29141	----	Transcriber's Note. The layout of the column headings in the table at the end of this text has been changed for ease of reading. Otherwise the text remains unchanged. Two New Pocket Gophers from Wyoming and Colorado BY E. RAYMOND HALL and H. GORDON MONTAGUE University of Kansas Publications Museum of Natural History Volume 5, No. 3, pp. 25-32 February 28, 1951 University of Kansas LAWRENCE 1951 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS, MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Editors: E. Raymond Hall, Chairman, Edward H. Taylor, A. Byron Leonard, Robert W. Wilson Volume 5, No. 3, pp. 25-32 February 28, 1951 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS Lawrence, Kansas PRINTED BY FERD VOILAND, JR., STATE PRINTER TOPEKA, KANSAS 1951 23-6627 Two New Pocket Gophers from Wyoming and Colorado BY E. RAYMOND HALL AND H. GORDON MONTAGUE In the academic year of 1947-48 Montague studied the geographic variation in _Thomomys talpoides_ of Wyoming. His study was based upon materials then in the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History. Publication of the results was purposely delayed until previously reported specimens from certain adjacent areas, especially in Colorado, could be examined. In the autumn of 1950 one of us, Hall, was able to examine the specimens from Colorado; also, the specimens from Wyoming accumulated in the past two seasons of field work in Wyoming were examined by Hall. A result of these studies is the recognition of two heretofore unnamed subspecies of the northern pocket gopher in southeastern Wyoming. Grateful acknowledgment is made of the opportunity to study the Coloradon specimens in the Biological Surveys Collection of the United States National Museum, and of the financial assistance from the Kansas University Endowment Association which permitted the field work in Wyoming. Descriptions and names for the two new subspecies are given below: =Thomomys talpoides rostralis= new subspecies _Type._--Female, adult, skull and skin, no. 17096 Mus. Nat. Hist., Univ. Kansas; from 1 mi. E Laramie, 7164 ft., Albany County, Wyoming; obtained on July 16, 1945, by C. Howard Westman; original no. 320. _Range._--Southern Wyoming and south in the mountains of Colorado to the Arkansas River but not including the Colorado River drainage except in Grand County and part of Routt County. _Diagnosis._--Size medium (see measurements); upper parts ranging from between Cinnamon-Rufous and Hazel (capitalized terms are of Ridgway, Color Standards and Color Nomenclature, Washington, D. C., 1912) in the eastern part of the range to between Argus Brown and Brussels Brown in the western part of the range; sides Cinnamon-Rufous; throat whitish; remainder of under-parts whitish, in many specimens tipped with Ochraceous-Buff; feet and tail whitish; rostrum long; nasals ordinarily truncate posteriorly; temporal ridges nearly parallel; interpterygoid space broadly V-shaped. _Comparisons._--From _Thomomys talpoides clusius_ (topotypes), _T. t. rostralis_ differs in: Body longer; color more reddish (lighter with less brownish and more ochraceous); rostrum both longer and broader, actually and also in relation to length of the skull; skull broader interorbitally; upper molariform tooth-row longer; tympanic bullae less inflated. For comparison with _T. t. attenuatus_ to the east, see the account of that subspecies. From _Thomomys talpoides macrotis_ (topotypes) to the southeast, _T. t. rostralis_ differs in: Body shorter; upper parts slightly more ochraceous and less grayish; skull averaging smaller in all measurements except that interorbital region is broader and rostrum and upper molariform tooth-row are longer; nasals truncate versus emarginate, and consistently shorter; basilar length consistently less in specimens of equal age; mastoidal breadth less in 16 of 17 specimens of _rostralis_; temporal ridges parallel instead of divergent posteriorly; exposed parts of upper incisors shorter; tympanic bullae more angular antero-laterally. From _Thomomys talpoides fossor_ (specimens from Rico, Silverton, Hermit and Pagosa Springs, all in Colorado), the subspecies to the southward, _T. t. rostralis_ differs in: Longer body; lighter color of upper parts; nasals truncate rather than rounded posteriorly; temporal ridges more nearly parallel (less divergent posteriorly); rostrum longer (averaging longer and broader); skull wider across zygomatic arches in 11 of 12 specimens of _rostralis._ _Remarks._--Geographic variation is evident in the material examined. In the initial study, one of us, Montague, separated the material from the Medicine Bow Range in Wyoming as a subspecies different from that at Laramie and the adjoining mountains to the eastward because of the darker color of the western animals and the smaller size of males. Acquisition of more material from still farther west (Sierra Madre) in Wyoming and the examination of material in the United States Biological Surveys Collection from Colorado discloses that there is a cline of increasing intensity of color from the geographic range of _T. t. cheyennensis_ at Pine Bluffs, Wyoming, westward to the eastern side of the Sierra Madre at a locality three miles east and five miles north of Savery, Wyoming. A further deterrent to setting apart the animals of the Medicine Bow Mountains as a separate subspecies is the large size of males from the North Platte River Valley southeast of Saratoga. The males from the valley of the North Platte are intermediate in size between those from the Medicine Bow Mountains and those from the Laramie River Valley. Females from the same places are available in longer series and show less variation. If there is a difference in size in the females, those from the mountains are larger than those from lower elevations on either side. The examination that one of us, Hall, has made of the related materials from Colorado reveals, as we supposed would be the case, that a large area formerly assigned to the geographic range of _Thomomys talpoides fossor_ is to be assigned to the geographic range of the newly named _Thomomys talpoides rostralis._ It should be added that, at this writing, the lack of ideally complete material from southwestern Colorado leaves some doubt as to the range of variation properly to be included within the geographic range of _T. t. fossor._ Consequently, study of a larger number of specimens from more localities in Colorado may show that the boundary between the geographic ranges of _T. t. fossor_ and _T. t. rostralis_ should be shifted from where we have tentatively placed it. _Specimens examined._--Total number, 168. Unless otherwise indicated, those from Colorado are in the United States National Museum, Biological Surveys Collection, and those from Wyoming are in the Museum of Natural History of the University of Kansas. =Colorado.= _Routt Co._: Hahns Peak, 2; Hayden, 1. _Jackson Co._ Pearle, North Park, 9000 ft., 2; Canadian Creek, North Park, 6; 5 mi. E Canadian Creek, 1; Rabbit Ear Mts., Arapaho Pass, 5. _Larimer Co._: Elkhorn, 7000 ft., 1; Estes Park, 7. _Grand Co._: Coulter, 4. _Boulder Co._: Longs Peak, 3; Gold Hill (the skin only; skull does not belong), 1; 3 mi. S Ward, 9000 ft., 10 (K. U.); 5 mi. W Boulder, 7. _Gilpin Co._: Blackhawk (U. S. N. M.), 2. _Jefferson Co._: Golden, 1; Golden foothills, 7300 ft., 1. _Park Co._: Como, South Park, 9800 ft., 1. _El Paso Co._: Cascade, 1 (too young for certain sub-specific identification). =Wyoming.= _Carbon County_: 13 mi. E and 6 mi. S Saratoga, 8500 ft., 1; 14 mi. E and 6 mi. S Saratoga, 8800 ft., 1; 7 mi. S and 11 mi. E Saratoga, 5; 8 mi. S and 6 mi. E Saratoga, 10; 10 mi. N and 14 mi. E Encampment, 8000 ft., 2; 10 mi. N and 16 mi. E Encampment, 8000 ft., 1; 8 mi. N and 16 mi. E Encampment, 8400 ft., 10. _Albany Co._: 2-1/4 mi. ESE Browns Peak, 10300 ft., 7; 3 mi. ESE Browns Peak 10000 ft., 5; 2 mi. S Browns Peak, 10600 ft., 7; 3 mi. S Browns Peak, 1; 2 mi. E and 1/2 mi. S Medicine Bow Peak, 10800 ft., 2; 5 mi. N Laramie, 7200 ft., 1; 1 mi. E Laramie, 7164 ft., 18; Laramie Mts., 10 mi. E Laramie (8500 ft., 2; 9000 ft., 1), 3 (U. S. B. S.); 5-1/2 mi. ESE Laramie, 8500 ft., 4; 8 mi. E and 4 mi. S Laramie, 8600 ft., 5; 8 mi. E and 6 mi. S Laramie, 8500 ft., 1; 15 mi. SE Laramie, Pole Mtn., 8200 ft., 3 (U. S. B. S.); 1 mi. SSE Pole Mtn., (8250 ft., 4; 8350 ft., 6), 10; 1 mi. S Pole Mtn., 8350 ft., 2; 2 mi. SW Pole Mtn., 8300 ft., 6; 2-1/2 mi. S Pole Mtn., 8340 ft., 1; 3 mi. S Pole Mtn., 1; Woods P. O., 2 (U. S. N. M.); Fort Russell, 1 (U. S. N. M.); Sherman, 2 (U. S. N. M.). _Additional records._--Bailey (N. Amer. Fauna, 39:101, 112, November 15, 1915) has recorded the following specimens, which on geographic grounds, would presumably be referable to _Thomomys talpoides rostralis._ COLORADO: Estes Park (referred by Bailey, p. 101, to _T. t. clusius_), 1; Colorado City, 1; Colorado Springs, 2-1/2 mi. N, 6000 ft., 1; Colorado Springs, east of Palmer Park, 1; Montgomery, 3; Nederland, 4; Teller County Divide, 1. These specimens have not been examined by us. =Thomomys talpoides attenuatus= new subspecies _Type._--Male, adult, skull and skin, no. 15095 Mus. Nat. Hist., Univ. Kansas; from 3-1/2 mi. W Horse Creek Post Office, 7000 ft., Laramie County, Wyoming; obtained on July 16, 1945, by Henry W. Setzer; original no. 629. _Range._--Southeastern Wyoming from Niobrara County south into Weld County, Colorado. _Diagnosis._--Size small; color pale (whitish); skull smooth and, relative to its length, slender; rostrum relatively long; nasals truncate posteriorly; middle parts of zygomatic arches straight; temporal ridges low and more widely separated in middle extent than at anterior or posterior ends; tympanic bullae rounded and moderately inflated; interpterygoid space V-shaped. _Comparisons._--From _Thomomys talpoides bullatus_ (topotypes) to the northward, _T. t. attenuatus_ differs in smaller size, lighter (less brownish, more whitish) color, smaller and slenderer skull. In detail, some cranial features diagnostic of _attenuatus,_ when compared with _bullatus,_ are: Anterolateral angle of zygoma less nearly a right angle; temporal ridges bowed outward at middle, instead of straight, and farther apart posteriorly than anteriorly instead of nearly parallel; sides of basioccipital nearly straight instead of concave. From _Thomomys talpoides cheyennensis_ (holotype and Wyoming specimens from: Pine Bluff; 1 mi. W Pine Bluffs, 5000 ft.; 12 mi. N and 1/2 mi. W Pine Bluffs) to the eastward, _T. t. attenuatus_ differs in smaller size throughout and more slender skull. The two subspecies are indistinguishable in color. From _Thomomys talpoides macrotis_ (topotypes) to the southward, _T. t. attenuatus_ differs in smaller size, slightly lighter (less brownish and more whitish) color, smaller and slenderer skull. From _Thomomys talpoides rostralis_ (specimens from the type locality) to the westward, _T. t. attenuatus_ differs in smaller size; lighter (grayer, less brownish) color, smaller and less angular skull. From _Thomomys talpoides clusius_ (topotypes) to the northwestward, _T. t. attenuatus_ differs in shorter body, slightly grayer color, less width across mastoid region of skull, smaller tympanic bullae, and more obtuse anterolateral angle on zygoma. _Remarks._--This subspecies is of smaller size than any of the geographically adjoining subspecies. Intergradation with _T. t. cheyennensis_ is shown by specimens from two miles south and nine and one-half miles east of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Intergradation with _T. t. bullatus_ or _T. t. clusius_ or both is suggested by the larger size of the specimen from five miles southwest of Wheatland, Wyoming. Although large, this skull has the slender proportions of _attenuatus_ to which the specimen is tentatively referred. Although the specimens from Avalo, Colorado, are typical _attenuatus,_ the specimen from Pawnee Buttes, Colorado, is somewhat larger than typical _attenuatus_ and suggests intergradation with the subspecies to the southward, for example, at Flagler, Colorado. _Specimens examined._--Total number, 44, and unless otherwise indicated in the Museum of Natural History of the University of Kansas. =Wyoming.= _Niobrara County_: 10 mi. N Hatcreek Post Office, 5300 ft., 1. _Platte Co._: 5 mi. SW Wheatland, 1 (U. S. B. S.). _Goshen Co._: Little Bear Creek, 20 mi. SE Chugwater, 1 (U. S. B. S.). _Laramie Co._: 5 mi. W and 1 mi. N Horse Creek P. O., 7200 ft., 1; 3-1/2 mi. W Horse Creek P. O., 7000 ft., 6; 2-1/5 mi. W Horse Creek P. O., 6600 ft., 1; 2 mi. W Horse Creek P. O., 6600 ft., 2; Horse Creek 6500 ft., 1; 3 mi. E Horse Creek P. O., 6400 ft., 5; 6 mi. W Islay, 2 (U. S. B. S.); 2 mi. S and 1/2 mi. E Pine Bluffs, 5200 ft., 1; 7 mi. W Cheyenne, 6500 ft., 1; Cheyenne, 7 (U. S. N. M.); 1 mi. S and 4-1/2 mi. E Cheyenne, 5200 ft., 1; 2 mi. S and 9-1/2 mi. E Cheyenne, 5200 ft., 3; Arcola, 5200 ft., 4. =Colorado.= _Weld Co._: Pawnee Buttes, 5300 ft., 1 (U. S. B. S.). _Logan Co._: Chimney Canyon, 10 mi. NE Avalo, 5100 ft., 5 (U. S. B. S.). _Museum of Natural History, University of Kansas, Lawrence. Transmitted January 15, 1951._ TABLE 1. MEASUREMENTS, IN MILLIMETERS, OF TWO SUBSPECIES OF THOMOMYS TALPOIDES. ______________________________________________________________________ Column A Catalogue number or number of averaged individuals Column B Sex Column C Total length Column D Length of tail Column E Basilar length Column F Length of hind foot Column G Zygomatic breadth Column H Least interorbital constriction Column I Mastoidal breadth Column J Length of nasals Column K Breadth of rostrum Column L Length of rostrum Column M Alveolar length if maxilliary tooth-row A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M _T. t. rostralis,_ from type locality 17092 |Male |220|56 |28 |33.2|23.7|6.4 |19.5|15.5|8.1 |17.5| 8.2 17095 |Male |228|68 |30 |33.3| - |6.5 |18.8|15.0|7.4 |17.3| 7.3 17091 |Male |212|56 |27 |33.0|22.8|6.5 |18.7|14.2|8.5 |16.2| 7.6 Average|Male |220|60 |28.3|33.2|23.2|6.5 |19.0|14.9|8.0 |17.0| 7.7 9 av. |Female|214|56 |27.1|31.6|22.4|6.5 |18.5|14.4|7.8 |16.8| 7.9 min. |Female|198|45 |25 |30.0|20.7|6.2 |17.7|13.2|7.4 |15.4| 7.1 max. |Female|230|72 |28.5|33.5|23.3|7.0 |19.8|14.9|8.1 |17.7| 8.4 _T. t. attenuatus,_ from type locality 15095 |Male |202|61 |26 |30.1|21.2|6.6 |18.2|13.6|7.3 |16.0| 7.0 15094 |Male |189|56 |24 |29.7|20.1|5.7 |17.2|12.4|7.2 |14.8| 6.9 from 2-1/2 mi. W Horse Creek P. O., 6600 ft. 15100 |Male |196|58 |27 |30.2|21.7|6.1 |18.4|14.5|7.5 |16.3| 7.0 3 av. |Male |196|58 |25.7|30.0|21.0|6.1 |17.9|13.5|7.3 |15.7| 7.0 from type locality 15096 |Female|203|59 |26 |30.0| - |6.1 |18.0|14.1|7.3 |16.3| 6.8 15098 |Female|192|69 |26 |28.8|19.8|5.5 |17.2|12.0|6.7 |14.7| 7.3 Horse Creek, 6500 ft. 15103 |Female|181|58 |25 |29.6|19.5|5.9 |16.3|13.0|6.9 |15.2| 7.0 3 mi. E Horse Creek P. O., 6400 ft. 15107 |Female|190|54 |27 |30.5|20.5|6.0 |17.9|13.5|7.3 |16.4| 6.8 15106 |Female|192|55 |26 |30.8|21.5|6.5 |18.2|12.7|7.6 |15.5| 7.0 5 av. |Female|192|59 |26 |29.9|20.3|6.0 |17.5|13.1|7.2 |15.6| 7.0 
27077	----	[Illustration: DANGERS OF THE TRAIL--1865] DANGERS OF THE TRAIL IN 1865 A Narrative of Actual Events By CHARLES E. YOUNG GENEVA, N. Y. 1912 COPYRIGHT, 1912 BY CHARLES E. YOUNG Press of W. F. Humphrey, Geneva, N. Y. H. DeF. Patterson, Illustrator, Geneva, N. Y. PREFACE I present this narrative of actual events on a trip across the plains to Denver, Colorado, in 1865 and of life in the Far West in the later sixties. An interesting and valuable feature is a map of the country, made in 1865, by Henry Bowles of Boston, showing the old Platte River and Smoky Hill Trails of that day before there was a railroad west of the Missouri River. Everything is told in a plain but truthful manner, and this little volume is submitted to the reader for approval or criticism. CHAS. E. YOUNG July, 1912 CONTENTS CHAPTER I--Young Man, Go West CHAPTER II--Arrival at Fort Carney CHAPTER III--An Attack by the Indians CHAPTER IV--Denver in 1865 CHAPTER V--A Proof of Marksmanship CHAPTER VI--On to Leavenworth CHAPTER VII--A Plucky German [Illustration: (decorative)] CHAPTER I "YOUNG MAN, GO WEST" [Illustration: E] Early in 1859 gold was discovered in Colorado, and Horace Greeley, the well known writer and a power throughout the country both before and during the Civil War, made, in the interest of the _New York Tribune_, of which he was editor, an overland trip to Denver by the first stage line run in that day. He started from Leavenworth, Kansas, and with the exception of Mr. Richardson, of the _Boston Journal_, was the only passenger in the coach. The trip was not all that could be desired, for they met with numerous hardships and many narrow escapes, as did hundreds of others who had preceded them over that dangerous trail, many never reaching their destination--having met death at the hands of the cruel Indians of the plains. During his stay in Denver Mr. Greeley wrote a number of letters to the _New York Tribune_, confirming the finding of gold in the territory and advising immigration. The people in the East were skeptical in regard to its discovery and awaited a written statement from him to this effect. At the close of the war Mr. Greeley's advice to young men, through the columns of his paper, was to go West and grow up with the country, and it became a byword throughout the State of New York and the Nation, "Young man, go West and grow up with the country." Could Mr. Greeley have foreseen the number of young lives that were to be sacrificed through his advice, I think he would have hesitated before giving it; yet, it was the most valued utterance of any public man of that day for the settlement of the then Far West. After reading a number of these letters in the _New York Tribune_, I became very enthusiastic over the opportunities that the West offered for the young man. There was also a loyal friend of mine who became as enthusiastic over it as myself. Thus, while we were still so young as to be called boys, we made up our minds to follow Mr. Greeley's advice, and "Go West and grow up with the country." [Illustration: _MAP OF TRAILS LEADING FROM MISSOURI RIVER TO DENVER, COLORADO 1865_] In making our purchases for the trip we were obliged to make our plans known to an acquaintance, who at once expressed a desire to accompany us. After consultation, we consented and at the appointed time, the fore part of July, 1865, just at the close of the Civil War, we boarded a New York Central train at the depot in Geneva, N. Y., with no thought of the hardships and dangers we would be called upon to meet. The first night found us at the Falls of Niagara--the most stupendous production of nature that the country was known to possess at that time. Our time was divided between the American and Canadian sides, viewing the grand spectacle at all hours, from the rising to the setting of the sun; and, awed by the marvelous masterpiece of grandeur, we were held as if fascinated by its beauty, until we were forced to leave for the want of food and to replenish our commissary. When we boarded the cars to be whirled through the then wilds of Lower Canada, we were liberally supplied with the best the country produced. Upon the fifth day we rolled into Chicago, the cosmopolitan city of the West. Two days later we reached Quincy, Ill., where we made connection with the old Hannibal & St. Joe Railroad which was to take us through Missouri to Atchison, Kansas. Missouri, after the war, was not an ideal state for a law abiding citizen, much less for inexperienced youths of our age, and we quickly realized that fact. Many stations had their quota of what was termed the Missouri bushwhacker, or, more plainly speaking, outlaws, who, during the war and for some time after, pillaged the state and surrounding country, leaving in their wake death and destruction. They had belonged to neither side at war, but were a set of villians banded together to plunder, burn, ravage and murder young and old alike; as wicked a set of villians as the world has ever known. At many stations they would nearly fill the car, making it very unpleasant for the passengers. Their language and insults caused every one to be guarded in conversation. The condition of the road, however, often gave us relief, as we were obliged to alight and walk, at times, when arriving at a point where ties or rails had to be replaced. Its entire length showed the carnage and destruction of war, making travel slow and dangerous as well as uncomfortable. On reaching the state of bleeding Kansas and the then village of Atchison we were about used up. We at once called at the Ben Holiday Stage Office and inquired the price of a ticket to Denver, but finding it to be beyond our means, we decided to go by ox conveyance. COMMANCHE BILL We were not long in finding what, in those days, was called a tavern, located in the outskirts of the town. Having been chosen spokesman, I stepped up to the rough board counter and registered. We were soon confronted by the toughest individual we had yet seen. I pleasantly bade him good morning but received no immediate recognition, save a wild stare from two horrible, bloodshot eyes. I quickly came to the conclusion that we were up against the real Western article, nor was I mistaken. He didn't keep up waiting long, for he soon roared out an oath and wanted to know where we were from. After telling him as near as I possibly could, under the circumstances, he again became silent. His look and brace of revolvers were not reassuring, to say the least. He soon came out of his trance and did not keep us long in suspense, for his next act was to pull out both of his life-takers, and, not in very choice language, introduce himself as Commanche Bill from Arkansas, emphasizing the Arkansas by letting the contents of both of his instruments of death pierce the ceiling of his story and a half shack. I have wondered many times since that I am alive. We had been told by a fellow passenger that Atchison was a little short of Hades, and we were fast realizing that our informer was not far out of the way; yet, it was a haven in comparison to other places at which we were yet to arrive. Commanche William, or whatever his right name might have been, was a different person after his forceful introduction. He began to question me. He asked me if we had any money. "Yes." "Any friends?" "Certainly." "Well, then you had better get straight back to them, for if you remain in these parts long, they will be unable to recognize you. Where are you fellows headed for, anyway?" "Denver, Colorado." "By stage?" "No, sir. By ox or mule conveyance." "You are too light weight. No freighter will hire you." "They will or we'll walk." "You will not walk far for the Indians along the Platte are ugly. By the way, do you pards ever take anything?" Not wishing to offend such a character, I gave my companions the wink and we followed him into the bar-room with the full determination of making a friend of him. After all had done the sociable act--of course gentlemen only drink for sociability sake--I took him to one side purposely to draw him into a little private chat, and it was not long before his self-conceit had the better of him. He ordered grub--as all meals were called in the West in those days--for four, stating he was in need of a bite himself. Before the meal had been finished, I became convinced that the old fellow had a tender spot in his makeup, like all tough outlaws, and, if one had tact enough to discover it, he might have great influence over him; otherwise, we would be obliged to sleep with both eyes open and each with his right hand on the butt of his revolver. THE AMERICAN INDIAN The following day was passed in taking in the town and Indian Reservation, which was but a short distance from the place. There we came, for the first time, face to face with the American Indian, the sole owner of this vast and fertile continent before the paleface landed to dispute his right of ownership. Foot by foot they had been driven from East, North and South, until at that time they were nearly all west of the great Missouri River, or River of Mud, as the Indians called it. At the suggestion of our landlord, we took with us an interpreter, a few trinkets, and something to moisten the old chief's lips. Upon our arrival we were duly presented to the chief, who invited us to sit on the ground upon fur robes made from the pelts of different animals, including the antelope and the buffalo, or American bison, the monarch of the plains, and each one of us in turn took a pull at the pipe of peace. We then made a tour of their lodges. When we returned, the chief called his squaws to whom we presented our gifts, which pleased them greatly. To the old chief I handed a bottle of Atchison's best. As he grasped it, a smile stole over his ugly face, and with a healthy grunt and a broad grin, he handed me back the empty bottle. Indians love liquor better than they do their squaws. In return he gave me a buffalo robe which later became of great service. After taking another pull at the pipe of peace, we thanked him and took our departure, having no desire to be present when Atchison's invigorator commenced to invigorate his Indian brain. The impression made by that visit to a supposedly friendly tribe, who at that time had a peace treaty with the government, was not one of confidence. The noble red men, as they were called by the Eastern philanthropist, were as treacherous to the whites as an ocean squall to the navigator. No pen or picture has or can fully describe the cruelty of their nature. It was dusk when we reached our tavern, and we found it filled with a lawless band of degenerates, as repulsive as any that ever invested Western plains or canyons of the Rockies. We were at once surrounded and by a display of their shooting irons, forced to join in their beastly carnival. It was not for long, however, for a sign from the landlord brought me to his side. He whispered, "When I let my guns loose you fellows pike for the loft." There were no stairs. No sooner had he pulled his life-takers than all the others followed his example. Bullets flew in every direction. Clouds of smoke filled the room, but we had ducked and scaled the ladder to the loft and safety. Sleep was out of the question until the early hours of the morning, for the night was made hideous by blasphemous language, howls of pain and the ring of revolvers. The first call for grub found us ready and much in need of a nerve quieter, which the old sinner laughingly supplied; but no word from him of the night's bloody work. Taking me to one side, he said, "Take no offence, but repeat nothing you hear or see in these parts, and strictly mind your own business and a fellow like you will get into no trouble." I thanked him and followed his advice to the letter during my entire Western life. THE FIRST CAMP After that night's experience, we decided to pay our bill and become acclimated to camp life. We had taken with us a tent, blankets and three toy pistols, the latter entirely useless in that country, which proved how ignorant we were of Western ways. We were not long in finding a suitable camping spot a mile from the town and the same distance from the many corrals of the great Western freighters and pilgrims, as the immigrants were called. For miles we could see those immense, white covered prairie schooners in corral formation. Hundreds of oxen and mules were quietly grazing under the watchful eyes of their herders in saddle. It was certainly a novel sight to the tenderfoot. We soon had our tent up and leaving one of our number in charge the other two went to town for the necessary camp utensils and grub. Immediately on our return supper was prepared and the novelty enjoyed. After a three days' rest I started out to make the rounds of the corrals in search of a driver's berth. All freighters had a wagon boss and an assistant who rightfully had the reputation of being tyrants when on the trail, using tact and discretion when in camp. A revolver settled all disputes. On approaching them they treated me as well as their rough natures would permit; but I did not take kindly to any of them. They all told me that I was undersized, and too young to stand the dangers and hardships of a trip. I returned to camp much disappointed but not discouraged. The following morning we proceeded to the large warehouses on the river front, where all Western freighters were to be found. In those days all emigrants and oxen and mule trains with freight going to the far Western Territories would start from either Council Bluffs, Iowa, Leavenworth, Kansas, Atchison or St. Joe, Missouri; Atchison being the nearest point, a large majority embarked from there. The freight was brought up the Missouri River in flat-bottom steam-boats, propelled by a large wheel at the stern, and unloaded on the bank of the river. The perishable goods were placed in the large warehouses but the unperishable were covered with tarpaulin and left where unloaded. They were then transferred to large white covered prairie schooners and shipped to their different points of destination in trains of from twenty-five to one hundred wagons. The rate for freighting depended on the condition of the Indians and ran from ten cents per pound up to enormous charges in some cases. SECURING PASSAGE After making application to several of the freighters and receiving the same reply as from the wagon bosses, we went a short distance down the river to the last of the warehouses. On our approach we discovered a genuine bullwhacker--as all ox drivers were called in that day--in conversation with a short, stout-built fellow with red hair and whiskers to match. The moment he became disengaged I inquired if he was a freighter. He said that he was and that he wanted more men. His name was Whitehead, just the opposite to the color of his hair, and as I stepped up to him I wondered what kind of a disposition the combination made--whitehead, redhead. I at once made application for a position for the three of us. In rather a disagreeable voice, he asked me if I could drive. I replied that I could. "Can you handle a gun and revolver?" "Certainly." "How many trips have you made?" "None." "Then how the devil do you know you can drive?" "For the simple reason I am more than anxious to learn, and so are my friends." Then I made a clean breast of the position we were in and urged him to give us a chance. "Well," he said, "You seem to be a determined little cuss; are the rest of the same timber?" I told him they were of the same wood but not of the same tree. After thinking the matter over, he said, "I'll tell you what I will do. I will hire the big fellow for driver at one hundred and twenty-five dollars per month, and the little fellow for night herder at one hundred dollars a month, and yourself for cook for one mess of twenty-five men and for driver in case of sickness or death, at one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month." We then gave him our names, and, in return, he gave us a note to Mr. Perry, his wagon boss. We at once started for his corral, two miles distant, where we found the gentleman. He asked where our traps were. We told him, and also assured him that we would report for duty the following morning. When we reached our camp we were completely tired out, but passed the remainder of the day in celebrating our success, and feeling assured that if we escaped the scalping knife of the Indians, we would reach Denver in due time, and, when paid off have a nice sum in dollars. The following morning we had an early breakfast, broke camp, and reported at the corral where each was presented with two revolvers and a repeating carbine. I was then taken over to the mess wagon which was liberally supplied with bacon (in the rough), flour, beans, cargum (or sour molasses), coffee, salt, pepper, baking-powder and dried apples; the latter we were allowed three times a week for dessert. There was also a skillet for baking bread, which resembled a covered spider without a handle. When the assistant cook, with whom I was favored, had started the fire and sufficient coals had accumulated, he would rake them out and place the skillet on them. As soon as the dough was prepared, a chunk was cut off and put in the skillet, the lid placed and covered with coals; in fifteen minutes we would have as nice a looking loaf of bread as one could wish to see, browned to a tempting color. When eaten warm, it was very palatable, but when cold, only bullwhackers could digest it. An old-fashioned iron kettle in which to stew the beans and boil the dried apples, or vice versa, coffee pots, frying pans, tin plates, cups, iron knives and forks, spoons and a combination dish and bread-pan made up the remainder of the cooking and eating utensils. EXPERIENCES AMONG THE BUSHWHACKERS It seemed that my assistant was exempt from bringing water, which often had to be carried in kegs for two miles, so he fried the meat and washed the dishes. I soon caught on to the cooking, and doing my best to please everyone, soon became aware of the fact that I had many friends among the toughest individuals on earth, the professional bullwhackers, who, according to their own minds, were very important personages. Their good qualities were few, and consisted of being a sure shot, and expert at lariat and whip-throwing. They would bet a tenderfoot a small sum that they could at a distance of twelve feet, abstract a small piece from his trousers without disturbing the flesh. They could do this trick nine times out of ten. The whips consisted of a hickory stalk two feet long, a lash twelve feet in length with buck or antelope skin snapper nine inches in length. The stalk was held in the left hand, the lash coiled with the right hand and index finger of the left. It was then whirled several times around the head, letting it shoot straight out and bringing it back with a quick jerk. It would strike wherever aimed, raising a dead-head ox nearly off its hind quarters and cutting through the hide and into the flesh. When thrown into space, it would make a report nearly as loud as a revolver. A lariat is a fifty foot line with a running noose at one end and made from the hide of various animals. It is coiled up and carried on the pommel of the saddle. When used for capturing animals or large game, it is whirled several times around the head when the horse is on a dead run and fired at the head of the victim. A professional can place the loop nearly every time. During the third day of corral life, the steers arrived, and the hard work, mixed with much fun, commenced. A corral is about the shape of an egg, closed by the wagons at one end, and left open to admit the cattle at the other, then closed by chains. MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION Our wheelers and leaders were docile, old freighters, the others were long-horned, wild Texas steers. All of the freighters had their oxen branded for identification, using the first letter of his last name for the purpose. The brand was made from iron and was about four inches in height, attached to a rod three feet in length. A rope was placed over the horns of the animal and his head was drawn tight to the hub of a heavy laden prairie schooner. A bullwhacker, tightly grasping the tail of the beast, would twist him to attention. The man with the branding implement heated to a white heat would quickly jab the ox on the hind quarter, burning through hair and hide and into the flesh. Then, after applying a solution of salt and water, he was left to recover as best he could. The brand would remain in evidence more than a year unless the steer was captured by cattle thieves, who possessed a secret for growing the hair again in six months. When the branding was completed, each man was given twelve steers to break to yoke, and it was three long weeks before we were in shape to proceed on our long Western tramp. The cattle were driven in each morning at break of day, the same time as when on trail. Each man with a yoke on his left shoulder and a bow in his right hand would go groping about in almost total darkness to select his twelve steers. When they were all found he would yoke them and hitch them to the wagons; the wheelers to the tongue, the leaders in front and the balance to section chains. For days we were obliged to lariat the wildest of them and draw their heads to the hubs of the heavily laden wagons, before being able to adjust the yoke, many times receiving a gentle reminder from the hind hoof of one of the critters to be more careful. I went into the fray with the full determination of learning the profession of driver and at the tenth day I had broken in a team of extras. ON THE SICK LIST I was then taken sick and for two long weeks kept my bed of earth under the mess wagon, with no mother or doctor, and two thousand miles from home. You may be able to imagine my feelings, but I doubt it. At the end of the second week Mr. Perry came and told me they would make a start the next afternoon and, in his judgment, he thought it unwise to think of making the trip in my present condition. I knew my condition was serious, but I would rather have died on the road, among those outlaws, than to have been left in Atchison among entire strangers. They were all very kind and did what they could for me, but were powerless to check my fast failing strength. I had wasted to less than one hundred pounds in weight and was too weak to even lift an arm. I pleaded with Mr. Perry for some time and finally overcame his objections. "Well," he said, "Charlie, I will fix a bed in my wagon and you can bunk with me." I objected, for I did not wish to discommode him in the least and told him a good bed could be fixed in the mess wagon. "As you will," he said, and had the boys get some straw which together with the Buffalo robe made a very comfortable bed when not on the move. A THUNDER STORM The next day they picked me up and put me in the second or reserve mess wagon. Shortly after that the start was made. We had covered less than two miles when all of a sudden I heard the rumbling of distant thunder. Very soon rain began to patter on the canvas covering of my wagon. Then Heaven's artillery broke loose and the water came down in torrents. Never in my young life had I witnessed such a storm. It seemed as if thunder, lightning and clouds had descended to earth and were mad with anger. The racket was deafening. Between the angered claps could be heard the cursing of those Missouri bushwhackers, who, in their oaths, defied the Almighty to do his worst and hurled unspeakable insults at the memory of the mothers who gave them birth. I knew they were trying hard to make corral; whether they could do it, rested entirely with the wagon boss. The cattle were crazed with fright and the moment they were loose, would certainly stampede. The oxen were finally unyoked and such a snorting and bellowing, it would be impossible to describe. As the racket died away in their mad race, my thoughts turned to my chum, who I knew was with them, and would be trampled beyond recognition by their death-dealing hoofs, if he had not gained his proper position in the rear. [Illustration: LOG CABIN IN KANSAS] THE LOG CABIN At that juncture the front flaps of my wagon were parted and at a flash I recognized two of the men, who bore me across the way to the "Old Log Cabin" on the extreme edge of the then Western civilization. As they laid me down I swooned from sheer exhaustion and fright. Before I had become fully conscious I heard that gruff old wagon boss telling the good woman of the cabin to spare nothing for my comfort. She felt of my pulse, asked me a few questions and assured him that she would soon have me on my feet. He bade "God bless me," and passed out into the dark and stormy night. The good woman poked up the fire and placed an old-fashioned, iron tea-kettle in position to do its duty. At that juncture a young miss about my own age came from somewhere, as if by magic, and was told by the good mother to prepare a chicken, that she might make broth for the sick young man, pointing to where I lay. For two hours that good mother worked over me, now and then giving me draughts of hot herb tea, while the daughter deftly prepared nature's wild bird of the prairie, occasionally shooting darts of sympathy from her jet black eyes. When the bird had been cooked, the meat and bones were removed leaving only the broth which was seasoned to a nicety and given me in small quantities and at short intervals until early morning, when I passed into dreamland with the mother keeping vigil as though I were her own son. When I awoke I felt refreshed and comfortable, and found her still at my side, doing for me that which only a mother can. At daybreak I heard footsteps above; presently the father and son came in. The daughter was called and breakfast was prepared. They told me that our cattle had stampeded and it might be days before they were found. After a three days search my chum and the cattle were overtaken miles from camp, but none the worse for their fearful experience. The moment he arrived he came to see me. I was sitting up for the first time, wrapped in Indian blankets, but very weak. I assured him that I would certainly get well, emphasizing the fact, however, that had we not run into that fearful storm, making my present haven of care possible, I could never have recovered, and believed that the prayers of a loving mother at home had been answered. A CATTLE STAMPEDE He then related his experience with those storm-maddened cattle. The first clap of thunder awoke him, and when the rain began he knew he was in for a bad night, and had taken every precaution to supply himself with all things needful. His description of the storm and mad race to keep up with those wild animals, crazed with fright, was enough to congeal the blood of a well man, and in my condition it nearly unnerved me. But I was delighted to know that he was safe, for we were like brothers. His safe arrival, together with the motherly care I had received and was receiving, put me rapidly on the gain. Not a morning passed that the daughter did not shoulder her trusty rifle and go out in search of some refreshment for me, always returning with a number of chickens of the prairie. She was a sure shot, as were the entire family, for they were all born and brought up on the border, moving farther West as the country became settled. From the father I learned the treachery of the Indians, their mode of warfare and different methods of attack; in fact, I had the devilish traits of the noble red men--as history called them--down to a nicety. When the daughter's day's work was done, she would read to me and relate stories of her life, which reminded me of the "Wild Rose" in all its purity and strength. The fifth day after the cattle were found the train broke corral and proceeded on its long Western tramp. Before leaving, Mr. Perry made arrangements with the old borderman for me to overtake them as soon as I was able. [Illustration: THE MARCH OF DESTINY] The fourth day after the train had left, I made up my mind that I would start the next morning at sunrise and so informed my Western friends, whom, I felt, had saved my life. The old borderman expressed regret at my leaving and informed me that both he and his son would accompany me to camp. I thanked him and assured him that I felt a mother could not have done more for her own son than his wife had for me--they had all shown me every consideration possible--and that I should always remember them, which I have. At this juncture the mother spoke up gently, but firmly, and addressing her husband, said, "If you have no objection, daughter will accompany Mr. Young. She is a sure shot, a good horsewoman, and the horses are fleet of foot. We have not heard of any Indians in the neighborhood for some time, and besides she wants to go and the ride will do her good." He replied, "My good woman, you cannot tell where the Indians are, they may be miles away today, but here this very night." "That is true," she said, "but the stage driver told me that he had not seen a redskin since crossing the Nebraska line." "That may be," he replied, "still they may have been in the bluffs, or sand hills watching their opportunity to surprise one of the many small trains of pilgrims, thinking to overpower them, run off their cattle and massacre all." "Yes, that is all true, but I'll wager they could not catch our girl." After thinking silently for a few moments, he said, "Well, if you wish, she may go; but if anything happens to our little one, you alone will be blamed." That settled it. We talked long after father and brother had bade us good night. Mother and daughter finally retired; but, as for myself, I was nervous and restless, sleeping little, thinking of home and loved ones; not, however, forgetting the little "Wild Rose" that was separated from me only by a curtain partition. The following morning we were up at break of day, and at just 5:30 on a lovely August morning the horses were brought to the door and both quickly mounted. Her riding habit of buckskin, trimmed with colored beads, was the most becoming costume I had ever seen on her during my stay, and for the first time I wished that I were not going, but it was for a moment only. WITH THE WAGON TRAIN AGAIN My destination was Denver, and nothing could change my plans except death in the natural way, or being cut down by those treacherous plains roamers. After a pleasant ride which lasted till noon, we came in sight of the corral. When within a quarter of a mile of it, she informed me she was going no farther. Both quickly dismounted. Our conversation would not interest you. Suffice to say, the parting was painful to both. I bade her good-bye and she was off like a flash. I walked slowly into camp, now and then turning to watch the fast retreating figure of as brave a prairie child as nature ever produced. The men appeared glad to see me; the gruff old wagon boss more so than any of the others, for he would not let me turn my hand to any kind of work until I was able. Then I did my best to repay him for his many kindnesses. At 2 o'clock that afternoon the train broke corral, and for the first time I realized the slowness of our progress, and the long trip before us. Under the most favorable circumstances we could not make over ten miles a day and more often at the beginning three, five and seven. Our bed was mother earth, a rubber blanket and buffalo robe the mattress, two pairs of blankets the covering, Heaven's canopy the roof; the stars our silent sentinels. The days were warm, the nights cool. We would go into camp at sundown. The cattle were unyoked and driven to water. After grub the night herder and one of the drivers would take them in charge, and if there were no Indians following, would drive them to a good grazing spot over the bluffs. We passed through Kansas, after crossing the Little and Big Blue rivers, and part of Nebraska without seeing another log cabin or woods. Every fifteen or twenty miles there was a stage station of the Ben Holiday coach line, which ran between Atchison, Kansas, and Sacramento, California. At every station would be a relay of six horses, and by driving night and day would make one hundred miles every twenty-four hours. They were accompanied by a guard of United States soldiers on top of coaches and on horseback. [Illustration: FORT CARNEY, NEBRASKA, 1859] CHAPTER II ARRIVAL AT FORT CARNEY [Illustration: A] Arriving at Fort Carney we struck the Platte River trail leading to Denver. We were compelled by United States army officers to halt and await the arrival of a train of fifty armed men before being allowed to proceed. In a few hours the required number came up, together with three wagon loads of pilgrims. No train was permitted to pass a Government fort without one hundred well-armed men; but once beyond the fort, they would become separated and therein lay the danger. A captain was appointed by the commander of the fort to take charge. Here we struck the plains proper, or the great American desert, as it was often called, the home of the desperate Indians, degraded half-breeds, and the squaw man--white men with Indian wives--who were at that time either French or Spanish; also the fearless hunters and trappers with nerves of steel, outdoing the bravest Indian in daring and the toughest grizzly in endurance. It is a matter of record that these men of iron were capable and some did amputate their own limbs. A knife sharpened as keen as a razor's edge would cut the flesh; another hacked into a saw would separate the bones and sensitive marrow; while an iron heated to white heat seared up the arteries and the trick was done. There was no anesthetic in those days. There were also the cattle and mule thieves who lived in the bluffs, miles from the trail of white men, a tough lot of desperadoes, believing in the adage "Dead men tell no tales." There were the ranchmen at intervals of twenty, fifty and a hundred miles, who sold to the pilgrims supplies, such as canned goods, playing cards, whiskey of the vilest type, and traded worn-out cattle, doctored to look well for a few days and then give out, thus cheating freighters and pilgrims alike. These adobe ranches were built of sod cut in lengths of from two to four feet, four inches in thickness and eighteen inches in width and laid grass side down. The side walls were laid either single or double, six feet in height, with the end walls tapering upward. A long pole was then placed from peak to peak and shorter poles from side walls to ridge pole. Four inches of grass covered the poles and the same depth of earth completed the structure making the best fortifications ever devised; no bullet was able to penetrate their sides nor could fire burn them. The poles used for building these adobe ranches were in most cases hauled two hundred miles and in some cases three hundred miles. WILD ANIMALS OF THE WEST On a graceful slope roamed immense herds of buffalo, bands of elk, thousands of antelope, herds of black-and white-tail deer and the large gray wolf. Coyotes about the size of a shepherd dog would assemble on the high bluffs or invade the camp and make night hideous by their continuous and almost perfect imitation of a human baby's cry, making sleep impossible. The prairie dog, the fierce rattlesnake, and the beautiful little white burrowing-owl, occupied the same hole in the ground, making a queer family combination. Contrary to the belief of all dwellers and travelers of the plains in that day, Colonel Roosevelt claims it is not a fact that the three mentioned animals occupied the same quarters together, and that the story is a myth. The little prairie dogs had their villages the same as the Indians. I have frequently seen a prairie dog come out and return into the same hole in the ground. I have also seen a beautiful little white owl silently perched at the side of the same hole and finally enter it, and a few moments later a fierce rattlesnake would crawl into the same hole. Whether it was the snake's permanent abode and it went in for a much needed rest, or whether it was an enemy to the others and the snake went in for a game supper of prairie dog puppies and owl squabs, departing by another route, I am unable to say, as I never took the trouble to investigate one of the holes to confirm the fact. If I had, I would in all probability still be digging. However, in this case, I am inclined to give Colonel Roosevelt the benefit of the doubt for the reason that if nature had not created an enemy to check their increase, the prairie dog would now over-run the country, as they multiply faster than any known animal, and are very destructive to the farm. The Government, through its agents, have destroyed thousands every year in the West by distributing poisoned grain. Last, but not least, of the life of the plains was the Pole Cat. Conscious of his own ability to protect himself, he would often invade the camps at night, making the life of the sleeper miserable. TROUBLE EN ROUTE After leaving Fort Carney our troubles began. Many of the drivers were as treacherous as the Indians and would bear watching. One of them in our mess was a former bushwhacker, who bore many scars of his former unsavory life, one of which was the loss of an eye, which did not make him a very desirable acquaintance, much less a companion. He was of an ugly disposition, very seldom speaking to anyone and very few taking the trouble to speak to him. At times he acted as if he had been taking something stronger than coffee, but as we had not camped near any ranch where the poison could be procured, I came to the conclusion that he was a dope fiend. In some mysterious manner we had lost one of our cups, and at each meal for a week it fell to the lot of this particular bushwhacker to get left. He at last broke his long silence, and in anger with oaths, vowed he would not eat another meal without a cup, and would certainly take one from somebody, if obliged to. As soon as the call for grub was heard the next morning, all rushed simultaneously for a cup, and Mr. Bushwhacker got left again. Without ceremony he proceeded to make good his threat, the second cook being his victim. TROUBLE EN ROUTE For his trouble he received a stinging blow over his good eye, and was sent sprawling in the alkali dust. Not being in the least dismayed, he rushed for another and received a similar salute on the jaw, doubling him up and bringing him to the earth. By this time both messes joined in forming a ring and called for fair play. Mr. Perry tried hard to stop it, but was finally convinced that it was better, policy to let them have it out. How many times the fellow was knocked down, I do not remember, but the last round finished him. We carried him to the shady side of his wagon, covered him with a blanket and resumed our meal. On going into corral, we always took our revolvers off and placed them where they could easily be reached. We had been eating but a short time, when the report of a gun rang out and each man fairly flew for his weapons. Indians seldom made an attack except at early morning, when the oxen were being yoked or when we were going into corral at night. To the surprise of everyone Mr. Bushwhacker had taken another lease of life and with a revolver in each hand was firing at anyone his disturbed brain suggested. He was quick of action, firing and reloading with rapidity, and soon had the entire camp playing hide and seek between, around and under the wagons to keep out of the range of his guns, which we succeeded in doing, for not a man was hit. Finally, two of the drivers succeeded in getting behind him and overpowered him. His brother bushwhackers were in for lynching him on the spot, but wiser council prevailed, and his disposal was left to Mr. Perry who sentenced him to be escorted back three miles from the corral and left to walk the remaining two miles to Fort Carney alone. He covered less than a mile when he was captured by the Indians. I was obliged then to drive his team. A few evenings later my chum and friend were lounging by the side of my wagon smoking, and otherwise passing the time away, when finally the conversation turned to the departed driver who by that time had undoubtedly been disposed of by the Indians--not a very pleasant thought--but we consoled ourselves with the fact that no one was to blame but himself. My chum inquired the contents of my prairie schooner, and I replied that I did not know, but would investigate. Suiting the action to the word I crawled in, struck a match, and found a case labeled Hostetters' Bitters. Its ingredients were one drop of Bitters and the remainder, poor liquor. I soon found a case that had been opened, pulled out a bottle and sampled it. The old story came to me about the Irish saloonkeeper and his bartender. I called my chum and asked him if Murphy was good for a drink, he replied, "Has he got it?" "He has?" "He is then!" and we all were. I thought it would be impossible for the secret to be kept, but it was until we were on the last leg to Denver. The entire load consisted of cases of the Bitters. Fights were of frequent occurrence during the remainder of the trip, Mr. Perry being powerless to prevent them. Arriving at Central City where the Bitters were consigned, the consignee reported to the freighter that the load just received consisted of one-half Bitters, the remainder Platte river water. Each man had twenty dollars deducted from his pay, and a large number of the drivers, in addition, bore earmarks of its effect. The country from Fort Carney for four hundred miles up the Platte river valley and back from the high bluffs, that skirted the river on either side, was one vast rolling plain with no vegetation except a coarse luxuriant growth of grass in the valley near the river and beyond the bluffs; in spots that were not bare grew the prickly pear, and a short crisp grass of lightish color and of two varieties--the bunch and buffalo grasses--which were very nutritious, as the cattle thrived and grew fat on them. There was the clear sky and sun by day, with an occasional sandstorm; the moon (when out) and stars by night, but no rain--a vast thirsty desert. On the small islands of the river a few scattered cottonwood trees were to be seen. Their high branches embraced a huge bunch of something that resembled the nest of an American Eagle, but on close inspection was found to be the corpse of a lone Indian a long time dead. This was the mode of burial of some of the tribes in the early days, using fur robes or blankets for a casket. There was nothing to relieve the monotony in this desert land, except desperate Indians, immense herds of animal life, daily coaches--when not held back or captured by the Indians or mountain highwaymen--returning freight trains, and the following points where there were adobe ranches: Dog Town, Plum Creek, Beaver Creek, Godfrey's, Moore's, Brever's at Old California Crossing and Jack Morrow's at the junction of the north and south Platte, Fort Julesburg, Cotton Wood and the Junction, each one hundred miles apart, and John Corlew's and William Kirby near O'Fallow's Bluffs. It was said of these ranchmen that some were honest and some were not; others were in league with the Indians, and cattle and mule thieves, and, as a rule, a bad lot. They traded supplies to the Indians for furs of every kind. The winter passed in hunting, trapping, drinking, and gambling. O'FALLOW'S BLUFFS O'Fallow's Bluffs was a point where the river ran to the very foot of the bluffs making it necessary for all of the trains to cross, then again strike Platte river trail at Alkali Creek, the waters of which were poisonous to man and beast. The trail over the bluffs was of sand, and those heavily ladened, white covered prairie schooners would often sink to the hubs, requiring from fifty to seventy-five yoke of oxen to haul them across, often being compelled to double the leading yoke as far back as the wheelers, then doubling again, would start them on a trot, and with all in line and pulling together, would land the deeply sunken wheels on solid ground. It took one entire day to again reach river trail, which was hard and smooth. O'Fallow's Bluffs was a point feared by freighters and emigrants alike. At this point many a band of pilgrims met destruction at the hands of the fiendish redskins of the plains. Directly upon going into camp at night a party of them would ride up, demand coffee, whiskey, or whatever they wanted, and having received it, would massacre the men and children, reserving the women for a fate a thousand fold worse, as they were very seldom rescued by the tardy government, whose agents were supplying the Indians with guns, ammunition and whiskey to carry on their hellish work unmolested. When captured, which was seldom, were they hung as they deserved? No, the chief with a few others, who stood high in the councils of the tribe, were taken by stage to Atchison, Kansas, there transferred to luxuriantly equipped sleeping cars of that day, and whirled on to Washington; and, in war paint and feather and with great pomp, were presented to their great white father (the President) as they called him. ABUSES OF THE INDIAN DEPARTMENT They were then taken in charge by Representatives of the Indian department of the Government, that in those days was honeycombed with corruption from foundation to dome; a disgraceful and blood-stained spot in the Nation's history. Day after day and night after night they were shown the sights of that great city. The capitol of a free and growing Republic whose people respected the Constitution their fathers had drafted, signed and fought for. Day after day and night after night they were courted, dined, toasted and wined until they had become sufficiently mellow to be cajoled into signing another peace treaty, and were then given money and loaded down with presents as an inducement to be good. They were then returned to the agency at the Fort, having been taken from there and back by those red-nosed, liquor-bloated Indian Department guardians of the United States Government and were freely supplied with whiskey until they were willing to part with their cattle, furs, and beaded goods at extremely low figures, in exchange for provisions, guns, ammunition, and liquor at fabulously high prices. Robbed of their money and presents, and in this condition allowed to return to their village, where when they become sober, they would quickly awaken to a realizing sense of how they had been deceived, swindled and robbed. What could you expect from those copper-colored savages of the soil after such treatment? With no regard for the treaty they had signed, they would resume the warpath. Revenge, swift and terrible, was meted out to the innocent pilgrims and freighters who had left home, comforts and friends. Hundreds sacrificed their lives by horrible tortures in their heroic efforts to settle the West, unconscious that they were making history for their country and the nation, great. With no respect for the United States Government, with no respect for the flag with its cluster of stars and stripes of red, white and blue that fired the heart of every living American soldier to win victory at Valley Forge, which gained our independence, Antietam, and San Juan Hill, saved the nation, reunited the union of states in lasting friendship, lifted the yoke of tyranny from an oppressed people; and, as if with one stroke, swept from the high seas two powerful naval squadrons--the pride of the Spanish nation. Washington, Lincoln and McKinley were backed by the old glory that electrified every loyal American with patriotism to respond to the call of duty for the love of their country and the "Star Spangled Banner," that at that time fluttered high above the parapet of every Government fort as an emblem of protection to all that were struggling on and on over that vast expanse of unbroken and treeless plain; can you wonder then that the unspeakable crimes and mistakes of the Government of those days still rankle in the breast of every living man and woman that in any way participated in the settlement of the West? If you do, look on the painting of the terrible annihilation of the gallant Custer and his five companies of the Seventh U. S. Cavalry with the old chief, Sitting Bull, and his band of Sioux Indians on the Big Horn River, June 25, 1876, from which not a man escaped to tell the tale, and you may form some conception of the hardships, suffering, and cruelties inflicted on the early pioneer. It was left for the resourceful Remington to vividly portray life and scenes of those days, perpetuating their memory on canvas and bronze for all time. The name of Frederick Remington should not only go down in history as the greatest living artist of those scenes, but his bust in bronze should be given a place in the Hall of Fame as a tribute to his life and a recognition of his great worth. CHAPTER III AN ATTACK BY THE INDIANS [Illustration: O] O'Fallow's Bluffs was the most dismal spot on the entire trail. Its high walls of earth and over-hanging, jagged rocks, with openings to the rolling plain beyond, made it an ideal point for the sneaking, cowardly savages to attack the weary pilgrims and freighters. The very atmosphere seemed to produce a feeling of gloom and approaching disaster. The emigrants had been repeatedly instructed by the commander at Fort Carney to corral with one of the trains. Many of the bullwhackers were desperate men, so that the poor pilgrims were in danger from two sources, and very seldom camped near either corral. Our consort was a day's drive in the rear. That evening the emigrants camped about a half mile in advance of our train. It was at this point, when unyoking our oxen at evening that a large band sneaked over the bluffs for the purpose, as we supposed, of stampeding our cattle. They did not take us unawares, however, for we never turned cattle from corral until the assistant wagon boss surveyed the locality in every direction with a field glass, for the tricky redskin might be over the next sand hill. [Illustration: INDIANS ATTACKING CORRAL] Fifty good men could whip five times their number, especially when fortified by those immense white covered prairie schooners in corral formation. On they came in single file, their blood-curdling war whoop enough to weaken the bravest. Closer they came, bedecked in war-paint and feathers, their chief in the lead resembling the devil incarnate with all his aids bent on exterminating as brave a band of freighters as ever crossed the plains. Nearer they came, their ponies on a dead run, the left leg over the back, the right under and interlocking the left, firing from the opposite side of them, ducking their heads, encircling the camp and yelling like demons. Their racket, together with the yelping of their mongrel dogs and the snorting and bellowing of the cattle, made it an unspeakable hell. Every man stood to his gun, and from between the wagons, at the command of the wagon boss, poured forth with lightning rapidity his leaden messengers of death. For about an hour they made it very interesting for us. It was almost impossible to hit one as they kept circling the camp, drawing nearer with each circle made. How many were killed we did not know as they carried them off, but from the number of riderless ponies, a dozen or more must have been dispatched to their happy hunting grounds. During the fight a portion of them bore down on the poor pilgrims' camp, in plain sight, and massacred all, running off their cattle and such of their outfit as they wanted. [Illustration: MASSACRE OF EMIGRANTS] SAVAGES IN THEIR GLORY Mothers with babes at their sides and with uplifted, clasped hands, implored the cruel warriors for mercy, but it was like pouring water on the desert sands. Crazed by thirst for blood and the scalps of the whites, they knew no mercy. The hatchet-like tomahawk glittering in the evening twilight, held with a vice-like grip in the hand of a cowardly savage, came down at last with such force as to crush through skull and brain, and all was over. We were powerless to render assistance. The scene was heartrending. The depredations of these savages is too revolting to relate, and after completing their hellish work, they sneaked back as they came, keeping up their sickening yell until distance drowned it entirely. Few days passed that they were not seen as evening approached, and after dark we were able to know that they were in the vicinity, watching their opportunity to surprise us at early morning, by signal arrows of fire shot into the heavens to make known their whereabouts to companions. Could these silent bluffs of sand but unfold the butchery and unspeakable outrages inflicted on innocent men, women and children, could the trail through the valley of the Platte, and even more dangerous trail of the Smoky Hill give up its secrets, it would reveal a dark page in the history of our Government, which was directly responsible for a great deal of it; responsible in so far as sending unscrupulous peace commissioners to the different agencies to make treaties of peace with tribes of Indians, and who kept them just long enough to become liberally supplied with provisions, clothing, guns, ammunition and whiskey, then ravish and murder in the most diabolical manner pilgrims and freighters alike. On both trails many a silent monument of stone was all that remained of their cruel depredations. Such was not the uncommon work of the fiends, known to readers of fiction as the noble red men of the plains. More dastardly cowards never existed. Their struggles against destiny have long since been broken, and the offspring of those cruel warriors are being educated by a gracious government. The monotony of that lonesome and tedious tramp was enlivened only by fights among the men, and an occasional lay-over for a day to set the tires of the many wagons, having had no rain to keep them tight during the entire trip after leaving Atchison, Kansas. With many encounters and bearing scars received from warring tribes of Indians, we tramped along in moccasin covered feet, now and again throwing our long lashed whips with such force as to awaken the dead-head ox to life and quicker action. Day after day the same scenery faced us; yet, it was an experience never to be forgotten. We passed Fort Julesburg and Cottonwood with the loss of but three men, arriving late at night after a forced drive at the junction or division of the two trails leading to Denver. The distance to Denver by the "Cut-off" was seventy-five miles; by the river route one hundred miles; but as water was to be found only at long distances on the former, all cattle trains took the river route. It was early in November, the nights and mornings were cold and frosty, the air exhilarating. We were up the next morning at the usual time, and as the sun rose in all its splendor and warmth, one hundred miles in the far away distance could be seen with the naked eye, the gigantic range of the Rockies whose lofty snow-capped peaks, sparkling in the morning sun, seemed to soar and pierce the clouds of delicate shades that floated in space about them, attracted, as it were, by a heavenly magnet. It was a sight I had not dreamed of, and one that made an impression on my young mind to last through life. DENVER AT LAST! When about ten miles from Denver--so we at least thought, and fearless of danger, my chum and myself obtained permission from Mr. Perry to walk to the city over the rolling ground. We tramped until the sun was well up in the heavens. One would think it but a few miles to those mighty and solemn mountains of rocks, so deceptive was the distance, yet, they were twenty miles beyond the city. At noon we knew we had made ten long miles and were completely tired out. We were on the point of taking a rest when I urged my chum to cross the next knoll, and if the city did not loom up we would halt. We did so and to our surprise and joy were right in the city of Denver, the "Mecca" of nearly all Western freighters and distributing point for the far Western territories. It seemed to have risen beneath our feet. The grand old range of mountains with their sky-soaring pinnacles and scenic background of grandeur, together with the surrounding landscape, made it the sight of one's life. Our sixteen mile walk and previous seventy days' living on a diet of bacon, beans, and dried apples, certainly placed us in condition for a civilized meal. We were directed to a first-class restaurant, both in price and quality of food. We were about famished, and to satisfy our hunger seemed impossible. We ate and ate, and probably would have been eating yet, had not the waiter presented us with a ticket demanding a five dollar gold piece from each, when we decided we had better call a halt, if we intended to remain in the city over night. AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE On walking up the street we stepped into the first hotel we came to, the old "Planters," registered, paid for our supper, lodging and breakfast. When about to leave the hotel, who should walk in but a Genevan by name, Michael C. Pembroke, with his arm in a sling. He had been propelled across the plains by mules, and one of the ugly brutes had broken his right arm with one of his ever active hoofs. I asked Michael why the mule kicked him? He replied, "Charlie, I may look foolish but was not fool enough to go back and ask him." Never approach a Missouri mule from the rear, for there certainly will be trouble if you do. He asked if we had any money. We replied that we would have when paid off. He advised us to go direct to the Ben Holiday stage office and buy a ticket for the States as soon as we received our pay, as Colorado was no place for boys. [Illustration: MICHAEL C. PEMBROKE] At his suggestion we started out to do the town, and came very near being done ourselves. Colorado at this time was a territory with a Governor appointed by the President. Law, except as executed by a vigilance committee, did not amount to much more than the word. If one wished to depart life in full dress, he could be accommodated by simply calling another a liar or cheat at gambling. If desirous of taking a long rest by being suspended by the neck from a limb of the only tree in Denver at that time, which was on the west side of Cherry Creek, all he had to do was to appropriate to himself an ox, mule, or anything of value, and the vigilance committee would manipulate the rope. The gambling places, which occupied long halls on the ground floor of tall buildings--nearly always on the business street of the city--kept open until the small hours of morning. There was always a brass band in front, and a string band, or orchestra, in the extreme rear, so if one wished to dance, he could select a partner of most any nationality; dance a set, step up to the bar, pay two bits or twenty-five cents for cigars, drinks or both and expend his balance on any game known to the profession, which games occupied either side of the long room. We had been in the place less than fifteen minutes when bang went a revolver and on the instant the room was in total darkness. I mechanically ducked under a table. Where my companions were, I knew not; I began to think that Mike's advice was about correct, and before emerging wished more than once I was back in my home. When the lights were turned on, I discovered my chum occupying a like berth of safety on the opposite side of the room. Mike had evidently followed his own advice and taken his departure, for he was nowhere to be found. The band struck up a lively tune; the fiddles, a waltz; dancing began, gold and chips commenced to fly, and, if I had not passed through the ordeal, I never would have known anything had happened. The dead were quickly disposed of, the wounded hurried to physicians, and old timers gave it no further thought, as it was of frequent occurrence, and one soon became hardened. Denver at that time was a hotbed of gambling, with murder and lynch law a secondary pastime. Not being deterred by our experience, we continued our sightseeing, ending up at the only theatre in the city, afterwards called the "Old Languish." JOINING THE CATTLE TRAIN AGAIN The following afternoon our train reached town and we joined it during the evening to be ready for an early start for Golden City, the entrance to the mountains leading to Black Hawk and Central City where our freight was consigned. The most hazardous part of our trip was before us, one that to this day makes me shiver when I think of it. The first team entered the canyon at 11 A. M. in a blinding snowstorm. The road for nearly the entire distance was hewn from solid rock out of the side of steep mountains, gradually ascending to a great height, then descending to what seemed a bottomless canyon. We finally arrived at Guy Hill, the most dangerous part of the route. It took us one entire day to reach its pinnacle, where we camped for the night. The road at the top was cut through solid rock at a height of twenty feet, seven feet in width and led to a steep precipice. It then made a sharp turn to the right and, in a serpent shape drive, continued to the canyon below. At this point it was said to be fifteen hundred feet straight down, and a number of outfits had previously gone over its rocky edge and been hurled to destruction by a slight error of judgment on the part of the driver. The cold and snow, together with summer clothing, made our suffering indescribable. The following morning I started in the lead of the train with a nine thousand pound boiler, with the rear wheels securely locked, and twenty yoke of oxen to haul it to the edge of the precipice. Then discarding all but the wheelers and leaders, we began the descent. There was not room enough on either side for the driver to walk. He generally rode the off ox, but I took my position on the rear of the wagon tongue and found it decidedly the safest place in case of an accident. By night all wagons were safely in the canyon below. The road for nearly the entire distance presented the same dangers, taking ten days to reach our destination from Denver, the entire trip occupying eighty days. A THRILLING COACH RIDE On receiving our pay, which was our promised salary less twenty dollars for the Hostetter's Bitters, my chum and myself decided to go direct to Denver, our friend remaining in the Mountain City. We boarded a Concord coach with six snow-white horses to wheel us on a dead run over and around steep mountains and through dismal canyons, first on four wheels, then three, then two and occasionally one, keeping us constantly busy retaining our seats and fearing at every turn that we would be dashed into eternity; and yet, it was one of the most picturesque and thrilling rides one could take. Being tossed from side to side in the roomy coach, now and then grabbing a fellow passenger with desperation, gazing down from lofty peaks to yawning chasms below, hearing the crack of the long-lashed whip urging the noble steeds to faster speed, turning the rough, ragged, serpent-shaped drive, thundering through clouds and mist with lightning rapidity, and always in constant terror of a breakdown or error on the part of the fearless driver, gave one a sensation that would nearly make his hair stand on end. During the descent a slight error on the part of the horses or driver, would have hurled all to a horrible death; but those mountain drivers, strapped to their seats, were monarchs of the Rockies and unerring in every move. From among the snow-covered glaciers sparkling in the morning sun, emitting the many tints of a midday storm-bow and presenting a sight of unsurpassed grandeur, we emerged from the mouth of the last canyon and struck the smooth rolling trail. All the way from Golden we were going, it seemed, on the wings of the wind and were landed in Denver on scheduled time. CHAPTER IV DENVER IN 1865 [Illustration: I] In that period Denver was appropriately called the "City of the Plains." Situated sixteen miles from the base of the nearest Rocky Mountain peak, and six hundred and fifty miles from Atchison, Kansas, the nearest town to the East; while seven hundred miles to the west loomed up as from the very bowels of the earth, the beautiful city of the Mormons, Salt Lake City, Utah. The nearest forts--two hundred miles distant--were Fort Cottonwood to the northeast, Collins to the north and Halleck to the northwest. Its northern limits extended to the South fork of the Platte River; Cherry Creek running through one-third, dividing it into East and West Denver. Its population numbered about five thousand souls. Here was to be found the illiterate man--but a grade above the coyote--lawbreakers of every kind and from every land, to men of culture and refinement. Here it stood, a typical mining town, a monument to the indomitable energy of man in his efforts to settle that barren and almost endless plain and open to the world the Rocky's unlimited hidden gold. Here were brick structures modern for that day, the brick being made from the soil of the territory; a United States mint, a church, a school house, large warehouses, stores, and the home of the _Rocky Mountain Daily News_, which kept one partially in touch with happenings in the faraway states. Isolated from the outside world, it was an ideal place of refuge for those anxious to escape the outraged law. Knights of the green cloth held full sway. Men in every walk in life gambled. A dead man for breakfast was not an uncommon heading for the menu card, the old tree on the west bank of Cherry Creek furnishing the man. Society was just a little exclusive and to gain admission the pass was, "Where are you from?" and in some cases, "Your name in the East." Desperadoes made one attempt to lay the city in ashes and certainly would have accomplished their purpose had it not been for the timely action of the Vigilance Committee in hanging the ring-leaders. When the guilt of a suspect for any crime was in doubt, he was presented with a horse or mule and ordered to leave between sun and sun and never return. During my four years of residence in Denver there was but one Indian scare and it made a lasting impression on the tablet of my memory. A church bell pealed forth the warning over the thirsty desert of an Indian attack. Business places were closed, the women and children were rushed to the mint and warehouses for protection, armed men surrounded the city, pickets on horseback were thrown out in every direction. Couriers kept thundering back and forth between picket line and those in command and others were despatched to the different Forts for assistance that never came. A look of determination stood out on the face of every one and not a man, from clergyman to desperado, within the confines of the city who would not willingly have given up his life's blood to protect the honor of the women and lives of the little ones. For three weary days and the same number of nights the terrible suspense lasted, but no Indian came. It was a false alarm. Denver, in its early settlement, was never attacked by the Indians except in isolated cases. The only reason that I ever heard given for their not doing so was that they knew not their strength, for there was no time in the sixties that they could not have swooped down on the place, massacred all and buried the little mining town in ashes. SECURED WORK AGAIN For a young man to obtain work other than oxen or mule driving, we were told, was simply impossible. Not being deterred, however, by this discouraging information we at once started out to secure work. Board was twenty-five dollars a week in gold, and you had to furnish your own sleeping quarters, so not to secure work at once would quickly reduce our wealth. We had called on nearly all of the business places, when my chum secured a position with a grocer and freighter. As for myself, I received little encouragement but finally called at a large restaurant where I was offered work. I told the proprietor it was a little out of my line, but he told me that if I could not find a position to suit me, I should walk in at any time, pull off my coat and go to work, which I did three days later. About the tenth day the proprietor told me his lease expired and that the man who owned the building was going to conduct the business. He came in that afternoon, and I was introduced to him. Before leaving he stepped into the office and informed me that he wanted a man next to him; or, in other words, an assistant and that the former proprietor had given me a good recommend and he thought that I would suit him. He made me a tempting offer and I accepted. The restaurant was located on Blake street, one of the then principal business streets of the city, and kept open until early morning as did the gambling places in the immediate vicinity. I soon discovered that the new proprietor could neither read or write and that he conducted one of the largest private club rooms in the city where gambling was carried on without limit. He paid me a large salary and allowed me everything my wild nature craved. I had charge of the entire business as well as his bank account. The restaurant was the headquarters of nearly all oxen and mule drivers and also of the miners who came from the mountains in winter, and were of the toughest type of men of that day. All professional oxen and mule drivers after making one round trip to the river and points in the far Western territories were paid off in Denver and many of them would deposit with me, for safe keeping, a large share of their dangerously and hard earned dollars. They would then start out to do the town, now and then taking a chance at one of the many gambling games, always returning for more money, which I would give them; and this they would continue until all was expended except enough to keep them a week, when sober, and a commission for doing the business, for which I was careful to look out. An individual who bore the name of "One Eye Jack" boarded with us and I could always depend upon him in time of trouble. His vocation for a long time was a mystery, until one evening, as I was passing down a side street, he popped out from an alley and with uplifted blackjack would have felled and robbed me had he not recognized the unearthly yell I gave. I forgave him, and afterwards he doubled his energies to protect me and on more than one occasion saved my life. When in his professional clothes he was a tough looking customer and could fight like a bull dog. He was always liberally supplied with someone else's money. Yet with all his bad traits, his word was as good as his gold; but like other similar individuals that infested Denver at that time, he finally went to the end of his tether, and was presented by the Vigilance Committee with a hemp collar that deprived him of his life. Before his demise, however, a party of ten tough-looking individuals entered the restaurant and, in forceful language, demanded the best the country offered in eatables and drink. My friend, or would-be-murderer, was in at the time and I noticed a look of cunning pleasure steal over his rough countenance. The strangers were dressed in corduroy trousers, velveteen coats, slouch hats and black ties. Their shirts and collars of red flannel made a conspicuous appearance and caused their undoing later. After seeing them well cared for, I returned to the office and calling Jack inquired his opinion of the gents. "Well," he replied, "I may be mistaken but I will just bet you a ten spot they are road agents." "Yes," I said, "I am inclined to agree with you, but keep mum." You may think it strange I did not give this bold highwayman away; but life in those days was sweet and I had no desire to have that young life taken so I followed Commanche Bill's advice and strictly minded my own business. If I had not, I would not be living today. [Illustration: ROAD AGENTS HOLDING UP STAGE COACH] HIGHWAYMEN OF THE WEST Two mornings later on entering for breakfast one of the band had his head done up in a bandage. From words he dropped I was satisfied that Jack or one of his cronies had been improving their spare time by relieving him of his over abundance of gold. The reckless manner in which they disposed of their money and their conversation when flushed with wine betrayed their true characters and stamped them a murderous band of mountain highwaymen who had made their headquarters in the fastnesses of the Rockies, near the overland mountain trail and there devoted their time to holding up stage coaches, compelling the driver with a shot from a carbine to halt, descend, disarm and be quiet. The passengers were then ordered to alight and stand in a row, continually being covered with guns by a part of the band and by others relieved of their personal effects. Then the stage coach was systematically gone through together with the Wells Fargo & Co's. safe, which often contained gold into the thousands. These hold-ups were not infrequent and were the fear of all who were obliged to pass through these canyons of robbery and often death. The bunch that we harbored were undoubtedly as bold a band of robbers and murderers as ever infested the silent caves of the Rockies. Could their dingy walls but talk they would reveal crimes unspeakable. I knew there were many strangers in town and was almost certain their every movement was watched; nor was I mistaken. The seventh day after their arrival a young school teacher whom I knew by sight called at the restaurant and inquired by name for one of the band. I asked if he knew him. He replied, no more than that he had met him in one of the corrals of the city and had been offered free passage to the States if he would do their cooking. I told him of my suspicions and all I knew about them and advised him not to go with them, but like many others he gave no heed. Two days later they were missed at meal time. The next morning word came by courier that the entire band including the school teacher were dangling by the neck from the branches of cottonwood trees twelve miles down the Platte River with their pockets inside-out and outfits gone. Thus was meted out innocent and guilty alike the Vigilance Committee justice, which was not of uncommon occurrence. [Illustration: VIGILANCE COMMITTEE JUSTICE] Mr. Pembroke secured a position at Black Hawk, Colorado, in the year 1865, with the first smelter works erected in the Rocky Mountains. He was employed in the separating department where sulphur was freely used, and he inhaled much of the fumes emitted therefrom, which was the direct cause of a severe illness. He fought retirement for a long time, but was finally forced to give up. The latter part of February, 1886, he arrived in Denver on his way to his home in Geneva, N. Y., but remained with me at the restaurant for ten days where he was cared for and given the best of medical aid available in those days. He finally prevailed on a mule freighter to take him as a passenger to Atchison, Kansas. Arriving at Fort Carney, Nebraska, he had a relapse and was ordered by the Commander of the Fort to be placed in the Army Hospital for treatment, where he remained until able to continue his journey by stage to Atchison, thence by rail home. He left Colorado with the full determination of returning on recovering his health. A mother's influence, however, changed his plans and he finally decided to remain in the East. He purchased a grocery business and conducted it with great success until his death, March 17th, 1910. By his strict attention to business, square dealing, genial disposition and original wit, he gained the confidence and respect of his fellow-men. He was buried in St. Patrick's cemetery in his home city where a surviving sister has caused to be erected an appropriate and costly monument to his memory. NEW EMPLOYMENT I remained with the restaurant keeper one year, when through the assistance of influential men that boarded at the restaurant, I secured a position with a grocer. Shortly after entering his employ I made the acquaintance of an ex-army officer, a graduate of West Point and a well educated man, who afterwards became my boon companion. At that time he was an ex-pork merchant from Cincinnati; an eccentric old fellow without chick or child, and with plenty of money to loan at 3% a month. He owned a large warehouse on Cherry Creek in West Denver where he slept and did his own cooking. His evenings were passed at the store and many were the nights that we told stories and otherwise enjoyed ourselves. He was a silent member of the firm and I was wise enough to keep on the right side of him. During that time the head of the firm ran for Congress on the Democratic ticket. Such an election I never want to see or go through again. Large wagons loaded with barrels of all kinds of liquor on tap were driven from poll to poll. Many more ballots were cast in each precinct than there were voters and by night nearly the entire male portion of the inhabitants were a drunken, howling mass. The outcome of the election resulted in the Governor giving the Democratic nominee the certificate of election; the Secretary of the territory favoring the Republicans. The Governor left the city that night and never returned. The contest terminated in a Republican Congress seating the Republican candidate, and Andrew Johnson--then President of the United States--appointing the Democratic candidate Governor of Colorado. A year from that time General Grant was inaugurated, and shortly afterwards the Governor's head went into the basket and mine fell on the outside. On another occasion there was to be a prize fight at Golden City, sixteen miles from Denver. My friend, the ex-pork merchant, I could see was anxious to attend but did not wish to lower his standard of dignity by doing so, so the subject was not mentioned save in a casual way until the morning of the fight, when he entered the store, puffing and blowing, stamping the floor with his hickory cane and mopping his crimson brow with an old-fashioned bandana handkerchief, said "Charley, let's go to that infernal fight. I don't approve of it, but let's go." "All right," I said. I was in for any kind of sport. AN EXPERIENCE IN MULE RIDING I left everything, locked the store and started out to procure a rig, but found there were none to be had for love or money. The only article of propulsion we could hire were saddle mules. Both quickly mounted and on a slow trot started for the ring. We had been there less than an hour when both of us became thoroughly disgusted and started on the return trip. When about seven miles from Denver and going at a lively pace--for a mule--the Major's animal stiffened both front legs, and placing his hoofs firmly in the sandy road, permitted the Major's chunky little body to pass over his head and through space for about ten feet, landing, with much force, on his stomach. The old fellow was an artist at curse words and the more I laughed the more he cursed. He was a sprightly little fellow and on gaining his feet grabbed for the bridle, but Mr. Mule shook his head, made a side step, and the devil could not have caught him again until he reached the barn. I dismounted and with much difficulty my friend scrambled into my saddle, with myself on behind. But my long-eared critter objected and the fun commenced. He bunted and kicked. All of a sudden his hind quarters rose and like lightning his long lanky legs shot high into the air. First, I went off, and on gaining a sitting position with mouth, ears and eyes full of sand, I witnessed a spectacle befitting the clumsiest bareback rider on one of their first lessons. The old Major had both arms affectionately entwined around the mule's thick neck and was hanging on with desperation. Up and down went the hind quarters of that unkind brute, bunting and kicking, the Major's little body keeping taps with the ups and downs and every time he caught his breath he let out a war whoop that would do credit to a Commanche brave. The old mule finally dumped him all in a heap and followed his mate to Denver. Such an appearance as both presented, each blaming the other for our misfortune and vowing we would never be caught at another prize fight. Lame, bruised, and crestfallen, we walked the remainder of the way into Denver. Each cautioned the other to say nothing of our misfortune; but the two Mauds had carried the news ahead, and we were the laughing stock of the town for the next nine days. [Illustration: RETURNING FROM PRIZE FIGHT] At another time I was attending a performance in the "Old Languish Theater," when from the stage I was informed I was wanted in the bar room of the building, a necessary adjunct to all western theaters in those days. Upon entering I was taken by the hand by one of those trusty and warm-hearted stage drivers of the plains and Rockies, and told that my chum had been caught in one of those treacherous mountain snow storms on the Catchla Purder River two miles above La Port and was badly frozen, and, if he didn't receive medical aid at once, could not survive. I left the theater at once and commenced preparing plans for the trip. I started unaccompanied the following afternoon at 2:30 o'clock on a one hundred fifty mile ride. A RIDE IN A STORM My conveyance was a long old-fashioned buggy. The buggy, which was well filled with straw, blankets, medicine, grub, and a commissary bottle, had two good roadsters hitched in front to wheel me to the rescue of my friend or to an ignominious death. I had not only Indians to fear, but the treacherous elements. The trail ran close along the base of the mountains. It was a lovely May day. I was obliged to make thirty-two miles that night to reach cover. Less than half of the distance had been traveled when the wind veered suddenly to the north, mild at first, then a hurricane of anger, roaring and blowing with such force as to nearly upset the buggy. Dark clouds gathered and floated around those silent peaks of ages. Lightning darted hither and thither among the stalwart pines, which were creaking, bending and crashing. Clap after clap of thunder pealed through and from those dismal canyons, vibrating between Nature's slopes of granite, quartz and rock. The din was fearful, rain fell at first, then turned to snow. Just before it became dark I adjusted the front piece of the buggy. My compass was useless. I urged my faithful steeds to faster speed, and at the same time gave them the rein. As I did so, they left the trail. Cold and chilled to the marrow or very bone, I took frequent drafts from the commissary bottle, and fought with all my power against sleep, but it was useless. On gaining partial consciousness two squaws were bending over me rubbing me with all their Indian strength and a third forcing something warm down my throat. Men, rough of dress, were smoking and playing cards. Revolvers, chips and gold was in front of each, with plenty of the latter in the center of the table. I knew not if they were friends or mountain highwaymen. Many claim that horses are dumb brutes with no instinct, but that faithful pair on leaving the trail avoided a long bend and made straight for the adobe stage ranch, sixteen miles away. On reaching it, they ran the buggy-pole through the only opening of that mud shack rousing the inmates to action and bringing me to safety. The large Concord coach filled with passengers soon arrived from Denver, and owing to the severity of the storm, put up for the night. The time was passed in smoking, drinking and playing cards. At six o'clock the next morning the coach pulled up at the door. The storm was over, but not the wind. The cold was intense. My team soon came up, but their ears and noses were badly frost bitten and otherwise showed the effects of the storm. I followed the coach but for a short distance only, as the snow which was drifting badly obliterated the trail. The six black horses on the coach were too much for my two bays and soon left me far in the rear. My compass had been lost and by noon I was back at the ranch I had previously left, the horses having made nearly a complete circle without my knowledge. I secured another compass and at nine o'clock that evening rolled into La Port, a city of adobe ranches, and stage station, where I put up for the night. (A place of two or three houses in those days was called a city.) I was informed that my chum was two miles up the river and in bad shape. The next morning I was up at day break. After grub I started and found my companion quartered in a little old log cabin at the base of the mountains, and being cared for by an aged squaw and her daughter--the old buck being out caring for the cattle. My chum had encountered the same kind of a storm as his rescuer, and unable to find his way was obliged to remain out the entire night and only one hundred feet from the cabin. Both of his feet were badly frozen. The Indians had done everything possible for him. The daughter, for an Indian, was extremely pretty, and I soon discovered that she was very much taken with my chum. I applied the remedies which I had brought. Then the little Indian maiden bundled him up, and with the promise that he would return they parted. We were at once off on the return trip and arrived at the stage ranch, where I was cared for the previous night at just six o'clock. On driving up to the door of the station all three of the reaches of the buggy broke and gently dropped us to the ground. Fortunately there was a blacksmith connected with the station and I assisted him through the long night, forging reaches and repairing the buggy. At daylight we were off, reaching Denver in safety at 3:30 that afternoon and making the trip in just three days. Both of my chum's feet had to be amputated at the insteps. He was very grateful and quite conscious of the fact that true friendship still existed. Before leaving the governor's employ, I accompanied a mule train of ten wagons with supplies for the Ute tribe of Indians who lived in one of the parks of the mountains in the vicinity of Pike's Peak. The Utes, at that particular time, were on friendly terms with the white men as there was a treaty of peace existing between them and the Government. CHAPTER V A PROOF OF MARKSMANSHIP [Illustration: W] We took with us a Mr. Baker, who was conceded to be one of the best guides, hunters, trappers and interpreters of that day, with a heart as large as an American bison, and as tender as a child's. But when his anger was aroused by danger or treachery, the very devil seemed to possess him; he had the courage of a lion, and was a dead shot. We had been friends for a long time, and on more than one occasion he had proved a true one. The park was an ideal summer resort, an extended plateau with acres of fresh green grass, wild flowers, and virgin soil. In the center was a beautiful lake, its ice cold water well stocked with the finny tribe of speckled mountain trout, the delight of the angler. The park was inclosed by mountains of great height and grandeur, their rocky slopes were dotted with spruce, pine, and cottonwood, and capped with ages of crystal snow, presenting a sight more pleasing to the eye than the Falls of Niagara, and a perfect haven for an Indian maiden's love dream. We had been in camp but a few days when Mr. Baker informed me that the young bucks, as the men of the tribe were called, wanted us to join in shooting at a target. After Mr. Baker and myself had made a few bull's eyes, they proposed we two should choose sides, and we did so. The teams were very evenly matched, making the game interesting. In the meantime, I had been presented to the chief in true Indian fashion and in turn was made known by him to his squaw, young bucks and maidens. The Indians had their tribal laws and customs as well as the white man and were required to live up to them. The maidens were two in number, their ages fourteen and seventeen moons respectively; the latter a picture of Indian beauty, perfect in every feature, form and carriage, a rare model for an artist. They were nearly always found together. At first they were quite reserved, but finally we became fast friends; we would ramble, hunt, fish from canoes and sail the placid waters of the little lake. Early on the morning of the tenth day Mr. Baker entered my tent with a troubled look. I bade him good-morning and inquired the cause. Without fencing, he asked me if I wanted to be a squaw man. I asked him what the devil he was getting at. AN OFFER OF MATRIMONY He replied, "All there is to it, the old chief has taken a great liking to you, and wants you to marry Weenouah, his oldest daughter. He has plenty of money, and his horses and cattle run into four figures." "That is no inducement," I said, "and it could never be." Mr. Baker asked, "How are you going to get out of it?" I replied, "I have been in lots of tight places, as you know, and have always managed to squeeze through, and I'll get out of this one in some way." Little did either of us dream at that time of the manner, or rather the sacrifice, that one of us was doomed to bear, for me to escape the wrath of the old chief, when informed I would not marry his daughter. Fate decreed he was never to be so informed, but instead, a most cruel and unfortunate accident was to provide the means. That afternoon the young bucks were again anxious to test their skill at the target. We all used the same carbine, which contained seven cartridges, one in the gun barrel and six in a magazine in the butt of the gun. Mr. Baker and I always tossed up a pebble to see who had first shot. As Mr. Baker won the first chance, he took aim and pulled the trigger and such an explosion as took place will never be forgotten. Everyone was stunned by its force. When the smoke had cleared, poor Baker's body was found lying on the ground with the lower jaw torn from its place. On recovering from the shock the young bucks fairly flew for the Indian medicine man. I quickly reached the corral and informed the wagon boss of the accident. He at once ordered the mules brought up. The light wagon was supplied with straw, blankets, commissary bottle and grub. Six of the fastest mules were hitched to the wagon and selecting two of the mulewhackers gave instruction for his care en route. I took the lines and quickly drove to the spot where poor Baker had fallen. Just as soon as the flow of blood had been checked and his wounds dressed we raised him gently and placed him in the wagon. Without a word I mounted the driver's box and drove for all there was in those six mules, reaching Denver late the following night. Some who read this narrative may be skeptical, but it is a fact, nevertheless, that poor Baker recovered for I saw him a year later, but he could partake of liquid food only. The once stalwart form of that brave man, now emaciated and wasted to a mere skeleton, still stood erect. THE TOLL OF THE PLAINS My whole heart went out to him who, in years past, had hunted the antelope, deer, elk and buffalo; fought the cowardly savages and desperadoes on the thirsty plains and amidst the ragged slopes of the Rocky Mountains; penetrated the silent recesses of the dismal canyons and caves; crossed the snow covered divides; faced danger of every conceivable nature; and at last, although maimed for life, was grateful that he had escaped death and thankful in the thought that he had done his share in the settlement of the then Far West. As I gazed into his once keen eyes and beheld that shriveled face, my heart wrung with remorse, for I knew he had keenly suffered. Tears filled my eyes and trickled down my weather-beaten and sun-tanned boyish face, and I knew he accepted it as an emblem of my sorrow for being the innocent cause, in a measure, of his cruel misfortune. Thus, by the flip of a pebble was my life spared, but at the expense of a true friend. CHAPTER VI ON TO LEAVENWORTH [Illustration: T] The next summer I was not very well, and so I made a trip to Leavenworth, Kansas, by the Southern or Smoky Hill route. We made the trip by mule train of twenty wagons with six mules hitched to each. The driver rode the nigh mule and with one line guided the team. If he wanted the leaders to go to the right he simply jerked fast or slow, depending on how quick he wanted to make the turn; if to the left, a steady or quick pull. The Indians on this trail were more numerous than on the Platte and scarcely a day passed that they were not to be seen, and continually trying to drive off our stock. We did not receive any great scare until we reached the Big Blue River where on the fourth day of July at ten o'clock in the morning a large Concord coach filled with passengers and a small guard of the United States soldiers, which had previously passed us, were awaiting our arrival before daring to proceed. On reaching the crest of the bluff leading to the valley of the river we saw hundreds of Sioux Indians, in war paint and feathers, camped on the opposite side in the underbrush and woods, and in the main trail directly in our path. We at once went into corral. Thirty men against a horde of savages, if they were there to dispute our right of progress, was not a pleasant position to be placed in nor a fitting manner in which to celebrate the glorious Fourth. Consultations were numerous and all took part. The redskins, camped in plain sight, were hurrying to and fro, evidently in council like ourselves. To the right of the trail was a dense wood close to the river bank; on the left was a high perpendicular bluff, its sides unscalable, so our route was a genuine death trap, should they attack us. After grub all gathered in a circle and with pipes we proceeded with our last council. The situation was talked over from every point as to what the Indians might do or might not do. We finally arrived to the conclusion that they had the best of us whatever move we made. A majority vote decided to proceed with every man for himself in case of attack. Our wagons were empty which was a little in our favor as we could go on a mule trot or gallop. The coach filled with passengers was placed in the lead; and, being the youngest of the party, they were considerate enough to let me follow, and I did so as closely as possible. On reaching the river bottom, the driver of the coach started his horses on a run and the lash was put to every mule. We were all yelling like demons and on our approach the Indians left the trail and took to the river, thinking that we were a hundred or more strong. All passed safely through that valley of what might have been a horrible massacre. The unearthly racket we made was undoubtedly our salvation, but we were not out of danger by any means and continued our flight until eleven P. M. when we went into corral for food and rest. At three A. M. we again struck the trail and it is well that we did, for those blood-thirsty redskins laid death and destruction in their wake and came very near overtaking us a day later. Arriving at Leavenworth, I boarded a Missouri River palace for St. Louis, thence to New Orleans. A FALSE FRIEND On returning to St. Louis, I met a Westerner that I knew only by sight, and by him was induced to remain over a few days and take in the city. I did and was scooped. On the third morning I went through my pockets and the bed, piece by piece, dumping its contents in the center of the room, but my roll was gone. At once I sought my friend, but he was nowhere to be found. Plain case of misplaced confidence. He had made a touch. In my desperation, I made a confident of the caretaker of the hotel register. Being of a sympathetic nature, he consoled me with an invitation to stimulate, which I did. Being without a trunk, I was informed on my arrival it was customary to pay as you enter; fortunately I had a meal to my credit. I was in good condition, having had sufficient victuals to last the day, after which I proceeded to the river front and here discovered a boat bound for Omaha. I boarded her, sought out the steward, and applied for a position. He replied that he did not want any help. "Well, I suppose you will let a fellow work his way, won't you?" His answer was "Get off this craft," and without further talk, in not a very gentlemanly manner he assisted me. On landing, I was mad clear through, and made up my mind I was going on that boat, and I did go. Just before the gang plank was pulled in I walked on board, keeping a sharp lookout for the steward. After I had avoided him for an hour and just as I was on the point of congratulating myself, I bumped into him. "You on board?" "It looks very much as if I were in evidence." He grabbed me by the coat collar and hustled me before the captain. I told a straight story, and he, being a man, told the steward to take me up to the kitchen and set me to work. He did, and had his revenge in seeing that it was nearly continuous. After supper I worked the dish racket until twelve o'clock. At three the next morning he awoke me out of a sound sleep and set me to cleaning the woodwork of the cabin. Another of my desirable duties was to wash and polish the silver, throwing the water over the sides of the boat. AN ALERT STEWARD After dinner of the second day I proceeded with the tin bucket to the side of the boat and overboard went its contents, including three silver spoons. The spoons had no sooner left the bucket than I felt something of great force come in contact with the seat of my trousers. For a moment I thought surely perpetual motion had been discovered. Turning I was face to face with that infernal steward. Nor did that end my troubles for during the entire trip that particular locality of my person was the target for that fellow's boot. With a terrible oath, he informed me that my landing would be reached about midnight a day later and was called Wood Pile Landing. A short time before reaching the place, I was hustled from my bunk by the steward and in no gentle manner forced to the bow of the boat. The night was pitch dark, and produced a decidedly lonesome feeling in the one that was to be put off at a Wood Pile on the edge of an immense forest and undoubtedly miles from a dwelling. As the boat reached the bank, not even waiting for the gang plank to be shoved out, the old sinner gave me a push and at the same time applied the now familiar boot. I reached the earth on all fours. My first thought was to present him with a rock, but I curbed my temper, for I had no idea of deserting the old ship. In those days the boilers of the boats were fired with cord wood purchased of the planters and delivered on the bank of the river. All boats plying on the Missouri River at that time were flat bottom with paddle wheel at the stern. Two long heavy poles were carried at the bow and worked with a windlass, being used to raise the bow of the boat when becoming fast on a sand bar. The pilot was obliged to keep a continuous lookout for these bars, as the channel was treacherous and changed often. On approaching the river bank one of the deck hands would jump off with the bow line and make fast to a stump or tree, then the stern line was thrown to him and similarly connected. Then the negro deck hands would proceed to carry on the wood on their bare shoulders to the tune of a Southern plantation melody. When ready to start the bow line was cast off, the paddle wheel was started by the engine, and by means of the steering gear the craft was swung out into the stream, then the stern line was thrown aship, and the boat was off--but not without the steward's victim. No sooner had the colored gentlemen reached the deck, than I followed. Waiting until all was quiet aboard, I sought my berth. The next morning I proceeded with my work as if nothing had happened. I anticipated the steward's next move would be to throw me overboard, and in that belief told the cook of what he had done the previous night. At that point he came in, and on discovering me said, "You here again," his face purple with rage. His right foot at once became restless, he made a rush for me, but the cook with butcher-knife in hand prevented the action of said foot, and my troubles with that gentleman were over. ARRIVAL AT LEAVENWORTH We soon reached Leavenworth, and I left the boat without regret, but a much wiser youth. I went to the First National Bank of Leavenworth, drew my money, and after a few days' rest, I again embarked for Denver astride a mule. We saw plenty of Indians, but as the train was a long one they did not molest us. On reaching the city of the plains I at once hunted up my old friend, the Major, who introduced me to the head of a firm of contractors, who were at that time engaged in getting out ties in the "Black Hills," for a portion of the Union Pacific railroad, then under construction. He told me that he wanted a man to go there and straighten out a set of books that a former employee had left badly mixed. He also took the trouble to inform me that the country was alive with Indians, and that the man who went there took big chances; and, if I were at all timid, I had better not accept the position. My friend gave me a strong recommend and I clinched the matter by telling the gentleman that I was not afraid of man, ghost or Indian. He replied that I was just the man he was in search of, and would give me five hundred dollars in gold, a good horse and pay all expenses; that I should get my traps and be at the Planter's Hotel for dinner. He expected his two partners from the east to inspect the camp and business, and everything was to be in readiness to depart on their arrival. Our conveyance was a full sized Concord coach with six good mules to draw it. The boot of the coach contained the best of everything to eat and drink--the latter being just as essential in that country as gun and ammunition. The partners were detained en route, and did not arrive until the second day, when they wished to rest and see the western sights, so we did not leave until the fourth day. Two Denverites accompanied us, making six in the party. The first afternoon we made thirty-two miles, and camped near a stage station, where they keep, for the weary pilgrims, supplies and the rankest kind of corn juice known to the professional drinker. The following morning we made an early start, and before noon rolled into La Port, on the Cachella Pondre River, the only settlement on the trail to the hills. We put up at the stage station for the night. There we met a drover, and a party of cow boys with one thousand head of California bronchos bound for the States. Those cowboys were as wild as western life could make them, yet, a jolly good lot. During the evening, at the suggestion of someone, a poker game was started which lasted all night, and in the morning those who had indulged in the game were not feeling any too good--especially the losers--but, nevertheless, they all strolled over to the large adobe corral to see our party off. Mr. A----, the head of the firm of contractors, had his large winnings safely concealed in a chamois bag placed close to his hide, where all wise men of the West carried their money in those days. The drover had been a heavy but good loser. When about ready to hitch up our mules he called out to Mr. A----, "I'll go you six of my best bronchos against five hundred dollars that you haven't a man in your outfit that can drive the d----d brutes a mile and return." The contractor approached me and asked if I thought I could do it. I told him that I was willing to take the chance. Without another word he walked over to where the drover was standing and informed him that he would take the bet, provided he would have his cowpunchers hitch the little devils to the coach. "Agreed," shouted the old fellow in no uncertain language. The boys turned to the work with a will; for the fun expected, even if I received a broken neck for my daredevil recklessness, excited them to the highest pitch. The reader has undoubtedly seen in the Wild West circuses the old-fashioned overland coach hung by heavy springs from front to rear axle. One of the most uncomfortable conveyances to ride in ever invented, especially for the driver, for, if the coach was not heavily loaded, when the front wheels dropped into a hole the old ramshackle thing was liable to topple over on the animals; and, if the driver was not securely strapped to the seat when the rear wheels reached the hole, he would land some distance in the rear. The contractor had the old ark properly balanced before starting, so I had no excuse to worry from that source. The cowpunchers selected one broncho each and after a half hour's hawling, pulling and coaxing succeeded in hitching them to the coach. I climbed to the seat and was securely strapped with a large leather apron. Then I gathered up the lines and placed myself solidly for the start. The whip socket contained a hickory stick five feet long with a lash twelve feet in length attached to one end. I gave the word to let them go, but the little bronchos thought different and balked. The number of times they bucked and threw themselves, started and bucked again, would be impossible to say. Finally the contractor accused the drover of being in collusion with his cowpuncher in order to win the wager by holding the bronchos back and a volley of words of not very mild character ensued, after which the six cowboys, three on either side of the team, stood off six feet. The noise made by the cracking of their whips their everlasting yelping made the excitement stronger than before, and I was off on the wildest ride I ever took. A hurdle jumper would not stand much of a chance with one of those wild bronchos. A DANGEROUS RIDE It was a lovely June morning and the bracing air of Colorado made me feel as wild as the young animals that were fast wheeling me over the dangerous trail and possibly into a camp of hostile Indians. I gave no thought to danger for I was too busy keeping the fiery little beasts to the trail. They were going at breakneck speed with no sign of tiring, so I let them go enjoying the sport even more than they. My hat went flying with the wind, I looked back, but could not see the ranch. How far I had left it behind, or what distance I had covered, I knew not. At last I came to myself and realized for the first time what terrible danger I was in. Slowly turning the team to the right, I began a circle, hardly perceptible at first, but finally again reaching the trail. On the return trip, I plied the long lash to the leading pair. They shot forward faster than ever, all steaming with foam and covered with lather. At a great distance to the south I could see a party of Indians riding in the same direction. This additional danger seemed fairly to intoxicate me and I plied the whip with all my strength. The corral loomed up and then the stage station. The others, with hands in their pockets and mouth agap, were holding their breath; and, as we wheeled past them, the cowboys lashing the bronchos, a mighty shout went up. I had won the wager and was the lion of the day. We did not make a start until the following morning. We fastened the bronchos together and tied the leader to the rear of the coach, and thus resumed our journey to the hills, where we safely arrived two days later, but minus four of the treacherous brutes. At night we always picketed them with the mules and the four that were lost had pulled their picket irons and undoubtedly gone to join the much read of "wild horses of the plains." The camp in the hills consisted of shanties for fifteen hundred men, saw mill, and outfit store. The latter included in its stock plenty of the best kind of liquor. Each man was allowed three drinks a day and no more. I had the books straightened out in due time and one day the contractor discovered he would soon be out of flour, and the nearest point at which it could be purchased was La Port, seventy-five miles distant. The Indians were troublesome, and each man who was asked refused to go, with one exception. The contractor finally made me a tempting offer to accompany a driver of a six mule team. I accepted, and at break of day the next morning we started. My companion on that dangerous trip was a plucky son of the Emerald Isle. We camped that night on Lodge Pole Creek. On the opposite side was an adobe ranch, and an immense stockade owned by a Frenchman with a Sioux squaw for a wife. In our hurried start we had forgotten our tobacco, and without it my companion seemed lost. After grub I mounted my horse, and crossed over the creek to procure some. On making my wants known, I was freely supplied with tobacco, and was also informed that before we arrived they had been fighting the Indians for some time; that one of the cowboys had an arm badly shattered; and that they feared another attack the next morning. I returned to camp and told my companion of our danger. A WELCOME HAVEN After giving the animals plenty of feed and rest, we again took the trail at 4:30 A. M. As the day dawned, with the aid of a field glass, I discovered Indians swooping down on the ranch with the stockade at breakneck speed, and others coming in our direction. I told Patrick to urge the mules to a gallop. He suspected the cause and did so at once. Over the rolling ground we flew until the sun was well up in the heavens, and as each hour passed the redskins gained on us, until at last they could be seen with the naked eye. The harsh and cruel war-whoop of those blood-thirsty savages echoed and re-echoed back from the distant hills, and over the desolate plains until men and beasts were crazed to desperation. The lash was put to the already tired mules, and we strained every nerve to reach the crest of the next knoll, hoping against hope for succor. On they came, their warwhoops for scalps and the white man's blood was now continuous. The long feared report of their rifles was at last heard; bullets pierced our canvas covered wagon. We made a last desperate effort and reached the summit of the bluff. Not a half a mile from its base was a large corral of white covered wagons. Down the incline we flew, looking neither to the right nor the left, and, on reaching the corral, both men and beasts fell into a heap exhausted. The red devils rode to the top of the hill, and the warwhoop of anger they sent up rings in my ears at times to this very day. That evening we again took the trail and made the remainder of the trip by night drives. Reaching La Port the third morning, we secured our load and after giving the animals a much needed rest we started on the return trip. The fourth morning we arrived at the ranch with the stockade. Three mornings after we reached the foot of the hills where the company had a log cabin for their hunters and trappers, who, with their trusty rifles, furnished antelope, deer and buffalo meat for their small army of employees. On entering, a sight met our gaze too revolting to pass from memory. Upon the earthy floor lay two of those sturdy and warm-hearted dwellers of the plains and rockies, cold in death, scalped and mutilated almost beyond recognition--a deed committed by those dastardly red fiends of the Far West. Both were friends of mine and with uncovered head, in the presence of that gritty son of old Ireland, I vowed vengeance. "At least, Charlie," said Patrick, "Let's give them a decent burial and move on." We did so, reaching camp that evening just as the sun, with its beautiful tints of carmine, was bidding plains and hills goodnight, as if in memory of those stalwart and brave men who made the settlement and civilization of the West possible. CHAPTER VII A PLUCKY GERMAN [Illustration: T] Two weeks later a strapping six-foot German, who was in charge of another camp further down the line, came for a visit. Shortly after his arrival, he proposed that we should go hunting, to which I agreed. That morning, as usual, the men called for their liquor, and among them was a long lanky fellow with red hair and bushy beard. He certainly had the appearance of an outlaw. He had received one glass of grog and came for the second which I refused him. Without a word I was on my back. At that point the German came in and caught him with the left hand in the same locality. Suffering with pain and crazed with liquor, he left the store, secured his revolvers and returned. I was behind the counter at the time with my back to the door. The first thing I knew I heard the report of a revolver and a bullet whizzed past my ear and buried itself in a can of tomatoes not six inches from my head. As I turned around, I saw the fellow being propelled through the door by the German's right. At that point the contractor came in and after being told of what had happened, he discharged the fellow. He wished to retain his revolvers, but his request was not granted. He had an old-fashioned army musket and begged to be allowed to keep that. I told Mr. A---- not to let him have it for I was satisfied from the blow he gave me that he was a bad actor; but Mr. A----, being good natured and kind hearted, consented. He ordered four days' rations put up for him and he left camp in an ugly mood and was given no further thought. After grub, the German proposed that we flip a coin to see who should go for the horses. The visitor losing, he at once started for the canyon below where the horses were grazing. Shortly after I heard a shot and then many more, but gave it no heed as it was a common occurrence there. Half an hour later one of the men came in and told me that the German lay dead in the canyon below. I, with the others in camp, proceeded to the point indicated, where we found the poor fellow lying on his back. A bullet from that villian's musket had pierced his heart. His watch, belt of cartridges, revolvers, and repeating carbine were gone. After we returned with the body, Mr. A---- had the mill whistle blown calling all hands to quarters and for three days and nights with little sleep or rest we searched those hills and trails leading to Salt Lake and Denver. We picketed men on each trail to search all passing trains; but the demon gave us the slip, and cheated that maddened crowd of a lynching, or something worse; perhaps a tug of war between two wild bronchos, which we had in camp, with that man's body as the connecting link. I can to this day remember just how that poor fellow looked; cold in death, far from home and loved ones, with no mother to weep at his bier. With uncovered heads we lowered him in earth, in a rough box, at the foot of one of the tall sentinels of the hills, and placed a slab to mark the spot, that his friends might some day claim all that remained of as brave and honest a German as ever lived. A WATCHFUL PROVIDENCE Thus by the toss of a coin was my life again spared. This last narrow escape from death was the fourteenth of which I positively knew, and how many more that I did not know of, it is impossible to tell; so I made up my mind to get out of the country alive, if possible. I informed Mr. A---- of my intentions and the following day closed my business and at dusk that evening I started, unaccompanied, on a two hundred mile ride over a trail watched by hundreds of blood-thirsty Indians. I knew that no Indian pony could overtake my fleet runner, and all that was to be feared was a surprise or have my horse shot from under me. I camped far from the trail, with lariat fastened to my wrist, never closing my eyes until my faithful animal had laid down for the day. His first move at dusk awoke me, and, after feed, we were off with the wind at breakneck speed. At the close of the second day, while I lay sleeping on the desert sands with the saddle blanket for a pillow, and dreaming of my far away home, it seemed as if something of a slimy nature was slowly crawling over the calf of my bare leg. On gaining partial consciousness, too quickly did I realize that it was a reality and not a dream. A rattlesnake's long slimy body was crossing that bridge of flesh, squirming along for a couple of inches, then raising its repulsive body a foot or more and turning its insignificant head, would look straight towards my partly closed eyes and, with its hideous mouth agap, would dart its poisonous arrow-like tongue in and out like lightning, then lowering itself, it would resume the same tactics as before. How many times it repeated this, I shall never know. No words have ever been formed that can adequately express the feeling that took possession of me. I seemed powerless to move a muscle or twitch an eye-lid. The suspense was terrible, expecting each time that the slimy body descended the viper would thrust his poisonous lance into my leg and all would be over. The horror of it all cannot be imagined, and to this day, when I recall the incident, it sends a shiver through my entire body. As the coarse rattles of his tail left the bare flesh of my leg, my senses seemed to return; but it was only for a moment, for through the pant of my right leg I felt that same crawling sensation and I knew in an instant that it was a mate following the one that had just passed over the bridge of flesh. As soon as it reached the bare leg the dirty reptile went through the same horrible stunts as the first one. The agony seemed impossible to bear and when at last the thing had completed its journey and was at a safe distance away, I leaped into the air--how far I shall leave the reader to surmise. Crazed with anger and trembling from head to foot, I rushed for my revolvers and fired at random. I was considered a good shot in those days, but in this excited condition I would not have been able to hit a barn. I ran for my Henry Carbine and, grasping it by the barrel, made short work of ridding the earth of the cause that had produced the most terrifying scare experience during my western life. [Illustration: BILLIE! BILLIE!] THE FAITHFUL HORSE For the first time during the excitement my thoughts turned to my faithful horse, but he was nowhere to be seen. The horror of the situation began to dawn upon me and I realized at once that I was lost on that desolate plain--one hundred miles from any camp that I knew of and apparently alone. I cried out, "My God, what can be done!" The thought was enough to drive one crazy. Can I ever forget it? I think not; nor could anyone. Even to see or talk to an Indian would have been a comfort. Driven to agonizing despair I ran for my field glass and scanned the rolling ground in every direction. Buffalo, deer, antelope, coyote, and a small party of horsemen were visible, but the latter too far away to make out if they were United States Cavalrymen or Indians. Looking again, without my glass, I discovered my horse standing on a high knoll not more than a half mile away with head and tail erect; the breath from his dilated nostrils ascending heavenward in the cold October air and presenting a picture for an artist. I called loudly, "Billie, Billie," and with outstretched hand walked slowly toward him, but he looked not in my direction. All of a sudden he made a quick bound and was off. My heart seemed to stop beating. A minute seemed an hour; but I kept walking after him and he finally stopped, turned around and faced me. That look can never be forgotten. With ears thrown back, he came slowly toward me. Again, I called "Billie, Billie," and held out both hands and with a whinner he came on a gallop, trembling in every muscle, seemingly as frightened as myself. I patted his neck, straightened out his rich heavy mane, rubbed his face and nose and kissed him. He licked my cheek and hand in appreciation of my welcome; moisture gathered in his large eyes and I cried with joy--like a child that I was--and then we both felt better. I coiled up the lariat and placed my right arm over his perfectly formed neck and slowly walked to our little camp. I rubbed him down until he was perfectly dry; then curried, brushed and rubbed until I could almost see myself in his coat of silky hair. Then I made him lay down and did the same thing myself, using his withers and mane for a pillow. When I awoke the moon shown full in our faces. I patted his neck and soon those large eyes were looking affectionately into mine. I sprang to my feet and he did the same. After brushing off the side on which he had laid, I placed the saddle blanket, buckled taut the saddle, gathered up my small camp kit and fastened it to the rear of the saddle, coiled the lariat and hung it on the pommel of the saddle, fastened on my spurs--from which he had never felt even the slightest touch--threw my field glass over my left shoulder, buckled on my cartridge belt and revolvers, swung my canteen and Henry Carbine over my right shoulder, and with a leap, landed astride the saddle, and was off with the wind in search of the trail two full miles away. THE INDIANS CAPTURE A FRIEND Early on the morning of the third day, I stopped at a stage station, where I met the assistant wagon boss who was with the bull train during my first trip across the plains. He was a genuine Missouri Bushwacker and a desperate fellow. Like all others of his class he wore his hair long, making it a much coveted prize for the Indians. After the days visit and relating our experience of western life, he told me that he was on his way to the Black Hills. I reluctantly volunteered the information to him that I did not think he would ever reach there on the old skate he was riding, and that he should not venture on the trail until after dark, but he knew it all and started at sundown. I was sure the fellow would never reach the Hills, nor was I mistaken, for in less than an hour the Salt Lake Coach rolled up to the door of the station, and the driver asked if a horseman had put up at the place, and being informed that there had, told us the Indians had captured him and tied him to one of their own ponies and was rapidly going north, leaving his old nag to be picked up by any one who would care for it. Not a day passed that the unwelcome savages were not to be seen, and we were chased many times, but the faithful animal reached Denver in safety. The Union Pacific railroad had then reached Julesburg and I conceived the hazardous idea of reaching that point by navigating the Platte River--a distance of three hundred miles--so I at once ordered a flat bottomed boat built of material in the rough. A CUNNING SCHEMER I next went in quest of my aged chum, the ex-pig dealer, who, when found, revealed by a twinkle in his eye another dare-devil scheme, which he was quite capable of concocting when alone in his warehouse den. He exclaimed, with much feeling and a forced tear, that he was right down glad to see me safely back and gave me little rest until I had related my experiences in the hills. He then unfolded his diabolical scheme, whereby both of us could lay a foundation for a fortune. I was in need of the latter, without any question, but not by this method. Cheyenne had just been surveyed, mapped and laid out, and the proposition was for him to furnish a man, two mule teams, wagons, tents, provisions and all other necessities; and this man and myself were to go there and squat or take possession of two sections of Government land, consisting of one hundred and sixty acres each, located just outside the city limits. The offer was promptly rejected, and it destroyed the last particle of friendship that had existed between us as far as I was concerned. I had just been through that part of the country and had narrowly escaped death many times, and for us to carry out this scheme, I knew would be impossible, for the tricky redskins would be certain to capture us. I cannot recollect the exact reply that I made him, but am positive I requested him to go to Hades by the shortest possible route. We parted in anger after three long years of friendship. The old major's love for the almighty dollar was the cause. I never did have a very strong desire to furnish material to the cruel savages for one of their home scalp dances, and besides my mind was made up to leave Colorado, which I did. I afterwards made the acquaintance of a young fellow, a college graduate who had been unable to secure a position to his liking and was anxious to return to the States. After a few days of good fellowship, and finding him of the right material, I made my plans known to him. He at once fell in with them, and a week later we embarked on our perilous journey. We started at full moon drifting with a comparatively strong current using paddles to guide our roughly constructed craft. We made nightly rides of about fifty miles, and at dawn would land on one of the small islands of the river, conceal ourselves and the boat in the tall grass from which we were able to see all that passed by trail and bluffs, and not be seen ourselves. Our greatest danger was in being discovered by the Indians on the high bluffs, or a visit from them to the island we occupied. The first scare we had was when a party of a dozen or more rode to the bank of the river for the purpose, as we supposed, of crossing. They seemed, however, undecided as to their course, but finally urged their ponies down the bank and into the river. To describe our feelings would be impossible. Just then, to us, a minute seemed an hour. Cold beads of perspiration stood out on both, not exactly from fear, but a sort of yearning to be elsewhere; and I wondered, after all that I had passed through, if I was to be cut down on my homeward journey by those fiendish red devils. "Saved!" whispered my friend, "they are leaving the river." And sure enough those little prairie ponies were climbing the bank on a dead run for the bluffs. [Illustration: HOME RIDE DOWN THE PLATTE RIVER] The last night of that eventful ride lasted long until after the sun was up. The large Concord coach filled with passengers passed close to the river bank a short time before, and from the driver we learned we were ten miles from Julesburg. We proceeded, keeping close to the bank, and with field glass continually swept the valley and bluffs in every direction. We were facing a mild and depressing wind. All of a sudden dismal sounds reached our ears, and as the noiseless current of the river rounded the projecting points in its banks, it bore our staunch old craft to a place of safety, or ourselves to a cruel death, we knew not which. The sounds became more distinct until both of us were satisfied that the Indians had captured the overland coach with its load of human freight. As we rounded the next bend the river took a straight course, but there was no island in sight. "No island in sight," said my friend. "Where can we go?" And turning around I discovered he was as white as a sheet. As for myself, I was hanging to the edge of the bank trying hard to collect my wits and recover from a fainting spell. We finally managed to get the boat back and around the bend where we lay concealed for some time, suffering the torture of Hades. I finally crawled to the top of the bank and with field glass surveyed the locality in every direction. No life was visible, still the unearthly noise kept up, and the feeling of those two lone travelers would be impossible to describe. The thought at last came to me that we must be somewhere in the vicinity of the old California Crossing. I crawled back to the boat and told my companion to go ahead, while I continually used the field glass. After fifteen minutes, I discovered a white speck in the eastern horizon. We were soon over our fright, and with light hearts were sailing over the rippling waters of the old Platte feeling assured that we would soon reach a place of safety, as far as the Indians were concerned. On arriving at the crossing, which it proved to be, we found one of those large white covered prairie schooners stalled in the middle of the stream, and fifty Greasers, as the Mexican drivers were called, and as many yoke of oxen trying to haul it out. FAREWELL TO THE PLAINS We sailed merrily along and at two P. M. reached Julesburg, the then terminus of the Union Pacific railroad and overland shipping point for all territory west, north and south. The Union Pacific railroad, when under construction, made a terminus every two or three hundred miles. The houses were built in sections, so they were easily taken apart, loaded on flat freight cars, and taken to the next terminus completely deserting the former town, Julesburg was rightfully named "The Portable Hell of the Plains." My finer feelings cannot, if words could, attempt a description. Suffice to say that during the three days we were there four men and women were buried in their street costumes. The fourth day we boarded a Union Pacific train and were whirled to its Eastern terminus, Omaha, thence home, arriving safely after an absence of four years. The habits formed during those western years were hard to change, and the fight of my life to live a semblance of the proper life, required a will power as irresistible as the crystal quartz taken from the lofty snow capped mountain sides, taking tons of weight to crush it, that the good might be separated from the worthless. [Illustration] * * * * * Transcriber's Notes Original spelling has been preserved. Some illustrations have been moved to avoid breaking up the text. The following typos have been corrected: Contents: Markmanship changed to Marksmanship: (Chapter V--A Proof of Markmanship) Page 12: Holliday changed to Holiday: (We at once called at the Ben Holliday Stage Office). Page 104: ther changed to their: (had ther tribal laws and customs). Page 106: added closing quotes: (I'll get out of this one in some way.) Page 128: added comma after Charlie: ("At least, Charlie" said Patrick, "Let's give them a decent). Page 137: added comma after second Billie: (loudly, "Billie, Billie" and with outstretched hand walked). 
30297	----	UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Volume 14, No. 17, pp. 483-491, 2 figs. March 2, 1964 Records of the Fossil Mammal Sinclairella, Family Apatemyidae, From the Chadronian and Orellan BY WILLIAM A. CLEMENS, JR. UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS LAWRENCE 1964 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS, MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Editors: E. Raymond Hall, Chairman, Henry S. Fitch, Theodore H. Eaton, Jr. Volume 14, No. 17, pp. 483-491, 2 figs. Published March 2, 1964 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS Lawrence, Kansas PRINTED BY HARRY (BUD) TIMBERLAKE, STATE PRINTER TOPEKA, KANSAS 1964 29-8587 Records of the Fossil Mammal Sinclairella, Family Apatemyidae, From the Chadronian and Orellan BY WILLIAM A. CLEMENS, JR. Introduction The family Apatemyidae has a long geochronological range in North America, beginning in the Torrejonian land-mammal age, but is represented by a relatively small number of fossils found at a few localities. Two fossils of Orellan age, found in northeastern Colorado and described here, demonstrate that the geochronological range of the Apatemyidae extends into the Middle Oligocene. Isolated teeth of _Sinclairella dakotensis_ Jepsen, part of a sample of a Chadronian local fauna collected by field parties from the Webb School of California, are also described. I thank Mr. Raymond M. Alf, Webb School of California, Claremont, California, and Dr. Peter Robinson, University of Colorado Museum, Boulder, Colorado, for permitting me to describe the fossils they discovered. Also Dr. Robinson made available the draft of a short paper he had prepared on the tooth found in Weld County, Colorado; his work was facilitated by a grant from the University of Colorado Council on Research and Creative Work. I also gratefully acknowledge receipt of critical data and valuable comments from Drs. Edwin C. Galbreath, Glenn L. Jepsen, and Malcolm C. McKenna who is currently revising the Paleocene apatemyids and studying the phylogenetic relationships of the family. The prefixes of catalogue numbers used in the text identify fossils in the collections of the following institutions: KU, Museum of Natural History, The University of Kansas, Lawrence; Princeton, Princeton Museum, Princeton, New Jersey; RAM-UCR, Raymond Alf Museum, Webb School of California, Claremont, California (the permanent repository for these specimens will be the University of California, Riverside); and UCM, University of Colorado Museum, Boulder, Colorado. The system of notations for teeth prescribed for use here is as follows: teeth in the upper half of the dentition are designated by a capital letter and a number; thus M2 is the notation for the upper second molar; teeth in the lower half of the dentition are designated by a lower-case letter and a number; thus p2 is the notation for the lower second premolar. Family APATEMYIDAE Matthew, 1909 Genus =Sinclairella= Jepsen, 1934 =Sinclairella dakotensis= Jepsen, 1934 The type of the species, Princeton no. 13585, was discovered in Chadronian strata of the upper part of the Chadron Formation cropping out in Big Corral Draw, approximately 13 miles south-southwest of Scenic, in southwestern South Dakota (Jepsen, 1934, p. 291). Detailed descriptions of the type specimen are given in papers by Jepsen (1934) and Scott and Jepsen (1936). Isolated teeth of Chadronian age referable to _Sinclairella dakotensis_ have been discovered subsequently at a locality in Nebraska and fossils of Orellan age, also referable to _S. dakotensis_, have been collected at two localities in Colorado. The sample from each locality is described separately. Sioux County, northwestern Nebraska _Material._--RAM-UCR nos. 381, left M1; 598, left m2; 1000, right m1; 1001, right m2; 1079, right m2; 1674, right M2; and 3013, left m2. _Locality and stratigraphy._--These Chadronian fossils were discovered by Raymond Alf and members of his field parties in several harvester ant mounds built in exposures of the Chadron Formation in Sec. 26, T 33 N, R 53 W, Sioux County, Nebraska (Alf, 1962, and Hough and Alf, 1958). This is UCR locality V5403. The collectors carefully considered the possibility that some of the fossils found in the ant mounds were collected from younger strata by the harvester ants and concluded this was unlikely (Alf, personal communication). _Description and comments._--The cusps of RAM-UCR no. 381, a left M1, are sharp and the wear-facets resulting from occlusion with the lower dentition are small. The paraconule is a low, ill-defined cusp on the anterior margin of the crown; a metaconule is not present. A smooth stylar shelf is present labial to the metacone. The crown was supported by three roots. There are no interradicular crests. The crown of RAM-UCR no. 1674, a right M2, is heavily abraded and many morphological details of the cusps have been destroyed. Low interradicular crests linked the three roots of the tooth with a low, central prominence. As was the case with RAM-UCR no. 381, no significant differences could be found in comparisons with illustrations of the teeth preserved in Princeton no. 13585. RAM-UCR nos. 598, 1001, 1079, and 3013 all appear to be m2's. The talonids of these teeth are not elongated, their trigonids have quadrilateral outlines, and the paraconids are small but prominent, bladelike cusps. The trigonid of RAM-UCR 1000 is elongated and the paraconid is a minute cusp; the tooth closely resembles the m1 of the type of _Sinclairella dakotensis_. Logan County, northeastern Colorado _Material._--KU no. 11210 (fig. 1), a fragment of a left maxillary containing P4 and M1-2. _Locality and stratigraphy._--The fossil was found in the center of the W-1/2, Sec. 21, T 11 N, R 53 W, Logan County, Colorado, "... in the bed below _Agnotocastor_ bed, Cedar Creek Member...." (Ronald H. Pine, 1958, field notes on file at the University of Kansas). The bed so defined is part of unit 3 in the lower division of the Cedar Creek Member, as subdivided by Galbreath (1953:25) in stratigraphic section XII. The fauna obtained from unit 3 is of Orellan age. [Illustration: FIG. 1. _Sinclairella dakotensis_ Jepsen, KU no. 11210, fragment of left maxillary with P4 and M1-2; Orellan, Logan County, Colorado; drawings by Mrs. Judith Hood: a, labial view; b, occlusal view; both approximately × 9.] _Description and comments._--P4 of KU no. 11210 has a large posterolingual cusp separated from the main cusp by a distinct groove, which deepens posteriorly. The posterolingual cusp is supported by the broad posterior root. P4 of the type specimen of _Sinclairella dakotensis_ is described (Jepsen, 1934, p. 392) as having an oval outline at the base of the crown, and a small, posterolingual cusp. A chip of enamel is missing from the posterior slope of the main cusp of the P4 of KU no. 11210. The anterior slope of the main cusp is flattened, possibly the result of wear, and there is no evidence of a groove like that present on the P4 of the type specimen. Only a few differences were found between the molars preserved in KU no. 11210 and their counterparts in the type specimen. A stylar shelf is present labial to the metacone of M1 of KU no. 11210, but, unlike the type, its surface is smooth and there is no evidence of cusps. Of the three small stylar cusps on the stylar shelf of M2 the smallest is in the position of a mesostyle. The M2 lacks a chip of enamel from the lingual surface of the hypocone. Unlike the M2 of Princeton no. 13585, in occlusal view the posterior margin of the M2 of KU no. 11210 is convex posterior to the metacone. The anterior edge of the base of the zygomatic arch of KU no. 11210 was dorsal to M2. The shallow oval depression in the maxillary dorsal to M1 might be the result of post-mortem distortion. The molars preserved in KU no. 11210 and their counterparts in the type specimen do not appear to be significantly different in size (table 1) or morphology of the cusps. The only difference between the two specimens that might be of classificatory significance is the difference in size of the posterolingual cusp of P4. At present the range of intraspecific variation in the morphology of P4 has not been documented for any species of apatemyid. The evolutionary trend or trends of the apatemyids (McKenna, 1960, p. 48) for progressive reduction of function of p4 probably were paralleled by similar trends in the evolution of the P4. If so, the intraspecific variation in the morphology of P4 could be expected to be somewhat greater than that of the upper molars, for example. The morphological difference between the P4's of the type of _Sinclairella dakotensis_ and KU no. 11210 is not extreme and does not exceed the range of intraspecific variation that could be expected for this element of the dentition. The close resemblances in size and morphology between the M1-2 of Princeton no. 13585 and KU no. 11210 also favor identification of the latter as part of a member of an Orellan population of _Sinclairella dakotensis_. Weld County, northeastern Colorado [Illustration: FIG. 2. _Sinclairella dakotensis_ Jepsen, UCM no. 21073, right M2; Orellan, Weld County, Colorado; drawing by Mrs. Judith Hood: occlusal view, approximately × 9.] _Material._--UCM no. 20173 (fig. 2), is a right M2. _Locality and stratigraphy._--The tooth was discovered at the Mellinger locality, Sec. 17, T 11 N, R 65 W, Weld County, Colorado. The Mellinger locality is in the Cedar Creek Member, White River Formation, and its fauna is considered to be of Orellan age (Patterson and McGrew, 1937, and Galbreath, 1953). _Description and comments._--UCM no. 21073, which is more heavily abraded than KU no. 11210, shows no evidence of a stylar cusp either anterolabial to the metacone or in the position of a mesostyle. A small stylar cusp is present anterolabial to the paracone. A notch that appears to have been cut through the enamel of the posterolabial corner of the crown could have received the parastylar apex of M3. A similar notch is not present on the M2 of KU no. 11210 nor indicated in the illustrations of the M2 of Princeton no. 13585. The coronal dimensions of UCM no. 21073 (table 1) do not appear to differ significantly from those of the M2's of KU no. 11210 and the type specimen of _Sinclairella dakotensis_. Comments With the discovery of Orellan apatemyids the geochronological range of the family in North America is shown to extend from the Torrejonian through the Orellan land-mammal ages. The discoveries reported here enlarge the Oligocene record of apatemyids to include not only the type specimen of _Sinclairella dakotensis_, a skull and associated mandible from South Dakota, but also seven isolated teeth, representing at least two individuals, from a Chadronian fossil locality in Nebraska and one specimen from each of two Orellan fossil localities in northeastern Colorado. Simpson (1944:73, and 1953:127) presented tabulations of the published records of American apatemyids and suggested the data indicated the populations of these mammals were of small size throughout the history of the family. The few pre-Oligocene occurrences of apatemyids described subsequently (note McKenna, 1960, figs. 3-10, and p. 48) and occurrences described here tend to reinforce Simpson's interpretation. This interpretation may have to be modified to some degree, however, when current studies of collections of pre-Oligocene apatemyids are completed (McKenna, personal communication). Although information concerning the evolutionary trends of American apatemyids has been published, no data on the morphological variation in a population are available in the literature. An adequate basis for evaluating the significance of the morphological differences between the P4's of Princeton no. 13585 and KU no. 12110 coupled with the similarities of their M1-2's is lacking. In the evolution of American apatemyids the P4 underwent reduction in size and, apparently, curtailment of function. This history suggests the range of morphological variation of P4 in populations of _Sinclairella dakotensis_ could be expected to be greater than that of the molars and encompass the morphological differences between the P4's of Princeton no. 13585 and KU no. 12110. The difference in age of the Chadronian and Orellan fossils does not constitute proof that they pertain to different species. Although the identification is admittedly provisional until more fossils including other parts of the skeleton are discovered, the Orellan fossils described here are referred to _Sinclairella dakotensis_. TABLE 1.--MEASUREMENTS (IN MILLIMETERS) OF TEETH OF SINCLAIRELLA DAKOTENSIS JEPSEN. ========================================================================== | P4 | M1 | M2 -----------------------+------------+------------------+------------------ |length|width|length[1]|width[1]|length[1]|width[1] -----------------------+------+-----+---------+--------+---------+-------- Princeton no. 13585[2] | 2.1 | 1.1 | 4.0 | 3.7 | 3.4 | 4.7 RAM no. 381 | | | 4.1 | 3.5 | | RAM no. 1674 | | | | | 3.4 | 4.2 KU no. 11210 | 2.4 | 1.6 | 3.9 | 3.5 | 3.8 | 4.1+ UCM no. 21073 | | | | | 3.6 | 4.1 -----------------------+------+-----+---------+--------+---------+-------- | m1 | m2 +---------+--------+---------+-------- | length | width | length | width +---------+--------+---------+-------- Princeton no. 13585[3] | 3.5 | 2.4 | 3.7 | 2.8 RAM no. 1000 | 3.5 | 2.2 | | RAM no. 598 | | | 3.8 | 2.6 RAM no. 1001 | | | 3.6+ | 2.6 RAM no. 1079 | | | 4.0 | 2.8 RAM no. 3013 | | | 3.6 | 2.8 ------------------------------------+---------+--------+---------+-------- [Footnote 1: Length defined as maximum dimension of the labial half of the crown measured parallel to a line drawn through the apices of paracone and metacone. Width defined as maximum coronal dimension measured along line perpendicular to line defined by apices of paracone and metacone.] [Footnote 2: Dimensions provided by Dr. Glenn L. Jepsen.] [Footnote 3: Dimensions taken from Jepsen (1934:300).] Literature Cited ALF, R. 1962. A new species of the rodent _Pipestoneomys_ from the Oligocene of Nebraska. Breviora, Mus. Comp. Zool., no. 172, pp. 1-7, 3 figs. GALBREATH, E. C. 1953. A contribution to the Tertiary geology and paleontology of northeastern Colorado. Univ. Kansas Paleont. Cont., Vertebrata, art. 4, pp. 1-120, 2 pls., 26 figs. HOUGH, J., and ALF, R. 1958. A Chadron mammalian fauna from Nebraska. Journ. Paleon. 30:132-140, 4 figs. JEPSEN, G. L. 1934. A revision of the American Apatemyidae and the description of a new genus, _Sinclairella_, from the White River Oligocene of South Dakota. Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc., 74:287-305, 3 pls., 4 figs. MCKENNA, M. C. 1960. Fossil Mammalia from the early Wasatchian Four Mile fauna, Eocene of northwest Colorado. Univ. California Publ. in Geol. Sci., 37:1-130, 64 figs. MATTHEW, W. D. 1909. The Carnivora and Insectivora of the Bridger Basin, Middle Eocene. Mem. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., 9:289-567, pls. 42-52, 118 figs. PATTERSON, B. and MCGREW, P. O. 1937. A soricid and two erinaceids from the White River Oligocene. Geol. Ser., Field Mus. Nat. Hist., 6:245-272, figs. 60-74. SCOTT, W. B. and JEPSEN, G. L. 1936. The mammalian fauna of the White River Oligocene--Part I. Insectivora and Carnivora. Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc., n. s., 28:1-153, 22 pls., 7 figs. SIMPSON, G. G. 1944. Tempo and mode in evolution. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, xviii + 237 pp., 36 figs. 1953. The major features of evolution. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, xx + 434 pp., 52 figs. _Transmitted June 24, 1963._ 
12734	----	The Young Engineers in Colorado or, At Railwood Building in Earnest By H. Irving Hancock CONTENTS CHAPTERS I. The Cub Engineers Reach Camp II. Bad Pete Becomes Worse III. The Day of Real Work Dawns IV. "Trying Out" the Gridley Boys V. Tom Doesn't Mind "Artillery" VI. The Bite from the Bush VII. What a Squaw Knew VIII. 'Gene Black, Trouble-Maker IX. "Doctored" Field Notes? X. Things Begin to go Down Hill XI. The Chief Totters from Command XII. From Cub to Acting Chief XIII. Black Turns Other Colors XIV. Bad Pete Mixes in Some XV. Black's Plot Opens With a Bang XVI. Shut Off from the World XVII. The Real Attack Begins XVIII. When the Camp Grew Warm XIX. Sheriff Grease Drops Dave XX. Mr. Newnham Drops a Bomb XXI. The Trap at the Finish XXII. "Can Your Road Save Its Charter Now?" XXIII. Black's Trump Card XXIV. Conclusion CHAPTER I THE CUB ENGINEERS REACH CAMP "Look, Tom! There is a real westerner!" Harry Hazelton's eyes sparkled, his whole manner was one of intense interest. "Eh?" queried Tom Reade, turning around from his distant view of a sharp, towering peak of the Rockies. "There's the real thing in the way of a westerner," Harry Hazelton insisted in a voice in which there was some awe. "I don't believe he is," retorted Tom skeptically. "You're going to say, I suppose, that the man is just some freak escaped from the pages of a dime novel?" demanded Harry. "No; he looks more like a hostler on a leave of absence from a stranded Wild West show," Tom replied slowly. There was plenty of time for them to inspect the stranger in question. Tom and Harry were seated on a mountain springboard wagon drawn by a pair of thin horses. Their driver, a boy of about eighteen, sat on a tiny make-believe seat almost over the traces. This youthful driver had been minding his own business so assiduously during the past three hours that Harry had voted him a sullen fellow. This however, the driver was not. "Where did that party ahead come from, driver?" murmured Tom, leaning forward. "Boston or Binghamton?" "You mean the party ahead at the bend of the trail?" asked the driver. "Yes; he's the only stranger in sight." "I guess he's a westerner, all right," answered the driver, after a moment or two spent in thought. "There! You see?" crowed Harry Hazelton triumphantly. "If that fellow's a westerner, driver," Tom persisted, "have you any idea how many days he has been west?" "He doesn't belong to this state," the youthful driver answered. "I think he comes from Montana. His name is Bad Pete." "Pete?" mused Tom Reade aloud. "That's short for Peter, I suppose; not a very interesting or romantic name. What's the hind-leg of his name?" "Meaning his surnames" drawled the driver. "Yes; to be sure." "I don't know that he has any surname, friend," the Colorado boy rejoined. "Why do they call him 'Bad'?" asked Harry, with a thrill of pleasurable expectation. As the driver was slow in finding an answer, Tom Reade, after another look at the picturesque stranger, replied quizzically: "I reckon they call him bad because he's counterfeit." "There you go again," remonstrated Harry Hazelton. "You'd better be careful, or Bad Pete will hear you." "I hope he doesn't," smiled Tom. "I don't want to change Bad Pete into Worse Pete." There was little danger, however, that the picturesque-looking stranger would hear them. The axles and springs of the springboard wagon were making noise enough to keep their voices from reaching the ears of any human being more than a dozen feet away. Bad Pete was still about two hundred and fifty feet ahead, nor did he, as yet, give any sign whatever of having noted the vehicle. Instead, he was leaning against a boulder at the turn in the road. In his left hand he held a hand-rolled cigarette from which he took an occasional reflective puff as he looked straight ahead of him as though he were enjoying the scenery. The road---trail---ran close along the edge of a sloping precipice. Fully nine hundred feet below ran a thin line of silver, or so it appeared. In reality it was what was left of the Snake River now, in July, nearly dried out. Over beyond the gulch, for a mile or more, extended a rather flat, rock-strewn valley. Beyond that were the mountains, two peaks of which, even at this season, were white-capped with snow. On the trail, however, the full heat of summer prevailed. "This grand, massive scenery makes a human being feel small, doesn't it?" asked Tom. Harry, however, had his eyes and all his thoughts turned toward the man whom they were nearing. "This---er---Bad Pete isn't an---er---that is, a road agent, is he?" he asked apprehensively. "He may be, for all I know," the driver answered. "At present he mostly hangs out around the S.B. & L. outfit." "Why, that's our outfits---the one we're going to join, I mean," cried Hazelton. "I hope Pete isn't the cook, then," remarked Tom fastidiously. "He doesn't look as though he takes a very kindly interest in soap." "Sh-h-h!" begged Harry. "I'll tell you, he'll hear you." "See here," Tom went on, this time addressing the driver, "you've told us that you don't know just where to find the S.B. & L. field camp. If Mr. Peter Bad hangs out with the camp then he ought to be able to direct us." "You can ask him, of course," nodded the Colorado boy. Soon after the horses covered the distance needed to bring them close to the bend. Now the driver hauled in his team, and, blocking the forward wheels with a fragment of rock, began to give his attention to the harness. Bad Pete had consented to glance their way at last. He turned his head indolently, emitting a mouthful of smoke. As if by instinct his right hand dropped to the butt of a revolver swinging in a holster over his right hip. "I hope he isn't bad tempered today!" shivered Harry under his breath. "I beg your pardon, sir," galled Tom, "but can you tell us-----" "Who are ye looking at?" demanded Bad Pete, scowling. "At a polished man of the world, I'm sure," replied Reade smilingly. "As I was saying, can you tell us just where we can find the S.B. & L.'s field camp of engineers?" "What d'ye want of the camp?" growled Pete, after taking another whiff from his cigarette. "Why, our reasons for wanting to find the camp are purely personal," Tom continued. "Now, tenderfoot, don't get fresh with me," warned Pete sullenly. "I haven't an idea of that sort in the world, sir," Tom assured him. "Do you happen to know the hiding-place of the camp?" "What do you want of the camp?" insisted Pete. "Well, sir, since you're so determined to protect the camp from questionable strangers," Tom continued, "I don't know that it will do any harm to inform you that we are two greenhorns---tenderfeet, I believe, is your more elegant word---who have been engaged to join the engineers' crowd and break in at the business." "Cub engineers, eh, tenderfoot?" "That's the full size of our pretensions, sir," Tom admitted. "Rich men's sons, coming out to learn the ways of the Rookies?" questioned Bad Pete, showing his first sign of interest in them. "Not quite as bad as that," Tom Reade urged. "We're wholly respectable, sir. We have even had to work hard in order to raise money for our railway fare out to Colorado." Bad Pete's look of interest in them faded. "Huh!" he remarked. "Then you're no good either why." "That's true, I'm afraid," sighed Tom. "However, can you tell us the way to the camp?" From one pocket Bad Pete produced a cigarette paper and from another tobacco. Slowly he rolled and lighted a cigarette, in the meantime seeming hardly aware of the existence of the tenderfeet. At last, however, he turned to the Colorado boy and observed: "Pardner, I reckon you'd better drive on with these tenderfeet before I drop them over the cliff. They spoil the view. Ye know where Bandy's Gulch is?" "Sure," nodded the Colorado boy. "Ye'll find the railroad outfit jest about a mile west o' there, camped close to the main trail." "I'm sure obliged to you," nodded the Colorado boy, stepping up to his seat and gathering in the reins. "And so are we, sir," added Tom politely. "Hold your blizzard in until I ask ye to talk," retorted Bad Pete haughtily. "Drive on with your cheap baggage, pardner." "Cheap baggage, are we?" mused Tom, when the wagon had left Bad Pete some two hundred feet to the rear. "My, but I feel properly humiliated!" "How many men has Bad Pete killed?" inquired Harry in an awed voice. "Don't know as he ever killed any," replied the Colorado boy, "but I'm not looking for trouble with any man that always carries a revolver at his belt and goes around looking for someone to give him an excuse to shoot. The pistol might go off, even by accident." "Are there many like Mr. Peter Bad in these hills nowadays?" Tom inquired. "You'll find the foothills back near Denver or Pueblo," replied the Colorado youth coldly "You're up in the mountains now." "Well, are there many like Peter Bad in these mountains?" Tom amended. "Not many," admitted their driver. "The old breed is passing. You see, in these days, we have the railroad, public schools, newspapers, the telegraph, electric light, courts and the other things that go with civilization." "The old days of romance are going by," sighed Harry Hazelton. "Do you call murder romantic?" Reade demanded. "Harry, you came west expecting to find the Colorado of the dime novels. Now we've traveled hundreds of miles across this state, and Mr. Bad wore the first revolver that we've seen since we crossed the state line. My private opinion is that Peter would be afraid to handle his pistol recklessly for fear it would go off." "I wouldn't bank on that," advised the young driver, shaking his head. "But you don't carry a revolver," retorted Tom Reade. "Pop would wallop me, if I did," grinned the Colorado boy. "But then, I don't need firearms. I know enough to carry a civil tongue, and to be quiet when I ought to." "I suppose people who don't possess those virtues are the only people that have excuse for carrying a pistol around with their keys, loose change and toothbrushes," affirmed Reade. "Harry, the longer you stay west the more people you'll find who'll tell you that toting a pistol is a silly, trouble-breeding habit." They drove along for another hour before a clattering sounded behind them. "I believe it's Bad Pete coming," declared Harry, as he made out, a quarter of a mile behind them, the form of a man mounted on a small, wiry mustang. "Yep; it is," nodded the Colorado boy, after a look back. The trail being wider here Bad Pete whirled by them with a swift drumming of his pony's hoofs. In a few moments more he was out of sight. "Tom, you may have your doubts about that fellow," Hazelton remarked, "but there's one thing he can do---ride!" "Humph! Anyone can ride that knows enough to get into a saddle and stick there," observed the Colorado boy dryly. Readers of the "_Grammar School Boys Series_" and of the "_High School Boys Series_", have already recognized in Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton two famous schoolboy athletes. Back in old Gridley there had once been a schoolboy crowd of six, known as Dick & Co. Under the leadership of Dick Prescott, these boys had made their start in athletics in the Central Grammar School, winning no small amount of fame as junior schoolboy athletes. Then in their High School days Dick & Co. had gradually made themselves crack athletes. Baseball and football were their especial sports, and in these they had reached a degree of skill that had made many a college trainer anxious to obtain them. None of the six, however, had gone to college. Dick Prescott and Greg Holmes had secured appointments as cadets at the United States Military Academy, at West Point. Their adventures are told in the "_West Point Series_." Dave Darrin and Dan Dalzell, feeling the call to the Navy, had entered the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. Their further doings are all described in the "_Annapolis Series_." Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton, however, had found that their aspirations pointed to the great constructive work that is done by the big-minded, resourceful American civil engineer of today. Bridge building, railroad building, the tunneling of mines---in a word, the building of any of the great works of industry possessed a huge fascination for them. Tom was good-natured and practical, Harry at times full of mischief and at others dreamy, but both longed with all their souls to place themselves some day in the front ranks among civil engineers. At high school they had given especial study to mathematics. At home they had studied engineering, through correspondence courses and otherwise. During more than the last year of their home life our two boys had worked much in the offices of a local civil engineer, and had spent part of their school vacations afield with him. Finally, after graduating from school both boys had gone to New York in order to look the world over. By dint of sheer push, three-quarters of which Tom had supplied, the boys had secured their first chance in the New York offices of the S.B. & L. Not much of a chance, to be sure, but it meant forty dollars a month and board in the field, with the added promise that, if they turned out to be "no good," they would be promptly "bounced." "If 'bounced' we are," Tom remarked dryly, "we'll have to walk home, for our money will just barely take us to Colorado." So here they were, having come by rail to a town some distance west of Pueblo. From the last railway station they had been obliged to make thirty miles or more by wagon to the mountain field camp of the S.B. & L. Since daybreak they had been on the way, eating breakfast and lunch from the paper parcels that they had brought with them. "How much farther is the camp, now that you know the way." Reade inquired an hour after Bad Pete had vanished on horseback. "There it is, right down there," answered the Colorado youth, pointing with his whip as the raw-boned team hauled the wagon to the top of a rise in the trail. Of the trail to the left, surrounded by natural walls of rock, was an irregularly shaped field about three or four acres in extent. Here and there wisps of grass grew, but the ground, for the most part, was covered by splinters of rock or of sand ground from the same. At the farther end of the camp stood a small wooden building, with three tents near try. At a greater distance were several other tents. Three wagons stood at one side of the camp, though horses or mules for the same were not visible. Outside, near the door of one tent, stood a transit partially concealed by the enveloping rubber cover. Near another tent stood a plane table, used in field platting (drawing). Signs of life about the camp there were none, save for the presence of the newcomers. "I wonder if there's anyone at home keeping house," mused Tom Reade, as he jumped down from the wagon. "There's only one wooden house in this town. That must be where the boss lives," declared Harry. "Yes; that's where the boss lives," replied the Colorado youth, with a wry smile. "Let's go over and see whether he has time to talk to us," suggested Reade. "Just one minute, gentlemen," interposed the driver. "Where do you want your kit boxes placed? Are you going to pay me now?" "Drop the kit boxes on the ground anywhere," Tom answered. "We're strong enough to carry 'em when we find where they belong." And---yes: we are going to pay you now. Eighteen dollars, isn't it?" "Yes," replied the young driver, with the brevity of the mountaineer. Tom and Harry went into their pockets, each producing nine dollars as his share of the fare. This was handed over to the Colorado youth. "'Bliged to you, gentlemen," nodded the Colorado boy pocketing the money. "Anything more to say to me?" "Nothing remains to be said, except to thank you, and to wish you good luck on your way back," said Reade. "I wish you luck here, too, gentlemen. Good day." With that, the driver mounted his seat, turned the horses about and was off without once looking back. "Now let's go over to the house and see the boss," murmured Tom. Together the chums skirted the camp, going up to the wooden building. As the door was open, Tom, with a sense of good manners, approached from the side that he might not appear to be peeping in on the occupants of the building. Gaining the side of the doorway, with Harry just behind him, Reade knocked softly. "Quit yer kidding, whoever it is, and come in," called a rough voice. Tom thereupon stepped inside. What he saw filled him with surprise. Around the room were three or four tables. There were many utensils hanging on the walls. There were two stoves, with a man bending over one of them and stirring something in a pot. "Oh, I beg your pardon," said Tom. "I thought I'd find Mr. Timothy Thurston, the chief engineer, here." "Nope," replied a stout, red-faced man of forty, in flannel shirt and khaki trousers. "Mr. Thurston never eats between meals, and when he does eat he's served in his own mess tent. Whatcher want here, pardner?" "We're under orders to report to him," Tom answered politely. "New men in the chain gang?" asked the cook, swinging around to look at the newcomers. "Maybe," Reade assented. "That will depend on the opinion that Mr. Thurston forms of us after he knows us a little while. I believe the man in New York said we were to be assistant engineers." "There's only one assistant engineer here," announced the cook. "The other engineers are Just plain surveyors or levelers." "Well, we won't quarrel about titles," Tom smilingly assured the cook. "Will you please tell us where Mr. Thurston is?" "He's in his tent over yonder," said the cook, pointing through the open doorway. "Shall we step over there and announce ourselves?" Tom inquired. "Why, ye could do it," rejoined the red-faced cook, with a grin. "If Tim Thurston happens to be very busy he might use plain talk and tell you to git out of camp." "Then do you mind telling us just how we should approach the chief engineer?" "Whatter yer names?" "Reade and Hazelton." "Bob, trot over and tell Thurston there's two fellows here, named Reade and Hazelnut. Ask him what he wants done with 'em." The cook's helper, who, so far, had not favored the new arrivals with a glance, now turned and looked them over. Then, with a nod, the helper stepped across the ground to the largest tent in camp. In a few moments he came back. "Mr. Thurston says to stay around and he'll call you jest as soon as he's through with what he's doing," announced Bob, who, dark, thin and anemic, was a decrepit-looking man of fifty years or thereabouts. "Ye can stand about in the open," added the cook, pointing with his ladle. "There's better air out there." "Thank you," answered Tom briskly, but politely. Once outside, and strolling slowly along, Reade confided to his chum: "Harry, you can see what big fellows we two youngsters are going to be in a Rocky Mountain railroad camp. We haven't a blessed thing to do but play marbles until the chief can see us." "I can spare the time, if the chief can," laughed Harry. "Hello---look who's here!" Bad Pete, now on foot, had turned into the camp from the farther side. Espying the boys he swaggered over toward them. "How do you do, sir?" nodded Tom. "Can't you two tenderfeet mind your own business?" snarled Pete, halting and scowling angrily at them. "Now, I come to think of it," admitted Tom, "it _was_ meddlesome on my part to ask after your health. I beg your pardon." "Say, are you two tenderfeet trying to git fresh with me?" demanded Bad Pete, drawing himself up to his full height and gazing at them out of flashing eyes. Almost unconsciously Tom Reade drew himself up, showing hints of his athletic figure through the folds of his clothing. "No, Peter," he said quietly. "In the first place, my friend hasn't even opened his mouth. As for myself, when I _do_ try to get fresh with you, you won't have to do any guessing. You'll be sure of it." Bad Pete took a step forward, dropping his right hand, as though unconsciously, to the butt of the revolver in the holster. He fixed his burning gaze savagely on the boy's face as he muttered, in a low, ugly voice: "Tenderfoot, when I'm around after this you shut your mouth and keep it shut! You needn't take the trouble to call me Peter again, either. My name is Bad Pete, and I am bad. I'm poison! Understand? Poison!" "Poison?" repeated Tom dryly, coolly. "No; I don't believe I'd call you that. I think I'd call you a bluff---and let it go at that." Bad Pete scowled angrily. Again his hand slid to the butt of his revolver, then with a muttered imprecation he turned and stalked away, calling back threateningly over his shoulder: "Remember, tenderfoot. Keep out of my way." Behind the boys, halted a man who had just stepped into the camp over the natural stone wall. This man was a sun-browned, smooth-faced, pleasant-featured man of perhaps thirty-two or thirty-three years. Dressed in khaki trousers, with blue flannel shirt, sombrero and well-worn puttee leggings, he might have been mistaken for a soldier. Though his eyes were pleasant to look at, there was an expression of great shrewdness in them. The lines around his mouth bespoke the man's firmness. He was about five-feet-eight in height, slim and had the general bearing of a strong man accustomed to hard work. "Boys," he began in a low voice, whereat both Tom and Harry faced swiftly about, "you shouldn't rile Bad Pete that way. He's an ugly character, who carries all he knows of law in his holsters, and we're a long way from the sheriff's officers." "Is he really bad?" asked Tom innocently. "Really bad?" laughed the man in khaki. "You'll find out if you try to cross him. Are you visiting the camp?" "Reade! Hazelton!" called a voice brusquely from the big tent. "That's Mr. Thurston calling us, I guess," said Tom quickly. "We'll have to excuse ourselves and go and report to him." "Yes, that was Thurston," nodded the slim man. "And I'm Blaisdell, the assistant engineer. I'll go along with you." Throwing aside the canvas flap, Mr. Blaisdell led the boys inside the big tent. At one end a portion of the tent was curtained off, and this was presumably the chief engineer's bedroom. Near the centre of the tent was a flat table about six by ten feet. Just at present it held many drawings, all arranged in orderly piles. Not far from the big table was a smaller one on which a typewriting machine rested. The man who sat at the large table, and who wheeled about in a revolving chair as Tom and Harry entered, was perhaps forty-five years of age. His head was covered with a mass of bushy black hair. His face was as swarthy, in its clean-shaven condition, as though the owner had spent all of his life under a hot sun. His clothing like that of all the rest of the engineers in camp was of khaki, his shirt of blue flannel, with a long, flowing black tie. "Mr. Thurston," announced the assistant engineer, "I have just encountered these young gentlemen, who state that they are under orders from the New York offices to report to you for employment." Mr. Thurston looked both boys over in silence for a few seconds. His keen eyes appeared to take in everything that could possibly concern them. Then he rose, extending his hand, first to Reade, next to Hazelton. "From what technical school do you come?" inquired the engineer as he resumed his chair. "From none, sir," Tom answered promptly "We didn't have money enough for that sort of training." Mr. Thurston raised his eyebrows in astonished inquiry. "Then why," he asked, "did you come here? What made you think that you could break in as engineers?" CHAPTER II BAD PETE BECOMES WORSE Timothy Thurston's gaze was curious, and his voice a trifle cold. Yet he did not by any means treat the boys with contempt. He appeared simply to wonder why these young men had traveled so far to take up his time. "We couldn't afford to take a college course in engineering, sir," Tom Reade continued, reddening slightly. "We have learned all that we possibly could in other ways, however." "Do you expect me, young men, to detail an experienced engineer to move about with you as instructor until you learn enough to be of use to us?" "No, indeed, we don't, sir," Tom replied, and perhaps his voice was sharper than usual, though it rang with earnestness. "We believe, sir, that we are very fair engineers. We are willing to be tried out, sir, and to be rated exactly where you find that we belong. If necessary we'll start in as helpers to the chainmen, and we have pride enough to walk back over the trail at any moment when you decide that we're no good. We have traveled all the way from the east, and I trust, sir, that you'll give us a fair chance to show if we know anything." "It won't take long to find that out," replied Mr. Thurston gravely. "Of course you both understand that we are doing real engineering work and haven't any time to instruct amateurs or be patient with them." "We don't want instruction, Mr. Thurston," Hazelton broke in. "We want work, and when we get it we'll do it." "I hope your work will be as good as your assurance," replied the chief engineer, with a slight twinkle in his eyes. "What can you do?" "We know how to do ordinary surveying, sir," Tom replied quickly. "We can run our courses and supervise the chaining. We know how to bring in field notes that are of some use. We can do our work well within the limits of error allowed by the United States Government. We also consider ourselves competent at leveling. Give us the profile plan and the notes on an excavation, and we can superintend the laborers who have to make an excavation. We have a fair knowledge of ordinary road building. We have the strength of usual materials at our finger's ends, and for beginners I think we may claim that we are very well up in mathematics. We have had some all-around experience. Here is a letter, sir, from Price & Conley, of Gridley, in whose offices we have done quite a bit of work." Mr. Thurston took the letter courteously, though he did not \ immediately glance at it. "Country surveyors, these gentlemen, I suppose?" he asked, looking into Tom's eyes. "Yes, sir," nodded Reade, "though Mr. Price is also the engineer for our home county. Both Mr. Price and Mr. Conley paid us the compliment of saying that we were well fitted to work in a railway engineering camp." "Well, we'll try you out, until you either make good or convince us that you can't," agreed the chief engineer, without any show of enthusiasm. "You may show them where they are to live, Mr. Blaisdell, and where they are to mess. In the morning you can put these young men at some job or other." The words sounded like a dismissal, but Blaisdell lingered a moment. "Mr. Thurston," he smiled, "our young men ran, first thing, into Bad Pete." "Yes?" inquired the chief. "Did Pete show these young men his fighting front?" Blaisdell repeated the dialogue that had taken place between Tom and Bad Pete. The chief listened to his assistant in silence. Tom flushed slightly under the penetrating glance Mr. Thurston cast upon him during the recital. When the assistant had finished, the chief merely remarked: "Blaisdell, I wish you could get rid of that fellow, Bad Pete. I don't like to have him hanging about the camp. He's an undesirable character, and I'm afraid that some of our men will have trouble with him. Can't you get rid of him?" "I'll do it if you say so, Mr. Thurston," Blaisdell answered quietly. "How?" inquired his chief. "I'll serve out firearms to five or six of the men, and the next time Pete shows his face we'll cover him and march him miles away from camp." "That wouldn't do any good," replied Mr. Thurston, with a shake of his head. "Pete would only come back, uglier than before, and he'd certainly shoot up some of our men." "You asked me, a moment ago, Mr. Thurston, what I could do," Tom broke in. "Give me a little time, and I'll agree to rid the camp of Peter." "How?" asked the chief abruptly. "Not with any gun-play! Pete would be too quick for you at anything of that sort." "I don't carry a pistol, and don't wish to do so," Tom retorted. "In my opinion only a coward carries a pistol." "Then you think Bad Pete is a coward, young man?" returned the chief. "If driven into a corner I'm pretty sure he'd turn out to be one, sir," Tom went on earnestly. "A coward is a man who's afraid. If a fellow isn't afraid of anything, then why does he have to carry firearms to protect himself?" "I don't believe that would quite apply to Pete," Mr. Thurston went on. "Pete doesn't carry a revolver because he's afraid of anything. He knows that many other men are afraid of pistols, and so he carries his firearms about in order that he may enjoy himself in playing bully." "I can drive him out of camp," Tom insisted. "All I'll wait for will be your permission to go ahead." "If you can do it without shooting," replied the chief, "try your hand at it. Be careful, however, Reade. There are plenty of good natural lead mines in these mountains." "Yes---sir?" asked Reade, looking puzzled. "Much as we'd like to see Pete permanently out of this camp, remember that we don't want you to give the fellow any excuse for turning you into a lead mine." "If Peter tries anything like that with me," retorted Tom solemnly, "I shall be deeply offended." "Very good. Take the young men along with you, Blaisdell. I'll hear your report on them tomorrow night." The assistant engineer took Tom and Harry over to a seven by nine tent. "You'll bunk in here," he explained, "and store your dunnage here. There are two folding cots in the tent, as you see. Don't shake 'em out until it's time to turn in, and then you'll have more room in your house. Now, come on over and I'll show you the mess tent for the engineers." This Blaisdell also showed them. There was nothing in the tent but a plain, long table, with folding legs, and a lot of camp chairs of the simplest kind. "What's that tent, Mr. Blaisdell?" inquired Harry, pointing to the next one, as they came out of the engineers' mess. "Mess tent for the chainmen and rod men laborers, etc.," replied their guide. "Now, the fellows will be in soon, and supper will be on in half an hour. After you get your dunnage over to your tent amuse yourselves in any way that you care to. I'll introduce you to the crowd at table." Tom and Harry speedily had their scanty dunnage stored in their own tent. Then they sat down on campstools just outside the door. "Thurston didn't seem extremely cordial, did he?" asked Hazelton solemnly. "Well, why should he be cordial?" Tom demanded. "What does he know about us? We're trying to break in here and make a living, but how does he know that we're not a pair of merely cheerful idiots?" "I've an idea that Mr. Thurston is always rather cool with his staff," pursued Harry. "Do your work, old fellow, in an exceptionally fine way, and I guess you'll find that he can thaw out. Mr. Thurston is probably just like other men who have to employ folks. When he finds that a man can really do the work that he's paid to do I imagine that Thurston is well satisfied and not afraid to show it." "What's that noise?" demanded Harry, trying to peer around the corner of their tent without rising. "The field gang coming in, I think," answered Tom. "Let's get up, then, and have a look at our future mates," suggested Harry Hazelton. "No; I don't believe it would be a good plan," said Tom. "We might be thought fresh if we betrayed too much curiosity before the crowd shows some curiosity about us." "Reade!" sounded Blaisdell's voice, five minutes later. "Bring your friend over and inspect this choice lot of criminals." Tom rose eagerly, followed by Harry. As they left the tent and hurried outside they beheld two rows of men, each before a long bench on which stood agate wash basins. The toilet preceding the evening meal was on. "Gentlemen," Mr. Blaisdell, as the two chums drew near, "I present two new candidates for fame. One is named Reade, the other Hazelton. Take them to your hearts, but don't, at first, teach them all the wickedness you know. Reade, this is Jack Rutter, the spotted hyena of the camp. If he ever gets in your way just push him over a cliff." A pleasant-faced young man in khaki hastily dried his face and hands on a towel, then smilingly held out his right hand. "Glad to know you, Reade," he laughed. Hope you'll like us and decide to stay." "Hazelton," continued the announcer, "shake hands with Slim Morris, whether he'll let you or not. And here's Matt Rice. We usually call him 'Mister' Rice, for he's extremely talented. He knows how to play the banjo." The assistant engineer then turned away, while one young man, at the farther end of the long wash bench stood unpresented. "Oh, on second thoughts," continued Blaisdell, "I'll introduce you to Joe Grant." The last young man came forward. "Joe used to be a good fellow---once," added the assistant engineer. "In these days, however, you want to keep your dunnage boxes locked. Joe's specialty is stealing fancy ties---neckties, I mean." Joe laughed good-humoredly as he shook hands, adding: "We'll tell you all about Blaisdell himself, boys, one of these days, but not now. It's too far from pay day, and old Blaze stands in too thickly with the chief." "If you folks don't come into supper soon," growled the voice of the cook, Jake Wren, from the doorway of the engineer's mess tent, "I'll eat your grub myself." "He'd do it, too," groaned Slim Morris, a young man who nevertheless weighed more than two hundred pounds. "Blaze, won't you take us inside and put us in our high chairs?" There was infinite good humor in this small force of field engineers. As was afterwards learned, all of them were graduates either of colleges or of scientific schools but not one of them affected any superiority over the young newcomers. Just as the party had seated themselves there was a step outside, and Bad Pete stalked in looking decidedly sulky. "Evening," he grunted, and helped himself to a seat at the table. "Reade and Hazelton, you've had the pleasure of meeting Pete, I believe?" asked Blaisdell, without the trace of a smile. "Huh!" growled Pete, not looking up, for the first supply of food was on the table. "We've had the pleasure, twice today, of meeting Mr. Peter," replied Tom, with equal gravity. "See here, tenderfoot," scowled Bad Pete, looking up from his plate, "don't you call me 'Peter' again. Savvy?" "We don't know your other name, sir," rejoined Tom, eyeing the bad man with every outward sign of courtesy. "I'm just plain Pete. Savvy that? "Certainly, Plain Pete," Reade nodded. Pete dropped his soup spoon with a clatter letting his right hand fall to the holster. "Be quiet, Pete," warned Blaisdell, his eyes shooting a cold glance at the angry man. "Reade is a newcomer, not used to our ways yet. Remember that this is a gentleman's club." "Then let him get out," warned Pete blackly. "He belongs here by right, Pete, and you're a guest. Of course we enjoy having you here with us, but, if you don't care to take us as you find us, the fellows in the chainmen's mess will be glad to have you join them." "That tenderfoot is only a boy," growled Pete. "If he can't hold his tongue when men are around, then I'll teach him how." "Reade hasn't done anything to offend you," returned Blaisdell, half sternly, half goodhumoredly. "You let him alone, and he'll let you alone. I'm sure of that." "Blaisdell, if you don't see that I'm treated right in this mess, I'll teach you something, too," flared Bad Pete. "Threatening the president of the mess is a breach of courtesy on the part of any guest who attempts it," spoke Blaisdell again. "Gentlemen, what is your pleasure?" "I move," suggested Slim Morris quietly, "that Pete be considered no longer a member or guest of this mess." "Second the motion," cried Rutter, Rice and Grant together. "The motion appears to have been carried, without the necessity for putting it," declared Mr. Blaisdell. "Pete, you have heard the pleasure of the mess." "Huh!" scowled Bad Pete, picking up his soup plate and draining it. Jake Wren, at this moment, entered with a big platter of roast beef, Bob, the helper, following with dishes of vegetables. Then Bob came in with plates, which he placed before Blaisdell. The latter counted the plates, finding eight. "We shan't need this plate, Bob," declared Blaisdell evenly, handing it back. Then he began to carve. "Put that plate back with the rest, Bob, you pop-eyed coyote," ordered Bad Pete. Bob, looking uneasy, started to do so, but Blaisdell waved him away. At that instant Jake Wren came back into the tent. "For the present, Jake," went on the assistant engineer, "serve only for seven in this tent. Pete is leaving us." "Do you mean-----" flared Pete, leaping to his feet and striding toward the engineer. "I mean," responded Blaisdell, without looking up, "that we hope the chainmen's mess will take you on. But if they don't like you, they don't have to do so." For ten seconds, while Pete stood glaring at Blaisdell, it looked as though the late guest would draw his revolver. Pete was swallowing hard, his face having turned lead color. "Won't you oblige us by going at once, Pete?" inquired Blaisdell coolly. "Not until I've settled my score here," snarled the fellow. "Not until I've evened up with you, you-----" At the same time Pete reached for his revolver in evident earnest. Both his words and his movement were nipped short. Morris and Rice were the only men in the engineers' party who carried revolvers. They carried weapons, in the day time, for protection against a very real foe, the Rocky Mountain rattlesnakes, which infested the territory through which the engineers were then working. Both these engineers reached swiftly for their weapons. Before they could produce them, however, or ore Pete could finish what he was saying, Tom Reade leaped up from his campstool, closing in behind the bad man. "Ow-ow! Ouch!" yelled Pete. "Let go, you painted coyote." "Walk right out of the tent, and I shall rejoice to let you depart," responded Tom steadily. Standing behind the fellow, he had, with his strong, wiry fingers, gripped Pete hard right over the biceps muscle of each arm. Like many another of his type Pete had developed no great amount of bodily strength. Though he struggled furiously, he was unable to wrench himself free from this youth who had trained hard in football training squads. "Step outside and cool off, Peter," advised Tom, thrusting the bad man through the doorway. "Have too much pride, man, to force yourself on people who don't want your company." Reade ran his foe outside a dozen feet, then released him, turning and reentering the tent. "No, you don't! Put up your pistol," sounded the warning voice of Cook Jake Wren outside. "You take a shot at that young feller, Pete, and I'll never serve you another mouthful as long as I'm in the Rockies!" Bad Pete gazed fiercely toward the engineers' tent, hesitated a moment, and then walked wrathfully away. CHAPTER III THE DAY OF REAL WORK DAWNS The meal was finished in peace after that. It was so hearty a meal that Tom and Harry, who had not yet acquired the keen edge of appetite that comes to hard workers in the Rockies, had finished long before any one else. "You fellers had better hurry up," commanded Jake Wren finally. "It'll soon be dark, and I'm not going to furnish candles." As the cook was an autocrat in camp, the engineers meekly called for more pie and coffee, disposed of it and strolled out of the mess tent over to their own little village under canvas. "Bring over your banjo, Matt," urged Joe. "Nothing like the merry old twang to make the new boys feel at home in our school." Rice needed no further urging. As darkness came down a volume of song rang out. "What time do we turn out in the morning?" Tom asked, as Mr. Blaisdell brought over a camp stool and sat near them. "At five sharp," responded the assistant engineer. "An hour later we hit the long trail in earnest. This isn't an idling camp." "I'm glad it isn't," Reade nodded. Then Blaisdell chatted with the boys, drawing out of them what they knew, or thought they knew, of civil engineering, especially as applied to railroad building. "I hope you lads are going to make good," said Blaisdell earnestly. "We're in something of a fix on this work at best, and we need even more than we have, of the very best hustling engineers that can be found." "I am beginning to wonder," said Tom, "how, when you have such need of men of long training, your New York office ever came to pick us out." "Because," replied the assistant candidly, "the New York office doesn't know the difference between an engineer and a railroad tie. Tim Thurston has been making a long yell at the New York offices of the company for engineers. Knowing the little that they do, our New York owners take anyone who says he's an engineer, and unload the stranger on us." "I hope we prove up to the work," sighed Harry. "We're going to size up. We've got to, and that's all there is to it," retorted Tom. "We've been thrown in the water here, Harry, and we've got to swim---which means that we're going to do so. Mr. Blaisdell," turning to the assistant, "you needn't worry as to whether we're going to make good. We _shall_!" "I like your spirit, at any rate, and I've a notion that you're going to win through," remarked the assistant. "You try out a lot of men here, don't you?" asked Harry. "A good many," assented Blaisdell. "From what I heard at table," Hazelton continued, "Mr. Thurston drops a good many of the new men after trying them." "He doesn't drop any man that he doesn't have to drop," returned Blaisdell. "Tim Thurston wants every competent man that he can get here. Let me see-----" Blaisdell did some silent counting on his fingers. Then he went on: "In the last eleven weeks, Thurston has dropped just sixteen new men." "Whew!" gasped Harry, casting a sidelong glance at his shoes, with visions of a coming walk at least as far back as Denver or Pueblo. "Mr. Thurston isn't going to drop us," Tom declared. "Mr. Blaisdell, Hazelton and I are here and we're going to hang on if we have to do it with our teeth. We're going to know how to do what's required of us if we have to stay up all night finding out. We've just got to make good, for we haven't any money with which to get home or anywhere else. Besides, if we can't make good here we're not fit to be tried out anywhere else." "We're in an especially hard fix, you see," the assistant engineer explained. "When we got our charter something less than two years ago we undertook to have every mile of track ballasted and laid on the S.B. & L., and trains running through, by September 30th of this year. There are three hundred and fifty-four miles of road in all. Now, in July, less than three months from the time, this camp is forty-nine miles from the terminus of the road at Loadstone, while the constructing engineers and the track-layers are thirty-eight miles behind us. Do you see the problem?" "You can get an extension of time, can't you?" asked Tom. "We can---_not_! You see, boys, the S.B. & L. is the popular road. That is, it's the one that the people of this state backed in the main. When we got our charter from the legislature there was a lot of opposition from the W.C. & A. railroad. That organization wishes to add to their road, using the very locations that our preliminary engineering force selected for the S.B. & L. The W.C. & A. folks have such a bewildering number of millions at their back that they would have won away from us, had they been an American crowd. The W.C. & A. has only American officers and a few small stockholders in this country. The W.C. & A. is a foreign crowd throughout in reality, and back of them they have about all the money that's loose in London, Paris and Berlin. The W.C. & A. spent a lot of money at the state capital, I guess, for it was common report that some of the members of the legislature had sold out to the foreign crowd. So, though public clamor carried our charter through the legislature by sheer force, the best concession we could get was that our road must be built and in operation over the entire length by September 30th, or the state has the privilege of taking over our road at an appraised value. Do you see what that means?" "Does it mean that the state would then turn around and sell this road to the W.C. & A. at a good profit?" asked Reade. "You've hit it," nodded Mr. Blaisdell. "The W.C. & A. would be delighted to take over our road at a price paid to the state that would give Colorado quite a few millions in profits. The legislature would then have a chance to spend those millions on public improvements in the state. I think you will understand why public clamor now seems to have swung about in favor of the W.C.& A." "Yet it seems to me," put in Harry, "that, even if the S.B. & L. does fail to get the railroad through in time, the stockholders will get their money back when the state takes the road over." "That, one can never count on," retorted Blaisdell, shaking his head. "The state courts would have charge of the appraising of the value of the road, and one can never tell just what courts will award. Ten chances to one the appraisal wouldn't cover more than fifty per cent. of what the S.B. & L. has expended, and thus our company would be many millions of dollars out of pocket. Besides, if the courts could be depended upon to appraise this uncompleted road at twenty per cent. more than has been expended upon it, our company would still lose, for what the S.B. & L. really expects to do is to bag the big profits that can be made out of the section of the state that this road taps. Take it from me, boys, the officials of this road are crazy with anxiety to get the road through in time, and not lose the many millions that are waiting to be earned by the S.B. & L. getting this road through is all that Tim Thurston dreams of, by night or day. His reputation---and he has a big one in railroad building---is wholly at stake on his carrying this job through. It'll be a big prize for all of us, professionally, if we can back Thurston's fight to win." "I'll back it to win," glowed Tom ardently "Mr. Blaisdell, I am well aware that I'm hardly more than the lens cap on a transit in this outfit, but I'm going to do every ounce of my individual share to see this road through and running on time, and I'll carry as much of any other man's burden as I can load onto my shoulders!" "Good!" chuckled Blaisdell, holding out his hand. "I see that you're one of us, heart and soul, Reade. What have you to say, Hazelton?" "I always let Tom do my talking, because he can do it better," smiled Harry. "At the same time, I've known Tom Reade for a good many years, and his performance is always as good as his promise. As for me, Mr. Blaisdell, I've just told you that Tom does my talking, but I back up all that he promises for me." "Pinkitty-plank-plink!" twanged Matt Rice's banjo, starting into another rollicking air. "I guess it's taps, boys," called Blaisdell in his low but resonant voice. "Look at the chief's tent; he's putting out his candles now." A glance at the gradually darkening walls of the chief engineers big tent showed that this was the case. "We'll all turn in," nodded Blaisdell. So Tom and Harry hastened to their tent, where they unfolded their camp cots and set them up. There was not much bed-making. The body of the cot was of canvas, and required no mattress. From out of their baggage each took a small pillow and pair of blankets. At this altitude the night was already rather chilly, despite the fact that it was July. Rapidly undressing in the dark the young engineers crawled in between their blankets. "Well, at last," murmured Harry, "we're engineers in earnest. That is," he added rather wistfully, "if we last." "We've got to last," replied Tom in a low voice, hardly above a whisper, "and we're going to. Harry, we've left behind us the playtime of boyhood, and we're beginning real life! But in that playtime we learned how to play real football. From now on we'll apply all of the best and most strenuous rules of football to the big art of making a living and a reputation. Good night, old fellow! Dream of the folks back in Gridley. I'm going to." "And of the chums at West Point and Annapolis," gaped Hazelton. "God bless them!" That was not the only short prayer sent up, but within five minutes both youngsters had fallen sound asleep. The man who can sleep as they did, when the head touches the pillow, has many successes still ahead of him! Nor did they worry about not waking in season in the morning. Slim Morris had promised to see to it that they were awake on time. Slam! Bump! Tom Reade was positive he had not been asleep more than a minute when that rude interruption came. He awoke to find himself scrambling up from the ground. Tom had his eyes open in time to see Harry Hazelton hit the ground with force. Then Slim Morris retreated to the doorway of the tent. "Are you fellows going to sleep until pay days" Slim demanded jovially. Tom hustled into his clothes, reached the doorway of the tent and found the sun already well up in the skies. "The boys are sitting down to breakfast," called Slim over his shoulder. "Want any?" "_Do_ I want any?" mocked Tom. He had laid out his khaki clothing the night before, and was now in it, save for his khaki jacket, which he caught up on his arm as he raced along toward the wash bench. Nor had he gone very far with the soap and water when Harry Hazelton was beside him. "Tom, Tom!" breathed Harry in ecstacy. "Do you blame people for loving the Rocky Mountains? This grand old mountain air is food and drink---almost." "It may be for you. I want some of the real old camp chuck---plenty of it," retorted Reade, drawing a pocket comb out and running it through his damp locks while he gazed into the foot-square camp mirror hanging from a tree. "May we come in?" inquired Tom, pausing in the doorway of the engineers' mess tent. "Not if you're in doubt about it," replied Mr. Blaisdell, who was already eating with great relish. The boys slid into their seats, while Bob rapidly started things their way. How good it all tasted! Bacon and fried eggs, corn bread and potatoes, coffee and a big dish of that time-honored standby in engineers' camp---baked beans. Then, just as Tom and Harry, despite their appetites, sat back filled, Bob appeared with a plate of flapjacks and a pitcher of molasses. "Ten minutes of six," observed Mr. Blaisdell, consulting his watch as he finished. "Not much more time, gentlemen." Tom and Harry followed the assistant engineer out into the open. "Can you tell us now, Mr. Blaisdell, what we're to do today?" Reade inquired eagerly. "See those transits?" inquired Blaisdell, pointing to two of the telescoped and compassed instruments used by surveyors in running courses. "One for each of you. Take your choice. You'll go out today under charge of Jack Rutter. Of course it will be a little bit slow to you the first two or three days, but between you, I hope to see you do more than Rutter could do alone. You'll each have two chainmen. Rutter will give you blank form books for your field notes. He'll work back and forth between the two of you, seeing that you each do your work right. Boys, don't make any mistakes today, will you, So much depends, you know, upon the way you start in at a new job." "We'll do the best that's in us," breathed Tom ardently. "Engineer Rutter," called Blaisdell, "your two assistants are ready. Get your two sets of chainmen and make a flying start." Animated by the spirit of activity that pervaded the camp, Tom and Harry ran to select their instruments, while Rutter hastened after his chainmen. Bad Pete had not appeared at either mess this morning. He had small need to, for, in the still watches of the night, he had burglarized the cook's stores so successfully that not even that argus-eyed individual had noticed the loss. Having breakfasted heartily in a deep thicket, Pete now looked down over the camp, his eyes twinkling in an evil way. "I'll get bounced out of mess on account of two pasty-faced tenderfeet like those boys, will I?" Pete grumbled to himself. "Before this morning is over I reckon I'll have all accounts squared with the tenderfeet!" CHAPTER IV "TRYING OUT" THE GRIDLEY BOYS The chainmen picked up the transits, carrying also the chains and rods. Rutter led the way, Tom and Harry keeping on either side of him, except when the rough mountain trail narrowed. Then they were obliged to walk at his heels. "We are making this survey first," Rutter explained, "and then the leveling over the same ground follows within a few days. Both the surveying and the leveling have to be done with great care. They must tally accurately, or the work will all go wrong, and the contractors would be thrown out so badly that they'd hardly know where they stood. A serious mistake in surveying or leveling at any point might throw the work down for some days. As you've already heard explained, any delay, now, is going to lose us our charter as sure as guns." For more than a mile and a half the brisk walk continued. At last Rutter halted, pointing to a stake driven in the ground. "See the nail head in the top of the stake?" he inquired. "Yes," Tom nodded. "You'll find a similar nail head in every stake. The exact point of the plummet of your bog-line must centre on the middle of that nail head. You can't be too exact about that, remember." Turning to one of the chainmen, Rutter added: "Jansen, take a rod and hustle along to the next stake." "Yes, sir," answered the man, and started on a run. Nor did he pause until he had located the stake. Then he signaled back with his right hand. Tom Reade, in the meantime, had quickly set up his transit over the first stake on his part of the course. He did some rough shifting, at first, until the point of the plummet was exactly over the nail head. Then followed some careful adjusting of the instrument on its supports until two fine spirit levels showed that the compass of the instrument was exactly level. "Now, let me see you get your sight," urged Rutter. Tom did so, coolly, manipulating his instrument as rapidly as he could with safety, yet not with speed enough to cause himself confusion or worry. "I've got a sight on the rod," announced Reade, without emotion. "Are the cross-hairs, as you see them through the telescope, just on the mark?" Rutter demanded. "Yes, sir." "Let me have a look," ordered Rutter. "A fine, close sight," he assented, after taking a careful look through the telescope. "Now, take your reading." This showed the course by the compass, and was expressed in degrees, minutes and seconds. The poor reading of a course is one of the frequent faults of new or careless engineers. "Here is a magnifier for the vernier," continued Rutter, just after Tom had started to make his reading. "Thank you; I have a pretty good one of my own," Tom answered, diving into one of his pockets and bringing to light a small but powerful reading glass with an aplanatic lens. "You carry a better magnifier than I do," laughed Rutter. "Hazelton, do You carry a pocket glass?" "Yes, sir," nodded Harry "I have one just like Reade's." "Good! I can see that you youngsters believe in good tools." Tom in the meantime was busy with the vernier of his transit. This is an ingenious device for showing the smaller divisions into which the circles of the compass are divided. Tom quickly jotted down his field note in degrees, minutes and seconds. One chainman now held an end of a hundred-link chain at the nail head on the stake, while a second man started toward the rodman, unfolding the chain as he went. Tom remained over his transit. The traveling chainman frequently glanced back for directions from Reade whether or not he was off the course of a straight line to the next stake. Soon the chain-bearer was a little to the left of the line. Tom held a hand over the telescope of the transit, moving it very slowly to the right. The chain-bearer, glancing slowly back, stepped slowly to the right of the course until Tom's hand fell abruptly. Then the chain-bearer stopped, knowing that he was on the right line. A metal stake, having a loop at the top from which fluttered a marker of red flannel, the man stuck upright in the ground. Tom took a peep, signaling so gently that the man moved the stake just half an inch before Reade's hand again fell. "That stake is right; go ahead," ordered Tom, but he said it not by word of mouth, but merely with a slight gesture of pushing forward. "You've been well trained, I'll bet a hat," smiled Butter. "I can tell that by the practiced way that you signal. O'Brien!" "Yes, sir," answered another chainman, stepping forward. "Take Thane with you, and carry Mr. Hazelton's transit to Grizzly Ledge. Mr. Hazelton and I will be there presently." Two more chainmen started away. Now, both of Tom's chainmen started forward, the rear one moving to the first metal stake that displayed the red marker. Tom still remained at the transit, motioning to the men whenever they got the least out of a true straight line to the rodman. It was not hard work for Reade at this point, but it required his closest attention. After some time had passed the chainmen had "chained" the whole distance between Tom's stake and the rod resting on the next stake. Now the rodman, after making a close measurement, signaled back. Nine downward sweeps of his right arm signified nine chains; next the movements of his arm signaled the forty-four links of a tenth chain. Then seven movements of the left hand across in front of the eyes, and Reade knew that stood for seven-tenths of a link. Hence on the page of his field note book Tom wrote the distance between the stakes as nine chains and forty-four and seven-tenths links. "That's good," nodded Rutter, who had been watching every move closely. The forty-four signaled by the rodman's left arm, instead of being made up of forty-four downward strokes, had consisted of four such strokes, followed by a pause, and then four more strokes. "I'll go along and see you get the course and distance to the third rod," said Rutter. This course and distance, too, in time, had been measured and carefully noted by Reade. "You'll get along all right, if you pay strict attention and don't become confused or careless," nodded Jack Rutter. "Now, I'll write 'Reade' on this starting stake of yours, and I'll write Hazelton on your friend's starting stake. After you've surveyed to Hazelton's starting stake let your rodman bring you forward until you overhaul me." "Very good, sir," nodded Tom coolly. Rutter and Harry moved along the trail, leaving Tom with his own "gang." "Nothing very mentally wearing in this job," reflected Tom, when he found himself left to his own resources. "All a fellow has to do is to keep his head clear, be faithful and exactly honest with his work, and move with all the speed that good, straight work will allow." So Reade moved ahead, getting courses and distances to five more stakes. Then, as he reached the sixth, he gazed ahead and smiled. A mountain pond lay right in his straight path to the seventh stake. "Can that pond be easily forded?" Reade asked the nearer chainman. "No, sir; it's about ten feet deep in the centre." Tom smiled grimly to himself. "Rutter didn't say anything about this to me," Tom muttered to himself. "He put this upon me, to see how I'd get over an obstacle like an unfordable pond. Well, it's going to take a lot of time but I'll show Mr. Jack Rutter!" Accordingly, Reade allowed his chainmen to proceed measuring until they were fairly close to the pond. Then he went forward to the metal stake that had just been driven. From this stake he laid out a new course to the north and at exact right angles with the proper course, sending his chainmen forward with markers. When he had thus passed the end of the pond Reade took another course at exactly right angles to the northerly course, but now going westerly. This he extended until it passed the pond by a few feet. Once more Reade laid out a course, southerly, at exact right angles with the westerly course, the southerly line being exactly four chains in length, as the northerly line had been. Now, the young engineer was able to resume his surveying toward the seventh stake. The extra route that he had followed made three sides of a square. Tom was now in line again, with the pond passed, and the exact distance between the sixth and seventh stakes. "I guess that was where Rutter was sure he'd have me," chuckled Tom quietly. "He's probe ably waiting ahead to see me come hot-footing over the trail to ask for orders." At the tenth stake Tom found "Hazelton" written thereon. "Men," said the young engineer, "I guess this is where we go forward and look for the crowd. Get up the stuff and we'll trot along." Nearly an hour of solid tramping over the trail followed before Tom and his party, guided by the rodman, came upon Harry Hazelton. Jack Rutter, chewing a blade of grass, sat under a tree at a little distance from where Harry was watching and signaling to two chainmen who were getting a distance. "Is your own work all done?" asked Rutter. "Yes, sir," Tom answered. "Let me see your field notes." Reade passed over the book containing them. From an inner pocket Rutter drew out his own field note book. Before another minute had passed Tom had opened his eyes very wide. "Your field notes are all straight, my boy. If you've made any errors, then I've made the same." "You've already been over this work that we've been doing?" demanded Tom, feeling somewhat abashed. "Of course," nodded the older and more experienced engineer. "You don't for a moment suppose we'd trust you with original work until we had tried you out, do you? We have all the field notes for at least three miles more ahead of here. Hazelton!" "Coming," said Harry, after jotting down his last observations and the distance. "Let me see your last notes, Hazelton," directed Rutter. "Yes; your work is all right." "What do you know about this, Harry?" laughingly demanded Reade. "I've suspected for the last two hours that Mr. Rutter was merely trying us out over surveyed courses," laughed Harry. "If you don't know how to do anything other than transit work," Rutter declared, "the chief can use all your time at that. He'll be pleased when I tell him that you're at least as good surveyors as I am. And, Reade, I see from your notes that you knew how to measure across a pond that your chainmen couldn't ford." "Mr. Price taught me that trick, back in Gridley," Tom responded. Suddenly Jack Rutter sprang to his feet sniffing vigorously. "Boys," he announced, "an adventure is coming our way. Can you guess what it is?" Tom and Harry gazed at him blankly. CHAPTER V TOM DOESN'T MIND "ARTILLERY" "I give it up," Reade replied. "Well, it's dinner time," declared Rutter, displaying the face of his watch. "Do we have to walk all the way back to camp?" queried Harry, who knew that no provisions had been brought with them. "No; camp is going to be brought to us," smiled Rutter. "At least, a part of the camp will be brought here. Look up the trail there, at that highest rise. Do you see dust near there?" "Yes," nodded Tom. "A burro pack-train, conveying our food and that of the other surveying parties ahead of us," nodded Rutter. "You'll find the cook's helper, Bob, in charge of it." "Is that the way the meals are brought out every day?" asked Hazelton. "No; but now we're getting pretty far from camp, and it would waste a lot of our time to go back and forth. So our noon meals will come by burro route. Tomorrow or the day after the camp will be moved forward." "How long before that train will be here?" Tom wanted to know. "Probably ten minutes," guessed Rutter. "Then I'm going to see if I can't find some little stream such as I've passed this morning," Tom went on. "I want to wash before I'm introduced to clean food." "I'll go along presently," nodded Harry to his chum. "There's something about the spirit level on this transit of mine that I want to inspect." So Tom Reade trudged off into the brush alone. After a few minutes he returned. "That burro outfit in sight?" he called, as he neared the trail. "No," answered Rutter. "But it's close. Once in a while I can hear a burro clicking his hoofs against stones." Harry appeared two minutes later, just as the foremost burro, with Bob by its head, put in an appearance about fifty yards away. "All ready for you, Bob," called Rutter good-humoredly. "You gentlemen of the engineer corps are always ready," grunted the cook's helper. A quick stop was made, Bob unloading tin plates, bowls and cups. "Soup!" cried Rutter in high glee. "This is fine living for buck engineers, Bob!" "There's even dessert," returned the cook's helper gravely, exposing an entire apple pie. There was also meat, still fairly warm, as well as canned vegetables in addition to potatoes. A pot of hot coffee finished the repast that Bob unloaded at this point. "Everything but napkins!" chuckled Rutter, as he and the boys quickly "set table" on the ground. "No; something else is missing," answered Tom gravely. "Bob forgot the finger-bowls." The helper, beginning to feel that he was being "guyed," took refuge in cold indifference. "Just stack the things up at this point when you're through," directed Bob. "I'll pick 'em up when I come back on the trail." Rutter, like a good chief, saw to it that his two assistants and the chainmen were started on their meal ere he himself began. In half an hour every morsel of food and the final drop of coffee had disappeared. "Twenty minutes to loaf," advised Rutter, throwing himself on the ground and closing his eyes. "I'll take a nap. You'd better follow my example." "Then who'll call us?" asked Tom. "I will," gaped Rutter. "Without a clock to ring an alarm?" "Humph! Any real backwoods engineer can wake up in twenty minutes if he sets his mind on it," retorted Jack. This was a fact, though it was the first that Tom or Harry had heard of it. "See the time?" called Rutter, holding out his watch. "Twenty minutes of one. I'll call you at one o'clock---see if I don't." In that fine air, with all the warmth of the noon hour, there was no difficulty in going to sleep. Truth to tell, Tom and Harry had tramped so far that forenoon that they were decidedly tired. Within sixty seconds both "cubs" were sound asleep. "One o'clock!" called Rutter, sitting up and consulting his watch. "Fall to, slaves! There is a big batch of work awaiting us. Hazelton, you can go right on where you left off. Survey along carefully until you come upon a stake marked 'Reade.' Then come forward until you find us. Reade, I'll go along with you and show you where to break in." Preceded by their chainmen, Rutter and Reade trudged along the trail for something like a mile. "Halt," ordered Jack Rutter. "Reade, write your autograph on that stake and begin." Tom stepped over to the transit, adjusting it carefully and setting the hanging plummet on dead centre with the nail head in the top of the short stake. "Never set up a transit again," directed Rutter, "without making sure that your levels are absolutely true, and that your vernier arrangement is in order." "I don't believe you'll ever catch me at that, Mr. Rutter," Tom answered, busying himself with the finer adjustments of the transit. "Mr. Price pounded that into me every time that he took me out in the field." "Nevertheless," went on Rutter, "I have known older engineers than you, Reade, who became careless, and their carelessness cost their employers a lot of wasted time and money. Now, you-----" At this juncture Jack Rutter suddenly crouched behind a low ledge at the right. "Get behind here, quickly, Reade!" called Rutter. "Bad Pete is up the hillside, about two hundred yards from you-----" "I haven't time to bother with him, now," Tom broke in composedly. "Duck fast, boy! Pete has an ugly grin on his face, and he's reaching for his pistol. He's got it out---he's going to shoot!" whispered Rutter, drawing his head down where it would be safe from flying bullets. The chainmen, lounging nearby, had wasted no time in getting safely to cover. "Going to shoot, is he?" murmured Tom, without glancing away from the instrument. "Does Peter really know how to shoot," "You'll find out! Jump---like a flash, boy!" Tom went calmly on tinkering with the mechanism of his instrument. Bang! sounded up the trail. Tom's fingers didn't falter as he adjusted a small, brass screw. Bang! came the second shot. Tom betrayed no more annoyance than before. Bad Pete was aiming to drive bullets into the ground close to the young engineer's feet, making him skip about. The sixth shot Pete was saving for clipping Reade's hat from his head. The shots continued to ring out. Tom, though he appeared to be absorbed in his instrument, counted. When he had counted the sixth shot Reade dropped suddenly, picked up a stone that lay at his feet, and whirled about. Tom Reade hadn't devoted years to ball-playing without knowing how to throw straight. The stone left his hand, arching upward, and flew straight toward Bad Pete, who had advanced steadily as he fired. Whiff! Though Pete tried, too late, to dodge the stone, it landed against his sombrero, carrying that away without injuring the owner. "Kindly clear out!" called Tom coolly. "You and your noise annoy me when I'm trying to do a big afternoon's work." Snatching up his sombrero, Bad Pete vanished into a clump of brush. Jack Rutter leaped up from his haven of safety, advancing swiftly to his cub assistant. "Reade," he exclaimed, with ungrudging admiration, "you're the coolest young fellow I ever met, without exception. But you're foolhardy, boy. Bad Pete is a real shot. One of these days, when you're just as cool, he'll fill you full of lead!" "If he does?" retorted Tom, again bending over his transit, "and if I notice it, I'll throw a bigger stone at him than I did that time, and it'll land on him a few inches lower down." "But, boy, don't you understand that the days of David and Goliath are gone by," remonstrated Rutter. "It's true you're turned the laugh on Pete, but that fellow won't forgive you. He may open on you again within two minutes." "I don't believe he will," replied Tom, with his quiet smile. "At the same time, I'll be prepared for him." Bending to the ground, and rummaging about a bit, Reade selected three stones that would throw well. These he dropped into one of his pockets. "Now, let the bad man trot himself on, if he has to," added the cub engineer, waving a signal to the rodman, who had just halted at the next stake. "Well, of all the cool ones!" grunted Rutter, under his breath. "But, then, Reade's a tenderfoot. He doesn't understand just how dangerous a fellow like Pete can be." The chainman started away to measure the distance. From up the hillside came sounds of smothered but very bad language. "There's our friend Peter again," Tom chuckled to Rutter. "Yes, and the ruffian may open on you again at any moment," warned Jack, keeping an anxious glance turned in the direction whence came the disturbing voice of Bad Pete. "Oh, I don't think he will," drawled Tom, making a hand signal to the leading chainman to step a little more to the left. "I hope not, anyway, for the noise of revolver shots takes my thoughts away from my work." Jack Rutter said no more after that, though through the rest of the afternoon he kept an alert lookout for signs of Pete. There were none, however. Rather earlier than usual, on account of the distance back to camp, Rutter knocked off work for the entire party and the start on the return to camp was made. Harry Hazelton was considerably excited when he heard the news of the firing on his chum. Reade, however, appeared to be but little interested in the subject. Pete was not in camp that evening. Rutter went at once to the tent of the chief, to tell him how well the "cubs" had done during the day. Nor did Jack forget to relate the encounter with Bad Pete. Just as the underlings of the staff were seating themselves around the table in their mess, Mr. Thurston thrust his head in at the doorway. "Reade," called the chief engineer, "I have heard about your trouble with Pete today." "There wasn't any real trouble, sir," Tom answered. "Fortunately for you, Reade, Pete didn't intend to hit you. If he had meant to do so, he'd have done it. I've seen him shoot all the spots out of a ten of clubs. Don't provoke the fellow, Reade, or he'll shoot you full of fancy holes. Of course it showed both grit and coolness on your part in keeping steadily on with your work all the time the fellow was firing at you. Still, it was unwise to expose yourself needlessly to danger." "I didn't consider Bad Pete particularly dangerous," Tom rejoined. "A lawless man with a loaded revolver is hardly a safe person to trifle with," retorted Mr. Thurston dryly. "I see that I shall have to make a confession," smiled Tom. "It was this way, sir. When Hazelton and I were on our way west Harry insisted that we were coming into a dangerous country and that we'd need firearms. So Harry bought two forty-five six-shooters and several boxes of cartridges, too. I was provoked when I heard about it, for we hadn't any too much money, and Harry had bought the revolvers out of our joint treasury." "I felt sure we'd need the pistols," interrupted Hazelton. "Today's affair shows that I was right. Tom, you'll have to carry one of the revolvers after this." "I'm no gun-packer," retorted Tom scornfully. "Young men have no business carting firearms about unless they're hunting or going to war. Any fellow who carries a pistol as he would a lead pencil is either a coward or a lunatic." "I'm glad to hear you say that, Reade," nodded Mr. Thurston approvingly. "Two of my staff carry pistols, but they do so under my orders. In the first place they're grown men, not boys. In the second place, they're working over a stretch of ground where rattlesnakes are thick. Your coolness today served you better than a pistol would have done. If you had had a revolver, and had drawn it, Pete would have drilled you through the head." "Drilled me through the head---with what?" asked Tom, smiling. "With a bullet, of course, young man," retorted Mr. Thurston. "I don't believe he would have gone as far as that," laughed Tom. "You see, sir, it was like this: When I found Harry so set on carrying a pistol, I went down deep in my own pocket and bought two boxes of blank cartridges to fit the forty-fives. I thought if Harry were going to do some shooting, it would be the part of friendship to fix him so that he could do it in safety to himself and others." Harry's face turned decidedly red. He was beginning to feel foolish. "Now, this morning," Tom continued, "when I got the khaki out of my dunnage, I ran across the blanks. I don't know what made me do it, but I dropped the box of blanks into one of my pockets. This noon, when I went off to find a stream where I could wash up, I almost stepped on our friend Peter, asleep under a bush. For greater comfort he had taken off his belt and holster. Somehow, I didn't like the idea of his being there. As softly as I could I crept close. I emptied his revolver and fitted in blanks from my own box. Then I took about twenty cartridges out of Peter's belt and replaced them with blanks." "Do you mean to tell me," broke in Rutter, "that Bad Pete, when he turned his revolver loose on you, was shooting nothing but blanks?" "That was all he had to shoot," Tom returned coolly. "And blanks were all he had in his belt to reload with. Don't you remember when we heard him making a noise up the hillside, and talking in dots and dashes!" "I do," nodded Rutter, looking half dazed. "That," grinned Reade, "was when he started in to reload? and discovered that he had nothing on hand but temperance cartridges. Here-----" Tom began to unload one of his pockets upon the wooden table before the astonished eyes of the others. There was a mixture of his own blank cartridges with the real ammunition that he had stealthily abstracted from Bad Pete's revolver and belt. Such a whoop of glee ascended that the head chainman came running from the other nearby mess tent to see what was up. "Just a little joke among our youngsters, my man," explained Mr. Thurston. "The young gentlemen are going to keep the joke to themselves for the present, though." So the mystified and disappointed chainman returned to his own crowd. "Let me see, Reade," continued Mr. Thurston, turning once more to Tom, "what is your salary?" "I was taken on, sir, at forty dollars a month, as a starter," Tom replied. "A young man with your size of head is worth more than that to the company. We'll call it fifty a month, Reade, and keep our eyes on you for signs of further improvement," said the chief engineer, as he turned to go back to his own waiting dinner. CHAPTER VI THE BITE FROM THE BUSH From the time that they parted in the morning, until they started to go back to camp in the afternoon, Tom and Harry did not meet the next day. Each, with his chainmen, was served from Bob's burro train at noon. "Did you see Bad Pete today?" was Harry's greeting, as they Started back over the trail. "No." "Did you hear from him or of him in any way?" pressed Hazelton. "Not a sign of any sort from Peter," Tom went on. "I've a theory as to what's keeping him away. He's on a journey." "Journey?" "Yes; between you and me, I believe that Peter has gone in search of someone who can sell him, or give him, a few forty-five cartridges." "He'd better apply to you, then, Tom," grinned Harry. "Why, I couldn't sell him any," Tom replied. "What did you do with those you had last night?" "You remember the unfordable pond that came in one of my courses yesterday?" "Yes." "To-day I threw all of Peter's .45's into the middle of the pond. They must have sunk a foot into the mud by this time." "Seriously, Tom, don't you believe that you'd better take one of the revolvers that I bought and wear it on a belt?" "Not I," retorted Reade. "Harry, I wish you could get that sort of foolishness out of your head. A revolver is of no possible use to a man who hasn't any killing to do. I'm trying to learn to be a civil engineer, not a man-killer." "Then I believe that Bad Pete will 'get' you one of these days," sighed Hazelton. "Wait until he does," smiled Tom. "Then you can have the fun of coming around and saying 'I told you so.'" Their chainmen were ahead of the "cub" engineers on the trail. Tom and Harry were talking earnestly when they heard a pony's hoofs behind them. Hazelton turned with a start. "Oh, it's Rutter mounted," Hazelton said, with a sigh of relief. "I was afraid it was Bad Pete." "Take my word for it, Harry. Peter is a good deal of a coward. He won't dare to show up until he has some real cartridges. The temperance kind do not give a man like Peter any real sense of security in the world." Rutter rode along on his sure-footed mountain pony at a rapid jog. When he came close, Tom and Harry stepped aside into the brush to let him go by on the narrow trail. "Don't get off into the brush that way," yelled Rutter from the distance. "We're trying to give you room," Tom called. "I don't need the room yet. I won't run over you, anyway. Stand out of the brush, I tell you." Tom good-humoredly obeyed, Harry moving, too, though starting an instant later. Prompt as he was, however, Tom Reade was a fraction of a second too late. Behind them there was a half-whirring, half-clicking sound. Then Reade felt a stinging sensation in his left leg three or four inches from the heel. "Look out!" yelled Rutter, more excitedly than before. "Get away from there!" Tom ran some distance down the trail. Then he halted, laughing. "I wonder what's on Rut's mind," he smiled, as Hazelton joined him. Jack Rutter came at a gallop, reining up hard as he reached where Tom had stood. Again that whirring, clicking sound. Rutter's pony reared. "Still, you brute!" commanded Rutter sternly. Then, without waiting to see whether his mount would stand alone, Rutter leaped from saddle, going forward with his quirt---a rawhide riding whip---uplifted. Into the brush from which Tom had stepped Rutter went cautiously, though he did not lose much time about it. Swish! swish! swish! sounded the quirt, as Rutter laid it on the ground ahead of him. Then he stepped out. The pony had drawn back thirty or forty feet and now stood trembling, nostrils distended. "Is that the way you take your exercise?" Reade demanded. Rutter, however, came running along the trail, his face white as though from worry. "Reade," he demanded, "Did that thing strike you?" "What thing," asked Tom in wonderment. "The rattler that I killed!" "Rattler?" gasped both cub engineers. "Yes. From the distance I thought I saw it strike out at you. There's a nest of the reptiles at some point near that brush. That's why I warned you to get away from there. Never stand in brush, in the Rockies, unless you've looked before stepping. Were you struck?" "I believe something did sting me," Reade admitted, remembering that smarting sensation in his left leg. "Which leg was it? demanded Rutter, halting beside the cub. "Left---a little above the ankle," replied Tom. "Take off your legging. I must have a look. Hazelton, call to one of your chainmen and send him back to make sure of my pony." Harry hastened to obey, then came back breathless. Rutter, in the meantime, had turned up enough of Tom's left trousers' leg to bare a spot on the flesh that was red. There were fang marks in the centre of this reddened surface. "You got it, boy," spoke Rutter huskily. "Now we'll have to go to work like lightning to save you." "How are you going to do it?" asked Tom coolly, though he felt decidedly queer over the startling news. "Hazelton," demanded Rutter, turning upon the other cub engineer, "have you nerve enough to put your lips to that wound, and draw, draw draw as hard as you can, and keep on until you've drawn all the poison out?" "I have," nodded Harry, sinking to his knees beside his chum. "I'll draw all the poison out if I have to swallow enough to kill me." "You won't poison yourself, Hazelton," replied Rutter quickly, as one of the chainmen came near with the recaptured pony. "Snake venom isn't deadly in the stomach---only when it gets into the blood direct. There's no danger unless you've a cut or a deep scratch in your mouth. Spit the stuff out as you draw." Having given these directions, Jack Rutter turned, with the help of one of the chainmen to fasten a blanket behind the saddle to make a sort of extra saddle. The blanket had been lying rolled at the back of the saddle. Harry, in the meantime, without flinching, performed his task well. Had he but known it, Rutter's explanation of the lack of danger was true; but in that moment, with his chum's life at stake, Harry didn't care a fig whether the explanation were true or not. All he thought of was saving Tom. "I reckon that part of the job has been done well," nodded Rutter, turning back from the horse. "Now, Reade, I want you to mount behind me and hold on tightly, for we're going to do some hard, swift riding. The sooner we get you to camp the surer you will be of coming out of this scrape all right." "I've never had much experience in horsemanship, and I may out a sorry figure at it," laughed Reade, as, with Harry's help he got up behind Rutter. "Horsemanship doesn't count---speed does," replied Rutter tersely. "Hold on tightly, and we'll make as good time as possible. I'm going to start now." Away they went, at a hard gallop, Tom doing his best to hold on, but feeling like a jumping-jack. "It won't take us more than twenty minutes," promised Jack Rutter. CHAPTER VII WHAT A SQUAW KNEW All the way to camp Rutter kept the pony at a hard gallop. "Thurston! Mr. Thurston!" he shouted. "Be quick, please!" Even as the young man called, Mr. Thurston ran out of his tent. "You know something about rattlesnake bites, I believe?" Rutter went on hurriedly, as Tom Reade slipped to the ground. "The boy has been bitten by one and we'll have to work quickly." "Don't bring any liquor, though," objected Reade, leaning up against a tree. "If liquor is your cure for snakebites I prefer to take my chances with the bite." "Get the shoe off and roll up the trousers," directed the chief engineer, without loss of words. "Fortunately, I believe we have someone here who knows more about treating the bites than I do. Squaw!" An Indian woman who had been sitting on the grass before the chief's tent, a medley pack of Indian baskets arranged before her, glanced up. "Snake! You know what to do," went on Mr. Thurston hurriedly. "You know what to do----eh? Pay you well." At the last three magic words the aged squaw rose and hobbled quickly forward. "Take boy him tent," directed the Indian woman. "I can walk," remarked Tom. "No; they take you. Heap better," commanded the woman. Instantly Mr. Thurston and Rutter took hold of Tom, raising him into their arms. Through the flap of his tent they bore him, depositing him on his cot. The Indian woman followed them inside. "Now you go out," she ordered, with a sweep of her hand. "Send him cookman. Hot water---heap boil." Thus ordered, Jake Wren came on the run with a kettle of boiling water. The Indian squaw received it with a grunt, ordering that bowls and cups be also brought. When Wren came the second time he lingered curiously. "You go out; no see what do," said the squaw. So Jake departed, the squaw tying the flap of the tent after he had gone. Then, from the bosom of her dress she drew out a few small packages of herbs. The contents of these she distributed in different bowels and cups. "I'd like to see what the old witch is doing, and how she's doing it," declared Rutter in a whisper. "She'll stop short if she catches you looking in on her," replied the chief, with a smile. "For some reason these Indians are very jealous of their secrets in treating snakebites. They're wizards, though, these same red-skinned savages." "You believe, then, that she can pull Reade through?" asked Rutter eagerly. "If she knows her business, and if there's any such thing as saving the boy she'll do it," declared Mr. Thurston, as they reached the door of the chief's tent. "Will you come inside, Rutter! You look badly broken up." "I am, and I shall be, just as long as Reade is in any danger," Rutter admitted. "Reade is a mighty fine boy and I'm fond of him. Besides, more than a little of our success in getting the road through on time depends on the boy." "Is Reade really so valuable, then?" "He goes over the course, Mr. Thurston, as rapidly as any man in our corps, and his work is very accurately done. Moreover, he never kicks. If you told him to work half the night, on top of a day's work, he'd do it." "Then Reade, if he recovers, must be watched and rewarded for anything he does for us," murmured Mr. Thurston. "Don't say, 'if he recovers,' chief," begged Jack. "I hate to think of his not pulling through from this snakebite." "What became of the reptile that did the trick?" asked Mr. Thurston. "That crawler will never bite anything else," muttered Rutter. "I got the thing with my riding quirt." Not very long after Harry Hazelton reached camp, well in advance of the chainmen, for Harry, good school athlete that he was, had jog-trotted every step of the way in. "Where's Tom?" Hazelton demanded. "Here," called a voice from Reade's tent. Hazelton turned in that direction, but Mr. Thurston looked out from the large tent, calling: "Don't go there now, Hazelton. You wouldn't be admitted. Come here." Despite his long run, Harry's face displayed pallor as he came breathlessly into Mr. Thurston's field abode. In a few words, however, the lad was acquainted with the situation as far as it had developed. In the meantime what was the squaw doing with Tom? It must be admitted that Reade hadn't any too clear an idea. The gaunt old red woman poured hot water, small quantities at a time, into the bowls and cups in which she had distributed the herbs. Then she stirred vigorously, in the meantime muttering monotonously in her own language. "She isn't relying on the herbs alone," muttered Tom curiously to himself. "She's working up some kind of incantation. I wonder what effect she expects an Indian song to have on snake poison?" Presently the squaw turned, bringing one of the cupfuls to the wounded boy. "Sit up," she ordered. "Drink!" Tom nearly dropped it, it was so hot. "Drink!" repeated the squaw. "But it's so hot it'll burn my gullet out," remonstrated Reade. "You know more I do?" demanded the squaw stolidly. "Drink!" Tom took a sip, and shuddered from the intense heat of the stuff. "Humph! White man him heap papoose!" muttered the squaw, scornfully. "You want live, drink!" Tom took a longer swallow of the hot stuff. Whew, but it was bitter! "The bronze lady is trying to turn me inside out!" gasped the boy to himself. "Drink---all down!" commanded the squaw with scarcely less scorn than before in her voice. This time Tom took a hard grip on himself and swallowed all the liquid. For a moment, he thought the nauseating stuff would kill him. "Now, eat grass," ordered the squaw. "Meaning eat these herbs," demanded Tom, glancing up. "Yes. Heap quick." "To make a fellow eat these herbs after drinking the brew from them is what I call rubbing it in," grimaced Reade. "Now, this," continued the squaw, calmly handing a second cup to Tom. "It's all right for _you_ to be calm," thought Tom, as he took the cup from her. "All you have to do is to stand by and watch me. You don't have to drink any of these fearful messes." However, Tom brought all his will power into play, swallowing a second brew, compared with which the first had been delicious. "Eat this grass, too"? inquired Tom, gazing at the squaw. "Yes." Tom obeyed. "I shall be very, very careful not to meet any more snakes," he shuddered, after getting the second dose down. Now the squaw busied herself with spreading soaked herbs on a piece of cloth that she had torn from one of Tom's white shirts' to which she had helped herself from his dunnage box. "What's a dollar shirt, anyway, when an interesting young man's life is at stake" mused Reade. "Ow---ow---ooch!" "You baby---papoose?" inquired the squaw calmly. She had slapped on Tom's leg, over the bite, a poultice that, to his excited mind, was four hundred degrees hotter than boiling water. "Oh, no," grimaced Tom. "That's fine and soothing. But it's growing cool. Haven't you something hotter?" Just five seconds later Reade regretted his rashness, for, snatching off the first poultice, the squaw slapped on a second that seemed, in some way, ten times more powerful---and twenty times hotter. "It's queer what an awful amount of heat a squaw can get out of a kettle of hot water, thought the suffering boy. I'll wager some of the heat is due to the herbs themselves. O-o-o-o-ow! Ouch!" For now the third poultice, most powerful of all, was in place, and Mrs. Squaw was binding it on as though she intended it never to come off. Two minutes after that Tom Reade commenced to retch violently. With a memory of the messes that he had swallowed he didn't wonder. The squaw now stepped outside, calling for coffee. This was brought. Tom was obliged to drink several cupfuls, after which he began to feel decidedly more comfortable. "Now, take nap," advised the squaw, and quitted the tent. "The bronze lady seems to know what she's doing," thought Tom. "I guess I'll take the whole of her course of treatment." Thereupon he turned his face to the wall. Within sixty seconds he slept. "How's Reade?" demanded Harry, rising eagerly as the squaw stepped inside the chief's tent. "He sleep," muttered the squaw. "He---he---isn't dead!" choked Harry, turning deathly pale. "You think I make death medicine?" demanded the squaw scornfully. "You think me heap fool?" "The young man will be all right, squaw?" asked Mr. Thurston. "Humph! Maybe," grunted the red woman. "Yes, I think so. You know bimeby." "That's the Indian contempt for death," explained the chief engineer, turning to Harry. "I imagine that Reade is doing all right, or she wouldn't have left him." However, Hazelton was not satisfied with that. He slipped out, crossed camp and stealthily peeped inside of the tent. Then Hazelton slipped back to Mr. Thurston to report. "If Tom doesn't swallow some of those big snores of his, and choke to death, I think he'll get well," said Harry, with a laugh that testified to the great relief that had come to his feelings. With that all hands had to be content for the time being. CHAPTER VIII 'GENE BLACK, TROUBLE-MAKER In the morning Tom Reade declared that he was all right. The old Indian squaw had pronounced him safe, and had gone on her way. "You'll stay in camp today, Reade," announced Mr. Thurston, dropping into the mess tent. "With all the work there is ahead of us, sir?" cried Reade aghast. "That's why you'll stay," nodded Mr Thurston. "Your life has been saved, but after the shock you had yesterday you're not as strong as you may feel. One day of good rest in camp will fit you for what's ahead of us in the days to come. The strain of tramping miles and working like a steam engine all day is not to be thought of for you today. Tomorrow you'll go out with the rest." Tom sighed. True, he did not feel up to the mark, and was eating a very light breakfast. Still he chafed at the thought of inaction for a whole day. "The chief wouldn't order you to stay in," remarked Blaisdell, after Mr. Thurston had gone, "unless he knew that to be the best thing for you." So, after the engineers, their chainmen and rodmen had left camp Tom wandered about disconsolately. He tried to talk to the cook, but Jake and his helper were both rushed in getting the meal that was to be taken out over the trail by burro train. "Lonely, Reade?" called the chief from his tent. "Yes, sir," Tom nodded. "I wish I had something to do." "Perhaps I can find work for you in here. Come in." Tom entered eagerly. Mr. Thurston was seated at the large table, a mass of maps and field notes before him. "How are you on drawing, Reade?" queried his chief. "Poor, sir." "Never had any training in that line?" "I can draw the lines of a map, sir, and get it pretty straight, as far as the mathematics of map-drawing goes," Tom answered. "But another man has to go over my work and put in the fine touches of the artist. You know what I mean, sir; the fancy fixings of a map." "Yes, I know," nodded Mr. Thurston. "I can sympathize with you, too, Reade, for, though I always longed to do artistic platting (map-work) I was always like yourself, and could do only the mathematical part of it. You can help me at that, however, if you are careful enough. Take a seat at that drawing table; and I'll see what you can do." First, Reade stepped to a box that held map paper. Taking out a sheet, he placed it on the surface of the drawing table, then stuck in thumb-tacks at each of the four corners. "All ready, sir," he announced. Mr. Thurston stepped over with an engineer's field note book. "See if these notes are all clear," directed the chief engineer. "Yes, sir; I know what the notes call for," Tom answered confidently. "Then I'll show you just what's wanted Reade," continued the chief. After some minutes of explanation Tom picked up the T-square, placing the top at the side of the drawing surface. Then against the limb of the "T" Tom laid the base of a right-angled triangle. Along this edge he drew his perpendicular north-and-south line in the upper left-hand corner. He crossed this with a shorter line at right angles, establishing his east-and-west line. Mr. Thurston, standing at the cub engineer is back, looked on closely. Tom now settled on his beginning point, and made the dot with his pencil. From that point he worked rapidly, making all his measurements and dotting his points. Then he began to draw in. The chief engineer went back to his table. After Tom had worked an hour the chief interrupted him. "Now, Reade, get up and let me sit down there for a little while. I want to go over your work." For some minutes Mr. Thurston checked off the lad's work. "You really know what you are doing, Reade," he said at last. "Your line measurements are right, and your angles tally faultlessly, I'm glad I kept you back today. You can help me here even more than in the field. Tomorrow, however, I shall have to keep Rice back. He's our ornamental draughtsman, and puts in the fine, flowery work on our maps. Here's some of his work." Tom gazed intently at the sheet that Mr. Thurston spread for his inspection. "Rice does it well," remarked Reade thoughtfully. "You've one other man in the corps who can do the pretty draughting about as well." "Who is he?" "Hazelton. Harry doesn't do the mathematical part as easily as I do, but he has a fine talent for fancy drawing, sir." "Then I'll try Hazelton tonight," decided Mr. Thurston aloud. "You may go on with your drawing now, Reade. Hello; someone is coming into camp." Mr. Thurston stepped over to the doorway in time to see a young man riding up on a pony. "Where's the chief engineer?" called the newcomer. "You're looking at him," replied Mr. Thurston. The young man, who appeared to be about twenty-eight years of age, rode his horse to a near-by tree, then dismounted gracefully and tied his mount. The young man was well-built, dark-haired and smooth-faced, with snapping black eyes. There was an easy, half-swaggering grace about him suggesting one who had seen much of free life in the open air. For one attired for riding in saddle over mountain trails the stranger was not a little of a dandy in appearance. His khaki trousers and leggings, despite his probably long ride, were spotless. His dark-blue flannel shirt showed no speck of dust; his black, flowing tie was perfection; his light-hued sombrero looked as though it had just left the store. "If you are Mr. Thurston, I have the honor to present a letter," was the stranger's greeting as he entered the large tent. Mr. Thurston glanced at the envelope, reading: "Mr. Eugene Black." "Be seated, Mr. Black," requested the chief, then opened the letter. "Oh, you're a new engineer, sent out from the offices in New York," continued the chief. "Yes," smiled the newcomer. "An experienced engineer, the vice-president of the company informs me." "Six years of experience," smiled the newcomer, showing his white, handsome teeth. Tom glanced up just in time to see that smile. "Somehow, I don't quite like the looks of Mr. Black," Reade decided. "What is your especial line of work, Mr. Black?" Thurston continued. "Anything in usual field work, sir." "This letter states that you expect one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month." "Then the letter is correct, sir." "All right, Mr. Black; we'll put you at work and let you prove that you're worth it," smiled Mr. Thurston pleasantly. "How soon shall I go to work, sir?" asked Black. "I expect my assistant, Mr. Blaisdell, here in about an hour. I'll send you out with him when he returns to field." "Then, if you're through with me at present, sir, I'll step outside and be within call." Tom and his chief were again alone. Reade kept steadily on with his work, and no word was spoken for half an hour. Then there came a commotion in camp, for four drovers came in with two dozen horses that had been ordered for the use of the engineering party. "Step outside, Reade, and see the horses, if you care to do so," suggested Mr. Thurston, reaching for his sombrero. "Thank you, sir; but the horses will keep, and I'm greatly interested in finishing my drawing so that I can take up more work." "That young cub, Reade, is no idler." thought the chief, as he stepped into the open. Tom kept steadily at work. Ten minutes later, Thurston still being absent, Eugene Black strolled into the tent. He glanced at Tom's drawing with some contempt, then inquired: "Drawing, boy?" "Why, not?" laughed Tom. "I'm only one of the stable boys, and, as you can see, I'm currying a horse." "Stop that sort of nonsense with me, right at the start," flashed Black angrily, striding closer. "I don't allow boys to be fresh with me." "Where's the boy?" drawled Tom, turning slightly, for a better view \ of the stranger's face. "You're one," snapped Black. "What are you?" Tom asked curiously. "I'm an engineer." "If that is anything to be chesty about, then I'm an engineer also," Reade replied, rising. "Sit down, boy!" commanded Black angrily. The trace of frown on Reade's face disappeared. He smiled good-humoredly as he observed. "Black, I'm a bit uncertain about you." "_Mister_ Black, boy!" warned the other, his dark eyes snapping. "Why are you uncertain about me?" "I'm wondering," purred Tom gently, "whether you are just _trying_ to be offensive, or whether you don't know any better than to talk and act the way you do?" "You young puppy, I'll teach you something right now," cried Black, stepping closer and raising a clenched fist. "Look out," begged Tom. "You'll upset my drawing table." Eugene Black closed in, striking out. Reade who felt that the situation didn't call for any fighting, retreated, still smiling. Whether by accident or design, Black, as he made a half turn to start after the cub engineer anew, brushed a corner of the unstable drawing table hard enough to tip it over. A bottle of drawing ink fell, too, splashing ugly black blotches over Tom's carefully drawn outlines of a map. "Now, you've done it!" exclaimed Tom. "I haven't quite finished," snapped the stranger, rushing after Reade. "I'm going to box your ears soundly, boy!" "Are you, indeed?" demanded Tom, halting. He was still smiling, but there was a stern look in his eyes. Tom no longer retreated, but stood awaiting Black's assault. Blanks fist shot out straight, but Reade didn't stop the blow. Instead, he ducked low. When he came up his arms enveloped Black's legs in one of the swift football tackles that Tom had learned with the Gridley High School football team. "You annoy me," drawled Tom, and hurled the fellow ten feet away. Black landed on his back with an angry roar, followed by cursing. "Profanity is always objectionable to a gentleman," declared Tom dryly, running over ere the newcomer could regain his feet. Once more Reade bent and rose. As he did so, Eugene Black shot through the tent doorway, landing on the ground a dozen feet beyond. Tom stood in the doorway, smiling. Black leaped to his feet. "You puppy!" gasped Black, sending his right hand back to his hip pocket. Tom didn't wait to see what he would bring out, but darted forward. This time he seized the stranger in a dead tackle, dropping him over on his back without throwing him. "Now, roll over," ordered Reade grimly. "I'm curious to see what you have in your pocket. Ah! So---this is it! You're another Peter Bad, are you?" Tom held in one hand a silver-plated revolver with ivory handle that he had snatched out of Black's pocket. "I wonder why it is," mocked Tom, grinning, "that nine out of every ten dude tenderfeet from the east come west with one of these things." Black charged the cub, intent on recapturing his pistol, but Reade shot out a foot, tripping him. Then Tom ran nimbly over to the cook tent. Here he halted, breaking the weapon at the breech and allowing the cartridges to drop into his hand. He transferred them to his pocket, then wheeled and picked up Jake's kitchen hatchet. With a few swift strokes from the head of the hatchet Tom put that firearm on the retired list for good. "Give me my pistol, boy!" choked Black, running up. "Certainly," rejoined Reade, wheeling and politely offering the ruined firearm. "I don't want it. I've no use for such things" Black took his weapon, gasped, then, seizing it by the barrel, leaped at Tom, intent on battering his head. "Here, what's the trouble?" cried Mr. Thurston, appearing around the corner of the cook house and promptly seizing Black by the collar of his flannel shirt. "Nothing much, sir," laughed Tom. "Mr. Black has just been showing me how bad men behave out in this part of the country." "This boy is a troublesome cub, Mr. Thurston," declared Black hotly. "Do you see what he has done to my revolvers" "How did Reade come to have it?" inquired Mr. Thurston. "He snatched it away from me." "Reade, is this true?" demanded the chief engineer, turning to the youth. "Yes, sir; as far as the story goes." "Tell me the whole truth of this affair," ordered Mr. Thurston sternly. Tom started to do so, modestly, but Black broke in angrily at points in the narrative. "The principal thing that I have against Mr. Black," Tom said, "is that he spoiled all my drawing work of this morning." "Yes; but how did I come to do it?" insisted the newcomer. "You pushed me against your drawing table." Tom started with astonishment. "My friend," he remarked, "Baron Munchausen never had anything on you!" "Careful, Reade! Don't pass the lie," ordered the chief engineer sternly. "I shall look fully into this matter, but at present I'm inclined to believe that you're more at fault than is Black. Return to the tent and start your drawing over again." There was a smile again on Tom's face as he turned back to make his spoiled work good. Mr. Thurston went back to his inspection of the ponies. Later, the chief engineer was able to pick up some details of the trouble from Jake Wren, who had seen Black reach for his revolver. "Understand two things, Mr. Black," said the chief briskly. "In the first place, it is not expected that the engineers of this corps will find any real cause for fighting. Second, I will tolerate no pistol nonsense here." Then he went back to Tom Reade and spoke to him more quietly. "Reade, if Black doesn't turn out to be a valuable man here he won't last long. If he is a good man, then you will find it necessary, perhaps, to use a little tact in dealing with him. Did you notice what snapping black eyes the man has? Men with such black eyes are usually impulsive. Remember that." "I never thought of that before, sir," Tom admitted dryly. "I really didn't know that people with black eyes are impulsive. This I do know, however, people who are too impulsive generally get black eyes!" CHAPTER IX "DOCTORED" FIELD NOTES? There was no more trouble---immediately. When the other engineers heard of the row---which news they obtained through Jake, not from Reade---they soon made it plain to 'Gene Black that Tom Reade was a favorite in the corps. Black was therefore treated with a coldness that he strove hard to overcome. In the matter of being a capable civil engineer 'Gene Black speedily proved himself efficient. Assistant Chief Engineer Blaisdell soon reported at headquarters that the new member of the corps was an exceedingly valuable man. Black was therefore placed at the head of a leveling squad that obtained the field notes from which were to be estimated the cost of making excavations in several cuts that must be made ere the coming tracks could be laid. In the days that passed Tom and Harry saw little of the field work. They were kept at the chief's tent. Hence Reade had but little to do with 'Gene Black, which may have been fortunate, as Tom still retained his first instinctive dislike for the black-eyed fellow. * * * * * * * * * "Reade and Hazelton, you two young men are going to forge ahead rapidly, and you are sure to earn good salaries, if you don't make the too common mistake of young engineers first starting out," Mr. Thurston told the cubs one forenoon. "And what is that mistake, sir, if you please?" Tom queried. "Don't make the mistake of getting too large an idea of the value of your services," replied the chief. "Just work hard all the time and be wholly unassuming. "I think we can follow that advice, sir," Tom replied, with a smile. "If you can, you'll get along rapidly. I have already written to our officers in New York, thanking them for having sent you two young men." "Here's the map I have just finished, sir," said Harry, rising from his drawing table on which were arranged the various draughtsman's inks and washes---the latter being thin solutions of water colors with which some parts of the maps were colored. "Very handsomely done, Hazelton. Reade, what are you doing?" "I'm at work on Black's field notes of the leveling," Tom answered. "I am very much pleased with Black's work," replied Mr. Thurston. "His notes show that we are going to get out of the excavating in the cuts at about one third of the trouble and expense that I had looked for." "Black's field notes certainly do look good, sir, for they show that you can get the work through on this division in much less time than you had supposed." As he turned around to speak, Tom sat where he could easily see the colored field map that Harry had just turned in to the chief. "Hold on, there, Harry," Tom objected. "You've lined in a pretty high hill on Section Nineteen. You'll have to cut that down a bit." "The surveyor's field notes call for that hill," Hazelton retorted. "But, as it happens," objected Tom, "I'm just working out the profile drawing of Section Nineteen from Black's notes. See here-----" Tom rested a pencil point on a portion of the hill depicted on Hazelton's map. "You've drawn that pretty steep. Now, as you'll see by Black's notes, the upgrade at that point is only a three per cent. grade." "Humph! It's all of an eight per cent. grade," grunted Hazelton. "See, here are the surveyor's field notes." "Three per cent. grade," insisted Tom, holding forward Black's leveling notes. "There's a difference there, then, that must be reconciled," broke in Mr. Thurston, rising, a look of annoyance on his face. "We can't have any such disagreement as that between the field map and the profile sheet. Let us find out, at once, where the trouble lies." Yet the more the three pondered over the matter the greater became the puzzle. The notes of the surveyor, Matt Rice, and of the leveler, 'Gene Black, were at utter variance. "We must get hold of these men as soon as they come in tonight," exclaimed Mr. Thurston, much disturbed. "We must find out just which one is at fault." "Rice is a very reliable man, sir," spoke up Tom. "Yes; but Blaisdell reports that Black thoroughly understands his work, too," grumbled the chief. "We must settle this tonight." "May I make a suggestion, sir?" asked Tom. "Certainly. Go ahead." "There is no use, sir, in my going ahead with this profile drawing, if there's a chance that the sights turned in by Black are wrong. Until we know, my time at this drawing board may all be wasted. Trotter, one of the rodmen, is in camp today. I might take him, and a level along, and go over the foresights and backsights myself. All of the stakes will be in place. In two hours I ought to have a very good set of leveling notes. Then I can bring them back and compare them with Black's sights." "Can you run a level well?" inquired Mr. Thurston. "Of course I can, sir. It's simple enough work, and I've done a good bit of it in the east." "Go along, then, and see if you can throw any light on this," sighed the disturbed chief. "Reade really ought to have two rodmen," broke in Harry eagerly. "May I go along, sir, to serve as the other rodman?" "Run along," assented Mr. Thurston. "Remember, boys, I can't go any further until this tangle is settled. Come back as speedily as you can." Tom and Harry snatched up their sombreros, hurrying forth. Trotter was found readily, and was ordered to saddle three ponies. Tom busied himself in picking out the best leveling instrument in camp, while Hazelton secured the rods and a chain. Then the party set forth in Indian file, Tom riding in advance. A trot of half an hour brought them to Section Nineteen. Here Tom speedily adjusted his instrument, taking up his post over the first stake at the bottom of the hill. Leveling is not difficult work, though it calls for some judgment and a good deal of care. For instance, when Tom set his telescope exactly level and took a reading of the rod at the second stake, which Harry held, he read the height as eight feet and four inches. Then he trudged forward, carrying his instrument, while Trotter held his rod exactly perpendicular over the first stake. From the second stake Tom sighted back through his telescope, reading two feet three inches. The difference between these two readings was six feet and one inch, showing that, for the distance between first and second stakes the rise in the hillside was six feet one inch. Thereupon Reade turned and sighted, from stake number two to stake number three, noting in his book the reading he secured from the rod at number three. Once at number three he turned his telescope backward, taking a reading from Trotter's rod at number two. Ten stakes were thus covered, and not only were the foresights and backsights read and recorded, but the distance between each pair of stakes was measured with the chain and the distances entered on the record. At stake number ten Tom halted. "Harry," he directed, "you take Black's leveling notes and hold them while I read my own notes. Stop me every time that you note a difference between the two records." After that Harry steadily stopped his chum at every reading. By the time that they had finished the comparisons Hazelton's face looked blank from sheer astonishment. "Why, every single one of Blacks foresights and backsights is wrong!" gasped Harry. "And yet Mr. Blaisdell reported that 'Gene Black is such a fine engineer." Tom turned to make sure that Trotter was resting out of hearing before he replied: "Harry, Black isn't such a fool as to bring in an absolutely wrong record of sights, and yet do it innocently. If he didn't do it unintentionally, then he must have tangled the record purposely." "But why should he do it purposely?" Harry insisted. "He would know that, sooner or later, his blunders or lies would be discovered, and that he would be discharged. Now, Black really wants to hold his job with this outfit." "Does he?" asked Tom bluntly. "Why, what do you mean?" "I don't know," Reade confessed. "I never heard of any such bungle as this before by an engineer. Why, Harry, this hillside averages an eight and a third grade, yet Black's field notes show it to be only a three per cent. grade. Hang it, the fellow must have played the trick purposely!" "Yet why?" pressed Hazelton. "I'll admit that I can't understand. Unless, well---unless-----" "Say it!" "Unless Black joined this outfit with the express purpose of queering all the work of the entire corps as he could easily do. Harry, do you think that Black could possibly be serving with this outfit as the paid tool of the rival road, the W.C. & A.? Can he be the enemy's spy within our lines---sent to prevent our finishing the road on time?" CHAPTER X THINGS BEGIN TO GO DOWN HILL "I suppose I'm thick," Harry murmured. "How would Black, by turning in some wrong backsights and foresights, expect to delay the building of the road, even if he wanted to do it?" "How?" repeated Tom Reade, showing an amount of heat and excitement that he rarely displayed. "Why, Harry, this same old Section Nineteen is one of the hard spots on the road. A lot of excavating has to be done before the tracks can be laid here. It's not a mere matter of scooping up dirt and removing it, either. A large amount of solid rock has to be blasted out here before the roadbed can be laid." "I know it," Harry nodded. "Well, then, at the present moment our chief, Mr. Thurston, is preparing the estimates for the work that must be done. On his estimates will be based the strength of the laboring gangs that must come forward to do the work." "Yes." "Then, suppose that Mr. Thurston has been misled into making a certain estimate as to the number of thousand cubic yards of stuff that must be taken out of the outs that are to be made. After he gets his laborers here, and at work, he finds that he has at least three times as much rock and dirt to get out-----" "I see," cried Hazelton. "Before the chief could get men and wagons, and make all necessary changes in the work, the time would have slipped by so far that the finishing of the road would be blocked." "And the S.B. & L. would lose its charter," finished Tom grimly. "It's mighty lucky that we came out here today, then," exclaimed Hazelton, now fully alive to the danger that menaced their employers. "Come, we must hustle back to camp and show Mr. Thurston how he has been imposed on. There can't be a doubt that 'Gene Black has been deliberately crooked." "Go slowly," advised Tom. "Don't be in a rush to call any other man a crook. Mr. Thurston can hear our report. Then he can look into it himself and form his own opinion. That's as far as we have any right to go in the matter." "Thurston is at fault in not having come out here himself," Harry continued. "The chief engineer in charge of a job should know every foot of the way." "Thurston, from the nature of his own work, is obliged to leave much of the detail to his assistant, Mr. Blaisdell," Tom explained. "Then why doesn't Blaisdell look out that no such treacherous work is done by any member of the engineer corps?" flared Harry. "'Gene Black is plainly a very competent man," Reade argued. "The work has had to be rushed of late, and, on so simple a matter as leveling, I don't suppose Blaisdell has thought it at all necessary to dig into Black's field notes." "I hope Black is fired out of this outfit, neck and crop!" finished Hazelton. "That's something with which we have nothing to do," Reade retorted. "Harry, we'll confine ourselves to doing our work well and reporting our results. Mr. Thurston is intelligent enough to form all his own conclusions when he has our report. Come, it's high time for us to be putting the ponies to real speed on the trail back." Not long afterwards the young engineers rode into the engineer camp. Harry dismounted, seating himself on the ground, while Tom hurried toward the chief's big tent. It was Blaisdell who sat in the chief's chair when Tom entered. "Oh, hello, Reade," was the assistant's pleasant greeting. "Where's the chief?" "Gone back to the track builders. You know, they're within fourteen miles of us now." "When will Mr. Thurston be back?" "I don't know," Blaisdell answered. "In the meantime, Reade, you know, I'm acting chief here." "I beg your pardon," Tom murmured hastily. "The chief told me, just before leaving, that you thought some of Black's sights on Section Nineteen are wrong," Blaisdell pursued. "They're all wrong," Reade rejoined quietly. "_All_?" echoed Blaisdell, opening his eyes very wide. "Yes, sir; everyone of them." "Come, come, Reade!" remonstrated the acting chief. "Don't try to amuse yourself with me. All of the sights can't be wrong." "But they are, sir. Hazelton and I have been over them most carefully in the field. Here are _our_ notes, sir. Look them over and you'll find that Section Nineteen calls for three or four times as much excavating as Black's notes show." "This is strange!" mused Blaisdell, after comparing the two sets of notes. "I can't credit it. Reade, you and Hazelton are very young---mere cubs, in fact. Are you sure that you know all you owlet to know about leveling?" "Mr. Blaisdell, I'll answer you by saying, sir, that though Hazelton and I are nothing but cubs, we have the success of this railroad building game at heart. We're deeply in earnest. We'll work ourselves to our very bones in order to see this road get through in time. I don't ask you, sir, to take our word about these sights, but we both beg you, sir, to go out with a gang of men and go over some of the work yourself. Keep on surveying, sir, until you're satisfied that Black is wrong and that Hazelton and I are right. You know what it would mean, sir, if we're right and you don't find it out in time. Then you simply couldn't get the cut through Section Nineteen in time and the S.B. & L. would lose its charter." "By Jove, you're right," muttered Blaisdell uneasily, as he slowly stood up. "Reade, I'm going to take men and go out, carrying your notes and Black's. Let me warn you, however, that if I find that Black is right and you're wrong, then it will give you two cubs such a black eye that the chief will run you out of camp." "If we had made any such gigantic blunder as that," returned Tom firmly, "then we'd deserve to be run out. We wouldn't have the nerve to put in another night in camp." "Hey, you, don't unsaddle those ponies. Hold yourselves ready to go out," called Blaisdell from the doorway of the tent. "Will you give us our orders on drawing before you go, sir?" asked Reade. "No," smiled Blaisdell. "If you've made a blunder out on Nineteen, then you're not to be trusted with drawing. Wait until I return. Take it easy until then." "Very good." "And---Reade!" "Yes, sir." "Neither you nor Hazelton are to let a word cross your lips regarding the disagreement over Section Nineteen." "You'll never have any trouble, sir, over our talking when we ought not to do it," promised Reade. Two minutes later the assistant engineer rode out with a pair of rodmen whom he picked up on the way to Nineteen. "What happened?" asked Harry, coming into the big tent. Tom told him all that had taken place, adding the caution that nothing was to be said about the matter for the present. "Whew! I wish Mr. Blaisdell had let me go along," murmured Hazelton. "I'd like to have seen his face when he finds out!" Hearing footsteps approaching outside, Reade signaled for silence. Then the flap of the tent was pulled back and Bad Pete glanced in. "Howdy, pardners?" was the greeting from the bad man, that caused Tom Reade almost to fall from his campstool. "How are you, Peter?" returned Tom. "This is, indeed, a pleasure." "Where's the boss?" continued Bad Pete. "If you mean Mr. Thurston, he's away." "Where's Blaisdell, then?" "He hit the trail, just a few minutes ago," Tom responded. "Then I suppose you have no objections if I sit in here a while?" "Peter," replied Tom solemnly, "you'll be conferring a great honor on us." The bad man's present mood was so amiable that Harry did not deem it desertion to go outside. Bad Pete had his cartridge belt restocked with sure-enough cartridges, and his revolver swung as jauntily in its holster as ever. Pete seemed to have no idea, however, of trying to terrify anyone with his hardware. "You've been away?" suggested Tom, by way of making conversation, after an awkward silence had endured for nearly two minutes. "Yep," admitted the bad one. "Pardner, it seems like home to get back. Do you know, Reade, I've taken a big liking to you?" "Peter," protested Tom, "if you don't look out you'll make me the vainest cub on earth." "I mean it," asserted Pete. "Pardner, I've a notion me and you are likely to become big friends." "I never dared to hope for so much," breathed Tom, keeping back a laugh. "'Cause," continued Bad Pete, "I reckon you're one of the kind that never goes back on a real pardner." "I should hope not," Tom assured him. "Have a cigar?" urged Pete, doffing his sombrero and taking out a big, black weed that he tendered the cub. "What's the matter with it?" asked Tom curiously. For just a second Bad Pete's eyes flashed. Then he choked back all signs of anger as he drawled: "The only matter with this cigar, pardner, is that it's a gen-u-wine Havana cigar." "I couldn't tell it from a genuine Baltimore," asserted Tom. "But I suppose that is because I never smoked." "You never smoked? Pardner, you've got a lot to learn," replied Bad Pete, as he put the cigar back in his hat and replaced the latter on his head. "And, while we're talking about such matters, pardner, you might just hand me a twenty for a few days." "Twenty dollars?" returned Tom. "Peter, until payday gets around I won't have twenty cents." Bad Pete gazed at the cub keenly. "Fact!" Tom assured him. "Huh!" grunted Pete, rising. "I've been wasting my time on a pauper!" Saying which, he stalked out. Tom discreetly repressed his desire to laugh. Hazelton glided into the tent, grinning. "Tom, be careful not to string Bad Pete so hard, or, one of these days, you'll get him so mad that he won't be able to resist drilling you through with lead." "Let's go over to the cook tent and either beg or steal something to eat," proposed Reade. It was two hours later when a rodman rode hurriedly into camp. "Hey, you cubs," he called, "come and help me get Mr. Blaisdell's bed ready for him. He's coming back sick." "Sick?" demanded Reade, thunderstruck. "Why, he looked healthy enough when he went out of camp a little while ago." "He's sick enough, now," retorted the rodman. "What ails Mr. Blaisdell?" asked Harry. "It's mountain fever, I reckon," rejoined the rodman. "Blaisdell must have been off color for days, and didn't really know it." All three worked rapidly getting everything in readiness for the coming of the assistant engineer. Then Mr. Blaisdell was brought in, on a stretcher rigged between two ponies. The acting chief is face was violently flushed, his eyes seemed bright as diamonds. "Reade," said the acting chief thickly, as they lifted him from the litter to his cot, "if I'm not better by morning you'll have to get word to the chief." "Yes, sir," assented Reade, placing a hand on Blaisdell's forehead. It felt hot and feverish. "May I ask, sir, if you verified any of the sights on Nineteen?" "I---I took some of 'em," replied the acting chief hesitatingly. "Reade, I'm not sure that I remember aright, but I think---I think---you and Hazelton were correct about that. I---wish I could---remember." Bill Blaisdell closed his eyes, and his voice trailed off into murmurs that none around him could understand. Even Reade, with his very slight experience in such matters, realized that the acting chief was a very sick man. "You cubs better clear out of here now," suggested one of the rodmen. "I know better how to take care of men with mountain fever." "I hope you do know more about nursing than I do, Carter," replied Tom very quietly. "In the future, however, don't forget that, though I may be a cub, I am an engineer, and you are a rodman. When you speak to me address me as Mr. Reade. Come, men, all out of here but the nurse." Once in the open Tom turned to Harry with eyes ablaze. "Harry, could anything be tougher? The chief away, the acting chief down with fever and on the verge of delirium---and a crooked engineer in our crowd who's doing his best to sell out the S.B. & L.---bag, baggage and charter!" CHAPTER XI THE CHIEF TOTTERS FROM COMMAND It was not like Tom Reade to waste time in wondering what to do. "Harry," he continued, once more turning upon his chum, "I want you to get a pony saddled as fast as you can. You know that the telegraph wire is being brought along as fast as it can be done. This morning I heard Rutter say that it was hardly five miles back of us on the trail. Get into saddle, wire the chief at the construction camp, and bring back his orders as fast as you can ride." Hazelton replied only with a nod, then broke into a sprint for the spot where the saddle animals were tethered. Two minutes later Harry, though not a crack horseman, left camp at a gallop. In Blaisdell's tent matters dragged along. Ice was needed, but none was to be had. Cloths were wrung out in spring water and applied to the sick man's head. Within half an hour Tom received word that the acting chief was "out of his head." Later on Hazelton galloped back into camp bearing this despatch: "Reade, Engineer Corps. Take charge of camp until Rutter returns. Then turn over charge to him. Rush for the nearest physician; engage him to remain at camp and look after Blaisdell. I return tonight. (Signed) Thurston, Chief Engineer." "Men," called Tom striding over to the little party of rodmen, "tell me where the nearest physician is to be found." "Doe Jitney, at Bear's Cave," replied one of the men. "How far is that?" "Fourteen miles, by the trail." "Get on to a pony, then, and go after Dr. Gitney. Bring him here and tell him we'll want him here for the present. Tell the doctor to bring all the medicines he'll need, and both of you ride fast." "I'm not going on your orders," retorted the man sullenly. "Yes, you are," Tom informed him promptly. "I'm in charge, for the present, and acting under Mr. Thurston's orders. If you don't go, you won't eat any more in this camp, or draw any more pay here. It's work or jump for you---and discharge if you lose or waste any time on the way. Mr. Blaisdell's life is at stake. Rustle!" The man so ordered scowled, but he rose, went over and saddled a pony and rode out of camp. "That part is attended to," sighed Tom. "Hang it, I wish we could get hold of some ice. I don't know much, but I do know that ice is needed in high fevers. I wonder if anyone here knows where ice can be had? By Jove, there's Peter! He knows more about this country than anyone else around here." It was now within an hour of the time when the engineer parties might be expected hack into camp. Reade, however, was not of the sort to lose an hour needlessly. Tom had just caught sight of Bad Pete as the latter stepped through a little gully an eighth of a mile below the trail and vanished into some green brush. "I'll run after him," Tom decided. "Pete wants a little money, and this will be a chance for him to earn it---if he can find some man to drive a load of ice to camp." Being a trained runner, Tom did not consume much time in nearing the spot where he had last seen Bad Pete. The lad put two fingers up to his mouth, intending to whistle, when he heard a twig snap behind him. Tom turned quickly, then, warned by some instinct, stepped noiselessly behind high brush. The newcomer was 'Gene Black. "Pete!" called Black softly. "Oy!" answered a voice some distance away. "That you, Pete?" called the engineer. "Yep." "Then close in here. I have doings for you." Tom Reade should have stepped out into sight. He was neither spy nor eavesdropper. For once, something within urged him to keep out of sight and silent. "Where be you, pardner?" called Pete's voice, nearer at hand now. "Right here, Pete," called Black. "What do you want, pardner?" demanded the bad man, coming through the brush. "Lend me a couple of hundred dollars, Pete," laughed 'Gene Black. "Did you call me here for any such fool talk as that?" scowled Pete. "No," Black admitted. "Pete, I don't believe you have two hundred dollars. But you'd like to have. Now, wouldn't you!" "Two hundred silver bricks," retorted Bad Pete, his eyes gleaming, "is the price of shooting up a whole town. Pardner, just get me an extra box of cartridges and lead me to that town! But have you got the money?" "Yes," laughed Black, holding up a roll of greenbacks. "This and more, too!" Bad Pete surveyed the money hungrily. "Some men who know me," he muttered thickly, "would be afraid to show me a whole bankful of money when there was no one else looking." "I'm not afraid of you, Pete," replied Black quietly. "You might shoot me, if you felt you could get away with it. Do you notice that my left hand is in my pocket! I'm a left-handed shooter, you see." Pete glanced covertly at that bulging left trousers' pocket of the engineer. "You won't have to do anything like that to get the money, Pete. Save your cartridges for other people. There, I've let go of my gun. Come close and listen to what I have to say---but only in your ear." There followed some moments of whisperings Try as he would, Reade could not make out a word of what was being said until at last Bad Pete muttered audibly, in a low, hoarse voice: "You're not doing that on your own account, Black?" "No, Pete; I'm not." "Then you must really be working for the road that wants to steal the charter away---the W.C. & A.?" "Perhaps so, Pete. You don't need to know that. All you have to know is what I want done. I'm a business man, Pete, and money is the soul of business. Here!" Black peeled some banknotes from his roll. "Ten twenties, Pete. That makes the two hundred I was talking to you about. Understand, man, that isn't your pay. That's simply your expense money, for you to spend while you're hanging about. Stick to me, do things just as I want them done, and your pay will run several times as high as your expense money." "Do you know how long I've been looking for this sort o' thing, pardner?" Pete inquired huskily. "No; of course not," rejoined 'Gene Black rather impatiently. "All my life," returned Bad Pete solemnly. "Pardner, I'll sell myself to you for the money you've been talking about." "Come along, then. We're too near the camp. I want to talk with you where we're not so likely to be interfered with by people who have too much curiosity." "If that means me," quoth Tom Reade inwardly, "the shoe fits to a nicety." Tom followed the pair for a little way, with a stealth that was born in him for the present need. Then the plotters stepped into a rocky, open gully, where the cub engineer could not have followed without being seen. "Oh, dear! I never wanted to follow anyone as much in my life!" groaned Reade in his disappointment. There was nothing to do but to go back. Then, too, with a guilty start, Tom remembered the great need of ice for poor, fever-tossed, big-hearted Bill Blaisdell, who had been so kind to the two cubs from the hour of their arrival in the field camp. Just as he stepped into the camp area Tom espied Jack Rutter, who also saw him and came quickly forward. "I've been looking everywhere for you, Reade," said Rutter, in a tone that was close to carrying reproach with it. "I've been absent on real business, Rutter," Tom answered, with a flush, nevertheless. "Mr. Blaisdell must have ice a lot of it." "Great Scott! Where shall we find it in these mountains in midsummer?" Rutter demanded. "We've got to have it, haven't we?" Tom urged. "It will be the first thing that the doctor will call for." "Then he should bring it with him," returned Rutter. "Would you want the doctor to be hampered with a ton or so of ice!" asked Reade. "Would we need that much?" Rutter seemed hopelessly ignorant in such matters. "I imagine we'd want a lot of it," Tom answered. "By the way, Mr. Rutter-----" "Well?" Jack inquired. Tom was on the point of giving a hint of what he had heard in the gully during the meeting between Black and Bad Pete. Then, on second thought, the cub engineer decided to hold that news for the ear of Mr. Thurston alone. "What were you going to say?" pressed Rutter. "Probably Hazelton has told you," Tom continued, "that you're in charge here until Mr. Thurston arrives." "Yes; and I'm mighty glad that the chief will be here before daylight tomorrow," returned Jack. "I may be a fair sort of engineer, but I'm not cut out for a chief engineer." Later, one of the rodmen was sent to guide Harry to the nearest small town, twenty-eight miles away, for ice. If they succeeded in obtaining it they might be back by dark of the following day. Supper in camp was a gloomy meal. No one felt light-hearted. "Mr. Rutter," asked Tom, approaching the temporary chief, soon after the evening meal, "what do you want Hazelton and myself to do this evening?" "Don't ask me," returned Jack, with a shrug of his shoulders. "What have you been doing? Drawing?" "Yes." "Why don't you go on with it?" "We're at a point where we need orders, for we've had to lay down one part of the work while waiting for further instructions." "I can't help you any, then," replied Rutter. "Sorry, but before I could give any orders I'd need a few myself." At eleven o'clock that night Dr. Gitney arrived, with saddle-bags full of medicines and other necessaries. He saw Blaisdell, and pronounced the assistant engineer a very sick man. Shortly after midnight Mr. Thurston rode into camp. He tottered from saddle and reeled until Tom, on the lookout for him, ran forward and supported the chief engineer to his tent. Then Dr. Gitney was sent for and came. "Your chief has mountain fever, too," said the medical attendant to Tom, after stepping outside the tent. "How long will it take them to get well?" asked Wade anxiously. "Weeks! Hard to say," replied the physician vaguely. "Weeks!" groaned Tom Reade. "And the camp now in charge of Jack Rutter, who's a fine workman but no leader! Doc Gitney doesn't know it, but he has sentenced the S.B. & L. railroad to death!" It was a trying situation. The cub engineer felt it keenly, for he had set his heart on seeing the S.B. & L. win out over its rival. Then, too, all in a flash, the memory of 'Gene Black's treachery to his employers came back to the mind of Tom Reade. CHAPTER XII FROM CUB TO ACTING CHIEF Tom didn't sleep that night. He sat by, silently, in the big tent, nursing the patient as Dr. Gitney directed. In the morning, at five, Matt Rice came. Tom gladly surrendered the post to him and took a scant hour of deep slumber on the bare ground outside. "Wake up, Reade," ordered Rutter, at last shaking the cub and hauling him to his feet. "This is no place to sleep. Go to your tent and stretch out full length on your cot." "On my cot?" demanded Tom, rubbing his eyes fiercely. "You can't spare me from the day's work?" "I don't believe there will be any day's work," Rutter answered. "You're in charge, man! You must put us to work," Tom insisted. "I don't know just what ought to be done," complained Rutter. "I shall have to wait for orders." "Orders?" repeated Tom, in almost breathless scorn. "From whom can you get orders?" "Howe is Thurston's assistant at the lower camp," Rutter rejoined. "He'll have to come over here and take real charge. I'm going to send a messenger to the telegraph station and wire Mr. Howe to come here at once." "See here, Rutter," blazed Tom insistently, "Mr Howe is in charge of the construction forces. He's laying the bed and the tracks. He can't be spared from the construction work for even a day, or the road will fail to get through, no matter what we do here. Man, you've simply got to be up and doing! Make some mistakes, if you have to, but don't lie down and kill the S.B. & L. with inaction." "Cub," laughed Rutter good-humoredly, "you speak as if this were a big personal matter with you." "Oh, isn't it, thought" retorted Tom Reade with spirit. "My whole heart is centered on seeing the S.B. & L. win out within the time granted by its charter. Rutter, if you don't take hold with a rush and make a live, galloping start with your new responsibilities, I'm afraid I'll go wild and assault you violently!" "Ha, ha, ha!" Jack laughed loudly. "Here, stop that cackling," ordered Reade in the same low voice that he had been using. "Let's get away from the chief's tent. We'll disturb him with our noise." Dr. Gitney, entering the big tent five minutes later, found Mr. Thurston very much awake, for he had heard the low-voiced conversation outside the tent. Mr. Thurston was not quite as ill as was Blaisdell, and had not as yet reached the stage of delirium. "Doctor, I want you to summon the engineer corps here," begged the patient. "When you're better," replied the doctor, with a hand on the sick man's pulse. "Doc, you'd better let me have my way," insisted Mr. Thurston in a weak voice. "If you don't, you'll make me five times more ill than I am at present." Watching the fever glow in the man's face deepen, and feeling the pulse go up several beats per minute, Dr. Gitney replied: "There, there, Thurston. Be good, and I'll let you have three minutes with your engineers." "That's all I ask," murmured the sick man eagerly. Dr. Gitney went outside and rounded them up. All were present except 'Gene Black, who, according to Matt Rice, had taken a little walk outside of camp. "I hope you'll soon be better, sir," began Rutter, as the engineers gathered at the cot of their stricken chief. "Don't say anything unnecessary, and don't waste my time," begged Mr. Thurston. "Rutter, do you feel equal to running this field corps until either Blaisdell or I can take charge again?" "No, I don't chief," replied Jack. "I've sent a wire to Howe, urging him to come here and take charge." "Howe can't come," replied the chief. "If he does, the construction work will go to pieces. This corps will have to be led by someone now present." Morris and Rice gazed eagerly at their chief. Butter showed his relief at being allowed to hack out from full control. As for Timothy Thurston, he let his gaze wander from face to face. "Reade!" he almost whispered. "Yes, sir!" answered Tom, stepping gently forward. "What can I do for you, sir?" "Reade," came in another whisper, "can you---have you the courage to take the post of acting chief?" Several gasps of astonishment broke on the air, but the greatest gasp of all came from Reade himself. "I think you need a little sleep now, sir," urged Tom. "I'm not out of my head," smiled Timothy Thurston wanly. "Doc Gitney will tell you that. Come---for I'm growing very tired. Can you swing this outfit and push the S.B. & L. through within charter time?" "I---I---hardly know what to say," stammered Tom, who felt dizzy from the sudden rush of blood to his head. "Have you the courage to try?" "Yes, sir---_I have_!" came, without further hesitation from Tom Reade. "I believe I'll succeed, at that, for I'll stake health, and even life, on winning out!" "That's what I like to hear," breathed Mr. Thurston, an added flush coming to his own face. "Gentlemen, it's time to leave," warned Dr. Gitney, watching his patient. "One moment more, Doc," insisted the chief engineer feebly. "Gentlemen, you've heard what has just been said. Will everyone of you pledge himself on his honor to drop all feeling that might interfere? Will you all stand loyally by Reade, take his orders and help boost him and all the rest of us through to victory in this big game?" "I will!" spoke Jack Rutter earnestly and with a deep sigh of relief. The others added their promises. "Reade, you will take full charge here," continued Timothy Thurston. "Notify Mr. Howe, too, at once. You and he will not need to conflict with each other in any way. Also notify the president of the road, at the New York offices. Wire him at once. Now---thank you all, gentlemen. I believe I shall have to stop and go to sleep." "Get out, all of you," came firmly from bearded, middle-aged Dr. Gitney. "You fellows now have your acting chief to look to, and you don't need to bother a sick man any more." When Tom Reade stepped outside, on the heels of the others, he certainly didn't feel as though treading on air. Instead, he wondered if he were going to reel and totter, so dizzy did he feel over the sudden realization of the responsibilities he had taken upon himself. "Give us our orders, chief," begged Matt Rice, with a grin, when Tom joined the others over by the mess tent. "Wait a few moments," urged Reade. "I don't really know whether I am chief or a joke." "Great Scott! After lecturing me the way you did, you are not going to get cold feet, are you?" gasped Jack Rutter. "You'll know what I mean before long," Tom murmured. "I signaled to Dr. Gitney to follow me as soon as he could." "How does it seem to know that you have only to beckon and that men must follow?" laughed Joe Grant. It is doubtful whether Tom, gazing at the chief's big tent, even heard. Presently Dr. Gitney stepped outside and came toward them. "Doctor," began Tom, "will you give me your word of honor that Mr. Thurston is in his right mind?" "He certainly impresses me as being so," the physician replied. "You fully believe that he knew just what he was doing?" Tom insisted. "I do, Reade. But why should you care? You have the reins in your own hands now." "I wish to keep the reins there," Tom returned quickly. "Still I don't want to hold the power for an instant if there is reason to believe that Mr. Thurston didn't know what he was doing." "If that is all you required of me, Reade, rest easy and go ahead with the big trust that has been placed in your hands," replied Dr. Gitney. "Then help me to get a few things out of the chief's tent that we shall need," replied Tom. "Tell me what the things are," rejoined the physician, "and I'll pass them out. I don't want one of you in there, or Thurston will soon be as delirious as Blaisdell is, poor fellow." By stealth, drawing tables and instruments, several boxes of maps, books and papers and other necessary articles were taken from Mr. Thurston tent without awaking the sick man. These were removed to a tent that was not occupied at the moment. "Supper's ready, folks," announced Bob, the cook's helper, stepping softly through camp. Tom joined the other engineers, taking a few hasty mouthfuls. Hardly had the party gathered in the mess tent when 'Gene Black, bright and cheery, stepped in swiftly, nodding here and there. "Well, Rutter, I take it you are running the camp from now on?" asked Black. "Guess just once more," replied Jack. "Who is, then?" "Mr. Reade." Black gulped, then grinned. "The cub? That's good!" Black leaned back on his stool, laughing loudly. "But who _is_ going to boss the camp?" insisted Black, after he had had his laugh. "Mr. Reade!" flung back the other engineers in one voice. "What have you to say to this, cub?" asked 'Gene Black, turning to Tom. "Mr. Thurston placed me in charge because no one else would assume the responsibility," smiled Tom good-humoredly. "Then you're going to stay boss for the present?" "Unless Mr. Thurston changes his mind." "Oh, what a fool I was to be away this afternoon!" groaned Black to himself. "I could have gotten this chance away from a cub like Reade. Oh, but my real task would have been easy if I had been here on deck, and had got Thurston to turn matters over to me. Reade will be easy! He's only a cub---a booby. Even if he proved shrewd---well, I have at my disposal several ways of getting rid of him!" Then, aloud, Black went on: "Reade, I'm a candidate for the post of acting assistant chief engineer." "That goes to Rutter, if he'll take it," replied Tom, with a smile. "Oh, I'll take it," nodded Jack Rutter. "I can follow orders, when I have someone else to give them." Tom was intentionally pleasant with 'Gene Black. He intended to remain pleasant---until he was quite ready to act. Immediately after supper Tom ordered one of the chainmen to saddle a pony and be ready to take a message back to the telegraph service that was rapidly overtaking them. "I want you to be sure to get a receipt for the message from the operator," Tom explained. "Direct the operator to get the message through to New York at once." "What's the use?" demanded the chainman. "It's night in New York, the same as it is here. If the message goes through at any time tonight it will do." "I didn't ask you that," Tom replied quietly. "I told you to instruct the operator, from me, to send the message at once. Then, if there is any delay on the way, the message will still be in New York in the morning when the company's offices open." Then Tom Reade went to the new headquarters' tent, seated himself at the desk and picked up a pen. "Whew!" he muttered suddenly. "This message is going to be harder to write than I thought! When the president of the S.B. & L. gets my telegram, informing him that a cub is in command here, he'll blow up! If he recovers he'll wire me that he's sending a grown man for the job!" CHAPTER XIII BLACK TURNS OTHER COLORS Through the night Tom Reade managed to get some sound sleep. Had he been less exhausted physically the excitement caused by his sudden and dizzying promotion might have interfered with his rest. As it was, he slept like a log, though, by his own orders, he was called twice in the night to be informed as to the condition of the two sick men. In the morning a male nurse for whom Dr. Gitney had arranged arrived in camp. Thereafter the physician had a little opportunity for rest. Mr. Thurston reached the delirium stage in his illness that forenoon. "Reade, I don't feel like going out this morning," announced 'Gene Black, approaching the young head of the camp after early breakfast. "What's the matter?" Tom asked pleasantly. "I have rather a bad headache," complained Black. "That's a woman's complaint," smiled Tom. "Just the same, I'm not fit for duty," retorted Black rather testily. "I hope I'm not going to come down with the fever, but I can't be sure." "You'd better stay in camp, then," nodded Reade. "Don't go out into the field again until you feel like work." "Humph! He takes it easily enough," grunted Black to himself as the young chief strode away to confer with Butter. "I wonder if the cub suspects the game I'm playing here? Oh, pshaw! Of course he doesn't suspect. Why should he? The truth is that Cub Reade doesn't realize how much every man is needed in the field. Reade doesn't understand the big need for hustle here. Well, that all helps to make my task the easier." Within five minutes Rutter and the other engineers had their full instructions. As they started away Tom called after them: "Gentlemen, if there is any possible way of putting fifty per cent. more work into each day, now, I know I can rely upon you all to do it. The S.B. & L. must run its first train over the completed road within charter time." Now, Tom had opportunity to wonder what had happened to Harry Hazelton, who should have been back in camp the preceding evening. "He must have had to go farther for ice than we imagined," was the only conclusion Reade could form. "At any rate, Harry won't come back until he has it. He won't bring back merely an excuse when his commission was for a ton of ice." Tom wandered into the new headquarters' tent, heaved a big sigh as the weight of his new responsibilities struck him with full force, and began a systematic examination of all the piles of papers and maps now under his charge. By nine o'clock Harry Hazelton and his guide returned, followed by a four-mule transport wagon. Tom, hearing the approach, came out and beckoned. Harry rode up, dismounting. "Well, I got the ice, you see," announced Hazelton. "Did you have to go very far for it?" "No; but you and I forgot to allow for the time that mules would need for rest on such a steep, uphill climb. Where is the ice to go?" "Send the man over to Jake Wren. Jake knows more about such things than you or I will know within the next ten years." Harry carried the order to the driver, then hurried back. "How are our sick men?" he asked. "Both alive, but delirious. Doc Gitney has a man nurse to help him now." "Did Mr. Rutter leave any orders for me?" pressed Harry. "No; Rutter is in charge of the actual field work only." "Who gives the main orders?" "I do---unless New York changes the plan." Tom hastily narrated what had taken place in Mr. Thurston's tent the day before. Harry listened, his eyes growing larger as he heard. "Tom! I'm mighty glad!" he cried delightedly. "You're going to do the trick, too! You're going to put the S.B. & L. through within the time allowed by the charter!" "I'm going to do it or wear myself out," replied Reade, with a glint of determination in his eyes. "But, Harry, the road isn't going to go through on mere wind. We've got to work---not talk! Come into the new headquarters' tent. Throw the front of your shirt open, take a few deep breaths, tie down the safety valve and get ready to make the steam fly. I'm going over the maps and documents, the field notes, the reports and what not. I want you to help me untangle them and set all matters straight." For two hours the cub engineers worked as they had never toiled before. Then a horseman drew up before their tent. "Telegram for Reade, acting chief engineer," called the man from saddle. "The czar over at the cook house told me I'd find my man here." "I'm Reade," admitted Tom, stepping outside and receiving the envelope. "Do you belong with the telegraph construction crowd?" "Yes, sir," replied the young horseman. "How long before you expect to have the line up with the camp?" "By tomorrow night, unless you move the camp forward again." "That's good news," nodded Reade. "Wait until I see whether there is to be an answer to this message." Tom stepped inside, breaking the flap of the envelope. From head to foot he trembled as his eyes took in the following message: "Reade, Acting Chief Engineer. "Relying upon Thurston's judgment, and from your satisfactory wire, conclude that Thurston chose right man for post. Assume all responsibilities. Advise New York offices daily as to condition of work, also condition Thurston and Blaisdell. Spare no expense in their care. Shall join you within five days." (Signed) "Newnham, President S.B. & L. R.R." Having read the telegram, Tom turned to pick up a sheet of paper. After jotting down the address of President Newnham, he added: "Shall hustle job through rapidly if there is any way of doing it. Shall engage extra engineers in this state. Hope to be able to show you, on arrival, things moving at speed." (Signed) Reade, "Acting Chief Engineer." Then Tom shoved both despatches under his chum's eyes. Naturally Hazelton read the one from New York first. "Whew! The president seems to trust you," murmured Harry. "No; he doesn't," Tom retorted. "He doesn't know anything about me. His wire shows that he knows and trusts Mr. Thurston, the man who picked me out for this job." Then Tom wrote a second despatch, addressed to the State University. It ran as follows: "Have heard that your university has party from engineering school in field this summer. Can you place me in immediate wire communication with professor in charge of party? Have practical work to offer students." This also Tom showed briefly to his chum. Then, picking up the two telegrams, Tom stepped outside, turning them over to the rider. "Ask your operator to rush both of these, the one to New York going first." As the pony's hoofs clicked against the gravel, Reade stepped inside the tent. "What are you going to do with the State University students?" asked Harry curiously. "Put 'em at work on the smaller jobs here," Tom answered. "At least, as many of them as the professor will vouch for." Three hours later Tom received an answer to his local despatch. It was from Professor Coles, sixty miles away, in camp with a party of thirty engineering students. The professor asked for further particulars. Tom wired back: "Can use your entire lot of students in practical railroad work, if they want experience and can do work. Will you bring them here with all speed and let us try them out? For yourself, we offer suitable pay for a man of your attainments. Students engaged will be paid all they are worth." "Gracious, but you're going in at wholesale! What will President Newnham say to you for engaging men at such a wholesale rate!" "By the time he reaches here," replied Tom in a tone that meant business, "either he will see results that will force him to approve---or else he'll give me my walking papers." "Now, what shall we do?" inquired Hazelton. "Nothing. It's nearly time for the field force to be back in camp." "We'd better work every minute of the time," urged Harry. "We're going to take things more easily after this," Tom yawned. "Is that what you mean by hustling?" "In a way, yes," Tom nodded. "See here, Harry, in the field we tried to do the work of a man and a half each, didn't we? And here at the drawing tables, too." "Of course." "Now there is need of hustling, and, if we work too hard, we simply won't have time to plan for others, or even to know what they're doing. There are a lot of students coming, Harry. Most of them will be good men, for they're young, full of enthusiasm, and just crazy to show what they can do. Some of them will doubtless be good draughtsmen. You'll take these men and see to it that the drawing is pushed forward. But you won't work too hard yourself. You'll see to it that the force under you is working, and in that way you'll be three times as useful as if you merely ground and dug hard by yourself. I shall go light on real work, just in order that I may have my eyes and brains where they will do the most good every minute of the time." Someone was approaching. Tom threw open the flap of the tent, thus discovering that the man was Black. "Howdy, Reade," was the greeting of the idle engineer. "I'm glad to say that my headache is better. I'm not going to have the fever, after all. Tomorrow I'll be out on the leveling job." Tom shook his head. "I want you to rest up tomorrow, Black." "I won't do it," retorted the other flatly. "Tomorrow I go out and continue running my levels." "Then I may as well tell you," Tom continued, "what I would have preferred to break to you more easily later on." "What do you mean?" questioned the other sharply, an uneasy look creeping into his face. "You're not going to do any more work for us, Black," replied the young chief coolly. "Not do any more work, What do you mean, Reade? Am I discharged from this corps?" "Not yet, Black, for I haven't the money at hand to pay you to date. So you may stay here until the paymaster comes. Then, when you have your full amount of pay, you can leave us." "What does this mean?" demanded 'Gene Black angrily, as he stepped closer, his eyes blazing. Some young men would have shrunk back before Black's menacing manner. Tom had never yet met the man who could make him really afraid. "I've already told you the whole story, Black." "Why am I discharged?" "I am not obliged to give you my reasons." "You'll find you'll have to do so!" stormed 'Gene Black. "Well, then," Tom answered, "you get through here because you kicked one of the tripod legs of your leveling instrument the other day, and left a mark on the wood." "Don't you try to be funny with me, you young hound!" hissed Black, stepping so close that Tom gently pushed him back. "You young idiot! Do you think you can fire me---and get away with it?" "We won't talk about it any more," Tom answered. "Your time will be all your own until the paymaster arrives. After you've received your money you will leave camp." "Are any of the others going?" "No." "Then you're discharging me for personal reasons!" snarled 'Gene Black. "However, you can't do it! I'll wire the president of the road, at New York." "He won't receive your wire," Tom assured the irate one. "President Newnham is on his way here. Probably he'll arrive here before the paymaster does. You may take your case to President Newnham in person if you wish." "That's what I'll do, then!" breathed 'Gene Black fiercely. "And I'll take your place in charge here, cub! If I don't, _you_ shall never finish the S.B. & L!" CHAPTER XIV BAD PETE MIXES IN SOME Forty-Eight hours later Professor Coles arrived in camp with thirty healthy, joyous young students of engineering. It didn't take Tom half an hour to discover that he had some excellent material here. As for the professor himself, that gentleman was a civil engineer of the widest experience. "I shall need you to advise me, professor," Tom explained. "While I had the nerve to take command here, I'm only a boy, after all, and you'll be surprised when you find out how much there is that I don't know." "It's very evident, Mr. Reade," smiled the professor, "that you know the art of management, and that's the important part in any line of great work." The student party had brought their own tents and field equipment with them. Their arrival had been a total surprise in camp, as none of the other engineers, save Harry, had known what was in the wind. "If these boys don't make mistakes by wholesale," declared Jack Butter, "we'll just boost the work along after this. I wonder why Mr. Thurston never hit upon the idea of adding such a force?" "It's very likely he has been thinking of it all along," Tom rejoined. "The main point, however, is that we seem to have a bully field force." Four of the students had been selected to serve as map-making force under Harry Hazelton. The rest were going out into the field, some of them as engineers in embryo, the rest as chainmen and rodmen. Though the field outfit now presented a lively appearance, all was kept as quiet as possible in and near the camp, for neither Mr. Thurston nor Mr. Blaisdell knew what was going on about them. Both were still delirious, and very ill. "Now I see why you could afford to 'fire' me and let the work slack up for a while," sneered Black, meeting Reade after dark. "Do you?" asked Tom. "These boys will spoil the whole business. You don't seem to have any idea of the numbers of fool mistakes that boys can make." "They're good fellows, anyway, and honest," Tom rejoined. "Give some of 'em leveling work out on Section Nineteen," suggested 'Gene, apparently seized with a sudden thought. "Then compare their field notes with mine, and see how far out they are." "I happen to know all about your leveling notes on Nineteen," Reade retorted rather significantly. "What do you mean?" flared Black. "Just before Mr. Thurston was taken ill, as it happened, Hazelton and I took a leveling instrument out on Nineteen one day and ran your sights over after you." "So that's why you 'fired'-----" began Black, his thoughts moving swiftly. Then, realizing that he was about to say too much, he went on: "What did you find wrong with my sights on Nineteen?" "I didn't say that anything was wrong with your work," Reade rejoined. "What I was about to say was that, if I put any of the students at leveling on Nineteen, by way of test, I shall have my own notes with which to compare theirs." "Humph!" muttered the fellow. Then shaking with anger, he walked away from the young chief. "Now, Black knows that much against himself," smiled Reade inwardly. "He doesn't yet know, however, that I heard him talking with Bad Pete." Though he was pretending to take things easily, Tom's head was all but whirling with the many problems that presented themselves to him. To get away from it all for a while Tom strolled a short distance out of camp, seating himself on the ground under a big tree not far from the trail. Five minutes later the young chief heard halting footsteps that struck his ear as being rather stealthy. Someone, from camp, was heading that way. Stealth in the other's movements made Reade draw himself back into the shadow. 'Gene Black halted not far from the tree. Turning back toward the camp, the fellow shook his fist violently in that direction. "He's certainly thinking of me," grimaced Reade. "You young cub, you may laugh for a day or two more!" muttered Black, with another shake of his fist. "If that's meant for me, I'm much obliged, I'm sure," thought Reade. "Laughing is always a great pleasure for me." "It's your turn now," continued Black, in the same low, passionate tone, "but I'll soon have you blocked---or else under the sod!" "Oho!" reflected the young acting chief engineer, not without a slight shudder. "Is assassination in the plans of the people behind 'Gene Black's treachery? Or is putting me under the sod merely an addition that Black has made for his own pleasure?" The plotter, still unaware of the eavesdropper, had now turned and was walking down the trail. He was now so far from camp that he did not need to be soft-footed. Out of the shadow, after a brief pause, stole Tom Reade. "If Black is going to meet anyone tonight I'd better be near to the place of meeting. I might hear something that would teach me just what to do to checkmate the plotters against us." For fully half a mile the chase continued. Two or three times Reade stepped against some slight obstacle in the darkness, making a sound which, he feared, would travel to the ears of Black. But the latter kept on his way. Finally 'Gene Black halted where three trees grew in the form of a triangle and threw a dense shadow. In the same instant the young chief engineer dropped out of sight behind a boulder close to the path. Black's low, thrilling whistle sounded. A night bird's call answered. Soon afterwards, another form appeared, and Tom, peering anxiously, was sure that he recognized the man whom he expected to see---Bad Pete. What Tom heard came disjointedly---a few words here and there, but enough to set him thinking "at the rate of a mile a minute," as he told himself. Up the trail came the pair, after some minutes. Tom crouched flat behind his boulder. "Great! I hope they'll halt within a few feet and go on talking about the things that I want to hear---_must_ hear!" quivered Reade. It was provoking! Black and Bad Pete passed so close, yet the only sound from either of them, while within earshot, was a chuckle from Pete. "That's right! Laugh," gritted disappointed Tom. "Laughing is in your line! You're planning, somehow, to put the big laugh over the whole line of the S.B. & L. railroad. If I could only hear a little more I might be able to turn the laugh on you!" The pair went on out of sight. Tom waited where he was for more than half an hour. "Now, the coast is surely clear," thought Reade at last. He rose and started campward. "The soft-foot, the rubber shoe won't work now," Tom decided. "If I were to go along as if trying not to run into anyone, and that pair got first sight of me, it would make them suspicious. I haven't been eavesdropping---oh, no! I'm merely out taking a night stroll to ease my nerves." Therefore the cub chief puckered his lips, emitting a cheery whistling as he trudged along up the trail. As it happened the pair whom Tom sought had not yet parted. From behind a boulder a man stepped out in his path. From the other side of the boulder another man moved in behind him. "Out for the air, Reade?" asked the sneering voice of 'Gene Black. "Hello, Black---is that you?" "Now, Black," broke in the voice of Bad Pete, "you wanted this cub, and he's all yours! What are you going to do with him?" CHAPTER XV BLACK'S PLOT OPENS WITH A BANG "Some mistake here, gentlemen," interjected Tom Reade coolly. "Unless I'm very badly informed I don't belong to either of you. If anyone owns me, then I belong to the S.B. & L." "I told you I'd make you settle with me for throwing me out of the camp," remarked Black disagreeably. "You're not out yet---more's the pity," Tom retorted. "You will be, however, as soon as the paymaster arrives." "You're wrong," jeered 'Gene. "You're out---from this minute!" "What do you mean?" Tom inquired, looking Black steadily in the eye. Yet the young chief engineer had a creepy realization of just what the pair _did_ mean. Black must have confederates somewhere in the mountains near. It was evidently the rascal's intention to seize Tom and carry him away where he would be held a prisoner until he had lost all hope of regaining his position at the head of the railroad's field force. "You say that I'll be thrown out of camp very soon," sneered Black. "The fact is, you are not going back to camp." "What's going to stop me?" Reade inquired, with no sign of fear. "You're not going back to camp!" Black insisted. "Someone has been giving you the wrong tip," smiled Tom. He started forward, brushing past Black. It was mainly a pretense, for Reade had no notion but that he would be stopped. With a savage cry Black seized him by the shoulders. Tom made a quick turn, shaking the fellow off. While he was thus occupied Bad Pete slipped about, and now confronted Reade. The muzzle of a revolver was pressed against the young engineer's belt. "Hoist your hands!" ordered Pete warningly. Tom obeyed, though he hoisted his hands only as far as his mouth. Forming a megaphone, he gave vent to a loud yell of: "Roo-rup! roo-rup! roo-rup!" It was one of the old High School yells of the good old Gridley days---one of the yells sometimes used as a signal of distress by famous old Dick & Co., of which Tom Reade had been a shining member. On the still air of the mountain night that yell traveled far and clearly. It was a call of penetrating power, traveling farther than its sound would suggest. "You do that again, you young coyote, and I'll begin to pump!" growled Bad Pete savagely. "I won't need to do it again," Tom returned. "Wait a few minutes, and you'll see." "Shall I drop him, Black?" inquired Pete. 'Gene Black was about to answer in the affirmative, when a sound up the trail caught his attention. "There's someone coming," snarled Black, using his keen powers of hearing. "Wait and I'll introduce you," mocked Tom Reade. "We won't wait. Neither will you," retorted Black. "You'll come with us. About face and walk fast!" "I'm not going your way tonight," replied Reade calmly. "If he doesn't obey every order like a flash, Pete, then you pull the trigger and wind this cub up." "All right," nodded Pete. "Cub, you heard what Black said?" "Yes," replied Tom, looking at Pete with smiling eyes. "Then come along," ordered Black, seizing Tom by one arm. "I won't!" Tom declared flatly. "You know what refusal means. Pete is steady on the trigger." "Is he?" asked Reade coolly. Watching like a cat through his sleepy-looking eyes, Reade suddenly shot his right hand across his abdomen in such fashion as to knock away the muzzle of the revolver. Bad Pete felt himself seized in a football tackle that had been the terror of more than one opposing High School football player. Crash! Pete struck the ground, Reade on top of him. 'Gene Black darted to the aid of his companion, but shrank back as he caught the glint of the revolver that Tom had twisted out of the hand of the bad man. "Duck, Black!" warned Tom, in a quiet tone that nevertheless had a deadly note in it. "Where are you?" called the voice of Harry Hazelton, not two hundred yards up the trail now. "Here!" called Tom. "Wow-ow-ow! Whoop!" yelled a chorus of college boys. It all took place in a very few seconds. Black, hesitating whether or not to close with Reade, decided on flight. He turned and fled. Whizz-zz-zz! The sound was made by the captured revolver as Tom, leaping to his feet, threw it as far from him as he could. It sailed through space, next disappearing over the edge of a steep precipice. "What's your hurry, Peter?" drawled Reade, as, jerking Bad Pete to his feet, he planted a kick that sent the bad man down the trail a dozen feet. Tom started after Pete, intent on another kick. Bad Pete sped down the trail blindly. Like most of his gun-play kind, he had little courage when deprived of his implement of murder. "What's up, Tom?" demanded Harry Hazelton, leaping to the spot. "What's the row, chief?" asked one of the university boys eagerly. "Anyone you want us to catch? Whoop! Lead the way to the running track while we show you our best time!" "There's nothing to be done, I think," laughed Tom. "Do you all know Black by sight?" "Yes," came the answer from a score of throats. "Well," Tom continued, "if any of you ever catch sight of him in the camp again you are hereby authorized to run him out by the use of any kind of tactics that won't result fatally." On the way up the trail Tom told the rescue party something about the late affair. However, Reade referred to it only as a personal quarrel, refraining from making any mention of the treachery of Black and of the plots of which that treacherous engineer was a part. "If you've many friends like that one, chief, you had better strap a gun on to your belt." "I don't like revolver carrying," Tom replied bluntly. "It always makes a coward of a fellow." Two mornings later the telegraph wire, one end of which now rested in a tent in camp, brought word that President Newnham was at the construction camp, and would be along in the course of the day. Tom, Harry and the draughtsmen were the only engineers in camp at the hour when the message arrived. "Big doings coming our way!" announced Tom, after he had broken the news to the others. "Is Mr. Newnham likely to make much of a shake-up?" asked Watson, one of the college-boy draughtsmen. "I've never met him," Tom answered, "and I don't know. We're going along at grand old speed, and Mr. Newnham had better let things run just as they're going now, if he wants to see the S.B. & L. open for traffic within charter time." "He may give all of us university boys the swift run," laughed another of the draughtsmen. "I don't believe it," Tom replied. "The added help that you fellows have given us has enabled us to double our rush forward. I've a notion that President Newnham is a man of great common sense." "How are the sick men this morning," inquired Harry. "Is either one of them fit to talk with the president?" "Doc Gitney says he won't allow any caller within a thousand feet of his patients," Tom smiled. "And Doc seems to be a man of his word." Both Mr. Thurston and Mr. Blaisdell were now weakly conscious, in a half-dazed sort of way. Their cases were progressing favorably on the whole, though it would be weeks ere either would be fit to take charge of affairs. The camp had been moved forward, so as to leave the sick men about a fifth of a mile away from the scenes of camp activity. This insured quiet for them until they were able to endure noise once more. "You'll be amazingly busy until the president gets here, I take it," remarked Bushrod, another college boy, without glancing up from his drawing table. "Yes," drawled Tom, with a smile. "When you get time to breathe look out of the door and see what I'm doing." Tom walked over to his favorite seat, a reclining camp chair that he had placed under a broad shade tree. Seating himself, the cub chief opened a novel that he had borrowed from one of the college boys. "It looks lazy," yawned Tom, "but what can I do? I've hustled the corps, but I'm up with them to the last minute of work they've done. There is nothing more I can do until they bring me more work. I might ride out and see how the fellows are coming along in the field, but I was out there yesterday, and I know all they're doing, and everyone of their problems. Besides, if I rode afield, I'd miss Mr. Newnham." So he opened the book and read for an hour. Then he glanced up as a stranger on horseback rode into camp. "Tell me where I can find Mr. Reade," said the new arrival. "You're looking at hire," Tom replied. "No, son; I want your father," explained the horseman. "If you go on horseback it will take you months to reach him," Tom explained. "My father lives 'way back east." "But I want the chief engineer of this outfit," insisted the stranger. "Then you're at the end of your journey." "Don't tell me, young man, that you're the chief engineer," protested the horseman. "No," Tom admitted modestly. "I'm only the acting chief. Hold on. If you think I'm not responsible for that statement you might ask any of the fellows over in the headquarters tent." At that moment Harry Hazelton thrust his head out through the doorway. "Young man," hailed the stranger, "I want to find the chief." "Reach out your hand, and you can touch him on the shoulder," answered Hazelton, and turned back. "I know I don't look entirely trustworthy," grinned Tom, "but I've been telling you the truth." "Then, perhaps," continued the stranger, looking keenly at the cub engineer, "you'll know why I'm here. I'm Dave Fulsbee." "You're mighty welcome, then," cried Tom, reaching out his hand. "I've been wondering where you were." "I came as soon as I could get the wagon-load of equipment together," grinned Fulsbee. "Where is the wagon?" "Coming along up the trail. It will be here in about twenty minutes." "I'll be glad to see your equipment, and to set you at work as soon as we're ready," Reade went on. "Harry, show Mr. Fulsbee the tent we've set aside for himself and his helper." "Who is that party?" questioned Watson, as Hazelton started off with the newcomer in tow. "Oh, just a new expert that we're taking on," Tom drawled. Ten minutes later all other thoughts were driven from Reade's mind. A mountain wagon was sighted coming up the trail, drawn by a pair of grays. The stout gentleman, on the rear seat, dressed in the latest fashion, even to his highly polished shoes, must surely be all the way from Broadway. "Mr. Newnham?" queried Tom, advancing to the wagon as it halted. "Yes; is Mr. Reade here?" "You're speaking to him, sir," smiled the cub engineer. Mr. Newnham took a quick look, readjusted his spectacles, and looked once more. Tom bore the scrutiny calmly. "I expected to find a very young man here, Mr. Reade, but you're considerably younger than I had expected. Yet Howe, in charge of the construction corps, tells me that you've been hustling matters at this field survey end. How are you, Reade?" Mr. Newnham descended from the wagon, at once holding out his hand. "I'm very comfortable, thank you, sir," Tom smiled. "You're dreadfully busy, I'm sure," continued the president of the S.B. & L. "In fact, Reade, I feel almost guilty in coming here and taking up your time when you've such a drive on. Don't let me detain you. I can go right on into the field and talk with you there." "It won't be necessary, sir," Tom answered, with another smile. "I'm not doing anything in particular." "Nothing in particular? Why, I thought-----" "I don't do any tearing around myself," laughed Reade. "Since you were kind enough to make me acting chief engineer here I've kept the other fellows driving pretty hard, and I have every bit of work done right up to the minute. Yet, as for myself, I have little to do, most of the day, except to sit in a camp easy chair, or else I ride a bit over the ground and see just where the fellows are working." "You take it mighty easily," murmured President Newnham. "A chief may, if he has the sense to know how to work his subordinates," Tom continued. "I don't believe, sir, that you'll find any fault with the way matters have gone forward." "Let me see the latest reports," urged Mr. Newnham. "Certainly, sir, if you'll come into the head-quarters tent." Leading the way into the tent where Harry Hazelton and his draughting force were at work, Tom announced: "Gentlemen, Mr. Newnham, president of the S.B. & L., wishes to look over the reports and the maps with me. You may lay off until called back to work." As the others filed out of the tent, Tom made Harry a sign to remain. Then the three went over the details of what the field survey party was doing. "From all I can see," remarked President Newnham, "you have done wonderfully well, Reade. I can certainly find no fault with Tim Thurston for recommending that you be placed in charge. Thurston will certainly be jealous when he gets on his feet again. You have driven the work ahead in faster time than Thurston himself was able to do." "It's very likely, sir," replied Tom Reade, "that I have had an easier part of the country to work through than Mr. Thurston had. Then, again, the taking on of the engineer student party from the State University has enabled us to get ahead with much greater speed." "I wonder why Thurston never thought to take on the students," murmured Mr. Newnham. Bang! sounded an explosion, a mile or two to the westward. "I didn't know that you were doing any blasting, Reade," observed the president of the S.B. & L. "Neither did I, sir," Tom replied, rising and listening. Bang! bang! bang! sounded a series of sharp reports. Tom ran out into the open Mr. Newnham following at a slower gait. Bang! bang! bang! "Hi, there, Riley!" roared Tom promptly. "Saddle two horses as quickly as you can. Harry, make ready to follow with me as soon as the horses are ready." "Is anything wrong?" inquired the president. He was answered by more explosions in the distance. "I'm afraid so," Tom muttered, showing his first trace of uneasiness. "However, I don't want to say, Mr. Newnham, until I've investigated." Before the horses were ready Tom descried, half a mile away, on a clear bit of trail, a horseman riding in at a furious gallop. "There comes a messenger, Mr. Newnham," Tom went on. "We'll soon know just what the trouble is." "Trouble?" echoed Mr. Newnham, in astonishment. "Then you believe that is the word, do you?" "I'm afraid, Mr. Newnham, that you've reached here just in time to see some very real trouble," was Reade's quick answer. "But wait just two minutes, sir, and we'll have exact information. Guessing won't do any good." Once or twice, through the trees, they caught sight of the on-rushing rider. Then Jack Rutter, a big splotch of red on the left sleeve of his shirt, rode hard into camp. "Reade," he shouted, "we're ambushed! Hidden scoundrels have been firing on us." "You've ordered all the men in?" called Tom, as Rutter reined up beside him. "Every man of them," returned Jack. "Poor Reynolds, of the student party, is rather seriously hit, I'm afraid. Some of the fellows are bringing him in." "You're hit yourself," Tom remarked. "What? That little scratch?" demanded Rutter scornfully. "Don't count me as a wounded man, Reade. There are some firearms in this camp. I want to get the men armed, as far as the weapons will go, and then I want to go back and smoke out the miserable rascals!" "It won't be wise, Jack," Tom continued coolly. "You'll find that there are too many of the enemy. Besides, you won't have to fatigue yourselves by going back over the trail. The scoundrels will be here, before long. They doubtless intend to wipe out the camp." "Assassins coming to wipe out the camp?" almost exploded President Newnham. "Reade, this is most extraordinary!" "It is---very," Tom assented dryly. "But who can the villains be?" "A picked-up gang of gun-fighters, sent here to blow this camp off the face of the earth, since that is the only way that the backers of the rival road can find to set us back," Tom rejoined. "If they drive us away from here, they'll attack the construction force next!" CHAPTER XVI SHUT OFF FROM THE WORLD Five horsemen belonging to the field party rode in furiously, Matt Rice at their head. "It's a shame," yelled Rice, as he threw himself from his horse. "I'd have stayed behind---so would the others---if we had had rifles with us. The scoundrels kept up a fire at a quarter of a mile range. Then we passed the men who are carrying Reynolds---they're almost here now---but it wouldn't have done any good for us to stand by them. We'd have made the other party only a bigger mark. Where are the revolvers, Reader? We've got to make a stand here. We can't run away and leave our camp to fall into their hands." "We're not going to run away," said Reade grimly. "But I'll tell you what a half dozen of you can do. Hustle for shovels and dig a deep hole here. This gentleman is Mr. Newnham, president of the company that employs us. If the camp is attacked we can't afford to have the president of the road killed." "Mr. Newnham would do far better to ride down the trail as fast as he can go, and try to join the construction camp," offered Rutter. The president of the S.B. & L. had been silent during the last few exciting moments. But now he opened his mouth long enough to reply very quickly: "Mr. Newnham hasn't any thoughts of flight. I am not a fighting man, and never saw a shot fired in anger in my life, but I'm going to stand my ground in my own camp." "Dig the hole, anyway," ordered Tom. "We'll want a safe place to put young Reynolds. We can't afford to leave him exposed to fire." "Where are the revolvers?" Rice insisted, as others started to get shovels and dig in a hurry. "Oh, never mind the revolvers," replied Tom. "We won't use 'em, anyway. We can't, for they wouldn't carry far enough to put any of the enemy in danger." "Mr. Reade," remarked Mr. Newnham, in a quiet undertone, "does it occur to you that you are making no preparations to defend the camp! That, in fact, you seem wholly indolent in the matter?" "Oh, no; I'm not indolent, sir," smiled Tom. "You'll find me energetic enough, sir, I imagine, when the need for swift work comes." "Of course you couldn't foresee the coming of any such outrage as this," Mr. Newnham continued. "Oh, I rather guessed that this sort of thing was coming," Tom confessed. "You guessed it---and yet the camp has been left undefended? You haven't taken any steps to protect the company's rights and property at this point?" gasped Mr. Newnham. "You will find, sir, that I am not wholly unprepared," Reade remarked dryly, while the corners of his mouth drew down grimly. Tom was apparently the only one in camp, after the excitement started, who had noted that Dave Fulsbee, at the first shots, had leaped to his horse and vanished down the trail to the eastward. At this moment a party of a dozen, headed by Professor Coles, came in on foot, bearing young Reynolds with them. "Harry, mount one of the saddled horses and rush down yonder for Doc Gitney," Tom ordered. "Give him your horse to come back on. He must see to young Reynolds promptly." Some of the field party came in on horseback, followed soon by still others on foot. Many of the field engineering party, in their haste, had left their instruments, rods and chains behind. Tom, after diving into and out of the headquarters tent, held up a pair of powerful binocular field glasses. With these he took sweeping views of the near-by hills to the westward. "The scoundrels haven't gotten in at close quarters yet, sir," Reade reported to President Newnham. "At least, I can't make out a sign of them on the high ground that commands this camp." "This whole business of an armed attack on us is most incomprehensible to me," remarked Mr. Newnham. "I know, of course, that the W.C. & A. haven't left a stone unturned to defeat our efforts in getting our road running within the limits set in the charter. However, the W.C. & A. people are crazy to send armed assassins against us in the field in this fashion. No matter, now, whether we finish the road on time, this rascally work by the opposition will defeat their hopes of getting the charter away from us." "It might prevent them from doing so, sir," Tom rejoined quietly, "if you were able to prove that the scoundrels who fired on our engineering parties this morning were really employed by the W.C. & A. railroad crowd." "Prove it?" snorted the man from Broadway. "Who else would have any interest in blocking us?" "Would that statement go in court, or before a legislature?" Tom pressed. "No, it wouldn't," President Newnham admitted thoughtfully. "I see the point, Reade. After the scoundrels have done their worst against us, they can disperse, vanishing among the hills, and the W.C. & A. people will simply deny that they were behind the attack, and will call upon us to prove it." "Not only that, sir," continued the cub chief engineer, "but I doubt if any of the officials of the W.C. & A. have any real knowledge that such a move is contemplated. This trick proceeds from the fertile mind of some clever, well-paid scoundrel who is employed in the opposition railroad's gloom department. It is a cleverly thought-out scheme to make us lose three or four days of work, which will be enough to prevent us from finishing the road on time. So, the enemy think that we must lose the charter, sir." "That trick will never work," declared Mr. Newnham angrily. "Reade, there are courts, and laws. If the State of Colorado doesn't protect us in our work, then we can't be held to am count for not finishing within a given time." "That's as the legislature may decide, I imagine, sir," hazarded the young engineer. "There are powerful political forces working to turn this road's charter over to the W.C. & A. crowd. Your company's property, Mr. Newnham, is entitled to protection from the state, of course. The state, however, will be able to reply that the authorities were not notified, and could not send protection to us." "But we have a telegraph running from here out into the world!" cried the man from Broadway way, wheeling like a flash. "Reade, we're both idiots not to have remembered, at the first shots, to send an urgent message to Denver. Where's your operating tent?" "Over there. I'll take you there, sir," offered Tom, after pointing. "Still it won't do any good, Mr. Newnham, to think of telegraphing." "Not do us any good?" echoed the other, aghast. "What nonsense are you talking, Reade? If we are hindered the feet of our having wired to the governor of the state will be our first proof of having appealed to the state for protection. Can't you see that, Reade?" The pair now turned in at the operator's tent. "Operator," said Reade, to the young man seated before the keys on a table, "this gentleman man is President Newnham, of the S.B. & L. Send any messages that he dictates." "Get Denver on the wire," commanded Mr. Newnham. "Hustle!" Click-click-click! rattled the sounder. "It won't do a particle of good," Tom uttered calmly. "'Gene Black, the engineer discharged from this camp, is serving the enemy. Black has brains enough to see that our wire was cut before he started a thing moving." Click-click-click! spoke the sounder again. "I can't get a thing," explained the operator. "I can't even get a response from the construction camp. Mr. Reade must be right---our wire has been cut and we're shut off from the outside world." CHAPTER XVII THE REAL ATTACK BEGINS Hearing the moving wheels of a wagon on the trail, Tom looked outside, then seized Mr. Newnham's arm rather roughly. "Come along, sir, and come quickly, if you want to see something that will beat a carload of telegrams," urged the cub engineer. Having gotten the president of the road outside, Tom let go of his arm and raced on before that astonished man from Broadway. "Here, you fellows," called Tom, almost gayly, as he ran to where engineers and chainmen men were standing in little groups, talking gloomily over the forenoon's work. "Get in line, here---a whole crowd of you!" Dave Fulsbee was now riding briskly toward the centre of the camp, ahead of the wagon for which he had gone down the trail. Laughing quietly, Tom hustled group after group of young men into one long line. "Hold up your right hands!" called out the young cub engineer. Wondering, his subordinates obeyed. Fulsbee reined up, dismounting before the line. "They're all ready for you, friend," called Tom gayly. "Listen, boys!" commanded Dave Fulsbee, as he faced the line on foot. "You do each and all of you, singly and severally, hereby swear that you will serve truly and well as special deputy sheriffs, and obey all lawful orders, so help you God?" Almost in complete silence the hands fell as their owners nodded. Both the engineers and rodmen felt a trifle dazed. Why was this solitary deputy sheriff before them, and with what did he expect them to fight! Were they to stand and throw rocks at an enemy armed with rifles? But just then the wagon was driven in front of them. "Hustle the cases out, boys! Get 'em open!" commanded Dave, though he spoke without excitement. "Forty rifles and ten thousand cartridges, all borrowed from the National Guard of the State. Get busy! If the coyotes down to the westward try to get busy around here we will talk back to them!" "Whoop!" yelled the college boys. They pushed and crowded about the wooden cases that were now unloaded. "See here," boomed in the deep voice of Professor Coles, "I wasn't sworn in, and I now insist that I, too, be sworn." "Mr. Newnham, tell the professor that fighting is a boy's business, and that there isn't any call for him to risk himself," appealed Tom. "There are plenty of youngsters here to do the fighting and to take the chances." "Surely, there appear to be enough men," chuckled President Newnham, who, since he realized that rifles and ammunition were at hand, appeared to be wonderfully relieved. "Professor, don't think of running yourself into any danger. Look on, with me." "Rifles are all given out, now, anyway," called Dave Fulsbee coolly. "Now, youngsters, I'm going to show you where to station yourselves. Mr. Reade, have you seen anything through the glasses that looks interesting?" "By Jove," Tom admitted, flushing guiltily, "I quite forgot to keep the lenses turned on the hills to the west." He now made good for his omission, while Fulsbee led his young men away, stationing them in hiding places along the westward edge of the camp. Each man with a rifle was ordered not to rise from the ground, or to show himself in any way, and not to fire unless orders were given. Then Dave hurried back to the wagon. Something else was lifted out, all canvas covered, and rushed forward to a point just behind a dense clump of bushes. "Reade, I want to apologize to you," cried the man from Broadway, moving quickly over to where Tom stood surveying the hills beyond through his glass. "I thought, for a few minutes, that you had suspected some such rascally work afoot, and that you had failed to take proper precautions." "If I had failed, sir," murmured Tom, without removing the glass from before his eyes, "you would have arrived just in time, sir, to turn out of the camp a man who wasn't fit to be in charge. Yet it was only accident, sir, that led me to suspect what might be in the air." Thereupon Tom hastily recounted to the president of the company the story of how he had accidentally overheard fragments of talk between 'Gene Black and Bad Pete. "That gave me a hint of how the wind was blowing," Tom continued, "though I couldn't make out enough of their talk, on either occasion, to learn just what was happening. I telegraphed to the nearest town that had a sheriff in it, and that put me in touch with Fulsbee. Then Dave, over the wire, offered to bring arms here and to help us to defend our camp." "Mr. Reade," exclaimed President Newnham hoarsely, "you are a wonderful young man! While seeming to be idle yourself, you have rushed the work through in splendid shape." Even when our enemies plot in the dark, and plan incredible outrages against us, you fully inform yourself of their plans. When the cowards strike you are ready to meet them, force for force. You may be only a cub engineer, but you have an amazing genius for the work in which chance has placed you out here." "You may be guilty, Mr. Newnham, of giving me far more credit than I deserve," laughed Tom gently. "In the matter of finding out the enemy's designs, I didn't, and I don't know fully yet what the other side intends to do to us. What I did learn was by accident." "Very few other young men would have been equal to making the greatest and best use of what accident revealed," insisted Mr. Newnham warmly. Harry Hazelton came now, from the hole in the ground, to report that Dr. Gitney had done all he could for the comfort of poor young Reynolds. "Gitney says that Reynolds ought to come along all right, as far as the mere wound itself is concerned," Hazelton added. "What will have to be looked out for is suppuration. If pus forms in and around the wound it may carry Reynolds off, for there are no hospital conveniences to be had in this wild neck of the woods." "Is the doctor staying with Reynolds?" Tom asked, still using the glasses on the hilly country that lay ahead. "No; he has gone back to Mr. Thurston and Mr. Blaisdell," Hazelton answered. "Doc says he'll have to be with them to quiet them in case the firing gets close. He says both men will become excited and try to jump out of bed and come over here. Doc says he's going to strap 'em both down." "Dr. Gitney may be badly needed here, if a fight opens," Tom mused aloud. "He says, if we need him, to send for him." "Come through a hot fire?" Tom gasped. "Surely! Doc Gitney is a Colorado man, born and bred. He doesn't mind a lead shower when it comes in the line of duty," laughed Harry. "Now, if you're through using me as a messenger, I'm going to find a rifle." "You won't succeed," Tom retorted. "Every rifle in camp already has an amateur soldier behind it." "Just my luck!" growled Harry. "You're a good, husky lad," Tom continued. "If you want to be of real use, just lie down hug the earth, take good care not to be hit, and-----" "Fine and manly!" interjected Hazelton with contempt. "Now, don't try to be a hero," urged Tom teasingly. "There are altogether too many green, utterly inexperienced heroes here at present. Be useful, Harry, old chum, and let those who are good for nothing else be heroes." "Following your own advice?" asked Hazelton. "Is that why you haven't a rifle yourself?" "Why do I need a rifle?" demanded Reade. "I'm a non-combatant." "You-----" "Box the chatter, Harry, and ship it east," Tom interposed, showing signs of interest. Then, in a louder voice, Tom called: "Dave Fulsbee!" "Here," answered the deputy sheriff from his hiding place in the brush. "Do you see that bald knob of rock ahead, to your left; about a quarter of a mile away?" "I do." "I make out figures crawling to the cover of the line of brush just to the right of the bald knob," Tom continued. "There are eight of them, I think." "I see figures moving there," Dave answered. Then, in a low voice, the deputy instructed the engineers on each side of him. "I see half a dozen more figures---heads, rather---showing just at the summit line of the rock itself," went on Reade. "Yes; I make 'em," answered Fulsbee, after a long, keen look. Again more instructions were given to the engineers. "Say, I've _got_ to have a rifle," insisted Harry nervously. "You know, I always have been 'cracked, on target shooting. This is the best practical chance that I'll ever have." "You'll have to wait your turn, Harry," Tom urged soothingly. "My turn?" "Yes; wait until one of our fellows is badly hit. Then you can take up his rifle and move into his place on the line. When you're hit, then I can have the rifle." Hazelton made a face, though he said nothing. Meanwhile Fulsbee's assistant, the man who had driven the wagon into camp, stood silent, motionless, behind the canvas-covered object in the bushes just behind the engineer's fighting line. "Now, if one of you galoots dares to fire before he gets the word," sounded Dave Fulsbee's warning voice in the ominous calm that followed, "I'll snatch the offender out of the line and give him a good, sound spanking. The only man for me is the man who has the nerve to wait when he's being shot at." Crack! Far up on the bald knob a single shot sounded, and a bullet struck the ground about six feet from where Tom Reade stood with the binocular at his eyes. Then there came a volley from the right of the rock, followed by one from the rock itself. "Easy, boys," cautioned Fulsbee, as the bullets tore up the ground back of the firing line. "I'll give you the word when the time comes." Another volley sounded. Bullets tore up the ground near President Newnham, and one leaden pellet carried off that gentleman's soft hat. "Please lie down, Mr. Newnham," begged Tom, turning around. Now that the fight had opened the cub chief saw less use for the binocular. "We can't have you hit, sir. You're the head of the company, please remember." "I don't like this place, but I'm only one human life here," the man from Broadway replied quietly, gravely. "If other men so readily risk their lives for the property of my associates and myself, then I'm going to expose myself at least as much as these young men ahead of us do." "Just one shot apiece," sounded Dave Fulsbee's steady voice. "Fire where you've been told." It was an irregular volley that ripped out from the defenders of the camp. Half of the marksmen fired to the right of the rook, the others at its crest. Right on top of this came another volley, fired from some new point of attack. It filled the air at this end of the camp with bullets. "Livin' rattlers!", cried Dave Fulsbee, leaping to his feet. "That's the real attack. Reade, locate that main body and turn us loose on 'em. If you don't, the fellows in the real ambush will soon make a sieve of this camp. There must be a regiment of 'em!" CHAPTER XVIII WHEN THE CAMP GREW WARM President Newnham had prudently decided to lie down flat on the ground. Nor was it any reflection on his courage that he did so. He was taking no part in the fight, and the leaden tornado that swept the camp from some unknown point was almost instantly repeated. At the same time the marksmen on and at the right of the bald knob continued to fire. The camp defenders were in a criss-cross of fire that might have shaken the nerves of an old and tried soldier. Tom watched the ground as bullets struck, trying to decide their original course from the directions in which the dust flew. Then he swung around to the right. With modern smokeless powder there was no light, bluish haze to mark the firing line of the new assailants. Tom Reade had to search and explore with his binocular glass until he could make out moving heads, waving arms. "I've found 'em, Fulsbee!" young Reade cried suddenly, above the noise of rifles within a few yards of where they stood, as the engineers made the most of their chances to fire. "Turn the same way that I'm looking. See that blasted pine over there to your right, about six hundred there to the gully southeast of the tree. Got the line? Well, along there there's a line of men hidden. Through the glass I can sometimes make out the flash of their rifles. Take the glass yourself, and see." Dave Fulsbee snatched the binoculars, making a rapid survey. "Reade," he admitted, "you have surely located that crowd." "Now, go after them with your patent hay rake," quivered Tom, feeling the full excitement of the thing in this tantalizing cross fire. Then the cub added, with a sheepish grin: "I hope you'll scare 'em, instead of hitting 'em, Dave." Fulsbee stepped over to his assistant. Between them they swung the machine gun around, the assistant wrenching off the canvas cover. Fulsbee rapidly sighted the piece for six hundred yards. The assistant stood by to feed belts of cartridges, while Dave took his post at the firing mechanism. Cr-r-r-r-rack! sounded the machine gun, spitting forth a pelting storm of lead. As the piece continued to disgorge bullets at the rate of six hundred a minute, Dave, a grim smile on his lips, swung the muzzle of the piece so as to spread the fire along the entire line of the main ambush. "Take the glass," Tom roared in Harry's ear, above the din. "See how Fulsbee is throwing up dust and bits of rock all along that rattled line." Hazelton watched, his face showing an appreciative grin. "It has the scoundrels scared and going!" Hazelton yelled back. Fully fifteen hundred cartridges did the machine gun deliver up and down that line. Then, suddenly, Dave Fulsbee swung the gun around, delivering a hailstorm of bullets against the bald knob rock and the bushes to the right of it. "There's the answer!" gleefully uttered Hazelton, who had just handed the glass back to his chum. The "answer" was a fluttering bit of white cloth tied to a rifle and hoisted over the bushes at the right of the bald knob. "Who do you suppose is holding the white cloth?" chuckled Tom. "I can't guess," Harry confessed. "Our old and dangerous friend Peter," Tom laughed. "Bad Pete!" "No; Scared Pete." There was a sudden twinkle in Hazelton's eyes as he espied Dave Fulsbee's rifle lying on the ground beside the machine gun. In another instant Harry had that rifle and was back at Tom's side. Harry threw open the magazine, making sure that there were cartridges in the weapon. Then he dropped to one knee, taking careful sight in the direction of the white flag. "You idiot---what are you doing?" blazed Tom. The fire from the camp had died out. That from the assailants beyond had ceased at least thirty seconds earlier. One sharp report broke the hush that followed. "Who's doing that work? Stop it!" ordered Fulsbee, turning wrathfully. "I'm through," grinned Harry meekly. "What do you mean by shooting at a flag of truce?" demanded the deputy sheriff angrily. "I didn't," Harry argued, laying the rifle down on the ground. "I sent one in with my compliments, to see whether the fellow with the white rag would get the trembles. I guess he did, for the white rag has gone out of sight." "They may start the firing again," uttered Dave Fulsbee. "They'll feel that you don't respect their flag of truce." "I didn't feel a heap of respect for the fellow that held up the white flag," Hazelton admitted, with another grin. "It was Bad Pete, and I wanted to see what his nerve was like when someone else was doing the shooting and he was the target." "Peter simply flopped and dropped his gun, Tom declared. "Say," muttered Harry, his face showing real concern, "I hope I didn't hit him." "Did you aim at him?" demanded Tom. "I did not." "Then there _is_ some chance that Peter was hit," Tom confessed. "Harry, when you're shooting at a friend, and in a purely hospitable way, always aim straight for him. Then the poor fellow will have a good chance to get off with a whole skin!" "Cut out that line of talk," ordered Hazelton, his face growing red. "Back in the old home days, Tom, you've seen me do some great shooting." "With the putty-blower---yes," Tom admitted, with a chuckle. "Say, wasn't Old Dut Jones, of the Central Grammar, rough on boys who used putty-blowers in the schoolroom?" "If Pete was hit, it wasn't my shot that did it," muttered Harry, growing redder still. "I aimed for the centre of that white rag. If we ever come across the rag we'll find my bullet hole through it. That was what I hit." Deputy Dave's assistant was now cleaning out the soot-choked barrels of the machine gun, that the piece might be fit for use again as soon as the barrels had cooled. "I reckon," declared Dave, "that our friends have done their worst. It's my private wager that they're now doing a foot race for the back trails." "Is any one of our fellows hit?" called Tom, striding over to the late firing line. "Anyone hit? If so, we must take care of him at once." Tom went the length of the line, only to discover that none of the camp's defenders had been injured, despite the shower of bullets that had been poured in during the brief but brisk engagement. Three of the engineers displayed clothing that had been pierced by bullets. "Dave," called Tom, "how soon will it be safe to send over to the late strongholds and find out whether any of Naughty Peter's friends have any hurts that demand Doc Gitney's attention?" "Huh! If any of the varmints are hit, I reckon they can wait," muttered Fulsbee. "Not near this camp!" retorted Reade with spirit. "If any human being around here has been hurt he must have prompt care. How soon will it be safe to start?" "I don't know how soon it will be safe," Dave retorted. "I want to take about a half dozen of the young fellows, on horseback, and ride over just to see if we can draw any fire. That will show whether the rascals have quit their ambushes." "If they haven't," mocked Tom, "they'll also show your little party some new gasps in the way of excitement." Nevertheless Reade did not object when Fulsbee called for volunteers. If any new firing was to be encountered it was better to risk a small force rather than a large one. Harry Hazelton was one of the six volunteers who rode out with Deputy Dave. Though they searched the country for miles they did not encounter any of the late raiders. Neither did they find any dead or wounded men. The abandoned transits and other instruments and implements were found and brought back to camp. While this party was absent Tom took Mr. Newnham back to headquarters tent, where he explained, in detail, all that had been accomplished and all that was now being done. Late in the afternoon Dave Fulsbee and his little force returned. Tom listened attentively to the report made by the sheriff's officer. "They've cheated you out of one day's work, anyway," muttered the man from Broadway, rather fretfully. "We can afford to lose the time," Tom answered almost carelessly. "Our field work is well ahead. It's the construction work that is bothering me most. I hope soon to have news as to whether the construction outfit has been attacked." "The wires are all up again, sir," reported the operator, pausing at the doorway of the tent. "The men you sent back have mended all the breaks. I've just heard from the construction camp that none of the unknown scoundrels have been heard from there." "They found you so well prepared here," suggested President Newnham, "that the rascals have an idea that the construction camp is also well guarded. I imagine we've heard the last of the opposition." "Then you're going to be fooled, sir," Tom answered, very decisively. "For my part, I believe that the tactics of the gloom department of the W.C. & A. have just been commenced. Fighting men of a sort are to be had cheap in these mountains, and the W.C. & A. railroad is playing a game that it's worth millions to win. They're resolved that we shan't win. And I, Mr. Newnham, am determined that we shall win!" CHAPTER XIX SHERIFF GREASE DROPS DAVE Tom's prediction came swiftly true in a score of ways. The gloom department of the W.C. & A. immediately busied itself with the public. The "gloom department" is a comparatively new institution in some kinds of high finance circles. Its mission is to throw gloom over the undertakings of a rival concern. At the same time, through such matter as it can manage to have printed in some sorts of newspapers the gloom department seeks to turn the public against its business rivals. That same day news was flashed all over the country that a party of railway engineers, led by a mad deputy sheriff had wantonly fired on a party of travelers who had had the misfortune to get upon the building railway's right of way. In many parts of Colorado a genuine indignation was aroused against the S.B. & L. President Newnham sought to correct the wrong impression, but even his carefully thought out statements were misconstrued. The W.C. & A., though owned mainly abroad, had some clever American politicians of the worst sort in its service. Many of these men were influential to some extent in Colorado. The sheriff of the county was approached and inflamed by some of these politicians, with the result that the sheriff hastened to the field camp, where he publicly dismissed Dave Fulsbee from his force of deputies. The sheriff solemnly closed his fiery speech by demanding Dave's official badge. "That's funny, but don't mind, Dave," laughed Tom, as he witnessed the handing over of the badge. "You won't be out of work." "Won't be out of work, eh?" demanded Sheriff Grease hotly. "Just let him wait and see. There isn't a man in the county who wants Dave Fulsbee about now." "Then what a disappointed crowd they're going to be," remarked Tom pleasantly, "for Mr. Newnham is going to make Dave chief of detectives for the company, at a salary of something like six thousand a year. "He is, oh?" gulped down Sheriff Grease. "I'll bet he won't. I'll protest against that, right from the start." "Dave will be our chief of detectives, if you protest all night and some more in the morning," returned Tom Reade. "And Dave, I reckon, is going to need a force of at least forty men under him. Dave will be rather important in the county, won't he, sheriff, if he has forty men under him who feel a good deal like voting the way that Dave believes? A forty-man boss is quite a little figure in politics, isn't he, sheriff?" Grease turned nearly purple in the face, choking and sputtering in his wrath. "Come along, Dave, and see if that job as chief detective is open today," urged Tom, drawing one arm through Fulsbee's. "If you're interested in knowing the news, sheriff, you might wait." "I'll-----" ground out Grease, gritting his teeth and clenching one fist. Tom waited patiently for the county officer to finish. Then, as he didn't go further, Reade rejoined, half mockingly: "Exactly, sheriff. That's just what I thought you'd do." Then Tom dragged Dave down to the headquarters tent, where they found the president of the road. "Mr. Newnham," began Tom gravely, "the sheriff has just come to camp and has discharged Fulsbee from his force of deputies, just because Fulsbee acted as a real law officer and stopped the raid on the road. I have told Mr. Fulsbee, before Sheriff Grease, that you are going to make him chief of detectives for the road at a salary of about six thousand a year." Mr. Newnham displayed his astonishment very openly, though he did not speak at first. "That's all right," replied President Newnham. "Mr. Fulsbee, do you accept the offer of six thousand as chief detective for the road," "Does a man accept an invitation to eat when he's hungry?" replied Dave rather huskily. "Then it's settled," put in Tom, anxious to clinch the matter, for he had a very shrewd idea that he would need Dave badly ere long. "Now, Mr. Newnham, until we get everything running smoothly, Mr. Fulsbee ought to have a force of about forty men. They will cost seventy-five dollars a month, per man, with an allowance for horses, forage, etc. Hadn't Mr. Fulsbee better get his force together as soon as possible? For I am certain, sir, that the next move by the opposition will be to tear up and blow up our tracks at some unguarded points. At the same time, sir, I feel certain that we can get far more protection from Chief of Detectives Fulsbee's men than from a man like Sheriff Grease." "Reade?" returned President Newnham, "it is plain to be seen that you lose no time in making your plans or in arranging to put them into execution. I imagine you're right, for you've been right in everything so far. So arrange with Mr. Fulsbee for whatever you think may be needed." "Thank you, sir," murmured Tom. Then he signaled Fulsbee to get out of the tent, and followed that new official. "Never hang around, Dave, after you've got what you want," chuckled Tom. "Hello, Mr. Sheriff! This is just a line to tell you that Fulsbee has a steady job with the company, and that he'll need the services of at least forty men, all of whom must be voters in this county. The pay will be seventy-five a month and keep, with extra allowance for horses." Sheriff Grease didn't look much more pleasant than he felt. "Are you homeward bound---when you go?" continued Reade. The sheriff nodded. "Then you might spread the word that men are needed, and tell the best men to apply to Dave Fulsbee, at this camp," suggested Tom. "Be strong on the point that all applicants have to be voters in this county." "I will," nodded the sheriff, choking down his wrath by a great effort. "Dave won't have any trouble in getting good men when I spread the word. You're a mighty good fellow, Dave. I always said it," added the sheriff. "I'm sorry I had to be rough with you, but---but-----" "Of course we understand here that orders from a political boss have to be obeyed," Tom added good-naturedly. "We won't over-blame you, Mr. Grease." The sheriff rode away, Tom's smiling eyes following him. "That touch about your having forty voters at your beck and call must have stuck in the honorable sheriff's crop, Dave," chuckled the cub chief engineer. "I reckon it does," drawled Dave. "A man like Grease can't understand that a man of my kind wouldn't ask any fellow working for him what ticket he voted for on election day. You certainly hit the sheriff hard, Mr. Reade. In the first place, six thousand a year is a lot more money than the sheriff gets himself. Forty voters are fully as many as he can control, for which reason Grease, in his mind's eye, sees me winning his office away from him any day that I want to do so." Ere three days had passed Sheriff Grease had lost fully half of his own force, and some of his controlled voters as well, for many of his deputies flocked to serve under Dave Fulsbee. The rest of the needed detectives also came in, and Dave was soon busy posting his men to patrol the S.B. & L. and protect the workers against any more raids by armed men. After a fortnight student Reynolds recovered sufficiently to be sent to Denver, there to complete his work of recovering from his wound. President Newnham also saw to it that Reynolds was well repaid for his services. The camp moved on. Soon Lineville was sighted from the advanced camp of the engineers. As Lineville was to be the western terminus of the new railroad the work of the field party was very nearly finished. President Newnham, who was all anxiety to see the first train run over the road, remained with the field engineers. "I couldn't sleep at night, if I were anywhere else than here," explained the president, "though I feel assured now that the W.C. & A. will make no more efforts, in the way of violence; to prevent us from finishing the building of the road." "Then you're more trustful than I am," smiled Tom Reade. "What's worrying me most of all is that I can't quite fathom in what way the W.C. & A's gloom department will plan to stop us. That they have some plan---and a rascally one---I'm as certain, sir, as I am that I'm now speaking with you." "Has Fulsbee any suspicions?" inquired Mr. Newnham. "Loads of 'em," declared Tom promptly. "What does he think the W.C. & A. will try to do?" "Dave's suspicions, Mr. Newnham, aren't any more definite than mine. He feels certain, however, that we're going to have a hard fight before we get the road through." "Then I hope the opposition won't be able to prevent us from finishing," murmured Mr. Newnham. "Oh, the enemy won't be able to hinder us," replied Tom confidently. "You have a Fulsbee and a Reade on the job, sir. Don't worry. I'm not doing any real worrying, and I promise you that I'm not going to be beaten." "It will be a genuine wonder if Reade is beaten," reflected Mr. Newnham, watching the cub's athletic figure as Tom walked through the centre of the camp. "I never knew a man of any age who was more resourceful or sure to win than this same cub, Tom Reade, whose very name was unknown to me a few weeks ago. Yet I shiver! I can't help it. Men just as resourceful as Tom Reade are sometimes beaten to a finish!" CHAPTER XX MR. NEWNHAM DROPS A BOMB The field work was done. Yet the field engineers were not dismissed. Instead, they were sent back along the line. The construction gang was still twelve miles out of Lineville, and the time allowed by the charter was growing short. At Denver certain politicians seemed to have very definite information that the S.B. & L. R.R., was not going to finish the building of the road and the operating of the first through train within charter time. Where these politicians had obtained their news they did not take the trouble to state. However, they seemed positive that, under the terms of the charter, the state would take over as much of the railroad as was finished, pay an appraisal price for it, and then turn the road over to the W.C. & A. promoters to finish and use as part of their own railway system. These same politicians, by the way, were a handful of keen, unscrupulous men who derived their whole income from politics, and who had always been identified with movements that the better people of the state usually opposed. Mr. Thurston and his assistant, Blaisdell, were now able to be up and to move about a little, but were not yet able to travel forward to the point that the construction force had now reached. Neither Thurston nor Blaisdell was in fit shape to work, and would not be for some weeks to come. Mr. Newnham, who had learned in these weeks to ride a horse, came along in saddle as Tom and Harry stood watching the field camp that was now being rapidly taken down by the few men left behind. "Idling, as usual, Reade?" smiled the president of the road. "This time I seem to have a real excuse, sir," chuckled Tom. "My work is finished. There isn't a blessed thing that I could do, if I wanted to. By tomorrow I suppose you will be paying me off and letting me go." "Let you go---before the road is running?" demanded Mr. Newnham, in astonishment. "Reade, have you noted any signs of my mind failing lately?" "I haven't, sir." "Then why should you imagine that I am going to let my chief engineer go before the road is in operations" "But I was acting chief, sir, only of the field work." "Reade," continued Mr. Newnham, "I have something to tell you. Thurston has left our employ. So has Blaisdell. They are not dissatisfied in any way, but neither man is yet fit to work. Besides, both are tired of the mountains, and want to go east together as soon as possible and take up some other line of engineering work. So---well, Reade, if you want it, you are now chief engineer of the S.B. & L. in earnest." "Don't trifle with me, sir!" begged Tom incredulously. "I'm too far from home." "No one has ever accused me of being a humorist," replied Mr. Newnham dryly. "Now tell me, Reade, whether you want the post I have offered you?" "Want it?" echoed Tom. "Of course I do. Yet doesn't it seem too 'fresh' in a cub like myself to take such a post?" "You've won it," replied the president. "It's also true that you're only a cub engineer in years, and there are many greater engineers than yourself in the country. You have executive ability, however, Reade. You are able to start a thing, and then put it through on time---or before. The executive is the type of man who is most needed in this or any other country." "Is an executive a lazy fellow who can make others work!" asked Reade. "No; an executive is a man who can choose other men, and can wisely direct them to big achievements. An executive is a director of fine team play. That describes you, Reade. However---you haven't yet accepted the position as chief engineer of the S.B. & L." "I'll end your suspense then, sir," smiled the cub. "I _do_ accept, and with a big capital 'A'." "As to your salary," continued Mr. Newnham, "nothing has been said about that, and nothing need be said until we see whether the road is operating in season to save its charter. If we save our charter and the road, your salary will be in line with the size of the achievement." "If we should lose the charter, sir," Tom retorted, his face clouding, "I don't believe I'd take any interest in the salary question. Money is a fine thing, but the game---the battle---is twenty times more interesting. However, I'm going to predict, Mr. Newnham, that the road WILL operate on time." "I believe you're going to make good, Reade, no matter what a small coterie of politicians at Denver may think. I never met a man who had success stamped more plainly on his face than you have. By the way, I shall ask you to keep Mr. Howe as an assistant. You still have the appointment of one other assistant, in place of Mr. Blaisdell." "I know the fellow I'd like to appoint," cried Tom eagerly. "If you're sure about him, then go ahead and appoint him," responded the president of the S.B. & L. railway. "Hazelton!" proclaimed Tom. "Good, old dependable Harry Hazelton!" "Hazelton would be a wise choice," nodded Mr. Newnham. "Harry!" called Reade, as his chum appeared in the distance. "Come here hustle!" Mr. Newnham turned away as Hazelton came forward. Tom quickly told his chum the news. "I? Assistant chief engineer?" gasped Harry, turning red. "Whew, but that's great! However, I'm not afraid of falling down, Tom, with you to steer me. What's the pay of the new job!" "Not decided," rejoined Tom. "Wait until we get the road through and the charter is safe." "Never mind the wages. The job's the thing, after all!" cried Harry, his face aglow. "Whew! I'll send a letter home tonight with the news." "Make it a small post card, then, concealed under a postage stamp," counseled Reade dryly. "We've work ahead of us---not writing." "What's the first thing you're going to do?" inquired Hazelton. "The first thing will be to get on the job." "You're going back to the construction force?" "I am." "When?" "Well, we start within five minutes." "Whew!" His face still aglow with happiness, Harry Hazelton bounded off to his tent. Tom called to one of the men to saddle two horses, and then followed. "You're going back to the construction camp?" inquired Mr. Newnham, looking in at the doorway. "As fast as horses can take us, sir," Tom replied, as he whipped out a clean flannel shirt and drew it over his head. "I'm going with you," replied Mr. Newnham. "You'll ride fast, if you go with us, sir," called Tom. "I can stand it, if you can, Reade. Your enthusiasm and speed are 'catching,'" replied the president, with a laugh, as he started off to give orders about his horse. "If the president is going with us, then we'll have to take two of Dave Fulsbee's men with us," mused Tom aloud to his chum. "It would never do to have our president captured just before we're ready to open the road to traffic." The orders were accordingly given. Tom then appointed one of the chainmen to command the camp until the construction gang came up. Just seven minutes after he had given the first order, Tom Reade was in saddle. Hazelton was seated on another horse some thirty seconds afterward. The two railroad detectives rode forward, halting near by, and all waited for Mr. Newnham. Nor did the president of the S.B. & L. delay them long. During his weeks in camp in the Rockies the man from Broadway had learned something of the meaning of the word "hustle." As the party started Tom ordered one of the detectives to ride two hundred yards in advance of the party, the other the same distance to the rear. "Set a good pace, and keep it," called Tom along the trail. Shortly after dark the party reached the construction camp, which now numbered about five hundred men. Assistant Chief Engineer Howe appeared more than a little astonished when he learned that Tom Reade was the actual chief engineer of the road. However, the man who had been in charge so far of the construction work made no fuss about being supplanted. "Show me what part of the work you want me to handle," offered Howe, "and you'll find me right with you, Mr. Reade." "Thank you," responded Tom, holding out his hand. "I'm glad you feel no jealousy or resentment. There's just one thing in life for all of us, now, and that is to win the fight." Howe produced the plans and reports, and the three---for Hazelton was of their number---sat up until long after midnight laying out plans for pushing the work faster and harder. At four in the morning, while it was still dark, Tom was up again. He sat at the desk, going over the work once more until half past five o'clock. Then he called Harry and Howe, and the trio of chiefs had a hurried breakfast together. At six in the morning Mr. Newnham appeared, just in time to find Tom and Harry getting into saddle. "Not going to stay behind and sit in an easy chair this morning, Reade?" called the president. "Not this, or any other morning, sir," Tom replied. "You amaze me!" "This construction work requires more personal attention, sir. I may have twenty minutes to dream, in the afternoon, but my mornings are mortgaged each day, from four o'clock on." An hour later Mr. Howe joined Reade and Hazelton in the field. Tom had already prodded three or four foremen, showing them how their gangs were losing time. "If we get the road through on time, and save the charter," Tom called, on leaving each working party, "every laborer and foreman is to have an extra week's pay for his loyalty to us." In every instance that statement brought forth a cheer. "Did Mr. Newnham tell you that you could promise that?" inquired Harry. "No," said Tom shortly. "Then aren't you going a bit far, perhaps!" "I don't care," retorted Tom. "Victory is the winning of millions; defeat is the loss of millions. Do you imagine Mr. Newnham will care about a little thing such as I've promised the men? Harry, our president is a badly worried man, though he doesn't allow himself to show it. Once the road is finished, operating and safe, he won't care what money he has to spend in rewards. He-----" Tom did not finish his words. Instead he dug his heels into his pony, bringing his left hand down hard on that animal's flank. "Yi, yi, yi! Git!" called Tom, bending low over his mount's neck. He drove straight ahead. Hazelton looked astonished for a space of five seconds, then started in pursuit of his chum and chief. It was not long ere Tom reined in, holding up a hand as a signal to Harry to do the same thing. "Here, hold my horse, and stay right here," ordered the young chief. "Tom, what on earth-----" Tom Reade was already a hundred yards away, running in amid the brush. At last he halted, studying the ground earnestly. Then Reade disappeared. "One thing I know, anyway," muttered the puzzled Hazelton, "Tom is not crazy, and he doesn't dash off like that unless he has something real on his mind." The minutes passed. At last Tom came back, walking energetically. He took his horse's bridle and leaded into saddle. "Harry, ride back, hard, and send me two or three of the railroad detectives, unless you happen to meet some of them this side of the camp. I want the men on the rush. Don't fail to tell 'em that." "Any---er---explanations" queried Hazelton. "For you---yes---but don't take the time to pass the explanation on to the men. Just hustle 'em here. When I started my horse forward it was because I caught sight of 'Gene Black's head over the bush tops. I found a few of his footprints, then lost the trail. Send Dave Fulsbee along, too, if you have the luck to see him. I want 'Gene Black hunted down before he does some big mischief. Now---ride!" Harry Hazelton went back over the trail at a gallop. Not until he reached camp did he come upon Fulsbee's men. These he hustled out to find Tom. Two hours later Reade came back over the trail, at a slow jog. The young chief engineer looked more worried than Hazelton had ever seen his chum look before. CHAPTER XXI THE TRAP AT THE FINISH A number of days passed, days full of worry for the young chief engineer. Yet, outwardly, Tom Reade was as good-humored and cheery as ever. He was sure that his eyes had played him no trick, and that he really had seen 'Gene Black in the brush. The presence of that scoundrel persuaded Tom that someone working in the interests of the W.C. & A. Railroad Company was still employing Black in an attempt to block the successful completion of the S.B. & L. Moreover, the news that Dave Fulsbee received from Denver showed that two of the officials of the W.C. & A. were in that city, apparently ready to proceed to get possession of the rival road. Politicians asserted that it was a "cinch" that the new road would fall short of the charter requirement in the matter of time. "All this confidence on the part of the enemy is pretty fair proof that the scoundrels are up to something," Tom told Mr. Newnham. "Or else they're trying to break down our nerve so that we'll fail through sheer collapse," replied the president of the S.B. & L., rubbing his hands nervously. "Reade, why should there be such scoundrels in the world?" "The president is all but completely gone to pieces," Reade confided to his chum. "Say, but I'm glad Mr. Newnham himself isn't the one who has to get the road through in time. If it rested with him I'm afraid he'd fizzle. But we'll pull it through, Harry, old chum---we'll pull it through." "If this thing had to last a month more I'm afraid good old Tom would go to pieces himself," thought Harry, as he watched his friend stride away. "Tom never gets to his cot now before eleven at night, and four thirty in the morning always finds him astir again. I wonder if he thinks he's fooling me by looking so blamed cheerful and talking so confidently. Whew! I'd be afraid for poor old Tom's brain if anything should happen to trip us up." Harry himself was anxious, but he was not downright nervous. He did not feel things as keenly as did his chum; neither was Hazelton directly responsible for the success of the big undertaking. Mile after mile the construction work stretched. Trains were running now for work purposes, nearly as far as the line extended. The telegraph wires ran into the temporary station building at Lineville, and the several operators along the line were busy carrying orders through the length of the wire service. Back at Stormburg, where the railroad line began, three trains lay on side tracks. These were passenger trains that were to run the entire length of the road as soon as it was opened. Back at Stormburg, also, the new general superintendent slept at his office that he might receive messages from President Newnham the more quickly. At Bakerstown a division superintendent was stationed, he, too, sleeping at his office. Once more Tom Reade had brought his work within sight of Lineville. In fact, the track extended all but the last mile of the line. Ties were down nearly all of the way to the terminal station. This was the state of affairs at two o'clock in the afternoon. Before midnight the last rail must be laid, and the first through train from Stormburg must run in. If, at the stroke of midnight, the first train had failed to go through, then the charter of the S.B. & L. would be forfeited and subject to seizure and sale by the state. Up from Denver some of the worst politicians had come. They were quartered at the new little hotel in Lineville. Dave Fulsbee had detailed three of his men covertly to watch these same politicians. Tom, inwardly consumed with fever, outwardly as cheery as human being might be, stood watching the laying of the rails over that last stretch. The men who could be prevented from dropping in their tracks must work until the last rail had been spiked into place. Away up in Lineville Harry Hazelton was personally superintending the laying of the last ties. The honk of an automobile horn caused Tom Reade to glance up. Approaching him was President Newnham, himself driving the runabout that he had had forwarded. "Reade!" called the president of the S.B. & L., stopping his car, and Tom went over to him. "The suspense is over, at last, Reade," exclaimed Mr. Newnham, smiling broadly. "Look! the road is all but completed. Hundreds of men are toiling. The first train left Stormburg this morning. By seven tonight you'll have the last rails in place. Between eight and nine this evening the first through train will have rolled into Lineville and we shall have won the fight that has brought me many gray hairs. At last the worry is over!" "Of course, sir," nodded Tom. "Reade, don't you really believe that the stress is over---that we shall triumph tonight?" "Of course we shall, sir," Tom responded. "I have predicted, all along, that we'd have the road through in time, haven't I?" "And the credit is nearly all yours, Reade," admitted Mr. Newnham gleefully. "Nearly all yours, lad!" Honk! honk! Unable to remain long at one spot, Mr. Newnham started his car again. Reade felt a depression that he could not shake off. "It's just the reaction following the long train," Tom tried to tell himself. "Whew! Until within the last two or three days I haven't half realized how much the strain was taking out of me! I'll wager I'll sleep, tonight, after I once have the satisfaction of seeing the first train roll in!" By six o'clock Tom felt as though he could hardly stand up. Be wondered if his teeth were really chattering, or whether he merely imagined it. To take up his time Tom tried a brisk canter, away from the railroad. At seven o'clock he rode into Lineville. "Tom, Tom!", bawled Harry, from the centre of a group of workmen. "We've been looking for you! Come here quickly!" Tom urged his pony forward to the station from which Hazelton had called him. "Watch this---just watch it!" begged Harry. Clank! clank! clank! Tom Reade, gazing in fascination, saw the last spike of the last rail being driven into place. "Two sidetracks and switches already up!" called Harry. Tom threw his bridle to one of the workmen, then sprang from his horse. Out of the station came Mr. Newnham, waving a telegram. "Our first train, with passengers, has just left the station at Brand's Ranch junction, a hundred and ten miles away," shouted the president of the road. "The train should be here long before ten o'clock." From the crowd a cheer greeted the announcement. "There's nothing left but to wait to win," continued Mr. Newnham. Five hundred voices in the crowd cheered the announcement. A group of five Denver politicians smiled sardonically. Tom pushed his way gently through the crowd, glancing inside the station. There was no one there, save an operator. Closing the door behind him, Tom crossed to a seat and sank wearily upon it. Here he sat for some minutes, to be discovered by the telegraph operator when the latter came out to light the lamps in the waiting room. "Mr. Reade is all in, I guess," thought the operator. "I don't wonder. I hope he goes to sleep where he sits." Ten minutes later the receiver of one of the up the terminal station. The operator broke in, sending back his response. Then a telegram came, which he penned on paper. "Mr. Reade," called the operator, "this is for you." Tom sat up, brushing his eyes, and read: "If you can spare time wish you would ride down track to point about two miles west of Miller's where brook crosses under roadbed. Have something to show you that will interest you. Nothing serious, but will fill you with wonder. My men all along line report all safe and going well. Come at once." (signed) "Dave Fulsbee." Tom's first instinct was to start and tremble. He felt sure that Fulsbee had bad news and was trying to conceal the fact until he could see the young chief engineer in person. "But that's really not Dave's way," Reade told himself in the next breath. "Fulsbee talks straight out from the shoulder. What has he to show me, I wonder! Gracious, how tired I am! If Fulsbee knew just how I feel at this moment he wouldn't send for me. But of course he doesn't know." Stepping outside, Tom looked about, espying his pony standing where it had been tied to one of the porch pillars of the station. "I'll get Harry to ride with me," Reade thought, but he found his chum engaged in testing a stretch of rails near the station, a dozen of the college students with him. "Pshaw! I'm strong enough to ride five miles alone," muttered Tom. "Thank goodness my horse hasn't been used up. Never mind, Tom Reade. To-morrow you can ride as far as you like on the railroad, with never a penny of fare to pay, either!" Unnoticed, the young chief engineer untied his horse in the dark, mounted and rode away. How dark and long the way seemed. Truth to tell, Tom Reade was very close to the collapse that seemed bound to follow the reaction once his big task was safely over. Only his strength of will sustained him. He gripped the pony's sides with his knees. "I wouldn't want anyone to see me riding in this fashion!" muttered the lad. "I must look worse than a tenderfoot. Why, I'll be really glad if Dave Fulsbee can ride back with me. I had no idea he was so near. I believed him to be at least fifty or sixty miles down the line." Tom was nearing the place appointed when a sudden whistle rang out from the brush beside the track. Then half a dozen men leaped out into view in the darkness, two of them seizing the bridle of his horse. "Good evening, Reade!" called the mocking voice of 'Gene Black. "Down this way to see your first train go through? Stay with us, and we'll show you how it doesn't get through---not tonight!" CHAPTER XXII "CAN YOUR ROAD SAVE ITS CHARTER NOW?" "Oh, I guess the train will go through, all right," replied Tom Reade, with much more confidence expressed in his tone than he really felt. "Stay with us and see it go through," mocked 'Gene Black. "If it's just the same to you I'd rather ride on," Tom proposed. "But it isn't all the same to us," Black chuckled. "Then I guess I prefer to ride on, anyway." "You won't, though," snapped Black. "You'll get off that horse and do as we tell you." "Eh?" demanded the young chief engineer. He appeared astonished, though he was not. "You came down the line to meet your railroad detective, Fulsbee," Black continued sneeringly. "You'd better give it up." "You seem to think you know a good deal about my business," Tom continued. "I know all about the telegram," 'Gene retorted. "I sent it---or ordered it sent." Tom started in earnest this time. "Did you ever hear of ways of cutting out a telegraph wire and then attaching one of the cut ends to a box relay?" queried the scoundrel. "I---I believe I have heard of some such thing," Reade hesitated. "Was that the trick you played on me?" "Yes," nodded Gene Black. "We cut the wire just below here. We've got a box relay on the wire going both ways. Your operators can't use the wire much tonight. Your company can't use it from Lineville at all." Tom's face showed his dismay. 'Gene Black laughed in intense enjoyment. "So you cut the wire, oh, and attached box relays?" "Surely," Black nodded. "I'm glad you confess it," replied Tom slowly. "Cutting telegraph wires, or attaching box relays without proper authority is a felony. The punishment is a term in state's prison." "Bosh!" sneered Black. "With all the political pull our crowd has behind it do you suppose we fear a little thing like that?" "I'll talk the crime over with Dave Fulsbee," Tom continued. "A lot of good Fulsbee will do you," jeered 'Gene. "We have him attended to as well as we have you." "That's a lie," Reade declared coolly. "Do you want us to show him to you?" "Yes," nodded Tom. "You'd have to show me Dave Fulsbee before I'd believe you." "Yank the cub off that horse!" ordered 'Gene Black harshly. Three or four men seized Reade, dragging him out of the saddle and throwing him to earth. Tom did not resist, for he saw other men standing about with revolvers in their hands. He did not believe that this desperate crew of worthless characters would hesitate long about drilling holes through him. "Take the horse, you, and ride it away," directed Black, turning to one of the men, who promptly mounted and rode off into the darkness. "Tie that cub's hands behind him," was Black's next order. "Now, bring him along." 'Gene Black led the way back from the track and into the woods for a few rods. Then the party wheeled, going eastward in a line parallel with the track. Tom did not speak during the journey. It was not his nature to use words where they would be worse than wasted. After proceeding a quarter of a mile or so, Black parted the bushes of a dense thicket and led the way inside. At the centre the brush had been cleaned out, clearing a circular space about twenty feet in diameter and dimly lighted by a lantern placed in the centre of the inclosure. "A snug little place, Reade," chuckled the scoundrel, turning about as Reade was piloted into the retreat. "How do you like it?" "I like the place a whole lot better than the company," Tom answered promptly. "What's the matter with the company?" jeered Black. "A hangman would feel more at home in a crowd like this." "See here, cub! Don't you try to get funny," warned Black, his eyes snapping dangerously. "If you attempt any of your impudence here you'll soon find out who's master." "Master?" scoffed Tom, his own eyes flashing. "Black, do you draw any comfort from feeling that you're boss of such an outfit? Though I daresay that the outfit is better than its boss. However, you asked my opinion, and you got it. I'll give you a little more of my opinion, Black, and it won't cost you a cent." He looked steadily into his enemy's eyes as he continued: "Black, a good, clean dog wouldn't willingly stand by this crowd!" Thump! 'Gene Blacks clenched fist landed in Reade's face, knocking him down. "Thank you," murmured Reade, as he sat up. "Much obliged, are you?" jeered Black. "Yes," admitted Tom. "As far as it goes. That was a coward's act---to have a fellow's hands tied before daring to hit him." Black's face now turned livid with passion. "Lift the fool to his feet, if he wants to stand," ordered Black savagely. "He's trying to make me waste my time talking to him. Operator, call up Brewster's and ask if he held the train as ordered by wire." "Oho!" thought Tom. "So that's your trick? You have the wire in your control, and you're sending supposed train orders holding the train at a station so that it can't get through You're a worse scoundrel than I thought!" Off at the edge of the brush, on the inner side, a telegraph instrument had been set up on a barrel. From the instrument a wire ran toward the track. In another moment the sounder of the sender was clicking busily. There was a pause, then the answer came back: Click-click-click-clickety-click! The operator, a seedy-looking fellow over whose whole appearance was written the word "worthless," swung a lantern so that the light fell on a pad of paper before him. Pencil in hand, he took off the message as it came. "Come over here and read it, sir?" inquired the operator. Black crossed, bending over the sheet. Despite himself the scoundrel started. Then he moved so that the light should not fall across his face. Plainly Black was greatly disappointed. He swallowed hard, then strolled back to the main group, of which Tom was one. "That's the way to do business," announced 'Gene Black, with a chuckle. "We sent fake train orders from the top of that barrel, and your own railroad operator handed the orders to the conductor of your through train. Therefore the train is switched off on to the side track at Brewster's, and the engineer, under the false orders, is allowing his steam to cool. Now, do you believe you will get your train through tonight?" "Oh, yes!" yawned Tom coolly. "For you are lying. The message that came back over the wire from our operator at Brewster's read in these words: 'Showed your order to train conductor. He refused order, saying that it was not signed properly. Train has proceeded.'" It was an incautious speech for Tom Reade Black fairly glared into his eyes. "So you can pick up telegraph messages by the sounds" 'Gene demanded. "'Most anyone can who has ever worked over a telegraph key," Tom admitted. Now that the secret was out, Black plainly showed his anger over the fact that the conductor had refused train orders at Brewster's. "You S.B. & L. fellows have put up some trick to beat us off!" he declared, looking accusingly into Tom's face. "What of it?" Reade inquired. "It's our railroad, isn't it? Can't we do what we please with our own road?" "It won't be your road after tonight!" Black insisted, grinding his teeth in his rage. "Fortunately, we have other ways of stopping that train from getting through. You'll soon know it, too." Black called to the tramp operator. "My man, call up the box relay fellow below here." The sounder clicked busily for some moments. "I have the other box relay man," declared the operator. "Then send this, very carefully," Black continued hoarsely: "X-x-x---a-a-a---b-b-b." The operator repeated it. Black nodded. Once more the instrument clicked. "The other box relay man signals that he has it," nodded Black's present operator. "Listen! Everyone of you! Not a sound in this outfit," commanded 'Gene Black. For fully three minutes the intense silence continued. Then Black turned again to the operator, saying: "Ask the other box relay man if anything has happened near him?" A minute later Black's operator reported: "He says: 'Yes; happened successfully.'" "Good!" laughed Black, a look of fierce Joy lighting up his eyes. "Now, Reade, I guess you'll admit yourself beaten. An electric spark has touched off a charge of giant powder under the roadbed. The rails have been blown skyward and a big hole torn out of the roadbed itself. Even if you had a wrecking crew at the spot at this moment the road couldn't be prepared for traffic inside of twenty-four hours. NOW, will your through train reach Lineville tonight? Can your road save its charter _now_?" Tom Reade's face turned deathly white. 'Gene Black stood before him, gazing tauntingly into the eyes of the Young Chief engineer. CHAPTER XXIII BLACK'S TRUMP CARD "You scoundrel---you unhung imitation of Satan himself!" gasped Reade, great beads of perspiration standing out on his face. "Oho! We're fools, are we?" sneered Black "We're people whom you can beat with your cheap little tricks about a different signature for each station on the line, are we? For that was why the conductor refused the false order at Brewster's. He has a code of signatures for train orders---a different signature to be used for messages at each station?" Black's keen mind had solved the reason for the conductor's refusal to hold his train on a siding. The conductor _had_ been supplied with a code list of signatures---a different one for each station along the line. "Now, you know," mocked Black, enjoying every line of anxiety written on Tom Reade's face, "that we have you knocked silly. You know, now, that your train can't get through by tonight---probably not even by tomorrow night. You realize at last---eh?---that you've lost your train and your charter---your railroad?" "I wasn't thinking of the train, or of the road," Tom groaned. "What I'm thinking of is the train, traveling at high speed, running into that blown-out place. The train will be ditched and the crew killed. A hundred and fifty passengers with them---many of them state officials. Oh, Black, I wouldn't dare stand in your shoes now! The whole state---the entire country---will unite in running you down. You can never hope to escape the penalty of your crime!" "What are you talking about?" sneered Black. "Do you think I'm fool enough to ditch the train? No, sir! Don't believe it. I'm not running my neck into a noose of that kind. A cluster of red lights has been spread along the track before the blow-out. The engineer will see the signals and pull his train up---he has to, by law! No one on the train will be hurt, but the train simply can't get through!" "Oh, if the train is safe, I don't care so much," replied Reade, the color slowly returning to his face. "As for getting through tonight, the S.B. & L. has a corps of engineers and a full staff in other departments. Black, you'll lose after all your trouble." "Humph!" muttered Black unbelievingly. "Your train will have to get through in less than three hours, Reade!" "It'll do it, somehow," smiled Tom. "Yes; your engineers will bring it through, somehow," taunted Black. "We have the chief of that corps with us right now." "That's all right," retorted Tom. "You're welcome to me, if I can be of any real comfort to you. But you forget that you haven it my assistant. Harry Hazelton is at large, among his own friends. Harry will see the train through tonight. Never worry." Click-click-click-click! sounded the machine on the barrel. "It's the division superintendent at Lineville, calling up Brewster's," announced the operator. "Answer for Brewster, then," directed Black. "Let us see what the division super wants, anyway." More clicking followed, after which the operator explained: "Division super asks Brewster if through train has passed there." "Answer, 'Yes; twelve minutes ago,'" directed Black. The instrument clicked furiously for a few moments. "The division super keeps sending, 'Sign, sign, sign!'" explained the operator at the barrel. "So I've kept on signing 'Br,' 'Br,' over and over again. That's the proper signature for Brewster's." Again the machine clicked noisily. "Still insisting on the signature," grinned the operator uneasily. "Do you know the name of the operator at Brewster's?" demanded 'Gene Black. "Yes," nodded the man at the barrel. "The operator at Brewster's is a chap named Havens." "Then send the signature, 'Havens, operator, Brewster's," ordered Black. Still the machine clicked insistently. "Super still yells for my signature," explained the man at the barrel desk. "He demands to know whether I'm really the operator at Brewster's, or whether I've broken in on the wire at some other point." "Don't answer the division super any further, then," snorted Black disgustedly. Tom, with his ability to read messages, was enjoying the whole situation until Black, with a sudden flash of his eyes, turned upon the cub chief engineer. "Reade," he hissed, "you must know the proper signature for tonight for the operator at Brewster's to use." "Nothing doing," grunted Tom. "Give us that signature the right one for Brewster's." "Nothing doing," Tom repeated. "Put a pistol muzzle to his ear and see his memory brighten," snarled the scoundrel. One of the hard-looking men behind Tom obeyed. Reade, it must be confessed, shivered slightly when he felt the cold touch of steel behind his ear. "Give us the proper signature!" insisted 'Gene. "Nothing doing," Tom insisted. "Give us the right signature, or take the consequences!" "I can't give it to you," Tom replied steadily. "I don't know the signature." "You lie!" "Thank you." Tom had gotten his drawl back. "Do you want to have the trigger of that pistol pulled?" cried 'Gene Black hoarsely. "I certainly don't," Tom confessed. "Neither do I doubt that you fellows are scoundrels enough to do such a trick. However, I can't help you, even though I have to lose my life for my ignorance. I honestly don't know the right signature for Brewster's tonight. That information doesn't belong to the engineering department, anyway." "Shall I pull the trigger, Black?" asked the man who held the weapon to Reade's head. "Yes; if he doesn't soon come to his senses," snarled Black. "I've already told you," persisted Tom, "that I couldn't give you the proper signature, even if I wanted to---which I don't." "You may be glad to talk before we're through with you tonight," threatened Black. "The time for trifling is past. Either give us that signature or else prepare to take the consequences. For the last time, are you going to answer my question?" "I've told you the truth," Reade insisted. "If you won't believe me, then there is nothing more to be said." "You lie, if you insist that you don't know the signatures for tonight!" cried Black savagely. "All right, then," sighed Tom. "I can't tell you what I don't know." From off in the distance came the shrill too-oo-oot! of a locomotive. Tom Reade heard, and, despite his fears for his safety, an exclamation of joy escaped him. "Oh, you needn't build any false hopes," sneered Black. "That whistle doesn't come from the through train. It's one of the locomotives that the S.B. & L. had delivered over the D.V. & S., which makes a junction with your road at Lineville. A locomotive or a train at the Lineville end won't help your crowd any. That isn't the through train required by the charter. The S.B. & L. loses the game, just the same." "Oh, I don't know," Tom argued. "The S.B. & L. road was finished within charter time. No railroad can get a train through if the opposition sends out men to dynamite the tracks." "Humph!" jeered Black maliciously. "That dynamited roadbed won't save your crowd. The opposition can make it plain enough that your crowd dynamited its own roadbed through a well-founded fear that the tracks clear through weren't strong enough to stand the passing of a train. Don't be afraid, Reader the enemies of your road will know how to explain the dynamiting this side of Brewster's." "That's a question for tomorrow, Black," rejoined Tom Reade. "No man can ever tell, today, what tomorrow will bring forth." Too-oo-oot! sounded a locomotive whistle again. One of the men in the thicket threw himself to the ground, pressing his ear to the earth. "There's a train, or a locomotive, at least, coming this way from Lineville, boss," reported the fellow. "A train?" gasped Black. Then his face cleared. "Oh, well, even if it's a fully equipped wrecking train, it can't get the road mended in time to bring the through train in before midnight, as the charter demands." Now the train from Lineville came closer, and the whirr of its approach was audible along the steel rails. The engine's bell was clanging steadily, too, after the manner of the engines of "specials." 'Gene Black crowded to the outer edge of the thicket, peering through intently. The bright headlight of an approaching locomotive soon penetrated this part of the forest. Then the train rolled swiftly by. "Humph!" muttered Black. "Only an engine, a baggage car and one day coach. That kind of train can't carry much in the way of relief." As the train passed out of sight the engine sent back a screeching whistle. "The engineer is laughing at you, Black," jeered Tom. "Let him," sneered the other. "I have the good fortune to know where the laugh belongs." Toot! toot! too-oot-oot! Something else was coming down the track from Lineville. Then it passed the beholders in the thicket---a full train of engine and seven cars. "Good old Harry Hazelton!" glowed Tom Reade. "I'll wager that was Harry's thought---a pilot ahead, and then the real train!" "Small good it will do," laughed 'Gene Black disagreeably. Then, a new thought striking him, he added: "Bill Hoskins, you and some of the men get the dynamite under the track opposite here. You know how to do it! Hustle!" "You bet I know how," growled Bill eagerly, as he stepped forward, picking out the fellows he wanted as his helpers. "I'll have the blast against the roadbed here ready in five minutes, Black." "Now, you'll have three trains stalled along the line tonight, Cub Reade," laughed Black sneeringly. "Getting any train as far as this won't count for a copper's worth! Your road has to get a through train all the way into Lineville before midnight. We'll blow out the roadbed here, and then where are you?" CHAPTER XXIV CONCLUSION At these words even the brief hope that had been in Tom Reade's mind, died out. With the roadbed gone at this point also, he did not see the slightest chance for the S.B. & L. to save its charter or its property rights. "Here's the racketty stuff," went on Hoskins, indicating the boxes. "That small box has the fuses. Get the stuff along, and I'll lay the magneto wire." "Not quite so hastily!" sternly broke in a new voice. Tom Reade fairly yelled for joy, for the new speaker, as he knew at the first sound, was Dave Fulsbee. The amazed and dismayed scoundrels huddled closer together for a moment in the middle of the thicket. "Spread, men! Don't let one of 'em get out alive!" sounded Dave Fulsbee's voice. The scurrying steps of Fulsbee's men could be heard apparently surrounding the thicket. With an exclamation of rage, Black made a dash for freedom. "Stand where you are, Black, if you want to live!" warned Dave. "No use to make a kick you rascals! We've got you covered, and the first man who makes a move will eat his breakfast in another world. Now, listen to me. One at a time you fellows step up to me, drop your weapons on the ground, where I can see you do it, and then come out here, one at a time. No tricks---for, remember, you are covered by my men out here. We don't want to shoot the whole lot of you up unless we have to, but we won't stand for any fooling. Reade, you come through first. Any man who offers to hinder Mr. Reade will be sorry he took the trouble---that's all!" His heart bounding with joy, Tom stepped through the thicket, going straight toward the sound of Fulsbee's voice. "I've got a knife in my left hand," announced Fulsbee, as Tom neared him in the dark. "Turn around so that I can cut the cords at your wrists." In a moment this was done. "You might stay here and help me," whispered Dave. Tom nodded. "Now, Black, you can be the first," called Dave in a brisk, business-like tone. "Step up here and drop your weapons on the ground." Wincing under a bitter sense of defeat, 'Gene Black stepped forward. He was not really a coward, but he valued his life, little as it was actually worth. So he dropped a revolver to the ground. "What I have to say to you, Black, applies to the others," Dave continued from outside the thicket. "If any man among you doesn't drop all his weapons, we'll make it lively for him when we get him out here." A look of malignant hate crossed his face, then 'Gene Black dropped also a knife to the ground. "Come on out, Black," directed Dave Fulsbee. "Mr. Reade, will you oblige me by running your hands over the fellow's clothing to see if he, has any more weapons." Tom promptly complied. A hasty search revealed no other weapons. "Now, step right along over there, Black, where you'll find two of my men," nodded Dave Fulsbee. Again Black obeyed. He saw, dimly, two men some yards further away in the darkness and joined them. Click-click! Then the scoundrel cried out in the bitterness of his rage, for the two railway detectives had handcuffed him. "You, with the black hair, next," summoned Fulsbee, his vision aided by the lantern in the centre of the thicket. "You come here, but first stop and drop your weapons on the pile---all the trouble-makers you happen to have." Thus they came, one at a time, the operator being the last of all. The crowd of prisoners under guard of the two railway detectives grew steadily, and each was handcuffed as he reached the detectives after having been searched by Tom Reade. "Good job," nodded Dave coolly, as he am approached the captives. "Now, we have you all under lock and key. My, but you're a pretty-looking outfit!" "Come on, men. March 'em up the track. Then we'll come back, or send someone else after the dynamite and other stuff. That'll be handy as evidence." Guarded by Fulsbee and his two detectives, the prisoners marched along a few rods. "Mr. Reade," called Dave, pointing, "you'll find your horse tied to that tree yonder. I reckon you'll be glad to get in saddle again." Indeed, Tom was glad. He ran over, untying the animal, which uttered a whinny of recognition. In saddle, Tom joined the marching party. "You don't seem to think us a very hard crowd to guard," remarked 'Gene Black curiously. "Why don't you call off the men you posted around the thickets" "I didn't post any," Fulsbee answered simply. "I sent these two men of mine running around the thicket. Then they had to come together and attend to handcuffing you fellows." "And were you the only man who had the drop on us?" gasped 'Gene Black. "I was," Dave Fulsbee responded. "If you fellows hadn't had such bad nerves, you could have escaped. But it's an old story. When men go bad their nerves go bad with them." As for Black's followers, now that they knew the nature of the trick that had fooled them, several of them hung back. "You fellows needn't think you can balk now," observed Fulsbee grimly. "You're all of you handcuffed, and there are enough of us to handle you. I promise you that, if anyone of you tries to run away, I won't run after him until I've first tried dropping him with a shot." So the party proceeded, and in time reached Lineville. There was great excitement in that little junction town when the citizens first heard of the dastardly work that the prisoners had attempted. Dave marched his captives into the waiting room of the station. All outsiders were ushered forth politely. Mr. Newnham was hurriedly summoned, and to him Tom Reade disclosed what he had learned of the work of enemies along the line. Naturally the president of the S.B. & L. was greatly excited. "We knew something was wrong, from the nature of the telegraph messages that came in," cried Mr. Newnham. "It was your friend, Hazelton, who first suggested the idea of sending a full train down the line, with a short pilot train ahead." "Good, great old Harry!" murmured Tom admiringly. Both Fulsbee and the president of the road tried to question 'Gene Black. That treacherous fellow, however, steadfastly refused to talk. Two or three of his gang were willing enough to talk, but they knew little, as Black had carried all his plans and schemes in his own head. "No matter!" muttered Dave Fulsbee. "My two men and I were close to that thicket for some time before we broke in on the affair. We heard enough to supply all the evidence that the courts will want against these worthies." As the futile questioning was drawing to a close, 'Gene Black suddenly roused himself to say sneeringly: "Gentlemen, look at your station clock. It's fifteen minutes before midnight. A quarter of an hour left! Where's your through train? If it reaches here fifteen minutes from now it will be too late." "Send a message down the line quickly," gasped Mr. Newnham, turning pale. Then he wheeled savagely upon the prisoner, exclaiming: "I forgot, Black. You rascals cut the wires. We could have mended them at the nearer point, but the wires were cut, too, at the scene of the blow-out. Oh, but you have been a thorn in our sides!" From the crowd that still lingered outside came a cheer. Tom Reade sprang to the nearest door, throwing it open. "Listen!" he shouted. The sound that had started the crowd to cheering was repeated again. _Too-oo-oo-oot_! "It's the train!" cried Reade joyously. "It can't be more than two or three miles below here, either. It will get through on time!" With nine minutes to spare, the train rolled into the station at Lineville. It was not the same train that had left Stormburg, for that train had been halted, safely, just before reaching the scene of the disastrous blow-out. At that point the passengers had alighted and had been conducted on foot to the other side of the gap caused by the explosion. Here Hazelton's Lineville special stood ready to convey them into Lineville. So the road had been legally opened, since the passengers from Stormburg---among whom was the lieutenant governor of the state had been brought all the way through over the line. Within the meaning of the law a through train had been operated over the new line, and within charter time. The S.B. & L. had won! It had saved its charter. On the morrow, in Wall Street, the value of the road's stock jumped by some millions of dollars. Let us not forget the pilot train. That returned to Lineville in the rear of the passenger train. Though the pilot train had a conductor, Harry Hazelton was in real charge. "Look whom we have here, Tom!" called Harry from the open side door of the baggage car, as Reade raced up to greet his successful chum. A man, bandaged, injured and groaning, lay on the floor of the baggage car. "Why, it's Naughty Peter, himself!" cried Tom. "Peter, I'm sorry to find you in this shape. I am afraid you have been misbehaving." "We found him not far from the track, near the blow-out," Hazelton explained. "Whether he attended to that bit of bad work all alone, or whether his companions believed him dead and fled for their own safety, I can't learn. Bad Pete won't say a word. He was unconscious when we first discovered him. Now he knows what's going on around him, but he's too badly hurt to do more than hold his tongue." It was only when Bad Pete recovered his health---in jail---and found himself facing a long term in prison, that he was ready to open his mouth. He could tell nothing, however, beyond confessing that he and three other men, including an operator, had attended to the blow-out. Pete had no knowledge of the real parties behind the plot. He knew only that he had acted under 'Gene Blanks orders. So Bad Pete was shown no mercy, but sent behind the bars for a term of twenty-five years. Owing to Black's stubborn silence the outrages were never traced back to any official of the W.C. & A. 'Gene Black was sentenced to prison for thirty years. The other rascals, who had worked under his direction, all received long terms. The student engineers, wholly happy and well paid, returned to their college. The S.B. & L. is still under the same management, and is one of the prosperous independent railroads of the United States. Dave Fulsbee continues as the head of its detective system. Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton had made good in their first professional undertaking. They were paid in proportion to their services, and given the opportunity to retain their positions at the head of the railway's engineering corps. For some time they kept their positions, filling them always with honor. Yet, in the end, the desire to do other great things in their chosen profession led them into other fields of venture. Their greatest adventures, their severest trials and deepest problems, as well as their gravest perils were still ahead of them in their path of duty. The Young Engineers were bound to go on and up, yet their way was sure to be a stormy one. We shall meet these fine young Americans again in the next volume of this series, which is published under the title, "The Young Engineers in Arizona; Or, Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand." It is a rousing narrative of real people and real happenings. 
29335	----	A GOLD HUNTER'S EXPERIENCE BY CHALKLEY J. HAMBLETON CHICAGO PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION 1898 I have often been asked to write an account of my Pike's Peak Expedition in search of gold. The following attempt has been made up partly from memory and partly from old letters written at the time to my sister in the east. C. J. H. A Gold Hunter's Experience Early in the summer of 1860 I had a bad attack of gold fever. In Chicago the conditions for such a malady were all favorable. Since the panic of 1857 there had been three years of general depression, money was scarce, there was little activity in business, the outlook was discouraging, and I, like hundreds of others, felt blue. Gold had been discovered in the fall of 1858 in the vicinity of Pike's Peak, by a party of Georgian prospectors, and for several years afterward the whole gold region for seventy miles to the north was called "Pike's Peak." Others in the East heard of the gold discoveries and went West the next spring; so that during the summer of 1859 a great deal of prospecting was done in the mountains as far north as Denver and Boulder Creek. Those who returned in the autumn of that year, having perhaps claims and mines to sell, told large stories of their rich finds, which grew larger as they were repeated, amplified and circulated by those who dealt in mining outfits and mills. Then these accounts were fed out to the public daily in an appetizing way by the newspapers. The result was that by the next spring the epidemic became as prevalent in Chicago as cholera was a few years later. Four of the fever stricken ones, Enos Ayres, T. R. Stubbs, John Sollitt and myself, formed a partnership, raised about $9,000 and went to work to purchase the necessary outfit for gold mining. Mr. Ayres furnished a larger share of the capital than any of the others and was not to go with the expedition, but might join us the following year. Mr. Stubbs and I were both to go, while Mr. Sollitt was to be represented by a substitute, a relative whose name was also John Sollitt, and who had been a farmer and butcher and was supposed to know all about oxen. Mr. Stubbs was a good mechanic, an intelligent, well-read man, and ten years before had been to California in search of gold. Our outfit consisted of a 12-stamp quartz mill with engine and boiler, and all the equipments understood to be necessary for extracting gold from the rock, including mining tools, powder, quicksilver, copper plate and chemicals; also a supply of provisions for a year. The staple articles of the latter were flour, beans, salt pork, coffee and sugar. Then we had rice, cornmeal, dried fruit, tea, bacon and a barrel of syrup; besides a good supply of hardtack, crackers and cheese for use while crossing the plains, when a fire for cooking might not be found practicable. These things were all purchased in Chicago, together with the fourteen wagons necessary to carry them across the plains. Then all were shipped by rail to St. Joseph, Mo., where the oxen were to be purchased. The entire outfit when loaded on the cars, weighed twenty-four tons. I stayed in Chicago till the last to help purchase and forward the outfit and supplies, while Stubbs and Sollitt (the substitute) went to St. Joe to receive and load them on the wagons and to purchase the oxen. On the 1st day of August, all was ready, and we ferried our loaded wagons and teams across the Missouri River into Kansas to make a final start next morning into regions to us unknown. Stubbs started the same day by stage for the mountains, to prospect and look out for a favorable location and then to meet the train when it arrived at Denver. Sollitt was to be trainmaster, which involved the oversight and direction of the teams and drivers, and the duty of frequently going ahead to pick out the best road and select a favorable place to camp at night, where water and grass could be had. I was the general business man of the expedition, had full power of attorney from Mr. Ayres to represent and manage his interest, and hence I had the control and responsibility in my hands and practically decided all important questions relating to the business. The fourteen ox-drivers were all volunteers, who drove without pay--except their board--for the sake of getting to the gold regions to make their fortunes there. Most of them were from Chicago--three married men who left families behind, and one a young dentist. Another was the son of a prominent public woman who was a rigid Presbyterian, and when I left Chicago his father gave me a satchel full of religious books to give to him in St. Joe to read on the plains. He deliberately pitched them into a loft, where they were left. Another was a young Illinois farmer, named Tobias, a splendid fellow. Among those we secured in St. Joe were one German and two Missourians. The principal article in the outfit of each individual, aside from his ornaments in the shape of knives and pistols, was a pair of heavy blankets. One of the Missourians first appeared without any, but next morning he had a quilted calico bed cover, stuffed with cotton, borrowed probably from a friendly clothesline, and which, at the end of the journey, presented a very dilapidated appearance. Early in the morning of August 2d all were busy yoking oxen and hitching them to the wagons, but as most of the drivers were green at the business and did not know "haw" from "gee," and a number of the oxen were young and not well broken, it was several hours before our train was in motion and finally headed for "Pike's Peak." The train consisted of fourteen wagons, a driver for each, forty yoke of oxen, one yoke of cows and one pony with a Mexican saddle and a rawhide lariat thirty feet long, with an iron pin at the end to stick in the ground to secure the animal. For the first two or three miles, while crossing the level valley, all went well, but when we reached the bluffs and ravines that bounded the river valley on the west, the green oxen began to balk and back and refused to pull their loads up the hills, and the new drivers were nonplused and helpless. The better teams went ahead and were soon out of sight, while the poorer ones had to double up, taking one wagon up a hill and then going back for another, and consequently made slow progress. Instead of riding or walking along like a "boss" at ease, I soon found myself fully occupied in whipping up the poorly broken oxen on the off side, while the green drivers whipped and yelled at those on their side of the team. It was surprising how soon the nice city boys picked up the strong language in use by teamsters on the Western plains. The teams got separated, and the train stretched out two or three miles long. Then Sollitt rode ahead, picked out a camping place, and directed the drivers to halt and unyoke as they reached it; but when it became dark three or four teams were still from a quarter of a mile to a mile behind, and in trouble, so they unhitched the oxen and let them run in their yokes for the night. Our lunch and our supper that day consisted of crackers and cheese, as we had no time to cook. About dark a shower came up, and it drizzled a good part of the night--the last rain we met with for many weeks. We rolled ourselves up in our blankets on the ground, under the wagons or in a small tent we had, for sleep. At daylight next morning we all started in different directions through the wet bushes that filled the ravines to find the scattered oxen, and before noon they were all collected at camp. We had hot coffee and some cooked things for breakfast. But several accidents had occurred. The cows had fallen into a gully with their yoke on and broken their necks, one load of heavy machinery had run down hill and upset, one axle, two wagon tongues, one yoke and some chains were broken. Sollitt, with two or three of the drivers who were mechanics, went to work to repair damages. As we seemed short of oxen, I rode back to St. Joe and bought two yoke more, spending the last of our money except about fifty dollars. By next morning we were ready for a new start. Experience had already taught us something, and we adopted more system and some rules. All the teams were to keep near together, so as not to leave the weaker ones behind in the lurch. Our cattle were to be strictly watched all night by two men on guard at a time--not together, but on opposite sides of the herd. Two would watch half the night and then be relieved by two others who stood guard till morning. We all took our turns except the cook, who was relieved from that duty and from yoking and hitching up his own team, as cooking for sixteen men while in camp was no sinecure. The man chosen for cook was one of the drivers from Chicago named Taylor, who had cooked for campers and for parties at work in the woods. He was really a good plain cook. His utensils consisted of some large boiling pots and kettles, a tin bake oven, two or three frying pans, a two-gallon coffeepot and a few other usual articles. Each person had a tin plate, a pint tin cup with a handle, and an iron knife, fork and spoon. The food was placed in the dishes and cups on the ground, and while eating we stood up, sat on the ground or reclined in the fashion of the ancient Romans, according to our individual tastes. The article of first importance at a meal was strong coffee and plenty of it. Next came boiled beans with pork, whenever there was time to cook them; and that could generally be done during the night. Then we had some kind of bread, cake or crackers, and sometimes stewed dried fruit. About the third day out our open air prairie appetites came, and it seemed as if we could eat and digest anything. I had been a little out of health for some time, was somewhat dyspeptic, and had not tasted pork for years. Soon I could devour it in a manner that would have shocked my vegetarian friends; and for the next two years I was conscious of a stomach only when hungry. The third day the teams went a little better, but we had to double up sometimes to pull the wagons up the hills and out of the deep gullies we had frequently to cross, so we only made seven or eight miles. In a few days we got out on the level prairie and went along faster. But every morning for a week, one or more of our cattle would be lost from the herd. They would sneak away during the night and hide in the bushes and ravines, or start back toward home. As I had no special duties in camp, or in yoking up in the morning, hunting them fell to my lot. If not found in the first search before starting time, I would ride back on the pony for miles, scour the country and hunt through the gullies and bushes for hours till the lost animal was found; then drive him along until the train was overtaken. That could easily be followed by the tracks of the wheels on the prairie. Hiawatha, Kansas, and a few scattered cabins some miles to the west of it were about the last signs of settlement and civilization that we saw. That season was a very dry one in Kansas and on the Western plains. The prairies were parched and looked like a desert, except a fringe of green along the water courses. The heat was intense and the distant hills and everything visible seemed quivering from its effects. The dry ground and sand reflected the sun's rays into our faces, till a few with weak eyes were seriously affected. The iron about the wagons, and the chains were blistering to the touch. The southwest wind was like a blast from a heated furnace. It was worse than stillness, and I frequently took shelter behind a wagon to escape its effects. This heat was very trying and debilitating to the oxen. They would pant, loll their tongues out of their mouths, refuse to pull, and lie down in their yokes. Sometimes we were compelled to keep quiet all day, and drive in the early evening and morning, and during the night when we could find the way. The most important thing was to find water near which to camp. Wolves began to surround our camp and the herd of oxen at night, and break the silence by their piercing howls. After we had gone to sleep, they would sneak into camp to pick up scraps left from supper, then come within a few feet of some one rolled up in his blanket and startle him with a howl. But with all their noise these prairie wolves were great cowards, and would run from any movement of a man. Soon after starting out one evening for a night drive, after a very hot day, one of the weak oxen lay down and refused to go. That the train might not be delayed, they tied his mate to a wagon, and I concluded to stay behind with him till morning to see if he would recover. Soon after dark the wolves seeming to divine his condition and the good meal in store for them, collected around us a short distance off, and seated on their haunches, with howls of impatience waited for the feast. They were plainly visible by their glaring, fire-like eyes. I varied the monotony of the long night by walking around, sitting down, lying upon the ground, and occasionally falling asleep beside the sick ox. Then the wolves emboldened by the stillness, would sneak up close to us and break out in piercing howls, but they would instantly vanish when I got up and threw something at them. Daylight came at last; the ox had grown worse instead of better, and I left him to his fate and the wolves, and followed the wagon tracks till I overtook the train in camp, early in the day, with an appetite for a quart of strong coffee and something to eat. In this hot weather the oxen with their heavy loads did not make more than a mile an hour when on the march, so with the numerous delays it was nearly two weeks before we reached Marysville on the Big Blue River. This was a small settlement on the verge of civilization, with a few ranches, saloons and stores, situated on that branch of the old Oregon trail which started northward from Westport, Mo., and passed near Fort Leavenworth, Kan. The inhabitants had the reputation of being mostly outlaws, blacklegs and stock thieves. Their reputation inspired us with such respect for them that we kept extra watch over our cattle and possessions while in the vicinity. About a week after starting, one of the drivers got homesick, discouraged and disgusted with the trip, left us and started back home on foot. This compelled Sollitt and me to drive his team. One of our wagons not being made of properly seasoned wood, became shaky from the effects of the heat and dry air of the plains. At Marysville I traded it off to a ranchman for a yoke of oxen and had the load distributed on the other wagons so that again we had as many drivers as teams. I also traded some of our younger, weaker oxen for old ones that served our purpose better, though they were of less market value. We learned that between this place and the Little Blue, there was no water to be found to enable us to camp for a night, so we were compelled to make the trip--some twenty miles--at a single drive. As the weather was hot we started late in the afternoon, drove all night, and arrived early next day, at that small river, where we found water and grass. Sollitt rode ahead much of the time to pick out the road. Our course for several days was now along the Little Blue in a northwest direction, toward Fort Kearney on the Platte. To avoid the side gullies and ravines, which were water courses in the spring, though now dried up, we frequently circled off two or three miles on to the level prairie, but had to return near the stream when we camped, in order to get water. One day, off to the west, a mile or two away, we saw a single buffalo which had probably been outlawed and driven from the herd to wander in solitude over the plains. Our pony had crossed the plains before and was well used to buffalo. Sollitt mounted him, and, rifle in hand, rode for the lone beast. When approached he began to run, but the horse soon overtook him, and he received a bullet. Then he turned savagely on the horse and rider, and, with head down, chased them at high speed before trying to escape. The horse overtook him a second time and he received another bullet. Then he charged after the horse and rider again. When the horse's turn to chase came next, the buffalo received a third shot and soon fell dead. This was quite exciting sport for us "tenderfeet" who had never seen a buffalo hunt. Sollitt, who was a butcher by trade, was now in his glory. He rode back to camp, sharpened his knives and with the help of one or two of the men carved up the animal and brought back a supply of fresh meat. This proved rather tough as the animal was an old bull, nevertheless the tongue and the tenderloin were relished, after having eaten only salt pork for three weeks. The small stream of water in the Little Blue grew less and less as we approached its source, and the last night that we camped near it, there was no running water at all. The little that was to be seen stood in stagnant pools in the bottom of the river bed. When we would approach these pools, turtles, frogs and snakes in great variety, that had been sunning themselves on the banks, would tumble, jump and crawl into the water, and countless tadpoles wiggled in the mud, at the bottom, so that the water was soon black and thick. Its taste and smell were anything but appetizing. The oxen, though without water since morning, refused to drink it, even after we had dipped it up in pails and allowed it to settle. We boiled it for the coffee, but the odor and flavor of mud still remained. The situation had become serious and our only hope was to reach the Platte river before the oxen were famished from thirst. Earlier in the season, before the streams dried up, this was a favorite route of travel, but it was not so at this time of year and we saw very few passing teams. By daylight next morning the oxen were yoked and hitched up and we commenced a forced march for water and salvation. The old trail seemed still to follow the course of the dried-up stream, bearing much to the west. We concluded to leave it and steer more to the north with the hope of striking the Platte at the nearest point. The prairie was hard and level, the day not excessively hot, and everything was favorable for a long drive. The rule for keeping together was ignored and each team was to be urged to its best speed, in the hope that the strong and the swift would reach the goal though the weak and the weary might fall by the way. Before noon the teams were much separated. They halted for a nooning; the oxen browsed a little on sage brush and dried grass; the men lunched on crackers, cold coffee and the remnants of breakfast, but our water keg was empty. By the time the last team was at the nooning place, the head ones were ready to start on. Sollitt rode ahead to explore and pick out the road, carrying his rifle on the saddle, as we were liable at any time to meet bands of treacherous, pillaging Pawnees, whose haunts were on the lower Platte. I formed the rear guard with the hindmost wagon, so that it would not be deserted and alone in case of accident. Each team was always in sight of the next one ahead of it, though the train was stretched out some three miles long. Late in the afternoon Sollitt rode back with the cheering news that he had seen the Stars and Stripes waving over Fort Kearney to the west and that he had picked out a camping ground near the river a few miles below. Soon after dark the last team was in camp and the men and beasts were luxuriating in the clear running water of the Platte. The next forenoon we drove on to the fort and camped a mile or two west of it for a day's rest. This was on the 20th of August, so we had been out twenty days on the road from St. Joe. At the fort was a postoffice and here we received letters from our friends in the East, and spent a good part of the day in writing, in response to them. Letters were brought here by the coaches of the overland express which carried the United States mail to California. The fort consisted of a few buildings surrounded by a high adobe wall for protection; and adjoining was a strong stockade for horses and oxen. There were a few United States troops here. Just outside the fort grounds were some ranches, stores, saloons and trading posts. The two Missourians proceeded forthwith to get dead drunk and it took them till next day to sober up. By way of apology they said the whisky tasted "so good" after being so long without it. We had no whisky on our train. It was one of the very few that crossed the plains in those days without that, so considered, essential article in frontier life. Personally, through the entire period of my "Pike's Peak" experience, I adhered strictly to my custom of not tasting spirituous or malt liquors, nor using tobacco in any form. We were now on the main central route of travel from the States to the mountains, Salt Lake, California and Oregon. We saw teams and trains daily going in both directions, and Kearney was a favorite place for them to stop over a day and rest. Our course now lay along the south side of the Platte, clear to Denver; and with the prospect of level roads and plenty of grass and water, we looked forward hopefully to a pleasant trip the rest of the way. The valley of the Platte is a sandy plain, nearly level, extending westward for hundreds of miles from Kearney, bounded on the north and the south by low bluffs, some four or five miles apart. Back of these lie the more elevated, dry plains extending to great distances. Winding through this valley is the Platte river, a half a mile or more wide, with water from an inch to two feet deep, running over a sandy bottom and filled with numberless islands of shifting sand. The banks were lined with willows and cottonwood bushes and bordered in many places by green, grassy meadows, but trees were a rarity and for some two hundred miles we did not see one larger than a good sized bush. The day we camped near Kearney we began to see buffalo in small groups off a few miles to the south and west. When I awoke next morning, soon after daylight, I saw a lone one quietly eating grass about half a mile from camp. I got out a rifle and went toward him, stooping or going on my hands and knees through the wet grass, till within good rifle shot. I then stood up, took deliberate aim just behind the shoulder, and fired. He gave a quick jump, looked around and started toward me on the run with head down, in usual fashion, for a charge. My thought was that I had hit, but not hurt him. I dropped into the grass and made my way on hands and knees as fast as possible toward camp, a little agitated. Losing sight of me the animal soon stopped, stood still a few minutes and then suddenly dropped to the ground. He had been shot through the heart. This was my first and last buffalo, as sneaking up to them and shooting them down did not seem much more like sport than shooting down oxen. I was neither a sufficiently expert rider nor hunter to chase and shoot them on horseback. The one I shot was carved by Sollitt and one of the men, and furnished us fresh meat for breakfast and several meals thereafter. During the day we passed a ranch, occupied by a man and his son, twelve or fourteen years old. The boy had eight or ten buffalo calves in a pen, which he said he had caught himself and intended to sell to parties returning to their homes in the East. He had a well-trained little pony, which he would mount, with a rope in hand that had a noose at the end, and ride directly into the midst of a small drove of buffalo, and while they scattered and ran would slip his rope about the neck of a calf and lead it back to the ranch. The calf would side up to the pony and follow it along as if under the delusion that it was following its mother. The man traded in cattle by picking up estrays and buying, for a song, those that were footsore and sick, keeping them till in condition and then selling them to passing trains that were in need. We now began to see buffalo quite plentifully off to the southwest, in small groups, and in droves of twenty or more. Sometimes hunters on horseback, who had camped near Kearney, were indulging in the excitement of the hunt, chasing and shooting, and in turn being chased by the enraged animals. That evening we camped on the verge of the great herd that extended some sixty or seventy miles to the westward, and blackened the bluffs to the south, and the great plains beyond as far as the eye could reach. This great herd was not a solid, continuous mass, but was divided up into innumerable smaller herds or droves consisting of from fifty to two hundred animals each. These kept together when grazing, marching or running, the bulls on the outside and the cows and calves in the center. Sometimes these small herds were separated from each other by a considerable space. This great herd had probably started northward from the Arkansas in the spring and had now reached the Platte, where they lingered for water and the better grass that was found along the river. Following in the wake and prowling on the outskirts of this slowly moving host, were thousands of wolves, collected from the distant plains, to feast upon the young and the weakly, and the carcasses of those that were killed by accident or the hunter's gun. The turn for watching the cattle the first half of that night fell to the lot of two of the boys from Chicago. The cattle were grazing in a good meadow off toward the river, half a mile from camp. At dusk the boys went off to take charge of them. After dark the wolves began to howl in all directions and sometimes it sounded as if a hundred hungry ones were fighting over a single carcass. Then the buffalo bulls chimed in with the music and bellowed, apparently by thousands, at the same time. Pandemonium seemed to reign. The two boys got nervous, then frightened and finally panic-stricken, and long before midnight came rushing into camp declaring that they were surrounded by droves of hungry wolves and furious buffalo. The cattle were also disturbed and inclined to scatter and wander off. Next morning early, all of us, except the cook, started off to hunt them up. Some went up stream, some down, and some back along the road we had come. Tobias and myself waded the river to the north side to hunt them there, but we found neither cattle nor cattle tracks. We did find a huge rattlesnake, which we killed. The river was about three-quarters of a mile wide, and in no place over two feet deep. Wading it was easy enough if one kept moving, but if he stood still he would gradually sink into the quicksand till it was difficult to extricate his feet. By noon, after this thorough search, we had collected all of our oxen but two, which could not be found. Sollitt was very suspicious of cattle thieves, and, whenever an ox was lost, his first opinion was that it had been stolen. Mine was that it had strayed off and hidden in some ravine or clump of bushes. He decided that these two lost ones had been taken by some ranchman or passing train. I believed they had gone off with the buffalo and that when they wanted drink badly they would come back to the river. I therefore concluded to let the train go on, while I, with the pony and some food, would stay behind and patrol the river for a day or two. I rode back eastward along the river's edge, searching in the bushes, and at night came to a ranch, near which I picketed the pony and slept on the ground. Next morning, after first examining the ranchman's cattle, I started westward again, making another thorough search as I went along. In the afternoon I found the stragglers quietly eating grass near the river, and then drove them along as fast as possible till the train was overtaken. We were now right in the midst of the great herd, through which we journeyed for nearly five days. The anxiety they gave us was greater than that of any of our previous troubles. To avoid having the oxen stampeded, or run off with the buffalo at night, we wheeled our wagons into a circle when camping at the end of a day's drive, and thus formed a corral, into which we put as many oxen as it would hold, for the night, and chained the rest in their yokes to the wagon wheels on the outside. This was hard on the oxen, as they could not rest as well as when free, nor could they graze a part of the night, as was their habit. Whenever we looked off to the south or southwest, we would see dozens and dozens of the small droves of one or two hundred buffalo moving about in all directions. Some of the droves would be quietly eating grass, some marching in a slow, stately walk, and others on the run, going back and forth between their grazing grounds and the river. But each separate drove kept in quite a compact body. Sometimes they would keep off from the trail along which we traveled, for several hours at a time and not trouble us. At other times they would be going in such great numbers across our route, passing to and from the river, that we had to wait hours for them to get out of our way. Often a drove would get frightened at a passing wagon, the report of a gun, the barking of a dog, or some imaginary enemy, and would start on a run which soon became a furious stampede, the hindermost following those before them, and in their blind fury crowding them forward with such irresistible force that the leaders could not stop if they would. If they came suddenly to a deep gully the foremost would tumble in till it was full, and thus form a bridge of bone and flesh over which the rest would pass. Several times these frightened droves passed so near our wagons as to be alarming. One drove came within a few yards of one of our wagons, and some of the drivers peppered them with bullets from their pistols. Though these frightened droves could not be stopped, they would shy to the right or left if an unusual commotion was made in time in front of them. When a drove, at some distance, seemed to be headed toward our train, we often ran toward it, yelling, firing guns, and waving articles of clothing. The leaders would shy off, and that would give direction to the whole body, and thus relieve us from danger for the time being. Every teamster, traveler and hunter that crossed the plains felt that he must kill from one to a dozen or more buffalo. The result was that the plain was dotted and whitened with tens of thousands of their carcasses and skeletons. With this general slaughter and the increase of travel induced by the discovery of the Pike's Peak gold fields, no wonder that this was the very last year that these animals appeared in large numbers in the Platte valley. We always estimated their numbers by the million.[1] For some years after they appeared in large numbers in some parts of the great plains of the West, but they rapidly declined in number till they became extinct in their wild state. [Footnote 1: The estimate was probably not an exaggeration. In a late work it is stated on the authority of railroad statistics that in the thirteen years from 1868 to 1881 "in Kansas alone there was paid out _two millions five hundred thousand dollars_ for their bones gathered on the prairies to be utilized by the various carbon works of the country, principally in St. Louis. It required about one hundred carcases to make one ton of bones, the price paid averaging eight dollars a ton; so the above quoted enormous sum represented the skeletons of over thirty-one millions of buffalo."--_The Old Santa Fe Trail, by Col. Henry Inman p. 203._ The author further says, "In the autumn of 1868 I rode with Generals Sheridan, Custer, Sully and others for three consecutive days through one continuous herd, which must have contained millions. In the spring of 1869 the train on the Kansas Pacific railroad was detained at a point between Forts Harker and Hays from nine o'clock in the morning until five in the afternoon in consequence of the passage of an immense herd of buffalo across the track." Horace Greeley crossed the plains in 1859 in a stage coach, and as stated in his published letters, he saw a herd of buffalo that he estimated to contain over five millions.] While in their midst we not only had fresh meat at every meal, but we cut the flesh in strips and tied it to the wagons to dry and thus provided a small supply of "jerked" meat. In the dry, pure air of this region, though in the heat of August, fresh meat did not spoil but simply dried up, if cut in moderate sized pieces. This was also found to be the case with fresh beef in the mountains. We felt relieved and heartily glad when the last drove of buffalo was left behind. Familiarity with them, as with the Indians, destroyed all the poetry and romance about them. They were not a thing of beauty. An old buffalo bull with broken horns and numerous scars from a hundred fights, with woolly head and shaggy mane, his last year's coat half shed and half hanging from his sides in ragged patches and strips flying in the breeze, the whole covered over with dirt and patches of dried mud, presented a picture that was supremely ugly. On the journey from St. Joe to Kearney we found, along the water courses and ravines, enough of dry wood and dead trees to supply us plentifully with fuel for cooking and occasionally to light up the camp in the evening. To make sure of never being entirely out of wood, a small supply was carried along on the wagons. Along the Platte there was practically no wood to be had. For one hundred and fifty miles we did not see a single tree, but the buffalo supplied us with a good fuel called "buffalo chips," which was scattered over the plains in abundance, and which in this dry country, burned freely and made a very hot fire. When approaching camp in the evening, the drivers would pick up armsfull of fuel for the use of the cook and for the evening camp fire, and place it in a pile as they came to a halt. As soon as we reached camp and while others were taking care of the oxen, the cook built a fire, drove two forked sticks into the ground, one on each side of the fire, placed a cross stick on them, and then hung his pots and kettle over the blaze. A big pot of beans with pork was boiled or warmed over. Coffee was prepared, and dough made of flour and baking powder was baked either in the tin oven or a Dutch oven. Frequently some of the men were seated on the ground around the fire, stick in hand with a piece of pork on the end of it, held near the coals to toast. While eating and during the early evening, talking, story telling and ironical remarks about the prolonged picnic--as the trip was called--were indulged in. We were now on the main route of travel between the East and the Pike's Peak gold fields. Horse and mule teams going West, and traveling faster than our ox train could go, passed us frequently, and gave us the latest general news from the States. We also began to meet the vanguard of the returning army of disappointed gold seekers. They came on foot, on horse back and in wagons drawn by horses, mules and oxen, and many of them were a sorry, ragged looking lot. Judging from their requests from us, their most pressing wants were tobacco and whisky. In those days Western towns were full of enthusiastic, sanguine, roving men who were ever ready for any new enterprise, and they were the first to rush to the gold regions in the spring. But lacking pluck, perseverance and the staying qualities, they were the first to rush back when the difficulties and discouragements of the undertaking appeared in their way. These returners told sad stories about life in the mountains, the prospects and the danger from Indians on the road. They said that there was but little gold to be found, that very few of the miners were making expenses, that food was scarce, and that before we reached our destination, nearly everybody there would be leaving for home. Besides, they said, there were hundreds of Indians along the route, robbing and murdering the whites. Such stories had a discouraging effect on some of our drivers and I was very fearful that a few of them would leave us and join the homeward procession. Some of these chaps showed a humorous vein in the mottoes painted on the sides of their wagons. On one was "Pike's Peak or bust," evidently written on going out; under it was written, "Busted." On another was, "Ho for Pike's Peak;" under it was, "Ho for Sweet Home." Each exaggerated account of the Indians made by these people, brought us nearer and nearer to them and made them seem more and more dangerous. Finally one morning as we reached the top of a gentle swell in the plain, a large band of them suddenly appeared in full view, camped at the side of our road about half a mile ahead of us. From all appearances there were five or six hundred or more of them. They belonged to the western branch of the Sioux tribe. We stopped a few minutes to consider the situation. We had heard and read enough about Western Indians to know that the safest thing to do was to appear bold and strong, while a show of weakness and timidity was often dangerous. So we placed in our belts all our ornaments in the shape of pistols and ugly looking knives, and those who had rifles carried them. Then we drove boldly forward toward the camp. I rode the pony beside the driver of the foremost wagon with my old shot gun in hand. Soon two or three of their mounted warriors or hunters rode at full speed toward us and then without stopping circled off on the plain and back to their camp. They were evidently making observations. Off to the north several hundred shaggy ponies were grazing in a green meadow near the river, and the greater part of their men seemed to be there with them. The camp was made up of some forty lodges, which looked like so many cones grouped on the plain. These lodges were formed of poles, some fifteen feet long, the larger ends of which rested on the ground in a circle, while the smaller ends were fastened in a bunch at the top, with a covering of dressed buffalo skins stitched together. On one side was a low opening, which served for a door. As we approached we were first greeted by a lot of dirty, hungry looking dogs, which barked at us, snarled and showed their teeth. Then there was a flock of shy, naked, staring children who at first kept at a safe distance, but came nearer as their timidity left them. The boys with their little bows and arrows were shooting at targets--taking their first lessons as future warriors of the tribe. When we got near the edge of the camp several of the old men came forward to greet us with extended hands, saying "how! how! how!" and we had to have a handshake all around. Some of them knew a few words of English. They asked for whisky, powder and tobacco. Instead, we gave some of them a little cold "grub." They looked over all the wagons and their contents, so far as they could, and were particularly interested in the locomotive boiler which was placed on the running gear of a wagon without the box, and with the help of a little rude imagination, somewhat resembled a huge cannon. I told them it was a "big shoot," and that seemed to inspire them with great respect for it. They looked under it and over it and into it with much interest. The greater part of the squaws were seated on the ground at the openings of their lodges, busily at work. Some were dressing skins by scraping and rubbing them, some making moccasins and leggings for their lazy lords, some stringing beads and others preparing food. The oldest ones, thin, haggard and bronzed, looked like witches. The young squaws, in their teens, round and plump, their faces bedaubed with red paint toned down with dirt, squatted on the ground and grinned with delight when gazed at by our crew of young men. We all traded something for moccasins and for the rest of the trip wore them instead of shoes. Curious to see inside of the lodges, I took a cup of sugar and went into two or three under pretence of trading it for moccasins. Their belongings were lying around in piles, and the stench from the partly prepared skins and food was intolerable. One old Indian seemed to think that I was hunting a wife, for he offered to trade me one of his young squaws for the pony. A pony was the usual price of a wife with these Western Indians. They exhibited no hostility whatever toward us. It might have been otherwise, had we been a weak party of two or three possessing something that they coveted. They asked us if we saw any buffalo. When we told them that at a distance of two or three days' travel the plains were covered with them, they seemed greatly interested and before we got away began to take down some of their lodges and start off. They were out for their yearly buffalo hunt to supply themselves with meat for the winter. In moving they tied one end of their lodge poles in bunches to their ponies and let the other ends spread out and drag upon the ground, and on these dragging poles they piled their skins and other possessions. The young children and old squaws would often climb up on these and ride. Cactus plants in hundreds of varieties grew in great abundance on these dry plains. They were beautiful to the eye, but a thorn in the flesh. As we walked through them their sharp needles would run through trousers and moccasins and penetrate legs and feet. We often ate the sickishly sweet little pears that were seen in profusion. Prairie dogs by the million lived and burrowed in the ground over a vast region. The plains were dotted all over with the little mounds about two feet high that surrounded their holes. On these mounds the little animals would stand up and bark till one approached quite near, then dart into the holes. In places the ground was honeycombed with their small tunnels, endangering the legs of horses and oxen, which would break through the crust of ground into them. I shot at many of them, but never got a single animal, as they always dropped, either dead or alive, into the hole and disappeared from sight. Many small owls sat with a wise look on top of these little mounds, and rattlesnakes, too, were often found there. When disturbed the owls and snakes would quickly fly and crawl into the holes. It was a saying that a prairie dog, an owl and a rattlesnake lived together in peace in the same hole. Whether the latter two were welcome guests of the little animal, or forced themselves upon his hospitality, in his cool retreat, I never knew. One day we came to a wide stretch of loose dry sand, devoid of vegetation, over which we had to go. It looked like some ancient lake or river bottom. The white sand reflected the sun's rays and made it unpleasantly hot. The wheels sank into the sand and made it so hard a pull for the oxen that we had to double up teams, taking one wagon through and going back for another, so we only made about three miles that day. The unexpected was always happening to delay us. The trip was dragging out longer than was first reckoned on, and the early enthusiasm was dying out. Walking slowly along nine or ten hours a day grew monotonous and tiresome. Then, after the day's work, to watch cattle one-half of every third night was a lonely, dreary task, and became intolerably wearisome. Standing or strolling alone, half a mile from camp, in the darkness, often not a sound to be heard except the howling of the wolves, and nothing visible but the sky above and the ground below, one felt as if his only friends and companions were his knife and his pistol. In the early part of September violent thunderstorms came up every evening or night, with the appearance of an approaching deluge. Very little rain fell, however, but the lightning and thunder were the most terrific I ever saw or heard. There being no trees or other high objects around, we were as likely to be struck as any thing. For a few wet nights I crawled into one of the covered wagons to sleep, where some provisions had been taken out, and right on top of twelve kegs of powder. I sometimes mused over the probable results, in case lightning were to strike that wagon. We passed one grave of three men who had been killed by a single stroke of lightning. Graves of those who had given up the struggle of life on the way, were seen quite frequently along the route. They were often marked by inscriptions, made by the companions of the dead ones on pieces of board planted in the graves. Now we came to extensive alkali plains, covered with soda, white as new fallen snow, glittering in the sunshine. No vegetation grew and all was desolation. An occasional shower left little pools of water here and there, strongly impregnated with alkali, and from them the oxen would occasionally take a drink. From that cause, or some other unknown one, they began to die off rapidly, and within three days one-third of them were gone. The remainder were too few to pull the heavy train. The situation was such that it gave us great anxiety. What was to be done? Either leave part behind and go on to Denver with what we could take, or else keep things together by taking some of the wagons on for a few miles and then go back for the rest. The conclusion was to leave four loads of heavy machinery on the plains and go on with the other wagons as fast as possible. I asked the drivers if any of them would stay and guard those to be left. Tobias and the German volunteered to stay. We selected a camping spot a mile away from the usually traveled road so as to avoid the scrutiny of other pilgrims and look like a small party camping to rest. Then we left them provisions for two or three weeks and went ahead. We guessed that we were then about 150 miles from Denver. The two left behind had no mishaps, but found their stay there all alone for two weeks very dreary and lonesome. Tobias was for over a year one of my most valuable and agreeable assistants. The German, when in the mountains a short time, lost his eyes by a premature blast of powder in a mining shaft. I helped provide funds to send him East to his friends. A few days before this misfortune of the death of our oxen and when the drivers were in their most discontented mood, Sollitt, ever suspicious, came to me quite agitated with a tale of gloomy forebodings. He said he had overheard fragments of a talk between the Missourians and some others who were quite friendly with them, which convinced him that a conspiracy was hatching to terminate the tiresome trip, by their deserting us in a body, injuring or driving off the oxen, or committing some more tragic act. He thereupon armed himself heavily with his small weapons, and advised me to do the same. Instead of following the advice, I became more chatty and friendly with the men and talked of our trials and our better prospects. I discovered in a few a bitter feeling toward Sollitt, occasioned by some rough words or treatment they had received. Sollitt was honest and faithful and in many things very efficient, but was devoid of tact and agreeable ways toward those under his control, especially if he took a dislike to them. One man urged me to assert my reserved authority and take direct charge of the whole business of the train to the exclusion of Sollitt. I had no longings for the disagreeable task of a train master, and simply poured oil on the troubled waters, and went ahead. When the oxen began to die off, Sollitt told me that he thought one of the Missourians had poisoned them and he disemboweled a number of the dead animals to see if the cause of death could be discovered. He found no signs of poison and nothing that looked suspicious in the stomachs; but he said, the spleens of all of them were in a high state of inflammation. I did not, however, understand that the oxen got their ailment from the Missourians. One evening we saw the clear cut outline of the Rocky Mountains, including Long's Peak. We differed in opinion, at first, as to whether it was mountain or cloud and could not decide the question till next morning, when, as it was still in view, we knew it was mountain. For several days, though traveling directly toward the mountains, we seemed to get no nearer, which was rather discouraging. Small flocks of antelope, fleet and graceful, were frequently seen gliding over the plain. They were very shy, and kept several gunshots away. But their curiosity was great, and if a man would lie down on the ground and wave a flag or handkerchief tied to a stick till they noticed it, they would first gaze at it intently and then gradually approach. In this way they were often enticed by hunters to come near enough for a shot. Forty or fifty miles below Denver we came in view of one picturesque ruin--old Fort St. Vrain--with its high, thick walls of adobe situated on the north side of the Platte. It was built about twenty-five years before, by Ceran St. Vrain, an old trapper and Indian trader. These adobe walls, standing well preserved in this climate, it seemed to me, would be leveled to the ground by one or two good eastern equinoxial storms. We reached Denver on the 18th of September about noon, being forty-nine days out from St. Joe. Stubbs met us five or six miles out on the road. This gave him and me a chance, as we walked along, to talk over the condition of things and our plans for the immediate future. He had been in Denver over a week waiting for us and had had no tidings of the train since I wrote him from Fort Kearney. He had considerable liking for display and had evidently told people in Denver that he was waiting for the arrival of a large train of machinery and goods in which he was interested. He thought it would be a scene to be proud of to see fourteen new wagons, heavily loaded and drawn by forty yoke of oxen, come marching into town in one close file. When he saw only nine wagons straggling along over the space of a mile, covered with dust that had been settling on them for weeks, with oxen lean, footsore, limping and begrimed with sweat and dirt, and teamsters in clothes faded, soiled and ragged, his pride sank to a low level, and he did not want to go into town with the wagons. The train did not tarry, but crossed Cherry Creek--then entirely dry, though often a torrent--drove up the Platte a mile or so and camped for the day on the south or east side of the stream. Stubbs and I spent a couple of hours looking over the town and calling on some acquaintances and then went to the camp. Denver was at that time a lively place, with a few dozen frame and log buildings, and probably a thousand or more people. Most of them lived and did business in tents and wagons. A Mr. Forrest, whom I had known in Chicago, was doing a banking business here in a tent. The town seemed to be full of wagons and merchandise, consisting of food, clothing and all kinds of tools and articles used in mining. Many people were preparing to leave for the States, some to spend the winter and to return, others, more discouraged or tired of gold hunting, to stay for good. When I went to the camp in the afternoon Sollitt and all the drivers wanted to go back to the town to look it over and make a few purchases. I told them I would look after the oxen till evening, when the herders for that night would come and relieve me. The afternoon was clear and warm, though the mountains to the west were carpeted with new-fallen snow. I went out in my shirt sleeves, without a thought of needing a coat. The oxen wandered off quite a distance from camp in search of the best grass, and I leisurely followed them. Late in the afternoon, and quite suddenly, the wind sprang up and came directly from the mountains, damp and cold. Soon I was enveloped in a dense fog, and could see but a few yards away. I lost all sense of the direction of the camp or town, and the men at camp did not know where or how to find me. When night came it grew so dark that I could not see my hand a foot from my eyes, and could only keep with the cattle by the noise they made in walking and grazing. Later the fog turned into a cold rain, with considerable wind, and was chilling to the bone, so I was booked for the night in a cold storm without supper or coat. To keep the blood in circulation I would jump and run around in a circle for half an hour at a time. Sometimes I would lean up against one of the quiet old oxen on his leeward side, and thus get some warmth from his body and shelter from the wind. When the oxen had finished grazing and had lain down for the night, I tried to lie down beside one of them to get out of the wind, but the experiment was so novel to the ox that he would get up at once and walk off. During the night the oxen strolled off more than a mile from camp. When morning came I was relieved by the men and was ready for breakfast, and especially for the strong coffee. In times of exposure and extra effort, coffee was the greatest solace we found. When on a visit to Denver, twenty-three years afterwards, I tried to find out just where I spent that night. An old settler of the place decided with me that it was on the elevated ground now known as Capitol Hill. During the day we crossed the Platte and went forward with the train to the foot of the mountains, and camped some two or three miles south of where Clear creek leaves the foot-hills. Next morning Sollitt took twelve yoke of oxen with two drivers, and started back for the four wagons and two men that had been left behind on the plains. Our teamsters, who had volunteered to drive oxen to the mountains without pay, had now fulfilled their agreement, but most of them were glad to stay with us for awhile at current wages--about a dollar and a half a day. The prospect was not as golden, and the men were not as anxious to get to mining as they had been when a thousand miles further east. Stubbs had spent a month among the mines and mills, and his observations made him rather blue. The accounts he gave me were most discouraging. He was inclined to think that the best thing for us to do was to go into camp for the winter, look around, watch the developments, and in the spring decide where to locate, if at all, or whether to sell out, give up the enterprise and go home. The proposition was not a bad one, by any means; but I was too full of determination to do _something_, to think of sitting down and quietly waiting six months, after all we had gone through, to get there. I thought we would all be better satisfied if we were to pitch in and make a vigorous effort, even if we failed in the end, rather than to quit at this early stage of the hunt. The usual route from Denver to the gold fields, was to the north of Clear creek, by Golden City to Blackhawk, and then to Mountain City. Stubbs selected a route further south, because there was a fine camping place, with good grass, about fifteen miles, or half way up to the gold fields, from the foot of the mountains. The roads were quite passable up to this camp, though the hills were steep. With the drivers and oxen that were left after Sollitt started back, the wagons were gradually taken up to this mountain camp, while he was back on the plains and Stubbs and I were looking over the gold region to decide on a final location. The weather was pleasant and rather warm during the day, but frosty at night. We still slept in the open air, and our blankets were often frozen to the ground in the morning. There was more or less gulch mining and prospecting[2] going on over a large section of the mountains, but the principal part of the lode mining, and most of the mills that had been located, were confined to a field not over five or six miles in extent, the center of which was Mountain City, now Central City. There were fifty or more mills already up and in running order. They varied in capacity from three to twenty stamps. Some were running day and night crushing quartz that was apparently rich in gold; some were running a part of the time, experimenting on a variety of quartz taken out of different lodes and prospect holes, and generally not paying, and some were idle, the owners discouraged, "bust," and trying to sell, or else gone home for the winter to get more money to work with. [Footnote 2: "Prospecting" included the searching for gold in almost any way that was experimental. Going off into the unexplored mountains to hunt new fields of gold, whether in gulches or lodes was prospecting. Digging a hole down through the dirt and loose stones in the bottom of a gulch to see if gold could be found in the sand was prospecting. Sinking a shaft into the top dirt of a hillside in search of a new lode, or into the lode when discovered to see if gold could be found there was prospecting. And manipulating a specimen of quartz by pulverizing and the use of quicksilver to see if it contained gold was also prospecting.] The most of these mills were located about Mountain City and Blackhawk and in Nevada and Russell's gulches. The rest of them were scattered in other small gulches or mountain valleys in the vicinity. The richest mines being worked were the Bobtail, Gregory, and others, in Gregory gulch between Mountain City and Blackhawk. The other principal gold diggings were some seventy miles further south, near the present site of Leadville. These I did not then visit. Nearly all of these mills had been brought out and located during the year 1860. Ours was about the last one to arrive that season. It was evident that the business was not generally paying. The reasons given were, that the mills did not save the gold that was in the quartz, and that those at work in the mines were nearly all in the "cap rock" which was supposed to overlie the richer deposits below. The theory was that the deeper they went the richer the quartz. There were just enough rich "pockets" and streaks being discovered and good runs made by the few paying mines and mills to keep everybody hopeful and in expectation that fortune would soon favor them. So they worked away as long as they had anything to eat, or tools and powder to work with. After looking over the fields a number of days, carrying our blankets and sleeping in empty miners' cabins, Stubbs and I concluded to locate at the head of Leavenworth gulch, which was about a mile and a half southwest of Mountain City, between Nevada and Russell's gulches. The side hills were studded all over with prospect holes and mining shafts. Several lodes, said to be rich in gold, had recently been discovered, and a nice stream of water ran down the gulch. Only three mills were in operation there, and a number of miners who were developing their own claims strongly encouraged us to come, promising us plenty of quartz to crush. Several parties were gulch mining there with apparent success, and during the short time that I watched one man washing out the dirt and gravel from the bottom of the gulch he picked up several nice nuggets of shining gold, which was quite stimulating to one's hopes. I afterwards learned that these same nuggets had been washed out several times before, whenever a "tenderfoot" would come along, who it was thought might want to buy a rich claim. As soon as we located and selected a mill site, we went vigorously to work, and all was preparation, bustle and activity. Stubbs was a good mechanic and took charge of the construction. Others were cutting down trees, hauling and squaring logs, and framing and placing timbers to support the heavy mill machinery. As soon as Sollitt returned from the plains, he, with a few of the drivers, went to work to get the wagons, machinery and provisions from the mountain camp up to our location. In many places, at first glance, the roads looked impassable. They went up hills and rocky ledges so steep that six yoke of oxen could pull only a part of a load; then down a mountain side so precipitous that the four wheels of each wagon would have to be dead-locked with chains to keep them from overrunning the oxen; then they would go along mountain streams full of rocks and bowlders, and upsetting a wagon was quite a common occurrence. I saw one of our provision wagons turn over into a running stream, and, among other things, a barrel of sugar start rolling down with the current. As soon as everything was brought up to our final location, I sold some of the wagons, some oxen and the pony, thus securing cash to pay help and other expenses. I traded others off for sawed lumber, shingles, etc., for use in building the mill-house and a cabin. Grass was very scarce in the mining regions. One of the faithful, well-whipped oxen was killed for beef (a little like eating one of the family). In this dry, pure air the meat kept in perfect condition for many weeks till all eaten up, and it was an agreeable change in our diet. When we had finished the hauling of timber and other things, we sent the oxen, still on hand, down to the foot of the mountains where there was grass during the winter; for cattle would pick up a living among the foot-hills, and come out in good condition in the spring. The distance was some twenty-five or thirty miles. Early one bright November morning I started down there on foot to make arrangements with a ranchman to look after them. The air was so bracing and stimulating to the energies that I felt as if a fifty-mile walk would be mere recreation. Being mostly down hill, I arrived at the ranch before noon, did my business, got a dinner of beef, bread and coffee, and felt so fine that soon after two o'clock I concluded to start for home, thinking that in any event I would reach one of the two or three cabins that would be found on the latter part of the road. Walking up the mountains was slower business than going down, and long before I reached the expected cabins it became dark and I was completely tired out. I found a small pile of dried grass by the roadside which had been collected by some teamster for his horses. I covered myself up with this as well as I could, and being very tired, was soon asleep, without supper or blanket. On awakening in the morning, I found myself covered with several inches of snow, and felt tired, hungry and depressed. I plodded along toward home for a few hours, and came to a cabin occupied by a lone prospector, who got me up a meal of coffee, tough beef and wheat flour bread, baked in a frying pan with a tin cover over it. Soon after finishing the meal I felt sick and very weak, and was unable to proceed on my journey till late in the afternoon, when I went ahead and reached home long after dark. Leavenworth gulch was crossed by dozens of lodes of gold-bearing quartz, generally running in a north-easterly and south-westerly direction. In this district the discoverer of a lode was entitled to claim and stake off 200 feet in length, then others could in succession take 100 feet each, in either direction from the discovery hole, and these claims, in order to be valid, were all recorded in the record office of the district. Owners of these various claims, to prospect and develop them, had dug the side hills of the gulch all over with hundreds of holes from ten to thirty feet deep, partly through top dirt and partly through rock. A few would find ore rich enough to excite and encourage all the rest. More would find rich indications that would stimulate them to work on as long as they had provisions or credit to enable them to go ahead, hoping each day for the golden "strike." A large majority of these prospect holes came to nothing. Many of the miners had claims on several different lodes, and although they might have faith in their richness, they wanted to sell part of them to get means to work the rest. We had plenty of chances to buy for a few hundred dollars in money or trade mines partly opened, showing narrow streaks of good ore, which, according to the prevailing belief, would widen out and pay richly as soon as they were down through the "cap rock." While work was progressing on the mill I spent considerable time in looking over these mines, and I went down numerous shafts by means of a rope and windlass, turned by a lone stranger, who I sometimes feared might let me drop. I listened to glowing descriptions by the owners, examined the crevises and pay streaks, and took specimens home to prospect. This was done by pounding a piece of ore to powder in a little hand mortar, then putting in a drop of quicksilver to pick up the gold, and then evaporating that fluid by holding it in an iron ladle over a fire. The richness of the color left in the cup would indicate the amount of gold in the quartz.[3] I could soon talk glibly of "blossom rock," "pay streaks," "cap rock," "wall rock," "rich color," and use the common terms of miners. I bought two or three mines, traded oxen and wagons for two or three more, and furnished "grub stakes" to one or two miners--that is, gave them provisions to live on while they worked their claims on terms of sharing the results. [Footnote 3: In testing quartz by specimens, "greenhorns" were sometimes deceived by "loaded" quicksilver, that is by that which had some gold in it and would leave a "color" whenever evaporated. I knew one miner who worked away in his mine, taking out quartz all winter, and was in good spirits as he tested a specimen of his ore every day or two and always found a rich color. When crushed in the spring his quartz did not "pay." The bottle of quicksilver he had used all winter was found to be "loaded."] Quartz mills were nearly all run by steam and the fuel was pine wood cut from the mountain sides, every one taking from these public domains whatever he wanted. The principal features of our mill were twelve large pestles or stamps, weighing 500 pounds each, which were raised up about eighteen inches by machinery and dropped into huge iron mortars onto the small pieces of rock which were constantly fed into them by a man with a shovel. A small stream of water was let into the mortars, and as the rock was crushed into fine sand and powder it went out with the water, through fine screens in front, and passed over long tables, a little inclined, and then over woolen blankets. The tables were covered with large sheets of brightly polished copper. On these polished plates, quicksilver was sprinkled and it was held to the copper by the affinity of the two metals for each other. As the water and powdered rock passed over the tables, the quicksilver, by reason of its chemical attraction for gold, would gather up the fine particles of that metal and, as the two combined, would gradually harden and form an amalgam, somewhat resembling lead. Coarser grains of gold would lodge in the blankets, owing to their weight, while the small particles of rock would pass over with the water. The amalgam was put into a retort and heated over a fire, when the quicksilver would pass off in vapor through a tube into a vessel of water, and then condense, to be again used, while the gold would be left in the retort, to be broken up into small pieces and used as current money. In order to save as much of the gold as possible, these copper plates required close watching, constant care and much rubbing to remove the verdigris that would form. About the first of November our mill was completed, and we expected to operate it a good part of the winter with the quartz of other miners, together with that which we would take out ourselves from our own mines. A large well, or underground cistern, was dug under the mill house, which was fed by copious springs, and promised to furnish an abundant supply of water. To furnish water for the numerous mills about Mountain City and in Nevada gulch a large ditch had been dug, which started up in the mountains near the Snowy range, and wound like a huge serpent around promontories and the sides and heads of numerous gulches, with a slight incline, for some fifteen miles. It passed around the hills which bordered Leavenworth gulch, a few hundred yards above our mill site. About the time the mill was completed the water was turned off from this ditch on account of freezing weather and the near approach of winter. Very soon after, the beautiful springs which supplied our tank and the gulch with water, all dried up. They had been fed by seepage from the big ditch. With the disappearance of the water vanished all prospect of running the mill before spring, when the melting snow would furnish a supply. It seemed like a bad case of "hope deferred." But the bracing air and climate, outdoor life, constant exercise, coarse food and pure water were too invigorating and stimulating to the feelings and hopes to allow one to feel much depressed or discouraged. We looked forward to the next summer for the golden harvest. Stubbs built us a one-and-a-half-story-cottage out of sawed lumber, boards and shingles, with one room below for living, eating, cooking and storing provisions in, and one above for a dormitory. A corner of the latter was partitioned off into a small room for him and me, with a bunk for each, under which we stored our twelve kegs of powder, as being the safest place we had for it. We slept on beds of hay with our blankets over us, and in very cold weather piled on our entire stock of coats and some empty provision sacks. In the room below was a good cook stove, and there was wood in abundance, so we kept comfortable, though the house was neither plastered nor sheeted, and considerable daylight came in through cracks in the siding. We had a table and benches made of boards, and Stubbs made me an armchair and a desk for my account books, papers and stationery. What a luxury, after four months camping out, to be able to sit down in a chair, eat from a table, sleep on a bed, write at a desk, read by a candle at night and have regular, well-cooked meals. To a lover of the picturesque in scenery our location was ideal. Immediately around us was a semicircle of high, steep, pine-covered hills spotted with prospect holes. To the east, through an opening in the intervening mountain ranges, the plains were in full view over a hundred miles away. Sometimes for days, they were covered with shifting clouds which seemed far below us. Then an east wind would drive the clouds and mist slowly up into the mountains, swallowing up first one range and then another, till only a few peaks would stand out, above an ocean of fog, and finally we would be enveloped ourselves. Ascending a hill a few hundred yards above our house and looking westward over a great depression or mountain valley, one had in full view the Snowy range over twenty miles away, with its crests and peaks covered with perpetual snow, and Mount Gray still further in the distance. In the fall and winter almost every day local snowstorms and blizzards were seen playing over this great basin and on the sides of the distant range. Our location was some nine or ten thousand feet above the sea. The lightness of the air gave some inconvenience and many surprises to new comers. They would get out of breath in a few minutes in walking up a hill. I would wake up several times in a night with a feeling of suffocation, draw deep breaths for a few minutes and thus get relief before going to sleep again. It took ten minutes to boil eggs, two to three hours for potatoes, and beans for dinner were usually put on the fire at supper time the day before. Coin and bank bills were seldom seen. The universal currency was retorted gold, broken up into small pieces, which went at $16 an ounce. Every man had his buckskin purse tied with a string, to carry his "dust" in, and every store and house had its small scales, with weights from a few grains to an ounce, to weigh out the price when any article from a newspaper to a wagon was purchased. No laws were in force or observed except miners' laws made by the people of the different districts. When a few dozen miners, more or less, settled or went to work in a new place they soon organized, adopted a set of laws and elected officers, usually a president, secretary, recorder of claims, justice of the peace and a sheriff or constable. Appeals from the justice, disputes of importance over mining claims, and criminal cases were tried at a meeting of the miners of the district. We were in the district of Russell's gulch. Sometimes we had a meeting of the residents of our own gulch. One chap there stole a suit of clothes. The residents were notified to meet at once, and the same day the culprit was tried and found guilty, and a committee, of which I was one, was appointed to notify him to leave our locality within two hours and not to return, on penalty of death. He went on time. Had he been stubborn and refused to go, I don't know what course the committee would have taken. This member of it would have been embarrassed. An adjoining district was made up mostly of Georgians. They had their own tastes and prejudices. Soon after we came to the mountains, at their miners' meeting a man was convicted for some offence and sentenced to receive thirty lashes from a heavy horsewhip. The day for the execution of the sentence was regarded as a kind of holiday and the miners collected from all the country around. All our men, including Sollitt, went to the whipping. Stubbs and I stayed at home. We had no relish for that sort of amusement. A thief was more sure of punishment than a murderer. There was so much property lying around in cabins unguarded, while the owners were off mining or prospecting, that stealing could not be tolerated, while the loss of a man now and then by killing or otherwise did not count for much. When it was found that the mill could not be run during the winter, we discharged all the men except the cook, and two others, who were kept to help do a little mining on two of the claims that we had secured by trade and purchase. A shaft about three feet by six was sunk in each, which followed the vein of mineral quartz down to a depth of thirty to fifty feet. In one, the vein was quite rich in places, but only two or three inches wide, and it would not pay to work it; but the hope that kept us, like hundreds of others at work, was, that the vein would widen out when we got a little deeper and grow richer as it went down. This hope was never realized. The other shaft was on a lode called the Keystone, and developed a wide vein of black pyrites of iron that much resembled that which was being taken out of the best paying mines, and most of the miners that examined it declared that we had a bonanza. Of course we were in good spirits, but we did not care to run in debt in order to take out more mineral than we got in sinking the shaft, of which there were several cords. I worked a part of each day in the shafts, with the others, to learn the details, drilling, blasting and picking out the "pay streak." Then I spent a good deal of time looking around among other mines, and the mills that were at work, to learn what I could. Quite a number of other miners were at work in the gulch sinking shafts on their best claims and taking out ore to be crushed in the spring. To some of these we furnished provisions to enable them to keep at work. Most of the roving, restless, fickle people had gone home in the fall and those who stayed were men of grit and determination. Some of them were well educated and intelligent. Every little while somebody would strike a small pocket, or a streak of very rich ore, which would help to make everybody else feel hopeful. And so the winter wore away. There were four families in the gulch this winter, including that number of women, several children and three young ladies. The young men buzzed around the homes of the latter like bees about a honey dish. These families united and had a party on Christmas Eve. Three cottages were used for the occasion, one to receive the guests in, ours for the supper room, and another with a floor for dancing. We regarded this as the "coming out" of the youngest of the young ladies. Several ladies from Russell's and other gulches came to the party. Among those living here were quite a number who brought a few books with them. No one person had many, but all together they made quite a library and were freely lent. I remember borrowing and reading by the light of a candle, in these long winter evenings, some works on mines, Carlyle's works, a few histories and several novels. The almost universal amusement with the miners and others was card playing, confined to euchre and poker. Every miner had a pack of cards in his cabin if not in his pocket, and generally so soiled and greasy that one could not tell the jack from the king. Gambling was common and open in Denver and Mountain City, and not unusual elsewhere. Playing for gain was never practiced in our cottage. When poker was played, beans were put in the jackpot instead of money. Near the junction of Russell's and Leavenworth gulches, and about a third of a mile from our location, was a mill owned and run by George M. Pullman, then a comparatively obscure man, but later known to the world as the great sleeping car magnate. He also had an interest in a general supply store near Mountain City. He lived much of this winter in a cabin near the mill, and rode back and forth to town almost daily on an old mule. He wore common clothes like the rest of us, and the only sign of greater importance that he exhibited was, that while I walked to town, he rode the mule. He left the mountains the next summer for Chicago, and entered upon his sleeping-car enterprise, which led to fame and fortune. Another young miner that was much in evidence about Mountain City this winter was Jerome B. Chaffee, who afterwards made a fortune in mines, took an active interest in local politics and became a United States Senator. In Mountain City there was an enterprising chap who started a pie bakery and did an extensive business. Miners from all the country around, when they came to town, crowded his shop for a delightful change from the usual cabin fare. I went to town every few days for letters and papers, or to visit the mills, and always indulged in this one dissipation. I went to his bakery and feasted on pie. He had peach, apple, mince, berry, pumpkin and custard pie, and never since I was a boy in the land of pie did the article taste so good. Within a hundred yards of our mill lived and worked the gulch blacksmith, named Switzer. He sharpened our drills and did our smith work generally. He had a bitter feud with a gambler in Mountain City, which resulted in each vowing to shoot the other on sight. They carried loaded revolvers for the occasion for nearly a month, and then happened to meet in broad daylight in the principal street of the town. The other fellow was the quicker--Switzer fell dead and we had to find another blacksmith. No notice was taken of the affair by the authorities. Sollitt became ill with what the doctors pronounced scurvy, and went East before April. Stubbs and he disliked each other from the first, and whatever one suggested the other opposed. This made it easier for me to decide some questions, as I never had both of them against me. The people here were generally very healthy. I increased much in strength and vigor, and weighed 175 pounds for the first and only time in my life. November was windy, stormy and cold, but in December the weather was settled and pleasant. During the winter the mercury a few times went below zero; otherwise the climate was delightful. The warm sunshine of the last half of April melted the snow, thawed the ground and brought a supply of water for the mill, even before the big ditch began to run. We soon began crushing the piles of quartz that had been taken out during the winter by various miners, and tried our own rich-looking black stuff from the Keystone. The mill was run day and night. I took charge from midnight till noon and Stubbs from noon till midnight. None of the rock was found rich enough to pay for mining and milling. That tried in one or two other mills was no better. General discouragement followed, and everybody stopped mining in our gulch. Some went to work for wages in other mines, to get a fresh supply of provisions, etc. Some went off prospecting and gulch mining in the newer gold regions. Our neighbor, Farren, moved his mill seventy miles away, to California gulch, near where Leadville now is. A mill partly erected near our mill site, and owned by a Mr. Bradley and a Mr. H. H. Honore, the father of Mrs. Potter Palmer, was moved away to other parts, and our mill was left alone. The gulch was soon almost deserted. Mines and mills seemed to be of no use or value. Our whole enterprise had apparently collapsed, and the golden halo, that for ten months had surrounded it, had vanished. Hope departed, and for a few days was replaced by feelings of disappointment and depression of spirits not often experienced by me. Stubbs abandoned the business and decided to go home and leave me to hold the fort and look after the wreck, as he called it, to see what could be saved. He built a boat, had it hauled down to the Platte at Denver, piled in his provisions and effects, launched it in the river and started down stream, hoping to reach Omaha in that way. All went well for about a hundred miles, when the water grew so shallow that he was stranded amid the small islands and shifting sands. He got ashore, abandoned his boat and took passage in an eastward-bound mule wagon. He and the principal, Mr. Sollitt, afterwards sold out their interest in the enterprise to Mr. Ayres for a small consideration. In a few days I got over the "dumps," and spent a week or two visiting the newer gold fields up the south branch of Clear creek, about Idaho, Georgetown, Empire and Fall river, where new lodes were being discovered almost daily. Not much gold was being taken out, but everybody was full of hope and expectation and busy prospecting and staking off claims on newly discovered lodes. I had some staked off for myself by some men who had worked for us. Geo. M. Pullman wanted to experiment on a load of the ore from our noted Keystone lode, as it looked so rich. When it was going through the mill, the amalgam piled up so fast on the copper plates and appeared so rich that he at once came up to see me and proposed that we buy, on joint account, the adjoining claim on the same lode, as I knew the owner and had formerly had an option on its purchase. A few hours later, when they had cleaned up and retorted the amalgam he came galloping up again on the old mule to stop proceedings, as they got very little of value from the amalgam, and that mostly silver. Thus that gleam of hope quickly vanished also. Late in June, with Tobias as a companion, I took a trip of observation over the range into the wild regions of Middle park. We carried our blankets, flour, bacon, coffee and sugar to last a week, also tin cups, plates and spoons, a frying pan, gun, pistol, hatchet and belt knives. Walking the first day slowly up the slopes through the pine forests, around the head of Nevada gulch, and along the high ridge south of Boulder valley, we camped for the night just below the timber line so as to have fuel for a fire. A few tracks of Mountain lion were seen in the afternoon. The trees grew smaller and smaller till the last seen were old ones covered with moss and only a few feet high. After leaving the line of timber growth, the ground for some miles was thickly carpeted with mountain moss, then in full bloom in rich colors of red, white, blue and yellow. In the afternoon we reached the top of a high peak on the crest of the range where all was desolation, and nothing grew. The peak was a vast pile of broken rocks and stones partly covered with snow. To the North Long's Peak stood out above everything else. To the East one had a grand view over a wilderness of mountain ranges and peaks to the great plains in the dim distance. To the South, beyond a range of other snow-capped peaks, towered Mount Gray. Within a mile of us in full view, were seven mountain lakes from ten to a hundred acres in size, and one of them, which was screened from the sun's rays by a steep rocky ledge, was still solid ice from the freeze of the last winter. To the west was visible a circle of mountain tops, thirty or forty miles away, and surrounding the great basin, a mile below us in elevation, which constituted Middle park. The afternoon was bright and pleasant, and we decided to spend the night on the peak, to see the sunrise and enjoy the view in the clear morning air. We made a bed with flat stones and rolled up in our blankets for sleep. Then the wind blew over us and up through the crevices in the rocks under us and soon our teeth were chattering and we were chilled through and through. To keep from freezing we climbed in the darkness, over the rocks and down the mountain side to a sheltered nook, then rolled up and went to sleep. During the night I was awakened by some animal sniffing about my head and pulling at my blanket. A yell, a start and two or three stones thrown after him, sent him off among the rocks, and I never knew what it was. At daylight we again climbed up the peak, saw the sun rise, made a breakfast of bread and sugar as we had no fuel to make a fire, and then started down the mountain. The little streams and pools coming from the melting snows the day before were now all frozen up. By ten o'clock we were down where the vegetation was luxuriant, the flowers in bloom and the butterflies flitting about them. Along the stream that we descended to the westward, was a series of beaver dams continuing for several miles, covering two or three acres each, with breasts four or five feet high formed of logs and brush. Out in the middle of the dams were the beavers' houses, partly under water and rising a few feet above. Many of the logs, cut off by the beavers to form the dams, and the stumps on the shore where they had gnawed down the trees, were twelve to fifteen inches through. Further on we saw bear tracks in the mud along the stream. When we camped at night we made a bed of pine boughs, and over it a small shelter with branches of trees cut with the hatchet. We built a fire on the side hill above our sleeping place beside a fallen tree. In the night it burned through and a log rolled down the hill over us, and we awoke with a sudden start. I thought of bears and instantly seized my hatchet and knife for defense, before realizing the true situation. Old skulls and bones of buffalo were plentiful, showing that the animals had once occupied these fertile valleys. On starting back we followed an old animal trail, the general course of which was headed toward the range, though it wound around the mountain sides and gulches in all directions. We felt sure it would lead over the Snowy range at the easiest passage. After following it two days, often climbing over and creeping under fallen trees, it brought us through a low pass to the head waters of South Clear creek, whence we had an easy trail down hill most of the way home. Though far away from the seat of the civil war we did not escape its excitements. The Southerners were numerous in the mountains, and of course all sided with the South. They and the Northerners were very suspicious of each other, and each party bought up all the guns they could get in the mountains. During the summer of 1861 much fear was felt that a rebel force might march up the Arkansas and, with the help of their friends here, capture the whole settlement. But when the Southern troops were defeated and driven out of New Mexico by the Union forces in the following spring, all danger was over and "Pike's Peak" was loyal. The Southerners gradually left to join the rebel army. We got news from the East in six days, by telegraph to Omaha, the overland mail coach to Julesburg, near the forks of the Platte, and by pony express from there to Denver. St. Louis papers were eight days old and Chicago papers ten days old when received. One of the best known miners in our region was Joe Watson, who came from near Philadelphia, in 1859, and he came to stay. Though quiet and unassuming he was nervy, determined, persevering and persistent. He discovered, staked off, owned and worked many claims in Leavenworth and other gulches. Sometimes he had streaks of luck and often the reverse. When lucky he would hire men to help him, when "broke" he would put more patches on his clothes, sharpen his own tools, borrow a sack of flour and work away. Some years later he discovered a really rich gold mine, then worked a silver mine in Utah and became a millionaire. During the spring of 1861 and the winter previous, he prospected in several of his claims, but fortune was against him. In July, when most of the other miners had left our gulch, he came back and quietly went to work in a claim that he owned on the hillside a few hundred feet above our cottage. In two or three weeks he took out from a narrow crevice two cart loads of top quartz which looked like rusty iron (not having got down to the pyrites), and he persuaded me to start up the mill and crush it. Very soon the amalgam began to pile up on the copper plates as I had never before seen it. The result of the "clean up" and retorting was $1,000 worth of shining gold. The next run, out of the same mine, produced but little gold, a good example of how that metal was found in streaks and pockets. Watson paid his debts, got a new suit of clothes, laid in a stock of provisions, and went to work again developing his mines. It was related of him that he went to Philadelphia one winter to try and sell shares in his mines, and that he wore a suit of Quaker clothes, used the plain language, attended Friends' meetings, and had good success in selling shares. Of these early workers I might name a few more who attained wealth or prominence; but the great majority--those who hoped and struggled and toiled without success, are forgotten. The rich strike in Joe's mine made quite an excitement. Some others were inspired with renewed hopes and many visited the gulch to see the rich mine they had heard of. There was a small army of miners marching through the mountains constantly, going in all directions, leaving one place for some other where rich strikes were reported. I concluded to make one more trial in the Keystone, dig a little deeper and see if the ore was any richer there. The result was a pleasant surprise, and gold enough to more than pay expenses. I hired a gang of men to work the mine night and day, and thus kept the mill going till the water gave out in the fall. As I had no skilled assistant I had to work at least sixteen hours a day in running the mill, procurring supplies and superintending everything. Some runs proved the quartz to be quite rich, though it varied greatly. We still believed in the theory that it would grow richer as we went deeper. I arranged to mine all winter and pile up the quartz for spring crushing. In April, 1862, when provisions were nearly used up in the mountains and the early spring supply trains from the East were about due, there came an unusual fall of snow, eighteen inches deep, extending far eastward over the plains, completely blockading teams and transportation. A famine was threatened and people became panic-stricken. Flour rose as high as $50 a sack, and one day a small quantity sold for eighty cents a pound. Coffee and other things also advanced in price. We were on our last sack of flour, and I decided that when that was gone the men must all quit work and start eastward to meet the supplies on the plains. But the incoming trains soon began to arrive in Denver, and provisions were plentiful at usual prices. When the mill was started up in the spring our hopes were dashed by finding that the quartz taken out during the winter did not pay as well as that of the previous season. The mine was down about a hundred feet, and the last taken out did not pay expenses, so I discharged the miners again. I was getting tired and disgusted with the whole business, and realized that it was about time to return East if I were going back there to settle down. About the first of June, Mr. Ayres came out to spend the summer. He was so delighted with the beauty of the scenery and novelty of the business that he talked of sending for his family. The mountain sides were gay with wild flowers in full bloom in gorgeous colors. The shining gold that he could see taken out by several successful plants, delighted his eyes and stimulated his imagination nearly up to the point of genuine gold fever. His coming was of course a great relief to me by dividing the responsibility and work about the mill. We ran the mill night and day, crushed all the quartz that could be got and worked over a large pile of tailings that had accumulated below the mill, which paid a small profit. The summer's success was very moderate. About midsummer Mr. Ayres bought out my interest in the enterprise, with the understanding that I would remain till fall and assist him. He wanted to give the business a further trial. I determined to return to Chicago and try to take advantage of the tide of prosperity then beginning to rise in the East. Mr. Ayres remained till late in the fall, then went to Chicago for the winter and returned to the mountains early in the spring of 1863, to give the business a further trial. But he did not do much mining or milling. During that spring and the following summer a fever of speculation prevailed all over the East, brought about by the war and the deluge of greenbacks. It extended to mining stocks, and especially to gold mines, as gold was then selling at a high premium--one hundred dollars in gold bringing $260 in legal tender currency. Mr. Ayres offered his plant for sale, went to New York in the summer and disposed of it in Wall street for $30,000. The mill was never afterwards run and I believe, none of the mines ever worked. Twenty years later I visited Leavenworth gulch. The mill and all the houses and cabins of my former days there had disappeared, and most of the old prospect holes and mining shafts had caved in. One familiar sight, however, remained. A load or so of black, rich looking ore was lying upon the ground unused and uncared for at the shaft of the Keystone. On the 22nd of October, 1862, I left the mountains and gave up the mining business for ever. The next day at Denver I took passage for Omaha, in a two-horse covered wagon, with a man and his wife who were returning to their home in Baraboo, Wis., after spending two years in the gold fields with only moderate success. Another man also took passage making a party of four. Leaving the wagon to the man and his wife, my fellow passenger and I slept on the ground in our blankets, except occasionally, when near some ranch or settlement, we could enjoy the luxury of a haystack. When two or three days out of Denver we had a "cold snap" which froze the vegetables in the wagon and made sleeping out very uncomfortable. The woman did the cooking and the men collected the fuel. The other two men had guns and supplied us with small game. We saw a few dozen buffalo, but they were too far off to shoot. One day the two men went off on an all-day hunt among the distant hills, the arrangement being to meet us in camp at evening. I drove the team, and in the afternoon we came in sight of a camp of Indians with their lodges set up near our trail. The only thing to do was to drive boldly ahead. The woman sat on a seat well back in the wagon, and I sat forward with my feet out on a front step. I hung up a blanket close behind me across the wagon, so that the Indians could not see how many persons were in it. As we approached the camp about a dozen of them came out on the trail in front of us, motioning to me to stop and calling out, "Swap, swap, swap," meaning for us to stop and trade with them, but intending doubtless to find out how many were in the wagon, and rob us if they dared. Suddenly, when within a few yards of them, I whipped the horses with all my might, and drove furiously past and away from the camp. When our party met at night, all agreed that the day's experience savored too much of danger to allow the hunters to go out of sight of the wagon again. We passed two or three camps of Sioux Indians along the Platte, but they gave us no trouble. When driving through the trees and bushes in a lonely spot about a day's journey below Fort Kearney, we suddenly met a band of mounted Pawnee warriors, who stopped us and in broken English asked where we were going, where we came from, if we saw any Sioux Indians, how big the bands were, if they had many ponies and how many days' journey they were away. We answered their inquiries, and they told us to go ahead. They rode westward, doubtless to make a raid on their enemies, the Sioux. The weather was now getting cold; we approached the settlements and enjoyed the haystacks. One night, while camping near an Indian settlement on the Platte, I crawled well into the middle of a small rick of hay. The Indians were tramping around it and over it and howling and yelling all night, but I kept my berth till morning. We reached Omaha in twenty days from Denver. There I said good-by to my traveling companions and took stage for Iowa City, whence I could go by rail to Chicago. The stage trip was two days and nights of continuous travel, except short stops to change horses and get something to eat. We were packed three on a seat, with no chance to stretch out our limbs, and no opportunity for sleep, except such as could be obtained sitting upright and jolting over the rough roads. After an absence of about two and a third years, I reached Chicago in the middle of November, 1862, a wiser if not a richer man. After selling out my interest in the joint enterprise, I still had left some fifty claims on various lodes in the newer gold fields of the Clear creek region. Some I had pre-empted, and some I had bought in job lots from miners who were "broke" or were about to leave the mountains. Some had prospect holes dug in them and some were entirely undeveloped. They may have been worthless, and they may have contained untold millions. But I had given up the mining business. Some time after returning to Chicago I was making a real estate trade, and we were a little slow in adjusting the difference in values and closing the deal, and finally as "boot" to make things even I threw in these fifty gold mines. Perhaps this was a mistake and a squandering of wealth and opportunities. Had I only kept them, and gotten up some artistic deeds of conveyance, in gilded letters, what magnificent wedding presents they would have made. And the supply would have been as exhaustless as that of Queen Victoria's India shawls. In the long list of high-sounding, useless presents, the present of a gold mine would have led all the rest. In summing up the losses and gains of the expedition, I have to charge on one side two years and four months of time devoted to hard work, with many privations, and about $500 in cash which I was out of pocket. On the other side, I had built up a fine constitution, increased in strength and endurance, gained valuable business experience, learned in a measure to persevere under difficulties, and to bear with patience and fortitude the back-sets, reverses and disappointments that so often beset us, and, finally, had learned enough not to be taken in by the schemers who are constantly enticing eastern people to invest in gold and silver mines. Did the enterprise pay? PRINTED BY R. R. DONNELLEY AND SONS COMPANY AT THE LAKESIDE PRESS, CHICAGO, ILL. 
31148	----	A New Subspecies of Wood Rat (Neotoma mexicana) From Colorado BY ROBERT B. FINLEY, JR. University of Kansas Publications Museum of Natural History Volume 5, No. 30, pp. 527-534, 2 figures in text August 15, 1953 University of Kansas LAWRENCE 1953 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS, MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Editors: E. Raymond Hall, Chairman, A. Byron Leonard, Robert W. Wilson Volume 5, No. 30, pp. 527-534, 2 figures in text August 15, 1953 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS Lawrence 1953 PRINTED BY FERD VOILAND, JR., STATE PRINTER TOPEKA, KANSAS 1953 [Illustration] 24-7674 A New Subspecies of Wood Rat (Neotoma mexicana) from Colorado By ROBERT B. FINLEY, JR. Field and museum studies of the wood rats of Colorado have revealed the existence of an unnamed subspecies of _Neotoma mexicana_ in eastern Colorado south of the Arkansas River. The characters of the new subspecies are most distinctive in the northeastern part of its range near Two Buttes and Higbee. It differs in cranial characters from _N. m. fallax_ and _N. m. inopinata_ and averages slightly larger, but cannot be distinguished by coloration of the pelage. This heretofore undescribed subspecies may be known as: #Neotoma mexicana scopulorum# subsp. nov. _Type._--Mus. Nat. Hist., Univ. Kansas, No. 37137, old adult male, skin and skull; from 37° 47' N, 103° 28' W, three miles northwest of Higbee, 4300 feet, Otero County, Colorado; trapped 16 May 1950 by R. B. Finley, Jr., original number 500516-1. _Range._--Cañons, mesas, and foothills south of the Arkansas River, east to Two Buttes, Colorado, and south to Clayton, New Mexico. The extent of the range to the southwest in New Mexico has not been determined. _Diagnosis._--Size large for the species; interorbital constriction near middle of frontal rather than anteriorly; supraorbital ridges of frontal concave laterally; skull large, strongly arched at base of rostrum; rostrum wide; nasals wide anteriorly; upper incisors wide, light yellow; molars large, tooth-rows long; zygomatic arches wide and heavy; interparietal short, wide, and posterior margin straight or with a slight posterior median angle. _Description._--Adults in dense unworn pelage taken in February at Two Buttes Reservoir: size large for the species; tail approximately 76 per cent as long as head and body; hind feet of medium length. Pelage: moderately long, thick; tail covered with short hairs; longest vibrissae 80 mm. Color: sides near Raffia (11 E 6) (capitalized color names and designators are of Maerz and Paul, A Dictionary of Color, McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 1930) overlaid with black, the general effect being grayish buff (13 G 6); back darker, moderately to heavily overlaid with black; indistinct dark eye ring; underparts whitish, fur basally gray except patch of fur pure white to base almost always present on upper throat; dark line around mouth; tail bicolor, black above, whitish below; feet white to ankles. Skull: large for the species, strongly arched at base of rostrum; rostrum heavy; zygomatic arches widely spreading, heavy, squarish; braincase moderately ridged and angular; nasals wide anteriorly, lateral margins nearly parallel or converging evenly posteriorly, tapered abruptly at posterior ends which reach posteriorly beyond anterior plane of orbits; dorsal branches of premaxillae extending 0.5 to 1.2 mm. posterior to nasals; interorbital region moderately channeled, narrowly constricted near middle of frontal (instead of anteriorly); supraorbital ridges concave laterally, diverging more strongly posterior to interorbital constriction (frontal 8.7 to 9.5 mm. wide at posterior ends of supraorbital ridges); temporal ridges widely flaring on parietals; occipital ridges prominent; interparietal broadly rectangular between temporal ridges, usually short in median line of skull, posterior margin straight or with slight median posterior angle; incisive foramina tapered toward both ends, sometimes narrower anteriorly than posteriorly; anterior palatal spine usually forming a blade thickened on ventral edge, and right and left sides usually incompletely fused; nasal septum with a posterior notch separating vomer from maxillary; posterior margin of palate usually bearing single or double point, sometimes straight; interpterygoid fossa moderately wide, lateral margins concave; sphenopalatine vacuities large; auditory bullae of medium size; basioccipital with low median ridge or crest; upper incisors wide, yellow or yellow-orange; molars large, M1 wider than M2; maxillary tooth-rows long, nearly parallel; anterointernal fold of M1 deep, cutting more than half way across first enamel loop. [Illustration: FIGS. 1-6. Skulls of _Neotoma mexicana_. All × 1. FIGS. 1-2. _Neotoma mexicana scopulorum_, holotype. FIGS. 3-6. _Neotoma mexicana fallax_, 1-1/2 mi. NW Golden, 6200 ft., Jefferson County, Colorado, 8 June 1948, [Male] No. 29182 KU.] Adult in worn pelage taken in May at Two Buttes peak: no molt in evidence; pelage thinner and rougher than in adults of same tooth wear taken in February in unworn pelage (described above); upper parts duller, less heavily overlaid with black; sides less richly yellowish, slightly more pinkish in hue; underparts with no fur white to base (as usual for the species). The skull of this rat has narrower nasals than other adults from Two Buttes and a longer interparietal with a posterior median angle. Subadult taken in April at Regnier: completing postjuvenal (first) molt; new pelage fairly long and thick everywhere except on neck and upper back, where covered by remaining juvenal pelage; upper parts of new pelage duller than in adults, sides less buffy, more grayish; juvenal pelage grayer than new pelage; new pelage indistinguishable from same pelage (second pelage of first year) of _N. m. fallax_. _Comparisons._--_N. m. scopulorum_ is extremely variable in color but averages lighter and richer in color than _N. m. fallax_, and about the same as _N. m. inopinata_. _N. m. scopulorum_ can be separated from either by the following cranial differences: skull larger, more strongly arched at base of rostrum, interorbital constriction more posterior; supraorbital ridges concave laterally (in contrast to straight, diverging); interparietal shorter in median line, more widely spreading and rectangular; zygomatic arches more widely spreading and heavier; upper incisors wider; and molars larger. _N. m. scopulorum_ differs from _inopinata_ also in paler upper incisors and less prominent basicranial ridges. _N. m. scopulorum_ is paler than _N. m. pinetorum_. The skulls of these two subspecies are of about the same size, but the subspecies differ in other respects as _scopulorum_ differs from _fallax_ and _inopinata_. Judging from the description and photograph of _mexicana_ in Goldman's revision of the genus _Neotoma_ (N. Amer. Fauna, 31: 54-56, Pl. IV, 19 October 1910), _scopulorum_ differs from _N. m. mexicana_ in: larger skull; longer nasals and dorsal branches of premaxillae; more posterior interorbital constriction (supraorbital ridges more concave laterally); wider upper incisors; and larger molars. _Measurements._--Mean and extreme measurements in millimeters of 6 males and 5 females from 3 mi. NW Higbee and the vicinity of Two Buttes are, respectively, as follows: total length, 357 (345-368), 345 (310-379); length of tail, 147 (140-158), 159 (138-178); length of hind foot, 35 (32-38), 36.4 (35-38); length of ear, from notch, 25.5 (25-26), 25.7 (25-27); weight (in grams), 234 (213-253), 206 (161-246); basilar length, 37.9 (36.8-38.9), 36.2 (34.5-38.6); length of nasals, 19.0 (18.2-20.0), 17.9 (16.4-19.6); zygomatic breadth, 23.9 (23.0-24.5), 23.3 (22.3-24.0); interorbital breadth, 5.3 (4.9-5.6), 5.1 (5.0-5.3); breadth of rostrum, 7.2 (6.8-7.7), 6.8 (6.7-6.9); diastema, 12.8 (12.3-13.3), 12.2 (11.1-13.7); alveolar length of maxillary tooth-row, 9.5 (9.2-9.8), 9.4 (9.0-9.7); length of incisive foramina, 9.7 (9.2-10.2), 9.2 (8.6-10.2); length of palatal bridge, 8.8 (8.4-9.2), 8.5 (8.0-8.9). _Measurements of the type._--Total length, 348; length of tail, 143; length of hind foot, 35; length of ear, from notch, 25; weight (in grams), 230; basilar length, 38.1; length of nasals, 18.8; zygomatic breadth, 24.2; interorbital constriction, 5.5; breadth of rostrum, 7.2; diastema, 13.0; alveolar length of maxillary tooth-row, 9.2; length of incisive foramina, 9.7; length of palatal bridge, 8.9. _Remarks._--The large size and distinctive cranial characters of _N. m. scopulorum_ are fairly constant in the northeastern part of its range, but there is a wide range of variation in color. The only two skins from the type locality differ markedly in color. Both specimens (the type and KU 37138, adult male) were collected on 16 May 1950 and are in moderately worn pelage. The upper parts of the holotype are much more yellowish than in KU 37138, and are even lighter buff than adults in unworn pelage from Two Buttes. The underparts of the holotype are more extensively white than in almost any other specimen seen of _Neotoma mexicana_. The basal gray coloration, where it is present along the sides of the venter, forms only a narrow intermediate color band extending not more than one third the length of the hairs. An extensive area of the throat, breast, axillae, median belly, and inguinal region is covered by hairs pure white to the skin. The dark line around the mouth is present, as usual for the species. The upper parts of KU 37138 are like those of the adult in worn pelage from Two Buttes peak, described above; the underparts have only small patches of pure white fur on the throat and inguinal region, being elsewhere gray at the base of the fur, as is usual for the species. The molars of the type specimen are in an advanced state of wear, having the pattern of the enamel folds still discernible but the depth of remaining enamel slight. A large alveolar abscess surrounds the abnormal left M1. There are two, much worn, peglike fragments of the tooth projecting slightly from an ovoid alveolar cavity 5.1 mm. long and 4.3 mm. wide. As a result of the reduction of wear on the opposing m1, the crown of m1 is much less worn than those of the other lower molars and projects 0.8 mm. above the occlusal level of the two posterior molars. A few barbed cactus glochids (bristles) are inbedded in the cavity around the base of the molar remnants. Although glochids are of rather frequent and normal occurrence between the teeth of _Neotoma albigula_ and _N. micropus_, they are not so commonly found in _N. mexicana_ and possibly induced the alveolar infection in this individual. In addition to the skins in unworn and worn pelages already described from Two Buttes, an extremely dark specimen is at hand from Two Buttes peak, taken on 9 May 1950. This specimen (KU 37141 [Female]) is an adult in moderately worn pelage. The back is dark brownish gray (Taupe, 16 A 6), the sides lighter (a shade lighter than Beaver, 15 A 6). The entire underparts are washed with reddish buff (Grain, 11 B 5) over the gray basal coloration, with a patch of white only in the genital region. The dark eye ring and dark line around the mouth are heavier than usual. The underside of the tail is light gray. The white hind feet are sharply set off from the dark gray ankles. Each of four skulls from Regnier (three adults and one subadult) differs from skulls from Two Buttes in having a longer interparietal with a posterior angle. The skins of five adults collected in December at Trinchera are less richly colored on the sides than skins from Two Buttes and look more nearly like topotypes of _N. m. fallax_. The skull of one of the five from Trinchera differs from skulls from Two Buttes in much narrower nasals anteriorly, narrower rostrum, much narrower upper incisors, and smaller zygomatic breadth, these characters being as in _fallax_. Four adults and one subadult from Trinidad are intergrades between _N. m. scopulorum_ and _N. m. fallax_, perhaps more nearly resembling the former. In pelage they are indistinguishable from specimens of _fallax_ from Gold Hill (the type locality), less buff than most individuals of _scopulorum_ from Otero, Prowers, and Baca counties. The skulls of the three fully mature adults are large with a wide zygomatic breadth, large rostrum, and large upper incisors as in _scopulorum_; but the upper molars are small and the bullae are rather small and narrow as in _fallax_. In the degree of arching at the base of the rostrum, the shape of the frontal, the shape of the interparietal, and the size of the upper molars, the specimens from Trinidad are intermediate. It seems to me best to refer them to _scopulorum_. Two first-year adults from Fisher Peak and Long Cañon are indistinguishable from topotypes of _fallax_ of similar age and also resemble a young adult and a subadult from Trinidad, but all are insufficiently mature to show subspecific characters distinctly. Until adequate series are available from southwestern Las Animas County it seems best to regard all specimens from the three localities as representatives of a single uniform population which is intermediate between _fallax_ and _scopulorum_ but more nearly like the latter. Unfortunately no other specimens are available from the foothill zone south of the Arkansas River where morphological intergradation and ecological transition between _fallax_ and _scopulorum_ might reasonably be expected to occur. Three specimens from the north side of the Arkansas River, about 26 miles below Canon City, Pueblo County, are like _fallax_ in size, dorsal profile of the skull, and shape of the interorbital constriction; but they approach _scopulorum_ in shape of the interparietal, size of the rostrum, and size of the molars. They are intergrades referrable to _fallax_. _Neotoma mexicana_ was first reported from Oklahoma by W. Frank Blair in 1939 (Amer. Midl. Nat., 22:126) who referred a specimen from Tesequite Canyon, Cimarron County, to _N. m. fallax_. I have seen one specimen (MZ 80469) from Tesequite Canyon and refer it to _scopulorum_. Of _scopulorum_, each of eight skulls, of the 28 skulls examined, has an anteroexternal enamel fold on the m3 and one (BSC 35222/47487 [Male]) has an anterointernal fold on the m3. Of the other 19 mandibles, a few are too old to show such a fold, which tends to be obliterated with wear in later age, and the others lack the fold. Two other wood rats (_N. albigula warreni_ and _N. micropus canescens_) occur at many of the same localities as _N. m. scopulorum_. The dens of _scopulorum_ almost always are situated among rocks, but the dens of _warreni_ and _canescens_ are in a variety of other situations as well as among rocks. Houses of sticks or cactus joints piled up around the base of a juniper (_Juniperus monosperma_), thicket of skunkbush (_Rhus trilobata_), clump of soapweed (_Yucca glauca_) or tree cactus (_Opuntia arborescens_) have been found to shelter only _N. a. warreni_ or _N. micropus canescens_. When these wood rats are associated with _scopulorum_ among the rocks, their dens can be recognized by the compact midden of innumerable cactus spines. The dens of _scopulorum_ have only a few loosely scattered spine areoles or none at all. I am grateful to the officials of the following institutions for permission to examine specimens from the collections under their care: Denver Museum of Natural History; Biological Survey Collection, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service; American Museum of Natural History; Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California; Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan. The drawings of the skulls were made by Victor Hogg. _Specimens examined._--Total 66, distributed as follows: #Colorado.# _Baca County_: "Furnace Canyon" [= Furnish Canyon], 1 (DMNH); Regnier, 4500 ± ft., 4 (2 DMNH, 2 KU); Two Buttes Reservoir, 4200 ± ft., 5 (3 DMNH, 2 KU). _Las Animas County_: Fisher Peak, "about 8000 ft." [6 mi. SE Trinidad], 1 (BSC); Long Cañon (near Martinsen), 1 (BSC); Mesa de Maya, 1 (MZ); 9 mi. W jct. Purgatory [= Purgatoire] & Chaquaqua [= Chacuaco] rivers ("Red Rock Canyon," collector's field notes), 1 (MVZ); Trinchera, 6 (5 DMNH, 1 AMNH); Trinidad, 5 (BSC); 20 mi. E Walsenburg, "Huerfano Co." [probably Las Animas County], 1 (DMNH). _Otero County_: 3 mi. NW Higbee, 4300 ft., 4 (KU). _Prowers County_: Two Buttes peak, 4600 & 4650 ft., 2 (KU). #New Mexico.# _Union County_: Clayton, 9 (BSC); 9 mi. NE Des Moines on the "Carramba River" [= Cimarron River], 1 (DMNH); Folsom, 6 (BSC); Raton Range (Oak Cañon), 8 (BSC); Sierra Grande, 9 (BSC). #Oklahoma.# _Cimarron County_: Tesequite Canyon, 1 (MZ). _Museum of Natural History, University of Kansas, Lawrence. Transmitted April 20, 1953._ 24-7674 
30224	----	[Illustration: _A Prairie Infanta.--Frontispiece_ "THE DOCTOR SCOWLED OVER HIS GLASSES AS HE LISTENED." _See p. 79_] A Prairie Infanta By Eva Wilder Brodhead Illustrated PHILADELPHIA HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY HENRY ALTEMUS The pictures in this book have been reproduced by the courtesy of "The Youth's Companion" CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER ONE THE POWER OF CONSOLATION 13 CHAPTER TWO A SACRED CHARGE 37 CHAPTER THREE A TRUE BENEFACTRESS 61 CHAPTER FOUR WISE IMPULSES 85 CHAPTER FIVE DESTINY PRESSES 109 CHAPTER SIX BEWILDERING SATISFACTION 133 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE "The doctor scowled over his glasses as he listened" _Frontispiece_ "'I will not go with you!'" 29 "'He is Tesuque, the rain-god'" 55 "'I hoped you'd be able to lend me a hand'" 101 "'Do not make the thread short, Lolita'" 123 "'_Tia_, you are a lady of fortune'" 153 THE POWER OF CONSOLATION A PRAIRIE INFANTA CHAPTER ONE THE POWER OF CONSOLATION At the first glance there appeared to be nothing unusual in the scene confronting Miss Jane Combs as she stood, broad and heavy, in her doorway that May morning, looking up and down the single street of the little Colorado mining-town. Jane's house was broad and heavy also--a rough, paintless "shack," which she had built after her own ideals on a treeless "forty" just beyond the limits of Aguilar. It was like herself in having nothing about it calculated to win the eye. Jane, with her rugged, middle-aged face, baggy blouse, hob-nailed shoes and man's hat, was so unfeminine a figure as she plowed and planted her little vega, that some village wag had once referred to her as "Annie Laurie." Because of its happy absurdity the name long clung to Jane; but despite such small jests every one respected her sterling traits,--every one, that is, except Señora Vigil, who lived hard by in a mud house like a bird's nest, and who cherished a grudge against her neighbor. For, years before, when Jane's "forty" was measured off by the surveyor, it had been developed that the Vigil homestead was out of bounds, and that a small strip of its back yard belonged in the Combs tract. Jane would have waived her right, but the surveyor said that the land office could not "muddle up" the records in any such way; she must take her land. And Jane had taken it, knowing, however, that thereafter even the youngest Vigil, aged about ten months, would regard her as an enemy. Just now, too, as Alejandro Vigil, a ragged lad with a scarlet cap on his black head, went by, driving his goats to pasture, he had said "rogue!" under his breath. Jane sighed at the word, and her eyes followed him sadly up the road, little thinking her glance was to take in something which should print itself forever in her memory, and make this day different from all other days. In the clear sun everything was sharply defined. From the Mexican end of town,--the old "plaza,"--which antedated coal-mines and Americanisms, gleamed the little gold cross of the adobe Church of San Antonio. Around it were green, tall cottonwoods and the straggling mud-houses and pungent goat-corrals of its people. Toward the cañon rose the tipple and fans of the Dauntless colliery, banked in slack and slate, and surrounded by paintless mine-houses, while to the right swept the ugly shape of the company's store. The mine end of the town was not pretty, nor was it quiet, like the plaza. Just at present the whistle was blowing, and throngs of miners were gathering at the mouth of the slope. From above clamored the first "trip" of cars. Day and its work had begun. Alejandro's red cap was a mere speck in the cañon, and his herd was sprinkled, like bread-crumbs, over the slaty hills. But over in the Vigil yard the numberless other little Vigils were to be seen, and Jane, as she looked, began to see that some sort of excitement was stirring them. The señora herself stood staring, wide-eyed and curious. Ana Vigil, her eldest girl, was pointing. Attention seemed to be directed toward something at the foot of the hill behind Jane's house, and she turned to see what was going on there. A covered wagon, of the prairie-schooner type, was drawn up at the foot of the rise. Three horses were hobbled near by, and a little fire smoked itself out, untended. The whole thing meant merely the night halt of some farer to the mountains. Jane, about to turn away, saw something, however, which held her. In the shadow of the wagon the doctor's buggy disclosed itself. Some one lay ill under the tunnel of canvas. She had just said this to herself when out upon the sunny stillness rang a sharp, lamentable cry, such as a child might utter in an extremity of fear or pain. The sound seemed to strike a sudden horror upon the day's bright face, and Jane shivered. She made an impulsive step out into her corn-field, hardly knowing what she meant to do. And then she saw the doctor alighting from the wagon, and pausing to speak to a man who followed him. This man wore a broad felt hat, whose peaked crown was bound in a silver cord which glittered gaily above the startled whiteness of his face. He had on buckskin trousers, and there was a dash of color at his waist, like a girdle, which gave a sort of theatric air to his gesture as he threw up his arms wildly and turned away. The doctor seemed perplexed. He looked distractedly about, and seeing Jane Combs in her field, called to her and came running. He reached the fence breathless, for he was neither so young nor so slim as the man leaning weeping against the wagon-step. "Will you go over there, Miss Combs?" he panted. "There's a poor woman in that wagon breathing her last. They were on their way from Taos to Cripple Creek--been camping along the way for some time. Probably they struck bad water somewhere. She's had a low fever. The husband--Keene, his name is--came for me at daybreak, but it was too late. She seems to be a Mexican, though the man isn't. What I want you to do is to look after a child--a little girl of ten or twelve--who is there with her mother. She must be brought away. Did you hear her cry out just now?--that desperate wail? We'd just told her!" "I guess everybody heard it," said Jane. Mechanically she withdrew the bolt of the gate, which forthwith collapsed in a tangle of barbed wire. Tramping over this snare, Jane faced the doctor as he wiped his brows. "I aint much hand with children," she reminded him. "You better send Señora Vigil, too." As she strode toward the wagon, the man in the sombrero looked up. He was good-looking, in a girlish sort of way, with a fair skin and blue eyes. A lock of damp, yellow hair fell over his forehead, and he kept pushing it back as if it confused and blinded him. "Go in, ma'am--go in!" he said, brokenly. "Though I do not reckon any one can do much for her. Poor Margarita! I wish I'd made her life easier--but luck was against me! Go in, ma'am!" As Jane, clutching the iron brace, clambered up the step and pulled back the canvas curtain, the inner darkness struck blank upon her sun-blinded eyes. Then presently a stretch of red stuff, zigzagged with arrow-heads of white and orange and green, grew distinct, and under the thick sweep of the Navajo blanket, the impression of a long, still shape. The face on the flat pillow was also still, with closed eyes whose lashes lay dark upon the lucid brown of the cheek. A braid of black hair, shining like a rope of silk, hung over the Indian rug. Heavy it hung, in a lifeless fall, which told Jane that she was too late for any last service to the stranger lying before her under the scarlet cover. Neither human kindness nor anything could touch her farther. "The tale of what we are" was ended for her; and from the peace of the quiet lips it seemed as if the close had been entirely free of bitterness or pain. Jane moved toward the sleeper. She meant to lay the hands together, as she remembered her mother's had been laid long ago in the stricken gloom of the Kansas farmhouse which had been her home; but suddenly there was a movement at her feet, and she stopped, having stumbled over some living thing in the shadows of the couch, something that stirred and struggled and gasped passionately, "_Vamos! Vamos!_" Such was the wrathful force of this voice which, with so little courtesy, bade the intruder begone, as fairly to stagger the well-meaning visitor. "I want to help you, my poor child!" Jane said. And her bosom throbbed at the sight of the little, stony face now lifted upon her from the dusk of the floor--a face with a fierce gleam in its dark eyes, and clouded with a wild array of black hair in which was knotted and twisted a fantastic _faja_ of green wool, narrowly woven. "I ask no help!" said the child, in very good English. "Only that you go away! We--we want to be by ourselves, here--" suddenly she broke off, glancing piteously toward the couch, and crying out in a changed, husky voice, "_Madre mia! muerta! muerta!_" A ray of sunshine sped into the wagon as some hand outside withdrew the rear curtain a little. It shot a sharp radiance through the red and orange of the Indian blanket, and flashed across the array of tin and copper cooking things hung against one of the arching ribs of the canvas hood. Also it disclosed how slight and small a creature it was who spoke so imperatively, asking solitude for her mourning. Jane, viewing the little, desperate thing, seemed to find in herself no power of consolation. And as she stood wordless, with dimming eyes, there came from without a sound of mingling voices. Others were come with offers of service and sympathy. A confusion of Spanish and English hurtled on Jane's uncomprehending ear; some one climbing the step cried, "_Ave Maria!_" as his eyes fell on the couch. It was Pablo Vigil, a mild-eyed Mexican, with a miner's lamp burning blue in his cap. Behind him rose the round, doughy visage of his wife, blank with awe. She muttered a saint's name as she dragged herself upward, and said, "Ay! ay! ay! the poor little one! Let me take her away! So you are here, too, Mees Combs. But she will not speak to you, eh? _Lo se! lo se!_ She will speak to one who is like herself, a Mexican!" She seemed to gather up the child irresistibly, murmuring over her in language Jane could not understand, "Tell me thy name, _pobrecita_! Maria de los Dolores, is it? A name of tears, but blessed. And they call thee Lola, surely, as the custom is? Come, _querida_! Come with me to my house. It will please thy mother!" It was not precisely clear to Jane how among them the half-dozen Mexican women, who now thronged the wagon and filled it with wailing exclamations, managed to pass the little girl from hand to hand and out into the air. Seeing, however, that this was accomplished, she descended into the crowd of villagers now assembled outside. There was a strange, dumb pain in her breast as she saw the little, green-tricked head disappear in the press about the doctor's buggy. She was sensible of wishing to carry the child home to her own dwelling; and there was in her a kind of jealous pang that Señora Vigil should so easily have accomplished a task of which she herself had made a distinct failure. "If I'd only known how to call the poor little soul a lot of coaxing names!" deplored Jane, "Then maybe she'd have come with me. She'd have been better off sleeping on my good feather bed than what she will on those ragged Mexican mats over to Vigil's." Then, observing that two burros and several goats, taking advantage of the open gate, were now gorging themselves on her alfalfa, she proceeded to make a stern end of their delight. Early in the morning of the stranger's burial, Mexicans from up the cañon and down the creek arrived in town in ramshackle wagons, attended by dogs and colts. She who lay dead had been of their race. It was meet that she should not go unfriended to the _Campo Santo_. Besides, the weather was fine, and it is good to see one's kinsfolk and acquaintances now and then. The church, too, would be open, although the _padre_, who lived in another town, might not be there. Young and old, they crowded the narrow aisles, even up to the altar space, where a row of tapers burned in the solemn gloom. Little children were there, also, hushed with awe. And many a sad-faced Mexican mother pressed her baby closer to her heart that day, taking note of the little girl in the front pew, sitting so silent and stolid beside her weeping father. Jane Combs was in the back of the church. In their black _rebozos_, the poorest class of poor Mexican women were clad with more fitness than she. For Jane, weighted with the gravity of the occasion, had donned an austere black bonnet such as aged ladies wear, and its effect upon her short locks was incongruous in the extreme. No one, however, thought of her as being more queer than usual; for her sunburned cheeks were wet with tears, and her eyes were deep with tenderness and pity as they fixed themselves upon the small, rigid figure in the shadows of the altar's dark burden. Upon the following day, as Miss Combs opened her ditch-gate for the tide of mine water which came in a flume across the arroyo, she saw the doctor and Mr. Keene approaching. They had an absorbed air, and as she opened the door for them the doctor said, "Miss Combs, we want you to agree to a plan of ours, if you can." Keene tilted his chair restlessly. He looked as if life was regaining its poise with him, and his voice seemed quite cheerful as he said, "Well, it's about my little girl! I'm bound for a mountain-camp, and it's no place for a motherless child. Lola's a kind of queer little soul, too! My wife made a great deal of her. She was from old Mexico, ma'am. She was a _mestizo_--not pure Indian, you know, but part Spanish. Her folks were _rancheros_, near Pachuca, where I worked in the mines. I'm from Texas, myself. They weren't like these peons about here--they were good people. They never wanted Margarita to marry me." He laughed a little. "But she did, and the old folks never let up on her. They're both dead now. We've lived hither and yon around New Mexico these ten years past, and I aint been very successful; though things will be different now that I've decided to pull out for the gold regions!" Keene paused with an air of growing good cheer. He seemed to forget his point. Whereupon the doctor said simply: "In view of these things, Mr. Keene would like to make some arrangement for leaving his daughter here until he can look round." "And we thought of your taking her, ma'am," broke in Keene, with renewed anxiety. "Lola's delicate and high-strung, and I don't know how to manage her like my wife did. It'll hamper me terrible to take her along. Of course she's bright," he interpolated, hastily. "She was always picking up things everywhere, and speaks two languages well. And she'd be company for you, ma'am, living alone like you do. And I'd pay any board you thought right." [Illustration: "'I WILL NOT GO WITH YOU!'"] Jane's pulses had leaped at his suggestion. She was aware of making a resolute effort as she said, "Wouldn't Lola be happier with the Vigils?" "Her mother wouldn't rest in her grave," cried Keene, "if she knew the child was being brought up amongst a tribe of peons! And me--I want my child to grow up an American citizen, ma'am!" "Take the little girl, Miss Combs," advised the doctor. "It'll be good for you to have her here." "I've got to think if it'll be good for her," said Jane. "If that's all!" chorused the two men. They rose. The thing was settled. "I'll go and tell the Vigil tribe," said Keene, "and send Lola's things over here right off." With a wave of the hand and a relieved look, he went down the road. That night a boy brought to Jane's door a queer little collapsible trunk of sun-cured hide, thonged fast with leather loops. The Navajo blanket was outside. Jane surmised that Mr. Keene had sent it because he dreaded its saddening associations. A message from him conveyed the information that he expected to leave town early the next morning, and that Lola would be sent over from the Vigils. All during the afternoon Jane waited with breathless expectancy. The afternoon waned, but Lola did not come. Finally, possessed of fear and foreboding, Jane set forth to inquire into the matter. Upon opening the Vigil gate, she saw Lola herself sitting on the doorstep, looking over toward the little wood crosses of the Mexican burying-ground. The girl hardly noted Jane's approach, but behind her, Señora Vigil came forward, shaking her head at Jane and touching her lip significantly. "She does not know," whispered the señora. "Her papa did not say good-by. He said it was better for him to 'slip away.' And me--I could not tell her! I am only a woman." "You think--she will not want--to live with me?" The other's face grew very bland. "She said to-day 'how ugly' was your house," confessed Señora Vigil. "And when you was feeding your chickens she cried out, '_Hola_, what a queer woman is yonder!' Children have funny things in their heads. But it is for you to tell her you come to fetch her away!" And the señora called out, "_Lolita, ven aca!_" The girl looked up startled. "_Que hay?_" she asked, coming toward them apprehensively. "Lola," began Jane, "your papa wants you should stay with me for a while. He--he saw how lonesome I was," she continued, unwisely, "and--and so he decided to leave you here. Lola, I hope--I--" She could not go on for the strangeness in Lola's gaze. "Is he _gone_--my father? But no! he would not leave me behind! No! no! _Dejeme! dejeme!_ you do not say the truth! You shall not touch me! I will not--will not go with you!" She turned wildly, dizzily, as if about to run she knew not where; and then flung herself down before Señora Vigil, clasping the Mexican woman's knees in a frantic, fainting grasp. A SACRED CHARGE CHAPTER TWO A SACRED CHARGE Jane helplessly regarded the child's despair, while Señora Vigil maintained an attitude curiously significant of deep compassion and a profound intention of neutrality. With the sound of Lola's distraught refusals in her ear, Jane felt upon her merely the instinct of flight. She rallied her powers of speech and set her hand on the gate, saying simply, "I'm going. She better stay here." But at this the señora's face, which had exhibited a kind of woful pleasure in the excitement of the occasion, took on an anxious frown. "And the board-money?" she exclaimed, with instant eagerness. "I guess it'll be all right. Mr. Keene said he'd send it every month." The señora's eyes narrowed. "He said so! Ay, but who can say he shall remember? There are eight chickens to eat of our meal already. No, Mees Combs! The _muchacha_ was left to you. It is a charge very sacred. Ave Maria! yes!" Jane had closed the gate. "I can't force her," she repeated. Señora Vigil, watching her go, fell a prey to lively dissatisfaction. "_Santo cielo!_" she thought. "What will my Pablo say to this? I must run to the mine for a word with him. It is most serious, this business!" And casting her apron over the whip-cord braids of her coarse hair, she started hastily down toward the bridge. Lola, crouching on the ground, watched her go. It was very quiet in the grassless yard. The Vigil children were playing in the _arroyo_ bed. Their voices came with a stifled sound. There was nothing else to hear save the far-off moaning of a wild dove somewhere up Gonzales cañon. The echo was like a soft, sad voice. It sounded like the mournful cry of one who, looking out of heaven, saw her hapless little daughter bereaved and abandoned, and was moved, even among the blessed, to a sobbing utterance. Lola sat up to listen. Her father had spoken of going through that cañon from which the low call came. Even now he was traveling through the green hills, regretting that he had left his child behind him at the instance of a strange woman! Even now he was doubtless deploring that he should have been moved to consider another's loneliness before his own. "Wicked woman," thought the girl, angrily, "to ask him to leave me here--my poor papa!" She sprang to her feet, filled with an impetuous idea. She might follow her father! There was the road, and no one by to hinder her. Even the hideous wooden house of the short-haired woman looked deserted. Lola, with an Indian's stealth of tread, crossed the bridge, and walked without suspicious haste up the empty street. At the mouth of the cañon, taking heart of the utter wilderness all about, she began to run. Before her the great Spanish Peaks heaved their blue pyramids against the desert sky. Shadows were falling over the rough, winding road, and as she rushed on and on, many a gully and stone and tree-root took her foot unaware in the growing gray of twilight. Presently a star came out, a strange-faced star. Others followed in an unfamiliar throng, which watched her curiously when, breathless and exhausted, she dropped down beside a little spring to drink. The water refreshed her. She lay back on the cattle-tramped hill to rest. Dawn was rosy in the east when she awoke, dazed to find herself alone in a deep gorge. Her mission recurred to her, and again she took the climbing road. Now, however, the way was hard, for it rose ever before her, and her feet were swollen. As the day advanced it grew sultry, with a menace of clouds to the west. After a time the great peaks were lost in dark clouds, and distant thunder boomed. A lance of lightning rent the nearer sky, and flashed its vivid whiteness into the gorge. This had narrowed so that between the steep hills there was only room for the arroyo and the little roadway beside it. Before the rain began to fall on Lola's bare head, as it did shortly in sheets, the stream-bed had become a raging torrent, down which froth and spume and uprooted saplings were spinning. In an instant the cañon was a wild tumult of thunder and roaring water, and Lola, barely keeping her feet, had laid hold of a piñon on the lower slope and was burying her head in the spiked branches. Wind and rain buffeted the child. The ground began to slip and slide with the furious downpour, but she held fast, possessed of a great fear of the torrent sweeping down below her. As she listened to the crashing of the swollen tide, another noise seemed to mingle with the sound of the mountain waters--a sound of bellowing and trampling, as of a stampeded herd. A sudden horror of great rolling eyes and rending horns and crazy hoofs hurtled through the girl's dizzy brain. Her hands loosened. She began to slip down. The rain had slackened when Bev Gribble, looking from his herder's hut up on the _mesa_, saw that his "bunch" of cattle had disappeared. Certain tracks on the left of the upland pasture exhibited traces of a hasty departure. That there had been a cloudburst over toward the Peaks he was as yet ignorant; nor did he discover this until he had caught his cow-pony and descended into the ravine. The sun was shining now, and the arroyo was nothing more than a placid, though muddy stream. Its gleaming sides, however, spoke lucidly to Bev's intelligence, and he set the pony at a smarter pace in the marshy road. "_Sus! Sus!_" said Bev to his pony, who knew Spanish best, being a bronco from the south. But Coco did not respond. Instead, he came back suddenly on his haunches, as if the rope on the cow-puncher's saddle had lurched to the leap of a steer. Coco knew well the precise instant when it is advisable for a cow-pony to forestall the wrench of the lasso. But now the loop of hemp hung limp on the saddle-horn, and Gribble, surprised at being nearly thrown, rose in the stirrups to see what was underfoot. A drenched thing it was which huddled at the roadside; very limp, indeed, and laxly lending itself to the motions of Gribble's hands as he lifted and shook it. "Seems to be alive!" muttered the cow-puncher. "Where could she have dropped from? Aha! here's a broken arm! I better take her right to town to the doctor. Hi there, Coco!" He laid Lola over the saddle and mounted behind his dripping burden. When the coal-camp came in sight on the green skirt of the plains, with the Apishapa scrolling the distance in a velvet ribbon, sunset was already forward, and the smoke of many an evening fire veined the late sky. A man coming toward the cañon stopped at sight of Gribble. He was the store clerk going home to supper. He shouted, "Hullo, Bev! Why, what have you struck? Bless me, it's the little girl they're all hunting! She belongs to Miss Combs, it seems. Her mother died here the other day. Found her up the cañon, eh? They been all ranging north, thinking she'd taken after her pa. Maybe she thought he'd headed for La Veta pass? Looks sure 'nough bad, don't she?" Jane, when she heard the pony cross the bridge, ran to the door, as she had run so many times during the long, anxious day. She took the girl from Gribble without a word, and bore her into the house from which she had fled with so much loathing. "Don't look so scared!" said Gribble, kindly. "It's only a broken bone or so." As this consoling assurance seemed not to lessen Jane's alarm, he went on cheerfully to say, "There isn't one in my body hasn't been splintered by these broncos! Tinker 'em up and they're better than new. Here's doc coming lickety-switch! He'll tell you the same." But the doctor was less encouraging. "It isn't merely a question of bones," he said, observing his patient finally in her splints and bandages. "It's the nervous strain she's lately undergone. She's been overtaxed with so much excitement and sorrow. If she pulls through, it'll be the nursing." Jane drew a deep breath. "She won't die if nursing can save her!" said she. Her face shone with grave sacrificial tenderness, in the light of which the shortcomings of her uncouth dress and looks were for once without significance. "She's a good woman," said the doctor, as he rode away, "though she wears her womanhood so ungraciously--as a rough husk rather than a flower. All the same, she's laying up misery for herself in her devotion to this fractious child; I wish I'd had no hand in it!" Jane early came to feel what burs were in the wind for her. Lola soon returned to the world, staring wonderingly about; but even in the first moment she winced and turned her face away from Jane's eager gaze. As the girl shrank back into the pillows, Jane's lips quivered. "Goose that I am!" she thought. "Of course my looks are strange to her! It'd be funny if she took to me right off. I aint good-looking. And her ma was real handsome!" For once in her life Jane sighed a little over her own plainness. "Children love their mothers even when they're plumb homely!" she encouraged herself. "Maybe Lola'll like me, in spite of my not being well-favored, when she finds how much I think of her." As time passed, and Lola, with her arm in a sling, began to sit up and to creep about, there was little in her manner to show the wisdom of Jane's cheerful forecast. The girl was still and reserved, as if some ancient Aztec strain predominated in her over all others. She watched the Vigils playing, the kids gamboling, the magpies squabbling; but never a lighter look stirred the chill calm of her little, russet-toned features, or the sombre depths of her dark, long eyes. Jane watched her in despair. "I'm afraid you aint very well contented, Lola," she said, one day. "Is there anything any one can do?" Lola was sitting in the August sunshine. A little quiver passed through her. "I want to hear from my father," she said. "Has he--written?" Her voice was wishful, indeed, and Jane colored. "I guess he's been so busy he hasn't got round to it yet," she said, lightly. "I thought he hadn't," said Lola, quickly. "I--didn't expect it quite yet. He hates to write." Her accent was sharp with anxiety as she added, "But of course he sends the--board-money for me--he would remember that?" Evidently she recalled the Señora Vigil's questions and doubts on this subject, for there was such intensity of apprehension in her look that Jane felt herself full of pain. "Of course he would remember it, my dear!" she said, on the instant; she consoled her conscience by reflecting that there was no untruth in her words. Although Mr. Keene had sent never a word or sign to Aguilar, it was measurably certain that he remembered his obligations. "It'd just about kill that child to find out the truth," thought Jane. "She looks, anyhow, like she hadn't a friend on earth! I'm going to let her think the money comes as regular as clockwork! I d' know but I'm real glad he don't send it. Makes me feel closer to the little thing, somehow." After a while the broken arm was pronounced whole again, and the sling was taken off. "You're all right now," said the doctor to Lola, "and you must run out-of-doors and get some Colorado tan on your cheeks. _Sabe?_ And eat more. Get up an appetite. How do you say that in Spanish? _Tener buen diente_, eh? All right. See you do it." Lola stood at his knee, solemn and mute. She took his jests with an air of formal courtesy, barely smiling. She had a queer little half-civilized look in the neat pigtails which Jane considered appropriate to her age, and which were so tightly braided as fairly to draw up the girl's eyebrows. The emerald _fajas_ had been laid by. To garland that viny strip in Lola's locks was beyond Jane's power. "What a little icicle it is!" mused the doctor. "If I had taken a thorn from a dog's foot the creature would have been more grateful!" Even as he was thinking this, he felt a sudden pressure upon his hand. Lola had seized it and was kissing the big fingers passionately, while she cried, "_Gracias! mil gracias, señor!_ You have made me well! When my papa comes he will bless you! He will pour gold over you from head to foot!" "That's all right, Lola," laughed the doctor. "He'll have to thank Miss Jane more than me. She pulled you through. Have you thanked _her_ yet, Lola?" Lola's face stiffened. "But for her I should not have been tramped by the cattle--I should have been safe in my father's wagon!" she thought. "I--have not, but I will--soon," she said. "And your housekeeper, too, for the ice-cream, and other things." Jane, in succeeding days, took high comfort in the fact that Lola seemed to like being out-of-doors, and apparently amused herself there much after the fashion of ordinary children. She had established herself over by the ditch, and Jane could see her fetching water in a can and mixing it with a queer kind of adobe which she got half-way up the hill. That Lola should be engaged with mud _casas_ was, indeed, hardly in accord with Jane's experience of the girl's dignity; but that she should be playing ever so foolishly in a slush of clay delighted Jane as being a healthful symptom. "What you making down yonder, honey?" she ventured to ask. "I am making nothing; I am finished," said Lola. "To-morrow you shall see my work." Jane felt taken aback. It had been work, then; not simple play. She awaited what should follow with curious interest. Upon the next morning Lola ran off through the alfalfa rather excitedly. After a little she reappeared, walking slowly, with an air of importance. She carried something carefully before her, holding it above the reach of the alfalfa's snatching green fingers. It was a square pedestal of adobe, sun-baked hard as stone, upon which sat a queer adobe creature, with a lean body and a great bulbous head. This personage showed the presence in his anatomy of an element of finely chopped straw. His slits of eyes were turned prayerfully upward. From his widely open mouth hung a thirsty mud tongue, and between his knobby knees he held an empty bowl, toward the filling of which his whole expression seemed an invocation. "He is for you," said Lola, beaming artistic gratification. "He is to show my thanks for your caring for me in my broken-bonedness. He is Tesuque, the rain-god. You can let your ditches fill with weeds, if you like. You won't need to irrigate your _vega_ any more. Tesuque will make showers come." Jane trembled with surprised pleasure. The powers ascribed to Tesuque were hardly accountable for the gratification with which she received him. "I'll value him as long as I live!" she exclaimed. "He--he's real handsome!" "Not handsome," corrected Lola, with a tone of modest pride, "but _good_! He makes the rain come. In Taos are many Tesuques." "I reckon it must rain considerable there," surmised Jane, not unnaturally. Lola shook her head. "No. It's pretty dry--but it wouldn't rain at all, you see, if it wasn't for Tesuque!" This logic was irresistible. Jane dwelt smilingly upon it as she set the rain-god on the mantel, with a crockery bowl of yellow daisies to maintain his state. Afterward, a dark, adder-like compunction glided through the flowery expanse of her joy in Tesuque, as she wondered if there was not something heathenish in his lordly enshrinement upon a Christian mantelpiece. "Maybe he's an idol!" thought Jane. "Lola," she asked, perturbed, "you don't _pray_ to Tersookey, do you?" Lola looked horrified. "Me? _Maria Santissima!_ I am of the Church! Tesuque is not to pray to. I hope you have not been making your worship to him. It is like this, señora: You plant the seed and the leaf comes; you set out Tesuque and rain falls. It is quite simple." [Illustration: "'HE IS TESUQUE, THE RAIN-GOD.'"] Jane rested in this easy and convincing philosophy. She saw the joke of Lola's advice to her not to misplace her devotions, and one day she repeated the story to the doctor, showing him the rain-god. "Do you know," said the doctor, handling Tesuque, "that this thing is surprisingly well-modeled? The Mexicans can do anything with adobe, but this has something about it beyond the reach of most of them." After this, a pleasanter atmosphere spread in Jane's dwelling. Lola often unbent to talk. Sometimes she sewed a little on the frocks and aprons, preparing for her school career. Oftener she worked in her roofless pottery by the ditch, where many a queer jug and vase and bowl, gaudy with ochre and Indian red, came into being and passed early to dust again, for want of firing. Jane found these things engrossing. She liked to sit and watch them grow under Lola's fingers, while the purple alfalfa flowers shed abroad sweet odors, and the ditch-water sang softly at her feet. As she sat thus one afternoon, Alejandro Vigil came running across the field, waving a letter. "'Tis for you, Lolita!" he cried. "My father read the marks. It is from Cripple Creek!" "Oh, give me! give me!" cried Lola, flinging down a mud dish. Jane had taken the letter. "It's for me, dear," she said, beginning to open it. "I'll read it aloud--" She paused. Her face had a gray color. Lola held out her hands in a passion of joy and eagerness. "What does he say? Oh, hurry! Oh, let me have it!" Jane suddenly crushed the letter, and her eyes were stern as she withdrew it resolutely from Lola's reaching fingers. "No, Lola, no!" she said, in a sharp tone. "I--can't let you have this letter! I can't! I can't!" A TRUE BENEFACTRESS CHAPTER THREE A TRUE BENEFACTRESS Lola's breath was suspended in amazement. Indignation flashed from her eyes. She dropped her hands and Jane saw the fingers clench. "It is my father's letter--and you keep it from me? You are cruel!" said Lola, passionately. Jane's eyes, set on the ground, seemed to see there, in fiery type, the words of the paper in her grasp. Those scrawling lines, roaming from blot to blot across the soiled sheet, had communicated to Jane no pain of a personal sort. So far, indeed, as their trend took her on the score of feeling, she might even have found something satisfying in Mr. Keene's news, since this was merely a statement of his financial disability. All along Jane had been dreading the hour when, instead of this frank disclosure of "hard luck," there should come to her a parcel of money. Not to have any money to send might conjecturally be distressing to Mr. Keene; but Jane felt that he would be able to endure his embarrassment better than she herself any question of barter respecting Lola. The very thought of being paid for what she had so freely given hurt Jane. Without realizing its coldness and emptiness, her life had been truly void of human warmth before the little, lonely girl stole in to fill it with her piteous, proud presence. A happier child, with more childish ways, might not so fully have compassed Jane's awakening; for this had been in proportion to the needs of the one who so forlornly made plea for entrance. Having once thrown wide the door of her heart, Jane had begun to understand the blessedness that lies in generosity. Lola might never care for her, indeed; but to Lola she owed the impulse of loving self-bestowal, which is as shining sunlight in the bosom. Mr. Keene wrote that the claim he had been working had proved valueless. He expected better luck next time; but just now he could not do as he had intended for Lola; and in view of his unsettled circumstances he thought it might be well if Miss Combs could place the girl in some family where her services would be acceptable. "Life," he wrote, was at best "a rough proposition," and it would doubtless be good for Lola, who had sundry faults of temper, to learn this fact early. For the present she would have to give up all idea of going to school. Mr. Keene would be sorry if the prospect displeased his daughter, but people couldn't have everything their own way in this world. Such words as these Jane instinctively knew would fall crushingly upon Lola, and leave her in a sorry plight of abject, hardening thought. Therefore, steeling herself to bear the girl's misinterpretation, she said, "Lola, your father wouldn't want you to see this letter. It's on business." "Does he say I'm not to see it?" asked Lola. Jane's brows twisted painfully. "No," she said, "but--" Lola turned away. Every line of her figure was eloquent of grievance. She walked off without a glance to apprise her of the anguish in Jane's face. Slowly Jane went toward the house; whereupon Alejandro Vigil, who had continued an interested spectator, followed Lola to the ditch. "If thou hadst wept, she would have given thee the letter," he suggested. "My mother, she always gives up to us when we weep loudly. A still baby gets no milk," said Alejandro, wisely, as he hugged his bare knees. "I am no baby!" retorted Lola. Nevertheless her voice was husky, and Alejandro watched her anxiously. "It's no good to cry now," he advised her. "She's gone into the house." "_Tonto!_ Do you think I want her to see me?" wept Lola. "She is hard and cruel. O my father!" "Come over and tell my mother about it!" urged the boy, troubled. "You are Mexican like us, no? Your mother was Mexican? Come! My mother will say what is best to do." Lola listened. She let herself be dragged up. An adviser might speak some word of wisdom. "Come, then," she agreed. But Señora Vigil, on hearing the story, only groaned and sighed. "These Americans have the heart of ice!" she said. "Doubtless there was money in the letter and she did not want you to know. Serafita, leave thy sister alone, or I will beat thee! It will be best, Lolita, to say little. A close mouth catches no flies." "I may not stay here with you?" asked Lola. "Alas, no, little pigeon!" mourned the señora. "In the cage where thy father has put thee thou must stay! But come and tell me everything. This shall be thy house when thou art in trouble!" and thus defining the limits of her hospitality, she made a gesture toward the mud walls on which strings of goat meat were drying in a sanguinary fringe. Autumn fell bright on the foot-hills. The plains blazed with yellow flowers which seemed to run in streams of molten gold from every cañon, and linger in great pools on the flats and line all the ditches. Ricks of green and silver rose all along the Apishapa. Alfalfa was purple to the last crop, and an air of affluence pervaded everything. The town was thronged with ranchers, coming in to trade; the mine had started up for the winter. Men who had prospected for precious metals all summer in the mountains now bundled their pots and pans and blankets back to shelter for the winter; the long-eared burros, lost in great rolls of bedding, stood about the tipple awaiting the result of their masters' interviews with the mine boss, concerning work and the occupancy of any "shack" that might still be empty. Now, too, the bell of the red-brick school clamored loudly of mornings; and dark, taciturn Mexican children, and paler, noisier children from the mining end of town, bubbled out of every door. Seven Vigils obeyed the daily summons, clad, boy and girl, in cotton stuff of precisely the hue of their skin. Bobbing through the gate, one after another, they were like a family of little dun-colored prairie-dogs, of a hue with their adobe dwelling, shy and brown and bright-eyed. Among them Lola had an effect of tropical brilliancy, by reason of the red frock with which Jane had provided her. There were red ribbons also in Lola's braided hair; and the girl, although still aware of bitter wrongs, was sensible of being pleased with her raiment. More than once on her way to school that first day she looked at the breadths of her scarlet cashmere with a gratified eye; and catching her at this, Ana Vigil had sighed disapprovingly, saying, "It is too good for every day--that dress." "It isn't too good for me!" flashed back Lola. "My father can do what he likes!" "True," said Ana, "since he has a gold-mine. But even if I were rich, I should fear that the saints might punish me for wearing to school my best clothes. I would wish to win their good-will by wearing no finery," said Ana, piously. She was a plump girl, with eyes like splinters of coal in her suave brown face; despite the extreme softness of her voice, these glittering splinters rested with no gentle ray on Lola. Indeed, Jane's pride in having her charge well-dressed operated largely against the girl's popularity with others of her mates than Ana. Primarily Lola's air of hauteur provoked resentment; but hauteur in poor attire would have been only amusing, while in red cashmere it was felt to be a serious matter, entailing upon every one the sense of a personal affront. Lola's quickness of retort was also against her. The swift flash of her eye, the sudden quiver of her lip, afforded continual gratification to such as had it in mind to effect her discomposure. "They do not love you too well, Lolita," said Ana Vigil, sadly. "They say you have a sharp tongue. They say you are too well pleased with yourself. Me, I tell you what I hear because I am your friend." "So long a tongue as yours, Ana, weaves a short web!" growled Alejandro, with a masculine distrust of his sister's friendly assumptions. "Lola knows if I speak truth," returned Ana, tranquilly. Lola maintained an impassive front, but she was hurt. The little tricks and taunts of her schoolfellows tormented her deeply. She had lately relapsed into the stolid indifference native to her blood, and this was her best shield, had she only known it, although it, too, for a time left her open to attack. For when she encased herself in cold silence, and stalked home with lifted head and unseeing eyes, often a little throng of Mexican children would walk behind her, imitating her stately gait and calling mockingly, "_Ea! ea!_ See the _madamisela_! See the princess! She is sister to the king--that one! _Vah! vah! vah!_" And mingling their voices they would sing, "_Infanta! Infanta Lolita!_" until Lola, stung to rage, turned upon them wildly; whereat their delighted cries served to send her flying homeward. "I guess not even Squire Baca's girls nor Edith May Jonas had better things than you," said Jane, unaware of all this. Her own garments remained things of the baldest utility, but the village seamstress was kept busy feather-stitching and beribboning articles for Lola's wear. In these things Jane developed a most prodigal pride, freely expending upon them the little patrimony which had been put in the Trinidad bank against her old age. Her usual good judgment quite failed her; and she who, patternless and guideless, slashed brown denim fearlessly into uncouth vestures for herself, now had a pulse of trepidation at laying the tissue-paper model of some childish garment for Lola upon a length of dainty wool. "Maybe," said Lola, "the others would like me better if my father didn't get me so many things." Jane's eyes shone with a fierce light. "Don't they like you?" she demanded, harshly. "Didn't you hear them calling 'infanta' after me just now?" "Infanta--is it anything _bad_?" Jane's voice was so wroth that Lola laughed. "It means princess." "Oh!" said Jane, mollified. "If it'd been anything _else_, I'd have gone straight down to see the marshal!" Lola flushed a little. She thought, "How kind she is! If I could only forget--about that letter!" The dislike of the Mexican children abated with time. They even came to admire Lola's quickness. She went above them in class--yes! but also she went above the Americans! The little Mexicans, aware of a certain mental apathy, had not enviously regarded the exploits of the "smart" Americans. If these others "went up," what did it matter? All one could do if one were Mexican was to accept defeat with dignity, and reflect upon the fact that things would be different if Spanish and not English were the language of the school. When Lola, however, one of themselves by reason of her color and her fluency in their idiom, displayed an ability to master those remorseless obscurities of spelling and arithmetic which had seemed sufficient to dethrone reason in any but a Saxon mind, then the peon children began to find some personal satisfaction in her achievements. Whenever Lola went above Jimmy Adkins, the mine boss's boy, and Edith May Jonas, the liveryman's only daughter, every Mexican face recorded a slow smile of triumph. "_'Sta 'ueno!_" they would whisper, watching Edith May, who upon such occasions was wont to enliven things by bursting into tears, and who commonly brought upon the following day a note from her mother, stating that Edith May must be excused for missing in spelling because she had not been at all well and had misunderstood the word. The next two years also mitigated much of the constraint which had marked Miss Combs's relations with Lola. After the episode of the letter, Lola never asked news of her father. Insensibly she came to understand that if he wrote at all he wrote seldom, and solely upon the matter of her expenses. And naturally she ceased clinging warmly to the thought of his love for her. His silence and absence were not spurs to affection, although she dwelt gratefully upon the fact that he should lavish so much upon her. Jane's money was lessening, but none of Lola's wishes had as yet been baffled. The girl had a sort of barbaric love of brightness and softness; and one day, as she looked over some fabrics for which Jane, spurred by the approach of the vacation and the fact that Lola was to have a part in the closing exercises of school, had sent to Denver, the girl said suddenly, "How good my father is to me, _tia_!" Long before, she had asked Jane what she should call her, and Jane had said, "Maybe you better call me aunt." "I will do it in Mexican, then," said Lola. "It sounds more ripe." She meant mellow, no doubt. Now, as she fingered the pretty muslin, she seemed to gather resolution to speak of something which had its difficulties. "_Tia_," she pursued, "he is well off--my father?" Jane's voice had rather a feigned lightness as she replied, "You have everything you want, don't you?" No one but herself knew that for some time she had been paying Mr. Keene a monthly stipend. He had written that Lola ought not any longer to be giving her services just for board. So great a girl must be very handy about a house; and as luck still evaded him, he confessed that Lola's earnings would considerably "help him out." Jane had not combated his views. Many Mexican children younger than Lola earned a little tending the herds and helping about the fields. They were usually boys; but Jane did not dwell on this point. She had never clearly realized, on her own part, those distinctions in labor which appertain to the sexes; she had herself always done everything that had to be done, whether it were cooking or plowing. If she had any choice, it was for pursuits of the field. Therefore, without comment, she had accepted Mr. Keene's theories as just, and began to pay him what he said would be "about right." "Because," said Lola, "I want you to ask him something when you write. I am over fourteen now. There isn't much more for me to learn in this school. Señor Juarez and Miss Belton both tell me I ought to go to Pueblo. Edith May Jonas is going. I should like to study many things--drawing, for instance. They say I ought to study that. My mother always said she hoped I would have a chance to learn. And my father used to say, 'Oh, yes!' that he would soon have money for everything. And now he has! Will you ask him?" Jane was dusting the mantel on which Tesuque still sat open-mouthed, with his bowl. The room had lost its former barren aspect. There was now a carpet, while muslin shades softened the glare of the Colorado sun and the view of the sterile hills. Geraniums bloomed on the window-sills, and some young cottonwoods grew greenly at the door. The scarlet Navajo blanket, which had been Lola's inheritance from the prairie-schooner, was spread across a couch, and gave a final note of warmth and comfort to the low room, now plastered in adobe from ceiling to floor. Everything that had been done was for Lola's sake, who loved warmth and color, as do all Southrons. Tesuque alone, divinely invariable amid so much change, now seemed to wink the eye at Jane's uncertainty. For Jane knew that there was not enough money in the bank to pay for a year's schooling at Pueblo. So far she knew, yet she said simply, "I can ask him." If Lola wanted to go to Pueblo, she must go. It would be a pity if Edith May Jonas should have better schooling than Lola, thought Jane. And as she pondered, it came forcibly to her that money need not be lacking; she could mortgage her house. She shut her eyes to all future difficulties which this must involve, and, upon a certain June day, set resolutely out to see if the doctor were willing to make the loan. The doctor, sitting in the little office which he had built in the corner of his shady yard, scowled over his glasses as he listened. "You're making a mistake," he said, having heard all, "to let Lola believe that her father is providing for her. I know you began it all with a view to charitable ends; but he who does evil that good may come sets his foot in a crooked path, of which none can see the close." "I didn't want to see her breaking her heart." "I know, but I do not believe it's ever well to compound and treat with wrong. If you'll be advised, you'll tell her the whole truth at once." Jane sat bolt upright before him. Her arms were folded across her butternut waist, and under the man's hat a grim resolution seemed to be embodying itself. "She wouldn't go to school at Pueblo if I told her--nor feel like she had any home--or anything in the world. And I aint going to tell her!" "Miss Jane, Miss Jane, don't you see you're doing the girl a real injury in letting her regard you, her true benefactor, merely as the agent of her father's generosity? You have simply sustained and encouraged her worst traits. She wouldn't have been so exacting, so resentful, so easily provoked if she had known all along that she was only a poor little pensioner on your bounty. The lesson of humility would have gone far with her. No, Miss Jane, it wouldn't have hurt her to be humbled. It won't now!" "I don't believe it ever does any one any good to be humbled!" maintained Jane, stoutly and with reason. "Especially if it's a poor, frail little soul that aint got no mother! I did what I thought best, though I can't afford it no way in the world! To prune and dress a lie aint going to make it grow into a truth!" She rose. "I guess I'll see if Henry Jonas'll be willing to take that mortgage!" "I'm going to do it myself!" roared the doctor. "I don't want Jonas to own all the property in Aguilar!" Generosity and anger swayed him confusedly; but as he watched Jane trudging down under the Dauntless's tipple he became clear enough to register with himself a vow. "Lola has got to know the truth!" he declared. "Maybe it's none of my business, but all the same she's going to know it, and know it now!" And he got up, grimly resolute. WISE IMPULSES CHAPTER FOUR WISE IMPULSES The next day was the last of the school term, and it afforded the doctor an opportunity for carrying out his resolve. There was a base of sound reason in his purposed action. It might give the girl pain, indeed, to hear what he felt impelled to tell her; it is not pleasant to have a broken bone set, yet the end is a good one. The doctor felt that Lola's mind held a smoldering distrust of Jane, which not even the consciousness of Jane's love could dispel. The girl, without directly formulating so strong a case against Jane, obscurely held her accountable for that division from her father which she deplored. Doubtless it was affection which had caused Jane to ask Mr. Keene to leave his child behind. Affection also might have jealously deterred Jane from giving Lola her father's infrequent letters. But affection cannot excuse what is unworthy; and Lola's thoughts ran vaguely with a distrust which did something to embitter the wholesome tides of life. "I am right to put an end to Miss Combs's unwise benevolence," thought the doctor, as he tied his horse outside the schoolhouse. Throngs of white-frocked girls were chattering about the yard. Rows of Mexican children squatted silent and stolid against the red walls, unmoved by those excitements of closing day which stirred their American mates to riotous glee. The wives of the miners and town merchants were arriving in twos and threes. Gaunt Mexican women, holding quiet babies in their looped _rebozos_, stood about, hardly ever speaking. Señora Vigil, more lavishly built than the rest of her countrywomen and gayer of port than they, moved from group to group, talking cheerfully. Jane also awaited the opening of the schoolhouse door, watching the scene with interest and having no conception of herself as an object of note, in her elderly black bonnet and short jean skirt. Presently Señor Juarez, the Mexican master, appeared. The bell in the slate dome rang loudly, and the throng filed indoors. There was the usual array of ceremonies appropriate to occasions like this. Small boys spoke "pieces," which they forgot, being audibly prompted, while the audience experienced untold pangs of sympathy and foreboding. Little beribboned girls exhibited their skill in dialogue, and read essays and filed through some patriotic drill, to which a forest of tiny flags gave splendid emphasis at impressive junctures. Then Edith May Jonas, solemn with anxiety and importance, rose to sing. She was a plain, flaxen-haired girl, with a Teutonic cast of feature and a thin voice; but every one, benumbed with speechless admiration of her blue silk dress, derived from her performance an impression of surpassing beauty and unbounded talent. "_Caramba!_ but she is like a vision!" sighed Señora Vigil in Jane's ear. "Look at Señora Jonas, the mother! Well may she weep tears of pride! She is a great lady--Señora Jonas. Just now she have condescended to say to me, ''Ow-de-do?' and me, I bow low. _'A los pics de V. señora!'_ I say. _Ay Dios!_ if I but had a child with yellow hair, like the Señorita Edith May! _Que chula!_" "Sh!" breathed Jane. "There's my Lola on the platform!" Lola had grown tall in the past year. She was fairer than the Mexicans, although not fair in the fashion of Edith May, but with a faint citron hue which, better than pink and white, befitted the extreme darkness of her hair and eyes. She wore a dress of thin white, and around her slender neck was a curious old strand of turquoise beads which had been found carefully hidden away in the Mexican trunk. There was an air of simple reserve about her which touched the doctor. She was only a child for all her stately looks, and he began to hate his task. Lola read a little address which had been assigned to her as a representative of the highest class. She read the farewell lines almost monotonously, without effect, without inflection, almost coldly. Yet as he listened, the doctor had an impression of vital warmth underlying the restraint of the girl's tone--an impression of feeling that lay far below the surface, latent and half-suspected. "There is something there to be reckoned with," he decided. "But what? Is it a noble impulse which will spring to life in rich gratitude when I tell her my story? Or will a mere hurt, passionate vanity rise to overwhelm us all in its acrid swell? I shall soon know." In the buzz of gaiety and gossip which succeeded the final reading, he approached Lola and beckoned her away from the crowd. She came running to him smiling, saying, "Señor!" "I want to say something to you, my dear. Come here where it's quiet." The doctor was finding the simplicity and trustfulness of her gaze very trying. "Lola," he continued, desperately, "I--you must listen to me." Just at this point something struck against his arm, and turning irritably, he saw Jane. "What's all this?" said she, placidly. "What are you saying to make my little girl so wide-eyed? Remember, she has a fierce old guardian--one that expects every one to 'tend to his own affairs!" Jane spoke jestingly, but the doctor knew he was worsted. Jane had been watching him. "But, _tia_!" interposed Lola, "the doctor was just going to tell me something very important!" "He was maybe going to tell you that you are going to Pueblo next fall! Yes, honey, it's all fixed!" She turned a joyous, defiant face on the doctor, who cast his hands abroad as if he washed them of the whole affair; while Lola, beaming with pleasure, rushed off to tell the news to Señor Juarez. "You'll regret this!" said the doctor, somehow feeling glad of his own failure. "Well, _she_ won't!" cried Jane, watching Lola's flight with tender eyes. "Sometime she is going to find out all this deceit!" he added. "I know," said Jane. "I know. And then she'll quit trusting me forever. But if I'm willing to stand it, nobody else need to worry." With this tacit rebuke she left him, and thereafter the doctor respected her wishes. A month or so after Lola's departure northward, Jane's solicitude was enlivened by an event of startling importance. She was notified by the Dauntless Company that two entries, the fourth and fifth east, had entered her property, in which she had never suspected the presence of coal, and that the owners were prepared to negotiate with her suitable terms for the right of working the vein in question. When the matter of royalties was settled and several hundred dollars paid to Jane's account for coal already taken out, she had a sudden rush of almost tearful joy. Every month would come to her, while the coal lasted, a determinate sum of money. She regarded the fact in a sort of ecstasy, and resolved upon many things. First she banished from her house the shadow of the mortgage. Then, glowing with enterprise, she proceeded to extend and embellish her property in a way which speedily set the town by the ears, and aroused every one to dark prophecies as to what must happen when her money should all be gone, and nothing left her but to face poverty in the palatial five-room dwelling now growing up around the pine homestead of the past. Lola liked adobe houses; and fortunately Enrique Diaz, the blacksmith, had a fine lot of adobes which he had made before frost, and put under cover against a possible extension of his shop, "to-morrow or some time after a while." These Jane bought, and deftly the chocolate walls arose in her _vega_, crowned finally with a crimson roof, which could be seen two miles off at Lynn. There was a porch, too, with snow-white pillars, and an open fireplace, all tiled with adobe, in which might blaze fires of piñon wood, full of resin and burning as nothing else can burn save driftwood, sodden with salt and oil and the mystery of old ocean. Then, after a little, there arrived in town a vaulted box, in which the dullest fancy might conjecture a piano. Greatly indeed were heads shaken. If doom were easily invoked, Jane would hardly have lived to unpack the treasure and help to lift it up the porch steps. "_Por Dios!_" gasped Ana Vigil. "It must have cost fifty dollars! And for what good, señora?" "Lola's taking music-lessons," said Jane. "Her and Edith May Jonas is learning a duet. I want she should be able to go right on practising." "Ah!" said Ana, innocently. "She will not say your house now is 'ugly,' will she? And you, señora, shall you get a longer dress and do your hair up, so she will not say of you like she did, 'How queer'?" Jane looked at Ana. Surely she could not mean to be ill-tempered--Ana, with a face as broad and placid as a standing pool? No, no, Ana was too simple to wish to pain any one! Yet as Jane dwelt upon Ana's queries, it came slowly to Jane that certain changes in herself might be well. She obeyed this wise, if late, impulse, and when Lola came home in June she had her reward. The girl cried out with surprise as she beheld on the platform at Lynn that tall figure in a soft gray gown, fashioned with some pretensions to the mode, but simple and dignified as befitted Jane's stature and look. There was a bonnet to match, too elderly for Jane's years, and of a Quakerish form. But this was less the cause for the general difference in Jane's aspect than the fact that her brown hair, parted smoothly on the broad, benignant brow, now had its ends tucked up in a neat knot. "_Tia! tia!_" exclaimed Lola, herself glowing like a prairie-rose, as she dashed out of the train. "What have you done? You are good to look at! Your hair--oh, _asombro!_" But when the white burros of the mail wagon, wildly skimming the plains, brought them in sight of the new house, Lola's joy turned white on her cheeks, and she clutched Jane's arm. "_Tia_--our house! It is gone--gone!" Then was Jane's time to laugh with sheer happiness, to throw open gate and door and usher her guest into the old room where Tesuque sat and the Navajo blanket still covered the couch as of yore, and nothing was altered except that now other rooms opened brightly on all sides, and in one a piano displayed its white teeth in beaming welcome. Lola's blank face, whereon every moment printed a new delight, was to Jane a sight hardly to be matched. The satisfaction grew also with time, as the piano awoke to such strains as Lola had mastered, and people strolled up from the village ways to listen, and, to Jane's deep gratification, to praise the musician. The Mexicans came in throngs, filling the air with a chorus of "_Caspitas!_" and "_Carambas!_" None of them called Lola "_Infanta_" nowadays unless it were in a spirit of friendly pleasantry; and she herself had lost much of the air which had brought this contemptuous honor upon her childish head. "She is Mexican--yes!" they nodded to one another, deriving much simple satisfaction from the circumstance. For was it not provocative of racial pride that one of their compatriots should be able to make tunes--actual tunes!--issue from those keys which responded to their own tentative touches merely with thin shrieks or a dull, rumbling note? "Lolita is like she was," remarked Alejandro Vigil to his sister on the morning of the Fourth of July, as they wandered around the common beyond the _arroyo_. This space of desert had an air of festive import, for unwonted celebrations of the day were forward. A pavilion roofed with green boughs had been built for the occasion, on the skirts of an oval course which was to be the ground of sundry feats of cowboy horsemanship, and of a foot-race between Piedro Cordova and the celebrated Valentino Cortés. There would be music, also, before long. Already the sound of a violin in process of tuning rang cheerfully through the open. The Declaration of Independence was to be read by the lawyer, who might be seen in the pavilion wiping his brow in anticipation of this exciting duty. A tribe of little girls, who were to sing national airs, were even now climbing into the muslin-draped seats of the lumber-wagon allotted them. It was to be a great day for Aguilar! People from Santa Clara and Hastings and Gulnare were arriving in all manner of equipages. Mexican vehicles made a solid stockade along the west of the track. In the upper benches of the pavilion were ranged the flower and chivalry of the town--the families of the mine boss, the liveryman, the lawyer, the schoolmaster and several visiting personages. Jane, in her gray gown, was among them; beside her sat Lola, with Edith May Jonas. "And did you think going away to school would make her different?" inquired Ana of her brother. "What should it do to her, 'Andro? Make her white like Miss Jonas? _Vaya!_ Lola is only a Mexican!" "She is not ashamed to be one, either!" cried Alejandro, accepting Ana's tacit imputation of some inferiority in their race. "And she is white enough," he added, regarding Lola as she sat smiling and talking, with the boughy eaves making little shadows across the rim of her broad straw hat. "Who said she was ashamed?" asked Ana, with suspicious suavity. "You hear words that have not been spoken. I tell you of your faults, _hermano mio_, because I love you!" Alejandro turned off in a sulk, and, leaving Ana to her own resources, went toward the place where the ponies and burros were tethered. It was comparatively lonely here, and Alejandro began to make friends with a disconsolate burro who was bewailing his fate in a series of lamentable sounds. "Ha, _bribon!_" he said, pinching the burro's ears. "What is the use of wasting breath? _Sus, sus, amigo!_" The burro began to buck and Alejandro stepped back. As he did so he saw approaching him from behind the wagons a man in tattered garments, with a hat dragged over his eyes, and a great mass of furzy yellow beard. "Here, you!" said this person. "Oh, you're Mexican! _Ya lo veo_--" [Illustration: "'I HOPED YOU'D BE ABLE TO LEND ME A HAND.'"] "Me, I spik English all ri'!" retorted Alejandro, with dignity. "Spik English if you want. I it onnerstan'." "I see. Well, look here!" He withdrew a folded paper from his pocket. "I want you to take this note over to that lady in the gray dress in the pavilion. _Sabe_ 'pavilion'? All right! Don't let any one else see it. Just hand it to her quietly and tell her the gentleman's waiting." Alejandro took the note reluctantly. Why should he put himself at the behest of this _vagabundo_ who impeached his English? The man, however, had an eye on him. It was an eye which Alejandro felt to be impelling. He decided to take the note to the lady in gray. Jane, as Alejandro smuggled the paper into her hand, caught a glimpse of the writing and felt her heart sink. Lola and Edith May Jonas were whispering together. They had not noticed Alejandro. "The man is waiting," said the boy, in her ear. Jane touched Lola. "Keep my seat, dear," she said. "Some one wants to speak to me." And she followed Alejandro across the field. Alejandro's _vagabundo_ came forward to meet her with an air of light cordiality. His voice was the voice which had greeted her first from the steps of the prairie-schooner in which Lola's mother lay dead. "It's me!" conceded Mr. Keene, pleasantly. "In rather poor shape, as you see. It's always darkest before dawn! You're considerable changed, ma'am--and to the better. I would hardly have known you. Is that girl in the big white hat Lola? Well, well! Now, ma'am I'll tell you why I'm here." He proceeded to speak of an opportunity of immediate fortune which was open to him, after prolonged disaster, if only the sum of five hundred dollars might be forthcoming. A friend of his in Pony Gulch had sent him glowing reports of the region. "All I want is a grub-stake," said Mr. Keene, "and I'm sure to win!" "I haven't that much money in the world!" said Jane. Keene sighed. "Well, I hoped you'd be able to lend me a hand, but if you can't, you can't! There seems to be nothing for me but to go back North, and try to earn something to start on. I guess it'd be well for me to take Lola along. She's nearly grown now, and they need help the worst kind in the miners' boarding-house where I stay up in Cripple. I told the folks that keep it--I owe 'em considerable--that I'd bring back my daughter with me to assist 'em in the dining-room, and they said all right, that'd suit 'em. Wages up there are about the highest thing in sight. Equal to the altitude. And it'll give me a chance to look round." Jane was staring at him. "You would do that?" she breathed. "You'd take that delicate girl up there to wait on a lot of rough miners? I've worked for her and loved her and sheltered her from everything! She's not fit for any such life! She sha'n't go!" Keene had been touched at first. At Jane's last assertion, however, he began to look sulky. "Well, I guess it's for me to say what she shall do!" he signified. "I guess it's not against the law or the prophets for a daughter to assist her father when he's in difficulties. And Lola'll recognize her duty. I'll just go over yonder to the pavilion, ma'am, and see what she says." DESTINY PRESSES CHAPTER FIVE DESTINY PRESSES Jane stood confounded. Her aghast mind, following Mr. Keene's project, seemed to see him rakishly ascending the pavilion steps, among a wondering throng, and making way to Lola as she sat, happy and honored, with her friends. Jane had a sharp prevision of Lola's face when her father should appear before her, so different from the tender ideal of him which she had cherished, so intent upon himself, so bent upon shattering with his first word to his child all those visions of unselfish kindness and generosity which had made her thoughts of him beautiful. Lola would go with him. She would rise and leave her home, friends and happy prospects to follow him to whatever life he might judge best, however rough, however wild. In ordinary circumstances Jane could not deny to herself that this course would be the right course for a daughter; that such an one would do well to succor a father's failings, to add hope to his despondency and love to the mitigation of his trials. But Mr. Keene was not despondent, nor were his trials of a sort which might not easily be tempered by something like industry on his own part. He was frankly idle. He loved better than simple work the precarious excitement of prospecting--an occupation which, except in isolated and accidental instances, cannot be pursued to any good save with the aid of science and capital. Camp life might not be bad for Mr. Keene; but that it would be good for a girl so young and sensitive to every impression as Lola, Jane doubted. "I got to consider what's best for her," thought Jane, while Keene himself was beginning once more to sympathize with the silent misery in her face. "I never had no idea you thought so much of Lola!" he exclaimed. "She wasn't the kind of child a stranger'd be apt to get attached to. I hope you don't think I'd do anything mean? That isn't my style! All is, I'm her father, and a father ought to have some say-so. Now aint that true, Miss Combs?" Jane was thinking. "Would three hundred dollars help you out?" she demanded. "I've got that much. I've been saving it toward Lola's schooling next year." "What, have you been sending her to pay-school?" Keene looked surprised, and unexpectedly his eyes began to dim. "I'd have been a better man if I'd had any luck," he said, with apparent irrelevance. Jane made no moral observations. She did not point out that a man's virtue ought not to depend altogether on his income. She said simply, "Will that much do?" Mr. Keene, controlling his emotion, said it would, and they parted upon the understanding that they should meet at Lynn two days later, for the transference of the fund. Then Jane plodded wearily back to the pavilion, and mutely watched the cow-ponies rush and buck around the course. She beheld Valentino Cortés, a meteoric vision in white cotton trousers, girdled in crimson, flash by to victory amid the wild "_Vivas!_" of his compatriots. She saw the burros trot past in their little dog-trot of a race. But although she essayed a pleased smile at these things, and listened with enforced attention to the speeches and the music, there were present with her foreboding and unrest. For usually the Dauntless pursued no vigorous labor in summer, but merely kept the water out of its slope and "took up" and sold to various smelters such "slack" as it had made during the winter. There would be no royalties coming in to Jane, since no coal would be mined; and presently it would be September, and no money for Lola's school. So Jane's cares were thickening. Not only did the mine soon enter on its summer inactivity, but worse befell. The mine boss came one day to tell Jane that, because of a certain "roll" in the east entries, it was deemed inadvisable farther to work these levels. "The coal over there makes too much slack, anyhow," said the mine boss, "so we intend hereafter to stick to the west." Whereupon, unaware of leaving doom behind him, he went cheerfully away. Jane's horizons had always lain close about her. She had never been one to scent trouble afar off. To be content in the present, to be trustful in the future, was her unformulated creed. And now, as she mused, it came to her swiftly that she need not despair so long as she had over her head a substantial dwelling. This abode, in its mere cubhood, had afforded her financial succor. It would be queer if such an office were beyond it now. Only this time the doctor must not be approached; his reasoning before had been too searching. Jane therefore wrote to a lawyer in Trinidad, authorizing him to obtain for her a certain amount of money. She felt assured of the outcome of this letter, but presently there came a reply which stupefied her. The lawyer wrote that there happened to be in court a suit concerning the boundaries of an old Spanish land grant, which, it was claimed, extended north of the Purgatory River, and touched upon her own and other neighboring property. The lawyer wrote that matters would probably be settled in favor of the present landholders, but that, so long as litigation pended, all titles were so clouded as to make any questions of loans untenable. Jane felt as if a ruthless destiny were pressing her home. She looked at Lola, and her heart sank at the girl's air of springlike happiness and hope. Must these sweet hours be broken upon with a tale of impending penury? Lola of late had seemed gentler, and the silent, stony moods were leaving her, together with her childish impulse toward sudden anger. So much Jane saw. Lola herself was sensible of a changing sway of feeling which she did not seek to understand. To read of a noble deed brought swift tears to her eyes in these days of mutation, and stirred her to emulative dreams. She did not know what power of action lay in her; but there seemed to be some vital promise in the eager essence of spirit which spread before her such visions of beautiful enterprise. Lola did not realize how favorable to ripening character was the atmosphere in which she lived. She could not yet know how she had been impressed by the simple page of plain, undramatic kindness and generosity which Jane's life opened daily to her eyes. One day Jane spoke to her sadly. "Lola," she said, "I'm afraid there won't be enough money to send you away to school this year." "But papa never denies me anything, _tia_." "I know, dear." "How funny you say that! Is--has he--lost his money, _tia_? You're keeping something from me!" "Lola," said Jane, in a moved voice, "I don't know a great deal about your father's means. I can't say they're less than they were; but there's reasons--why I'm afraid you can't--go to Pueblo this coming fall. No, Lola--don't ask me any questions--I can't speak out! I've done wrong! I can't say any more!" and to Lola's surprise she hurried out of the room. Never before had Lola witnessed in Jane such confusion and distress. The sight bewildered and troubled her so sorely as for the moment to exclude from mind the bearing upon her own future of Jane's ambiguous, faltering words. Something was surely amiss; but the girl as yet fully realized only one fact--that tia, always so steadfast and strong and cheerful, had gone hastily from the room in the agitation of one who struggled with unaccustomed tears. Lola hesitated to follow Jane. Some inward prompting withheld her. "She is like me," mused the girl. "She would rather be alone when anything troubles her. I will wait. Maybe she will come back soon and tell me everything." Outside it was as dry and bright as ever. The Peaks stood bald and pink against the flawless sky. Over in the Vigil yard Lola saw the smaller Vigil boys lassoing one another with a piece of clothes-line, while, dozing over her sewing, Señora Vigil herself squatted in the doorway. Propped against the house-wall, Diego Vigil sat munching a corn-cake and frugally dispersing crumbs to the magpies which hovered about him in short, blue-glancing flights. Diego was two years old--quite old enough to doff his ragged frock for the "pantalones" which his mother was still working upon, after weeks of listless endeavor. The señora's thread was long enough to reach half-way across the yard, and it took time and patience to set a stitch. For very weariness the señora nodded over her labor, and made many little appeals to the saints that they might guide aright the tortuous course of her double cotton. "Life is hard!" sighed the señora, pausing over a knot in her endless thread. "Ten children keep the needle hot. Ay, but this knot is a hard one! There are evil spirits about." She laid down her work to wipe her eyes, and, observing two of her sons grappling in fraternal war at the house corner, she arose to cuff each one impartially, exclaiming, "_Ea, muchachos!_ You fight before my very eyes, eh? Take that! and that!" Waddling reluctantly back to her sewing, she saw Lola standing in the white-pillared porch of the big adobe house beyond, and a gleam of inspiration crossed the señora's dark, fat face. "She shall take out this knot," thought Señora Vigil. "Señorita!" she called. "Come here, I pray you! There is a tangle in my thread and all my girls are away!" And, as Lola came across the field, she added, "I am dead of loneliness, Lolita. Ana and Benita and Ines and Marina and Alejandro are gone up the Trujillo to the wedding-party of their cousin, Judita Vasquez. To-morrow she marries the son of Juan Montoya. _Hola!_ She does well to get so rich a one! He has twenty goats, a cow and six dogs. His house has two rooms and a shed. They will live splendid! It is to be hoped these earthly grandeurs will not turn Judita's thoughts from heaven!" The señora shook her head cheerfully. "My Ana told Judita she ought to be thankful so plain a face as hers should find favor with José Montoya. My Ana is full of loving thoughts! She never lets her friends forget what poor, sinning mortals they are!" "Indeed, no!" agreed Lola, feelingly, while she smoothed out the thread. "Take a stitch or two that I may be sure the cotton is really all right!" implored the señora. "Yes, truly Ana is a maid of rare charms. When she marries I shall be desolate!" "Is there talk of that?" asked Lola, with interest. Ana was now sixteen, and was nearly as heavy as her mother, and much more sedate. In true Mexican fashion the look of youth had left her betimes, and her swarthy plumpness had early hardened and settled to a look of maturity to which future years could add little. "There is Juan Suarez," said the señora, in a mysterious whisper, "and if I would I could mention others; for, as you know, Lolita, my Ana is very beautiful." Lola maintained a judicious silence, and the señora continued placidly, "Though she is my child, I am bound to admit it. Her nature is a rare one, too. And when suitors throng about her she only shakes her head. She is lofty. She will not listen. 'No, _caballeros_,' she says, 'I have regarded your corral. It is too empty.' And one by one they go away weeping, the poor caballeros! She is cruel, my Ana, being so beautiful! Me, I own it--though my heart aches to see the caballeros shedding tears!" Lola, finding her own face expanding irresistibly, bent lower over Diego's small trousers. The picture of Ana, standing disdainful among the sorrowing caballeros and waving off their pleas with an imperious hand, was one to bring a smile to lips of deadliest gravity. Ana, with her hands on her broad hips, short and thick as a squat brown jug with its handles akimbo,--Ana, with her great clay-colored face and tiny, glittering eyes, with her thick, pale lips and coarse, black hair,--surely none but a mother could view in Ana such charms as bedewed Señora Vigil's eyes only to think of! "To see unhappiness is a very blade in my heart!" sighed Señora Vigil, recovering herself. "Do not make the thread short, Lolita! No, no! I shall have to thread the needle again before the week is out, if you do. Ah, yes! I wept much the day when you were lost, and Bev Gribble, the vaquero, brought you home on his horse. 'Twas long ago. And now you are grown tall and can play the piano. Shall you go on fretting your poor head with more schooling, _chiquita_?" [Illustration: "'DO NOT MAKE THE THREAD SHORT LOLITA!'"] At this question Lola's mind sharply reverted to the distressing scene which had by a moment preceded her neighbor's summons. There had been in Jane's words a broken, yet oddly definite, assertion of impending poverty. She had spoken of the unlikelihood of another year in Pueblo for Lola, and the girl for the first time began to realize this fact with a sinking of the heart. Her voice had a tremor as she said hesitatingly, "I'm afraid I can't go back to Pueblo this fall." "Not go back? The Jonas señorita goes back! Why not you? Has thy father lost money? I am thy friend, Lolita. Tell me!" "I can't tell what I don't know, señora. I don't know if he has lost money. _Tia_ only said that--that I mightn't go back to school. She didn't say why, but she will, no doubt." Señora Vigil's eyes narrowed. She recalled certain rumors long afloat in town as to Jane's extravagance, and the inability of her means to such luxuries as pianos. Also, although half-consciously, the señora's inner memory dwelt upon that corner of her back yard which it had been Jane's sad fortune to take away. The señora was not unkind or vindictive, but she had a mouse-trap sort of mind which only occasionally was open to the admittance of ideas, but which snapped fast forever upon such few notions as wandered into it. Having once accepted the belief that Jane was not averse to snatch at any good in her way, even if it belonged to another, the señora found herself still under the sway of this opinion. "The big house of Mees Combs has cost too much!" she asserted. "Where has the money come from? From the coal? Some, perhaps, yes; but for all of the great house, ah, it cannot be! Every one has been saying there was not enough coal in her tract to pay for what she has done; and new debts press, doubtless. What could be easier than to take the money of thy father? I tell you, Lolita, that you cannot go to school because Mees Combs has had to use your money to pay them! Eh, but your father will be mad! He is not working himself to a bone that strangers should build themselves fine houses! My Pablo said a little time ago that people said your father's riches were going astray. Me, I did not listen. Now I know he spoke true." The señora's tongue wagged on in a diatribe of accusation and pity. Lola let the sewing fall. Against her stoutest effort there prevailed a vivid remembrance of Jane's manner and statements, of Jane's self-impeachment and agitation, and, try as hard as she could to forget them, the words which Jane had used kept coming to mind. "I have done wrong!" Had not Jane said this? Had she not covered her face--could it be _guiltily_--and gone away? "No," said Lola, hoarsely, half to herself, half to her hearer, "it isn't true! You make mistakes, Señora Vigil! Do you hear? You make mistakes!" "Alas, for thy soft heart!" moaned the señora. "Thou art changed much! Me, I would not be hard on Mees Combs, though her sin is clear. Who am I to judge? Nay, even I try to forget that me she has also despoiled; that she took a corner of our back yard, and plants corn in it to this day! I am all for forgiving. But the saints are not so easy!" said the señora, unconscious of any disparagement to the saints, and referring merely to a judicial quality in them. Lola was not listening. She had a burning wish to escape from the soft buzzing of the señora's words, which, a velvety, sting-infested swarm, whirred around her bee-like, seeking hive and home. "Don't think I believe anything against _tia_!" she heard herself saying sternly, as the gate slipped from her impetuous hand and she rushed away, the quarry of emotions which no speed, however swift, could outdistance. BEWILDERING SATISFACTION CHAPTER SIX BEWILDERING SATISFACTION Lola found herself walking up the cañon, between the rocky hills beside the dry _arroyo_. Summer dust whitened the road, and rose to her tread in alkaline clouds. It was warm, too, under the remorseless Colorado sun, but nothing touched Lola. She was struggling with a thing that was half anguish and half anger, and that lifted upon her a face more and more convincing in its ugliness. It seemed impossible to doubt that Jane had indeed worked the wrong of which Señora Vigil accused her--although Jane's own word, and no word of the señora's, bore this conviction to Lola's breast. Jane had faltered in the trust which she had assumed, and now, confronted with the embarrassment of facing Lola's father in a plain confession of her delinquency, she hesitated and was miserable and afraid and reluctant. Rather than state her situation she would even keep Lola from school. "It isn't that I care for that!" throbbed Lola. It was not the stoppage of her own course, indeed, although this was a misery, but the loss of trust in all humanity which distrust of Jane seemed to the girl to inflict upon her. If Jane were not true, none could be; and the suspicion and unrest rioted back again to the bosom which belief in Jane and the world had softened and calmed. There was nothing to do. Lola's father could easily repair Jane's shortcoming, but not without having an explanation of the facts of the case. The facts of the case he must never know. Even in her pain and indignation, Lola never made a question of this. "Suppose it is true!" thought the girl, suddenly overcome by a new tide of feeling. "What am I blaming her for? She would never have fixed the house or bought things for herself! She did it all for me. And although I would rather have gone to school than have the piano, am I to blame _tia_ for not knowing this? She never thought where she was coming out. She just went on and on. And now that there is no more money, she is frightened and sorry and ashamed. She has done everything for me--even herself she has fairly made over to please me. Poor _tia_! Oh, ungrateful that I am to have been thinking unkindly of her!" Suddenly all the bitterness left her, like an evil thing exorcised by the first word of pitying tenderness. Tears stole sweetly to her eyes. Peace came upon her shaken spirit. The day had been full of strange revelations; and now it showed her how good for the human heart it is to be able to pity weakness, to love, to forbear and to forgive. In the strange peacefulness which brooded over her she walked home between the piñon-sprinkled hills, where doves were crooning and the far bleating of an upland herd echoed among the barren ridges. She reflected quietly upon meeting Jane without a hint of any shadow in her face, but in such sunniness of humor as should gladden and reassure. And Jane would never dream of the dark hour which had visited her child. She would never know that any slightest thought, unnurtured in affection, had risen to cast between them the least passing shadow; although from Lola's heart might never pass away that little, inevitable sense of loss which those know whose love survives a revelation of weakness in one believed to be strong. As she came in sight of the hollow roof of the Dauntless she saw the doctor riding toward her. "Hello!" he said. "What have you been doing up the cañon? Building Spanish castles?" "Watching Spanish castles fall," said Lola, smiling. "What would you do," she went on lightly, "if you had planned something worth while, and it became impossible?" The doctor looked down at her young, questioning face. It was grave, although she spoke gaily, and looked so mere a slip of girlhood with her brown throat and cheek and lifted black-lashed eyes. Unexpectedly the doctor remembered when he, too, had meant to do things that should be "worth while." He thought of Berlin and Vienna and Paris, and the clinics where he had meant to acquire such skill as, aiding his zeal, should write him among the first physicians of his day. And here he was, practising among a few Mexicans and miners, tending their bruises, doling them out quinine, and taking pay of a dollar a month from every man, sick or well, enrolled on the mine books, and frequently getting nothing at all from such as were not therein enrolled. Never a volume of his had startled the world of science. Surgery was bare of his exploits. Medical annals knew him not. All he had thought to do was undone by him; and yet here he was, contented, happy and healthy in a realm of little duties. In so unpretentious a life as this he had found satisfaction; and for the first time it came upon him that thus simply and calmly satisfaction comes to the great mass of men who have nothing to do with glory or hope of glory. "When great things become impossible, what would you do?" said Lola, tossing back her long, braided hair. "I would do little things," said the doctor, with whimsical soberness. An unusual equipage was turning in from the Trinidad road--an equipage on which leather and varnish shone, and harness brasses flashed, while the dust rolled pompously after it in a freakish fantasy of postilions and outriders. The driver made a great business of his long whip. The horses were sleek and brown. Altogether the vehicle had a lordly air, easily matching that of the individual sitting alone on the purple cushions--a man whose features were not very clear at the distance, although the yellowness of his beard, the glitter of his studded shirt-front, and whole consequential, expansive effect recalled to the doctor's mind an image of the past, less ornate, indeed, and affluent, but of similar aspect. He narrowed his eyes, staring townward over Lola's head, and wondering if yonder princely personage might not in very truth be Lola's father. But the girl's eyes were bent upon the ground. She did not see the equipage or the man on the purple cushions. "You do little things?" she said, raising her eyes gravely to the doctor's. He had always seemed to her the man who did great things. "I will try," she added, seriously. While she talked with the doctor the world seemed to Lola a pleasant place, with a golden light on its long levels and a purple glamour on its hills. And after he had left her, she went with a light heart down the unpaved street that she had lately traversed in unseeing bitterness. The very hum of the mine cars was full of good cheer; children splashed joyously in the ditch; magpies gossiped; the blacksmith-shop rang with a merry din of steel. Set emerald-like in the yellow circle of the prairies, the green young cottonwood grove about Jane's house shone fresh and vivid. At the white gate a carriage waited--a strange carriage which Lola scrutinized wonderingly as she approached. With delighted eyes she noted the purple cushions and the satin coats of the horses. Who could have come? Whose voice was that which issued from the house in an unbroken monologue, genial, laughing, breathless? Suddenly, as she mounted the porch steps, a persuasion of familiarity in those light accents overcame her. Could it be that her father had come at last? That, after all her waiting, she was to see him and talk with him and sob out on his breast her appreciation of his long labors in her behalf, his kindness, unselfishness and goodness? She forgot that she had sometimes been hurt at his silence and absence. Her childhood swam before her; she recalled the sweetness of her mother's face, and in that memory he who awaited her in Jane's sitting-room gathered a graciousness which exalted him, as if he, too, had been dead and was alive again. The talk broke off at her impetuous entrance. Upon a chair sat a man with a round and ruddy face, with bright blue eyes and a curling spread of yellow beard. Lola hesitated. She doubted if this richly arrayed, somewhat stout man could be the slim, boyish-looking father she remembered. Then the unalterable joyousness of his glance reassured her, and she rushed forward crying, "Oh, it's you! It's you!" She had not noticed Jane, who sat opposite, mute and relaxed, like one in whom hope and resolution flag and fail; but Jane's deep eyes followed Lola's swift motion, and her look changed a little at the girl's air of eager joy. As she saw Lola fling herself upon his breast and cling there, she winced, and her heart yearned at the sight of a love which she had somehow failed to win with all her efforts, and which now she should never win, since Lola was about to leave her forever. The hour so long dreaded by Jane seemed surely to have come at last--the hour of her child's departure. Forth to life's best and brightest Lola would go, as was meet. Happiness illimitable awaited the girl she had cherished. It was right that this should be so; yet, alas for the vast void gray of the empty heart which Lola would leave behind! "Well, this is a kind of surprise!" said Mr. Keene, holding his daughter away for a better sight of her radiant face. "You are taller than I expected. She's got real Spanish eyes, aint she, Miss Combs? Like her mother's. The Keenes are all sandy. I'm not sure I'd have known you, Lola." "Oh, papa, you've been away so long! You've been kind and good to me--yet--" "We'll have to let bygones be bygones," declared her father, gratified to learn that she had thought him good and kind--for this point had rather worried him. "I've felt at times as if I hadn't done you just right." "Don't say so, papa!" "Well, I won't," agreed Mr. Keene, willingly. "Only I'm glad to find you haven't cherished anything against me for leaving you like I did. When I persuaded Miss Jane to take you, I couldn't foresee what hard luck I was going to strike, could I?" As he paused he caught Jane's eye upon him in a significance which he did not understand. "She doesn't know," said Jane, in a sort of whisper, indicating Lola, whose back was toward her. "Doesn't know what?" asked Mr. Keene, unwitting and bewildered. "Of course she doesn't know all I suffered, what with taking up one worthless claim after another month in and out--if you mean that! Why, I actually thought one time of giving up prospecting and settling down to day's work! Yes'm! It was sure enough that grub-stake you gave me last Fourth of July that brought me my first luck! I put it right into Pony Gulch and my pick struck free-milling ore the first blow! Some of the stuff runs ninety dollars to the ton and some higher. I've already had good offers for my claim from an English syndicate, but I haven't decided to sell. Seems queer it should be such a little while ago that I called you out of that pavilion, Miss Jane, and told you what a fix I was in! You remember you said you hadn't the money--and then afterward you turned in, real friendly, and raised me what I needed." Lola exclaimed, "You were here in town on the Fourth of July? O papa! Why didn't I see you? Oh--what--" "You came near enough to seeing me," laughed Mr. Keene, "and to going away with me, too! I'm glad things happened like they did. That boarding-house was no place for you, Lola. I realize it now! But I was pushed to the wall. But for Miss Jane's helping me out, I'd have had to take you away, sure enough! She told you, didn't she?" "Told me? Told me what?" "Why, about my idea of getting you that situation up in Cripple? They needed help bad up in the boarding-house where I lived, and I'd made 'em a promise to fetch you. It was easy work in the dining-room, and right good pay." "And--and--_tia_ fixed it--so--you decided to leave me here?" "That's what she did! I'm mighty glad of it, too, for I see you're not cut out for any such work. I'm not forgetting what I owe Miss Jane. She's been a good friend to us both. I was sorry to hear down in Trinidad about your mortgaging your house that time, Miss Combs. Yes, I'm downright ashamed to think I've let you pay me month by month for Lola's services, when really you were out of pocket for her schooling and all. But I didn't realize how things were, and now we'll level things up." "My services!" Lola sprang to her feet. Everything was clear enough now. No need to summon charity for Jane's shortcomings! No need to overlook, to palliate, to forgive! Jane's fault had been merely too lavish a generosity, too large a love. There had been no question with her of property. She had simply given everything she had to a forsaken, ungrateful child--home, food, raiment, schooling. These were the facts. The flood of unutterable feeling which swept over Lola as the knowledge of it all flashed upon her was something deeper than thought, something more moving than any mere matter of perception. A passionate gratitude throbbed in her heart, confused with a passionate self-reproach. She desired to speak, but somehow her lips refused utterance. She trembled and turned white, and stood wringing her hands. "I was always a generous man," said Mr. Keene, lost to his daughter's looks in pleasant introspection, "and I mean to do right by you, Miss Combs. You'll find I'm not ungrateful. Lola'll always write to you, too, wherever we are. I'm thinking some of Paris. How'd that suit you, Lola? A person can pick up a mighty good time over there, they say. And bonnets--how many bonnets can you manage, Lola? Why, she looks kind of stunned, don't she, Miss Combs?" Jane was gazing at the girl. She knew well with what force the blow so long averted had fallen at last. In her own breast she seemed to feel the pain with which Lola had received her father's revelations. "Lola," she cried, leaning forward, "don't feel so, my lamb! I'm sorry you had to know this. I tried hard to keep it from you. But it's all out now, and you must try to bear it. Your father don't realize--he hasn't meant to hurt you. He's fond of you, dearie. And he's going to take you to foreign lands, and you can see all the great pictures and statues, and have a chance to learn all the things you spoke of--designing and such. Don't look so, my child!" Mr. Keene began to feel highly uncomfortable. Evidently, in his own phrase, he had "put his foot into it;" he had said too much. He had disclosed fallacies in himself of which Lola, it seemed, knew nothing. And now Lola, who had received him with such flattering warmth, was turning her face away and looking strange and stern and stricken. Nor did Miss Combs seem fairly to have grasped the liberality of his intentions. She, too, had a curious air of not being exalted in any way by so much good fortune. She appeared to be engaged solely in trying to reconcile Lola to a situation which Mr. Keene considered dazzling. Altogether it was very disturbing, especially to a man who did not understand what he had done to bring about so unpleasant a turn. He was about to ask some explanation, when Lola said slowly, "And you, _tia_, you have done so much for me that you have nothing left? Is that so?" "I don't need much, Lola. I'll be all right. Don't you worry." "You won't mind living here alone and poor?" "She won't be poor, Lola," interpolated Mr. Keene. "Haven't I said so? And you can come and see her, you know. Everything will come out all right." Lola turned a little toward him, and he was glad to see that her eyes were soft and gentle and that the stern look had disappeared. "Yes," she said, "it will come out all right for tia, because I shall be here to see that it does." She caught her breath and added, "You couldn't think I should be willing to go away and leave her like this? Even if I hadn't heard how much more she has done for me than I dreamed? For I have been ignorant till now of many things; but I shouldn't have forgotten that she loved me and had reared me and cared for me when there was no one else. No, father, no! And now that you have let me find out what I owe her, do you think I sha'n't remember it always with every beat of my heart? Oh, yes--although I can never repay her for all she has suffered in keeping me from knowing things which would have hurt me too much when I was little and--and could not make allowances--as I can now. My home is here. My heart is here, father. You must let me stay!" She had taken Jane's hand and was holding it closely--that happy hand which for very blessedness and amazement trembled more than her own. And so holding it, she cried, "_Tia_, you want me to stay, don't you? Say yes! Tell him I may stay! It is my home where you are. And oh, how different I will be!" Jane, listening, could only press those slender, clinging fingers in speechless comfort, and look up silently into the imploring eyes of her child--eyes filled with tears and love. A moment of silence ensued. Then, clearing his throat suddenly, Mr. Keene rose and walked to the window. "Lola," he said presently, turning to face the two others, "I don't blame you one bit. Miss Jane's done a heap more for you than I had any notion. 'Tisn't only that she's done all you say, but she's raised you to be a girl I'm proud of--a right-minded, right-hearted girl. I never thought how it would look for you to be willing to rush off at the first word and leave behind you the person you owed most to in the world! But I'm free to say I wouldn't have liked it when I come to think of it. I wouldn't have felt proud of you like I do now. Knocking around the foot-hills has shaken me up pretty well, but I know what's right as well as any man. There's things in my life I'd like to forget; but they say it's never too late to mend. And I have hopes of myself when I see what a noble girl my daughter's turned out." [Illustration: "'TIA, YOU ARE A LADY OF FORTUNE!'"] He put his handkerchief away and came and stood before them, adding, "I haven't had a chance to finish my other story. When Miss Jane gave me that grub-stake she didn't know, I reckon, that half of anything I might strike would belong to her--that in law, grub-stakes always means halves! But I never had any intention of not dealing fair and square. So when I said she wasn't going to be poor, I meant it! For half 'the Little Lola' belongs to her. And if she's willing, I'll just run the mine for the next year or so, and after that we can talk about traveling." Mr. Keene, during the past hour, had been made sensible of certain deficiencies in himself. No one had accused him or reproached him, yet he felt chagrined as he saw his own conduct forcibly contrasted with the conduct of a different sort. But now, as his daughter sent a beaming glance toward him, his spirits rose again, and he began once more to regard himself hopefully, as a man who, despite some failings, was honest in the main, and generous and well-meaning. "Oh, how glad I am!" said Lola. "_Tia, tia_, do you hear? You are a lady of fortune and must have a velvet gown! And, oh, _tia_, a tall, silver comb in your hair!" She dropped a sudden kiss down upon the smooth, brown bands, and added in a deeper tone, "But nothing, nothing, can make you better or dearer!" Jane smiled uncertainly as if she were in a dream. Could this unlooked-for, bewildering satisfaction be indeed real, and not a visionary thing which would presently fade? She looked about. There was actuality in the scene. The cottonwoods rustled crisply, Alejandro Vigil was calling to his dog, and the tinkle of his herd stole softly upon her ear. The great hills rose majestic as of old upon the glorious western sky; the plains stretched off in silvery, sea-like waves to the very verge of the world. And hard by many a familiar thing spoke of a past which she knew; pots of geraniums, muslin shades and open piano. There, too, was Mr. Keene, sitting at ease in his chair; there was Lola, bending over her in smiling reassurance. And finally, there was Tesuque himself regarding her from his shelf in an Olympian calm which no merely mortal emotion could touch or stir. Tesuque's little bowl was still empty, but in his adobe glance Jane suddenly grew aware how truly her own cup overflowed. [THE END] A PRAIRIE INFANTA By EVA WILDEER BRODHEAD A clever Western story that develops in a little Colorado mining town. One is made to see the green, tall cottonwoods, the straggling mud-houses and pungent goat-corrals of its people, among whom lived the woman who took to her great heart the motherless Lola. The tropical brilliancy of the girl, by reason of her red frock and the red ribbons in her hair, excites the jealousy of the little Mexicans and the paler children from the mining end of the town, and in their disapproval they style her "Infanta." The story of the girl's life is charmingly told, and eventually, her father, a man who, despite some failings, is generous and well-meaning, reappears in the character of a wealthy mine owner, and brings the story to an unlooked for and happy termination. Cloth, ornamental, illustrated, 50 cents WITCHERY WAYS By AMOS R. WELLS PICTURES BY L. J. BRIDGMAN Children may well be grateful to the forgotten people who, long ago, first invented fairy tales. Mr. Wells confesses, in the preface to this book, that he has a very tender regard for the "Little People," as fairies used to be called in those days, and now he has given us, under the title of "Witchery Ways," some fairy tales of his own which will prove a never-ending delight to every reader. Cloth, ornamental, illustrated, 50 cents SONNY BOY By SOPHIE SWETT Sonny Boy was ten years old. His name was Peter, but his mother thought that too large a name for a small boy. Aunt Kate, one of the "right kind," is lonesome in her new house without any young people, and borrows Sonny Boy for six months. The lad has a happy visit and many pleasant experiences, learning the while some helpful lessons. Delightedly one reads of Otto and the white mice; Lena and the parrot, the wild man of the circus, and Sonny Boy's ambition to command the Poppleton Guards, but Miss Swett tells the story, and when that is said, nothing remains but to enjoy the book. Cloth, ornamental, handsomely illustrated, 50 cents HENRY ALTEMUS CO., PHILADELPHIA A GOURD FIDDLE By GRACE MACGOWAN COOKE A little colored boy, the sole orphaned remainder of a long line of masters of the violin, alone of the army of negroes who had borne the family name, is left to wait upon the old mistress and Miss Patrice at the "Great House." Miss Patrice teaches Orphy to sing the chants and anthems in the service of the little church where he was baptized, and with her voice new airs for his violin. Plantation songs he knew and rendered with a pleasing coloring. After the death of his teacher Orphy falls upon hard times, but eventually his talent is recognized by a professor of music who takes him to Europe, and there, under peculiar circumstances, he plays on his home-made gourd fiddle before no less a personage than Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. Cloth, ornamental, handsomely illustrated, 50 cents BUMPER AND BABY JOHN By ANNA CHAPIN RAY PICTURES BY CURTIS WAGER-SMITH An irresistibly humorous relation of the haps and mishaps of the homeliest, yet most dependable dog in the world, and a delightful red-haired and freckled child, whose united ages did not exceed seven years. But apart from the humor of the book, it is alive with human interest, and there is pathos as well. And this is not to forget the artist in praise of the author; the illustrations could not have been confided to a better hand. Cloth, ornamental, illustrated, 50 cents A LITTLE ROUGH RIDER By TUDOR JENKS Author of "Galopoff, the Talking Pony," "Gypsy, the Talking Dog," etc. PICTURES BY REGINALD B. BIRCH Under the title of "A Little Rough Rider" the author tells the story of a little girl, who, as Señorita Finette, the _equestrienne_, saved the fortunes of a circus during the early years of the gold-fever in California. Her charming feats on the back of her trained horse, Blanco, win fame and fortune for herself as well, the latter being augmented later by the discovery of gold on certain lands. Cloth, ornamental, illustrated, 50 cents HENRY ALTEMUS CO., PHILADELPHIA * * * * * Transcriber's Notes Page 43: Changed Sanish to Spanish: (who knew Sanish best, being a bronco from the south). 
28562	----	(This file made using scans of public domain works at the University of Georgia.) Wild Life on the Rockies [Illustration: LONG'S PEAK FROM THE EAST] Wild Life on the Rockies By Enos A. Mills With Illustrations from Photographs [Illustration: Publisher's Device] Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company The Riverside Press Cambridge COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY ENOS A. MILLS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Published March 1909_ To John Muir PREFACE This book contains the record of a few of the many happy days and novel experiences which I have had in the wilds. For more than twenty years it has been my good fortune to live most of the time with nature, on the mountains of the West. I have made scores of long exploring rambles over the mountains in every season of the year, a nature-lover charmed with the birds and the trees. On my later excursions I have gone alone and without firearms. During three succeeding winters, in which I was a Government Experiment Officer and called the "State Snow Observer," I scaled many of the higher peaks of the Rockies and made many studies on the upper slopes of these mountains. "Colorado Snow Observer" was printed in part in _The Youth's Companion_ for May 18, 1905, under the title of "In the Mountain Snows"; "The Story of a Thousand-Year Pine" appeared in _The World's Work_ for August, 1908; and "The Beaver and his Works" is reprinted from _The World To-Day_ for December, 1908. E. A. M. Contents Colorado Snow Observer 1 The Story of a Thousand-Year Pine 29 The Beaver and his Works 51 The Wilds without Firearms 69 A Watcher on the Heights 81 Climbing Long's Peak 97 Midget, the Return Horse 113 Faithful Scotch 129 Bob and Some Other Birds 149 Kinnikinick 169 The Lodge-Pole Pine 181 Rocky Mountain Forests 197 Besieged by Bears 215 Mountain Parks and Camp-Fires 231 Index 259 Illustrations _Long's Peak from the East_ _Frontispiece_ _A Man with a History_ 6 _The Crest of the Continent in Winter, 13,000 Feet above Sea-Level_ 16 _A Snow-Slide Track_ 20 _A Veteran Western Yellow Pine_ 32 _A Beaver-House_ 58 _A Beaver-Dam in Winter_ 63 _Lake Odessa_ 76 _On the Heights_ 84 _A Storm on the Rockies_ 94 _Long's Peak from the Summit of Mt. Meeker_ 100 _On the Tip-Top of Long's Peak_ 110 _A Miner on a Return Horse_ 116 _Scotch near Timber-Line_ 132 _The Cloud-Capped Continental Divide_ 144 _Ptarmigan_ 158 _Summer at an Altitude of 12,000 Feet_ 178 _A Typical Lodge-Pole Forest_ 184 _Aspens_ 204 _A Grove of Silver Spruce_ 208 _Ouray, Colorado, a Typical Mining Town_ 218 _Estes Park and the Big Thompson River from the Top of Mt. Olympus_ 238 _In the Uncompahgre Mountains_ 244 _A Grass-Plot among Engelmann Spruce_ 250 Colorado Snow Observer "Where are you going?" was the question asked me one snowy winter day. After hearing that I was off on a camping-trip, to be gone several days, and that the place where I intended to camp was in deep snow on the upper slopes of the Rockies, the questioners laughed heartily. Knowing me, some questioners realized that I was in earnest, and all that they could say in the nature of argument or appeal was said to cause me to "forego the folly." But I went, and in the romance of a new world--on the Rockies in winter--I lived intensely through ten strong days and nights, and gave to my life new and rare experiences. Afterwards I made other winter excursions, all of which were stirring and satisfactory. The recollection of these winter experiences is as complete and exhilarating as any in the vista of my memory. Some years after my first winter camping-trip, I found myself holding a strange position,--that of the "State Snow Observer of Colorado." I have never heard of another position like it. Professor L. G. Carpenter, the celebrated irrigation engineer, was making some original investigations concerning forests and the water-supply. He persuaded me to take the position, and under his direction I worked as a government experiment officer. For three successive winters I traversed the upper slopes of the Rockies and explored the crest of the continent, alone. While on this work, I was instructed to make notes on "those things that are likely to be of interest or value to the Department of Agriculture or the Weather Bureau,"--and to be careful not to lose my life. On these winter trips I carried with me a camera, thermometer, barometer, compass, notebook, and folding axe. The food carried usually was only raisins. I left all bedding behind. Notwithstanding I was alone and in the wilds, I did not carry any kind of a gun. The work made it necessary for me to ramble the wintry heights in sunshine and storm. Often I was out, or rather up, in a blizzard, and on more than one occasion I was out for two weeks on the snow-drifted crest of the continent, without seeing any one. I went beyond the trails and visited the silent places alone. I invaded gulches, eagerly walked the splendid forest aisles, wandered in the dazzling glare on dreary alpine moorlands, and scaled the peaks over mantles of ice and snow. I had many experiences,--amusing, dangerous, and exciting. There was abundance of life and fun in the work. On many an evening darkness captured me and compelled me to spend the night in the wilds without bedding, and often without food. During these nights I kept a camp-fire blazing until daylight released me. When the night was mild, I managed to sleep a little,--in installments,--rising from time to time to give wood to the eager fire. Sometimes a scarcity of wood kept me busy gathering it all night; and sometimes the night was so cold that I did not risk going to sleep. During these nights I watched my flaming fountain of fire brighten, fade, surge, and change, or shower its spray of sparks upon the surrounding snow-flowers. Strange reveries I have had by these winter camp-fires. On a few occasions mountain lions interrupted my thoughts with their piercing, lonely cries; and more than once a reverie was pleasantly changed by the whisper of a chickadee in some near-by tree as a cold comrade snuggled up to it. Even during the worst of nights, when I thought of my lot at all. I considered it better than that of those who were sick in houses or asleep in the stuffy, deadly air of the slums. "Believe me, 'tis something to be cast Face to face with thine own self at last." [Illustration: A MAN WITH A HISTORY] Not all nights were spent outdoors. Many a royal evening was passed in the cabin of a miner or a prospector, or by the fireside of a family who for some reason had left the old home behind and sought seclusion in wild scenes, miles from neighbors. Among Colorado's mountains there are an unusual number of strong characters who are trying again. They are strong because broken plans, lost fortunes, or shattered health elsewhere have not ended their efforts or changed their ideals. Many are trying to restore health, some are trying again to prosper, others are just making a start in life, but there are a few who, far from the madding crowd, are living happily the simple life. Sincerity, hope, and repose enrich the lives of those who live among the crags and pines of mountain fastnesses. Many a happy evening I have had with a family, or an old prospector, who gave me interesting scraps of autobiography along with a lodging for the night. The snow-fall on the mountains of Colorado is very unevenly distributed, and is scattered through seven months of the year. Two places only a few miles apart, and separated by a mountain-range, may have very different climates, and one of these may have twice as much snow-fall as the other. On the middle of the upper slopes of the mountains the snow sometimes falls during seven months of the year. At an altitude of eleven thousand feet the annual fall amounts to eighteen feet. This is several times the amount that falls at an altitude of six thousand feet. In a locality near Crested Butte the annual fall is thirty feet, and during snowy winters even fifty feet. Most winter days are clear, and the climate less severe than is usually imagined. One winter I walked on snowshoes on the upper slopes of the "snowy" range of the Rockies, from the Wyoming line on the north to near the New Mexico line on the south. This was a long walk, and it was full of amusement and adventure. I walked most of the way on the crest of the continent. The broken nature of the surface gave me ups and downs. Sometimes I would descend to the level of seven thousand feet, and occasionally I climbed some peak that was fourteen thousand feet above the tides. I had not been out many days on this trip when I was caught in a storm on the heights above tree-line. I at once started downward for the woods. The way among the crags and precipices was slippery; the wind threatened every moment to hurl me over a cliff; the wind-blown snow filled the air so that I could see only a few feet, and at times not at all. But it was too cold to stop. For two hours I fought my way downward through the storm, and so dark was it during the last half-hour that I literally felt my way with my staff. Once in the woods, I took off a snowshoe, dug a large hole in the snow down to the earth, built a fire, and soon forgot the perilous descent. After eating from my supply of raisins, I dozed a little, and woke to find all calm and the moon shining in glory on a snowy mountain-world of peaks and pines. I put on my snowshoes, climbed upward beneath the moon, and from the summit of Lead Mountain, thirteen thousand feet high, saw the sun rise in splendor on a world of white. The tracks and records in the snow which I read in passing made something of a daily newspaper for me. They told much of news of the wilds. Sometimes I read of the games that the snowshoe rabbit had played; of a starving time among the brave mountain sheep on the heights; of the quiet content in the ptarmigan neighborhood; of the dinner that the pines had given the grouse; of the amusements and exercises on the deer's stamping-ground; of the cunning of foxes; of the visits of magpies, the excursions of lynxes, and the red records of mountain lions. The mountain lion is something of a game-hog and an epicure. He prefers warm blood for every meal, and is very wasteful. I have much evidence against him; his worst one-day record that I have shows five tragedies. In this time he killed a mountain sheep, a fawn, a grouse, a rabbit, and a porcupine; and as if this were not enough, he was about to kill another sheep when a dark object on snowshoes shot down the slope near by and disturbed him. The instances where he has attacked human beings are rare, but he will watch and follow one for hours with the utmost caution and curiosity. One morning after a night-journey through the wood, I turned back and doubled my trail. After going a short distance I came to the track of a lion alongside my own. I went back several miles and read the lion's movements. He had watched me closely. At every place where I rested he had crept up close, and at the place where I had sat down against a stump he had crept up to the opposite side of the stump,--and I fear while I dozed! One night during this expedition I had lodging in an old and isolated prospector's cabin, with two young men who had very long hair. For months they had been in seclusion, "gathering wonderful herbs," hunting out prescriptions for every human ill, and waiting for their hair to grow long. I hope they prepared some helpful, or at least harmless prescriptions, for, ere this, they have become picturesque, and I fear prosperous, medicine-men on some populous street-corner. One day I had dinner on the summit of Mt. Lincoln, fourteen thousand feet above the ocean. I ate with some miners who were digging out their fortune; and was "the only caller in five months." But I was not always a welcome guest. At one of the big mining-camps I stopped for mail and to rest for a day or so. I was all "rags and tags," and had several broken strata of geology and charcoal on my face in addition. Before I had got well into the town, from all quarters came dogs, each of which seemed determined to make it necessary for me to buy some clothes. As I had already determined to do this, I kept the dogs at bay for a time, and then sought refuge in a first-class hotel; from this the porter, stimulated by an excited order from the clerk, promptly and literally kicked me out! In the robings of winter how different the mountains than when dressed in the bloom of summer! In no place did the change seem more marked than on some terrace over which summer flung the lacy drapery of a white cascade, or where a wild waterfall "leapt in glory." These places in winter were glorified with the fine arts of ice,--"frozen music," as some one has defined architecture,--for here winter had constructed from water a wondrous array of columns, panels, filigree, fretwork, relief-work, arches, giant icicles, and stalagmites as large as, and in ways resembling, a big tree with a fluted full-length mantle of ice. Along the way were extensive areas covered with the ruins of fire-killed trees. Most of the forest fires which had caused these were the result of carelessness. The timber destroyed by these fires had been needed by thousands of home-builders. The robes of beauty which they had burned from the mountain-sides are a serious loss. These fire ruins preyed upon me, and I resolved to do something to save the remaining forests. The opportunity came shortly after the resolution was made. Two days before reaching the objective point, farthest south, my food gave out, and I fasted. But as soon as I reached the end, I started to descend the heights, and very naturally knocked at the door of the first house I came to, and asked for something to eat. I supposed I was at a pioneer's cabin. A handsome, neatly dressed young lady came to the door, and when her eyes fell upon me she blushed and then turned pale. I was sorry that my appearance had alarmed her, but I repeated my request for something to eat. Just then, through the half-open door behind the young lady, came the laughter of children, and a glance into the room told me that I was before a mountain schoolhouse. By this time the teacher, to whom I was talking, startled me by inviting me in. As I sat eating a luncheon to which the teacher and each one of the six school-children contributed, the teacher explained to me that she was recently from the East, and that I so well fitted her ideas of a Western desperado that she was frightened at first. When I finished eating, I made my first after-dinner speech; it was also my first attempt to make a forestry address. One point I tried to bring out was concerning the destruction wrought by forest fires. Among other things I said: "During the past few years in Colorado, forest fires, which ought never to have been started, have destroyed many million dollars' worth of timber, and the area over which the fires have burned aggregates twenty-five thousand square miles. This area of forest would put on the equator an evergreen-forest belt one mile wide that would reach entirely around the world. Along with this forest have perished many of the animals and thousands of beautiful birds who had homes in it." I finally bade all good-bye, went on my way rejoicing, and in due course arrived at Denver, where a record of one of my longest winter excursions was written. In order to give an idea of one of my briefer winter walks, I close this chapter with an account of a round-trip snowshoe journey from Estes Park to Grand Lake, the most thrilling and adventurous that has ever entertained me on the trail. One February morning I set off alone on snowshoes to cross the "range," for the purpose of making some snow-measurements. The nature of my work for the State required the closest observation of the character and extent of the snow in the mountains. I hoped to get to Grand Lake for the night, but I was on the east side of the range, and Grand Lake was on the west. Along the twenty-five miles of trail there was only wilderness, without a single house. The trail was steep and the snow very soft. Five hours were spent in gaining timber-line, which was only six miles from my starting-place, but four thousand feet above it. Rising in bold grandeur above me was the summit of Long's Peak, and this, with the great hills of drifted snow, out of which here and there a dwarfed and distorted tree thrust its top, made timber-line seem weird and lonely. From this point the trail wound for six miles across bleak heights before it came down to timber on the other side of the range. I set forward as rapidly as possible, for the northern sky looked stormy. I must not only climb up fifteen hundred feet, but must also skirt the icy edges of several precipices in order to gain the summit. My friends had warned me that the trip was a foolhardy one even on a clear, calm day, but I was fated to receive the fury of a snowstorm while on the most broken portion of the trail. The tempest came on with deadly cold and almost blinding violence. The wind came with awful surges, and roared and boomed among the crags. The clouds dashed and seethed along the surface, shutting out all landmarks. I was every moment in fear of slipping or being blown over a precipice, but there was no shelter; I was on the roof of the continent, twelve thousand five hundred feet above sea-level, and to stop in the bitter cold meant death. [Illustration: THE CREST OF THE CONTINENT IN WINTER, 13,000 FEET ABOVE SEA-LEVEL] It was still three miles to timber on the west slope, and I found it impossible to keep the trail. Fearing to perish if I tried to follow even the general course of the trail, I abandoned it altogether, and started for the head of a gorge, down which I thought it would be possible to climb to the nearest timber. Nothing definite could be seen. The clouds on the snowy surface and the light electrified air gave the eye only optical illusions. The outline of every object was topsy-turvy and dim. The large stones that I thought to step on were not there; and, when apparently passing others, I bumped into them. Several times I fell headlong by stepping out for a drift and finding a depression. In the midst of these illusions I walked out on a snow-cornice that overhung a precipice! Unable to see clearly, I had no realization of my danger until I felt the snow giving way beneath me. I had seen the precipice in summer, and knew it was more than a thousand feet to the bottom! Down I tumbled, carrying a large fragment of the snow-cornice with me. I could see nothing, and I was entirely helpless. Then, just as the full comprehension of the awful thing that was happening swept over me, the snow falling beneath me suddenly stopped. I plunged into it, completely burying myself. Then I, too, no longer moved downward; my mind gradually admitted the knowledge that my body, together with a considerable mass of the snow, had fallen upon a narrow ledge and caught there. More of the snow came tumbling after me, and it was a matter of some minutes before I succeeded in extricating myself. When I thrust my head out of the snow-mass and looked about me, I was first appalled by a glance outward, which revealed the terrible height of the precipice on the face of which I was hanging. Then I was relieved by a glance upward, which showed me that I was only some twenty feet from the top, and that a return thither would not be very difficult. But if I had walked from the top a few feet farther back, I should have fallen a quarter of a mile. One of my snowshoes came off as I struggled out, so I took off the other shoe and used it as a scoop to uncover the lost web. But it proved very slow and dangerous work. With both shoes off I sank chest-deep in the snow; if I ventured too near the edge of the ledge, the snow would probably slip off and carry me to the bottom of the precipice. It was only after two hours of effort that the shoe was recovered. When I first struggled to the surface of the snow on the ledge, I looked at once to find a way back to the top of the precipice. I quickly saw that by following the ledge a few yards beneath the unbroken snow-cornice I could climb to the top over some jagged rocks. As soon as I had recovered the shoe, I started round the ledge. When I had almost reached the jagged rocks, the snow-cornice caved upon me, and not only buried me, but came perilously near knocking me into the depths beneath. But at last I stood upon the top in safety. A short walk from the top brought me out upon a high hill of snow that sloped steeply down into the woods. The snow was soft, and I sat down in it and slid "a blue streak"--my blue overalls recording the streak--for a quarter of a mile, and then came to a sudden and confusing stop; one of my webs had caught on a spine of one of the dwarfed and almost buried trees at timber-line. When I had traveled a short distance below timber-line, a fearful crashing caused me to turn; I was in time to see fragments of snow flying in all directions, and snow-dust boiling up in a great geyser column. A snow-slide had swept down and struck a granite cliff. As I stood there, another slide started on the heights above timber, and with a far-off roar swept down in awful magnificence, with a comet-like tail of snow-dust. Just at timber-line it struck a ledge and glanced to one side, and at the same time shot up into the air so high that for an instant I saw the treetops beneath it. But it came back to earth with awful force, and I felt the ground tremble as it crushed a wide way through the woods. It finally brought up at the bottom of a gulch with a wreckage of hundreds of noble spruce trees that it had crushed down and swept before it. As I had left the trail on the heights, I was now far from it and in a rugged and wholly unfrequented section, so that coming upon the fresh tracks of a mountain lion did not surprise me. But I was not prepared for what occurred soon afterward. Noticing a steamy vapor rising from a hole in the snow by the protruding roots of an overturned tree, I walked to the hole to learn the cause of it. One whiff of the vapor stiffened my hair and limbered my legs. I shot down a steep slope, dodging trees and rocks. The vapor was rank with the odor from a bear. [Illustration: A SNOW-SLIDE TRACK] At the bottom of the slope I found the frozen surface of a stream much easier walking than the soft snow. All went well until I came to some rapids, where, with no warning whatever, the thin ice dropped me into the cold current among the boulders. I scrambled to my feet, with the ice flying like broken glass. The water came only a little above my knees, but as I had gone under the surface, and was completely drenched, I made an enthusiastic move toward the bank. Now snowshoes are not adapted for walking either in swift water or among boulders. I realized this thoroughly after they had several times tripped me, sprawling, into the liquid cold. Finally I sat down in the water, took them off, and came out gracefully. I gained the bank with chattering teeth and an icy armor. My pocket thermometer showed two degrees above zero. Another storm was bearing down upon me from the range, and the sun was sinking. But the worst of it all was that there were several miles of rough and strange country between me and Grand Lake that would have to be made in the dark. I did not care to take any more chances on the ice, so I spent a hard hour climbing out of the cañon. The climb warmed me and set my clothes steaming. My watch indicated six o'clock. A fine snow was falling, and it was dark and cold. I had been exercising for twelve hours without rest, and had eaten nothing since the previous day, as I never take breakfast. I made a fire and lay down on a rock by it to relax, and also to dry my clothes. In half an hour I started on again. Rocky and forest-covered ridges lay between me and Grand Lake. In the darkness I certainly took the worst way. I met with too much resistance in the thickets and too little on the slippery places, so that when, at eleven o'clock that night, I entered a Grand Lake Hotel, my appearance was not prepossessing. The next day, after a few snow-measurements, I set off to re-cross the range. In order to avoid warm bear-dens and cold streams, I took a different route. It was a much longer way than the one I had come by, so I went to a hunter's deserted cabin for the night. The cabin had no door, and I could see the stars through the roof. The old sheet-iron stove was badly rusted and broken. Most of the night I spent chopping wood, and I did not sleep at all. But I had a good rest by the stove, where I read a little from a musty pamphlet on palmistry that I found between the logs of the cabin. I always carry candles with me. When the wind is blowing, the wood damp, and the fingers numb, they are of inestimable value in kindling a fire. I do not carry firearms, and during the night, when a lion gave a blood-freezing screech, I wished he were somewhere else. Daylight found me climbing toward the top of the range through the Medicine Bow National Forest, among some of the noblest evergreens in Colorado. When the sun came over the range, the silent forest vistas became magnificent with bright lights and deep shadows. At timber-line the bald rounded summit of the range, like a gigantic white turtle, rose a thousand feet above me. The slope was steep and very icy; a gusty wind whirled me about. Climbing to the top would be like going up a steep ice-covered house-roof. It would be a dangerous and barely possible undertaking. But as I did not have courage enough to retreat, I threw off my snowshoes and started up. I cut a place in the ice for every step. There was nothing to hold to, and a slip meant a fatal slide. With rushes from every quarter, the wind did its best to freeze or overturn me. My ears froze, and my fingers grew so cold that they could hardly hold the ice-axe. But after an hour of constant peril and ever-increasing exhaustion, I got above the last ice and stood upon the snow. The snow was solidly packed, and, leaving my snowshoes strapped across my shoulders, I went scrambling up. Near the top of the range a ledge of granite cropped out through the snow, and toward this I hurried. Before making a final spurt to the ledge, I paused to breathe. As I stopped, I was startled by sounds like the creaking of wheels on a cold, snowy street. The snow beneath me was slipping! I had started a snow-slide. Almost instantly the slide started down the slope with me on it. The direction in which it was going and the speed it was making would in a few seconds carry it down two thousand feet of slope, where it would leap over a precipice into the woods. I was on the very upper edge of the snow that had started, and this was the tail-end of the slide. I tried to stand up in the rushing snow, but its speed knocked my feet from under me, and in an instant I was rolled beneath the surface. Beneath the snow, I went tumbling on with it for what seemed like a long time, but I know, of course, that it was for only a second or two; then my feet struck against something solid. I was instantly flung to the surface again, where I either was spilled off, or else fell through, the end of the slide, and came to a stop on the scraped and frozen ground, out of the grasp of the terrible snow. I leaped to my feet and saw the slide sweep on in most impressive magnificence. At the front end of the slide the snow piled higher and higher, while following in its wake were splendid streamers and scrolls of snow-dust. I lost no time in getting to the top, and set off southward, where, after six miles, I should come to the trail that led to my starting-place on the east side of the range. After I had made about three miles, the cold clouds closed in, and everything was fogged. A chilly half-hour's wait and the clouds broke up. I had lost my ten-foot staff in the snow-slide, and feeling for precipices without it would probably bring me out upon another snow-cornice, so I took no chances. I was twelve thousand five hundred feet above sea-level when the clouds broke up, and from this great height I looked down upon what seemed to be the margin of the polar world. It was intensely cold, but the sun shone with dazzling glare, and the wilderness of snowy peaks came out like a grand and jagged ice-field in the far south. Halos and peculiarly luminous balls floated through the color-tinged and electrical air. The horizon had a touch of cobalt blue, and on the dome above, white flushes appeared and disappeared like faint auroras. After five hours on these silent but imposing heights I struck my first day's trail, and began a wild and merry coast down among the rocks and trees to my starting-place. I hope to have more winter excursions, but perhaps I have had my share. At the bare thought of those winter experiences I am again on an unsheltered peak struggling in a storm; or I am in a calm and splendid forest upon whose snowy, peaceful aisles fall the purple shadows of crags and pines. The Story of a Thousand-Year Pine The peculiar charm and fascination that trees exert over many people I had always felt from childhood, but it was that great nature-lover, John Muir, who first showed me how and where to learn their language. Few trees, however, ever held for me such an attraction as did a gigantic and venerable yellow pine which I discovered one autumn day several years ago while exploring the southern Rockies. It grew within sight of the Cliff-Dwellers' Mesa Verde, which stands at the corner of four States, and as I came upon it one evening just as the sun was setting over that mysterious tableland, its character and heroic proportions made an impression upon me that I shall never forget, and which familiar acquaintance only served to deepen while it yet lived and before the axeman came. Many a time I returned to build my camp-fire by it and have a day or a night in its solitary and noble company. I learned afterwards that it had been given the name "Old Pine," and it certainly had an impressiveness quite compatible with the age and dignity which go with a thousand years of life. When, one day, the sawmill-man at Mancos wrote, "Come, we are about to log your old pine," I started at once, regretting that a thing which seemed to me so human, as well as so noble, must be killed. [Illustration: A VETERAN WESTERN YELLOW PINE] I went out with the axemen who were to cut the old pine down. A grand and impressive tree he was. Never have I seen so much individuality, so much character, in a tree. Although lightning had given him a bald crown, he was still a healthy giant, and was waving evergreen banners more than one hundred and fifteen feet above the earth. His massive trunk, eight feet in diameter on a level with my breast, was covered with a thick, rough, golden-brown bark which was broken into irregular plates. Several of his arms were bent and broken. Altogether, he presented a timeworn but heroic appearance. It is almost a marvel that trees should live to become the oldest of living things. Fastened in one place, their struggle is incessant and severe. From the moment a baby tree is born--from the instant it casts its tiny shadow upon the ground--until death, it is in danger from insects and animals. It cannot move to avoid danger. It cannot run away to escape enemies. Fixed in one spot, almost helpless, it must endure flood and drought, fire and storm, insects and earthquakes, or die. Trees, like people, struggle for existence, and an aged tree, like an aged person, has not only a striking appearance, but an interesting biography. I have read the autobiographies of many century-old trees, and have found their life-stories strange and impressive. The yearly growth, or annual ring of wood with which trees envelop themselves, is embossed with so many of their experiences that this annual ring of growth literally forms an autobiographic diary of the tree's life. I wanted to read Old Pine's autobiography. A veteran pine that had stood on the southern Rockies and struggled and triumphed through the changing seasons of hundreds of years must contain a rare life-story. From his stand between the Mesa and the pine-plumed mountain, he had seen the panorama of the seasons and many a strange pageant; he had beheld what scenes of animal and human strife, what storms and convulsions of nature! Many a wondrous secret he had locked within his tree soul. Yet, although he had not recorded what he had _seen_, I knew that he had kept a fairly accurate diary of his own personal experience. This I knew the saw would reveal, and this I had determined to see. Nature matures a million conifer seeds for each one she chooses for growth, so we can only speculate as to the selection of the seed from which sprung this storied pine. It may be that the cone in which it matured was crushed into the earth by the hoof of a passing deer. It may have been hidden by a jay; or, as is more likely, it may have grown from one of the uneaten cones which a Douglas squirrel had buried for winter food. Douglas squirrels are the principal nurserymen for all the Western pineries. Each autumn they harvest a heavy percentage of the cone crop and bury it for winter. The seeds in the uneaten cones germinate, and each year countless thousands of conifers grow from the seeds planted by these squirrels. It may be that the seed from which Old Pine burst had been planted by an ancient ancestor of the protesting Douglas who was in possession, or this seed may have been in a cone which simply bounded or blew into a hole, where the seed found sufficient mould and moisture to give it a start in life. * * * * * Two loggers swung their axes. At the first blow a Douglas squirrel came out of a hole at the base of a dead limb near the top of the tree and made an aggressive claim of ownership, setting up a vociferous protest against the cutting. As his voice was unheeded, he came scolding down the tree, jumped off one of the lower limbs, and took refuge in a young pine that stood near by. From time to time he came out on the top of the limb nearest to us, and, with a wry face, fierce whiskers, and violent gestures, directed a torrent of abuse at the axemen who were delivering death-blows to Old Pine. The old pine's enormous weight caused him to fall heavily, and he came to earth with tremendous force and struck on an elbow of one of his stocky arms. The force of the fall not only broke the trunk in two, but badly shattered it. The damage to the log was so general that the sawmill-man said it would not pay to saw it into lumber and that it could rot on the spot. I had come a long distance for the express purpose of deciphering Old Pine's diary as the scroll of his life should be laid open in the sawmill. The abandonment of the shattered form compelled the adoption of another way of getting at his story. Receiving permission to do as I pleased with his remains, I at once began to cut and split both the trunk and the limbs and to transcribe their strange records. Day after day I worked. I dug up the roots and thoroughly dissected them, and with the aid of a magnifier I studied the trunk, the roots, and the limbs. I carefully examined the base of his stump, and in it I found 1047 rings of growth! He had lived through a thousand and forty-seven memorable years. As he was cut down in 1903, his birth probably occurred in 856. In looking over the rings of growth, I found that a few of them were much thicker than the others; and these thick rings, or coats of wood, tell of favorable seasons. There were also a few extremely thin rings of growth. In places two and even three of these were together. These were the result of unfavorable seasons,--of drought or cold. The rings of trees also show healed wounds, and tell of burns, bites, and bruises, of torn bark and broken arms. Old Pine not only received injuries in his early years, but from time to time throughout his life. The somewhat kinked condition of several of the rings of growth, beginning with the twentieth, shows that at the age of twenty he sustained an injury which resulted in a severe curvature of the spine, and that for some years he was somewhat stooped. I was unable to make out from his diary whether this injury was the result of a tree or some object falling upon him and pinning him down, or whether his back had been overweighted and bent by wet, clinging snow. As I could not find any scars or bruises, I think that snow must have been the cause of the injury. However, after a few years he straightened up with youthful vitality and seemed to outgrow and forget the experience. A century of tranquil life followed, and during these years the rapid growth tells of good seasons as well as good soil. This rapid growth also shows that there could not have been any crowding neighbors to share the sun and the soil. The tree had grown evenly in all quarters, and the pith of the tree was in the centre. But had one tree grown close, on that quarter the old pine would have grown slower than the others and would have been thinner, and the pith would thus have been away from the tree's centre. When the old pine was just completing his one hundred and thirty-fifth ring of growth, he met with an accident which I can account for only by assuming that a large tree that grew several yards away blew over, and in falling, stabbed him in the side with two dead limbs. His bark was broken and torn, but this healed in due time. Short sections of the dead limbs broke off, however, and were embedded in the old pine. Twelve years' growth covered them, and they remained hidden from view until my splitting revealed them. The other wounds started promptly to heal and, with one exception, did so. A year or two later some ants and borers began excavating their deadly winding ways in the old pine. They probably started to work in one of the places injured by the falling tree. They must have had some advantage, or else something must have happened to the nuthatches and chickadees that year, for, despite the vigilance of these birds, both the borers and the ants succeeded in establishing colonies that threatened injury and possibly death. Fortunately relief came. One day the chief surgeon of all the Southwestern pineries came along. This surgeon was the Texas woodpecker. He probably did not long explore the ridges and little furrows of the bark before he discovered the wound or heard these hidden insects working. After a brief examination, holding his ear to the bark for a moment to get the location of the tree's deadly foe beneath, he was ready to act. He made two successful operations. These not only required him to cut deeply into the old pine and take out the borers, but he may also have had to come back from time to time to dress the wounds by devouring the ant-colonies which may have persisted in taking possession of them. The wounds finally healed, and only the splitting of the affected parts revealed these records, all filled with pitch and preserved for nearly nine hundred years. Following this, an even tenor marked his life for nearly three centuries. This quiet existence came to an end in the summer of 1301, when a stroke of lightning tore a limb out of his round top and badly shattered a shoulder. He had barely recovered from this injury when a violent wind tore off several of his arms. During the summer of 1348 he lost two of his largest arms. These were large and sound, and were more than a foot in diameter at the points of breakage. As these were broken by a down-pressing weight or force, we may attribute these breaks to accumulations of snow. The oldest, largest portion of a tree is the short section immediately above the ground, and, as this lower section is the most exposed to accidents or to injuries from enemies, it generally bears evidence of having suffered the most. Within its scroll are usually found the most extensive and interesting autobiographical impressions. It is doubtful if there is any portion of the earth upon which there are so many deadly struggles as upon the earth around the trunk of a tree. Upon this small arena there are battles fierce and wild; here nature is "red in tooth and claw." When a tree is small and tender, countless insects come to feed upon it. Birds come to it to devour these insects. Around the tree are daily almost merciless fights for existence. These death-struggles occur not only in the daytime, but in the night. Mice, rats, and rabbits destroy millions of young trees. These bold animals often flay baby trees in the daylight, and while at their deadly feast many a time have they been surprised by hawks, and then they are at a banquet where they themselves are eaten. The owl, the faithful nightwatchman of trees, often swoops down at night, and as a result some little tree is splashed with the blood of the very animal that came to feed upon it. The lower section of Old Pine's trunk contained records which I found interesting. One of these in particular aroused my imagination. I was sawing off a section of this lower portion when the saw, with a buzz-z-z-z, suddenly jumped. The object struck was harder than the saw. I wondered what it could be, and, cutting the wood carefully away, laid bare a flint arrowhead. Close to this one I found another, and then with care I counted the rings of growth to find out the year that these had wounded Old Pine. The outer ring which these arrowheads had pierced was the six hundred and thirtieth, so that the year of this occurrence was 1486. Had an Indian bent his bow and shot at a bear that had stood at bay backed up against this tree? Or was there around this tree a battle among Indian tribes? Is it possible that at this place some Cliff-Dweller scouts encountered their advancing foe from the north and opened hostilities? It may be that around Old Pine was fought the battle that is said to have decided the fate of that mysterious race the Cliff-Dwellers. The imagination insists on speculating with these two arrowheads, though they form a fascinating clue that leads us to no definite conclusion. But the fact remains that Old Pine was wounded by two Indian arrowheads some time during his six hundred and thirtieth summer. The year that Columbus discovered America, Old Pine was a handsome giant with a round head held more than one hundred feet above the earth. He was six hundred and thirty-six years old, and with the coming of the Spanish adventurers his lower trunk was given new events to record. The year 1540 was a particularly memorable one for him. This year brought the first horses and bearded men into the drama which was played around him. This year, for the first time, he felt the edge of steel and the tortures of fire. The old chronicles say that the Spanish explorers found the cliff-houses in the year 1540. I believe that during this year a Spanish exploring party may have camped beneath Old Pine and built a fire against his instep, and that some of the explorers hacked him with an axe. The old pine had distinct records of axe and fire markings during the year 1540. It was not common for the Indians of the West to burn or mutilate trees, and as it was common for the Spaniards to do so, and as these hackings in the tree seemed to have been made with some edged tool sharper than any possessed by the Indians, it at least seems probable that they were done by the Spaniards. At any rate, from the year 1540 until the day of his death, Old Pine carried these scars on his instep. As the average yearly growth of the old pine was about the same as in trees similarly situated at the present time, I suppose that climatic conditions in his early days must have been similar to the climatic conditions of to-day. His records indicate periods of even tenor of climate, a year of extremely poor conditions, occasionally a year crowned with a bountiful wood harvest. From 1540 to 1762 I found little of special interest. In 1762, however, the season was not regular. After the ring was well started, something, perhaps a cold wave, for a time checked its growth, and as a result the wood for that one year resembled two years' growth, but yet the difference between this double or false ring and a regular one was easily detected. Old Pine's "hard times" experience seems to have been during the years 1804 and 1805. I think it probable that these were years of drought. During 1804 the layer of wood was the thinnest in his life, and for 1805 the only wood I could find was a layer which only partly covered the trunk of the tree, and this was exceedingly thin. From time to time in the old pine's record, I came across what seemed to be indications of an earthquake shock; but late in 1811 or early in 1812, I think there is no doubt that he experienced a violent shock, for he made extensive records of it. This earthquake occurred after the sap had ceased to flow in 1811, and before it began to flow in the spring of 1812. In places the wood was checked and shattered. At one point, some distance from the ground, there was a bad horizontal break. Two big roots were broken in two, and that quarter of the tree which faced the cliffs had suffered from a rock bombardment. I suppose the violence of the quake displaced many rocks, and some of these, as they came bounding down the mountain-side, collided with Old Pine. One, of about five pounds' weight, struck him so violently in the side that it remained embedded there. After some years the wound was healed over, but this fragment remained in the tree until I released it. During 1859 some one made an axe-mark on the old pine that may have been intended for a trail-blaze, and during the same year another fire badly burned and scarred his ankle. I wonder if some prospectors came this way in 1859 and made camp by him. Another record of man's visits to the tree was made in the summer of 1881, when I think a hunting or outing party may have camped near here and amused themselves by shooting at a mark on Old Pine's ankle. Several modern rifle-bullets were found embedded in the wood around or just beneath a blaze which was made on the tree the same year in which the bullets had entered it. As both these marks were made during the year 1881, it is at least possible that this year the old pine was used as the background for a target during a shooting contest. While I was working over the old pine, a Douglas squirrel who lived near by used every day to stop in his busy harvesting of pine-cones to look on and scold me. As I watched him placing his cones in a hole in the ground under the pine-needles, I often wondered if one of his buried cones would remain there uneaten to germinate and expand ever green into the air, and become a noble giant to live as long and as useful a life as Old Pine. I found myself trying to picture the scenes in which this tree would stand when the birds came singing back from the Southland in the springtime of the year 3000. After I had finished my work of splitting, studying, and deciphering the fragments of the old pine, I went to the sawmill and arranged for the men to come over that evening after I had departed and burn every piece and vestige of the venerable old tree. I told them I should be gone by dark. Then I went back and piled into a pyramid every fragment of root and trunk and broken branch. Seating myself upon this pyramid, I spent some time that afternoon gazing through the autumn sunglow at the hazy Mesa Verde, while my mind rebuilt and shifted the scenes of the long, long drama in which Old Pine had played his part, and of which he had given us but a few fragmentary records. I lingered there dreaming until twilight. I thought of the cycles during which he had stood patient in his appointed place, and my imagination busied itself with the countless experiences that had been recorded, and the scenes and pageants he had witnessed but of which he had made no record. I wondered if he had enjoyed the changing of seasons. I knew that he had often boomed or hymned in the storm or in the breeze. Many a monumental robe of snow-flowers had he worn. More than a thousand times he had beheld the earth burst into bloom amid the happy songs of mating birds; hundreds of times in summer he had worn countless crystal rain-jewels in the sunlight of the breaking storm, while the brilliant rainbow came and vanished on the near-by mountain-side. Ten thousand times he had stood silent in the lonely light of the white and mystic moon. Twilight was fading into darkness when I arose and started on a night-journey for the Mesa Verde, where I intended next morning to greet an old gnarled cedar which grew on its summit. When I arrived at the top of the Mesa, I looked back and saw a pyramid of golden flame standing out in the darkness. The Beaver and his Works I have never been able to decide which I love best, birds or trees, but as these are really comrades it does not matter, for they can take first place together. But when it comes to second place in my affection for wild things, this, I am sure, is filled by the beaver. The beaver has so many interesting ways, and is altogether so useful, so thrifty, so busy, so skillful, and so picturesque, that I believe his life and his deeds deserve a larger place in literature and a better place in our hearts. His engineering works are of great value to man. They not only help to distribute the waters and beneficially control the flow of the streams, but they also catch and save from loss enormous quantities of the earth's best plant-food. In helping to do these two things,--governing the rivers and fixing the soil,--he plays an important part, and if he and the forest had their way with the water-supply, floods would be prevented, streams would never run dry, and a comparatively even flow of water would be maintained in the rivers every day of the year. A number of beaver establishing a colony made one of the most interesting exhibitions of constructive work that I have ever watched. The work went on for several weeks, and I spent hours and days in observing operations. My hiding-place on a granite crag allowed me a good view of the work,--the cutting and transportation of the little logs, the dam-building, and the house-raising. I was close to the trees that were felled. Occasionally, during the construction work of this colony, I saw several beaver at one time cutting trees near one another. Upon one occasion, one was squatted on a fallen tree, another on the limb of a live one, and a third upon a boulder, each busy cutting down his tree. In every case, the tail was used for a combination stool and brace. While cutting, the beaver sat upright and clasped the willow with fore paws or put his hands against the tree, usually tilting his head to one side. The average diameter of the trees cut was about four inches, and a tree of this size was cut down quickly and without a pause. When the tree was almost cut off, the cutter usually thumped with his tail, at which signal all other cutters near by scampered away. But this warning signal was not always given, and in one instance an unwarned cutter had a narrow escape from a tree falling perilously close to him. Before cutting a tree, a beaver usually paused and appeared to look at its surroundings as if choosing a place to squat or sit while cutting it down; but so far as I could tell, he gave no thought as to the direction in which the tree was going to fall. This is true of every beaver which I have seen begin cutting, and I have seen scores. But beavers have individuality, and occasionally I noticed one with marked skill or decision. It may be, therefore, that some beaver try to fell trees on a particular place. In fact, I remember having seen in two localities stumps which suggested that the beaver who cut down the trees had planned just how they were to fall. In the first locality, I could judge only from the record left by the stumps; but the quarter on which the main notch had been made, together with the fact that the notch had in two instances been made on a quarter of the tree where it was inconvenient for the cutter to work, seemed to indicate a plan to fell the tree in a particular direction. In the other locality, I knew the attitude of the trees before they were cut, and in this instance the evidence was so complete and conclusive that I must believe the beaver that cut down these trees endeavored to get them to fall in a definite direction. In each of these cases, however, judging chiefly from the teeth-marks, I think the cuttings were done by the same beaver. Many observations induce me to believe, however, that the majority of beaver do not plan how the trees are to fall. Once a large tree is on the ground, the limbs are trimmed off and the trunk is cut into sections sufficiently small to be dragged, rolled, or pushed to the water, where transportation is easy. The young beaver that I have seen cutting trees have worked in leisurely manner, in contrast with the work of the old ones. After giving a few bites, they usually stop to eat a piece of the bark, or to stare listlessly around for a time. As workers, young beaver appear at their best and liveliest when taking a limb from the hillside to the house in the pond. A young beaver will catch a limb by one end in his teeth, and, throwing it over his shoulder in the attitude of a puppy racing with a rope or a rag, make off to the pond. Once in the water, he throws up his head and swims to the house or the dam with the limb held trailing out over his back. The typical beaver-house seen in the Rockies at the present time stands in the upper edge of the pond which the beaver-dam has made, near where the brook enters it. Its foundation is about eight feet across, and it stands from five to ten feet in height, a rude cone in form. Most houses are made of sticks and mud, and are apparently put up with little thought for the living-room, which is later dug or gnawed from the interior. The entrance to the house is below water-level, and commonly on the bottom of the lake. Late each autumn, the house is plastered on the outside with mud, and I am inclined to believe that this plaster is not so much to increase the warmth of the house as to give it, when the mud is frozen, a strong protective armor, an armor which will prevent the winter enemies of the beaver from breaking into the house. Each autumn beaver pile up near by the house, a large brush-heap of green trunks and limbs, mostly of aspen, willow, cottonwood, or alder. This is their granary, and during the winter they feed upon the green bark, supplementing this with the roots of water-plants, which they drag from the bottom of the pond. Along in May five baby beaver appear, and a little later these explore the pond and race, wrestle, and splash water in it as merrily as boys. Occasionally they sun themselves on a fallen log, or play together there, trying to push one another off into the water. Often they play in the canals that lead between ponds or from them, or on the "slides." Toward the close of summer, they have their lessons in cutting and dam-building. [Illustration: A BEAVER-HOUSE Supply of winter food piled on the right] A beaver appears awkward as he works on land. In use of arms and hands he reminds one of a monkey, while his clumsy and usually slow-moving body will often suggest the hippopotamus. By using head, hands, teeth, tail, and webbed feet the beaver accomplishes much. The tail of a beaver is a useful and much-used appendage; it serves as a rudder, a stool, and a ramming or signal club. The beaver _may_ use his tail for a trowel, but I have never seen him so use it. His four front teeth are excellent edge-tools for his logging and woodwork; his webbed feet are most useful in his deep-waterway transportation, and his hands in house-building and especially in dam-building. It is in dam-building that the beaver shows his greatest skill and his best headwork; for I confess to the belief that a beaver reasons. I have so often seen him change his plans so wisely and meet emergencies so promptly and well that I can think of him only as a reasoner. I have often wondered if beaver make a preliminary survey of a place before beginning to build a dam. I have seen them prowling suggestively along brooks just prior to beaver-dam building operations there, and circumstantial evidence would credit them with making preliminary surveys. But of this there is no proof. I have noticed a few things that seem to have been considered by beaver before beginning dam-building,--the supply of food and of dam-building material, for instance, and the location of the dam so as to require the minimum amount of material and insure the creation of the largest reservoir. In making the dam, the beaver usually takes advantage of boulders, willow-clumps, and surface irregularities. But he often makes errors of judgment. I have seen him abandon dams both before and after completion. The apparent reasons were that the dam either had failed or would fail to flood the area which he needed or desired flooded. His endeavors are not always successful. About twenty years ago, near Helena, Montana, a number of beaver made an audacious attempt to dam the Missouri River. After long and persistent effort, however, they gave it up. The beaver may be credited with errors, failures, and successes. He has forethought. If a colony of beaver be turned loose upon a three-mile tree-lined brook in the wilds and left undisturbed for a season, or until they have had time to select a site and locate themselves to best advantage, it is probable that the location chosen will indicate that they have examined the entire brook and then selected the best place. As soon as the beaver's brush dam is completed, it begins to accumulate trash and mud. In a little while, usually, it is covered with a mass of soil, shrubs of willow begin to grow upon it, and after a few years it is a strong, earthy, willow-covered dam. The dams vary in length from a few feet to several hundred feet. I measured one on the South Platte River that was eleven hundred feet long. The influence of a beaver-dam is astounding. As soon as completed, it becomes a highway for the folk of the wild. It is used day and night. Mice and porcupines, bears and rabbits, lions and wolves, make a bridge of it. From it, in the evening, the graceful deer cast their reflections in the quiet pond. Over it dash pursuer and pursued; and on it take place battles and courtships. It is often torn by hoof and claw of animals locked in death-struggles, and often, very often, it is stained with blood. Many a drama, picturesque, fierce, and wild, is staged upon a beaver-dam. An interesting and valuable book could be written concerning the earth as modified and benefited by beaver action, and I have long thought that the beaver deserved at least a chapter in Marsh's masterly book, "The Earth as modified by Human Action." To "work like a beaver" is an almost universal expression for energetic persistence, but who realizes that the beaver has accomplished anything? Almost unread of and unknown are his monumental works. The instant a beaver-dam is completed, it has a decided influence on the flow of the water, and especially on the quantity of sediment which the passing water carries. The sediment, instead of going down to fill the channel below, or to clog the river's mouth, fill the harbor, and do damage a thousand miles away, is accumulated in the pond behind the dam, and a level deposit is formed over the entire area of the lake. By and by this deposit is so great that the lake is filled with sediment, but before this happens, both lake and dam check and delay so much flood-water that floods are diminished in volume, and the water thus delayed is in part added to the flow of the streams at the time of low water, the result being a more even stream-flow at all times. The regulation of stream-flow is important. There are only a few rainy days each year, and all the water that flows down the rivers falls on these few rainy days. The instant the water reaches the earth, it is hurried away toward the sea, and unless some agency delays the run-off, the rivers would naturally contain water only on the rainy days and a little while after. The fact that some rivers contain water at all times is but evidence that something has held in check a portion of the water which fell during these rainy days. [Illustration: A BEAVER-DAM IN WINTER] Among the agencies which best perform this service of keeping the streams ever-flowing, are the forests and the works of the beaver. Rainfall accumulates in the brooks. The brooks conduct the water to the rivers. If across a river there be a beaver-dam, the pond formed by it will be a reservoir which will catch and retain some of the water coming into it during rainy days, and will thus delay the passage of all water which flows through it. Beaver-reservoirs are leaky ones, and if they are stored full during rainy days, the leaking helps to maintain the stream-flow in dry weather. A beaver-dam thus tends to distribute to the streams below it a moderate quantity of water each day. In other words, it spreads out or distributes the water of the few rainy days through all the days of the year. A river which flows steadily throughout the year is of inestimable value to mankind. If floods sweep a river, they do damage. If low water comes, the wheels of steamers and of manufactories cease to move, and damage or death may result. In maintaining a medium between the extremes of high and low water, the beaver's work is of profound importance. In helping beneficially to control a river, the beaver would render enormous service if allowed to construct his works at its source. During times of heavy rainfall, the water-flow carries with it, especially in unforested sections, great quantities of soil and sediment. Beaver-dams catch much of the material eroded from the hillsides above, and also prevent much erosion along the streams which they govern. They thus catch and deposit in place much valuable soil, the cream of the earth, that otherwise would be washed away and lost,--washed away into the rivers and harbors, impeding navigation and increasing river and harbor bills. There is an old Indian legend which says that after the Creator separated the land from the water he employed gigantic beavers to smooth it down and prepare it for the abode of man. This is appreciative and suggestive. Beaver-dams have had much to do with the shaping and creating of a great deal of the richest agricultural land in America. To-day there are many peaceful and productive valleys the soil of which has been accumulated and fixed in place by ages of engineering activities on the part of the beaver before the white man came. On both mountain and plain you may still see much of this good work accomplished by them. In the mountains, deep and almost useless gulches have been filled by beaver-dams with sediment, and in course of time changed to meadows. So far as I know, the upper course of every river in the Rockies is through a number of beaver-meadows, some of them acres in extent. On the upper course of Grand River in Colorado, I once made an extensive examination of some old beaver-works. Series of beaver-dams had been extended along this stream for several miles, as many as twenty dams to the mile. Each succeeding dam had backed water to the one above it. These had accumulated soil and formed a series of terraces, which, with the moderate slope of the valley, had in time formed an extensive and comparatively level meadow for a great distance along the river. The beaver settlement on this river was long ago almost entirely destroyed, and the year before my arrival a cloudburst had fallen upon the mountain-slope above, and the down-rushing flood had, in places, eroded deeply into the deposits formed by the beaver-works. At one place the water had cut down twenty-two feet, and had brought to light the fact that the deposit had been formed by a series of dams one above the other, a new dam having been built or the old one increased in height when the deposit of sediment had filled, or nearly filled, the pond. This is only one instance. There are thousands of similar places in the Rockies where beaver-dams have accumulated deposits of greater or less extent than those on the Grand River. Only a few beaver remain, and though much of their work will endure to serve mankind, in many places their old work is gone or is going to ruin for the want of attention. We are paying dearly for the thoughtless and almost complete destruction of this animal. A live beaver is far more valuable to us than a dead one. Soil is eroding away, river-channels are filling, and most of the streams in the United States fluctuate between flood and low water. A beaver colony at the source of every stream would moderate these extremes and add to the picturesqueness and beauty of many scenes that are now growing ugly with erosion. We need to coöperate with the beaver. He would assist the work of reclamation, and be of great service in maintaining the deep-waterways. I trust he will be assisted in colonizing our National Forests, and allowed to cut timber there without a permit. The beaver is the Abou-ben-Adhem of the wild. May his tribe increase. The Wilds without Firearms Had I encountered the two gray wolves during my first unarmed camping-trip into the wilds, the experience would hardly have suggested to me that going without firearms is the best way to enjoy wild nature. But I had made many unarmed excursions beyond the trail before I had that adventure, and the habit of going without a gun was so firmly fixed and so satisfactory that even a perilous wolf encounter did not arouse any desire for firearms. The habit continued, and to-day the only way I can enjoy the wilds is to leave guns behind. On that autumn afternoon I was walking along slowly, reflectively, in a deep forest. Not a breath of air moved, and even the aspen's golden leaves stood still in the sunlight. All was calm and peaceful around and within me, when I came to a little sunny frost-tanned grass-plot surrounded by tall, crowding pines. I felt drawn to its warmth and repose and stepped joyfully into it. Suddenly two gray wolves sprang from almost beneath my feet and faced me defiantly. At a few feet distance they made an impressive show of ferocity, standing ready apparently to hurl themselves upon me. Now the gray wolf is a powerful, savage beast, and directing his strong jaws, tireless muscles, keen scent, and all-seeing eyes are exceedingly nimble wits. He is well equipped to make the severe struggle for existence which his present environment compels. In many Western localities, despite the high price offered for his scalp, he has managed not only to live, but to increase and multiply. I had seen gray wolves pull down big game. On one occasion I had seen a vigorous long-horned steer fall after a desperate struggle with two of these fearfully fanged animals. Many times I had come across scattered bones which told of their triumph; and altogether I was so impressed with their deadliness that a glimpse of one of them usually gave me over to a temporary dread. The two wolves facing me seemed to have been asleep in the sun when I disturbed them. I realized the danger and was alarmed, of course, but my faculties were under control, were stimulated, indeed, to unusual alertness, and I kept a bold front and faced them without flinching. Their expression was one of mingled surprise and anger, together with the apparent determination to sell their lives as dearly as possible. I gave them all the attention which their appearance and their reputation demanded. Not once did I take my eyes off them. I held them at bay with my eyes. I still have a vivid picture of terribly gleaming teeth, bristling backs, and bulging muscles in savage readiness. They made no move to attack. I was afraid to attack and I dared not run away. I remembered that some trees I could almost reach behind me had limbs that stretched out toward me, yet I felt that to wheel, spring for a limb, and swing up beyond their reach could not be done quickly enough to escape those fierce jaws. Both sides were of the same mind, ready to fight, but not at all eager to do so. Under these conditions our nearness was embarrassing, and we faced each other for what seemed, to me at least, a long time. My mind working like lightning, I thought of several possible ways of escaping, I considered each at length, found it faulty, and dismissed it. Meanwhile, not a sound had been made. I had not moved, but something had to be done. Slowly I worked the small folding axe from its sheath, and with the slowest of movements placed it in my right coat-pocket with the handle up, ready for instant use. I did this with studied deliberation, lest a sudden movement should release the springs that held the wolves back. I kept on staring. Statues, almost, we must have appeared to the "camp-bird" whose call from a near-by limb told me we were observed, and whose nearness gave me courage. Then, looking the nearer of the two wolves squarely in the eye, I said to him, "Well, why don't you move?" as though we were playing checkers instead of the game of life. He made no reply, but the spell was broken. I believe that both sides had been bluffing. In attempting to use my kodak while continuing the bluff, I brought matters to a focus. "What a picture you fellows will make," I said aloud, as my right hand slowly worked the kodak out of the case which hung under my left arm. Still keeping up a steady fire of looks, I brought the kodak in front of me ready to focus, and then touched the spring that released the folding front. When the kodak mysteriously, suddenly opened before the wolves, they fled for their lives. In an instant they had cleared the grassy space and vanished into the woods. I did not get their picture. With a gun, the wolf encounter could not have ended more happily. At any rate, I have not for a moment cared for a gun since I returned enthusiastic from my first delightful trip into the wilds without one. Out in the wilds with nature is one of the safest and most sanitary of places. Bears are not seeking to devour, and the death-list from lions, wolves, snakes, and all other bugbears combined does not equal the death-list from fire, automobiles, street-cars, or banquets. Being afraid of nature or a rainstorm is like being afraid of the dark. The time of that first excursion was spent among scenes that I had visited before, but the discoveries I made and the deeper feelings it stirred within me, led me to think it more worth while than any previous trip among the same delightful scenes. The first day, especially, was excitingly crowded with new sights and sounds and fancies. I fear that during the earlier trips the rifle had obscured most of the scenes in which it could not figure, and as a result I missed fairyland and most of the sunsets. [Illustration: LAKE ODESSA] When I arrived at the alpine lake by which I was to camp, evening's long rays and shadows were romantically robing the picturesque wild border of the lake. The crags, the temples, the flower-edged snowdrifts, and the grass-plots of this wild garden seemed half-unreal, as over them the long lights and torn shadows grouped and changed, lingered and vanished, in the last moments of the sun. The deep purple of evening was over all, and the ruined crag with the broken pine on the ridge-top was black against the evening's golden glow, when I hastened to make camp by a pine temple while the beautiful world of sunset's hour slowly faded into the night. The camp-fire was a glory-burst in the darkness, and the small many-spired evergreen temple before me shone an illuminated cathedral in the night. All that evening I believed in fairies, and by watching the changing camp-fire kept my fancies frolicking in realms of mystery where all the world was young. I lay down without a gun, and while the fire changed and faded to black and gray the coyotes began to howl. But their voices did not seem as lonely or menacing as when I had had a rifle by my side. As I lay listening to them, I thought I detected merriment in their tones, and in a little while their shouts rang as merrily as though they were boys at play. Never before had I realized that coyotes too had enjoyments, and I listened to their shouts with pleasure. At last the illumination faded from the cathedral grove and its templed top stood in charcoal against the clear heavens as I fell asleep beneath the peaceful stars. The next morning I loitered here and there, getting acquainted with the lake-shore, for without a gun all objects, or my eyes, were so changed that I had only a dim recollection of having seen the place before. From time to time, as I walked about, I stopped to try to win the confidence of the small folk in fur and feathers. I found some that trusted me, and at noon a chipmunk, a camp-bird, a chickadee, and myself were several times busy with the same bit of luncheon at once. Some years ago mountain sheep often came in flocks to lick the salty soil in a ruined crater on Specimen Mountain. One day I climbed up and hid myself in the crags to watch them. More than a hundred of them came. After licking for a time, many lay down. Some of the rams posed themselves on the rocks in heroic attitudes and looked serenely and watchfully around. Young lambs ran about, and a few occasionally raced up and down smooth, rocky steeps, seemingly without the slightest regard for the laws of falling bodies. I was close to the flock, but luckily they did not suspect my presence. After enjoying their fine wild play for more than two hours, I slipped away and left them in their home among the crags. One spring day I paused in a whirl of mist and wet snow to look for the trail. I could see only a few yards ahead. As I peered ahead, a bear emerged from the gloom, heading straight for me. Behind her were two cubs. I caught her impatient expression when she beheld me. She stopped, and then, with a growl of anger, she wheeled and boxed cubs right and left like an angry mother. The bears disappeared in the direction from which they had come, the cubs urged on with spanks from behind as all vanished in the falling snow. The gray Douglas squirrel is one of the most active, audacious, and outspoken of animals. He enjoys seclusion and claims to be monarch of all he surveys, and no trespasser is too big to escape a scolding from him. Many times he has given me a terrible tongue-lashing with a desperate accompaniment of fierce facial expressions, bristling whiskers, and emphatic gestures. I love this brave fellow creature; but if he were only a few inches bigger, I should never risk my life in his woods without a gun. This is a beautiful world, and all who go out under the open sky will feel the gentle, kindly influence of Nature and hear her good tidings. The forests of the earth are the flags of Nature. They appeal to all and awaken inspiring universal feelings. Enter the forest and the boundaries of nations are forgotten. It may be that some time an immortal pine will be the flag of a united and peaceful world. A Watcher on the Heights While on the sky-line as State Snow Observer, I had one adventure with the elements that called for the longest special report that I have ever written. Perhaps I cannot do better than quote this report transmitted to Professor Carpenter, at Denver, on May 26, 1904. NOTES ON THE POUDRE FLOOD The day before the Poudre flood, I traveled for eight hours northwesterly along the top of the Continental Divide, all the time being above timber-line and from eleven thousand to twelve thousand feet above sea-level. The morning was cloudless and hot. The western sky was marvelously clear. Eastward, a thin, dark haze overspread everything below ten thousand feet. By 9.30 A. M. this haze had ascended higher than where I was. At nine o'clock the snow on which I walked, though it had been frozen hard during the night, was soggy and wet. About 9.30 a calm that had prevailed all the morning gave way before an easy intermittent warm breeze from the southeast. At 10.10 the first cloud appeared in the north, just above Hague's Peak. It was a heavy cumulus cloud, but I do not know from what direction it came. It rose high in the air, drifted slowly toward the west, and then seemed to dissolve. At any rate, it vanished. About 10.30 several heavy clouds rose from behind Long's Peak, moving toward the northwest, rising higher into the sky as they advanced. [Illustration: ON THE HEIGHTS] The wind, at first in fitful dashes from the southeast, began to come more steadily and swiftly after eleven o'clock, and was so warm that the snow softened to a sloppy state. The air carried a tinge of haze, and conditions were oppressive. It was labor to breathe. Never, except one deadly hot July day in New York City, have I felt so overcome with heat and choking air. Perspiration simply streamed from me. These oppressive conditions continued for two hours,--until about one o'clock. While they lasted, my eyes pained, ached, and twitched. There was no glare, but only by keeping my eyes closed could I stand the half-burning pain. Finally I came to some crags and lay down for a time in the shade. I was up eleven thousand five hundred feet and the time was 12.20. As I lay on the snow gazing upward, I became aware that there were several flotillas of clouds of from seven to twenty each, and these were moving toward every point of the compass. Each seemed on a different stratum of air, and each moved through space a considerable distance above or below the others. The clouds moving eastward were the highest. Most of the lower clouds were those moving westward. The haze and sunlight gave color to every cloud, and this color varied from smoky red to orange. At two o'clock the haze came in from the east almost as dense as a fog-bank, crossed the ridge before me, and spread out as dark and foreboding as the smoke of Vesuvius. Behind me the haze rolled upward when it struck the ridge, and I had clear glimpses whenever I looked to the southwest. This heavy, muddy haze prevailed for a little more than half an hour, and as it cleared, the clouds began to disappear, but a gauzy haze still continued in the air. The feeling in the air was not agreeable, and for the first time in my life I felt alarmed by the shifting, rioting clouds and the weird haze. I arrived at timber-line south of Poudre Lakes about 4.30 P. M., and for more than half an hour the sky, except in the east over the foothills, was clear, and the sunlight struck a glare from the snow. With the cleared air there came to me an easier feeling. The oppressiveness ceased. I descended a short distance into the woods and relaxed on a fallen tree that lay above the snow. I had been there but a little while, when--snap! buzz! buzz! buzz! ziz! ziz! and electricity began to pull my hair and hum around my ears. The electricity passed off shortly, but in a little while it caught me again by the hair for a brief time, and this time my right arm momentarily cramped and my heart seemed to give several lurches. I arose and tramped on and downward, but every little while I was in for shocking treatment. The electrical waves came from the southwest and moved northeast. They were separated by periods of from one to several minutes in length, and were about two seconds in passing. During their presence they made it lively for me, with hair-pulling, heart-palpitation, and muscular cramps. I tried moving speedily with the wave, also standing still and lying down, hoping that the wave would pass me by; but in each and every case it gave me the same stirring treatment. Once I stood erect and rigid as the wave came on, but it intensified suddenly the rigidity of every muscle to a seemingly rupturing extent, and I did not try that plan again. The effect of each wave on me seemed to be slightly weakened whenever I lay down and fully relaxed my muscles. I was on a northerly slope, in spruce timber, tramping over five feet of snow. During these electrical waves, the points of dry twigs were tipped with a smoky blue flame, and sometimes bands of this bluish flame encircled green trees just below their lower limbs. I looked at the compass a few times, and though the needle occasionally swayed a little, it was not affected in any marked manner. The effect of the electrical waves on me became less as I descended, but whether from my getting below the electrical stratum, or from a cessation of the current, I cannot say. But I did not descend much below eleven thousand feet, and at the lowest point I crossed the South Poudre, at the outlet of Poudre Lakes. In crossing I broke through the ice and received a wetting, with the exception of my right side above the hip. Once across, I walked about two hundred yards through an opening, then again entered the woods, on the southeasterly slope of Specimen Mountain. I had climbed only a short distance up this slope when another electrical wave struck me. The effect of this was similar to that of the preceding ones. There was, however, a marked difference in the intensity with which the electricity affected the wet and the dry portions of my body. The effect on my right side and shoulder, which had escaped wetting when I broke through the ice, was noticeably stronger than on the rest of my body. Climbing soon dried my clothes sufficiently to make this difference no longer noticeable. The waves became more frequent than at first, but not so strong. I made a clumsy climb of about five hundred feet, my muscles being "muscle-bound" all the time with rigidity from electricity. But this climb brought me almost to timber-line on Specimen Mountain, and also under the shadow of the south peak of it. At this place the electrical effects almost ceased. Nor did I again seriously feel the current until I found myself out in the sunlight which came between the two peaks of Specimen. While I continued in the sunlight I felt the electrical wave, but, strange to say, when I again entered the shadow I almost wholly escaped it. When I started on the last slope toward the top of North Specimen, I came out into the sunlight again, and I also passed into an electrical sea. The slope was free from snow, and as the electrical waves swept in close succession, about thirty seconds apart, they snapped, hummed, and buzzed in such a manner that their advance and retreat could be plainly heard. In passing by me, the noise was more of a crackling and humming nature, while a million faint sparks flashed from the stones (porphyry and rhyolite) as the wave passed over. But the effect on me became constant. Every muscle was almost immovable. I could climb only a few steps without weakening to the stopping-point. I breathed only by gasps, and my heart became violent and feeble by turns. I felt as if cinched in a steel corset. After I had spent ten long minutes and was only half-way up a slope, the entire length of which I had more than once climbed in a few minutes and in fine shape, I turned to retreat, but as there was no cessation of the electrical colic, I faced about and started up again. I reached the top a few minutes before 6.30 P. M., and shortly afterward the sun disappeared behind clouds and peaks. I regret that I failed to notice whether the electrical effects ceased with the setting of the sun, but it was not long after the disappearance of the sun before I was at ease, enjoying the magnificent mountain-range of clouds that had formed above the foothills and stood up glorious in the sunlight. Shortly before five o'clock the clouds had begun to pile up in the east, and their gigantic forms, flowing outlines, and glorious lighting were the only things that caused the electrical effects to be forgotten even momentarily. The clouds formed into a long, solid, rounded range that rose to great height and was miles in length. The southern end of this range was in the haze, and I could not make out its outline further south than a point about opposite Loveland, Colorado, nor could I see the northern end beyond a few miles north of Cheyenne, where it was cut off by a dozen strata of low clouds that moved steadily at a right angle to the east. Sixty miles of length was visible. Its height, like that of the real mountains which it paralleled, diminished toward the north. The place of greatest altitude was about twenty-five miles distant from me. From my location, the clouds presented a long and smoothly terraced slope, the top of which was at least five thousand feet and may have been fifteen thousand feet above me. The clouds seemed compact; at times they surged upwards; then they would settle with a long, undulating swell, as if some unseen power were trying to force them further up the mountains, while they were afraid to try it. Finally a series of low, conical peaks rose on the summit of the cloud-range, and the peaks and the upper cloud-slope resembled the upper portion of a circus-tent. There were no rough places or angles. When darkness came on, the surface of this cloud-range was at times splendidly illuminated by electricity beneath; and, when the darkness deepened, the electrical play beneath often caused the surface to shine momentarily like incandescent glass, and occasionally sinuous rivers of gold ran over the slopes. Several times I thought that the course of these golden rivers of electrical fire was from the bottom upward, but so brilliant and dazzling were they that I could not positively decide on the direction of their movement. Never have I seen such enormous cloud-forms or such brilliant electrical effects. The summit of Specimen Mountain, from which I watched the clouds and electrical flashes, is about twelve thousand five hundred feet above sea-level. A calm prevailed while I remained on top. It was about 8.30 P. M. when I left the summit, on snowshoes, and swept down the steep northern slope into the woods. This hurry caused no unusual heart or muscle action. The next morning was cloudy as low down as ten thousand five hundred feet, and, for all I know, lower still. The night had been warm, and the morning had the oppressive feeling that dominated the morning before. The clouds broke up before nine o'clock, and the air, with haze in it, seemed yellow. About 10.30, haze and, soon after, clouds came in from the southeast (at this time I was high up on the southerly slope of Mt. Richthofen), and by eleven o'clock the sky was cloudy. Up to this time the air, when my snow-glasses were off, burned and twitched my eyes in the same manner as on the previous morning. Early in the afternoon I left Grand Ditch Camp and started down to Chambers Lake. I had not gone far when drops of rain began to fall from time to time, and shortly after this my muscles began to twitch occasionally under electrical ticklings. At times slight muscular rigidity was noticeable. Just before two o'clock the clouds began to burst through between the trees. I was at an altitude of about eleven thousand feet and a short distance from the head of Trap Creek. Rain, hail, and snow fell in turn, and the lightning began frequently to strike the rocks. With the beginning of the lightning my muscles ceased to be troubled with either twitching or rigidity. For the two hours between 2 and 4 P. M. the crash and roll of thunder was incessant. I counted twenty-three times that the lightning struck the rocks, but I did not see it strike a tree. The clouds were low, and the wind came from the east and the northeast, then from the west. [Illustration: A STORM ON THE ROCKIES] About four o'clock, I broke through the snow, tumbled into Trap Creek, and had to swim a little. This stream was really very swift, and ran in a narrow gulch, but it was blocked by snow and by tree-limbs swept down by the flood, and a pond had been formed. It was crowded with a deep deposit of snow which rested on a shelf of ice. This covering was shattered and uplifted by the swollen stream, and I had slipped on the top of the gulch and tumbled in. Once in, the swift water tugged at me to pull me under; the cakes of snow and ice hampered me, and my snowshoes were entangled with brush and limbs. The combination seemed determined to drown me. For a few seconds I put forth all my efforts to get at my pocket-knife. This accomplished, the fastenings of my snowshoes were cut, and unhampered by these, I escaped the waters. * * * * * Since I have felt no ill results, the effect of the entire experience may have been beneficial. The clouds, glorious as they had been in formation and coloring, resulted in a terrible cloudburst. Enormous quantities of water were poured out, and this, falling upon the treeless foothills, rushed away to do more than a million dollars' damage in the rich and beautiful Poudre Valley. Climbing Long's Peak Among the best days that I have had outdoors are the two hundred and fifty-seven that were spent as a guide on Long's Peak. One day was required from the starting-place near my cabin for each round trip to the summit of the peak. Something of interest occurred to enliven each one of these climbs: a storm, an accident, the wit of some one or the enthusiasm of all the climbers. But the climb I remember with greatest satisfaction is the one on which I guided Harriet Peters, an eight-year-old girl, to the top. It was a cold morning when we started for the top, but it was this day or wait until next season, for Harriet was to start for her Southern home in a day or two and could not wait for a more favorable morning. Harriet had spent the two preceding summers near my cabin, and around it had played with the chipmunks and ridden the burros, and she had made a few climbs with me up through the woods. We often talked of going to the top of Long's Peak when she should become strong enough to do so. This time came just after her eighth birthday. As I was as eager to have her make the climb as she was to make it, we started up the next morning after her aunt had given permission for her to go. She was happy when I lifted her at last into the saddle, away up on old "Top's" back. She was so small that I still wonder how she managed to stay on, but she did so easily. Long's Peak is not only one of the most scenic of the peaks in the Rocky Mountains, but it is probably the most rugged. From our starting-place it was seven miles to the top; five of these miles may be ridden, but the last two are so steep and craggy that one must go on foot and climb. [Illustration: LONG'S PEAK FROM THE SUMMIT OF MT. MEEKER] After riding a little more than a mile, we came to a clear, cold brook that is ever coming down in a great hurry over a steep mountain-side, splashing, jumping, and falling over the boulders of one of nature's stony stairways and forming white cascades which throw their spray among the tall, dark pines. I had told Harriet that ouzels lived by this brook; she was eager to see one, and we stopped at a promising place by the brook to watch. In less than a minute one came flying down the cascades, and so near to the surface of the water that he seemed to be tumbling and sliding down with it. He alighted on a boulder near us, made two or three pleasant curtsies, and started to sing one of his low, sweet songs. He was doing the very thing of which I had so often told Harriet. We watched and listened with breathless interest. In the midst of the song he dived into the brook; in a moment he came up with a water-bug in his bill, settled on the boulder again, gave his nods, and resumed his song, seemingly at the point where he left off. After a few low, sweet notes he broke off again and plunged into the water. This time he came up quickly and alighted on the spot he had just left, and went on with his song without any preliminaries and as if there had been no interruption. The water-ouzel is found by the alpine lakes and brooks on the mountains of the West. It is a modest-appearing bird, about the size of a thrush, and wears a plain dress of slaty blue. This dress is finished with a tail-piece somewhat like that of the wren, though it is not upturned so much. The bird seems to love cascades, and often nests by one. It also shows its fondness for water by often flying along the brook, following every bend and break made by the stream, keeping close to the water all the time and frequently touching it. Over the quiet reaches it goes skimming; it plunges over the waterfalls, alights on rocks in the rapids, goes dashing through the spray, its every movement showing the ecstasies of eager life and joy in the hurrying water. Our ouzel was quietly feeding on the edge of the brook, when Harriet said good-bye as our ponies started up the trail. Harriet had never been in school, but she could read, write, and sing. She had good health, and a brighter, cheerier little girl I have never seen. As we rode up the trail through the woods, the gray Douglas squirrels were busy with the harvest. They were cutting off and storing cones for winter food. In the treetops these squirrels seemed to be bouncing and darting in all directions. One would cut off a cone, then dart to the next, and so swiftly that cones were constantly dropping. Frequently the cones struck limbs and bounded as they fell, often coming to the ground to bounce and roll some distance over the forest floor. An occasional one went rolling and bouncing down the steep mountain-side with two or three happy chipmunks in jolly pursuit. We watched one squirrel stow cones under trash and in holes in the thick beds of needles. These cones were buried near a tree, in a dead limb of which the squirrel had a hole and a home. Harriet asked many questions concerning the cones,--why they were buried, how the squirrel found them when they were buried in the snow, and what became of those which were left buried. I told her that during the winter the squirrel came down and dug through the snow to the cones and then fed upon the nuts. I also told her that squirrels usually buried more cones than were eaten. The uneaten cones, being left in the ground, were in a way planted, and the nuts in them in time sprouted, and young trees came peeping up among the fallen leaves. The squirrel's way of observing Arbor Day makes him a useful forester. Harriet said she would tell all her boy and girl friends what she knew of this squirrel's tree-planting ways, and would ask her uncle not to shoot the little tree-planter. As we followed the trail up through the woods, I told Harriet many things concerning the trees, and the forces which influenced their distribution and growth. While we were traveling westward in the bottom of a gulch, I pointed out to her that the trees on the mountain that rose on the right and sloped toward the south were of a different kind from those on the mountain-side which rose on our left and sloped toward the north. After traveling four miles and climbing up two thousand feet above our starting-place, and, after from time to time coming to and passing kinds of trees which did not grow lower down the slopes, we at last came to timber-line, above which trees did not grow at all. In North America between timber-line on the Rockies, at an altitude of about eleven thousand feet, and sea-level on the Florida coast, there are about six hundred and twenty kinds of trees and shrubs growing. Each kind usually grows in the soil and clime that is best suited to its requirements; in other words, most trees are growing where they can do the best, or where they can do better than any other kind. Some trees do the best at the moist seashore; some thrive in swamps; others live only on the desert's edge; some live on the edge of a river; and still others manage to endure the storms of bleak heights. At timber-line the trees have a hard time of it. All of them at this place are dwarfed, many distorted, some crushed to the earth, flattened out upon the ground like pressed flowers, by the snowdrifts that have so long lain upon them. The winter winds at this place blow almost constantly from the same quarter for days at a time, and often attain a high velocity. The effect of these winds is strikingly shown by the trees. None of the trees are tall, and most of them are leaning, pushed partly over by the wind. Some are sprawled on the ground like uncouth vines or spread out from the stump like a fan with the onsweeping direction of the storms. Most of the standing, unsheltered trees have limbs only on the leeward quarter, all the other limbs having been blown off by the wind or cut off by the wind-blown gravel. Most of the exposed trees are destitute of bark on the portion of the trunk that faces these winter winds. Some of the dead standing trees are carved into strange totem-poles by the sand-blasts of many fierce storms. With all the trees warped or distorted, the effect of timber-line is weird and strange. Harriet and I got off the ponies the better to examine some of the storm-beaten trees. Harriet was attracted to a few dwarf spruces that were standing in a drift of recently fallen snow. Although these dwarfed little trees were more than a hundred years old, they were so short that the little mountain-climber who stood by them was taller than they. After stroking one of the trees with her hand, Harriet stood for a time in silence, then out of her warm childish nature she said, "What brave little trees to live up here where they have to stand all the time in the snow!" Timber-line, with its strange tree statuary and treeless snowy peaks and crags rising above it, together with its many kinds of bird and animal life and its flower-fringed snowdrifts, is one of nature's most expressive exhibits, and I wish every one might visit it. At an altitude of about eleven thousand seven hundred feet we came to the last tree. It was ragged, and so small that you could have hidden it beneath a hat. It nestled up to a boulder, and appeared so cold and pitiful that Harriet wanted to know if it was lost. It certainly appeared as if it had been lost for a long, long time. Among the crags Harriet and I kept sharp watch for mountain sheep, but we did not see any. We were fortunate enough, however, to see a flock of ptarmigan. These birds were huddled in a hole which narrowly escaped being trampled on by Top. They walked quietly away, and we had a good look at them. They were almost white; in winter they are pure white, while in summer they are of a grayish brown. At all times their dress matches the surroundings fairly well, so that they have a protective coloring which makes it difficult for their enemies to see them. At an altitude of twelve thousand five hundred feet the horses were tied to boulders and left behind. From this place to the top of the peak the way is too rough or precipitous for horses. For a mile Harriet and I went forward over the boulders of an old moraine. The last half-mile was the most difficult of all; the way was steep and broken, and was entirely over rocks, which were covered with a few inches of snow that had fallen during the night. We climbed slowly; all good climbers go slowly. Harriet also faithfully followed another good mountain rule,--"Look before you step." She did not fall, slip, or stumble while making the climb. Of course we occasionally rested, and whenever we stopped near a flat rock or a level place, we made use of it by lying down on our backs, straightening out arms and legs, relaxing every muscle, and for a time resting as loosely as possible. Just before reaching the top, we made a long climb through the deepest snow that we had encountered. Though the sun was warm, the air, rocks, and snow were cold. Not only was the snow cold to the feet, but climbing through it was tiresome, and at the first convenient place we stopped to rest. Finding a large, smooth rock, we lay down on our backs side by side. We talked for a time and watched an eagle soaring around up in the blue sky. I think Harriet must have recalled a suggestion which I made at timber-line, for without moving she suddenly remarked, "Mr. Mills, my feet are so cold that I can't tell whether my toes are wiggling or not." Five hours after starting, Harriet stepped upon the top, the youngest climber to scale Long's Peak. The top is fourteen thousand two hundred and fifty-nine feet above the sea, is almost level, and, though rough, is roomy enough for a baseball game. Of course if the ball went over the edge, it would tumble a mile or so before stopping. With the top so large, you will realize that the base measures miles across. The upper three thousand feet of the peak is but a gigantic mass, almost destitute of soil or vegetation. Some of the rocks are flecked and spotted with lichens, and a few patches of moss and straggling, beautiful alpine flowers can be found during August. There is but little chance for snow to lodge, and for nearly three thousand feet the peak rises a bald, broken, impressive stone tower. While Harriet and I were eating luncheon, a ground-hog that I had fed on other visits came out to see if there was anything for him. Some sparrows also lighted near; they looked hungry, so we left some bread for them and then climbed upon the "tip-top," where our picture was taken. From the tip-top we could see more than a hundred miles toward any point of the compass. West of us we saw several streams that were flowing away toward the Pacific; east of us the streams flowed to the Atlantic. I told Harriet that the many small streams we saw all grew larger as they neared the sea. Harriet lived at the "big" end of the Arkansas River. She suddenly wanted to know if I could show her the "little end of the Arkansas River." [Illustration: ON THE TIP-TOP OF LONG'S PEAK] After an hour on top we started downward and homeward, the little mountain-climber feeling happy and lively. But she was careful, and only once during the day did she slip, and this slip was hardly her fault: we were coming off an enormous smooth boulder that was wet from the new snow that was melting, when both Harriet's feet shot from under her and she fell, laughing, into my arms. "Hello, Top, I am glad to see you," said Harriet when we came to the horses. While riding homeward I told Harriet that I had often climbed the peak by moonlight. On the way down she said good-bye to the little trees at timber-line, the squirrels, and the ouzel. When I at last lifted Harriet off old Top at the cabin, many people came out to greet her. To all she said, "Yes, I'm tired, but some time I want to go up by moonlight." Midget, the Return Horse In many of the Western mining-towns, the liverymen keep "return horses,"--horses that will return to the barn when set at liberty, whether near the barn or twenty miles away. These horses are the pick of their kind. They have brains enough to take training readily, and also to make plans of their own and get on despite the unexpected hindrances that sometimes occur. When a return horse is ridden to a neighboring town, he must know enough to find his way back, and he must also be so well trained that he will not converse too long with the horse he meets going in the opposite direction. The return horse is a result of the necessities of mountain sections, especially the needs of miners. Most Western mining-towns are located upon a flat or in a gulch. The mines are rarely near the town, but are on the mountain-slopes above it. Out of town go a dozen roads or trails that extend to the mines, from one to five miles away, and much higher than the town. A miner does not mind walking down to the town, but he wants to ride back; or the prospector comes in and wants to take back a few supplies. The miner hires a return horse, rides it to the mine, and then turns the horse loose. It at once starts to return to the barn. If a horse meets a freight wagon coming up, it must hunt for a turnout if the road is narrow, and give the wagon the right of way. If the horse meets some one walking up, it must avoid being caught. The San Juan mining section of southwestern Colorado has hundreds of these horses. Most of the mines are from one thousand to three thousand feet above the main supply-points, Ouray, Telluride, and Silverton. Ouray and Telluride are not far apart by trail, but they are separated by a rugged range that rises more than three thousand feet above them. Men often go by trail from one of these towns to the other, and in so doing usually ride a return horse to the top of the range, then walk down the other side. [Illustration: A MINER ON A RETURN HORSE] "Be sure to turn Jim loose before you reach the summit; he won't come back if you ride him even a short distance on the other side," called a Telluride liveryman to me as I rode out of his barn. It seems that the most faithful return horse may not come back if ridden far down the slope away from home, but may stray down it rather than climb again to the summit to return home. The rider is warned also to "fasten up the reins and see that the cinches are tight" when he turns the horse loose. If the cinches are loose, the saddle may turn when the horse rolls; or if the reins are down, the horse may graze for hours. Either loose reins or loose cinches may cripple a horse by entangling his feet, or by catching on a snag in the woods. Once loose, the horse generally starts off home on a trot. But he is not always faithful. When a number of these horses are together, they will occasionally play too long on the way. A great liking for grass sometimes tempts them into a ditch, where they may eat grass even though the reins are up. The lot of a return horse is generally a hard one. A usurper occasionally catches a horse and rides him far away. Then, too often, his owner blames him for the delay, and for a time gives him only half-feed to "teach him not to fool along." Generally the return horse must also be a good snow horse, able to flounder and willing to make his way through deep drifts. He may be thirsty on a warm day, but he must go all the way home before having a drink. Often, in winter, he is turned loose at night on some bleak height to go back over a lonely trail, a task which he does not like. Horses, like most animals and like man, are not at ease when alone. A fallen tree across the trail or deepened snow sometimes makes the horse's return journey a hard one. On rare occasions, cinch or bridle gets caught on a snag or around his legs, and cripples him or entangles him so that he falls a victim to the unpitying mountain lion or some other carnivorous animal. I have never met a return horse without stopping to watch it as far as it could be seen. They always go along with such unconscious confidence and quiet alertness that they are a delight to behold. Many good days I have had in their company, and on more than one occasion their alertness, skill, and strength have saved me either from injury or from the clutches of that great white terror the snow-slide. The February morning that I rode "Midget" out of Alma began what proved to be by far the most delightful association that I have ever had with a return horse, and one of the happiest experiences with nature and a dumb animal that has ever come into my life. I was in government experiment work as "State Snow Observer," and wanted to make some observations on the summit peaks of the "Twelve-Mile" and other ranges. Midget was to carry me far up the side of these mountains to the summit of Hoosier Pass. A heavy snow had fallen a few days before I started out. The wind had drifted most of this out of the open and piled it deeply in the woods and gulches. Midget galloped merrily away over the wind-swept ground. We came to a gulch, I know not how deep, that was filled with snow, and here I began to appreciate Midget. Across this gulch it was necessary for us to go. The snow was so deep and so soft that I dismounted and put on my snowshoes and started to lead Midget across. She followed willingly. After a few steps, a flounder and a snort caused me to look back, and all I could see of Midget was her two little ears wriggling in the snow. When we reached the other side, Midget came out breathing heavily, and at once shook her head to dislodge the snow from her forehead and her ears. She was impatient to go on, and before I could take off my snowshoes and strap them on my back, she was pawing the ground impatiently, first with one little fore foot and then with the other. I leaped into the saddle and away we went again. We had a very pleasant morning of it. About eleven o'clock I dismounted to take a picture of the snowy slope of Mt. Silverheels. Evidently Midget had never before seen a kodak. She watched with extraordinary interest the standing of the little three-legged affair upon the ground and the mounting of the small black box upon it. She pointed her ears at it; tilted her head to one side and moved her nose up and down. I moved away from her several feet to take the picture. She eyed the kodak with such intentness that I invited her to come over and have a look at it. She came at once, turning her head and neck to one side to prevent the bridle-reins, which I had thrown upon the ground, from entangling her feet. Once by me, she looked the kodak and tripod over with interest, smelled of them, but was careful not to strike the tripod with her feet or to overturn it and the kodak with her nose. She seemed so interested that I told her all about what I was doing,--what I was taking a picture of, why I was taking it, and how long an exposure I was going to give it; and finally I said to her: "To-morrow, Midget, when you are back in your stall in the barn at Alma, eating oats, I shall be on the other side of Mt. Silverheels, taking pictures there. Do you understand?" She pawed the ground with her right fore foot with such a satisfied look upon her face that I was sure she thought she understood all about it. From time to time I took other pictures, and after the first experience Midget did not wait to be invited to come over and watch me, but always followed me to every new spot where I set the tripod and kodak down, and on each occasion I talked freely with her, and she seemed to understand and to be much interested. Shortly after noon, when I was taking a picture, Midget managed to get her nose into my mammoth outside coat-pocket. There she found something to her liking. It was my habit to eat lightly when rambling about the mountains, often eating only once a day, and occasionally going two or three days without food. I had a few friends who were concerned about me, and who were afraid I might some time starve to death. So, partly as a joke and partly in earnest, they would mail me a package of something to eat, whenever they knew at what post-office I was likely to turn up. At Alma, the morning I hired Midget, the prize package which I drew from the post-office contained salted peanuts. I did not care for them, but put them into my pocket. It was past noon and Midget was hungry. I was chattering away to her about picture-taking when, feeling her rubbing me with her nose, I put my hand around to find that she was eating salted peanuts from my big coat-pocket. Midget enjoyed them so much that I allowed her to put her nose into my pocket and help herself, and from time to time, too, I gave her a handful of them until they were all gone. Late in the afternoon, Midget and I arrived at the top of Hoosier Pass. I told her to look tired and I would take her picture. She dropped her head and neck a little, and there on the wind-swept pass, with the wind-swept peaks in the background, I photographed her. Then I told her it was time to go home, that it was sure to be after dark before she could get back. So I tightened the cinches, fastened up the bridle-rein over the horn of the saddle, and told her to go. She looked around at me, but did not move. Evidently she preferred to stay with me. So I spoke to her sternly and said, "Midget, you will have to go home!" Without even looking round, she kicked up her heels and trotted speedily down the mountain and disappeared. I did not imagine that we would meet again for some time. I went on, and at timber-line on Mt. Lincoln I built a camp-fire and without bedding spent the night by it. The next day I climbed several peaks, took many photographs, measured many snowdrifts, and made many notes in my notebook. When night came on, I descended from the crags and snows into the woods, built a fire, and spent the night by it, sleeping for a little while at a time. Awakening with the cold, I would get up and revive my fire, and then lie down to sleep. The next day a severe storm came on, and I was compelled to huddle by my fire all day, for the wind was so fierce and the snow so blinding that it would have been extremely risky to try to cross the craggy and slippery mountain-summits. All that day I stayed by the fire, but that night, instead of trying to get a little sleep there, I crawled into a newly formed snowdrift, and in it slept soundly and quite comfortably until morning. Toward noon the storm ceased, but it had delayed me a day. I had brought with me only a pound of raisins, and had eaten these during the first two days. I felt rather hungry, and almost wished I had saved some of the salted peanuts that I had given Midget, but I felt fresh and vigorous, and joyfully I made my way over the snowy crest of the continent. Late that night I came into the mining-town of Leadville. At the hotel I found letters and a telegram awaiting me. This telegram told me that it was important for me to come to the Pike's Peak National Forest at the earliest possible moment. After a light supper and an hour's rest, I again tied on my snowshoes, and at midnight started to climb. The newly fallen snow on the steep mountain-side was soft and fluffy. I sank so deeply into it and made such slow progress that it was late in the afternoon of the next day before I reached timber-line on the other side. The London mine lay a little off my course, and knowing that miners frequently rode return horses up to it, I thought that by going to the mine I might secure a return horse to carry me back to Alma, which was about thirteen miles away. With this in mind, I started off in a hurry. In my haste I caught one of my webbed shoes on the top of a gnarly, storm-beaten tree that was buried and hidden in the snow. I fell, or rather dived, into the snow, and in so doing broke a snowshoe and lost my hat. This affair delayed me a little, and I gave up going to the mine, but concluded to go to the trail about a mile below it, and there intercept the first return horse that came down. Just before I reached the trail, I heard a horse coming. As this trail was constantly used, the snow was packed down, while the untrampled snow on each side of it lay from two to four feet deep. Seeing that this pony was going to get past before I could reach the trail, I stopped, took a breath, and called out to it. When I said, "Hello, pony," the pony did not hello. Instead of slackening its pace, it seemed to increase it. Knowing that this trail was one that Midget had often to cover, I concluded as a forlorn hope to call her name, thinking that the pony might be Midget. So I called out, "Hello, Midget!" The pony at once stopped, looked all around, and gave a delighted little whinny. It was Midget! The instant she saw me, she tried to climb up out of the trail into the deep snow where I was, but I hastened to prevent her. Leaping down by her side, I put my arm around her neck, and told her that I was very glad to see her, and that I wanted to ride to Alma. Her nose found its way into my coat-pocket. "Well, Midget, it is too bad. Really, I was not expecting to see you, and I haven't a single salted peanut, but if you will just allow me to ride this long thirteen miles into Alma, I will give you all the salted peanuts that you will be allowed to eat. I am tired, and should very much like to have a ride. Will you take me?" She at once started to paw the snowy trail with a small fore foot, as much as to say, "Hurry up!" I took off my snowshoes, and without waiting to fasten them on my back, jumped into the saddle. In a surprisingly short time, and with loud stamping on the floor, Midget carried me into the livery barn at Alma. When her owner saw a man in the saddle, he was angry, and reminded me that it was unfair and illegal to capture a return horse; but when he recognized me, he at once changed his tone, and he became friendly when I told him that Midget had invited me to ride. He said that as she had invited me to ride I should have to pay the damages to her. I told him that we had already agreed to this. "But how in thunder did you catch her?" he asked. "Yesterday Pat O'Brien tried that, and he is now in the hospital with two broken ribs. She kicked him." I said good-bye to Midget, and went to my supper, leaving her contentedly eating salted peanuts. Faithful Scotch I carried little Scotch all day long in my overcoat pocket as I rode through the mountains on the way to my cabin. His cheerful, cunning face, his good behavior, and the clever way in which he poked his head out of my pocket, licked my hand, and looked at the scenery, completely won my heart before I had ridden an hour. That night he showed so strikingly the strong, faithful characteristics for which collies are noted that I resolved never to part with him. Since then we have had great years together. We have been hungry and happy together, and together we have played by the cabin, faced danger in the wilds, slept peacefully among the flowers, followed the trails by starlight, and cuddled down in winter's drifting snow. On my way home through the mountains with puppy Scotch, I stopped for a night near a deserted ranch-house and shut him up in a small abandoned cabin. He at once objected and set up a terrible barking and howling, gnawing fiercely at the crack beneath the door and trying to tear his way out. Fearing he would break his little puppy teeth, or possibly die from frantic and persistent efforts to be free, I concluded to release him from the cabin. My fears that he would run away if left free were groundless. He made his way to my saddle, which lay on the ground near by, crawled under it, turned round beneath it, and thrust his little head from beneath the arch of the horn and lay down with a look of contentment, and also with an air which said, "I'll take care of this saddle. I'd like to see any one touch it." [Illustration: SCOTCH NEAR TIMBER LINE] And watch it he did. At midnight a cowboy came to my camp-fire. He had been thrown from his bronco and was making back to his outfit on foot. In approaching the fire his path lay close to my saddle, beneath which Scotch was lying. Tiny Scotch flew at him ferociously; never have I seen such faithful ferociousness in a dog so small and young. I took him in my hands and assured him that the visitor was welcome, and in a moment little Scotch and the cowboy were side by side gazing at the fire. I suppose his bravery and watchful spirit may be instinct inherited from his famous forbears who lived so long and so cheerfully on Scotland's heaths and moors. But, with all due respect for inherited qualities, he also has a brain that does a little thinking and meets emergencies promptly and ably. He took serious objection to the coyotes which howled, serenaded, and made merry in the edge of the meadow about a quarter of a mile from my cabin. Just back of their howling-ground was a thick forest of pines, in which were scores of broken rocky crags. Into the tangled forest the coyotes always retreated when Scotch gave chase, and into this retreat he dared not pursue them. So long as the coyotes sunned themselves, kept quiet, and played, Scotch simply watched them contentedly from afar; but the instant they began to howl and yelp, he at once raced over and chased them into the woods. They often yelped and taunted him from their safe retreat, but Scotch always took pains to lie down on the edge of the open and remain there until they became quiet or went away. During the second winter that Scotch was with me and before he was two years of age, one of the wily coyotes showed a tantalizing spirit and some interesting cunning which put Scotch on his mettle. One day when Scotch was busy driving the main pack into the woods, one that trotted lame with the right fore leg emerged from behind a rocky crag at the edge of the open and less than fifty yards from Scotch. Hurrying to a willow clump about fifty yards in Scotch's rear, he set up a broken chorus of yelps and howls, seemingly with delight and to the great annoyance of Scotch, who at once raced back and chased the noisy taunter into the woods. The very next time that Scotch was chasing the pack away, the crippled coyote again sneaked from behind the crag, took refuge behind the willow clump, and began delivering a perfect shower of broken yelps. Scotch at once turned back and gave chase. Immediately the entire pack wheeled from retreat and took up defiant attitudes in the open, but this did not seem to trouble Scotch; he flung himself upon them with great ferocity, and finally drove them all back into the woods. However, the third time that the cunning coyote had come to his rear, the entire pack stopped in the edge of the open and, for a time, defied him. He came back from this chase panting and tired and carrying every expression of worry. It seemed to prey upon him to such an extent that I became a little anxious about him. One day, just after this affair, I went for the mail, and allowed Scotch to go with me. I usually left him at the cabin, and he stayed unchained and was faithful, though it was always evident that he was anxious to go with me and also that he was exceedingly lonely when left behind. But on this occasion he showed such eagerness to go that I allowed him the pleasure. At the post-office he paid but little attention to the dogs which, with their masters, were assembled there, and held himself aloof from them, squatting on the ground with head erect and almost an air of contempt for them, but it was evident that he was watching their every move. When I started homeward, he showed great satisfaction by leaping and barking. That night was wildly stormy, and I concluded to go out and enjoy the storm on some wind-swept crags. Scotch was missing and I called him, but he did not appear, so I went alone. After being tossed by the wind for more than an hour, I returned to the cabin, but Scotch was still away. This had never occurred before, so I concluded not to go to bed until he returned. He came home after daylight, and was accompanied by another dog,--a collie, which belonged to a rancher who lived about fifteen miles away. I remembered to have seen this dog at the post-office the day before. My first thought was to send the dog home, but I finally concluded to allow him to remain, to see what would come of his presence, for it was apparent that Scotch had gone for him. He appropriated Scotch's bed in the tub, to the evident satisfaction of Scotch. During the morning the two played together in the happiest possible manner for more than an hour. At noon I fed them together. In the afternoon, while I was writing, I heard the varied voices of the coyote pack, and went out with my glass to watch proceedings, wondering how the visiting collie would play his part. There went Scotch, as I supposed, racing for the yelping pack, but the visiting collie was not to be seen. The pack beat the usual sullen, scattering retreat, and while the dog, which I supposed to be Scotch, was chasing the last slow tormenter into the woods, from behind the crag came the big limping coyote, hurrying toward the willow clump from behind which he was accustomed to yelp triumphantly in Scotch's rear. I raised the glass for a better look, all the time wondering where the visiting collie was keeping himself. I was unable to see him, yet I recollected he was with Scotch less than an hour before. The lame coyote came round the willow clump as usual, and threw up his head as though to bay at the moon. Then the unexpected happened. On the instant, Scotch leaped into the air out of the willow clump, and came down upon the coyote's back! They rolled about for some time, when the coyote finally shook himself free and started at a lively limping pace for the woods, only to be grabbed again by the visiting collie, which had been chasing the pack, and which I had mistaken for Scotch. The pack beat a swift retreat. For a time both dogs fought the coyote fiercely, but he at last tore himself free, and escaped into the pines, badly wounded and bleeding. I never saw him again. That night the visiting collie went home. As Scotch was missing that night for a time, I think he may have accompanied him at least a part of the way. One day a young lady from Michigan came along and wanted to climb Long's Peak all alone, without a guide. I agreed to consent to this if first she would climb one of the lesser peaks unaided, on a stormy day. This the young lady did, and by so doing convinced me that she had a keen sense of direction and an abundance of strength, for the day on which she climbed was a stormy one, and the peak was completely befogged with clouds. After this, there was nothing for me to do but allow her to climb Long's Peak alone. Just as she was starting, that cool September morning, I thought to provide for an emergency by sending Scotch with her. He knew the trail well and would, of course, lead her the right way, providing she lost the trail. "Scotch," said I, "go with this young lady, take good care of her, and stay with her till she returns. Don't you desert her." He gave a few barks of satisfaction and started with her up the trail, carrying himself in a manner which indicated that he was both honored and pleased. I felt that the strength and alertness of the young lady, when combined with the faithfulness and watchfulness of Scotch, would make the journey a success, so I went about my affairs as usual. When darkness came on that evening, the young lady had not returned. She climbed swiftly until she reached the rocky alpine moorlands above timber-line. Here she lingered long to enjoy the magnificent scenery and the brilliant flowers. It was late in the afternoon when she arrived at the summit of the peak. After she had spent a little time there resting and absorbing the beauty and grandeur of the scene, she started to return. She had not proceeded far when clouds and darkness came on, and on a slope of slide-rock she lost the trail. Scotch had minded his own affairs and enjoyed himself in his own way all day long. Most of the time he followed her closely, apparently indifferent to what happened, but when she, in the darkness, left the trail and started off in the wrong direction, he at once came forward, and took the lead with an alert, aggressive air. The way in which he did this should have suggested to the young lady that he knew what he was about, but she did not appreciate this fact. She thought he had become weary and wanted to run away from her, so she called him back. Again she started in the wrong direction; this time Scotch got in front of her and refused to move. She pushed him out of the way. Once more he started off in the right direction, and this time she scolded him and reminded him that his master had told him not to desert her. Scotch dropped his ears and sheepishly fell in behind her and followed meekly along. He had obeyed orders. After traveling a short distance, the young lady realized that she had lost her way, but it never occurred to her that she had only to trust Scotch and he would lead her directly home. However, she had the good sense to stop where she was, and there, among the crags, by the stained remnants of winter's snow, thirteen thousand feet above sea-level, she was to spend the night. The cold wind blew a gale, roaring and booming among the crags, the alpine brooklet turned to ice, while, in the lee of the crag, shivering with cold, hugging shaggy Scotch in her arms, she lay down for the night. I had given my word not to go in search of her if she failed to return. However, I sent out four guides to look for her. They suffered much from cold as they vainly searched among the crags through the dark hours of the windy night. Just at sunrise one of them found her, almost exhausted, but, with slightly frost-bitten fingers, still hugging Scotch in her arms. He gave her food and drink and additional wraps, and without delay started with her down the trail. As soon as she was taken in charge by the guide, patient Scotch left her and hurried home. He had saved her life. Scotch's hair is long and silky, black with a touch of tawny about the head and a little bar of white on the nose. He has the most expressive and pleasing dog's face I have ever seen. There is nothing he enjoys so well as to have some one kick the football for him. For an hour at a time he will chase it and try to get hold of it, giving an occasional eager, happy bark. He has good eyes, and these, with his willingness to be of service, have occasionally made him useful to me in finding articles which I, or some one else, had forgotten or lost on the trail. Generally it is difficult to make him understand just what has been lost or where he is to look for it, but when once he understands, he keeps up the search, sometimes for hours if he does not find the article before. He is always faithful in guarding any object that I ask him to take care of. I have but to throw down a coat and point at it, and he will at once lie down near by, there to remain until I come to dismiss him. He will allow no one else to touch it. His attitude never fails to convey the impression that he would die in defense of the thing intrusted to him, but desert it or give it up, never! One February day I took Scotch and started up Long's Peak, hoping to gain its wintry summit. Scotch easily followed in my snowshoe-tracks. At an altitude of thirteen thousand feet on the wind-swept steeps there was but little snow, and it was necessary to leave snowshoes behind. After climbing a short distance on these icy slopes, I became alarmed for the safety of Scotch. By and by I had to cut steps in the ice. This made the climb too perilous for him, as he could not realize the danger he was in should he miss a step. There were places where slipping from these steps meant death, so I told Scotch to go back. I did not, however, tell him to watch my snowshoes, for so dangerous was the climb that I did not know that I should ever get back to them myself. However, he went to the snowshoes, and with them he remained for eight cold hours until I came back by the light of the stars. On a few occasions I allowed Scotch to go with me on short winter excursions. He enjoyed these immensely, although he had a hard time of it and but very little to eat. When we camped among the spruces in the snow, he seemed to enjoy sitting by my side and silently watching the evening fire, and he contentedly cuddled with me to keep warm at night. [Illustration: THE CLOUD-CAPPED CONTINENTAL DIVIDE] One cold day we were returning from a four days' excursion when, a little above timber-line, I stopped to take some photographs. To do this it was necessary for me to take off my sheepskin mittens, which I placed in my coat-pocket, but not securely, as it proved. From time to time, as I climbed to the summit of the Continental Divide, I stopped to take photographs, but on the summit the cold pierced my silk gloves and I felt for my mittens, to find that one of them was lost. I stooped, put an arm around Scotch, and told him I had lost a mitten, and that I wanted him to go down for it to save me the trouble. "It won't take you very long, but it will be a hard trip for me. Go and fetch it to me." Instead of starting off hurriedly, willingly, as he had invariably done before in obedience to my commands, he stood still. His alert, eager ears drooped, but no other move did he make. I repeated the command in my most kindly tones. At this, instead of starting down the mountain for the mitten, he slunk slowly away toward home. It was clear that he did not want to climb down the steep icy slope of a mile to timber-line, more than a thousand feet below. I thought he had misunderstood me, so I called him back, patted him, and then, pointing down the slope, said, "Go for the mitten, Scotch; I will wait here for you." He started for it, but went unwillingly. He had always served me so cheerfully that I could not understand, and it was not until late the next afternoon that I realized that he had not understood me, but that he had loyally, and at the risk of his life, tried to obey me. The summit of the Continental Divide, where I stood when I sent him back, was a very rough and lonely region. On every hand were broken snowy peaks and rugged cañons. My cabin, eighteen miles away, was the nearest house to it, and the region was utterly wild. I waited a reasonable time for Scotch to return, but he did not come back. Thinking he might have gone by without my seeing him, I walked some distance along the summit, first in one direction and then in the other, but, seeing neither him nor his tracks, I knew that he had not yet come back. As it was late in the afternoon, and growing colder, I decided to go slowly on toward my cabin. I started along a route that I felt sure he would follow, and I reasoned that he would overtake me. Darkness came on and still no Scotch, but I kept going forward. For the remainder of the way I told myself that he might have got by me in the darkness. When, at midnight, I arrived at the cabin, I expected to be greeted by him, but he was not there. I felt that something was wrong and feared that he had met with an accident. I slept two hours and rose, but still he was missing, so I concluded to tie on my snowshoes and go to meet him. The thermometer showed fourteen below zero. I started at three o'clock in the morning, feeling that I should meet him without going far. I kept going on and on, and when, at noon, I arrived at the place on the summit from which I had sent him back, Scotch was not there to cheer the wintry, silent scene. I slowly made my way down the slope, and at two in the afternoon, twenty-four hours after I had sent Scotch back, I paused on a crag and looked below. There in the snowy world of white he lay by the mitten in the snow. He had misunderstood me, and had gone back to guard the mitten instead of to get it. He could hardly contain himself for joy when he saw me. He leaped into the air, barked, jumped, rolled over, licked my hand, whined, grabbed the mitten, raced round and round me, and did everything that an alert, affectionate, faithful dog could do to show that he appreciated my appreciation of his supremely faithful services. After waiting for him to eat a luncheon, we started merrily towards home, where we arrived at one o'clock in the morning. Had I not returned, I suppose Scotch would have died beside the mitten. In a region cold, cheerless, oppressive, without food, and perhaps to die, he lay down by the mitten because he understood that I had told him to. In the annals of dog heroism, I know of no greater deed. Bob and Some Other Birds Birds are plentiful on the Rockies, and the accumulating information concerning them may, in a few years, accredit Colorado with having more kinds of birds than any other State. The mountains and plains of Colorado carry a wide range of geographic conditions,--a variety of life-zones,--and in many places there is an abundance of bird-food of many kinds. These conditions naturally produce a large variety of birds throughout the State. Notwithstanding this array of feathered inhabitants, most tourists who visit the West complain of a scarcity of birds. But birds the Rockies have, and any bird-student could tell why more of them are not seen by tourists. The loud manners of most tourists who invade the Rockies simply put the birds to flight. When I hear the approach of tourists in the wilds, I feel instinctively that I should fly for safety myself. "Our little brothers of the air" the world over dislike the crowd, and will linger only for those who come with deliberation and quiet. This entire mountain-section, from foothills to mountain-summits, is enlivened in nesting-time with scores of species of birds. Low down on the foothills one will find Bullock's oriole, the red-headed woodpecker, the Arkansas kingbird, and one will often see, and more often hear, the clear, strong notes of the Western meadowlark ringing over the hills and meadows. The wise, and rather murderous, magpie goes chattering about. Here and there the quiet bluebird is seen. The kingfisher is in his appointed place. Long-crested jays, Clarke's crows, and pigmy nuthatches are plentiful, and the wild note of the chickadee is heard on every hand. Above the altitude of eight thousand feet you may hear, in June, the marvelous melody of Audubon's hermit thrush. Along the brooks and streams lives the water-ouzel. This is one of the most interesting and self-reliant of Rocky Mountain birds. It loves the swift, cool mountain-streams. It feeds in them, nests within reach of the splash of their spray, closely follows their bent and sinuous course in flight, and from an islanded boulder mingles its liquid song with the music of the moving waters. There is much in the life of the ouzel that is refreshing and inspiring. I wish it were better known. Around timber-line in summer one may hear the happy song of the white-throated sparrow. Here and above lives the leucosticte. Far above the vanguard of the brave pines, where the brilliant flowers fringe the soiled remnants of winter's drifted snow, where sometimes the bees hum and the painted butterflies sail on easy wings, the broad-tailed hummingbird may occasionally be seen, while still higher the eagles soar in the quiet bending blue. On the heights, sometimes nesting at an altitude of thirteen thousand feet, is found the ptarmigan, which, like the Eskimo, seems supremely contented in the land of crags and snows. Of all the birds on the Rockies, the one most marvelously eloquent is the solitaire. I have often felt that everything stood still and that every beast and bird listened while the matchless solitaire sang. The hermit thrush seems to suppress one, to give one a touch of reflective loneliness; but the solitaire stirs one to be up and doing, gives one the spirit of youth. In the solitaire's song one feels all the freshness and the promise of spring. The song seems to be born of ages of freedom beneath peaceful skies, of the rhythm of the universe, of a mingling of the melody of winds and waters and of all rhythmic sounds that murmur and echo out of doors and of every song that Nature sings in the wild gardens of the world. I am sure I have never been more thoroughly wide awake and hopeful than when listening to the solitaire's song. The world is flushed with a diviner atmosphere, every object carries a fresher significance, there are new thoughts and clear, calm hopes sure to be realized on the enchanted fields of the future. I was camping alone one evening in the deep solitude of the Rockies. The slanting sun-rays were glowing on St. Vrain's crag-crowned hills and everything was at peace, when, from a near-by treetop came the triumphant, hopeful song of a solitaire, and I forgot all except that the world was young. One believes in fairies when the solitaire sings. Some of my friends have predicted that I shall some time meet with an accident and perish in the solitudes alone. If their prediction should come true, I shall hope it will be in the summer-time, while the flowers are at their best, and that during my last conscious moments I shall hear the melody of the solitaire singing as I die with the dying day. I sat for hours in the woods one day, watching a pair of chickadees feeding their young ones. There were nine of these hungry midgets, and, like nine small boys, they not only were always hungry, but were capable of digesting everything. They ate spiders and flies, green worms, ants, millers, dirty brown worms, insect-eggs by the dozen, devil's-darning-needles, woodlice, bits of lichen, grasshoppers, and I know not how many other things. I could not help thinking that when one family of birds destroyed such numbers of injurious insects, if all the birds were to stop eating, the insects would soon destroy every green tree and plant on earth. One of the places where I used to camp to enjoy the flowers, the trees, and the birds was on the shore of a glacier lake. Near the lake were eternal snows, rugged gorges, and forests primeval. To its shore, especially in autumn, came many bird callers. I often screened myself in a dense clump of fir trees on the north shore to study the manners of birds which came near. To help attract and detain them, I scattered feed on the shore, and I spent interesting hours and days in my hiding-place enjoying the etiquette of birds at feast and frolic. I was lying in the sun, one afternoon, just outside my fir clump, gazing out across the lake, when a large black bird alighted on the shore some distance around the lake. "Surely," I said to myself, "that is a crow." A crow I had not seen or heard of in that part of the country. I wanted to call to him that he was welcome to eat at my free-lunch counter, when it occurred to me that I was in plain sight. Before I could move, the bird rose in the air and started flying leisurely toward me. I hoped he would see, or smell, the feed and tarry for a time; but he rose as he advanced, and as he appeared to be looking ahead, I had begun to fear he would go by without stopping, when he suddenly wheeled and at the same instant said "Hurrah," as distinctly as I have ever heard it spoken, and dropped to the feed. The clearness, energy, and unexpectedness of his "Hurrah" startled me. He alighted and began to eat, evidently without suspecting my presence, notwithstanding the fact that I lay only a few feet away. Some days before, a mountain lion had killed a mountain sheep; a part of this carcass I had dragged to my bird table. Upon this the crow, for such he was, alighted and fed ravenously for some time. Then he paused, straightened up, and took a look about. His eye fell on me, and instantly he squatted as if to hurl himself in hurried flight, but he hesitated, then appeared as if starting to burst out with "Caw" or some such exclamation, but changed his mind and repressed it. Finally he straightened and fixed himself for another good look at me. I did not move, and my clothes must have been a good shade of protective coloring, for he seemed to conclude that I was not worth considering. He looked straight at me for a few seconds, uttered another "Hurrah," which he emphasized with a defiant gesture, and went on energetically eating. In the midst of this, something alarmed him, and he flew swiftly away and did not come back. Was this crow a pet that had concluded to strike out for himself? Or had his mimicry or his habit of laying hold of whatever pleased him caused him to appropriate this word from bigger folk? Go where you will over the Rockies and the birds will be with you. One day I spent several hours on the summit of Long's Peak, and while there twelve species of birds alighted or passed near enough for me to identify them. One of these birds was an eagle, another a hummingbird. [Illustration: PTARMIGAN] On a June day, while the heights were more than half covered with winter's snow, I came across the nest of a ptarmigan near a drift and at an altitude of thirteen thousand feet above sea-level. The ptarmigan, with their home above tree-line, amid eternal snows, are wonderfully self-reliant and self-contained. The ouzel, too, is self-poised, indifferent to all the world but his brook, and showing an appreciation for water greater, I think, than that of any other landsman. These birds, the ptarmigan and the ouzel, along with the willow thrush, who sings out his melody amid the shadows of the pines, who puts his woods into song,--these birds of the mountains are with me when memory takes me back a solitary visitor to the lonely places of the Rockies. The birds of the Rockies, as well as the bigger folk who live there, have ways of their own which distinguish them from their kind in the East. They sing with more enthusiasm, but with the same subtle tone that everywhere tells that all is right with the world, and makes all to the manner born glad to be alive. Nothing delights me more than to come across a person who is interested in trees; and I have long thought that any one who appreciates trees or birds is one who is either good or great, or both. I consider it an honor to converse with one who knows the birds and the trees, and have more than once gone out of my way to meet one of those favored mortals. I remember one cold morning I came down off the mountains and went into a house to get warm. Rather I went in to scrape an acquaintance with whomsoever could be living there who remembered the birds while snow and cold prevailed,--when Nature forgot. To get warm was a palpable excuse. I was not cold; I had no need to stop; I simply wanted to meet the people who had, on this day at least, put out food and warm water for the birds; but I have ever since been glad that I went in, for the house shielded from the cold a family whom it is good to know, and, besides making their acquaintance, I met "Bob" and heard her story. Every one in the house was fond of pets. Rex, a huge St. Bernard, greeted me at the door, and with a show of satisfaction accompanied me to a chair near the stove. In going to the chair some forlorn snowbirds, "that Sarah had found nearly frozen while out feeding the birds this morning," hopped out of my way. As I sat down, I noticed an old sack on the floor against the wall before me. All at once this sack came to life, had an idea, or was bewitched, I thought. Anyway it became so active that it held my attention for several seconds, and gave me a little alarm. I was relieved when out of it tumbled an aggressive rooster, which advanced a few steps, flapped, and crowed lustily. "He was brought in to get thawed out; I suppose you will next be wondering where we keep the pig," said my hostess as she advanced to stir the fire, after which she examined "two little cripples," birds in a box behind the stove. I moved to a cooler seat, by a door which led into an adjoining room. After I had sat down, "Bob," a pet quail, came from somewhere, and advanced with the most serene and dignified air to greet me. After pausing to eye me for a moment, with a look of mingled curiosity and satisfaction, she went under my chair and squatted confidingly on the floor. Bob was the first pet quail I had ever seen, and my questions concerning her brought from my hostess the following story:-- "One day last fall a flock of quail became frightened, and in their excited flight one struck against a neighbor's window and was badly stunned. My husband, who chanced to be near at the time, picked up the injured one and brought it home. My three daughters, who at times had had pet horses, snakes, turtles, and rats, welcomed this shy little stranger and at once set about caring for her injuries. Just before "Bob" had fully recovered, there came a heavy fall of snow, which was followed by such a succession of storms that we concluded to keep her with us, provided she was willing to stay. We gave her the freedom of the house. For some time she was wild and shy; under a chair or the lounge she would scurry if any one approached her. Plainly, she did not feel welcome or safe in our house, and I gave up the idea of taming her. One day, however, we had lettuce for dinner, and while we were at the table Sarah, my eldest daughter, who has a gift for taming and handling wild creatures, declared that Bob should eat out of her hand before night. All that afternoon she tempted her with bits of lettuce, and when evening came, had succeeded so well that never after was Bob afraid of us. Whenever we sat down for a meal, Bob would come running and quietly go in turn to each with coaxing sounds and pleading looks, wanting to be fed. It was against the rules to feed her at meals, but first one, then another, would slip something to her under the table, trying at the same time to appear innocent. The girls have always maintained that their mother, who made the rule, was the first one to break it. No one could resist Bob's pretty, dainty, coaxing ways. "She is particularly fond of pie-crust, and many a time I have found the edge picked off the pie I had intended for dinner. Bob never fails to find a pie, if one is left uncovered. I think it is the shortening in the pie-crust that gives it the delicious flavor, for lard she prefers above all of her many foods. She cares least of all for grain. My daughters say that Bob's fondness for graham gems accounts for the frequency of their recent appearances on our table. "After trying many places, Bob at last found a roosting-place that suited her. This was in a leather collar-box on the bureau, where she could nestle up close to her own image in the mirror. Since discovering this place she has never failed to occupy it at night. She is intelligent, and in so many ways pleasing that we are greatly attached to her." Here I had to leave Bob and her good friends behind; but some months afterward my hostess of that winter day told me the concluding chapters of Bob's life. "Bob disliked to be handled; though pleasing and irresistibly winsome, she was not in the least affectionate, and always maintained a dignified, ladylike reserve. But with the appearance of spring she showed signs of lonesomeness. With none of her kind to love, she turned to Rex and on him lavished all of her affection. When Rex was admitted to the house of a morning, she ran to meet him with a joyful cackle,--an utterance she did not use on any other occasion,--and with soft cooing sounds she followed him about the house. If Rex appeared bored with her attentions and walked away, she followed after, and persisted in tones that were surely scolding until he would lie down. Whenever he lay with his huge head between his paws, she would nestle down close to his face and remain content so long as he was quiet. Sometimes when he was lying down she would climb slowly over him; at each step she would put her foot down daintily, and as each foot touched him there was a slight movement of her head and a look of satisfaction. These climbs usually ended by her scratching in the long hair of his tail, and then nestling down into it. "One day I was surprised to see her kiss Rex. When I told my family of this, they laughed heartily and were unable to believe me. Later, we all witnessed this pretty sight many times. She seemed to prefer to kiss him when he was lying down, with his head raised a little above the floor. Finding him in this position, she would walk beside him, reach up and kiss his face again and again, all the time cooing softly to him. "Toward spring Bob's feathers became dull and somewhat ragged, and with the warm days came our decision to let her go outside. She was delighted to scratch in the loose earth around the rosebushes, and eagerly fed on the insects she found there. Her plumage soon took on its natural trimness and freshness. She did not show any inclination to leave, and with Rex by her or near her, we felt that she was safe from cats, so we soon allowed her to remain out all day long. "Passers-by often stopped to watch Bob and Rex playing together. Sometimes he would go lumbering across the yard while she, plainly displeased at the fast pace, hurried after with an incessant scolding chatter as much as to say: 'Don't go so fast, old fellow. How do you expect me to keep up?' Sometimes, when Rex was lying down eating a bone, she would stand on one of his fore legs and quietly pick away at the bone. "The girls frequently went out to call her, and did so by whistling 'Bob White.' She never failed to answer promptly, and her response sounded like _chee chos, chee chos_, which she uttered before hurrying to them. "One summer morning I found her at the kitchen door waiting to be let out. I opened the door and watched her go tripping down the steps. When she started across the yard I cautioned her to 'be a little lady, and don't get too far away.' Rex was away that morning, and soon one of the girls went out to call her. Repeated calls brought no answer. We all started searching. We wondered if the cat had caught her, or if she had been lured away by the winning calls of her kind. Beneath a cherry tree near the kitchen door, just as Rex came home, we found her, bloody and dead. Rex, after pushing her body tenderly about with his nose, as if trying to help her to rise, looked up and appealed piteously to us. We buried her beneath the rosebush near which she and Rex had played." Kinnikinick The kinnikinick is a plant pioneer. Often it is the first plant to make a settlement or establish a colony on a barren or burned-over area. It is hardy, and is able to make a start and thrive in places so inhospitable as to afford most plants not the slightest foothold. In such places the kinnikinick's activities make changes which alter conditions so beneficially that in a little while plants less hardy come to join the first settler. The pioneer work done by the kinnikinick on a barren and rocky realm has often resulted in the establishment of a flourishing forest there. The kinnikinick, or _Arctostaphylos Uva-Ursi_, as the botanists name it, may be called a ground-loving vine. Though always attractive, it is in winter that it is at its best. Then its bright green leaves and red berries shine among the snow-flowers in a quiet way that is strikingly beautiful. Since it is beautiful as well as useful, I had long admired this ever-cheerful, ever-spreading vine before I appreciated the good though humble work it is constantly doing. I had often stopped to greet it,--the only green thing upon a rock ledge or a sandy stretch,--had walked over it in forest avenues beneath tall and stately pines, and had slept comfortably upon its spicy, elastic rugs, liking it from the first. But on one of my winter tramps I fell in love with this beautiful evergreen. The day was a cold one, and the high, gusty wind was tossing and playing with the last snow-fall. I had been snowshoeing through the forest, and had come out upon an unsheltered ridge that was a part of a barren area which repeated fires had changed from a forested condition to desert. The snow lay several feet deep in the woods, but as the gravelly distance before me was bare, I took off my snowshoes. I went walking, and at times blowing, along the bleak ridge, scarcely able to see through the snow-filled air. But during a lull the air cleared of snow-dust and I paused to look about me. The wind still roared in the distance, and against the blue eastern sky it had a column of snow whirling that was dazzling white in the afternoon sun. On my left a mountain rose with easy slope to crag-crowned heights, and for miles swept away before me with seared side barren and dull. A few cloudlets of snowdrifts and a scattering of mere tufts of snow stood out distinctly on this big, bare slope. I wondered what could be holding these few spots of snow on this wind-swept slope. I finally went up to examine one of them. Thrust out and lifted just above the snow of the tuft before me was the jeweled hand of a kinnikinick; and every snow-deposit on the slope was held in place by the green arms of this plant. Here was this beautiful vinelike shrub gladly growing on a slope that had been forsaken by all other plants. To state the situation fairly, all had been burned off by fire and Kinnikinick was the first to come back, and so completely had fires consumed the plant-food that many plants would be unable to live here until better conditions prevailed and the struggle for existence was made less severe. Kinnikinick was making the needed changes; in time it would prepare the way, and other plants, and the pines too, would come back to carpet and plume the slope and prevent wind and water from tearing and scarring the earth. The seeds of Kinnikinick are scattered by birds, chipmunks, wind, and water. I do not know by what agency the seeds had come to this slope, but here were the plants, and on this dry, fire-ruined, sun-scorched, wind-beaten slope they must have endured many hardships. Many must have perished before these living ones had made a secure start in life. Once Kinnikinick has made a start, it is constantly assisted to succeed by its own growing success. Its arms catch and hold snow, and this gives a supply of much-needed water. This water is snugly stored beneath the plant, where but little can be reached or taken by the sun or the thirsty winds. The winds, too, which were so unfriendly while it was trying to make a start, now become helpful to the brave, persistent plant. Every wind that blows brings something to it,--dust, powdered earth, trash, the remains of dead insects; some of this material is carried for miles. All goes to form new soil, or to fertilize or mulch the old. This supplies Kinnikinick's great needs. The plant grows rich from the constant tribute of the winds. The soil-bed grows deeper and richer and is also constantly outbuilding and enlarging, and Kinnikinick steadily increases its size. In a few years a small oasis is formed in, or rather on, the barren. This becomes a place of refuge for seed wanderers,--in fact, a nursery. Up the slope I saw a young pine standing in a kinnikinick snow-cover. In the edge of the snow-tuft by me, covered with a robe of snow, I found a tiny tree, a mere baby pine. Where did this pine come from? There were no seed-bearing pines within miles. How did a pine seed find its way to this cosy nursery? Perhaps the following is its story: The seed of this little pine, together with a score or more of others, grew in a cone out near the end of the pine-tree limb. This pine was on a mountain several miles from the fire-ruined slope, when one windy autumn day some time after the seeds were ripe, the cone began to open its fingers and the seeds came dropping out. The seed of this baby tree was one of these, and when it tumbled out of the cone the wind caught it, and away it went over trees, rocks, and gulches, whirling and dancing in the autumn sunlight. After tumbling a few miles in this wild flight, it came down among some boulders. Here it lay until, one very windy day, it was caught up and whirled away again. Before long it was dashed against a granite cliff and fell to the ground; but in a moment, the wind found it and drove it, with a shower of trash and dust, bounding and leaping across a barren slope, plump into this kinnikinick nest. From this shelter the wind could not drive it. Here the little seed might have said, "This is just the place I was looking for; here is shelter from the wind and sun; the soil is rich and damp; I am so tired, I think I'll take a sleep." When the little seed awoke, it wore the green dress of the pine family. The kinnikinick's nursery had given it a start in life. Under favorable conditions Kinnikinick is a comparatively rapid grower. Its numerous vinelike limbs--little arms--spread or reach outward from the central root, take a new hold upon the earth, and prepare to reach again. The ground beneath it in a little while is completely hidden by its closely crowding leafy arms. In places these soft, pliable rugs unite and form extensive carpets. Strip off these carpets and often all that remains is a barren exposure of sand or gravel on bald or broken rocks, whose surfaces and edges have been draped or buried by its green leaves and red berries. In May kinnikinick rugs become flower-beds. Each flower is a narrow-throated, pink-lipped, creamy-white jug, and is filled with a drop of exquisitely flavored honey. The jugs in a short time change to smooth purple berries, and in autumn they take on their winter dress of scarlet. When ripe the berries taste like mealy crab-apples. I have often seen chipmunks eating the berries, or apples, sitting up with the fruit in both their deft little hands, and eating it with such evident relish that I frequently found myself thinking of these berries as chipmunk's apples. Kinnikinick is widely distributed over the earth, and is most often found on gravelly slopes or sandy stretches. Frequently you will find it among scattered pines, trying to carpet their cathedral floor. Many a summer day I have lain down and rested on these flat and fluffy forest rugs, while between the tangled tops of the pines I looked at the blue of the sky or watched the white clouds so serenely floating there. Many a summer night upon these elastic spreads I have lain and gazed at the thick-sown stars, or watched the ebbing, fading camp-fire, at last to fall asleep and to rest as sweetly and serenely as ever did the Scotchman upon his heathered Highlands. Many a morning I have awakened late after a sleep so long that I had settled into the yielding mass and Kinnikinick had put up an arm, either to shield my face with its hand, or to show me, when I should awaken, its pretty red berries and bright green leaves. [Illustration: SUMMER AT AN ALTITUDE OF 12,000 FEET] One morning, while visiting in a Blackfoot Indian camp, I saw the men smoking kinnikinick leaves, and I asked if they had any legend concerning the shrub. I felt sure they must have a fascinating story of it which told of the Great Spirit's love for Kinnikinick, but they had none. One of them said he had heard the Piute Indians tell why the Great Spirit had made it, but he could not remember the account. I inquired among many Indians, feeling that I should at last learn a happy legend concerning it, but in vain. One night, however, by my camp-fire, I dreamed that some Alaska Indians told me this legend:-- Long, long ago, Kinnikinick was a small tree with brown berries and broad leaves which dropped to the ground in autumn. One year a great snow came while the leaves were still on, and all trees were flattened upon the ground by the weight of the clinging snow. All broad-leaved trees except Kinnikinick died. When the snow melted, Kinnikinick was still alive, but pressed out upon the ground, crushed so that it could not rise. It started to grow, however, and spread out its limbs on the surface very like a root growth. The Great Spirit was so pleased with Kinnikinick's efforts that he decided to let it live on in its new form, and also that he would send it to colonize many places where it had never been. He changed its berries from brown to red, so that the birds could see its fruit and scatter its seeds far and wide. Its leaves were reduced in size and made permanently green, so that Kinnikinick, like the pines it loves and helps, could wear green all the time. Whenever I see a place that has been made barren and ugly by the thoughtlessness of man, I like to think of Kinnikinick, for I know it will beautify these places if given a chance to do so. There are on earth millions of acres now almost desert that may some time be changed and beautified by this cheerful, modest plant. Some time many bald and barren places in the Rockies will be plumed with pines, bannered with flowers, have brooks, butterflies, and singing birds,--all of these, and homes, too, around which children will play,--because of the reclaiming work which will be done by charming Kinnikinick. The Lodge-Pole Pine The trappers gave the Lodge-Pole Pine (_Pinus contorta_, var. _Murrayana_) its popular name on account of its general use by Indians of the West for lodge or wigwam poles. It is a tree with an unusually interesting life-story, and is worth knowing for the triumphant struggle which it makes for existence, and also for the commercial importance which, at an early date, it seems destined to have. Perhaps its most interesting and advantageous characteristic is its habit of holding or hoarding its seed-harvests. Lodge-pole is also variously called Tamarack, Murray, and Two-leaved Pine. Its yellow-green needles are in twos, and are from one to three inches in length. Its cones are about one inch in diameter at the base and from one to two inches long. Its light-gray or cinnamon-gray bark is thin and scaly. In a typical lodge-pole forest the trees, or poles, stand closely together and all are of the same age and of even size. Seedlings and saplings are not seen in an old forest. This forest covers the mountains for miles, growing in moist, dry, and stony places, claims all slopes, has an altitudinal range of four thousand feet, and almost entirely excludes all other species from its borders. [Illustration: A TYPICAL LODGE-POLE FOREST] The hoarding habit of this tree, the service rendered it by forest fires, the lightness of the seeds and the readiness with which they germinate on dry or burned-over areas, its ability to grow in a variety of soils and climates, together with its capacity to thrive in the full glare of the sun,--all these are factors which make this tree interesting, and which enable it, despite the most dangerous forest enemy, fire, to increase and multiply and extend its domains. During the last fifty years this aggressive, indomitable tree has enormously extended its area, and John Muir is of the opinion that, "as fires are multiplied and the mountains become drier, this wonderful lodge-pole pine bids fair to obtain possession of nearly all the forest ground in the West." Its geographical range is along the Rocky Mountains from Alaska to New Mexico, and on the Pacific coast forests of it are, in places, found from sea-level to an altitude of eleven thousand feet. On the Rockies it flourishes between the altitudes of seven thousand and ten thousand feet. It is largely represented in the forests of Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Montana, and it has extensive areas in Oregon and Washington. It is the most numerous tree in Wyoming, occupying in Yellowstone Park a larger area than all other trees combined, while in California it forms the bulk of the alpine forests. The lodge-pole readily adapts itself to the most diverse soil and conditions, but it thrives best where there is considerable moisture. The roots accommodate themselves to shallow soil, and thrive in it. This tree begins to bear fruit at an early age, sometimes when only eight years old, and usually produces large quantities of cones annually. The cones sometimes open and liberate the seeds as soon as they are ripe, but commonly they remain on the tree for years, with their seeds carefully sealed and protected beneath the scales. So far as I have observed, the trees on the driest soil cling longest to their seeds. For an old lodge-pole to have on its limbs twenty crops of unopened cones is not uncommon. Neither is it uncommon to see an extensive lodge-pole forest each tree of which has upon it several hundred, and many of the trees a few thousand, cones, and in each cone a few mature seeds. Most of these seeds will never have a chance to make a start in life except they be liberated by fire. In fact, most lodge-pole seeds are liberated by fire. The reproduction of this pine is so interwoven with the effects of the forest fires that one may safely say that most of the lodge-pole forests and the increasing lodge-pole areas are the result of forest fires. Every lodge-pole forest is a fire-trap. The thin, scaly, pitchy bark and the live resiny needles on the tree, as well as those on the ground, are very inflammable, and fires probably sweep a lodge-pole forest more frequently than any other in America. When this forest is in a sapling stage, it is very likely to be burned to ashes. If, however, the trees are beyond the sapling stage, the fire probably will consume the needles, burn some of the bark away, and leave the tree, together with its numerous seed-filled cones, unconsumed. As a rule, the fire so heats the cones that most of them open and release their seeds a few hours, or a few days, after the fire. If the area burned over is a large one, the fire loosens the clasp of the cone-scales and millions of lodge-pole seeds are released to be sown by the great eternal seed-sower, the wind. These seeds are thickly scattered, and as they germinate readily in the mineral soil, enormous numbers of them sprout and begin to struggle for existence. I once counted 84,322 young trees on an acre. The trees often stand as thick as wheat in a field and exclude all other species. Their growth is slow and mostly upright. They early become delicate miniature poles, and often, at the age of twenty-five or thirty years, good fishing-poles. In their crowded condition, the competition is deadly. Hundreds annually perish, but this tree clings tenaciously to life, and starving it to death is not easy. In the summer of 1895 I counted 24,271 thirty-year-old lodge-poles upon an acre. Ten years later, 19,040 of these were alive. It is possible that eighty thousand, or even one hundred thousand, seedlings started upon this acre. Sometimes more than half a century is required for the making of good poles. On the Grand River in Colorado I once measured a number of poles that averaged two inches in diameter at the ground and one and one half inches fifteen feet above it. These poles averaged forty feet high and were sixty-seven years of age. Others of my notes read: "9728 trees upon an acre. They were one hundred and three years of age, two to six inches in diameter, four and a half feet from the ground, and from thirty to sixty feet high, at an altitude of 8700 feet. Soil and moisture conditions were excellent. On another acre there were 4126 trees one hundred and fifty-four years old, together with eleven young Engelmann spruces and one _Pinus flexilis_ and eight Douglas firs. The accumulation of duff, mostly needles, averaged eight inches deep, and, with the exception of one bunch of kinnikinick, there was neither grass nor weed, and only tiny, thinly scattered sun-gold reached the brown matted floor." After self-thinning has gone on for a hundred years or so, the ranks have been so thinned that there are openings sufficiently large to allow other species a chance to come in. By this time, too, there is sufficient humus on the floor to allow the seeds of many other species to germinate. Lodge-pole thus colonizes barren places, holds them for a time, and so changes them that the very species dispossessed by fire may regain the lost territory. Roughly, the lodge-pole will hold the ground exclusively from seventy-five to one hundred and fifty years, then the invading trees will come triumphantly in and, during the next century and a half, will so increase and multiply that they will almost exclude the lodge-pole. Thus Engelmann spruce and Douglas fir are now growing where lodge-pole flourished, but let fire destroy this forest and lodge-pole will again claim the territory, hold it against all comers for a century or two, and then slowly give way to or be displaced by the spruces and firs. The interesting characteristic of holding its cones and hoarding seeds often results in the cones being overgrown and embedded in the trunk or the limbs of the trees. As the cones hug closely the trunk or the limbs, it is not uncommon for the saw, when laying open a log at the mill, to reveal a number of cones embedded there. I have in my cabin a sixteen-foot plank that is two inches in diameter and six inches wide, which came out of a lodge-pole tree. Embedded in this are more than a score of cones. Probably most of these cones were of the first crop which the tree produced, for they clung along the trunk of the tree and grew there when it was about an inch and a quarter in diameter. The section upon which these cones grew was between fifteen and twenty-five feet from the ground. The seeds of most conifers need vegetable mould, litter, or vegetation cover of some kind in which to germinate, and then shade for a time in which to grow. These requirements so needed by other conifer seeds and seedlings are detrimental to the lodge-pole. If its seeds fall on areas lightly covered with low huckleberry vines, but few of them will germinate. A lodge-pole seed that germinates in the shade is doomed. It must have sunlight or die. In the ashes of a forest fire, in the full glare of the sun, the seeds of the lodge-pole germinate, grow, and flourish. Wind is the chief agency which enables the seeds to migrate. The seeds are light, and I know of one instance where an isolated tree on a plateau managed to scatter its seeds by the aid of the wind over a circular area fifty acres in extent, though a few acres is all that is reached by the average tree. Sometimes the wind scatters the seeds unevenly. If most of the seeds are released in one day, and the wind this day prevails from the same quarter, the seeds will take but one course from the tree; while changing winds may scatter them quite evenly all around the tree. A camping party built a fire against a lone lodge-pole. The tree was killed and suffered a loss of its needles from the fire. Four years later, a long green pennant, tattered at the end and formed of lodge-pole seedlings, showed on the mountain-side. This pennant began at the tree and streamed out more than seven hundred feet. Its width varied from ten to fifty feet. The action of a fire in a lodge-pole forest is varied. If the forest be an old one, even with much rubbish on the ground the heat is not so intense as in a young growth. Where trees are scattered the flames crawl from tree to tree, the needles of which ignite like flash-powder and make beautiful rose-purple flames. At night fires of this kind furnish rare fireworks. Each tree makes a fountain of flame, after which, for a moment, every needle shines like incandescent silver, while exquisite light columns of ashen green smoke float above. The hottest fire I ever experienced was made by the burning of a thirty-eight-year lodge-pole forest. In this forest the poles stood more than thirty feet high, and were about fifteen thousand to an acre. They stood among masses of fallen trees, the remains of a spruce forest that had been killed by the same fire which had given this lodge-pole forest a chance to spring up. Several thousand acres were burned, and for a brief time the fire traveled swiftly. I saw it roll blazing over one mountain-side at a speed of more than sixty miles an hour. It was intensely hot, and in a surprisingly short time the flames had burned every log, stump, and tree to ashes. Several hundred acres were swept absolutely bare of trees, living and dead, and the roots too were burned far into the ground. Several beetles prey upon the lodge-pole, and in some localities the porcupine feeds off its inner bark. It is also made use of by man. The wood is light, not strong, with a straight, rather coarse grain. It is of a light yellow to nearly white, or pinkish white, soft, and easily worked. In the West it is extensively used for lumber, fencing, fuel, and log houses, and millions of lodge-pole railroad-ties are annually put to use. Most lodge-poles grow in crowded ranks, and slow growth is the result, but it is naturally a comparatively rapid grower. In good, moist soil, uncrowded, it rapidly builds upward and outward. I have more than a score of records that show that it has made a quarter of an inch diameter growth annually, together with an upright growth of more than twelve inches, and also several notes which show where trees standing in favorable conditions have made half an inch diameter growth annually. This fact of its rapid growth, together with other valuable characteristics and qualities of the tree, may lead it to be selected by the government for the reforestation of millions of acres of denuded areas in the West. In many places on the Rockies it would, if given a chance, make commercial timber in from thirty to sixty years. I examined a lodge-pole in the Medicine Bow Mountains that was scarred by fire. It was two hundred and fourteen years of age. It took one hundred and seventy-eight years for it to make five inches of diameter growth. In the one hundred and seventy-eighth ring of annual growth there was a fire-scar, and during the next thirty-six years it put on five more inches of growth. It is probable, therefore, that the fire destroyed the neighboring trees, which had dwarfed and starved it and thus held it in check. I know of scores of cases where lodge-poles grew much more rapidly, though badly fire-scarred, after fires had removed their hampering competitors. There are millions of acres of young lodge-pole forests in the West. They are almost as impenetrable as canebrakes. It would greatly increase the rate of growth if these trees were thinned, but it is probable that this will not be done for many years. Meantime, if these forests be protected from fire, they will be excellent water-conservers. When the snows or the rains fall into the lodge-pole thickets, they are beyond the reach of the extra dry winds. If they are protected, the water-supply of the West will be protected; and if they are destroyed, the winds will evaporate most of the precipitation that falls upon their areas. I do not know of any tree that better adjusts itself to circumstances, or that struggles more bravely or successfully. I am hopeful that before many years the school-children of America will be well acquainted with the Lodge-Pole Pine, and I feel that its interesting ways, its struggles, and its importance will, before long, be appreciated and win a larger place in our literature and also in our hearts. Rocky Mountain Forests It is stirring to stand at the feet of the Rocky Mountains and look upward and far away over the broken strata that pile and terrace higher and higher, until, at a distance of twenty-five or thirty miles, they stand a shattered and snowy horizon against the blue. The view is an inspiring one from the base, but it gives no idea that this mountain array is a magnificent wild hanging-garden. Across the terraced and verdure-plumed garden the eternal snows send their clear and constant streams, to leap in white cascades between crowning crags and pines. Upon the upper slopes of this garden are many mirrored lakes, ferny, flowery glens, purple forests, and crag-piled meadows. If any one were to start at the foothills in Colorado, where one of the clear streams comes sweeping out of the mountains to go quietly across the wide, wide plains, and from this starting-place climb to the crest of this terraced land of crags, pines, ferns, and flowers, he would, in so doing, go through many life-zones and see numerous standing and moving life-forms, all struggling, yet seemingly all contented with life and the scenes wherein they live and struggle. The broad-leaf cottonwood, which has accompanied the streams across the plains, stops at the foothills, and along the river in the foothills the narrow-leaf cottonwood (_Populus angustifolia_) crowds the water's edge, here and there mingling with red-fruited hawthorns and wild plums (_Prunus Americana_). A short distance from the stream the sumac stands brilliant in the autumn, and a little farther away are clumps of greasewood and sagebrush and an occasional spread of juniper. Here and there are some forlorn-looking red cedars and a widely scattered sprinkling of stunted yellow pines (_Pinus scopulorum_). At an altitude of six thousand feet the yellow pine acquires true tree dignity and begins to mass itself into forests. When seen from a distance its appearance suggests the oak. It seems a trifle rigid, appears ready to meet emergencies, has a look of the heroic, and carries more character than any other tree on the Rockies. Though a slender and small-limbed tree in youth, after forty or fifty years it changes slowly and becomes stocky, strong-limbed, and rounded at the top. Lightning, wind, and snow break or distort its upper limbs so that most of these veteran pines show a picturesquely broken top, with a towering dead limb or two among the green ones. Its needles are in bundles of both twos and threes, and they vary from three to eight inches in length. The tree is rich in resin, and a walk through its groves on an autumn day, when the sun shines bright on its clean golden columns and brings out its aroma, is a walk full of contentment and charm. The bark is fluted and blackish-gray in youth, and it breaks up into irregular plates, which on old trees frequently are five inches or more in thickness. This bark gives the tree excellent fire-protection. The yellow pine is one of the best fire-fighters and lives long. I have seen many of the pines that were from sixty to ninety feet high, with a diameter of from three to five feet. They were aged from two hundred and fifty to six hundred years. Most of the old ones have lived through several fires. I dissected a fallen veteran that grew on the St. Vrain watershed, at an altitude of eight thousand feet, that was eighty-five feet high and fifty-one inches in diameter five feet from the ground. It showed six hundred and seventy-nine annual rings. During the first three hundred years of its life it averaged an inch of diameter growth every ten years. It had been through many forest fires and showed large fire-scars. One of these it received at the age of three hundred and thirty-nine years. It carried another scar which it received two hundred and sixteen years before its death; another which it received in 1830; and a fourth which it received fourteen years before it blew over in the autumn of 1892. All of these fire-scars were on the same quarter of the tree. All were on that part of the tree which overlooked the down-sloping hillside. Forest fires, where there is opportunity, sweep up the mountain-side against the lower side of the trees. The lower side is thus often scarred while the opposite side is scarcely injured; but wind blowing down the gulch at the time of each fire may have directed the flames against the lower side of this tree. In many places clusters of young trees were growing close to the lower side of the old trees, and were enabled to grow there by light that came in from the side. It may be that the heat from one of the blazing clusters scarred this old pine; then another young cluster may have grown, to be in time also consumed. But these scars may have resulted, wholly or in part, from other causes. Yellow pine claims the major portion of the well-drained slopes, except those that are northerly, in the middle mountain-zone up to the lower lodge-pole margin. A few groves are found higher than nine thousand feet. Douglas spruce covers many of the northerly slopes that lie between six thousand and nine thousand feet. The regularity of tree-distribution over the mountains is to me a never-failing source of interest. Though the various species of trees appear to be growing almost at random, yet each species shows a decided preference for peculiar altitude, soil, temperature, and moisture conditions. It is an interesting demonstration of tree adaptability to follow a stream which comes out of the west, in the middle mountain-zone, and observe how unlike the trees are which thrive on opposite sides. On the southerly slopes that come down to the water is an open forest of yellow pine, and on the opposite side, the south bank, a dense forest of Douglas spruce. If one be told the altitude, the slope, and the moisture conditions of a place on the Rockies, he should, if acquainted with the Rockies, be able to name the kinds of trees growing there. Some trees grow only in moist places, others only in dry places, some never below or above a certain altitude. Indeed, so regular is the tree-distribution over the Rockies that I feel certain, if I were to awaken from a Rip Van Winkle sleep in the forests on the middle or upper slopes of these mountains, I could, after examining a few of the trees around me, tell the points of the compass, the altitude above sea-level, and the season of the year. [Illustration: ASPENS] At an altitude of about sixty-five hundred feet cottonwood, which has accompanied the streams from the foothills, begins to be displaced by aspen. The aspen (_Populus tremuloides_) is found growing in groups and groves from this altitude up to timber-line, usually in the moister places. To me the aspen is almost a classic tree, and I have met it in so many places that I regard it almost as an old friend. It probably rivals the juniper in being the most widely distributed tree on the North American continent. It also vies with the lodge-pole pine in quickness of taking possession of burned-over areas. Let a moist place be burned over and the aspen will quickly take possession, and soon establish conditions which will allow conifers to return. This the conifers do, and in a very short time smother the aspens that made it possible for them to start in life. The good nursery work of aspens is restricted pretty closely to damp places. Besides being a useful tree, the bare-legged little aspen with its restless and childlike ways is a tree that it is good to know. When alone, these little trees seem lonely and sometimes to tremble as though just a little afraid in this big strange world. But generally the aspen is not alone. Usually you find a number of little aspens playing together, with their leaves shaking, jostling, and jumping,--moving all the time. If you go near a group and stop to watch them, they may, for an instant, pause to glance at you, then turn to romp more merrily than before. And they have other childlike ways besides bare legs and activity. On some summer day, if you wish to find these little trees, look for them where you would for your own child,--wading the muddiest place to be found. They like to play in the swamps, and may often be seen in a line alongside a brook with toes in the water, as though looking for the deepest place before wading in. One day I came across a party of merry little aspens who were in a circle around a grand old pine, as though using the pine for a maypole to dance around. It was in autumn, and each little aspen wore its gayest colors. Some were in gowns of new-made cloth-of-gold. The grizzled old pine, like an old man in the autumn of his life, looked down as though honored and pleased with the happy little ones who seemed so full of joy. I watched them for a time and went on across the mountains; but I have long believed in fairies, so the next day I went back to see this fairyland and found the dear little aspens still shaking their golden leaves, while the old pine stood still in the sunlight. Along the streams, between the altitudes of sixty-five hundred and eighty-five hundred feet, one finds the Colorado blue or silver spruce. This tree grows in twos or threes, occasionally forming a small grove. Usually it is found growing near a river or brook, standing closely to a golden-lichened crag, in surroundings which emphasize its beauty of form and color. With its fluffy silver-tipped robe and its garlands of cones it is the handsomest tree on the Rockies. It is the queen of these wild gardens. Beginning at the altitude where the silver spruce ceases is the beautiful balsam fir (_Abies lasiocarpa_). The balsam fir is generally found in company with the alders or the silver spruce near a brook. It is strikingly symmetrical and often forms a perfect slender cone. The balsam fir and the silver spruce are the evergreen poems of the wild. They get into one's heart like the hollyhock. Several years ago the school-children of Colorado selected by vote a State flower and a State tree. Although more than fifty flowers received votes, two thirds of all the votes went to the Rocky Mountain columbine. When it came to selecting a tree, every vote was cast for the silver spruce. Edwinia, with its attractive waxy white flowers, and potentilla, with bloom of gold, are shrubs which lend a charm to much of the mountain-section. Black birch and alder trim many of the streams, and the mountain maple is thinly scattered from the foothills to nine thousand feet altitude. Wild roses are frequently found near the maple, and gooseberry bushes fringe many a brook. Huckleberries flourish on the timbered slopes, and kinnikinick gladdens many a gravelly stretch or slope. [Illustration: A GROVE OF SILVER SPRUCE] Between the altitudes of eight thousand and ten thousand feet there are extensive forests of the indomitable lodge-pole pine. This borders even more extensive forests of Engelmann spruce. Lodge-pole touches timber-line in a few places, and Engelmann spruce climbs up to it in every cañon or moist depression. Along with these, at timber-line, are _flexilis_ pine, balsam fir, arctic willow, dwarf black birch, and the restless little aspen. All timber-line trees are dwarfed and most of them distorted. Conditions at timber-line are severe, but the presence, in places, of young trees farthest up the slopes suggests that these severe conditions may be developing hardier trees than any that now are growing on this forest frontier. If this be true, then timber-line on the Rockies is yet to gain a higher limit. Since the day of "Pike's Peak or bust," fires have swept over more than half of the primeval forest area in Colorado. Some years ago, while making special efforts to prevent forest fires from starting, I endeavored to find out the cause of these fires. I regretfully found that most of them were the result of carelessness, and I also made a note to the effect that there are few worse things to be guilty of than carelessly setting fire to a forest. Most of these forest fires had their origin from camp-fires which the departing campers had left unextinguished. There were sixteen fires in one summer, which I attributed to the following causes: campers, nine; cigar, one; lightning, one; locomotive, one; stockmen, two; sheep-herders, one; and sawmill, one. Fires have made the Rocky Mountains still more rocky. In many places the fires burn their way to solid rock. In other places the humus, or vegetable mould, is partly consumed by fire, and the remainder is in a short time blown away by wind or washed away by water. Fires often leave only blackened granite rock behind, so that in many places they have not only consumed the forests, but also the food upon which the new forests might have fed. Many areas where splendid forests grew, after being fire-swept, show only barren granite. As some of the granite on the Rockies disintegrates slowly, it will probably require several hundred years for Nature to resoil and reforest some of these fire-scarred places. However, upon thousands of acres of the Rockies millions of young trees are just beginning to grow, and if these trees be protected from fire, a forest will early result. I never see a little tree bursting from the earth, peeping confidently up among the withered leaves, without wondering how long it will live or what trials or triumphs it will have. I always hope that it will find life worth living, and that it will live long to better and to beautify the earth. I hope it will love the blue sky and the white clouds passing by. I trust it will welcome all seasons and ever join merrily in the music, the motion, and the movement of the elemental dance with the winds. I hope it will live with rapture in the flower-opening days of spring and also enjoy the quiet summer rain. I hope it will be a home for the birds and hear their low, sweet mating-songs. I trust that when comes the golden peace of autumn days, it will be ready with fruited boughs for the life to come. I never fail to hope that if this tree is cut down, it may be used for a flagpole to keep our glorious banner in the blue above, or that it may be built into a cottage where love will abide; or if it must be burnt, that it will blaze on the hearthstone in a home where children play in the firelight on the floor. In many places the Rockies rise more than three thousand feet above the heights where live the highest struggling trees at timber-line, but these steep alpine slopes are not bare. The rocks are tinted with lichens. In places are miles of grassy slopes and miniature meadows, covered with coarse sedges and bright tender flowers. Among the shrubs the _Betula glandulosa_ is probably commonest, while _Dasiphora fruticosa_ and _Salix chlorophylla_ are next in prominence. Here and there you will see the golden gaillardia, the silver and blue columbines, splendid arrays of sedum, many marsh-marigolds, lungworts, paint-brushes of red and white and yellow green, beds of purple primroses, sprinklings of alpine gentians, many clusters of live-forever, bunches of honey-smelling valerian, with here and there standing the tall stalks of fraseria, or monument-plant. There are hundreds of other varieties of plants, and the region above timber-line holds many treasures that are dear to those who love flowers and who appreciate them especially where cold and snow keep them tiny. Above timber-line are many bright blossoms that are familiar to us, but dwarfed to small size. One needs to get down and lie upon the ground and search carefully with a magnifying-glass, or he will overlook many of these brave bright but tiny flowers. Here are blue gentians less than half an inch in height, bell-flowers only a trifle higher, and alpine willows so tiny that their catkins touch the ground. One of the most attractive and beautiful of these alpine flowers is the blue honeysuckle or polemonium, about an inch in height. I have found it on mountain-tops, in its fresh, clear coloring, at an altitude of fourteen thousand feet, as serene as the sky above it. A climb up the Rockies will develop a love for nature, strengthen one's appreciation of the beautiful world outdoors, and put one in tune with the Infinite. It will inspire one with the feeling that the Rockies have a rare mountain wealth of their own. They are not to be compared with the Selkirks or the Alps or any other unlike range of mountains. The Rockies are not a type, but an individuality, singularly rich in mountain scenes which stir one's blood and which strengthen and sweeten life. Besieged by Bears Two old prospectors, Sullivan and Jason, once took me in for the night, and after supper they related a number of interesting experiences. Among these tales was one of the best bear-stories I have ever heard. The story was told in the graphic, earnest, realistic style so often possessed by those who have lived strong, stirring lives among crags and pines. Although twenty years had gone by, these prospectors still had a vivid recollection of that lively night when they were besieged by three bears, and in recounting the experience they mingled many good word-pictures of bear behavior with their exciting and amusing story. "This happened to us," said Sullivan, "in spite of the fact that we were minding our own business and had never hunted bears." The siege occurred at their log cabin during the spring of 1884. They were prospecting in Geneva Park, where they had been all winter, driving a tunnel. They were so nearly out of supplies that they could not wait for snowdrifts to melt out of the trail. Provisions must be had, and Sullivan thought that, by allowing twice the usual time, he could make his way down through the drifts and get back to the cabin with them. So one morning, after telling Jason that he would be back the next evening, he took their burro and set off down the mountain. On the way home next day Sullivan had much difficulty in getting the loaded burro through the snowdrifts, and when within a mile of the cabin, they stuck fast. Sullivan unpacked and rolled the burro out of the snow, and was busily repacking, when the animal's uneasiness made him look round. [Illustration: OURAY, COLORADO A typical mining town] In the edge of the woods, only a short distance away, were three bears, apparently a mother and her two well-grown children. They were sniffing the air eagerly and appeared somewhat excited. The old bear would rise on her hind paws, sniff the air, then drop back to the ground. She kept her nose pointed toward Sullivan, but did not appear to look at him. The smaller bears moved restlessly about; they would walk a few steps in advance, stand erect, draw their fore paws close to their breasts, and sniff, sniff, sniff the air, upward and in all directions before them. Then they would slowly back up to the old bear. They all seemed very good-natured. When Sullivan was unpacking the burro, the wrapping had come off two hams which were among the supplies, and the wind had carried the delicious aroma to the bears, who were just out of their winter dens after weeks of fasting. Of course, sugar-cured hams smelled good to them. Sullivan repacked the burro and went on. The bears quietly eyed him for some distance. At a turn in the trail he looked back and saw the bears clawing and smelling the snow on which the provisions had lain while he was getting the burro out of the snowdrift. He went on to the cabin, had supper, and forgot the bears. The log cabin in which he and Jason lived was a small one; it had a door in the side and a small window in one end. The roof was made of a layer of poles thickly covered with earth. A large shepherd-dog often shared the cabin with the prospectors. He was a playful fellow, and Sullivan often romped with him. Near their cabin were some vacant cabins of other prospectors, who had "gone out for the winter" and were not yet back for summer prospecting. The evening was mild, and as soon as supper was over Sullivan filled his pipe, opened the door, and sat down on the edge of the bed for a smoke, while Jason washed the dishes. He had taken only a few pulls at his pipe when there was a rattling at the window. Thinking the dog was outside, Sullivan called, "Why don't you go round to the door?" This invitation was followed by a momentary silence, then smash! a piece of sash and fragments of window-glass flew past Sullivan and rattled on the floor. He jumped to his feet. In the dim candle-light he saw a bear's head coming in through the window. He threw his pipe of burning tobacco into the bear's face and eyes, and then grabbed for some steel drills which lay in the corner on the floor. The earth roof had leaked, and the drills were ice-covered and frozen fast to the floor. While Sullivan was dislodging the drills, Jason began to bombard the bear vigorously with plates from the table. The bear backed out; she was looking for food, not clean plates. However, the instant she was outside, she accepted Sullivan's invitation and went round to the door! And she came for it with a rush! Both Sullivan and Jason jumped to close the door. They were not quick enough, and instead of one bear there were three! The entire family had accepted the invitation, and all were trying to come in at once! When Sullivan and Jason threw their weight against the door it slammed against the big bear's nose,--a very sensitive spot. She gave a savage growl. Apparently she blamed the two other bears either for hurting her nose or for being in the way. At any rate, a row started; halfway in the door the bears began to fight; for a few seconds it seemed as if all the bears would roll inside. Sullivan and Jason pushed against the door with all their might, trying to close it. During the struggle the bears rolled outside and the door went shut with a bang. The heavy securing cross-bar was quickly put into place; but not a moment too soon, for an instant later the old bear gave a furious growl and flung herself against the door, making it fairly crack; it seemed as if the door would be broken in. Sullivan and Jason hurriedly knocked their slab bed to pieces and used the slats and heavy sides to prop and strengthen the door. The bears kept surging and clawing at the door, and while the prospectors were spiking the braces against it and giving their entire attention to it, they suddenly felt the cabin shake and heard the logs strain and give. They started back, to see the big bear struggling in the window. Only the smallness of the window had prevented the bear from getting in unnoticed, and surprising them while they were bracing the door. The window was so small that the bear in trying to get in had almost wedged fast. With hind paws on the ground, fore paws on the window-sill, and shoulders against the log over the window, the big bear was in a position to exert all her enormous strength. Her efforts to get in sprung the logs and gave the cabin the shake which warned. Sullivan grabbed one of the steel drills and dealt the bear a terrible blow on the head. She gave a growl of mingled pain and fury as she freed herself from the window. Outside she backed off growling. For a little while things were calmer. Sullivan and Jason, drills in hand, stood guard at the window. After some snarling in front of the window the bears went round to the door. They clawed the door a few times and then began to dig under it. "They are tunneling in for us," said Sullivan. "They want those hams; but they won't get them." After a time the bears quit digging and started away, occasionally stopping to look hesitatingly back. It was almost eleven o'clock, and the full moon shone splendidly through the pines. The prospectors hoped that the bears were gone for good. There was an old rifle in the cabin, but there were no cartridges, for Sullivan and Jason never hunted and rarely had occasion to fire a gun. But, fearing that the animals might return, Sullivan concluded to go to one of the vacant cabins for a loaded Winchester which he knew to be there. As soon as the bears disappeared, he crawled out of the window and looked cautiously around; then he made a run for the vacant cabin. The bears heard him running, and when he had nearly reached the cabin, they came round the corner of it to see what was the matter. He was up a pine tree in an instant. After a few growls the bears moved off and disappeared behind a vacant cabin. As they had gone behind the cabin which contained the loaded gun, Sullivan thought it would be dangerous to try to make the cabin, for if the door should be swelled fast, the bears would surely get him. Waiting until he thought it safe to return, he dropped to the ground and made a dash for his own cabin. The bears heard him and again gave chase, with the evident intention of getting even for all their annoyances. It was only a short distance to his cabin, but the bears were at his heels when he dived in through the broken window. A bundle of old newspapers was then set on fire and thrown among the bears, to scare them away. There was some snarling, until one of the young bears with a stroke of a fore paw scattered the blazing papers in all directions; then the bears walked round the cabin-corner out of sight and remained quiet for several minutes. Just as Jason was saying, "I hope they are gone for good," there came a thump on the roof which told the prospectors that the bears were still intent on the hams. The bears began to claw the earth off the roof. If they were allowed to continue, they would soon clear off the earth and would then have a chance to tear out the poles. With a few poles torn out, the bears would tumble into the cabin, or perhaps their combined weight might cause the roof to give way and drop them into the cabin. Something had to be done to stop their clawing and if possible get them off the roof. Bundles of hay were taken out of the bed mattress. From time to time Sullivan would set fire to one of these bundles, lean far out through the window, and throw the blazing hay upon the roof among the bears. So long as he kept these fireworks going, the bears did not dig; but they stayed on the roof and became furiously angry. The supply of hay did not last long, and as soon as the annoyance from the bundles of fire ceased, the bears attacked the roof again with renewed vigor. Then it was decided to prod the bears with red-hot drills thrust up between the poles of the roof. As there was no firewood in the cabin, and as fuel was necessary in order to heat the drills, a part of the floor was torn up for that purpose. The young bears soon found hot drills too warm for them and scrambled or fell off the roof. But the old one persisted. In a little while she had clawed off a large patch of earth and was tearing the poles with her teeth. The hams had been hung up on the wall in the end of the cabin; the old bear was tearing just above them. Jason threw the hams on the floor and wanted to throw them out of the window. He thought that the bears would leave contented if they had them. Sullivan thought differently; he said that it would take six hams apiece to satisfy the bears, and that two hams would be only a taste which would make the bears more reckless than ever. The hams stayed in the cabin. The old bear had torn some of the poles in two and was madly tearing and biting at others. Sullivan was short and so were the drills. To get within easier reach, he placed the table almost under the gnawing bear, sprang upon it, and called to Jason for a red-hot drill. Jason was about to hand him one when he noticed a small bear climbing in at the window, and, taking the drill with him, he sprang over to beat the bear back. Sullivan jumped down to the fire for a drill, and in climbing back on the table he looked up at the gnawed hole and received a shower of dirt in his face and eyes. This made him flinch and he lost his balance and upset the table. He quickly straightened the table and sprang upon it, drill in hand. The old bear had a paw and arm thrust down through the hole between the poles. With a blind stroke she struck the drill and flung it and Sullivan from the table. He shouted to Jason for help, but Jason, with both young bears trying to get in at the window at once, was striking right and left. He had bears and troubles of his own and did not heed Sullivan's call. The old bear thrust her head down through the hole and seemed about to fall in, when Sullivan in desperation grabbed both hams and threw them out of the window. The young bears at once set up a row over the hams, and the old bear, hearing the fight, jumped off the roof and soon had a ham in her mouth. While the bears were fighting and eating, Sullivan and Jason tore up the remainder of the floor and barricaded the window. With both door and window closed, they could give their attention to the roof. All the drills were heated, and both stood ready to make it hot for the bears when they should again climb on the roof. But the bears did not return to the roof. After eating the last morsel of the hams they walked round to the cabin door, scratched it gently, and then became quiet. They had lain down by the door. It was two o'clock in the morning. The inside of the cabin was in utter confusion. The floor was strewn with wreckage; bedding, drills, broken boards, broken plates, and hay were scattered about. Sullivan gazed at the chaos and remarked that it looked like poor housekeeping. But he was tired, and, asking Jason to keep watch for a while, he lay down on the blankets and was soon asleep. Toward daylight the bears got up and walked a few times round the cabin. On each round they clawed at the door, as though to tell Sullivan that they were there, ready for his hospitality. They whined a little, half good-naturedly, but no one admitted them, and finally, just before sunrise, they took their departure and went leisurely smelling their way down the trail. Mountain Parks and Camp-Fires The Rockies of Colorado cross the State from north to south in two ranges that are roughly parallel and from thirty to one hundred miles apart. There are a number of secondary ranges in the State that are just as marked, as high, and as interesting as the main ranges, and that are in every way comparable with them except in area. The bases of most of these ranges are from ten to sixty miles across. The lowlands from which these mountains rise are from five to six thousand feet above sea-level, and the mountain-summits are from eleven thousand to thirteen thousand feet above the tides. In the entire mountain area of the State there are more than fifty peaks that are upward of fourteen thousand feet in height. Some of these mountains are rounded, undulating, or table-topped, but for the most part the higher slopes and culminating summits are broken and angular. Altogether, the Rocky Mountain area in Colorado presents a delightful diversity of parks, peaks, forests, lakes, streams, cañons, slopes, crags, and glades. On all of the higher summits are records of the ice age. In many places glaciated rocks still retain the polish given them by the Ice King. Such rocks, as well as gigantic moraines in an excellent state of preservation, extend from altitudes of twelve or thirteen thousand feet down to eight thousand, and in places as low as seven thousand feet. Some of the moraines are but enormous embankments a few hundred feet high and a mile or so in length. Many of these are so raw, bold, and bare, they look as if they had been completed or uncovered within the last year. Most of these moraines, however, especially those below timber-line, are well forested. No one knows just how old they are, but, geologically speaking, they are new, and in all probability were made during the last great ice epoch, or since that time. Among the impressive records of the ages that are carried by these mountains, those made by the Ice King probably stand first in appealing strangely and strongly to the imagination. All the Rocky Mountain lakes are glacier lakes. There are more than a thousand of these. The basins of the majority of them were excavated by ice from solid rock. Only a few of them have more than forty acres of area, and, with the exception of a very small number, they are situated well up on the shoulders of the mountains and between the altitudes of eleven thousand and twelve thousand feet. The lower and middle slopes of the Rockies are without lakes. The lower third of the mountains, that is, the foothill section, is only tree-dotted. But the middle portion, that part which lies between the altitudes of eight thousand and eleven thousand feet, is covered by a heavy forest in which lodge-pole pine, Engelmann spruce, and Douglas spruce predominate. Fire has made ruinous inroads into the primeval forest which grew here. A large portion of the summit-slopes of the mountains is made up of almost barren rock, in old moraines, glaciated slopes, or broken crags, granite predominating. These rocks are well tinted with lichen, but they present a barren appearance. In places above the altitude of eleven thousand feet the mountains are covered with a profuse array of alpine vegetation. This is especially true of the wet meadows or soil-covered sections that are continually watered by melting snows. In the neighborhood of a snowdrift, at an altitude of twelve thousand feet, I one day gathered in a small area one hundred and forty-two varieties of plants. Areas of "eternal snows," though numerous, are small, and with few exceptions, above twelve thousand feet. Here and there above timber-line are many small areas of moorland, which, both in appearance and in vegetation, seem to belong in the tundras of Siberia. While these mountains carry nearly one hundred varieties of trees and shrubs, the more abundant kinds of trees number less than a score. These are scattered over the mountains between the altitudes of six thousand and twelve thousand feet, while, charming and enlivening the entire mountain-section, are more than a thousand varieties of wild flowers. Bird-life is abundant on the Rockies. No State east of the Mississippi can show as great a variety as Colorado. Many species of birds well known in the East are found there, though, generally, they are in some way slightly modified. Most Rocky Mountain birds sound their notes a trifle more loudly than their Eastern relatives. Some of them are a little larger, and many of them have their colors slightly intensified. Many of the larger animals thrive on the slopes of the Rockies. Deer are frequently seen. Bobcats, mountain lions, and foxes leave many records. In September bears find the choke-cherry bushes and, standing on their hind legs, feed eagerly on the cherries, leaves, and good-sized sections of the twigs. The ground-hog apparently manages to live well, for he seems always fat. There is that wise little fellow the coyote. He probably knows more than he is given credit for knowing, and I am glad to say for him that I believe he does man more good than harm. He is a great destroyer of meadow mice. He digs out gophers. Sometimes his meal is made upon rabbits or grasshoppers, and I have seen him feeding upon wild plums. There are hundreds of ruins of the beaver's engineering works. Countless dams and fillings he has made. On the upper St. Vrain he still maintains his picturesque rustic home. Most of the present beaver homes are in high, secluded places, some of them at an altitude of eleven thousand feet. In midsummer, near most beaver homes one finds columbines, fringed blue gentians, orchids, and lupines blooming, while many of the ponds are green and yellow with pond-lilies. [Illustration: ESTES PARK AND THE BIG THOMPSON RIVER FROM THE TOP OF MT. OLYMPUS] During years of rambling I have visited and enjoyed all the celebrated parks of the Rockies, but one, which shall be nameless, is to me the loveliest of them all. The first view of it never fails to arouse the dullest traveler. From the entrance one looks down upon an irregular depression, several miles in length, a small undulating and beautiful mountain valley, framed in peaks with purple forested sides and bristling snowy grandeur. This valley is delightfully open, and has a picturesque sprinkling of pines over it, together with a few well-placed cliffs and crags. Its swift, clear, and winding brooks are fringed with birch and willow. A river crosses it with many a slow and splendid fold of silver. Not only is the park enchanting from the distance, but every one of its lakes and meadows, forests and wild gardens, has a charm and a grandeur of its own. There are lakes of many kinds. One named for the painter, now dead, who many times sketched and dreamed on its shores, is a beautiful ellipse; and its entire edge carries a purple shadow matting of the crowding forest. Its placid surface reflects peak and snow, cloud and sky, and mingling with these are the green and gold of pond-lily glory. Another lake is stowed away in an utterly wild place. It is in a rent between three granite peaks. Three thousand feet of precipice bristle above it. Its shores are strewn with wreckage from the cliffs and crags above, and this is here and there cemented together with winter's drifted snow. Miniature icebergs float upon its surface. Around it are mossy spaces, beds of sedge, and scattered alpine flowers, which soften a little the fierce aspect of this impressive scene. On the western margin of the park is a third lake. This lake and its surroundings are of the highest alpine order. Snow-line and tree-line are just above it. Several broken and snowy peaks look down into it, and splendid spruces spire about its shores. Down to it from the heights and snows above come waters leaping in white glory. It is the centre of a scene of wild grandeur that stirs in one strange depths of elemental feeling and wonderment. Up between the domes of one of the mountains is Gem Lake. It is only a little crystal pool set in ruddy granite with a few evergreens adorning its rocky shore. So far as I know, it is the smallest area of water in the world that bears the name of lake; and it is also one of the rarest gems of the lakelet world. The tree-distribution is most pleasing, and the groves and forests are a delight. Aged Western yellow pines are sprinkled over the open areas of the park. They have genuine character, marked individuality. Stocky and strong-limbed, their golden-brown bark broken into deep fissures and plateaus, scarred with storm and fire, they make one think and dream more than any other tree on the Rockies. By the brooks the clean and childlike aspens mingle with the willow and the alder or the handsome silver spruce. Some slopes are spread with the green fleece of massed young lodge-pole pines, and here and there are groves of Douglas spruce, far from their better home "where rolls the Oregon." The splendid and spiry Engelmann spruces climb the stern slopes eleven thousand feet above the ocean, where weird timber-line with its dwarfed and distorted trees shows the incessant line of battle between the woods and the weather. Every season nearly one thousand varieties of beautiful wild flowers come to perfume the air and open their "bannered bosoms to the sun." Many of these are of brightest color. They crowd the streams, wave on the hills, shine in the woodland vistas, and color the snow-edge. Daisies, orchids, tiger lilies, fringed gentians, wild red roses, mariposas, Rocky Mountain columbines, harebells, and forget-me-nots adorn every space and nook. While only a few birds stay in the park the year round, there are scores of summer visitors who come here to bring up the babies, and to enliven the air with song. Eagles soar the blue, and ptarmigan, pipits, and sparrows live on the alpine moorlands. Thrushes fill the forest aisles with melody, and by the brooks the ever-joyful water-ouzel mingles its music with the song of ever-hurrying, ever-flowing waters. Among the many common birds are owls, meadowlarks, robins, wrens, magpies, bluebirds, chickadees, nuthatches, and several members of the useful woodpecker family, together with the white-throated sparrow and the willow thrush. Speckled and rainbow trout dart in the streams. Mountain sheep climb and pose on the crags; bear, deer, and mountain lions are still occasionally seen prowling the woods or hurrying across the meadows. The wise coyote is also seen darting under cover, and is frequently heard during the night. Here among the evergreens is found that small and audacious bit of intensely interesting and animated life, the Douglas squirrel, and also one of the dearest of all small animals, the merry chipmunk. Along the brooks are a few small beaver colonies, a straggling remnant of a once numerous population. It is to be hoped that this picturesque and useful race will be allowed to extend its domain. The park has also a glacier, a small but genuine chip of the old block, the Ice King. The glacier is well worth visiting, especially late in summer, when the winter mantle is gone from its crevasses, leaving revealed its blue-green ice and its many grottoes. It is every inch a glacier. There are other small glaciers above the Park, but these glacial remnants, though interesting, are not as imposing as the glacial records, the old works which were deposited by the Ice King. The many kinds of moraines here display his former occupation and activities. There are glaciated walls, polished surfaces, eroded basins, and numerous lateral moraines. One of the moraines is probably the largest and certainly one of the most interesting in the Rockies. It occupies about ten square miles on the eastern slope of the mountain. Above timber-line this and other moraines seem surprisingly fresh and new, as though they had been formed only a few years, but below tree-line they are forested, and the accumulation of humus upon them shows that they have long been bearers of trees. The rugged Peak looks down over all this wild garden, and is a perpetual challenge to those who go up to the sky on mountains. It is a grand old granite peak. There are not many mountains that require more effort from the climber, and few indeed can reward him with such a far-spreading and magnificent view. [Illustration: IN THE UNCOMPAHGRE MOUNTAINS] One of the most interesting and impressive localities in the Rockies lies around Mt. Wetterhorn, Mt. Coxcomb, and Uncompahgre Peak. Here I have found the birds confiding, and most wild animals so tame that it was a joy to be with them. But this was years ago, and now most of the wild animals are wilder and the birds have found that man will not bear acquaintance. Most of this region was recently embraced in the Uncompahgre National Forest. It has much for the scientist and nature-lover: the mountain-climber will find peaks to conquer and cañons to explore; the geologist will find many valuable stone manuscripts; the forester who interviews the trees will have from their tongues a story worth while; and here, too, are some of Nature's best pictures for those who revel only in the lovely and the wild. It is a strikingly picturesque by-world, where there are many illuminated and splendid fragments of Nature's story. He who visits this section will first be attracted by an array of rock-formations, and, wander where he will, grotesque and beautiful shapes in stone will frequently attract and interest his attention. The rock-formation is made up of mixtures of very unequally tempered rock metal, which weathers in strange, weird, and impressive shapes. Much of this statuary is gigantic and uncouth, but some of it is beautiful. There are minarets, monoliths, domes, spires, and shapeless fragments. In places there are, seemingly, restive forms not entirely free from earth. Most of these figures are found upon the crests of the mountains, and many of the mountain-ridges, with their numerous spikes and gigantic monoliths, some of which are tilted perilously from the perpendicular, give one a feeling of awe. Some of the monoliths appear like broken, knotty tree-trunks. Others stand straight and suggest the Egyptian obelisks. They hold rude natural hieroglyphics in relief. One mountain, which is known as Turret-Top, is crowned with what from a distance seems to be a gigantic picket-fence. This fence is formed by a row of monolithic stones. One of the most remarkable things connected with this strange locality is that its impressive landscapes may be overturned or blotted out, or new scenes may be brought forth, in a day. The mountains do not stand a storm well. A hard rain will dissolve ridges, lay bare new strata, undermine and overturn cliffs. It seems almost a land of enchantment, where old landmarks may disappear in a single storm, or an impressive landscape come forth in a night. Here the god of erosion works incessantly and rapidly, dissecting the earth and the rocks. During a single storm a hilltop may dissolve, a mountain-side be fluted with slides, a grove be overturned and swept away by an avalanche, or a lake be buried forever. This rapid erosion of slopes and summits causes many changes and much upbuilding upon their bases. Gulches are filled, water-courses invaded, rivers bent far to one side, and groves slowly buried alive. One night, while I was in camp on the slope of Mt. Coxcomb, a prolonged drought was broken by a very heavy rain. Within an hour after the rain started, a large crag near the top of the peak fell and came crashing and rumbling down the slope. During the next two hours I counted the rumbling crash of forty others. I know not how many small avalanches may have slipped during this time that I did not hear. The next day I went about looking at the new landscapes and the strata laid bare by erosion and landslide, and up near the top of this peak I found a large glaciated lava boulder. A lava boulder that has been shaped by the ice and has for a time found a resting-place in a sedentary formation, then been uplifted to near a mountain-top, has a wonder-story of its own. One day I came across a member of the United States Geological Survey who had lost his way. At my camp-fire that evening I asked him to hug facts and tell me a possible story of the glaciated lava boulder. The following is his account:-- The shaping of that boulder must have antedated by ages the shaping of the Sphinx, and its story, if acceptably told, would seem more like fancy than fact. If the boulder were to relate, briefly, its experiences, it might say: "I helped burn forests and strange cities as I came red-hot from a volcano's throat, and I was scarcely cool when disintegration brought flowers to cover my dead form. By and by a long, long winter came, and toward the close of it I was sheared off, ground, pushed, rolled, and rounded beneath the ice. 'Why are you grinding me up?' I asked the glacier. 'To make food for the trees and the flowers during the earth's next temperate epoch,' it answered. One day a river swept me out of its delta and I rolled to the bottom of the sea. Here I lay for I know not how long, with sand and boulders piling upon me. Here heat, weight, and water fixed me in a stratum of materials that had accumulated below and above me. My stratum was displaced before it was thoroughly solidified, and I felt myself slowly raised until I could look out over the surface of the sea. The waves at once began to wear me, and they jumped up and tore at me until I was lifted above their reach. At last, when I was many thousand feet above the waves, I came to a standstill. Then my mountain-top was much higher than at present. For a long time I looked down upon a tropical world. I am now wondering if the Ice King will come for me again." The Engelmann spruce forest here is an exceptionally fine one, and the geologist and I discussed it and trees in general. Some of the Indian tribes of the Rockies have traditions of a "Big Fire" about four centuries ago. There is some evidence of a general fire over the Rockies about the time that the Indian's tradition places it, but in this forest there were no indications that there had ever been a fire. Trees were in all stages of growth and decay. Humus was deep. Here I found a stump of a Douglas spruce that was eleven feet high and about nine feet in diameter. It was so decayed that I could not decipher the rings of growth. This tree probably required at least a thousand years to reach maturity, and many years must have elapsed for its wood to come to the present state of decay. Over this stump was spread the limbs of a live tree that was four hundred years of age. Trees have tongues, and in this forest I interviewed many patriarchs, had stories from saplings, examined the mouldy, musty records of many a family tree, and dug up some buried history. The geologist wanted in story form a synopsis of what the records said and what the trees told me, so I gave him this account:-- "We climbed in here some time after the retreat of the last Ice King and found aspen and lodge-pole pine in possession. These trees fought us for several generations, but we finally drove them out. For ages the Engelmann spruce family has had undisputed possession of this slope. We stand amid three generations of mouldering ancestors, and beneath these is the sacred mould of older generations still. [Illustration: A GRASS-PLOT AMONG ENGELMANN SPRUCE] "One spring, when most of the present grown-up trees were very young, the robins, as they flew north, were heard talking of strange men who were exploring the West Indies. A few years later came the big fire over the Rockies, which for months choked the sky with smoke. Fire did not get into our gulch, but from birds and bears which crowded into it we learned that straggling trees and a few groves on the Rockies were all that had escaped with their lives. Since we had been spared, we all sent out our seed for tree-colonies as rapidly as we could, and in so doing we received much help from the birds, the squirrels, and the bears, so that it was not long before we again had our plumes waving everywhere over the Rockies. About a hundred and sixty years ago, an earthquake shook many of us down and wounded thousands of others with the rock bombardment from the cliffs. The drought a century ago was hard on us, and many perished for water. Not long after the drought we began to see the trappers, but they never did us any harm. Most of them were as careful of our temples as were the Indians. While the trappers still roamed, there came a very snowy winter, and snow-slides mowed us down by thousands. Many of us were long buried beneath the snow. The old trees became dreadfully alarmed, and they feared that the Ice King was returning. For weeks they talked of nothing else, but in the spring, when the mountain-sides began to warm and peel off in earth-avalanches, we had a real danger to discuss. "Shortly after the snowy winter, the gold-seekers came with their fire havoc. For fifty years we have done our best to hold our ground, but beyond our gulch relentless fire and flashing steel, together with the floods with which outraged Nature seeks to revenge herself, have slain the grand majority, and much, even, of the precious dust of our ancestors has been washed away." With the exception of the night I had the geologist, my days and nights in this locality were spent entirely alone. The blaze of the camp-fire, moonlight, the music and movement of the winds, light and shade, and the eloquence of silence all impressed me more deeply here than anywhere else I have ever been. Every day there was a delightful play of light and shade, and this was especially effective on the summits; the ever-changing light upon the serrated mountain-crests kept constantly altering their tone and outline. Black and white they stood in midday glare, but a new grandeur was born when these tattered crags appeared above storm-clouds. Fleeting glimpses of the crests through a surging storm arouse strange feelings, and one is at bay, as though having just awakened amid the vast and vague on another planet. But when the long, white evening light streams from the west between the minarets, and the black buttressed crags wear the alpine glow, one's feelings are too deep for words. The wind sometimes flowed like a torrent across the ridges, surging and ripping between the minarets, then bearing down like an avalanche upon the purple sylvan ocean, where it tossed the trees with boom, roar, and wild commotion. I usually camped where it showed the most enthusiasm. Here I often enjoyed the songs or the fierce activities of the wind. The absence and the presence of wind ever stirred me strongly. Weird and strange are the feelings that flow as the winds sweep and sound through the trees. The Storm King has a bugle at his lips, and a deep, elemental hymn is sung while the blast surges wild through the pines. Mother Nature is quietly singing, singing soft and low while the breezes pause and play in the pines. From the past one has been ever coming, with the future destined ever to go when, with centuries of worshipful silence, one waits for the winds in the pines. Ever the good old world grows better both with songs and with silence in the pines. Here the energy and eloquence of silence was at its best. That all-pervading presence called silence has its happy home within the forest. Silence sounds rhythmic to all, and attunes all minds to the strange message, the rhapsody of the universe. Silence is almost as kind to mortals as its sweet sister sleep. A primeval spruce forest crowds all the mountain-slopes of the Uncompahgre region from an altitude of eight thousand feet to timber-line. So dense is this forest that only straggling bits of sun-fire ever fall to the ground. Beneath these spiry, crowding trees one has only "the twilight of the forest noon." This forest, when seen from near-by mountain-tops, seems to be a great ragged, purple robe hanging in folds from the snow-fields, while down through it the white streams rush. A few crags pierce it, sun-filled grass-plots dot its expanse at intervals, and here and there it is rent with a vertical avalanche lane. Many a happy journey and delightful climb I have had in the mountains all alone by moonlight, and in the Uncompahgre district I had many a moonlight ramble. I know what it is to be alone on high peaks with the moon, and I have felt the spell that holds the lonely wanderer when, on a still night, he feels the wistful, tender touch of the summer air, while the leaves whisper and listen in the moonlight, and the moon-toned etchings of the pines fall upon the magic forest floor. One of the best moonlit times that I have had in this region was during my last visit to it. One October night I camped in a grass-plot in the depths of a spruce forest. The white moon rose grandly from behind the minareted mountain, hesitated for a moment among the tree-spires, then tranquilly floated up into space. It was a still night. There was silence in the treetops. The river near by faintly murmured in repose. Everything was at rest. The grass-plot was full of romantic light, and on its eastern margin was an etching of spiry spruce. A dead and broken tree on the edge of the grass-plot looked like a weird prowler just out of the woods, and seemed half-inclined to come out into the light and speak to me. All was still. The moonlit mist clung fantastically to the mossy festoons of the fir trees. I was miles from the nearest human soul, and as I stood in the enchanting scene, amid the beautiful mellow light, I seemed to have been wafted back into the legend-weaving age. The silence was softly invaded by zephyrs whispering in the treetops, and a few moonlit clouds that showed shadow centre-boards came lazily drifting along the bases of the minarets, as though they were looking for some place in particular, although in no hurry to find it. Heavier cloud-flotillas followed, and these floated on the forest sea, touching the treetops with the gentleness of a lover's hand. I lay down by my camp-fire to let my fancy frolic, and fairest dreams came on. It was while camping once on the slope of Mt. Coxcomb that I felt most strongly the spell of the camp-fire. I wish every one could have a night by a camp-fire,--by Mother Nature's old hearthstone. When one sits in the forest within the camp-fire's magic tent of light, amid the silent, sculptured trees, there go thrilling through one's blood all the trials and triumphs of our race. The blazing wood, the ragged and changing flame, the storms and calms, the mingling smoke and blaze, the shadow-figures that dance against the trees, the scenes and figures in the fire,--with these, though all are new and strange, yet you feel at home once more in the woods. A camp-fire in the forest is the most enchanting place on life's highway by which to have a lodging for the night. Index Alma, 119, 127. _Arctostaphylos Uva-Ursi_. _See_ Kinnikinick. Aspen, 204-206, 208. Bears, vapor from a bear, 20; a bear and her cubs, 79; prospectors besieged by, 217-229; feeding on choke-cherries, 237. Beaver, 238, 242; usefulness of, 53; cutting trees, 54-56; young, 56-58; houses of, 57; granary of, 58; tools of, 58, 59; dam-building, 59, 60; growth of a dam, 61; the dam a highway, 61; influence of dams on stream-flow, 61-64; dams catching and holding soil, 64-67; value of, 67. Birds, Rocky Mountain, abundance of, 151, 152, 237; various species of, 152-159; song of, 159; a pet quail, 160-167; of a mountain park, 241, 242. Boulder, a lava, 247-249. Cabin, a night in a deserted, 22, 23. Camp-fires, 5, 6, 77; the spell of the camp-fire, 256, 257. Camping outfit, 4. Carpenter, Prof. L. G., 4, 83. Chambers Lake, 93. Chickadee, 155. Chipmunk, 242. Columbine, 208. Cottonwood, broad-leaf, 200. Cottonwood, narrow-leaf, 200. Coyotes, 77, 242; Scotch and the, 133-138; usefulness of, 237. Crested Butte, 7. Crow, 156-158. Deer, 9. Dog, the story of a collie, 131-147; a St. Bernard and a pet quail, 160, 164-167. Edwinia, 208. Electrical phenomena, in winter, 26; before the Poudre flood, 83-95. Fir, balsam (_Abies lasiocarpa_), 207, 208. Fir, Douglas. _See_ Spruce, Douglas. Fires, forest, 12, 14; and the lodge-pole pine, 186, 187, 191, 192; causes of, 209; effects of, 209, 210; Indian tradition of a "Big Fire," 249, 250. Flowers, above timber-line, 211-213; of a mountain park, 241. Forestry, an address on, 13, 14. Gem Lake, 240. Geneva Park, 217. Geologist, a night with a, 247-252. Girl, climbing Long's Peak with an eight-year-old, 99-111. Glaciation, 234, 235, 243. Glaciers, 243. Grand Ditch Camp, 93. Grand Lake, 14, 15, 22. Ground-hog, 110, 237. Grouse, 9. Hague's Peak, 84. Hoosier Pass, 119, 123. Horses, return, 115-118; Midget, 119-128. Hotel, ejected from a, 11. Ice, fine arts of, 12. Kinnikinick, a plant pioneer, 171-175; its nursery for trees, 175, 176; growth of, 176, 177; flowers and fruit of, 177; as a bed, 177, 178; a legend of, 178, 179; reclaiming work of, 180. Lakes, 235, 239, 240. Lead Mountain, 9. Leadville, 125. Lion, mountain, 6, 20, 23; an epicure, 9, 10; tracked by a, 10. Long's Peak, 15, 84; a climb up, with a little girl, 99-111; summit of, 109, 110; Scotch and the young lady on, 138-141; a winter climb with Scotch, 142-147; birds on summit of, 158. Loveland, 91. Mammals, 237. Medicine Bow National Forest, 23. Medicine-men, 10, 11. Mesa Verde, 31, 48, 49. Moonlight, the mountains by, 254-256. Mt. Coxcomb, 244; camping on the slope of, 246-254, 256. Mt. Lincoln, 11, 123. Mt. Richthofen, 93. Mt. Silverheels, 120, 121. Mt. Wetterhorn, 244. Ouzel, water, 100-102, 152, 153, 158, 159. Park, a Rocky Mountain, 238-244. Pine, nursed by kinnikinick, 175, 176. Pine, lodge-pole, its names, 183; description of, 183; its habit of growth, 183, 184; its aggressive character, 184; distribution of, 184, 185, 208; its method of dispersing its seeds, 185-187, 191; growth of, 187, 188, 193, 194; as a colonist and pioneer, 189; cones embedded in, 189, 190; sunlight necessary to, 190; fire in a forest of, 191, 192; enemies of, 193; uses of, 193; value of, 193-195. Pine, Western yellow, a thousand-year-old, 31-50; habits of the, 200-204; character of the, 240. _Pinus flexilis_, 188, 208. Plants, of the summit-slopes, 235, 236. Potentilla, 208. Poudre Lakes, 86. Poudre Valley, flood in, 83, 95. Ptarmigan, 9, 107, 153, 158. Quail, a pet, 161-167. Rabbit, snowshoe, 9. Rex, a St. Bernard dog, 160, 164-167. Rock, easily eroded, 246. Rock-formations, grotesque and beautiful, 245, 246. Rocky Mountains, individuality of, 213; character of, 233, 234. Schoolhouse, a mountain, 13. Sheep, mountain, 9; a flock of, 78. Silence, 254. Snow, tracks in, 9. Snow-cornice, breaking through a, 17. Snow-fall, 7. Snow-slides, 19, 20; an adventure with a snow-slide, 24, 25. Snowstorm, a, 8. Solitaire, 153-155. Specimen Mountain, electrical phenomena on, 88-92. Spruce, Colorado blue or silver, 207, 208. Spruce, Douglas, or Douglas fir, 188, 189, 203, 204; a large stump, 249. Spruce, Engelmann, 188, 189, 208, 241, 249; the story of a forest of, 250-252. Squirrel, Douglas, 242; as a nurseryman, 34, 35; and the old pine, 35, 47; character of, 79; cutting off and storing cones, 102-104. Thrush, Audubon's hermit, 152, 154. Timber-line, 104-107, 208, 209. Trap Creek, 94, 95. Trees, of the Rocky Mountains, 199-211, 236. _See also individual species_. Turret-Top, 245. Uncompahgre National Forest, 244. Uncompahgre Peak, 244. Uncompahgre region, wonders of the, 244-256. Wind, 253. Wolves, an adventure with, 71-75. Woodpecker, Texas, 39, 40. The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A Transcriber's Note Variant and inconsistent spellings in the original text have been retained in this ebook (for instance: kodak, cosy, halfway and half-way; kinnikinick and Kinnikinick). Some illustrations have been moved from their original locations to paragraph breaks, so as to be nearer to their corresponding text, or for ease of document navigation. Duplicate chapter titles have been removed in the text version and hidden in the HTML version of this ebook. The following typographical corrections have been made to this text: Page xi: Changed 64 to 63, to account for illustration repositioning Page 27: Changed spendid to splendid (calm and splendid forest) Page 202: Changed eight to eighty (eighty-five feet high) 
31035	----	UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Volume 14, No. 3, pp. 29-67, pls. 1 and 2, 3 figs. in text July 24, 1961 Mammals of Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado BY SYDNEY ANDERSON UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS LAWRENCE 1961 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS, MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Editors: E. Raymond Hall, Chairman, Henry S. Fitch, Robert W. Wilson Volume 14, No. 3, pp. 29-67, pls. 1 and 2, 3 figs. in text Published July 24, 1961 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS Lawrence, Kansas PRINTED IN THE STATE PRINTING PLANT TOPEKA, KANSAS 1961 28-7577 Mammals of Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado BY SYDNEY ANDERSON INTRODUCTION A person standing on the North Rim of the Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado sees a vast green plain sloping away to the south. The plain drops 2000 feet in ten miles. On a clear evening, before the sun reaches the horizon, the rays of the sun are reflected from great sandstone cliffs forming the walls of deep canyons that appear as crooked yellow lines in the distance. Canyon after canyon has cut into the sloping green plain. These canyons are roughly parallel and all open into the canyon of the Mancos River, which forms the southern boundary of the Mesa Verde. If the observer turns to the north he sees the arid Montezuma Valley 2000 feet below. A few green streaks and patches in the brown and barren low country denote streams and irrigated areas. To the northeast beyond the low country the towering peaks of the San Miguel and La Plata mountains rise more than 4000 feet above the vantage point on the North Rim at 8000 feet. To the northwest, in the hazy distance 90 miles away in Utah, lie the isolated heights of the La Sal Mountains, and 70 miles away, the Abajo Mountains (see Fig. 1). In the thirteenth century, harassed by nomadic tribes and beset by years of drouth, village dwelling Indians left their great cliff dwellings in the myriad canyons of the Mesa Verde, and thus ended a period of 1300 years of occupancy. The story of those 1300 years, unfolded through excavation and study of the dwellings along the cliffs and earlier dwellings on the top of the Mesa, is one of the most fascinating in ancient America. To stop destructive commercial exploitation of the ruins, to preserve them for future generations to study and enjoy, and to make them accessible to the public, more than 51,000 acres, including approximately half of the Mesa, have been set aside as Mesa Verde National Park, established in 1906. The policies of the National Park Service provide protection, not only for the features of major interest in each park, but for other features as well. Thus the policy in Mesa Verde National Park is not only to preserve the many ruins, but also the wildlife and plants. Five considerations prompted me to undertake a study of the mammals of Mesa Verde National Park: First, the relative lack of disturbance; second, the interesting position, zoogeographically, of the Mesa that extends as a spur of higher land from the mountains of southwestern Colorado and that is almost surrounded by arid country typical of much of the Southwest; third, the discovery in the Park of _Microtus mexicanus_, a species of the Southwest until then not known from Colorado; fourth, the co-operative spirit of the personnel at the Park when I visited there in 1955; and finally, the possibility of making a contribution not only to our knowledge of mammals, but to the interpretive program of the Park Service. [Illustration: FIG. 1. Map of the "four corners" region showing the position of Mesa Verde National Park (in black) relative to the mass of the Southern Rocky Mountains above 8000 feet elevation (indicated by stippled border) to the northeast in Colorado, and the positions of other isolated mountains in the region.] A Faculty Research Grant from The University of Kansas provided some secretarial help and field expenses for August and early September, 1956, when my wife, Justine, and I spent our vacation enjoyably collecting and studying animals in the Park. The co-operation of Dr. E. Raymond Hall is greatly appreciated; a grant to him from the American Heart Association provided field expenses for work by Mr. J.R. Alcorn, collector for The University of Kansas Museum of Natural History, in 1957. Mr. Harold R. Shepherd of Mancos, Colorado (Senior Game Biologist for the State of Colorado, Department of Game and Fish), provided advice in the field, helped in identifying plants, and saved specimens of rodents (in 1958 and 1959) taken in his studies of the effect of rodents on browse utilized by deer. Mr. J.D. Hart, Assistant Director of the Department of Game and Fish, issued a letter of authority to collect in Colorado; and Superintendent O.W. Carlson approved my appointment as a collaborator. Mr. "Don" Watson, then Park Archeologist, and Mrs. Jean M. Pinkley, now Park Archeologist, assisted us in 1956, and since then have provided advice and assistance, and have reviewed the manuscript of this report. Geologically, the Mesa Verde is the northern edge of a Cretaceous, coal-bearing, sandstone deposit called the Mesaverde group, which dips beneath the San Juan Basin of New Mexico. An abrupt retreating escarpment commonly forms on arid plateaus underlain by horizontal rocks of unequal strength, and characterizes the borders of mesas. Such an escarpment forms the North Rim of the Mesa Verde. However, the dip of the rocks has channelled drainage southward and erosion has cut numerous, deep, parallel-sided canyons rather than a simple, retreating escarpment. The Mesa Verde therefore is, technically speaking, a cuesta rather than a mesa. The remnants of the plateau left between the canyons are also (and again incorrectly in the technical sense) called mesas; Chapin Mesa and Wetherill Mesa are examples. Climatically, the Mesa Verde is arid; precipitation averaged 18.41 inches per year for a period of 37 years. Precipitation may be scattered through the year, and more important, may be erratic from month to month and from year to year. In addition to low precipitation and periods of drouth, a great amount of sunshine, and thin, well-drained soils on all but the more sheltered parts of the Mesa favor vegetation that requires neither great amounts of, nor a continuous supply of, water. The vegetation of the Mesa is illustrated in Plates 1 and 2, and consists predominantly of pinyon pine, _Pinus edulis_ Engelm., and Utah juniper, _Juniperus osteosperma_ (Torr.) Little. More sheltered areas along the North Rim and in most of the canyons support scattered small stands of Douglas fir, _Pseudotsuga menziesii_ (Merb.) Franco. These are the "spruce trees" of Spruce Tree Canyon. An occasional ponderosa pine, _Pinus ponderosa_ Laws., represents a vestige of more montane species of plants and animals in the Park. The dusky grouse, _Dendragapus obscurus_ (Say), occurs along the North Rim in oak-chaparral, and is one of the few montane species of birds; several montane mammals are discussed later. The vegetation of the Mesa Verde has not changed appreciably in the last thousand years. The tree rings of 13 centuries show that Douglas fir has grown essentially as it does now, varying with precipitation from year to year, and periodically suffering from drouth (Schulman, 1946:18). Surface ruins yield mostly pinyon and juniper; cave ruins yield more Douglas fir than surface ruins; and "only rarely does yellow pine [_Pinus ponderosa_] occur in the ruins, indicating that then, as now, this tree grew only in the northern and higher parts of the Mesa Verde, remote from most of the ruins" (Getty, 1935:21). Not all areas within the Park are undisturbed. The rights of way of roads are kept clear, as are campgrounds and other facilities in the area of headquarters. Part of the Mancos Valley within the Park is privately owned and is still in agricultural use. Cattle from land belonging to the Ute Indians wander into the Park from the Mancos Canyon along the floor of the canyon above the mouth of Weber Canyon. In addition to the pasture near headquarters, Prater Canyon below a fence across the canyon above Middle Well is used to pasture horses used by visitors to the Park and belonging to the pack and saddle concessioner. In 1956, the floor of Long Canyon was grazed by stock belonging to Utes, and horses ranged freely onto Wetherill Mesa as far as the North Rim. Occasionally livestock enter the floor of other canyons, for example Navajo, Soda, Prater, Morfield, and Waters canyons, owing to inadequate fencing, or no fencing. [Illustration: FIG. 2. Map of Mesa Verde National Park and vicinity. The map and this legend provide the names of places mentioned in the following accounts of mammals. Localities from which specimens have been preserved are indicated by dots. Localities within 1/2 mile of each other are not indicated by separate dots. Unnumbered dots designate some of the places from which specimens were obtained. The numbered dots are: (1) Prater Grade; (2) Upper Well, Prater Canyon, 7575 ft.; (3) Chickaree Draw, 8200 ft.; (4) 1/4 mi. N Middle Well, 7500 ft., Prater Canyon; (5) east side of Morfield Canyon about one mile below the well; (6) Lower Well, Prater Canyon; (7) Sect. 27, head of east fork Navajo Canyon; (8) Far View, designated on various specimens as Far View Ruins, Far View Point, and Far View House, 7700 ft.; (9) localities designated Utility Area, and Well, "Park Well," or "Old Park Well"; (10) Headquarters, including the designations 25 mi. [by road] SW Mancos, Museum, Hospital, head of Spruce Tree Canyon, Spruce Tree House, and Spruce Tree Lodge; (11) Cliff Palace, across the canyon about 1/4 mile southwest are Sun Temple and Oak Tree Ruin; (12) Square Tower House; (13) Balcony House; (14) Indian Cornfield, "Cornfield," or "Garden."] The first mammals from the Mesa to be preserved for scientific study were seven specimens in the United States National Museum (designated USNM in lists of specimens examined) obtained by Merritt Cary in 1907, and mentioned in his "Biological Survey of Colorado" (Cary, 1911). In 1931 and 1932, R.L. Landberg obtained a few specimens that are in the Denver Museum of Natural History. In 1935, C.W. Quaintance, Lloyd White, Harold P. Pratt, and A.E. Borell prepared specimens, some of which remain in the museum at the Park (all specimens in the museum at the Park are designated by "MV" for Mesa Verde and by their catalogue numbers), and some are in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California at Berkeley (designated "MVZ" in the following accounts). Specimens in The University of Kansas Museum of Natural History are referred to by catalogue numbers only. Specimens prepared by D. Watson bear dates from 1936 until 1955. In 1938, Raymond F. Harlow prepared some specimens; his Student Technician's Report of 7 typescript pages, for July 8 to September 9, 1938, is on file at Mesa Verde National Park. In 1944 and 1945, Dr. D.A. Sutton, then a student at the University of Colorado, collected chipmunks for his own study, and also some other specimens that are in the University of Colorado Museum and the Park Museum. In 1949, Dr. R.B. Finley, then a student at The University of Kansas, collected in and near the Park and obtained a few specimens preserved in The University of Kansas Museum of Natural History. Rodents preserved by Harold R. Shepherd have been mentioned. I have examined 244 specimens that were collected by the above persons. Between August 8 and September 4, 1956, and on July 17, 1960, I collected 216 mammals from Mesa Verde National Park. Between November 3, and 12, 1957, J.R. Alcorn collected 275 mammals from the Mesa. The total of specimens examined is 735. Written reports by C.W. Quaintance, H.P. Pratt, and R. Harlow have been of considerable use. A typescript report of 13 pages by Wildlife Technician H.P. Pratt for the period from September 9 to October 15, 1935, and monthly reports comprising 40 typescript pages and 4 pages with photographs by C.W. Quaintance for the period from February 18 through July 17, 1935, are on file at offices of Region Four, National Park Service, 180 New Montgomery Street, San Francisco 5, California. Chief Ranger Wade has kindly made available the files in his office, including reports of the Superintendent and reports of the Chief Ranger in earlier years, and Annual or Biennial Animal Census Reports since 1930. Special reports on prairie dogs, porcupines, and deer are in the files. These reports, and random reports that were regarded as reliable, are recorded on card files in both the Chief Ranger's office and Park Archeologist's office. Most of the information reported here on the larger mammals was gleaned from the above sources. A study of population fluctuations in porcupines by Donald A. Spencer and perhaps a study of movements of porcupines by Spencer, Wade and Fitch are to be published elsewhere. Other studies still in progress are mentioned in the following accounts. ACCOUNTS OF SPECIES Sorex merriami leucogenys Osgood Merriam's Shrew _Specimen_: MV 7898/507, head of Navajo Canyon (locality No. 7 in Fig. 2), October 21, 1954. This was the third reported specimen of the rare Merriam's shrew from Colorado (Rodeck and Anderson, 1956:436). Sorex vagrans obscurus Merriam Wandering Shrew _Specimens examined._--Total, 8: Morfield Canyon, 7600 ft., 75972, 75973; Upper Well, Prater Canyon, 7575 ft., 69235-69238; 1/4 mi. N Middle Well, Prater Canyon, 7500 ft., 69239-69240. The specimens from Prater Canyon were trapped in the grasses and sedges of the meadow comprising the floor of the canyon. The ground and vegetation were dry at the time of capture, September 2, 3, and 4, 1956. _Microtus montanus_ was the only other species taken in the mouse traps in the sedge and grass. Five of the six specimens from Prater Canyon are young, having slightly worn teeth; the sixth is an old adult male the teeth of which are so much worn that only a few traces of the reddish-brown pigment remain. His testes were 5 mm. long. These specimens are from an area of intergradation between _S. v. obscurus_ and _S. v. monticola_. The length of the maxillary tooth-row in these six specimens averaged 6.23 (6.1-6.4) millimeters. Comparison with average measurements of 6.6 and 6.8 in samples of _S. v. obscurus_, and of 5.9 in a sample of _S. v. monticola_ (Findley, 1955:64, 65) reveals the intermediate size of the specimens from the Mesa Verde. The gap between habitat suitable for _Sorex vagrans_ on the Mesa Verde and the nearest record-station for _S. v. monticola_ to the south and west in the Chuska Mountains is wider than the gap between the Mesa Verde and the nearest record-station for _S. v. obscurus_ to the north and east, one mile west of Mancos, 75971, 7000 feet, or at Silverton. On geographic grounds the specimens from the Mesa Verde are referred to _S. v. obscurus_. The two specimens from Morfield Canyon were trapped on November 4, 1957, and are grayish above and silvery below. Their pelage contrasts markedly with the dorsally brownish and ventrally buffy pelage of the September-taken specimens from Prater Canyon. Myotis californicus stephensi Dalquest California Myotis _Specimens examined._---Total, 3: Rock Springs, 7400 ft., 69243, 69246, August 21 and 22, 1956; 4505 Denver Museum, within the Park (exact locality not recorded), R.L. Landberg, July 27, 1931. The specimens from Rock Springs were an adult male and a non-pregnant adult female. Both were shot over the road in pinyon and juniper. The specimens are referred to _M. c. stephensi_ on account of their paleness, _stephensi_ being paler than _M. c. californicus_ from east of Mesa Verde in Colorado. Myotis evotis evotis (H. Allen) Long-eared Myotis _Specimens examined._--Total, 4: Chickaree Draw, Prater Canyon, 8200 ft., MV 7841/507, probably in the summer of 1935; Rock Springs, 7400 ft., 69241, August 23, 1956, and 69249, August 18, 1956; Museum, Headquarters, 6950 ft., 69251, August 24, 1956. An adult male (69241) was taken in a Japanese mist net stretched fifteen feet across a dirt road where it entered the stand of pinyon and juniper at the south edge of the burn on Wetherill Mesa between 7:20 and 8:30 p.m.; at the same place and time I captured five other bats of four species: _Myotis thysanodes_, _Myotis subulatus_, _Eptesicus fuscus_, and _Plecotus townsendii_. A piece of mist net attached to an aluminum hoop-net two and one half feet in diameter was used to good advantage in capturing bats rebounding from the larger mist net, and in frightening bats into the larger net when they approached closely. An adult male (69249) was shot at 7:20 p.m. while flying six to eight feet from the ground between pinyon trees up to 20 feet high; the air temperature was 70° F. A female (69251) was found seemingly exhausted on the floor in the museum at Park Headquarters in the daytime, and was immature as indicated by small size, open basicranial sutures, unworn teeth, weakly ossified zygoma, and open epiphyseal sutures of phalanges. Myotis subulatus melanorhinus (Merriam) Small-footed Myotis _Specimens examined._--Total, 8: Rock Springs, 7400 ft., 69242, 69244, 69245, 69247, 69248, August 21 to 23, 1956; Hospital, Park Headquarters, MV 7886/507, [Male], July 12, 1939; Headquarters, MV 7877/507, [Female], August 30, 1938; 4504 Denver Museum, within the Park (exact locality not recorded), R.L. Landberg, July 27, 1931. The specimens from Rock Springs are two adult males that were shot, and one adult male, one adult female, and one young male that were netted at the place described in the account of _Myotis evotis_. The three adult males are near the average color of _M. s. melanorhinus_, and distinctly darker than the _Myotis californicus_ from the Mesa Verde. In the female the pelage is paler and brighter, and the ears and membranes are darker, than in _M. californicus_. Myotis thysanodes thysanodes Miller Fringed Myotis _Specimen_: Rock Springs, 7400 ft., 69250, ad. [Female], August 23, 1956; taken in net as noted in account of _Myotis evotis_. Myotis volans interior Miller Long-legged Myotis _Specimen_: Rock Springs, 7400 ft., 69252, ad. [Female], August 21, 1956; shot over road. Eptesicus fuscus pallidus Young Big Brown Bat _Specimen_: Rock Springs, 7400 ft., 69253, ad. [Female], August 23, 1956; taken in net as noted in account of _Myotis evotis_. Plecotus townsendii pallescens (Miller) Townsend's Big-eared Bat _Specimens examined._--Total, 5: Rock Springs, 7400 ft., 69254, ad. [Female], non-pregnant, August 23, 1956; Square Tower House, 6700 ft., 69255-69258, March, 1955. The specimen from Rock Springs was taken in a net as noted in the account of _Myotis evotis_. The specimens from Square Tower House were obtained by D. Watson in a dimly lighted chamber formed by fracture in the rocks at the bottom of the canyon wall, above the talus slope. The bats were suspended from the wall of the chamber, which was at least six feet wide and fifteen feet long. Tadarida brasiliensis mexicana (Saussure) Brazilian Free-tailed Bat _Specimens examined._--Total, 2: Cliff Palace, 6800 ft., MV 7862/507 and 7863/507, males, both collected by A.E. Borell, on August 23, 1936. Lepus californicus texianus Waterhouse Black-tailed Jackrabbit The black-tailed jackrabbit inhabits the Montezuma Valley to the north of the Mesa Verde and the Mancos Valley to the northeast, and has been seen occasionally on the top of the Mesa according to reports with date and locality noted in the files at the Park for the years 1941, 1942, 1947, 1948, 1950, and 1951. In 1942 four observations were made, in 1950 and 1951 two observations were recorded each year, and in other years only one observation was recorded each year. Nine observations are for Chapin Mesa south of Far View; only two observations are for higher elevations on the North Rim. Sylvilagus audubonii warreni Nelson Desert Cottontail _Specimens examined._--Total, 2: Head of Prater Canyon, MV 7850/507; Far View Ruins, 75974, ad. [Female], non-pregnant, November 8, 1957. One specimen was shot, while it was sitting near a pile of logs, by J.R. Alcorn by means of a bow and arrow. Although _S. audubonii_ occurs on the Mesa along with _S. nuttallii_, _S. audubonii_ is the species of the lowlands throughout the western United States at the latitude of Mesa Verde National Park. For example, _S. a. warreni_ (69260) but not _S. n. pinetis_ was obtained along the east side of the Mancos River at 6200 feet elevation (less than 50 yards outside the Park) and the same was true at the same elevation at a place 4-1/2 mi. N of the Park (No. 69259 from 2 mi. E Cortez). Sylvilagus nuttallii pinetis (J.A. Allen) Nuttall's Cottontail _Specimens examined._--Total, 3: ad. [Male], 69263, skull only, dead on road, 1-3/4 mi. N Park Headquarters, 7275 feet, August 9, 1956; ad. [Female], 69261, no embryos, dead on road, 3/4 mi. S and 1-3/4 mi. W Park Point, 8000 ft, August 8, 1956; ad. [Male], 69262, shot in brushy area on the burn on Wetherill Mesa 2 mi. NNW Rock Springs, 7900 ft., August 24, 1956. Nuttall's cottontail in Colorado is in general the cottontail of the highlands, and the three localities just mentioned are on the top of the Mesa Verde. Sciurus aberti mimus Merriam Abert's Squirrel _Specimens examined._--Total, 2: [Male], MV 7872/507, prepared by D. Watson, killed by a car "near" the Park Well on September 24, 1937; [Female] (an unnumbered cased skin only), found dead "near" the Park Well on June 21, 1937. Since 1934 these squirrels have been observed and recorded each year except in 1938, 1943, 1947, 1953, 1957, and 1958. The 77 reported observations can be grouped as follows: 11 from within a mile of the entrance to the Park, 14 from the North Rim or higher parts of canyons adjacent to it, 38 from Chapin Mesa south of Far View, and 14 not classifiable. The large number of observations on Chapin Mesa, chiefly in the vicinity of Park Headquarters, indicates the presence of more observers rather than more squirrels in this area. Tamiasciurus hudsonicus fremonti (Audubon and Bachman) Red Squirrel _Specimens examined._--Total, 2: MV 7843/507, Chickaree Draw, Prater Canyon, 1935, C.W. Quaintance and Lloyd White; [Female], 69264, no embryos, 1/4 mi. NNW Middle Well, Prater Canyon, 7600 ft., August 31, 1956. Red squirrels, or chickarees as they are called in Colorado, are known from only one place on the Mesa Verde, a side canyon on the west side of Prater Canyon above Middle Well. This side canyon has been named Chickaree Draw by C.W. Quaintance, who, with Lloyd White, studied the chickaree there in 1935. Quaintance reported the small colony at 7800 feet elevation in Douglas fir beneath which were found piles of cones from which the seeds had been eaten by the chickarees. On May 29, 1935, White observed a chickaree eating green oak leaves. On June 3, 1935, a nest was found in an old hollow snag up under the rim rock; there were four young squirrels in the nest. At least one nest was in a juniper and was composed mostly of oak leaves and grass. One nest twenty-five feet from the ground in a Douglas fir was composed of oak leaves and finely shredded cedar bark. In August, 1956, I found these squirrels in the same area and I shot one specimen. Other chickarees were seen and heard and the characteristic piles of parts of Douglas fir cones still attest to their presence. On September 1, 1953, D. Watson observed a pair of chickarees in Prater Canyon. The only other specific record in the files at the Park is of two seen in a branch of Soda Canyon in late 1956. Jean Pinkley tells me that chickarees have been observed in 1958 and 1959 at several other localities from Prater Canyon to the hill at the head of Navajo Canyon. The extent to which increased observations indicate an increase in number of chickarees is uncertain, since the amounts of time spent in the field and the percentage of observations recorded are not known. Marmota flaviventris luteola A.H. Howell Yellow-bellied Marmot Records are available of observations at 14 different places in the Park and in 19 different years between 1930 and 1960. Approximately two-thirds of the observations have been on Prater Grade or in upper Prater Canyon or in upper Morfield Canyon. On the morning of August 24, 1956, Harold Shepherd and I heard the whistle of an animal that he was certain was a marmot, 2 mi. NNW of Rock Springs at the west rim of Wetherill Mesa. Mr. Shepherd has worked in areas occupied by marmots for years in southwestern Colorado. Wetherill Mesa is the locality farthest west in the Park where marmots are known to occur. They occur as far south as Cliff Palace. Cynomys gunnisoni zuniensis Hollister Gunnison's Prairie Dog _Specimens examined._--Total, 3: MV 7836/507, Prater Canyon, 7600 ft., C.W. Quaintance and L. White, May 24, 1935; [Female], MV 7847/507, head of Prater Canyon, June 13, 1935, C.W. Quaintance (the skin is on display); MV 7887/507, Prater Canyon, September 1, 1939. C.W. Quaintance in reports on the results of his work in 1935 included the following information: On February 20 in Prater Canyon Ranger Markley noticed that prairie dogs were active although about three feet of snow lay on the ground. Between April 15 and May 15 approximately 500 prairie dogs were in Prater Canyon above Lower Well; through field glasses 350 were counted. Young were first noted in Prater Canyon on July 12. Quaintance and Lloyd White had under observation two bulky nests of the red-tailed hawk in the tops of tall Douglas firs in side draws of Prater Canyon. Quaintance found near the rimrock a quarter of a mile from the prairie-dog town the skeletons of two prairie dogs between a sliver of a dead pinyon branch and the branch itself. Another skeleton lay on a dead limb fifteen feet from the ground. A red-tailed hawk once was observed to swoop down, seize a prairie dog and fly down the canyon. The four colonies found in the Park were in Prater Canyon, in Morfield Canyon, in the east fork of School Section Canyon, and in Whites Canyon. The last two were smaller colonies than the first two. Prairie dogs were observed away from these colonies. On June 20 a young prairie dog ran into a culvert on the Knife Edge Section of the road. Others were observed on the north side of the road, at the head of the east prong of School Section Canyon, on the road west of Park Point, and on the road at the head of Long Canyon five miles from the nearest known colony in the Park. Possibly this last individual came from the Montezuma Valley north of the Park. Mr. Prater, after whom Prater Canyon is named, homesteaded on the Mesa Verde in 1899. He informed Quaintance that prairie dogs were present in Morfield Canyon prior to 1900 but were not in Prater Canyon in 1899. Prater said he drowned out a few that came into Prater Canyon before 1914. In 1942, Chief Ranger Faha wrote in his Annual Animal Census Report that he had interviewed an old time resident (name not noted) who stated that prairie dogs were not present on the Mesa Verde until about 1905 or 1906 and that Helen Morfield, the daughter of Judge Morfield who homesteaded in Morfield Canyon, brought the first prairie dogs on the Mesa Verde. Estimates of the prairie-dog population in the Annual Animal Census Reports for 1935 through 1941 were: 1935--800, 1936--650, 1937--650, 1938--650, 1939--no report, 1940--1500 and increasing, 1941--slight decrease. After 1942 more adequate records were kept by Chief Ranger Wade and other Park Service personnel. On August 9, 1943, occupied burrows of prairie dogs were found to be thinly scattered down Prater Canyon from the head of the canyon at the Maintenance Camp to a point about one hundred feet below the lower well. The largest concentration was in the vicinity of the upper well near Prater's Cabin. Little new digging that would indicate a spreading population was noticed. Seemingly desirable, but unoccupied, habitat extended at least two miles south of the inhabited area. In Morfield Canyon, burrows were found from a point one hundred yards north of the fence at the south boundary of Section 17, south for a mile and one-half to a point one-third of a mile into Section 29. The greatest concentration was in the vicinity of Morfield Well. South of this point the burrows were found only along the narrow dry sides of the canyon and in sage-covered areas at slightly higher elevations than the rest of the floor of the canyon. Seemingly desirable habitat extended at least three miles to the south and one mile to the north of the occupied area. The report of the study in 1943 concluded with the statement that artificial control by poisoning would be unwise and unnecessary. Requests were being made at that time to exterminate prairie dogs in the Park on the basis of the unproved assumption that prairie dogs move from the Park to surrounding range land where extermination was then being attempted by poisoning. On August 10, 1944, no occupied burrows were found in Whites Canyon or the east fork of School Section Canyon. A heavy rain on August 9 made accurate count of occupied burrows possible. In Prater Canyon the occupied area extended 200 feet south of the area occupied in 1943. In Morfield Canyon no change had occurred. North of the fence in Morfield Canyon 130 occupied burrows were counted. More than one hole, if judged to be part of the same burrow system, were counted as one. The vegetation within the colony had continued to improve in spite of the large population of prairie dogs. On August 8 and 14, 1945, although a careful search was made, the only prairie dogs found in Prater Canyon were living in one burrow fifty yards from the Maintenance Camp. In Morfield Canyon the colony had decreased. Occupied burrows were found on the west side of the canyon near the fence and above the well (17 burrows), and below the well on the west side (estimated 30 burrows). The total population in both canyons was estimated to be 100, compared with 800 in the preceding year. The ground-water table was thought to be rising, and vegetation was increasing. On August 12, 1946, two prairie dogs were observed in Prater Canyon, one near the Maintenance Camp, and the other a mile to the south. In Morfield Canyon 18 occupied burrows were found north of the fence and 36 below the well, in the same two areas occupied in 1945. On August 12, 1947, two animals were seen at one of the localities occupied a year earlier in Prater Canyon, and three burrows were occupied. In Morfield Canyon 119 occupied burrows were counted. At least 12 dens occupied by badgers were present in 1946, and four in 1947. On August 9, 1948, no evidence of living prairie dogs was found in Prater Canyon. In Morfield Canyon 45 burrows were counted north of the fence. The grass had been increasing in abundance for several years. On August 18, 1949, no evidence of living prairie dogs was found in either canyon. In 1951 five prairie dogs were said to have been seen in Prater Canyon in June and July. No other observations have been recorded. On June 22, 1956, 13 pups and 7 adult prairie dogs were released in an enclosure in Morfield Canyon. Periodic inspections in the summer revealed that the colony was surviving and healthy. By the following spring no prairie dogs remained. Another reintroduction is planned this year (1960). Both the history of the prairie dogs and the history of the viewpoint of people toward them are interesting. Individual views have ranged from a desire to exterminate all the prairie dogs to a desire to leave them undisturbed by man. In review: The early history of prairie dogs on the Mesa Verde is not well documented but reports are available of the absence of prairie dogs before settlement by white men, and of introductions of prairie dogs. Other reports indicate that prairie dogs have been observed far from established colonies; therefore natural invasion may account for the establishment of prairie dogs on the Mesa. Grazing of moderate to heavy intensity by livestock continued in Morfield Canyon until 1941. Cessation of grazing and above average precipitation were accompanied by increased growth of vegetation in the colonies of prairie dogs. Mr. Wade has suggested that flooding of burrows by ground water drove prairie dogs from some lower parts of the floors of the canyons, and that increased vegetation favored predators, primarily badgers and coyotes, which further reduced the population. The abruptness of the decline, especially in Prater Canyon, is consistent with the theory that some epidemic disease occurred. This possibility was considered at the time of the decline, and a Mobile Laboratory of the United States Public Health Service spent from June 5 to June 25, 1947, in the Park collecting rodents and their fleas for study. The primary concern was plague, which had been detected in neighboring states. No evidence of plague or of tularemia was reported after study of 494 small rodents obtained from 13 localities in the Park. Only six prairie dogs (all from Morfield Canyon) were studied. The negative report does not prove that tularemia or some other disease was not a factor in the decimation of the colony in Prater Canyon the year before. If prairie dogs were able to survive primarily because of over-grazing by domestic animals, future introductions may fail. If disease was the major factor in their disappearance, reintroductions may succeed. Spermophilus lateralis lateralis (Say) Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel _Specimens examined._--Total, 10: highway at School Section Canyon, MV 7894/507; Sect. 27, head of east fork of Navajo Canyon, 7900 ft., 69265; and Prater Canyon, 7600 to 7800 ft., MV 7835/507, 7837/507, 7846/507, 7874/507, 7875/507, MVZ 74411-74413. In 1956, I observed _S. lateralis_ 1/2 mi. W of Park Point, 3/4 mi. WSW Park Point, in the public campground at Park Headquarters, at the lower well in Prater Canyon, and at two other places on the North Rim. Other observations on file were made at Prater Grade, Park Point, "D" cut (on North Rim 1 mi. WSW Park Point), and Morfield Canyon. A juvenile was noted at Park Point on June 28, 1952, by Jean Pinkley, and five young were seen together at "D" cut on July 3, 1935. The earliest observation, also recorded by Jean Pinkley, was on February 1, 1947. All of the localities with the exception of Park Headquarters are above 7500 feet, and most of the localities are in vegetation that is predominantly oak-brush. Spermophilus variegatus grammurus (Say) Rock Squirrel _Specimens examined._--Total, 6: Head of Prater Canyon, MV 7876/507; Chickaree Draw, Prater Canyon, MV 7843/507, 7844/507; Headquarters Area, MV 7888/507; Ruins Road 1/2 mi. NE of Cliff Palace, MV 7893/507; and Spruce Tree House, 4334 in Denver Museum. Specimen number 7893/507 had 360 Purshia seeds in its cheek-pouches according to a note on the label. On July 18, 1960, I found a young male rock squirrel dead on the road a mile north of headquarters that had 234 pinyon seeds in its cheek-pouches. Young, recorded as "half-grown," have been observed in May and July. The first appearance may be as early as January. In 1950, D. Watson thought that they did not hibernate, except for a few days when the weather was stormy. I observed a rock squirrel in August in the public campground at Park Headquarters sitting on its haunches on a branch of a juniper some twelve feet from the ground and eating an object held in its forefeet. The rock squirrel ranges throughout the Park in all habitats. Eutamias minimus operarius Merriam Least Chipmunk _Specimens examined._--Total, 17: North Rim above Morfield Canyon, MV 7856/507; Morfield Canyon, 7600 ft. (obtained on Nov. 4, 1957), 75976; Middle Well in Prater Canyon, 7500 ft, MV 7855/507; Prater Canyon, 7600 ft., MVZ 74414; Park Point, 8525 ft., 69267-69270; 1/4 mi. S, 3/4 mi. W Park Point, 8300 ft., 69271-69272; Sect. 27, head of east fork of Navajo Canyon, 7900 ft., 69273; Far View Ruins, 7700 ft., 69274-69275, and two uncatalogued specimens in preservative; 3 mi. N Rock Springs, 8200 ft., 69276-69277. Five of the fourteen specimens of known sex are females, all of which were taken in August and September, and none of which is recorded as having contained embryos. The skulls of the eight August-taken specimens also suggest that young are born in late spring or early summer: the largest skull had well-worn teeth that might indicate an age of more than one year; four others had complete adult dentitions that were barely worn; and three had not yet acquired complete adult dentitions. The records of _E. minimus_, like those of _Spermophilus lateralis_, indicate greatest abundance in the higher parts of the Mesa Verde and in areas of predominantly brushy vegetation. Eutamias quadrivittatus hopiensis Merriam Colorado Chipmunk _Specimens examined._--Total, 13: Prater Canyon, 7600 ft., MV 7838/507; Lower Well, Prater Canyon, 69278; Park Headquarters, MV 7889/507; near the old Park Well, 7300 ft., 5468 in Univ. of Colorado collection; Utility Area, 5469 and 5470 in Univ. of Colorado collection; Spruce Tree House, 4352-4355 in Denver Museum; Mesa Verde, 25 mi. [by road] SW Mancos, 149080-149081 USNM; Square Tower House, 7000 ft., 5467 in Univ. of Colorado collection. Although both species occur in some of the same areas, _E. q. hopiensis_ is more abundant than is _E. minimus_ in stands of pinyon and juniper, along cliffs, and at low elevations. (A specimen of _hopiensis_, MV 7849/507, from 3 mi. S of the Park boundary where the 6000 foot contour line cross the Mancos River is indicative of the occurrence at low elevations.) Thomomys bottae aureus J.A. Allen Botta's Pocket Gopher _Specimens examined._--Total, 35: Prater Canyon, 7600 ft., 74408-74410 MVZ; Upper Well, Prater Canyon, 7575 ft., 69279; 1/4 mi. N Middle Well, Prater Canyon, 7500 ft., 69280; Middle Well, Prater Canyon, 7500 ft., 69281-69285, 75977; Morfield Canyon, 7600 ft., 75978; 3/4 mi. S, 1-3/4 mi. W Park Point, 8000 ft, 69286-69288; 1-1/4 mi. S, 1-3/4 mi. W Park Point, 8000 ft., 69289; 1-1/2 mi. S, 2 mi. W Park Point, 8075 ft., 69290; Sect. 27, head of east fork Navajo Canyon, 7900 ft, 69291-69292; 1/2 mi. N Far View Ruins, 7825 ft, 69293; Far View Ruins, 7700 ft., 69294, MV 7852/507, 7853/507; 3 mi. N Rock Springs, 8200 ft., 69295-69298; 2-1/2 mi. N, 1/2 mi. W Rock Springs, 8100 ft., 69299-69301; 2 mi. N, 1/4 mi. W Rock Springs, 69302-69303; 1 mi. NNW Rock Springs, 69304; 1/2 mi. NNW Rock Springs, 69305; Mesa Verde, northern end, 8100 ft., 149087 USNM. The pocket gophers of the Mesa Verde and vicinity are of one species, _Thomomys bottae_. The distribution and variation of this species in Colorado have been studied recently by Youngman (1958) who referred all specimens from the Mesa Verde to _T. b. aureus_. He noted that some specimens have dark diffuse dorsal stripes that are wide in specimens from the Mancos River Valley. The generally darker color of the specimens from the Mancos Valley as compared with that of specimens from on the Mesa was noticed in the field, and is another example of the local variability of pocket gophers. The nine specimens listed by Youngman (1958:372) as from "Mesa Verde National Park," Mancos River, 6200 ft., are not here listed among "specimens examined" because possibly some, or all, of the nine were trapped on the east side of the River and therefore outside the Park. None was, however, farther than 30 yards east of the Park. In the Park, pocket gophers occur both on mesa tops and in canyons. Most of the localities listed above and others at which mounds were seen are areas of disturbance such as the old burn on Wetherill Mesa, the rights of way for roads, the river valley, and the grazed floor of Prater Canyon. Little evidence of pocket gophers was found on unusually rocky slopes, steep slopes, or in stands of pinyon and juniper or in relatively pure stands of oak-brush. In addition to workability of the soil, the presence of herbaceous plants, many of them weedy annuals, is probably the most important factor governing the success of pocket gophers in a local area. No female was recorded to have contained embryos, but two had enlarged uteri or placental scars. This fact and the capture of nine half-grown individuals indicate breeding prior to late August when most specimens were trapped. Dipodomys ordii longipes (Merriam) Ord's Kangaroo Rat Kangaroo rats have been seen crossing the highway in the Park less than one mile from the Park entrance by Jean Pinkley. Castor canadensis concisor Warren and Hall Beaver In 1935 Quaintance and White spent June 16 to June 20 in the Mancos River Bottoms at the mouth of Weber Canyon, looking for sign of fresh beaver work. They found none. Annual Animal Census Reports include the following information based on patrols along the Mancos River at the east boundary of the Park: 1937--estimate 4 beaver present, 1938--8, 1941--numerous bank burrows, 1942--uncommon, 1944--uncommon, 1945--most concentrated at southeast corner, 1946--runs and two small dams seen (flood had washed out larger dams), 1947--only in 1-1/2 miles north of boundary with Ute Reservation, 1949--two separate colonies (each with dams and one with a large house), 1950--none, owing to drouth and diversion of water upstream completely drying the river at times, 1951--none, 1953--present, 1955--present. On the Mancos River, 6200 ft., in late August, 1956, sign of beaver was abundant, numerous trees had been cut but none within a week, and a bank den was found on the west side of the river extending back 50 feet from the stream and caved in at three places. In 1959 dens were still present. Reithrodontomys megalotis aztecus J.A. Allen Western Harvest Mouse _Specimens examined._--Total, 38: North end Mesa Verde National Park, 7000 ft, 75984-75986; Park Point, 8525 ft., 69316-69317; Far View Ruins, 7700 ft, 69318-69319, 79220, MV 7897/507, and 23 uncatalogued specimens in preservative; 3 mi. N Rock Springs, 8200 ft., 69320-69321; 2 mi. NNW Rock Springs, 7900 ft., 69322-69323; 1 mi. NNW Rock Springs, 7600 ft., 69324; 1/2 mi. NNW Rock Springs, 7500 ft., 69325. The specimen listed last (69325) was an adult male recovered from the stomach of a small (snout-vent length 334 mm., wt. 26.0 gms.) _Crotalus viridus_ that was trapped in a Museum Special mouse-trap on a rocky slope mostly barren of vegetation. The availability of samples taken in August (by Anderson in 1956), in September (by Shepherd in 1958), and in November (by Alcorn in 1957) makes the following comparison of age and reproductive condition possible. The sample from November includes some specimens from outside the Park as follows: 1 mi. W Mancos, Colorado, 75979-75983, and 2 mi. N La Plata [not shown on Fig. 2], San Juan County, New Mexico, some 18 miles southeast of the Park, 75987-76000. The data shown in Figure 3 indicate that females are pregnant at least from in August into November. A smaller percentage of females was pregnant in November than in August or September. The fact that all females more than 130 mm. long were pregnant in September suggests an autumnal peak in breeding activity. A change in the ratio of small individuals (less than 130 mm. in length) to large individuals (130 mm. or more in length) is indicative of a sustained breeding period throughout the time shown. In August the ratio was 1 to 2.3, in September the ratio was 1 to 1.2, and the ratio was 1 to 0.7 in November. The western harvest mouse is found usually in grassy areas. Peromyscus boylii rowleyi (J.A. Allen) Brush Mouse _Specimens examined._--Total, 14: North end Mesa Verde National Park, 7000 ft., 76002-76003; Far View House, 7700 ft., MV 7851/507, 7854/507; Far View Point, 5 uncatalogued specimens in preservative; 1/2 mi. N Spruce Tree Lodge, 34742; 25 mi. [by road] SW Mancos, 149094 and 149096 USNM; Oak Tree Ruin, 6700 ft., MV 7870/507; and Cliff Palace, 6800 ft., MV 7864/507. The specimens were taken in August, September, and November. One adult female trapped on September 10, 1958, had six embryos. Peromyscus crinitus auripectus (J.A. Allen) Canyon Mouse _Specimens examined._--Total, 3: Mesa Verde [Spruce Tree Cliff Ruins], 149095 USNM; Balcony House, MV 7865/507, 7866/507. Peromyscus maniculatus rufinus (Merriam) Deer Mouse _Specimens examined._--Total, 396: North end Mesa Verde National Park, 7000 ft., 76004-76100; Prater Canyon, 7600 ft., 76101-76144, MV 7839/507, 7840/507; Upper Well, Prater Canyon, 7575 ft., 69328-69329; Morfield Canyon, 7600 ft., 76145-76184; Park Point, 8525 ft., 69330-69342, 69344-69360; 1-1/2 mi. E Waters Cabin, 6400 ft. (labels on some specimens read "West Bank Mancos River, Northeast side Mesa Verde National Park"), 69361-69376, 76185-76204; Sect. 27, head of east fork Navajo Canyon, 7900 ft., 69377-69380, 69422-69426; 3 mi. N Rock Springs, 8200 ft., 69403-69410; 2 mi. NNW Rock Springs, 7900 ft., 69411-69412; 1 mi. NNW Rock Springs, 7600 ft., 69413-69418; 1/2 mi. NNW Rock Springs, 7500 ft., 69419-69421; Far View Ruins, 7700 ft., 69386-69402; Far View Point, 76530-76531, 79221 and 90 uncatalogued specimens in preservative; Mancos River, 6200 ft., 69382-69385; back of Park Museum, 6930 ft., MV 7857/507; Mesa Verde, 25 mi. [by road] SW Mancos, 149093 USNM; Cornfield, MV 7878/507. The most abundant mammal is the ubiquitous deer mouse. Series of specimens taken in August (by Anderson in 1956), in September (by Shepherd in 1958 and 1959), and in November (by Alcorn in 1957) make possible the following comparisons of age, reproductive conditions, and molts. The specimens obtained in August and November were placed in five categories according to age (as judged by wear on the teeth). These categories correspond in general to those used by Hoffmeister (1951:1) in studies of _Peromyscus truei_. From his descriptions I judge that wear in _Peromyscus maniculatus_ differs from wear in _Peromyscus truei_ in that the last upper molar is not worn smooth before appreciable wear appears on the first two molars, and the lingual and labial cusps wear more nearly concurrently. The five categories differ as follows: category 1, last upper molar in process of erupting, showing no wear; category 2, some wear apparent on all teeth, but most cusps little worn; category 3, greater wear on all teeth, lingual cusps becoming rounded or flattened; category 4, lingual cusps worn smooth, labial cusps show considerable wear; category 5, all cusps worn smooth. The condition of the pelage was noted for each prepared skin. Hoffmeister (_op. cit._: 4) summarized changes in pelage that he observed in _Peromyscus truei_, and he summarized earlier work by Collins with _Peromyscus maniculatus_. In _P. maniculatus_ a grayish juvenal pelage is replaced by a postjuvenal pelage in which the hairs are longer and have longer, pale, terminal or subterminal bands giving a paler and more buffy or ochraceous hue to the dorsal pelage. The postjuvenal pelage is replaced by an adult pelage that is either brighter or, in some cases, is not distinguishable with certainty from the postjuvenal pelage. Not only is the juvenal pelage distinguishable from the postjuvenal pelage, but the sequence of ingrowth of postjuvenal pelage follows a regular pattern that is usually different from that of subsequent molts. The loss of juvenal hair is less readily observed than the ingrowth of new postjuvenal hair on account of the greater time required for the growth of any individual hair than for the sudden loss of a hair. Molt was observed in some individuals no longer having juvenal pelage; some new pelage was observed on the skins of seven mice collected in August. Each of these was in category 4 or 5 and probably had been born in the previous calendar year. These seven molting individuals make up nearly 17 per cent of 42 individuals that had completed the juvenal to postjuvenal molt. In November, 80 per cent of individuals (92 of 115) that had previously obtained their postjuvenal or adult pelage were molting. These mice were in age-categories 3, 4, and 5. Some of the individuals in category 3 were developing new hair beneath a relatively unworn bright pelage that I judge to be an adult pelage rather than a postjuvenal pelage. If this judgment be correct and if the relatively unworn dentition (category 3) means that these animals are young of the year, we must conclude that individuals born in early summer may molt from juvenal to postjuvenal, then to adult pelage, and finally in the autumn into another adult pelage. Other individuals, six in number and of categories 2 and 3, are simultaneously completing the juvenal to postjuvenal molt and beginning the postjuvenal to adult molt. The juvenal to postjuvenal molt begins, as has been described by various authors, along the lateral line and proceeds dorsally and ventrally and anteriorly and posteriorly, and the last patch to lose the gray juvenal color is the top of head and nape, or less frequently the rump. In some individuals a gray patch on the nape remained but emerging hair was not apparent; perhaps the molt had been halted just prior to completion. The progressing band of emerging hair is narrow in most specimens but in some up to one-fifth of the circumference of the body has hair at the same degree of emergence. Subsequent molts, both from postjuvenal to adult pelage and between adult pelages, are less regular in point, or points, of origin, width of progressing molt, and amount of surface molting at one time. Half or more of the dorsum is oftentimes involved in the same stage of molt at once. In some specimens the molt begins along the lateral line, and in others in several centers on the sides. In some skins distinct lines of molt are visible without parting the hair, and in some others the molt is patchy in appearance. Growth of new hair is apparent at various times of the year as a result of injury such as that caused by bot fly larvae, cuts, scratches, or bites of other mice. Abrasion, wear, irritation by ectoparasites, and other kinds of injury to the skin may play a part in the development of a patchy molt. Both breeding and molting are sources of considerable stress, and the delay of the peak of molting activity until November when breeding activity has decreased seems of benefit to the mice. A change in the ratio of young mice (categories 1, 2, and 3) to old mice (categories 4 and 5) between August and November was noted. In August, 29 per cent of the population is composed of old mice, and in November only 6 per cent. This change results from birth of young as well as death of old mice, but may indicate that a mouse in November has less than one chance in ten of being alive the following November. Some females born early in the reproductive season breed in their first summer or autumn. For example, a female of category 2, taken on August 12, and probably in postjuvenal pelage, had placental scars. Undoubtedly the young of the year contribute to the breeding population, especially late in the season. [Illustration: FIG. 3. Frequency distributions, according to size, of _Reithrodontomys megalotis_ and _Peromyscus maniculatus_ in three samples taken in August, September, and November. Sexes and pregnancy or nonpregnancy of females are indicated. See discussion in text.] In Figure 3 the proportion of females bearing embryos in August, September, and November is shown. Of the females trapped in August, 11 of 32 that were more than 144 mm. in total length contained embryos; an additional 14 females were lactating or possessed placental scars or enlarged uteri. Therefore, approximately 80 per cent of the larger females were reproducing in August. In September two females were pregnant and an additional sixteen of the 44 females examined showed other evidence of reproduction; these eighteen females make up 41 per cent of those more than 144 mm. in total length. The only reproductive data available for November pertain to the presence or absence of embryos. No female was pregnant although 35 females more than 144 mm. in total length were examined. Some of the skins show prominent mammae indicative of recent nursing, and juveniles less than a month old were taken. The reproductive activity of deer mice on the Mesa Verde seems to be greatly reduced in autumn. Peromyscus difficilis nasutus (J.A. Allen) Rock Mouse _Specimen_: 1 mi. NNW Rock Springs, 7600 ft., 69413, a young individual completing the molt from juvenal to postjuvenal pelage. Peromyscus truei truei (Shufeldt) Pinyon Mouse _Specimens examined._--Total, 42: North end Mesa Verde National Park, 7000 ft., 76220-76232; Far View Ruins, 7700 ft., 69326-69327, 79222, and 8 uncatalogued specimens in preservative; Far View Point, 76532-76535; Far View House, 7700 ft., 74416 MVZ; 1/2 mi. NNW Rock Springs, 7500 ft., 69429-69430; Rock Springs, 7400 ft., 69431-69435; Park Well, 7450 ft., 69428; Headquarters, MV 7882/507; back of Museum, MV 7879/507, 7880/507, 7881/507; Square Tower House, 6700 ft., 69438. In August three females were pregnant or lactating, or both. None of seven adult females taken in November was pregnant. Neotoma cinerea arizonae Merriam Bushy-tailed Wood Rat _Specimen_: Head of Prater Canyon, MV 7873/507. Another, in the Denver Museum, from Spruce Tree House, was reported by Finley (1958:270). _Neotoma cinerea_ prefers vertical crevices in high cliffs but occupies other areas. Neotoma mexicana inopinata Goldman Mexican Wood Rat _Specimens examined._--Total, 10: Headquarters, MV 7890/507 and probably 7861/507, 74421 MVZ; Spruce Tree Lodge, 6950 ft., 34802-34803; Spruce Tree House, 74419-74420 MVZ; Square Tower House, MV 7869/507; Cliff Palace, 74422 MVZ; Balcony House, MV 7868/507. The Mexican wood rat is the most common species of wood rat on the Mesa Verde. The two specimens from Spruce Tree Lodge obtained by R.B. Finley on September 2, 1949, are young individuals. Another species of the genus, the white-throated wood rat, _Neotoma albigula_, may occur within the Park, since three specimens (34757-34759) from the Mesa Verde were trapped on September 15, 1949, by R.B. Finley, approximately 4-1/2 miles south of the Park [6 mi. E, 17 mi. S Cortez, 5600 ft.--south of the area shown in Figure 2]. Finley (1958:450) stated that at that locality he trapped _Neotoma mexicana_ [No. 34801], that _N. albigula_ was perhaps more common there than _N. mexicana_, that dens of _N. albigula_ were more common than those of _N. mexicana_ under large rocks in the talus on the south slope of the Mesa, and that dens of _N. mexicana_ seemed to be more numerous in crevices of ledges in the bedrock and cliffs. Ondatra zibethicus osoyoosensis (Lord) Muskrat D. Watson (in letter of January 16, 1957) reported that he has seen muskrat tracks many times along the Mancos River. He also relates a report received from Chief Ranger Wade and D.A. Spencer who saw a muskrat, no doubt a wanderer, on the Knife Edge Road on a cold winter night. These men, both reliable observers, stopped and saw the muskrat at a distance of two feet, where it took shelter under a power shovel parked beside the road. Reports of dens seen along the Mancos River are available for 1944, 1945, 1946, and 1947. Microtus longicaudus mordax (Merriam) Long-tailed Vole _Specimens examined._--Total, 36: North end Mesa Verde National Park, 7000 ft., 76233-76237; entrance to Mesa Verde National Park, 5123-5126 in Denver Museum; Prater Canyon, 7600 ft., 76238-76244; Upper Well, Prater Canyon, 7575 ft., 69441; Morfield Canyon, 7600 ft., 76245-76259, 76261-76263; west bank Mancos River, northeast side Mesa Verde National Park, 76260. The vegetation at the above-named localities is a combination of brush and grasses that are both more luxuriant than in areas dominated by pinyon and juniper on the more southern and altitudinally lower part of the top of the Mesa where no _M. longicaudus_ was taken. Microtus mexicanus mogollonensis (Mearns) Mexican Vole _Specimens examined._--Total, 22: Prater Canyon, 7600 ft., 76283-76287; Sect. 27, head of east fork of Navajo Canyon, 7900 ft., 69442; Far View Ruins, 7700 ft., 69443, 79223-79224; 2 mi. NNW Rock Springs, 7900 ft., 69444-69446; Park Well, 7450 ft., 69447-69453; rock ledge at head of Spruce Tree Canyon, unnumbered specimen in Denver Museum; Headquarters, MV 7895/507, 7896/507. The first specimen of the Mexican vole from Colorado was obtained on the Mesa Verde and has been reported by Rodeck and Anderson (1956:436). Specimens have now been taken at seven localities on the Mesa. Prater Canyon is the only one of these localities at which any other species of vole was taken. There _Microtus longicaudus_ and _Microtus montanus_ were also obtained. Judging from the vegetation at the above localities, _M. mexicanus_ is to be expected in drier areas with less cover than _M. montanus_ inhabits, and in areas having less cover than those inhabited by _M. longicaudus_. Microtus montanus fusus Hall Montane Vole _Specimens examined._--Total, 16: Upper Well, 7575 ft., 69454-69465; 1/4 mi. N Middle Well, 7500 ft., 69466-69469. The voles were trapped in the dry but dense meadow of grass and sedge covering the floor of the canyon (see Plate 1). _Sorex vagrans_ was trapped in the same places. Four of the females of _M. montanus_ trapped on September 3, 1956, were pregnant. Erethizon dorsatum couesi Mearns Porcupine _Specimens examined._--Total, 2: 69470, old [Female], and 69471, her young male offspring, both obtained on August 28, 1956, in the canyon of the Mancos River, 6200 feet, along the western side of the River. I saw no other porcupine in the Park. In 1935, C.W. Quaintance took special notice of porcupines because of the possibility, then being considered, of their being detrimental to habitat conditions thought to be favorable to wild turkeys. Porcupines were suspected of killing ponderosa pine, which occurred in only a few places, and which was thought to be necessary for wild turkeys. Porcupines were recorded as follows: one found dead on the road at the North Rim on March 16; one killed in oak brush along the North Rim; one killed between April 15 and May 15; oak brush damaged by porcupines in Soda Canyon below the well; one seen on July 4 on the Poole Canyon Trail; one seen at the foot of the Mesa on June 26; one seen by Lloyd White in Moccasin Canyon on June 27; and one seen by Mrs. Sharon Spencer on July 1 in Prater Canyon. After four months on the Mesa Verde, Quaintance concluded that there were not so many porcupines as had been expected and that there were more ponderosa pines than had been expected. In 1946, Donald A. Spencer began a study of porcupines on the Mesa Verde and in 1958 deposited, in the University of Colorado Library, his results in manuscript form as a dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a higher degree ("Porcupine population fluctuations in past centuries revealed by dendrochronology," 108 numbered and 13 unnumbered pages, 39 figures, and 13 tables). Dendrochronology, or the dating of trees by studying their rings, is a technique widely used in the southwest by archeologists, climatologists, and others. Spencer found that porcupines damage trees in a characteristic manner, and that damage to a pinyon pine was evident as long as the tree lived. By dating approximately 2000 scars and plotting the year for each scar, Spencer observed three peaks since 1865; these were in about 1885, 1905, and 1935. The increase and decrease each time were at about the same rate. The study did not yield precise population estimates. Some porcupines were destroyed but Spencer is of the opinion that the decline that came in following years was independent of the control measures. Spencer thinks that activities of porcupines on the Mesa Verde are a major factor in maintaining a forest cover of relatively young trees, and also in preventing invasion of trees into areas of brush. The general policy in regard to porcupines from 1930 to 1946 was to kill them because they eat parts of trees. In at least the following years porcupines were killed: 1930, 1933, 1935, 1940, 1943, 1944, and 1946. The largest number reported killed in one year is 71 in 1933 when a crew of men was employed for this purpose. The amount of effort devoted to killing porcupines varied from year to year. The most frequently voiced alarm was that the scenic value of the areas along the entrance highway and near certain ruins was being impaired. The direst prediction was that all pine trees on the Mesa Verde were doomed to extinction in the near future. The last prediction has not come to pass, nor has this extinction occurred in the past thousand years and more during which pine trees and porcupines have existed together on the Mesa Verde. In 1946 the studies of Spencer, Wade, and Fitch began. Much effort was expended in obtaining and dating scars for analysis, and the interesting results mentioned above were the reward. Also many porcupines were captured alive and marked with ear-tags so that they could be recognized later. For example, in the winter of 1946 and 1947, 117 were marked in Soda Canyon. A decline in numbers in recent years reduced the impetus for continuation of the study by reducing the results obtained for each day spent searching for porcupines. Information obtained on movements of porcupines relative to season and weather conditions in these studies may be summarized and published later. Data regarding ratio of young to adult animals from year to year are also of interest. The effect of a porcupine on a single tree is often easy to assess. The effect of a fluctuating population of porcupines on a mixed forest is not so easy to assess, but is of more intrinsic interest. It is desirable that studies designed to evaluate the latter effect continue while the population remains low and also when the next cyclic increase begins. Publication of Spencer's results would be a major step forward. Cahalane (1948:253) mentions the difficulty that has been experienced in protecting aesthetically desirable trees around cliff dwellings. Perhaps in a local area removal of porcupines is sometimes warranted, but control of the porcupine seems undesirable to me, as a general policy, because one purpose of a National Park is to preserve natural conditions and that implies naturally occurring changes. What is needed is continued careful study of the ecological relationships of animals and of plants. National parks provide, to the extent that they are not disturbed or "controlled," especially favorable places for studies of this sort. Mus musculus subsp. House Mouse _Specimens examined._--Total, 7: North end Mesa Verde National Park, 7000 ft, 76290; west bank Mancos River northeast side Mesa Verde National Park, 76291-76296. Canis latrans mearnsi Merriam Coyote _Specimens examined._--Total, 3: 69472, skull only of a young individual, found dead at the top of the bank of the Mancos River, 1-1/2 mi. E Waters Cabin, 6400 ft., August 29, 1956, probably killed by man; ad. [Male], 76298, taken by J.R. Alcorn, November 10, 1957, on the top of the Mesa at Square Tower House; and skin and skull, MV 7858/507, without data. Tracks or scats of the coyote were seen in all parts of the Park visited. Coyotes range throughout the area. On September 3, 1956, 35 coyote scats were found on the dirt roads in Prater and Morfield canyons above 7300 feet elevation and on the road crossing the divide between these canyons. Probably none of these scats was more than a month old. Coyote tracks were seen at some of the fresher scats. Scats associated with fox tracks and scats of small size were not picked up. Nevertheless, a few of the scats studied may have been those of foxes. Judging from the contents of scats that were certainly from foxes, the effect of inadvertent inclusion of fox scats would be to elevate the percentage of scats containing berries (but not more than five percentage points). Each scat was broken up and the percentage of scats containing each of the following items was noted (figures are to the nearest per cent). Remains of deer occurred in 48 per cent of scats, gooseberries (_Ribes_) in 34 per cent, porcupines in 29 per cent, insects in 11 per cent, birds in 11 per cent, unidentified hair in 9 per cent, and unidentified material in 6 per cent. One scat (3 per cent) contained an appreciable amount of plant debris, one contained _Microtus_ along with other items, and one contained only _Sylvilagus_; 14 scats had material of more than one category. The percentage in each category of the volume of each scat was estimated. Data on volume warrant no conclusion other than one that can be drawn from the percentages of occurrence, namely that the major food sources used in August, 1956, by coyotes in these canyons were deer, berries, and porcupines and that other sources, though used, were relatively unimportant. Deer were common in the area. It is fortunate that coyotes remain to help regulate the deer population. Wolves, _Canis lupus_, which at one time occurred in the Park, are now gone. The coyote and mountain lion are the only sizeable predators that remain. Vulpes vulpes macroura Baird Red Fox D. Watson (in letter of January 16, 1957) reported that red foxes have been seen on the Mesa by several employees of the Park. These persons know the gray fox, which often is seen in winter feeding at their back doors, and Mr. Watson considers the reports reliable. In the early morning of October 24, 1943, a reddish-yellow fox having a white-tipped tail was observed by three men, one of whom was Chief Ranger Wade, at Park Point. In 1948, 1950, and 1953 black foxes have been reported. Urocyon cinereoargenteus scottii Mearns Gray Fox _Specimens examined._--Total, 3: [Male], MV 7867/507, 2 mi. N of Headquarters, 7400 ft., September 24, 1935, H.P. Pratt; [Male], 76299, November 9, and [Female], 76300, trapped on November 12, 1957, by J.R. Alcorn at Square Tower House. The gray fox is common on the Mesa. Ursus americanus amblyceps Baird Black Bear From 1929 through 1959 at least 151 observations of bears were recorded. Observations were unrecorded in only five years--1952, 1953, 1954, 1956, and 1958. Most observations were in the 1940's and the peak was in 1944 (18 observations) and 1945 (21 observations). Cubs have been recorded in 10 different years. If dated reports are tabulated by months the following figures are obtained for the 12 months beginning with January: 0, 0, 0, 4, 15, 19, 19, 9, 10, 9, 3, 0. The peak in the summer months and the absence of observations in the winter months are significant. Individual bears probably enter and leave the Park in the course of their normal wanderings; however bears probably hibernate, breed, and bear young within the Park and should not be regarded as merely occasionally wandering into the Park. Procyon lotor pallidus Merriam Raccoon In December, 1959, three raccoons were seen on Prater Grade and later three were seen in Morfield Canyon near the tunnel. I saw a dead raccoon at the side of the highway 3 mi. WSW of Mancos, 6700 feet, on August 8, 1956. This locality is outside of the Park and not on the Mesa, but is mentioned because it indicates that the raccoon probably occurs along the Mancos River, which forms the eastern boundary of the Park. The raccoon is rare in the area. Some local persons were surprised to hear of its presence; other persons told me that raccoons were present, but rare. Bassariscus astutus flavus Rhoads Ringtail _Specimens examined._--Total, 4: MV 7884/507 and 7885/507, trapped in Balcony House and prepared by D. Watson in 1939; MV 7901/507 and 7902/507, without data. The cliff dwellings are favored by ringtails and in some years they are common near occupied dwellings in the area of headquarters. Ringtails have been seen in each major habitat within the Park. Mustela frenata nevadensis Hall Long-tailed Weasel _Specimens examined._--Total, 5: MV 7891/507, [Male], from the "Garden" [= Indian Cornfield]; [Female], MV 7892/507, also from the "Cornfield"; MV 7859/507, "Killed by car on Prater Grade"; [Male], MV 7871/507, in winter pelage, from the North Rim; and [Male], 83464, killed on the road 1/2 mi. NE of the tunnel, Morfield Canyon. C.W. Quaintance in 1935 reported that on January 11, he and Mr. Nelson saw a weasel attack a cottontail, and on March 9, while on the snow plow, Mr. Nelson witnessed another cottontail being killed by a weasel. Weasels in white winter pelage have been recorded in December and January. The brown pelage has been seen as late as November. Mustela vison energumenos (Bangs) Mink D. Watson (in letter of January 16, 1957) wrote: "When Jack Wade, now Chief Ranger, was doing patrol work in the Mancos Canyon back in the 1930's, he saw mink along the river at the east side of the Park. Several years ago, the people who lived on the ranch where Weber Canyon joins the Mancos trapped a mink." Tracks have been reported along the Mancos River in several years. Spilogale putorius gracilis Merriam Spotted Skunk _Specimen_: Immature [Male], MV 7860/507, Cliff Palace, August 22, 1936, prepared by A.E. Borrell. In some years these little skunks have become so numerous in the area of headquarters that they were a nuisance, and were captured in garbage cans and released in other parts of the Park. Mephitis mephitis estor Merriam Striped Skunk D. Watson advises me that striped skunks are fairly common around the entrance to the Park, along the foot of the Mesa, and along the Mancos River. Striped skunks have been reported in 1951 in Morfield Canyon, in 1952 on the Knife Edge, in 1953 at Windy Point (1/4 mi. N of Point Lookout), and in 1959 at the head of Morfield Canyon. [Illustration: PLATE 1 UPPER: View of the North Rim of Mesa Verde, looking west from Park Point, the highest place on the North Rim. The south-facing slope on the left is covered with brushy vegetation, mostly oak. Sheltered parts of the north-facing slope support stands of Douglas fir, and at a few places some ponderosa pines. Photo taken in August, 1956, by S. Anderson. LOWER LEFT: View of Rock Canyon from Wetherill Mesa, looking southwest from a point 2 mi. NNW Rock Springs. The area in the foreground on Wetherill Mesa was burned in 1934. Photo taken in August, 1956, by S. Anderson. LOWER RIGHT: Prater Canyon, at Upper Well, 7575 feet. In the matted grasses and sedges on the floor of the canyon _Microtus montanus_ and _Sorex vagrans_ were captured. _Tamiasciurus hudsonicus_ was found in a side canyon, Chickaree Draw, one half mile southwest of the place shown. Chickaree Draw is more sheltered than the slope in the background and has a denser stand of Douglas fir than occurs here. Photo taken in August, 1956, by S. Anderson.] [Illustration: PLATE 2 UPPER: Relatively undisturbed stand of pinyon pine and Utah juniper 1/4 mi. N Rock Springs, at 7400 feet elevation on Wetherill Mesa along a service road. The vegetation shown is characteristic of the lower more exposed parts of the top of the Mesa Verde. Photo taken in August, 1956, by S. Anderson. LOWER: Wetherill Mesa, 1/2 mi. NNW Rock Springs, 7500 feet elevation. This area burned in 1934. It contained no pine or juniper in 1956 despite attempted reforestation in the thirties and the presence of a stand of pinyon and juniper (shown above) only one quarter of a mile away. Possibly fire in the last three or four hundred years on the higher parts of the Mesa has been a factor in producing chaparral there, rather than pinyon and juniper. Photo taken in August, 1956, by S. Anderson.] Taxidea taxus berlandieri Baird Badger Several reports, but no specimens, of the badger have been obtained. In 1935, C.W. Quaintance wrote that in School Section Canyon tracks of cougar, bobcat, coyote, and deer were found, and that pocket gophers, badgers, and cottontail rabbits were present. Later in 1935, H.P. Pratt wrote that he had found evidence of badgers "at the lower well in Prater Canyon, where on September 23, there were extensive badger diggings and fresh tracks in the vicinity of the prairie dog colony there." Badgers are common in the lowlands around the Mesa and they are common enough on the Mesa to be regarded as nuisances by archeologists on account of badgers digging in ruins. Badgers have been seen from three to six times each year from 1950 to this date, most of them in the vicinity of the North Rim. Felis concolor hippolestes Merriam Mountain Lion Mountain lions range throughout the Park. There are reliable sight records of lions and lion tracks, but no specimen has been preserved. Early records of observations include the report of tracks seen in Navajo Canyon by Cary (1911:165), and a lion seen in 1917. Since 1930 the more adequate records include reports of from one to eight observations each year for 26 of the 30 years. Young animals (recorded as "half-grown") or cubs have been reported in four of these years. The tabulation of dated reports by month beginning with January is: 2, 0, 3, 2, 8, 4, 6, 7, 4, 9, 5, 7. Mountain lions range more widely than bears in their daily and seasonal activities, but like bears probably breed, bear young, and feed in the Park. Although at any one time lions may or may not be within the Park, it is part of their normal range and the species should be regarded as resident and is not uncommon. Lynx rufus baileyi Merriam Bobcat _Specimens examined._--Total, 2: A specimen (now mounted in Park Museum) from the Knife Edge Road; and ad. [Female], 76302, Prater Canyon, 7500 ft., November 12, 1957, obtained by J.R. Alcorn. Bobcats are present throughout the Park. Approximately 80 observations of bobcats are on file, from all parts of the Park and in all months. Probably the bobcat and the gray fox are the most abundant carnivores in the Park. In addition to known predation by mountain lions and coyotes on porcupines, the bobcat kills porcupines. A dead porcupine and a dead bobcat with its face, mouth, and one foot full of quills were found together on January 31, 1952, under a boulder in front of Cliff Palace. On August 20, 1956, I saw a bobcat hunting in sage in a draw near a large clump of oak-brush, into which it fled, at the head of the east fork of Navajo Canyon, Sect. 21, near the North Rim, 8100 feet. Odocoileus hemionus hemionus (Rafinesque) Mule Deer _Specimens examined._--Total, 2: Young [Male], 76303, November 8, 1957, Far View Ruins; [Female], 76304, November 12, 1957, Spruce Tree House Ruin, both obtained by J.R. Alcorn. In all parts of the Park, mule deer are common. Five projects concerning deer are in progress or have been concluded recently on the Mesa. One is a study of the responses of different species of plants to browsing and was begun in 1949 by Harold R. Shepherd for the Colorado Department of Game and Fish. A number of individual plants and in some instances groups of plants were fenced to exclude deer. Systematic clips of 20, 40, 60, 80, or 100 per cent of the annual growth are made each year. The results of the first ten years of this study are being prepared for publication by Shepherd. A study of browsing pressure was initiated in 1952 by Regional Biologist C.M. Aldous, on eight transects in the Park. Each transect consists of 15 plots at intervals of 200 feet. The amount of use of each plant species was recorded from time to time. The study was terminated in 1955. I have seen no summary of results of this study. A trapping program was begun in 1953 with the co-operation of the Colorado Department of Game and Fish. Deer are trapped, marked, and released. Some are released in areas other than where trapped. In this way the excessive size of the herd near headquarters has been reduced. Recoveries of marked deer outside the Park by hunters and retrapping results in the Park should provide information about movements of deer and about life expectancy. The "Deer Trend Study" was initiated in 1954. From November to May, twice a day, at the same time, a count is made along the entrance road from the Park Entrance to Headquarters. Ten drainage areas traversed are tabulated separately. The results of four years of this study indicate that the greatest number of deer are present in November, December, and January, and that only about one-fourth as many are present in February and March. Depending on severity of weather, the yearly pattern varies, the deer arriving earlier, or leaving earlier. This change in numbers, the recovery outside of the Park of animals marked in the Park, and direct observations of movement indicate that the Mesa Verde is an intermediate range rather than a summer-range or winter-range. In summer deer tend to move northward and eastward out of the Park, and in winter they move back through the Park toward lower and more protected areas in canyons both in the Park and south of the Park on the Ute Reservation. Some deer remain in the Park the entire year. Close co-operation between personnel of the Park Service and of the Colorado Department of Game and Fish has regulated hunting outside the Park in such a way as to provide satisfactory control of the deer within the Park. A study of the effect of rodents on plants used by deer was initiated in 1956 by Harold R. Shepherd. Three acres were fenced in a fashion designed to exclude rodents but not deer. An adjacent three acres were fenced as a control, but not so as to exclude rodents or deer. Eight trap lines nearby provide an index of rodent fluctuations from year to year. These studies will need to be continued for a period of ten years or more, and should provide much information concerning not only deer but also rodents and their effect on vegetation. Cervus canadensis nelsoni V. Bailey Wapiti Wapiti are seen periodically; probably they wander in from the higher mountains to the northeast and do not remain for long. The following note was included in the 1921 report of Mr. Jesse L. Nusbaum, then Superintendent of the Park: "The first elk ever seen in the Park made his appearance near the head of Navajo Canyon, August 15 of this year, and travelled for two miles in front of a Ford car down the main road before another car, travelling in the opposite direction, scared him into the timber." Additional observations have been recorded as follows: School Section Canyon ("fall" 1935), Knife Edge Road (July, 1940), West Soda Canyon and Windy Point (December, 1949), Long Canyon (July, 1959), and Park Entrance (December, 1959). Three of the six observations are in July and August; therefore movement by wapiti into the Park can not be attributed entirely to disturbance during the hunting season. Ovis canadensis canadensis Shaw Bighorn Some early records of the bighorn were mentioned by C.W. Quaintance (1935): In a letter of January 20, 1935, John Wetherill said that a "Mountain Sheep Canyon" (now Rock Canyon) was named for a bunch of sheep that wintered near their camp; and Sam Ahkeah, a Navajo, says the Indians occasionally find remnants of sheep on the Mesa, which they take back to their hogans. Cahalane (1948:257) reported that hunting presumably had eliminated bighorns from the Mesa by 1896; however Jean Pinkley reports that a large ram was killed on Point Lookout in 1906. On January 30, 1946, 14 sheep (3 rams, 7 ewes, and 4 lambs) from the herd at Tarryall, Colorado, were obtained through the Colorado Department of Game and Fish and were released at 8:30 a.m. at the edge of the canyon south of Spruce Tree Lodge. The sheep, instead of entering the canyon as expected, turned north, passed behind the museum, and eventually disappeared northward on Chapin Mesa. The sheep evidently divided into at least two bands. On April 24, 1946, three sheep were seen 2-1/2 mi. N of Rock Springs, and on June 19, 1947, tracks were seen in Mancos Canyon. In 1947, 1948, and 1949 farmers in Weber Canyon reported seeing sheep many times on Weber Mountain, and watering at the Mancos River. In May, 1949, an estimate of 27 sheep on Weber Mountain was made after several days study by men from the state game department. The herds continued to increase. In 1956 I saw two bighorns. On August 18, at 6:20 a.m., my wife and I briefly observed a bighorn on the rocks below Square Tower Ruins. On August 24, I was digging with a small shovel in rocky soil behind the cabin at Rock Springs, when hoof beats were heard approaching in the rocky head of the canyon to the east. An adult ewe came up to the fence around the cabin area and looked at me, seemingly curious about the noise my shovel had been producing. I remained motionless and called to my wife, Justine, to come from the cabin and see the sheep. The ewe seemed not to be disturbed by my voice, but took flight, returning in the direction from which she had come, the moment Justine appeared from behind the cabin. Sheep can now be seen on occasion in any of the deep canyons across the southern half of the Park. The sheep have caused slight damage in some of the ruins by bedding down there, and by climbing on walls. As the sheep increase in numbers this activity may be regarded as a problem. In 1959 an estimated 75 to 100 sheep were in the Park and adjacent areas. DISCUSSION The distributions of animals are influenced by geographic, vegetational, and altitudinal factors. The Mesa Verde is intermediate in geographic position and altitude between the high Southern Rocky Mountains and the low southwestern desert. For this reason, we find on the Mesa Verde (1) a preponderance of species having wide distributions in this part of the country, and having relatively wide ranges of tolerance for different habitats, (2) a lesser number of exclusively montane or boreal species than occur in the higher mountains to the northeast of the Mesa and that may reach the limits of their ranges here, and (3) a small number of species of southern or Sonoran affinities. Fifty-four species are recorded above. Forty-one of these species are represented by specimens from the Park. Thirteen additional species in the list have been seen in the Park. On the Grand Mesa, which is more elevated than, and some 110 miles north of, the Mesa Verde (see Figure 1), 55 per cent of the species of mammals have boreal affinities and the other 45 per cent are wide-spread species (Anderson, 1959:414). Boreal species from the Mesa Verde are _Sorex vagrans_, _Sylvilagus nuttallii_, _Spermophilus lateralis_, _Marmota flaviventris_, _Tamiasciurus hudsonicus_, _Microtus montanus_, and _Microtus longicaudus_. These seven species comprise only thirteen per cent of the mammalian fauna of the Mesa Verde. Other boreal species that occur in the mountains of Colorado on the Grand Mesa or elsewhere (Findley and Anderson, 1956:80) and that do not occur on the Mesa Verde are _Sorex cinereus_, _Sorex palustris_, _Ochotona princeps_, _Lepus americana_, _Clethrionomys gapperi_, _Phenacomys intermedius_, _Zapus princeps_, _Martes americana_, _Mustela erminea_, and _Lynx canadensis_. The 47 species from the Mesa Verde that are not exclusively boreal make up 87 per cent of the mammalian fauna. Most of these are wide-spread species and are more abundant in the deserts or other lowlands than in the coniferous forests of the highlands, for example the eight species of bats, and _Sylvilagus audubonii_, _Thomomys bottae_, _Taxidea taxus_, _Bassariscus astutus_, _Canis latrans_, _Cynomys gunnisoni_, _Reithrodontomys megalotis_, and _Lepus californicus_. A few of the wide-spread species are more common in the highlands than in the lowlands, for example _Ursus americanus_, _Felis concolor_, _Castor canadensis_, _Erethizon dorsatum_, and _Cervus canadensis_, and the ranges of three of these, the bear, mountain lion and wapiti, are more restricted today than formerly. A few species find their favorite habitat and reach their greatest abundance in altitudinally and vegetationally intermediate areas such as upon the Mesa Verde, or in special habitats, such as the rock ledges, and crevices that are so abundant on the Mesa. Examples of this group of species are _Spermophilus variegatus_, _Peromyscus crinitus_, _Peromyscus truei_, _Neotoma cinerea_, and _Neotoma mexicana_. One species, _Dipodomys ordii_, is restricted to the desert. Species that are restricted to the desert and that occur in Montezuma County, Colorado, but that are not known from the Mesa Verde are _Ammospermophilus leucurus_, _Perognathus flavus_, and _Onychomys leucogaster_. Species known to have changed in numbers in the past 50 years are the mule deer that has increased, and the prairie dog that has decreased. Possibly beaver have increased along the Mancos River. The muskrat, mink, beaver, and raccoon usually occur only along the Mancos River, as there is no other permanent surface water in the Park. Species such as the bighorn and the marmot that are rare within the Park, or those such as the chickaree, the prairie dog, the wandering shrew, the montane vole, and the long-tailed vole that occupy only small areas of suitable habitat within the Park are the species most likely to be eliminated by natural changes, or through the activities of man. For example parasites introduced through domestic sheep that wander into the range of bighorns within the Park might endanger the bighorn population. An increase in grazing activity, road building, and camping in Prater and Morfield canyons might eliminate the small areas of habitat occupied by the montane vole and the wandering shrew. Fire in Chickaree Draw could destroy all the Douglas fir there, and consequently much of the habitat occupied by the chickaree. Probably some species inhabit the Mesa that have not yet been found, but they are probably few, and their discovery will not alter the faunal pattern in which the few boreal species occupy restricted habitats in the higher parts of the Mesa, and a preponderance of geographically wide-spread species occupy all or most of the Mesa, and surrounding areas. Additional bats are the species most likely to be added to the list. 28-7577 LITERATURE CITED ANDERSON, S. 1959. Mammals of the Grand Mesa, Colorado. Univ. Kansas Publ., Mus. Nat. Hist, 9(16):405-414, 1 fig. in text. CAHALANE, V.H. 1948. The status of mammals in the U.S. National Park System, 1947. Jour. Mamm., 29(3):247-259. CARY, M. 1911. A biological survey of Colorado. N. Amer. Fauna, 33:1-256, 39 figs., frontispiece (map). FINDLEY, J.S. 1955. Speciation of the Wandering Shrew. Univ. Kansas Publ., Mus. Nat. Hist., 9(1):1-68, figs. 1-18. FINDLEY, J.S. and ANDERSON, S. 1956. Zoogeography of the montane mammals of Colorado. Jour. Mamm., 37(1):80-82,1 fig. in text. FINLEY, R.B. 1958. The wood rats of Colorado, distribution and ecology. Univ. Kansas Publ., Mus. Nat. Hist., 10(6):213-552, 34 plates, 8 figs., 35 tables in text. GETTY, H.T. 1935. New dates from Mesa Verde. Tree-ring Bulletin, 1(3):21-23. HOFFMEISTER, D.F. 1951. A taxonomic and evolutionary study of the piñon mouse, Peromyscus truei. Illinois Biol. Monogr., vol. XXI(4), pp. ix + 104, 24 figs., 4 tables and 5 plates in text. RODECK, H.G. and ANDERSON, S. 1956. _Sorex merriami_ and _Microtus mexicanus_ in Colorado. Jour. Mamm., 37(3):436. SCHULMAN, E. 1946. Dendrochronology at Mesa Verde National Park. Tree-ring Bulletin, 12(3):18-24, 2 figs., 1 table in text. YOUNGMAN, P.M. 1958. Geographic variation in the pocket gopher, Thomomys bottae, in Colorado. Univ. Kansas Publ., Mus. Nat. Hist., 9(12):363-387, 7 figs. in text. _Transmitted April 11, 1961._ UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS MUSEUM OF NATIONAL HISTORY Institutional libraries interested in publications exchange may obtain this series by addressing the Exchange Librarian, University of Kansas Library, Lawrence, Kansas. Copies for individuals, persons working in a particular field of study, may be obtained by addressing instead the Museum of Natural History, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas. There is no provision for sale of this series by the University Library, which meets institutional requests, or by the Museum of Natural History, which meets the requests of individuals. However, when individuals request copies from the Museum, 25 cents should be included, for each separate number that is 100 pages or more in length, for the purpose of defraying the costs of wrapping and mailing. * An asterisk designates those numbers of which the Museum's supply (not the Library's supply) is exhausted. Numbers published to date, in this series, are as follows: Vol. 1. Nos. 1-26 and index. Pp. 1-638, 1946-1950. *Vol. 2. (Complete) Mammals of Washington. By Walter W. Dalquest. Pp. 1-444, 140 figures in text. April 9, 1948. Vol. 3. *1. The avifauna of Micronesia, its origin, evolution, and distribution. By Rollin H. Baker. Pp. 1-359, 16 figures in text. June 12, 1951. *2. A quantitative study of the nocturnal migration of birds. By George H. Lowery, Jr. Pp. 361-472, 47 figures in text. June 29, 1951. 3. Phylogeny of the waxwings and allied birds. By M. Dale Arvey. Pp. 478-530, 49 figures in text, 18 tables. October 10, 1951. 4. Birds from the state of Veracruz, Mexico. By George H. Lowery, Jr., and Walter W. Dalquest. Pp. 531-649, 7 figures in text, 2 tables. October 10, 1951. Index. Pp. 651-681. *Vol. 4. (Complete) American weasels. By E. Raymond Hall. Pp. 1-466, 41 plates, 31 figures in text. December 27, 1951. Vol. 5. Nos. 1-37 and index. Pp. 1-676, 1951-1953. *Vol. 6. (Complete) Mammals of Utah, _taxonomy and distribution_. By Stephen D. Durrant. Pp. 1-549, 91 figures in text, 30 tables. August 10, 1952. Vol. 7. *1. Mammals of Kansas. By E. Lendell Cockrum. Pp. 1-303, 73 figures in text, 37 tables. August 25, 1952. 2. Ecology of the opossum on a natural area in northeastern Kansas. By Henry S. Fitch and Lewis L. Sandidge. Pp. 305-338, 5 figures in text. August 24, 1953. 3. The silky pocket mice (Perognathus flavus) of Mexico. By Rollin H. Baker. Pp. 339-347, 1 figure in text. February 15, 1954. 4. North American jumping mice (Genus Zapus). By Philip H. Krutzsch. Pp. 349-472, 47 figures in text, 4 tables, April 21, 1954. 5. Mammals from Southeastern Alaska. By Rollin H. Baker and James S. Findley. Pp. 473-477. April 21, 1954. 6. Distribution of Some Nebraskan Mammals. By J. Knox Jones, Jr. Pp. 479-487. April 21, 1954. 7. Subspeciation in the montane meadow mouse. Microtus montanus, in Wyoming and Colorado. By Sydney Anderson. Pp. 489-506, 2 figures in text. July 23, 1954. 8. A new subspecies of bat (Myotis velifer) from southeastern California and Arizona. By Terry A. Vaughan. Pp. 507-512. July 28, 1954. 9. Mammals of the San Gabriel mountains of California. By Terry A. Vaughan. Pp. 513-582, 1 figure in text, 12 tables. November 15, 1954. 10. A new bat (Genus Pipistrellus) from northeastern Mexico. By Rollin H. Baker. Pp. 583-586. November 15, 1954. 11. A new subspecies of pocket mouse from Kansas. By E. Raymond Hall. Pp. 587-590. November 15, 1954. 12. Geographic variation in the pocket gopher, Cratogeomys castanops, in Coahuila, Mexico. By Robert J. Russell and Rollin H. Baker. Pp. 591-608. March 15, 1955. 13. A new cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus) from northeastern Mexico. By Rollin H. Baker. Pp. 609-612. April 8, 1955. 14. Taxonomy and distribution of some American shrews. By James S. Findley. Pp. 613-618. June 10, 1955. 15. The pigmy woodrat, Neotoma goldmani, its distribution and systematic position. By Dennis G. Rainey and Rollin H. Baker. Pp. 619-624, 2 figures in text. June 10, 1955. Index. Pp. 625-651. Vol. 8. Nos. 1-10 and index. Pp. 1-675, 1954-1956. Vol. 9. 1. Speciation of the wandering shrew. By James S. Findley. Pp. 1-68, 18 figures in text. December 10, 1955. 2. Additional records and extensions of ranges of mammals from Utah. By Stephen D. Durrant, M. Raymond Lee, and Richard M. Hansen. Pp. 69-80. December 10, 1955. 3. A new long-eared myotis (Myotis evotis) from northeastern Mexico. By Rollin H. Baker and Howard J. Stains. Pp. 81-84. December 10, 1955. 4. Subspeciation in the meadow mouse, Microtus pennsylvanicus, in Wyoming. By Sydney Anderson. Pp. 85-104, 2 figures in text. May 10, 1956. 5. The condylarth genus Ellipsodon. By Robert W. Wilson. Pp. 105-116, 6 figures in text. May 19, 1956. 6. Additional remains of the multituberculate genus Eucosmodon. By Robert W. Wilson. Pp. 117-123, 10 figures in text. May 19, 1956. 7. Mammals of Coahuila, Mexico. By Rollin H. Baker, Pp. 125-335, 75 figures in text. June 15, 1956. 8. Comments on the taxonomic status of Apodemus peninsulae, with description of a new subspecies from North China. By J. Knox Jones, Jr. Pp. 337-346, 1 figure in text, 1 table. August 15, 1956. 9. Extensions of known ranges of Mexican bats. By Sydney Anderson. Pp. 347-351. August 15, 1956. 10. A new bat (Genus Leptonycteris) from Coahuila. By Howard J. Stains. Pp. 353-356. January 21, 1957. 11. A new species of pocket gopher (Genus Pappogeomys) from Jalisco, Mexico. By Robert J. Russell Pp. 357-361. January 21, 1957. 12. Geographic variation in the pocket gopher, Thomomys bottae, in Colorado. By Phillip M. Youngman. Pp. 363-387, 7 figures in text. February 21, 1958. 13. New bog lemming (genus Synaptomys) from Nebraska. By J. Knox Jones, Jr. Pp. 385-388. May 12, 1958. 14. Pleistocene bats from San Josecito Cave, Nuevo León, Mexico. By J. Knox Jones, Jr. Pp. 389-396. December 19, 1958. 15. New subspecies of the rodent Baiomys from Central America. By Robert L. Packard. Pp. 397-404. December 19, 1958. 16. Mammals of the Grand Mesa, Colorado. By Sydney Anderson. Pp. 405-414, 1 figure in text. May 20, 1959. 17. Distribution, variation, and relationships of the montane vole, Microtus montanus. By Emil K. Urban. Pp. 415-511. 12 figures in text, 2 tables. August 1, 1959. 18. Conspecificity of two pocket mice, Perognathus goldmani and P. artus. By E. Raymond Hall and Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie. Pp. 513-518, 1 map. January 14, 1960. 19. Records of harvest mice, Reithrodontomys, from Central America, with description of a new subspecies from Nicaragua. By Sydney Anderson and J. Knox Jones, Jr. Pp. 519-529. January 14, 1960. 20. Small carnivores from San Josecito Cave (Pleistocene), Nuevo León, Mexico. By E. Raymond Hall. Pp. 531-538, 1 figure in text. January 14, 1960. 21. Pleistocene pocket gophers from San Josecito Cave, Nuevo León, Mexico. By Robert J. Russell. Pp. 539-548, 1 figure in text. January 14, 1960. 22. Review of the insectivores of Korea. By J. Knox Jones, Jr., and David H. Johnson. Pp. 549-578. February 28, 1960. 23. Speciation and evolution of the pygmy mice, genus Baiomys. By Robert L. Packard. Pp. 579-670, 4 plates, 12 figures in text. June 16, 1960. Index Pp. 671-690. Vol. 10. 1. Studies of birds killed in nocturnal migration. By Harrison B. Tordoff and Robert M. Mengel. Pp. 1-44, 6 figures in text, 2 tables. September 12, 1956. 2. Comparative breeding behavior of Ammospiza caudacuta and A. maritima. By Glen E. Woolfenden. Pp. 45-75, 6 plates, 1 figure. December 20, 1956. 3. The forest habitat of the University of Kansas Natural History Reservation. By Henry S. Fitch and Ronald R. McGregor. Pp. 77-127, 2 plates, 7 figures in text, 4 tables. December 31, 1956. 4. Aspects of reproduction and development in the prairie vole (Microtus ochrogaster). By Henry S. Fitch. Pp. 129-161, 8 figures in text, 4 tables. December 19, 1957. 5. Birds found on the Arctic slope of northern Alaska. By James W. Bee. Pp. 163-211, pls. 9-10, 1 figure in text. March 12, 1958. 6. The wood rats of Colorado: distribution and ecology. By Robert B. Finley, Jr. Pp. 213-552, 34 plates, 8 figures in text, 35 tables. November 7, 1958. 7. Home ranges and movements of the eastern cottontail in Kansas. By Donald W. Janes. Pp. 558-572, 4 plates, 3 figures in text. May 4, 1959. 8. Natural history of the salamander, Aneides hardyi. By Richard F. Johnston and Schad Gerhard. Pp. 573-585. October 8, 1959. 9. A new subspecies of lizard, Cnemidophorus sacki, from Michoacán, Mexico. By William E. Duellman. Pp. 587-598, 2 figures in text. May 2, 1960. 10. A taxonomic study of the Middle American Snake, Pituophis deppei. By William E. Duellman. Pp. 599-612, 1 plate, 1 figure in text. May 2, 1960. Index Pp. 611-626. Vol. 11. 1. The systematic status of the colubrid snake, Leptodeira discolor Günther. By William E. Duellman. Pp. 1-9, 4 figs. July 14, 1958. 2. Natural history of the six-lined racerunner, Cnemidophorus sexlineatus. By Henry S. Fitch. Pp. 11-62. 9 figs., 9 tables. September 19, 1958. 3. Home ranges, territories, and seasonal movements of vertebrates of the Natural History Reservation. By Henry S. Fitch. Pp. 63-326, 6 plates, 24 figures in text, 3 tables. December 12, 1958. 4. A new snake of the genus Geophis from Chihuahua, Mexico. By John M. Legler. Pp. 327-334, 2 figures in text. January 28, 1959. 5. A new tortoise, genus Gopherus, from north-central Mexico. By John M. Legler. Pp. 335-343. April 24, 1959. 6. Fishes of Chautauqua, Cowley and Elk counties, Kansas. By Artie L. Metcalf. Pp. 345-400, 2 plates, 2 figures in text, 10 tables. May 6, 1959. 7. Fishes of the Big Blue River Basin, Kansas. By W.L. Minckley, Pp. 401-442, 2 plates, 4 figures in text, 5 tables. May 8, 1959. 8. Birds from Coahuila, Mexico. By Emil K. Urban. Pp. 443-516. August 1, 1959. 9. Description of a new softshell turtle from the southeastern United States. By Robert G. Webb. Pp. 517-525, 2 pls., 1 figure in text. August 14, 1959. 10. Natural history of the ornate box turtle, Terrapene ornata ornata Agassiz. By John M. Legler. Pp. 527-669, 16 pls., 29 figures in text. March 7, 1960. Index Pp. 671-703. Vol. 12. 1. Functional morphology of three bats: Eumops, Myotis, Macrotus. By Terry A. Vaughan. Pp. 1-153, 4 plates, 24 figures in text. July 8, 1959. 2. The ancestry of modern Amphibia: a review of the evidence. By Theodore H. Eaton, Jr. Pp. 155-180, 10 figures in text. July 10, 1959. 3. The baculum in microtine rodents. By Sydney Anderson. Pp. 181-216, 49 figures in text. February 19, 1960. 4. A new order of fishlike Amphibia from the Pennsylvanian of Kansas. By Theodore H. Eaton, Jr., and Peggy Lou Stewart. Pp. 217-240, 12 figures in text. May 2, 1960. More numbers will appear in volume 12. Vol. 13. 1. Five natural hybrid combinations in minnows (Cyprinidae). By Frank B. Cross and W.L. Minckley. Pp. 1-18. June 1, 1960. 2. A distributional study of the amphibians of the isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico. By William E. Duellman. Pp. 19-72, pls. 1-8, 3 figs. August 16, 1960. 3. A new subspecies of the slider turtle (Pseudemys scripta) from Coahuila, Mexico. By John M. Legler. Pp. 73-84, pls. 9-12, 3 figures in text. August 16, 1960. 4. Autecology of the Copperhead. By Henry S. Fitch. Pp. 85-288, pls. 13-20, 26 figures in text. November 30, 1960. 5. Occurrence of the Garter Snake, Thamnophis sirtalis, in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains. By Henry S. Fitch and T. Paul Maslin. Pp. 289-308, 4 figures in text. February 10, 1961. 6. Fishes of the Wakarusa River in Kansas. By James E. Deacon and Artie L. Metcalf. Pp. 309-32 2, 1 figure in text. February 10, 1961. 7. Geographic variation in the North American Cyprinid Fish, Hybopsis gracilis. By Leonard J. Olund and Frank B. Cross. Pp. 323-348, pls. 21-24, 2 figures in text. February 10, 1961. 8. Descriptions of two species of frogs, Genus Ptychohyla--studies of American hylid frogs, V. By William E. Duellman. Pp. 349-357, pls. 25, 2 figures in text. April 27, 1961. More numbers will appear in volume 13. Vol. 14. 1. Neotropical bats from western Mexico. By Sydney Anderson. Pp. 1-8. October 24, 1960. 2. Geographic variation in the harvest mouse Reithrodontomys megalotis on the central Great Plains and in adjacent regions. By J. Knox Jones, Jr. and B. Mursaloglu. Pp. 9-27, 1 figure in text. July 24, 1961. 3. Mammals of Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. By Sydney Anderson. Pp. 29-67, pls. 1-2, 3 figures in text. July 24, 1961. More numbers will appear in volume 14. 
31280	----	UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Volume 9, No. 16, pp. 405-414, 1 fig. May 20, 1959 Mammals of the Grand Mesa, Colorado BY SYDNEY ANDERSON UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS LAWRENCE 1959 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS, MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Editors: E. Raymond Hall, Chairman, Henry S. Fitch, Robert W. Wilson Volume 9, No. 16, pp. 405-414, 1 fig. Published May 20, 1959 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS Lawrence, Kansas PRINTED IN THE STATE PRINTING PLANT TOPEKA, KANSAS 1959 27-7472 Mammals of the Grand Mesa, Colorado BY SYDNEY ANDERSON The Grand Mesa of Colorado is a westward extension of the mountains of central Colorado, standing more than five thousand feet above the valleys of the Colorado and the Gunnison rivers. To certain montane mammals the mesa is a peninsula of cool, moist, forest surrounded by inhospitable, hot, dry, barren lowland. Few mammals previously have been preserved or reported from the Grand Mesa. Of the species here reported, Warren (1942, The Mammals of Colorado, Univ. Oklahoma Press) mentioned only four from the counties in which the Grand Mesa is located. Twenty-two species are here recorded from the Grand Mesa, and two localities below the rim of the Mesa on the north slope, on the basis of specimens preserved, and five additional species on the basis of observations. Many of these species are limited to a montane habitat or find their optimum conditions there. The known geographic ranges of some subspecies are extended westward. Specimens and notes were obtained by members of a field party from the Museum of Natural History led by Dr. Harrison B. Tordoff. The party, including also R. Gordon Cliffgard, John M. Legler, Olin L. Webb, and Glen E. Woolfenden, was in the area from June 17 to July 5, 1954, and obtained all of the specimens listed excepting those from 28 miles east of Grand Junction (Sect. 29, T. 11S, R. 95W), Mesa County, that were obtained from June 13 to July 2, 1956, by Phillip M. Youngman, and those from Land's End Road that were obtained on May 13 and 14, and on October 1, 1948, by D. A. Sutton. Localities designated by numbers in the accounts to follow are listed in the legend for Figure 1. Localities 1 and 3 lie below the rim of the Mesa on the north side. Catalogue numbers are of the Museum of Natural History of the University of Kansas, unless noted otherwise. =_Sorex cinereus cinereus_= Kerr.--Two male (59642-59643) Masked Shrews weighing 4.8 and 4.9 grams were trapped on June 17 at locality 10, and a nonpregnant female (59644) was trapped on June 26 at locality 6. _Sorex cinereus_ seemed to be less abundant on the Mesa than _Sorex vagrans_; more individuals of _S. vagrans_ than of _S. cinereus_ were trapped on June 17 at locality 10 and on June 26 at locality 6, and _S. vagrans_ was trapped at three localities where no _S. cinereus_ was obtained. [Illustration: FIG. 1. Map of the Grand Mesa (for purposes of this paper the area above 7500 feet on each side of the northern boundary of Delta County). The inset of the western three-fourths of Colorado shows the Grand Mesa in relation to the larger areas of mountains in the state (areas above 9000 feet are stippled). The following collecting localities are indicated by numbered, black dots: (1) 2 mi. N, 9 mi. E Collbran, 7000 ft., Mesa County. (2) Land's End Road to Grand Mesa, 6800 to 8050 ft., Mesa County. (3) 3 mi. E, 4 mi. S Collbran, 6800 ft., Mesa County. (4) 3 mi. E, 9 mi. S Collbran, 10,200 ft., Mesa County. (5) 5-1/2 mi. E, 11-1/2 mi. S Collbran, _in_ Delta County. (6) 5-1/2 mi. E, 12 mi. S Collbran, 9600 to 10,400 ft., _in_ Delta County. (7) 28 mi. E Grand Junction (Sec. 29, T. 11S, R. 95W), Mesa County. (8) 6 mi. E Skyway, 10,000 to 10,500 ft., _in_ Delta County. (9) 7 mi. E Skyway, _in_ Delta County. (10) 8 mi. E, 1/2 mi. S Skyway, 9500 to 10,200 ft., _in_ Delta County. (11) 8 mi. E, 3/4 mi. S Skyway, 10,200 ft., _in_ Delta County. (12) 8 mi. E, 1 mi. S Skyway, 10,000 to 10,200 ft., _in_ Delta County. (13) 8 mi. E, 1-1/2 mi. S Skyway, 8500 to 9600 ft., _in_ Delta County. (14) 8 mi. E, 2 mi. S Skyway, 9000 ft., _in_ Delta County. (15) 8 mi. E, 2-1/2 mi. S Skyway, 9600 ft., _in_ Delta County. (16) 1 mi. S, 4 mi. W Skyway, 10,200 ft., Mesa County.] =_Sorex vagrans obscurus_= Merriam.--Fifteen specimens of the Vagrant Shrew (59645-59655, 59665-59668) were trapped in Delta County from localities 6, 10, 12, 13, and 14. The fourteen specimens having skulls fell into two distinct age-classes based on wear of the teeth as described by Findley (1955, Univ. Kansas Publ., Mus. Nat. Hist., 9:8); 5 were in the younger group and 9 in the older group. Weights in grams of the younger shrews were 4.6, 5.5, 5.7, 5.8, and 6.4; weights of the older shrews were 6.4, 6.8, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5, 8.0, 8.3, and 8.8. One of the seven females was lactating; none contained embryos. =_Sorex palustris navigator_= (Baird).--Six Water Shrews (59633-59638) were trapped in Delta County at localities 10, 13, 14, and 15. The one specimen from locality 10 was trapped on June 17; all others were taken on June 21. None was pregnant or lactating. Two are young, weighing 11.0 and 12.9 grams; the other four are older, weighing 16.6, 17.0, 19.2, and 21.5 grams. =_Myotis evotis evotis_= (H. Allen).--One female Long-eared Myotis (59671), containing no embryos, was shot at dusk on July 2, at locality 3, which is below the rim of the Mesa. =_Myotis volans interior_= Miller.--One female Long-legged Myotis (70016), containing no embryos, was shot at locality 7 on July 1, 1956. =_Ochotona princeps figginsi_= J. A. Allen.--Six specimens of the Pika (59672-59675, 70018-70019) from localities 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 extend the known range of the subspecies approximately 55 miles to the westward from Irwin in Gunnison County. Each of two females taken on June 18 and 26 contained three embryos, which measured 20 millimeters in the latter; a third female on June 29 contained two embryos 35 millimeters in length. =_Lepus americanus bairdii_= Hayden.--No Snowshoe Rabbit was taken, but one individual was observed by H. B. Tordoff on June 18, 1954, at locality 8. Droppings of a large lagomorph were seen in the woods, and tracks were seen in the snow. =_Marmota flaviventris luteola_= A. H. Howell.--The seven specimens of the Yellow-bellied Marmot (59731-6, 70022, four adult and two young, each a skin and skull, and one skull only of an adult) are referable on the basis of size, color, and locality as discussed by Warren (1936, Jour. Mamm., 17:394) to _M. f. luteola_. The total lengths in millimeters are as follows: young male 582; adult males 640, 655; young females 460, 520; adult female 630. The color and condition of the pelage is the same in all the specimens except that the two largest males are much more worn and show irregular patches of new hair on the back, and the two young females are paler especially on the back and tail. These marmots were taken at localities 4, 7, 8, 10, and 16. =_Spermophilus lateralis lateralis_= (Say).--Eleven specimens of the Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel (59748-59756, 59763-59764) were taken at localities 1, 3, and 4. Young were born before late June; three young of the year were taken at locality 3 on June 29 and 30, and none of the adult females taken at locality 1 (1 female) and at locality 4 (3 females) was pregnant. Most adults of both sexes at all elevations represented (6800 to 10,200 ft.) showed molt in progress and proceeding from anterior to posterior. All specimens were obtained from June 25 to July 4. =_Spermophilus variegatus grammurus_= (Say).--Three Rock Squirrels (59738-59739, 59742) were obtained at locality 3. One of these specimens was a skull found near a wood rat nest. The other two were nonpregnant females; the adult measured 485 millimeters in total length, and the younger individual measured 413 millimeters. The two skins are characteristic of _S. v. grammurus_ in their paleness. =_Eutamias minimus consobrinus_= (J. A. Allen).--The 63 specimens of the Least Chipmunk (59770-59824, 60105-60108, 70024-70025, and nos. 5194 and 5196 in Univ. of Colorado Museum) were taken at localities 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 13, and 15. The reproductive condition at time of death had been noted for 20 females obtained from June 17 to July 2 at elevations from 9500 to 10,400 feet. Eleven of these had no embryos, but six have mammae that are still prominent on the dried skins and may have had litters prior to their capture. Nine females contained embryos, numbering 3 in two specimens, 5 in four specimens, 6 in two specimens, and 7 in one specimen. =_Eutamias quadrivittatus hopiensis_= Merriam.--Four specimens of the Colorado Chipmunk were obtained by D. A. Sutton at locality 2, at 6800, 6900, 7175, and 8050 feet elevation. All are males taken on May 13 and 14, 1949; the specimens bear numbers 5197, 5198, 5199, and 5201 in the collection of the University of Colorado Museum. =_Thomomys talpoides fossor_= J. A. Allen.--The 27 specimens of the Northern Pocket Gopher (59840-59849, 70086-70102) were trapped at localities 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, and 13. The eight skins from locality 7 differ from those from the other localities on the Mesa in being uniformly duller in color dorsally. No significant difference in size or cranial characters was observed. Specimens assigned to _T. t. fossor_, in the collection of the Museum of Natural History, from other localities in Colorado differ in color from any of the specimens from the Grand Mesa. Until larger numbers of _Thomomys talpoides_ from other localities in Colorado and from the type locality of _T. t. fossor_, stated to be at Florida, in southern Colorado, have been studied, the specimens from the Grand Mesa seem best referred to _T. t. fossor_. Three females from localities 7, 10, and 11 contained embryos (2, 4, and 5 in number), and seven other females from localities 6 and 7 show distinct mammae on the dried skins or were recorded by the collectors as lactating. =_Castor canadensis concisor_= Warren and Hall.--Dams constructed by beavers were seen at locality 4 on June 23, 1954. No specimen was taken. =_Peromyscus maniculatus rufinus_= (Merriam).--The 36 specimens of the Deer Mouse (59921-59956) are from seven localities (3, 4, 6, 10, 12, 14, and 15). The mice vary considerably in color; most of them are like mice of the highlands of Colorado and unlike the paler mice inhabiting the lower areas immediately to the west of the Grand Mesa. Young individuals trapped on June 20, 21, and 22 and judged to range from a month through two months in age, and females containing embryos, attest to a somewhat protracted breeding season on the Grand Mesa. =_Neotoma cinerea arizonae_= Merriam.--Two immature Bushy-tailed Wood Rats (60000-60001) were obtained at locality 3 on July 3. =_Clethrionomys gapperi galei_= (Merriam).--The 22 specimens (60005-60025, 70133) of Gapper's Red-backed Vole were taken at localities 6, 7, and 10, and are clearly referable to _C. g. galei_, rather than to _Clethrionomys gapperi gauti_ to the south, on the basis of generally dark dorsal pelage, indistinctly bordered broad dorsal stripe, and cranial features. _C. g. gauti_ was described by Cockrum and Fitch (1952, Univ. Kansas Publ., Mus. Nat. Hist., 5:289) on the basis of 14 specimens from southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. Twenty-one additional specimens from five miles south and one mile west of Cucharas Camps, Huerfano County, were obtained from the seventh to the fourteenth of July by the field party led by Tordoff after the party left the Grand Mesa. These specimens substantiate the subspecific distinctness of _C. g. gauti_ in that they agree in external and in cranial appearance with the description of typical _C. g. gauti_, and are distinct in appearance from specimens of _C. g. galei_ from the Grand Mesa and from other localities in northern Colorado. The six specimens from two localities in Colorado available to Cockrum and Fitch exhibited evidence of intergradation at one locality, and atypical smallness at the other locality. A specimen (70134) taken on June 26, 1956, by Phillip M. Youngman on the Black Mesa, nine miles WNW of Sapinero, 9500 ft., Gunnison County, Colorado, is almost identical in color to the two specimens from Saguache County regarded by Cockrum and Fitch as intergrades between _C. g. galei_ and _C. g. gauti_, but in small size of auditory bullae and narrowness of braincase resembles _C. g. galei_, to which it seems best referred. The specimens from the Grand Mesa extend the known range of _C. g. galei_ approximately 50 miles westward in central Colorado from Gothic. Three females were pregnant; two trapped on June 17 and June 25 contained 6 embryos each, and one trapped on June 25 contained 5 embryos. Four of the females taken in Huerfano County were pregnant; one contained 3 embryos, two contained 5 embryos, and one contained 7 embryos. Immature individuals are present in the sample from Huerfano County also. =_Phenacomys intermedius intermedius_= Merriam.--Three Heather Voles (60048, 60049, 70135) were trapped at localities 6, 7, and 10. All were adult females; one, taken on June 25 at locality 6, contained seven embryos five millimeters in length, and one, taken on July 2 at locality 7, contained seven embryos nine millimeters in length. These specimens extend the known range of the species approximately 55 miles west from Gothic (Pruitt, Jour. Mamm., 35:450, 1954). =_Microtus longicaudus mordax_= (Merriam).--Ten Long-tailed Voles (60070-60079) represent localities 3, 6, 12, 13, 14, and 15. =_Microtus montanus fusus_= Hall.--Ten Montane Voles (60060-60068, 70145) represent localities 3, 6, 7, and 15. =_Ondatra zibethicus osoyoosensis_= (Lord).--Muskrats were seen daily from June 17 to June 23 in a lake at locality 13. No specimen was obtained. =_Zapus princeps princeps_= J. A. Allen.--Nineteen Western Jumping Mice (60109-60126, 60137) were trapped at localities 6, 10, 12, 14, and 15. =_Erethizon dorsatum epixanthum_= Brandt.--A Porcupine skull was seen in the nest of a wood rat by John M. Legler at locality 3 on July 2. On June 20 a porcupine was seen at locality 12. No specimen was obtained. =_Mustela frenata nevadensis_= Hall.--Seven Long-tailed Weasels (60138-60143, 70152) were taken at localities 1, 4, 7, 8, 13, and 14. Four are males and three are females. Some of these were attracted by "squeaking" noises and then shot. =_Taxidea taxus taxus_= (Schreber).--One adult male Badger (60144) was found dead; the skull and baculum were saved. The subspecific identification is on geographic grounds, and is tentative. In this area _T. t. taxus_ and _T. t. fippsi_ may intergrade. =_Mephitis mephitis estor_= Merriam.--One Striped Skunk (60145) of unknown sex was found dead in the cellar of a cabin at locality 10. =_Odocoileus hemionus hemionus_= (Rafinesque).--Mule Deer were observed at locality 15; no specimen was obtained. DISCUSSION The species here reported from the Grand Mesa may be placed according to their geographic ranges and their restriction to certain habitats in two groups: BOREAL.--Each of the 12 species listed below is of northern distribution, is dependent, at the latitude of Colorado, upon the habitat provided by areas of high altitudes, and is near its southern zonal limit on the Grand Mesa. The 12 species are: _Sorex cinereus_, _Sorex palustris_, _Sorex vagrans_, _Ochotona princeps_, _Lepus americanus_, _Marmota flaviventris_, _Spermophilus lateralis_, _Clethrionomys gapperi_, _Phenacomys intermedius_, _Microtus longicaudus_, _Microtus montanus_, and _Zapus princeps_. _Thomomys talpoides_ may be considered in this category also, although it is less restricted in range and habitat than most of the other species listed as boreal. These thirteen species make up almost half of the twenty-seven species known from the Grand Mesa. WIDE-SPREAD.--Species in this category are those that are widely distributed in the western United States and that occur in Colorado in both the mountains and the lower more arid intermontane areas. Some of these species are differentiated into subspecies, one of which inhabits the mountains and another the lowlands. Wide-spread species that do not have subspecies in the lowlands different than the subspecies in the mountains or that are represented by too little material from the Grand Mesa to be evaluated critically are _Myotis evotis_, _Myotis volans_, _Spermophilus variegatus_, _Eutamias quadrivittatus_, _Castor canadensis_, _Ondatra zibethicus_, _Erethizon dorsatum_, _Mustela frenata_, _Taxidea taxus_, _Mephitis mephitis_, and _Odocoileus hemionus_. Three other wide-spread species are differentiated into lowland and highland subspecies; two of these species, _Eutamias minimus_ and _Peromyscus maniculatus_, are represented on the Grand Mesa by the darker subspecies of the mountains. The third species, _Neotoma cinerea_, is represented by two individuals from below the actual rim of the mesa; they are intergrades between the lowland and highland subspecies. Species of southern distribution, that are dependent at the latitude of Colorado upon the habitat provided by areas of lower altitudes, and that are here in Colorado near their northern limit comprise a third category that is not represented in the list of mammals from the Grand Mesa although such characteristic species as _Ammospermophilus leucurus_, _Perognathus apache_, and _Dipodomys ordii_ occur as near as Grand Junction. Approximately 55 per cent of the species of the mammalian fauna are boreal; no species of Sonoran affinities finds haven on the Grand Mesa. Transmitted January 22, 1959. 27-7472 * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Italicized text is shown within _underscores_. Bold italicized text is shown within =_equal signs and underscores_=. Page 407: Rejoined the remainder of the last paragraph, originally found on page 409. 
26239	----	[Illustration: HER FACE SHONE AS SHE CALLED OUT: "WELL, HOW DO YOU STACK UP THIS MORNING?" (See page 31)] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE FORESTER'S DAUGHTER A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range By HAMLIN GARLAND Author of "The Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop" "Main-Travelled Roads" Etc. Illustrated HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS New York and London MCMXIV ---------------------------------------------------------------------- COPYRIGHT. 1914. BY HAMLIN GARLAND Printed in the United States of America Published February, 1914 A-O ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I The Happy Girl 1 II A Ride In The Rain 19 III Wayland Receives a Warning 46 IV The Supervisor of the Forest 68 V The Golden Pathway 82 VI Storm-Bound 110 VII The Walk in the Rain 123 VIII The Other Girl 142 IX Further Perplexities 159 X The Camp on the Pass 173 XI The Death-Grapple 195 XII Berrie's Vigil 204 XIII The Gossips Awake 223 XIV The Summons 247 XV A Matter of Millinery 260 XVI The Private Car 274 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE HER FACE SHONE AS SHE CALLED OUT: "WELL, HOW DO YOU STACK UP THIS MORNING?" Frontispiece THE GIRL BEHIND HIM WAS A WONDROUS PART OF THIS WILD AND UNACCOUNTABLE COUNTRY 6 SHE FOUND HERSELF CONFRONTED BY AN ENDLESS MAZE OF BLACKENED TREE-TRUNKS 140 THE SLENDER YOUTH WENT DOWN BEFORE THE BIG RANCHER AS THOUGH STRUCK BY A CATAPULT 195 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AUTHOR'S FOREWORD This little story is the outcome of two trips (neither of which was in the Bear Tooth Forest) during the years 1909 and 1910. Its main claim on the reader's interest will lie, no doubt, in the character of Berea McFarlane; but I find myself re-living with keen pleasure the splendid drama of wind and cloud and swaying forest which made the expeditions memorable. The golden trail is an actuality for me. The camp on the lake was mine. The rain, the snow I met. The prying camp-robbers, the grouse, the muskrats, the beaver were my companions. But Berrie was with me only in imagination. She is a fiction, born of a momentary, powerful hand-clasp of a Western rancher's daughter. The story of Wayland Norcross is fiction also. But the McFarlane ranch, the mill, and the lonely ranger-stations are closely drawn pictures of realities. Although the stage of my comedy is Colorado, I have not held to any one locality. The scene is composite. It was my intention, originally, to write a much longer and more important book concerning Supervisor McFarlane, but Berrie took the story into her own strong hands and made of it something so intimate and so idyllic that I could not bring the more prosaic element into it. It remained personal and youthful in spite of my plans, a divergence for which, perhaps, most of my readers will be grateful. As for its title, I had little to do with its selection. My daughter, Mary Isabel, aged ten, selected it from among a half-dozen others, and for luck I let it stand, although it sounds somewhat like that of a paper-bound German romance. For the sub-title my publishers are responsible. Finally, I warn the reader that this is merely the very slender story of a young Western girl who, being desired of three strong men, bestows her love on a "tourist" whose weakness is at once her allurement and her care. The administration problem, the sociologic theme, which was to have made the novel worth while, got lost in some way on the low trail and never caught up with the lovers. I'm sorry--but so it was! Chicago, January, 1914. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE FORESTER'S DAUGHTER ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE FORESTER'S DAUGHTER I THE HAPPY GIRL The stage line which ran from Williams to Bear Tooth (one of the most authentic then to be found in all the West) possessed at least one genuine Concord coach, so faded, so saddened, so cracked, and so splintered that its passengers entered it under protest, and alighted from it with thanksgiving, and yet it must have been built by honorable men, for in 190- it still made the run of one hundred and twenty miles twice each week without loss of wheel or even so much as moulting a scrap of paint. And yet, whatever it may have been in its youth, it was in its age no longer a gay dash of color in the landscape. On the contrary, it fitted into the dust-brown and sage-green plain as defensively as a beetle in a dusty path. Nevertheless, it was an indispensable part of a very moving picture as it crept, creaking and groaning (or it may be it was the suffering passenger creaking and groaning), along the hillside. After leaving the Grande River the road winds up a pretty high divide before plunging down into Ute Park, as they call all that region lying between the Continental Range on the east and the Bear Tooth plateau on the west. It was a big spread of land, and very far from an Eastern man's conception of a park. From Dome Peak it seems a plain; but, in fact, when clouds shut off the high summits to the west, this "valley" becomes a veritable mountain land, a tumbled, lonely country, over which an occasional horseman crawls, a minute but persistent insect. It is, to be exact, a succession of ridges and ravines, sculptured (in some far-off, post-glacial time) by floods of water, covered now, rather sparsely, with pinons, cedars, and aspens, a dry, forbidding, but majestic landscape. In late August the hills become iridescent, opaline with the translucent yellow of the aspen, the coral and crimson of the fire-weed, the blood-red of huckleberry beds, and the royal purple of the asters, while flowing round all, as solvent and neutral setting, lies the gray-green of the ever-present and ever-enduring sage-brush. On the loftier heights these colors are arranged in most intricate and cunning patterns, with nothing hard, nothing flaring in the prospect. All is harmonious and restful. It is, moreover, silent, silent as a dream world, and so flooded with light that the senses ache with the stress of it. Through this gorgeous land of mist, of stillness, and of death, a few years ago a pale young man (seated beside the driver) rode one summer day in a voiceless rapture which made Bill McCoy weary. "If you'd had as much of this as I have you'd talk of something else," he growled, after a half dozen attempts at conversation. Bill wasn't much to look at, but he was a good driver and the stranger respected him for it. Eventually this simple-minded horseman became curious about the slim young fellow sitting beside him. "What you doing out here, anyhow--fishing or just rebuilding a lung?" "Rebuilding two lungs," answered the tourist. "Well, this climate will just about put lungs into a coffee-can," retorted Bill, with official loyalty to his country. To his discerning eye "the tourist" now became "a lunger." "Where do you live when you're to home?" "Connecticut." "I knew it." "How did you know it?" The youth seemed really interested to know. "I drove another fellow up here last fall that dealt out the same kind of brogue you do." This amused the tourist. "You think I have a 'brogue,' do you?" "I don't think it--I know it!" Bill replied, shortly. He was prevented at the moment from pursuing this line of inquiry by the discovery of a couple of horsemen racing from a distant ranch toward the road. It was plain, even to the stranger, that they intended to intercept the stage, and Bill plied the lash with sudden vigor. "I'll give 'em a chase," said he, grimly. The other appeared a little alarmed, "What are they--bandits?" "Bandits!" sneered Bill. "Your eyesight is piercing. Them's _girls_." The traveler apologized. "My eyes aren't very good," he said, hurriedly. He was, however, quite justified in his mistake, for both riders wore wide-rimmed sombreros and rode astride at a furious pace, bandanas fluttering, skirts streaming, and one was calling in shrill command, "OH, BILL!" As they neared the gate the driver drew up with a word of surprise. "Why, howdy, girls, howdy!" he said, with an assumption of innocence. "Were you wishin' fer to speak to me?" "Oh, shut up!" commanded one of the girls, a round-faced, freckled romp. "You know perfectly well that Berrie is going home to-day--we told you all about it yesterday." "Sure thing!" exclaimed Bill. "I'd forgot all about it." "Like nothin'!" exclaimed the maid. "You've been countin' the hours till you got here--I know you." Meanwhile her companion had slipped from her horse. "Well, good-by, Molly, wish I could stay longer." "Good-by. Run down again." "I will. You come up." The young passenger sprang to the ground and politely said: "May I help you in?" Bill stared, the girl smiled, and her companion called: "Be careful, Berrie, don't hurt yourself, the wagon might pitch." The youth, perceiving that he had made another mistake, stammered an apology. The girl perceived his embarrassment and sweetly accepted his hand. "I am much obliged, all the same." Bill shook with malicious laughter. "Out in this country girls are warranted to jump clean over a measly little hack like this," he explained. The girl took a seat in the back corner of the dusty vehicle, and Bill opened conversation with her by asking what kind of a time she had been having "in the East." "Fine," said she. "Did ye get as far back as my old town?" "What town is that, Bill?" "Oh, come off! You know I'm from Omaha." "No, I only got as far as South Bend." The picture which the girl had made as she dashed up to the pasture gate (her hat-rim blown away from her brown face and sparkling eyes), united with the kindliness in her voice as she accepted his gallant aid, entered a deep impression on the tourist's mind; but he did not turn his head to look at her--perhaps he feared Bill's elbow quite as much as his guffaw--but he listened closely, and by listening learned that she had been "East" for several weeks, and also that she was known, and favorably known, all along the line, for whenever they met a team or passed a ranch some one called out, "Hello, Berrie!" in cordial salute, and the men, old and young, were especially pleased to see her. [Illustration: THE GIRL BEHIND HIM WAS A WONDROUS PART OF THIS WILD AND UNACCOUNTABLE COUNTRY] Meanwhile the stage rose and fell over the gigantic swells like a tiny boat on a monster sea, while the sun blazed ever more fervently from the splendid sky, and the hills glowed with ever-increasing tumult of color. Through this land of color, of repose, of romance, the young traveler rode, drinking deep of the germless air, feeling that the girl behind him was a wondrous part of this wild and unaccountable country. He had no chance to study her face again till the coach rolled down the hill to "Yancy's," where they were to take dinner and change horses. Yancy's ranch-house stood on the bank of a fine stream which purled--in keen defiance of the hot sun--over a gravel bed, so near to the mountain snows that their coolness still lingered in the ripples. The house, a long, low, log hut, was fenced with antlers of the elk, adorned with morning-glory vines, and shaded by lofty cottonwood-trees, and its green grass-plat--after the sun-smit hills of the long morning's ride--was very grateful to the Eastern man's eyes. With intent to show Bill that he did not greatly fear his smiles, the youth sprang down and offered a hand to assist his charming fellow-passenger to alight; and she, with kindly understanding, again accepted his aid--to Bill's chagrin--and they walked up the path side by side. "This is all very new and wonderful to me," the young man said in explanation; "but I suppose it's quite commonplace to you--and Bill." "Oh no--it's home!" "You were born here?" "No, I was born in the East; but I've lived here ever since I was three years old." "By East you mean Kansas?" "No, Missouri," she laughed back at him. She was taller than most women, and gave out an air of fine unconscious health which made her good to see, although her face was too broad to be pretty. She smiled easily, and her teeth were white and even. Her hand he noticed was as strong as steel and brown as leather. Her neck rose from her shoulders like that of an acrobat, and she walked with the sense of security which comes from self-reliant strength. She was met at the door by old lady Yancy, who pumped her hand up and down, exclaiming: "My stars, I'm glad to see ye back! 'Pears like the country is just naturally goin' to the dogs without you. The dance last Saturday was a frost, so I hear, no snap to the fiddlin', no gimp to the jiggin'. It shorely was pitiful." Yancy himself, tall, grizzled, succinct, shook her hand in his turn. "Ma's right, girl, the country needs ye. I'm scared every time ye go away fer fear some feller will snap ye up." She laughed. "No danger. Well, how are ye all, anyway?" she asked. "All well, 'ceptin' me," said the little old woman. "I'm just about able to pick at my vittles." "She does her share o' the work, and half the cook's besides," volunteered Yancy. "I know her," retorted Berrie, as she laid off her hat. "It's me for a dip. Gee, but it's dusty on the road!" The young tourist--he signed W. W. Norcross in Yancy's register--watched her closely and listened to every word she spoke with an intensity of interest which led Mrs. Yancy to say, privately: "'Pears like that young 'lunger' ain't goin' to forgit you if he can help it." "What makes you think he's a 'lunger'?" "Don't haf to think. One look at him is enough." Thereafter a softer light--the light of pity--shone in the eyes of the girl. "Poor fellow, he does look kind o' peaked; but this climate will bring him up to the scratch," she added, with optimistic faith in her beloved hills. A moment later the down-coming stage pulled in, loaded to the side-lines, and everybody on it seemed to know Berea McFarlane. It was hello here and hello there, and how are ye between, with smacks from the women and open cries of "pass it around" on the part of the men, till Norcross marveled at the display. "She seems a great favorite," he observed to Yancy. "Who--Berrie? She's the whole works up at Bear Tooth. Good thing she don't want to go to Congress--she'd lay Jim Worthy on the shelf." Berea's popularity was not so remarkable as her manner of receiving it. She took it all as a sort of joke--a good, kindly joke. She shook hands with her male admirers, and smacked the cheeks of her female friends with an air of modest deprecation. "Oh, you don't mean it," was one of her phrases. She enjoyed this display of affection, but it seemed not to touch her deeply, and her impartial, humorous acceptance of the courtship of the men was equally charming, though this was due, according to remark, to the claims of some rancher up the line. She continued to be the theme of conversation at the dinner-table and yet remained unembarrassed, and gave back quite as good as she received. "If I was Cliff," declared one lanky admirer, "I'd be shot if I let you out of my sight. It ain't safe." She smiled broadly. "I don't feel scared." "Oh, _you're_ all right! It's the other feller--like me--that gets hurt." "Don't worry, you're old enough and tough enough to turn a steel-jacketed bullet." This raised a laugh, and Mrs. Yancy, who was waiting on the table, put in a word: "I'll board ye free, Berrie, if you'll jest naturally turn up here regular at meal-time. You do take the fellers' appetites. It's the only time I make a cent." To the Eastern man this was all very unrestrained and deeply diverting. The people seemed to know all about one another notwithstanding the fact that they came from ranches scattered up and down the stage line twenty, thirty miles apart--to be neighbors in this country means to be anywhere within a sixty-mile ride--and they gossiped of the countryside as minutely as the residents of a village in Wisconsin discuss their kind. News was scarce. The north-bound coach got away first, and as the girl came out to take her place, Norcross said: "Won't you have my seat with the driver?" She dropped her voice humorously. "No, thank you, I can't stand for Bill's clack." Norcross understood. She didn't relish the notion of being so close to the frankly amorous driver, who neglected no opportunity to be personal; therefore, he helped her to her seat inside and resumed his place in front. Bill, now broadly communicative, minutely detailed his tastes in food, horses, liquors, and saddles in a long monologue which would have been tiresome to any one but an imaginative young Eastern student. Bill had a vast knowledge of the West, but a distressing habit of repetition. He was self-conscious, too, for the reason that he was really talking for the benefit of the girl sitting in critical silence behind him, who, though he frequently turned to her for confirmation of some of the more startling of his statements, refused to be drawn into controversy. In this informing way some ten miles were traversed, the road climbing ever higher, and the mountains to right and left increasing in grandeur each hour, till of a sudden and in a deep valley on the bank of another swift stream, they came upon a squalid saloon and a minute post-office. This was the town of Moskow. Bill, lumbering down over the wheel, took a bag of mail from the boot and dragged it into the cabin. The girl rose, stretched herself, and said: "This stagin' is slow business. I'm cramped. I'm going to walk on ahead." "May I go with you?" asked Norcross. "Sure thing! Come along." As they crossed the little pole bridge which spanned the flood, the tourist exclaimed: "What exquisite water! It's like melted opals." "Comes right down from the snow," she answered, impressed by the poetry of his simile. He would gladly have lingered, listening to the song of the water, but as she passed on, he followed. The opposite hill was sharp and the road stony, but as they reached the top the young Easterner called out, "See the savins!" Before them stood a grove of cedars, old, gray, and drear, as weirdly impressive as the cacti in a Mexican desert. Torn by winds, scarred by lightnings, deeply rooted, tenacious as tradition, unlovely as Egyptian mummies, fantastic, dwarfed and blackened, these unaccountable creatures clung to the ledges. The dead mingled horribly with the living, and when the wind arose--the wind that was robustly cheerful on the high hills--these hags cried out with low moans of infinite despair. It was as if they pleaded for water or for deliverance from a life that was a kind of death. The pale young man shuddered. "What a ghostly place!" he exclaimed, in a low voice. "It seems the burial-place of a vanished race." Something in his face, some note in his voice profoundly moved the girl. For the first time her face showed something other than childish good nature and a sense of humor. "I don't like these trees myself," she answered. "They look too much like poor old squaws." For a few moments the man and the maid studied the forest of immemorial, gaunt, and withered trees--bright, impermanent youth confronting time-defaced and wind-torn age. Then the girl spoke: "Let's get out of here. I shall cry if we don't." In a few moments the dolorous voices were left behind, and the cheerful light of the plain reasserted itself. Norcross, looking back down upon the cedars, which at a distance resembled a tufted, bronze-green carpet, musingly asked: "What do you suppose planted those trees there?" The girl was deeply impressed by the novelty of this query. "I never thought to ask. I reckon they just grew." "No, there's a reason for all these plantings," he insisted. "We don't worry ourselves much about such things out here," she replied, with charming humor. "We don't even worry about the weather. We just take things as they come." They walked on talking with new intimacy. "Where is your home?" he asked. "A few miles out of Bear Tooth. You're from the East, Bill says--'the far East,' we call it." "From New Haven. I've just finished at Yale. Have you ever been to New York?" "Oh, good Lord, no!" she answered, as though he had named the ends of the earth. "My mother came from the South--she was born in Kentucky--that accounts for my name, and my father is a Missourian. Let's see, Yale is in the state of Connecticut, isn't it?" "Connecticut is no longer a state; it is only a suburb of New York City." "Is that so? My geography calls it 'The Nutmeg State.'" "Your geography is behind the times. New York has absorbed all of Connecticut and part of Jersey." "Well, it's all the same to us out here. Your whole country looks like the small end of a slice of pie to us." "Have you ever been in a city?" "Oh yes, I go to Denver once in a while, and I saw St. Louis once; but I was only a yearling, and don't remember much about it. What are you doing out here, if it's a fair question?" He looked away at the mountains. "I got rather used up last spring, and my doctor said I'd better come out here for a while and build up. I'm going up to Meeker's Mill. Do you know where that is?" "I know every stove-pipe in this park," she answered. "Joe Meeker is kind o' related to me--uncle by marriage. He lives about fifteen miles over the hill from Bear Tooth." This fact seemed to bring them still closer together. "I'm glad of that," he said, pointedly. "Perhaps I shall be permitted to see you now and again? I'm going to be lonesome for a while, I'm afraid." "Don't you believe it! Joe Meeker's boys will keep you interested," she assured him. The stage overtook them at this point, and Bill surlily remarked: "If you'd been alone, young feller, I'd 'a' give you a chase." His resentment of the outsider's growing favor with the girl was ludicrously evident. As they rose into the higher levels the aspen shook its yellowish leaves in the breeze, and the purple foot-hills gained in majesty. Great new peaks came into view on the right, and the lofty cliffs of the Bear Tooth range loomed in naked grandeur high above the blue-green of the pines which clothed their sloping eastern sides. At intervals the road passed small log ranches crouching low on the banks of creeks; but aside from these--and the sparse animal life around them--no sign of settlement could be seen. The valley lay as it had lain for thousands of years, repeating its forests as the meadows of the lower levels send forth their annual grasses. Norcross said to himself: "I have circled the track of progress and have re-entered the border America, where the stage-coach is still the one stirring thing beneath the sun." At last the driver, with a note of exultation, called out: "Grab a root, everybody, it's all the way down-hill and time to feed." And so, as the dusk came over the mighty spread of the hills to the east, and the peaks to the west darkened from violet to purple-black, the stage rumbled and rattled and rushed down the winding road through thickening signs of civilization, and just at nightfall rolled into the little town of Bear Tooth, which is the eastern gateway of the Ute Plateau. Norcross had given a great deal of thought to the young girl behind him, and thought had deepened her charm. Her frankness, her humor, her superb physical strength and her calm self-reliance appealed to him, and the more dangerously, because he was so well aware of his own weakness and loneliness, and as the stage drew up before the hotel, he fervently said: "I hope I shall see you again?" Before she could reply a man's voice called: "Hello, there!" and a tall fellow stepped up to her with confident mien. Norcross awkwardly shrank away. This was her cowboy lover, of course. It was impossible that so attractive a girl should be unattached, and the knowledge produced in him a faint but very definite pang of envy and regret. The happy girl, even in the excitement of meeting her lover, did not forget the stranger. She gave him her hand in parting, and again he thrilled to its amazing power. It was small, but it was like a steel clamp. "Stop in on your way to Meeker's," she said, as a kindly man would have done. "You pass our gate. My father is Joseph McFarlane, the Forest Supervisor. Good night." "Good night," he returned, with sincere liking. "Who is that?" Norcross heard her companion ask. She replied in a low voice, but he overheard her answer, "A poor 'lunger,' bound for Meeker's--and Kingdom Come, I'm afraid. He seems a nice young feller, too." "They always wait till the last minute," remarked the rancher, with indifferent tone. II A RIDE IN THE RAIN There are two Colorados within the boundaries of the state of that name, distinct, almost irreconcilable. One is a plain (smooth, dry, monotonous), gently declining to the east, a land of sage-brush, wheat-fields, and alfalfa meadows--a rather commonplace region now, given over to humdrum folk intent on digging a living from the soil; but the other is an army of peaks, a region of storms, a spread of dark and tangled forests. In the one, shallow rivers trickle on their sandy way to the Gulf of Mexico; from the other, the waters rush, uniting to make the mighty stream whose silt-laden floods are slowly filling the Gulf of California. If you stand on one of the great naked crests which form the dividing wall, the rampart of the plains, you can see the Colorado of tradition to the west, still rolling in wave after wave of stupendous altitudes, each range cutting into the sky with a purple saw-tooth edge. The landscape seems to contain nothing but rocks and towering crags, a treasure-house for those who mine. But this is illusive. Between these purple heights charming valleys wind and meadows lie in which rich grasses grow and cattle feed. On certain slopes--where the devastating miners have not yet played their relentless game--dark forests rise to the high, bold summits of the chiefest mountains, and it is to guard these timbered tracts, growing each year more valuable, that the government has established its Forest Service to protect and develop the wealth-producing power of the watersheds. Chief among the wooded areas of this mighty inland empire of crag and stream is the Bear Tooth Forest, containing nearly eight hundred thousand acres of rock and trees, whose seat of administration is Bear Tooth Springs, the small town in which our young traveler found himself. He carefully explained to the landlord of the Cottage Hotel that he had never been in this valley before, and that he was filled with astonishment and delight of the scenery. "Scenery! Yes, too much scenery. What we want is settlers," retorted the landlord, who was shabby and sour and rather contemptuous, for the reason that he considered Norcross a poor consumptive, and a fool to boot--"one of those chaps who wait till they are nearly dead, then come out here expecting to live on climate." The hotel was hardly larger than the log shanty of a railway-grading camp; but the meat was edible, and just outside the door roared Bear Creek, which came down directly from Dome Mountain, and the young Easterner went to sleep beneath its singing that night. He should have dreamed of the happy mountain girl, but he did not; on the contrary, he imagined himself back at college in the midst of innumerable freshmen, yelling, "Bill McCoy, Bill McCoy!" He woke a little bewildered by his strange surroundings, and when he became aware of the cheap bed, the flimsy wash-stand, the ugly wallpaper, and thought how far he was from home and friends, he not only sighed, he shivered. The room was chill, the pitcher of water cold almost to the freezing-point, and his joints were stiff and painful from his ride. What folly to come so far into the wilderness at this time. As he crawled from his bed and looked from the window he was still further disheartened. In the foreground stood a half dozen frame buildings, graceless and cheap, without tree or shrub to give shadow or charm of line--all was bare, bleak, sere; but under his window the stream was singing its glorious mountain song, and away to the west rose the aspiring peaks from which it came. Romance brooded in that shadow, and on the lower foot-hills the frost-touched foliage glowed like a mosaic of jewels. Dressing hurriedly he went down to the small bar-room, whose litter of duffle-bags, guns, saddles, and camp utensils gave evidence of the presence of many hunters and fishermen. The slovenly landlord was poring over a newspaper, while a discouraged half-grown youth was sludging the floor with a mop; but a cheerful clamor from an open door at the back of the hall told that breakfast was on. Venturing over the threshold, Norcross found himself seated at table with some five or six men in corduroy jackets and laced boots, who were, in fact, merchants and professional men from Denver and Pueblo out for fish and such game as the law allowed, and all in holiday mood. They joked the waiter-girls, and joshed one another in noisy good-fellowship, ignoring the slim youth in English riding-suit, who came in with an air of mingled melancholy and timidity and took a seat at the lower corner of the long table. The landlady, tall, thin, worried, and inquisitive, was New England--Norcross recognized her type even before she came to him with a question on her lips. "So you're from the East, are you?" "I've been at school there." "Well, I'm glad to see you. My folks came from York State. I don't often get any one from the _real_ East. Come out to fish, I s'pose?" "Yes," he replied, thinking this the easiest way out. "Well, they's plenty of fishing--and they's plenty of air, not much of anything else." As he looked about the room, the tourist's eye was attracted by four young fellows seated at a small table to his right. They wore rough shirts of an olive-green shade, and their faces were wind-scorched; but their voices held a pleasant tone, and something in the manner of the landlady toward them made them noticeable. Norcross asked her who they were. "They're forestry boys." "Forestry boys?" "Yes; the Supervisor's office is here, and these are his help." This information added to Norcross's interest and cheered him a little. He knew something of the Forest Service, and had been told that many of the rangers were college men. He resolved to make their acquaintance. "If I'm to stay here they will help me endure the exile," he said. After breakfast he went forth to find the post-office, expecting a letter of instructions from Meeker. He found nothing of the sort, and this quite disconcerted him. "The stage is gone," the postmistress told him, "and you can't get up till day after to-morrow. You might reach Meeker by using the government 'phone, however." "Where will I find the government 'phone?" "Down in the Supervisor's office. They're very accommodating; they'll let you use it, if you tell them who you want to reach." It was impossible to miss the forestry building for the reason that a handsome flag fluttered above it. The door being open, Norcross perceived from the threshold a young clerk at work on a typewriter, while in a corner close by the window another and older man was working intently on a map. "Is this the office of the Forest Supervisor?" asked the youth. The man at the machine looked up, and pleasantly answered: "It is, but the Supervisor is not in yet. Is there anything I can do for you?" "It may be you can. I am on my way to Meeker's Mill for a little outing. Perhaps you could tell me where Meeker's Mill is, and how I can best get there." The man at the map meditated. "It's not far, some eighteen or twenty miles; but it's over a pretty rough trail." "What kind of a place is it?" "Very charming. You'll like it. Real mountain country." This officer was a plain-featured man of about thirty-five, with keen and clear eyes. His voice, though strongly nasal, possessed a note of manly sincerity. As he studied his visitor, he smiled. "You look brand-new--haven't had time to season-check, have you?" "No; I'm a stranger in a strange land." "Out for your health?" "Yes. My name is Norcross. I'm just getting over a severe illness, and I'm up here to lay around and fish and recuperate--if I can." "You can--you will. You can't help it," the other assured him. "Join one of our surveying crews for a week and I'll mellow that suit of yours and make a real mountaineer of you. I see you wear a _Sigma Chi_ pin. What was your school?" "I am a 'Son of Eli.' Last year's class." The other man displayed his fob. "I'm ten classes ahead of you. My name is Nash. I'm what they call an 'expert.' I'm up here doing some estimating and surveying for a big ditch they're putting in. I was rather in hopes you had come to join our ranks. We sons of Eli are holding the conservation fort these days, and we need help." "My knowledge of your work is rather vague," admitted Norcross. "My father is in the lumber business; but his point of view isn't exactly yours." "He slays 'em, does he?" "He did. He helped devastate Michigan." "After me the deluge! I know the kind. Why not make yourself a sort of vicarious atonement?" Norcross smiled. "I had not thought of that. It would help some, wouldn't it?" "It certainly would. There's no great money in the work; but it's about the most enlightened of all the governmental bureaus." Norcross was strongly drawn to this forester, whose tone was that of a highly trained specialist. "I rode up on the stage yesterday with Miss Berrie McFarlane." "The Supervisor's daughter?" "She seemed a fine Western type." "She's not a type; she's an individual. She hasn't her like anywhere I've gone. She cuts a wide swath up here. Being an only child she's both son and daughter to McFarlane. She knows more about forestry than her father. In fact, half the time he depends on her judgment." Norcross was interested, but did not want to take up valuable time. He said: "Will you let me use your telephone to Meeker's?" "Very sorry, but our line is out of order. You'll have to wait a day or so--or use the mails. You're too late for to-day's stage, but it's only a short ride across. Come outside and I'll show you." Norcross followed him to the walk, and stood in silence while his guide indicated the pass over the range. It all looked very formidable to the Eastern youth. Thunderous clouds hung low upon the peaks, and the great crags to left and right of the notch were stern and barren. "I think I'll wait for the stage," he said, with candid weakness. "I couldn't make that trip alone." "You'll have to take many such a ride over that range in the _night_--if you join the service," Nash warningly replied. As they were standing there a girl came galloping up to the hitching-post and slid from her horse. It was Berea McFarlane. "Good morning, Emery," she called to the surveyor. "Good morning," she nodded at Norcross. "How do you find yourself this morning?" "Homesick," he replied, smilingly. "Why so?" "I'm disappointed in the town." "What's the matter with the town?" "It's so commonplace. I expected it to be--well, different. It's just like any other plains town." Berrie looked round at the forlorn shops, the irregular sidewalks, the grassless yards. "It isn't very pretty, that's a fact; but you can always forget it by just looking up at the high country. When you going up to the mill?" "I don't know. I haven't had any word from Meeker, and I can't reach him by telephone." "I know, the line is short-circuited somewhere; but they've sent a man out. He may close it any minute." "Where's the Supervisor?" asked Nash. "He's gone over to Moore's cutting. How are you getting on with those plats?" "Very well. I'll have 'em all in shape by Saturday." "Come in and make yourself at home," said the girl to Norcross. "You'll find the papers two or three days old," she smiled. "We never know about anything here till other people have forgotten it." Norcross followed her into the office, curious to know more about her. She was so changed from his previous conception of her that he was puzzled. She had the directness and the brevity of phrase of a business man, as she opened letters and discussed their contents with the men. "Truly she _is_ different," thought Norcross, and yet she lost something by reason of the display of her proficiency as a clerk. "I wish she would leave business to some one else," he inwardly grumbled as he rose to go. She looked up from her desk. "Come in again later. We may be able to reach the mill." He thanked her and went back to his hotel, where he overhauled his outfit and wrote some letters. His disgust of the town was lessened by the presence of that handsome girl, and the hope that he might see her at luncheon made him impatient of the clock. She did not appear in the dining-room, and when Norcross inquired of Nash whether she took her meals at the hotel or not, the expert replied: "No, she goes home. The ranch is only a few miles down the valley. Occasionally we invite her, but she don't think much of the cooking." One of the young surveyors put in a word: "I shouldn't think she would. I'd ride ten miles any time to eat one of Mrs. McFarlane's dinners." "Yes," agreed Nash with a reflective look in his eyes. "She's a mighty fine girl, and I join the boys in wishing her better luck than marrying Cliff Belden." "Is it settled that way?" asked Norcross. "Yes; the Supervisor warned us all, but even he never has any good words for Belden. He's a surly cuss, and violently opposed to the service. His brother is one of the proprietors of the Meeker mill, and they have all tried to bulldoze Landon, our ranger over there. By the way, you'll like Landon. He's a Harvard man, and a good ranger. His shack is only a half-mile from Meeker's house. It's a pretty well-known fact that Alec Belden is part proprietor of a saloon over there that worries the Supervisor worse than anything. Cliff swears he's not connected with it; but he's more or less sympathetic with the crowd." Norcross, already deeply interested in the present and future of a girl whom he had met for the first time only the day before, was quite ready to give up his trip to Meeker. After the men went back to work he wandered about the town for an hour or two, and then dropped in at the office to inquire if the telephone line had been repaired. "No, it's still dead." "Did Miss McFarlane return?" "No. She said she had work to do at home. This is ironing-day, I believe." "She plays all the parts, don't she?" "She sure does; and she plays one part as well as another. She can rope and tie a steer or bake a cake as well as play the piano." "Don't tell me she plays the piano!" Nash laughed. "She does; but it's one of those you operate with your feet." "I'm relieved to hear that. She seems almost weirdly gifted as it is." After a moment he broke in with: "What can a man do in this town?" "Work, nothing else." "What do you do for amusement?" "Once in a while there is a dance in the hall over the drug-store, and on Sunday you can listen to a wretched sermon in the log church. The rest of the time you work or loaf in the saloons--or read. Old Nature has done her part here. But man--! Ever been in the Tyrol?" "Yes." "Well, some day the people of the plains will have sense enough to use these mountains, these streams, the way they do over there." It required only a few hours for Norcross to size up the valley and its people. Aside from Nash and his associates, and one or two families connected with the mill to the north, the villagers were poor, thriftless, and uninteresting. They were lacking in the picturesque quality of ranchers and miners, and had not yet the grace of town-dwellers. They were, indeed, depressingly nondescript. Early on the second morning he went to the post-office--which was also the telephone station--to get a letter or message from Meeker. He found neither; but as he was standing in the door undecided about taking the stage, Berea came into town riding a fine bay pony, and leading a blaze-face buckskin behind her. Her face shone cordially, as she called out: "Well, how do you stack up this morning?" "Tip-top," he answered, in an attempt to match her cheery greeting. "Do you like our town better?" "Not a bit! But the hills are magnificent." "Anybody turned up from the mill?" "No, I haven't heard a word from there. The telephone is still out of commission." "They can't locate the break. Uncle Joe sent word by the stage-driver asking us to keep an eye out for you and send you over. I've come to take you over myself." "That's mighty good of you; but it's a good deal to ask." "I want to see Uncle Joe on business, anyhow, and you'll like the ride better than the journey by stage." Leaving the horses standing with their bridle-reins hanging on the ground, she led the way to the office. "When father comes in, tell him where I've gone, and send Mr. Norcross's packs by the first wagon. Is your outfit ready?" she asked. "Not quite. I can get it ready soon." He hurried away in pleasant excitement, and in twenty minutes was at the door ready to ride. "You'd better take my bay," said Berea. "Old Paint-face there is a little notional." Norcross approached his mount with a caution which indicated that he had at least been instructed in range-horse psychology, and as he gathered his reins together to mount, Berrie remarked: "I hope you're saddle-wise." "I had a few lessons in a riding-school," he replied, modestly. Young Downing approached the girl with a low-voiced protest: "You oughtn't to ride old Paint. He nearly pitched the Supervisor the other day." "I'm not worried," she said, and swung to her saddle. The ugly beast made off in a tearing sidewise rush, but she smilingly called back: "All set." And Norcross followed her in high admiration. Eventually she brought her bronco to subjection, and they trotted off together along the wagon-road quite comfortably. By this time the youth had forgotten his depression, his homesickness of the morning. The valley was again enchanted ground. Its vistas led to lofty heights. The air was regenerative, and though a part of this elation was due, no doubt, to the power of his singularly attractive guide, he laid it discreetly to the climate. After shacking along between some rather sorry fields of grain for a mile or two, Berea swung into a side-trail. "I want you to meet my mother," she said. The grassy road led to a long, one-story, half-log, half-slab house, which stood on the bank of a small, swift, willow-bordered stream. "This is our ranch," she explained. "All the meadow in sight belongs to us." The young Easterner looked about in astonishment. Not a tree bigger than his thumb gave shade. The gate of the cattle corral stood but a few feet from the kitchen door, and rusty beef-bones, bleaching skulls, and scraps of sun-dried hides littered the ground or hung upon the fence. Exteriorly the low cabin made a drab, depressing picture; but as he alighted--upon Berea's invitation--and entered the house, he was met by a sweet-faced, brown-haired little woman in a neat gown, whose bearing was not in the least awkward or embarrassed. "This is Mr. Norcross, the tourist I told you about," explained Berrie. Mrs. McFarlane extended her small hand with friendly impulse. "I'm very glad to meet you, sir. Are you going to spend some time at the Mill?" "I don't know. I have a letter to Mr. Meeker from a friend of mine who hunted with him last year--a Mr. Sutler." "Mr. Sutler! Oh, we know him very well. Won't you sit down?" The interior of the house was not only well kept, but presented many evidences of refinement. A mechanical piano stood against the log wall, and books and magazines, dog-eared with use, littered the table; and Norcross, feeling the force of Nash's half-expressed criticism of his "superior," listened intently to Mrs. McFarlane's apologies for the condition of the farmyard. "Well," said Berea, sharply, "if we're to reach Uncle Joe's for dinner we'd better be scratching the hills." And to her mother she added: "I'll pull in about dark." The mother offered no objection to her daughter's plan, and the young people rode off together directly toward the high peaks to the east. "I'm going by way of the cut-off," Berrie explained; and Norcross, content and unafraid, nodded in acquiescence. "Here is the line," she called a few minutes later, pointing at a sign nailed to a tree at the foot of the first wooded hill. The notice, printed in black ink on a white square of cloth, proclaimed this to be the boundary of the Bear Tooth National Forest, and pleaded with all men to be watchful of fires. Its tone was not at all that of a strong government; it was deprecatory. The trail, hardly more than a wood road, grew wilder and lonelier as they climbed. Cattle fed on the hillsides in scattered bands like elk. Here and there a small cabin stood on the bank of a stream; but, for the most part, the trail mounted the high slopes in perfect solitude. The girl talked easily and leisurely, reading the brands of the ranchers, revealing the number of cattle they owned, quite as a young farmer would have done. She seemed not to be embarrassed in the slightest degree by the fact that she was guiding a strange man over a lonely road, and gave no outward sign of special interest in him till she suddenly turned to ask: "What kind of a slicker--I mean a raincoat--did you bring?" He looked blank. "I don't believe I brought any. I've a leather shooting-jacket, however." She shrugged her shoulders and looked up at the sky. "We're in for a storm. You'd ought 'o have a slicker, no fancy 'raincoat,' but a real old-fashioned cow-puncher's oilskin. They make a business of shedding rain. Leather's no good, neither is canvas; I've tried 'em all." She rode on for a few minutes in silence, as if disgusted with his folly, but she was really worrying about him. "Poor chap," she said to herself. "He can't stand a chill. I ought to have thought of his slicker myself. He's helpless as a baby." They were climbing fast now, winding upward along the bank of a stream, and the sky had grown suddenly gray, and the woodland path was dark and chill. The mountains were not less beautiful; but they were decidedly less amiable, and the youth shivered, casting an apprehensive eye at the thickening clouds. Berea perceived something of his dismay, and, drawing rein, dismounted. Behind her saddle was a tightly rolled bundle which, being untied and shaken out, proved to be a horseman's rainproof oilskin coat. "Put this on!" she commanded. "Oh no," he protested, "I can't take your coat." "Yes you can! You must! Don't you worry about me, I'm used to weather. Put this on over your jacket and all. You'll need it. Rain won't hurt _me_; but it will just about finish you." The worst of this lay in its truth, and Norcross lost all his pride of sex for the moment. A wetting would not dim this girl's splendid color, nor reduce her vitality one degree, while to him it might be a death-warrant. "You could throw me over my own horse," he admitted, in a kind of bitter admiration, and slipped the coat on, shivering with cold as he did so. "You think me a poor excuse of a trailer, don't you?" he said, ruefully, as the thunder began to roll. "You've got to be all made over new," she replied, tolerantly. "Stay here a year and you'll be able to stand anything." Remounting, she again led the way with cheery cry. The rain came dashing down in fitful, misty streams; but she merely pulled the rim of her sombrero closer over her eyes, and rode steadily on, while he followed, plunged in gloom as cold and gray as the storm. The splitting crashes of thunder echoed from the high peaks like the voices of siege-guns, and the lightning stabbed here and there as though blindly seeking some hidden foe. Long veils of falling water twisted and trailed through the valleys with swishing roar. "These mountain showers don't last long," the girl called back, her face shining like a rose. "We'll get the sun in a few minutes." And so it turned out. In less than an hour they rode into the warm light again, and in spite of himself Norcross returned her smile, though he said: "I feel like a selfish fool. You are soaked." "Hardly wet through," she reassured him. "My jacket and skirt turn water pretty well. I'll be dry in a jiffy. It does a body good to be wet once in a while." The shame of his action remained; but a closer friendship was established, and as he took off the coat and handed it back to her, he again apologized. "I feel like a pig. I don't see how I came to do it. The thunder and the chill scared me, that's the truth of it. You hypnotized me into taking it. How wet you _are_!" he exclaimed, remorsefully. "You'll surely take cold." "I never take cold," she returned. "I'm used to all kinds of weather. Don't you bother about me." Topping a low divide the youth caught a glimpse of the range to the southeast, which took his breath. "Isn't that superb!" he exclaimed. "It's like the shining roof of the world!" "Yes, that's the Continental Divide," she confirmed, casually; but the lyrical note which he struck again reached her heart. The men she knew had so few words for the beautiful in life. She wondered whether this man's illness had given him this refinement or whether it was native to his kind. "I'm glad he took my coat," was her thought. She pushed on down the slope, riding hard, but it was nearly two o'clock when they drew up at Meeker's house, which was a long, low, stone structure built along the north side of the road. The place was distinguished not merely by its masonry, but also by its picket fence, which had once been whitewashed. Farm-wagons of various degrees of decay stood by the gate, and in the barn-yard plows and harrows--deeply buried by the weeds--were rusting forlornly away. A little farther up the stream the tall pipe of a sawmill rose above the firs. A pack of dogs of all sizes and signs came clamoring to the fence, followed by a big, slovenly dressed, red-bearded man of sixty or thereabouts. "Hello, Uncle Joe," called the girl, in offhand boyish fashion. "How are you _to-day_?" "Howdy, girl," answered Meeker, gravely. "What brings you up here this time?" She laughed. "Here's a boarder who wants to learn how to raise cattle." Meeker's face lightened. "I reckon you're Mr. Norcross? I'm glad to see ye. Light off and make yourself to home. Turn your horses into the corral, the boys will feed 'em." "Am I in America?" Norcross asked himself, as he followed the slouchy old rancher into the unkempt yard. "This certainly is a long way from New Haven." Without ceremony Meeker led his guests directly into the dining-room, a long and rather narrow room, wherein a woman and six or seven roughly dressed young men were sitting at a rudely appointed table. "Earth and seas!" exclaimed Mrs. Meeker. "Here's Berrie, and I'll bet that's Sutler's friend, our boarder." "That's what, mother," admitted her husband. "Berrie brought him up." "You'd ought 'o gone for him yourself, you big lump," she retorted. Mrs. Meeker, who was as big as her husband, greeted Norcross warmly, and made a place for him beside her own chair. "Highst along there, boys, and give the company a chance," she commanded, sharply. "Our dinner's turrible late to-day." The boys--they were in reality full-grown cubs of eighteen or twenty--did as they were bid with much noise, chaffing Berrie with blunt humor. The table was covered with a red oil-cloth, and set with heavy blue-and-white china. The forks were two-tined, steel-pronged, and not very polished, and the food was of the simplest sort; but the girl seemed at home there--as she did everywhere--and was soon deep in a discussion of the price of beef, and whether it was advisable to ship now or wait a month. Meeker read Sutler's letter, which Norcross had handed him, and, after deliberation, remarked: "All right, we'll do the best we can for you, Mr. Norcross; but we haven't any fancy accommodations." "He don't expect any," replied Berrie. "What he needs is a little roughing it." "There's plinty of that to be had," said one of the herders, who sat below the salt. "'is the soft life I'm nadin'." "Pat's strong on soft jobs," said another; and Berea joined the laugh which followed this pointless joke. She appeared to be one of them, and it troubled Norcross a little. She had so little the sex feeling and demanded so few of the rights and privileges of a girl. The men all admired her, that was evident, almost too evident, and one or two of the older men felt the charm of her young womanhood too deeply even to meet her eyes; but of this Norcross was happily ignorant. Already in these two days he had acquired a distinct sense of proprietorship in her, a feeling which made him jealous of her good name. Meeker, it turned out, was an Englishman by way of Canada, and this was his second American wife. His first had been a sister to Mrs. McFarlane. He was a man of much reading--of the periodical sort--and the big sitting-room was littered with magazines both English and American, and his talk abounded in radical and rather foolish utterances. Norcross considered it the most disorderly home he had ever seen, and yet it was not without a certain dignity. The rooms were large and amply provided with furniture of a very mixed and gaudy sort, and the table was spread with abundance. One of the lads, Frank Meeker, a dark, intense youth of about twenty, was Berea's full cousin. The others were merely hired hands, but they all eyed the new-comer with disfavor. The fact that Berrie had brought him and that she seemed interested in him added to the effect of the smart riding-suit which he wore. "I'd like to roll him in the creek," muttered one of them to his neighbor. This dislike Berrie perceived--in some degree--and to Frank she privately said: "Now you fellows have got to treat Mr. Norcross right. He's been very sick." Frank maliciously grinned. "Oh, we'll treat him _right_. We won't do a thing to him!" "Now, Frank," she warned, "if you try any of your tricks on him you'll hear from me." "Why all this worry on your part?" he asked, keenly. "How long since you found him?" "We rode up on the stage day before yesterday, and he seemed so kind o' blue and lonesome I couldn't help trying to chirk him up." "How will Cliff take all this chirking business?" "Cliff ain't my guardian--yet," she laughingly responded. "Mr. Norcross is a college man, and not used to our ways--" "_Mister_ Norcross--what's his front name?" "Wayland." He snorted. "Wayland! If he gets past us without being called 'pasty' he's in luck. He's a 'lunger' if there ever was one." The girl was shrewd enough to see that the more she sought to soften the wind to her Eastern tenderfoot the more surely he was to be shorn, so she gave over her effort in that direction, and turned to the old folks. To Mrs. Meeker she privately said: "Mr. Norcross ain't used to rough ways, and he's not very rugged, you ought 'o kind o' favor him for a while." The girl herself did not understand the vital and almost painful interest which this young man had roused in her. He was both child and poet to her, and as she watched him trying to make friends with the men, her indignation rose against their clownish offishness. She understood fully that his neat speech, his Eastern accent, together with his tailor-cut clothing and the delicacy of his table manners, would surely mark him for slaughter among the cow-hands, and the wish to shield him made her face graver than anybody had ever seen it. "I don't feel right in leaving you here," she said, at last; "but I must be ridin'." And while Meeker ordered her horse brought out, she walked to the gate with Norcross at her side. "I'm tremendously obliged to you," he said, and his voice was vibrant. "You have been most kind. How can I repay you?" "Oh, that's all right," she replied, in true Western fashion. "I wanted to see the folks up here, anyhow. This is no jaunt at all for me." And, looking at her powerful figure, and feeling the trap-like grip of her cinch hand, he knew she spoke the truth. Frank had saddled his own horse, and was planning to ride over the hill with her; but to this she objected. "I'm going to leave Pete here for Mr. Norcross to ride," she said, "and there's no need of your going." Frank's face soured, and with instant perception of the effect her refusal might have on the fortunes of the stranger, she reconsidered. "Oh, come along! I reckon you want to get shut of some mean job." And so she rode away, leaving her ward to adjust himself to his new and strange surroundings as best he could, and with her going the whole valley darkened for the convalescent. III WAYLAND RECEIVES A WARNING Distance is no barrier to gossip. It amazed young Norcross to observe how minutely the ranchers of the valley followed one another's most intimate domestic affairs. Not merely was each man in full possession of the color and number of every calf in his neighbor's herd, it seemed that nothing could happen in the most remote cabin and remain concealed. Any event which broke the monotony of their life loomed large, and in all matters of courtship curiosity was something more than keen, it was remorseless. Living miles apart, and riding the roads but seldom, these lonely gossips tore to tatters every scrap of rumor. No citizen came or went without being studied, characterized, accounted for, and every woman was scrutinized as closely as a stray horse, and if there was within her, the slightest wayward impulse some lawless centaur came to know it, to exult over it, to make test of it. Her every word, her minutest expression of a natural coquetry was enlarged upon as a sign of weakness, of yielding. Every personable female was the focus of a natural desire, intensified by lonely brooding on the part of the men. It was soon apparent to the Eastern observer that the entire male population for thirty miles around not only knew McFarlane's girl; but that every unmarried man--and some who were both husbands and fathers--kept a deeply interested eye upon her daily motion, and certain shameless ones openly boasted among their fellows of their intention to win her favor, while the shy ones reveled in secret exultation over every chance meeting with her. She was the topic of every lumber-camp, and the shining lure of every dance to which the ranch hands often rode over long and lonely trails. Part of this intense interest was due, naturally, to the scarcity of desirable women, but a larger part was called out by Berea's frank freedom of manner. Her ready camaraderie was taken for carelessness, and the candid grip of her hand was often misunderstood; and yet most of the men respected her, and some feared her. After her avowed choice of Clifford Belden they all kept aloof, for he was hot-tempered and formidably swift to avenge an insult. At the end of a week Norcross found himself restless and discontented with the Meekers. He was tired of fishing, tired of the old man's endless arguments, and tired of the obscene cow-hands. The men around the mill did not interest him, and their Saturday night spree at the saloon disgusted him. The one person who piqued his curiosity was Landon, the ranger who was stationed not far away, and who could be seen occasionally riding by on a handsome black horse. There was something in his bearing, in his neat and serviceable drab uniform, which attracted the convalescent, and on Sunday morning he decided to venture a call, although Frank Meeker had said the ranger was a "grouch." His cabin, a neat log structure, stood just above the road on a huge natural terrace of grassy boulders, and the flag which fluttered from a tall staff before it could be seen for several miles--the bright sign of federal control, the symbol of law and order, just as the saloon and the mill were signs of lawless vice and destructive greed. Around the door flowers bloomed and kittens played; while at the door of the dive broken bottles, swarms of flies, and heaps of refuse menaced every corner, and the mill immured itself in its own debris like a foul beast. It was strangely moving to come upon this flower-like place and this garden in the wilderness. A spring, which crept from the high wall back of "the station" (as these ranger headquarters are called), gave its delicious water into several winding ditches, trickled musically down the other side of the terrace in little life-giving cascades, and so finally, reunited in a single current, fell away into the creek. It was plain that loving care, and much of it, had been given to this tiny system of irrigation. The cabin's interior pleased Wayland almost as much as the garden. It was built of pine logs neatly matched and hewed on one side. There were but two rooms--one which served as sleeping-chamber and office, and one which was at once kitchen and dining-room. In the larger room a quaint fireplace with a flat arch, a bunk, a table supporting a typewriter, and several shelves full of books made up the furnishing. On the walls hung a rifle, a revolver in its belt, a couple of uniforms, and a yellow oilskin raincoat. The ranger, spurred and belted, with his cuffs turned back, was pounding the typewriter when Wayland appeared at the open door; but he rose with grave courtesy. "Come in," he said, and his voice had a pleasant inflection. "I'm interrupting." "Nothing serious, just a letter. There's no hurry. I'm always glad of an excuse to rest from this job." He was at once keenly interested in his visitor, for he perceived in him the gentleman and, of course, the alien. Wayland, with something of the feeling of a civilian reporting to an officer, explained his presence in the neighborhood. "I've heard of you," responded the ranger, "and I've been hoping you'd look in on me. The Supervisor's daughter has just written me to look after you. She said you were not very well." Again Wayland protested that he was not a consumptive, only a student who needed mountain air; but he added: "It is very kind of Miss McFarlane to think of me." "Oh, she thinks of everybody," the young fellow declared. "She's one of the most unselfish creatures in the world." Something in the music of this speech, and something in the look of the ranger's eyes, caused Wayland to wonder if here were not still another of Berrie's subjects. He became certain of it as the young officer went on, with pleasing frankness, and it was not long before he had conveyed to Wayland his cause for sadness. "She's engaged to a man that is not her equal. In a certain sense no man is her equal; but Belden is a pretty hard type, and I believe, although I can't prove it, that he is part owner of the saloon over there." "How does that saloon happen to be here?" "It's on patented land--a so-called 'placer claim'--experts have reported against it. McFarlane has protested against it, but nothing is done. The mill is also on deeded land, and together they are a plague spot. I'm their enemy, and they know it; and they've threatened to burn me out. Of course they won't do that, but they're ready to play any kind of trick on me." "I can well believe that, for I am getting my share of practical jokes at Meeker's." "They're not a bad lot over there--only just rowdy. I suppose they're initiating you," said Landon. "I didn't come out here to be a cowboy," responded Norcross. "But Frank Meeker seems to be anxious to show me all the good old cowboy courtesies. On Monday he slipped a burr under my horse's saddle, and I came near to having my neck broken. Then he or some one else concealed a frog in my bed, and fouled my hair-brushes. In fact, I go to sleep each night in expectation of some new attack; but the air and the riding are doing me a great deal of good, and so I stay." "Come and bunk with me," urged Landon. "I'll be glad to have you. I get terribly lonesome here sometimes, although I'm supposed to have the best station in the forest. Bring your outfit and stay as long as you like." This offer touched Norcross deeply. "That's very kind of you; but I guess I'll stick it out. I hate to let those hoodlums drive me out." "All right, but come and see me often. I get so blue some days I wonder what's the use of it all. There's one fatal condition about this ranger business--it's a solitary job, it cuts out marriage for most of us. Many of the stations are fifteen or twenty miles from a post-office; then, too, the lines of promotion are few. I guess I'll have to get out, although I like the work. Come in any time and take a snack with me." Thereafter Wayland spent nearly every day with the ranger, either in his cabin or riding the trail, and during these hours confidence grew until at last Landon confessed that his unrest arose from his rejection by Berrie. "She was not to blame. She's so kind and free with every one, I thought I had a chance. I was conceited enough to feel sorry for the other fellows, and now I can't even feel sorry for myself. I'm just dazed and hanging to the ropes. She was mighty gentle about it--you know how sunny her face is--well, she just got grave and kind o' faint-voiced, and said--Oh, you know what she said! She let me know there was another man. I didn't ask her who, and when I found out, I lost my grip entirely. At first I thought I'd resign and get out of the country; but I couldn't do it--I can't yet. The chance of seeing her--of hearing from her once in a while--she never writes except on business for her father; but--you'll laugh--I can't see her signature without a tremor." He smiled, but his eyes were desperately sad. "I ought to resign, because I can't do my work as well as I ought to. As I ride the trail I'm thinking of her. I sit here half the night writing imaginary letters to her. And when I see her, and she takes my hand in hers--you know what a hand she has--my mind goes blank. Oh, I'm crazy! I admit it. I didn't know such a thing could happen to me; but it has." "I suppose it's being alone so much," Wayland started to argue, but the other would not have it so. "No, it's the girl herself. She's not only beautiful in body, she's all sweetness and sincerity in mind. There isn't a petty thing about her. And her happy smile--do you know, I have times when I resent that smile? How can she be so happy without me? That's crazy, too, but I think it, sometimes. Then I think of the time when she will not smile--when that brute Belden will begin to treat her as he does his sisters--then I get murderous." As Wayland listened to this outpouring he wondered at the intensity of the forester's passion. He marveled, too, at Berrie's choice, for there was something fine and high in Landon's worship. A college man with a mining engineer's training, he should go high in the service. "He made the mistake of being too precipitate as a lover," concluded Wayland. "His forthright courtship repelled her." Meanwhile his own troubles increased. Frank's dislike had grown to an impish vindictiveness, and if the old man Meeker had any knowledge of his son's deviltries, he gave no sign. Mrs. Meeker, however, openly reproved the scamp. "You ought to be ashamed of worrying a sick man," she protested, indignantly. "He ain't so sick as all that; and, besides, he needs the starch taken out of him," was the boy's pitiless answer. "I don't know why I stay," Wayland wrote to Berea. "I'm disgusted with the men up here--they're all tiresome except Landon--but I hate to slink away, and besides, the country is glorious. I'd like to come down and see you this week. May I do so? Please send word that I may." She did not reply, and wondering whether she had received his letter or not, he mounted his horse one beautiful morning and rode away up the trail with a sense of elation, of eager joy, with intent to call upon her at the ranch as he went by. Hardly had he vanished among the pines when Clifford Belden rode in from his ranch on Hat Creek, and called at Meeker's for his mail. Frank Meeker was in the office, and as he both feared and disliked this big contemptuous young cattleman, he set to work to make him jealous. "You want to watch this one-lung boarder of ours," he warned, with a grin. "He's been writing to Berrie, and he's just gone down to see her. His highfalutin ways, and his fine white hands, have put her on the slant." Belden fixed a pair of cold, gray-blue eyes on his tormentor, and said: "You be careful of your tongue or I'll put _you_ on the slant." "I'm her own cousin," retorted Frank. "I reckon I can say what I please about her. I don't want that dude Easterner to cut you out. She guided him over here, and gave him her slicker to keep him dry, and I can see she's terribly taken with him. She's headstrong as a mule, once she gets started, and if she takes a notion to Norcross it's all up with you." "I'm not worrying," retorted Belden. "You'd better be. I was down there the other day, and it 'peared like she couldn't talk of anything else but Mister Norcross, Mister Norcross, till I was sick of his name." An hour later Belden left the mill and set off up the trail behind Norcross, his face fallen into stern lines. Frank writhed in delight. "There goes Cliff, hot under the collar, chasing Norcross. If he finds out that Berrie is interested in him, he'll just about wring that dude's neck." Meanwhile Wayland was riding through the pass with lightening heart, his thought dwelling on the girl at the end of his journey. Aside from Landon and Nash, she was the one soul in all this mountain world in whom he took the slightest interest. Her pity still hurt him, but he hoped to show her such change of color, such gain in horsemanship, that she could no longer consider him an invalid. His mind kept so closely to these interior matters that he hardly saw the path, but his horse led him safely back with precise knowledge and eager haste. As he reached the McFarlane ranch it seemed deserted of men, but a faint column of smoke rising from the roof of the kitchen gave evidence of a cook, and at his knock Berrie came to the door with a boyish word of frank surprise and pleasure. She was dressed in a blue-and-white calico gown with the collar turned in and the sleeves rolled up; but she seemed quite unembarrassed, and her pleasure in his coming quite repaid him for his long and tiresome ride. "I've been wondering about you," she said. "I'm mighty glad to see you. How do you stand it?" "You got my letter?" "I did--and I was going to write and tell you to come down, but I've had some special work to do at the office." She took the horse's rein from him, and together they started toward the stables. As she stepped over and around the old hoofs and meat-bones--which littered the way--without comment, Wayland again wondered at her apparent failure to realize the disgusting disorder of the yard. "Why don't she urge the men to clean it up?" he thought. This action of stabling the horses--a perfectly innocent and natural one for her--led one of the hands, a coarse-minded sneak, to watch them from a corral. "I wonder how Cliff would like that?" he evilly remarked. Berea was frankly pleased to see Wayland, and spoke of the improvement which had taken place in him. "You're looking fine," she said, as they were returning to the house. "But how do you get on with the boys?" "Not very well," he admitted. "They seem to have it in for me. It's a constant fight." "How about Frank?" "He's the worst of them all. He never speaks to me that he doesn't insult me. I don't know why. I've tried my best to get into his good graces, but I can't. Your uncle I like, and Mrs. Meeker is very kind; but all the others seem to be sworn enemies. I don't think I could stand it if it weren't for Landon. I spend a good deal of time with him." Her face grew grave. "I reckon you got started wrong," she said at last. "They'll like you better when you get browned up, and your clothes get dirty--you're a little too fancy for them just now." "But you see," he said, "I'm not trying for their admiration. I haven't the slightest ambition to shine as a cow-puncher, and if those fellows are fair samples I don't want anybody to mistake me for one." "Don't let that get around," she smilingly replied. "They'd run you out if they knew you despised them." "I've come down here to confer with you," he declared, as they reached the door. "I don't believe I want any more of their company. What's the use? As you say, I've started wrong with them, and I don't see any prospect of getting right; and, besides, I like the rangers better. Landon thinks I might work into the service. I wonder if I could? It would give me something to do." She considered a moment. "We'll think about that. Come into the kitchen. I'm cook to-day, mother's gone to town." The kitchen was clean and ample, and the delicious odor of new-made bread filled it with cheer. As the girl resumed her apron, Wayland settled into a chair with a sigh of content. "I like this," he said aloud. "There's nothing cowgirl about you now, you're the Anglo-Saxon housewife. You might be a Michigan or Connecticut girl at this moment." Her cheeks were ruddy with the heat, and her eyes intent on her work; but she caught enough of his meaning to be pleased with it. "Oh, I have to take a hand at the pots and pans now and then. I can't give all my time to the service; but I'd like to." He boldly announced his errand. "I wish you'd take me to board? I'm sure your cooking would build up my shattered system a good deal quicker than your aunt's." She laughed, but shook her head. "You ought to be on the hills riding hard every day. What you need is the high country and the air of the pines." "I'm not feeling any lack of scenery or pine-tree air," he retorted. "I'm perfectly satisfied right here. Civilized bread and the sight of you will do me more good than boiled beans and camp bread. I hate to say it, but the Meeker menu runs largely to beef. Moreover, just seeing you would help my recovery." She became self-conscious at this, and he hastened to add: "Not that I'm really sick. Mrs. Meeker, like yourself, persists in treating me as if I were. I'm feeling fine--perfectly well, only I'm not as rugged as I want to be." She had read that victims of the white plague always talk in this cheerful way about themselves, and she worked on without replying, and this gave him an excellent opportunity to study her closely. She was taller than most women and lithely powerful. There was nothing delicate about her--nothing spirituelle--on the contrary, she was markedly full-veined, cheerful and humorous, and yet she had responded several times to an allusive phrase with surprising quickness. She did so now as he remarked: "Somebody, I think it was Lowell, has said 'Nature is all very well for a vacation, but a poor substitute for the society of good men and women.' It's beautiful up at the mill, but I want some one to enjoy it with, and there is no one to turn to, except Landon, and he's rather sad and self-absorbed--you know why. If I were here--in the valley--you and I could ride together now and then, and you could show me all the trails. Why not let me come here and board? I'm going to ask your mother, if I may not do so?" Quite naturally he grew more and more personal. He told her of his father, the busy director of a lumber company, and of his mother, sickly and inert. "She ought never to have married," he said, with darkened brow. "Not one of her children has even a decent constitution. I'm the most robust of them all, and I must seem a pretty poor lot to you. However, I wasn't always like this, and if that young devil, Frank Meeker, hadn't tormented me out of my sleep, I would have shown you still greater improvement. Don't you see that it is your duty to let me stay here where I can build up on your cooking?" She turned this aside. "Mother don't think much of my cooking. She says I can handle a brandin'-iron a heap better than I can a rollin'-pin." "You certainly can ride," he replied, with admiring accent. "I shall never forget the picture you made that first time I saw you racing to intercept the stage. Do you _know_ how fine you are physically? You're a wonder." She uttered some protest, but he went on: "When I think of my mother and sisters in comparison with you, they seem like caricatures of women. I know I oughtn't to say such things of my mother--she really is an exceptional person--but a woman should be something more than mind. My sisters could no more do what you do than a lame duck can lead a ballet. I suppose it is because I have had to live with a lot of ailing women all my life that I feel as I do toward you. I worship your health and strength. I really do. Your care of me on that trip was very sweet--and yet it stung." "I didn't mean to hurt you." "I know you didn't, and I'm not complaining. I'm only wishing I could come here and be 'bossed' by you until I could hold my own against any weather. You make me feel just as I used to do when I went to a circus and watched the athletes, men and women, file past me in the sawdust. They seemed like demigods. As I sit here now I have a fierce desire to be as well, as strong, as full of life as you are. I hate being thin and timid. You have the physical perfection that queens ought to have." Her face was flushed with inward heat as she listened to his strange words, which sprang, she feared, from the heart of a man hopelessly ill; but she again protested. "It's all right to be able to throw a rope and ride a mean horse, but you have got something else--something I can never get. Learning is a thousand times finer than muscle." "Learning does not compensate for nine-inch shoulders and spindle legs," he answered. "But I'm going to get well. Knowing you has given me renewed desire to be a man. I'm going to ride and rough it, and sleep out of doors till I can follow you anywhere. You'll be proud of me before the month is out. But I'm going to cut the Meeker outfit. I won't subject myself to their vulgarities another day. Why should I? It's false pride in me to hang on up there any longer." "Of course you can come here," she said. "Mother will be glad to have you, although our ranch isn't a bit pretty. Perhaps father will send you out with one of the rangers as a fire-guard. I'll ask him to-night." "I wish you would. I like these foresters. What I've seen of them. I wouldn't mind serving under a man like Landon. He's fine." Upon this pleasant conference Cliff Belden unexpectedly burst. Pushing the door open with a slam, he confronted Berrie with dark and angry face. "Why, Cliff, where did you come from?" she asked, rising in some confusion. "I didn't hear you ride up." "Apparently not," he sneeringly answered. "I reckon you were too much occupied." She tried to laugh away his black mood. "That's right, I was. I'm chief cook to-day. Come in and sit down. Mother's gone to town, and I'm playing her part," she explained, ignoring his sullen displeasure. "Cliff, this is Mr. Norcross, who is visiting Uncle Joe. Mr. Norcross, shake hands with Mr. Belden." She made this introduction with some awkwardness, for her lover's failure to even say, "Howdy," informed her that his jealous heart was aflame, and she went on, quickly: "Mr. Norcross dropped in on his way to the post-office, and I'm collecting a snack for him." Recognizing Belden's claims upon the girl, Wayland rose. "I must be going. It's a long ride over the hill." "Come again soon," urged Berrie; "father wants to see you." "Thank you. I will look in very shortly," he replied, and went out with such dignity as he could command, feeling, however, very much like a dog that has been kicked over the threshold. Closing the door behind him, Belden turned upon the girl. "What's that consumptive 'dogie' doing here? He 'peared to be very much at home with you--too dern much at home!" She was prepared for his displeasure, but not for words like these. She answered, quietly: "He just dropped in on his way to town, and he's not a dogie!" She resented his tone as well as his words. "I've heard about you taking him over to Meeker's and lending him your only slicker," he went on; "but I didn't expect to find him sittin' here like he owned you and the place. You're taking altogether too much pains with him. Can't he put his own horse out? Do you have to go to the stable with him? You never did have any sense about your actions with men. You've all along been too free of your reputation, and now I'm going to take care of it for you. I won't have you nursin' this runt any longer!" She perceived now the full measure of his base rage, and her face grew pale and set. "You're making a perfect fool of yourself, Cliff," she said, with portentous calmness. "Am I?" he asked. "You sure are, and you'll see it yourself by and by. You've no call to get wire-edged about Mr. Norcross. He's not very strong. He's just getting well of a long sickness. I knew a chill would finish him, that's why I gave him my slicker. It didn't hurt me, and maybe it saved his life. I'd do it again if necessary." "Since when did you start a hospital for Eastern tenderfeet?" he sneered; then his tone changed to one of downright command. "You want to cut this all out, I tell you! I won't have any more of it! The boys up at the mill are all talkin' about your interest in this little whelp, and I'm getting the branding-iron from every one I meet. Sam saw you go into the barn with that dude, and _that_ would have been all over the country to-morrow, if I hadn't told him I'd sew his mouth up if he said a word about it. Of course, I don't think you mean anything by this coddlin'." "Oh, thank you," she interrupted, with flaming, quick, indignant fury. "That's mighty nice of you. I went to the barn to show Mr. Norcross where to stall his horse. I didn't know Sam was here." He sneered: "No, I bet you didn't." She fired at this. "Come now! Spit it out! Something nasty is in your mind. Go on! What have I done? What makes you so hot?" He began to weaken. "I don't accuse you of anything. I--but I--" "Yes you do--in your heart you distrust me--you just as much as said so!" He was losing his high air of command. "Never mind what I said, Berrie, I--" She was blazing now. "But I _do_ mind--I mind a whole lot--I didn't think it of you," she added, as she realized his cheapness, his coarseness. "I didn't suppose you could even _think_ such things of me. I don't like it," she repeated, and her tone hardened, "and I guess you'd better pull out of here--for good. If you've no more faith in me than that, I want you to go and never come back." "You don't mean that!" "Yes, I do! You've shown this yellow streak before, and I'm tired of it. This is the limit. I'm done with you." She stood between tears and benumbing anger now, and he was scared. "Don't say that, Berrie!" he pleaded, trying to put his arm about her. "Keep away from me!" She dashed his hands aside. "I hate you. I never want to see you again!" She ran into her own room and slammed the door behind her. Belden stood for a long time with his back against the wall, the heat of his resentment utterly gone, an empty, aching place in his heart. He called her twice, but she made no answer, and so, at last, he mounted his horse and rode away. IV THE SUPERVISOR OF THE FOREST Young Norcross, much as he admired Berrie, was not seeking to exchange her favor for her lover's enmity, and he rode away with an uneasy feeling of having innocently made trouble for himself, as well as for a fine, true-hearted girl. "What a good friendly talk we were having," he said, regretfully, "and to think she is to marry that big, scowling brute. How could she turn Landon down for a savage like that?" He was just leaving the outer gate when Belden came clattering up and reined his horse across the path and called out: "See here, you young skunk, you're a poor, white-livered tenderfoot, and I can't bust you as I would a full-grown man, but I reckon you better not ride this trail any more." "Why not?" inquired Wayland. Belden glared. "Because I tell you so. Your sympathy-hunting game has just about run into the ground. You've worked this baby dodge about long enough. You're not so almighty sick as you put up to be, and you'd better hunt some other cure for lonesomeness, or I'll just about cave your chest in." All this was shockingly plain talk for a slender young scholar to listen to, but Norcross remained calm. "I think you're unnecessarily excited," he remarked. "I have no desire to make trouble. I'm considering Miss Berea, who is too fine to be worried by us." His tone was conciliating, and the cowman, in spite of himself, responded to it. "That's why I advise you to go. She was all right till you came. Colorado's a big place, and there are plenty other fine ranges for men of your complaint--why not try Routt County? This is certain, you can't stay in the same valley with my girl. I serve notice of that." "You're making a prodigious ass of yourself," observed Wayland, with calm contempt. "You think so--do you? Well, I'll make a jack-rabbit out of you if I find you on this ranch again. You've worked on my girl in some way till she's jest about quit me. I don't see how you did it, you measly little pup, but you surely have turned her against me!" His rage burst into flame as he thought of her last words. "If you were so much as half a man I'd break you in two pieces right now; but you're not, you're nothing but a dead-on-the-hoof lunger, and there's nothing to do but run you out. So take this as your final notice. You straddle a horse and head east and keep a-ridin', and if I catch you with my girl again, I'll deal you a whole hatful of misery--now that's right!" Thereupon, with a final glance of hate in his face, he whirled his horse and galloped away, leaving Norcross dumb with resentment, intermingled with wonder. "Truly the West is a dramatic country! Here I am, involved in a lover's wrath, and under sentence of banishment, all within a month! Well, I suppose there's nothing to do but carry out Belden's orders. He's the boss," he said as he rode on. "I wonder just what happened after I left? Something stormy, evidently. She must have given him a sharp rebuff, or he wouldn't have been so furious with me. Perhaps she even broke her engagement with him. I sincerely hope she did. She's too good for him. That's the truth." And so, from point to point, he progressed till with fine indignation he reached a resolution to stay and meet whatever came. "I certainly would be a timorous animal if I let myself be scared into flight by that big bonehead," he said at last. "I have as much right here as he has, and the law must protect me. It can't be that this country is entirely barbaric." Nevertheless, he felt very weak and very much depressed as he rode up the street of the little town and dismounted at the hotel. The sidewalks were littered with loafing cowboys and lumber-jacks, and some of them quite openly ridiculed his riding-breeches and his thin legs. Others merely grinned, but in their grins lay something more insulting than words. "To them I am a poor thing," he admitted; but as he lifted his eyes to the mighty semicircular wall of the Bear Tooth Range, over which the daily storm was playing, he forgot his small worries. What gorgeous pageantry! What life-giving air! "If only civilized men and women possessed this glorious valley, what a place it would be!" he exclaimed, and in the heat of his indignant contempt he would have swept the valley clean. As his eyes caught the flutter of the flag on its staff above the Forest Service building, his heart went out to the men who unselfishly wrought beneath that symbol of federal unity for the good of the future. "That is civilized," he said; "that is prophetic," and alighted at the door in a glow of confidence. Nash, who was alone in the office, looked up from his work. "Come in," he called, heartily. "Come in and report." "Thank you. I'd like to do so; and may I use your desk? I have a letter to write." "Make yourself at home. Take any desk you like. The men are all out on duty." "You're very kind," replied Wayland, gratefully. There was something reassuring in this greeting, and in the many signs of skill and scientific reading which the place displayed. It was like a bit of Washington in the midst of a careless, slovenly, lawless mountain town, and Norcross took his seat and wrote his letter with a sense of proprietorship. "I'm getting up an enthusiasm for the Service just from hearing Alec Belden rave against it," he said a few minutes later, as he looked up from his letter. Nash grinned. "How did you like Meeker?" "He's a good man, but he has his peculiarities. Belden is your real enemy. He is blue with malignity--so are most of the cowmen I met up there. I wish I could do something for the Service. I'm a thoroughly up-to-date analytical chemist and a passable mining engineer, and my doctor says that for a year at least I must work in the open air. _Is_ there anything in this Forest Service for a weakling like me?" Nash considered. "The Supervisor might put you on as a temporary guard. I'll speak to him if you like?" "I wish you would. Tell him to forget the pay. I'm not in need of money, but I do require some incentive--something to do--something to give me direction. It bores me stiff to fish, and I'm sick of loafing. If McFarlane can employ me I shall be happy. The country is glorious, but I can't live on scenery." "I think we can employ you, but you'll have to go on as fire-guard or something like that for the first year. You see, the work is getting to be more and more technical each year. As a matter of fact"--here he lowered his voice a little--"McFarlane is one of the old guard, and will have to give way. He don't know a thing about forestry, and is too old to learn. His girl knows more about it than he does. She helps him out on office work, too." Wayland wondered a little at the freedom of expression on the part of Nash; but said: "If he runs his office as he runs his ranch he surely is condemned to go." "There's where the girl comes in. She keeps the boys in the office lined up and maintains things in pretty fair shape. She knows the old man is in danger of losing his job, and she's doing her best to hold him to it. She's like a son to him and he relies on her judgment when a close decision comes up. But it's only a matter of time when he and all he represents must drift by. This is a big movement we're mixed with." "I begin to feel that that's why I'd like to take it up. It's the only thing out here that interests me--and I've got to do something. I can't loaf." "Well, you get Berrie to take up your case and you're all right. She has the say about who goes on the force in this forest." It was late in the afternoon before Wayland started back to Meeker's with intent to repack his belongings and leave the ranch for good. He had decided not to call at McFarlane's, a decision which came not so much from fear of Clifford Belden as from a desire to shield Berea from further trouble, but as he was passing the gate, the girl rose from behind a clump of willows and called to him: "Oh, Mr. Norcross! Wait a moment." He drew rein, and, slipping from his horse, approached her. "What is it, Miss Berrie?" he asked, with wondering politeness. She confronted him with gravity. "It's too late for you to cross the ridge. It'll be dark long before you reach the cut-off. You'd better not try to make it." "I think I can find my way," he answered, touched by her consideration. "I'm not so helpless as I was when I came." "Just the same you mustn't go on," she insisted. "Father told me to ask you to come in and stay all night. He wants to meet you. I was afraid you might ride by after what happened to-day, and so I came up here to head you off." She took his horse by the rein, and flashed a smiling glance up at him. "Come now, do as the Supervisor tells you." "Wait a moment," he pleaded. "On second thought, I don't believe it's a good thing for me to go home with you. It will only make further trouble for--for us both." She was almost as direct as Belden had been. "I know what you mean. I saw Cliff follow you. He jumped you, didn't he?" "He overtook me--yes." "What did he say?" He hesitated. "He was pretty hot, and said things he'll be sorry for when he cools off." "He told you not to come here any more--advised you to hit the out-going trail--didn't he?" He flushed with returning shame of it all, but quietly answered: "Yes, he said something about riding east." "Are you going to do it?" "Not to-day; but I guess I'd better keep away from here." She looked at him steadily. "Why?" "Because you've been very kind to me, and I wouldn't for the world do anything to hurt or embarrass you." "Don't you mind about me," she responded, bluntly. "What happened this morning wasn't your fault nor mine. Cliff made a mighty coarse play, something he'll have to pay for. He knows that right now. He'll be back in a day or two begging my pardon, and he won't get it. Don't you worry about me, not for a minute--I can take care of myself--I grew up that way, and don't you be chased out of the country by anybody. Come, father will be looking for you." With a feeling that he was involving both the girl and himself in still darker storms, the young fellow yielded to her command, and together they walked along the weed-bordered path, while she continued: "This isn't the first time Cliff has started in to discipline me; but it's obliged to be the last. He's the kind that think they own a girl just as soon as they get her to wear an engagement ring; but Cliff don't own me. I told him I wouldn't stand for his coarse ways, and I won't!" Wayland tried to bring her back to humor. "You're a kind of 'new woman.'" She turned a stern look on him. "You bet I am! I was raised a free citizen. No man can make a slave of me. I thought he understood that; but it seems he didn't. He's all right in many ways--one of the best riders in the country--but he's pretty tolerable domineering--I've always known that--still, I never expected him to talk to me like he did to-day. It certainly was raw." She broke off abruptly. "You mustn't let Frank Meeker get the best of you, either," she advised. "He's a mean little weasel if he gets started. I'll bet he put Cliff up to this business." "Do you think so?" "Yes, he just as good as told me he'd do it. I know Frank, he's my own cousin, and someways I like him; but he's the limit when he gets going. You see, he wanted to get even with Cliff and took that way of doing it. I'll ride up there and give him a little good advice some Saturday." He was no longer amused by her blunt speech, and her dark look saddened him. She seemed so unlike the happy girl he met that first day, and the change in her subtended a big, rough, and pitiless world of men against which she was forced to contend all her life. Mrs. McFarlane greeted Norcross with cordial word and earnest hand-clasp. "I'm glad to see you looking so well," she said, with charming sincerity. "I'm browner, anyway," he answered, and turned to meet McFarlane, a short, black-bearded man, with fine dark eyes and shapely hands--hands that had never done anything more toilsome than to lift a bridle rein or to clutch the handle of a gun. He was the horseman in all his training, and though he owned hundreds of acres of land, he had never so much as held a plow or plied a spade. His manner was that of the cow-boss, the lord of great herds, the claimant of empires of government grass-land. Poor as his house looked, he was in reality rich. Narrow-minded in respect to his own interests, he was well in advance of his neighbors on matters relating to the general welfare, a curious mixture of greed and generosity, as most men are, and though he had been made Supervisor at a time when political pull still crippled the Service, he was loyal to the flag. "I'm mighty glad to see you," he heartily began. "We don't often get a man from the sea-level, and when we do we squeeze him dry." His voice, low, languid, and soft, was most insinuating, and for hours he kept his guest talking of the East and its industries and prejudices; and Berrie and her mother listened with deep admiration, for the youngster had seen a good deal of the old world, and was unusually well read on historical lines of inquiry. He talked well, too, inspired by his attentive audience. Berrie's eyes, wide and eager, were fixed upon him unwaveringly. He felt her wonder, her admiration, and was inspired to do his best. Something in her absorbed attention led him to speak of things so personal that he wondered at himself for uttering them. "I've been dilettante all my life," was one of his confessions. "I've traveled; I've studied in a tepid sort of fashion; I went through college without any idea of doing anything with what I got; I had a sort of pride in keeping up with my fellows; and I had no idea of preparing for any work in the world. Then came my breakdown, and my doctor ordered me out here. I came intending to fish and loaf around, but I can't do that. I've got to do something or go back home. I expected to have a chum of mine with me, but his father was injured in an automobile accident, so he went into the office to help out." As he talked the girl discovered new graces, new allurements in him. His smile, so subtly self-derisive, and his voice so flexible and so quietly eloquent, completed her subjugation. She had no further care concerning Clifford--indeed, she had forgotten him--for the time at least. The other part of her--the highly civilized latent power drawn from her mother--was in action. She lost her air of command, her sense of chieftainship, and sat humbly at the feet of this shining visitor from the East. At last Mrs. McFarlane rose, and Berea, reluctantly, like a child loath to miss a fairy story, held out her hand to say good night, and the young man saw on her face that look of adoration which marks the birth of sudden love; but his voice was frank and his glance kindly as he said: "Here I've done all the talking when I wanted you to tell _me_ all sorts of things." "I can't tell you anything." "Oh yes, you can; and, besides, I want you to intercede for me with your father and get me into the Service. But we'll talk about that to-morrow. Good night." After the women left the room Norcross said: "I really am in earnest about entering the Forest Service. Landon filled me with enthusiasm about it. Never mind the pay. I'm not in immediate need of money; but I do need an interest in life." McFarlane stared at him with kindly perplexity. "I don't know exactly what you can do, but I'll work you in somehow. You ought to work under a man like Settle, one that could put you through a training in the rudiments of the game. I'll see what can be done." "Thank you for that half promise," said Wayland, and he went to his bed happier than at any moment since leaving home. Berrie, on her part, did not analyze her feeling for Wayland, she only knew that he was as different from the men she knew as a hawk from a sage-hen, and that he appealed to her in a higher way than any other had done. His talk filled her with visions of great cities, and with thoughts of books, for though she was profoundly loyal to her mountain valley, she held other, more secret admirations. She was, in fact, compounded of two opposing tendencies. Her quiet little mother longing--in secret--for the placid, refined life of her native Kentucky town, had dowered her daughter with some part of her desire. She had always hated the slovenly, wasteful, and purposeless life of the cattle-rancher, and though she still patiently bore with her husband's shortcomings, she covertly hoped that Berea might find some other and more civilized lover than Clifford Belden. She understood her daughter too well to attempt to dictate her action; she merely said to her, as they were alone for a few moments: "I don't wonder your father is interested in Mr. Norcross, he's very intelligent--and very considerate." "Too considerate," said Berrie, shortly; "he makes other men seem like bears or pigs." Mrs. McFarlane said no more, but she knew that Cliff was, for the time, among the bears. V THE GOLDEN PATHWAY Young Norcross soon became vitally engaged with the problems which confronted McFarlane, and his possible enrolment as a guard filled him with a sense of proprietorship in the forest, which made him quite content with Bear Tooth. He set to work at once to acquire a better knowledge of the extent and boundaries of the reservation. It was, indeed, a noble possession. Containing nearly eight hundred thousand acres of woodland, and reaching to the summits of the snow-lined peaks to the east, south, and west, it appealed to him with silent majesty. It drew upon his patriotism. Remembering how the timber of his own state had been slashed and burned, he began to feel a sense of personal responsibility. He had but to ride into it a few miles in order to appreciate in some degree its grandeur, considered merely as the source of a hundred swift streams, whose waters enriched the valleys lying below. He bought a horse of his own--although Berrie insisted upon his retaining Pete--and sent for a saddle of the army type, and from sheer desire to keep entirely clear of the cowboy equipment procured puttees like those worn by cavalry officers, and when he presented himself completely uniformed, he looked not unlike a slender, young lieutenant of the cavalry on field duty, and in Berrie's eyes was wondrous alluring. He took quarters at the hotel, but spent a larger part of each day in Berrie's company--a fact which was duly reported to Clifford Belden. Hardly a day passed without his taking at least one meal at the Supervisor's home. As he met the rangers one by one, he perceived by their outfits, as well as by their speech, that they were sharply divided upon old lines and new. The experts, the men of college training, were quite ready to be known as Uncle Sam's men. They held a pride in their duties, a respect for their superiors, and an understanding of the governmental policy which gave them dignity and a quiet authority. They were less policemen than trusted agents of a federal department. Nevertheless, there was much to admire in the older men, who possessed a self-reliance, a knowledge of nature, and a certain rough grace which made them interesting companions, and rendered them effective teachers of camping and trailing, and while they were secretly a little contemptuous of the "schoolboys"; they were all quite ready to ask for expert aid when knotty problems arose. It was no longer a question of grazing, it was a question of lumbering and reforestration. Nash, who took an almost brotherly interest in his apprentice, warningly said: "You want to go well clothed and well shod. You'll have to meet all kinds of weather. Every man in the service, I don't care what his technical job is, should be schooled in taking care of himself in the forest and on the trail. I often meet surveyors and civil engineers--experts--who are helpless as children in camp, and when I want them to go into the hills and do field work, they are almost useless. The old-style ranger has his virtues. Settle is just the kind of instructor you young fellows need." Berrie also had keen eyes for his outfit and his training, and under her direction he learned to pack a horse, set a tent, build a fire in the rain, and other duties. "You want to remember that you carry your bed and board with you," she said, "and you must be prepared to camp anywhere and at any time." The girl's skill in these particulars was marvelous to him, and added to the admiration he already felt for her. Her hand was as deft, as sure, as the best of them, and her knowledge of cayuse psychology more profound than any of the men excepting her father. One day, toward the end of his second week in the village, the Supervisor said: "Well, now, if you're ready to experiment I'll send you over to Settle, the ranger, on the Horseshoe. He's a little lame on his pen-hand side, and you may be able to help him out. Maybe I'll ride over there with you. I want to line out some timber sales on the west side of Ptarmigan." This commission delighted Norcross greatly. "I'm ready, sir, this moment," he answered, saluting soldier-wise. That night, as he sat in the saddle-littered, boot-haunted front room of Nash's little shack, his host said, quaintly: "Don't think you are inheriting a soft snap, son. The ranger's job was a man's job in the old days when it was a mere matter of patrolling; but it's worse and more of it to-day. A ranger must be ready and willing to build bridges, fight fire, scale logs, chop a hole through a windfall, use a pick in a ditch, build his own house, cook, launder, and do any other old trick that comes along. But you'll know more about all this at the end of ten days than I can tell you in a year." "I'm eager for duty," replied Wayland. The next morning, as he rode down to the office to meet the Supervisor, he was surprised and delighted to find Berea there. "I'm riding, too," she announced, delightedly. "I've never been over that new trail, and father has agreed to let me go along." Then she added, earnestly: "I think it's fine you're going in for the Service; but it's hard work, and you must be careful till you're hardened to it. It's a long way to a doctor from Settle's station." He was annoyed as well as touched by her warning, for it proclaimed that he was still far from looking the brave forester he felt himself to be. He replied: "I'm not going to try anything wild, but I do intend to master the trailer's craft." "I'll teach you how to camp, if you'll let me," she continued. "I've been on lots of surveys with father, and I always take my share of the work. I threw that hitch alone." She nodded toward the pack-horse, whose neat load gave evidence of her skill. "I told father this was to be a real camping expedition, and as the grouse season is on we'll live on the country. Can you fish?" "Just about that," he laughed. "Good thing you didn't ask me if I could _catch_ fish?" He was recovering his spirits. "It will be great fun to have you as instructor in camp science. I seem to be in for all kinds of good luck." They both grew uneasy as time passed, for fear something or some one would intervene to prevent this trip, which grew in interest each moment; but at last the Supervisor came out and mounted his horse, the pack-ponies fell in behind, Berrie followed, and the student of woodcraft brought up to rear. "I hope it won't rain," the girl called back at him, "at least not till we get over the divide. It's a fine ride up the hill, and the foliage is at its best." It seemed to him the most glorious morning of his life. A few large white clouds were drifting like snow-laden war-vessels from west to east, silent and solemn, and on the highest peaks a gray vapor was lightly clinging. The near-by hills, still transcendently beautiful with the flaming gold of the aspen, burned against the dark green of the farther forest, and far beyond the deep purple of the shadowed slopes rose to smoky blue and tawny yellow. It was a season, an hour, to create raptures in a poet, so radiant, so wide-reaching, so tumultuous was the landscape. Nothing sad, nothing discouraging, showed itself. The wind was brisk, the air cool and clear, and jewel-like small, frost-painted vines and ripened shrubberies blazed upward from the ground. As he rode the youth silently repeated: "Beautiful! Beautiful!" For several miles they rode upward through golden forests of aspens. On either hand rose thick walls of snow-white boles, and in the mystic glow of their gilded leaves the face of the girl shone with unearthly beauty. It was as if the very air had become auriferous. Magic coins dangled from the branches. Filmy shadows fell over her hair and down her strong young arms like priceless lace. Gold, gold! Everywhere gold, gold and fire! Twice she stopped to gaze into Wayland's face to say, with hushed intensity: "Isn't it wonderful! Don't you wish it would last forever?" Her words were poor, ineffectual; but her look, her breathless voice made up for their lack of originality. Once she said: "I never saw it so lovely before; it is an enchanted land!" with no suspicion that the larger part of her ecstasy arose from the presence of her young and sympathetic companion. He, too, responded to the beauty of the day, of the golden forest as one who had taken new hold on life after long illness. Meanwhile the Supervisor was calmly leading the way upward, vaguely conscious of the magical air and mystic landscape in which his young folk floated as if on wings, thinking busily of the improvements which were still necessary in the trail, and weighing with care the clouds which still lingered upon the tallest summits, as if debating whether to go or to stay. He had never been an imaginative soul, and now that age had somewhat dimmed his eyes and blunted his senses he was placidly content with his path. The rapture of the lover, the song of the poet, had long since abandoned his heart. And yet he was not completely oblivious. To him it was a nice day, but a "weather breeder." "I wonder if I shall ever ride through this mountain world as unmoved as he seems to be?" Norcross asked himself, after some jarring prosaic remark from his chief. "I am glad Berrie responds to it." At last they left these lower, wondrous forest aisles and entered the unbroken cloak of firs whose dark and silent deeps had a stern beauty all their own; but the young people looked back upon the glowing world below with wistful hearts. Back and forth across a long, down-sweeping ridge they wove their toilsome way toward the clouds, which grew each hour more formidable, awesome with their weight, ponderous as continents in their majesty of movement. The horses began to labor with roaring breath, and Wayland, dismounting to lighten his pony's burden, was dismayed to discover how thin the air had become. Even to walk unburdened gave him a smothering pain in his breast. "Better stay on," called the girl. "My rule is to ride the hill going up and walk it going down. Down hill is harder on a horse than going up." Nevertheless he persisted in clambering up some of the steepest parts of the trail, and was increasingly dismayed by the endless upward reaches of the foot-hills. A dozen times he thought, "We must be nearly at the top," and then other and far higher ridges suddenly developed. Occasionally the Supervisor was forced to unsling an ax and chop his way through a fallen tree, and each time the student hurried to the spot, ready to aid, but was quite useless. He admired the ease and skill with which the older man put his shining blade through the largest bole, and wondered if he could ever learn to do as well. "One of the first essentials of a ranger's training is to learn to swing an ax," remarked McFarlane, "and you never want to be without a real tool. _I_ won't stand for a hatchet ranger." Berrie called attention to the marks on the trees. "This is the government sign--a long blaze with two notches above it. You can trust these trails; they lead somewhere." "As you ride a trail study how to improve it," added the Supervisor, sheathing his ax. "They can all be improved." Wayland was sure of this a few steps farther on, when the Supervisor's horse went down in a small bog-hole, and Berrie's pony escaped only by the most desperate plunging. The girl laughed, but Wayland was appalled and stood transfixed watching McFarlane as he calmly extricated himself from the saddle of the fallen horse and chirped for him to rise. "You act as if this were a regular part of the journey," Wayland said to Berrie. "It's all in the day's work," she replied; "but I despise a bog worse than anything else on the trail. I'll show you how to go round this one." Thereupon she slid from her horse and came tiptoeing back along the edge of the mud-hole. McFarlane cut a stake and plunged it vertically in the mud. "That means 'no bottom,'" he explained. "We must cut a new trail." Wayland was dismounting when Berrie said: "Stay on. Now put your horse right through where those rocks are. It's hard bottom there." He felt like a child; but he did as she bid, and so came safely through, while McFarlane set to work to blaze a new route which should avoid the slough which was already a bottomless horror to the city man. This mishap delayed them nearly half an hour, and the air grew dark and chill as they stood there, and the amateur ranger began to understand how serious a lone night journey might sometimes be. "What would I do if when riding in the dark my horse should go down like that and pin me in the mud?" he asked himself. "Eternal watchfulness is certainly one of the forester's first principles." The sky was overshadowed now, and a thin drizzle of rain filled the air. The novice hastened to throw his raincoat over his shoulders; but McFarlane rode steadily on, clad only in his shirtsleeves, unmindful of the wet. Berrie, however, approved Wayland's caution. "That's right; keep dry," she called back. "Don't pay attention to father, he'd rather get soaked any day than unroll his slicker. You mustn't take him for model yet awhile." He no longer resented her sweet solicitude, although he considered himself unentitled to it, and he rejoiced under the shelter of his fine new coat. He began to perceive that one could be defended against a storm. After passing two depressing marshes, they came to a hillside so steep, so slippery, so dark, so forbidding, that one of the pack-horses balked, shook his head, and reared furiously, as if to say "I can't do it, and I won't try." And Wayland sympathized with him. The forest was gloomy and cold, and apparently endless. After coaxing him for a time with admirable gentleness, the Supervisor, at Berrie's suggestion, shifted part of the load to her own saddle-horse, and they went on. Wayland, though incapable of comment--so great was the demand upon his lungs--was not too tired to admire the power and resolution of the girl, who seemed not to suffer any special inconvenience from the rarefied air. The dryness of his open mouth, the throbbing of his troubled pulse, the roaring of his breath, brought to him with increasing dismay the fact that he had overlooked another phase of the ranger's job. "I couldn't chop a hole through one of these windfalls in a week," he admitted, as McFarlane's blade again liberated them from a fallen tree. "To do office work at six thousand feet is quite different from swinging an ax up here at timber-line," he said to the girl. "I guess my chest is too narrow for high altitudes." "Oh, you'll get used to it," she replied, cheerily. "I always feel it a little at first; but I really think it's good for a body, kind o' stretches the lungs." Nevertheless, she eyed him with furtive anxiety. He was beginning to be hungry also--he had eaten a very early breakfast--and he fell to wondering just where and when they were to camp; but he endured in silence. "So long as Berrie makes no complaint my mouth is shut," he told himself. "Surely I can stand it if she can." And so struggled on. Up and up the pathway looped, crossing minute little boggy meadows, on whose bottomless ooze the grass shook like a blanket, descending steep ravines and climbing back to dark and muddy slopes. The forest was dripping, green, and silent now, a mysterious menacing jungle. All the warmth and magic of the golden forest below was lost as though it belonged to another and sunnier world. Nothing could be seen of the high, snow-flecked peaks which had allured them from the valley. All about them drifted the clouds, and yet through the mist the flushed face of the girl glowed like a dew-wet rose, and the imperturbable Supervisor jogged his remorseless, unhesitating way toward the dense, ascending night. "I'm glad I'm not riding this pass alone," Wayland said, as they paused again for breath. "So am I," she answered; but her thought was not his. She was happy at the prospect of teaching him how to camp. At last they reached the ragged edge of timber-line, and there, rolling away under the mist, lay the bare, grassy, upward-climbing, naked neck of the great peak. The wind had grown keener moment by moment, and when they left the storm-twisted pines below, its breath had a wintry nip. The rain had ceased to fall, but the clouds still hung densely to the loftiest summits. It was a sinister yet beautiful world--a world as silent as a dream, and through the short, thick grass the slender trail ran like a timid serpent. The hour seemed to have neither daytime nor season. All was obscure, mysterious, engulfing, and hostile. Had he been alone the youth would have been appalled by the prospect. "Now we're on the divide," called Berea; and as she spoke they seemed to enter upon a boundless Alpine plain of velvet-russet grass. "This is the Bear Tooth plateau." Low monuments of loose rock stood on small ledges, as though to mark the course, and in the hollows dark ponds of icy water lay, half surrounded by masses of compact snow. "This is a stormy place in winter," McFarlane explained. "These piles of stone are mighty valuable in a blizzard. I've crossed this divide in August in snow so thick I could not see a rod." Half an hour later they began to descend. Wind-twisted, storm-bleached dwarf pines were first to show, then the firs, then the blue-green spruces, and then the sheltering deeps of the undespoiled forest opened, and the roar of a splendid stream was heard; but still the Supervisor kept his resolute way, making no promises as to dinner, though his daughter called: "We'd better go into camp at Beaver Lake. I hope you're not starved," she called to Wayland. "But I am," he replied, so frankly that she never knew how faint he really was. His knees were trembling with weakness, and he stumbled dangerously as he trod the loose rocks in the path. They were all afoot now descending swiftly, and the horses ramped down the trail with expectant haste, so that in less than an hour from timber-line they were back into the sunshine of the lower valley, and at three o'clock or thereabouts they came out upon the bank of an exquisite lake, and with a cheery shout McFarlane called out: "Here we are, out of the wilderness!" Then to Wayland: "Well, boy, how did you stand it?" "Just middling," replied Wayland, reticent from weariness and with joy of their camping-place. The lake, dark as topaz and smooth as steel, lay in a frame of golden willows--as a jewel is filigreed with gold--and above it the cliffs rose three thousand feet in sheer majesty, their upper slopes glowing with autumnal grasses. A swift stream roared down a low ledge and fell into the pond near their feet. Grassy, pine-shadowed knolls afforded pasture for the horses, and two giant firs, at the edge of a little glade, made a natural shelter for their tent. With businesslike certitude Berrie unsaddled her horse, turned him loose, and lent a skilful hand at removing the panniers from the pack-animals, while Wayland, willing but a little uncertain, stood awkwardly about. Under her instruction he collected dead branches of a standing fir, and from these and a few cones kindled a blaze, while the Supervisor hobbled the horses and set the tent. "If the work of a forester were all like this it wouldn't be so bad," he remarked, wanly. "I think I know several fellows who would be glad to do it without a cent of pay." "Wait till you get to heaving a pick," she retorted, "or scaling lumber in a rain, or building a corduroy bridge." "I don't want to think of anything so dreadful. I want to enjoy this moment. I never was hungrier or happier in my life." "Do ye good," interjected McFarlane, who had paused to straighten up the coffee-pot. "Most people don't know what hunger means. There's nothing finer in the world than good old-fashioned hunger, provided you've got something to throw into yourself when you come into camp. This is a great place for fish. I think I'll see if I can't jerk a few out." "Better wait till night," said his daughter. "Mr. Norcross is starving, and so am I. Plain bacon will do me." The coffee came to a boil, the skillet gave off a wondrous savor, and when the corn and beans began to sizzle, the trailers sat down to their feast in hearty content, with one of the panniers for a table, and the fir-tree for roof. "This is one of the most perfectly appointed dining-rooms in the world," exclaimed the alien. The girl met his look with a tender smile. "I'm glad you like it, for perhaps we'll stay a week." "It looks stormy," the Supervisor announced, after a glance at the crests. "I'd like to see a soaking rain--it would end all our worry about fires. The country's very dry on this side the range, and your duty for the present will be to help Tony patrol." While he talked on, telling the youth how to beat out a small blaze and how to head off a large one, Wayland listened, but heard his instructions only as he sensed the brook, as an accompaniment to Berea's voice, for as she busied herself clearing away the dishes and putting the camp to rights, she sang. "You're to have the tent," said her father, "and we two huskies will sleep under the shade of this big fir. If you're ever caught out," he remarked to Wayland, "hunt for one of these balsam firs; there's always a dry spot under them. See here!" And he showed him the sheltered circle beneath the tree. "You can always get twigs for kindling from their inner branches," he added, "or you can hew into one of these dead trees and get some pitchy splinters. There's material for everything you want if you know where to find it. Shelter, food, fire are all here for us as they were for the Indians. A ranger who needs a roof all the time is not worth his bacon." So, one by one, the principles of camping were taught by the kindly old rancher; but the hints which the girl gave were quite as valuable, for Wayland was eager to show her that he could be, and intended to be, a forester of the first class or perish in the attempt. McFarlane went farther and talked freely of the forest and what it meant to the government. "We're all green at the work," he said, "and we old chaps are only holding the fort against the thieves till you youngsters learn how to make the best use of the domain." "I can see that it takes more than technical training to enable a man to be Supervisor of a forest," conceded Wayland. McFarlane was pleased with this remark. "That's true, too. It's a big responsibility. When I first came on, it was mainly patrolling; but now, with a half dozen sawmills, and these 'June Eleventh Homesteads,' and the new ways of marking timber, and the grazing and free-use permits, the office work has doubled. And this is only the beginning. Wait till Colorado has two millions of people, and all these lower valleys are clamoring for water. Then you'll see a new party spring up--right here in our state." Berrie was glowing with happiness. "Let's stay here till the end of the week," she suggested. "I've always wanted to camp on this lake, and now I'm here I want time to enjoy it." "We'll stay a day or two," said her father; "but I must get over to that ditch survey which is being made at the head of Poplar, and then Moore is coming over to look at some timber on Porcupine." The young people cut willow rods and went angling at the outlet of the lake with prodigious success. The water rippled with trout, and in half an hour they had all they could use for supper and breakfast, and, behold, even as they were returning with their spoil they met a covey of grouse strolling leisurely down to the lake's edge. "Isn't it a wonderful place!" exclaimed the happy girl. "I wish we could stay a month." "It's like being on the Swiss Family Robinson's Island. I never was more content," he said, fervently. "I wouldn't mind staying here all winter." "I would!" she laughed. "The snow falls four feet deep up here. It's likely there's snow on the divide this minute, and camping in the snow isn't so funny. Some people got snowed in over at Deep Lake last year and nearly all their horses starved before they could get them out. This is a fierce old place in winter-time." "I can't imagine it," he said, indicating the glowing amphitheater which inclosed the lake. "See how warmly the sun falls into that high basin! It's all as beautiful as the Tyrol." The air at the moment was golden October, and the dark clouds which lay to the east seemed the wings of a departing rather than an approaching storm; and even as they looked, a rainbow sprang into being, arching the lake as if in assurance of peace and plenty, and the young people, as they turned to face it, stood so close together that each felt the glow of the other's shoulder. The beauty of the scene seemed to bring them together in body as in spirit, and they fell silent. McFarlane seemed quite unconscious of any necromancy at work upon his daughter. He smoked his pipe, made notes in his field-book, directing an occasional remark toward his apprentice, enjoying in his tranquil, middle-age way the beauty and serenity of the hour. "This is the kind of thing that makes up for a hard day's ride," he said, jocosely. As the sunset came on, the young people again loitered down to the water's edge, and there, seated side by side, on a rocky knoll, watched the phantom gold lift from the willows and climb slowly to the cliffs above, while the water deepened in shadow, and busy muskrats marked its glossy surface with long silvery lines. Mischievous camp-birds peered at the couple from the branches of the pines uttering satirical comment, while squirrels, frankly insolent, dropped cones upon their heads and barked in saucy glee. Wayland forgot all the outside world, forgot that he was studying to be a forest ranger, and was alive only to the fact that in this most bewitching place, in this most entrancing hour, he had the companionship of a girl whose eyes sought his with every new phase of the silent and wonderful scene which shifted swiftly before their eyes like a noiseless yet prodigious drama. The blood in his thin body warmed. He forgot his fatigue, his weakness. He was the poet and the forest lover, and this the heart of the range. Lightly the golden glory rose till only the highest peaks retained its flame; then it leapt to the clouds behind the peaks, and gorgeously lit their somber sulphurous masses. The edges of the pool grew black as night; the voice of the stream grew stern; and a cold wind began to fall from the heights, sliding like an invisible but palpable icy cataract. At last the girl rose. "It is getting dark. I must go back and get supper." "We don't need any supper," he protested. "Father does, and you'll be hungry before morning," she retorted, with sure knowledge of men. He turned from the scene reluctantly; but once at the camp-fire cheerfully gave his best efforts to the work in hand, seconding Berrie's skill as best he could. The trout, deliciously crisp, and some potatoes and batter-cakes made a meal that tempted even his faint appetite, and when the dishes were washed and the towels hung out to dry, deep night possessed even the high summit of stately Ptarmigan. McFarlane then said: "I'll just take a little turn to see that the horses are all right, and then I think we'd better close in for the night." When they were alone in the light of the fire, Wayland turned to Berrie: "I'm glad you're here. It must be awesome to camp alone in a wilderness; and yet, I suppose, I must learn to do it." "Yes, the ranger often has to camp alone, ride alone, and work alone for weeks at a time," she assured him. "A good trailer don't mind a night trip any more than he does a day trip, or if he does he never admits it. Rain, snow, darkness, is all the same to him. Most of the boys are fifteen to forty miles from the post-office." He smiled ruefully. "I begin to have new doubts about this ranger business. It's a little more vigorous than I thought it was. Suppose a fellow breaks a leg on one of those high trails?" "He mustn't!" she hastened to say. "He can't afford really to take reckless chances; but then father won't expect as much of you as he does of the old-stagers. You'll have plenty of time to get used to it." "I may be like the old man's cow and the green shavings, just as I'm getting used to it I'll die." She didn't laugh at this. "You mustn't be rash; don't jump into any hard jobs for the present; let the other fellow do it." "But that's not very manly. If I go into the work I ought to be able to take my share of any task that turns up." "You'd better go slow," she argued. "Wait till you get hardened to it. You need something over your shoulders now," she added; and rose and laid a blanket over him. "You're tired; you'll take a chill if you're not careful." "You're very considerate," he said, looking up at her gratefully. "But it makes me feel like a child to think I need such care. If honestly trying, if going up against these hills and winds with Spartan courage will do me good, I'm for it. I'm resolved to show to you and your good father that I can learn to ride and pack and cut trail, and do all the rest of it--there's some honor in qualifying as a forester, and I'm going to do it." "Of course there isn't much in it for you. The pay, even of a full ranger, isn't much, after you count out his outlay for horses and saddles and their feed, and his own feed. It don't leave so very much of his ninety dollars a month." "I'm not thinking of that," he retorted. "If you had once seen a doctor shake his head over you, as I have, you'd think just being here in this glorious spot, as I am to-night, would be compensation enough. It's a joy to be in the world, and a delight to have you for my teacher." She was silent under the pleasure of his praise, and he went on: "I _know_ I'm better, and, I'm perfectly certain I can regain my strength. The very odor of these pines and the power of these winds will bring it back to me. See me now, and think how I looked when I came here six weeks ago." She looked at him with fond agreement. "You _are_ better. When I saw you first I surely thought you were--" "I know what you thought--and forget it, _please_! Think of me as one who has touched mother earth again and is on the way to being made a giant. You can't imagine how marvelous, how life-giving all this is to me. It is poetry, it is prophecy, it is fulfilment. I am fully alive again." McFarlane, upon his return, gave some advice relating to the care of horses. "All this stock which is accustomed to a barn or a pasture will quit you," he warned. "Watch your broncos. Put them on the outward side of your camp when you bed down, and pitch your tent near the trail, then you will hear the brutes if they start back. Some men tie their stock all up; but I usually picket my saddle-horse and hobble the rest." It was a delightful hour for schooling, and Wayland would have been content to sit there till morning listening; but the air bit, and at last the Supervisor asked: "Have you made your bed? If you have, turn in. I shall get you out early to-morrow." As he saw the bed, he added: "I see you've laid out a bed of boughs. That shows how Eastern you are. We don't do that out here. It's too cold in this climate, and it's too much work. You want to hug the ground--if it's dry." The weary youth went to his couch with a sense of timorous elation, for he had never before slept beneath the open sky. Over him the giant fir--tall as a steeple--dropped protecting shadow, and looking up he could see the firelight flickering on the wide-spread branches. His bed seemed to promise all the dreams and restful drowse which the books on outdoor life had described, and close by in her tiny little canvas house he could hear the girl in low-voiced conversation with her sire. All conditions seemed right for slumber, and yet slumber refused to come! After the Supervisor had rolled himself in the blanket, long after all sounds had ceased in the tent, there still remained for the youth a score of manifold excitations to wakefulness. Down on the lake the muskrats and beavers were at their work. Nocturnal birds uttered uncanny, disturbing cries. Some animal with stealthy crackling tread was ranging the hillside, and the roar of the little fall, so far from lulling him to sleep--as he had imagined it would--stimulated his imagination till he could discern in it the beat of scurrying wings and the patter of pernicious padded feet. "If I am appalled by the wilderness now, what would it seem to me were I alone!" he whispered. Then, too, his bed of boughs discovered unforeseen humps and knobs, and by the time he had adjusted himself to their discomfort, it became evident that his blankets were both too thin and too short. And the gelid air sweeping down from the high places submerged him as if with a flood of icy water. In vain he turned and twisted within his robes. No sooner were his shoulders covered and comfortable than his hip-bones began to ache. Later on the blood of his feet congealed, and in the effort to wrap them more closely, he uncovered his neck and shoulders. The frost became a wolf, the night an oppressor. "I must have a different outfit," he decided. And then thinking that this was but early autumn, he added: "What will it be a month later?" He began to doubt his ability to measure up to the heroic standard of a forest patrol. The firelight flickered low, and a prowling animal daringly sniffed about the camp, pawing at the castaway fragments of the evening meal. The youth was rigid with fear. "Is it a bear? Shall I call the Supervisor?" he asked himself. He felt sadly unprotected, and wished McFarlane nearer at hand. "It may be a lion, but probably it is only a coyote, or a porcupine," he concluded, and lay still for what seemed like hours waiting for the beast to gorge himself and go away. He longed for morning with intense desire, and watched an amazingly luminous star which hung above the eastern cliff, hoping to see it pale and die in dawn light, but it did not; and the wind bit even sharper. His legs ached almost to the cramping-point, and his hip-bones protruded like knots on a log. "I didn't know I had door-knobs on my hips," he remarked, with painful humor, and, looking down at his feet, he saw that a thick rime was gathering on his blanket. "This sleeping out at night isn't what the books crack it up to be," he groaned again, drawing his feet up to the middle of his bed to warm them. "Shall I resign to-morrow? No, I'll stay with it; but I'll have more clothing. I'll have blankets six inches thick. Heaps of blankets--the fleecy kind--I'll have an air-mattress." His mind luxuriated in these details till he fell into an uneasy drowse. VI STORM-BOUND Wayland was awakened by the mellow voice of his chief calling: "_All out! All out! Daylight down the creek!_" Breathing a prayer of thankfulness, the boy sat up and looked about him. "The long night is over at last, and I am alive!" he said, and congratulated himself. He drew on his shoes and, stiff and shivering, stood about in helpless misery, while McFarlane kicked the scattered, charred logs together, and fanned the embers into a blaze with his hat. It was heartening to see the flames leap up, flinging wide their gorgeous banners of heat and light, and in their glow the tenderfoot ranger rapidly recovered his courage, though his teeth still chattered and the forest was dark. "How did you sleep?" asked the Supervisor. "First rate--at least during the latter part of the night," Wayland briskly lied. "That's good. I was afraid that Adirondack bed of yours might let the white wolf in." "My blankets did seem a trifle thin," confessed Norcross. "It don't pay to sleep cold," the Supervisor went on. "A man wants to wake up refreshed, not tired out with fighting the night wind and frost. I always carry a good bed." It was instructive to see how quietly and methodically the old mountaineer went about his task of getting the breakfast. First he cut and laid a couple of eight-inch logs on either side of the fire, so that the wind drew through them properly, then placing his dutch-oven cover on the fire, he laid the bottom part where the flames touched it. Next he filled his coffee-pot with water, and set it on the coals. From his pannier he took his dishes and the flour and salt and pepper, arranging them all within reach, and at last laid some slices of bacon in the skillet. At this stage of the work a smothered cry, half yawn, half complaint, came from the tent. "Oh, hum! Is it morning?" inquired Berrie. "Morning!" replied her father. "It's going toward noon. You get up or you'll have no breakfast." Thereupon Wayland called: "Can I get you anything, Miss Berrie? Would you like some warm water?" "What for?" interposed McFarlane, before the girl could reply. "To bathe in," replied the youth. "To bathe in! If a daughter of mine should ask for warm water to wash with I'd throw her in the creek." Berrie chuckled. "Sometimes I think daddy has no feeling for me. I reckon he thinks I'm a boy." "Hot water is debilitating, and very bad for the complexion," retorted her father. "Ice-cold water is what you need. And if you don't get out o' there in five minutes I'll dowse you with a dipperful." This reminded Wayland that he had not yet made his own toilet, and, seizing soap, towel, and brushes, he hurried away down to the beach where he came face to face with the dawn. The splendor of it smote him full in the eyes. From the waveless surface of the water a spectral mist was rising, a light veil, through which the stupendous cliffs loomed three thousand feet in height, darkly shadowed, dim and far. The willows along the western marge burned as if dipped in liquid gold, and on the lofty crags the sun's coming created keen-edged shadows, violet as ink. Truly this forestry business was not so bad after all. It had its compensations. Back at the camp-fire he found Berrie at work, glowing, vigorous, laughing. Her comradeship with her father was very charming, and at the moment she was rallying him on his method of bread-mixing. "You should rub the lard into the flour," she said. "Don't be afraid to get your hands into it--after they are clean. You can't mix bread with a spoon." "Sis, I made camp bread for twenty years afore you were born." "It's a wonder you lived to tell of it," she retorted, and took the pan away from him. "That's another thing _you_ must learn," she said to Wayland. "You must know how to make bread. You can't expect to find bake-shops or ranchers along the way." In the heat of the fire, in the charm of the girl's presence, the young man forgot the discomforts of the night, and as they sat at breakfast, and the sun rising over the high summits flooded them with warmth and good cheer, and the frost melted like magic from the tent, the experience had all the satisfying elements of a picnic. It seemed that nothing remained to do; but McFarlane said: "Well, now, you youngsters wash up and pack whilst I reconnoiter the stock." And with his saddle and bridle on his shoulder he went away down the trail. Under Berrie's direction Wayland worked busily putting the camp equipment in proper parcels, taking no special thought of time till the tent was down and folded, the panniers filled and closed, and the fire carefully covered. Then the girl said: "I hope the horses haven't been stampeded. There are bears in this valley, and horses are afraid of bears. Father ought to have been back before this. I hope they haven't quit us." "Shall I go and see?" "No, he'll bring 'em--if they're in the land of the living. He picketed his saddle-horse, so he's not afoot. Nobody can teach him anything about trailing horses, and, besides, you might get lost. You'd better keep close to camp." Thereupon Wayland put aside all responsibility. "Let's see if we can catch some more fish," he urged. To this she agreed, and together they went again to the outlet of the lake--where the trout could be seen darting to and fro on the clear, dark flood--and there cast their flies till they had secured ten good-sized fish. "We'll stop now," declared the girl. "I don't believe in being wasteful." Once more at the camp they prepared the fish for the pan. The sun suddenly burned hot and the lake was still as brass, but great, splendid, leisurely, gleaming clouds were sailing in from the west, all centering about Chief Audobon, and the experienced girl looked often at the sky. "I don't like the feel of the air. See that gray cloud spreading out over the summits of the range, that means something more than a shower. I do hope daddy will overtake the horses before they cross the divide. It's going to pour up there." "What can I do?" "Nothing. We'll stay right here and get dinner for him. He'll be hungry when he gets back." As they were unpacking the panniers and getting out the dishes, thunder broke from the high crags above the lake, and the girl called out: "Quick! It's going to rain! We must reset the tent and get things under cover." Once more he was put to shame by the decision, the skill, and the strength with which she went about re-establishing the camp. She led, he followed in every action. In ten minutes the canvas was up, the beds rolled, the panniers protected, the food stored safely; but they were none too soon, for the thick gray veil of rain, which had clothed the loftiest crags for half an hour, swung out over the water--leaden-gray under its folds--and with a roar which began in the tall pines--a roar which deepened, hushed only when the thunder crashed resoundingly from crag to crest--the tempest fell upon the camp and the world of sun and odorous pine vanished almost instantly, and a dark, threatening, and forbidding world took its place. But the young people--huddled close together beneath the tent--would have enjoyed the change had it not been for the thought of the Supervisor. "I hope he took his slicker," the girl said, between the tearing, ripping flashes of the lightning. "It's raining hard up there." "How quickly it came. Who would have thought it could rain like this after so beautiful a morning?" "It storms when it storms--in the mountains," she responded, with the sententious air of her father. "You never can tell what the sky is going to do up here. It is probably snowing on the high divide. Looks now as though those cayuses pulled out sometime in the night and have hit the trail for home. That's the trouble with stall-fed stock. They'll quit you any time they feel cold and hungry. Here comes the hail!" she shouted, as a sharper, more spiteful roar sounded far away and approaching. "Now keep from under!" "What will your father do?" he called. "Don't worry about him. He's at home any place there's a tree. He's probably under a balsam somewhere, waiting for this ice to spill out. The only point is, they may get over the divide, and if they do it will be slippery coming back." For the first time the thought that the Supervisor might not be able to return entered Wayland's mind; but he said nothing of his fear. The hail soon changed to snow, great, clinging, drowsy, soft, slow-moving flakes, and with their coming the roar died away and the forest became as silent as a grave of bronze. Nothing moved, save the thick-falling, feathery, frozen vapor, and the world was again very beautiful and very mysterious. "We must keep the fire going," warned the girl. "It will be hard to start after this soaking." He threw upon the fire all of the wood which lay near, and Berrie, taking the ax, went to the big fir and began to chop off the dry branches which hung beneath, working almost as effectively as a man. Wayland insisted on taking a turn with the tool; but his efforts were so awkward that she laughed and took it away again. "You'll have to take lessons in swinging an ax," she said. "That's part of the job." Gradually the storm lightened, the snow changed back into rain, and finally to mist; but up on the heights the clouds still rolled wildly, and through their openings the white drifts bleakly shone. "It's all in the trip," said Berrie. "You have to take the weather as it comes on the trail." As the storm lessened she resumed the business of cooking the midday meal, and at two o'clock they were able to eat in comparative comfort, though the unmelted snow still covered the trees, and water dripped from the branches. "Isn't it beautiful!" exclaimed Wayland, with glowing boyish face. "The landscape is like a Christmas card. In its way it's quite as beautiful as that golden forest we rode through." "It wouldn't be so beautiful if you had to wallow through ten miles of it," she sagely responded. "Daddy will be wet to the skin, for I found he didn't take his slicker. However, the sun may be out before night. That's the way the thing goes in the hills." To the youth, though the peaks were storm-hid, the afternoon was joyous. Berrie was a sweet companion. Under her supervision he practised at chopping wood and took a hand at cooking. At her suggestion he stripped the tarpaulin from her father's bed and stretched it over a rope before the tent, thus providing a commodious kitchen and dining-room. Under this roof they sat and talked of everything except what they should do if the father did not return, and as they talked they grew to even closer understanding. Though quite unlearned of books, she had something which was much more piquant than anything which theaters and novels could give--she possessed a marvelous understanding of the natural world in which she lived. As the companion of her father on many of his trips, she had absorbed from him, as well as from the forest, a thousand observations of plant and animal life. Seemingly she had nothing of the woman's fear of the wilderness, she scarcely acknowledged any awe of it. Of the bears, and other predatory beasts, she spoke carelessly. "Bears are harmless if you let 'em alone," she said, "and the mountain-lion is a great big bluff. He won't fight, you can't make him fight; but the mother lion will. She's dangerous when she has cubs--most animals are. I was out hunting grouse one day with a little twenty-two rifle, when all at once, as I looked up along a rocky point I was crossing, I saw a mountain-lion looking at me. First I thought I'd let drive at him; but the chances were against my getting him from there, so I climbed up above him--or where I thought he was--and while I was looking for him I happened to glance to my right, and there he was about fifty feet away looking at me pleasant as you please. Didn't seem to be mad at all--'peared like he was just wondering what I'd do next. I jerked my gun into place, but he faded away. I crawled around to get behind him, and just when I reached the ledge on which he had been standing a few minutes before, I saw him just where I'd been. He had traded places with me. I began to have that creepy feeling. He was so silent and so kind of pleasant-looking I got leery of him. It just seemed like as though I'd dreamed him. He didn't seem real." Wayland shuddered. "You foolish girl! Why didn't you run?" "I did. I began to figure then that this was a mother lion, and that her cubs were close by, and that she could just as well sneak up and drop on me from above as not. So I got down and left her alone. It was her popping up now here and now there like a ghost that locoed me. I was sure scared." Wayland did not enjoy this tale. "I never heard of such folly. Did your father learn of that adventure?" "Yes, I told him." "Didn't he forbid your hunting any more?" "No, indeed! Why should he? He just said it probably was a lioness, and that it was just as well to let her alone. He knows I'm no chicken." "How about your mother--does she approve of such expeditions?" "No, mother worries more or less when I'm away; but then she knows it don't do any good. I'm taking all kinds of chances every day, anyhow." He had to admit that she was better able to care for herself in the wilderness than most men--even Western men--and though he had not yet witnessed a display of her skill with a rifle, he was ready to believe that she could shoot as well as her sire. Nevertheless, he liked her better when engaged in purely feminine duties, and he led the talk back to subjects concerning which her speech was less blunt and manlike. He liked her when she was joking, for delicious little curves of laughter played about her lips. She became very amusing, as she told of her "visits East," and of her embarrassments in the homes of city friends. "I just have to own up that about all the schooling I've got is from the magazines. Sometimes I wish I had pulled out for town when I was about fourteen; but, you see, I didn't feel like leaving mother, and she didn't feel like letting me go--and so I just got what I could at Bear Tooth." She sprang up. "There's a patch of blue sky. Let's go see if we can't get a grouse." The snow had nearly all sunk into the ground on their level; but it still lay deep on the heights above, and the torn masses of vapor still clouded the range. "Father has surely had to go over the divide," she said, as they walked down the path along the lake shore. "He'll be late getting back, and a plate of hot chicken will seem good to him." Together they strolled along the edge of the willows. "The grouse come down to feed about this time," she said. "We'll put up a covey soon." It seemed to him as though he were re-living the experiences of his ancestors--the pioneers of Michigan--as he walked this wilderness with this intrepid huntress whose alert eyes took note of every moving thing. She was delightfully unconscious of self, of sex, of any doubt or fear. A lovely Diana--strong and true and sweet. Within a quarter of a mile they found their birds, and she killed four with five shots. "This is all we need," she said, "and I don't believe in killing for the sake of killing. Rangers should set good examples in way of game preservation. They are deputy game-wardens in most states, and good ones, too." They stopped for a time on a high bank above the lake, while the sunset turned the storm-clouds into mountains of brass and iron, with sulphurous caves and molten glowing ledges. This grandiose picture lasted but a few minutes, and then the Western gates closed and all was again gray and forbidding. "Open and shut is a sign of wet," quoted Berrie, cheerily. The night rose formidably from the valley while they ate their supper; but Berrie remained tranquil. "Those horses probably went clean back to the ranch. If they did, daddy can't possibly get back before eight o'clock, and he may not get back till to-morrow." VII THE WALK IN THE RAIN Norcross, with his city training, was acutely conscious of the delicacy of the situation. In his sister's circle a girl left alone in this way with a man would have been very seriously embarrassed; but it was evident that Berrie took it all joyously, innocently. Their being together was something which had happened in the natural course of weather, a condition for which they were in no way responsible. Therefore she permitted herself to be frankly happy in the charm of their enforced intimacy. She had never known a youth of his quality. He was so considerate, so refined, so quick of understanding, and so swift to serve. He filled her mind to the exclusion of unimportant matters like the snow, which was beginning again; indeed, her only anxiety concerned his health, and as he toiled amid the falling flakes, intent upon heaping up wood enough to last out the night, she became solicitous. "You will be soaked," she warningly cried. "Don't stay out any more. Come to the fire. I'll bring in the wood." Something primeval, some strength he did not know he possessed sustained him, and he toiled on. "Suppose this snow keeps falling?" he retorted. "The Supervisor will not be able to get back to-night--perhaps not for a couple of nights. We will need a lot of fuel." He did not voice the fear of the storm which filled his thought; but the girl understood it. "It won't be very cold," she calmly replied. "It never is during these early blizzards; and, besides, all we need to do is to drop down the trail ten miles and we'll be entirely out of it." "I'll feel safer with plenty of wood," he argued; but soon found it necessary to rest from his labors. Coming in to camp, he seated himself beside her on a roll of blankets, and so together they tended the fire and watched the darkness roll over the lake till the shining crystals seemed to drop from a measureless black arch, soundless and oppressive. The wind died away, and the trees stood as if turned into bronze, moveless, save when a small branch gave way and dropped its rimy burden, or a squirrel leaped from one top to another. Even the voice of the waterfall seemed muffled and remote. "I'm a long way from home and mother," Wayland said, with a smile; "but--I like it." "Isn't it fun?" she responded. "In a way it's nicer on account of the storm. But you are not dressed right; you should have waterproof boots. You never can tell when you may be set afoot. You should always go prepared for rain and snow, and, above all, have an extra pair of thick stockings. Your feet are soaked now, aren't they?" "They are; but your father told me to always dry my boots on my feet, otherwise they'd shrink out of shape." "That's right, too; but you'd better take 'em off and wring out your socks or else put on dry ones." "You insist on my playing the invalid," he complained, "and that makes me angry. When I've been over here a month you'll find me a glutton for hardship. I shall be a bear, a grizzly, fearful to contemplate. My roar will affright you." She laughed like a child at his ferocity. "You'll have to change a whole lot," she said, and drew the blanket closer about his shoulders. "Just now your job is to keep warm and dry. I hope you won't get lonesome over here." "I'm not going to open a book or read a newspaper. I'm not going to write to a single soul except you. I'll be obliged to report to you, won't I?" "I'm not the Supervisor." "You're the next thing to it," he quickly retorted. "You've been my board of health from the very first. I should have fled for home long ago had it not been for you." Her eyes fell under his glance. "You'll get pretty tired of things over here. It's one of the lonesomest stations in the forest." "I'll get lonesome for you; but not for the East." This remark, or rather the tone in which it was uttered, brought another flush of consciousness to the girl's face. "What time is it now?" she asked, abruptly. He looked at his watch. "Half after eight." "If father isn't on this side of the divide now he won't try to cross. If he's coming down the slope he'll be here in an hour, although that trail is a tolerably tough proposition this minute. A patch of dead timber on a dark night is sure a nuisance, even to a good man. He may not make it." "Shall I fire my gun?" "What for?" "As a signal to him." This amused her. "Daddy don't need any hint about direction--what he needs is a light to see the twist of the trail through those fallen logs." "Couldn't I rig up a torch and go to meet him?" She put her hand on his arm. "You stay right here!" she commanded. "You couldn't follow that trail five minutes." "You have a very poor opinion of my skill." "No, I haven't; but I know how hard it is to keep direction on a night like this and I don't want you wandering around in the timber. Father can take care of himself. He's probably sitting under a big tree smoking his pipe before his fire--or else he's at home. He knows we're all right, and we are. We have wood and grub, and plenty of blankets, and a roof over us. You can make your bed under this fly," she said, looking up at the canvas. "It beats the old balsam as a roof. You mustn't sleep cold again." "I think I'd better sit up and keep the fire going," he replied, heroically. "There's a big log out there that I'm going to bring in to roll up on the windward side." "It'll be cold and wet early in the morning, and I don't like to hunt kindling in the snow," she said. "I always get everything ready the night before. I wish you had a better bed. It seems selfish of me to have the tent while you are cold." One by one--under her supervision--he made preparations for morning. He cut some shavings from a dead, dry branch of fir and put them under the fly, and brought a bucket of water from the creek, and then together they dragged up the dead tree. Had the young man been other than he was, the girl's purity, candor, and self-reliance would have conquered him, and when she withdrew to the little tent and let fall the frail barrier between them, she was as safe from intrusion as if she had taken refuge behind gates of triple brass. Nothing in all his life had moved him so deeply as her solicitude, her sweet trust in his honor, and he sat long in profound meditation. Any man would be rich in the ownership of her love, he admitted. That he possessed her pity and her friendship he knew, and he began to wonder if he had made a deeper appeal to her than this. "Can it be that I am really a man to her," he thought, "I who am only a poor weakling whom the rain and snow can appall?" Then he thought of the effect of this night upon her life. What would Clifford Belden do now? To what deeps would his rage descend if he should come to know of it? Berrie was serene. Twice she spoke from her couch to say: "You'd better go to bed. Daddy can't get here till to-morrow now." "I'll stay up awhile yet. My boots aren't entirely dried out." As the flame sank low the cold bit, and he built up the half-burned logs so that they blazed again. He worked as silently as he could; but the girl again spoke, with sweet authority: "Haven't you gone to bed yet?" "Oh yes, I've been asleep. I only got up to rebuild the fire." "I'm afraid you're cold." "I'm as comfortable as I deserve; it's all schooling, you know. Please go to sleep again." His teeth were chattering as he spoke, but he added: "I'm all right." After a silence she said: "You must not get chilled. Bring your bed into the tent. There is room for you." "Oh no, that isn't necessary. I'm standing it very well." "You'll be sick!" she urged, in a voice of alarm. "Please drag your bed inside the door. What would I do if you should have pneumonia to-morrow? You must not take any risk of a fever." The thought of a sheltered spot, of something to break the remorseless wind, overcame his scruples, and he drew his bed inside the tent and rearranged it there. "You're half frozen," she said. "Your teeth are chattering." "It isn't so much the cold," he stammered. "I'm tired." "You poor boy!" she exclaimed, and rose in her bed. "I'll get up and heat some water for you." "I'll be all right, in a few moments," he said. "Please go to sleep. I shall be snug as a bug in a moment." She watched his shadowy motions from her bed, and when at last he had nestled into his blankets, she said: "If you don't lose your chill I'll heat a rock and put at your feet." He was ready to cry out in shame of his weakness; but he lay silent till he could command his voice, then he said: "That would drive me from the country in disgrace. Think of what the fellows down below will say when they know of my cold feet." "They won't hear of it; and, besides, it is better to carry a hot-water bag than to be laid up with a fever." Her anxiety lessened as his voice resumed its pleasant tenor flow. "Dear girl," he said, "no one could have been sweeter--more like a guardian angel to me. Don't place me under any greater obligation. Go to sleep. I am better--much better now." She did not speak for a few moments, then in a voice that conveyed to him a knowledge that his words of endearment had deeply moved her, she softly said: "Good night." He heard her sigh drowsily thereafter once or twice, and then she slept, and her slumber redoubled in him his sense of guardianship, of responsibility. Lying there in the shelter of her tent, the whole situation seemed simple, innocent, and poetic; but looked at from the standpoint of Clifford Belden it held an accusation. "It cannot be helped," he said. "The only thing we can do is to conceal the fact that we spent the night beneath this tent alone." In the belief that the way would clear with the dawn, he, too, fell asleep, while the fire sputtered and smudged in the fitful mountain wind. The second dawn came slowly, as though crippled by the storm and walled back by the clouds. Gradually, austerely, the bleak, white peaks began to define themselves above the firs. The camp-birds called cheerily from the wet branches which overhung the smoldering embers of the fire, and so at last day was abroad in the sky. With a dull ache in his bones, Wayland crept out to the fire and set to work fanning the coals with his hat, as he had seen the Supervisor do. He worked desperately till one of the embers began to angrily sparkle and to smoke. Then slipping away out of earshot he broke an armful of dry fir branches to heap above the wet, charred logs. Soon these twigs broke into flame, and Berrie, awakened by the crackle of the pine branches, called out: "Is it daylight?" "Yes, but it's a very _dark_ daylight. Don't leave your warm bed for the dampness and cold out here; stay where you are; I'll get breakfast." "How are you this morning? Did you sleep?" "Fine!" "I'm afraid you had a bad night," she insisted, in a tone which indicated her knowledge of his suffering. "Camp life has its disadvantages," he admitted, as he put the coffee-pot on the fire. "But I'm feeling better now. I never fried a bird in my life, but I'm going to try it this morning. I have some water heating for your bath." He put the soap, towel, and basin of hot water just inside the tent flap. "Here it is. I'm going to bathe in the lake. I must show my hardihood." He heard her protesting as he went off down the bank, but his heart was resolute. "I'm not dead yet," he said, grimly. "An invalid who can spend two such nights as these, and still face a cold wind, has some vitality in his bones after all." When he returned he found the girl full dressed, alert, and glowing; but she greeted him with a touch of shyness and self-consciousness new to her, and her eyes veiled themselves before his glance. "_Now_, where do you suppose the Supervisor is?" he asked. "I hope he's at home," she replied, quite seriously. "I'd hate to think of him camped in the high country without bedding or tent." "Oughtn't I to take a turn up the trail and see? I feel guilty somehow--I must do something!" "You can't help matters any by hoofing about in the mud. No, we'll just hold the fort till he comes, that's what he'll expect us to do." He submitted once more to the force of her argument, and they ate breakfast in such intimacy and good cheer that the night's discomforts and anxieties counted for little. As the sun broke through the clouds Berrie hung out the bedding in order that its dampness might be warmed away. "We may have to camp here again to-night," she explained, demurely. "Worse things could happen than that," he gallantly answered. "I wouldn't mind a month of it, only I shouldn't want it to rain or snow all the time." "Poor boy! You did suffer, didn't you? I was afraid you would. Did you sleep at all?" she asked, tenderly. "Oh yes, after I came inside; but, of course, I was more or less restless expecting your father to ride up, and then it's all rather exciting business to a novice. I could hear all sorts of birds and beasts stepping and fluttering about. I was scared in spite of my best resolution." "That's funny; I never feel that way. I slept like a log after I knew you were comfortable. You must have a better bed and more blankets. It's always cold up here." The sunlight was short-lived. The clouds settled over the peaks, and ragged wisps of gray vapor dropped down the timbered slopes of the prodigious amphitheater in which the lake lay. Again Berrie made everything snug while her young woodsman toiled at bringing logs for the fire. In truth, he was more elated than he had been since leaving school, for he was not only doing a man's work in the world, he was serving a woman in the immemorial way of the hewer of wood and the carrier of water. His fatigue and the chill of the morning wore away, and he took vast pride in dragging long poles down the hillside, forcing Berrie to acknowledge that he was astonishingly strong. "But don't overdo it," she warned. At last fully provided for, they sat contentedly side by side under the awning and watched the falling rain as it splashed and sizzled on the sturdy fire. "It's a little like being shipwrecked on a desert island, isn't it?" he said. "As if our boats had drifted away." At noon she again prepared an elaborate meal. She served potatoes and grouse, hot biscuit with sugar syrup, and canned peaches, and coffee done to just the right color and aroma. He declared it wonderful, and they ate with repeated wishes that the Supervisor might turn up in time to share their feast; but he did not. Then Berrie said, firmly: "Now you must take a snooze, you look tired." He was, in truth, not only drowsy but lame and tired. Therefore, he yielded to her suggestion. She covered him with blankets and put him away like a child. "Now you have a good sleep," she said, tenderly. "I'll call you when daddy comes." With a delicious sense of her protecting care he lay for a few moments listening to the drip of the water on the tent, then drifted away into peace and silence. When he woke the ground was again covered with snow, and the girl was feeding the fire with wood which her own hands had supplied. Hearing him stir, she turned and fixed her eyes upon him with clear, soft gaze. "How do you feel by now?" she asked. "Quite made over," he replied, rising alertly. His cheer, however, was only pretense. He was greatly worried. "Something has happened to your father," he said. "His horse has thrown him, or he has slipped and fallen." His peace and exultation were gone. "How far is it down to the ranger station?" "About twelve miles." "Don't you think we'd better close camp and go down there? It is now three o'clock; we can walk it in five hours." She shook her head. "No, I think we'd better stay right here. It's a long, hard walk, and the trail is muddy." "But, dear girl," he began, desperately, "it won't do for us to camp here--alone--in this way another night. What will Cliff say?" She flamed red, then whitened. "I don't care what Cliff thinks--I'm done with him--and no one that I really care about would blame us." She was fully aware of his anxiety now. "It isn't our fault." "It will be _my_ fault if I keep you here longer!" he answered. "We must reach a telephone and send word out. Something may have happened to your father." "I'm not worried a bit about him. It may be that there's been a big snowfall up above us--or else a windstorm. The trail may be blocked; but don't worry. He may have to go round by Lost Lake pass." She pondered a moment. "I reckon you're right. We'd better pack up and rack down the trail to the ranger's cabin. Not on my account, but on yours. I'm afraid you've taken cold." "I'm all right, except I'm very lame; but I am anxious to go on. By the way, is this ranger Settle married?" "No, his station is one of the lonesomest cabins on the forest. No woman will stay there." This made Wayland ponder. "Nevertheless," he decided, "we'll go. After all, the man is a forest officer, and you are the Supervisor's daughter." She made no further protest, but busied herself closing the panniers and putting away the camp utensils. She seemed to recognize that his judgment was sound. It was after three when they left the tent and started down the trail, carrying nothing but a few toilet articles. He stopped at the edge of the clearing. "Should we have left a note for the Supervisor?" She pointed to their footprints. "There's all the writing he needs," she assured him, leading the way at a pace which made him ache. She plashed plumply into the first puddle in the path. "No use dodging 'em," she called over her shoulder, and he soon saw that she was right. The trees were dripping, the willows heavy with water, and the mud ankle-deep--in places--but she pushed on steadily, and he, following in her tracks, could only marvel at her strength and sturdy self-reliance. The swing of her shoulders, the poise of her head, and the lithe movement of her waist, made his own body seem a poor thing. For two hours they zigzagged down a narrow cañon heavily timbered with fir and spruce--a dark, stern avenue, crossed by roaring streams, and filled with frequent boggy meadows whereon the water lay mid-leg deep. "We'll get out of this very soon," she called, cheerily. By degrees the gorge widened, grew more open, more genial. Aspen thickets of pale-gold flashed upon their eyes like sunlight, and grassy bunches afforded firmer footing, but on the slopes their feet slipped and slid painfully. Still Berea kept her stride. "We must get to the middle fork before dark," she stopped to explain, "for I don't know the trail down there, and there's a lot of down timber just above the station. Now that we're cut loose from our camp I feel nervous. As long as I have a tent I am all right; but now we are in the open I worry. How are you standing it?" She studied him with keen and anxious glance, her hand upon his arm. "Fine as a fiddle," he replied, assuming a spirit he did not possess, "but you are marvelous. I thought cowgirls couldn't walk?" "I can do anything when I have to," she replied. "We've got three hours more of it." And she warningly exclaimed: "Look back there!" They had reached a point from which the range could be seen, and behold it was covered deep with a seamless robe of new snow. "That's why dad didn't get back last night. He's probably wallowing along up there this minute." And she set off again with resolute stride. Wayland's pale face and labored breath alarmed her. She was filled with love and pity, but she pressed forward desperately. As he grew tired, Wayland's boots, loaded with mud, became fetters, and every slope greasy with mire seemed an almost insurmountable barricade. He fell several times, but made no outcry. "I will not add to her anxiety," he said to himself. At last they came to the valley floor, over which a devastating fire had run some years before, and which was still covered with fallen trees in desolate confusion. Here the girl made her first mistake. She kept on toward the river, although Wayland called attention to a trail leading to the right up over the low grassy hills. For a mile the path was clear, but she soon found herself confronted by an endless maze of blackened tree-trunks, and at last the path ended abruptly. Dismayed and halting, she said: "We've got to go back to that trail which branched off to the right. I reckon that was the highland trail which Settle made to keep out of the swamp. I thought it was a trail from Cameron Peak, but it wasn't. Back we go." She was suffering keenly now, not on her own account, but on his, for she could see that he was very tired, and to climb up that hill again was like punishing him a second time. When she picked up the blazed trail it was so dark that she could scarcely follow it; but she felt her way onward, turning often to be sure that he was following. Once she saw him fall, and cried out: "It's a shame to make you climb this hill again. It's all my fault. I ought to have known that that lower road led down into the timber." Standing close beside him in the darkness, knowing that he was weary, wet, and ill, she permitted herself the expression of her love and pity. Putting her arm about him, she drew his cheek against her own, saying: "Poor boy, your hands are cold as ice." She took them in her own warm clasp. "Oh, I wish we had never left the camp! What does it matter what people say?" Then she broke down and wailed. "I shall never forgive myself if you--" Her voice failed her. [Illustration: SHE FOUND HERSELF CONFRONTED BY AN ENDLESS MAZE OF BLACKENED TREE-TRUNKS] He bravely reassured her: "I'm not defeated, I'm just tired. That's all. I can go on." "But you are shaking." "That is merely a nervous chill. I'm good for another hour. It's better to keep moving, anyhow." She thrust her hand under his coat and laid it over his heart. "You are tired out," she said, and there was anguish in her voice. "Your heart is pounding terribly. You mustn't do any more climbing. And, hark, there's a wolf!" He listened. "I hear him; but we are both armed. There's no danger from wild animals." "Come!" she said, instantly recovering her natural resolution. "We can't stand here. The station can't be far away. We must go on." VIII THE OTHER GIRL The girl's voice stirred the benumbed youth into action again, and he followed her mechanically. His slender stock of physical strength was almost gone, but his will remained unbroken. At every rough place she came back to him to support him, to hearten him, and so he crept on through the darkness, falling often, stumbling against the trees, slipping and sliding, till at last his guide, pitching down a sharp slope, came directly upon a wire fence. "Glory be!" she called. "Here is a fence, and the cabin should be near, although I see no light. Hello! Tony!" No voice replied, and, keeping Wayland's hand, she felt her way along the fence till it revealed a gate; then she turned toward the roaring of the stream, which grew louder as they advanced. "The cabin is near the falls, that much I know," she assured him. Then a moment later she joyfully cried out: "Here it is!" Out of the darkness a blacker, sharper shadow rose. Again she called, but no one answered. "The ranger is away," she exclaimed, in a voice of indignant alarm. "I do hope he left the door unlocked." Too numb with fatigue, and too dazed by the darkness to offer any aid, Wayland waited--swaying unsteadily on his feet--while she tried the door. It was bolted, and with but a moment's hesitation, she said: "It looks like a case of breaking and entering. I'll try a window." The windows, too, were securely fastened. After trying them all, she came back to where Wayland stood. "Tony didn't intend to have anybody pushing in," she decided. "But if the windows will not raise they will smash." A crash of glass followed, and with a feeling that it was all part of a dream, Wayland waited while the girl made way through the broken sash into the dark interior. Her next utterance was a cry of joy: "Oh, but it's nice and warm in here! I can't open the door. You'll have to come in the same way I did." He was too weak and too irresolute to respond immediately, and, reaching out, she took him by the arms and dragged him across the sill. Her strength seemed prodigious. A delicious warmth, a grateful dryness, a sense of shelter enfolded him like a garment. The place smelled deliciously of food, of fire, of tobacco. Leading him toward the middle of the room, Berrie said: "Stand here till I strike a light." As her match flamed up Norcross found himself in a rough-walled cabin, in which stood a square cook-stove, a rude table littered with dishes, and three stools made of slabs. It was all very rude; but it had all the value of a palace at the moment. The girl's quick eye saw much else. She located an oil-lamp, some pine-wood, and a corner cupboard. In a few moments the lamp was lit, the stove refilled with fuel, and she was stripping Wayland's wet coat from his back, cheerily discoursing as she did so. "Here's one of Tony's old jackets, put that on while I see if I can't find some dry stockings for you. Sit right down here by the stove; put your feet in the oven. I'll have a fire in a jiffy. There, that's right. Now I'll start the coffee-pot." She soon found the coffee, but it was unground. "Wonder, where he keeps his coffee-mill." She rummaged about for a few minutes, then gave up the search. "Well, no matter, here's the coffee, and here's a hammer. One of the laws of the trail is this: If you can't do a thing one way, do it another." She poured the coffee beans into an empty tomato-can and began to pound them with the end of the hammer handle, laughing at Wayland's look of wonder and admiration. "Necessity sure is the mother of invention out here. How do you feel by now? Isn't it nice to own a roof and four walls? I'm going to close up that window as soon as I get the coffee started. Are you warming up?" "Oh yes, I'm all right now," he replied; but he didn't look it, and her own cheer was rather forced. He was in the grasp of a nervous chill, and she was deeply apprehensive of what the result of his exposure might be. It seemed as if the coffee would never come to a boil. "I depend on that to brace you up," she said. After hanging a blanket over the broken window, she set out some cold meat and a half dozen baking-powder biscuits, which she found in the cupboard, and as soon as the coffee was ready she poured it for him; but she would not let him leave the fire. She brought his supper to him and sat beside him while he ate and drank. "You must go right to bed," she urged, as she studied his weary eyes. "You ought to sleep for twenty-four hours." The hot, strong coffee revived him physically and brought back a little of his courage, and he said: "I'm ashamed to be such a weakling." "Now hush," she commanded. "It's not your fault that you are weak. Now, while I am eating my supper you slip off your wet clothes and creep into Tony's bunk, and I'll fill one of these syrup-cans with hot water to put at your feet." It was of no use for him to protest against her further care. She insisted, and while she ate he meekly carried out her instructions, and from the delicious warmth and security of his bed watched her moving about the stove till the shadows of the room became one with the dusky figures of his sleep. A moment later something falling on the floor woke him with a start, and, looking up, he found the sun shining, and Berrie confronting him with anxious face. "Did I waken you?" she asked. "I'm awfully sorry. I'm trying to be extra quiet. I dropped a pan. How do you feel this _morning_?" He pondered this question a moment. "Is it to-morrow or the next week?" She laughed happily. "It's only the next day. Just keep where you are till the sun gets a little higher." She drew near and put a hand on his brow. "You don't feel feverish. Oh, I hope this trip hasn't set you back." He laid his hands together, and then felt of his pulse. "I don't seem to have a temperature. I just feel lazy, limp and lazy; but I'm going to get up, if you'll just leave the room for a moment--" "Don't try it now. Wait till you have had your breakfast. You'll feel stronger then." He yielded again to the force of her will, and fell back into a luxurious drowse hearing the stove roar and the bacon sizzle in the pan. There was something primitive and broadly poetic in the girl's actions. Through the haze of the kitchen smoke she enlarged till she became the typical frontier wife, the goddess of the skillet and the coffee-pot, the consort of the pioneer, equally skilled with the rifle and the rolling-pin. How many millions of times had this scene been enacted on the long march of the borderman from the Susquehanna to the Bear Tooth Range? Into his epic vision the pitiful absurdity of his own part in the play broke like a sad discord. "Of course, it is not my fault that I am a weakling," he argued. "Only it was foolish for me to thrust myself into this stern world. If I come safely out of this adventure I will go back to the sheltered places where I belong." At this point came again the disturbing realization that this night of struggle, and the ministrations of his brave companion had involved him deeper in a mesh from which honorable escape was almost impossible. The ranger's cabin, so far from being an end of their compromising intimacy, had added and was still adding to the weight of evidence against them both. The presence of the ranger or the Supervisor himself could not now save Berea from the gossips. She brought his breakfast to him, and sat beside him while he ate, chatting the while of their good fortune. "It is glorious outside, and I am sure daddy will get across to-day, and Tony is certain to turn up before noon. He probably went down to Coal City to get his mail." "I must get up at once," he said, in a panic of fear and shame. "The Supervisor must not find me laid out on my back. Please leave me alone for a moment." She went out, closing the door behind her, and as he crawled from his bed every muscle in his body seemed to cry out against being moved. Nevertheless, he persisted, and at last succeeded in putting on his clothes, even his shoes--though he found tying the laces the hardest task of all--and he was at the wash-basin bathing his face and hands when Berrie hurriedly re-entered. "Some tourists are coming," she announced, in an excited tone. "A party of five or six people, a woman among them, is just coming down the slope. Now, who do you suppose it can be? It would be just our luck if it should turn out to be some one from the Mill." He divined at once the reason for her dismay. The visit of a woman at this moment would not merely embarrass them both, it would torture Berrie. "What is to be done?" he asked, roused to alertness. "Nothing; all we can do is to stand pat and act as if we belonged here." "Very well," he replied, moving stiffly toward the door. "Here's where I can be of some service. I am an excellent white liar." As our hero crawled out into the brilliant sunshine some part of his courage came back to him. Though lame in every muscle, he was not ill. That was the surprising thing. His head was clear, and his breath full and deep. "My lungs are all right," he said to himself. "I'm not going to collapse." And he looked round him with a new-born admiration of the wooded hills which rose in somber majesty on either side the roaring stream. "How different it all looks this morning," he said, remembering the deep blackness of the night. The beat of hoofs upon the bridge drew his attention to the cavalcade, which the keen eyes of the girl had detected as it came over the ridge to the east. The party consisted of two men and two women and three pack-horses completely outfitted for the trail. One of the women, spurring her horse to the front, rode serenely up to where Wayland stood, and called out: "Good morning. Are you the ranger?" "No, I'm only the guard. The ranger has gone down the trail." He perceived at once that the speaker was an alien like himself, for she wore tan-colored riding-boots, a divided skirt of expensive cloth, and a jaunty, wide-rimmed sombrero. She looked, indeed, precisely like the heroine of the prevalent Western drama. Her sleeves, rolled to the elbow, disclosed shapely brown arms, and her neck, bare to her bosom, was equally sun-smit; but she was so round-cheeked, so childishly charming, that the most critical observer could find no fault with her make-up. One of the men rode up. "Hello, Norcross. What are you doing over here?" The youth smiled blandly. "Good morning, Mr. Belden. I'm serving my apprenticeship. I'm in the service now." "The mischief you are!" exclaimed the other. "Where's Tony?" "Gone for his mail. He'll return soon. What are _you_ doing over here, may I ask?" "I'm here as guide to Mr. Moore. Mr. Moore, this is Norcross, one of McFarlane's men. Mr. Moore is connected with the tie-camp operations of the railway." Moore was a tall, thin man with a gray beard and keen blue eyes. "Where's McFarlane? We were to meet him here. Didn't he come over with you?" "We started together, but the horses got away, and he was obliged to go back after them. He also is likely to turn up soon." "I am frightfully hungry," interrupted the girl. "Can't you hand me out a hunk of bread and meat? We've been riding since daylight." Berrie suddenly appeared at the door. "Sure thing," she called out. "Slide down and come in." Moore removed his hat and bowed. "Good morning, Miss McFarlane, I didn't know you were here. You know my daughter Siona?" Berrie nodded coldly. "I've met her." He indicated the other woman. "And Mrs. Belden, of course, you know." Mrs. Belden, the fourth member of the party, a middle-aged, rather flabby person, just being eased down from her horse, turned on Berrie with a battery of questions. "Good Lord! Berrie McFarlane, what are you doing over in this forsaken hole? Where's your dad? And where is Tony? If Cliff had known you was over here he'd have come, too." Berrie retained her self-possession. "Come in and get some coffee, and we'll straighten things out." Apparently Mrs. Belden did not know that Cliff and Berrie had quarreled, for she treated the girl with maternal familiarity. She was a good-natured, well-intentioned old sloven, but a most renowned tattler, and the girl feared her more than she feared any other woman in the valley. She had always avoided her, but she showed nothing of this dislike at the moment. Wayland drew the younger woman's attention by saying: "It's plain that you, like myself, do not belong to these parts, Miss Moore." "What makes you think so?" she brightly queried. "Your costume is too appropriate. Haven't you noticed that the women who live out here carefully avoid convenient and artistic dress? Now your outfit is precisely what they should wear and don't." This amused her. "I know, but they all say they have to wear out their Sunday go-to-meeting clothes, whereas I can 'rag out proper.' I'm glad you like my 'rig.'" "When I look at you," he said, "I'm back on old Broadway at the Herald Square Theater. The play is 'Little Blossom, or the Cowgirl's Revenge.' The heroine has just come into the miner's cabin--" "Oh, go 'long," she replied, seizing her cue and speaking in character, "you're stringin' me." "Not on your life! Your outfit is a peacherino," he declared. "I am glad you rode by." At the moment he was bent on drawing the girl's attention from Berrie, but as she went on he came to like her. She said: "No, I don't belong here; but I come out every year during vacation with my father. I love this country. It's so big and wide and wild. Father has built a little bungalow down at the lower mill, and we enjoy every day of our stay." "You're a Smith girl," he abruptly asserted. "What makes you think so?" "Oh, there's something about you Smith girls that gives you dead away." "Gives us away! I like that!" "My phrase was unfortunate. I like Smith girls," he hastened to say; and in five minutes they were on the friendliest terms--talking of mutual acquaintances--a fact which both puzzled and hurt Berea. Their laughter angered her, and whenever she glanced at them and detected Siona looking into Wayland's face with coquettish simper, she was embittered. She was glad when Moore came in and interrupted the dialogue. Norcross did not relax, though he considered the dangers of cross-examination almost entirely passed. In this he was mistaken, for no sooner was the keen edge of Mrs. Belden's hunger dulled than her curiosity sharpened. "Where did you say the Supervisor was?" she repeated. "The horses got away, and he had to go back after them," again responded Berrie, who found the scrutiny of the other girl deeply disconcerting. "When do you expect him back?" "Any minute now," she replied, and in this she was not deceiving them, although she did not intend to volunteer any information which might embarrass either Wayland or herself. Norcross tried to create a diversion. "Isn't this a charming valley?" Siona took up the cue. "Isn't it! It's romantic enough to be the back-drop in a Bret Harte play. I love it!" Moore turned to Wayland. "I know a Norcross, a Michigan lumberman, Vice-President of the Association. Is he, by any chance, a relative?" "Only a father," retorted Wayland, with a smile. "But don't hold me responsible for anything he has done. We seldom agree." Moore's manner changed abruptly. "Indeed! And what is the son of W. W. Norcross doing out here in the Forest Service?" The change in her father's tone was not lost upon Siona, who ceased her banter and studied the young man with deeper interest, while Mrs. Belden, detecting some restraint in Berrie's tone, renewed her questioning: "Where did you camp last night?" "Right here." "I don't see how the horses got away. There's a pasture here, for we rode right through it." Berrie was aware that each moment of delay in explaining the situation looked like evasion, and deepened the significance of her predicament, and yet she could not bring herself to the task of minutely accounting for her time during the last two days. Belden came to her relief. "Well, well! We'll have to be moving on. We're going into camp at the mouth of the West Fork," he said, as he rose. "Tell Tony and the Supervisor that we want to line out that timber at the earliest possible moment." Siona, who was now distinctly coquetting with Wayland, held out her hand. "I hope you'll find time to come up and see us. I know we have other mutual friends, if we had time to get at them." His answer was humorous. "I am a soldier. I am on duty. I'm not at all sure that I shall have a moment's leave; but I will call if I can possibly do so." They started off at last without having learned in detail anything of the intimate relationship into which the Supervisor's daughter and young Norcross had been thrown, and Mrs. Belden was still so much in the dark that she called to Berrie: "I'm going to send word to Cliff that you are over here. He'll be crazy to come the minute he finds it out." "Don't do that!" protested Berrie. Wayland turned to Berrie. "That would be pleasant," he said, smilingly. But she did not return his smile. On the contrary, she remained very grave. "I wish that old tale-bearer had kept away. She's going to make trouble for us all. And that girl, isn't she a spectacle? I never could bear her." "Why, what's wrong with her? She seems a very nice, sprightly person." "She's a regular play actor. I don't like made-up people. Why does she go around with her sleeves rolled up that way, and--and her dress open at the throat?" "Oh, those are the affectations of the moment. She wants to look tough and boisterous. That's the fad with all the girls, just now. It's only a harmless piece of foolishness." She could not tell him how deeply she resented his ready tone of camaraderie with the other girl; but she was secretly suffering. It hurt her to think that he could forget his aches and be so free and easy with a stranger at a moment's notice. Under the influence of that girl's smile he seemed to have quite forgotten his exhaustion and his pain. It was wonderful how cheerful he had been while she was in sight. In all this Berrie did him an injustice. He had been keenly conscious, during every moment of the time, not only of his bodily ills, but of Berrie, and he had kept a brave face in order that he might prevent further questioning on the part of a malicious girl. It was his only way of being heroic. Now that the crisis was passed he was quite as much of a wreck as ever. A new anxiety beset her. "I hope they won't happen to meet father on the trail." "Perhaps I should go with them and warn him." "Oh, it doesn't matter," she wearily answered. "Old Mrs. Belden will never rest till she finds out just where we've been, and just what we've done. She's that kind. She knows everything that goes on." He understood her fear, and yet he was unable to comfort her in the only way she could be comforted. That brief encounter with Siona Moore--a girl of his own world--had made all thought of marriage with Berea suddenly absurd. Without losing in any degree the sense of gratitude he felt for her protecting care, and with full acknowledgment of her heroic support of his faltering feet, he revolted from putting into words a proposal of marriage. "I love her," he confessed to himself, "and she is a dear, brave girl; but I do not love her as a man should love the woman he is to marry." A gray shadow had plainly fallen between them. Berea sensed the change in his attitude, and traced it to the influence of the coquette whose smiling eyes and bared arms had openly challenged admiration. It saddened her to think that one so fine as he had seemed could yield even momentary tribute to an open and silly coquette. IX FURTHER PERPLEXITIES Wayland, for his part, was not deceived by Siona Moore. He knew her kind, and understood her method of attack. He liked her pert ways, for they brought back his days at college, when dozens of just such misses lent grace and humor and romance to the tennis court and to the football field. She carried with her the aroma of care-free, athletic girlhood. Flirtation was in her as charming and almost as meaningless as the preening of birds on the bank of a pool in the meadow. Speaking aloud, he said: "Miss Moore travels the trail with all known accessories, and I've no doubt she thinks she is a grand campaigner; but I am wondering how she would stand such a trip as that you took last night. I don't believe she could have done as well as I. She's the imitation--you're the real thing." The praise involved in this speech brought back a little of Berrie's humor. "I reckon those brown boots of hers would have melted," she said, with quaint smile. He became very grave. "If it had not been for you, dear girl, I would be lying up there in the forest this minute. Nothing but your indomitable spirit kept me moving. I shall be deeply hurt if any harm comes to you on account of me." "If it hadn't been for me you wouldn't have started on that trip last night. It was perfectly useless. It would have been better for us both if we had stayed in camp, for we wouldn't have met these people." "That's true," he replied; "but we didn't know that at the time. We acted for the best, and we must not blame ourselves, no matter what comes of it." They fell silent at this point, for each was again conscious of their new relationship. She, vaguely suffering, waited for him to resume the lover's tone, while he, oppressed by the sense of his own shortcomings and weakness, was planning an escape. "It's all nonsense, my remaining in the forest. I'm not fitted for it. It's too severe. I'll tell McFarlane so and get out." Perceiving his returning weakness and depression, Berea insisted on his lying down again while she set to work preparing dinner. "There is no telling when father will get here," she said. "And Tony will be hungry when he comes. Lie down and rest." He obeyed her silently, and, going to the bunk, at once fell asleep. How long he slept he could not tell, but he was awakened by the voice of the ranger, who was standing in the doorway and regarding Berrie with a round-eyed stare. He was a tall, awkward fellow of about thirty-five, plainly of the frontier type; but a man of intelligence. At the end of a brief explanation Berrie said, with an air of authority: "Now you'd better ride up the trail and bring our camp outfit down. We can't go back that way, anyhow." The ranger glanced toward Wayland. "All right, Miss Berrie, but perhaps your tenderfoot needs a doctor." Wayland rose painfully but resolutely. "Oh no, I am not sick. I'm a little lame, that's all. I'll go along with you." "No," said Berrie, decisively. "You're not well enough for that. Get up your horses, Tony, and by that time I'll have some dinner ready." "All right, Miss Berrie," replied the man, and turned away. Hardly had he crossed the bridge on his way to the pasture, when Berrie cried out: "There comes daddy." Wayland joined her at the door, and stood beside her watching the Supervisor, as he came zigzagging down the steep hill to the east, with all his horses trailing behind him roped together head-to-tail. "He's had to come round by Lost Lake," she exclaimed. "He'll be tired out, and absolutely starved. Wahoo!" she shouted in greeting, and the Supervisor waved his hand. There was something superb in the calm seat of the veteran as he slid down the slope. He kept his place in the saddle with the air of the rider to whom hunger, fatigue, windfalls, and snowslides were all a part of the day's work; and when he reined in before the door and dropped from his horse, he put his arm about his daughter's neck with quiet word: "I thought I'd find you here. How is everything?" "All right, daddy; but what about you? Where have you been?" "Clean back to Mill Park. The blamed cayuses kept just ahead of me all the way." "Poor old dad! And on top of that came the snow." "Yes, and a whole hatful. I couldn't get back over the high pass. Had to go round by Lost Lake, and to cap all, Old Baldy took a notion not to lead. Oh, I've had a peach of a time; but here I am. Have you seen Moore and his party?" "Yes, they're in camp up the trail. He and Alec Belden and two women. Are you hungry?" He turned a comical glance upon her. "Am I hungry? Sister, I am a wolf. Norcross, take my horses down to the pasture." She hastened to interpose. "Let me do that, daddy, Mr. Norcross is badly used up. You see, we started down here late yesterday afternoon. It was raining and horribly muddy, and I took the wrong trail. The darkness caught us and we didn't reach the station till nearly midnight." Wayland acknowledged his weakness. "I guess I made a mistake, Supervisor; I'm not fitted for this strenuous life." McFarlane was quick to understand. "I didn't intend to pitchfork you into the forest life quite so suddenly," he said. "Don't give up yet awhile. You'll harden to it." "Here comes Tony," said Berrie. "He'll look after the ponies." Nevertheless Wayland went out, believing that Berrie wished to be alone with her father for a short time. As he took his seat McFarlane said: "You stayed in camp till yesterday afternoon, did you?" "Yes, we were expecting you every moment." He saw nothing in this to remark upon. "Did it snow at the lake?" "Yes, a little; it mostly rained." "It stormed up on the divide like a January blizzard. When did Moore and his party arrive?" "About ten o'clock this morning." "I'll ride right up and see them. What about the outfit? That's at the lake, I reckon?" "Yes, I was just sending Tony after it. But, father, if you go up to Moore's camp, don't say too much about what has happened. Don't tell them just when you took the back-trail, and just how long Wayland and I were in camp." "Why not?" She reddened with confusion. "Because--You know what an old gossip Mrs. Belden is. I don't want her to know. She's an awful talker, and our being together up there all that time will give her a chance." A light broke in on the Supervisor's brain. In the midst of his preoccupation as a forester he suddenly became the father. His eyes narrowed and his face darkened. "That's so. The old rip could make a whole lot of capital out of your being left in camp that way. At the same time I don't believe in dodging. The worst thing we could do would be to try to blind the trail. Was Tony here last night when you came?" "No, he was down the valley after his mail." His face darkened again. "That's another piece of bad luck, too. How much does the old woman know at present?" "Nothing at all." "Didn't she cross-examine you?" "Sure she did; but Wayland side-tracked her. Of course it only delays things. She'll know all about it sooner or later. She's great at putting two and two together. Two and two with her always make five." McFarlane mused. "Cliff will be plumb crazy if she gets his ear first." "I don't care anything about Cliff, daddy. I don't care what he thinks or does, if he will only let Wayland alone." "See here, daughter, you do seem to be terribly interested in this tourist." "He's the finest man I ever knew, father." He looked at her with tender, trusting glance. "He isn't your kind, daughter. He's a nice clean boy, but he's different. He don't belong in our world. He's only just stopping here. Don't forget that." "I'm not forgetting that, daddy. I know he's different, that's why I like him." After a pause she added: "Nobody could have been nicer all through these days than he has been. He was like a brother." McFarlane fixed a keen glance upon her. "Has he said anything to you? Did you come to an understanding?" Her eyes fell. "Not the way you mean, daddy; but I think he--likes me. But do you know who he is? He's the son of W. W. Norcross, that big Michigan lumberman." McFarlane started. "How do you know that?" "Mr. Moore asked him if he was any relation to W.W. Norcross, and he said, 'Yes, a son.' You should have seen how that Moore girl changed her tune the moment he admitted that. She'd been very free with him up to that time; but when she found out he was a rich man's son she became as quiet and innocent as a kitten. I hate her; she's a deceitful snip." "Well, now, daughter, that being the case, it's all the more certain that he don't belong to our world, and you mustn't fix your mind on keeping him here." "A girl can't help fixing her mind, daddy." "Or changing it." He smiled a little. "You used to like Cliff. You liked him well enough to promise to marry him." "I know I did; but I despise him now." "Poor Cliff! He isn't so much to blame after all. Any man is likely to flare out when he finds another fellow cutting in ahead of him. Why, here you are wanting to kill Siona Moore just for making up to your young tourist." "But that's different." He laughed. "Of course it is. But the thing we've got to guard against is old lady Belden's tongue. She and that Belden gang have it in for me, and all that has kept them from open war has been Cliff's relationship to you. They'll take a keen delight in making the worst of all this camping business." McFarlane was now very grave. "I wish your mother was here this minute. I guess we had better cut out this timber cruise and go right back." "No, you mustn't do that; that would only make more talk. Go on with your plans. I'll stay here with you. It won't take you but a couple of days to do the work, and Wayland needs the rest." "But suppose Cliff hears of this business between you and Norcross and comes galloping over the ridge?" "Well, let him, he has no claim on me." He rose uneasily. "It's all mighty risky business, and it's my fault. I should never have permitted you to start on this trip." "Don't you worry about me, daddy, I'll pull through somehow. Anybody that knows me will understand how little there is in--in old lady Belden's gab. I've had a beautiful trip, and I won't let her nor anybody else spoil it for me." McFarlane was not merely troubled. He was distracted. He was afraid to meet the Beldens. He dreaded their questions, their innuendoes. He had perfect faith in his daughter's purity and honesty, and he liked and trusted Norcross, and yet he knew that should Belden find it to his advantage to slander these young people, and to read into their action the lawlessness of his own youth, Berea's reputation, high as it was, would suffer, and her mother's heart be rent with anxiety. In his growing pain and perplexity he decided to speak frankly to young Norcross himself. "He's a gentleman, and knows the way of the world. Perhaps he'll have some suggestion to offer." In his heart he hoped to learn that Wayland loved his daughter and wished to marry her. Wayland was down on the bridge leaning over the rail, listening to the song of the water. McFarlane approached gravely, but when he spoke it was in his usual soft monotone. "Mr. Norcross," he began, with candid inflection, "I am very sorry to say it; but I wish you and my daughter had never started on this trip." "I know what you mean, Supervisor, and I feel as you do about it. Of course, none of us foresaw any such complication as this, but now that we are snarled up in it we'll have to make the best of it. No one of us is to blame. It was all accidental." The youth's frank words and his sympathetic voice disarmed McFarlane completely. Even the slight resentment he felt melted away. "It's no use saying _if_," he remarked, at length. "What we've got to meet is Seth Belden's report--Berrie has cut loose from Cliff, and he's red-headed already. When he drops onto this story, when he learns that I had to chase back after the horses, and that you and Berrie were alone together for three days, he'll have a fine club to swing, and he'll swing it; and Alec will help him. They're all waiting a chance to get me, and they're mean enough to get me through my girl." "What can I do?" asked Wayland. McFarlane pondered. "I'll try to head off Marm Belden, and I'll have a talk with Moore. He's a pretty reasonable chap." "But you forget there's another tale-bearer. Moore's daughter is with them." "That's so. I'd forgotten her. Good Lord! we are in for it. There's no use trying to cover anything up." Here was the place for Norcross to speak up and say: "Never mind, I'm going to ask Berrie to be my wife." But he couldn't do it. Something rose in his throat which prevented speech. A strange repugnance, a kind of sullen resentment at being forced into a declaration, kept him silent, and McFarlane, disappointed, wondering and hurt, kept silence also. Norcross was the first to speak. "Of course those who know your daughter will not listen for an instant to the story of an unclean old thing like Mrs. Belden." "I'm not so sure about that," replied the father, gloomily. "People always listen to such stories, and a girl always gets the worst of a situation like this. Berrie's been brought up to take care of herself, and she's kept clear of criticism so far; but with Cliff on edge and this old rip snooping around--" His mind suddenly changed. "Your being the son of a rich man won't help any. Why didn't you tell me who you were?" "I didn't think it necessary. What difference does it make? I have nothing to do with my father's business. His notions of forest speculation are not mine." "It would have made a difference with me, and it might have made a difference with Berrie. She mightn't have been so free with you at the start, if she'd known who you were. You looked sick and kind of lonesome, and that worked on her sympathy." "I _was_ sick and I was lonesome, and she has been very sweet and lovely to me, and it breaks my heart to think that her kindness and your friendship should bring all this trouble and suspicion upon her. Let's go up to the Moore camp and have it out with them. I'll make any statement you think best." "I reckon the less said about it the better," responded the older man. "I'm going up to the camp, but not to talk about my daughter." "How can you help it? They'll force the topic." "If they do, I'll force them to let it alone," retorted McFarlane; but he went away disappointed and sorrowful. The young man's evident avoidance of the subject of marriage hurt him. He did not perceive, as Norcross did, that to make an announcement of his daughter's engagement at this moment would be taken as a confession of shameful need. It is probable that Berrie herself would not have seen this further complication. Each hour added to Wayland's sense of helplessness and bitterness. "I am in a trap. I can neither help Berrie nor help myself. Nothing remains for me but flight, and flight will also be a confession of guilt." Once again, and in far more definite terms, he perceived the injustice of the world toward women. Here with Berrie, as in ages upon ages of other times, the maiden must bear the burden of reproach. "In me it will be considered a joke, a romantic episode, in her a degrading misdemeanor. And yet what can I do?" When he re-entered the cabin the Supervisor had returned from the camp, and something in his manner, as well as in Berrie's, revealed the fact that the situation had not improved. "They forced me into a corner," McFarlane said to Wayland, peevishly. "I lied out of one night; but they know that you were here last night. Of course, they were respectful enough so long as I had an eye on them, but their tongues are wagging now." The rest of the evening was spent in talk on the forest, and in going over the ranger's books, for the Supervisor continued to plan for Wayland's stay at this station, and the young fellow thought it best not to refuse at the moment. As bedtime drew near Settle took a blanket and went to the corral, and Berrie insisted that her father and Wayland occupy the bunk. Norcross protested; but the Supervisor said: "Let her alone. She's better able to sleep on the floor than either of us." This was perfectly true; but, in spite of his bruised and aching body, the youth would gladly have taken her place beside the stove. It seemed pitifully unjust that she should have this physical hardship in addition to her uneasiness of mind. X THE CAMP ON THE PASS Berea suffered a restless night, the most painful and broken she had known in all her life. She acknowledged that Siona Moore was prettier, and that she stood more nearly on Wayland's plane than herself; but the realization of this fact did not bring surrender--she was not of that temper. All her life she had been called upon to combat the elements, to hold her own amidst rude men and inconsiderate women, and she had no intention of yielding her place to a pert coquette, no matter what the gossips might say. She had seen this girl many times, but had refused to visit her house. She had held her in contempt, now she quite cordially hated her. "She shall not have her way with Wayland," she decided. "I know what she wants--she wants him at her side to-morrow; but I will not have it so. She is trying to get him away from me." The more she dwelt on this the hotter her jealous fever burned. The floor on which she lay was full of knots. She could not lose herself in sleep, tired as she was. The planks no longer turned their soft spots to her flesh, and she rolled from side to side in torment. She would have arisen and dressed only she did not care to disturb the men. The night seemed interminable. Her plan of action was simple. "I shall go home the morrow and take Wayland with me. I will not have him going with that girl--that's settled!" The very thought of his taking Siona's hand in greeting angered her beyond reason. She had put Cliff Belden completely out of her mind, and this was characteristic of her. She had no divided interests, no subtleties, no subterfuges. Forthright, hot-blooded, frank and simple, she had centered all her care, all her desires, on this pale youth whose appeal was at once mystic and maternal; but her pity was changing to something deeper, for she was convinced that he was gaining in strength, that he was in no danger of relapse. The hard trip of the day before had seemingly done him no permanent injury; on the contrary, a few hours' rest had almost restored him to his normal self. "To-morrow he will be able to ride again." And this thought reconciled her to her hard bed. She did not look beyond the long, delicious day which they must spend in returning to the Springs. She fell asleep at last, and was awakened only by her father tinkering about the stove. She rose alertly, signing to the Supervisor not to disturb her patient. However, Norcross also heard the rattle of the poker, opened his eyes and regarded Berrie with sleepy smile. "Good morning, if it _is_ morning," he said, slowly. She laughed back at him. "It's almost sunup." "You don't tell me! How could I have overslept like this? Makes me think of the Irishman who, upon being awakened to an early breakfast like this, ate it, then said to his employer, an extra thrifty farmer, 'Two suppers in wan night--and hurrah for bed again.'" This amused her greatly. "It's too bad. I hope you got some sleep?" "All there was time for." His voice changed. "I feel like a hound-pup, to be snoring on a downy couch like this while you were roughing it on the floor. How did I come to do it? It's shameful!" "Don't worry about me. How are you feeling this morning?" He stretched and yawned. "Fine! That is, I'm sore here and there, but I'm feeling wonderfully well. Do you know, I begin to hope that I can finally dominate the wilderness. Wouldn't it be wonderful if I got so I could ride and walk as you do, for instance? The fact that I'm not dead this morning is encouraging." He drew on his shoes as he talked, while she went about her toilet, which was quite as simple as his own. She had spent two nights in her day dress with almost no bathing facilities; but that didn't trouble her. It was a part of the game. She washed her face and hands in Settle's tin basin, but drew the line at his rubber comb. There was a distinct charm in seeing her thus adapting herself to the cabin, a charm quite as powerful as that which emanated from Siona Moore's dainty and theatrical personality. What it was he could not define, but the forester's daughter had something primeval about her, something close to the soil, something which aureoles the old Saxon words--_wife_ and _home_ and _fireplace_. Seeing her through the savory steam of the bacon she was frying, he forgot her marvelous skill as horsewoman and pathfinder, and thought of her only as the housewife. She belonged here, in this cabin. She was fitted to this landscape, whereas the other woman was alien and dissonant. He moved his arms about and shook his legs with comical effect of trying to see if they were still properly hinged. "It's miraculous! I'm not lame at all. No one can accuse me of being a 'lunger' now. Last night's sleep has made a new man of me. I've met the forest and it is mine." She beamed upon him with happy pride. "I'm mighty glad to hear you say that. I was terribly afraid that long, hard walk in the rain had been too much for you. I reckon you're all right for the work now." He recalled, as she spoke, her anguish of pity while they stood in the darkness of the trail, and it seemed that he could go no farther, and he said, soberly: "It must have seemed to you one while as if I were all in. I felt that way myself. I was numb from head to heel. I couldn't have gone another mile." Her face clouded with retrospective pain. "You mustn't try any more such stunts--not for a few weeks, anyway. But get ready for breakfast." He went out into the morning exultantly, and ran down to the river to bathe his face and hands, allured by its splendid voice. The world seemed very bright and beautiful and health-giving once more. As soon as she was alone with her father, Berrie said: "I'm going home to-day, dad." "Going home! What for?" "I've had enough of it." He glanced at her bed on the floor. "I can't say I blame you any. This has been a rough trip; but we'll go up and bring down the outfit, and then we men can sleep in the tent and let you have the bunk--you'll be comfortable to-night." "Oh, I don't mind sleeping on the floor," she replied; "but I want to get back. I don't want to meet those women. Another thing, you'd better use Mr. Norcross at the Springs instead of leaving him here with Tony." "Why so?" "Well, he isn't quite well enough to run the risk. It's a long way from here to a doctor." "He 'pears to be on deck this morning. Besides, I haven't anything in the office to offer him." "Then send him up to Meeker. Landon needs help, and he's a better forester than Tony, anyway." "How about Cliff? He may make trouble." Her face darkened. "Cliff will reach him if he wants to--no matter where he is. And then, too, Landon likes Mr. Norcross and will see that he is not abused." McFarlane ruminated over her suggestion, well knowing that she was planning this change in order that she might have Norcross a little nearer, a little more accessible. "I don't know but you're right. Landon is almost as good a hustler as Tony, and a much better forester. I thought of sending Norcross up there at first, but he told me that Frank and his gang had it in for him. Of course, he's only nominally in the service; but I want him to begin right." Berrie went further. "I want him to ride back with me to-day." He looked at her with grave inquiry. "Do you think that a wise thing to do? Won't that make more talk?" "We'll start early and ride straight through." "You'll have to go by Lost Lake, and that means a long, hard hike. Can he stand it?" "Oh yes. He rides well. It's the walking at a high altitude that does him up. Furthermore, Cliff may turn up here, and I don't want another mix-up." McFarlane was troubled. "I ought to go back with you; but Moore is over here to line out a cutting, and I must stay on for a couple of days. Suppose I send Tony along?" "No, Tony would be a nuisance and would do no good. Another day on the trail won't add to Mrs. Belden's story. If she wants to be mean she's got all the material for it already." In the end she had her way. McFarlane, perceiving that she had set her heart on this ride, and having perfect faith in her skill and judgment on the trail, finally said: "Well, if you do so, the quicker you start the better. With the best of luck you can't pull in before eight o'clock, and you'll have to ride hard to do that." "If I find we can't make it I'll pull into a ranch. But I'm sure we can." When Wayland came in the Supervisor inquired: "Do you feel able to ride back over the hill to-day?" "Entirely so. It isn't the riding that uses me up; it is the walking; and, besides, as candidate for promotion I must obey orders--especially orders to march." They breakfasted hurriedly, and while McFarlane and Tony were bringing in the horses Wayland and Berrie set the cabin to rights. Working thus side by side, she recovered her dominion over him, and at the same time regained her own cheerful self-confidence. "You're a wonder!" he exclaimed, as he watched her deft adjustment of the dishes and furniture. "You're ambidextrous." "I have to be to hold my job," she laughingly replied. "A feller must play all the parts when he's up here." It was still early morning as they mounted and set off up the trail; but Moore's camp was astir, and as McFarlane turned in--much against Berrie's will--the lumberman and his daughter both came out to meet them. "Come in and have some breakfast," said Siona, with cordial inclusiveness, while her eyes met Wayland's glance with mocking glee. "Thank you," said McFarlane, "we can't stop. I'm going to set my daughter over the divide. She has had enough camping, and Norcross is pretty well battered up, so I'm going to help them across. I'll be back to-night, and we'll take our turn up the valley to-morrow. Nash will be here then." Berrie did not mind her father's explanation; on the contrary, she took a distinct pleasure in letting the other girl know of the long and intimate day she was about to spend with her young lover. Siona, too adroit to display her disappointment, expressed polite regret. "I hope you won't get storm-bound," she said, showing her white teeth in a meaning smile. "If there is any sign of a storm we won't cross," declared McFarlane. "We're going round by the lower pass, anyhow. If I'm not here by dark, you may know I've stayed to set 'em down at the Mill." There was charm in Siona's alert poise, and in the neatness of her camp dress. Her dainty tent, with its stools and rugs, made the wilderness seem but a park. She reminded Norcross of the troops of tourists of the Tyrol, and her tent was of a kind to harmonize with the tea-houses on the path to the summit of the Matterhorn. Then, too, something triumphantly feminine shone in her bright eyes and glowed in her softly rounded cheeks. Her hand was little and pointed, not fitted like Berrie's for tightening a cinch or wielding an ax, and as he said "Good-by," he added: "I hope I shall see you again soon," and at the moment he meant it. "We'll return to the Springs in a few days," she replied. "Come and see us. Our bungalow is on the other side of the river--and you, too," she addressed Berrie; but her tone was so conventionally polite that the ranch-girl, burning with jealous heat, made no reply. McFarlane led the way to the lake rapidly and in silence. The splendors of the foliage, subdued by the rains, the grandeur of the peaks, the song of the glorious stream--all were lost on Berrie, for she now felt herself to be nothing but a big, clumsy, coarse-handed tomboy. Her worn gloves, her faded skirt, and her man's shoes had been made hateful to her by that smug, graceful, play-acting tourist with the cool, keen eyes and smirking lips. "She pretends to be a kitten; but she isn't; she's a sly grown-up cat," she bitterly accused, but she could not deny the charm of her personality. Wayland was forced to acknowledge that Berrie in this dark mood was not the delightful companion she had hitherto been. Something sweet and confiding had gone out of their relationship, and he was too keen-witted not to know what it was. He estimated precisely the value of the malicious parting words of Siona Moore. "She's a natural tease, the kind of woman who loves to torment other and less fortunate women. She cares nothing for me, of course, it's just her way of paying off old scores. It would seem that Berrie has not encouraged her advances in times past." That Berrie was suffering, and that her jealousy touchingly proved the depth of her love for him, brought no elation, only perplexity. He was not seeking such devotion. As a companion on the trail she had been a joy--as a jealous sweetheart she was less admirable. He realized perfectly that this return journey was of her arrangement, not McFarlane's, and while he was not resentful of her care, he was in doubt of the outcome. It hurried him into a further intimacy which might prove embarrassing. At the camp by the lake the Supervisor became sharply commanding. "Now let's throw these packs on lively. It will be slippery on the high trail, and you'll just naturally have to hit leather hard and keep jouncing if you reach the wagon-road before dark. But you'll make it." "Make it!" said Berrie. "Of course we'll make it. Don't you worry about that for a minute. Once I get out of the green timber the dark won't worry me. We'll push right through." In packing the camp stuff on the saddles, Berrie, almost as swift and powerful as her father, acted with perfect understanding of every task, and Wayland's admiration of her skill increased mightily. She insisted on her father's turning back. "We don't need you," she said. "I can find the pass." McFarlane's faith in his daughter had been tested many times, and yet he was a little loath to have her start off on a trail new to her. He argued against it briefly, but she laughed at his fears. "I can go anywhere you can," she said. "Stand clear!" With final admonition he stood clear. "You'll have to keep off the boggy meadows," he warned; "these rains will have softened all those muck-holes on the other side; they'll be bottomless pits; watch out for 'em. Good-by! If you meet Nash hurry him along. Moore is anxious to run those lines. Keep in touch with Landon, and if anybody turns up from the district office say I'll be back on Friday. Good luck." "Same to you. So long." Berea led the way, and Norcross fell in behind the pack-horses, feeling as unimportant as a small boy at the heels of a circus parade. His girl captain was so competent, so self-reliant, and so sure that nothing he could say or do assisted in the slightest degree. Her leadership was a curiously close reproduction of her father's unhurried and graceful action. Her seat in the saddle was as easy as Landon's, and her eyes were alert to every rock and stream in the road. She was at home here, where the other girl would have been a bewildered child, and his words of praise lifted the shadow from her face. The sky was cloudy, and a delicious feeling of autumn was in the air--autumn that might turn to winter with a passing cloud, and the forest was dankly gloomy and grimly silent, save from the roaring stream which ran at times foam-white with speed. The high peaks, gray and streaked with new-fallen snow, shone grandly, bleakly through the firs. The radiant beauty of the road from the Springs, the golden glow of four days before was utterly gone, and yet there was exultation in this ride. A distinct pleasure, a delight of another sort, lay in thus daring the majesty of an unknown wind-swept pass. Wayland called out: "The air feels like Thanksgiving morning, doesn't it?" "It _is_ Thanksgiving for me, and I'm going to get a grouse for dinner," she replied; and in less than an hour the snap of her rifle made good her promise. After leaving the upper lake she turned to the right and followed the course of a swift and splendid stream, which came churning through a cheerless, mossy swamp of spruce-trees. Inexperienced as he was, Wayland knew that this was not a well-marked trail; but his confidence in his guide was too great to permit of any worry over the pass, and he amused himself by watching the water-robins as they flitted from stone to stone in the torrent, and in calculating just where he would drop a line for trout if he had time to do so, and in recovered serenity enjoyed his ride. Gradually he put aside his perplexities concerning the future, permitting his mind to prefigure nothing but his duties with Landon at Meeker's Mill. He was rather glad of the decision to send him there, for it promised absorbing sport. "I shall see how Landon and Belden work out their problem," he said. He had no fear of Frank Meeker now. "As a forest guard with official duties to perform I can meet that young savage on other and more nearly equal terms," he assured himself. The trail grew slippery and in places ran full of water. "But there's a bottom, somewhere," Berrie confidently declared, and pushed ahead with resolute mien. It was noon when they rose above timber and entered upon the wide, smooth slopes of the pass. Snow filled the grass here, and the wind, keen, cutting, unhindered, came out of the desolate west with savage fury; but the sun occasionally shone through the clouds with vivid splendor. "It is December now," shouted Wayland, as he put on his slicker and cowered low to his saddle. "It will be January soon." "We will make it Christmas dinner," she laughed, and her glowing good humor warmed his heart. She was entirely her cheerful self again. As they rose, the view became magnificent, wintry, sparkling. The great clouds, drifting like ancient warships heavy with armament, sent down chill showers of hail over the frosted gold of the grassy slopes; but when the shadows passed the sunlight descended in silent cataracts deliriously spring-like. The conies squeaked from the rocky ridges, and a brace of eagles circling about a lone crag, as if exulting in their sovereign mastery of the air, screamed in shrill ecstatic duo. The sheer cliffs, on their shadowed sides, were violently purple. Everywhere the landscape exhibited crashing contrasts of primary pigments which bit into consciousness like the flare of a martial band. The youth would have lingered in spite of the cold; but the girl kept steadily on, knowing well that the hardest part of their journey was still before them, and he, though longing to ride by her side, and to enjoy the views with her, was forced to remain in the rear in order to hurry the reluctant pack-animals forward. They had now reached a point twelve thousand feet above the sea, and range beyond range, to the west and south, rose into sight like stupendous waves of a purple-green sea. To the east the park lay level as a floor and carpeted in tawny velvet. It was nearly two o'clock when they began to drop down behind the rocky ridges of the eastern slope, and soon, in the bottom of a warm and sheltered hollow just at timber-line, Berrie drew her horse to a stand and slipped from the saddle. "We'll rest here an hour," she said, "and cook our grouse; or are you too hungry to wait?" "I can wait," he answered, dramatically. "But it seems as if I had never eaten." "Well, then, we'll save the grouse till to-morrow; but I'll make some coffee. You bring some water while I start a fire." And so, while the tired horses cropped the russet grass, she boiled some coffee and laid out some bread and meat, while he sat by watching her and absorbing the beauty of the scene, the charm of the hour. "It is exactly like a warm afternoon in April," he said, "and here are some of the spring flowers." "There now, sit by and eat," she said, with humor; and in perfectly restored tranquillity they ate and drank, with no thought of critics or of rivals. They were alone, and content to be so. It was deliciously sweet and restful there in that sunny hollow on the breast of the mountain. The wind swept through the worn branches of the dwarfed spruce with immemorial wistfulness; but these young souls heard it only as a far-off song. Side by side on the soft Alpine clover they rested and talked, looking away at the shining peaks, and down over the dark-green billows of fir beneath them. Half the forest was under their eyes at the moment, and the man said: "Is it not magnificent! It makes me proud of my country. Just think, all this glorious spread of hill and valley is under your father's direction. I may say under _your_ direction, for I notice he does just about what you tell him to do." "You've noticed that?" she laughed. "If I were a man I'd rather be Supervisor of this forest than Congressman." "So would I," he agreed. "Nash says you _are_ the Supervisor. I wonder if your father realizes how efficient you are? Does he ever sorrow over your not being a boy?" Her eyes shone with mirth. "Not that I can notice. He 'pears contented." "You're a good deal like a son to him, I imagine. You can do about all that a boy can do, anyhow--more than I could ever do. Does he realize how much you have to do with the management of his forest? I've never seen your like. I really believe you _could_ carry on the work as well as he." She flushed with pleasure. "You seem to think I'm a district forester in disguise." "I have eyes, Miss Supervisor, and also ears--which leads me to ask: Why don't you clean out that saloon gang? Landon is sure there's crooked work going on at that mill--certainly that open bar is a disgraceful and corrupting thing." Her face clouded. "We've tried to cut out that saloon, but it can't be done. You see, it's on a patented claim--the claim was bogus, of course, and we've made complaint, but the matter is hung up, and that gives 'em a chance to go on." "Well, let's not talk of that. It's too delicious an hour for any question of business. It is a moment for poetry. I wish I could write what I feel this moment. Why don't we camp here and watch the sun go down and the moon rise? From our lofty vantage-ground the coming of dawn would be an epic." "We mustn't think of that," she protested. "We must be going." "Not yet. The hour is too perfect. It may never come again. The wind in the pines, the sunshine, the conies crying from their rocks, the butterflies on the clover--my heart aches with the beauty of it. It's been a wonderful trip. Even that staggering walk in the rain had its splendid quality. I couldn't see the poetry in it then; but I do now. These few days have made us comrades, haven't they--comrades of the trail? You have been very considerate of me." He took her hand. "I've never seen such hands. They are like steel, and yet they are feminine." She drew her hands away. "I'm ashamed of my hands--they are so big and rough and dingy." "They're brown, of course, and calloused--a little--but they are not big, and they are beautifully modeled." He looked at her speculatively. "I am wondering how you would look in conventional dress." "Do you mean--" She hesitated. "I'd look like a gawk in one of those low-necked outfits. I'd never dare--and those tight skirts would sure cripple me." "Oh no, they wouldn't. You'd have to modify your stride a little; but you'd negotiate it. You're equal to anything." "You're making fun of me!" "No, I'm not. I'm in earnest. You're the kind of American girl that can go anywhere and do anything. My sisters would mortgage their share of the golden streets for your abounding health--and so would I." "You are all right now," she smiled. "You don't look or talk as you did." "It's this sunlight." He lifted a spread hand as if to clutch and hold something. "I feel it soaking into me like some magical oil. No more moping and whining for me. I've proved that hardship is good for me." "Don't crow till you're out of the woods. It's a long ride down the hill, and going down is harder on the tenderfoot than going up." "I'm no longer a tenderfoot. All I need is another trip like this with you and I shall be a master trailer." All this was very sweet to her, and though she knew they should be going, she lingered. Childishly reckless of the sinking sun, she played with the wild flowers at her side and listened to his voice in complete content. He was right. The hour was too beautiful to be shortened, although she saw no reason why others equally delightful might not come to them both. He was more of the lover than he had ever been before, that she knew, and in the light of his eyes all that was not girlish and charming melted away. She forgot her heavy shoes, her rough hands and sun-tanned face, and listened with wondering joy and pride to his words, which were of a fineness such as she had never heard spoken--only books contained such unusual and exquisite phrases. A cloud passing across the sun flung down a shadow of portentous chill and darkness. She started to her feet with startled recollection of the place and the hour. "We _must_ be going--at once!" she commanded. "Not yet," he pleaded. "It's only a cloud. The sun is coming out again. I have perfect confidence in your woodcraft. Why not spend another night on the trail? It may be our last trip together." He tempted her strongly, so frank and boyish and lovable were his glances and his words. But she was vaguely afraid of herself, and though the long ride at the moment seemed hard and dull, the thought of her mother waiting decided her action. "No, no!" she responded, firmly. "We've wasted too much time already. We must ride." He looked up at her with challenging glance. "Suppose I refuse--suppose I decide to stay here?" Upon her, as he talked, a sweet hesitation fell, a dream which held more of happiness than she had ever known. "It is a long, hard ride," she thought, "and another night on the trail will not matter." And so the moments passed on velvet feet, and still she lingered, reluctant to break the spell. Suddenly, into their idyllic drowse of content, so sweet, so youthful, and so pure of heart, broke the sound of a horse's hurrying, clashing, steel-shod feet, and looking up Berrie saw a mounted man coming down the mountainside with furious, reckless haste. "It is Cliff!" she cried out. "He's on our trail!" And into her face came a look of alarm. Her lips paled, her eyes widened. "He's mad--he's dangerous! Leave him to me," she added, in a low, tense voice. XI THE DEATH-GRAPPLE There was something so sinister in the rider's disregard of stone and tree and pace, something so menacing in the forward thrust of his body, that Berrie was able to divine his wrath, and was smitten into irresolution--all her hardy, boyish self-reliance swallowed up in the weakness of the woman. She forgot the pistol at her belt, and awaited the assault with rigid pose. As Belden neared them Norcross also perceived that the rider's face was distorted with passion, and that his glance was not directed upon Berrie, but upon himself, and he braced himself for the attack. Leaving his saddle with one flying leap, which the cowboy practises at play, Belden hurled himself upon his rival with the fury of a panther. The slender youth went down before the big rancher as though struck by a catapult; and the force of his fall against the stony earth stunned him so that he lay beneath his enemy as helpless as a child. [Illustration: THE SLENDER YOUTH WENT DOWN BEFORE THE BIG RANCHER AS THOUGH STRUCK BY A CATAPULT] Belden snarled between his teeth: "I told you I'd kill you, and I will." But this was not to be. Berea suddenly recovered her native force. With a cry of pain, of anger, she flung herself on the maddened man's back. Her hands encircled his neck like a collar of bronze. Hardened by incessant use of the cinch and the rope, her fingers sank into the sinews of his great throat, shutting off both blood and breath. "Let go!" she commanded, with deadly intensity. "Let go, or I'll choke the life out of you! Let go, I say!" He raised a hand to beat her off, but she was too strong, too desperate to be driven away. She was as blind to pain as a mother eagle, and bent above him so closely that he could not bring the full weight of his fist to bear. With one determined hand still clutching his throat, she ran the fingers of her other hand into his hair and twisted his head upward with a power which he could not resist. And so, looking into his upturned, ferocious eyes, she repeated with remorseless fury: "_Let go_, I say!" His swollen face grew rigid, his mouth gaped, his tongue protruded, and at last, releasing his hold on his victim, he rose, flinging Berrie off with a final desperate effort. "I'll kill you, too!" he gasped. Up to this moment the girl had felt no fear of herself; but now she resorted to other weapons. Snatching her pistol from its holster, she leveled it at his forehead. "Stop!" she said; and something in her voice froze him into calm. He was not a fiend; he was not a deliberate assassin; he was only a jealous, despairing, insane lover, and as he looked into the face he knew so well, and realized that nothing but hate and deadly resolution lit the eyes he had so often kissed, his heart gave way, and, dropping his head, he said: "Kill me if you want to. I've nothing left to live for." There was something unreal, appalling in this sudden reversion to weakness, and Berrie could not credit his remorse. "Give me your gun," she said. He surrendered it to her and she threw it aside; then turned to Wayland, who was lying white and still with face upturned to the sky. With a moan of anguish she bent above him and called upon his name. He did not stir, and when she lifted his head to her lap his hair, streaming with blood, stained her dress. She kissed him and called again to him, then turned with accusing frenzy to Belden: "You've killed him! Do you hear? You've killed him!" The agony, the fury of hate in her voice reached the heart of the conquered man. He raised his head and stared at her with mingled fear and remorse. And so across that limp body these two souls, so lately lovers, looked into each other's eyes as though nothing but words of hate and loathing had ever passed between them. The girl saw in him only a savage, vengeful, bloodthirsty beast; the man confronted in her an accusing angel. "I didn't mean to kill him," he muttered. "Yes, you did! You meant it. You crushed his life out with your big hands--and now I'm going to kill you for it!" A fierce calm had come upon her. Some far-off ancestral deep of passion called for blood revenge. She lifted the weapon with steady hand and pointed it at his heart. His fear passed as his wrath had passed. His head drooped, his glance wavered. "Shoot!" he commanded, sullenly. "I'd sooner die than live--now." His words, his tone, brought back to her a vision of the man he had seemed when she first met and admired him. Her hand fell, the woman in her reasserted itself. A wave of weakness, of indecision, of passionate grief overwhelmed her. "Oh, Cliff!" she moaned. "Why did you do it? He was so gentle and sweet." He did not answer. His glance wandered to his horse, serenely cropping the grass in utter disregard of this tumultuous human drama; but the wind, less insensate than the brute, swept through the grove of dwarfed, distorted pines with a desolate, sympathetic moan which filled the man's heart with a new and exalted sorrow. "You're right," he said. "I was crazy. I deserve killing." But Berrie was now too deep in her own desolation to care what he said or did. She kissed the cold lips of the still youth, murmuring passionately: "I don't care to live without you--I shall go with you!" Belden's hand was on her wrist before she could raise her weapon. "Don't, for God's sake, don't do that! He may not be dead." She responded but dully to the suggestion. "No, no. He's gone. His breath is gone." "Maybe not. Let me see." Again she bent to the quiet face on which the sunlight fell with mocking splendor. It seemed all a dream till she felt once more the stain of his blood upon her hands. It was all so incredibly sudden. Only just now he was exulting over the warmth and beauty of the day--and now-- How beautiful he was. He seemed asleep. The conies crying from their runways suddenly took on poignant pathos. They appeared to be grieving with her; but the eagles spoke of revenge. A sharp cry, a note of joy sprang from her lips. "He _is_ alive! I saw his eyelids quiver--quick! Bring some water." The man leaped to his feet, and, running down to the pool, filled his sombrero with icy water. He was as eager now to save his rival as he had been mad to destroy him. "Let me help," he pleaded. But she would not permit him to touch the body. Again, while splashing the water upon his face, the girl called upon her love to return. "He hears me!" she exulted to her enemy. "He is breathing now. He is opening his eyes." The wounded man did, indeed, open his eyes, but his look was a blank, uncomprehending stare, which plunged her back into despair. "He don't know me!" she said, with piteous accent. She now perceived the source of the blood upon her arm. It came from a wound in the boy's head which had been dashed upon a stone. The sight of this wound brought back the blaze of accusing anger to her eyes. "See what you did!" she said, with cold malignity. Then by sudden shift she bent to the sweet face in her arms and kissed it passionately. "Open your eyes, darling. You must not die! I won't let you die! Can't you hear me? Don't you know where you are?" He opened his eyes once more, quietly, and looked up into her face with a faint, drowsy smile. He could not yet locate himself in space and time, but he knew her and was comforted. He wondered why he should be looking up into a sunny sky. He heard the wind and the sound of a horse cropping grass, and the voice of the girl penetratingly sweet as that of a young mother calling her baby back to life, and slowly his benumbed brain began to resolve the mystery. Belden, forgotten, ignored as completely as the conies, sat with choking throat and smarting eyes. For him the world was only dust and ashes--a ruin which his own barbaric spirit had brought upon itself. Slowly the youth's eyes took on expression. "Are we still on the hill?" he asked. "Yes, dearest," she assured him. Then to Belden, "He knows where he is!" Wayland again struggled with reality. "What has happened to me?" "You fell and hurt your head." He turned slightly and observed the other man looking down at her with dark and tragic glance. "Hello, Belden," he said, feebly. "How came you here?" Then noting Berrie's look, he added: "I remember. He tried to kill me." He again searched his antagonist's face. "Why didn't you finish the job?" The girl tried to turn his thought aside. "It's all right now, darling. He won't make any more trouble. Don't mind him. I don't care for anybody now you are coming back to me." Wayland wonderingly regarded the face of the girl. "And you--are you hurt?" "No, I'm not hurt. I am perfectly happy now." She turned to Belden with quick, authoritative command. "Unsaddle the horses and set up the tent. We won't be able to leave here to-night." He rose with instant obedience, glad of a chance to serve her, and soon had the tent pegged to its place and the bedding unrolled. Together they lifted the wounded youth and laid him upon his blankets beneath the low canvas roof which seemed heavenly helpful to Berea. "There!" she said, caressingly. "Now you are safe, no matter whether it rains or not." He smiled. "It seems I'm to have my way after all. I hope I shall be able to see the sun rise. I've sort of lost my interest in the sunset." "Now, Cliff," she said, as soon as the camp was in order and a fire started, "I reckon you'd better ride on. I haven't any further use for you." "Don't say that, Berrie," he pleaded. "I can't leave you here alone with a sick man. Let me stay and help." She looked at him for a long time before she replied. "I shall never be able to look at you again without hating you," she said. "I shall always remember you as you looked when you were killing that boy. So you'd better ride on and keep a-riding. I'm going to forget all this just as soon as I can, and it don't help me any to have you around. I never want to see you or hear your name again." "You don't mean that, Berrie!" "Yes, I do," she asserted, bitterly. "I mean just that. So saddle up and pull out. All I ask of you is to say nothing about what has happened here. You'd better leave the state. If Wayland should get worse it might go hard with you." He accepted his banishment. "All right. If you feel that way I'll ride. But I'd like to do something for you before I go. I'll pile up some wood--" "No. I'll take care of that." And without another word of farewell she turned away and re-entered the tent. Mounting his horse with painful slowness, as though suddenly grown old, the reprieved assassin rode away up the mountain, his head low, his eyes upon the ground. XII BERRIE'S VIGIL The situation in which Berea now found herself would have disheartened most women of mature age, but she remained not only composed, she was filled with an irrational delight. The nurse that is in every woman was aroused in her, and she looked forward with joy to a night of vigil, confident that Wayland was not seriously injured and that he would soon be able to ride. She had no fear of the forest or of the night. Nature held no menace now that her tent was set and her fire alight. Wayland, without really knowing anything about it, suspected that he owed his life to her intervention, and this belief deepened the feeling of admiration which he had hitherto felt toward her. He listened to her at work around the fire with a deepening sense of his indebtedness to her, and when she looked in to ask if she could do anything for him, his throat filled with an emotion which rendered his answer difficult. As his mind cleared he became very curious to know precisely what had taken place, but he did not feel free to ask her. "She will tell me if she wishes me to know." That she had vanquished Belden and sent him on his way was evident, although he had not been able to hear what she had said to him at the last. What lay between the enemy's furious onslaught and the aid he lent in making the camp could only be surmised. "I wonder if she used her pistol?" Wayland asked himself. "Something like death must have stared him in the face." "Strange how everything seems to throw me ever deeper into her debt," he thought, a little later. But he did not quite dare put into words the resentment which mingled with his gratitude. He hated to be put so constantly into the position of the one protected, defended. And yet it was his own fault. He had put himself among people and conditions where she was the stronger. Having ventured out of his world into hers he must take the consequences. That she loved him with the complete passion of her powerful and simple nature he knew, for her voice had reached through the daze of his semi-unconsciousness with thrilling power. The touch of her lips to his, the close clasp of her strong arms were of ever greater convincing quality. And yet he wished the revelation had come in some other way. His pride was abraded. His manhood seemed somehow lessened. It was a disconcerting reversal of the ordinary relations between hero and heroine, and he saw no way of re-establishing the normal attitude of the male. Entirely unaware of what was passing in the mind of her patient, Berrie went about her duties with a cheerfulness which astonished the sufferer in the tent. She seemed about to hum a song as she set the skillet on the fire, but a moment later she called out, in a tone of irritation: "Here comes Nash!" "I'm glad of that," answered Wayland, although he perceived something of her displeasure. Nash, on his way to join the Supervisor, raised a friendly greeting as he saw the girl, and drew rein. "I expected to meet you farther down the hill," he said. "Tony 'phoned that you had started. Where did you leave the Supervisor?" "Over at the station waiting for you. Where's your outfit?" "Camped down the trail a mile or so. I thought I'd better push through to-night. What about Norcross? Isn't he with you?" She hesitated an instant. "He's in the tent. He fell and struck his head on a rock, and I had to go into camp here." Nash was deeply concerned. "Is that so? Well, that's hard luck. Is he badly hurt?" "Well, he had a terrible fall. But he's easier now. I think he's asleep." "May I look in on him?" "I don't think you'd better take the time. It's a long, hard ride from here to the station. It will be deep night before you can make it--" "Don't you think the Supervisor would want me to camp here to-night and do what I could for you? If Norcross is badly injured you will need me." She liked Nash, and she knew he was right, and yet she was reluctant to give up the pleasure of her lone vigil. "He's not in any danger, and we'll be able to ride on in the morning." Nash, thinking of her as Clifford Belden's promised wife, had no suspicion of her feeling toward Norcross. Therefore he gently urged that to go on was quite out of order. "I _can't_ think of leaving you here alone--certainly not till I see Norcross and find out how badly he is hurt." She yielded. "I reckon you're right," she said. "I'll go see if he is awake." He followed her to the door of the tent, apprehending something new and inexplicable in her attitude. In the music of her voice as she spoke to the sick man was the love-note of the mate. "You may come in," she called back, and Nash, stooping, entered the small tent. "Hello, old man, what you been doing with yourself? Hitting the high spots?" Norcross smiled feebly. "No, the hill flew up and bumped _me_." "How did it all happen?" "I don't exactly know. It all came of a sudden. I had no share in it--I didn't go for to do it." "Whether you did or not, you seem to have made a good job of it." Nash examined the wounded man carefully, and his skill and strength in handling Norcross pleased Berrie, though she was jealous of the warm friendship which seemed to exist between the men. She had always liked Nash, but she resented him now, especially as he insisted on taking charge of the case; but she gave way finally, and went back to her pots and pans with pensive countenance. A little later, when Nash came out to make report, she was not very gracious in her manner. "He's pretty badly hurt," he said. "There's an ugly gash in his scalp, and the shock has produced a good deal of pain and confusion in his head; but he's going to be all right in a day or two. For a man seeking rest and recuperation he certainly has had a tough run of weather." Though a serious-minded, honorable forester, determined to keep sternly in mind that he was in the presence of the daughter of his chief, and that she was engaged to marry another, Nash was, after all, a man, and the witchery of the hour, the charm of the girl's graceful figure, asserted their power over him. His eyes grew tender, and his voice eloquent in spite of himself. His words he could guard, but it was hard to keep from his speech the song of the lover. The thought that he was to camp in her company, to help her about the fire, to see her from moment to moment, with full liberty to speak to her, to meet her glance, pleased him. It was the most romantic and moving episode in his life, and though of a rather dry and analytic temperament he had a sense of poesy. The night, black, oppressive, and silent, brought a closer bond of mutual help and understanding between them. He built a fire of dry branches close to the tent door, and there sat, side by side with the girl, in the glow of embers, so close to the injured youth that they could talk together, and as he spoke freely, yet modestly, of his experiences Berrie found him more deeply interesting than she had hitherto believed him to be. True, he saw things less poetically than Wayland, but he was finely observant, and a man of studious and refined habits. She grew friendlier, and asked him about his work, and especially about his ambitions and plans for the future. They discussed the forest and its enemies, and he wondered at her freedom in speaking of the Mill and saloon. He said: "Of course you know that Alec Belden is a partner in that business, and I'm told--of course I don't know this--that Clifford Belden is also interested." She offered no defense of young Belden, and this unconcern puzzled him. He had expected indignant protest, but she merely replied: "I don't care who owns it. It should be rooted out. I hate that kind of thing. It's just another way of robbing those poor tie-jacks." "Clifford should get out of it. Can't you persuade him to do so?" "I don't think I can." "His relationship to you--" "He is not related to me." Her tone amazed him. "You know what I mean." "Of course I do, but you're mistaken. We're not related that way any longer." This silenced him for a few moments, then he said: "I'm rather glad of that. He isn't anything like the man you thought he was--I couldn't say these things before--but he is as greedy as Alec, only not so open about it." All this comment, which moved the forester so deeply to utter, seemed not to interest Berea. She sat staring at the fire with the calm brow of an Indian. Clifford Belden had passed out of her life as completely as he had vanished out of the landscape. She felt an immense relief at being rid of him, and resented his being brought back even as a subject of conversation. Wayland, listening, fancied he understood her desire, and said nothing that might arouse Nash's curiosity. Nash, on his part, knowing that she had broken with Belden, began to understand the tenderness, the anxious care of her face and voice, as she bent above young Norcross. As the night deepened and the cold air stung, he asked: "Have you plenty of blankets for a bed?" "Oh yes," she answered, "but I don't intend to sleep." "Oh, you must!" he declared. "Go to bed. I will keep the fire going." At last she consented. "I will make my bed right here at the mouth of the tent close to the fire," she said, "and you can call me if you need me." "Why not put your bed in the tent? It's going to be cold up here." "I am all right outside," she protested. "Put your bed inside, Miss Berrie. We can't let conventions count above timber-line. I shall rest better if I know you are properly sheltered." And so it happened that for the third time she shared the same roof with her lover; but the nurse was uppermost in her now. At eleven thousand feet above the sea--with a cold drizzle of fine rain in the air--one does not consider the course of gossip as carefully as in a village, and Berrie slept unbrokenly till daylight. Nash was the first to arise in the dusk of dawn, and Berrie, awakened by the crackle of his fire, soon joined him. There is no sweeter sound than the voice of the flame at such a time, in such a place. It endows the bleak mountainside with comfort, makes the ledge a hearthstone. It holds the promise of savory meats and fragrant liquor, and robs the frosty air of its terrors. Wayland, hearing their voices, called out, with feeble humor: "Will some one please turn on the steam in my room?" Berrie uttered a happy word. "How do you feel this morning?" she asked. "Not precisely like a pugilist--well, yes, I believe I do--like the fellow who got second money." "How is the bump?" inquired Nash, thrusting his head inside the door. "Reduced to the size of a golf-ball as near as I can judge of it. I doubt if I can wear a hat; but I'm feeling fine. I'm going to get up." Berrie was greatly relieved. "I'm so glad! Do you feel like riding down the hill?" "Sure thing! I'm hungry, and as soon as I am fed I'm ready to start." Berrie joined the surveyor at the fire. "If you'll round up our horses, Mr. Nash, I'll rustle breakfast and we'll get going," she said. Nash, enthralled, lingered while she twisted her hair into place, then went out to bring in the ponies. Wayland came out a little uncertainly, but looking very well. "I think I shall discourage my friends from coming to this region for their health," he said, ruefully. "If I were a novelist now all this would be grist for my mill." Beneath his joking he was profoundly chagrined. He had hoped by this time to be as sinewy, as alert as Nash, instead of which here he sat, shivering over the fire like a sick girl, his head swollen, his blood sluggish; but this discouragement only increased Berea's tenderness--a tenderness which melted all his reserve. "I'm not worth all your care," he said to her, with poignant glance. The sun rose clear and warm, and the fire, the coffee, put new courage into him as well as into the others, and while the morning was yet early and the forest chill and damp with rain, the surveyor brought up the horses and started packing the outfit. In this Berrie again took part, doing her half of the work quite as dextrously as Nash himself. Indeed, the forester was noticeably confused and not quite up to his usual level of adroit ease. At last both packs were on, and as they stood together for a moment, Nash said: "This has been a great experience--one I shall remember as long as I live." She stirred uneasily under his frank admiration. "I'm mightily obliged to you," she replied, as heartily as she could command. "Don't thank me, I'm indebted to you. There is so little in my life of such companionship as you and Norcross give me." "You'll find it lonesome over at the station, I'm afraid," said she. "But Moore intends to put a crew of tie-cutters in over there--that will help some." She smiled. "I'm not partial to the society of tie-jacks." "If you ride hard you may find that Moore girl in camp. She was there when we left." There was a sparkle of mischief in her glance. "I'm not interested in the Moore girl," he retorted. "Do you know her?" "I've seen her at the post-office once or twice; _she_ is not my kind." She gave him her hand. "Well, good-by. I'm all right now that Wayland can ride." He held her hand an instant. "I believe I'll ride back with you as far as the camp." "You'd better go on. Father is waiting for you. I'll send the men along." There was dismissal in her voice, and yet she recognized as never before the fine qualities that were his. "Please don't say anything of this to others, and tell my father not to worry about us. We'll pull in all right." He helped Norcross mount his horse, and as he put the lead rope into Berrie's hand, he said: with much feeling: "Good luck to you. I shall remember this night all the rest of my life." "I hate to be going to the rear," called Wayland, whose bare, bandaged head made him look like a wounded young officer. "But I guess it's better for me to lay off for a week or two and recover my tone." And so they parted, the surveyor riding his determined way up the naked mountainside toward the clouds, while Berrie and her ward plunged at once into the dark and dripping forest below. "If you can stand the grief," she said, "we'll go clear through." Wayland had his misgivings, but did not say so. His confidence in his guide was complete. She would do her part, that was certain. Several times she was forced to dismount and blaze out a new path in order to avoid some bog; but she sternly refused his aid. "You must not get off," she warned; "stay where you are. I can do this work better alone." They were again in that green, gloomy, and silent zone of the range, where giant spruces grow, and springs, oozing from the rocks, trickle over the trail. It was very beautiful, but menacing, by reason of its apparently endless thickets cut by stony ridges. It was here she met the two young men, Downing and Travis, bringing forward the surveying outfit, but she paused only to say: "Push along steadily. You are needed on the other side." After leaving the men, and with a knowledge that the remaining leagues of the trail were solitary, Norcross grew fearful. "The fall of a horse, an accident to that brave girl, and we would be helpless," he thought. "I wish Nash had returned with us." Once his blood chilled with horror as he watched his guide striking out across the marge of a grassy lake. This meadow, as he divined, was really a carpet of sod floating above a bottomless pool of muck, for it shook beneath her horse's feet. "Come on, it's all right," she called back, cheerily. "We'll soon pick up the other trail." He wondered how she knew, for to him each hill was precisely like another, each thicket a maze. Her caution was all for him. She tried each dangerous slough first, and thus was able to advise him which way was safest. His head throbbed with pain and his knees were weary, but he rode on, manifesting such cheer as he could, resolving not to complain at any cost; but his self-respect ebbed steadily, leaving him in bitter, silent dejection. At last they came into open ground on a high ridge, and were gladdened by the valley outspread below them, for it was still radiant with color, though not as brilliant as before the rain. It had been dimmed, but not darkened. And yet it seemed that a month had passed since their ecstatic ride upward through the golden forest, and Wayland said as much while they stood for a moment surveying the majestic park with its wall of guardian peaks. But Berrie replied: "It seems only a few hours to me." From this point the traveling was good, and they descended rapidly, zigzagging from side to side of a long, sweeping ridge. By noon they were once more down amid the aspens, basking in a world of sad gold leaves and delicious September sunshine. At one o'clock, on the bank of a clear stream, the girl halted. "I reckon we'd better camp awhile. You look tired, and I am hungry." He gratefully acquiesced in this stop, for his knees were trembling with the strain of the stirrups; but he would not permit her to ease him down from his saddle. Turning a wan glance upon her, he bitterly asked: "Must I always play the weakling before you? I am ashamed of myself. Ride on and leave me to rot here in the grass. I'm not worth keeping alive." "You must not talk like that," she gently admonished him. "You're not to blame." "Yes, I am. I should never have ventured into this man's country." "I'm glad you did," she answered, as if she were comforting a child. "For if you hadn't I should never have known you." "That would have been no loss--to you," he bitterly responded. She unsaddled one pack-animal and spread some blankets on the grass. "Lie down and rest while I boil some coffee," she commanded; and he obeyed, too tired to make pretension toward assisting. Lying so, feeling the magic of the sun, hearing the music of the water, and watching the girl, he regained a serener mood, and when she came back with his food he thanked her for it with a glance before which her eyes fell. "I don't see why you are so kind to me, I really believe you _like_ to do things for me." Her head drooped to hide her face, and he went on: "Why do you care for me? Tell me!" "I don't know," she murmured. Then she added, with a flash of bravery: "But I do." "What a mystery it all is! You turn from a splendid fellow like Landon to a 'skate' like me. Landon worships you--you know that--don't you?" "I know--he--" she ended, vaguely distressed. "Did he ask you to marry him?" "Yes." "Why didn't you? He's just the mate for you. He's a man of high character and education." She made no answer to this, and he went on: "Dear girl, I'm not worth your care--truly I'm not. I resented your engagement to Belden, for he was a brute; but Landon is different. He thinks the world of you. He'll go high in the service. I've never done anything in the world--I never shall. It will be better for you if I go--to-morrow." She took his hand and pressed it to her cheek, then, putting her arm about his neck, drew him to her bosom and kissed him passionately. "You break my heart when you talk like that," she protested, with tears. "You mustn't say such gloomy things--I won't let you give up. You shall come right home with me, and I will nurse you till you are well. It was all my fault. If we had only stayed in camp at the lake daddy would have joined us that night, and if I had not loitered on the mountain yesterday Cliff would not have overtaken us. It's all my fault." "I will not have it go that way," he said. "I've brought you only care and unhappiness thus far. I'm an alien--my ways are not your ways." "I can change," she answered. "I hate my ways, and I like yours." As they argued she felt no shame, and he voiced no resentment. She knew his mood. She understood his doubt, his depression. She pleaded as a man might have done, ready to prove her love, eager to restore his self-respect, while he remained both bitter and sadly contemptuous. A cow-hand riding up the trail greeted Berrie respectfully, but a cynical smile broke out on his lips as he passed on. Another witness--another gossip. She did not care. She had no further concern of the valley's comment. Her life's happiness hung on the drooping eyelashes of this wounded boy, and to win him back to cheerful acceptance of life was her only concern. "I've never had any motives," he confessed. "I've always done what pleased me at the moment--or because it was easier to do as others were doing. I went to college that way. Truth is, I never had any surplus vitality, and my father never demanded anything of me. I haven't any motives now. A few days ago I was interested in forestry. At this time it all seems futile. What's the use of my trying to live?" Part of all this despairing cry arose from weariness, and part from a luxurious desire to be comforted, for it was sweet to feel her sympathy. He even took a morbid pleasure in the distress of her eyes and lips while her rich voice murmured in soothing protest. She, on her part, was frightened for him, and as she thought of the long ride still before them she wrung her hands. "Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?" she moaned. Instantly smitten into shame, into manlier mood, he said: "Don't worry about me, please don't. I can ride. I'm feeling better. You must not weaken. Please forgive my selfish complaints. I'm done! You'll never hear it again. Come, let us go on. I can ride." "If we can reach Miller's ranch--" "I can ride to _your_ ranch," he declared, and rose with such new-found resolution that she stared at him in wonder. He was able to smile. "I've had my little crying spell. I've relieved my heart of its load. I didn't mean to agonize you. It was only a slump." He put his hand to his head. "I must be a comical figure. Wonder what that cowboy thought of me?" His sudden reversal to cheer was a little alarming to her, but at length she perceived that he had in truth mastered his depression, and bringing up the horses she saddled them, and helped him to mount. "If you get tired or feel worse, tell me, and we'll go into camp," she urged as they were about to start. "You keep going till I give the sign," he replied; and his voice was so firm and clear that her own sunny smile came back. "I don't know what to make of you," she said. "I reckon you must be a poet." XIII THE GOSSIPS AWAKE It was dark when they reached the village, but Wayland declared his ability to go on, although his wounded head was throbbing with fever and he was clinging to the pommel of his saddle; so Berrie rode on. Mrs. McFarlane, hearing the horses on the bridge, was at the door and received her daughter with wondering question, while the stable-hands, quick to detect an injured man, hurried to lift Norcross down from his saddle. "What's the matter?" repeated Mrs. McFarlane. "He fell and struck his head on a stone," Berea hastily explained. "Take the horses, boys, mother and I will look out for Mr. Norcross." The men obeyed her and fell back, but they were consumed with curiosity, and their glances irritated the girl. "Slip the packs at once," she insisted. With instant sympathy her mother came to her aid in supporting the wounded, weary youth indoors, and as he stretched out on the couch in the sitting-room, he remarked, with a faint, ironic smile: "This beats any bed of balsam boughs." "Where's your father?" asked Mrs. McFarlane of her daughter. "He's over on the Ptarmigan. I've a powerful lot to tell you, mother; but not now; we must look after Wayland. He's nearly done up, and so am I." Mrs. McFarlane winced a little at her daughter's use of Norcross's first name, but she said nothing further at the moment, although she watched Berrie closely while she took off Wayland's shoes and stockings and rubbed his icy feet. "Get him something hot as quick as you can!" she commanded; and Mrs. McFarlane obeyed without a word. Gradually the tremor passed out of his limbs and a delicious sense of warmth, of safety, stole over him, and he closed his eyes in the comfort of her presence and care. "Rigorous business this life of the pioneer," he said, with mocking inflection. "I think I prefer a place in the lumber trust." "Don't talk," she said. Then, with a rush of tender remorse: "Why didn't you tell me to stop? I didn't realize that you were so tired. We could have stopped at the Springs." "I didn't know how tired I was till I got here. Gee," he said, boyishly, "that door-knob at the back of my head is red-hot! You're good to me," he added, humbly. She hated to have him resume that tone of self-depreciation, and, kneeling to him, she kissed his cheek, and laid her head beside his. "You're splendid," she insisted. "Nobody could be braver; but you should have told me you were exhausted. You fooled me with your cheerful answers." He accepted her loving praise, her clasping arms, as a part of the rescue from the darkness and pain of the long ride, careless of what it might bring to him in the future. He ate his toast and drank his coffee, and permitted the women to lead him to his room, and then being alone he crept into his bed and fell instantly asleep. Berrie and her mother went back to the sitting-room, and Mrs. McFarlane closed the door behind them. "Now tell me all about it," she said, in the tone of one not to be denied. The story went along very smoothly till the girl came to the second night in camp beside the lake; there her voice faltered, and the reflective look in the mother's eyes deepened as she learned that her daughter had shared her tent with the young man. "It was the only thing to do, mother," Berrie bravely said. "It was cold and wet outside, and you know he isn't very strong, and his teeth were chattering, he was so chilled. I know it sounds strange down here; but up there in the woods in the storm what I did seemed right and natural. You know what I mean, don't you?" "Yes, I understand. I don't blame you--only--if others should hear of it--" "But they won't. No one knows of our being alone there except Tony and father." "Are you sure? Doesn't Mrs. Belden know?" "I don't think so--not yet." Mrs. McFarlane's nervousness grew. "I wish you hadn't gone on this trip. If the Beldens find out you were alone with Mr. Norcross they'll make much of it. It will give them a chance at your father." Her mind turned upon another point. "When did Mr. Norcross get his fall?" "On the way back." Here Berrie hesitated again. "I don't like to tell you, mother, but he didn't fall, Cliff jumped him and tried to kill him." The mother doubted her ears. "Cliff did? How did he happen to meet you?" Berrie was quick to answer. "I don't know how he found out we were on the trail. I suppose the old lady 'phoned him. Anyhow, while we were camped for noon yesterday"--her face flamed again at thought of that tender, beautiful moment when they were resting on the grass--"while we were at our lunch he came tearing down the hill on that big bay horse of his and took a flying jump at Wayland. As Wayland went down he struck his head on a stone. I thought he was dead, and I was paralyzed for a second. Then I flew at Cliff and just about choked the life out of him. I'd have ended him right there if he hadn't let go." Mrs. McFarlane, looking upon her daughter in amazement, saw on her face the shadow of the deadly rage which had burned in her heart as she clenched young Belden's throat. "What then? What happened then?" "He let go, you bet." Her smile came back. "And when he realized what he'd done--_he_ thought Wayland was dead--he began to weaken. Then I took my gun and was all for putting an end to him right there, when I saw Wayland's eyelids move. After that I didn't care what became of Cliff. I told him to ride on and keep a-ridin', and I reckon he's clear out of the state by this time. If he ever shows up I'll put him where he'll have all night to be sorry in." "When did this take place?" "Yesterday about two. Of course Wayland couldn't ride, he was so dizzy and kind o' confused, and so I went into camp right there at timber-line. Along about sunset Nash came riding up from this side, and insisted on staying to help me--so I let him." Mrs. McFarlane's tense attitude relaxed. "Nash is not the kind that tattles. I'm glad he turned up." "And this morning I saddled and came down." "Did Nash go on?" "Yes, daddy was waiting for him, so I sent him along." "It's all sad business," groaned Mrs. McFarlane, "and I can see you're keeping something back. How did Cliff happen to know just where you were? And what started you back without your father?" For the first time Berrie showed signs of weakness and distress. "Why, you see, Alec Belden and Mr. Moore were over there to look at some timber, and old Marm Belden and that Moore girl went along. I suppose they sent word to Cliff, and I presume that Moore girl put him on our trail. Leastwise that's the way I figure it out. That's the worst of the whole business." She admitted this with darkened brow. "Mrs. Belden's tongue is hung in the middle and loose at both ends--and that Moore girl is spiteful mean." She could not keep the contempt out of her voice. "She saw us start off, and she is sure to follow it up and find out what happened on the way home; even if they don't see Cliff they'll _talk_." "Oh, I _wish_ you hadn't gone!" exclaimed the worried mother. "It can't be helped now, and it hasn't done me any real harm. It's all in the day's work, anyhow. I've always gone with daddy before, and this trip isn't going to spoil me. The boys all know me, and they will treat me fair." "Yes, but Mr. Norcross is an outsider--a city man. They will all think evil of him on that account." "I know; that's what troubles me. No one will know how fine and considerate he was. Mother, I've never known any one like him. He's a poet! He's taught me to see things I never saw before. Everything interests him--the birds, the clouds, the voices in the fire. I never was so happy in my life as I was during those first two days, and that night in camp before he began to worry--it was just wonderful." Words failed her, but her shining face and the forward straining pose of her body enlightened the mother. "I don't care what people say of me if only they will be just to him. They've _got_ to treat him right," she added, firmly. "Did he speak to you--are you engaged?" Her head drooped. "Not really engaged, mother; but he told me how much he liked me--and--it's all right, mother, I _know_ it is. I'm not fine enough for him, but I'm going to try to change my ways so he won't be ashamed of me." Mrs. McFarlane's face cleared. "He surely is a fine young fellow, and can be trusted to do the right thing. Well, we might as well go to bed. We can't settle anything till your father gets home," she said. Wayland rose next morning free from dizziness and almost free from pain, and when he came out of his room his expression was cheerful. "I feel as if I'd slept a week, and I'm hungry. I don't know why I should be, but I am." Mrs. McFarlane met him with something very intimate, something almost maternal in her look; but her words were as few and as restrained as ever. He divined that she had been talking with Berrie, and that a fairly clear understanding of the situation had been reached. That this understanding involved him closely he was aware; but nothing in his manner acknowledged it. She did not ask any questions, believing that sooner or later the whole story must come out. The fact that Siona Moore and Mrs. Belden knew that Berrie had started back on Thursday with young Norcross made it easy for the villagers to discover that she had not reached the ranch till Saturday. "What could Joe have been thinking of to allow them to go?" she said. "Mr. Nash's presence in the camp must be made known; but then there is Clifford's assault upon Mr. Norcross, can that be kept secret, too?" And so while the young people chatted, the troubled mother waited in fear, knowing that in a day or two the countryside would be aflame with accusation. In a landscape like this, as she well knew, nothing moves unobserved. The native--man or woman--is able to perceive and name objects scarcely discernible to the eye of the alien. A minute speck is discovered on the hillside. "Hello, there's Jim Sanders on his roan," says one, or "Here comes Kit Jenkins with her flea-bit gray. I wonder who's on the bay alongside of her," remarks another, and each of these observations is taken quite as a matter of course. With a wide and empty field of vision, and with trained, unspoiled optic nerves, the plainsman is marvelously penetrating of glance. Hence, Mrs. McFarlane was perfectly certain that not one but several of her neighbors had seen and recognized Berrie and young Norcross as they came down the hill. In a day or two every man would know just where they camped, and what had taken place in camp. Mrs. Belden would not rest till she had ferreted out every crook and turn of that trail, and her speech was quite as coarse as that of any of her male associates. Easy-going with regard to many things, these citizens were abnormally alive to all matters relating to courtship, and popular as she believed Berrie to be, Mrs. McFarlane could not hope that her daughter would be spared--especially by the Beldens, who would naturally feel that Clifford had been cheated. She sighed deeply. "Well, nothing can be done till Joe returns," she repeated. A long day's rest, a second night's sleep, set Wayland on his feet. He came to breakfast quite gay. "Barring the hickory-nut on the back of my head," he explained, "I'm feeling fine, almost ready for another expedition. I may make a ranger yet." Berrie, though equally gay, was not so sure of his ability to return to work. "I reckon you'd better go easy till daddy gets back; but if you feel like it we'll ride up to the post-office this afternoon." "I want to start right in to learn to throw that hitch, and I'm going to practise with an ax till I can strike twice in the same place. This trip was an eye-opener. Great man I'd be in a windfall--wouldn't I?" He was persuaded to remain very quiet for another day, and part of it was spent in conversation with Mrs. McFarlane--whom he liked very much--and an hour or more in writing a long letter wherein he announced to his father his intention of going into the Forest Service. "I've got to build up a constitution," he said, "and I don't know of a better place to do it in. Besides, I'm beginning to be interested in the scheme. I like the Supervisor. I'm living in his house at the present time, and I'm feeling contented and happy, so don't worry about me." He was indeed quite comfortable, save when he realized that Mrs. McFarlane was taking altogether too much for granted in their relationship. It was delightful to be so watched over, so waited upon, so instructed. "But where is it all leading me?" he continued to ask himself--and still that wall of reserve troubled and saddened Berrie. They expected McFarlane that night, and waited supper for him, but he did not come, and so they ate without him, and afterward Wayland helped Berrie do up the dishes while the mother bent above her sewing by the kitchen lamp. There was something very sweet and gentle about Mrs. McFarlane, and the exile took almost as much pleasure in talking with her as with her daughter. He led her to tell of her early experiences in the valley, and of the strange types of men and women with whom she had crossed the range. "Some of them are here yet," she said. "In fact the most violent of all the opponents to the Service are these old adventurers. I don't think they deserve to be called pioneers. They never did any work in clearing the land or in building homes. Some of them, who own big herds of cattle, still live in dug-outs. They raged at Mr. McFarlane for going into the Service--called him a traitor. Old Jake Proudfoot was especially furious--" "You should see where old Jake lives," interrupted Berrie. "He sleeps on the floor in one corner of his cabin, and never changes his shirt." "Hush!" warned Mrs. McFarlane. "That's what the men all say. Daddy declares if they were to scrape Jake they'd find at least five layers of shirts. His wife left him fifteen years ago, couldn't stand his habits, and he's got worse ever since. Naturally he is opposed to the Service." "Of course," her mother explained, "those who oppose the Supervisor aren't all like Jake; but it makes me angry to have the papers all quoting Jake as 'one of the leading ranchers of the valley.'" She could not bring herself to take up the most vital subject of all--the question of her daughter's future. "I'll wait till father gets home," she decided. On the fourth morning the 'phone rang, and the squawking voice of Mrs. Belden came over the wire. "I wanted to know if Berrie and her feller got home all right?" "Yes, they arrived safely." The old woman chuckled. "Last I see of Cliff he was hot on their trail--looked like he expected to take a hand in that expedition. Did he overtake 'em?" "I don't hear very well--where are you?" "I'm at the Scott ranch--we're coming round 'the horn' to-day." "Where is the Supervisor?" "He headed across yesterday. Say, Cliff was mad as a hornet when he started. I'd like to know what happened--" Mrs. McFarlane hung up the receiver. The old woman's nasty chuckle was intolerable; but in silencing the 'phone Mrs. McFarlane was perfectly aware that she was not silencing the gossip; on the contrary, she was certain that the Beldens would leave a trail of poisonous comment from the Ptarmigan to Bear Tooth. It was all sweet material for them. Berrie wanted to know who was speaking, and Mrs. McFarlane replied: "Mrs. Belden wanted to know if you got through all right." "She said something else, something to heat you up," persisted the girl, who perceived her mother's agitation. "What did she say--something about me--and Cliff?" The mother did not answer, for Wayland entered the room at the moment; but Berrie knew that traducers were already busy with her affairs. "I don't care anything about old lady Belden," she said, later; "but I hate to have that Moore girl telling lies about me." As for Wayland, the nights in the camp by the lake, and, indeed, all the experiences of his trip in the high places were becoming each moment more remote, more unreal. Camp life at timber-line did not seem to him subject to ordinary conventional laws of human conduct, and the fact that he and Berrie had shared the same tent under the stress of cold and snow, now seemed so far away as to be only a complication in a splendid mountain drama. Surely no blame could attach to the frank and generous girl, even though the jealous assault of Cliff Belden should throw the valley into a fever of chatter. "Furthermore, I don't believe he will be in haste to speak of his share in the play," he added. "It was too nearly criminal." It was almost noon of the fourth day when the Supervisor called up to say that he was at the office, and would reach the ranch at six o'clock. "I wish you would come home at once," his wife argued; and something in her voice convinced him that he was more needed at home, than in the town. "All right, mother. Hold the fort an hour and I'll be there." Mrs. McFarlane met him at the hitching-bar, and it required but a glance for him to read in her face a troubled state of mind. "This has been a disastrous trip for Berrie," she said, after one of the hands had relieved the Supervisor of his horse. "In what way?" She was a bit impatient. "Mrs. Belden is filling the valley with the story of Berrie's stay in camp with Mr. Norcross." His face showed a graver line. "It couldn't be helped. The horses had to be followed, and that youngster couldn't do it--and, besides, I expected to get back that night. Nobody but an old snoop like Seth Belden would think evil of our girl. And, besides, Norcross is a man to be trusted." "Of course he is, but the Beldens are ready to think evil of any one connected with us. And Cliff's assault on Wayland--" He looked up quickly. "Assault? Did he make trouble?" "Yes, he overtook them on the trail, and would have killed Norcross if Berrie hadn't interfered. He was crazy with jealousy." "Nash didn't say anything about any assault." "He didn't know it. Berrie told him that Norcross fell from his horse." McFarlane was deeply stirred. "I saw Cliff leave camp, but I didn't think anything of it. Why should he jump Norcross?" "I suppose Mrs. Belden filled him with distrust of Berrie. He was already jealous, and when he came up with them and found them lunching together, he lost his head and rushed at Wayland like a wild beast. Of course he couldn't stand against a big man like Cliff, and his head struck on a stone; and if Berrie hadn't throttled the brute he would have murdered the poor boy right there before her eyes." "Good God! I never suspected a word of this. I didn't think he'd do that." The Supervisor was now very grave. These domestic matters at once threw his work as forester into the region of vague and unimportant abstractions. He began to understand the danger into which Berea had fallen, and step by step he took up the trails which had brought them all to this pass. He fixed another penetrating look upon her face, and his voice was vibrant with anxiety as he said: "You don't think there's anything--wrong?" "No, nothing wrong; but she's profoundly in love with him. I never have seen her so wrapped up in any one. She thinks of nothing else. It scares me to see it, for I've studied him closely and I can't believe he feels the same toward her. His world is so different from ours. I don't know what to do or say. I fear she is in for a period of great unhappiness." She was at the beginning of tears, and he sought to comfort her. "Don't worry, honey, she's got too much horse sense to do anything foolish. She's grown up. I suppose it's his being so different from the other boys that catches her. We've always been good chums--let me talk with her. She mustn't make a mistake." The return of the crew from the corral cut short this conference, and when McFarlane went in Berrie greeted him with such frank and joyous expression that all his fears vanished. "Did you come over the high trail?" she asked. "No, I came your way. I didn't want to take any chances on getting mired. It's still raining up there," he answered, then turned to Wayland: "Here's your mail, Norcross, a whole hatful of it--and one telegram in the bunch. Hope it isn't serious." Wayland took the bundle of letters and retired to his room, glad to escape the persistent stare of the cow-hands. The despatch was from his father, and was curt and specific as a command: "Shall be in Denver on the 23d, meet me at the Palmer House. Am on my way to California. Come prepared to join me on the trip." With the letters unopened in his lap he sat in silent thought, profoundly troubled by the instant decision which this message demanded of him. At first glance nothing was simpler than to pack up and go. He was only a tourist in the valley with no intention of staying; but there was Berea! To go meant a violent end of their pleasant romance. To think of flight saddened him, and yet his better judgment was clearly on the side of going. "Much as I like her, much as I admire her, I cannot marry her. The simplest way is to frankly tell her so and go. It seems cowardly, but in the end she will be happier." His letters carried him back into his own world. One was from Will Halliday, who was going with Professor Holsman on an exploring trip up the Nile. "You must join us. Holsman has promised to take you on." Another classmate wrote to know if he did not want to go into a land deal on the Gulf of Mexico. A girl asked: "Are you to be in New York this winter? I am. I've decided to go into this Suffrage Movement." And so, one by one, the threads which bound him to Eastern city life re-spun their filaments. After all, this Colorado outing, even though it should last two years, would only be a vacation--his real life was in the cities of the East. Charming as Berea was, potent as she seemed, she was after all a fixed part of the mountain land, and not to be taken from it. At the moment marriage with her appeared absurd. A knock at his door and the Supervisor's voice gave him a keen shock. "Come in," he called, springing to his feet with a thrill of dread, of alarm. McFarlane entered slowly and shut the door behind him. His manner was serious, and his voice gravely gentle as he said: "I hope that telegram does not call you away?" "It is from my father, asking me to meet him in Denver," answered Norcross, with faltering breath. "He's on his way to California. Won't you sit down?" The older man took a seat with quiet dignity. "Seems like a mighty fine chance, don't it? I've always wanted to see the Coast. When do you plan for to pull out?" Wayland was not deceived by the Supervisor's casual tone; there was something ominously calm in his manner, something which expressed an almost dangerous interest in the subject. "I haven't decided to go at all. I'm still dazed by the suddenness of it. I didn't know my father was planning this trip." "I see. Well, before you decide to go I'd like to have a little talk with you. My daughter has told me part of what happened to you on the trail. I want to know _all_ of it. You're young, but you've been out in the world, and you know what people can say about you and my girl." His voice became level and menacing, as he added: "And I don't intend to have her put in wrong on account of you." Norcross was quick to reply. "Nobody will dare accuse her of wrongdoing. She's a noble girl. No one will dare to criticize her for what she could not prevent." "You don't know the Beldens. My girl's character will be on trial in every house in the county to-morrow. The Belden side of it will appear in the city papers. Sympathy will be with Clifford. Berrie will be made an issue by my enemies. They'll get me through her." "Good Lord!" exclaimed Norcross, in sudden realization of the gravity of the case. "What beasts they are!" "Moore's gang will seize upon it and work it hard," McFarlane went on, with calm insistence. "They want to bring the district forester down on me. This is a fine chance to badger me. They will make a great deal of my putting you on the roll. Our little camping trip is likely to prove a serious matter to us all." "Surely you don't consider me at fault?" Worried as he was, the father was just. "No, you're not to blame--no one is to blame. It all dates back to the horses quitting camp; but you've got to stand pat now--for Berrie's sake." "But what can I do? I'm at your service. What rôle shall I play? Tell me what to do, and I will do it." McFarlane was staggered, but he answered: "You can at least stay on the ground and help fight. This is no time to stampede." "You're right. I'll stay, and I'll make any statement you see fit. I'll do anything that will protect Berrie." McFarlane again looked him squarely in the eyes. "Is there a--an agreement between you?" "Nothing formal--that is--I mean I admire her, and I told her--" He stopped, feeling himself on the verge of the irrevocable. "She's a splendid girl," he went on. "I like her exceedingly, but I've known her only a few weeks." McFarlane interrupted. "Girls are flighty critters," he said, sadly. "I don't know why she's taken to you so terrible strong; but she has. She don't seem to care what people say so long as they do not blame you; but if you should pull out you might just as well cut her heart to pieces--" His voice broke, and it was a long time before he could finish. "You're not at fault, I know that, but if you _can_ stay on a little while and make it an ounce or two easier for her and for her mother, I wish you'd do it." Wayland extended his hand impulsively. "Of course I'll stay. I never really thought of leaving." In the grip of McFarlane's hand was something warm and tender. He rose. "I'm terribly obliged," he said; "but we mustn't let her suspect for a minute that we've been discussing her. She hates being pitied or helped." "She shall not experience a moment's uneasiness that I can prevent," replied the youth; and at the moment he meant it. Berrie could not be entirely deceived. She read in her father's face a subtle change of line which she related to something Wayland had said. "Did he tell you what was in the telegram? Has he got to go away?" she asked, anxiously. "Yes, he said it was from his father." "What does his father want of him?" "He's on his way to California and wants Wayland to go with him; but Wayland says he's not going." A pang shot through Berrie's heart. "He mustn't go--he isn't able to go," she exclaimed, and her pain, her fear, came out in her sharpened, constricted tone. "I won't let him go--till he's well." Mrs. McFarlane gently interposed. "He'll have to go, honey, if his father needs him." "Let his father come here." She rose, and, going to his door, decisively knocked. "May I come in?" she demanded, rather than asked, before her mother could protest. "I must see you." Wayland opened the door, and she entered, leaving her parents facing each other in mute helplessness. Mrs. McFarlane turned toward her husband with a face of despair. "She's ours no longer, Joe. Our time of bereavement has come." He took her in his arms. "There, there, mother. Don't cry. It can't be helped. You cut loose from your parents and came to me in just the same way. Our daughter's a grown woman, and must have her own life. All we can do is to defend her against the coyotes who are busy with her name." "But what of _him_, Joe; he don't care for her as she does for him--can't you see that?" "He'll do the right thing, mother; he told me he would. He knows how much depends on his staying here now, and he intends to do it." "But in the end, Joe, after this scandal is lived down, can he--will he--marry her? And if he marries her can they live together and be happy? His way of life is so different. He can't content himself here, and she can't fit in where he belongs. It all seems hopeless to me. Wouldn't it be better for her to suffer for a little while now than to make a mistake that may last a lifetime?" "Mebbe it would, mother, but the decision is not ours. She's too strong for us to control. She's of age, and if she comes to a full understanding of the situation, she can decide the question a whole lot better than either of us." "That's true," she sighed. "In some ways she's bigger and stronger than both of us. Sometimes I wish she were not so self-reliant." "Well, that's the way life is, sometimes, and I reckon there's nothin' left for you an' me but to draw closer together and try to fill up the empty place she's going to leave between us." XIV THE SUMMONS When Wayland caught the startled look on Berrie's face he knew that she had learned from her father the contents of his telegram, and that she would require an explanation. "Are you going away?" she asked. "Yes. At least, I must go down to Denver to see my father. I shall be gone only over night." "And will you tell him about our trip?" she pursued, with unflinching directness. "And about--me?" He gave her a chair, and took a seat himself before replying. "Yes, I shall tell him all about it, and about you and your father and mother. He shall know how kind you've all been to me." He said this bravely, and at the moment he meant it; but as his father's big, impassive face and cold, keen eyes came back to him his courage sank, and in spite of his firm resolution some part of his secret anxiety communicated itself to the girl, who asked many questions, with intent to find out more particularly what kind of man the elder Norcross was. Wayland's replies did not entirely reassure her. He admitted that his father was harsh and domineering in character, and that he was ambitious to have his son take up and carry forward his work. "He was willing enough to have me go to college till he found I was specializing on wrong lines. Then I had to fight in order to keep my place. He's glad I'm out here, for he thinks I'm regaining my strength. But just as soon as I'm well enough he expects me to go to Chicago and take charge of the Western office. Of course, I don't want to do that. I'd rather work out some problem in chemistry that interests me; but I may have to give in, for a time at least." "Will your mother and sisters be with your father?" "No, indeed! You couldn't get any one of them west of the Hudson River with a log-chain. My sisters were both born in Michigan, but they want to forget it--they pretend they have forgotten it. They both have New-Yorkitis. Nothing but the Plaza will do them now." "I suppose they think we're all 'Injuns' out here?" "Oh no, not so bad as that; but they wouldn't comprehend anything about you except your muscle. That would catch 'em. They'd worship your splendid health, just as I do. It's pitiful the way they both try to put on weight. They're always testing some new food, some new tonic--they'll do anything except exercise regularly and go to bed at ten o'clock." All that he said of his family deepened her dismay. Their interests were so alien to her own. "I'm afraid to have you go even for a day," she admitted, with simple honesty, which moved him deeply. "I don't know what I should do if you went away. I think of nothing but you now." Her face was pitiful, and he put his arm about her neck as if she were a child. "You mustn't do that. You must go on with your life just as if I'd never been. Think of your father's job--of the forest and the ranch." "I can't do it. I've lost interest in the service. I never want to go into the high country again, and I don't want you to go, either. It's too savage and cruel." "That is only a mood," he said, confidently. "It is splendid up there. I shall certainly go back some time." He could not divine, and she could not tell him, how poignantly she had sensed the menace of the cold and darkness during his illness. For the first time in her life she had realized to the full the unrelenting enmity of the clouds, the wind, the night; and during that interminable ride toward home, when she saw him bending lower and lower over his saddle-bow, her allegiance to the trail, her devotion to the stirrup was broken. His weariness and pain had changed the universe for her. Never again would she look upon the range with the eyes of the care-free girl. The other, the civilized, the domestic, side of her was now dominant. A new desire, a bigger aspiration, had taken possession of her. Little by little he realized this change in her, and was touched with the wonder of it. He had never had any great self-love either as man or scholar, and the thought of this fine, self-sufficient womanly soul centering all its interests on him was humbling. Each moment his responsibility deepened, and he heard her voice but dimly as she went on. "Of course we are not rich; but we are not poor, and my mother's family is one of the oldest in Kentucky." She uttered this with a touch of her mother's quiet dignity. "Your father need not despise us." "So far as my father is concerned, family don't count, and neither does money. But he confidently expects me to take up his business in Chicago, and I suppose it is my duty to do so. If he finds me looking fit he may order me into the ranks at once." "I'll go there--I'll do anything you want me to do," she urged. "You can tell your father that I'll help you in the office. I can learn. I'm ready to use a typewriter--anything." He was silent in the face of her naïve expression of self-sacrificing love, and after a moment she added, hesitatingly: "I wish I could meet your father. Perhaps he'd come up here if you asked him to do so?" He seized upon the suggestion. "By George! I believe he would. I don't want to go to town. I just believe I'll wire him that I'm laid up here and can't come." Then a shade of new trouble came over his face. How would the stern, methodical old business man regard this slovenly ranch and its primitive ways? She felt the question in his face. "You're afraid to have him come," she said, with the same disconcerting penetration which had marked every moment of her interview thus far. "You're afraid he wouldn't like me?" With almost equal frankness he replied: "No. I think he'd like _you_, but this town and the people up here would gall him. Order is a religion with him. Then he's got a vicious slant against all this conservation business--calls it tommy-rot. He and your father might lock horns first crack out of the box. But I'll risk it. I'll wire him at once." A knock at the door interrupted him, and Mrs. McFarlane's voice, filled with new excitement, called out: "Berrie, the District office is on the wire." Berrie opened the door and confronted her mother, who said: "Mr. Evingham 'phones that the afternoon papers contain an account of a fight at Coal City between Settle and one of Alec Belden's men, and that the District Forester is coming down to investigate it." "Let him come," answered Berrie, defiantly. "He can't do us any harm. What was the row about?" "I didn't hear much of it. Your father was at the 'phone." McFarlane, with the receiver to his ear, was saying: "Don't know a thing about it, Mr. Evingham. Settle was at the station when I left. I didn't know he was going down to Coal City. No, that's a mistake. My daughter was never engaged to Alec Belden. Alec Belden is the older of the brothers, and is married. I can't go into that just now. If you come down I'll explain fully." He hung up the receiver and slowly turned toward his wife and daughter. "This sure is our day of trouble," he said, with dejected countenance. "What is it all about?" asked Berrie. "Why, it seems that after I left yesterday Settle rode down the valley with Belden's outfit, and they all got to drinking, ending in a row, and Tony beat one of Belden's men almost to death. The sheriff has gone over to get Tony, and the Beldens declare they're going to railroad him. That means we'll all be brought into it. Belden has seized the moment to prefer charges against me for keeping Settle in the service and for putting a non-resident on the roll as guard. The whelp will dig up everything he can to queer me with the office. All that kept him from doing it before was Cliff's interest in you." "He can't make any of his charges stick," declared Berrie. "Of course he can't. He knows that. But he can bring us all into court. You and Mr. Norcross will both be called as witnesses, for it seems that Tony was defending your name. The papers call it 'a fight for a girl.' Oh, it's a sweet mess." For the first time Berrie betrayed alarm. "What shall we do? I can't go on the stand! They can't make me do that, can they?" She turned to Wayland. "Now you _must_ go away. It is a shame to have you mixed up in such a trial." "I shall not run away and leave you and the Supervisor to bear all the burden of this fight." He anticipated in imagination--as they all did--some of the consequences of this trial. The entire story of the camping trip would be dragged in, distorted into a scandal, and flashed over the country as a disgraceful episode. The country would ring with laughter and coarse jest. Berrie's testimony would be a feast for court-room loafers. "There's only one thing to do," said McFarlane, after a few moments of thought. "You and Berrie and Mrs. McFarlane must get out of here before you are subpoenaed." "And leave you to fight it out alone?" exclaimed his wife. "I shall do nothing of the kind. Berrie and Mr. Norcross can go." "That won't do," retorted McFarlane, quickly. "That won't do at all. You must go with them. I can take care of myself. I will not have you dragged into this muck-hole. We've got to think quick and act quick. There won't be any delay about their side of the game. I don't think they'll do anything to-day; but you've got to fade out of the valley. You all get ready and I'll have one of the boys hook up the surrey as if for a little drive, and you can pull out over the old stage-road to Flume and catch the narrow-gage morning train for Denver. You've been wanting for some time to go down the line. Now here's a good time to start." Berrie now argued against running away. Her blood was up. She joined her mother. "We won't leave you to inherit all this trouble. Who will look after the ranch? Who will keep house for you?" McFarlane remained firm. "I'll manage. Don't worry about me. Just get out of reach. The more I consider this thing, the more worrisome it gets. Suppose Cliff should come back to testify?" "He won't. If he does I'll have him arrested for trying to kill Wayland," retorted Berrie. "And make the whole thing worse! No. You are all going to cross the range. You can start out as if for a little turn round the valley, and just naturally keep going. It can't do any harm, and it may save a nasty time in court." "One would think we were a lot of criminals," remarked Wayland. "That's the way you'll be treated," retorted McFarlane. "Belden has retained old Whitby, the foulest old brute in the business, and he'll bring you all into it if he can." "But running away from it will not prevent talk," argued his wife. "Not entirely; but talk and testimony are two different things. Suppose they call daughter to the stand? Do you want her cross-examined as to what basis there was for this gossip? They know something of Cliff's being let out, and that will inflame them. He may be at the mill this minute." "I guess you're right," said Norcross, sadly. "Our delightful excursion into the forest has led us into a predicament from which there is only one way of escape, and that is flight." Back of all this talk, this argument, there remained still unanswered the most vital, most important question: "Shall I speak of marriage at this time? Would it be a source of comfort to them as well as a joy to her?" At the moment he was ready to speak, for he felt himself to be the direct cause of all their embarrassment. But closer thought made it clear that a hasty ceremony would only be considered a cloak to cover something illicit. "I'll leave it to the future," he decided. McFarlane was again called to the telephone. Landon, with characteristic brevity, conveyed to him the fact that Mrs. Belden was at home and busily 'phoning scandalous stories about the country. "If you don't stop her she's going to poison every ear in the valley," ended the ranger. "You'd think they'd all know my daughter well enough not to believe anything Mrs. Belden says," responded McFarlane, bitterly. "All the boys are ready to do what Tony did. But nobody can stop this old fool's mouth but you. Cliff has disappeared, and that adds to the excitement." "Thank the boys for me," said McFarlane, "and tell them not to fight. Tell 'em to keep cool. It will all be cleared up soon." As McFarlane went out to order the horses hooked up, Wayland followed him as far as the bars. "I'm conscience-smitten over this thing, Supervisor, for I am aware that I am the cause of all your trouble." "Don't let that worry you," responded the older man. But he spoke with effort. "It can't be helped. It was all unavoidable." "The most appalling thing to me is the fact that not even your daughter's popularity can neutralize the gossip of a woman like Mrs. Belden. My being an outsider counts against Berrie, and I'm ready to do anything--anything," he repeated, earnestly. "I love your daughter, Mr. McFarlane, and I'm ready to marry her at once if you think best. She's a noble girl, and I cannot bear to be the cause of her calumniation." There was mist in the Supervisor's eyes as he turned them on the young man. "I'm right glad to hear you say that, my boy." He reached out his hand, and Wayland took it. "I knew you'd say the word when the time came. I didn't know how strongly she felt toward you till to-day. I knew she liked you, of course, for she said so, but I didn't know that she had plum set her heart on you. I didn't expect her to marry a city man; but--I like you and--well, she's the doctor! What suits her suits me. Don't you be afraid of her not meeting all comers." He went on after a pause, "She's never seen much of city life, but she'll hold her own anywhere, you can gamble on that." "She has wonderful adaptability, I know," answered Wayland, slowly. "But I don't like to take her away from here--from you." "If you hadn't come she would have married Cliff--and what kind of a life would she have led with him?" demanded McFarlane. "I knew Cliff was rough, but I couldn't convince her that he was cheap. I live only for her happiness, my boy, and, though I know you will take her away from me, I believe you can make her happy, and so--I give her over to you. As to time and place, arrange that--with--her mother." He turned and walked away, unable to utter another word. Wayland's throat was aching also, and he went back into the house with a sense of responsibility which exalted him into sturdier manhood. Berea met him in a pretty gown, a dress he had never seen her wear, a costume which transformed her into something entirely feminine. She seemed to have put away the self-reliant manner of the trail, and in its stead presented the lambent gaze, the tremulous lips of the bride. As he looked at her thus transfigured his heart cast out its hesitancy and he entered upon his new adventure without further question or regret. XV A MATTER OF MILLINERY It was three o'clock of a fine, clear, golden afternoon as they said good-by to McFarlane and started eastward, as if for a little drive. Berrie held the reins in spite of Wayland's protestations. "These bronchos are only about half busted," she said. "They need watching. I know them better than you do." Therefore he submitted, well knowing that she was entirely competent and fully informed. Mrs. McFarlane, while looking back at her husband, sadly exclaimed: "I feel like a coward running away like this." "Forget it, mother," commanded her daughter, cheerily. "Just imagine we're off for a short vacation. I'm for going clear through to Chicago. So long as we _must_ go, let's go whooping. Father's better off without us." Her voice was gay, her eyes shining, and Wayland saw her as she had been that first day in the coach--the care-free, laughing girl. The trouble they were fleeing from was less real to her than the happiness toward which she rode. Her hand on the reins, her foot on the brake, brought back her confidence; but Wayland did not feel so sure of his part in the adventure. She seemed so unalterably a part of this life, so fitted to this landscape, that the thought of transplanting her to the East brought uneasiness and question. Could such a creature of the open air be content with the walls of a city? For several miles the road ran over the level floor of the valley, and she urged the team to full speed. "I don't want to meet anybody if I can help it. Once we reach the old stage route the chances of being scouted are few. Nobody uses that road since the broad-gauge reached Cragg's." Mrs. McFarlane could not rid herself of the resentment with which she suffered this enforced departure; but she had small opportunity to protest, for the wagon bumped and clattered over the stony stretches with a motion which confused as well as silenced her. It was all so humiliating, so unlike the position which she had imagined herself to have attained in the eyes of her neighbors. Furthermore, she was going away without a trunk, with only one small bag for herself and Berrie--running away like a criminal from an intangible foe. However, she was somewhat comforted by the gaiety of the young people before her. They were indeed jocund as jaybirds. With the resiliency of youth they had accepted the situation, and were making the best of it. "Here comes somebody," called Berrie, pulling her ponies to a walk. "Throw a blanket over that valise." She was chuckling as if it were all a good joke. "It's old Jake Proudfoot. I can smell him. Now hang on. I'm going to pass him on the jump." Wayland, who was riding with his hat in his hand because he could not make it cover his bump, held it up as if to keep the wind from his face, and so defeated the round-eyed, owl-like stare of the inquisitive rancher, who brought his team to a full stop in order to peer after them, muttering in a stupor of resentment and surprise. "He'll worry himself sick over us," predicted Berrie. "He'll wonder where we're going and what was under that blanket till the end of summer. He is as curious as a fool hen." A few minutes more and they were at the fork in the way, and, leaving the trail to Cragg's, the girl pulled into the grass-grown, less-traveled trail to the south, which entered the timber at this point and began to climb with steady grade. Letting the reins fall slack, she turned to her mother with reassuring words. "There! Now we're safe. We won't meet anybody on this road except possibly a mover's outfit. We're in the forest again," she added. For two hours they crawled slowly upward, with a roaring stream on one side and the pine-covered slopes on the other. Jays and camp-birds called from the trees. Water-robins fluttered from rock to rock in the foaming flood. Squirrels and minute chipmunks raced across the fallen tree-trunks or clattered from great boulders, and in the peace and order and beauty of the forest they all recovered a serener outlook on the noisome tumult they were leaving behind them. Invisible as well as inaudible, the serpent of slander lost its terror. Once, as they paused to rest the horses, Wayland said: "It is hard to realize that down in that ethereal valley people like old Jake and Mrs. Belden have their dwelling-place." This moved Mrs. McFarlane to admit that it might all turn out a blessing in disguise. "Mr. McFarlane may resign and move to Denver, as I've long wanted him to do." "I wish he would," exclaimed Berrie, fervently. "It's time you had a rest. Daddy will hate to quit under fire, but he'd better do it." Peak by peak the Bear Tooth Range rose behind them, while before them the smooth, grassy slopes of the pass told that they were nearing timber-line. The air was chill, the sun was hidden by old Solidor, and the stream had diminished to a silent rill winding among sear grass and yellowed willows. The valley behind them was vague with mist. The southern boundary of the forest was in sight. At last the topmost looming crags of the Continental Divide cut the sky-line, and then in the smooth hollow between two rounded grassy summits Berrie halted, and they all silently contemplated the two worlds. To the west and north lay an endless spread of mountains, wave on wave, snow-lined, savage, sullen in the dying light; while to the east and southeast the foot-hills faded into the plain, whose dim cities, insubstantial as flecks in a veil of violet mist, were hardly distinguishable without the aid of glasses. To the girl there was something splendid, something heroical in that majestic, menacing landscape to the west. In one of its folds she had begun her life. In another she had grown to womanhood and self-confident power. The rough men, the coarse, ungainly women of that land seemed less hateful now that she was leaving them, perhaps forever, and a confused memory of the many splendid dawns and purple sunsets she had loved filled her thought. Wayland, divining some part of what was moving in her mind, cheerily remarked, "Yes, it's a splendid place for a summer vacation, but a stern place in winter-time, and for a lifelong residence it is not inspiring." Mrs. McFarlane agreed with him in this estimate. "It _is_ terribly lonesome in there at times. I've had enough of it. I'm ready for the comforts of civilization." Berrie turned in her seat, and was about to take up the reins when Wayland asserted himself. "Wait a moment. Here's where my dominion begins. Here's where you change seats with me. I am the driver now." She looked at him with questioning, smiling glance. "Can you drive? It's all the way down-hill--and steep?" "If I can't I'll ask your aid. I'm old enough to remember the family carriage. I've even driven a four-in-hand." She surrendered her seat doubtfully, and smiled to see him take up the reins as if he were starting a four-horse coach. He proved adequate and careful, and she was proud of him as, with foot on the brake and the bronchos well in hand, he swung down the long looping road to the railway. She was pleased, too, by his care of the weary animals, easing them down the steepest slopes and sending them along on the comparatively level spots. Their descent was rapid, but it was long after dark before they reached Flume, which lay up the valley to the right. It was a poor little decaying mining-town set against the hillside, and had but one hotel, a sun-warped and sagging pine building just above the station. "Not much like the Profile House," said Wayland, as he drew up to the porch. "But I see no choice." "There isn't any," Berrie assured him. "Well, now," he went on, "I am in command of this expedition. From this on I lead this outfit. When it comes to hotels, railways, and the like o' that, I'm head ranger." Mrs. McFarlane, tired, hungry, and a little dismayed, accepted his control gladly; but Berrie could not at once slip aside her responsibility. "Tell the hostler--" "Not a word!" commanded Norcross; and the girl with a smile submitted to his guidance, and thereafter his efficiency, his self-possession, his tact delighted her. He persuaded the sullen landlady to get them supper. He secured the best rooms in the house, and arranged for the care of the team, and when they were all seated around the dim, fly-specked oil-lamp at the end of the crumby dining-room table he discovered such a gay and confident mien that the women looked at each other in surprise. Berrie was correspondingly less masculine. In drawing off her buckskin driving-gloves she had put away the cowgirl, and was silent, a little sad even, in the midst of her enjoyment of his dictatorship. And when he said, "If my father reaches Denver in time I want you to meet him," she looked the dismay she felt. "I'll do it--but I'm scared of him." "You needn't be. I'll see him first and draw his fire." Mrs. McFarlane interposed. "We must do a little shopping first. We can't meet your father as we are." "Very well. I'll go with you if you'll let me. I'm a great little shopper. I have infallible taste, so my sisters say. If it's a case of buying new hats, for instance, I'm the final authority with them." This amused Berrie, but her mother took it seriously. "Of course, I'm anxious to have my daughter make the best possible impression." "Very well. It is arranged. We get in, I find, about noon. We'll go straight to the biggest shop in town. If we work with speed we'll be able to lunch with my father. He'll be at the Palmer House at one." Berrie said nothing, either in acceptance or rejection of his plan. Her mind was concerned with new conceptions, new relationships, and when in the hall he took her face between his hands and said, "Cheer up! All is not lost," she put her arms about his neck and laid her cheek against his breast to hide her tears. "Oh, Wayland! I'm such an idiot in the city. I'm afraid your father will despise me." What he said was not very cogent, and not in the least literary, but it was reassuring and lover-like, and when he turned her over to her mother she was composed, though unwontedly grave. She woke to a new life next morning--a life of compliance, of following, of dependence upon the judgment of another. She stood in silence while her lover paid the bills, bought the tickets, and telegraphed their coming to his father. She acquiesced when he prevented her mother from telephoning to the ranch. She complied when he countermanded her order to have the team sent back at once. His judgment ruled, and she enjoyed her sudden freedom from responsibility. It was novel, and it was very sweet to think that she was being cared for as she had cared for and shielded him in the world of the trail. In the little railway-coach, which held a score of passengers, she found herself among some Eastern travelers who had taken the trip up the Valley of the Flume in the full belief that they were piercing the heart of the Rocky Mountains! It amused Wayland almost as much as it amused Berrie when one man said to his wife: "Well, I'm glad we've seen the Rockies." "He really believes it!" exclaimed Norcross. After an hour's ride Wayland tactfully withdrew, leaving mother and daughter to discuss clothes undisturbed by his presence. "We must look our best, honey," said Mrs. McFarlane. "We will go right to Mme. Crosby at Battle's, and she'll fit us out. I wish we had more time; but we haven't, so we must do the best we can." "I want Wayland to choose my hat and traveling-suit," replied Berrie. "Of course. But you've got to have a lot of other things besides." And they bent to the joyous work of making out a list of goods to be purchased as soon as they reached Chicago. Wayland came back with a Denver paper in his hand and a look of disgust on his face. "It's all in here--at least, the outlines of it." Berrie took the journal, and there read the details of Settle's assault upon the foreman. "The fight arose from a remark concerning the Forest Supervisor's daughter. Ranger Settle resented the gossip, and fell upon the other man, beating him with the butt of his revolver. Friends of the foreman claim that the ranger is a drunken bully, and should have been discharged long ago. The Supervisor for some mysterious reason retains this man, although he is an incompetent. It is also claimed that McFarlane put a man on the roll without examination." The Supervisor was the protagonist of the play, which was plainly political. The attack upon him was bitter and unjust, and Mrs. McFarlane again declared her intention of returning to help him in his fight. However, Wayland again proved to her that her presence would only embarrass the Supervisor. "You would not aid him in the slightest degree. Nash and Landon are with him, and will refute all these charges." This newspaper story took the light out of their day and the smile from Berrie's lips, and the women entered the city silent and distressed in spite of the efforts of their young guide. The nearer the girl came to the ordeal of facing the elder Norcross, the more she feared the outcome; but Wayland kept his air of easy confidence, and drove them directly to the shopping center, believing that under the influence of hats and gloves they would regain their customary cheer. In this he was largely justified. They had a delightful hour trying on millinery and coats and gloves. The forewoman, who knew Mrs. McFarlane, gladly accepted her commission, and, while suspecting the tender relationship between the girl and the man, she was tactful enough to conceal her suspicion. "The gentleman is right; you carry simple things best," she remarked to Berrie, thus showing her own good judgment. "Smartly tailored gray or blue suits are your style." Silent, blushing, tousled by the hands of her decorators, Berrie permitted hats to be perched on her head and jackets buttoned and unbuttoned about her shoulders till she felt like a worn clothes-horse. Wayland beamed with delight, but she was far less satisfied than he; and when at last selection was made, she still had her doubts, not of the clothes, but of her ability to wear them. They seemed so alien to her, so restrictive and enslaving. "You're an easy fitter," said the saleswoman. "But"--here she lowered her voice--"you need a new corset. This old one is out of date. Nobody is wearing hips now." Thereupon Berrie meekly permitted herself to be led away to a torture-room. Wayland waited patiently, and when she reappeared all traces of Bear Tooth Forest had vanished. In a neat tailored suit and a very "chic" hat, with shoes, gloves, and stockings to match, she was so transformed, so charmingly girlish in her self-conscious glory, that he was tempted to embrace her in the presence of the saleswoman. But he didn't. He merely said: "I see the governor's finish! Let's go to lunch. You are stunning!" "I don't know myself," responded Berrie. "The only thing that feels natural is my hand. They cinched me so tight I can't eat a thing, and my shoes hurt." She laughed as she said this, for her use of the vernacular was conscious. "I'm a fraud. Your father will spot my brand first shot. Look at my face--red as a saddle!" "Don't let that trouble you. This is the time of year when tan is fashionable. Don't you be afraid of the governor. Just smile at him, give him your grip, and he'll melt." "I'm the one to melt. I'm beginning now." "I know how you feel, but you'll get used to the conventional boiler-plate and all the rest of it. We all groan and growl when we come back to it each autumn; but it's a part of being civilized, and we submit." Notwithstanding his confident advice, Wayland led the two silent and inwardly dismayed women into the showy café of the hotel with some degree of personal apprehension concerning the approaching interview with his father. Of course, he did not permit this to appear in the slightest degree. On the contrary, he gaily ordered a choice lunch, and did his best to keep his companions from sinking into deeper depression. It pleased him to observe the admiring glances which were turned upon Berrie, whose hat became her mightily, and, leaning over, he said in a low voice to Mrs. McFarlane: "Who is the lovely young lady opposite? Won't you introduce me?" This rejoiced the mother almost as much as it pleased the daughter, and she answered, "She looks like one of the Radburns of Lexington, but I think she's from Louisville." This little play being over, he said, "Now, while our order is coming I'll run out to the desk and see if the governor has come in or not." XVI THE PRIVATE CAR After he went away Berrie turned to her mother with a look in which humor and awe were blent. "Am I dreaming, mother, or am I actually sitting here in the city? My head is dizzy with it all." Then, without waiting for an answer, she fervently added: "Isn't he fine! I'm the tenderfoot now. I hope his father won't despise me." With justifiable pride in her child, the mother replied: "He can't help liking you, honey. You look exactly like your grandmother at this moment. Meet Mr. Norcross in her spirit." "I'll try; but I feel like a woodchuck out of his hole." Mrs. McFarlane continued: "I'm glad we were forced out of the valley. You might have been shut in there all your life as I have been with your father." "You don't blame father, do you?" "Not entirely. And yet he always was rather easy-going, and you know how untidy the ranch is. He's always been kindness and sympathy itself; but his lack of order is a cross. Perhaps now he will resign, rent the ranch, and move over here. I should like to live in the city for a while, and I'd like to travel a little." "Wouldn't it be fine if you could! You could live at this hotel if you wanted to. Yes, you're right. You need a rest from the ranch and dish-washing." Wayland returned with an increase of tension in his face. "He's here! I've sent word saying, 'I am lunching in the café with ladies.' I think he'll come round. But don't be afraid of him. He's a good deal rougher on the outside than he is at heart. Of course, he's a bluff old business man, and not at all pretty, and he'll transfix you with a kind of estimating glare as if you were a tree; but he's actually very easy to manage if you know how to handle him. Now, I'm not going to try to explain everything to him at the beginning. I'm going to introduce him to you in a casual kind of way and give him time to take to you both. He forms his likes and dislikes very quickly." "What if he don't like us?" inquired Berrie, with troubled brow. "He can't help it." His tone was so positive that her eyes misted with happiness. "But here comes our food. I hope you aren't too nervous to eat. Here is where I shine as provider. This is the kind of camp fare I can recommend." Berrie's healthy appetite rose above her apprehension, and she ate with the keen enjoyment of a child, and her mother said, "It surely is a treat to get a chance at somebody else's cooking." "Don't you slander your home fare," warned Wayland. "It's as good as this, only different." He sat where he could watch the door, and despite his jocund pose his eyes expressed growing impatience and some anxiety. They were all well into their dessert before he called out: "Here he is!" Mrs. McFarlane could not see the new-comer from where she sat, but Berrie rose in great excitement as a heavy-set, full-faced man with short, gray mustache and high, smooth brow entered the room. He did not smile as he greeted his son, and his penetrating glance questioned even before he spoke. He seemed to silently ask: "Well, what's all this? How do you happen to be here? Who are these women?" Wayland said: "Mrs. McFarlane, this is my father. Father, this is Miss Berea McFarlane, of Bear Tooth Springs." The elder Norcross shook hands with Mrs. McFarlane politely, coldly; but he betrayed surprise as Berea took his fingers in her grip. At his son's solicitation he accepted a seat opposite Berea, but refused dessert. Wayland explained: "Mrs. McFarlane and her daughter quite saved my life over in the valley. Their ranch is the best health resort in Colorado." "Your complexion indicates that," his father responded, dryly. "You look something the way a man of your age ought to look. I needn't ask how you're feeling." "You needn't, but you may. I'm feeling like a new fiddle--barring a bruise at the back of my head, which makes a 'hard hat' a burden. I may as well tell you first off that Mrs. McFarlane is the wife of the Forest Supervisor at Bear Tooth, and Miss Berea is the able assistant of her father. We are all rank conservationists." Norcross, Senior, examined Berrie precisely as if his eyes were a couple of X-ray tubes, and as she flushed under his slow scrutiny he said: "I was not expecting to find the Forest Service in such hands." Wayland laughed. "I hope you didn't mash his fingers, Berrie." She smiled guiltily. "I'm afraid I did. I hope I didn't hurt you--sometimes I forget." Norcross, Senior, was waking up. "You have a most extraordinary grip. What did it? Piano practice?" Wayland grinned. "Piano! No--the cinch." "The what?" Wayland explained. "Miss McFarlane was brought up on a ranch. She can rope and tie a steer, saddle her own horse, pack an outfit, and all the rest of it." "Oh! Kind of cowgirl, eh?" Mrs. McFarlane, eager to put Berrie's better part forward, explained: "She's our only child, Mr. Norcross, and as such has been a constant companion to her father. She's not all cow-hand. She's been to school, and she can cook and sew as well." He looked from one to the other. "Neither of you correspond exactly to my notions of a forester's wife and daughter." "Mrs. McFarlane comes from an old Kentucky family, father. Her grandfather helped to found a college down there." Wayland's anxious desire to create a favorable impression of the women did not escape the lumberman, but his face remained quite expressionless as he replied: "If the life of a cow-hand would give you the vigor this young lady appears to possess, I'm not sure but you'd better stick to it." Wayland and the two women exchanged glances of relief. "Why not tell him now?" they seemed to ask. But he said: "There's a long story to tell before we decide on my career. Let's finish our lunch. How is mother, and how are the girls?" Once, in the midst of a lame pursuit of other topics, the elder Norcross again fixed his eyes on Berea, saying: "I wish my girls had your weight and color." He paused a moment, then resumed with weary infliction: "Mrs. Norcross has always been delicate, and all her children--even her son--take after her. I've maintained a private and very expensive hospital for nearly thirty years." This regretful note in his father's voice gave Wayland confidence. His spirits rose. "Come, let's adjourn to the parlor and talk things over at our ease." They all followed him, and after showing the mother and daughter to their seats near a window he drew his father into a corner, and in rapid undertone related the story of his first meeting with Berrie, of his trouble with young Belden, of his camping trip, minutely describing the encounter on the mountainside, and ended by saying, with manly directness: "I would be up there in the mountains in a box if Berrie had not intervened. She's a noble girl, father, and is foolish enough to like me, and I'm going to marry her and try to make her happy." The old lumberman, who had listened intently all through this impassioned story, displayed no sign of surprise at its closing declaration; but his eyes explored his son's soul with calm abstraction. "Send her over to me," he said, at last. "Marriage is a serious matter. I want to talk with her--alone." Wayland went back to the women with an air of victory. "He wants to see you, Berrie. He's mellowing. Don't be afraid of him." She might have resented the father's lack of gallantry; but she did not. On the contrary, she rose and walked resolutely over to where he sat, quite ready to defend herself. He did not rise to meet her, but she did not count that against him, for there was nothing essentially rude in his manner. He was merely her elder, and inert. "Sit down," he said, not unkindly. "I want to have _you_ tell me about my son. He has been telling me all about you. Now let's have your side of the story." She took a seat and faced him with eyes as steady as his own. "Where shall I begin?" she bluntly challenged. "He wants to marry you. Now, it seems to me that seven weeks is very short acquaintance for a decision like that. Are you sure you want him?" "Yes, sir; I am." Her answer was most decided. His voice was slightly cynical as he went on. "But you were tolerably sure about that other fellow--that rancher with the fancy name--weren't you?" She flushed at this, but waited for him to go on. "Don't you think it possible that your fancy for Wayland is also temporary?" "No, sir!" she bravely declared. "I never felt toward any one the way I do toward Wayland. He's different. I shall _never_ change toward him." Her tone, her expression of eyes stopped this line of inquiry. He took up another. "Now, my dear young lady, I am a business man as well as a father, and the marriage of my son is a weighty matter. He is my main dependence. I am hoping to have him take up and carry on my business. To be quite candid, I didn't expect him to select his wife from a Colorado ranch. I considered him out of the danger-zone. I have always understood that women were scarce in the mountains. Now don't misunderstand me. I'm not one of those fools who are always trying to marry their sons and daughters into the ranks of the idle rich. I don't care a hang about social position, and I've got money enough for my son and my son's wife. But he's all the boy I have, and I don't want him to make a mistake." "Neither do I," she answered, simply, her eyes suffused with tears. "If I thought he would be sorry--" He interrupted again. "Oh, you can't tell that now. Any marriage is a risk. I don't say he's making a mistake in selecting you. You may be just the woman he needs. Only I want to be consulted. I want to know more about you. He tells me you have taken an active part in the management of the ranch and the forest. Is that true?" "I've always worked with my father--yes, sir." "You like that kind of life?" "I don't know much about any other kind. Yes, I like it. But I've had enough of it. I'm willing to change." "Well, how about city life--housekeeping and all that?" "So long as I am with Wayland I sha'n't mind what I do or where I live." "At the same time you figure he's going to have a large income, I suppose? He's told you of his rich father, hasn't he?" Berrie's tone was a shade resentful of his insinuation. "He has never said much about his family one way or another. He only said you wanted him to go into business in Chicago, and that he wanted to do something else. Of course, I could see by his ways and the clothes he wore that he'd been brought up in what we'd call luxury, but we never inquired into his affairs." "And you didn't care?" "Well, not that, exactly. But money don't count for as much with us in the valley as it does in the East. Wayland seemed so kind of sick and lonesome, and I felt sorry for him the first time I saw him. I felt like mothering him. And then his way of talking, of looking at things was so new and beautiful to me I couldn't help caring for him. I had never met any one like him. I thought he was a 'lunger'--" "A what?" "A consumptive; that is, I did at first. And it bothered me. It seemed terrible that any one so fine should be condemned like that--and so--I did all I could to help him, to make him happy. I thought he hadn't long to live. Everything he said and did was wonderful to me, like poetry and music. And then when he began to grow stronger and I saw that he was going to get well, and Cliff went on the rampage and showed the yellow streak, and I gave him back his ring--I didn't know even then how much Wayland meant to me. But on our trip over the Range I understood. He meant everything to me. He made Cliff seem like a savage, and I wanted him to know it. I'm not ashamed of loving him. I want to make him happy, and if he wishes me to be his wife I'll go anywhere he says--only I think he should stay out here till he gets entirely well." The old man's eyes softened during her plea, and at its close a slight smile moved the corners of his mouth. "You've thought it all out, I see. Your mind is clear and your conscience easy. Well, I like your spirit. I guess he's right. The decision is up to you. But if he takes you and stays in Colorado he can't expect me to share the profits of my business with him, can he? He'll have to make his own way." He rose and held out his hand. "However, I'm persuaded he's in good hands." She took his hand, not knowing just what to reply. He examined her fingers with intent gaze. "I didn't know any woman could have such a grip." He thoughtfully took her biceps in his left hand. "You are magnificent." Then, in ironical protest, he added: "Good God, no! I can't have you come into my family. You'd make caricatures of my wife and daughters. Are all the girls out in the valley like you?" She laughed. "No. Most of them pride themselves on _not_ being horsewomen. Mighty few of 'em ever ride a horse. I'm a kind of a tomboy to them." "I'm sorry to hear that. It's the same old story. I suppose they'd all like to live in the city and wear low-necked gowns and high-heeled shoes. No, I can't consent to your marriage with my son. I must save you from corruption. Go back to the ranch. I can see already signs of your deterioration. Except for your color and that grip you already look like upper Broadway. The next thing will be a slit skirt and a diamond garter." She flushed redly, conscious of her new corset, her silk stockings, and her pinching shoes. "It's all on the outside," she declared. "Under this toggery I'm the same old trailer. It don't take long to get rid of these things. I'm just playing a part to-day--for you." He smiled and dropped her hand. "No, no. You've said good-by to the cinch, I can see that. You're on the road to opera boxes and limousines. What is your plan? What would you advise Wayland to do if you knew I was hard against his marrying you? Come, now, I can see you're a clear-sighted individual. What can he do to earn a living? How will you live without my aid? Have you figured on these things?" "Yes; I'm going to ask my father to buy a ranch near here, where mother can have more of the comforts of life, and where we can all live together till Wayland is able to stand city life again. Then, if you want him to go East, I will go with him." They had moved slowly back toward the others, and as Wayland came to meet them Norcross said, with dry humor: "I admire your lady of the cinch hand. She seems to be a person of singular good nature and most uncommon shrewd--" Wayland, interrupting, caught at his father's hand and wrung it frenziedly. "I'm glad--" "Here! Here!" A look of pain covered the father's face. "That's the fist she put in the press." They all laughed at his joke, and then he gravely resumed. "I say I admire her, but it's a shame to ask such a girl to marry an invalid like you. Furthermore, I won't have her taken East. She'd bleach out and lose that grip in a year. I won't have her contaminated by the city." He mused deeply while looking at his son. "Would life on a wheat-ranch accessible to this hotel by motor-car be endurable to you?" "You mean with Berea?" "If she'll go. Mind you, I don't advise her to do it!" he added, interrupting his son's outcry. "I think she's taking all the chances." He turned to Mrs. McFarlane. "I'm old-fashioned in my notions of marriage, Mrs. McFarlane. I grew up when women were helpmates, such as, I judge, you've been. Of course, it's all guesswork to me at the moment; but I have an impression that my son has fallen into an unusual run of luck. As I understand it, you're all out for a pleasure trip. Now, my private car is over in the yards, and I suggest you all come along with me to California--" "Governor, you're a wonder!" exclaimed Wayland. "That'll give us time to get better acquainted, and if we all like one another just as well when we get back--well, we'll buy the best farm in the North Platte and--" "It's a cinch we get that ranch," interrupted Wayland, with a triumphant glance at Berea. "Don't be so sure of it!" replied the lumberman. "A private car, like a yacht, is a terrible test of friendship." But his warning held no terrors for the young lovers. They had entered upon certainties. THE END 
25973	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 25973-h.htm or 25973-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/5/9/7/25973/25973-h/25973-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/5/9/7/25973/25973-h.zip) Transcriber's note: Text enclosed between equal signs was in bold face in the original (=bold face=). BIRDS OF THE ROCKIES by LEANDER S. KEYSER Author of "In Bird Land," Etc. With Eight Full-page Plates (four in color) by LOUIS AGASSIZ FUERTES; Many Illustrations in the Text by BRUCE HORSFALL, and Eight Views of Localities from Photographs With a Complete Check-List of Colorado Birds [Illustration: PLATE I WILLIAMSON'S SAPSUCKER _Sphyrapicus thyroideus_ (Figure on left, male; on right, female)] [Illustration] Chicago · A. C. McClurg and Co. Nineteen Hundred and Two Copyright A. C. McClurg & Co. 1902 Published September 27, 1902 TO KATHERINE AND THE BOYS IN MEMORY OF MANY HAPPY DAYS BOTH INDOORS AND OUT CONTENTS PAGE UP AND DOWN THE HEIGHTS 19 INTRODUCTION TO SOME SPECIES 31 BALD PEAKS AND GREEN VALES 47 BIRDS OF THE ARID PLAIN 83 A PRETTY HUMMER 103 OVER THE DIVIDE AND BACK 117 A ROCKY MOUNTAIN LAKE 139 A BIRD MISCELLANY 149 PLAINS AND FOOTHILLS 177 RAMBLES ABOUT GEORGETOWN 197 HO! FOR GRAY'S PEAK! 223 PLEASANT OUTINGS 259 A NOTABLE QUARTETTE 285 CHECK-LIST OF COLORADO BIRDS 307 INDEX 349 ILLUSTRATIONS FULL-PAGE PLATES PLATE FACING PAGE I. WILLIAMSON'S SAPSUCKER--_Sphyrapicus thyroideus_ _Frontispiece_ II. GREEN-TAILED TOWHEE--_Pipilo chlorurus_; SPURRED TOWHEE--_Pipilo megalonyx_ 47 III. LAZULI BUNTING--_Cyanospiza amoena_ 83 IV. LARK BUNTING--_Calamospiza melanocorys_ 139 V. LOUISIANA TANAGER--_Pyranga ludoviciana_ 177 VI. TOWNSEND'S SOLITAIRE--_Myiadestes townsendii_ 223 VII. RUDDY DUCK--_Erismatura rubida_ 259 VIII. BROWN-CAPPED LEUCOSTICTE--_Leucosticte australis_ 303 SCENIC AND TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE WHITE-CROWNED SPARROWS ("Their grass-lined nests by the babbling mountain brook") 21 TURTLE DOVES ("Darting across the turbulent stream") 44 PIPITS ("Te-cheer! te-cheer!") 50 PIPITS ("Up over the Bottomless Pit") 51 WHITE-CROWNED SPARROW ("Dear Whittier") 55 RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET ("The singer elevated his crest feathers") 65 DESERT HORNED LARKS ("They were plentiful in this parched region") 84 HORNED LARK ("It was a dear little thing") 88 COYOTE ("Looking back to see whether he were being pursued") 100 ONE OF THE SEVEN LAKES 105 SUMMIT OF PIKE'S PEAK 111 "PIKE'S PEAK IN CLOUDLAND" 114 CLIFF-SWALLOWS ("On the rugged face of a cliff") 118 ROYAL GORGE 123 PINE SISKINS 128 WILLOW THRUSH 136 BREWER'S BLACKBIRDS ("An interesting place for bird study") 139 YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRDS ("There the youngsters perched") 142 "FROM THEIR PLACE AMONG THE REEDS" 146 THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN JAY ("Seeking a covert in the dense pineries when a storm sweeps down from the mountains") 152 RAINBOW FALLS 165 WATER-OUSEL ("Up, up, only a few inches from the dashing current") 167 WATER-OUSEL ("Three hungry mouths which were opened wide to receive the food") 171 "NO SNOWSTORM CAN DISCOURAGE HIM" 174 "THE DARK DOORWAY" 179 SONG SPARROW ("His songs are bubbling over still with melody and glee") 194 CLEAR CREEK VALLEY 201 WESTERN ROBIN ("Out-pouring joy") 207 RED-NAPED SAPSUCKERS ("Chiselling grubs out of the bark") 211 PIGEON HAWK ("Watching for quarry") 214 "SOLO SINGING IN THE THRUSH REALM" 218 GRAY'S AND TORREY'S PEAKS 245 PANORAMA FROM GRAY'S PEAK--NORTHWEST 249 THISTLE BUTTERFLY 252 WESTERN WHITE 252 JUNCO ("Under a roof of green grass") 255 SOUTH PARK FROM KENOSHA HILL 265 MAGPIE AND WESTERN ROBINS ("They were hot on his trail") 271 VIOLET-GREEN SWALLOW ("Squatted on the dusty road and took a sun-bath") 279 "'What bird is that? Its song is good,' And eager eyes Go peering through the dusky wood In glad surprise; Then late at night when by his fire The traveller sits, Watching the flame grow brighter, higher, The sweet song flits By snatches through his weary brain To help him rest." HELEN HUNT JACKSON: _The Way to Sing_. BRIEF FOREWORD With sincere pleasure the author would acknowledge the uniform courtesy of editors and publishers in permitting him to reprint many of the articles comprised in this volume, from the various periodicals in which they first appeared. He also desires to express his special indebtedness to Mr. Charles E. Aiken, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, whose contributions to the ornithology of the West have been of great scientific value, and to whose large and varied collection of bird-skins the author had frequent access for the purpose of settling difficult points in bird identification. This obliging gentleman also spent many hours in conversation with the writer, answering his numerous questions with the intelligence of the scientifically trained observer. Lastly, he kindly corrected some errors into which the author had inadvertently fallen. While the area covered by the writer's personal observations may be somewhat restricted, yet the scientific bird-list at the close of the volume widens the field so as to include the entire avi-fauna of Colorado so far as known to systematic students. Besides, constant comparison has been made between the birds of the West and the allied species and genera of our Central and Eastern States. For this reason the range of the volume really extends from the Atlantic seaboard to the parks, valleys, and plateaus beyond the Continental Divide. L. S. K. All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone. I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, Singing at dawn on the alder bough; I brought him home, in his nest, at even; He sings the song, but it cheers not now, For I did not bring home the river and sky;-- He sang to my ear,--they sang to my eye. RALPH WALDO EMERSON: _Each and All_. Not from his fellows only man may learn Rights to compare and duties to discern; All creatures and all objects, in degree, Are friends and patrons of humanity. There are to whom the garden, grove, and field Perpetual lessons of forbearance yield; Who would not lightly violate the grace The lowliest flower possesses in its place; Nor shorten the sweet life, too fugitive, Which nothing less than infinite Power could give. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH: _Humanity_. Sounds drop in visiting from everywhere-- The bluebird's and the robin's trill are there, Their sweet liquidity diluted some By dewy orchard spaces they have come. JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY: _A Child World_. Even in the city, I Am ever conscious of the sky; A portion of its frame no less Than in the open wilderness. The stars are in my heart by night, I sing beneath the opening light, As envious of the bird; I live Upon the payment, yet I give My soul to every growing tree That in the narrow ways I see. My heart is in the blade of grass Within the courtyard where I pass; And the small, half-discovered cloud Compels me till I cry aloud. I am the wind that beats the walls And wander trembling till it falls; The snow, the summer rain am I, In close communion with the sky. PHILIP HENRY SAVAGE. BIRDS OF THE ROCKIES UP AND DOWN THE HEIGHTS To study the birds from the level plains to the crests of the peaks swimming in cloudland; to note the species that are peculiar to the various altitudes, as well as those that range from the lower areas to the alpine heights; to observe the behavior of all the birds encountered in the West, and compare their habits, songs, and general deportment with those of correlated species and genera in the East; to learn as much as possible about the migratory movements up and down the mountains as the seasons wax and wane,--surely that would be an inspiring prospect to any student of the feathered fraternity. For many years one of the writer's most cherished desires has been to investigate the bird life of the Rocky Mountains. In the spring of 1899, and again in 1901, fortune smiled upon him in the most genial way, and--in a mental state akin to rapture, it must be confessed--he found himself rambling over the plains and mesas and through the deep cañons, and clambering up the dizzy heights, in search of winged rarities. In this chapter attention will be called to a few general facts relative to bird life in the Rockies, leaving the details for subsequent recital. As might be expected, the towering elevations influence the movements of the feathered tenants of the district. There is here what might be called a vertical migration, aside from the usual pilgrimages north and south which are known to the more level portions of North America. The migratory journeys up and down the mountains occur with a regularity that amounts to a system; yet so far as regards these movements each species must be studied for itself, each having manners that are all its own. In regions of a comparatively low altitude many birds, as is well known, hie to the far North to find the proper climatic conditions in which to rear their broods and spend their summer vacation, some of them going to the subarctic provinces and others beyond. How different among the sublime heights of the Rockies! Here they are required to make a journey of only a few miles, say from five to one hundred or slightly more, according to the locality selected, up the defiles and cañons or over the ridges, to find the conditions as to temperature, food, nesting sites, etc., that are precisely to their taste. The wind blowing down to their haunts from the snowy summits carries on its wings the same keenness and invigoration that they would find if they went to British America, where the breezes would descend from the regions of snow and ice beyond the Arctic Circle. [Illustration: _White-Crowned Sparrows_] It will add a little spice of detail if we take a concrete case. There is the handsome and lyrical white-crowned sparrow; in my native State, Ohio, this bird is only a migrant, passing for the summer far up into Canada to court his mate and rear his family. Now remember that Colorado is in the same latitude as Ohio; but the Buckeye State, famous as it is for furnishing presidents, has no lofty elevations, and therefore no white-crowns as summer residents. However, Colorado may claim this distinction, as well as that of producing gold and silver, and furnishing some of the sublimest scenery on the earth; for on the side of Pike's Peak, in a green, well-watered valley just below timber-line, I was almost thrown into transports at finding the white-crowns, listening to their rhythmic choruses, and discovering their grass-lined nests by the side of the babbling mountain brook. Altitude accomplishes for these birds what latitude does for their brothers and sisters of eastern North America. There is almost endless variety in the avi-faunal life of the Rockies. Some species breed far above timber-line in the thickets that invade the open valleys, or clamber far up the steep mountain sides. Others ascend still higher, building their nests on the bald summits of the loftiest peaks at an altitude of fourteen thousand feet and more, living all summer long in an atmosphere that is as rare as it is refreshing and pure. Among these alpine dwellers may be mentioned the brown-capped leucostictes, which shall be accorded the attention they deserve in another chapter. Then, there are species which have representatives both on the plains and far up in the mountain parks and valleys, such as the western robin, the western meadow-lark, and the mountain bluebird. In this wonderful country there is to be observed every style of migratory habit. A twofold migrating current must be noticed. While there is a movement up and down the mountain heights, there is at the same time a movement north and south, making the migratory system a perfect network of lines of travel. Some species summer in the mountains and winter on the plains; others summer in the mountains pass down to the plains in the autumn, then wing their way farther south into New Mexico, Mexico, Central America, and even South America, where they spend the winter, reversing this order on their return to the north in the spring; others simply pass through this region in their vernal and autumnal pilgrimages, stopping for a short time, but spending neither the summer nor the winter in this latitude; still others come down from the remote north on the approach of autumn, and winter in this State, either on the plains or in the sheltering ravines and forests of the mountains, and then return to the north in the spring; and, lastly, there are species that remain here all the year round, some of them in the mountains, others on the plains, and others again in both localities. A number of hardy birds--genuine feathered Norsemen--brave the arctic winters of the upper mountain regions, fairly revelling in the swirling snow-storms, and it must be a terrific gale indeed that will drive them down from their favorite habitats toward the plains. Does the avi-fauna of the Rocky Mountain district differ widely from that of the Eastern States? The reply must be made in the affirmative. Therefore the first work of the bird-student from the East will be that of a tyro--the identification of species. For this purpose he must have frequent recourse to the useful manuals of Coues and Ridgway, and to the invaluable brochure of Professor Wells W. Cooke on the "Birds of Colorado." In passing, it may be said that the last-named gentleman might almost be called the Colorado Audubon or Wilson. In studying the birds of the West, one should note that there are western subspecies and varieties, which differ in some respects, though not materially, from their eastern cousins; for instance, the western robin, the western chipping sparrow, the western lark sparrow, and the western nighthawk. Besides, intermediate forms are to be met with and classified, the eastern types shading off in a very interesting process into the western. It would be impossible for any one but a systematist with the birds in hand to determine where the intermediate forms become either typical easterners or typical westerners. Most interesting of all to the rambler on avian lore intent is the fact that there are many species and genera that are peculiar to the West, and therefore new to him, keeping him constantly on the _qui vive_. In Colorado you will look in vain for the common blue jay, so abundant in all parts of the East; but you will be more than compensated by the presence of seven other species of the jay household. The woodpeckers of the West (with one exception) are different from those of the East, and so are the flycatchers, the grosbeaks, the orioles, the tanagers, the humming-birds, and many of the sparrows. Instead of the purple and bronzed grackles (the latter are sometimes seen on the plains of Colorado, but are not common), the Rockies boast of Brewer's blackbird, whose habits are not as prosaic as his name would indicate. "Jim Crow" shuns the mountains for reasons satisfactory to himself; not so the magpie, the raven, and that mischief-maker, Clark's nutcracker. All of which keeps the bird-lover from the East in an ecstasy of surprises until he has become accustomed to his changed environment. One cannot help falling into the speculative mood in view of the sharp contrasts between the birds of the East and those of the West. Why does the hardy and almost ubiquitous blue jay studiously avoid the western plains and mountains? Why do not the magpie and the long-crested jay come east? What is there that prevents the indigo-bird from taking up residence in Colorado, where his pretty western cousin, the lazuli finch, finds himself so much at home? Why is the yellow-shafted flicker of the East replaced in the West by the red-shafted flicker? These questions are more easily asked than answered. From the writer's present home in eastern Kansas it is only six hundred miles to the foot of the Rockies; yet the avi-fauna of eastern Kansas is much more like that of the Eastern and New England States than that of the Colorado region. Perhaps the reason is largely, if not chiefly, physiological. Evidently there are birds that flourish best in a rare, dry atmosphere, while others naturally thrive in an atmosphere that is denser and more humid. The same is true of people. Many persons find the climate of Colorado especially adapted to their needs; indeed, to certain classes of invalids it is a veritable sanitarium. Others soon learn that it is detrimental to their health. Mayhap the same laws obtain in the bird realm. The altitude of my home is eight hundred and eighty feet above sea-level; that of Denver, Colorado, six thousand one hundred and sixty, making a difference of over five thousand feet, which may account for the absence of many eastern avian forms in the more elevated districts. Some day the dissector of birds may find a real difference in the physiological structure of the eastern and western meadow-larks. If so, it is to be hoped he will at once publish his discoveries for the satisfaction of all lovers of birds. If one had time and opportunity, some intensely interesting experiments might be tried. Suppose an eastern blue jay should be carried to the top of Pike's Peak, or Gray's, and then set free, how would he fare? Would the muscles and tendons of his wings have sufficient strength to bear him up in the rarefied atmosphere? One may easily imagine that he would go wabbling helplessly over the granite boulders, unable to lift himself more than a few feet in the air, while the pipit and the leucosticte, inured to the heights, would mount up to the sky and shout "Ha! ha!" in good-natured raillery at the blue tenderfoot. And would the feathered visitor feel a constriction in his chest and be compelled to gasp for breath, as the human tourists invariably do? It is even doubtful whether any eastern bird would be able to survive the changed meteorological conditions, Nature having designed him for a different environment. INTRODUCTION TO SOME SPECIES It was night when I found lodgings in the picturesque village of Manitou, nestling at the foot of the lower mountains that form the portico to Pike's Peak. Early the next morning I was out for a stroll along the bush-fringed mountain brook which had babbled me a serenade all night. To my delight, the place was rife with birds, the first to greet me being robins, catbirds, summer warblers, and warbling vireos, all of which, being well known in the East, need no description, but are mentioned here only to show the reader that some avian species are common to both the East and the West. But let me pause to pay a little tribute to the brave robin redbreast. Of course, here he is called the "western robin." His distribution is an interesting scientific fact. I found him everywhere--on the arid plains and mesas, in the solemn pines of the deep gulches and passes, and among the scraggy trees bordering on timber-line, over ten thousand feet above sea-level. In Colorado the robins are designated as "western," forms by the system-makers, but, even though called by a modified title, they deport themselves, build their nests, and sing their "cheerily, cheerily, cheer up," just as do their brothers and sisters of the land toward the rising sun. If there is any difference, their songs are not so loud and ringing, and their breasts not quite so ruddy as are those of the eastern types. Perhaps the incessant sunshine of Colorado bleaches out the tints somewhat. But in my ante-breakfast stroll at Manitou I soon stumbled upon feathered strangers. What was this little square-shouldered bird that kept uttering a shrill scream, which he seemed to mistake for a song? It was the western wood-pewee. Instead of piping the sweet, pensive "Pe-e-e-o-we-e-e-e" of the woodland bird of the Eastern States, this western swain persists in ringing the changes hour by hour upon that piercing scream, which sounds more like a cry of anguish than a song. At Buena Vista, where these birds are superabundant, their morning concerts were positively painful. One thing must be said, however, in defence of the western wood-pewee--he means well. Another acquaintance of my morning saunter was the debonair Arkansas goldfinch, which has received its bunglesome name, not from the State of Arkansas, but from the Arkansas River, dashing down from the mountains and flowing eastwardly through the southern part of Colorado. Most nattily this little bird wears his black cap, his olive-green frock, and his bright yellow vest. You will see at once that he dresses differently from the American goldfinch, so well known in the East, and, for that matter, just as well known on the plains of Colorado, where both species dwell in harmony. There are some white markings on the wings of _Spinus psaltria_ that give them a gauze-like appearance when they are rapidly fluttered. His song and some of his calls bear a close resemblance to those of the common goldfinch, but he is by no means a mere duplicate of that bird; he has an individuality of his own. While his flight is undulatory, the waviness is not so deeply and distinctly marked; nor does he sing a cheery cradle-song while swinging through the ether, although he often utters a series of unmusical chirps. One of the most pleasingly pensive sounds heard in my western rambles was the little coaxing call of this bird, whistled mostly by the female, I think. No doubt it is the tender love talk of a young wife or mother, which may account for its surpassing sweetness. Every lover of feathered kind is interested in what may be called comparative ornithology, and therefore I wish to speak of another western form and its eastern prototype--Bullock's oriole, which in Colorado takes the place of the Baltimore oriole known east of the plains all the way to the Atlantic coast. However, Bullock's is not merely a variety or subspecies, but a well-defined species of the oriole family, his scientific title being _Icterus bullocki_. Like our familiar Lord Baltimore, he bravely bears black and orange; but in _bullocki_ the latter color invades the sides of the neck, head, and forehead, leaving only a small black bow for the throat and a narrow black stripe running back over the crown and down the back of the neck; whereas in _Icterus galbula_ the entire head and neck are black. Brilliant as Bullock's oriole is, he does not seem to be anxious to display his fineries, for he usually makes it a point to keep himself ensconced behind a clump of foliage, so that, while you may hear a desultory piping in the trees, apparently inviting your confidence, it will be a long time before you can get more than a provoking glimpse of the jolly piper himself. "My gorgeous apparel was not made for parade," seems to be his modest disclaimer. He is quite a vocalist. Here is a quotation from my lead-pencil, dashes and all: "Bullock's oriole--fine singer--voice stronger than orchard oriole's--song not quite so well articulated or so elaborate, but louder and more resonant--better singer than the Baltimore." It might be added that Bullock's, like the orchard, but unlike the Baltimore, pipes a real tune, with something of a theme running through its intermittent outbursts. The plumage of the young bird undergoes some curious changes, and what I took to be the year-old males seemed to be the most spirited musicians. Maurice Thompson's tribute to the Baltimore oriole will apply to that bird's western kinsman. He calls him:-- "Athlete of the air-- Of fire and song a glowing core;" and then adds, with tropical fervor: "A hot flambeau on either wing Rimples as you pass me by; 'T is seeing flame to hear you sing, 'T is hearing song to see you fly. * * * * * "When flowery hints foresay the berry, On spray of haw and tuft of brier, Then, wandering incendiary, You set the maple swamps afire!" Many nests of Bullock's oriole rewarded my slight search. They are larger and less compactly woven than the Baltimore's, and have a woolly appearance exteriorly, as if the down of the Cottonwood trees had been wrought into the fabric. Out on the plains I counted four dangling nests, old and new, on one small limb; but that, of course, was unusual, there being only one small clump of trees within a radius of many miles. In the vicinity of Manitou many trips were taken by the zealous pedestrian. Some of the dry, steep sides of the first range of mountains were hard climbing, but it was necessary to make the effort in order to discover their avian resources. One of the first birds met with on these unpromising acclivities was the spurred towhee of the Rockies. In his attire he closely resembles the towhee, or "chewink," of the East, but has as an extra ornament a beautiful sprinkling of white on his back and wings, which makes him look as if he had thrown a gauzy mantle of silver over his shoulders. But his song is different from our eastern towhee's. My notes say that it is "a cross between the song of the chewink and that of dickcissel," and I shall stand by that assertion until I find good reason to disown it--should that time ever come. The opening syllabication is like dickcissel's; then follows a trill of no specially definable character. There are times when he sings with more than his wonted force, and it is then that his tune bears the strongest likeness to the eastern towhee's. But his alarm-call! It is no "chewink" at all, but almost as close a reproduction of a cat's mew as is the catbird's well-known call. Such crosses and anomalies does this country produce! On the arid mountain sides among the stunted bushes, cactus plants, sand, and rocks, this quaint bird makes his home, coming down into the valleys to drink at the tinkling brooks and trill his roundelays. Many, many times, as I was following a deep fissure in the mountains, his ditty came dripping down to me from some spot far up the steep mountain side--a little cascade of song mingling with the cascades of the brooks. The nests are usually placed under a bush on the sides of the mesas and mountains. And would you believe it? Colorado furnishes another towhee, though why he should have been put into the Pipilo group by the ornithologists is more than I can tell at this moment. He has no analogue in the East. True, he is a bird of the bushes, running sometimes like a little deer from one clump to another; but if you should see him mount a boulder or a bush, and hear him sing his rich, theme-like, finely modulated song, you would aver that he is closer kin to the thrushes or thrashers than to the towhees. There is not the remotest suggestion of the towhee minstrelsy in his prolonged and well-articulated melody. It would be difficult to find a finer lyrist among the mountains. But, hold! I have neglected to introduce this pretty Mozart of the West. He is known by an offensive and inapt title--the green-tailed towhee. Much more appropriately might he be called the chestnut-crowned towhee, for his cope is rich chestnut, and the crest is often held erect, making him look quite cavalier-like. It is the most conspicuous part of his toilet. His upper parts are grayish-green, becoming slightly deeper green on the tail, from which fact he derives his common name. His white throat and chin are a further diagnostic mark. The bright yellow of the edge of the wings, under coverts and axillaries is seldom seen, on account of the extreme wariness of the bird. In most of the dry and bushy places I found him at my elbow--or, rather, some distance away, but in evidence by his mellifluous song. Let me enumerate the localities in which I found my little favorite: Forty miles out on the plain among some bushes of a shallow dip; among the foothills about Colorado Springs and Manitou; on many of the open bushy slopes along the cog-road leading to Pike's Peak, but never in the dark ravines or thick timber; among the bushes just below timber-line on the southern acclivity of the peak; everywhere around the village of Buena Vista; about four miles below Leadville; and, lastly, beyond the range at Red Cliff and Glenwood.[1] [1] This list was greatly enlarged in my second trip to Colorado in 1901. The song, besides its melodious quality, is full of expression. In this respect it excels the liquid chansons of the mountain hermit thrush, which is justly celebrated as a minstrel, but which does not rehearse a well-defined theme. The towhee's song is sprightly and cheerful, wild and free, has the swing of all outdoors, and is not pitched to a minor key. It gives you the impression that a bird which sings so blithesome a strain must surely be happy in his domestic relations. Among the Rockies the black-headed grosbeak is much in evidence, and so is his cheerful, good-tempered song, which is an exact counterpart of the song of the rose-breasted grosbeak, his eastern kinsman. Neither the rose-breast nor the cardinal is to be found in Colorado, but they are replaced by the black-headed and blue grosbeaks, the former dwelling among the lower mountains, the latter occurring along the streams of the plains. Master black-head and his mate are partial to the scrub oaks for nesting sites. I found one nest with four callow bantlings in it, but, much to my grief and anger, at my next call it had been robbed of its precious treasures. A few days later, not far from the same place, a female was building a nest, and I am disposed to believe that she was the mother whose children had been kidnapped. Instead of the scarlet and summer tanagers, the Rocky Mountain region is honored with that beautiful feathered gentleman, the Louisiana tanager, most of whose plumage is rich, glossy yellow, relieved by black on the wings, back, and tail; while his most conspicuous decoration is the scarlet or crimson tinting of his head and throat, shading off into the yellow of the breast. These colors form a picturesque combination, especially if set against a background of green. The crimson staining gives him the appearance of having washed his face in some bright-red pigment, and like an awkward child, blotched his bosom with it in the absence of a napkin. So far as I could analyze it, there is no appreciable difference between his lyrical performances and those of the scarlet tanager, both being a kind of lazy, drawling song, that is slightly better than no bird music at all. One nest was found without difficulty. It was placed on one of the lower branches of a pine tree by the roadside at the entrance to Engleman's Cañon. As a rule, the males are not excessively shy, as so many of the Rocky Mountain birds are. The tanagers were seen far up in the mountains, as well as among the foothills, and also at Red Cliff and Glenwood on the western side of the Divide. A unique character in feathers, one that is peculiar to the West, is the magpie, who would attract notice wherever he should deign to live, being a sort of grand sachem of the outdoor aviary. In some respects the magpies are striking birds. In flight they present a peculiar appearance; in fact, they closely resemble boys' kites with their long, slender tails trailing in the breeze. I could not avoid the impression that their tails were superfluous appendages, but no doubt they serve the birds a useful purpose as rudders and balancing-poles. The magpie presents a handsome picture as he swings through the air, the iridescent black gleaming in the sun, beautifully set off with snowy-white trimmings on both the upper and lower surfaces of the wings. On the perch or on the wing he is an ornament to any landscape. As to his voice--well, he is a genuine squawker. There is not, so far as I have observed, a musical cord in his larynx,[2] and I am sure he does not profess to be a musical genius, so that my criticism will do him no injury. All the use he has for his voice seems to be to call his fellows to a new-found banquet, or give warning of the approach of an interloper upon his chosen preserves. His cry, if you climb up to his nest, is quite pitiful, proving that he has real love for his offspring. Perhaps the magpies have won their chief distinction as architects. Their nests are really remarkable structures, sometimes as large as fair-sized tubs, the framework composed of good-sized sticks, skilfully plaited together, and the cup lined with grass and other soft material, making a cosey nursery for the infantile magpies. Then the nest proper is roofed over, and has an entrance to the apartment on either side. When you examine the structure closely, you find that it fairly bristles with dry twigs and sticks, and it is surprising how large some of the branches are that are braided into the domicile. All but one of the many nests I found were deserted, for my visit was made in June, and the birds, as a rule, breed earlier than that month. Some were placed in bushes, some in willow and cottonwood trees, and others in pines; and the birds themselves were almost ubiquitous, being found on the plains, among the foothills, and up in the mountains as far as the timber-line, not only close to human neighborhoods, but also in the most inaccessible solitudes. [2] In this volume the author has made use of the terminology usually employed in describing bird music. Hence such words as "song," "chant," "vocal cords," etc., are of frequent occurrence. In reality the writer's personal view is that the birds are whistlers, pipers, fluters, and not vocalists, none of the sounds they produce being real voice tones. The reader who may desire to go into this matter somewhat technically is referred to Maurice Thompson's chapter entitled "The Anatomy of Bird-Song" in his "Sylvan Secrets," and the author's article, "Are Birds Singers or Whistlers?" in "Our Animal Friends" for June, 1901. In one of my excursions along a stream below Colorado Springs, one nest was found that was still occupied by the brooding bird. It was a bulky affair, perhaps half as large as a bushel basket, placed in the crotch of a tree about thirty feet from the ground. Within this commodious structure was a globular apartment which constituted the nest proper. Thus it was roofed over, and had an entrance at each side, so that the bird could go into his house at one doorway and out at the other, the room being too small to permit of his turning around in it. Thinking the nest might be occupied, in a tentative way I tossed a small club up among the branches, when to my surprise a magpie sprang out of the nest, and, making no outcry, swung around among the trees, appearing quite nervous and shy. When she saw me climbing the tree, she set up such a heart-broken series of cries that I permitted sentiment to get the better of me, and clambered down as fast as I could, rather than prolong her distress. Since then I have greatly regretted my failure to climb up to the nest and examine its contents, which might have been done without the least injury to the owner's valuable treasures. A nestful of magpie's eggs or bairns would have been a gratifying sight to my bird-hungry eyes. One bird which is familiar in the East as well as the West deserves attention on account of its choice of haunts. I refer to the turtle dove, which is much hardier than its mild and innocent looks would seem to indicate. It may be remarked, in passing, that very few birds are found in the deep cañons and gorges leading up to the higher localities; but the doves seem to constitute the one exception to the rule; for I saw them in some of the gloomiest defiles through which the train scurried in crossing the mountains. For instance, in the cañon of the Arkansas River many of them were seen from the car window, a pair just beyond the Royal Gorge darting across the turbulent stream to the other side. A number were also noticed in the darkest portions of the cañon of the Grand River, where one would think not a living creature could coax subsistence from the bare rocks and beetling cliffs. Turtle doves are so plentiful in the West that their distribution over every available feeding ground seems to be a matter of social and economic necessity. [Illustration: "_Darting across the turbulent stream_" _Turtle Doves_] BALD PEAKS AND GREEN VALES [Illustration: PLATE II GREEN-TAILED TOWHEE--_Pipilo chlorurus_ (Male) SPURRED TOWHEE--_Pipilo megalonyx_ (Male)] One of my chief objects in visiting the Rockies was to ascend Pike's Peak from Manitou, and make observations on the birds from the base to the summit. A walk one afternoon up to the Halfway House and back--the Halfway House is only about one-third of the way to the top--convinced me that to climb the entire distance on foot would be a useless expenditure of time and effort. An idea struck me: Why not ride up on the cog-wheel train, and then walk down, going around by some of the valleys and taking all the time needed for observations on the avi-faunal tenantry? That was the plan pursued, and an excellent one it proved. When the puffing cog-wheel train landed me on the summit, I was fresh and vigorous, and therefore in excellent condition physically and mentally to enjoy the scenery and also to ride my hobby at will over the realm of cloudland. The summit is a bald area of several acres, strewn with immense fragments of granite, with not a spear of grass visible. One of the signal-station men asked a friend who had just come up from the plain, "Is there anything green down below? I'd give almost anything to see a green patch of some kind." There was a yearning strain in his tones that really struck me as pathetic. Here were visitors revelling in the magnificence of the panorama, their pulses tingling and their feelings in many cases too exalted for expression; but those whose business or duty it was to remain on the summit day after day soon found life growing monotonous, and longed to set their eyes on some patch of verdure. To the visitors, however, who were in hale physical condition, the panorama of snow-clad ranges and isolated peaks was almost overwhelming. In the gorges and sheltered depressions of the old mountain's sides large fields of snow still gleamed in the sun and imparted to the air a frosty crispness. When the crowd of tourists, after posing for their photographs, had departed on the descending car, I walked out over the summit to see what birds, if any, had selected an altitude of fourteen thousand one hundred and forty-seven feet above sea-level for their summer home. Below me, to the east, stretched the gray plains running off to the skyline, while the foothills and lower mountains, which had previously appeared so high and rugged and difficult of access, now seemed like ant-hills crouching at the foot of the giant on whose crown I stood. Off to the southwest, the west, and the northwest, the snowy ranges towered, iridescent in the sunlight. In contemplating this vast, overawing scene, I almost forgot my natural history, and wanted to feast my eyes for hours on its ever-changing beauty; but presently I was brought back to a consciousness of my special vocation by a sharp chirp. Was it a bird, or only one of those playful little chipmunks that abound in the Rockies? Directly there sounded out on the serene air another ringing chirp, this time overhead, and, to my delight and surprise, a little bird swung over the summit, then out over the edge of the cliff, and plunged down into the fearsome abyss of the "Bottomless Pit." Other birds of the same species soon followed his example, making it evident that this was not a birdless region. Unable to identify the winged aeronauts, I clambered about over the rocks of the summit for a while, then slowly made my way down the southern declivity of the mountain for a short distance. Again my ear was greeted with that loud, ringing chirp, and now the bird uttering it obligingly alighted on a stone not too far away to be seen distinctly through my binocular. Who was the little waif that had chosen this sky-invading summit for its summer habitat? At first I mistook it for a horned lark, and felt so sure my decision was correct that I did not look at the bird as searchingly as I should have done, thereby learning a valuable lesson in thoroughness. The error was corrected by my friend, Mr. Charles E. Aiken, of Colorado Springs, who has been of not a little service in determining and classifying the avian fauna of Colorado. My new-found friend (the feathered one, I mean) was the American pipit, which some years ago was known as the tit-lark. [Illustration: _Pipits_ "_Te-cheer! Te-cheer!_"] "Te-cheer! te-cheer! te-cheer!" (accent strong on the second syllable) the birds exclaimed in half-petulant remonstrance at my intrusion as I hobbled about over the rocks. Presently one of them darted up into the air; up, up, up, he swung in a series of oblique leaps and circles, this way and that, until he became a mere speck in the sky, and then disappeared from sight in the cerulean depths beyond. All the while I could hear his emphatic and rapidly repeated call, "Te-cheer! te-cheer!" sifting down out of the blue canopy. How long he remained aloft in "his watch-tower in the skies" I do not know, for one cannot well count minutes in such exciting circumstances, but it seemed a long time. By and by the call appeared to be coming nearer, and the little aeronaut swept down with a swiftness that made my blood tingle, and alighted on a rock as lightly as a snowflake. Afterwards a number of other pipits performed the same aerial exploit. It was wonderful to see them rise several hundred feet into the rarefied atmosphere over an abyss so deep that it has been named the "Bottomless Pit." [Illustration: _Pipits_ "_Up over the Bottomless Pit_"] The pipits frequently flitted from rock to rock, teetering their slender bodies like sandpipers, and chirping their disapproval of my presence. They furnished some evidence of having begun the work of nest construction, although no nests were found, as it was doubtless still too early in the season. In some respects the pipits are extremely interesting, for, while many of them breed in remote northern latitudes, others select the loftiest summits of the Rockies for summer homes, where they rear their broods and scour the alpine heights in search of food. The following interesting facts relative to them in this alpine country are gleaned from Professor Cooke's pamphlet on "The Birds of Colorado": In migration they are common throughout the State, but breed only on the loftiest mountains. They arrive on the plains from the South about the last of April, tarry for nearly a month, then hie to the upper mountain parks, stopping there to spend the month of May. By the first of June they have ascended above timber-line to their summer home amid the treeless slopes and acclivities. Laying begins early in July, as soon as the first grass is started. Most of the nests are to be found at an elevation of twelve thousand to thirteen thousand feet, the lowest known being one on Mount Audubon, discovered on the third of July with fresh eggs. During the breeding season these birds never descend below timber-line. The young birds having left the nest, in August both old and young gather in flocks and range over the bald mountain peaks in quest of such dainties as are to the pipit taste. Some of them remain above timber-line until October although most of them have by that time gone down into the upper parks of the mountains. During this month they descend to the plains, and in November return to their winter residence in the South. While watching the pipits, I had another surprise. On a small, grassy area amid the rocks, about a hundred feet below the summit, a white-crowned sparrow was hopping about on the ground, now leaping upon a large stone, now creeping into an open space under the rocks, all the while picking up some kind of seed or nut or insect. It was very confiding, coming close to me, but vouchsafing neither song nor chirp. Farther on I shall have more to say about these tuneful birds, but at this point it is interesting to observe that they breed abundantly among the mountains at a height of from eight thousand to eleven thousand feet, while the highest nest known to explorers was twelve thousand five hundred feet above the sea. One of Colorado's bird men has noted the curious fact that they change their location between the first and second broods--that is, in a certain park at an elevation of eight thousand feet they breed abundantly in June, and then most of them leave that region and become numerous among the stunted bushes above timber-line, where they raise a second brood. It only remains to be proved that the birds in both localities are the same individuals, which is probable. On a shoulder of the mountain below me, a flock of ravens alighted on the ground, walked about awhile, uttered their hoarse croaks, and then took their departure, apparently in sullen mood. I could not tell whether they croaked "Nevermore!" or not. Down the mountain side I clambered, occasionally picking a beautiful blossom from the many brilliant-hued clusters and inhaling its fragrance. Indeed, sometimes the breeze was laden with the aroma of these flowers, and in places the slope looked like a cultivated garden. The only birds seen that afternoon above timber-line were those already mentioned. What do the birds find to eat in these treeless and shrubless altitudes? There are many flies, some grasshoppers, bumble-bees, beetles, and other insects, even in these arctic regions, dwelling among the rocks and in the short grass below them watered by the melting snows. At about half-past four in the afternoon I reached the timber-line, indicated by a few small, scattering pines and many thick clumps of bushes. Suddenly a loud, melodious song brought me to a standstill. It came from the bushes at the side of the trail. Although I turned aside and sought diligently, I could not find the shy lyrist. Another song of the same kind soon reached me from a distance. Farther down the path a white-crowned sparrow appeared, courting his mate. With crown-feathers and head and tail erect, he would glide to the top of a stone, then down into the grass where his lady-love sat; up and down, up and down he scuttled again and again. My approach put an end to the picturesque little comedy. The lady scurried away into hiding, while the little prince with the snow-white diadem mounted to the top of a bush and whistled the very strain that had surprised me so a little while before, farther up the slope. Yes, I had stumbled into the summer home of the white-crowned sparrow, which on the Atlantic coast and the central portions of the American continent breeds far in the North. It was not long before I was regaled with a white-crown vesper concert. From every part of the lonely valley the voices sounded. And what did they say? "Oh, de-e-e-ar, de-e-ar, Whittier, Whittier," sometimes adding, in low, caressing tones, "Dear Whittier"--one of the most melodious tributes to the Quaker poet I have ever heard. Here I also saw my first mountain bluebird, whose back and breast are wholly blue, there being no rufous at all in his plumage. He was feeding a youngster somewhere among the snags. A red-shafted flicker flew across the vale and called, "Zwick-ah! zwick-ah!" and then pealed out his loud call just like the eastern yellow-shafted high-holder. Why the Rocky Mountain region changes the lining of the flicker's wings from gold to crimson--who can tell? A robin--the western variety--sang his "Cheerily," a short distance up the hollow, right at the boundary of the timber-line. [Illustration: "_Dear Whittier_" _White-Crowned Sparrow_] About half-past five I found myself a few hundred feet below timber-line in the lone valley, which was already beginning to look shadowy and a little uncanny, the tall ridges that leaped up at the right obscuring the light of the declining sun. My purpose had been to find accommodations at a mountaineer's cabin far down the valley, in the neighborhood of the Seven Lakes; but I had tarried too long on the mountain, absorbed in watching the birds, and the danger now was that, if I ventured farther down the hollow, I should lose my way and be compelled to spend the night alone in this deserted place. I am neither very brave nor very cowardly; but, in any case, such a prospect was not pleasing to contemplate. Besides, I was by no means sure of being able to secure lodgings at the mountaineer's shanty, even if I should be able to find it in the dark. There seemed to be only one thing to do--to climb back to the signal station on the summit. I turned about and began the ascent. How much steeper the acclivities were than they had seemed to be when I came down! My limbs ached before I had gone many rods, and my breath came short. Upward I toiled, and by the time my trail reached the cog-road I was ready to drop from exhaustion. Yet I had not gone more than a third of the way to the top. I had had no supper, but was too weary even to crave food, my only desire being to find some place wherein to rest. Night had now come, but fortunately the moon shone brightly from a sky that was almost clear, and I had no difficulty in following the road. Wearily I began to climb up the steep cog-wheel track. Having trudged around one curve, I came to a portion of the road that stretched straight up before me for what seemed an almost interminable distance, and, oh! the way looked so steep, almost as if it would tumble back upon my head. Could I ever drag myself up to the next bend in the track? By a prodigious effort I did this at last--it seemed "at last" to me, at all events--and, lo! there gleamed before me another long stretch of four steel rails. My breath came shorter and shorter, until I was compelled to open my mouth widely and gasp the cold, rarefied air, which, it seemed, would not fill my chest with the needed oxygen. Sharp pains shot through my lungs, especially in the extremities far down in the chest; my head and eye-balls ached, and it seemed sometimes as if they would burst; my limbs trembled with weakness, and I tottered and reeled like a drunken man from side to side of the road, having to watch carefully lest I might topple over the edge and meet with a serious accident. Still that relentless track, with its quartette of steel rails, stretched steep before me in the distance. For the last half mile or more I was compelled to fling myself down upon the track every few rods to rest and recover breath. Up, up, the road climbed, until at length I reached the point where it ceases to swing around the shoulders of the mountain, and ascends directly to the summit. Here was the steepest climb of all. By throwing my weary frame on the track at frequent intervals and resting for five minutes, taking deep draughts of air between my parched lips, I at last came in sight of the government building. It is neither a mansion nor a palace, not even a cottage, but never before was I so glad to get a glimpse of a building erected by human hands. It was past nine o'clock when I staggered up to the door and rang the night bell, having spent more than three hours and a half in climbing about two miles and a half. Too weary to sleep, I tossed for hours on my bed. At last, however, "nature's sweet restorer" came to my relief, and I slept the deep sleep of unconsciousness until seven o'clock the next morning, allowing the sun to rise upon the Peak without getting up to greet him. That omission may have been an unpardonable sin, for one of the chief fads of visitors is to see the sun rise from the Peak; but I must say in my defence that, in the first place, I failed to wake up in time to witness the Day King's advent, and, in a second place, being on bird lore intent rather than scenic wonders, my principal need was to recruit my strength for the tramping to be done during the day. The sequel proved that, for my special purpose, I had chosen the wiser course. By eight o'clock I had written a letter home, eaten a refreshing breakfast, paying a dollar for it, and another for lodging, and was starting down the mountain, surprised at the exhilaration I felt, in view of my extreme exhaustion of the evening before. I naturally expected to feel stiff and sore in every joint, languid and woe-be-gone; but such was not the case. It is wonderful how soon one recovers strength among these heights. How bracing is the cool mountain air, if you breathe it deeply! As I began the descent, I whistled and sang,--that is, I tried to. To be frank, it was all noise and no music, but I must have some way of giving expression to the uplifted emotions that filled my breast. Again and again I said to myself, "I'm so glad! I'm so glad! I'm so glad!" It was gladness pure and simple,--the dictionary has no other word to express it. No pen can do justice to the panorama of mountain and valley and plain as viewed from such a height on a clear, crisp morning of June. One felt like exclaiming with George Herbert: "Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, The bridal of the earth and sky!" So far as the æsthetic value of it went, I was monarch of all I surveyed, even though mile on mile of grandeur and glory was spread out before me. The quatrain of Lowell recurred to my mind: "'Tis heaven alone that is given away, 'Tis only God may be had for the asking; No price is set on the lavish summer; June may be had by poorest comer." Before leaving the Peak, I watched a flock of birds eating from the waste-heap at the Summit House. They were the brown-capped rosy finches, called scientifically _Leucosticte australis_. Their plumage was a rich chocolate, suffused over neck, breast, and back with intense crimson, while the pileum was quite black. With one exception--the white-tailed ptarmigan--they range the highest in summer of all Colorado birds. They are never seen below timber-line in that season, and are not known to breed below twelve thousand feet; thence to the tops of the highest peaks they hatch and rear their young. In August old and young swarm over the summits picking edible insects from the snow, while in winter they descend to timber-line, where most of them remain to brave the arctic weather and its frequent storms. Bidding a regretful good-by to the summit, for it held me as by a magician's spell, I hastened down the steep incline of the cog-wheel road, past Windy Point, and turning to the right, descended across the green slope below the boulder region to the open, sunlit valley which I had visited on the previous afternoon. It was an idyllic place, a veritable paradise for birds. Such a chorus as greeted me from the throats of I know not how many white-crowned sparrows,--several dozen, perhaps,--it would have done the heart of any lover of avian minstrelsy good to listen to. The whole valley seemed to be transfigured by their roundelays, which have about them such an air of poetry and old-world romance. During the morning I was so fortunate as to find a nest, the first of this species that I had ever discovered. Providence had never before cast my lot with these birds in their breeding haunts. The nest was a pretty structure placed on the ground, beneath a bush amid the green grass, its holdings consisting of four dainty, pale-blue eggs, speckled with brown. The female leaped from her seat as I passed near, and in that act divulged her little family secret. Although she chirped uneasily as I bent over her treasures, she had all her solicitude for nothing; the last thing I would think of doing would be to mar her maternal prospects. As has been said, in this valley these handsome sparrows were quite plentiful; but when, toward evening, I clambered over a ridge, and descended into the valley of Moraine Lake, several hundred feet lower than the Seven Lakes valley, what was my surprise to find not a white-crown there! The next day I trudged up to the Seven Lakes, and found the white-crowns quite abundant in the copses, as they had been farther up the hollow on the previous day; and, besides, in a boggy place about two miles below Moraine Lake there were several pairs, and I was fortunate enough to find a nest. Strange--was it not?--that these birds should avoid the copsy swamps near Moraine Lake, and yet select for breeding homes the valleys both above and below it. Perhaps the valley of Moraine Lake is a little too secluded and shut in by the towering mountains on three sides, the other places being more open and sunshiny. The upper valley was the summer home of that musician _par excellence_ of the Rockies, the green-tailed towhee, and he sang most divinely, pouring out his "full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art." Having elsewhere described his minstrelsy and habits with more or less fulness, I need give him only this passing reference here. A little bird with which I here first made acquaintance was an elegant species known as Audubon's warbler, which may be regarded as the western representative of the myrtle warbler of the East. The two birds are almost counterparts. Indeed, at first I mistook the Audubon for the myrtle. The former has a yellow throat, while the latter's throat is white. In all the upper mountain valleys, and on the steep slopes of the western as well as the eastern side of the Divide, I had the Audubon warblers often at my elbow. In summer they make their homes at an altitude of seven to eleven thousand feet, and are partial to pine timber; indeed, I think I never found them elsewhere, save occasionally among the quaking asps. I learned to distinguish Audubon's chanson from those of his fellow-minstrels. It is not much of a song--a rather weak little trill, with a kind of drawl in the vocalization that forms its diagnostic feature. The persistency with which it is repeated on the solitary pine-clad mountain sides constitutes its principal charm. The winter haunts of Audubon's warblers are farther south than Colorado, mostly in Mexico and Guatemala, although a few of them remain in the sheltered mountain valleys of the western part of the United States. Early in May they appear on the plains of eastern Colorado, where they are known only as migrants. Here a double movement presently takes place--what might be called a longitudinal and a vertical migration--one division of the warbler army sweeping north to their breeding grounds in Canada, and the other wheeling westward and ascending to the alpine heights among the mountains, where they find the subartic conditions that are congenial to their natures without travelling so great a distance. Here they build their nests in the pine or spruce trees, rear their families, and as autumn approaches, descend to the plains, tarry there a week or two, then hie to their winter homes in the South. One of the most gorgeous tenants of this valley was Wilson's warbler.[3] It wears a dainty little cap that is jet black, bordered in front and below with golden yellow, while the upper parts are rich olive and the lower parts bright yellow. These warblers were quite abundant, and were evidently partial to the thickets covering the boggy portions of the vale. While Audubon's warblers kept themselves for the most part among the pines on the slopes and acclivities, the little black-caps preferred the lower ground. Their songs were not brilliant performances, though rather pleasing, being short, jerky trills, somewhat lower in the scale than those of the well-known summer warbler. [3] Mr. Aiken says, "The Rocky Mountain representative of Wilson's warbler is an intermediate form, nearest the Pacific coast bird which is distinguished as the pileolated warbler." While I was stalking about in the low, boggy part of the hollow, my attention was attracted by an odd little song that came rolling down from the pines on the mountain side. At length, time was found to go to the place whence the song came. What could the gay little minstrel be? Somewhere I had heard such minstrelsy--but where? There were runs in it that bore some resemblance to certain strains of the Carolina wren's vigorous lays, but this songster's voice was of a finer quality and had less volume than that of the Carolina. The little bird was found flitting among the pines, and continued to sing his gay little ballad with as much vigor as before. Indeed, my presence seemed to inspire him to redouble his efforts and to sing with more snap and challenge. He acted somewhat like a wren, but was smaller than any species of that family with which I was acquainted, and no part of his plumage was barred with brown and white. Now the midget in feathers leaped up the alternating branches of a pine, and now he flew down and fluttered amid the chaos of dead logs and boughs on the ground, all the while rolling his ditty from his limber tongue. Beginning with an exceedingly fine whistle, which could not be heard far away, he descanted in sounds that it is impossible to convey in syllables. The best literation of his song that I was able to make was the following: "Tse-e-ek, tse-e-ek, tse-e-e-ek, cholly-cholly-cholly, che-che-che, pur-tie, pur-tie, pur-tie!" the _pur-tie_ accented strongly on the second syllable and the whole performance closing with an interrogative inflection. For a long time I watched the little acrobat, but could not settle his identity. Some hours later, while stalking along the other side of the valley, I heard the song duplicated; this time the singer elevated his crest feathers, and at once I recognized him; he was the ruby-crowned kinglet, of course, of course! It was a shame not to identify him at first sight. In Ohio I had often heard his song during the migrating season, and now remembered it well; but never dreaming that the ruby-crown would be found in these alpine districts, I was completely thrown off my reckoning on hearing his quaint melodies. [Illustration: _Ruby-Crowned Kinglet_ "_The singer elevated his crest feathers_"] The ruby-crowned kinglet migrates to these heights in the spring and rears his brood at an elevation of from nine thousand feet to the timber-line, building a nest far up in a pine tree; whereas his eastern kindred hie to the northern part of the United States and beyond, to find summer homes and suitable breeding grounds. Within their chosen boundaries the rubies are very plentiful in the Rockies, their quaint rondeaus tumbling down from every pine-clad acclivity. In October they descend to the plains, and in the latter part of the month hurry off to a more southerly clime. The birds were most abundant in the upper part of the valley, keeping close to the precipitous heights of the Peak. It was a long walk down to the mountaineer's cabin, and I had reason to be glad for not having undertaken to find it the evening before, as I should certainly have lost my way in the darkness. No one was at home now, but through the screen door I could see a canary in a cage. Not a very inviting place to spend the night, I reflected, and I crossed the valley, climbed a steep ridge, following a slightly used wagon road, and trudged down the other side into what I afterwards found was the valley of Moraine Lake, one of the crystal sheets of water that are seen from the summit of Pike's Peak sparkling in the sunshine. While climbing the ridge, I saw my first mountain chickadee, capering about in the trees. He called like the familiar black-cap, and his behavior was much like that bird's. As will be seen in another chapter, I afterwards heard the mountain chickadee's song on the western side of the range, and found it to be quite unlike the minor strain of our pleasant black-cap of the East. On the mountain side forming the descent to Moraine Lake a flock of Clark's nutcrackers were flying about in the pine woods, giving expression to their feelings in a great variety of calls, some of them quite strident. A little junco came in sight by the side of the trail, and hopped about on the ground, and I was surprised to note a reddish patch ornamenting the centre of his back. Afterwards I learned that it was the gray-headed junco, which is distinctly a western species, breeding among the mountains of Colorado. Thrashing about among some dead boles, and making a great to-do, were a pair of small woodpeckers, which closely resembled the well-known downies of our eastern longitudes. I suppose them to have been their western representatives, which are known, according to Mr. Aiken and Professor Cooke, as Batchelder's woodpecker. Near the same place I saw a second pair of mountain bluebirds, flitting about somewhat nervously, and uttering a gentle sigh at intervals; but as evening was now rapidly approaching, I felt the need of finding lodging for the night, and could not stop to hunt for their nest. Faring down the mountain side to the lake, I circled around its lower end until I came to the cottage of the family who have the care of the reservoirs that supply the three towns at the foot of the mountains with water fresh from the snow-fields. Here, to my intense relief, I was able to secure lodging and board as long as I desired to remain. I enjoyed the generous hospitality offered me for two nights and considerably more than one day. It was a genuine retreat, right at the foot of a tall mountain, embowered in a grove of quaking asps. Several persons from Colorado Springs, one of them a professor of the college, were spending their outing at the cottage, and a delightful fellowship we had, discussing birds, literature, and mountain climbing. After resting awhile, I strolled up the valley to listen to the vesper concert of the birds, and a rich one it was. The western robins were piping their blithesome "Cheerilies," Audubon's warblers were trilling in the pines, and, most of all--but here I had one of the most gratifying finds in all my mountain quest. It will perhaps be remembered that the white-crowned sparrows, so plentiful in the upper valley, were not to be seen in the valley of Moraine Lake. Still there were compensations in this cloistered dip among the towering mountains; the mountain hermit thrushes--sometimes called Audubon's thrushes--found the sequestered valley precisely to their liking, and on the evening in question I saw them and heard their pensive cadences for the first time. Such exquisite tones, which seemed to take vocal possession of the vale and the steep, pine-clad mountain side, it has seldom been my good fortune to hear. Scores of the birds were singing simultaneously, some of their voices pitched high in the scale and others quite low, as though they were furnishing both the air and the contralto of the chorus. It was my first opportunity to listen to the songs of any of the several varieties of hermit thrushes, and I freely confess that I came, a willing captive, under the spell of their minstrelsy, so sweet and sad and far away, and yet so rich in vocal expression. In the latter part of the run, which is all too brief, there is a strain which bears close resemblance to the liquid melody of the eastern wood-thrush, but the opening notes have a pathetic quality all their own. Perhaps Charles G. D. Roberts can give some idea of one's feelings at a time like this: "O hermit of evening! thine hour Is the sacrament of desire, When love hath a heavenlier flower, And passion a holier fire." A happy moment it was when a nest of this mountain hermit was discovered, saddled on one of the lower limbs of a pine and containing four eggs of a rich green color. These birds are partial to dense pine forests on the steep, rocky mountain sides. They are extremely shy and elusive, evidently believing that hermit thrushes ought to be heard and not seen. A score or more may be singing at a stone's throw up an acclivity, but if you clamber toward them they will simply remove further up the mountain, making your effort to see and hear them at close range unavailing. That evening, however, as the gloaming settled upon the valley, one selected a perch on a dead branch some distance up the hillside, and obligingly permitted me to obtain a fair view of him with my glass. The hermits breed far up in the mountains, the greatest altitude at which I found them being on the sides of Bald Mountain, above Seven Lakes and a little below the timber-line. To this day their sad refrains are ringing in my ears, bringing back the thought of many half-mournful facts and incidents that haunt the memory. A good night's rest in the cottage, close beneath the unceiled roof, prepared the bird-lover for an all-day ramble. The matutinal concert was early in full swing, the hermit thrushes, western robins, and Audubon's warblers being the chief choralists. One gaudy Audubon's warbler visited the quaking asp grove surrounding the cottage, and trilled the choicest selections of his repertory. Farther up the valley several Wilson's warblers were seen and heard. A shy little bird flitting about in the tangle of grass and bushes in the swampy ground above the lake was a conundrum to me for a long time, but I now know that it was Lincoln's sparrow, which was later found in other ravines among the mountains. It is an exceedingly wary bird, keeping itself hidden amid the bushy clusters for the greater part of the time, now and then venturing to peep out at the intruder, and then bolting quickly into a safe covert. Occasionally it will hop out upon the top of a bush in plain sight, and remain for a few moments, just long enough for you to fix its identity and note the character of its pleasing trill. Some of these points were settled afterwards and not on the morning of my first meeting with the chary little songster. My plan for the day was to retrace my steps of the previous afternoon, by climbing over the ridge into the upper valley and visiting the famous Seven Lakes, which I had missed the day before through a miscalculation in my direction. Clark's crows and the mountain jays were abundant on the acclivities. One of the latter dashed out of a pine bush with a clatter that almost raised the echoes, but, look as I would, I could find no nest or young or anything else that would account for the racket. The Seven Lakes are beautiful little sheets of transparent water, embosomed among the mountains in a somewhat open valley where there is plenty of sunshine. They are visible from the summit of Pike's Peak, from which distant viewpoint they sparkle like sapphire gems in a setting of green. As seen from the Peak they appear to be quite close together, and the land about them seems perfectly level, but when you visit the place itself, you learn that some of them are separated from the others by ridges of considerable height. Beautiful and sequestered as the spot is, I did not find as many birds as I expected. Not a duck or water bird of any kind was seen. Perhaps there is too much hunting about the lakes, and, besides, winged visitors here would have absolutely no protection, for the banks are free of bushes of any description, and no rushes or flags grow in the shallower parts. On the ridges and mountain sides the kinglets and hermit thrushes were abundant, a robin was carolling, a Batchelder woodpecker chirped and pounded in his tumultuous way, Clark's crows and several magpies lilted about, while below the lakes in the copses the white-crowned sparrows and green-tailed towhees held lyrical carnival, their sway disputed only by the natty Wilson's warblers. It was a pleasure to be alive and well in such a place, where one breathed invigoration at every draught of the fresh, untainted mountain air; nor was it less a delight to sit on the bank of one of the transparent lakes and eat my luncheon and quaff from a pellucid spring that gushed as cold as ice and as sweet as nectar from the sand, while the white-crowned sparrows trilled a serenade in the copses. Toward evening I clambered down to the cottage by Moraine Lake. The next morning, in addition to the birds already observed in the valley, I listened to the theme-like recitative of a warbling vireo, and also watched a sandpiper teetering about the edge of the water, while a red-shafted flicker dashed across the lake to a pine tree on the opposite side. As I left this attractive valley, the hermit thrushes seemed to waft me a sad farewell. A little over half a day was spent in walking down from Moraine Lake to the Halfway House. It was a saunter that shall never be forgotten, for I gathered a half day's tribute of lore from the birds. A narrow green hollow, wedging itself into one of the gorges of the towering Peak, and watered by a snow-fed mountain brook, proved a very paradise for birds. Here was that queer little midget of the Rockies, the broad-tailed humming-bird, which performs such wonderful feats of balancing in the air; the red-shafted flicker; the western robin, singing precisely like his eastern half-brother; a pair of house-wrens guarding their treasures; Lincoln's sparrows, not quite so shy as those at Moraine Lake; mountain chickadees; olive-sided flycatchers; on the pine-clad mountain sides the lyrical hermit thrushes; and finally those ballad-singers of the mountain vales, the white-crowned sparrows, one of whose nests I was so fortunate as to come upon. It was placed in a small pine bush, and was just in process of construction. One of the birds flew fiercely at a mischievous chipmunk, and drove him away, as if he knew him for an arrant nest-robber. Leaving this enchanting spot, I trudged down the mountain valleys and ravines, holding silent converse everywhere with the birds, and at length reached a small park, green and bushy, a short distance above the Halfway House. While jogging along, my eye caught sight of a gray-headed junco, which flitted from a clump of bushes bordering the stream to a spot on the ground close to some shrubs. The act appeared so suggestive that I decided to reconnoitre. I walked cautiously to the spot where the bird had dropped down, and in a moment she flew up with a scolding chipper. There was the nest, set on the ground in the grass and cosily hidden beneath the over-arching branches of a low bush. Had the mother bird been wise and courageous enough to retain her place, her secret would not have been betrayed, the nest was so well concealed. The pretty couch contained four juvenile juncos covered only with down, and yet, in spite of their extreme youth, their foreheads and lores showed black, and their backs a distinctly reddish tint, so early in life were they adopting the pattern worn by their parents. The persistency of species in the floral and faunal realms presents some hard nuts for the evolutionist to crack. But that is an excursus, and would lead us too far afield. This was the first junco's nest I had ever found, and no one can blame me for feeling gratified with the discovery. The gray-headed juncos were very abundant in the Rockies, and are the only species at present known to breed in the State of Colorado. They are differentiated from the common slate-colored snowbird by their ash-gray suits, modestly decorated with a rust-colored patch on the back. It was now far past noon, and beginning to feel weak with hunger, I reluctantly said adieu to the junco and her brood, and hurried on to the Halfway House, where a luncheon of sandwiches, pie and coffee strengthened me for the remainder of my tramp down the mountain to Manitou. That was a walk which lingers like a Greek legend in my memory on account of--well, that is the story that remains to be told. On a former visit to the Halfway House I was mentally knocked off my feet by several glimpses of a woodpecker which was entirely new to me, and of whose existence I was not even aware until this gorgeous gentleman hove in sight. He was the handsomest member of the _Picidæ_ family I have ever seen--his upper parts glossy black, some portions showing a bluish iridescence; his belly rich sulphur yellow, a bright red median stripe on the throat, set in the midst of the black, looking like a small necktie; two white stripes running along the side of the head, and a large white patch covering the middle and greater wing-coverts. Altogether, an odd livery for a woodpecker. Silently he swung from bole to bole for a few minutes, and then disappeared. Not until I reached my room in Manitou could I fix the bird's place in the avicular system. By consulting Coues's _Key_ and Professor Cooke's brochure on the _Birds of Colorado_, I found this quaintly costumed woodpecker to be Williamson's sapsucker (_Sphyrapicus thyroideus_), known only in the western part of the United States from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific coast. I now lingered in the beautiful pine grove surrounding the Halfway House, hoping to see him again, but he did not appear, and I reluctantly started down the cog-wheel track. As I was turning a bend in the road, I caught sight of a mountain chickadee flitting to a dead snag on the slope at the right, the next moment slipping into a small hole leading inside. I climbed up to the shelf, a small level nook among the tall pines on the mountain side, to inspect her retreat, for it was the first nest of this interesting species that I found. The chickadee flashed in and out of the orifice, carrying food to her little ones, surreptitiously executing her housewifely duties. The mountain tit seems to be a shy and quiet little body when compared with the common black-cap known in the East. While watching this bird from my place of concealment, I became conscious of the half-suppressed chirping of a woodpecker, and, to my intense joy, a moment later a Williamson's sapsucker swung to a pine bole a little below me and began pecking leisurely and with assumed nonchalance for grubs in the fissures of the bark. From my hiding-place behind some bushes I kept my eye on the handsome creature. An artist might well covet the privilege of painting this elegant bird as he scales the wall of a pine tree. Presently he glided to a snag not more than a rod from the chickadee's domicile, and then I noticed that the dead bole was perforated by a number of woodpecker holes, into one of which the sapsucker presently slipped with the tidbit he held in his bill. The doorway was almost too small for him, obliging him to turn slightly sidewise and make some effort to effect an entrance. Fortune had treated me as one of her favorites: I had discovered the nest of Williamson's sapsucker. But still another surprise was in store. A low, dubious chirping was heard, and then the female ambled leisurely to the snag and hitched up to the orifice. She made several efforts to enter, but could not while her spouse was within. Presently he wormed himself out, whereupon she went in, and remained for some time. At length I crept to the snag and beat against it with my cane. She was loath to leave the nest, but after a little while decided that discretion was the better part of valor. When she came out, my presence so near her nursery caused her not a little agitation, which she displayed by flinging about from bole to bole and uttering a nervous chirp. As to costume, the male and the female had little in common. Her back was picturesquely mottled and barred with black and white, her head light brown, her breast decorated with a large black patch, and her other under parts yellow. Had the couple not been seen together flitting about the nest, they would not have been regarded as mates, so differently were they habited. Standing before the doorway of the nursery--it was not quite so high as my head--I could plainly hear the chirping of the youngsters within. Much as I coveted the sight of a brood of this rare species, I could not bring myself to break down the walls of their cottage and thus expose them to the claws and beaks of their foes. Even scientific curiosity must be restrained by considerations of mercy. The liege lord of the family had now disappeared. Desirous of seeing him once more, I hid myself in a bush-clump near at hand and awaited his return. Presently he came ambling along and scrambled into the orifice, turning his body sidewise, as he had done before. I made my way quietly to the snag and tapped upon it with my cane, but he did not come out, as I expected him to do. Then I struck the snag more vigorously. No result. Then I whacked the bole directly in the rear of the nest, while I stood close at one side watching the doorway. The bird came to the orifice, peeped out, then, seeing me, quickly drew back, determined not to desert his brood in what he must have regarded as an emergency. In spite of all my pounding and coaxing and feigned scolding--and I kept up the racket for several minutes--I did not succeed in driving the _pater familias_ from his post of duty. Once he apparently made a slight effort to escape, but evidently stuck fast in the entrance, and so dropped back and would not leave, only springing up to the door and peeping out at me when my appeals became especially vigorous. It appeared like a genuine case of "I'm determined to defend my children, or die in the attempt!" Meanwhile the mother bird was flitting about in an agitated way, uttering piteous cries of remonstrance and entreaty. Did that bandit intend to rob her of both her husband and her children? It was useless, if not wanton, to hector the poor creatures any longer, even to study their behavior under trying circumstances; and I left them in peace, and hurried down to my lodgings in Manitou, satisfied with the results of my day's ramble. BIRDS OF THE ARID PLAIN [Illustration: PLATE III LAZULI BUNTING--_Cyanospiza amoena_ (Upper figure, male; lower, female)] Having explored the summit of Pike's Peak and part of its southern slope down to the timber-line, and spent several delightful days in the upper valleys of the mountains, as well as in exploring several cañons, the rambler was desirous of knowing what species of birds reside on the plain stretching eastward from the bases of the towering ranges. One afternoon in the latter part of June, I found myself in a straggling village about forty miles east of Colorado Springs. On looking around, I was discouraged, and almost wished I had not come; for all about me extended the parched and treeless plain, with only here and there a spot that had a cast of verdure, and even that was of a dull and sickly hue. Far off to the northeast rose a range of low hills sparsely covered with scraggy pines, but they were at least ten miles away, perhaps twenty, and had almost as arid an aspect as that of the plains themselves. Only one small cluster of deciduous trees was visible, about a mile up a shallow valley or "draw." Surely this was a most unpromising field for bird study. If I had only been content to remain among the mountains, where, even though the climbing was difficult, there were brawling brooks, shady woodlands, and green, copsy vales in which many feathered friends had lurked! [Illustration: _Desert Horned Larks_ "_They were plentiful in this parched region_"] But wherever the bird-lover chances to be, his mania leads him to look for his favorites, and he is seldom disappointed; rather, he is often delightfully surprised. People were able to make a livelihood here, as was proved by the presence of the village and a few scattering dwellings on the plain; then why not the birds, which are as thrifty and wise in many ways as their human relatives? In a short time my baggage was stowed in a safe place, and, field-glass in hand, I sallied forth for my first jaunt on a Colorado plain. But, hold! what were these active little birds, hopping about on the street and sipping from the pool by the village well? They were the desert horned larks, so called because they select the dry plains of the West as their dwelling place. They are interesting birds. The fewer trees and the less humidity, provided there is a spot not too far away at which they may quench their thirst and rinse their feathers, the better they seem to be pleased. They were plentiful in this parched region, running or flying cheerfully before me wherever my steps were bent. I could not help wondering how many thousands of them--and millions, perhaps--had taken up free homesteads on the seemingly limitless plains of eastern Colorado. Most of the young had already left the nest, and were flying about in the company of their elders, learning the fine art of making a living for themselves and evading the many dangers to which bird flesh is heir. The youngsters could readily be distinguished from their seniors by the absence of distinct black markings on throat, chest, and forehead, and the lighter cast of their entire plumage. Sometimes these birds are called shore larks; but that is evidently a misnomer, or at least a very inapt name, for they are not in the least partial to the sea-shore or even the shores of lakes, but are more disposed to take up their residence in inland and comparatively dry regions. There are several varieties, all bearing a very close resemblance, so close, indeed, that only an expert ornithologist can distinguish them, even with the birds in hand. The common horned lark is well known in the eastern part of the United States as a winter resident, while in the middle West, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, etc., are to be found the prairie horned larks, which, as their name indicates, choose the open prairie for their home. The desert horned larks are tenants exclusively of the arid plains, mesas, and mountain parks of the West. There is still another variety, called the pallid horned lark, which spends the winter in Colorado, then hies himself farther north in summer to rear his brood. As I pursued my walk, one of these birds suddenly assumed an alert attitude, then darted into the air, mounting up, up, up, in a series of swift leaps, like "an embodied joy whose race has just begun." Up he soared until he could no longer be seen with the naked eye, and even through my field-glass he was a mere speck against the blue canopy, and yet, high as he had gone, his ditty filtered down to me through the still, rarefied atmosphere, like a sifting of fine sand. His descent was a grand plunge, made with the swiftness of an Indian's arrow, his head bent downward, his wings partly folded, and his tail perked upward at precisely the proper angle to make a rudder, all the various organs so finely adjusted as to convert him into a perfectly dirigible parachute. Swift as his descent was, he alighted on the ground as lightly as a tuft of down. It was the poetry of motion. One or two writers have insisted that the horned lark's empyrean song compares favorably with that of the European skylark; but, loyal and patriotic an American as we are, honesty compels us to concede that our bird's voice is much feebler and less musical than that of his celebrated relative across the sea. It sounds like the unmelodious clicking of pebbles, while the song of the skylark is loud, clear, and ringing. Our birds of the plain find insects to their taste in the short grass which carpets the land with greenish or olive gray. The following morning a mother lark was seen gathering insects and holding them in her bill--a sure sign of fledglings in the near neighborhood. I decided to watch her, and, if possible, find her bantlings. It required not a little patience, for she was wary and the sun poured down a flood of almost blistering heat. This way and that she scurried over the ground, now picking up an insect and adding it to the store already in her bill, and now standing almost erect to eye me narrowly and with some suspicion. At length she seemed to settle down for a moment upon a particular spot, and when I looked again with my glass, her beak was empty. I examined every inch of ground, as I thought, in the neighborhood of the place where she had stopped, but could find neither nest nor nestlings. Again I turned my attention to the mother bird, which meanwhile had gathered another bunch of insects and was hopping about with them through the croppy grass, now and then adding to her accumulation until her mouth was full. For a long time she zigzagged about, going by provoking fits and starts. At length fortune favored me, for through my levelled glass I suddenly caught sight of a small, grayish-looking ball hopping and tumbling from a cactus clump toward the mother bird, who jabbed the contents of her bill into a small, open mouth. I followed a bee-line to the spot, and actually had to scan the ground sharply for a few moments before I could distinguish the youngster from its surroundings, for it had squatted flat, its gray and white plumage harmonizing perfectly with the grayish desert grass. [Illustration: _Lark_ "_It was a dear little thing_"] It was a dear little thing, and did not try to escape, although I took it up in my hand and stroked its downy back again and again. Sometimes it closed its eyes as if it were sleepy. When I placed it on the ground, it hopped away a few inches, and by accident punctured the fleshy corner of its mouth with a sharp cactus thorn, and had to jerk itself loose, bringing the blood from the lacerated part. Meanwhile the mother lark went calmly about her household duties, merely keeping a watchful eye on the human meddler, and making no outcry when she saw her infant in my possession. I may have been _persona non grata_, but, if so, she did not express her feeling. This was the youngest horned lark seen by me in my rambles on the plains. Perhaps the reader will care to know something about the winter habits of these birds. They do not spend the season of cold and storm in the mountains, not even those that breed there, for the snow is very deep and the tempests especially fierce. Many of them, however, remain in the foothills and on the mesas and plains, where they find plenty of seeds and berries for their sustenance, unless the weather chances to be unusually severe. One winter, not long ago, the snow continued to lie much longer than usual, cutting off the natural food supply of the larks. What regimen did they adopt in that exigency? They simply went to town. Many of the kindly disposed citizens of Colorado Springs scattered crumbs and millet seeds on the streets and lawns, and of this supply the little visitors ate greedily, becoming quite tame. As soon, however, as the snow disappeared they took their departure, not even stopping to say thanks or adieu; although we may take it for granted that they felt grateful for favors bestowed. Besides the horned larks, many other birds were found on the plain. Next in abundance were the western meadow-larks. Persons who live in the East and are familiar with the songs of the common meadow-lark, should hear the vocal performances of the westerners. The first time I heard one of them, the minstrelsy was so strange to my ear, so different from anything I had ever heard, I was thrown into an ecstasy of delight, and could not imagine from what kind of bird larynx so quaint a medley could emanate. The song opened with a loud, fine, piercing whistle, and ended with an abrupt staccato gurgle much lower in the musical staff, sounding precisely as if the soloist's performance had been suddenly choked off by the rising of water in the windpipe. It was something after the order of the purple martin's melodious sputter, only the tones were richer and fuller and the music better defined, as became a genuine oscine. His sudden and emphatic cessation seemed to indicate that he was in a petulant mood, perhaps impatient with the intruder, or angry with a rival songster. Afterwards I heard him--or, rather, one of his brothers--sing arias so surpassingly sweet that I voted him the master minstrel of the western plains, prairies, and meadows. One evening as I was returning to Colorado Springs from a long tramp through one of the cañons of the mountains, a western meadow-lark sat on a small tree and sang six different tunes within the space of a few minutes. Two of them were so exquisite and unique that I involuntarily sprang to my feet with a cry of delight. There he sat in the lengthening shadows of Cheyenne Mountain, the champion phrase-fluter of the irrigated meadow in which he and a number of his comrades had found a summer home. On the plain, at the time of my visit, the meadow-larks were not quite so tuneful, for here the seasons are somewhat earlier than in the proximity of the mountains, and the time of courtship and incubation was over. Still, they sang enough to prove themselves members of a gifted musical family. Observers in the East will remember the sputtering call of the eastern larks when they are alarmed or their suspicions are aroused. The western larks do not utter alarums of that kind, but a harsh "chack" instead, very similar to the call of the grackles. The nesting habits of the eastern and western species are the same, their domiciles being placed on the ground amid the grass, often prettily arched over in the rear and made snug and neat. It must not be thought, because my monograph on the western larks is included in this chapter, that they dwell exclusively on the arid plain. No; they revel likewise in the areas of verdure bordering the streams, in the irrigated fields and meadows, and in the watered portions of the upper mountain parks. An interesting question is the following: Are the eastern and western meadow-larks distinct species, or only varieties somewhat specialized by differences of locality and environment? It is a problem over which the scientific professors have had not a little disputation. My own opinion is that they are distinct species and do not cohabit, and the conviction is based on some special investigations, though not of the kind that are made with the birds in hand. It has been my privilege to study both forms in the field. In the first place, their vocal exhibitions are very different, so much so as to indicate a marked diversity in the organic structure of their larynxes. Much as I have listened to their minstrelsy, I have never known one kind to borrow from the musical repertory of the other. True, there are strains in the arias of the westerners that closely resemble the clear, liquid whistle of the eastern larks, but they occur right in the midst of the song and are part and parcel of it, and therefore afford no evidence of mimicry or amalgamation. Even the trills of the grassfinch and the song-sparrow have points of similarity; does that prove that they borrow from each other, or that espousals sometimes occur between the two species? The habiliments of the two forms of larks are more divergent than would appear at first blush. Above, the coloration of _neglecta_ (the western) is paler and grayer than that of _magna_, the black markings being less conspicuous, and those on the tertials and middle tail-feathers being arranged in narrow, isolated bars, and not connected along the shaft. While the flanks and under tail-coverts of _magna_ are distinctly washed with buff, those of _neglecta_ are white, very faintly tinged with buff, if at all. The yellow of the throat of the eastern form does not spread out laterally over the malar region, as does that of the western lark. All of which tends to prove that the two forms are distinct. Early in the spring of 1901 the writer took a trip to Oklahoma in the interest of bird-study, and found both kinds of meadow-larks extremely abundant and lavish of their melodies on the fertile prairies. He decided to carry on a little original investigation in the field of inquiry now under discussion. One day, in a draw of the prairie, he noticed a western meadow-lark which was unusually lyrical, having the skill of a past-master in the art of trilling and gurgling and fluting. Again and again I went to the place, on the same day and on different days, and invariably found the westerner there, perching on the fence or a weed-stem, and greeting me with his exultant lays. But, mark: no eastern lark ever intruded on his preserve. In other and more distant parts of the broad field the easterners were blowing their piccolos, but they did not encroach on the domain of the lyrical westerner, who, with his mate--now on her nest in the grass--had evidently jumped his claim and held it with a high hand. In many other places in Oklahoma and Kansas where both species dwell, I have noticed the same interesting fact--that in the breeding season each form selects a special precinct, into which the other form does not intrude. They perhaps put up some kind of trespass sign. These observations have all but convinced me that _S. magna_ and _S. neglecta_ are distinct species, and avoid getting mixed up in their family affairs. Nor is that all. While both forms dwell on the vast prairies of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska, yet, as you travel eastward, the western larks gradually diminish in number until at length they entirely disappear; whereas, if you journey westward, the precise opposite occurs. I have never heard _neglecta_ east of the Missouri River,[4] nor _magna_ on the plains of Colorado. Therefore the conclusion is almost forced upon the observer that there are structural and organic differences between the two forms. [4] He sometimes ventures, though sparingly, as far east as Illinois and Wisconsin; still my statement is true--I have never heard the western lark even in the bottoms and meadows of the broad valley east of the Missouri River, while, one spring morning, I did hear one of these birds fluting in the top of a cottonwood tree in my yard on the high western bluff of that stream. After the foregoing deductions had been reached, the writer bethought him of consulting Ridgway's Manual on the subject, and was gratified to find his views corroborated by a footnote answering to an asterisk affixed to the name of the western lark: "Without much doubt a distinct species. The occurrence of both _S. neglecta_ and _S. magna_ together in many portions of the Mississippi Valley, each in its typical style (the ranges of the two overlapping, in fact, for a distance of several hundred miles), taken together with the excessive rarity of intermediate specimens and the universally attested radical difference in their notes, are facts wholly incompatible with the theory of their being merely geographical races of the same species." This has been a long _excursus_, and we must get back to our jaunt on the plain. While I was engaged in watching the birds already named, my ear was greeted by a loud, clear, bell-like call; and, on looking in the direction from which it came, I observed a bird hovering over a ploughed field not far away, and then descending with graceful, poising flight to the ground. It proved to be the Arkansas flycatcher, a large, elegant bird that is restricted to the West. I had never seen this species. Nothing like him is known in the East, the crested flycatcher being most nearly a copy of him, although the manners of the two birds are quite unlike. The body of the western bird is as large as that of the robin, and he must be considerably longer from tip of beak to tip of tail. He is a fine-looking fellow, presenting a handsome picture as he stands on a weed-stalk or a fence-post, his yellow jacket gleaming in the sun. He is the possessor of a clear, musical voice, and if he had the vocal organs of some of the oscines, he certainly would be one of the best feathered lyrists of America. Unfortunately he is able to do nothing but chirp and chatter, although he puts not a little music into his simple vocal exercises. It was surprising to note on how slender a weed-stalk so large a bird was able to perch. There being few trees and fences in this region, he has doubtless gained expertness through practice in the art of securing a foot-hold on the tops of the weed-stems. Some of the weeds on which he stood with perfect ease and grace were extremely lithe and flexible and almost devoid of branches. But what was the cause of this particular bird's intense solicitude? It was obvious there was a nest in the neighborhood. As I sought in the grass and weed-clumps, he uttered his piercing calls of protest and circled and hovered overhead like a red-winged blackbird. Suddenly the thought occurred to me that the flycatchers of my acquaintance do not nest on the ground, but on trees. I looked around, and, sure enough, in the shallow hollow below me stood a solitary willow tree not more than fifteen or twenty feet high, the only tree to be seen within a mile. And that lone tree on the plain was occupied by the flycatcher and his mate for a nesting place. In a crotch the gray cottage was set, containing three callow babies and one beautifully mottled egg. In another fork of the same small tree a pair of kingbirds--the same species as our well-known eastern bee-martins--had built their nest, in the downy cup of which lay four eggs similarly decorated with brown spots. The birds now all circled overhead and joined in an earnest plea with me not to destroy their homes and little ones, and I hurriedly climbed down from the tree to relieve their agitation, stopping only a moment to examine the twine plaited into the felted nests of the kingbirds. The willow sapling contained also the nest of a turtle dove. "If there are three nests in this small tree, there may be a large number in the cluster of trees beyond the swell about a mile away," I mused, and forthwith made haste to go to the place indicated. I was not disappointed. Had the effort been made, I am sure two score of nests might have been found in these trees, for they were liberally decorated with bird cots and hammocks. Most of these were kingbirds' and Arkansas flycatchers' nests, but there were others as well. On one small limb there were four of the dangling nests of Bullock's orioles, one of them fresh, the rest more or less weather beaten, proving that this bird had been rearing broods here for a number of seasons. Whose song was this ringing from one of the larger trees a little farther down the glade? I could scarcely believe the testimony of my ears and eyes, yet there could be no mistake--it was the vivacious mimicry of the mocking-bird, which had travelled far across the plain to this solitary clump of trees to find singing perches and a site for his nests. He piped his musical miscellany with as much good-cheer as if he were dwelling in the neighborhood of some embowered cottage in Dixie-land. In suitable localities on the plains of Colorado the mockers were found to be quite plentiful, but none were seen among the mountains. A network of twigs and vines in one of the small willows afforded a support and partial covert for the nest of a pair of white-rumped shrikes. It contained six thickly speckled eggs, and was the first nest of this species I had ever found. The same hollow,--if so shallow a dip in the plain can be called a hollow,--was selected as the home of several pairs of red-winged and Brewer's blackbirds, which built their grassy cots in the low bushes of a slightly boggy spot, where a feeble spring oozed from the ground. It was a special pleasure to find a green-tailed towhee in the copse of the draw, for I had supposed that he always hugged close to the steep mountain sides. A walk before breakfast the next morning added several more avian species to my roll. To my surprise, a pair of mountain bluebirds had chosen the village for their summer residence, and were building a nest in the coupler of a freight car standing on a side track. The domicile was almost completed, and I could not help feeling sorry for the pretty, innocent couple, at the thought that the car would soon be rolling hundreds of miles away, and all their loving toil would go for naught. Bluebirds had previously been seen at the timber-line among the mountains, and here was a pair forty miles out on the plain--quite a range for this species, both longitudinally and vertically. During the forenoon the following birds were observed: A family of juvenile Arkansas flycatchers, which were being fed by their parents; a half-dozen or more western grassfinches, trilling the same pensive tunes as their eastern half-brothers; a small, long-tailed sparrow, which I could not identify at the time, but which I now feel certain was Lincoln's sparrow; these, with a large marsh-harrier and a colony of cliff-swallows, completed my bird catalogue at this place. It may not be amiss to add that several jack-rabbits went skipping over the swells; that many families of prairie dogs were visited, and that a coyotte galloped lightly across the plain, stopping and looking back occasionally to see whether he were being pursued. It was no difficult task to study the birds on the plain. Having few hiding-places in a locality almost destitute of trees and bushes, where even the grass was too short to afford a covert, they naturally felt little fear of man, and hence were easily approached. Their cousins residing in the mountains were, as a rule, provokingly wary. The number of birds that had pre-empted homesteads on the treeless wastes was indeed a gratifying surprise, and I went back to the mountains refreshed by the pleasant change my brief excursion upon the plains had afforded me. [Illustration: _Coyotte_ "_Looking back to see whether he were being pursued_"] A PRETTY HUMMER [Illustration] Where do you suppose I got my first glimpse of the mite in feathers called the broad-tailed humming-bird? It was in a green bower in the Rocky Mountains in plain sight of the towering summit of Pike's Peak, which seemed almost to be standing guard over the place. Two brawling mountain brooks met here, and, joining their forces, went with increased speed and gurgle down the glades and gorges. As they sped through this ravine, they slightly overflowed their banks, making a boggy area of about an acre as green as green could be; and here amid the grass and bushes a number of birds found a pleasant summer home, among them the dainty hummer. From the snow-drifts, still to be seen in the sheltered gorges of Pike's Peak, the breezes would frequently blow down into the nook with a freshness that stimulated like wine with no danger of intoxicating; and it was no wonder that the white-crowned sparrows, Lincoln's sparrows, the robins and wrens, and several other species, found in this spot a pleasant place to live. One of the narrow valleys led directly up to the base of the massive cone of the Peak, its stream fed by the snow-fields shining in the sun. Going around by the valley of Seven Lakes, I had walked down from the summit, but nowhere had I seen the tiny hummer until I reached the green nook just described. Still, he sometimes ascends to an elevation of eleven thousand feet above the level of the sea. _ONE OF THE SEVEN LAKES_ _PIKE'S PEAK shows dimly in the background, more plainly in the reflection. Viewed from the peak, the lakes sparkle like opaline gems in the sun. The waters are so clear that an inverted world is seen in their transparent depths. The valley is an elysium for many kinds of birds, most of them described in the text. The white-crowned sparrows love the shores of these beautiful lakes, which mirror the blithe forms of the birds. The pine forests of the mountain sides are vocal with the refrains of the hermit thrushes._ [Illustration] Our feathered dot is gorgeous with his metallic green upper parts, bordered on the tail with purplish black, his white or grayish under parts, and his gorget of purple which gleams in bright, varying tints in the sun. He closely resembles our common ruby-throated humming-bird, whose gorget is intense crimson instead of purple, and who does not venture into the Rocky Mountain region, but dwells exclusively in the eastern part of North America. It is a little strange that the eastern part of our country attracts only one species of the large hummer family, while the western portion, including the Rocky Mountain region, can boast of at least seventeen different kinds as summer residents or visitors. My attention was first directed to the broad-tailed hummer by seeing him darting about in the air with the swiftness of an arrow, sipping honey from the flower cups, and then flying to the twigs of a dead tree that stood in the marsh. There he sat, turning his head this way and that, and watching me with his keen little eyes. It was plain he did not trust me, and therefore resented my presence. Though an unwelcome guest, I prolonged my call for several hours, during which I made many heroic but vain attempts to find his nest. But what was the meaning of a sharp, insect-like buzzing that fell at intervals on my ear? Presently I succeeded in tracing the sound to the hummer, which utters it whenever he darts from his perch and back again, especially if there is a spectator or a rival near at hand, for whom he seems in this way to express his contempt. It is a vocal sound, or, at least, it comes from his throat, and is much louder and sharper than the _susurrus_ produced by the rapid movement of his wings. This I ascertain by hearing both the sounds at the same time. But the oddest prank which this hummer performs is to dart up in the air, and then down, almost striking a bush or a clump of grass at each descent, repeating this feat a number of times with a swiftness that the eye can scarcely follow. Having done this, he will swing up into the air so far that you can scarcely see him with the naked eye; the next moment he will drop into view, poise in mid-air seventy-five or a hundred feet above your head, supporting himself by a swift motion of the wings, and simply hitching to right and left in short arcs, as if he were fixed on a pivot, sometimes meanwhile whirling clear around. There he hangs on his invisible axis until you grow tired watching him, and then he darts to his favorite perch on the dead tree. No doubt John Vance Cheney had in mind another species when he composed the following metrical description, but it aptly characterized the volatile broad-tail as well: "Voyager on golden air, Type of all that's fleet and fair, Incarnate gem, Live diadem, Bird-beam of the summer day,-- Whither on your sunny way? * * * * * Stay, forget lost Paradise, Star-bird fallen from happy skies." After that first meeting the broad-tailed hummers were frequently seen in my rambles among the Rockies. In some places there were small colonies of them. They did not always dwell together in harmony, but often pursued one another like tiny furies, with a loud z-z-z-zip that meant defiance and war. The swiftness of their movements often excited my wonder, and it was difficult to see how they kept from impaling themselves on thorns or snags, so reckless were their lightning-like passages through the bushes and trees. When four or five of them were found in one place, they would fairly thread the air with green and purple as they described their circles and loops and festoons with a rapidity that fairly made my head whirl. At one place several of them grew very bold, dashing at me or wheeling around my head, coming so close that I could hear the _susurrus_ of their wings as well as the sharp, challenging buzz from their throats. Perhaps it would interest you to know where the rambler found these tiny hummers. They were never in the dark cañons and gorges, nor in the ravines that were heavily wooded with pine, but in the open, sunshiny glades and valleys, where there were green grass and bright flowers. In the upper part of both North and South Cheyenne Cañons they were plentiful, although they avoided the most scenic parts of these wonderful mountain gorges. Another place where they found a pleasant summer home was in a green pocket of the mountain above Red Cliff, a village on the western side of the great range. On descending the mountains to the town of Glenwood, I did not find them, and therefore am disposed to think that in the breeding season they do not choose to dwell in too low or too high an altitude, but seek suitable places at an elevation of from seven thousand to nine thousand feet. _SUMMIT OF PIKE'S PEAK_ _Only a small portion of the peak is shown in the view. The comparatively level area referred to in the text lies back of the signal station on the crest. At a garbage heap near the building a flock of leucostictes were seen, and the writer was told that they came there regularly to feed. From this sublime height the American pipits rise on resilient wings hundreds of feet into the air until they disappear in the cerulean depths of the sky, singing all the while at "heaven's gate."_ [Illustration] One day, while staying at Buena Vista, Colorado, I hired a saddle-horse and rode to Cottonwood Lake, twelve miles away, among the rugged mountains. The valley is wide enough here to admit of a good deal of sunshine, and therefore flowers studded the ground in places. It was here I saw the only female broad-tailed hummer that was met with in my rambles in the Rockies. She was flitting among the flowers, and did not make the buzzing sound that the males produce wherever found. She was not clad so elegantly as were her masculine relatives, for the throat-patch was white instead of purple, and the green on her back did not gleam so brightly. But, oddly enough, her sides and under tail-coverts were stained with a rufous tint--a color that does not appear at all in the costume of the male. A curious habit of these hummers is worth describing. The males remain in the breeding haunts until the young are out of the nest and are beginning to be able to shift for themselves. Then the papas begin to disappear, and in about ten days all have gone, leaving the mothers and the youngsters to tarry about the summer home until the latter are strong enough to make the journey to some resort lower in the mountains or farther south. The reason the males do this is perhaps evident enough, for at a certain date the flowers upon whose sweets the birds largely subsist begin to grow scant, and so if they remained there would not be enough for all. In the San Francisco Mountains of Arizona, Doctor Merriam found the broad-tails very abundant in the balsam timber and the upper part of the pine belt, where they breed in the latter part of July; after which they remain in that region until the middle of September, even though the weather often becomes quite frosty at night. At break of day, in spite of the cold, they will gather in large flocks at some spring to drink and bathe. Doctor Merriam says about them at such times: "They were like swarms of bees, buzzing about one's head and darting to and fro in every direction. The air was full of them. They would drop down to the water, dip their feet and bellies, and rise and shoot away as if propelled by an unseen power. They would often dart at the face of an intruder as if bent on piercing the eye with their needle-like bills, and then poise for a moment almost within reach before turning, when they were again lost in the busy throng. Whether this act was prompted by curiosity or resentment I was not able to ascertain." As has already been said, there is not always unruffled peace in the hummer family. Among the Rocky Mountains, and especially on the western side of the range, there dwells another little hummer called the rufous humming-bird, because the prevailing color of his plumage is reddish, and between this family and the broad-tails there exists a bitter feud. When, in the migrating season, a large number of both species gather together in a locality where there is a cluster of wild-flowers, the picture they make as they dart to and fro and bicker and fight for some choice blossom, their metallic colors flashing in the sun, is so brilliant as never to be forgotten by the spectator who is fortunate enough to witness it. [Illustration: "_Pike's Peak in cloudland_"] OVER THE DIVIDE AND BACK One June day a Denver & Rio Grande train bore the bird-lover from Colorado Springs to Pueblo, thence westward to the mountains, up the Grand Cañon of the Arkansas River, through the Royal Gorge, past the smiling, sunshiny upper mountain valleys, over the Divide at Tennessee Pass, and then down the western slopes to the next stopping-place, which was Red Cliff, a village nestling in a deep mountain ravine at the junction of Eagle River and Turkey Creek. The following day, a little after "peep o' dawn," I was out on the street, and was impressed by a song coming from the trees on the acclivity above the village. "Surely that is a new song," I said to myself; "and yet it seems to have a familiar air." A few minutes of hard climbing brought me near enough to get my glass on the little lyrist, and then I found it was only the house-wren! "How could you be led astray by so familiar a song?" you inquire. Well, that is the humiliating part of the incident, for I have been listening to the house-wren's gurgling sonata for some twenty years--rather more than less--and should have recognized it at once; only it must be remembered that I was in a strange place, and had my ears and eyes set for avian rarities, and therefore blundered.[5] [5] On this incident I quote a personal note from my friend, Mr. Aiken: "The wren of the Rockies is the western house-wren, but is the same form as that found in the Mississippi Valley. It is quite possible that a difference in song may occur, but I have not noticed any." [Illustration: _Cliff-Swallows_ "_On the rugged face of a cliff_"] To my surprise, I found many birds on those steep mountain sides, which were quite well timbered. Above the village a colony of cliff-swallows had a nesting place on the rugged face of a cliff, and were soaring about catching insects and attending to the wants of their greedy young. Besides the species named, I here found warbling vireos, broad-tailed humming-birds, western nighthawks, ruby-crowned kinglets, magpies, summer warblers, mountain chickadees, western wood-pewees, Louisiana tanagers, long-crested jays, kingfishers, gray-headed juncos, red-shafted flickers, pygmy nuthatches, house-finches, mountain jays, and Clarke's nutcrackers. The only species noted here that had not previously been seen east of the Divide was the pygmy nuthatch, a little bird which scales the trunks and branches of trees like all his family, but which is restricted to the Rocky Mountains. Like the white-breasted nuthatch, he utters an alto call, "Yang! yang! yang!" only it is soft and low--a miniature edition of the call of its eastern relative. A mountain chickadee's nest was also found, and here I heard for the first time one of these birds sing. Its performance was quite an affecting little minor whistle, usually composed of four distinct notes, though sometimes the vocalist contented himself with a song of two or three syllables. The ordinary run might be represented phonetically in this way, "Phee, ph-e-e-e, phe-phe," with the chief emphasis on the second syllable, which is considerably prolonged. The song is quite different from that of the black-capped chickadee both in the intoning and the technical arrangement, while it does not run so high in the scale, nor does it impress me as being quite so much of a minor strain, if such a distinction can be made in music. Both birds' tunes, however, have the character of being whistled. Glenwood is a charming summer resort in Colorado on the western side of the Rocky Mountain range, and can be reached by both the Denver & Rio Grande and the Colorado Midland Railways. Beautifully situated in an open mountain valley, it possesses many attractions in the way of natural scenery, while the cool breezes blow down from the snow-mantled ranges gleaming in the distance, and the medicinal springs draw many tourists in search of health and recuperation. My purpose, however, in visiting this idyllic spot--I went there from Red Cliff--was not primarily to view the scenery, nor to make use of the healing waters, but to gratify my thirst for bird-lore. Having spent some weeks in observing the avi-fauna east of the range, I had a curiosity to know something of bird life west of the great chain of alpine heights, and therefore I selected Glenwood as a fertile field in which to carry on some investigations. While my stay at this resort was all too short, it was of sufficient length to put me in possession of a number of facts that may prove to be of general interest. For one thing I learned, somewhat to my surprise, that the avian fauna on both sides of the Divide is much the same. Indeed, with one exception--to be noted more at length hereafter--I found no birds on the western side that I had not previously seen on the eastern side, although a longer and minuter examination would undoubtedly have resulted in the discovery of a few species that are peculiar to the regions beyond the range. In the extreme western and southwestern portions of Colorado there are quite a number of species that are seldom or never seen in the eastern part of the State. However, keeping to the mountainous districts, and given the same altitude and other conditions, you will be likely to find the same kinds of feathered folk on both sides of the range. A few concrete cases will make this statement clear. The elevation of Glenwood is five thousand seven hundred and fifty-eight feet; that of Colorado Springs, five thousand nine hundred and ninety-two feet; and the climatic conditions otherwise are practically the same. Hence at both places the following species were found: Lazuli buntings, Arkansas goldfinches, American goldfinches, western wood-pewees, Arkansas kingbirds, Bullock's orioles, grassfinches, and catbirds. At the same time there were a number of species in both localities that have a more extensive vertical range, as, for example, the western robins, which were seen in many places from the bases of the mountains up to the timber-line, over eleven thousand five hundred feet above sea-level. _ROYAL GORGE_ _In the Grand Cañon of the Arkansas River. In cañons like this, their walls rising almost vertically from one thousand to fifteen hundred feet, few birds are to be seen. Occasionally a dove will fly from one side of the gorge to the other before the scurrying train. From below a magpie or a Clark's crow may sometimes be seen flying overhead across the fearful chasm from one wall to the other, turning its head at intervals as if to inspect and question the spectator over a thousand feet below._ [Illustration] The presence of practically the same avian fauna on both sides of the great range suggests some speculations as to their movements in the migrating season. Do those on the western side of the mountains travel over the towering summits from the eastern plains? Or do they come up from their southern winter homes by way of the valleys and plains west of the range? Undoubtedly the latter is the correct surmise, for there were birds at Glenwood that are never known to ascend far into the mountains, and should they attempt to cross the Divide in the early spring, they would surely perish in the intense cold of those elevated regions, where snow often falls even in June, July, and August. One can easily imagine some of the eastern and western residents meeting in the autumn on the plains at the southern extremity of the mountain range, dwelling together in some southern locality throughout the winter, and then, when spring approaches, taking their separate routes, part going east and part west of the range, for their breeding haunts in the North. More than likely they do not meet again until the following autumn. There are individuals, doubtless, that never catch a glimpse of the western side of the great American watershed, while others are deprived of the privilege of looking upon the majestic panoramas of the eastern side. What has just been said applies, of course, only to those species that prefer to dwell in the lower altitudes. There are other species that find habitats to their taste in the most elevated localities, ranging at will in the summer time over the bald summits in the regions of perpetual snow. Among these may be mentioned the brown-capped leucostictes, the American pipits, the ravens, and Brewer's blackbirds. These species will often have the privilege of looking upon the scenery on both sides of the range, and you and I can scarcely repress a feeling of envy when we think of their happy freedom, and their frequent opportunities to go sightseeing. While taking an early morning stroll along one of the streets of Glenwood, I caught sight of a new member of the phoebe family, its reddish breast and sides differentiating it from the familiar phoebe of the East. Afterwards I identified it as Say's phoebe, a distinctly western species. Its habits are like those of its eastern relative. A pair of Say's phoebes had placed their nest on a beam of a veranda, near the roof, where they could be seen carrying food to their young. My notes say nothing of their singing a tune or even uttering a chirp. This was my first observation of Say's phoebe, although, as will be seen, I subsequently saw one under somewhat peculiar circumstances. Having spent all the time I could spare at Glenwood, one morning I boarded the eastward-bound train, and was soon whirling up through the sublime cañons of Grand and Eagle Rivers, keeping on the alert for such birds as I could see from the car-window. Few birds, as has been said, can be seen in the dark gorges of the mountains, the species that are most frequently descried being the turtle doves, with now and then a small flock of blackbirds. The open, sunlit valleys of the upper mountains, watered by the brawling streams, are much more to the liking of many birds, especially the mountain song-sparrows, the white-crowned sparrows, the green-tailed towhees, and Audubon's and Wilson's warblers. Up, up, for many miles the double-headed train crept, tooting and puffing hard, until at length it reached the highest point on the route, which is Tennessee Pass, through the tunnel of which it swept with a sullen roar, issuing into daylight on the eastern side, where the waters of the streams flow eastward instead of westward. The elevation of this tunnel is ten thousand four hundred and eighteen feet, which is still about a thousand feet below the timber-line. A minute after emerging from the tunnel's mouth I caught sight of a red-shafted flicker which went bolting across the narrow valley. The train swept down the valley for some miles, stopped long enough to have another engine coupled to the one that had brought us down from the tunnel, then wheeled to the left and began the ascent to the city of Leadville. This city is situated on a sloping plain on the mountain side, in full view of many bald mountain peaks whose gorges are filled with deep snow-drifts throughout the summer. For some purposes Leadville may be an exceedingly desirable city, but it has few attractions for the ornithologist. I took a long walk through a part of the city, and, whether you will believe it or not, I did not see a single bird outside of a cage, not even a house-finch or an English sparrow, nor did I see one tree in my entire stroll along the busy streets. The caged birds seen were a canary and a cardinal, and, oddly enough, both of them were singing, mayhap for very homesickness. Why should a bird student tarry here? What was there to keep him in a birdless place like this? I decided to leave at once, and so, checking my baggage through to Buena Vista, I started afoot down the mountain side, determined to walk to Malta, a station five miles below, observing the birds along the way. Not a feathered lilter was seen until I had gone about a mile from Leadville, when a disconsolate robin appeared among some scraggy pine bushes, not uttering so much as a chirp by way of greeting. A few minutes later I heard a vigorous and musical chirping in the pine bushes, and, turning aside, found a flock of small, finch-like birds. They flitted about so rapidly that it was impossible to get a good view of them with my glasses; but such glimpses as I obtained revealed a prevailing grayish, streaked with some darker color, while a glint of yellow in their wings and tails was displayed as the birds flew from bush to bush. When the wings were spread, a narrow bar of yellow or whitish-yellow seemed to stretch across them lengthwise, giving them a gauzy appearance. The birds remained together in a more or less compact flock. They uttered a loud, clear chirp that was almost musical, and also piped a quaint trill that was almost as low and harsh as that of the little clay-colored sparrow, although occasionally one would lift his voice to a much higher pitch. What were these tenants of the dry and piney mountain side? They were pine siskins, which I had ample opportunity to study in my rambles among the mountains in 1901. [Illustration: _Pine Siskins_] A mile farther down, a lone mountain bluebird appeared in sight, perched on a gray stump on the gray hillside, and keeping as silent as if it were a crime in bluebird-land to utter a sound. This bird's breeding range extends from the plains to the timber-line; and he dwells on both sides of the mountains, for I met with him at Glenwood. About a half mile above Malta a western nighthawk was seen, hurtling in his eccentric, zigzag flight overhead, uttering his strident call, and "hawking for flies," as White of Selborne would phrase it. A western grassfinch flew over to some bushes with a morsel in its bill, but I could not discover its nest or young, search as I would. Afterwards it perched on a telegraph wire and poured out its evening voluntary, which was the precise duplicate of the trills of the grassfinches of eastern North America. There seems to be only a slight difference between the eastern and western forms of these birds, so slight, indeed, that they can be distinguished only by having the birds in hand. Turtle doves were also plentiful in the valley above Malta, as they were in most suitable localities. Here were also several western robins, one of which saluted me with a cheerful carol, whose tone and syllabling were exactly like those of the merry redbreast of our Eastern States. I was delighted to find the sweet-voiced white-crowned sparrows tenants of this valley, although they were not so abundant here as they had been a little over a week before in the hollows below the summit of Pike's Peak. But what was the bird which was singing so blithely a short distance up the slope? He remained hidden until I drew near, when he ran off on the ground like a frightened doe, and was soon ensconced in a sage bush. Note his chestnut crest and greenish back. This is the green-tailed towhee. He is one of the finest vocalists of the Rocky Mountains, his tones being strong and well modulated, his execution almost perfect as to technique, and his entire song characterized by a quality that might be defined as human expressiveness. A pair of western chipping sparrows were feeding their young in one of the sage bushes. I hoped to find a nest, but my quest simply proved that the bantlings had already left their nurseries. It was some satisfaction, however, to establish the fact at first hand that the western chipping sparrows breed at an elevation of nine thousand five hundred and eighty feet above sea-level. While strolling about a short distance above the town, I discovered an underground passage leading to some of the factories, or perhaps the smelting works, a few miles farther up the valley. The over-arching ground and timbers forming the roof were broken through at various places, making convenient openings for the unwary pedestrian to tumble through should he venture to stroll about here by night. Suddenly a little broad-shouldered bird appeared from some mysterious quarter, and flitted silently about from bush to bush or from one tussock of grass to another. To my surprise, he presently dropped into one of the openings of the subterranean passage, disappeared for a few moments, and then emerged from another opening a little farther away. The bird--let me say at once--was Say's phoebe, with which, as previously told, I made acquaintance at Glenwood. He may be recognized by the reddish or cinnamon-brown cast of his abdomen and sides. Again and again he darted into the passage, perhaps to make sure that his bairns had not been kidnapped, and then came up to keep a vigilant eye on his visitor, whom he was not wholly disposed to trust. I am not sure that there was a nest in the subterranean passage, as my time was too short to look for it. Others may not regard it as an important ornithological discovery, and I do not pretend that it was epoch-making, but to me it was at least interesting to find this species, which was new to me, dwelling at an elevation of five thousand seven hundred and fifty-eight feet on the western side of the range, and on the eastern side at an elevation of nine thousand five hundred and eighty feet. Nowhere else in my peregrinations among the Rockies did I so much as catch a glimpse of Say's phoebe.[6] [6] In 1901 this bird was seen by me in South Park, and its quaint whistle was heard,--it says _Phe-by_, but its tone and expression are different from those of its eastern relative. See the chapter entitled "Pleasant Outings." With the exception of some swallows circling about in the air, I saw no other birds during my brief stay at Malta. I was sorely disappointed in not being able to find accommodation at this place, for it had been my intention to remain here for the night, and walk the next day to a station called Granite, some seventeen miles farther down the valley, making observations on bird life in the region by the way. To this day I regret that my calculations went "agley"; but I was told that accommodation was not to be secured at Malta "for love or money," and so I shook the dust from my feet, and boarded an evening train for my next stopping-place, which was Buena Vista. The elevation of this beautiful mountain town is seven thousand nine hundred and sixty-seven feet. It nestles amid cottonwood trees and green meadows in a wide valley or park, and is flanked on the east by the rolling and roaring Arkansas River, while to the west the plain slopes up gradually to the foothills of the three towering college peaks,--Harvard, Yale, and Princeton,--crowned all the year with snow. And here were birds in plenty. Before daybreak the avian concert began with the shrieking of the western wood-pewees--a vocal performance that they, in their innocence, seriously mistake for melody--and continued until night had again settled on the vale. In this place I spent three or four days, giving myself up to my favorite study and pastime, and a list of all the birds that I saw in the neighborhood would surprise the reader. However, a mere catalogue would be of slight interest, I apprehend, and therefore mention will be made only of those species which I had not seen elsewhere, passing by such familiar feathered folk as the Arkansas goldfinches, catbirds, western meadow-larks, Brewer's blackbirds, house-finches, green-tailed towhees, magpies, long-crested jays, summer warblers, and many others, begging their pardon, of course, for paying them such scant courtesy. Early on a bright morning I was following one of the streets of the village, when, on reaching the suburbs, I was greeted by a blithe, dulcet trill which could come from no other vocalist than the song-sparrow. His tones and vocalization were precisely like those of _Melospiza fasciata_, to which I have so often listened in my native State of Ohio. It was a dulcet strain, and stirred memories half sad, half glad, of many a charming ramble about my eastern home when the song-sparrows were the chief choralists in the outdoor opera festival. Peering into the bushes that fringed the gurgling mountain brook, I soon caught sight of the little triller, and found that, so far as I could distinguish them with my field-glass, his markings were just like those of his eastern relative--the same mottled breast, with the large dusky blotch in the centre. Delighted as I was with the bird's aria, I could not decide whether this was the common song-sparrow or the mountain song-sparrow. Something over a week earlier I had seen what I took to be the mountain song-sparrow in a green nook below the summit of Pike's Peak, and had noted his trill as a rather shabby performance in comparison with the tinkling chansons of the song-sparrow of the East. Had I mistaken some other bird for the mountain song-sparrow? Or was the Buena Vista bird the common song-sparrow which had gone entirely beyond its Colorado range? Consulting Professor W. W. Cooke's list of Colorado birds, I found that _Melospiza fasciata_ is marked "migratory, rare," and has been known thus far only in the extreme eastern part of the State; whereas _Melospiza fasciata montana_ is a summer resident, "common throughout the State in migration, and not uncommon as a breeder from the plains to eight thousand feet." But Professor Cooke fails to give a clue to the song of either variety, and therefore my little problem remains unsolved, as I could not think of taking the life of a dulcet-voiced bird merely to discover whether it should have "_montana_" affixed to its scientific name or not. All I can say is, if this soloist was a mountain song-sparrow, he reproduced exactly the trills of his half-brothers of the East.[7] On the morning of my departure from Buena Vista another song-sparrow sang his matins, in loud, clear tones among the bushes of a stream that flowed through the town, ringing quite a number of changes in his tune, all of them familiar to my ear from long acquaintance with the eastern forms of the _Melospiza_ subfamily. [7] The problem has since been solved, through the aid of Mr. Aiken. The Buena Vista bird was _montana_, while the bird in the Pike's Peak hollow was Lincoln's sparrow. How well I recall a rainy afternoon during my stay at Buena Vista! The rain was not so much of a downpour as to drive me indoors, although it made rambling in the bushes somewhat unpleasant. What was this haunting song that rose from a thick copse fringing one of the babbling mountain brooks? It mingled sweetly with the patter of the rain upon the leaves. Surely it was the song of the veery thrush! The same rich, melodious strain, sounding as if it were blown through a wind-harp, setting all the strings a-tune at the same time. Too long and closely had I studied the veery's minstrelsy in his summer haunts in northern Minnesota to be deceived now--unless, indeed, this fertile avian region produced another thrush which whistled precisely the same tune. The bird's alarm-call was also like that of the veery. The few glimpses he permitted of his flitting, shadowy form convinced me that he must be a veery, and so I entered him in my note-book. But on looking up the matter--for the bird student must aim at accuracy--what was my surprise to find that the Colorado ornithologists have decided that the veery thrush is not a resident of the State, nor even an occasional visitor! Of course I could not set up my judgment against that of those scientific gentlemen. But what could this minstrel be? I wrote to my friend, Mr. Charles E. Aiken, of Colorado Springs, who replied that the bird was undoubtedly the willow thrush, which is the western representative of the veery. I am willing to abide by this decision, especially as Ridgway indicates in his Manual that there is very little difference in the coloration of the two varieties. One more mile-post had been passed in my never-ending ornithological journey--I had learned for myself and others that the willow thrush of the Rockies and the veery of our Eastern and Middle States have practically the same musical repertory, and nowhere in the East or the West is sweeter and more haunting avian minstrelsy to be heard, if only it did not give one that sad feeling which Heine calls _Heimweh_! [Illustration: _Willow Thrush_] A ROCKY MOUNTAIN LAKE [Illustration: PLATE IV LARK BUNTING--_Calamospiza melanocorys_ (Upper figure, male; lower, female)] "You will find a small lake just about a mile from town. Follow the road leading out this way"--indicating the direction--"until you come to a red gate. The lake is private property, but you can go right in, as you don't shoot. No one will drive you out. I think you will find it an interesting place for bird study." [Illustration: _Brewer's Blackbirds_ "_An interesting place for bird study_"] The foregoing is what my landlord told me one morning at Buena Vista. Nor did I waste time in finding the way to the lake, a small sheet of water, as clear as crystal, embowered in the lovely park lying between towering, snow-clad mountains. One might almost call the spot a bird's Arcadia. In no place, in all my tramping among the Rockies, did I find so many birds in an equal area. In the green, irrigated meadow bordering one side of the sheet of water, I was pleased to find a number of Brewer's blackbirds busily gathering food in the wet grass for their young. And who or what are Brewer's blackbirds? In the East, the purple and bronzed grackles, or crow blackbirds, are found in great abundance; but in Colorado these birds are replaced by Brewer's blackbirds, which closely resemble their eastern kinsfolk, although not quite so large. The iridescence of the plumage is somewhat different in the two species, but in both the golden eye-balls show white at a distance. When I first saw a couple of Brewer's blackbirds stalking featly about on a lawn at Manitou, digging worms and grubs out of the sod, I simply put them down in my note-book as bronzed or purple grackles--an error that had to be corrected afterwards, on more careful examination. The mistake shows how close is the resemblance between the two species. The Brewer division of the family breed on the plains and in the mountains, to an altitude of ten thousand feet, always selecting marshy places for their early summer home; then in August and September, the breeding season over, large flocks of old and young ascend to the regions above the timber-line, about thirteen thousand feet above sea-level, where they swarm over the grassy but treeless mountain sides in search of food. In October they retire to the plains, in advance of the austere weather of the great altitudes, and soon the majority of them hie to a blander climate than Colorado affords in winter. Still more interesting to me was the large colony of yellow-headed blackbirds that had taken up their residence in the rushes and flags of the upper end of the lake. These birds are not such exclusive westerners as their ebon-hued cousins just described; for I found them breeding at Lake Minnetonka, near Minneapolis, Minnesota, a few years ago, and they sometimes straggle, I believe, as far east as Ohio. A most beautiful bird is this member of the _Icteridæ_ family, a kind of Beau Brummel among his fellows, with his glossy black coat and rich yellow--and even orange, in highest feather--mantle covering the whole head, neck, and breast, and a large white, decorative spot on the wings, showing plainly in flight. He is the handsomest blackbird with which I am acquainted. At the time of my visit to the lake, the latter part of June, the yellow-heads were busy feeding their young, many of which had already left the nest. From the shore, I could see dozens of them clinging to the reeds, several of which they would grasp with the claws of each foot, their little legs straddled far apart, the flexile rushes spreading out beneath their weight. There the youngsters perched, without seeming to feel any discomfort from their strained position. And what a racket they made when the parent birds returned from an excursion to distant meadows and lawns, with bill-some tidbits! They were certainly a hungry lot of bairns. When I waded out into the shallow water toward their rushy home, the old birds became quite uneasy, circling about above me like the red-wings, and uttering a harsh blackbird "chack," varied at intervals by a loud, and not unmusical, chirp. [Illustration: _Yellow-Headed Blackbirds_ "_There the youngsters perched_"] You should see the nest of the yellow-head. It is really a fine structure, showing no small amount of artistic skill--a plaited cup, looking almost as if it had been woven by human hands, the rushes of the rim and sides folding the supporting reeds in their loops. Thus the nest and its reedy pillars are firmly bound together. I waded out to a clump of rushes and found one nest with three eggs in its softly felted cup--the promise, no doubt, of a belated, or possibly a second, brood. This mountain lake was also the abode of a number of species of ducks, not all of which could be identified, on account of the distance they constantly put between themselves and the observer. Flocks of them floated like light, feathered craft upon the silvery bosom of the lake, now pursuing one another, now drifting lazily, now diving, and anon playing many attractive gambols. One of the most curious ducks I have ever seen was the ruddy duck, called in the scientific manuals _Erismatura rubida_. As I sat on a rock on the shore, watching the aquatic fowl, one of the male ruddy ducks, accompanied by three or four females, swam out from the reeds into an open space where I could see him plainly with my field-glass. A beautiful picture he presented, as he glided proudly about on the water, surrounded by his devoted harem. Imagine, if you can, how regal he must have appeared--his broad, flat bill, light blue, widening out at the commissure, and seeming to shade off into the large white cheeks, which looked like snowy puffballs on the sides of his head; his crown, black and tapering; his neck, back, and sides, a rich, glossy brownish-red; his lower parts, "silky, silvery white, 'watered' with dusky, yielding, gray undulations"; and his wing-coverts and jauntily perked-up tail, black. If that was not a picture worthy of an artist's brush I have never seen one in the outdoor world. No less quaint was his conduct. That he was proud and self-conscious, no one seeing him could doubt; and it was just as plain from his consequential mien, that he was posing before his train of plainly clad wives, who, no doubt, looked upon him as the greatest "catch" of the lake. Unlike most ducks, in swimming this haughty major carries his head erect, and even bent backward at a sharp angle; and his short tail is cocked up and bent forward, so that his glossy back forms a graceful half-circle or more, and does not slope downward, as do the backs of most ducks on the water. Of all the odd gestures, this fellow's carried off the palm. He would draw his head up and back, then thrust it forward a few inches, extend his blue bill in a horizontal line, and at the same time emit a low, coarse squawk that I could barely hear. Oddly enough, all the females, staid as they were, imitated their liege lord's deportment. It was their way of protesting against my ill-bred intrusion into their demesne. Presently a second male came out into the open space, accompanied by a retinue of wives, and then a third emerged, similarly attended. With this there was a challenging among the rivals that was interesting to witness; they fairly strutted about on the water, now advancing, now retreating, and occasionally almost, but never quite, closing in combat. Sometimes one would pursue another for a rod or more, in a swift rush that would make the spray fly and cut a swath on the smooth bosom of the lake. Several coots now appeared on the scene. Between them and the ruddy ducks there seemed to be a feud of more or less intensity, each being on the offensive or the defensive as the exigencies of naval warfare demanded. Once I was moved to laughter as a coot made a fierce dash toward one of the ducks, and was almost upon her, and I thought she was destined to receive a severe trouncing, when she suddenly dodged her pursuer by diving. He just as suddenly gave up the chase, looking as if it were a case of "sour grapes," anyway. After watching the antics of these birds for a long time, I turned my attention to another pretty scene,--a pair of coots leading their family of eight or ten little ones out into the clear area from their hiding-place among the reeds, presenting a picture of unruffled domestic bliss. How sweet and innocent the little coots were! Instead of the black heads and necks of their parents, and the white bills and frontal bones, these parts were tinted with red, which appeared quite bright and gauze-like in the sunshine. The process of feeding the juvenile birds was interesting. The parents would swim about, then suddenly dip their heads into the water, or else dive clear under, coming up with slugs in their bills. Turning to the youngsters, which were always close upon their heels--or perhaps I would better say their tails--they would hold out their bills, when the little ones would swim up and pick off the toothsome morsel. It must not be supposed that the bantlings opened their mouths, as most young birds do, to receive the tidbits. No, indeed! That is not coot vogue. The little ones picked the insects from the sides of the papa's or mamma's beak, turning their own little heads cunningly to one side as they helped themselves to their luncheon. The other waterfowl of the lake acted in an ordinary way, and therefore need no description. It was strange, however, that this was the only lake seen in all my Rocky Mountain touring where I found waterfowl. At Seven Lakes, Moraine Lake, and others in the vicinity of Pike's Peak, not a duck, crane, or coot was to be seen; and the same was true of Cottonwood Lake, twelve miles from Buena Vista, right in the heart of the rugged mountains. [Illustration: "_From their place among the reeds_"] Two facts may account for the abundance of birds at the little lake near Buena Vista; first, here they were protected from gunners and pot hunters by the owner, whose residence commanded a full view of the whole area; and, second, large spaces of the upper end of the lake was thickly grown with flags and rushes, which were cut off from the shore by a watery space of considerable breadth. In this place these birds found coverts from enemies and suitable sites for their nests. A BIRD MISCELLANY It shall be my purpose in this chapter to describe with more or less fulness a number of Rocky Mountain birds which have either not been mentioned in previous chapters or have received only casual attention. On reaching Colorado one is surprised to find none of our common blue jays which are so abundant in the Eastern and Middle States. In my numerous Rocky Mountain jaunts not one was seen. Yet this region does not need to go begging for jays, only they belong to different groups of the _Garrulinæ_ subfamily. The most abundant and conspicuous of these western forms are the long-crested jays, so called on account of the long tuft of black feathers adorning the occiput. This distinguishing mark is not like the firm pyramidal crest of the eastern jay, but is longer and narrower, and so flexible that it sways back and forth as the bird flits from branch to branch or takes a hop-skip-and-jump over the ground. Its owner can raise and lower it at will. The forehead of this jay is prettily sprinkled with white; his head and neck are black, in decided contrast with the umber-brown of the back; his rump and belly are pale blue, and his wings and tail are rich indigo-blue, somewhat iridescent and widely barred with black. Thus it will be seen that he has quite a different costume from that of our eastern jay, with his gaudy trimmings of white and black and purplish blue. The westerner cannot boast of _cristata's_ dressy black collar, but otherwise he is more richly attired, although he may not be quite so showy. The long-crested jays have a wide range among the mountains, breeding from the base of the foothills to the timber-line, although their nests are not commonly found below an altitude of seven thousand feet. In many places from nine to eleven thousand feet up the acclivities of the mountains they were seen flitting among the pines or the quaking asps. Like their eastern relatives, some individuals seem to prefer the society of man, dwelling in the villages or in the vicinity of country homes, while others choose the most secluded and solitary localities for their habitat. The fact is, I rarely made an excursion anywhere without sooner or later discovering that these jays had pre-empted the place for feeding or breeding purposes, sometimes with loud objurgations bidding me be gone, and at other times making no to-do whatever over my intrusion. Perhaps the proximity or remoteness of their nests was the chief cause of this variableness in their behavior. A pretty picture is one of these jays mounting from branch to branch around the stem of a pine tree, from the lower limbs to the top, as if he were ascending a spiral staircase. This seems to be one of their regulation habits when they find themselves under inspection. If you intrude on their domestic precincts, their cry is quite harsh, and bears no resemblance to the quaint calls of the eastern jays; nor does the plaintive note of the eastern representative, so frequently heard in the autumnal woods, ever issue from any of the numerous jay throats of the West. Far be it from me to blacken the reputation of any bird, but there is at least circumstantial evidence that the long-crested jay, like his eastern cousin, is a nest robber; for such birds as robins, tanagers, flycatchers, and vireos make war upon him whenever he comes within their breeding districts, and this would indicate that they are only too well aware of his predatory habits. More than that, he has the sly and stealthy manners of the sneak-thief and the brigand. Of course, he is by no means an unmixed evil, for you will often see him leaping about on the lawns, capturing beetles and worms which would surely be injurious to vegetation if allowed to live and multiply. There are other jays in the Rockies that deserve attention. The Rocky Mountain jay--_Perisoneus canadensis capitalis_--is a bird of the higher altitudes, remaining near the timber-line all the year round, braving the most rigorous weather and the fiercest mountain storms during the winter. Although not an attractive species, his hardiness invests him with not a little interest. One can imagine him seeking a covert in the dense pineries when a storm sweeps down from the bald, snow-mantled summits, squawking his disapproval of the ferocity of old Boreas, and yet able to resist his most violent onsets. [Illustration: _The Rocky Mountain Jay_ "_Seeking a covert in the dense pineries when a storm sweeps down from the mountains_"] Early in April, at an altitude of from eight thousand to eleven thousand five hundred feet, these jays begin to breed. At that height this is long before the snow ceases to fall; indeed, on the twentieth of June, while making the descent from Pike's Peak, I was caught in a snowfall that gave the ground quite a frosty aspect for a few minutes. One can readily fancy, therefore, that the nests of these birds are often surrounded with snow, and that the bantlings may get their first view of the world in the swirl of a snow-squall. The nests are built in pine bushes and trees at various distances from the ground. Of all the hurly-burlies ever heard, that which these birds are able to make when you go near their nests, or discover them, bears off the palm, their voices being as raucous as a buzz-saw, fairly setting your teeth on edge. Those of us who live in the East are so accustomed to the adjective "blue" in connection with the jay that we are surprised to find that _P. c. capitalis_ wears no blue whatever, but dons a sombre suit of leaden gray, somewhat relieved by the blackish shade of the wings and tail, with their silvery or frosted lustre. He is certainly not an attractive bird, either in dress or in form, for he appears very "thick-headed" and lumpish, as if he scarcely knew enough to seek shelter in a time of storm; but, of course, a bird that contrives to coax a livelihood out of such unpromising surroundings must possess a fine degree of intelligence, and, therefore, cannot be so much of a dullard as his appearance would indicate. He has some interesting ways, too, as will be seen from the following quotation from a Colorado writer: "White-headed, grave, and sedate, he seems a very paragon of propriety, and if you appear to be a suitable personage, he will be apt to give you a bit of advice. Becoming confidential, he sputters out a lot of nonsense which causes you to think him a veritable 'whiskey Jack.' Yet, whenever he is disposed, a more bland, mind-your-own-business appearing bird will be hard to find; as will also many small articles around camp after one of his visits, for his whimsical brain has a great fancy for anything which may be valuable to you, but perfectly useless to himself." This habit of purloining has won him the title of "camp robber" among the people of the Rocky Mountains. Woodhouse's jay, also peculiar to the Rocky Mountain region, is mostly to be found along the base of the foothills and the lower wooded mountains. While he may be called a "blue" jay, having more of that color in his plumage than even the long-crested, he belongs to the _Aphelcoma_ group--that is, he is without a crest. Every observer of eastern feathered folk is familiar with our "little boy blue," the indigo-bird, whose song is such a rollicking and saucy air, making you feel as if the little lyrist were chaffing you. In Colorado, however, you do not meet this animated chunk of blue, but another little bird that belongs to the same group, called the "painted finches," although their plumes are not painted any more than those of other species. This bird is the lazuli bunting. He wears a great deal of blue, but it is azure, and not indigo, covering the head, neck, most of the upper parts, and the lining of the wings; and, as if to give variety to the bird's attire, the nape and back are prettily shaded with brown, and the wings and tail with black. But his plumage is still more variegated, for he bears a conspicuous white spot on the greater wing-coverts, and his breast is daintily tinted with chestnut-brown, abruptly cut off from the blue of the throat, while the remaining under parts are snowy white. From this description it will be seen that he is quite unlike the indigo-bird, which has no brown or white in his cerulean attire. Handsome as Master Indigo is, the lazuli finch, with his sextet of hues, is a more showily dressed bird; in fact, a lyric in colors. The habits of the two birds are quite similar. However, the lazuli seemed to be much shyer than his relative, for the latter is a familiar figure at the border of our eastern woodlands, about our country homes, and even in the neighborhood of our town dwellings, when there are bushes and trees close at hand. My saunterings among the mountains took me into the haunts of the lazulis, but I regret to have to confess that all my alertness was of so little avail that I saw only three males and one female. One day, while rambling among the cottonwoods that broidered the creek flowing south of Colorado Springs, I was brought to a standstill by a sharp chirp, and the next moment a pair of lazulis appeared on the lower branches and twigs of a tree. There they sat quiet enough, watching me keenly, but allowing me to peer at them at will with my field-glass. I could not understand why birds that otherwise were so shy should now permit a prolonged inspection and manifest so little anxiety; but perhaps they reasoned that they had been discovered anyway, and there was no need of pretending that no lazulis dwelt in the neighborhood. How elegant the little husband looked in his variegated attire! The wife was soberly clad in warm brown, slightly streaked with dusk, but she was trig and pretty and worthy of her more richly apparelled spouse. In the bushes below I found a well-made nest, which I felt morally certain belonged to the little couple that was keeping such faithful surveillance over it. As yet it contained no eggs. In order to make certainty doubly sure, I visited the place a week or so later, and found that my previous conclusion had been correct. I flushed the little madame from the nest, and saw her flit with a chirp to the twigs above, where she sat quietly watching her visitor, exhibiting no uneasiness whatever about her cot in the bushes with its three precious eggs. It was pleasing to note the calmness and dignity with which she regarded me. But where was that important personage, the little husband? He was nowhere to be seen, although I lingered about the charmed spot for over two hours, hoping to get at least a glimpse of him. A friend, who understands the sly ways of the lazulis, suggested that very likely the male was watching me narrowly all the while from a safe hiding-place in the dense foliage of some tree not far away. My friend told me that I would not be able to distinguish the song of the lazuli from those of the summer and mountain warblers. We shall see whether he was right. One evening I was searching for a couple of blue grosbeaks at the border of Colorado Springs, where I had previously seen them, when a loud, somewhat percussive song, much like the summer warbler's, burst on my ear, coming from a clump of willow bushes hard by the stream. At once I said to myself, "That is not the summer warbler's trill. It resembles the challenging song of the indigo-bird, only it is not quite so loud and defiant. A lazuli finch's song, or I am sadly astray! Let me settle the question now." I did settle it to my great satisfaction, for, after no little effort, I succeeded in obtaining a plain view of the elusive little lyrist, and, sure enough, it proved to be the lazuli finch. Metaphorically I patted myself with a great deal of self-complacency, as I muttered: "The idea of Mr. Aiken's thinking I had so little discrimination! I know that hereafter I shall be able to detect the lazuli's peculiar intonations every time." So I walked home in a very self-confident frame of mind. A few days later I heard another song lilting down from the upper branches of a small tree. "Surely that is the lazuli again," I muttered. "I know that voice." For a while I eyed the tree, and presently caught sight of the little triller, and behold, it was--a summer warbler! All my self-complacency vanished in a moment; I wasn't cock-sure of anything; and I am obliged to confess that I was led astray in a similar manner more than once afterward. It may indicate an odd psychological condition to make the claim; but, absurd or not, I am disposed to believe that, whenever I really heard the lazuli, I was able to recognize his song with a fair degree of certainty, but when I heard the summer warbler I was thrown into more or less confusion, not being quite sure whether it was that bird or the other. The most satisfactory lazuli song I heard was on the western side of the range, at the resort called Glenwood. This time, as was usually the case, I heard the little triller before seeing him, and was sure it was _Passerina amoena_, as the bunting strains were plainly discernible. He was sitting on a telephone wire, and did not flit away as I stood below and peered at him through my glass, and admired his trig and handsome form. I studied his song, and tried to fix the peculiar intonations in my mind, and felt positive that I could never be caught again--but I was.[8] [8] In the foregoing remarks the lazuli finches have been represented as excessively shy. So they were in 1899 in the neighborhoods then visited. Strangely enough, in the vicinity of Denver in 1901, these birds were abundant and as easily approached and studied as are the indigoes of the East. See the chapter entitled, "Plains and Foothills." The lazuli finch does not venture very high into the mountains, seldom reaching an altitude of more than seven thousand feet. He is a lover of the plains, the foothills, and the lower ranges of the mountains. In this respect he differs from some other little birds, which seek a summer home in the higher regions. On the southern slope of Pike's Peak, a little below the timber-line, I found a dainty little bird which was a stranger to me. It was Audubon's warbler. At first sight I decided that he must be the myrtle warbler, but was compelled to change my conclusion when I got a glimpse of his throat, which was golden yellow, whereas the throat of _Dendroica coronata_ is pure white. Then, too, the myrtle warbler is only a migrant in Colorado, passing farther north to breed. Audubon's, it must be said, has extremely rich habiliments, his upper parts being bluish-ash, streaked with black, his belly and under tail-coverts white, and his breast in high feather, black, prettily skirted with gray or invaded with white from below; but his yellow spots, set like gleaming gold in various parts of his plumage, constitute his most marked embellishment, being found on the crown, rump, throat, and each side of the chest. On my first excursion to some meadows and wooded low-grounds south of Colorado Springs, while listening to a concert given by western meadow-larks, my attention was attracted to a large, black bird circling about the fields and then alighting on a fence-post. My first thought was: "It is only a crow blackbird." But on second thought I decided that the crow blackbird did not soar and circle about in this manner. At all events, there seemed to be something slightly peculiar about this bird's behavior, so I went nearer to inspect him, when he left his perch on the post, flapped around over the meadow, and finally flew to a large, partially decayed cottonwood tree in a pasture field. If I could believe my eyes, he clung to the upright stems of the branches after the style of a woodpecker! That was queer indeed--a woodpecker that looked precisely like a blackbird! Such a featherland oddity was certainly foreign to any of my calculations; for, it must be remembered, this was prior to my making acquaintance with Williamson's sapsucker. Closer inspection proved that this bird was actually hitching up and down the branches of the tree in the regular woodpecker fashion. Presently he slipped into a hole in a large limb, and the loud, eager chirping of young birds was heard. It was not long before his mate appeared, entered the cavity, and fed the clamorous brood. The birds proved to be Lewis's woodpeckers, another distinctly western type. My field-glass soon clearly brought out their peculiar markings. A beautiful bird-skin, bought of Mr. Charles E. Aiken, now lies on my desk and enables me to describe the fine habiliments of this kind from an actual specimen. His upper parts are glossy black, the sheen on the back being greenish, and that on the wings and tail bluish or purplish, according to the angle of the sun's light; a white collar prettily encircles the neck, becoming quite narrow on the nape, but widening out on the side so as to cover the entire breast and throat. This pectoral shield is mottled with black and lightly stained with buff in spots; the forehead, chin, superciliary line, and a broad space on the cheek are dyed a deep crimson; and, not least by any means, the abdomen is washed with pink, which is delicately stencilled with white, gray, and buff. A most gorgeous bird, fairly rivalling, but not distancing, Williamson's sapsucker. By accident I made a little discovery relative to the claws of this woodpecker which, I suppose, would be true of all the _Picidæ_ family. The claws of the two fore toes are sharply curved and extremely acute, making genuine hooks, so that when I attempt to pass my finger over them the points catch at the skin. Could a better hook be contrived for enabling the bird to clamber up the trunks and branches of trees? But note: the claws of the two hind toes are not so sharply decurved, nor so acute at the points, the finger slipping readily over them. Who can deny the evidence of design in nature? The fore claws are highly specialized for clinging, the very purpose for which they are needed, while the hind claws, being used for a different purpose--only that of support--are moulded over a different pattern. Like our common red-head, this bird has the habit of soaring out into the air and nabbing insects on the wing. The only other pair of these woodpeckers I was so fortunate as to meet with were found in the ravine leading up from Buena Vista to Cottonwood Lake.[9] Their nest was in a dead tree by the roadside. While the first couple had been entirely silent, one of the second pair chirped somewhat uneasily when I lingered beneath his tree, suspecting, no doubt, that I had sinister designs upon his nest. Unlike some of their kinsmen, these pickers of wood seem to be quiet and dignified, not given to much demonstration, and are quite leisurely in their movements both on the branch and on the wing. [9] Two years later a pair were seen on a mountain near Golden, Colorado, and probably twenty individuals were watched a long time from a cañon above Boulder as they circled gracefully over the mountains, catching insects on the wing. One day, when walking up Ute Pass, celebrated both for its magnificent scenery and its Indian history, I first saw the water-ousel. I had been inspecting Rainbow Falls, and was duly impressed with its attractiveness. Thinking I had lingered long enough, I turned away and clambered up the rocky wall below the falls towards the road above. As I did so, a loud, bell-like song rang above the roar of the water. On looking down into the ravine, I saw a mouse-colored bird, a little smaller than the robin, his tail perked up almost vertically, scuttling about on the rocks below and dipping his body in an expressive way like the "tip-up" sandpiper. Having read about this bird, I at once recognized it as the water-ousel. My interest in everything else vanished. This was one of the birds I had made my pilgrimage to the Rockies to study. It required only a few minutes to scramble down into the ravine again. Breathlessly I watched the little bird. Its queer teetering is like that of some of the wrens, accentors, and water-thrushes. Now it ran to the top of a rock and stood dipping and eying me narrowly, flirting its bobby tail; now it flew to one of the steep, almost vertical walls of rock and scrambled up to a protuberance; then down again to the water; then, to my intense delight, it plunged into the limpid stream, and came up the next moment with a slug or water-beetle in its bill. Presently it flew over to the opposite wall, its feet slipping on the wet rocks, and darted into a small crevice just below the foot of the falls, gave a quick poke with its beak and flitted away--minus the tidbit it had held in its bill. _RAINBOW FALLS_ _When the sun strikes the spray and mist at the proper angle, a beautiful rainbow is painted on the face of the falls. At the time of the author's visit to this idyllic spot a pair of water-ousels had chosen it for a summer residence. They flew from the rocks below to the top of the falls, hugging close to the rushing torrent. In returning, they darted in one swift plunge from the top to the bottom, alighting on the rocks below. With the utmost abandon they dived into the seething waters at the foot of the falls, usually emerging with a slug or beetle in their bills for the nestlings. Shod with tall rubber boots, the writer waded close up to the foot of the falls in search of the dipper's nest, which was set in a cleft of the rocks a few inches above the water, in the little shadowed cavern at the left of the stream. The pointed rock wrapped in mist, almost in the line of the plunging tide, was a favorite perch for the dippers._ [Illustration] Ah! my propitious stars shone on me that day with special favor. I had found not only the water-ousel itself, but also its nest. Suddenly water-ousel number two, the mate of number one, appeared on the scene, dipped, scanned me closely, flew to the slippery wall, darted to the cranny, and deposited its morsel, as its spouse had done. This time I heard the chirping of the youngsters. Before examining the nest I decided to watch the performances of the parent birds, which soon cast off all the restraint caused for a moment by my presence, taking me, no doubt, for the ordinary sightseer who overlooks them altogether. Again and again the birds plunged into the churning flood at the foot of the falls, sometimes remaining under water what seemed a long while, and always coming to the surface with a delicacy for the nestlings. They were able to dip into the swift, white currents and wrestle with them without being washed away. Of course, the water would sometimes carry them down stream, but never more than a few inches, and never to a point where they could be injured. They were perfect masters of the situation. They simply slipped in and out like living chunks of cork. Their coats were waterproof, all they needed to do being to shake off the crystal drops now and then. Their flight up the almost perpendicular face of the falls was one of graceful celerity. Up, up, they would mount only a few inches from the dashing current, and disappear upstream in search of food. In returning, they would sweep down over the precipitous falls with the swiftness of arrows, stopping themselves lightly with their outspread wings before reaching the rocks below. From a human point of view it was a frightful plunge; from the ousel point of view it was an every-day affair. [Illustration: _Water-Ousel_ "_Up, up, only a few inches from the dashing current_"] After watching the tussle between ousel and water for a long time, I decided to take a peep at their nursery. In order to do this I was compelled to wade into the stream a little below the falls, through mist and spray; yet such humid quarters were the natural habitat and playground of these interesting cinclids. And there the nest was, set in a cleft about a foot and a half above the water, its outer walls kept moist by the spray which constantly dashed against them from the falls. The water was also dripping from the rock that over-hung the nest and formed its roof. A damp, uncanny place for a bird's domicile, you would naturally suppose, but the little lovers of cascades knew what they were about. Only the exterior of the thick, moss-covered walls were moist. Within, the nest was dry and cosey. It was an oval structure, set in its rocky cleft like a small oven, with an opening at the front. And there in the doorway cuddled the two fledglings, looking out at the dripping walls and the watery tumult, but kept warm and comfortable. I could not resist touching them and caressing their little heads, considering it quite an ornithological triumph for one day to find a pair of water-ousels, discover a nest, and place my finger upon the crowns of the nestlings. Scores of tourists visited the famous falls every day, some of them lingering long in the beautiful place, and yet the little ousels had gone on with their nest-building and brood-rearing, undisturbed by human spectators. I wondered whether many of the visitors noticed the birds, and whether any one but myself had discovered their nest. Indeed, their little ones were safe enough from human meddling, for one could not see the nest without wading up the stream into the sphere of the flying mists. The natural home of _Cinclus mexicanus_ is the Rocky Mountains, to which he is restricted, not being known anywhere else on this continent. He is the only member of the dipper family in North America. There is one species in South America, and another in Europe. He loves the mountain stream, with its dashing rapids and cascades. Indeed, he will erect his oven-like cottage nowhere else, and it must be a fall and not a mere ripple or rapid. Then from this point as a centre--or, rather, the middle point of a wavering line--he forages up and down the babbling, meandering brook, feeding chiefly, if not wholly, on water insects. Strange to say, he never leaves the streams, never makes excursions to the country roundabout, never flies over a mountain ridge or divide to reach another valley, but simply pursues the winding streams with a fidelity that deserves praise for its very singleness of purpose. No "landlubber" he. It is said by one writer that the dipper has never been known to alight on a tree, preferring a rock or a piece of driftwood beside the babbling stream; yet he has the digits and claws of the passeres, among which he is placed systematically. He is indeed an anomaly, though a very engaging one. Should he wish to go to another cañon, he will simply follow the devious stream he is on to its junction with the stream of the other valley; then up the second defile. His flight is exceedingly swift. His song is a loud, clear, cheerful strain, the very quintessence of gladness as it mingles with the roar of the cataracts. Farther up Ute Pass I found another nest, which was placed right back of a cascade, so that the birds had to dash through a curtain of spray to reach their cot. They also were feeding their young, and I could see them standing on a rock beneath the shelf, tilting their bodies and scanning me narrowly before diving into the cleft where the nest was hidden. This nest, being placed back of the falls, could not be reached. In Bear Creek cañon I discovered another inaccessible nest, which was placed in a fissure at the very foot of the falls and only an inch or two above the agitated waters. There must have been a cavity running back into the rock, else the nest would have been kept in a soggy condition all the time. Perhaps the most interesting dipper's nest I found was one at the celebrated Seven Falls in the south Cheyenne Cañon. On the face of the cliff by the side of the lowest fall there was a cleft, in which the nest was placed, looking like a large bunch of moss and grass. My glass brought the structure so near that I could plainly see three little heads protruding from the doorway. There were a dozen or more people about the falls at the time, who made no attempt at being quiet, and yet the parent birds flew fearlessly up to the nest with tidbits in their bills, and were greeted with loud, impatient cries from three hungry mouths, which were opened wide to receive the food. The total plunge of the stream over the Seven Falls is hundreds of feet, and yet the adult birds would toss themselves over the abyss with reckless abandon, stop themselves without apparent effort in front of their cleft, and thrust the gathered morsels into the little yellow-lined mouths. It was an aerial feat that made our heads dizzy. This pair of birds did not fly up the face of the falls in ascending to the top, as did those at Rainbow Falls, but clambered up the wall of the cliff close to the side of the roaring cataract, aiding themselves with both claws and wings. When gathering food below the falls, they would usually, in going or returning, fly in a graceful curve over the heads of their human visitors. [Illustration: _Water-Ousel_ "_Three hungry mouths, which were opened wide to receive the food_"] Although the dipper is not a web-footed bird, and is not classed by the naturalists among the aquatic fowl, but is, indeed, a genuine passerine, yet he can swim quite dexterously on the surface of the water. However, his greatest strength and skill are shown in swimming under water, where he propels himself with his wings, often to a considerable distance, either with or against the current. Sometimes he will allow the current to carry him a short distance down the stream, but he is always able to stop himself at a chosen point. "Ever and anon," says Mr. John Muir, in his attractive book on "The Mountains of California," "while searching for food in the rushing stream, he sidles out to where the too powerful current carries him off his feet; then he dexterously rises on the wing and goes gleaning again in shallower places." So it seems that our little acrobat is equal to every emergency that may arise in his adventurous life. In winter, when the rushing mountain streams are flowing with the sludge of the half-melted snow, so that he cannot see the bottom, where most of his delicacies lie, he betakes himself to the quieter stretches of the rivers, or to the mill ponds or mountain lakes, where he finds clearer and smoother water, although a little deeper than he usually selects. Such weather does not find him at the end of his resources; no, indeed! Having betaken himself to a lake, he does not at once plunge into its depths after the manner of a duck, but finding a perch on a snag or a fallen pine, he sits there a moment, and then, flying out thirty or forty yards, "he alights with a dainty glint on the surface, swims about, looks down, finally makes up his mind, and disappears with a sharp stroke of his wings." So says Mr. John Muir, who continues: "After feeding for two or three minutes he suddenly reappears, showers the water from his wings with one vigorous shake, and rises abruptly into the air as if pushed up from beneath, comes back to his perch, sings a few minutes, and goes out to dive again; thus coming and going, singing and diving, at the same place for hours." The depths to which the cinclid dives for the food on the bottom is often from fifteen to twenty feet. When he selects a river instead of a lake for his winter bathing, its waters, like those of the shallower streams, may also contain a large quantity of sludge, thus rendering them opaque even to the sharp little eyes of the dipper. Then what does he do? He has a very natural and cunning way of solving this problem; he simply seeks a deep portion of the river and dives through the turbid water to the clear water beneath, where he can plainly see the "goodies" on the bottom. It must not be thought that this little bird is mute amid all the watery tumult of his mountain home, for he is a rare vocalist, his song mingling with the ripple and gurgle and roar of the streams that he haunts. Nor does he sing only in the springtime, but all the year round, on stormy days as well as fair. During Indian summer, when the streams are small, and silence broods over many a mountain solitude, the song of the ousel falls to its lowest ebb; but when winter comes and the streams are converted into rolling torrents, he resumes his vocal efforts, which reach their height in early summer. Thus it would seem that the bird's mood is the gayest when his favorite stream is dashing at its noisiest and most rapid pace down the steep mountain defiles. The clamor of the stream often drowns the song of the bird, the movement of his mandibles being seen when not a sound from his music-box can be heard. There must be a feeling of fellowship between the bird and the stream he loves so well. [Illustration: "_No snowstorm can discourage him_"] You will not be surprised to learn that the dipper is an extremely hardy bird. No snowstorm, however violent, can discourage him, but in the midst of it all he sings his most cheerful lays, as if defying all the gods of the winds. While other birds, even the hardy nuthatches, often succumb to discouragement in cold weather, and move about with fluffed-up feathers, the very picture of dejection--not so the little dipper, who always preserves his cheerful temper, and is ready to say, in acts, if not in words: "Isn't this the jolliest weather you ever saw?" Away up in Alaska, where the glaciers hold perpetual sway, this bird has been seen in the month of November as glad and blithesome as were his comrades in the summery gorges of New Mexico. PLAINS AND FOOTHILLS [Illustration: PLATE V LOUISIANA TANAGER--_Pyranga ludoviciana_ (Upper figure, male; lower, female)] The foregoing chapters contain a recital of observations made in the neighborhood of Colorado Springs and in trips on the plains and among the mountains in that latitude. Two years later--that is, in 1901--the rambler's good angel again smiled upon him and made possible another tour among the Colorado mountains. This time he made Denver, instead of Colorado Springs, the centre of operations; nor did he go alone, his companion being an active boy of fourteen who has a penchant for Butterflies, while that of the writer, as need scarcely be said, is for the Birds--in our estimation, the two cardinal B's of the English language. Imagine two inveterate ramblers, then, with two such enchanting hobbies, set loose on the Colorado plains and in the mountains, with the prospect of a month of uninterrupted indulgence in their manias! In the account of my first visit, most of the species met with were described in detail both as to their habits and personal appearance. In the present record no such minutiæ will be necessary so far as the same species were observed, and therefore the chief objects of the following chapters will be, first, to note the diversities in the avian fauna of the two regions; second, to give special attention to such birds as either were not seen in my first visit or were for some cause partly overlooked; and, third, to trace the peculiar transitions in bird life in passing from the plains about Denver to the crest of Gray's Peak, including jaunts to several other localities. In my rambles in the neighborhood of Denver only a few species not previously described were observed, and yet there were some noteworthy points of difference in the avi-fauna of the two latitudes, which are only about seventy-five miles apart. It will perhaps be remembered that, in the vicinity of Colorado Springs and Manitou, the pretty lazuli buntings were quite rare and exceedingly shy, only two or three individuals having been seen. The reverse was the case in the suburbs of Denver and on the irrigated plains between that city and the mountains, and also in the neighborhood of Boulder, where in all suitable haunts the lazulis were constantly at my elbow, lavish enough of their pert little melodies to satisfy the most exacting, and almost as familiar and approachable as the indigo-birds of the East. It is possible that, for the most part, the blue-coated beauties prefer a more northern latitude than Colorado Springs for the breeding season. At the latter place I failed to find the burrowing owl, although there can be little doubt of his presence there, especially out on the plains. Not far from Denver one of these uncanny, sepulchral birds was seen, having been frightened from her tunnel as I came stalking near it. She flew over the brow of the hill in her smooth, silent way, and uttered no syllable of protest as I examined her domicile--or, rather, the outside of it. Scattered about the dark doorway were a number of bones, feathers, and the skin of a frog, telling the story of the _table d'hôte_ set by this underground dweller before her nestlings. She might have put up the crossbones and skull as a sign at the entrance to her burrow, or even placed there the well-known Dantean legend, "All hope abandon, ye who enter here," neither of which would have been more suggestive than the telltale litter piled up before her door. When I chased her from her hiding-place, she flew down the hill and alighted on a fence-post in the neighborhood of her nest, uttering several screechy notes as I came near her again, as if she meant to say that I was carrying the joke a little too far in pursuing her about. Presently she circled away on oily wings, and I saw her no more. [Illustration: "_The dark doorway_"] So little enthusiasm does such a bird stir within me that I felt too lazy to follow her about on the arid plain. It may be interesting as a matter of scientific information to know that the burrowing owl breeds in a hole in the ground, and keeps company with the prairie dog and the rattlesnake, but a bird that lives in a gloomy, malodorous cave, whose manners are far from attractive, and whose voice sounds as strident as a buzz-saw--surely such a bird can cast no spell upon the observer who is interested in the æsthetic side of bird nature. A recent writer, in describing "A Buzzards' Banquet," asks a couple of pregnant questions: "Is there anything ugly out of doors? Can the ardent, sympathetic lover of nature ever find her unlovely?" To the present writer these questions present no Chinese puzzle. He simply brushes all speculation and theorizing aside by responding "Yes," to both interrogatories, on the principle that it is sometimes just as well to cut the Gordian knot as to waste precious time trying to untie it. The burrowing owl makes me think of a denizen of the other side of the river Styx, and why should one try to love that which nature has made unattractive, especially when one cannot help one's feeling? In the preceding chronicles no mention, I believe, has been made of one little bird that deserves more than a mere _obiter dictum_. My first meeting with the blithesome house-finch of the West occurred in the city of Denver, in 1899. It could not properly be called a formal presentment, but was none the less welcome on that account. I had scarcely stepped out upon the busy street before my ear was accosted by a kind of half twitter and half song that was new to me. "Surely that is not the racket of the English sparrow; it is too musical," I remarked to a friend walking by my side. Peering among the trees and houses, I presently focussed my field-glass upon a small, finch-like bird whose coat was striped with gray and brown, and whose face, crown, breast, and rump were beautifully tinged or washed with crimson, giving him quite a dressy appearance. What could this chipper little city chap be, with his trig form and well-bred manners, in such marked contrast with those of the swaggering English sparrow? Afterwards he was identified as the house-finch, which rejoices in the high-sounding Latin name of _Carpodacus mexicanus frontalis_. His distribution is restricted to the Rocky Mountain district chiefly south of the fortieth parallel of north latitude. He is certainly an attractive species, and I wish we could offer sufficient inducements to bring him east. A bird like him is a boon and an ornament to the streets and parks of any city that he graces with his presence and enlivens with his songs. No selfish recluse is he; no, indeed! In no dark gulch or wilderness, far from human neighborhood, does he sulkily take up his abode, but prefers the companionship of man to the solitudes of nature, declaring in all his conduct that he likes to be where there are "folks." In this respect he bears likeness to the English sparrow; but let it be remembered that there the analogy stops. Even his chirruping is musical as he flies overhead, or makes his _caveat_ from a tree or a telegraph wire against your ill-bred espionage. He and his plainly clad little spouse build a neat cottage for their bairns about the houses, but do not clog the spouting and make themselves a nuisance otherwise, as is the habit of their English cousins. This finch is a minstrel, not of the first class, still one that merits a high place among the minor songsters; and, withal, he is generous with his music. You might call him a kind of urban Arion, for there is real melody in his little score. As he is an early riser, his matin voluntaries often mingled with my half-waking dreams in the morning at dawn's peeping, and I loved to hear it too well to be angry for being aroused at an unseasonable hour. The song is quite a complicated performance at its best, considerably prolonged and varied, running up and down the chromatic scale with a swing and gallop, and delivered with great rapidity, as if the lyrist were in a hurry to have done, so that he could get at something else. In my rambles he was found not only in the cities of the plains (Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo), but also in many of the mountain towns and villages visited, Leadville, over ten thousand feet skyward, being, I believe, one of the exceptions, while Silver Plume and Graymont were others. He does not fancy altitudes, I take it, much over eight thousand feet. In the villages of Red Cliff and Glenwood, both beyond the continental divide, he was the same sprightly citizen, making himself very much at home. Much as this finch cherishes the society of man, he is quite wary and suspicious, and does not fancy being watched. As long as you go on your way without seeming to notice him, he also goes his way, coming into plain sight and chirping and singing; but just stop to watch him with your binocular, and see how quickly he will take alarm, dart away, and ensconce himself behind a clump of foliage, uttering a protest which seems to say, "Why doesn't that old fellow go about his own business?" If in some way the American house-finch could be persuaded to come east, and the English sparrow could be given papers of extradition, the exchange would be a relief and a benefit to the whole country. Some idyllic days were spent in sauntering about Golden, which keeps guard at the entrance of Clear Creek Cañon, and has tucked itself in a beautiful valley among the foothills, which in turn stand sentinel over it. In the village itself and along the bush-fringed border of the creek below, as well as in the little park at its border, there were many birds, nearly all of which have been described in the previous chapters. However, several exceptions are worthy of note. A matted copse a mile and a half below the town afforded a hiding-place for three young or female redstarts, which were "playing butterfly," as usual, and chanting their vivacious little tunes. These and several near Boulder were the only redstarts seen in my Colorado wanderings, although Professor Cooke says they breed sparingly on the plains, and a little more commonly in the mountains to an altitude of eight thousand feet, while one observer saw a female in July at the timber-line, which is three thousand feet above the normal range of the species. Why did not this birdlet remain within the bounds set by the scientific guild? Suit for contempt of court should be brought against it. Redstarts must have been very scarce in the regions over which I rambled, else I certainly should have noticed birds that are so fearless and so lavish of song. One day my companion and I clambered up the steep side of a mesa some distance below Golden--that is, the base of the mesa was below the village, while its top towered far above it. A mesa was a structural portion of Colorado topography that neither of the two ramblers had yet explored, and we were anxious to know something about its resources from a natural history point of view. It was hard climbing on account of the steepness of the acclivity, its rocky character, and the thick network of bushes and brambles in many places; but "excelsior" was our motto in all our mountaineering, and we allowed no surmountable difficulties to daunt us. What birds select such steep places for a habitat? Here lived in happy domesticity the lyrical green-tailed towhee, the bird of the liquid voice, the poet laureate of the steep, bushy mountain sides, just as the water-ousel is the poet of the cascades far down in the cañons and gulches; here also thrived the spurred towhees, one of which had tucked a nest beneath a bush cradling three speckled eggs. This was the second nest of this species I had found, albeit not the last. Here also dwelt the rock wren, a little bird that was new to me and that I had not found in the latitude of Colorado Springs either east or west of the continental divide. A description of this anchorite of the rocks will be given in a later chapter. I simply pause here to remark that he has a sort of "monarch-of-all-I-survey" air as he sits on a tall sandstone rock and blows the music from his Huon's horn on the messenger breezes. His wild melodies, often sounding like a blast from a bugle, are in perfect concord with the wild and rugged acclivities which he haunts, from which he can command many a prospect that pleases, whether he glances down into the valleys or up to the silver-capped mountain peaks. One cannot help feeling--at least, after one has left his rock-strewn dwelling-place--that a kind of glamour hangs about it and him. The loud hurly-burly of the long-tailed chat reached us from a bushy hollow not far away. So far as I could determine, this fellow is as garrulous a churl and bully as his yellow-breasted cousin so well known in the East. (Afterwards I found the chats quite numerous at Boulder.) At length we scaled the cliffs, and presently stood on the edge of the mesa, which we found to be a somewhat rolling plateau, looking much like the plains themselves in general features, with here and there a hint of verdure, on which a herd of cattle were grazing. The pasture was the buffalo grass. Does the bird-lover ask what species dwell on a treeless mesa like this? It was the home of western grassfinches, western meadow-larks, turtle doves, desert horned larks, and a little bird that was new to me, evidently Brewer's sparrow. Its favorite resort was in the low bushes growing on the border of the mesa and along the edge of the cliff. Its song was unique, the opening syllable running low on the alto clef, while the closing notes constituted a very respectable soprano. A few extremely shy sparrows flitted about in the thickets of a hollow as we began our descent, and I have no doubt they were Lincoln's sparrows. The valley and the irrigated plain were the birds' elysium. Here we first saw and heard that captivating bird, the lark bunting, as will be fully set forth in the closing chapter. This was one of the birds that had escaped me in my first visit to Colorado, save as I had caught tantalizing glimpses of him from the car-window on the plain beyond Denver, and when I went south to Colorado Springs, I utterly failed to find him. It has been a sort of riddle to me that not one could be discovered in that vicinity, while two years later these birds were abundant on the plains both east and west of Denver. If Colorado Springs is a little too far south for them in the summer, Denver is obviously just to their liking. No less abundant were the western meadow-larks, which flew and sang with a kind of lyrical intoxication over the green alfalfa fields. One morning we decided to walk some distance up Clear Creek Cañon. At the opening of the cañon, Brewer's blackbirds were scuttling about in the bushes that broidered the steep banks of the tumultuous stream, and a short distance up in the gorge a lazuli bunting sat on a telegraph wire and piped his merry lay. Soon the cañon narrowed, grew dark and forbidding, and the steep walls rose high on both sides, compelling the railway to creep like a half-imprisoned serpent along the foot of the cliffs; then the birds disappeared, not caring to dwell in such dark, more than half-immured places. Occasionally a magpie could be seen sailing overhead at an immense height, crossing over from one hillside to the other, turning his head as he made the transit, to get a view of the two peripatetics in the gulch below, anxious to discover whether they were bent on brigandage of any kind. At length we reached a point where the mountain side did not look so steep as elsewhere, and we decided to scale it. From the railway it looked like a short climb, even if a little difficult, and we began it with only a slight idea of the magnitude of our undertaking. The fact is, mountain climbing is a good deal more than pastime; it amounts to work, downright hard work. In the present instance, no sooner had we gained one height than another loomed steep and challenging above us, so that we climbed the mountain by a series of immense steps or terraces. At places the acclivity was so steep that we were compelled to scramble over the rocks on all fours, and were glad to stop frequently and draw breath and rest our tired limbs. My boy comrade, having fewer things than I to lure him by the way, and being, perhaps, a little more agile as well, went far on ahead of me, often standing on a dizzy pinnacle of rock, and waving his butterfly-net or his cap in the air, and shouting at the top of his voice to encourage his lagging parent and announce his triumph as a mountaineer. However, the birdman can never forget his hobby. There were a few birds on that precipitous mountain side, and that lent it its chief attraction. At one place a spurred towhee flitted about in a bushy clump and called much like a catbird--an almost certain proof of a nest on the steep, rocky wall far up from the roaring torrent in the gorge below. On a stony ridge still farther up, a rock wren was ringing his peculiar score, which sounds so much like a challenge, while still farther up, in a cluster of stunted pines, a long-crested jay lilted about and called petulantly, until I came near, when he swung across the cañon, and I saw him no more. After a couple of hours of hard climbing, we reached the summit, from which we were afforded a magnificent view of the foothills, the mesas, and the stretching plains below us, while above us to the west hills rose on hills until they culminated in mighty snow-capped peaks and ridges. It must not be supposed, because the snow-mantled summits in the west loomed far above our present station, that this mountain which we had ascended was a comparatively insignificant affair. The fact is, it was of huge bulk and great height measured from its base in the cañon; almost as much of a mountain, in itself considered, as Gray's Peak. It must be borne in mind that the snowy peaks were from thirty to forty miles away, and that there is a gradual ascent the entire distance to the upper valleys and gorges which creep about the bases of the loftiest peaks and ridges. A mountain rising from the foothills may be almost as bulky and high and precipitous as one of the alpine peaks covered with eternal snow. Its actual altitude above sea-level may be less by many thousand feet, while its height from the surrounding cañons and valleys may be almost, if not quite, as great. The alpine peaks have the advantage of majesty of situation, because the general level of the country from which they rise is very high. There we stood at a sort of outdoor halfway house between the plains and the towering ridges, and I can only say that the view was superb. There were certain kinds of birds which had brought their household gods to the mountain's crest. Lewis's woodpeckers ambled about over the summit and rocky ridges, catching insects on the wing, as is their wont. Some distance below the summit a pair of them had a nest in a dead pine snag, from the orifice of which one was seen to issue. A mother hawk was feeding a couple of youngsters on the snarly branch of a dead pine. Almost on the summit a western nighthawk sprang up from my feet. On the bare ground, without the faintest sign of a nest, lay her two speckled eggs, which she had been brooding. She swept around above the summit in immense zigzag spirals while I examined her roofless dwelling-place. It was interesting to one bird-lover, at least, to know that the nighthawk breeds in such places. Like their eastern congeners, the western nighthawks are fond of "booming." At intervals a magpie would swing across the cañon, looking from side to side, the impersonation of cautious shyness. A few rods below the crest a couple of rock wrens were flitting about some large rocks, creeping in and out among the crevices like gray mice, and at length one of them slyly fed a well-fledged youngster. This proves that these birds, like many of their congeners, are partial to a commanding lookout for a nesting site. These were the only occupants of the mountain's brow at the time of our visit, although in one of the hollows below us the spurred and green-tailed towhees were rendering a selection from Haydn's "Creation," probably "The heavens are telling." No water was to be found from the bottom of the cañon to the summit of the mountain; all was as dry as the plain itself. The feathered tenants of the dizzy height were doubtless compelled to fly down into the gorge for drinking and bathing purposes, and then wing up again to the summit--certainly no light task for such birds as the wrens and towhees. Before daybreak one morning I made my way to a small park on the outskirts of the village to listen to the birds' matutinal concert. The earliest singers were the western robins, which began their carols at the first hint of the coming dawn; the next to break the silence were the western wood-pewees; then the summer warblers chimed in, followed by the western grassfinches, Bullock's orioles, meadow-larks, and lark sparrows, in the order named. Before daylight had fully come a family of mountain bluebirds were taking their breakfast at the border of the park, while their human relatives were still snoring in bed. The bluebirds are governed by old-fashioned rules even in this very "modern" age, among their maxims being,-- "Early to bed and early to rise, Makes bluebirds healthy and wealthy and wise." Just now I came across a pretty conceit of John B. Tabb, which more aptly sets off the mountain blue than it does his eastern relative, and which I cannot forbear quoting: "When God made a host of them, One little flower lacked a stem To hold its blossom blue; So into it He breathed a song, And suddenly, with petals strong As wings, away it flew." And there is Eben E. Rexford, who almost loses himself in a tangle of metaphors in his efforts to express his admiration of this bird with the cerulean plumes. Hark to his rhapsody: "Winged lute that we call a bluebird, you blend in a silver strain The sound of the laughing waters, the patter of spring's sweet rain, The voice of the winds, the sunshine, and fragrance of blossoming things; Ah! you are an April poem that God has dowered with wings." On our return to the plains from a two weeks' trip to Georgetown and Gray's Peak, we spent several days at Arvada, a village about halfway between Denver and Golden. The place was rife with birds, all of which are described in other chapters of this volume.[10] Mention need be made here only of the song-sparrows, which were seen in a bushy place through which a purling stream wound its way. Of course, they were _Melospiza fasciata montana_, but their clear, bell-like trills were precise copies of those of the merry lowland minstrels of the East. Special attention is called to the fact that, in my first visit to Colorado, the only place in which mountain song-sparrows were met with was Buena Vista, quite a distance up among the mountains, while in the visit now being described they were not found anywhere in the mountains, save in the vale below Cassels. They were breeding at Arvada, for a female was seen carrying a worm in her bill, and I am sure a nest might easily have been found had I not been so busily occupied in the study of other and rarer species. However, the recollection of the merry lyrists with the speckled breasts and silvery voices, brings to mind Mr. Ernest Thompson Seton's "Myth of the Song-Sparrow," from which it will be seen that this attractive bird has had something of an adventurous career: "His mother was the Brook, his sisters were the Reeds, And they every one applauded when he sang about his deeds. His vest was white, his mantle brown, as clear as they could be, And his songs were fairly bubbling o'er with melody and glee. But an envious Neighbor splashed with mud our Brownie's coat and vest, And then a final handful threw that stuck upon his breast. The Brook-bird's mother did her best to wash the stains away, But there they stuck, and, as it seems, are very like to stay. And so he wears the splashes and the mud blotch, as you see; But his songs are bubbling over still with melody and glee." [Illustration: "_His songs are bubbling over still with melody and glee._" _Song Sparrow_] [10] I find I have overlooked the western Maryland yellow-throat, which was seen here; also near Colorado Springs, and in several other bushy spots, only on the plains. It seldom ascends into the mountains, never far. Its song and habits are similar to those of its eastern congener. RAMBLES ABOUT GEORGETOWN At nine o'clock on the morning of June 22, the two ramblers boarded a Colorado and Southern train, and bowled up Clear Creek Cañon to Georgetown. Having been studying winged creatures on the plains and among the foothills, mesas, and lower mountains, we now proposed to go up among the mountains that were mountains in good earnest, and see what we could find. The village of Georgetown nestles in a deep pocket of the mountains. The valley is quite narrow, and on three sides, save where the two branches of Clear Creek have hewn out their cañons, the ridges rise at a sharp angle to a towering height, while here and there a white-cap peeps out through the depressions. Those parts of the narrow vale that are irrigated by the creek and its numerous tiny tributaries are beautiful in their garb of green, while the areas that are not thus refreshed are as gray as the arid portions of the plains themselves. And that is the case everywhere among the Rockies--where no water flows over the surface the porous, sandy soil is dry and parched. The altitude of Georgetown is eight thousand four hundred and seventy-six feet. We were therefore three thousand feet higher than we had been in the morning, and had a right to expect a somewhat different avi-fauna, an expectation in which we were not disappointed. Our initial ramble took us down the valley. The first bird noted was a familiar one--the warbling vireo, which is very abundant in Colorado in its favorite localities, where all day you may be lulled by its "silvery converse, just begun and never ended." No description of a bird so well known in both the East and the West is required, but the one seen that day gave a new performance, which seems to be worthy of more than a passing notice. Have other bird students observed it? The bird was first seen flitting about in the trees bordering the street; then it flew to its little pendent nest in the twigs. I turned my glass upon it, and, behold, there it sat in its tiny hammock singing its mercurial tune at the top of its voice. It continued its solo during the few minutes I stopped to watch it, glancing over the rim of its nest at its auditor with a pert gleam in its twinkling eyes. That was the first and only time I have ever seen a bird indulging its lyrical whim while it sat on its nest. Whether the bird was a male or a female I could not determine, but, whatever its sex, its little bosom was bubbling over with music.[11] [11] After the foregoing was written, I chanced upon the following note in "Bird Lore" for September and October, 1901, written by a lady at Moline, Illinois, who had made an early morning visit to the haunt of a warbling vireo: "Seated on the ground, in a convenient place for watching the vireo, which was on the nest, we were soon attracted by a vireo's song. Search for the singer failed to find it, until we noted that the bird on the nest seemed to be singing. Then, as we watched, over and over again the bird was seen to lift up its head and pour out the long, rich warble--a most delicious sight and sound. Are such ways usual among birds, or did we chance to see and hear an unusual thing?" It was soon evident that the western robins were abundant about Georgetown, as they were on the plains and among the foothills. They were principally engaged just now in feeding their young, which had already left their nests. Presently I shall have more to say about these birds. Just now I was aware of some little strangers darting about in the air, uttering a fine, querulous note, and at length descending to the ground to feast daintily on the seeds of a low plant. Here I could see them plainly with my glass, for they gave me gracious permission to go quite near them. Their backs were striped, the predominant color being brown or dark gray, while the whitish under parts were streaked with dusk, and there were yellow decorations on the wings and tails, whether the birds were at rest or in flight. When the wings were spread and in motion, the golden ornamentation gave them a filmy appearance. On the wing, the birds, as I afterwards observed, often chirped a little lay that bore a close resemblance in certain parts to the "pe-chick-o-pe" of the American goldfinch. Indeed, a number of their notes suggested that bird, as did also their manner of flight, which was quite undulatory. The birds were the pine siskins. They are very common in the Rockies, ranging from an elevation of eight thousand feet to the timber-line. This pert and dainty little bird is the same wherever found in North America, having no need of the cognomen "western" prefixed to his name when he takes it into his wise little head to make his abode in the Rocky Mountains. _CLEAR CREEK VALLEY_ _A scene near Georgetown. The copses in the valley are the home of white-crowned sparrows, willow thrushes, Lincoln's sparrows and Wilson's warblers; the steep, bushy acclivities are selected by the spurred and green-tailed towhees, Audubon's and Macgillivray's warblers; while the western robins, pine siskins, and broad-tailed humming-birds range all over the region. The robins and siskins make some of their most thrilling plunges over such cliffs as are shown in the picture._ [Illustration] The reader will perhaps recall that a flock of pine siskins were seen, two years prior, in a patch of pine scrub a short distance below Leadville, at which time I was uncertain as to their identity. Oddly enough, that was the only time I saw these birds in my first trip to Colorado, but here in the Georgetown region, only seventy-five or a hundred miles farther north, no species were more plentiful than they. The siskins try to sing--I say "try" advisedly. It is one of the oddest bits of bird vocalization you ever heard, a wheezy little tune in the ascending scale--a kind of crescendo--which sounds as if it were produced by inhalation rather than exhalation. It is as labored as the alto strain of the clay-colored sparrow of the Kansas and Nebraska prairies, although it runs somewhat higher on the staff. The siskins seen at Georgetown moved about in good-sized flocks, feeding awhile on weed-seeds on the sunny slopes, and then wheeling with a merry chirp up to the pine-clad sides of the mountains. As they were still in the gregarious frame at Georgetown, I concluded that they had not yet begun to mate and build their nests in that locality. Afterwards I paid not a little attention to them farther up in the mountains, and saw several feeding their young, but, as their nests are built high in the pines, they are very difficult to find, or, if found, to examine. Our birdlets have superb powers of flight, and actually seem to revel in hurling themselves down a precipice or across a chasm with a recklessness that makes the observer's blood run cold. Sometimes they will dart out in the air from a steep mountain side, sing a ditty much like the goldfinch's, then circle back to their native pines on the dizzy cliff. I must be getting back to my first ramble below Georgetown. Lured by the lyrics of the green-tailed towhee, I climbed the western acclivity a few hundred feet, but found that few birds choose such dry and eerie places for a habitat. Indeed, this was generally my experience in rambling among the mountains; the farther up the arid steeps, the fewer the birds. If you will follow a mountain brook up a sunny slope or open valley, you will be likely to find many birds; but wander away from the water courses, and you will look for them, oftentimes, in vain. The green-tailed towhees, spurred towhees, Audubon's warblers, and mountain hermit thrushes are all partial to acclivities, even very steep ones, but they do not select those that are too remote from the babbling brook to which they may conveniently resort for drinking and bathing. A green and bushy spot a half mile below the village was the home of a number of white-crowned sparrows. None of them were seen on the plains or in the foothills; they had already migrated from the lower altitudes, and had sought their summer residences in the upper mountain valleys, where they may be found in great abundance from an elevation of eight thousand feet to copsy haunts here and there far above the timber-line hard by the fields of snow. The white-crowns in the Georgetown valley seemed to be excessively shy, and their singing was a little too reserved to be thoroughly enjoyable, for which reason I am disposed to think that mating and nesting had not yet begun, or I should have found evidences of it, as their grassy cots on the ground and in the bushes are readily discovered. Other birds that were seen in this afternoon's ramble were Wilson's and Audubon's warblers, the spotted sandpiper, and that past-master in the art of whining, the killdeer. Another warbler's trill was heard in the thicket, but I was unable to identify the singer that evening, for he kept himself conscientiously hidden in the tanglewood. A few days later it turned out to be one of the most beautiful feathered midgets of the Rockies, Macgillivray's warbler, which was seen in a number of places, usually on bushy slopes. He and his mate often set up a great to-do by chirping and flitting about, and I spent hours in trying to find their nests, but with no other result than to wear out my patience and rubber boots. I can recall no other Colorado bird, either large or small, except the mountain jay, that made so much ado about nothing, so far as I could discover. But I love them still, on account of the beauty of their plumage and the gentle rhythm of their trills. The next morning, chilly as the weather was--and it was cold enough to make one shiver even in bed--the western robins opened the day's concert with a splendid voluntary, waking me out of my slumbers and forcing me out of doors for an early walk. No one but a systematic ornithologist would be able to mark the difference between the eastern and western types of robins, for their manners, habits, and minstrelsy are alike, and their markings, too, so far as ordinary observation goes. The carolling of the two varieties is similar, so far as I could discern--the same cherry ringing melody, their voices having a like propensity to break into falsetto, becoming a veritable squeak, especially early in the season before their throat-harps are well tuned. With his powerful muscles and wide stretch of wing the robin is admirably adapted to the life of a mountaineer. You find him from the plains to the timber-line, sometimes even in the deepest cañons and on the most precipitous mountain sides, always the same busy, noisy, cheery body. One day I saw a robin dart like a meteor from the top of a high ridge over the cliffs to the valley below, where he alighted on a cultivated field almost as lightly as a flake of snow. He--probably she (what a trouble these pronouns are, anyway!)--gathered a mouthful of worms for his nestlings, then dashed up to the top of the ridge again, which he did, not by flying out into the air, but by keeping close up to the steep, cliffy wall, striking a rock here and twig there with his agile feet to help him in rising. The swiftness of the robin's movements about the gorges, abysses, and precipices of the mountains often inspires awe in the beholder's breast, and, on reflection, stirs him with envy. Many nests were found in the Georgetown valley, in woodsy and bushy places on the route to Gray's Peak as far as the timber-line, in the neighborhood of Boulder, in the Platte River Cañon, in South Park, and in the Blue River region beyond the Divide. Some of the nests contained eggs, others young in various stages of plumage, and still others were already deserted. For general ubiquity as a species, commend me to the American robin, whether of the eastern or western type. Wherever found he is a singer, and it is only to be regretted that-- "All will not hear thy sweet, out-pouring joy That with morn's stillness blends the voice of song, For over-anxious cares their souls employ, That else, upon thy music borne along And the light wings of heart-ascending prayer, Had learned that Heaven is pleased thy simple joys to share." [Illustration: _Western Robin_ "_Out-pouring joy_"] In Georgetown, Silver Plume, and other mountain towns the lovely violet-green swallow is frequently seen--a distinctly western species and one of the most richly apparelled birds of the Rockies. It nests in all sorts of niches and crannies about the houses, often sits calmly on a telegraph wire and preens its iridescent plumes, and sometimes utters a weak and squeaky little trill, which, no doubt, passes for first-rate music in swallowdom, whatever we human critics might think of it. Before man came and settled in those valleys, the violet-greens found the crevices of rocks well enough adapted to their needs for nesting sites, but now they prefer cosey niches and crannies in human dwellings, and appear to appreciate the society of human beings. For over a week we made Georgetown our headquarters, going off every day to the regions round about. Among my most treasured finds here was the nest of Audubon's warbler--my first. It was saddled in the crotch of a small pine a short distance up an acclivity, and was prettily roofed over with a thick network of branches and twigs. Four white, daintily speckled eggs lay in the bottom of the cup. While I was sitting in the shadow of the pine, some motion of mine caused the little owner to spring from her nest, and this led to its discovery. As she flitted about in the bushes, she uttered a sharp _chip_, sometimes consisting of a double note. The nest was about four feet from the ground, its walls built of grasses and weed-stems, and its concave little floor carpeted with cotton and feathers. A cosey cottage it was, fit for the little poets that erected it. Subsequently I made many long and tiresome efforts to find nests of the Audubons, but all these efforts were futile. One enchanting day--the twenty-fourth of June--was spent in making a trip, with butterfly-net and field-glass, to Green Lake, an emerald gem set in the mountains at an altitude of ten thousand feet, a few miles from Georgetown. Before leaving the town, our first gray-headed junco for this expedition was seen. He had come to town for his breakfast, and was flitting about on the lawns and in the trees bordering the street, helping himself to such dainties as pleased his palate. It may be said here that the gray-headed juncos were observed at various places all along the way from Georgetown to Green Lake and far above that body of water. Not so with the broad-tailed hummers, which were not seen above about eight thousand five hundred feet, while the last warbling vireo of the day was seen and heard at an altitude of nine thousand feet, possibly a little more, when he decided that the air was as rare as was good for his health. A short distance up the cañon of the west branch of Clear Creek, a new kind of flycatcher was first heard, and presently seen with my glass. He sat on a cliff or flitted from rock to bush. He uttered a sharp call, "Cheep, cheep, cheep"; his under parts were bright yellow, his upper parts yellow-olive, growing darker on the crown, and afterwards a nearer view revealed dark or dusky wings, yellowish or gray wing-bars, and yellow eye-rings. He was the western flycatcher, and bears close likeness to our eastern yellow-breasted species. Subsequently he was quite frequently met with, but never far above the altitude of Georgetown. In the same cañon a beautiful Macgillivray's warbler was observed, and two water-ousels went dashing up the meandering stream, keeping close to the seething and roaring waters, but never stopping to sing or bid us the time of day. Very few ousels were observed in our rambles in this region, and no nests rewarded my search, whereas in the vicinity of Colorado Springs, as the reader will recall, these interesting birds were quite frequently near at hand. A mother robin holding a worm in her bill sped down the gulch with the swiftness of an arrow. We soon reached a belt of quaking asps where there were few birds. This was succeeded by a zone of pines. The green-tailed towhees did not accompany us farther in our climb than to an elevation of about nine thousand three hundred feet, but the siskins were chirping and cavorting about and above us all the way, many of them evidently having nests in the tops of the tall pines on the dizzy cliffs. Likewise the hermit thrushes were seen in suitable localities by the way, and also at the highest point we reached that day, an elevation of perhaps ten thousand five hundred feet. While some species were, so to speak, our "companions in travel" the entire distance from the town to the lake, and others went with us only a part of the way, still other species found habitats only in the higher regions clambering far up toward the timber-line. Among these were the mountain jays, none of which were found as far down the range as Georgetown. They began to proclaim their presence by raucous calls as soon as we arrived in the vicinity of Green Lake. A family of them were hurtling about in the pine woods, allowing themselves to be inspected at short range, and filling the hollows with their uncanny calls. What a voice the mountain jay has! Nature did a queer thing when she put a "horse-fiddle" into the larynx of this bird--but it is not ours to ask the reason why, simply to study her as she is. In marked contrast with the harsh calls of these mountain hobos were the roulades of the sweet and musical ruby-crowned kinglets, which had absented themselves from the lower altitudes, but were abundant in the timber belts about ten thousand feet up the range and still higher. [Illustration: _Red-naped Sapsuckers_ "_Chiselling grubs out of the bark_"] On the border of the lake, among some gnarly pines, I stumbled upon a woodpecker that was entirely new to my eastern eyes--one that I had not seen in my previous touring among the heights of the Rockies. He was sedulously pursuing his vocation--a divine call, no doubt--of chiselling grubs out of the bark of the pine trees, making the chips fly, and producing at intervals that musical snare-drumming which always sets the poet to dreaming of sylvan solitudes. What was the bird? The red-naped sapsucker, a beautifully habited Chesterfield in plumes. He presently ambled up the steep mountain side, and buried himself in the pine forest, and I saw him no more, and none of his kith. When I climbed up over a tangle of rocks to a woodsy ravine far above the lake, it seemed at first as if there were no birds in the place, that it was given up entirely to solitude; but the winged creatures were only shy and cautious for the nonce, waiting to learn something about the errand and disposition of their uninvited, or, rather, self-invited, guest, before they ventured to give him a greeting. Presently they discovered that he was not a collector, hunter, nest-robber, or ogre of any other kind, and there was the swish of wings around me, and a medley of chirps and songs filled the sequestered spot. Away up here the gray-headed juncos were trilling like warblers, and hopping about on their pine-needle carpet, creeping in and out among the rocks, hunting for tidbits. Here also was the mountain chickadee, found at this season in the heights hard by the alpine zone, singing his dulcet minor strain, "Te-te-re-e-e, te-eet," sometimes adding another "te-eet" by way of special emphasis and adornment. Oh, the sweet little piper piping only for Pan! The loneliness of the place was accentuated by the sad cadenzas of the mountain hermit thrushes. Swallows of some kind--cliff-swallows, no doubt--were silently weaving invisible filigree across the sky above the tops of the stately pines. In the afternoon we made our way, with not a little laborious effort, to the farther end of the lake, across which a red-shafted flicker would occasionally wing its galloping flight; thence through a wilderness of large rocks and fallen pines to a beckoning ridge, where, to our surprise, another beautiful aqueous sheet greeted our vision in the valley beyond. Descending to its shores, we had still another surprise--its waters were brown instead of green. Here were two mountain lakes not more than a quarter of a mile apart, one of which was green and the other brown, each with a beauty all its own. In the brown lake near the shore there were glints of gold as the sun shone through its ripples on the rocks at the bottom. Afterwards we learned that the name of this liquid gem was Clear Lake, and that the western branch of Clear Creek flows through it, tarrying a while to sport and dally with the sunbeams. While Green Lake was embowered in a forest of pine, its companion lay in the open sunlight, unflecked by the shadow of a tree. At the upper end of Clear Lake we found a green, bosky and bushy corner, which formed the summer tryst of white-crowned sparrows, Wilson's warblers, and broad-tailed humming-birds, none of which could find a suitable habitat on the rocky, forest-locked shores of Green Lake. A pigeon hawk, I regretted to note, had settled among the bushes, and was watching for quarry, making the only fly in the amber of the enchanted spot. A least flycatcher flitted about in the copse some distance up a shallow runway. I trudged up the valley about a mile above Clear Lake, and found a green, open meadow, with clumps of bushes here and there, in which a few white-crowned sparrows and Wilson's warblers had taken up at least a temporary dwelling; but the wind was blowing shiveringly from the snow-capped mountains not many miles away, and there was still a wintry aspect about the vale. The cold evidently affected the birds as it did myself, for they lisped only a few bars of song in a half-hearted way. Evening was approaching, and the two travellers--the human ones, I mean--started on the trail down the valleys and cañons toward Georgetown, which they reached at dusk, tired, but thankful for the privilege of spending an idyllic day among their winged companions. [Illustration: _Pigeon Hawk_ "_Watching for quarry_"] Following a wagon road, the next day, across a pass some distance below Georgetown brought us into another valley, whose green meadows and cultivated fields lay a little lower, perhaps a couple hundred feet, than the valley from which we had come. Here we found many Brewer's blackbirds, of which there were very few in the vicinity of Georgetown. They were feeding their young, some of which had already left the nest. No red-winged blackbirds had been seen in the Georgetown valley, while here there was a large colony of them, many carrying food to the bantlings in grass and bush. Otherwise there was little difference between the avi-fauna of the two valleys. One morning I climbed the steep mountain just above Georgetown, the one that forms the divide between the two branches of Clear Creek. A western chipping sparrow sat trilling on the top of a small pine, as unafraid as the chippie that rings his silvery peals about your dooryard in the East; nor could I distinguish any difference between the minstrelsy of this westerner and his well-known cousin of Ohio. He dexterously caught an insect on the wing, having learned that trick, perhaps, from his neighbor, the little western flycatcher, which also lived on the slope. Hermit thrushes, Audubon's warblers, and warbling vireos dwelt on the lower part of the acclivity. When I climbed far up the steep wall, scarcely able to cling to its gravelly surface, I found very few birds; only a flycatcher and an Audubon's warbler, while below me the hermit thrushes were chanting a sacred oratorio in the pine woods. On another day the train bore us around the famous "Loop" to Silver Plume. In the beautiful pine grove at the terminus of the railway there were many birds--siskins, chipping sparrows, western robins and ruby-crowned kinglets; and they were making the place vocal with melody, until I began to inspect them with my glass, when they suddenly lapsed into a silence that was as trying as it was profound. By and by, discretion having had her perfect work, they metaphorically came out of their shells and permitted an inspection. Above the railway I saw one of the few birds of my entire Rocky Mountain outing that I was unable to identify. That little feathered Sphinx--what could he have been? To quote from my note-book, "His song, as he sits quietly on a twig in a pine tree, is a rich gurgling trill, slightly like that of a house-wren, but fuller and more melodious, with an air about it that makes me feel almost like writing a poem. The bird is in plain view before me, and I may watch him either with or without my glass; he has a short, conical bill; his upper parts are gray or olive-gray; cervical patch of a greenish tinge; under parts whitish, spotted with dusk or brown. The bill is white or horn-color, and is quite heavy, I should say heavier than that of any sparrow I know. The bird continued to sing for a long time and at frequent intervals, not even stopping when the engine near at hand blew off steam, although he turned his head and looked a little startled." I saw this species nowhere else in my Colorado rambles, and can find no description in the systematic manuals that helps to clear up the mystery, and so an _avis incognita_ he must remain for the present. Has mention been made of a few house-finches that were seen in Georgetown? Only a few, however, for they prefer the towns and cities of the plain. Several house-wrens were also seen in the vicinity of the Georgetown Loop as well as elsewhere in the valley. The "Loop," although a monumental work of human genius and daring, has its peculiar attractions for the student of natural history, for in the cañon itself, which is somewhat open and not without bushy haunts, and on the precipitous mountain sides, a few birds set up their Lares and Penates, and mingle their songs of domestic felicity with the roar of the torrent and the passing trains. Darting like zigzag lightning about the cliffs, the broad-tailed humming-bird cuts the air with his sharp, defiant buzz, until you exclaim with the poet: "Is it a monster bee, Or is it a midget bird, Or yet an air-born mystery That now yon marigold has stirred?" [Illustration: "_Solo singing in the thrush realm_"] Among the birds that dwell on the steep mountain sides above the "Loop" hollow are the melodious green-tailed towhees, lisping their chansons of good-will to breeze and torrent, while in the copse of asps in the hollow itself the warbling vireo and the western flycatcher hold sway, the former rehearsing his recitative all the day long, and the latter chirping his protest at every human intrusion. On a pine-clad shelf between the second fold of the "Loop" and what is known as the "Great Fill" I settled (at least, to my own satisfaction) a long-disputed point in regard to the vocalization of the mountain hermit thrush. Again and again I had noticed a peculiarity about the hermit's minstrelsy--whenever the music reached my ear, it came in two runs, the first quite high in the scale, the second perhaps an octave lower. For a long time I supposed that two thrushes were singing responsively, but here at the "Loop," after listening for a couple of hours, it occurred to me as improbable that there would invariably be a respondent when a thrush lifted up his voice in song. Surely there would sometimes, at least, be solo singing in the thrush realm. And so the conclusion was forced upon me that both strains emanated from the same throat, that each vocalist was its own respondent. It was worth while to clamber laboriously about the "Loop" to settle a point like that--at all events, it was worth while for one admirer of the birds. HO! FOR GRAY'S PEAK! [Illustration: PLATE VI TOWNSEND'S SOLITAIRE--_Myiadestes townsendii_] [Illustration] By the uninitiated it may be regarded simply as fun and pastime to climb a mountain whose summit soars into cloudland; in reality it is serious business, not necessarily accompanied with great danger, but always accomplished by laborious effort. However, it is better for the clamberer to look upon his undertaking as play rather than work. Should he come to feel that it is actual toil, he might soon weary of a task engaged in so largely for its own sake, and decide to expend his time and energy in something that would "pay better." Moreover, if he is impelled by a hobby--ornithology, for instance--in addition to the mere love of mountaineering, he will find that something very near akin to wings has been annexed to the climbing gear of which he is naturally possessed. The morning of June 27 saw my youthful companion and myself mounted each upon a shaggy burro, scrambling up the steep hill above Georgetown, en route for Gray's Peak, the ascent of which was the chief goal of our ambition in coming to the Rockies on the present expedition. The distance from Georgetown to the summit of this peak is fourteen miles, and the crest itself is fourteen thousand four hundred and forty-one feet above sea-level, almost three hundred feet higher than Pike's Peak, and cannot be scaled by means of a cog-wheel railway or any other contrivance that uses steam or electricity as a motor. Indeed, the only motor available at the time of our ascent--that is, for the final climb--was "shank's horses," very useful and mostly safe, even if a little plebeian. We had been wise enough not to plunge at once among the heights, having spent almost a week rambling over the plains, mesas, foothills, and lower ranges, then had been occupied for five or six days more in exploring the valleys and mountain sides in the vicinity of Georgetown, and thus, by gradually approaching them, we had become inured to "roughing it" in the higher altitudes when we reached them, and suffered no ill effects from the rarefied atmosphere. We passed the famous "Georgetown Loop," crept at a snail's pace--for that is the natural gait of the burro--through the town of Silver Plume, and pursued our leisurely journey toward the beckoning, snow-clad heights beyond. No, we did not hurry, for two reasons: First, our little four-footers would not or could not quicken their pace, urge them as we would; second, we desired to name all the birds along the route, and that "without a gun," as Emerson mercifully enjoins. Have you ever ridden a burro? Have you ever been astride of an old one, a hirsute, unkempt, snail-paced, obstinate one, which thinks he knows better what gait he ought to assume than you do? If you have not, I venture to suggest modestly that your education and moral discipline are not quite complete. The pair which we had hired were slow and headstrong enough to develop the patience of Job in a most satisfactory way, and to test it, too. They were as homely as the proverbial "mud fence" is supposed to be. Never having seen a fence of that kind, I speak with some degree of caution, not wanting to cast any disparagement upon something of which I have so little knowledge. If our long-eared companions had ever seen a curry-comb, it must have been in the days of Noah. You see, we were "tenderfoots," as far as having had any experience with burros was concerned, or we might have selected a more sprightly pair for our fellow-pilgrims. A fine picture, fit for the camera or the artist's brush, we presented as we crept with the speed of a tortoise along the steep mountain roads and trails. Our "jacks," as Messrs. Longears are called colloquially, were not lazy--oh, no! they were simply averse to leaving home! Their domestic ties were so strong they bound them with cords of steel and hooks of iron to stall and stable-yard! The thought of forsaking friends and kindred even for only a few days wrung their loving hearts with anguish! No wonder we had a delicate and pathetic task on hand when we attempted to start our caravan up the mountain road. From side to side the gentle animals wabbled, their load of grief weighing them down tenfold more than the loads on their backs, and times without count they were prompted to veer about and "turn again home." Much labor and time and patience were expended in persuading our steeds to crawl up the hill, but I am delighted to say that no profane history was quoted, as we were a strictly moral crowd. At length we arrived in state at the village of Silver Plume. Canter into the town like a gang of border ruffians we did not; we entered deliberately, as became a dignified company of travellers. But here a new difficulty confronted us, stared us blankly in the face. Our little charges could not be convinced that there was any occasion for going farther than the town. They seemed to have conscientious scruples about the matter; so they stopped without any invitation from their riders, sidled off, turned in toward the residences, stores, groceries, shoe-shops, drugstores, barns, and even the saloons, the while the idlers on the streets and the small boys were gawking at us, smiling in a half-suppressed way, and making quaint remarks in which we could see no wisdom nor humor. We had not come into the town, like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, merely to furnish the villagers amusement. Applying our canes and straps forcibly to the haunches and rumps of our burros only seemed to embarrass the poor creatures, for you can readily see how they would reason the matter out from their own premises: If they were to go no farther, as had been decided by themselves, why should their riders belabor them in that merciless way? For downright dialectics commend me to the Rocky Mountain burro. Finally a providence in the shape of two small boys came to our rescue, and in a most interesting and effective way. Seeing the predicament we were in, and appreciating the gravity of the situation, those nimble-witted lads picked up a couple of clubs from the street, and, getting in the rear of our champing steeds, began to pound them over the haunches. For small boys they delivered sturdy blows. Now, if there is anything that will make a burro move dexterously out of his tracks, it is to get behind him with a club and beat a steady tattoo on his hams and legs. No sooner did the boys begin to apply their clubs in good earnest than our burros began to print tracks in quick succession on the dusty road, and we went gayly through the town, the lads making a merry din with their shouts and whacks, mingled with the patter of hoofs on the street. It was so dramatic that even the women came to their doors to witness the pageant. We tried not to laugh, and so did the delicately mannered spectators, but I suspect that a good deal of laughing was done on the sly, in spite of the canons of etiquette. At length the obliging lads became a little too accommodating. They used their persuasives upon the donkeys so vigorously that they--the donkeys--started off on a lope, a sort of awkward, lop-sided gallop. Now, if there is anything that is beyond the ability of Master Jack, especially if he is old, it is to canter and at the same time preserve his equilibrium. It is evident that he is not built to make a rocking-chair of his back bone. So a little comedy was enacted, all involuntary on the part of the _dramatis personæ_. Suddenly Turpentine--that was the name of the little gray burro ridden by my boy companion--took a header, sending his youthful rider sprawling to the ground, where he did not remain a moment longer than good manners demanded. Fortunately he succeeded in disengaging his feet from the stirrups and directing his movements in such a way that the animal did not fall upon him. But poor Turpentine, what of him? He tumbled clean over his head upon his back, and I want to confess in all candor that one of the most instructive and interesting "animal pictures" I have ever seen, including those done by Landseer, Rosa Bonheur, and Ernest Thompson Seton, was that little iron-gray, long-eared donkey lying on his back on the street and clawing the air with his hoofs. And he clawed fast, too--fairly sawed the air. For once in his life Turpentine, the snail paced, was in a hurry; for once he moved with more celerity than grace. It threw us into spasms of laughter to see him exert himself so vigorously to reverse his position--to get his feet down and his back up. A cat could not have done it with more celerity. You never would have believed him capable of putting so much vim and vigor into his easy-going personality. After chopping the air with his hoofs for a second or two, he succeeded in righting himself, and was on his feet in less time than it takes to tell it. There he stood, as meek as Mary's lamb, trying to look as if he had never turned an undignified somersault in all his tranquil life. We started on our journey again, and presently, to our intense relief, reached the border of the town, thanked the lads who had expedited our march along the street, and proceeded on our way up the valley. We soon settled down to taking our burros philosophically, and erelong they were going calmly on the even tenor of their way, and afterwards we had little trouble with them, and actually became quite attached to the gentle creatures before our joint pilgrimage drew to an end. It is time to pass from quadrupeds to bipeds. While our feathered friends were not so abundant in the wilder regions as we might have wished, still we had almost constant avian companionship along the way. The warbling vireos were especially plentiful, and in full tune, making a silvery trail of song beside the dusty road. We had them at our elbow as far as Graymont, where we made a sharp detour from the open valley, and clambered along a steep mountain side, with a deep, wooded gorge below us. Here the vireos suddenly decided that they could escort us no farther, as they had no taste for crepuscular cañons and alpine heights. Not a vireo was seen above Graymont, which has an altitude of nearly ten thousand feet. We left them singing in the valley as we turned from it, and did not hear them again until we came back to Graymont. Almost the same may be said of the broad-tailed humming-birds, whose insect-like buzzing we heard at frequent intervals along the route to a shoulder of the mountain a little above Graymont, when it suddenly ceased and was heard no more until we returned to the same spot a few days later. House-wrens, willow thrushes, Brewer's blackbirds, and long-crested jays were also last seen at Graymont, which seemed to be a kind of territorial limit for a number of species. However, several species--as species, of course, not as individuals--convoyed us all the way from Georgetown to the timber-line and, in some instances, beyond. Let me call the roll of these faithful "steadies": Mountain hermit thrushes, gray-headed juncos, red-shafted flickers, pine siskins, western robins, Audubon's and Wilson's warblers, mountain bluebirds and white-crowned sparrows. Of course, it must be borne in mind that these birds were not seen everywhere along the upward journey, simply in their favorite habitats. The deep, pine-shadowed gorges were avoided by the warblers and white-crowned sparrows, whilst every open, sunlit, and bushy spot or bosky glen was enlivened by a contingent of these merry minnesingers. One little bird added to our list in the gorge above Graymont was the mountain chickadee, which was found thereafter up to the timber-line. It was sometime in the afternoon when we reached Graymont, which we found to be no "mount" at all, as we had expected, but a hamlet, now mostly deserted, in a narrow valley in sight of several gray mountains looming in the distance. Straight up the valley were some snow-mantled peaks, but none of them was Gray's; they did not beckon to us from the right direction. From the upper part of the hamlet, looking to our left, we saw a frowning, snow-clad ridge towering like an angry giant in the air, and we cried simultaneously, "Gray's Peak!" The terrific aspect of that mountain sent a momentary shiver through our veins as we thought of scaling it without a guide. We were in error, as we afterwards found, for the mountain was Torrey's Peak, not Gray's, which is not visible from Graymont, being hidden by two intervening elevations, Mount Kelso and Torrey's Peak. There are several points about a mile above Graymont from which Gray's serene peak is visible, but of this we were not aware until on our return trip, when we had learned to recognize him by his calm and magisterial aspect. As evening drew on, and the westering sun fell below the ridges, and the shadows deepened in the gorges, making them doubly weird, we began to feel very lonely, and, to add to our misgivings, we were uncertain of our way. The prospect of having to spend a cold night out of doors in a solitary place like this was not very refreshing, I am free to confess, much as one might desire to proclaim himself a brave man. Presently our eyes were gladdened by the sight of a miner's shack just across the hollow, perhaps the one for which we were anxiously looking. A man at Graymont had told us about a miner up this way, saying he was a "nice man" and would no doubt give us accommodation for the night. I crossed the narrow foot-bridge that spanned the booming torrent, and found the miner at home. Would he give two way-worn travellers a place to sleep beneath his roof? We had brought plenty of food and some blankets with us, and all we required was four walls around us and a roof over our heads. Yes, he replied, we were welcome to such accommodation as he had, and he could even give us a bed, though it "wasn't very stylish." Those were among the sweetest and most musical words that ever fell on my ear. Having tethered our burros in a grassy cove on the mountain side, and cooked our supper in the gloaming among some rocks by the bank of the brawling stream, we turned into the cabin for the night, more than grateful for a shelter from the chill winds scurrying down from the snow-capped mountains. The shack nestled at the foot of Mount Kelso, which we had also mistaken for Gray's Peak. As we sat by the light of a tallow candle, beguiling the evening with conversation, the miner told us that the mountain jays, colloquially called "camp robbers," were common around his cabin, especially in winter; but familiar as they were, he had never been able to find a nest. The one thing about which they insist on the utmost privacy is their nesting places. My friend also told me that a couple of gray squirrels made the woods around his camp their home. The jays would frequently carry morsels of food up to the branches of the pines, and stow them in some crevice for future use, whereupon the squirrels, always on the lookout for their own interests, would scuttle up the tree and steal the hidden provender, eating it with many a chuckle of self-congratulation. Had not the weather turned so cold during the night, we might have slept quite comfortably in the miner's shack, but I must confess that, though it was the twenty-eighth of June and I had a small mountain of cover over me, I shivered a good deal toward morning. An hour or so after daylight four or five mountain jays came to the cabin for their breakfast, flitting to the ground and greedily devouring such tidbits as they could find. They were not in the least shy. But where were their nests? That was the question that most deeply interested me. During the next few days I made many a long and toilsome search for them in the woods and ravines and on the steep mountain sides, but none of the birds invited me to their houses. These birds know how to keep a secret. Anything but feathered Apollos, they have a kind of ghoulish aspect, making you think of the apparitional as they move in their noiseless way among the shadowing pines. There is a look in their dark, deep-set eyes and about their thick, clumpy heads which gives you a feeling that they might be equal to any imaginable act of cruelty. Yet I cannot say I dislike these mountain roustabouts, for some of their talk among themselves is very tender and affectionate, proving that, "whatever brawls disturb the street," there are love and concord in jay household circles. That surely is a virtue to be commended, and cannot be claimed for every family, either avian or human. At 4.30 that morning I crept out of bed and climbed far up one of the mountain sides--this was before the jays came to the cabin. The wind blew so icy from the snow-clad heights that I was only too glad to wear woollen gloves and pin a bandanna handkerchief around my neck, besides buttoning up my coat collar. Even then I shivered. But would you believe it? The mosquitoes were as lively and active as if a balmy breeze were blowing from Arcady, puncturing me wherever they could find a vulnerable spot, and even thrusting their sabres through my thick woollen gloves into the flesh. They must be extremely hardy insects, for I am sure such arctic weather would send the mosquitoes of our lower altitudes into their winter hiding-places. People who think there are no mosquitoes in the Rockies are reckoning without their hosts. In many places they assaulted us by the myriad until life among them became intolerable, and some were found even in the neighborhood of perpetual snow. Raw as the morning was, the hermit thrushes, mountain chickadees, Audubon's warblers, gray-headed juncos, and ruby-crowned kinglets were giving a lively rehearsal. How shy they were! They preferred being heard, not seen. Unexpectedly I found a hermit thrush's nest set in plain sight in a pine bush. One would have thought so shy a bird would make some attempt at concealment. It was a well-constructed domicile, composed of grass, twigs, and moss, but without mortar. The shy owner was nowhere to be seen, nor did she make any outcry, even though I stood for some minutes close to her nest. What stolidity the mountain birds display! You could actually rob the nests of some of them without wringing a chirp from them. On two later visits to the place I found Madame Thrush on her nest, where she sat until I came quite close, when she silently flitted away and ensconced herself among the pines, never chirping a syllable of protest or fear. In the bottom of the pretty crib lay four deep-blue eggs. Afterwards I found one more hermit's nest, which was just in process of construction. In this case, as in the first, no effort was made at concealment, the nest being placed in the crotch of a quaking asp a rod or so above the trail, from which it could be plainly seen. The little madame was carrying a load of timbers to her cottage as we went down the trail, and sat in the nest moulding and putting her material in place as I climbed up the steep bank to inspect her work. Then she flew away, making no demonstration while I examined the nest. Having eaten our breakfast at the miner's cabin, my youthful companion and I mounted our "gayly caparisoned steeds," and resumed our journey toward Gray's Peak. The birds just mentioned greeted us with their salvos as we crept along. It was not until we had almost reached the timber-line that Gray's Peak loomed in sight, solemn and majestic, photographed against the cobalt sky, with its companion-piece, Torrey's Peak, standing sullen beside it. The twin peaks were pointed out to us by another miner whom we met at his shack just a little below the timber-line, and who obligingly gave us permission to "bunk" in one of the cabins of what is known as "Stephen's mine," which is now abandoned--or was at the time of our visit. Near the timber-line, where the valley opens to the sunlight, we found a mountain bluebird flitting about some old, deserted buildings, but, strangely enough, this was the last time we saw him, although we looked for him again and again. Nor did we see another mountain blue in this alpine eyrie. Our burros were tethered for the day in a grassy hollow, our effects stowed away in the cabin aforesaid, which we had leased for a few days; then, with luncheon strapped over our shoulders and butterfly net and field-glass in hand, we started happily up the valley afoot toward the summit of our aspirations, Gray's Peak, rising fourteen thousand four hundred and forty-one feet above the level of the sea. In some scrubby pine bushes above timber-line several Audubon's warblers were flitting and singing, living hard by the white fields of snow. Still farther up the hollow Wilson's warblers were trilling blithely, proclaiming themselves yet more venturesome than their gorgeous cousins, the Audubons. There is reason for this difference, for Wilson's warblers nest in willows and other bushes which thrive on higher ground and nearer the snowy zone than do the pines to which Audubon's warblers are especially attached. At all events, _Sylvania pusilla_ was one of the two species which accompanied us all the way from Georgetown to the foot of Gray's Peak, giving us a kind of "personally conducted" journey. Our other brave escorts were the white-crowned sparrows, which pursued the narrowing valleys until they were merged into the snowy gorges that rive the sides of the towering twin peaks. In the arctic gulches the scrubby copses came to an end, and therefore the white-crowns ascended no higher, for they are, in a pre-eminent sense, "birds of the bush." Subsequently I found them as far up the sides of Mount Kelso as the thickets extended, which was hundreds of feet higher than the snow-bound gorges just mentioned, for Kelso receives more sunshine than his taller companions, particularly on his eastern side. Brave birds are these handsome and musical sparrows. It was interesting to see them hopping about on the snow-fields, picking up dainties from the white crystals. How lyrical they were in this upper mountain valley! As has been said, for some unaccountable reason the white-crowns in the vicinity of Georgetown were quite chary of their music. Not so those that dwelt in the valley below Gray's and Torrey's peaks, for there they trilled their melodious measures with a richness and abandon that were enchanting. On reaching the snow-belt, though still a little below the limit of copsy growths, we saw our first pipits, which, it will be remembered, I had encountered on the summit of Pike's Peak two years before. In our climb up Gray's Peak we found the pipit realm and that of the white-crowned sparrows slightly overlapping. As soon, however, as we began the steep climb above the matted copses, the white-crowns disappeared and the pipits grew more abundant. At frequent intervals these birds would suddenly start up from the ground, utter their protesting "Te-cheer! te-cheer!" and hurl themselves recklessly across a snowy gulch, or dart high into the air and let their semi-musical calls drop and dribble from the turquoise depths of the sky. Did the pipits accompany you to the summit of the peak? I half regret to admit that they did not, but ceased to appear a good while before the summit was attained. This is all the more remarkable when it is remembered that these birds were extremely abundant on the crest of Pike's Peak, where they behaved in a "very-much-at-home" way. However, there was ample compensation in the ascent of Gray's Peak. As we clambered up the steep and rugged side of the mountain, sometimes wading snow up to our knees, then making a short cut straight up the acclivity to avoid the snow-banks, unable to follow the trail a large part of the way, we were suddenly made aware of the presence of another fearless feathered comrade. With a chirp that was the very quintessence of good cheer and lightness of heart, he hopped about on the snow, picking dainties from his immaculate tablecloth, and permitting us to approach him quite close before he thought it worth while to take to wing. We were happy indeed to meet so companionable a little friend, one that, amid these lonely and awe-inspiring heights, seemed to feel so much at ease and exhibited so confiding a disposition. Was it fancy or was it really true? He appeared to be giving us a hospitable welcome to his alpine home, telling us we might venture upward into cloudland or skyland without peril; then, to make good his assurance, he mounted upward on resilient wings to prove how little danger there was. We were doubly glad for our little seer, for just then we needed someone to "prophesy smooth things" to us. The bird was the brown-capped leucosticte or rosy finch. Thus far I have used the singular number, but the plural would have been more accurate, for there were many of these finches on the acclivity and summit, all of them in a most cheerful mood, their good will and cordial welcome giving us a pleasant feeling of comradery as we journeyed together up the mountain side. Our climb up Gray's Peak was a somewhat memorable event in our experience, and I am disposed to dwell upon it. The valley which we had followed terminates in a deep gorge, filled with drift snow the year round, no doubt, and wedging itself between Gray's and Torrey's shoulders and peaks. Here the melting snows form the head waters of Clear Creek, whose sinuous course we had followed by rail, foot, and burro from the city of Denver. The trail, leaving the ravine, meandered up a shoulder of the mountain, wheeled to the left and crept along a ridge, with some fine, blood-curdling abysses on the eastern side; then went zigzagging back and forth on the precipitous wall of Gray's titanic mount, until at last, with a long pull and a strong pull, it scaled the backbone of the ridge. All this, however, is much more easily told than done. Later in the season, when the trail is clear of snow-drifts, sure-footed horses and burros are ridden to the summit; but we were too early to follow the trail even on foot. Indeed, many persons familiar with the mountains had declared that we could not reach the top so early in the season, on account of the large snow-banks that still covered the trail. Even the old miner, who in the valley below pointed out the peak to us, expressed grave doubts about the success and wisdom of our undertaking. "See!" he said, "the trail's covered with snow in many places on the mountain side. I'm afraid you can't reach the top, sir." I did not see as clearly as he did, but said nothing aloud. In my mind I shouted, "Excelsior!" and then added, mentally, of course, "Faint heart never won fair lady or fairer mountain's crest--hurrah for the peak!" I simply felt that if there were birds and butterflies on that sky-aspiring tower, I _must_ see them. The die was cast; we had come to Colorado expressly to climb Gray's Peak, and climb it we would, or have some good reason to give for not doing so. And now we were making the attempt. We had scarcely reached the mountain's shoulder before we were obliged to wade snow. For quite a distance we were able to creep along the edge of the trail, or skirt the snow-beds by making short detours, and then returning to the trail; but by and by we came to a wide, gleaming snow-field that stretched right athwart our path and brought us to a standstill with the exclamation, "What shall we do now?" Having already sunk a number of times into the snow over our boot-tops, we felt that it would not be safe to venture across so large an area of soft and treacherous crystals melting in the afternoon sun and only slightly covering we knew not what deep gorges. In some places we had been able to walk on the top of the snow, but elsewhere it was quite soft, and we could hear the gurgling of water underneath, and sometimes it sounded a little more sepulchral than we liked. Looking far up the acclivity, we saw still larger snow-fields obliterating the trail. "We can never cross those snow-fields," one of us declared, a good deal of doubt in his tones. A moment's reflection followed, and then the other exclaimed stoutly, "Let us climb straight up, then!" To which his companion replied, "All right, little Corporal! Beyond the Alps lies Italy!" Over rocks and stones and stretches of gravel, sometimes loose, sometimes solid, we clambered, half the time on all fours, skirting the snow-fields that lay in our unblazed pathway; on and up, each cheering the other at frequent intervals by crying lustily, "We can make it! We can make it!" ever and anon throwing ourselves on the rocks to recover our breath and rest our aching limbs; on and up we scrambled and crept, like ants on a wall, until at length, reaching the ridge at the left a little below the top, we again struck the trail, when we stopped a few minutes to catch breath, made one more mighty effort, and, behold! we stood on Gray's summit, looking down triumphantly at the world crouching at our feet. Never before had we felt so much like Jupiter on Olympus. _GRAY'S AND TORREY'S PEAKS_ _Gray's to the left, Torrey's to the right. As the lookout of the photographer was nearer Torrey's than Gray's, the former appears the higher in the picture, while the reverse is really the case. The trail winds through a ravine at the right of the ridge in front; then creeps along the farther side of the ridge above the gorge at Torrey's base; comes to the crest of the ridge pretty well toward the left; then crawls and zigzags back and forth along the titanic wall of Gray's to the summit. In the vale, where some of the head waters of Clear Creek will be seen, the white-crowned sparrows and Wilson's warblers find homes. A little before the ascent of the ridge begins, the first pipits are seen; thence the clamberer has pipit company to the point where the ridge joins the main bulk of the mountain. Here the pipits stop, and the first leucostictes are noted, which, chirping cheerily all the way, escort the traveller to the summit._ [Illustration] In making the ascent, some persons, even among those who ride, become sick; others suffer with bleeding at the nose, and others are so overcome with exhaustion and weakness that they cannot enjoy the superb panorama spread out before them. However you may account for it, my youthful comrade and I, in spite of our arduous climb, were in excellent physical condition when we reached our goal, suffering no pain whatever in eyes, head, or lungs. The bracing air, rare as it was, soon exhilarated us, our temporary weariness disappeared, and we were in the best of trim for scouring the summit, pursuing our natural history hobbies, and revelling in the inspiring cyclorama that Nature had reared for our delectation. My pen falters when I think of describing the scene that broke upon our vision. I sigh and wish the task were done. The summit itself is a narrow ridge on which you may stand and look down the declivities on both sides, scarcely having to step out of your tracks to do so. It is quite different from the top of Pike's Peak, which is a comparatively level plateau several acres in extent, carpeted, if one may so speak, with immense granite rocks piled upon one another or laid side by side in semi-systematic order; whereas Gray's, as has been said, is a narrow ridge, composed chiefly of comparatively small stones, with a sprinkling of good-sized boulders. The finer rocks give the impression of having been ground down by crushing and attrition to their present dimensions in the far-away, prehistoric ages. A short distance to the northwest frowned Torrey's Peak, Gray's companion-piece, the twain being connected by a ridge which dips in an arc perhaps a hundred feet below the summits. The ridge was covered with a deep drift of snow, looking as frigid and unyielding as a scene in the arctic regions. Torrey's is only a few feet lower than Gray's--one of my books says five. Mention has been made of its forbidding aspect. It is indeed one of the most ferocious-looking mountains in the Rockies, its crown pointed and grim, helmeted with snow, its sides, especially east and north, seamed and ridged and jagged, the gorges filled with snow, the beetling cliffs jutting dark and threatening, bearing huge drifts upon their shoulders. Torrey's Peak actually seemed to be calling over to us like some boastful Hercules, "Ah, ha! you have climbed my mild-tempered brother, but I dare you to climb me!" For reasons of our own we declined the challenge. The panorama from Gray's Peak is one to inspire awe and dwell forever in the memory, an alpine wonderland indeed and in truth. To the north, northwest, and west there stretches, as far as the eye can reach, a vast wilderness of snowy peaks and ranges, many of them with a rosy glow in the sunshine, tier upon tier, terrace above terrace, here in serried ranks, there in isolated grandeur, some just beyond the dividing cañons, others fifty, sixty, a hundred miles away, cyclopean, majestic, infinite. Far to the north, Long's Peak lifts his seamed and hoary pyramid, almost as high as the crest on which we are standing; in the west rise that famous triad of peaks, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, their fanelike towers, sketched against the sky, disputing the palm with old Gray himself; while a hundred miles to the south Pike's Peak stands solitary and smiling in the sun, seeming to say, "I am sufficient unto myself!" Between our viewpoint and the last-named mountain lies South Park, like a paradise of green immured by guardian walls of rock and snow, and far to the east, beyond the billowing ranges, white, gray, and green, stretch the limitless plains, vanishing in the hazy distance. In such surroundings one's breast throbs and swells with the thought of Nature's omnipotence. _PANORAMA FROM GRAY'S PEAK--NORTHWEST_ _The picture includes the northern spur of Gray's Peak, with the dismantled signal station on its crest. The main ridge of the peak extends out to the left of the signal station. The summit is so situated as to be exposed to the sun the greater part of the day; hence, although it is the highest point in the region, there is less snow upon it in summer than upon many of the surrounding elevations. Looking northwest from the signal station, the eye falls upon a wilderness of snow-clad peaks and ranges, some standing in serried ranks, others in picturesque disorder. It is truly an arctic scene, summer or winter. Yet it is the summer home of the brown-capped leucosticte and the white-tailed ptarmigan, which range in happy freedom over the upper story of our country._ [Illustration] The summit of Gray's Peak is a favorable viewpoint from which to study the complexion, the idiosyncrasies, if you please, of individual mountains, each of which seems to have a personality of its own. Here is Gray's Peak itself, calm, smiling, good-natured as a summer morning; yonder is Torrey's, next-door neighbor, cruel, relentless, defiant, always threatening with cyclone or tornado, or forging the thunder-bolts of Vulcan. Some mountains appear grand and dignified, others look like spitfires. On one side some bear smooth and green slopes almost to the top, while the other is scarred, craggy, and precipitous. The day was serene and beautiful, the sky a deep indigo, unflecked with clouds, save a few filmy wracks here and there, and the breeze as balmy as that of a May morning in my native State. So quiet was the alpine solitude that on all sides we could hear the solemn roar of the streams in the ravines hundreds of feet below, some of them in one key and some in another, making almost a symphony. For several hours we tarried, held by a spell. "But you have forgotten your ornithology!" some one reminds me. No one could blame me if I had. Such, however, is not the case, for ornithology, like the poor, is never far from some of us. The genial little optimists that had been hopping about on the snow on the declivities had acted as our cicerones clear to the summit, and some of them remained there while we tarried. Indeed the leucostictes were quite plentiful on the mountain's brow. Several perched on the dismantled walls of the abandoned government building on the summit, called cheerily, then wheeled about over the crest, darted out and went careering over the gulches with perfect aplomb, while we watched them with envious eyes, wishing we too had wings like a leucosticte, not that we "might fly away," as the Psalmist longed to do, but that we might scale the mountains at our own sweet will. The favorite occupation of our little comrades, besides flying, was hopping about on the snow and picking up dainties that were evidently palatable. Afterwards we examined the snow, and found several kinds of small beetles and other insects creeping up through it or about on its surface. Without doubt these were leucosticte's choice morsels. Thus Nature spreads her table everywhere with loving care for her feathered children. The general habits of the rosy finches are elsewhere depicted in this volume. It only remains to be said that they were much more abundant and familiar on Gray's Peak than on Pike's Peak,--that is, at the time of my respective visits to those summits. [Illustration: _Thistle Butterfly_] [Illustration: _Western White_] To omit all mention of the butterflies seen on this trip would be proof of avian monomania with a vengeance. The lad who was with me found a number of individuals of two species zigzagging over the summit, and occasionally settling upon the rocks right by the fields of snow. What kind of nectar they sipped I know not, for there were no flowers or verdure on the heights. They were the Painted Lady or Thistle Butterfly (_Pyrameis cardui_) and the Western White (_Pieris occidentalis_). He captured an individual of the latter species with his net, and to-day it graces his collection, a memento of a hard but glorious climb. The descent of the mountain was laborious and protracted, including some floundering in the snow, but was accomplished without accident. A warm supper in the miner's shack which we had leased prepared us for the restful slumbers of the night. Although the weather was so cold that a thin coating of ice was formed on still water out of doors, the next morning the white-crowned sparrows were singing their sonatas long before dawn, and when at peep of day I stepped outside, they were flitting about the cabins as if in search of their breakfast. The evening before, I left the stable-door open while I went to bring the burros up from their grazing plat. When I returned with the animals, a white-crown flew out of the building just as I stepped into the entrance, almost fluttering against my feet, and chirping sharply at what he seemed to think a narrow escape. He had doubtless gone into the stable on a foraging expedition. The day was spent in exploring the valley and steep mountain sides. A robin's nest was found a little below the timber-line on the slope of Mount Kelso. In the woods a short distance farther down, a gray-headed junco's nest was discovered after a good deal of patient waiting. A female was preening her feathers on a small pine-tree, a sure sign that she had recently come from brooding her eggs. Presently she began to flit about from the tree to the ground and back again, making many feints and starts, which proved that she was embarrassed by my espionage; but at last she disappeared and did not return. With quickened pulse I approached the place where I had last seen her. It was not long before she flew up with a nervous chirp, revealing a pretty domicile under a roof of green grass, with four daintily speckled eggs on the concave floor. I noticed especially that the doorway of the tiny cottage was open toward the morning sun. At the timber-line there were ruby-crowned kinglets, mountain chickadees, and gray-headed juncos, while far above this wavering boundary a pair of red-shafted flickers were observed ambling about among the bushes and watching me as intently as I was watching them. I climbed far up the side of Mount Kelso, then around its rocky shoulder, following an old trail that led to several abandoned silver mines, but no new birds rewarded my toilsome quest, although I was pleased to learn that the pipits and leucostictes did not give the "go-by" to this grand old mountain, but performed their thrilling calisthenics in the air about its slopes and ravines with as much grace as they did on the loftier mountain peaks the day before. A beautiful fox and three cubs were seen among the large stones, and many mountain rats and a sly mink went scuttling about over the rocks. [Illustration: _Junco_ "_Under a roof of green grass_"] On the morning of June 30 the white-crowns, as usual, were chanting their litanies long before day broke. We left the enchanting valley that morning, the trills of the white-crowns ringing in the alpenglow like a sad farewell, as if they felt that we should never meet again. On our way down the winding road we frequently turned to gaze with longing eyes upon the snowy summits of the twin peaks, Gray's all asmile in the sunshine, and Torrey's--or did we only imagine it?--relenting a little now that he was looking upon us for the last time. Did the mountains and the white-crowns call after us, "Auf wiedersehen!" or was that only imagination too? PLEASANT OUTINGS [Illustration: PLATE VII RUDDY DUCK--_Erismatura rubida_ (Lower figure, male; upper, female)] One of our pleasantest trips was taken up South Platte Cañon, across South Park, and over the range to Breckenridge. The town lies in the valley of the Blue River, the famous Ten Mile Range, with its numerous peaks and bold and rugged contour, standing sentinel on the west. Here we found many birds, but as few of them were new, I need not stop to enter into special detail. At the border of the town I found my first green-tailed towhee's nest, which will be described in the last chapter. A pair of mountain bluebirds had snuggled their nest in a cranny of one of the cottages, and an entire family of blues were found on the pine-clad slope beyond the stream; white-crowned sparrows were plentiful in the copses and far up the bushy ravines and mountain sides; western chippies rang their silvery peals; violet-green swallows wove their invisible fabrics overhead; juncos and Audubon's warblers proclaimed their presence in many a remote ingle by their little trills; and Brewer's blackbirds "chacked" their remonstrance at every intrusion into their demesnes; while in many a woodsy or bushy spot the long-crested jays rent the air with their raucous outcries; nor were the broad-tailed hummers wanting on this side of the range, and of course their saucy buzzing was heard wherever they darted through the air. An entire day was spent in ascending and descending Peak Number Eight, one of the boldest of the jutting crags of the Ten Mile Range; otherwise it is called Tillie Ann, in honor of the first white woman known to scale its steep and rugged wall to the summit. She must have been a brave and hardy woman, and certainly deserves a monument of some kind in memory of her achievement, although it falls to the lot of few persons to have their deeds celebrated by a towering mountain for a memorial. While not as high by at least a thousand feet as Gray's Peak, it was fully as difficult of access. A high ridge of snow, which we surmounted with not a little pride and exhilaration, lay on its eastern acclivity within a few feet of the crest, a white crystalline bank gleaming in the sun. The winds hurtling over the summit were as cold and fierce as old Boreas himself, so that I was glad to wear woollen gloves and button my coat-collar close around my neck; yet it was the Fourth of July, when the people of the East were sweltering in the intense heat of their low altitudes. It was a surprise to us to find the wind so much colder here than it had been on the twenty-eighth of June on the summit of Gray's Peak, which is considerably farther north. However, there may be times when the meteorological conditions of the two peaks are reversed, blowing a gale on Gray's and whispering a zephyr on Tillie Ann. The usual succession of birds was seen as we toiled up the slopes and steep inclines, some stopping at the timber-line and others extending their range far up toward the alpine zone. In the pine belt below the timber-line a pair of solitaires were observed flitting about on the ground and the lower branches of the trees, but vouchsafing no song. In the same woodland the mountain jays held carnival--a bacchanalian revel, judging from the noise they made; the ruby-crowned kinglets piped their galloping roundels; a number of wood-pewees--western species--were screeching, thinking themselves musical; siskins were flitting about, though not as numerous as they had been in the piny regions below Gray's Peak; and here for the first time I saw olive-sided flycatchers among the mountains. I find by consulting Professor Cooke that their breeding range is from seven thousand to twelve thousand feet. A few juncos and ruby-crowned kinglets were seen above the timber-line, while many white-crowned sparrows, some of them singing blithely, climbed as far up the mountain side as the stunted copses extended. Oddly enough, no leucostictes were seen on this peak. Why they should make their homes on Pike's and Gray's Peaks and neglect Tillie Ann is another of those puzzles in featherdom that cannot be solved. Must a peak be over fourteen thousand feet above sea-level to meet their physiological wants in the summery season? Who can tell? There were pipits on this range, but, for some reason that was doubtless satisfactory to themselves, they were much shyer than their brothers and sisters had been on Gray's Peak and Mount Kelso; more than that, they were seen only on the slopes of the range, none of them being observed on the crest itself, perhaps on account of the cold, strong gale that was blowing across the snowy heights. A nighthawk was sailing in its erratic course over the peaks--a bit of information worth noting, none of these birds having been seen on any of the summits fourteen thousand feet high. These matters are perhaps not of supreme interest, yet they have their value as studies in comparative ornithology and are helpful in determining the _locale_ of the several species named. In the same interest I desire to add that mountain chickadees, hermit thrushes, warbling vireos, and red-shafted flickers belong to my Breckenridge list. Besides, what I think must have been a Mexican crossbill was seen one morning among the pines, and also a large hawk and two kinds of woodpeckers, none of which tarried long enough to permit me to make sure of their identity. The crossbill--if the individual seen was a bird of that species--wore a reddish jacket, explored the pine cones, and sang a very respectable song somewhat on the grosbeak order, quite blithe, loud, and cheerful. On our return trip to Denver we stopped for a couple of days at the quiet village of Jefferson in South Park, and we shall never cease to be thankful that our good fairies led us to do so. What birds, think you, find residence in a green, well-watered park over nine thousand feet above sea-level, hemmed in by towering, snow-clad mountains? Spread out around you like a cyclorama lies the plateau as you descend the mountain side from Kenosha Pass; or wheel around a lofty spur of Mount Boreas, and you almost feel as if you must be entering Paradise. It was the fifth of July, and the park had donned its holiday attire, the meadows wearing robes of emerald, dappled here and there with garden spots of variegated flowers that brought more than one exclamation of delight from our lips. _SOUTH PARK FROM KENOSHA HILL_ _A paradise of green engirdled by snow-mantled mountains, making a summer home for western meadow-larks, Brewer's blackbirds, desert horned larks, and western Savanna sparrows._ [Illustration] Before leaving the village, our attention was called to a colony of cliff-swallows, the first we had seen in our touring among the mountains. Against the bare wall beneath the eaves of a barn they had plastered their adobe, bottle-shaped domiciles, hundreds of them, some in orderly rows, others in promiscuous clusters. At dusk, when we returned to the village, the birds were going to bed, and it was interesting to watch their method of retiring. The young were already grown, and the entire colony were converting their nests into sleeping berths, every one of them occupied, some of the partly demolished ones by two and three birds. But there were not enough couches to go round, and several of the birds were crowded out, and were clinging to the side of the wall on some of the protuberances left from their broken-down clay huts. It was a query in my mind whether they could sleep comfortably in that strained position, but I left them to settle that matter for themselves and in their own way. Leaving the town, we soon found that the irrigated meadows and bush-fringed banks of the stream made habitats precisely to the taste of Brewer's blackbirds, which were quite plentiful in the park. My companion was "in clover," for numerous butterflies went undulating over the meadows, leading him many a headlong chase, but frequently getting themselves captured in his net. Thus occupied, he left me to attend to the birds. At the border of the village a little bird that was new to me flitted into view and permitted me to identify it with my glass. The little stranger was the western savanna sparrow. South Park was the only place in my Colorado rambles where I found this species, and even his eastern representative is known to me very imperfectly and only as a migrant. The park was fairly alive with savannas, especially in the irrigated portions. I wonder how many millions of them dwelt in this vast Eden of green almost twice as large as the State of Connecticut! The little cocks were incessant singers, their favorite perches being the wire fences, or weeds and grass tufts in the pastures. Their voices are weak, but very sweet, and almost as fine as the sibilant buzz of certain kinds of insects. The pretty song opens with two or three somewhat prolonged syllables, running quite high, followed by a trill much lower in the scale, and closes with a very fine, double-toned strain, delivered with the rising inflection and a kind of twist or jerk--"as if," say my notes, "the little lyrist were trying to tie a knot in his aria before letting it go." More will be said about these charming birds before the end of this chapter. The western meadow-larks were abundant in the park, delivering with great gusto their queer, percussive chants, which, according to my notes, "so often sound as if the birds were trying to crack the whip." The park was the only place above the plains and mesas where I found these gifted fluters, with the exception of the park about Buena Vista. It would appear that the narrow mountain valleys, green and grassy though they are, do not appeal to the larks for summer homes; no, they seem to crave "ampler realms and spaces" in which to spread their wings and chant their dithyrambs. Where the natural streams and irrigating ditches do not reach the soil of the park it is as dry and parched as the plains and mesas. In fact, the park is only a smaller and higher edition of the plains, the character of the soil and the topography of the land in both regions being identical. Never in the wet, fresh meadows, whether of plain or park, only on the arid slopes and hillocks, will you find the desert horned larks, which are certainly true to their literary cognomen, if ever birds were. How they revel in the desert! How scrupulously they draw the line on the moist and emerald areas! Surely there are "many birds of many kinds," and one might appropriately add, "of many minds," as well; for, while the blackbirds and savanna sparrows eschew the desert, the horned larks show the same dislike for the meadow. In shallow pits dug by themselves amid the sparse buffalo grass, the larks set their nests. The young had already left their nurseries at the time of my visit to the park, but were still receiving their rations from the beaks of their elders. On a level spot an adult male with an uncommonly strong voice for this species was hopping about on the ground and reciting his canticles. Seeing I was a stranger and evidently interested in all sorts of avian exploits, he decided to give an exhibition of what might be called sky-soloing, as well as dirigible ballooning. Starting up obliquely from the ground, he continued to ascend in a series of upward leaps, making a kind of aerial stairway, up, up, on and up, until he was about the size of a humming-bird framed against the blue dome of the sky. So far did he plunge into the cerulean depths that I could just discern the movement of his wings. While scaling the air he did not sing, but having reached the proper altitude, he opened his mandibles and let his ditty filtrate through the ether like a shower of spray. It could be heard quite plainly, although at best the lark's song is a weak, indefinite twitter, its peculiar characteristic being its carrying quality, which is indeed remarkable. The soloist circled around and around in the upper air so long that I grew dizzy watching him, and my eyes became blinded by the sun and the glittering sky. How long he kept up his aerial evolutions, singing all the while, I am unprepared to announce, for I was too much engrossed in watching him to consult my timepiece; but the performance lasted so long that I was finally obliged to throw myself on my back on the ground to relieve the strain upon me, so that I might continue to follow his movements. I venture the conjecture that the show lasted from fifteen to twenty minutes; at least, it seemed that long to me in my tense state of body and mind. Finally he shot down like an arrow, making my head fairly whirl, and landed lightly on the ground, where he skipped about and resumed his roundelay as if he had not performed an extraordinary feat. This was certainly skylarking in a most literal sense. With the exception of a similar exhibition by Townsend's solitaire--to be described in the closing chapter--up in the neighborhood of Gray's Peak, it was the most wonderful avian aeronautic exploit, accompanied with song, of which I have ever been witness. It is odd, too, that a bird which is so much of a groundling--I use the term in a good sense, of course--should also be so expert a sky-scraper. I had listened to the sky song of the desert horned lark out on the plain, but there he did not hover long in the air. The killdeer plovers are as noisy in the park as they are in an eastern pasture-field, and almost as plentiful. In the evening near the village a pair of western robins and a thieving magpie had a hard tussle along the fence of the road. The freebooter was carrying something in his beak which looked sadly like a callow nestling. He tried to hide in the fence-corners, to give himself a chance to eat his morsel, but they were hot on his trail, and at length he flew off toward the distant ridge. Where did the robins build their nests? I saw no trees in the neighborhood, but no doubt they built their adobe huts on a fence-rail or in a nook about an old building. Not a Say's phoebe had we thus far seen on this jaunt to the mountains, but here was a family near the village, and, sure enough, they were whistling their likely tunes, the first time I had ever heard them. While I had met with these birds at Glenwood and in the valley below Leadville, they had not vouchsafed a song. What is the tune they whistle? Why, to be sure, it is, "Phe-be-e! phe-be-e! phe-e-e-bie!" Their voices are stronger and more mellifluent than the eastern phoebe's, but the manner of delivery is not so sprightly and gladsome. Indeed, if I mistake not, there is a pensive strain in the lay of the western bird. A few cowbirds, red-winged blackbirds, and spotted sandpipers were seen in the park, but they are too familiar to merit more than casual mention. However, let us return to Brewer's blackbirds. Closely as they resemble the bronzed grackles of the East, there are some marked differences between the eastern and western birds; the westerners are not so large, and their manners and nesting habits are more like those of the red-wings than the grackles. Brewer's blackbirds hover overhead as you come into the neighborhood of their nests or young, and the males utter their caveats in short squeals or screeches and the females in harsh "chacks." [Illustration: _Magpie and Western Robins_ "_They were hot on his trail_"] The nests are set in low bushes and even on the ground, while those of the grackles are built in trees and sometimes in cavities. To be exact and scientific, Brewer's blackbirds belong to the genus _Icolecophagus_, and the grackles to the genus _Quiscalus_. In the breeding season the western birds remain in the park. That critical period over, in August and September large flocks of them, including young and old, ascend to favorite feeding haunts far above the timber-line, ranging over the slopes of the snowy mountains engirdling their summer home. Then they are in the heyday of blackbird life. Silverspot himself, made famous by Ernest Thompson Seton, did not lead a more romantic and adventurous life, and I hope some day Brewer's blackbird will be honored by a no less effective biography. What a to-do they make when you approach their outdoor hatchery! Yet they are sly and diplomatic. One day I tried my best to find a nest with eggs or bantlings in it, but failed, although, as a slight compensation, I succeeded in discovering three nests from which the young had flown. The old birds of both sexes circled overhead, called and pleaded and scolded, and sometimes swooped down quite close to my scalp, always veering off in time to avoid actual collision. A pair of them held choice morsels--choice for Brewer's blackbirds--in their bills, and I sat down on a tuft of sod and watched them for a couple of hours, hoping they would feed their young in plain sight and divulge their secret to me; but the sable strategists flitted here and there, hovered in the air, dropped to the ground, visiting every bush and grass-tuft but the right one, and finally the worms held in their bills disappeared, whether into their own gullets or those of their fledgelings, I could not tell. If the latter, the rascals were unconscionably wary, for my eyes were bent on them every moment--at least, I thought so. Again and again they flew off some distance, never more than a stone's throw, strutted about for a few minutes among the tufts of grass and sod, then came back with loud objurgations to the place where I sat. They seemed to be aware of my inspection the moment my field-glass was turned upon them, for they would at once cease their pretended search for insects in the grass and fly toward me with a clamorous berating giving me a big piece of their mind. At length my patience was worn out; I began to hunt for nests, and found the three empty abodes to which allusion has been made. For the most part the female cried, "Chack! chack!" but occasionally she tried to screech like her ebon consort, her voice breaking ludicrously in the unfeminine effort. The evening before, I had flushed a youngster about which a great hubbub was being made, but on the day of my long vigil in the meadow, I could not, by the most careful search, find a single bantling, either in or out of a nest. It is odd how effectually the young are able to conceal themselves in the short grass and straggling bushes. Not a little attention was given to the western savanna sparrows, whose songs have already been described. Abundant proof was furnished that the breeding season for these little birds was at its height, and I determined to find a nest, if within the range of possibility. An entire forenoon was spent in discovering three nests. As you approach their domiciles, the cocks, which are always on the alert, evidently give the alarm to their sitting mates, which thereupon slip surreptitiously from the nest; and in that case how are you going to ferret out their domestic secrets? A female--I could distinguish her from her consort by her conduct--was sitting on the post of a wire fence, preening her feathers, which was sufficient evidence that she had just come from brooding her eggs. To watch her until she went back to her nest, then make a bee-line for it--that was the plan I resolved to pursue. It is an expedient that succeeds with many birds, if the observer is very quiet and tactful. For a long time I stood in the blazing sun with my eyes bent on the little impostor. Back and forth, hither and yon, she flew, now descending to the ground and creeping slyly about in the grass, manifestly to induce me to examine the spot; then back to the fence again, chirping excitedly; then down at another place, employing every artifice to make me think the nest was where it was not; but I steadfastly refused to budge from my tracks as long as she came up in a few moments after descending, for in that case I knew that she was simply resorting to a ruse to lead me astray. Finally she went down at a point which she had previously avoided, and, as it was evident she was becoming exceedingly anxious to go back upon her eggs, I watched her like a tiger intent on his prey. Slyly she crept about in the grass, presently her chirping ceased, and she disappeared. Several minutes passed, and she did not come up, so I felt sure she had gone down for good this time, and was sitting on her nest. Her husband exerted himself to his utmost to beguile my attention with his choicest arias, but no amount of finesse would now turn me from my purpose. I made a bee-line for the spot where I had last seen the madame, stopping not, nor veering aside for water, mud, bushes, or any other obstacle. A search of a couple of minutes brought no find, for she had employed all the strategy of which she was mistress in going to the nest, having moused along in the grass for some distance after I had last seen her. I made my search in an ever-widening circle, and at length espied some dry grass spears in a tuft right at my feet; then the little prospective mother flitted from her nest and went trailing on the ground, feigning to be fatally wounded. Acquainted with such tactics, I did not follow her, not even with my eye, but looked down at my feet. Ah! the water sprites had been kind, for there was the dainty crib, set on a high tuft of sod raised by the winter's frosts, a little island castle in the wet marsh, cosey and dry. It was my first savanna sparrow's nest, whether eastern or western. The miniature cottage was placed under a fragment of dried cattle excrement, which made a slant roof over it, protecting it from the hot rays of the sun. Sunken slightly into the ground, the nest's rim was flush with the short grass, while the longer stems rose about it in a green, filmy wall or stockade. The holdings of the pretty cup were four pearls of eggs, the ground color white, the smaller end and middle peppered finely with brown, the larger almost solidly washed with pigment of the same tint. Two more savannas' nests were found not long afterwards, one of them by watching the female until she settled, the other by accidentally flushing her as I walked across the marshy pasture; but neither of them was placed under a roof as the first one had been, the blue dome being their only shelter. These birdlets seem to be especially fond of soggy places in pastures, setting their nests on the little sod towers that rise above the surrounding water. All the birds seen in the park have now been mentioned. It was an idyllic spot, and I have often regretted that I did not spend a week in rambling over it and making excursions to the engirdling ridges and peaks. A few suggestive questions arise relative to the migratory habits of the feathered tenants of a mountain park like this, for most of those that have been named are only summer residents. How do they reach this immured Eden at the time of the spring migration? One may conjecture and speculate, but one cannot be absolutely sure of the precise course of their annual pilgrimage to their summer Mecca. Of course, they come up from the plains, where the spring arrives much earlier than it does in the higher altitudes. Our nomads may ascend by easy stages along the few cañons and valleys leading up from the plains to this mountain-girt plateau; or else, rising high in air at eventide--for most birds perform their migrations at night--they may fly over the passes and mountain tops, and at dawn descend to the park. Neither of these hypotheses is free from objection, for, on the one hand, it is not likely that birds, which cannot see in the dark, would take the risk of dashing their brains out against the cliffs and crags of the cañons by following them at night; yet they may depart from their usual habit of nocturnal migration, and make the journey up the gorges and vales by day. On the other hand, the nights are so cold in the elevated regions that the little travellers' lives might be jeopardized by nocturnal flight over the passes and peaks. There is one thing certain about the whole question, perplexing as it may be--the feathered pilgrims reach their summer quarters in some way, and seem to be very happy while they remain. We stopped at a number of places in our run down South Platte Cañon, adding no new birds to our list, but making some interesting observations. At Cassel's a house-wren had built a nest on the veranda of the hotel where people were sitting or passing most of the time, and was feeding her tiny brood. In the copse of the hollow below the resort, the mountain song-sparrows were trilling sweetly--the only ones we had encountered in our wanderings since leaving Arvada on the plains. These musicians seem to be rather finical in their choice of summer resorts. Chaseville is about a mile below Cassel's, and was made memorable to us by the discovery of our second green-tailed towhee's nest, a description of which I have decided to reserve for the last chapter of this volume. Lincoln's sparrows descanted in rich tones at various places in the bushy vales, but were always as wild as deer, scuttling into the thickets before a fair view of them could be obtained. The veranda of a boarding-house at Shawnee was the site of another house-wren's nest. While I stood quite close watching the little mother, she fed her bantlings twice without a quaver of fear, the youngsters chirping loudly for more of "that good dinner." At this place barn swallows were describing graceful circles and loops in the air, and a sheeny violet-green swallow squatted on the dusty road and took a sun-bath, which she did by fluffing up all her plumes and spreading out her wings and tail, so that the rays could reach every feather with their grateful warmth and light. It was a pretty performance. [Illustration: _Violet-green Swallow_ "_Squatted on the dusty road and took a sun-bath_"] A stop-over at Bailey's proved satisfactory for several reasons, among which was the finding of the Louisiana tanagers, which were the first we had seen on this trip, although many of them had been observed in the latitude of Colorado Springs. Afterwards we found them abundant in the neighborhood of Boulder. The only pigmy nuthatches of this visit were seen in a ravine above Bailey's. In the same wooded hollow I took occasion to make some special notes on the quaint calls of the long-crested jays, a task that I had thus far deferred from time to time. There was an entire family of jays in the ravine, the elders feeding their strapping youngsters in the customary manner. These birds frequently give voice to a strident call that is hard to distinguish from the cries of their kinsmen, the mountain jays. When I pursued the couple that were attending to the gastronomical wants of their children, one of the adults played a yodel on his trombone sounding like this: "Ka-ka-ka, k-wilt, k-wilt, k-wilt", the first three short syllables enunciated rapidly, and the "k-wilts" in a more measured way, with a peculiar guttural intonation, giving the full sound to the _k_ and _w_. The birds became very shy when they thought themselves shadowed, not understanding what my pursuit might imply, and they gave utterance to harsh cries of warning that were different from any that had preceded. It was presently followed by a soft and friendly chatter, as if the birds were having an interview that was exclusively _inter se_. Then one of them startled me by breaking out in a loud, high key, crying, "Quick! quick! quick!" as fast as he could fling the syllables from his tongue. This, being translated into our human vernacular, obviously meant, "Hurry off! danger! danger!" A few minutes of silence followed the outburst, while the birds ambled farther away, and then the echoes were roused by a most raucous call, "Go-ware! go-ware! go-ware!" in a voice that would have been enough to strike terror to the heart of one who was not used to uncanny sounds in solitary places. After that outburst the family flew off, and I could hear them talking the matter over among themselves far up the mountain side, no doubt congratulating one another on their hair-breadth escape. The youngsters looked quite stylish with their quaint little blue caps and neatly fitting knickerbockers. At Bailey's I found my first and only white-crowned sparrow's nest for this trip, although two years before I was fortunate enough to discover several nests in the valleys creeping from the foot of Pike's Peak. At dusk one evening I was walking along the railway below the village, listening to the sweetly pensive trills of the white-crowns in the bushes bordering the creek, when there was a sharp chirp in the willows, and a female white-crown darted over to my side of the stream and slipped quietly into a thick bush on the bank. I stepped down to the spot, and the pretty madame leaped away, uncovering a well-woven nest containing four white eggs speckled with dark brown. All the while her spouse was trilling with might and main on the other side of the creek, to make believe that there was nothing serious happening, no nest that any one cared anything about. His mate could not disguise her agitation by assuming nonchalance, but flitted about in the willows and chirped pitifully. I hurried away to relieve her distress. The cottages on the slopes were gay with tourists enjoying their summer outing, and beautiful Kiowa Lodge, perched on a shoulder of the mountain among embowering pines, glowed with incandescent lights, while its blithe-hearted guests pursued their chosen kinds of pastime; but none of them, I venture to assert, were happier than the little white-crown in her grassy lodge on the bank of the murmuring stream. On the way down the cañon, as we were going to Denver, I was able to add three belted kingfishers to my bird-roll of Colorado species, the only ones I saw in the Rockies. Our jaunt of 1901 included a trip to Boulder and a thrilling swing around the far-famed "Switzerland Trail" to Ward, perched on the mountain sides among the clouds hard by the timber-line. Almost everywhere we met with feathered comrades; in some places, especially about Boulder, many of them; but no new species were seen, and no habits observed that have not been sufficiently delineated in other parts of this book. If one could only observe all the birds all the time in all places, what a happy life the bird-lover would live! It is with feelings of mingled joy and sadness that one cons Longfellow's melodious lines:-- "Think every morning when the sun peeps through The dim, leaf-latticed windows of the grove, How jubilant the happy birds renew Their old, melodious madrigals of love! And when you think of this, remember too 'Tis always morning somewhere, and above The awakened continents, from shore to shore, Somewhere the birds are singing evermore." A NOTABLE QUARTETTE[12] On the plains of Colorado there dwells a feathered choralist that deserves a place in American bird literature, and the day will perhaps come when his merits will have due recognition, and then he shall have not only a monograph, but also an ode all to himself. [12] The author is under special obligation to Mr. John P. Haines, editor of "Our Animal Friends," and president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, for publishing the contents of this chapter in his magazine in time to be included in this volume. Also for copyright privileges in connection with this and other chapters. The bird to which I refer is called the lark bunting in plain English, or, in scientific terms, _Calamospiza melanocorys_. The male is a trig and handsome fellow, giving you the impression of a well-dressed gentleman in his Sunday suit of black, "with more or less of a slaty cast," as Ridgway puts it, the middle and greater wing-coverts bearing a conspicuous white patch which is both a diagnostic marking and a real ornament. In flight this patch imparts to the wing a filmy, almost semi-transparent, aspect. The bunting is about the size of the eastern bobolink, and bears some resemblance to that bird; but bobolink he is not, although sometimes mistaken for one, and even called by that name in Colorado. The fact is, those wise men, the systematists, have decided that the bobolink belongs to the family _Icteridæ_, which includes, among others, the blackbirds and orioles, while the lark bunting occupies a genus all by himself in the family _Fringillidæ_--that is, the family of finches, sparrows, grosbeaks, and towhees. Therefore, the two birds can scarcely be called second cousins. The bunting has no white or buff on his upper parts. Sitting on a sunny slope one June evening, I surrendered myself to the spell of the bunting, and endeavored to make an analysis of his minstrelsy. First, it must be said that he is as fond as the bobolink of rehearsing his arias on the wing, and that is, perhaps, the chief reason for his having been mistaken for that bird by careless observers. Probably the major part of his solos are recited in flight, although he can sit quietly on a weed-stalk or a fence-post and sing as sweetly, if not as ecstatically, as if he were curveting in the air. During this aerial performance he hovers gracefully, bending his wings downward, after the bobolink's manner, as if he were caressing the earth beneath him. However, a striking difference between his intermittent song-flights and those of the bobolink is to be noted. The latter usually rises in the air, soars around in a curve, and returns to the perch from which he started, or to one near by, describing something of an ellipse. The lark bunting generally rises obliquely to a certain point, then descends at about the same angle to another perch opposite the starting-point, describing what might be called the upper sides of an isosceles triangle, the base being a line near the ground, connecting the perch from which he rose and the one on which he alighted. I do not mean to say that our bunting never circles, but simply that such is not his ordinary habit, while sweeping in a circle or ellipse is the favorite pastime of the eastern bobolink. The ascent of neither bird is very high. They are far from deserving the name of skylarks. We must give a detailed account of the bunting's song. Whatever others may think of him, I have come under the spell of his lyrical genius. True, his voice has not the loud, metallic ring, nor his chanson the medley-like, happy-go-lucky execution, that marks the musical performances of the bobolink; but his song is more mellow, rhythmic, theme-like; for he has a distinct tune to sing, and sing it he will. In fine, his song is of a different order from that of the bobolink, and, therefore, the comparison need be carried no further. As one of these minstrels sat on a flowering weed and gave himself up to a lyrical transport, I made careful notes, and now give the substance of my elaborate entries. The song, which is intermittent, opens with three prolonged notes running high in the scale, and is succeeded by a quaint, rattling trill of an indescribable character, not without musical effect, which is followed by three double-toned long notes quite different from the opening phrases; then the whole performance is closed by an exceedingly high and fine run like an insect's hum--so fine, indeed, that the auditor must be near at hand to notice it at all. Sometimes the latter half of the score, including the second triad of long notes, is repeated before the soloist stops to take breath. It will be seen that the regular song consists of four distinct phrases, two triads and two trills. About one-third of the songs are opened in a little lower key than the rest, the remainder being correspondingly mellowed. The opening syllables, and, indeed, some other parts of the melody as well, are very like certain strains of the song-sparrow, both in execution and in quality of tone; and thus even the experienced ornithologist may sometimes be led astray. When the bunting sails into the air, he rehearses the song just described, only he is very likely to prolong it by repeating the various parts, though I think he seldom, if ever, throws them together in a hodge-podge. He seems to follow a system in his recitals, varied as many of them are. As to his voice, it is of superb timbre. Another characteristic noted was that the buntings do not throw back their heads while singing, after the manner of the sparrows, but stretch their necks forward, and at no time do they open their mouths widely. As a rule, or at least very often, when flying, they do not begin their songs until they have almost reached the apex of their triangle; then the song begins, and it continues over the angle and down the incline until another perch is settled upon. What Lowell says of "bobolinkum" is just as true of bunting--"He runs down, a brook o' laughter, thru the air." As the sun went down behind the snow-clad mountains, a half dozen or more of the buntings rolled up the full tide of song, and I left them to their vespers and trudged back to the village, satisfied with the acquirements of this red-letter day in my ornithological journey. However, one afternoon's study of such charming birds was not enough to satisfy my curiosity, for no females had been seen and no nests discovered. About ten days later, more attention was given them. In a meadow not far from the hamlet of Arvada, between Denver and the mountains, I found a colony of buntings one morning, swinging in the air and furnishing their full quota of the matutinal concert, in which many other birds had a leading part, among them being western meadow-larks, western robins, Bullock's orioles, American and Arkansas goldfinches, mountain song-sparrows, lazuli finches, spurred towhees, black-headed grosbeaks, summer warblers, western Maryland yellow-throats, and Townsend's solitaires. It has seldom been my fortune to listen to a finer _pot-pourri_ of avian music. At first only male buntings were seen. Surely, I thought, there must be females in the neighborhood, for when male birds are singing so lustily about a place, their spouses are usually sitting quietly on nests somewhere in bush or tree or grass. I hunted long for a nest, trudging about over the meadow, examining many a grass-tuft and weed-clump, hoping to flush a female and discover her secret; but my quest was vain. It is strange how difficult it is to find nests in Colorado, either on the plains or in the mountains. The birds seem to be adepts in the fine arts of concealment and secret-keeping. Presently several females were seen flying off over the fields and returning, obviously to feed their young. There was now some colorable prospect of finding a nest. A mother bird appeared with a worm in her bill, and you may rely upon it I did not permit her to slip from my sight until I saw her drop to the ground, hop about stealthily for a few moments, then disappear, and presently fly up minus the worm. Scarcely daring to breathe, I followed a direct course to the weed-clump from which she had risen. And there was a nest, sure enough--my first lark bunting's--set in a shallow pit of the ground, prettily concealed and partly roofed over by the flat and spreading weed-stalk. Four half-fledged youngsters lay panting in the little cradle, the day being very warm. I lifted one of them from the nest, and held it in my hand for a minute or two, and even touched it with my lips, my first view of lark-bunting babies being something of an event--I had almost said an epoch--in my experience. Replacing the youngster in its crib, I stepped back a short distance and watched the mother bird returning with another mouthful of "goodies," and feeding her bantlings four. She was not very shy, and simply uttered a fine chirp when I went too close to her nestlings, while her gallant consort did not even chirp, but tried to divert my attention by repeatedly curveting in the air and singing his choicest measures. This was the only bunting's nest I found, although I made long and diligent search for others, as you may well believe when I state that a half day was spent in gathering the facts recorded in the last two paragraphs. In the afternoon I watched a female in another field for a long time, but she was too wary to betray her secret. In this case the male, instead of beguiling me with song, flitted about and mingled his fine chirps with those of his anxious mate. On my way across the plains, some two weeks later, I discovered that the lark buntings do not dwell only in well-watered meadows, but also in the most arid localities. Still, I am inclined to think they do not build their nests far from refreshing streams. When the breeding season is over, they range far and wide over the plains in search of insects that are to their taste. From the car window many of them were observed all along the way to a distance of over sixty miles east of Denver. At that time the males, females, and young were moving from place to place, mostly in scattering flocks, the breeding season being past. A problem that puzzled me a little was where they obtain water for drinking and bathing purposes, but no doubt such blithe and active birds are able to "look out for number one." The second member of our lyrical quartette is the elegant green-tailed towhee, known scientifically as _Pipilo chlorurus_. The pretty green-tails are quite wary about divulging their domestic secrets, and for a time I was almost in despair of finding even one of their nests. In vain I explored with exhausting toil many a steep mountain side, examining every bush and beating every copse within a radius of many rods. My purpose was to flush the female from her nest, a plan that succeeds with many birds; but in this instance I was disappointed. It is possible that, when an intruder appears in their nesting haunts, the males, which are ever on the lookout, call their spouses from the nests, and then "snap their fingers," so to speak, at the puzzled searcher. However, by watching the mother birds carrying worms in their bills I succeeded in finding two nests. The first was at Breckenridge, and, curiously enough, in a vacant lot at the border of the town, not on a steep slope, but on a level spot near the bank of Blue River. The mother bird had slyly crept to her nest while I watched, and remained firmly seated until I bent directly over her, when she fluttered away, trailing a few feet to draw my attention to herself. It was a cosey nest site--in a low, thick bush, beneath a rusty but well-preserved piece of sheet-iron which made a slant roof over the cradle. It contained three callow bantlings, which innocently opened their carmine-lined mouths when I stirred the leaves above them. It seemed to be an odd location for the nest of a bird that had always appeared so wild and shy. The altitude of the place is nine thousand five hundred and twenty feet. My second green-tail's nest was in South Platte Cañon, near a station called Chaseville, its elevation being about eight thousand five hundred feet. I was walking along the dusty wagon road winding about the base of the mountain, when a little bird with a worm in her bill flitted up the steep bank a short distance and disappeared among the bushes. The tidbit in her bill gave me a clew to the situation; so I scrambled up the steep place, and presently espied a nest in a bush, about a foot and a half from the ground. As had been anticipated, it turned out to be a green-tailed towhee's domicile, as was proved by the presence and uneasy chirping of a pair of those birds. While the nest at Breckenridge was set on the ground, this one was placed on the twigs of thick bushes, showing that these birds, like their eastern relatives, are fond of diversity in selecting nesting places. This nest contained four bantlings, already well fledged. My notes say that their mouths were yellow-lined, and that the fleshy growths at the corners of their bills were yellow. Does the lining of the juvenile green-tail's mouth change from red to yellow as he advances in age? My notes certainly declare that the nestlings at Breckenridge had carmine-lined mouths. For the present I cannot settle the question either affirmatively or negatively. Here I perpetrated a trick which I have ever since regretted. The temptation to hold a baby green-tail in my hand and examine it closely was so strong that, as carefully as I could, I drew one from its grassy crib and held it in my palm, noting the green tinting already beginning to show on its wings and back. Its tail was still too stubby to display the ornamentation that gives the species its popular name. So much was learned, but at the expense of the little family's peace of mind. As I held the bantling in my hand, the frightened mamma uttered a series of pitiful calls that were new to my ears, consisting of two notes in a low, complaining tone; it was more of an entreaty than a protest. Afterwards I heard the green-tails also give voice to a fine chirp almost like that of a chipping sparrow. The mother's call seemed to strike terror to the hearts of her infant brood, for, as I attempted to put the baby back into its crib, all four youngsters set up a loud to-do, and sprang, panic stricken, over the rim, tumbling, fluttering, and falling through the network of twigs to the ground, a couple of them rolling a few feet down the dusty bank. Again and again I caught them and put them back into the nest, but they would not remain there, so I was compelled to leave them scrambling about among the bushes and rocks. I felt like a buccaneer, a veritable Captain Kidd. My sincere hope is that none of the birdkins came to grief on account of their premature flight from the nest. The next morning old and young were chirping about the place as I passed, and I hurried away, feeling sad that science and sentiment must sometimes come into conflict. One day in the latter part of June, as I was climbing the steep side of a mesa in the neighborhood of Golden, my ear was greeted by a new style of bird music, which came lilting sweetly down to me from the height. It had a kind of wild, challenging ring about it, as if the singer were daring me to venture upon his demesne at my peril. A hard climb brought me at length within range of the little performer, who was blowing his Huon's horn from the pointed top of a large stone on the mesa's side. My field-glass was soon fixed upon him, revealing a little bird with a long beak, decurved at the end, a grayish-brown coat quite thickly barred and mottled on the wings and tail, and a vest of warm white finely sprinkled with a dusky gray. A queer, shy, timid little thing he was. Afterwards I met him often, but never succeeded in gaining his confidence or winning a single concession from him. He was the rock wren (_Salpinctes obsoletus_)--a species that is unknown east of the Great Plains, one well deserving a place in literature. I was especially impressed with his peculiar style of minstrelsy, so different from anything I had ever heard in the bird realm. While the song was characterized by much variety, it usually opened with two or three loud, clear syllables, somewhat prolonged, sounding, as has been said, like a challenge, followed by a peculiar bubbling trill that seemed fairly to roll from the piper's tongue. Early one morning a few days later I heard a brilliant vocalist descanting from the top of a pump in a wide field among the foothills. How wildly his tones rang out on the crisp morning air! I seemed to be suddenly transported to another part of the world, his style of music was so new, so foreign to my ear. My pencilled notes say of this particular minstrel: "Very musical--great variety of notes--clear, loud, ringing--several runs slightly like Carolina's--others suggest Bewick's--but most of them _sui generis_." Let us return to the first rock wren I saw. He was exceedingly shy, scurrying off to a more distant perch--another stone--as I approached. Sometimes he would run down among the bushes and rocks like a mouse, then glide to the top of another stone, and fling his pert little aria at the intruder. It was interesting to note that he most frequently selected for a singing perch the top of a high, pointed rock where he could command a view of his surroundings and pipe a note of warning to his mate at the approach of a supposed enemy. Almost every conspicuous rock on the acclivity bore evidence of having been used as a lookout by the little sentinel. This wren is well named, for his home is among the rocks, in the crannies and niches of which his mate hides her nest so effectually that you must look long for it, and even after the most painstaking search you may not be able to find it. The little husband helps to lead you astray. He will leap upon a rock and send forth his bell-like peal, as if he were saying, "Right here, right here, here is our nest!" but when you go to the spot, he flits off to another rock and sounds the same challenge. And so you can form no idea of the nest site. My nearest approach to finding a nest was among the rocks and cliffs on the summit of a mountain a few miles from Golden, where an adult bird was seen to feed a youngster that had already flown from the nursery. It was interesting to know that the rock wrens breed at so high an altitude. However, they are not an alpine species, none having been seen by the writer over eight thousand feet above sea-level, although they have been known to ascend to an altitude of twelve thousand feet. The fourth member of our feathered quartette was the oddest of all. On the thirtieth of June my companion and I were riding slowly down the mountain side a few miles below Gray's Peak, which we had scaled two days before. My ear was struck by a flicker's call above us, so I dismounted from my burro, and began to clamber up the hillside. Presently I heard a song that seemed one moment to be near at hand, the next far away, now to the right, now to the left, and anon directly above me. To my ear it was a new kind of bird minstrelsy. I climbed higher and higher, and yet the song seemed to be no nearer. It had a grosbeak-like quality, I fancied, and I hoped to find either the pine or the evening grosbeak, for both of which I had been making anxious search. The shifting of the song from point to point struck me as odd, and it was very mystifying. Higher and higher I climbed, the mountain side being so steep that my breath came in gasps, and I was often compelled to throw myself on the ground to recover strength. At length a bird darted out from the pines several hundred feet above me, rose high into the air, circled and swung this way and that for a long time, breaking at intervals into a song which sifted down to me faintly through the blue distance. How long it remained on the wing I do not know, but it was too long for my eyes to endure the strain of watching it. Through my glass a large part of the wings showed white or yellowish-white, and seemed to be almost translucent in the blaze of the sunlight. What could this wonderful haunter of the sky be? It was scarcely possible that so roly-poly a bird as a grosbeak could perform so marvellous an exploit on the wing. I never worked harder to earn my salary than I did to climb that steep and rugged mountain side; but at last I reached and penetrated the zone of pines, and finally, in an area covered with dead timber, standing and fallen, two feathered strangers sprang in sight, now flitting among the lower branches and now sweeping to the ground. They were not grosbeaks, that was sure; their bills were quite slender, their bodies lithe and graceful, and their tails of well-proportioned length. Save in color, they presented a decidedly thrush-like appearance, and their manners were also thrush-like. Indeed, the colors and markings puzzled me not a little. The upper parts were brownish-gray of various shades, the wings and tail for the most part dusky, the wing-coverts, tertials, and some of the quills bordered and tipped with white, also the tail. The white of both wings and tail became quite conspicuous when they were spread. This was the feathered conundrum that flitted about before me. The birds were about the size of the hermit thrushes, but lither and suppler. They ambled about gracefully, and did not seem to be very shy, and presently one of them broke into a song--the song that I had previously heard, only it was loud and ringing and well articulated, now that I was near the singer. Again and again they lifted their rich voices in song. When they wandered a little distance from each other, they called in affectionate tones, giving their "All's well." Then one of them, no doubt the male, darted from a pine branch obliquely into the air, and mounted up and up and up, in a series of graceful leaps, until he was a mere speck against the blue dome, gyrating to and fro in zigzag lines, or wheeling in graceful circles, his song dribbling faintly down to me at frequent intervals. A thing of buoyancy and grace, more angel than bird, that wonderful winged creature floated about in the cerulean sky; how long I do not know, whether five minutes, or ten, or twenty, but so long that at last I flung myself upon my back and watched him until my eyes ached. He kept his wings in constant motion, the white portions making them appear filmy as the sun shone upon them. Suddenly he bent his head, partly folded his wings, and swept down almost vertically like an arrow, alighting safe somewhere among the pines. I have seen other birds performing aerial evolutions accompanied with song, but have never known one to continue so long on the wing. What was this wonderful bird? It was Townsend's solitaire (_Myadestes townsendii_)--a bird which is peculiar to the West, especially to the Rocky Mountains, and which belongs to the same family as the thrushes and bluebirds. No literature in my possession contains any reference to this bird's astonishing aerial flight and song, and I cannot help wondering whether other bird-students have witnessed the interesting exploit. Subsequently I found a pair of solitaires on the plains near Arvada. The male was a powerful singer. Many of his outbursts were worthy of the mocking-bird, to some of whose runs they bore a close resemblance. He sang almost incessantly during the half day I spent in the neighborhood, my presence seeming to inspire him to the most prodigious lyrical efforts of which he was master. Sometimes he would sit on the top of a bush or a fence-post, but his favorite perches were several ridges of sand and gravel. His flight was the picture of grace, and he had a habit of lifting his wings, now one, now the other, and often both, after the manner of the mocking-bird on a chimney-top. He and his mate did not utter a chirp, but made a great to-do by singing, and finally I discovered that all the fuss was not about a nest, but about a hulking youngster that had outgrown his kilts and looked very like a brown thrasher. Neither of this second pair of solitaires performed any evolutions in the upper air; nor did another pair that I found far up a snow-clad mountain near Breckenridge, on the other side of the Continental Divide. The scientific status of this unique bird is interesting. He is a species of the genus _Myadestes_, which belongs to the family _Turdidæ_, including the thrushes, stone-chats, and bluebirds, as well as the solitaires. He is therefore not a thrush, but is closely related to the genus _Turdus_, occupying the same relative position in the avi-faunal system. According to Doctor Coues the genus includes about twenty species, only one of which--the one just described--is native to the United States, the rest being found in the West Indies and Central and South America. Formerly the solitaires comprised a subfamily among the chatterers, but a later and more scientific classification places them in a genus under the head of _Turdidæ_. [Illustration: PLATE VIII BROWN-CAPPED LEUCOSTICTE--_Leucosticte australis_ (Lower figure, male; upper, female)] The range of Townsend's solitaire is from the plains of Colorado to the Pacific coast and north to British Columbia. According to Robert Ridgway, he has even been met with "casually" in Illinois. In Colorado many of the solitaires are permanent residents in the mountains, remaining there throughout the winter. Some of them, however, visit the plains during the fall, winter, and spring. In the winter they may be found from the lower valleys to an elevation of ten thousand feet, while they are known to breed as high as twelve thousand feet. The nests are placed on the ground among rocks, fallen branches and logs, and are loosely constructed of sticks and grass. From three to six eggs compose a set, the ground color being white, speckled with reddish brown. Doctor Coues says the birds feed on insects and berries, and are "capable of musical expression in an exalted degree." With this verdict the writer is in full accord. CHECK-LIST OF COLORADO BIRDS The following list includes all the species and varieties, so far as known to naturalists, occurring in the State of Colorado. Of course, these birds as families are not restricted to that State, and therefore the catalogue comprehends many of the species to be found in adjacent and even more remote parts of the country. Aside from the author's own observations, he is indebted for a large part of the matter comprised in this list to Professor Wells W. Cooke's pamphlet, entitled, "The Birds of Colorado," with the several appendixes, and to the invaluable manuals of Mr. Ridgway and Dr. Coues. According to the latest information accessible to the writer, 389 species and varieties occur in Colorado, of which 243 are known to breed. This is a superb record, and is excelled by only two other States in the Union, namely, Texas and California. Colorado's splendid list is to be explained on the ground of its wonderful variety of climate, altitude, soil, and topographical features, such as its plains, foothills, lower mountains, and towering peaks and ranges, bringing within its boundaries many eastern, boreal, middle western, and far western forms. The author's preference would have been to begin the roll with the most interesting birds, those to which he gave the largest share of his attention, namely, the oscines, but he has decided to follow the order and nomenclature of the Check-List of North American birds as arranged by the American Ornithologists' Union. In deference to the general reader, however, he has placed the English name of each bird first, then the scientific designation. The numbers correspond to the American Check-List. By noting those omitted, the reader will readily discover what species have not been found in Colorado. 1. =Western grebe.= ÆCHMOPHORUS OCCIDENTALIS. Rare migrant; western species, chiefly interior regions of North America. 2. =Holboell's grebe.= COLYMBUS HOLBOELLII. Rare migrant; breeds far north; range, all of North America. 3. =Horned grebe.= COLYMBUS AURITUS. Rare migrant; range, almost the same as the last. 4. =American eared grebe.= COLYMBUS NIGRICOLLIS CALIFORNICUS. Summer resident; rare in eastern, common in western Colorado; breeds from plains to 8,000 feet; partial to alkali lakes; western species. 6. =Pied-billed grebe.= PODILYMBUS PODICEPS. Summer resident, rare; common in migration; breeds in northern part of State; sometimes winters in southern part. 7. =Loon.= GAVIA IMBER. Migrant; occasionally winter resident; not known to breed in State. 8. =Yellow-billed loon.= GAVIA ADAMSII. Migrant; rare or accidental. 9. =Black-throated loon.= GAVIA ARCTICA. Rare fall and winter visitant. 37. =Parasitic jaeger.= STERCORARIUS PARASITICUS. Fall and winter resident; rare. 40. =Kittiwake.= RISSA TRIDACTYLA. Rare or accidental in winter. 49. =Western gull.= LARUS OCCIDENTALIS. Pacific Coast bird; accidental in Colorado; only one record. 51a. =American herring gull.= LARUS ARGENTATUS SMITHSONIANUS. Rare migrant; range, the whole of North America. 53. =California gull.= LARUS CALIFORNICUS. Western species; breeds abundantly in Utah; only three records for Colorado. 54. =Ring-billed gull.= LARUS DELAWARENSIS. Not uncommon summer resident; common in migration; breeds as high as 7,500 feet; range, whole of North America. 58. =Laughing gull.= LARUS ATRICILLA. Bird of South Atlantic and Gulf States; once accidental in Colorado. 59. =Franklin's gull.= LARUS FRANKLINII. Rare migrant; range, interior of North America. 60. =Bonaparte's gull.= LARUS PHILADELPHIA. Rare migrant; not uncommon in a few localities; range, whole of North America. 62. =Sabine's gull.= XEMA SABINII. Rare winter visitant; breeds in the arctic regions. 69. =Forster's tern.= STERNA FORSTERI. Rare summer resident; common migrant; habitat, temperate North America. 71. =Arctic tern.= STERNA PARADISÆA. Very rare migrant; but two records; breeding habitat, circumpolar regions. 77. =Black tern.= HYDROCHELIDON NIGRA SURINAMENSIS. Common summer resident; both sides of range; habitat, temperate North America; in winter south as far as Brazil and Chili. 120. =Double-crested cormorant.= PHALACROCORAX DILOPHUS. Perhaps breeds in Colorado, as it breeds abundantly in Utah; all present records from eastern foothills. 125. =American white pelican.= PELECANUS ERYTHRORHYNCHOS. Once a common migrant; a few remained to breed; now rare; still noted on both sides of the range. 129. =American merganser.= MERGANSER AMERICANUS. Resident; common migrant and winter sojourner; a few breed in mountains and parks; generally distributed in North America. 130. =Red-breasted merganser.= MERGANSER SERRATOR. Rare winter sojourner; common migrant; breeds far north. 131. =Hooded merganser.= LOPHODYTES CUCULLATUS. Rare resident both summer and winter; breeds in eastern part and in the mountains; general range, North America. 132. =Mallard.= ANAS BOSCHAS. Very common in migration; common in winter; breeds below 9,000 feet, on plains as well as in mountains; general range, whole northern hemisphere. 134a. =Mottled duck.= ANAS FULVIGULA MACULOSA. Rare migrant; an eastern species, sometimes wandering west to plains. 135. =Gadwall.= CHAULELASMUS STREPERUS. Summer resident; common in migration; breeds on plains; also in sloughs and small lakes at an elevation of 11,000 feet in southern part of State; breeds abundantly at San Luis Lakes. 137. =Baldpate.= MARECA AMERICANA. Summer resident; breeds from plains to 8,000 feet. 139. =Green-winged teal.= NETTION CAROLINENSIS. Common summer resident; abundant in migration; a few breed on the plains; more in mountains and upper parks. 140. =Blue-winged teal.= QUERQUEDULA DISCORS. Same records as preceding. 141. =Cinnamon teal.= QUERQUEDULA CYANOPTERA. Common summer resident; breeds both east and west of the range; a western species; in winter south to Chili, Argentina, and Falkland Islands; sometimes strays east as far as Illinois and Louisiana. 142. =Shoveller.= SPATULA CLYPEATA. Summer resident; abundant in migration; breeds in suitable localities, but prefers mountain parks 8,000 feet in altitude; breeds throughout its range, which is the whole of North America. 143. =Pintail=. DAFILA ACUTA. Rare summer and winter resident; common migrant; mostly breeds in the North. 144. =Wood duck.= AIX SPONSA. Rare summer resident. 146. =Redhead.= AYTHYA AMERICANA. Common migrant; breeds far north; migrates early in spring. 147. =Canvas-back.= AYTHYA VALLISNERIA. Migrant; not common; breeds far north. 148. =Scaup duck.= AYTHYA MARILA. Rare migrant; both sides of the range; breeds far north. 149. =Lesser scaup duck.= AYTHYA AFFINIS. Migrant; not common; a little more common than preceding. 150. =Ring-necked duck.= AYTHYA COLLARIS. Rare migrant, though common in Kansas; breeds in far North. 151. =American golden-eye.= CLANGULA CLANGULA AMERICANA. Rare migrant; breeds far north. 152. =Barrow's golden-eye.= CLANGULA ISLANDICA. Summer and winter resident; a northern species, but breeds in mountains of Colorado, sometimes as high as 10,000 feet; rare on plains. 153. =Buffle-head.= CHARITONETTA ALBEOLA. Common migrant throughout State; breeds in the North. 154. =Old squaw.= HARELDA HYEMALIS. Rare winter visitor; a northern species. 155. =Harlequin duck.= HISTRIONICUS HISTRIONICUS. Resident; not common; a northern species, but a few breed in mountains at an altitude of 7,000 to 10,000 feet. 160. =American eider.= SOMATERIA DRESSERI. Very rare; only two records--one somewhat uncertain. 163. =American scoter.= OIDEMIA AMERICANA. Rare winter visitor; northern bird, in winter principally along the sea-coast, but a few visit the larger inland lakes. 165. =White-winged scoter.= OIDEMIA DEGLANDI. Same habits as preceding; perhaps rarer. 166. =Surf scoter.= OIDEMIA PERSPICILLATA. Same as preceding. 167. =Ruddy duck.= ERISMATURA JAMAICENSIS. Common summer resident; both sides of the range; breeds from plains to 10,000 feet; a beautiful bird; author's observations given in Chapter VII. 169. =Lesser snow goose.= CHEN HYPERBOREA. Migrant and winter resident; not common; breeds far north. 169a. =Greater snow goose.= CHEN HYPERBOREA NIVALIS. Rare migrant; only two records; the eastern form, which does not come regularly as far west as Colorado. 171a. =American white-fronted goose.= ANSER ALBIFRONS GAMBELI. Rare migrant; breeds far northward. 172. =Canada goose.= BRANTA CANADENSIS. Summer and winter resident; rare, except locally; common in migration; breeds about secluded lakes at 10,000 feet. 172a. =Hutchins's goose.= BRANTA CANADENSIS HUTCHINSII. Common migrant; breeds in the North; a few may winter in the State. 172c. =Cackling goose.= BRANTA CANADENSIS MINIMA. One record; Pacific coast bird; breeds in Alaska. 173. =Brant.= BRANTA BERNICLA. Rare or accidental migrant; an eastern species seldom coming west; breeds only within the Arctic Circle. 180. =Whistling swan.= OLOR COLUMBIANUS. Migrant; not common; formerly fairly plentiful; breeds far northward. 181. =Trumpeter swan.= OLOR BUCCINATOR. Rare migrant; not so common as preceding; breeds from Iowa and Dakota northward. 183. =Roseate spoonbill.= AJAJA AJAJA. Accidental; two instances; habitat, tropical and subtropical America. 184. =White ibis.= GUARA ALBA. Rare migrant; one taken on plains; habitat, tropical and subtropical America, coming north as far as Great Salt Lake and South Dakota. [185.] =Scarlet ibis.= GUARA RUBRA. Accidental; one specimen taken; a wonderful record for this tropical species. 186. =Glossy ibis.= PLEGADIS AUTUMNALIS. Accidental; two fine specimens taken in the State; this is far out of its ordinary tropical range. 187. =White-faced glossy ibis.= PLEGADIS GUARAUNA. Summer visitor; rare; fairly common in New Mexico and Arizona; sometimes wanders into Colorado; Aiken found it breeding at San Luis Lakes. 188. =Wood ibis.= TANTALUS LOCULATOR. Rare summer visitor; southern range. 190. =American bittern.= BOTAURUS LENTIGINOSUS. Common summer resident; breeds throughout the State, from plains to about 7,000 feet. 191. =Least bittern.= ARDETTA EXILIS. Rare summer visitor; a few records east of mountains; one specimen seen west of the divide. 194. =Great blue heron.= ARDEA HERODIAS. Summer resident; common in migration; seldom goes far up in the mountains, though Mr. Aiken found one at an altitude of 9,000 feet. 196. =American egret.= ARDEA EGRETTA. Rare or accidental; one seen; general range, the whole of the United States; in winter south to Chili and Patagonia. 197. =Snowy heron.= ARDEA CANDIDISSIMA. Summer visitor; not known to breed; the highest altitude is the one taken near Leadville, 10,000 feet. 198. =Reddish egret.= ARDEA RUFESCENS. Rare or accidental; only two specimens secured; southern range. 202. =Black-crowned night heron.= NYCTICORAX NYCTICORAX NÆVIUS. Summer resident; not common; local; more plentiful in migration. 203. =Yellow-crowned night heron.= NYCTICORAX VIOLACEUS. Rare summer visitor; southern species; not known to breed in State. 204. =Whooping crane.= GRUS AMERICANA. Rare migrant; more common east of Colorado. 205. =Little brown crane.= GRUS CANADENSIS. Migrant; few taken; northern breeder. 206. =Sandhill crane.= GRUS MEXICANA. Summer resident; not uncommon locally; in migration common; breeds as high as 8,000 feet; has been seen in autumn passing over the highest peaks. 212. =Virginia rail.= RALLUS VIRGINIANUS. Summer resident; not uncommon; breeds on plains and in mountains to at least 7,500 feet. 214. =Sora.= PORZANA CAROLINA. Common summer resident; breeds from plains to 9,000 feet. 216. =Black rail.= PORZANA JAMAICENSIS. Rare migrant; one specimen secured. 219. =Florida gallinule.= GALLINULA GALEATA. Summer visitor, not known to breed. 221. =American coot.= FULICA AMERICANA. Common summer resident; breeds on plains and in mountain parks. 222. =Red phalarope.= CRYMOPHILUS FULICARIUS. Migrant; rare; once taken at Loveland by Edw. A. Preble, July 25, 1895. Breeds far north. 223. =Northern phalarope.= PHALAROPUS LOBATUS. Migrant; not uncommon; breeds far northward. 224. =Wilson's phalarope.= STEGANOPUS TRICOLOR. Common summer resident; more common in migration; breeds below 6,000 feet. 225. =American avocet.= RECURVIROSTRA AMERICANA. Common summer resident; occurs frequently on the plains; less frequent in mountains. 226. =Black-necked stilt.= HIMANTOPUS MEXICANUS. Summer resident; most common in the mountains, going as high as 8,000 feet; more common west of range than east. 228. =American woodcock.= PHILOHELA MINOR. Rare summer resident; Colorado the extreme western limit of its range, going only to foothills. 230. =Wilson's snipe.= GALLINAGO DELICATA. Rare summer resident; common migrant; winter resident, rare; found as high as 10,000 feet. 232. =Long-billed dowitcher.= MACRORHAMPHUS SCOLOPACEUS. Somewhat common migrant; all records restricted to plains; breeds far northward. 233. =Stilt sandpiper.= MICROPALAMA HIMANTOPUS. Rare migrant; breeds north of United States. 239. =Pectoral sandpiper.= TRINGA MACULTA. Common migrant; occurs from the plains to the great height of 13,000 feet. 240. =White-rumped sandpiper.= TRINGA FUSCICOLLIS. Not uncommon migrant; a bird of the plains, its western limit being the base of the Rockies; breeds in the far North. 241. =Baird's sandpiper.= TRINGA BAIRDII. Abundant migrant; breeds far north; returns in August and ranges over mountains sometimes at height of 13,000 to 14,000 feet, feeding on grasshoppers. 242. =Least sandpiper.= TRINGA MINUTILLA. Common migrant; found from plains to 7,000 feet. 243a. =Red-backed sandpiper.= TRINGA ALPINA PACIFICA. Rare migrant; only three records; range, throughout North America. 246. =Semipalmated sandpiper.= EREUNETES PUSILLUS. Common migrant; from the plains to 8,000 feet. 247. =Western sandpiper.= EREUNETES OCCIDENTALIS. Rare migrant; breeds in the remote North; western species, but in migration occurs regularly along the Atlantic coast. 248. =Sanderling.= CALIDRIS ARENARIA. Rare migrant, on plains; range nearly cosmopolitan; breeds only in northern part of northern hemisphere. 249. =Marbled godwit.= LIMOSA FEDOA. Migrant; not common; a bird of the plains, but seldom seen; occasionally found in the mountains. 254. =Greater yellow-legs.= TOTANUS MELANOLEUCUS. Common migrant; in favorable localities below 8,000 feet. 255. =Yellow-legs.= TOTANUS FLAVIPES. Common migrant; distribution same as preceding. 256. =Solitary sandpiper.= HELODROMAS SOLITARIUS. Summer resident; not common; in migration, common; breeds from plains to 10,000 feet. 258a. =Western willet.= SYMPHEMIA SEMIPALMATA INORNATA. Summer resident; not common; common migrant, especially in the fall; breeds from plains to 7,000 feet. 261. =Bartramian sandpiper.= BARTRAMIA LONGICAUDA. Common summer resident; abundant in migration; a bird of the plains; rare west of mountains. 263. =Spotted sandpiper.= ACTITIS MACULARIA. Abundant summer resident; breeds on the plains and at all intermediate altitudes to 12,000 feet, even on top of mountains of that height, if a lake or pond can be found; in fall, ranges above timber-line to 14,000 feet; some may remain throughout winter. 264. =Long-billed curlew.= NUMENIUS LONGIROSTRIS. Common summer resident; breeds on the plains; also in Middle and South Parks; found on both sides of the range. 265. =Hudsonian curlew.= NUMENIUS HUDSONICUS. Rare migrant; all records thus far from the plains; general range, North America. 270. =Black-bellied plover.= SQUATAROLA SQUATAROLA. Migrant, not common; bird of plains below 5,000 feet; breeds far north. 272. =American golden plover.= CHARADRIUS DOMINICUS. Migrant, not common; same record as preceding. 273. =Killdeer.= ÆGIALITIS VOCIFERA. Abundant summer resident; arrives early in spring; breeds most abundantly on plains and at base of foothills, but is far from rare at an altitude of 10,000 feet. 274. =Semipalmated plover.= ÆGIALITIS SEMIPALMATA. Migrant, not common; breeds near the Arctic Circle. 281. =Mountain plover.= ÆGIALITIS MONTANA. Common summer resident; in spite of its name, a bird of the plains rather than the mountains; yet sometimes found in parks at an altitude of 8,000 and even 9,000 feet. Its numbers may be estimated from the fact that in one day of August a sportsman shot one hundred and twenty-six birds, though why he should indulge in such wholesale slaughter the author does not understand. 283. =Turnstone.= ARENARIA INTERPRES. Rare migrant; breeding grounds in the north; cosmopolitan in range, but chiefly along sea-coasts. 289. =Bob-white.= COLINUS VIRGINIANUS. Resident; somewhat common locally; good reason to believe that all the quails of the foothills are descendants of introduced birds, while those of the eastern border of the plains are native. A few were introduced some years ago into Estes Park, and are still occasionally noticed. 293. =Scaled partridge.= CALLIPEPLA SQUAMATA. Resident; common locally; southern species, but more common than the bob-white at Rocky Ford, Col. 294. =California partridge.= LOPHORTYX CALIFORNICUS. Resident, local; introduced at Grand Junction, Col., and have flourished so abundantly as to become troublesome to gardeners. 295. =Gambel's partridge.= LOPHORTYX GAMBELII. Resident, rare; known only in southwestern part of the State; a western species. 297. =Dusky grouse.= DENDRAGAPUS OBSCURUS. Resident; mountain dwellers; breed from 7,000 feet to timber-line; in September wander above timber-line to 12,500 feet, feeding on grasshoppers; remain in thick woods in winter. 300b. =Gray ruffed grouse.= BONASA UMBELLUS UMBELLOIDES. Rare resident; a more northern species, but a few breed in Colorado just below timber-line; winters in higher foothills. 304. =White-tailed ptarmigan.= LAGOPUS LEUCURUS. Common resident; one of the most strictly alpine species; breeds entirely above timber-line from 11,500 to 13,500 feet; thence ranging to the summits of the highest peaks. Only in severest winter weather do they come down to timber-line; rarely to 8,000 feet. In winter they are white; in summer fulvous or dull grayish-buff, barred and spotted with black. This bird is colloquially called the "mountain quail." The brown-capped leucosticte is the only other Colorado species that has so high a range. 305. =Prairie hen.= TYMPANUCHUS AMERICANUS. Resident; uncommon and local. 308b. =Prairie sharp-tailed grouse.= PEDIOECETES PHASIANELLUS CAMPESTRIS. Resident, not common; once common, but killed and driven out by pothunters; some breed in Middle Park; noted in winter at 9,500 feet. 309. =Sage grouse.= CENTROCERCUS UROPHASIANUS. Common resident. "As its name implies, it is an inhabitant of the artemisia or sage-brush plains, and is scarcely found elsewhere." Ranges from plains to 9,500 feet. 310. =Mexican turkey.= MELEAGRIS GALLOPAVO. Rare local resident; southern part of the State. 310a. =Wild turkey.= MELEAGRIS GALLOPAVO FERA. Resident; rare; once abundant, but will probably soon be exterminated; not certain whether Colorado birds are eastern or western forms. 312. =Band-tailed pigeon.= COLUMBA FASCIATA. Summer resident; local; breeds from 5,000 to 7,000 feet and occasionally higher. 316. =Mourning dove.= ZENAIDURA MACROURA. Summer resident; very abundant; breeds everywhere below the pine region up to 10,000 feet, though usually a little lower; in fall ranges up to 12,000 feet. 319. =White-winged dove.= MELOPELIA LEUCOPTERA. Four records of this straggler in Colorado; its usual range is subtropical, though not uncommon as far north as the southern border of the United States. 325. =Turkey vulture.= CATHARTES AURA. Common summer resident; breeds from plains to 10,000 and even 12,000 feet. 327. =Swallow-tailed kite.= ELANOIDES FORFICATUS. Summer visitor; rare or accidental; bird of the plains, not regularly west of central Kansas. 329. =Mississippi kite.= ICTINIA MISSISSIPPIENSIS. Accidental; two records; a bird of eastern and southern United States, and southward. 331. =Marsh hawk.= CIRCUS HUDSONIUS. Common resident; most common in migration; a few remain throughout winter; breeds on plains, and in mountains to 10,000 feet; in fall may be seen at 14,000 feet. 332. =Sharp-shinned hawk.= ACCIPITER VELOX. Common resident; much more common in mountains than on plains; breeds up to 10,000 feet. 333. COOPER'S HAWK. ACCIPITER COOPERI. Common resident; breeds from plains to 9,000 feet. 334. =American goshawk.= ACCIPITER ATRICAPILLUS. Resident; not uncommon; breeds from 9,000 to 10,000 feet; more common in winter than summer. 334a. =Western goshawk.= ACCIPITER ATRICAPILLUS STRIATULUS. Winter visitor; rare, if not accidental; Pacific Coast form; comes regularly as far east as Idaho. 337a. =Krider's hawk.= BUTEO BOREALIS KRIDERII. Resident; not uncommon; nests on the plains; no certain record for the mountains. 337b. =Western red-tail.= BUTEO BOREALIS CALURUS. Abundant resident; this is the Rocky Mountain form, of which Krider's hawk is the eastern analogue; the ranges of the two forms overlap on the Colorado plains; _calurus_ breeds from plains to 12,000 feet; not a few winter in the State. 337d. =Harlan's hawk.= BUTEO BOREALIS HARLANI. Rare winter visitor; one specimen; natural habitat, Gulf States and lower Mississippi Valley. 339b. =Red-bellied hawk.= BUTEO LINEATUS ELEGANS. Rare migrant; Pacific coast species. 342. =Swainson's hawk.= BUTEO SWAINSONI. Common resident; breeds everywhere below 11,000 feet. 347a. =American rough-legged hawk.= ARCHIBUTEO LAGOPUS SANCTI-JOHANNIS. Somewhat common winter resident; arrives from the north in November and remains till March. 348. =Ferruginous rough-leg.= ARCHIBUTEO FERRUGINEUS. Rather common resident; breeds on plains and in mountains; winters mostly on plains and along lower streams. 349. =Golden eagle.= AQUILA CHRYSAETOS. Resident; common in favorable localities; breeds from foothills to 12,500 feet; in winter on plains and also in mountains, often at 11,000 feet. 352. =Bald eagle.= HALLÆETUS LEUCOCEPHALUS. Fairly common resident; mostly in mountains in summer; on plains in winter. 355. =Prairie falcon.= FALCO MEXICANUS. Not uncommon resident; breeds from plains to 10,000 feet; quite numerous in more open portions of western Colorado. 356. =Duck hawk.= FALCO PEREGRINUS ANATUM. Resident; not uncommon locally; breeds up to 10,000 feet. 357. =Pigeon hawk.= FALCO COLUMBARIUS. Summer resident; not common; usual breeding grounds 8,000 to 9,000 feet; some breed on the plains. 358. =Richardson's merlin.= FALCO RICHARDSONII. Rare summer resident; not uncommon in migration; naturalists not quite sure that it breeds in the State; has been taken in summer at an altitude of 11,000 feet. 360. =American sparrow hawk.= FALCO SPARVERIUS. Abundant resident; the most common hawk from the plains to 11,000 feet; some winter in State; breeds throughout its range. 360a. =Desert sparrow hawk.= FALCO SPARVERIUS DESERTICOLUS. Resident, though rare; taken in Middle and South Parks. 364. =American osprey.= PANDION HALIAËTUS CAROLINENSIS. Summer resident; not uncommon locally; breeds as high as 9,000 feet; has been taken in fall at an altitude of 10,500 feet. 365. =American barn owl.= STRIX PRATINCOLA. Resident; quite rare; a southern species rarely coming so far north as Colorado. 366. =American long-eared owl.= ASIO WILSONIANUS. Common resident; winters from plains to 10,000 feet; breeds from plains to 11,000 feet; eggs laid early in April. 367. =Short-eared owl.= ASIO ACCIPITRINUS. Resident, but not common; highest record 9,500 feet. 368. =Barred owl.= SYRNIUM NEBULOSUM. Resident; few records; one breeding pair found in the northeastern part of the State. 369. =Spotted owl.= SYRNIUM OCCIDENTALE. Resident; not common; a little doubt as to its identity; but Mr. Aiken vouches for its presence in the State. 371. =Richardson's owl.= NYCTALA TENGMALMI RICHARDSONI. Rare winter visitor; a northern species. 372. =Saw-whet owl.= NYCTALA ACADICA. Resident; not uncommon; occurs throughout the State below 8,000 feet. 373. =Screech owl.= MAGASCOPS ASIO. Rare resident; the eastern analogue of the next. 373e. =Rocky Mountain screech owl.= MAGASCOPS ASIO MAXWELLIÆ. Common resident; found from plains and foothills to about 6,000 feet; rare visitant at nearly 9,000 feet. 373g. =Aiken's screech owl.= MEGASCOPS ASIO AIKENI. Resident; limited to from 5,000 to 9,000 feet. 374. =Flammulated screech owl.= MEGASCOPS FLAMMEOLA. Rare resident; rarest owl in Colorado, if not in the United States; ten instances of breeding, all in Colorado; twenty-three records in all for the State. 375a. =Western horned owl.= BUBO VIRGINIANUS PALLESCENS. Common resident; breeds on the plains and in the mountains. 375b. =Arctic horned owl.= BUBO VIRGINIANUS ARCTICUS. Winter visitor; not uncommon; breeds in arctic America. 376. =Snowy owl.= NYCTEA NYCTEA. Rare winter visitor; occurs on the plains and in the lower foothills; range in summer, extreme northern portions of northern hemisphere. 378. =Burrowing owl.= SPEOTYTO CUNICULARIA HYPOGÆA. Resident; abundant locally; breeds on plains and up to 9,000 feet. 379. =Pygmy owl.= GLAUCIDIUM GNOMA. Resident; rare; favorite home in the mountains; breeds as high as 10,000 feet. 382. =Carolina paroquet.= CONURUS CAROLINENSIS. Formerly resident; few records; general range, east and south; now almost exterminated. 385. =Road-runner.= GEOCOCCYX CALIFORNIANUS. Resident; not common; restricted to southern portion of the State; breeds throughout its range; rare above 5,000 feet, though one was found in the Wet Mountains at an altitude of 8,000 feet. 387. =Yellow-billed cuckoo.= COCCYZUS AMERICANUS. Rare summer visitor, on the authority of Major Bendire. 387a. =California cuckoo.= COCCYZUS AMERICANUS OCCIDENTALIS. Summer resident; not uncommon locally; mostly found on the edge of the plains, but occasionally up to 8,000 feet in mountains. 388. =Black-billed cuckoo.= COCCYZUS ERYTHROPHTHALMUS. Rare migrant; only two records. 390. =Belted kingfisher.= CERYLE ALCYON. Common resident; breeds from plains to 10,000 feet; a few remain in winter. 393e. =Rocky Mountain hairy woodpecker.= DRYOBATES VILLOSUS MONTICOLA. Common resident; breeds from plains to 11,000 feet; winter range almost the same. 394c. =Downy woodpecker.= DRYOBATES PUBESCENS MEDIANUS. Visitor; rare, if not accidental. 394b. =Batchelder's woodpecker.= DRYOBATES PUBESCENS HOMORUS. Common resident; breeding range from plains to 11,500 feet; winter range from plains to 10,000 feet. 396. =Texan woodpecker.= DRYOBATES SCALARIS BAIRDI. Resident; rare and local; southern range generally. 401b. =Alpine three-toed woodpecker.= PICOIDES AMERICANUS DORSALIS. Resident; not common; a mountain bird; range, 8,000 to 12,000 feet; even in winter remains in the pine belt at about 10,000 feet. 402. =Yellow-bellied sapsucker.= SPHYRAPICUS VARIUS. Rare migrant; eastern form, scarcely reaching the base of the Rockies. 402a. =Red-naped sapsucker.= SPHYRAPICUS VARIUS NUCHALIS. Common summer resident; breeds from plains to 12,000 feet, but partial to the mountains. Author saw one at Green Lake. 404. =Williamson's sapsucker.= SPHYRAPICUS THYROIDEUS. Common summer resident; breeds from 5,000 feet to upper limits of the pines; range higher in the southern part of the State than in the northern. 405a. =Northern pileated woodpecker.= CEOPHLOEUS PILEATUS ABIETICOLA. Resident; very rare; only probably identified. 406. =Red-headed woodpecker.= MELANERPES ERYTHROCEPHALUS. Common summer resident; breeds from plains to 10,000 feet; late spring arrival; same form in the East and West. 408. =Lewis's woodpecker.= MELANERPES TORQUATUS. Common resident; characteristic bird of the foothills; sometimes seen as high as 10,000 feet in southern Colorado; probably does not breed above 9,000 feet. 409. =Red-bellied woodpecker.= MELANERPES CAROLINUS. Summer visitor; rare, if not accidental; eastern and southern species, not occurring regularly west of central Kansas. 412a. =Northern flicker.= COLAPTES AURATUS LUTEUS. Rare migrant; range extends only to foothills; no record of its breeding. 413. =Red-shafted flicker.= COLAPTES CAFER. Abundant summer resident; breeds from plains to 12,000 feet; almost as plentiful at its highest range as on the plains; early spring arrival; a few winter in the State. 418. =Poor-will.= PHALÆNOPTILUS NUTTALLII. Common summer resident; breeds from plains to 8,000 feet; has been noted up to 10,000 feet. 418a. =Frosted poor-will.= PHALÆNOPTILUS NUTTALLII NITIDUS. Rare summer resident; few typical _nitidus_ taken; a more southern variety. 420a. =Western nighthawk.= CHORDEILES VIRGINIANUS HENRYI. Abundant summer resident; breeds on the plains and up to about 11,000 feet; in fall ranges up to 12,000 feet; most common on plains and in foothills. 422. =Black swift.= CYPSELOIDES NIGER BOREALIS. Summer resident; abundant locally; southwestern part of the State; breeds from 10,000 to 12,000 feet, and ranges up to 13,000 feet. 425. =White-throated swift.= AERONAUTES MELANOLEUCUS. Summer resident; not uncommon locally; breeds in inaccessible rocks from 6,000 to 12,000 feet, if not higher; most common in southern part of the State. 429. =Black-chinned humming-bird.= TROCHILUS ALEXANDRI. Summer resident; local; only in southwestern part of the State, and below 6,000 feet. 432. =Broad-tailed humming-bird.= SELASPHORUS PLATYCERCUS. Common summer resident; Colorado's most common hummer; breeds from foothills to 11,000 feet; ranges 2,000 feet above timber-line in summer. 433. =Rufous humming-bird.= SELASPHORUS RUFUS. Summer resident; local; a western species, coming into southwestern Colorado, where it breeds from 7,000 to 10,000 feet, and ranges in summer several thousand feet higher; a few records east of the range. 436. =Calliope humming-bird.= STELLULA CALLIOPE. Summer visitor; rare or accidental; but two records, one near Breckenridge at an altitude of 9,500 feet; western species. 443. =Scissor-tailed flycatcher.= MILVULUS FORFICATUS. Summer visitor; rare or accidental; but one record; southern range, and more eastern. 444. =Kingbird.= TYRANNUS TYRANNUS. Common summer resident; occurs only on plains and in foothills up to 6,000 feet; same form as the eastern kingbird. 447. =Arkansas kingbird.= TYRANNUS VERTICALIS. Common summer resident; more common in eastern than western part of the State; fond of the plains and foothills, yet breeds as high as 8,000 feet. 448. =Cassin's kingbird.= TYRANNUS VOCIFERANS. Common summer resident; breeds on plains and up to 9,000 feet in mountains; occurs throughout the State. 454. =Ash-throated flycatcher.= MYIARCHUS CINERASCENS. Rare summer resident; western species, coming east to western edge of plains. 455a. =Olivaceous flycatcher.= MYIARCHUS LAWRENCEI OLIVASCENS. Summer visitor, rare, if not accidental; a southern species; taken once in Colorado. 456. =Phoebe.= SAYORNIS PHOEBE. Rare summer visitor; comes west to eastern border of the State. 457. =Say's phoebe.= SAYORNIS SAYA. Common summer resident; most common on the plains; occurs on both sides of the range; the author found it a little above Malta, at Glenwood, and in South Park. 459. =Olive-sided flycatcher.= CONTOPUS BOREALIS. Common summer resident; breeds only in the mountains, from 7,000 to 12,000 feet. 462. =Western wood pewee.= CONTOPUS RICHARDSONII. Common summer resident; most common in breeding season from 7,000 to 11,000 feet. 464. =Western flycatcher.= EMPIDONAX DIFFICILIS. Common summer resident; breeds from plains to 10,000 feet, but most common in upper part of its range. 466. =Traill's flycatcher.= EMPIDONAX TRAILLII. Fairly common summer resident; most common on the plains, but occurs in mountains up to 8,000 feet; breeds throughout its Colorado range. 467. =Least flycatcher.= EMPIDONAX MINIMUS. Rare migrant; west to eastern foothills; probably breeds, but no nests have been found. 468. =Hammond's flycatcher.= EMPIDONAX HAMMONDI. Common summer resident; comes east only to the western edge of the plains; breeds as high as 9,000 feet. 469. =Wright's flycatcher.= EMPIDONAX WRIGHTII. Abundant summer resident; breeds from 7,500 feet to 10,000. 474a. =Pallid horned lark.= OTOCORIS ALPESTRIS LEUCOLÆMA. Abundant winter resident; literature on this bird somewhat confused on account, no doubt, of its close resemblance to the next; winters on the plains abundantly, and sparsely in the mountains. 474c. =Desert horned lark.= OTOCORIS ALPESTRIS ARENICOLA. Abundant resident; winters on plains and in mountains up to 9,000 feet; breeds from plains to 13,000 feet; raises two broods. 475. =American magpie.= PICA PICA HUDSONICA. Common resident; breeds commonly on the plains and in the foothills and lower mountains; a few breed as high as 11,000 feet. 478b. =Long-crested jay.= CYANOCITTA STELLERI DIADEMATA. Common resident; seldom strays far east of the foothills; breeds from base of foothills to timber-line; winter range from edge of plains almost to 10,000 feet. 480. =Woodhouse's jay.= APHELOCOMA WOODHOUSEI. Common resident; most common along the base of foothills and lower wooded mountains; sometimes breeds as high as 8,000 feet; in fall roams up to 9,500 in special instances. 484a. =Rocky Mountain jay.= PERISOREUS CANADENSIS CAPITALIS. Common resident; remains near timber-line throughout the year. 486. =American raven.= CORVUS CORAX SINUATUS. Resident; common locally; breeds; rather of western Colorado, but visitant among eastern mountains. 487. =White-necked raven.= CORVUS CRYPTOLEUCUS. Rare resident now; formerly abundant along eastern base of the front range and a hundred miles out on the plains; now driven out by advent of white man. 488. =American crow.= CORVUS AMERICANUS. Resident; common in northeastern Colorado; rare in the rest of the State. 491. =Clark's nutcracker.= NUCIFRAGA COLUMBIANA. Abundant resident; a mountain bird; breeds from 7,000 to 12,000 feet; sometimes in fall gathers in "enormous flocks"; at that season wanders up to at least 13,000 feet; most remain in the mountains through the winter, though a few descend to the plains. 492. =Pinon jay.= CYANOCEPHALUS CYANOCEPHALUS. Resident; abundant locally; breeds almost exclusively among the pinon pines; keeps in small parties during breeding season; then gathers in large flocks; wandering up to 10,000 feet. 494. =Bobolink.= DOLICHONYX ORYZIVORUS. Rare summer visitor. 495. =Cowbird.= MOLOTHRUS ATER. Common summer resident; breeds from plains to about 8,000 feet; author saw several in South Park. 497. =Yellow-headed blackbird.= XANTHOCEPHALUS XANTHOCEPHALUS. Common summer resident; breeds in suitable places on the plains and in mountain parks. 498. =Red-winged blackbird.= AGELAIUS PHOENICEUS. Common summer resident; breeds mostly below 7,500 feet, though occasionally ascends to 9,000. 501b. =Western meadow-lark.= STURNELLA MAGNA NEGLECTA. Abundant summer resident. 506. =Orchard oriole.= ICTERUS SPURIUS. Summer visitor; rare, if not accidental. 507. =Baltimore oriole.= ICTERUS GALBULA. Marked as a rare summer resident, though no record of nesting. 508. =Bullock's oriole.= ICTERUS BULLOCKI. Abundant summer resident; breeds on plains and in mountain regions below 10,000 feet. 509. =Rusty blackbird.= SCOLECOPHAGUS CAROLINUS. Migrant; rare, if not accidental; two records. 510. =Brewer's blackbird.= SCOLECOPHAGUS CYANOCEPHALUS. Abundant summer resident. 511b. =Bronzed grackle.= QUISCALUS QUISCULA ÆNEUS. Summer resident; not uncommon locally; comes only to eastern base of mountains. 514a. =Western evening grosbeak.= COCCOTHRAUSTES VESPERTINUS MONTANUS. Resident; found every month of the year; no nests found, but evidently breeds. 515a. =Rocky Mountain pine grosbeak.= PINICOLA ENUCLEATOR MONTANA. Resident; not uncommon; most common in late summer and fall when most of them are just below timber-line; stragglers descend to foothills and plains. 517. =Purple finch.= CARPODACUS PURPUREUS. Migrant; rare, if not accidental; only one specimen, and that a female. 518. =Cassin's purple finch.= CARPODACUS CASSINI. Common resident; winters from plains to 7,000 feet; breeds from that altitude to 10,000 feet. 519. =House finch.= CARPODACUS MEXICANUS FRONTALIS. Abundant resident. 521a. =Mexican crossbill.= LOXIA CURVIROSTRA STRICKLANDI. Resident; not uncommon; has been seen in summer at 11,000 feet; breeds in mountains, perhaps in winter like its eastern antitype. 522. =White-winged crossbill.= LOXIA LEUCOPTERA. Rare winter visitor; one record. 524. =Gray-crowned leucosticte.= LEUCOSTICTE TEPHROCOTIS. Rare winter visitor; western species. 524a. =Hepburn's leucosticte.= LEUCOSTICTE TEPHROCOTIS LITTORALIS. Rare winter visitor; summers in the North. 525. =Black leucosticte.= LEUCOSTICTE ATRATA. Rare winter visitor; summer range unknown; winters in the Rockies. 526. =Brown-capped leucosticte.= LEUCOSTICTE AUSTRALIS. This little bird and the white-tailed ptarmigan have the highest summer range of any Colorado birds. 528. =Redpoll.= ACANTHIS LINARIA. Common winter resident; lives from plains to 10,000 feet. 528b. =Greater redpoll.= ACANTHIS LINARIA ROSTRATA. Rare or accidental winter visitor; one record. 529. =American goldfinch.= ASTRAGALINUS TRISTIS. Resident; quite common in summer; sometimes reaches 10,000 feet. 529a. =Western goldfinch.= ASTRAGALINUS TRISTIS PALLIDUS. Migrant; probably common; added by Mr. Aiken. 530. =Arkansas goldfinch.= ASTRAGALINUS PSALTRIA. Common summer resident; breeds from plains to over 9,000 feet. 530a. =Arizona goldfinch.= ASTRAGALINUS PSALTRIA ARIZONÆ. Summer resident; not common. 530b. =Mexican goldfinch.= ASTRAGALINUS PSALTRIA MEXICANUS. Rare, but believed to be a summer resident at Trinidad. 533. =Pine siskin.= SPINUS PINUS. Common resident; breeding range from plains to timber-line. 000. =English sparrow.= PASSER DOMESTICUS. Rapidly increasing in numbers; has settled at points west of the range. 534. =Snowflake.= PASSERINA NIVALIS. Rare winter visitor; one record west of the range; several east. 536a. =Alaskan longspur.= CALCARIUS LAPPONICUS ALASCENSIS. Common winter resident; breeds far north. 538. =Chestnut-collared longspur.= CALCARIUS ORNATUS. Rare summer resident; winter resident, not common; common in migration. 539. =McCown's longspur.= RHYNCOPHANES MCCOWNII. Common winter resident, dwelling on the plains. 540a. =Western vesper sparrow.= POOCÆTES GRAMINEUS CONFINIS. Abundant summer resident; breeds from plains to 12,000 feet. 542b. =Western savanna sparrow.= AMMODRAMUS SANDWICHENSIS ALAUDINUS. Common summer resident; breeds from base of foothills to almost 12,000 feet. 545. =Baird's sparrow.= AMMODRAMUS BAIRDII. Migrant; not common; a number taken east of the range, and one west. 546a. =Western grasshopper sparrow.= AMMODRAMUS SAVANNARUM PERPALLIDUS. Not uncommon summer resident; breeds on plains and in lower foothills. 552a. =Western lark sparrow.= CHONDESTES GRAMMACUS STRIGATUS. Common summer resident; breeds on plains and in mountain parks to 10,000 feet. 553. =Harris's sparrow.= ZONOTRICHIA QUERULA. Rare migrant; abundant migrant in Kansas. 554. =White-crowned sparrow.= ZONOTRICHIA LEUCOPHRYS. Abundant summer resident. 554a. =Intermediate sparrow.= ZONOTRICHIA LEUCOPHRYS GAMBELII. Common migrant, both east and west of the range; breeds north of the United States. 557. =Golden-crowned sparrow.= ZONOTRICHIA CORONATA. Accidental winter visitor; Pacific Coast species; breeds in Alaska. 558. =White-throated sparrow.= ZONOTRICHIA ALBICOLLIS. Rare migrant; but three records. 559a. =Western tree sparrow.= SPIZELLA MONTICOLA OCHRACEA. Common winter resident; mostly on plains and in lower mountains. 560. =Chipping sparrow.= SPIZELLA SOCIALIS. Rare summer resident; common in migration; goes as far west as base of the mountains. 560a. =Western chipping sparrow.= SPIZELLA SOCIALIS ARIZONÆ. Abundant summer resident; breeds from base of foothills to 10,000 feet. 561. =Clay-colored sparrow.= SPIZELLA PALLIDA. Summer resident; not uncommon; scattered over State east of mountains. 562. =Brewer's sparrow.= SPIZELLA BREWERI. Summer resident; not uncommon; breeds from plains to 8,000 feet. 566. =White-winged junco.= JUNCO AIKENI. Common winter resident; on plains and 8,000 feet up in the mountains. 567. =Slate-colored junco.= JUNCO HYEMALIS. Winter resident; not common; not found above 8,000 feet. 567b. =Shufeldt's junco.= JUNCO HYEMALIS CONNECTENS. Abundant winter resident; most common in southern part of the State; not uncommon elsewhere. 567.1. =Montana junco.= JUNCO MONTANUS. Winter visitor; not uncommon. 568. =Pink-sided junco.= JUNCO MEARNSI. Common winter resident; plentiful at base of foothills in winter; in spring ascend to 10,000 feet; then leaves the State for the North. 568.1. =Ridgway's junco.= JUNCO ANNECTENS. Rare winter visitor; one record. 569. =Gray-headed junco.= JUNCO CANICEPS. Abundant resident; breeds from 7,500 to 12,000 feet; sometimes rears three broods. 570a. =Red-backed junco.= JUNCO PHÆONOTUS DORSALIS. Rare migrant; abundant just south of State. 573a. =Desert sparrow.= AMPHISPIZA BILINEATA DESERTICOLA. Summer resident; not uncommon locally; found only in southwestern part of the State. 574a. =Sage sparrow.= AMPHISPIZA BELLI NEVADENSIS. Abundant summer resident; common on sage-brush plains of western and southwestern Colorado; ranges as far east as San Luis Park and north to Cheyenne, Wyoming. 581. =Song-sparrow.= MELOSPIZA FASCIATA. Rare migrant; found only at eastern border of State. 581b. =Mountain song-sparrow.= MELOSPIZA FASCIATA MONTANA. Common summer resident; a few remain on plains in mild winters; breeds from plains to 8,000 feet. 583. =Lincoln's sparrow.= MELOSPIZA LINCOLNI. Common summer resident; abundant in migration; breeds from base of foothills to timber-line. 584. =Swamp sparrow.= MELOSPIZA GEORGIANA. Accidental summer visitor; one record. 585c. =Slate-colored sparrow.= PASSERELLA ILIACA SCHISTACEA. Rare summer resident; only three records. 588. =Arctic towhee.= PIPILO MACULATUS ARCTICUS. Winter resident; not uncommon; comes to base of Rocky Mountains in winter; breeds in the North, as far as the Saskatchewan River. 588a. =Spurred towhee.= PIPILO MACULATUS MEGALONYX. Common summer resident; upper limit, 9,000 feet. 591. =Cañon towhee.= PIPILO FUSCUS MESOLEUCUS. Resident; common locally; all records from Arkansas Valley; rare at an altitude of 10,000 feet. 592. =Abert's towhee.= PIPILO ABERTI. Rare summer resident; species abundant in New Mexico and Arizona. 592.1. =Green-tailed towhee.= OREOSPIZA CHLORURA. Common summer resident; melodious songster. 593. =Cardinal.= CARDINALIS CARDINALIS. Winter visitor; rare, if not accidental; two records. 595. =Rose-breasted grosbeak.= ZAMELODIA LUDOVICIANA. Accidental summer resident; one record. 596. =Black-headed grosbeak.= ZAMELODIA MELANOCEPHALA. Common summer resident; breeds from plains to 8,500 feet; has been seen at 10,000 feet. 597a. =Western blue grosbeak.= GUIRACA CÆRULEA LAZULA. Summer resident; not uncommon locally; southern part of State; author saw one pair at Colorado Springs. 598. =Indigo bunting.= CYANOSPIZA CYANEA. Rare summer visitor; range, farther east. 599. =Lazuli bunting.= CYANOSPIZA AMOENA. Abundant summer resident; does not breed far up in the mountains, but has been taken at 9,100 feet. 604. =Dickcissel.= SPIZA AMERICANA. Rare summer resident; only on plains and in foothills. 605. =Lark bunting.= CALAMOSPIZA MELANOCORYS. Abundant summer resident; very plentiful on the plains; sometimes breeds as far up in mountains as 9,000 feet. 607. =Louisiana tanager.= PIRANGA LUDOVICIANA. Common summer resident; in migration common on the plains, but breeds from 6,000 to 10,000 feet. 608. =Scarlet tanager.= PIRANGA ERYTHROMELAS. Rare migrant. 610a. =Cooper's tanager.= PIRANGA RUBRA COOPERI. Rare or accidental summer visitor; abundant in New Mexico and Arizona; only one record for Colorado. 611. =Purple martin.= PROGNE SUBIS. Summer resident; local; rare in eastern, quite common in western part of the State. 612. =Cliff-swallow.= PETROCHELIDON LUNIFRONS. Abundant summer resident; breeds everywhere from plains to 10,000 feet; nests on cliffs and beneath eaves. 613. =Barn swallow.= HIRUNDO ERYTHROGASTER. Common summer resident; breeds from plains to 10,000 feet. 614. =Tree swallow.= TACHYCINETA BICOLOR. Summer resident; not uncommon; breeds occasionally on the plains; more frequently in mountains up to 10,000 feet. 615. =Violet-green swallow.= TACHYCINETA THALASSINA. Summer resident; abundant locally; a few breed on plains; more commonly from 6,000 to 10,500 feet. 616. =Bank swallow.= CLIVICOLA RIPARIA. Rare summer resident; rarest Colorado swallow; from plains to foothills. 617. =Rough-winged swallow.= STELGIDOPTERYX SERRIPENNIS. Summer resident; not uncommon; breeds below 7,500 feet. 618. =Bohemian waxwing.= AMPELIS GARRULUS. Winter resident; not uncommon; breeds north of the United States. 619. =Cedar waxwing.= AMPELIS CEDRORUM. Resident; not common; breeds from plains to about 9,000 feet. 621. =Northern shrike.= LANIUS BOREALIS. Common winter resident; on its return from the North in October it first appears above timber-line, then descends to the plains. 622a. =White-rumped shrike.= LANIUS LUDOVICIANUS EXCUBITORIDES. Common summer resident; breeds mostly on the plains; sometimes in mountains up to 9,500 feet. 624. =Red-eyed vireo.= VIREO OLIVACEUS. Rare summer resident; an eastern species, coming only to base of foothills; still, one was taken at 11,000 feet. 627. =Warbling vireo.= VIREO GILVUS. Common summer resident; breeds sparingly on the plains; commonly in mountains up to 10,000. 629a. =Cassin's vireo.= VIREO SOLITARIUS CASSINII. Rare or accidental summer visitor; not known to breed; a southwestern species. 629b. =Plumbeous vireo.= VIREO SOLITARIUS PLUMBEUS. Summer resident; common; breeds in foothills and mountains up to over 9,000 feet. 636. =Black and white warbler.= MNIOTILTA VARIA. Rare summer visitor; two records. 644. =Virginia's warbler.= HELMINTHOPHILA VIRGINIÆ. Common summer resident; western bird, but breeds along eastern base of foothills. 646. =Orange-crowned warbler.= HELMINTHOPHILA CELATA. Summer resident; not uncommon; common migrant; breeds from 6,000 to 9,000 feet. 646a. =Lutescent warbler.= HELMINTHOPHILA CELATA LUTESCENS. Summer resident; not uncommon: western form of the orange-crowned warbler; ranges to eastern base of mountains. 647. =Tennessee warbler.= HELMINTHOPHILA PEREGRINA. Rare migrant; eastern Colorado to base of mountains. 648. =Parula warbler.= COMPSOTHLYPIS AMERICANA. Rare summer resident; comes to base of foothills. 652. =Yellow warbler.= DENDROICA ÆSTIVA. Abundant summer resident; breeds up to 8,000 feet. 652a. =Sonora yellow warbler.= DENDROICA ÆSTIVA SONORANA. Summer resident; probably common; to the southwest _æstiva_ shades into _sonorana_. 654. =Black-throated blue warbler.= DENDROICA CÆRULESCENS. Rare migrant; one record. 655. =Myrtle warbler.= DENDROICA CORONATA. Common migrant; scarcely known west of the range. 656. =Audubon's warbler.= DENDROICA AUDUBONI. Abundant summer resident; breeds from 7,000 to 11,000 feet. 657. =Magnolia warbler.= DENDROICA MACULOSA. Rare migrant; breeds northward. 658. =Cerulean warbler.= DENDROICA RARA. Rare migrant; one record. 661. =Black-poll warbler.= DENDROICA STRIATA. Rare summer resident; sometimes common in migration; one breeding record for the State--at Seven Lakes; altitude, 11,000 feet. 664. =Grace's warbler.= DENDROICA GRACIÆ. Summer resident; common in extreme southwestern part of the State. 665. =Black-throated gray warbler.= DENDROICA NIGRESCENS. Summer resident; not infrequent; breeds in pinon hills near Cañon City. 668. =Townsend's warbler.= DENDROICA TOWNSENDI. Summer resident; not uncommon; western species, coming east to base of foothills and a few miles out on plains; breeds from 5,500 to 8,000 feet in western Colorado; in fall it is found as high as 10,000 feet. 672. =Palm warbler.= DENDROICA PALMARUM. Rare or accidental migrant; one specimen seen. 674. =Oven-bird.= SEIURUS AUROCAPILLUS. Rare breeder, on Mr. Aiken's authority. 675a. =Grinnell's water thrush.= SEIURUS NOVEBORACENSIS NOTABILIS. Rare migrant; appearing from plains to 8,000 feet. 678. =Connecticut warbler.= GEOTHLYPIS AGILIS. Rare or accidental migrant; one record by Mr. Aiken. 680. =Macgillivray's warbler.= GEOTHLYPIS TOLMIEI. Common summer resident; breeds from base of foothills to 9,000 feet. 681. =Maryland yellow-throat.= GEOTHLYPIS TRICHAS. One taken at Colorado Springs by Mr. Aiken. 681a. =Western yellow-throat.= GEOTHLYPIS TRICHAS OCCIDENTALIS. Common summer resident, almost restricted to the plains; both sides of the range. 683. =Yellow-breasted chat.= ICTERIA VIRENS. Accidental summer visitor. 683a. =Long-tailed chat.= ICTERIA VIRENS LONGICAUDA. Common summer resident; scarcely found in the mountains, but frequent in the lower foothills and on the plains; never seen above 8,000 feet. 685. =Wilson's warbler.= WILSONIA PUSILLA. Abundant summer resident; centre of abundance in breeding season, 11,000 feet; known to breed at 12,000 feet; also as low as 6,000. 685a. =Pileolated warbler.= WILSONIA PUSILLA PILEOLATA. Summer resident; not uncommon; Mr. Aiken thinks it as plentiful as preceding. 686. =Canadian warbler.= WILSONIA CANADENSIS. Rare or accidental migrant; one record by Mr. Aiken. 687. =American redstart.= SETOPHAGA RUTICILLA. Summer resident; not uncommon in eastern, rare in western, Colorado; breeds below 8,000 feet. 697. =American pipit.= ANTHUS PENSILVANICUS. Common summer resident; breeds only on summits of the mountains. 701. =American dipper.= CINCLUS MEXICANUS. Resident; common in favorite localities; one seen above timber-line in October. 702. =Sage thrasher.= OROSCOPTES MONTANUS. Summer resident; breeds from plains to nearly 10,000 feet; western species, coming east to mountain slopes. 703. =Mocking-bird.= MIMUS POLYGLOTTOS. Summer resident; common locally; mostly on plains, but sometimes reaches 8,000 feet. 704. =Catbird.= GALEOSCOPTES CAROLINENSIS. Common summer resident; from plains to 8,000 feet. 705. =Brown thrasher.= HARPORHYNCHUS RUFUS. Not uncommon as summer resident; almost restricted to the plains. 708. =Bendire's thrasher.= HARPORHYNCHUS BENDIREI. Summer resident; rare and local; south central part of State. 715. =Rock wren.= SALPINCTES OBSOLETUS. Common summer resident; breeds from plains to 12,000 feet. 717a. =Cañon wren.= CATHERPES MEXICANUS CONSPERSUS. Rare resident; one nest recorded. 719b. =Baird's wren.= THRYOMANES BEWICKII LEUCOGASTER. Rare summer resident. 721b. =Western house wren.= TROGLODYTES AËDON AZTECUS. Common summer resident; from plains to 10,000 feet; raises two broods, sometimes three. 722. =Winter wren.= ANORTHURA HIEMALIS. Rare resident; no nest found. 725a. =Tulé wren.= CISTOTHORUS PALUDICOLA. Summer resident; not uncommon; breeds from plains to 8,000 feet; some remain all winter in hot-water swamps. 725c. =Western marsh wren.= CISTOTHORUS PALUSTRIS PLESIUS. Summer resident; not uncommon locally. 726b. =Rocky Mountain creeper.= CERTHIA FAMILIARIS MONTANA. Common resident; in breeding season confined to the immediate vicinity of timber-line, where some remain the year round. 727. =White-breasted nuthatch.= SITTA CAROLINENSIS. Resident; not common. 727a. =Slender-billed nuthatch.= SITTA CAROLINENSIS ACULEATA. Common resident; western form; commonly breeds from 7,500 feet to timber-line. 728. =Red-breasted nuthatch.= SITTA CANADENSIS. Not uncommon resident; migrant on the plains; resident in the mountains to about 8,000 feet, sometimes 10,000. 730. =Pigmy nuthatch.= SITTA PYGMÆA. Abundant resident; mountain bird; makes scarcely any migration; most common from 7,000 to 10,000 feet. 733a. =Gray titmouse.= PARUS INORNATUS GRISEUS. Resident; not common; southern species, coming to eastern foothills. 735a. =Long-tailed chickadee.= PARUS ATRICAPILLUS SEPTENTRIONALIS. Not uncommon resident; winters on plains and in foothills; breeds from 7,000 to 10,000 feet; sometimes on plains. 738. =Mountain chickadee.= PARUS GAMBELI. Abundant resident; nests from 8,000 feet to timber-line; ranges in the fall to the tops of the loftiest peaks. 744. =Lead-colored bush-tit.= PSALTRIPARUS PLUMBEUS. Resident; not common; western species, coming to eastern foothills. 748. =Golden-crowned kinglet.= REGULUS SATRAPA. Rare summer resident; rather common in migration; breeds only near timber-line at about 11,000. 749. =Ruby-crowned kinglet.= REGULUS CALENDULA. Abundant summer resident; breeds from 9,000 feet to timber-line. 751. =Blue-gray gnatcatcher.= POLIOPTILA CÆRULEA. Rare summer resident; breeds on the plains and in the foothills. 754. =Townsend's solitaire.= MYADESTES TOWNSENDII. Common resident; breeds from 8,000 to 12,000 feet; winters in mountains, though stragglers are sometimes seen on the plains. The author saw a pair on plains near Arvada, in company with a young, well-fledged bird. 756a. =Willow thrush.= HYLOCICHLA FUSCESCENS SALICICOLA. Summer resident; rather common; breeds in foothills and parks up to about 8,000 feet. 758a. =Olive-backed thrush.= HYLOCICHLA USTULATA SWAINSONII. Rare migrant. 758c. =Alma's thrush.= HYLOCICHLA USTULATA ALAMÆ. Rare summer resident; in migration common. 759. =Dwarf hermit thrush.= HYLOCICHLA AONALASCHKÆ. Rare migrant. 759a. =Audubon's hermit thrush.= HYLOCICHLA AONALASCHKÆ AUDUBONI. Common summer resident; breeds from 8,000 feet to timber-line. 759b. =Hermit thrush.= HYLOCICHLA AONALASCHKÆ PALLASII. Rare migrant; comes to the eastern edge of Colorado, just touching range of _auduboni_. 761. =American robin.= MERULA MIGRATORIA. Summer resident, but not common; some interesting questions arise in connection with intermediate forms. 761a. =Western robin.= MERULA MIGRATORIA PROPINQUA. Abundant summer resident; breeds from plains to timber-line. 765a. =Greenland wheatear.= SAXICOLA OENANTHE LEUCORHOA. European species; a straggler taken at Boulder by Minot. 766. =Bluebird.= SIALIA SIALIS. Rare summer resident; west to base of Rockies. 767a. =Chestnut-backed bluebird.= SIALIA MEXICANA BAIRDI. Summer resident; not common; western form, coming east as far as Pueblo. 768. =Mountain bluebird.= SIALIA ARCTICA. Abundant summer resident; breeds from plains to timber-line; in autumn roams up to at least 13,000 feet. INDEX Aerial song, 50, 51, 86, 87, 239, 268-270, 286, 287, 299-301. Aiken, Charles E., xiii, 50, 63, 67, 118, 134, 136, 157, 161. Arvada, 193, 194, 278, 289, 301. Blackbird, Brewer's, 25, 98, 125, 126, 133, 139, 140, 141, 187, 215, 230, 259, 264, 266, 268, 271-274. red-winged, 98, 142, 215, 271. yellow-headed, 141, 142. Bluebird, mountain, 22, 55, 67, 99, 128, 192, 231, 237, 259. Bobolink, 286, 287, 289. Boulder, 162, 178, 184, 186, 206, 279, 282. Breckenridge, 259, 293, 294, 302. Buena Vista, 32, 38, 112, 127, 132-136, 139, 146, 162, 193, 267. Bunting, lark, 187, 285-292. lazuli (also called finch), 25, 121, 154-159, 178, 187, 290. Burro ride, 223-256. Butterflies, 177, 252, 253, 266. Canary, 127. Cañon, Arkansas River, 43, 117. Cheyenne, 109, 170. Clear Creek, 184, 187, 197. Eagle River, 117, 125. Engleman's, 40. Grand River, 44, 125. South Platte, 206, 259, 278-282, 293. Catbird, 31, 36, 121, 133, 189. Chat, yellow-breasted, 186. long-tailed, 186. Chatterers, 302. Cheyenne Mountain, 91. Chewink, 36. Chickadee, black-capped, 66, 67, 76, 119. mountain, 66, 67, 73, 76, 77, 119, 212, 231, 235, 254, 262. Colorado Springs, 38, 42, 50, 68, 83, 89, 90, 117, 121, 155, 157, 160, 177, 178, 183, 187, 193, 210, 279. Cooke, Wells W., 24, 51, 67, 76, 134, 184, 261. Coot, American, 145, 146. Cottonwood Lake, 112, 146, 162. Coues, Dr. Elliott, 24, 76, 302, 303. Cowbird, 271. Coyote, 99, 100. Crane, 146. Crossbill, Mexican, 262, 263. Crow, 25. Denver, 26, 159, 177, 178, 179, 181, 183, 187, 193, 241, 263, 282, 289, 292. Dickcissel, 36. Dipper (_see_ water-ousel), 163-174, 209, 210. Dove, turtle, 43, 44, 97, 122, 126, 129, 186. Ducks, 72, 143, 146. ruddy, 143-145. East and West, birds of, compared, 19, 21, 23-27, 31-40, 43, 44, 54, 55, 62, 67, 69, 76, 90-95, 106, 119, 121, 125, 129-131, 133-136, 149-159, 186, 191-193, 198, 205, 215, 266, 270, 272, 286, 287. Flicker, red-shafted, 25, 55, 73, 119, 126, 213, 231, 254, 262, 298. yellow-shafted, 25, 55. Flycatchers, 25, 151. Arkansas, 95-97, 99. crested, 95. least, 214. olive-sided, 73, 261. western, 209, 215, 218. Georgetown, 193, 197-219, 224, 238. Glenwood, 38, 40, 109, 120-125, 129, 158, 183, 271. Golden, 162, 184, 193, 296, 298. Goldfinch, American, 33, 121, 202, 203, 290. Arkansas, 32, 33, 121, 133, 290. Grackle, bronzed, 25, 140, 271, 272. purple, 25, 140. Grassfinch, eastern, 99, 129. western, 92, 99, 121, 129, 186, 192. Graymont, 183, 230, 232. Gray's Peak, 26, 178, 190, 193, 206, 224-256, 260, 261, 262, 270, 298. ascent of, 241-243. summit, 243-251. Green Lake, 208-214. Grosbeak, 25, 298, 299. black-headed, 39, 290. cardinal, 39, 127. rose-breasted, 39. western blue, 39, 157. Halfway House, 47, 74, 75, 76. Harrier, marsh, 99. Herbert, George, 59. Hawk, pigeon, 214. House-finch, 119, 127, 133, 181-183, 217. Humming-bird, 25. broad-tailed, 73, 103-109, 112-114, 200, 209, 213, 217, 230, 260. ruby-throated, 106. rufous, 113. Indigo-bird, 25, 154, 155, 178. Jack-rabbit, 99. Jay, blue, 24, 25, 26, 27, 149, 151, 153. long-crested, 25, 119, 133, 149-151, 154, 189, 230, 260, 279-281. mountain, 71, 119, 151-154, 205, 210, 233, 234, 261. Woodhouse's, 154. Junco, slate-colored, 75. gray-headed, 67, 74, 75, 119, 209, 212, 231, 235, 254, 255, 259, 261. Kelso, Mount, 232, 233, 238, 253, 254, 262. Killdeer, 205, 270. Kingbird, 97. Kingfisher, 119, 282. Kinglet, ruby-crowned, 64-66, 72, 119, 211, 216, 235, 254, 261. Lark, desert horned, 49, 84-89, 186, 264, 268-270. horned, 85. pallid horned, 86. prairie horned, 86. Leadville, 38, 126, 127, 183, 202, 271. Leucosticte, brown-capped, 22, 27, 59, 60, 125, 240, 241, 244, 248, 251, 252, 254, 262. Lowell, James Russell, 59, 289. Magpie, 25, 40-43, 72, 119, 122, 133, 188, 270. Manitou, 31, 32, 36, 38, 47, 75, 76, 79, 140, 178. Martin, purple, 90. Meadow-lark, eastern, 26, 90-95. western, 22, 26, 90-95, 133, 160, 186, 187, 192, 264, 267, 290. Merriam, Dr. C. Hart, 113. Migration, 19-23, 51, 52, 63, 65, 66, 124, 277, 278. Mocking-bird, 98, 301, 302. Moraine Lake, 61, 66-73, 146. Muir, John, 172, 173. Nighthawk, eastern, 191. western, 24, 119, 129, 190, 191, 262. Nutcracker (also crow) Clark's, 25, 67, 71, 72, 119, 122. Nuthatch, pygmy, 119, 174, 279. white-breasted, 119. Ohio, 21, 65, 141, 215. Oriole, 25. Baltimore, 33-35. Bullock's 33-35, 97, 121, 192, 290. orchard, 34. Owl, burrowing, 178-180. Phoebe, 125. Say's, 125, 131, 270, 271. Pike's Peak, 21, 26, 31, 38, 66, 71, 73, 83, 103, 104, 110, 129, 134, 146, 152, 159, 224, 239, 250, 252, 262, 281. ascent of, 47, 56-58. descent of, 49-56, 58-79. summit, 47-49, 58, 59, 60. Pipit, American, 27, 49-52, 125, 239, 244, 254, 262. Ptarmigan, white-tailed, 60, 248. Pueblo, 117, 183. Raven, 25, 53, 125. Red Cliff, 38, 40, 109, 117, 120, 183. Redstart, 184. Rexford, Eben E., 192. Ridgway, Robert, 24, 94, 136, 285, 303. Roberts, Charles G. D., 69. Robin, eastern, 32, 73, 95, 127, 205, 206. western, 22, 24, 31, 32, 55, 68, 70, 72, 73, 106, 121, 127, 129, 151, 192, 199, 200, 205-207, 210, 216, 231, 253, 270, 290. Royal Gorge, 43, 117, 122. Sandpiper, spotted, 51, 73, 163, 204, 271. Sapsucker, red-naped, 211, 212. Williamson's, 75-79, 160, 161. Seton, Ernest Thompson, 194, 229, 272. Seven Lakes, 55, 61, 70, 71, 72, 104, 146. Shrike, white-rumped, 98. Silver Plume, 183, 207, 216, 224, 226. Siskin, pine, 128, 200, 202, 203, 210, 216, 231, 261. Skylark, European, 87. Solitaire, Townsend's, 261, 270, 290, 298-303. South Park, 131, 206, 250, 259, 263-278. Sparrow, 25. Brewer's, 186. chipping, western, 24, 130, 215, 216, 259. clay-colored, 128, 203. English, 127, 181-183. lark, western, 24, 192. Lincoln's, 70, 71, 73, 99, 106, 134, 187, 200, 278. mountain song, 126, 133-135, 193, 278, 290. savanna, western, 264, 266, 267, 274-276. song, 92, 126, 133-135, 193, 288. white-crowned, 21, 22, 52-55, 60, 61, 68, 72-74, 103, 126, 129, 200, 204, 213, 214, 231, 238, 239, 244, 253, 255, 256, 259, 261, 281, 282. Swallows, 131. barn, 279. cliff, 99, 118, 213, 263, 266. violet-green, 207, 208, 259, 279. Tabb, John B., 192. Tanager, 25, 151. Louisiana, 39, 40, 119, 279. scarlet, 39, 40. summer, 39. Thompson, Maurice, 35. Thrasher, brown, 37, 302. Thrush, 37, 302. hermit, 69. mountain hermit, 38, 68-70, 72, 73, 204, 210, 212, 215, 218, 219, 231, 235, 236, 262. veery, 135, 136. willow, 135, 136, 200, 230. wood, 69. Tillie Ann, Mount, 260-262. Torrey's Peak, 232, 237, 239, 241, 244, 245, 250, 256. Towhee, 36, 37. green-tailed, 37-39, 62, 72, 98, 126, 130, 133, 185, 191, 200, 203, 204, 210, 218, 259, 278, 292-295. spurred, 36, 37, 185, 189, 191, 200, 204, 290. Vireo, 151. warbling, 31, 73, 118, 198, 199, 209, 215, 218, 230, 262. Warbler, Audubon's, 62-64, 68, 70, 126, 159, 200, 204, 208, 215, 216, 231, 235, 237, 238, 259. Macgillivray's, 200, 205, 209. mountain, 157. myrtle, 62, 159. pileolated, 63. summer, 31, 119, 133, 157, 158, 192, 290. Wilson's, 63, 64, 70, 72, 126, 200, 204, 213, 214, 231, 238, 244. Water-ousel (_see_ dipper), 163-174, 185, 209, 210. Woodpeckers, 24, 75, 160, 211, 262. Batchelder's, 67, 72. downy, 67. Lewis's, 160-162, 190. red-headed, 162. Wood-pewee, eastern, 32. western, 32, 119, 121, 132, 192, 261. Wren, Bewick's, 297. Carolina, 64, 297. rock, 185, 186, 189, 191, 296-298. western house, 73, 106, 117, 118, 217, 230, 278, 279. Yellow-throat, western, 193, 290. PRINTED FOR A. C. McCLURG & CO. BY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, JOHN WILSON & SON (INC.) CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. * * * * * Transcriber's note: Page 140 The illustration entitled "Brewer's Blackbirds" appears to be one of Yellow-headed Blackbirds. Unchanged. Page 333 000. =English sparrow.= PASSER DOMESTICUS. This item falls between item 533 and 534. Unchanged from original. 
20104	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustration. See 20104-h.htm or 20104-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/0/1/0/20104/20104-h/20104-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/0/1/0/20104/20104-h.zip) THE CROSS-CUT by COURTNEY RYLEY COOPER With Frontispiece by George W. Gage [Frontispiece: Carbide pointing the way, he turned back, pushing the tram before him.] Boston Little, Brown, and Company 1921 Copyright, 1921, by Little, Brown, and Company. All rights reserved Published May, 1921 TO G. F. C. I'VE THREATENED YOU WITH A DEDICATION FOR A LONG TIME AND HERE IT IS! THE CROSS-CUT CHAPTER I It was over. The rambling house, with its rickety, old-fashioned furniture--and its memories--was now deserted, except for Robert Fairchild, and he was deserted within it, wandering from room to room, staring at familiar objects with the unfamiliar gaze of one whose vision suddenly has been warned by the visitation of death and the sense of loneliness that it brings. Loneliness, rather than grief, for it had been Robert Fairchild's promise that he would not suffer in heart for one who had longed to go into a peace for which he had waited, seemingly in vain. Year after year, Thornton Fairchild had sat in the big armchair by the windows, watching the days grow old and fade into night, studying sunset after sunset, voicing the vain hope that the gloaming might bring the twilight of his own existence,--a silent man except for this, rarely speaking of the past, never giving to the son who worked for him, cared for him, worshiped him, the slightest inkling of what might have happened in the dim days of the long ago to transform him into a beaten thing, longing for the final surcease. And when the end came, it found him in readiness, waiting in the big armchair by the windows. Even now, a book lay on the frayed carpeting of the old room, where it had fallen from relaxing fingers. Robert Fairchild picked it up, and with a sigh restored it to the grim, fumed oak case. His days of petty sacrifices that his father might while away the weary hours with reading were over. Memories! They were all about him, in the grate with its blackened coals, the old-fashioned pictures on the walls, the almost gloomy rooms, the big chair by the window, and yet they told him nothing except that a white-haired, patient, lovable old man was gone,--a man whom he was wont to call "father." And in that going, the slow procedure of an unnatural existence had snapped for Robert Fairchild. As he roamed about in his loneliness, he wondered what he would do now, where he could go; to whom he could talk. He had worked since sixteen, and since sixteen there had been few times when he had not come home regularly each night, to wait upon the white-haired man in the big chair, to discern his wants instinctively, and to sit with him, often in silence, until the old onyx clock on the mantel had clanged eleven; it had been the same program, day, week, month and year. And now Robert Fairchild was as a person lost. The ordinary pleasures of youth had never been his; he could not turn to them with any sort of grace. The years of servitude to a beloved master had inculcated within him the feeling of self-impelled sacrifice; he had forgotten all thought of personal pleasures for their sake alone. The big chair by the window was vacant, and it created a void which Robert Fairchild could neither combat nor overcome. What had been the past? Why the silence? Why the patient, yet impatient wait for death? The son did not know. In all his memories was only one faint picture, painted years before in babyhood: the return of his father from some place, he knew not where, a long conference with his mother behind closed doors, while he, in childlike curiosity, waited without, seeking in vain to catch some explanation. Then a sad-faced woman who cried at night when the house was still, who faded and who died. That was all. The picture carried no explanation. And now Robert Fairchild stood on the threshold of something he almost feared to learn. Once, on a black, stormy night, they had sat together, father and son before the fire, silent for hours. Then the hand of the white-haired man had reached outward and rested for a moment on the young man's knee. "I wrote something to you, Boy, a day or so ago," he had said. "That little illness I had prompted me to do it. I--I thought it was only fair to you. After I 'm gone, look in the safe. You 'll find the combination on a piece of paper hidden in a hole cut in that old European history in the bookcase. I have your promise, I know--that you 'll not do it until after I 'm gone." Now Thornton Fairchild was gone. But a message had remained behind; one which the patient lips evidently had feared to utter during life. The heart of the son began to pound, slow and hard, as, with the memory of that conversation, he turned toward the bookcase and unlatched the paneled door. A moment more and the hollowed history had given up its trust, a bit of paper scratched with numbers. Robert Fairchild turned toward the stairs and the small room on the second floor which had served as his father's bedroom. There he hesitated before the little iron safe in the corner, summoning the courage to unlock the doors of a dead man's past. At last he forced himself to his knees and to the numerals of the combination. The safe had not been opened in years; that was evident from the creaking of the plungers as they fell, the gummy resistance of the knob as Fairchild turned it in accordance with the directions on the paper. Finally, a great wrench, and the bolt was drawn grudgingly back; a strong pull, and the safe opened. A few old books; ledgers in sheepskin binding. Fairchild disregarded these for the more important things that might lie behind the little inner door of the cabinet. His hand went forward, and he noticed, in a hazy sort of way, that it was trembling. The door was unlocked; he drew it open and crouched a moment, staring, before he reached for the thinner of two envelopes which lay before him. A moment later he straightened and turned toward the light. A crinkling of paper, a quick-drawn sigh between clenched teeth; it was a letter; his strange, quiet, hunted-appearing father was talking to him through the medium of ink and paper, after death. Closely written, hurriedly, as though to finish an irksome task in as short a space as possible, the missive was one of several pages,--pages which Robert Fairchild hesitated to read. The secret--and he knew full well that there was a secret--had been in the atmosphere about him ever since he could remember. Whether or not this was the solution of it, Robert Fairchild did not know, and the natural reticence with which he had always approached anything regarding his father's life gave him an instinctive fear, a sense of cringing retreat from anything that might now open the doors of mystery. But it was before him, waiting in his father's writing, and at last his gaze centered; he read: My son: Before I begin this letter to you I must ask that you take no action whatever until you have seen my attorney--he will be yours from now on. I have never mentioned him to you before; it was not necessary and would only have brought you curiosity which I could not have satisfied. But now, I am afraid, the doors must be unlocked. I am gone. You are young, you have been a faithful son and you are deserving of every good fortune that may possibly come to you. I am praying that the years have made a difference, and that Fortune may smile upon you as she frowned on me. Certainly, she can injure me no longer. My race is run; I am beyond earthly fortunes. Therefore, when you have finished with this, take the deeds inclosed in the larger envelope and go to St. Louis. There, look up Henry F. Beamish, attorney-at-law, in the Princess Building. He will explain them to you. Beyond this, I fear, there is little that can aid you. I cannot find the strength, now that I face it, to tell you what you may find if you follow the lure that the other envelope holds forth to you. There is always the hope that Fortune may be kind to me at last, and smile upon my memory by never letting you know why I have been the sort of man you have known, and not the jovial, genial companion that a father should be. But there are certain things, my son, which defeat a man. It killed your mother--every day since her death I have been haunted by that fact; my prayer is that it may not kill you, spiritually, if not physically. Therefore is it not better that it remain behind a cloud until such time as Fortune may reveal it--and hope that such a time will never come? I think so--not for myself, for when you read this, I shall be gone; but for you, that you may not be handicapped by the knowledge of the thing which whitened my hair and aged me, long before my time. If he lives, and I am sure he does, there is one who will hurry to your aid as soon as he knows you need him. Accept his counsels, laugh at his little eccentricities if you will, but follow his judgment implicitly. Above all, ask him no questions that he does not care to answer--there are things that he may not deem wise to tell. It is only fair that he be given the right to choose his disclosures. There is little more to say. Beamish will attend to everything for you--if you care to go. Sell everything that is here; the house, the furniture, the belongings. It is my wish, and you will need the capital--if you go. The ledgers in the safe are only old accounts which would be so much Chinese to you now. Burn them. There is nothing else to be afraid of--I hope you will never find anything to fear. And if circumstances should arise to bring before you the story of that which has caused me so much darkness, I have nothing to say in self-extenuation. I made one mistake--that of fear--and in committing one error, I shouldered every blame. It makes little difference now. I am dead--and free. My love to you, my son. I hope that wealth and happiness await you. Blood of my blood flows in your veins--and strange though it may sound to you--it is the blood of an adventurer. I can almost see you smile at that! An old man who sat by the window, staring out; afraid of every knock at the door--and yet an adventurer! But they say, once in the blood, it never dies. My wish is that you succeed where I failed--and God be with you! Your father. For a long moment Robert Fairchild stood staring at the letter, his heart pounding with excitement, his hands grasping the foolscap paper as though with a desire to tear through the shield which the written words had formed about a mysterious past and disclose that which was so effectively hidden. So much had the letter told--and yet so little! Dark had been the hints of some mysterious, intangible thing, great enough in its horror and its far-reaching consequences to cause death for one who had known of it and a living panic for him who had perpetrated it. As for the man who stood now with the letter clenched before him, there was promise of wealth, and the threat of sorrow, the hope of happiness, yet the foreboding omen of discoveries which might ruin the life of the reader as the existence of the writer had been blasted,--until death had brought relief. Of all this had the letter told, but when Robert Fairchild read it again in the hope of something tangible, something that might give even a clue to the reason for it all, there was nothing. In that super-calmness which accompanies great agitation, Fairchild folded the paper, placed it in its envelope, then slipped it into an inside pocket. A few steps and he was before the safe once more and reaching for the second envelope. Heavy and bulky was this, filled with tax receipts, with plats and blueprints and the reports of surveyors. Here was an assay slip, bearing figures and notations which Robert Fairchild could not understand. Here a receipt for money received, here a vari-colored map with lines and figures and conglomerate designs which Fairchild believed must relate in some manner to the location of a mining camp; all were aged and worn at the edges, giving evidence of having been carried, at some far time of the past, in a wallet. More receipts, more blueprints, then a legal document, sealed and stamped, and bearing the words: County of Clear Creek, ) ss. State of Colorado. ) DEED PATENT. KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS: That on this day of our Lord, February 22, 1892, Thornton W. Fairchild, having presented the necessary affidavits and statements of assessments accomplished in accordance with-- On it trailed in endless legal phraseology, telling in muddled, attorney-like language, the fact that the law had been fulfilled in its requirements, and that the claim for which Thornton Fairchild had worked was rightfully his, forever. A longer statement full of figures, of diagrams and surveyor's calculations which Fairchild could neither decipher nor understand, gave the location, the town site and the property included within the granted rights. It was something for an attorney, such as Beamish, to interpret, and Fairchild reached for the age-yellowed envelope to return the papers to their resting place. But he checked his motion involuntarily and for a moment held the envelope before him, staring at it with wide eyes. Then, as though to free by the stronger light of the window the haunting thing which faced him, he rose and hurried across the room, to better light, only to find it had not been imagination; the words still were before him, a sentence written in faint, faded ink proclaiming the contents to be "Papers relating to the Blue Poppy Mine", and written across this a word in the bolder, harsher strokes of a man under stress of emotion, a word which held the eyes of Robert Fairchild fixed and staring, a word which spelled books of the past and evil threats of the future, the single, ominous word: "Accursed!" CHAPTER II One works quickly when prodded by the pique of curiosity. And in spite of all that omens could foretell, in spite of the dull, gloomy life which had done its best to fashion a matter-of-fact brain for Robert Fairchild, one sentence in that letter had found an echo, had started a pulsating something within him that he never before had known: "--It is the blood of an adventurer." And it seemed that Robert Fairchild needed no more than the knowledge to feel the tingle of it; the old house suddenly became stuffy and prison-like as he wandered through it. Within his pocket were two envelopes filled with threats of the future, defying him to advance and fight it out,--whatever _it_ might be. Again and again pounded through his head the fact that only a night of travel intervened between Indianapolis and St. Louis; within twelve hours he could be in the office of Henry Beamish. And then-- A hurried resolution. A hasty packing of a traveling bag and the cashing of a check at the cigar store down on the corner. A wakeful night while the train clattered along upon its journey. Then morning and walking of streets until office hours. At last: "I 'm Robert Fairchild," he said, as he faced a white-haired, Cupid-faced man in the rather dingy offices of the Princess Building. A slow smile spread over the pudgy features of the genial appearing attorney, and he waved a fat hand toward the office's extra chair. "Sit down, Son," came casually. "Need n't have announced yourself. I 'd have known you--just like your father, Boy. How is he?" Then his face suddenly sobered. "I 'm afraid your presence is the answer. Am I right?" Fairchild nodded gravely. The old attorney slowly placed his fat hands together, peaking the fingers, and stared out of the window to the grimy roof and signboards of the next building. "Perhaps it's better so," he said at last. "We had n't seen each other in ten years--not since I went up to Indianapolis to have my last talk with him. Did he get any cheerier before--he went?" "No." "Just the same, huh? Always waiting?" "Afraid of every step on the veranda, of every knock at the door." Again the attorney stared out of the window. "And you?" "I?" Fairchild leaned forward in his chair. "I don't understand." "Are you afraid?" "Of what?" The lawyer smiled. "I don't know. Only--" and he leaned forward--"it's just as though I were living my younger days over this morning. It doesn't seem any time at all since your father was sitting just about where you are now, and gad, Boy, how much you look like he looked that morning! The same gray-blue, earnest eyes, the same dark hair, the same strong shoulders, and good, manly chin, the same build--and look of determination about him. The call of adventure was in his blood, and he sat there all enthusiastic, telling me what he intended doing and asking my advice--although he would n't have followed it if I had given it. Back home was a baby and the woman he loved, and out West was sudden wealth, waiting for the right man to come along and find it. Gad!" White-haired old Beamish chuckled with the memory of it. "He almost made me throw over the law business that morning and go out adventuring with him! Then four years later," the tone changed suddenly, "he came back." "What then?" Fairchild was on the edge of his chair. But Beamish only spread his hands. "Truthfully, Boy, I don't know. I have guessed--but I won't tell you what. All I know is that your father found what he was looking for and was on the point of achieving his every dream, when something happened. Then three men simply disappeared from the mining camp, announcing that they had failed and were going to hunt new diggings. That was all. One of them was your father--" "But you said that he 'd found--" "Silver, running twenty ounces to the ton on an eight-inch vein which gave evidences of being only the beginning of a bonanza! I know, because he had written me that, a month before." "And he abandoned it?" "He 'd forgotten what he had written when I saw him again. I did n't question him. I did n't want to--his face told me enough to guess that I would n't learn. He went home then, after giving me enough money to pay the taxes on the mine for the next twenty years, simply as his attorney and without divulging his whereabouts. I did it. Eight years or so later, I saw him in Indianapolis. He gave me more money--enough for eleven or twelve years--" "And that was ten years ago?" Robert Fairchild's eyes were reminiscent. "I remember--I was only a kid. He sold off everything he had, except the house." Henry Beamish walked to his safe and fumbled there a moment, to return at last with a few slips of paper. "Here 's the answer," he said quietly, "the taxes are paid until 1922." Robert Fairchild studied the receipts carefully--futilely. They told him nothing. The lawyer stood looking down upon him; at last he laid a hand on his shoulder. "Boy," came quietly, "I know just about what you 're thinking. I 've spent a few hours at the same kind of a job myself, and I 've called old Henry Beamish more kinds of a fool than you can think of for not coming right out flat-footed and making Thornton tell me the whole story. But some way, when I 'd look into those eyes with the fire all dead and ashen within them, and see the lines of an old man in his young face, I--well, I guess I 'm too soft-hearted to make folks suffer. I just couldn't do it!" "So you can tell me nothing?" "I 'm afraid that's true--in one way. In another I 'm a fund of information. To-night you and I will go to Indianapolis and probate the will--it's simple enough; I 've had it in my safe for ten years. After that, you become the owner of the Blue Poppy mine, to do with as you choose." "But--" The old lawyer chuckled. "Don't ask my advice, Boy. I have n't any. Your father told me what to do if you decided to try your luck--and silver 's at $1.29. It means a lot of money for anybody who can produce pay ore--unless what he said about the mine pinching out was true." Again the thrill of a new thing went through Robert Fairchild's veins, something he never had felt until twelve hours before; again the urge for strange places, new scenes, the fire of the hunt after the hidden wealth of silver-seamed hills. Somewhere it lay awaiting him; nor did he even know in what form. Robert Fairchild's life had been a plodding thing of books and accounts, of high desks which as yet had failed to stoop his shoulders, of stuffy offices which had been thwarted so far in their grip at his lung power; the long walk in the morning and the tired trudge homeward at night to save petty carfare for a silent man's pettier luxuries had looked after that. But the recoil had not exerted itself against an office-cramped brain, a dusty ledger-filled life that suddenly felt itself crying out for the free, open country, without hardly knowing what the term meant. Old Beamish caught the light in the eyes, the quick contraction of the hands, and smiled. "You don't need to tell me, Son," he said slowly. "I can see the symptoms. You 've got the fever--You 're going to work that mine. Perhaps," and he shrugged his shoulders, "it's just as well. But there are certain things to remember." "Name them." "Ohadi is thirty-eight miles from Denver. That's your goal. Out there, they 'll tell you how the mine caved in, and how Thornton Fairchild, who had worked it, together with his two men, Harry Harkins, a Cornishman, and 'Sissie' Larsen, a Swede, left town late one night for Cripple Creek--and that they never came back. That's the story they 'll tell you. Agree with it. Tell them that Harkins, as far as you know, went back to Cornwall, and that you have heard vaguely that Larsen later followed the mining game farther out West." "Is it the truth?" "How do I know? It 's good enough--people should n't ask questions. Tell nothing more than that--and be careful of your friends. There is one man to watch--if he is still alive. They call him 'Squint' Rodaine, and he may or may not still be there. I don't know--I 'm only sure of the fact that your father hated him, fought him and feared him. The mine tunnel is two miles up Kentucky Gulch and one hundred yards to the right. A surveyor can lead you to the very spot. It's been abandoned now for thirty years. What you 'll find there is more than I can guess. But, Boy," and his hand clenched tight on Robert Fairchild's shoulder, "whatever you do, whatever you run into, whatever friends or enemies you find awaiting you, don't let that light die out of your eyes and don't pull in that chin! If you find a fight on your hands, whether it's man, beast or nature, sail into it! If you run into things that cut your very heart out to learn--beat 'em down and keep going! And win! There--that's all the advice I know. Meet me at the 11:10 train for Indianapolis. Good-by." "Good-by--I 'll be there." Fairchild grasped the pudgy hand and left the office. For a moment afterward, old Henry Beamish stood thinking and looking out over the dingy roof adjacent. Then, somewhat absently, he pressed the ancient electric button for his more ancient stenographer. "Call a messenger, please," he ordered when she entered, "I want to send a cablegram." CHAPTER III Two weeks later, Robert Fairchild sat in the smoking compartment of the Overland Limited, looking at the Rocky Mountains in the distance. In his pocket were a few hundred dollars; in the bank in Indianapolis a few thousand, representing the final proceeds of the sale of everything that had connected him with a rather dreary past. Out before him-- The train had left Limon Junction on its last, clattering, rushing leg of the journey across the plains, tearing on through a barren country of tumbleweed, of sagebrush, of prairie-dog villages and jagged arroyos toward the great, crumpled hills in the distance,--hills which meant everything to Robert Fairchild. Two weeks had created a metamorphosis in what had been a plodding, matter-of-fact man with dreams which did not extend beyond his ledgers and his gloomy home--but now a man leaning his head against the window of a rushing train, staring ahead toward the Rockies and the rainbow they held for him. Back to the place where his father had gone with dreams aglow was the son traveling now,--back into the rumpled mountains where the blue haze hung low and protecting as though over mysteries and treasures which awaited one man and one alone. Robert Fairchild momentarily had forgotten the foreboding omens which, like murky shadows, had been cast in his path by a beaten, will-broken father. He only knew that he was young, that he was strong, that he was free from the drudgery which had sought to claim him forever; he felt only the surge of excitement that can come with new surroundings, new country, new life. Out there before him, as the train rattled over culverts spanning the dry arroyos, or puffed gingerly up the grades toward the higher levels of the plains, were the hills, gray and brown in the foreground, blue as the blue sea farther on, then fringing into the sun-pinked radiance of the snowy range, forming the last barrier against a turquoise sky. It thrilled Fairchild, it caused his heart to tug and pull,--nor could he tell exactly why. Still eighty miles away, the range was sharply outlined to Fairchild, from the ragged hump of Pikes Peak far to the south, on up to where the gradual lowering of the mighty upheaval slid away into Wyoming. Eighty miles, yet they were clear with the clearness that only altitudinous country can bring; alluring, fascinating, beckoning to him until his being rebelled against the comparative slowness of the train, and the minutes passed in a dragging, long-drawn-out sequence that was almost an agony to Robert Fairchild. Hours! The hills came closer. Still closer; then, when it seemed that the train must plunge straight into them, they drew away again, as though through some optical illusion, and brooded in the background, as the long, transcontinental train began to bang over the frogs and switches as it made its entrance into Denver. Fairchild went through the long chute and to a ticket window of the Union Station. "When can I get a train for Ohadi?" The ticket seller smiled. "You can't get one." "But the map shows that a railroad runs there--" "Ran there, you mean," chaffed the clerk. "The best you can do is get to Forks Creek and walk the rest of the way. That's a narrow-gauge line, and Clear Creek 's been on a rampage. It took out about two hundred feet of trestle, and there won't be a train into Ohadi for a week." The disappointment on Fairchild's face was more than apparent, almost boyish in its depression. The ticket seller leaned closer to the wicket. "Stranger out here?" "Very much of one." "In a hurry to get to Ohadi?" "Yes." "Then you can go uptown and hire a taxi--they 've got big cars for mountain work and there are good roads all the way. It 'll cost fifteen or twenty dollars. Or--" Fairchild smiled. "Give me the other system if you 've got one. I 'm not terribly long on cash--for taxis." "Certainly. I was just going to tell you about it. No use spending that money if you 've got a little pep, and it is n't a matter of life or death. Go up to the Central Loop--anybody can direct you--and catch a street car for Golden. That eats up fifteen miles and leaves just twenty-three miles more. Then ask somebody to point out the road over Mount Lookout. Machines go along there every few minutes--no trouble at all to catch a ride. You 'll be in Ohadi in no time." Fairchild obeyed the instructions, and in the baggage room rechecked his trunk to follow him, lightening his traveling bag at the same time until it carried only necessities. A luncheon, then the street car. Three quarters of an hour later, he began the five-mile trudge up the broad, smooth, carefully groomed automobile highway which masters Mount Lookout. A rumbling sound behind him, then as he stepped to one side, a grimy truck driver leaned out to shout as he passed: "Want a lift? Hop on! Can't stop--too much grade." A running leap, and Fairchild seated himself on the tailboard of the truck, swinging his legs and looking out over the fading plains as the truck roared and clattered upward along the twisting mountain road. Higher, higher, while the truck labored along the grade, and while the buildings in Golden below shrank smaller and smaller. The reservoir lake in the center of the town, a broad expanse of water only a short time before, began to take on the appearance of some great, blue-white diamond glistening in the sun. Gradually a stream outlined itself in living topography upon a map which seemed as large as the world itself. Denver, fifteen miles away, came into view, its streets showing like seams in a well-sewn garment, the sun, even at this distance, striking a sheen from the golden dome of the capitol building. Higher! The chortling truck gasped at the curves and tugged on the straightaway, but Robert Fairchild had ceased to hear. His every attention was centered on the tremendous stage unfolded before him, the vast stretches of the plains rolling away beneath, even into Kansas and Wyoming and Nebraska, hundreds of miles away, plains where once the buffalo had roamed in great, shaggy herds, where once the emigrant trains had made their slow, rocking progress into a Land of Heart's Desire; and he began to understand something of the vastness of life, the great scope of ambition; new things to a man whose world, until two weeks before, had been the four chalky walls of an office. Cool breezes from pine-fringed gulches brushed his cheek and smoothed away the burning touch of a glaring sun; the truck turned into the hairpin curves of the steep ascent, giving him a glimpse of deep valleys, green from the touch of flowing streams, of great clefts with their vari-hued splotches of granite, and on beyond, mound after mound of pine-clothed hills, fringing the peaks of eternal snow, far away. The blood suddenly grew hot in Fairchild's veins; he whistled, he repressed a wild, spasmodic desire to shout. The spirit that had been the spirit of the determined men of the emigrant trains was his now; he remembered that he was traveling slowly toward a fight--against whom, or what, he knew not--but he welcomed it just the same. The exaltation of rarefied atmosphere was in his brain; dingy offices were gone forever. He was free; and for the first time in his life, he appreciated the meaning of the word. Upward, still upward! The town below became merely a checkerboard thing, the lake a dot of gleaming silver, the stream a scintillating ribbon stretching off into the foothills. A turn, and they skirted a tremendous valley, its slopes falling away in sheer descents from the roadway. A darkened, moist stretch of road, fringed by pines, then a jogging journey over rolling table-land. At last came a voice from the driver's seat, and Fairchild turned like a man suddenly awakened. "Turn off up here at Genesee Mountain. Which way do you go?" "Trying to get to Ohadi." Fairchild shouted it above the roar of the engine. The driver waved a hand forward. "Keep to the main road. Drop off when I make the turn. You 'll pick up another ride soon. Plenty of chances." "Thanks for the lift." "Aw, forget it." The truck wheeled from the main road and chugged away, leaving Fairchild afoot, making as much progress as possible toward his goal until good fortune should bring a swifter means of locomotion. A half-mile he walked, studying the constant changes of the scenery before him, the slopes and rises, the smooth valleys and jagged crags above, the clouds as they drifted low upon the higher peaks, shielding them from view for a moment, then disappearing. Then suddenly he wheeled. Behind him sounded the swift droning of a motor, cut-out open, as it rushed forward along the road,--and the noise told a story of speed. Far at the brow of a steep hill it appeared, seeming to hang in space for an instant before leaping downward. Rushing, plunging, once skidding dangerously at a small curve, it made the descent, bumped over a bridge, was lost for a second in the pines, then sped toward him, a big touring car, with a small, resolute figure clinging to the wheel. The quarter of a mile changed to a furlong, the furlong to a hundred yards,--then, with a report like a revolver shot, the machine suddenly slewed in drunken fashion far to one side of the road, hung dangerously over the steep cliff an instant, righted itself, swayed forward and stopped, barely twenty-five yards away. Staring, Robert Fairchild saw that a small, trim figure had leaped forth and was waving excitedly to him, and he ran forward. His first glance had proclaimed it a boy; the second had told a different story. A girl--dressed in far different fashion from Robert Fairchild's limited specifications of feminine garb--she caused him to gasp in surprise, then to stop and stare. Again she waved a hand and stamped a foot excitedly; a vehement little thing in a snug, whipcord riding habit and a checkered cap pulled tight over closely braided hair, she awaited him with all the impatience of impetuous womanhood. "For goodness' sake, come here!" she called, as he still stood gaping. "I 'll give you five dollars. Hurry!" Fairchild managed to voice the fact that he would be willing to help without remuneration, as he hurried forward, still staring at her, a vibrant little thing with dark-brown wisps of hair which had been blown from beneath her cap straying about equally dark-brown, snapping eyes and caressing the corners of tightly pressed, momentarily impatient lips. Only a second she hesitated, then dived for the tonneau, jerking with all her strength at the heavy seat cushion, as he stepped to the running board beside her. "Can't get this dinged thing up!" she panted. "Always sticks when you 're in a hurry. That's it! Jerk it. Thanks! Here!" She reached forward and a small, sun-tanned hand grasped a greasy jack, "Slide under the back axle and put this jack in place, will you? And rush it! I 've got to change a tire in nothing flat! Hurry!" Fairchild, almost before he knew it, found himself under the rear of the car, fussing with a refractory lifting jack and trying to keep his eyes from the view of trimly clad, brown-shod little feet, as they pattered about at the side of the car, hurried to the running board, then stopped as wrenches and a hammer clattered to the ground. Then one shoe was raised, to press tight against a wheel; metal touched metal, a feminine gasp sounded as strength was exerted in vain, then eddying dust as the foot stamped, accompanied by an exasperated ejaculation. "Ding these old lugs! They 're rusted! Got that jack in place yet?" "Yes! I'm raising the car now." "Oh, please hurry." There was pleading in the tone now. "Please!" The car creaked upward. Out came Fairchild, brushing the dust from his clothes. But already the girl was pressing the lug wrench into his hands. "Don't mind that dirt," came her exclamation. "I 'll--I 'll give you some extra money to get your suit cleaned. Loosen those lugs, while I get the spare tire off the back. And for goodness' sake, please hurry!" Astonishment had taken away speech for Fairchild. He could only wonder--and obey. Swiftly he twirled the wrench while lug after lug fell to the ground, and while the girl, struggling with a tire seemingly almost as big as herself, trundled the spare into position to await the transfer. As for Fairchild, he was in the midst of a task which he had seen performed far more times than he had done it himself. He strove to remove the blown-out shoe with the cap still screwed on the valve stem; he fussed and swore under his breath, and panted, while behind him a girl in whipcord riding habit and close-pulled cap fidgeted first on one tan-clad foot, then on the other, anxiously watching the road behind her and calling constantly for speed. At last the job was finished, the girl fastening the useless shoe behind the machine while Fairchild tightened the last of the lugs. Then as he straightened, a small figure shot to his side, took the wrench from his hand and sent it, with the other tools, clattering into the tonneau. A tiny hand went into a pocket, something that crinkled was shoved into the man's grasp, and while he stood there gasping, she leaped to the driver's seat, slammed the door, spun the starter until it whined, and with open cutout roaring again, was off and away, rocking down the mountain side, around a curve and out of sight--while Fairchild merely stood there, staring wonderingly at a ten-dollar bill! A noise from the rear, growing louder, and the amazed man turned to see a second machine, filled with men, careening toward him. Fifty feet away the brakes creaked, and the big automobile came to a skidding, dust-throwing stop. A sun-browned man in a Stetson hat, metal badge gleaming from beneath his coat, leaned forth. "Which way did he go?" "He?" Robert Fairchild stared. "Yeh. Did n't a man just pass here in an automobile? Where'd he go--straight on the main road or off on the circuit trail?" "It--it was n't a man." "Not a man?" The four occupants of the machine stared at him. "Don't try to bull us that it was a woman." "Oh, no--no--of course not." Fairchild had found his senses. "But it was n't a man. It--it was a boy, just about fifteen years old." "Sure?" "Oh, yes--" Fairchild was swimming in deep water now. "I got a good look at him. He--he took that road off to the left." It was the opposite one to which the hurrying fugitive in whipcord had taken. There was doubt in the interrogator's eyes. "Sure of that?" he queried. "I 'm the sheriff of Arapahoe County. That's an auto bandit ahead of us. We--" "Well, I would n't swear to it. There was another machine ahead, and I lost 'em both for a second down there by the turn. I did n't see the other again, but I did get a glimpse of one off on that side road. It looked like the car that passed me. That's all I know." "Probably him, all right." The voice came from the tonneau. "Maybe he figured to give us the slip and get back to Denver. You did n't notice the license number?" This to Fairchild. That bewildered person shook his head. "No. Did n't you?" "Could n't--covered with dust when we first took the trail and never got close enough afterward. But it was the same car--that's almost a cinch." "Let's go!" The sheriff was pressing a foot on the accelerator. Down the hill went the car, to skid, then to make a short turn on to the road which led away from the scent, leaving behind a man standing in the middle of the road, staring at a ten-dollar bill,--and wondering why he had lied! CHAPTER IV Wonderment which got nowhere. The sheriff's car returned before Fairchild reached the bottom of the grade, and again stopped to survey the scene of defeat, while Fairchild once more told his story, deleting items which, to him, appeared unnecessary for consumption by officers of the law. Carefully the sheriff surveyed the winding road before him and scratched his head. "Don't guess it would have made much difference which way he went," came ruefully at last, "I never saw a fellow turn loose with so much speed on a mountain road. We never could have caught him!" "Dangerous character?" Fairchild hardly knew why he asked the question. The sheriff smiled grimly. "If it was the fellow we were after, he was plenty dangerous. We were trailing him on word from Denver--described the car and said he 'd pulled a daylight hold-up on a pay-wagon for the Smelter Company--so when the car went through Golden, we took up the trail a couple of blocks behind. He kept the same speed for a little while until one of my deputies got a little anxious and took a shot at a tire. Man, how he turned on the juice! I thought that thing was a jack rabbit the way it went up the hill! We never had a chance after that!" "And you 're sure it was the same person?" The sheriff toyed with the gear shift. "You never can be sure about nothing in this business," came finally. "But there 's this to think about: if that fellow was n't guilty of something, why did he run?" "It might have been a kid in a stolen machine," came from the back seat. "If it was, we 've got to wait until we get a report on it. I guess it's us back to the office." The automobile went its way then, and Fairchild his, still wondering; the sheriff's question, with a different gender, recurring again and again: "If she was n't guilty of something, why did she run?" And why had she? More, why had she been willing to give ten dollars in payment for the mere changing of a tire? And why had she not offered some explanation of it all? It was a problem which almost wiped out for Robert Fairchild the zest of the new life into which he was going, the great gamble he was about to take. And so thoroughly did it engross him that it was not until a truck had come to a full stop behind him, and a driver mingled a shout with the tooting of his horn, that he turned to allow its passage. "Did n't hear you, old man," he apologized. "Could you give a fellow a lift?" "Guess so." It was friendly, even though a bit disgruntled; "hop on." And Fairchild hopped, once more to sit on the tailboard, swinging his legs, but this time his eyes saw the ever-changing scenery without noticing it. In spite of himself, Fairchild found himself constantly staring at a vision of a pretty girl in a riding habit, with dark-brown hair straying about equally dark-brown eyes, almost frenzied in her efforts to change a tire in time to elude a pursuing sheriff. Some way, it all did n't blend. Pretty girls, no doubt, could commit infractions of the law just as easily as ones less gifted with good looks. Yet if this particular pretty girl had held up a pay wagon, why did n't the telephoned notice from Denver state the fact, instead of referring to her as a man? And if she had n't committed some sort of depredation against the law, why on earth was she willing to part with ten dollars, merely to save a few moments in changing a tire and thus elude a sheriff? If there had been nothing wrong, could not a moment of explanation have satisfied any one of the fact? Anyway, were n't the officers looking for a man instead of for a woman? And yet: "If she was n't guilty of something, why did she run?" It was too much for any one, and Fairchild knew it. Yet he clung grimly to the mystery as the truck clattered on, mile after mile, while the broad road led along the sides of the hills, finally to dip downward and run beside the bubbling Clear Creek,--clear no longer in the memory of the oldest inhabitant; but soiled by the silica from ore deposits that, churned and rechurned, gave to the stream a whitish, almost milk-like character, as it twisted in and out of the tortuous cañon on its turbulent journey to the sea. But Fairchild failed to notice either that or the fact that ancient, age-whitened water wheels had begun to appear here and there, where gulch miners, seekers after gold in the silt of the creek's bed, had abandoned them years before; that now and then upon the hills showed the gaunt scars of mine openings,--reminders of dreams of a day long past; or even the more important fact that in the distance, softened by the mellowing rays of a dying sun, a small town gradually was coming into view. A mile more, then the truck stopped with a jerk. "Where you bound for, pardner?" Fairchild turned absently, then grinned in embarrassment. "Ohadi." "That's it, straight ahead. I turn off here. Stranger?" "Yep." "Miner?" Fairchild shrugged his shoulders and nodded noncommittally. The truck driver toyed with his wheel. "Just thought I 'd ask. Plenty of work around here for single and double jackers. Things are beginning to look up a bit--at least in silver. Gold mines ain't doing much yet--but there 's a good deal happening with the white stuff." "Thanks. Do you know a good place to stop?" "Yeh. Mother Howard's Boarding House. Everybody goes there, sooner or later. You 'll see it on the left-hand side of the street before you get to the main block. Good old girl; knows how to treat anybody in the mining game from operators on down. She was here when mining was mining!" Which was enough recommendation for Mother Howard. Fairchild lifted his bag from the rear of the vehicle, waved a farewell to the driver and started into the village. And then--for once--the vision of the girl departed, momentarily, to give place to other thoughts, other pictures, of a day long gone. The sun was slanting low, throwing deep shadows from the hills into the little valley with its chattering, milk-white stream, softening the scars of the mountains with their great refuse dumps; reminders of hopes of twenty years before and as bare of vegetation as in the days when the pick and gad and drill of the prospector tore the rock loose from its hiding place under the surface of the ground. Nature, in the mountainous country, resents any outrage against her dignity; the scars never heal; the mine dumps of a score of years ago remain the same, without a single shrub or weed or blade of grass growing in the big heaps of rocky refuse to shield them. But now it was all softened and aglow with sunset. The deep red buildings of the Argonaut tunnel--a great, criss-crossing hole through the hills that once connected with more than thirty mines and their feverish activities--were denuded of their rust and lack of repair. The steam from the air-compressing engine, furnishing the necessary motive power for the drills that still worked in the hills, curled upward in billowy, rainbow-like coloring. The scrub pines of the almost barren mountains took on a fluffier, softer tone; the jutting rocks melted away into their own shadows, it was a picture of peace and of memories. And it had been here that Thornton Fairchild, back in the nineties, had dreamed his dreams and fought his fight. It had been here--somewhere in one of the innumerable cañons that led away from the little town on every side--that Thornton Fairchild had followed the direction of "float ore" to its resting place, to pursue the vagrant vein through the hills, to find it at last, to gloat over it in his letters to Beamish and then to--what? A sudden cramping caught the son's heart, and it pounded with something akin to fear. The old foreboding of his father's letter had come upon him, the mysterious thread of that elusive, intangible Thing, great enough to break the will and resistance of a strong man and turn him into a weakling--silent, white-haired--sitting by a window, waiting for death. What had it been? Why had it come upon his father? How could it be fought? All so suddenly, Robert Fairchild had realized that he was in the country of the invisible enemy, there to struggle against it without the slightest knowledge of what it was or how it could be combated. His forehead felt suddenly damp and cold. He brushed away the beady perspiration with a gesture almost of anger, then with a look of relief, turned in at a small white gate toward a big, rambling building which proclaimed itself, by the sign on the door, to be Mother Howard's Boarding House. A moment of waiting, then he faced a gray-haired, kindly faced woman, who stared at him with wide-open eyes as she stood, hands on hips, before him. "Don't you tell me I don't know you!" she burst forth at last. "I 'm afraid you don't." "Don't I?" Mother Howard cocked her head. "If you ain't a Fairchild, I 'll never feed another miner corned beef and cabbage as long as I live. Ain't you now?" she persisted, "ain't you a Fairchild?" The man laughed in spite of himself. "You guessed it." "You 're Thornton Fairchild's boy!" She had reached out for his handbag, and then, bustling about him, drew him into the big "parlor" with its old-fashioned, plush-covered chairs, its picture album, its glass-covered statuary on the old, onyx mantel. "Did n't I know you the minute I saw you? Land, you're the picture of your dad! Sakes alive, how is he?" There was a moment of silence. Fairchild found himself suddenly halting and boyish as he stood before her. "He 's--he 's gone, Mrs. Howard." "Dead?" She put up both hands. "It don't seem possible. And me remembering him looking just like you, full of life and strong and--" "Our pictures of him are a good deal different. I--I guess you knew him when everything was all right for him. Things were different after he got home again." Mother Howard looked quickly about her, then with a swift motion closed the door. "Son," she asked in a low voice, "did n't he ever get over it?" "It?" Fairchild felt that he stood on the threshold of discoveries. "What do you mean?" "Didn't he ever tell you anything, Son?" "No. I--" "Well, there was n't any need to." But Mother Howard's sudden embarrassment, her change of color, told Fairchild it was n't the truth. "He just had a little bad luck out here, that was all. His--his mine pinched out just when he thought he 'd struck it rich--or something like that." "Are you sure that is the truth?" For a second they faced each other, Robert Fairchild serious and intent, Mother Howard looking at him with eyes defiant, yet compassionate. Suddenly they twinkled, the lips broke from their straight line into a smile, and a kindly old hand reached out to take him by the arm. "Don't you stand there and try to tell Mother Howard she don't know what she 's talking about!" came in tones of mock severity. "Hear me? Now, you get up them steps and wash up for dinner. Take the first room on the right. It's a nice, cheery place. And get that dust and grime off of you. The dinner bell will ring in about fifteen minutes, and they 's always a rush for the food. So hurry!" In his room, Fairchild tried not to think. His brain was becoming too crammed with queries, with strange happenings and with the aggravating mysticisms of the life into which his father's death had thrown him to permit clearness of vision. Even in Mother Howard, he had not been able to escape it; she told all too plainly, both by her actions and her words, that she knew something of the mystery of the past,--and had falsified to keep the knowledge from him. It was too galling for thought. Robert Fairchild hastily made his toilet, then answered the ringing of the dinner bell, to be introduced to strong-shouldered men who gathered about the long tables; Cornishmen, who talked an "h-less" language, ruddy-faced Americans, and a sprinkling of English, all of whom conversed about things which were to Fairchild as so much Greek,--of "levels" and "stopes" and "winzes", of "skips" and "manways" and "raises", which meant nothing to the man who yet must master them all, if he were to follow his ambition. Some ate with their knives, meeting the food halfway from their plates; some acted and spoke in a manner revealing a college education and the poise that it gives. But all were as one, all talking together; the operator no more enthusiastic than the man whose sole recompense was the five dollars a day he received for drilling powder holes; all happy, all optimistic, all engrossed in the hopes and dreams that only mining can give. And among them Mother Howard moved, getting the latest gossip from each, giving her views on every problem and incidentally seeing that the plates were filled to the satisfaction of even the hungriest. As for Robert Fairchild, he spoke but seldom, except to acknowledge the introductions as Mother Howard made him known to each of his table mates. But it was not aloofness; it was the fact that these men were talking of things which Fairchild longed to know, but failed, for the moment, to master. From the first, the newcomer had liked the men about him, liked the ruggedness, the mingling of culture with the lack of it, liked the enthusiasm, the muscle and brawn, liked them all,--all but two. Instinctively, from the first mention of his name, he felt they were watching him, two men who sat far in the rear of the big dining room, older than the other occupants, far less inviting in appearance. One was small, though chunky in build, with sandy hair and eyebrows; with weak, filmy blue eyes over which the lids blinked constantly. The other, black-haired with streaks of gray, powerful in his build, and with a walrus-like mustache drooping over hard lips, was the sort of antithesis naturally to be found in the company of the smaller, sandy complexioned man. Who they were, what they were, Fairchild did not know, except from the general attributes which told that they too followed the great gamble of mining. But one thing was certain; they watched him throughout the meal; they talked about him in low tones and ceased when Mother Howard came near; they seemed to recognize in him some one who brought both curiosity and innate enmity to the surface. And more; long before the rest had finished their meal, they rose and left the room, intent, apparently, upon some important mission. After that, Fairchild ate with less of a relish. In his mind was the certainty that these two men knew him--or at least knew about him--and that they did not relish his presence. Nor were his suspicions long in being fulfilled. Hardly had he reached the hall, when the beckoning eyes of Mother Howard signaled to him. Instinctively he waited for the other diners to pass him, then looked eagerly toward Mother Howard as she once more approached. "I don't know what you 're doing here," came shortly, "but I want to." Fairchild straightened. "There is n't much to tell you," he answered quietly. "My father left me the Blue Poppy mine in his will. I 'm here to work it." "Know anything about mining?" "Not a thing." "Or the people you 're liable to have to buck up against?" "Very little." "Then, Son," and Mother Howard laid a kindly hand on his arm, "whatever you do, keep your plans to yourself and don't talk too much. And what's more, if you happen to get into communication with Blindeye Bozeman and Taylor Bill, lie your head off. Maybe you saw 'em, a sandy-haired fellow and a big man with a black mustache, sitting at the back of the room?" Fairchild nodded. "Well, stay away from them. They belong to 'Squint' Rodaine. Know him?" She shot the question sharply. Again Fairchild nodded. "I 've heard the name. Who is he?" A voice called to Mother Howard from the dining room. She turned away, then leaned close to Robert Fairchild. "He 's a miner, and he 's always been a miner. Right now, he 's mixed up with some of the biggest people in town. He 's always been a man to be afraid of--and he was your father's worst enemy!" Then, leaving Fairchild staring after her, she moved on to her duties in the kitchen. CHAPTER V Impatiently Fairchild awaited Mother Howard's return, and when at last she came forth from the kitchen, he drew her into the old parlor, shadowy now in the gathering dusk, and closed the doors. "Mrs. Howard," he began, "I--" "Mother Howard," she corrected. "I ain't used to being called much else." "Mother, then--although I 'm not very accustomed to using the title. My own mother died--shortly after my father came back from out here." She walked to his side then and put a hand on his shoulders. For a moment it seemed that her lips were struggling to repress something which strove to pass them, something locked behind them for years. Then the old face, dim in the half light, calmed. "What do you want to know, Son?" "Everything!" "But there is n't much I can tell." He caught her hand. "There is! I know there is. I--" "Son--all I can do is to make matters worse. If I knew anything that would help you--if I could give you any light on anything, Old Mother Howard would do it! Lord, did n't I help out your father when he needed it the worst way? Did n't I--" "But tell me what you know!" There was pleading in Fairchild's voice. "Can't you understand what it all means to me? Anything--I 'm at sea, Mother Howard! I 'm lost--you 've hinted to me about enemies, my father hinted to me about them--but that's all. Is n't it fair that I should know as much as possible if they still exist, and I 'm to make any kind of a fight against them?" "You 're right, Son. But I 'm as much in the dark as you. In those days, if you were a friend to a person, you didn't ask questions. All that I ever knew was that your father came to this boarding house when he was a young man, the very first day that he ever struck Ohadi. He did n't have much money, but he was enthusiastic--and it was n't long before he 'd told me about his wife and baby back in Indianapolis and how he 'd like to win out for their sake. As for me--well, they always called me Mother Howard, even when I was a young thing, sort of setting my cap for every good-looking young man that came along. I guess that's why I never caught one of 'em--I always insisted on darning their socks and looking after all their troubles for 'em instead of going out buggy-riding with some other fellow and making 'em jealous." She sighed ever so slightly, then chuckled. "But that ain't getting to the point, though, is it?" "If you could tell me about my father--" "I 'm going to--all I know. Things were a lot different out here then from what they were later. Silver was wealth to anybody that could find it; every month, the Secretary of the Treasury was required by law to buy three or four million ounces for coining purposes, and it meant a lot of money for us all. Everywhere around the hills and gulches you could see prospectors, with their gads and little picks, fooling around like life did n't mean anything in the world to 'em, except to grub around in those rocks. That was the idea, you see, to fool around until they 'd found a bit of ore or float, as they called it, and then follow it up the gorge until they came to rock or indications that 'd give 'em reason to think that the vein was around there somewhere. Then they 'd start to make their tunnel--to drift in on the vein. I 'm telling you all this, so you 'll understand." Fairchild was listening eagerly. A moment's pause and the old lodging-house keeper went on. "Your father was one of these men. 'Squint' Rodaine was another--they called him that because at some time in his life he 'd tried to shoot faster than the other fellow--and did n't do it. The bullet hit right between his eyes, but it must have had poor powder behind it--all it did was to cut through the skin and go straight up his forehead. When the wound healed, the scar drew his eyes close together, like a Chinaman's. You never see Squint's eyes more than half open. "And he's crooked, just like his eyes--" Mother Howard's voice bore a touch of resentment. "I never liked him from the minute I first saw him, and I liked him less afterward. Then I got next to his game. "Your father had been prospecting just like everybody else. He 'd come on float up Kentucky Gulch and was trying to follow it to the vein. Squint saw him--and what's more, he saw that float. It looked good to Squint--and late that night, I heard him and his two drinking partners, Blindeye Bozeman and Taylor Bill--they just reverse his name for the sound of it--talking in Blindeye's room. I 'm a woman--" Mother Howard chuckled--"so I just leaned my head against the door and listened. Then I flew downstairs to wait for your father when he came in from sitting up half the night to get an assay on that float. And you bet I told him--folks can't do sneaking things around me and get away with it, and it was n't more 'n five minutes after he 'd got home that your father knew what was going on--how Squint and them two others was figuring on jumping his claim before he could file on it and all that. "Well, there was a big Cornishman here that I was kind of sweet on--and I guess I always will be. He 's been gone now though, ever since your father left. I got him and asked him to help. And Harry was just the kind of a fellow that would do it. Out in the dead of night they went and staked out your father's claim--Harry was to get twenty-five per cent--and early the next morning your dad was waiting to file on it, while Harry was waiting for them three. And what a fight it must have been--that Harry was a wildcat in those younger days." She laughed, then her voice grew serious. "But all had its effect. Rodaine did n't jump that claim, and a few of us around here filed dummy claims enough in the vicinity to keep him off of getting too close--but there was one way we couldn't stop him. He had power, and he 's always had it--and he 's got it now. A lot of awful strange things happened to your father after that--charges were filed against him for things he never did. Men jumped on him in the dark, then went to the district attorney's office and accused him of making the attack. And the funny part was that the district attorney's office always believed them--and not him. Once they had him just at the edge of the penitentiary, but I--I happened to know a few things that--well, he did n't go." Again Mother Howard chuckled, only to grow serious once more. "Those days were a bit wild in Ohadi--everybody was crazy with the gold or silver fever; out of their head most of the time. Men who went to work for your father and Harry disappeared, or got hurt accidentally in the mine or just quit through the bad name it was getting. Once Harry, coming down from the tunnel at night, stepped on a little bridge that always before had been as secure and safe as the hills themselves. It fell with him--they went down together thirty feet, and there was nothing but Nature to blame for it, in spite of what we three thought. Then, at last, they got a fellow who was willing to work for them in spite of what Rodaine's crowd--and it consisted of everybody in power--hinted about your father's bad reputation back East and--" "My father never harmed a soul in his life!" Fairchild's voice was hot, resentful. Mother Howard went on: "I know he did n't, Son. I 'm only telling the story. Miners are superstitious as a general rule, and they 're childish at believing things. It all worked in your father's case--with the exception of Harry and 'Sissie' Larsen, a Swede with a high voice, just about like mine. That's why they gave him the name. Your father offered him wages and a ten per cent. bonus. He went to work. A few months later they got into good ore. That paid fairly well, even if it was irregular. It looked like the bad luck was over at last. Then--" Mother Howard hesitated at the brink of the very nubbin of it all, to Robert Fairchild. A long moment followed, in which he repressed a desire to seize her and wrest it from her, and at last-- "It was about dusk one night," she went on. "Harry came in and took me with him into this very room. He kissed me and told me that he must go away. He asked me if I would go with him--without knowing why. And, Son, I trusted him, I would have done anything for him--but I was n't as old then as I am now. I refused--and to this day, I don't know why. It--it was just woman, I guess. Then he asked me if I would help him. I said I would. "He did n't tell me much; except that he had been uptown spreading the word that the ore had pinched out and that the hanging rock had caved in and that he and 'Sissie' and your father were through, that they were beaten and were going away that night. But--and Harry waited a long time before he told me this--'Sissie' was not going with them. "'I'm putting a lot in your hands,' he told me, 'but you 've got to help us. "Sissie" won't be there--and I can't tell you why. The town must think that he is. Your voice is just like "Sissie's." You 've got to help us out of town.' "And I promised. Late that night, the three of us drove up the main street, your father on one side of the seat. Harry on the other, and me, dressed in some of Sissie's clothes, half hidden between them. I was singing; that was Sissie's habit,--to get roaring drunk and blow off steam by yodelling song after song as he rolled along. Our voices were about the same; nobody dreamed that I was any one else but the Swede--my head was tipped forward, so they couldn't see my features. And we went our way with the miners standing on the curb waving to us, and not one of them knowing that the person who sat between your father and Harry was any one except Larsen. We drove outside town and stopped. Then we said good-by, and I put on an old dress that I had brought with me and sneaked back home. Nobody knew the difference." "But Larsen--?" "You know as much as I do, Son." "But did n't they tell you?" "They told me nothing and I asked 'em nothing. They were my friends and they needed help. I gave it to them--that's all I know and that's all I 've wanted to know." "You never saw Larsen again?" "I never saw any of them. That was the end." "But Rodaine--?" "He 's still here. You 'll hear from him--plenty soon. I could see that, the minute Blindeye Bozeman and Taylor Bill began taking your measure. You noticed they left the table before the meal was over? It was to tell Rodaine." "Then he'll fight me too?" Mother Howard laughed,--and her voice was harsh. "Rodaine's a rattlesnake. His son 's a rattlesnake. His wife 's crazy--Old Crazy Laura. He drove her that way. She lives by herself, in an old house on the Georgeville road. And she 'd kill for him, even if he does beat her when she goes to his house and begs him to take her back. That's the kind of a crowd it is. You can figure it out for yourself. She goes around at night, gathering herbs in graveyards; she thinks she 's a witch. The old man mutters to himself and hates any one who doesn't do everything he asks,--and just about everybody does it, simply through fear. And just to put a good finish on it all, the young 'un moves in the best society in town and spends most of his time trying to argue the former district judge's daughter into marrying him. So there you are. That's all Mother Howard knows, Son." She reached for the door and then, turning, patted Fairchild on the shoulder. "Boy," came quietly, "you 've got a broad back and a good head. Rodaine beat your father--don't let him beat you. And always remember one thing: Old Mother Howard 's played the game before, and she 'll play it with you--against anybody. Good night. Go to bed--dark streets are n't exactly the place for you." Robert Fairchild obeyed the instructions, a victim of many a conjecture, many an attempt at reasoning as he sought sleep that was far away. Again and again there rose before him the vision of two men in an open buggy, with a singing, apparently maudlin person between them whom Ohadi believed to be an effeminate-voiced Swede; in reality, only a woman. And why had they adopted the expedient? Why had not Larsen been with them in reality? Fairchild avoided the obvious conclusion and turned to other thoughts, to Rodaine with his squint eyes, to Crazy Laura, gathering herbs at midnight in the shadowy, stone-sentineled stretches of graveyards, while the son, perhaps, danced at some function of Ohadi's society and made love in the rest periods. It was all grotesque; it was fantastic, almost laughable,--had it not concerned him! For Rodaine had been his father's enemy, and Mother Howard had told him enough to assure him that Rodaine did not forget. The crazed woman of the graveyards was Squint's lunatic wife, ready to kill, if necessary, for a husband who beat her. And the young Rodaine was his son, blood of his blood; that was enough. It was hours before Fairchild found sleep, and even then it was a thing of troubled visions. Streaming sun awakened him, and he hurried to the dining room to find himself the last lodger at the tables. He ate a rather hasty meal, made more so by an impatient waitress, then with the necessary papers in his pocket, Fairchild started toward the courthouse and the legal procedure which must be undergone before he made his first trip to the mine. A block or two, and then Fairchild suddenly halted. Crossing the street at an angle just before him was a young woman whose features, whose mannerisms he recognized. The whipcord riding habit had given place now to a tailored suit which deprived her of the boyishness that had been so apparent on their first meeting. The cap had disappeared before a close-fitting, vari-colored turban. But the straying brown hair still was there, the brown eyes, the piquant little nose and the prettily formed lips. Fairchild's heart thumped,--nor did he stop to consider why. A quickening of his pace, and he met her just as she stepped to the curbing. "I 'm so glad of this opportunity," he exclaimed happily. "I want to return that money to you. I--I was so fussed yesterday I did n't realize--" "Aren't you mistaken?" She had looked at him with a slight smile. Fairchild did not catch the inflection. "Oh, no. I 'm the man, you know, who helped you change that tire on the Denver road yesterday." "Pardon me." This time one brown eye had wavered ever so slightly, indicating some one behind Fairchild. "But I was n't on the Denver road yesterday, and if you 'll excuse me for saying it, I don't remember ever having seen you before." There was a little light in her eyes which took away the sting of the denial, a light which seemed to urge caution, and at the same time to tell Fairchild that she trusted him to do his part as a gentleman in a thing she wished forgotten. More fussed than ever, he drew back and bent low in apology, while she passed on. Half a block away, a young man rounded a corner and, seeing her, hastened to join her. She extended her hand; they chatted a moment, then strolled up the street together. Fairchild watched blankly, then turned at a chuckle just behind him emanating from the bearded lips of an old miner, loafing on the stone coping in front of a small store. "Pick the wrong filly, pardner?" came the query. Fairchild managed to smile. "Guess so." Then he lied quickly. "I thought she was a girl from Denver." "Her?" The old miner stretched. "Nope. That's Anita Richmond, old Judge Richmond's daughter. Guess she must have been expecting that young fellow--or she would n't have cut you off so short. She ain't usually that way." "Her fiancé?" Fairchild asked the question with misgiving. The miner finished his stretch and added a yawn to it. Then he looked appraisingly up the street toward the retreating figures. "Well, some say he is and some say he ain't. Guess it mostly depends on the girl, and she ain't telling yet." "And the man--who is he?" "Him? Oh, he 's Maurice Rodaine. Son of a pretty famous character around here, old Squint Rodaine. Owns the Silver Queen property up the hill. Ever hear of him?" The eyes of Robert Fairchild narrowed, and a desire to fight--a longing to grapple with Squint Rodaine and all that belonged to him--surged into his heart. But his voice, when he spoke, was slow and suppressed. "Squint Rodaine? Yes, I think I have. The name sounds rather familiar." Then, deliberately, he started up the street, following at a distance the man and the girl who walked before him. CHAPTER VI There was no specific reason why Robert Fairchild should follow Maurice Rodaine and the young woman who had been described to him as the daughter of Judge Richmond, whoever he might be. And Fairchild sought for none--within two weeks he had been transformed from a plodding, methodical person into a creature of impulses, and more and more, as time went on, he was allowing himself to be governed by the snap judgment of his brain rather than by the carefully exacting mind of a systematic machine, such as he had been for the greater part of his adult life. All that he cared to know was that resentment was in his heart,--resentment that the family of Rodaine should be connected in some way with the piquant, mysterious little person he had helped out of a predicament on the Denver road the day before. And, to his chagrin, the very fact that there _was_ a connection added a more sinister note to the escapade of the exploded tire and the pursuing sheriff; as he walked along, his gaze far ahead, Fairchild found himself wondering whether there could be more than mere coincidence in it all, whether she was a part of the Rodaine schemes and the Rodaine trickery, whether-- But he ceased his wondering to turn sharply into a near-by drug store, there absently to give an order at the soda fountain and stand watching the pair who had stopped just in front of him on the corner. She was the same girl; there could be no doubt of that, and he raged inwardly as she chatted and chaffed with the man who looked down upon her with a smiling air of proprietorship which instilled instant rebellion in Fairchild's heart. Nor did he know the reason for that, either. After a moment they parted, and Fairchild gulped at his fountain drink. She had hesitated, then with a quick decision turned straight into the drug store. "Buy a ticket, Mr. McCauley?" she asked of the man behind the counter. "I 've sold twenty already, this morning. Only five more, and my work 's over." "Going to be pretty much of a crowd, is n't there?" The druggist was fishing in his pocket for money. Fairchild, dallying with his drink now, glanced sharply toward the door and went back to his refreshment. She was standing directly in the entrance, fingering the five remaining tickets. "Oh, everybody in town. Please take the five, won't you? Then I 'll be through." "I 'll be darned if I will, 'Nita!" McCauley backed against a shelf case in mock self-defense. "Every time you 've got anything you want to get rid of, you come in here and shove it off on me. I 'll be gosh gim-swiggled if I will. There 's only four in my family and four 's all I 'm going to take. Fork 'em over--I 've got a prescription to fill." He tossed four silver dollars on the showcase and took the tickets. The girl demurred. "But how about the fifth one? I 've got to sell that too--" "Well, sell it to him!" And Fairchild, looking into the soda-fountain mirror, saw himself indicated as the druggist started toward the prescription case. "I ain't going to let myself get stuck for another solitary, single one!" There was a moment of awkward silence as Fairchild gazed intently into his soda glass, then with a feeling of queer excitement, set it on the marble counter and turned. Anita Richmond had accepted the druggist's challenge. She was approaching--in a stranger-like manner--a ticket of some sort held before her. "Pardon me," she began, "but would you care to buy a ticket?" "To--to what?" It was all Fairchild could think of to say. "To the Old Timers' Dance. It's a sort of municipal thing, gotten up by the bureau of mines--to celebrate the return of silver mining." "But--but I 'm afraid I 'm not much on dancing." "You don't have to be. Nobody 'll dance much--except the old-fashioned affairs. You see, everybody 's supposed to represent people of the days when things were booming around here. There 'll be a fiddle orchestra, and a dance caller and everything like that, and a bar--but of course there 'll only be imitation liquor. But," she added with quick emphasis, "there 'll be a lot of things really real--real keno and roulette and everything like that, and everybody in the costume of thirty or forty years ago. Don't you want to buy a ticket? It's the last one I 've got!" she added prettily. But Robert Fairchild had been listening with his eyes, rather than his ears. Jerkily he came to the realization that the girl had ceased speaking. "When's it to be?" "A week from to-morrow night. Are you going to be here that long?" She realized the slip of her tongue and colored slightly. Fairchild, recovered now, reached into a pocket and carefully fingered the bills there. Then, with a quick motion, as he drew them forth, he covered a ten-dollar bill with a one-dollar note and thrust them forward. "Yes, I 'll take the ticket." She handed it to him, thanked him, and reached for the money. As it passed into her hand, a corner of the ten-dollar bill revealed itself, and she hastily thrust it toward him as though to return money paid by mistake. Just as quickly, she realized his purpose and withdrew her hand. "Oh!" she exclaimed, almost in a whisper, "I understand." She flushed and stood a second hesitant, flustered, her big eyes almost childish as they looked up into his. "You--you must think I 'm a cad!" Then she whirled and left the store, and a slight smile came to the lips of Robert Fairchild as he watched her hurrying across the street. He had won a tiny victory, at least. Not until she had rounded a corner and disappeared did Fairchild leave his point of vantage. Then, with a new enthusiasm, a greater desire than ever to win out in the fight which had brought him to Ohadi, he hurried to the courthouse and the various technicalities which must be coped with before he could really call the Blue Poppy mine his own. It was easier than he thought. A few signatures, and he was free to wander through town to where idlers had pointed out Kentucky gulch and to begin the steep ascent up the narrow road on a tour of prospecting that would precede the more legal and more safe system of a surveyor. The ascent was almost sheer in places, for in Kentucky gulch the hills huddled close to the little town and rose in precipitous inclines almost before the city limits had been reached. Beside the road a small stream chattered, milk-white from the silica deposits of the mines, like the waters of Clear Creek, which it was hastening to join. Along the gullies were the scars of prospect holes, staring like dark, blind eyes out upon the gorge;--reminders of the lost hopes of a day gone by. Here and there lay some discarded piece of mining machinery, rust-eaten and battered now, washed down inch by inch from the higher hill where it had been abandoned when the demonetization of silver struck, like a rapier, into the hearts of grubbing men, years before. It was a cañon of decay, yet of life, for as he trudged along, the roar of great motors came to Fairchild's ears; and a moment later he stepped aside to allow the passage of ore-laden automobile trucks, loaded until the springs had flattened and until the engines howled with their compression as they sought to hold back their burdens on the steep grade. And it was as he stood there, watching the big vehicles travel down the mountain side, that Fairchild caught a glimpse of a human figure which suddenly darted behind a clump of scrub pine and skirted far to one side, taking advantage of every covering. A new beat came into Fairchild's heart. He took to the road again, plodding upward apparently without a thought of his pursuer, stopping to stare at the bleak prospect holes, or to admire the pink-white beauties of the snowy range in the far distance, seemingly a man entirely bereft of suspicion. A quarter of a mile he went, a half. Once, as the road turned beside a great rock, he sought its shelter and looked back. The figure still was following, running carefully now along the bank of the stream in an effort to gain as much ground as possible before the return of the road to open territory should bring the necessity of caution again. A mile more, then, again in the shelter of rocks, he swerved and sought a hiding place, watching anxiously from his concealment for evidences of discovery. There were none. The shadower came on, displaying more and more caution as he approached the rocks, glancing hurriedly about him as he moved swiftly from cover to cover. Closer--closer--then Fairchild repressed a gasp. The man was old, almost white-haired, with hard, knotted hands which seemed to stand out from his wrists; thin and wiry with the resiliency that outdoor, hardened muscles often give to age, and with a face that held Fairchild almost hypnotized. It was like a hawk's; hook-beaked, colorless, toneless in all expressions save that of a malicious tenacity; the eyes were slanted until they resembled those of some fantastic Chinese image, while just above the curving nose a blue-white scar ran straight up the forehead,--Squint Rodaine! So he was on the trail already! Fairchild watched him pass, sneak around the corner of the rocks, and stand a moment in apparent bewilderment as he surveyed the ground before him. A mumbling curse and he went on, his cautious gait discarded, walking briskly along the rutty, boulder-strewn road toward a gaping hole in the hill, hardly a furlong away. There he surveyed the ground carefully, bent and stared hard at the earth, apparently for a trace of footprints, and finding none, turned slowly and looked intently all about him. Carefully he approached the mouth of the tunnel and stared within. Then he straightened, and with another glance about him, hurried off up a gulch leading away from the road, into the hills. Fairchild lay and watched him until he was out of sight, and he knew instinctively that a surveyor would only cover beaten territory now. Squint Rodaine, he felt sure, had pointed out to him the Blue Poppy mine. But he did not follow the direction given by his pursuer. Squint Rodaine was in the hills. Squint Rodaine might return, and the consciousness of caution bade that Fairchild not be there when he came back. Hurriedly he descended the rocks once more to turn toward town and toward Mother Howard's boarding house. He wanted to tell her what he had seen and to obtain her help and counsel. Quickly he made the return trip, crossing the little bridge over the turbulent Clear Creek and heading toward the boarding house. Half a block away he halted, as a woman on the veranda of the big, squarely built "hotel" pointed him out, and the great figure of a man shot through the gate, shouting, and hurried toward him. A tremendous creature he was, with red face and black hair which seemed to scramble in all directions at once, and with a mustache which appeared to scamper in even more directions than his hair. Fairchild was a large man; suddenly he felt himself puny and inconsequential as the mastodonic thing before him swooped forward, spread wide the big arms and then caught him tight in them, causing the breath to puff over his lips like the exhaust of a bellows. A release, then Fairchild felt himself lifted and set down again. He pulled hard at his breath. "What's the matter with you?" he exclaimed testily. "You 've made a mistake!" "I 'm blimed if I 'ave!" bellowed a tornado-like voice. "Blime! You look just like 'im!" "But you 're mistaken, old man!" Fairchild was vaguely aware that the spray-like mustache was working like a dust-broom, that snappy blue eyes were beaming upon him, that the big red nose was growing redder, while a tremendous paw had seized his own hand and was doing its best to crush it. "Blimed if I 'ave!" came again. "You're your Dad's own boy! You look just like 'im! Don't you know me?" He stepped back then and stood grinning, his long, heavily muscled arms hanging low at his sides, his mustache trying vainly to stick out in more directions than ever. Fairchild rubbed a hand across his eyes. "You 've got me!" came at last. "I--" "You don't know me? 'Onest now, don't you? I 'm Arry! Don't you know now? 'Arry from Cornwall!" CHAPTER VII It came to Fairchild then,--the sentence in his father's letter regarding some one who would hurry to his aid when he needed him, the references of Beamish, and the allusion of Mother Howard to a faithful friend. He forgot the pain as the tremendous Cornishman banged him on the back, he forgot the surprise of it all; he only knew that he was laughing and welcoming a big man old enough in age to be his father, yet young enough in spirit to want to come back and finish a fight he had seen begun, and strong enough in physique to stand it. Again the heavy voice boomed: "You know me now, eh?" "You bet! You 're Harry Harkins!" "'Arkins it is! I came just as soon as I got the cablegram!" "The cablegram?" "Yeh." Harry pawed at his wonderful mustache. "From Mr. Beamish, you know. 'E sent it. Said you 'd started out 'ere all alone. And I could n't stand by and let you do that. So 'ere I am!" "But the expense, the long trip across the ocean, the--" "'Ere I am!" said Harry again. "Ain't that enough?" They had reached the veranda now, to stand talking for a moment, then to go within, where Mother Howard awaited, eyes glowing, in the parlor. Harry flung out both arms. "And I still love you!" he boomed, as he caught the gray-haired, laughing woman in his arms. "Even if you did run me off and would n't go back to Cornwall!" Red-faced, she pushed him away and slapped his cheek playfully; it was like the tap of a light breeze against granite. Then Harry turned. "'Ave you looked at the mine?" The question brought back to Fairchild the happenings of the morning and the memory of the man who had trailed him. He told his story, while Mother Howard listened, her arms crossed, her head bobbing, and while Harry, his big grin still on his lips, took in the details with avidity. Then for a moment a monstrous hand scrambled vaguely about in the region of the Cornishman's face, grasping a hair of that radiating mustache now and then and pulling hard at it, at last to drop,--and the grin faded. "Le 's go up there," he said quietly. This time the trip to Kentucky gulch was made by skirting town; soon they were on the rough, narrow roadway leading into the mountains. Both were silent for the most part, and the expression on Harry's face told that he was living again the days of the past, days when men were making those pock-marks in the hills, when the prospector and his pack jack could be seen on every trail, and when float ore in a gulley meant riches waiting somewhere above. A long time they walked, at last to stop in the shelter of the rocks where Fairchild had shadowed his pursuer, and to glance carefully ahead. No one was in sight. Harry jabbed out a big finger. "That's it," he announced, "straight a'ead!" They went on, Fairchild with a gripping at his throat that would not down. This had been the hope of his father--and here his father had met--what? He swerved quickly and stopped, facing the bigger man. "Harry," came sharply, "I know that I may be violating an unspoken promise to my father. But I simply can't stand it any longer. What happened here?" "We were mining--for silver." "I don't mean that--there was some sort of tragedy." Harry chuckled,--in concealment, Fairchild thought, of something he did not want to tell him. "I should think so! The timbers gave way and the mine caved in!" "Not that! My father ran away from this town. You and Mother Howard helped him. You didn't come back. Neither did my father. Eventually it killed him." "So?" Harry looked seriously and studiously at the young man. "'E did n't write me of'en." "He did n't need to write you. You were here with him--when it happened." "No--" Harry shook his head. "I was in town." "But you knew--" "What's Mother Howard told you?" "A lot--and nothing." "I don't know any more than she does." "But--" "Friends did n't ask questions in those days," came quietly. "I might 'ave guessed if I 'd wanted to--but I did n't want to." "But if you had?" Harry looked at him with quiet, blue eyes. "What would you guess?" Slowly Robert Fairchild's gaze went to the ground. There was only one possible conjecture: Sissie Larsen had been impersonated by a woman. Sissie Larsen had never been seen again in Ohadi. "I--I would hate to put it into words," came finally. Harry slapped him on the shoulder. "Then don't. It was nearly thirty years ago. Let sleeping dogs lie. Take a look around before we go into the tunnel." They reconnoitered, first on one side, then on the other. No one was in sight. Harry bent to the ground, and finding a pitchy pine knot, lighted it. They started cautiously within, blinking against the darkness. A detour and they avoided an ore car, rusty and half filled, standing on the little track, now sagging on moldy ties. A moment more of walking and Harry took the lead. "It's only a step to the shaft now," he cautioned. "Easy--easy--look out for that 'anging wall--" he held the pitch torch against the roof of the tunnel and displayed a loose, jagged section of rock, dripping with seepage from the hills above. "Just a step now--'ere it is." The outlines of a rusty "hoist", with its cable leading down into a slanting hole in the rock, showed dimly before them,--a massive, chunky, deserted thing in the shadows. About it were clustered drills that were eaten by age and the dampness of the seepage; farther on a "skip", or shaft-car, lay on its side, half buried in mud and muck from the walls of the tunnel. Here, too, the timbers were rotting; one after another, they had cracked and caved beneath the weight of the earth above, giving the tunnel an eerie aspect, uninviting, dangerous. Harry peered ahead. "It ain't as bad as it looks," came after a moment's survey. "It's only right 'ere at the beginning that it's caved. But that does n't do us much good." "Why not?" Fairchild was staring with him, on toward the darkness of the farther recesses. "If it is n't caved in farther back, we ought to be able to repair this spot." But Harry shook his head. "We did n't go into the vein 'ere," he explained. "We figured we 'ad to 'ave a shaft anyway, sooner or later. You can't do under'and stoping in a mine--go down on a vein, you know. You 've always got to go up--you can't get the metal out if you don't. That's why we dug this shaft--and now look at it!" He drew the flickering torch to the edge of the shaft and held it there, staring downward. Fairchild beside him. Twenty feet below there came the glistening reflection of the flaring flame. Water! Fairchild glanced toward his partner. "I don't know anything about it," he said at last. "But I should think that would mean trouble." "Plenty!" agreed Harry lugubriously. "That shaft's two 'unnerd feet deep and there 's a drift running off it for a couple o' 'unnerd feet more before it 'its the vein. Four 'unnerd feet of water. 'Ow much money 'ave you got?" "About twenty-five hundred dollars." Harry reached for his waving mustache, his haven in time of storm. Thoughtfully he pulled at it, staring meanwhile downward. Then he grunted. "And I ain't got more 'n five 'unnerd. It ain't enough. We 'll need to repair this 'oist and put the skip in order. We 'll need to build new track and do a lot of things. Three thousand dollars ain't enough." "But we 'll have to get that water out of there before we can do anything." Fairchild interposed. "If we can't get at the vein up here, we 'll have to get at it from below. And how 're we going to do that without unwatering that shaft?" Again Harry pulled at his mustache. "That's just what 'Arry 's thinking about," came his answer finally. "Le 's go back to town. I don't like to stand around this place and just look at water in a 'ole." They turned for the mouth of the tunnel, sliding along in the greasy muck, the torch extinguished now. A moment of watchfulness from the cover of the darkness, then Harry pointed. On the opposite hill, the figure of a man had been outlined for just a second. Then he had faded. And with the disappearance of the watcher, Harry nudged his partner in the ribs and went forth into the brighter light. An hour more and they were back in town. Harry reached for his mustache again. "Go on down to Mother 'Oward's," he commanded. "I 've got to wander around and say 'owdy to what's left of the fellows that was 'ere when I was. It's been twenty years since I 've been away, you know," he added, "and the shaft can wait." Fairchild obeyed the instructions, looking back over his shoulder as he walked along toward the boarding house, to see the big figure of his companion loitering up the street, on the beginning of his home-coming tour. It was evident that Harry was popular. Forms rose from the loitering places on the curbings in front of the stores, voices called to him; even as the distance grew greater, Fairchild could hear the shouts of greeting which were sounding to Harry as he announced his return. The blocks passed. Fairchild turned through the gate of Mother Howard's boarding house and went to his room to await the call for dinner. The world did not look exceptionally good to him; his brilliant dreams had not counted upon the decay of more than a quarter of a century, the slow, but sure dripping of water which had seeped through the hills and made the mine one vast well, instead of the free open gateway to riches which he had planned upon. True, there had been before him the certainty of a cave-in, but Fairchild was not a miner, and the word to him had been a vague affair. Now, however, it was taking on a new aspect; he was beginning to realize the full extent of the fight which was before him if the Blue Poppy mine ever were to turn forth the silver ore he hoped to gain from it, if the letter of his father, full of threats though it might be, were to be realized in that part of it which contained the promise of riches in abundance. Pitifully small his capital looked to Fairchild now. Inadequate--that was certain--for the needs which now stood before it. And there was no person to whom he could turn, no one to whom he could go, for more. To borrow, one must have security; and with the exception of the faith of the red-faced Harry, and the promise of a silent man, now dead, there was nothing. It was useless; an hour of thought and Fairchild ceased trying to look into the future, obeying, instead, the insistent clanging of the dinner bell from downstairs. Slowly he opened the door of his room, trudged down the staircase,--then stopped in bewilderment. Harry stood before him, in all the splendor that a miner can know. He had bought a new suit, brilliant blue, almost electric in its flashiness, nor had he been careful as to style. The cut of the trousers was somewhat along the lines of fifteen years before, with their peg tops and heavy cuffs. Beneath the vest, a glowing, watermelon-pink shirt glared forth from the protection of a purple tie. A wonderful creation was on his head, dented in four places, each separated with almost mathematical precision. Below the cuffs of the trousers were bright, tan, bump-toed shoes. Harry was a complete picture of sartorial elegance, according to his own dreams. What was more, to complete it all, upon the third finger of his right hand was a diamond, bulbous and yellow and throwing off a dull radiance like the glow of a burnt-out arclight; full of flaws, it is true, off color to a great degree, but a diamond nevertheless. And Harry evidently realized it. "Ain't I the cuckoo?" he boomed, as Fairchild stared at him. "Ain't I? I 'ad to 'ave a outfit, and-- "It might as well be now!" he paraphrased, to the tune of the age-whitened sextette from "Floradora." "And look at the sparkler! Look at it!" Fairchild could do very little else but look. He knew the value, even in spite of flaws and bad coloring. And he knew something else, that Harry had confessed to having little more than five hundred dollars. "But--but how did you do it?" came gaspingly. "I thought--" "Installments!" the Cornishman burst out. "Ten per cent. down and the rest when they catch me. Installments!" He jabbed forth a heavy finger and punched Fairchild in the ribs. "Where's Mother 'Oward? Won't I knock 'er eyes out?" Fairchild laughed--he couldn't help it--in spite of the fact that five hundred dollars might have gone a long way toward unwatering that shaft. Harry was Harry--he had done enough in crossing the seas to help him. And already, in the eyes of Fairchild, Harry was swiftly approaching that place where he could do no wrong. "You 're wonderful, Harry," came at last. The Cornishman puffed with pride. "I'm a cuckoo!" he admitted. "Where's Mother 'Oward? Where's Mother 'Oward? Won't I knock 'er eyes out, now?" And he boomed forward toward the dining room, to find there men he had known in other days, to shake hands with them and to bang them on the back, to sight Blindeye Bozeman and Taylor Bill sitting hunched over their meal in the corner and to go effusively toward them. "'Arry" was playing no favorites in his "'ome-coming." "'Arry" was "'appy", and a little thing like the fact that friends of his enemies were present seemed to make little difference. Jovially he leaned over the table of Bozeman and Bill, after he had displayed himself before Mother Howard and received her sanction of his selections in dress. Happily he boomed forth the information that Fairchild and he were back to work the Blue Poppy mine and that they already had made a trip of inspection. "I 'm going back this afternoon," he told them. "There 's water in the shaft. I 've got to figure a wye to get it out." Then he returned to his table and Fairchild leaned close to him. "Is n't that dangerous?" "What?" Harry allowed his eyes to become bulbous as he whispered the question. "Telling them two about what we 're going to do? Won't they find it out anyway?" "I guess that's true. What time are you going to the mine?" "I don't know that I 'm going. And then I may. I 've got to kind of sye 'ello around town first." "Then I 'm not to go with you?" Harry beamed at him. "It's your day off, Robert," he announced, and they went on with their meal. That is, Fairchild proceeded. Harry did little eating. Harry was too busy. Around him were men he had known in other days, men who had stayed on at the little silver camp, fighting against the inevitable downward course of the price of the white metal, hoping for the time when resuscitation would come, and now realizing that feeling of joy for which they had waited a quarter of a century. There were a thousand questions to be answered, all asked by Harry. There was gossip to relate and the lives of various men who had come and gone to be dilated upon. Fairchild finished his meal and waited. But Harry talked on. Bozeman and Bill left the dining room again to make a report to the narrow-faced Squint Rodaine. Harry did not even notice them. And as long as a man stayed to answer his queries, just so long did Harry remain, at last to rise, brush a few crumbs from his lightning-like suit, press his new hat gently upon his head with both hands and start forth once more on his rounds of saying hello. And there was nothing for Fairchild to do but to wait as patiently as possible for his return. The afternoon grew old. Harry did not come back. The sun set and dinner was served. But Harry was not there to eat it. Dusk came, and then, nervous over the continued absence of his eccentric partner, Fairchild started uptown. The usual groups were in front of the stores, and before the largest of them Fairchild stopped. "Do any of you happen to know a fellow named Harry Harkins?" he asked somewhat anxiously. The answer was in the affirmative. A miner stretched out a foot and surveyed it studiously. "Ain't seen him since about five o'clock," he said at last. "He was just starting up to the mine then." "To the mine? That late? Are you sure?" "Well--I dunno. May have been going to Center City. Can't say. All I know is he said somethin' about goin' to th' mine earlier in th' afternoon, an' long about five I seen him starting up Kentucky Gulch." "Who 's that?" The interruption had come in a sharp, yet gruff voice. Fairchild turned to see before him a man he recognized, a tall, thin, wiry figure, with narrowed, slanting eyes, and a scar that went straight up his forehead. He evidently had just rounded the corner in time to hear the conversation. Fairchild straightened, and in spite of himself his voice was strained and hard. "I was merely asking about my partner in the Blue Poppy mine." "The Blue Poppy?" the squint eyes narrowed more than ever. "You 're Fairchild, ain't you? Well, I guess you 're going to have to get along without a partner from now on." "Get along without--?" A crooked smile came to the other man's lips. "That is, unless you want to work with a dead man. Harry Harkins got drowned, about an hour ago, in the Blue Poppy shaft!" CHAPTER VIII The news caused Fairchild to recoil and stand gasping. And before he could speak, a new voice had cut in, one full of excitement, tremulous, anxious. "Drowned? Where 's his body?" "How do I know?" Squint Rodaine turned upon his questioner. "Guess it's at the foot of the shaft. All I saw was his hat. What 're you so interested for?" The questioner, small, goggle-eyed and given to rubbing his hands, stared a moment speechlessly. Then he reached forward and grasped at the lapels of Rodaine's coat. "He--he bought a diamond from me this morning--on the installment plan!" Rodaine smiled again in his crooked fashion. Then he pushed the clawlike hands of the excited jeweler away from his lapels. "That's your own fault, Sam," he announced curtly. "If he 's at the bottom of the shaft, your diamond 's there too. All I know about it is that I was coming down from the Silver Queen when I saw this fellow go into the tunnel of the Blue Poppy. He was all dressed up, else I don't guess I would have paid much attention to him. But as it was, I kind of stopped to look, and seen it was Harry Harkins, who used to work the mine with this"--he pointed to Fairchild--"this fellow's father. About a minute later, I heard a yell, like somebody was in trouble, then a big splash. Naturally I ran in the tunnel and struck a match. About twenty feet down, I could see the water was all riled up, and a new hat was floating around on top of it. I yelled a couple of times and struck a lot of matches--but he did n't come to the surface. That's all I know. You can do as you please about your diamond. I 'm just giving you the information." He turned sharply and went on then, while Sam the jeweler, the rest of the loiterers clustered around him, looked appealingly toward Fairchild. "What 'll we do?" he wailed. Fairchild turned. "I don't know about you--but I 'm going to the mine." "It won't do any good--bodies don't float. It may never float--if it gets caught down in the timbers somewheres." "Have to organize a bucket brigade." It was a suggestion from one of the crowd. "Why not borry the Argonaut pump? They ain't using it." "Go get it! Go get it!" This time it was the wail of the little jeweler. "Tell 'em Sam Herbenfelder sent you. They 'll let you have it." "Can't carry the thing on my shoulder." "I 'll get the Sampler's truck"--a new volunteer had spoken--"there won't be any kick about it." Another suggestion, still another. Soon men began to radiate, each on a mission. The word passed down the street. More loiterers--a silver miner spends a great part of his leisure time in simply watching the crowd go by--hurried to join the excited throng. Groups, en route to the picture show, decided otherwise and stopped to learn of the excitement. The crowd thickened. Suddenly Fairchild looked up sharply at the sound of a feminine voice. "What is the matter?" "Harry Harkins got drowned." All too willingly the news was dispersed. Fairchild's eyes were searching now in the half-light from the faint street bulbs. Then they centered. It was Anita Richmond, standing at the edge of the crowd, questioning a miner, while beside her was a thin, youthful counterpart of a hard-faced father, Maurice Rodaine. Just a moment of queries, then the miner's hand pointed to Fairchild as he turned toward her. "It's his partner." She moved forward then and Fairchild went to meet her. "I 'm sorry," she said, and extended her hand. Fairchild gripped it eagerly. "Thank you. But it may not be as bad as the rumors." "I hope not." Then quickly she withdrew her hand, and somewhat flustered, turned as her companion edged closer. "Maurice, this is Mr. Fairchild," she announced, and Fairchild could do nothing but stare. She knew his name! A second more and it was explained; "My father knew his father very well." "I think my own father was acquainted too," was the rejoinder, and the eyes of the two men met for an instant in conflict. The girl did not seem to notice. "I sold him a ticket this morning to the dance, not knowing who he was. Then father happened to see him pass the house and pointed him out to me as the son of a former friend of his. Funny how those things happen, is n't it?" "Decidedly funny!" was the caustic rejoinder of the younger Rodaine. Fairchild laughed, to cover the air of intensity. He knew instinctively that Anita Richmond was not talking to him simply because she had sold him a ticket to a dance and because her father might have pointed him out. He felt sure that there was something else behind it,--the feeling of a debt which she owed him, a feeling of companionship engendered upon a sunlit road, during the moments of stress, and the continuance of that meeting in those few moments in the drug store, when he had handed her back her ten-dollar bill. She had called herself a cad then, and the feeling that she perhaps had been abrupt toward a man who had helped her out of a disagreeable predicament was prompting her action now; Fairchild felt sure of that. And he was glad of the fact, very glad. Again he laughed, while Rodaine eyed him narrowly. Fairchild shrugged his shoulders. "I 'm not going to believe this story until it's proven to me," came calmly. "Rumors can be started too easily. I don't see how it was possible for a man to fall into a mine shaft and not struggle there long enough for a man who had heard his shout to see him." "Who brought the news?" Rodaine asked the question. Fairchild deliberately chose his words: "A tall, thin, ugly old man, with mean squint eyes and a scar straight up his forehead." A flush appeared on the other man's face. Fairchild saw his hands contract, then loosen. "You 're trying to insult my father!" "Your father?" Fairchild looked at him blankly. "Would n't that be a rather difficult job--especially when I don't know him?" "You described him." "And you recognized the description." "Maurice! Stop it!" The girl was tugging at Rodaine's sleeve. "Don't say anything more. I 'm sorry--" and she looked at Fairchild with a glance he could not interpret--"that anything like this could have come up." "I am equally so--if it has caused you embarrassment." "You 'll get a little embarrassment out of it yourself--before you get through!" Rodaine was scowling at him. Again Anita Richmond caught his arm. "Maurice! Stop it! How could the thing have been premeditated when he did n't even know your father? Come--let's go on. The crowd's getting thicker." The narrow-faced man obeyed her command, and together they turned out into the street to avoid the constantly growing throng, and to veer toward the picture show, Fairchild watching after them, wondering whether to curse or luck himself. His temper, his natural enmity toward the two men whom he knew to be his enemies, had leaped into control, for a moment, of his tongue and his senses, and in that moment what had it done to his place in the estimation of the woman whom he had helped on the Denver road? Yet, who was she? What connection had she with the Rodaines? And had she not herself done something which had caused a fear of discovery should the pursuing sheriff overtake her? Bewildered, Robert Fairchild turned back to the more apparent thing which faced him: the probable death of Harry--the man upon whom he had counted for the knowledge and the perspicacity to aid him in the struggle against Nature and against mystery--who now, according to the story of Squint Rodaine, lay dead in the black waters of the Blue Poppy shaft. Carbide lights had begun to appear along the street, as miners, summoned by hurrying gossip mongers, came forward to assist in the search for the missing man. High above the general conglomeration of voices could be heard the cries of the instigator of activities, Sam Herbenfelder, bemoaning the loss of his diamond, ninety per cent. of the cost of which remained to be paid. To Sam, the loss of Harry was a small matter, but that loss entailed also the disappearance of a yellow, carbon-filled diamond, as yet unpaid for. His lamentations became more vociferous than ever. Fairchild went forward, and with an outstretched hand grasped him by the collar. "Why don't you wait until we 've found out something before you get the whole town excited?" he asked. "All we 've got is one man's word for this." "Yes," Sam spread his hands, "but look who it was! Squint Rodaine! Ach--will I ever get back that diamond?" "I 'm starting to the mine," Fairchild released him. "If you want to go along and look for yourself, all right. But wait until you 're sure about the thing before you go crazy over it." However, Sam had other thoughts. Hastily he shot through the crowd, organizing the bucket brigade and searching for news of the Argonaut pump, which had not yet arrived. Half-disgusted, Fairchild turned and started up the hill, a few miners, their carbide lamps swinging beside them, following him. Far in the rear sounded the wails of Sam Herbenfelder, organizing his units of search. Fairchild turned at the entrance of the mine and waited for the first of the miners and the accompanying gleam of his carbide. Then, they went within and to the shaft, the light shining downward upon the oily, black water below. Two objects floated there, a broken piece of timber, torn from the side of the shaft, where some one evidently had grasped hastily at it in an effort to stop a fall, and a new, four-dented hat, gradually becoming water-soaked and sinking slowly beneath the surface. And then, for the first time, fear clutched at Fairchild's heart,--fear which hope could not ignore. "There 's his hat." It was a miner staring downward. Fairchild had seen it, but he strove to put aside the thought. "True," he answered, "but any one could lose a hat, simply by looking over the edge of the shaft." Then, as if in proof of the forlorn hope which he himself did not believe; "Harry 's a strong man. Certainly he would know how to swim. And in any event he should have been able to have kept afloat for at least a few minutes. Rodaine says that he heard a shout and ran right in here; but all that he could see was ruffled water and a floating hat. I--" Then he paused suddenly. It had come to him that Rodaine might have helped in the demise of Harry! Shouts sounded from outside, and the roaring of a motor truck as it made its slow, tortuous way up the boulder-strewn road with its gullies and innumerable ruts. Voices came, rumbling and varied. Lights. Gaining the mouth of the tunnel. Fairchild could see a mass of shadows outlined by the carbides, all following the leadership of a small, excited man, Sam Herbenfelder, still seeking his diamond. The big pump from the Argonaut tunnel was aboard the truck, which was followed by two other auto vehicles, each loaded with gasoline engines and smaller pumps. A hundred men were in the crowd, all equipped with ropes and buckets. Sam Herbenfelder's pleas had been heard. The search was about to begin for the body of Harry and the diamond that circled one finger. And Fairchild hastened to do his part. Until far into the night they worked and strained to put the big pump into position; while crews of men, four and five in a group, bailed water as fast as possible, that the aggregate might be lessened to the greatest possible extent before the pumps, with their hoses, were attached. Then the gasoline engines began to snort, great lengths of tubing were let down into the shaft, and spurting water started down the mountain side as the task of unwatering the shaft began. But it was a slow job. Morning found the distance to the water lengthened by twenty or thirty feet, and the bucket brigades nearly at the end of their ropes. Men trudged down the hills to breakfast, sending others in their places. Fairchild stayed on to meet Mother Howard and assuage her nervousness as best he could, dividing his time between her and the task before him. Noon found more water than ever tumbling down the hills--the smaller pumps were working now in unison with the larger one--for Sam Herbenfelder had not missed a single possible outlet of aid in his campaign; every man in Ohadi with an obligation to pay, with back interest due, or with a bill yet unaccounted for was on his staff, to say nothing of those who had volunteered simply to still the tearful remonstrances of the hand-wringing, diamond-less, little jeweler. Afternoon--and most of Ohadi was there. Fairchild could distinguish the form of Anita Richmond in the hundreds of women and men clustered about the opening of the tunnel, and for once she was not in the company of Maurice Rodaine. He hurried to her and she smiled at his approach. "Have they found anything yet?" "Nothing--so far. Except that there is plenty of water in the shaft. I 'm trying not to believe it." "I hope it is n't true." Her voice was low and serious. "Father was talking to me--about you. And we hoped you two would succeed--this time." Evidently her father had told her more than she cared to relate. Fairchild caught the inflection in her voice but disregarded it. "I owe you an apology," he said bluntly. "For what?" "Last night. I could n't resist it--I forgot for a moment that you were there. But I--I hope that you 'll believe me to be a gentleman, in spite of it." She smiled up at him quickly. "I already have had proof of that. I--I am only hoping that you will believe me--well, that you 'll forget something." "You mean--" "Yes," she countered quickly, as though to cut off his explanation. "It seemed like a great deal. Yet it was nothing at all. I would feel much happier if I were sure you had disregarded it." Fairchild looked at her for a long time, studying her with his serious, blue eyes, wondering about many things, wishing that he knew more of women and their ways. At last he said the thing that he felt, the straightforward outburst of a straightforward man: "You 're not going to be offended if I tell you something?" "Certainly not." "The sheriff came along just after you had made the turn. He was looking for an auto bandit." "A what?" She stared at him with wide-open, almost laughing eyes. "But you don't believe--" "He was looking for a man," said Fairchild quietly. "I--I told him that I had n't seen anything but--a boy. I was willing to do that then--because I could n't believe that a girl like you would--" Then he stumbled and halted. A moment he sought speech while she smiled up at him. Then out it came: "I--I don't care what it was. I--I like you. Honest, I do. I liked you so much when I was changing that tire that I did n't even notice it when you put the money in my hand. I--well, you 're not the kind of a girl who would do anything really wrong. It might be a prank--or something like that--but it would n't be wrong. So--so there 's an end to it." Again she laughed softly, in a way tantalizing to Robert Fairchild, as though she were making game of him. "What do you know about women?" she asked finally, and Fairchild told the truth: "Nothing." "Then--" the laugh grew heartier, finally, however, to die away. The girl put forth her hand. "But I won't say what I was going to. It would n't sound right. I hope that I--I live up to your estimation of me. At least--I 'm thankful to you for being the man you are. And I won't forget!" And once more her hand had rested in his,--a small, warm, caressing thing in spite of the purely casual grasp of an impersonal action. Again Robert Fairchild felt a thrill that was new to him, and he stood watching her until she had reached the motor car which had brought her to the big curve, and had faded down the hill. Then he went back to assist the sweating workmen and the anxious-faced Sam Herbenfelder. The water was down seventy feet. That night Robert Fairchild sought a few hours' sleep. Two days after, the town still divided its attention between preparations for the Old Times Dance and the progress in the dewatering of the Blue Poppy shaft. Now and then the long hose was withdrawn, and dynamite lowered on floats to the surface of the water, far below, a copper wire trailing it. A push of the plunger, a detonation, and a wait of long moments; it accomplished nothing, and the pumping went on. If the earthly remains of Harry Harkins were below, they steadfastly refused to come to the surface. The volunteers had thinned now to only a few men at the pumps and the gasoline engine, and Sam Herbenfelder was taking turns with Fairchild in overseeing the job. Spectators were not as frequent either; they came and went,--all except Mother Howard, who was silently constant. The water had fallen to the level of the drift, two hundred feet down; the pumps now were working on the main flood which still lay below, while outside the townspeople came and went, and twice daily the owner and proprietor and general assignment reporter of the _Daily Bugle_ called at the mouth of the tunnel for news of progress. But there was no news, save that the water was lower. The excitement of it began to dim. Besides, the night of the dance was approaching, and there were other calls for volunteers, for men to set up the old-time bar in the lodge rooms of the Elks Club; for others to dig out ancient roulette wheels and oil them in preparation for a busy play at a ten-cent limit instead of the sky-high boundaries of a day gone by; for some one to go to Denver and raid the costume shops, to say nothing of buying the innumerable paddles which must accompany any old-time game of keno. But Sam stayed on--and Fairchild with him--and the loiterers, who would refuse to work at anything else for less than six dollars a day, freely giving their services at the pumps and the engines in return for a share of Sam's good will and their names in the papers. A day more and a day after that. Through town a new interest spread. The water was now only a few feet high in the shaft; it meant that the whole great opening, together with the drift tunnel, soon would be dewatered to an extent sufficient to permit of exploration. Again the motor cars ground up the narrow roadway. Outside the tunnel the crowds gathered. Fairchild saw Anita Richmond and gritted his teeth at the fact that young Rodaine accompanied her. Farther in the background, narrow eyes watching him closely, was Squint Rodaine. And still farther-- Fairchild gasped as he noticed the figure plodding down the mountain side. He put out a hand, then, seizing the nervous Herbenfelder by the shoulder, whirled him around. "Look!" he exclaimed. "Look there! Did n't I tell you! Did n't I have a hunch?" For, coming toward them jauntily, slowly, was a figure in beaming blue, a Fedora on his head now, but with the rest of his wardrobe intact, yellow, bump-toed shoes and all. Some one shouted. Everybody turned. And as they did so, the figure hastened its pace. A moment later, a booming voice sounded, the unmistakable voice of Harry Harkins: "I sye! What's the matter over there? Did somebody fall in?" The puffing of gasoline engines ceased. A moment more and the gurgling cough of the pumps was stilled, while the shouting and laughter of a great crowd sounded through the hills. A leaping form went forward, Sam Herbenfelder, to seize Harry, to pat him and paw him, as though in assurance that he really was alive, then to grasp wildly at the ring on his finger. But Harry waved him aside. "Ain't I paid the installment on it?" he remonstrated. "What's the rumpus?" Fairchild, with Mother Howard, both laughing happily, was just behind Herbenfelder. And behind them was thronging half of Ohadi. "We thought you were drowned!" "Me?" Harry's laughter boomed again, in a way that was infectious. "Me drowned, just because I let out a 'oller and dropped my 'at?" "You did it on purpose?" Sam Herbenfelder shook a scrawny fist under Harry's nose. The big Cornishman waved it aside as one would brush away an obnoxious fly. Then he grinned at the townspeople about him. "Well," he confessed, "there was an un'oly lot of water in there, and I didn't 'ave any money. What else was I to do?" "You--!" A pumpman had picked up a piece of heavy timbering and thrown it at him in mock ferocity. "Work us to death and then come back and give us the laugh! Where you been at?" "Center City," confessed Harry cheerily. "And you knew all the time?" Mother Howard wagged a finger under his nose. "Well," and the Cornishman chuckled, "I did n't 'ave any money. I 'ad to get that shaft unwatered, did n't I?" "Get a rail!" Another irate--but laughing--pumpman had come forward. "Think you can pull that on us? Get a rail!" Some one seized a small, dead pine which lay on the ground near by. Others helped to strip it of the scraggly limbs which still clung to it. Harry watched them and chuckled--for he knew that in none was there malice. He had played his joke and won. It was their turn now. Shouting in mock anger, calling for all dire things, from lynchings on down to burnings at the stake, they dragged Harry to the pine tree, threw him astraddle of it, then, with willing hands volunteering on every side, hoisted the tree high above them and started down the mountain side, Sam Herbenfelder trotting in the rear and forgetting his anger in the joyful knowledge that his ring at last was safe. Behind the throng of men with their mock threats trailed the women and children, some throwing pine cones at the booming Harry, juggling himself on the narrow pole; and in the crowd, Fairchild found some one he could watch with more than ordinary interest,--Anita Richmond, trudging along with the rest, apparently remonstrating with the sullen, mean-visaged young man at her side. Instinctively Fairchild knew that young Rodaine was not pleased with the return of Harkins. As for the father-- Fairchild whirled at a voice by his side and looked straight into the crooked eyes of Thornton Fairchild's enemy. The blue-white scar had turned almost black now, the eyes were red from swollen, blood-stained veins, the evil, thin, crooked lips were working in sullen fury. They were practically alone at the mouth of the mine, Fairchild with a laugh dying on his lips, Rodaine with all the hate and anger and futile malice that a human being can know typified in his scarred, hawklike features. A thin, taloned hand came upward, to double, leaving one bony, curved finger extending in emphasis of the words which streamed from the slit of a mouth: "Funny, weren't you? Played your cheap jokes and got away with 'em. But everybody ain't like them fools!" he pointed to the crowd just rounding the rocks, Harry bobbing in the foreground. "There 's some that remember--and I 'm one of 'em. You 've put over your fake; you 've had your laugh; you 've framed it so I 'll be the butt of every numbskull in Ohadi. But just listen to this--just listen to this!" he repeated, the harsh voice taking on a tone that was almost a screech. "There's another time coming--and that time 's going to be mine!" And before Fairchild could retort, he had turned and was scrambling down the mountain side. CHAPTER IX It was just as well. Fairchild could have said nothing that would have helped matters. He could have done nothing that would have damaged them. The cards were still the same; the deck still bore its markings, and the deal was going on without ever a change, except that now the matter of concealment of enmities had turned to an open, aboveboard proposition. Whether Harry had so intended it or not, he had forced Squint Rodaine to show his hand, and whether Squint realized it, that amounted to something. Fairchild was almost grateful for the fact as he went back into the tunnel, spun the flywheels of the gasoline engines and started them revolving again, that the last of the water might be drained from the shaft before the pumps must be returned to their owners. Several hours passed, then Harry returned, minus his gorgeous clothing and his diamond ring, dressed in mining costume now, with high leather boots into which his trousers were tucked, and carrying a carbide lantern. Dolefully he looked at the vacant finger where once a diamond had sparkled. Then he chuckled. "Sam took it back," he announced. "And I took part of the money and paid it out for rent on these pumps. We can keep 'em as long as we want 'em. It's only costing about a fourth of what it might of. Drowning 's worth something," he laughed again. Fairchild joined him, then sobered. "It brought Rodaine out of the bushes," he said. "Squint threatened us after they 'd hauled you down town on the rail." Harry winked jovially. "Ain't it just what I expected? It's better that wye than to 'ave 'im snoopin' around. When I came up to the mine, 'e was right behind me. I knew it. And I 'd figured on it. So I just gave 'im something to get excited about. It was n't a minute after I 'd thrown a rock and my 'at in there and let out a yell that he came thumping in, looking around. I was 'iding back of the timbers there. Out 'e went, muttering to 'imself, and I--well, I went to Center City and read the papers." They chuckled together then; it was something to know that they had not only forced Squint Rodaine to show his enmity openly, but it was something more to make him the instrument of helping them with their work. The pumps were going steadily now, and a dirty stream of water was flowing down the ditch that had been made at one side of the small tram track. Harry looked down the hole, stared intently at nothing, then turned to the rusty hoist. "'Ere 's the thing we 've got to fix up now. This 'ere chiv wheel's all out of gear." "What makes your face so red?" Fairchild asked the question as the be-mustached visage of Harry came nearer to the carbide. Harry looked up. "Mother 'Oward almost slapped it off!" came his rueful answer. "For not telling 'er what I was going to do, and letting 'er think I got drownded. But 'ow was I to know?" He went to tinkering with the big chiv wheel then, supported on its heavy timbers, and over which the cable must pass to allow the skip to travel on its rails down the shaft. Fairchild absently examined the engines and pumps, supplying water to the radiators and filling an oil cup or two. Then he turned swiftly, voicing that which was uppermost in his mind. "When you were here before, Harry, did you know a Judge Richmond?" "Yeh." Harry pawed his mustache and made a greasy, black mark on his face. "But I don't think I want to know 'im now." "Why not?" "'E's mixed up with the Rodaines." "How much?" "They own 'im--that's all." There was silence for a moment. It had been something which Fairchild had not expected. If the Rodaines owned Judge Richmond, how far did that ownership extend? After a long time, he forced himself to a statement. "I know his daughter." "You?" Harry straightened. "'Ow so?" "She sold me a ticket to a dance," Fairchild carefully forgot the earlier meeting. "Then we 've happened to meet several times after that. She said that her father had told her about me--it seems he used to be a friend of my own father." Harry nodded. "So 'e was. And a good friend. But that was before things 'appened--like they 've 'appened in the last ten years. Not that I know about it of my own knowledge. But Mother 'Oward--she knows a lot." "But what's caused the change? What--?" Harry's intent gaze stopped him. "'Ow many times 'ave you seen the girl when she was n't with young Rodaine?" "Very few, that's true." "And 'ow many times 'ave you seen Judge Richmond?" "I have n't ever seen him." "You won't--if Mother 'Oward knows anything. 'E ain't able to get out. 'E's sick--apoplexy--a stroke. Rodaine's taken advantage of it." "How?" "'Ow does anybody take advantage of somebody that's sick? 'Ow does anybody get a 'old on a person? Through money! Judge Richmond 'ad a lot of it. Then 'e got sick. Rodaine, 'e got 'old of that money. Now Judge Richmond 'as to ask 'im for every penny he gets--and 'e does what Rodaine says." "But a judge--" "Judges is just like anybody else when they're bedridden and only 'arf their faculties working. The girl, so Mother 'Oward tells me, is about twenty now. That made 'er just a little kid, and motherless, when Rodaine got in 'is work. She ain't got a thing to sye. And she loves 'er father. Suppose," Harry waved a hand, "that you loved somebody awful strong, and suppose that person was under a influence? Suppose it meant 'is 'appiness and 'is 'ealth for you to do like 'e wanted you? Wouldn't you go with a man? What's more, if 'e don't die pretty soon, you 'll see a wedding!" "You mean--?" "She 'll be Mrs. Maurice Rodaine. She loves 'er father enough to do it--after 'er will's broken. And I don't care 'oo it is; there ain't a woman in the world that's got the strength to keep on saying no to a sick father!" Again Robert Fairchild filled an oil cup, again he tinkered about the pumps. Then he straightened. "How are we going to work this mine?" he asked shortly. Harry stared at him. "'Ow should I know? You own it!" "I don't mean that way. We were fifty-fifty from the minute you showed up. There never has been any other thought in my mind--" "Fifty-fifty? You're making me a bloated capitalist!" "I hope I will. Or rather, I hope that you 'll make such a thing possible for both of us. But I was talking about something else; are we going to work hard and fight it out day and night for awhile until we can get things going, or are we just going at it by easy stages?" "Suppose," answered Harry after a communication with his magic mustache, "that we go dye and night 'til we get the water out? It won't be long. Then we 'll 'ave to work together. You 'll need my vast store of learning and enlightenment!" he grinned. "Good. But the pumping will last through tomorrow night. Can you take the night trick?" "Sure. But why?" "I want to go to that dance!" Harry whistled. Harry's big lips spread into a grin. "And she 's got brown eyes!" he chortled to himself. "And she 's got brown 'air, and she 's a wye about 'er. Oh! She's got a wye about 'er! And I 'll bet she 's going with Maurice Rodaine! Oh! She's got a wye about'er!" "Oh, shut up!" growled Fairchild, but he grinned in schoolboy fashion as he said it. Harry poured half a can of oil upon the bearings of the chiv wheel with almost loving tenderness. "She 's got a wye about 'er!" he echoed. Fairchild suddenly frowned. "Just what do you mean? That she 's in love with Rodaine and just--" "'Ow should I know? But she 's got a wye about 'er!" "Well," the firm chin of the other man grew firmer, "it won't be hard to find out!" And the next night he started upon his investigations. Nor did he stop to consider that social events had been few and far between for him, that his dancing had progressed little farther than the simple ability to move his feet in unison to music. Years of office and home, home and office, had not allowed Robert Fairchild the natural advantages of the usual young man. But he put that aside now; he was going to that dance, and he was going to stay there as long as the music sounded, or rather as long as the brown eyes, brown hair and laughing lips of Anita Richmond were apparent to him. What's more, he carried out his resolution. The clock turned back with the entrance to that dance hall. Men were there in the rough mining costumes of other days, with unlighted candles stuck through patent holders into their hats, and women were there also, dressed as women could dress only in other days of sudden riches, in costumes brought from Denver, bespangled affairs with the gorgeousness piled on until the things became fantastic instead of the intensely beautiful creations that the original wearers had believed them to be. There was only one idea in the olden mining days, to buy as much as possible and to put it all on at once. High, Spanish combs surmounted ancient styles of hairdressing. Rhinestones glittered in lieu of the real diamonds that once were worn by the queens of the mining camps. Dancing girls, newly rich cooks, poverty-stricken prospectors' wives suddenly beaming with wealth, nineteenth-century vamps, gambling hall habitués,--all were represented among the femininity of Ohadi as they laughed and giggled at the outlandish costumes they wore and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Far at one side, making a brave effort with the "near" beer and "almost there" concoctions of a prohibition buried country, was the "old-fashioned bar" with its old-fashioned bartender behind it, roaring out his orders and serving drinks with one hand while he waved and pulled the trigger of a blank-cartridged revolver with the other. Farther on was the roulette wheel, and Fairchild strolled to it, watching the others to catch the drift of the game before he essayed it, playing with pennies where, in the old days, men had gambled away fortunes; surrounded by a crowd that laughed and chattered and forgot its bets, around a place where once a "sleeper" might have meant a fortune. The spirit of the old times was abroad. The noise and clatter of a dance caller bellowed forth as he shouted for everybody to grab their "podners one an' all, do-se-do, promenade th' hall!" and Fairchild, as he watched, saw that his lack of dancing ability would not be a serious handicap. There were many others who did not know the old numbers. And those who did had worn their hobnailed boots, sufficient to take the spring out of any one's feet. The women were doing most of the leading, the men clattered along somewhere in the rear, laughing and shouting and inadvertently kicking one another on the shins. The old times had come back, boisterously, happily,--and every one was living in those days when the hills gushed wealth, and when poverty to-day might mean riches tomorrow. Again and again Fairchild's eyes searched the crowds, the multicolored, overdressed costumes of the women, the old-fashioned affairs with which many of the men had arrayed themselves, ranging all the way from high leather boots to frock suits and stovepipe beaver hats. From one face to another his gaze went; then he turned abstractedly to the long line of tables, with their devotees of keno, and bought a paddle. From far away the drone of the caller sounded in a voice familiar, and Fairchild looked up to see the narrow-eyed, scarred face of Squint Rodaine, who was officiating at the wheel. He lost interest in the game; lackadaisically he placed the buttons on their squares as the numbers were shouted, finally to brush them all aside and desert the game. His hatred of the Rodaines had grown to a point where he could enjoy nothing with which they were connected, where he despised everything with which they had the remotest affiliation,--excepting, of course, one person. And as he rose, Fairchild saw that she was just entering the dance hall. Quaint in an old-fashioned costume which represented more the Civil War days than it did those of the boom times of silver mining, she seemed prettier than ever to Robert Fairchild, more girlish, more entrancing. The big eyes appeared bigger now, peeping from the confines of a poke bonnet; the little hands seemed smaller with their half-length gloves and shielded by the enormous peacock feather fan they carried. Only a moment Fairchild hesitated. Maurice Rodaine, attired in a mauve frock suit and the inevitable accompanying beaver, had stopped to talk to some one at the door. She stood alone, looking about the hall, laughing and nodding,--and then she looked at him! Fairchild did not wait. From the platform at the end of the big room the fiddles had begun to squeak, and the caller was shouting his announcements. Couples began to line up on the floor. The caller's voice grew louder: "Two more couples--two more couples! Grab yo' podners!" Fairchild was elbowing his way swiftly forward, apologizing as he went. A couple took its place beside the others. Once more the plea of the caller sounded: "One more couple--then the dance starts. One more couple, lady an' a gent! One more--" "Please!" Robert Fairchild had reached her and was holding forth his hand. She looked up in half surprise, then demurred. "But I don't know these old dances." "Neither do I--or any other, for that matter," he confessed with sudden boldness. "But does that make any difference? Please!" She glanced quickly toward the door. Maurice Rodaine was still talking, and Fairchild saw a little gleam come into her eyes,--the gleam that shows when a woman decides to make some one pay for rudeness. Again he begged: "Won't you--and then we 'll forget. I--I could n't take my payment in money!" She eyed him quickly and saw the smile on his lips. From the platform the caller voiced another entreaty: "One more cou-ple! Ain't there no lady an' gent that's goin' to fill out this here dance? One more couple--one more couple!" Fairchild's hand was still extended. Again Anita Richmond glanced toward the door, chuckled to herself while Fairchild watched the dimples that the merriment caused, and then--Fairchild forgot the fact that he was wearing hobnailed shoes and that his clothes were worn and old. He was going forward to take his place on the dance floor, and she was beside him! Some way, as through a haze, he saw her. Some way he realized that now and then his hand touched hers, and that once, as they whirled about the room, in obedience to the monarch on the fiddler's rostrum, his arm was about her waist, and her head touching his shoulder. It made little difference whether the dance calls were obeyed after that. Fairchild was making up for all the years he had plodded, all the years in which he had known nothing but a slow, grubbing life, living them all again and rightly, in the few swift moments of a dance. The music ended, and laughing they returned to the side of the hall. Out of the haze he heard words, and knew indistinctly that they were his own: "Will--will you dance with me again tonight?" "Selfish!" she chided. "But will you?" For just a moment her eyes grew serious. "Did you ever realize that we 've never been introduced?" Fairchild was finding more conversation than he ever had believed possible. "No--but I realize that I don't care--if you 'll forgive it. I--believe that I 'm a gentleman." "So do I--or I would n't have danced with you." "Then please--" "Pardon me." She had laid a hand on his arm for just a moment, then hurried away. Fairchild saw that she was approaching young Rodaine, scowling in the background. That person shot an angry remark at her as she approached and followed it with streaming sentences. Fairchild knew the reason. Jealousy! Couples returning from the dance floor jostled against him, but he did not move. He was waiting--waiting for the outcome of the quarrel--and in a moment it came. Anita Richmond turned swiftly, her dark eyes ablaze, her pretty lips set and firm. She looked anxiously about her, sighted Fairchild, and then started toward him, while he advanced to meet her. "I 've reconsidered," was her brief announcement. "I 'll dance the next one with you." "And the next after that?" Again: "Selfish!" But Fairchild did not appear to hear. "And the next and the next and the next!" he urged as the caller issued his inevitable invitations for couples. Anita smiled. "Maybe--I 'll think about it." "I 'll never know how to dance, unless you teach me." Fairchild pleaded, as they made their way to the center of the floor. "I 'll--" "Don't work on my sympathies!" "But it's the truth. I never will." "S'lute yo' podners!" The dance was on. And while the music squealed from the rostrum, while the swaying forms some way made the rounds according to the caller's viewpoint of an old-time dance, Anita Richmond evidently "thought about it." When the next dance came, they went again on the floor together, Robert Fairchild and the brown-eyed girl whom he suddenly realized he loved, without reasoning the past or the future, without caring whom she might be or what her plans might contain; a man out of prison lives by impulse, and Fairchild was but lately released. A third dance and a fourth, while in the intervals Fairchild's eyes sought out the sulky, sullen form of Maurice Rodaine, flattened against the wall, eyes evil, mouth a straight line, and the blackness of hate discoloring his face. It was as so much wine to Fairchild; he felt himself really young for the first time in his life. And as the music started again, he once more turned to his companion. Only, however, to halt and whirl and stare in surprise. There had come a shout from the doorway, booming, commanding: "'Ands up, everybody! And quick about it!" Some one laughed and jabbed his hands into the air. Another, quickly sensing a staged surprise, followed the example. It was just the finishing touch necessary,--the old-time hold-up of the old-time dance. The "bandit" strode forward. "Out from be'ind that bar! Drop that gun!" he commanded of the white-aproned attendant. "Out from that roulette wheel. Everybody line up! Quick--and there ain't no time for foolin'." Chattering and laughing, they obeyed, the sheriff, his star gleaming, standing out in front of them all, shivering in mock fright, his hands higher than any one's. The bandit, both revolvers leveled, stepped forward a foot or so, and again ordered speed. Fairchild, standing with his hands in the air, looked down toward Anita, standing beside him. "Is n't it exciting," she exclaimed. "Just like a regular hold-up! I wonder who the bandit is. He certainly looks the part, does n't he?" And Fairchild agreed that he did. A bandanna handkerchief was wrapped about his head, concealing his hair and ears. A mask was over his eyes, supplemented by another bandanna, which, beginning at the bridge of his nose, flowed over his chin, cutting off all possible chance of recognition. Only a second more he waited, then with a wave of the guns, shouted his command: "All right, everybody! I'm a decent fellow. Don't want much, but I want it quick! This 'ere 's for the relief of widders and orphans. Make it sudden. Each one of you gents step out to the center of the room and leave five dollars. And step back when you 've put it there. Ladies stay where you 're at!" Again a laugh. Fairchild turned to his companion, as she nudged him. "There, it's your turn." Out to the center of the floor went Fairchild, the rest of the victims laughing and chiding him. Back he came in mock fear, his hands in the air. On down the line went the contributing men. Then the bandit rushed forward, gathered up the bills and gold pieces, shoved them in his pockets, and whirled toward the door. "The purpose of this 'ere will be in the paper to-morrow," he announced. "And don't you follow me to find out! Back there!" Two or three laughing men had started forward, among them a fiddler, who had joined the line, and who now rushed out in flaunting bravery, brandishing his violin as though to brain the intruder. Again the command: "Back there--get back!" Then the crowd recoiled. Flashes had come from the masked man's guns, the popping of electric light globes above and the showering of glass testifying to the fact that they had contained something more than mere wadding. Somewhat dazed, the fiddler continued his rush, suddenly to crumple and fall, while men milled and women screamed. A door slammed, the lock clicked, and the crowd rushed for the windows. The hold-up had been real after all,--instead of a planned, joking affair. On the floor the fiddler lay gasping--and bleeding. And the bandit was gone. All in a moment the dance hall seemed to have gone mad. Men were rushing about and shouting; panic-stricken women clawed at one another and fought their way toward a freedom they could not gain. Windows crashed as forms hurtled against them; screams sounded. Hurriedly, as the crowd massed thicker, Fairchild raised the small form of Anita in his arms and carried her to a chair, far at one side. "It's all right now," he said, calming her. "Everything 's over--look, they 're helping the fiddler to his feet. Maybe he 's not badly hurt. Everything 's all right--" And then he straightened. A man had unlocked the door from the outside and had rushed into the dance hall, excited, shouting. It was Maurice Rodaine. "I know who it was," he almost screamed. "I got a good look at him--jumped out of the window and almost headed him off. He took off his mask outside--and I saw him." "You saw him--?" A hundred voices shouted the question at once. "Yes." Then Maurice Rodaine nodded straight toward Robert Fairchild. "The light was good, and I got a straight look at him. He was that fellow's partner--a Cornishman they call Harry!" CHAPTER X "I don't believe it!" Anita Richmond exclaimed with conviction and clutched at Fairchild's arm. "I don't believe it!" "I can't!" Robert answered. Then he turned to the accuser. "How could it be possible for Harry to be down here robbing a dance hall when he 's out working the mine?" "Working the mine?" This time it was the sheriff. "What's the necessity for a day and night shift?" The question was pertinent--and Fairchild knew it. But he did not hesitate. "I know it sounds peculiar--but it's the truth. We agreed upon it yesterday afternoon." "At whose suggestion?" "I 'm not sure--but I think it was mine." "Young fellow," the sheriff had approached him now, "you 'd better be certain about that. It looks to me like that might be a pretty good excuse to give when a man can't produce an alibi. Anyway, the identification seems pretty complete. Everybody in this room heard that man talk with a Cousin Jack accent. And Mr. Rodaine says that he saw his face. That seems conclusive." "If Mr. Rodaine's word counts for anything." The sheriff looked at him sharply. "Evidently you have n't been around here long." Then he turned to the crowd. "I want a couple of good men to go along with me as deputies." "I have a right to go." Fairchild had stepped forward. "Certainly. But not as a deputy. Who wants to volunteer?" Half a dozen men came forward, and from them the sheriff chose two. Fairchild turned to say good-by to Anita. In vain. Already Maurice Rodaine had escorted her, apparently against her will, to a far end of the dance hall, and there was quarreling with her. Fairchild hurried to join the sheriff and his two deputies, just starting out of the dance hall. Five minutes later they were in a motor car, chugging up Kentucky Gulch. The trip was made silently. There was nothing for Fairchild to say; he had told all he knew. Slowly, the motor car fighting against the grade, the trip was accomplished. Then the four men leaped from the machine at the last rise before the tunnel was reached and three of them went forward afoot toward where a slight gleam of light came from the mouth of the Blue Poppy. A consultation and then the creeping forms made the last fifty feet. The sheriff took the lead, at last to stop behind a boulder and to shout a command: "Hey you, in there." "'Ey yourself!" It was Harry's voice. "Come out--and be quick about it. Hold your light in front of your face with both hands." "The 'ell I will! And 'oo 's talking?" "Sheriff Adams of Clear Creek County. You 've got one minute to come out--or I 'll shoot." "I 'm coming on the run!" And almost instantly the form of Harry, his acetylene lamp lighting up his bulbous, surprised countenance with its spraylike mustache, appeared at the mouth of the tunnel. "What the bloody 'ell?" he gasped, as he looked into the muzzle of the revolver. From down the mountain side came the shout of one of the deputies: "Sheriff! Looks like it's him, all right. I 've found a horse down here--all sweated up from running." "That's about the answer." Sheriff Adams went forward and with a motion of his revolver sent Harry's hands into the air. "Let's see what you 've got on you." A light gleamed below as an electric flash in the hands of one of the deputies began an investigation of the surroundings. The sheriff, finishing his search of 'Arry's pockets, stepped back. "Well," he demanded, "what did you do with the proceeds?" "The proceeds?" Harry stared blankly. "Of what?" "Quit your kidding now. They 've found your horse down there." "Would n't it be a good idea--" Fairchild had cut in acridly--"to save your accusations on this thing until you're a little surer of it? Harry has n't any horse. If he 's rented one, you ought to be able to find that out pretty shortly." As if in answer, the sheriff turned and shouted a question down the mountain side. And back came the answer: "It's Doc Mason's. Must have been stolen. Doc was at the dance." "I guess that settles it." The officer reached for his hip pocket. "Stick out your hands, Harry, while I put the cuffs on them." "But 'ow in bloody 'ell 'ave I been doing anything when I 've been up 'ere working on this chiv wheel? 'Ow--?" "They say you held up the dance to-night and robbed us," Fairchild cut in. Harry's face lost its surprised look, to give way to a glance of keen questioning. "And do you say it?" "I most certainly do not. The identification was given by that honorable person known as Mr. Maurice Rodaine." "Oh! One thief identifying another--" "Just cut your remarks along those lines." "Sheriff!" Again the voice from below. "Yeh!" "We 've found a cache down here. Must have been made in a hurry--two new revolvers, bullets, a mask, a couple of new handkerchiefs and the money." Harry's eyes grew wide. Then he stuck out his hands. "The evidence certainly is piling up!" he grunted. "I might as well save my talking for later." "That's a good idea." The sheriff snapped the handcuffs into place. Then Fairchild shut off the pumps and they started toward the machine. Back in Ohadi more news awaited them. Harry, if Harry had been the highwayman, had gone to no expense for his outfit. The combined general store and hardware emporium of Gregg Brothers had been robbed of the articles necessary for a disguise,--also the revolvers and their bullets. Robert Fairchild watched Harry placed in the solitary cell of the county jail with a spirit that could not respond to the Cornishman's grin and his assurances that morning would bring a righting of affairs. Four charges hung heavy above him: that of horse-stealing, of burglary, of highway robbery, and worse, the final one of assault with attempt to kill. Fairchild turned wearily away; he could not find the optimism to join Harry's cheerful announcement that it would be "all right." The appearances were otherwise. Besides, up in the little hospital on the hill, Fairchild had seen lights gleaming as he entered the jail, and he knew that doctors were working there over the wounded body of the fiddler. Tired, heavy at heart, his earlier conquest of the night sodden and overshadowed now, he turned away from the cell and its optimistic occupant,--out into the night. It was only a short walk to the hospital and Fairchild went there, to leave with at least a ray of hope. The probing operation had been completed; the fiddler would live, and at least the charge against Harry would not be one of murder. That was a thing for which to be thankful; but there was plenty to cause consternation, as Fairchild walked slowly down the dark, winding street toward the main thoroughfare. Without Harry, Fairchild now felt himself lost. Before the big, genial, eccentric Cornishman had come into his life, he had believed, with some sort of divine ignorance, that he could carry out his ambitions by himself, with no knowledge of the technical details necessary to mining, with no previous history of the Blue Poppy to guide him, and with no help against the enemies who seemed everywhere. Now he saw that it was impossible. More, the incidents of the night showed how swiftly those enemies were working, how sharp and stiletto-like their weapons. That Harry was innocent was certain,--to Robert Fairchild. There was quite a difference between a joke which a whole town recognized as such and a deliberate robbery which threatened the life of at least one man. Fairchild knew in his heart that Harry was not built along those lines. Looking back over it now, Fairchild could see how easily Fate had played into the hands of the Rodaines, if the Rodaines had not possessed a deeper concern than merely to seize upon a happening and turn it to their own account. The highwayman was big. The highwayman talked with a "Cousin-Jack" accent,--for all Cornishmen are "Cousin Jacks" in the mining country. Those two features in themselves, Fairchild thought, as he stumbled along in the darkness, were sufficient to start the scheming plot in the brain of Maurice Rodaine, already ugly and evil through the trick played by Harry on his father and the rebuke that had come from Anita Richmond. It was an easy matter for him to get the inspiration, leap out of the window, and then wait until the robber had gone, that he might flare forth with his accusation. And after that--. Either Chance, or something stronger, had done the rest. The finding of the stolen horse and the carelessly made cache near the mouth of the Blue Poppy mine would be sufficient in the eyes of any jury. The evidence was both direct and circumstantial. To Fairchild's mind, there was small chance for escape by Harry, once his case went to trial. Nor did the pounding insistence of intuitive knowledge that the whole thing had been a deliberately staged plot on the part of the Rodaines, father and son, make the slightest difference in Fairchild's estimation. How could he prove it? By personal animosity? There was the whole town of Ohadi to testify that the highwayman was a big man, of the build of Harry, and that he spoke with a Cornish accent. There were the sworn members of the posse to show that they, without guidance, had discovered the horse and the cache,--and the Rodaines were nowhere about to help them. And experience already had told Fairchild that the Rodaines, by a deliberately constructed system, held a ruling power; that against their word, his would be as nothing. Besides, where would be Harry's alibi? He had none; he had been at the mine, alone. There was no one to testify for him, not even Fairchild. The world was far from bright. Down the dark street the man wandered, his hands sunk deep in his pockets, his head low between his shoulders,--only to suddenly galvanize into intensity, and to stop short that he might hear again the voice which had come to him. At one side was a big house,--a house whose occupants he knew instinctively, for he had seen the shadow of a woman, hands outstretched, as she passed the light-strewn shade of a window on the second floor. More, he had heard her voice, supplemented by gruffer tones. And then it came again. It was pleading, and at the same time angered with the passion of a person approaching hysteria. A barking sentence answered her, something that Fairchild could not understand. He left the old board sidewalk and crept to the porch that he might hear the better. Then every nerve within him jangled, and the black of the darkness changed to red. The Rodaines were within; he had heard first the cold voice of the father, then the rasping tones of the son, in upbraiding. More, there had come the sobbing of a woman; instinctively Fairchild knew that it was Anita Richmond. And then: It was her voice, high, screaming. Hysteria had come,--the wild, racking hysteria of a person driven to the breaking point: "Leave this house--hear me! Leave this house! Can't you see that you're killing him? Don't you dare touch me--leave this house! No--I won't be quiet--I won't--you 're killing him, I tell you--!" And Fairchild waited for nothing more. A lunge, and he was on the veranda. One more spring and he had reached the door, to find it unlocked, to throw it wide and to leap into the hall. Great steps, and he had cleared the stairs to the second floor. A scream came from a doorway before him; dimly, as through a red screen, Fairchild saw the frightened face of Anita Richmond, and on the landing, fronting him angrily, stood the two Rodaines. For a moment, Fairchild disregarded them and turned to the sobbing, disheveled little being in the doorway. "What's happened?" "They were threatening me--and father!" she moaned. "But you shouldn't have come in--you should n't have--" "I heard you scream. I could n't help it. I heard you say they were killing your father--" The girl looked anxiously toward an inner room, where Fairchild could see faintly the still figure of a man outlined under the covers of an old-fashioned four-poster. "They--they--got him excited. He had another stroke. I--I could n't stand it any longer." "You 'd better get out," said Fairchild curtly to the Rodaines, with a suggestive motion toward the stairs. They hesitated a moment and Maurice seemed about to launch himself at Robert, but his father laid a restraining hand on his arm. A step and the elder Rodaine hesitated. "I 'm only going because of your father," he said gruffly, with a glance toward Anita. Fairchild knew differently, but he said nothing. The gray of Rodaine's countenance told where his courage lay; it was yellow gray, the dirty gray of a man who fights from cover, and from cover only. "Oh, I know," Anita said. "It's--it's all right. I--I 'm sorry. I--did n't realize that I was screaming--please forgive me--and go, won't you? It means my father's life now." "That's the only reason I am going; I 'm not going because--" "Oh, I know. Mr. Fairchild should n't have come in here. He should n't have done it. I 'm sorry--please go." Down the steps they went, the older man with his hand still on his son's arm; while, white-faced, Fairchild awaited Anita, who had suddenly sped past him into the sick room, then was wearily returning. "Can I help you?" he asked at last. "Yes," came her rather cold answer, only to be followed by a quickly whispered "Forgive me." And then the tones became louder--so that they could be heard at the bottom of the stairs: "You can help me greatly--simply by going and not creating any more of a disturbance." "But--" "Please go," came the direct answer. "And please do not vent your spite on Mr. Rodaine and his son. I 'm sure that they will act like gentlemen if you will. You should n't have rushed in here." "I heard you screaming, Miss Richmond." "I know," came her answer, as icily as ever. Then the door downstairs closed and the sound of steps came on the veranda. She leaned close to him. "I had to say that," came her whispered words. "Please don't try to understand anything I do in the future. Just go--please!" And Fairchild obeyed. CHAPTER XI The Rodaines were on the sidewalk when Fairchild came forth from the Richmond home, and true to his instructions from the frightened girl, he brushed past them swiftly and went on down the street, not turning at the muttered invectives which came from the crooked lips of the older man, not seeming even to notice their presence as he hurried on toward Mother Howard's boarding house. Whether Fate had played with him or against him, he did not know,--nor could he summon the brain power to think. Happenings had come too thickly in the last few hours for him to differentiate calmly; everything depended upon what course the Rodaines might care to pursue. If theirs was to be a campaign of destruction, without a care whom it might involve, Fairchild could see easily that he too might soon be juggled into occupying the cell with Harry in the county jail. Wearily he turned the corner to the main street and made his plodding way, along it, his shoulders drooping, his brain fagged from the flaring heat of anger and the strain that the events of the night had put upon it. In his creaky bed in the old boarding house, he again sought to think, but in vain. He could only lie awake and stare into the darkness about him, while through his mind ran a muddled conglomeration of foreboding, waking dreams, revamps of the happenings of the last three weeks, memories which brought him nothing save sleeplessness and the knowledge that, so far, he fought a losing fight. After hours, daylight began to streak the sky. Fairchild, dull, worn by excitement and fatigue, strove to rise, then laid his head on the pillow for just a moment of rest. And with that perversity which extreme weariness so often exerts, his eyes closed, and he slept,--to wake at last with the realization that it was late morning, and that some one was pounding on the door. Fairchild raised his head. "Is that you, Mother Howard? I'm getting up, right away." A slight chuckle answered him. "But this is n't Mother Howard. May I see you a moment?" "Who is it?" "No one you know--yet. I 've come to talk to you about your partner. May I come in?" "Yes." Fairchild was fully alive now to the activities that the day held before him. The door opened, and a young man, alert, almost cocky in manner, with black, snappy eyes showing behind horn-rimmed glasses, entered and reached for the sole chair that the room contained. "My name 's Farrell," he announced. "Randolph P. Farrell. And to make a long story short, I 'm your lawyer." "My lawyer?" Fairchild stared. "I haven't any lawyer in Ohadi. The only--" "That does n't alter the fact. I 'm your lawyer, and I 'm at your service. And I don't mind telling you that it's just about my first case. Otherwise, I don't guess I 'd have gotten it." "Why not?" The frankness had driven other queries from Fairchild's mind. Farrell, the attorney, grinned cheerily. "Because I understand it concerns the Rodaines. Nobody but a fool out of college cares to buck up against them. Besides, nearly everybody has a little money stuck into their enterprises. And seeing I have no money at all, I 'm not financially interested. And not being interested, I 'm wholly just, fair and willing to fight 'em to a standstill. Now what's the trouble? Your partner 's in jail, as I understand it. Guilty or not guilty?" "Wa--wait a minute!" The breeziness of the man had brought Fairchild to more wakefulness and to a certain amount of cheer. "Who hired you?" Then with a sudden inspiration: "Mother Howard did n't go and do this?" "Mother Howard? You mean the woman who runs the boarding house? Not at all." "But--" "I 'm not exactly at liberty to state." Suspicion began to assert itself. The smile of comradeship that the other man's manner instilled faded suddenly. "Under those conditions, I don't believe--" "Don't say it! Don't get started along those lines. I know what you 're thinking. Knew that was what would happen from the start. And against the wishes of the person who hired me for this work, I--well, I brought the evidence. I might as well show it now as try to put over this secret stuff and lose a lot of time doing it. Here, take a glimpse and then throw it away, tear it up, swallow it, or do anything you want to with it, just so nobody else sees it. Ready? Look." He drew forth a small visiting card. Fairchild glanced. Then he looked--and then he sat up straight in bed. For before him were the engraved words: Miss Anita Natalie Richmond. While across the card was hastily written, in a hand distinctively feminine: Mr. Fairchild: This is my good friend. He will help you. There is no fee attached. Please destroy. Anita Richmond. "Bu--but I don't understand." "You know Miss--er--the writer of this card, don't you?" "But why should she--?" Mr. Farrell, barrister-at-law, grinned broadly. "I see you don't know Miss--the writer of this card at all. That's her nature. Besides--well, I have a habit of making long stories short. All she 's got to do with me is crook her finger and I 'll jump through. I 'm--none of your business. But, anyway, here I am--" Fairchild could not restrain a laugh. There was something about the man, about his nervous, yet boyish way of speaking, about his enthusiasm, that wiped out suspicion and invited confidence. The owner of the Blue Poppy mine leaned forward. "But you did n't finish your sentence about--the writer of that card." "You mean--oh--well, there 's nothing to that. I 'm in love with her. Been in love with her since I 've been knee-high to a duck. So 're you. So 's every other human being that thinks he's a regular man. So's Maurice Rodaine. Don't know about the rest of you--but I have n't got a chance. Don't even think of it any more--look on it as a necessary affliction, like wearing winter woolens and that sort of thing. Don't let it bother you. The problem right now is to get your partner out of jail. How much money have you got?" "Only a little more than two thousand." "Not enough. There 'll be bonds on four charges. At the least, they 'll be around a thousand dollars apiece. Probabilities are that they 'll run around ten thousand for the bunch. How about the Blue Poppy?" Fairchild shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know what it's worth." "Neither do I. Neither does the judge. Neither does any one else. Therefore, it's worth at least ten thousand dollars. That 'll do the trick. Get out your deeds and that sort of thing--we 'll have to file them with the bond as security." "But that will ruin us!" "How so? A bond 's nothing more than a mortgage. It doesn't stop you from working on the mine. All it does is give evidence that your friend and partner will be on the job when the bailiff yells oyez, oyez, oyez. Otherwise, they 'll take the mine away from you and sell it at public sale for the price of the bond. But that's a happen-so of the future. And there 's no danger if our client--you will notice that I call him our client--is clothed with the dignity and the protecting mantle of innocence and stays here to see his trial out." "He 'll do that, all right." "Then we 're merely using the large and ample safe of the court of this judicial district as a deposit vault for some very valuable papers. I 'd suggest now that you get up, seize your deeds and accompany me to the palace of justice. Otherwise, that partner of yours will have to eat dinner in a place called in undignified language the hoosegow!" It was like warm sunshine on a cold day, the chatter of this young man in horn-rimmed glasses. Soon Fairchild was dressed and walking hurriedly up the street with the voluble attorney. A half-hour more and they were before the court. Fairchild, the lawyer and the jail-worn Harry, his mustache fluttering in more directions than ever. "Not guilty, Your Honor," said Randolph P. Farrell. "May I ask the extent of the bond?" The judge adjusted his glasses and studied the information which the district attorney had laid before him. "In view of the number of charges and the seriousness of each, I must fix an aggregate bond of five thousand dollars, or twelve hundred fifty dollars for each case." "Thank you; we had come prepared for more. Mr. Fairchild, who is Mr. Harkins' partner, is here to appear as bondsman. The deeds are in his name alone, the partnership existing, as I understand it, upon their word of honor between them. I refer, Your Honor, to the deeds of the Blue Poppy mine. Would Your Honor care to examine them?" His Honor would. His Honor did. For a long moment he studied them, and Fairchild, in looking about the courtroom, saw the bailiff in conversation with a tall, thin man, with squint eyes and a scar-marked forehead. A moment later, the judge looked over his glasses. "Bailiff!" "Yes, Your Honor." "Have you any information regarding the value of the Blue Poppy mining claims?" "Sir, I have just been talking to Mr. Rodaine. He says they 're well worth the value of the bond." "How about that, Rodaine?" The judge peered down the court room. Squint Rodaine scratched his hawklike nose with his thumb and nodded. "They 'll do," was his answer, and the judge passed the papers to the clerk of the court. "Bond accepted. I 'll set this trial for--" "If Your Honor please, I should like it at the very, very earliest possible moment," Randolph P. Farrell had cut in. "This is working a very great hardship upon an innocent man and--" "Can't be done." The judge was scrawling on his docket. "Everything 's too crowded. Can't be reached before the November term. Set it for November 11th." "Very well, Your Honor." Then he turned with a wide grin to his clients. "That's all until November." Out they filed through the narrow aisle of the court room, Fairchild's knee brushing the trouser leg of Squint Rodaine as they passed. At the door, the attorney turned toward them, then put forth a hand. "Drop in any day this week and we 'll go over things," he announced cheerfully. "We put one over on his royal joblots that time, anyway. Hates me from the ground up. Worst we can hope for is a conviction and then a Supreme Court reversal. I 'll get him so mad he 'll fill the case with errors. He used to be an instructor down at Boulder, and I stuck the pages of a lecture together on him one day. That's why I asked for an early trial. Knew he 'd give me a late one. That 'll let us have time to stir up a little favorable evidence, which right now we don't possess. Understand--all money that comes from the mine is held in escrow until this case is decided. But I 'll explain that. Going to stick around here and bask in the effulgence of really possessing a case. S'long!" And he turned back into the court room, while Fairchild, the dazed Harry stalking beside him, started down the street. "'Ow do you figure it?" asked the Cornishman at last. "What?" "Rodaine. 'E 'elped us out!" Fairchild stopped. It had not occurred to him before. But now he saw it: that if Rodaine, as an expert on mining, had condemned the Blue Poppy, it could have meant only one thing, the denial of bond by the judge and the lack of freedom for Harry. Fairchild rubbed a hand across his brow. "I can't figure it," came at last. "And especially since his son is the accuser and since I got the best of them both last night!" "Got the best of 'em? You?" The story was brief in its telling. And it brought no explanation of the sudden amiability displayed by the crooked-faced Rodaine. They went on, striving vainly for a reason, at last to stop in front of the post-office, as the postmaster leaned out of the door. "Your name's Fairchild, isn't it?" asked the person of letters, as he fastened a pair of gimlet eyes on the owner of the Blue Poppy. "Yes." "Thought so. Some of the fellows said you was. Better drop in here for your mail once in a while. There 's been a letter for you here for two days!" "For me?" Vaguely Fairchild went within and received the missive, a plain, bond envelope without a return address. He turned it over and over in his hand before he opened it--then looked at the postmark,--Denver. At last: "Open it, why don't you?" Harry's mustache was tickling his ear, as the big miner stared over his shoulder. Fairchild obeyed. They gasped together. Before them were figures and sentences which blurred for a moment, finally to resolve into: Mr. Robert Fairchild, Ohadi, Colorado. Dear Sir; I am empowered by a client whose name I am not at liberty to state, to make you an offer of $50,000. for your property in Clear Creek County, known as the Blue Poppy mine. In replying, kindly address your letter to Box 180, Denver, Colo. Harry whistled long and thoughtfully. "That's a 'ole lot of money!" "An awful lot, Harry. But why was the offer made? There 's nothing to base it on. There 's--" Then for a moment, as they stepped out of the post-office, he gave up the thought, even of comparative riches. Twenty feet away, a man and a girl were approaching, talking as though there never had been the slightest trouble between them. They crossed the slight alleyway, and she laid her hand on his arm, almost caressingly, Fairchild thought, and he stared hard as though in unbelief of their identity. But it was certain. It was Maurice Rodaine and Anita Richmond; they came closer, her eyes turned toward Fairchild, and then-- She went on, without speaking, without taking the trouble to notice, apparently, that he had been standing there. CHAPTER XII After this, there was little conversation until Harry and Fairchild had reached the boarding house. Then, with Mother Howard for an adviser, the three gathered in the old parlor, and Fairchild related the events of the night before, adding what had happened at the post-office, when Anita had passed him without speaking. Mother Howard, her arms folded as usual, bobbed her gray head. "It's like her, Son," she announced at last. "She 's a good girl. I 've known her ever since she was a little tad not big enough to walk. And she loves her father." "But--" "She loves her father. Is n't that enough? The Rodaines have the money--and they have almost everything that Judge Richmond owns. It's easy enough to guess what they 've done with it--tied it up so that he can't touch it until they 're ready for him to do it. And they 're not going to do that until they 've gotten what they want." "Which is--?" "Anita! Any fool ought to be able to know that. Of course," she added with an acrid smile, "persons that are so head over heels in love themselves that they can't see ten feet in front of them would n't be able to understand it--but other people can. The Rodaines know they can't do anything directly with Anita. She would n't stand for it. She 's not that kind of a girl. They know that money does n't mean anything to her--and what's more, they 've been forced to see that Anita ain't going to turn handsprings just for the back-action honor of marrying a Rodaine. Anita could marry a lot richer fellows than Maurice Rodaine ever dreamed of being, if she wanted to--and there wouldn't be any scoundrel of a father, or any graveyard wandering, crazy mother to go into the bargain. And they realize it. But they realize too, that there ain't a chance of them losing out as long as her father's happiness depends on doing what they want her to do. So, after all, ain't it easy to see the whole thing?" "To you, possibly. But not to me." Mother Howard pressed her lips in exasperation. "Just go back over it," she recapitulated. "She got mad at him at the dance last night, did n't she? He 'd done something rude--from the way you tell it. Then you sashayed up and asked her to dance every dance with you. You don't suppose that was because you were so tall and handsome, do you?" "Well--" Fairchild smiled ruefully--"I was hoping that it was because she rather liked me." "Suppose it was? But she rather likes a lot of people. You understand women just like a pig understands Sunday--you don't know anything about 'em. She was mad at Maurice Rodaine and she wanted to give him a lesson. She never thought about the consequences. After the dance was over, just like the sniveling little coward he is, he got his father and went to the Richmond house. There they began laying out the old man because he had permitted his daughter to do such a disgraceful thing as to dance with a man she wanted to dance with instead of kowtowing and butting her head against the floor every time Maurice Rodaine crooked his finger. And they were n't gentle about it. What was the result? Poor old Judge Richmond got excited and had another stroke. And what did Anita do naturally--just like a woman? She got the high-strikes and then you came rushing in. After that, she calmed down and had a minute to think of what might be before her. That stroke last night was the second one for the Judge. There usually ain't any more after the third one. Now, can't you see why Anita is willing to do anything on earth just to keep peace and just to give her father a little rest and comfort and happiness in the last days of his life? You 've got to remember that he ain't like an ordinary father that you can go to and tell all your troubles. He 's laying next door to death, and Anita, just like any woman that's got a great, big, good heart in her, is willing to face worse than death to help him. It's as plain to me as the nose on Harry's face." "Which is quite plain," agreed Fairchild ruefully. Harry rubbed the libeled proboscis, pawed at his mustache and fidgeted in his chair. "I understand that, all right," he announced at last. "But why should anybody want to buy the mine?" It brought Fairchild to the realization of a new development, and he brought forth the letter, once more to stare at it. "Fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money," came at last. "It would pretty near pay us for coming out here, Harry." "That it would." "And what then?" Mother Howard, still looking through uncolored glasses, took the letter and scanned it. "You two ain't quitters, are you?" "'Oo, us?" Harry bristled. "Yes, you. If you are, get yourselves a piece of paper and write to Denver and take the offer. If you ain't--keep on fighting." "I believe you 're right, Mother Howard." Fairchild had reached for the letter again and was staring at it as though for inspiration. "That amount of money seems to be a great deal. Still, if a person will offer that much for a mine when there 's nothing in sight to show its value, it ought to mean that there's something dark in the woodpile and that the thing 's worth fighting out. And personally speaking, I 'm willing to fight!" "I never quit in my life!" Harry straightened in his chair and his mustache stuck forth pugnaciously. Mother Howard looked down at him, pressed her lips, then smiled. "No," she announced, "except to run away like a whipped pup after you 'd gotten a poor lonely boarding-house keeper in love with you!" "Mother 'Oward, I 'll--" But the laughing, gray-haired woman had scrambled through the doorway and slammed the door behind her, only to open it a second later and poke her head within. "Need n't think because you can hold up a dance hall and get away with it, you can use cave-man stuff on me!" she admonished. And in that one sentence was all the conversation necessary regarding the charges against Harry, as far as Mother Howard was concerned. She did n't believe them, and Harry's face showed that the world had become bright and serene again. He swung his great arms as though to loosen the big muscles of his shoulders. He pecked at his mustache. Then he turned to Fairchild. "Well," he asked, "what do we do? Go up to the mine--just like nothing 'ad ever 'appened?" "Exactly. Wait until I change my clothes. Then we 'll be ready to start. I 'm not even going to dignify this letter by replying to it. And for one principal reason--" he added--"that I think the Rodaines have something to do with it." '"Ow so?" "I don't know. It's only a conjecture; I guess the connection comes from the fact that Squint put a good valuation on the mine this morning in court. And if it is any of his doings--then the best thing in the world is to forget it. I 'll be ready in a moment." An hour later they entered the mouth of the Blue Poppy tunnel, once more to start the engines and to resume the pumping, meanwhile struggling back and forth with timbers from the mountain side, as they began the task of rehabilitating the tunnel where it had caved in just beyond the shaft. It was the beginning of a long task; well enough they knew that far below there would be much more of this to do, many days of back-breaking labor in which they must be the main participants, before they ever could hope to begin their real efforts in search of ore. And so, while the iron-colored water gushed from the pump tubes. Harry and Fairchild made their trips, scrambling ones as they went outward, struggling ones as they came back, dragging the "stulls" or heavy timbers which would form the main supports, the mill-stakes, or lighter props, the laggs and spreaders, all found in the broken, well-seasoned timber of the mountain side, all necessary for the work which was before them. The timbering of a mine is not an easy task. One by one the heavy props must be put into place, each to its station, every one in a position which will furnish the greatest resistance against the tremendous weight from above, the constant inclination of the earth to sink and fill the man-made excavations. For the earth is a jealous thing; its own caverns it makes and preserves judiciously. Those made by the hand of humanity call forth the resistance of gravity and of disintegration, and it takes measures of strength and power to combat them. That day, Harry and Fairchild worked with all their strength at the beginning of a stint that would last--they did not, could not know how long. And they worked together. Their plan of a day and night shift had been abandoned; the trouble engendered by their first attempt had been enough to shelve that sort of program. Hour after hour they toiled, until the gray mists hung low over the mountain tops, until the shadows lengthened and twilight fell. The engines ceased their chugging, the coughing swirl of the dirty water as it came from the drift, far below, stopped. Slowly two weary men jogged down the rutty road to the narrow, winding highway which led through Kentucky Gulch and into town. But they were happy with a new realization: that they were actively at work, that something had been accomplished by their labors, and progress made in spite of the machinations of malignant men, in spite of the malicious influences of the past and of the present, and in spite of the powers of Nature. It was a new, a grateful life to Fairchild. It gave him something else to think about than the ponderings upon the mysterious events which seemed to whirl, like a maelstrom, about him. And more, it gave him little time to think at all, for that night he did not lie awake to stare about him in the darkness. Muscles were aching in spite of their inherent strength. His head pounded from the pressure of intensified heart action. His eyes closed wearily, yet with a wholesome fatigue. Nor did he wake until Harry was pounding on the door in the dawn of the morning. Their meal came before the dining room was regularly open. Mother Howard herself flipping the flapjacks and frying the eggs which formed their breakfast, meanwhile finding the time to pack their lunch buckets. Then out into the crisp air of morning they went, and back to their labors. Once more the pumps; once more the struggle against the heavy timbers; once more the "clunk" of the axe as it bit deep into wood, or the pounding of hammers as great spikes were driven into place. Late that afternoon they turned to a new duty,--that of mucking away the dirt and rotted logs from a place that once had been impassable. The timbering of the broken-down portion of the tunnel just behind the shaft had been repaired, and Harry flipped the sweat away from his broad forehead with an action of relief. "Not that it does us any particular good," he announced. "There ain't nothing back there that we can get at. But it's room we 'll need when we start working down below, and we might as well 'ave it fixed up--" He ceased suddenly and ran to the pumps. A peculiar gurgling sound had come from the ends of the hose, and the flow depreciated greatly; instead of the steady gush of water, a slimy silt was coming out now, spraying and splattering about on the sides of the drainage ditch. Wildly Harry waved a monstrous paw. "Shut 'em off!" he yelled to Fairchild in the dimness of the tunnel. "It's sucking the muck out of the sump!" "Out of the what?" Fairchild had killed the engines and run forward to where Harry, one big hand behind the carbide flare, was peering down the shaft. "The sump--it's a little 'ole at the bottom of the shaft to 'old any water that 'appens to seep in. That means the 'ole drift is unwatered." "Then the pumping job 's over?" "Yeh." Harry rose. "You stay 'ere and dismantle the pumps, so we can send 'em back. I 'll go to town. We 've got to buy some stuff." Then he started off down the trail, while Fairchild went to his work. And he sang as he dragged at the heavy hose, pulling it out of the shaft and coiling it at the entrance to the tunnel, as he put skids under the engines, and moved them, inch by inch, to the outer air. Work was before him, work which was progressing toward a goal that he had determined to seek, in spite of all obstacles. The mysterious offer which he had received gave evidence that something awaited him, that some one knew the real value of the Blue Poppy mine, and that if he could simply stick to his task, if he could hold to the unwavering purpose to win in spite of all the blocking pitfalls that were put in his path, some day, some time, the reward would be worth its price. More, the conversation with Mother Howard on the previous morning had been comforting; it had given a woman's viewpoint upon another woman's actions. And Fairchild intuitively believed she was correct. True, she had talked of others who might have hopes in regard to Anita Richmond; in fact, Fairchild had met one of those persons in the lawyer, Randolph Farrell. But just the same it all was cheering. It is man's supreme privilege to hope. And so Fairchild was happy and somewhat at ease for the first time in weeks. Out at the edge of the mine, as he made his trips, he stopped now and then to look at something he had disregarded previously,--the valley stretching out beneath him, the three hummocks of the far-away range, named Father, Mother and Child by some romantic mountaineer; the blue-gray of the hills as they stretched on, farther and farther into the distance, gradually whitening until they resolved themselves into the snowy range, with the gaunt, high-peaked summit of Mount Evans scratching the sky in the distance. There was a shimmer in the air, through which the trees were turned into a bluer green, and the crags of the mountains made softer, the gaping scars of prospect holes less lonely and less mournful with their ever-present story of lost hopes. On a great boulder far at one side a chipmunk chattered. Far down the road an ore train clattered along on the way to the Sampler,--that great middleman institution which is a part of every mining camp, and which, like the creamery station at the cross roads, receives the products of the mines, assays them by its technically correct system of four samples and four assayers to every shipment, and buys them, with its allowances for freight, smelting charges and the innumerable expenditures which must be made before money can become money in reality. Fairchild sang louder than ever, a wordless tune, an old tune, engendered in his brain upon a paradoxically happy and unhappy night,--that of the dance when he had held Anita Richmond in his arms, and she had laughed up at him as, by her companionship, she had paid the debt of the Denver road. Fairchild had almost forgotten that. Now, with memory, his brow puckered, and his song died slowly away. "What the dickens was she doing?" he asked himself at last. "And why should she have wanted so terribly to get away from that sheriff?" There was no answer. Besides, he had promised to ask for none. And further, a shout from the road, accompanied by the roaring of a motor truck, announced the fact that Harry was making his return. Five men were with him, to help him carry in ropes, heavy pulleys, weights and a large metal shaft bucket, then to move out the smaller of the pumps and trundle away with them, leaving the larger one and the larger engine for a single load. At last Harry turned to his paraphernalia and rolled up his sleeves. "'Ere 's where we work!" he announced. "It's us for a pulley and bucket arrangement until we can get the 'oist to working and the skip to running. 'Elp me 'eave a few timbers." It was the beginning of a three-days' job, the building of a heavy staging over the top of the shaft, the affixing of the great pulley and then the attachment of the bucket at one end, and the skip, loaded with pig iron, on the other. Altogether, it formed a sort of crude, counterbalanced elevator, by which they might lower themselves into the shaft, with various bumpings and delays,--but which worked successfully, nevertheless. Together they piled into the big, iron bucket. Harry lugging along spikes and timbers and sledges and ropes. Then, pulling away at the cable which held the weights, they furnished the necessary gravity to travel downward. An eerie journey, faced on one side by the crawling rope of the skip as it traveled along the rusty old track on its watersoaked ties, on the others by the still dripping timbers of the aged shaft and its broken, rotting ladder, while the carbide lanterns cast shadows about, while the pulley above creaked and the eroded wheels of the skip squeaked and protested! Downward--a hundred feet--and they collided with the upward-bound skip, to fend off from it and start on again. The air grew colder, more moist. The carbides spluttered and flared. Then a slight bump, and they were at the bottom. Fairchild started to crawl out from the bucket, only to resume his old position as Harry yelled with fright. "Don't do it!" gulped the Cornishman. "Do you want me to go up like a skyrocket? Them weights is all at the top. We 've got to fix a plug down 'ere to 'old this blooming bucket or it 'll go up and we 'll stay down!" Working from the side of the bucket, still held down by the weight of the two men, they fashioned a catch, or lock, out of a loop of rope attached to heavy spikes, and fastened it taut. "That 'll 'old," announced the big Cornishman. "Out we go!" Fairchild obeyed with alacrity. He felt now that he was really coming to something, that he was at the true beginning of his labors. Before him the drift tunnel, damp and dripping and dark, awaited, seeming to throw back the flare of the carbides as though to shield the treasures which might lie beyond. Harry started forward a step, then pausing, shifted his carbide and laid a hand on his companion's shoulder. "Boy," he said slowly, "we 're starting at something now--and I don't know where it's going to lead us. There's a cave-in up 'ere, and if we 're ever going to get anywhere in this mine, we 'll 'ave to go past it. And I 'm afraid of what we 're going to find when we cut our wye through!" Clouds of the past seemed to rise and float past Fairchild. Clouds which carried visions of a white, broken old man sitting by a window, waiting for death, visions of an old safe and a letter it contained. For a long, long moment, there was silence. Then came Harry's voice again. "I 'm afraid it ain't going to be good news, Boy. But there ain't no wye to get around it. It's got to come out sometime--things like that won't stay 'idden forever. And your father 's gone now--gone where it can't 'urt 'im." "I know," answered Fairchild in a queer, husky voice. "He must have known, Harry--he must have been willing that it come, now that he is gone. He wrote me as much." "It's that or nothing. If we sell the mine, some one else will find it. And we can't 'it the vein without following the drift to the stope. But you're the one to make the decision." Again, a long moment; again, in memory, Fairchild was standing in a gloomy, old-fashioned room, reading a letter he had taken from a dusty safe. Finally his answer came: "He told me to go ahead, if necessary. And we 'll go, Harry." CHAPTER XIII They started forward then, making their way through the slime and silt of the drift flooring, slippery and wet from years of flooding. From above them the water dripped from the seep-soaked hanging-wall, which showed rough and splotchy in the gleam of the carbides and seemed to absorb the light until they could see only a few feet before them as they clambered over water-soaked timbers, disjointed rails of the little tram track which once had existed there, and floundered in and out of the greasy pockets of mud which the floating ties of the track had left behind. On--on--they stopped. Progress had become impossible. Before them, twisted and torn and piled about in muddy confusion, the timbers of the mine suddenly showed in a perfect barricade, supplanted from behind by piles of muck and rocky refuse which left no opening to the chamber of the stope beyond. Harry's carbide went high in the air, and he slid forward, to stand a moment in thought before the obstacle. At place after place he surveyed it, finally to turn with a shrug of his shoulders. "It's going to mean more 'n a month of the 'ardest kind of work, Boy," came his final announcement. "'Ow it could 'ave caved in like that is more than I know. I 'm sure we timbered it good." "And look--" Fairchild was beside him now, with his carbide--"how everything's torn, as though from an explosion." "It seems that wye. But you can't tell. Rock 'as an awful way of churning up things when it decides to turn loose. All I know is we 've got a job cut out for us." There was only one thing to do,--turn back. Fifteen minutes more and they were on the surface, making their plans; projects which entailed work from morning until night for many a day to come. There was a track to lay, an extra skip to be lowered, that they might haul the muck and broken timbers from the cave-in to the shaft and on out to the dump. There were stulls and mill-stakes and laggs to cut and to be taken into the shaft. And there was good, hard work of muscle and brawn and pick and shovel, that muck might be torn away from the cave-in, and good timbers put in place, to hold the hanging wall from repeating its escapade of eighteen years before. Harry reached for a new axe and indicated another. "We 'll cut ties first," he announced. And thus began the weeks of effort, weeks in which they worked with crude appliances; weeks in which they dragged the heavy stulls and other timbers into the tunnel and then lowered them down the shaft to the drift, two hundred feet below, only to follow them in their counter-balanced bucket and laboriously pile them along the sides of the drift, there to await use later on. Weeks in which they worked in mud and slime, as they shoveled out the muck and with their gad hooks tore down loose portions of the hanging wall to form a roadbed for their new tram. Weeks in which they cut ties, in which they crawled from their beds even before dawn, nor returned to Mother Howard's boarding house until long after dark; weeks in which they seemed to lose all touch with the outside world. Their whole universe had turned into a tunnel far beneath the surface of the earth, a drift leading to a cave-in, which they had not yet begun to even indent with excavations. It was a slow, galling progress, but they kept at it. Gradually the tram line began to take shape, pieced together from old portions of the track which still lay in the drift and supplemented by others bought cheaply at that graveyard of miner's hopes,--the junk yard in Ohadi. At last it was finished; the work of moving the heavy timbers became easier now as they were shunted on to the small tram truck from which the body had been dismantled and trundled along the rails to the cave-in, there to be piled in readiness for their use. And finally-- A pick swung in the air, to give forth a chunky, smacking sound, as it struck water-softened, spongy wood. The attack against the cave-in had begun, to progress with seeming rapidity for a few hours, then to cease, until the two men could remove the debris which they had dug out and haul it by slow, laborious effort to the surface. But it was a beginning, and they kept at it. A foot at a time they tore away the old, broken, splintered timbers and the rocky refuse which lay piled behind each shivered beam; only to stop, carry away the muck, and then rebuild. And it was effort,--effort which strained every muscle of two strong men, as with pulleys and handmade, crude cranes, they raised the big logs and propped them in place against further encroachment of the hanging wall. Cold and damp, in the moist air of the tunnel they labored, but there was a joy in it all. Down here they could forget Squint Rodaine and his chalky-faced son; down here they could feel that they were working toward a goal and lay aside the handicap which humans might put in their path. Day after day of labor and the indentation upon the cave-in grew from a matter of feet to one of yards. A week. Two. Then, as Harry swung his pick, he lurched forward and went to his knees. "I 've gone through!" he announced in happy surprise. "I 've gone through. We 're at the end of it!" Up went Fairchild's carbide. Where the pick still hung in the rocky mass, a tiny hole showed, darker than the surrounding refuse. He put forth a hand and clawed at the earth about the tool; it gave way beneath his touch, and there was only vacancy beyond. Again Harry raised his pick and swung it with force. Fairchild joined him. A moment more and they were staring at a hole which led to darkness, and there was joy in Harry's voice as he made a momentary survey. "It's fairly dry be'ind there," he announced. "Otherwise we 'd have been scrambling around in water up to our necks. We 're lucky there, any'ow." Again the attack and again the hole widened. At last Harry straightened. "We can go in now," came finally. "Are you willing to go with me?" "Of course. Why not?" The Cornishman's hand went to his mustache. "I ain't tickled about what we 're liable to find." "You mean--?" But Harry stopped him. "Let's don't talk about it till we 'ave to. Come on." Silently they crawled through the opening, the silt and fine rock rattling about them as they did so, to come upon fairly dry earth on the other side, and to start forward. Under the rays of the carbides, they could see that the track here was in fairly good condition; the only moisture being that of a natural seepage which counted for little. The timbers still stood dry and firm, except where dripping water in a few cases had caused the blocks to become spongy and great holes to be pressed in them by the larger timbers which held back the tremendous weight from above. Suddenly, as they walked along. Harry took the lead, holding his lantern far ahead of him, with one big hand behind it, as though for a reflector. Then, just as suddenly, he turned. "Let's go out," came shortly. "Why?" "It's there!" In the light of the lantern, Harry's face was white, his big lips livid. "Let's go--" But Fairchild stopped him. "Harry," he said, and there was determination in his voice, "if it's there--we 've got to face it. I 'll be the one who will suffer. My father is gone. There are no accusations where he rests now; I 'm sure of that. If--if he ever did anything in his life that wasn't right, he paid for it. We don't know what happened, Harry--all we are sure of is that if it's what we 're--we 're afraid of, we 've gone too far now to turn back. Don't you think that certain people would make an investigation if we should happen to quit the mine now?" "The Rodaines!" "Exactly. They would scent something, and within an hour they 'd be down in here, snooping around. And how much worse would it be for them to tell the news--than for us!" "Nobody 'as to tell it--" Harry was staring at his carbide flare--"there 's a wye." "But we can't take it, Harry. In my father's letter was the statement that he made only one mistake--that of fear. I 'm going to believe him--and in spite of what I find here, I 'm going to hold him innocent, and I 'm going to be fair and square and aboveboard about it all. The world can think what it pleases--about him and about me. There 's nothing on my conscience--and I know that if my father had not made the mistake of running away when he did, there would have been nothing on his." Harry shook his head. "'E could n't do much else, Boy. Rodaine was stronger in some ways then than he is now. That was in different days. That was in times when Squint Rodaine could 'ave gotten a 'undred men together quicker 'n a cat's wink and lynched a man without 'im 'aving a trial or anything. And if I 'd been your father, I 'd 'ave done the same as 'e did. I 'd 'ave run too--'e 'd 'ave paid for it with 'is life if 'e didn't, guilty or not guilty. And--" he looked sharply toward the younger man--"you say to go on?" "Go on," said Fairchild, and he spoke the words between tightly clenched teeth. Harry turned his light before him, and once more shielded it with his big hand. A step--two, then: "Look--there--over by the footwall!" Fairchild forced his eyes in the direction designated and stared intently. At first it appeared only like a succession of disjointed, broken stones, lying in straggly fashion along the footwall of the drift where it widened into the stope, or upward slant on the vein. Then, it came forth clearer, the thin outlines of something which clutched at the heart of Robert Fairchild, which sickened him, which caused him to fight down a sudden, panicky desire to shield his eyes and to run,--a heap of age-denuded bones, the scraps of a miner's costume still clinging to them, the heavy shoes protruding in comically tragic fashion over bony feet; a huddled, cramped skeleton of a human being! They could only stand and stare at it,--this reminder of a tragedy of a quarter of a century agone. Their lips refused to utter the words that strove to travel past them; they were two men dumb, dumb through a discovery which they had forced themselves to face, through a fact which they had hoped against, each more or less silently, yet felt sure must, sooner or later, come before them. And now it was here. And this was the reason that twenty years before Thornton Fairchild, white, grim, had sought the aid of Harry and of Mother Howard. This was the reason that a woman had played the part of a man, singing in maudlin fashion as they traveled down the center of the street at night, to all appearances only three disappointed miners seeking a new field. And yet-- "I know what you 're thinking." It was Harry's voice, strangely hoarse and weak. "I 'm thinking the same thing. But it must n't be. Dead men don't alwyes mean they 've died--in a wye to cast reflections on the man that was with 'em. Do you get what I mean? You've said--" and he looked hard into the cramped, suffering face of Robert Fairchild--"that you were going to 'old your father innocent. So 'm I. We don't know, Boy, what went on 'ere. And we 've got to 'ope for the best." Then, while Fairchild stood motionless and silent, the big Cornishman forced himself forward, to stoop by the side of the heap of bones which once had represented a man, to touch gingerly the clothing, and then to bend nearer and hold his carbide close to some object which Fairchild could not see. At last he rose and with old, white features, approached his partner. "The appearances are against us," came quietly. "There 's a 'ole in 'is skull that a jury 'll say was made by a single jack. It 'll seem like some one 'ad killed 'im, and then caved in the mine with a box of powder. But 'e 's gone, Boy--your father--I mean. 'E can't defend 'imself. We 've got to take 'is part." "Maybe--" Fairchild was grasping at the final straw--"maybe it's not the person we believe it to be at all. It might be somebody else--who had come in here and set off a charge of powder by accident and--" But the shaking of Harry's head stifled the momentary ray of hope. "No. I looked. There was a watch--all covered with mold and mildewed. I pried it open. It's got Larsen's name inside!" CHAPTER XIV Again there was a long moment of silence, while Harry stood pawing at his mustache and while Robert Fairchild sought to summon the strength to do the thing which was before him. It had been comparatively easy to make resolutions while there still was hope. It was a far different matter now. All the soddenness of the old days had come back to him, ghosts which would not be driven away; memories of a time when he was the grubbing, though willing slave of a victim of fear,--of a man whose life had been wrecked through terror of the day when intruders would break their way through the debris, and when the discovery would be made. And it had remained for Robert Fairchild, the son, to find the hidden secret, for him to come upon the thing which had caused the agony of nearly thirty years of suffering, for him to face the alternative of again placing that gruesome find into hiding, or to square his shoulders before the world and take the consequences. Murder is not an easy word to hear, whether it rests upon one's own shoulders, or upon the memory of a person beloved. And right now Robert Fairchild felt himself sagging beneath the weight of the accusation. But there was no time to lose in making his decision. Beside him stood Harry, silent, morose. Before him,--Fairchild closed his eyes in an attempt to shut out the sight of it. But still it was there, the crumpled heap of tattered clothing and human remains, the awry, heavy shoes still shielding the fleshless bones of the feet. He turned blindly, his hands groping before him. "Harry," he called, "Harry! Get me out of here--I--can't stand it!" Wordlessly the big man came to his side. Wordlessly they made the trip back to the hole in the cave-in and then followed the trail of new-laid track to the shaft. Up--up--the trip seemed endless as they jerked and pulled on the weighted rope, that their shaft bucket might travel to the surface. Then, at the mouth of the tunnel, Robert Fairchild stood for a long time staring out over the soft hills and the radiance of the snowy range, far away. It gave him a new strength, a new determination. The light, the sunshine, the soft outlines of the scrub pines in the distance, the freedom and openness of the mountains seemed to instill into him a courage he could not feel down there in the dampness and darkness of the tunnel. His shoulders surged, as though to shake off a great weight. His eyes brightened with resolution. Then he turned to the faithful Harry, waiting in the background. "There's no use trying to evade anything, Harry. We 've got to face the music. Will you go with me to notify the coroner--or would you rather stay here?" "I 'll go." Silently they trudged into town and to the little undertaking shop which also served as the office of the coroner. They made their report, then accompanied the officer, together with the sheriff, back to the mine and into the drift. There once more they clambered through the hole in the cave-in and on toward the beginning of the stope. And there they pointed out their discovery. A wait for the remainder of that day,--a day that seemed ages long, a day in which Robert Fairchild found himself facing the editor of the _Bugle_, and telling his story, Harry beside him. But he told only what he had found, nothing of the past, nothing of the white-haired man who had waited by the window, cringing at the slightest sound on the old, vine-clad veranda, nothing of the letter which he had found in the dusty safe. Nothing was asked regarding that; nothing could be gained by telling it. In the heart of Robert Fairchild was the conviction that somehow, some way, his father was innocent, and in his brain was a determination to fight for that innocence as long as it was humanly possible. But gossip told what he did not. There were those who remembered the departure of Thornton Fairchild from Ohadi. There were others who recollected perfectly that in the center of the rig was a singing, maudlin man, apparently "Sissie" Larsen. And they asked questions. They cornered Harry, they shot their queries at him one after another. But Harry was adamant. "I ain't got anything to sye! And there's an end to it!" Then, forcing his way past them, he crossed the street and went up the worn steps to the little office of Randolph P. Farrell, with his grinning smile and his horn-rimmed glasses, there to tell what he knew,--and to ask advice. And with the information the happy-go-lucky look faded, while Fairchild, entering behind Harry, heard a verdict which momentarily seemed to stop his heart. "It means, Harry, that you were accessory to a crime--if this was a murder. You knew that something had happened. You helped without asking questions. And if it can be proved a murder--well," and he drummed on his desk with the end of his pencil--"there 's no statute of limitations when the end of a human life is concerned!" Only a moment Harry hesitated. Then: "I 'll tell the truth--if they ask me." "When?" The lawyer was bending forward. "At the inquest. Ain't that what you call it?" "You'll tell nothing. Understand? You'll tell nothing, other than that you, with Robert Fairchild, found that skeleton. An inquest is n't a trial. And that can't come without knowledge and evidence that this man was murdered. So, remember--you tell the coroner's jury that you found this body and nothing more!" "But--" "It's a case for the grand jury after that, to study the findings of the coroner's jury and to sift out what evidence comes to it." "You mean--" This time it was Fairchild cutting in--"that if the coroner's jury cannot find evidence that this man was murdered, or something more than mere supposition to base a charge on--there 'll be no trouble for Harry?" "It's very improbable. So tell what happened on this day of this year of our Lord and nothing more! You people almost had me scared myself for a minute. Now, get out of here and let a legal light shine without any more clouds for a few minutes." They departed then and traveled down the stairs with far more spring in their step than when they had entered. Late that night, as they were engaged at their usual occupation of relating the varied happenings of the day to Mother Howard, there came a knock at the door. Instinctively, Fairchild bent toward her: "Your name 's out of this--as long as possible." She smiled in her mothering, knowing way. Then she opened the door, there to find a deputy from the sheriff's office. "They 've impaneled a jury up at the courthouse," he announced. "The coroner wants Mr. Fairchild and Mr. Harkins to come up there and tell what they know about this here skeleton they found." It was the expected. The two men went forth, to find the street about the courthouse thronged, for already the news of the finding of the skeleton had traveled far, even into the little mining camps which skirted the town. It was a mystery of years long agone, and as such it fascinated and lured, in far greater measure perhaps, than some murder of a present day. Everywhere were black crowds under the faint street lamps. The basement of the courthouse was illuminated; and there were clusters of curious persons about the stairways. Through the throngs started Harry and Fairchild, only to be drawn aside by Farrell, the attorney. "I 'm not going to take a part in this unless I have to," he told them. "It will look better for you if it is n't necessary for me to make an appearance. Whatever you do," and he addressed Harry, "say nothing about what you were telling me this afternoon. In the first place, you yourself have no actual knowledge of what happened. How do you know but what Thornton Fairchild was attacked by this man and forced to kill in self-defense? It's a penitentiary offense for a man to strike another, without sufficient justification, beneath ground. And had Sissie Larsen even so much as slapped Thornton Fairchild, that man would have been perfectly justified in killing him to protect himself. I 'm simply telling you that so that you will have no qualms in keeping concealed facts which, at this time, have no bearing. Guide yourselves accordingly--and as I say, I will be there only as a spectator, unless events should necessitate something else." They promised and went on, somewhat calmer in mind, to edge their way to the steps and to enter the basement of the courthouse. The coroner and his jury, composed of six miners picked up haphazard along the street--according to the custom of coroners in general--were already present. So was every person who possibly could cram through the doors of the big room. To them all Fairchild paid little attention,--all but three. They were on a back seat in the long courtroom,--Squint Rodaine and his son, chalkier, yet blacker than ever, while between them sat an old woman with white hair which straggled about her cheeks, a woman with deep-set eyes, whose hands wandered now and then vaguely before her; a wrinkled woman, fidgeting about on her seat, watching with craned neck those who stuffed their way within the already crammed room, her eyes never still, her lips moving constantly, as though mumbling some never-ending rote. Fairchild stared at her, then turned to Harry. "Who 's that with the Rodaines?" Harry looked furtively. "Crazy Laura--his wife." "But--" "And she ain't 'ere for anything good!" Harry's voice bore a tone of nervousness. "Squint Rodaine don't even recognize 'er on the street--much less appear in company with 'er. Something's 'appening!" "But what could she testify to?" "'Ow should I know?" Harry said it almost petulantly. "I did n't even know she--" "Oyez, oyez, oyez!" It was the bailiff, using a regular district-court introduction of the fact that an inquest was about to be held. The crowded room sighed and settled. The windows became frames for human faces, staring from without. The coroner stepped forward. "We are gathered here to-night to inquire into the death of a man supposed to be L. A. Larsen, commonly called 'Sissie', whose skeleton was found to-day in the Blue Poppy mine. What this inquest will bring forth, I do not know, but as sworn and true members of the coroner's jury, I charge and command you in the great name of the sovereign State of Colorado, to do your full duty in arriving at your verdict." The jury, half risen from its chair, some with their left hands held high above them, some with their right, swore in mumbling tones to do their duty, whatever that might be. The coroner surveyed the assemblage. "First witness," he called out; "Harry Harkins!" Harry went forward, clumsily seeking the witness chair. A moment later he had been sworn, and in five minutes more, he was back beside Fairchild, staring in a relieved manner about him. He had been questioned regarding nothing more than the mere finding of the body, the identification by means of the watch, and the notification of the coroner. Fairchild was called, to suffer no more from the queries of the investigator than Harry. There was a pause. It seemed that the inquest was over. A few people began to move toward the door--only to halt. The coroner's voice had sounded again: "Mrs. Laura Rodaine!" Prodded to her feet by the squint-eyed man beside her, she rose, and laughing in silly fashion, stumbled to the aisle, her straying hair, her ragged clothing, her big shoes and shuffling gait all blending with the wild, eerie look of her eyes, the constant munching of the almost toothless mouth. Again she laughed, in a vacant, embarrassed manner, as she reached the stand and held up her hand for the administration of the oath. Fairchild leaned close to his partner. "At least she knows enough for that." Harry nodded. "She knows a lot, that ole girl. They say she writes down in a book everything she does every day. But what can she be 'ere to testify to?" The answer seemed to come in the questioning voice of the coroner. "Your name, please?" "Laura Rodaine. Least, that's the name I go by. My real maiden name is Laura Masterson, and--" "Rodaine will be sufficient. Your age?" "I think it's sixty-four. If I had my book I could tell. I--" "Your book?" "Yes, I keep everything in a book. But it is n't here. I could n't bring it." "The guess will be sufficient in this case. You 've lived here a good many years, Mrs. Rodaine?" "Yes. Around thirty-five. Let's see--yes, I 'm sure it's thirty-five. My boy was born here--he 's about thirty and we came here five years before that." "I believe you told me to-night that you have a habit of wandering around the hills?" "Yes, I 've done that--I do it right along--I 've done it ever since my husband and I split up--that was just a little while after the boy was born--" "Sufficient. I merely wanted to establish that fact. In wandering about, did you ever see anything, twenty-three or four years ago or so, that would lead you to believe you know something about the death of this man whose demise we are inquiring?" The big hand of Harry caught at Fairchild's arm. The old woman had raised her head, craning her neck and allowing her mouth to fall open, as she strove for words. At last: "I know something. I know a lot. But I 've never figured it was anybody's business but my own. So I have n't told it. But I remember--" "What, Mrs. Rodaine?" "The day Sissie Larsen was supposed to leave town--that was the day he got killed." "Do you remember the date?" "No--I don't remember that." "Would it be in your book?" She seemed to become suddenly excited. She half rose in her chair and looked down the line of benches to where her husband sat, the scar showing plainly in the rather brilliant light, his eyes narrowed until they were nearly closed. Again the question, and again a moment of nervousness before she answered: "No--no--it would n't be in my book. I looked." "But you remember?" "Just like as if it was yesterday." "And what you saw--did it give you any idea--" "I know what I saw." "And did it lead to any conclusion?" "Yes." "What, may I ask?" "That somebody had been murdered!" "Who--and by whom?" Crazy Laura munched at her toothless gums for a moment and looked again toward her husband. Then, her watery, almost colorless eyes searching, she began a survey of the big room, looking intently from one figure to another. On and on--finally to reach the spot where stood Robert Fairchild and Harry, and there they stopped. A lean finger, knotted by rheumatism, darkened by sun and wind, stretched out. "Yes, I know who did it, and I know who got killed. It was 'Sissie' Larsen--he was murdered. The man who did it was a fellow named Thornton Fairchild who owned the mine--if I ain't mistaken, he was the father of this young man--" "I object!" Farrell, the attorney, was on his feet and struggling forward, jamming his horn-rimmed glasses into a pocket as he did so. "This has ceased to be an inquest; it has resolved itself into some sort of an inquisition!" "I fail to see why." The coroner had stepped down and was facing him. "Why? Why--you 're inquiring into a death that happened more than twenty years ago--and you 're basing that inquiry upon the word of a woman who is not legally able to give testimony in any kind of a court or on any kind of a case! It's not judicial, it's not within the confines of a legitimate, honorable practice, and it certainly is not just to stain the name of any man with the crime of murder upon the word of an insane person, especially when that man is dead and unable to defend himself!" "Are n't you presuming?" "I certainly am not. Have you any further evidence upon the lines that she is going to give?" "Not directly." "Then I demand that all the testimony which this woman has given be stricken out and the jury instructed to disregard it." The official smiled. "I think otherwise. Besides, this is merely a coroner's inquest and not a court action. The jury is entitled to all the evidence that has any bearing on the case." "But this woman is crazy!" "Has she ever been adjudged so, or committed to any asylum for the insane?" "No--but nevertheless, there are a hundred persons in this court room who will testify to the fact that she is mentally unbalanced and not a fit person to fasten a crime upon any man's head by her testimony. And referring even to yourself, Coroner, have you within the last twenty-five years, in fact, since a short time after the birth of her son, called her anything else but Crazy Laura? Has any one else in this town called her any other name? Man, I appeal to your--" "What you say may be true. It may not. I don't know. I only am sure of one thing--that a person is sane in the eyes of the law until adjudged otherwise. Therefore, her evidence at this time is perfectly legal and proper." "It won't be as soon as I can bring an action before a lunacy court and cause her examination by a board of alienists." "That's something for the future. In that case, things might be different. But I can only follow the law, with the members of the jury instructed, of course, to accept the evidence for what they deem it is worth. You will proceed, Mrs. Rodaine. What did you see that caused you to come to this conclusion?" "Can't you even stick to the rules and ethics of testimony?" It was the final plea of the defeated Farrell. The coroner eyed him slowly. "Mr. Farrell," came his answer, "I must confess to a deviation from regular court procedure in this inquiry. It is customary in an inquest of this character; certain departures from the usual rules must be made that the truth and the whole truth be learned. Proceed, Mrs. Rodaine, what was it you saw?" Transfixed, horrified, Fairchild watched the mumbling, munching mouth, the staring eyes and straying white hair, the bony, crooked hands as they weaved before her. From those toothless jaws a story was about to come, true or untrue, a story that would stain the name of his father with murder! And that story now was at its beginning. "I saw them together that afternoon early," the old woman was saying. "I came up the road just behind them, and they were fussing. Both of 'em acted like they were mad at each other, but Fairchild seemed to be the maddest. "I did n't pay much attention to them because I just thought they were fighting about some little thing and that it wouldn't amount to much. I went on up the gulch--I was gathering flowers. After awhile, the earth shook and I heard a big explosion, from way down underneath me--like thunder when it's far away. Then, pretty soon, I saw Fairchild come rushing out of the mine, and his hands were all bloody. He ran to the creek and washed them, looking around to see if anybody was watching him--but he did n't notice me. Then when he 'd washed the blood from his hands, he got up on the road and went down into town. Later on, I thought I saw all three of 'em leave town, Fairchild, Sissie and a fellow named Harkins. So I never paid any more attention to it until to-day. That's all I know." She stepped down then and went back to her seat with Squint Rodaine and the son, fidgeting there again, craning her neck as before, while Fairchild, son of a man just accused of murder, watched her with eyes fascinated from horror. The coroner looked at a slip of paper in his hand. "William Barton," he called. A miner came forward, to go through the usual formalities, and then to be asked the question: "Did you see Thornton Fairchild on the night he left Ohadi?" "Yes, a lot of us saw him. He drove out of town with Harry Harkins, and a fellow who we all thought was Sissie Larsen. The person we believed to be Sissie was singing like the Swede did when he was drunk." "That's all. Mr. Harkins, will you please take the stand again?" "I object!" again it was Farrell. "In the first place, if this crazy woman's story is the result of a distorted imagination, then Mr. Harkins can add nothing to it. If it is not, Mr. Harkins is cloaked by the protection of the law which fully applies to such cases and which, Mr. Coroner, you cannot deny." The coroner nodded. "I agree with you this time, Mr. Farrell. I wish to work no hardship on any one. If Mrs. Rodaine's story is true, this is a matter for a special session of the grand jury. If it is not true--well, then there has been a miscarriage of justice and it is a matter to be rectified in the future. But at the present, there is no way of determining that matter. Gentlemen of the jury," he turned his back on the crowded room and faced the small, worried appearing group on the row of kitchen chairs, "you have heard the evidence. You will find a room at the right in which to conduct your deliberations. Your first official act will be to select a foreman and then to attempt to determine from the evidence as submitted the cause of death of the corpse over whom this inquest has been held. You will now retire." Shuffling forms faded through the door at the right. Then followed long moments of waiting, in which Robert Fairchild's eyes went to the floor, in which he strove to avoid the gaze of every one in the crowded court room. He knew what they were thinking, that his father had been a murderer, and that he--well, that he was blood of his father's blood. He could hear the buzzing of tongues, the shifting of the court room on the unstable chairs, and he knew fingers were pointing at him. For once in his life he had not the strength to face his fellow men. A quarter of an hour--a knock on the door--then the six men clattered forth again, to hand a piece of paper to the coroner. And he, adjusting his glasses, turned to the court room and read: "We, the jury, find that the deceased came to his death from injuries sustained at the hands of Thornton Fairchild, in or about the month of June, 1892." That was all, but it was enough. The stain had been placed; the thing which the white-haired man who had sat by a window back in Indianapolis had feared all his life had come after death. And it was as though he were living again in the body of his son, his son who now stood beside the big form of Harry, striving to force his eyes upward and finally succeeding,--standing there facing the morbid, staring crowd as they turned and jostled that they might look at him, the son of a murderer! How long it lasted he did not, could not know. The moments were dazed, bleared things which consisted to him only of a succession of eyes, of persons who pointed him out, who seemed to edge away from him as they passed him. It seemed hours before the court room cleared. Then, the attorney at one side, Harry at the other, he started out of the court room. The crowd still was on the street, milling, circling, dividing into little groups to discuss the verdict. Through them shot scrambling forms of newsboys, seeking, in imitation of metropolitan methods, to enhance the circulation of the _Bugle_ with an edition of a paper already hours old. Dazedly, simply for the sake of something to take his mind from the throngs and the gossip about him, Fairchild bought a paper and stepped to the light to glance over the first page. There, emblazoned under the "Extra" heading, was the story of the finding of the skeleton in the Blue Poppy mine, while beside it was something which caused Robert Fairchild to almost forget, for the moment, the horrors of the ordeal which he was undergoing. It was a paragraph leading the "personal" column of the small, amateurish sheet, announcing the engagement of Miss Anita Natalie Richmond to Mr. Maurice Rodaine, the wedding to come "probably in the late fall!" CHAPTER XV Fairchild did not show the item to Harry. There was little that it could accomplish, and besides, he felt that his comrade had enough to think about. The unexpected turn of the coroner's inquest had added to the heavy weight of Harry's troubles; it meant the probability in the future of a grand jury investigation and the possible indictment as accessory after the fact in the murder of "Sissie" Larsen. Not that Fairchild had been influenced in the slightest by the testimony of Crazy Laura; the presence of Squint Rodaine and his son had shown too plainly that they were connected in some way with it, that, in fact, they were responsible. An opportunity had arisen for them, and they had seized upon it. More, there came the shrewd opinion of old Mother Howard, once Fairchild and Harry had reached the boarding house and gathered in the parlor for their consultation: "Ain't it what I said right in the beginning?" the gray-haired woman asked. "She 'll kill for that man, if necessary. It was n't as hard as you think--all Squint Rodaine had to do was to act nice to her and promise her a few things that he 'll squirm out of later on, and she went on the stand and lied her head off." "But for a crazy woman--" "Laura's crazy--and she ain't crazy. I 've seen that woman as sensible and as shrewd as any sane woman who ever drew breath. Then again, I 've seen her when I would n't get within fifty miles of her. Sometimes she 's pitiful to me; and then again I 've got to remember the fact that she 's a dangerous woman. Goodness only knows what would happen to a person who fell into her clutches when she 's got one of those immortality streaks on." "One of those what?" Harry looked up in surprise. "Immortality. That's why you 'll find her sneaking around graveyards at night, gathering herbs and taking them to that old house on the Georgeville Road, where she lives, and brewing them into some sort of concoction that she sprinkles on the graves. She believes that it's a sure system of bringing immortality to a person. Poison--that's about what it is." Harry shrugged his shoulders. "Poison 's what she is!" he exclaimed. "Ain't it enough that I 'm accused of every crime in the calendar without 'er getting me mixed up in a murder? And--" this time he looked at Fairchild with dolorous eyes--"'ow 're we going to furnish bond this time, if the grand jury indicts me?" "I 'm afraid there won't be any." Mother Howard set her lips for a minute, then straightened proudly. "Well, I guess there will! They can't charge you a million dollars on a thing like that. It's bondable--and I guess I 've got a few things that are worth something--and a few friends that I can go to. I don't see why I should be left out of everything, just because I 'm a woman!" "Lor' love you!" Harry grinned, his eyes showing plainly that the world was again good for him and that his troubles, as far as a few slight charges of penitentiary offenses were concerned, amounted to very little in his estimation. Harry had a habit of living just for the day. And the support of Mother Howard had wiped out all future difficulties for him. The fact that convictions might await him and that the heavy doors at Cañon City might yawn for him made little difference right now. Behind the great bulwark of his mustache, his big lips spread in a happy announcement of joy, and the world was good. Silently, Robert Fairchild rose and left the parlor for his own room. Some way he could not force himself to shed his difficulties in the same light, airy way as Harry. He wanted to be alone, alone where he could take stock of the obstacles which had arisen in his path, of the unexplainable difficulties and tribulations which had come upon him, one trailing the other, ever since he had read the letter left for him by his father. And it was a stock-taking of disappointing proportions. Looking back, Fairchild could see now that his dreams had led only to catastrophes. The bright vista which had been his that day he sat swinging his legs over the tailboard of the truck as it ground up Mount Lookout had changed to a thing of gloomy clouds and of ominous futures. Nothing had gone right. From the very beginning, there had been only trouble, only fighting, fighting, fighting against insurmountable odds, which seemed to throw him ever deeper into the mire of defeat, with every onslaught. He had met a girl whom he had instinctively liked, only to find a mystery about her which could not be fathomed. He had furthered his acquaintance with her, only to bring about a condition where now she passed him on the street without speaking and which, he felt, had instigated that tiny notice in the _Bugle_, telling of her probable marriage in the late autumn to a man he detested as a cad and as an enemy. He had tried his best to follow the lure of silver; if silver existed in the Blue Poppy mine, he had labored against the powers of Nature, only to be the unwilling cause of a charge of murder against his father. And more, it was clear, cruelly clear, that if it had not been for his own efforts and those of a man who had come to help him, the skeleton of Sissie Larsen never would have been discovered, and the name of Thornton Fairchild might have gone on in the peace which the white-haired, frightened man had sought. But now there was no choosing. Robert was the son of a murderer. Six men had stamped that upon him in the basement of the courthouse that night. His funds were low, growing lower every day, and there was little possibility of rehabilitating them until the trial of Harry should come, and Fate should be kind enough to order an acquittal, releasing the products from escrow. In case of a conviction, Fairchild could see only disaster. True, the optimistic Farrell had spoken of a Supreme Court reversal of any verdict against his partner, but that would avail little as far as the mine was concerned. It must still remain in escrow as the bond of Harry until the case was decided, and that might mean years. And one cannot borrow money upon a thing that is mortgaged in its entirety to a commonwealth. In the aggregate, the outlook was far from pleasant. The Rodaines had played with stacked cards, and so far every hand had been theirs. Fairchild's credit, and his standing, was ruined. He had been stamped by the coroner's jury as the son of a murderer, and that mark must remain upon him until it could be cleared by forces now imperceptible to Fairchild. His partner was under bond, accused of four crimes. The Rodaines had won a victory, perhaps greater than they knew. They had succeeded in soiling the reputations of the two men they called enemies, damaging them to such an extent that they must henceforth fight at a disadvantage, without the benefit of a solid ground of character upon which to stand. Fairchild suddenly realized that he was all but whipped, that the psychological advantage was all on the side of Squint Rodaine, his son, and the crazy woman who did their bidding. More, another hope had gone glimmering; even had the announcement not come forth that Anita Richmond had given her promise to marry Maurice Rodaine, the action of a coroner's jury that night had removed her from hope forever. A son of a man who has been called a slayer has little right to love a woman, even if that woman has a bit of mystery about her. All things can be explained--but murder! It was growing late, but Fairchild did not seek bed. Instead he sat by the window, staring out at the shadows of the mountains, out at the free, pure night, and yet at nothing. After a long time, the door opened, and a big form entered--Harry--to stand silent a moment, then to come forward and lay a hand on the other man's shoulder. "Don't let it get you, Boy," he said softly--for him. "It's going to come out all right. Everything comes out all right--if you ain't wrong yourself." "I know, Harry. But it's an awful tangle right now." "Sure it is. But it ain't as if a sane person 'ad said it against you. There 'll never be anything more to that; Farrell 'll 'ave 'er adjudged insane if it ever comes to anything like that. She 'll never give no more testimony. I 've been talking with 'im--'e stopped in just after you came upstairs. It's only a crazy woman." "But they took her word for it, Harry. They believed her. And they gave the verdict--against my father!" "I know. I was there, right beside you. I 'eard it. But it 'll come out right, some way." There was a moment of silence, then a gripping fear at the heart of Fairchild. "Just how crazy is she, Harry?" "'Er? Plumb daft! Of course, as Mother 'Oward says, there 's times when she 's straight--but they don't last long. And, if she 'd given 'er testimony in writing, Mother 'Oward says it all might 'ave been different, and we 'd not 'ave 'ad anything to worry about." "In writing?" "Yes, she 's 'arfway sane then. It seems 'er mind 's disconnected, some wye. I don't know 'ow--Mother 'Oward 's got the 'ole lingo, and everybody in town knows about it. Whenever anybody wants to get anything real straight from Crazy Laura, they make 'er write it. That part of 'er brain seems all right. She remembers everything she does then and 'ow crazy it is, and tells you all about it." "But why did n't Farrell insist upon that tonight?" "'E could n't have gotten 'er to do it. And nobody can get 'er to do it as long has Squint's around--so Mother 'Oward says. 'E 's got a influence about 'im. And she does exactly what 'e 'll sye--all 'e 's got to do is to look at 'er. Notice 'ow flustered up she got when the coroner asked 'er about that book?" "I wonder what it would really tell?" Harry chuckled. "Nobody knows. Nobody 's ever seen it. Not even Squint Rodaine. That's the one thing she 's got the strength to keep from 'im--I guess it's a part of 'er right brain that tells 'er to keep it a secret! I 'm going to bed now. So 're you. And you 're going to sleep. Good night." He went out of the room then, and Fairchild, obedient to the big Cornishman's command, sought rest. But it was a hard struggle. Morning came, and he joined Harry at breakfast, facing the curious glances of the other boarders, staving off their inquiries and their illy couched consolations. For, in spite of the fact that it was not voiced in so many words, the conviction was present that Crazy Laura had told at least a semblance of the truth, and that the dovetailing incidents of the past fitted into a well-connected story for which there must be some foundation. Moreover, in the corner were Blindeye Bozeman and Taylor Bill, hurrying through their breakfast that they might go to their work in the Silver Queen, Squint Rodaine's mine, less than a furlong from the ill-boding Blue Poppy. Fairchild could see that they were talking about him, their eyes turned often in his direction; once Taylor Bill nodded and sneered as he answered some remark of his companion. The blood went hot in Fairchild's brain. He rose from the table, hands clenched, muscles tensed, only to find himself drawn back by the strong grasp of Harry. The big Cornishman whispered to him as he took his seat again: "It 'll only make more trouble. I know 'ow you feel--but 'old in. 'Old in!" It was an admonition which Fairchild was forced to repeat to himself more than once that morning as he walked uptown with Harry, to face the gaze of the street loafers, to be plied with questions, and to strive his best to fence away from them. There were those who were plainly curious; there were others who professed not to believe the testimony and who talked loudly of action against the coroner for having introduced the evidence of a woman known by every one to be lacking in balanced mentality. There were others who, by their remarks, showed that they were concealing the real truth of their thoughts and only using a cloak of interest to guide them to other food for the carrion proclivities of their minds. To all of them Fairchild and Harry made the same reply: that they had nothing to say, that they had given all the information possible on the witness stand during the inquest, and that there was nothing further forthcoming. And it was while he made this statement for the hundredth time that Fairchild saw Anita Richmond going to the post-office with the rest of the usual crowd, following the arrival of the morning train. Again she passed him without speaking, but her glance did not seem so cold as it had been on the morning that he had seen her with Rodaine, nor did the lack of recognition appear as easily simulated. That she knew what had happened and the charge that had been made against his father, Fairchild did not doubt. That she knew he had read the "personal" in the _Bugle_ was as easily determined. Between them was a gulf--caused by what Fairchild could only guess--a gulf which he could not essay to cross, and which she, for some reason, would not. But there was nothing that could stop him from watching her, with hungry eyes which followed her until she had disappeared in the doorway of the post-office, eyes which believed they detected a listlessness in her walk and a slight droop to the usually erect little shoulders, eyes which were sure of one thing: that the smile was gone from the lips, that upon her features were the lines and hollows of sleeplessness, and the unmistakable lack of luster and color which told him that she was not happy. Even the masculine mentality of Fairchild could discern that. But it could not answer the question which the decision brought. She had become engaged to a man whom she had given evidence of hating. She had refused to recognize Fairchild, whom she had appeared to like. She had cast her lot with the Rodaines--and she was unhappy. Beyond that, everything was blank to Fairchild. An hour later Harry, wandering by the younger man's side, strove for words and at last uttered them. "I know it's disagreeable," came finally. "But it's necessary. You 'ave n't quit?" "Quit what?" "The mine. You 're going to keep on, ain't you?" Fairchild gritted his teeth and was silent. The answer needed strength. Finally it came. "Harry, are you with me?" "I ain't stopped yet!" "Then that's the answer. As long as there 's a bit of fight left in us, we 'll keep at that mine. I don't know where it's going to lead us--but from appearances as they stand now, the only outlook seems to be ruin. But if you 're willing, I 'm willing, and we 'll make the scrap together." Harry hitched at his trousers. "They 've got that blooming skeleton out by this time. I 'm willing to start--any time you say." The breath went over Fairchild's teeth in a long, slow intake. He clenched his hands and held them trembling before him for a lengthy moment. Then he turned to his partner. "Give me an hour," he begged. "I 'll go then--but it takes a little grit to--" "Who's Fairchild here?" A messenger boy was making his way along the curb with a telegram. Robert stretched forth a hand in surprise. "I am. Why?" The answer came as the boy shoved forth the yellow envelope and the delivery sheet. Fairchild signed, then somewhat dazedly ran a finger under the slit of the envelope. Then, wondering, he read: Please come to Denver at once. Have most important information for you. R. V. Barnham, H & R Building. A moment of staring, then Fairchild passed the telegram over to Harry for his opinion. There was none. Together they went across the street and to the office of Farrell, their attorney. He studied the telegram long. Then: "I can't see what on earth it means, unless there is some information about this skeleton or the inquest. If I were you, I 'd go." "But supposing it's some sort of a trap?" "No matter what it is, go and let the other fellow do all the talking. Listen to what he has to say and tell him nothing. That's the only safe system. I 'd go down on the noon train--that 'll get you there about two. You can be back by 10:30 to-morrow." "No 'e can't," it was Harry's interruption as he grasped a pencil and paper. "I 've got a list of things a mile long for 'im to get. We're going after this mine 'ammer and tongs now!" When noon came, Robert Fairchild, with his mysterious telegram, boarded the train for Denver, while in his pocket was a list demanding the outlay of nearly a thousand dollars: supplies of fuses, of dynamite, of drills, of a forge, of single and double jack sledges, of fulminate caps,--a little of everything that would be needed in the months to come, if he and 'Arry were to work the mine. It was only a beginning, a small quantity of each article needed, part of which could be picked up in the junk yards at a reasonable figure, other things that would eat quickly into the estimate placed upon the total. And with a capital already dwindling, it meant an expenditure which hurt, but which was necessary, nevertheless. Slow, puffing and wheezing, the train made its way along Clear Creek cañon, crawled across the newly built trestle which had been erected to take the place of that which had gone out with the spring flood of the milky creek, then jangled into Denver. Fairchild hurried uptown, found the old building to which he had been directed by the telegram, and made the upward trip in the ancient elevator, at last to knock upon a door. A half-whining voice answered him, and he went within. A greasy man was there, greasy in his fat, uninviting features, in his seemingly well-oiled hands as they circled in constant kneading, in his long, straggling hair, in his old, spotted Prince Albert--and in his manners. Fairchild turned to peer at the glass panel of the door. It bore the name he sought. Then he looked again at the oily being who awaited him. "Mr. Barnham?" "That's what I 'm called." He wheezed with the self-implied humor of his remark and motioned toward a chair. "May I ask what you 've come to see me about?" "I have n't the slightest idea. You sent for me." Fairchild produced the telegram, and the greasy person who had taken a position on the other side of a worn, walnut table became immediately obsequious. "Of course! Of course! Mr. Fairchild! Why did n't you say so when you came in? Of course--I 've been looking for you all day. May I offer you a cigar?" He dragged a box of domestic perfectos from a drawer of the table and struck a match to light one for Fairchild. He hastily summoned an ash tray from the little room which adjoined the main, more barren office. Then with a bustling air of urgent business he hurried to both doors and locked them. "So that we may not be disturbed," he confided in that high, whining voice. "I am hoping that this is very important." "I also." Fairchild puffed dubiously upon the more dubious cigar. The greasy individual returned to his table, dragged the chair nearer it, then, seating himself, leaned toward Fairchild. "If I 'm not mistaken, you 're the owner of the Blue Poppy mine." "I 'm supposed to be." "Of course--of course. One never knows in these days what he owns or when he owns it. Very good, I 'd say, Mr. Fairchild, very good. Could you possibly do me the favor of telling me how you 're getting along?" Fairchild's eyes narrowed. "I thought you had information--for me!" "Very good again." Mr. Barnham raised a fat hand and wheezed in an effort at intense enjoyment of the reply. "So I have--so I have. I merely asked that to be asking. Now, to be serious, have n't you some enemies, Mr. Fairchild?" "Have I?" "I was merely asking." "And I judged from your question that you seemed to know." "So I do. And one friend." Barnham pursed his heavy lips and nodded in an authoritative manner. "One, very, very good friend." "I was hoping that I had more than that." "Ah, perhaps so. But I speak only from what I know. There is one person who is very anxious about your welfare." "So?" Mr. Barnham leaned forward in an exceedingly friendly manner. "Well, is n't there?" Fairchild squared away from the table. "Mr. Barnham," came coldly; the inherent distrust for the greasy, uninviting individual having swerved to the surface. "You wired me that you had some very important news for me. I came down here expressly because of that wire. Now that I 'm here, your mission seems to be wholly taken up in drawing from me any information that I happen to possess about myself. Plainly and frankly, I don't like it, and I don't like you--and unless you can produce a great deal more than you have already, I 'll have to chalk up the expense to a piece of bad judgment and go on about my business." He started to rise, and Barnham scrambled to his feet. "Please don't," he begged, thrusting forth a fat hand, "please, please don't. This is a very important matter. One--one has to be careful in going about a thing as important as this is. The person is in a very peculiar position." "But I 'm tired of the way you beat around the bush. You tell me some meager scrap of filmy news and then ask me a dozen questions. As I told you before, I don't like it--and I 'm just about at the point where I don't care what information you have!" "But just be patient a moment--I 'm coming to it. Suppose--" then he cupped his hands and stared hard at the ceiling, "Suppose that I told you that there was some one who was willing to see you through all your troubles, who had arranged everything for you, and all you had to do would be to say the word to find yourself in the midst of comfort and riches?" CHAPTER XVI Fairchild blinked in surprise at this and sank back into his chair. Finally he laughed uneasily and puffed again on the dubious cigar. "I 'd say," came finally, "that there is n't any such animal." "But there is. She has--" Then he stopped, as though to cover the slip. Fairchild leaned forward. "She?" Mr. Barnham gave the appearance of a very flustered man. "My tongue got away from me; I should n't have said it. I really should n't have said it. If she ever finds it out, it will mean trouble for me. But truly," and he beamed, "you are such a tough customer to deal with and so suspicious--no offense meant, of course--that I really was forced to it. I--feel sure she will forgive me." "Whom do you mean by 'she'?" Mr. Barnham smiled in a knowing manner. "You and I both know," came his cryptic answer. "She is your one great, good friend. She thinks a great deal of you, and you have done several things to cause that admiration. Now, Mr. Fairchild, coming to the point, suppose she should point a way out of your troubles?" "How?" "In the first place, you and your partner are in very great difficulties." "Are we?" Fairchild said it sarcastically. "Indeed you are, and there is no need of attempting to conceal the fact. Your friend, whose name must remain a secret, does not love you--don't ever think that--but--" Then he hesitated as though to watch the effect on Fairchild's face. There was none; Robert had masked it. In time the words went on: "But she does think enough of you to want to make you happy. She has recently done a thing which gives her a great deal of power in one direction. In another, she has connections who possess vast money powers and who are looking for an opening here in the west. Now,--" he made a church steeple out of his fingers and leaned back in his chair, staring vacuously at the ceiling, "if you will say the word and do a thing which will relieve her of a great deal of embarrassment, I am sure that she can so arrange things that life will be very easy for you henceforth." "I 'm becoming interested." "In the first place, she is engaged to be married to a very fine young man. You, of course, may say differently, and I do not know--I am only taking her word for it. But--if I understand it, your presence in Ohadi has caused a few disagreements between them and--well, you know how willful and headstrong girls will be. I believe she has committed a few--er--indiscretions with you." "That's a lie!" Fairchild's temper got away from him and his fist banged on the table. "That's a lie and you know it!" "Pardon me--er--pardon me! I made use of a word that can have many meanings, and I am sure that in using it, I did n't place the same construction that you did in hearing it. But let that pass. I apologize. What I should have said was that, if you will pardon me, she used you, as young women will do, as a foil against her fiancé in a time of petty quarreling between them. Is that plainer?" It was too plain to Fairchild. It hurt. But he nodded his head and the other man went on. "Now the thing has progressed to a place where you may be--well--what one might call the thorn in the side of their happiness. You are the 'other man', as it were, to cause quarrels and that sort of thing. And she feels that she has not done rightly by you, and, through her friendship and a desire to see peace all around, believes she can arrange matters to suit all concerned. To be plain and blunt, Mr. Fairchild, you are not in an enviable position. I said that I had information for you, and I 'm going to give it. You are trying to work a mine. That demands capital. You have n't got it and there is no way for you to procure it. To get capital, one must have standing--and you must admit that you are lacking to a great extent in that very necessary ingredient. In the first place, your mine is in escrow, being held in court in lieu of five thousand dollars bond on--" "You seem to have been making a few inquiries?" "Not at all. I never heard of the proposition before she brought it to me. As I say, the deeds to your mine are held in escrow. Your partner now is accused of four crimes and will go to trial on them in the fall. It is almost certain that he will be convicted on at least one of the charges. That would mean that the deeds to the mine must remain in jurisdiction of the court in lieu of a cash bond while the case goes to the Supreme Court. Otherwise, you must yield over your partner to go to jail. In either event, the result would not be satisfactory. For yourself, I dare say that a person whose father is supposed to have committed a murder--not that I say he did it, understand--hardly could establish sufficient standing to borrow the money to proceed on an undertaking which requires capital. Therefore, I should say that you were in somewhat of a predicament. Now--" a long wait and then, "please take this as only coming from a spokesman: My client is in a position to use her good offices to change the viewpoint of the man who is the chief witness against your partner. She also is in a position to use those same good offices in another direction, so that there might never be a grand jury investigation of the finding of a certain body or skeleton, or something of the kind, in your mine--which, if you will remember, brought about a very disagreeable situation. And through her very good connections in another way, she is able to relieve you of all your financial embarrassment and procure for you from a certain eastern syndicate, the members of which I am not at liberty to name, an offer of $200,000 for your mine. All that is necessary for you to do is to say the word." Fairchild leaned forward. "And of course," he said caustically, "the name of this mysterious feminine friend must be a secret?" "Certainly. No mention of this transaction must be made to her directly, or indirectly. Those are my specific instructions. Now, Mr. Fairchild, that seems to me to be a wonderful offer. And it--" "Do you want my answer now?" "At any time when you have given the matter sufficient thought." "That's been accomplished already. And there 's no need of waiting. I want to thank you exceedingly for your offer, and to tell you--that you can go straight to hell!" And without looking back to see the result of his ultimatum, Fairchild rose, strode to the door, unlocked it, and stamped down the hall. He had taken snap judgment, but in his heart, he felt that he was right. What was more, he was as sure as he was sure of life itself that Anita Richmond had not arranged the interview and did not even know of it. One streaking name was flitting through Fairchild's brain and causing it to seethe with anger. Cleverly concealed though the plan might have been, nicely arranged and carefully planted, to Robert Fairchild it all stood out plainly and clearly--the Rodaines! And yet why? That one little word halted Fairchild as he left the elevator. Why should the Rodaines be willing to free him from all the troubles into which his mining ventures had taken him, start him out into the world and give him a fortune with which to make his way forward? Why? What did they know about the Blue Poppy mine, when neither he nor Harry had any idea of what the future might hold for them there? Certainly they could not have investigated in the years that were gone; the cave-in precluded that. There was no other tunnel, no other means of determining the riches which might be hidden within the confines of the Blue Poppy claims, yet it was evident. That day in court Rodaine had said that the Blue Poppy was a good property and that it was worth every cent of the value which had been placed on it. How did he know? And why--? At least one answer to Rodaine's action came to him. It was simple now to see why the scar-faced man had put a good valuation on the mine during the court procedure and apparently helped Fairchild out in a difficulty. In fact, there were several reasons for it. In the first place, the tying up of the mine by placing it in the care of a court would mean just that many more difficulties for Fairchild, and it would mean that the mine would be placed in a position where work could be hampered for years if a first conviction could be obtained. Further, Rodaine could see that if by any chance the bond should be forfeited, it would be an easy matter for the claims to be purchased cheap at a public sale by any one who desired them and who had the inside information of what they were worth. And evidently Rodaine and Rodaine alone possessed that knowledge. It was late now. Fairchild went to a junk yard or two, searching for the materials which Harry had ordered, and failed to find them. Then he sought a hotel, once more to struggle with the problems which the interview with Barnham had created and to cringe at a thought which arose like a ghost before him: Suppose that it had been Anita Richmond after all who had arranged this? It was logical in a way. Maurice Rodaine was the one man who could give direct evidence against Harry as the man who had held up the Old Times Dance, and Anita now was engaged to marry him. Judge Richmond had been a friend of Thornton Fairchild; could it have been possible that this friendship might have entailed the telling of secrets which had not been related to any one else? The matter of the finding of the skeleton could be handled easily, Fairchild saw, through Maurice Rodaine. One word from him to his father could change the story of Crazy Laura and make it, on the second telling, only the maundering tale of an insane, herb-gathering woman. Anita could have arranged it, and Anita might have arranged it. Fairchild wished now that he could recall his words, that he could have held his temper and by some sort of strategy arranged matters so that the offer might have come more directly--from Anita herself. Yet, why should she have gone through this procedure to reach him? Why had she not gone to Farrell with the proposition--to a man whom she knew Fairchild trusted, instead of to a greasy, hand rubbing shyster? And besides-- But the question was past answering now. Fairchild had made his decision, and he had told the lawyer where to go. If, at the same time, he had relegated the woman who had awakened affection in his heart, only to have circumstances do their best to stamp it out again, to the same place,--well, that had been done, too, and there was no recalling of it now. But one thing was certain: the Blue Poppy mine was worth money. Somewhere in that beetling hill awaited wealth, and if determination counted for anything, if force of will and force of muscle were worth only a part of their accepted value, Fairchild meant to find it. Once before an offer had come, and now that he thought of it, Fairchild felt almost certain that it had been from the same source. That was for fifty thousand dollars. Why should the value have now jumped to four times its original figures? It was more than the adventurer could encompass; he sought to dismiss it all, went to a picture show, then trudged back to his hotel and to sleep. The next day found him still striving to put the problem away from him as he went about the various errands outlined by Harry. A day after that, then the puffing, snorting, narrow-gauged train took him again through Clear Creek cañon and back to Ohadi. The station was strangely deserted. None of the usual loungers were there. None of the loiterers who, watch in hand, awaited the arrival and departure of the puffing train as though it were a matter of personal concern. Only the bawling 'bus man for the hotel, the station agent wrestling with a trunk or two,--that was all. Fairchild looked about him in surprise, then approached the agent. "What's happened? Where 's everybody?" "Up on the hill." "Something happened?" "A lot. From what I hear it's a strike that's going to put Ohadi on the map again." "Who made it?" "Don't know. Some fellow came running down here an hour or so ago and said there 'd been a tremendous strike made on the hill, and everybody beat it up there." Fairchild went on, to turn into a deserted street,--a street where the doors of the stores had been left open and the owners gone. Everywhere it was the same; it was as if Ohadi suddenly had been struck by some catastrophe which had wiped out the whole population. Only now and then a human being appeared, a few persons left behind at the banks, but that was about all. Then from far away, up the street leading from Kentucky Gulch, came the sound of cheering and shouting. Soon a crowd appeared, led by gesticulating, vociferous men, who veered suddenly into the Ohadi Bank at the corner, leaving the multitude without for a moment, only to return, their hands full of gold certificates, which they stuck into their hats, punched through their buttonholes, stuffed into their pockets, allowing them to hang half out, and even jammed down the collars of their rough shirts, making outstanding decorations of currency about their necks. On they came, closer--closer, and then Fairchild gritted his teeth. There were four of them leading the parade, displaying the wealth that stood for the bonanza of the silver strike they had just made, four men whose names were gall and wormwood to Robert Fairchild. Blindeye Bozeman and Taylor Bill were two of them. The others were Squint and Maurice Rodaine! CHAPTER XVII Had it been any one else, Fairchild would have shouted for happiness and joined the parade. As it was, he stood far at one side, a silent, grim figure, watching the miners and townspeople passing before him, leaping about in their happiness, calling to him the news that he did not want to hear: The Silver Queen had "hit." The faith of Squint Rodaine, maintained through the years, had shown his perspicacity. It was there; he always had said it was there, and now the strike had been made at last, lead-silver ore, running as high as two hundred dollars a ton. And just like Squint--so some one informed Fairchild--he had kept it a secret until the assays all had been made and the first shipments started to Denver. It meant everything for Ohadi; it meant that mining would boom now, that soon the hills would be clustered with prospectors, and that the little town would blossom as a result of possessing one of the rich silver mines of the State. Some one tossed to Fairchild a small piece of ore which had been taken from a car at the mouth of the mine; and even to his uninitiated eyes it was apparent,--the heavy lead, bearing in spots the thin filagree of white metal--and silver ore must be more than rich to make a showing in any kind of sample. He felt cheap. He felt defeated. He felt small and mean not to be able to join the celebration. Squint and Maurice Rodaine possessed the Silver Queen; that they, of all persons, should be the fortunate ones was bitter and hard to accept. Why should they, of every one in Ohadi, be the lucky men to find a silver bonanza, that they might flaunt it before him, that they might increase their standing in the community, that they might raise themselves to a pedestal in the eyes of every one and thereby rally about them the whole town in any difficulty which might arise in the future? It hurt Fairchild, it sickened him. He saw now that his enemies were more powerful than ever. And for a moment he almost wished that he had yielded down there in Denver, that he had not given the ultimatum to the greasy Barnham, that he had accepted the offer made him,--and gone on, out of the fight forever. Anita! What would it mean to her? Already engaged, already having given her answer to Maurice Rodaine, this now would be an added incentive for her to follow her promise. It would mean a possibility of further argument with her father, already too weak from illness to find the means of evading the insidious pleas of the two men who had taken his money and made him virtually their slave. Could they not demonstrate to him now that they always had worked for his best interests? And could not that plea go even farther--to Anita herself--to persuade her that they were always laboring for her, that they had striven for this thing that it might mean happiness for her and for her father? And then, could they not content themselves with promises, holding before her a rainbow of the far-away, to lead her into their power, just as they had led the stricken, bedridden man she called "father"? The future looked black for Robert Fairchild. Slowly he walked past the happy, shouting crowd and turned up Kentucky Gulch toward the ill-fated Blue Poppy. The tunnel opening looked more forlorn than ever when he sighted it, a bleak, staring, single eye which seemed to brood over its own misfortunes, a dead, hopeless thing which never had brought anything but disappointment. A choking came into Fairchild's throat. He entered the tunnel slowly, ploddingly; with lagging muscles he hauled up the bucket which told of Harry's presence below, then slowly lowered himself into the recesses of the shaft and to the drift leading to the stope, where only a few days before they had found that gaunt, whitened, haunting thing which had brought with it a new misfortune. A light gleamed ahead, and the sound of a single jack hammering on the end of a drill could be heard. Fairchild called and went forward, to find Harry, grimy and sweating, pounding away at a narrow streak of black formation which centered in the top of the stope. "It's the vein," he announced, after he had greeted Fairchild, "and it don't look like it's going to amount to much!" "No?" Harry withdrew the drill from the hole he was making and mopped his forehead. "It ain't a world-beater," came disconsolately. "I doubt whether it 'll run more 'n twenty dollars to the ton, the wye smelting prices 'ave gone up! And there ain't much money in that. What 'appened in Denver?" "Another frame-up by the Rodaines to get the mine away from us. It was a lawyer. He stalled that the offer had been made to us by Miss Richmond." "How much?" "Two hundred thousand dollars and us to get out of all the troubles we are in." "And you took it, of course?" "I did not!" "No?" Harry mopped his forehead again. "Well, maybe you 're right. Maybe you 're wrong. But whatever you did--well, that's just the thing I would 'ave done." "Thanks, Harry." "Only--" and Harry was staring lugubriously at the vein above him, "it's going to take us a long time to get two hundred thousand dollars out of things the wye they stand now." "But--" "I know what you're thinking--that there's silver 'ere and that we 're going to find it. Maybe so. I know your father wrote some pretty glowing accounts back to Beamish in St. Louis. It looked awful good then. Then it started to pinch out, and now--well, it don't look so good." "But this is the same vein, is n't it?" "I don't know. I guess it is. But it's pinching fast. It was about this wye when we first started on it. It was n't worth much and it was n't very wide. Then, all of a sudden, it broadened out, and there was a lot more silver in it. We thought we 'd found a bonanza. But it narrowed down again, and the old standard came back. I don't know what it's going to do now--it may quit altogether." "But we 're going to keep at it, Harry, sink or swim." "You know it!" "The Rodaines have hit--maybe we can have some good luck too." "The Rodaines?" Harry stared. "'It what?" "Two hundred dollar a ton ore!" A long whistle. Then Harry, who had been balancing a single jack, preparatory to going back to his work, threw it aside and began to roll down his sleeves. "We 're going to 'ave a look at it." "A look? What good would it--?" "A cat can look at a king," said Harry. "They can't arrest us for going up there like everybody else." "But to go there and ask them to look at their riches--" "There ain't no law against it!" He reached for his carbide lamp, hooked to a small chink of the hanging wall, and then pulled his hat over his bulging forehead. Carefully he attempted to smooth his straying mustache, and failing, as always, gave up the job. "I 'd be 'appy, just to look at it," he announced. "Come on. Let's forget 'oo they are and just be lookers-on." Fairchild agreed against his will. Out of the shaft they went and on up the hill to where the townspeople again were gathering about the opening of the Silver Queen. A few were going in. Fairchild and 'Arry joined them. A long walk, stooping most of the way, as the progress was made through the narrow, low-roofed tunnel; then a slight raise which traveled for a fair distance at an easy grade--at last to stop; and there before them, jammed between the rock, was the strike, a great, heavy streaking vein, nearly six feet wide, in which the ore stuck forth in tremendous chunks, embedded in a black background. Harry eyed it studiously. "You can see the silver sticking out!" he announced at last. "It's wonderful--even if the Rodaines did do it." A form brushed past them, Blindeye Bozeman, returning from the celebration. Picking up a drill, he studied it with care, finally to lay it aside and reach for a gad, a sort of sharp, pointed prod, with which to tear away the loose matter that he might prepare the way for the biting drive of the drill beneath the five-pound hammer, or single jack. His weak, watery eyes centered on Harry, and he grinned. "Didn't believe it, huh?" came his query. Harry pawed his mustache. "I believed it, all right, but anybody likes to look at the United States Mint!" "You 've said it. She 's going to be more than that when we get a few portable air compressors in here and start at this thing in earnest with pneumatic drills. What's more, the old man has declared Taylor Bill and me in on it--for a ten per cent. bonus. How's that sound to you?" "Like 'eaven," answered Harry truthfully. "Come on, Boy, let's us get out of 'ere. I 'll be getting the blind staggers if I stay much longer." Fairchild accompanied him wordlessly. It was as though Fate had played a deliberate trick, that it might laugh at him. And as he walked along, he wondered more than ever about the mysterious telegram and the mysterious conversation of the greasy Barnham in Denver. That--as he saw it now--had been only an attempt at another trick. Suppose that he had accepted; suppose that he had signified his willingness to sell his mine and accept the good offices of the "secret friend" to end his difficulties. What would have been the result? For once a ray of cheer came to him. The Rodaines had known of this strike long before he ever went to that office in Denver. They had waited long enough to have their assays made and had completed their first shipment to the smelter. There was no necessity that they buy the Blue Poppy mine. Therefore, was it simply another trick to break him, to lead him up to a point of high expectations, then, with a laugh at his disappointment, throw him down again? His shoulders straightened as they reached the outside air, and he moved close to Harry as he told him his conjectures. The Cornishman bobbed his head. "I never thought of it that way!" he agreed. "But it could explain a lot of things. They 're working on our--what-you-call-it?" "Psychological resistance." "That's it. Psych--that's it. They want to beat us and they don't care 'ow. It 'urts a person to be disappointed. That's it. I alwyes said you 'ad a good 'ead on you! That's it. Let's go back to the Blue Poppy." Back they went, once more to descend the shaft, once more to follow the trail along the drift toward the opening of the stope. And there, where loose earth covered the place where a skeleton once had rested, Fairchild took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves. "Harry," he said, with a new determination, "this vein does n't look like much, and the mine looks worse. From the viewpoint we 've got now of the Rodaine plans, there may not be a cent in it. But if you're game, I'm game, and we'll work the thing until it breaks us." "You 've said it. If we 'it anything, fine and well--if we can turn out five thousand dollars' worth of stuff before the trial comes up, then we can sell hit under the direction of the court, turn over that money for a cash bond, and get the deeds back. If we can't, and if the mine peters out, then we ain't lost anything but a lot of 'opes and time. But 'ere goes. We 'll double-jack. I 've got a big 'ammer 'ere. You 'old the drill for awhile and turn it, while I sling th' sledge. Then you take th' 'ammer and Lor' 'ave mercy on my 'ands if you miss." Fairchild obeyed. They began the drilling of the first indentation into the six-inch vein which lay before them. Hour after hour they worked, changing positions, sending hole after hole into the narrow discoloration which showed their only prospect of returns for the investments which they had put into the mine. Then, as the afternoon grew late, Harry disappeared far down the drift to return with a handful of greasy, candle-like things, wrapped in waxed paper. "I knew that dynamite of yours could n't be shipped in time, so I bought a little up 'ere," he explained, as he cut one of the sticks in two with a pocketknife and laid the pieces to one side. Then out came a coil of fuse, to be cut to its regular lengths and inserted in the copper-covered caps of fulminate of mercury, Harry showing his contempt for the dangerous things by crimping them about the fuse with his teeth, while Fairchild, sitting on a small pile of muck near by, begged for caution. But Harry only grinned behind his big mustache and went on. Out came his pocketknife again as he slit the waxed paper of the gelatinous sticks, then inserted the cap in the dynamite. One after another the charges were shoved into the holes, Harry tamping them into place with a steel rod, instead of with the usual wooden affair, his mustache brushing his shoulder as he turned to explain the virtues of dynamite when handled by an expert. "It's all in the wye you do it," he announced. "If you don't strike fire with a steel rod, it's fine." "But if you do?" "Oh, then!" Harry laughed. "Then it's flowers and a funeral--after they 've finished picking you up." One after another he pressed the dynamite charges tight into the drill holes and tamped them with muck wrapped in a newspaper that he dragged from his hip pocket. Then he lit the fuses from his lamp and stood a second in assurance that they all were spluttering. "Now we run!" he announced, and they hurried, side by side, down the drift tunnel until they reached the shaft. "Far enough," said Harry. A long moment of waiting. Then the earth quivered and a muffled, booming roar came from the distance. Harry stared at his carbide lamp. "One," he announced. Then, "Two." Three, four and five followed, all counted seriously, carefully by Harry. Finally they turned back along the drift toward the stope, the acrid odor of dynamite smoke-cutting at their nostrils as they approached the spot where the explosions had occurred. There Harry stood in silent contemplation for a long time, holding his carbide over the pile of ore that had been torn from the vein above. "It ain't much," came at last. "Not more 'n 'arf a ton. We won't get rich at that rate. And besides--" he looked upward--"we ain't even going to be getting that pretty soon. It's pinching out." Fairchild followed his gaze, to see in the torn rock above him only a narrow streak now, fully an inch and a half narrower than the vein had been before the powder holes had been drilled. It could mean only one thing: that the bet had been played and lost, that the vein had been one of those freak affairs that start out with much promise, seem to give hope of eternal riches, and then gradually dwindle to nothing. Harry shook his head. "It won't last." "Not more than two or three more shots," Fairchild agreed. "You can't tell about that. It may run that way all through the mountain--but what's a four-inch vein? You can go up 'ere in the Argonaut tunnel and find 'arf a dozen of them things that they don't even take the trouble to mine. That is, unless they run 'igh in silver--" he picked up a chunk of the ore from the muck pile where it had been deposited and studied it intently--"but I don't see any pure silver sticking out in this stuff." "But it must be here somewhere. I don't know anything about mining--but don't veins sometimes pinch off and then show up later on?" "Sure they do--sometimes. But it's a gamble." "That's all we 've had from the beginning, Harry." "And it's about all we 're going to 'ave any time unless something bobs up sudden like." Then, by common consent, they laid away their working clothes and left the mine, to wander dejectedly down the gulch and to the boarding house. After dinner they chatted a moment with Mother Howard, neglecting to tell her, however, of the downfall of their hopes, then went upstairs, each to his room. An hour later Harry knocked at Fairchild's door, and entered, the evening paper in his hand. "'Ere 's something more that's nice," he announced, pointing to an item on the front page. It was the announcement that a general grand jury was to be convened late in the summer and that one of its tasks probably would be to seek to unravel the mystery of the murder of Sissie Larsen! Fairchild read it with morbidity. Trouble seemed to have become more than occasional, and further than that, it appeared to descend upon him at just the times when he could least resist it. He made no comment; there was little that he could say. Again he read the item and again, finally to turn the page and breathe sharply. Before him was a six-column advertisement, announcing the strike in the Silver Queen mine and also spreading the word that a two-million-dollar company would be formed, one million in stock to represent the mine itself, the other to be subscribed to exploit this new find as it should be exploited. Glowing words told of the possibilities of the Silver Queen, the assayer's report was reproduced on a special cut which evidently had been made in Denver and sent to Ohadi by rush delivery. Offices had been opened; everything had been planned in advance and the advertisement written before the town was aware of the big discovery up Kentucky Gulch. All of it Fairchild read with a feeling he could not down,--a feeling that Fate, somehow, was dealing the cards from the bottom, and that trickery and treachery and a venomous nature were the necessary ingredients, after all, to success. The advertisement seemed to sneer at him, to jibe at him, calling as it did for every upstanding citizen of Ohadi to join in on the stock-buying bonanza that would make the Silver Queen one of the biggest mines in the district and Ohadi the big silver center of Colorado. The words appeared to be just so many daggers thrust into his very vitals. But Fairchild read them all, in spite of the pain they caused. He finished the last line, looked at the list of officers, and gasped. For there, following one another, were three names, two of which Fairchild had expected. But the other-- They were, president and general manager, R. B. (Squint) Rodaine; secretary-treasurer, Maurice Rodaine; and first vice-president--Miss Anita Natalie Richmond! CHAPTER XVIII After that, Fairchild heard little that Harry said as he rambled on about the plans for the future. He answered the big Cornishman's questions with monosyllables, volunteering no information. He did not even show him the advertisement--he knew that it would be as galling to Harry as it was to him. And so he sat and stared, until finally his partner said good night and left the room. That name could mean only one thing: that she had consented to become a partner with them, that they had won her over, after all. Now, even a different light came upon the meeting with Barnham in Denver and a different view to Fairchild. What if she had been playing their game all along? What if she had been merely a tool for them; what if she had sent Farrell at their direction, to learn everything he and Harry knew? What--? Fairchild sought to put the thought from him and failed. Now that he looked at it in retrospect, everything seemed to have a sinister meaning. He had met the girl under circumstances which never had been explained. The first time she ever had seen him after that she pretended not to recognize him. Yet, following a conversation with Maurice Rodaine, she took advantage of an opportunity to talk to him and freely admitted to him that she had been the person he believed her to be. True, Fairchild was looking now at his idol through blue glasses, and they gave to her a dark, mysterious tone that he could not fathom. There were too many things to explain; too many things which seemed to connect her directly with the Rodaines; too many things which appeared to show that her sympathies were there and that she might only be a trickster in their hands, a trickster to trap him! Even the episode of the lawyer could be turned to this account. Had not another lawyer played the friendship racket, in an effort to buy the Blue Poppy mine? And here Fairchild smiled grimly. From the present prospects, it would seem that the gain would have been all on his side, for certainly there was little to show now toward a possibility of the Blue Poppy ever being worth anything near the figure which he had been offered for it. And yet, if that offer had not been made as some sort of stiletto jest, why had it been made at all? Was it because Rodaine knew that wealth did lie concealed there? Was it because Squint Rodaine had better information even than the faithful, hard-working, unfortunate Harry? Fairchild suddenly took hope. He clenched his hands and he spoke, to himself, to the darkness and to the spirits of discouragement that were all about him: "If it's there, we 'll find it--if we have to work our fingers to the bone, if we have to starve and die there--we'll find it!" With that determination, he went to bed, to awake in the morning filled with a desire to reach the mine, to claw at its vitals with the sharp-edged drills, to swing the heavy sledge until his shoulders and back ached, to send the roaring charges of dynamite digging deeper and deeper into that thinning vein. And Harry was beside him every step of the way. A day's work, the booming charges, and they returned to the stope to find that the vein had neither lessened nor grown greater. Another day--and one after that. The vein remained the same, and the two men turned to mucking that they might fill their ore car with the proceeds of the various blasts, haul it to the surface by the laborious, slow process of the man-power elevator, then return once more to their drilling, begrudging every minute that they were forced to give to the other work of tearing away the muck and refuse that they might gain the necessary room to follow the vein. The days grew to a week, and a week to a fortnight. Once a truck made its slow way up the tortuous road, chortled away with a load of ore, returned again and took the remainder from the old, half-rotted ore bins, to the Sampler, there to be laid aside while more valuable ore was crushed and sifted for its assays, and readier money taken in. The Blue Poppy had nothing in its favor. Ten or twenty dollar ore looked small beside the occasional shipments from the Silver Queen, where Blindeye Bozeman and Taylor Bill formed the entire working staff until the much-sought million dollars should flow in and a shaft-house, portable air pumps, machine drills and all the other attributes of modern mining methods should be put into operation. And it appeared that the million dollars would not be slow in coming. Squint Rodaine had established his office in a small, vacant store building on the main street, and Fairchild could see, as he went to and from his work, a constant stream of townspeople as they made that their goal--there to give their money into the keeping of the be-scarred man and to trust to the future for wealth. It galled Fairchild, it made his hate stronger than ever; yet within him there could not live the hope that the Silver Queen might share the fate of the Blue Poppy. Other persons besides the Rodaines were interested now, persons who were putting their entire savings into the investment; and Fairchild could only grit his teeth and hope--for them--that it would be an everlasting bonanza. As for the girl who was named as vice-president-- He saw her, day after day, riding through town in the same automobile that he had helped re-tire on the Denver road. But now she did not look at him; now she pretended that she did not see him. Before,--well, before, her eyes had at least met his, and there had been some light of recognition, even though her carefully masked face had belied it. Now it was different. She had gone over to the Rodaines, she was engaged to marry the chalky-faced, hook-nosed son and she was vice-president of their two-million-dollar mining corporation. Fairchild did not even strive to find a meaning for it all; women are women, and men do well sometimes if they diagnose themselves. The summer began to grow old, and Fairchild felt that he was aging with it. The long days beneath the ground had taught him many things about mining now, all to no advantage. Soon they would be worth nothing, save as five-dollar-a-day single-jackers, working for some one else. The bank deposits were thinning, and the vein was thinning with it. Slowly but surely, as they fought, the strip of pay ore in the rocks was pinching out. Soon would come the time when they could work it no longer. And then,--but Fairchild did not like to think about that. September came, and with it the grand jury. But here for once was a slight ray of hope. The inquisitorial body dragged through its various functionings, while Farrell stood ready with his appeal to the court for a lunacy board at the first hint of an investigation into Crazy Laura's story. Three weeks of prying into "vice conditions", gambling, profiteering and the usual petty nonsense with which so many grand juries have managed to fritter away time under the misapprehension of applying some weighty sort of superhuman reasoning to ordinary things, and then good news. The body of twelve good men and true had worn themselves out with other matters and adjourned without even taking up the mystery of the Blue Poppy mine. But the joy of Fairchild and Harry was short-lived. In the long, legal phraseology of the jury's report was the recommendation that this important subject be the first for inquiry by the next grand inquisitorial body to be convened,--and the threat still remained. But before the two men were now realities which were worse even than threats, and Harry turned from his staging late one afternoon to voice the most important. "We 'll start single-jacking to-morrow," he announced with a little sigh. "In the 'anging wall." "You mean--?" "We can't do much more up 'ere. It ain't worth it. The vein 's pinched down until we ain't even getting day laborer's wages out of it--and it's October now." October! October--and winter on the way. October--and only a month until the time when Harry must face a jury on four separate charges, any one of which might send him to Cañon City for the rest of his days; Harry was young no longer. October--and in the dreamy days of summer, Fairchild had believed that October would see him rich. But now the hills were brown with the killing touch of frost; the white of the snowy range was creeping farther and farther over the mountains; the air was crisp with the hint of zero soon to come; the summer was dead, and Fairchild's hopes lay inert beside it. He was only working now because he had determined to work. He was only laboring because a great, strong, big-shouldered man had come from Cornwall to help him and was willing to fight it out to the end. October--and the announcement had said that a certain girl would be married in the late fall, a girl who never looked in his direction any more, who had allowed her name to become affiliated with that of the Rodaines, now nearing the task of completing their two million. October--month of falling leaves and dying dreams, month of fragrant beauties gone to dust, the month of the last, failing fight against the clutch of grim, all-destroying winter. And Fairchild was sagging in defeat just as the leaves were falling from the shaking aspens, as the moss tendrils were curling into brittle, brown things of death. October! For a long moment, Fairchild said nothing, then as Harry came from the staging, he moved to the older man's side. "I--I did n't quite catch the idea," came at last. Harry pointed with his sledge. "I 've been noticing the vein. It keeps turning to the left. It struck me that it might 'ave branched off from the main body and that there 's a bigger vein over there some'eres. We 'll just 'ave to make a try for it. It's our only chance." "And if we fail to find it there?" "We 'll put a couple of 'oles in the foot wall and see what we strike. And then--" "Yes--?" "If it ain't there--we 're whipped!" It was the first time that Harry had said the word seriously. Fairchild pretended not to hear. Instead, he picked up a drill, looked at its point, then started toward the small forge which they had erected just at the foot of the little raise leading to the stope. There Harry joined him; together they heated the long pieces of steel and pounded their biting faces to the sharpness necessary to drilling in the hard rock of the hanging wall, tempering them in the bucket of water near by, working silently, slowly,--hampered by the weight of defeat. They were being whipped; they felt it in every atom of their beings. But they had not given up their fight. Two blows were left in the struggle, and two blows they meant to strike before the end came. The next morning they started at their new task, each drilling holes at points five feet apart in the hanging wall, to send them in as far as possible, then at the end of the day to blast them out, tearing away the rock and stopping their work at drilling that they might muck away the refuse. The stope began to take on the appearance of a vast chamber, as day after day, banging away at their drill holes, stopping only to sharpen the bits or to rest their aching muscles, they pursued into the entrails of the hills the vagrant vein which had escaped them. And day after day, each, without mentioning it to the other, was tortured by the thought of that offer of riches, that mysterious proffer of wealth for the Blue Poppy mine,--tortured like men who are chained in the sight of gold and cannot reach it. For the offer carried always the hint that wealth was there, somewhere, that Squint Rodaine knew it, but that they could not find it. Either that--or flat failure. Either wealth that would yield Squint a hundredfold for his purchase, or a sneer that would answer their offer to sell. And each man gritted his teeth and said nothing. But they worked on. October gave up its fight. The first day of November came, to find the chamber a wide, vacuous thing now, sheltering stone and refuse and two struggling men,--nothing more. Fairchild ceased his labors and mopped his forehead, dripping from the heat engendered by frenzied labor; without the tunnel opening, the snow lay deep upon the mountain sides, for it had been more than a week since the first of the white blasts had scurried over the hills to begin the placid, cold enwrapment of the winter. A long moment, then: "Harry." "Aye." "I 'm going after the other side. We 've been playing a half-horsed game here." "I 've been thinking that, Boy." "Then I 'm going to tackle the foot wall. You stay where you are, for a few more shots; it can't do much good, the way things are going, and it can't do much harm. I was at the bank to-day." "Yeh." "My balance is just two hundred." "Counting what we borrowed from Mother 'Oward?" "Yes." Harry clawed at his mustache. His nose, already red from the pressure of blood, turned purplish. "We 're nearing the end, Boy. Tackle the foot wall." They said no more. Fairchild withdrew his drill from the "swimmer" or straightforward powder hole and turned far to the other side of the chamber, where the sloping foot wall showed for a few feet before it dived under the muck and refuse. There, gad in hand, he pecked about the surface, seeking a spot where the rock had splintered, thereby affording a softer entrance for the biting surface of the drill. Spot after spot he prospected, suddenly to stop and bend forward. At last came an exclamation, surprised, wondering: "Harry!" "Yeh." "Come here." The Cornishman left his work and walked to Fairchild's side. The younger man pointed. "Do you ever fill up drill holes with cement?" he asked. "Not as I know of. Why?" "There 's one." Fairchild raised his gad and chipped away the softer surface of the rock, leaving a tubular protuberance of cement extending. Harry stared. "What the bloody 'ell?" he conjectured. "D' you suppose--" Then, with a sudden resolution: "Drill there! Gad a 'ole off to one side a bit and drill there. It seems to me Sissie Larsen put a 'ole there or something--I can't remember. But drill. It can't do any 'arm." The gad chipped away the rock. Soon the drill was biting into the surface of the foot wall. Quitting time came; the drill was in two feet, and in the morning, Fairchild went at his task again. Harry watched him over a shoulder. "If it don't bring out anything in six feet--it ain't there," he announced. Fairchild found the humor to smile. "You 're almost as cheerful as I am." Noon came and they stopped for lunch. Fairchild finished the remark begun hours before. "I 'm in four feet now--and all I get is rock." "Sure now?" "Look." They went to the foot wall and with a scraper brought out some of the muggy mass caused by the pouring of water into the "down-hole" to make the sittings capable of removal. Harry rubbed it with a thumb and forefinger. "That's all," he announced, as he went back to his dinner pail. Together, silently, they finished their luncheon. Once more Fairchild took up his work, dully, almost lackadaisically, pounding away at the long, six-foot drill with strokes that had behind them only muscles, not the intense driving power of hope. A foot he progressed into the foot wall and changed drills. Three inches more. Then-- "Harry!" "What's 'appened?" The tone of Fairchild's voice had caused the Cornishman to lean from his staging and run to Fairchild's side. That person had cupped his hand and was holding it beneath the drill hole, while into it he was pulling the muck with the scraper and staring at it. "This stuff's changed color!" he exclaimed. "It looks like--" "Let me see!" The older man took a portion of the blackish, gritty mass and held it close to his carbide. "It looks like something--it looks like something!" His voice was high, excited. "I 'll finish the 'ole and jam enough dynamite in there to tear the insides out of it. I 'll give 'er 'ell. But in the meantime, you take that down to the assayer!" CHAPTER XIX Fairchild did not hesitate. Scraping the watery conglomeration into a tobacco can, he threw on his coat and ran for the shaft. Then he pulled himself up, singing, and dived into the fresh-made drifts of a new storm as he started toward town; nor did he stop to investigate the fast fading footprints of some one who evidently had passed the mine a short time before. Fairchild was too happy to notice such things just now; in a tin can in his side pocket was a blackish, muggy mixture which might mean worlds to him; he was hurrying to receive the verdict, which could come only from the retorts and tests of one man, the assayer. Into town and through it to the scrambling buildings of the Sampler, where the main products of the mines of Ohadi found their way before going to the smelter. There he swung wide the door and turned to the little room on the left, the sanctum of a white-haired, almost tottering old man who wandered about among his test tubes and "buttons" as he figured out the various weights and values of the ores as the samples were brought to him from the dirty, dusty, bin-filled rooms of the Sampler proper. A queer light came into the old fellow's eyes as he looked into those of Robert Fairchild. "Don't get 'em too high!" he admonished. Fairchild stared. "What?" "Hopes. I 've seen many a fellow come in just like you. I 've been here thirty year. They call me Old Undertaker Chastine!" Fairchild laughed. "But I'm hoping--" "Yep, Son." Undertaker Chastine looked over his glasses. "You 're just like all the rest. You 're hoping. That's what they all do; they come in here with their eyes blazing like a grate fire and their faces all lighted up as bright as an Italian cathedral. And they tell me they 've got the world by the tail. Then I take their specimens and I put 'em over the hurdles,--and half the time they go out wishing there was n't any such person in the world as an assayer. Boy," and he pursed his lips, "I 've buried more fortunes than you could shake a stick at. I 've seen men come in here millionaires and go out paupers--just because I 've had to tell 'em the truth. And I 'm soft-hearted. I would n't kill a flea--not even if it was eatin' up the best bird dog that ever set a pa'tridge. And just because o' that, I 've adopted the system of taking all hope out of a fellow right in the beginning. Then if you 've really got something, it's a joyful surprise. If you ain't, the disappointment don't hurt so much. So trot 'er out and let the old Undertaker have a look at 'er. But I 'm telling you right at the start that it won't amount to much." Sobered now, Fairchild reached for his tobacco can, which had been stuffed full of every scrap of slime that he and 'Arry had been able to drag from the powder hole. Evidently, his drill had been in the ore, whatever it was, for some time before he realized it; the can was heavy, exceedingly heavy, giving evidence of purity of something at least. But Undertaker Chastine shook his head. "Can't tell," he announced. "Feels heavy, looks black and all that. But it might not be anything but straight lead with a sprinkling of silver. I 've seen stuff that looked a lot better than this not run more 'n fifteen dollars to the ton. And then again--" He began to tinker about with his pottery. He dragged out a scoop from somewhere and prepared various white powders. Then he turned to the furnace, with its high-chimneyed draft, and filled a container with the contents of the tobacco can. "Let 'er roast, Son," he announced. "That's the only way. Let 'er roast--and while it's getting hot, well, you just cool your heels." Long waiting--while the eccentric old assayer told doleful tales of other days, tales of other men who had rushed in, just like Fairchild, with their sample of ore, only to depart with the knowledge that they were no richer than before, days when the news of the demonetization of silver swooped down upon the little town like some black tornado, closing down the mines, shutting up the gambling halls and great saloons, nailing up the doors, even of the Sampler, for years to come. "Them was the times when there was a lot of undertakers around here besides me," Chastine went on. "Everybody was an undertaker then. Lor', Boy, how that thing hit. We 'd been getting along pretty well at ninety-five cents and a dollar an ounce for silver, and there was men around here wearing hats that was the biggest in the shop, but that did n't come anywhere near fittin' 'em. And then, all of a sudden, it hit! We used to get in all our quotations in those days over the telephone, and every morning I 'd phone down to Old Man Saxby that owned the Sampler then to find out how the New York market stood. The treasury, you know, had been buying up three or four million ounces of silver a month for minting. Then some high-falutin' Congressman got the idea they didn't want to do that any more, and he began to talk. Well, one morning, I telephoned down, and silver 'd dropped to eighty-five. The next morning it went to seventy. The House or the Senate, I 've forgotten which, had passed the demonetization bill. After that, things dragged along and then--I telephoned down again. "'What's the quotation on silver?' I asked him." "'Hell,' says Old Man Saxby, 'there ain't any quotation! Close 'er up--close up everything. They 've passed the demonetization bill, the president 's going to sign it, and you ain't got a job.' "And young feller--" Old Undertaker Chastine looked over his glasses again, "that was some real disappointment. And it's a lot worse than you 're liable to get in a minute." He turned to the furnace and took out the pottery dish in which the sample had been smelting, white-hot now. He cooled it and tinkered with his chemicals. He fussed with his scales, he adjusted his glasses, he coughed once or twice in an embarrassed manner; finally to turn to Fairchild. "Young man," he queried, "it ain't any of my business, but where 'd you get this ore?" "Out of my mine, the Blue Poppy!" "Sure you ain't been visiting?" "What do you mean?" Fairchild was staring at him in wonderment. Old Undertaker Chastine rubbed his hands on his big apron and continued to look over his glasses. "What 'll you take for the Blue Poppy mine, Son?" "Why--it's not for sale." "Sure it ain't going to be--soon?" "Absolutely not." Then Fairchild caught the queer look in the man's eyes. "What do you mean by all these questions? Is that good ore--or is n't it?" "Son, just one more question--and I hope you won't get mad at me. I 'm a funny old fellow, and I do a lot of things that don't seem right at the beginning. But I 've saved a few young bloods like you from trouble more than once. You ain't been high-grading?" "You mean--" "Just exactly what I said--wandering around somebody else's property and picking up a few samples, as it were, to mix in with your own product? Or planting them where they can be found easily by a prospective buyer?" Fairchild's chin set, and his arms moved slowly. Then he laughed--laughed at the small, white-haired, eccentric old man who through his very weakness had the strength to ask insulting questions. "No--I 'll give you my word I have n't been high-grading," he said at last. "My partner and I drilled a hole in the foot wall of the stope where we were working, hoping to find the rest of a vein that was pinching out on us. And we got this stuff. Is it any good?" "Is it good?" Again Old Undertaker Chastine looked over his glasses. "That's just the trouble. It's too good--it's so good that it seems there's something funny about it. Son, that stuff assays within a gram, almost, of the ore they 're taking out of the Silver Queen!" "What's that?" Fairchild had leaped forward and grasped the other man by the shoulders, his eyes agleam, his whole being trembling with excitement. "You're not kidding me about it? You're sure--you 're sure?" "Absolutely! That's why I was so careful for a minute. I thought maybe you had been doing a little high-grading or had been up there and sneaked away some of the ore for a salting proposition. Boy, you 've got a bonanza, if this holds out." "And it really--" "It's almost identical. I never saw two samples of ore that were more alike. Let's see, the Blue Poppy's right up Kentucky Gulch, not so very far away from the Silver Queen, is n't it? Then there must be a tremendous big vein concealed around there somewhere that splits, one half of it running through the mountain in one direction and the other cutting through on the opposite side. It looks like peaches and cream for you, Son. How thick is it?" "I don't know. We just happened to put a drill in there and this is some of the scrapings." "You have n't cut into it at all, then?" "Not unless Harry, my partner, has put in a shot since I 've been gone. As soon as we saw that we were into ore, I hurried away to come down here to get an assay." "Well, Son, now you can hurry back and begin cutting into a fortune. If that vein's only four inches wide, you 've got plenty to keep you for the rest of your life." "It must be more than that--the drill must have been into it several inches before I ever noticed it. I 'd been scraping the muck out of there without paying much attention. It looked so hopeless." Undertaker Chastine turned to his work. "Then hurry along, Son. I suppose," he asked, as he looked over his glasses for the last time, "that you don't want me to say anything about it?" "Not until--" "You 're sure. I know. Well, good news is awful hard to keep--but I 'll do my best. Run along." And Fairchild "ran." Whistling and happy, he turned out of the office of the Sampler and into the street, his coat open, his big cap high on his head, regardless of the sweep of the cold wind and the fine snow that it carried on its icy breath. Through town he went, bumping into pedestrians now and then, and apologizing in a vacant, absent manner. The waiting of months was over, and Fairchild at last was beginning to see his dreams come true. Like a boy, he turned up Kentucky Gulch, bucking the big drifts and kicking the snow before him in flying, splattering spray, stopping his whistling now and then to sing,--foolish songs without words or rhyme or rhythm, the songs of a heart too much engrossed with the joy of living to take cognizance of mere rules of melody! So this was the reason that Rodaine had acknowledged the value of the mine that day in court! This was the reason for the mysterious offer of fifty thousand dollars and for the later one of nearly a quarter of a million! Rodaine had known; Rodaine had information, and Rodaine had been willing to pay to gain possession of what now appeared to be a bonanza. But Rodaine had failed. And Fairchild had won! Won! But suddenly he realized that there was a blankness about it all. He had won money, it is true. But all the money in the world could not free him from the taint that had been left upon him by a coroner's investigation, from the hint that still remained in the recommendation of the grand jury that the murder of Sissie Larsen be looked into further. Nor could it remove the stigma of the four charges against Harry, which soon were to come to trial, and without a bit of evidence to combat them. Riches could do much--but they could not aid in that particular, and somewhat sobered by the knowledge, Fairchild turned from the main road and on up through the high-piled snow to the mouth of the Blue Poppy mine. A faint acrid odor struck his nostrils as he started to descend the shaft, the "perfume" of exploded dynamite, and it sent anew into Fairchild's heart the excitement and intensity of the strike. Evidently Harry had shot the deep hole, and now, there in the chamber, was examining the result, which must, by this time, give some idea of the extent of the ore and the width of the vein. Fairchild pulled on the rope with enthusiastic strength, while the bucket bumped and swirled about the shaft in descent. A moment more and he had reached the bottom, to leap from the carrier, light his carbide lamp which hung where he had left it on the timbers, and start forward. The odor grew heavier. Fairchild held his light before him and looked far ahead, wondering why he could not see the gleam from Harry's lamp. He shouted. There was no answer, and he went on. Fifty feet! Seventy-five! Then he stopped short with a gasp. Twisted and torn before him were the timbers of the tunnel, while muck and refuse lay everywhere. A cave-in--another cave-in--at almost the exact spot where the one had occurred years before, shutting off the chamber from communication with the shaft, tearing and rending the new timbers which had been placed there and imprisoning Harry behind them! Fairchild shouted again and again, only gaining for his answer the ghostlike echoes of his own voice as they traveled to the shaft and were thrown back again. He tore off his coat and cap, and attacked the timbers like the fear-maddened man he was, dragging them by superhuman force out of the way and clearing a path to the refuse. Then, running along the little track, he searched first on one side, then the other, until, nearly at the shaft, he came upon a miner's pick and a shovel. With these, he returned to the task before him. Hours passed, while the sweat poured from his forehead and while his muscles seemed to tear themselves loose from their fastenings with the exertion that was placed upon them. Foot after foot, the muck was torn away, as Fairchild, with pick and shovel, forced a tunnel through the great mass of rocky debris which choked the drift. Onward--onward--at last to make a small opening in the barricade, and to lean close to it that he might shout again. But still there was no answer. Feverish now, Fairchild worked with all the reserve strength that was in him. He seized great chunks of rock that he could not even have budged at an ordinary time and threw them far behind him. His pick struck again and again with a vicious, clanging reverberation; the hole widened. Once more Fairchild leaned toward it. "Harry!" he called. "Harry!" But there was no answer. Again he shouted, then he returned to his work, his heart aching in unison with his muscles. Behind that broken mass, Fairchild felt sure, was his partner, torn, bleeding through the effects of some accident, he did not know what, past answering his calls, perhaps dead. Greater became the hole in the cave-in; soon it was large enough to admit his body. Seizing his carbide lamp, Fairchild made for the opening and crawled through, hurrying onward toward the chamber where the stope began, calling Harry's name at every step, in vain. The shadows before him lengthened, as the chamber gave greater play to the range of light. Fairchild rushed within, held high his carbide and looked about him. But no crumpled form of a man lay there, no bruised, torn human being. The place was empty, except for the pile of stone and refuse which had been torn away by dynamite explosions in the hanging wall, where Harry evidently had shot away the remaining refuse in a last effort to see what lay in that direction,--stones and muck which told nothing. On the other side-- Fairchild stared blankly. The hole that he had made into the foot wall had been filled with dynamite and tamped, as though ready for shooting. But the charge had not been exploded. Instead--on the ground lay the remainder of the tamping paper and a short foot and a half of fuse, with its fulminate of mercury cap attached, where it had been pulled from its berth by some great force and hastily stamped out. And Harry-- Harry was gone! CHAPTER XX It was as though the shades of the past had come to life again, to repeat in the twentieth century a happening of the nineteenth. There was only one difference--no form of a dead man now lay against the foot wall, to rest there more than a score of years until it should come to light, a pile of bones in time-shredded clothing. And as he thought of it, Fairchild remembered that the earthly remains of "Sissie" Larsen had lain within almost a few feet of the spot where he had drilled the prospect hole into the foot wall, there to discover the ore that promised bonanza. But this time there was nothing and no clue to the mystery of Harry's disappearance. Fairchild suddenly strengthened with an idea. Perhaps, after all, he had been on the other side of the cave-in and had hurried on out of the mine. But in that event, would he not have waited for his return, to tell him of the accident? Or would he not have proceeded down to the Sampler to bring the news if he had not cared to remain at the tunnel opening? However, it was a chance, and Fairchild took it. Once more he crawled through the hole that he had made in the cave-in and sought the outward world. Then he hurried down Kentucky Gulch and to the Sampler. But Harry had not been there. He went through town, asking questions, striving his best to shield his anxiety, cloaking his queries under the cover of cursory remarks. Harry had not been seen. At last, with the coming of night, he turned toward the boarding house, and on his arrival. Mother Howard, sighting his white face, hurried to him. "Have you seen Harry?" he asked. "No--he has n't been here." It was the last chance. Clutching fear at his heart, he told Mother Howard of the happenings at the mine, quickly, as plainly as possible. Then once more he went forth, to retrace his steps to the Blue Poppy, to buck the wind and the fine snow and the high, piled drifts, and to go below. But the surroundings were the same: still the cave-in, with its small hole where he had torn through it, still the ragged hanging wall where Harry had fired the last shots of dynamite in his investigations, still the trampled bit of fuse with its cap attached. Nothing more. Gingerly Fairchild picked up the cap and placed it where a chance kick could not explode it. Then he returned to the shaft. Back into the black night, with the winds whistling through the pines. Back to wandering about through the hills, hurrying forward at the sight of every faint, dark object against the snow, in the hope that Harry, crippled by the cave-in, might have some way gotten out of the shaft. But they were only boulders or logs or stumps of trees. At midnight, Fairchild turned once more toward town and to the boarding house. But Harry had not appeared. There was only one thing left to do. This time, when Fairchild left Mother Howard's, his steps did not lead him toward Kentucky Gulch. Instead he kept straight on up the street, past the little line of store buildings and to the courthouse, where he sought out the sole remaining light in the bleak, black building,--Sheriff Bardwell's office. That personage was nodding in his chair, but removed his feet from the desk and turned drowsily as Fairchild entered. "Well?" he questioned, "what's up?" "My partner has disappeared. I want to report to you--and see if I can get some help." "Disappeared? Who?" "Harry Harkins. He 's a big Cornishman, with a large mustache, very red face, about sixty years old, I should judge--" "Wait a minute," Bardwell's eyes narrowed. "Ain't he the fellow I arrested in the Blue Poppy mine the night of the Old Times dance?" "Yes." "And you say he 's disappeared?" "I think you heard me!" Fairchild spoke with some asperity. "I said that he had disappeared, and I want some help in hunting for him. He may be injured, for all I know, and if he 's out here in the mountains anywhere, it's almost sure death for him unless he can get some aid soon. I--" But the sheriff's eyes still remained suspiciously narrow. "When does his trial come up?" "A week from to-morrow." "And he 's disappeared." A slow smile came over the other man's lips. "I don't think it will help much to start any relief expedition for him. The thing to do is to get a picture and a general description and send it around to the police in the various parts of the country! That 'll be the best way to find him!" Fairchild's teeth gritted, but he could not escape the force of the argument, from the sheriff's standpoint. For a moment there was silence, then the miner came closer to the desk. "Sheriff," he said as calmly as possible, "you have a perfect right to give that sort of view. That's your business--to suspect people. However, I happen to feel sure that my partner would stand trial, no matter what the charge, and that he would not seek to evade it in any way. Some sort of an accident happened at the mine this afternoon--a cave-in or an explosion that tore out the roof of the tunnel--and I am sure that my partner is injured, has made his way out of the mine, and is wandering among the hills. Will you help me to find him?" The sheriff wheeled about in his chair and studied a moment. Then he rose. "Guess I will," he announced. "It can't do any harm to look for him, anyway." Half an hour later, aided by two deputies who had been summoned from their homes, Fairchild and the sheriff left for the hills to begin the search for the missing Harry. Late the next afternoon, they returned to town, tired, their horses almost crawling in their dragging pace after sixteen hours of travel through the drifts of the hills and gullies. Harry had not been found, and so Fairchild reported when, with drooping shoulders, he returned to the boarding house and to the waiting Mother Howard. And both knew that this time Harry's disappearance was no joke, as it had been before. They realized that back of it all was some sinister reason, some mystery which they could not solve,--for the present at least. That night, Fairchild faced the future and made his resolve. There was only a week now until Harry's case should come to trial. Only a week until the failure of the defendant to appear should throw the deeds of the Blue Poppy mine into the hands of the court, to be sold for the amount of the bail. And in spite of the fact that Fairchild now felt his mine to be a bonanza, unless some sort of a miracle could happen before that time, the mine was the same as lost. True, it would go to the highest bidder at a public sale and any money brought in above the amount of bail would be returned to him. But who would be that bidder? Who would get the mine--perhaps for twenty or twenty-five thousand dollars, when it now was worth millions? Certainly not he. Already he and Harry had borrowed from Mother Howard all that she could lend them. True she had friends; but none could produce from twenty to two hundred thousand dollars for a mine, simply on his word. And unless something should happen to intervene, unless Harry should return, or in some way Fairchild could raise the necessary five thousand dollars to furnish a cash bond and again recover the deeds of the Blue Poppy, he was no better off than before the strike was made. Long he thought, finally to come to his conclusion, and then, with the air of a gambler who has placed his last bet to win or lose, he went to bed. But morning found him awake long before the rest of the house was stirring. Downtown he hurried, to eat a hasty breakfast in the all-night restaurant, then to start on a search for men. The first workers on the street that morning found Fairchild offering them six dollars a day. And by eight o'clock, ten of them were at work in the drift of the Blue Poppy mine, working against time that they might repair the damage which had been caused by the cave-in. It was not an easy task. That day and the next and the next after that, they labored. Then Fairchild glanced at the progress that was being made and sought out the pseudo-foreman. "Will it be finished by night?" he asked. "Easily." "Very well. I may need these men to work on a day and night shift, I 'm not sure. I 'll be back in an hour." Away he went and up the shaft, to travel as swiftly as possible through the drift-piled road down Kentucky Gulch and to the Sampler. There he sought out old Undertaker Chastine, and with him went to the proprietor. "My name is Fairchild, and I 'm in trouble," he said candidly. "I 've brought Mr. Chastine in with me because he assayed some of my ore a few days ago and believes he knows what it's worth. I 'm working against time to get five thousand dollars. If I can produce ore that runs two hundred dollars to the ton, and if I 'll sell it to you for one hundred seventy-five dollars a ton until I can get the money I need, provided I can get the permission of the court,--will you put it through for me?" The Sampler owner smiled. "If you 'll let me see where you 're getting the ore." Then he figured a moment. "That 'd be thirty or forty ton," came at last. "We could handle that as fast as you could bring it in here." But a new thought had struck Fairchild,--a new necessity for money. "I 'll give it to you for one hundred fifty dollars a ton, providing you do the hauling and lend me enough after the first day or so to pay my men." "But why all the excitement--and the rush?" "My partner 's Harry Harkins. He 's due for trial Friday, and he 's disappeared. The mine is up as security. You can see what will happen unless I can substitute a cash bond for the amount due before that time. Is n't that sufficient?" "It ought to be. But as I said, I want to see where the ore comes from." "You 'll see in the morning--if I 've got it," answered Fairchild with a new hope thrilling in his voice. "All that I have so far is an assay of some drill scrapings. I don't know how thick the vein is or whether it's going to pinch out in ten minutes after we strike it. But I 'll know mighty soon." Every cent that Robert Fairchild possessed in the world was in his pockets,--two hundred dollars. After he had paid his men for their three days of labor, there would be exactly twenty dollars left. But Fairchild did not hesitate. To Farrell's office he went and with him to an interview, in chambers, with the judge. Then, the necessary permission having been granted, he hurried back to the mine and into the drift, there to find the last of the muck being scraped away from beneath the site of the cave-in. Fairchild paid off. Then he turned to the foreman. "How many of these men are game to take a chance?" "Pretty near all of 'em--if there 's any kind of a gamble to it." "There 's a lot of gamble. I 've got just twenty dollars in my pocket--enough to pay each man one dollar apiece for a night's work if my hunch doesn't pan out. If it does pan, the wages are twenty dollars a day for three days, with everybody, including myself, working like hell! Who's game?" The answer came in unison. Fairchild led the way to the chamber, seized a hammer and took his place. "There 's two-hundred-dollar ore back of this foot wall if we can break in and start a new stope," he announced. "It takes a six-foot hole to reach it, and we can have the whole story by morning. Let's go!" Along the great length of the foot wall, extending all the distance of the big chamber, the men began their work, five men to the drills and as many to the sledges, as they started their double-jacking. Hour after hour the clanging of steel against steel sounded in the big underground room, as the drills bit deeper and deeper into the hard formation of the foot wall, driving steadily forward until their contact should have a different sound, and the muggy scrapings bear a darker hue than that of mere wall-rock. Hour after hour passed, while the drill-turners took their places with the sledges, and the sledgers went to the drills--the turnabout system of "double-jacking"--with Fairchild, the eleventh man, filling in along the line as an extra sledger, that the miners might be the more relieved in their strenuous, frenzied work. Midnight came. The first of the six-foot drills sank to its ultimate depth. Then the second and third and fourth: finally the fifth. They moved on. Hours more of work, and the operation had been repeated. The workmen hurried for the powder house, far down the drift, by the shaft, lugging back in their pockets the yellow, candle-like sticks of dynamite, with their waxy wrappers and their gelatinous contents together with fuses and caps. Crimping nippers--the inevitable accompaniment of a miner--came forth from the pockets of the men. Careful tamping, then the men took their places at the fuses. "Give the word!" one of them announced crisply as he turned to Fairchild. "Each of us 'll light one of these things, and then I say we 'll run! Because this is going to be some explosion!" Fairchild smiled the smile of a man whose heart is thumping at its maximum speed. Before him in the long line of the foot wall were ten holes, "up-holes", "downs" and "swimmers", attacking the hidden ore in every direction. Ten holes drilled six feet into the rock and tamped with double charges of dynamite. He straightened. "All right, men! Ready?" "Ready!" "Touch 'em off!" The carbide lamps were held close to the fuses for a second. Soon they were all going, spitting like so many venomous, angry serpents--but neither Fairchild nor the miners had stopped to watch. They were running as hard as possible for the shaft and for the protection that distance might give. A wait that seemed ages. Then: "One!" "And two--and three!" "There goes four and five--they went together!" "Six--seven--eight--nine--" Again a wait, while they looked at one another with vacuous eyes. A long interval until the tenth. "Two went together then! I thought we 'd counted nine?" The foreman stared, and Fairchild studied. Then his face lighted. "Eleven 's right. One of them must have set off the charge that Harry left in there. All the better--it gives us just that much more of a chance." Back they went along the drift tunnel now, coughing slightly as the sharp smoke of the dynamite cut their lungs. A long journey that seemed as many miles instead of feet. Then with a shout, Fairchild sprang forward, and went to his hands and knees. It was there before him--all about him--the black, heavy masses of lead-silver ore, a great, heaping, five-ton pile of it where it had been thrown out by the tremendous force of the explosion. It seemed that the whole great floor of the cavern was covered with it, and the workmen shouted with Fairchild as they seized bits of the precious black stuff and held it to the light for closer examination. "Look!" The voice of one of them was high and excited. "You can see the fine streaks of silver sticking out! It's high-grade and plenty of it!" But Fairchild paid little attention. He was playing in the stuff, throwing it in the air and letting it fall to the floor of the cavern again, like a boy with a new sack of marbles, or a child with its building blocks. Five tons and the night was not yet over! Five tons, and the vein had not yet shown its other side! Back to work they went now, six of the men drilling, Fairchild and the other four mucking out the refuse, hauling it up the shaft, and then turning to the ore that they might get it to the old, rotting bins and into position for loading as soon as the owner of the Sampler could be notified in the morning and the trucks could fight their way through the snowdrifts of Kentucky Gulch to the mine for loading. Again through the hours the drills bit into the rock walls, while the ore car clattered along the tram line and while the creaking of the block and tackle at the shaft seemed endless. In three days, approximately forty tons of ore must come out of that mine,--and work must not cease. Morning, and in spite of the sleep-laden eyes, the heavy aching in his head, the tired drooping of the shoulders, Fairchild tramped to the boarding house to notify Mother Howard and ask for news of Harry. There had been none. Then he went on, to wait by the door of the Sampler until Bittson, the owner, should appear, and drag him away up the hill, even before he could open up for the morning. "There it is!" he exclaimed, as he led him to the entrance of the chamber. "There it is; take all you want of it and assay it!" Bittson went forward into the cross-cut, where the men were drilling even at new holes, and examined the vein. Already it was three feet thick, and there was still ore ahead. One of the miners looked up. "Just finishing up on the cross-cut," he announced, as he nodded toward his drill. "I 've just bitten into the foot wall on the other side. Looks to me like the vein 's about five feet thick--as near as I can measure it." "And--" Bittson picked up a few samples, examined them by the light of the carbides and tossed them away--"you can see the silver sticking out. I caught sight of a couple of pencil threads of it in one or two of those samples. All right, Boy!" he turned to Fairchild. "What was that bargain we made?" "It was based on two hundred dollars a ton ore. This may run above--or below. But whatever it is, I 'll sell you all you can handle for the next three days at fifty dollars a ton under the assay price." "You 've said the word. The trucks will be here in an hour if we have to shovel a path all the way up Kentucky Gulch." He hurried away then, while Fairchild and the men followed him into town and to their breakfast. Then, recruiting a new gang on the promise of payment at the end of their three-day shift, Fairchild went back to the mine. But the word had spread, and others were there before him. Already a wide path showed up Kentucky Gulch. Already fifteen or twenty miners were assembled about the opening of the Blue Poppy tunnel, awaiting permission to enter, the usual rush upon a lucky mine to view its riches. Behind him, Fairchild could see others coming from Ohadi to take a look at the new strike, and his heart bounded with happiness tinged with sorrow. Harry was not there to enjoy it all; Harry was gone, and in spite of his every effort, Fairchild had failed to find him. All that morning they thronged down the shaft of the Blue Poppy. The old method of locomotion grew too slow; willing hands repaired the hoist and sent volunteers for a gasoline engine to run it, while in the meantime officials of curiosity labored on the broken old ladder that once had encompassed the distance from the bottom of the shaft to the top, rehabilitating it to such an extent that it might be used again. The drift was crowded with persons bearing candles and carbides. The big chamber was filled, leaving barely room for the men to work with their drills at the final holes that would be needed to clear the vein to the foot wall on the other side and enable the miners to start upward on their new stope. Fairchild looked about him proudly, happily; it was his, his and Harry's--if Harry ever should come back again--the thing he had worked for, the thing he had dreamed of, planned for. Some one brushed against him, and there came a slight tug at his coat. Fairchild looked downward to see passing the form of Anita Richmond. A moment later she looked toward him, but in her eyes there was no light of recognition, nothing to indicate that she had just given him a signal of greeting and congratulation. And yet Fairchild felt that she had. Uneasily he walked away, following her with his eyes as she made her way into the blackness of the tunnel and toward the shaft. Then, absently, he put his hand into his pocket. Something there caused his heart to halt momentarily,--a piece of paper. He crumpled it in his hand, he rubbed his fingers over it wonderingly; it had not been in his pocket before she had passed him. Hurriedly he walked to the far side of the chamber and there, pretending to examine a bit of ore, brought the missive from its place of secretion, to unfold it with trembling fingers, then to stare at the words which showed before him: "Squint Rodaine is terribly worried about something. Has been on an awful rampage all morning. Something critical is brewing, but I don't know what. Suggest you keep watch on him. Please destroy this." That was all. There was no signature. But Robert Fairchild had seen the writing of Anita Richmond once before! CHAPTER XXI So she was his friend! So all these days of waiting had not been in vain; all the cutting hopelessness of seeing her, only to have her turn away her head and fail to recognize him, had been for their purpose after all. And yet Fairchild remembered that she was engaged to Maurice Rodaine, and that the time of the wedding must be fast approaching. Perhaps there had been a quarrel, perhaps-- Then he smiled. There was no perhaps about it! Anita Richmond was his friend; she had been forced into the promise of marriage to Maurice Rodaine, but she had not been forced into a relinquishment of her desire to reward him somehow, some way, for the attention that he had shown her and the liking that she knew existed in his heart. Hastily Fairchild folded the paper and stuffed it into an inside pocket. Then, seeking out one of the workmen, he appointed him foreman of the gang, to take charge in his absence. Following which, he made his way out of the mine and into town, there to hire men of Mother Howard's suggestion and send them to the Blue Poppy, to take their stations every few feet along the tunnel, to appear mere spectators, but in reality to be guards who were constantly on the watch for anything untoward that might occur. Fairchild was taking no chances now. An hour more found him at the Sampler, watching the ore as it ran through the great crusher hoppers, to come forth finely crumbled powder and be sampled, ton by ton, for the assays by old Undertaker Chastine and the three other men of his type, without which no sampler pays for ore. Bittson approached, grinning. "You guessed just about right," he announced. "That stuff 's running right around two hundred dollars a ton. Need any money now?" "All you can let me have!" "Four or five hundred? We 've gotten in eight tons of that stuff already; don't guess I 'd be taking any risk on that!" he chuckled. Fairchild reached for the currency eagerly. All but a hundred dollars of it would go to Mother Howard,--for that debt must be paid off first. And, that accomplished, denying himself the invitation of rest that his bed held forth for him, he started out into town, apparently to loiter about the streets and receive the congratulations of the towns-people, but in reality to watch for one person and one alone,--Squint Rodaine! He saw him late in the afternoon, shambling along, his eyes glaring, his lips moving wordlessly, and he took up the trail. But it led only to the office of the Silver Queen Development Company, where the scar-faced man doubled at his desk, and, stuffing a cigar into his mouth, chewed on it angrily. Instinctively Fairchild knew that the greatest part of his mean temper was due to the strike in the Blue Poppy; instinctively also he felt that Squint Rodaine had known of the value all along, that now he was cursing himself for the failure of his schemes to obtain possession of what had appeared until only a day before to be nothing more than a disappointing, unlucky, ill-omened hole in the ground. Fairchild resumed his loitering, but evening found him near the Silver Queen office. Squint Rodaine did not leave for dinner. The light burned long in the little room, far past the usual closing time and until after the picture-show crowds had come and gone, while the man of the blue-white scar remained at his desk, staring at papers, making row after row of figures, and while outside, facing the chill and the cold of winter, Fairchild trod the opposite side of the street, careful that no one caught the import of his steady, sentry-like pace, yet equally careful that he did not get beyond a range of vision where he could watch the gleam of light from the office of the Silver Queen. Anita's note had told him little, yet had implied much. Something was fermenting in the seething brain of Squint Rodaine, and if the past counted for anything, it was something that concerned him. An hour more, then Fairchild suddenly slunk into the shadows of a doorway. Squint had snapped out the light and was locking the door. A moment later he had passed him, his form bent, his shoulders hunched forward, his lips muttering some unintelligible jargon. Fifty feet more, then Fairchild stepped from the doorway and took up the trail. It was not a hard one to follow. The night wind had brought more snow with it, to make a silent pad upon the sidewalks and to outline to Fairchild more easily the figure which slouched before him. Gradually Robert dropped farther and farther in the rear; it gave him that much more protection, that much more surety in trailing his quarry to wherever he might be bound. And it was a certainty that the destination was not home. Squint Rodaine passed the street leading to his house without even looking up. Two blocks more, and they reached the city limits. But Squint kept on, and far in the rear, watching carefully every move, Fairchild followed his quarry's shadow. A mile, and they were in the open country, crossing and recrossing the ice-dotted Clear Creek. A furlong more, then Fairchild went to his knees that he might use the snow for a better background. Squint Rodaine had turned up the lane which led to a great, shambling, old, white building that, in the rosy days of the mining game, had been a roadhouse with its roulette wheels, its bar, its dining tables and its champagne, but which now, barely furnished in only a few of its rooms, inhabited by mountain rats and fluttering bats and general decay for the most part, formed the uncomfortable abode of Crazy Laura! And Fairchild followed. It could mean only one thing when Rodaine sought the white-haired, mumbling old hag whom once he had called his wife. It could mean but one outcome, and that of disaster for some one. Mother Howard had said that Crazy Laura would kill for Squint. Fairchild felt sure that once, at least, she had lied for him, so that the name of Thornton Fairchild might be branded as that of a murderer and that his son might be set down in the community as a person of ill-intent and one not to be trusted. And now that Squint Rodaine was seeking her once more, Fairchild meant to follow, and to hear--if such a thing were within the range of human possibility--the evil drippings of his crooked lips. He crossed to the side of the road where ran the inevitable gully and taking advantage of the shelter, hurried forward, smiling grimly in the darkness at the memory of the fact that things were now reversed; that he was following Squint Rodaine as Rodaine once had followed him. Swiftly he moved, closer--closer; the scar-faced man went through the tumble-down gate and approached the house, not knowing that his pursuer was less than fifty yards away! A moment of cautious waiting then, in which Fairchild did not move. Finally a light showed in an upstairs room of the house, and Fairchild, masking his own footprints in those made by Rodaine, crept to the porch. Swiftly, silently, protected by the pad of snow on the soles of his shoes, he made the doorway and softly tried the lock. It gave beneath his pressure, and he glided within the dark hallway, musty and dusty in its odor, forbidding, evil and dark. A mountain rat, already disturbed by the entrance of Rodaine, scampered across his feet, and Fairchild shrunk into a corner, hiding himself as best he could in case the noise should cause an investigation from above. But it did not. Now Fairchild could hear voices, and in a moment more they became louder, as a door opened. "It don't make any difference! I ain't going to stand for it! I tell you to do something and you go and make a mess of it! Why did n't you wait until they were both there?" "I--I thought they were, Roady!" The woman's voice was whining, pleading. "Ain't you going to kiss me?" "No, I ain't going to kiss you. You went and made a mess of things." "You kissed me the night our boy was born. Remember that, Roady? Don't you remember how you kissed me then?" "That was a long time ago, and you were a different woman then. You 'd do what I 'd tell you." "But I do now, Roady. Honest, I do. I 'll do anything you tell me to--if you 'll just be good to me. Why don't you hold me in your arms any more--?" A scuffling sound came from above. Fairchild knew that she had made an effort to clasp him to her, and that he had thrust her away. The voices came closer. "You know what you got us into, don't you? They made a strike there to-day--same value as in the Silver Queen. If it had n't been for you--" "But they get out someway--they always get out." The voice was high and weird now. "They 're immortal. That's what they are--they 're immortal. They have the gift--they can get out--" "Bosh! Course they get out when you wait until after they 're gone. Why, one of 'em was downtown at the assayer's, so I understand, when you went in there." "But the other--he 's immortal. He got out--" "You're crazy!" "Yes, crazy!" She suddenly shrieked at the word. "That's what they all call me--Crazy Laura. And you call me Crazy Laura too, when my back 's turned. But I ain't--hear me--I ain't! I know--they're immortal, just like the others were immortal! I can't hold 'em when they 've got the spirit that rises above--I 've tried, ain't I--and I 've only got one!" "One?" Squint's voice became suddenly excited. "One--what one?" "I 'm not going to tell. But I know--Crazy Laura--that's what they call me--and they give me a sulphur pillow to sleep on. But I know--I know!" There was silence then for a moment, and Fairchild, huddled in the darkness below, felt the creeping, crawling chill of horror pass over him as he listened. Above were a rogue and a lunatic, discussing between them what, at times, seemed to concern him and his partner; more, it seemed to go back to other days, when other men had worked the Blue Poppy and met misfortunes. A bat fluttered about, just passing his face, its vermin-covered wings sending the musty air close against his cringing flesh. Far at the other side of the big hall a mountain rat resumed its gnawing. Then it ceased. Squint Rodaine was talking again. "So you 're not going to tell me about 'the one', eh? What have you got this door shut for?" "No door 's shut." "It is--don't you think I can see? This door leading into the front room." The sound of heavy shoes, followed by a lighter tread. Then a scream above which could be heard the jangling of a rusty lock and the bumping of a shoulder against wood. High and strident came Crazy Laura's voice: "Stay out of there--I tell you, Roady! Stay out of there! It's something that mortals should n't see--it's something--stay out--stay out!" "I won't--unlock this door!" "I can't do it--the time has n't come yet--I must n't--" "You won't--well, there 's another way." A crash, the sudden, stumbling feet of a man, then the scratching of a match and an exclamation: "So this is your immortal, eh?" Only a moaning answered, moaning intermingled with some vague form of a weird chant, the words of which Fairchild in the musty, dark hall below could not distinguish. At last came Squint's voice again, this time in softened tones: "Laura--Laura, honey." "Yes, Squint." "Why did n't you tell your sweetheart about this?" "I must n't--you 've spoiled it now, Roady." "No--Honey. I can show you the way. He 's nearly gone. What were you going to do when he went--?" "He 'd have dissolved in air, Roady--I know. The spirits have told me." "Perhaps so." The voice of the scar-faced, mean-visaged Squint Rodaine was still honeyed, still cajoling. "Perhaps so--but not at once. Is n't there a barrel of lime in the basement?" "Yes." "Come downstairs with me." They started downward then, and Fairchild, creeping as swiftly as he could, hurried under the protection of the rotten casing, where the wainscoting had dropped away with the decay of years. There he watched them pass, Rodaine in the lead, carrying a smoking lamp with its half-broken chimney careening on the base. Crazy Laura, mumbling her toothless gums, her hag-like hands extended before her, shuffling along in the rear. He heard them go far to the rear of the house, then descend more stairs. And he went flat to his stomach on the floor, with his ear against a tiny chink that he might hear the better. Squint still was talking in his loving tones. "See, Honey," he was saying. "I 've--I 've broken the spell by going in upstairs. You should have told me. I did n't know--I just thought--well, I thought there was some one in there you liked, and I got jealous." "Did you, Roady?" She cackled. "Did you?" "Yes--I did n't know you had _him_ there. And you were making him immortal?" "I found him, Roady. His eyes were shut, and he was bleeding. It was at dusk, and nobody saw him when I carried him in here. Then I started giving him the herbs--" "That you 've gathered around at night?" "Yes--where the dead sleep. I get the red berries most. That's the blood of the dead, come to life again." The quaking, crazy voice from below caused Fairchild to shiver with a sudden cold that no warmth could eradicate. Still, however, he lay there listening, fearful that every move from below might bring a cessation of their conversation. But Rodaine talked on. "Of course, I know. But I 've spoiled that now. There's another way, Laura. Get that spade. See, the dirt's soft here. Dig a hole about four feet deep and six or seven feet long. Then put half that lime from the barrel in there. Understand?" "What for?" "It's the only way now; we 'll have to do that. It's the other way to immortality. You 've given him the herbs?" "Yes." "Then this is the end. See? Now do that, won't you, Honey?" "You'll kiss me, Roady?" "There!" The faint sound of a kiss came from below. "And there's another one. And another!" "Just like the night our boy was born. Don't you remember how you bent over and kissed me then and held me in your arms?" "I 'm holding you that way now, Honey--just the same way that I held you the night our boy was born. And I 'll help you with this. You dig the hole and put half the lime in there--don't put it all. We 'll need the rest to put on top of him. You 'll have it done in about two hours. There 's something else needed--some acid that I 've got to get. It 'll make it all the quicker. I 'll be back, Honey. Kiss me." Fairchild, seeking to still the horror-laden quiver of his body, heard the sound of a kiss and then the clatter of a man's heavy shoes on the stairs, accompanied by a slight clink from below. He knew that sound,--the scraping of the steel of a spade against the earth as it was dragged into use. A moment more and Rodaine, mumbling to himself, passed out the door. But the woman did not come upstairs. Fairchild knew why: her crazed mind was following the instructions of the man who knew how to lead the lunatic intellect into the channels he desired; she was digging, digging a grave for some one, a grave to be lined with quicklime! Now she was talking again and chanting, but Fairchild did not attempt to determine the meaning of it all. Upstairs was some one who had been found by this woman in an unconscious state and evidently kept in that condition through the potations of the ugly poison-laden drugs she brewed,--some one who now was doomed to die and to lie in a quicklime grave! Carefully Fairchild gained his feet; then, as silently as possible, he made for the rickety stairs, stopping now and again to listen for discovery from below. But it did not come; the insane woman was chanting louder than ever now. Fairchild went on. He felt his way up the remaining stairs, a rat scampering before him; he sneaked along the wall, hands extended, groping for that broken door, finally to find it. Cautiously he peered within, striving in vain to pierce the darkness. At last, listening intently for the singing from below, he drew a match from his pocket and scratched it noiselessly on his trousers. Then, holding it high above his head, he looked toward the bed--and stared in horror! A blood-encrusted face showed on the slipless pillow, while across the forehead was a jagged, red, untended wound. The mouth was open, the breathing was heavy and labored. The form was quite still, the eyes closed. And the face was that of Harry! CHAPTER XXII So this explained, after a fashion, Harry's disappearance. This revealed why the search through the mountains had failed. This-- But Fairchild suddenly realized that now was not a time for conjecturing upon the past. The man on the bed was unconscious, incapable of helping himself. Far below, a white-haired woman, her toothless jaws uttering one weird chant after another, was digging for him a quicklime grave, in the insane belief that she was aiding in accomplishing some miracle of immortality. In time--and Fairchild did not know how long--an evil-visaged, scar-faced man would return to help her carry the inert frame of the unconscious man below and bury it. Nor could Fairchild tell from the conversation whether he even intended to perform the merciful act of killing the poor, broken being before he covered it with acids and quick-eating lime in a grave that soon would remove all vestige of human identity forever. Certainly now was not a time for thought; it was one for action! And for caution. Instinct told Fairchild that for the present, at least, Rodaine must believe that Harry had escaped unaided. There were too many other things in which Robert felt sure Rodaine had played a part, too many other mysterious happenings which must be met and coped with, before the man of the blue-white scar could know that finally the underling was beginning to show fight, that at last the crushed had begun to rise. Fairchild bent and unlaced his shoes, taking off also the heavy woolen socks which protected his feet from the biting cold. Steeling himself to the ordeal which he must undergo, he tied the laces together and slung the footgear over a shoulder. Then he went to the bed. As carefully as possible, he wrapped Harry in the blankets, seeking to protect him in every way against the cold. With a great effort, he lifted him, the sick man's frame huddled in his arms like some gigantic baby, and started out of the eerie, darkened house. The stairs--the landing--the hall! Then a query from below: "Is that you, Roady?" The breath pulled sharp into Fairchild's lungs. He answered in the best imitation he could give of the voice of Squint Rodaine: "Yes. Go on with your digging, Honey. I 'll be there soon." "And you'll kiss me?" "Yes. Just like I kissed you the night our boy was born." It was sufficient. The chanting began again, accompanied by the swish of the spade as it sank into the earth and the cludding roll of the clods as they were thrown to one side. Fairchild gained the door. A moment more and he staggered with his burden into the protecting darkness of the night. The snow crept about his ankles, seeming to freeze them at every touch, but Fairchild did not desist. His original purpose must be carried out if Rodaine were not to know,--the appearance that Harry had aroused himself sufficiently to wrap the blankets about him and wander off by himself. And this could be accomplished only by the pain and cold and torture of a barefoot trip. Some way, by shifting the big frame of his unconscious partner now and then, Fairchild made the trip to the main road and veered toward the pumphouse of the Diamond J. mine, running as it often did without attendance while the engineer made a trip with the electric motor into the hill. Cautiously he peered through the windows. No one was there. Beyond lay warmth and comfort--and a telephone. Fairchild went within and placed Harry on the floor. Then he reached for the 'phone and called the hospital. "Hello!" he announced in a husky, disguised voice. "This is Jeb Gresham of Georgeville. I 've just found a man lying by the side of the Diamond J. pumphouse, unconscious, with a big cut in his head. I 've brought him inside. You 'll find him there; I 've got to go on. Looks like he 's liable to die unless you can send the ambulance for him." "We 'll make it a rush trip," came the answer, and Fairchild hung up the 'phone, to rub his half-frozen, aching feet a moment, then to reclothe them in the socks and shoes, watching the entrance of the Diamond J. tunnel as he did so. A long minute--then he left the pumphouse, made a few tracks in the snow around the entrance, and walked swiftly down the road. Fifteen minutes later, from a hiding place at the side of the Clear Creek bridge, he saw the lights of the ambulance as it swerved to the pumphouse. Out came the stretcher. The attendants went in search of the injured man. When they came forth again, they bore the form of Harry Harkins, and the heart of Fairchild began to beat once more with something resembling regularity. His partner--at least such was his hope and his prayer--was on the way to aid and to recovery, while Squint Rodaine would know nothing other than that he had wandered away! Grateful, lighter in heart than he had been for days. Fairchild plodded along the road in the tracks of the ambulance, as it headed back for town. The news already had spread by the time he reached there; news travels fast in a small mining camp. Fairchild went to the hospital, and to the side of the cot where Harry had been taken, to find the doctor there before him, already bandaging the wound on Harry's head and looking with concern now and then at the pupils of the unconscious man's eyes. "Are you going to stay here with him?" the physician asked, after he had finished the dressing of the laceration. "Yes," Fairchild said, in spite of aching fatigue and heavy eyes. The doctor nodded. "Good. I don't know whether he 's going to pull through or not. Of course, I can't say--but it looks to me from his breathing and his heart action that he 's not suffering as much from this wound as he is from some sort of poisoning. "We 've given him apomorphine and it should begin to take effect soon. We 're using the batteries too. You say that you 're going to be here? That's a help. They 're shy a nurse on this floor to-night, and I 'm having a pretty busy time of it. I 'm very much afraid that poor old Judge Richmond 's going to lay down his cross before morning." "He 's dying?" Fairchild said it with a clutching sensation at his throat. The physician nodded. "There 's hardly a chance for him." "You 're going there?" "Yes." "Will you please give--?" The physician waited. Finally Fairchild shook his head. "Never mind," he finished. "I thought I would ask you something--but it would be too much of a favor. Thank you just the same. Is there anything I can do here?" "Nothing except to keep watch on his general condition. If he seems to be getting worse, call the interne. I 've left instructions with him." "Very good." The physician went on, and Fairchild took his place beside the bed of the unconscious Harry, his mind divided between concern for his faithful partner and the girl who, some time in the night, must say good-by forever to the father she loved. It had been on Fairchild's tongue to send her some sort of message by the physician, some word that would show her he was thinking of her and hoping for her. But he had reconsidered. Among those in the house of death might be Maurice Rodaine, and Fairchild did not care again to be the cause of such a scene as had happened on the night of the Old Times dance. Judge Richmond was dying. What would that mean? What effect would it have upon the engagement of Anita and the man Fairchild hoped that she detested? What--then he turned at the entrance of the interne with the batteries. "If you 're going to be here all night," said the white-coated individual, "it 'll help me out a lot if you 'll use these batteries for me. Put them on at their full force and apply them to his cheeks, his hands, his wrists and the soles of his feet alternately. From the way he acts, there 's some sort of morphinic poisoning. We can't tell what it is--except that it acts like a narcotic. And about the only way we can pull him out is with these applications." The interne turned over the batteries and went on about his work, while Fairchild, hoping within his heart that he had not placed an impediment in the way of Harry's recovery by not telling what he knew of Crazy Laura and her concoctions, began his task. Yet he was relieved by the knowledge that such information could aid but little. Nothing but a chemical analysis could show the contents of the strange brews which the insane woman made from her graveyard herbiage, and long before that could come, Harry might be dead. And so he pressed the batteries against the unconscious man's cheeks, holding them there tightly, that the full shock of the electricity might permeate the skin and arouse the sluggish blood once more to action. Then to the hands, the wrists, the feet and back again; it was the beginning of a routine that was to last for hours. Midnight came and early morning. With dawn, the figure on the bed stirred slightly and groaned. Fairchild looked up, to see the doctor just entering. "I think he 's regaining consciousness." "Good." The physician brought forth his hypodermic. "That means a bit of rest for me. A little shot in the arm, and he ought to be out of danger in a few hours." Fairchild watched him as he boiled the needle over the little gas jet at the head of the cot, then dissolved a white pellet preparatory to sending a resuscitory fluid into Harry's arm. "You 've been to Judge Richmond's?" he asked at last. "Yes." Then the doctor stepped close to the bed. "I 've just closed his eyes--forever." Ten minutes later, after another examination of Harry's pupils, he was gone, a weary, tired figure, stumbling home to his rest--rest that might be disturbed at any moment--the reward of the physician. As for Fairchild, he sat a long time in thought, striving to find some way to send consolation to the girl who was grieving now, struggling to figure a means of telling her that he cared, that he was sorry, and that his heart hurt too. But there was none. Again a moan from the man on the bed, and at last a slight resistance to the sting of the batteries. An hour passed, two; gradually Harry came to himself, to stare about him in a wondering, vacant manner and then to fasten his eyes upon Fairchild. He seemed to be struggling for speech, for coördination of ideas. Finally, after many minutes-- "That's you, Boy?" "Yes, Harry." "But where are we?" Fairchild laughed softly. "We 're in a hospital, and you 're knocked out. Don't you know where you 've been?" "I don't know anything, since I slid down the wall." "Since you what?" But Harry had lapsed back into semi-consciousness again, to lie for hours a mumbling, dazed thing, incapable of thought or action. And it was not until late in the night after the rescue, following a few hours of rest forced upon him by the interne, that Fairchild once more could converse with his stricken partner. "It's something I 'll 'ave to show you to explain," said Harry. "I can't tell you about it. You know where that little fissure is in the 'anging wall, away back in the stope?" "Yes." "Well, that's it. That's where I got out." "But what happened before that?" "What didn't 'appen?" asked Harry, with a painful grin. "Everything in the world 'appened. I--but what did the assay show?" Fairchild reached forth and laid a hand on the brawny one of his partner. "We 're rich, Harry," he said, "richer than I ever dreamed we could be. The ore's as good as that of the Silver Queen!" "The bloody 'ell it is!" Then Harry dropped back on his pillow for a long time and simply grinned at the ceiling. Somewhat anxious. Fairchild leaned forward, but his partner's eyes were open and smiling. "I 'm just letting it sink in!" he announced, and Fairchild was silent, saving his questions until "it" had sunk. Then: "You were saying something about that fissure?" "But there is other things first. After you went to the assayers, I fooled around there in the chamber, and I thought I 'd just take a flyer and blow up them 'oles that I 'd drilled in the 'anging wall at the same time that I shot the other. So I put in the powder and fuses, tamped 'em down and then I thinks thinks I, that there's somebody moving around in the drift. But I did n't pay any attention to it--you know. I was busy and all that, and you often 'ear noises that sound funny. So I set 'em off--that is, I lit the fuses and I started to run. Well, I 'ad n't any more 'n started when bloeyy-y-y-y, right in front of me, the whole world turned upside down, and I felt myself knocked back into the chamber. And there was them fuses. All of 'em burning. Well, I managed to pull out the one from the foot wall and stamp it out, but I didn't 'ave time to get at the others. And the only place where there was a chance for me was clear at the end of the chamber. Already I was bleeding like a stuck hog where a whole 'arf the mountain 'ad 'it me on the 'ead, and I did n't know much what I was doing. I just wanted to get be'ind something--that's all I could think of. So I shied for that fissure in the rocks and crawled back in there, trying to squeeze as far along as I could. And 'ere 's the funny part of it--I kept on going!" "You what?" "Kept on going. I 'd always thought it was just a place where the 'anging wall 'ad slipped, and that it stopped a few feet back. But it don't--it goes on. I crawled along it as fast as I could--I was about woozy, anyway--and by and by I 'eard the shots go off be'ind me. But there was n't any use in going back--the tunnel was caved in. So I kept on. "I don't know 'ow long I went or where I went at. It was all dark--and I was about knocked out. After while, I ran into a stream of water that came out of the inside of the 'ill somewhere, and I took a drink. It gave me a bit of strength. And then I kept on some more--until all of a sudden, I slipped and fell, just when I was beginning to see dyelight. And that's all I know. 'Ow long 'ave I been gone?" "Long enough to make me gray-headed," Fairchild answered with a little laugh. Then his brow furrowed. "You say you slipped and fell just as you were beginning to see daylight?" "Yes. It looked like it was reflected from below, somewyes." Fairchild nodded. "Is n't there quite a spring right by Crazy Laura's house?" "Yes; it keeps going all year; there 's a current and it don't freeze up. It comes out like it was a waterfall--and there 's a roaring noise be'ind it." "Then that's the explanation. You followed the fissure until it joined the natural tunnel that the spring has made through the hills. And when you reached the waterfall--well, you fell with it." "But 'ow did I get 'ere?" Briefly Fairchild told him, while Harry pawed at his still magnificent mustache. Robert continued: "But the time 's not ripe yet, Harry, to spring it. We 've got to find out more about Rodaine first and what other tricks he 's been up to. And we 've got to get other evidence than merely our own word. For instance, in this case, you can't remember anything. All the testimony I could give would be unsupported. They 'd run me out of town if I even tried to start any such accusation. But one thing 's certain: We 're on the open road at last, we know who we 're fighting and the weapons he fights with. And if we 're only given enough time, we 'll whip him. I 'm going home to bed now; I 've got to be up early in the morning and get hold of Farrell. Your case comes up at court." "And I 'm up in a 'ospital!" Which fact the court the next morning recognized, on the testimony of the interne, the physician and the day nurses of the hospital, to the extent of a continuance until the January term in the trial of the case. A thing which the court further recognized was the substitution of five thousand dollars in cash for the deeds of the Blue Poppy mine as security for the bailee. And with this done, the deeds to his mine safe in his pocket, Fairchild went to the bank, placed the papers behind the great steel gates of the safety deposit vault, and then crossed the street to the telegraph office. A long message was the result, and a money order to Denver that ran beyond a hundred dollars. The instructions that went with it to the biggest florist in town were for the most elaborate floral design possible to be sent by express for Judge Richmond's funeral--minus a card denoting the sender. Following this, Fairchild returned to the hospital, only to find Mother Howard taking his place beside the bed of Harry. One more place called for his attention,--the mine. The feverish work was over now. The day and night shifts no longer were needed until Harry and Fairchild could actively assume control of operations and themselves dig out the wealth to put in the improvements necessary to procure the compressed air and machine drills, and organize the working of the mine upon the scale which its value demanded. But there was one thing essential, and Fairchild procured it,--guards. Then he turned his attention to his giant partner. Health returned slowly to the big Cornishman. The effects of nearly a week of slow poisoning left his system grudgingly; it would be a matter of weeks before he could be the genial, strong giant that he once had represented. And in those weeks Fairchild was constantly beside him. Not that there were no other things which were represented in Robert's desires,--far from it. Stronger than ever was Anita Richmond in Fairchild's thoughts now, and it was with avidity that he learned every scrap of news regarding her, as brought to him by Mother Howard. Hungrily he listened for the details of how she had weathered the shock of her father's death; anxiously he inquired for her return in the days following the information--via Mother Howard--that she had gone on a short trip to Denver to look after matters pertaining to her father's estate. Dully he heard that she had come back, and that Maurice Rodaine had told friends that the passing of the Judge had caused only a slight postponement in their marital plans. And perhaps it was this which held Fairchild in check, which caused him to wonder at the vagaries of the girl--a girl who had thwarted the murderous plans of a future father-in-law--and to cause him to fight down a desire to see her, an attempt to talk to her and to learn directly from her lips her position toward him,--and toward the Rodaines. Finally, back to his normal strength once more, Harry rose from the armchair by the window of the boarding house and turned to Fairchild. "We 're going to work to-night," he announced calmly. "When?" Fairchild did not believe he understood. Harry grinned. "To-night. I 've taken a notion. Rodaine 'll expect us to work in the daytime. We 'll fool 'im. We 'll leave the guards on in the daytime and work at night. And what's more, we 'll keep a guard on at the mouth of the shaft while we 're inside, not to let nobody down. See?" Fairchild agreed. He knew Squint Rodaine was not through. And he knew also that the fight against the man with the blue-white scar had only begun. The cross-cut had brought wealth and the promise of riches to Fairchild and Harry for the rest of their lives. But it had not freed them from the danger of one man,--a man who was willing to kill, willing to maim, willing to do anything in the world, it seemed, to achieve his purpose. Harry's suggestion was a good one. Together, when night came, they bundled their greatcoats about them and pulled their caps low over their ears. Winter had come in earnest, winter with a blizzard raging through the town on the breast of a fifty-mile gale. Out into it the two men went, to fight their way though the swirling, frigid fleece to Kentucky Gulch and upward. At last they passed the guard, huddled just within the tunnel, and clambered down the ladder which had been put in place by the sight-seers on the day of the strike. Then-- Well, then Harry ran, to do much as Fairchild had done, to chuckle and laugh and toss the heavy bits of ore about, to stare at them in the light of his carbide torch, and finally to hurry into the new stope which had been fashioned by the hired miners in Fairchild's employ and stare upward at the heavy vein of riches above him. "Wouldn't it knock your eyes out?" he exclaimed, beaming. "That vein 's certainly five feet wide." "And two hundred dollars to the ton," added Fairchild, laughing. "No wonder Rodaine wanted it." "I 'll sye so!" exclaimed Harry, again to stand and stare, his mouth open, his mustache spraying about on his upper lip in more directions than ever. A long time of congratulatory celebration, then Harry led the way to the far end of the great cavern. "'Ere it is!" he announced, as he pointed to what had seemed to both of them never to be anything more than a fissure in the rocks. "It's the thing that saved my life." Fairchild stared into the darkness of the hole in the earth, a narrow crack in the rocks barely large enough to allow a human form to squeeze within. He laughed. "You must have made yourself pretty small, Harry." "What? When I went through there? Sye, I could 'ave gone through the eye of a needle. There were six charges of dynamite just about to go off be'ind me!" Again the men chuckled as they looked at the fissure, a natural, usual thing in a mine, and often leading, as this one did, by subterranean breaks and slips to the underground bed of some tumbling spring. Suddenly, however, Fairchild whirled with a thought. "Harry! I wonder--couldn't it have been possible for my father to have escaped from this mine in the same way?" "'E must 'ave." "And that there might not have been any killing connected with Larsen at all? Why couldn't Larsen have been knocked out by a flying stone--just like you were? And why--?" "'E might of, Boy." But Harry's voice was negative. "The only thing about it was the fact that your father 'ad a bullet 'ole in 'is 'ead." Harry leaned forward and pointed to his own scar. "It 'it right about 'ere, and glanced. It did n't 'urt 'im much, and I bandaged it and then covered it with 'is 'at, so nobody could see." "But the gun? We did n't find any." "'E 'ad it with 'im. It was Sissie Larsen's. No, Boy, there must 'ave been a fight--but don't think that I mean your father murdered anybody. If Sissie Larsen attacked 'im with a gun, then 'e 'ad a right to kill. But as I 've told you before--there would n't 'ave been a chance for 'im to prove 'is story with Squint working against 'im. And that's one reason why I did n't ask any questions. And neither did Mother 'Oward. We were willing to take your father's word that 'e 'ad n't done anything wrong--and we were willing to 'elp 'im to the limit." "You did it, Harry." "We tried to--" He ceased and perked his head toward the bottom of the shaft, listening intently. "Did n't you 'ear something?" "I thought so. Like a woman's voice." "Listen--there it is again!" They were both silent, waiting for a repetition of the sound. Faintly it came, for the third time: "Mr. Fairchild!" They ran to the foot of the shaft, and Fairchild stared upward. But he could see no one. He cupped his hands and called: "Who wants me?" "It's me." The voice was plainer now--a voice that Fairchild recognized immediately. "I 'm--I 'm under arrest or something up here," was added with a laugh. "The guard won't let me come down." "Wait, and I 'll raise the bucket for you. All right, guard!" Then, blinking with surprise, he turned to the staring Harry. "It's Anita Richmond," he whispered. Harry pawed for his mustache. "On a night like this? And what the bloody 'ell is she doing 'ere, any'ow?" "Search me!" The bucket was at the top now. A signal from above, and Fairchild lowered it, to extend a hand and to aid the girl to the ground, looking at her with wondering, eager eyes. In the light of the carbide torch, she was the same boyish appearing little person he had met on the Denver road, except that snow had taken the place of dust now upon the whipcord riding habit, and the brown hair which caressed the corners of her eyes was moist with the breath of the blizzard. Some way Fairchild found his voice, lost for a moment. "Are--are you in trouble?" "No." She smiled at him. "But out on a night like this--in a blizzard. How did you get up here?" She shrugged her shoulders. "I walked. Oh," she added, with a smile, "it did n't hurt me any. The wind was pretty stiff--but then I 'm fairly strong. I rather enjoyed it." "But what's happened--what's gone wrong? Can I help you with anything--or--" Then it was that Harry, with a roll of his blue eyes and a funny waggle of his big shoulders, moved down the drift toward the stope, leaving them alone together. Anita Richmond watched after him with a smile, waiting until he was out of hearing distance. Then she turned seriously. "Mother Howard told me where you were," came quietly. "It was the only chance I had to see you. I--I--maybe I was a little lonely or--or something. But, anyway, I wanted to see you and thank you and--" "Thank me? For what?" "For everything. For that day on the Denver road, and for the night after the Old Times dance when you came to help me. I--I have n't had an easy time. And I 've been in rather an unusual position. Most of the people I know are afraid and--some of them are n't to be trusted. I--I could n't go to them and confide in them. And--you--well, I knew the Rodaines were your enemies--and I 've rather liked you for it." "Thank you. But--" and Fairchild's voice became a bit frigid--"I have n't been able to understand everything. You are engaged to Maurice Rodaine." "I was, you mean." "Then--" "My engagement ended with my father's death," came slowly--and there was a catch in her voice. "He wanted it--it was the one thing that held the Rodaines off him. And he was dying slowly--it was all I could do to help him, and I promised. But--when he went--I felt that my--my duty was over. I don't consider myself bound to him any longer." "You 've told Rodaine so?" "Not yet. I--I think that maybe that was one reason I wanted to see some one whom I believed to be a friend. He 's coming after me at midnight. We 're to go away somewhere." "Rodaine? Impossible!" "They 've made all their plans. I--I wondered if you--if you 'd be somewhere around the house--if you 'd--" "I 'll be there. I understand." Fairchild had reached out and touched her arm. "I--want to thank you for the opportunity. I--yes, I 'll be there," came with a short laugh. "And Harry too. There'll be no trouble--from the Rodaines!" She came a little closer to him then and looked up at him with trustful eyes, all the brighter in the spluttering light of the carbide. "Thank you--it seems that I 'm always thanking you. I was afraid--I did n't know where to go--to whom to turn. I thought of you. I knew you 'd help me--women can guess those things." "Can they?" Fairchild asked it eagerly. "Then you 've guessed all along that--" But she smiled and cut in. "I want to thank you for those flowers. They were beautiful." "You knew that too? I didn't send a card." "They told me at the telegraph office that you had wired for them. They--meant a great deal to me." "It meant more to me to be able to send them." Then Fairchild stared with a sudden idea. "Maurice 's coming for you at midnight. Why is it necessary that you be there?" "Why--" the idea had struck her too--"it is n't. I--I just had n't thought of it. I was too badly scared, I guess. Everything 's been happening so swiftly since--since you made the strike up here." "With them?" "Yes, they 've been simply crazy about something. You got my note?" "Yes." "That was the beginning. The minute Squint Rodaine heard of the strike, I thought he would go out of his head. I was in the office--I 'm vice-president of the firm, you know," she added with a sarcastic laugh. "They had to do something to make up for the fact that every cent of father's money was in it." "How much?" Fairchild asked the question with no thought of being rude--and she answered in the same vein. "A quarter of a million. They 'd been getting their hands on it more and more ever since father became ill. But they could n't entirely get it into their own power until the Silver Queen strike--and then they persuaded him to sign it all over in my name into the company. That's why I 'm vice-president." "And is that why you arranged things to buy this mine?" Fairchild knew the answer before it was given. "I? I arrange--I never thought of such a thing." "I felt that from the beginning. An effort was made through a lawyer in Denver who hinted you were behind it. Some way, I felt differently. I refused. But you said they were going away?" "Yes. They 've been holding conferences--father and son--one after another. I 've had more peace since the strike here than at any time in months. They 're both excited about something. Last night Maurice came to me and told me that it was necessary for them all to go to Chicago where the head offices would be established, and that I must go with him. I did n't have the strength to fight him then--there was n't anybody near by who could help me. So I--I told him I 'd go. Then I lay awake all night, trying to think out a plan--and I thought of you." "I 'm glad." Fairchild touched her small gloved hand then, and she did not draw it away. His fingers moved slowly under hers. There was no resistance. At last his hand closed with a tender pressure,--only to release her again. For there had come a laugh--shy, embarrassed, almost fearful--and the plea: "Can we go back where Harry is? Can I see the strike again?" Obediently Fairchild led the way, beyond the big cavern, through the cross-cut and into the new stope, where Harry was picking about with a gad, striving to find a soft spot in which to sink a drill. He looked over his shoulder as they entered and grinned broadly. "Oh," he exclaimed, "a new miner!" "I wish I were," she answered. "I wish I could help you." "You 've done that, all right, all right." Harry waved his gad. "'E told me--about the note!" "Did it do any good?" she asked the question eagerly. Harry chuckled. "I 'd 'ave been a dead mackerel if it 'ad n't," came his hearty explanation. "Where you going at all dressed up like that?" "I 'm supposed," she answered with a smile toward Fairchild, "to go to Center City at midnight. Squint Rodaine 's there and Maurice and I are supposed to join him. But--but Mr. Fairchild 's promised that you and he will arrange it otherwise." "Center City? What's Squint doing there?" "He does n't want to take the train from Ohadi for some reason. We 're all going East and--" But Harry had turned and was staring upward, apparently oblivious of their presence. His eyes had become wide, his head had shot forward, his whole being had become one of strained attention. Once he cocked his head, then, with a sudden exclamation, he leaped backward. "Look out!" he exclaimed. "'Urry, look out!" "But what is it?" "It's coming down! I 'eard it!" Excitedly he pointed above, toward the black vein of lead and silver. "'Urry for that 'ole in the wall--'urry, I tell you!" He ran past them toward the fissure, yelling at Fairchild. "Pick 'er up and come on! I tell you I 'eard the wall moving--it's coming down, and if it does, it 'll bust in the 'ole tunnel!" CHAPTER XXIII Hardly realizing what he was doing or why he was doing it, Fairchild seized Anita in his arms, and raising her to his breast as though she were a child, rushed out through the cross-cut and along the cavern to the fissure, there to find Harry awaiting them. "Put 'er in first!" said the Cornishman anxiously. "The farther the safer. Did you 'ear anything more?" Fairchild obeyed, shaking his head in a negative to Harry's question, then squeezed into the fissure, edging along beside Anita, while Harry followed. "What is it?" she asked anxiously. "Harry heard some sort of noise from above, as if the earth was crumbling. He 's afraid the whole mine 's going to cave in again." "But if it does?" "We can get out this way--somehow. This connects up with a spring-hole; it leads out by Crazy Laura's house." "Ugh!" Anita shivered. "She gives me the creeps!" "And every one else; what's doing, Harry?" "Nothing. That's the funny part of it!" The big Cornishman had crept to the edge of the fissure and had stared for a moment toward the cross-cut leading to the stope. "If it was coming, it ought to 'ave showed up by now. I 'm going back. You stay 'ere." "But--" "Stay 'ere, I said. And," he grinned in the darkness, "don't let 'im 'old your 'and, Miss Richmond." "Oh, you go on!" But she laughed. And Harry laughed with her. "I know 'im. 'E 's got a wye about 'im." "That's what you said about Miss Richmond once!" "Have you two been talking about me?" "Often." Then there was silence--for Harry had left the fissure to go into the stope and make an investigation. A long moment and he was back, almost creeping, and whispering as he reached the end of the fissure. "Come 'ere--both of you! Come 'ere!" "What is it?" "Sh-h-h-h-h-h. Don't talk too loud. We 've been blessed with luck already. Come 'ere." He led the way, the man and woman following him. In the stope the Cornishman crawled carefully to the staging, and standing on tiptoes, pressed his ear against the vein above him. Then he withdrew and nodded sagely. "That's what it is!" came his announcement at last. "You can 'ear it!" "But what?" "Get up there and lay your ear against that vein. See if you 'ear anything. And be quiet about it. I 'm scared to make a move, for fear somebody 'll 'ear me." Fairchild obeyed. From far away, carried by the telegraphy of the earth--and there are few conductors that are better--was the steady pound, pound, pound of shock after shock as it traveled along the hanging wall. Now and then a rumble intervened, as of falling rock, and scrambling sounds, like a heavy wagon passing over a bridge. Fairchild turned, wondering, then reached for Anita. "You listen," he ordered, as he lifted her to where she could hear. "Do you get anything?" The girl's eyes shone. "I know what that is," she said quickly. "I 've heard that same sort of thing before--when you 're on another level and somebody 's working above. Is n't that it, Mr. Harkins?" Harry nodded. "That's it," came tersely. Then bending, he reached for a pick, and muffling the sound as best he could between his knees, knocked the head from the handle. Following this, he lifted the piece of hickory thoughtfully and turned to Fairchild. "Get yourself one," he ordered. "Miss Richmond, I guess you 'll 'ave to stay 'ere. I don't see 'ow we can do much else with you." "But can't I go along--wherever you 're going?" "There's going to be a fight," said Harry quietly. "And I 'm going to knock somebody's block off!" "But--I 'd rather be there than here. I--I don't have to get in it. And--I 'd want to see how it comes out. Please--!" she turned to Fairchild--"won't you let me go?" "If you 'll stay out of danger." "It's less danger for me there than--than home. And I 'd be scared to death here. I wouldn't if I was along with you two, because I know--" and she said it with almost childish conviction--"that you can whip 'em." Harry chuckled. "Come along, then. I 've got a 'unch, and I can't sye it now. But it 'll come out in the wash. Come along." He led the way out through the shaft and into the blizzard, giving the guard instructions to let no one pass in their absence. Then he suddenly kneeled. "Up, Miss Richmond. Up on my back. I 'm 'efty--and we 've got snowdrifts to buck." She laughed, looked at Fairchild as though for his consent, then crawled to the broad back of Harry, sitting on his shoulders like a child "playing horse." They started up the mountain side, skirting the big gullies and edging about the highest drifts, taking advantage of the cover of the pines, and bending against the force of the blizzard, which seemed to threaten to blow them back, step for step. No one spoke; instinctively Fairchild and Anita had guessed Harry's conclusions. The nearest mine to the Blue Poppy was the Silver Queen, situated several hundred feet above it in altitude and less than a furlong away. And the metal of the Silver Queen and the Blue Poppy, now that the strike had been made, had assayed almost identically the same. It was easy to make conclusions. They reached the mouth of the Silver Queen. Harry relieved Anita from her position on his shoulders, and then reconnoitered a moment before he gave the signal to proceed. Within the tunnel they went, to follow along its regular, rising course to the stope where, on that garish day when Taylor Bill and Blindeye Bozeman had led the enthusiastic parade through the streets, the vein had shown. It was dark there--no one was at work. Harry unhooked his carbide from his belt, lit it and looked around. The stope was deeper now than on the first day, but not enough to make up for the vast amount of ore which had been taken out of the mine in the meanwhile. On the floor were tons of the metal, ready for tramming. Harry looked at them, then at the stope again. "It ain't coming from 'ere!" he announced. "It's--" then his voice dropped to a whisper--"what's that?" Again a rumbling had come from the distance, as of an ore car traveling over the tram tracks. Harry extinguished his light, and drawing Anita and Fairchild far to the end of the stope, flattened them and himself on the ground. A long wait, while the rumbling came closer, still closer; then, in the distance, a light appeared, shining from a side of the tunnel. A clanging noise, followed by clattering sounds, as though of steel rails hitting against each other. Finally the tramming once more,--and the light approached. Into view came an ore car, and behind it loomed the great form of Taylor Bill as he pushed it along. Straight to the pile of ore he came, unhooked the front of the tram, tripped it and piled the contents of the car on top of the dump which already rested there. With that, carbide pointing the way, he turned back, pushing the tram before him. Harry crept to his feet. "We 've got to follow!" he whispered. "It's a blind entrance to the tunnel som'eres." They rose and trailed the light along the tracks, flattening themselves against the timbers of the tunnel as the form of Taylor Bill, faintly outlined in the distance, turned from the regular track, opened a great door in the side of the tunnel, which, to all appearances, was nothing more than the ordinary heavy timbering of a weak spot in the rocks, pulled it far back, then swerved the tram within. Then, he stopped and raised a portable switch, throwing it into the opening. A second later the door closed behind him, and the sound of the tram began to fade in the distance. Harry went forward, creeping along the side of the tunnel, feeling his way, stopping to listen now and then for the sound of the fading ore car. Behind him were Fairchild and Anita, following the same procedure. And all three stopped at once. The hollow sound was coming directly to them now. Harry once more brought out his carbide to light it for a moment and to examine the timbering. "It's a good job!" he commented. "You could n't tell it five feet off!" "They 've made a cross-cut!" This time it was Anita's voice, plainly angry in spite of its whispering tones. "No wonder they had such a wonderful strike," came scathingly. "That other stope down there--" "Ain't nothing but a salted proposition," said Harry. "They 've cemented up the top of it with the real stuff and every once in a while they blow a lot of it out and cement it up again to make it look like that's the real vein." "And they 're working our mine!" Red spots of anger were flashing before Fairchild's eyes. "You 've said it! That's why they were so anxious to buy us out. And that's why they started this two-million-dollar stock proposition, when they found they could n't do it. They knew if we ever 'it that vein that it would n't be any time until they 'd be caught on the job. That's why they 're ready to pull out--with somebody else 's million. They 're getting at the end of their rope. Another thing; that explains them working at night." Anita gritted her teeth. "I see it now--I can get the reason. They 've been telephoning Denver and holding conferences and all that sort of thing. And they planned to leave these two men behind here to take all the blame." "They'll get enough of it!" added Harry grimly. "They 're miners. They could see that they were making a straight cross-cut tunnel on to our vein. They ain't no children, Blindeye and Taylor Bill. And 'ere 's where they start getting their trouble." He pulled at the door and it yielded grudgingly. The three slipped past, following along the line of the tram track in the darkness, Harry's pick handle swinging beside him as they sneaked along. Rods that seemed miles; at last lights appeared in the distance. Harry stopped to peer ahead. Then he tossed aside his weapon. "There 's only two of 'em--Blindeye and Taylor Bill. I could whip 'em both myself but I 'll take the big 'un. You--" he turned to Fairchild--"you get Blindeye." "I 'll get him." Anita stopped and groped about for a stone. "I 'll be ready with something in case of accident," came with determination. "I 've got a quarter of a million in this myself!" They went on, fifty yards, a hundred. Creeping now, they already were within the zone of light, but before them the two men, double-jacking at a "swimmer", had their backs turned. Onward--until Harry and Fairchild were within ten feet of the "high-jackers", while Anita waited, stone in hand, in the background. Came a yell, high-pitched, fiendish, racking, as Harry leaped forward. And before the two "high-jackers" could concentrate enough to use their sledge and drill as weapons, they were whirled about, battered against the hanging wall, and swirling in a daze of blows which seemed to come from everywhere at once. Wildly Harry yelled as he shot blow after blow into the face of an ancient enemy. High went Fairchild's voice as he knocked Blindeye Bozeman staggering for the third time against the hanging wall, only to see him rise and to knock him down once more. And from the edge of the zone of light came a feminine voice, almost hysterical with the excitement of it all, the voice of a girl who, in her tensity, had dropped the piece of stone she had carried, to stand there, hands clenched, figure doubled forward, eyes blazing, and crying: "Hit him again! Hit him again! Hit him again--for me!" And Fairchild hit, with the force of a sledge hammer. Dizzily the sandy-haired man swung about in his tracks, sagged, then fell, unconscious. Fairchild leaped upon him, calling at the same time to the girl: "Find me a rope! I 'll truss his hands while he 's knocked out!" Anita leaped into action, to kneel at Fairchild's side a moment later with a hempen strand, as he tied the man's hands behind his back. There was no need to worry about Harry. The yells which were coming from farther along the stope, the crackling blows, all told that Harry was getting along exceedingly well. Glancing out of a corner of his eye, Fairchild saw now that the big Cornishman had Taylor Bill flat on his back and was putting on the finishing touches. And then suddenly the exultant yells changed to ones of command. "Talk English! Talk English, you bloody blighter! 'Ear me, talk English!" "What's he mean?" Anita bent close to Fairchild. "I don't know--I don't think Taylor Bill can talk anything else. Put your finger on this knot while I tighten it. Thanks." Again the command had come from farther on: "Talk English! 'Ear me--I'll knock the bloody 'ell out of you if you don't. Talk English--like this: 'Throw up your 'ands!' 'Ear me?" Anita swerved swiftly and went to her feet. Harry looked up at her wildly, his mustache bristling like the spines of a porcupine. "Did you 'ear 'im sye it?" he asked. "No? Sye it again!" "Throw up your 'ands!" came the answer of the beaten man on the ground. Anita ran forward. "It's a good deal like it," she answered. "But the tone was higher." "Raise your tone!" commanded Harry, while Fairchild, finishing his job of tying his defeated opponent, rose, staring in wonderment. Then the answer came: "That's it--that's it. It sounded just like it!" And Fairchild remembered too,--the English accent of the highwayman on the night of the Old Times Dance. Harry seemed to bounce on the prostrate form of his ancient enemy. "Bill," he shouted, "I 've got you on your back. And I 've got a right to kill you. 'Onest I 'ave. And I 'll do it too--unless you start talking. I might as well kill you as not.--It's a penitentiary offense to 'it a man underground unless there 's a good reason. So I 'm ready to go the 'ole route. So tell it--tell it and be quick about it. Tell it--was n't you him?" "Him--who?" the voice was weak, frightened. "You know 'oo--the night of the Old Times dance! Didn't you pull that 'old-up?" There was a long silence. Finally: "Where's Rodaine?" "In Center City." It was Anita who spoke. "He 's getting ready to run away and leave you two to stand the brunt of all this trouble." Again a silence. And again Harry's voice: "Tell it. Was n't you the man?" Once more a long wait. Finally: "What do I get out of it?" Fairchild moved to the man's side. "My promise and my partner's promise that if you tell the whole truth, we 'll do what we can to get you leniency. And you might as well do it; there 's little chance of you getting away otherwise. As soon as we can get to the sheriff's office, we 'll have Rodaine under arrest, anyway. And I don't think that he 's going to hurt himself to help you. So tell the truth; weren't you the man who held up the Old Times dance?" Taylor Bill's breath traveled slowly past his bruised lips. "Rodaine gave me a hundred dollars to pull it," came finally. "And you stole the horse and everything--" "And cached the stuff by the Blue Poppy, so 's I 'd get the blame?" Harry wiggled his mustache fiercely. "Tell it or I 'll pound your 'ead into a jelly!" "That's about the size of it." But Fairchild was fishing in his pockets for pencil and paper, finally to bring them forth. "Not that we doubt your sincerity, Bill," he said sarcastically, "but I think things would be a bit easier if you'd just write it out. Let him up, Harry." The big Cornishman obeyed grudgingly. But as he did so, he shook a fist at his bruised, battered enemy. "It ain't against the law to 'it a man when 'e 's a criminal," came at last. The thing was weighing on Harry's mind. "I don't care anyway if it is--" "Oh, there 's nothing to that," Anita cut in. "I know all about the law--father has explained it to me lots of times when there 've been cases before him. In a thing of this kind, you 've got a right to take any kind of steps necessary. Stop worrying about it." "Well," and Harry stood watching a moment as Taylor Bill began the writing of his confession, "it's such a relief to get four charges off my mind, that I did n't want to worry about any more. Make hit fulsome, Bill--tell just 'ow you did it!" And Taylor Bill, bloody, eyes black, lips bruised, obeyed. Fairchild took the bescrawled paper and wrote his name as a witness, then handed it to Harry and Anita for their signatures. At last, he placed it in his pocket and faced the dolorous high-jacker. "What else do you know, Bill?" "About what? Rodaine? Nothing---except that we were in cahoots on this cross-cut. There is n't any use denying it"--there had come to the surface the inherent honor that is in every metal miner, a stalwartness that may lie dormant, but that, sooner or later, must rise. There is something about taking wealth from the earth that is clean. There is something about it which seems honest in its very nature, something that builds big men in stature and in ruggedness, and it builds an honor which fights against any attempt to thwart it. Taylor Bill was finding that honor now. He seemed to straighten. His teeth bit at his swollen, bruised lips. He turned and faced the three persons before him. "Take me down to the sheriff's office," he commanded. "I 'll tell everything. I don't know so awful much--because I ain't tried to learn anything more than I could help. But I 'll give up everything I 've got." "And how about him?" Fairchild pointed to Blindeye, just regaining consciousness. Taylor Bill nodded. "He 'll tell--he 'll have to." They trussed the big miner then, and dragging Bozeman to his feet, started out of the cross-cut with them. Harry's carbide pointing the way through the blind door and into the main tunnel. Then they halted to bundle themselves tighter against the cold blast that was coming from without. On--to the mouth of the mine. Then they stopped--short. A figure showed in the darkness, on horseback. An electric flashlight suddenly flared against the gleam of the carbide. An exclamation, an excited command to the horse, and the rider wheeled, rushing down the mountain side, urging his mount to dangerous leaps, sending him plunging through drifts where a misstep might mean death, fleeing for the main road again. Anita Richmond screamed: "That's Maurice! I got a glimpse of his face! He 's gotten away--go after him somebody--go after him!" But it was useless. The horseman had made the road and was speeding down it. Rushing ahead of the others, Fairchild gained a point of vantage where he could watch the fading black smudge of the horse and rider as it went on and on along the rocky road, finally to reach the main thoroughfare and turn swiftly. Then he went back to join the others. "He 's taken the Center City road!" came his announcement. "Is there a turn-off on it anywhere?" "No." Anita gave the answer. "It goes straight through--but he 'll have a hard time making it there in this blizzard. If we only had horses!" "They would n't do us much good now! Climb on my back as you did on Harry's. You can handle these two men alone?" This to his partner. The Cornishman grunted. "Yes. They won't start anything. Why?" "I 'm going to take Miss Richmond and hurry ahead to the sheriff's office. He might not believe me. But he 'll take her word--and that 'll be sufficient until you get there with the prisoners. I 've got to persuade him to telephone to Center City and head off the Rodaines!" CHAPTER XXIV He stooped and Anita, laughing at her posture, clambered upon his back, her arms about his neck, arms which seemed to shut out the biting blast of the blizzard as he staggered through the high-piled snow and downward to the road. There he continued to carry her; Fairchild found himself wishing that he could carry her forever, and that the road to the sheriff's office were twenty miles away instead of two. But her voice cut in on his wishes. "I can walk now." "But the drifts--" "We can get along so much faster!" came her plea. "I 'll hold on to you--and you can help me along." Fairchild released her and she seized his arm. For a quarter of a mile they hurried along, skirting the places where the snow had collected in breast-high drifts, now and then being forced nearly down to the bank of the stream to avoid the mountainous piles of fleecy white. Once, as they floundered through a knee-high mass, Fairchild's arm went quickly about her waist and he lifted her against him as he literally carried her through. When they reached the other side, the arm still held its place,--and she did not resist. Fairchild wanted to whistle, or sing, or shout. But breath was too valuable--and besides, what little remained had momentarily been taken from him. A small hand had found his, where it encircled her. It had rested there, calm and warm and enthralling, and it told Fairchild more than all the words in the world could have told just then--that she realized that his arm was about her--and that she wanted it there. Some way, after that, the stretch of road faded swiftly. Almost before he realized it, they were at the outskirts of the city. Grudgingly he gave up his hold upon her, as they hurried for the sidewalks and for the sheriff's office. There Fairchild did not attempt to talk--he left it all to Anita, and Bardwell, the sheriff, listened. Taylor Bill had confessed to the robbery at the Old Times dance and to his attempt to so arrange the evidence that the blame would fall on Harry. Taylor Bill and Blindeye Bozeman had been caught at work in a cross-cut tunnel which led to the property of the Blue Poppy mine, and one of them, at least, had admitted that the sole output of the Silver Queen had come from this thieving encroachment. Then Anita completed the recital,--of the plans of the Rodaines to leave and of their departure for Center City. At last, Fairchild spoke, and he told the happenings which he had encountered in the ramshackle house occupied by Crazy Laura. It was sufficient. The sheriff reached for the telephone. "No need for hurry," he announced. "Young Rodaine can't possibly make that trip in less than two hours. How long did it take you to come down here?" "About an hour, I should judge." "Then we 've got plenty of time--hello--Central? Long distance, please. What's that? Yeh--Long Distance. Want to put in a call for Center City." A long wait, while a metallic voice streamed over the wire into the sheriff's ear. He hung up the receiver. "Blocked," he said shortly. "The wire 's down. Three or four poles fell from the force of the storm. Can't get in there before morning." "But there 's the telegraph!" "It 'd take half an hour to get the operator out of bed--office is closed. Nope. We 'll take the short cut. And we 'll beat him there by a half-hour!" Anita started. "You mean the Argonaut tunnel?" "Yes. Call up there and tell them to get a motor ready for us to shoot straight through. We can make it at thirty miles an hour, and the skip in the Reunion Mine will get us to the surface in five minutes. The tunnel ends sixteen hundred feet underground, about a thousand feet from Center City," he explained, as he noted Fairchild's wondering gaze. "You stay here. We 've got to wait for those prisoners--and lock 'em up. I 'll be getting my car warmed up to take us to the tunnel." Anita already was at the 'phone, and Fairchild sank into a chair, watching her with luminous eyes. The world was becoming brighter; it might be night, with a blizzard blowing, to every one else,--but to Fairchild the sun was shining as it never had shone before. A thumping sound came from without. Harry entered with his two charges, followed shortly by Bardwell, the sheriff, while just beneath the office window a motor roared in the process of "warming up." The sheriff looked from one to the other of the two men. "These people have made charges against you," he said shortly. "I want to know a little more about them before I go any farther. They say you 've been high-jacking." Taylor Bill nodded in the affirmative. "And that you robbed the Old Times dance and framed the evidence against this big Cornishman?" Taylor Bill scraped a foot on the floor. "It's true. Squint Rodaine wanted me to do it. He 'd been trying for thirty years to get that Blue Poppy mine. There was some kind of a mix-up away back there that I did n't know much about--fact is, I did n't know anything. The Silver Queen didn't amount to much and when demonetization set in, I quit--you 'll remember, Sheriff--and went away. I 'd worked for Squint before, and when I came back a couple of years ago, I naturally went to him for a job again. Then he put this proposition up to me at ten dollars a day and ten per cent. It looked too good to be turned down." "How about you?" Bardwell faced Blindeye. The sandy lashes blinked and the weak eyes turned toward the floor. "I--was in on it." That was enough. The sheriff reached for his keys. A moment more and a steel door clanged upon the two men while the officer led the way to his motor car. There he looked quizzically at Anita Richmond, piling without hesitation into the front seat. "You going too?" "I certainly am," and she covered her intensity with a laugh, "there are a number of things that I want to say to Mr. Maurice Rodaine--and I have n't the patience to wait!" Bardwell chuckled. The doors of the car slammed and the engine roared louder than ever. Soon they were churning along through the driving snow toward the great buildings of the Argonaut Tunnel Company, far at the other end of town. There men awaited them, and a tram motor, together with its operator,--happy in the expectation of a departure from the usual routine of hauling out the long strings of ore and refuse cars from the great tunnel which, driving straight through the mountains, had been built in the boom days to cut the workings of mine after mine, relieving the owners of those holdings of the necessity of taking their product by the slow method of burro packs to the railroads, and gaining for the company a freight business as enriching as a bonanza itself. The four pursuers took their places on the benches of the car behind the motor. The trolley was attached. A great door was opened, allowing the cold blast of the blizzard to whine within the tunnel. Then, clattering over the frogs, green lights flashing from the trolley wire, the speeding journey was begun. It was all new to Fairchild, engrossing, exciting. Close above them were the ragged rocks of the tunnel roof, seeming to reach down as if to seize them as they roared and clattered beneath. Seepage dripped at intervals, flying into their faces like spray as they dashed through it. Side tracks appeared momentarily when they passed the opening of some mine where the ore cars stood in long lines, awaiting their turn to be filled. The air grew warmer. The minutes were passing, and they were nearing the center of the tunnel. Great gateways sped past them; the motor smashed over sidetracks and spurs and switches as they clattered by the various mine openings, the operator reaching above him to hold the trolley steady as they went under narrow, low places where the timbers had been placed, thick and heavy, to hold back the sagging earth above. Three miles, four, five, while Anita Richmond held close to Fairchild as the speed became greater and the sparks from the wire above threw their green, vicious light over the yawning stretch before them. A last spurt, slightly down-grade, with the motor pushing the wheels at their greatest velocity; then the crackling of electricity suddenly ceased, the motor slowed in its progress, finally to stop. The driver pointed to the right. "Over there, sheriff--about fifty feet; that's the Reunion opening." "Thanks!" They ran across the spur tracks in the faint light of a dirty incandescent, gleaming from above. A greasy being faced them and Bardwell, the sheriff, shouted his mission. "Got to catch some people that are making a get-away through Center City. Can you send us up in the skip?" "Yes, two at a time." "All right!" The sheriff turned to Harry. "You and I 'll go on the first trip and hurry for the Ohadi road. Fairchild and Miss Richmond will wait for the second and go to Sheriff Mason's office and tell him what's up. Meet us there," he said to Fairchild, as he went forward. Already the hoist was working; from far above came the grinding of wheels on rails as the skip was lowered. A wave of the hand, then Bardwell and Harry entered the big, steel receptacle. At the wall the greasy workman pulled three times on the electric signal; a moment more and the skip with its two occupants had passed out of sight. A long wait followed while Fairchild strove to talk of many things,--and failed in all of them. Things were happening too swiftly for them to be put into crisp sentences by a man whose thoughts were muddled by the fact that beside him waited a girl in a whipcord riding suit--the same girl who had leaped from an automobile on the Denver highway and-- It crystallized things for him momentarily. "I 'm going to ask you something after a while--something that I 've wondered and wondered about. I know it was n't anything--but--" She laughed up at him. "It did look terrible, didn't it?" "Well, it would n't have been so mysterious if you had n't hurried away so quick. And then--" "You really did n't think I was the Smelter bandit, did you?" the laugh still was on her lips. Fairchild scratched his head. "Darned if I know what I thought. And I don't know what I think yet." "But you 've managed to live through it." "Yes--but--" She touched his arm and put on a scowl. "It's very, very awful!" came in a low, mock-awed voice. "But--" then the laugh came again--"maybe if you 're good and--well, maybe I 'll tell you after a while." "Honest?" "Of course I 'm honest! Is n't that the skip?" Fairchild walked to the shaft. But the skip was not in sight. A long ten minutes they waited, while the great steel carrier made the trip to the surface with Harry and Sheriff Bardwell, then came lumbering down again. Fairchild stepped in and lifted Anita to his side. The journey was made in darkness,--darkness which Fairchild longed to turn to his advantage, darkness which seemed to call to him to throw his arms about the girl at his side, to crush her to him, to seek out with an instinct that needed no guiding light the laughing, pretty lips which had caused him many a day of happiness, many a day of worried wonderment. He strove to talk away the desire--but the grinding of the wheels in the narrow shaft denied that. His fingers twitched, his arms trembled as he sought to hold back the muscles, then, yielding to the impulse, he started-- "Da-a-a-g-gone it!" "What's the matter?" "Nothing." But Fairchild was n't telling the truth. They had reached the light just at the wrong, wrong moment. Out of the skip he lifted her, then inquired the way to the sheriff's office of this, a new county. The direction was given, and they went there. They told their story. The big-shouldered, heavily mustached man at the desk grinned cheerily. "That there's the best news I 've heard in forty moons," he announced. "I always did hate that fellow. You say Bardwell and your partner went out on the Ohadi road to head the young 'un off?" "Yes. They had about a fifteen-minute start on us. Do you think--?" "We 'll wait here. They 're hefty and strong. They can handle him alone." But an hour passed without word from the two Searchers. Two more went by. The sheriff rose from his chair, stamped about the room, and looked out at the night, a driving, aimless thing in the clutch of a blizzard. "Hope they ain't lost," came at last. "Had n't we better--?" But a noise from without cut off the conversation. Stamping feet sounded on the steps, the knob turned, and Sheriff Bardwell, snow-white, entered, shaking himself like a great dog, as he sought to rid himself of the effects of the blizzard. "Hello, Mason," came curtly. "Hello, Bardwell, what 'd you find?" The sheriff of Clear Creek county glanced toward Anita Richmond and was silent. The girl leaped to her feet. "Don't be afraid to talk on my account," she begged. "Where's Harry? Is he all right? Did he come back with you?" "Yes--he's back." "And you found Maurice?" Bardwell was silent again, biting at the end of his mustache. Then he squared himself. "No matter how much a person dislikes another one--it's, it's--always a shock," came at last. Anita came closer. "You mean that he 's dead?" The sheriff nodded, and Fairchild came suddenly to his feet. Anita's face had grown suddenly old,--the oldness that precedes the youth of great relief. "I 'm sorry--for any one who must die," came finally. "But perhaps--perhaps it was better. Where was he?" "About a mile out. He must have rushed his horse too hard. The sweat was frozen all over it--nobody can push a beast like that through these drifts and keep it alive." "He did n't know much about riding." "I should say not. Did n't know much of anything when we got to him. He was just about gone--tried to stagger to his feet when we came up, but could n't make it. Kind of acted like he 'd lost his senses through fear or exposure or something. Asked me who I was, and I said Bardwell. Seemed to be tickled to hear my name--but he called it Barnham. Then he got up on his hands and knees and clutched at me and asked me if I 'd drawn out all the money and had it safe. Just to humor him, I said I had. He tried to say something after that, but it was n't much use. The first thing we knew he 'd passed out. That's where Harry is now--took him over to the mortuary. There isn't anybody named Barnham, is there?" "Barnham?" The name had awakened recollections for Fairchild; "why he's the fellow that--" But Anita cut in. "He 's a lawyer in Denver. They 've been sending all the income from stock sales to him for deposit. If Maurice asked if he 'd gotten the money out, it must mean that they meant to run with all the proceeds. We 'll have to telephone Denver." "Providing the line's working." Bardwell stared at the other sheriff. "Is it?" "Yes--to Denver." "Then let's get headquarters in a hurry. You know Captain Lee, don't you? You do the talking. Tell him to get hold of this fellow Barnham and pinch him, and then send him up to Ohadi in care of Pete Carr or some other good officer. We 've got a lot of things to say to him." The message went through. Then the two sheriffs rose and looked at their revolvers. "Now for the tough one." Bardwell made the remark, and Mason smiled grimly. Fairchild rose and went to them. "May I go along?" "Yes, but not the girl. Not this time." Anita did not demur. She moved to the big rocker beside the old base burner and curled up in it. Fairchild walked to her side. "You won't run away," he begged. "I? Why?" "Oh--I don't know. It--it just seems too good to be true!" She laughed and pulled her cap from her head, allowing her wavy, brown hair to fall about her shoulders, and over her face. Through it she smiled up at him, and there was something in that smile which made Fairchild's heart beat faster than ever. "I 'll be right here," she answered, and with that assurance, he followed the other two men out into the night. Far down the street, where the rather bleak outlines of the hotel showed bleaker than ever in the frigid night, a light was gleaming in a second-story window. Mason turned to his fellow sheriff. "He usually stays there. That must be him--waiting for the kid." "Then we 'd better hurry--before somebody springs the news." The three entered, to pass the drowsy night clerk, examine the register and to find that their conjecture had been correct. Tiptoeing, they went to the door and knocked. A high-pitched voice came from within. "That you, Maurice?" Fairchild answered in the best imitation he could give. "Yes. I 've got Anita with me." Steps, then the door opened. For just a second, Squint Rodaine stared at them in ghastly, sickly fashion. Then he moved back into the room, still facing them. "What's the idea of this?" came his forced query. Fairchild stepped forward. "Simply to tell you that everything 's blown up as far as you 're concerned, Mr. Rodaine." "You needn't be so dramatic about it. You act like I 'd committed a murder! What 've I done that you should--?" "Just a minute. I would n't try to act innocent. For one thing, I happened to be in the same house with you one night when you showed Crazy Laura, your wife, how to make people immortal. And we 'll probably learn a few more things about your character when we 've gotten back there and interviewed--" He stopped his accusations to leap forward, clutching wildly. But in vain. With a lunge, Squint Rodaine had turned, then, springing high from the floor, had seemed to double in the air as he crashed through the big pane of the window and out to the twenty-foot plunge which awaited him. Blocked by the form of Fairchild, the two sheriffs sought in vain to use the guns which they had drawn from their holsters. Hurriedly they gained the window, but already the form of Rodaine had unrolled itself from the snow bank into which it had fallen, dived beneath the protection of the low coping which ran above the first-floor windows of the hotel, skirted the building in safety and whirled into the alley that lay beyond. Squint Rodaine was gone. Frantically, Fairchild turned for the door, but a big hand stopped him. "Let him go--let him think he 's gotten away," said grizzled Sheriff Mason. "He ain't got a chance. There 's snow everywhere--and we can trail him like a hound dawg trailing a rabbit. And I think I know where he 's bound for. Whatever that was you said about Crazy Laura hit awful close to home. It ain't going to be hard to find that rattler!" CHAPTER XXV Fairchild felt the logic of the remark and ceased his worriment. Quietly, as though nothing had happened, the three men went down the stairs, passed the sleeping night clerk and headed back to the sheriff's office, where waited Anita and Harry, who had completed his last duties in regard to the chalky-faced Maurice Rodaine. The telephone jangled. It was Denver. Mason talked a moment over the wire, then turned to his fellow officer. "They 've got Barnham. He was in his office, evidently waiting for a call from here. What's more, he had close to a million dollars in currency strapped around him. Pete Carr 's bringing him and the boodle up to Ohadi on the morning train. Guess we 'd better stir up some horses now and chase along, had n't we?" "Yes, and get a gentle one for me," cautioned Harry. "It's been eight years since I 've sit on the 'urricane deck of a 'orse!" "That goes for me too," laughed Fairchild. "And me--I like automobiles better," Anita was twisting her long hair into a braid, to be once more shoved under her cap. Fairchild looked at her with a new sense of proprietorship. "You 're not going to be warm enough!" "Oh, yes, I will." "But--" "I'll end the argument," boomed old Sheriff Mason, dragging a heavy fur coat from a closet. "If she gets cold in this--I 'm crazy." There was little chance. In fact, the only difficulty was to find the girl herself, once she and the great coat were on the back of a saddle horse. The start was made. Slowly the five figures circled the hotel and into the alley, to follow the tracks in the snow to a barn far at the edge of town. They looked within. A horse and saddle were missing, and the tracks in the snow pointed the way they had gone. There was nothing necessary but to follow. A detour, then the tracks led the way to the Ohadi road, and behind them came the pursuers, heads down against the wind, horses snorting and coughing as they forced their way through the big drifts, each following one another for the protection it afforded. A long, silent, cold-gripped two hours,--then finally the lights of Ohadi. But even then the trail was not difficult. The little town was asleep; hardly a track showed in the streets beyond the hoofprints of a horse leading up the principal thoroughfare and on out to the Georgeville road. Onward, until before them was the bleak, rat-ridden old roadhouse which formed Laura's home, and a light was gleaming within. Silently the pursuers dismounted and started forward, only to stop short. A scream had come to them, faint in the bluster of the storm, the racking scream of a woman in a tempest of anger. Suddenly the light seemed to bob about in the old house; it showed first at one window--then another--as though some one were running from room to room. Once two gaunt shadows stood forth--of a crouching man and a woman, one hand extended in the air, as she whirled the lamp before her for an instant and brought herself between its rays and those who watched. Again the chase and then the scream, louder than ever, accompanied by streaking red flame which spread across the top floor like wind-blown spray. Shadows weaved before the windows, while the flames seemed to reach out and enwrap every portion of the upper floor. The staggering figure of a man with the blaze all about him was visible; then a woman who rushed past him. Groping as though blinded, the burning form of the man weaved a moment before a window, clawing in a futile attempt to open it, the flames, which seemed to leap from every portion of his body, enwrapping him. Slowly, a torch-like, stricken thing, he sank out of sight, and as the pursuers outside rushed forward, the figure of a woman appeared on the old veranda, half naked, shrieking, carrying something tightly locked in her arms, and plunged down the steps into the snow. Fairchild, circling far to one side, caught her, and with all his strength resisted her squirming efforts until Harry and Bardwell had come to his assistance. It was Crazy Laura, the contents of her arms now showing in the light of the flames as they licked every window of the upper portion of the house,--five heavy, sheepskin-bound books of the ledger type, wrapped tight in a grasp that not even Harry could loosen. "Don't take them from me!" the insane woman screamed. "He tried it, didn't he? And where 's he now--up there burning! He hit me--and I threw the lamp at him! He wanted my books--he wanted to take them away from me--but I would n't let him. And you can't have them--hear me--let go of my arm--let go!" She bit at them. She twisted and butted them with her gray head. She screamed and squirmed,--at last to weaken. Slowly Harry forced her arms aside and took from them the precious contents,--whatever they might be. Grimly old Sheriff Mason wrapped her in his coat and led her to a horse, there to force her to mount and ride with him into town. The house--with Squint Rodaine--was gone. Already the flame was breaking through the roof in a dozen places. It would be ashes before the antiquated fire department of the little town of Ohadi could reach there. Back in the office of Sheriff Bardwell the books--were opened, and Fairchild uttered an exclamation. "Harry! Did n't she talk about her books at the Coroner's inquest?" "Yeh. That's them. Them 's her dairy." "Diary," Anita corrected. "Everybody knows about that--she writes everything down in there. And the funny part about it, they say, is that when she's writing, her mind is straight and she knows what she's done and tells about it. They 've tried her out." Fairchild was leaning forward. "See if there 's any entry along early in July--about the time of the inquest." Bardwell turned the closely written pages, with their items set forth with a slight margin and a double line dividing them from the events tabulated above. At last he stopped. "Testified to-day at the inquest," he read. "I lied. Roady made me do it. I never saw anybody quarreling. Besides, I did it myself." "What's she mean--did it herself?" the sheriff looked up. "Guess we 'll have to go 'way back for that." "First let's see how accurate the thing is," Fairchild interrupted. "See if there 's an item under November 9 of this year." The sheriff searched, then read: "I dug a grave to-night. It was not filled. The immortal thing left me. I knew it would. Roady had come and told me to dig a grave and put it in there. I did. We filled it with quicklime. Then we went upstairs and it was gone. I do not understand it. If Roady wanted me to kill him, why did n't he say so. I will kill if Roady will be good to me. I 've killed before for him." "Still referring to somebody she 's killed," cut in Anita. "I wonder if it could be possible--" "I 've just thought of the date!" Harry broke in excitedly. "It was along about June 7, 1892. I 'm sure it was around there." The old books were mulled over, one after the other. At last Bardwell leaned forward and pointed to a certain page. "Here's an item under May 28. It says: 'Roady has been at me again! He wants me to fix things so that the three men in the Blue Poppy mine will get caught in there by a cave-in.'" The sheriff looked up. "This seems to read a little better than the other stuff. It's not so jagged. Don't guess she was as much off her nut then as she is now. Let's see. Where 's the place? Oh, yes: 'If I 'll help him, I can have half, and we 'll live together again, and he 'll be good to me and I can have the boy. I know what it's all about. He wants to get the mine without Sissie Larsen having anything to do with it. Sissie has cemented up the hole he drilled into the pay ore and has n't told Fairchild about it, because he thinks Roady will go partnerships with him and help him buy in. But Roady won't do it. He wants that extra money for me. He told me so. Roady is good to me sometimes. He kisses me and makes over me just like he did the night our boy was born. But that's when he wants me to do something. If he 'll keep his promise I 'll fix the mine so they won't get out. Then we can buy it at public sale or from the heirs; and Roady and I will live together again.'" "The poor old soul," there was aching sympathy in Anita Richmond's voice. "I--I can't help it if she was willing to kill people. The poor old thing was crazy." "Yes, and she 's 'ad us bloody near crazy too. Maybe there 's another entry." "I 'm coming to it. It's along in June. The date 's blurred. Listen: 'I did what Roady wanted me to. I sneaked into the mine and planted dynamite in the timbers. I wanted to wait until the third man was there, but I could n't. Fairchild and Larsen were fussing. Fairchild had learned about the hole and wanted to know what Larsen had found. Finally Larsen pulled a gun and shot Fairchild. He fell, and I knew he was dead. Then Larsen bent over him, and when he did I hit him--on the head with a single-jack hammer. Then I set off the charge. Nobody ever will know how it happened unless they find the bullet or the gun. I don't care if they do. Roady wanted me to do it.'" Fairchild started to speak, but the sheriff stopped him. "Wait, here 's another item: "'I failed. I did n't kill either of them. They got out someway and drove out of town to-night. Roady is mad at me. He won't come near me. And I 'm so lonesome for him!'" "The explanation!" Fairchild almost shouted it as he seized the book and read it again. "Sheriff, I 've got to make a confession. My father always thought that he had killed a man. Not that he told me--but I could guess it easily enough, from other things that happened. When he came to, he found a single-jack hammer lying beside him, and Larsen's body across him. Could n't he naturally believe that he had killed him while in a daze? He was afraid of Rodaine--that Rodaine would get up a lynching party and string him up. Harry here and Mrs. Howard helped him out of town. And this is the explanation!" Bardwell smiled quizzically. "It looks like there 's going to be a lot of explanations. What time was it when you were trapped in that mine, Harkins?" "Along about the first of November." The sheriff turned to the page. It was there,--the story of Crazy Laura and her descent into the Blue Poppy mine, and again the charge of dynamite which wrecked the tunnel. With a little sigh, Bardwell closed the book and looked out at the dawn, forcing its way through the blinding snow. "Yes, I guess we 'll find a lot of things in this old book," came at last. "But I think right now that the best thing any of us can find is a little sleep." Rest,--rest for five wearied persons, but the rest of contentment and peace. And late in the afternoon, three of them were gathered in the old-fashioned parlor of Mother Howard's boarding house, waiting for the return of that dignitary from a sudden mission upon which Anita Richmond had sent her, involving a trip to the old Richmond mansion. Harry turned away from his place at the window. "The district attorney 'ad a long talk with Barnham," he announced, "and 'e 's figured out a wye for all the stock'olders in the Silver Queen to get what's coming to them. As it is, they's about a 'unnerd thousand short some'eres." Fairchild looked up. "What's the scheme?" "To call a meeting of the stock'olders and transfer all that money over to a special fund to buy Blue Poppy stock. We 'll 'ave to raise money anyway to work the mine like we ought to. And it 'd cost something. You always 'ave to underwrite that sort of thing. I sort of like it, even if we 'd 'ave to sell stock a little below par. It 'd keep Ohadi from getting a bad name and all that." "I think so too." Anita Richmond laughed, "It suits me fine." Fairchild looked down at her and smiled. "I guess that's the answer," he said. "Of course that does n't include the Rodaine stock. In other words, we give a lot of disappointed stockholders par value for about ninety cents on the dollar. But Farrell can look after all that. He 's got to have something to keep him busy as attorney for the company." A step on the veranda, and Mother Howard entered, a package under her arm, which she placed in Anita's lap. The girl looked up at the man who stood beside her. "I promised," she said, "that I 'd tell you about the Denver road." He leaned close. "That is n't all you promised--just before I left you this morning," came his whispered voice, and Harry, at the window, doubled in laughter. "Why did n't you speak it all out?" he gurgled. "I 'eard every word." Anita's eyes snapped. "Well, I don't guess that's any worse than me standing behind the folding doors listening to you and Mother Howard gushing like a couple of sick doves!" "That 'olds me," announced Harry. "That 'olds me. I ain't got a word to sye!" Anita laughed. "Persons who live in glass houses, you know. But about this explanation. I 'm going to ask a hypothetical question. Suppose you and your family were in the clutches of persons who were always trying to get you into a position where you 'd be more at their mercy. And suppose an old friend of the family wanted to make the family a present and called up from Denver for you to come on down and get it--not for yourself, but just to have around in case of need. Then suppose you went to Denver, got the valuable present and then, just when you were getting up speed to make the first grade on Lookout, you heard a shot behind you and looked around to see the sheriff coming. And if he caught you, it 'd mean a lot of worry and the worst kind of gossip, and maybe you 'd have to go to jail for breaking laws and everything like that? In a case of that kind, what'd you do?" "Run to beat bloody 'ell!" blurted out Harry. "And that's just what she did," added Fairchild. "I know because I saw her." Anita was unwrapping the package. "And seeing that I did run," she added with a laugh, "and got away with it, who would like to share in what remains of one beautiful bottle of Manhattan cocktails?" There was not one dissenting voice! 
22231	----	----------------------------------------------------------------------- By ANNA FULLER A Literary Courtship: Under the Auspices of Pike's Peak. 28th thousand. 16° $1.25 A Venetian June. Illustrated. 15th thousand. 16° $1.25 Peak and Prairie: From a Colorado Sketch-Book. Illustrated. 7th thousand. 16° New Edition. 12° $1.50 Pratt Portraits: Sketched in a New England Suburb. Illustrated, 12th thousand. 12° $1.50 One of the Pilgrims. A Bank Story. 6th thousand. 12° $1.25 Katherine Day. 8th thousand. 12° $1.50 A Bookful of Girls. 4th thousand. Illustrated. 12° $1.50 Later Pratt Portraits. Illustrated $1.50 net ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [Illustration: "THE PEAK WAS SUPERB THAT MORNING, BIG AND STRONG AND GLITTERING WITH SNOW."] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PEAK AND PRAIRIE From a Colorado Sketch Book By ANNA FULLER Author of "A Literary Courtship" "Pratt Portraits," Etc. Illustrated by Emma G. Moore New York and London G. P. Putnam's Sons ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright, 1894 BY ANNA FULLER The Knickerbocker Press, New York ----------------------------------------------------------------------- TO ONE TO WHOM I OWE COLORADO AND MUCH BESIDES THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PREFACE. The sketches of Colorado life which make up this volume are little more than hints and suggestions caught from time to time by a single observer in a comparatively narrow field of observation. Narrow as the field is, however, it offers a somewhat unusual diversity of scene; for that most charming of health resorts known in these pages as Springtown, is the chance centre of many varying interests. In its immediate vicinity exists the life of the prairie ranch on the one hand and that of the mining-camp on the other; while dominating all as it were--town, prairie, and mountain fastness--rises the great Peak which has now for so many years been the goal of pilgrimage to men and women from the Eastern States in pursuit of health, of fortune, or of the free, open-air life of the prairie. If, from acquaintance with these fictitious characters set in a very real environment, the reader be led to form some slight impression of the stirring little drama which is going forward to-day in that pleasant Land of Promise, he will have incidentally endorsed the claim of these disconnected sketches to be regarded as a single picture. May, 1894. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE PREFACE v I.--A PILGRIM IN THE FAR WEST 1 II.--BRIAN BORU 36 III.--JAKE STANWOOD'S GAL 60 IV.--AT THE KEITH RANCH 101 V.--THE RUMPETY CASE 123 VI.--THE LAME GULCH PROFESSOR 151 VII.--THE BOSS OF THE WHEEL 187 VIII.--MR. FETHERBEE'S ADVENTURE 217 IX.--AN AMATEUR GAMBLE 240 X.--A ROCKY MOUNTAIN SHIPWRECK 266 XI.--A STROKE IN THE GAME 301 XII.--THE BLIZZARD PICNIC 335 XIII.--A GOLDEN VISTA 369 Note.--Of the thirteen sketches included in this volume six have previously appeared in periodicals, as follows: _A Pilgrim in the Far West_ in _Harper's Weekly_; _Brian Boru_ in _Worthington's Magazine_; _Jake Stanwood's Gal_ and _At the Keith Ranch_ in _The Century Magazine_; _The Rumpety Case_ in _Lippincott's Magazine_; and _An Amateur Gamble_ in _Scribner's Magazine_. They were, however, all prepared with reference to their final use as a consecutive series. A. F. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE "The Peak was Superb that Morning, Big and Strong and Glittering with Snow" _Frontispiece_ "A Handful of Cottonwood Trees Clustered about the House" 24 "The Vast Sea of the Prairie" 46 "Between his Cabin Door and 'The Range' Stretched Twenty Miles of Arid Prairie" 60 The Keith Ranch 104 "A Half-Hearted Stream Known as 'The Creek'" 122 "The Great Dome of Snow Towered in All its Grandeur" 142 "A Town of Rude Frame Huts had Sprung up in the Hollow below" 156 "On the Edge of a Dead Forest" 212 "It's a Kind of Double Back-Action Slant we've Got to Tackle this Time" 228 Pine Bluff 258 "They Looked out at the Peak" 289 "The Brook, Which Came Dashing Down From The Cañon, Still Rioting on Its Way" 324 "The Ranch Gate, Which Had Swung Half To On Its Hinges" 360 "The Wild and Beautiful Gorge" 378 A Golden Vista 388 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PEAK AND PRAIRIE I. A PILGRIM IN THE FAR WEST. The Peak was superb that morning, big and strong, and glittering with snow. Little Mrs. Nancy Tarbell turned, after shutting and locking the door of her cottage, and looked down the street, at the end of which the friendly giant stood out against a clear blue sky. The cottonwood trees on either side of the road were just coming into leaf, and their extended branches framed in her mighty neighbor in a most becoming manner. The water in the irrigating ditch beneath the trees was running merrily. The sound of it brought a wistful look into the cheerful old face. It made Mrs. Nancy think of the gay little brook in the pasture behind the house at home--at home, in far New England. Surely it must have been a strange wind of destiny that wafted this unadventurous little woman across half a continent to the very foot of the Rocky Mountains--a long and weary journey for the young and vigorous. Yet it was something no stranger than a mother's love for her only child. For "Willie's" sake the widow Tarbell had turned her back upon the dear New England woods and meadows, upon the tidy village where every man and woman was her friend; for his sake she had come to dwell among strangers in a strange and barren land. The old homestead had been sold, and with the meagre proceeds she had paid their way across the prairies, and had bought a little house and a lot of land on the outskirts of Springtown, while Willie looked about him for something to do. But the enemy before whom they had fled followed them to the high pure altitude it loves not, and before poor Willie had found anything to do, he had been "called up higher." This was the phrase the minister used at Willie's funeral, and it had been peculiarly comforting to the bereaved mother. She had known well that her boy needed higher air, for that she had come to live six thousand feet above the level of the New England pastures. But the Lord saw that she, with her poor human wisdom, could not lead him to the needed height, and He had called him up higher yet, where are blessing and healing forever. With this abiding consolation in her heart, Willie's mother could face the shining Peak day after day and month after month with a countenance as brave and cheerful as his own. It was only when she listened to the sound of running waters, or some other voice of the past, that the wistful look came into her face. Meanwhile it was good life-giving air that she breathed, and good warm sunshine that rested upon her, as she stepped briskly on her way. Her little cottage was no longer on the outskirts of the town. Stately mansions had risen up about her, and a long procession of houses now stretched far up to the northward. The people idly looking forth from the windows of the stately mansions, did not realize how much a part of the landscape the little black figure had become, passing and repassing their doors. A small meek figure it was, with little indication of the bright spirit within. It was her "best dress" of ten years ago that she now "wore common." The folds of the skirt, cut in the fashion of a by-gone day, offered ample accommodation for bustle and steels, and in the absence of these props the gown had a collapsed, inconsequent air. But little Mrs. Nancy had never seen her own back, and she wore the gown with a pleased consciousness of being well dressed. Then there was the thin cashmere shoulder cape, with the long slimpsy fringe, which Willie, in his pride and fondness, had persuaded her to buy, and which had a curiously jaunty and inapt appearance on the narrow shoulders. The close black felt bonnet was rusty and of antiquated shape. And since few ever thought of looking within these prosaic externals to note the delicacy of the soft old cheek, and the sweet innocence of the faded blue eyes beneath the thin gray locks, it is perhaps no wonder that the dwellers in the stately mansions quite overlooked their modest little neighbor. Mrs. Nancy was expecting to bring back her marketing in the flat twine bag she carried, and she was also thinking of calling at the milliner's and inquiring the cost of having her old black straw bonnet pressed over and retrimmed. She held her purse tightly between her fingers, encased in loose black cotton gloves, as she tried to estimate the sum of such an unwonted outlay. Her means were very, very slender, yet she could not bear that Willie's mother should look too shabby. And was that all? Who knows but that the spring instinct of renewal and rejuvenation played a part in her resolve quite independent of the perennial thought of Willie? The drama of life does not cease even in the most unobtrusive consciousness. It was going on in little Mrs. Nancy's brain at every step of her morning walk. As the shriek of a locomotive rent the air, a bright smile suddenly crossed her face. Her thoughts had taken a different and more inspiring turn. "Who knows," she said to herself. "Maybe that is the very engine that will take me home some day--when Atchison begins to pay again." The noisy engines had always a reassuring sound to her ears. She would sometimes lie in bed listening with rapture to their discordant cries. They were the willing servants that would one day carry her eastward, miles upon miles, hours upon hours--eastward to the old home, within smell of the salt air, where there were familiar faces to welcome her, familiar voices to speak of Willie. The people here, the few she knew, were very kind, but they seemed to have forgotten Willie, and she was shy of speaking of him. But all the home folks would flock to meet her, and to hear of his last brave hours. How glad they would be to know that he had lacked nothing! Atchison had given them all they needed while Willie was alive. She blessed Heaven for that. She had arrived in the business part of the town, where wagons and foot-passengers thronged at this hour of the morning. She willingly let them divert her thoughts. She liked the bustle and hurry of the scene. The well-dressed men and women in their trim turnouts little guessed what pleasure their high-stepping horses and silver-mounted harnesses gave to the modest little woman threading her way among the people on the sidewalk. Suddenly Mrs. Nancy's pleased survey of the scene was interrupted. Glancing down a side street, she beheld a sight which made her heart beat hard. A big, rough-looking man was striding along the sidewalk, dragging at the end of a long pole a frightened white dog. The dog was pulling back with might and main, scarcely using its unwilling legs in its enforced progress over the ground. What could it mean? Was the dog mad? He looked harmless enough. They were only a few rods off, and Mrs. Nancy soon overtook them. The dog proved to be a small white collie, and as she came up with him he gave her an appealing look out of his great brown eyes, which filled her with compassion and indignation. "What are you doing with that dog?" she demanded, in a peremptory tone of voice quite out of keeping with the rusty black bonnet. "Doin'?" repeated the man, somewhat surprised. "I'm takin' him to the City Hall." "What for?" "He ain't got no license on." "And what are you going to do with him when you get him there?" "_I_ ain't goin' to do nothin' more with him." "Will they put a license on him?" "Not much! He won't need no license after to-morrow morning." The man's grin seemed perfectly diabolical. "You don't mean they'll kill him?" "I reckon that's about the size of it." "But suppose the owner would rather pay the license?" she urged. "Then he'd better step round lively and pay it. There ain't no time to lose. The law was on the 1st of May, and the owner'd ought to have attended to it before now." The unutterable tragedy of the situation was heightened by the needless humiliation and terror of the victim, and once again Mrs. Nancy protested. "What makes you drag him at the end of that pole?" "I ain't goin' to give him a chance at my breeches, not if I knows myself," replied the man, defiantly. "He wouldn't hurt your pantaloons. See how gentle he is!" and the little woman pulled off her glove to pat the pretty white head. As the grateful creature licked her hand she felt a thrill of new pity and tenderness. By this time they were at the City Hall. "What do you have to pay for a license?" she asked. "Two good solid dollars," said the man. "I never seen a dog yet that was worth that money, did you?" And dog and persecutor disappeared together within a sinister-looking basement door. Mrs. Nancy Tarbell stood for a moment irresolute, and then she slowly wended her way along the sidewalk, pondering the thing she had seen. Two dollars! That was a large sum of money in these hard times. Could she possibly spare it? She did not know yet what her tax bill would be, but for some unexplained reason it turned out to be larger every year. She supposed it was owing to the improvements they were making in the town, and she had too much self-respect to protest. But it was really getting to be a serious matter. In her perplexity and absorption the little lady had turned eastward, and presently she found herself close upon a railroad track over which a freight train was slowly passing. It was the Atchison road, and she watched with interest the long, slow train. "They appear to be doing a good business," she said to herself. "Seems as though they might make out to pay something or other." When the train had passed she stepped across the track, looking with interest at the well-laid rails and the solid ties. "Queer, isn't it?" she thought. "Now I own six thousand dollars worth of that track, and yet I can't squeeze out of it enough to pay a poor little dog's license." She never could think without a feeling of awe of the magnitude of the sum left her by her thrifty husband, the bulk of which sum was represented by those unfruitful certificates. She stooped and felt the rails, looking cautiously up and down the road to be sure no train was coming. After all, it was consoling to think that that good honest steel and timber was partly her property. It was not her first visit to the spot. "Queer, isn't it," she reflected, as she had often done before, "that there isn't any way that I can think of to make my own road take me home? Anyhow I'll buy that license _just to spite 'em_," she exclaimed, with sudden decision; and shaking the dust of Atchison from her feet, and the far more bewildering dust of financial perplexities from her mind, she walked quickly back to the town. It took a certain amount of resolution to turn the handle of the sinister-looking door, and the group of men lounging in the smoking-room, and turning upon her inquisitive glances as she entered, might even then have daunted her, had not her eye fallen upon a dejected bunch of whitish hair in one corner. As she stepped into the room, a white tail disengaged itself from the round hairy bundle, and began pathetically to beat the floor, while two very beautiful and beseeching eyes were fixed upon her face. Had she still been irresolute this mute appeal would have been irresistible, and suddenly feeling as bold as a lion she stepped up to the desk where the city marshal was throned, and demanded a license for the white dog. The two great silver dollars which she drew from her purse looked very large to the widow Tarbell, yet it was with a feeling of exultation that she paid them as ransom for the white dog. In return for the money she received a small, round piece of metal with a hole bored through it, bearing a certain mystic legend which was to act as a talisman to the wearer. Her name and address were duly entered on the books. Then her agitated little beneficiary was untied from the chair leg, the rope which bound him was put into her hands, and with a polite courtesy Mrs. Tarbell turned to go. By a sudden impulse one of the rough-looking men got up from his chair, and, taking his hat off, opened the door. A light flush crossed the little woman's cheek as she accepted the attention, and then the two small figures, the black and the white, passed out into the delicious Colorado sunshine. "She looked 'most too small to handle that big door," said the tall fellow, apologetically, as he re-established his wide sombrero on the back of his head, and, resuming his seat, tilted his chair once more against the wall. The other men smoked on in silence. No one felt inclined to chaff this shamefaced Bayard. Mrs. Tarbell, meanwhile, led her willing captive along, delighting in his cheerful aspect and expressive tail. He was dirty, to be sure, and he was presumably hungry. Who could tell what hardships he had suffered before falling into the brutal hands of the law? She stopped to buy her dinner, to which she added five cents' worth of dog's-meat, but the milliner's door was passed coldly by. The old straw would have to serve her another season. Before they had gone two blocks, Mrs. Nancy had named the collie David. She had no question whatever about the name, for had he not been delivered out of the hands of the Philistines? She was patient with him when he paused to make the acquaintance of other dogs, and even once when he succeeded in winding the cord tightly about her ankles. Nevertheless it was a relief to get him home, and to tie him to the post of her front porch, where he established himself with entire willingness, and promptly dropping asleep, forgot alike his perils and his great escape. The first care of his new friend on arriving home was to secure the license upon him. He was collarless, and she was a good deal "put to it" to supply the lack. At last she resolved to sacrifice her shawl-strap in the emergency. She might miss it, to be sure, when she came to go home, but then, she reflected, if she were once on her way home, she would not care about any little inconvenience. So as soon as she and David had had a good dinner, she got down the old strap, which had hung on a certain nail for five long years, and taking a kitchen knife, ruthlessly chopped it off to the right length. Then she bored a new hole with her scissors for the tongue of the buckle to pass through, and, going to Willie's tool box, found a short piece of wire with which--it seemed but the other day--he had been tinkering something about the house. With the wire she fastened the license securely to the collar. But before David could be found worthy of such decoration, he was subjected to a pretty severe bath in an old tub out in the back yard. Poor David! This was a novel and painful dispensation, and he submitted only under protest. But his new mistress was firm, and arrayed in her oldest calico gown, with spectacles on her nose, she applied herself, with the energy and determination of all her New England grandmothers, to the task of scrubbing and soaping and squeezing and combing the dirt out of the long, thick hair. Three tubs of water were barely sufficient for the process, but finally David emerged, subdued but clean, looking very limp and draggled, and so much smaller because of his wet, close-clinging coat, that for a moment Mrs. Nancy thought, with a pang, that she might have washed away a part of the original dog. Later, however, when the sun had dried the fluffy hair, and when she fastened the new collar about the neck of the spotless animal, she let him lick her very face, so delighted were they both with the result of her labors. The rest of the afternoon they passed amicably together on the sunny porch. She would look up occasionally from her sewing, and say, "Good doggy!" and David would immediately wag his tail in delighted response. He was extremely mannerly and appreciative of the slightest attention--always excepting his enforced ablutions--and he seemed to approve of the kind eyes of his little protectress as warmly as she approved of his cool leather nose and speaking ears. As often as he moved, his license, hitting against the collar buckle, made a safe, cheerful sound, and Mrs. Nancy felt quite overcome with joy and gratitude at having been the chosen instrument of his preservation. When she lighted the lamp in the evening and began her regular game of backgammon, David curled himself up at her feet in a most companionable manner, and pricked his ears with interest at the fall of the dice. But for her backgammon it would be difficult to imagine what Mrs. Tarbell would have done with her evenings, for her eyes were not strong enough for reading or sewing. She had got the habit of playing backgammon with Willie, after he became too weak for more active occupations, and they had kept the score in a little green blank-book. After he died she had missed the game, and she had found it pleasant to take it up again, and to play for both herself and Willie. The score, too, had been continued in the old book. At the top of each new page she wrote in her precise old-fashioned hand, "Mother," "Willie," and under her name all the victories of the "whites" were scored, while those of the "blacks" were still recorded to Willie's credit. After a while her eyesight began to fail still more, and it became necessary to lift the dice and examine them "near to." Then gradually she found that the black checkers occasionally eluded her, and that she was straining her eyes in her efforts to see them in the shadowy corners of the board. When at last she found that by an oversight she had committed a flagrant injustice to Willie's interests, she felt that something must be done. Being fertile in resource, she presently bethought herself of the bright colored wafers she had played with in her childhood, and to her joy she found they were still to be bought. Having possessed herself of a box of them, she proceeded to stick a glittering gilt star upon each side of each checker, both black and white, after which the checkerboard took on a showy theatrical appearance. Mrs. Nancy rarely felt lonely when playing backgammon. The click of the dice sounded cheerful and sociable; the checkers, with their shining eyes, seemed to take a real interest in the game; and when she scored the result to "Willie" or to "Mother," the old familiar every-day relation seemed restored between them. To-night Willie was having all the luck, and that was sure to put his mother in the best of spirits. She played on and on, much later than her custom was, till at last the luck turned, and looking at her flat, gold-faced watch, she found, with a shock, that it was ten minutes after ten o'clock. "My sakes!" she cried. "I ought to be ashamed of myself! Come, David, come right along to bed. You're going to sleep on the mat at the back door." David, who was nothing if not amenable, cheerfully acceded to this arrangement. Even before his new mistress had finished tying him to the railing, he had curled himself up on the mat and was fast asleep. When she patted him on the head, however, by way of good-night, his tail gave a responsive wag, and little Mrs. Nancy left him with the friendliest feelings. The next morning the dog was gone. Yes, incredible as it seems, that graceless dog was gone--gone without a word of farewell. Mrs. Nancy was standing gazing in dejected mood at the fragment of string he had left behind him, when the milkman, one of her special cronies, arrived. The good-natured Sam was full of sympathy. "I reckon he came in with some ranchman yesterday, and got lost in the town. Like as not he's gone home. Good Lord! I'd just like to see that 'ere ranchman when his dog gits back with a locket round his neck!" "I washed him too, Sam," Mrs. Nancy lamented, as she accompanied her visitor to the gate. She was too conscientious to detain the man from the performance of his duty. "You washed him!" he cried, as he got into his cart. "Jerusalem! I guess that's the first time a ranch dog ever got a taste of a bath." And the cart rattled off, leaving David's little friend standing at the gate. It was just after sunrise, and she looked down the street to the mountains, which were bathed in a flood of translucent crimson reflected from the east. "I wonder if the walls of the heavenly Jerusalem look very different from that!" she mused, as she gazed into the deepening color. When she turned back to the house, she had almost forgotten the ungrateful runaway in thoughts of her boy and his heavenly abiding place. The next afternoon Mrs. Tarbell was sitting on her front porch endeavoring to readjust the bows upon the old straw bonnet. She had taken them off, and sponged both ribbon and straw, and she was now trying her best to make the bows hold up their heads with the spirit and grace which distinguish a milliner's trimming. She looked up from time to time to enjoy the reflection of the trees in the lake surrounding the house. For her grass was being flooded to-day, and that was always a pretty sight. "It looks almost as pretty as Watkins' pond out on the Goodham turnpike," she reflected, as the water glistened in a broad expanse. She owned a good piece of land, a hundred feet front. Willie had meant to have a vegetable garden when he had got strong enough to work in it. A horseman had turned into the street, and came cantering toward the house. But horsemen were part of the landscape in Colorado, and she scarcely noticed his approach till a joyful bark caused her to look up, just in time to see David take a flying leap over the gate and come dashing up to her. "Why, David!" she cried; and then she stopped, abashed, for the horseman was already tying his pony to the post. "Mrs. Tarbell?" he questioned, as he opened the gate; and without waiting for an answer, he went on: "I've come to thank you for getting my dog away from those scoundrels at the City Hall. They had the decency to tell me where to look for you." "Oh, pray don't mention it!" said little Mrs. Nancy, with old-fashioned courtesy. "Not mention it!" cried her visitor. "It was the kindest thing I ever heard of. I don't see what made you do it." "Oh, I couldn't help it. David looked so miserable being dragged along at the end of a pole." "The cowards!" he cried. "Don't get a chair, ma'am. I like the steps better. Did you call him David?" he asked, with a twinkle of amusement in his kind gray eyes, as he seated himself on the low step, with his long legs trailing off over the walk. "Well, yes. I didn't know what else to call him, and as he'd been delivered out of the hands of the Philistines----" "That's a good one!" cried the ranchman. "Come here, David. You've got a name now as well as a locket. Do you hear that?" David had established himself between his master and his rescuer, and looked from one to the other with evident satisfaction. They were soon engaged in an amicable conversation, quite unconscious of the picture they were forming. The tall ranchman, clad in full cowboy paraphernalia, his extended legs encased in leathern "shaps" decorated with long fringes, his belt of rattlesnake-skin, his loose shirt showing a triangle of bronzed throat, in his hand the broad sombrero clasped about with a silver band. Little Mrs. Nancy sitting upright in her chair, in her neat old black gown, holding the forgotten bonnet in her lap, watched her picturesque visitor with the greatest interest. And looking up into the delicate little old face, he noted all the sweetness and brightness which had so long been lost upon the world. To make a clean breast of it, the two fell frankly in love with each other upon the spot, and before the stranger had departed, he had persuaded her to visit his ranch with him the very next Sunday. "But I don't know what to call you," she said, after having agreed upon this wild escapade. "That's so," said he. "I go by the name of Wat Warren out here, but they used to call me Walter at home. I wish you would call me Walter." "It's a pretty name," she said. "I thought some of calling my boy Walter at first." Warren was on the point of departure, and a sudden embarrassment seemed to seize him. He had his hand in his trousers' pocket. "I 'most forgot the money for the license," he stammered, as he pulled out a couple of silver dollars. Nobody knows what came over Mrs. Nancy, but she suddenly found she could not take the money. "Oh, that's of no consequence," she said, quite as though she had had at her command the whole treasury surplus of a few years ago. "I should like to make David a present of the license;" and as her two visitors departed at full gallop, she sat down in a flutter of pleasurable excitement. How surprising it all was! She looked back upon the last hour quite incredulous. She felt as though she had known this strange young man all her life. Not that he had told her much about his own concerns. On the contrary, after complimenting her on the subject of David's collar and David's bath, he had got her talking about herself; and she had told him about Willie, and about Atchison, and about her desire to go home to New England. "My sakes!" said she to herself; "what a chatterbox I'm getting to be in my old age! What must he have thought of me?" But in her heart she knew he had not thought any harm of her confidence. There had been no mistaking the sympathy in that sunburnt face, and if there had been any doubt remaining, the hearty grip of the rough hand, which she still felt upon her palm, would have set her mind quite at rest. But if Mrs. Nancy wondered at herself on Tuesday, she had fairly lost all track of her own identity when, on Sunday, she found herself seated beside her broad-shouldered friend in a light wagon, bowling over the prairies behind a pair of frisky four-year-olds, while David bounded beside them or scampered about in the vain pursuit of prairie-dogs. "Do you feel afraid?" asked her host, looking protectingly down upon the tiny figure at his side. "Not a mite," she declared. "I never was one of the scary kind." They had left the mountains behind them and were speeding to the eastward. It seemed to her that a few hours of this rapid progress would bring them to the very shores of the Atlantic. On and on they went over the undulating yellow plains. As they neared the top of each rise of ground Mrs. Nancy's heart stood still in a strange fantastic suspense. Would there be trees over beyond, or lakes, or rivers, or perhaps a green New England meadow? "Isn't it like sailing?" said her companion as they bowled along. "I never went sailing," Mrs. Nancy replied. "I've only been out in a boat on the pond, and I think this is pleasanter." They did little talking on that drive. Mrs. Nancy was too entirely absorbed in her new experience to have much to say. But when at last they reached the ranch, lying like an oasis in the vast barren, with young corn sprouting in the wide fields, and a handful of cottonwood trees clustered about the house, the tears fairly started to the little woman's eyes, so much did this bit of rural landscape remind her of her own far-away New England. And when the master of the house led the way into a neat little room, with a south window looking across the plains, it came his turn for confidences. "This room was built on for my mother," he said. "Did she live here with you?" "No; she died before she could get here." "Oh dear!" said his little visitor. The two small words were eloquent with sympathy. That was a red-letter day for Mrs. Nancy Tarbell. She felt as though she were getting a glimpse of the great West for the first time in all these years. When her host casually informed her that he owned about seven square miles of land and two hundred head of cattle, she gave a little gasp of amazement. [Illustration: "A HANDFUL OF COTTONWOOD TREES CLUSTERED ABOUT THE HOUSE."] "I always wanted to see a cattle ranch," she said. "Oh, this is no cattle ranch. It's only a dairy." And he took her about through the many sheds and barns, which were hidden in a hollow a few rods away. Here he showed her his ice-houses, his huge churns, and his mammoth "separator" that went whirling around, dividing the cream from hundreds of gallons of milk in the time it would have taken her to skim a couple of three-pint pans. "Sakes alive!" she exclaimed again and again, as these wonders were explained to her--"sakes alive! what would our folks say to that?" "You'll have a great deal to tell them when you go back," said Warren, studying her animated face. "If I ever go," she said, with a little sigh. This was after dinner, which had been a savory meal served by a man cook. "Do you want very much to go?" "Oh yes! I shall go just as soon as ever Atchison begins to pay again. I hope I haven't any false pride," she added, deprecatingly, "but I can live cheaper here than I should be willing to there, where I've seen better days." Brave little Mrs. Nancy! It was not indeed false pride that deterred her, but the fear of being a burden to others. They were sitting in the big living-room, which on this great occasion had been made as neat as her own little parlor. Antlers and other strange trophies ornamented the walls, where also guns and spurs and lassos hung. The little woman did not seem in the least out of place among these warlike objects. She sat in an old leathern chair, her feet on a coyote-skin, looking about her with quick bright motions that made the big fellow think of the shy field creatures that sometimes strayed over his threshold--ground squirrels, rabbits, and the like. David lay curled up close beside her, and half a dozen less-favored dogs looked wistfully in from time to time. Warren was wondering whether she could possibly fit in naturally to the stiff, scant New England life which he had fled away from when a boy. Presently he said: "Have you any idea how much your house and land are worth?" "Oh yes! We paid ten hundred and fifty dollars for it when the house was new, but it's a good deal out of repair now." "But you know real estate is pretty high here just now." Struck by the peculiar emphasis with which he spoke, Mrs. Nancy gave him a startled look. "Why--why--what do you mean?" "Well, I was talking with a real-estate man about the value of land the other day, and he said you could realize six thousand dollars on your place any day." "Six--thousand--dollars?" "Yes, six thousand dollars." "Why, that's just what we had in Atchison!" "Well, I guess there's no question but that you could get that for your land to-morrow." It had indeed been an eventful day, and it was followed by a sleepless night. For years little Mrs. Nancy had had one great wish, and suddenly it was to be fulfilled. She could go home--home to New England, to the village where she was born, to the village where everybody knew her, where they would talk of Willie. Through the hours of the night, which sped fast, she thought and thought of the home-coming. She passed in review all her old neighbors, forgetting for the moment how many would be found missing; she wandered in spirit through the familiar pastures, beneath the green trees, beside the pond at the foot of the hill. Suddenly a strange suggestion intruded itself upon her thoughts. Must it not be "kind o' damp" with all that swamp land so near by, and the great elm-trees so close about the house? Her house no longer, however. It had passed into the hands of strangers--city people, whom she did not know. She wondered where she should live. She should want to be independent, and she should hate to "board out." But with the alloy of perplexity her radiant visions faded, and she fell asleep. For the first time in all these years the milkman found locked doors. He would not disturb the "little widdy," but when he had left the can upon the back steps he turned away, feeling somewhat aggrieved. The next morning, after her house was set in order and her marketing done, Mrs. Nancy sat herself down in her porch to darn her stockings. She had formed the habit, for Willie's sake, of doing all the work possible out in the air and sunshine, and she still clung to all the habits that were associated with him. Her weekly darning was a trifling piece of work, for every hole which ventured to make its appearance in those little gray stockings was promptly nipped in the bud. The water was merrily flowing in the irrigating ditch, a light breeze was rustling in the cotton woods before the door, while the passing seemed particularly brisk. Two small boys went cantering by on one bareback horse; a drove of cattle passed the end of the street two or three rods away, driven by mounted cow-boys; a collection of small children in a donkey cart halted just before her door, not of their own free will, but in obedience to a caprice of the donkey's. They did not hurt Mrs. Nancy's feelings by cudgelling the fat little beast, but sat laughing and whistling and coaxing him until, of his own accord, he put his big flapping ears forward as though they had been sails, and ambled on. There were pretty turnouts to watch, and spirited horses, and Mrs. Nancy found her mind constantly wandering from what she meant should be the subject of her thoughts. When the postman appeared around the corner he came to her gate and lifted the latch. It was not time for her small bank dividend. The letter must be from her husband's sister-in-law, who wrote to her about twice a year. As Mrs. Nancy sat down to read the letter her eyes rested for a moment upon the mountains. "If Almira could have come with the letter she'd have thought those snowy peaks well worth the journey," she said to herself. And then she read the letter. Here it is: "DEAR NANCY,--Excuse my long silence, but I've been suffering from rheumatism dreadfully, and haven't had the spirit to write to anybody but my Almira. It's been so kind of lonesome since she went away that I guess that's why the rheumatism got such a hold of me. When you ain't got anybody belonging to you, you get kind of low-spirited. Then the weather--it's been about as bad as I ever seen it. Not a good hard rain, but a steady drizzle-drozzle day after day. You can't put your foot out of doors without getting your petticoats draggled. But you'll want to hear the news. Cousin Joshua he died last month, and the place was sold to auction. Deacon Stebbins bought it low. He's getting harder-fisted every year. Eliza Stebbins she's pretty far gone with lung trouble, living in that damp old place; but he won't hear to making any change, and she ain't got life enough left to ask for it. Both her boys is off to Boston. Does seem as though you couldn't hold the young folks here with ropes, and I don't know who's going to run the farms and the corner store when we're gone. Going pretty fast we be too. They've been eight deaths in the parish since last Thanksgiving--Mary Jane Evans and me was counting them up last sewing circle. Mr. Williams, the new minister, made out as we'd better find a more cheerful subject; but we told him old Parson Edwards before him had given us to understand that it was profitable and edifying to the spiritual man to dwell on thoughts of death and eternity. They do say that Parson Williams would be glad to get another parish. He's a stirring kind of man, and there ain't overmuch to stir, round here. I sometimes wish I could get away myself. I'd like to go down to Boston and board for a spell, jest to see somebody passing by; but they say board's high down there and living's poor; and, after all, it's about as easy to stick it out here. I don't know though's I wonder that you feel 's you do about coming home. 'T ain't what you're used to out West, and I don't suppose you ever feel real easy in your mind from cow-boys and Indians and wild animals. I was reading only yesterday about a grizzly-bear that killed a man right there in the Rocky Mountains, and I'm glad you feel 's you do about coming home. I should like to think that you'd be here to close my eyes at the last. "But no more at present. This is quite a letter for me. Your true friend, "ALMIRA TARBELL. "P.S.--You remember my old tabby that I set such store by? She died along in March, and I buried her under the sugar-maple side of the barn. The maples didn't do as well this year." "Poor Almira," said the little widow, folding the letter with a sigh; "she's having a real hard time. I do feel for her, I declare." An hour after, when her new friends Warren and David came to inquire how she had borne the fatigues of her yesterday's drive, they found her sitting with the letter in her hands. There was a bright flush on her cheeks, and a look of perplexity in her blue eyes. "Fine day, isn't it?" said Warren, while David wagged his tail till it almost touched his ears. "Yes, it's a very fine day. 'Pears to me Colorado never did look so nice as it does to-day." "That is because you are thinking of leaving us," Warren rejoined, thoughtfully pulling the ears of David, who could scarcely contain himself for joy at being the object of such a flattering attention. "I don't know 's I should be in such a hurry to go right straight away, even if I could sell my land," said the widow, slipping the letter into her pocket with a guilty air. They chatted awhile in the bright sunshine, and Warren soon had an inkling of the little woman's state of mind. "I don't suppose, now, you'd be willing to take a ground-rent on the other half of your land if a desirable party should apply? A rent, say, for five years, with the privilege of purchase at the expiration of the term?" The long words sounded very technical and business-like, yet rather agreeable too. "You mean somebody might like to build on my land?" "That's the idea," said Warren. "Fact is," he went on, after a pause, "I happen to know a nice, steady young fellow who is thinking of getting married. He told me he would be willing to pay $300 and taxes." "Three hundred dollars!" cried the wondering little land-owner. "Why, I should feel like a rich woman!" "Well, the land's worth it, and the young man's able to pay." The air was growing warmer and sweeter every minute, and the water in the irrigating ditch sounded quite jubilant as it raced past the house. Yes, Colorado was a pleasant place to live in, especially with Walter Warren for a neighbor only ten miles away. The ranch did not seem at all far off since that rapid drive across the prairies. She sat so long silent that her visitor felt he must offer greater inducements. He began pulling David's ears so vigorously that a dog of a less refined perception might have howled remonstrance, and then, while the color deepened in the sunburnt face and an engaging shyness possessed him, Warren said, "Perhaps you'd take more kindly to the arrangement if you knew who the young man was?" "My dear, are you going to get married?" cried Mrs. Nancy, forgetting alike her perplexities and her dreams of opulence. "Well, yes, I am; some time next fall. She lives back East; and I thought it would be nice to have a little place in town where we could stay through the off seasons. You'll let us come, won't you?" he cried, with a look of boyish beseeching. "I know you would if you could see Jenny. _She's so sweet!_" The momentous visit was over; Warren had had his turn at confidences, and was now striding down the street, with David at his heels. The little widow stood at the gate, her heart feeling bigger and warmer than for many a long day. Once more she looked down under the row of cotton woods, which had come into full leaf during the past week, looked to where her giant mountain neighbor stood, strong and constant as an old friend. The air seemed clearer, the sunshine brighter, than ever before. The running stream was singing its own gay song, and for once it waked no longing in her breast. As Mrs. Nancy turned to walk up the path, she drew forth Almira's letter, not without a momentary pang of remorse. With the letter in her hand she paused again, and looked and listened as though she would drink in the whole of Colorado at one draught. Suddenly a gleam of roguish wilfulness came into the sweet old face, and speaking half aloud, she murmured, "I don't know but I'm getting to be a heartless old woman, but--I'm afraid I'd full as lief somebody else closed Almira's eyes for her!" And with this revolutionary sentiment the faithless little New Englander passed into the house that had at last taken on the dignity and the preciousness of a home. II. BRIAN BORU. Sir Bryan Parkhurst, a young Irish sportsman just over from the old country, was rather disappointed in Colorado; and that was a pity, considering that he had crossed an ocean and half a continent to get there. The climate, to be sure, was beyond praise, and climate is what Colorado is for, as any resident of Springtown will tell you. Nature, too, was very satisfactory. He liked the way the great mass of Rocky Mountains thrust itself up, a mighty barrier against the west, perfectly regardless of scenic conventionalities. There was something refreshingly democratic about the long procession of peaks, seeming to be all of about the same height. In that third week of September not a single one of them all wore the ermine, though their claim to that distinction, measured by their altitude, equalled that of their snow-clad cousins of another hemisphere. On the other hand, Sir Bryan pleased himself with fancying that the splashes of golden aspen and crimson sumac on the mountain sides, contrasting with the brilliant, unalterable blue of the sky, had a Star-Spangled-Banner effect--a thing which the British tourist is always delighted to discover. Truth to tell, it was the people that bothered Sir Bryan. In dress, in manners,--he sometimes feared in morals, they lacked the strong flavor which he had confidently looked for. They did not wear flannel shirts in general society; they did not ask impertinent questions; a whiskey cocktail did not seem to play a necessary part in the ceremony of introduction; the almighty dollar itself did not stalk through every conversation, putting the refinements of life to the blush. In short, Sir Bryan found himself forced to base his regard for his new acquaintances upon such qualities as good breeding, intelligence, and a cordial yet discriminating hospitality,--qualities which he was perfectly familiar with at home. He sometimes wondered whether the taint of civilization might not already have attached itself to the grizzly bear and the mountain lion, for whose inspiring acquaintance he had ardently pined since boyhood. He was on the eve of going to pay his respects to these worthies in their own mountain fastnesses, and, meanwhile, was getting himself in training by walking great distances with a rifle over his shoulder. In the course of the last of his extended tramps--for he was due to join that inveterate sportsman, Lord Longshot, at Denver, on the following day,--he found himself passing through a wilderness of loveliness. He had entered what he would have termed, with the genial inaccuracy of his race, a "boundless enclosure," and having crossed a vast, yellowish field, populous with scrawny cattle and self-important prairie-dogs, he was following a well-marked road, which led alluringly up hill. Thousands of scrub-oaks, in every shade of bronze and russet, massed themselves on either hand, and in among them tufts of yellow asters shone, and here and there a belated gilia tossed its feathery plume. Scattered groups of pine trees that scorn the arid plains were lording it over the bolder slopes of the mountain side. The steep road went on its winding way, after the manner of its kind, dipping occasionally to meet a bridge of planks, beneath which flowed a stream of autumn colors. After a while Sir Bryan found the ascent too gradual for his ambition, and, leaving the road to make its way as it would, he pushed upwards through the bushes. Every step brought him nearer the gigantic crags which formed the buttresses of the mountain, and looked wild and impregnable enough to be the haunt of the grizzly himself. The young man's thoughts were dwelling fondly upon the grizzly of his dreams, when he beheld a sight that sent the blood back to his heart with a rush. Not fifty yards away, in a sunny opening, lay a mass of brownish fur which could belong to nobody but a bear _in propria persona_. Great Cæsar! Could it be possible? Almost too agitated to breathe, Sir Bryan moved cautiously toward the creature, covering it with his rifle. The bear, with the politeness which appeared to cling to all classes of society in this effetely civilized West, rose up and sat on his haunches, facing his visitor. Sir Bryan fired and the bear tumbled over like a ninepin. Sir Bryan Parkhurst, as became a young Irish baronet, had enjoyed his share of sensations in life. A year previous he had almost broken his neck riding across country, and had won the brush into the bargain. He had once saved a man from drowning on the coast of Cornwall. He had come into his title unexpectedly, and made his new tenantry adore him. To crown all, he had, at a still poignantly recent date, practically refused the hand of an English heiress. But he had never before shot a bear, nor indeed had he ever seen one outside the Zoo. As he steadfastly regarded the heap of brown fur, a sinister doubt invaded his mind. Might it be a cow, after all? Forgetful of the well-established fact in natural history that cows never sit on their haunches, even with a view to serving as target to an ambitious sportsman, he cautiously approached his victim. It was unquestionably a bear, though not of a terrific aspect. Sir Bryan examined the lifeless body with the keenest interest. He had seen a domestic pig which would have weighed more; he had encountered more than one dog of a more dangerous appearance; yet, when all was said, a bear was a bear. Sir Bryan seated himself upon a rock to reflect upon his next step. It was close upon midday. He thought he must be some eight miles from town. When he had enjoyed his bear for a few minutes, he would return there and get some men to come and cart the carcass to town. He would have the skin removed and cured, and the meat-- "Brian! Brian Boru!" The words came ringing up the mountain slope in a bell-like soprano. Why should a bell-like soprano call the name of the old Irish king in this remote wilderness? Was there witchery at work? Was the bear merely a part of the phantasmagoria of an enchanted region? Sir Bryan, undeterred by these suggestions of his fancy, lifted up his voice and shouted "Hulloo!" and behold! a few minutes later, a horse came pushing through the scrub-oaks, bearing upon his back an enchanted princess. As was to be expected of a Colorado princess, enchanted or otherwise, she had not quite the traditional appearance. In lieu of a flowing robe of spotless white, she was clad in a plain black skirt and a shirt waist of striped cambric, while the golden fillet, if such she wore, was quite concealed by a very jaunty sailor-hat, than which no fillet could have been more becoming. In short, the pleasing vision which Sir Bryan beheld was far more to his taste than any princess of fairy lore could have been. As he sprang to his feet and lifted his hat he wondered whether the expression "nut-brown maid" was poetry. If so, he had performed an unprecedented feat in recalling it so aptly. There is a difference in the way men lift their hats, and Sir Bryan's way was a charming one. "Did you call?" asked the nut-brown maid. "No; I only answered when I heard you call my name." "Is your name Brian Boru?" she inquired, with animation. "I am an Irishman, and my name is Bryan, so they used to call me Brian Boru." "How very curious! That is the name of my bear!" "Of your bear?" he repeated in blank amazement. "Yes. Have you seen anything of him? I'm a little near-sighted and----" Sir Bryan Parkhurst never shirked a dilemma. "I've just shot a bear," he blurted out, "but I hope, with all my heart, it wasn't yours!" "Shot a bear?" cried the girl, in consternation. "Oh! how could you?" Before Sir Bryan could reach out a helping hand, her feet were on the ground. "Where is he? Oh! where is he?" she cried in tragic accents. Sir Bryan pointed to the prostrate form of the murdered bear. Alas! It must have been her bear, for she knelt down beside him, and gazed upon him long and mournfully. And truly there was something pathetic about the victim, viewed from this new standpoint. He lay on his side, exposing the wound, which was clotted with blood. His small eyes were open, and a red tongue just visible between his parted teeth. One short, rigid, foreleg was stretched out as though in remonstrance, and just within its embrace a fading spray of gilia lifted its fragile blossoms. Sir Bryan stood lost in contemplation of this singular scene; the graceful figure of the kneeling girl, bending over the mass of coarse brown fur; the flower, standing unscathed close beside the long, destructive claws. A few yards away, the horse lazily whisked his tail, while to the right the frowning crags rose, so near and steep that they seemed about to topple over and make an end of the improbable situation. At last the girl lifted her head, murmuring, "Straight through the heart!" The sportsman's vanity gave a little throb. It was a pretty shot, by Jove! He moved nearer. "I'm no end sorry about it," he declared. Alas, for that throb of vanity! His contrition did not have the true ring. The girl turned upon him with quick distrust. No, he was more glad than sorry. "If we were in England," she cried, with withering scorn, "you would have to be more than sorry." "In England?" "Yes, in England, or in Ireland, or anywhere round there. If I'd shot so much as a miserable pheasant on your land you'd have--you'd have _had me up before the bailey_!" Clearly the girl's reading of English fiction had confused her ideas of British magistracy. But Sir Bryan was generous, and overlooked side issues. "Is this your land?" he asked, gazing at the wild mountain side, and then at the flaming cheeks of the girl. She stood there like an animated bit of autumn coloring. "Of course it's my land," she declared. "But I didn't know it was your land." "You knew it wasn't _yours_!" she cried vehemently. Poor Sir Bryan was hopelessly bewildered. The great West was, after all, not quite like the rest of the world, if charming young ladies owned the mountain sides, danced attendance upon by bears of dangerous aspect and polished manners. He blushed violently, but he did not look in the least awkward. "I wish you would tell me your name," he said, feeling that if this remarkable young lady possessed anything so commonplace as a name, the knowledge of it might place him on a more equal footing with her. "Certainly, Mr. Bryan," she replied. "My name is Merriman; Kathleen Merriman," and she looked at him with great dignity but with no relenting. "Well, Miss Merriman, I don't suppose there's any good in talking about it. My being awfully sorry doesn't help matters any. I don't see that there's anything to be done about it, but to have the carcass carted off your land as soon as may be." "Carted off my land!" the girl cried, with kindling indignation. "You need not trouble yourself to do anything of the kind." Then, with a sudden change to the elegiac, she fixed her mournful gaze upon her departed friend and said, "I shall bury him where he lies!" In this softened mood she seemed less formidable, and Sir Bryan so far plucked up his spirit as to make a suggestion. "Perhaps I could help you," he said. "If I had a shovel, or something, I think I could dig a first-rate grave." The fair mourner looked at him doubtfully, and then she looked at his namesake, and apparently the poetic justice of the thing appealed to her. "There's a spade over at the house," she said, "and I don't know that it's any more than fair that you should bury him." Sir Bryan's spirits rose still higher at the hope of partial expiation of his crime; but with his rising spirits came a premonition of a good healthy appetite which would soon be due, and he asked meekly: "Would you mind, then, if I were to go back to town first, to get something to eat? A person doesn't dig so well, I suppose, on an empty stomach." "No, you'd better stay and get your dinner with me. It will take you pretty much all day to bury Brian. You probably never buried a bear before," she added, as patronizingly as if she herself had been a professional grave-digger, "and you don't know what a piece of work it's going to be." They started to push their way through the scrub-oaks. "Shall I lead your horse for you?" Sir Bryan asked. [Illustration: "THE VAST SEA OF THE PRAIRIE."] "No, thank you. Comrag will follow, all right;" and Comrag did follow, so close upon their heels, that Sir Bryan was in momentary expectation of being trampled upon. Comrag was an unbeautiful beast, and he permitted himself startling liberties; crowding himself in between his mistress and her companion, helping himself without ceremony to a bunch of asters which Sir Bryan had in his hand, and neighing straight into the young baronet's ear as they came in sight of the house. The "house" was a mere hut, painted red, entirely dwarfed by an ungainly chimney of rough stone. The little hut was built against a huge boulder, which towered above the chimney itself, and looked as though it had stood there since the foundation of the earth. There was a rustic veranda along the front of this diminutive dwelling, which stood on a slight eminence; and, as Sir Bryan stepped upon the veranda, he drew a long breath of amazement and delight. Looking down over the broad, oak-clad slope of the mountain, he beheld the vast sea of the prairie, stretching for leagues upon leagues away to the low horizon. From that height the view seemed limitless, and the illusion of the sea, which always hovers over the prairies, was complete. As his hostess came out with a long-handled spade in her hand, he cried, "That is the most magnificent thing I ever saw!" She did not answer immediately, but stood leaning upon the spade, and gazing forth as intently as if it had been to her too a revelation. Then she drew a long breath and said, in a rapt tone, as though the words came to her one by one: "Yes, it makes you feel sometimes as if your soul would get away from you." They stood there for a while, watching the cloud-shadows swimming upon that mystic sea. The smoke of an express train on the horizon seemed fairly to crawl, so great was the distance. "That looks like the smoke of a steamer," Sir Bryan observed. "Then you think it seems like the sea, as everybody else does," she answered. "I never saw the sea, myself, but I don't believe it can be finer than this." There was another pause, and then, with a sudden change of mood, to which she seemed subject, the rapt worshipper turned her thoughts to practical things, saying briskly: "Here's your spade, Mr. Bryan. You had better go and begin, while I get the dinner. I'll fire a shot when it's ready." Sir Bryan obediently took the spade. "How am I to find my way to the bear?" he asked. All about the little clearing was an unbroken wilderness of scrub-oaks, gorgeous but bewildering. "Why, you can just follow Comrag's tracks," she said, pointing toward the spot where the hoof-prints emerged from the brush. "You'd better leave your rifle here," she added with some asperity, "You might take a fancy to shoot Comrag if he strayed your way." It was Sir Bryan Parkhurst's first attempt at digging, and he devoutly hoped it might be his last. He thought at first that he should never get his spade inserted into the earth at all, so numerous and exasperating were the hindrances it met with. The hardest and grittiest of stones, tangled roots, and solid cakes of earth, which seemed to cohere by means of some subterranean cement, offered a complicated resistance, which was not what he had expected of Mother Earth. He began to fear that that much bepraised dame was something of a vixen after all. The other Brian lay, meanwhile, in all the dignity and solemnity of funeral state, awaiting burial. As Sir Bryan toiled at his thankless task he found himself becoming strangely impressed. There seemed to be a weird and awesome significance in the scene. He did not know why it was, but the beetling crags above him, the consciousness of the marvellous plains below, the rhythmic murmur of the wind in the pine trees near at hand, the curious impenetrableness of the old earth, the kingship of death asserting itself in the motionless brute which he had killed, but which he was powerless to make alive again--all these weird and unaccustomed influences seemed to be clutching at his imagination, taking liberties with his sense of identity. He had just about reached the conclusion that it was all a mistake about his being anybody in particular, when a shot rang out and reminded him that he was, at any rate, ravenously hungry. Five minutes later he had washed his hands at the toy sink of a toy kitchen and was seated at a snowy table on the little veranda, partaking of a mutton stew which seemed a dish fit for the gods. It had been something of a shock to Sir Bryan to find places laid for only two. He had never before enjoyed a _tête-à-tête_ meal with a young lady, and it was some minutes before he could rid his mind of the impression that an irate chaperon was about to appear from behind the boulder, or, for the matter of that, from the depths of the earth itself. His recent experience of the difficulty of penetrating the surface of the earth might have given him a sense of security in that direction, had he not cherished an exaggerated opinion of the prowess of the traditional chaperon in thwarting the pleasures of the young. The comeliness, too, of his hostess led him, by inference, to suppose that the chaperon in question would prove to be of a peculiarly vicious and aggressive type. No such apparition came, however, to disturb his satisfaction, and he gradually came to believe in the lawfulness of the situation. His face may have betrayed something of the questionings which were racking his mind, for the self-possessed Kathleen, after heaping his plate with stew for the second time, gave him an elder-sisterly look, and said: "Mr. Bryan, you are such a very discreet young man, that I believe I will answer all the questions you are dying to ask." Sir Bryan blushed, as he always hated himself for doing, and the nut-brown maid continued: "Yes, I live here all alone. I am taking up a claim. No. Nobody molests me, and I get on beautifully. Sometimes my friends come up and spend a few days with me, but not often. Comrag and I do the marketing once or twice a week. I've got a lovely cool cellar up against the boulder under the house." All this she said like a child repeating a lesson she has learned by rote, which the teacher wants to hear, but which the child finds rather uninteresting. But Sir Bryan listened as if it had been the most exciting tale he had ever heard. Thus encouraged she proceeded with the dry statement of facts. "I've only got to stay here a month longer to secure the claim. I've got three hundred acres, and it has cost me just three hundred dollars to take it up and to build my house and Comrag's stall. I could sell out to-morrow for five hundred dollars, but I don't know that I would sell for five thousand. Because I have such a beautiful time here. I feel somehow as if I had struck root." Sir Bryan knew exactly what she meant. In spite of the sailor hat and shirt waist, she had the air of having grown up among the rocks and glowing oak leaves. He said nothing, but his attentive attitude asked for more. "Oh, yes! and about Brian Boru," she proceeded. "I found him last June, lying up against a tree with his leg broken. I fed him until his leg was mended, and--and"--with a little catch in her breath--"he adored me! See how green it looks off to the south," she hastened to add, brushing her hand across her eyes. An hour after dinner, as Sir Bryan still labored at that contumacious grave, his hostess came and seated herself upon the rock, whence he, in the first flush of triumph, had surveyed the dead bear. Sir Bryan could not but feel flattered by this kind attention, and, being particularly anxious to acquit himself creditably before so distinguished a spectator, he naturally became more and more awkward at his work. The young lady considerately divided her attention between the futile efforts of the amateur grave-digger and the flippant behavior of a black and white magpie, which was perched on the branch of a dead pine near by, derisively jerking its long tail. She wondered whether the magpie perhaps shared her astonishment, that an able-bodied son of Erin should not take more naturally to a spade. She had supposed that, if there was one weapon that an Irishman thoroughly understood, it was that which her new acquaintance was struggling with. She cocked her head on one side, with something of a magpie air, while a little crease appeared between her eyebrows. "Why don't you coax it a little more?" she suggested. Sir Bryan straightened himself up and stood there, very red in the face, trying to make out whether she was laughing at him. Then he laughed at himself and said, "I believe you are right. I was getting vindictive." After that he seemed to get on better. They buried the bear just as the heavy shadow of the mountain fell across their feet. By the time the last clod of earth had fallen upon the grave, the mountain shadow had found its way a hundred miles across the plains, and a narrow golden rim, like a magic circlet, glimmered on the horizon. "Do you never feel afraid?" he asked, as they walked back to the house. "No. I suppose I ought to, but I don't. I was a little disappointed the first summer I was here, because nothing happened. It seemed such a chance. But somehow things don't happen very often. Do you think they do? And now I'm a good deal older and more experienced, and I don't expect adventures. I'm almost twenty-five," she declared, with the pardonable pride of advancing years. There was that in Sir Bryan's face as well as in his character which had always invited confidence. Consequently it did not seem to him in the least degree unnatural that this charming girl should tell him about herself, as they walked side by side along the lonely mountain slope, in the fading light. "I forgot to tell you," she was saying, "that I am a trained nurse. I came out West from Iowa with a sick lady who died very soon, and I liked the mountains, and so I stayed." "And you've given up nursing?" "Oh, no. In the winter season I am always busy. I couldn't afford to give up nursing, and I don't believe I should want to. It's lovely to help people when they are suffering. You get almost to feel as though they belonged to you, and I haven't anybody belonging to me." All this was said in a tone of soliloquy, without a trace of self-consciousness. Miss Kathleen Merriman seemed to find it quite natural that she should stand alone and unprotected in the world. But somehow it conflicted with all Sir Bryan's articles of faith. Women were intended to be taken care of, especially young and pretty women. A feeling of genuine tenderness came over him and a longing to protect this brave young creature. There was, to be sure, something about the way her head was set upon her shoulders, that made him doubt whether it would be easy to acquire the right to take care of her. But that made the task all the more tempting. The old song that every Irishman loves was in his thoughts. He felt an impulse, such as others had felt in this young lady's presence, to whisper: "Kathleen Mavourneen." He tried to fancy the consequences of such a bold step, but he did not venture to face them. He therefore contented himself with observing that the air had grown very chilly. They had reached the little veranda once more, and Sir Bryan was not invited to tarry. The girl stood there in the deepening twilight, a step above him, leaning upon the spade he had delivered up, and looking out across the shadowy plains, and Sir Bryan could think of no possible excuse for staying any longer. As he flung his rifle over his shoulder and made a motion to go, she held out her hand, with a sudden friendly impulse, and said: "I was very unjust this morning. You couldn't possibly have known, and it was very kind of you to bury him." Sir Bryan murmured a remorseful word or two, and then he started down the mountain side. "Good-bye," he cried, across the scrub-oaks that were growing dark and indistinct. "Good-bye, Mr. Bryan," came the answer, sounding shrill and near through the intervening distance. As he looked back, a huge, ungainly form thrust itself before the slender figure. A great dark head stood out against the light shirtwaist the girl wore, and he perceived that Comrag had strolled from his stall for a friendly good-night. "The only friend she has left now," Sir Bryan reflected in sorrowful compunction. He strode down the mountain at a good pace. Now and then a startled rabbit crossed his path, and once his imagination turned a scrub-oak into the semblance of a bear. But he gave no heed to these apparitions. His sportsman's instinct had suffered a check. By the time Sir Bryan had reached the outskirts of the town, the stars were out. He looked up at the great mountain giant that closed the range at the south. Wrapped in darkness and in silence it stood against the starry sky. He tried to imagine that he could perceive a twinkling light from the little cabin, but none was visible. The enchantment of the mountain-side had already withdrawn itself into impregnable shadow. "Jove!" he said to himself, as he turned into the prosaic town. "If I were an American, or something of that sort, I'd go up there again." Being, however, a young Irish baronet, as shy of entanglements with his own kind as he was eager for encounters with wild beasts, he very wisely went his way the next morning, and up to this time has never beheld mountain or maiden again. Over the grave which Sir Bryan dug, there stands to-day a stout pine board, upon which may be read the following legend: "Here lies the body of Brian Boru, shot through the heart and subsequently buried by an agreeable Paddy of the same name." Every year, however, the inscription becomes somewhat less legible and it is to be feared that all record of the poor bear will soon be lost. III. JAKE STANWOOD'S GAL. Jacob Stanwood was not the only college-bred man, stranded more or less like a disabled hull, upon the prairie sea of Colorado. Within the radius of a hundred miles--no great distance as prairie miles are reckoned,--there were known to be some half dozen of the fraternity, putting their superior equipment to the test, opposing trained minds and muscles to the stubborn resistance of an ungenial nature. The varying result of the struggle in different cases would seem to indicate that it is moral fibre which nature respects and submits to, rather than any acquired advantages. [Illustration: "BETWEEN HIS CABIN DOOR AND 'THE RANGE' STRETCHED TWENTY MILES OF ARID PRAIRIE."] In Jacob Stanwood's case there was no such test applied, for there was absolutely no struggle. He would have found it much easier to send a bullet through his brain than to put that organ to any violent exertion. Up to him, but he sometimes fancied that he saw it coming. At such times he would philosophize over himself and fate, until he had exhausted those two great subjects, and then, in a quiet and gentlemanly way, he would drown speculation in the traditional dram. He never drank anything but "Old Rye," and he flattered himself that he did so only when he pleased. If he somewhat misapprehended his relation with old rye, it was perhaps no wonder; for in his semi-occasional encounters with this gentlemanly intoxicant, his only witnesses and commentators were his collie dogs, and they never ventured upon an opinion in the matter. When he was in a good mood Stanwood would sit in his doorway of a summer evening, with the collies at his feet, and commune with nature as amicably as if she had been his best friend. Between his cabin door and "the range" stretched twenty miles of arid prairie; but when the sun was in the west, the wide expanse took on all the mystic hues that the Orientals love and seek to imitate, and he gazed across it to the towering peaks with a sense of ownership which no paternal acres, no velvet lawns, nor stately trees, could have awakened in him. A row of telegraph-poles, which had doubtless once been trees, straggled along the line of the railroad, a few miles to the north, and his own windmill indicated the presence of water underground. But as far as the eye could reach not a living tree could be seen, not a glimmer of a lake or rivulet; only the palpitating plain and the soaring peaks, and at his feet the cluster of faithful friends, gazing, from time to time, with rapt devotion into his face. On these meditative evenings Stanwood found a leisurely companionship in reminiscences of better days; reminiscences more varied and brilliant than most men have for solace. But it was part of his philosophy never to dwell on painful contrasts. Even in the memory of his wife, whom he had adored and lost, even into that memory he allowed no poignant element to enter. He thought of her strong and gay and happy, making a joy of life. He never permitted the recollection of her illness and death, nor of his own grief, to intrude itself. Indeed he had succeeded in reality, as well as in retrospect, in evading his grief. There had been a little daughter of six, who had formed part of the painful association which his temperament rebelled against. Foregoing, in her favor, the life-interest in her mother's estate to which he was entitled, he had placed the child under the guardianship of an uncle whom he equally disliked and trusted, and, having thus disposed of his last responsibility, he had gone forth into what proved to be the very diverting world of Europe. The havoc which some ten years' sojourn wrought in his very considerable fortune would force one to the conclusion that he had amused himself with gambling; but whether in stocks, or at faro tables, or in some more subtle wise, was known only to himself. He had returned to his own country by way of Japan and San Francisco, and then he had set his face to the East, with an idea that he must repair his shattered fortunes. When once the Rocky Mountains were crossed, however, and no longer stood as a bulwark between him and unpleasant realities, he suddenly concluded to go no farther. It struck him that he was hardly prepared for the hand-to-hand struggle with fortune which he had supposed himself destined to; it would be more in his line to take up a claim and live there as master, though it were only master of a desert. The little daughter, with whom he kept up a desultory correspondence, had expressed her regret in a letter written in the stiff, carefully worded style of "sweet sixteen," and he had never guessed the passion of disappointment which the prim little letter concealed. This had happened five years ago. He had taken up his claim successfully, but there success ended. After four years or more of rather futile "ranching," he sold most of his stock to his men, who promptly departed with it, and proceeded to locate a claim a few miles distant. The incident amused him as illustrating the dignity of labor, and kindred philosophical theories which the present age seems invented to establish. One horse, a couple of cows, and his six collie dogs of assorted ages and sizes, he still retained, and with their assistance he was rapidly making away with the few hundreds accruing from the sale of his stock and farming implements. He had placed the money in the bank at Cameron City, a small railroad-station in a hollow five miles north of him, and it was when his eyes fell upon the rapidly diminishing monthly balance that he thought he saw coming that unpleasant alternative of which mention has been made. He found no little entertainment, after the departure of his men, in converting their late sleeping-apartment into what he was pleased to call a "museum." To this end nothing further was necessary, after removing all traces of their late occupancy, than that two old sole-leather trunks should render up their contents, consisting of half-forgotten souvenirs of travel. The change was magic. Unmounted photographs appeared upon the wall, an ivory Faust and Gretchen from Nuremberg stood, self-centred and unobservant, upon the chimney-shelf among trophies from Turkey, and Japan, Spain, and Norway. A gorgeous _kimono_ served as curtain at the south window, a Persian altar-cloth at the west; and through the west window, the great Peak gazed with stolid indifference upon all that splendor, while the generous Colorado sunshine poured itself in at the south in unstinted measure, just as lavishly as if its one mission had been to illuminate the already gorgeous display. And then, when all was done, Stanwood found to his surprise, that he still liked best to sit at his cabin-door, and watch the play of light on peak and prairie. Late one afternoon, as he sat in the doorway, at peace with himself, and in agreeable harmony with the world as he beheld it, his eye was caught by an indistinguishable object moving across the plain from the direction of Cameron City. He regarded it as he might have regarded the progress of a coyote or prairie-dog, till it stopped at his own gate, half a mile to the northward. A vague feeling of dissatisfaction came over him at the sight, but he did not disturb himself, nor make any remarks to the dogs on the subject. They however soon pricked up their ears, and sprang to their feet, excited and pleased. They were hospitable souls and welcomed the diversion of a visitor. As the wagon drew nearer, Stanwood observed that there was a woman sitting beside the driver; whereupon he repaired to his own room to give himself a hasty polish. The dogs began to bark in a friendly manner, and, under cover of their noise, the wagon came up and stopped before the door. Suddenly a rap resounded, and in acknowledgment of this unusual ceremony, the master of the house went so far as to pull on his best coat before stepping out into the main room. There in the doorway, cutting off the view of the Peak, stood a tall, well-dressed young woman, patting one of the dogs, while the others leaped, barking, about her. Somewhat mystified by this apparition, Stanwood approached, and said; "Good-evening, madam." "Good-evening," came the reply, in a rather agitated voice. "I'm Elizabeth." "The deuce you are!" Struck, not by the unfatherly, but by the ungentlemanly nature of his response, Stanwood promptly gathered himself together, to meet the situation. "Pray come in and take a seat," he said; and then, falling into the prairie speech: "Where are you stopping?" The tall young lady, who had entered, but who had not taken the proffered seat, looked at him a moment, and then she came toward him with a swift, impulsive movement, and said: "Why, papa, I don't believe you know me! I'm Elizabeth!" "Yes, yes, oh, yes! I understand. But I thought perhaps you were paying a visit somewhere--some school friend, you know, or--or--yes--some school friend." The girl was looking at him half bewildered, half solicitous. It was not the reception she had anticipated at the end of her two-thousand-mile journey. But then, this was not the man she had expected to see--this gaunt, ill-clad figure, with the worn, hollow-eyed face, and the gray hair. Why, her father was only fifty years old, yet the lines she saw were lines of age and suffering. Suddenly all her feeling of perplexity and chagrin and wounded pride was merged in a profound tenderness. She drew nearer, extending both her hands, placed them gently upon his shoulders and said: "Will you please to give me a kiss?" Stanwood, much abashed, bent his head toward the blooming young face, and imprinted a perfunctory kiss upon the waiting lips. This unaccustomed exercise completed his discomfiture. For the first time in his life he felt himself unequal to a social emergency. A curious sensation went over Elizabeth. Somehow she felt as if she had been kissed by a total stranger. She drew back and picked up her small belongings. For a moment Stanwood thought she was going. "Don't you get your mail out here any more?" she asked. "Not very regularly," he replied, guiltily conscious of possessing two or three illegible letters from his daughter which he had not yet had the enterprise to decipher. "Then you did not expect me?" "Well, no, I can't say I did. But"--with a praiseworthy if not altogether successful effort--"I am very glad to see you, my dear." The first half of this speech was so much more convincing than the last, that the girl felt an unpleasant stricture about her throat, and knew herself to be on the verge of tears. "I could go back," she said, with a pathetic little air of dignity. "Perhaps you would not have any place to put me if I should stay." "Oh, yes; I can put you in the museum"--and he looked at her with the first glimmer of appreciation, feeling that she would be a creditable addition to his collection of curiosities. Elizabeth met his look with one of quick comprehension, and then she broke into a laugh which saved the day. It was a pleasant laugh in itself, and furthermore, if she had not laughed just at that juncture she would surely have disgraced herself forever by a burst of tears. Cy Willows, meanwhile, believing that "the gal and her pa" would rather not be observed at their first meeting, had discreetly busied himself with the two neat trunks which his passenger had brought. "Hullo, Jake!" he remarked, as the ranchman appeared at the door; "this is a great day for you, ain't it?" The two men took hold of one of the trunks together, and carried it into the museum. When the door opened, Willows almost dropped his end from sheer amazement. He stood in the middle of the room, staring from Venus to altar-cloth, from altar-cloth to censer. "Gosh!" he remarked at last. "Your gal's struck it rich!" The "gal" took it more quietly. To her, the master of this fine apartment was not Jake Stanwood, the needy ranchman, but Jacob Stanwood, Esq., gentleman and scholar, to the manor born. She stepped to the window, and looked out across the shimmering plain to the rugged peaks and the warm blue slopes of "the range," and a sigh of admiration escaped her. "Oh, papa!" she cried, "how beautiful it is!" "And I'll be durned if 't wa' n't the mountings the gal was looking at all the time!" Cy Willows declared, when reporting upon the astonishing situation at the ranch. Stanwood himself was somewhat impressed by the girl's attitude. The museum had come to seem to his long unaccustomed mind a very splendid apartment indeed. When, a few minutes later, Elizabeth joined him in the rudely furnished living-room of the cabin, he felt something very like chagrin at her first observation. "Oh, papa!" she cried. "I'm so glad the rest of it is a real ranch house! I've always wanted to see just how a real ranchman lives!" He thought ruefully that she would soon learn, to her cost, how a very poverty-stricken ranchman lived. His examination of the larder had not been encouraging. "I am afraid we shall have rather poor pickings for supper, my dear," he said apologetically. He called her "my dear" from the first; it seemed more non-committal and impersonal than the use of her name. He had not called a young lady by her first name for fifteen years. "I have my dinner in the middle of the day," he went on, "and I seem to have run short of provisions this evening." "I suppose you have a man-cook," she remarked, quite ignoring his apology. "Yes," he replied grimly. "I have the honor to fill that office myself." "Why; isn't there anybody else about the place?" "No. I'm 'out of help' just now, as old Madam Gallup used to say. I don't suppose you remember old Madam Gallup." "Oh, yes, I do! Mama used to have her to dinner every Sunday. She looked like a duchess, but when she died people said she died of starvation. That was the year after you went away," she added thoughtfully. It seemed very odd to hear this tall young woman say "mama," and to realize that it was that other Elizabeth that she was laying claim to. Why, the girl seemed almost as much of a woman as her mother. Fifteen years! A long time to be sure. He ought to have known better than to have slipped into reminiscences at the very outset. Uncomfortable things, always--uncomfortable things! He would not let her help him get the supper, and with a subtle perception of the irritation which he was at such pains to conceal, she forbore to press the point, and went, instead, and sat in the doorway, looking dreamily across the prairie. Stanwood noted her choice of a seat, with a curious mixture of jealousy and satisfaction. He should be obliged either to give up his seat, or to share it for awhile; but then it was gratifying to know that the girl had a heart for that view. And the girl sat there wondering vaguely why she was not homesick. Everything had been different from her anticipations. No one to meet her at Springtown; no letter, no message at the hotel. She had had some difficulty in learning how to reach Cameron City, and when, at last, she had found herself in the forlorn little prairie train, steaming eastward across the strange yellow expanse, unbroken by the smallest landmark, she had been assailed by strange doubts and questionings. At Cameron City, again, no longed-for, familiar face had appeared among the loungers at the station, and the situation and her part in it seemed most uncomfortable. When, however, she had made known her identity, and word was passed that this was "Jake Stanwood's gal," there were prompt offers of help, and she had soon secured the services of Cy Willows and his "team." As she sat in the doorway, watching the glowing light, the sun dropped behind the Peak. She remembered how Cy had said he "hadn't never heard Jake Stanwood speak of havin' a gal of his own." The shadow of the great mountain had fallen upon the plain, and a chill, half imaginary, half real, possessed itself of her. Was she homesick after all? She stood up and stepped out upon the prairie, which had never yielded an inch of space before the cabin door. Off to the southward was a field of half-grown alfalfa that had taken on a weird, uncanny green in the first sunless light. She looked across to the remote prairie, and there, on the far horizon, the sunlight still shone, a golden circlet. No. She was not homesick; anything but that! She had been homesick almost ever since she could remember, but now she was in her father's house and everything must be well. When Stanwood came to look for her he found her surrounded by the assiduous collies, examining with much interest the tall, ungainly windmill, with its broad wooden flaps. On the whole, their first evening together was a pleasant one. Stanwood listened with amused appreciation to the account of her journey. She would be a credit to his name, he thought, out there in the old familiar world which he should never see again. He had relinquished to her the seat on the door-step, and himself sat on a saw-horse outside the door, where the lamp-light struck his face. Her head and figure presented themselves to him as a silhouette, and somehow that suited him better than to see her features distinctly; it seemed to keep their relation back where it had always been, a sort of impersonal outline. Elizabeth, for her part, thought that, for all his shabby clothes and thin, sunburnt face, her father was more manifestly a gentleman than any man she had ever seen. She learned several things in the course of that conversation. She found that when she touched upon her reasons for coming to him, her feeling that they were only two and that they ought to be together, his eyes wandered and he looked bored; when she spoke of her mother he seemed uncomfortable. Was she like her mother? No, he said, she was not in the least like her mother; he did not see that she took after anybody in particular. Then, as if to escape the subject, was her Uncle Nicholas as rabid a teetotaller as ever? He liked best to hear about her school days and of the gay doings of the past year, her first year of "society." "And you don't like society?" he asked at last, with a quizzical glance at her pretty profile. She had turned her eyes from the contemplation of his face, and seemed to be conjuring up interesting visions out of the darkness. "Yes, I do!" she said with decision. "You won't get much society out here," he remarked, and his spirits rose again. Of course she would be bored to death without it. "I like some things better than society," she replied. "For instance?" She turned her face full upon him, and boldly said, "You." "The deuce you do!" he cried, and was instantly conscious that it was the second time that he had forgotten himself. A little crinkle appeared in the silhouette of a cheek, and she said, "I do like to hear you say 'the deuce.' I don't believe Uncle Nicholas ever said 'the deuce' in his life." "Nick was always a bore," Stanwood rejoined, more pleased with the implied disparagement of his pet aversion than with the very out-spoken compliment to himself. "I think Uncle Nicholas has done his duty by me," Elizabeth remarked demurely, "but I am glad he has got through. I came of age last Monday, the day I started for Colorado." "When did you decide to come?" "About five years ago. I always meant to start on the 7th of June of this year." "You make your plans a long way ahead. What is the next step on the program?" "I haven't the least idea." "For such a very decided young lady, isn't that rather odd?" "There are some things one can't decide all by one's self." "Such as?" "The next step." "Perhaps you will find it easier after a week or two of ranching." "You don't think I am going to like ranching?" "Hardly." "Don't you like it?" "Oh, I'm an old man, with my life behind me." The lamp-light on his face was stronger than he was aware; Elizabeth saw a good deal in it which he was not in the habit of displaying to his fellow-creatures. She stooped, and patted one of the collies, and told him she thought she really ought to go to bed; upon which Stanwood rose with alacrity, and conducted her to the museum, which had been turned into a very habitable sleeping-room. Having closed the door upon his latest "curiosity," Stanwood proceeded to perform a solemn rite in the light of the stars. He took his demijohn of old rye, and, followed by the six collies, he carried it out a few rods back of the cabin, where he gravely emptied its contents upon the sandy soil. At the first remonstrating gulp of the demijohn, which seemed to be doing its best to arrest the flow, a strong penetrating aroma assailed his nostrils, but he never flinched. Great as his confidence was in his own supremacy in his peculiarly intimate relations with old rye, he did not wish to "take any chances" with himself. The dogs stood around in an admiring circle, and sniffed perplexedly at the strange libation which was clearly not intended for their kind. Did they realize that it was poured before the altar of parental devotion? They stood there wagging their tails with great vigor, and never taking their eyes off their master's countenance. Perhaps they appreciated the odd, half-deprecating, half-satirical expression of the face they knew so well. It would have been a pity if somebody had not done so. It is to be feared, however, that the remark with which Stanwood finally turned away from the odorous pool and walked toward the house was beyond the comprehension of the canine intellect. To himself, at least, the remorseful pang was very real with which he said, half aloud, "Pity to waste good liquor like that! Some poor wretch might have enjoyed it." The morning following his visitor's arrival, the two drove together in the rattling old ranch wagon to Cameron City. Elizabeth was enchanted with the ingenious introduction of odd bits of rope into the harness, by means of which the whole establishment was kept from falling apart. She thought the gait of the lazy old nag the most amusing exhibition possible, and as for the erratic jolts and groans of the wagon, it struck her that this was a new form of exercise, the pleasurable excitement and unexpectedness of which surpassed all former experiences. At Cameron City she made purchase of a saddle-horse, a very well-made bronco with dramatic possibilities in his eye. "I don't know where you will get a sidesaddle," Stanwood had demurred when the purchase was first proposed. "A sidesaddle? I have it in my trunk." "You don't say so! I should think it would jam your bonnets." "Oh, I packed it with my ranch outfit." So they jogged and rattled over to Cameron City, where Elizabeth had made the acquisition, not only of a saddle-horse, but of two or three most interesting new acquaintances. "I do like the people so much, papa," she declared as they drove out of town, having left the new horse to be shod. "You don't mind their calling you 'Jake Stanwood's gal'?" "No, indeed! I think it's perfectly lovely!" "It cannot but be gratifying to me," Stanwood remarked, in the half-satirical tone he found easiest in conversation with this near relative; "in fact, I may say it _is_ gratifying to me, to find that the impression is mutually favorable. Halstead, the ruffianly looking sheep-raiser who called you 'Madam,' confided to me that you were the first woman he had ever met who knew the difference between a horse and a cow; and Simmons, the light-haired man who looks like a deacon, but who is probably the worst thief in four counties, told me I ought to be proud of 'that gal'!" "Oh, papa, what gorgeous compliments! Don't you want a swap?" "A what?" "A swap. That's what we call it when we pay back one compliment with another." He turned and looked at her with an amused approval which was almost paternal. "It is most refreshing," he said, "to have the vocabulary of the effete West enlivened with these breezy expressions from the growing East." "But, papa, you must really like slang, now really! Uncle Nicholas could never tolerate it." "There you strike a chord! I desire you to speak nothing but slang if Nick objects." Agreeable badinage had always been a favorite pastime with Jacob Stanwood. If Elizabeth had but guessed it, a taste of it was worth more to him than all the filial devotion she held in reserve. "And now for the swap," she said. "You are not modest, I hope?" "Heaven forbid!" "Well, then! Miss Hunniman--you remember Miss Hunniman? She used to make mama's dresses, and now she makes mine. She told me only a year ago that whenever she read about Sir Galahad or the Chevalier Bayard or Richard the Lion-hearted, she always thought of you; which was very inconvenient, because it made her mix them up, and she never could remember which of them went to the Crusades and which of them did not!" Anything in the nature of a reminiscence was sure to jar upon Stanwood. He preferred to consider the charming young person beside him as an agreeable episode; he half resented any reminder of the permanence of their relation. Therefore, in response to this little confidence, which caused the quaint figure of Miss Hunniman to present itself with a hundred small, thronging associations of the past, he only remarked drily: "I suppose you know that if you stay out here any length of time you will spoil your complexion." Elizabeth was impressionable enough to feel the full significance of such hints and side-thrusts as were cautiously administered to her. She was quite aware that she and her father were totally at odds on the main point at issue, that he had as yet no intention of sharing his solitude with her for any length of time. As the days went by she perceived something else. She was not long in discovering that he was extremely poor, and she became aware in some indefinable wise that he held existence very cheap. Had her penetration been guided by a form of experience which she happily lacked, she might have suspected still another factor in the situation which had an unacknowledged influence upon Stanwood's attitude. Meanwhile their relation continued to be a friendly one. They were, in fact, peculiarly congenial, and they could not well live together without discovering it. They rode together, they cooked together, they set up a target, and had famous shooting-matches. Elizabeth learned to milk the cows and make butter, to saddle her bronco and mount him from the ground. They taught the pups tricks, they tamed a family of prairie-dogs, they had a plan for painting the windmill. By the end of a week Stanwood was in such good humor, that he made a marked concession. One of the glowing, glimmering sunsets they both delighted in was going on, beautifying the prairie as warmly as the sky. Stanwood came from the shed where he had been feeding the horses, and found his visitor seated in the doorway. He stood observing her critically for a few moments. She made an attractive picture there in the warm sunset light. Before he could check himself he found himself wishing that her mother could see her. Ah! If her mother were here too, it would be almost worth while to begin life over again. The girl, unconscious of his scrutiny, sat gazing at the view he loved. As he watched her tranquil happy face he felt reconciled and softened. Her hands lay palm downward on her lap. They were shapely hands, large and generous; a good deal tanned and freckled now. There was something about them which he had not noticed before; and almost involuntarily his thoughts got themselves spoken. "Do you know, Elizabeth, your _thumbs_ are like your mother's!" Elizabeth felt that it was a concession, but she had learned wisdom. She did not turn her eyes from the range, and she only said quietly, "I am glad of that, papa." Emboldened by the consciousness of her own discretion, she ventured, later in the evening, to broach a subject fraught with risks. Having armed herself with a piece of embroidery, and placed the lamp between herself and the object of her diplomacy, she remarked in a casual manner: "I suppose, papa, that Uncle Nicholas has told you how rich we are." "Nick wrote me with his usual consciousness of virtue that his investments for you had turned out well." "Our income is twice what it was ten years ago." "I congratulate you, my dear. I only regret the moral effect upon Nick." "And I congratulate _you_, papa. Of course it's really yours as long as you live." "I think you have been misinformed, my dear. It was your mother's property, and is now yours." "Oh, no, papa! You have a life-interest in it. I am surprised that you did not know that." "And I am surprised that you should be, or pretend to be, ignorant that the property stands in your name. I have no more concern in it than--Miss Hunniman." "But, papa!" "We won't discuss the matter, if you please, my dear. We can gain nothing by discussion." "I don't want to discuss it, papa," taking a critical survey of her embroidery; "but if you won't go snacks, I won't. Uncle Nicholas told me never to say 'go snacks,'" she added, with a side glance around the edge of the lamp-shade. His face relaxed so far that she ventured to add: "Uncle Nicholas would be furious if we were to go snacks." Stanwood smiled appreciatively. "Nothing could be more painful to me than to miss an opportunity of making Nick furious," he said; "but I have not lived fifty years without having learned to immolate myself and my dearest ambitions upon the appropriate altars." After which eloquent summing-up, he turned the conversation into another channel. It was not long after this that Stanwood found himself experiencing a peculiar depression of spirits, which he positively refused to trace to its true source. He told himself that he wanted his freedom; he was getting tired of Elizabeth; he must send her home. It was nonsense for her to stay any longer, spoiling her complexion and his temper; it was really out of the question to have this thing go on any longer. Having come to which conclusion, it annoyed him very much to find himself enjoying her society. His depression of spirits was intermittent. One morning, when he found her sitting on the saw-horse, with the new bronco taking his breakfast from a bag she held in her lap, the sun shining full in her clear young face, health and happiness in every line of her figure, a positive thrill of fatherly pride and affection seized him. But the reaction was immediate. He turned on his heel, disgusted at this refutation of his theories. He was wretched and uncomfortable as he had never been before, and if it was not this intruding presence that made him so, what was it? Of course he was getting tired of her; what could be more natural? For fifteen years he had not known the pressure of a bond. Of course it was irksome to him! He really must get rid of it. His moodiness did not escape Elizabeth, nor did she fail to note the recent accentuating of those lines in his face, which had at first struck her painfully, but which she had gradually become accustomed to. In her own mind she concluded that her father had lived too long at this high altitude, and that she must persuade him to leave it. "Papa," she said, as they stood for a moment in the doorway after supper, "don't you think it would be good fun to go abroad this autumn?" His drooping spirit revived; she was getting tired of ranching. "A capital plan, my dear. Just what you need," he replied, with more animation than he had shown since morning. "Let us start pretty soon," she went on persuasively, deceived by his ready acquiescence. "Us? My dear, what are you thinking of? I' m tired to death of Europe! Nothing would induce me to go." "Oh, well. Then I don't care anything about it," she said. "We'll stay where we are, of course. I am as happy and contented as I could be anywhere." Stanwood turned upon her with a sudden, fierce irritation. "This is nonsense!" he cried. "You are not to bury yourself alive out here! I won't permit it! The sooner you go, _the better for both of us_!" His voice was harsh and strained; it was the tone of it more than the words themselves that cut her to the heart. He did not want her; it had all been a miserable failure. She controlled herself with a strong effort. Her voice did not tremble; there was only the pathos of repression in it as she answered: "Very well, papa; perhaps I have had my share." Stanwood thought, and rebelled against the thought, that he had never seen a finer thing than her manner of replying. For himself, he felt as if he had come to the dregs of life and should like to fling the cup away. They occupied themselves that evening a good deal with the collies, and they parted early; and then it was that Stanwood was brought face to face with himself. For half an hour or more he made a pretence of reading the papers, and looking at the pictures in a stray magazine, thus keeping himself at arm's length, as it were. But after a while even that restraint became unendurable. He went to the back door of the house and opened it. The collies appeared in a delighted group to rush into the house. He suffered them to do so, and then, stepping out, he closed the door upon them and stood outside. There was a strong north wind, and, for a moment, its breath refreshed him like a dash of cold water. Only for a moment, however. The sense of oppression returned upon him, and he felt powerless to shake it off. With the uncertain, wavering step of a sleep-walker, he moved across to the spot where he had poured his libation three weeks ago. He stood there, strangely fascinated, glancing once or twice, furtively over his shoulder. Then, hardly knowing what he did, he got down on his knees and put his face to the ground. Was it the taste or the smell that he craved? He could not have told. He only knew that he knelt there and pressed his face to the earth, and that a sickening sense of disappointment came over him at finding all trace of it gone. He got up from his knees, very shaky and weak, and then it was that he looked himself in the face and knew what the ignominious craving meant. He slunk into the house, cowed and shamed. The sight of the dogs, huddled about the door inside, gave him a guilty start, and he drove them angrily out. Then he got himself to bed in the dark. He lay there in the dark, wondering foolishly what Jacob Stanwood would say if he knew what had happened; till, suddenly, he became aware that his mind was wandering, upon which he laughed harshly. Elizabeth heard the laugh, and a vague fear seized upon her. She got up and listened at her door, but the noise was not repeated. Perhaps it was a coyote outside; they sometimes made strange noises. She went to the window and drew back the Persian altar-cloth. The wind came from the other side of the house; she had been too preoccupied to notice it before. Now it shook the house rudely, and then went howling and roaring across the plains. It was strange to hear it and to feel its force, and yet to see no evidence of it: not a tree to wave its branches, not a cloud to scurry through the sky; only the vast level prairie and the immovable hills, and up above them a sky, liquid and serene, with steady stars shining in its depths, all unconcerned with the raving wind. She felt comforted and strengthened, and when she went back to bed she rested in the sense of comfort. But she did not sleep. She was hardly aware that she was not sleeping, as the hours passed unmarked, until, in a sudden lull of the wind, a voice struck her ear; a voice speaking rapidly and eagerly. She sprang to her feet. The voice came from her father's room. Had some one lost his way in the night, and had her father taken him in? It did not sound like a conversation; it was monotonous, unvarying, unnatural. She hastily threw on a dressing-gown, and crept to her father's door. She recognized his voice now, but the words were incoherent. He was ill, he was delirious. There was no light within. She opened the door and whispered "Papa," but he did not hear her. In a moment she had lighted a lamp; another moment, and she stood beside him. He was sitting straight up in his bed, talking and gesticulating violently; his eyes glittered in the lamp-light, his face showed haggard and intense. Elizabeth placed the lamp upon a stand close at hand. "Papa," she said, "don't you know me? I'm Elizabeth." He caught at the name. "You lie!" he cried shrilly. "Elizabeth's dead! I won't have her talked about! She's dead, I say! Hush-sh! Hush-sh! Don't wake her up. Sleep's a good thing--a good thing." On the table where she had placed the lamp was a tiny bottle marked "chloral." There was also a glass of water upset upon the table. Stanwood's clothing and other belongings lay scattered upon the floor. She had never before seen his room disordered. Well! he was ill, and here she was to take care of him. He was not talking so fast now, but what he said was even more incoherent. The light and the presence of another person in the room seemed to confuse and trouble him. She took his hand and felt the pulse. The hand was hot, and grasped hers convulsively. She put his coat over his shoulders, and then she sat with her arm about him, and gradually he stopped talking, and turned his face to hers with a questioning look. "What can I do for you, papa? Tell me if there is anything I can do for you." "Do for me?" he repeated. "Yes, dear. Is there nothing I can do, nothing I can get for you?" "Get for me?" He drew off from her a little, and a crafty look, utterly foreign to the man's nature, came into the tense face. "I don't suppose you've got a drop of whisky!" he said insinuatingly. The sound of the word upon his own lips seemed to bring the excitement back on him. "Whisky! Yes, that's it! I don't care who knows it! Whisky! Whisky!" He fairly hissed the words. For the first time since she came into the room Elizabeth was frightened. "I think you ought to have a doctor," she said. She felt him lean against her again, and she gently lowered him to the pillow. His head sank back, and he lay there with white lips and closed lids. She knelt beside him, watching his every breath. After a few minutes he opened his eyes. They were dull, but no longer wild. "Ought you not to have a doctor, papa dear?" she asked. Intelligence came struggling back into his face. "No, my dear," he said, gathering himself for a strong effort. "I have had attacks like this before." "And a stimulant is all you need?" "All I need," he muttered. His eyes closed, and his breath came even and deep. Elizabeth knelt there, thankful that he slept. How white his lips were! How spent he looked! He had asked for whisky. Perhaps even in his delirium he knew what he wanted; perhaps a stimulant was all he needed. Of course it was! How stupid not to have understood! She hurried to her room and got a small brandy-flask that had been given her for the journey. She had emptied it for a sick man on the train. She went back to her father. He was sleeping heavily. She glanced at his watch lying upon the table beside the chloral bottle. One o'clock! She wondered whether the "store" would be open. She should hate to go to a saloon. But then, that was no matter. If her father needed a stimulant he must have it. She dressed herself quickly, and put her purse and the brandy-flask into her pocket. Then she hurried to the shed, where she saddled the bronco. Her father had once told her that she would have made a first-rate cowboy. Well, now was her chance to prove it. The collies, who had taken refuge from the wind on the south side of the shed, came trotting in at the open door, and assembled, a curious little shadowy group, about her. But they soon dropped off to sleep, and when she led the bronco out and closed the door upon them, a feeble wag of a tail or two was all the evidence of interest they gave. She twisted the bridle round a post and slipped into the house for one more look at her patient. He was sleeping profoundly. She placed the lamp upon the floor in a corner, so that the bed was in shadow. Then she came back to the bedside and watched the sleeper again for a moment. She touched his forehead and found it damp and cool. The fever was past. Perhaps he was right; there was no need of a doctor--it was nothing serious. Perhaps the stuff in that little bottle had done something queer to him. A stimulant was all he needed. But he needed that, for his face was pitifully pallid and drawn. A moment later the bronco was bearing her swiftly through the night, his hoof-falls echoing in a dull rhythm. The wind still came in gusts, blowing straight into her face, but it was warm and pleasant. When she had passed through the gate of the ranch the road went between wire fences, straight north to Cameron City. Now and then a group of horses, roused, perhaps, by her approach, stood with their heads over the fence watching her pass, while the wind stretched their manes and tails out straight to one side. She wished she could stop and make friends with them, but there was no time for that. Her father might wake up and call for her. So on they sped, she and the bronco, waking the cattle on either side of the road, startling more than one prowling coyote, invisible to them, causing more than one prairie-dog, snug in his hole, to fancy it must be morning. And the great night, encompassing the world, gleaming in the heavens, brooding upon the earth, made itself known to her for the first time. Elizabeth never forgot that ride through the beautiful brooding night. Nature seemed larger and deeper and grander to her ever after. As they came among the houses of the town she reined in the bronco and went quietly, lest she should wake the people. There was a light burning in the room over the store, and the window was open. A woman answered her summons. It was the wife of the storekeeper. Her husband was absent, she said, and she was up with a sick baby. She readily filled the little flask, and was sympathetic and eager to help. Shouldn't she send somebody over to the ranch? There wasn't any doctor in Cameron City, but Cy Willows knew a heap about physic. No. Elizabeth said her father was better already, only he seemed in need of a stimulant. No, she did not want an escort. The night was lovely, and she wouldn't miss her solitary ride home for anything. She was so glad Mrs. Stiles had the whisky. It would be just what her father needed when he waked up. And when, some hours later, Jacob Stanwood awoke, he found his daughter sitting beside him in the gray dawn. "Why, Elizabeth!" he said, "is anything the matter? Did I disturb you?" She leaned toward him, and laid her hand on his. "You were ill in the night, papa, and asked for a stimulant, and I got it for you." "A stimulant?" he repeated vaguely. "What stimulant? Where did you get it?" "I got it at the store. It's whisky." "Whisky?" he cried, with a sudden, eager gleam. Elizabeth was enchanted to find that she had done the right thing. "Here it is, papa," she said, drawing the flask from her pocket, and pouring a little of the contents into a glass that stood ready. He watched her with that intense, eager gleam. "Fill it up! Fill it up!" he cried impatiently. "A drop like that is no good to a man." He was sitting straight up again, just as she found him in the night. He reached his thin hand for the glass, which he clutched tightly. The smell of the liquor was strong in the room. His eyes were glittering with excitement. The girl stood beside him, contemplating with affectionate delight the success of her experiment. Her utter innocence and unsuspiciousness smote him to the heart. Something stayed his hand so that he did not even lift the glass to his lips. Slowly, with his eyes fixed upon the sweet, young face, he extended his arm out over the side of the bed, the glass shaking plainly in his hold. She did not notice it; she was looking into his face which had softened strangely. "Elizabeth," he said. There was a sound of breaking glass, and a strong smell of liquor pouring out upon the floor. "O papa!" she cried, distressed. He had sunk back against the pillows, pale with exhaustion. But when she lifted the fragments of the glass, saying: "Isn't it a pity, papa?" he only answered in his usual tone, "There's no harm done, my dear. I don't believe it was just what I needed, after all." He smiled with a new, indescribable sweetness and weariness. "I think I could sleep, now," he said. At noon Stanwood was quite himself again; himself and more, he thought, with some surprise. He would not have owned that it was a sense of victory that had put new life into his veins. Victory over a vulgar passion must partake somewhat of the vulgarity of the passion itself. No, Stanwood was not the man to glory in such a conquest. But he could, at last, glory in this daughter of his. As she told him with sparkling eyes of her beautiful ride through the night, through the beautiful brooding night, her courage and her innocence seemed to him like a fair, beneficent miracle. But he made no comment upon her story. He only sat in the doorway, looking down the road where he had watched her approach a few weeks ago, and when she said, noting his abstraction, "A penny for your thoughts, papa!" he asked, in a purely conversational tone, "Elizabeth,"--she always loved to hear him say "Elizabeth,"--"Elizabeth, do you think it would make Nick very mad indeed if we were to go snacks?" "Mad as hops!" she cried. "Then let's do it!" Elizabeth beamed. "And Elizabeth, there's no place like Switzerland in summer. Let's pack up and go!" "Let us!" she answered, very softly, with only a little exultant tremor on the words. She never guessed all that she had won that day; she only knew that life stretched on before her, a long, sunny pathway, where she and her father might walk together in the daily and hourly good-comradeship that she loved. IV. AT THE KEITH RANCH. The dance was in full swing--a vehement, rhythmic, dead-in-earnest ranch dance. Eight couples on the floor tramped or tiptoed, as the case might be, but always in perfect time with the two unmelodious fiddles. The tune, if tune it might be called, went over and over and over again, with the monotonous persistency of a sawmill, dominating the rhythmic tread of the dancers, but not subduing the fancy of the caller-out. The caller-out for the moment was a curly-headed lad of twenty, with a shrewd, good-humored face. He stood in a slouching attitude, one shoulder much higher than the other, and as he gave forth, in a singsong voice, his emphatic rhymed directions, his fingers played idly with the red-silk lacings of his brown flannel shirt. To an imaginative looker-on those idly toying fingers had an indefinable air of being very much at home with the trigger of the six-shooter at the lad's belt. So, at least, it struck Lem Keith. "Swing him round for old Mother Flannigan! You've swung him so nice, now swing him again, again! On to the next, and swing that gent! Now straight back, and swing your own man again!" Tramp, tramp, tramp went the rhythmic feet; diddle-diddle-dee went the fiddles. There was not much talking among either dancers or sitters-out. Occasionally one of the babies in the adjoining bedroom waked and wailed, but on the whole they were well-behaved babies. There they lay on the bed, six in a row, while their mothers eagerly snatched their bit of pleasure at the cost of a night's sleep. Lemuel Keith, joint host with his brother on this occasion, sat on a bench against the wall, contemplating with wonder the energy of these overworked women. Beside him sat the husband of one of them, a tall, gaunt ranchman, with his legs crossed, poising upon a bony knee an atom of humanity in a short plaided woollen frock. "How old is your baby?" asked Lem, mindful of his duties as host. "Four months," was the laconic reply; and as though embarrassed by the personal nature of the inquiry, the man rose and repaired to a remote corner, where he began a solemn waltz with his offspring in his arms. It was an April evening, and the windows were open to the south. A cool night-breeze came in, grateful alike to dancers and lookers-on. Lem sat watching his twin brother Joe, who was taking his turn at the dance. Lem usually watched Joe when he had the chance; for if the brothers were bewilderingly alike in appearance, they were animated by a spirit so unlike, that Joe's every look and action was a source of interest to Lem. Indeed, it was his taste for Joe's society that had made a Colorado ranchman of him. Nature had intended Lemuel Keith for a student, and then, by a strange oversight, had made him the twin-brother of a fascinating daredevil for whom the East was too narrow. Lem sat and watched Joe, and observed the progress of the dance, philosophizing over the scene in a way peculiar to himself. For his own part, he never danced if he could help himself, but he found the dancing human being a fruitful subject of contemplation. Joe's partner, in particular, amused and interested him. She was a rather dressy young person, with a rose-leaf complexion and a simpering mouth. Rose-leaf complexions are rare on the sun-drenched, wind-swept prairies, and the more effective for that. The possessor of this one, fully aware of her advantage, was displaying, for her partner's delectation, the most wonderful airs and graces. She glided about upon the points of her toes; she gave him her delicately poised finger-tips with a birdlike coyness which the glance of her beady black eyes belied. Joe was in his element, playing the bold yet insinuating cavalier. Lem Keith found a fascination in this first ranch dance of his. He liked the heartiness of the whole performance; he enjoyed the sharp-cut individuality of the people, their eccentricities of costume and deportment; he was of too sensitive a fibre not to feel the dramatic possibilities of the occasion. "Tenderfoot" as he was, the fact could not escape him that a man in a flannel shirt, with a pistol at his belt,--and most of the men were thus equipped,--was more than likely to have a touch of lawlessness about him. [Illustration: THE KEITH RANCH.] There was a pause between the two figures of the dance. Joe had taken his partner's fan, which he was gently waving to and fro before her face. She stood panting with affected exhaustion, glancing archly at her new "young man" from under studiously fluttering eyelids. The gaunt father, having stopped waltzing, had discovered that the woollen-clad baby was fast asleep on his shoulder. Over in another corner, under a window, was a red-faced cowboy, slumbering as tranquilly as the baby, his head sunk on his breast, a genial forelock waving lightly in the breeze. The fiddlers resumed their function. "Swing your pards!" cried the curly-headed boy; and once more all was commotion. The room seemed hot and crowded. Lem had shifted his position, and was standing opposite the windows. He looked toward them, and his glance was arrested. In the square of light cast outside by the lamps within was a sinister, malignant face. It was the face of a man whom the Keith boys had seen to-night for the first time. He had paid his seventy-five cents, and had received his numbered ticket like the others, by which simple ceremony all the requirements of ranch etiquette were fulfilled. Bub Quinn they called him--Bub Quinn from the Divide. Rather a nice-looking fellow, the brothers had agreed, attracted by his brilliant smile and hearty hand-shake. It was Bub Quinn who had brought the girl that Joe was dancing with, and now that Lem came to think of it, he could not remember having seen her dance with any one else, besides Quinn himself. Lem's heart gave a heavy thump almost before his brain had grasped the situation. Yet the situation was very plain. It was Joe and his little fool of a partner that those malignant eyes were following. They were light eyes, looking out from under level light eyebrows, and Lem frankly quaked at sight of them. The man's face was clean-shaven, showing high cheekbones and a firm, handsome mouth. He stood in an indolent attitude, with his hands in his pockets; but all the reckless passion of the desperado was concentrated in the level glance of those menacing eyes. "Meet your partner with a double _sashay_," cried the curly-headed boy. Diddle-diddle-dee squeaked the fiddles. Lem looked again at his brother. He was flirting outrageously. A door opened behind Lem, and a woman called him by name. He stepped into the kitchen, where two of his prairie neighbors were busy with the supper. It was Mrs. Luella Jenkins who had summoned him, kind, queer, warm-hearted Mrs. Luella. The "Keith boys" were giving their first dance, and she had undertaken to engineer the supper. "We've got the coffee on," she remarked, pointing over her shoulder at a couple of gallon-cans on the stove, from which an agreeable aroma was rising. "That's first-rate," said Lem, who had a much more distinct vision of Bub Quinn's eyes than of the mammoth tin cans. "Is there anything I can do to help?" "Well, I dunno," Mrs. Luella ruminated. Her speech was as slow as her movements were quick. "I was thinkin' 't was 'most a pity you hadn't had bun sandwiches." She looked regretfully at the rapidly growing pile of the ordinary kind with which the table was being loaded. "The buns taste kind o' sweet and pleasant, mixed up with the ham." Through the closed door came the scraping of the indefatigable fiddles. "Hold her tight, and run her down the middle!" shouted the voice of the caller-out. "Over to Watts's last fall," Mrs. Luella rambled on, slicing ham the while at a great rate, "they had bun sandwiches, and in the top of ary bun there was a toothpick stickin' up. If you've got toothpicks enough about the place, we might try it. It looks real tasty." "Mrs. Jenkins," Lem broke in, "do you know Bub Quinn?" "No; nor I don't want to," Luella answered curtly. "Why not?" "He's too handy with his shooting-irons to suit my taste." Then, resuming the thread of her discourse: "You don't think, now, you've got toothpicks enough? They'd set things off real nice." But Lem had departed. "I s'pose he's kind o' flustered with givin' their first dance," she said apologetically to her coadjutor among the sandwiches. Lem was a great favorite with Mrs. Luella. She liked him better than she did Joe. She was one of the few people who could, at a glance, tell the two brothers apart. She always spoke of Lem as the "little chap," though he was in fact precisely of a height with his brother; and she gave as the reason for the preference, that "the little chap wasn't a ramper." Unfortunately for Lem, perhaps, she was right. He was not a ramper. As Lem stepped out into the other room, the caller-out was shouting, "Promen-_ade_ all--you know where!" The sets were breaking up, and Joe with his best manner was leading his partner to a seat. The face had vanished from the window. Bub Quinn was striding across the room, and now planted himself in front of the recreant pair. "You're to come with me, Aggy," he growled. "Pray don't mention it!" cried Joe, relinquishing the girl to Quinn with a mocking reverence. Shrugging her shoulders, and pouting, Aggy moved away with her captor; not, however, without a parting glance over her shoulder at Joe. The two brothers met at the kitchen-door. "I say, Joe," Lem begged, "don't dance with that girl again." "And why not!" "You wouldn't ask why not if you had seen that ruffian's face at the window." "Didn't I see it, though?" scoffed Joe, in high spirits, and Lem knew that he had blundered. A new caller-out had taken the floor, and was shouting, "Seventeen to twenty-four, get on the floor and dance!" The pauses are short at a ranch dance, for each man, having a right in only one dance out of three or four, is eager for his turn. The women on this particular occasion might have been glad of a rest, for there were only ten of them to satisfy the demands of all the men, and steady dancing from eight o'clock to three is no light task. Nevertheless, each one rose with sufficient alacrity in response to the polite inquiry, "Will you assist me with this dance?" and in a few minutes the same many-colored woollen gowns, and much befrizzled heads, which had diversified the last sets, were lending lustre to the present dance. Neither Bub Quinn nor Joe Keith was included this time among those admonished to "get on the floor and dance," and Lem, thankful for the respite, stepped out on the piazza, where a group of men were lounging and smoking. The air outside was sharp and invigorating; the moon was full, and in its cold, clear light the Peak glimmered white and ghostly. Lem strolled off the piazza, and over to the group of sorry-looking broncos, in saddle or harness, standing hitched to the fence. He pushed in among them, patting their heads, or righting the blankets of the few that were fortunate enough to have such luxuries. He felt as though he should like to enter into confidential relations with them. They seemed, somehow, more of his own kind than the rough, jostling, pugnacious beings passing themselves off as men and brothers within there. He poked about from one to the other of the sturdy, plush-coated little beasts, till he came to a great white plow-horse harnessed to a sulky, and looking like a giant in contrast with the scrubby broncos. The amiability which is supposed to wait upon generous proportions proved to be a characteristic of this equine Goliath, for at Lem's approach he cocked his ears and turned his head with marked friendliness. Lem looked across the creature's rough neck to the firm, strong outlines of "the range," showing clearly in the moonlight; he drew his lungs full of the keen, thin air. But neither "the strength of the hills," nor the elixir of the air, could restore his equanimity. He could not throw off the weight that oppressed him. There was no shirking the truth. He was deadly afraid of Bub Quinn; the sight of that lowering face at the window had caused in him a horrible physical shrinking; the dread of an undefined mischief brewing weighed upon his spirit like a nightmare. "Great heavens! What a coward I am!" he groaned aloud. The white horse rubbed his velvet nose in mute sympathy against the young man's shoulder; but there was no solace that the white horse could give. Lem leaned against the friendly neck, and shut his teeth hard together. A lifelong chagrin welled up in him, flooding his soul with bitterness. If Lemuel Keith had not adored his brother, he would have hated him--hated him for possessing that one quality of rash courage beside which every other virtue seemed mean and worthless. Presently he found himself looking in at the window again. Joe had disappeared from the scene. Bub Quinn and his Aggy were sitting side by side in stony silence. The fiddles had fallen into a more sentimental strain; hints of "The Mocking Bird" might be heard struggling for utterance in the strings. In this ambitious attempt the pitch would get lower and lower, and then recover itself with a queer falsetto effect. Charley Leroy, the crack "bronco-buster" of the region, was caller-out this time. He was less inventive than the curly-headed boy, but he gave out his commands in the same chanting measure, and the tramp, tramp of the feet was as rhythmic as ever. The curly-headed boy was having his turn at the dance, "assisted" by a sallow, middle-aged woman in a brown woollen dress, who made frequent dashes into the adjoining room to quiet her baby. Lem noticed that the hands of the curly-headed boy were so tanned that the finger-nails showed white by contrast. He also observed that Aggy's neck was as pink as her cheeks, which had not been the case half an hour before. In his effort not to look at Bub Quinn, Lem's attention had become vague and scattered. He fixed his eyes upon an elderly man of an anxious countenance, with a shock of tow-colored hair sticking straight out in all directions. The man was having some difficulty in steering his partner through an intricate figure; he was the only person on the floor who did not keep step, and his movements became at every moment more vague and undecided. When, at last, the wiry, determined-looking "bronco-buster" sprang upon the company the somewhat abstruse direction: "Lady round the gent, and the gent don't go; Lady round the lady, and the gent so-_lo_!" the "gent" in question became hopelessly bewildered, and stood stock still in the middle of the floor. By the time the set was disentangled, the dance seemed to be over, and the "bronco-buster" dismissed the dancers with the cynical prophecy, "You'll all get married on a _stor-my day_!" At this juncture, midnight being well passed, supper was announced. The kitchen door swung open, and the fragrant smell of the coffee took possession of the room, and floated out through the open window. As some one closed the window in his face, Lem followed the other loungers into the house. The men had all made a stampede for the kitchen; the women sat on chairs and benches against the wall, some of them leaning their heads back wearily, while others fanned themselves and their neighbors with vigor, not relaxing for a moment the somewhat strained vivacity which they felt that the occasion demanded. Bub Quinn's Aggy--no one knew her last name--sat a little apart from the others. She was apparently absorbed in the contemplation of her pocket-handkerchief, a piece of coarse finery, which she held by the exact middle, flirting it across her face in lieu of the fan, which had slid to the floor. Lem paused on his way to the kitchen, and observed her closely. He saw the pink of her neck take on a deeper tinge, and at the same moment Bub Quinn and Joe brushed past him and stood before the girl, each offering her a plate on which reposed two sandwiches and a section of cucumber pickle. This was Aggy's opportunity. She shrugged her shoulders, which were encased in red velveteen; she lifted and then dropped her eyes, poising her head first on one side and then on the other; she clasped her hands and wrinkled her forehead. Lem felt as though he were watching the capricious sparks which mark the progress of a slow match toward a powder-train. Bub Quinn, meanwhile, stood rooted before the girl, while Joe, having possessed himself of the fallen fan, met her coquetry with blandishments of the most undisguised nature. At length, hesitatingly, deprecatingly, she took Quinn's plate, but at the same time she moved along on the bench and offered Joe a seat. He promptly took it, and Quinn went away with the calmness of a silently gathering thunder-cloud. Quinn did not dance again that night; he withdrew to the piazza, where he kept guard at the window hour after hour. Joe danced with no one but Aggy, and sat beside her between whiles. Lem wandered about, trying not to watch Quinn. He knew his brother too well to remonstrate with him again by so much as a look. As the night wore on, the hilarity of the company increased, nothing daunted by the sight of a man lying here and there under a bench with a telltale black bottle protruding from his pocket. When the favorite figure of the "Bird in the Cage" was danced, and the caller-out shouted, "Bird flies out, and the crow flies in," everybody in the room, cried "Caw! caw!" in excellent imitation of the sable-hued fowl thereby typified, and the dancers, conscious of an admiring public, "swung" and "sashayed" with increased vehemence. Toward three o'clock Joe was again dancing with Quinn's Aggy, and as the caller-out chanted: "Swing that girl, that _pretty_ little girl, That _girl_ you left _behind you_!" he advanced toward her with an air of mock gallantry. At the same moment Bub Quinn stalked into the middle of the set, a sombrero planted firmly on his head, a long cowhide whip in his hand. He seized Aggy by the arm with a grip that must have hurt her, and said, "I'm going home now; you can do as you d---- please." A pistol-shot could not have made half the sensation caused by this breach of etiquette; indeed, it would not have been half so unprecedented. Aggy turned with a startled defiance, but at sight of Quinn's face she recoiled. "I'm all ready to go," she said sullenly; and too thoroughly cowed to cast even a parting glance at Joe, she hurried away to get ready for her twenty-mile drive. Joe, meanwhile, with perfect composure, provided himself with another partner, and the dance went on. And so the thunder-cloud had withdrawn, and the bolt had not fallen. It was not until the gray dawn was in the sky that the last of the revellers drove through the cow-yard, and out across the prairie to meet the rising sun. * * * * * By the time a second dawn had come the daily routine at the Keith ranch was running in its accustomed grooves. The cows had already been milked, yesterday's butter already packed for shipment, and Joe, surrounded by bustling men and barking dogs, was attending to the departure of the milk-carts for the town. The Keith brothers had a young but thriving dairy-trade, and Joe was a great success in his character of "boss." In a field bordering upon the highway, a mile away from the ranch-house, Lem Keith was plowing. There was something about this pastoral labor which was peculiarly congenial to Lem; perhaps because he did it well. Not one of the ranch "hands" could guide the plow with such precision through the loose prairie soil. Certainly, very few of them would have taken the trouble to set up a stake at the end of the furrow with a flying bit of red flannel to steer by. Lem had the habit of plowing with his eyes fixed upon the stake, his shoulders slightly stooping. Yet the sense of what was going on in the sky and on the prairie was never lost. To-day the sun rose as clear as a bell, flooding the fields with gold. Lem was plowing from east to west, a quarter-mile furrow. Whether he faced the mountains, answering the sunrise with a crimson glow, or the yellow prairie sea, with bold buttes standing out upon it like rock-bound islands, he could not go amiss. His eye met nothing, his thoughts touched upon nothing, which could jar upon his peaceful mood. The horses plodded steadily on with hanging heads; the plow responded like a live thing to his guidance; he knew that the long narrow furrow he was leaving behind him was as straight as the wake of a boat in still water. After all, ranch life was a fine thing. A man must be the better for breathing such air; a man must be the wiser for living so close to good old Mother Earth; a man must be--hark! Was that Joe's pony galloping across the field? Lem turned. No; the pony was a strange one. And the rider? Bub Quinn had leaped to the ground not ten feet from him. He had flung the rein over the neck of his steaming bronco; but he himself was as calm and as cool as though he had not ridden twenty miles before sunrise at a break-neck gallop. "I've come to settle accounts with you, mister," Quinn remarked in a drawling voice. If the fellow had raged and cursed, if he had seemed to be in a passion, if his fists had been clenched, or the muscles of his face set, it would not have been so appalling. But this deadly composure, the careless indifference with which he held his pistol in his right hand, while his left hung loosely at his side, was more than terrifying; it was fairly blood-curdling. Lem's hands had let the reins drop, and the horses had gone plodding on, the plow lurching and swaying at their heels. For an instant Lem's brain whirled. Swing that girl, that _pretty_ little girl, That _girl_ you left _behind you_! His brain seemed to be whirling to the tune of that jingle. "If you've got anything to say," drawled Quinn, fingering the trigger, the pistol pointed at Lem's forehead--"if you've got anything to say, now's your chance. Sorry I can't allow you time to make a will," he added facetiously, "but I've got to get back to my work." Lem's brain was clear now. There were no more jingles in it. Nothing was there but an overwhelming conviction that, if the man did not shoot quickly, Joe might arrive, and show Quinn his mistake. That must not be. Joe was too fine a fellow to end like this--like this! Lem Keith was shuddering from head to foot, and his lips were stiff and blue, yet there was an odd, masterful ring in his voice as he cried, "Make haste, will you, and shoot!" A shot rang out, and Lem fell, pierced, not by Bub Quinn's bullet, but by the living horror of death. On the furrows beside him Bub Quinn lay stretched, with blood oozing from his right shoulder. That shot of Joe Keith's, as his pony tore across the plowed field, was long talked of on the prairie. The echo was still ringing in his ears when he sprang to the ground, and knelt beside his brother, searching for a wound. He could find none. He pressed his hand to Lem's heart; his own pulse was pounding so that he could feel no other motion. He lifted his brother's head and laid it against his own breast; he loosened his shirt and chafed his hands. The sun shone straight into the white face, and the eyelids moved. "Lem! Dear old pal! Speak! Do speak!" Lem's consciousness returned slowly, reluctantly; but he knew his brother's voice. "Joe!" he muttered; "Joe!" He made an effort to look about him; and first his eyes followed vaguely the wanderings of Quinn's bronco, which had strayed far afield, and he strove feebly to account for the pang that the sight gave him. Suddenly his consciousness adjusted itself, as a lock falls into place. He turned his eyes on Quinn, lying where he had fallen, the blood still flowing from his wound; and then he knew that he himself had only swooned. He sat upright, clasping his knees with his two hands, and Joe stood over him, tenderly brushing the earth from his shoulder. At last Lem spoke, while a dark flush mounted slowly up into his temples. "Joe!" he said, "I'm not hurt. You may as well despise me. I _am_ a coward." A look went across Joe's face, half-assenting, half-indulgent. "Never mind, old boy," he said, with patronizing good-will; "we can't all be cut after the same pattern." He extended his hand to help his brother to his feet. A movement caused him to turn. Quinn had gathered strength to speak. He was leaning on his left elbow, staring at the two brothers. His face was ghastly, but his voice had lost none of its drawling scorn as he said to Joe, slowly and distinctly, "You in-fernal idiot!" Then a great light broke in upon Joe Keith's mind, and he knew the truth. V. THE RUMPETY CASE. When Sandoria is snowbound it is not so very much quieter, even in its outer aspect, than at any other time; for the monotony of snow is no more complete than the monotony of yellow-gray prairie. Even when, at rare intervals, the snow covers the fences, it is no characteristic landmark which is thus obliterated; no picturesque rustic bars are thus lost to the landscape, no irregular and venerable stone walls. At the best a prairie fence offers nothing more distinctive to the view than a succession of scrawny upright stakes connected by wires invisible at a few rods' distance. One feature Sandoria boasts, to be sure, which lends a certain distinction to the landscape at every season: namely, a long line of cottonwood-trees following the course of a halfhearted stream known as "the creek." The water-supply is but a grudging one, yet it has proved sufficient not only to induce the growth of cottonwoods, but to raise the tiny collection of houses known as Sandoria to the rank and dignity of a county-seat. For who could doubt the future growth and prosperity of a prairie town rejoicing in the unique advantage of a watercourse? There is, however, in the modern scheme of things, one agent more potent than running water, and that is the arbitrary, omnipotent, indispensable railroad; and the railroad in its erratic course saw fit to give the cold shoulder to the ambitious little county-seat, left it ten miles to the eastward, and then went zigzagging up to Denver with a conscience as dead as that of the corporation whose creature it was. [Illustration: "A HALF-HEARTED STREAM KNOWN AS 'THE CREEK.'"] Sandoria, unable to retaliate, took its reverses philosophically, and straightway fell into a profound slumber, from which it is thoroughly aroused but once a year. Once a year, in the depth of winter, the much-injured county-seat asserts its rightful dignity; for once a year the court convenes within its borders, and then the whole county becomes a meek tributary to its proper head. With indisputable authority the citizens of the two upstart railroad towns are summoned as jurors; ranchman and cowboy from all the countryside make daily trips in the service of the law to the neglected little county-seat, leaving, as is but just, many a ponderous silver dollar in "sample-room" or "store." At such times the visitors admit that Sandoria is a snug little place, and the new frame court-house a credit to the county, only why did they build a town where you can't see the mountains? Then the Sandorians reply that from the slight elevation west of the town there is a view of the Peak itself,--neither critic nor apologist taking into consideration how rarely men and women ascend their little hills to contemplate the wider glories of life. To-day the court was sitting, and the town rejoiced. Every man, woman, and child felt the pleasing exhilaration of knowing that something was going forward. The square two-story false fronts of the peak-roofed buildings looked with one-eyed approval upon the thronging men and women, horses and dogs, enlivening the single street of the town. A fervent sun shone gratefully upon the loungers in front of the court-house, where the snow was trodden to the solid consistency of a pavement. The noon recess was nearly over, and all were waiting for the judge and his galaxy of legal lights. Ed Rankin, a young ranchman from over beyond Emmaville, finding himself among strangers, and being as shy as a coyote, turned in at the court-house door, and was making his way toward the big air-tight stove, when he observed that the room was not empty, as he supposed it would be. In a remote corner sat a sorry-looking group, a woman and three children, their shrinking figures thinly clad, their eyes, red with crying or exposure, glancing apprehensively from side to side. The youngest of the group was a boy of ten; he, like all the others, had the look of a hunted creature. Rankin walked across the room, his footsteps muffled by the sawdust with which the floor was plentifully strewn. Yet, soft as his tread was, the four shivering creatures were visibly startled by it. The young ranchman passed within "the bar" and stood with his back to the stove. He tried to whistle, but he could not do it. He looked about the room, seeking some object to divert his thoughts. Bare walls and rows of empty benches outside the bar; within that mystic boundary all the usual furnishings of the immediate precincts of justice. Three days' steadfast contemplation of these humble stage-properties had pretty well exhausted their interest, and Rankin's attention again wandered to the group in the corner. The more the dry scorching heat of the stove penetrated his own person the colder the woman and children looked. At last he blurted out, in the manner peculiar to him when suffering from embarrassment, "Say, ma'am, why don't you come and get warm?" The woman started and looked over her shoulder before she answered. "I guess we'd rather stay where we are," she said. Incapable of withstanding such a rebuff, Rankin slouched across the room and stood in the open doorway. A three-seated ranch-wagon, drawn by a pair of ill-matched but brisk little broncos, was just coming along the street. The heavy wheels creaked and groaned over the snow, and then stopped before the court-house. The whole "court," which was sojourning with a well-to-do ranchman a couple of miles out of town, had arrived, plentifully wrapped up in mufflers of every color of the rainbow. As judge and lawyers descended before the temple of justice, it was curious to observe how, in spite of bemufflered heads and crimson noses, these representatives of a different civilization contrasted with the prairie people. There was the grave, keen-eyed judge, of humane and dignified bearing; there was the district attorney, shrewd and alert, a rising man; and there were lawyers from the city of Springtown: all this ability and training placed at the service of the remote little prairie community. "What's on this afternoon, judge?" asked Merriam the storekeeper, with the well-bred familiarity of a prominent citizen. "The Rumpety case, I believe." "Not much good, I suppose." "I'm afraid not," said the judge, glancing as he passed at the shivering woman and children. "I wonder if they have had any dinner," he queried, with sudden solicitude. "Yes. My wife looked after that. She took 'em over a mess of stuff. They looked scared of their lives to eat it, but it's safe inside of 'em now." And the kind, red-faced storekeeper hugged himself visibly at the thought. The court assembled. Within the bar a group of chairs had already been taken possession of by the dames and belles of Sandoria and the neighboring ranches, to whom court-week is the equivalent of carnival, opera, or races in more favored regions; and where, indeed, could a more striking drama be presented for their delectation than here, where friends and neighbors played the leading parts? The court assembled; lawyers and stenographer took their places; the clerk stood in readiness; the judge mounted the bench; and lo! the historic dignity of a court of justice had descended upon that rude stage, and all was ready for whatever comedy or tragedy might be to enact upon it. The judge, referring to the list, announced that the next case would be "The people of the State of Colorado against Dennis Rumpety." Then, being called, Dennis Rumpety walked down the court-room and passed within the bar. The man looked fifty or thereabouts; a short, thick-set figure, with a large head covered with thick iron-gray hair. The smooth-shaven face was a peculiar one, being broad in its outline, with the features, especially the eyes, small and close together. The short, bushy eyebrows met above a fine, clean-cut nose; the jaws were heavy and brutal; yet the menace of the face was not in these, but in the thin straight lips which closed like the shears of Fate. A cruel smile gathered about the lips as he answered the questions of the court. There was something peculiarly incongruous in the jovial, happy-go-lucky name to which this man answered. "Mr. Rumpety," the judge asked, "have you provided yourself with legal advice?" "No, your honor," the man replied, with a strong north-country brogue. "No, sorr! I've got no use for the laryers." "You are prepared, then, to argue your own case?" "I lave me case in the hands of me fahmily. Their testimony will clear me from the false accusations of me innimies. If thim as----" "That will do, Mr. Rumpety." "If thim as are----" "Mr. Rumpety, that will do." The judge invariably spoke in a low tone of voice, but it was not often that he had to repeat himself; the voice of authority has a way of making itself heard. Rumpety locked his lips again and took his seat. The jury was called, Ed Rankin's name among the first. Rankin had not heard a word about the Rumpety case, yet the nature of it was as clear to him as daylight. This brute was up for cruelty to those four shivering creatures on the bench in the corner, and they would never dare testify against their persecutor. In all those abject countenances there was not one ray of courage visible. Now began the process of weeding out the jury, which, when it came his turn, Rumpety performed with a free hand. The prosecution having dismissed some half-dozen men and "passed" the jury, the defendant began his inquisition. He asked no unnecessary questions, gave no reasons for his prejudices, but with unalterable decision declared, "I won't have that man on the jury at all!" or, "I don't want him: he may go." Rankin was among the first to be thus summarily rejected, and he joined the crowd outside the bar, only half contented with his release. He would have liked "to convict that beast." It was not much of a compliment to be retained on Rumpety's jury. As often as, in his cursory examination, he came upon an ignorant or brutish face, a complacent smile played about the thin lips, and he said, "That man 'll do. He 'll do." And now the trial began. People from the town of Wolverton testified that the boy Victor--poor little defeated Victor!--had appeared in the street fleeing from his home, four miles away, crying that his father was going to kill him. The child's ear had been frightfully bruised and swollen, and there were unmistakable marks of ill usage upon him. The man Rumpety's barbarity was notorious on all the countryside, and this was the third successive year he had been up before the court. It had never been possible to secure a conviction, owing to the dogged persistence of his victims in perjuring themselves in his favor. As one after another of the trembling family shuffled up to the witness-seat and swore, with hanging head and furtive eyes, that Dennis Rumpety was a kind husband and father, who never punished them "more than was just," this model parent sat with gleaming eyes and an evil smirk, resting his case upon the "testimony of his fahmily." If, occasionally, the witness hesitated, Rumpety would lift his eyebrows or make a slight movement which sent the blood into the pale cheek of woman or child and an added tremor into the faint voice. More than once the district attorney sprang to his feet and cried, "Your honor, I object to this man's intimidating the people's witnesses;" but the intimidation was too subtle to seize hold upon. Ed Rankin wondered what would happen if somebody should hit the wretch a whack over the head every time he raised an eyebrow. Somehow it struck him that the law was hardly equal to tackling "that kind." The cross-examination brought out no new evidence. The district attorney was especially persistent with the boy, the immediate victim in this instance. "Victor," he said, "state to the jury why you accused your father of abusing you and wanting to kill you, if it wasn't true." The boy hesitated. "Don't be afraid to speak the truth. He sha' n't hurt you." But the boy knew better. "Sure I lied," he said. "And what did you lie for?" "Because I was mad." "But what made you get mad with such a kind father?" "Because he came into the cellar and found fault wid me about the potatoes." "Had he reason to find fault with you?" The boy looked at his father: one look was enough. "Yes, sorr. I had an ugly fit on." Poor little shrinking shivering wretch, with his cowed figure and trembling lips! It is safe to say that an "ugly fit" seized upon every person listening to that futile confession. Ed Rankin felt the blood boil in his veins. He glanced at Myra Beckwith, sitting among the audience within the bar. She was leaning forward with her hands clasped tightly, watching the boy. There were tears in her eyes, and Rankin blessed her for them. It was clear that the district attorney himself was a good deal wrought upon, for his manner grew quieter every minute. He sat with his head slightly forward, looking out from under his brows straight into the miserable little face before him. His questions came short and incisive. "State to the jury again how you hurt your ear." "Sure I fell off a horse." "Hm! You fell off a horse and lit on your ear?" "Yes, sorr." "And this ingenious tumble took place before the racket in the cellar?" "Yes, sorr." "How long before?" "I guess about a week." "Your mother testified that it happened the same morning." "Yes, sorr. It was the same marning." The poor little chap's answers were getting almost inaudible. He looked spent with misery and apprehension. He gave no sign of tears. His wan, pinched little face looked as if he had cried so much in his short life that there was no longer any relief in it. He was soon dismissed, and went shuffling back to his cold corner. The woman and girls proved no more available for purposes of justice than the boy. Their testimony was perfectly consistent and absolutely unshakable; it had been thoroughly beaten into them, that was clear. When it came time for Rumpety to plead his own cause before the jury he proved quite equal to the situation. He planted himself before them and harangued them like any third-rate criminal lawyer. "I tell you, gen'lemen," he declared, "it's no small b'y's job to keep that fahmily in arder!" and he proceeded to describe them as a cantankerous lot, to be ruled only by that ideal justice tempered by mercy which he was apparently a master in dispensing. At the last he waxed pathetic, and, in a tearful voice, somewhat at odds with his dry, wicked little eyes, he cried, "I've got a row to hoe, that if there was a lot of men in it they'd have hanged themselves from a rafter!" With which magnificent climax and a profound bow and flourish, he took his seat, and assumed a pose of invulnerable righteousness from which no invectives nor innuendoes of the prosecuting attorney could move him. He had rested his case on the testimony of his "fahmily," and he knew his jury too well to have much anxiety about their verdict. The lamps had been lighted long ago, and the early winter evening had set in. The court took a recess, waiting the verdict of the jury. This was the last case on the trial docket for that day. Rumpety was standing, broad and unblushing, before the stove, whither, in obedience to his commands, his wife and children had also repaired. With true prairie courtesy the men had placed chairs for the Rumpety "fahmily," and an unsuccessful attempt was made to converse with them on indifferent topics. Rumpety stood, plainly gloating over his victims, the queer gleam in his eyes growing more intense every minute. Mrs. Rumpety did not share her husband's confidence in the issue. Once, when the judge spoke a kind word to her, she muttered, "Ach, your honor! don't let 'em put the costs on us! Don't let 'em put the costs on us!" and Rankin, standing by, realized with a pang that even this misery could be increased. The situation was oppressive. Rankin sauntered out of the room and out of the court-house, closing the door behind him. The air was intensely cold; the stars glittered sharply. He liked it outside; he felt the same relief and exhilaration which he had experienced when he first took possession of his "claim," three years before, and felt himself lord over the barren sweep of prairie. There had been hardship in it; the homely comforts of his father's little down-east farm were lacking,--but it was freedom. Freedom! It used to seem to Rankin, before he knew Myra Beckwith, that freedom was all he wanted in life. This shy, awkward, longlimbed fellow had desired nothing so much as room enough, and he had wrested it from Fate. He wondered, as he stood out under the stars, why Mrs. Rumpety and her children did not run away. The world was big enough and to spare. They would probably starve, to be sure; but starvation was infinitely better than bondage. The door at his elbow closed sharply, and a voice cried,-- "Hullo, Rank! did you know that those blamed idiots had acquitted him?" "I knew they would." Rankin answered, with a jerk which betokened suppressed emotion. "There's nothing left now but lynching," his friend continued. It was Ray Dolliber, one of the more reckless spirits. Rankin grunted in a non-committal manner. "Say, Rank, would you lend a hand?" "I guess not," Rankin replied slowly, as if deliberating the question. "Why not?" "I never did believe in lynching." "What's the matter with lynching?" "'T ain't fair play. Masked men, and a lot of 'em, onto one feller." Dolliber waxed sarcastic. "P'raps you think it's fair play for a great brute of a man to bully a woman and six children." "P'raps I do," said Rankin, still deliberating, "but I guess 't ain't likely." Another man came out of the court-house, leaving the door open behind him. They could see Rumpety pulling on a thick overcoat and winding his ears and throat in a heavy muffler. "Come along," he swaggered, with a flourish of the arms; and woman and children, unencumbered by other wraps than those they had worn all day, followed abjectly and made their way after him to the shed where the team was tied. "I say, Dolliber, did they say it was fourteen miles to their ranch?" "Yes." "South, wasn't it?" "Yes." "They'll have the wind in their faces." "You bet!" A few minutes later the Rumpety wagon went creaking and groaning past the court-house. Ed Rankin stepped inside and got his leather jacket and woollen muffler. He met the jury straggling out with the crestfallen air of men conscious of an inglorious performance. The judge and the district attorney stood just within the door, waiting for the ranch-wagon. "They say," said the district attorney, "that Rumpety never does a stroke of work." "Saves up his strength for bullying his family," the judge rejoined. "He takes good care of himself. Did you see how warmly he was dressed?" "Yes, curse him!" "It would be a mercy if the others were to freeze to death on the way home." "Seems likely enough, too; but it would be rather hard on the three little brats waiting at the ranch for their mother." Rankin, meanwhile, had got himself equipped for his long ride. There was to be a dance in the court-house that evening, and some men were sweeping the sawdust into a corner and setting the benches against the wall. "Ain't you goin' to stay for the dance, Ed?" one of them asked. "The girls are all coming." Rankin felt himself blush ignominiously. "No," he growled. "I've got some work to do to-night." "What, at the ranch?" Rankin paused to take account with his conscience. Being a downeaster, he liked to keep on good terms with that monitor. But conscience had no fault to find as he presently answered, "Yes, at the ranch." He strode out of the court-house with a tread very different from his usual slouching gait. Out in the shed he found his bronco sniffing ruefully at an empty dinner-bag. But she whinnied pleasantly at his approach. Five minutes later horse and rider were off at a swinging pace, headed, not for their own ranch, which lay twelve miles to the northward. Straight in the teeth of the wind they travelled; in the teeth of the south wind, that stung their faces like a whiplash. Before very long they sighted the Rumpety wagon showing plainly against the snow in the starlight. The road went most of the way down-hill, and wagon and bronco made good speed. The air grew colder every minute. "About ten below, shouldn't you say, Pincher?" Pincher tossed her tousled mane affirmatively. They kept about forty yards behind the team, which went at a steady rate. "I say, Pincher, the old beast must be laying it onto them horses, to make 'em go like that." This time Pincher merely laid an ear back in token of sympathy. "We'll give him a worse trouncing than that, though. Eh, Pincher?" And Rankin fumbled with cold fingers at the whip-handle in his pocket. The reins lay across Pincher's neck. Rankin did not want his hands to get too cold "for business." On and on they pounded through the snow; colder and colder it grew. There was a shiver in the stars themselves, and only the snow looked warm. "If I wasn't so all-fired mad, Pincher, I believe 't would seem kind o' cold." At these words Pincher took a spurt and had to be held in, lest they should overtake the wagon. They had crossed the railroad, leaving Wolverton with its handful of twinkling lights to the eastward, and now a line of the Peak was gleaming, a narrow white crescent, above the long, low rise of ground to the west. Once they passed a depression through which the great dome of snow towered in all its grandeur; but that was only for a moment. Rankin's heart beat high at sight of it. "There's a way out of 'most every place," he muttered, below his breath. The last three miles of the way the cold had got such a grip on him that he desisted from further social amenities. Pincher quite understood his silence, though she, with her furry coat and hard exercise, was not as near freezing as he. [Illustration: "THE GREAT DOME OF SNOW TOWERED IN ALL ITS GRANDEUR."] At length they perceived, close to the road, a dim light shining from a single point in a huddled group of buildings. The wagon turned into a corral, close to a tumble-down shanty, and as Rankin rode up to the opening the children were just disappearing in at the door, while the woman slowly and painfully climbed down over the wheel. Rumpety stood by, jeering at her slow progress. "Come, horry a little, me foine lady," Rankin heard him say. "Horry, or I'll come and give ye a lift ye'll not thank me for!" The poor creature's dress had caught in something, and she stood an instant on the hub. With a sudden movement the brute raised the long whip he held in his hand and gave her a stinging blow across the shoulders. There was a faint moan, a sound of tearing cotton, and the woman fell in a heap to the ground. In another instant she had scrambled to her feet and fled limping into the house. Ed Rankin felt the blood rush to his heart and then go tingling down into his finger-tips; but he made no sound nor sudden movement. With his teeth set hard, his hand clutching his cowhide whip, he got off his horse and stood on the ground. "I guess I'll wait till he's given the critters their supper," he muttered in Pincher's ear. "He might forget to do it after I'm done with him." He stood looking into the enclosure while Rumpety unharnessed "the critters" and put them up in an open shed. The corral was a comfortless, tumble-down place. The outlines of the crazy huts and sheds which enclosed it on three sides showed clear in the starlight. A gaunt plough-horse stood motionless in the cold shelter of a skeleton haywagon; in one corner a drinking-trough gleamed, one solid mass of ice. And now across this dreary, God-forsaken stage passed the warmly clad, stalwart figure that Fate was waiting for. Rankin noted that he held the whip still in his hand as he made for the door of the cabin. Suddenly Rankin blocked his path. "_You cur!_" The words were flung like a missile into the face of the brute. With a cry of inarticulate rage Rumpety raised his long whip, and then, coward that he was, let it fall. Rankin never had a very clear idea of what happened next. Somehow or other he had torn the coat off the man's back, had bound him with the lasso to a corner of the haywagon, and was standing over him, cowhide in hand, panting with rage and the desire for vengeance. The gaunt horse had moved off a few paces, and stood like an apparition, gazing with spectral indifference at the scene. Rankin raised his arm and brought the whiplash whistling down upon the broad shoulders. There was a strange guttural sound, and the figure before him seemed to collapse and sink, a dead weight, down into the encircling rope. Rankin's arm was arrested in mid-air. "Stand up, you hound, or I'll murder you!" he hissed between his teeth. But the figure hung there like a log. The spectral horse sniffed strangely. A swift horror seized upon Rankin. He grasped the heavy shoulder and shook it roughly. It was like shaking--hush! he dared not think what! Rankin flung his whip to the ground, and wildly, feverishly, untied the rope. It was a difficult thing to do, the sinking of the body having tightened the knots. At last they yielded, and the dead weight tumbled in a heap before him. Even in his wild horror Rankin thought how the woman had fallen just so in a heap on the ground a few minutes before. The thought put life into his heart. The gaunt horse had taken a step forward and was sniffing at that heap on the ground, mouthing the limp trousers: a few wisps of hay had clung to them. Rankin watched the weird scene. He knew that that was a dead man before him; nothing could make that surer. He tried to lift the body and carry it toward the house; he could not do it. It was not the weight, it was the repulsion that lamed him. He stalked to the cabin and flung open the door. The woman crouched in a corner with her six children about her; seven pitiful scared faces were lifted to his. He stepped in and closed the door behind him. "Dennis Rumpety is dead," he stated, in a hard, unnatural voice. It seemed to him as if those awful words must echo round the globe, rousing all the powers of the land against him, striking terror to the hearts at home. The woman glanced about her with wandering eyes. Then she shook her head. "Dinnis Rumpety? Sure he'll niver be dead!" "I tell you Dennis Rumpety is dead. I have killed him!" "You!" she shrieked. "The saints preserve ye!" It was a ghastly work to get that dishonored body across the corral while the spectral horse came sniffing after. Rankin wondered whether the dishonored soul could be far away. He wondered that the woman and children did not seem to dread being left alone with--_it_. He did not know how futile ghostly horrors seemed, as compared with those horrors they had thrust out. As Pincher bore him back over the fourteen miles thither where justice awaited him, Rankin was a prey to two alternating regrets. At one moment he wished he had not said, "I'll murder you!" In the next turn of thought he wished it had been murder in the first degree, that the penalty might have been death rather than imprisonment. He did not allow himself to think of Myra Beckwith; his mind felt blood-stained, no fit place for the thought of her. There, where the thought of her had shone for months, a steady, heart-warming flame, was only a dull desolation which he dared not face. As he rode up the deserted street of Sandoria a strong desire possessed him to keep on to the north and have one more night of freedom on his own ranch; but that would have been a cruelty to Pincher. He put her up in the shed and gave her the next day's dinner which he had brought with him that morning in case there should be a dance to keep him over-night. Then he took a long, deep breath of the icy air and passed into the court-house. Inside, the atmosphere seemed suffocating. The room was so crowded that he did not find Myra's face anywhere. The sheriff was among the dancers, but the fiddles were winding up the set with a last prolonged squeak. As the scraping ceased, Rankin stood before the sheriff. In the sudden pause of sound and motion his voice sounded distinctly throughout the room. "I have just killed Dennis Rumpety," he said. For ten seconds there was absolute silence; then a rough voice growled, "Thunder! But you done a good job!" Upon that everybody began talking at once, and in the midst of the clamor Ed Rankin, the man who loved freedom better than life, was formally placed under arrest. His trial came off the next day but one. The coroner's inquest had shown death by apoplexy, caused probably by a paroxysm of rage. The jury rendered a verdict of "involuntary manslaughter." The sentence was the lowest the law allows: namely, one day's imprisonment with hard labor. This unlooked-for clemency staggered the prisoner. Oblivious of every fact but the terrible one that Dennis Rumpety had died by his hand, he had nerved himself for what he believed would be his death-blow. The tension had been too great; he could not bear its sudden removal. "Say, your honor," he cried, regardless of court etiquette,--"say, your honor, couldn't you lay it on a little heavier?" "The court sees no reason for altering its decision," his honor replied, gravely, passing on to the delivery of the next sentence. But after the court had adjourned, the judge stepped up to the prisoner and said, kindly, "I wouldn't take it too hard, if I were you, Rankin. We all know that there was no murder in your heart." "Yes, there was, your honor. Yes, there was." "At any rate, the man's death was clearly not your deed. It was the hand of the Lord that did it." "I don't know, your honor," Rankin persisted. "It feels to me as though it was me that done it." The judge and the lookers-on were puzzled by this persistency. It did not seem in character. For the first time in his life, Rankin felt the need of words. The moral perplexity was too great for him to deal with; he was reaching out for something to take hold of, a thing which his self-contained, crudely disciplined nature had never craved before. "It's an awful thing to send a soul to hell," he muttered. Then, in his extremity, he felt a soft touch upon his arm. Myra Beckwith stood beside him. "Ed," she said, with the sweet seriousness which had first attracted him, and now at last there was the tone in her voice which he would have given his life to hear,--"Ed, think of the seven souls you have delivered out of hell! I was over to see them yesterday." The consolation of that voice and touch calmed his troubled spirit, restored him to himself; the nightmare of the last two days faded and slid away. He stood a moment in awkward silence, while Myra's hand rested upon his arm; then, before them all, he laid his hand upon it, and, with the solemnity of a priest before the altar, he said, "I guess it was the Lord that done it, after all!" VI THE LAME GULCH PROFESSOR. Simon Amberley had never been able to strike root in life, until, some ten years since, he found a congenial soil in that remote fastness of the Rocky Mountains known as Lame Gulch. From the first moment of his arrival there it was borne in upon him that this was the goal of his long, apparently aimless pilgrimage, and he lost no time in securing to himself a foothold, by the simple and inexpensive method of taking up a ranch. The land he chose was higher up the Gulch than any of the neighboring ranches, and all that it was rich in was views. It ran up the side of a hill, seen from the top of which, the whole Rocky Mountain Range had the appearance of marshalling itself in one grand, exhaustive cyclorama. On every hand were snowy summits forming a titanic ring which seemed to concentrate upon Lame Gulch; and much of the sense of aloofness and security which was the chief element in Amberley's content came from the illusion which he carefully guarded, that that wall of giants really was impenetrable. He liked, too, to feel himself at a great altitude above the lower world where he had so long and vainly toiled. "Nine thousand feet above sea-level!" he would assure himself in self-congratulatory mood. "When I come to quit, I sha' n't hev fur to go!" which confidence in the direction his spirit was destined to take, may fairly be accepted as indication of a good conscience. Amberley had not married, and although he felt the omission to be matter for regret, he had never, as far as his recollection served him, found his wish to do so particularized in favor of any one woman. "No, I ain't never married," he reluctantly admitted, when Enoch Baker, his next-door neighbor at Lame Gulch, pressed the point. Enoch lived with his wife just round on the other side of Bear Mountain, only three miles away, and although his now elderly consort was reputed to be unamiable,--not to say cantankerous,--yet her existence, and the existence in the world outside, of many children and grandchildren, conferred upon him the enviable dignity of a man of family. He was a Yankee, and his thirst for information was not to be lightly appeased. "Disapp'inted?" he asked, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, and pulling out a venerable tobacco-pouch, with a view to "fillin' her up" again. "Disapp'inted?" "Yes; ruther,--bein' as I was always fond of children." Amberley was himself a tall, limp-looking downeaster, with pleasant, unsuspicious eyes, and a guileless spirit. He used to hand his cattle over to Baker once a year, and let him drive them with his own down the long mountain road to Springtown, and it was understood than he did not inquire too curiously in the matter of commissions. The stores and fodder which Enoch delivered over to him in exchange, together with a plausibly varying amount of hard cash, seemed to Simon an ample return for the scrawny cattle he sent to market. And Enoch, for his part, was always willing to testify that Amberley was a pleasant man to deal with. "What was she like?" Enoch inquired, in the tone of a connoisseur, transfixing Amberley with his shrewd eyes. "Don't know's I could tell you, neighbor, I kind o' fancied the ones with the snappin' black eyes. But I ruther guess some other kind would ha' done's well, when it come to the pint." Enoch raised his eyebrows inquiringly. "Wouldn't ary one on 'em hev you?" he asked. "Never asked 'em," was the reply. "It was this way," Amberley went on, gathering himself together for the unaccustomed effort of expounding a situation. "I never seemed to feel to hev _gumption_ enough to raise a family." Enoch's countenance took on a judicial look. "Yet you've got a good eddication," he remarked, after thoughtful consideration of the case. "You've got book larnin' enough to make your way." "Wall, yes; the eddication's stayed by me. I ruther guess 'twas the gumption that got knocked out. That was at Antietam." "Didn't know you was in the war," Enoch exclaimed, with a visible accession of respect. "Was you hit?" "Wall, yes; in the head. I wa' n't much more 'n a youngster, and when they let me loose the doctors said I was good 's new; 'n I ruther guess I was, all except the gumption. 'T was kind o' curous, too," he went on, warming to his subject, and fumbling at something on the side of his head. "When the bullet ploughed through here, the settin' sun was in my eyes; 'n soon's I got on my feet agin I wanted to go West. I was let go there in Virginia, 'n though I hankered after my own folks as bad as anybody, there was nothin' for it, but to turn toward the settin' sun. 'N fust I went to Ohio, 'n then to Illinois, 'n then to Missouri, 'n so on here. Never could manage to stop more 'n a few years in one place till I come up agin the Rocky Mountings. Since then I've felt kind o' settled and satisfied." But Simon's satisfaction was destined to be rudely broken in upon. One pleasant September day somebody picked up something in the Gulch that looked like a dingy bit of quartz, and carried it down to Springtown, and shortly after that a squad of men appeared upon the scene. The mountains, faithless to their trust, had let them in. They gathered together along the Gulch and on the side of Bear Mountain, where Amberley could see them, little remote groups, sometimes losing themselves among the pine-trees, sometimes showing plain against the sky on the exposed comb of the mountain-side. By and by more men came and rougher ones, bringing mules and oxen with them, and camping in tents which they deserted by day. When the early snow came, Amberley could see, more plainly than before, the doings of the encroaching enemy. Great black scars were made in the snow; sledges, laden with weird, ungainly masses of wood and iron, were hauled up the mountain-side. Here and there a structure appeared, that had a grotesque resemblance to a gallows. The uncouth monsters planted themselves along the hillside, where they breathed forth smoke and emitted strange noises. Amberley could hear the rattling of chains, the creaking of timbers; a hoarse shout would sometimes come ringing across the Gulch through the thin frosty air, if the wind was that way. [Illustration. "A TOWN OF RUDE FRAME HUTS HAD SPRUNG UP IN THE HOLLOW BELOW."] In September it was that the bit of quartz was carried down to Springtown; before the winter snows had thought of melting, a town of rude frame huts had sprung up in the hollow below, and Lame Gulch was a flourishing mining-camp. All the rough-scuff of the countryside promptly gathered there, and elbowed, with equal indifference, the honest miner, the less honest saloon-keeper, and the capitalist, the degree of whose claim to that laudatory adjective was not to be so easily fixed. No one seemed out of place in the crazy, zigzag streets, no sound seemed foreign to this new, conglomerate atmosphere. The fluent profanity of the mule-driver, the shrill laugh of the dance-hall; the prolonged rattle and final roar of the ore-chute, the steady pick of the laborer at the prospect-hole;--each played its part to burden and stain the pure, high air that had seemed so like the air of Heaven itself. Amberley stayed on in his lonely lean-to, or roamed over his desecrated acres, bewildered and aggrieved. What were the mountains thinking of to admit these savage hordes! Whither should he go, where should he find a refuge, since his trusted allies had played him false? He loathed it all, loathed most of all Enoch's exultant suggestion that there might be gold on their land. "But we'll lay low for a while," Enoch said, with an air of profound cunning. "We'll wait till they're plumb crazy, and then we kin git our own price!" And Amberley stayed on all through that trying winter, simply because he knew of no better place to go to, and the spring came and found him there, unreconciled, to be sure, but leading his usual life. And so it happened that one day, when the snow had disappeared from all the southerly slopes, and the wind was toward the Camp, so that the sounds he hated came dulled and hushed to his ear, Amberley ventured a few rods down the hillside in search of a missing calf. The truant was a pretty, white-nosed creature, a special pet of his master's, with great brown, confiding eyes, and ample ears, and Amberley had named him Simon. Not a usual name for a calf, as Simon was well aware, but somehow it gave the lonely man a peculiar pleasure to know that his name was borne by a cheerful young thing, with frisky tail and active legs, and everything to live for. As the elder Simon strolled down the hillside on this particular spring day, calling and peering from side to side, his eye fell upon the first daisy of the season, nestling close at his feet,--a single blossom among a crowded group of little short-stemmed scrubby buds. He stooped to pick it, and was standing, lost in wonder over its frailty and its hardihood, when a child's voice struck his ear, calling, "Come Bossie, come!" Stepping around a projecting rock close at hand, Amberley came upon a pretty scene. On a wide level sunny space, where young grass was already springing, stood a little figure in blue, with yellow hair flying about in the breeze; a tiny hand filled with grass, held out toward the doubtful yet covetous Simon Jr. The child stood perfectly still, her square little back turned to her new observer, while the calf stumped cautiously toward her. At a safe distance he stopped and sniffed at the tiny hand, then kicked up his heels and pranced away again. The little drama repeated itself several times, the child standing always motionless, with extended arm, and calling upon "Bossie" in enticing tones to come. Won over at last by her constancy,--or by his own greed,--"Bossie" ventured near enough to snatch the proffered tidbit; then off he scampered, in ungrateful haste, mouthing the delicate morsel. A sigh of relief and satisfaction went up from the little figure, while one small hand gravely rubbed and kneaded the arm which had so pluckily maintained its uncomfortable position. Amberley approached with his short-stemmed daisy. "How do you do, little girl?" he inquired in his most polite manner. "Would you like a daisy?" "Yes," was the reply, spoken with a slight lisp. "You are very good to feed Simon," Amberley proceeded, quite set at ease by the gracious acceptance of his offering. "Yes;" said the child once more, this time with a rising inflection. "Simon is my calf, you know," Amberley went on. "Here, Simon, come along." Simon Jr., was already approaching, with an eye to business, and even as his master spoke, he had got his nose into a certain wide, baggy pocket in the old army trousers, and was poking it about in very familiar fashion. "Wait a minute, Simon," said Amberley, drawing himself gently away. "Here, little girl, you take a bit of the salt in your hand and he'll come for it." "Yes," came the assenting voice; and Simon Jr., once convinced that the pocket was closed to him, approached the child with easy confidence, and not only devoured the proffered salt, but continued to lick the grimy little palm when it was quite bare of that pleasing stimulant. Then the child laughed, a queer little short, grown-up laugh, and declared: "I like Simon." "So do I," said Amberley, casting about for some new blandishment. "Let's come up to the shanty and draw a picture of him." "Yes," the little sphinx replied. Amberley held out his hand, with a poignant dread lest she should refuse to take it; a thrill of pleasure, almost as poignant, went up his arm and so on to his heart, as the tiny hand rested in his own. "What is your name?" he asked. They were rounding the big boulder and beginning the short ascent to the cabin. "Eliza Christie, and I'm six years old," she replied, tugging the while at his hand, to help herself over a rough place. Then,--"What's yours?" she asked. "Simon Amberley." "Same's the calf," she commented. "Was either of you named for the other?" "Yes; the calf was." "I was named for my sainted grandmother. Bella Jones says Eliza's an ugly name, but Ma says if 't was good enough for my sainted grandmother it's good enough for me." "_I_ think Eliza's a real pretty name," Amberley declared in a tone of conviction, as he warded off the renewed advances of Simon. "If ever I have another calf I shall call it Eliza." "I like both the Simons," Eliza announced, with flattering openness. To such a declaration as this, modesty forbade any reply, and the two went on in silence to the cabin door, closely followed by the white-nosed gourmand. Outside the lean-to was a bench, roughly modelled on Amberley's recollection of the settle outside his mother's kitchen door. "You'd better set there, Eliza," he said; "It's prettier outside than in;" and he lifted her to the seat, and left her there, with her fat little legs sticking straight out in front of her. She seemed to take very naturally to the situation, and indeed her small, sturdy person looked as much a part of the homely scene as the stubby little daisy she held in her hand. As she sat there in the sunshine, placid and self-contained, a mysterious trampling and crackling began among the trees close at hand, and one after another, three solemn-eyed cows emerged into the clearing and fixed a wondering gaze upon the little visitor. She, nothing daunted, calmly returned their gaze, only holding the daisy a little more tightly, lest one of the new-comers should take it into her head to dispute the prize; and Simon found her, upon his return, confronting the horned monsters with unruffled tranquillity. Acknowledging the presence of the cows only by a friendly "Shoo, there!" he established himself beside his waiting guest upon the settle, his long legs crossed, by way of a table. "Can you draw?" he asked. "No; I don't know my letters," she replied, with unconscious irrelevance. "How would you like to have me learn you?" "I'd like it." "Well; I'll learn you _O_ first. That's the first letter I learned;" and he made a phenomenally large and round _O_ in the upper left-hand corner of the sheet. The paper, finding insufficient resting-place upon the bony knee, took occasion to flap idly in the gentle southerly breeze; upon which the child took hold of it with a quaint air of helpfulness which was singularly womanly. "Now I've learned _O_," she remarked, "I'd like to learn another." "Well, there's an _I_; see, there?" "The other one looks more like an eye," she observed critically. "So it does, so it does!" Amberley admitted, much impressed by the discovery. "But then it's an _O_ all the same, and this one is an _I_." "Yes; well, I've learned that. Now, make another." Thus unheralded and unawares come the great moments of life. When little Eliza mounted that wooden settle, her mind was innocent of artificial accomplishments; before she again stood on her round fat legs, she had begun the ascent of that path which leads away up to the heights of human knowledge. It is a long ascent and few accomplish it, but the first essential steps had been taken: little Eliza had become a _Scholar_! Not only had she learned to recognize an _O_ and an _I_, an _S_, an _M_, and an _N_, but she had laboriously made each one of them with her own hand. And, furthermore, she had seen them combined in a wonderful group which, if her teacher was to be credited, stood for _Simon_! It was better than drawing, infinitely better! Anybody could make a round thing with four crooked legs and a thin tail, and call it a calf--but only a scholar could put five letters together and make them stand for a man and a calf beside; a man with a kind voice and a big beard, and a calf that would lick a person's hand! Oh, but life had grown a wonderful thing to little Eliza, when she trotted down the hillside, clinging to the fingers of her new friend, and holding the sturdy little daisy in the other sturdy little hand. And life had grown even more wonderful to Simon Amberley. He had not passed such a pleasant day since he could remember, and he had certainly never in his life had so much to look forward to; for had not Eliza promised to come again the next day, and to bring Bella Jones with her? He went into the cabin after his chores were done, and pulled out an old cowhide trunk with the hair pretty well worn off it, and there, inside, he found the battered family Bible which had been sent out, at his request, when his mother died; and a copy of Shakespeare's _Plays_ in one volume which he had got as a prize at school. There, too, were Miss Edgeworth's _Rosamond_, and Nathaniel P. Willis' _Poems_, and one volume of Dr. Kane's _Explorations at the North Pole_. "Quite a library," he said to himself, with conscious pride. He had not read in a book for twenty years; not since the time, back in Ohio, when he had bought Scott's complete Works at auction, and had to sell them again to pay his way to Missouri, whither he had gone in obedience to that mysterious prompting of the setting sun. By and by he strolled up the hill to get the sunset light. It was very splendid on the glittering snow of the heights over yonder. After all, he reflected, the mountains knew pretty well what they were about. If they had not let the enemy through, those little girls would not have got in, and he should not have felt as if he were beginning life all over again. Before a month had passed, Simon found himself established in the new character of Lame Gulch Professor. So, at least, Enoch called him, and it was not displeasing to the subject of Enoch's pleasantry to know that others had adopted the suggestion and bestowed upon him that honorable title. His little class numbered fifteen or twenty children of assorted ages and dispositions, who came, lured by rumors of pleasant things, and remained to imbibe learning with more or less avidity. There was an absence of restraint about this novel school which appealed strongly to the childish heart. The scholars were free to come and go as they pleased, a privilege which, once established, they were not inclined to take undue advantage of. They sat on the most amusing seats, improvised from fallen tree trunks, or small wood-piles, or cocks of hay. They called their teacher what they pleased: sometimes Simon, sometimes Teacher, sometimes Mister! Bella Jones always said "Perfessor." They studied from whatever book they liked best, each child bringing the "Reader" or "Speller" he could most easily lay hands on. But they learned more from Simon's books than from their own. That book of William Shakespeare's stood easily first in their estimation, for when the "perfessor" read from it, they somehow understood the story, in spite of the hard words which, taken by themselves, seemed to mean nothing at all. If a ground squirrel scuttled across the clearing, no one was so quick to observe him as the teacher himself, and before Fritz Meyer could seize a stone to fire at the tame little chap, the young sportsman had become so interested in something Simon was saying about its ways and nature, that he forgot what he wanted of the stone. "How do you spell squirrel?" asked a sharp-featured boy one day, as he watched the twinkling eyes of one of the tiny creatures. Simon drew his brows together over his mild eyes, with a mighty effort at thinking. "How do you spell squirrel?" he repeated. "How do you spell it? Well; you begin with an _sk_, of course--and then there's a _w_.--I don't know, Tim, but that's too hard a word to spell until you're growed up. But I'll learn you to spell woodchuck! We used to go after woodchucks when I was a youngster." What boy could insist upon the spelling of a paltry little ground squirrel, with beady eyes and nervous, inconsequent motions, when there was talk of a woodchuck, lowering in his black hole, ready to fix his sharp teeth in the nose of the first intruding terrier? If they learned in after years that the spelling-books knew nought of a _k_ or a _w_ in squirrel,--and some of them never did!--we may be very sure that it was not Simon Amberley that fell in their estimation! Sometimes Simon Jr. came to school, and there was a sudden, exhilarating scramble in pursuit of his tail; now and then a hard-worked mother would bring her baby and sit as guest of honor in Simon's solitary "cane-bottom," where she would inadvertently learn items of interest with regard to "yon Cassius," or "bluff Harry," or a certain young lady who was described as being "little" but "fierce,"--a good deal like Molly Tinker whose "man" kept the "Golden Glory Saloon." On one occasion a rattlesnake lifted its head drowzily from behind a rock near by, and was despatched offhand by Simon. It was this exploit which filled the measure of Simon's fame. "Any fool kin learn readin' an' writin'," said Patsy Linders, the eldest of the band, who, by the way, had yet to prove himself fool enough to do so. "But I'll be durned if I ever seen a _stun_ fired as neat as that!" "Simon's smarter 'n anybody," little Eliza declared in reply. "He's smarter 'n you nor me, 'n he's smarter 'n David an' Goliath, 'n he's my Simon!" No one was disposed to question Eliza's prior claim to Simon. She always sat beside him on the original settle against the lean-to. She would not abdicate the seat even when the ground grew hot and pleasant and she saw half her mates lying on the short sparse grass with their heels in the air, conning their books, or falling asleep over them, as the case might be. She felt it her prerogative to sit right there, with her chubby legs sticking out in front of her; there, where she could pull at Simon's sleeve and interrupt his discourse as often as she pleased. And so it came about, that by the time spring had passed into summer, sumptuous wildflowers succeeding the first little scrubby daisy, a blessèd idyl of quaint child life, dear to Simon's heart, had grown out of the chance meeting on the hillside. It was as if Simon's clearing were a charmed circle into which no evil could enter, to which no echo of the greed and brutality of the mining-camp could make its way. When his permission was respectfully asked to sink a few prospect holes on his land, Simon unhesitatingly rejected the proposal, with all its glittering possibilities. As soon would the President and Fellows of Harvard College permit the sinking of prospect holes in the sacred "yard" itself, as the Lame Gulch Professor allow his "school" to be molested. But, alas! it is written in the books that no earthly circle shall be forever charmed, no human enterprise exempt from evil. And it was little Eliza herself, Simon's champion and dictator, faithful, plucky little Eliza, by whom the evil entered in. She came, one hot July day, and planted herself quite unconcernedly beside the professor, and he, looking down into the funny little round face, beheld a great black-and-blue bump on the forehead. The sight grieved him to the soul, even before he knew its tragic meaning. "Did you tumble down, Eliza?" he asked with great concern. "No," said Eliza. "Did you bump your head agin something?" "No." "Did anybody hurt you?" and already the professor was casting wrathful glances from boy to boy, well calculated to strike terror to the heart of the culprit. "Not much;" said the matter-of-fact little voice. "I guess 't was her pa done it," spoke up Patsy Linders. "He's a bloomin' terror when he's drunk." Without a word, Simon rose and led the little creature into the lean-to, where he tenderly bathed the bruise in cold water, giving no voice to the swelling indignation that tore through him. His tone and touch were but the gentler for that, as he sought to soothe the self-contained little victim, who, truth to tell, seemed not much in need of his ministrations. "My lamb!" he murmured. "My little lamb!" "Ma said to never mind," the plucky little lamb remarked. "He ain't often so." "Do you love your father?" asked Simon, seeking to fathom the blue eyes for the truth. The blue eyes were, for the moment, intent upon a swarm of flies disporting themselves upon the window-pane. "Do you love your father?" Simon asked again. "No;" quoth Eliza, "I wish he was dead." Now Simon Amberley was slow to anger; indeed it may be doubted whether he had ever in all his life before been thoroughly roused; and perhaps for that very reason, the surging flood of indignation, so new to his experience, seemed to him like a call from heaven. All day he fed his wrath on the deeds of Scripture warriors, reading aloud from the sacred records, till Patsy Linders exclaimed, enraptured, that "the Bible was a durned good book, by Jiminy!" Little Eliza stayed on, as she often did after the school was dispersed, sure that "her Simon," would find some new and agreeable entertainment for her. "Did your father ever hit you before?" Amberley asked casually, as they strung a handful of painter's-brush into a garland, which it was thought might prove becoming to Simon Jr.'s complexion. "Yes," said Eliza. "More than once?" "Yes." "Where did he hit you last time?" "Here." And Eliza pulled up the blue calico sleeve, and displayed a pretty bad bruise on the arm. Simon paused a moment in his cross-examination. "And you wish he was dead?" he asked at last, between his set teeth. "Yes." "What does he look like?" "Something like you," was the startling response; "only different." The amendment was, at first blush, more gratifying to Simon than the original statement. Yet, when Eliza was gone, he went and looked in his bit of a looking-glass, half hoping to find some touch of the latent ruffian in his face. All he saw there was a kindly, unalarming countenance, with a full blond beard, and thick blond hair. The eyes had a look of bewilderment which did not lessen their habitual mildness. He straightened his tall form, and threw his shoulders back, and he set his mouth in a very firm, determined line; but, somehow, the mild eyes would not flash, and a profound misgiving penetrated his soul. Was he the man after all, to terrorize a ruffian? The ruffian in question was an unknown quantity to his would-be intimidator, who boasted but a calling acquaintance with Eliza's mother,--a pale, consumptive creature, with that "better-days" air about her, which gives the last touch of pitifulness to poverty and hardship. Little as he had frequented the now thriving metropolis of Lame Gulch, Amberley knew pretty well where to look for his man, and as he sallied forth that same evening, with the purpose of investigating the "unknown quantity," he bent his steps, not in the direction of the rickety cabin in the hollow there, but toward the "Lame Gulch Opera House." This temple of the muses was easily discoverable, being situated in the main street of the town, and marked by a long transparency projecting above the door, upon which the luminous inscription, "Opera House," was visible from afar. Upon entering beneath this alluring sign, Amberley found himself in a full-blown "sample room," the presence of whose glittering pyramids of bottles was still further emphasized by the following legend, "Patronize the bar and walk in!" which was inscribed above an inner portal. The new-comer stepped up to the bar-tender. "Do you know whether a miner named Conrad Christie is in there?" he asked. "I guess likely enough," was the reply. "Mr. Christie is one of our regular patrons. Won't you take a drink, Mister?" "No;" said Simon, shortly. "No? Ain't that ruther a pity? But pass right in, Sir. Any friend of Mr. Christie's is welcome here." Whereupon Mr. Christie's "friend" passed through the door, into the long, narrow "Opera House." It was a dirty, cheerless hole, in spite of the brilliance of many oil lamps, shining among the flimsy decorations. At the end of the tunnel-shaped room was a rude stage, festooned with gaudy, squalid hangings, beneath which a painted siren was singing a song which Simon did not listen to. The floor of the auditorium was filled with chairs and tables in disorderly array, the occupants of which seemed to be paying more attention to their liquor and their cards than to the cracked voice of the songstress. There was a rattling of glasses, the occasional clink of money, frequent shrill laughs and deeper-chested oaths and guffaws; the fumes of beer and whisky mingled with the heavy canopy of smoke which gave to the flaring lights a lurid aspect, only too well befitting the place and the occasion. "Wal, I swan!" exclaimed a familiar voice close at Simon's elbow: and, turning, he beheld the doughty Enoch, seated at a table close to the door, imbibing beer at the hands of a gaudy young woman in a red silk gown. Simon looked at the elderly transgressor in speechless astonishment. "Yas, here I be," said Enoch, jauntily, "consortin' with the hosts of Belial. Take a cheer, Simon, take a cheer." "I guess not," said Simon, slowly; "I don't have no special hankerin' after Belial, myself. Do you happen to know a man named Conrad Christie?" "Him's the gentleman," the red-silk Hebe volunteered. "Him in the yeller beard and the red necktie, rakin' in the chips." Amberley took a critical survey of his adversary. He was a man of forty, or thereabouts, singularly like Simon himself in build and coloring, with enough of the ruffian in his aspect to give the professor an envious sense of inferiority. He was playing cards with a fierce-looking fellow in a black beard, who seemed to be getting the worst of it. Simon was conscious afterwards of having turned his back on Enoch rather abruptly; of having interrupted, by his departure, an outpouring of confidence in regard to "Mis' Baker's tantrums." At the time, however, he had but one thought and that was to strike while the iron was hot. He felt that the iron was becoming very hot indeed, as he stepped up to the yellow-haired gambler, who was again engaged in the satisfactory ceremony of "rakin' 'em in." "Mr. Christie," Simon said, and hot as the iron was, he could not control a slight tremor in his voice, not of fear, but of excitement. "Mr. Christie, I've got something to say to you. Will you step outside with me?" Christie measured his interlocutor from head to foot, till Simon felt himself insulted in every inch of his person. The peace-loving hermit had time for blood-thirsty thoughts before the answer struck his ear. "Not much!" came the reply at last, while the speaker gathered up the cards and began dealing. "If this place is good enough for me, I reckon it's good enough for a blasted Sissy of your description!" No one would do Mr. Christie the injustice to suppose that his remark was unembellished by more forcible expressions than are hereby recorded. Yet, somehow, the worst of them lacked the sting that Simon managed to get into his reply, as he said, in a suppressed voice: "This place ain't good enough, as far's that goes, for the meanest skunk God ever created! But it'll do for what we've got to settle between us." "Have a seat, Mister?" A sick-looking girl, with blazing cheeks, had placed a chair for him. "Have a----" The words died on her lips before the solemn, reproachful look the professor turned upon her. "And Jinny looked smart As a cranberry tart!" sang the discordant voice from the stage, which nobody thought of listening to. "It's the Lame Gulch Professor," the black-haired man remarked, taking a look at his cards, before turning to his glass for refreshment. "Damn the Lame Gulch Professor!" Christie retorted, by way of acknowledging the introduction. Then Simon spoke again. "Mr. Christie, you've got the prettiest and smartest little girl in Lame Gulch," he declared, laying down his proposition in a tone of extreme deliberation; "and you hit her over the head last night, and 't ain't the first time neither." "Is that the latest news you've got to give us?" asked Christie, passing his hand caressingly over his pistol, which lay like a lap-dog on his knees. "Better let that alone," said the black-haired gambler, persuasively. "The professor's ben good to my kids." The threat was so very covert that the sensitive Christie did not feel himself called upon to recognize it as such. "_He_ ain't no target," Christie declared, with unutterable contempt. "I'd as soon shoot a door-mat!" whereupon he proceeded, in a disengaged manner, to empty the contents of the black bottle into a glass, flinging the bottle under the table, with a praiseworthy regard for appearances. Simon breathed deep and hard, and again there was an exasperating tremor in his low-pitched voice, which drawled more than usual, as he said: "No; 't ain't the latest news! What I specially come to tell you was, that if you ever lay hands on that child agin, I'll shoot you deader 'n any door-mat you ever wiped your great cowardly boots on!" Each word of this speech seemed to cleave its separate, individual way with a slow, ponderous significance. Christie passed his hand absently down the barrel of the pistol on his knees, till his fingers rested on the trigger. If he had had any murderous intention, however, he seemed to think better of it, for he contented himself with a shrug and an oath, and the supercilious inquiry: "What are you givin' us, anyway?" The man of the black beard eyed his movements with a furtive interest. Amberley stood a moment, to give a still more deliberate emphasis to his words, thinking, the while, that in spite of the unvarnished frankness on either side, neither he nor his adversary had quite made each other out. Then he turned and threaded his way among the tables to the door, as quietly and composedly as he had come; while the girl on the stage repeated the assertion in regard to "Jinny's" smart looks, in which she seemed still unable to awaken the slightest interest in those who should have been her auditors. Before he had passed Enoch's chair, which was placed discreetly near the exit, the pair of gamblers were at it again. Not even the luck had been turned by the interruption. Christie was sweeping in the chips to the same refrain of the "cranberry tarts." When, to Simon's infinite relief, little Eliza appeared at school the next morning, the teacher scrutinized her jealously in search of bumps and bruises. There was nothing to be seen but the original bump, and that was reduced in size, though somewhat intensified in color, since the day before. "I wonder how I should feel when I had shot him!" thought Simon, and his mind reverted to the rattlesnake, and to a sneaking compunction which had seized him when the tail gave its death-quiver. The possibility of missing his mark when once obliged to shoot did not enter his mind. He was fighting on the side of right and justice, and possessing, as he did, but small knowledge of the world and its ways, he had implicit faith in the triumphant outcome of all such encounters. He took small credit to himself for any temerity he had shown. Somehow it seemed to him that the thing had been made very easy. He felt moderately sure that he owed his safety to the villainous-looking man in the black beard; and, indeed, that was quite in order, for he had been given to understand that Providence was not above making use of the meanest instruments to the accomplishment of a good end. There were times when he was even constrained to hope that, by the same Great Influence, a spark of magnanimity had been awakened in Christie's abandoned soul; and once, when Eliza reported that her "pa" had given her a nickle, he almost believed that those seemingly ineffective words of his had, thanks to that same all-powerful intervention, made an impression. He became positively hopeful that this might be the case, when nearly a month had passed, and no further harm had come to his "lamb." One morning Bella Jones, who ordinarily kept rather fashionable hours, came panting up the hill, the first to arrive. She was a dressy young person, whose father kept a "sample-room." Looking hastily about, to make sure that no one was there to have forestalled her, she cried, still quite out of breath: "Eliza Christie, she's lost her ma! Died in the night of a hemorag! Eliza ain't cried a drop, 'n her pa he's just settin' there like he was shot!" "Like he was shot!" Simon shivered at the words as if a cold wind had passed, striking a chill through the intense August day. The professor kept school that morning as usual, but he did not sit on the settle against the lean-to, and when Patsy Lenders undertook to hoist himself up on it, the boy got his ears boxed. Patsy stated afterwards, in maintenance of the justifiable pride of "ten years goin' on eleven," that he "wouldn't ha' took it from anybody but the perfessor," and he "wouldn't ha' took it from him, if 't hadn't a ben for that snake!" It was high noon. The sun was pouring down upon the group of children in the clearing in front of the lop-sided cabin, and upon the empty settle up against it; upon the brooding heights that spanned the horizon beyond the Gulch, upon the fragrant pine-trees close at hand. Simon Jr. had just strayed along with a blossoming yucca protruding from his mouth, and the professor had driven him farther up the slope. Returning from this short excursion, Simon beheld two figures coming up the Gulch; a blond-bearded man, and a little girl in blue. He hurried toward them in real trepidation. He could not bear to see the lamb actually in the company of the wolf. The three met on the edge of the clearing; Christie was the first to speak. "I've brought you Eliza," he said, in a steady, matter-of-fact voice, something like Eliza's own. "Her ma's dead, 'n you can have her 'f you want her. She thinks you'd like her." "What do you mean?" asked Simon, his voice clouding over, so that it was hardly audible. "Can I hev her for my own?" "Yes; that's the proposition! 'N there's a hundred dollars in her pocket which is all the capital I can raise to-day. I can do the funeral on tick. No; I won't try to get her away from you. She ain't my style." Simon was stooping down with his eyes on a level with Eliza's. "Say, Eliza," he asked, "would you like to be my little girl?" "Yes," quoth Eliza. "And come and live with me all the time?" "Yes!" and she put out a little hand and touched his face. "She won't be no great expense to you," said Christie. Simon stood up and cast a significant glance about him. "I guess if I let them prospectors in on my land," he said, "there won't be no great call for economizing!" The two men stood a moment facing each other with the same half-defiant, half-puzzled look they had exchanged at that other meeting, not so long ago. Christie was the first to break the silence. "There wa' n't never much love lost between Eliza and me," he remarked, as if pursuing a train of thought that had been interrupted. "After the two boys died of the shakes, down in the Missouri Bottoms, both in one week, I kind o' lost my interest in kids. But I'd like to know she was in better hands than mine, for her mother's sake." "Eliza," said Simon, in a tone of gentle authority which the Lame Gulch Professor rarely assumed. "Eliza, give your pa that money, and tell him to bury your ma decent." Christie took the money. "Well," said he, "I guess you're correct about the prospectors. They're right after your claim!--Good-bye Eliza." "Good-bye," said Eliza, digging the heel of her boot into the bed of pine needles. Yet Christie did not go. "I'll send her duds up after the funeral," he said. "And her ma's things along with them. And, say!" he added with a sort of gulp of determination, while a dark flush went over his face. "About that _door-mat_, you know. It wasn't respectful and--_I apologize_!" With that, Christie strode down the hill to his dead wife, and Simon and the child turned and walked hand in hand toward the lean-to. Half way across the clearing Simon Jr. unabashed by his late ejection, joined the pair. "She's our little girl now, Simon," said the professor, gravely. "Yes," quoth Eliza, with equal gravity. Upon which Simon Jr. kicked up his heels in the most intelligent manner, and pranced off in pursuit of the succulent yucca. VII. THE BOSS OF THE WHEEL. When contrasted with the ordinary grog-shop and gambling den of Lame Gulch, the barroom of the _Mountain Lion_ has an air of comfort and propriety which is almost a justification of its existence. If men must drink and gamble,--and no one acquainted with a mining-camp would think of doubting the necessity,--here, at least, is a place where they may do so with comparative decency and decorum. The _Mountain Lion_, which is in every respect a well-conducted hostelry, tolerates no disorderly persons, and it is therefore the chosen resort, not only of the better class of transient visitors, but of the resident aristocracy as well. In the spacious office are gathered together each evening, mining-engineer and real-estate broker, experts and prospectors from Denver, men from Springtown in search of business and diversion, to say nothing of visitors from the eastern and western seaboards; and hither, to the more secluded and less pretentious barroom, at least, come the better class of miners, those who have no special taste for bloodshed and other deviltry, and who occasionally go so far as to leave their firearms at home. Some slight prejudice, to be sure, was created among the independent Sons of Toil, when it was found that the _Mountain Lion_ did not permit its waiters to smoke cigarettes while on duty; but such cavillers were much soothed upon learning that a "bust dude" had been quite as summarily dealt with when he broke forth into song at the dinner-table. This latter victim of severity and repression was a certain Mr. Newcastle, a "gent gone to seed" as he was subsequently described, and he had protested against unkind restrictions by declaring that such exhibitions of talent were _typ_-sical of a mining-camp. He pronounced _typ_-sical with an almost audible hyphen, as if his voice had stubbed its toe. But Mr. Newcastle's involuntary wit was of no avail, and he was forced to curb his songful spirit until a more fitting season. So it came about that the _Mountain Lion_ had not been in existence ten days before it had gone on record as a thoroughly "first-class" establishment. No wonder, then, that an air of peculiar respectability attached itself to the "wheel" itself which revolved in a corner of the barroom night after night, whirling into opulence or penury, such as entrusted their fortunes to its revolutions. Despite its high-toned patronage, however, the terms "roulette" and "croupier" found small favor with the devotees at that particular shrine of the fickle goddess, and Dabney Dirke, its presiding genius, was familiarly known among "the boys," as "the boss of the wheel." "Waxey" Smithers,--he who was supposed to have precipitated Jimmy Dolan's exit from a disappointing world,--had been heard to say that "that feller Dirke" was too (profanely) high-toned for the job. Nevertheless, the wheel went round at Dirke's bidding as swiftly and uncompromisingly as heart could wish, and to most of those gathered about that centre of attraction the "boss" seemed an integral part of the machine. Dabney Dirke was an ideal figure for the part he had to play. He was tall and thin and Mephistophelian, though not of the dark complexion which is commonly associated with Mephistopheles. His clean-shaven face got its marked character, not from its coloring but from its cut; Nature's chisel would seem to have been more freely used than her brush in this particular production. The face was long and thin and severe, the nose almost painfully sensitive, the mouth thin and firmly closed rather than strong. The chin did not support the intention of the lips, nor did the brows quite do their duty by the eyes, which had a steely light, and might have gleamed with more effect if they had been somewhat more deeply set. The hair was sparse and light, and the complexion of that kind of paleness which takes on no deeper tinge from exposure to sun or wind or from passing emotion. There were two indications that "the boss of the wheel" was also a gentleman;--he put on a clean collar every day, and he did not oil his hair. It would have been strange indeed if two such glaring peculiarities had escaped the subtle perception of Mr. Smithers, and it was rather to be wondered at that such inexcusable pretensions did not militate against the "boss" in his chosen calling.--That the calling was in this case deliberately chosen, may as well be admitted at the outset. Dabney Dirke had once, in a very grievous moment, sworn that he would "go to the devil," and had afterwards found himself so ill-suited to that hasty enterprise, that he had been somewhat put to it to get started on the downward path. He was the only son of a Wall Street magnate who had had the misfortune to let his "transactions" get the better of him. Dirke often thought of his father when he watched the faces of the men about the "wheel." There was little in the outer aspect, even of the men of civilized traditions who stood among the gamblers, to remind him of the well-dressed, well-groomed person of his once prosperous parent. But in their faces, when the luck went against them, was a look that he was poignantly familiar with; a look which had first dawned in his father's face, flickeringly, intermittently, and which had grown and intensified, week after week, month after month, till it had gone out in the blankness of despair. That was when the elder Dirke heard his sentence of imprisonment. For Aaron Dirke's failure had involved moral as well as financial ruin. He had died of the shock, as some of his creditors thought it behooved him to do,--died in prison after one week's durance. His son envied him; but dying is difficult in early youth, and Dabney Dirke did not quite know how to set about. Sometimes when he gave the wheel the fateful turn, he tried to cheat himself with an idea that it obeyed his will, this wonderful, dizzying, maddening wheel, with its circle of helpless victims. But there were moments when he felt himself more at the mercy of the wheel than any wretched gambler of them all. As he stood, with his curiously rigid countenance, performing his monotonous functions in the peculiar silence which characterizes the group around a gaming table, he sometimes felt himself in the tangible grasp of Fate; as if the figures surrounding the table had been but pictures on his brain, and he, the puppet impersonating Fate to them, the real and only victim of chance. At such times he could get free from this imaginary bondage only by a deliberate summoning up of those facts of his previous existence which alone seemed convincingly real. They marshalled themselves readily enough at his bidding, those ruthless invaders of an easy, indolent life;--penury and disgrace, wounded pride and disappointed love, and, bringing up the rear, that firm yet futile resolve of his to go to the devil. Dabney Dirke, with his tragic intensity, had often been the occasion of humor in other men, but it is safe to say that his own mind had never been crossed by a single gleam of that illumining, revivifying flame. For that reason he took his fate and himself more seriously, Heaven help him!--than even his peculiar ill-fortune warranted. At the time of his father's failure and disgrace he had been the accepted suitor of a girl whom he idealized and adored, and in his extremity she had failed him. She had weakly done as she was bid, and broken faith with him. It was on this occasion that he laid upon himself the burdensome task of which mention has been made. "Frances," he had said, with the solemnity of a Capuchin friar taking his vows; "Frances, if you cast me off I shall go to the devil!" Frances was very sorry, and very reproachful, and withal, not a little nattered by this evidence of her negative influence; but she gave him her blessing and let him go, whither he would; and he, with the inconsequent obstinacy of his nature, carried with him a perfectly unimpaired ideal of her, sustained by her tearful assurance that she should always love him and pray for him. Even when he heard within the year that she was about to make a brilliant marriage with a titled Frenchman whom she had met at Newport, he persisted in thinking of her as the victim, not of her own inconstancy, but of parental sternness. He sometimes saw her pretty face quite distinctly before his eyes, as he looked out across the swiftly spinning wheel, into the smoke-hung barroom,--the pretty face with the tearful eyes and the quivering lip of shallow feeling, the sincerity of which nothing could have made him doubt,--and somehow that pictured face had always the look of loving and praying for him. There was a certain little ring, bearing a design of a four-leaved clover done in diamonds, a trinket of her girlhood days, which she used to let him wear "for luck." He had it on his little finger the day his father was sentenced. Its potency might fairly have been questioned after that, yet when she took it back he felt as if the act must have a blighting influence upon his destinies, quite apart from the broken engagement which it marked. He had accepted for the nonce a place at the foot of the ladder in a bankers' and brokers' office which was offered him by one of the partners, an old friend of his father's. He held the place for some months, and, being quite devoid of ambition, he soon came to loathe the daily grind. Through that, as through, the later vicissitudes of his career, his mind clung, with a curious, mechanical persistency, to that troublesome vow which he had made. The difficulty lay in his entire constitutional lack of vicious tendencies. He had no taste for drink and none for bad company; highway robbery was played out, and the modern substitutes for it were too ignoble to be thought of. Had that not been the case his perplexities might have found an easy solution, for more than one golden opportunity offered for bald, barefaced breach of trust. One day in particular, he found himself in the street with thirty thousand dollars in his trousers' pocket. This not unprecedented situation derived its special significance from the fact that the day was the one fixed for Frances Lester's marriage. As Dirke walked up the street he saw, in fact, the carriages drawn up before Trinity Church, and he knew that the ceremony was going forward. He was struck with the dramatic possibilities of the moment. Were he to decamp on the spot, he might be in time to get into the morning papers, and Frances would know with what _éclat_ he had celebrated her wedding day. He raised his hand to signal a cab, but the driver did not see him, and ten minutes later the money had gone to swell his employers' bank-account. He had often questioned what would have been his next step, supposing that particular cab-driver had had his wits about him and seen the signal. He was loath to admit that he would merely have been at the expense of driving the few blocks to the same destination which he had reached more economically on foot! He had returned in time to stand among the crowd on the sidewalk and see the bridal party issue from the church. When bride and bridegroom crossed the narrow space between the awning and the carriage door, Dirke had his first opportunity of seeing the Count de Lys. He could not but perceive that the man was the possessor of a high-bred, handsome face, but perhaps it was, under the circumstances, not altogether surprising that he found the handsome face detestable. The mere sight of the black moustache and imperial which the Frenchman wore so jauntily was enough to make the unhappy broker's clerk forswear all kindred ornaments to the end of his days. A broker's clerk he did not long remain, however. He was too restless for that, too much at odds with the particular sort of life his situation forced him into. Within a month of the day on which he had proved himself so signally unfitted for the _rôle_ of rascal, he had thrown up his position and cut himself loose from all his old moorings. It was in a spirit of fantastic knight-errantry that he turned his face westward, a spirit that gave him no rest until, at the end of many months, he finally dropped anchor in the riotous little harbor of Lame Gulch. This turbulent haven seemed to promise every facility for the shipwreck on which he had so perversely set his heart, and he was content to wait there for whatever storm or collision should bring matters to a crisis. Perhaps the mere steady under-tow would suck him down to destruction. The under-tow is not inconsiderable among the seething currents of life in a two-year-old mining-camp. Dirke had not been long in the camp, before his indefeasible air of integrity and respectability had attracted the attention of no less a personage than the proprietor of the roulette wheel, who invited him to run the wheel on a salary. It was now some three months since he had entered upon this vocation, and it had, on the whole, been a disappointment to him. He had accepted the position with an idea that he should be playing the sinister _rôle_ of tempter, that he should feel himself at last acting a very evil part. To his surprise and chagrin he found that he was conscious of no moral relation whatever with the victims of the wheel. It was not he who enticed them; it was not he who impoverished them. On the contrary, given his contract with the "bank," he was doing his duty as simply and scrupulously here as in the Wall Street office, performing a certain function for certain pay, accountable to an employer now as hitherto. And, indeed, when he reflected upon the glimpses of Wall Street methods he had got, and upon the incalculable turns of the Wall Street wheel, whirling its creatures into opulence or penury as capriciously as the roulette wheel itself, he could not but feel that he was serving the same master now as heretofore, and to very much the same ends. And now, as heretofore, he had no reassuring sense of being on the downward path. He used to amuse himself during the day,--for his time was his own from dawn to dark,--in trying to work out the law of averages, following out the hints he gathered from the working of the wheel. He had always had a taste for mathematics, having rather "gone in" for that branch at college. Fleeting visions of becoming an astronomer had visited him from time to time; but the paralysis of wealth had deterred him while he was yet ostensible master of his own fate, and now the same inherent weakness of character which had made him a slave to wealth, made him a slave to poverty, and he regarded whatever latent ambition he had ever cherished as a dead issue. His mind sometimes recurred to those neglected promptings of happier days, as he went forth under the stars after hours, and cleared his brain by a walk in the pure night air. It was his habit to make for the hills outside the camp, and his solitary wanderings were much cheered by the light of those heavenly lamps. At this high altitude they had a peculiar brilliance that seemed to give them a nearer, more urgent significance than elsewhere. He felt that it was inconsistent in him to look at the stars and to inquire into the law of averages. It would be more in character, he told himself,--that is, more in the character he aspired to--if he were to embrace the exceptional advantages Lame Gulch offered for doing something disreputable. Yet the stars shone down, undaunted and serene, upon the squalid camp, and into the bewildered soul of Dabney Dirke, so fantastically pledged to do violence to its own nature. Sometimes they twinkled shrewdly, comprehendingly; sometimes they glowed with a steady splendor that seemed to dominate the world. There were nights when the separate stars were blended, to his apprehension, in one great symphony of meaning; again certain ones stood out among the others, individual and apart. There was Jupiter up there. He did not look as if he were revolving with lightning speed about the sun, and the moons revolving about him were not even visible. That was the kind of roulette wheel a man might really take an interest in! And while he dallied with the stars and with those higher promptings which their radiance symbolized, he yet clung persistently to the purely artificial bonds he had put upon himself. Poor Dabney Dirke! If he had possessed the saving grace of humor he could not have dedicated the golden years of youth to anything so hopelessly chimerical and absurd. He would have perceived that he was enacting the part of an inverted Don Quixote; a character grotesque enough when planted on its own erratic legs, but hopelessly ridiculous when made to stand on its head and defy its windmills up-side-down. As it was, he continued to take himself seriously, and to argue with himself on every concession made to a nature at bottom sound and well-inclined, if not well-balanced; and he was still standing at his incongruous post, performing its duties with dogged industry, when something happened which created a commotion within him. The man who had married Frances Lester came to Lame Gulch and gravitated, as every guest of the _Mountain Lion_ is sure to do, for the passing moment at least, to the barroom of the house. The count was a member of a French syndicate engaged in the erection of a "stamp-mill" at Lame Gulch, and he was making a flying trip from the East with one of his compatriots, to take a look at the property. He was a man of medium height whose nationality and rank were equally unmistakable, and his air of distinction attracted no little attention upon his entrance. Dirke, however, did not see him. There was a throng of men about the wheel, and the "boss" was regarding their movements with the perfunctory attention which his duties required, when a hand, whiter than the others, was thrust forward. As it placed a silver dollar on the board a flash of diamonds caught Dirke's eye, and he recognized the "lucky ring" he had once worn. It was a closer fit for the little finger of the present wearer than it had been for his own. There was little need of further investigation to establish the identity of the new-comer. The wheel went round and the ball dropped in the stranger's favor. Dirke glanced at him as he pocketed his winnings. The handsome face antagonized him even more strongly than it had six months ago. M. de Lys did not play again immediately. He watched the wheel with a quiet intentness, as if he were establishing some subtle, occult influence over it. Then the white hand was quietly extended, and a gold piece glittered where it had touched. Again the ball declared itself in favor of the Frenchman. He played at intervals for more than an hour, with unvarying success. Eager, inexperienced boys rashly staked and often lost; laborers with haggard faces saw their earnings swept away; but the count, always calm and deliberate, won,--won repeatedly, invariably. He rarely risked more than ten dollars on a single turn; he never placed his money on a number. He played red or black, and the ball followed his color as the needle follows the magnet. Dirke began to dread the sight of that white hand; the gleam of the diamonds seemed to pierce and pain him like sharp steel. An hour had passed and Dirke estimated that de Lys must have won several hundred dollars. Other men had begun to choose his color, and the "bank" was feeling the drain. Yet the machine itself was not more unconcerned than the "boss" appeared, as he paid out the money lost, and set the wheel spinning to new issues. Black, red,--red, black; so the ball fell, but always in favor of the white hand with the flashing brilliants. The group about the table was becoming excited; Dirke knew very well that if the thing went on much longer the "bank" would have to close down. There was a moment's pause, while all waited to follow the stranger's lead. Then the white hand reached forward and placed four five-dollar gold pieces upon the red. A dozen gnarled and grimy hands swarmed like a flock of dingy birds above the board, and each one laid its coin upon the red. Round went the wheel; the ball sped swiftly in its groove. Then the speed slackened, the ball seemed to hesitate and waver like a sentient thing making choice; there was the light click of the drop; the "bank" had won. After that the white hand played with varying luck, sometimes winning, sometimes losing. The other players began staking on their own account again. And then, some time after midnight, de Lys began losing, as persistently, as uninterruptedly as he had won. He played as deliberately as before, with a something more of calculating intentness, but the charm was broken; the wheel seemed to whirl with an intelligent revolt. Just as surely as the white hand placed a coin upon the black, the red had it; just as certainly as the diamonds flashed above the red, the ball found its way into the black. The handsome face grew slightly strained and eager--so slightly that the change would have escaped the ordinary observer. For the first time Dirke found a satisfaction in the contemplation of those high-bred features. Silver, gold, banknotes,--each and all were swept into the coffers of the "bank." His losses must already exceed his winnings, Dirke thought. The thought animated him with a malignant joy. For the first time he felt an interest in the fall of the ball; for the first time too, he felt the evil in his nature vibrate into life. Three turns of the wheel had taken place with no appearance of the white hand upon the board. "Busted," had been the laconic comment of a by-stander. Dirke glanced at the count and their eyes met. The gambler was fingering the "lucky ring." As he caught Dirke's eye he drew the ring from his finger. "What will you place against that?" he asked, handing it over to the boss. His English was careful and correct, yet as Gallic as his face itself. Dirke examined the ring judicially, wondering, the while, that it did not burn his fingers. The moment in which he last held it thus was far more vivid to his consciousness than the present instant and the present scene. "Twenty-five dollars," he said, in his most official tone, as he returned the ring to its owner. The wheel spun, the ring glittered on the red. The count leaned slightly forward. Dirke watched only the wheel. He had a wild notion that the result was life or death to him, yet why, he could not tell. Then the wheel slackened, the ball hesitated, paused, dropped. Black had won! M. de Lys turned on his heel and left the table. An hour later the room was empty and the lights were out. When Dirke passed through the office of the _Mountain Lion_ and stepped out on the veranda, the night was far spent, but the deep June sky was still spangled with stars. He stood for an instant at the top of the steps, hardly aware of the delicious wash of the night air on his face, which yet he paused to enjoy. There was a foot-fall close at hand and a voice. "M. le croupier?" the voice queried. He turned sharp about. The Frenchman stood there with his hat raised, a gentleman to the finger-tips. Involuntarily Dirke lifted his own hat, and lifted it after the manner of a gentleman. The manner was not lost upon the Frenchman. "Monsieur," said the latter, courteously; "I had the misfortune to lose a ring this evening. I shall redeem it on the morrow, when I can command my resources." The "boss" looked him full in the face. They could not distinguish one another's features in the starlight, yet the two personalities were as plainly in evidence as could have been the case in the broad light of day. "No, you won't!" Dirke retorted, coolly, planting his hat firmly on his head again. He was angry with himself for having removed it. "May I ask Monsieur why not?" "Because the ring is sold!" The Frenchman started visibly. "And the purchaser? Would you have the courtesy to indicate to me the purchaser?" "No!" The rudely spoken monosyllable put an abrupt period to the conversation. Dirke passed down the steps and along the deserted street. As he paced the length of the board sidewalk, which helped itself over the ups and downs of the ungraded thoroughfare by means of short, erratic flights of steps at certain points, he distinctly heard footsteps following. They sounded plainly on the plank walk, and he did not for a moment doubt whose they were. His hands were in his coat-pockets. On the little finger of his left hand was the ring. He paused, opposite the brightly lighted windows of the last saloon in the row. The town ended there, the street lapsing into a rough and trackless barren. Here he waited for the Frenchman to come up with him. He watched his progress with a curious interest, noting how the figure was at one moment lost in the shadow, only to emerge, the next instant, into the full light that streamed from some nocturnal haunt. As he came up with Dirke, the electric light over the entrance to the saloon shone full upon them both. Dirke waited for him to speak. Again he raised his hat, but this time Dirke was on his guard and was not to be betrayed into any concession to courtesy. There was a slight shrug of the shoulders as the Frenchman replaced his hat. He spoke, however, in a conciliatory tone: "It is a fine evening," he observed. "I have followed your example. I go for a walk." "You have followed me, you mean," said Dirke, bluntly. "I heard you behind me." Then, moved by a sudden impulse to precipitate matters, he drew his left hand from his pocket. The diamonds flashed in the light. M. de Lys's eyes flashed in response. With all his unabated elegance, he had something the look of a tiger ready to spring upon his prey. But he held himself in check. "Monsieur!" he cried, and there was a savage note in his voice, which Dirke would not have credited him with. "Monsieur! If you decline to permit me to pay for that ring to-morrow, I am ready to _fight_ for it to-night!" He pronounced the word "_fight_" with a peculiar, hissing emphasis. "Not to-night," Dirke rejoined quietly. "And why not to-night, Monsieur, may I ask?" "Because I am armed, and you are not." At the word Dirke had drawn his right hand from his pocket; the barrel of a pistol gleamed white between them. The Frenchman recoiled. His face was not pleasant to look upon, yet his antagonist would have been sorry to lose the sight of it. Dirke stood, tall and slim and commanding, his face set in the accustomed lines. No emotion whatever was to be seen there, not even contempt for the man who shrank from sure death in such a cause. For fully twenty seconds they faced each other in the glaring light of the saloon, pent up passion visible in the one, invisible in the other. In Dirke's face, and bearing, however, devoid as it was of any emotion, one quality was but the more recognizable for that, and the count knew that the man before him was available as an antagonist. "Monsieur," he said, with strong self-control, "it is possible that you do not understand--that you are not aware--that--Monsieur! The ring which you are pleased to wear so--so--conspicuously is the property of--The ring, Monsieur, is sacred to me!" "Sacred!" Dirke repeated. "Sacred!" The word was an arraignment, not to be overlooked. "Monsieur!" the count cried. "I was merely struck by your peculiar treatment of sacred things," Dirke replied, his tone dropping to the level of absolute indifference. "It is--unconventional, to say the least." He lifted his hand and examined the ring with an air of newly aroused interest. He wondered, half-contemptuously, at the man's self-control. "Monsieur," he heard him say. "You are a gentleman; I perceive it beneath the disguise of your vocation,--of your conduct. When I say to you that the sight of that ring upon your finger compromises my honor,--that it is an _insult_ to me,--you comprehend; is it not so?" "Quite so," Dirke replied, with carefully studied offensiveness. "Then, Monsieur, it will perhaps be possible at another time to correct the inequality in point of arms to which you have called my attention." The challenge was admirably delivered. "I should think nothing could be simpler," Dirke rejoined, and he deliberately put his pistol in his pocket. They parted without more words, de Lys stumbling once as he made his way along the uneven sidewalk, Dirke keeping on across the barren upland, sure-footed and serene. It had come at last, his great opportunity; all the evil in his nature was roused at last; jealousy, vindictiveness, unscrupulousness. He gloated over his own iniquity; every feature of it rejoiced him. He had no moral right to that ring,--all the dearer his possession of it! This man had never injured him;--the more delicious his hatred of him. The Frenchman with his exasperating air of success was to him the insolent embodiment of that which had been wrongfully wrested from him, Dabney Dirke, who had as good a right to success as another. Some philanthropists, made such by prosperity and ease, spent their lives in trying to even things off by raising the condition of their fellow-creatures to their own. Well, he had the same object to be attained, by different means. He would even things off by grading to his own level. Was not that a perfectly logical aim, given the circumstances which induced it? He lifted his hand and moved it to and fro, that he might catch the gleam of the stones in the faint starlight. In the mere joy of seeing the ring there upon his finger he almost forgot for the moment what its significance was. It scarcely reminded him just then of the girl with the tearful eyes, usually so present with him. Her face seemed to be receding from his memory; the whole story of his life seemed to grow dim and ill-defined. His mind was curiously elate with a sense of achievement, a certainty that he was near the goal, that fulfilment was at hand. He was still pursuing his way up the hill, walking slowly, with bent head, like a philosopher in revery, when he became aware that the day was dawning. The stars were growing dim and vanishing one by one, in the pale light which came like a veil across their radiance. A dull, creeping regret invaded his mind. He had loved the stars, he could have studied them with joy; under a happier fate he might have been high in their counsels. As he watched their obliteration in the dawn of a day deliberately dedicated to evil, a profound yearning for their pure tranquil eternal light came upon him, and as Jupiter himself withdrew into the impenetrable spaces, Dirke turned his eyes downward with a long, shuddering sigh. His downcast gaze fell upon the poor earthly brilliance of the diamonds. [Illustration: "ON THE EDGE OF A DEAD FOREST."] It was not until he heard from the count, a few hours later, that Dirke found himself restored to the state of mind which he was pleased to consider natural. The call for action dissipated his misgivings, carried him beyond the reach of doubts and regrets, gave him an assurance that Fate had at last ranged itself on his side. For even if duelling were not a peculiarly un-American institution, it is a mode of warfare of such refinement and elaborateness, as to be utterly foreign to the atmosphere of a mining-camp, and Dirke could only regard the challenge which came to him in due form and order that morning, as a special interposition of those darker powers which he had so long, and hitherto so vainly invoked. He went about his preparations for the meeting in an exaltation of spirit, such as he had never before experienced. Paradoxical as it may seem, absurd as it really was, he was sustained, uplifted, by the sense of immolating himself upon the altar of an ideal cause. He was about to do an ideally evil thing, to the accomplishment of an ideally evil end. Insane as this feeling was, it was his inspiration, and he felt himself, for the first time in his life, acting consistently, courageously, confidently. The meeting took place on a remote, barren hillside, on the edge of a dead forest whose gaunt stems stood upright, or leaned against each other, a weird, unearthly company. As Dirke arrived with his second,--a saturnine Kentuckian, with a duelling record of his own,--he glanced about the desolate spot thinking it well chosen. Only one feature of the scene struck him as incongruous. It was a prickly poppy standing there, erect and stiff, its coarse, harsh stem and leaves repellent enough, yet bearing on its crest a single flower, a wide white silken wonder, curiously at variance with the spirit of the scene. Dirke impatiently turned away from the contemplation of it, which had for an instant fascinated him, and faced, instead, the count, who was approaching from below, accompanied by his friend and countryman. Shots were to be exchanged but once, and though the principals were both good shots, the seconds anticipated nothing serious. The count, for his part, was not desirous of killing his adversary, and he had no reason to suppose that the latter thirsted for his blood. He considered the incident which had led to this unpleasant situation as a mere freak on the part of this morose individual whom he had unfortunately run afoul of. He had, indeed, moments of wondering whether the man were quite in his right mind. Dirke wore the ring, and he gloried in wearing it, as he took his place, elate, exultant, yet perfectly self-contained. "Are you ready?" the Kentuckian asked, and the sense of being "ready" thrilled him through every nerve. At the given signal, Dirke raised his pistol in deliberate, deadly aim. De Lys saw it, and a subtle change swept his face, while he instantly readjusted his own aim. In Dirke's countenance there was no change, no slightest trace of any emotion whatever. Yet both seconds perceived, in the flash of time allowed, that the combat was to be a mortal one, and that it was Dirke who had thus decreed it. And then it was, in that crucial moment, that Dirke's groping soul came out into the light,--even as the wide white flower over yonder had come out into the light, springing from its grim, unsightly stem. In that flashing instant of time his true nature, which he had so long sought to belie, took final command. All that was false, fantastic, artificial, loosed its hold and fell away. For the first time in two years Dabney Dirke was perfectly sane. At the word to fire, he did the one thing possible to the man he was; his pistol flashed straight upwards. The two shots rang out simultaneously, setting the echoes roaring among the hills. Dirke staggered, but recovered his foothold again and stood an instant, swaying slightly, while he slowly, with an absent look in his face and in his eyes, drew the ring from his finger. As de Lys came up, he dropped the trinket at his feet. Then, slowly, heavily, he sank back, and the men gently lowered him to the ground. De Lys knelt beside him, white with consternation. "Monsieur!" he cried; "Monsieur! It was a misunderstanding! I mistook you wholly! And you, you were magnanimous! Ah, _mon Dieu_!" And then a wonder came to pass, for Dabney Dirke's lips parted in a smile. The smile was faint, yet indescribably sweet, and the voice was faint, and far-away, in which he murmured brokenly; "It was--a message--to--the stars." The horror in the faces bending over him was lost in a look of awe. There was an influence mystically soothing in the dying man's words. The dry, soft air played about the group, rustling the short, sparse grass. It seemed the only motion left in a hushed and reverent world. Then, as the smile deepened upon his face, fixed there by the hand of death, the lips parted for the last time, and Dirke whispered; "I am going--in--for astronomy!" VIII. MR. FETHERBEE'S ADVENTURE. Mr. Fetherbee was in his element,--a fact which the casual observer would have found it hard to believe; for he was a dapper little gentleman, dainty in his attire and presumably fastidious as to his surroundings, and these last were, in the present instance, hardly calculated to suit a fastidious taste. In a word, Mr. Fetherbee was "doing" Lame Gulch, doing it from the tourist's standpoint, delighting in every distinctive feature of the rough-and-ready, sordid, picturesque, "rustling" young mining-camp. He was a popular little man, and he had been received with open arms, so to speak, by the Springtown contingent, when he had put in an appearance the day before at the _Mountain Lion_. He had arrived in a state of high good humor, induced by the stage ride from the railroad terminus, which he had accomplished, perched upon the topmost seat of the big "Concord," scraping acquaintance with a miscellaneous lot of pilgrims, all bound to the same conglomerate Mecca. Indeed, so charmed had he been with the manners and language of his fellow-passengers, that it is to be feared that he did but scant justice to the superb scenery spread out for the delectation of the traveller. There were moments, to be sure, when a line of gleaming snow-caps visible through the interstices of a tract of starveling trees would arrest his attention; yet the more moving and dramatic interest of some chance utterance in his immediate vicinity, was sure to recall him to a delighted contemplation of a rakish sombrero or of a doubtfully "diamond" scarf-pin. When, at last, the stage reached the edge of the sort of basin in which the camp lies, and began the descent of the last declivity, he could scarcely contain himself for sheer joy. What, to him, were the glories of the encircling peaks, the unfolding wonders of this heart of the Rockies, compared with the actual sight of the mushroom growth of pine huts and canvas tents, straggling sparsely up the hill, centring closely in the valley? Children and dogs tumbled over each other on the barren slope which looked like one vast back yard; donkeys grazed there, apparently fattening upon a rich diet of tin cans and shavings. Over yonder was a charred heap which had once been a building of some pretension, as was evident from the rude stone foundation which the blackened timbers leaned against. So Lame Gulch had its history, its traditions, its ruin. The charred timbers already looked older than the everlasting hills that towered on every hand, wrapped in the garment of eternal youth. "What a lot of houses there are here," Mr. Fetherbee remarked to his next neighbor, a seamy old reprobate with an evil eye. "Hm!" was the reply, the articulate profanity of which was lost in a cloud of the thickest, vilest tobacco smoke. "Ever seen a mining-camp when the stuff's given out?" "No; what does it look like?" "Like a heap of bloomin' peanut-shells chucked in a corner." At the _Mountain Lion_ were Allery Jones, Harry de Luce, Dick Dayton "the mascot," and half a dozen other Springtown men, and they pounced upon the new-comer with every flattering indication of delight. Mr. Fetherbee had been but six months a resident of Springtown, but it had hardly taken as many days for Springtown to make the discovery that he was the king of story-tellers. He and his wife had taken up their residence in that most delightful of health resorts, and, having definitively closed up his affairs in the East, he had entered upon the Western life with keen zest. In one particular only he was apparently destined here as elsewhere to the disappointment which had dogged his footsteps from childhood up. Fortune had treated him kindly in many respects; she had given him health and prosperity, she had bestowed upon him a host of friends, and the wife of his choice,--a choice which fifteen years of rather exceptional happiness had amply justified,--best of all, he was endowed with an unfailing relish for these blessings: yet in the one burning desire of his heart he had been persistently frustrated. He had never had an adventure. Men he knew had found this crowning bliss ready to their hand. There was his old chum, Jack Somers, who had been actually shipwrecked among the Azores; there was Caleb Fitz who had once stopped a runaway horse and saved the lives of two beauteous ladies, getting a corresponding number of his own ribs broken into the bargain; lucky dog! There was that miserable little cad, Sandy Seakum, who had been in Boston at the big fire of '72, and had done something he was forever bragging about in the way of saving a lot of bonds and other securities belonging to his father-in-law. But for Mr. Fetherbee there had been no such honors. He had never met so much as a savage dog; the very burglars had declined to concern themselves with his house; and once when the top story of a hotel he was sleeping in had caught fire, and prodigies of valor were performed in the rescue of the inmates under the roof, he had disgraced himself irretrievably in his own eyes by sleeping through the night unconscious of any disturbance. It was perhaps this unsatisfied craving for adventures of his own which gave such a vivid coloring to his anecdotes of other men's exploits; possibly too, his sense of humor, which had an entirely individual flavor, had been quickened by a sly appreciation of his own oddities. On the evening of his arrival at Lame Gulch, Mr. Fetherbee had outdone himself. He had sat, the centre of an appreciative group, in the corner of the big office, well away from the roaring wood fire, his chair tilted back against the wall, his hat on the back of his head, spouting entertainment in an uninterrupted stream. Not that Mr. Fetherbee was in the habit of tilting his chair back, or, for the matter of that, of wearing his hat on the back of his head. But here, at Lame Gulch, he felt it incumbent upon him to enter as far as was practicable into the spirit of the piece. As he sat, enveloped in smoke and surrounded by the familiar forms of his Springtown cronies, he was obliged to admit that the "piece" in question had not yet developed much action. Yet the atmosphere was electric with possibilities, and the stage was well peopled with "characters," not one of which escaped the watchful eye of Mr. Fetherbee. A "character" he would have defined as a picturesque and lawless being, given to claim-jumping, murder, and all ungodliness; these qualities finding expression in a countenance at once fascinating and forbidding, a bearing at once stealthy and imperious. If no single one of the slouching, dark-browed apparitions that crossed his vision could be said to fulfil all these requirements, the indications scattered among them were sufficiently suggestive to have an exhilarating effect upon the genial little story-teller. And now it was morning and the serious business of the day had begun. He was off for "the mines" with Dick Dayton, Allery Jones, and Frank Discombe,--a young mining engineer who was far more proud of his attainments as "Jehu," than of his really brilliant professional reputation. They rattled noisily along the main street of the camp in a loose-jointed vehicle drawn by two ambitious steeds which Allery Jones characterized as "fiery skeletons." It was a glorious September morning, and though there had been a heavy frost in the night, the sensitive mountain air was already, two or three hours after sunrise, warmed and mellowed through and through. The road soon began to rise, taking a fine sweep about the shoulder of Bear Mountain, and then making its way over obstacles of a pronounced nature, through a very poor and peaked "virgin forest." The wood-cutter had hacked his way right and left, combining a quest for firewood with his efforts in the service of the road-builder, scorning to remove stumps and roots, delighting in sharp corners and meaningless digressions. The horses struggled gallantly on, sometimes marching like a sculptor's creation, elevated on a huge pedestal of rock above the wagon which grovelled behind, its wheels sunk to their hubs in the ruts on either side;--sometimes plunging into unexpected depressions, which brought their backs below the level of the dasher. The wheels made their individual way as best they could, without the slightest reference to one another. At one moment Mr. Fetherbee perched with Dayton on the larboard end of the rear axle-tree; a moment later he found himself obliterated beneath the burly form of the latter, whom the exigencies of mountain travel had flung to the starboard side. Released from Dayton's crushing weight, his small person jounced freely about, or came butting against Discombe's back in the most spontaneous manner possible. The threatened dislocation of his joints, the imminent cracking of all his bones, the squeezing of his small person between the upper and the nether millstones of Dayton's portly form and the adamantine seat-cushions; each and every incident of the transit Mr. Fetherbee took in perfectly good part. Yet it may be questioned whether he would have arrived at the goal intact, had it not been for the timely splitting of an under-pinning of the wagon, which caused a sudden collapse in the bows of the storm-tossed bark, and obliged the travellers to descend while yet half a mile distant from their journey's end. The drive had been a silent function, each man having been preoccupied with the effort to preserve the integrity of his physical structure. Once on their feet, a splashed and battered company, they observed one another critically, bursting into shouts of unrestrained mirth over the astonishing hieroglyphics of mud which had inscribed themselves upon their respective countenances. Mr. Fetherbee himself looked like an Indian brave in full war-paint. The day thus pleasantly begun was one of divers experiences, any one of which seemed to contain within itself all the essential elements of an adventure. More than once Mr. Fetherbee felt, as he jocosely expressed it, as if every minute would be the next! Thanks to Discombe's commanding position as superintendent of several of the mines, they were able to investigate the situation pretty thoroughly. They climbed up and down ladders, regardless of the wear and tear upon their breathing apparatus, they hailed the discovery of "free gold" in a bit of ore with as much enthusiasm as if they had been able to distinguish the microscopic speck which was agitating the minds of foreman and superintendent. Into one mine they descended, two passengers at a time, standing on the edge of a huge ore-bucket, which was gently lowered down the shaft. It was a treat to see the gnomelike figure of Mr. Fetherbee poking about among the rocky ribs of Mother Earth, closely attended by the flickering lights and weird shadows cast by the tallow-dip with which he had prudently provided himself early in the day. Emerging into the light of heaven they all rested for a while, sprawling there upon the sun-baked hillside, looking down into a quiet wooded valley full of brooding sunshine and heavenly shadows, while their ears were filled with the din of the ore-bucket, restored to its legitimate function, rattling up the shaft and sending its contents crashing down into the dump. There was but one moment of the day when Mr. Fetherbee's spirit quailed. His kind friends, anxious that he should miss no feature of "local coloring" had thoughtfully conducted him to the very worst of the miner's boarding-houses, where they all cheerfully partook of strange and direful viands for his sake. Mr. Fetherbee, shrewdly suspecting the true state of the case, had unflinchingly devoured everything that was set before him, topping off his gastronomic martyrdom with a section of apricot pie, of a peculiar consistency and a really poignant flavor. Just as he had swallowed the last mouthful, the proprietor of "The Jolly Delvers" came up, and Mr. Fetherbee, in the first flush of victory, remarked: "Well, sir! That _is_ a pie, and no mistake!" Upon which the host, charmed with this spontaneous tribute, hastened to set before his guest another slice. And then it was that Mr. Fetherbee, but now so unflinching, so imperturbable, laid down his weapons and struck his colors. He eyed the pie, he eyed his delighted fellow-sufferers, and then, in a voice grown suddenly plaintive, he said: "Don't tempt me, sir! It would be against my doctor's orders!" But even the memory of his discomfiture could not long check the flow of Mr. Fetherbee's spirits, and ten minutes later the valiant little trencher-man was climbing with cheerful alacrity into the wagon, which had been, in the interim, subjected to a judicious application of ropes and wires. "Think she's quite seaworthy?" he asked, as the structure groaned and "gave" under his light weight. "Guess she'll weather it," Discombe growled between his teeth which were closed upon the stem of his pipe. "If she doesn't, there'll be a circus!" "Waves likely to be as high as they were this morning?" "No; it's a kind of a double back-action slant we've got to tackle this time," and off they rattled, even more musically than before, by reason of the late repairs. Over the brow of the mountain they went, and down on the other side. For some fifteen minutes they rumbled along so smoothly that the insatiate Mr. Fetherbee experienced a gnawing sense of disappointment and feared that the fun was really over. But presently, without much warning, the road made a sharp curve and began pitching downward in the most headlong manner, taking on at the same time a sharp lateral slant. The brake creaked, and screamed, the wheels scraped and wabbled in their loose-jointed fashion, the horses, almost on their haunches, gave up their usual mode of locomotion, and coasted unceremoniously along, their four feet gathered together in a rigid protest. "Do you often come this way?" asked Mr. Fetherbee, in a disengaged manner. "Well, no;" Discombe replied, composedly. "This is my first trip. They sometimes haul the ore down here on a sort of drag, but I guess these are the first wheels that ever---- I say, fellows, you'd better get out and hang on. She's slipping!" [Illustration: "IT'S A KIND OF DOUBLE BACK-ACTION SLANT WE'VE GOT TO TACKLE THIS TIME."] In an instant all but Discombe had sprung out, and seizing the side of the wagon, or the spokes of the stiff front, wheel, in fact anything they could lay hands on, hung on to the endangered craft like grim fate, while Discombe, standing on the step, held the horses up by main force. There were moments when the longed-for adventure seemed imminent, and Mr. Fetherbee's spirits rose. He had quite made up his mind that if the wagon went over he should go with it, go with it into "kingdom come" rather than let go! He wondered whether he should be able to do the situation justice when he got home. It was a pity that Louisa could not see them with her own eyes! Though, on second thoughts, he was afraid he did not present a very dignified appearance, and if Louisa had a weakness, it consisted in the fact that she made a fetich of dignity, especially where her vivacious husband was concerned. Meanwhile the ground was receding more and more rapidly under his sliding, stumbling feet, and his eyes were full of sand. Dayton and Allery Jones were frankly puffing and groaning, but Mr. Fetherbee scorned to make any such concession to circumstances. He was wondering whether his gait would be permanently out of kilter after this complicated and violent scramble, when he became aware that the lateral slant was gradually lessening. A moment later he and his two companions had loosed their hold and stood stretching and rubbing themselves, while the wagon, under Discombe's pilotage, continued on its way, scooping the horses down the hill at an increasing rate of speed. Just above where they were standing, was a shed-like structure which looked much the worse for wind and weather. "That's the old shaft of the 'Coreopsis,'" Dayton remarked. "So it is," said Jones. "Harry de Luce went down on the rope the other day." "How do you do it?" asked Mr. Fetherbee, much interested. "Hand over hand, I suppose; or else you just let her slide. De Luce went down like a monkey." "He must have come up like a monkey! I don't see how he did it!" "He didn't come up; he went out by the tunnel. It would take more than a monkey to go up three hundred feet on a slack rope, or thirty feet either, for the matter of that." As Mr. Fetherbee stood mopping his brow, thereby spreading a cake of mud which he had unsuspectingly worn since morning, in a genial pattern over his right temple, a consuming ambition seized him. "Now that's something I should like to do," he declared. "Anything to prevent?" "Why, no; not if you're up to that kind of thing. They're doing it every day." "Why don't you go down that way now?" Dayton asked. "We shall be driving right by the tunnel in an hour or two, and can pick you up." By this time they had effected an entrance into the shed, the door of which was securely locked, while the boards of one entire side of the tumble-down structure swung in at a touch. The three men stood looking down the pitch black hole into which the rope disappeared. "Looks kind of pokey, doesn't it?" said Allery Jones. "Think you'd better try it, Fetherbee?" For answer, Mr. Fetherbee seized the lightly swinging rope with both hands, twisted one leg about it and slid gaily from sight. "_Bon voyage!_" called Dayton, down the inky shaft. "_Yage!_" came a hollow voice from the reverberating depths. They felt of the rope which was taut and firm. "He's all right," said Dayton. "There's not enough of him to get hurt," and he squeezed his portly person out between the flapping boards. "All the same, I shall be glad to see him again," Jones declared, with an anxious frown upon his usually _nonchalant_ countenance; and the two men started briskly down the hill in pursuit of "the team." Meanwhile, Mr. Fetherbee was making his way slowly and cautiously down the rope. It was a good stout one and he had no real misgivings. Yet the situation was unusual enough to have a piquant flavor. In the first place the darkness was more than inky in character, the kind of blackness in comparison with which the blackest night seems luminous. Then there was the peculiar quality of the air, so different from anything above ground, that the words chill, and dampness, had no special relation to it. In the strange, tomb-like silence, his own breath, his own movements, waked a ghostly, whispering echo which was extremely weird and suggestive. Mr. Fetherbee was enchanted. He felt that he was getting down into the mysterious heart of things; that he was having something which came within an ace of being an adventure. Then, as he felt his way down, farther and farther below the vain surface of things, that intervening ace vanished, and he came up against his adventure with a suddenness that sent a knife-like thrill to his heart. His foot had lost its hold of the rope; he was hanging by his hands only. Startled into what he condemned as an unreasoning agitation, he began describing a circle with his leg, searching for the lost rope. It must be there, of course; why, of course it must! He had certainly not gone more than fifty or sixty feet, and they had said something about three hundred feet? Where could the rope be? It must have got caught somehow on his coat! Or perhaps his right leg was getting numb and he could not feel anything with it. But no! His leg was all right. He felt out with his left leg. It did not even touch the wall of the shaft. There seemed to be nothing there, nothing at all! Nothing there? Nothing in all the universe, but this bit of rope he was clutching, and himself, a miserable little lump of quivering, straining nerves. Mr. Fetherbee told himself that this would never do. He loosed the grip of his left hand, and it felt its way slowly down the rope gathering it up inch by inch. He knew by the lightness of the rope that the end was there, yet when he touched it a shiver went through him. A second later the left hand was clutching the rope beside the right, and he had taken a long breath of,--was it relief? Relief from uncertainty, at least. He knew with a positive knowledge that there was but one outcome for the situation. It would be an hour at the very least before his friends reached the tunnel, for Discombe had business to attend to on the way. Even then they might not conclude immediately that anything was amiss. The break in the rope must be recent. It was possible that no one in the mine had discovered it. The old shaft was never used now-a-days, except for just such chance excursions as his. One thing was sure,--he could never hold out an hour. Already his wrists were weakening; he was getting chilled too, now that motion had ceased. He gave himself twenty minutes at the most, and then?--Hm! He wondered what it would be like! He had heard that people falling from a great height had the breath knocked out of them before they--arrived! He was afraid three hundred feet was not high enough for that! What a pity the shaft was not a thousand feet deep! What a pity it had any bottom at all! "I should have liked a chance to tell Louisa," he said aloud, with a short, nervous laugh, and then,--he was himself again. To say that Mr. Fetherbee was himself again is to say that he was a self-possessed and plucky little gentleman,--the same gallant little gentleman, dangling here at the end of a rope, with the steady, irresistible force of gravitation pulling him to his doom, as he had ever been in his gay, debonair progress through a safe and friendly world. He forced his thoughts away from the horror to come. His imagination could be kept out of that yawning horror, though his body must be inevitably drawn down into it as by a thousand clutching hands. He forced his thoughts back to the pleasant, prosperous life he had led; to the agreeable people he had known; and most tenderly, most warmly, he thought of Louisa,--Louisa, so kind, so sympathetic, so companionable. "Louisa," he had said to her one day, "I not only love you, but I like you." Well, so it had been with his life, that pleasant life of his. He not only loved it but he liked it! As he looked back over its course, in a spirit of calm contemplation, the achievement of which he did not consider in the least heroic, he came to the deliberate conclusion that he had had his share. After a little more consideration his mind, with but a quickly suppressed recoil, adopted the conviction that it was perhaps better to go suddenly like this, than to have been subjected to a long, lingering illness. His wrists were becoming more and more weak and shaky, and there was a sense of emptiness within him, natural perhaps, considering the quality of his noon-day meal. His thoughts began to hover, with a curious bitterness over the memory of that apricot pie. It was the one thing that interfered with the even tenor of his philosophical reflections. The most singular resentment toward it had taken possession of his mind. "Look here," he said to himself; "I'll get my mind clear of that confounded pie, and then I'll drop and have done with it." He knew very well that he could not keep his hold two minutes longer, and he was determined to "die game." For a few seconds Mr. Fetherbee very nearly lost his mental grip. It seemed to be loosening, loosening, just as his fingers were doing. Then, as in a sort of trance, there rose before him a visible picture of the pleasant, kindly face he had so warmly loved, so heartily liked. Still in a trance-like condition, he became aware that that was the impression he would like to carry with him into eternity. He let it sink quietly into his soul, a soothing, fortifying draught; then, unconscious of philosophy, of heroism, of whatever we may choose to call the calm acceptance of the inevitable, he loosed his hold. He fell of course only three inches. Anybody might have foreseen it, anybody, that is, who had not been suspended at the end of a rope in a pitch black hole. There is, however, something more convincing in experience than in anything else, and, as we have seen, Mr. Fetherbee had not once thought of the possibility of a friendly platform close beneath his feet. The discovery of it was none the less exhilarating. He did not in the least understand it, but he was entirely ready to believe in it. He promptly pulled out his match-box and the bit of candle he was provided with. The dim, uncertain light cheered and warmed his very soul. He found himself standing on a broad stout plank, built securely across the shaft. From the under side of this plank hung a rope like the one gently swaying before his eyes. He was saved; and as he breathed something very like a prayer of thanksgiving, it suddenly struck him that he had escaped not only an untimely, but an undignified end. "I'm glad I haven't done anything to mortify Louisa," he said to himself, and he felt that he had not until that moment appreciated his good fortune! He looked at his watch. It was nearly half-an-hour since he had entered the mine. He stamped his feet on the plank and rubbed his hands together to get up the circulation, and then he pulled out a cigar and lighted it. The first whiff permeated his being with a sense as of food and drink, sunshine and sweet air. The rest of the descent was accomplished by means of a succession of ropes suspended from a succession of platforms. An hour later, when the wagon drove up to the mouth of the tunnel, Mr. Fetherbee was found standing serenely there, with a half finished cigar between his lips, gazing abstractedly at the landscape. "Hullo, Fetherbee!" Dayton sung out, as they approached. "How was it?" "First rate!" came the answer, in a voice of suppressed elation, which Allery Jones noted and was at something of a loss to interpret. "Was it all your fancy pictured?" he asked, in rather a sceptical tone. "All and more!" Mr. Fetherbee declared. He mounted into the wagon, and the horses started on the home-stretch, not more joyful in the near prospect of their well-earned orgie of oats and hay than Mr. Fetherbee in the feast of narration which was spread for him. Finding it impossible to contain himself another moment, he cried, with an exultant ring in his voice: "But I say, you fellows! _I've had an adventure!_" Then, as they bowled along through a winding valley in which the early September twilight was fast deepening, Mr. Fetherbee gave his initial version of what has since become a classic, known among the ever-increasing circle of Mr. Fetherbee's friends as--"An adventure I once had!" IX. AN AMATEUR GAMBLE. The mining boom was on, and Springtown, that famous Colorado health-resort and paradise of idlers, was wide awake to the situation. The few rods of sidewalk which might fairly be called "the street," was thronged all day with eager speculators. Everybody was "in it," from the pillars of society down to the slenderest reed of an errand boy who could scrape together ten dollars for a ten-cent stock. As a natural consequence real estate was, for the moment, as flat as a poor joke, and people who had put their money into town "additions" were beginning to think seriously of planting potatoes where they had once dreamed of rearing marketable dwelling-houses. Hillerton, the oldest real-estate man in town, was one of the few among the fraternity who had not branched out into stock brokerage. For that reason an air of leisure pervaded his office, and men liked to gather there and discuss the prospects of Lame Gulch. Lame Gulch, as everybody knows, is the new Colorado mining-camp, which is destined eventually to make gold a drug in the market. The camp is just on the other side of the Peak, easily accessible to any Springtown man who is not afraid of roughing it. And to do them justice, there proved to be scarcely an invalid or a college-graduate among them all who did not make his way up there, and take his first taste of hardship like a man. Hillerton used to sit behind the balustrade which divided his sanctum from the main office, and listen with an astute expression, and just the glimmer of a smile, to the talk of the incipient millionaires, who bragged with such ease and fluency of this or that Bonanza. When all declared with one accord that "if Lame Gulch panned out as it was dead sure to do, Springtown would be the biggest _little_ town in all creation," Hillerton's smile became slightly accentuated, but a wintry chill of incredulity had a neutralizing effect upon it. As the excitement increased, and his fellow-townsmen manifested a willingness to mortgage every inch of wood and plaster in their possession, Hillerton merely became, if possible, more stringent in the matter of securities. "We might as well take a mortgage on the town, and done with it," he remarked to his confidential clerk one Saturday evening. "We shall own it all in six months, anyhow!" Peckham, the confidential clerk, shrugged his shoulders, and said he "guessed it was about so." Hillerton's confidential clerk usually assented to the dictum of his principal. It saved trouble and hurt nobody. Not that Lewis Peckham was without opinions of his own; but he took no special interest in them, and rarely put himself to the trouble of defending them. The young man's countenance had never been an expressive one, and during the three years he had spent in Hillerton's employ, his face had lost what little mobility it had ever possessed. He was a pale, hollow-chested individual, with a bulging forehead, curiously marked eyebrows, and a prominent and sensitive nose. A gentleman, too, as anybody could see, but a gentleman of a singularly unsocial disposition. He looked ten years older than he was--an advantage which Hillerton recognized. His grave, unencouraging manner had a restraining effect upon too exacting tenants; while his actual youthfulness gave Hillerton the advantage over him of thirty years' seniority. Altogether Hillerton placed a high value upon his confidential clerk, and it was with a very genuine good-will that he followed up the last recorded observation, by saying, carelessly: "I hope you've kept out of the thing yourself, Peckham." "Oh, yes!" Peckham answered, in a tone of indifference, copied after Hillerton's own. Peckham spoke the truth, as it happened, but he would probably have made the same answer whether it had been true or not. He was of the opinion that he was not accountable to Hillerton nor to any one else in the disposition he might make of his legitimate earnings. In fact, it was largely owing to Hillerton's inquiry and the hint of resentment it excited, that Peckham put a hundred dollars into the Yankee Doodle Mining and Milling Co. that very day. To be sure, he acted on a "straight tip," but straight tips were as thick as huckleberries in Springtown, and this was the first time he had availed himself of one. It would be difficult to imagine why Peckham should not have thoroughly liked Hillerton; difficult, that is, to any one not aware of the unusual criterion by which he measured his fellow men. He was himself conscious that he had ceased to "take any stock" in his employer, since the day on which he had discovered that that excellent man of business did not know the Ninth Symphony from Hail Columbia. Against Fate, on the other hand, Peckham had several grudges. He was inconveniently poor, he was ill, and he was in exile. With so many hard feelings to cherish against his two immediate superiors--namely, Hillerton and Fate--it is no wonder that Peckham had the reputation of being of a morose disposition. He was perhaps the most solitary man in Springtown. Not only did he live in lodgings, and pick up his meals at cheap restaurants; he had wilfully denied himself the compensations which club life offers. Living, too, in a singularly hospitable community, he never put himself in the way of receiving invitations, and he consequently was allowed to do without them. He did not keep a horse; he thought a lodging-house no place for dogs, and he entertained serious thoughts of shooting his landlady's cat. He had always refrained from burdening himself with correspondents, and would have thought it a nuisance to write to his own brother, if so be he had had such a relative to bless himself with. Lewis Peckham did not complain of his lot in detail, and he never made the least effort to better it. There was only one thing he really wanted, and that thing he could not have. He wanted to be "something big" in the way of a musician. Not merely to be master of this or that instrument; certainly not to teach reluctant young people their scales and arpeggios. What he had intended to become was a great composer--a composer of symphonies and operas--the First Great American Composer, spelled, be it observed, with capital letters. He was not destined to the disillusionment of direct failure, which in all human probability would have been his. Fate spared him that by visiting him in the beginning of his career with an attack of pneumonia which sent him fleeing for his life to the sunshine and high air of the Rocky Mountain region. Peckham was always rather ashamed of having fled for his life, which, as he repeatedly assured himself, was by no means worth the purchase. Yet with him as with most men, even when thwarted in what they believe to be a great ambition, the instinct of life is as imperative as that of hunger. And Lewis Peckham found himself wooing health at the cost of music, and earning his living as prosaically as any mere bread-winner of them all. The "straight tip" on the Yankee Doodle proved to be an exception among its kind. The Y. D. which he had bought at ten cents, ran up in a week to twenty-five cents. Peckham sold out just before it dropped back, and then he put his profits into the "Libby Carew." It happened that about that time he read in the local paper that the great Leitmann Orchestra would close its season with a concert in Chicago on May 16th. This concert Peckham was determined to hear, cost what it would. Hence the prudence which led him to reserve his original hundred dollars; a prudence which would otherwise have deprived the speculation of half its savor. The Libby Carew was as yet a mere "hole in the ground," but if he did not have the excitement of making money, it might prove equally stirring to lose it. Besides that, Hillerton's tone was getting more and more lofty on the subject of stock gambling, and the idea of acting contrary to such unquestioned sagacity had more relish than most ideas possessed. Meanwhile the excitement grew. Lame Gulch was "panning out" with startling results. One after another the Springtown men went up to investigate matters for themselves, and the most sceptical came back a convert. The railroad folks began to talk of building a branch "in." Eastern capitalists pricked up their ears and sent out experts. One morning the last of February, half-a-dozen men, among them a couple who had just come down from the camp, stood about Hillerton's office or sat on the railing of the sanctum, giving rough but graphic accounts of the sights to be seen at Lame Gulch. The company was not a typical Western crowd. The men were nearly all well dressed and exhibited evidences of good breeding. The refinement of the "tenderfoot" was still discernible, and excepting for the riding boots which they wore and the silk hats and derbys which they did not wear, and for an air of cheerful alertness which prevailed among them, one might have taken them for a group of Eastern club men. The reason of this was not far to seek. Most of them were, in fact, Eastern club men, who had sought Springtown as a health-resort, and had discovered, to their surprise, that it was about the pleasantest place they had yet "struck." Peckham sat somewhat apart from the others on his high revolving stool, sometimes listening, without a sign of interest in his face, sometimes twirling his stool around and sitting with his back to the company, apparently immersed in figures. Allery Jones, the Springtown wag, had once remarked that Peckham's back was more expressive than his face. On this occasion he nudged Dicky Simmons, with a view to reminding him of the fact; but Dicky, a handsome youth with a sanguine light in his blue eyes, was intent on what Harry de Luce was saying. "Tell you what!" cried de Luce, who had only recently discovered that there were other interests in life besides the three P's, polo, poker, and pigeon-shooting. "Tell you what, those fellows up there are a rustling lot. Take the Cosmopolitan Hotel now! They're getting things down to a fine point in that tavern. There was a man put up there night before last, one of those rich-as-thunder New York capitalists. You could see it by the hang of his coat-tails. He came sniffing round on his own hook, as those cautious cusses do. Well, Rumsey gave him one of his crack rooms--panes of glass in the window, imitation mahogany chamber-set, pitcher of water on the washstand, all complete. Do you suppose that was good enough for old Money-Bags? Not by a jug-full. He owned the earth, he'd have you to know, and he wasn't going to put up with anything short of the Murray Hill! Nothing suited. There wasn't any paper on the walls, there wasn't any carpet on the floor, there wasn't any window-shade, and I'll be blowed if the old chap didn't object to finding the water frozen solid in the pitcher. He came down to the bar roaring-mad, and said he wouldn't stand it; he'd rather camp out and done with it; if they couldn't give him a better room than that, he'd be out of this quicker 'n he came in! Well, fellers! You never saw anything half so sweet as that old halibut Rumsey. If the gentleman would just step in to supper and have a little patience, he thought he'd find everything to his satisfaction. And by the living Jingo, boys! when old Money-Bags went up to his room in the middle of the evening, I'm blessed if there wasn't a paper on the wall, an ingrain carpet on the floor, and a red-hot stove over in the corner! Same room, too! Like to have seen the old boy when the grand transformation scene burst upon his astonished optics! Guess he thought Lame Gulch could give New York City points!" "Did the old cove seem likely to put any money in?" asked a man with high cheekbones, who had the worried look of a person who has given a mortgage on his peace of mind. "Yes, he bought up some claims dirt cheap, and they say he's going to form a company." "That's the talk!" cried the sanguine Dicky. "Speaking of picking up claims dirt cheap," began a new orator, an ex-ranchman, who was soon to make the discovery that there was as much money to be lost in mines as in cattle, if a fellow only had the knack; "I saw a tidy little deal when I was up at the camp last week. We were sitting round in the barroom of the Cosmopolitan, trying to keep warm. I guess it was the only place in Lame Gulch that night where the thermometer was above zero. There was a lot of drinking going on, and the men that were playing were playing high. I wasn't in it myself. I was pleasantly occupied with feeling warm after having fooled round the Libby Carew all day. I got interested in a man standing outside, who kept looking in at the window and going off again. The light struck the face in a queer sort of way, and I guess there was something wrong about the window-pane. They don't do much business in the way of plate-glass at Lame Gulch. Anyhow, I couldn't seem to get a fair sight of anything but the man's eyes, and they looked like the eyes of a hungry wolf." "Ever meet a hungry wolf, Phil?" "Scores of 'em. You're one yourself, Jim, when you look at the stock-boards. Well! The fellow came and went like an angel visitant, and after awhile I got tired of watching for him, and found myself admiring the vocabulary of the boys as they got excited. Gad! It's a liberal education to listen to that sort of a crowd. The worst you can do yourself sounds like a Sunday-school address by comparison. Suddenly the door opened and in walked the man with the eyes. He hadn't any overcoat on and his feet and legs were tied up in gunny sacks. His teeth were chattering and his face looked like a blue print! He shuffled up to Rumsey, who was sipping a cocktail behind the bar, and says he: "'Evenin', pard; I want a drink.' "'All right, stranger. Just show us the color of your money.' "'Ain't got any money,' says he, 'but I've got a claim over 'long side of the Yankee Doodle, and I'm ready to swap a half interest in it for all the liquor I can drink between now and morning.' There was a kind of a desperate look about the man that meant business. Rumsey stepped out among the boys and got a pointer or two on that claim, and they made the deal." There was a pause in the narrative, to allow the listeners to take in the situation, and then the speaker went on: "It was a sight to see that chap pour the stuff down his throat. He was drinking, off and on, pretty much all night. Didn't come to till late the next afternoon. Rumsey was so pleased with the deal next morning, that he let the fellow lie behind the stove all day and sleep it off. Not sure but that he gave him a drink of water when he woke up, and water's high at Lame Gulch." "Kind of a shame, I call it, to let him do it. Wasn't there anybody to stand treat?" It was Dicky, the lad of the sanguine countenance that spoke. "Wonder what the claim was worth?" said the man with a mortgage on him. "Wonder how he felt next morning?" queried another. "Felt like an infernal donkey!" Hillerton declared, flinging away a cigar-stump and taking his legs down from the desk. Then Peckham turned himself round to face the crowd, and said, in a tone of quiet conviction: "The man was all right. If you only want anything bad enough, no price is too high to pay for it." This was a sentiment which every one was bound to respect--every one, at least, excepting Hillerton. "Sounds very well, Peckham," he said, "but it won't hold water." The most surprising thing about Peckham's little speculations was that they all succeeded. It made the other men rather mad because he did not care more. "But that's always the way," Freddy Dillingham remarked, with an air of profound philosophy. "It's the fellers that don't care a darn that have all the luck." When Peckham sold out of the Libby Carew, he doubled his money, and the moment he touched the "Trailing Arbutus," up she went. By the first of May he found himself the possessor of nearly three thousand dollars' worth of "stuff" distributed among several ventures. Of course, he was credited with five times as much, and the other men began to think that if he did not set up a dogcart pretty soon, or at least a yellow buckboard, they should have their opinion of him. If the truth must be known, Peckham would not have given a nickle for a dozen dog-carts. It was all very well to make a little money; it was the first time he had discovered a taste for anything in the nature of a game, and the higher the stakes came to be, the more worth while it seemed. Nevertheless, his mind, in those days of early May, when he was steadily rising in the esteem of his associates, was very little occupied with the calculation of his profits. He had long since arranged with Hillerton to take part of his vacation the middle of May, and the anticipation of that concert was more inspiring to him than all the gold mines in Colorado. As the time drew near, a consuming thirst took possession of him, and not a gambler of them all was the prey to a more feverish impatience than he. He tormented himself with thoughts of every possible disaster which might come to thwart him at the last minute. Visions of a railroad accident which should result in the wholesale destruction of the entire orchestra, haunted his mind. Another great fire might wipe Chicago out of existence. The one thing which his imagination failed to conceive, was the possibility that he, Lewis Peckham, might be deterred from hearing the concert when once it should take place. In the interim he made repeated calculations of the number of hours that must be lived through before May 16th. Hillerton came across a half sheet of paper covered with such calculations, and was somewhat puzzled by the prominence of the figure 24. An odd price to pay for a mining stock. He was afraid it was the "Adeline Maria," a notorious swindle. Well, Peckham might as well get his lesson at the hands of the faithless Adeline Maria as by any other means. He was bound to come to grief sooner or later, but that was no business of Hillerton's. On May 7th, Hillerton came down with pleurisy and Peckham suddenly found himself at the head of affairs. Hillerton had no partner; no one but Peckham could take his place. And in Peckham's moral constitution was a substratum of unshakable fidelity upon which the astute Hillerton had built. Cursing his own unimpeachable sense of duty, Peckham could see but one straw of hope to clutch at. It might be a light case. He went directly to the doctor's office, and with a feverish anxiety apparent in his voice and bearing, he asked how long Hillerton was likely to be laid up. "Curious," thought the doctor during that carefully calculated pause which your experienced practitioner so well knows the value of. "Curious how fond folks get of James Hillerton. The fellow looks as though his own brother were at death's door." "I think there is nothing serious to apprehend," he answered soothingly. "Hillerton has a good constitution. I've no doubt he will be about again by the end of the month." Peckham went white to the lips. "I suppose that's the best you can promise," he said. "Yes, but I can promise that safely." The confidential clerk went back to the office filled with a profound loathing of life. "If liquor wasn't so nasty, I'd take to drink," he said to himself as he sat down at Hillerton's desk and set to work. The next day was Sunday, and Peckham was at something of a loss what to do with it. He hated the sight of his room. The odor of the straw matting and the pattern of the wallpaper were inextricably associated with those anticipations which he had been rudely cheated out of. To escape such associations he took an electric car to the Bluffs, those rock-bound islands in the prairie sea which lie a couple of miles to the east of the town. There was only one other passenger besides himself, a man with a gun, who softly whistled a popular air, very much out of tune. Peckham came perilously near kicking the offender, but, happily, the fellow got off just in time, and went strolling across the open with the gun over his shoulder. Once he stooped to pick a flower which he stuck in his buttonhole. Queer, thought Peckham, that a man should go picking flowers and whistling out of tune! There were the mountains, too. Some people made a great deal of them--great, stupid masses of dumb earth! He remembered he had thought them fine himself the other day when there were shadows on them. But to-day! How the sun glared on their ugly reddish sides! And what was it that had gone wrong anyhow? He could not seem to remember, and on the whole he did not wish to. Now Lewis Peckham was neither losing his mind, nor had he been drowning his sorrows in the conventional dram. The simple fact of the matter was that he had not slept fifteen minutes consecutively all night long, and his brain was not likely to clear up until he had given it a chance to recuperate. By the time he had left the car and climbed the castellated side of Pine Bluff he was still miserably unhappy, but he had altogether lost track of the cause of his unhappiness. He strayed aimlessly along the grassy top of the Bluff, away from the road, and down a slight incline, into a sheltered hollow. At the foot of a strange, salmon-colored column of rock was a little group of budding scrub-oaks. Peckham crawled in among them, and in about thirty seconds he was fast asleep. There he lay for hours. A blue jay, chattering in a pine-tree near at hand, made no impression upon his sleep-deadened ear; a pair of ground squirrels scuttled in and out among the scrub-oaks, peering shyly at the motionless intruder, and squeaked faintly to one another, with vivacious action of nose and tail. They were, perhaps, discussing the availability of a certain inviting coat-pocket for purposes of domestic architecture. An occasional rumble of wheels on the road, a dozen rods away, startled the birds and squirrels, but Peckham slept tranquilly on, and dreamed that the Leitmann Orchestra was playing in the Springtown Opera House, and that he, by reason of his being an early Christian martyr, was forced to roast at the stake just out of hearing of the music. [Illustration: PINE BLUFF.] It was well on in the afternoon when he came to himself, to find his boots scorched almost to a crisp in the sun which had been pouring upon them. He pulled himself out from among the scrub-oaks, and got his feet out of the sun. Then he looked at his watch; and after that he looked at the view. The view was well worth looking at in the mellow afternoon light. Peckham gazed across the shimmering gold of the plain, to the mountains, which stood hushed into a palpitating blue; the Peak alone, white and ethereal, floating above the foot hills in the sun. Peckham was impressed in spite of himself. It made him think of a weird, mystical strain of music that had sometimes haunted his brain and yet which he had never been able to seize and capture. As he gazed on the soaring, mystical Peak, he remembered his dream, and slowly, but very surely, he perceived that a purpose was forming in his mind, almost without the connivance of his will. He got upon his feet and laughed aloud. A sudden youthful intoxication of delight welled up within him and rang forth in that laugh. Life, for the first time in three years, seemed to him like a glorious thing; an irresistible, a soul-stirring purpose had taken possession of him, and he knew that no obstacle could stand against it. He started for the town almost on a run, scorning the prosaic cars which harbored passengers who whistled out of tune. He struck directly across the intercepting plain, and though he soon had to slacken his pace, his winged thoughts went on before him, and he took no note of the distance. That evening Peckham sent off a telegram of one hundred and eleven words to Heinrich Leitmann, of the Leitmann Orchestra, and Monday afternoon the following answer came: "Full Leitmann Orchestra can engage for Springtown, evening of 19th. Terms, five thousand dollars, expenses included. Answer before 13th. Buffalo, N. Y. (Signed) "H. LEITMANN." And now Lewis Peckham came out a full-fledged speculator. He sold out of four mines and bought into six; he changed his ventures three times in twenty-four hours, each time on a slight rise. He haunted the stockbroker's offices, watching out for "pointers"; he button-holed every third man on the street; he drank in every hint that was dropped in his hearing. On Tuesday afternoon he "cleaned up" his capital and found himself in possession of three thousand five hundred dollars. "Peckham's going it hard," men said at the club. "He must be awfully bitten." All day Wednesday he could not muster courage to put his money into anything, though stocks were booming on every hand. And yet on Wednesday, as on Monday and on Tuesday, he did his office work and superintended that of his subordinates methodically and exactly. The substratum of character which the long-headed Hillerton had built upon, held firm. On Wednesday evening Peckham stood, wild-eyed and haggard, in the light of Estabrook's drug-store and scanned the faces of the foot-passengers. Early in the evening Elliot Chittenden came along with a grip-sack in his hand, just down from Lame Gulch. Peckham fell upon him like a footpad, whispering hoarsely: "For God's sake give me a pointer." "Jove!" said Chittenden, afterward, "I thought it was a hold-up, sure as trumps." At the moment, however, he maintained his composure and only said: "The smelter returns from the Boa Constrictor are down to-day. Two hundred and seventeen dollars to the ton. I've got all the stuff I can carry, so I don't mind letting you in. The papers will have it to-morrow, though they're doing their best to keep it back." Into the Boa Constrictor Peckham plunged the next morning, for all he was worth. His money brought him ten thousand shares. The morning papers did not have it, and all that day the Boa Constrictor lay as torpid as any other snake in cold weather. Peckham's face had taken on the tense, wild look of the gambler. He left the office half a dozen times during the day to look at the stock-boards. He had a hundred minds about taking his money out and putting it into something else. But nothing else promised anything definite, and he held on. The evening papers gave the smelter returns, precisely as Chittenden had stated them. Now would the public "catch on" quick enough, or would they take ten days to do what they might as well come to on the spot? At nine o'clock the next morning, Peckham was on the street lying in wait for an early broker. It was not until half-past nine that they began to arrive. "Any bids for Boa Constrictor?" Peckham inquired of Macdugal, the first-comer. "They were bidding forty cents at the club last night, with no takers." "Let me know if you get fifty cents bid." "How much do you offer?" "Ten thousand shares." "Oh! see here, Peckham! I wouldn't sell out at such a price. The thing's sure to go to a dollar inside of thirty days." "I don't care a _hang_ where it goes in thirty days. I want the money to-day." "Whew! Do you know anything better to put it into?" "I know something _a million times better_!" cried Peckham, in a voice sharp with excitement. "The fellow's clean daft," Macdugal remarked to his partner, a few minutes later. "I should say so!" was the reply. "Queer, too, how suddenly it takes 'em. A week ago I should have said that was the coolest head of the lot. He didn't seem to care a chuck for the whole business. Wonder if he's gone off his base since Hillerton was laid up. Hope he isn't in for a swindle. He'd be just game for a sharper to-day." At noon Peckham sold his ten thousand shares of B. C. for five thousand dollars. He could have got six thousand the next morning, but then, as he reflected, what good would it have done him? His first act after depositing the check received for his stock, was to send the following telegram: "Leitmann Orchestra engaged for Springtown, May 19th. Five thousand dollars deposited in First National Bank. Particulars by letter. (Signed) "LEWIS PECKHAM." It is not a usual thing for an impecunious young man to invest five thousand dollars in a single symphony concert, but there was one feature of the affair which was more unusual still; namely, the fact that the consummation of that same young man's hopes was complete. For two beatific hours on the evening of the memorable 19th of May, Lewis Peckham's cup was full. He sat among the people in the balcony, quiet and intent, taking no part in the applause, looking neither to the right nor to the left. But if he gave no outward sign, perhaps it was because his spirit was so far uplifted as to be out of touch with his body. The money which he had expended in the gratification of what the uninitiated would call a whim, seemed to him the paltriest detail, quite unworthy of consideration. When he thought of it at all it was to recall the story of the gaunt customer who paid so handsomely for his whisky, and to note the confirmation of his theory, that "if you only want anything bad enough no price is too high to pay for it." And in still another particular Lewis Peckham's experience was unique. He never gambled again. He had a feeling that he had got all he was entitled to from the fickle goddess. When pressed to try his luck once more he would only say, with his old, indifferent shrug: "No, thanks. I've had my fling and now I've got through." X. A ROCKY MOUNTAIN SHIPWRECK. "Bixby's Art Emporium" was a temple of such modest exterior that visitors were conscious of no special disappointment upon finding that there was, if possible, less of "art" than of "emporium" within. A couple of show-cases filled with agate and tiger-eye articles, questionable looking "gems," and the like; a table in the centre of the shop piled high with Colorado views of every description; here and there on the walls a poor water-color or a worse oil-painting; a desultory Navajo rug on a chair: these humble objects constituted the nearest approach to "art" that the establishment could boast. The distinctive feature of the little shop was the show-case at the rear, filled with books of pressed wildflowers; these, at least, were the chief source of income in the business, and therefore Marietta spent every odd half-hour in the manufacture of them. A visitor, when he entered, was apt to suppose that the shop was empty; for the black, curly head bent over the work at the window behind the back counter was not immediately discernible. It was a fascinating head, as the most unimpressionable visitor could not fail to observe when the tall figure rose from behind the counter,--fascinating by reason of the beautiful hair, escaping in soft tendrils from the confining knot; fascinating still more by reason of the perfect grace of poise. The face was somewhat sallow and very thin; care and privation had left their marks upon it. The mouth was finely modelled, shrewd and humorous; but it was the eyes, dark, and darkly fringed as those of a wood-nymph, that dominated the face; one had a feeling that here was where the soul looked out. To hear Marietta speak, however, was something of a disenchantment; her tone was so very matter-of-fact, her words so startlingly to the point. If the soul looked out at the eyes, the lips at least had little to say of it. The visitor, if a stranger, had an excellent opportunity of making his observations on these points, for Marietta usually remained standing, in a skeptical attitude, behind the distant counter until he had shown signs of "business" intentions. She was very ready to stand up and rest her back, but she had no idea of coming forward to indulge an aimless curiosity as to the origin and price of her art treasures. An old customer, on the other hand, was treated with an easy good-fellowship so marked that only those who liked "that sort of thing" ever became old customers. "Well, how's everything?" was the usual form of greeting, as the tall willowy figure passed round behind the counters and came opposite the new-comer. "Did your folks like the frame?" would come next, if the customer chanced to have had a frame sent home recently. Marietta was agent for a Denver art firm, which framed pictures at a "reasonable figure"; or rather, Jim was the agent, and Jim being Marietta's husband, and too sick a man of late to conduct his business, did not have to be reckoned with. In spite of the fact that she was generally known as "Mrs. Jim," many people forgot that Marietta had a husband, for he was never visible now-a-days. But Marietta never forgot, never for one single instant, the wasted figure in the easy chair at the window above the shop, the pale sunken face with the shining eyes, turned always toward the stairway the instant her foot touched the lower step. The look of radiant welcome that greeted her as often as her head appeared above the opening on a level with the uneven deal floor, that look was always worth coming up for. She did not bring her work and sit upstairs with Jim, because there was but one small window in the dingy, slant-roofed loft, that served as bed-chamber, kitchen, and parlor, and she knew he liked to sit at the window and watch the panorama of the street below. The broad, sunny Springtown thoroughfare, with its low, irregular wooden structures, likely, at any moment, to give place to ambitious business "blocks"; with its general air of incompleteness and transitoriness brought into strong relief against the near background of the Rocky Mountains, was alive with human interest. Yet, singularly enough, it was not the cowboy, mounted on his half-broken bronco that interested Jim; not the ranch wagon, piled high with farm produce, women, and children; not even the Lame Gulch "stage,"--a four-seated wagon, so crowded with rough-looking men that their legs dangled outside like fringe on a cowboy's "shaps,"--none of these sights made much impression on the sick man at his upper window. The work-a-day side of life was far too familiar to Jim to impress him as being picturesque or dramatic. What he did care for, what roused and satisfied his imagination, was what was known in his vocabulary as "style." It was to the "gilded youth" of Springtown that he looked for his entertainment. He liked the yellow fore-and-aft buckboards, he enjoyed the shining buggies, especially when their wheels were painted red; dog-carts and victorias ranked high in his esteem. He knew, to be sure, very little about horses; their most salient "points" escaped him: he gave indiscriminate approval to every well-groomed animal attached to a "stylish" vehicle, and the more the merrier! It is safe to declare that he was a distinctly happier man from that day forward on which Mr. Richard Dayton first dazzled the eyes of Springtown with his four-in-hand. This happened early in February and the day chanced to be a warm one, so that Jim's window was open. He was sitting there, gazing abstractedly at the Peak which rose, a great snowy dome, above Tang Ling's shop across the way. Jim seldom spoke of the mountains, nor was he aware of paying any special attention to them. "I ain't much on Nature," he had always maintained; and since Marietta admitted the same lack in herself there seemed to be nothing in that to regret. Yet it is nevertheless true that Jim had his thoughts, as he sat, abstractedly gazing at those shining heights, thoughts of high and solemn things which his condition brought near to him, thoughts which he rarely said anything about. To-day, as he watched the deep blue shadows brooding upon the Peak, he was wondering in a child-like way what Heaven would be like. Suddenly the musical clink of silver chains struck his ear, and the look of abstraction vanished. He had never heard those bridle chains before. Somebody had got something new! A moment more, and, with a fine rush and jingle, and a clear blast from the horn, the four-in-hand dashed by. "Hurrah!" Jim cried huskily, as Marietta's foot trod the stair. "I say, Jim! You seen 'em?" She came up panting, for the stairs were very steep and narrow. "Seen 'em? I rather guess! Wasn't it bully? Do you reckon they'll come back this way?" "Course they will! Don't you s'pose they like to show themselves off? And the horn! did you hear the horn, Jim? I wonder if that's the way they sound in Switzerland!" She came up and stood with her hand on Jim's shoulder, looking down into the street. "And just to think of it, Jim!" she said, a moment later. "They say he's made lots of money right here in mines! If we was in mines we might have made some." "More likely to lose it," Jim answered. He was not of the stuff that speculators are made of. The shop-bell rang, and Marietta hurried downstairs, to spend ten minutes in selling a ten-cent Easter card; while Jim sat on, forgetting his burden of weakness and pain, and all his far-away dreams, in anticipation of the returning four-in-hand. In Marietta, too, the jingle of the four-in-hand had struck a new key-note; her thoughts had taken a new turn. If Mr. Dayton had made money in mines why should not she and Jim do the same? They needed it far more than he did. To him it only meant driving four horses instead of one; to them it might mean driving one horse once in a while. It might even mean giving up the tiresome, profitless shop, and going to live in a snug little house of their own, where there should be a porch for Jim in pleasant weather and, for cold days, a sitting-room with two windows instead of one where she could work at her flower-books, while they planned what they should do when Jim got well. She sat over her pressed flowers, which she handled with much skill, while she revolved these thoughts in her mind. She was busy with her columbines, a large folio of which lay on a table near by. At her left hand was a pile of square cards with scalloped edges, upon which the columbines were to be affixed; at her right was a small glass window-pane smeared with what she called "stickum." As she deftly lifted the flowers, one by one, without ever breaking a fragile petal, she laid each first upon the "stickum"-covered square of glass and then upon the Bristol-board. She was skilful in always placing the flower precisely where it was to remain upon the page, so that the white surface was kept unstained. Then she further secured each brittle stem with a tiny strip of paper pasted across the end. She lifted a card and surveyed her work critically, thinking the while, not of the wonderful golden and purple flower, holding its beautiful head with as stately a grace as if it were still swaying upon its stem, but of the great "mining-boom" that was upon the town, and of the chances of a fortune. Half-an-hour had passed since the shop-bell had last tinkled, and Marietta was beginning to think of making Jim a flying call, when she heard his cane rapturously banging the floor above. This was the signal for her to look out into the street, which she promptly did, and, behold! the four-in-hand had stopped before the door, a groom was standing at the leaders' heads, and the master of this splendid equipage was just coming in, his figure looming large and imposing in the doorway. "Good morning, Mrs. Jim," he called before he was well inside the shop. "I want one of your ten-dollar flower-books." Quite unmoved by the lavishness of her customer, Marietta rose in her stately way, and drew forth several specimens of her most expensive flower-book. Dayton examined them with an attempt to be discriminating, remarking that the book was for some California friends of his wife who were inclined to be "snifty" about Colorado flowers. "That's the best of the lot," Marietta volunteered, singling out one which her customer had overlooked. "So it is," he replied; "do it up for me, please." This Marietta proceeded to do in a very leisurely manner. She was making up her mind to a bold step. "Say, Mr. Dayton," she queried, as she took the last fold in the wrapping paper; "what's the best mine to go into?" "The best mine? Oh, I wouldn't touch one of them if I were you!" "Yes, you would, if you were me! So you might as well tell me a good one or I might make a mistake." She held her head with the air of a princess, while the look of a wood-nymph still dwelt in her shadowy eyes, but words and tone meant "business." "How much money have you got to lose?" "Oh, fifty or a hundred dollars," she said carelessly. Dayton strolled to the door and back again before he answered. He was annoyed with Mrs. Jim for placing him in such a position, but he did not see his way out of it. The next man she asked might be a sharper. His ideas of woman's "sphere" were almost mediæval, but somehow they did not seem to fit Mrs. Jim's case. "Well," he said at last with evident reluctance; "the 'Horn of Plenty' doesn't seem to be any worse than the others, and it may be a grain better. But it's all a gamble, just like roulette or faro, and I should think you had better keep out of it altogether." The "Horn of Plenty"! It was a name to appeal to the most sluggish imagination; the mere sound of it filled Marietta with a joyful confidence. Within the hour she had hailed a passing broker and negotiated with him for five hundred shares of the stock at twenty cents a share. It was not without a strange pang, to be sure, that she wrote out her check for the amount; for just as she was signing her name the unwelcome thought crossed her mind that the person who was selling that amount of stock for a hundred dollars must believe that sum of money to be a more desirable possession than the stock! She felt the meaning of the situation very keenly, but she did not betray her misgivings. As she finished the scrawling signature she only lifted her head with a defiant look, and said: "If anybody tells Jim, I'll _chew 'em up_!" Inches, the broker, thus admonished, only laughed. Indeed, the thing Inches admired most in Mrs. Jim was her forcible manner of expressing herself. He admired and liked her well enough, for that and for other reasons, to take a very disinterested pleasure in putting her in the way of turning an honest penny. The broker's faith in the "Horn of Plenty" was almost as implicit as Marietta's own, and it was with no little pride that he brought the certificate in to her the following day, and unfolded it to her dazzled contemplation. It was a very beauteous production done in green and gold, the design being suggestive and encouraging. It represented a woman clad in green, pointing with a magic golden wand in her left hand toward a group of toiling green miners, while from a golden cornucopia in her right she poured a shower of gold upon an already portentous pyramid of that valuable metal, planted upon a green field. As Marietta refolded the crisply rustling paper, Inches bent his head toward her and said, confidentially: "She's bound to touch fifty cents inside of thirty days;" and Marietta, still thinking of the bountiful lady of the golden cornucopia, believed him. "Inside of thirty days" the "H. O. P.," as it was familiarly called, was selling at forty-five cents, and the world was very much agog on the subject. There had been fluctuations in the meanwhile, fluctuations which Marietta watched with eager intentness. Once, on the strength of disquieting rumors about the management, the stock dropped to sixteen cents and Marietta's hopes sank accordingly; she felt as if she had picked Jim's pocket. But the "H. O. P." soon rallied, and day by day it crept upwards while Marietta's spirits crept upwards with it, cautiously, questioningly. Should she sell? Should she hold on? If only she might talk it over with Jim! That was something she poignantly missed; she had never had a secret from Jim before. To make up for her reticence on this point she used to tell him more minutely than ever of all that went on in the shop below. Jim thought he had never known Marietta so entertaining. "I say, Marietta, it's a shame you're nothing but a shop-keeper's wife!" he said to her one evening as she sat darning stockings by the lamp-light in the dingy attic room. "You'd ought to have been a duchess or a governor's wife or something like that, so's folks would have found out how smart you was." "Listen at him!" cried Marietta. The words might have offended the taste of the governor who had failed to secure this valuable matrimonial alliance, but the poise of the pretty head, as she cast an affectionate look upon Jim, lying on the old sofa, would have graced the proudest duchess of them all. Now the "Horn of Plenty" was a Lame Gulch stock, and, since the mining-camp of Lame Gulch had been in existence less than a year, the value of any mine up there was a very doubtful quantity. It was perhaps the proximity of the camp to Springtown, that fired the imagination of the Springtown public, perhaps the daily coming and going of people between the two points. Be that as it may, the head must have been a very level one indeed that could keep its balance through the excitement of that winter's "boom." There were many residents of Springtown who had a sentiment for the Peak, more intelligent and more imaginative than any Marietta could boast, yet it is probable that the best nature-lover of them all shared something of her feeling, now that she had come to regard the Peak as the mountain on the other side of which the Lame Gulch treasures lay awaiting their resurrection. "Just the other side of the Peak!" What magic in those words, spoken from time to time by one and another of the Springtown people. "Just the other side of the Peak!" Marietta would say to herself, lifting to the noble mountain eyes bright with an interest such as he in his grandest mood had never awakened there before. Suppose the "Horn of Plenty" should go to a dollar!--to five dollars,--to ten dollars,--to twenty-five dollars! Her mind took the leap with ease and confidence. Had not Bill Sanders said that there were forty millions in it, and had he not seen the mine with his own eyes? Marietta had a mental picture of a huge mountain of solid gold, and when, to complete the splendor of the impression, men talked of "free gold," the term seemed to her to signify a buoyant quality, the quality of pouring itself out in spontaneous plenty. She heard much talk of this kind, for the "H. O. P." was the topic of the hour, and her customers discussed it among themselves. Forty millions almost in plain sight! That was forty dollars a share, and she had five hundred shares! And all this time she was thinking, not of wealth and luxury, but only of a snug cottage in a side street, where there should be two windows in the sitting-room, where she might sit and chat with Jim while she made her flower-books, planning what they should do when he got well. How little she asked; how reasonable it was, how fair! And if only the "H. O. P." were to go to five dollars a share she would venture it. Meanwhile people were bidding forty-five cents, and Inches had called twice in one morning to ask if she would not sell at that price. "What makes them want it so much?" she asked on the occasion of his second visit. "Oh, just an idea they've got that it's going higher," Inches answered indifferently. "Well, s'posing it is; why should I want to sell?" "Why, you'd have made a pretty good thing in it, and you might like to have your bird in hand, don't you know?" Marietta sat down to her flower-books and worked on composedly, while Inches still lingered. "That's a real pretty painting of the Peak over there," he remarked presently, nodding his head toward a crude representation of that much-travestied mountain. Marietta knew better, but she said nothing. "What do you ask for that now?" he persisted. "Oh, I guess about a hundred dollars," she returned facetiously. "The Peak comes high now-a-days, 'cause Lame Gulch is right round on the other side." There was another pause before the broker spoke again. "Then, s'posing I could get you forty-six cents for your stock, would you take it? That's rather above the market price, you know." "'Taint up to my price," said Marietta, trying to make a group of painter's brush look artistic. "What would you take for it then?" asked Inches. Marietta put down her work and drew herself up, to rest her back, and make an end of the interview at a blow. "Look here, Mr. Inches," she said, with decision; "seeing you want the stock so bad, I guess I'll hold on to it!" She was still holding on with unwavering persistence when, a few days after that, Dayton came into the shop. He wondered, as he entered the door, what could be the unpleasant association that was aroused in him by the familiar atmosphere of skins and dried flowers and general "stock in trade" which pervaded the place. No sooner did his eye fall upon Marietta coming towards him, however, than he recalled the distasteful part of adviser which had been forced upon him on the occasion of his last visit. He tried to think that he had washed his hands of the whole matter, but, "Mrs. Jim," he found himself saying; "did you go into mines the other day?" "Yes." "What did you buy?" "H. O. P." "What did you pay?" "Twenty cents." "Sold yet?" "No." Dayton took the little parcel she was handing him. He had come in for a lead-pencil and had bought, in addition, a stamp-box, a buttonhook, and a plated silver photograph frame, not one of which newly acquired treasures he had the slightest use for. They were very neatly tied up, however. He wished Mrs. Jim would stick to her legitimate business which she did uncommonly well. "I think I would sell out my 'H. O. P.' if I were you," he said. "Isn't it going any higher?" she asked. "Very likely; but it's a swindle." "What do you mean?" "Well, I mean that the management's bad, and they don't know the first thing about what they've got, any way. Honestly, Mrs. Jim, it isn't safe to hold." Marietta's heart sank; if she sold her stock what was to become of the little house with the two windows in the sitting-room? She did not reply, and Dayton went on: "Of course," he said; "I can't tell that the thing won't go to a dollar, but there is really no basis for it. I've sold out every share I held, and I don't regret it, though it has gone up ten points since then." Marietta regarded him attentively. There was no mistaking his sincerity,--and he probably knew what he was talking about. "Well," she said at last, with a profound sigh; "I guess I'll do as you say. It worked pretty well the other time." "That's right, Mrs. Jim, and supposing you let me have your stock. I can probably get you fifty cents for it in the course of the day." She took the certificate from a drawer close at hand, and having signed it, she gave one lingering farewell look at the green lady and her golden horn. "I may as well write a check for the amount now," Dayton said. "But maybe you can't get it." "More likely to get a little over. If I do I'll bring it in." Dayton looked into her face as he spoke, and its beauty struck him as pathetic. There were lines and shadows there which he had not noticed before. "I wish, Mrs. Jim," he said, "that you wouldn't do anything more in mines; it's an awfully risky business at the best. There isn't one of us that knows the first thing about it." She gave him a sceptical look; was he so entirely sincere, after all? "Some of you know enough about it to make an awful lot of money in it," she answered quietly. "That isn't knowledge," he declared; "it's luck!" "Comes to the same thing in the end," said Marietta. If it had not been for those pathetic lines and shadows, Dayton would have turned on his heel then and there, disgusted with what seemed to him unfeminine shrewdness. As it was, he said: "Well, then, why not let me be your broker? I'm on the street half the time, and I could attend to your business a great deal better than you could." Marietta did not commit herself to any agreement. She put her check away, still too regretful about the dreams she had relinquished, to rejoice in the mere doubling of her money. Late in the afternoon she was paying a visit to Jim. In spite of the brilliant sunshine that flooded the little garret, at this hour, the place seemed dingier and drearier than ever. Jim, too, she thought, was not looking quite as well as usual; his hand as she took it was hot and dry. She knelt down beside him and they looked out at the Peak, rising grand and imposing beyond the low roofs. Marietta was thinking of the gold, "just round on the other side," but Jim's thoughts had wandered farther still; or was it, after all, nearer to the sick man with the wistful light in his eyes? "I say, Marietta," he said, "I wonder what Heaven's like." She had never heard him speak like that, and the words went to her heart like a knife. But she answered, gently: "I guess we don't know much about it, Jim; only that it'll be Heaven." "I suppose when we get there, you and I, Springtown will seem very far away." "I don't know, Jim," Marietta said, looking still out toward the Peak, but thinking no longer of the gold on the other side. "I shouldn't like any of our life together ever to seem very far away." Just then the sound of the horn rang musically down the street and a moment later the brake went by. The horses' heads were toward home and they knew it; the harness jingled and glittered. On the brake were half-a-dozen well-dressed people laughing and talking gaily; health and prosperity seemed visibly in attendance upon that little company of fortunates. They passed like a vision, and again the sound of the horn came ringing down the street. Jim turned and looked at Marietta who had been almost as excited as he. A thousand thoughts had chased themselves through her brain as the brake went by. She sighed in the energetic manner peculiar to her, and then she said: "O Jim! If you could only be like that for just one day!" Perhaps he had had the same thought but her words dispelled it. "Never mind, Etta," he said. "I wouldn't change with him;" and Marietta shut away the little speech in her heart to be happy over at her leisure. The next day the invalid was not as well as usual and Mrs. Jim spent half her time running up and down stairs. Inches came in in the course of the day and offered her sixty cents for her "Horn of Plenty," and she thought with a pang how fast it was going up. The thought haunted her all day long, but she could not leave Jim to take any steps toward retrieving her opportunity, and after that first visit Inches did not come in again. She took out her big check once or twice in the course of the day and looked at it resentfully; and as she brooded upon the matter, it was borne in upon her with peculiar force that she had made a fatal blunder in exchanging her "chances" for that fixed, inexpansive sum. Had it not been cowardly in her to yield so easily? Supposing Dayton himself had lacked courage at the critical moment; where would his four-in-hand have been to-day? She was sure that no timid speculator had ever made a fortune; on the contrary, she had often heard it said that a flash of courage at the right moment was the very essence of success in speculation. She remembered the expression "essence of success." [Illustration: "THEY LOOKED OUT AT THE PEAK."] By the time evening came the fever of speculation was high in her veins, and urged on by her own brooding fancies, uncontradicted from without, unexposed to the light of day, she did an incredible thing. As she drew forth her writing materials in order to put her new and startling resolution into execution, she paused and looked about the familiar little shop with a feeling of estrangement. There was an incongruity between the boldness of the thing she was about to do, and the hard and fast limitations of her lot, which the sight of those humble properties brought sharply home to her. The first pen she took up was stiff and scratchy; the sound of it was like a challenge to the outer world to come and pass judgment upon her. She flung the pen to one side in nervous trepidation, and then she searched until she found one that was soft and pliable, and went whispering over the paper like a fellow-conspirator. This was what she wrote: "DEAR MR. DAYTON, "I want to go into the 'Horn of Plenty' again, and I can't get away to attend to it. I enclose your check, and one of my own for $400. Please buy me what the money will bring. They say it isn't a swindle, and any way I want some. You said to come to you, and that was the same as saying you'd do it, if I asked you to. I don't care what you pay; get what you can for the money. "Yours truly, "M. BIXBY." Another morning found Jim so ill that they sent for the doctor. On the same day Inches came in and offered seventy-five cents for the stock. Marietta had not told him that it was sold and she did not propose to do so. In the afternoon the price had "jumped" to ninety cents, but by that time she was too anxious about Jim to care. For five weeks the "Art Emporium" was closed, and in that time the face of the world had changed for Marietta. She realized the change when she came downstairs and opened the shop again. It was impossible to feel that life was restored to its old basis. There was a change too in her, which was patent to the most casual observer. It was, indeed, a very wan and thin Marietta that at last came forward to meet her customers; her eyes looked alarmingly big, and though nothing could disturb the pose of the beautiful head, there was a droop in the figure, that betokened bodily and mental exhaustion. A good many customers came in to make Easter purchases,--for the following Sunday was Easter,--and many others to inquire for Jim. As the old, familiar life began to reassert itself, as she began to feel at home again in the old, accustomed surroundings, her mind recurred, in a half-dazed way, to her speculation. She did not herself know much about it, for Dayton had never sent her her certificate. Probably he had come with it when the shop was closed. She supposed she must be too tired to have much courage; that must be why her heart sank at the thought of what she had done. She was sitting by the work-table, her head in her hands, pondering dully. At the sound of the shop-bell she looked up, mechanically, and saw Inches coming in. "Good morning, Mrs. Jim," he said. "How's your husband?" "Jim's better, thank you," she replied, and the sound of her own confident words dispelled the clouds. Inches looked at her narrowly, and then he began pulling the ears of a mounted fox-skin that was lying on the counter, as he remarked casually: "Hope you got rid of your 'H. O. P.' in time." "In time?" she asked. "In time? What do you mean?" "Why, before they closed down. You sold out, I hope?" There was a sudden catch in her breath. "Yes, I sold out some time ago." "Glad of that," he declared, with very evident relief, suddenly losing interest in the fox's ears. Inches had none of Dayton's prejudices in regard to woman's "sphere," but he was none the less rejoiced to know that this particular woman, with the tired-looking eyes, had not "got hurt," as he would have put it. "It's been a bad business all round," he went on, waxing confidential as he was prone to do. "Why, I knew a man that bought twenty thousand shares at a dollar-ten three weeks ago, just before she closed down, and he's never had the sand to sell." "What could he get to-day?" Marietta asked. Her voice sounded in her ears strange and far away. "Well, I don't know. I was offered some at six cents, but I don't know anybody that wants it." Marietta's throat felt parched and dry, and now there was a singing in her ears; but she gave no outward sign. "Pretty hard on some folks," she remarked. "I should say so!" There was a din in her ears all that afternoon, which was perhaps a fortunate circumstance, for it shut out all possibility of thought. It was not until night came that the din stopped, and her brain became clear again,--cruelly, pitilessly clear. Deep into the night she lay awake tormenting herself with figures. How hideous, how intolerable they were! They passed and repassed in her brain in the uncompromising search-light of conscience, like malicious, mouthing imps. They were her debts and losses, they stood for disgrace and penury, they menaced the very foundation of her life and happiness. Doubtless the man who had put many thousands into the "Horn of Plenty," and had lacked the "sand" to sell, would have wondered greatly that a fellow-creature should be suffering agony on account of a few hundred dollars. Yet he, in his keenest pang of disappointment, knew nothing whatever of the awful word "ruin"; while Marietta, staring up into the darkness, was getting that lesson by heart. The town-clock striking three seemed to pierce her consciousness and relieve the strain. She wished the sofa she was lying upon were not so hard and narrow; perhaps if she were more comfortable she might be able to sleep, and then, in the morning, she might see light. Of course there was light, somewhere, if she could only find it; but who ever found the light, lying on a hard sofa, in pitchy darkness? Perhaps if she were to get up and move about things would seem less intolerable. And with the mere thought of action the tired frame relaxed, the straining eyes were sealed with sleep, the curtain of unconsciousness had fallen upon the troubled stage of her mind. And when, at dawn, Jim opened frightened eyes, and struggled with a terrible oppression to speak her name, Marietta was still sleeping profoundly. "Etta!" he gasped. "O, Etta!" And Marietta heard the whispered name, and thrusting out her hands, as if to tear away a physical bond, broke through the torpor that possessed her, and stood upon her feet. She staggered, white and trembling, to Jim's bedside, and there, in the faint light, she saw that he was dying. "Etta, Etta," he whispered, "I want you!" She sank upon her knees beside him, but the hand she folded in her own was already lifeless. Slowly the light increased in that dingy garret, until the sun shone full upon the face of the Peak, fronting the single window of the chamber in uncompassionate splendor. Occasional sounds of traffic came up from the street below; the day had begun. And still Marietta knelt beside the bed, clasping the hand she loved, with a passionate purpose to prolong the mere moment of possession that was all that was left her now, all it was worth being alive for. He wanted her, he wanted her,--and oh, the years and years that he must wait for her, in that strange, lonely, far-away heaven! "Jim, Jim," she muttered from time to time, with a dry gasp in her throat, that almost choked her; "Jim, O Jim!" By-and-by, when the sun was high in the heavens, and all the world was abroad, she got upon her feet, and went about the strange new business that death puts upon the broken-hearted. The day after the funeral was the third of April, and Marietta knew that all her April bills were lying in the letterbox, the silent menace which had seemed so terrible to her the other day. Well,--that at least was nothing to her now. So much her heart-break had done for her, that all the lesson of ruin she had conned through those horrible black hours, when Jim was dying and she did not know it,--that lesson at least had lost its meaning. Ruin could not hurt Jim now, and she?--she might even find distraction in it,--find relief. She went down into the dimly lighted shop, where the shades were closely drawn in the door and in the broad show-window. In that strange midday twilight, she gathered up her mail, and then she seated herself in her old place behind the counter, and began the examination of it. There were all the bills, just as she had anticipated; bills for food and bills for medicine; bills for all those useless odds and ends which made up her stock in trade, which she and Jim had been so proud of a few years ago when they first came to Springtown. She wrote out the various sums in a long column, just to look at them all together, and to feel how little harm they could do her; and in the midst of the dull, lifeless work, she came upon a letter which did not look like a bill. As she drew it from the envelope, two slips of paper fell out of it, two slips of paper which she picked up and read, with but a dazed, bewildered attention. They were the checks she had sent to Dayton a month ago; his own check for $250; hers for $400. Marietta, in her humble joys and sorrows, had never known the irony of Fate, and hence she could not understand about those checks. The meaning of the letter was blurred as she read it. It was from Dayton. He could not know that Jim was dead, for he said nothing of it. But if there was any one who did not know that Jim was dead, could it be true? Her heart gave a wild leap, and she half rose to her feet. What if she were to run up those stairs, quickly, breathlessly? Oh, what then? But the stillness of the closed shop, the strange half-light that came through the drawn shades, her own black dress, recalled her from that swift and cruel hope, and again she set herself to read the letter. The words all seemed straight enough, if she could only make sense of them. He had but just read her letter, being returned that morning from the East. The letter had come the day he left town, and thinking that it was a receipted bill, he had locked it up, unopened, in his desk. He feared that Mrs. Jim had been anxious about the matter, and he hastened to relieve her mind. While he apologized for his own carelessness, he congratulated her upon her escape. "He congratulates me, he congratulates me!" she whispered hoarsely; "O my God!" She did not yet comprehend the letter nor the checks which had fluttered to the floor. It was only the last sentence that she took note of, because of its jarring sense. Suddenly the meaning of it all broke upon her. Those were her checks! Ruin had evaded her! She could not prove upon it her loyalty to Jim, her loyalty to grief. Fate had shipwrecked her, and now it was decreed that the sun should shine and the sea subside in smiling peace. It was more than she could bear. She flung the letter from her, and, stooping, she picked up the checks and crushed them in her clenched hands. How dared they come back to mock at her! How dared Fate take her all, and toss her what she did not value! How dared--Heaven? Was it Heaven she was defying? Ah! she must not lose her soul, Heaven knew she would not lose her soul--for Jim's sake! She opened her clenched hands and smoothed out the checks, patiently, meekly; and then she went on with the bills, a strange calm in her mind, different from the calm of the last three days. And then, for the first time, it struck her that the bills were all made out to Jim. JAMES BIXBY, to HIRAM ROGERS, Dr. to JAMES WILKINS, Dr. to FIELDS & LYMAN, Dr. It was his name that would have been disgraced, not hers; his memory would have been stained. She turned white with terror of the danger past. After a while she put the bills aside, and drew out her folios of pressed flowers. It seemed a hundred years since she had worked upon them. How exquisite they were, those delicate ghosts of flowers;--the regal columbine, the graceful gilia, coreopsis gleaming golden, anemones, pale and soft. How they kept their loveliness when life was past! They were only flower memories, but how fair they were, and how lasting! No frost to blight them, no winds to tear their silken petals any more! Well might they outlast the hand that pressed them! And soon Marietta found herself doing the old, accustomed work with all the old skill, and with a new grace and delicacy of touch. And when the friends in her old home which she had left for Jim's sake, urged her to come back to them, she answered, no;--she would rather stay in Colorado and do her flower-books;--adding, in a hand that scrawled more than usual with the effort for composure: "They are my consolation." XI. A STROKE IN THE GAME. The mining boom was off, and Springtown was feeling the reaction as severely as so sanguine and sunny a little place was capable of doing. To one who had witnessed, a year or more previous, the rising of the tide of speculation, whose tossing crest had flung its glittering drops upon the loftiest and firmest rocks of the business community, the streets of the little Rocky Mountain town had something the aspect of the shore at low tide. Such a witness was Harry Wakefield, if, indeed, a man may be said to have "witnessed" a commotion which has swept him off his feet and whirled him about like a piece of driftwood. It was, to be sure, quite in the character of a piece of driftwood that Wakefield had let himself be drawn into the whirlpool, and he could not escape the feeling that, tossed as he was, high and dry upon the shore, he was getting quite as good as he deserved. "Yes, I'm busted!" he remarked to his friend Chittenden, the stock-broker, as the two men paused before the office-door of the latter. "It was the Race-Horse that finished me up. No, thanks, I won't come in. A burnt child dreads the fire!" "We're all cool enough now-a-days," Chittenden replied, shrugging his shoulders. "Couldn't get up a blaze to heat a flat-iron!" and he passed in to the office, with the air of a man whose occupation is gone. As Wakefield turned down the street, his eye fell upon a stock-board across the way, a board upon which had once been jotted down from day to day, a record of his varying fortunes. He remembered how, a few months ago, that same board showed white with Lame Gulch quotations. He reflected that, while the price set against each stock had made but a modest showing, running from ten cents up into the second dollar, a man of sense,--supposing such a phenomenon to have weathered the "boom,"--would have been impressed with the fact that the valuation thus placed upon the infant camp aggregated something like twenty millions of dollars. The absurdity of the whole thing struck Wakefield with added force, as he read the solitary announcement which now graced the board,--namely: "To exchange: 1000 Race-Horse for a bull-terrier pup." "Kind o' funny; ain't it?" said a voice close beside him. It was Dicky Simmons, a youth of seedy aspect, but a cheerful countenance, who had come up with him, and was engaged in the perusal of the same announcement. "Hullo, Simmons! Where do you hail from?" "From Barnaby's ranch. I'm trying my hand at agriculture until this thing's blown over!" "Think it's going to?" "Oh, yes! When the tide's dead low it's sure to turn!" and the old hopeful look glistened in the boy's face. "That's the case in Nature," Wakefield objected. "Nature hadn't anything to do with the boom. It was contrary to all the laws." "Oh, I guess Nature has a hand in most things," Dicky replied with cheerful assurance. "Anyhow she's made a big deal up at Lame Gulch, and those of us who've got the sand to hold on will find that she's in the management." "Think so?" "Sure of it!" "Hope you're right. Anyhow, though, I'd try the old girl on agriculture for a while, if I were you. How's Barnaby doing, by the way?" "Holding on by the skin of his teeth." "What's wrong there?" "Can't collect;" was the laconic reply. The two companions in adversity were walking toward the post-office, moved, perhaps, by the subtle attraction which that institution exercises over the man who is "down on his luck." There was no mail due, yet they turned, with one accord, in at the door, and repaired to their respective boxes. As Wakefield looked up from the inspection of his empty one, he saw Simmons, with an open letter or circular in his hand. Catching Wakefield's eye he laughed. "Well?" Wakefield queried. "You know, Wake," said Dicky, in a confidential tone. "The thing's too funny to be serious. Here's the Trailing Arbutus (you're not in that, I believe), capitalization a million and a half shares, calls a meeting of stockholders to consider how to raise money to get the mine out of the hands of a receiver. Now, guess how much money they want!" "How much?" "_Five hundred dollars!_ Five hundred dollars on a million and a half shares! I say, Wake, they couldn't be funnier if they tried!" Agreeable as Dicky's company usually was, Wakefield was glad when the boy hailed the Barnaby milk-cart, and betook himself and his insistent brightness under its canvas shelter. The white covered wagon went rattling out of town, and Wakefield, somewhat to his surprise, found himself striding after it. "Anyhow, he's hit it off better than I have," he said to himself; and as he perceived how rapidly the cart was disappearing, he had a sense of being distanced, and he involuntarily quickened his pace. The street he was following was one that he strongly approved of, because it had the originality to cut diagonally across the rectangular plan of the town. The houses on either hand were small and unpretentious, but tidy little homesteads, and he did not like to think of the mortgages with which, according to Chittenden, the "boom" had weighted more than one modest roof. In the strong sense of general disaster which he was struggling under, those mortgages seemed almost visible to the eye. He was glad when he had left the town behind him, and was marching on between stretches of uncultivated prairie and bare reddish hillocks. They, at least, stood for what they were,--and see, how the wildflowers had thrust themselves up through the harsh gritty sand; that great tract of yellow vetches, for instance, that had brought up out of the earth a glory of gold that might well put all Lame Gulch to the blush! Over yonder stood the Range, not beautiful, in the uncompromising noon light, but strong and steadfast, with an almost moral vigor in its outlines. He had lost sight of the milk-cart altogether, and was plodding on, simply because there seemed to be nothing better to do with himself. He presently came opposite a low, conical hill which he recognized as "Mt. Washington,"--a hill whose elevation above sea-level was said to be precisely that of New England's loftiest peak. Wakefield reflected that he was never likely to reach that classic altitude with less exertion than to-day, and that on the whole it would be rather pleasant than otherwise to find himself at that particular height. There was a barbed-wire fence intervening, and it pleased him to take it "on the fly." He had undoubtedly been going down-hill of late, but his legs, at least, had held their own, he assured himself, with some satisfaction, as he alighted, right side up, within the enclosure. He thought, with a whimsical turn, of Pheidippides, the youth who used his legs to such good purpose; who "ran like fire,"--shouted, "Rejoice, we conquer!"--then "died in the shout for his meed." How simple life once was, according to Browning and the rest! What a muddle it was to-day, according to Harry Wakefield! And all because a girl had refused him! He had been trying all along not to think of Dorothy Ray, but by the time he had reached the summit of the hill,--that little round of red sand, where only a single yellow cactus had had the courage to precede him,--he knew that his hour of reckoning had come. He had gambled, yes; but it was for her sake he had gambled; he had lost, yes, but it was she he had lost. He flung himself down on the bare red hilltop, and with his chin in his hands, gazed across irrigated meadows and parched foothills to the grim slope of the mountains. And stretched there, with his elbows digging into the sandy soil, his mind bracing itself against the everlasting hills, he let the past draw near. There was an atmosphere about that past, a play of light and shadow, a mist of poetry and romance, that made the Colorado landscape in the searching noon light seem typical of the life he had led there:--a crude, prosaic, _metallic_ sort of life. And after the first shrinking from the past, his mind began to feel deliciously at home in it. How he had loved Dorothy Ray! How the thought of her had pervaded his life, as the sunshine pervades a landscape! Yet not like the sunshine; for sunshine is fructifying, and his life had been singularly fruitless. There was no shirking the truth, that the year he had spent reading law in her father's office, the year he had discovered that his old friend and playmate was the girl of his choice, had been a wasted year. In all that did not directly concern her he had dawdled, and Dorothy knew and resented it. He remembered how, on one occasion, she had openly preferred Aleck Dorr to himself; Aleck Dorr, with his ugly face and boorish manners, who was cutting a dash with a newly acquired fortune. "Dorothy," Wakefield asked abruptly, the next time he got speech of her,--it was at the Assembly and she had only vouchsafed him two dances,--"Dorothy, what do you like about that boor?" "In the first place he isn't a boor," she answered. "He's as gentlemanlike as possible." "Supposing he is, then! That's a recommendation most of us possess." She gave him a scrutinizing, almost wistful look. How dear she was, standing there in the brilliant gas-light, fresh and natural in her ball-dress and sparkling jewels as she had been when her hair hung down in a big braid over her gingham frock. "You gentlemanlike? That's something you could never be, Harry,--because you are a gentleman. But that's all you are," she added, with a sudden impatience that checked his rising elation. "I don't see that there was any call for snubbing," he retorted angrily. He was often angry with Dorothy; that was part of the old good-fellowship he had used to value so much, but which seemed so insufficient now. "Snubbing? I thought I made you a very pretty compliment," she answered, with a little caressing tone that he found illogically comforting. "You haven't told me why you like this gentlemanlike boor," he persisted. "I should think anybody might see that! I like him because he amounts to something; because he has made a fortune, if you insist. It takes a _man_ to do that!" Upon which, before Wakefield had succeeded in framing a suitable retort, Dorr came up, with a ponderous joke, and claimed a promised waltz. Well! Dorr need not be in such thundering spirits! He had no chance with her at any rate! And only a few months later it turned out that he, Harry Wakefield, had as little chance as Dorr. At this point in his reflections Wakefield's elbows began to feel rough and gritty. He turned himself round and sat with his back to the mountains, looking eastward, his hands clasping one knee. He was glad the prairie was broken up into mounds and hillocks over there, and had not the look of the sea that it took on from some points of view. There was a group of pines off to the left; he had been too preoccupied to observe them as he came along the road,--strangely enough too, for a group of trees is an unusual sight out on the prairie. What a lot of trees there were in the East though, and how wofully he had come to grief among them up there on the North Shore! Only a year ago it had happened, only a year ago, in the fragrant New England June! His married sister had had Dorothy and himself visiting her at the same time. Well, Fanny had done her best for him, though it was no good. He wondered, in passing, how it happened that a fellow could come to care more for anybody else than for a sister like Fanny! He had found Dorothy sitting in perfect idleness under a big pine-tree that lovely June morning. There were robins hopping about the lawn; the voices of his sister's children came, shrill and sweet, calling to one another as they dug in the garden by the house. The tide was coming in; he could hear it break against the rocks over yonder, while the far stretches of sea glimmered softly in the sunshine. Dorothy looked so sweet and beneficent as she sat under the big pine-tree in the summer sunshine, that all his misgivings vanished. Before he knew what he was about he had "asked her." And here the little drama was blurred and muffled in his memory. He wondered, as he clasped his knees and studied the tops of the pine-trees, how he had put the question; whether he had perhaps put it wrong. He could not recall a word he had said; but her words in reply fell as distinct on his ear, as the note of the meadow-lark, down there by the roadside. How the note of the meadow-lark shot a thrill through the thin Colorado air,--informed with a soul the dazzling day! How cruelly sweet Dorothy's voice had been, as she said: "No, Harry, I couldn't!" It had made him so angry that he hardly knew how deep his hurt was. "You have no right to say no!" he had heard himself say. He could not remember whether that was immediately, or after an interval of discussion. She had stood up and turned away, not deigning to reply. And then the memory of that talk at the ball had struck him like a blow. "Wait, Dorothy! You must wait!" he had cried, aware that his imperative words clutched her like a detaining hand. Then, while his breath came fast, almost chokingly, he had said: "Tell me, Dorothy, is it because you don't call me _a man_ that you won't have me?" The angry challenge in his voice hardened her. "I don't know anything about how much of a man you are, Harry Wakefield," she had declared, with freezing indifference. "I only know you are not the man for me." That had been practically the end of it. They had got through the day very creditably he believed, and the next morning they had departed on their several ways. Wakefield had read law like mad for a week, and then he had started for Colorado. He had a favorite cousin out there whose husband was making a fortune in Lame Gulch stocks, and he thought that even prosaic fortune-hunting in a new world would be better than the gnawing chagrin that monopolized things in the old. Better be active than passive, on any terms. By the time he was well on his westward way, the sting of that refusal had yielded somewhat, and he began to take courage again. Perhaps when he had made a fortune! "It takes a man to do that," she had said. Well, he had four times the money to start with that Dick Dayton had had, and look, what chances there were! Once fairly launched in the stirring, out-of-door Colorado life, his spirits had so far recovered their tone that he could afford to be magnanimous. Accordingly he wrote the following letter to Dorothy: "DEAR DOROTHY, "You were right; I wasn't half good enough for you. No fellow is, as far as that goes! Don't you let them fool you on that score! It makes me mad when I think about it. You always knew the worst of me, but you don't really know the first thing about any other man. I'm coming back next year to try again. Do give me the chance, Dorothy! Remember, I don't tell you you could make anything you like of me--that's the rubbish the rest will talk. I'm going to make something of myself first! And if I don't do it in a year, I am ready to work seven years,--or seventy,--or seventy-seven years; if you'll only have me in the end! That would have to be in Heaven, though, wouldn't it? Well, it would come to the same thing in the end! It would be Heaven for me, wherever it was!" Wakefield had the habit of saying to Dorothy whatever came into his head; and so he had written his letter without any thought of effect. But the answer he got was so carefully worded that he could make nothing of it. At the end of three non-committal pages she wrote: "I ought not to wish you good luck, for Papa says if you have it it will be your ruin. I did not suppose that circumstances could ruin anybody,--anybody that had any backbone, I mean. But I do wish you good luck all the same, and if you're the kind of person to be ruined by it, why, I'm sorry for you!" There was something in that letter, non-committal as it was, that gave Wakefield the impression that a correspondence would be no furtherance to his interests. He did not write again, and he only knew, from his sister Fanny, that Dorothy was a greater favorite than ever that season; a fact from which he could gather little encouragement. He had flung himself like a piece of driftwood into the whirl of speculation; he had lost more thousands than he cared to think about, the bulk of his patrimony in fact, and his last chance was gone of making the fortune that was to have been the winning of Dorothy. "It takes a man to do that!" she had said. Well, that was the end of it! As far as he was concerned, Dorothy Ray had ceased to exist; the past had ceased to exist, the pleasant past, with its deceitful mists and bewildering sunbeams. Things out here were crude, but they were real! He got on his feet and turned about once more. Between Mt. Washington and the range was a fertile ranch; broad fields of vivid alfalfa, big barns, pastures dotted with cattle; a line of light-green cottonwoods ran along the borders of the creek. What was that about the wilderness blossoming like the rose? He turned again and looked toward the barren hillocks. Even they, dead and inhospitable as they appeared at a little distance, afforded nourishment for cactus and painter's-brush, prickly poppy and hardy vetches. Dorothy Ray might do as she pleased,--his fortune might go where it would! That need not be the end of all things. Life, to be sure, might seem a little like a game of chess after the loss of the Queen! Pretty tough work it was likely to be to save the game, but none the less worth while for all that. He wondered what his next move would be,--and meanwhile, before recommencing the game, why not seize the most obvious outlet for his newly roused energies, by tearing down the hill at a break-neck gallop and clearing the wire fence at a bound! "Took you for a jack-rabbit!" said a gruff voice close at hand, as he landed on his two feet by the dusty roadside. "Not a bad thing to be," Wakefield panted, falling in step with the speaker, who was walking toward the town at a brisk pace. "Not unless the dogs are round," the stranger demurred. "Dogs! A jack-rabbit would never know how game he was, if it wasn't for the dogs!" "Any on your track?" asked the man with a grin. "Looked like it when you come walluping down the mounting!" "A whole pack of them," Wakefield answered. "Didn't you see anything of them?" "Can't say I did." "You're not so smart as you look, then;" and they went jogging on like comrades of a year's standing. The new acquaintance appeared to be a man of sixty or thereabouts. A crowbar and shovel which he carried over his shoulder seemed a part of his rough laborer's costume. He had a shrewd, good sort of face, and a Yankee twang to his speech. "You carry those things as easy as a walking-stick," Wakefield observed, ready to reciprocate in point of compliments. "What do you use them for?" "Ben mendin' the bit o' _codderoy_ down yonder," was the answer. "Is that your trade?" "No, not partic'larly. I make a trade of most anything I kin work at. Happened to be out of a job last week, so I took up with this." "Got through with it?" "Yes; stopped off to-day. Got done just in time. They start in on the road next week, 'n they've took me on." "What road's that?" "The new branch in." "Oh! In to Lame Gulch. I heard they were going to start in on that." "Yes; the 'Rocky Mounting' are doin' it. They say there'll be trains runnin' in from the Divide inside of six months." Wakefield looked sceptical; he had heard that sort of talk before. "Do you like railroad work?" he asked. "Not so well's this. I like my own job better, only 'taint so _stayin'_. Might 've had another month's work, on the road to the cañon over there; but that would ha' ben the end on 't. So I'm goin' to throw up that job this afternoon." "What's wanted on the cañon road?" "Wal, it wants widenin', an' it wants bracin' up here 'n there, 'n there's a power of big stuns to be weeded out. A reel purty job it's goin' to be, too, in there by the runnin' water, among the _fars_ 'n the birds 'n the squirrels." "I suppose you could hardly have managed that all by yourself?" "Oh, yes! It's an easy job." "And you think you could have done it with just your two hands and a shovel and a crowbar?" "Wal, yes,--'n a pinch o' powder now and then, 'n somethin' to drill a hole with,--an' a little nat'ral gumption." Wakefield liked the sound of it all uncommonly well. For a man who had come to a rough place in his own road,--a jumping-off place he had once thought it might prove to be,--would it not be rather a pleasant thing, to smooth off a road for the general public? It would be a stroke in the game, at least, and that was his main concern just now. Such a good, downright, genuine sort of work too! He had an idea that if he could once get his grip on a crowbar, and feel a big rock come off its bottom at his instigation, he should have a stirring of self-respect. After all, of all that he had lost, that was perhaps the most important thing to get back. Just as he had arrived at this sensible conclusion his companion came to a halt. "Here's my shanty; where's yours?" he asked. "Haven't got any!" "I'd ask you in if we wasn't packin' up to go." "Does your wife go with you?" "Why, nat'rally!" "Say," Wakefield queried, as the man turned in at the gate. "How did you go to work to get that job up in the cañon?" "Went to 'Bijah Lang, the street-commissioner." "You haven't got any friend who would like you to pass the job over to him?" "No." "Think I could do it?" "Wal, yes,--if you've got the gumption! Your arms and legs 'pear to be all right! Ever see any work of the kind?" "Yes; I used to watch them on the road up Bear Mountain, at Lame Gulch." "Know how to drill a hole in a rock?" "Learned that when I was a boy." "Know the difference between _joint_ powder and the black stuff?" "Yes; though I never handled giant powder myself." "Wal, don't be too free with it, that's all. And, say!" he called, as Wakefield in his turn made as if to go. "Look's like as though you'd got somethin' up to Lame Gulch. Wal, you hold on to it, that's all!" "You believe in Lame Gulch, then?" "Lame Gulch is all right. It's chockfull of stuff, now I tell ye! Only folks thought they was goin' to fish it out with a rod 'n line." "Then you really think there 's something in it?" "Somethin' in it? I tell ye, it's chockfull o' stuff! Only folks have got it into their heads that the one thing in this world they kin git without workin' for it, is _gold_! If that was so, what would it be wuth? Less than pig-iron! I tell ye, there ain't nothin' in this world that's to be got without workin' for it, 'n the more work it takes, the more it's wuth! 'N the reason gold's wuth more 'n most things, is because it takes more work 'n most things; more diggin' 'n more calc'latin'. Why!" he went on, waxing more and more emphatic. "Ef diggin' gold wa' n't no harder 'n mendin' roads, 't wouldn't _pay_ any better,--now I tell ye!" "Perhaps you're right," Wakefield admitted, "but that's not what we're brought up to think." "That's what my boys was brought up to think, 'n they're actin' accordin'." "Have you got some boys up at Lame Gulch?" "Yes, four on 'em. 'N I've got a claim up there too, 'n they're workin' it." "Why don't you go up and work your claim yourself?" asked Wakefield. A humorous twinkle came into the man's eyes. "Wal, now I tell ye!" and his voice dropped to a confidential level. "Railroadin' _pays better_, so far!" "Do your boys get a living out of the mine?" "Not yet, not yet. But they're skilled miners. 'N when they git hard up, a couple on 'em put in a month's work for some skalliwag 'company' or other, 'n so they keep agoin'. The three married ones ain't up there at all." "So you've got seven sons?" "Yes; seven boys, all told. We lost a girl," he added, with an indefinable change in his voice. "Her name was Loretty." With that, Loretty's father passed up the path and disappeared within the house. "Nice old chap," Wakefield thought, as he walked on, past the little houses with the presumable mortgages on them. "Nice of him to go on caring for Loretty after he had lost her." He wondered whether, after all, he had better make such a point of forgetting about Dorothy! Up there on the red hilltop, hobnobbing with the yellow cactus, he had resolved never to think of her again; but down here among human habitations, fresh from the good human intercourse of the last ten minutes, he did not feel so sure about it. He thought that, on the whole, it might be as well to decide that question later. Meanwhile, here was the street-commissioner's door, and here was a decision that must be come to on the spot. Harry Wakefield always looked back upon the day when he first pried a big rock off its base, as a turning-point in his career; a move that put the game in his own hands. The sensation was different from what he had anticipated. He had fancied that he was about to engage in a single-handed struggle, but no sooner had his grip closed upon the crowbar, no sooner had he felt the mass of rock yield to its pressure, than he found that he was not working single-handed. On the contrary, he had the feeling of having got right down among the forces of nature and of finding them ranged on his side. It was gravitation that gave the rock its weight, but, look there! how some other law, which he did not know the name of, dwelt in the resisting strength of the iron, worked in the action of his muscles. His legs trembled, as he braced himself to the effort; the veins of his neck throbbed hard; but the muscles of his arms and chest held firm as the crowbar they guided, and slowly, reluctantly, sullenly, the rock went over on its side. He dropped the crowbar from his stiffening grasp and drew himself up, flinging his shoulders back and panting deep and strong. It was between six and seven o'clock in the morning, a radiant June morning, which seemed alive with pleasant things. As he stood with his head thrown back, taking a good draught of the delicious mountain air, a bluebird shot, like a bit of the sky, in and out among the solemn pines and delicate aspens. He looked down on the tangle of blossoming vines and bushes that latticed the borders of the brook, which came dashing down from the cañon, still rioting on its way. The water would soon have another cause for clamor, in the big stone that had so long cumbered the road. He should presently have the fun of rolling it over the bank and seeing it settle with a splash in the bed of the stream where it belonged by rights. After that there was a fallen tree to be tackled, a couple of rods farther on, and then he should take a rest with his shovel and fill in some holes near by. [Illustration: "THE BROOK, WHICH CAME DASHING DOWN FROM THE CAÑON, STILL RIOTING ON ITS WAY."] He had found a deserted lean-to, half way up the cañon, where he had arranged to camp while the work went on. As he thought of Chittenden and Allery Jones and the rest, cooped up there in the town, still anxiously watching the fluctuations of the stock-market, he was filled with compassion for them, and he determined to have them out now and then and give them a camp stew. Of course the exultation of that first hour's work did not last. Before the day was out, Wakefield had found out what he was "in for." An aching back and blistered hands were providing him with sensations of a less exhilarating order than those of the early morning. At one time, soon after his "nooning" as he liked to call it, the sun blazed so fiercely that he had ignominiously fled before it and taken refuge for an hour or more among the trees. That was the episode which he least liked to remember. He did not quite see why mending a road in the sun should be so much more dangerous than playing polo at high noon, but, somehow, it hurt more; and he recollected that his late father, who was a physician, had once told him that pain was Nature's warning. Having, then, entered into a close alliance with Nature, he thought it well to take her hints. Before many days his apprenticeship was over and he was working like a born day-laborer. After the first week he was well rid of aches and pains; the muscles of his back were strengthened, the palms of his hands were hardened, his skull, he thought to himself, must have thickened. In all things, too, he was tuned to a lower key. But if the exhilaration of that first morning was gone, it had only given place to something better; namely, a solid sense of satisfaction. He knew it was all an episode, this form of work at least; he knew that when his "job" was done he should go back into the world and take up the life he had once made a failure of; but he knew also that he should not fail again. A sense of power had come into him; he had made friends with work for its own sake. He believed that his brain was as good as his muscles, that it would respond as readily to the demands he should put upon it. And he had learned to be strenuous with himself. Wakefield was in correspondence with a friend in San Francisco who wanted him to come out there and practise law. He decided, rather suddenly, to do so, coming to his decision the day after he was told that Dorothy Ray was engaged to be married. It was Dick Dayton who brought him the news. As he listened, he felt something as he did that first day in the cañon when the sun got too strong for him. He thought, after Dayton left him, that he should have given up the game then and there, if it had not been for some blasting he was to do in the morning. The holes were all drilled, and it would be a day's job to clear away the pieces and straighten things out at that point. He should hate to have another man go on with the job. They might cut him out with Dorothy,--that was sure to come, sooner or later,--but, by the Great Horn Spoon! they should not get his job away from him! It was not until he had turned in for the night that it occurred to him that he had not asked whom Dorothy was engaged to. What did he care, any way? he said to himself. He had gambled away his chances long ago. Yet, Good Heavens, how dear she was! As he lay on the ground, outside the little lean-to, staring up at the stars that glittered in the thin air with what is called, at lower altitudes, a frosty brilliance, he seemed to see her before him more plainly than he had ever done in the old days when they had stood face to face. He had been too self-absorbed, too blinded and bewildered with the urgency of his own case, to see her as she really was. He remembered now,--something that he had never thought about before,--the little toss of her hair, up from her forehead, which was different from the way other girls wore their hair. It made a little billow there, that was like her free spirit. Yes, she had always had a free spirit. Perhaps it was the claim of ownership he had made, which had repelled her so strongly. As well set up a claim of ownership over those stars up there! He tried to hope that the other fellow was man enough to deserve her; but that was beyond his magnanimity. The only way to bear it, for the present at least, was to leave the "other fellow" out of the question. He was glad he did not know his name. And all night long, as he watched the stars, their slow, imperceptible progress marked only by the intervening tree-twigs, Dorothy's face was fairly visible to him, her voice came to him distinct as an echo; her sweet, free nature unfolded itself to his awakened consciousness. Since then he had worked as if his life had depended upon it, and now, after those ten days of fierce labor, his "job" was almost done. He had worked his way well up into the cañon, quite to the end of the distance contracted for. A few days more would complete the job. He thought, with a pang of regret, that his lines would never again fall in such glorious places. He knew the cañon by heart; he had seen it in every phase of its summer beauty, by day and by night, in sunshine and in storm, and now the autumn had come and the sensitive green of the aspens had turned to yellow. They gleamed along the brook-side; they showed like an outcrop of gold on the wall of rock over there, and in among the blue-green pines; their yellow leaves strewed the ground on which he stood. It was eight o'clock in the morning, and he was about to do his last blasting. There was nobody up the cañon, and nobody was likely to come from below for an hour yet. The big boulder was not to thrust itself into the road any more; another minute, and all that protruding side of it would be blown off and there would be room for two teams to pass each other. Hark! Was not that a horse's hoofs down below? He was already in the act of "touching her off," holding the lighted match in the hollow of his two hands. As he turned his head to listen, the fuse ignited with a sharp _spit!_ scorching and blackening the palms of his hands, and causing him to jump as violently as he used to do before his nerves were trained to the business. Somewhat disgusted with his want of nerve, he picked up his tools in a particularly leisurely manner, and deposited them at a safe distance from the coming crash. Then, to make up for this bit of bravado, he ran swiftly down the road,--"walluped" he said to himself, thinking of Loretty's father,--and when he espied the horse, he shouted and waved his arms in warning. The horse stopped, and Wakefield slackened his pace. The moment he had done so he recognized the rider. He was not conscious of any surprise at seeing Dorothy Ray riding, all by herself, up the cañon. He did not pause to question as to how she got there, to wonder what she would think of him, turned day-laborer. He felt nothing but an absolute content and satisfaction in having her there before him; it seemed so natural and so right that he did not see how it could have been otherwise! He strode down the road to where she stood, and as she dropped the bridle and held out both hands to him, he flung his old hat away and clasped them in his powder-blackened palms. "O Harry!" she cried with a joyful ring in her voice; "I never was so glad to see anybody in my life!" He did not say one word, but as he stood there, bareheaded, there was a look in his face that gave her pause. Had she been too forward? Was he so changed? She drew her hands away, and taking up the bridle, looked uncertainly from side to side. "Aren't we friends any more, Harry? Aren't you glad to see me?" she asked. Her voice was unsteady like her look. He had never seen her like this. "Glad to see you, Dorothy?" he cried. "You seem like an angel straight from Heaven, only a hundred thousand million times better!" A sudden explosion boomed out, putting a period to this emphatic declaration. Wakefield seized the rein of the startled horse, that sprang shivering to one side; but Dorothy only said, quite composedly: "I suppose you were blasting up there. Will there be another?" "No; but how did you know it was I?" "Why, I knew all about it, of course. Fanny told me, and Mrs. Dick Dayton wrote home, and,--well, I knew about it a great deal better than anybody else!" "And you knew I was up here?" "Of course I did! Why, else, should I have come up at daybreak?" "But, Dorothy," Wakefield persisted, determined to make a clean breast of it at the outset. "Did you know I had made a fizzle of everything out here?" "I knew you had lost your money," she replied, with an air of misprizing such sordid considerations. "And Fanny told me you were going to California, and,--I just thought I would come out with the Dennimans!" she added irrelevantly. He was walking beside her horse up the broad clean road he had once taken such pride in;--ages ago he thought it must have been. On either hand, the solemn cliffs, familiars of the past three months, stood decked with gleaming bits of color; the brook went careering in their shadow, calling and crooning its little tale. What was that over yonder under the big pine-tree? Only a pair of bright eyes, that twinkled curiously, then vanished in a whisking bit of fur! On a sudden he had become estranged and disassociated from these intimate surroundings, these sights and sounds which had so long been his companions. What had they to do with Dorothy! She was telling him of her journey out and of the friends she was travelling with. She would have given him the home news, but, "Don't talk about anybody but yourself, Dorothy," he said. "That's all that I care about!" At last they stood fronting the big boulder, whose side had been blasted off. Dorothy looked at the fragments of stone strewing the road, and at the massive granite surface, now withdrawn among the pine-trees. One huge branch, broken by a flying rock, hung down across its face. The whole scene told of the play of tremendous forces, and Wakefield's was the hand that had controlled and directed them. Obedient to long habit, he stooped, and lifting a good-sized fragment, sent it crashing down the bank into the brook. "How strong you are, Harry!" she said. There was something in the way she said it, that made him feel that he must break the spell, then and there, or he should be playing the mischief with his own peace of mind. Yet he was conscious of a strange absence of conviction, as he asked abruptly: "Dorothy, whom are you going to marry?" So he had heard that foolish gossip, and that was why there was that look in his face! She was too generous to think of herself, too sure, indeed, of him and of herself, to weigh her words. With the little, half-defiant toss of the head he knew so well, yet gathering up the reins as if for instant flight, she said: "I should think that was for you to say, Harry!" XII. THE BLIZZARD PICNIC. "Ah, there, Mr. Burns! Glad to see you! This is what we call real Colorado weather!" The speaker, a mercurial youth of two and twenty, was one of a group of young people assembled, some on horseback, some in yellow buckboards, in front of a stately Springtown mansion. "Nothing conceited about us!" a girlish voice retorted. "I am sure you understand by this time, Mr. Burns, that Colorado is a synonym for perfection." The new-comer laughed appreciatively as he drew rein close beside the girl, who sat her part-thoroughbred with the ease and grace of lifelong habit. "I had learned my lesson pretty well before I came out, thanks to you," the young man answered, in a tone that was a trifle over-significant. The girl flushed, whether from pleasure or annoyance, it was impossible for the looker-on to decide. The looker-on--and his name, as usual, was legion,--had found no lack of occupation since the arrival on the field, some two weeks previous, of the Rev. Stephen Burns. Although the young minister was staying at the hotel, like any other chance tourist, there could be no question as to the object of his visit, for he passed most of his waking hours, either under Dr. Lovejoy's roof, or in the society of the doctor's daughter. The fact that Amy Lovejoy tolerated such assiduous attendance boded ill for Springtown, yet so cheerful is the atmosphere of the sunny-hearted little community, that foregone conclusions of an unwelcome character carry but scant conviction to its mind. Springtown could not spare Amy Lovejoy, therefore Springtown would not be called upon to do so. By this time the group was twenty strong, a truly gala assemblage, which might have blocked the way on a less generous thoroughfare. On the broad expanse of Western Avenue, however, no picnic party, however numerous, was likely to interfere with traffic. They were all young people, the chaperone of the occasion, a bride of twenty, looking, as she was, one of the very youngest. The brilliant February day gleamed like a jewel upon the proud and grateful earth. The sky was one glorious arch of tingling blue, beneath which the snowy peaks shone with a joyful glitter. The air had the keen, dry sparkle that is sometimes compared to champagne, greatly to the advantage of that pleasant beverage. In short, it was a real Colorado day, and these young people were off on a real Colorado picnic. How exceptionally characteristic the occasion might prove to be, no one suspected, simply because no one payed sufficient heed to a shred of gray vapor that hovered on the brow of the Peak. Amy Lovejoy, to be sure, remarked that there would be wind before night, and another old resident driving by, waved his hat toward the Peak, and cried, "Look out for hurricanes!" But no one was the wiser for that. The last packages of good things, the last overcoat and extra wrap, were stowed away under the seats of the yellow buckboards; the mercurial youth, Jack Hersey by name, had cried, for the last time, "Are we ready,--say, _are_ we ready?" Elliot Chittenden's restive bronco, known as "my nag," had cut its last impatient caper; and off they started, a gay holiday throng, passing down the Avenue to the tune of jingling harness and chattering voices and ringing hoofs. From a south porch on the one hand, and a swinging gate on the other, friends called a cheery greeting; elderly people jogging past in slow buggies, met the pleasure-seekers with a benignant smile; foot-passengers turned and waved their wide sombreros, and over yonder the Peak beamed upon them, with never a hint of warning; for the gray vapor hovering there was far too slight a film to cast a shadow upon that broad and radiant front. "It makes one think of the new Jerusalem, and the walls of Walhalla, and every sort of brilliant vision," Stephen Burns remarked, as his horse and Amy's cantered side by side, a little apart from the others. "Yes," said Amy, looking absently before her; "I suppose it does." And she wondered, as she had done more than once in the past two weeks, why she could not enter more responsively into the spirit of his conversation. She knew, and she would once have considered it a fact of the first importance, that to Stephen Burns the New Jerusalem was not more sacred than the abode of the ancient gods,--or, to be more accurate, Walhalla was not less beautiful and real than the sacred city of the Hebrews. Each had its own significance and value in his estimation, as a dream, an aspiration of the human mind. It was what seemed to Amy Lovejoy the originality and daring of the young minister's views of things high and low, which had at first fascinated the girl. She had never before met with just that type of thinker,--indeed she had never before associated on equal terms with any thinker of any type whatever!--and it was perhaps no wonder that she had been inclined to identify the priest with his gospel, that she had been ready to accept both with equal trust. In fact, nothing but her father's cautious reluctance had deterred her from pledging herself, four months ago, to this grave-eyed cavalier, riding now so confidently by her side. She was her father's only child, and since the death of her mother, some ten years previous to this, she had been called upon to fill the important position of "apple of the eye" to a secretly adoring, if somewhat sarcastic parent. "Your parson may be all very well," the doctor had written, "but if he is worth having he will keep! He must have the advantage of extreme youth, to be taken with a callow chick like yourself, but that shall not injure him in my eyes. Tell him to wait a while, and then come and show himself. Two heads are better than one in most of the exigencies of life, and when he comes, you and I can make up our minds about him at our leisure." The girl's mind had reverted, _à propos_ of nothing, to that concluding sentence of her father's letter, which she had read at the time with an indulgent but incredulous smile. Presently she became aware that her companion was speaking again. "It is all one," he was saying. "What we see and what we imagine; what we aspire to, and what has been the aspiration of other men in other ages. And how _good_ it all is!" This he added with a certain turn and gesture which made the words intensely personal. Why did they repel her so strongly, she wondered, and wondering, she failed to answer. Involuntarily she had slackened her horse's pace, and fallen in line with the others, and when Jack Hersey rode up at that moment, she gave him a look of welcome which had the effect of making him more mercurial than ever for the rest of the day. "I say, Amy," he cried; "isn't this a dandy day?" and Amy felt herself on good, homely, familiar ground, and she answered him with a heart grown suddenly light as his own. Stephen Burns, meanwhile, rode on beside her, with no very distinct misgiving in his mind. He had, to be sure, been somewhat daunted once or twice before, by a curious, intermittent asperity in her, which he could not quite account for. Yet why should he expect to account for every changing mood in this uniquely charming being? Had he not perceived from the beginning that she was not fashioned quite after the usual pattern? They had met, the previous autumn, in the quaint old New England town where his people lived. She had come like a bit of the young West into the staid, old-fashioned setting of the place, and he had rejoiced in every trait that distinguished her from the conventional young lady of his acquaintance. To-day, as they rode side by side toward the broad-bosomed mountain to the southward, he told himself once more that her nature was like this Colorado atmosphere, in its absolute clearness and crispness. Such an air,--bracing, stinging, as it sometimes was,--could never turn really harsh and easterly; neither, perhaps, could it ever take on the soft languor of the summer sea. And Amy Lovejoy's nature would always have the finer, more individual quality of the high, pure altitude in which she had been reared. Possibly Stephen Burns had yet something to learn about that agreeable climate with which he was so ready to compare his love. The weather had been perfect since he came to Colorado. How could he suspect the meaning of a tiny wisp of vapor too slight to cast a visible shadow? And Amy chatted gaily on with Jack Hersey, as they cantered southward, while Stephen Burns, riding beside them, told himself with needless reiteration, that he was well content. One reason for content he certainly had at that moment, for he was a good horseman, as an accomplished gentleman is bound to be, and he was never quite insensible to the exhilaration of that delicious, rhythmic motion. They had passed through a gate which signified that the rolling acres of prairie on either hand, the winding road that lost itself in the distance, the pine-clad slope to the right, were all but a part of a great ranch. Herds of cattle were doubtless pastured within that enclosure, though nowhere visible to the holiday party riding and driving over their domain. Hundreds of prairie-dog holes dotted the vast field on either hand, and here and there one of the odd little fraternity scampered like a ball of gray cotton across the field, or sat erect beside his hole, barking shrilly, before vanishing, with a whisk of the tail, from sight. Stephen took so kindly to the little show, and made such commonplace exclamations of pleasure, that Amy felt a sudden relieved compunction and smiled upon him very graciously. "They are not a bit like what I expected," he said; "but they are such self-important, conceited little chaps that you can't help having a fellow-feeling with them!" "Hullo! There's a give-away!" Jack Hersey shouted; and he turned and repeated the remark for the benefit of a buckboard in the rear. Amy thought Jack very stupid and silly, and in her own heart, she promptly ranged herself on the side of her young minister. There was nothing subtle or elusive about her changes of mood, and Stephen profited by each relenting. For a few blissful moments, accordingly, he now basked in the full consciousness of her favor. They continued for half an hour on the ranch road, rising and dipping from point to point, yet mounting always higher above the great plain below. There the prairie stretched away, a hundred miles to the East and South, with never a lake nor a forest to catch the light, with not a cloud in the sky to cast a shadow. Yet over the broad, undulating expanse were lines and patches of varying color, changing and wavering from moment to moment, like mystic currents and eddies upon a heaving, tide-swept sea. Amy watched her companion furtively, ready to take umbrage at any lack of proper appreciation on his part; for this was what she liked best in all Colorado, this vast, mysterious prairie sea. Yet when she saw by Stephen's face that the spell had touched him too, when she noted the rapt gaze he sent forth, as he left his horse to choose his own way, she felt annoyed, unreasoningly, perversely annoyed. Somehow his look was too rapt, he was taking it too solemnly, he was too much in earnest! She had a longing to touch up her horse and gallop off to some spot where she might be unmolested, where she might think her own thoughts and receive her own impressions without seeing them accentuated, exaggerated in another person. There had never been any one before who seemed to feel just as she did about that view, and somehow she resented this intrusion upon what seemed like her own preserve. Of course there was but one explanation of all this high-strung sensitiveness in a healthy, natural girl like Amy Lovejoy. She had made a mistake, and she was finding it out. In those autumn days in the little New England town, she had fallen captive to an idea, a theory of life, a certain poetical incentive and aspiration; for months she had fed her imagination upon this new experience, and suddenly Stephen Burns had come, and by his personal presence asserted a personal claim. She had been unconsciously ignoring the personal element in their relation, which had, in the months of separation, become very indefinite and unreal to her. She had told her father that Stephen's eyes were brown, and she found that they were blue; she had described him as being tall, and he had turned out to be rather below the medium height; she had forgotten what his voice was like, and it seemed oppressively rich and full. "Better look out for your horse, Mr. Burns!" she said curtly. "He almost took a header a minute ago." "Did he?" said Stephen. "I did not notice. This is the view you told me about, is it not?" "Very likely," she returned, with affected indifference. "We Colorado people always do a good deal of bragging when we are in the East. We wear all our little descriptions and enthusiasms threadbare." "There was nothing threadbare about your account," Stephen protested. "It was almost as vivid as the sight itself." "We take things more naturally when we get back to them. Come, Jack, let's go faster!" There was a level stretch of road before them, and the two young people were off with a rush. Stephen knew that the livery horse he rode could never keep up with them, even had his pride allowed him to follow uninvited. He had a dazed, hurt feeling, which was not more than half dispelled when, a few minutes later he came up with the truants, resting their horses at the top of a sudden dip in the road. "Who got there first?" called a voice from one of the buckboards. "Amy, of course. You don't suppose Cigarette would pass a lady!" "Jacky wouldn't 'cause he couldn't!" Amy quoted. "Poor Cigarette," she added, descending to prose again, and tapping Cigarette's nose with the butt of her riding-crop. "How he did heave and pant when he caught up with us! And Sunbeam never turned a hair!" "What made you call him Sunbeam?" Stephen asked, with an effort to appear undisturbed, as he watched her stroking the glossy black neck. "Because he wasn't yellow," she answered shortly; upon which somebody laughed. They picknicked in a sunny opening among the scrub-oaks, on the edge of a hollow through which a mountain brook had made its way. There was snow in the hollow, and a thin coating of ice on the brook. A few rods away, the horses, relieved of their bridles, were enjoying their dinners, switching their sides with their tails from time to time, as if the warm sun had wakened recollections of summer flies. Amy sat on the outskirts of the company, where Sunbeam could eat from her hand; a privilege he was accustomed to on such occasions. One of the men had brought a camera, and he took a snap-shot at the entire company, just as they had grouped themselves on the sunny slope. Amy and Sunbeam were conspicuous in the group, but when, some days later, the plate was developed, it was found that Mr. Stephen Burns did not appear in the photograph. Amy was the only one not surprised at the omission. He had been sitting beside her, and she was aware that he leaned on his elbow and got out of sight, just as the snap-shot was taken. She wondered at the time why he did so, but she found that she did not greatly care to know the reason. A few minutes later, just as the girls of the party were busy dipping the cups and spoons into the edge of the snow,--the sun so hot on their shoulders that they quite longed to get into the shade, Elliot Chittenden came hurrying back from a short excursion out to the edge of the slope, to tell them of a wicked-looking cloud in the north. The brow of the hill had shut off the view in that direction, the faithful barometer, the Peak, having long since been lost sight of. There was a sudden hurry and commotion, for all knew the menace of a storm from the north, and that its coming is often as swift as it is sharp. No one was better aware of the situation than Amy. "Put your overcoat on to begin with," she said to Burns; "and get your horse. I'll see to Sunbeam." The bridle was already fast on the pretty black head as she spoke, but it was some time before Burns came up. He had mislaid his bridle, and when he found it he fumbled unaccountably. His fingers apparently shared the agitation of his mind; an agitation which was something new in his experience, and which made him feel singularly at odds with everything, even with impersonal straps and buckles! When at last he came, she put her foot in his hand and went up like a bird to a perch. "Everybody has got ahead of us," she said, as they put their horses into a canter. The sun was still hot upon them, but down below, the plains were obscured as with a fog. "What is that?" he asked. "A dust-storm. Can you make your horse go faster?" "Not and keep the wind in him." "Never mind, we shall do very well." They had come about the brow of the mountain now, and could see the great black cloud to the north. It looked pretty ugly, even to Stephen Burns's unaccustomed eyes. "What do you expect?" he asked, as they walked their horses down a sharp descent. "It may be only wind, but there is likely to be snow at this season. If we can only get out of the ranch we're all right; the prairie-dog holes make it bad when you can't see." "Can't see?" he repeated. "Yes," she answered impatiently. "Of course you can't see _in a blizzard_!" A moment later a blinding cloud of sand struck them with such force that both the horses slewed sharp about and stood an instant, trembling with the shock. As they turned to the north again, a few flakes of snow came flying almost horizontally in their faces and then--the storm came! Horses and riders bent their heads to the blast, and on they went. It had suddenly grown bitterly cold. "I wish you would take my coat," said Stephen, fumbling at the buttons as he had fumbled at the bridle. His teeth were chattering as he spoke. "Nonsense!" Amy answered sharply. "You'll feel this ten times as much as I." The snow was collecting in Stephen's beard, freezing as it fell, and making fantastic shapes there; the top of Amy's hat was a white cone, stiff and sharp as if it were carved in stone. They could not see a rod before them, but they found it easier to breathe now. "Isn't it splendid, the way one rouses to it!" Amy exclaimed. "I'm getting all heated up from the effort of breathing!" There was no answer. "Don't you like it?" she asked, taking a look at his set face. "Like it? With you out in it!" That was all he said, but Amy felt her cheeks tingle under the dash of snow that clung to them. The answer came like a rude check to the exultant thrill which had prompted her words. "He doesn't understand in the least!" she thought, impatiently, and it was all she could do to refrain from spurring on her horse and leaving him in the lurch as she had done once before, that day. He was faint-hearted, pusillanimous! What if it were only for her sake that he feared? All the worse for him! She did not want his solicitude; it was an offence to her! The wind whistled past them, and the snow beat in their faces; the shapes in his beard grew more and more fantastic, the white cone on her hat grew taller, and then broke and tumbled into her lap; the horses bent their heads, all caked with snow, and cantered pluckily on. They had passed the gate of the ranch, leaving it open behind them, and now there were but a couple of miles between them and the town. The snow was so blinding that they did not see a group of buckboards and saddle-horses under a shed close at hand, nor guess that some of the party had found shelter in a house near by. They rode swiftly on, gaining in speed as they approached the town. The horses were very close together, straining, side by side, toward the goal. Amy's right hand lay upon her knee, the stiff fingers closed about the riding-crop. If she had thought about it at all, she would have said that her hand was absolutely numb. Suddenly, with a shock, she felt another hand close upon it, while the words, "_my darling!_" vibrated upon her ear; the voice was so close that it seemed to touch her cheek. She started as if she had been stung. "Oh, my riding-crop!" she cried, letting the handle slip from her grasp. "I beg your pardon," Stephen gasped, in a low, pained tone. "If you will wait an instant, I will get it for you!" He turned his horse about, for they had passed the spot by several lengths. Sunbeam stood for a moment, obedient to his rider's hand, while Amy watched the storm close in about her departing cavalier. As he vanished from view, a sudden, overpowering impulse of flight seized her. Without daring to think of what she was doing, she bent down and whispered "_go!_" in the low sharp tone that Sunbeam knew. He was off like a shot. "I don't care, I don't care," the girl said to herself, over and over again, as they bounded forward in the teeth of the storm. "Better now than later!" She wondered whether Stephen would kill his horse endeavoring to overtake her; she wondered whether he would ever overtake her again! Somehow it seemed to her as if the storm had caught her up bodily and were bearing her away from a very perplexing world. After all, what an amenable, unexacting sort of thing a blizzard was! How very easy to deal with! You had only to duck your head, and screw up your eyes, and cleave your way through it, and on it went, quite unconcerned with your moods and tenses! If Stephen Burns were only more like that, she thought to herself! But, alas! poor Stephen, with all his strong claims to affection and esteem, could not assert the remotest kinship with the whistling winds and blinding snow which were proving such formidable rivals! A narrow lane appeared at her right. Almost before she was aware that it was there, she had swung Sunbeam about; in another moment they were standing, with two other saddle-horses, in a little grove of trees, further protected by a small house close at hand. It seemed almost warm in that sheltered nook. Amy recognized the horses and knew that Harry de Luce and one of the girls must have taken refuge within. The lane was a short one, and she and Sunbeam stood, trembling with excitement, until they saw the shadow of a horse and rider speeding along the road toward the town. Then Amy drew a long breath of relief. "It was all nothing but a shadow," she said to herself, "and I went and thought it was real!" She slid stiffly down from the saddle and hobbled into the house, all the exultation gone from her bounding veins. It made her a bit dizzy to think of the rush of tumultuous emotions which had outvied the storm of the elements but now. By the time the friendly hostess had established her before the kitchen stove and taken away her dripping hat and coat, she felt too limp and spent to answer the eager questions that were asked. "Do something for Sunbeam," she murmured weakly to Harry de Luce, in answer to his ready offers of help. "They're going to send out a 'bus with four horses to pick up the remnants," de Luce assured her. "If you girls will go in the 'bus I will lead Sunbeam and Paddy home." And somehow it seemed so pleasant to be taken care of, just in a group with another girl and two horses, that Amy, with a faint, assenting smile, submitted to be classed with the "remnants." She felt as if she were half asleep when, an hour or more later, she sat in the corner of the great omnibus, that went lurching along through the snow, like a mudscow gone astray among ocean waves. She had an idea that everybody was talking at once, but that was just as well, since not a syllable was audible above the creaking and rattling of the big ark. Arrived at home she found the riding-crop, but no Stephen. He had called an hour ago, to ask if she had arrived safely, but he had said nothing about coming again. "If he has an atom of spirit he will never come near me again," Amy thought to herself. And then; "Oh, that dear blizzard!" she exclaimed under her breath. Sunbeam, she learned, had arrived before her. Thomas Jefferson, the black stable-man, reported him as partaking of a sumptuous supper with unimpaired relish. The thought of her favorite, crunching his feed in the stall close at hand, gave her a sense of companionship as she ate her own solitary meal. Her father had been called in consultation to a neighboring town and would not return until the following day. After supper Amy curled herself up in an easy-chair under the drop-light, and opened a new novel which she had been longing to read, ever since Stephen Burns's arrival. She thought with strong disapproval of the manner in which he had been taking possession of her time for two weeks past. She looked at the clock; it was half-past-eight. "Well! that's over with!" she thought, with a half guilty pang of conviction. Somehow the novel was not as absorbing as she had anticipated. She let it drop on her lap, and sat for awhile listening to the storm outside, as she reviewed this strange, unnatural episode of half-betrothal which had turned out so queerly. A sharp ring at the telephone in the adjoining room broke in upon her revery. She hastened to answer it. It was an inquiry from the livery-stable for Mr. Stephen Burns. He had not brought the horse back, nor had he returned to his hotel. Did Miss Lovejoy perhaps know of his whereabouts? Did she think they had better send out a search-party? Miss Lovejoy knew nothing of his whereabouts, and she was strongly of the opinion that he had better be looked up. As she still stood listening at the telephone, her heart knocking her ribs in a fierce fright, she heard a voice in the distant stable, not intended for her ears, say: "Not much use to search! If he ain't under cover he ain't alive." Upon which the heart ceased, for several seconds, its knocking at the ribs, and Amy Lovejoy knew how novel-heroines feel, when they are described as growing gray about the lips. She could not seem to make the telephone tube fit in its ring, and after trying to do so once or twice, she left it hanging by the cord, and went and opened the front door and stood on the veranda. It did not seem to her especially cold, but over there, in the light that streamed from the parlor window, the snow lay drifted into a singular shape, that looked as if it might cover a human form. She shuddered sharply and went into the house again. From time to time she telephoned to the stable. They had sent a close carriage out with a doctor and two other passengers, and Elliot Chittenden had gone in an open buckboard with a driver. By and by the buckboard had come back and another party had gone out in it. Then the carriage had returned and gone forth again with fresh horses and a fresh driver. She played a good deal with the riding-crop during the evening, and now and then she went outside the door and took a look at the weird, shroud-like shape, there in the light of the window. Once she stepped up to it and pushed the riding-crop in, to its full length, just to make sure that there was nothing under the snow. After that she took the riding-crop in and dried it carefully on a towel. Before she knew it the evening was far gone, and all but one carriage had returned. "Guess Jim's turned in at some ranch," came the word from the livery-stable. "He'll be ready to start out again as soon as it's light." If the evening had not seemed so miraculously short, Amy could not have forgiven herself for having been so slow in arriving at her own plan of action. As it was, the clock had struck twelve, before she found herself, clothed in two or three knit and wadded jackets under a loose old seal-skin sack, crossing the yard to the stable door. The maids had long since gone to bed, and Thomas Jefferson was a mile away, under his own modest roof. Presently, with a clatter of hoofs, Sunbeam came forth from the stable door, bearing on his back, a funny, round, dumpy figure, very unlike in its outlines to the slender form which usually graced that seat. The gallant steed was still further encumbered by a fur-lined great coat of the doctor's, strapped on behind, its pockets well stocked with brandy flask and biscuits. The storm had much abated, and there was already a break in the clouds over yonder. The air was intensely cold, but the wind had quite died down. Sunbeam took the road at a good pace, for he had a valiant spirit and would have scorned to remember the day's fatigues. His rider sat, a funny little ball of fur, looking neither to the right nor to the left. Stephen was nowhere on the open road; that was sure, for he was far too good a horseman to come to grief out there. There was but one place to look for him, and that was among the prairie-dog holes. She had told him of the danger there was among them, and he would have hastened there the moment he believed that she was lost. Amy did not do very much thinking as she rode along; she did not analyze the feeling that drove her forth to the rescue. She only knew that she and she alone was responsible for any harm that might have come to one whose only fault was that he had taken her at her word; and that she would cheerfully break her own neck and Sunbeam's,--even Sunbeam's! for the sake of rescuing him. The storm had ceased entirely now, and just as she reached the ranch gate, which had swung half to on its hinges and was stuck there in the snow, the moon came out and revealed the wide white expanse, unbroken by any sign of the road. She felt sure that the search-parties would have followed the road as closely as possible and that they would have tried not to stray off into the field. But that was just where Stephen Burns, mindful of the perils she had described to him, would naturally have turned. She blew the whistle in the end of her riding-crop, once, twice, three times. The sound died away in the wide echoless spaces. Then cautiously, slowly, she made Sunbeam feel his way across the snow. The moon was still riding among heavy clouds, but now and then it shone forth and flooded with light the broad white field, casting a sharp-cut, distorted shadow of horse and rider upon the snow. [Illustration: "THE RANCH GATE, WHICH HAD SWUNG HALF TO ON ITS HINGES."] Once or twice she stopped, and blew the whistle and hallooed, and each time the weird silence closed in again like an impenetrable veil. Sometimes she became impatient of her slow progress, but she knew too well the dangers of a misstep to risk the chance of success by any lack of caution. Even in her anxiety and distress of mind, she marked the intelligence with which Sunbeam picked his way, testing the firmness of each spot on which he trod, as if he had known the danger. Presently they began the ascent of a long narrow ridge beyond which she knew there were no holes. As they paused for a moment on the crest, looking down into the moonlit hollow, she raised the riding-crop to her lips, and blew a long, shrill whistle; and promptly as an echo a voice returned the signal. Following the direction of the sound, her eyes discerned a dark shadow in the hollow forty rods away. She put Sunbeam into a canter, and as she approached the shadow, the outline defined itself, and she saw that it was a ruinous shed or hut. "Hulloo!" came the voice again, and this time it was unmistakeably Stephen's. A hundred yards from the shed, Sunbeam shied violently. Looking to one side, she beheld in the shadow of a mass of scrub-oaks the body of a horse lying stark and still. Close beside the head was a dark spot in the snow. A moment later she had dismounted and was standing within the rickety hut, looking down upon another shadowy form that moved and spoke. "Are you hurt?" she asked. "Not much. I believe I have sprained my ankle. But the poor nag is done for," he added sorrowfully. "Which foot have you hurt?" "The right one." "That's good. Then you can ride sidesaddle. Are you sure that is all?" He was already consuming brandy and biscuit at a rate to dissipate all immediate anxiety. "Yes; and I declare it's worth it!" he cried with enthusiasm; a statement which, if slightly ambiguous, conveyed a cheerful impression. "Did the fall kill the horse?" Amy asked, with a little quiver in her voice, of pity for the poor beast. "No; I thought it best to cut an artery for him. Poor boy! He floundered terribly before he went down." "What threw him?" "Something in the way of a branch or a piece of timber. Lucky it happened where it did," he added. "I couldn't have gone far looking for shelter." "Poor old nag!" said Amy. Then, perceiving that she had not been altogether polite: "Aren't you nearly frozen?" she asked. "No, it's very snug in here. Some other tramp must have been here before me, and got these leaves together. There's lots of warmth in them." By this time Stephen had crawled out from among the oak-leaves and, having got himself into the doctor's fur-lined coat, stood on one foot, leaning heavily against the door-frame. "A splendid night, isn't it?" he remarked in a conversational tone. Amy, who was just leading Sunbeam up to the doorway, glanced at the young man, standing there in the bright moonlight,--at his sensitive, intelligent face, his finely-modelled head and brow,--and somehow she felt reinstated with herself. She had been fatally wrong in making choice so lightly, but at least the choice was, in itself, nothing to be ashamed of! As she helped Stephen in his painful transit to the saddle, she wondered if she were really a heartless person to take comfort in such a thought. But, in truth, since she had come to question the genuineness of her own part in their relation, she had lost faith in his share as well. There must have been something wrong about it from the beginning, and certainly, she reasoned, if she had lost interest in so admirable a being as he, it was not to be expected that he would be more constant to a trifling sort of person like herself. There was only a little awkwardness to be got over at first, but sooner or later he would bless her for his escape. Stephen, meanwhile, was submitting to all her arrangements with neither protest nor suggestion. She had undertaken to rescue him, and she must do it in her own way. If he hated to see her ploughing through the snow by the side of the horse, he made no sign. If he would rather have been left to his fate than to have subjected her to exposure and fatigue, he was too wise to say so. Her wilfulness had been so thoroughly demonstrated in the course of that day that he merely observed her with an appreciation half amused, half admiring. "There is a house just beyond the gate where we can go," she said; and then she did not speak again for many minutes. As for her companion, he seemed inclined at first to be as taciturn as she. Whether or not he was suffering agony from his foot, she had no means of knowing, nor could she guess how he interpreted her own action. At last he broke the silence. "Of course you meant to give me the slip," he said. "I half knew it all the time. I suppose that was the very reason why I persisted in acting as if I thought you had ridden back for me. One clings all the harder to one's illusions when,--well, when it's all up with them." Amy could not seem to think of any suitable remark to make in reply. They had reached the ranch road now. She knew the general lay of the land well enough to recognize it, and she could trust Sunbeam to keep it. A dense black cloud, the rearguard of the storm, had covered the moon, but there were stars enough to light the way somewhat. "Would you mind telling me why you risked your life for me?" Stephen asked abruptly. Some seconds went by before she answered. Then: "I think there was reason enough in my being to blame for it all," she said; "I behaved outrageously." "And the other reason? There was another reason, I take it." His voice was not eager, not lover-like; there was more curiosity than anything else in the tone. Again the moon shone out, and lighted up her face distinctly, as she answered him, looking straight before her along the snowy road. "I think," she said, speaking with a slow consideration of her words; "I think it was because I could not bear to have you--go out of the world, believing--what was not true! It seemed like a deceit going over into eternity!" Would he say something very dreadful in reply, she wondered; something that would haunt her for the rest of her days? She was still bracing herself for the worst,--for he had not yet broken the silence,--when they came to the gate, fixed there, half closed. There was just room for Sunbeam to pass out, and Amy fell behind for a moment. Stephen drew rein and waited for her, while she vainly tried to close the gate. "Don't mind that," he said. "It will close of itself when the snow melts." She came obediently and walked beside him. They had turned aside from the direction of Springtown, toward a little house a few rods away. They were almost there when Stephen spoke again. "You must be sorry about it all," he said, "though you very wisely leave that to be understood. You have made a mistake and you think you have caused another person great and lasting unhappiness. I can't tell to-night whether that is so or not, but there is one thing that I think you have a right to know." "And that is?" She felt that she must fill in the pause, for he evidently found it difficult to go on. "I think I know you well enough," he said; "to be sure of your feeling about it, though it is different from what some people would have under the circumstances. But somehow I am sure that you will be glad to know, that when I thought I was going to perish in the storm,--after I was thrown, and before I had seen that there was shelter near by,--it was _not you_ my thoughts were running on." Again he paused while she lifted the latch of the little gate. Then, as Sunbeam passed through, and Amy walked by his side up the snowy path, Stephen said: "I think it must have been a good many minutes that I lay there, thinking that the end was coming, and the only person in the world that I seemed to care about was--_my mother_!" At the word, the bond that had irked her was gently loosed, and he, for his part, could only wonder that he felt no pain. The great cold moonlit calm of the night seemed to enter into their hearts, swept clean by the storm. They looked into one another's faces in the solemn white light, with a fine new unconcern. Where were all their perplexities? What had it all been about? It was as if the snow had melted, and the great gate had closed itself. Was it Paradise or Purgatory they had shut themselves out from? XIII. A GOLDEN VISTA. Tramp, tramp, tramp,--the heavy boots had sounded on the road,--tramp, tramp, tramp! since Sunday morning, and now it was Tuesday noon. Often for hours together there had been no witness to the steady march, save the lordly pine-trees, standing straight and grand in the mountain "parks," or scaling boldly the precipitate sides of the encroaching cliffs; the cliffs themselves, frowning sternly above the path; and always somewhere on the horizon, towering above the nearer hills or closing in the end of the valley, a snowy peak gleaming like a transcendent promise against the sky. Waldo Kean, as he strode steadily down from his father's mountain ranch toward a wonderful new future whose door was about to be flung wide to him, felt the inspiration of those rugged mountain influences, the like of which had been his familiars all the seventeen years of his life. The chattering brooks had nothing to say to him as they came dashing down from the hills to join the rollicking stream whose course his path followed; the sunflowers, gilding the edge of the road, were but frills and furbelows to his thinking. But in the pine-trees there was a perfectly clear significance,--in those hardy growths, finding a foothold among the rocks, drawing sustenance from Heaven knew where, yet ever growing skyward, straight and tall and strong. As he passed among them, standing at gracious intervals in the broad "parks," they seemed to flush with understanding and sympathy. His way led from north to south and as often as he turned and looked back among the trees, the stems glowed ruddily and his heart warmed to them. He knew that it was merely the southern exposure that had tinged their bark and caused that friendly glow, but he liked it all the same. Now and then the solitude was relieved by the appearance of a horseman riding with flapping arms and jingling spurs up the pass; or again the silence was broken by the inconsequent bleating of a flock of sheep wandering in search of their scant pasturage or huddling together, an agitated mass of grimy wool, its outskirts painfully exposed to the sharp but well-intentioned admonitions of a somewhat irascible collie. Neither man nor beast took special note of the overgrown boy striding so confidently on his way, nor was one observer more likely than the other to guess what inspiring thoughts were animating the roughly clad, uncouth form. The boy's clothes were shabby and travel-stained, and over his shoulders was slung a canvas bag, its miscellaneous contents making sharp, angular protuberances on its surface. He had left the ranch with clothes and books enough to give the bag a pretty weight, and this he had unconcernedly increased by the insertion into the straining receptacle of many a "specimen" picked up by the way. For the eyes were keen and observant that looked out from under the strongly marked brows, and bits of fluorite and "fool's gold," and of rarer minerals as well, which had lain for years beside the road, noted as little by cowboy and ranchman and mountain tourist as by the redman whose feet first trod the pass, were destined to-day to start on their travels, enlisted in the service of Science. It must have been a daring specimen indeed that should have thought of resisting its fate when it came at the hands of Waldo Kean. There was a certain rough strength not only in the muscular frame, but in the face itself, with its rude features, its determined outlines, its heavy under-lip; and in the stiff black hair roughly clipped on the ample skull, growing in a bushy thatch above the keen dark eyes. It seemed but natural that just that type of boy should feel himself drawn to the study of the rocky foundation of things. Four years ago Waldo Kean had found out that he wanted to be a geologist, and that to this end he must go to college. Yet though the college was in Springtown, and though Springtown lies close to the foot of the "range," it had taken him four years to get there. During that enforced interval he had done his full share of the heavy ranch work, he had found one and another means of accumulating a little capital of his own; at off hours and off seasons he had cudgelled his brain over books with ugly difficult titles and anything but tractable contents. In short he had fairly earned his passport, and now, at last, on this radiant October morning, he was striding over the few intervening miles that separated him from that wonderful Land of Promise, where Latin and Greek grew on every tree, and the air was electric with the secrets of Science itself. What wonder that he was unconscious of hardship and fatigue, that he counted as nothing the three days' tramp; the icy nights spent out under the chill stars; the only half-satisfied hunger of a healthy boy, living on food which the dry mountain air was rapidly reducing to a powdery consistency! He was going to College; he was going to be a Geologist. What did he care for any paltry details by the way? He seated himself for his noon meal, the last crumbling sandwich of his store, at the foot of a big pine-tree, just where the pass narrows to a wild ravine. As he took out the slice of bread and meat neatly wrapped about with brown paper, his thoughts reverted with a certain sore compunction to the hand that had prepared it for him. It had been his mother's farewell service, and he somehow realized now as he had not realized at the time, how much all those careful preparations meant, to her and to himself. He remembered how, late Saturday night, she had sat mending a new rip in his best coat, and that when she pricked her finger, and a little bead of red blood had to be disposed of before she could go on with the work, he had wondered why women were always pricking their fingers when there was no need. It was not until the very moment of departure that the pain of it seized him. His mother was a quiet, undemonstrative woman of the New England race, and if mother and son loved each other,--as it now transpired that they did,--no mention had ever been made of the fact on either side. The consequence was, that when, at parting, an iron hand seemed to be gripping the boy's throat, he had been so taken at unawares, that he had found it impossible to articulate a single word. On the mother's part there had been one little, half-suppressed sob that sounded in his ears yet. It left an ache in him that he did not at first know what to do with, but which clearly called for heroic treatment. Accordingly, after much pondering the situation, he had adopted a great resolution,--a resolution which involved no less arduous a task than that of writing a letter to his mother and telling her that he loved her. He thought it possible that the confession might give her pleasure, coming from a safe distance and involving no immediate consequences, and in any case he did not feel justified in keeping to himself a discovery which so nearly concerned another person. He had thought a good deal about the letter and of how he should approach the subject, and he had about decided to make the momentous statement in a postscript down in one corner and to sign it "Waldy." He was so near his journey's end that he allowed himself rather a longer nooning than usual. He stretched himself on his back on the pine needles, and with his hands clasped behind his head, he gazed up through the spreading branches to the marvellous blue of the sky. When he should be a scientific man and know all sorts of things besides geology,--meteorology and chemistry and the like,--perhaps he should find out why the sky looked so particularly deep and palpitating when you were lying flat on your back and there were some pine branches in between. He meant, one of these days, to know everything there was to be known, and to discover a little something new besides. A train of cars thundered by on the other side of the brook not thirty yards from his feet. He did not change his position, but looking down the long length of his legs, he saw the roaring, snorting beast of an engine rush by, trailing its tail of cars behind it. "And yet the power isn't in the steam," he thought to himself, "but in the brain that controls it. Just the brain. That's all." At the thought a sudden impatience seized him to arrive at that goal where the brain takes command, and he sprang to his feet, and shouldering his pack, strode on down the pass. Tramp, tramp, tramp! went the heavy boots; the great bag weighed like lead across his shoulders; a gnawing hunger had somehow got into him since he swallowed the crumbling bread and meat. "The water was good, at any rate," he said to himself, glancing more appreciatively than before at the crystal stream that still raced on a level with the road. The way led across both brook and railroad just there, and there was a sharp turn in the walls of the cañon. He looked back and saw a train rushing down the pass, swiftly,--surreptitiously, it seemed, so curiously little noise did it make on the down-grade. An instant later he had turned the corner, and found himself face to face with a pair of horses harnessed to a buggy, trotting rapidly up the pass, straight toward that railroad crossing. They were already close upon him and he could see a man and woman seated in the buggy. He had only time to fling his pack to one side and wave his arms in warning, and then, his warning being unheeded, he sprang at the horses' heads and seized the bridles. The horses reared and plunged, there was the sharp whistle of a whiplash, a stinging blow cut him across the face. The blood rushed to his head in a sudden fury, but instinctively he kept his hold upon the plunging horses. They had all but dragged him to the track when the train rushed by. The whole thing had happened in twenty seconds of time. He dropped his hold and sprang to one side while the horses dashed on and tore round the projecting corner of rock, the buggy slewing wildly after them. Waldo Kean stood an instant with clenched hands and crimson face, a straight welt standing out white and angry across his cheek. Then,--"Pooh! he muttered, I'm going to college all the same!"--and he picked up his hat which the horses had trampled out of shape, shouldered his pack and strode on down the pass. His cheek was smarting with pain, but he was hardly aware of that; there was a yawning rip in the arm-hole of his coat, but that was of still less consequence. He had all he could do to attend to the conflicting emotions of the moment; the sense of outraged dignity contending, not very successfully, with a lively concern for the fate of those people he had tried to rescue. He thought it more than likely that they would both get killed, for the horses were quite unmanageable when they disappeared around the corner, and he remembered an ugly bit of road just above that point. He was not a little disgusted with himself when he caught himself hoping that they might get out of the scrape alive. Well, if he could not "stay mad" longer than that, he told himself, he might as well forget the whole business and be on the look-out for specimens. Meanwhile the pass was getting grander every moment; the brook was working its way deeper below the level of the road, while here and there in this sombre defile a splash of yellow aspen gleamed like living gold on the face of the precipice. The wild and beautiful gorge interested him in spite of himself; it disengaged his thoughts alike from his personal grievance, and from his dissatisfied contemplation of his own lack of proper vindictiveness. There was nothing grand like this in the neighborhood of the ranch. It was more like his father's description of the "Flume" and the "Notch," those natural wonders of the White Hills which Waldo Kean the elder liked to talk about. "When I was a boy over in New Hampshire," he used to say; and to the children it seemed as if "over in New Hampshire" could not be more than a day's journey from the ranch. [Illustration: "THE WILD AND BEAUTIFUL GORGE."] "When I was a boy over in New Hampshire," he would say, "I got it into my head that if I could only get away to a new place I sh'd get to be something big; and the farther away I got, the bigger I expected to be. Colorado was a territory then, 'n I thought, 'f I could only get out here they'd make me gov'nor's like 's not. 'N I do' know but what I'd have looked to be made President of the United States 'f I'd sighted the Pacific Ocean!" Then the shaggy, keen-eyed mountaineer who made so light of boyish expectations would knock the logs together and take a puff or two at his pipe before coming to the climax of his remarks, which varied according to the lesson he wished to inculcate. "It took me several years of wrastling with life," he was fond of saying, "to find out that it ain't so much matter _whar_ you be, as _what_ you be. 'N if I was you, Waldy,"--here was the application,--"I'd contrive to learn a little something on my own hook, before I aspired to go consorting with them as knows it all!" When, however, the time was ripe, and "Waldy," having fulfilled these conditions, was fairly off for college, the ranchman had signified his approval of his son's course by escorting him a few miles on his way. The boy had felt himself highly honored by the attention, yet when the time of parting came, it was with no such stricture about his throat as had taken him at unawares in the early morning, that he watched the tall form disappearing among the pine-trees. There was a certain self-sufficiency about the "old man,"--aged forty-five,--that precluded any embarrassing tenderness in one's relations with him. Waldo was thinking of his father as he strode down the pass with that welt on his cheek. He had an idea that his father would not make so much of the affair as he was taking himself to task for not doing. And up to this time his father had been his standard. He not only had a very high opinion of him as he was, but he had a boyish faith in what he might have been, a belief that if he had had half a chance he would have made his mark in the world. He was glad that he bore his father's name, and he was quite determined to make it stand for something in the minds of men before he got through with it. It sounded like a name that was to be made to mean something. Suddenly the sound of wheels coming down the pass struck his ear. They were the wheels of a buggy, he thought, and of a buggy drawn by a pair of horses. The suggestion was distasteful to Waldo Kean just at that moment, and he quickened his pace somewhat. Presently the wheels stopped close behind him, a firm step sounded on the road, he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. He looked up, and his worst forebodings were realized. It was the face he had caught sight of in that particular buggy which he did not like to think about, and the hand that rested on his shoulder was the one which had swung the whip to such good purpose. A very hearty and pleasant voice was saying; "Do you know, I never did anything in all my life I was so sorry for!" but the boy strode on as stolidly as if he had been stone-deaf. The other, though a man of heavy build, kept pace with him easily. "You see," he remarked, after waiting a reasonable time for a reply; "I never knew what it was to owe any one so much as I owe you!" Not being, in fact, stone-deaf, Waldo found himself obliged to make some response. As much from embarrassment as from anger, he spoke gruffly. "That's nothing," he said. "I'd have done as much for a stray dog,--and like as not I'd have got bit all the same!" His companion was making a study of him rather than of his words;--of the defiant pose of the head above the shabby, uncouth figure,--of the stormy eyes set in the fiery crimson of the face. He could not resent the rough words, but neither could he help being amused at the tragic exaggeration of the figure. "Do you know, you _do_ look like a brigand!" he said, in an easy tone, that had a curious effect upon the excited boy. "I don't so much wonder that I took you for a footpad!" No one but Dick Dayton,--for it was the Springtown "Mascot" himself who was trying to make friends with the ranch boy,--could have "hit off" the situation so easily. The "brigand's" face had already relaxed somewhat, though his tongue was not to be so lightly loosed. "The fact is," Dayton went on, following up his advantage; "The fact is, there was a hold-up here in the pass last week, and my wife and I were just saying what a jolly good place it was for that kind of thing, when you flung yourself at the horses' heads. I don't know what you would have done under the circumstances, but I know you'd have been either a fool or a prophet if you hadn't let fly for all you were worth!" The boy looked up at the friendly, humorous face, and pleasant relentings stole upon him. "Well, then," he said, with a sudden, flashing smile, which illuminated his harsh countenance, very much as the gold of the aspens lit up the wall of frowning rock over there. "That's all right, and I'm glad I did it." "All right!" cried Dayton, with a sudden rising emotion in his voice,--"I should think it _was_ all right! It isn't every day that a man and his wife get their lives saved in that offhand way! Why! I'm all _balled up_ every time I think of it!" "Oh, well; I don't know!" said Waldo, relapsing into embarrassment again; "I guess it was the horses I thought of as much as anything!" Dayton was still too sincerely moved to laugh outright at this unexpected turn, as he would have done in spite of himself under ordinary circumstances, but he found it a relief to slip back into his tone of easy banter. "If that's the case," he said; "would you mind coming back and being introduced to the horses? They are just behind us, and I think they ought to have a chance to make their acknowledgments." The boy, very much aware that he had said the wrong thing, yet attracted, in spite of himself and his own blunders, to the good-natured giant, yielded, awkwardly enough, and retraced his steps. They were soon face to face with the horses, making their way at a slow walk down the road, driven by the woman whose face Waldo had had a confused glimpse of in the heat of that fateful encounter. "This is my wife, Mrs. Dayton," said the big man; "and you are?" "Waldo Kean." For the first time in his life the boy had taken his hat off as a matter of ceremony. He had done so in unconscious imitation of Dayton, who had lifted his own as he mentioned his wife's name. Waldo Kean did not perhaps realize that the education he was so ambitious of achieving was begun then and there. The shapeless old hat once off, he did not find it easy to put it on again, and, as Mrs. Dayton leaned forward with extended hand, he stopped to tuck the battered bundle of felt into his pocket before clasping the bit of dainty kid she held out to him. She was already speaking, and, strangely enough, there was something in her voice which made him think of his mother's as it had sounded just before it broke into that pathetic little sob. "There is so little good in talking about what a person feels," she was saying; "that I'm not going to try." Yes, the little break in the voice was something he had heard but once in his life before; yet nothing could have been less like his mother than the expressive young face bending toward him. The great half-civilized boy took one look at the face, and all his self-consciousness vanished. "I guess anybody 'd like to do you a good turn!" he declared boldly, as he loosed the small gloved hand from the big clutch he had given it. The charming face flushed as warmly as if it had never been complimented before. "Are you going to stay in Springtown?" its owner asked. "I'm going to the college," the young geologist answered proudly. "Then you'd better let us have your pack," said Dayton. "We can do that much for you! There's lots of room in back here." Waldo hesitated; he was used to carrying his own burdens. But Dayton had hold of the pack, and it seemed to find its own way into the buggy. "There! That will ride nicely," said Dayton. "Now I suppose we may call ourselves quits?" and he glanced quizzically at the boy who had clearly missed the amiable satire of the suggestion. The two walked on together for some time, keeping close beside the buggy. The horses were perfectly docile now that no one seemed disposed to fly at their heads. Waldo began to feel that he had really been needlessly violent with them in that first encounter. He pulled out his hat and put it on again. They had come to the narrowest and most stupendous part of the pass, and Waldo, now wonderfully at his ease, had broached the subject of the Notch. He was astonished to find how conversible these new acquaintances were. They proved much easier to talk with than his ranch neighbors whom he had known all his life. And, better still, they knew a surprising lot about minerals and flowers and things of that sort, that were but sticks and stones to his small world at home. When, at last, these very remarkable and well-informed people drove away, and he watched their buggy disappearing down the pass, he found himself possessed of a new and inspiring faith in the approachableness of the great world he was about to confront. He had rather expected to deal with it with hammer and pick,--to wrest the gold of experience from the hardest and flintiest bedrock; and all at once he felt as if he had struck a great "placer" with nuggets of the most agreeable description lying about, ready to his hand! As he reflected upon these things, the pass was opening out into a curious, cup-shaped valley, crowded with huge hotels and diminutive cottages of more or less fantastic architecture, clustering in the valley, climbing the hills, perching on jutting rocks and overhanging terraces. Waldo knew the secret of this startling outcrop of human enterprise. He knew that here, in this populous nook, were hidden springs of mineral waters, bubbling and sparkling up from the caverns of the earth. He found his way to one of the springs, where he took a long, deep draught of the tingling elixir, speculating the while, as to its nature and source. Then on he went, refreshed and exhilarated. A few miles of dusty highway brought him at last within the borders of classic Springtown, classic in its significance to him, as the elm-embowered shades of Cambridge or New Haven to the New England boy at home. As he entered upon the broad Western Avenue, the declining sun had nearly touched the great Peak, its long, level rays striking a perfect glory across the boughs of the cottonwood trees shining in the height of their yellow autumn splendor. They arched the walk he trod, and stretched to the northward, a marvellous golden vista, as brilliant as the promise of the future itself. There were fine residences on either side of the avenue, finer than anything the ranch boy had ever dreamed of, while off to the west stretched the line of mountains, transfigured in the warm afternoon light. But all the boy could see or think of was that golden vista, stretching before him to the very portals of the house of learning. And presently, along this glorified path, a man approached, and as the two came face to face, he stopped before the boy and called him by name. [Illustration: A GOLDEN VISTA.] The whole situation was so wonderful,--so magical it seemed to Waldo in the exaltation of the moment,--that he did not pause to consider how his name should be known to a chance passer-by; and when the stranger went on to give his own name, and it was the name of the college president, the boy accepted the fact that dreams come true, and only held his head a little higher and trod the path a little more firmly, as he walked beside the president under the yellow cottonwoods. "I came out to meet you," the president was saying, in a big, friendly voice. "I heard you were coming, and I thought we might talk things over a bit on the way." They chatted a little of the boy's plans and resources, of the classes he was to enter, and of what he might accomplish in his college course; and then they came out from under the trees, and found themselves upon the college campus. A game of football was going on there, the figures of the players fairly irradiated in the golden light which fell aslant the great open space, touching the scant yellowish grass into a play of shimmering color. They stood a moment, while the president pointed out to Waldo the different college buildings. Then:-- "I have something pleasant to tell you," his companion remarked, with a glance at the strong eager face of the boy. "The college has just had the gift of a scholarship." "I'm glad of that," said Waldo, heartily, finding a cheerful omen in the fact that the day was an auspicious one for others beside himself. "The gift is a sort of thank-offering," he heard his new friend say; "from a man who fell in with _you_--up in the pass this afternoon!" The boy's face went crimson at the words, but he only fixed his eyes the more intently upon the football players, as if his destiny had depended upon the outcome of the game. "The scholarship is the largest we have;"--he heard the words distinctly, but they struck him as coming from quite a long distance. "It is to be called--_the Waldo Kean Scholarship!_" The Waldo Kean Scholarship! How well that sounded! What a good, convincing ring it had, as if it had been intended from the very beginning of things! He stood silent a moment, pondering it, while the president waited for him to speak; and as he watched the field the football players seemed to mingle and vanish from sight like shadows in a dream, while in their place a certain tall angular form stood out, loose-jointed, somewhat bent, yet full of character and power. All the splendor of the setting sun centred upon that rugged vision, that yet did not bate one jot of its homely reality. And the boy, lifting his head with a proud gesture, and with a straightening of the whole figure, looked the president in the face and said: "_That is my father's name!_" They started to cross the campus, where the football players were once more in possession. The sun had dropped behind the Peak, and the glory was fading from the face of the earth; but to Waldo Kean, walking side by side with the college president, the world was alight with the rays of a sun whose setting was yet a long way off; and the golden vista he beheld before him was nothing less than the splendid illimitable future,--the future of the New West, which was to be his by right of conquest! THE END. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- A Selection from the Catalogue of G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS Complete Catalogue sent on application One of the most successful novels of the year, because it is one of those unusual stories that appeals to all classes of readers of fiction. THE ROSARY By Florence L. Barclay "Once in a long while there appears a story like _The Rosary_, in which there is but one adventure, the love of the two real persons superbly capable of love, the sacrifices they make for it, the sorrows it brings them, the exceeding reward. This can only be done by a writer of feeling, of imagination, and of the sincerest art. When it is done, something has been done that justifies the publishing business, refreshes the heart of the reviewer, strengthens faith in the outcome of the great experiment of putting humanity on earth. _The Rosary_ is a rare book, a source of genuine delight."--_The Syracuse Post-Standard._ Crown 8vo. $1.35 Net. ($1.50 by mail) G. P. Putnam's Sons New York--London ----------------------------------------------------------------------- BY ANNA FULLER A LITERARY COURTSHIP Under the Auspices of Pike's Peak. 28th thousand. Illustrated. 16°, gilt top. $1.25 "A delightful little love story. Like her other books it is bright and breezy; its humor is crisp, and the general idea decidedly original."--_Boston Times._ A VENETIAN JUNE Illustrated by George Sloane. 15th thousand. 16°, gilt top $1.25 "Full of the picturesqueness, the novelty, the beauty of life in the city of gondolas and gondoliers."--_Literary World._ The above two volumes together in box $2.50 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PRATT PORTRAITS Sketched in a New England Suburb. 12th thousand. Illustrated by George Sloane. 12°, gilt top $1.50 "The lines the author cuts in her vignette are sharp and clear, but she has, too, not alone the knack of color, but what is rarer, the gift of humor."--_New York Times._ ONE OF THE PILGRIMS A Bank Story. 6th thousand. 12°, gilt top $1.25 "The story is graceful and delightful, full of vivacity, and is not without pathos. It is thoroughly interesting."--_Congregationalist._ G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS New York--London ----------------------------------------------------------------------- _Myrtle Reed's New Novel_ MASTER OF THE VINEYARD BY MYRTLE REED Author of "Old Rose and Silver," "Lavender and Old Lace," etc. There is probably no other living writer whose books have the extraordinary popularity of Myrtle Reed's. There is always a large circle of readers waiting for each of her new books as it appears. But the remarkable feature of Miss Reed's popularity is that each one of her books continues to show increasing sales every year. The more the public has of them, the more it wants. This can be said of no other fiction of the day. Miss Reed's stories are always charming, but her latest book is something more than this. The humor is delightful, and the panorama of life, with its well-balanced picturing of lights and shadows, possesses the quality best-named fascination. With Frontispiece in Color by Blendon Campbell. Crown 8vo. beautifully printed and bound. Cloth, $1.50 net. Full Red Leather, $2.00 net, Antique Calf, $2.50 net. Lavender Silk, $3.50 net. Uniform with "Lavender and Old Lace" G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK--LONDON 
26389	----	DOROTHY ON A RANCH By EVELYN RAYMOND AUTHOR OF "Dorothy," "Dorothy at Skyrie," "Dorothy's Schooling," "Dorothy's Travels," "Dorothy's House Boat," "Dorothy at Oak Knowe," "Dorothy's Triumph," "Dorothy's Tour." A. L. BURT COMPANY Publishers New York Printed in U.S.A. THE DOROTHY BOOKS By EVELYN RAYMOND These stories of an American girl by an American author have made "Dorothy" a household synonym for all that is fascinating. Truth and realism are stamped on every page. The interest never flags, and is ofttimes intense. No more happy choice can be made for gift books, so sure are they to win approval and please not only the young in years, but also "grown-ups" who are young in heart and spirit. Dorothy Dorothy at Skyrie Dorothy's Schooling Dorothy's Travels Dorothy's House Party Dorothy in California Dorothy on a Ranch Dorothy's House Boat Dorothy at Oak Knowe Dorothy's Triumph Dorothy's Tour COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY THE PLATT & PECK CO. [Illustration: The great animal had now dropped from its upright position at Dolly's window and was crawling on all fours back along the wide porch. (_Frontis_) (_Dorothy on a Ranch_)] CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE TRIP IN THE ERMINIE 9 II. A SPILL BY THE WAY 25 III. THE MIDNIGHT SEARCHING PARTY 45 IV. THE WATCHERS AT RODERICK'S 62 V. THE CALL OF THE MOUNTAINS 75 VI. A MARTINET OF THE ROCKIES 93 VII. A RIFLE PRACTICE 110 VIII. A CONCERT IN THE MOONLIGHT 127 IX. A MODERN HORSE FAIR 142 X. AN UNEXPECTED DEPARTURE 157 XI. THE SHEEP HERDER'S CABIN 172 XII. PLAY THAT WAS WORK AND WORK THAT WAS PLAY 187 XIII. THE HEN OF WUN SING 205 XIV. THE GRIZZLY AND THE INDIANS 220 XV. A TRIP TO BALD EAGLE ROCK 235 XVI. PROSPERITY AND PARTING 250 DOROTHY ON A RANCH CHAPTER I THE TRIP IN THE ERMINIE The "Erminie," private car of "Railway Boss, Dan Ford," stood side-tracked at Denver, and his guests within it were the happy people whom, some readers may remember, we left keeping a belated Christmas in the old adobe on the mesa, in southern California. To Dorothy, the trip thus far had been like a wonderful dream. "Just think, Alfy Babcock, of owning a real car, going and stopping just as you please, same's riding in a carriage with horses! Even darling Aunt Betty, who's been 'most everywhere and seen 'most everything, in her long life, never travelled 'private coaching' this way before. I hate to think it's over, that I'll have to say good-by to her so soon. Seems if I ought not. Seems if she'll be dreadful lonesome without me all summer. I'm her own folks and I--I believe I shall go home with her after all, 'stead of into the mountains to that ranch with the Gray Lady." Alfaretta gave a vigorous tug to the shawl-strap she was fastening about a curious assortment of her personal belongings and answered: "That's enough of your 'seems-if-ing,' Dolly Doodles! It's all settled, isn't it? And when a thing's fixed--it ought to stay fixed. Mrs. Calvert don't want either of us. She said so, more 'n once, too. She's tickled to death to think there's such a good time comin' for us. She's got all that prop'ty that got itself into trouble to look after, and she's got them ladies, her old friends, that's been in San Diego all winter, to go home to New York with her. You better stop frettin' and lookin' out o' winder, and pick up your things. You've lots more 'n I have and that's sayin' consid'able. The way that Mr. Ford moves makes other folks hustle, too! Hurry up, do! He said we was all to go to a big hotel for our dinners and I'm real ready for mine. I am so! Car-cookin's well enough, but for me--give me a table that won't go wobblety-wobble all the time." Dorothy roused from her idleness and began to collect her own "treasures." They had accumulated to a surprising degree during this journey from San Diego to Denver; for their genial host had indulged his young guests in all their whims and, at the various stops along the way, they had purchased all sorts of things, from baskets to blankets, horned toads on cards, centipedes in vials of alcohol, Indian dolls and pottery, and other "trash," as Aunt Betty considered it. In the roomy private car these had given but little trouble; now Alfaretta expressed the thought of both girls as well as of the lad, Leslie, when after a vain effort to pack an especially ugly red-clay "image," she exclaimed: "A fool and his money! That's what I was. Felt as rich as a queen, startin' out with all them earnin's and presents in my pocket-book. Now I haven't got a cent, hardly, and I'd ha' been better off if I hadn't a had them! There! that paper's busted again! Does beat the Dutch the way things act! Just plain _things_! If they was folks you could box their ears, but you can't do a thing to things, not a thing! Only--" "Throw them away! That's what I'm going to do with my stuff!" cried Leslie, from a far corner, standing up and wiping his face, after his own bit of packing. "This old musket that that man in uniform assured me had belonged to General Custer--Dad says never saw a soldier's hands, let alone Custer's. Says he knew that all the time, even when I was dickering for it. Says--" Dorothy looked up from her own task to ask: "Why should he let you buy it then?" "For experience, likely. That's the way he likes to have us learn, he claims." "Humph! But Aunt Betty says it's wicked to waste money. One ought only to use it for some good purpose." A shout of derision came from both Alfy and Leslie, at this remark, and they pointed in high glee at a basketful of things Dorothy was vainly trying to make look a tidy bundle. She had to join in the laughter against herself and Mr. Ford came forward to lend a hand or offer advice, as need be. "So you're up against a tough proposition, are you, youngsters? How much of all that stuff do you really want?" "Not a scrap!" said Alfaretta, frankly. "Good enough! Well, let me tell you. There's a poor old fellow hangs out just beyond this station who makes his scanty living selling just such 'trash.' I'll give you just five minutes to select whatever you really wish to keep, five minutes more to stow them compactly for our long buckboard-drive, and about as much longer to make the acquaintance of my lame peddler and give him your leavings. Five seconds wasted already, taring at me! Begin, begin!" The gentleman's face was aglow with happiness and mischief, but there was a tone in his voice which compelled instant obedience; and long before the first five minutes had passed all three young folks had heaped the most of their "things" in a pile in the center of the car. The rest was quickly strapped in the beautiful Navajo blankets which Mrs. Ford, or the "Gray Lady"--as they best loved to call her, had purchased and given them as souvenirs of this wonderful trip. Blankets that were almost priceless, as only Dorothy knew from Aunt Betty's explanation, but that Alfaretta considered far less attractive than a plain white wool one. A porter, laden with baskets, appeared at that moment, as if by previous instruction; and into the baskets were tossed or tumbled the odd collection, everybody working swiftly yet already half-regretfully that they hadn't kept more. "That horned toad'll get a rush of blood to his head!" cried Leslie, as Alfaretta threw her recent "treasure" into the mess. "Take care, boy! Don't break that alcohol bottle. That centipede mayn't be as dead as he looks! The horrid leg-gy thing! How in the world did I ever fancy it? Take care!" warned Dorothy, as Leslie dropped an uncouth Indian "image" upon the vial. "Hi, dere! Massa Leslie! Jed'll do de res'!" cried Mr. Ford's own especial servant, coolly pushing the lad aside and rapidly making a better arrangement of the articles. Then he shouldered his baskets and left the car, Mr. Ford following, with the three young people trailing after him. At the door Alfaretta turned and rapidly surveyed the luxurious coach in which she had spent the past few days. To her it had been a veritable fairyland, and quick tears sprang to her eyes as she exclaimed: "I never had such a good time in all my life as I've had in this 'Erminie,' and I never expect to again! It 'most breaks my heart to say good-by to it!" "Don't say it then! I shan't, though I feel as bad as you do. But our worst good-by is to come when Aunt Betty starts east and we west. I can't--how can I?--let her go alone?" This was sufficient to arouse all Alfy's sympathy. She promptly forgot her own regret in soothing her friend, for Dorothy's grief was most sincere. Ever since that day when she had learned that Mrs. Calvert was her own kin she had loved the lady with all her heart and had, during the past winter of Aunt Betty's lameness, felt that she must now take care of her. She did not realize that the one-time invalid was now quite well and as independent of aid as ever. Indeed, the Gray Lady had laughingly declared: "Dear Mrs. Betty is the youngest-hearted of us all!" After that happy day when Dorothy had helped to bring about the reunion of the long parted Fords, the "Railroad Boss" had taken his wife and son away for a little time; but they had soon returned to _El Paraiso_, that charming home in the southwestern city and had remained as members of Mrs. Calvert's household till the spring days came. Then Mr. Ford had announced his summer plans: "I'm going to give myself a long vacation. I own a ranch in the Colorado mountains and I'm going to take you all, each and everyone, to enjoy it with me. My wife, Erminie, claims it her turn to play hostess, so we'll all become cowboys and cowgirls, and have a wild-west show of our own, with a continuous performance for three jolly months. All in favor, say Aye!" "Aye! Aye! Aye!" the youngsters had it, so heartily that, for a moment, nobody noticed that Aunt Betty was silent. Then, when Dorothy observed this, with a down-sinking of her own spirits, the lady made haste to explain: "Nothing could please me better for Dorothy, and for myself if I were able to accept. But I can't. As you know, my business affairs have become tangled in some way and I must go home to really understand what is amiss. Indeed, I don't know yet where I may have to be during the warm weather and I'm delighted for my little girl, and for Alfaretta, to have such a fine chance. I fancy you'll all come east in the autumn, as brown as the Indians who'll be your neighbors, and in fine health. How soon do you leave, Mr. Ford? That I may make some arrangement about this dear old house, for I shan't want to stay in it after you're gone." Then it was his turn to explain: "I have felt all along, ever since I found Erminie here with our boy, that the place should never become again just 'a house to rent.' So I've bought it. I've found Padre Nicolas, the old priest whom the Indians love and trust, and deeded it to him in trust for them as a Home. Here Lazaro Gomez and the other ancients of his race shall dwell in comfort for the rest of their days. The only proviso is that Father Nicholas shall admit none who hasn't reached the age of discretion--say, eighty-odd years, or so! Nor shall any of his charges be compelled to tame wild beasts and sell them for a livelihood. The good old priest is ready to take possession as soon as we vacate and will put everything into what Alfy calls 'apple-pie order,' according to a red man's fancy. So, when everybody is ready--Don't hurry, please!--we'll board my car, the 'Erminie,' and take our leisurely way northward. It isn't as if we had to say good-by, you see, for we'll be all together still. As for Mrs. Calvert's plan--maybe we can persuade her to postpone business awhile for a taste of real ranch life. Eh?" But Mistress Elisabeth Cecil-Somerset-Calvert was a matron who never said "No" when she meant "Yes;" and she smilingly kept to her own purpose, yet took good care that no shadow of a coming separation should darken her beloved Dorothy's wonderful trip in a private car. Just here we may recall to the readers' attention that this young girl's earlier experiences have been told in "Dorothy's Schooling," her "Travels" and "House Party" and best of all "In California." Now those happy days of travel and sightseeing had ended in the city of Denver. The "Erminie" was to be stripped and renovated and put aside to await its owner's further orders. From this point the ranchers were to proceed by a coaching tour over the long and delightful road to the distant Rockies: while Mrs. Calvert, her black "boy," Ephraim, and some women friends were to speed eastward by the fleetest "limited" express. One more short hour together, in a hotel dining-room, and the parting was due. Aunt Betty and Mrs. Ford had already been driven away to this hotel as Leslie and his girl guests followed his father from the "Erminie," and seeing the downward droop of Dorothy's lip he tried to divert her by exclaiming: "There was never such a man as Dad! He never forgets. Never. I believe he knows every cripple between New York and San Francisco. I do, indeed. This fellow we're going to give that 'trash' to is one of his pets. I remember him now. Got hurt in a railway smash but is as independent as they make 'em. Wouldn't sue the company and wouldn't take money from it when offered. Claimed he was stealing a ride and only got what he calls his 'come-uppance' when he got hurt. Dad was so astonished when he heard about that, he said the man ought to be 'framed and put on exhibition, as the only case of his kind on record.' Then he suggested this way of earning his living. He has the 'boys' keep him fixed up in a little sort of stand just yonder and they see to it that his stock never fails. The cripple's as proud as Punch. Boasts that any honest man can do well in America if he tries. He hasn't any legs left and his arms aren't worth much but his spirit is the bravest ever. It would break his heart if he guessed that most of the stuff he sells is bought for my father by some of his employees, all on the sly. But he'll never know it. That's the best of Dad! His 'boys' love him. They think he's just rippin'! And he is. Look now. See how that man's face lights up when he hears that 'Halloo'!" Dorothy stopped short to exclaim: "Bought the stuff and gave us most of it, and now will buy it over again just to throw away! I never heard anything like that!" "Reckon you didn't, for there is only one Dan Ford! But he doesn't have it thrown away. He has it burned. He says, 'Burned toads tell no tales,' and the worst trouble the boys have is to get folks enough to buy the things for them. When they see a likely lookin' tourist edging around the stand they use him, if they can. If they can't it's a 'short day' for Cripple Andy, but that doesn't worry him. 'The fat and the lean,' he calls it. Oh! I say, he's almost as rippin' as Dad himself, he's so plucky!" The cripple's face did indeed light up as Mr. Ford appeared before him and shouted that gay "Halloo!" "Well, well, well! If you ain't the best sight I've had since I saw you last. Halloo, yourself and see how you like it!" With this attempt at facetiousness, the seller of notions leaned forward over his stand and extended his best hand toward his benefactor. "How's business, Andy?" "Tollable, sir, fairly tollable. Been sellin' a lot o' truck, lately, to some Cookies, and there was a reduction-school-ma'am-racket that nigh cleaned me out. See that your man Jed here has got a heap more things. How'd he come by them? Must ha' cleared the country of rep_tiles_, judgin' by them samples." "Oh, he came by them fairly enough, Andy. These youngsters couldn't live without the things when they first saw them, but now they'll be grateful if you'll take them off their hands. Maybe you can make something from them, maybe not. In any case they're not going to _San Leon_ on a buckboard with me! Take them off our hands, lad, and do a good deed once in your life!" By this time Mr. Ford had placed his own two strong hands over the shrivelled one of the peddler and was pressing it warmly, while the two looked into one another's eyes with mutual respect and liking. Then when the hands unclasped there was left on Andy's palm a glittering double eagle. Dorothy, watching, wondered at this, after hearing Leslie's boast of the cripple's independence; and there did a flush rise in his face for a moment, till Mr. Ford said: "For Laddie, you know. If you can't use it--pass it on!" The flush died out of the vender's cheek and a soft look came over it. "So I will, man, so I will. Thank God there's always somebody poorer than me! Good-by, and good luck, Boss! By that token I never seen you look that happy as you do this day, man alive, never!" "I never had such reason to be glad, Andy boy! Good-by, good-by!" Mr. Ford started off at a brisk pace, the young folks trying to equal his long strides, and Alfaretta asking: "Is that cripple crazy? What'd he mean by sellin' things to 'Cookies' and what's a 'school-ma'am-racket'?" Leslie laughed and answered: "A 'racket' of that sort has nothing to do with tennis, Miss Babcock, at your service; and 'Cookies' are just Cook's tourists. All railroaders call them that; and I suppose the 'racket' was a cheap excursion the school-ma'ams were taking. Odd, isn't it? That though all Andy's trouble came from the railroad he claims to belong to it as one of its 'boys.' He's rippin', Andy is. He told father 't he 'teached school' himself, once! But he got so tired of it that the sight of a spelling-book made him sick." "It does me, too," said Alfy, with sympathy. "So he 'cut and run,' and rode on trains in every direction as long as his money held out. Then he stole the ride that ended his travels right here in Denver. Hello! where's Dad?" They had loitered along the way and he had simply outstripped them. So without even a quarter in his purse but in his most lordly air, Leslie hailed a cab to carry them to the hotel he knew was that habitually patronized by his father; and a few minutes later they rode up to the entrance in state. An attendant hastened to the curb to assist the "young ladies" out of the cab, but the hackman laid a detaining hand upon Leslie's shoulder with the remark: "Fares, please." "Eh? Just settle that with Mr. Daniel Ford, inside. Here, Buttons, you find Mr. Ford and ask him to step here. It'll be all right, Jehu, and let's hurry, girls, else we'll be late for dinner." He started to enter the building but the cabman retained his hold on the lad's shoulder and remarked: "No, you don't! You may be all right and so may your Mr. Ford but, as for me, I never heard tell of him and money talks. Fares, please." Dorothy and Alfaretta clung together, really afraid of the cabman who was now growing decidedly angry. He was a stranger to that city and had just embarked in a rather losing business, his outfit of horse and cab being a second-hand one and too shabby for most patrons. Also, "Buttons," as Leslie had called the bell-boy, now returned to say that "no name of Ford was on the register and the clerk wouldn't bother." Here was a dilemma. The trio who had ridden in state now felt very small, indeed, and glanced at one another in dismay. Then Leslie surveyed the name over the hotel entrance and exclaimed: "Pshaw! This isn't the place at all. That donkey of a driver has brought us to the Metropole and not the Metropolitan. I might have known Dad wouldn't put up at such a third-rate tavern as this! Now, you idiot, we'll get in again and you take us where you were bid! and there, it's likely, you'll make the acquaintance of Mr. Daniel Ford in a way you don't like! Get in, Dorothy--Alfy! We can't stand foolin' here!" But the cabman closed the door of his vehicle with a bang and calmly folded his arms to wait. Dolly pulled out her little purse. It contained one nickel and two cents. She had carefully cherished these because coins smaller than a nickel are not plentiful in California; but she tendered them to Leslie who smiled and shook his head. Alfaretta discovered a dime, but it was her "luck piece," wrapped in pink tissue paper and carried thus in order that she "might always have money in her pocket," and she hated to give it up. Both she and Dolly thought regretfully of the little pocket-hoard they had begged the Gray Lady to keep for them, lest they spend it on the trip. However, neither the cabman nor Leslie accepted their offering, and the latter exclaimed: "Ain't this rippin'? Lost in a strange city, in the middle of the day, and not a soul willing to help us out! What in the world will Dad say!" "What, indeed! But look here, Leslie Ford, we've got enough to pay for telephoning that other hotel, if the man in here will let us use his 'phone! Then your father will send somebody after us or do something. Please try. I feel so queer with so many folks staring at us as if we'd done something bad!" By this time the hotel clerk had become more amiable. The name of Ford had impressed him if it hadn't the hackman, and though he, too, was new to the town he bade Leslie: "Go ahead! Call him up, if there is such a man." With a glance of angry contempt Leslie put the receiver to his ear and rang up "Dad;" only to hang it up again in disgust, as the answer came back: "Line's busy!" CHAPTER II A SPILL BY THE WAY The "line" remained busy for so long that the loungers in the hotel lobby grew amused at Leslie's impatience while the two girls became very anxious. "It was only an hour or so, Mr. Ford said, before Aunt Betty's train would leave and I shall be too late to see her--to bid her good-by--and it's for all summer--a whole long summer! I must go, I must find her, I shall--I will!" cried poor Dorothy, her own words increasing her fear of this calamity, and with a sudden burst of tears. For an instant she tried to keep them back, then careless who might see her crying, darted outward to the curbstone and to the hackman waiting there. In so doing she collided with a gentleman entering, who staggered backward from the impact, then quietly put his hands upon the girl's shoulders, to steady her also. "Beg pardon, little miss! and hello! What's wrong? Did I hurt you? Beg pardon twice, in that case!" The tone was kindly and to Dorothy it was a case of "any port in a storm." "No, no, sir, you didn't! But I'm--we're--in dreadful trouble. Do you know--do you?--where that other hotel is, that Metropolitan?" "Surely, I know. Why?" "Is it far? Can I run there quick? The cabman--we haven't any money--it was a mistake--and I must go, I must!" Leslie laid a soothing hand on Dorothy's, which she had clasped imploringly before the stranger, and told their story. The effect was surprising. This gentleman was the proprietor of this establishment and he well knew Mr. Ford, by reputation at least. With one angry glance around the lobby and at the now obsequious clerk, he wheeled about, strode to the cab, opened the door and lifted Dorothy within. Then he as promptly settled Alfaretta beside her, himself took the forward seat and motioned Leslie to follow. Then he ordered: "Now, cabby, drive like lightning! It'll be worth your while. Straight ahead, five blocks--east two--north three! Drive, I tell you." And "drive" the man did, as fast as his slow horse could be urged, while within the carriage the three young folks sat in anxiety, Dorothy leaning far forward, as if by that means she could reach her destination sooner. Their new friend beamed upon her, asking a few questions which drew out a brief history of their trip and the plans for their coming summer. Then almost before the cab was halted before a big hotel he had opened its door again and taking the hands of the two girls piloted them straight into it and through some great halls to the dining room. There he halted and gave the name: "Mr. Daniel Ford and party." "At dinner, sir, private dining room. May not wish to be disturbed. I'll send to inquire--step into the reception room please," bowed and explained the employee the gentleman had summoned. "That's all right. Direct us. I'm Darby of the Metropole. These young people belong to Mr. Ford's party." A moment later they had met Mr. Ford himself, issuing from his private room, vexed and anxious at their delay and starting out in their pursuit. "Well, laggards! What does this mean? Wasting the time when there's so little of it? Mrs. Calvert's fretting so she can't eat her dinner and--in with you! In with you! There's but fifteen minutes before her train starts east!" When a good natured man is angry he seems another person and Dorothy drew back in fear. But Alfaretta's own temper rose and she exclaimed: "Don't scold us, please, Mr. Ford, it wasn't our fault!" while Leslie vainly tried to explain: "A gentleman, a stranger, brought us here and paid our cab fare. I want a dollar, Dad, to refund him." But, for once, the doting father was deaf to his son's words. He did not even pause in his rapid stride along the corridor, fairly dragging Dorothy off her feet in his unconscious haste, and finally depositing her in an empty chair beside Aunt Betty's, with the remark: "Here's your 'bad penny' again! She--they all--will learn some lessons up at San Leon, this summer, or I'm a mistaken man. The one thing nobody should dare lose is--time!" Mrs. Calvert gave him a surprised look but she had also been hurt by Dorothy's absence during the brief space that remained to them together, and she hastened to deliver the many last charges and bits of advice that seemed needful before their parting. A waiter placed their dinner before the three young folks and Alfy and Leslie fell to work upon it with hungry zeal, but Dorothy could not eat. Her eye had discovered a clock on the wall, with the hands pointing five minutes to three. At ten minutes past that hour the "Eastern Limited" would roll out of the station and she be left behind. In a sudden impulse, she threw her arms about Aunt Betty's neck, begging: "Take me with you! Please take me with you! I--I love you best of all the world, so why shouldn't we keep together?" If there were tears in Mrs. Calvert's bright, dark eyes, she did not allow them to fall. Unclasping her darling's arms and gently laying them down, she silently signalled to Mrs. Ford and almost as silently left the room. The "Gray Lady" followed and Aunt Betty whispered: "I'm getting too old for good-bys. I'm going to slip away in the hotel stage and don't let Dolly follow me, please, till it's too late. She'll be all right again, directly, and--and so shall I. Good-by to you, though, and--that's all." Dolly dropped her head on the edge of the table, as Aunt Betty loosened her arms. She was bravely trying to overcome the sudden loneliness which possessed her and in this was helped by Alfy's warning: "Dolly Doodles! Take your head out of your soup plate! Are you crazy? There goes your ribbon right into the mess!" The head was lifted so suddenly that the ribbon flew off and fell into the dish and its owner's tears ended in a giggle. Then her face flushed at thought of her own awkwardness and she looked down expecting a reprimand from Mrs. Calvert. When none came she lifted her eyes and found the next chair empty. This was a relief. She'd hide the ribbon before her aunt discovered it! But already the waiter had whisked that plate away and was supplying her with another. Funny! Where Aunt Betty had gone! But, of course she'd merely left the room for a minute and would be back to say good-by. Then she picked at her food for a moment, wondering why Mr. Ford had also disappeared, and at the eagerness with which Leslie and Alfaretta enjoyed the good things served to them. Gray Lady slipped back to her own place between the other two young people and began to ask them about the adventure which had delayed them. Presently they were all talking together, even Dorothy adding her comments and forgetting to look again at that warning clock. Besides, she was listening to the grumbles of Leslie who, for once, was angry against his father and was explaining to his mother: "I never felt so ashamed of myself. The idea of letting that stranger, and the proprietor of a rival hotel, pay our cab fare! I wish you'd hand me the cash and I'll send a boy to hunt him up and settle. I--" Mrs. Ford stopped his further complaints by a nod of her head and the odd remark: "They must have arrived by this time and the others must be gone. Yes, they ought to be here. I hope they'll not delay us, too, as you did. Money? No, dear, I can't give you that. Not in this case when your father has denied it. Ah! Fifteen minutes after three! Then our friends must be well out of the city by now." Lady Gray, as her son still loved to call her, now took her eyes from the clock she had been studying and cast a tender look upon the face of Dorothy. The girl had sprung up from her chair and had fixed her own gaze upon the time-piece while the color left her cheeks and she trembled violently. But Mrs. Ford's arm was about the slender waist and her voice was comforting: "Your Aunt Betty thought it was the best. She shrank from the good-bys for both your sakes. She's a wonderful woman and thinks of everything that will make people happier. She said she'd just postpone the farewells till you meet again. She went away as cheerfully as possible and you must follow her example. Ah! hark!" Dorothy's bent head lifted slightly. There was a sound of merry, youthful voices in the corridor, the genial tones of Mr. Ford mingling with them, and presently the portieres were parted and the opening was filled by a group of faces matching the voices and belonging to--Could it be? Could it! "Molly Breckenridge! Helena! Oh! Oh! Jim--you dears!" cried the astonished Dolly, rubbing her eyes that had been so dimmed by tears, and gazing at the faces in the doorway as if she couldn't believe her own sight. There, too, was Alfaretta, clasping the hands of all the newcomers, fairly dancing up and down in her excitement, "hail-fellow-well-met" with them all, forgetful for once of the difference in their social positions which had used to make her shy and restrained. "Be I awake or asleep? How in my senses have you all got away out here to this jumpin' off place of all creation? Jim Barlow, you darlin' old Jim! How's Ma Babcock? How's Pa? How's every single one the precious folks up-mounting? Oh! I could just squeeze the life out of you, I'm so terrible glad to see you!" almost screamed the girl, as she now for a moment forsook the "'ristocratics" of the party to hug and kiss James Barlow. He, poor fellow, rid himself of her clasping arms as soon as possible, reddening yet laughing, and casting an appealing look upon the lady who had risen from the table and stood smiling her welcome to them all. "Don't mind Alfy, ma'am; she always did have to be the middle of things," begged the lad, overcoming his own shyness rather than have that beautiful lady think he was a "softie" who liked kissing girls. Also, he was thankful that Dorothy had contented herself with merely holding tight to his hand and simply looking her affection. "Oh! that's all right. We love Alfy; and this, I see, is that wonderful 'Jim' of whom I've been told so much. I--we--are delighted that you were able to take your holiday with us; and though we are not there yet, I bid you hearty welcome to San Leon," said Lady Gray, now moving forward and warmly shaking the hand of the "work boy" as Dorothy released it. "Isn't it splendid? Is it a surprise? Didn't you know a thing about it, Dolly Doodles?" demanded pretty Molly, hugging her friend, then standing back to hold her at arm's length and study the changes which a few months' separation had made in the beloved face. Helena Montaigne, too, was trying to clasp her in equally tender arms, and Molly reluctantly released Dorothy, while she let Mr. Ford lead her to his wife, introducing her as: "The daughter of my old friend, Judge Breckenridge. He and I were classmates once, and come here, Leslie boy! I've heard this little lady spoken of as 'Jolly Molly,' and you must make it your business that not one day of her coming summer with us shall be anything save 'jolly.' Ah! Erminie, young people on a ranch!" Evidently, Leslie was as much in the dark as Dorothy and Alfy had been, this visitation of so many young strangers a complete surprise to him; but he was trained to good manners and at once captivated Molly's admiration by his cordial greeting. So that, a moment later, she whispered to Dorothy: "Isn't he a dear! I declare he's just a heavenly handsome boy, with his blue eyes and--and his _air_! He really is too sweet for words, that boy!" Whereat Dolly laughed and answered: "Oh! you funny Molly! You don't change a bit! Still 'doting on boys' as much as ever! How's Melvin?" "Melvin's a poke. The invitation included him, too, but he sets himself up stiff as stiff and said he had no time to waste visiting. He'd got to learn the business soon as he could, for his mother--Oh! a lot of bosh about his mother, and her trusting him. Even my father--" "Never mind him, then, but tell me how in the world you happened to come just here and now?" The two had retreated to the window and stood with arms about each other and Dorothy's eyes now free from tears. Indeed, so surprising was this whole affair that she had, for a moment, forgotten Aunt Betty's departure. "Why, it's this way. Mr. Ford is an old friend of Papa's and when he found out that you knew us, too, he just planned the whole thing for a grand treat to you! He wrote Papa that he was under 'lifelong obligation to you' because--well, of something or other. I wasn't told what, but it doesn't matter. The thing that does matter is that we're to be together all summer long, at least for three whole months. Think of that, girlie, just think of that! He wrote Papa, too, that he'd have liked to gather the whole 'House Party' together if it had been practical, but his wife didn't think it would. I reckon she knew she'd have her hands full enough, chaperoning eight youngsters, without asking more. We came pretty near not getting Helena and Herbert, though! Mr. Montaigne fancied it was too much like an imposition to let them come, because he didn't know the Fords. Helena wrote me that, so I got Dad to send him a letter to make him stop and think! Besides, Jim--that boy is just grand! He--" "Of course, honey. He's a boy, you know." "Laugh away! I'm too happy to care. I do like boys best. Why shouldn't I? They're heaps more fun than girls--except you. And to think! Helena and Jim were the real chaperons of our trip, though Helena's governess, Miss Milliken, was called such. But she's a stick! I had the time of my life, keeping her scared all the way on. Oh! I'm glad to be off that train. Mr. Ford says we're to finish our journey in wagons. I like that." "But I don't see Miss Milliken, Molly." "No. She knows some people here in Denver and they met her at the station and carried her off to dine with them. I wish she'd get belated and left behind. She was a regular kill-joy all the way out." "Poor, meek, timid woman! She used to have so little snap that Herbert nicknamed her 'The Worm.' It was horrid--" "Well, she's 'turned,' then. Of course, we were pretty full of fun and scared her with some of our pranks. But--Ah! there she is now! You can't lose that woman! Mrs. Montaigne told her that 'the lives of her precious children were entrusted to her hands,' and the governess feels her responsibility to the full, I tell you. Even Helena--" "Dinner for the newcomers!" called Mr. Ford, interrupting, as a fresh meal was placed upon the table and they were invited to their seats. The zeal with which they accepted and the fine appetites they displayed sent a satisfied smile to their host's lips, and he nodded merrily to his wife: "No invalids among them! Glad of that! But youngsters, eat first, chatter afterwards! The wagons will be at the door very soon and I want to get in a good thirty miles before bedtime!" They tried to check their eager talk but they were all too excited for quiet, and presently rose from the table, ready for the ride, while Mr. Ford said: "Now, Erminie, wife, you do the pairing off of the youngsters, and arrange how we shall divide. First, count noses! Eight youngsters, three oldsters, two 'boys'--thirteen passengers in all! Miss Milliken, did you ever 'cross the plains' before?" The prim little lady, who had been standing beside Mrs. Ford, appeared not to hear the gentleman's question, but turned with an air of anxiety to ask in turn: "Madam, did I hear there were 'thirteen,' THIRTEEN?" "Yes, Miss Milliken. Why?" "Then I think you'll have to excuse me. I might follow you later if there were some way but I positively decline to make the thirteenth of any party." There certainly was nothing wormlike, or undecided, about the governess, whose lips had closed in such a thin line of obstinacy as changed her whole appearance, while her would-be hostess inquired with amusement: "Are you superstitious, Miss Milliken? Surely, with your culture and--" Helena advanced with an air of authority: "Milliken, this is absurd! Please get back your common sense. Remember we are guests and have no right to object to anything." The chaperon bridled, but kept silence, till Mr. Ford explained: "Thirteen doesn't mean the whole party. There'll be three drivers, besides. Possibly more men picked up along the road. Moreover, thirteen is my 'lucky number,' if 'luck' is anything. Well, Mrs. Ford, have you arranged the company?" "No, I cannot. I know them so slightly, as yet, and the best way is to draw lots. How many will the first buckboard carry?" "Eight, all told. A dozen, if need be. Well, time's precious! Here's a lot of matches. The whole ones go in number one, the next lengths in wagon two, and the little ones in the last. See, I've snapped them off, and Miss Milliken, as head of the expedition, please draw first!" The lady flushed and drew. Her lot was in the last and smallest buckboard which would carry but two more beside the driver; and it fell out that her companions would be Alfaretta and Monty Stark. The driver was known as Silent Pete, and it certainly was an odd combination which had resulted from the first "drawing." To the leading wagon the "lots" assigned the three Fords and Jedediah, their colored "boy," with Molly, Helena and Herbert--their driver, Lem Hunt, the most talkative man at San Leon but, also, the crack whip of the ranch. The driver of the second team was "Tenderfoot Sorrel," so called because of his red hair and his comparatively recent arrival from the east. He was less familiar with the country than the other two teamsters and had been assigned to the place in the middle of the little cavalcade, so that "he can't lose hisself afore or ahind, ary way," as Lemuel explained it. Naturally, everybody was disappointed at the result of the lots, Mrs. Ford protesting that it was inhospitable to put all her family in one vehicle, and that the best, but that "a Ford should have been in each." "Let's change, then," begged Monty, "and let one of the girls settle it as she knows we'd like it." But Alfy gave him such a frown that he ducked his head, avoiding an imaginary blow, while Miss Milliken as vigorously declared: "You mustn't do that. Oh! don't do that! 'Twould be the very worst luck of all. Something would surely happen!" "Well, if there doesn't I shall be disappointed! We're all eager for adventures, and that's why I took this long, roundabout way to the ranch. We could have gone there in next to no time, by rail, but that's too humdrum a thing. Anyhow, I bow to Miss Milliken's prejudices for the time being. We shall be in sight of each other all the time, I expect, and meet at Roderick's for our suppers and beds! All off for San Leon that's going!" cried Mr. Ford, in imitation of a steamboat steward, and taking his wife's arm led her and her guests out of the hotel. The trunks and heavier luggage had already gone ahead in other wagons and only suit-cases and hand-bags were on hand. These were hastily bestowed in the boxes of the two less crowded buckboards, and no attention paid to their ownership, since it was expected that all would meet at "Roderick's," where every traveller could find his own. With a blast on his coach horn, a crack of his long whip over his four-in-hand, proud Lemuel led the way along the city street, out of the town, and into the open country beyond. All the horses attached to the blackboards were the picked ones of the San Leon stables, with a record known as well in the far east as in that wide western land. As one spectator of this gallant start remarked: "It goes without saying that Dan Ford will drive no second-rate horseflesh, any more 'n he will a second-class railroad. My! See 'em travel! At that gait they'll pick up the stretch 'twixt here and 'Roderick's' long before nightfall, or I'm no judge." "Likely enough, likely enough. Only I don't like the looks of that second span--I mean the one to the middle buckboard. Them blacks. The boys up to S' Leon hadn't no right to trust a tenderfoot to drive them critters!" remarked another observer, as the fretful animals passed out of sight, following their leaders. Even Lem Hunt looked back once or twice, as they left the city limits, and waved a warning hand toward "T. Sorrel," who merely tossed his red head and continued to draw upon the reins he should have loosened. Also, Silent Pete opened his lips for once and hallooed to the man ahead: "Let 'em out, you fool! Give 'em their heads, I say!" Then he relapsed into his normal condition, attending strictly to his own business and making himself deaf to the timid shrieks of Miss Milliken, from the rear seat. He was known to "hate silly women" and felt his fate a hard one in having to escort such a one as the governess. She, accustomed only to the sedate pace of the fat Montaigne steeds, felt that the spirited animals before that wagon were simply on the road to destruction and nowhere short of it! She clung to her seat-arm with one hand and clutched Pete's coat collar with the other, frantically beseeching him: "Do stop! Oh! you--man--just stop--and let me get my breath! I--I bump so--I--I can't even think!" But this western jehu merely flicked her fingers off as he would a troublesome fly, while Monty coolly advised: "Don't try, Miss Milliken. Fast? Why, they call this mere walkin' out here. I'm going to take a nap." He settled himself sidewise on his seat, folded his arms upon its back, dropped his face upon them and tried to sleep. He was cross. He had wanted to ride in the foremost vehicle with the fine four-in-hand. He hated being put at the tail end of the procession with stupid Alfaretta Babcock, a speechless man, and a nervous, half-hysterical woman for companions. But the chuckle that escaped him a moment later proved that his slumber was only a pretended one. At a particularly rough spot in the road and a particularly shrill scream from Miss Milliken, the angry ranchman faced about and rudely ordered: "Shut up!" Then his lips closed with a click and nothing further escaped them during all that drive. Alfaretta giggled; then strained her eyes again to pierce the distance which she had been studying for some time. Then she laid a hand on Monty's head and shook it vigorously: "Wake up, boy! Look ahead and see if either wagon is in sight! 'Tisn't so awful dark yet but I wish--I wish I could get a glimpse of Dolly and Jim. That fool driver might have taken the wrong road where it branched off a ways back." Silent Pete heard and guessed this was the truth, but he ventured no reply. His business was to drive his own horses and let the tenderfoot look out for himself. But Monty roused himself enough to assure Alfy: "He wouldn't do that! Why, that road is nothing but a trail through the woods. Dark as midnight. Don't worry." Then he settled himself to sleep again. Now the fact was that "T. Sorrel," as his fellow ranchmen called him, had more conceit than common sense. He had heard that the branch road was a short cut to "Roderick's," but not that it was impassable for a team. A man on horseback might pass safely over it, by daylight and with a trustworthy mount. Not otherwise; and though the opening was fairly clear the trail entered a hopeless tangle of underbrush and fallen timber but a short way further on. To go forward then became impossible, and equally so the turning back. The lively blacks resented the scratching of briers and broken branches upon their tender limbs and pranced and fretted wildly. A molly cottontail scurried across the track before them and with a mutual, frenzied impulse they shied and sprang into the air. The buckboard flew upward, turned turtle, scattered its load in all directions, then settled into a broken heap, while the light traces yielded to the strength of the horses, and they rushed madly forward out of sight. At that very moment it had been, that Silent Pete and his wagon had passed the entrance of that trail; and even in that dusk his trained eye had noted fresh wheel and hoof prints. But it was not his business to stop and investigate. He had been set to bring his party to "Roderick's", not to take care of a tenderfoot who ought to have a nurse, the fool! CHAPTER III THE MIDNIGHT SEARCHING PARTY The night was growing late and there were anxious hearts at "Roderick's." The four-in-hand had arrived hours before, and Silent Pete had also brought his party safely in--to the mutual relief of himself and Miss Milliken, the latter really surprised to find she had arrived sound in body and limb. She had promptly retired to the little chamber assigned herself and Helena, only to reappear in fresh distress. "My suit-case with my night-things! I can't find it anywhere. The one they gave me has a lot of boys' things in it-all jumbled together. I'd like my suit-case, please. I'm worn out with that awful ride and if I've got to repeat it to-morrow, I must get to rest;" but as the buxom maid to whom she appealed paid her scant attention, she turned to Helena with her wail: "Oh, Miss Helena! _Won't_ you make them give me the right case?" The emphasis put on the "won't" suggested a desperate need, but merely annoyed her young mistress, who requested: "Don't make a nuisance of yourself, Milly. The loss of a suit-case is nothing compared to--Oh! if Dolly were only safely here!" "She will be, of course. Haven't I, with my nerves, lived through that ride? But, you don't understand, dear, I _want my things_. I can't wear a boy's pajamas--all mussed up, at that. I want, I want to go to bed." "Then, for goodness' sake--go!" cried Monty Stark, who had come up to the pair. "That'll give us a rest, too." "I shall have to sit up all night, then," still moaned the lady, "for your case isn't to be found either, Miss Helena." Then finding no greater sympathy from her mistress than from that saucy boy, the governess betook herself out of the way. She was the only one of the party which had so gaily left Denver that now cared for anything except the appearance down the road of the missing buckboard. Molly and Leslie, congenial spirits, had tried to laugh off their anxiety and to convince the others that everything was "all right, of course." "Likely Dolly Doodles has discovered some new sort of flowers somewhere and has wandered off to get them. She's always doing that kind of thing," Molly assured her hostess, who had gently answered: "We'll hope it's only that. But she'd scarcely look for wild flowers at night, nor do anything to make us anxious by her delay. Our Dorothy is a very considerate girl and I wish--they would come." Linking her arm within Helena's, the lady set her steps to suit the girl's and resumed the pacing up and down the long piazza. The house was a one-storied building, stretching along the roadway to a size that was unusual for such a locality. It had been added to at different periods, as need arose; each addition being either a little lower or higher than its neighbor, according to the cash in hand, but invariably with the continuance of the comfortable piazza. This now afforded a long promenade, and all the people gathered at the wayside inn that night, were using it to walk off their impatience at the delay of "Tenderfoot Sorrel" to bring in his team. Supper had been put back till it was spoiled, and having been telegraphed for beforehand, good Mrs. Roderick had wasted her best efforts upon it. But, at last, seeing Monty and Molly peering through the kitchen windows in a hungry sort of way, Mr. Ford ordered it served and all repaired to the dining room, feeling that the meal would be a farce, yet something with which to kill time. However, the long ride in the keen air had given all a fine appetite and despite the landlady's laments over the "dried-up stuff," the table was nearly cleared of its food when they left it. Moreover, everyone felt better and brighter for the refreshment and so hopeful now for the speedy arrival of the laggards, that Mr. Ford suggested to the waitress: "Just have a few things kept warm for the others. There'll be four of them. If they aren't here within a half-hour, now, I'll go back in search of them. Something may have happened to the wagon and they left to come on a-foot." "Dear, did you ask the man you call Silent Pete if he passed them anywhere along the road?" "Surely, I did that the first thing. He had neither passed nor seen them, he said." "Well, I'm going to interview him again. Come on, Miss Molly, to the stable with me," cried Leslie. "'Molly,' without the 'Miss,' please, and I'm ready enough! It seems as if I must be doing something, for everybody is looking so worried," she answered, catching his outstretched hand and racing with him down the long porch and around to the stables in the rear. Silent Pete had not gone to the loft where the workmen slept. He had wrapped himself in a blanket and, with another for a pillow, had settled himself in a corner of the loose box next the stalls where his team stood. He was so devoted to them that he couldn't leave them alone in a strange stable, though from the snores which already came from him he didn't seem a great protection to anything. But Silent Pete was wily. He had heard the voices of the pair without the building, asking a groom to tell where Pete could be found, and had resented being disturbed. He had done his day's work, he had no intention of joining in any search that might be made for the delinquents, and he promptly pretended slumber. But he hadn't reckoned upon Leslie's persistence nor his own uneasy conscience. "Wake up there, Peter, if that's your name! I'm your boss's son, and I want a word with you. Wake up, man!" The snores deepened. Rarely had the nose of mortal man emitted such ear-splitting sounds as now issued from the nostrils of the ranchman, as Leslie shoved aside the sliding door of the loose box and stepped within. "Here, Molly-without-the-Miss, take the lantern and hold it so I can find the head inside that roll of blankets! Feet are big enough. Can't miss them," said the lad, stumbling over the protruding boots of the sleeper. "I'll take this pitchfork and prod him up a bit. Hello, Pete! I say, Pete, you've earned your name one way--but you hardly deserve it another. 'Silent!' You'll certainly keep the horses awake and--Wake up, I say! You shall!" Leslie thrust the pitchfork into the boards of the floor so uncomfortably near that snoring nose that Pete hitched aside and so admitted himself awake. Molly ran into the box and held the lantern low, while the boy squatted at the teamster's head and thumped it soundly. Both were giggling, which incensed their victim still further, and he suddenly tossed off his blanket with such force that it hit Molly's face and made her jump away, while Leslie ordered: "Quit that! Don't you know how to treat a lady?" There was no answer, save a frown directed toward the laughing girl, and the lad demanded: "You're to open your lips and tell us what you think has happened to that tenderfoot driver and his team. Why doesn't he come in? They say you're the oldest driver round, know the most about the roads, or trails, and your opinion's wanted. Give it quick, because--Well, there'll be some thing doin' if you do know anything and don't tell it. I don't understand why I suspect you're hiding things but I do; unless it's that grudge I heard some men say you had against the 'Sorrel' fellow. Now, you talk. Where do you think that buckboard is?" "Gone to smash." Molly screamed at this cool answer, and Leslie threatened his pitchfork. But it was neither of these things which moved Pete to tersely disclose his private opinion: "I know nothin'. I guess shortcut and destruction. Lem knows the trail. T. Sorrel ain't wuth huntin', nor them boys. Little gal--might--Talk to Lem. Clear out." Having relieved his conscience of this much information the man buried his face again in his blanket and resumed his interrupted repose. Leslie wasted one moment of indignation upon him, as a heartless human being, then hurried out of the place and to his father. When consulted, Lem Hunt hesitated for an instant only, then advised: "Best get right a-doin' things! No wagons, but fresh hosses and as many of 'em as want to go. Jiminy cricket! If T. Sorrel branched off where Pete thinks he did he's done for hisself an' all consarned. Let's be steppin'!" Fortunately, there were plenty of fresh horses at "Roderick's" that night. A drove of them were corralled behind the inn, _en route_ from a distant ranch to Denver, and thence eastward to market. All of them were well broken, to the saddle at least, and the best were promptly led out for Mr. Ford's selection, leaving his own beasts to rest for the next day's travel. Also, the drivers eagerly offered their own company, mounting without their saddles, which they insisted upon lending to the less experienced riders. Excitement followed Lemuel's advice to "Be steppin'," and a very few minutes' of bustling activity saw the cavalcade lined up before the inn with him for leader. It numbered Mr. Ford, Herbert and Monty, of that party; with Noll Roderick himself and three drovers. That Leslie had not joined the riders was due to his mother's anxiety for his health, though his father had rather favored his going. The lad had been indignant at the "molly-coddling" and had hurt the tender heart of the Gray Lady by some angry words. Then he had walked away to the extreme end of the long piazza, whence he watched the disappearance of the rescuers down the moonlight road. As the horses' footfalls died in the distance, his grumblings were interrupted by a light touch on his arm. "Come around this corner, boy! Hurry up!" He turned to find Molly Breckenridge beside him, her finger on her lip, and a wild light in her eyes. She was trembling with excitement and could scarcely wait to whisper: "I'm going, too!" "Girl, how can you?" "Horseback, course. Roderick's daughter's lending me her own pony. Mattie, her name is, and she was all for going with the others but her mother can't spare her. I told her I was just crazy, thinking of my Dorothy; hurt maybe, lost anyway, and nobody but a lot of men to speak to, even if they find her. Do you s'pose I'll desert her? That I love best of all the world? I guess not. I'm a Breckenridge! Good-by!" There was mischief in her eyes as she turned to leave him and Leslie laughed: "Course! You're thoroughbred--I saw that right away. And you're my guest! Could I, as a gentleman, let you ride off alone on a lonely road at night? Hurray! You're A 1! You're rippin'!" Molly sped around the house. She wasn't familiar, as yet, with Leslie's "rippin'" but she knew he'd approved of her wild prank and would join her in it. She was a far better rider than he, for in her own southern home she had been reared to the saddle and was never happier than when she had a good horse at command. Mattie's pony was swift and easy, and Molly sprang to its back with the feeling that now she was "really doing something," and that very speedily she would have her arms about her missing friend and all would be well. She had also begged Mattie to get a mount for Leslie, forseeing that he would follow her--exactly as he did. Another instant, and the pair were off along a little by-path, toward the main road and the pursuit of the searching party. As they struck into the smoother going Molly touched the calico pony with her whip and called to Leslie: "Come on! Hurry up! We'll have to ride like the wind to catch up with the rest!" "All right--I'll do my best but--but this--old nag--wait a little bit!" Molly wheeled about and did so, but the delay made her extremely impatient, and with some contempt she remarked, as the lad came alongside: "Why, I supposed you could ride! You looked like a boy who knew how!" "So I do! But this thing I'm on--Call this a horse? I'd rather have a mule! How dared they give me such a thing?" In her hurry Molly had not observed the animal which had stood saddled at the stable door, and that now seemed as ugly and tiresome a beast as her own little pony was fine. Pity then banished vexation and she exclaimed: "You poor fellow! I don't believe Matty meant you to have that beast. But, come on, anyway. Maybe he'll warm up after a bit, and I'll take that back--that I said about your riding. I reckon you're all right. Anybody must be who can stick on the rack-o'-bones you've got. Touch him up a little--I'll set the pace." Away she sped while the gaunt creature which Leslie bestrode planted his forefeet firmly on the ground and refused to lift them thence. Molly was fast passing around a curve in the road and would then be out of sight, and Leslie's temper rose to its height. He forgot everything except his own awkward position and the fact that his lively young guest could have the laugh on him when that night's tale was told. "Oh! you hateful beast! You won't go, eh? Well, go you shall! Hear me? Take that--and that--and--THAT!" Blows rained hard and fast, till the lash of the whip gave out, and the butt took its place. Then, as if the astonished horse had just aroused to the state of things, it bolted! and the way its old heels picked up that road was the most amazing thing of all that evening's happenings. Then, indeed, did Leslie prove himself a better horseman than he looked, and, for all time to come, his full ability to "stick." Riding ahead at a smart pace, but not her pony's best, Molly heard the footfalls behind her and swerved out of the way--not a minute too soon! Evidently, the maligned "rack-o'-bones" would otherwise have ridden her down. He passed her like a whirlwind and then--she after him. Followed, a race to be remembered! The big horse keeping the lead, the little "calico" pit-pattering along behind in a hopeless effort to get even. Thus for what seemed an endless time, the long dusty road was desolate of any travellers except this pair of runaways. Sometimes a coyote yelped in the distance; occasionally some creeping thing barred the track before them; and a screech owl sent its blood-curdling cries into their ears. Otherwise they were alone in the wilderness and the night, and beyond speaking distance even of one another. The effect was to set each culprit thinking. How wild a thing they had done! How thoughtless, how selfish! What fresh anxiety they had added to the troubled hearts back there at "Roderick's," as soon as their absence was discovered! How flat their jolly adventure had fallen! Molly had bound Mattie to secrecy, and there was that about the western girl that convinced the other that the secret would be kept. If Mrs. Roderick did guess what had become of them, and said so, it would be no comfort to Lady Gray and Helena; and the longer Molly pondered the matter, the more ashamed and terrified she felt. What would Aunt Lucretia say? And what her father--could he see his madcap at that moment? In a bitter reaction of feeling the girl dropped her head upon the pony's neck, though still mechanically urging the willing creature to her utmost speed. Her thoughts were far away when, suddenly, she felt a check upon the rein and lifted her startled face. "Why, Leslie! You scared me!" "Were you asleep?" "No." "What then? Your head was down. The 'calico' was taking her own way. What's the matter?" "It's none--I mean, if you must know, I was crying." "Oh! horrors! Why?" "Because I've done such a dreadful thing. It was wicked. I had no right and--and--" "Yes, I know. You were frightened. Well, I was, too." Molly straightened her shoulders and pretended contempt, saying: "I didn't know as gentlemen--'thoroughbreds,' you know--western thoroughbreds ever were fr-fri-ghtened. What--was--that?" A curious cry had reached them and Molly finished her speech in a whisper. The horses, also, had heard it and had thrust back their ears in fear. Just there the road skirted the edge of a forest and the cry had come from its depths. They peered into the shadows but could see nothing, and edging the pony close to Beelzebub, as Leslie's mount was named, Molly repeated her question. "Likely a wild cat, puma, or wolf. I don't know," he answered. "Have you heard it before? Was it that scared you?" "No, I was afraid something would happen to you, left behind, alone. I fancy we're in no danger that way--" pointing forestward. "But--" "'But'--what? If you thought about me why didn't you come back to look for me?" "I couldn't. Once he got in motion this beast wouldn't stop till he--ran down like a clock." "Pooh! You should go to a riding school! Let's go on, now, or else back. I can't stop here with lions and panthers yelling at us! I--I--Oh! do come on! But keep tight hold of the pony's rein. Don't get away from me again." "I shan't. I can't." "Oh! come!" "I tell you I can't. We're planted." Molly's lip quivered, but she restrained her tears and tremulously entreated: "Oh, Leslie, don't! I can't stand teasing now. This isn't funny--not a bit. Shall we go back? Or try to overtake the others?" "We can't do either one. I tell you we're simply stuck. Settled down and gone to housekeeping. Beelzebub has finished. He won't take another step. Fact. We've got to make the best of it. If that pony of yours was as big as a decent calf we might ride double and leave this wretch to starve and think it over at his leisure. I don't see why that girl gave me such a creature. Let's get off and sit down on that rock and wait. Something's bound to happen--sometime--if we live long enough. The folks'll come back this same road, course." He jumped to the ground and held out his hand to her but, for a moment, she would not dismount; then as he coolly left her and walked to the rock he had pointed out, she slipped from her saddle and followed him. But she still held fast to her bridle rein and the pony offered no resistance to the leading, though the big brute of the profane name remained in the middle of the road, his forefeet pointed forward, his hind ones backward, his whole attitude one of stubborn ugliness. Leslie had reached a point where the ludicrous side of things appeared and he remarked: "Looks like the potato-horses I used to make when I was a kid, with matches stuck in for legs. I wonder how long he'll stand there!" Molly smiled faintly. At present there were no alarming sounds from the forest and the boy's apparent indifference to their lonely situation relieved her own fears. "Well, it's an 'ill wind that blows nobody good,' you know. That Beelzy thing is the toughest I ever rode. He's bumped me up and down till I ache all over and this rock is actually soft in comparison. Here. I'll put some of these big ferns for a cushion for you, and, after all, we'll meet our folks just as soon by waiting as by going on. They must come back, you know, sure as fate. This is the only road leads to 'Roderick's', I heard them say. Hello! Why--Beelzebub, good boy!" A whim had seized the obstinate animal to approach his late rider and fawn about his feet, nibbling the scant grass which grew there, as the pony was already doing. In surprise at this change both Leslie and Molly laughed and forgot, for the time, that they were in such a desolate place at so late an hour. The horse's action reminded Molly of an animal her father had once owned and she began to tell stories about him; stories that the boy matched with marvelous ones of his own. That some of these were fiction made no difference. Molly disdained to believe them but they served to pass the time as well as any better ones might have done. Indeed, fear had now left them. The rest after their hard ride was pleasant and both felt that they were simply waiting for their friends' return. So they sat on, as composedly as if they were safe at home, till Molly's eyes, fixed upon the distant road, suddenly grew startled again. Leslie's latest yarn had been of an Indian outbreak, or uprising, of recent date and in this neighborhood. He had heard it that evening from the men at the inn and had not paused to consider how unlikely was such an incident so near to the city of Denver. In truth, the "boys" had invented the whole story, just for the sake of impressing the young "tenderfeet"--Monty, Herbert and Leslie; and it had satisfied the jokers that these youngsters "swallered it hull." But Leslie had a gift for dramatic recital and listening to him the affair seemed very real to the girl. The scene and the hour suggested a possible repetition of the occurrence; and as there now came to her ears the sound of distant hoofbeats on the road, and presently, to her eyes the sight of a company of horsemen approaching, she gave one terrified cry and darted into the forest behind her. "The Indians! The--Indians! They'll kill us!" Moved by his own eloquence and still believing the story he had been told, the boy followed her flight. He did not even turn to look where she had pointed but, with a headlong rush, dashed into the wood and into a mass of briars which threw him face downward in their midst. Also, at that same instant both the deserted horses set up a continued neighing, which confirmed the fears of their riders who, both now prone upon the ground, felt that their last hour had come. CHAPTER IV THE WATCHERS AT RODERICK'S As soon as Molly and Leslie had ridden away, Mattie Roderick disappeared within her own room and became deaf to all the inquiries made outside her door. She was a high-spirited, "wild western" girl, accustomed to obeying little else than her own impulses. She had a fine record as a horsewoman and had been disappointed that she could not go with the searching party. This being the case, it was next better to lend her pony to that other lively girl who was so like herself. But Mrs. Roderick was certain that the missing Molly and Leslie had followed the first party and could give no comfort to anxious Mrs. Ford beyond the statement: "Things don't happen often, 'twixt here an' Denver. Been one or two hold-ups, of men known to carry money, but beyond a murder or so, ain't been no excitement this long spell." "Murder!" cried Helena aghast, and folding her arm a bit more tightly about Gray Lady's trembling body. "Oh! yes'm. A few has been. But nobody'd touch to harm them children. You needn't worry. They've thought it smart to take a hand in the business, that's all. Mattie won't say 'yes' nor 'no' to my askin', but the 'calico's' out of the corral and Long Jim's Belezebub ain't hitched no longer. Ha, ha, ha! If either them kids tries to ride Beelzy--Hmm. But Chiquita, now, she's little but she's great. Pa and Matt claim she's worth her weight in gold. She's likely, anyway. An' don't fret, lady. They'll all be home to breakfast, an' seein's I've got that to cook, I'll hump myself to bed and advisin' you to do the same. If not, make yourselves comfortable's you can, and good night." After the landlady's departure the house became strangely quiet. The men who had been talking outside sought their own rest, and the anxious watchers missed the murmur of voices and the sense of protection which the presence of even these strangers gave. While Mrs. Ford was still restlessly pacing the long piazza, Alfy slipped within. With her keen observation of details, she had seen where the woodpile was and that the fire on the hearth in the main room of the house had about died out. This had been lighted for the guests' enjoyment, the inn folks caring nothing for it and therefore easily forgetting to replenish it. When she had gathered an armful of wood, Alfy carried it to the fireplace and lustily blew upon the embers till a little blaze started. Then she heaped the sticks upon this and presently had a roaring flame. At once the room grew cheerful, its bareness furnished, as it were, by this open fire. "Now, dear Lady Gray, please come right inside. You'll get your death out here in this night air, with not even your cloak on. Come, Helena, you both come in," said Alfaretta, appearing on the porch. But her first words had started the mother's tears. "Lady Gray." That had been her son's pet name for her, its use still more frequent than "Mother," and with a little cry she murmured: "Ah! my boy! Shall I ever hear you say that again!" "I don't see why not," said practical Alfaretta, nodding to Helena to help persuade the woman to take a needed rest. "You heard that landlady tellin' how 't they'd all be home to breakfast. Well, then, she knows. She's lived here a power o' time and we've only just come. Say, Helena, let's make a pot of coffee and set the table. I can do it right on them coals, after the fire burns down a mite. If I can't there, 'twon't be the first cook stove I've tackled in my life, and I know one thing if I don't any more: that is, when those searchers and Dolly an' Jim do come they'll be so tearing hungry they could nigh eat ten-penny nails. Come on. Let's get supper for 'em. You boss the job, Mrs. Ford, and then it'll be done right. I saw a lot of chickens in a back room, as I come through, all fixed to fry. Well now, you both know I can fry chicken to the queen's taste, and I'll just lay myself out this time!" Her energy and cheerfulness were not to be resisted. Mrs. Ford followed the two girls inside and with a little shiver, from her exposure outside, drew a chair to the hearth and bent to its warmth. Then, as if she had been in her own home, Alfaretta whisked about, dragging small tables from the dining room into this larger one, ordering Helena to do this and that, and all with a haste that was almost as cheering as the fire. "Now, Helena, here's the dish-closet. You set the table. My! Ain't these the heaviest plates and cups you ever saw? Ma Babcock'd admire to get some like 'em; our children break such a lot of things. But Mis' Calvert wouldn't think she could drink tea out of such. She wants her 'n to be thin as thin! and she's got one set, 't belonged to her grandmother--great-grandma, I guess it was--come over from England or somewhere--that she won't let no hands except her own touch to wash. I wish you could see Aunt Betty wash dishes! 'Twould set you laughing, fit to split, first off. It did me till I begun to see the other side of it, seems if. First, she must have a little porcelain tub, like a baby's wash-tub, sort of--then a tiny mop, doll's mop, I called it, and towels--Why, her best table napkins aren't finer than them towels be. And dainty! My heart! 'Tis the prettiest picture in the world when that 'ristocratic old lady washes her heirloom-china! But this--your hands'd get tired enough if you had to do much of this. Hurry up! Don't you know how to set a table yet, great girl like you? Well, do the best you can. I'm going into that kitchen to cook. I can't wait for this fire to get low. I surely can't, because, you see, they might be here any minute--any single minute--and nothing done yet, not even the table set. Mrs. Ford, you better cut the bread. Here's a lot of it in a tin box, and a knife with it, sharp enough to cut a feller's head off. You best not touch it, Helena, you're so sort of clumsy with things. Now I'm off to boil 'tatoes and fry chicken!" It was impossible to retain gloomy forebodings while Alfy's cheerful tongue was running on at this rate, and as she left the living-room for the kitchen at the rear both Lady Gray and Helena were laughing, partly at their own awkwardness at the tasks assigned them as well as at her glib remarks. "I never set a table in my life!" cried Helena, in glee. "And I never sliced a loaf of bread!" said Gray Lady; "though I'll admit it is time I learned. Indeed, I've never had a home, you know, and I'm looking forward to my housekeeping as eagerly as a child to her playhouse." "I'm wondering what the landlady will say, when she finds how we've invaded her pantry," continued Helena, carefully arranging the coarse stone-china upon the oilcloth covered tables. She had begun very reluctantly but found that the labor was a delightful relief from worry, and, with the good sense she possessed, now went on with it as painstakingly as if she expected a fashionable and critical company. Indeed, her first table-setting, copied, as near as she could remember, from the careful appointments of her own mother's board, was to be an object lesson to others besides herself. For presently there was the sound of voices in the kitchen; Alfaretta's, of course, with another equally gay and girlish. Mattie Roderick had slept lightly. She had been excited over the arrival of the Ford party in the first place, and doubly so from the later events of the night. So as she lay sleepless and listening, she heard the rattle of cooking things in the kitchen below and soon the odor of frying. With a little grumble she got up and put on the few garments she had discarded. "It can't be near morning yet. I don't see what's set Ma to cooking, 'less they're on the road back and nigh starved. One thing I know! I shan't marry no tavern-keeper! It's nothin' but fry, roast, bake, an' bile, the hull endurin' time. I'm goin' to quit and go east fur as Denver, anyhow, soon's I get my age. I'd like to look same's them girls do, and they ain't no prettier 'n me. It's only their clothes makes 'em look it, and as for that Molly, they call her, that's rid off on Chiquita, she's just as plain and folksy as get out! So's the red-headed one with the high-falutin' name, out of that song Pa sings about the 'blue Juniata' and 'bright Alfaretta,' or some such trash. Them boys--Well, they hain't took no notice o' me yet--but I can show 'em a thing or two. I bet I can shoot better than any of 'em. I bet, if they don't hurry off too early to-morrow, I'll get up a match and teach 'em how a Colorado girl can hit the bull's-eye every time!" With these ambitious reflections the inn-keeper's daughter arrived at the kitchen and the presence of the red-headed girl in it, instead of the portly form of her mother. "What on earth does it mean?" demanded Mattie, scarcely believing her own eyes. It didn't take Alfy long to explain, and she added the warning: "You keep it up! Don't you let on to Mrs. Ford that there's the least misdoubt in your mind but what them searchers will be back, right to once, same's I'm pretending! Oh! I hope they do! I hope they do! I hope it so much I dassent hardly think and just have to keep talking to stop it. If I had hold that Molly Breckenridge I'd shake her well! The dear flighty little thing! To go addin' another scare to a big enough one before, and now about that Leslie. He's a real nice boy--Leslie is--if you let him do exactly what he wants and don't try to make him different. His ma just sets all her store by him. I never got the rights of it, exactly, Aunt Betty Calvert--she 't I've been hired out to--she never approved of gossip. She said that folks quarrellin' was just plain makin' fools of themselves, or words to that effect. The Fords had done it and now, course, they was thicker 'n blueberries again and didn't want to hear nothing about the time they wasn't. Don't leave them 'tatoes in that water so long! Why, child o' grace, don't you know yet, and you keepin' tavern, that soon's a potato is cooked it ought to be snatched out the pot and set to steamin', to get dry? Soggy potatoes gives you the dyspepsy and that's a disease I ain't sufferin' to catch. It makes folks so cross." By this time Mattie had entered into the spirit of the thing and had never been happier in her life. This Alfaretta was so jolly, so friendly, so full of talk. So wholly satisfied in her conscience, too, now that "one of the family" was beside her to share the risk she had assumed of using other people's provisions so recklessly. But in that she had misjudged her genial hosts. Nothing was too good for their guests, these or any others, and if the chickens meant for breakfast were pre-empted for this midnight meal, why there were plenty more in the hennery. So, secure in her better knowledge of the elder Rodericks, Miss Mattie sped about, flew in and out of the sitting-room, to tend the fire or add some delicacy to Helena's daintily set table; the same that made her stare at its difference from ordinary. Didn't seem possible that the mere arrangement of cups and saucers, of knives and forks, could give such an "air" to the whole place. "Like brook trout, Mis' Ford?" asked the girl, upon one entrance. "You men-folks like 'em, too?" Assured that they were considered a great treat, Mattie advised: "Well, you just wait! I know where there's a lot, in a basket in the pool. Pa catched 'em to have 'em ready and I'll hike after 'em to onct. You like to go along, Helena?" Stately Helena smiled at the free masonry of the westerner and glanced at Mrs. Ford, in inquiry: "Yes, dear, go with her. I shan't be lonely, with Alfaretta left, flying in and out busily. I declare, those kitchen odors _are_ savory! I hope the wanderers will soon be here, that this new meal won't be kept till spoiled, as Mrs. Roderick complained of the other." Helena noticed that the lady expressed no further doubt about the safety of the absentees and thus encouraged she gladly accepted Mattie's invitation. Indeed, this whole trip was full of delightful novelty and all the affectations which had once made Helena Montaigne disagreeable to sensible people had been discarded, or outgrown. Mattie's first preparation was to take off her shoes and stockings and she advised the other girl to do the same. "Else you'll get 'em all dirt going through the swamp to the pool. We don't have none too much water hereabouts but what we have got is _wet_!" "I couldn't go barefooted. My feet would hurt so. I'll have to risk the shoes. I have others in my suit-case, wherever it is." "Well, come on then. You can step light through the ma'sh and 'twon't be so bad. Wait till I fetch a lantern." "A lantern, in this moonlight?" "Sure. 'Twon't shine into the woods. The trees are awful thick and though I could go straight there and back, without stumbling once, you're new to the way an' the light's for you. I don't want you to get hurt just goin' for a mess o' fish!" "Thank you, Mattie. That is very considerate of you. Shall I carry it?" Mattie was pleased by the other girl's "thank you." Such small courtesies were almost unknown to her, but she determined to remember how "good" it had made her feel and to experiment with it upon somebody else, sometime. Even as Helena's table-setting had also been a lesson in neatness; and with her eagerness to learn she felt that she had been amply repaid for giving up her sleep. Chattering as if she had always known the stranger she led the way safely to the pool, deep in the woods; and Helena never forgot that scene. Except for the slight illumination of the lantern the blackness of the forest was intense, and the rustling of wild things among the tree-tops startled her. Mattie looked up and saw her fear, then laughed hilariously: "Two 'fraid-cats together, you an' the birds! Likely, they never saw a lantern before and hate to be disturbed even more 'n I did, listenin' to Alfaretta in the kitchen. But don't you like it? Ain't it awful solemn in such woods in the night-time? Makes a body think of all the hateful things she's done and sort of wish she hadn't done 'em. But there ain't no livin' thing in these woods'll hurt you, nowadays, though onct they was chock full o' grizzlies an' such. Now I guess that's enough. Don't suppose your folks'd eat a bigger mess 'n that, do you? 'Cause I could take a few more if you say so." Helena looked at the big basket of trout and laughed, then shivered at the echo of her own laughter in that place, which seemed full as "solemn" to her as it did to the more accustomed Mattie. They were soon back at the inn, Mattie at once proceeding to show Alfaretta that she could do some fine cooking herself; and between them they made Mrs. Roderick's larder suffer, so eager was each to outdo the other and to suggest some further delicacy for that wonderful meal. Mrs. Ford paced in and out of the living-room, watchful and still anxious, though greatly amused at the doings of the three girls, and wondering, as well, how the landlady could sleep through all that din and chatter. For Helena, too, had gone into the kitchen and seizing a pitcher of cream Mattie was carrying to the table, demanded a chance to "whip" it. "It's such an improvement, or will be for that good coffee you've made, and Herbert likes it so much." Mattie put her arms akimbo and stared; then demanded, in turn: "Can't you do anything sensibler than 'whip' cream? As if it was bad. You make me laugh, though I don't know what you mean." Helena soon showed her, even with a two-tined steel fork beating the rich cream into a heaped-up, foamy mass, which Mattie declared was the "wonderfulest thing" she had ever seen. They were still discussing the matter, and each sampling the delicacy with relish, when Mrs. Ford's excited voice was heard, calling: "They're coming! Oh! they're coming at last! Away down the road! I can hear them--beyond the turn of the road. Only it seems that they come slowly. Is it so? Or is it my own impatience?" Only Alfaretta stopped to push the pans and pots to the cool, safe end of the great stove, now glowing red in front from the hot fire they had made. The other girls rushed outward to see for themselves, and Alfy reached the piazza just in time to hear Mattie remark: "Yes, they do travel powerful slow. They ain't in no hurry to get here. Somethin's happened. You can just believe me--somethin's happened!" CHAPTER V THE CALL OF THE MOUNTAINS As the approaching company came around the bend of the road into sight of the inn, a "calico" pony detached itself from the group of riders and before those watching on the porch could hear her words, Molly was shouting to them: "We're all right! Everybody is all right--except the one that isn't! And he--Wait, I'm coming!" The three girls ran down the road to meet her, and even Lady Gray walked swiftly after, and in a moment more they had encircled the truant with their loving arms, forgetting that she had given them a needless anxiety. "They weren't Indians at all. They were just our own folks, but Leslie and I were frightened half to death! I don't know what would have become of us except the pony told our story. And he's only smashed up a little some way. They had to hold him on the horse--" "What! Leslie, my Leslie, my boy!" gasped Mrs. Ford. "Leslie? No, indeed! Nothing the matter with him only riding the rack-o'-bones. The 'Tenderfoot' man, and the cowboys say it served him right. Only he got off too easy with just a broken collar bone, and a sprained ankle, and some teeth gone--and a few other trifles like that. He--" "You can get off Chiquita now, Molly. I want to rub her down. Ain't she the best ever?" said Mattie, calmly lifting the rider down from the saddle. "Indeed she is! And how strong you are, to lift a big girl like me!" cried Molly, eagerly. "I do believe your little Chiquita saved our lives, Leslie's and mine." "Tell me what you mean, child. Where is Leslie?" demanded the Gray Lady, placing her hand on Molly's shoulder and peering into her eyes. "Why--I mean, what I say, course, Mrs. Ford. But Leslie's all right now. He's scratched with the briars and torn his clothes and has had to ride double with a cowboy, or drover, because he couldn't stand Beelzebub again. Mr. Roderick is riding that creature and--Here, here they are!" Once in sight of the house most of the party came up at a canter, Mr. Ford cheerfully saluting his wife, and the others waving their hats and showing off a few tricks of their steeds--while Dorothy was handed down from riding-pillion behind her host. Everybody's tongue was loosened at once and such a hubbub arose that Mrs. Ford clapped her hands to her ears, then caught hold of Leslie as he slid to the ground and ran like a girl to the house. She wanted a chance to kiss him before the rest came in and had learned long before this that her boy "hated coddling." However, he submitted to a little of it that night with a better grace than usual, understanding that he had given his mother anxiety; and told her as briefly as possible the whole story. "You see, Lady Gray, that 'Sorrel Tenderfoot' was too smart, so came to grief." "A good lesson to remember, son." "Course. Well, he drove into a road, a trail, and got stuck. The horses bolted, the wagon went to smash and he was hurt. Pretty bad, I guess. The others weren't at all, only frightened and sort of stunned. They were in a tight fix. So dark in there they didn't know which way was out and made up their minds to stay till daylight. That Jim Barlow--I tell you he's great!--he fixed a bed with the wagon cushions and laid 'Sorrel' on it. Then he felt the man all over and saw his legs and arms were sound. After that he got the box of the buckboard right side up and made Dorothy get into that and lie down. He covered her with the robes and made Manuel promise to stay right beside her while he went back for help. Dorothy wouldn't let him go, at first, till he made her ashamed thinking about the 'Tenderfoot.' "He made his way back all that distance to the main road, just by noticing the branches that had been broken by their driving in. He was going to walk back to Denver for help, thinking that was the quickest way, but when he got out of the woods he couldn't go any further. He'd hurt his arm some way--Dad says it's broken--and the pain made him faint. We found him there--I mean the searchers did, and when he came to be told them the rest. "Lem Hunt and Roderick knew exactly where to look. They found the runaway blacks and captured them, or some of the cowboys did, and they made a litter of the wagon box, covered it with branches and carried him out of the woods. They've brought him all the way here for he insisted on coming. Said he'd be better cared for by Mrs. Roderick than at any hospital in Denver. He was sort of crazy and they didn't dare oppose him. That's why they are so slow. But they'll be here soon and he'll be put to bed. Lemuel says the man'll take a blazed trail the rest of his life, and will have time to get over his smartness while his bones heal. But I think it's too bad. I'm sorry for him, and so is Dad. Now, come. They're going to table and I'm hungry as a bear. Isn't it fine of Mrs. Roderick to get a meal this time of night, or day, or whatever hour it is?" "It wasn't Mrs. Roderick. Alfy was the moving spirit and the other girls helped. But not one mouthful shall you have till you confess your own fault. Why did you, Leslie, run away into all that danger against my wishes?" "Why, Molly--" began the lad, then checked himself for shame. "Why, Lady Gray, I couldn't let a girl like Molly ride away alone, could I? And she would go--just would. And the funny part was--we heard 'lions' or 'panthers', or something in the woods behind us. We'd stopped to rest and we thought so. Then we saw the searchers coming back and thought they were Indians! and the way we took to the woods would make you laugh. That's how I got to look like this. We might have been in them yet if little Chiquita hadn't stood like a post right beside the rock where we'd been sitting. Her being there, and Molly's hat and jacket that she'd taken off because she was too warm, told the truth. Dorothy saw the hat and knew it at once. So when Roderick came up and recognized Chiquita they made another search and found--us. But I tell you, Lady Gray, I've had all the lecturing I need just now from the other head of the family. I think Dad would have liked me to ride with him, at first, but he gave me his opinion of a boy who would 'sneak' off and 'leave his mother unprotected in a strange house at night.' Just forgive me this once, motherkin, and I'll be good in future; or till next time, any way. Now, come." Such a meal as followed had rarely been eaten even in that land of hungry people, where the clear air so sharpens appetite; and in the midst of it came the landlady herself, not even showing surprise, and certainly not offence, at the liberties which had been taken in her house. Fortunately, Jim's arm had been bruised and strained, only; not broken as Mr. Ford had feared. Then to bed and a few hours of sleep; another breakfast, as good as the first; after which buckboards were driven round and horses saddled; Herbert, Jim, and Manuel electing to ride while Monty was to travel in the wagon with Silent Pete, as driver. He was the better suited thus because Mr. Ford and Leslie were to be his companions, the gentlemen having arranged matters this time without any casting of lots. Lemuel drove the four-in-hand as on the day before, having as passengers Mrs. Ford and Miss Milliken--who had slept soundly through all the events of the night--with the four girls. Jedediah, Mr. Ford's colored "boy" also rode beside the driver, for the greater protection of the feminine travelers, should any need arise. But nothing did. All the untoward incidents of this journey to the Rockies had happened during its first stage. "Tenderfoot Sorrel" was left behind, of course, but he did not greatly regret that. He felt that he could more easily endure physical pain than the chaffing of his fellows at San Leon. As before, the start was made with a flourish of whip and horn, amid good wishes and farewells from the hosts of the Wayside Inn, and a sure promise to "come again!" Then a day's journey steadily onward and upward, through river-fed valleys and rocky ravines, with a mid-day stop at another little hostelry, for a change of horses and a plain dinner. Then on again, following the sun till it sank behind a mountain range and they had climbed well nigh to the top. Here Mr. Ford ordered a brief halt, that the travellers might look behind them at the glorious landscape. When they had done so, till the scene was impressed upon their memories forever, again the order came: "Eyes front! but shut! No peeping till I say--Look!" Laughing, finding it ever so difficult to obey, but eager, indeed, the last ascent was made. Then the wheels seemed to have found a level stretch of smoother travelling and again came Mr. Ford's cry: "All eyes front and--open! Welcome to San Leon!" Open they did. Upon one of the loveliest homes they had ever beheld. A long, low, roomy building, modelled in the Mission style that Lady Gray so greatly admired; whose spacious verandas and cloistered walks invited to delightful days out of doors; while everywhere were flowers in bloom, fountains playing, vine-clad arbors and countless cosy nooks, shadowed by magnificent trees. A lawn as smooth as velvet, dotted here and there by electric light poles whose radiance could turn night into day. For a moment nobody spoke; then admiration broke forth in wondering exclamations, while the host helped his wife to alight, asking: "Well, Erminie, does it suit you?" "Suit? Dear, I never dreamed of anything better than a plain shack on a mountain side. That's what you called it--but this--this is no shack. It's more like a palace!" "Well, the main thing is to make it a home." "Is it as good as the 'cabin,' father?" asked Leslie, coming up and laying his hand on Mr. Ford's shoulder. "Let us hope it will be! If the first inmates are peace and good will. Peace and good will," he repeated, gravely. Then his accustomed gayety replaced his seriousness and he waved his hand toward the entrance, saying: "Queen Erminie, enter in and possess your kingdom! Your maids of honor with you!" "My heart!" cried Alfaretta, following her hostess, like a girl in a dream. "I thought 'twould be just another up-mounting sort of place, not near so nice as Deerhurst or the Towers, but it's splendid more 'n they are, either one or both together." "Wonderful, what money can do in this land of the free!" remarked Herbert, critically estimating the establishment. "Think of a man having his own electric light plant away up here! Why, if it weren't for the mountains yonder one could fancy this is Newport or Long Branch." "Without the sea, Bert. Even money can't bring the sea to the mountain-tops," said Helena, though her own face was aglow with admiration. "It can do the next best thing to it. Look yonder," said Monty, pointing where a glimmer of sunset-tinted water showed through a hedge of trees. "Let's go there. It certainly is water," urged Jim Barlow. "Well, Leslie told me there was a strange waterfall near San Leon and I suppose the same money has pressed that into service. To think! That 'Railroad Boss' earned his first quarter selling papers on the train! He was talking about the 'cabin' as we came along. It had two rooms and he lived in it alone with his mother. By his talk they hadn't always been so poor and she belonged to an old family, as 'families go in America.' That was the way he put it, and it was his ambition to see his mother able to take 'the place where she belonged.' That's how he began; and now, look at this!" All the young people had now gathered around the pond, or lake, that had been made in a natural basin on the mountain side, for thinking that their host and hostess would better like to enter their new home with no strangers about them, Dorothy had suggested: "Let's follow the boys! Jim's arm ought to be looked after, first thing, and I'll remind him of it. He'd no business to come on horseback all that long way, but he never would take care of himself." "Has Leslie ever been here before?" asked Molly Breckenridge. "No. It is as much a surprise to him as to his mother. But he's mighty proud of his father," answered Dorothy. "Look, here he comes now." He came running across the sward and down the rocky path to the edge of the lake and clapped a hand on the shoulders of Herbert and Montmorency. He did not mean to be less cordial to Jim Barlow but he was. For two reasons: one that Dorothy had extolled her humble friend till he seemed a paragon of all the virtues; and secondly what he had learned of Jim's eagerness for knowledge had made him ashamed of his own indifference to it. Even that day, his father had commended the poorer boy for his keen observation of everything and read him a portion of a letter received from Dr. Sterling, the clergyman with whom James lived and studied. The Doctor had written that the lad was already well versed in natural history and that his interest in geology was as great as the writer's own. He felt that this invitation to his beloved protégé was a wonderful thing for the student, and that Mr. Ford might feel he was having a hand in the formation of a great scientist. There had been more of the same sort of praise and Leslie had looked with simple amazement at the tall, awkward youth, who had arrived in Denver with the rest of his young guests. "That fellow smart? Clever? Brainy? Well, he doesn't look it. If ever I saw a regular clodhopper, he's the chap. But that Herbert Montaigne, now, is rippin'! He has the right 'air,' and so has the shorty, the fat Monty, only his figure is against him," he had remarked to Mateo, who had instantly agreed with him. Indeed, the Mexican _never_ disagreed with his "gracious excellency, Señor Leslie." Mateo's service was an easy one and his salary good. Besides, he was really fond of his young master and formed all his opinions in accordance. So then he, too, cast a supercilious glance at Jim, and had caused that shy lad's color to rise, though beyond that he took no notice. Already as they stood there gazing over the lake, crimson with the last rays of the sun, Jim was studying the rocks upon the farther side and squinting his eyes at something moving among them. It was with a startled return to his surroundings that he heard Leslie now say: "My father wants to have you come in, Mr.--I mean James. The doctor is going to properly dress your arm." "The doctor? Is there a doctor here?" asked Dorothy, slipping her hand under Jim's uninjured arm, and conveying by that action her sympathy with his feeling of an alien. But he coolly drew aside. He wasn't going to be humiliated by any girl's cossetting, not even hers. He had never realized his poverty so bitterly, nor been more ashamed of that fact. Just because some richer boys looked down upon him was no reason he should look down upon himself. Also, it angered him that he really needed surgical attention. He had suffered intensely during the ride hither but he had kept that to himself. He meant to keep it to himself whatever happened, and to join in what was going on as if he were physically sound as the other boys. "It's only my left arm, anyway. I'd be a poor stick of a thing if I couldn't manage with the other," he had thought, bravely, despite the pain. Now here was he being made the object of everybody's notice; and, being Jim--he hated it! There was a surly look in his eyes as he replied to Leslie's message: "I guess not. I mean--there isn't any need--I'm all right. I'm all right, I say. I'm--Shucks! I'm bully!" It was Dorothy who blushed this time, she was so mortified by the rudeness of her "paragon." Whenever had he used such an expression? She flashed an indignant glance upon him, then coolly commanded him: "You come right straight along, James Barlow. You're Mr. Ford's guest now and must do what he wants, just the same as if he were Dr. Sterling. Besides, I know we all ought to be freshening ourselves before supper. Lady Gray hates untidy people. Come on." Again she linked her arm in Jim's and led the way up the slope toward the house, while at the mention of supper all the others fell into line behind her. And now Jim was already ashamed of his petulance with her. After all, she was the prettiest girl of them all; and, so far as he knew, the richest. She was "thoroughbred;" her family one of the oldest in its native State; and though the poorhouse boy had no family pride of his own he was loyal to old Maryland and his earliest friend. What had not Dolly been to him? His first teacher, his loving companion, and the means of all that was good coming into his life. "Say, Dolly, I'm sorry I said that and shamed you. Sorry I'm such a conceited donkey as to hate being looked down on. You just keep me posted on what's what, little girl, and I'll try to behave myself. But it beats creation, to find such a place as this up here on the Rockies and to know one man's done it. Kind of takes a feller's breath away, don't it?" They were a little ahead of the rest of the party and able to talk freely, so Dorothy improved the chance to give "her boy Jim" a little lecture; suggesting that he must never stop short of accomplishing just as much as Daniel Ford had done. "What one poor lad can do, another can--if he will! _If he will_, James Barlow! It's just the _will_, you see. There was a copy in my old writing-book: 'What man has done, man can do.'" "Shucks! I'm ambitious enough, but 'tain't along no money lines. What I want is learnin'--just plain knowledge. I wrote a copy once, too, and 'twas that 'Knowledge is Power.' I made them capitals the best I could so 't I never would forget 'em." "Huh! For such a wise young man you talk pretty common. There's no need, Jim Barlow, for you to go back into all the bad grammar and chipped-off words just because you're talking to--me. I notice you are very particular and careful when you speak to our hosts. Oh, Jim! isn't this going to be just a glorious summer? Except when I think about Aunt Betty I'm almost too happy to breathe." Jim had stumbled along beside her, unseeing the objects that were nearest--the lovely shrubbery, beautiful flowers, and quaint little furnishings of that grand lawn--but with his eyes fixed on a distant mountain peak, bare of verdure, and seemingly but a mass of vari-colored rock; and he now remarked: "I wonder how much of this country that Dan Ford owns! I wonder if he's got a claim on the peaks yonder!" "Come back to earth, boy! Can't you think anything, see anything but--stones? Here we are at the door and I fancy this gentleman is the doctor. Good evening, sir." "Is this the lad with the injured arm?" asked the gentleman meeting the pair, and glancing toward Jim's bandaged arm, with the coat sleeve hanging loose above it. "Yes, sir, but it's nothing. It doesn't need any attention," said Jim, ungraciously. "Behave yourself, Jim. Yes, Doctor--I suppose you're that?--he is so badly hurt that he's cross. But it's wonderful to find a doctor away up here," said Dorothy. Her odd little air of authority over the great, loutish lad, and her gay smile to himself, instantly won the stranger's liking, and he answered warmly: "Wonderful, maybe, but no more so than all of Dan Ford's doings. Step this way, my son, and Miss, I fancy you'd best not follow just yet. Nurse Melton will assist me, if I need assistance." "A nurse, too? How odd!" said Dorothy turning to join her mates. She did not see Jim Barlow again that night. When the examination was made the doctor found the injured arm in bad shape, swollen and inflamed to a degree that made great care a necessity unless much worse were to follow. So, for the first time in his healthy life, Jim found himself an invalid; sent to bed and ministered to by a frail, sweet-faced woman in a white uniform, whose presence on that far away ranch was a puzzle to him. Until, seeing his evident curiosity, she satisfied it by the explanation: "Oh! I'm merely another of Mr. Ford's beneficiaries. My brother is an engineer on one of his railroads, and he heard that I was threatened with consumption. So he had me sent to Denver for a time, till San Leon was ready. Then I came here. I'm on hand to attend any sick folks who may need me, though you're the first patient yet. I can tell you that you're fortunate to number Daniel Ford among your friends. He's the grandest man in the world." Jim lay quiet for a time, till his supper was brought in. But he could not taste that. The dressing of his wounded arm had been painful in extreme, though he had borne the pain without a groan, and for that been greatly admired by both the surgeon and the nurse. He was now feverish and discontented. The "happy summer" of which Dorothy had boasted was beginning anything but happily for him. He was angry against his own weakness and disappointed that he could not at once begin his work of studying the rocks of this region. To do so had been his chief reason for accepting Mr. Ford's genial invitation, for his shyness shrank from meeting strangers and accepting favors from them. Dr. Sterling had talked him "out of his nonsense" for the time being, but he now wished himself back in his familiar room at Deerhurst lodge, with Hans and Griselda Roemer. They were humble folk and so was he. He had no business in this rich man's "shack" that was, in reality, a palace; where pleasure was the rule and work the exception. Well--things might happen! He'd take care they should! He was among the mountains--for that part he was glad; only regretful of the debt to another which had brought him there. The hum of voices in and about the big house ceased. Even the barking dogs were silent at last, and the music from the men's quarters, stopped. There was where he, Jim belonged, by right. Out in some of the many buildings at the rear; so many, in fact, that they were like a village. He guessed he'd go there. Yes. In the morning, maybe the Boss would give him a job, and he could work to pay his keep. His thoughts grew wilder and more disordered, his head ached. The nurse was sitting silent in an adjoining room. Actual watching was unnecessary and she understood her patient's mood, that her presence in his chamber worried him. It was his time--now or never. He crept from his bed and stepped out of the low window upon the wide porch. Even in his delirious confusion it struck him that he had never seen such wonderful moonlight, nor such a big, inviting world. The vagary of thought altered. He would not seek the workmen's quarters, after all. The mountains were better. They called him. They did not seem far away. He would not feel so hot and then so shivery if he could lie down on their cool tops, with only the sky above him. Aye, they called him; and blindly answering to their silent summons the sick boy went. The things he prophesied had surely begun to "happen." CHAPTER VI A MARTINET OF THE ROCKIES San Leon ranch was a large one. The dwelling house and many outbuildings were upon a rich plateau topping a spur from the great mountain beyond. On one side, the land sloped to the valley of the Mismit, utilized for the sheep farming; and across the river, or run, rose grassy fields, climbing one above another till they ended in rocky, verdureless soil. Here were the cattle ranges, and here the herds of horses lived their free life. The extent of the property amazed the newcomers, even Lady Gray herself. She was exploring the premises escorted by Leslie and her young guests, and piloted by the talkative Lem Hunt. For once he had attentive listeners. There was no fellow ranchmen to ridicule his oft-told tales, but eager ears to which they were new; and eyes as eager to behold the scenes of these same marvellous stories. All began and ended with "The Boss, he." Evidently, for old Lem, there existed but one man worth knowing and that was the "Boss, he." "I s'pose, Ma'am, you know how the Boss, he come to buy S' Leon. No? You don't? By the Great Horned Spoon! Ain't that great? Just like him. The Boss, he never brags of his doin's, that's why I have to do it for him. Well, Ma'am, I can't help sayin' 'twas a deed o' charity. Just a clean, simon-pure piece of charity. Yes, Ma'am, that's what it was, and you can bite that off an' chew it." Mrs. Ford smiled. She was always delighted to hear of her husband's generous deeds but rarely heard of them from himself. Also, she had supposed that the purchase of San Leon had been a recent one and was amazed now to learn it had been owned by Mr. Ford for several years. Not as it then was, for no improvements had been made to the home-piece till after he had found her that last winter in San Diego. Then, at once, preparations had been made for this home-coming, with the result of all the beauty that now greeted her eyes. "Tell us, Lemuel. I'm anxious to hear." Lem switched some hay from a wagon seat, that stood upon the ground, and motioned the lady to be seated. The youngsters grouped about her, Lem cut off a fresh "chaw," rubbed his hands and began. He stood with legs far apart, arms folded, an old sombrero pushed back on his head, a riding crop in hand, and an air of a king. Was he not a free-born American citizen, as good as could be found in all the country? Lemuel adored his "Boss" but he had not learned the manners which that "Boss" would have approved in the presence of the Gray Lady; who, by the way, was never more truly the "Lady" than in her intercourse then, and always, with the toilers at San Leon. "Well, sir, Ma'am, I mean--'twas really a deed o' gift. There was another railroader, rich once, done somethin' he hadn't ought to. I don't rightly know what that was. The Boss never told, course, and it never leaked out otherwise. That's no more here nor there. But he, the other feller, had his bottom dollar into S' Leon, and some dollars 't wasn't his 'n. He was countin' on this range bein' chock full o' silver an' he'd wheedled the rest to takin' his word for it. Silver? Not on your life. The sheriffs got after him. He hadn't a friend in the world. He lit out a-foot and got as far as Denver city an' aboard a train. Leastwise, under a baggage car, stealin' a ride. Course he got hurt. Happened the Boss, he was on hand. He's a way of bein' when other folks is in trouble. Heard the feller's story. Had knowed him out east and 'lowed he was more fool than knave. Long-short was--S' Leon swopped owners. The first named had had to take his medicine an' I've been told he took it like a little man. The Boss paid in full, on condition 't all hands round got their level dues. Atterwards, the Boss made this a dumpin'-ground for all the down-in-the-world unfortunates he knew. "The doctor's one. He was just dyin' back yonder, same as Miss Melton. Doc, he took the place o' book-keeper, sort o' manager--I claim to be that myself--but to do anything needed. The's always somebody gettin' broke, legs, an' arms, and such. But as for gineral sickness, why there ain't never been none o' that to San Leon. No wonder that Dan Ford's a prosperous man! He lives his religion--he ain't no preachin'-no-practice-sky-pilot, the Boss, he ain't. "Ma'am? Like to see where the boys hang out? Well, come along. If things ain't the way I'd like to have 'em, you c'n allow 't I'm the only one's been in the ranks. Yes, Ma'am. I have that. Used to belong to a crack comp'ny out home and was one the picked men to shoot at Seagirt, New Jarsey. The National Rifle Range, Ma'am, as maybe you know. I've scored highest, more 'n once. That's how I come to sort o' set up in business out here. Shootin' an' hosses; them's my business; and every tenderfoot strikes S' Leon comes under my teachin' first or last." With that remark he cast a critical eye upon the assembled young folks and noted the kindling gleam of seven pairs of eyes. Only Jim Barlow's blue orbs were missing; but, of course, that nurse or doctor had made him stay in bed, which was a shame, the others thought, and Dorothy loyally expressed: "Course! That's one the things we're all wild to do--learn to handle a rifle. But don't let's begin till Jim gets well." A curious expression passed over Mrs. Ford's face. She was the only one present who knew of Jim's midnight escape. The knowledge had almost miraculously been kept from Lemuel and by the master's express orders. Whatever that talkative ranchman knew, all the world knew, as fast as his tongue could tell it. All had been so quiet in the sick room that the nurse had supposed her patient fallen asleep; and it was not till daybreak that she discovered his absence. She had immediately informed Dr. Jones, and he, in turn, the "Boss," who understanding the shy nature of the truant and knowing how he would dislike to be talked about, had instituted a quiet but thorough search. Only the trustiest men had been set upon this search, Mr. Ford taking the most active part in it. By his request the matter had been kept from his young guests, also; and they were to be made as happy as possible in their ignorance. As he said to Lady Gray, before leaving her: "Of course, we shall find him in a very little while. He can't have gone far afield, and we'll have him back in bed before any of those youngsters get wind of his performance. Nurse says he was flighty and feverish and I don't wonder. Doctor claims he'd rather have had a clean, sharp break to mend than all those bruised and torn ligaments. However, don't you worry. This party is going to be a success--don't doubt. Sorry to leave you with seven young folks on your hands--a little world in themselves, of varying ideas and wills. They can easily spend this first half-day in inspecting the ranch and, if they're as healthy and happy as they seem, will be too interested to give much thought to Master James. Good-by, don't worry." However, although they felt it would be well to wait for the injured Jim before beginning their lessons in shooting, Lemuel himself took the matter out of their hands, explaining: "I've lived long enough to know there ain't never but one time to do one thing, an' that if a feller don't snatch it then, afore it gets out o' reach, he'll be sorry forever atterwards. We'll go inspect the boys' quarters first hand. That's a part o' my business, anyway. Makes 'em mad, sometimes, but it's for their good. Nothin' like the army for trainin' folks right, an' so I tell 'em. Get jawed for it a pretty consid'able, but Lemuel G. W. Hunt--I'm named for the Father of my Country, Ma'am--Lemuel G. W. Hunt always does his duty, let come what follers atterwards. Right this way, Ma'am. Hep, hep, hep, right face!" The odd fellow led off with a military step and catching his humor the boys did likewise. Then, the girls laughed and marched, Herbert gallantly escorting Mrs. Ford, as the eighth of the little "Company A," as Leslie immediately named the new "awkward squad." "And I say, Lem, it'll be just rippin' if you'll drill us in regular 'tactics.' Once a day, anyhow. I'll get Dad to furnish the uniforms and it'll be a help because, you know, I'm bound for West Point sometime," cried Leslie. Lady Gray's face resumed its look of anxiety that had passed for a moment, listening to Lemuel's talk. This West Point ambition of her son's was a sore subject with her, though his great desire for a military life had never been hidden from her. "If I can pass the physical exam., and the book one--either," he added, with a grimace. "Well, you'll have to know a power more 'n you do now, if you get into that place," said truthful Alfy. "I've heard Mis' Judge Satterlee, up-mounting, tell 't her boy near studied his head off, an' then got shut out. It's a terrible fine thing, though, if a body could. Why, up-mounting, we can hear the bands playin', guns firin', and Dolly there, she's seen 'em drill. Seen the battery-drill, she called it, and didn't guess how in the world them gray-coated boys could hop on-an'-off their gun wagons like they did. When I get home, I mean to go over to the Point myself and see 'em. If you should be there I'd take you something to eat." Leslie was now much more interested in hearing about the place of his dreams than in the present inspection of San Leon; and encouraged by this Alfaretta made Dolly tell how she and Molly had once visited the Academy and Molly's cadet cousin, Tom Hungerford. Molly interrupted the narrative with frequent comments and they all paused at the entrance to the Barracks, as Lemuel had named the long building of the workmen, while the story was told. Lemuel and Leslie were the most eager listeners, both faces alight with enthusiasm, as the two girls described their day at the military school. "Tom got leave off, to show us around, and Aunt Betty with Mrs. Hungerford--" "That's Aunt Lucretia, Tom's mother," explained Molly. "You tell it, Molly. You can do it better," urged Dorothy. "All right. I'd rather. Well, we went down in the morning early, on the boat, to be in time for early drill. It was summer time and the darling cadets were all in their white uniforms, fresh as daisies. Do you know those poor lambs have to change their white suits every day? Some oftener, if they get a single speck of dirt on them. Their laundry bills are something terrible. Terrible! poor dears!" Lady Gray laughed at the girl's sympathy with the afflicted young soldiers, and Dolly took up the tale again: "Well, they needn't worry. The Government pays for it, really. They just get a little salary each month and their expenses come out of that. Whatever else they have their own people give them. But, anyway, it was just lovely. If I were a boy and didn't want to be a great scientist, like Jim does, or a banker like Monty, or--or anything else, I'd be an army man." "Bother what you'd be, Dolly. You're only a girl. Go on with the story," said impatient Leslie, while Lemuel nodded his head in satisfaction. Talk of soldiering touched the warmest spot in the old sharpshooter's heart. "Do hurry up." "Why, after all, there isn't much to tell--" "But there is," cried Molly. "About the luncheon in the church. Listen. We went everywhere about the grounds, saw the riding-school, the mess-room, the dancing-hall and all, a lot of places. Oh! yes, the library, too. Then it got noon and hungry-time and we'd brought an elegant lunch. Cold chicken and sardines and sandwiches and early peaches--the nicest we could get, and Tom's 'leave' gave him a chance to eat it with us. We asked him where we could and he thought a minute, then said in the church. Aunty Lu thought that was dreadful, to eat in a church! But Tom said it was the only place on the Point where we wouldn't be stared at by others. Folks were everywhere else; cadets and visitors--and oh! It was so pretty. All the white tents on the campus and the darling boys walking about in their white--" "Nighties?" suggested Monty, maliciously. It had been an ambition of his own to enter the Academy; but his being under age, his size--and several other good reasons, including his utter want of fitness in the matter of book learning--had prevented the realization of this fine dream. His failure had rendered him skeptical of the charms of the famous institution, and he now always mentioned it as a place quite beneath his own notice. The story promised to be a long one and Lemuel thoughtfully produced a chair and placed it for Mrs. Ford's use. Her eyes were on Leslie's interested face and she would gladly have postponed the recital; for, even more than the disgruntled Monty, she disliked the very name of West Point. However, in this matter, as in many future ones, her own fancy was to be set aside by the eagerness of her young guests. So Dorothy went on: "There wasn't anybody else in the church except ourselves. A few visitors came to the door and peeped in, to see a famous painting over the chancel, but finding us there went away again. That old church is so interesting! Tablets to famous generals everywhere--" "This isn't a history lesson! Go on with the story!" cried Herbert, who was so familiar with West Point that he desired no fresh description. Molly made him a little mocking face and herself took up the tale: "Well, we had our dinners there, sitting in some of the front pews, and the way Tom walked into that fried chicken and things would make you open your eyes. We were all hungry, course, after so early a breakfast, and the sail down, and all; but Tom was simply ravenous. He was so hungry he took away our own appetites, just watching. When he'd eaten all he could there was still a lot of stuff left; and Mrs. Calvert asked him if he knew any place where we could dispose of it; a garbage can, she meant, or some waste-box. "Tom said yes he did, and if she'd excuse him he'd show her. It was what he called 'slumgudgeon day.' 'Slumgudgeon' is a kind of stew made up of the leavings of lots of other meals and the poor, darling cadets just hate it. He said 'cold victuals' never came in as handy as ours did then. So he unbuttoned his jacket, that fitted him as if he'd been melted into it, and began to pad himself out with the leavings. Cake and chickens, pickles and sardines, boiled eggs and fruit--you never saw such a mess! And the way he packed it in, so as to keep an even sort of front, was a caution. You know the poor dears have no pockets in their uniforms. Not allowed. So that was the only way he could take it. He wanted to share it with his cronies after we'd gone and told Aunty Lu that it would have been a perfectly wicked shame to have thrown it away, when it would do him so much good. Oh! we had a glorious time. I do just love West Point--" "The cadets, you mean! I never saw a girl that liked the boys so well as you do, Molly Breckenridge. But I s'pose you can't help it. If 't wasn't for that you'd be just splendid, and _they_ don't seem to mind--much--anyway," remarked Alfaretta, beaming upon pretty Molly with loving smiles. Molly's liking for "boys" seemed to honest, sensible Alfy the one flaw in an otherwise lovely character. But Molly tossed her sunny head and laughed. Also, she flashed a mischievous glance into all the boyish faces turned toward her and on every one she saw a similar liking and admiration of herself. She was quite satisfied, was Jolly Molly. "Now, if we are to 'inspect' the 'Barracks,' isn't it time? So that we can get back to the house by the time James Barlow is ready to see us. I suppose the doctor won't keep him in bed all day; do you, Mrs. Ford?" said Helena Montaigne. She had already learned that the Gray Lady was bitterly opposed to Leslie's plans for the future and wanted to put aside the unfortunate subject of West Point. To her surprise, instead of lightening, the lady's face grew still more troubled, as she turned to scan the landscape behind her with a piercing gaze. "That story was just rippin'! When I get to the Point the first place I shall go to see will be that church! Hear me, Dorothy Doodles?" demanded Leslie, catching her hand and swinging it lightly as he led her forward into the first room Lemuel had opened. "Will you come over there and bring me just another such a luncheon, girlie?" "Well, yes. I don't like to promise things but I guess this is safe enough. When you get there--_when you get there_--I'll come, and you shall have the finest dinner Alfy and I can cook. We'll do it all by ourselves--_when you get there to eat it_!" "Oh! I'll be there, never fear. My! isn't this rippin'? How does the old soldier make the men keep such order, I wonder! Lem Hunt must be as great a martinet as he is talker. Look at him." The ranchman was in his element. He had long before marshalled the entire working force of San Leon into a "regiment." Any newcomer who declined to join it was promptly "left out in the cold." The "soldiers" were jolly company for themselves and none at all for any outsider who refused to obey the unwritten laws which honest old Lem had laid down for their benefit. "Captain Lem" was the neatest man of all, but he required the rest to come as near his standard as the disadvantages of previous bad training permitted. Now, in imitation of that West Point discipline he admired, he had pulled from his pocket a white linen handkerchief and was passing it gently but firmly over the few simple furnishings of this first apartment in the long row. It belonged to Silent Pete, just then engaged breaking to harness a spirited colt, exercising it around and around the smooth driveways of the "home piece." He was not so far away that he could not perfectly see what was going on at the "Barracks," and even at that distance his grizzled cheek flushed. He had risen late and been remiss in his room-cleaning. He hoped old Lem would forget to mention who was the occupant of that cell-like place, and, for once, he did. There was dust on the chest of drawers which held Peter's belongings, the cot was just as he had crawled out of it at daybreak, a horsewhip and blankets littered the floor, and the "Martinet" was so ashamed of the whole appearance of things that, after one hasty test with the handkerchief, he withdrew carrying the company with him. Yet, before leaving, he had drawn a piece of chalk from the band of his sombrero and made a big cross upon the dusty chest. Silent Pete would know what that meant: mounting guard for three nights to come! and a grim smile twisted Lemuel's lips, reflecting what that meant to one of his "Squad." The visitors had smiled, too, but with amusement at this odd old ranchman's discipline; and Monty had whispered: "What makes 'em put up with it? What right has he to order them around?" But Leslie, the young master of San Leon, was as much in the dark as any other stranger, and could only answer: "Suppose it's because he's a leader. Born that way, just as my father was, though it's a different way, of course. Otherwise, I can't guess. But I'm wild to get at the shooting lessons. I hope the rest of you are, too. The first step to becoming a real 'wild westerner' is to know how to handle the 'irons.' He's rippin', Lem is. But come on. He's getting away from us. I wish poor old Jim was here. It's a pity anybody has to be sick in such a place as this. I tell you, boys, I was never so proud of Dad as I am now, when I look around and see what a ranch he's got--earned--right out of his own head-piece! I don't see where he is! I wish he was here. I'd ask him about those uniforms and I'd get him to let old Lem off every other duty, just to teach us. Dad's a sort of sharpshooter himself. Once he--No matter. That story'll keep. Lady Gray is calling us." They had lingered to inspect some of the ranchmen's belongings, as they passed from room to room, Lady Gray and the girls going forward in Lemuel's company. She was beckoning her son and asked, as he came running up: "Please go across the lawn and ask Miss Milliken to join us. She went to her room to write letters, immediately after breakfast, but I see she's come out now and I don't want her to feel lonely nor neglected." Leslie darted away, but returned again to say: "She doesn't want to come, just now. She wants Jim Barlow. Says she went to his room but the nurse said he wasn't in. Jim knows about some books she wants to send for, when the mail-bag is sent out. Do you know where he is? Or father? 'Tisn't half-fun, this inspection of San Leon without Dad here to tell us things. I haven't seen him this morning, any more than I have Jim. Do you know where they are?" Poor Lady Gray was not much better at keeping secrets than old Lemuel was. She had had to put a great constraint upon herself not to reveal the anxiety which consumed her. Hours had now passed since Mr. Ford had ridden away, with a couple of men attending him. All the other men not absolutely required to look after the place had been despatched to search on foot. Their long-delayed return seemed to prove the matter of the sick boy's disappearance a more serious one than at first imagined. Her answer was a sudden wringing of her white hands and the tremulous cry: "No, no, I don't. Pray God, no tragedy marks the opening of our home!" CHAPTER VII A RIFLE PRACTICE "Mother, what do you mean? Don't turn so white and do speak! What 'tragedy' could have happened up here in this lovely place?" demanded Leslie, putting his arm around the lady's shoulders and wondering if she had suddenly become ill. She was slender but had never complained of any weakness, nor shown the least fatigue during her long care of him at San Diego. Since then, she had been like a happy girl with him and his father but something was amiss with her now. In a moment she had calmed herself and was already blaming herself for her disobedience to her husband's request for silence. However, this last matter was a small one; for, if the missing lad was not soon found, all would have to know it. Indeed, it might be better that they did so now. They knew him better than his hosts did and possibly might give a clue to his whereabouts. So she told them all she knew, and the surmise that he had wandered away in a fit of delirium. The very telling restored her own courage, and, as yet, there was little fear showing upon the faces of her young guests. Except on Dorothy's. Her brown eyes were staring wide and all the pretty color of her cheeks had faded. As if she saw a vision the others could not she stood clasping and unclasping her hands, and utterly sick at heart for the loss of her early friend. Longer than she had known any of these here about her she had known poor Jim. He had saved her life, or she believed so, in her childhood that now seemed far away. But for Jim, the poorhouse boy, she had never escaped from Mrs. Stott's truck-farm when she had been kidnapped and hidden there. He had stood by her in all her little troubles, had praised and scolded her, and known her through and through. It was her talk about him which had made Mr. Ford invite him to San Leon--to his death, maybe. That thought was too much. Clinching her small hands and stamping her little foot she defied even death to hurt poor Jim, good Jim, brainy Jim, who was to astonish the world some day by his wisdom! "Oh! If you'd only have told me before! I would have had him found long, long ago! To think of that poor fellow wandering around alone, sick, crazy, suffering--not knowing where he was or what he was doing! And we strolling around, looking at old 'Barracks' and things, and telling silly stories of silly picnics! It was cruel, cruel! Come, Alfy. You like him, too. You don't look down on my poor boy--you come and help me find him!" She seized her old friend's hand and ran toward the house, which now looked anything save beautiful in her sight; and, turning, she saw the lake, gleaming in the noonday sun as it gleamed in the red rays of sunset with Jim there to admire it. "The lake! He's drowned! That's where he is, our Jim! In the bottom of that horrible lake!" Catching Alfaretta's hand more firmly she drew that frightened girl along with her to the edge of the pond and to a little boat that was moored there. Both lake and boat were merely toylike in proportion and the bottom of the pond was pebble-strewn and plainly visible through the clear, shallow water. "He ain't--he--ain't--he can't--you could see--him--He isn't--Oh! Dolly, Dolly Doodles! I'm sick! It makes me feel terrible queer!" wailed Alfaretta. "But Jim can't--Jim can't be drowned! _He can't!_" "Yes he can, too. Shut up. Help me untie that rope. Get in. Take an oar. Row--row, I tell you," snapped Dorothy, distraught. "I can't. I dassent! I never touched to row an oar in my life. Not in my whole life long, and--I--I shan't do it now!" retorted the mountaineer with equal crispness. But she had no need to try. The whole party had followed Dorothy to the water's edge and had divined her intent. Not one believed that Jim was drowned, though they could have given no good reason for this disbelief. Only that was too horrible. Such a thing would not have been permitted! Yet Herbert, as the best oarsman there and also as the loyal friend of the missing lad, assumed the place Alfy would not take. Without a word he did what Dorothy desired. He slipped the painter from its post, helped the girl to take her seat in the little "Dorothy," even smiling as he observed that it had been named for her, and quietly pushed out from shore. It was just as Alfy had said: the bottom of the lake was clearly visible everywhere, and no frightful object marred its beauty. Dorothy was utterly quiet now but her searching gaze never lifted from the water, as Herbert patiently rowed around and around. The group on the bank waited also in silence, though certain after that first circuit of the pond that Jim was not there. When they had gone around several times, and had crossed and criss-crossed in obedience to Dorothy's nod, Herbert brought the boat back to the little landing and helped Dorothy out. "He isn't there, Gray Lady. May I go to the doctor?" "Surely. I'll go with you. And don't look so tragic, darling. The boy will certainly be found. There will nothing else be done at San Leon until he is. Both my husband and myself agree on that point--that Jim Barlow's safety is our first consideration. He will probably be found near at hand, although--" "Hasn't he been looked for 'near at hand,' then, dear Gray Lady?" "Certainly. At the beginning. We didn't think he could have wandered far, yet when they failed to find him on the home-grounds, the searchers spread out in all directions. Here is the doctor coming now, if you wish to speak with him." "Thank you, I do." The gentleman came toward them and Dorothy ran to meet him. "Oh! sir, have you found him?" A negative shake of the head answered her. Then she plied him with all sorts of questions: how long could a sick boy live exposed to the night air, as Jim had been; without food or medicine; and couldn't he think of some place that nobody else had searched, so she might go and try it? He laid his hand upon her head and gently asked: "Was he your brother, little girl?" "No. I haven't any brother. I haven't anybody but Jim, that has known me always, seems if, and--and dear Doctor, won't you please, please find him?" Clasping her hands about his arm she looked up piteously into his face, and his own grew pitiful as he answered: "I will do my utmost. What I hope is that he will wander back, of his own will, just as he wandered away. Be sure I shall keep a sharp lookout, but it is Mr. Ford's wish that I do not leave the home-place till--at present. If he is found, I mean _when_ he is found, he will need my care and it wouldn't do for me to be away then. Else I should have gone out with one of the searching parties." That "when he is found" was reassuring. Evidently, the doctor expected the speedy return of the lad and all were relieved, even Dorothy. Alfaretta expressed her own feeling by saying: "Out here in this Colorado, seems if there wasn't anything but folks gettin' lost and other folks searching for 'em. I never heard anything like it," she finished with a sigh. The sigh was echoed by all the rest; then Mrs. Ford suggested: "Let us have luncheon now, then call on Lemuel to give us our first lesson in rifle-firing." She assumed a cheerfulness she did not really feel, but felt that the happiness of so many should not be spoiled by the absence of one. "Oh! Lady Gray, will you practice with us?" asked Leslie, eagerly. "To be sure. I'm going to 'play pretend,' as children say, that I'm just as young as any of you. In my busy life I've not had much time for 'playing' but I mean to make up for lost time. Come, I'm sure that Wun Sing has made something nice for us. He--" "Wun Sing! _Wun Sing?_ Why that was the name of Aunt Betty's cook at _El Paraiso_! How odd that yours should have the same name!" exclaimed Dorothy, forgetting her troubles for the moment. "Not so odd, dearie, because it is the same man. He came to Mr. Ford one day while we were still in San Diego and confessed his regret for his behavior at Mrs. Calvert's home. And my good Daniel can never turn his back upon any penitent; so the result is the Chinaman reigns in our kitchen here. Doubtless he'll be pleased to see Alfaretta who taught him so many fine dishes." "Oh! good! May we go see him, Mrs. Ford?" demanded that young person, eager not only to see Wun Sing because he was one more familiar acquaintance but because she wished to settle a few old scores. "I'm so glad! I'll make him toe the mark here, see if I don't. Come on, Dolly Doodles, he's an old friend of yours, too." Alfy's eagerness infected even anxious Dorothy and gave an agreeable turn to the thoughts of all. So, at a nod of consent, the girls sped along the cloister, seeking the great kitchen and the salaaming grinning Chinaman within it. "Oh! how good you look, Wunny! Same old purple sack! same old shoes; same old twisted cue around your same old shiny black head! Same old nasty messes cooking! and same old Alfaretta to get after you with a sharp stick!" cried Leslie bursting in with all the others. Even Dorothy was laughing now, Jim quite forgot, while the cook held such a reception as had never been his before. Leslie went through some formal introductions, beginning with the lady of the mansion and ending with Miss Milliken, who had followed unseen till now. Wun Sing's back must have ached, so often and so low he bowed, while his tongue mumbled compliments to the most gracious and honorable visitors; but a look of real delight was on his swarthy face and one of great affection for smiling Alfaretta. "My heart! Ain't it just grand to find an old friend up here on the mountains! I declare, it does beat the Dutch!" and to this, her expression of greatest wonderment, Leslie added his own: "Just downright rippin'! He's worth all he costs just to make our Dolly forget that horrid Jim Barlow. I can't forgive him for running away and stirring up all this mess, sending Dad off on a tiresome ride and spoiling sport this way. He was good enough, I'd have treated him decent, all right, but I wish now he'd never been heard of." But the most of this was whispered in his mother's ear, as he stood beside her, his hand upon her shoulder, in that familiar, loving attitude which always made her so happy. Then she demanded of the proud _chef_ how soon he could have lunch ready, and he replied with another gesture of profound respect: "Light away, this instlant! By my honorable forefathers it is fittee for the most bleautiful!" Then he bowed them out of the place and they wandered to the pretty room where the meal would be served, and which because of its simple, cloister-like effect, Helena at once named "The Refectory." It had been a trifling incident, but it had had a happy effect. All tongues were talking now, planning, anticipating, wondering over the things they meant to do and to learn; while a man was sent across to the "Barracks" to tell Lemuel that they would like to begin their rifle lessons that afternoon. Mrs. Ford suggested naps for everybody, on account of their previous long journeys but none wished to sleep just then. "How can anybody be tired in this glorious air?" asked Helena, burying her nose in a beautiful bunch of wild flowers somebody had placed beside her plate. Even Miss Milliken was wide awake now and as happy as she ever could be anywhere. Her one complaint was that it was "so far from civilization." "But you knew that, Milly, before you came. Mamma stated everything to you as plainly as could be. You knew you were going to an isolated ranch on a mountain, so how could you expect daily papers, visitors, and such things? You've always said you loved quiet and, now you've got it, do be satisfied," begged Helena. She was really fond of the nervous little governess but sometimes lost patience with her. "Yes, dear, but suppose--suppose something happened? Illness at home, or something serious." Lady Gray gently interposed, and made, also, her little speech. It was her first and last advice, or request, to her guests and most of them were impressed by it. "Dear Miss Milliken, don't be troubled by 'being so far from civilization.' You aren't that, at all. My husband has brought civilization with him. I am amazed at all he has accomplished. We have a telegraph line--that he found necessary for his business, but that can be used by any of us. Bad news travels fast. Be sure if 'anything happens' we shall hear of it all too soon. And now I have but one suggestion to make for our life together, and I mean to apply it to myself first of all. It is: Let us put everything unpleasant under our feet, as far as possible, and each do his and her share to make this a wholly joyous summer. I'm inclined to 'worry' and it's a most unfortunate inclination. This is the first time I have had a chance to make a 'home' for Daniel and Leslie and I want it to be perfect. Will you all help me? Will you all take my dear husband's words for a summer text and make life at this dear San Leon a synonym of 'Peace and Good Will'?" Lady Gray's beautiful face was very earnest, there was even a suspicion of tears in her long-lashed eyes, but they did not fall, and, after a moment's silence, Leslie sprang to his feet with a: "Hip, hip, hurra, for the Gray Lady and her maiden speech! All in favor of following her lead, say 'Aye'!" All the company rose and the deafening "Ayes" which those young throats emitted were as flattering as confusing to the "speech" maker. Then she waved them back to their chairs and Wun Sing's perfection lunch was served. Of course they all missed their jolly host, and their hearts were still troubled because of the missing Jim; but each strove with the other to keep these feelings out of sight. This was hardest for Dorothy, who guessed that the lady's suggestion was meant for her most of all; yet she bravely tried to smile at every witticism made by her mates and to respond in sort as far as she could. They had been a little company of eight and because one was away should the seven be made to suffer? She would try not, and contented herself with one final question, as the hostess rose from the table and, the others hurrying "Barracks"-ward, she could whisper: "Even if they don't find my poor boy right away, you won't let them give up looking, will you, dearest Gray Lady?" Mrs. Ford drew the child close into her arms and kissed her tenderly: "Don't fear that, for a moment, darling. As if James Barlow were our own Leslie, the search for him would never be given up till he were found. Scouts will be looking for him everywhere; though, of course he's sure to be found near home and soon. Now, my dear little girl, shorten up that long face and trust to older heads to do the right thing. Your business now, as it has always seemed to be, is to make your playmates happy. Jim shall be found; and soon--I do believe. You've heard the men say that whatever 'Dan Ford, Railroad Boss' undertook he accomplished. Now let's put that matter aside and learn how to handle a rifle." "Captain Lem" had made great preparations for his "shooting school." He had called upon his own company, as far as he could find it, to help him. Most of the "boys" had gone searching, but the few who were left soon had a row of benches set out, a target placed, and the finest guns available stacked in readiness. It was really a very business like arrangement and the would-be students soon found Lemuel's rule was business only. For the boys he had placed arm-rests and they were to fire from the ground, aided by these slight supports. "The females can stand and shoot, on account o' their petticoats worryin' 'em, lyin'. An' as I can't do nothin' unless it's by rule an' rod, I lay it this way: Mrs. Ford, bein' she's the eldest--though she don't look it, Ma'am!--she'll begin. Nobody can have more 'n two tries to a round. Then Number Two takes it. The schoolma'am next, an' mebbe I mistook in that matter of age. But that's not here nor there. Mrs. Ford, Number One; the schoolma'am, Two; the rest the females follerin' in order. Then the boys. One, two, three--attention! Step right here, lady, and I'll show you the first position--how to hold your rifle." Captain Lem had put on a rusty uniform, a relic of former grandeur "back home," and carried his bent shoulders with a military precision that quite transformed him. He gave Gray Lady a salute, moved forward and placed her "in position" and handed her the rifle. "Hold it just this way, scholar, and sight your bull's-eye. Keep your eye on that, allowin' for a little play in the carryin', and now--pull your trigger--let her go!" Mrs. Ford obeyed, or thought she did. The result was that the gun kicked, she screamed, and threw it as far from her as she could. What became of the bullet she never knew, but she firmly declined any further lessons in the fine art of sharpshooting. "Look at Lem's face!" whispered Herbert to Molly who giggled and returned: "Wait till it comes my turn, I'll show him something!" The Captain, as they henceforth called him tried to hide his look of disgust by turning his back upon the group, and asking in a sarcastic tone: "Any more females want to take a try? The schoolma'am lady, for instance?" She ignored his question and sat down by her hostess to soothe that now abashed person for her failure. Captain Lem had withered even the lady of the ranch by his contempt. "Helena next!" cried Molly, fairly dancing about in her impatience. So Helena tried and made out fairly well. That is she succeeded in keeping the rifle in hand, she did not scream at the discharge, and she came within a hundred feet of the target. The lads applauded, noisily, and she mocked back at their pretended admiration, though she made one effort only and subsided on the bench beside the ladies. "All the same it's wonderfully exciting! And I mean to try again, to-morrow, if they'll let me," she remarked. "Let some of the boys try before we do, so we can see how it's done. Or you, Captain Hunt, you show us!" begged Molly. This was what he had waited for. With a strut he marched across the space between them and the target and carried that much further back. He longed for a target bearing an arrangement of letters that he could hit and cause to disappear, as at his boasted Seagirt, instead of a plain affair such as this he had to use. Strutting back to them he lay down, wriggled himself into position, muttered something about the sun in his eyes, hemmed and hawed, took final aim and--let her go! But she didn't go--not in the least. All unconsciously, he had taken an unloaded piece! There was no strut left in him as he rose to his feet, rather slowly, and faced his laughing audience; but he rallied after a moment and good-naturedly joined in the laugh against himself. However, discipline was over for that lesson. Without regard to any rules the youngsters rushed to the stack and took whatever gun was fancied. Then began an indiscriminate firing till Mrs. Ford grew frightened and implored them to stop. They did so, all but Alfaretta and Molly, who had both been fascinated by the sport and felt sure that they could hit the bull's-eye--which nobody else had done. "Come on, Alfy! Let's get down on our tummy, same's all marksmen do, let's!" Down they flung themselves and now, as eager for their success as they were, old Lem handed each a fresh rifle and sang out: "Let her go! A silver dollar to the gal that wins!" They fired--and the unexpected happened. Alfaretta's untaught hands succeeded where greater skill had failed. Her bullet went straight into the bull's-eye, into its very centre. "By the Great Horned Spoon! What an eye you've got, child of mortality! Why I couldn't ha' done better myself! Glory be!" shouted the excited ranchman, fairly dancing in his pride and glee. Then he helped Alfy up from the ground, where she still lay, wondering at the excitement about her, and peered critically into her blue orbs. "However could you see it? That fur away?" "Why--why, I didn't see it at all. I got scared and shut my eyes when I pulled that thing on it!" Captain Lem staggered as if he had been hit instead of the target and softly marvelled: "Such--dum--luck! She done it--with her eyes--shut! She--done--it--with--her--eyes--shut! Somebody take me out and lay me down. I'm beat." His ludicrous manner amused the others but frightened the too successful Alfaretta. Also, her attention was claimed by Molly's expression. That ambitious young person was looking very white about the lips, and was clasping and unclasping her hands in evident distress. "Molly, what's the matter?" cried Alfy, shaking her partner in the affair. Molly lifted one shaking finger and pointed into the distance: "I--I hit something, too!" Other eyes than Alfy's followed the pointing finger and a groan of horror burst from more than one throat. Indeed, and all too surely, Molly had "hit something, too!" CHAPTER VIII A CONCERT IN THE MOONLIGHT Night fell on San Leon; and the searching party which had gone out in the morning, sure of prompt success, returned tired and dispirited. But their places were immediately taken by fresh recruits, Mr. Ford announcing that the matter would not be dropped, night or day, until all hope had to be given up. Except that Jim's clothes had been left in his room it might have seemed that the lad had run away, feeling himself out of place at San Leon. But the folded garments placed on the chair beside his empty bed told a different tale. "No, he has wandered off unknowing what he did. Well, when he comes back he shall find his place ready for him and the warmest of welcomes waiting. While we have tried--and will still--to visit every cabin and ranch within reasonable reach, there are many such little shacks dropped here and there among the mountains; and we have probably overlooked the one in which he is sheltered. Open hospitality is a feature of the west. Anybody who comes across the boy will be good to him. Now, let's have a little music and then to bed. A whole day in the saddle tires me, though I'm bound to get used to it yet, and so shall all of you. Come, Erminie, give me a song; and Dorothy dear, get out your violin." Thus said Mr. Ford, when their evening dinner had been enjoyed and they had all gone out to sit upon the wide veranda, the moonlight flooding the beautiful grounds, and the soft spring air playing about them. Dorothy felt that she could not play a note, and even Alfaretta was quietly crying in the retired corner she had sought, in the shadow of a pillar. But Mrs. Ford at once obeyed her husband's wish, and as her wonderful voice floated over them it banished every thought save the delight of listening. The "boys" came over from their "Barracks" and sprawled on the grass, entranced. Hitherto, their life on the ranch had been one of toil, lightened by sports almost as rough, with the evening diversion of swopping stories over their pipes. They hadn't been greatly pleased at the prospect of a lot of strangers living so near them, but already all that was changed; and though they didn't know, till Lemuel informed them, and this singer was one of a few famous _artistes_, they were moved and touched by the marvellous beauty of her voice. "You know, boys, it'd be worth ten dollars a ticket--gallery seats, at that--just to get into an opery house an' hark to yonder lady. An' now you're just gettin' it for nothin', free, clear gratis, take it or leave it, ary one. Fact. The 'Boss's' lady is an A 1 singer if she is a--I mean, a poor show at a rifle." The songs went on till the Gray Lady dared sing no more. Like all trained singers she was careful of her throat and unused, as yet, to the air of this region at night. But when she laughingly declared: "No more this time; not if I'm to sing again," there was a murmur of dissatisfaction from the group of men about the fountain; and old Captain Lem begged, in their name: "Just one more, lady, to sleep on. That kind o' music makes a feller hungry for more and sort-of-kind-of sets him thinkin' 'bout things back home." But Mr. Ford interposed: "No, Captain, not to-night! I want to have a lot of just such concerts so we mustn't put the _prima donna_ out of condition. But I've a little girl here with a fiddle and I tell you she can just make it talk! Come farther forward, Dolly dear, and stand close to me. Then 'rosin your bow' and get to work. Show these cowboys what a little girl-tenderfoot can do. Maybe, too, who knows? Maybe our Jim will hear it wherever he is and hurry back. At it, child, and call him!" Lady Gray feared this was a trifle unkind to the girl, who she wished might wholly forget the boy, but the master felt it not so. He knew that nothing would more thoroughly inspire her than this possibility. "Oh! do you think so? Then I'll play as I never did before--I will, I will!" She stepped out from the veranda upon the broad walk before it, and with the moonlight pouring down upon her white-clad little figure, her face uplifted to the sky, and her precious violin beneath her chin, she played, indeed, "as she had never done before." On and on she played; one ranchman after another softly suggesting some desired melody, and her eager little fingers rendering it upon the instant. The men ceased sprawling and sat up. If they had found the Gray Lady's voice a marvel, here was a greater. That any child--a despised "female" child--could evoke such music seemed past belief; and when, at length, Mr. Ford bade her render the beloved "Home, Sweet Home" as a finale, there was a reluctant rising of the audience to its feet, ordered to it by the Captain who, in rather husky tones, stated: "Ladies and gentlemen, and mostly the little gal, I give the sentiments o' my regiment, to a man, when I say all you tenderfoots is welcome to S' Leon. We wasn't very tickled before, thinkin' all our free livin's an' doin's was to be interfered with, but we are now. Three cheers for the company an' the treat they've give us, more especial for the Little One, and--Long may she wave! Hip, hip, hurrar!" The cheer was given with a will, and then again came the Captain's order: "Fall into line. Right about face. March! hep, hep, hep--hep!" But as they filed away Dorothy had another inspiration and, acting upon it, sent the delighted cowboys marching to the lively air of "Yankee, Doodle, Doodle Doo." "And now to bed!" advised the hostess. So within a very few moments all were in their rooms, tired and happy despite the worries of the day, and sure that all would come right at last. The four girls shared two rooms, facing one another and with two dainty beds in each. Milliken's chamber was at the end of the long passage beyond theirs, and those of the rest of the household across a wide hall which cut this wing of the house in two. In structure the building was very like _El Paraiso_, which the Gray Lady had admired and where the happiness of reunion had come to her; and it seemed to those who had wintered in the old adobe that they had but stepped into another home. Of course, sleep did not come at once. Four girls, even if together all day long, find much to chatter about at night, and this had been a day of "happenings" indeed. Dolly and Alfy came across to sit on Helena's bed and watch her dainty, slow preparations for retiring. Molly was already perched in the middle of her own white bed, hugging her knees and proclaiming for the twentieth time, at least: "Oh! I am such a thankful girl! After I fired that rifle and saw that purple mass of stuff lying on the ground I thought I was a murderer! I did so. Yet I was mad, too, to think Wun Sing had been such an idiot as to go between me and the target." "Herbert claims the safest place for others, when a girl shoots, is right behind the target. But it wasn't when Alfy hit the bull's-eye. How did you do it, child? It was wonderful and at that distance--which Captain Lemuel fixed for himself!" said Helena, brushing out her hair preparatory to loosely braiding it. "Oh! Nell, you're lovely that way! In that soft nightie--you do have such lovely, lacey things. I wish Aunt Betty would buy me some like them, but she won't. She's too sensible, and oh! dear! I wish I had my arms around her neck this minute!" "Put them around mine, Dolly Doodles, and quit wishin' for things you can't get. Do you s'pose I'll ever do it again?" asked Alfaretta, drawing one of Dorothy's arms about her own shoulder. "Do what again, child?" "Child, yourself. I mean fire right into the middle of the thing, and 'honest Injun', I did do it with my eyes shut. I wonder if that ain't the rightest way to sharpshoot, anyway. The rest of you couldn't hit it anywheres near, with your eyes open. What say?" Molly yawned and stretched herself luxuriously, and Helena remarked: "Molly, you make me think of a Persian kitten! She does just that when she feels particularly good." "Well, I ought to feel good. I didn't kill Wun Sing. I just made a hole in his old purple blouse and I can give him another new one. If I can find one like it, and have money enough, and--and other things. If I had shot him instead of his clothes what would they have done to me? Would I have been hung by the neck till you are dead and the Lord have mercy on your soul? Would I?" "Oh! Molly, how horrible and how wicked! That's swearing!" cried indignant Dorothy. "Well, I like that! I mean I don't! I never swore a swore in my life and you're horrid, just horrid, Dorothy Calvert, to say so," retorted Molly, suddenly sitting up and flashing a look of scorn at her beloved chum. "It was really swearing, you know, though you didn't mean it." "It's what the Judge says--my poor father's one--when a man is condemned to death." "Aunt Betty says that any taking of the Lord's name _in vain_ is swearing and--" Foreseeing a childish squabble, due to over-excitement and fatigue, Helena gently interposed: "That's enough. Neither of you knows what she is talking about. They don't hang people nowadays, they electrocute them, and Wun Sing wasn't hurt. He was only badly scared and will keep a good distance from our rifle-range hereafter. Alfy did hit the bull's-eye, no matter whether she meant to do it or not. We've had a perfectly lovely evening and a perfectly lovely summer is before us. I mean to get up, to-morrow, and see the sun rise, so--off with you, girls. Molly and I are sleepy. Good night to both of you. What friends we shall be before this summer ends!" "Why, I thought we was now. I'm sure I don't feel much above any of you, even if I can shoot better 'n the rest," said practical Alfaretta, moving slowly toward the door. A shout of laughter greeted her words and Molly indignantly retorted: "You aren't one bit smarter than I am. You only hit an old target and I hit a man, and we didn't either of us mean to do it. But good night, good night. Wake early, 'cause Leslie says we've a great doin's before us, to-morrow. Something better than waking up to see the sun rise. Helena'll get over that, though. Such fine resolutions don't last." "You'll see. I--I think I shall keep a diary. Take notes of what happens up here on the Rockies. If I succeed I may--I _may_ write a book, sometime," said Helena. Molly and Dolly stared, seized with sudden awe of this ambitious young person, and Alfy stared, too; but she was not impressed and her comment was a not unkindly but perfectly sincere remark: "Why, Nell, you couldn't do that. It takes brains to--" "Young ladies! I am amazed at your disturbing the house like this, after retiring hours! Lights out, or off, silence at once!" ordered Miss Milliken, appearing in their midst. And at this apparition silence did follow. Back in their own room, Dorothy and Alfaretta pushed their little beds close together and knelt down to say their prayers. In the heart of each was an earnest petition for "poor Jim," Dolly's ending with the words: "And let me see his face the first thing in the morning." But Alfy reproved this. "We haven't any right to set times for things to be done and prayers to be answered, Dolly Doodles, and don't say no more. It's sort of saucy seems if, to ask for things and then keep thinkin' in your insides that they won't be give. You've asked and the Lord's heard you--now get up and go to bed." "Oh! Alfy! I wish you had--had--a little more spiritually!" wailed Dorothy, rather stumbling over the long word but obediently rising from her knees and creeping between the snowy sheets. "And I don't feel as if there was any use going to bed, any way. I know I shan't sleep a wink." "Fiddlesticks! You just do beat the Dutch! As if great Jim Barlow hadn't a decent head on his shoulders and needed the use o' your 'n! He wouldn't thank you for makin' him out such a fool. Good night. I'm goin' to sleep." Dorothy felt that this was simply heartless and sighed: "I wish I could! But I can't!" Then she drew the covers about her shoulders, stared through the open window at the moonlit ground, felt the scene a trifle dazzling, and closed her lids just to rest her eyes a minute. When she opened them again Alfaretta's bed was empty and neatly spread. Except her own belongings the room was in perfect order for the day, the sun shone where the moonlight had been, and the cathedral clock on the cloister wall was striking-- "Oh! Oh! It's morning! It's _late_ morning, too, that's six, seven, nine o'clock! Oh! how could I sleep so? I never did before in all my life--except--well, sometimes, but I'm ashamed, I'm awfully ashamed of myself." As she sprang to her feet there was a tap at the door and a white-capped, white-aproned maid appeared, saying: "Good morning, Señorita. The Señora sent me to serve you and help you about your bath. It is ready, yes, and the other señoritas have breakfasted and gone out, _si_. By my Lady's orders you were not to be awakened till you roused yourself." "Oh! but I am sorry. I didn't mean to do this, for I know one of Mr. Ford's rules is early rising. I found that out at _El Paraiso_ and--yes, yes, please do help me. But tell me, what shall I call you?" "Anita, niña. Anita Mantez I am, from the dear City of the Angels, _si_. This way, _carita_, do not fear displeasure. They are all beloved, the fair young things, but you are nearest, dearest, so my Lady tells. For you will never be blamed, believe me." Dorothy made short work of her toilet and felt so refreshed by her night of sound sleep and her delightful morning bath, that the world outside seemed even lovelier than she remembered it. Also, she was hungry--so hungry! It was quite as Mr. Ford had said; that the mountain air made people almost ravenous, at first. Afterwards, one's appetite sank to the normal and to be out and doing was the one great desire of life. Anita led her to the refectory and served her with a dainty breakfast, disposed on exquisite "individual" dishes, and oddly enough, bearing the initial "D." Dolly lifted a cup and stared at it, wondering while Anita glibly explained in her patois of Spanish-English, that yes, indeed, it was the Señorita's own. Dorothy's heart was touched and grateful. Charming as her hosts were to all their guests, in many little ways they had singled her out as in this; and she understood without explanation from them that it was because of the part she had played in bringing together the once divided family. Very humbly and gravely she accepted these attentions, thankful in her deepest heart that she had been "inspired," on that past winter day, to lead the father and son across the mesa to the little cabin where Gray Lady dwelt alone. It had been a daring thing to do--an "assisting Providence"--such as wise Aunt Betty wholly disapproved; but that time it had been a fortunate one for all concerned. Now as the girl sipped her cocoa, turning the egg-shell like cup to catch the light, she wondered what she could still do to help her dear Gray Lady and to prove her own love. Then her dreaming was cut short by a hubbub of merry voices without, and, a moment later, a crowd of young folks tumbled through the big window, laughing, teasing, exhorting: "Lazy girl! Just eating breakfast and it's nearly time for lunch, seems if!" "Oh! The loveliest thing in the world!" cried Molly, clapping her hands. "Thank you," said Dolly, demurely, lifting her face for the other to kiss. "Oh! not you, Miss Vanity, but a beautiful thing on four legs!" "We're to take our choice and the white one's _mine_, for--" declared Alfaretta. "No white one for me! Dad says we're to do our own grooming and white ones have to be washed just like a poodle dog and--" began Leslie. "I had one once. His name was 'Goodenough,' and he was good enough, too. Could walk on its hind legs--" interrupted Herbert. "Oh, Dorothy! If you aren't going to finish that buttered toast, do give it to me! I never was so hungry in all my life. I simply can't get filled up, and--" "Montmorency Vavasour-Stark! You ought to be ashamed! After eating four chops, three boiled eggs, five helpings of potato, to say nothing of coffee enough for the regiment, and strawberries--" "Well, Mistress Molly Breckenridge, I don't know who set you to keep tally on my appetite! and I hate to see good things wasted. Want the rest of those berries, girlie? I know you don't. You're real unselfish, you are; and you wouldn't eat all the nice-ripe-red-strawberries- raised-under-glass-ripe-red-strawberries and give your neighbor none. And give your neighbor none, you-shan't-have-any-of-my-nice-ripe-red- strawberries-who-gives-his-neighbor--Molly, give it back! Aw, now, Molly! You wouldn't eat all the nice-ripe--Hold on! Bert Montaigne, that's a beastly shame! After I had to warble in that dulcet way for a plate of poor, left-over, second-hand strawberries, to have 'em grabbed by you and Molly--that's too much. Just one drop too much to fill my bucket, but I say, 'Little One,' I wish you'd get up late every morning, and have just such a superfine breakfast as this saved for you, and not be hungry at all yourself, but save it for a poor starved little boy who hasn't had a mouthful in an hour--" Monty was running on in this absurd way, yet holding his own in a three cornered scramble for possession of a dish of berries he had pre-empted from Dorothy's table; till, without saying anything, Helena calmly walked up, took the disputed dish from the contestants and, shoving Dolly aside to give up half her chair, sat down and began to eat them herself. "Two spoons with but a single dish! How touching!" cried Herbert, posing in pretended admiration of the pair, yet covertly watching his chance to add a third spoon to the two and get his own taste of the luxury. Not but that all had been served likewise, at the regular meal earlier in the day, and Monty's boasted appetite was but a part of the happy foolishness of their youth and high spirits. For they were all evidently greatly excited over something, and the talk fell back upon "choice" and "points" and "colors" with a comparison of manes and tails, till Dorothy sprang up, clapped her hands over her ears, and demanded: "One at a time! One at a time! Do tell me what you're all jabbering about and be quick! Just because I was lazy--I admit it, all right--I don't want to miss all the fun! Tell me!" But her answer did not come from any of the lively group about her. A shadow fell across the floor and Captain Lem appeared at the window. Leaning his elbows on the low sill he surveyed the interior with a quizzical smile, then observed: "If everybody's et all they can and has got time for somethin' elst, please to step over to the corral behind the Barracks. Time there was somethin' doin'! Come on, Little One. I'd like to have you head the procesh, for 'twas the Boss's orders, first pick for you. Hep, hep, hep--march!" CHAPTER IX A MODERN HORSE FAIR They departed as they had entered, by way of the window, Dorothy lifted through it by her admiring Captain Lem, whose heart she had wholly won by her music the night before, and by the deference she paid to his talk. She was eager to find out the cause of all this excitement and placed herself alongside him, as he led off with a military tread and tensely squared shoulders. It wasn't for him to admit that rheumatism commonly bowed those same shoulders, when he was "off duty" and secure in the shelter of his own room. "Hep, hep, hep,--hep," said the Captain marking time, and scowling at the irregular pace of the excited youngsters behind her. At which Dorothy promptly echoed his "Hep, hep, hep," and the others took the hint, pairing off into a compact little company and following their leader like soldiers on parade. Captain Lemuel smiled and nodded: "Good, Little One! 'Tis you has the head of sense, and fingers for the fiddle bow. The boys are all just proud to have you up at S' Leon, and anything you want done--say the word! All I want is to see you shoot well as you can fiddle. Ride, eh? Can you ride a horse, Little One?" "My name is Dorothy, Captain Lemuel, and I can--a little. Helena, too, is fine on horseback. She's the yellow-haired girl, you know. But why? What makes you ask?" They had come across the grass as far as the end of the Barracks, and still drilling his "awkward squad," the old ranchman wheeled about and ordered: "Halt! About--face!" Alfy giggled, but seeing the faces of all the rest, especially Dorothy's, sober and set in imitation of the Captain's, she stopped laughing and applied herself to the business in hand. "Hep, hep, hep--March!" They might have been veterans, instead of an awkward squad, so perfectly they now kept step and so fully they entered into the old man's whim. For only a whim they supposed this drilling to be, though in reality he had taken note of all their figures and, with the exception of Herbert's and Dorothy's, saw that each could be improved. Especially was there need of this in Leslie's case; and having been told of the lad's delicacy by his beloved "Boss," he had conceived this scheme of drill. "You see, Boss, I can easy enough cure that boy by 'whipping him over the others' shoulders,' so to speak. You've heard tell of that before, I 'low. He's all right. He's a real likely, well-growed lad; and that West Point 't he's hankerin' for'd be the best thing ever happened to him. Exceptin' course 't it would nigh break his mother's heart, so he told me. Well, that's no more here nor there. A little drillin' in this Colorady air'll do 'em all good and set him up to a dandy shape. Yes, siree! You or your lady best just drop the hint to that there little fiddler-girl, 't seems to lead the rest of 'em round by the nose--though they like it, they like it an' her too! Couldn't help it, you see. Nobody could; eh, what?" "Indeed not! A daughter of our own could scarcely be dearer than little Dorothy. I'll have Mrs. Ford speak to her, and I'll make it worth your while, Captain, to do your utmost for Leslie's improvement. He has lost his cough; he does seem to be well, now; but--there is still enough delicacy about his appearance to make us anxious. You do your best, Lem, and so will I." The captain had drawn himself up with a little pride, but with an adoring look in his old eyes, and had answered: "Drop that, Boss, drop it! Of all the unfortunate, down-on-their-luck fellers 't this S' Leon ranch shelters now, I was the downdest! I ain't never forgot what you done for me, takin' me out the gutter, so to speak, and settin' me on my pins again. And if there's a single mortal thing 't I can do for you--that debt's paid an' overpaid, a hundred thousand times. A hundred thousand times, sir, yes, sir." "A hundred thousand is a sizable number, Lem--but we understand each other. Shake hands and--God speed your efforts!" This little talk had taken place on the night before, and Lady Gray had taken an opportunity to relate it to Dorothy. This was why she so eagerly fell in with Captain Lemuel's idea, though she forebore to mention it to any of the other young folks at San Leon. Lady Gray had warned her: "I would rather Leslie did not himself know, and if the others did he'd be sure to find it out. It would make him conspicuous, maybe worry him and set him brooding over himself, so I'm trusting you to keep it secret. And, in any case, what better amusement could you have? The regular exercise in this perfect air will be as good for you girls as for the boys." Now as Dorothy fell into step with the Captain, she realized that here was one thing, however slight, that she could do to prove her love for sweet Lady Gray. She could use her influence to keep up what the others considered a temporary game, entered into merely to gratify the vanity of an ex-sharpshooter; and as she now marched along by his side, she begged: "Do please, Captain, set a regular hour for this drill, and make us stick to it, just as in the regular army. I promise I'll not oversleep again--I'll try not, I mean. Will you?" "Sure, Little One, and I'll app'int you First Leftenant, Company B, San Leon Life Guards. Halt!" He stopped and faced his followers: "It has been proposed 't we make this a regular company, same as Company A, of the boys. I second the proposition. I'd be proud to train ye, if so be you'll hold up your end the musket. I mean, no shirkin' duty and bein' marched to the guard house, or sentinel work, for bad behavior. Put on your thinkin' caps and keep 'em on a minute. Down to West Point, where some of us is hankerin' to be, they don't allow no lyin'. A broken promise is the worst kind of a lie. So before you pledge your word, gals and boys alike, you--_think_. Think hard, think deep. I'll time ye. When one minute is up, to the second, I'll call for your answer. Everybody turn their eyes inside themselves and--_think_." With that the wise and shrewd old fellow pulled his silver time-piece from his pocket and placed it in the hollow of his hand. Then he fixed his eyes upon its white face and stood motionless, watching the second hand make its little circuit. When the sixty seconds had been counted, he held up his hand with profound gravity and called: "All in favor of forming a new Company, say 'Aye!' Contrary 'No!'" Every hand went up--but Leslie's. Every voice uttered an earnest "Aye!" save his, and Dorothy flashed an indignant, as well as disappointed glance upon him, exclaiming: "Oh! What a mean--I mean, what a rude boy! When all your guests are just suffering to be soldiers, you go and spoil the whole business. Why do you do that?" The lad flushed. He had been duly instructed by both parents in the duties of a host, even a young one; and he knew it was his business to see that all his guests were helped to enjoy themselves as they, not he, desired. It was the first time that he had had any responsibility of this sort and it didn't greatly please him. Now when he found they were all looking at him in that aggrieved way he tossed his head, thrust his hands into his pockets, and answered: "I know I proposed it and thought I'd like it, but I've changed my mind and now think it would get to be a confounded nuisance. I've never done anything, regularly, as you talk about, and I don't see any use in beginning at this late day when--" "When you're getting so old and infirm, poor dear!" said Molly, interrupting. In reality she cared little what they did at San Leon, so long as they were all together and having a good time. But she saw on Dorothy's expressive face a keener disappointment than the affair seemed to warrant and loyally placed herself in support of her chum. Leslie went on as if she hadn't spoken, though he glanced her way with a promise in his eyes to "get even" with her for that mockery: "We're up here on the mountains for a summer holiday. What's the use of making it a work day, then? It would be work--sure enough. There'd be lots of mornings when every one of us would hate it. Oh! you needn't look that way. You all would, sure. What's fun when you feel like it is quite the other thing when you don't. And nine o'clock comes pretty early in the morning. Doesn't it, Miss Dorothy?" The laugh was upon her and she joined in it. Yet she hadn't one whit abandoned her plan of helping Leslie against himself. But there was no use in arguing, and, small woman that she was, she tried strategy instead. "Well, Leslie, you make me think of Mr. Seth Winter's story about the eleven contrary jurymen. All 'contrary' except the one who couldn't get his own way. No matter, nobody wants to force you into hard work. Though I suppose you'll be willing, we, your guests, shall do as we please?" "Certainly," he replied with an absurdly profound bow, to which Dorothy merrily returned a sweeping courtesy. "Then the rest of us who have given our word will keep it. We will be on hand every morning, Captain, to be drilled in the noble tactics of the soldier. Aunt Betty says everybody always finds use for all the knowledge he possesses. Aunt Betty knows. She's lived almost as long as all our ages put together, and she's the very happiest person I ever saw. I don't know anything about soldiering yet but I'm going to learn what I can with this splendid teacher to instruct me--" here she made another profound obeisance to Captain Lem, who returned the courtesy by his finest military salute, mentally appraising the earnest little girl as the best of them all. "So that I shall have one more thing to put in my knowledge-box, ready to use if I ever need it. And while we are drilling you can amuse yourself otherwise, Leslie dear. Now, Captain, can't we go on and find out what wonderful thing is hidden in that corral behind these Barracks?" "Sure. Forward, march!" He faced forward again and even Leslie fell into step behind the others, willing to join in such "foolishness" as a temporary amusement. In fine order they reached the further end of the long building, marched around its rear, and came upon what Dorothy thought was a most beautiful sight. Within the wide paddock, or corral, as these westerners called it, was a small herd of young, thoroughbred horses. From a little stand outside the paling, Mr. and Mrs. Ford were watching the handsome creatures and talking with the grooms that attended them, concerning their good, and possibly, bad qualities. But at the sound of the approaching "squad" Lady Gray turned an eager face and called out, reprovingly: "Oh! my dears, how slow you have been! If I were your age and had been promised a horse for my very own, I shouldn't have tarried on the way!" "Our very own? What do you mean, dear Mrs. Ford?" asked Dorothy, hastening to bid her tardy "Good morning," before she more than glanced across the fence. "Just what I say, dear. Mr. Ford has had eight horses brought in for you young folks to use. Each is to make a choice for herself or himself, subject to change if any necessity for it. Your choice is to be your own property and I hope will give you lots of pleasure. Captain Lem and some of the other good horsemen will teach you anything you need to know. Why, my dears! How astonished you look! Didn't you understand? Didn't Leslie tell you?" For, indeed, surprise had kept them silent. None had guessed of having a horse of her "own," supposing from Leslie's words that they were only to have the loan of an animal during their stay at San Leon. Alfaretta broke the silence, explaining: "No, he didn't say any such thing. He said we was to come choose horses to ride, and when he said one was white I picked that out at once. I--can't really believe you mean it, Mrs. Ford, though--course--Ma Babcock--I never heard o' such folks--never--never--in my life. It certainly does beat the Dutch. I--Alfy Babcock--Dolly Doodles--Jolly Molly--Helena--to have horses of our own--it makes me cry! I, Alfy Babcock, ownin' a whole horse! Oh! My!" "Then I shall be very, very sorry the idea ever entered my husband's mind, of making such a gift. We don't want tears--we just want happiness, perfect happiness, up here at San Leon!" said beautiful Gray Lady, smiling, and looking fairer than ever in this new delight of making gifts, as freely as she wished. Her own life had grown so much happier, these last months, that she longed only to "pass on" happiness to all whom she knew. Alfy's tears really hurt her, for a moment, till Dolly explained, with an arm about the weeper's waist: "I reckon these must be what I've heard of as 'happy tears,' dear Lady Gray. Alfy is too pleased to do anything else--even to say 'thank you'--yet." Queer little Alfy had dropped her head on Dorothy's shoulder and was repeating in a low tone: "A whole horse of my own! Mine, Alfy Babcock's! A whole horse--a whole--livin'--horse--A--whole--horse!" "Well, you wouldn't want a half one, would you, Miss Babcock? Nor one that wasn't living?" demanded Monty, laughing. "Quit crying and let's choose, for that's what Leslie said we were to do. Is that correct, Mr. Ford?" "Entirely. But--see to it that your choice falls each on a different animal! Suppose you begin, alphabetically. Alfaretta first." Such a group of radiant faces as now peered over the paling! while without a second's hesitation, Alfaretta announced: "I choose that pure white one for mine!" "All right. Captain Lem, lead out Blanca and put on her side saddle," directed Mr. Ford. A passage was opened in the paling and the beautiful Blanca was led forth, amid a murmur of admiration from everybody, except the girl herself. She could only stand, clasping and unclasping her hands, and gazing with dim eyes at this wonderful possession. The handsome saddle cloth was marked Blanca, and Mr. Ford explained that each animal was registered and its name had been chosen by its breeder. Most of these names were Spanish and suited well; as that Blanca meant "white," which the gentle little mare certainly was. To another corner of the saddle cloth, Captain Lem slowly attached the initial "A," as mark of ownership, then beckoned to Alfy that she should mount. All her mates watched her curiously, expecting to see her timid and reluctant. She treated them to a fine surprise; first by running to Lady Gray and rapturously kissing her hand, then returning to Lemuel, and letting him swing her up to the saddle, without an instant's hesitation. Dorothy stared, amazed; but she needn't have done so: Alfy was "her mother's daughter" as the saying goes, and inherited that good woman's love of horseflesh and fearlessness; and as she settled herself and received the bridle reins she kept murmuring the marvellous fact: "A whole horse--mine! And Ma Babcock's only got Barnaby!" "Who is 'Barnaby,' Alfy?" asked Leslie, going round to her side and critically inspecting her treasure. "Oh--he--Why, he's a mule!" A shout of laughter greeted this announcement and Lemuel moved away. He was disappointed that the beautiful Blanca had not fallen to Dorothy's share, for he believed the white filly to be the best as well as the handsomest creature in the corral. However, her turn was next, and he listened anxiously to hear what it might be. He wished she wouldn't be so over-generous in offering the choice to her mates, and in saying that if she disappointed them she wanted to change. "All are so fine. It can't make a bit of difference to me." "Choose! Choose! You dear old slow-poke, for I'm just dying to do so, too. I can't wait--do choose!" cried impatient Molly, skipping about and trying to cut short Dorothy's hesitation. "All right, then. I choose the 'calico'. She's so like another Portia that I used to ride 'back home.'" "Zaraza, for Dolly. A Spanish title, too, dear, and means 'chintz'--a 'calico', if you please. Lead her out, Lem!" The pretty creature was brought out, arching her graceful neck and lifting her dainty hoofs as if she were dancing to music, as she was now to the clapping of hands and lusty cheers of healthy young throats. Then she was saddled, a decorative "D" attached to her saddle-cloth, Dorothy put upon her back, to take her stand beside Alfaretta on Blanca, while the others chose and were mounted. "It has been a real ceremony and a delightful one! Here's to the health and happiness of our young equestrians! Hip, hip, hurra!" cried the master of the ranch, with a boyish heartiness that sent the hats of the ranchmen from their heads and their voices echoing the gay "Hip, hip, hurra!" But, despite her happiness, Dorothy's face was thoughtful. There had been eight horses in the corral, as there had been, at first, eight young guests at San Leon. To Helena had been allotted a fine bay, big and powerful as well as comely, by name Benito; to Herbert a black, chosen by him for its resemblance to his own "Bucephalus," "back home" where Portia was, and from a sentiment similar to Dolly's. Then Lady Gray was asked to choose for the absent James Barlow, and did so as calmly as if he had but stepped around the corner and had deputed her to act for him. But it was noticeable that of all the splendid thoroughbreds within the paddock one was by far the finest. That was a dappled gray, perfect in every, point, and looking as if he were king of that four-footed company. "For Jim, I choose Azul, the Gray! You all know I love gray in color and I love the 'blue,' as his Spanish owners named him. Captain Lemuel, please saddle Azul for Jim Barlow, and, Daniel, will you use him, please, till Jim comes back?" Dorothy flashed a grateful look upon her hostess, then glanced at Alfaretta, sure of finding sympathy in that girl's honest eyes. But Alfy nodded, well pleased, and Mr. Ford rode to the head of the little cavalcade and took his place at Dorothy's side, while the others followed, two by two, to make a circuit of the grounds and test their mounts. The men cheered again and again as the procession started, Mr. Ford and Dorothy leading; then Leslie on the sorrel, Cæsar, with Alfy on Blanca; Helena on Benito, with Monty on the chestnut, Juan--a mount well suited to his stature and requirements. Last rode Molly on Juana, another chestnut, and a perfect match for her brother--Monty's Juan; while Herbert's Blackamoor finished the caravan, last but by no means least in the creature's own proud estimation. They paced and they cantered, they trotted and they galloped, even the most inexperienced without fear, because of the vigilant attendants who raced beside them, as well as the high spirits of the others. Around and around the spacious grounds they rode, Captain Lem pointing out several fences and hedges he would have them leap, later on, and finally bringing up before the stately front of the house to dismount. As they did so Dorothy noticed a queerly dressed little boy sitting beside the fountain holding a basket in his hand and eagerly watching the cavalcade. Nobody else seemed to observe him, amid all the clatter and laughter. He looked to the sympathetic girl as if he were very tired and, leaving the rest, she crossed to him and asked: "Who are you, little boy? Do you want something?" Instantly, he offered her the basket, and as instantly vanished. CHAPTER X AN UNEXPECTED DEPARTURE Dorothy looked after the fleeing little figure as it disappeared behind a clump of shrubbery in the direction of the laundry. "A child of one of the workmen, I suppose, but such an odd, quaint looking child," she thought, and rejoined her mates. They were still standing beside the cloistered walk, talking, planning the wonderful trips which would be open to them now that they owned horses; comparing notes upon the points of each that they fancied they had already learned, while Mr. Ford declared: "This really is the most wonderful affair! Not that you have the horses, but that you show no jealousy about them. So far as I can see each of you is perfectly satisfied with his own choice and sure it was the wisest. I only hope our good James Barlow will like his Azul as well. Heigho, Dolly Doodles! What a quaint little basket! An Indian one and fine. Where did you get that?" "A little boy gave it to me. I suppose it is for Lady Gray, and here she comes." The lady had walked across from the Barracks, slowly, sauntering over the beautiful grounds, so fully in accord with them and the glorious day hat she was humming an aria from pure lightness of heart. She had not forgotten the missing lad for whom she had chosen the best horse in the herd, but it did not seem now that anything could be really amiss. He would surely soon be back, safe and well, and oh! how good life was! How dear the world, and how gracious that tender Providence which had crowned her life with joy! In this mood she came up to the group awaiting her and Dorothy put the basket into her hands. She hadn't expected anything of weight and nearly dropped it. "Why, dearie, what an exquisite basket! But how heavy it is! What--here--why? See how oddly it's fastened with rushes or something like them. I'll sit right here while one of you open it." She seated herself upon a carved bench beside a sun-dial and Leslie cut the rushes which were bound tightly about the basket. As he did so a plaintive little wail issued from it, and Lady Gray and he both jumped. "A baby! A foundling!" laughed Mr. Ford, pretending to be greatly frightened. "Open it, open it quick, please! I can't wait!" cried Molly. At the slightest touch now the lid fell off and there, lying on a mat of softest grass, was a tiny, new-born lamb. Ohs! and Ahs! and laughter greeted it, to which the small creature answered by another feeble "Ma-a-a!" then curled itself to sleep. "What a pretty present! Who could have sent it?" wondered Lady Gray. "One of the shepherds, likely; sheep herders they call them here. And it's the first time I ever saw a lamb 'snow white.' The comparison, 'white as a lamb' is generally wrong, for they're a dirty gray. This one has been washed within an inch of its life--literally. Some of you girls better take it to the dairy and give it some milk," said Mr. Ford. "Maybe there somebody will know about it or we'll find the little boy again. He was so cute! Like a small Indian, he looked." "He might easily be one, Dorothy. There are still many bands of them roaming the mountains. Quite often, the 'boys' say, some come to San Leon. A peaceable lot, though, mostly, unless they get hold of liquor. But liquor turns even cultivated white men into brutes. Not likely we shall see any of them at this time of year, when life in the forest is pleasant." "Oh! Daniel, don't talk of Indians at all! I don't like them," protested Mrs. Ford, with a little shudder. "I hope that child wasn't one." "Well, we don't know that he was. There are many people belonging to San Leon and other neighboring ranches and a child more or less isn't enough to set us worrying. Hmm. Here comes the operator with a telegram. I was in hopes that I might escape them for a few weeks. News, Mr. Robson?" The clerk's face was grave and the young folks walked away; Dorothy carrying the basket with the lamb, the others following--with mischievous Molly prodding the little creature with her forefinger "to make it talk." But the boys were not interested in "young mutton" as Monty called it, and sought the ranchmen at their quarters to learn when they could go fishing, or what was better, hunting. "I don't see what you want to kill things for!" pouted Molly, while Helena answered: "Because they are--just boys! I only hope they won't be allowed to handle firearms, except for rifle practice under the trainer's care. So this is the dairy! What a fine one and away up here, where Milliken said there was 'no civilization!' Do you know, Papa is getting quite anxious for a stock farm? We think it's so queer for a man who knows nothing but banking, but some doctor told him it would be fine for his health. If he has cattle, I suppose we'll have a dairy. I mean now to find out all I can about such things because I know whatever Mr. Ford does will be the best possible. Odd! up here the dairymaids are dairymen! How spotlessly clean that one yonder looks, in his white uniform! I'm going to ask what he is doing now." She left the other girls to do so and from another worker in this up-to-date, sweet-smelling place, Dorothy begged a basin of milk for their new pet. It still remained in the basket, which was so soft and of such exquisite fineness that it could be folded like a cloth. Alfaretta still held the soft cover, which had slipped off when Leslie cut the rushes binding it on, turning it idly in her hands. Suddenly she stopped and stared at its inner side, then excitedly stooped where Dorothy was feeding the lamb and pointed, exclaiming: "For the land sakes, Dolly Doodles, look at that!" "Take care, Alfy! You're scaring this timid little thing so it won't drink. It hardly knows how, anyway. What? What do you say?" "I say look a there! _Jim! Jim!_" Dorothy snatched the cover from Alfy's hand and there, surely enough, was the letter D done in the curious handwriting which James Barlow had acquired; quite different both girls knew from that of any other they had ever seen. Then they stared at one another, not knowing whether to be glad or sorry. "What does it mean?" cried Dorothy at last, while Molly drew near to learn what had happened to surprise them. For answer Alfaretta handed her the cover and fairly gasped out: "Jim--our Jim--wrote that--or painted it--or--or--It's Jim, true as preachin'!" "Huh! then all I can say is that this paragon of a Jim has a mighty poor style of writing. Looks more as if that lamb had bumped its itsy--witsy--heady--and made it bleed. That's some Indian 'mark' that the maker of the basket put on it. Don't try to get up any excitement over that." Alfy shook her head but Dorothy did not look up. She was searching the soft, wilted grass that lined the basket; and, in the bottom, tied to a bunch of faded flowers was a little glistening stone. The pebble was marked by another D, traced in the red juice of some plant. The basket went one way, the lamb another as Dorothy sprang to her feet and danced for very joy. "Yes, it's from Jim--it's from Jim! And he's alive--somewhere he is alive! Oh! I am so glad, so glad!" Alfy was glad, too, of this reminder of the lad's existence, but she was also ashamed of him. "Huh! I don't see what there's to be so tickled over, for my part! Jim Barlow's actin' like a regular simpleton. And he's mean, too. He's meaner 'n pussley, makin' everybody such a lot of trouble. Folks riding night and day to hunt for him--some out scourin' round this very minute--and him just stayin' away 'cause--'cause--" "'Cause what, Alfaretta Babcock?" demanded Molly sternly. As always she was loyal to her beloved Dorothy whose joy Alfy was rapidly spoiling by her contempt for the truant. "'Cause, I s'pose he hasn't any decent clothes to come home in. He didn't take his with him and clothes don't grow on trees, even in Colorado. But--if I knew where he was I'd take 'em to him and give him a piece o' my mind along with 'em." "Give it to me, instead, missy. I'm kind of sort of hungry for it!" said a familiar voice behind them, and there was Captain Lem leaning on the sill of the dairy window and looking at them with that amused expression of his. He seemed to find a lot of young folks the most entertaining company in the world. He had hated their coming and had instantly veered around to be thankful for it. Already his mates were teasing him about it and prophesying that Lem had done his last job on the ranch. Hereafter, if he was missed, all the "boys" would have to do would be to hunt up Dorothy, or her chums, and find him. "What's a doin', younkers? Hope your ridin' round didn't tire ye none. Hello! Gone to raisin' sheep, have ye? Mighty pretty little creatur', that one is. Where'd you find it?" Even Helena left off learning dairy work and hurried with the others to the window to learn his opinion. He took the cover and the stone and carefully studied the inscriptions on them. Cocked his head sidewise, put on his spectacles, screwed up his eyebrows and his lips, and ejaculated: "That's a poor fist--whoever done it!" "Maybe it is; but both Alfaretta and I recognized it at once. You see poor Jim almost taught himself to write. He'd begun that even before I first saw him and it's hard to unlearn things, you know. Else, Jim's so smart he'd have written better than any of us by this time. Yes, indeed! Poor Jim is very, very clever!" said Dolly warmly. Captain Lemuel shook his head, and remarked: "I 'low you call him that by way o' compliment. But back home when we called a feller 'clever' it meant he hadn't much sense. I've seen that sort, 'clever' souls 't scurcely knew enough to come in out the rain. This here one 'peared the same to me. Course, I hadn't been acquainted with him longer 'n next to no time but if he was so smart, as I s'pose you're meanin' to state, he hid it amazin' well. Hmm. But--but--if this is a handwrite o' his 'n, our business is to take it straight to the 'Boss.' What you goin' to name your lamb, Little One?" Dorothy lifted the little animal and gave it to him through the window. He caressed it tenderly enough in his strong hands, for he loved all animals, though horses best. "Why, I hadn't thought. I mean we hadn't. And it isn't ours, anyway, if it was sent to the Gray Lady." "Your Gray Lady's name don't begin with a D. It's plain as the nose on your face who it's meant for," he answered, promptly. "Then if it is really mine--how lovely!--I'll just call it Snowball." "Pshaw, Dolly Doodles! If I had a lamb sent to me by a poor lost feller like Jim, I'd name it after him and not so silly like that. Do call it Jim, junior," argued Alfy. "Yes, sissy, but--but it ain't that kind of a lamb," observed the Captain, siding with his favorite at once. Molly giggled and even Helena smiled, but Alfy simply pouted. "Huh! Well, then if Jim won't do, call her Jiminetta--that'd be after me and him, too, same's I'm Alfaretta." Dorothy laughed, too, now, and stopped studying the rude letters traced on the cover and the stone. They but deepened the mystery of Jim's disappearance and present whereabouts. She remarked: "We don't often enough take time to say your whole name, child. It's generally 'Alfy.' Let's compromise and call our lamb Netty." "Good enough! And if the little creatur' takes after most Colorady folks or flocks, she won't care a mite what name she has so she ain't called late to dinner. Haw, haw, haw!" Laughing at his own ancient witticism, Captain Lem started houseward with "Netty" in his arms, the little thing nestling down in them as if it knew it had found a friend. But his face was troubled. He didn't like this secret signal from the missing James and he liked less the fact that the lad's messenger had been a small Indian. However, this seemed a small matter to what was awaiting him, as Mr. Ford came toward him, walking rapidly, and, apparently, in deep thought. "Lem, do you think you can run San Leon without me for a few days?" Captain saluted his "chief" and replied, a trifle testily: "That's what I have been doin' for a purty consid'able spell, ain't it, Boss?" "Yes, but you hadn't eight youngsters on your hands then, to keep happy and out of mischief. Boys you know, Lem--" "I know. I've been one. Wish 't I was again. What's up, Boss?" The girls had followed the Captain, slowly, and eagerly discussing Jim's message--if it was such--and its probable meaning; but they paused at a little distance, not wishing to interrupt the men's interview which, from the expression of their faces, was a serious one. But Mr. Ford saw them and beckoned them to come up; and then explained to them as well as to the old ranchman: "We have had telegrams that call us east. Away east, as far as New York. I feel that we must leave you young folks--for a few days--as few as we can possibly make them. It isn't business or I'd depute somebody else to act for me. It's this: A wireless dispatch has been received that a very old lady, an aunt of Erminie's, will arrive in that city on the steamer which is due in just three days. She has lived abroad for many years and is now very feeble, helpless, in fact, from paralysis or something of that nature. She brought Erminie up and has been the best and truest friend my wife ever had. We owe her everything, and feel that we cannot leave her to land in a strange city, broken in mind and body, without her 'daughter' to care for her. We must go, for I don't want Lady Gray to take the trip and responsibility without me. If all goes well, we should be back in less than a fortnight--could be much sooner except that Lady Gray wants to bring Aunt Rachel to San Leon; and we will have to make the return journey by very easy stages, as her strength will allow. It is trying, too, that, having learned of our trip east, Miss Milliken insists upon returning with us. She hasn't been happy here and I find she's worrying about her heart. The altitude of San Leon is bad for her, she thinks, and since she puts it on that ground neither Erminie nor I can urge her to remain. But--" "'But,' don't you worry a minute, dear Uncle Dan!" cried Dorothy, clasping her hands around his arm and using the title he had asked for many times, though she had rarely done so before. All along, despite his great generosity and kindness, she had stood just a little in awe of the "Railroad Boss," and he had been simply "Mr. Ford" to her as well as to all his other young guests. But it needed only one look of anxiety on his noble face to rouse all her loving sympathy. She repeated: "Don't you, nor sweet Lady Gray, worry one single minute about us or things up here at San Leon. We'll be as good as good! Helena, here, is a better caretaker than poor Miss Milly. Between ourselves, we're glad she's going. She's been a burden to Nell, all the time, instead of a help. I'm sorry about her heart but--I'm glad she's going. Now--when do you start? Isn't there something I--we--can do to help you off? Do let us help!" The gentleman's face had lightened. His girl guests had accepted the situation beautifully, and he could but hope as much for the lads. In any case he must go; and, indeed, at once. He was so pressed for time that they disliked to trouble him with the message the lamb had brought, and watched him walk swiftly away without a further word. "Huh! He needn't be afraid we'll do anything we oughtn't! And I don't see as we're going to be so much alone, after all. There's the trained nurse, and though the doctor's gone to Denver he'll come back." "She's sick herself, this last day or so, Alfy. We mustn't count on her nor on Dr. Jones. But there's Mr. Robson, Captain Lem, Anita, Wun Sing--and lots of ranchmen left. Oh! we'll be all right!" said Dorothy. "But the Captain has walked off with 'Netty'--forgotten all about her, I guess." "Well, I must go to poor Milly. She never can keep her head when anything happens suddenly, like this. She has complained, incessantly, that she could hardly breathe up here and I'm glad she has the chance to go now. But I can fancy my dear mother's face, when Milly walks into the Towers without me!" said Helena, hurrying away. A half-hour of activity followed, the girls taking Lady Gray's simple packing out of her hands, although that much-travelled _prima donna_ was never disturbed by sudden changes from place to place. Indeed, she was happy over this coming trip, under her husband's escort, and to meet her dearly loved Aunt Rachel. Jedediah had his master's suit-case ready in even shorter time and it was only Miss Milliken who delayed matters by her fussiness. However, the buckboard came around, Silent Pete holding the reins over the four-in-hand, and Captain Lem rather jealously regarding him; until his eye fell upon his "awkward squad" and he remembered the greater responsibility placed upon himself. Then he was reconciled to see another man drive his horses, reflecting: "Well, I needn't grumble, I'm the one Boss trusted most. Seven youngsters in hand and one in the bush--land knows where!--is a bigger job 'n just drivin' a four-footed team. I ain't no call to feel lonesome but just to feel sot up. Funny, ain't it, Lem! You a regular, dyed-in-the-wool old bach to find yourself suddenly playin' daddy to seven strappin' boys an' gals! Seven an' there'd ought to be eight. Ought to be--_must be_--that's what it spells to Captain Lemuel Hunt. For if--if--as I reasonably suspicion--that there Jim Barlow, poor writer, has fell into the hands of a passel of Injuns, his cake's dough, lessen I can rake it out their oven into mine." The departure of the buckboard, with solemn Silent Pete in charge, had a depressing effect upon the group left watching it. Everything would go on just as usual, of course. Why should there be any difference? But--how lonesome it was! How they would miss Lady Gray's sweet voice and presence, and the "Boss's" jokes and laughter! The thought was too much for tender-hearted Alfy, and after a spluttering, and sniffling to stem her own grief, she burst into an audible boo-hoo, that promptly started Molly's tears, though she shed them silently. All, indeed, were very sober and Leslie's face was pale. He hadn't realized till now how necessary his mother had become to his happiness, and he felt sorely inclined to follow the example of the weeping girls though rather indignant against them. It wasn't their Lady Gray who had left, nor their beloved Dad. He exclaimed, testily: "Girls, quit that! I'm your host now and I say--no crying! What I propose is--do something. Let's ride to Bald Eagle Peak--or Rock. You'll need clear eyes to follow that trail, but there'll be just time enough to do it before bedtime. Hurray for 'Boots and Saddles!'" Captain Lem answered quickly: "Lad, you can't do that! You mustn't take that road till you know more about ridin' 'n you do now, nor unless you start by daybreak. I wouldn't try it myself, old mountaineer as I am, at this hour, lessen it was a case of life and death. No, you can't go." Leslie's temper rose and he retorted: "I'm 'Boss' here now and don't you dare say 'mustn't' to me!" The sharpshooter laughed ironically; and this enraged the boy still further. His riding whip was in his hand and, with a furious look at the Captain, he lifted it and brought it down upon the old man's head--who staggered backward, then fell to the ground as if he were dead. "Leslie! Leslie!" shrieked the onlookers, "what have you done?" "Killed him--I--guess!" he gasped and threw himself beside the prostrate ranchman. CHAPTER XI THE SHEEP HERDER'S CABIN When, in the delirium of fever, Jim Barlow strayed from his room at San Leon, the one idea in his mind was that the mountains called him. One distant peak, in especial, seemed imbued with life, using human speech and gesture--warning him to come, and come at once, lest some terrible thing befall him. He must obey! He must--he must! He set off at a run, his bare feet unconsciously seeking the smooth driveway of the home-piece, and following it at breakneck speed till it ended in the road below the mesa. There the rougher going hindered him somewhat, but not greatly, and he kept to the highway till it reached a river and a bridge. Beyond the bridge the road divided into three forks, the northern one ascending steadily toward the peak to which his fancy still fixed itself and he struck off upon this. How long he travelled he did not know, though his unnatural strength due to his fever must have lasted for hours. Gradually, that fierce, inward excitement that drove him on gave place to a sudden weariness, and he dropped like a stone on the spot where it overcame him. As the morning rose, clear and bright, a company of horsemen, riding in single file toward a distant pass, came upon a prostrate, nearly naked figure lying in their path. The horsemen were Ute Indians, and like many of their white brothers, were prospecting for gold. All sorts of precious metals were to be found in these Rocky mountains, and were their own rightful inheritance. They were peaceably inclined to share and share alike with the pale faces. For years there had been friendship between them and the red men had learned many things from the white. Not the least had been this craving for gold; and where once they would have toiled only in the chase, to shoot and kill the game with which the mountains abounded, they now longed for the glittering stones hidden within them. But they were in no haste. The gold was hidden--it would keep, and they had ridden all night long. So, at sight of poor Jim, lying motionless, they dismounted and discussed him. "He is dead," said the foremost, in his own tongue which, of course, the lad would not have understood, even if he had heard. Another stooped down and turned the boy's face upward. It was scratched with the underbrush through which he had made his way and the light garments he wore were in shreds. His feet were swollen and bruised and the bandages had been torn from his arm. "Not dead. Might as well be. Heap bad," said another Indian, gravely shaking his head. There were four in the party and one of them filled a cup at a nearby spring and dashed the water over the lad's face. His fit of exhaustion was about over, anyway, and the shock of the ice-cold water revived him, so that he opened his eyes and looked into the dark face bent above him. But there was no intelligence in this look and presently his lids drooped and he was once more oblivious to all about him. The Indians held a consultation. Three were for going on, after they had breakfasted, and leaving the vagrant to his fate. One was for giving help and, being the leader of the party as well as a red-skinned "Good Samaritan," his counsel prevailed. When they resumed the trail, Jim Barlow was carried with them, very much like a sack of meal across a saddle bow. But carried--not left to die. When he again opened his eyes, and this time with consciousness in them, he was in a small shanty, rude in the extreme; and his bed a pile of hemlock boughs spread with a woollen blanket. He lay for some time trying to think where he was and what had happened to him, and idly watching the bent figure of a man sitting just outside the doorway of the hut. The man was smoking and a little boy was playing in the sand at his feet. Jim couldn't see anything interesting in these two strangers nor in the cabin itself and, with a feeling of great weakness, closed his eyes once more, and for many hours of sound, refreshing sleep. When for the third time he awoke his senses had returned and only the weakness remained. He tried to speak and after several efforts succeeded in asking, audibly: "Where am I?" At sound of his voice the man outside rose and came to the boy, nodding his head in satisfaction but in silence. "Where--am--I?" asked Jim, again. The man shook his head. By his appearance he was Mexican, but he wore an Indian costume of buckskin, once gaily decorated and fringed but now worn and very dirty. His straight black hair hung low over his forehead and his hands looked as if they had never seen water. His face was not ugly, neither was it kind; and he seemed more stolid than stupid. "Where--am--I? Who are you?" again demanded Jim, trying to get up, but instantly sinking back from utter weakness. There was no answer; but, after a long contemplation of his guest, the Mexican crossed to a little stove, wherein a few sticks were burning. From a rusty coffee pot which stood upon it, he poured some liquid into a tin cup and brought it to the lad. Jim tried to sit up and take the cup into his own hand but he could not; so, with unexpected gentleness, the man slipped his arm under his patient's shoulders and raised him to a half-sitting posture. Then he held the cup to Jim's lips, who drank eagerly, the muddy coffee seeming like nectar to his dry, parched throat. The drink refreshed him but he was still too weak to rise, or even care to do so. Dozing and waking, wondering a little over his situation yet mostly indifferent to everything, the hours passed. Jim's interest was next aroused by the man's dressing of his arm. He did this with real skill, removing the big leaves of some healing plant, with which it had been bound, and replacing these with fresh ones, confining them in place by long strips of split reeds. The soft, cool leaves were wonderfully comforting and with the easing of the pain serious thoughts came. To the injured lad everything now seemed a blank from the evening meal at San Leon, after his arrival there, until now. Why he had left that ranch and why he had come to this queer place he could not imagine; but the picture of the beautiful, mission-like house was distinct, and of Dorothy walking across its lawn beside him. Dorothy! It seemed a long time since he had seen her or heard her sweet voice chide him for his misdoings. Why--now he remembered--he hadn't said good-night to Dorothy, his first faithful friend. But it is needless to follow the gropings of Jim's mind back to the realization of his present situation. Yet the first and strongest feeling which possessed him was that he must tell Dorothy where he was. Dolly was such a hand to worry, silly Dolly! And she was his best, earliest friend. The Mexican brought him his breakfast of bacon and corn bread, with another cup of that coffee which always stood upon the stove. A child came with the man and gazed at Jim with solemn, wondering eyes. Jim returned the stare with interest. This was the first small Indian he had ever seen and to judge by the little fellow's face he might have been an old, old man--he was so grave and dignified. "How are you, sonny?" said Jim. The midget simply blinked. "Can't you talk, kid?" again questioned the stranger, holding out his hand. The little boy did not answer, save by placing his own chubby, extremely dirty hand on Jim's extended palm. "Good. You're friendly, if you are dumb. Sort of needs washin', don't it? Water. Can you bring me some water? I'm thirsty." The child walked to a big tank, or half-barrel, outside the door and dipped the tin coffee cup within it. But he was too short to reach the low supply and giving himself an extra hitch upwards, over the edge, the better to obtain the draught, he lost his balance and fell in head first. Jim's low bed commanded a view of this and he started to rescue the youngster, but the man was before him. He treated the accident as if it were an ordinary occurrence, pulling the child out by the seat of his leather breeches, shaking him as one might a wet puppy, and setting him on his feet without a word. Indeed, words seemed the most precious commodity in that queer shanty, so rarely were they used. But the father, if such he were, himself filled the cup with the stale water and gave it to the child, who carried it to Jim as calmly as if no trouble had attended his getting it. "Thank you, boy. What's your name?" "Name--José," said the man answering for him. He pronounced it "Ho-say," and Jim was pleased. Knowing that he might meet people who spoke Spanish, in this trip west, the studious lad had brought a Spanish grammar along with him on the train and had glanced into it whenever he had a chance. Of course, he could not speak it himself, nor understand it well, nor was the dialect here in use very much like the correct language of the grammar. "José, where is this place?" The child stared. Then suddenly went out of doors and returned with a baby lamb in his arms. He plumped this down upon Jim's breast and smiled for the first time. The lamb was his latest, greatest treasure and, in his childish sympathy, he offered it to the "hurted man." With his good arm, Jim made the little animal more comfortable, while José vanished without again. This time he returned with a fine basket of Indian workmanship, and this was filled in part by glittering stones and in part by flowers. All these he deposited on the bed beside the lamb, and folded his arms behind him in profound satisfaction. He had done his very best. He had given the sick one all his things. If that didn't cure him it would be no further business of José's. The man of the house had now seated himself beside the stove. He placed an earthen pan beside him on the clay floor and laid a bundle of rushes beside it. Also, he took down from a peg in the wall an unfinished basket, and reseating himself, proceeded to weave upon it. He used only the finest of splits, torn from the reeds, almost like thread in their delicacy and he worked very slowly. From time to time he held the basket from him, studying its appearance with half-closed eyes, as an artist studies a picture. Frequently, he lifted the coffee pot to his lips and drank from its spout. Jim watched him in silent admiration of his deftness with the weaving and in disgust at his use of the coffee pot--thinking he would want no more draughts from it himself. All the time his mind grew clearer and he began to form plans for telling Dorothy where he was--though he didn't know that, himself; but, at least, of letting her know he was alive. She would have to guess at the rest and she would surely trust him to come back when he could. When the weaver looked up again Jim beckoned him to approach. Rather reluctantly, he did so. For his own part he was getting tired of this helpless lad, left in his hut by White Feather, his Ute brother-in-law. If Moon Face were living, the Ute maiden who had been his wife and little José's mother, it wouldn't have mattered. To her would have fallen the care. Nothing had gone right with him, Alaric, the sheep herder, since Moon Face fell ill and died, though he went often to that far place in the forest where her body had been secretly buried in the crevice of a great rock. Moon Face had left him for a few days' visit to a camp of her relatives and there had taken the small-pox and died, despite the fact that she had been treated by the wisest medicine men and immersed in the sweat-box, the Indian cure for all ills. If he had been near enough to such a thing, or had had energy enough to prepare it up here at his home, Alaric would promptly have subjected poor Jim to similar treatment. As it was, the isolation of Alaric's hut and his laziness saved the wanderer from this. Now, as he obeyed the boy's summons, he was brooding over his misfortunes and was more grim even than usual. "Well, young man?" Jim was surprised. The man had been so silent, hitherto, that he imagined they two had no language in common. "So you speak English! That makes it easy. I want to send a message to the place I--I left. Will you take it?" Alaric shook his head, firmly declining. "Don't get ugly. If you won't go, will you send somebody?" The Mexican pretended that his English did not go so far as this. He obstinately would not understand. Then followed a long argument which greatly wearied Jim and simply failed of its object. At last, he named "San Leon" and Alaric's expression brightened. That was the place where there was plenty of money and the sheep herder loved money. He had been there. It was not far away, by a road he knew, yet he did not care to go there again, himself. There had been a transaction of horses that wasn't pleasant to remember. Old Lem Hunt had accused him of being a thief, once on a time, when some thoroughbreds had been missing from the San Leon corrals, and Alaric had had hard work to prove his innocence. He had been obliged to prove it because, in Colorado, men were still sometimes inclined to take justice in their own hands and not wait for the law to do it for them. The truth was that the sheep herder had not, personally, taken a single steed from San Leon. He had merely "assisted" some of his Indian friends to do so. He had even carefully kept all knowledge of the affair from the ears of his brother-in-law, White Feather; a man who indeed loved fine horseflesh, as all the Utes did, but preferred to increase his herds by legitimate trading. The other Indians, whom Alaric had "assisted," had paid their assistant in honest gold--he wouldn't take any other sort of payment--and there had been more gold changing hands in order to secure the real thieves. And because he loved the gold Alaric had thus assisted both sides and received double pay. Also, he had left an unsavory memory of himself at San Leon as well as offended his Ute relatives; and White Feather not only prevented harm being done to his Mexican brother-in-law, but also used the occasion to make Alaric subject to himself. Thus it was that he had made the sheep herder take in the sick lad he had found on the trail and swear to be kind to him. "San Lean? _Si_.... _En verdad_. Well, señor?" If this injured, half-naked youth had hailed from that rich man's ranch it might be worth while to hearken to what he wished. "I want to tell a girl there that I am not dead. I want to send just that message, till I can go there myself. Do this for me and I will--will pay you--when I can." Alaric considered. From present appearances there seemed small chance of Jim's ever paying anybody for any service. Yet--there was White Feather to please and there was possible payment at San Leon. He nodded acquiescence. "Then get me somethin' to write on!" begged Jim, vastly excited by this chance to set himself right with his friends. He might as well have asked for the moon. Writing was not an accomplishment of Alaric's and he had never owned a scrap of paper fit for such use. Yet the longer he pondered the matter the more willing the man became. Finally, he took José upon his knee, and, emphasizing each word of instruction by a stern forefinger and a threat of fearful punishment for disobedience, he instilled into the little fellow's mind the fact that he was to go to San Leon ranch; to find there a pretty girl in a white dress; a girl with big brown eyes and dark curly hair. A girl who was always laughing and who always wore a red bow on her head. He, Alaric, would go with his son as far as the cypress hedge, bordering the west side of the lake. There he would wait for the child to do his errand and return, and would himself be out of sight of that old sharpshooter, whom he feared. He had another inspiration--of generosity and greed commingled. That lamb of José's. He could afford to give that away because it wasn't his own, nor even really the little one's. It belonged to the rich ranch owner whose sheep he herded, up here on the lonely mountain. The girl for whom this sick boy wished a message might like the lamb and give the papoose money for it. Money would be far better for José than any pet. After this course of silent reasoning, Alaric bestirred himself to action. He had often had to make his "mark" upon some paper of agreement, the nearest to writing that he could come. He understood that Jim wished to make his own now. So, selecting a bit of glittering stone that was fairly smooth, he handed it to the lad, and afterward crushed the stem of a plant which exuded a red juice. With this other sharp pointed bit of stone dipped in this juice, anybody might make as many "marks" as he chose upon the flat stone. Jim was quick to understand the suggestion but real writing was out of the question. The best he could accomplish was that D which was in his peculiar hand. By signs, more than words, Alaric expressed the whole matter; and Jim eagerly caught at the suggestion. The lamb would be a pretty gift for Dorothy and would tell her better than words that he remembered her and was safe. Only--the little animal was like everything else seen in this cabin--so dirty! He couldn't send it to dainty Dorothy in such condition. In a few words he explained to the shepherd his ideas about it and was amused by the infinite contempt shown on Alaric's face. However, he made short work of that matter. He was now impatient to be off, the sooner to get that possible payment of gold; and remembered that White Feather had commanded him to serve the sick stranger to the best of his ability. With a flippant gesture he seized the lamb and carried it to the tank outside the door; and sousing it up and down till its dusty fleece was white and itself nearly drowned, he threw it on Jim's bed to dry. José found his voice and jabbered in a mixture of Spanish and Indian, expressing his pity for his pet; then brought handfuls of grass and leaves to rub it with. This vigorous attention, in which Jim used his own sound arm, soon restored the lambkin to a beauty that surprised them all. More grass and flowers were put in the bottom of the basket with the marked stone, the lamb upon this cushion, and the cover fastened on. Alaric informed Jim that such a basket was worth a great deal of money. He had learned the art of making such from Moon Face, who had travelled sometimes to the distant railway line and sold them to tourists. It was so tightly woven it would hold water; and in his pride over his handiwork the weaver would have poured a dipper of it into the basket to prove his statement. "No, no! The poor little thing has had more than its share of water! Best save the rest for yourself!" protested Jim, with a feeble attempt at a joke. Alaric desisted then, hung the dipper back on the tank, seized the basket in one hand and José in the other and strode away. The last glimpse Jim had of them showed poor little José's fat legs being swung along, touching the ground only now and then, as they utterly failed to keep up with his father's pace. Left alone, Jim lay still a long time, idly fingering some bits of rock which the child had scattered upon his blanket. He felt very cold; and again, in another moment, he seemed to be burning up. He thought of the water in the tank. He was desperately thirsty, his throat growing dry, his lips swelling; and alternately he longed to dip his head in that barrel and drink--drink--drink! then shivered with disgust remembering the various uses the stale fluid had been put to. Finally, sleep, or unconsciousness, overcame him and for many days he knew no more. CHAPTER XII PLAY THAT WAS WORK AND WORK THAT WAS PLAY The silence that followed Leslie's frightened cry, as he hurled himself to the ground beside the old man he had struck, lasted but an instant. Then, recovering their scattered wits, Herbert and Monty stooped and lifted the Captain's head. The movement roused him and he opened his eyes, drawing a long breath as he did so and trying to speak. But he couldn't do that yet; nor, indeed, till Dorothy had come back with a glass of water, for which she had instantly run to the house as Captain Lemuel fell. Dipping her fingers in the water she moistened his lips, and when he parted them as if demanding more, she gently dropped some between them. He swallowed with an effort but, presently, his strength returned and he tried to rise. The lads helped him and were overjoyed when he said, quite clearly and with a touch of his native humor: "Ain't so tough as I thought. Eh, what? Lessen a little tenderfoot like--Why, what's he down for? Tried it on himself?" At the sound of his victim's voice an infinite relief surged through Leslie's heart and he lifted a very white face to look at the ranchman. "Oh, Captain Lem! I--I was wild to do that! I beg your pardon--please forgive me--if you can!" The petition ended with a sob, that was really a gasp for breath, due to the excitement of his rage, and the anger of his mates changed to pity for him. "His weak heart! How ill he has made himself!" thought Helena, compassionately putting her hand under his arm and helping him to his feet, where he stood trembling and still breathing with much difficulty. Dorothy had told her of this weakness of the lad's and that his parents had been somewhat doubtful if he could endure the rarefied air of that high region. If he could it would cure that other weakness of his lungs and they hoped for the best. She was frightened by his appearance and inwardly resolved to oppose any sort of fun which might bring on a return of this attack. She had already heard her brother and Monty proposing a bear hunt on the more distant peaks of the mountains and decided that it should never take place. But Captain Lem was answering the boy and she listened to his words: "Course, sonny, I shan't lay it up again' you. An' I allow 't there's one thing decent about you: if you're quick to get r'iled you're just as quick to own yourself in fault. I'm willin' to wash the slate all clean now, an' start over again with any little problems we may meet, same's when I was a little shaver, an' 'tended deestrict school an' got my sums wrong, the teacher made me do. I'm no hand to lay up malice just 'cause a feller's got more 'n his share o' temper, specially not again' your father's son. Anybody 't spells his name Ford can do most as he's a mind to with Lemuel Hunt. Only--_don't you dast to do it again_; 'cause I'm some on the temper myself, an' I ain't much used to bein' struck. So--so--just don't show off any more o' that there little playfulness again. That's all." Too proud to show how really shaken and miserable he felt, the sharpshooter retired to his own quarters at the Barracks and was seen no more that night: but he sent word to Dorothy, the "Little One," that Netty, the lamb, had been given a soft bed close to his own and would be carefully attended. The hours passed quietly till bedtime, which all the young strangers at San Leon felt inclined to make early that night. Seven young people, with all the means of enjoyment at hand which these had, should have been very merry, but these were not. The absence of their hosts made the great house seem very empty. Nobody had heart for any music, though Dorothy bravely brought out her violin and Helena took her place at the piano, ready to accompany. But, unfortunately, the first melody which came to Dolly's mind was one that Father John, Aunt Betty, and poor Jim had each loved best--"Auld Lang Syne." She mastered a few strains and the tears rose to her eyes. She suddenly felt lonely and helpless, so far from all who had hitherto made her happy world. So, rather than break down completely and let the tears fall, she nodded to Helena and put her beloved Cremona "to bed," as she called its placing in its case. "Let's play 'Authors,'" suggested Molly. "'Authors' is the dullest game going," objected Monty. "That's because you're not well read. If you knew as much about books as Jim Barlow--" she retorted, teasing, then stopped abruptly. That was an unfortunate reference, for who, alas! could tell if that too studious youth were alive or dead? Alfaretta hurried to cover this mention by demanding: "Let's sing 'rounds,' 'Scotland's burning,' or 'Three Blind Mice.' Now don't stop to object or say nothin' but _just begin_. I will, and Nell, you follow. Then the boys, if any of 'em can sing a note. Sometimes their voices go 'way up in Q and sometimes 'way down suller. But they can try. Now--here she goes: 'Three Blind Mice--Three Blind Mice--For mercy's sake, Helena Montaigne, why don't you take it up? I sing one line, you know, then you sing the same one over--and we each do it three times then change to 'They--all--run--after--the--butcher's--wife--who-- cut--off--their--tails--with--a--carving--kni-i-ife!--You--never--see-- such--a--sight--in--your--life--as--Three--Blind Mice!' By that time Dolly'll be ready, over cryin'. She can sing real nice if she's a mind to. Listen! Everybody do it real solemn, no giggling, no forgettin' your parts, where you go in and come out at and doin' that part about the butcher's wife and the tails just as fast as you can speak it and the end--as--s-l-o-w--a-s--s-l-o-w. Begin!" Alfy's rich, though untrained voice, started the song and Helena followed on time, singing very sweetly, indeed, until she came to that tragic part about the tails, when she burst out in a giggle and a vain effort to race along as rapidly as Alfy had done. Herbert could sing well. He helped Alfaretta carry the thing through to a triumphant finale, they two alone; for all the others had laughed themselves out of place and tune, with Monty interspersing the melody by outrageous cat calls and screechings of "Maria Maouw, come and catch these Three Blind Mice!" "Maria! Maria! Pussy, pussy cat Maria--Come to supper!" echoed Leslie, laughing as he rarely laughed. To him this company of young people was wholly delightful--except when he felt it his duty to entertain them. When they were thus willing to entertain him everything was all right. He had had so few young intimates in his life that each of these youngsters seemed wonderful to him. Their nonsense and good natured chaffing of one another kept him amused at all times and was doubly pleasant to him that night. For, like Dorothy, he felt oddly forlorn and deserted in this great beautiful home that was practically his own; and he wished as he had done before that he might step into that cottage of the Babcock's, "up-mounting" where Alfaretta belonged and where she said everyone was as jolly as the day was long. He hadn't liked Alfy at first and he still rather looked down upon her. She wasn't of his station in life, she _would_ not see that money made such a great difference, whether one had it or had not. She was greatly lacking in delicacy of speech, but she was honest to a fault. Not honester than Dolly, perhaps, but in another way. She hadn't hesitated to give him one of those generous "pieces of her mind" with which she regaled anyone she considered at fault; and the "piece" she had cut for him that day had been: "Well, Leslie Ford, if bein' rich as Croesus--whoever he was--or havin' all creation to wait on you can't make you no better 'n a coward--I pity you. Yes, I do. That was the lowest-down, orneriest trick to hit an old man like Captain Lem, without givin' him a chance to help himself. Why, a boy that hadn't a cent, an' never looked to have, couldn't ha' been no meaner. An' just sayin' 'Forgive me' don't undo that job. Worst is, you raised a bigger welt on your own insides, on that thing Mr. Winters calls your conscience, 'n you did on his old head, an' it won't heal so quick, neither. I sure was ashamed of you, I sure was." This lecture had been in response to his appeal, as they chanced to stand together in the cloistered walk, waiting for supper: "You don't think very badly of me, do you, Alfaretta, for getting so angry?" The lad was very unhappy and very ashamed. He hoped to recover his own self-respect by hearing his mates declare the recent affair had been "nothing." Herbert had gone so far, indeed, as to say that he, too, would have resented being told "must" and "mustn't" by a mere hired man, but Leslie knew that Herbert would never have struck anybody under any provocation; and Monty had simply remarked: "Well, if you really liked to soil your hands that way, all right." Alfy was the first of the girls he had interviewed, though he had gratefully recognized Helena's compassion and Dorothy's distress--for himself. Molly--he guessed he wouldn't question Molly. That young person had a flippant tongue and she was always inclined to "call a spade a spade." He couldn't imagine her calling a coward a hero--and his own heart told him he had not been that. But Alfy was poor and intensely grateful for all his parents were doing for her. She would be the one to soothe his self-esteem and overlook the episode, he thought, and so he appealed to her. Alfy's opening remark had been: "I can't say I think very well. You might ha' done worse, course, you might have used that pistol I saw you cocking round, this morning, if you'd had it handy; and that you've got no more use for than a cat for two tails. You beat the Dutch, Leslie Ford. You're feelin' mean as pussley and you're coaxin' me to contradict you." Then had followed that larger "slice" of the girl's opinion, recorded above. It hadn't left a very pleasant "taste" in the lad's "mouth." Summons to supper was an agreeable sound, just then, and nobody referred to the event again. Yet, as has been told, the evening was a dull one for most of the party, the singing of the "rounds" its greatest amusement. Just as this ended, Dr. Jones appeared to read family prayers. Mrs. Ford had instituted this on her arrival at San Leon, and Mr. Ford had conducted the little service with a dignified sincerity which could not fail to impress his young guests. On leaving, he had requested the doctor to take his place, saying: "No ceremony that will help to bring a blessing on our home must be omitted just because I am away." But, to-night, they missed the master's earnest voice and Gray Lady's wonderful singing of just the familiar, common hymn which everybody knew. The house-servants, and such of the ranchmen as would, filed into the spacious music-room and took their seats in reverent quiet. This was new business to most of those rough westerners and they came partly from curiosity, partly from admiration of "Dan Ford, Railroad Boss"; so great a man in their opinion that whatever he did they felt must have some merit in it. Helena took her place at the piano and the other girls stood beside her; and Herbert, obeying a nod from Dorothy also came forward. Monty and Leslie reluctantly followed. They had grouped themselves thus when the master was present but had hesitated now from a foolish shame before these untutored workmen. Dorothy's face lighted with gratitude and between the lines of the hymn Molly murmured, "Good boys," while Alfy sang with even greater vim than her beloved "rounds." Then swift good nights and rest. It had been a busy, an exciting day; and Dorothy was soon asleep, though again her mind had been full of wonder concerning absent Jim and she had meant to lie awake and, as Alfy expressed it: "Cipher out where he could be." But still she could not worry greatly. The arrival of the lamb with his message assured her that he was alive and, she argued, must be well since he had not forgotten her. But in one room there was no desire for sleep. Leslie was still restless and excited. His heart bothered him. He missed his parents more than he would acknowledge even to himself. He was fractious and tried Mateo's patience sorely. "No, Mateo, I shan't go to bed till I get ready. No matter if my mother did say ten o'clock, it was because she didn't understand. You can't go, either. I want you to talk." "Certainly, señor." But when silence followed Leslie impatiently inquired: "Well, why don't you?" Poor Mateo sighed. Commonly his tongue would run so fast that his young master would order him to be quiet. Now, when requested, the valet could find no word to say. He stood behind his master's chair, idly turning with his foot the corners of a mighty bear skin which lay upon the floor. It was the skin of an enormous grizzly, that had been shot by Captain Lem and another _caballero_, or horse trainer and had been mounted by themselves with infinite care, as a gift to their employer. The head was stuffed to the contour of life, and the paws outspread and perfect. It was, indeed, a most valuable skin and Leslie had admired it so greatly that it had been spread as a rug upon his floor. It annoyed him now to see Mateo toying with it and he bade him stop. The Mexican flushed and sighed: "It is that _el señor_ is not well, _si_?" he suggested, suavely. "Yes, I am well, too," retorted the boy, who felt wretched, with a curious oppression on his chest. "Imagine, Señor Leslie, what it must be to kill, to slaughter such a monster!" "Ah! a monster, indeed! But I shall kill just such another, you'll see. What's the use of a ranch on the Rockies and not go bear hunting? They can't keep me done up in cotton wool just because I used to cough a little." "Certainly not, señor." "Oh! shut up with your everlasting 'certainly nots!' You're as tiresome as an old woman. I wish you'd stayed in San Diego, where you belong." Mateo was amazed. He was really devoted to Leslie and they had rarely disagreed. He scarcely knew the lad in such a mood as this and realized that something must be done to give a pleasanter turn to things. A bear hunt? Was that what the young señor had set his heart upon and been denied? An inspiration came to him. "_Caramba!_ Behold! I have a fine thought, me. Will it please _el señor_ to listen?" "Of course. That's what I said to do--to talk." Then Mateo did talk. For five, ten minutes, with many a gesture and mixture of Spanish and English, till his listener's face grew radiant and he sprang from his chair with a hip, hip, hurra! All his crossness was over and he now allowed Manuel to settle him for the night with a good nature not to be exceeded by anybody. The morning found all the young folks happier than they had been on the night before; and, nobody was late for breakfast. It had been explained to them that each one should attend the grooming of his or her own horse. There would be men to wait upon them, of course, and for the girls but little labor. Yet Mr. Ford believed that they would all be benefited in health by this pleasant task and that the intimacy which should exist between horse and rider would be thus furthered. Breakfast was scarcely over when Captain Lem appeared on the porch. He looked older than usual and uncommonly pale under his weather toughened skin, and he had put on his "specs," which he disliked. However, his manner was as gay as ever and he began: "You cert'nly are the laziest set o' youngsters I've met sence I was knee-high to a hop-toad. Reckon if anybody'd give me a horse when I was your ages I'd ha' beat the sun a-risin' to see if 't had lived over night. The boys is waiting in the stables, and gettin' pretty cross. Some on 'em sort-of-kind-of feel 's if they was playin' nurse to you kids, and the notion don't go down none too good even to oblige Dan Ford, Boss. They've lived in the open, most of the boys has, and are better used to roundin' up stock than to tendin' tenderfeet youngsters. Eh, Little One? Ain't you nowise curious to hear how Netty passed the night?" One thing was evident to them all--the sharpshooter's ready tongue had suffered no hurt from the unhappy incident of the day before. Dorothy ran to put her hand in his, exclaiming: "How dreadful of me! I had forgotten that darling thing. Actually forgotten. How could I when she came from Jim?" Away she sped toward the Barracks, her white frock and scarlet ribbons making a pretty spot of color on the wide shaven lawn; but practical Alfaretta remarked: "If that ain't just like Dolly Doodles! Make her think she's neglected somebody and off she flies, forgettin' things better worth rememberin'! The idea! She'll go right to cleanin' that calico filly, Zaraza, an' never think a mite about her clean clothes. Not till she gets 'em dirty--then nothing'll do but she must put on fresh. White frocks ain't so easy did up, either, so I'll go get our high aprons, that Mrs. Calvert had made for us to dust the house in, at Paradise. We've got quite a lot of 'em and, girls, if you'd like, I'll bring a couple for you, too." "You dear, thoughtful little caretaker! I'll be ever so obliged for the loan till I can make one for myself," answered Helena gratefully, giving her mate a smile that made Alfy happy. Eager to see their horses but not so pleased with the idea of grooming them, the lads sauntered toward the stables and corral, Leslie intimating that he thought "a quarter judiciously applied would be better than soiling himself by stable-work." Neither Herbert nor Monty knew Leslie well enough yet to understand this shirking of what they anticipated as a delightful task. Herbert had always been used to horses, and to fine ones. He loved his own Bucephalus, "back home," as a dear friend, and looked forward to equal enjoyment in his new Blackamoor. With a little laugh he glanced at his young host and remarked: "If I could help it I would never let another hand than mine touch that superb animal your father gave me. I hardly realize it yet, that it is truly my own. Why, I mean to train him to hurdles and high jumps, and when I go back east, this autumn, I'll get myself proposed for the Highland Valley Hunt and--elected, if I can. I say, this is just a glorious chance to learn what I couldn't at home, where houses are thick and farmers so stubborn they will object to one's riding to hounds across their property. Howev--" Monty interrupted, rather jealously: "Oh! Quit that riding-to-hounds talk! I don't know a thing about horses--except a saw-horse, that my mother insisted I should work on to reduce my--" "'Too, too solid flesh!'" broke in Leslie, laughing now and eager to watch the inexperienced "fat boy" make his first attempt at grooming a spirited beast. But they were apt to break in thus upon each other's remarks and no offence taken, and they were soon at the stables, where the girls were already assembled. One glance at his sister, covered from neck to foot by a brown gingham apron, reminded the fastidious Herbert that he was not fixed for dirty work, and he promptly begged a set of overalls from the nearest workman. The other lads followed his example, discarding jackets and vests, and beginning on their new tasks with a zeal that was almost too eager. Even Leslie had done the same, willing for once to try this new game and see if there was any fun in it, as Herbert seemed to think. But his fingers shrank from handling the curry comb and brushes, absolutely new and clean though they were, and the best he accomplished was a roughening of Cæsar's coat which disgusted him as well as the horse. At last, with a remark that "looking on was good enough for him," he tossed his brushes aside and signalled an attendant to finish the task so badly begun. To his amazement, the hostler declined: "Sorry, Master Leslie, but the Boss's express orders was--have you do it yourself." Leslie's eyes flashed. This was insubordination, indeed! Wasn't he master at San Leon, now? Then Captain Lem drew near, to pick up the brush and explain in a matter-of-fact way: "Best never rub anything--nor anybody--the wrong way, lad! This sorrel, here, 'd be sp'iled in next to no time if his hair ain't smoothed the way natur' meant it should lie. There. That's how. See how it shines? And just look at Herbert and his black! By the great horned spoon! Them two is cronies a'ready--hand-in-glove, pals! And let me say right here an' now; there ain't no comfortabler love nowhere in this world than that 'twixt a horse and his owner--if the last has got sense. Now pitch in, sonny, and don't let nobody get ahead of you on that line. No, siree! What'd the Boss say?" Then turning toward Monty, valiantly struggling with this new business, he inquired in real kindness: "Want me to lend a hand, youngster?" Poor Monty would have given many "quarters" to say "yes." But he was too plucky. His face was streaming with perspiration, he had worried the chestnut, Juan, till the creature threatened to kick, and he ached from head to foot. But he had glanced across to that open space where four girls were making a frolic of this "horrible mess" and manliness held him to his duty. But he couldn't refrain from a snappy: "No, I don't! And how long at a time does a fellow keep at it? How tell whether a horse is groomed or isn't?" "Ginger! Do you know when your shirt's buttoned or when it ain't? Just look at Herbert's piece o' work an' do accordin'. But keep cool, Monty. Don't get r'iled an' don't rile your nag. You'll do all right--you've got the makin' of a horseman in ye!" Thus encouraged, Montmorency Vavasour-Stark renewed his efforts, though with less force and better judgment. There is always a right and a wrong way to everything and the worried lad had, at last, fallen upon the right. He "would be a horseman!" Hurray! That opinion from such a source was worth lots! Well, that first lesson was over at last. Seven tired youngsters stripped off aprons and overalls and proceeded to mount the horses they had groomed and most of them were happy. It had been worth while, after all, to get thus familiar with the animals; and the girls, at least, remembered that their hosts had spoken of how beneficial it would be for their beloved son to be with such creatures as much as possible. Like the rifle practice, it was all for Leslie and Leslie's health; and they would have been willing enough to help this good work along, even if they had not got all the fun out of it for themselves, which they did. They rode "off bounds," that morning; following Captain Lem, with a couple of trained horsemen riding at their rear. Perhaps of all the company, Herbert and Molly were happiest. They were as much at home in the saddle as any cowboy of them all, and their high spirits spread to their mates, so that even they regretted the order that the leader gave: "Right about, face! Rifle practice--nine o'clock, sharp!" They hadn't a minute to lose; yet when the "awkward squad" repaired to the Barracks only the four girls answered to roll call. The lads came straggling up, later, their heads close together, an air of profound mischief and mystery about them, and Dorothy heard the words "Bear Hunt" escape from one of them. Her heart sank. Leslie was, indeed, coming to take the place he had declined in the "ranks," rather going with the crowd than be left out alone; but there was something in his manner that Dolly did not like. Were the three boys planning to steal off by themselves, despite Captain Lemuel's warnings? CHAPTER XIII THE HEN OF WUN SING But whatever wild schemes were hatching in the heads of the three lads nothing seemed to come of them. Days followed one another in such peaceful routine that Dorothy felt ashamed of her fears, as well as ashamed of her composure regarding Jim Barlow. The longer he was absent the less they spoke of him. That he was alive, somewhere, all were sure, and that he would return sometime or "when he gets good and ready," as Alfaretta coolly observed. "He seemed like a very odd chap, the little I saw of him," said Leslie, and did not regret the stranger's absence. Herbert was loyal and insisted that "Jim was a royal chap--once he shook off his awkward shyness a bit. Why, the yarns Jim Barlow could spin about woodsy things and habits of wild creatures would make you sit right up and take notice. Oh, Jim's all right--only bashful." "That's so. Why, that fellow, don't you know, that fellow really plans to go sometime, to Africa, or some other place and live with monkeys just to hear them talk. He--" "He might have stayed right here with us--or you, Monty dear," said Molly, sweetly. Monty merely frowned at her but continued: "There is a man did that. True. Went into the woods and lived in a cage--" "All that trouble and expense for nothing," again remarked Molly; and this time Monty changed the subject, asking: "Have you heard about Wun Sing and his hen?" "Oh! never mind hens. What do you say, folks? Suppose we get old Lem to go with us into the mountains yonder and look for Jim?" said Herbert. "You needn't do that. You'd not find him. He's hidden himself on purpose, I believe, and only sent back Netty to let us know he was alive and well. Even Molly thinks that," said Helena; "and I, for one don't care to hunt up boys who don't want to be found. I think Jim's shyness is at the bottom of the matter. It's kindness to let him alone and--" Dolly looked serious and shook her head while Monty again demanded: "Have you heard about Wun Sing's hen?" "I wonder what he's going to give us for supper! I'm nearly starved. There never was such a place for appetites--eating doesn't stop that hollow, all-gone feeling a bit!" calmly stated Alfy, with a tragic air. "Alfy, you little pig! It isn't more than an hour since we finished dinner," reproved Molly, laughing. "Well, I can't help that. I wish 'twas supper-time. Let's go in the kitchen and ask for a piece--like the children home do, bless 'em!" "I say, you better not! Wun Sing's hen--" "Monty--quit! Let's all go ask for a 'piece'!" cried Leslie, throwing his arm around the "fat boy's" shoulder and forcing him along with the others. Herbert pulled out a jew's-harp--procured nobody knew where--and headed the procession with a vain attempt to render "Yankee Doodle" so that it could be recognized for itself. Then all fell into line, with the laughter and nonsense natural to a company of care free "youngsters" as they were now known all over the premises. But as they passed a room just beyond Leslie's own, he poked his head through the window, to demand of Mateo, lying within: "Any better, boy?" "_Gracias_, Señor Leslie. Much better. Only, the hen of Wun Sing; the omelette--Ah! I suffer, _si_. I groan--I am on fire. The heathen creature and his foul fowl!" "What's the matter, Les? Is that your pert valet laid up in yon? What's up?" "Rather--what's down? The boy hasn't been well, or says he hasn't these three days. That's why I had to put off the bear--" "Mum! Dorothy's just behind us and she has ears all round her head! But we'll do it, yet; either with or without him. It'll be rippin' fun, but if that girl gets wind of it she'll stop it, sure." "I wonder if we'll see Wun Sing's hen!" said Monty again. "Stark! I tell you if you mention that fowl again I'll stuff her down your throat!" cried Herbert, dropping his jew's-harp and engaging with Monty. But the latter was round and easily slipped through Bert's fingers, and the scrimmage was playful, anyway. Resuming their march they entered the great kitchen, now wholly deserted save by the Chinaman, who cowered in a corner, praying lustily to his honorable forefathers and burning some sort of stuff before a little image on the floor beside him. Like a good many others of his race, Wun Sing was "good Chlistian" when it suited him to be, but a much better devotee of his ancient gods when real trouble overtook him. Wun Sing was in trouble now. Bottomless trouble, he feared, and so wholly engaged in his devotions that he didn't take any notice of the noisy youngsters foraging his stores. Until, from the corner of his eye, he saw Alfy poking into a little wall-cupboard that was his own property and used to shelter his dearest treasures. "No, no, Missee Alfaletta! No, no. Wun Sing's chalm no wolkee if lill gels meddle!" He rose from his prostration on the floor and fairly flew to the girl's side, pushing her hand aside from the key she had almost turned, his whole manner expressing great agitation. Of course, she desisted at once, even apologized for her action, but her old co-worker in Mrs. Calvert's kitchen begged pardon in his own turn and after his foreign fashion. In his broken English he eagerly explained that he and his belongings had been _bewitched_. His hen--the so beloved hen of Wun Sing, that he had brought from far away California, along with some garden seeds and roots, the hen had been entered by an evil spirit and the days of Wun Sing were numbered. Already he felt the dread sickness stealing over him, as it had already stolen upon his old neighbor of San Diego--the so afflicted Mateo. He had been praying and offering gifts to his little clay god but so far no good had come. Within the cupboard on the wall he had placed a "charm"--a terrible charm, in his opinion and if that failed not only he but all at San Leon were doomed. Would that he had never heard of the place, even for the extra big wages the rich owner had offered. He-- When he had reached this point, Alfy shook him demanding: "What makes you such a fool, Wunny? That little old image on the floor is enough to make you sick, course, it's so filthy dirty. I hope you'll scrub your hands good with soap before you touch any food for other folks to eat. What's the matter with the hen, anyway?" Having put this question, Alfaretta walked to the sink and turned the spigot over her own hand, which suddenly felt soiled by contact with the Chinaman's shoulder. Then she remarked: "We're all hungry. Tell us where we can find something to eat." The cook shook his head and Alfy foraged for herself: presently securing from the pantry a box of crackers and a jar of cheese. Armed with these refreshments she felt she would be sustained until the regular supper time, and invited her mates to accompany her on a visit to this wonderful hen whose name was in everybody's mouth. Wun Sing protested; but when they were determined, he tremblingly presented each of the youngsters with a bit of red paper, inscribed in black with a few Chinese characters. Laughingly, they pinned these on and so protected from "evil chalms" sought the little wire enclosure which the Chinaman had made for his petted fowl, upon his first coming to San Leon. The hen had been the gift of his opulent kinsman, Der Doo, and was far too precious to its new owner to be allowed with the other poultry. It had lived in state within its little wire-covered yard, supplied with fresh grass each day and fattening upon the best of food. For its night accommodation, Wun Sing had constructed a tiny pagoda-like house imitating a temple of his native land. Here the pampered fowl slept luxuriously, and for a time had been the delight of its owner's eyes. "Let's sit down on the grass and watch it awhile. We can eat our crackers here, first rate, 'cause if we get thirsty we can drink out of the spigot o' running water that cooky has fixed for the hen," suggested Alfy. So they ranged themselves in a semi-circle, with the crackers and cheese in the centre and awaited developments. "Cock-a-doodle-doo!" crowed Herbert, in excellent imitation of a rooster. "Oh! hush! Hens don't do _that_; they just say--cut-cut-cut-cut--cut-tarket!" corrected Molly. Immediately the rest took up the mocking cries, to the evident distress of poor Wun Sing, who stood in the background, his face yellower than common and his hands clasping and unclasping nervously. But neither cat-calls, crowings, nor cacklings, coaxed the invisible fowl from her palace-like retreat. So, soon tiring of this, they fell to talking of other things and forgot the creature; till, suddenly, from within the temple came a crow that beat even Herbert's noisy ones. It was so loud and so sudden, and was so closely followed by a jubilant cackle, that all of them were a trifle startled while Wun Sing threw himself down in real terror. The cackling continued a longer time than is usual and ended in another masculine crow. Then there solemnly stalked into the little yard a very handsome fowl, of the Plymouth Rock species, who strutted about as if she were the queen of all hens. "Huh! Nothing the matter with that biddy, Wun Sing! I wish 't Ma Babcock had her in our hennery, up-mounting. What's wrong with her, you think, Wunny?" "Missee Alfletta--_eggs_!" "Well, what's a hen's business in life but to lay eggs?" demanded Herbert, laughing at the Chinaman's curious expression. Then it came out. That hen did lay eggs--such eggs! She was a big hen and her eggs so small, and so many! Ah! she was bewitched. She was bewitching Wun Sing. She had already bewitched Mateo, yes. It began the very day the master left. On that sorrowful, august occasion that pent up, solitary fowl deposited two eggs in her softly lined nest. "That might be. Ma's hens do that, sometimes, good breeds," said Alfy, in answer to the Chinaman's impressive statement. With all this company of doubters around him Wun Sing felt secure enough to go on and state that on the day following there had been four eggs! Then one--then again seven--the mystic number. Latterly there had been eight, nine, as high as ten! All in one twenty-four hours! Could a fowl, free from an evil spirit, so conduct itself? No. No, indeed. Wun Sing knew what he knew. Disaster was coming. There was trouble on the wing. It would light upon San Leon. They were doomed--doomed--doomed! "I don't believe it!" declared Leslie. "But a hen of that character _ought_ to crow as well as cackle. How much'll you take for her, cooky? I'll buy and start a hennery to stump the world. Anybody want to go in with me on this deal? San Leon Chinese Poultry--Warranted to Make Possessors Rich! The Egg Trust of San Leon! I say, boys, the thing's just rippin'!" "Undo that little gate, Wunny. I'm going in to collect the eggs. Come on, Alfy, or anybody," cried Dorothy, laughing. "That empty cracker box to hold them in. By the way, Wunny, when did you empty the nest?" He assured her that he had done so the last thing before retiring on the night before. He had already taken two from it this day. Now by the cackle--there must be--Ah! he finished his speech with a wild flourish of his hands, then put them before his eyes to shield them from an uncanny sight. Those outside the little poultry yard waited in curiosity for the others to come back. The two girls within it had their heads close together peering into the hen-temple, while Monty had squeezed his plump body through its little door with the cracker box in hand. "Oh! I say, come out of there! How many have you found?" called Herbert. "Hurry up! Nell and Molly are getting scared. Fact!" "I'm not," denied Molly, but Helena said nothing. It was absurd, but she was actually catching some of the Chinaman's nervousness over this most uncanny fowl. And a moment later, she was relieved to see the egg-hunters turn around and Monty emerge from that "heathen temple," the cracker box held tightly in his hand. He carried it as if it were heavy and his face was almost as solemn as the Chinaman's. The box contained eleven eggs! Wun Sing gave one glance and fled, and trying to take the box into his own hands, Leslie dropped it--with the natural result. "Well, they may be bewitched eggs but they can break 'allee samee!' I'm sorry, Wun Sing, but I'll pay for them! And say, did anybody ever hear of such a thing before?" asked Leslie, astonished. Nobody had; and seeing Dr. Jones crossing the grounds at a little distance they ran to him with the marvellous tale. He listened attentively and even walked back with them to see the hen for himself. His decision put bewitchment out of the question. "The bird is a freak of nature. I have read of such before, but they are rare. Either that--or--are you quite sure that no practical joke has been played by any of the boys--or by yourselves?" His keen study of their faces revealed nothing mischievous on any. They were all as honestly surprised as himself, and he then made a close inspection of the little place. The pagoda stood exactly in the centre of the yard, so far from the wire-netting on every side that no arm would be long enough to reach it and drop eggs into the nest at the back. Wun Sing always kept the key of the Chinese padlock on the wire gate and entrance through it without his consent could not be made. "It doesn't look like a hoax, and it's not to be wondered at that the Chinaman was scared. We all are--at the unusual and unexplainable. But this is simple. It is a freak of nature and the hen will probably die soon, of exhaustion." The Doctor walked away and Molly made a funny little face behind his back. "I call that real mean, to take the mystery out of it in that way! I've been getting delightfully goose-fleshy and creepy, just to find the spook is nothing but a silly old hen that's outdone herself. I hate to be disappointed like that. I wish something would happen, real hair-raising, as Indians, or bears, or even a few catamounts!" "If they did, I'd like to be on the spot. I bet you, Molly Breckenridge, you'd run faster than anybody if those things did happen," teased Monty. Saying that, he exchanged an odd glance with Leslie, who nodded and said: "Come along, boys, let's visit Mateo in a body. Force of numbers you know. He lays it to eggs--Wunny's bewitched eggs, but I lay it to cowardice. There's nothing the matter with my valiant valet but downright scare. After proposing the thing, too, and being the best figure of all to do it. Ta, ta, ladies! We shall meet again--at feeding time. Eh, Alfy? I mean Miss Babcock!" "Huh! Don't you think I didn't notice 't you ate more 'n anybody else of the crackers and cheese. Good-by!" They separated, the girls to their own rooms to freshen themselves for the evening and for a long talk over the delights of this wonderful summer; yet in all their happiness, a deep regret was in their warm hearts for Jim Barlow's absence and the wish that they might know where he was and that he was well. The lads sought Mateo in his room, and though the valet pretended slumber he was promptly roused by the energetic attentions of his visitors. "Look here, Mateo, we know you're shamming. The fact is that after getting us all wrought up to this bear business and agreeing to take the chief part, you're afraid. Either you think the 'boys'll' get lively with their shooting-irons and hunt the bear too well, or else--I don't know what else. Only this, you can't pretend to be hoodooed or 'bewitched' with any of Wun Sing's omelettes. That's all up. The doctor's taken a hand in that and I know it isn't indigestion you're bewitched with--it's plain sneak. Now, boy, get up!" After Leslie's long speech, that ended in the terse command, Mateo raised himself on elbow and protested: "But it is of the illness, I, señor, _en verdad_. The omelette of Wun Sing--" "May have been a little too rich for you, Matty lad, but don't worry. That wonderful fowl has shortened her life by her own ambition. I suppose she had a certain number of eggs to lay during her earthly career and she concluded to get the job over with. She's an all right Chinee hen, but _she's_ the one that'll die, not you nor Wunny Sing. Doctor Jones said so. We've interviewed him on the subject. Doctors know a lot. So, be decent! Get up and practise a bit." Thus adjured by Herbert, for whom the valet had a great admiration, Mateo threw off the light covers and rose to his feet--fully dressed. He had only lain down, professing himself ill, whenever there was danger of his young master appearing. With a swift change of front, he now fell in with the lads' notions, and thereafter followed an hour of "practice," accompanied by curious sounds and growlings. All this behind locked door and tightly shuttered windows--something almost unknown at peaceful San Leon. At supper time there was a subdued air of mystery about the three lads, which Dorothy noticed, if none of the other girls did. Also, they were so extremely courteous and thoughtful that it was rather overdone. However, politeness was agreeable, and there followed the happiest evening the young guests had spent since the departure of Gray Lady for the east. The fading moonlight was now supplemented by the electric lights, making the wide lawns brilliant as day, save where the deep shadows fell, black in contrast. At midnight, Dorothy awoke. Something had startled her and she sat up in bed, shivering in fear. How queer! she thought and peered through the window as if expecting some unwelcome sight. There was nothing unusual visible and, except for a curious creeping sound, as of some large body moving stealthily on the veranda floor, nothing to hear. Strange that brave Dorothy's heart should beat so fast and she turn so cold. She wished Alfy would awake. She wanted to hear somebody speak. Then she scorned herself for her foolishness, wondering if she, too, had caught the Chinaman's terror of "bewitchment." Oh! this was horrid! Alfy would go right to sleep again, even if she were awakened, and she must, she must hear somebody human! She opened her trembling lips to call: "Alfy! Alfy dear, please wake up!" But the words were never uttered. Something had come into view at her open window which froze them on her lips. CHAPTER XIV THE GRIZZLY AND THE INDIANS For a moment Dorothy sat still in bed, afraid to move or cry out while the great animal at the window remained equally motionless. Then she was able to shriek: "Alf! Helena! Somebody--help--help! HELP!" Alfy leapt from her little bed with an answering cry, frightened by Dorothy's screech, and hurriedly demanding: "Why--why--what?" then rubbed her eyes and stood transfixed with horror. A moment later the whole house was in an uproar. The lads came running from their rooms, yelling in sympathy with the cries of the girls, the doctor rushed from his office-bedroom clad only in pajamas; the nurse forsook her sick bed--which she had not left before since first stricken with a chest attack; Anita--Wun Sing--kitchen boy--all the household gathered in the great corridor upon which the girls' rooms opened. Such an uproar had never been heard at peaceful San Leon since its foundation stone was laid; and the sounds carrying clearly in that night air, out from the Barracks rushed a horde of cowboys and workmen with Captain Lem in lead. "A bear!" "The Grizzly! The Grizzly!" A grizzly it was sure enough. All the feminine portion of the household retreated to the empty chamber of Miss Milliken, slammed down its window and locked themselves within; then from curiosity opened the door a little way, to peek through the crack. "Oh! Oh! It's coming this way--why doesn't somebody shoot it!" cried Helena, running back to look through the window panes. The great animal had now dropped from its upright position at Dolly's window and was crawling on all fours back along the wide porch. It certainly was coming that way but--it couldn't get in! "Could it? Can bears--open--open--things?" gasped Molly, retreating to a wardrobe and hiding within it, whence she demanded in a torrent of questions information of all sorts concerning bears and why nobody killed it before it killed them! Oddly enough, nobody had interfered with the creature's movements thus far, though some of the men had run back to the Barracks for firearms, and just then unlucky Wun Sing came round the corner of the building and met it face to face. He had run at top speed in the opposite direction from that the beast seemed taking when he had first espied it, issuing from his room beyond the kitchen. Seeing it headed that way he had instinctively chosen the other, not reckoning that even bears can change routes. Then the yell that rose belittled all which had gone before. Grizzly uprose on his hind feet and rushed to meet poor Wunny, squeezing him in a terrible embrace that checked the Chinaman's yell instantly. Until a touch of Bruin's teeth upon his thinly clad shoulder and a bite of sharp teeth awoke it again. A clutch of his queue from the great paw brought forth greater shrieks and seemed to give the victim an extraordinary strength. By some means he wrenched himself free and escaped, the grizzly pursuing on all fours again--and both headed toward the lake. Whether Wun Sing's purpose was to throw himself within it he didn't know himself, but the road toward it was the clearest and offered his best chance. Half way to the water his feet caught in his long night blouse and he tripped. Instantly the grizzly was upon him. The great furry creature sprawled over the prostrate cook, growling and snapping his teeth but as yet inflicting no further injury, and the man underneath no longer knowing anything, for his terrified senses had taken leave of his quivering body. Slowly the bear got upright again and, for a moment towered above his helpless victim. Then seeming to have satisfied his rage in that direction, he resumed his natural position and moved back toward the house. He kept his great head well lowered, wagging it from side to side and, altogether, conducting himself like a half-blind or greatly bewildered bear. By this time the men from the Barracks had reappeared, well armed; but as the grizzly climbed upon the veranda floor again they hesitated to fire because the low windows opening upon it were full of peeping faces. Silent Pete, alone, dared approach the creature as near as the other end of the veranda. This man had been a mighty hunter in his youth, when Colorado was an almost unknown country with few settlers and big game plentiful. His old blood had warmed to the conflict now, though he was silent as ever and paid no heed to the warnings called to him by his ranch mates. Creeping stealthily forward toward the encounter he watched his grizzly enemy with exultation, his thought being: "He's tough! He's an old one! His hide's thick--I must make no mistake. When I get nigh enough to hit him through the heart--wish he'd rise up again--queerest actin' grizzly I ever met--likely my last one--so anxious to meet me he come a-visitin'--he, he, he! Ah! he's risin'--I'll--" Out on the electric lighted grounds the men were grouped with their rifles, all anxious to fire and all eager to delay till the last moment, watching this wild beast so uncommonly near at hand. Why, from its movements it might almost have been a tame animal escaped from some menagerie. Besides, the trophy belonged to Silent Pete. He was first and hardiest to face the brute and only if his famously sure shot failed would they fire to the rescue. Yes, the bear was the old hunter's legitimate prize--they'd wait, guns ready-- "Don't shoot! Oh! men, don't shoot! DON'T SHOOT!" To the utter amazement of everyone, up flew Dorothy's window and out she leaped, so close behind the creeping grizzly that she almost touched him: she was gesticulating wildly and her repeated cries of "Don't shoot!" startled old Captain Lem almost to numbness. What was that she was saying? "He isn't a bear! I see his feet! Bears don't wear--SHOES!" Alas! Her cry came too late. As bruin reared himself old Peter's shot rang out. An instant later, with such a cry as never issued from the throat of any bear, he dropped to the veranda floor and lay there motionless. The great bear hunt was over. Five minutes later the grizzly rug was back on the floor of Leslie's room and the lad who had masqueraded in it to frighten a few girls, the over-zealous Mateo, lay on his own little bed with Doctor Jones probing for the bullet which had entered his shoulder. Fortunately, it had not lodged there but passed straight through leaving a clean flesh wound which would promptly heal, the doctor said, but that would keep unhappy Mateo in bed for a few days. He had feigned sickness when there was none, dreading to act the part he had just so unfortunately done. But the young master's will had been too strong and the suggestion had been Mateo's own. "The punishment, for once, has fallen upon the guilty person. You'll have time to reflect, Mateo, that frightening timid people is scarcely a manly pastime. I trust there'll be no more skylarking till Mr. Ford is home. You will be kept upon a rigid diet till I order otherwise, and good night." So said the doctor, leaving his patient to his own thoughts and assuring himself that all the young folks had retired to their rooms again. He had administered no further reproofs--nor needed to do so. It was an exceedingly crest-fallen trio of lads who disappeared from view, when once the extent of Mateo's injury was learned, and a very quiet one. But the excited girls were not so quiet. They had to talk it over, simply had to! "I thought it was queer all the boys were in their day clothes," said Helena, with her arm about Molly, who was still shaking with fright, now and then, despite the fact that the affair was all over. "I noticed, too, but I thought they'd just dressed awful quick. But suppose it _had_ been a real one--would it have eaten us up?" she begged to know. To which Alfy replied from her own room: "No, Molly Breckenridge, don't be a goose. _We'd_ have eaten _him_ up, course. We'd have had bear steak for breakfast--Some say it's good. Don't s'pose with all them men around they'd have let it live very long? No, indeedy. But Matty did it real cute, after all, didn't he? Must ha' been terrible hot, trampin' around under all that skin. Well, we ought to go to sleep, but seems if I'd never catch another wink. I wonder what became of Wunny! Last I saw him he was lyin' flat on the ground--thinkin' he was et up, I guess. Dolly--My heart! Dolly Doodles is asleep a'ready. Did you ever see such a sleepy head, Nell?" There was no answer from the room across the hall, so Alfy curled down among her pillows and composed herself to sleep. But her mind wasn't at rest. She kept seeing, in her fancy, the prostrate figure of Wun Sing, and hoped some of the men from the Barracks had looked after him. She felt as if she must get up again and go to see for herself. But--out of doors at night didn't seem quite the same, even to this sensible girl, as it had done before the bear scare. Besides--something really was the matter with her eyes. They felt as if they were full of sand--she'd just shut them a minute to-- She was asleep at once. A body simply could not stay awake after bedtime, in that Colorado air! And it was well she could not. Else, the warm-hearted girl would have suffered fresh alarm. It was a belated household which struggled out of heavy slumber the next day, and as Dorothy lazily yawned and stretched her arms above her head it seemed as if all the exciting events of the night must be part of her dreams. Alfy woke, too, as reluctantly as her mate and just as Helena appeared from her own room, looking a little heavy-eyed but fully dressed. She bade them good morning, but waited for no response before she added: "The house seems unusually still, and I don't smell coffee. I generally do, the first thing. I sometimes think it's the odor of that wakes me. I wonder if Wun Sing's fright and his worry about his poor hen has made him ill! I'll go and see; and if the boys aren't up I'll call them." The lads answered sleepily to Helena's summons, yet were not long in appearing on the porch, where the other girls promptly joined them. As if by common consent nobody mentioned the escapade of the night, though it was in the minds of all and all were really longing to discuss it. The boys because they wished to "explain," and the girls thinking that to treat the "joke" with silent contempt would be their severest punishment. Nobody even mentioned unlucky Mateo, who had lent himself to the furtherance of the affair, only to be the one to suffer most from it. "Hmm. Isn't it past breakfast time?" asked Monty, at last. Herbert looked at his watch, and exclaimed: "Ten minutes to nine! Who'd have believed it? Horses to be groomed before drill, and time up already. I wonder--But here's Nell. She's coming from the kitchen and looks important. What's up, Sis?" "Several things. First, the hen of Wun Sing lies dead in her coop." "O-oh!" "Ah!" "Unwise, ambitious hen!" were the exclamations which responded; and Molly added: "That isn't all. There's something worse on Helena's mind than the death of a bewitched hen! Out with it, child! After--I mean--my nerves won't stand any more." "Didn't know you had nerves," laughed Alfy. "What's happened, Helena?" "Wun Sing has disappeared." "W-h-a-t?" "It is true. He has gone, nobody knows where. There's a man from the Barracks, the one who does the cooking over there, getting breakfast. Captain Lem is flying around in a terrible state of mind. He's angry with you boys, says there'll be neither drill nor rifle practice to-day, but the horses _must_ be groomed just as soon as we get our breakfasts. He's sent a half-dozen men looking for the cook, now, and they expect to find him soon." "So they did Jim! Seems if there wasn't anything doing on this ranch but just getting lost," wailed Alfaretta, turning a little pale; while Molly nervously begged: "Somebody tie me fast! Tie me fast! It'll break my father's heart if I get lost, too!" Captain Lem came up at that moment. He looked so stern and unlike himself that the young folks were all of them awed by his manner. Even light hearted Monty slunk back, "shaking in his shoes," while Leslie dropped his eyes and lost all his bravado. "Hark to me, Squad! Every mortal son an' gal of ye! I'm riled--I'm mad. Here am I left in charge, so to speak, of your doin's, and of the work on the ranch, anyways. Your smart-aleck work has turned everything topsy-turvy. Men took from their reg'lar jobs to go hunt worthless Chinamen, and take his place a-cookin'. Hens dyin' to right an' left--pizened by some your doses, likely--" "Oh, no! Captain, I'm sure nobody would do such a cruel thing as poison helpless creatures!" protested Dorothy, running to clasp his hand. He had on his "specs," which they had already learned he used mostly when he was angry, and they were very glittering just then. But Dorothy would not be put aside. She clung to him till his mood softened and removing the menacing "specs," dropped them in his blouse pocket. Then he smiled upon her, rather shamefacedly, though he felt that he still had good cause for offence. "Well, Little One, you've got ways to win a feller, 'spite of himself. If they was all as good as you--" "Oh! they are, and even lots better! 'Twas just lads' foolishness that they mistook for smartness. And they, we, all of us will do all we can to help. Where can we look for Wunny? He's the first one to be thought of. And I'm sorry he was so scared. Also, he'll be sorry himself over the poor hen. What can I do?" "Go along an' eat what breakfast you can get. Then tend to your horses. Likely, they're hungrier 'n you are and I'll go see 't they're fed. But hear me! Not another mite o' foolin' with serious things till Dan Ford gets back an' takes the reins into his own hands. 'Twas the mercy of Providence--nothin' else--that that jabberin' shallow-pate Mateo wasn't killed plumb out. Silent Pete's used to grizzlies. He's used to _killin'_ 'em. It's his trade, a deal more 'n 'tis to tend horseflesh. I wouldn't like to stand as nigh hand to his gun as that Greaser did last night. Now, hurry up and eat. Then report for duty. I'm off to mine." "Where do you suppose Wun Sing is?" asked Helena, of anybody who chose to answer. Nobody did: it may be stated right here that he was never again seen at San Leon. The "bewitched dead fowl" was duly buried in her own courtyard, the little gate to this locked, and its key hung up in the cook's wall-cupboard. But Wun Sing came no more. Everything belonging to him was left as if he meant to return at any minute, but he did not come. They searched the pebbly bottom of the lake, thinking he might have drowned himself in his superstitious fear, but he was not there: and after days had been wasted in the fruitless search, Captain Lem had his belongings packed together and sent to his relative, Der Doo, in San Diego. Whence, at the very end of the summer word came back that he had reappeared in that city, a wreck of himself, but it was hoped that with time and good Chinese cooking he would recover his scattered wits and his own culinary skill. Meanwhile, many messages came from the travellers in the east. The expected old aunt had duly arrived but in no fit condition to travel further for the present. Gray Lady sent dearest love and hoped all her big, new family would find San Leon the happiest place in the world, and the most peaceful. She had lived long enough to understand that peace and harmony were the most precious things in life. She longed to be with them and would be as soon as it was right. Meanwhile, let all be patient as possible over her enforced absence and just feel that she was with them in spirit all the time. "Odd, isn't it? That she who so longed to have this home and so enjoyed it should have to leave it to us, a lot of strange youngsters, to use instead?" said Helena, one evening some time later, as they all had gathered about the fountain in the soft sunset light, to talk over happenings and plan things for the coming day. Since the escapade of the false bear hunt there had been a notable absence of pranks. An ominous peace had settled over the whole young company, remarked by the astute Captain Lem as the "'ca'm before a storm.' 'Tain't in natur' for 'em to be so demure an' tractable. No siree. They've 'tended to their groomin' like reg'lar saints, an' they've learned to drill amazin' well. They don't shoot none to hurt, yet, 'ceptin' that Leslie himself. Sence he's waked up an' took an interest he's done fine. He's the best o' the lot and his knowin' that is what inspires him to do better yet. That, an' hopin' to please the Boss. But--I hope the storm'll blow over--the one they're brewin'. And I wonder what in creation ever did become o' that first boy, or of Wunny." For as yet no news had come of the latter and the former had almost dropped out of thought--save now and then in Alfy's, and always in faithful Dorothy's. Now that they were better riders and had become what their teacher called "pals" with their horses, they were daily given larger liberty. In company with him, and sometimes without him, they rode long distances over the roads, the narrow trails, and the almost imperceptible paths which led over the mountains and through the forests. The wild flowers of Colorado are innumerable, almost, and most of them were new to Dorothy, the flower-lover. In search of these she was tireless and many hours were spent after her return from her rides, in pressing her "specimens" and preparing herbariums. In this delightful work she had the company and help of Dr. Jones, himself a well-read and enthusiastic botanist. Helena spent hours over her journal: "taking notes" for future literary labors. Alfy and Molly were content to do nothing save be happy. As Alfy expressed it: "I never was so lazy and I likely never will have a chance to be again. I can work when I have to and I can play just as hard." The lads fished, rode, hunted small game, and tried various feats of horsemanship, lariat casting, and even--when they were especially energetic, played ball. There was a fairly good team among the ranchmen and they entered into the sport with vim. Only Leslie found the exercise too violent and was content to lounge and watch the rest. This evening, sitting together so cosily, the peace of the beautiful scene gradually soothed them all to quiet. They had settled the plans for the morrow and were as happy as such care-free children could be. Helena picked up her guitar and played soft melodies upon it, the others humming them under their breaths--not to disturb the player, only Alfy presuming to fit real words to the music but not interfering with it. Suddenly Dorothy raised her eyes from the playing fountain, on which she had been dreamily gazing and thinking of lost Jim. A sound, faint, of horses' footfalls had entered her dream. With a silent gesture of alarm she sprang to her feet, staring with wide eyes at a company of Indians ascending the hill. They avoided the hard driveway, their horses treading with velvety softness upon the shaven lawn. They were many in number, twenty perhaps, and they were in gala dress. Head-dresses of eagles' feathers, gaily colored, hung from their crowns over the sides of their mounts, to the length of a man's height. They uttered no sounds, looked neither to the right nor left, but like a dreadful, phantom procession moved straight forward toward the fountain. CHAPTER XV A TRIP TO BALD EAGLE ROCK Molly gave one glance and screamed. Then flung herself to her knees and buried her face in Helena's lap, who pityingly drew her light skirt over the child's head. Nobody else moved nor spoke. All felt their last hour had come. "An Indian raid!" This was their thought and then of their helplessness. This company was only the forerunner of more! "Massacre! Oh! to die like this!" Even the lads' faces blanched, but resolution flashed from their observant eyes, and these beheld a strange spectacle. The superbly mounted Indians, in their gaudiest attire, bead-decked shirts and fringed leggings, their supple feet clad in embroidered moccasins, outshone even the most magnificent of "Wild West" shows; and without a spoken word each understood the desire of their Chief. They rode to the semi-circle of concrete before the main entrance to the great house and ranged themselves around it, the Chief in front, alone, and as the last hoof fell into position where the rider wished, they became as rigid as a company of warriors carved in stone. "What will they do next!" was the wonder in all the observers' minds, as they gazed in fascination at this curious sight. What they would do next seemed long in coming. Though it was but a few moments it seemed like ages while the redskins waited, stolid, immovable before the doorway of the mansion. But, at last, the spell was broken. Across from the Barracks, around the corner, through the cloistered walk, came Captain Lemuel, whistling. He was in good spirits; ready to join his "Squad" beside the fountain and have an evening's "gabble" with the youngsters. They had been abnormally good that day. Wholly obedient to his restrictions in the length of their rides, eager to improve in their shooting--which was so far removed from "sharp"; and in every respect so "decent" that he puzzled his brain to find the best story to tell them of old days in Colorado and of his own prowess therein. But, as he passed the corner, his whistling ceased. The story was told! And a far better one than any his memory could furnish. The young watchers caught their breath. Poor Captain Lem! Rushing thus to his own undoing! But still they had to gaze and gaze--they could not turn their eyes away; and gazing they beheld a stranger thing than any which had gone before. That was the jolly Captain clapping his hands as if in glee, bowing before the silent Chief, almost prostrating himself, in fact. Afterward a brief clasping of hands between the two and the Captain beginning a long harangue in a strange tongue, interrupted now and then by grunts and gutturals from the attentive Indians. Then giving the Chief his finest military salute, the Captain "right faced" and silently marched away. The Indians as silently followed him, the Chief first, and the others in single file, till they all disappeared toward the Barracks, and the youngsters were left gasping in amazement. A sigh of relief rose from them in unison and, hearing it, Molly lifted her face. She only had seen nothing of the pantomime, or such it seemed which had been enacted, though she had heard through her terror the whistling of the Captain and its abrupt ceasing. "Is--is--he--dead?" she whispered. "He's the liveliest dead man I ever saw. Come on, boys! That's the sight of our lives! Who's afraid?" cried Herbert, springing up and eager. But his sister clutched his arm. "No, no, Bert! You mustn't! You shan't!" "I shall and will! So should you--all! Whoever they are they're friendly. Else old Lem wouldn't have seemed so pleased and led 'em off with his best 'hep, hep, hep,' that way. I'll bet they're Utes, good neighbors of the white ranchers, but they're genuine Indians all the same and I'm going to see them. My! But I did feel mighty weak in the knees for a minute! I thought it was all up with yours truly. Come on, I say!" He really wished to follow but, evidently, he also wished to have his courage bolstered by the presence of his mates. Oddly enough it was Monty who first joined Herbert. He was still half afraid, yet also wild with curiosity. His was the least war-like spirit there, but he couldn't withstand this knowledge at first hand of real, live Indians. One after another they all followed. In any case they would be safer among the ranchmen than here in this lonelier spot, and Lemuel's manner had been quite different from fear. As they slowly passed around the house, whose corner hid the Barracks front view, they were wholly reassured. The lawn was wide and a good distance was still between them and the red-skinned visitors, but they could see all that was going on. The Indians had all dismounted, a lot of the cowboys had come forward to meet them, and the fine horses they rode were being led off to a still more distant and disused corral. Here the animals were turned loose, their blankets and trappings removed, and the ranchmen themselves at once setting to work to rub the fine creatures down and to supply them with ample fodder for the night. A big trough in the corral, through which running water was always piped furnished them with drink; and the entrance being secured, the attendants went back to the Barracks' porch, that extended from one end to the other of the long, low building. Upon the porch floor the blankets were spread and the Utes squatted on them, greatly pleased at their reception. Pipes were lighted and smoked, Captain Lem and several others joining in what looked to be a ceremony of welcome. A few of the ranchmen hurried to the Barracks' kitchen and prepared supper for the visitors, and after this was eaten by the strange guests, sitting where they were under the porch roof, the discarded pipes were again resumed and some sort of palaver followed. In this talk Silent Peter took the leading part. He was escorted by Captain Lem to the side of the Chief, none other than White Feather, and placed upon another blanket, handed a fresh pipe, and left to do the honors of the occasion. Meantime Captain Lem sent a messenger across to the watching youngsters, that they should come quietly to his own room at the Barracks and observe matters from that nearer point. "But--is it safe? What does it all mean?" demanded Leslie of the man. "Safe as can be. Why, that's White Feather, Chief of a band of Utes and one of the best friends your father has. Fact. He's awful disappointed, too, to find the Boss away. Came on a visit of ceremony, with the finest bucks in his band, to get acquainted and do a little horse-trading. That's all. Silent Pete can talk Injun and has travelled not a little with this crowd, afore he settled at San Leon. Huh! Did you think they was from the Plains?" "What's the difference? An Indian is an Indian, isn't he? Not to be trusted, any of them. I don't think my father would like to have the boys treat those fellows as they're doing. You men ought to arm yourselves and drive them off the ranch." The young ranchman regarded Leslie with a look of amused contempt, then retorted: "Well, you may be a rich man's son but what you don't know about your own country'd fill books! All the rest afraid, too? 'Cause if you are, you'd better get out o' sight. Captain Lem has asked White Feather to let him bring you over to meet him an' the old feller's said yes. He said it as if he hated to but was willin' for Lem's sake to do you the honor. Great Scott! Why, you young idiot, White Feather's a great Chief, a king among his people, feels he ranks with our President, or the Czar of all the Russias! Well,--well, I'm beat. I thought 't they had schools back east where you tenderfeet come from. I supposed you'd learned that there's more 'n one kind of Indian in this big country. Why, sir, the difference 'twixt the Arapahoes, or the Cheyennes, and them peaceable Utes yonder--humph! Well, are you comin' or not?" Leslie had resented the talkative ranchman's comments on his own ignorance but had the grace to conceal it. He had even jested a little at his own expense and said that he must "read up on Indians." Then he led off his party toward the Barracks and, arrived there, found Captain Lem vastly relieved. It was greatly to Mr. Ford's advantage to be on cordial terms with all his neighbors, in that isolated region, and the loyal Captain realized this. Both he and Silent Pete had to regret the fact that, at present and in their employer's absence, they could not venture on the trading; but at the old hunter's suggestion they had assumed the responsibility of giving White Feather the finest horse in stock. This was a magnificent black stallion which had never been broken to harness and with a temper that threatened ill to any man who undertook the task. The youngsters came up and filed before White Feather, standing now, and gravely accepting their timidly proffered hands, as the name of each was mentioned. His own response was a friendly grunt but he was evidently bored by the affair and passed the girls over with the slightest notice. His eye lingered a bit longer upon the lads and it seemed that he was measuring their heights with his eye. But he let them go, almost as soon as he had the girls, and as Molly exclaimed when they had retreated to Captain Lem's room: "I never felt I was such a litty-bitty-no-account creature in all my life! I wouldn't be an Indian squaw for anything! But wasn't he just grand--and hideous?" Then Captain signalled to them that they would better return to the house. The Chief evidently considered the presence of females an intrusion and that of such slender, white-faced lads but little better. Upon Leslie, as son of the ranch owner, he bestowed several grave stares but no more speech than on the others. So from the unlighted music-room they watched for a time in silence; till everything grew quiet at the Barracks, all lights out, and the strange guests asleep on their blankets upon the porch. Then they, too, went to bed, greatly stirred by the fact of such uncommon acquaintances so close at hand, and with entirely new ideas of Colorado red men. By daylight the visitors had gone, so silently that nobody in the house itself had heard their departure. With them, too, had gone Rob Roy, the black stallion; and, what seemed valueless to the givers some old garments of the ranchmen. From one a coat, another a sombrero, a blanket, shoes, underwear, and from Silent Pete himself a complete hunter's outfit. All his comrades were surprised at this, for he kept the buckskin suit as a souvenir of earlier days, when he was as free to roam the forests as any Indian of them all and the blood still ran hot and wild in his veins. He was an old man now. He pondered much on the past and he spoke little to any man. But he talked with the Chief in that warrior's own tongue and in tones not to be overheard by any others. When that bit of talk was over he had brought out the precious suit, neatly folded and bound about with a marvellous lariat--also another dear possession--and had placed them in White Feather's hands. Then he relapsed into his usual quiet and the life at San Leon resumed its usual routine. The visit of the Indians became as a dream, but news of the early return of the absent hosts sent new life and ambition into the minds of all their young guests. Drills no longer were irksome. Were they not to show Mr. Ford how well they could carry themselves? As for rifle practice, there was such prolonged and continual popping of guns that Dr. Jones lamented his disturbed quiet and Nurse Melton had often to seek the most remote quarters to escape the startling sounds. Riding, also, was kept up with great zest. It had proved true that the more one learned of his horse, the better he loved it, the greater the silent understanding between it and himself. They now had races of all sorts and daily. Hurdles had given place to great hedges and ditches, which most of the animals distinguished themselves in leaping. Monty was still the hindmost in everything, yet showed his pluck in sticking to his saddle at all risks, and sometimes with startling success. So well, indeed, had they learned horsemanship that on a certain glorious morning before sunrise, the seven youngsters were already in saddle, alert for the long-coveted ride to Bald Eagle Rock, under the guidance of Captain Lem himself, with Silent Pete and another ranchman to carry the luncheon upon two soberer steeds. It was to be an all-day's outing and a goodly little company which would enjoy it. As soon as possible after arrival in New York Mrs. Ford had procured and sent back to San Leon, readymade habits and riding clothes for her girls and boys, not forgetting to include one for absent Jim, which Dorothy had carefully placed along with his other belongings in his own room; so that now arrayed in these gifts they all looked fine and fit. "We might be going for a ride in the Park instead of a climb through woods and over rocks! I do hope we won't tear our clothes!" said careful Helena; while Molly returned with native carelessness: "Well, I think a ride to the top of the Rockies is worth at least one habit!" "I shan't spoil mine, not 'nless I get tumbled off Blanca, someway. I've got dozens of safety-pins and I shall pin my skirt--I mean drawers--whatever they call these 'divided' things--so tight they can't get torn. I never had a habit before. Course not. I never even had a horse," said Alfaretta. "Well, without the horse you wouldn't have needed the habit, dearie. But I do like this riding astride, as Lady Gray thought best we should do on hard trips. And aren't we happy? Only--only--if poor Jim was here!" answered Dorothy, with a little cry of delight that ended rather drearily. But now they were off! And no further thought of anything or anybody except the pleasure of the moment rose in any mind. Captain Lem had not over-rated the difficulties of that trip. The beginning was fairly easy, the road or trail wide enough for two to ride side by side, and one had leisure to admire the surroundings. But when they came to that same turn of the roads, beyond the river, and took the route which unhappy James had followed in his delirium, they could no longer travel in pairs. And now was proved the good judgment of Captain Lem in training them to a familiar knowledge of their horses and in their close friendship. "Guide 'em--point out the way you want 'em to go--then trust the creatur's to do the best for them and you!" advised the old sharpshooter, halting at the top of the first steep climb, to breathe his own horse and let the stragglers come up. "More 'n that you can't maybe all follow just the same track. Blanca there, is goin' to pick her way, cautious an' careful as a gal in a nice new white frock, like them the Little One wears. She ain't goin' to tear her white dress, Alfaretty, so don't you get scared if she falls a good ways behind the rest. She's a sociable beast, is Blanca, and she'll get to the top all right, give her time. But Dolly's calico'll nigh bust herself to be first. More 'n that she's the keenest nose for a shortcut of any horse in the batch. She's little and she's light, and she'll trust herself in places 't no bigger creatur' would tackle. All right, everybody? Girths tight? Stirrups to suit? Then--trust your horses' wits and--let her go!" It had been planned to have lunch on the Rock itself, and to be back at San Leon in time for a late supper. An early breakfast had been taken, of course, but not with the usual heartiness, for they were all too excited to eat. Bald Eagle Rock was the highest point in that region and it would be a fine thing to remember if they held out to reach its summit. Meanwhile the road thither lay through a deep forest; down and along ravines; steep climbs of slippery rocks; and over masses of ferns and underbrush. After Captain Lem's halt and harangue they all became silent. They had all they could do to keep in their saddles, and, as he had prophesied, the animals they rode chose each a slightly diverging route. However, they frequently called out to one another, their gay halloos and yodels echoing along the mountain side, to the glad assurance of themselves and the affright of the forest wildings. But the lads who had hoped to sight some big game, preferably a live grizzly and had brought their guns with them, were disappointed in that. Nothing fiercer than a coyote crossed their path. It was as if the forest had anticipated their invasion and put itself on guard. Dorothy obeyed Captain Lem's advice implicitly. She did not try to guide Zaraza but let the pretty creature follow her own will, so long as that will pointed straight upward. This gave the girl time to study the flowers and ferns along the way and sometimes she slipped from her saddle to gather and closely inspect them. She did not herself call out but contented herself with listening to the shouts of the others, and, for some reason, her thoughts were more upon the missing Jim than they had been of late. "Oh! how that boy would like this ride! How he'd pull out his little hammer and peg away at these wonderful rocks! What specimens he'd collect! and how his sharp eyes would see every little bird and beast that moves through this wilderness! Oh! I hope, I hope, he is still alive and safe. If I could only see him!" Suddenly, the forest seemed strangely still. Zaraza stopped to breathe and Dorothy listened keenly for the halloo of her mates. Hearing none she ventured on a little shout herself which, low as it was, awoke a thousand deafening echoes all about her. Or so it seemed. With a thrill of horror, she remembered how Molly had once been lost in a far away Nova Scotian wood, and the girl's description of her terror. She wished she hadn't thought of that tale now. But, of course, this was quite different. They were many in this company, ten all told, and somebody must be very near. It would all come right. She mustn't be a goose and get frightened just because, for a moment, she heard nobody. Yet, Alfy's words rang in her head: "Seems if there was nothing happens but somebody gets lost up here at San Leon!" and Molly's absurd appeal: "Tie me tight!" After a moment when Zaraza seemed rested she urged the docile creature forward, and now the "calico" had certainly discovered a smooth and easy way. That was good. It must be a well-traveled road, though it was still but a "trail" to her eyes. Probably this was the final stretch of the trip, and in a moment she would come face to face with the gigantic Rock. Instead, the way grew smoother all the time and now quite level. A little way farther she could see a wide plain, or mesa, with sheep grazing. How odd! that anybody should feed sheep upon a mountain that looked all rock and forest, seen from below. The sun was hot. It must be noon. She hoped she wouldn't be late for that famous lunch they had talked about so much. Zaraza trotted around a last clump of trees, as if she knew her task was ended, and her own feeding time at hand. Then Dorothy brought her up with a sharp, silent tug upon the reins. Yonder in that open space was a small hut, or cabin; and sitting on the ground before it was an Indian, with a little Indian child beside him. Evidently, they also were having a mid-day meal, for she saw the child lift a tin dipper to his lips and drink. Zaraza whinnied. She was thirsty and scented water, and at that sound the man sprang up and turned around. For one astonished moment he gazed at that girlish apparition and Dorothy at him. Then with a cry of ecstasy she sprang to the ground and sped toward him. "Jim! O Jim!" "Why--Dorothy!" CHAPTER XVI PROSPERITY AND PARTING They were both so excited that at first they couldn't talk, but could only stare at each other in speechless delight. Jim was trembling, for he was still weak from his long illness, and he steadied himself by attentions to Zaraza and by bidding José in Spanish to bring the stranger a drink. Dorothy dropped down upon the stones where they had been sitting and watched the child. He did not now dip water from the tank at the cabin door but from a nearby spring, which Jim had found and cleared of rubbish. The spring had always been there; but it had been easier for lazy Alaric, the herder, to fill the barrel now and then--or let the rain do it for him--and use from that till the supply failed. He did not yet understand how the stagnant water had had anything to do with his own fever, that had followed on Jim's partial recovery. Children are quick witted. José came running back with the dipper, after having carefully rinsed and filled it at the spring, as Jim had taught him. His eyes were bright and there was a winning smile on his chubby face, now clean. He recognized Dorothy as the girl to whom he had given his pet lamb and promptly demanded: "_El cordero? Donde?_" Dorothy stared at him, then put her hands on each side his chubby face and kissed him. The child screamed with delight and repeated his question. At which the girl also laughed and turned to Jim, asking: "What does he say? What does he want?" "I reckon he wants his lamb. He's asking you where it is," answered the lad, gladly using this chance to air his own new knowledge. That broke the spell of not knowing how to begin and their loosened tongues wagged fast enough after that. Dorothy forgot all about her lost company and seizing a piece of the coarse bread her old friend had been eating devoured it as if it had been a great delicacy. Jim laughed, glad to see her so hungry and so eager, and obeyed her command: "Now begin just as we used to do at home at Deerhurst. 'I went from here' and don't you miss a single thing until you come to 'and here I am.' I'll help you start. You went from San Leon the very night you got there. Now why?" "I shall never know why, girlie. I was crazy with fever, I guess. I hadn't been real well before I came west and that was one reason Dr. Sterling made me come. He thought the change would cure me. It didn't. I must have got out the window but I don't really know, only I half remember that. Then the next thing I did know I was in Alaric's cabin yonder with him and little José here. I was pretty sick. I couldn't write but I was wild to tell you where I was and not to worry nor think me terrible mean. I didn't want to act that way, you know, even though I did find myself in the wrong box with those other rich boys----" "No such thing, Jim Barlow! That was all your own self-consciousness. They're the nicest boys in the world and the friendliest. And it seems you can remember some things--bad ones--even if not how you ran away and got away up here to this peak. Jim, I'm ashamed of you. I certainly am!" But the way in which she reached out and clasped his hand in both of hers disarmed the words of all offence. Jim threw back his head and laughed as he hadn't done in many a day. It was just glorious to be scolded again by his old comrade! It was so homelike that he felt "more himself" than any softer speech would have made him. "Well, go on! Do go on!" "Alaric isn't half bad. I reckon I'd have died but for him. An old Indian chief, of the Utes, White Feather Alaric called him--his brother-in-law----" "Oh! I'm well acquainted with him. Don't stop to tell that part, but just do go on." Jim stared and retorted: "Oh! you are, eh? But I've got to tell about him 'cause it was he who found me and brought me here. Picked me up on the road somewhere. I've had a suspicion--just a suspicion, don't you know?--that Alaric wasn't any too glad to see me. It's a mighty little house and he's a mighty lazy man. But he had to do it. He's afraid of White Feather, though I tell you, Dolly Doodles, he's a splendid Indian. If all red men were like him----" "I don't care at all about Indians. Go on." "Alaric dressed my arm with leaves and stuff and fed me the best he could, but after I'd got that basket sent to you with the lamb and the stones--Did you get it? Did you understand?" "Yes, I understood--part. I knew that only Jim Barlow could make such a curious D as was on the stone and the basket. I supposed you were alive somewhere and I tried to think you were all right. By the way, the lambkin is thriving and we've named it after you--Netty!" "What? Why Netty, if you please?" Dorothy laughed and explained. She was ready now to laugh at anything and so was he: she made him finish his story, which he promptly did. After he had sent the basket-message he had grown worse. He was delirious and did not know what went on about him. He thought it was the bad water from the old tank that increased his fever, and was sure it was that which had made the sheep herder himself fall ill. So before his strength came back he had to turn nurse himself and attend upon Alaric. He had now recovered enough to go away to his employer's ranch for a few days. Meanwhile Jim was keeping the sheep for his host with little José for company. Dorothy listened, asking questions now and then, and finally inquired: "Is this Alaric an Indian?" "No. A Mexican, a Greaser. He married an Indian princess, the sister of White Feather." "How came you by that Indian rig? costume, I mean." Jim laughed. "White Feather again. At first I hadn't anything to wear but a ragged pair of trousers which Alaric lent me, though he hated to, and a blanket for a coat. But a few days ago White Feather and his braves came this way again. He brought quite a collection of old duds and gave 'em to Alaric. That paid him for what he'd lent me, I guess. And some of White Feather's folks have always given little José his Indian fixings, too. Else--Well, he wouldn't have had much to wear. Ain't he cute?" "Indeed, he is. Looks exactly like a tiny White Feather himself. The dear!" answered Dorothy, helping herself to another piece of bread and breaking it in bits to feed the child, who smiled and swallowed in great glee. "But your suit? You haven't told about that yet." "Isn't it fine? I begin to feel like a red man myself, wearing it. White Feather gave this to me with his own hands. It looks as if it had been worn a long time but it's a mighty comfortable rig, especially after a fellow's had--nothing at all." Then Dorothy talked, her words fairly tumbling over each other in her haste to tell all that had happened at San Leon while he was gone. She ended with the question: "Will you go back with me now, Jim? or with all of us, when we find them! My heart! How glad, how glad they'll be!" Jim shook his head. "I can't, Dolly, not yet. I've got to stay till Alaric comes. Nobody knows when that'll be, he's so lazy; and so sure now that I'll do his work for him. Besides--I've got something on my mind. Even if--even if--Well, I shan't go back to San Leon till I take a peace offering with me. I think--anyway I hope--I've--No matter. Where are the others, do you think? How did you get so far away from 'em, alone?" "I don't know. But I wish--I wish they'd come. Ah! Hark!" Dorothy stood up and listened. They could hear a horse moving somewhere, the dull thud of hoofs on soft ground, and a whinny of recognition to Zaraza feeding near. A moment later Silent Pete came into sight, and in another moment had dismounted beside them. He hadn't a word to say but stared at Jim with what would seem reproach except for a kindly gleam in his blue eyes. Up and down the lad's tall form the old man's eyes roved many times and then he gave one of his rare laughs. "Fits good, hey?" "First class! Did you ever wear an Indian costume?" asked Jim. "Huh! I've wore that one more years 'n you're old," said the ex-hunter, and sitting down helped himself to the bread. Perhaps the man had never talked so freely as he did now. Of hunting, of savage fights, and of mining--of anything and everything connected with Colorado's past as he had known it. Because he had never had such interested listeners. Jim's eyes shone, and when the subject touched on mining, he got up and went into the shack, coming back a moment later with some bits of stones lying on his palm. He held these out to Silent Pete who accepted them with sudden interest. Until he finally exclaimed: "Glory! Where?" Jim walked a little distance from that point of the mesa and the others followed him wondering. Then digging away some earth from the small hillock where he had paused, pointed downward. Silent Pete gazed without speaking for a full moment. Then he stooped and gathered a few fragments of insignificant stone, while Dorothy watched him wondering. Presently the hunter looked up--his face transformed--the brilliancy of youth restored to his faded eyes. "Silver! by gum! And--and--_all the land this side that shack belongs to San Leon_! Of all the dum luck--Let's go home! Let's go home!" He couldn't move fast enough. The youngsters followed him at an equal pace so excited that they scarcely knew what they were doing. Jim had found silver! Jim had discovered a mine! This meant untold wealth to their beloved host! There was no thought in their minds of a possible mistake. It could not be. It was all as clear as daylight to Dorothy, whose reverent heart always traced "leadings" in that chain of events which we call life. Jim had been "led" to all and through all that had happened. If he hadn't wandered here--no use thinking about that. He _had_ wandered, he _had_ found the silver, it _had_ been ordered, even the pain and suffering and grief. Oh! to get back to where they could send the good news flying to the absent owner of San Leon! "Let's go home!" cried the girl, running to the Zaraza's side and trying to saddle her. But Jim would not let her do that, though he did not seek to hinder her from going, and when she had sprung to her seat upon the filly's back, he held out his hand, saying: "I'll come soon's I can, Dolly Doodles! This is a big day for me!" "Why--why--aren't you coming too? You can ride part of the way and I part." "No, girlie. I promised Alaric I'd take care of José and the sheep. I've got to--duty, you know." "Oh! Duty! I hate duty! Oh! Jim, you ought to be the one, the very one to carry the good news straight to 'Boss Dan!' It should be you to send this glorious message!" But Jim shook his stubborn head. "I'd like to--shucks! But I ain't never seen how neglectin' the duty 't lies to hand helps a fellow to do the one 't is further off. It's all right, Dolly. You speed the good word and watch out for Jim. He'll be coming--sure. Good-by--good-by." Meanwhile Peter had placed the lunch baskets on the ground, leaving them for Jim and the child. Not until they had passed out of sight and were well on the downward trail did Dorothy remember her absent mates and to ask how Silent Pete had chanced to find her. He scarcely paused to reply; for though he spoke no word, except to answer her questions, he was fairly quivering with excitement. It isn't every day one stumbles on a silver mine, even in Colorado! "Oh! I saw where you'd passed by the trompled brush. I knew the calico's tread. I saw 't you was off the line an' I blazed that so's the rest'd see and not get scared. We shan't see no more o' them till nightfall, only you an' me--we must get home. Don't waste breath talkin'--_just travel_." Travel they did and, their own dispatches sent from San Leon, another came flashing back--crossed each other on the way, so to speak. "Reach the ranch to-morrow. D. F." Well, this story is about told. Such a wonderful home-coming that was! Messengers had been quickly sent to the sheep herder's hut to act as substitutes for Jim in his "duty" and to bring him and José "home," where he found himself welcomed as a hero--he who had thought himself despised. Thus was discovered the famous "Bygum Mine," so named for the first words uttered by Silent Pete, when Jim showed him the site. Those who remember the energy of "Dan Ford, Railroad Boss" will understand how promptly matters were set in motion for the opening of "Bygum;" and those who know his generosity will guess how he made each young guest a sharer, to some degree, in this fresh prosperity. All except Jim Barlow: for that too independent youth promptly refused any further benefit from his great discovery than a simple "Thank you." How that refusal affected the lad's pursuit of "knowledge" will be told in another story of "Dorothy's House Boat," upon which, a few weeks later, he had to "work his passage." But now, with Lady Gray's dear presence among them and the master's hand at the helm, there was nothing but happiness for all at San Leon: until, all suddenly it seemed, the three months of their stay had passed and the parting came. If there was sadness in their hearts that morning, when they mounted the buckboards for their journey back to Denver, there was also anticipation and delight; for, to quote the words of their genial host: "The world is but a little place. We have met and loved each other--we shall meet and love again." THE END TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author' words and intent. 
26434	----	The Boys of Crawford's Basin _THE STORY OF A MOUNTAIN RANCH IN THE EARLY DAYS OF COLORADO_ BY SIDFORD F. HAMP _Author of "Dale and Fraser, Sheepmen," etc._ ILLUSTRATED BY CHASE EMERSON W. A. WILDE COMPANY BOSTON CHICAGO _Copyrighted, 1907_ BY W. A. WILDE COMPANY _All rights reserved_ THE BOYS OF CRAWFORD'S BASIN [Illustration: "THERE WAS BIG REUBEN LOOKING DOWN AT US"] PREFACE In relating the adventures of "The Boys of Crawford's Basin," the author has endeavored to depict the life of the ranchman in the mountains of Colorado as he knew it towards the end of the "seventies" of the century just past. At that date, the railroads, after their long climb from the Missouri River to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, were still seeking a practicable passage westward over that formidable barrier, and in consequence, the mountain ranchman--who, by the way, was also sometimes a prospector and frequently a hunter--having no means of shipping his produce to the outside world, depended for his market upon one or another of the many little silver-mining camps scattered over the State. That infant State was but just learning to walk without leading-strings; and it has been the aim of the author to show how two stout young fellows, prone to honesty and not afraid of hard work, were able to do their share in advancing the prosperity of the growing Commonwealth in which their lot was cast. It may not be out of place, perhaps, to mention that, besides having had considerable experience in ranching, the author was, about the date of the story, himself prospecting for silver and working as a miner. He would add, too, that several of the incidents related therein, and those in his opinion the most remarkable, are drawn from actual facts. CONTENTS I. BIG REUBEN'S RAID 11 II. CRAWFORD'S BASIN 27 III. YETMORE'S MISTAKE 42 IV. LOST IN THE CLOUDS 64 V. WHAT WE FOUND IN THE POOL 82 VI. LONG JOHN BUTTERFIELD 101 VII. THE HERMIT'S WARNING 119 VIII. THE WILD CAT'S TRAIL 134 IX. THE UNDERGROUND STREAM 150 X. HOW TOM CONNOR WENT BORING FOR OIL 169 XI. TOM'S SECOND WINDOW 190 XII. TOM CONNOR'S SCARE 210 XIII. THE ORE-THEFT 229 XIV. THE SNOW-SLIDE 250 XV. THE BIG REUBEN VEIN 271 XVI. THE WOLF WITH WET FEET 289 XVII. THE DRAINING OF THE "FORTY RODS" 313 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE "THERE WAS BIG REUBEN LOOKING DOWN AT US" _Frontispiece_ 22 "AH, SOX, IS THAT YOU?'" 78 "WE SAW BEFORE US A VERY CURIOUS SIGHT" 155 "'CAN FOLKS SEE IN FROM OUTSIDE?'" 213 "HE SHOT DOWNWARD LIKE AN ARROW" 281 The Boys of Crawford's Basin CHAPTER I BIG REUBEN'S RAID "Wake up, boys! Wake up! Tumble out, there! Quick! Big Reuben's into the pig-pen again!" Our bedroom door was banged wide open, and my father stood before us--a startling apparition--dressed only in his night-shirt and a pair of boots, carrying a stable-lantern in one hand and a rifle in the other. "What is it?" cried Joe, as he bounced out of bed; and, "Where is it?" cried I, both of us half dazed by the sudden awakening. "It's Big Reuben raiding the pig-pen again! Can't you hear 'em squealing? Come on at once! Bring the eight-bore, Joe; and you, Phil, get the torch and the revolver. Quick; or he'll kill every hog in the pen!" Big Reuben was not a two-legged thief, as one might suppose from his name. He was a grizzly bear, a notorious old criminal, who, for the past two or three years, had done much harm to the ranchmen of our neighborhood, killing calves and colts and pigs--especially pigs. Like a robber-baron of old, he laid tribute on the whole community, raiding all the ranches in turn, traveling great distances during the night, but always retreating to his lair among the rocks before morning. This had gone on for a long time, when one day, in broad daylight, while Ole Johnson, the Swede, was plowing his upper potato-patch, the grizzly jumped down from a ledge of rocks and with one blow of his paw broke the back of Ole's best work-steer; Ole himself, frightened half to death, flying for refuge to his stable, where he shut himself up in the hay-loft for the rest of the day. This outrage had the effect of waking up the county commissioners, who, understanding at last that we had been terrorized long enough, now offered a reward of one hundred dollars for bruin's scalp--an offer which stimulated all the hunters round about to run the marauder to his lair. But Big Reuben was as crafty as he was bold. His home was up in one of the rocky gorges of Mount Lincoln to the west of us, where it would be useless to try to trail him; and after Jed Smith had been almost torn to pieces, and his partner, Baldy Atkins, had spent two nights and a day up a tree, the enthusiasm of the hunters had suddenly waned and Big Reuben's closer acquaintance had been shunned by all alike. Thereafter, the bear had continued his depredations unchecked. Among his many other pieces of mischief, he had killed a valuable calf for us once, once before he had raided the pig-pen, and now here he was again. Without waiting to put on any extra clothing, Joe and I followed my father through the kitchen, I grabbing a revolver from its nail in the wall, and Joe snatching down the great eight-bore duck-gun and slipping into it two cartridges prepared for this very contingency, each cartridge containing twelve buck-shot and a big spherical bullet--a terrific charge for close quarters. Once outside the kitchen-door, I ran to the wood-shed and seized the torch which, like the cartridges, had been made ready for this emergency. It consisted of a broom-handle with a great wad of waste, soaked in kerosene, bound with wire to one end of it. Lighting the torch, I held it high and followed two paces behind the others as they advanced towards the pig-pen. We had not progressed twenty yards, however--luckily for us, as it turned out--when there issued through the roof of the pen a great dark body, dimly seen by the light of the torch. "There he is!" cried my father, as the bear dropped out of sight behind the corral fence. "Look out, now! We'll get a shot at him as he runs up the hill!" But Big Reuben had no intention whatever of running up the hill; he feared neither man nor beast, and the next moment he appeared round the corner of the corral, charging full upon us, open-mouthed. With a single impulse, we all fired one shot at him and then turned and fled, helter-skelter, for the kitchen, all tumbling in together, treading on each others' heels; my father slamming behind us the door, which fortunately opened outward. The kitchen was a slight frame structure, built on to the back of the house as a T-shaped addition. We were barely inside when bang! came a heavy body against the door, with such force as to send several milk-pans clashing to the floor. My father had hastily loaded again, and now, hearing the bear's paws patting high up on the door, he fired a chance shot through it. The bear was hit, seemingly, for we heard him grunt; but that he was not killed by any means was evident, for the next moment, with a clattering crash, the kitchen window, glass, frame and all, was knocked into the room, and a great hairy arm and fierce, grinning head were thrust through the gap. Joe, who was standing just opposite the window, jumped backward, and catching his heels against the great tub wherein the week's wash was soaking, he sat down in it with a splash. Seeing this, I sprang forward and thrust my torch into the bear's face; upon which he dropped to the ground again. A half-second later, Joe, still sitting in the tub, fired his second barrel. It was a good shot, but just a trifle too late, and its only effect was to blow my torch to shreds, leaving us with the dim light of the lantern only. "Into the house!" shouted my father; whereupon we all retreated from the kitchen into the main building. There, while Joe held the door partly open and I held the lantern so as to throw a light into the kitchen, my father knelt upon the floor waiting for the bear to give him another chance. But Big Reuben was much too clever to do anything of the sort; he was not going to put himself into any such trap as that; and presently my mother from up-stairs called out that she could see him going off. We waited about for half an hour, but as there was no more disturbance we all went back to bed, where for another half-hour Joe and I lay talking, unable, naturally, to go to sleep at once after such a lively stirring-up. By sunrise next morning we were all out to see what damage had been done. The bear had torn a great hole in the roof of the pen, had jumped in and had killed and partly eaten one pig, choosing, as a bear of his sagacity naturally would, the best one. We were fortunate, though, to have come off so cheaply; doubtless the light of our torch shining through the chinks of the logs had disturbed him. If there had been any question as to the marauder's identity, that was settled at once. His tracks were plain in the dust, and as one of his hind feet showed no marks of claws, we knew it was Big Reuben; for Big Reuben had once been caught in a trap and had only freed himself by leaving his toe-nails behind him. Outside the kitchen door and window the tracks were very plain; there was also a good deal of blood, showing that he had been hit at least once. But it was evident also that he had not been hurt very seriously, for there was no irregularity in his trail--no swaying from side to side, as from weakness--though we followed it up to the point where, at the upper end of our valley, the bear had climbed the cliff which bounded the Second Mesa. Though on this occasion he had thought fit to run away, there was little doubt but that he would live to fight another day. "Father," said I, as we sat together at breakfast, "may Joe and I go and trail him up? If he keeps on bleeding it ought to be easy, and it is just possible that we might find him dead." My father at first shook his head, but presently, reconsidering, he replied: "Well, you may go; but you must go on your ponies: it's too dangerous to go a-foot. And in any case, if the trail leads you up to the loose rocks or into the big timber you must stop. You know what a tricky beast Big Reuben is. If he sees that he is followed he will lie in hiding and jump out on you. That's how he caught Jed Smith, you remember." "We'll take care, father," said I. "We'll stick to our ponies, and then we shall be all safe." "Very well, then; be off with you." With this permission we set off, I carrying a rifle and Joe his "old cannon," as he called the big shotgun; each with a crust of bread and a slice or two of bacon in his pocket by way of lunch. Picking up the trail where we had left it at the foot of the Second Mesa, we scrambled up the little cliff, looking out very sharply lest Big Reuben should be lying in wait for us in some crevice, and finding that the tracks led straight away for Mount Lincoln, we followed them, I doing the tracking while Joe kept watch ahead. The surface of the Second Mesa was very uneven: there were many little rocky hills and many small cañons, some of the latter as much as a hundred feet deep, so, keeping in mind the bear's crafty nature, whenever the trail led us near any of these obstacles I would stand still while Joe examined the cañon or the rocks, as the case might be. Every time we did this, however, we drew a blank. The trail continued to lead straight away for the mountain without diverging to one side or the other, and for five or six miles we followed it until the stunted cedars began to give place to pine trees, when we decided that we might as well stop, especially as for some time past there had ceased to be any blood-marks on the stones and we had been following only the occasional imprint of the bear's paws in the patches of sand. "The trail is headed straight for that rocky gorge, Phil," said my companion, pointing forward, "and it's no use going on. Even if your father hadn't forbidden it, I wouldn't go into that gorge, knowing that Big Reuben was in there somewhere, not if the county commissioners should offer me the whole county as a reward." "Nor I, either," said I. "Big Reuben may have his mountain all to himself as far as I'm concerned. So, come on; let's get back. What time is it?" "After noon," replied Joe, looking up at the sun. "We've been a long time coming, but it won't take us more than half the time going back. Let's dig out at once." Turning our ponies, we set off at an easy lope, and had ridden about two miles on the back track when, skirting along the edge of one of the little cañons I have mentioned, we noticed a tiny spring of water, which, issuing from the face of the cliff close to the top, fell in a thin thread into the chasm. "Joe," said I, "let's stop here and eat our lunch. I'm getting pretty hungry." "All right," said Joe; and in another minute we were seated on the edge of the cliff with our feet dangling in space, munching our bread and bacon, while the ponies, with the reins hanging loose, were cropping the scanty grass just behind us. About five feet below where we sat was a little ledge some eighteen inches wide, which, on our left, gradually sloped upward until it came to the top, while in the other direction it sloped downward, diminishing in width until it "petered out" entirely. The little spring fell upon this ledge, and running along it, fell off again at its lower end. As the best place to fill our tin cup was where the water struck the ledge, we, when we had finished our lunch, walked down to that point. Filling the cup, I was in the act of handing it to Joe, who was behind me, when a sudden clatter of hoofs caused us to straighten up. Our eyes came just above the level of the cliff, and the first thing they encountered was Big Reuben himself, not ten feet away, coming straight for us at a run! "Duck!" yelled Joe; and down we went--only just in time, too, for the bear's great claws rattled on the surface of the rock as he made a slap at us. Where had he come from? Had he followed us back from the mountain? Hardly: we had come too quickly. Had he seen us coming in the early morning, and, making a circuit out of our sight, lain in wait for us as we returned? Such uncanny cleverness seemed hardly possible, even for Big Reuben, clever as he was known to be. These questions, however, did not occur to us at the moment. All that concerned us just then was that there was Big Reuben, looking down at us from the edge of the cliff. There was no doubt that it was the same bear we had interviewed in the night, for all the hair on one side of his face was singed off where I had thrust at him with the torch, while one of his ears was tattered and bloody, showing that some of Joe's buck-shot, at least, had got him as he dropped from the window. Joe and I were on our hands and knees, when the bear, going down upon his chest, reached for us with one of his paws. He could not quite touch us, but he came so uncomfortably close that we crept away down the ledge, which, dipping pretty sharply, soon put us out of his reach altogether. Seeing this, the bear rose to his feet again, gazed at us for a moment, and then stepped back out of sight. "Has he gone?" I whispered; but before Joe could answer Big Reuben appeared again, walking down the ledge towards us. Of course we sidled away from him, until the ledge had become so narrow that I could go no farther; and lucky it was for us that the ledge was narrow, for what was standing-room for us was by no means standing-room for the bear: his body was much too thick to allow him to come near us, or even to approach the spot whence we had just retreated. As it was obvious that the bear could advance no farther, for he was standing on the very edge of the ledge and there was a bulge in the rock before him which would inevitably have pushed him off into the chasm had he attempted to pass it, Joe and I returned to the spring, where we had room to stand or to sit down as we wished. The enemy watched our approach, with a glint of malice in his little piggy eyes, but when he saw that we intended to come no nearer, he lay down where he was and began unconcernedly licking his paws. "He thinks he can starve us out," said Joe; "but if I'm not mistaken we can stand it longer than he can, even if he did eat half a pig last night. And there's one thing certain, Phil: if we don't get home to-night, somebody will come to look for us in the morning." "Yes," I assented. "But they'll get a pretty bad scare at home if we don't turn up. Is there no way of sending that beast off? If we could only get hold of one of the guns----" By standing upright we could see my rifle lying on the ground and Joe's big gun standing with its muzzle pointed skyward, leaning against a boulder. They were only six feet away, but six feet were six feet: we could not reach them without climbing up, and that was out of the question--the bear could get there much more quickly than we could. "Phil!" exclaimed my companion, suddenly. "Have you got any twine in your pocket?" "Yes," I replied, pulling out a long, stout piece of string. "Why?" "Perhaps we can 'rope' my gun. See, its muzzle stands clear. Then we could drag it within reach." I very soon had a noose made, and being the more expert roper of the two I swung it round and round my head, keeping the loop wide open, and threw it. My very first cast was successful. The noose fell over the muzzle of the gun and settled half way down the barrel, where it was stopped by the rock. "Good!" whispered Joe. "Now, tighten it up gently and pull the gun over." I followed these directions, and presently we heard the gun fall with a clatter upon the rocks; for, fearing it might go off when it fell, we had both ducked below the rim of the wall. Our actions had made the bear suspicious, and when the gun came clattering down he rose upon his hind feet and looked about him. Seeing nothing moving, however, he came down again, when I at once began to pull the gun gently towards me, keeping my head down all the time lest one of the hammers, catching against a rock, should explode the charge. At length, thinking it should be near enough, I ceased pulling, when Joe straightened up, reached out, and, to my great delight, when he withdrew his hand the gun was in it. Ah! What a difference it made in our situation! Joe, first opening the breach to make sure the gun was loaded, advanced as near the bear as he dared, and kneeling down took careful aim at his chest. But presently he lowered the gun again, and turning to me, said: "Phil, can you do anything to make him turn his head so that I can get a chance at him behind the ear? I'm afraid a shot in front may only wound him." "All right," said I. "I'll try." With my knife I pried out of the face of the cliff a piece of stone about the size and shape of the palm of my hand, and aiming carefully I threw it at the bear. It struck him on the very point of his nose--a tender spot--and seemingly hurt him a good deal, for, with an angry snarl, he rose upright on his hind feet. At that instant a terrific report resounded up and down the cañon, the whole charge of Joe's ponderous weapon struck the bear full in the chest--I could see the hole it made--and without a sound the great beast dropped from the ledge, fell a hundred feet upon the rocks below, bounded two or three times and then lay still, all doubled up in a heap at the bottom. Big Reuben had killed his last pig! CHAPTER II CRAWFORD'S BASIN You might think, perhaps, as many people in our neighborhood thought, that Joe was my brother. As a matter of fact he was no relation at all; he had dropped in upon us, a stranger, two years before, and had stayed with us ever since. It was in the haying season that he came, at a moment when my father and I were overwhelmed with work; for it was the summer of 1879, the year of "the Leadville excitement," when all the able-bodied men in the district were either rushing off to Leadville itself or going off prospecting all over the mountains in the hope of unearthing other Leadvilles. Ranch work was much too slow for them, and as a consequence it was impossible for us to secure any help that was worth having. What made it all the more provoking was that we had that year an extra-fine stand of grass--the weather, too, was magnificent--yet, unless we could get help, it was hardly likely that we could take full advantage of our splendid hay-crop. Nevertheless, as what could not be cured must be endured, my father and I tackled the job ourselves, working early and late, and we were making very good progress, all things considered, when we had the misfortune to break a small casting in our mowing-machine; a mishap which would probably entail a delay of several days until we could get the piece replaced. It was just before noon that this happened, and we had brought the machine up to the wagon-shed and had put up the horses, when, on stepping out of the stable, we were accosted by a tall, black haired, blue eyed young fellow of about my own age, who asked if he could get a job with us. "Yes, you can," replied my father, promptly; and then, remembering the accident to the machine, he added, "at least, you can as soon as I get this casting replaced," holding out the broken piece as he spoke. "May I look at it?" asked the young fellow; and taking it in his hand he went on: "I see you have a blacksmith-shop over there; I think I can duplicate this for you if you'll let me try: I was a blacksmith's apprentice only a month ago." "Do you think you can? Well, you shall certainly be allowed to try. But come in now: dinner will be ready in five minutes; you shall try your hand at blacksmithing afterwards. What's your name?" "Joe Garnier," replied the boy. "I come from Iowa. I was going to Leadville, but I met so many men coming back, with tales of what numbers of idle men there were up there unable to get work, that, hearing of a place called Sulphide as a rising camp, I decided to go there instead. This is the right way to get there, isn't it?" "Yes, this is the way to Sulphide. Did you expect to get work as a miner?" "Well, I intended to take any work I could get, but if you can give me employment here, I'd a good deal rather work out in the sun than down in a hole in the ground." "You replace that casting if you can, and I'll give you work for a month, at least, and longer if we get on well together." "Thank you," said the stranger; and with that we went into the house. The newcomer started well: he won my mother's good opinion at once by wiping his boots carefully before entering, and by giving himself a sousing good wash at the pump before sitting down to table. It was plain he was no ordinary tramp--though, for that matter, the genus "tramp" had not yet invaded the three-year-old state of Colorado--for his manners were good; while his clear blue eyes, in contrast with his brown face and wavy black hair, gave him a remarkably bright and wide-awake look. As soon as dinner was over, we all repaired to the blacksmith-shop, where Joe at once went to work. It was very evident that he knew what he was about: every blow seemed to count in the right direction; so that in about half an hour he had fashioned his piece of iron into the desired shape, when he plunged it into the tub of water, and then, clapping it into the vise, went to work on it with a file; every now and then comparing it with the broken casting which lay on the bench beside him. "There!" he exclaimed at last. "I believe that will fit." And, indeed, when he laid them side by side, one would have been puzzled to tell which was which, had not the old piece been painted red while the other was not painted at all. Joe was right: the piece did fit; and in less than an hour from the time we had finished dinner we were at work again in the hay-field. The month which followed was a strenuous one, but by the end of it we had the satisfaction of knowing that we had put up the biggest crop of hay ever cut on the ranch. Our new helper, who was a tall, stout fellow for his age, and an untiring worker, proved to be a capital hand, and though at first he was somewhat awkward, being unused to farm labor, before we had finished he could do a better day's work than I could, in spite of the fact that I had been a ranch boy ever since I had been a boy at all. We all took a great liking for Joe, and we were very pleased, therefore, when, the hay being in, it was arranged that he should stay on. For there was plenty of work to be done that year--extra work, I mean--such as building fences, putting up an ice-house and so forth, in which Joe, having a decided mechanical turn, proved a valuable assistant. So, when the spring came round again it found Joe still with us; and with us he continued to stay, becoming so much one of the family that many people, as I said, who did not know his story, supposed that he and I were brothers in fact, as we soon learned to become brothers in feeling. Long before this, of course, Joe had told us all about himself and how he had come to leave his old home and make his way westward. Of French-Canadian descent, the boy, left an orphan at three years of age, had been taken in by a neighbor, a kind-hearted blacksmith, and with him he had lived for the twelve years following, when the blacksmith, now an old man, had decided to go out of business. Just at this time "the Leadville excitement" was making a great stir in the country; thousands of men were heading for the new Eldorado, and Joe, his old friend consenting, determined to join the throng. It was, perhaps, lucky for the young blacksmith that he started rather late, for, on his approach to the mountains, he encountered files of disappointed men streaming in the opposite direction, and hearing their stories of the overcrowded condition of things in Leadville, he determined to try instead the mining camp of Sulphide, when, passing our place on the way he was caught by my father, as I have described, and turned into a ranchman. Such was the condition of affairs with us when Big Reuben made his final raid upon our pig-pen. The reward of one hundred dollars which the county paid us for our exploit in ridding the community of Big Reuben's presence came in very handily for Joe and me. It enabled us to achieve an object for which we had long been hoarding our savings--the purchase of a pair of mules. For the past two years, in the slack season, after the gathering of our hay and potato crops, we had hired out during the fine weather remaining to a man whose business it was to cut and haul timbers for the mines in and around the town of Sulphide, which lay in the mountains seven miles southwestward from our ranch. We found it congenial work, and Joe and I, who were now seventeen years old, hardened to labor with ax, shovel or pitchfork, saw no reason why we should not put in these odd five or six weeks cutting timbers on our own account. No reason but one, that is to say. My father would readily lend us one of his wagons, but he could not spare a team, and so, until we could procure a team of our own, we were obliged to forego the honor and glory--to say nothing of the expected profits--of setting up as an independent firm. Now, however, we had suddenly and unexpectedly acquired the necessary funds, and with the money in our pockets away we went at once to Ole Johnson's, from whom we bought a stout little pair of mouse-colored mules upon which we had long had an eye. But though the firm of Crawford and Garnier might now, if it pleased, consider itself established, it could not enter upon the practice of its business for some time yet. It was still the middle of summer, and there was plenty to do on the ranch: the hay and the oats would be ready to cut in two weeks, while after that there were the potatoes to gather--a very heavy piece of work. All these tasks had to be cleared out of the way before we could move up to Sulphide to begin on our timber-cutting enterprise. But between the harvesting of the oats and the gathering of the potato-crop there occurred an incident, which, besides being remarkable in itself, had a very notable effect upon my father's fortunes--and, incidentally, upon our own. To make understandable the ins and outs of this matter, I must pause a moment to describe the situation of our ranch; for it is upon the peculiarity of its situation that much of my story hinges. Anybody traveling westward from San Remo, the county seat, with the idea of getting up into the mountains, would encounter, about a mile from town, a rocky ridge, which, running north and south, extended for several miles each way. Ascending this bluff and still going westward, he would presently encounter a second ridge, the counterpart of the first, and climbing that in turn he would find himself upon the wide-spreading plateau known as the Second Mesa, which extended, without presenting any serious impediment, to the foot of the range--itself one of the finest and ruggedest masses of mountains in the whole state of Colorado. In a deep depression of the First Mesa--known as Crawford's Basin--lay our ranch. This "Basin" was evidently an ancient lake-bed--as one could tell by the "benches" surrounding it--but the water of the lake having in the course of ages sawed its way out through the rocky barrier, now ran off through a little cañon about a quarter of a mile long. The natural way for us to get from the ranch down to San Remo was to follow the stream down this cañon, but, curiously enough, for more than half the year this road was impassable. The lower end of Crawford's Basin, for a quarter of a mile back from the entrance of the cañon, was so soft and water-logged that not even an empty wagon could pass over it. In fact, so soft was it that we could not get upon it to cut hay and were obliged to leave the splendid stand of grass that grew there as a winter pasture. In the cold weather, when the ground froze up, it was all right, but at the first breath of spring it began to soften, and from then until winter again we could do nothing with it. It was, in fact, little better than a source of annoyance to us, for, until we fenced it off, our milk cows, tempted by the luxuriant grass, were always getting themselves mired there. This wet patch was known to every teamster in the county as "the bottomless forty rods," and was shunned by them like a pestilence. Its existence was a great drawback to us, for, between San Remo, where the smelters were, and the town of Sulphide, where the mines were, there was a constant stream of wagons passing up and down, carrying ore to the smelters and bringing back provisions, tools and all the other multitudinous necessaries required by the population of a busy mining town. Had it not been for the presence of "the bottomless forty rods," all these wagons would have come through our place and we should have done a great trade in oats and hay with the teamsters. But as it was, they all took the mesa road, which, though three miles longer and necessitating the descent of a long, steep hill where the road came down from the First Mesa to the plains, had the advantage of being hard and sound at all seasons of the year. My father had spent much time and labor in the attempt to make a permanent road through this morass, cutting trenches and throwing in load after load of stones and brush and earth, but all in vain, and at length he gave it up--though with great reluctance. For, not only did the teamsters avoid us, but we, ourselves, when we wished to go with a load to San Remo, were obliged to ascend to the mesa and go down by the hill road. The cause of this wet spot was apparently an underground stream which came to the surface at that point. The creek which supplied us with water for irrigation had its sources on Mount Lincoln and falling from the Second Mesa into our Basin in a little waterfall some twelve feet high, it had scooped out a circular hole in the rock about a hundred feet across and then, running down the length of the valley, found its way out through the cañon. Now this creek received no accession from any other stream in its course across the Basin, but for all that the amount of water in the cañon was twice as great as that which came over the fall; showing conclusively that the marsh whence the increase came must be supplied by a very strong underground stream. The greater part of Crawford's Basin was owned by my father, Philip Crawford, the elder, but a portion of it, about thirty acres at the upper end, including the pool, the waterfall and the best part of the potato land, was owned by Simon Yetmore, of Sulphide. My father was very desirous of purchasing this piece of ground, for it would round out the ranch to perfection, but Yetmore, knowing how much he desired it, asked such an unreasonable price that their bargaining always fell through. Being unable to buy it, my father therefore leased it, paying the rent in the form of potatoes delivered at Yetmore's store in Sulphide--for Simon, besides being mayor of Sulphide and otherwise a person of importance, was proprietor of Yetmore's Emporium, by far the largest general store in town. He was an enterprising citizen, Simon was, always having many irons in the fire; a clever fellow, too, in his way; though his way was not exactly to the taste of some people: he drove too hard a bargain. In fact, the opinion was pretty general that his name fitted him to a nicety, for, however much he might get, he always wanted yet more. My father distrusted him; yet, strange to say, in spite of that fact, and of the added fact that he had always fought shy of all mining schemes, he and Yetmore were partners in a prospecting venture. It was, in a measure, an accident, and it came about in this way: The smelter-men down at San Remo were always crying out for more lead-ores to mix with the "refractory" ores produced by most of the mines in our district, publishing a standing offer of an extra-good price for all ores containing more than a stated percentage of lead. In spite of the stimulus this offer gave to the prospecting of the mountains, north, south and west of us, there had been found but one mine, the Samson, of which the chief product was lead, and this did not furnish nearly enough to satisfy the wants of the smelter-men. Its discovery, however, proved the existence of veins of galena--the ore from which lead chiefly comes--in one part of the district, and the prospectors became more active than ever; though without result. That section of country where the Samson had been discovered was deeply overlaid with "wash," and as the veins were "blanket" veins--lying flat, that is--and did not crop out above the surface, their discovery was pretty much a matter of chance. Among the prospectors was one, Tom Connor, who, having had experience in the lead-mines of Missouri, proposed to adopt one of the methods of prospecting in use in that country, to wit, the core-drill. But to procure and operate a core-drill required money, and this Tom Connor had not. He therefore applied to Simon Yetmore, who agreed to supply part of the necessary funds--making good terms for himself, you may be sure--if Tom would provide the rest. The rest, however, was rather more than the sum-total of Tom's scanty capital, and so he came to my father, who was an old friend of his, and asked him to make up the difference. My father declined to take any share in the enterprise, for, though most of the ranchmen round about were more or less interested in mining, he himself looked upon it as being too near akin to gambling; but feeling well disposed towards Tom, and the sum required being very moderate, he lent his friend the money, quite prepared, knowing Tom's optimistic, harum-scarum character, never to see it again. In this expectation, however, he was happily deceived. It is true he did not get back his money, but he received his money's worth, and that in a very curious way. CHAPTER III YETMORE'S MISTAKE Three months had elapsed when Tom Connor turned up one day with a very long face. All his drilling had brought no result; he was at the end of his tether; he could see no possible chance of ever repaying the borrowed money, and so, said he, would my father take his interest in the drill in settlement of the debt? Very reluctantly my father consented--for what did he want with a one-third share in a core-drill?--whereupon Tom, the load of debt being off his mind, brightened up again in an instant--he was a most mercurial fellow--and forthwith he fell to begging my father's consent to his making one more attempt--just one. He was sure of striking it this time, he had studied the formation carefully and he had selected a spot where the chances of disappointment were, as he declared, "next-to-nothing." My father knew Tom well enough to know that he had been just as sure twenty times before, but Tom was so eager and so plausible that at last he agreed that he should sink one more hole--but no more. "And mind you, Tom," said he, "I won't spend more than fifty dollars; that is the very utmost I can afford, and I believe I am only throwing that away. But I'll spend fifty just to satisfy you--but that's all, mind you." "Fifty dollars!" exclaimed Tom. "Fifty! Bless you, that'll be more than enough. Twenty ought to do it. I'm going to make your fortune for twenty dollars, Mr. Crawford, and glad of the chance. You've treated me 'white,' and the more I can make for you the better I'll be pleased. Inside of a week I'll be coming back here with a lead-mine in my pocket--you see if I don't." "All right, Tom," said my father, laughing, as he shook hands with him. "I shall be glad to have it, even if it is only a pocket edition. So, good-bye, old man, and good luck to you." It was two days after this that my father at breakfast time turned to us and said: "Boys, how would you like to take your ponies and go and see Tom Connor at work? There is not much to do on the ranch just now, and an outing of two or three days will do you good." Needless to say, we jumped at the chance, and as soon as we could get off, away we went, delighted at the prospect of making an expedition into the mountains. The place where Tom was at work was thirty miles beyond Sulphide, a long ride, nearly all up hill, and it was not till towards sunset that we approached his camp. As we did so, a very surprising sight met our gaze: three men, close together, with their backs to us, down on their hands and knees, like Mahomedans saying their prayers. "What are they up to?" asked Joe. "Have they lost something?" At this moment, my horse's hoof striking a stone caused the three men to look up. One was Connor, one was his helper, and the other, to our surprise, was Yetmore. Connor sprang to his feet and ran towards us, crying: "What did I tell you, boys! What did I tell you! Get off your ponies, quick, and come and see!" He was wild with excitement. We slid from our horses, and joining the other two, went down on our knees beside them. Upon the ground before them lay the object of their worship: a "core" from the drill, neatly pieced together, about eight feet long and something less than an inch in diameter. Of this core, four feet or more at one end and about half a foot at the other was composed of some kind of stone, but in between, for a length of three feet and an inch or two, it was all smooth, shining lead-ore. Tom Connor had struck it, and no mistake! "Tom," said Yetmore, as we all rose to our feet again, "this _looks_ like a pretty fair strike; but you've got to remember that we know nothing about the extent of the vein--one hole doesn't prove much. It is three feet thick at this particular point, but it may be only three inches five feet away; and as to its length and breadth, why, that's all pure speculation. All the same I'm ready to make a deal with you. I'll buy your interest or I'll sell you mine. What do you say?" "What's the use of that kind of talk?" growled Connor. "You know I haven't a cent to my name. Besides, I haven't any interest." "You--what!--you haven't any interest!" cried the other. "What do you mean?" "I've sold it." "Sold it! Who to?" "To Mr. Crawford, two days ago." "Well, you are a----" Yetmore began; but catching sight of Tom's glowering face he stopped and substituted, "Well, I'm sorry to hear it." "Well, I ain't," said Tom, shortly. "If Mr. Crawford makes a fortune out of it I'll be mighty well pleased. He's treated me 'white,' _he_ has." From the tone and manner of this remark it was easy to guess that Tom did not love Mr. Yetmore: he had found him a difficult partner to get along with, probably. "I certainly hope he will," said Yetmore, smiling, "for if he does I shall. Sold it to Mr. Crawford, eh? So that accounts for you two boys being up here. Got here just in time, didn't you? You'll stay over to-morrow, of course, and see Tom uncover the vein?" "Are you proposing to uncover it, Tom?" I asked. "Yes. It's only four feet down; one shot will do it. You'll stay too, I suppose, Mr. Yetmore?" "Certainly," replied the other. But as he said it, I saw a change come over his face--it was a leathery face, with a large, long nose. Some idea had occurred to him I was sure, especially when, seeing that I was looking at him, he dropped his eyes, as though fearing they might betray him. Whatever the idea might be, however, I ceased to think of it when Tom suggested that it was getting late and that we had better adjourn to the cabin for supper. Taking our ponies over to the log stable, therefore, we gave them a good feed of oats, and soon afterwards were ourselves seated before a steaming hot meal of ham, bread and coffee; after which we spent an hour talking over the great strike, and then, crawling into the bunks, we very quickly fell asleep. Early next morning we walked about half a mile up the mountain to the scene of the strike, when, having first shoveled away two or three feet of loose stuff, Tom and his helper set to work, one holding the drill and the other plying the hammer, drilling a hole a little to one side of the spot whence the core had come. They were no more than well started when Yetmore, remarking that he had forgotten his tobacco, walked back to the cabin to get it--an action to which Joe and I, being interested in the drilling, paid little attention. It was only when Connor, turning to select a fresh drill, asked where he was, that we remembered how long he had been gone. "Gone back to the cabin, has he?" remarked Tom. "Well, he's welcome to stay there as far as I'm concerned." The work went on, until presently Tom declared that they had gone deep enough, and while we others cleared away the tools, Connor himself loaded and tamped the hole. "Now, get out of the way!" cried he; and while we ran off and hid behind convenient trees, Tom struck a match and lighted the fuse. The dull thud of an explosion shortly followed; but on walking back to the spot we were all greatly surprised to see that the rock had remained intact--it was as solid as ever. "Well, that beats all!" exclaimed Tom. "The thing has shot downward; it must be hollow underneath. We'll have to put in some short holes and crack it up." It did not take long to put in three short holes, and these being charged and tamped, we once more took refuge behind the trees while Tom touched them off. This time there were three sharp explosions, a shower of fragments rattled through the branches above our heads, and on going to inspect the result we found that the rock had been so shattered that it was an easy matter to pry out the pieces with pick and crowbar--a task of which Joe and I did our share. At length, the hole being now about three feet deep, Joe, who was working with a crowbar, gave a mighty prod at a loose piece of rock, when, to the astonishment of himself and everybody else, the bottom of the hole fell through, and rock, crowbar and all, disappeared into the cavity beneath. "Well, what kind of a vein is it, anyhow?" cried Tom, going down upon his knees and peering into the darkness. "Blest if there isn't a sort of cave down here. Knock out some more, boys, and let me get down. This is the queerest thing I've struck in a long time." We soon had the hole sufficiently enlarged, when, by means of a rope attached to a tree, Tom slid down into it, and lighting a candle, peered about. Poor old Tom! The change on his face would have been ludicrous had we not felt so sorry for him, when, looking up at us he said in lugubrious tones: "Done again, boys! Come down and see for yourselves." We quickly slid down the rope, when, our eyes having become accustomed to the light, Tom pointed out to us the extraordinary accident that had caused him to believe he had struck a three-foot vein of galena. Though there was no sign of such a thing on the surface, it was evident that the place in which we stood had at one time been a narrow, water-worn gully in the mountain-side. Ages ago there had been a landslide, filling the little gully with enormous boulders. That these rocks came from the vein of the Samson higher up the mountain was also pretty certain, for among them was one pear-shaped boulder of galena ore, standing upright, upon the apex of which rested the immense four-foot slab of stone through which Tom had bored his drill-hole. By a chance that was truly marvelous, the drill, after piercing the great slab, had struck the very point of the galena boulder and had gone through it from end to end, so that when the core came up it was no wonder that even Tom, experienced miner though he was, should have been deceived into the belief that he had discovered a three-foot vein of lead-ore. As a matter of fact, there was no vein at all--just one single chunk of galena, not worth the trouble of getting it out. Connor's lead-mine after all had turned out to be only a "pocket edition." Tom's disappointment was naturally extreme, but, as usual, his low spirits were only momentary. We had hardly climbed up out of the hole again when he suddenly burst out laughing. "Ho, ho, ho!" he went, slapping his leg. "What will Yetmore say? I'm sorry, Phil, that I couldn't keep my promise to your father, but I'll own up that as far as Yetmore is concerned I'm rather glad. I don't like the Honorable Simon, and that's a fact. What's he doing down at the cabin all this time, I wonder. Come! Let's gather up the tools and go down there: there's nothing more to be done here." On arriving at the cabin, Yetmore's non-appearance was at once explained. Fastened to the table with a fork was a piece of paper, upon which was written in pencil, "Gone to look for the horses." Of course, Joe and I at once ran over to the stable. It was empty; all three of the horses were gone. "Queer," remarked Joe. "I feel sure I tied mine securely, but you see halters and all are gone." "Yes," I replied. "And I should have relied upon our ponies' staying even if they had not been tied up; you know what good camp horses they are. Let's go out and see which way they went." We made a cast all round the stable, and presently Joe called out, "Here they are, all three of them." I thought he had found the horses, but it was only their tracks he had discovered, which with much difficulty we followed over the stony ground, until, after half an hour of careful trailing, they led us to the dusty road some distance below camp, where they were plainly visible. "Our ponies have followed Yetmore's horse," said Joe, after a brief inspection. "Do you see, Phil, they tread in his tracks all the time?" For the tracks left by our own ponies were easily distinguishable from those of Yetmore's big horse, our animals being unshod. "What puzzles me though, Joe," said I, "is that there are no marks of the halter-ropes trailing in the dust; and yet they went off with their halters." "That's true. I don't understand it. And there's another thing, Phil: Yetmore hasn't got on their trail yet, apparently; see, the marks of his boots don't show anywhere. He must be wandering in the woods still." "I suppose so. Well, let us go on and see if they haven't stopped to feed somewhere." We went on for half a mile when we came to a spot where the tracks puzzled us still more. For the first time a man's footmarks appeared. That they were Yetmore's I knew, for I had noticed the pattern of the nails in the soles of his boots as he had sat with his feet resting on a chair the night before. But where had he dropped from so suddenly? We could find no tracks on either side of the road--though certainly the ground was stony and would not take an impression easily--yet here they were all at once right on top of the horses' hoof-prints. Moreover, his appearance seemed to have been the signal for a new arrangement in the position of the horses, for our ponies had here taken the lead, while Yetmore's horse came treading in their tracks. Moreover, again, twenty yards farther on, the horses had all broken into a gallop. What did it mean? "Well, this is a puzzler!" exclaimed Joe, taking off his hat and rumpling his hair, as his habit was in such circumstances. "How do you figure it out, Phil?" "Why," said I. "I'll tell you what I think. Yetmore has caught sight of the horses strolling down the road and has followed them, keeping away from the road himself for fear they should see him and take alarm. Dodging through the scrub-oak and cutting across corners, he has come near enough to them to speak to his own horse; the horse has stopped and Yetmore has caught him. That was where his tracks first showed in the road. Then he has jumped upon his horse and galloped after our ponies, which appear to have bolted." "That sounds reasonable," Joe assented; "and in that case he'll head them and drive them back; so we may as well walk up to the cabin again and wait for him." To this I agreed, and we therefore turned round and retraced our steps. "There's only one thing about this that I can't understand," remarked Joe, as we trudged up the hill, "and that is about the halters--why they leave no trail. That does beat me." "Yes, that is certainly a queer thing; unless they managed to scrape them off against the trees before they took to the road. In that case, though, we ought to have found them; and anyhow it is hard to believe that all three horses should have done the same thing." We found Tom very busy packing up when we reached the cabin, and on our telling him the result of our horse-hunt he merely nodded, saying, "Well, they'll be back soon, I suppose, and then I'll ride down with you." "Why, are you going to quit, Tom?" I asked. "Yes," he replied. "Your father limited me to one more hole, you remember, and if I know him he'll stick to it; and as to working any longer for Yetmore, no thank you; I've had enough of it." So saying, Tom, who had already cleaned and put away the tools, began tumbling his scanty wardrobe into a gunny-sack, and this being done, he turned to us and said: "I've got a pony out at pasture about a mile up the valley. I'll go and bring him down; and while I'm gone you might as well pitch in and get dinner ready. You needn't provide for Sandy Yates: he's gone off already to see if he can get a job up at the Samson." Sandy Yates was the helper. In an hour or less Tom was back and we were seated at dinner, without Yetmore, who had not yet turned up, when the conversation naturally fell upon the subject of the runaway horses. We related to Tom how we had trailed them through the woods down to the road, told him of the sudden appearance of Yetmore's tracks, and how the horses had then set off at a run, followed by Yetmore. "But the thing I can_not_ understand," said Joe, harking back to the old subject, "is why the halter-ropes don't show in the dust." "Don't they?" exclaimed Tom, suddenly sitting bolt upright and clapping his knife and fork down upon the table. "Don't they? Just you wait a minute." With that he jumped up, strode out of the cabin, and went straight across to the stable. In two minutes he was back again, and standing in the doorway, with his hands in his pockets, he said: "Boys, I've got another surprise for you: Yetmore's saddle's gone!" "His saddle gone!" I exclaimed. "Is that why you went to the stable? Did you expect to find it gone?" "That's just what I did." "You did! Why?" Without replying directly, Tom came in, sat down, and leaning his elbows on the table, said, with a quiet chuckle, the meaning of which we could not understand: "Should you like to know, boys, what Yetmore did when he came down for his tobacco this morning? He went to the stable, saddled his horse, untied your two ponies and led them out. Then he mounted his horse and taking the halter-ropes in his hand he led your ponies by a roundabout way through the woods down to the road. After leading them at a walk along the road for half a mile he dismounted--that was where his tracks showed--and either took off the halters and threw them away, or what is more likely, tied them up around the ponies' necks so that they shouldn't step on them. Then he mounted again and went off at a gallop, driving your ponies ahead of him." As Tom concluded, he leaned back in his chair, bubbling with suppressed merriment, until the sight of our round-eyed wonder was too much for him and he burst into uproarious laughter, which was so infectious that we could not help joining in, though the cause of it was a perfect mystery to us both. At length, when he had laughed himself out, he leaned forward again, and rubbing the tears out of his eyes with the back of his hand, he said: "Can't you guess, boys, why Yetmore has gone off with your horses?" I shook my head. "No," said I, "unless he wants to steal them, and he'd hardly do that, I suppose." "No; anyhow not in such a bare-faced way as that. What he's after is to make you boys walk home." "Make us walk home!" cried Joe. "What should he want to do that for?" Tom grinned, and in reply, said: "Yetmore thought that as soon as we uncovered that fine three-foot vein of galena you would be for getting your ponies and galloping off home to tell Mr. Crawford of the great strike, and as he wanted to get there first he stole your ponies--temporarily--to make sure of doing it." "But why should he want to get there first?" I asked. "You are talking in riddles, Tom, and we haven't the key." "No, I know you haven't. You don't know Yetmore. I do. He's gone down to buy your father's share in the claim for next-to-nothing before he hears of the strike!" The whole thing was plain and clear now; and the hilarity of our friend, Connor, was explained. He had no liking for Yetmore, as we have seen, and it delighted him immeasurably to think of that too astute gentleman rushing off to buy my father's share of a valuable mine, and, if he succeeded, finding himself the owner of a worthless boulder instead. For myself, I was much puzzled how to act. Naturally, I felt pretty indignant at Yetmore's action, and it seemed to me that if, in trying to cheat my father, he should only succeed in cheating himself, it would be no more than just that he should be allowed to do so. But at the same time I thought that my father ought to be informed of the state of the case as soon as possible--he, not I, was the one to judge--and so, turning to Connor, I asked him to lend me his pony so that I might set off at once. "What! And spoil the deal!" cried Connor; and at first he was disposed to refuse. But on consideration, he added: "Well, perhaps you're right. Your father's an honest man, if ever there was one, and I doubt if he'd let even a man like Yetmore cheat himself if he could help it; and so I suppose you must go and tell him the particulars as soon as you can. All I hope is that he will have made his deal before you get there. Yes, you can take the pony." But it was not necessary to borrow Connor's steed after all, for when we stepped outside the cabin, there were our own ponies coming up the road. The halters were fastened up round their necks, and they showed evident signs of having been run hard some time during the morning. Presumably Yetmore had abandoned them somewhere on the road and they had walked leisurely back. "Well, boys," said Connor, "we may as well all start together now; but as your ponies have had a good morning's work already, we can't expect to make the whole distance this evening. We'll stop over night at Thornburg's, twenty miles down, and go on again first thing in the morning." This we did, and by ten o'clock we reached home, where the first person we encountered was my father. "Well, Tom," he cried, as the miner slipped down from his horse. "So you made a strike, did you?" At this Tom opened his eyes pretty widely. "How did you know?" he asked. "I didn't know," my father replied, smiling, "but I guessed. Does it amount to much?" "Well, no, I can't say it does," Tom replied, as he covered his mouth with his hand to hide the grin which would come to the surface. "Yetmore's been here, I suppose?" he added, inquiringly. "Yes, he has," answered my father, surprised in his turn. "Why do you ask?" "Oh, I just thought he might have, that's all." "Yes, he was here yesterday afternoon. I sold him my one-third share." "Did you?" asked Tom, eagerly. "I hope you got a good price." "Yes, I made a very satisfactory bargain. I traded my share for his thirty acres here, so that now, at last, I own the whole of Crawford's Basin, I'm glad to say." "Bully!" cried Tom, clapping his hands together with a report which made his pony shy. "That's great! Tell us about it, Mr. Crawford." "Why, Yetmore rode in yesterday afternoon, as I told you, on his way to town--he said. But I rather suspected the truth of his statement. He had come in a desperate hurry, for his horse was in a lather, and if he was in such haste to get to town, why did he waste time talking to me, as he did for twenty minutes? But when, just as he was starting off again, he turned back and asked me if I wanted to sell my share in the drill and claim, I knew that that was what he had come about, and I had a strong suspicion that he had heard of a strike of some sort and was trying to get the better of me. So when he asked what I wanted for my share, I said I would take his thirty acres, and in spite of his protestations that I was asking far too much, I stuck to it. The final result was that I rode on with him to town, where we exchanged deeds and the bargain was completed." "That's great!" exclaimed Connor once more, rubbing his hands. "And now I'll tell you our part of the story." When he had finished, my father stood thinking for a minute, and then said: "Well, the deal will have to stand. Yetmore believed we had a three-foot vein of galena, and it is perfectly evident that he meant to get my share out of me at a trifling price before I was aware of its value. It was a shabby trick. If he had dealt squarely with me, I would have offered to give him back his deed, but, as it is, I shan't. The deal will have to stand." Thus it was that my father became sole owner of Crawford's Basin. CHAPTER IV LOST IN THE CLOUDS The fact that he had lost his little all in the core-boring venture did not trouble Tom Connor in the least; the money was gone, and as worrying about it would not bring it back, Tom decided not to worry. The same thing had happened to him many a time before, for his system of life was to work in the mines until he had accumulated a respectable sum, and then go off prospecting till such time as the imminence of starvation drove him back again to regular work. It was so in this case; and being known all over the district as a skilful miner, his specialty being timber-work, he very soon got a good job on the Pelican as boss timberman on a section of that important mine. One effect of Tom's getting work on the Pelican was that he secured for Joe and me an order for lagging--small poles used in the mines to hold up the ore and waste--and our potato-crop being gathered and marketed, my father gave us permission to go off and earn some extra money for ourselves by filling the order which Tom's kindly thoughtfulness had secured for us. The place we had chosen as the scene of our operations was on the northern slope of Elkhorn Mountain, which lay next south of Mount Lincoln, and one bright morning in the late fall Joe and I packed our bedding and provisions into a wagon borrowed from my father and set out. We had chosen this spot, after making a preliminary survey for the purpose, partly because the growth of timber was--as it nearly always is--much thicker on the northern slopes of Elkhorn than on the south side of Lincoln, and also because, being a rather long haul, it had not yet been encroached upon by the timber-cutters of Sulphide. On a little branch creek of the stream which ran through Sulphide we selected a favorable spot and went to work. It was rather high up, and the country being steep and rocky, we had to make our camp about a mile below our working-ground, snaking out the poles as we cut them. This, of course, was a rather slow process, but it had its compensation in the fact that from the foot of the mountain nearly all the way to Sulphide our course lay across the Second Mesa, which was fairly smooth going, and as it was down hill for the whole distance we could haul a very big load when we did start. In due time we filled our contract and received our pay, after which, by advice of Tom Connor, we branched out on another line of the same business. Being unable to get a second contract, and being, in fact, afraid to take one if we could get it on account of the lateness of the season--for the snow might come at any moment and prevent our carrying it out--we consulted Tom, who suggested that we put in the rest of the fine weather cutting big timbers, hauling them to town, and storing them on a vacant lot, or, what would be better, in somebody's back yard. "For," said he, "though the Pelican and most of the other mines have their supplies for the winter on hand or contracted for, it is always likely they may want a few more stulls or other big timbers than they think. I'll keep you in mind, and if I hear of any such I'll try and make a deal for you, either for the whole stick or cut in lengths to order." As this seemed like good sense to us, we at once went off to find a storage place, a quest in which we were successful at the first attempt. Among my father's customers was the widow Appleby, who conducted a small grocery store on a side street in town. She was accustomed to buy her potatoes from us, and my father, knowing that she had a hard struggle to make both ends meet, had always been very easy with her in the matter of payment, giving her all the time she needed. This act of consideration had its effect, for, when we went to her and suggested that she rent us her back yard for storage purposes, she readily assented, and not only refused to take any rent, but gave us as well the use of an old stable which stood empty on the back of her lot. This was very convenient for us, for though a twenty-foot pole, measuring twelve inches at the butt is not the sort of thing that a thief would pick up and run away with, it was less likely that he would attempt it from an enclosed back yard than if the poles were stored in an open lot. Besides this, a stable rent-free for our mules, and a loft above it rent-free for ourselves to sleep in was a great accommodation. Returning to the Elkhorn, therefore, we went to work in a new place, a place where some time previously a fire had swept through a strip of the woods, killing the trees, but leaving them standing, stark and bare, but still sound as nuts--just the thing we wanted. Our chief difficulty this time was in getting the felled timbers out from amidst their fellows--for the dead trees were very thick and the mountain-side very steep--but by taking great care we accomplished this without accident. The loading of these big "sticks" would have been an awkward task, too, had we not fortunately found a cut bank alongside of which we ran our wagon, and having snaked the logs into place upon the bank we kidded them across the gap into the wagon without much difficulty. We had made three loads, and the fine weather still holding, we had gone back for a fourth and last one, when, having got our logs in place on the cut bank all ready to load, Joe and I, after due consultation, decided that we would take a day off and climb up to the saddle which connected the two mountains. We had never been up there before, and we were curious to see what the country was like on the other side. Knowing that it would be a long and hard climb, we started about sunrise, taking a rifle with us; not that we expected to use it, but because it is not good to be entirely defenseless in those wild, out-of-the-way places. Following at first our little creek, we went on up and up, taking it slowly, until presently the pines began to thin out, the weather-beaten trees, gnarled, twisted and stunted, becoming few and far between, and pretty soon we left even these behind and emerged upon the bare rocks above timber-line. Here, too, we left behind our little creek. For another thousand feet we scrambled up the rocks, clambering over great boulders, picking our way along the edges of little precipices, until at last we stood upon the summit of the saddle. To right and left were the two great peaks, still three thousand feet above us, but westward the view was clear. As far as we could see--and that, I expect, was near two hundred miles--were ranges and masses of mountains, some of them already capped with snow, a magnificent sight. "That is fine!" cried Joe, enthusiastically. "It's well worth the trouble of the climb. I only wish we had a map so that we could tell which range is which." "Yes, it's a great sight," said I. "And the view eastward is about as fine, I think. Look! That cloud of smoke, due east about ten miles away, comes from the smelters of San Remo, and that other smoke a little to the left of it is where the coal-mines are. There's the ranch, too, that green spot in the mesa; you wouldn't think it was nearly a mile square, would you?" "That's Sulphide down there, of course," remarked Joe, pointing off towards the right. "But what are those other, smaller, clouds of smoke?" "Those are three other little mining-camps, all tributary to the smelters at San Remo, and all producing refractory ores like the mines of Sulphide. My! Joe!" I exclaimed, as my thoughts reverted to Tom Connor and his late core-boring failure. "What a great thing a good vein of lead ore would be! Better than a gold mine!" "I expect it would. Poor old Tom! He bears his disappointment pretty well, doesn't he?" "He certainly does. He says, now, that he's going to stick to straightforward mining and leave prospecting alone; but he's said that every year for the past ten years at least, and if there's anything certain about Tom it is that when spring comes and he finds himself once more with money in his pocket, he'll be off again hunting for his lead-mine." "Sure to. Well, Phil, let's sit down somewhere and eat our lunch. We mustn't stay here too long." "All right. Here's a good place behind this big rock. It will shelter us from the east wind, which has a decided edge to it up here." For half an hour we sat comfortably in the sun eating our lunch, all around us space and silence, when Joe, rising to his feet, gave vent to a soft whistle. "Phil," said he, "we must be off. No time to waste. Look eastward." I jumped up. A wonderful change had taken place. The view of the plains was completely cut off by masses of soft cloud, which, coming from the east, struck the mountain-side about two thousand feet below us and were swiftly and softly drifting up to where we stood. "Yes, we must be off," said I. "It won't do to be caught up here in the clouds: it would be dangerous getting down over the rocks. And besides that, it might turn cold and come on to snow. Let us be off at once." It was fortunate we did so, for, though we traveled as fast as we dared, the cloud, coming at first in thin whisps and then in dense masses, enveloped us before we reached timber-line, and the difficulty we experienced in covering the small intervening space showed us how risky it would have been had the cloud caught us while we were still on the summit of the ridge. As it was, we lost our bearings immediately, for the chilly mist filled all the spaces between the trees, so that we could not see more than twenty yards in any direction. As to our proper course, we could tell nothing about it, so that the only thing left for us to do was to keep on going down hill. We expected every moment to see or hear our little creek, but we must have missed it somehow, for, though we ought to have reached it long before, we had been picking our way over loose rocks and fallen trees for two hours before we came upon a stream--whether the right or the wrong one we could not tell. Right or wrong, however, we were glad to see it, for by following it we should sooner or later reach the foot of the mountain and get below the cloud. But to follow it was by no means easy: the country was so unexpectedly rough--a fact which convinced us that we had struck the wrong creek. As we progressed, we presently found ourselves upon the edge of a little cañon which, being too steep to descend, obliged us to diverge to the left, and not only so, but compelled us to go up hill to get around it, which did not suit us at all. After a time, however, we began to go down once more, but though we kept edging to the right we could not find our creek again. The fog, too, had become more dense than ever, and whether our faces were turned north, south or east we had no idea. We were going on side by side, when suddenly we were astonished to hear a dog bark, somewhere close by; but though we shouted and whistled there was no reply. "It must be a prospector's dog," said Joe, "and the man himself must be underground and can't hear us." "Perhaps that's it," I replied. "Well, let's take the direction of the sound--if we can. It seemed to me to be that way," pointing with my hand. "I wish the dog would bark again." The dog, however, did not bark again, but instead there happened another surprising thing. We were walking near together, carefully picking our way, when suddenly a big raven, coming from we knew not where, flew between us, so close that we felt the flap of his wings and heard their soft _fluff-fluff_ in the moisture-laden air, and disappeared again into the fog before us with a single croak. It was rather startling, but beyond that we thought nothing of it, and on we went again, until Joe stopped short, exclaiming: "Phil, I smell smoke!" I stopped, too, and gave a sniff. "So do I," I said; "and there's something queer about it. It isn't plain wood-smoke. What is it?" "Sulphur," replied Joe. "Sulphur! So it is. What can any one be burning sulphur up here for? Anyhow, sulphur or no sulphur, some one must have lighted the fire, so let us follow the smoke." We had not gone far when we perceived the light of a fire glowing redly through the fog, and hurried on, expecting to find some man beside it. But not only was there nobody about, which was surprising enough, but the fire itself was something to arouse our curiosity. Beneath a large, flat stone, supported at the corners by four other stones, was a hot bed of "coals," while upon the stone itself was spread a thin layer of black sand. It was from these grains of sand, apparently, that the smell of sulphur came; though what they were or why they should be there we could not guess. We were standing there, wondering, when, suddenly, close behind us, the dog barked again. Round we whirled. There was no dog there! Instead, perched upon the stump of a dead tree, sat a big black raven, who eyed us as though enjoying our bewilderment. Bewildered we certainly were, and still more so when the bird, after staring us out of countenance for a few seconds, cocked his head on one side and said in a hoarse voice: "Gim'me a chew of tobacco!" And then, throwing back his head, he produced such a perfect imitation of the howl of a coyote, that a real coyote, somewhere up on the mountain, howled in reply. All this--the talking raven, the mysterious fire, the encompassing shroud of fog--made us wonder whether we were awake or asleep, when we were still more startled by a voice behind us saying, genially: "Good-evening, boys." Round we whirled once more, to find standing beside us a man, a tall, bony, bearded man, about fifty years old, carrying in his hand a long, old-fashioned muzzle-loading rifle. He was dressed all in buckskin, while the moccasins on his feet explained how it was he had been able to slip up on us so silently. Naturally, we were somewhat taken aback by the sudden appearance of this wild-looking specimen of humanity, when, thinking that he had alarmed us, perhaps, the man asked, pleasantly: "Lost, boys?" "Yes," I replied, reassured by his kindly manner. "We have been up to the saddle and got caught in the clouds. We don't know where we are. We are trying to get back to our camp on a branch of Sulphide creek." "Ah! You are the two boys I've seen cutting timbers down there, are you? Well, your troubles are over: I can put you on the road to your camp in an hour or so; I know every foot of these mountains." "But come in," he continued. "I suppose you are hungry, and a little something to eat won't be amiss." When the man said, "Come in," we naturally glanced about us to see where his house was, but none being visible we concluded it must be some distance off in the mist. In this, however, we were mistaken. The side of the mountain just here was covered with enormous rocks--a whole cliff must have tumbled down at once--and between two of these our guide led the way. In a few steps the passage widened out, when we saw before us, neatly fitted in between three of these immense blocks of stone--one on either side and one behind--a little log cabin, with chimney, door and window all complete; while just to one side was another, a smaller one, which was doubtless a storehouse. Past his front door ran a small stream of water which evidently fell from a cliff near by, for, though we could not see the waterfall we could hear it plainly enough. "Well!" I exclaimed. "Whoever would have thought there was a house in here?" "No one, I expect," replied the man. "At any rate, with one exception, you are the first strangers to cross the threshold; and yet I have lived here a good many years, too. Come in and make yourselves at home." Though we wondered greatly who our host could be and were burning to ask him his name, there was something in his manner which warned us to hold our tongues. But whatever his name might be, there was little doubt about his occupation. He was evidently a mighty hunter, for, covering the walls, the floor and his sleeping-place were skins innumerable, including foxes, wolves and bears, some of the last-named being of remarkable size; while one magnificent elk-head and several heads of mountain-sheep adorned the space over his fireplace. Our host having lighted a fire, was busying himself preparing a simple meal for us, when there came a gentle cough from the direction of the doorway, and there on the threshold stood the raven as though waiting for permission to enter. The man turned, and seeing the bird standing there with its head on one side, said, laughingly: "Ah, Sox, is that you? Come in, old fellow, and be introduced. These gentlemen are friends of mine. Say 'Good-morning.'" [Illustration: "'AH, SOX, IS THAT YOU?'"] "Good-morning," repeated the raven; and having thus displayed his good manners, he half-opened his wings and danced a solemn jig up and down the floor, finally throwing back his head and laughing so heartily that we could not help joining in. "Clever fellow, isn't he?" said the man. "His proper name is Socrates, though I call him Sox, for short. He is supposed to be getting on for a hundred years old, though as far as I can see he is just as young as he was when I first got him, twenty years ago. Here,"--handing us each a piece of meat--"give him these and he will accept you as friends for life." Whether he accepted us as friends remained to be seen, but he certainly accepted our offerings, bolting each piece at a single gulp; after which he hopped up on to a peg driven into the wall, evidently his own private perch, and announced in a self-satisfied tone: "First in war, first in peace," ending up with a modest cough, as though he would have us believe that he knew the rest well enough but was not going to trouble us with any such threadbare quotation. This solemn display of learning set us laughing again, upon which Socrates, seemingly offended, sank his head between his shoulders and pretended to go to sleep; though, that it was only pretense was evident, for, do what he would, he could not refrain from occasionally opening one eye to see what was going on. Having presently finished the meal provided for us, we suggested that we ought to be moving on, so, bidding adieu to Socrates, and receiving no response from that sulky philosopher, we followed our host into the open. That he had not exaggerated when he said he knew every foot of these mountains, seemed to be borne out by the facts. He went straight away, regardless of the fog, up hill and down, without an instant's hesitation, we trotting at his heels, until, in about an hour we found ourselves once more below the clouds, and could see not far away our two mules quietly feeding. "Now," said our guide, "I'll leave you. If ever you come my way again I shall be glad to see you; though I expect it would puzzle you to find my dwelling unless you should come upon it by accident. Good-bye." "Good-bye," we repeated, "and many thanks for your kindness. If we can do anything in return at any time we shall be glad of the chance. We live in Crawford's Basin." "Oh, do you?" said our friend. "You are Mr. Crawford's boys, then, are you? Well, many thanks. I'll remember. And now, good-bye to you." With that, this strange man turned round and walked up into the clouds again. In two minutes he had vanished. "Well, that was a queer adventure," remarked Joe. "I wonder who he is, and why he chooses to live all by himself like that." "Yes. It's a miserable sort of existence for such a man; for he seems like a sociable, good-hearted fellow. It isn't every one, for instance, who would walk three or four miles over these rough mountains just to help a couple of boys, whom he never saw before and may never see again. I wish we could make him some return." "Well, perhaps we may, some day," Joe replied. Whether we did or not will be seen later. CHAPTER V WHAT WE FOUND IN THE POOL Though we got back to camp pretty late, we set to work to load our poles at once, fearing that there was going to be a fall of snow which might prevent our getting them to town. This turned out to be a wise precaution, for when we started in the morning the snow was already coming down, and though it did not extend as far as Sulphide, the mountains were covered a foot deep before night. This fall of snow proved to be much to our advantage, for one of the timber contractors, fearing he might not be able to fill his order, bought our "sticks" from us, to be delivered, cut into certain lengths, at the Senator mine. This occupied us several days, when, having delivered our last load, we thanked Mrs. Appleby for the use of her back yard--the only payment she would accept--and then set off home, where we proudly displayed to my father and mother the money we had earned and related how we had earned it; including, of course, a description of our meeting with the wild man of the woods. "And didn't he tell you who he was?" asked my father, when we had finished. "No," I replied; "we were afraid to ask him, and he didn't volunteer any information." "And you didn't guess who he was?" "No. Why should we? Who is he?" "Why, Peter the Hermit, of course. I should have thought the presence of the raven would have enlightened you: he is always described as going about in company with a raven." "So he is. I'd forgotten that. But, on the other hand he is always described also as being half crazy, and certainly there was no sign of such a thing about him that we could see. Was there, Joe?" "No. Nobody could have acted more sensibly. Who is he, Mr. Crawford? And why does he live all by himself like that?" "I know nothing about him beyond common report. I suppose his name is Peter--though it may not be--and because he chooses to lead a secluded life, some genius has dubbed him 'Peter the Hermit'; though who he really is, or why he lives all alone, or where he comes from, I can't say. Some people say he is crazy, and some people say he is an escaped criminal--but then people will say anything, particularly when they know nothing about it. Judging from the reports of the two or three men who have met him, however, he appears to be quite inoffensive, and evidently he is a friendly-disposed fellow from your description of him. If you should come across him again you might invite him to come down and see us. I don't suppose he will, but you might ask him, anyhow." "All right," said I. "We will if we get the chance." And so the matter ended. It was just as well that we returned to the ranch when we did, for we found plenty of work ready to our hands, the first thing being the hauling of fire-wood for the year. To procure this, it was not necessary for us to go to the mountains: our supply was much nearer to hand. The whole region round about us had been at some remote period the scene of vigorous volcanic action. Both the First and Second Mesas were formed by a series of lava-flows which had come down from Mount Lincoln, and ending abruptly about eight miles from the mountains, had built up the cliff which bounded the First Mesa on its eastern side. Then, later, but still in a remote age, a great strip of this lava-bed, a mile wide and ten or twelve miles long, north and south, had broken away and subsided from the general level, forming what the geologists call, I believe, a "fault," thus causing the "step-up" to the Second Mesa. The Second Mesa, because the lava had been hotter perhaps, was distinguished from the lower level by the presence of a number of little hills--"bubbles," they were called, locally, and solidified bubbles of hot lava perhaps they were. They were all sorts of sizes, from fifty to four hundred feet high and from a hundred yards to half a mile in diameter. Viewed from a distance, they looked smooth and even, like inverted bowls, though when you came near them you found that their sides were rough and broken. I had been to the top of a good many of them, and all of those I had explored I had found to be depressed in the centre like little craters. From some of them tiny streams of water ran down, helping to swell the volume of our creek. Most of these so-called "bubbles," especially the larger ones, were well covered with pine-trees, and as there were three or four of them within easy reach of the ranch, it was here that we used to get our fire-wood. There was a good week's work in this, and after it was finished there was more or less repairing of fences to be done, as there always is in the fall, and the usual mending of sheds, stables and corrals. The weather by this time had turned cold, and "the bottomless forty rods" having been frozen solid enough to bear a load, Joe and I were next put to work hauling oats down to the livery stable men in San Remo, as well as up to Sulphide. Before this task was accomplished the winter had set in in earnest. We had had one or two falls of snow, though in our sheltered Basin the heat of the sun was still sufficient to clear off most of it again, and the frost had been sharp enough to freeze up our creek at its sources, so that our little waterfall was now converted into a motionless icicle. Fortunately, we were not dependent upon the creek for the household supply of water: we had one pump which never failed in the back kitchen and another one down by the stables. The creek having ceased to run, the surface of the pool was no longer agitated by the water pouring into it, and very soon it was solidly frozen over with a sheet of ice twelve inches thick, when, according to our yearly custom, we proceeded to cut this ice and stow it away in the ice-house; having previously been up to the sawmill near Sulphide and brought away, for packing purposes, several wagon-loads of sawdust, which the sawmill men readily gave us for nothing, being glad to have it hauled out of their way. We had taken the opportunity to do this when we took our loads of oats up to Sulphide, thus utilizing the empty wagons on the return trip. The pool, as I have said, measured about a hundred feet each way, though on account of its shallowness around the edges we could only cut ice over a surface about fifty feet square. Being frozen a foot thick, however, this gave us an ample supply for all our needs. The labor of cutting, hauling and housing the ice fell to Joe and me, my father having generally plenty of other work to do. He had taken in a number of young cattle for a neighboring cattleman for the winter, and having sold him the bulk of our hay crop and at the same time undertaken to feed the stock, this daily duty alone took up a large part of his time. Besides this, "the forty rods" having become passable, the freighters and others now came our way instead of taking the longer hill-road, and their frequent demands for a sack, or a load, of oats, and now and then for hay or potatoes, added to the work of stock-feeding, kept my father pretty well occupied. Joe and I, therefore, went to work by ourselves, beginning operations on that part of the pool nearest the point where the water used to pour in. We had taken out ten or a dozen loads of beautiful, clear ice, when, one day, Yetmore, who was riding down to San Remo, seeing us at work, stopped to watch us. He was a queer fellow. Though he must have been perfectly well aware that we distrusted him; and though, after the late affair of the lead-boulder--a miscarriage of his schemes which was doubtless extremely galling to him--one would think he would have rather avoided us than not, he appeared to feel no embarrassment whatever, but with a greeting of well-simulated cordiality he dismounted and walked over to the pool to see what we were doing. Perhaps--and this, I think, is probably the right explanation--if he did entertain the idea of some day "getting even" with us, he had decided to postpone any such attempt until he saw an opportunity of doing so at a profit. "Fine lot of ice," he remarked, after standing for a moment watching Joe as he plied the saw. "Does this creek always freeze up like this?" "Yes," I replied. "It heads in Mount Lincoln, and is made up of a number of small streams which always freeze up about the first of November. That reduces the flow to about one-third its usual size; and when the little streams which come down from three or four of the 'bubbles' freeze up too, the creek stops entirely; which makes it mighty convenient for us to cut ice, as you see." "I see. Is the pool the same depth all over?" "No," I answered. "Just here, under the fall, it is deepest, but round the edges it is so shallow that we can't take a stroke with the saw, the sand comes so close up to the ice. In fact, in some places, the ice rests right upon the sand." "How deep is it here?" "Four or five feet, I think. Try it, Joe." Joe, who had just laid down the saw and had taken up the long ice-hook we used for drawing the blocks of ice within reach, lowered the hook, point downward, into the water. Then, pulling it out again, he stood it up beside him, finding that the wet mark on the staff came up to his chin. "Five feet and three or four inches," said he. "Is the bottom solid or sandy?" asked Yetmore. "I didn't notice. I'll try it." With that Joe lowered the pole once more. "Seems solid," he remarked, giving two or three hard prods. But he had scarcely said so, when, to our surprise, several bits of rough ice about as big as my hand bobbed up from the bottom. "Hallo!" exclaimed Yetmore. "Ground ice!" "What's ground ice?" I asked. "Why, ice formed at the bottom of the pool. It is not uncommon, I believe, though I don't remember to have seen any before. Pretty dirty stuff, isn't it? Must be a sandy bottom." So saying, he stooped down, and picking up the only bit of ice which happened to be within reach, he examined its under side. As he did so, I saw him give a little start, as though there were something about it to cause him surprise, but just as I reached out my hand to ask him to let me see it, he threw it back into the water out of reach--an action which struck me as being hardly polite. "I must be off," said he, in apparent haste, "so, good-bye. Hope you will get your crop in before it snows. Looks threatening to me; you'll have to hurry, I think." This prediction seemed to me rather absurd, with the thermometer at zero and the sky as clear as crystal; but Yetmore was an indoor man and could not be expected to judge as can one whose daily work depends so much upon what the weather is doing or is going to do. It did not occur to me then--though it did later--that he only wanted us to get to work again at once, and so divert our minds from the subject of the ground ice. As I made no comment on his remark, Yetmore walked away, remounted his horse and rode off; while Joe and I went briskly to work again. We had been at it some time, when Joe stopped sawing, and straightening up, said: "It's queer about those bits of ground ice, Phil. Do you notice how they all float clean side up? Wait a bit and I'll show you." Taking the ice-hook, he turned over one of the bits with its point, showing its soiled side, but the moment he released it, the bit of ice "turned turtle" again. "Do you see?" said he. "The sand acts like ballast. It must be heavy stuff." "Yes," said I. "Hook a bit of it out and let's look at it." This was soon done, when, on examining it, we found the under side to be crusted with very black sand, which, whatever might be its nature, was evidently heavy enough to upset the balance of a small fragment of ice. "What is it made of, I wonder?" said Joe. "I don't know," I replied, "but perhaps it is that black sand which the prospectors are always complaining of as getting in their way when they are panning for gold." "That's what it is, Phil, I expect," cried Joe. "And what's more, that's what Yetmore thought, too, or else why should he throw that bit of ice back into the water so quickly when you held out your hand for it? He didn't want you to see it." "It does look like it," I assented. "Poke up a few more, Joe, and we will take them home and show them to my father: perhaps he'll know what the stuff is." Joe took the ice-hook and prodded about on the bottom, every prod bringing up one or two bits of ice, each one as it bobbed to the surface showing its sandy side for a moment and then turning over, clean side up. Drawing these to the edge of the ice, we picked them out, laying them on a gunny-sack we had with us, and when, towards sunset, we had carried home and housed our last load, and had stabled and fed the mules, we took our scraps over to the blacksmith-shop, where the tinkle of a hammer proclaimed that my father was at work doing some mending of something. He was much interested in hearing of the ground ice and of the way it brought up the black sand with it, and still more so in our description of Yetmore's action. "Let me look at it," said he; and taking one of our specimens, he stepped to the door to examine it, the light in the shop being too dim. He came back smiling. "Queer fellow, Yetmore!" said he. "One would think that the lesson of the lead-boulder might have taught him that a man may sometimes be too crafty. I think this is likely to prove another case of the same kind. I believe he has made a genuine discovery here--though what it may lead to there is no telling--and if he had had the sense to let you look at that piece of dirty ice, instead of throwing it back into the water, thus arousing your curiosity, he would probably have kept his discovery to himself. As it is, he is likely to have Tom Connor interfering with him again--that is to say, if this sand is what I think it is. I don't think it is the 'black sand' of the prospectors--it is too shiny, and it has a bluish tinge besides--I think it is something of far more value. We'll soon find out. Give me that piece of an iron pot, Phil; it will do to melt the ice in." Having broken up some of our ice into small pieces, we placed it in a large fragment of a broken iron pot, and this being set upon the forge, Joe took the bellows-handle and soon had the fire roaring under it. It did not take long to melt the ice, when, pouring off the water, we added some more, repeating the process until there was no ice left. The last of the water being then poured away, there remained nothing but about a spoonful of very fine, black, shiny sand. The receptacle was once more placed upon the fire, and while my father kept the contents stirred up with a stick, Joe seized the bellows-handle again and pumped away. Presently he began to cough. "What's the matter, Joe?" asked my father, laughing. "Sulphur!" gasped Joe. "Sulphur!" cried I. "I don't smell any sulphur." "Come over here, then, and blow the bellows," replied Joe. I took his place, but no sooner had I done so than I, too, began to cough. The smell of sulphur evidently came from our spoonful of sand, and as I was standing between the door and the window the draft blew the fumes straight into my face. On discovering this, I pulled the bellows-handle over to one side, when I was no more troubled. The iron pot, being set right down on the "duck's nest" and heaped all around with glowing coals, had become red-hot, when my father, peering into it, held up his hand. "That'll do, Phil. That's enough," he cried. "Give me the tongs, Joe." My father removed the melting-pot, and making a hole with his heel in the sandy floor of the shop, he poured the contents into it. "Lead!" we both cried, with one voice. "Yes, lead," my father replied. "Galena ore, ground fine by the action of water." "Do you mean," I asked, "that there is a lead-mine in the bottom of the pool?" "No, no. But there is a vein of galena, size and value unknown, somewhere up on Lincoln Mountain. The fine black sand sticking to the ground ice was brought down by our stream, being reduced to powder on the way, and deposited in the pool, where its weight has kept it from being washed out again." "I see. And do you suppose Yetmore recognized the sand as galena ore? Would he be likely to know it in the form of sand?" "I expect so. He's a sharp fellow enough. He must have seen pulverized samples of galena many a time in the assayers' offices. I've seen them myself: that was what gave me my clue." "And what do you suppose he'll do?" "He is pretty certain, I think, to try to get hold of some of the stuff, so that he may test it and make sure; though how he will go about it there's no telling. It will be interesting to see how he manages it." "And what shall you do, father? Go prospecting?" My father laughed, knowing that this was a joke on my part; for I was well aware that he would not think of such a thing. "Not for us, Phil," he answered. "We have our mine right here. Raising oats and potatoes may be a slow way of getting rich, but it is a good bit surer than prospecting. No, we'll tell Tom Connor about it and let him go prospecting if he likes. You shall go up to Sulphide the first Saturday after the ice-cutting is finished and give him our information. There's no hurry about it: he can't go prospecting while the mountains are all under snow. Come along in to supper now. You've fed the mules, I suppose." It was a snapping cold night that night, and about half-past eight I went into the kitchen to look at the thermometer which hung outside the door. As I came back, I happened to glance out of the west window, when, to my surprise, I thought I saw a glimmer of light up by the pool. Stepping quickly into the house again, I went to the front door and looked out. Yes, there was a light up there! "Father," I called out, "there's somebody up at the pool with a light." My father sprang out of his chair. "Is there?" he cried. "Then it's Yetmore, up to some of his tricks. Get into your coats, boys, and let's go and see what he's about." As we went out I took down the unlighted stable-lantern and carried it with me in case we might need it, and shutting the door softly behind me, ran after the others. We had not covered half the distance to the pool, however, when the light up there suddenly went out, and a minute later we heard the sound of galloping hoofs, muffled by the thin carpet of snow, going off in the direction of Sulphide. Our visitor, whoever he was, had departed. "Well, come on, anyhow," said my father. "Let us see what he was doing." As the thermometer was then standing at three degrees below zero, we knew that the sheet of clear water we had left in the afternoon should have been solidly frozen over again by this time. What was our surprise, therefore, to find that such was not the case: there was only a thin film of ice; it was but just beginning to form. "That is easily explained," remarked my father. "The ice did form, but some one has chopped it out and thrown it to one side there. See?" "Yes," replied Joe, "and then he took the ice-hook, which I know I left standing upright against the rocks, and poked up the ground ice. See, there are several bits floating about, and I remember quite well that we cleared out every one of them this afternoon. Didn't we, Phil?" "Yes," said I, "I'm sure we did, because I remember that those two or three bits that had no sand in them we threw into that corner instead of pitching them into the water again. I suppose it's Yetmore, father." "Oh, not a doubt of it. Did he leave any tracks?" By the light of the lantern we searched about, and though there were no tracks to be seen on the smooth ice, there were plenty in the snow below the pool. They were the foot-prints of a smallish man, for his tracks, in spite of his wearing over-shoes, were not so big as the prints made by Joe's boots--though, as Joe himself remarked, that was not much to go by, he being a six-footer with feet to match, "and a trifle over," as his friends sometimes considerately assured him. Following these foot-prints, we were led to the south gate, where, it was easy to see, a horse had been standing for some time tied to the gate-post. "Well, he's got off with his samples all right," remarked my father. "He's a smart fellow, and enterprising, too. He would deserve to win, if only he were not so fond of taking the crooked way of doing things. Come along. Let's get back to the house. There's nothing more to be done about it at present." CHAPTER VI LONG JOHN BUTTERFIELD "Boys," said my father next morning, "I've been thinking over this discovery of ours. It won't do to wait till you've finished the ice-cutting to notify Tom Connor. He has been a good friend to us, and I feel that we owe him some return for enabling me to get this piece of land from Yetmore, even though it was, in a manner, accidental; and as Tom is sure to go off prospecting in the spring, whether or no, we may as well give him the chance--if he wants it--to go hunting for this supposed vein of galena." "He's pretty sure to want to," said I. "Yes, I think he is. And as Yetmore will certainly find out the nature of the black sand, and will be sending out a prospector or two himself as soon as the snow clears off, we must at least give Tom an equal chance. So, instead of waiting for you to finish cutting the ice, I'll write him a letter at once, telling him all about it, and send it up by this morning's coach." One of the advantages to us of the frosty weather was that the mail coach between San Remo and Sulphide came our way instead of taking the hill-road, so that during the winter months we received our mail daily, whereas, through the greater part of the year, while the "forty rods" were "bottomless," we had to go ourselves to San Remo to get it. The coach, going up, passed our place about ten in the morning, and by it my father sent the promised letter. We quite expected that Tom would come flying down at once, but instead we received from him next morning a reply, stating that he could not leave his work, and asking my father to allow us boys to do a little prospecting for him--which, I may say, we boys were ready enough to do if my father did not object. He did not object; being, indeed, very willing that we should put in a day's work for the benefit of our friend. For, as he said, to undertake one day's prospecting for a friend was a very different matter from taking to prospecting as a business. It is a fascinating pursuit; men who contract the prospecting disease seldom get the fever entirely out of their systems again, and it was for this reason my father was so set against it, considering that no greater misfortune could befall two farmer-boys like ourselves than to be drawn into such a way of life. Now that we were seventeen years old, however, and might be supposed to have some discretion, he had little fear for Joe and me, knowing, as he did, that we shared his sentiments. We had seen enough of the life of the prospector to understand that a more precarious way of making a living could hardly be invented. How many men get rich at it? I have heard it estimated at one man in five thousand; and whether this estimate--or, rather, this guess--is right or wrong, it shows the trend of opinion. Suppose a prospector does strike a vein of ore: what is the common result? By the time he has sunk a shaft ten feet deep he must have a windlass and a man to work it, and being in most cases too poor to hire a miner, his only way of getting help is to take in a partner. The two go on sinking, until presently the hole is too deep to use a windlass any more--a horse-whim is needed and then a hoisting engine. But it is seldom that the ore dug out of a shaft will pay the expense of sinking it--for powder and drills, ropes, buckets and timbers, are expensive things--much less enable the owner to lay by anything, and the probability is that to buy a hoisting engine he must sell another portion of his claim. And so it goes, until, by the time his claim has been turned into a mine--for, as the common and very true saying is, "Mines are made, not found"--his share of it will probably have been reduced to one-quarter or less; while it is quite within the limits of probability that, becoming wearied by long waiting for the slow development of his prospect, he will have sold out for what he can get and gone back to his old life. But though I do not advocate the business of prospecting as a way of making a living--I had rather pitch hay or dig potatoes myself--I am far from wishing to disparage the prospector himself or to belittle the results of his work. He is the pioneer of civilization; and personally he is generally a fine fellow. At the same time, as in every other profession, the ranks of the prospectors include their share of the riff-raff. It was so in our district, and we were destined shortly to come in contact with one of them. Tom Connor in his letter instructed us as to what he wished us to do: it was very simple. He asked us to walk up the little cañon along which our stream flowed, when it did flow, and to examine the bed of each of its feeders as we came to them, to determine, if possible, which of the branch streams it was that brought down the powdered lead-ore. He also suggested that we get out some more of the black sand from the bottom of the pool for him to see, and at the same time ascertain, if we could, how much of a deposit there was there. The last request we performed first. Taking down to the pool a long, pointed iron rod, we lowered it into the water, marking the depth by tying a bit of string round the rod at high-water-mark, and then bored a hole down through the frozen sand until we struck bed-rock. By this means we discovered that the deposit was five inches thick at the upper end of the pool. A few feet further from the waterfall, however, the deposit was thicker, but we noticed at the same time that the ground ice which came up carried with it more or less yellow sand. The further we retreated from the waterfall, too, the larger became the proportion of yellow sand, until towards the edge of the pool it had taken the place of the black sand altogether. Having done this, we poked up a lot of the ground ice, which we collected and put into a tin bucket, and taking this home we melted the ice, poured off the water, and made a little parcel of the sand that remained. A few days later we had finished our ice-cutting and had stowed away the crop in the ice-house, when we were at length free to go off and make the little prospecting expedition that Tom had asked us to undertake. First walking up the bed of the cañon, where the water was now represented by sheets of crackling white ice, we arrived presently at the first branch creek which came in on the right. This we ascended in turn, going some distance up it before we found a likely patch of sand, into which we chopped a hole with the old hatchet we had brought for the purpose, disclosing a little of the black material at the bottom; though the amount was so scanty that we could not be sure it was really the black sand we were seeking. Going on up this branch creek, much impeded by the snow which became deeper and deeper the higher we ascended, we were nearing one of the bends when Joe, who was in advance, suddenly stopped, exclaiming: "Look there, Phil! Tracks coming down the bank. Somebody is ahead of us." "So there is," said I. "What can he be doing, I wonder?" Following these tracks a short distance, we very soon discovered the reason for their being there. The man was on the same quest as ourselves! In a bend of the stream where the snow lay two feet thick, he had dug a hole down to the sand, and then through the sand itself to bed-rock. At the bottom of the hole was a little black sand, showing the marks of a hatchet or knife-blade where it had been gouged out, but all around the hole, between the bed-rock and the yellow sand above, was a black line an inch thick, composed of the shiny, powdered galena ore. There could be no doubt that the man ahead of us was hunting the same game as we were. "Do you suppose it's Yetmore, Joe?" said I. "No," Joe answered, emphatically, "I'm sure it isn't. Look at his tracks: they are bigger than mine." "It can't be Tom, himself, can it?" "No, I'm pretty sure it isn't Tom either. Tom is a big, powerful fellow, all right, but he's not more than five feet ten, while this man, I think, is extra-tall--see the length of his stride where he came down the bank. Whoever he is, though, Phil, he's an experienced prospector. He hasn't wasted his time, as we have, trying unlikely places, but has chosen this spot and gone slap down through snow and everything, just as if he knew that the black sand would be found at the bottom." "That's true," said I. "I wonder who it is. We must find out if we can, Joe, so that we may be able to tell Tom who his competitor is. Let's follow his tracks." Getting out of the creek-bed again, we walked along the bank for nearly a mile, until Joe, stopping short, held up his finger. "Hark!" he whispered. "Somebody chopping." There was a sound as of metal being struck against stone somewhere ahead of us, so on we went again, making as little noise as possible, until presently Joe stopped again, and pointing forward, said softly, "There he is, look!" The man was down in the creek-bed again, and all we could see of him above the bank was his hat. We therefore went forward once more, timing our steps by the blows of the hatchet, until we could see the man's head and shoulders; but we did not gain much by that, as he had his back to us and was too intent upon his work to turn round. At length, however, he ceased chopping, and gathering the chips of frozen sand in his hands, he cast them to one side. In doing so, he showed his face for a moment, and in that brief glimpse I recognized who it was. Joe looked at me with raised eyebrows, as much as to say, "Do you know him?" to which I replied with a nod, and laying my hand on my companion's arm, I drew him back until only the top of the man's hat was visible again, when I whispered, "It's Long John Butterfield." "What! The man they call 'The Yellow Pup'? How do you suppose _he_ came to hear of the black sand?" "From Yetmore. He is a prospector whom Yetmore grub-stakes every summer." "'Grub-stakes,'" repeated Joe, inquiringly. "Yes. Some prospectors go out on their own account, you know, but some of them are 'grub-staked.' This man is employed by Yetmore. He sends him out prospecting every spring, providing him with tools and 'grub' and paying him some small wages. Whether it is part of the bargain that Long John is to get any share of what he may find, I don't know, but probably it is--that is the general rule. There is very little doubt that Yetmore has sent him out now, just as Tom has sent us out, to see which stream the lead-ore in the pool came from." "Not a doubt of it. Well, shall we go ahead and speak to him?" Before I could reply, the man himself rose up, looked about him, and at once espied us. At seeing us standing there silently watching him, he gave a not-unnatural start of alarm, but perceiving that he had only two boys to deal with, even if we were pretty big, he climbed up the bank and advanced towards us with a threatening air. Standing six feet five inches in his over-shoes, he was a rather formidable-looking object as he came striding down upon us, a shovel in one hand and a hatchet in the other; but as we knew him by reputation for a blusterer and a coward, we awaited his coming without any alarm for our safety. Long John Butterfield was a well-known character in Sulphide. Though a prospector all summer, he was a bar-room loafer all winter, spending his time hanging around the saloons, and doing only work enough in the way of odd jobs to keep himself from starving until spring came round again, when Yetmore would provide for him once more. It had formerly been his ambition to pass for a "bad man," though he found it difficult to maintain that reputation among the unbelieving citizens of Sulphide, who knew that he valued his own skin far too highly to risk it seriously. He had been wont to call himself "The Wolf," desiring to be known by that title as sounding sufficiently fierce and "bad," and being of a most unprepossessing appearance, with his matted hair, retreating forehead, long, sharp nose and projecting ears, he did represent a wolf pretty well--though, still better, a coyote. As the people of Sulphide, however, declined to take him at his own valuation, greeting his frequent outbreaks of simulated ferocity with derisive jeers--even the small boys used to scoff at him--he was reduced to practising his arts upon strangers, which he always hastened to do when he thought it was not likely to be dangerous. Unluckily for him, though, he once tried one of his tricks upon an inoffensive newcomer, with a result so unexpected and unwelcome that his only desire thereafter was that people should forget that he had ever called himself "The Wolf"--a desire in which his many acquaintances, whether working-men or loafers, readily accommodated him. But as they playfully substituted the less desirable title of "The Yellow Pup," Long John gained little by the move. It happened in this way: There came out from New York at one time a young fellow named Bertie Van Ness, a nephew of Marsden, the cattle man, some of whose stock we were feeding that winter. He arrived at Sulphide by coach one morning, and before going on to Marsden's he stepped into Yetmore's store to buy himself a pair of riding gauntlets. Long John was in there, and seeing the well-dressed, dapper little man, with his white collar and eastern complexion--not burned red by the Colorado sun, as all of ours are--he winked to the assembled company as much as to say, "See me take a rise out of the tenderfoot," sidled up to Bertie, who was a foot shorter than himself, leaned over him, and putting on his worst expression, said, in a harsh, growling voice, "I'm 'The Wolf.'" It was a trick that had often been successful before: peace-loving strangers, not knowing whom they had to deal with, would usually back away and sometimes even take to their heels, which was all that Long John desired. In the present instance, however, the "bad man" miscalculated. The little stranger, seeing the ugly face within a foot of his own, withdrew a step, and without waiting for the formality of an introduction, struck "The Wolf" a very sharp blow upon the end of his nose, at the same time remarking, "Howl, then, you beast." Long John did howl. Clapping his hands over his face, he retreated, roaring, from the store, amid the enthusiastic plaudits of those present. Thus it was that the name of "The Wolf" fell into disuse and the title, "Yellow Pup," was substituted; and if at any time thereafter Long John became obstreperous or in any way made himself objectionable, it was only necessary for some one in company to say "Bow-wow," when the offender would forthwith efface himself, with promptness and dispatch. This was the man who came striding down upon Joe and me, looking as though he were going to eat us up at a mouthful and think nothing of it. Doubtless he supposed that, being country boys, we had not heard the story of Bertie Van Ness, for, advancing close to us he said fiercely: "What you doing here? Be off home! Do you know who _I_ am? I'm 'The Wolf'!" "So I've heard," said I, calmly; a remark which took all the wind out of the gentleman's sails at once. He collapsed with ridiculous suddenness, and with a sheepish grin, said, "I was only just a-trying you, boys, to see if you was easy scart." "Well, you see we're not," remarked Joe. "What are _you_ doing up here? Pretty early for prospecting, isn't it?" "Not any earlier for me than it is for you," replied Long John, with a glance at the hatchet in Joe's hand. He was sharp enough. Joe laughed. "That's true," said he. "I suppose we're both hunting the same thing. Did you find any of it in that hole up there?" Long John hesitated. He would have preferred to lie about it, probably, but knowing that we could go and see for ourselves in a couple of minutes, he made a virtue of necessity and replied: "Yes, there's some of it there; but it don't amount to much. I guess the vein ain't worth looking for. Come and see." We walked forward and looked into the hole Long John had chopped, when we saw that his prospector's instinct had hit upon the right place again. Here also was a black streak an inch thick below the yellow sand. It was evident that the vein of galena was somewhere up-stream, though we ourselves were unable to judge from the amount of the deposit whether it was likely to be big or little. Long John might be telling the truth when he "guessed" that it was not worth looking for, though, from what we knew of him, we, in turn, "guessed" that what he said was most likely to be the opposite of what he thought. We could not tell, either, whether our new acquaintance was speaking the truth when he declared that he was satisfied with his day's work and had already decided to go home again; I think it rather likely that, being unable to devise any scheme for shaking us off, and not caring to act as prospector for us as well as for Yetmore, he preferred to go back at once and report progress. He was right, at any rate, in saying that the drifts ahead were too deep to admit of further prospecting; for the mountains began to close in just here, and the snow was becoming pretty heavy. Nevertheless, Joe and I thought we would try a little further, if only for the reason that Long John would not, and we were about to part company, when we were startled to hear a voice above our heads say, "Good-morning," and, looking quickly up, we saw, seated on a dead branch, a raven, to all appearance asleep, with his feathers fluffed out and his head sunk between his shoulders. That it was our friend, Socrates, we could not doubt, and we looked all around for the hermit, but as there was no one to be seen, Joe, addressing the raven, said: "Hallo, Sox! Where's your master?" "Chew o' tobacco," replied the raven. At this Long John burst out laughing. "Well, you're a cute one," said he; and thrusting his hand into his pocket he brought out a piece of tobacco which he invited Socrates to come and get. Sox flew down to a convenient rock and reached for the morsel, but the moment he perceived that it was not anything he could eat, he drew back in disdain, and eying Long John with severity, remarked, "Bow-wow." Now, as I have intimated, nothing was so exasperating to Long John as to have any one say "bow-wow" to him, and not considering that the offender was only a bird, he raised his hatchet and would have ended Sox's career then and there had not Joe stayed his arm. At being thus thwarted, Long John turned upon my companion, and for a moment I felt a little uneasy lest his temper should for once get the better of his discretion; but I need not have alarmed myself, for Long John's outbreaks of rage were always carefully calculated when directed against any one or anything capable of retaliation in kind, and very probably he had already concluded that two well-grown boys like ourselves, used to all kinds of hard work, might prove an awkward handful for one whose muscles had been rendered flabby by lack of exercise. At any rate, he quickly calmed down again, pretending to laugh at the incident; but though he made some remark about "a real smart bird," I guessed from the gleam in his little ferrety eyes that if he could lay hands on Socrates, that aged scholar's chances of ever celebrating his one hundredth anniversary would be slim indeed. "Who's the thing belong to, anyhow?" asked John. "There's no one living around here that I know of." "He belongs to a man who lives somewhere up on this mountain," I replied. "You've probably heard of him: Peter the Hermit." "Him!" exclaimed Long John, looking quickly all around, as though he feared the owner might make his appearance. "Well, I'm off. I've got to get back to Sulphide to-night, so I'll dig out at once." So saying, he picked up his long-handled shovel, and using it upside-down as a walking-staff, away he went, striding over the snow at a great pace; while Socrates, seeing him depart, very appropriately called after him, "Good-bye, John." CHAPTER VII THE HERMIT'S WARNING As it was now after midday, we concluded to eat our lunch before going any further, so, sitting down on the rocks, we produced the bread and cold bacon we had brought with us and prepared to refresh ourselves. Observing this, Socrates, who had flown up into a tree when Long John threatened him with the hatchet, now flipped down again and took up his station beside us, having plainly no apprehension that we would do him any harm, and doubtless thinking that if there was any food going he might come in for a share. I was just about to offer him a scrap of bacon, when the bird suddenly gave a croak and flew off up the mountain. Naturally, we both looked up to ascertain the reason for this sudden departure, when we were startled to see a tall, bearded man with a long staff in his hands, skimming down the snow-covered slope of the mountain towards us. One glance showed us that it was our friend, the hermit, though how he could skim over the snow like that without moving his feet was a puzzle to us, until, on approaching to within twenty yards of where we sat, he stuck his staff into the snow and checked his speed, when we perceived that he was traveling on skis. "How are you, boys?" he cried, shaking hands with us very heartily. "I'm glad to see you again. Much obliged to you, Joe, for interfering on behalf of old Sox. I would not have the bird hurt for a good deal. I saw the whole transaction from where I was standing up there in that grove of aspens. Why did your companion go off so suddenly?" "I don't know," I replied. "I only just mentioned to him that Sox belonged to you, when he picked up his shovel and skipped." Peter laughed. "I understand," said he. "The gentleman and I have met before, and have no wish to meet again. Our first and only interview was not conducive to a desire for further acquaintance. He is not a friend of yours, I hope." "Not at all," I replied. "We never met him before." "Well, I'm glad of that, because he is not one to be intimate with: he is a thief." "Why do you say that?" asked Joe, rather startled. "Because I happen to know it's so. I'll tell you how. I had set a bear-trap once up on the mountain back of my house, and going up next day to see if I had caught anything, I found this fellow busy skinning my bear. He had come upon it by accident, I suppose, and the bear being caught by both front feet, and being therefore perfectly helpless, he had bravely shot it, and was preparing to walk off with the skin when I appeared." "And what did you say to him?" I asked. "Nothing," replied Peter. "I just sat down on a rock near by, with my rifle across my knees, and watched him; and he grew so embarrassed and nervous and fidgety that he couldn't stand it any longer, and at last he sneaked off without completing his job and without either of us having said a word." "That certainly was a queer interview," remarked Joe, laughing, "and a most effective way, I should think, of dealing with a blustering rogue like Long John." "Long John?" repeated the hermit, inquiringly. "Yes, Long John Butterfield; known also as 'The Yellow Pup.'" "Oh, that's who it is, is it? I've heard of him from my friend, Tom Connor." "Tom Connor!" we both exclaimed. "Do you know Tom Connor, then?" "Yes, we have met two or three times in the mountains, and he once spent the night with me in my cabin--he is the 'one exception' I told you about, you remember. He seems like a good, honest fellow, and he has certainly been most obliging to me." As we looked inquiringly at him, wondering how Tom could have found an opportunity to be of service to one living such a secluded life as the hermit did, our friend went on: "I happened to mention to him that I had great need of an iron pot, and three days afterwards, on returning home one evening, what should I find standing outside my door but a big iron pot, and in it a chip, upon which was written in pencil, 'Compliments of T. Connor.'" "Just like Tom," said I, laughing. "He has more friends than any other man in the district, and he deserves it, for when he makes a friend he can't rest easy until he has found some way of doing him a service." "And he's as honest as they make 'em," Joe continued. "If he's a friend, he's a friend, and if he's an enemy, he's an enemy--he doesn't leave you in doubt." "Just what I should think," said the hermit. "Very different from Long John, if I'm not mistaken. That gentleman, I suspect, is of the kind that would shake hands with you in the morning and then come in the night and burn your house down. What were you and he doing, by the way? I've been watching you for an hour. First one and then the other would kneel down in the snow and chop a hole in the bed of the creek, then get up, walk a mile, and do it again. If I may be allowed to say so," he went on, laughing, "it appeared to an outsider like a crazy sort of amusement." "I should think it might," said I, laughing too; and I then proceeded to tell our friend the object of these seemingly senseless actions. "And do you expect to go prospecting for this vein of galena in the spring?" he inquired, when I had concluded. "Not we!" I exclaimed. "My father wouldn't let us if we wanted to. We are doing this work for Tom Connor, whom my father is anxious to serve, he having done us, among others, a very good turn." "I see," said the hermit. "And this man, Yetmore, or, rather, his henchman, Long John, will be coming as soon as the snow is off to hunt for the vein in competition with our friend, Connor." "That is what we expect." "Well, then, I can help you a little. We will, at least, secure for Connor a start over the enemy." "How?" I asked. "You remember, of course," said the hermit, "that sulphurous stuff that was cooking on the flat stone outside my door the day you came down to my house through the clouds? That was galena ore." "Why, of course!" I exclaimed, slapping my leg. "What pudding-heads we must have been, Joe, not to have thought of it before. I had forgotten all about it. Have you found the vein, then?" "No, I have not; nor have I ever taken the trouble to look for it, having found a place where I can get a sufficient supply for my purposes to last for years." "And what do you use it for?" I asked. "To make bullets from. I get the powdered ore, roast out the sulphur on that flat stone, and then melt down the residue." "And where do you get it?" "That is what I am going to tell you. You know that deep, rocky gorge where Big Reuben had his den? Well, near the head of that gorge is a basin in the rock in which is a large quantity of this powdered galena, all in very fine grains, showing that they have traveled a considerable distance. That stream is one of the four little rills which make up this creek, and if you tell Connor of this deposit it will save him the trouble of prospecting the other three creeks, as he would otherwise naturally do; and as Long John will pretty certainly do, for the creek coming out of Big Reuben's gorge is the last of the four he would come to if he took up his search where he left off to-day--which would be the plan he would surely follow. It should save Connor a day's work at least--perhaps two or three." "That's true," I responded. "It is an important piece of information. I wonder, though, that nobody else has ever found the deposit you speak of." "Do you? I don't. Considering that Big Reuben was standing guard over it, I think it would have been rather remarkable if any one had discovered it." "That's true enough," remarked Joe. "But that being the case, how did you come to discover it yourself? Big Reuben was no respecter of persons, that I'm aware of." "Ah, but that's just it. He was. He was afraid of me; or, to speak more correctly, he was afraid of Sox--the one single thing on earth of which he was afraid. Before I knew of his existence, I was going up the gorge one day when Big Reuben bounced out on me, and almost before I knew what had happened I found myself hanging by my finger-tips to a ledge of rock fifteen feet up the cliff, with the bear standing erect below me trying his best to claw me down. My hold was so precarious that I could not have retained it long, and my case would have been pretty serious had it not been for Socrates. That sagacious bird, seeming to recognize that I was in desperate straits, flew up, perched upon the face of the cliff just out of reach of the bear's claws, and in a tone of authority ordered him to lie down. The astonishment of the bear at being thus addressed by a bird was ludicrous, and at any other time would have made me laugh heartily. He at once dropped upon all fours, and when Socrates flipped down to the ground and walked towards him, using language fit to make your hair stand on end, the bear backed away. And he kept on backing away as Sox advanced upon him, pouring out as he came every word and every fragment of a quotation he had learned in the course of a long and studious career. One of the reasons I have for thinking that he is getting on for a hundred years old is that Sox on that occasion raked up old slang phrases in use in the first years of the century--phrases I had never heard him use before, and which I am sure he cannot have heard since he has been in my possession. "This stream of vituperation was too much for Big Reuben. He feared no man living, as you know, but a common black raven with a man's voice in his stomach was 'one too many for him,' as the saying is. He turned and bolted; while Socrates, flying just above his head, pursued him with jeers and laughter, until at last he found inglorious safety in the inmost recesses of his den, whither Sox was much too wise to follow him." "I don't wonder you set a high value on old Sox, then," said I. "He probably saved your life that time." "He certainly did: I could not have held on five minutes longer." "And did you ever run across Big Reuben again?" asked Joe. "Yes. Or, rather, I suppose I should say 'no.' I saw him a good many times, but he never would allow me to come near him. Whether he thought I was in league with the Evil One, I can't say, but, at any rate, one glimpse of me was enough to send him flying; and as I was sure I need have no fear of him, I had no hesitation in walking up the gorge if it happened to be convenient; and thus it was that I discovered the deposit of lead-ore up near its head." As this piece of information precluded the necessity of our prospecting any further, and as we had by this time finished our meal--which was shared by Peter and his attendant sprite--we informed our friend that it was time for us to be starting back; upon which he remarked that he would go part of the way with us, as, by taking one of the gulches farther on he would find an easier ascent to his house than by returning the way he had come. Hanging his skis over his shoulder, therefore, he trudged along beside us at a pace which made us hustle to keep up with him. "Do you think you would be able to find my house again?" asked the hermit as we walked along. "No," I replied, "I'm sure we couldn't. When we came down the mountain in the clouds that day we were so mixed up that we did not even know whether we were on Lincoln or Elkhorn, though we had kept away so much to the left coming down that we rather thought we must have got on to one of the spurs of Lincoln." "Well, you had. I'll show you directly what line you took." Half a mile farther on, at the point where the stream we were following joined our own creek, our friend stopped, and pointing up the mountain, said: "If you ever have occasion to come and look me up, all you have to do is to follow your own creek up to its head, when you will come to a high, unscalable cliff, and right at the foot of that cliff you will see the great pile of fallen rocks in which my house is hidden. You can see the cliff from here. When you came down that day you missed the head of the creek you had followed in going up, and by unconsciously bearing to your left all the time you passed the heads of several others as well, and so at length you got into the valley which would have brought you out here if you had continued to follow it." "I see. How far up is it to your house?" "About five miles from where we stand." "It must be all under snow up there," remarked Joe. "I wonder you are not afraid of being buried alive." The hermit smiled. "I'm not afraid of that," said he. "It is true the gulch below me gets drifted pretty full--there is probably forty feet of snow in it at this moment--but the point where my house stands always seems to escape; a fact which is due, I think, to the shape of the cliff behind it. It is in the form of a horseshoe, and whichever way the wind blows, the cliff seems to give it a twist which sends the snow off in one direction or another, so that, while the drifts are piled up all around me, the head of the gulch is always fairly free." "That's convenient," said Joe. "But for all that, I think I should be afraid to live there myself, especially in the spring." "Why?" asked the hermit. "Why in the spring particularly?" "I should be afraid of snowslides. The mountain above the cliff is very steep--at least it looks so from here." "It is very steep, extremely steep, and the snow up there is very heavy this winter--I went up to examine it two days ago. But at the same time I saw no traces of there ever having been a slide. There are a good many trees growing on the slope, some of them of large size, which is pretty fair evidence that there has been no slide for a long time--not for a hundred years probably. For as you see, there and there"--pointing to two long, bare tracks on the mountain-side--"when the slides do come down they clean off every tree in their course. No, I have no fear of snowslides. "By the way," he continued, "there is one thing you might tell Tom Connor when you see him, and that is that Big Reuben's creek heads in a shallow draw on the mountain above my house. If you follow with your eye from the summit of the cliff upward, you will notice a stretch of bare rock, and above it a strip of trees extending downward from left to right. It is among those trees that the creek heads. "You might mention that to Connor," he went on, "in case he should prefer to begin his prospecting downward from the head of the creek instead of upward from Big Reuben's gorge. And tell him, too, that if he will come to me, I shall be glad to take him up there at any time." "Very well," said I, "we'll do so." "Yes, we'll certainly tell him," said Joe. "It might very well happen that Tom would prefer to begin at the top, especially if he should find that Long John had got ahead of him and was already working up from below." "Exactly. That is what I was thinking of. Well, I must be off. I have a longish tramp before me, and the sunset comes pretty early under my cliff." "Won't you come home with us to-night?" I asked. "We have only two miles to go. My father told me to ask you the next time we met, and this is such a fine opportunity. I wish you would." "Yes; do," Joe chimed in. But the hermit shook his head. "You are very kind to suggest it," said he, "and I am really greatly obliged to you, and to Mr. Crawford also, but I think not. Thank you, all the same; but I'll go back home. So, good-bye." "Some other time, perhaps," suggested Joe. "Perhaps--we'll see. By the way, there was one other thing I intended to say, and that is:--look out for Long John! He is a dangerous man if he is a coward; in fact, all the more dangerous _because_ he is a coward. So now, good-bye; and remember"--holding up a warning finger--"look out for Long John!" With that, he slipped his feet into his skis and away he went; while Joe and I turned our own faces homeward. CHAPTER VIII THE WILD CAT'S TRAIL "He is quite right," said my father, when, on reaching home again, we related to him the results of our day's work and told him how the hermit had warned us against Long John. "He is quite right. Your hermit is a man of sense in spite of his reputation to the contrary. Yetmore, of course, will do anything he can to forestall Tom Connor, but, if I am not mistaken, he will not venture beyond the law; whereas Long John, I feel sure, would not be restrained by any such consideration. He would be quite ready to resort to violence, provided always that he could do it without risk to his own precious person. The hermit is right, too, in saying that Long John is all the more dangerous for being the cowardly creature that he is: whatever he may do to head off Tom will be done in the dark--you may be sure of that. We must warn Tom, so that he may be on his guard." "I'm afraid it won't be much use warning Tom," said I. "He is such a heedless fellow and so chuck full of courage that he won't trouble to take any precautions." "I don't suppose he will, but we will warn him, all the same, so that he may at least go about with his eyes open. I'll write to him again to-morrow. And now to our own business. Come into the back room. I want your opinion." It had been my father's custom for some time back--and a very good custom, too, I think--whenever there arose a question of management about the affairs of the ranch, to take Joe and me into consultation with him. It is probable enough that our opinion, when he got it, was not worth much, but the mere fact that we were asked for it gave us a feeling of responsibility and grown-up-ness which had a good effect. Whenever, therefore, any question of importance turned up, the whole male population of Crawford's Basin voted upon it, and though it is true that nine times out of ten any proposition advanced by my father would receive a unanimous vote, it did happen every now and then that one of us would make a suggestion which would be adopted, much to our satisfaction, thus adding a zest to the work, whatever it might be. For whether the plan originated with my father or with one of us, as we all voted on it we thereby made it our own, and having made it our own; we took infinitely more interest in its accomplishment than does the ordinary hired man, who is told to do this or do that without reason or explanation. It will be readily understood, too, how flattering it was to a couple of young fellows like ourselves to be asked for our opinion by a man like my father, for whose good sense and practical knowledge we had the greatest respect, and of course we were all attention at once, when, seating himself in his desk chair, he began: "You remember that when Marsden's cattle first came they broke a couple of the posts around the hay-corral, and that when we re-set them we found that the butt-ends of the posts were beginning to get pretty rotten?" He happened to catch Joe's eye, who replied: "I remember; and you said at the time that we should have to renew the fence entirely in two years or less." "Exactly. Well, now, this is what I've been thinking: instead of renewing with posts and poles, why not build a rough stone wall all round the present fence, which, when once done, would last forever? Within a half-mile of the corral there is material in plenty fallen from the face of the Second Mesa; and everything on the ranch being in good working order, you two boys would be free to put in several weeks hauling stones and dumping them outside the fence--the actual building I would leave till next fall. It will mean a long spell of pretty hard work, for you will hardly gather material enough if you keep at it all the rest of the winter. Now, what do you think?" "It seems to me like a good plan," Joe answered. "We can take two teams and wagons, help each other to load, drive down together, and help each other to unload; for I suppose you would use stones as big as we can handle by preference." "Yes, the bigger the better; especially for the lower courses and for the corners. What's your opinion, Phil?" "I agree with Joe," I replied. "And with such a short haul--for it will average nearer a quarter than half a mile--I should think we might even collect stones enough for the purpose this winter, provided there doesn't come a big fall of snow and stop us." "Then you shall begin to-morrow," said my father. "But here's another question," he continued. "Should we build the wall close around the present fence, or should we increase the size of the corral while we are about it?" "I should keep to the present dimensions," said I. "There is no chance that I see of our ever increasing the size of our hay-crop to any great extent, and the corral we have now has always held it all, even that very big crop we had the summer Joe came. If----" "Yes, 'if,'" my father interrupted, knowing very well what I had in mind. "_If_ we could drain 'the bottomless forty rods' we should need a corral half as big again; but I'm afraid that is beyond us, so we may as well confine ourselves to providing for present needs." "My wig!" exclaimed Joe--his favorite exclamation--at the same time rumpling his hair, as though that were the wig he referred to. "What a great thing it would be if we could but drain those forty rods!" "It undoubtedly would," replied my father. "It would about double the value of the ranch, I think; for, besides diverting the present county road between San Remo and Sulphide--for everybody would then leave the old hill-road and come past our door instead--it would give us a large piece of new land for growing oats and hay. And, do you know, I begin to think it is very possible that within a couple of years we shall have a market for more oats and hay than we can grow, even including the 'forty rods.'" "Why?" I asked, in surprise; for, at present, though we disposed of our produce readily enough, it could not be said that there was a booming market. "It is just guess-work," my father replied, "pure guess-work on my part, with a number of good big 'ifs' about it; but if Tom Connor or Long John, or, indeed, any one else, should discover a big vein of lead-ore up on Mount Lincoln--and the chances, I think, begin to look favorable--what would be the result?" "I don't know," said I. "What?" "Why, this whole district would take a big leap forward--that is what would happen. You see, as things stand now, the smelters, not being able to procure in the district lead-ores enough for fluxing purposes, are obliged to bring them in by railroad from other camps. This is very expensive, and the consequence is that they are obliged to make such high charges for smelting that any ore of less value than thirty dollars to the ton is at present worthless to the miner: the cost of hauling it to the smelter and the smelter-charges when it gets there eat up all the proceeds." "I see," said Joe. "And the discovery of a mine which would provide the smelters with all the lead-ore they wanted would bring down the charges of smelting and enable the producers of thirty dollar ore to work their claims at a profit." "Precisely. And as nine-tenths of the claims in the district produce mainly low-grade ore, which is now left lying on the dumps as worthless, and as even the big mines take out, and throw aside, probably ten tons of low-grade in getting out one ton of high-grade, you can see what a 'boost' the district would receive if all this unavailable material were suddenly to become a valuable and marketable commodity." "I should think it would!" exclaimed Joe, enthusiastically. "The prospectors would be getting out by hundreds; the population of Sulphide would double; San Remo would take a great jump forward; while we--why, we shouldn't _begin_ to be able to grow oats and hay enough to meet the demand." My father nodded. "That's what I think," said he. "And there's another thing," cried I, taking up Joe's line of prophecy. "If a big vein of lead-ore should be discovered anywhere about the head of our creek, the natural way for the freighters to get down to San Remo would be through here, if----" "That's it," interrupted my father. "That's the whole thing. I-F, IF." Dear me! What a big, big little word that was. To represent it of the size it looked to us, it would be necessary to paint it on the sky with the tail of a comet dipped in an ocean of ink! After a pause of a minute or two, during which we all sat silent, considering over again what we had considered many and many a time before: whether there were not some possible way of draining off the "forty rods," Joe suddenly straightened himself in his seat, rumpled his hair once more--by which sign I knew he had some idea in his head--and said: "I suppose you have thought of it before, Mr. Crawford, but would it be possible to run a tunnel up from the lower edge of the First Mesa, and so draw off the water?" "I have thought of it before, Joe," replied my father, "and while I think it might work, I have concluded that it is out of the question. How long a tunnel would it take, do you calculate?" "Well, a little more than a quarter of a mile, I suppose." "Yes. Say twelve hundred feet, at least. Well, to run a tunnel of that length would be cheap at ten dollars a foot." "Phew!" Joe whistled, opening his eyes widely. "That is a staggerer, sure enough. It does look as if there was no way out of it." "No, I'm afraid not," said my father. "And as to making a permanent road across the marsh, I have tried everything I can think of including corduroying with long poles covered with brush and earth. But it was no use. We had a very wet season that summer, and the road, poles and all, was covered with water. That settled it to my mind; we could not expect the freighters and others to come our way when, at any time, they might find the road under water." "No; that did seem to be a clincher. Well, as there appears to be no more to be said, let's get to bed, Phil. If we are going to haul rocks to-morrow, we shall need a good night's sleep as a starter." The cliff which bounded the eastern edge of the Second Mesa--at the same time bounding the ranch on its western side--was made up of layers of rock of an average thickness of about a foot, having been evidently built up by successive small flows of lava. The stones piled at the foot of the bluff being flat on both sides were therefore very convenient for wall-building, and so plentiful that we made rapid progress at first in hauling them down to the corral. At the end of three weeks, however, we had picked up all those fragments that were most accessible, and were now obliged to loosen up the great heaps of larger slabs and crack the stones with a sledgehammer. Some of these heaps were so large, and the stones composing them of such great size, that when we came to dislodge them we found that an ordinary crowbar made no impression; but we overcame that difficulty, at Joe's suggestion, by using a big pine pole as a lever. Inserting the butt-end of the pole between two big rocks, we would tie a rope to the other end and hitch the mules to it. The leverage thus obtained was tremendous, and unless the pole broke, something had to come. In this way we could sometimes bring down at one pull rock enough to keep us busy for a week. Day after day, without a break, we continued this work, and though it was certainly hard labor we enjoyed it, especially when, by constant practice we found ourselves handling all the time bigger and bigger stones with less and less exertion. It would seem that there could not be much art in so simple a matter as putting a stone into a wagon, and as far as stones of moderate size are concerned there is not. But when you come to deal with slabs of rock weighing a thousand pounds or more, you will find that the "know how" counts for very much more than mere strength. Of course, to handle pieces of this size it was necessary to use skids and crowbars, with which, aided by little rollers made of bits of gas-pipe, we did not hesitate to tackle stones which, when we first began, we should have cracked into two or three pieces. We had been at it, as I have said, for more than three weeks, when it happened one day that while driving down with our last load, we were met face to face by a wildcat, with one of our chickens in its mouth. There were a good many of these animals having their lairs among the fallen rocks at the foot of the mesa, and they caused us some trouble, but this was the first time I had known one to make a raid on the chicken-yard in broad daylight. I suppose rabbits were scarce, and the poor beast was driven to this unusual course by hunger. I was driving the mules at the moment, but Joe, who was walking beside the wagon, picked up a stone and hurled it at the cat. The animal, of course, bolted--taking his chicken with him, though--and disappeared among the rocks close to where we had just been at work. "Joe," said I, "we'll bring up the shotgun to-morrow. We may stir that fellow out and get a shot at him." Accordingly, next day, we took the gun with us, and leaning it against a tree near the wagon, set about our usual work. The first stone we loaded that morning was an extra-large one, and Joe on one side of the wagon and I on the other were prying it into position with our pinch-bars, when my companion, who was facing the bluff, gently laid down his bar and whispered: "Keep quiet, Phil! Don't move! I see that wildcat! Get hold of the lines in case the mules should scare, while I see if I can reach the gun." Stooping behind the wagon, he slipped away to where the gun stood, came stooping back, and then, straightening up, he raised the gun to his shoulder. Up to that moment the cat had stood so still that I had been unable to distinguish it, but just as Joe raised the gun it bolted. My partner fired a snap-shot, and down came the cat, tumbling over and over. "Good shot!" I cried. But hardly had I done so when the animal jumped up again and popped into a hole between two rocks before Joe could get a second shot. "Let's dig him out, Joe," I cried. And seizing a crowbar, I led the way to the foot of the cliff. Working away with the bar, while Joe stood ready with the gun, I soon enlarged the hole enough to let me look in, but it was so dark inside, and I got into my own light so much that I could see nothing. I happened to have a letter in my pocket, and taking the envelope I dropped a little stone into it, screwed up the corner, and lighting the other end, threw the bit of paper into the hole. My little fire-brand flickered for a moment, and then burned up brightly, when I saw the wildcat lying flat upon its side, evidently quite dead. Thereupon we both set to work and enlarged the hole so that Joe could crawl in, which he immediately did. I expected him to come out again in a moment, but it was a full minute before he reappeared, and when he did so he only poked out his head and said, in an excited tone: "Come in here, Phil! Here's the queerest thing--just come in here for a minute!" Of course I at once crept through the hole, to find myself in a little chamber about ten feet long, six feet wide and four feet high, built up of great flat slabs of stone, which, falling from above, had accidentally so arranged themselves as to form this little room. At first I thought it was the little room itself to which Joe had referred as "queer," but Joe, scouting such an idea, exclaimed: "No, no, bless you! I didn't mean that. That's nothing. Look here!" So saying, he struck a match and showed me, along one side of the chamber, a great crack in the ground, three feet wide, extending to the left an unknown distance--for in that direction it was covered by loose rocks of large size--while to the right it pinched out entirely. It was evident to me that this crevice had existed ever since the great break had occurred which had separated the First from the Second Mesa, but that, being covered by the fragments which had fallen from the cliff--itself formed by the subsidence of the First Mesa from what had once been the general level--it had hitherto remained concealed. "Well, that certainly is 'queer,'" said I. "How deep is it, I wonder?" "Don't know. Pitch a stone into it." I did so; judging from the sound that the crevice was probably thirty or forty feet deep. "That's what I should guess," said Joe. "But there's another thing, Phil, a good deal queerer than a mere crack in the ground. Lie down and put your ear over the hole and listen." I did as directed, and then at length I understood where the "queerness" came in. I could distinctly hear the rush of water down below! Rising to my knees, I stared at Joe, who, kneeling also, stared back at me, both keeping silence for a few seconds. At length: "Where does it come from, Joe?" I asked. "I don't know," Joe replied. "Mount Lincoln, perhaps. But I do know where it goes to." "You do? Where?" "Down to 'the forty rods,' of course." "That's it!" I cried, thumping my fist into the palm of the other hand. "That's certainly it! Look here, Joe. I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll quit hauling rock for this morning, go and get a long rope, climb down into this crack, see how much water there is, and find out if we can where it goes to." "All right," said Joe. "Your father won't object, I'm sure." "No, he won't object. Though he relies on our doing a good day's work without supervision, he relies, too, on our using our common sense, and I'm sure he'll agree that this is a matter that ought to be investigated without delay. It may be of the greatest importance." "All right!" cried Joe. "Then let us get about it at once!" CHAPTER IX THE UNDERGROUND STREAM It was on a Saturday morning that we made this discovery, and as my father and mother had both driven down to San Remo and would not be back till sunset, we could not ask permission to abandon our regular work and go exploring. But, as I had said to Joe, though he trusted us to work faithfully at any task we might undertake, my father also expected us to use our own discretion in any matter which might turn up when he was not at hand to advise with us. I had, therefore, no hesitation in driving back to the ranch, when, having unloaded our one stone and stabled the mules, Joe and I, taking with us a long, stout rope and the stable-lantern, retraced our steps to the wildcat's house. The first thing to be done was to enlarge the entrance so that we might have daylight to work by, and this being accomplished, we lighted the lantern and lowered it by a cord into the hole. We found, however, that a bulge in the rock prevented our seeing to the bottom, and all we gained by this move was to ascertain that the crevice was about forty feet deep, as we had guessed. The next thing, therefore, was for one of us to go down, and the only way to do this was to slide down a rope. This, doubtless, would be easy enough, but the climbing up again might be another matter. We were not afraid to venture on this score, however, for, as it happened, we had both often amused ourselves by climbing a rope hung from one of the rafters in the hay-barn, and though that was a climb of only twenty feet, we had done it so often and so easily that we did not question our ability to ascend a rope of double the length. "Who's to go down, Joe, you or I?" I asked. "Whichever you like, Phil," replied my companion. "I suppose you'd like to be the first, wouldn't you?" "Oh, yes, that's a matter of course," I answered, "but as you are the discoverer you ought to have first chance, so down you go, old chap!" "Very well, then," said Joe, "if you say so, I'll go." "Well, I do--so that settles it." I knew Joe well enough to be sure he would be eager to be the first, and though I should have liked very much to take the lead myself, it seemed to me only just that Joe, as the original discoverer, should, as I had said, be given the choice. This question being decided, we tied one end of the rope around a big stone, heavy enough to hold an elephant, and dropped the other end into the hole. The descent at first was very easy, for the walls being only three feet apart, and there being many rough projections on either side, it was not much more difficult than going down a ladder, especially as I, standing a little to one side, lowered the lantern bit by bit, that Joe might have a light all the time to see where to set his feet. Arrived at the bulge, Joe stopped, and standing with one foot on either wall, looked up and said: "It opens out below here, Phil; I shall have to slide the rest of the way. You might lower the lantern down to the bottom now, if you please." I did so at once, and then asked: "Can you see the bottom, Joe?" "Yes," he replied. "The crevice is much wider down there, and the floor seems to be smooth and dry. I can't see any sign of water anywhere, but I can hear it plainly enough. Good-bye for the present; I'm going down now." With that he disappeared under the bulge in the wall, while I, placing my hand upon the rope, presently felt the strain slacken, whereupon I called out: "All right, Joe?" "All right," came the answer. "How's the air down there?" "Seems to be perfectly fresh." "Can you see the water?" "No, I can't; but I can hear it. There's a heap of big rocks in the passage to the south and the splashing comes from the other side of it. I'm going to untie the lantern, Phil, and go and explore a bit. Just wait a minute." Very soon I heard his voice again calling up to me. "It's all right, Phil. I've found the water. You may as well come down." "Look here, Joe," I replied. "Before I come down, it might be as well to make sure that you can come up." "There's something in that," said Joe, with a laugh. "Well, then, I'll come up first." I felt the rope tauten again, and pretty soon my companion's head appeared, when, scrambling over the bulge, he once more stood astride of the crevice, and looking up said: "It's perfectly safe, Phil. The only troublesome bit is in getting over the bulge, and that doesn't amount to anything. It's safe enough for you to come down." "Very well, then, I'll come; so go on down again." Taking a candle we had brought with us, I set it on a projection where it would cast a light into the fissure, and seizing the rope, down I went. The descent was perfectly easy, and in a few seconds I found myself standing beside Joe at the bottom. The crevice down here was much wider than above--ten or twelve feet--the floor, composed of sandstone, having a decided downward tilt towards the south. In this direction Joe, lantern in hand, led the way. Piled up in the passage was a large heap of lava-blocks which had fallen, presumably, through the opening above, and climbing over these, we saw before us a very curious sight. [Illustration: "WE SAW BEFORE US A VERY CURIOUS SIGHT"] On the right hand side of the crevice--that is to say, on the western or Second Mesa side--between the sandstone floor and the lowest ledge of lava, there issued a thin sheet of water, coming out with such force that it swept right across, and striking the opposite wall, turned and ran off southward--away from us, that is. Only for a short distance, however, it ran in that direction, for we could see that the stream presently took another turn, this time to the eastward, presumably finding its way through a crack in the lava of the First Mesa. "I'm going to see where it goes to," cried Joe; and pulling off his boots and rolling up his trousers, he waded in. He expected to find the water as cold as the iced water of any other mountain stream, but to his surprise it was quite pleasantly warm. "I'll tell you what it is, Phil," said he, stepping back again for a moment. "This water must run under ground for a long distance to be as warm as it is. And what's more, there must be a good-sized reservoir somewhere between the lava and the sandstone to furnish pressure enough to make the water squirt out so viciously as it does." Entering the stream again, which, though hardly an inch deep, came out of the rock with such "vim" that when it struck his feet it flew up nearly to his knees, Joe waded through, and then turning, shouted to me: "It goes down this way, Phil, through a big crack in the lava. It just goes flying. Don't trouble to come"--observing that I was about to pull off my own boots--"you can't see any distance down the crack." But whatever there was to be seen, I wanted to see too, and disregarding his admonition, I pretty soon found myself standing beside my companion. The great cleft into which we were peering was about six feet wide at the bottom, coming together some twenty feet above our heads, having been apparently widened at the base by the action of the water, which, being here ankle-deep, rushed foaming over and around the many blocks of lava with which the channel was encumbered. As far as we could see, the fissure led straight away without a bend; and Joe was for trying to walk down it at once. I suggested, however, that we leave that for the present and try another plan. "Look here, Joe," said I. "If we try to do that we shall probably get pretty wet, and stand a good chance besides of hurting our feet among the rocks. Now, I propose that we go down to the ranch again, get our rubber boots, and at the same time bring back with us my father's compass and the tape-measure and try to survey this water-course. By doing that, and then by following the same line on the surface, we may be able to decide whether it is really this stream which keeps 'the forty rods' so wet." "I don't think there can be any doubt about that," Joe replied; "but I think your plan is a good one, all the same, so let us do it." We did not waste much time in getting down to the ranch and back again, when, pulling on our rubber boots, we proceeded to make our survey. It was not an easy task. With the ring at the end of the tape-measure hooked over my little finger, I took a candle in that hand and the compass in the other, and having ascertained that the course of the stream was due southeast, I told Joe to go ahead. My partner, therefore, with his arm slipped through the handle of the lantern and with a pole in his hand with which to test the depth of the stream, thereupon started down the passage, stepping from rock to rock when possible, and taking to the water when the rocks were too far apart, until, having reached the limit of the tape-measure, he made a mark upon the wall with a piece of white chalk. This being done, I noted on a bit of paper the direction and the distance, when Joe advanced once more, I following as far as to the chalk-mark, when the operation was repeated. In this manner we worked our way, slowly and carefully, down the passage, the direction of which varied only two or three degrees to one side or the other of southeast, until, having advanced a little more than a thousand feet, we found our further progress barred. For some time it had appeared to us that the sound of splashing water was increasing in distinctness, though the stream itself made so much noise in that hollow passage that we could not be sure whether we were right or not. At length, however, having made his twentieth chalk-mark, indicating one thousand feet, Joe, waving his lantern for me to come on, advanced once more; but before I had come to his last mark, he stopped and shouted back to me that he could go no farther. Wondering why not, I slowly waded forward, Joe himself winding up the tape-measure as I approached, until I found myself standing beside my companion, when I saw at once "why not." The stream here took a sudden dive down hill, falling about three feet into a large pool, the limits of which we could not discern--for we could see neither sides nor end--its surface unbroken, except in a few places where we could detect the ragged points of big lava-blocks projecting above the water, while here and there a rounded boulder showed its smooth and shining head. Joe, very carefully descending to the edge of the pool, measured the depth with his rod, when, finding it to be about four feet deep, we concluded that we would let well enough alone and end our survey at this point. "Come on up, Joe," I called out. "No use trying to go any farther: it's too dangerous; we might get in over our heads." "Just a minute," Joe replied. "Let's see if we can't find out which way the current sets in the pool." With that he took from his pocket a newspaper he had brought with him in case for any purpose we should need to make a "flare," and crumpling this into a loose ball he set it afloat in the pool. Away it sailed, quickly at first, and then more slowly; and taking a sight on it as far as it was distinguishable, I found that the set of the current continued as before--due southeast. "All right, Joe," I cried. "Come on, now." And Joe, giving me the end of his stick to take hold of, quickly rejoined me, when together we made our way carefully up the stream again, and climbing the rope, once more found ourselves out in the daylight. "Now, Joe," said I, "let us run our line and find out where it takes us." Having previously measured the distance from the point where the underground stream turned southeast to where the rope hung down, we now measured the same distance back again along the foot of the bluff, and thence, ourselves turning southeastward, we measured off a thousand feet. This brought us down to the lowest of the old lake-benches, about a hundred yards back of the house, when, sighting along the same line with the compass, we found that that faithful little servant pointed us straight to the entrance of the lower cañon. "Then that does settle it!" cried Joe. "We've found the stream that keeps 'the forty rods' wet; there can be no doubt of it." It did, indeed seem certain that we had at last discovered the stream which supplied "the forty rods" with water; but allowing that we _had_ discovered it:--what then? How much better off were we? Beneath our feet, as we had now every reason to believe, ran the long-sought water-course, but between us and it was a solid bed of lava about forty feet thick; and how to get the water to the surface, and thus prevent it from continuing to render useless the meadow below, was a problem beyond our powers. "It beats me," said Joe, taking off his hat and tousling his hair according to custom. "I can see no possible way of doing it. We shall have to leave it to your father. Perhaps he may be able to think of a plan. Do you suppose he'll venture to go down the rope, Phil?" "No, I don't," I replied. "It is all very well for you and me, with our one hundred and seventy pounds, or thereabouts, but as my father weighs forty pounds more than either of us, and has not been in the habit of climbing ropes for amusement as long as I can remember, I think the chances are that he won't try it." "I suppose not. It's a pity, though, for I'm sure he would be tremendously interested to see the stream down there in the crevice. Couldn't we----Look here, Phil: couldn't we set up a ladder to reach from the bottom up to the bulge?" I shook my head. "I don't think so," I answered. "It would take a ladder twenty feet long, and the bulge in the wall would prevent its going down." "That's true. Well, then, I'll tell you what we can do. We'll make two ladders of ten feet each--a ten-foot pole will go down easily enough--set one on the floor of the crevice and the other on that wide ledge about half way up to the bulge. What do you think of that?" "Yes, I think we could do that," I replied. "We'll try it anyhow. But we must go in and get some dinner now: it's close to noon." We did not take long over our dinner--we were too anxious to get to work again--and as soon as we had finished we selected from our supply of fire-wood four straight poles, each about ten feet long, and with these, a number of short pieces of six-inch plank, a hammer, a saw and a bag of nails, we drove back to the scene of action. Even a ten-foot pole, we found, was an awkward thing to get down to the bottom of the fissure, but after a good deal of coaxing we succeeded in lowering them all, when we at once set to work building our ladders. The first one, standing on the floor of the crevice, reached as high as the ledge Joe had mentioned, while the second, planted upon the ledge itself, leaned across the chasm, its upper end resting against the rock just below the bulge, so that, with the rope to hold on by, it ought to be easy enough to get up and down. It is true that the second ladder being almost perpendicular, looked a little precarious, but we had taken great care to set it up solidly and were certain it could not slip. As to the strength of the ladders, there was nothing to fear on that score, for the smallest of the poles was five inches in diameter at the little end. This work took us so long, for we were very careful to make things strong and firm, that it was within half an hour of sunset ere we had finished, and as it was then too late to begin hauling rocks, we drove down to the ranch again at once. As we came within sight of the house, we had the pleasure of seeing the buggy with my father and mother in it draw up at the door. Observing us coming, they waited for us, when, the moment we jumped out of the wagon, before we could say a word ourselves, my father exclaimed: "Hallo, boys! What are you wearing your rubber boots for?" My mother, however, looking at our faces instead of at our feet, with that quickness of vision most mothers of boys seem to possess, saw at once that something unusual had occurred. "What's happened, Phil?" she asked. "We've made a discovery," I replied, "and we want father to come and see it." "Can't I come, too?" she inquired, smiling at my eagerness. "I'm afraid not," I answered. "I wish you could, but I'm afraid your petticoats would get in the way." To this, perceiving easily enough that we had some surprise in store for my father, and not wishing to spoil the fun, my mother merely replied: "Oh, would they? Well, I'm afraid I couldn't come anyhow: I must go in and prepare supper. So, be off with you at once, and don't be late. You can tell me all about it this evening." "One minute, father!" I cried; and thereupon I ran to the house, reappearing in a few seconds with his rubber boots, which I thrust into the back of the buggy, and then, climbing in on one side while Joe scrambled in on the other, I called out: "Now, father, go ahead!" "Where to?" he asked, laughing. "Oh, I forgot," said I. "Up to our stone-quarry." If we had expected my father to be surprised, we were not disappointed. At first he rather demurred at going down our carefully prepared ladders, not seeing sufficient reason, as he declared, to risk his neck; but the moment we called his attention to the sound of water down below, and he began to understand what the presence of the rubber boots meant, he became as eager as either Joe or I had been. In short, he went with us over the whole ground, even down to the pool; and so interested was he in the matter that he quite forgot the flight of time, until, having reascended the ladders and followed with us our line on the surface down to the heap of stones with which we had marked the thousand-foot point, he--and we, too--were recalled to our duties by my mother, who, seeing us standing there talking, came to the back-door of the kitchen and called to us to come in at once if we wanted any supper. Long was the discussion that ensued that evening as we sat around the fire in the big stone fireplace; but long as it was, it ended as it had begun with a remark made by my father. "Well," said he, as he leaned back in his chair and crossed his slippered feet before the fire, "it appears to come to this: instead of discovering a way to drain 'the forty rods,' you have only provided us with another insoluble problem to puzzle our heads over. There seems to be no way that we can figure out--at present, anyhow--by which the water can be brought to the surface, and consequently our only resource is, apparently, to discover, if possible, where it first runs in under the lava-bed, to come squirting out again down in that fissure--an almost hopeless task, I fear." "It does look pretty hopeless," Joe assented; "though we have found out one thing, at least, which may be of service in our search, and that is that the water runs between the lava and the sandstone. That fact should be of some help to us, for it removes from the list of streams to be examined all those whose beds lie below the sandstone." "That's true enough," I agreed. "But, then again, the source may not be some mountain stream running off under the lava, as we have been supposing. It is quite possible that it is a spring which comes up through the sandstone, and not being able to get up to daylight because of the lava-cap, goes worming its way through innumerable crevices to the underground reservoir we suppose to exist somewhere beneath the surface of the Second Mesa." "That is certainly a possibility," replied my father. "Nevertheless, it is my opinion that it will be well worth while making an examination of the creeks on Mount Lincoln. The streams to search would be those running on a sandstone bed and coming against the upper face of the lava-flow. It is worth the attempt, at least, and when the snow clears off you boys shall employ any off-days you may have in that way." "It would be well, wouldn't it, to tell Tom Connor about it?" suggested Joe. "He would keep his eyes open for us. I suppose prospectors as a rule don't take much note of such things, but Tom would do so, I'm sure, if we asked him." "Yes," replied my father. "That is a good idea; and if either of you should come across your friend, the hermit, again, be sure to ask him. He knows Mount Lincoln as nobody else does, and if he had ever noticed anything of the sort he would tell us. Don't forget that. And now to bed." CHAPTER X HOW TOM CONNOR WENT BORING FOR OIL One thing was plain at any rate: we could do nothing towards finding the source of the underground stream until the snow cleared off the mountain, and that was likely to be later than usual this year, for the fall had been exceedingly heavy in the higher parts. We could see from the ranch that many of the familiar hollows were obliterated--leveled off by the great masses of snow which had drifted into them and filled them up. We therefore went about our work of hauling stone, and so continued while the cold weather lasted, interrupted only once by a heavy storm about the end of January, which, while it added another two feet to the thick blanket of snow already covering the mountains, quickly melted off down in the snug hollow where the ranch lay, so that our work was not delayed more than two or three days. One advantage to us of this storm was that it enabled us to learn something--not much, certainly, but still something--regarding the source of the stream in the fissure. It did not show us where that source was, but it proved to us pretty clearly where it was _not_. On the morning of the storm, Joe, at breakfast-time, turning to my father, said: "Wouldn't it be a good plan to go and measure the flow of the water down in the crevice, Mr. Crawford? We might be able to find out, by watching its rise and fall, whether the melting of the snow on the Second Mesa, or on the foot-hills beyond, or on the mountain itself affects it most." "That's a very good idea, Joe," my father replied. "Yes; as soon as we have fed the stock you can make a measuring-stick and go up there; and what's more, you had better make a practice of measuring it every day. The increase or decrease of the flow might be an important guide as to where it comes from." This we did, and thereby ascertained pretty conclusively that the source was nowhere on the Second Mesa, for in the course of a couple of weeks the heavy fall of new snow covering that wide stretch of country melted off without making any perceptible difference in the volume of the stream. Though there were several other falls of snow up in the mountains later in the season, this was the last one of any consequence down on the mesas. The winter was about over as far as we were concerned, and by the middle of the next month, the surface of "the bottomless forty rods" beginning to soften again, the freighters, who had been coming our way ever since the early part of November, deserted us and once more went back to the hill road--to our mutual regret. For a few days longer the stage-coach kept to our road, but very soon it, too, abandoned us, after which, except for an occasional horseback-rider, we had scarcely a passer-by. As was natural, we greatly missed this constant coming and going, though we should have missed it a good deal more but for the fact that with the softening of the ground our spring work began, when, Marsden's cattle having been removed by their owner, Joe and I started plowing for oats. With the prospect of a steady season's work before us, we entered upon our labors with enthusiasm. We had never felt so "fit" before, for our long spell of stone-hauling had put us into such good trim that we were in condition to tackle anything. At the same time, we did not forget our underground stream, keeping strict watch upon it as the snow-line retreated up the foot-hills of Mount Lincoln. But though one of us visited the stream every day, taking careful measurement of the flow, we could not see that it had increased at all. The intake must be either high on the mountain, or, as I had suggested, the spring must come up through the sandstone underlying the Second Mesa and was therefore not affected by the running off of the snow-water on the surface. As the town of Sulphide was so situated that its inhabitants could not see Mount Lincoln on account of a big spur of Elkhorn Mountain which cut off their view, any one in that town wishing to find out how the snow was going off on the former mountain was obliged to ride down in our direction about three miles in order to get a sight of it. Tom Connor, having neither the time to spare nor the money to spend on horse-hire, could not do this for himself, but, knowing that the mountain was visible to us any day and all day, he had requested us to notify him when the foot-hills began to get bare. This time had now arrived--it was then towards the end of March--and my father consequently wrote to Tom, telling him so; at the same time inviting him to come down to us and make his start from the ranch whenever he was ready. To our great surprise, we received a reply from him next afternoon, brought down by young Seth Appleby, the widow Appleby's ten-year-old boy, in which he stated that he could not start just yet as he was out of funds, but that he was hoping to raise one hundred and fifty dollars by a mortgage on his little house, which would be all he would need, and more, to keep him going for the summer. "Why, what's the meaning of this!" exclaimed my father, when he had read the letter. "How does Tom come to be out of funds at this time of year? He's been at work all winter at high wages and he ought to have saved up quite a tidy sum--in fact, he was counting on doing so. What's the matter, I wonder? Did he tell you anything about it, Seth?" "No," replied the youngster, "he didn't tell me, but he did tell mother, and then mother, she asked all the miners who come to our store, and they told her all about it. It was mother that sent me down with the letter, and she told me I was to be sure and 'splain all about it to you." "That was kind of Mrs. Appleby," said my father. "But come in, Seth, and have something to eat, and then you can give us your mother's message." Seated at the table, with a big loaf, a plate of honey and a pitcher of milk before him, young Seth, after he had taken off the fine edge of a remarkably healthy appetite, related to us between bites the story he had been sent down to tell. It was a long and complicated story as he told it, and even when it was finished we could not be quite sure that we had it right; but supposing that we had, it came to this: Tom had worked faithfully on the Pelican, never having missed a day, and had earned a very considerable sum of money, of which he had, with commendable--and, for him, unusual--discretion, invested the greater part in a little house, putting by one hundred and fifty dollars for his own use during the coming summer. The fund reserved would have been sufficient to see him through the prospecting season had he stuck to it; but this was just what he had not done. Two years before, a friend of his had been killed in one of the mines by that most frequent of accidents: picking out a missed shot; since which time the widow, a bustling, hearty Irishwoman, had supported herself and her five children. But during the changeable weather of early spring, Mrs. Murphy had been taken down with a severe attack of pneumonia--a disease particularly dangerous at high altitudes--and distress reigned in the family. As a matter of course, Tom, ever on the lookout to do somebody a good turn, at once hopped in and took charge of everything; providing a doctor and a nurse for his old friend's widow, and seeing that the children wanted for nothing; and all with such success that he brought his patient triumphantly out of her sickness; while as for himself, when he modestly retired from the fray, he found that he was just as poor as he had been at the beginning of winter. It is not to be supposed, however, that this worried Tom. Not a bit of it. It was unlucky, of course, but as it could not be helped there was no more to be said; and so long as he owned that house of his he could always raise one hundred and fifty dollars on it--it was worth three or four times as much, at least. As the prospecting season was now approaching, he therefore let it be known that he desired to raise this money, and then quietly went on with his work again, feeling confident that some one would presently make his appearance, cash in hand, anxious to secure so good a loan. Up to that morning, Seth believed, the expected capitalist had not turned up. As the boy finished his story, and--with a sigh at having reached his capacity--his meal as well, my father rose from his chair, exclaiming: "What a good fellow that is! When it comes to practical charity, Tom Connor leads us all. In fact, he is in a class by himself:--There is no Tom but Tom, and"--smiling at the little messenger--"Seth Appleby is his prophet--on this occasion." At which Seth opened his eyes, wondering what on earth my father was talking about. "Now, I'll tell you what we'll do," the latter continued. "Seth says his mother wants another thousand pounds of potatoes; so you shall take them up this afternoon, Phil; have a good talk with her; find out the rights of this matter; and then, if there is anything we can do to help, we can do it understandingly." I was very glad to do this, and with Seth on the seat beside me and his pony tied behind the wagon, away I went. As I had permission to stay in town over night if I liked, and as Mrs. Appleby urged me to do so, saying that I could share Seth's room, I decided to accept her offer, and after supper we were seated in the store talking over Tom Connor's affairs--which I found to be just about as Seth had described them--when who should burst in upon us but Tom himself. Evidently my presence was a surprise to him, for on seeing me he exclaimed: "Hallo, Phil! You here! Got my message, did you?" "Yes," I replied, "we got it all right; and very much astonished we were." Forthwith I tackled him on the subject, and though at first Tom was disposed to be evasive in his answers, finding that I had all the facts, he at length admitted the truth of the story. "But, bless you!" cried he. "That's nothing. I can raise a hundred and fifty easy enough on my house and pay it off again next winter, so there's nothing to fuss about. And now, ma'am," turning to Mrs. Appleby, and abruptly cutting off any further discussion of the topic, "now, ma'am, I'll give you a little order for groceries, if you please--which was what I came in for." So saying, he took a scrap of paper out of his pocket and proceeded to read out item after item: flour and bacon, molasses and dried apples, a little tea and a great deal of coffee, and so on, and so on, until at last he crumpled up his list between his two big hands, saying: "There! And we'll top off with a gallon of coal oil, if you please." "Ah," said the widow, laying down her pencil--she was a slight, nervous little woman--"I was afraid you'd come to coal oil presently. I haven't a pint of it in the house." "Well, that's a pity," said her customer. "Then I suppose I'll have to go down to Yetmore's for coal oil after all." "Yes, Yetmore can let you have it, I know," replied the widow, in a tone of voice which caused us both to look at her inquiringly. "He's got a barrel of it," she continued. "A whole barrel of it--belonging to me." "Eh! What's that?" cried Tom. "Belonging to you?" "Yes. And he won't give it up. You see, it was this way. I ordered a barrel from the wholesale people in San Remo, and they sent it up two days ago. Here's the bill of lading. 'One barrel coal oil, No. 668, by Slaughter's freight line.' The freighters made a mistake and delivered it at Yetmore's, and now he won't give it up." "Won't, eh!" cried Tom, with sudden heat. "We'll just look into that." "It's no use," interposed Mrs. Appleby, holding up her hand deprecatingly. "You can't take it by force; and I've tried persuasion. He's got my barrel; there's no mistake about that, because Seth went down and identified the number; but he says he ordered a barrel himself from the same firm and it isn't his fault if they didn't put the right number on." "Well, that's coming it pretty strong," said Tom, indignantly. "Yes, and it's hard on me," replied the widow, "because people come in here for coal oil, and when they find I haven't any they go off to Yetmore's, and of course he gets the rest of their order. I might go to law," she added, "but I can't afford that; and by the time my case was settled Yetmore's barrel will have arrived and he'll send it over here and pretend to be sorry for the mistake." "I see. Well, ma'am, you put me down for a gallon of coal oil just the same, and get my order together as soon as you like. I'm going out now to take a bit of a stroll around town." Though he spoke calmly, the big miner was, in fact, swelling with wrath at the widow's tale of petty tyranny. Without saying a word more to her, and forgetting my existence, apparently, he marched off down the street with the determination of going into Yetmore's and denouncing the storekeeper before his customers. But, no sooner had he come within sight of the store than he suddenly changed his mind. "Ho, ho!" he laughed, stopping short and shoving his hands deep into his pockets. "Ho, ho! Here's a game! He keeps it in the back end of the store, I know. I'll just meander in and prospect a bit." The store was a long, plainly-constructed building, such as may be seen in plenty in any Colorado mining camp, standing on the hillside with its back to the creek. In front its foundation was level with the street, but in the rear it was supported upon posts four feet high, leaving a large vacant space beneath--a favorite "roosting" place for pigs. It was the sight of these four-foot posts which caused the widow's champion so suddenly to change his mind. To tell the truth, Tom Connor, in spite of his forty years, was no more than an overgrown boy, in whose simple character the love of justice and the love of fun jostled each other for first place. He believed he had discovered an opportunity to "take a rise" out of Yetmore and at the same time to compel the misappropriator of other people's goods to restore the widow's property. That the contemplated act might savor of illegality did not trouble him--did not occur to him, in fact. He was sure that he had justice on his side, and that was enough for him. Full of his idea, Tom walked into the store, where he found Yetmore very busy serving customers, for it was near closing time, and to an inquiry as to what he wanted, he replied: "Nothing just now, thank ye. I'll just mosey around and take a look at things." To this Yetmore nodded assent; for though he and the miner had no affection for each other, they were outwardly on good terms, and it was no unusual thing for Tom to come into the store. Connor "moseyed" accordingly, and kept on "moseying" until he reached the back of the building, and there, standing upright against the rear wall, was the barrel, and beside it, mounted on a chair, a putty-faced boy, a stranger to Tom, who was busy boring a hole in the top of it. "Trade pretty brisk?" inquired Connor, sauntering up. "You bet," replied the youth, laconically. "What does '668' stand for?" asked the miner, tapping the top of the barrel with his finger. "That's the number of the barrel," was the reply. "The wholesalers down in San Remo always cut a number in their barrels when they send 'em out." "Your boss must be a right smart business man to run a 'stablishment like this," remarked Tom, after a pause, glancing about the store. "That's what," replied the boy, admiringly. "You'll have to get up early to get around the boss. Why, this barrel here----" He stopped short, as though suddenly remembering the value of silence, and screwing up one eye as if to indicate that he could tell things if he liked, he added, "Well, when the boss gets his hands on a thing he don't let go easy, I tell you that." "Ah! Smart fellow, the boss." "You bet," remarked the youth once more. All this time Tom had been taking notes. The thin, unplastered wall of the store was constructed of upright planks with battens over the joints. It was pierced with one window; and Tom noted that between the edge of the window and the centre of the barrel were four boards. He noted also that the barrel stood firm and square upon the floor and that the floor itself was water-tight. While he was making these observations, the boy finished his boring operation and having inserted a vent-peg in the hole, walked off. As soon as he was out of sight, Tom stepped up to the barrel, pulled out the vent-peg, dropped it into his pocket, and having done so, sauntered leisurely up the store again and went out. For a little while he hung around on the other side of the street and presently he had the satisfaction of seeing the lights in the store extinguished, soon after which Yetmore came out and locking the door behind him, walked away to his house. "Ah! So the putty-faced boy sleeps in the store, does he?" remarked Tom to himself; a conclusion in which he was confirmed when he saw a candle lighted and the boy making up his bed under the counter. A few minutes later the candle was blown out, when Tom set off briskly up the street for the widow's store. He found Mrs. Appleby and Seth tidying up preparatory to closing the store, and stepping in, he said, "You don't take in lodgers, I suppose, ma'am? I'm intending to stay down town to-night." "No, we don't," replied the widow. "The house is not large enough. But if you've nowhere to sleep, you're welcome to make up a bed on the floor--I can let you have some blankets." "Thank ye, ma'am, I'll be glad to do it, if you please." Accordingly, after the widow had retired up-stairs to her room and Seth and I to ours, Tom spread his blankets on the floor and went to bed himself. All was dark and silent when, at one o'clock in the morning, Tom sat up in bed, and after fumbling about for a minute, found a match and lighted a candle. "Have to get up early to get around the boss, eh?" said he to himself, with a chuckle. "Wonder if this is early enough." In his stocking-feet he walked to the back door and opened it wide. After pausing for an instant to listen, he came back, and lifting the empty oil barrel from its stand he carried it outside. Next he selected two buckets, and having reached down from a high shelf a large funnel, an auger and a faucet, he carried them and his boots into the back yard, and having locked the door behind him, walked off into the darkness. In a short time he reappeared, leading a horse, to which was harnessed a low wood-sled. Upon this sled he firmly lashed the barrel, and gathering up the other implements he took the horse by the bridle and led him away down the silent street; for the town of Sulphide as yet boasted neither a lighting system nor a police force--or, rather, the police force was accustomed to betake himself to bed with the rest of the community--so Tom had the dark and empty street entirely to himself. In a few minutes he drew up at the rear of Yetmore's store, where, leaving the horse standing, he proceeded to count four planks from the edge of the window. Having marked the right plank, he took the auger, and crawling beneath the store, set to work boring a hole up through the floor. Presently the auger broke through, coming with a thump against the bottom of the barrel above, when Tom withdrew the instrument, and taking out his knife enlarged the hole considerably. So far, so good. Next he set a bucket beneath the hole, took the faucet between his teeth in order to have it handy, and inserting the auger, he set to, boring a hole in the bottom of the barrel. Soon the tool popped through, when Tom hastily substituted the faucet, which he drove firmly in with a blow of his horny palm. The putty-faced boy inside the store stirred in his blankets, muttered something about "them pigs," and went to sleep again. Tom waited a moment to listen, and then drew off a bucket of oil. As soon as this was full he replaced it with the other bucket and emptied the first one into the barrel on the sled. This process he repeated until the oil began to dribble, when he carefully knocked out the faucet, and having collected his tools and emptied the last bucket into the barrel, he again took the horse by the bridle and silently led him away. Arrived once more in the widow's back yard, Tom unshipped the barrel and went off to restore the horse to its stable. He soon returned, and having unlocked the back door and re-lighted his candle, he proceeded to get the barrel into the house and back upon its stand; a work of immense labor, rendered all the harder by the necessity of keeping silence. Tom was a man of great strength, however, and at last he had the satisfaction of seeing the barrel once more in its place without having heard a sound from the sleepers overhead. Having washed the buckets and tools, he put them back where they came from, locked the door, and for the second time that night went to bed. It was about half-past six in the morning that Tom, happening to look out of the front window, saw Yetmore coming hurriedly up the street, like a hound following the trail of the sled. Stepping to the little window at the rear, Tom peeped out and saw the storekeeper enter the back yard, walk to the spot where the sled had stopped, and stand for a minute examining the marks in the soil. Having apparently satisfied himself, he turned about and went off down the street again. "What's he going to do about it, I wonder?" said Tom to himself. "Reckon I'll just mosey down to the store and see." As he heard Seth coming down the stairs, he unlocked the front door and stepping outside, walked down to Yetmore's. "Morning," said he, cheerfully. "It's a bit early for customers, I suppose, but I'm in a hurry this morning and I'd like to know whether you can let me have a gallon of coal oil." "Sorry to say I can't," replied the storekeeper. "Our only barrel sprang a leak last night and every drop ran out." "You don't say!" exclaimed Tom, with an air of concern. "Then I suppose I'll have to go up to the widow Appleby's. She's got plenty, I know." As he said this he looked hard at Yetmore, who in turn looked hard at him. "Maybe," said the storekeeper presently, "maybe you know something about that leak?" Tom nodded. "I do," said he. "I know _all_ about it; and I'm the only one that does. I know the whole story, too, from one end to the other. The widow has got her barrel of oil; and you and I can make a sort of a guess as to how she got it. As to your barrel, it unfortunately sprung a leak. Is that the story?" Yetmore stood for a minute glowering at the big miner, and then said, shortly, "That's the story." "All right," replied Tom; and turning on his heel, he went out. CHAPTER XI TOM'S SECOND WINDOW Mrs. Appleby never did quite understand how her barrel of oil had been recovered for her. All she knew for certain was that her good friend, Mr. Connor, had somehow procured it from Yetmore, and that Yetmore was, as Mr. Connor said, "agreeable." As for myself, when Tom that morning, taking me aside, related with many chuckles how he had occupied himself during the night, I must own that my only feeling was one of satisfaction at the thought that Yetmore had been made to restore the widow's property, and that the fear of ridicule would probably keep him silent on the subject. Sharing with most boys the love of fair play and the hatred of oppression, Tom's cleverness and promptness of action seemed to me altogether commendable. Nevertheless, I foresaw one consequence of the transaction which, I thought, was pretty sure to follow, namely, that it would arouse in Yetmore an angry resolve to "get even" with Tom by hook or by crook. That he would resort to active reprisals if the opportunity presented itself I felt certain, and so I warned our friend. But Tom, careless as usual, refused to take any precautions, believing that Yetmore would not venture as long as he--Tom--had, as he expressed it, two such damaging shots in his magazine as the story of the lead boulder and the story of the oil barrel; on both of which subjects he had, with rare discretion, determined to keep silence unless circumstances should warrant their disclosure. It was not till I had reached home again and had jubilantly retailed the story to my father, that I began to understand how there might be yet another aspect to the matter. Instead of receiving it with a hearty laugh and a "Good for Tom," as I had anticipated, he shook his head and said: "I'm sorry to hear it. Tom made a mistake that time. That Yetmore should be made to give up the barrel of oil is proper enough; but what right has Tom to appropriate to himself the duties of judge, jury and executive officer? It is just such cases as this that earn for the American people the reputation of a nation without respect for law. No. Tom meant well, I know, but in my opinion he made a mistake all the same." "I never thought of it in that light," said I; "so it is just as well, probably, that Tom didn't let me into the secret beforehand, because I'm afraid I should have been only too ready to help if he had asked me." "Yes, it is just as well you were not given the choice, I expect," replied my father, smiling. "I'm glad Tom had the sense to take the whole responsibility on his own shoulders. Does he expect that Yetmore will be content to let the matter rest where it is?" "He seems to think so; though he is such a heedless fellow that it wouldn't bother him much if he thought otherwise." "Well, in my opinion he will do well to keep his eyes open. As I told you before, I think Yetmore's natural caution would prompt him to keep within the law, but it is not impossible now, Tom having set him the example--for one such transgression of the law is apt to breed another--that he will think himself justified in resorting to lawless measures in his turn; especially as he will have that fellow, Long John, jogging his elbow and whispering evil counsels in his ear all the time." How correct my father was in his presumption; how Long John did devise a scheme of retaliation; and how Joe and I inadvertently got our fingers into the pie, I shall have to relate in due course. But though my father disapproved of Tom's action, that fact did not lessen his desire to help his friend when I had related to him how Tom had indeed spent all his savings on Mrs. Murphy and her family. "What a good-hearted, harum-scarum fellow he is!" exclaimed my father. "He knows--in fact, no one knows better--that there is a possible fortune waiting for him somewhere up here on Lincoln; he saves up all winter so that he may be free to go and hunt for it in the spring; yet at the first note of distress, away he runs and tumbles all his savings into Mrs. Murphy's lap, who, when all is said and done, has no real claim upon him, thus taking the risk of being stranded in town while Long John goes off and cuts him out. What are we going to do about it, boys? What can you suggest?" "It would certainly be a shame," said Joe, "if Tom, by his act of charity, should put himself out of the running in the search for that vein of galena. Yet he will surely do so if he can't raise that money. And even if he should raise it, he might be late in getting it, in which case Long John would get the start of him." "That's the case in a nutshell," my father assented; "and, as I said before: What are we going to do about it?" "Why----" Joe began; and then he suddenly jumped up and coming across the room he whispered something in my ear. I replied with a nod; whereupon Joe returned to his chair, and addressing my father once more, said: "I'll tell you what we'll do, Mr. Crawford. Phil and I made forty dollars last fall cutting timbers--it was Tom who got us our order, too--and we have it still. We'll put that in--eh, Phil?--if it will be any use." "Yes," said I. "Gladly." "Good!" exclaimed my father. "Then that settles it. Now, _I'll_ tell you what we'll do. I'll add sixty dollars to it--that is all I can afford just now--and you two shall ride back to Sulphide this afternoon, give Tom the money, and tell him he shall have fifty more in a couple of months if he needs it. And tell him at the same time that he needn't go mortgaging his little house. We don't want security from Tom Connor: we know him too well. I'd rather have his word than some men's bond. You shall ride up to see him this afternoon, and you needn't hurry back to-day; for that rain of last night has made the ground too wet to continue plowing; and, if I'm not mistaken, we're in for another storm to-night, in which case the soil won't be in condition again for two or three days." I need hardly say that Joe and I were delighted to undertake this mission, and about four o'clock we reached Mrs. Appleby's, where we put up our ponies in her stable. Then, as Tom would not be quitting work for another hour, instead of going direct to his house, we climbed up to the Pelican, intending to catch him there and walk home with him. Presently arriving at the great white dump of bleached porphyry to which the citizens of Sulphide were accustomed to point with pride as an indication of the immense amount of work it had taken to make the Pelican the important mine it was, we scrambled up to the engine-house, where for some minutes we stood watching the busy engine as it whirled to the surface the buckets of waste. Then, stepping over to the mouth of the shaft, we paused again to watch the top-men as they emptied the big buckets into the car and trundled the car itself to the edge of the dump, upset it, and trundled it back again for more. As we stood there, a miner came up, and stepping out of the cage, nodded to us in passing. "Want anybody, boys?" he asked. "We're waiting for Tom Connor," I replied. "He's down below, isn't he?" "Yes, he's down in the fifth. I'll take you down there if you like. I'm going back in a minute." "What do you think, Joe?" I asked. "Yes, let's go," my companion replied. "I've never been inside a mine, and I should like to see one." "All right," said the miner. "Come over here to the dressing-room and I'll give you a lamp and a couple of slickers. It's a bit wet down there." Joe and I were soon provided with water-proof coats, and in company with our new friend we stepped into the cage, when the miner, shutting the door behind us, called out to the engineer, "Fifth level, McPherson," and instantly the floor of the cage seemed to drop from under us. After a fall of several miles, as it appeared to us, the cage stopped, when, peering through the wire lattice-work, we saw before us a dark passage, upon one side of which hung a white board with a big "5" painted upon it. "Here you are," said the miner, stepping out of the cage and handing us a lighted lamp. "Just walk straight along this drift about three hundred feet--it's all plain sailing--and you'll find Tom Connor at work there. I'm going on down to the seventh myself." With that he stepped back into the cage, rang the bell, and vanished, leaving us standing there eyeing each other a little dubiously at finding ourselves left to our own guidance, four hundred feet below the surface of the earth. "I hadn't reckoned on that," said I. "I thought he was coming with us." "So did I," replied Joe. "But it doesn't really matter. All we have to do is to walk along this passage; so let's go ahead." That our obliging friend had been right when he stated that it was "a bit wet" down here was evident, for the drops of water from the roof of the drift kept pattering upon our slickers, and presently, when we had advanced something over half the distance, one of them fell plump upon the flame of our lamp and put it out! We stopped short, not knowing what pitfalls there might be ahead of us, and each felt in all his pockets for a match. We had none! Never anticipating any such contingency as this, we had ventured into this black hole without a match in our possession. I admit that we were scared--the darkness was so very dark and the silence so very silent--but fortunately it was only for a moment. Standing stock still, for, indeed, we dared not move, we shouted for Tom, when, to our infinite relief, we heard his familiar voice call out: "Hallo, there! That you, Patsy? I'm coming. Does the boss want me?" The next moment a light appeared moving towards us, and as soon as we could safely do so we advanced to meet it. "How are you, Tom?" we both cried, simultaneously, assuming an off-hand manner, as though we had not been scared a bit. Tom stopped, not recognizing us for a moment, and then exclaimed: "Hallo, boys! What are you doing down here? Who brought you down?" We told him how we came to be there, and how our lamp had gone out; at which Tom shook his head. "Well, it was certainly a smart trick to send you down into this wet hole and not even see that you had a match in your pocket. What would you have done if I'd happened to have left the drift?" The very idea gave me cold chills all down my back. "We should have been badly scared, Tom, and that's a fact," I replied; "but I hope we should have kept our heads. I believe we should have sat down where we were and shouted till somebody came." "Well, that would have been the best thing you could do, though you might have had to shout a pretty long time, for there is nobody working in this level just now but me, and, as a matter of fact, I should have left it myself in another five minutes. But it's all right as it happens; so now you can come along with me. I'm going out the other way through Yetmore's ground." "Yetmore's ground?" exclaimed Joe, inquiringly. "Yes, Yetmore is working the old stopes of the Pelican on a lease--it is one of his many ventures. In the early days of the camp mining was conducted much more carelessly than it is now; freight and smelter charges were a good bit higher, too, so that a considerable amount of ore of too low grade to ship then was left standing in the stopes. Yetmore is taking it out on shares. His ground lies this way. Come on." So saying, Tom led the way to the end of the drift, where, going down upon his hands and knees, he crawled through a man-hole, coming out into a little shaft which he called a "winze." Ascending this by a short ladder, we found ourselves in the old, abandoned workings, and still following our guide, we presently walked out into the daylight--greatly to our surprise. "Why, where have we got to, Tom?" cried Joe, as we stared about us, not recognizing our surroundings. Tom laughed. "This is called Stony Gulch," he replied. "The mine used to be worked through this tunnel where we just came out, but the tunnel isn't used now except temporarily by Yetmore's men. He only runs a day shift and at night he closes the place with that big door and locks it up. The Pelican buildings are just over the hill here, and we may as well go up at once: it will be quitting-time by the time we get there." We climbed over the hill, therefore, and having restored our slickers, went on with Tom down to his little cottage, which was only about a quarter of a mile from the mine. It was not until we were inside his house that we explained to Tom the object of our visit, at the same time handing over to him my father's check for one hundred dollars. The good fellow was quite touched by this very simple token of good-will on our part; for, though he was ever ready to help others, it seemed never to have occurred to him that others might like sometimes to help him. This little bit of business being settled, we all pitched in to assist in getting supper ready, and presently we were seated round Tom's table testing the result of our cookery. As we sat there, Joe, pointing to a window-sash and some planed and fitted lumber which stood leaning against the wall, asked: "What are you going to do with that, Tom? Put in a second window?" "Yes," replied our host. "And I was intending to do it this evening. You can help me now you're here. The stuff is all ready; all we have to do is to cut the hole in the wall and slap it in. It's just one sash, not intended to open and shut, so it's a simple job enough." "Where does it go?" asked Joe. "There, on the right-hand side of the door. Old man Snyder, in the next house west, put one in some time ago, and it's such an improvement that I decided to do the same. We'll step out presently and look at Snyder's, and then you'll see. Hallo! Come in!" This shout was occasioned by a tapping at the door, and in response to Tom's call there stepped in a tall miner, whom I recognized as George Simpson, one of the Pelican men. "Come in, George," cried our host. "Come in and have some supper. What's new?" "No, I won't take any supper, thank ye," replied the miner. "I must get along home. I just dropped in to speak to you. You know Arty Burns?--works on the night shift? Well, Arty's sick. When he came up to the mine to-night he was too sick to stand, so I packed him off home again and told him to go to bed where he belonged and I'd see to it that somebody went on in his place, so that he shouldn't lose his job. I'm proposing to work half his shift for him myself, and I want to find somebody----" "All right, George," Connor cut in. "I'll take the other half. Which do you want? First or second?" "Second, if it's all the same to you, Tom. If I don't get home first my old woman will think there's something the matter. So, if you don't mind, you can go on first and I'll relieve you at half-time." "All right, George, then I'll get out at once. You boys can wash up, if you will; and you'll find a mattress and plenty of blankets in the back room. I'll be back soon after eleven." With that, carrying a lantern in his hand, for it was getting dark, away he went; while the miner hurried off across lots for town; neither of them, apparently, thinking it anything out of the way to do a full day's work and then, instead of taking his well-earned rest, to go off and do another half-day's work in order to "hold the job" for a third man, to whom neither of them was under any obligation. Nor _was_ it anything out of the way; for the silver-miners of Colorado, whatever their faults, did in those days, and probably do still, exercise towards their fellows a practical charity which might well be counted to cover a multitude of sins. "Look here, Phil!" exclaimed my companion, after we had washed and put away the dishes. "I'll tell you what we'll do. Let's pitch in and put in Tom's second window for him!" "Good idea!" I cried. "We'll do it! Let's go out first, though, Joe, and take a look at old Snyder's house, so that we may see what effect Tom expects to get." "Come on, then!" The row of six little houses, of which Tom's was the third, counting from the west, had been one of Yetmore's speculations. They were situated on the southern outskirts of town, and were mostly occupied by miners working on the Pelican. Each house was an exact counterpart of every other, they having been built by contract all on one pattern. Each had a room in front and a room behind; one little brick chimney; a front door with two steps; and a window on the right-hand side of the door as you faced the house. All were painted the same color. Yetmore having secured the land, had laid it out as "Yetmore's Addition" to the town of Sulphide; had marked out streets and alleys, and had built the six houses as a starter, hoping thereby to draw people out there. But as yet his building-lots were a drug in the market: they were too far out; there being a vacant space of a quarter of a mile or thereabouts between them and the next nearest houses in town. The streets themselves were undistinguishable from the rest of the country, being merely marked out with stakes and having had no work whatever expended upon them. The six houses, built about three hundred feet apart, all faced north--towards the town--and being so far apart and all so precisely alike, it was absolutely impossible for any one coming from town on a dark night to tell which house was which. Not even the tenants themselves, coming across the vacant lots after nightfall, could tell their own houses from those of their neighbors; and consequently it was a common event for one of the sleepy inmates, stirred out of bed by a knock at the door, to find a belated citizen outside inquiring whether this was his house or somebody else's. Not infrequently they neglected to knock first, and walking straight in, found themselves, to their great embarrassment, in the wrong house. Old man Snyder, a somewhat irritable old gentleman, having been thus disturbed two nights in succession, determined that he would no longer subject himself to the nuisance. He bought a single sash and inserted a second window on the other side of his door; a device which not only saved him from intrusion, but served as a guide to his neighbors in finding their own houses. It was also a very obvious improvement, and we did not wonder that Tom Connor had determined to follow his neighbor's example. Old Snyder's house was the second from the western end of the street, Tom Connor's, three hundred feet distant, came next, while next to Tom's, another three hundred feet away, was a house which still belonged to Yetmore and was at that moment standing empty. You will wonder, very likely, why I should go into all these details, but you will cease to wonder, I think, when you see presently of what transcendent importance to Joe and me was the situation of these three houses. Joe and I, laying hands on our host's kit of tools, at once went to work on the window. As Tom had said, it was a simple job, and though it was something of a handicap to work by lamplight, we went at it so vigorously that by nine o'clock we had completed our task--very much to our satisfaction. Stepping outside to observe the effect, we saw that old Snyder's windows were lighted up also; but we had hardly noted that fact when his light went out. "The old fellow goes to bed early, Joe," said I. "Yes," Joe replied; and then, with a sudden laugh, added: "My wig, Phil! I hope there won't be anybody coming out from town to-night. If they do, there'll be complications. They will surely be taking our two windows for old Snyder's, for, now that his light is out, you can't see his house at all." "That's a fact," said I. "If Snyder's right-hand neighbor should come out across the flats to-night he would see our two windows, and, supposing them to be Snyder's windows, he would be almost sure to go blundering into the old fellow's house. My! How mad he would be!" "Wouldn't he! And any one coming out to visit Tom would pretty certainly go and pound on the door of the empty house to the left." "Well, let us hope that nobody does come out," said I. "Come on, now, Joe. Let's get back. It's going to rain pretty soon." "Yes; your father was right when he predicted more rain. It's going to be a biggish one, I should think. How dark it is! I don't wonder people find a difficulty in telling which house is which when all the lights are out. Here it comes now. Step out, Phil." As he spoke, a blast of wind from the mountains struck us, and a few needles of cold rain beat against our right cheeks. We were soon inside again, when, having shut our door, we sat down to a game of checkers, in which we became so absorbed that we failed to note the lapse of time until Tom's dollar clock, hanging on the wall, banged out the hour of ten. "To bed, Joe!" I cried, springing out of my chair. "Why, we haven't been up so late for weeks." Stepping into the back room, we soon had mattress and blankets spread upon the floor, when, quickly undressing, I crept into bed, while Joe, returning to the front room, blew out the light. Five minutes later we were both asleep, with a comfortable consciousness that we had done a good evening's work; though we little suspected how good an evening's work it really was. For it is hardly too much to say that had we _not_ put in Tom's second window that night we might both have been dead before morning. CHAPTER XII TOM CONNOR'S SCARE When Long John Butterfield (it was Yetmore himself who told us all this long afterwards) when Long John, returning from his day's prospecting up among the foot-hills of Mount Lincoln, had related to his employer the result of his labors, two conclusions instantly presented themselves to the worthy mayor of Sulphide. A man less acute than Yetmore would have understood at once that we had discovered the nature of the black sand in the pool, and that just as he had sent out Long John, so my father had sent out us boys to determine, if possible, which stream it was that had brought down the powdered galena. Moreover, knowing my father as he did--whose opinions on prospecting as a business were no secret in the community--Yetmore was sure that it was in the interest of Tom Connor we had been sent out; and it was equally plain to him that, such being the case, Tom's information on the subject would be just as good as his own. He was, of course, unaware that our information was in reality a good deal better than his own, thanks to the hint given us by our friend, Peter, as to the deposit at the head of Big Reuben's gorge. Knowing all this, Yetmore had no doubt that Tom would be starting out the moment the foot-hills were bare, and as Long John could do no more--for it was obviously useless to start before the ground was clear--it would result in a race between the two as to who should get out first and keep ahead of the other; in which case Tom's chances would be at least equal to his competitor's. But was there no way by which Tom Connor might be delayed in starting, if only for a day or two? That was the question; and very earnestly it was discussed between the pair. Vain, however, were their discussions; they could think of no way of keeping Tom in town. For, though Long John threw out occasional hints as to how _he_ would manage it, if his employer would only give him leave, his schemes always suggested the use of unlawful means of one sort or another, and Yetmore would have none of them; for he had at least sufficient respect for the law to be afraid of it. A gleam of hope appeared when it was rumored about town that Tom Connor was trying to raise money on his house; a rumor which Yetmore very quickly took pains to verify. In this he had no trouble whatever, for everybody knew the circumstances, and everybody, Yetmore found, was loud in his praises of Tom's self-sacrifice in spending his hard-earned savings for the benefit of Mrs. Murphy and her distressed family. The fact that his rival was out of funds caused Yetmore to rub his hands with glee. Here, indeed, was a possible chance to keep him tied up in town. It all depended upon his being able to prevent Tom from securing the loan he sought, and diligently did the storekeeper canvass one plan after another in his own mind--but still in vain. The sum desired was so moderate that some one would almost surely be found to advance it. While his schemes were still fermenting in his head, there came late one night a knock at his door--it was the very night that Tom Connor went boring for oil--and Long John Butterfield slipped into the house. Long John, too, had heard of Tom's necessities; he, too, had perceived the value of the opportunity; and being untrammeled by any respect for law as long as there was little likelihood that the law would find him out, he had devised in his own mind a plan which would promptly and effectually prevent Tom from raising any money on his house. [Illustration: "'CAN FOLKS SEE IN FROM OUTSIDE?'"] This plan he had now come to suggest to his employer. "Any one in the house with you, Mr. Yetmore?" he inquired. "No, John, I'm all alone. Come in. Why do you ask?" "Oh, I just wanted to talk to you, and I didn't want anybody listening, that's all. Can folks see in from outside?" "No, not while the curtains are drawn. Come on in. What's all this mystery about?" Long John entered, and sitting down close to his friend, he began, speaking in a low tone: "You've heard about Tom Connor trying to raise money on his house, o' course? Well, I can stop him, if you say so. Any one can see what Tom wants the money for. He'll get that hundred and fifty, sure, and then off he'll go. He's a thorough good prospector, better'n me, and with equal chances the betting will be in his favor. If there's a big vein, there's a big fortune for the finder, and it's for you to say whether Tom Connor is to get a shot at it or not." Long John paused a moment, and then, emphasizing each point with an extended finger, he continued: "Without money Tom can't move--that's sure; he's strapped just now--that's sure; and his only way of getting the cash is by raising it on that house of his--and that's sure. Now, Mr. Yetmore, you say the word and he shan't get it. No personal violence that you're always objecting to. Just the simplest little move; nobody hurt and nobody the wiser." Yetmore gazed at him earnestly for a few moments, and then said: "It's against the law, I suppose." "Oh, yes," replied Long John, with a careless shrug of his shoulders. "It's against the law all right; but what does that matter to you? I'm the one to do the job, and I'm the only one the law can touch, if it can touch any one; and I don't mean that it shall touch me. It's safe and it's sure." "Well, John, what is it?" Long John rose from his chair, leaned forward, and whispered in the other's ear a little sentence of five words. For a moment Yetmore gazed open-eyed at his henchman, then suddenly turned pale, then shook his head. "I daren't, John," said he. "It's a simple plan and it looks safe; and even if it were found out it would be about impossible for the law to prove anything against me, whatever it might do to you. But it isn't the law I'm afraid of--it's the people. Tom Connor has always been a favorite, and just now he is more of a favorite than ever, and if it should be found out, or even suspected, that I had any part in such a deed my business would be ruined: the whole population would turn their backs upon me. I daren't do it, John." "Well, boss," said Long John, with an air of resignation, shoving his hands deep into his pockets and thrusting out his long legs to the fire, "if you won't, you won't, I suppose; but it seems to me you're a bit over-timorous. Who's to suspect, anyhow?" "Who's to suspect!" exclaimed Yetmore, sharply. "Why, Tom Connor, himself, and old Crawford and those two meddling boys of his. They'd not only suspect--they'd know that you had done the job and that I'd paid you for it. And if they should go around telling their version of the story, everybody would believe them and nothing I could say would count against them; for they've all of them, worse luck, got the reputation of being as truthful as daylight, while, as for me----" Long John laughed. "As for you, you haven't, eh? Well, Mr. Yetmore, it's for you to say, of course, but it seems to me you're missing the chance of a lifetime. Anyhow, my offer stands good, and if you change your mind you've only got to wink at me and I'll trump Tom Connor's ace for him so sudden he'll be dizzy for a week." With that, Long John arose, slipped out of the house and sneaked off home by a back alley, leaving Yetmore pacing up and down his room with his hands behind him, thinking over and over again what would be the result if he should authorize Long John to go ahead. "No," said he at last, as he took up the lamp to go to bed, "I daren't. It's a good idea, simple, sure and probably safe, but I daren't risk it. No. Law or no law, the public would be down on me for certain. I must think up some other scheme." Though he thus dismissed the subject from his mind, as he believed, the idea still lurked in the corners of his brain in spite of himself, and when at six in the morning he awoke, there was the little black imp sitting on the pillow, as it were, waiting to go on with the discussion. Yetmore, however, brushed aside the tempter, jumped into his clothes and walked off to the store, where he found the putty-faced boy anxiously awaiting his appearance in order that he himself might be off to his breakfast. "Pht!" exclaimed the proprietor, the moment he set foot inside the store. "What's this smell of coal oil?" "I don't smell it," replied the boy. "You don't! Hm! I suppose you've got used to it. Well, get along to your breakfast." As the boy ran off, Yetmore walked to the back of the building. Here the scent was so strong that he was convinced the barrel must be leaking, so, seizing hold of it, he gave a mighty heave, when the empty barrel came away in his hands, as the saying is. He almost fell over. To ascertain the nature of the leak was the work of a moment; to trail the sled to Mrs. Appleby's back yard was the work of five minutes; but having done this, Yetmore was at fault, for, knowing well enough that neither the widow nor her son were capable of such an undertaking, he was at a loss to imagine who the culprit might be. It was only when Tom Connor a minute later stepped into the store and arranged that story of the leaky oil-barrel which he had described as being "agreeable" to Yetmore, that the storekeeper arrived at a true understanding of the whole matter. To say that he was enraged would be to put it too mildly, and, as always seems to be the case, the fact that he, himself, had been in the wrong to begin with, only exasperated him the more. The result was what any one might have expected. Hardly had Connor turned the corner out of sight, than there appeared, "snooping" up the street, that sheep in wolfs clothing, Long John Butterfield. Instantly Yetmore's resolution was taken. Seizing a broom, he stepped outside and made pretense to sweep the sidewalk, and as Long John, with a casual nod, sauntered past, the angry storekeeper caught his eye and whispered: "I've reconsidered. Go ahead." "Bully for you," replied the other in a low tone; and passed on. No one would have guessed that in that brief instant a criminal act had been arranged. Nor did Tom Connor, as he went chuckling up the street, guess that by his lawless recovery of the widow's property he had given Yetmore the excuse he longed for to defy the law himself. Least of all did any of them--not even Long John--guess that between them they were to come within an ace of snuffing out the lives of two innocent outsiders, namely, Joe Garnier and myself. Yet such was the case. It was only the accidental putting in of Tom's second window that saved us. Long John, being authorized to proceed, at once made his preparations, which were simple enough, and all he wanted now was an opportunity. By an unlooked-for chance, which, with his perverted sense of right and wrong, seemed to him to be providential, his opportunity turned up that very night. The miner, George Simpson, hastening homeward from Connor's house, happened to overtake Long John in the street, and as he passed gave him a friendly "Good-night." "Good-night," said John. "You're late to-night, aren't you?" "Yes, a bit late. One of our men's sick, and I've been fixing things so's he won't lose his job. Tom Connor and I are going to work his shift for him." "So!" cried Long John, with sudden interest. "Which half do you take?" "The second. Tom's gone off already, and I'm going to relieve him at eleven. So I must be getting along: I want my supper and two or three hours' sleep." So Tom would be out of his house till eleven o'clock! Such a chance might never occur again. Long John hastened home at once and got everything ready. As it would not do to start too early, because people might be about, John waited till nearly ten o'clock, and then sallied out. As he rounded the corner of his shack a furious blast of wind, driving the rain before it, almost knocked him over. "Good!" he exclaimed. "There won't be a soul out o' doors to-night." With his head bent to the storm and his hat pulled down over his ears, John made his way through alleys and bye-streets to the edge of town, and then set off across the intervening empty space towards the house where Joe and I were at that moment playing our last game of checkers. As he approached, he saw dimly through the blur of rain the light of two windows. "Good!" he exclaimed a second time. "Old Snyder not gone to bed yet. Mighty kind of the old gent to leave his light burning for me to steer by. If it hadn't been for him I'd 'a' had a job to tell which was the right house. As it is, I've borne more to the right than I thought." At this moment the town clock struck ten, and almost immediately afterwards the light in the windows went out. "Never mind," remarked John to himself. "I know where I am now." Advancing a little further, he caught sight of the dim outline of the house through the rain, and turning short to his left, he measured off one hundred steps along the empty street, a distance which brought him opposite the next house to the east. All was dark and silent, as he had expected, but to make sure he approached the house and thumped upon the door. There was no reply. Again he thumped and struck the door sharply with the handle of his knife. Silence! "He's out all right," muttered John. "Was there ever such a lucky chance? Howling wind, driving rain, dark as the ace of spades, and Tom Connor not coming back for an hour!" Dark it surely was. The night was black. Not a glimmer of light in any direction. Even the town itself, only a quarter-mile away, seemed to have been blotted from the face of the earth. As he had noticed in coming across the flats that there were lights still burning in two of the other houses, the patient plotter, in order to give the inmates a chance to get to bed and to sleep, sat waiting on the leeward side of the building for a full half hour. At the end of that time, however, he arose, moved along a few steps, and then, going down on his hands and knees, crept under the house. Ten minutes later he came crawling out again, feet foremost. Once outside, he struck a match, and sheltering it in his cupped hands he applied the flame to the end of something which looked like a long, stiff cord about as thick as a lead pencil. Presently there was a sharp "spit" from the ignited "cord," blowing out the match and causing John to shake his hand with a gesture of pain, as though it had been scorched. Next moment Long John sprang to his feet and fled away into the darkness; not straight across lots as he had come, but by a roundabout way which would bring him into town from the eastern side. Then, for two minutes, except for the roaring of the wind, all was silence. Joe and I were sound asleep on the floor of Tom's back room, when by a single impulse we both sprang out of bed with an irrepressible cry of alarm, and stood for a moment trembling and clinging to each other in the darkness. The sound of a frightful explosion was ringing in our ears! "What was it, Joe?" I cried. "Which direction?" "I don't know," my companion replied. "I hope it isn't an accident up at the Pelican. Let's get into our clothes, Phil." Lighting the lamp, we quickly dressed, and putting on our hats and overcoats we went out into the storm. All was dark, except that in the windows of each of the occupied houses in the row we could see a light shining. The whole street had been roused up. "It must have been a powder-magazine," Joe shouted in my ear. "Or else the boiler in the engine-house of the Pelican. What do you say, Phil? Shall we go up there? We might be able to help." "Yes, come on!" I cried. "Let's go and see first, though, if Tom hasn't a second lantern. We shall save time by it if he has." Our hurried search for a lantern was vain, however, so we determined to set off without one. As we closed the door behind us, our clock struck eleven, and a moment later we heard faintly the eleven o'clock whistle up at the Pelican. "Good!" cried Joe. "It isn't the boiler blown up, anyhow, so Tom's safe; for he is working underground and the explosion, whatever it was, was on the surface." With bent heads we pushed our way against the wind, until, looking up presently, I saw the light of a lantern coming quickly towards us. "Here's Tom, Joe," I shouted. "Pull up!" We stopped, and as the light swiftly approached we detected the beating footsteps of a man running furiously. "Then there is an accident!" cried Joe. "Ho, Tom! That you?" he shouted. It was Tom, who, suddenly stopping, held the lantern high, looking first at one and then at the other of us. He was still in his miner's cap and slicker, his face was as white as a ghost's, and he was so out of breath that for a moment he could not speak. "Hurt, Tom?" I cried, in alarm. "No,"--with a gasp. "Anybody hurt?" "No." "What is it, then?" "Scared!" And then, still panting violently: "Come to the house," said he. Once inside, I brought Tom a dipper of water, which quickly restored him, when, turning his still blanched face towards us, he said: "Boys, I've had the worst scare of my life!" "How, Tom?" I asked. "That explosion? Was it up at the Pelican?" "No, it wasn't; and I didn't know anything about it until I came up at eleven, when George, who was waiting to go on, told me there had been a heavy explosion down in the direction of my house. When he told me that, there rushed into my head all of a sudden an idea which nearly knocked me over--it was like a blow from a hammer. I grabbed the lantern, which I had just lighted, and ran for it. Can you guess what I expected to find?" We shook our heads. "I expected to find my house blown to pieces, and you two boys lying dead out in the rain!" We stared at him in amazement. "What do you mean?" I asked. "Look here, boys," Tom went on. "When George Simpson told me there had been an explosion down this way, it came into my head all at once that Yetmore or Long John--probably Long John--had heard that I was out at work to-night, and not knowing that you were staying the night with me, had come and wrecked my house." "But why should they?" Joe asked. "So as to prevent my raising money on it, and so keep me tied up in town while they skipped out to look for that vein of galena. I'm glad to find I was wrong. I did 'em an in----" He stopped short, and following his gaze, we saw that he was staring at the second window. "When did you put that in?" he cried. "Just after you left. We finished by nine o'clock." "How soon did you go to bed?" "Just after ten." "Come with me!" cried Tom, springing from his chair and seizing the lantern. "I know what's happened now!" With us two close at his heels, he led the way to the spot where Yetmore's empty house had stood. Not a vestige of it remained, except the upper part of the chimney, which lay prone in the great hole dug out by the violence of the explosion. "Boys," said Tom, in a tone of unusual gravity, "if you live a hundred years you'll never have a narrower squeak than you've had to-night. If Long John did this--and I'm pretty sure he did--he meant to blow up my house, but being misled by those two windows, he has blown up Yetmore's house instead. You never did, and I doubt if you ever will do, a better stroke of work in your lives than when you put in my second window!" CHAPTER XIII THE ORE-THEFT At half past five next morning Joe and I slipped out of bed, leaving Tom Connor, who had to go to work again at seven, still fast asleep. While Joe quietly prepared breakfast, I went out to examine by daylight the scene of last night's explosion. The first discovery I made was the imprint in the mud of footsteps, half obliterated by the rain. The tracks were very large and very far apart, proving that the owner of the boots that made them was a big man, and that he had gone off at a great pace; a discovery which tended to confirm in my mind Tom's guess that it was indeed Long John who had done the mischief. At this moment the tenant of the house next to the east came out--Hughy Hughes was his name; a Welshman--and as he walked towards me I saw him stoop to pick up something. "That was a rascally piece of work, wasn't it?" said he, as he joined me. "Scared us 'most to death, it did. See, here's the fuse he used. I just picked it up; fifteen feet of it. Wonder who the fellow was. Pretty state of things when folks take to blowing up each other's houses. Like enough Yetmore has his enemies, but it's a pretty mean enemy as 'd try to get even by any such scalawag trick as this." This speech enlightened me as to what would be the general theory regarding the outrage. It would be set down as an act of revenge on the part of some enemy of Yetmore's; and so Tom and Joe thought, too, when I went back to the house and told them about it. "That'll be the theory, all right," said Tom. "And as far as I see, we may as well let it go at that. We have no evidence to present, and it would look rather like malice on our part if we were to charge Long John with blowing his best friend's house to pieces just because we happen to suspect him of it. And so, I guess, boys, we may as well lay low for the present: we shan't do any good by putting forward our own theories. "I dare say," he went on, after a moment's reflection, "I dare say, if we were to go around telling what we thought and why we thought it, we might influence public opinion; but, when you come to think of it, we have no real proof; so we'll just hold our tongues. Are you in a hurry to get home?" "No," I replied. "We shan't be able to plow for two days at the very least, so there is nothing to hurry home for." "Well, then," said Tom, "I'll tell you what I wish you'd do. I must go back to work in a few minutes, but I wish you two would go down town and hear what folks have to say about this business, and then come back here and have dinner with me at twelve. Will you?" "All right," said I. "We'll do that." We found the town in a great state of excitement. Everybody was talking about the explosion, which, as the newspaper said, "would cast a blight upon the fair fame of Sulphide." Yetmore's store was crowded with people, shaking hands with him and expressing their indignation at the outrage; the universal opinion being, as we had anticipated, that some miscreant had done it out of revenge. Joe and I, squeezing in with the rest, presently found ourselves near the counter, when Yetmore, catching my eye, nodded to me and said: "How are you, Phil? I didn't know you were in town." "Yes," said I, "we came in last evening and spent the night in Tom Connor's house." Yetmore started and turned pale. "In Tom Connor's house?" he repeated, huskily. "Yes," I replied. "We were asleep in his back room when that explosion woke us up." At this Yetmore stared at me for a moment, and then, as he realized how narrowly he had missed being party to a murder, he turned a dreadful white color, staggered, and I believe might have fallen had he not sat himself down quickly upon a sack of potatoes. A draft of water soon brought back his color, when, addressing the sympathizing crowd, Yetmore said: "It made me feel a bit sick to think what chances these boys ran last night. Every one knows how hard it is to tell those houses apart; and that fellow might easily have made a mistake and blown up Tom Connor's house on one side or Hughy Hughes' on the other." "Yes," said I; "and all the more so as Joe and I last evening put a second window into Tom's house, so that any one coming across lots after dark might just as well have taken Tom's house for old Snyder's." "Phew!" whistled one of the men in the crowd. "Then it's Hughy Hughes that's to be congratulated. If that rascal _had_ made such a mistake, and had chosen the second house from Tom's instead of the second house from Snyder's we'd have been making arrangements for six funerals about now. Hughy has four children, hasn't he?" I could not help feeling sorry for Yetmore. Convinced as I was that he had at least connived in a plot to destroy Tom's house, I felt sure that he had been far from intending personal injury to any one; and I felt sure, too, that he was thoroughly sincere, when, rising from his seat and addressing the assemblage, he said: "Men, I'm sorry to lose my house, of course--that goes without saying--but when I think of what might have happened it doesn't trouble me that much"--snapping his finger and thumb. "I tell you, men, I'm downright thankful it was _my_ house that was blown up and nobody else's." As he said this he looked at Joe and me, and I felt convinced that it was to us and not to the assembled throng that he addressed his remark. The people, however, not knowing what we did, loudly applauded the magnanimity of the sentiment, and many of them pressed forward to shake hands again. Yetmore had never been so popular as he was at that moment. Everybody sympathized with him over his loss; everybody admired the dignified way in which he accepted it; and everybody would have been delighted to hear that some compensating piece of good fortune had befallen him. Strange to say, at that very moment that very thing happened. Suddenly we were all attracted by a distant shouting up the street. Looking through the front window, we saw that all the people outside had turned and were gazing in that direction. By one impulse everybody in the store surged out through the doorways, when we saw, still some distance away, a man running down the middle of the street, waving his cap and shouting some words we could not distinguish. We were all on tiptoe with expectation. At length the man approached, broke through the group, ran up to Yetmore, who was standing on his door-step, shook hands with him, and then turning round, he shouted out: "Great strike in the Pelican, boys! In the old workings above the fifth--Yetmore's lease. One of those pockets of tellurium that's never been known to run less than twenty thousand to the ton. Hooray for Yetmore!" The shout that went up was genuinely hearty. Once more the mayor was mobbed by his enthusiastic fellow citizens and once more he shook hands till his arm ached--during which proceeding Joe and I slipped away. We had not gone far when I heard my name called, and turning round I saw a man on horseback who handed me a letter. "I've just come up through your place," said he, "and your father asked me to give you this if I should see you." The note was to the effect that the rain had been heavy on the ranch, no plowing was possible, and so we were to stay in town that day and come down on the morrow after the mail from the south came in, as he was expecting an important letter, and it would thus save another trip up and down. We were glad enough to do this, so, making our way up the street past the knots of people, all talking over and over again the two exciting topics of the day, we retraced our steps to Tom's house, where we got ready the dinner against Tom's return. Shortly after twelve he came in, when we related to him what we had learned in town; demanding in our turn particulars of the great strike. "It's a rich strike, all right," said Tom, "but there isn't much of it--about five hundred pounds--just a pocket, and not a very large one. But it is very rich stuff, carrying over three thousand ounces of silver and a thousand of gold to the ton. The five hundred pounds should be worth ten or twelve dollars a pound. They've found the same stuff several times before in the Pelican, always unexpectedly and always in pockets." "Then," remarked Joe, "Yetmore will have made, perhaps, six thousand dollars this morning." "No, no," said Tom; "he won't have done anything of the sort; though I don't wonder you should think so after the way the people have been carrying on down town. They've just been led away by their enthusiasm. Most of 'em know the terms of Yetmore's lease well enough, but they have forgotten them for the moment. Yetmore pays the company a certain percentage of all the ore he gets out, and it is specially provided in the lease that should he come upon any of the well-known tellurium ore, the company is to have three-fifths of the proceeds and Yetmore only two-fifths. He'll make a good thing out of it though, anyway." "You say there's about five hundred pounds of the ore: have they taken it all out already?" asked Joe. "Yes, taken it out, sorted it, sacked it in little fifty-pound sacks, sewed up the sacks and piled them in one of the drifts, all ready to ship down to San Remo to-morrow by express." "Why do they leave it in the mine?" I asked. "Is it safer than taking it down to the express office?" "Yes: it would be pretty difficult to steal it out of the mine, with all the lights going and all the miners about, whereas, if it was just stacked in the express office, somebody might----" "Somebody might cut a hole in the floor and drop it through," remarked Joe, laughing. "That's so," said Tom, adding, "I tell you what it is, boys: I begin to think I wasn't quite so smart as I thought I was when I got back that coal oil for the widow. I wouldn't wonder a particle if it wasn't just that that decided Yetmore to come and blow my house to smithereens." "I shouldn't either," said Joe. Tom having departed to his work again, Joe and I once more went into town, where we spent the time going about, listening to the talk of the people, who were still standing in groups on the street corners, discussing the great events of the day. But if the people were excited, as they certainly were, their excitement was a mere flutter in comparison with the storm which swept over the community next morning. The ten sacks of high-grade ore had been stolen during the night! The news came down about eight o'clock in the morning, when, at once, and with one accord, all the men in the place who could get away swarmed up to the Pelican--we among them. The thief, whoever he was, was evidently familiar with the workings of the mine, for, going round into Stony Gulch, he had forced the door at the exit of the old tunnel, cutting out the staple with auger and saw, and then, clambering through the disused, waste-encumbered drifts, he had carried out the little sacks one by one and made away with them somehow. Wrapping his feet in old rags in order to disguise his foot-prints, he had taken the sacks of ore across the gulch to the stony ground beyond, where his boots would leave no impression, and there all trace of him was lost. Whether he had buried the sacks somewhere near by, or, if not, how he had managed to spirit them away, were matters of general speculation; though to most minds the question was settled when one of Yetmore's clerks came hastily up to the mine and called out that the roan pony and the two-wheeled delivery cart, used to carry packages up to the mines, were missing. The thief, seemingly, had not only stolen Yetmore's ore, but had borrowed Yetmore's horse and cart to convey it away. If this were true, it proved that the thief must have an intimate knowledge of the country, for, in spite of the heavy rain of the night before, not a sign of a wheel-mark was there to be found: the cart had been conducted over the rocks with such skill as to leave no trace whatever. Cart, pony, ore and thief had vanished as completely as though the earth had opened and swallowed them. At first everybody sympathized with Yetmore over his loss, but presently an ugly rumor began to get about when people bethought them of the terms of the lease. Those who did not like the storekeeper, and they were not a few, began to pull long faces, nudge each other with their elbows, and whisper together that perhaps Yetmore knew more of this matter than he pretended. Joe and I were at a loss to understand what they were driving at, until one man, more malicious or less discreet than the others, spoke up. "How are we to know," said he, "that Yetmore didn't steal this ore himself? Three-fifths of it belongs to the company--he'd make a mighty good thing by it. I'm not saying he did do it, but----" He ended with a closing of one eye and a sideways jerk of his head more expressive than words. "Oh, that's ridiculous!" Joe blurted out. "Yetmore isn't over-scrupulous, I dare say, but he's a long way from being a fool, and he'd never make such a blunder as to steal the ore and then use his own horse and cart to carry it off." "Well, I don't know," said the man. "It might be just a trick of his to put folks off the scent." And though Joe and I, for our part, felt sure that Yetmore had had nothing to do with it, we found that many people shared this man's suspicions; the consequence being that the mayor's popularity of the day before waned again as suddenly as it had arisen. In the midst of this excitement the mail-coach from the south came in, when Joe and I, carrying with us the expected letter for my father, set off home again; little suspecting--as how should we suspect--that the ore-thief, whoever he might be, was about to render us a service of greater value by far than the ore and the cart and the pony combined. We were jogging along on the homeward road, and were just rounding the spur of Elkhorn Mountain which divided our valley from Sulphide, when Joe suddenly laid his hand on my arm and cried: "Pull up, Phil. Stop a minute." "What's the matter?" I asked. "Get down and come back a few steps," Joe answered; and on my joining him, he pointed out to me in a sandy patch at the mouth of a steep draw coming in from the left, some deeply-indented wheel-marks. "Well, what of that, Joe?" said I, laughing. "Are you thinking you've found the trail of the ore-thief?" "No," Joe replied, "I'm not jumping at any such conclusion; but, at the same time, it's possible. If the ore-thief started northward from the Pelican, and the chances are he did, for we know he carried the sacks across to the north side of Stony Gulch, this would be the natural place for him to come down into the road; for it is plain to any one that he could never get a loaded cart--or an empty one either, for that matter--over the rocky ridge which crowns this spur. If he was making his way north, he had to get into the road sooner or later, and this gully was his last chance to come down." "That's true," I assented; "and this cart--it's a two-wheeler, you see--was heavily loaded. Look how it cuts into the sand." "Yes," said Joe; "and it was drawn by one smallish horse, led by a man; a big man, too: look at his tracks." "But the ore-thief, Joe, had his feet wrapped up in rags, and these are the marks of a number twelve boot." "Well, you don't suppose the thief would walk over this rough mountain with his feet wrapped up in rags, do you? In the dark, too. They'd be catching against everything. No; he would take off the rags as soon as he reached hard ground and throw them into the cart; for it is not to be expected either that he would leave them lying on his trail to show people which way he had gone." "No, of course not. But which way did he go, Joe; across the road or down it?" "Down it. See. The wheel-tracks bear to the left. And if you want evidence that he came down in the dark, here you are. Look how one wheel skidded over this half-buried, water-worn boulder and slid off and scraped the spokes against this projecting rock. Look at the blue paint it left on the rock." "Blue paint!" I cried. "Joe, Yetmore's cart was painted blue! I remember it very well. A very strongly-built cart, as it had to be to scramble up those rough roads that lead to the mines, painted blue with black trimmings. Joe, I begin to believe this is the ore-thief, after all." "It does look like it. But where was he going? Not down to the smelter at San Remo, surely." "Not he," I replied. "He would know better than that. The smelter has undoubtedly been notified of the robbery by this time, and the character of the Pelican tellurium is so well known that any one offering any of it for sale would have to give a very clear story as to how he came by it. No; this fellow will have to hide or bury the ore and leave it lying till he thinks the robbery is forgotten; and even then he will probably have to dispose of it at a distance in small lots or broken up very fine and mixed with other ore." "In that case," said Joe, "we shall find his trail leaving the road again on one side or the other." "I expect so. We'll keep a lookout. But come on, now, Joe: we mustn't delay any longer." The road had been traveled over by several vehicles since last night, and the trail of the cart was undistinguishable with any certainty until we had passed the point where the highway branched off to the right to go down to San Remo; after which it appeared again, apparently headed straight for the ranch. "Do you suppose he can have crossed our valley, Phil?" asked my companion. "No, I expect not," I replied. "Keep your eyes open; we shall find the tracks going off to one side or the other pretty soon--to the left most likely, for the best hiding-places would be up in the mountains." Sure enough, after traversing a bare, rocky stretch of road, we found that the tracks no longer showed ahead of us. The man had taken advantage of the hard ground to turn off. Pulling up our ponies, we both jumped to the ground once more, and going back a short distance, we made a cast on the western side of the road. In a few minutes Joe called out: "Here we are, Phil! See! The wheel touched the edge of this little sandy spot, and if you look ahead about forty yards you'll see where it ran over an ant-hill. It seems as though he were heading for our cañon. Do you think that's likely?" "Yes," I replied. "I think it is very likely. There is one place where he can get down, you remember, and then, by following up the bed of the stream for a short distance he will come to a draw which will lead him to the top of the Second Mesa--just the place he would make for. For, to any one knowing the country, as he evidently does, there would be a thousand good hiding-places in which to stow away ten small sacks of ore--you might search for years and not find them." "Yes," said Joe. "But there's the horse and cart, Phil. How will he dispose of them?" "Oh, that will be easy enough. He would tumble the cart into some cañon, perhaps, turn loose the horse, and be back in Sulphide before morning. But come on, Joe. We really mustn't waste any more time; it's getting on for six now." It was fortunate we did not delay any longer, for we found my father anxiously pacing up and down the room, wondering what was keeping us. Without heeding our explanation at the moment, he hastily tore open the letter we had brought, read it through, and then stepping to the foot of the stairs, called out: "Get your things on, mother. We must start at once. The train leaves at seven forty-five. There's no time to lose." Turning to us, he went on: "Boys, I have to go to Denver. I may be gone five or six days--can't tell how long. I leave you in charge. If you can get at the plowing, go ahead; but I'm afraid you won't have the chance. If I'm not mistaken, there's another rain coming--wettest season I remember. Joe, run out and hitch up the big bay to the buckboard. Phil, you will have to drive down to San Remo with us and bring back the rig. Go in and get some supper now; it's all ready on the table." In ten minutes we were off, I sitting on a little trunk at the back of the carriage, explaining to my father over his shoulder as we drove along the events of the last two days, and how it was we had taken so much time coming down from Sulphide. "It certainly does look as though the thief had come down this way," said he; "and though we are not personally concerned in the matter, I think one of you ought to ride up to Sulphide again on Monday and give your information. Hunt up Tom Connor and tell him. And I believe"--he paused to consider--"yes, I believe I would tell Yetmore, too. I'm sure he is not concerned in this robbery; and I'm even more sure that if he was a party to the blowing up of that house, he never intended any harm to you. Yes, I think I'd tell Yetmore. It will prove to him that we bear him no ill-will, and may have a good effect." Having seen them off on the train, I turned homeward again, going slowly, for the clouds were low and it was very dark. The consequence was that it was nearly ten by the time I reached the ranch, and before I did so the rain was coming down hard once more. "Wet night, Joe," said I, as I pulled off my overcoat. "No plowing for a week, I'm afraid." "I expect not," replied my companion. "It isn't often we have to complain of too much rain in Colorado, but we are certainly getting an over supply just now. There's one man, though, who'll be glad of it." "Who's that?" "That ore-thief. It will wash out his tracks completely." CHAPTER XIV THE SNOW-SLIDE The rain, which continued pretty steadily all day, Sunday, had ceased before the following morning, when, looking through the rifts in the clouds to the west we could see that a quantity of new snow had fallen on the mountains. "There'll be no trouble about water for irrigating this year, Joe," said I, as I returned from the stable after feeding the horses. "There's more snow up there, I believe, than I've ever seen before. It ought to last well into the summer, especially as the winds have drifted the gulches full and it has settled into solid masses." "Yes, there ought to be a good supply," answered Joe, who was busy cooking the breakfast. "Which of the ponies do you think I had better take this morning, Phil? The pinto?" "I thought so. I've given him a good feed of oats. He'll enjoy the outing, I expect, for he's feeling pretty chipper this morning. He tried to nip me in the ribs while I was rubbing him down. He needs a little exercise." We had arranged between us that Joe should ride to Sulphide that morning to see Tom Connor and Yetmore, as my father had directed; and accordingly, as soon as he could get off, away he went; the pinto pony, very fresh and lively, going off as though he intended to gallop the whole distance. Left to myself, I first went up to measure the flow of the underground stream, according to custom, and then, taking a shovel, I went to work clearing the headgates of our ditches, which had become more or less encumbered with refuse during the winter. There were two of them, set in niches of the rock on either side of the pool; for, to irrigate the land on both sides of the creek, we necessarily had to have two ditches. I had been at it only a few minutes when I noticed a curious booming noise in the direction of the mountains, which, continuing for a minute or two, presently died out again. From my position close under the wall of the Second Mesa, I could see nothing, and though it seemed to me to be a peculiar and unusual sound, I concluded that it was only a storm getting up; for, even at a distance of seven miles, we could often hear the roaring of the wind in the pine-trees. A quarter of an hour later, happening to look up the Sulphide road, I was rather surprised to see a horseman coming down, riding very fast. He was about a mile away when I first caught sight of him, and I could not make out who he was, but presently, as I stood watching, a slight bend in the road allowed the sunlight to fall upon the horse's side, when I recognized the pinto. It was Joe coming home again. I knew very well, of course, that he could not have been all the way to Sulphide and back in so short a time, and my first thought was that the spirited pony was running away with him; but as he approached I saw that Joe was leaning forward in the saddle, rather urging forward his steed than restraining him. "What's up?" I thought to myself, as I stood leaning on my shovel. "Has he forgotten something? He seems to be in a desperate hurry if he has: Joe doesn't often push his horse like that. Something the matter, I'm afraid." There was a rather steep pitch where the road came down into our valley, and it was a regular practice with us to descend this hill with some caution. Here, at any rate, I expected Joe to slacken his pace; but when I saw him come flying down at full gallop, where a false step by the pony would endanger both their necks, I knew there was something the matter, and flinging down my shovel, I ran to meet him. "What is it, Joe?" I cried, as soon as he came within hearing. Pulling in his pony, which, poor beast, stood trembling, with hanging head and legs astraddle, the breath coming in blasts from its scarlet nostrils, Joe leaped to the ground, crying: "A snow-slide! A fearful great snow-slide! Right down on Peter's house!" For a moment we stood gazing at each other in silence, when Joe, speaking very rapidly, went on: "We must get up there at once, Phil: we may be able to help Peter. Though if he was in his house when the slide came down, I'm afraid we can do nothing. His cabin must be buried five hundred feet deep, and the heavy snow will pack like ice with its own weight." "We'll take a couple of shovels, anyhow," I cried. "I'll get 'em. Pull your saddle off the pinto, Joe, he's used up, poor fellow, and slap it on to the little gray. Saddle my pony, too, will you? I'll clap some provisions into a bag and bring 'em along: there's no knowing how long we'll be gone!" "All right," replied Joe. And without more words, he turned to unsaddle the still panting pony, while I ran to the house. In five minutes, or less, we were under way. "Not too fast!" cried Joe. "We mustn't blow the ponies at the start. It's a good eight miles up to Peter's house." As we ascended the hill and came up on top of the Second Mesa, I was able to see for the first time the great scar on the mountain where the slide had come down. "Phew!" I whistled. "It was a big one, and no mistake. Did you see it start, Joe?" "Yes, I saw it start. I happened to be looking up there, thinking it looked pretty dangerous, when a great mass of snow which was overhanging that little cliff up there near the saddle, fell and started the whole thing. It seemed to begin slowly. I could see three or four big patches of snow fall from the precipice above Peter's cabin as though pushed over, and then the whole great mass, fifteen feet thick, I should think, three hundred yards wide and four or five times as long, came down with a rush, pouring over the cliff with a roar like thunder. I wonder you didn't hear it." "I did," I replied, remembering the noise I had taken for a wind-storm, "but being under the bluff, and the waterfall making so much noise, I couldn't hear distinctly, and so thought nothing of it. Why!" I cried, as I looked again. "There used to be a belt of trees running diagonally across the slope. They're all gone!" "Yes, every one of them. There were some biggish ones, too, you remember; but the slide snapped them off like so many carrots. It cut a clean swath right through them, as you see." "Where were you, Joe, when you saw it come down?" I asked. "More than half way to Sulphide. I came back in fifteen minutes--four miles." "Poor little Pinto! No wonder he was used up!" We had been riding at a smart lope, side by side, while this conversation was going on, and in due time we reached the foot-hills. Here our pace was necessarily much reduced, but we continued on up Peter's creek as rapidly as possible until the gulch became so narrow and rocky, and so encumbered with great patches of snow, that we thought we could make better time on foot. Leaving our ponies, therefore, we went scrambling forward, until, about half a mile from our destination, Joe suddenly stopped, and holding up his hand, cried eagerly: "Hark! Keep quiet! Listen!" "Bow, wow, wow! Bow, wow, wow, wow, wow!" came faintly to our ears from far up the mountain. "It's old Sox!" cried Joe. "There are no dogs up here!" And clapping his hands on either side of his mouth, he gave a yell which made the echoes ring. Almost immediately the sharp report of a rifle came down to us, and with a spontaneous cheer we plunged forward once more. It was hard work, for we were about nine thousand feet above sea level; the further we advanced, too, the more snow we encountered, until presently we found the narrow valley so blocked with it that we had to ascend the mountain-spur on one side to get around it. In doing so, we came in sight of the cliff behind Peter's house, and then, for the first time, we understood what a snow-slide really meant. Reaching half way up the thousand-foot precipice was a great slope of snow, completely filling the end of the valley; and projecting from it at all sorts of angles were trees, big and little, some whole, some broken off short, some standing erect as though growing there, some showing nothing but their roots. At the same time, from the edge of the precipice upward to the summit of the ridge, we had a clear view of the long, bare track left by the slide, with the snow-banks, fifteen or twenty feet thick, still standing on either side of it, held back by the trees. "What a tremendous mass of snow!" I exclaimed, "There must be ten million tons of it! And what an irresistible power! Peter's house must have been crushed like an eggshell!" "Yes," replied Joe. "But meanwhile where's Peter?" Once more he shouted; and this time, somewhere straight ahead of us, there was an answering shout which set us hurrying forward again with eager expectancy. At the same moment, up from the ground flew old Sox, perched upon the root of an inverted tree, where, showing big and black against the snow bank behind him, he set to work to bark a continuous welcome as we struggled forward to the spot, one behind the other. Beneath a tree, stretched on a mat of fallen pine-needles, just on the very outer edge of the slide, lay our old friend, the hermit, who, when he saw us approaching, raised himself on his elbow, and waving his other hand to us, called out cheerily: "How are you, boys? Glad to see you! You're welcome--more than welcome!" "Hurt, Peter?" cried Joe, running forward and throwing himself upon his knees beside the injured man. "A trifle. No bones broken, I believe, but pretty badly bruised and strained, especially the right leg above the knee. I find I can't walk--at least not just yet." "How did you escape the slide?" I asked. "Why, I had warning of it, luckily. I was up pretty early this morning and was just about to leave the house, when a dab of snow--a couple of tons, maybe--came down and knocked off my chimney. I knew what that meant, and I didn't waste much time, you may be sure, in getting out. I grabbed my rifle and ran for it. I was hardly out of my door when the roar began, and you may guess how I ran then. I had reached almost this spot when down it came. The edge of it caught me and tumbled me about; sometimes on the surface, sometimes on the ground; now on my face and now feet uppermost, I was pitched this way and that like a cork in a torrent, till a big tree--the one Sox is sitting on, I think--slapped me on the back with its branches and hurled me twenty feet away among the rocks. It was then I got hurt; but on the other hand, being flung out of the snow like that saved me from being buried, so I can't complain. It was as narrow a shave as one could well have." "It certainly was," said I. "And did you hold on to the rifle all the time?" "Yes; though why, I can't say. The natural instinct to hold on to something, I suppose. But how is it you are on hand so promptly? It did occur to me as I lay here that one of you might notice that there had been a slide and remember me, but I never expected to see you here so soon." "Well, that was another piece of good fortune," I replied. "Joe saw the slide come down and rode a four-mile race to come and tell me. We did not lose a minute in getting under way, and we haven't wasted any time in getting here either. But now we are here, the question is: How are we going to get you out?" "Where do you propose to take me?" asked Peter. "Down to our house." For a brief instant the hermit looked as though he were going to demur; but if he had entertained such an idea, he thought better of it, and thanked me instead. "It's very good of you," said he; "though it gives me an odd sensation. I haven't been inside another man's house for years." "Well, don't you think it's high time you changed your habits?" ask Joe, laughing. "And you couldn't have a better opportunity--your own house smashed flat; yourself helpless; and we two all prepared to lug you off whether you like it or not." "Well," said Peter, smiling at Joe's threat, "then I suppose I may as well give in. You're very kind, though, boys," he added, seriously, "and I'm very glad indeed to accept your offer." "Then let us pitch in at once and start downward," said Joe. "Do you think you could walk with help?" "I doubt it; but I'll have a try." It was no use, though. With one arm over Joe's shoulder and the other over mine he essayed to walk, but the attempt was a failure. His right leg dragged helplessly behind; he could not take a step. "We've got to think of some other way," said Joe, as Peter once more stretched himself at full length upon the ground. "Can we----" But here he was interrupted. All this time, Sox, with rare backwardness, had remained perched upon his tree-root, looking on and listening, but at this moment down he flew, alighted upon the ground near Peter's head, made a complete circuit of his master's prostrate form, then hopped up on his shoulder, and having promenaded the whole length of his body from his neck to his toes, he shook out his feathers and settled himself comfortably upon the hermit's left foot. We all supposed he intended to take a nap, but in another two seconds he straightened up again, eyed each of us in turn, and, with an air of having thought it all out and at last decided the matter beyond dispute, he remarked in a tone of gentle resignation: "John Brown's body." Having delivered this well-considered opinion with becoming solemnity, he threw back his head and laughed a rollicking laugh, as though he had made the very best joke that ever was heard. "You black heathen, Sox!" cried his master. "I believe you would laugh at a funeral." "Lies," said Sox, opening one eye and shutting it again; a remark which, though it sounded very much as though intended as an insult to Peter, was presumably but the continuation of his previous quotation. "Get out, you old rascal!" cried the hermit, "shooing" away the bird with his hat. "Your conversation is not desired just now." And as Sox flew back to his perch, Peter continued: "How far down did you leave your ponies, boys?" "About a mile," I replied. "Then I believe the best way will be for one of you to go down and bring up one of the ponies. I can probably get upon his back with your help, and then, by going carefully, I believe we can get down." "All right," said Joe, springing to his feet. "We'll try it. I'll go down. The little gray is the one, Phil, don't you think?" "Yes," I answered. "The little gray's the one; he's more sober-minded than my pony and very sure-footed. Bring the gray." Without further parley, away went Joe, and in about three-quarters of an hour he appeared again, leading the pony by the bridle. "It's pretty rough going," said he, "but I think we can make it if we take it slowly. The pony came up very well. Now, Peter let's see if we can hoist you into the saddle." It was a difficult piece of work, for Peter, though he had not an ounce of fat on his body, was a pretty heavy man, and being almost helpless himself, the feat was not accomplished without one or two involuntary groans on the part of the patient. At last, however, we had him settled into the saddle, when Joe, carrying the rifle, took the lead, while I, with the two shovels over my shoulder, brought up the rear. In this order the procession started, but it had no more than started when Peter called to us to stop. In order to avoid going up the hill more than was necessary, we were skirting along the edge of the great snow-bank, when, as we passed just beneath the big tree upon one of whose roots Socrates was perched, Peter, looking up to call to the bird, espied something which at once attracted his attention. "Wait a moment, boys, will you?" he requested, checking the pony; and then, turning to me, he continued: "Look up there, Phil. Do you see that black stone stuck among the roots? Poke it out with the shovel, will you? I should like to look at it." Wondering rather at his taking any interest in stones at such a time, I nevertheless obeyed his behest, and with two or three vigorous prods I dislodged the black fragment, catching it in my hand as it fell; though it was so unexpectedly heavy that I nearly let it drop. "Ah!" exclaimed Peter, when I had handed it up to him. "Just what I thought! This will interest Tom Connor." "Why?" we both asked. "What is it?" "A chunk of galena. Look! Do you see how it is made up of shining cubes of some black mineral? Lead--lead and sulphur. There's a vein up there somewhere." "And the big tree, pushing its roots down into the vein, has brought away a piece of it, eh?" asked Joe. "Yes, that is what I suppose. There are some bits of light-colored rock up there, too, Phil. Pry out one or two of those, will you?" I did as requested, and on my passing them to Peter, he said: "These are porphyry rocks. The general formation up there is limestone, I know--I've noticed it frequently--but I expect it is crossed somewhere--probably on the line of the belt of trees--by a porphyry dike. Put the specimens into your pocket, Joe; we must keep them to show to Connor. It's a very important find. And now let us get along." The journey down the gulch was very slow and very difficult--we made hardly a mile an hour--though, when we left the mountain and started across the mesa we got along better. When about half way, I left the others and galloped home, where I lighted a fire and heated a lot of water, so that, when at length Peter arrived, I had a steaming hot tubful all ready for him in the spare room on the ground floor. Though our friend protested against being treated like an invalid, declaring his belief that he would be about right again by morning, he nevertheless consented to take his hot bath and go to bed; though I think he was persuaded to do so more because he was unwilling to disappoint us after all our preparations, than because he really expected to derive any benefit. Be that as it may--and for my part I shall always hold that it was the hot bath that did it--when we went into Peter's room next morning, what was our surprise to find our cripple up and dressed. Though his right leg was still so stiff as to be of little use to him, he declined our help, and with the aid of a couple of broomsticks propelled himself out of his bedroom and into the kitchen, where Joe was busy getting the breakfast ready. His rapid recovery was astonishing to both of us; though, as Joe remarked later, we need not be so very much surprised, for, with his hardy life and abstemious habits he was as healthy as any wild animal. As we sat at our morning meal, we talked over our find of yesterday, and discussed what was the proper course for us to pursue. "First, and most important," said Peter, "Tom Connor must be notified. We must waste no time. The prospectors are beginning to get out, and any one of them, noticing the new scar on the mountain, might go exploring up there. When does Tom quit work on the Pelican?" "This evening," replied Joe. "It was this evening, wasn't it, Phil?" "Yes," I replied. "He was to quit at five this evening, and his intention then was to come down here next day and make this place his base of operations." "Then the thing to do," said Joe, "is for me to ride up there this morning--I started to go yesterday, you know, Peter--and catch Tom up at the mine at noon. When he hears of our discovery, I've not a doubt but that he will pack up and come back with me this evening, so as to get a start first thing to-morrow." "I expect he will," said I. "And while you are up there, Joe, you can see Yetmore and give him your information about those cart-tracks." "What do you mean?" asked Peter. "Information about what cart-tracks?" "Oh, you haven't heard of it, of course," said I; and forthwith I explained to him all about the ore-theft, and how we suspected that the thief was in hiding somewhere in the foot-hills. Peter listened attentively, and then asked: "Are you sure there was only one of them?" "Well, that's the general supposition," I replied. "Why?" "I thought there might be a pair of them, that's all. I'll tell you an odd thing that happened only the day before yesterday, which may or may not have a bearing on the case. When I got home about dusk that evening, I found that some one had broken into my house and had stolen a hind-quarter of elk, a box of matches, a frying-pan, and--of all queer things to select--a bear-trap. What on earth any one can want with a bear-trap at this season of the year, I can't think, when there is hardly a bear out of his winter-quarters yet; and if he was he'd be as thin as a rail. I found the fellow's tracks easily enough--tall man--big feet--long stride--and trailed them down the gulch to a point where another man had been sitting on a rock waiting for him. This other man's track was peculiar: he was lame--stepped short with his right foot, and the foot itself was out of shape. Their trail went on down the hill towards the mesa, but it was then too dark to follow it, and I was going off to take it up again next morning when that slide came down and changed my programme." "Well," said Joe, who had sat with his elbows on the table and his chin on his hands, listening closely, "where the lame man springs from I don't know, but if they should be the ore-thieves their stealing the meat and the frying-pan was a natural thing to do; for if they are going into hiding they will need provisions." "Yes," replied Peter; "and whether they knew of my place before or came upon it by accident, they would probably think it safer to steal from me than to raid one of the ranches and thus risk bringing all the ranchmen about their ears like a swarm of hornets." "That's true," said Joe. "Yes, I must certainly tell Tom and Yetmore about them: it may be important. And I'll start at once," he added, rising from the table as he spoke. "I'll take the buckboard, Phil, and then I can bring back Tom's camp-kit and tools for him; otherwise he would have to pack them on his pony and walk himself. I expect you will see us back somewhere about seven this evening." With that he went out, and soon afterwards we heard the rattle of wheels as he drove away. CHAPTER XV THE BIG REUBEN VEIN But it seemed as though Joe were destined never to get to Sulphide. I was still in the kitchen, when, not more than twenty minutes later, I heard the rattle of wheels again, and looking out of the window, there I saw my partner by the stable tying up his horse. "Hallo, Joe!" I cried, throwing open the door. "What's up?" Without replying at the moment, Joe came striding in, shut the door, and throwing his hat down upon the table, said: "I came back to tell you something. I've a notion, Phil, that we've got to go hunting for that vein ourselves, and not lose time by going up to tell Tom." "Why? What makes you think that, Joe?" I asked, in surprise. "That's what I came back to tell you. You know that little treeless 'bubble' that stands on the edge of the cañon only about half a mile up-stream from here? Well, when I drove up the hill out of our valley just now I turned, naturally, to look at the scar on the mountain, when the first thing to catch my eye was the figure of a man standing on top of the 'bubble.'" "Is that so? What was he doing?" "He was looking at the scar, too." "How do you know that, Joe?" I asked, incredulously. "You couldn't tell at that distance whether he had his back to you or his face." "Ah, but I could, though," Joe replied; "and I'll tell you how. After a minute or so the man turned--I could see that motion distinctly enough--caught sight of me, and instantly jumped down behind the rocks." "Didn't want to be seen, eh?" remarked Peter. "And what did you do next?" "I felt sure he was watching me, though I couldn't see him," Joe went on, "and so, to make him suppose I hadn't observed him, I stayed where I was for a minute, and then drove leisurely on again. There's a dip in the road, you know, Phil, a little further on, and as soon as I had driven down into it, out of sight, I pulled up, jumped out of the buckboard, and running up the hill again I crawled to the top of the rise and looked back. There was the man, going across the mesa at a run, headed straight for Big Reuben's gorge!" Joe paused, and for a moment we all sat looking at each other in silence. "Any idea who he was?" I asked presently. "Yes," replied Joe, without hesitation. "It was Long John Butterfield." "You seem very sure," remarked Peter; "but do you think you could recognize him so far off?" "I feel sure it was Long John," Joe answered. "I have very long sight; and as the man stood there on top of the 'bubble,' with the sun shining full upon him, he looked as tall as a telegraph pole. Yes, I feel certain it was Long John." "Then Yetmore has started him out to prospect for that vein!" I cried. "He is probably camped in the neighborhood of Big Reuben's gorge, following up the stream, and I suppose he heard the roar of the slide yesterday and came down this way the first thing this morning to get a look at the scar." "That's it, I expect," Joe answered. "And you suppose," said Peter, "that he went running back to his camp to get his tools and go prospecting up on the scar." Joe nodded. "Then, what do you propose to do?" asked the hermit. "I've been thinking about it as I drove back," replied Joe, "and my opinion is that Phil and I ought to go up at once, see if we can't find the spot where that big tree was rooted out, and stake the claim for Tom Connor. If we lose a whole day by going up to Sulphide to notify Tom, it would give Long John a chance to get in ahead of us and perhaps beat us after all." The bare idea of such a catastrophe was too much for me. I sprang out of my chair, crying, "We'll go, Joe! And we'll start at once! How are we to get up there, Peter? There must be any amount of snow; and we are neither of us any good on skis, even if we had them." "Yes, there's plenty of snow," replied Peter promptly, entering with heartiness into the spirit of the enterprise, "lots of snow, but you can avoid most of it by taking the ridge on the right of the creek and following along its summit to where it connects with the saddle. You'll find a little cliff up there, barring your way, but by turning to your left and keeping along the foot of the precipice you will come presently to the upper end of the slide, and then, by coming down the slide, you will be able to reach the place where the line of trees used to stand, which is the place you want to reach." "Is it at all dangerous?" asked Joe. "Why, yes," replied Peter, "it is a bit dangerous, especially on the slide itself now that the trees are gone; though if you are ordinarily careful you ought to be able to make it all right, there being two of you. For a man by himself it would be risky--a very small accident might strand him high and dry on the mountain--but where there are two together it is reasonably safe." "Come on, then, Joe," said I. "Let's be off." "Wait a bit!" cried our guest, holding up his hand. "You talk of staking a claim for Tom Connor; well, suppose you _should_ find the spot where the big tree was rooted out, and _should_ find a vein there--do you know how to write a location-notice?" "No," said I, blankly. "We don't." "Well, I'll write you out the form," said Peter. "I've read hundreds of them and I remember it well enough, and you can just copy the wording when you set up your stake--if you have occasion to set one up at all." He sat down and quickly wrote out the form for us, when, pocketing the paper, we went over to the stable, saddled up, and leaving Peter in charge, away we rode, armed with a pick, a shovel, an ax and a coil of rope. According to the hermit's directions, instead of following up the bed of the creek which led to his house, we took to the spur on the right, the top of which being treeless, had been swept bare of snow by the winds and presented no serious obstacle to our sure-footed ponies. We were able, therefore, to ride up the mountain so far that we presently found ourselves looking down upon Peter's house, or, rather, upon the mountain of snow which covered it. But here the character of the spur changed, or, to speak more accurately, here the spur ended and another one began. Between the two, half-filled with well-packed snow, lay a deep crevice, which, bearing away down hill to our right, was presently lost among the trees. "From the lay of the land," said Joe, "I should judge that this is the head of the creek which runs through Big Reuben's gorge--Peter told us it started up here, you remember. And from the look of it," he continued, "I should suppose that the shortest way of getting over to the slide would be to cut right across here to the left through the trees. But that is out of the question: the snow would be ten feet over our heads; so our only way is to cross this gulch and go on up as far as we can along the top of the next ridge, as Peter said." "Then we shall have to leave the ponies here," I remarked, "and do the rest on foot: there's no getting them across this place." Accordingly, we abandoned our ponies at this point, and having with some difficulty scrambled across the gulch ourselves, we ascended to the ridge of the next spur and continued our way upward. This spur was crowned by an outcrop of rock, which being much broken up and the cracks being filled with snow, made the walking not only difficult but dangerous. By taking care, however, we avoided any accident, and, after a pretty stiff climb arrived at the foot of a perpendicular ledge of rocks which cut across our course at right angles--the little cliff Peter had told us we should find barring our way. Here, turning to the left, as directed, we skirted along the base of the cliff, sometimes on the rocks and sometimes on the edge of the snow which rested against them, until at last we reached a point whence we could look right down the steep slope of the slide. Covered with loose shale, the slope for its whole length appeared to be smooth and of uniform pitch, except that about three-quarters of the way down we could see a line of snow hummocks stretching all across its course, indicating pretty surely that here had grown a strip of trees, which being most of them broken off short had caught and held a little snow against the stumps. "There's where we want to get, Joe!" I cried, eagerly. "Down there to that row of stumps! This is a limestone country--all this shale, you see, is composed of limestone chips--but that tree-root in which we found the chunk of galena held two or three bits of porphyry as well, you remember, and if it did come from down there, there's a good chance that that line of stumps indicates the course of a porphyry outcrop, as Peter guessed, cutting across the limestone formation." "Well, what of that?" asked Joe. "Is a porphyry outcrop a desirable thing to find? Is it an 'indication'?" "It's plain you're no prospector, Joe," said I, laughing; "and though I don't set up to know much about it myself, I've learned enough from hearing Tom Connor talk of 'contact veins' to know that if there's a vein in the neighborhood the most promising place to look for it is where the limestone and the porphyry come in contact." "Is that so?" cried Joe, beginning to get excited. "Then let us get down there at once; for, ten to one, that's where our big tree came from." "That's all very well," said I. "The row of stumps is our goal, all right, but how are we going to get down there? I don't feel at all inclined to trust myself on this loose shale. The pitch is so steep that I should be afraid of its starting to slide and carrying us with it, when I don't see anything to stop us from going down to the bottom and over the precipice at the lower end." "That's true," Joe assented. "No, it won't do to trust ourselves on this treacherous shale; it's too dangerous. What we must do, Phil, is to get across to that long spur of rocks over there and climb down that. It will bring us close down to the line of stumps." The spur to which Joe referred, connecting at its upper end with the cliff at the foot of which we were then standing, reached downward like a great claw to within a short distance of the chain of snow hummocks, and undoubtedly our safest course would be to follow it to its lowest extremity and begin our descent from there. It was near the further edge of the slide, however, and to get over to it we had to take a course close under the cliff, holding on to the rocks with our right hands as we skirted along the upper edge of the shaly slope. It was rather slow work, for we had to be careful, but at length we reached our destination, when, turning once more to our left, we scrambled down the spur to its lowest point. "Now, Phil," cried Joe, "you stay where you are while I go down. No use to take unnecessary risks by both going down together. You sit here, if you don't mind, and wait for me; I won't be any longer than I can help." "All right," said I; "but take the end of the rope in your hand, Joe. No use for _you_ to take unnecessary risks, either." [Illustration: "HE SHOT DOWNWARD LIKE AN ARROW"] "That's a fact," replied my companion. "Yes, I'll take the rope." With a shovel in one hand and the end of the rope in the other, Joe started downward, but presently, having advanced as far as the rope extended, he dropped it and went cautiously on, using the shovel-handle as a staff. Down to this point he had had little difficulty, but a few steps further on, reaching presumably the change of formation we had expected to find, where the smooth, icy rock beneath the shale was covered only by an inch or so of the loose material, the moment he stepped upon it Joe's feet slipped from under him and falling on his back he shot downward like an arrow. I held my breath as I watched him, horribly scared lest he should go flying down the whole remaining length of the slope and over the precipice; but my suspense lasted only a few seconds, for presently a great jet of snow flew into the air, in the midst of which Joe vanished. The next moment, however, he appeared again, hooking the snow out of his neck with his finger, and called out to me: "All right, Phil! I fell into a hole where a tree came out. I'm going to shovel out the snow now. Don't let go of that rope whatever you do." So saying he set to work with the shovel, making the snow fly, while I sat on the rocks a hundred feet above, watching him. In about a quarter of an hour he looked up and called out to me: "I've found it, Phil. Right in this hole. It's the hole our big tree came out of, I believe. Can't tell how much of a vein, though, the ground is frozen too hard. Bring down the pick, will you? Come down to the end of the rope and throw it to me." In response to this request, having first tied a knot in the end of the rope and fixed it firmly in a crack in the rocks, I went carefully down as far as it reached, when, with a back-handed fling, I sent the pick sliding down to my partner. "Don't you think I might venture down and help you, Joe?" I called out. "No!" replied Joe with much emphasis. "You stay where you are, Phil. It would be too risky. I can do the work by myself all right." Still keeping my hold on the rope, therefore, I sat myself down on the shale, while Joe, pick in hand, went to work again. Pretty soon he straightened up and said: "I've found the vein all right, Phil; I don't think there can be a doubt of it. Good strong vein, too, I should say." "How wide is it?" I asked. "Can't tell how wide it is. I've found what I suppose to be the porphyry hanging-wall, right here"--tapping the rock with his pick--"and I've been trying to trench across the vein to find the foot-wall, but the shale runs in on me faster than I can dig it out." "What do you propose to do, then, Joe?" "Try one of those other holes further along and see if I can't find the vein again and get its direction. You sit still there, Phil. I shall want you to give me a hand out of here soon." With extreme caution he made his way along the line of stumps, helping himself with the pick in one hand and the shovel in the other, until, about a hundred yards distant, he arrived at another hole where a tree had been rooted out, and here he went to work again. This time he kept at it for a good half hour, but at length he laid down his tools, and for a few minutes occupied himself by building with loose pieces of rock a little pillar about eighteen inches high. "Can you see that, Phil?" he shouted. "Yes, I can see it," I called back. This seemed to be all Joe wanted, for he at once picked up his tools again, and with the same caution made his way back to the first hole. "What's your pile of stones for, Joe?" I asked. "Why, I found the vein again, hanging-wall and all, and I set up that little monument so as to get the line of the vein from here." Taking out of his pocket a little compass we had brought for the purpose, he laid it on the rock, and sighting back over his "monument," he found that the vein ran northeast and southwest. "Phil," said he, "do you see that dead pine, broken off at the top, with a hawk's nest in it, away back there on the upper side of the gulch where we left the ponies?" "Yes," I replied, "I see it. What of it?" "The line of the vein runs right to that tree, and I propose we get back and hunt for it there. I don't want to set up the location-stake here: this place is too difficult to get at and too dangerous to work in. So I vote we get back to the dead tree and try again there. What do you say?" "All right," I replied. "We'll do so." "Very well, then I'll come up now." But this was more easily said than done. Do what he would, Joe could not get up to where I sat, holding out to him first a hand and then a foot. He tried walking and he tried crawling, but in vain; the rock beneath the shale was too steep and too smooth and too slippery. At length, at my suggestion, Joe threw the shovel up to me, when, on my lying flat and reaching downward as far as I could stretch, he succeeded in hooking the pick over the shoulder of the shovel-blade, after which he had no more difficulty. "Well, Joe," said I, when we had safely reached the rocks again, "it's just as well we didn't both go down together after all, isn't it?" "That's what it is," replied my partner, heartily. "If you had tried to come down with me we should both probably have tumbled into that hole together, and there we should have had to stay till somebody came up to look for us; and there'd have been precious little fun in that. Did it scare you when I went scooting down the slide on my back?" "It certainly did," I replied. "I expected to have to go down to Peter's house and lug _you_ home next--if there was any of you left." "Well, to tell you the truth, I was a bit scared myself. It was a great piece of luck my falling into that hole. It's a dangerous place, this, and the sooner we get out of it the better; so, let us start back, at once." Making our way up the spur, we again skirted along between the upper edge of the slide and the foot of the cliff, and ascending once more to the ridge, we retraced our steps down it until we presently arrived at the dead tree with the hawk's nest in it. Here, after a careful inspection of the ground, we went to work, Joe with the pick, and I, following behind him, throwing out the loose stuff with the shovel and searching through each shovelful for bits of galena. In this way we worked, cutting a narrow trench across the line where we supposed the vein ought to run, until presently Joe himself gave a great shout which brought me to his side in an instant. With the point of his pick he had hooked out a lump of galena as big as his head! My! How excited we were! And how we did work! We just flew at it, tooth and nail--or, rather, pick and shovel. If our lives had depended on it we could not have worked any harder, I firmly believe. The consequence was that at the end of an hour we had uncovered a vein fifteen feet wide, disclosing a porphyry wall on one side and a limestone wall on the other. The vein was not, of course, a solid body of ore. Very far from it. Though there were bits of galena scattered pretty thickly all across it, the bulk of the vein-matter was composed of scraps of quartz mixed with yellow earth--the latter, as we afterwards learned, being itself decomposed lead-ore--to say nothing of grass-roots, tree-roots and other rubbish which helped to make up the mass. But that we had found a real, genuine vein, even we, novices as we were at the business, could not doubt, and very heartily we shook hands with each other when our trenching at length brought us up against the limestone foot-wall. With the discovery of this foot-wall, Joe called a halt. "Enough!" he cried. "Enough, Phil! Let's stop now. We've got the vein, all right, and a staving good vein it is, and all we have to do for the present is to set up our location-stake. To-morrow Tom will come up here, when he can make his camp and get to work at it regularly, sinking his ten-foot prospect-hole. What are we going to name it? The 'Hermit'? The 'Raven'? The 'Socrates'?" "Call it the 'Big Reuben,'" I suggested. "Good!" exclaimed Joe. "That's it! The 'Big Reuben' it shall be." This, therefore, was the title we wrote upon our location-notice, by which we claimed for Tom Connor a strip of ground fifteen hundred feet in length along the course of the vein and one hundred and fifty feet wide on either side of it; and thus did our old enemy, Big Reuben, lend his name to a "prospect" which was destined later to take its place among the foremost mines of our district. CHAPTER XVI THE WOLF WITH WET FEET We had been so expeditious, thanks largely to Joe's good judgment in tumbling into the right hole at the start when he slid down the shale, that we reached home well before sunset, when, according to the arrangement we had made as we rode down, Joe started again that same evening for Sulphide. This time he made the trip without interruption, and when at eight o'clock next morning he drove up to our house, Tom Connor was with him. "How are you, old man?" cried the latter, springing to the ground and shaking hands very heartily with our guest. "That was a pretty narrow squeak you had." "It certainly was," replied Peter. "And if it hadn't been for these boys, I'd have been up there yet. What's the news, Connor? Any clue to your ore-thieves?" "Not much but what you and the boys have furnished. But ask Joe, he'll tell you." "Well," said Joe, "in the first place, Long John has disappeared. He has not been seen since the evening before the robbery. No one knows what's become of him." "Is that so?" I cried. "Then I suppose the robbery is laid to him." "Yes, to him and another man. I'll tell you all about it. After I had been to the mine and given Tom our news, I went down town to Yetmore's and had a long talk with him. That was a good idea of your father's, Phil, that we should go and tell Yetmore: he took it very kindly, and repeated several times how much obliged he felt. He seems most anxious to be friendly." "It's my opinion," Tom Connor cut in, "that he got such a thorough scare that night of the explosion, and is so desperate thankful he didn't blow you two sky-high, that he can't do enough to make amends." "That's it, I think," said Joe. "And I believe it is a great relief to him also to find that we are not trying to lay the blame on him. Anyhow, he couldn't have been more friendly than he was; and he told me things which seem to throw some light on the matter of the ore-theft. There _was_ seemingly a second man concerned in it; a man with a club-foot, Peter." "Ah, ha!" said Peter. "Is that so?" "Yes. There used to be a man about town known as 'Clubfoot,' a crony of Long John's," Joe continued. "He was convicted of ore-stealing about three years ago, and was sent to the penitentiary. A few days ago he escaped, and it is Yetmore's opinion that he ran straight to Long John for shelter. On the night after the explosion he--Yetmore, I mean, you know--went to John's house 'to give the blundering numskull a piece of his mind,' as he said--we can guess what about--and John wouldn't let him in; so they held their interview outside in the dark. I gathered that there was a pretty lively quarrel, which ended in Yetmore telling Long John that he had done with him, and that he needn't expect him to grub-stake him this spring. "It is Yetmore's belief that the reason John wouldn't let him into his house--it's only a one-roomed shanty, you know--was that Clubfoot was then inside; and he further believes that John, finding himself deprived of his expected summer's work, and no doubt incensed besides at Yetmore's going back on him, as he would consider it, then and there planned with Clubfoot the robbery of the ore; both of them being familiar with the workings of the Pelican." "That sounds reasonable," remarked Peter; "though, when all is said and done, it amounts to no more than a guess on Yetmore's part. But, look here!" he went on, as the thought suddenly occurred to him. "If Long John is not prospecting for Yetmore or himself either, being supposedly in hiding, what was he doing on the 'bubble' yesterday?" "But perhaps he is prospecting for himself," Tom Connor broke in. "Here we are, theorizing away like a house afire on the idea that he is the thief, when maybe he had nothing to do with it. And if he is prospecting for himself, the sooner I get up to that claim the better if I don't want to be interfered with. I reckon I'll dig out right away. If you boys," turning to us, "can spare the time and the buckboard you can help me a good bit by carrying up my things for me." "All right, Tom," said I. "We can do so." Starting at once, therefore, with a load of provisions, tools and bedding, we carried them up the mountain as far as we could on wheels, and then packed them the rest of the way on horseback, when, having seen Tom comfortably established in camp near the Big Reuben--with the look of which he expressed himself as immensely pleased--Joe and I turned homeward again about four in the afternoon. We were driving along, skirting the rim of our cañon, and were passing between the stream and the little treeless "bubble" upon which Joe had, as he believed, seen Long John standing the day before, when my companion remarked: "I should very much like to know, Phil, what Long John was doing up there. Do you suppose----Whoa! Whoa, there, Josephus! What's the matter with you?" This exclamation was addressed to the horse; for at this moment the ordinarily well-behaved Josephus shied, snorted, and standing up on his hind feet struck out with his fore hoofs at a big timber-wolf, which, springing out from the shelter of some boulders on the margin of the cañon and passing almost under his nose, ran off and disappeared among the rocks. "He must have been down to the stream to get a drink," suggested Joe. "He couldn't," said I; "the cañon-wall is too steep; no wolf could scramble up." "Well, if he didn't," remarked my companion, "how did he get his feet wet? Look here at his tracks." As he said this, Joe pointed to the bare stone before us, where the wolf's wet tracks were plainly visible. "Well," said I, "then I suppose there must be a way up after all. Wait a moment, Joe, while I take a look." Jumping from the buckboard, I stepped over to the boulders whence the wolf had appeared, where, to my surprise, I found a pool, or, rather, a big puddle of water, which, overflowing, dripped into the cañon. Where the water came from I could not at first detect, but on a more careful inspection I found that it ran, a tiny thread, along a crack in the lava not more than a couple of inches wide, which, on tracing it back, I found we had driven over without noticing. Apparently the water came down from the "bubble" through a rift in the crater-wall. As I have stated before, several of the little craters contributed small streams of water to our creek, but this was not one of them, so, turning to my companion, I said: "Joe, this is the first time I have ever seen any water come down from that 'bubble.' Let us climb up to the top and take a look inside." Away we went, therefore, scrambling up the rocky slope, when, having reached the rim, we looked down into the little crater. The area of its floor was only about an acre in extent, but instead of being grown over with grass and sagebrush, as was the case with most of them, this one was covered with blocks of stone of all sizes, some of them weighing several tons. It was evident that the walls, which were only about thirty feet in height, had at one time been much higher, but that in the course of ages they had broken down and thus littered the little bowl-shaped depression with the fragments. The thread of water which had drawn us up there came trickling out from among these blocks of stone, and we set out at once to trace it up to its source while we still had daylight. But this, we found, was by no means easy, for, though the stream did not dodge about much, but ran pretty directly down to the crack in the wall, its course was so much impeded by rocks, under and around which it had to make its way--while over and around them we had to make _our_ way--that it was ten or fifteen minutes before we discovered where it came from. We had expected to find a pool of rain-water, more or less extensive, seeping through the sand and slowly draining away. What we actually did find was something very different: something which filled us with wonder and excitement! About the middle of the little crater there came boiling out of the ground a strong spring, which, running along a deep, narrow channel it had in the course of many centuries worn in the solid stone floor of the crater, disappeared in turn beneath the litter of rocks. A short distance below the spring the channel was half filled for some distance with fragments of stone of no great size, which, checking the rush of the water, caused it to lap over the edge. It was this slight overflow which supplied the driblet we had followed up from the cañon below. "Joe!" I exclaimed, greatly excited. "Do you know what I think?" "Yes, I do," my companion answered like a flash. "I think so, too. Come on! Let's find out at once!" Following the channel, we went clambering over the rocks, which just here were not quite so plentiful, until, at a distance from the spring of about fifty yards, we came upon a large circular pool in which the water flowed continuously round and round as though stirred with a gigantic spoon, while in the centre it spun round violently, a perfect little whirlpool, and sank with a gurgle into the earth. For a moment we stood gazing spellbound at this natural phenomenon, hardly realizing what it meant, and then, with one impulse, we both threw our hats into the air with a shout, seized each other's hands, and danced a wild and unconventional dance, with no witness but a solitary eagle, which, passing high overhead, paused for an instant in his flight to wonder, probably, what those crazy, unaccountable human beings were up to now. At length, out of breath, we stopped, when Joe, clapping his hands together to emphasize his words, cried: "At last we've found it, Phil! This, _surely_, is the water-supply that keeps the 'forty rods' wet!" "It must be," I replied, no less excited than my partner. "It must be; it can't be anything else. But how are we going to prove it, Joe?" "The only way I see is to divert the flow here; then, if our underground stream stops, we shall know this is it." "Yes, but how are we to divert it?" "Why, look here," Joe answered. "The spring, I suppose, is a little extra-strong just now, causing that slight overflow up above here. Well, what we must do is to take the line marked out for us by the overflow, and following it from the channel down to the crack in the crater-wall, break up and throw aside all the rocks that get in the way; then cut a new channel and send the whole stream off through the crack, when it will pour into the cañon, run across the ranch on the surface, and the 'forty rods' will dry up!" He gazed at me eagerly, with his fists shut tight, as though he were all ready to spring upon the impeding rocks and fling them out of the way at once. "That's all right, Joe," I replied. "It's a good programme. But it's a tremendous piece of work, all the same. There are scores of rocks to be broken up and moved; and when that is done, there is still the new channel to be cut in the solid stone bed of the crater. The present channel is about eighteen inches deep; we shall have to make the new one six inches deeper, and something like a hundred feet long: a big job by itself, Joe." "I know that," Joe answered. "It's a big job, sure enough, and will take time and lots of hard work. Still, we can do it----" "And what's more we will do it!" I cried. "What's the best way of setting about it?" "We shall have to blast out the channel and blow to pieces all the bigger rocks," Joe replied. "It would take forever to do it with pick and sledge--in fact, it couldn't be done. We shall have to use powder and drill." "Well, then," said I, "I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll borrow the tools from Tom Connor. He left a number of drills, you know, stored in our blacksmith-shop, and he'll lend 'em to us I'm sure. One of us had better drive back to the Big Reuben to-morrow morning and ask him." "All right, Phil, we'll do so. My! I wish--it doesn't sound very complimentary--but I wish your father would stay away another week. I believe we can do this work in a week, and wouldn't it be grand if we could have the stream headed off before he got home! But how about the plowing, Phil? I was forgetting that." "Why, the only plowing left," I replied, "is the potato land, and that, fortunately, is not urgent; whereas the turning of this stream is urgent--extremely urgent--and my opinion is that we ought to get at it. Anyhow, we'll begin on it, and if my father thinks proper to set us to plowing instead when he gets home--all right." "Well, then, we'll begin on this work as soon as we can. And now, Phil, let us get along home." We had been seated on a big stone while this discussion was going on, and were just about to rise, when Joe, suddenly laying his hand on my arm, held up a warning finger. "Sh!" he whispered. "Don't speak. Don't stir. I hear some one moving about!" Squatting behind the rocks, I held my breath and listened, and presently I heard distinctly, somewhere close by, the tinkle of two or three chips of stone as they rolled down into the crater. Some one was softly approaching the place where we sat. Though to move was to risk detection, our anxiety to see who was there was too strong to resist, so Joe, taking off his hat, slowly arose until he was able to peep through a chink between two of the big fragments which sheltered us. For a moment he stood there motionless, and then, tapping me on the shoulder, he signed to me to stand up too. Peeping between the stones, I saw, not fifty yards away, a man coming carefully down the crater-wall on the side opposite from that by which we ourselves had entered. In spite of his care, however, he every now and then dislodged a little fragment of stone, which came clattering down the steep slope. It was one of these that had given us notice of his approach. There was no mistaking the tall, gaunt figure, even though the light of the sunset sky behind him made him look a veritable giant. It was Long John Butterfield. He was headed straight for our hiding-place, and it was with some uneasiness that I observed he had a revolver strapped about his waist. In appearance he looked wilder and more unkempt than ever, while the sharp, suspicious manner in which he would every now and then stop short and glance quickly all around, showed him to be nervous and ill at ease. While Joe and I stood there silent and rigid as statues, Long John came on down the slope, until presently he stopped scarce ten steps from us beside a big, flat stone. There, for a moment, he stood, his hand on his revolver, his body bent and his head thrust forward, his ears cocked and his little eyes roving all about the crater--the picture of a watchful wild animal--when, satisfied apparently that he was alone and unobserved, he went down upon his knees, threw aside several pieces of rock, and thrusting his arm under the flat stone, he pulled out--a sack! So close to us was he, that even in that uncertain light we could distinguish the word, "Pelican," stenciled upon it in big black letters. Laying this sack upon the flat stone, John reached into the hole again, and, one after another, brought out four others. Apparently there were no more in there, for, having done this, he rose to his feet again, looked all about him once more, and then walked off a short distance up-stream. At the point where the channel overflowed he stopped again, when, to our wonderment he pulled off his coat, rolled up one sleeve, and going down upon his knees, began scratching around in the water. In a few seconds he fished out one at a time five dripping sacks, all of which he carried over and set down beside the first five. Evidently he was working with some set purpose; though to us watchers it was all a perfectly mysterious proceeding. A few steps from where the sacks were piled was a little ledge of rock less than a foot high, above which was a steep slope covered with loose fragments of stone. Taking up the sacks, two at a time, John carried them over to this spot, laid them all, end to end, close under the little ledge, and then, climbing up above them, he sat down, and with his big, flat feet sent the loose shale running down until the row of sacks was completely buried. This seemed to be all he wanted, for, having examined the result of his work and satisfied himself apparently that the sacks were perfectly concealed, he turned and went straight off up the crater-wall again, pausing at the crest for a minute to inspect the country ahead of him, and then, stepping over the rim, in another moment he had vanished. "Come on, Phil!" whispered my companion, eagerly. "Let us see which direction he takes." "Wait a bit," I replied. "Give him five minutes: he might come back." We waited a short time, therefore, when, feeling pretty sure that John had gone for good, we scrambled to the summit of the ridge and looked out over the mesa. There we could see Long John striding away at a great pace, apparently making straight for Big Reuben's gorge. "Then Yetmore was right," said Joe. "Those fellows were the ore-thieves after all. I wonder if they haven't taken up their quarters in Big Reuben's old cave. It would be a pretty good place for their purpose." "Quite likely," I assented. "But what do you suppose, Joe, can have been Long John's object in coming down here and moving those ore-sacks?--for, of course, they are the Pelican ore-sacks. They were well enough concealed before." "It does look mysterious at first sight," replied Joe, "but I expect the explanation is simple enough. I think it is probable that when they brought the ore up here the two men divided the spoils on the spot, each hiding his own share in a place of his own choosing; and our respected friend, John, thinking to get ahead of the other thief, has just come and stolen his partner's share." "That would be a pretty shabby trick, but I expect it is just what he has done. He'll be a bit surprised when he finds that some one has played a similar trick on him. For, of course, we can't leave the sacks there, to be moved again if Long John should take the notion that the hiding place is not safe enough. How shall we manage it, Joe? If we are going to do anything this evening we must do it quickly: there won't be daylight much longer." After a moment's consideration, Joe replied: "Let us go down and carry those sacks outside the crater. Then get along home, and come back here with the wagon and team by daylight to-morrow and haul them off. It is too much of a load for the buckboard, even if we walked ourselves, so it won't do to take them with us now." "All right," said I. "Then we'll do that; and afterwards you can ride up to see Tom Connor about those tools, while I drive to Sulphide with the ore. Won't Yetmore be glad to see me!" There was no time to lose, and even as it was, the waning light made it pretty difficult to pick our way across the rock-strewn bottom of the crater with a fifty-pound sack under each arm, but at length we had them all safely laid away in a crack in the rocks just outside the crater, whence it would be handy to remove them in the morning. By the time we had finished it was dark, and we hurriedly drove off home, contemplating with some reluctance the chores which were still to be done. From this duty, however, we had a happy relief, for our good friend, Peter, anxious to make himself of some use, and taking his time about it, had managed to feed the horses and pigs, milk the cows, shut up the chickens and start the fire for supper--a service on his part which we very thoroughly appreciated. We had just sat down to our evening meal, and were telling Peter all about our two great finds of the afternoon, when our guest, whose long and solitary life as a hunter had made his hearing preternaturally sharp, straightened himself in his chair, and holding up one finger, said: "Hark! I hear a horse coming up the valley at a gallop!" At first Joe and I could hear nothing, but presently we detected the rhythmical beat of the hoofs of a horse approaching at a smart canter. Somebody was coming up from San Remo--for though a wheeled vehicle could not pass over the "forty rods," a horseman could pick his way--and knowing that nobody ever came that way in the "soft" season unless our house was his destination, I stepped to the door, wondering who our visitor could be. Great was my surprise when the horseman, riding into the streak of light thrown through the open doorway, proved to be Yetmore! "Why, Mr. Yetmore!" I cried. "Is it you? Come in! You're just in time for supper." "Thank you, Phil," replied the storekeeper, "but I won't stop. I was down at San Remo this afternoon, and it occurred to me to ride home this way and inquire of you if you'd seen or heard anything more of those ore-thieves. By the way, before I forget it: I brought your mail for you;" at the same time handing me one letter and two or three newspapers. "Thank you," said I, thrusting the letter into my pocket. "And as to the ore-thieves, Mr. Yetmore, we've seen one of them; but we've done something a good deal better than that--we've found the ore." "What!" shouted Yetmore, so loudly that Joe came running out, thinking there must be something the matter. "What! You've found the ore!" So saying, he leaped from his horse and seizing me by the arm, cried: "You're not joking, are you, Phil? For goodness' sake, don't fool me, boys. It's a matter of life and death to me, almost!" His anxiety was plainly expressed in his eager eyes and trembling hand, and I was glad to note the look of relief which came over his face when I replied: "I'm not fooling, Mr. Yetmore. We've found it all right--this evening. Come in and have some supper, and we'll tell you all about it." Yetmore did not decline a second time, but forgetting even to tie up his horse, which Joe did for him, he followed me at once into the kitchen, where, hardly noticing Peter, to whom I introduced him, and neglecting entirely the food placed before him, he sat down and instantly exclaimed: "Now, Phil! Quick! Go ahead! Go ahead! Don't keep me waiting, there's a good fellow! How did you find the ore? Where is it? What have you done with it?" Not to prolong his suspense, I at once related to him as briefly as possible the whole incident, winding up with the statement that we proposed to go and bring in the sacks by daylight on the morrow. At this conclusion Yetmore sprang to his feet. "Boys," said he, in a tremulous voice, "you've done me an immense service; now do me one more favor: lend me your big gun. I'll ride right up to the 'bubble' and stand guard over the ore till morning. If I should lose it a second time I believe it would turn my head." That he was desperately in earnest was plain to be seen: his voice was shaky, and his hand, I noticed, was shaky, too, when he held it out entreating us to lend him our big gun. I was about to say he might take it, and welcome, when Joe pulled me by the sleeve and whispered in my ear; I nodded my acquiescence; upon which my companion, turning to Yetmore, said: "We can do better than that, Mr. Yetmore. We'll hitch up the little mules and go and bring away the ore to-night." I have no doubt that to our anxious visitor the time seemed interminable while Joe and I were finishing our supper, but at length we rose from the table, and within a few minutes thereafter we were off; Yetmore himself sitting in the bed of the wagon with the big shotgun across his knees. As it was then quite dark, and as we did not wish to attract any possible notice by carrying a light, we were obliged to take it very slowly, one or other of us now and then descending from the wagon and walking ahead as a pilot. In due time, however, we reached the foot of the "bubble," when, leaving Yetmore to take care of the mules, Joe and I climbed up to the crevice, and having presently, by feeling around with our hands, found the hiding-place of the sacks, we pulled them out and carried them, one at a time down to the wagon. All this, being done in the dark, took a long time, and it was pretty late when we drew up again at our own door. Here, for the first time, Yetmore, striking a match, examined the ten little sacks. "It's all right, boys," said he, with a great sigh of relief. "These are the sacks; and none of them has been opened, either." He paused for a moment, and then, with much earnestness of manner, went on: "How am I to thank you, boys? You've done me a service of infinite importance. The loss of that ore almost distracted me: I needed the money so badly. But now, thanks to you, I shall be all right again. You don't know how great a service you have done me. I shan't forget it. We've not always been on the best of terms, I'm sorry to say--my fault, though, my fault entirely--but I should be very glad, if it suits you, to start fresh to-night and begin again as friends." He was so evidently in earnest, that Joe and I by one impulse shook hands with him and declared that nothing would suit us better. "And how about the ore, Mr. Yetmore?" I asked. "What will you do now?" "If you don't mind," he replied, "I should like to drive straight up to Sulphide at once. If you will lend me the mules and wagon, I'll set right off. I'll return them to-morrow." "Very well," said I. "And you can leave your own horse in the stable, so that whoever brings down the team will have a horse to ride home on." Yetmore, accordingly, climbed up to the seat and drove off at once, calling back over his shoulder: "Good-night, boys; and thank you again. I feel ten years younger than I did this morning!" CHAPTER XVII THE DRAINING OF THE "FORTY RODS" As soon as Yetmore was out of sight, Joe and I turned into the house, where we found that Peter, wise man, had gone to bed; an example we speedily followed. But, tired though we were, we could neither of us go to sleep. For a long time we lay talking over the exciting events of the day, and going over the probable consequences, if, as now seemed certain, we had indeed discovered the source of our underground stream. First and foremost, by diverting it we should dry up the "forty rods" and render productive a large piece of land which at present was more bane than benefit; we should bring the county road past our door; we should more than double our supply of water for irrigation purposes--a fact which, by itself, would be of immense advantage to us. At present we had no more than enough water--sometimes hardly enough--to irrigate our crops, but by doubling the supply we could bring into use another hundred acres or more. On either side of our present cultivated area, and only three feet above it, spread the first of the old lake-benches, a fine, level tract of land, capable of growing any crop, but which, for lack of water, we had hitherto utilized only as a dry pasture for our stock. By a test we had once made of a little patch of it, we had found that it was well adapted to the cultivation of wheat; and as I lay there thinking--Joe having by this time departed to the land of dreams--I pictured in my mind the whole area converted into one flourishing wheat-field; I built a castle in the air in the shape of a flour-mill which I ran by power derived from our waterfall; and with a two-ton load of flour I was in imagination driving down to San Remo over the splendid road which traversed the now solid "forty rods," when a light shining in my face disturbed me. It was the sun pouring in at our east window! Half-past seven! And we still in bed! Such a thing had not happened to me since that time when, a rebellious infant, I had been kept in bed perforce with a light attack of the measles. Needless to say, we were up and dressed in next to no time, when, on descending to the kitchen, we found another surprise in store for us. Peter was gone! He must have been gone some hours, too, for the fire in the range had burned out. He had not deserted us, however, for on the table was a bit of paper upon which he had written, "Back pretty soon. Wait for me"--a behest we duly obeyed, not knowing what else to do. About an hour later I heard the trampling of horses outside the front door, and going out, there I saw Peter stiffly descending from the back of our gray pony; while beside him, with a broad grin on his jolly face, stood Tom Connor. "Why, Tom!" I cried. "What brings you here?" Tom laughed. "Didn't expect to see me, eh, Phil," said he. "It's Peter's doing. While you two lazy young rascals were snoring away in bed, he started out at four-thirty this morning and rode all the way up to my camp to borrow my tools for you. And when he told me what you wanted 'em for, I decided to come down, too. You did me a good turn in finding the Big Reuben for me--and 'big' is the word for it, Phil, I can tell you--and so I thought I couldn't do less than come down here for a day or two and give you a hand. It's probable I can help you a good bit with your trench-cutting." "There's no doubt about that, Tom," I replied. "We shall be mighty glad of your help. You can give us a starter, anyhow. But you, Peter, we couldn't think what had become of you. Don't you think it was a bit risky to go galloping about the country with that game leg of yours?" "I couldn't very well go without it," replied our guest, laughing. "No, I don't think so," he added, more seriously. "It was easy enough, all except the mounting and dismounting. In fact, Phil, I'm so nearly all right again that I should have no excuse to be hanging around here any longer if it were not that I can be of use to you by taking all the chores off your hands, thus leaving you and Joe free to get about your work in the crater." "That will be a great help," I replied. "Though as to letting you go, Peter, we don't intend to do that, at least till my father and mother get home." "When _do_ they get home?" asked Tom. "Have you heard from them since they left?" "Why!" I cried, suddenly remembering the letter Yetmore had brought up from San Remo the previous evening. "I have a letter from my father in my pocket now. I'd forgotten all about it." Quickly tearing it open, I read it through. It was very short, being written mainly with the object of informing me that he was delayed and would not be home until the afternoon of the following Wednesday. This was Friday. "Joe!" I shouted; and Joe, who was in the stable, came running at the call. "Joe," I cried, "we have till Wednesday afternoon to turn that stream. Four full days. Tom is going to help us. Peter will take the chores. Can we make it?" "Good!" cried Joe. "Great! Make it? I should think so. We'll do it if we have to work night and day. My! But this is fine!" He rubbed his hands in anticipation of the task ahead of him. I never did know a fellow who took such delight in tackling a job which had every appearance of being just a little too big for him. We did not waste any time, you may be sure. Having picked out the necessary tools, we went off at once, taking our dinners with us, and arriving at the foot of the "bubble," we carried up into the crater the drills, hammers and other munitions of war we had brought with us. "I thought you said there was a driblet of water running out at the crevice," remarked Tom. "I don't see it." "There was yesterday," I replied, "but it seems to have stopped. I wonder why." "That's easily accounted for," said Joe. "It was those sacks lying in the channel which backed up the water and made it overflow, and when Long John cleared the course by pulling out the sacks it didn't overflow any more." "Then it's to Long John you owe this discovery!" cried Tom. "If 'The Wolf' hadn't blocked that channel the water would not have run down to the cañon, and the other wolf would not have got his feet wet; and if the other wolf had not got his feet wet, you would never have thought of coming up here." "That's all true," I assented. "In fact, you may go further than that and say that if John had not stolen the ore he would not have blocked the channel with it, and we should not have found the spring; if Yetmore had not given John leave to blow up your house, John would not have stolen the ore; if you had not bored a hole in Yetmore's oil-barrel, Yetmore would not have given John leave--it's like the story of 'The House that Jack Built.' And so, after all, it is to you we owe this discovery, Tom." "Well, that's one way of getting at it," said Tom, laughing. "But, come on! Let's pick out our line and get to work." "This won't be so much of a job," he remarked, when we had gone over the ground. "You ought to make quick work of it. We'll follow the wet mark left by the overflow, throw all these rocks out of the way, and then pitch in and cut our trench. Come on, now; let's begin at once. Phil, you throw aside all the rocks you can lift; Joe, take the sledge and crack all those too heavy to handle; I'll take the single-hand drill and hammer and put some shots into the big ones. Now, boys, blaze away, and let's see how much of a mark we can make before sunset." Blaze away we did! Never before had Joe and I worked so hard for so long a stretch; not a minute did we lose, except on those four or five occasions when Tom, having put down a hole into one of the large pieces, called out to us to get to cover, when, running for shelter, we crouched behind some friendly rock until a sharp, cracking explosion told us that another of the big obstructions was out of the way. So hard did we work, in fact, and so systematically, that by sunset we had cleared a path six feet wide. There remained only one more of the big rocks to break up, and into this Tom put a three-foot hole, which he charged and tamped, when, sending us ahead to hitch up the horse, he touched off the fuse, the explosion following just as we started homeward. "A great day's work, boys!" cried Tom. "If it wasn't for the training you've had all winter handling rocks, you never could have done it. There is a good chance now, I think, of getting the trench cut before Wednesday evening. I'll work with you all day to-morrow--I must get back to my camp then--and that will leave you two days and a half to finish up the job. You ought to do it if you keep hard at it." By sunrise next morning we were at it again, working under Tom's direction, in the same systematic manner. "Take the sledge, Joe," said he, "and crack up the fragments of that big rock we shot to pieces last night. Phil, you and I will put down our first hole, beginning here at the crevice and working upward. Now! Let's get to work!" Tom and I, therefore, went to work with drill and hammer, Tom taking the larger share of the striking; for though the swinging of the seven-pound hammer is the harder part of the work, the turning of the drill is the more particular, and as our instructor justly remarked, it was as well I should have all the practice I could get while he was on hand to superintend. The hole being deep enough, Tom made me load and tamp it with my own hands, using black powder, which, though perhaps less effective for this particular kind of work than giant powder would have been, he regarded as safer for novices like ourselves to handle. Our first shot broke out the rock in very good style, and then, while I busied myself cracking up the big pieces and throwing them aside, Joe took my place. The second hole was loaded and tamped by Joe, under Tom's supervision; after which my partner once more took the sledge, while I turned drill again. In this order we worked all day, making, before quitting time, such encouraging progress that we felt very hopeful of getting the task completed before my father's return. Tom having fairly started us, went back to his camp on Lincoln, leaving Joe and me to continue the work by ourselves; and sorely did we miss our expert miner when, on the Monday morning, we returned to the crater. Though we kept steadily at it all day, our progress was noticeably slower than it had been the first day, for, besides the fact that there were only two of us, and those the least skilful, as we ascended towards the stream each hole was a little deeper than the last, each charge a little stronger, and each shot blew out a greater amount of rock to be broken up and cast aside. Nevertheless, we made very satisfactory headway, and continuing our work the next two days with unabated energy and some increase of skill with every hole we put down, we made such progress that by two o'clock on the Wednesday afternoon there remained but three feet of rock to be shot out to make connection with the channel. I was for blasting this out forthwith, but Joe on the other hand suggested that we trim up our trench a little before turning in the water; for, hitherto, we had merely thrown out the loose pieces, and there were in consequence many projections and jagged corners both in the sides and bottom of our proposed water-course. These we attacked with sledge and crowbar, and in two hours or so had them pretty well cleared out of the way, when we went to work putting down our last hole. As we wanted to make a sure thing of it, we sank this hole rather deeper than any of the others, charging it with an extra allowance of powder. Then, the tools having been removed, I touched off the fuse and ran for shelter behind the big rock where Joe was already crouching, making himself as small as possible. Presently there was a tremendous bang! Rocks of every size and shape were flung broadcast all over the crater--some of them coming down uncomfortably close to our hiding-place--but as soon as the clatter ceased, up we both jumped and ran to see the result. Nothing could have been better. Our last shot had torn a great hole, extending across almost the whole width of the old channel, and our trench being six inches or more below the original level, the whole stream at once rushed into it, leaving its former bed high and dry. "Hooray, for us!" shouted Joe. "Come on, Phil! Let us run down and see it go into the cañon." Away we went; but as the crater-side was pretty steep we had to descend with some caution; whereas the water, having no neck to break, went down headlong. The consequence was that the stream beat us to the cañon by a hundred yards, and by the time we arrived it was pouring over the edge in a sixty-foot cascade. We were in time, however, to see a wall of foam flying down the cañon; a sight which, while it delighted us, at the same time gave us something of a start. "Joe!" I cried. "How about our bridge?" "Pht!" Joe whistled. "I never thought of it. It will go out, I'm afraid. Let us get down there at once." Off we ran to where our horse was standing, eating hay out of the back of the buckboard, threw on the harness, hitched him up, and scrambling in, one on either side, away we went as fast as we dared over the uneven, rocky stretch of the mesa which lay between us and home. The course of the stream being more circuitous than the one we took across country, we beat the water down to the ranch; but only by a few seconds. We had hardly reached the bridge when the swollen stream leaped into the pool in such volume that I felt convinced it would sweep it clear of all the sand in it whether black or yellow; rushed under the bridge, and went tearing down the valley--a sight to see! Luckily the creek-bed was fairly wide and straight, so that the banks did not suffer much. As to the bridge, the stringers being very long and well set, and the floor being composed of stout poles roughly squared and firmly spiked down, it did not go out, though the water came squirting up between the poles in a way which made us fear it might tear them loose at any moment. To prevent this, we ran quickly to the stable, harnessed up the mules to the wood-sled, loaded the sled with some of our big flat lava-rocks, and driving back to the bridge, we laid these rocks upon the ends of the poles, leaving a causeway between them wide enough for the passage of a wagon. We had just finished this piece of work, when we heard a rattle of wheels, and looking up the road we saw coming down the hill an express-wagon, driven by Sam Tobin, a San Remo liveryman, and in the wagon sat my father and mother. "Why, what's all this?" cried the former, as the driver pulled up on the far side of the bridge. "Where does all this water come from?" Then did the pent-up excitement of the past week burst forth. The flood of water going under the bridge was a trifle compared with the flood of words we poured out upon my bewildered parents; both of us talking at the same time, interrupting each other at every turn, explaining each other's explanations, and tumbling over each other, as it were, in our eagerness. All the details of the strenuous days since the snow-slide came down--the discovery of the Big Reuben, the recovery of the stolen ore, and above all the heading-off of the underground stream--were set forth with breathless volubility; so that if the hearers were a little dazed by the recital and a trifle confused as to the particulars, it was not to be wondered at. One thing, at least, was clear to them: we had found and turned the underground stream; and when he understood that, my father leaped from the wagon, and shaking hands with both of us at once, he cried: "Boys, you certainly _have_ done a stroke of work! If it had taken you a year instead of a week it would have been more than worth the labor. As to its actual money value, it is hard to judge yet; but whether that shall turn out to be much or little, there is one thing sure:--we have our work cut out for us for years to come--a grand thing by itself for all of us. And now, let us go on up to the house: Sam Tobin wants to get back home as soon as possible." This the driver was able to do at once, for the livery horses, frightened by the water which came spurting up through the floor of the bridge, declined to cross, so Joe and I, taking out the trunk, placed it on the wood-sled and thus drew it up to the house. As we walked along, my mother said: "So the hermit has been staying with you, has he? And what sort of a man _is_ your wild man now you've caught him?" "He isn't a wild man at all," cried Joe, somewhat indignantly. "He's a fine fellow--isn't he, Phil? He has been of great help to us these last few days. We could never have finished our trench in time if he hadn't taken the chores off our hands. He is in the kitchen now, getting the supper ready. I'll run and bring him out." So saying, Joe ran forward--we others walking on more leisurely--and as we approached the house the pair came out of the front door side by side. In spite of Joe's assurance to the contrary, my parents still had in their minds the idea that any one going by the name of "Peter, the Hermit" must be a rough, hirsute, unkempt specimen of humanity. Great was their surprise, therefore, when Peter, always clean and tidy, his hair and beard neatly trimmed in honor of their return, issued from the doorway, looking, with his clear gray eyes, his ruddy complexion and his spare, erect figure, remarkably young and alert. There was an added heartiness in their welcome, therefore, when Joe proudly introduced him; and though Peter threw out hints about sleeping in the hay-loft that night and taking himself off the first thing in the morning, my mother scouted the idea, telling him how she had long desired to make his acquaintance, and intimating that she should take it as a very poor compliment to herself if he should run off the moment she got home. So Peter, set quite at his ease, said no more about it, but went back into the kitchen, whence he presently issued again to announce that supper was ready. A very hearty and a very merry supper it was, too, and long and animated was the talk which followed, as we sat before the open fire that evening. "I feel almost bewildered," said my father, "when I think of the amount and the variety of the work we have before us; it is astonishing that the turning of that stream should carry with it so many consequences, as I foresee it will--that and Tom Connor's strike." "There's no end to it!" cried Joe, jumping out of his chair, striding up and down the room, and, for the last time in this history, rumpling his hair in his excitement. "There's no end to it! There's the hay-corral to enlarge--rock hauling all winter for you and me, Phil! We shall need a new ice-pond; for this new water-supply won't freeze up in winter like the old one did! Then, when the 'forty rods' dries up, there will be the extension of our ditches down there; besides making a first-class road to bring all the travel our way--plenty of work in that, too! Then, when we bring the old lake-benches under cultivation, there will be new headgates needed and two new ditches to lay out, besides breaking the ground! Then----Oh, what's the use? There's no end to it--just no end to it!" Joe was quite right. There was, and there still seems to be, no end to it. * * * * * The effect of Tom Connor's strike on Mount Lincoln was just what my father had predicted: our whole district took a great stride forward; the mountains swarmed with prospectors; the town of Sulphide hummed with business; our new friend, Yetmore, doing a thriving trade, while our old friend, Mrs. Appleby, followed close behind, a good second. As for Tom, himself, he is one of our local capitalists now, but he is the same old Tom for all that. Just as he used to do when he was poor, so he continues to do now he is rich: any tale of distress will empty his pocket on the spot. Though my father remonstrates with him sometimes, Tom only laughs and remarks that it is no use trying to teach old dogs new tricks; and moreover he does not see why he should not spend his money to suit himself. And so he goes his own way, more than satisfied with the knowledge that every man, woman and child in the district counts Tom Connor as a friend. The fate of those two poor ore-thieves was so horrible that I hesitate to mention it. It was six months later that a prospector on one of the northern spurs of Lincoln came upon two dead bodies. One, a club-footed man, had been shot through the head; the other, unmistakably Long John, was lying on his back, an empty revolver beside him, and one foot caught in a bear-trap. Though the truth will never be known, the presumption is that, setting the stolen trap in a deer run in the hope of catching a deer, they had got into a quarrel; Clubfoot, striking at his companion, had caused him to step backward into the trap, when, in his pain and rage, Long John had whipped out his revolver and shot the other. What his own fate must have been is too dreadful to contemplate. And the Crawford ranch? Well, the Crawford ranch is the busiest place in the county. Peter, for whom my parents, like ourselves, took a great liking, quickly thawed out under my mother's influence, and related to us briefly the reason for his having taken to his solitary life. He had been a school-teacher in Denver, but losing his wife and two children in an accident, he had fled from the place and had hidden himself up in our mountains, where for several years he had spent a lonely existence with no company but old Socrates. Now, however, his house destroyed and his mountain overrun with prospectors, he needed little inducement to abandon his old hermit-life; and accepting gladly my father's suggestion that he stay and work on the ranch, he built for himself a good log cabin up near the waterfall, and there he and Socrates took up their residence. There was plenty of work for him and for all of us--indeed, for the first two years there was almost more than we could do. It took that length of time for the "forty rods" to drain off thoroughly, but by the middle of the third summer we were cutting hay upon it; the ore wagons from Sulphide and from the Big Reuben were passing through in a continuous stream; the stage-coach was coming our way; the old hill road was abandoned. In fact, everybody is busy, and more than busy--with one single exception. The only loafer on the place is old Sox--tolerated on account of his advanced age. That veteran, whose love of mischief and whose unfailing impudence would lead any stranger to suppose he had but just come out of the egg, spends most of his time strutting about the ranch, stealing the food of the dogs and chickens; awing them into submission by his supernatural gift of speech. And as though that were not enough, his crop distended with his pilferings to the point of bursting, he comes unabashed to the kitchen door and blandly requests my mother, of all people, to give him a chew of tobacco! But the mail-coach has just gone through, and I hear Joe shouting for me; I must run. "Yetmore wants fifty-hundred of oats, Phil," he calls out. "You and I are to take it up. We must dig out at once if we are to get back to-night. To-morrow we break ground on our new ditches. A month or more of good stiff work for us, old chap!" He rubs his hands in anticipation; for the bigger he grows--and he has grown into a tremendous fellow now--the more work he wants. There is no satisfying him. We have been very fortunate, wonderfully fortunate; but I am inclined to set apart as pre-eminently our lucky day that one in the summer of '79, when young Joe Garnier, the blacksmith's apprentice, stopped at our stable-door to ask for work! THE END _By Amy E. Blanchard_ War of the Revolution Series The books comprising this series have become well known among the girls and are alike chosen by readers themselves, by parents and by teachers on account of their value from the historical standpoint, their purity of style and their interest in general. _A Girl of '76_ ABOUT COLONIAL BOSTON. 331 pp. It is one of the best stories of old Boston and its vicinity which has ever been written. Its value as real history and as an incentive to further study can hardly be overestimated. _A Revolutionary Maid_ A STORY OF THE MIDDLE PERIOD IN THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE. 312 pp. No better material could be found for a story than the New Jersey campaign, the Battle of Germantown, and the winter at Valley Forge. Miss Blanchard has made the most of a large opportunity and produced a happy companion volume to "A Girl of '76." _A Daughter of Freedom_ A STORY OF THE LATTER PERIOD OF THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE. 312 pp. In this story the South supplies the scenery, and good use is made of the familiar fact that a family often was divided in its allegiance. It is romantic but not sensational, well-written and rich in entertainment. War of 1812 Series This period is divided into two historical volumes for girls, the one upon the early portion describing the causes, etc., of the war, the latter showing the strife along the Northern border. _A Heroine of 1812_ A MARYLAND ROMANCE. 335 pp. This Maryland romance is of the author's best; strong in historical accuracy and intimate knowledge of the locality. Its characters are of marked individuality, and there are no dull or weak spots in the story. _A Loyal Lass._ A STORY OF THE NIAGARA CAMPAIGN OF 1814. 319 pp. This volume shows the intense feeling that existed all along the border line between the United States and Canada, and as was the case in our Civil War even divided families fought on opposite sides during this contest. It is a sweet and wholesome romance. EACH VOLUME FULLY ILLUSTRATED. Price, $1.50 W. A. WILDE COMPANY,--Boston and Chicago TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author's words and intent. 
29681	----	[Transcriber's note: Extensive research found no evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] [Frontispiece: AT THAT INSTANT THE BEAR CAME TO LIFE.] A MOUNTAIN BOYHOOD _by_ JOE MILLS Author of "The Comeback" Illustrated by ENOS B. COMSTOCK J. H. SEARS & COMPANY, Inc. PUBLISHERS NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY J. H. SEARS & CO., INCORPORATED COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA (INC.) MANUFACTURED COMPLETE BY THE KINGSPORT PRESS KINGSPORT, TENNESSEE _United States of America_ TO THE ONE WHO MADE THIS BOYHOOD POSSIBLE MY WIFE CONTENTS CHAPTER I. GOING WEST II. GETTING ACQUAINTED WITH WILD COUNTRY AND ANIMALS III. FIRST CAMP ALONE--EXPLORING IV. DANCING ACROSS THE DIVIDE V. TRAPPING--MOUNTAIN-TOP DWELLERS VI. A LOG CABIN IN THE WILDS--PRIMITIVE LIVING VII. GLACIERS AND FOREST FIRES VIII. THE PROVERBIAL BUSY BEAVER IX. MOUNTAIN CLIMBING X. MODERN PATHFINDERS XI. OFF THE TRAIL XII. DREAMERS OF GOLDEN DREAMS XIII. THE CITY OF SILENCE XIV. BEARS AND BUGBEARS XV. ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS At that instant the bear came to life . . . . _Frontispiece_ I plunged downward, struggling frantically I sat down by the fiddler and dozed I glimpsed his flaming eyes and wide-open, fang-filled mouth Sheep and rock dropped straight toward me Never before had the ring of an ax echoed in Silent Valley "See all fools ain't dead yit," he observed The memory of that race for life is still vividly terrifying Every fall I watched Mr. and Mrs. Peg at their repairs They turned tail and came racing back, straight toward me Out of the dust of years, we dug the history of a buried past A MOUNTAIN BOYHOOD CHAPTER ONE GOING WEST Father and mother settled on the Kansas prairie in the early fifties. At that time Kansas was the frontier. Near neighbors were twenty miles or more apart. There was no railroad; no stages supplied the vast unsettled region. A few supplies were freighted by wagon. However, little was needed from civilized sources, for the frontier teemed with game. Myriads of prairie chickens were almost as tame as domestic fowls. Deer stared in wide-eyed amazement at the early settlers. Bands of buffalo snorted in surprise as the first dark lines of sod were broken up. Droves of wild turkey skirted the fringes of timber. Indians roamed freely; halting in wonder at the first log cabins of the pioneers. In my father's old diary I found the following: June, 1854. Drove through from Iowa to Kansas by ox team. Located four days' drive south of Portsmouth.* Not much timber here. * Later Kansas City. October, 1854. Just returned from visit to our nearest neighbor, John Seeright, a day's drive away. Took the chickens and cow along and stayed several days. Father told me that the early settlers did not like a region after it got "settled up." He laughed heartily when he said this. It is quite true nevertheless; as soon as a region became "settled up," the pioneers were ready to push on again into the unknown. They loved the frontier--it held adventure, hazard always, mystery, ofttimes, romance, life. They moved ahead of and beyond civilization--even the long arm of the law did not penetrate their wilderness fastnesses. Their experience--so numerous books cannot hold them all--have become history. It is not strange that my parents welcomed the gold rush of '59. It called them once more into the farther wilderness, the vaster unknown. When news of the finding of gold in the Rockies came across the plains, legions of adventurers trailed westward. The few roads that led across the rolling prairies to the Rockies were soon deep-cut. Wagons trains strung out across the treeless land like huge, creeping serpents moving lazily in the sun. Joyfully the adventurers went--happy, courageous. They were the vanguards of civilization, pushing ever to the West. To my lifelong regret, my boyhood came after the gold rushes were over; the buffalo bands had passed for the last time; the Indian fighting ended. However, these exciting events were still fresh in the memory of my parents. When neighbors came to visit us, long hours were spent in talking over and comparing experiences. I thrilled as my father told of climbing Long's Peak, the eastern sentinel of the Rockies--of Estes Park, teeming with trout and game. I thought then that I had been born too late--that all the big things in the world were past history. I feared then that even the Rockies would lose their wildness before I could explore them. Within sight and sound of the farm where I was born, a number of Civil War skirmishes took place. The eastern Kansas border during the trying time of the early sixties was perhaps the worst place in all the world to live. Raiding parties plundered on both sides of the Kansas-Missouri line. My mother watched the battle of Mine Creek from the dooryard; saw the soldiers streaming by, and prayed fervently as the tide of battle swayed back and forth. My father was fighting in that battle. These frontier conflicts were still the favorite topics of conversation at neighborhood gatherings when I was a little boy. I listened breathlessly to them and lived them over in my imagination. Of all the tales recounted around our fire, I loved that of the gold rush of '59 best--my father and mother had participated in it--and I'm sure that story moved me most of all to obey Horace Greeley's injunction. The wagons, in the beginning of the journey, formed a train, keeping close together for mutual protection. As they neared the Rockies, they scattered, each party following its individual route. Late in the summer, high up in the mountains near Breckenridge, Colorado, my father fell ill of "mountain fever." My mother, who weighed less than one hundred pounds, alone drove the pony team back across the plains to eastern Kansas. Many weeks were spent en route. Sometimes they camped for a night with westward-bound wagons; then resumed the eastward journey alone. Buffalo, migrating southward, literally covered the prairie--at times, so dense were their ranks, my mother had to stop the team to let the herds go by. One experience of this trying trip, often related by my father, filled me with lasting admiration for my plucky mother. "We were camped one night beneath some cottonwoods beside a wide, shallow stream," father would say, "and I was unable to move from my bed in the wagon. Your mother cared for the team, started a fire, and got supper. Shortly after dark, and before supper was ready, a dozen Indians filed solemnly into our camp and sat down facing the fire. They said nothing, but followed your mother's every movement with watchful eyes. If your mother tasted the brew in the brass kettle, every Indian eye followed her hand, and every Indian licked his lips eagerly. The brass kettle was about the only cooking utensil we possessed, and your mother guarded it carefully. "This night the kettle held a savory stew of buffalo meat. When the stew was done, your mother set it off the fire to cool. During a few seconds--while her back was turned--the kettle vanished. From the shelter of the wagon I saw an Indian reach out stealthily and slip it beneath his blanket. The next moment your mother was facing the silent circle with blazing eyes. And there, hundreds of miles from a settlement, with no help at hand, she defied a dozen Indians. In spite of the fact that she weighed just ninety-two pounds, she swept around the circle slapping the surprised braves, pulling their hair and demanding the kettle. She noticed that the chief was sheltering something beneath his blanket. At once she gave his blanket a jerk. The hot brew spilled over the surprised redskin's legs. There was a yell that rent the stillness. The fellow leaped high into the air, and vanished into the night, leaving the brass kettle behind him." Little did my parents realize that their recounted experiences would eventually lead me, still a boy, to venture into new regions. At ten years of age I hazarded the statement that I was old enough to shift for myself; that I was going West to live the rest of my life in the Rocky Mountains. But my parents, in order to frighten me out of my plans, told me that Indians still infested the wilds; that terrible bull buffaloes and horrible grizzly bears roamed the wilderness. These attempts to frighten me only strengthened my desire for adventure and my determination to seek it. When all else failed I was told that I was too young to strike out for myself. At last father put his foot down firmly, a sign that his patience was at an end--so I postponed my adventure. The day finally came when I was aboard a train, heading westward, toward the mountains of my dreams. I possessed twenty dollars, my entire savings. During the journey I hardly slept, but kept watch out the window for the first glimpse of the Rockies. I have no recollection that there were sleeping cars at that time; anyhow, my thin little purse afforded no such gross extravagance if I had known. I recall that the individual seat of the chair-car gave me much concern. I had considerable trouble adjusting it--putting it up and laying it down. Beside me in the companion seat rode a man of middle age, bearded, roughly dressed, who took keen interest in my destination. He was located, I learned, over the Continental Divide in that vast region beyond Grand Lake. He talked of the forests of uncut timber near his homestead, of the fertile valleys and grassy parks that would eventually support cattle herds. "Some day," he predicted, "there'll be a railroad built between Denver and Salt Lake City; and when it comes it's bound to pass close to my claim." At dawn I caught my first sight of the great snow-covered peaks, a hundred miles away, rearing rose-red in the early morning light. At first I mistook those misty ranges for cloud banks, lighted by the rising sun. Then, as we drew nearer and day wore on, I made them out. Toward noon I reached Fort Collins, Colorado, fifty miles from Long's Peak, where there was no stage connection with Estes Park, but Loveland, a town fifteen miles south, had a horse stage that made three trips a week. The fare, I learned, was quite prohibitive, three dollars for something more than thirty miles. The walk would be interesting, I decided. But the old canvas bag, containing all my worldly possessions, was too bulky and awkward to be carried. After some hours of dickering, I paid eight dollars for a second-hand bicycle, tied the bag on the handle bars and started for the Mecca of my dreams. That first journey to the mountains was filled with thrills. The old stage road shot up successive mountain ranges, and plunged abruptly down into the valleys between. There was no Big Thompson route then; instead, the road ascended Bald Mountain, climbed the foothill range, crossed the top, then dropped into Rattlesnake Park. It squirmed up Pole Hill, a grade so steep that I could scarcely push up my wheel. Up and down, up and down, it seesawed endlessly. The afternoon wore on; each successive slope grew harder, for my legs were weary. Twice, braking with one foot on the front crotch and sliding the wheel, I had pitched headlong over the handle bars. Upon two descents that were too precipitous to venture unballasted, I tied fair-sized pine trees to the rear of my craft to act as drag-anchors. As darkness came on I coasted down a sharp pitch to a little brook. In the aspens that bordered the road was a range cow standing guard beside a newborn calf. Across the road, like grisly shadows among the trees, skulked several coyotes. The calf half rose, wabbled, and went down. Three times it attempted to rise, grew weaker, and at last gave up the struggle. With the waiting coyotes in mind, I leaned my wheel against a bowlder and went to its rescue. Several things happened at once. The half-wild range cow misunderstood my good intentions. She was accustomed to seeing men on horseback; and one afoot was strange. She charged headlong. I dodged quickly aside but not in time to escape entirely. She raked me with her sharp horns. There was a wild race through the aspens; I leading, but the cow a close second, her horns menacing me at every leap, while I doubled and backtracked sharply about among the trees. I had no chance to "tree"; though no mountain lion was ever more willing, for Mrs. Cow was too near. Only Providence and my agility saved me from an untimely end. At last the cow halted, for she was getting too far from her calf. She shook her horns after me menacingly, turned and hurried back toward where her offspring lay. Each mile I covered impressed upon me more and more that there is not even a distant relationship between mountain miles and my Kansas prairie miles. The latter are ironed out flat, the former stand on end, cease to be miles and become trials. Slowly the shadows filled the cañons, and came creeping up the slopes. I gazed in awesome wonder at the beauty of my land of dreams. My legs, cramped almost past pedaling, still kept on--for my goal, my mountains, were at hand. Exaltation of spirit overcame exhaustion of body. At no time had I given any particular thought to what would happen when I arrived; so far my whole attention had been centered on reaching the Rockies. Such trivialities as no job, no relatives, practically no money, made little impression upon my Rocky-bound mind. Long after nightfall I reached the crest of Park Hill, the last barrier to Estes Park. The moon shone full upon the valley below, and upon the snow-capped mountains beyond. The river murmured softly as its shining folds curled back and forth across the dark green meadow, suddenly vanishing between dark cañon walls. Coyotes raised their eerie voices; across the cañon, from the cliffs of Mount Olympus, an owl hooted gloomily. Before me loomed the Rockies, strangely unreal in the moonlight and yet very like the mountains of my imagination. I gazed, spellbound. My dream was realized. It was midnight when, completely exhausted, I stopped before an old log cabin. Dogs charged out, barking furiously at the strange thing I rode and nipping at my legs; but I was too weary to remember distinctly even now what happened. I must have tumbled off my wheel for I learned afterward that I was picked up and put to bed; but for hours I tossed about, my body racked with pain, my thoughts jumbled. But boys must sleep, and I slept at last. Next morning, pushing the wheel slowly, I headed for the most remote ranch in the region, that lay at the foot of Long's Peak. Progress was slow and painful for my body was stiff and sore; the road I followed wound upward, climbing steadily to higher altitude. Frequently I halted to rest, and spent my time of respite searching the mountains with eager, appraising eyes, planning explorations among them. Toward noon I came to the ranch I sought, located nine miles from the nearest neighbor, at nine thousand feet altitude, and surrounded by rugged mountains. Above it rose Long's Peak, up and up into the clouds, to more than fourteen thousand feet. The rancher was the Reverend E. J. Lamb, one of the early settlers of Estes Park. The Parson, as he was known, was more than six feet tall, straight as a lodge-pole pine physically--and even more so spiritually. He wore a long, flowing beard, rose habitually and unprotestingly at four in the morning--a man of diverse talents and eccentricities. CHAPTER TWO GETTING ACQUAINTED WITH WILD COUNTRY AND ANIMALS Parson Lamb's ranch consisted of a fenced garden tract surrounded on every side for miles by high mountains that shut it in. There was heavy forest on the slopes above the ranch; and out of these came many lively little streams that were almost as cold as their parent snowbanks. I hoarded my few remaining dollars. The Parson gave me room and board, in return for which I helped about the place, doing various chores, such as wood-splitting and clearing land for more garden, and occasionally going the nine miles to the village for the mail. My work took only a small part of my time, leaving me free to explore the near-by region, with its deep, evergreen forests, and the wild animals which lived in them. Many were the tales the tall, rawboned Parson told of his early pioneer days (for he had lived there since the early seventies, and was a loquacious old fellow), as he and his wife, Jane, and I sat beside the granite fireplace, when the coals glowed low and the shadows scurried here and there over the rough logs of the cabin walls. He had been shot and nearly killed by a bandit, gored by a bull, dragged by a frightened horse, and bitten by a bear. Upon one lonely excursion far from any settlement, he had been followed by a huge, stealthy, mountain lion. Harrowing as were these tales, the one that made me shiver despite the radiant pitch knots, was that of his perilous descent of the precipice on Long's Peak. Time has not changed the character of that face--it is sheer and smooth and icy now, as then. He was probably the first man to attempt its descent, and I was always weak and spent when he ended his story of it, so vividly did he portray its dangers. I sat tense, digging my nails deep into my palms, living through every squirm and twist with him, from the moment he slid down from the comparatively safe "Narrows" to the first niche in the glassy, precipitous wall, till, after many nearly-the-last experiences, he landed safely at its foot. That adventure had almost cost him his life, for he had once missed his foothold, slipped and slid and had hung suspended by one hand for a long, terrible moment. Always I sat with eyes glued upon the story-teller, thrilling as he talked, planning secretly to emulate his example, proving some of his statements by daily short excursions. However, the Parson was not always away on trips. Sometimes he guided visitors to the top of the Peak or worked on the trail to its summit. He chopped wood, worked in the garden, hunted stray cattle or horses. Frequently he rode off with his Bible under his arm, for he was a circuit rider, carrying the gospel into the wilderness. He gave good, if free, advice, officiated at weddings and funerals, at barn-raisings and log-rollings. He preached or worked as the notion moved him; lingered in one place or rode long trails to fulfill his mission. His own ranch was thirty miles from the railroad, but many of his calls were made on settlers even more remote. Gradually I extended the scope of my explorations, frequently spending the night abroad, carrying a pair of worn and faded blankets and a little food. A number of times I climbed Long's Peak alone. On these trips to high country I scouted the high-flung crest of Battle Mountain, Lady Washington, Storm Peak, and Mount Meeker; explored Glacier Gorge, investigated Chasm Lake, and from the top of Peak and Meeker looked down into Wild Basin to the south. I sketched a rude map of the great basin in my notebook and named it "Land of Many Waters," because of the scores of small streams that trickled down its inclosing mountain sides. The oval bowl I estimated to be fifteen miles long by about half as wide, its sides formed of mountain slopes densely wooded up to bleak timberline. Save the murmur of falling water, or the wind upon the heights, it was a land of silence. Small streams converged, dropped into deep cañons and reached the river that rumbled far below. There were vivid, emerald lakes everywhere--some lost in the woods near the river, others pocketed behind the ridges, while still more could be seen up above naked timberline. I returned, thrilled with the thought of exploring Wild Basin, sought the Parson and told him my ambition. At first he was much amused, but when he found I was serious he grew grave. "There's no neighbors over that way," he objected. "If anything happens, you'll be beyond help." Even though he was older and much more experienced, I thought him hardly qualified, after his own foolhardy adventures, to discourage me; but I decided to wait until fall before setting out. This delay would enable me to know more about the mountains, to add to my experience, and better fit me to cope with the emergencies of that inviting, great unknown--Wild Basin. Everywhere I found strange birds and animals, and began to get acquainted with them. The handsome, black and white, long-tailed magpies were much like the crows I had known in Kansas, so far as wariness was concerned. The Rocky Mountain long-crested jays, quite unlike our prairie jays, much more brilliant in coloring, their gorgeous coats of turquoise blue and black flashing in the sunshine, were continually bickering, and following me through the woods to see what I was about. Chickadees and nuthatches were always inspecting the trees for food, running up and down, paying no attention to me and going about their business with cheerful little chirrups that expressed their contentment. Occasionally a crow flew up the valley with raucous calls; and sometimes a raven pursued his way toward the deeper woods. Meadow larks and robins were everywhere. Woodpeckers and flickers did their bit to keep vermin off the trees, and performed daily operations on trunk and limb, removing borers and beetles that had penetrated beneath the bark, thus saving the lives of many evergreen monarchs. Around ten and eleven thousand feet there were campbirds, Canada jays, friendly and inquisitive; on first acquaintance they often took food from my hands, and helped themselves freely of any food accessible in camp. They were unruffled, flitting softly from tree to tree, with little flapping, calling low, and in a sweetly confidential tone. However friendly I found the birds, the big game animals were extremely wary. I mentioned the fact to the Parson. "They've been shot at," was his explanation. "Every time they've come in contact with men they've suffered. They know men are dangerous, always have guns." In spite of the Parson's observations we always had wild game hanging in the log meat house; there was never any question about securing whatever we wanted in that line. Except during the winter months, deer could be had with little effort. But the elk had practically vanished; occasionally a lone survivor strayed into the ranch valley. There were bears, of course, shy and fearful, in the rough, unsettled country. We had great variety of meat, venison, Bighorn sheep, grouse, ptarmigan, wild pigeon, sometimes squirrel and, rarely, bear steaks. Wherever I went, even in the far-away places where few men had ever been, the deer and elk and bear were very wild, and I found it impossible to approach them unless the wind was from them to me, and I moved forward carefully hidden. I spent many eventful days, walking, climbing, sitting motionless to watch the scampering chipmunks, or to invite the birds up close. Thus, a little at a time, I came to know the habits of the wild folks I met; learned their likes and dislikes--the things that excited their curiosity, and that frightened them away in panic. Upon my first climb to the top of Long's Peak alone, I halted above timberline and stared about in amazement at the wide stretches of rock-strewn slopes. From a distance these had appeared no larger than a back yard, but a close-up revealed they were miles across; and instead of being barren, were a series of hanging gardens, one above another, each of different shape and size, and all green with grass and with a hundred different kinds of wild flowers waving in the sunshine. I counted more than fifty varieties, none of which I knew, and still they seemed endless. Usually I wandered off the trail to follow birds or animals. In the arctic-like zone above were birds entirely strange to me, and animals that never came down to the valley of the ranch. It was not long before I discovered that nearly all birds and animals live at a certain zone of altitude, rarely straying above or below it. Occasionally I heard a queer "squee-ek." It sounded close, yet its maker was invisible. Many times I looked up, searching the air overhead for the elusive "squee-eker." At last I came upon a bunch of grass, no larger than a water pail, and stopped to examine it. Grass and flowers had been piled loosely in an irregular heap, resembling a miniature haystack. "Something making a nest," I observed aloud. "Squee-ek," denied a shrill voice almost at my elbow. Ten feet away upon a bowlder that rose above the rest of the rocks, sat a small animal which at first I mistook for a young rabbit. In shape and size he closely resembled a quarter-grown cottontail, but his ears were different from any rabbit's, being short and round. His eyes were beady; somehow he made me think of a rat. He ran down the rock and climbed to another perch. Not even so much tail as a bunny--none at all. In some respects he resembled a rabbit, a squirrel and a prairie dog. His actions reminded me of all of them. In fact, he is sometimes called "Rock Rabbit" and "Little Chief Hare." He may have other names besides. I watched the interesting little fellow for some time and later found his actions characteristic of his tribe. He literally makes hay while the summer shines. He is the only harvester I ever saw who works on the run. He dashed at top speed, without stopping for breath, bit off a mouthful of grass and again ran pell-mell for his growing stack. He scampered down its side, then leaped from an adjacent rock to its top, laden with his bundle of hay. Evidently he found the alpine summer short and felt it necessary to step lively. Altitude, that convenient scapegoat of tenderfeet, did not seem to affect his wind or his endurance. He stacked his harvest in one corner of the field from which he cut it. He cut flowers along with the grass. Perhaps he used them for flavor as grandmother put rose-geranium leaves in her crab-apple jelly. The haycock he built was about the size of a bucket--I have since seen them as large as bushel baskets. His tiny fields lay between bowlders; some of them were but a few inches square, others a foot, several a yard, perhaps. I was interested to learn if the little haycocks were blown away by the timberline gales, so returned later, not really expecting to find them. Nor were they in the same location, but their owners, not the wind, had moved them. Evidently, as soon as the hay was cured, it was stored for safe-keeping, usually beneath the overhang of a rock, away from the wind. I was then curious to see how the cony would transport his hay in winter. Many of his under-rock passages would, at that season, be filled with snow, forcing him to appear on the surface where the wind was often strong enough to blow me over, to say nothing of what it would do to the little midget in fur with a load of hay attached. He met the storm situation easily. Whenever he exhausted one hayloft, he moved his home to another. Thus he solved the transportation question and gained a new home at the same time. Several times, upon digging beneath the slide rock, I discovered cony dens, merely openings far down between the jumbled rocks, beyond the reach of wind and weather. They were of great variety, large, small, wide, narrow; all ready to move into. They were the conies' castles, ready refuges from enemies, their devious passages as effective as drawbridge or portcullis. The cony is something like the heaver far down on the flats below; working at top speed when he does work, and then resting for many months. Outside the brief harvest period I have found him sitting idly atop a rock, napping in the sun, dreaming apparently; thus for days and months he is idle, always harmless--a condition that does not apply to human beings under similar circumstances. He is energetic, ambitious, courageous, and acrobatic. He is the scout of the mountain top, always alert and friendly. The altitude zone of the cony I found to be between eleven and thirteen thousand feet. He and the Bighorn, ptarmigan, weasels and foxes are mountain-top dwellers throughout the year. Marmots hibernate during the long alpine winters. But the cony I have seen on sunny days in January; his welcome "squee-ek," piercing the roar of the wind, has greeted me on the lonely storm-swept heights when not another living thing was in sight. But in spite of his living in the out-of-the-way world the cony has enemies for whom he is always watching. In summer there are hawks and eagles, foxes and coyotes. In winter his feathered foes depart, but the foxes remain, as do the weasels. Sitting motionless in the midst of jumbled rocks I have faded into the bowlder fields, and thus have been able to watch the cony and his enemies. Usually his "squee-ek" announced the appearance of a foe before I discovered it. Then, if the enemy was a bird or a beast, he merely hugged the rock, watching alertly until he was discovered, then flipped out of sight to the safety of rocky retreat, giving a defiant "squee-ek" as he went. But if a weasel appeared... I sat watching a cony one day in early fall as he lay in the sunshine upon a bowlder. From somewhere below us came the distant "squee-ek" of a relative, followed shortly by the shrill whistle of a marmot. The cony sat up suddenly, awake and alertly watching. The signals were repeated. Instantly the little fellow departed from his outpost and hurried away, circling the bowlder, leaping to another, disappearing in the rocks and reappearing again. His actions were so unusual that I wondered what message the signals had carried; to me they were no different than they were when they announced my coming--yet the difference must have been plain to the wee furry ears, judging from their owner's apprehensive actions. Indeed, a weasel was abroad seeking his quarry. When his presence was announced, neither the cony nor I could see him because of an intervening upthrust of rock. Soon the weasel appeared, circling the rock where the cony had been sunning himself, searching beneath it, hurrying along the tunnels through which the cony had fled. Emerging upon the bowlder, he paused for a few seconds as he looked in all directions. The weasel was brownish-yellow in color. I was to learn later that he changed to pure white in winter. I sprang to my feet and pursued him, shouting as I ran, throwing rocks and attempting to scare him off. Losing track of both pursuer and pursued, I stopped for breath. Suddenly, from almost beneath my feet, the agile villain reappeared, staring at me with bright, bold eyes, advancing toward me as though to attack. He was no coward; with amazing agility he dodged a rock I threw at him, turning a back-spring and landing at my feet. For a moment we glared at each other, then he made off as though utterly unconscious of my presence. I watched the long slender body disappear among the rocks in the opposite direction to that taken by the cony, standing for a moment to regain my breath and recover from my surprise. Suddenly there was a shrill whistle behind me. I jumped and whirled about. Twenty feet away a marmot stood erect atop a rock, eying me inquiringly, watching every movement. He had whistled his signal about me, whether good or bad news I could not detect, but from the distance came other whistles in reply. He was the cony's ally, broadcasting information about the skirmish taking place before his eyes; but whether he was attempting to interfere and divert my attention, I could not make out. Certainly, though, he was giving information, signaling my presence to all within hearing. My intrusion upon the heights in summer has ever been announced by the conies and the marmots. From another direction came a second whistle; apparently I was surrounded. Then, as I moved, the second marmot hurried away from his observation post. He was short-legged, reddish-yellow in color, with a bushy tail, and he ran with great effort but with very little speed, like a fat boy in a foot race. Down in the valley near the ranch were numerous grouse, old and young, so tame that it was like knocking over pet chickens to kill them. But there was a strange bird above timberline, the ptarmigan, the arctic quail of the north--fool hens, the Parson told me. These birds were mottled in color, matching the rocks among which they lived, and so closely did their color blend with their environment it was impossible to distinguish bird from rock so long as the fowl remained still. It was because they depended so utterly upon their protective coloration, making no effort to get out of the way but acting with utmost stupidity, that they came to be called "fool hens." The days I spent above timberline were the most wonderful of all. From high above the world I could see tier upon tier of distant, snow-capped mountains--ghost ranges--and southward, at the horizon, loomed Pike's Peak a hundred airline miles away, a giant pyramid above the foothills, standing sentinel over the vast, flat plains that reached to its foot. As weeks passed and my interest in the wild things increased, I began to wish for a cabin of my own, a home or a den to which I could retreat and spend the time as I desired. Wherever I rambled I was alert for a location for my little house. I was not yet old enough to take up a homestead and claim land for myself. Climbing to the summits of various promontories I planned the sort of cabin I would like to build there; I'd have a dog, and a horse too, and a camera--I began to doubt whether I'd want my rifle for as I developed my acquaintance with the animals I found myself less eager to shoot them. Hunting and trapping was the habit of everyone I knew; even back in Kansas the boys and men had gone shooting at every opportunity; and the few men I encountered upon the trails in the Rockies were for the most part real trappers and hunters, following the trade for a living. They gave no thought to the cruelty of their traps or the suffering their operations occasioned, It is not strange, then, that such men saw no harm in their actions, for they considered all game fair prey. Occasionally I left my gun at home and found that I rambled the heights above timberline in a changed mood from when I carried it. The animals were more friendly, perhaps my actions were more open and aboveboard. My rifle naturally inspired a desire to shoot something; a mountain sheep, a bear, even the fat marmots did not escape my deadly fire. But, without a gun--there was interest everywhere. Many times I laughed at the antics of the animals, especially at the awkward, lumbering haste of the marmots. These animals, while very curious, were quick to take alarm. They would climb to a lookout post at the top of a rock, watching me eagerly and whistling mild gossip for the delectation of their neighbors who could not see me. One day, far skyward, I came upon an exceedingly fat marmot busily eating grass in a narrow little hayland between bowlders. He must have weighed more than twenty pounds, but this fact did not deter him from adding additional weight for the long, winter sleep. At best his active period was short, his hibernation long, so he ate and slept and ate again through all the hours of daylight. At my approach he reluctantly left off eating, crept up a rock and whistled mildly as though merely curious. For a time I amused him by advancing, retreating, and circling his rock. Suddenly I dropped out of sight behind a bowlder. Instantly his whistle carried a note of warning. So long as I remained in sight I was merely a curiosity, but the instant I dropped from sight, I became a suspicious character. Again he broadcasted sharp warning to all within hearing. From near and far came answering marmot shrillings, and from near by a cony "squee-eked" his quick alarm. My reappearance reassured the marmot. He whistled again, and I thought I distinguished a note of disgust or of disappointment. This marmot lived on the south slope of the big moraine that shoulders against Lady Washington, neighboring peak to the giant mountain, Long's Peak. Sometimes I found the roly-poly fellow saving hay by eating it, or asleep in the sun on an exposed rock. Often he ventured down into the cañon at the foot of the moraine to investigate the grass that grew down there. One day as I sat atop the big moraine, I heard his shrill whistle from the edge of the trees in the cañon below. It was somehow different from any signal I had heard him give before, but just how it was different I could not make out. The notes were the same, but the tone was different--that was it, the tone had changed. Then the reason for the difference came out of the scattered trees--a grizzly bear stalked deliberately into the open and sat down facing the huge bowlder upon which the marmot sat. The marmot stood erect on his hind legs, eying the bear warily, prepared to dash for his den beneath the rock the instant the visitor made an unfriendly move. But the bear was a very stupid fellow; he took no note of the marmot. Instead, he looked off across the cañon, swung his head slowly to and fro as though thinking deeply of something a hundred miles away. He was a young bear with a shiny new coat of summer fur. He had just had a bath in the stream where ice water gushed from beneath a snowbank. The marmot gave a second whistle, carrying less fear. Apparently the slow-moving, sleepy bear meant no harm. For half an hour the marmot watched alertly, then slid down beneath the bowlders and started eating. From time to time he sat stiffly erect, peering suspiciously at the intruder. But since the bear made no overt move, he continued his feeding as though he were too hungry to wait until his uninvited guest departed. At length the bear rolled over on his back with all four feet in the air. The marmot surveyed the performance for a few seconds, then went on feeding, gradually grazing out beyond the shelter of the rock beneath which he had his den. The bear "paid him no mind," apparently asleep in the sunshine. Slowly the marmot fed away from the rock, the farther he ventured the more luxuriant his feast, for the grass was eaten off short around his dooryard. For an hour I watched every move of that silent drama, trying to guess the outcome, wondering if the bear were really asleep. All at once the little gourmand whistled reassuringly: "All right, it's a friend." The marmot was not more surprised than myself at what happened next. The bear lay perhaps a hundred feet from the marmot's home, and the marmot had fed perhaps forty feet from it--a distance he could quickly cover if the visitor showed unfriendly symptoms. But there were no symptoms. It was all over so quickly that I was left dazed and breathless. There was a small bowlder about four feet high in the midst of a tiny hayfield where the marmot fed. The unsuspecting whistler fed into the little field, passed behind the rock, and was out of sight for just a second. At that instant the bear came to life, leaped to his feet and dashed toward the den beneath the rock, cutting off the marmot's retreat. Too late the quarry saw the bear. It made a frantic dash for home and shelter, its fat body working desperately, its short legs flying. Ten feet from the den the bear flattened the marmot with a single quick slap of his paw. Then he sat down to eat his dinner. His acting had been perfect; he had fooled me as well as the marmot. CHAPTER THREE FIRST CAMP ALONE--EXPLORING My short trips into the wilds tempted me to go beyond the trails. So far my rambles had taken me only to the threshold of the wilderness, I wondered what lay beyond; I wanted to follow the game trails and see where they led. Above all I was eager to pit my scant skill against primitive nature and learn if my resourcefulness was equal to the emergencies of the unknown. Somehow I never doubted my courage--I simply didn't fear. As the short high-altitude summer began to wane, I grew restless. September advanced; the aspen trees near timberline turned to gold; from day to day those lower down turned also until a vast richly colored rug covered the mountain sides. Ripe leaves fluttered down, rustling crisply underfoot. Frost cut down the rank grass, humbled the weeds and harvested the flowers. Forests of spruce and lodgepole were dark with shadow. A beaver colony returned to its former haunts at the foot of Long's Peak and was working night and day. Its pond of still water was glazing over with clear ice. October came. The nights grew colder. The snow of early winter came to the high peaks, dusting their bare, bald crowns. "Fur ought to be getting prime now," the Parson said one day. "It'll be better still, higher up." This was the message I had been waiting for. It set me packing at once, for I was going into Wild Basin, alone, to hunt, trap and explore. On a morning near the middle of October, much excited, I set out for the land of mystery. Ahead lay the unknown, uncharted wilds. I could go where I chose and stay as long as I wished. Bold Columbus, looking westward, I could not have been more thrilled. Mountain maple beckoned with ripe, red banners. The mountains peeked through the autumn haze, divulging nothing, promising everything! My outfit consisted of an old, ragged tent, a little food, a camera that had been through a fire and leaked light badly, a knife, an ax, a six-shooter, and an old rifle that had been traded about among the early settlers and had known many owners. In addition I had bought six double-spring steel traps sufficiently large to hold beaver, coyotes or wolves. The pair of ragged blankets that had served me on my short trips about the region had been reinforced with an old quilt, faded and patched, but sweet and clean. All this duffle I packed upon a "return" horse, lent me by the Parson, one that would return home as soon as it was let loose. The Parson chuckled at the appearance of my pack, even the horse turned his head inquiringly, but I was too excited to mind their insinuations. As the sun topped the mountains, I led the horse slowly down the old tollroad toward a game trail, and swung up in the direction of Wild Basin. Deer tracks showed in the old road and in the game trails; I also recognized coyote tracks, and puzzled over strange tracks which I could not make out. The small streams I crossed had many deep pools where trout were collecting for the winter. I tossed stones into them and the fish, like rainbow darts, dashed for shelter beneath the rocks. Hourly my excitement grew--a million plans ran through my head. I would become a mighty hunter and make a fortune trapping; I would turn prospector and locate a mine: Father and Mother would yet have the gold of which they were thwarted. The second evening brought me into such rough country that going farther with the horse was next to impossible. With excited hands I unpacked, bade the beast good-by, and started him toward home on the back trail. He trotted off, neighing eagerly. Save for the rumble of the river deep down in its cañon, the great basin was voiceless. The forest showed no signs of man. Above and beyond rose a circle of snow-capped peaks. I paused in awe; the world was bigger than I had dreamed. I was a boy without a woodsman's skill--a boy alone in the heart of an overwhelming silence. I turned, with a pang of homesickness, just in time to see the return horse disappear. Whistling loudly, I set about making camp. It should be my headquarters, from which I could explore in all directions, returning as often as necessary for supplies. A lake with sandy shores lapped in and out among immense bowlders. On the west side a cliff rose straight from the water. At the upper edge a small cataract came leaping down the ledges and plunged noisily into the pool that overflowed into the lake. Above the water was a grove of Engelmann spruces, giant trees that rose straight for more than a hundred feet. I pitched my tent in a small open glade, but had trouble getting down the stakes, for everywhere was granite. The first test of my resourcefulness had come--I met it by piling stones around the tent stakes, bracing them taut for the ropes. The call of the wild was too loud to ignore--I hastened my camp making. The sun was going down on a world of splendor. Overhead were brilliantly colored clouds, while deep in the cañon below the early darkness was thickening. From somewhere in the distance came the cry of an animal. Camp was left unfinished; I climbed to a jutting shoulder that overlooked the cañon. From far below came the noise of the river as it chugged and sobbed and roared endlessly between its towering walls. I promised myself I would go down and explore that dark cañon at an early date. Of a sudden there came an indescribable, unearthly sound that echoed and reëchoed among the cliffs. I could not tell the direction from which it came; a sudden chill crept along my spine, my hair prickled and lifted. Then the echoes ceased, the silence that followed was equally terrifying. I bethought me of my unfinished camp. Later I learned that alarming sound was the bugling of a bull elk. It was the mating season. As darkness came on I ate beans and bread by the light of the campfire. The beans came out of a can, so were well cooked; but the bread was my first campfire, culinary concoction. It was a flour and water mixture, plus salt and baking powder, cooked against a hot rock. It was smoked black and cooked so hard it nearly broke my teeth, besides, it had a granite finish from association with the rock oven. But I ate it with boyish relish in spite of its flaws. My imagination expanded as I watched ghostly shadow-figures dance upon the face of the cliff. The shifting flame, the wood smoke, the silent, starry night swelled my heart to pride in my great adventure. I ignored the incident of the animal cry that had sent me scurrying to camp. This first camp was just below timberline, at an altitude of eleven thousand feet or more. I had much to learn about altitude, as well as of winds and weather, woods and mountains. In the mountains the higher one goes the harder the wind blows. In the Rockies, around timberline, gales often reach a velocity of a hundred miles, or more, an hour. Here during the long alpine winters, the wind booms and crashes among the peaks, roars through the passes, and rips through the shattered trees. That first night I lay in camp and listened to its unceasing roar, as it tore along the ridge tops. Occasionally, a gust would scatter my fire. It raged through the spruces like a hurricane, causing me much uneasiness lest one of the trees should come crashing down upon my frail shelter. At last, after dozing before the dying fire, I went inside the tent, crept between my blankets and fell asleep. I was aiming at a charging grizzly, when there came a swishing, banging crash! I sat up, half awake. The tent flapped wildly, lifting clear of the ground. My stone cairns had been jerked down by the repeated yanks of the stake ropes. A stronger gust, the tent went down, or rather up, and vanished into the night. The spruce tree, which was my tent pole, struck me on the head. I sat dazed. Gradually it came to me that my clothes, as well as my tent, were gone. I realized, too, that I had pitched camp on the wrong side of the little stream, for the mischievous gusts, saturated with water from the falls, spat upon me and soaked my blankets. I managed to strike a match, but the wind snuffed it out instantly. I tried again and again to make a light--with no success. I crawled dazedly about--I struggled upright--my toe caught beneath a rock, and I pitched headlong. That hour of darkness taught me never to venture about blindly. The night was unbelievably cold. During the day, while the sun had shone brightly, the temperature had been very comfortable, even warm. But now, with wind blasts from the snow-fields and glaciers and waterfall, I was chilled through and through. As I felt about for my vanished clothes, my teeth chattered. Soon I gave up the search and sought shelter in the spruces; I found a leaning slab of rock and crept beneath it as a wild animal would have done. Through the remaining hours of the night I shivered and shook there; my imagination dulled, my ambition dampened. I decided to break camp as soon as it was light. But it is marvelous what sunshine will do. When at last the tardy sun came up, and the wind died down and I had recovered my clothes and warmed myself at a leaping fire, my heart too leaped up with renewed courage. All was serene. It seemed impossible that I could have been so miserable in the night. As soon as I had eaten I dragged the tent back among the spruces where I set it up and anchored it securely. Lesson Number One had sunk in. It would not need repeating. When camp was at last secure, I climbed slowly to the ridge top above. Its crest was above timberline. On all sides rose lofty mountains, many of them patched with snowbanks. Deep cañons cut sharply between the ridges and shoulders. Ice fields indicated possible glaciers. I wanted to explore everything at once; wanted to climb the peaks, and delve into the cañons; hunt out the game and explore the glaciers. At timberline I stopped in silent wonder. Broken trees were scattered about upon the ground like soldiers after a battle. I didn't quite comprehend its significance, but Parson Lamb had described it to me. I had seen other timberlines in my rambles, but none so impressive as this. Here was the forest frontier. How dauntless, how gallant, these pioneers were! How they strove to hold the advantage gained during the brief summer respite! Here a canny stripling grew behind a sheltering bowlder, but whenever it tried to peep above its breastworks, the wind, with its shell-shot of sand and gravel and ice bullets, cut off its protruding limbs as neatly as a gardner might have done. Consequently its top was as flat as a table. In the open, other trees trailed along the ground like creeping vines, their tops pointing away from the wind. It seemed as if they banded together for mutual protection, for they formed a dense hedge or "bush." Here was the deadline established by altitude. The forests were commanded to halt; this line of last defense was not unlike the sweeping shoreline of the sea. Here and there were lone scout trees in advance of the ranks. They were twisted and dwarfed, misshapen, grotesque. There were wide, naked stretches bare of snow. Great drifts lay in the woods; the deep, narrow cañons were piled full of it. Many of these drifts would last far into the following summer; a few would be perpetual. At the approach of summer, such drifts turn to ice through frequent thawing and freezing, since the surface snow, melting under the glare of the summer sun, seeps down through the mass beneath in daytime, and freezes again at night. From such drifts flow icy streams for the leaping trout. Countless sparkling springs gurgled forth at the foot of the slopes. Here I had my first lessons in conservation and learned that it is indeed an ill wind that does no good. Here nature hoards her savings in snowbanks. To these savings she adds constantly throughout the winter. Long I sat upon a promontory and marveled. Dimly, only, did I grasp the significance of what lay before me! The ranks of primeval forest waiting to aid civilization; snow, that white magic eventually destined to water crops on the distant plains; and, above all, woods, the final refuge of the big game; the sanctuary of the birds. Everywhere were scattered unnamed lakes. These edged out and around the rock peninsulas, folded back into dark coves and swung out of sight behind the timbered bends. Some were almost pinched in half by the crowding cliffs till they formed giant hour-glasses; again they bulged and overflowed like streams at high water. I began to name them according to their shape. "Hourglass," of course; the one that bulged out at one end was surely a plump "Pear"--yes, and "Dog-with-three-legs"! My imagination was recovering. For miles I followed the strange, fantastic timberline. Occasionally I found stunted little trees scarcely knee high, peeping through the crushing weight of snow that had smothered them, even throughout the summer. I cut several trees to count the rings of growth. I found trees growing close together and about the same size, with centuries of variation in age. One, that had been broken off by a rock slide, had two hundred and ninety-six annual rings. It had grown in a sheltered nook. Ten yards away another, much smaller, but growing upon an exposed, rocky point, was no higher than my head, yet I counted five hundred and seven rings; for half a thousand years it had stood at its post. I found the counting of these annual rings extremely difficult, as they were so dense that it was hard to distinguish them and they averaged from fifty to a hundred rings to an inch of thickness, but the small magnifying glass I carried made it possible. The most striking thing I discovered about the timberline trees was their irregularity. There was no similarity of form, as prevails among trees of the deep forest. Each tree took on a physical appearance according to its location and its opportunities. One resemblance only did they have in common: none had limbs on the west side. All their leafy banners pointed toward the rising sun. Thus I learned the direction of the prevailing winter winds. The west side of the trees were polished smooth, many cut halfway through. Trees that had reached maturity, or had died, were stripped almost bare of limbs, which had been cut away by the constant scouring. There were abundant tracks of deer, and some of elk, but I saw not a single animal. Near the spot from which had risen the terrifying sounds of that first night, a deep-worn game trail led down into the heavy forests. Sharp hoofs had cut into it recently, yet neither hide nor hair of an animal did I glimpse. There were no traces of beaver nor any coyote tracks. There were bear tracks, but the small traps I had brought would not hold bear, so I did not set them. I was running low on provisions, for I had counted on the game for meat: I had meant to have venison steak as soon as I had got settled in my permanent camp. Here was mystery! My curiosity was challenged; I determined to fathom it! How I studied those tracks! Those of the sheep could be distinguished by the rounded toe marks of their hoofs, worn blunt by the granite rocks they lived on. This was especially true of the forefeet. They were also wide apart, while the deer tracks were sharply pointed, with the hoofs close together. Days passed and the tracks in the trails grew dim, but not before I had read their story. I followed the sheep's up above timberline--they grew plainer and more numerous. So that was it! The sheep climbed where the wind would keep their tables, spread with sweet cured grass, swept free of snow, and had placed the barrier of timberline drifts between them and their enemies! The other tracks all led down to the valleys. There in the foothills winter would be less rigorous, and the grass would not be buried for months beneath the snow. Winter was at hand in the high country and all but the Bighorn had deserted it. What with them above me, and the rest below, I found myself in a no-game zone. There was no repetition of the frightful sound that had sent me scurrying for camp. I suspected a bull elk had made it, though I recognized no resemblance between that hair-raising sound and a bugle. My thoughts turned to other game. I must have meat--how about a bear? If I couldn't trap one, perhaps I could shoot one. I got out my battered old rifle, so like the timberline trees, and boldly set out for "b'ar." In and out of the dense forest I blundered; crashed through the tangle at timberline; toiled up the rocky ridges. Up and up I climbed, paying no heed to the direction of the wind. I found bear tracks, both large and small, but no sight of Bruin himself. Discouraged, I lay down to rest and had a nap in the sun. Later, with the wind in my face, I peeped over a rocky upthrust near a large snowbank. My eyes bulged, my mouth opened. There was a bear just ahead. Surely it was mad--crazy--for no animal in its right mind would do what it was doing. First it would lumber along a few feet from the edge of the snow, stopping, sniffing, striking out suddenly with its forepaws; it repeated this performance again and again. I watched, hypnotized, unaware of the gun gripped tightly in my hands. Anyhow, who'd want to eat a mad bear? A slight sound caused me to turn my head. Twenty feet away another bear stood regarding me curiously. Not being absent-minded, I have never been able to understand why I left my rifle on the mountainside after lugging it up there for an avowed purpose. At any rate I made record time back to camp, glancing rearward frequently, to see if the "flock" of bears was pursuing me. The next day, after surveying the mountainside to make sure that no bears were lurking there, I went back up and recovered the rifle. The sand beneath the shelving rock where I had seen the second bear was disturbed. Claws had rasped it sharply. It appeared as though this bear had been startled suddenly; had wheeled about and fled for its life in the opposite direction to that I had taken. The tracks were small, too, apparently those of a cub. This was my first hear experience. I had yet to learn that bear are as harmless as deer or mountain sheep; they attend strictly to their own business, and they never come near man except through accident. At that time, though, I was willing to give all bears the benefit of the doubt--and the right of way. While further exploring the ridge above the camp I came upon an old abandoned tunnel with its dump concealed among the trees below timberline. The entrance to the tunnel had been timbered to prevent its caving. There was nothing in its appearance to tell how long it had been abandoned. Beside the dump was a small selected pile of ore. This I gloated over happily, mistaking mingled stains and colors for pure sold. But if it was a gold mine, why had the owners departed--and why had they left rich ore? These and, other questions unanswered, left me with an uneasy feeling. I wondered if a tragedy had happened here, so many miles from civilization. With a torch of small twigs I ventured into the dark hole running straight back beneath the cliff. A short distance inside the tunnel I stopped uneasily. The silence was intense. The twig torch fluttered faintly and went out. The darkness was black beyond belief. Without delay I felt my way out into the sunshine, leaving further exploration for another day. For weeks I roamed the forest, circled the scattered lakes, climbed to the jagged tops of high-flung peaks; and daily, almost, had new and strange experiences. Everything was intensely interesting, and all was fairyland. Many times I was torn between timidity and curiosity. Though I often carried the huge old rifle with deadly intent, I failed to bring down any big game. Invariably when I had a good chance, my gun would be at camp. Before breakfast one morning I made an excursion to a promontory to watch the sunrise. Deep down in the cañons below, darkness still lingered. Slowly the world emerged from the shadows like a photographic plate developing and disclosing its images in the darkroom. Beyond the promontory a great spire lifted high above the cañon; I climbed to its top. Above the spire was a higher crag. Again I climbed up. Up and up I climbed until almost noon. Each new vantage point revealed new glory; every successive outpost lured me on. At last the long ridge I followed shouldered against a sheer-topped peak of the Continental Divide. It was mid-afternoon and hunger urged me homeward. The way I had come was long and circuitous. There was a short cut back to camp, but this threatened difficulty, for there was a deep cañon to be crossed; and even though I reached its bottom there seemed to be no possible way up the precipitous farther wall. I did, however, make the homeward side of the cañon very late. The clouds had shut down over the peaks, leveling their tops to timberline. All day I had carried the heavy camera with a supply of glass plates. Besides I carried my six-shooter, with belt and cartridges, buckled around my waist. Several times I saw grouse and fired at them, but not once did I get a close-up shot. As I toiled upward to cross the ridge that overlooked camp, I entered the lower cloud stratum. The air was biting cold. It was impossible to see more than a few feet ahead. I regretted that I had brought no food. Snow began to fall; and the higher I plodded the thicker it fell. Darkness came rapidly; footing became precarious. The snow plastered the rocks; the light was ghostly and unreal. I began to stumble; I slipped and slid, lost my balance, and fell. Then, as the snow deepened and the darkness increased, I realized that to attempt the descent of the slope above camp would be folly, for it was as steep as a house roof, and covered with loose bowlders. Besides it had many abrupt cliffs fifty to a hundred feet high. There was only one thing to do--camp here, for the night. But I was on an exposed shoulder of the mountain, above timberline, and it would be impossible to live through the night without shelter and fire. I headed downhill without regard for direction. I was becoming numb, but in half an hour I safely reached the dwarf trees at timberline and plunged through them to a dense grove of spruce. Occasionally there was a dead tree, and nearly all trees had dead limbs low down. With such limbs or small trunks as I could find I constructed a rude lean-to, with closed ends. With my pocket knife I cut green boughs, covered the lean-to and plastered the boughs with a coating of wet snow. The green branches, together with the snow that was streaming down like a waterfall, soon rendered the shelter windproof. With a glowing fire in front to light my way, I ranged in ever-widening circles for fuel to last through the long night ahead. Within an hour I had collected a fair-sized pile of wood, but I thought I'd better have even more. My quest took me farther among the trees. Of a sudden there came a whirr of wings that made me jump and drop my load, as a number of grouse flew in all directions, their booming wings fairly exploding with energy. One of the grouse alighted in a tree overhead and I snatched out the six-shooter, aimed carefully and fired. It was a new experience for the grouse; it stretched its head out, and, twisting sidewise, stared down at me curiously. Once more I fired. The interest of the grouse increased. Again and again I fired, pausing confidently after each shot for the bird to tumble down. Three times I emptied the cylinder without a hit. Then in disgust I shoved the gun back into its holster and fumbled in the snow for a stone. The first throw was close, the second hit its mark, and the bird came fluttering down. The clouds dropped lower, enveloping my camp. The night was inky black. I lay beneath my lean-to, watching the fire before which the plump grouse was slowly turning round and round as it roasted. The turning was accomplished by hooking a green twig into its neck and tying the other end of the twig with a string that wound and unwound as the bird alternated directions. I unloaded one of the revolver cartridges and used the salty powder for seasoning my feast. I saved some ammunition after all! It was noon next day before I reached camp. Then the storm shut down again. Snow began to accumulate. In the woods it lay knee deep, while the high ridges above the timberline were swept bare by the howling wind. Quite unexpectedly, in the dead of night, I had a visitor. He was uninvited, but was determined to make himself at home. Awakened by the rattle of tin, I sat up, listened and waited. I struck a match and caught a glimpse of a huge mountain rat disappearing in the darkness. I had scarcely fallen asleep again before he returned, and when I struck a light he stared at me with villainous, beady eyes. By the uncertain light of a match I took aim with the faithless six-shooter and fired. When I sprang up, expecting to find the mangled remains of the intruder, I discovered a gaping hole in my only frying pan. After an hour the pest came again, satisfied, no doubt, that my marksmanship was not dangerous. This time I was prepared for his coming. I had a lighted pine torch to see to aim by. I tried another shot. The rat kept moving while in the open and only stopped when behind shelter, peeping out with one eye. At last he left the tent, and I followed him into the woods. Beneath the overhang of the cliff he stopped, his piercing eyes flashing in the darkness as I advanced with the torch. Patiently he waited beneath a leaning tree trunk. Ten feet from him I knelt upon the velvet needles of the forest, and with torch held aloft, steadied the six-shooter, aimed carefully, and fired. At the shot the rat disappeared. I pressed forward confident that at last I had scored a hit. The torch had gone out. I was feeling among the dead needles for the rat's mangled body when my fingers touched something wooden. Instantly the pest was forgotten. By the light of a match I saw that I had uncovered the corner of a little box. It flashed upon me that I had stumbled upon the cache where the old prospectors had hidden their gold. They were gone; the gold was mine! I tugged and tugged till I dragged it from its concealment beneath the rotting log. In trembling haste I tore off its cover. Then... I staggered back with a cry of dismay! The box was filled with old, crystallized dynamite. An inch above the top layer of the deadly stuff was a fresh hole where my bullet had crashed through. A little lower and it would have hit the powder crystals! The next morning snow lay deep about the tent. It was impossible to make my way through the woods. I was marooned far from civilization. The wind rose; crashing among the peaks, tearing along the ridges, roaring through the passes. Blinding clouds came sifting down from the wind-swept heights. After days of patient waiting, I started the laborious climb upward, for it was impossible to make progress downward, where the soft snow lay. Now, like the sheep, I would take advantage of those wind-swept stretches above timberline. Before dawn I was on my way. It required three hours to gain the first mile. Then, as I reached the cleared stretches, progress became easier. Though the wind came in angry squalls, that sometimes flung me headlong, and buffeted and drove me about, the going underfoot was good. If I could keep my bearings and head northward, steer out around the heads of countless cañons, hold my given altitude above timberline, I would eventually reach a spot some miles above the valley where the home ranch lay. All day I plodded. The wind did not abate, but came in a gale from the west. At times it dropped to perhaps fifty miles an hour, and again it rose to more than a hundred miles; it shrieked, pounded at the cliffs, tore the battered timberline trees to bits, caught up frozen snow crust and crashed it among the trees like ripping shot. At such times I was forced to turn my back, or to feel my way blindly, head down. I moved with utmost caution lest I walk over a cliff. The time came when I had to abandon the wind-swept heights and flounder through the soft snow of the cañons. Through narrow passes I had to crawl, so terrific was the wind that poured through the channel like a waterfall. Nothing short of a Kansas cyclone can match the velocity of a mountain-top gale. All day I stemmed its tide, which sapped my strength, bowled me over and cut my face. As early darkness came on I reached a familiar cañon that dropped down toward the valley where the ranch lay hidden. Drunkenly I staggered homeward, too exhausted to care what happened. The last three miles required three hours of heroic work. I became extremely weary and wanted nothing so much as to sink down in the snow and go to sleep; but I knew what that would mean, so I kept slapping and beating myself to keep awake. In the end I reached the ranch, pounded upon the door and, when it was opened, pitched headlong across its threshold. The Parson gazed down at me from his six feet of height. "Well," he said at length, "guess you found a pretty big world." CHAPTER FOUR DANCING ACROSS THE DIVIDE So new was the life, so fascinating the animals and elements of the primitive world, so miraculous was it that my lifelong dreams were come true, that I never thought of home-sickness, nor missed the comrades left behind me, although the Parson and his quiet wife were rather elderly companions for a youngster. There were, too, the diversions of going for the mail, either horseback or in the old spring wagon behind the steady, little mountain ponies, the swapping of yarns while waiting for the generally belated stage to dash up, its four horses prancing, and steaming, no matter how cold the weather, from the precipitous ups and downs of the mountain roads they had traveled. The return journey in the dusk or by moonlight was never without incident: porcupine, deer, bear, Bighorn, mountain lion--some kind of game invariably crossed my trail. And, as was true in all pioneer regions, the community abounded in interesting personalities. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the fame and fairness of the country had reached the centers of Eastern culture, and had lured the ambitious and the adventurous to try their skill in hunting and trapping and fishing in this Paradise, roamed over by big game, crossed by sparkling streams, alive with trout. Kit Carson was the first white man to look down upon its beautiful valleys. Others soon followed: Joel Estes, for whom the Park was eventually named; "Rocky Mountain Jim," a two-gun man, living alone with his dogs, looking like a bearded, unkempt pirate, taciturn, yet not without charm, as later events proved, unmolesting and unmolested, enveloped in a haze of respected mystery. There was also that noted lady globe-trotter, Miss Isabella Bird, an Englishwoman of undoubted refinement, highly educated--whose volume, "A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains," is one of the earliest and most picturesque accounts of that time--upon whom "Rocky Mountain Jim" exerted his blandishments. Some sort of romance existed between them, how serious no one knows, for the tragic shooting of Jim, by an irate pioneer father, cut short its development. In the early sixties, an English nobleman and sportsman, the Earl of Dunraven, attracted by the wealth of game in the region, attempted to make it into a private hunting park or preserve. He took up all the acreage which he could legitimately acquire in his own name, then took up fraudulent claims in the names of his tenants. But the hardy pioneers, who were coming into the country in ever-increasing numbers, rightly doubting the validity of his own ownership of so many thousands of acres, homesteaded land to their liking and built their log cabins upon it. Lord Dunraven tried to scare them off, but they would not be bluffed, and in the contest which followed, he lost out and departed from the region. Although his coming to the Park contributed much to its romantic history, in his "Memoirs"--two thick, heavy volumes, published a few years ago--he devotes only half a page to his Estes Park experiences. Whether this is because he considered them negligible or unworthy, would be interesting to know. The old Dunraven Lodge was the first hostelry in the region, and about the great fireplace in its spacious, trophy-hung lobby gathered many of the political and artistic celebrities of that day. The fame of the mountain beauty spot spread--visitors came. The settlers added "spare rooms" to their log cabins, and during the summer and early fall "took in boarders," thus helping to eke out their living expenses and, what was even more far-reaching perhaps, the outer world was thus "fetched in" to them: they heard of railroads annihilating the long oxen-traversed distances of covered wagon days, of new gold strikes, of national politics, rumblings of the Civil War, slavery agitation, presidential elections, and those other momentous, history-making events of their time. The most important and regular social occasion of that day was the community dinner and "literary." Imagine the picturesque company, congregated from miles around, each contributing whatever he could muster of food and drink--the old Earl of Dunraven, as well as others, had a bar!--and seated at a long, single table. What genuine, home-made fun! What pranks, what wit--yes, what brilliance! Some one, usually Parson Lamb, sometimes gaunt old Scotch John Cleave, the postmaster, rarely some noted visitor, who either from choice or ill-health lingered on into the winter, made a speech. There were declamations, debates, the interminable, singsong ballads of the frontier, usually accompanied by French harp or fiddle. Families were few, bachelors much in the majority; I remember that at one of the community affairs there were eighteen bachelors out of a total attendance of thirty persons! But as the region settled up, the bachelor ranks dwindled. They, like the big game, disappeared, as though in their case "open season" prevailed likewise. I had attended several of these pioneer festivities and had enjoyed them greatly, and was much impressed with their importance, for underlying all the fun was an old-fashioned dignity seldom found nowadays. But Parson Lamb told me these dinners were tame compared to a real mountain dance. "Just you wait till you see a real shindig" he said. "Then you'll have something to talk about." In January, there was a letter in the mail from Jim Oss, my acquaintance of the train on which I came West. We had been carrying on a desultory correspondence, but this message was momentous. "I am giving a dance Monday," he wrote, "to celebrate proving up on my homestead. Come ahead of time so you can see all the fun." His hundred and sixty acres lay on the western slope of the Continental Divide--fifty-five miles away. Snow lay deep over every one of those intervening, upstanding miles! The Parson was concerned about my going alone. "'Tain't safe to cross that old range alone any time of year, let alone the dead of winter. Hain't no one else agoing from here?" I inquired, but it seemed there was not. Secretly I was well pleased to have it so. I was young enough to thrill at the chance of so hazardous an experience. Parson Lamb agreed that Friday morning would be a good time to start. We were not superstitious, and it wasn't the thirteenth. The trip had to be made on snowshoes, with which I was not very adept, but that only added to its attractions. In order to cross the Divide, it was necessary to descend from my lofty nine thousand feet elevation to seven thousand five hundred, before starting to climb Flattop trail, which led over to Grand Lake, the last settlement before reaching Oss's place. By sundown I reached a deserted sawmill shack, the last shelter between me and Grand Lake. It was six miles below the top of the Divide, and twenty miles to the Lake. There I spent the night and at dawn was trailing upward, in the teeth of a sixty-mile gale! The first two of those uprising six miles were fair going, and took only a little more than an hour. Thereafter the trail grew more precipitous. The third mile required one hour, and the fourth, two hours of exhausting work. The sun rose, but not the temperature; powdery snow swirled around the heads of the peaks; clouds swept above the ridges, flayed and torn; from above timberline came the roar of the wind. Dark glasses protected my eyes from snow and wind; and I was warmly dressed. I left my bedding roll at the sawmill, to be picked up on the return trip, for shelter could be had at Grand Lake. The light pack I carried contained peanuts, chocolate, and a change of socks. The higher I climbed the wilder became the wind. From timberline I surveyed the prospect ahead and hesitated. Clouds and snow whirled up in a solid mass, blinding and choking me. The cold penetrated my heavy clothing. I went on. In a few minutes I was in the midst of the turmoil, utterly lost, buffeted about. I tried to keep the wind in my face for compass, but it was so variable, eddying from all directions, that it was not reassuring. Near the top of the mountain a blast knocked me down, and half smothered me with flying snow. I arose groggily, uncertain which way to head; it was impossible to see even a step in front. The staff I carried served me well, with it I went tapping and feeling my way like a blind man. There I was on the top of the world, thirteen thousand feet above sea level--and overlooking nothing. Flattop mountain is shaped like a loaf of bread, sloping off steeply at the ends, its sides guarded by sheer cliffs.. It was these cliffs I feared and strove to avoid. I had heard startling tales of the effects of high altitude on one; how the atmosphere was very rare and light. Had it been any heavier that day, I could not have survived. Violent blasts of wind frequently bowled me over. After one of these falls, I arose uncertainly, drifted with the wind for a moment's respite, neglected to feel ahead with my staff--and walked out upon a snow cornice that overhung the top of the cliff. The cornice broke away! Amidst an explosion of snow I plunged downward, struggling frantically as I went! [Illustration: I plunged downward, struggling frantically.] I landed in a snowdrift featherbed which, while it broke my fall, almost buried me alive. The wind reached me only in occasional gusts, so I realized that I must be sheltered by the cliff wall. In the first brief lull I took my bearings. I had landed upon a narrow ledge a few feet wide. Below me yawned the gorge. It was a terrible half hour's work with a snowshoe as a shovel to extricate myself, but a few minutes later I was once more on top. Again I struggled upward. I reached the pass and started down the western slope toward timber. My fingers and toes were frosted, I was numb with cold, and so battered by the gale I could only pant. My careful calculations had come to naught, as I was far behind the schedule I had planned. I decided to make up time by abandoning the trail and taking a shortcut to timber and shelter through an unknown cañon which I thought led to Grand Lake. But the cañon was hard going. Thick, young evergreens, entangling willows and fallen logs impeded every step. I could make no headway and darkness was coming on. Disgusted, despairing, I took to the frozen stream, only to skid over icy bowlders and at last to break through the ice crust into the frigid water. Long after dark I staggered down the single street of Grand Lake toward a dim patch of light. It proved to be the window of a store. Within was a glowing stove, surrounded by a group of men. The proprietor eyed me with suspicion. "Where'd you drop from?" I waved vaguely toward the Continental Divide. "Must 'a' bin something urgent to make you tackle the Flattop trail in winter." He awaited my explanations curiously--but I had slumped down near the stove and was half asleep. Next morning I looked back up the way I had come--low clouds, tattered to shreds. Even at that distance I could hear the roar of the wind among the loft crags. I was thankful that I had crossed the Divide the day before. It was still thirty miles to the cabin of my friend, but they were fairly easy miles compared with those I had just traversed. Even so, so spent was my strength, it was pitch dark when I dragged wearily up the broken road to where that cabin nestled in its grove of spruces. The dance was not until Monday night, so I took it for granted that I should be the first to arrive, since I was a full day ahead of the function. But no! Many were already there! They were eating supper and made room for me at the long table before the open fire. They were cordial and made me feel at home at once, marveling over my making the trip alone, and praising my pluck. I was much too weary and hungry to protest, even though I had been becomingly modest. Seeing this, they filled my plate and let me be, turning their nimble tongues on our host--What handsome whiskers--la! la! He'd better be careful with those hirsute adornments and a cabin with a plank floor! He couldn't hope to remain a bachelor long! So the banter ran. Supper over and the dishes cleared away, the candles were snuffed out and the company (visitors were never called guests) sat around the flickering hearth and speculated over the possible coming of the Moffat railroad. What an assorted company it was! Young and grizzled--trappers, miners, invalids seeking health, adventurers, speculators, a few half-breeds; all men of little education, but of fascinating experience; a few women of quiet poise and resourcefulness. Their clothes were nondescript and betrayed the fact that they had come from the East, having been sent west by condoning relatives, no doubt after having lived in more fashionable circles. There were two little children who fell asleep early in the evening in their parents' arms. The company was put to bed in Oss's one-room house by the simple means of lying down upon the floor fully dressed, feet to the fire. All were up early next morning, and each found some task to do. Some of the men cut wood and piled it outside the door; the women folks assisted Oss with breakfast which was cooked in the fireplace; for he had not yet reached the luxury of a cook stove, which would have to be "fetched in" over sixty miles of mountain roads and would cost a tidy sum besides. Some artistic soul, with a memory of urban ways, made long ropes of evergreens and hung them in garlands from the rafters, a flag was draped above the fireplace, lanterns were hung ready to light. Distant "neighbors" kept flocking in all day, each bringing a neighborly offering; fresh pork from the owner of an only shoat; choice venison steaks; bear meat from a hunter who explained that the bear had been killed months before and kept frozen in the meat house. Wild raspberry jam, with finer flavor than any I have ever tasted before or since, was brought by a bachelor who vied with the women folks when it came to cookery. The prize offering, however, were some mountain trout, speared through the ice of a frozen stream. Dancing began early. The music was supplied by an old-time fiddler who jerked squeaky tunes from an ancient violin, singing and shouting the dance calls by turns. Voice, fiddle and feet, beating lusty time to his tunes, went incessantly. He had an endless repertoire, and a talent for fitting the names of the dancers to his ringing rimes. Some of his offerings were: "Lady round lady and gents so low! First couple lead to right-- Lady round lady and gents so low-- Lady round gent and gent don't go-- Four hands half and right and left." The encores he would improvise: "Hit the lumber with your leather-- Balance all, an' swing ter left." All swayed rhythmically, beating time with their feet, clapping their hands, bowing, laughing. The men threw in their fancy steps, their choice parlor tricks. A few performed a double shuffle; one a pigeon's wing; a couple of trappers did an Indian dance, twisting their bodies into grotesque contortions and every so often letting out a yell that made one's hair stand on end. There was little rest between the dances, for the old fiddler had marvelous powers of endurance. He sawed away, perspired, shouted and sang as though his life depended on his performance. He was having as good, or better time, than anyone. With scarcely a moment to breathe he'd launch into another call--and not once the whole night through did he repeat: "Ole Buffler Bill--Buffler Bill! Never missed an' never will." Then as the dancers promenaded he'd switch to a new improvisation, ending in a whirlwind of wit and telling personalities, which sent the company into hysterical laughter. I joined in the dance, rather gawkily no doubt, for my mother's father was a Quaker preacher and we had never been allowed to dance at home. The ladies regarded my clumsiness with motherly forbearance, and self-sacrificingly tried to direct my wayward feet. But either because I was not recovered from my trip or because the strangeness and confusion wearied me, I could not get the hang of the steps. Presently an understanding matron let me slip out of the dance, and I sat down by the fiddler and dozed. Clanking spurs, brilliant chaps, fur-trimmed trappers' jackets, thudding moccasins, gaudy Indian blankets and gay feathers, voluminous feminine flounces swinging from demure, snug-fitting basques--all whirled above me in a kaleidoscopic blur! [Illustration: I sat down by the fiddler and dozed.] A wild war whoop awakened me--nothing but a little harmless hilarity! It was two o'clock in the morning. I wished the dance would end so I could sleep undisturbed. I envied the two children asleep on the floor. But the dance went on. The fiddle whined, its player shouted, heavy shoes clumped tirelessly on the plank floor. There was still energetic swing and dash to the quadrilles, still gay voices were raised in joyous shouts. Those hearty pioneers were full of "wim, wigor and witality"! Dawn broke redly over the Divide; still the dance continued. Daylight sifted over the white world, and yet the dancers did not pause. At last as the sun came up, the old fiddler reluctantly stood on his chair and played "Home Sweet Home." All-night dances were at that time the custom of the mountain folk; the company assembled as far ahead of time as was convenient, and remained, sometimes, a day or two after the close of the festivities. There was no doubt as to one's welcome and there was no limit to the length of his stay. Isolation made opportunities for such social intercourse rare and therefore everyone got more "kick" out of these occasions than is possible in our swiftly moving, blasé age. Weather conditions changed while we danced: the wind eased off and the mountain tops emerged from the clouds and drifting snow. I trailed up the cañon I had struggled through in the darkness; and except for the final stretch of the steep mountain above timberline the snowshoeing was nothing except plain hard work. In some places the wind had packed the snow hard; again it was soft so that I sank knee deep at every step. In the soft snow, where there was a steep slope to negotiate, each snowshoe had to be lifted high, until my knee almost touched my chest. The webs accumulated snow, too, until each shoe weighed many additional pounds. But the fairyland that I found on top of the Divide was worth all the effort required to reach it. It was the first time I had found the wind quiet; every peak stood out sharp and clear, many miles away seemed but a few minutes' walk. There were none of the usual objects that help estimate distance; no horses or cattle, no trees or trails, nothing but unbroken space. The glare of the sun was blinding; even my very dark snow glasses failed to protect my eyes. The silence was tremendous. Always before there had been the wind shrieking and crashing. Now there was not a sound, not a breath of wind, not even a snow-swirl. I shouted, and my voice came back across the cañon without the usual blurring; each word was distinct. I whistled softly and other echoes came hurrying back. Never have I felt so alone, or so small. As far as the eye could reach were mountains, one beyond the other. Near by loomed the jagged Never-summer range, while farther down the Divide Gray's and Terry's peaks stood out; then the Collegiate range--Harvard, Yale and Princeton. In the midst of my reverie there came a creaking, groaning sound from almost beneath my feet. I had paused on the brink of the same precipice over which I had fallen on my way to Grand Lake. Before I could move, the snow-cornice broke away and several hundred feet of it crashed down the cliff. In places it appeared to be ten to forty feet thick. It must have weighed thousands of tons. It fell with a swishing roar, with occasional sharp reports, as loose rocks dropped to the clean-swept ledges of the cliff. It seemed to explode as it struck, to fly into powder which filled the gorge between Flat top and Hallett peaks. The wind had drifted the snow over the edge of the precipice where some of it had clung. Farther and farther it had crept out, overhanging the abyss, its great weight slowly bending the cornice downward until it had at last given way. I shuddered a little at the awfulness of it; felt smaller than ever, backed away from the rim of the cañon, and headed for home. CHAPTER FIVE TRAPPING--MOUNTAIN-TOP DWELLERS Gold and fur have ever been beckoning sirens, luring men into the unknown. As I have said, the famous trapper, Kit Carson, was the first white man to look down upon the picturesque, mountain-guarded valley, later known as Estes Park. From the foothills, he had followed up one of the streams, seeking new fur-fields, until, after crossing the last barrier range, he looked down upon a broad, river spangled park set like a gem in the midst of the encircling peaks of the Divide, with that sheer, pyramidal face of Long's Peak dominating all. We like to think that these early adventurers appreciated the beauty of the primitive lands they explored, but whether or not Carson thrilled at that exquisite alpine panorama, he noted keenly the profusion of tracks criss-crossing its green and white expanse, promising an abundance of game, for he moved down into the region and at the foot of Long's Peak built himself a rude log cabin. There he spent the winter trapping beaver, and the following spring bargained with the Indians to help pack out his catch. The walls, the hearth, and part of the stone chimney still mark the site of that first cabin. I selected the top of a high cliff overlooking these storied ruins for the location of a cabin which I planned to build as soon as I could manage it. I, too, would be a trapper, and though the beaver and other fur-bearing animals were not nearly so numerous as they had been that day, sixty years gone, when Carson first beheld their mountain fastness, there still remained enough to make trapping interesting and profitable. Game tracks still abounded, and notwithstanding that I was a mere boy, inexperienced in woodcraft, I could distinguish that they differed, even though I could classify only a few of them; coyote tracks, I found, were very like a dog's; sheep, elk and deer tracks were similar, yet easily distinguished from one another; bear left a print like that of a baby's chubby foot. Yes, there was still a chance for me! As soon as I returned from the dance at Jim Oss's, I set about carrying out my plans. I mushed over deep snow back into Wild Basin, to recover the six traps I had abandoned there on that memorable first camp alone, and found my tent crushed under six feet of drifted snow and the region still deserted by game. I set the traps out in the vicinity of the home ranch. Every few days I inspected them, only to find them empty. Indeed, over a period of long weeks I caught but one mink, two weasels and three coyotes. The Parson kindly said the country was trapped out; still, I suspected my lack of skill was responsible for my scanty catch. One morning in following up my trap line, I found a trap missing. In the sand about the aspen tree to which it had been anchored were coyote tracks. Ignorantly fearless, I set out to track down the miscreant. The trail led down toward a forest, where dense thickets of new-growth lodge-pole pines livened the stark, fire-killed trees. As I neared the forest, the tracks were farther apart and dimmer, but here and there were scratches on fallen logs as though a trap had been dragged across them; moreover, there were occasional spots where the earth was greatly disturbed, showing that the animal had no doubt threshed about in his efforts to dislodge the trap, caught on the snags or bowlders. No denying I thrilled from head to foot over the prospect of meeting Mr. Coyote face to face! If he showed fight I'd snatch my six-shooter from its holster (forgotten was its faithless performance in Wild Basin!) and show him I was not to be trifled with. Of course, I'd aim to hit him where the shot would do least damage to his fur; it would be more valuable for marketing. Just then I heard the clank of the trap chain. Heart pounding, hands trembling, I shakily drew my gun, and cautiously advanced. Around the corner of a bowlder I came upon a large coyote, with a black stripe running along his back, squatting in an old game trail, apparently little concerned either at my presence or at his own dilemma. As I stumbled toward him, he faced about, and without taking his eyes off me, kept jerking the trap which was wedged between a root and a bowlder. Twenty feet away I stopped, and with what coolness I could command in my excitement, took aim and fired. The bullet only ruffled the heavy fur at his shoulder. Determined to finish him next shot, I edged nearer. My target refused to stand still--he sprang the full length of his chain again and again, striving to dislodge the trap. Finally it jerked free and he was off like a rabbit, despite his dragging burden, leaping logs or scuttling beneath them, zigzagging along the crooked trail, dodging bowlders, tree limbs and my frequent but ineffective fire. For I madly pursued him though hard put to keep up his pace. Suddenly the trap caught again and jerked its victim to an abrupt stop. He whirled about and faced me defiantly, eyes blazing, fangs bared. I reloaded my revolver, aimed--fired, aimed--fired again and again, until the cylinder was empty, without once hitting him. I began to think that, like old Tom, he led a charmed life. Just then he jerked loose, and once more the chase was on. I reloaded my six-shooter and fired on the run, shouting excitedly. He ran on with tireless, automatic motion, apparently as unperturbed as he was impervious to bullets. All at once I discovered my belt empty--I had exhausted my cartridges! Disgusted, I shoved my gun back into its holster, and, picking up a stout club, ran after the coyote. Several times I was close enough to hit him, but he deftly dodged or else sprang forward beyond reach. Once when the trap caught and prisoned him an instant, I swung my club, sure of ending the race, but it collided on a limb overhead and went wide of the mark! Again I overtook the coyote as he struggled through hindering bush, and, reaching forward, swung my bludgeon with all my might and fell headlong upon him! I gave a terrified yell; my battered hat flew off; I dropped my club. The coyote was out of sight before I gained my feet! Suddenly we popped out of the forest on the edge of a cañon; its sides were smooth and almost bare. On this open ground, my quarry gained on me by leaps and bounds. I spied a rock-slide below--great slabs that had slid down from the cliff above--between openings amply large to admit almost any animal. Once the coyote reached that slide, he would escape. Panting loudly, I sprinted forward to overtake him. The trap chain wedged unexpectedly, the coyote changed ends, and came up facing me. I could not put on brakes quickly enough and skidded almost into him. He sprang at my throat. As he launched upward I glimpsed his flaming eyes and wide-open, fang-filled mouth. I do not know what saved me; whether my desperate effort to reverse succeeded, whether I dodged, or whether the restraining trap chain thwarted him. As it was, his teeth grazed my face, leaving deep, red scars across my chin.... His was the handsomest skin that adorned the walls of my cabin when that dream eventually became a reality. I did not sell the skin as purposed--not, however, because my bullets had ruined it for marketing! [Illustration: I glimpsed his flaming eyes and wide-open, fang-filled mouth.] In common with all small boys, I was the hero of my dreams, and in my fancy saw myself growing into a magnified composite of Nimrod, Robin Hood, Kit Carson, and Buffalo Bill, all molded into one mighty man who dwarfed the original individuals! I confess reality was retarding my growth considerably. It looked as though Kit Carson would go unrivaled by me as a trapper; certainly the shades of Nimrod and Robin Hood had no cause to be uneasy lest I win their laurels from them, and as for Buffalo Bill--both the Buffalo and the redskins, whose scalps had always dangled in fancy from my belt in revenge for their plaguing my mother on her brave drive with my sick father across those long unsettled miles, were far beyond my puny vengeance. The Parson told me that the Utes, a nomadic tribe, had once roamed the mountains and valleys around Estes, but that it was not generally believed that they had permanent settlements here. It was thought they made temporary or seasonal camp when hunting or fishing was at its height, and that they used the alpine valley as a vast council chamber when they met to discuss inter-tribal matters. Certain it is, I puzzled over curious, dim, ghostly circles, or rings, in the valleys, where neither grass nor any other vegetation had gained root even after all these years. The old-timers told me these had been made by the Indians banking dirt around their lodges. A few scattered tepee frames still stood, here and there, in sheltered groves along the river. Occasionally I picked up arrowheads--once upon a high-flung ledge I came upon a score or more. How my imagination soared! Here, no doubt, an Indian had stood, in eagle-feathered war bonnet and full regalia, guarding this pass; he had been wounded sore unto death, he fell! His bones, and all his trappings, the wooden shaft of his arrows, had disintegrated and disappeared. Only these bits of flint enmeshed in the clinging tendrils of Indian tobacco, or kinnikinic, were left to tell the tale of his heroism. Of course, I didn't give up hunting or trapping or even my hope of finding a gold mine, altogether. I continued to exercise my six-shooter, though repeated failures to find my mark made it easy for me to depend more and more on my camera for "shots." I still inspected my trapline, with mental resolutions against trailing trap-maddened coyotes. My trip over the Divide gave me a keener appreciation of winter upon the heights. When, from the window of our snug log cabin, I looked up toward Long's Peak, and saw the clouds of snow dust swirling about its head, I pictured just what was happening up there far more accurately than I could ever have done before I had that experience. I made frequent trips above timberline, sometimes to find arctic gales that filled the air with icy pellets which penetrated like shot, cutting my face; gales that drove the cold through the thickest, heaviest clothes I could put on; gales that blew the snow about until it enveloped me in a cloud-like veil, making vision impossible. On such days, retreat was the only possible, if not valorous, course. To have remained would have been foolhardy, for blinded and buffeted by the storm, I might easily have stepped off a precipice with less fortunate consequences than had attended my experience on my journey over the Divide. But sometimes, the conditions on the heights were astonishing. Once I left our valley chill and gloomy, all shut in by lowering clouds, and climbed up toward the hidden summits of the peaks, to emerge above the clouds into bright, warm sunshine. Another day, at an altitude of twelve thousand feet, I found it only twelve below freezing, while, at the same time, as I learned later, it was twenty-four degrees below zero at Fort Collins, a town forty miles away on the plains. Strange freak of weather! The explanation lay in the difference between the winds that blew over the respective sections, a blizzardly north wind was sweeping over the low, exposed plains, while up on the peak-encircled heights a balmy "chinook" gently stirred from the west. Mountaineers know that as long as the west wind blows no severe storm is to be feared. It is the chill east wind that comes creeping up the cañons from the bleak plains and prairies of the lowlands, which bring the blizzards. One rare, windless day upon the heights, my little hay-making friend, the cony, greeted me with an enthusiastic "squee-ek." He was sunning himself upon a rock and looked so sleek and plump I knew his harvest had been bountiful. He lay gazing off into space, apparently contemplating the Divide. But when, a few minutes later, a beady-eyed weasel challenged my right of way, I wondered whether little "Squee-ek's" thoughts were so remote as those distant peaks! In both storm and sunshine, I saw weasels abroad on the heights. They were bold, fearless little cutthroats, approaching within a few feet to stare at me wickedly. I saw them below timberline pursuing snowshoe rabbits many times their size. Occasionally I came across fox tracks. These sly fellows seemed indifferent to cold or wind. They stalked the ptarmigan above timberline, and the grouse that had migrated up the slopes to winter, below it, and accounted for the death of many. One moonlit night, as I prowled upward, I heard an unearthly, uncanny squall. I couldn't help the shiver that ran down my spine. All the pent-up anguish and torment in the world broke forth in that sound. But perhaps it was only his foxy protest because his prey had outfoxed him. But by far the most interesting mountain-top dwellers were the Bighorn sheep, which adopted those frigid regions as a winter resort. I had often wondered about those lofty-minded animals I had tracked over in the Wild Basin country. Were they still on those wind-blown heights? It seemed incredible that they could stand a whole winter of such bitter buffeting. Yet, on the days when I climbed above the timberline, no matter the weather, they were always there, contentedly feeding on the sweet, early-cured tufts of grass that the raging alpine gales kept uncovered. It was fascinating to watch them; neither wild winds nor blinding snow seemed to disconcert them; their thick wool coats were impervious to the keenest, most penetrating blasts. True, on terribly stormy days they sought the shelter of giant upthrusts of rock, towering cliffs or sky-piercing spires that faced eastward, away from the prevailing winds. There they probably stayed for days at a time, as long as the worst storms prevailed. Such days I did not dare venture upon the heights, but I often found signs of their bedding down among similar crags. And such nerveless or nervy creatures as they were! From the top of a cliff, one day, I watched a band of them go down a nearly perpendicular wall. I could not follow, though I did go part way down to where the wall bulged outward. There the ledges had crumbled away, leaving sheer, smooth rock. It did not seem possible that anything could go down that smooth face. But half a dozen sheep in succession made the descent safely, as I watched, breathless, from above. They seemed to defy the laws of gravitation in walking over the rim rock; for, instead of tumbling headlong as I feared, they went skidding downward, bouncing, side-stepping, twisting and angling across the wall like coasters on snow; they could not stop their downward drop, but they controlled their descent by making brakes of their feet, and taking advantage of every small bump to retard their speed. By foot pressure they steered their course for a shelving rock below. One after another, in quick succession, they shot down, struck the shelf and leaped sidewise to a ledge a dozen feet beneath. In spite of their efforts to retard their speed, they had gained tremendous momentum before reaching the ledge and landed with all four feet bunched beneath them. It seemed that their legs would surely be thrust through their bodies. Their heads jerked downward, their noses threatened to be skinned on the rock! Yet that rough descent neither disabled nor unnerved them. They recovered their balance instantly and trotted away around a turn of the wall. One young ram thought to escape by leaving the cliff and making his way across a steep, snowy slide to another crag. In places he struck soft snow and plunged heavily, breaking his way through. Midway between crags, however, he came to grief quite unexpectedly. An oozing spring had overflowed and covered the rocks with a coating of ice. Then snow had blown down from above and covered it. The ram struck this at top speed, and a moment afterward was turning somersaults down the slope. A hundred feet below he nimbly recovered his balance and proceeded on his way, carrying his head haughtily, as though indignant at my burst of laughter. Part way down the cliff I found the tracks of the big ram leader of the band. I had long since named him "Big Eye," which an old trapper had told me was the Indians' expression for extraordinary eyesight. Not that "Big Eye" was exceptional in this respect, not at all! Every one of his band possessed miraculous eyesight. But he was always alert and wary. It was unbelievable that he could detect me such a long way off, around bowlders, through granite walls, in thick brush, but it seemed to me he did. No matter how carefully I concealed my approach, he always discovered me. This day he had left his band and had turned aside upon an extremely narrow shelf and made his way out of sight. I followed his tracks, curious to learn where he had gone. Many places he had negotiated without slacking his speed, whereas I was forced to make detours for better footing, to double back and forth, and generally to progress very slowly. Apparently he was not much frightened, for his tracks showed that he had frequently halted to look behind him. So intent was I upon overtaking him, that I ran into a flock of ptarmigan and nearly stepped on one of the "fool hens" before it took wing and got out of the way, so utterly did it stake its safety on its winter camouflage. The whole flock had been sitting in plain sight but their snow-white coats made them hardly distinguishable from their background. They faded into the landscape like an elusive puzzle picture. In summer they had depended on their speckled plumage, so like the mottled patches of sand and snow and grass and granite whereon they lived, to protect them. They certainly put their trust in nature! Around a turn, I came upon the old Patriarch. He was standing with his back to the wall, facing out and back, for here the ledge he had been following pinched out, and even he, champion acrobat of the cliffs, could neither climb up nor find a way down. For several minutes we faced each other, ten yards apart. I had heard that mountain sheep never attack men, and that even the big leaders never use their massive, battering ram heads to injure anyone. With this in mind I moved up to within ten feet when a movement of his haughty head stopped me. Somehow in his action was the suggestion that he might forget tradition. One bump of his huge head would knock me overboard. There was nothing but space for a hundred feet below, then sheer wall for several hundred feet more. Arrogantly he faced me, unflinchingly; his eyes of black and gold never wavering; statuesque, his heroic body set solidly upon his sturdy legs, his regal head high, his lodestone feet secure upon the sloping rock, he was a handsome figure. He outweighed me about three pounds to one; so the longer I looked at him, the less desire I had to crowd. At length I mustered up courage to try him out. Slowly, an inch at a time, I edged forward, talking quietly--assuring him that my intentions were good, and that I merely wanted to learn how near a fellow might go without his lordship's taking exceptions. Suddenly he stiffened; half closed his eyes and lowered his head. At the same instant he shifted his feet as though to charge. As I backed carefully away, I recalled again that his kind had never harmed anyone, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and left him in undisputed possession of the ledge. On many a windy winter day thereafter, I saw "Big Eye" and his band. Always I laughed a bit at my experience upon the ledge. The ram appeared so dignified, so quiet, so harmless! Still, I had no fault to find with my retreat that day. One day there came a change over the world. Signs of spring came creeping up the valley. The pussy willows put on their silvery furs, the birches and elders unfurled their catkin tassels. Bands of deer and elk began to drift back into the valley; the Bighorn eagerly forsook the heights. The few coyotes that had remained throughout the winter were joined by more of their kin; fresh bobcat tracks appeared daily. The mountain lions that had trailed the deer and elk down to warmer climes, returned close on their heels as their red records testified. On my rambles I often came upon the scenes of their kills; deer, elk and even wary sheep were their victims. The wet, clinging, spring snows lent themselves readily as recording tablets for the movements of all the woods folk. Not far from the proposed site of my dream cabin, the story of a lion's stalk was plainly told by tracks. He had climbed to the top of a rock that stood ten feet above the level floor of the valley, a huge bowlder that had rolled down from a crag above, torn its way through the ranks of the trees and come to rest at last in the grassy meadow. There he lay in wait for the slowly advancing, grazing deer. As they approached the rock, the band had split; a section passing on either side of the bowlder. Out and down the lion had leaped--ten feet out and as far down. His momentum had overthrown his victim which had regained its feet and struggled desperately. The turf was torn up for thirty feet beyond the rock. I found only the tracks of the hind feet of the lion; it was not hard to imagine that, his front claws were fastened in the shoulders of his prey, and that his terrible teeth had reached an artery in his victim's neck. Many such slaughters the soft snow revealed! Aroused by them, I determined to revenge the shy, innocent deer family. At every opportunity, I have taken toll of the lion tribe. As soon as the first new grass painted the meadows pale green, the sheep flocked down from their lofty winter resort: the sunshine in the hemmed-in valley was hot; they still wore their heavy winter coats, they grew lazy; hours on end they lay dozing, or moving tranquilly about, feasting on the succulent young shoots. For six or seven months,--it was at least that long ago since my discovery of their uprising migration in Wild Basin--they had been living on dried fare--unbaled hay--with no water to wash it down, for there were no flowing springs about their airy castles. Snow was the only moisture to be had. I was all eagerness to "shoot" them with my camera! I had watched them so often I felt we were at least acquainted. But out of respect for their tremendous dignity, I decided to keep my plans secret from them, to approach under cover, to creep forward cautiously, soundlessly. To my dismay, as soon as I got within a quarter of a mile of them, some busybody of a sentinel would see me, and if I continued advancing, no matter how stealthily, the flock would move away. It seemed offish, not to say unfriendly; time and again I tried the same tactics, with the same result. I was disappointed and puzzled. I came to the conclusion that I had presumed too much on our previous friendship, that such regal creatures could not be expected to capitulate after a brief winter's acquaintance. I would visit them in their little valley, learn their peculiarities--who would do less to gain a friend worth while--and gain their confidence. Accordingly, every day I strolled casually in plain sight, over toward their feeding ground. They gradually lost their nervousness at my advances and eventually let me come within a hundred feet of them. One morning, after several weeks of this chivalrous conduct, I set out with my camera, to spend the day with them. Not that they had extended an invitation, but they unconsciously invited me. There were thirty-two of them, including two huge old rams, grazing at the edge of the valley. I approached them from the windward side, so they would be doubly sure of my identity, for I knew that with their telescopic eyes they would recognize me while I was still a long way off. I halted first while about a hundred yards distant. Pausing a few moments, I advanced again, until I cut the distance between us in half. I affected the utmost indifference--I lay down to rest, I got up and prowled about. They left off feeding, and bunched together, the wary old rams on the far side of the flock. They gallantly let the ladies and children be first to meet me! For an hour the game went on. Little by little I cut the distance to thirty feet. Some of them even forgot themselves so much as to lie down and doze, others were discourteous enough to resume feeding, but a canny few continued to watch my every movement sharply. Several times I tried to circle round them; each time they edged away towards the mountain slopes. At last they bunched together beside a jutting rock and made such a beautiful picture, I could no longer control my desire to photograph them. Setting my camera at forty feet, I again slowly advanced. At thirty feet, the sheep still being quiet, I shortened the range. My greediness threatened to be the end of me! Below my subjects was a smooth rock slope. Having set my camera for twenty-five feet, I ventured across it. If I could only reach the edge of that sloping rock before they took fright what a wonderful picture I'd get! Slowly, inch by inch I crept toward them. My eyes were glued to the finder, my finger trembled at the button, all at once, I stepped out, on nothing! Boy and camera turned over in midair and alighted, amid a shower of cones, in the top of a young spruce tree. After the first instant of astonishment, my exasperation grew. I had lost my first chance at getting a photograph of the sheep--most likely the best chance I'd ever have, too. Maybe ruined my camera, my clothes, and my hide! My disposition was past mending. My second surprise belittled my first. For when I looked about, expecting the sheep to have vanished, there they all were, crowding forward, and peering over the edge of the rock, in friendly solicitude! How often the unpremeditated exceeds our fondest plans! The picture I finally made far excelled the one I had first counted on! After my fall, the game was taken up again. The sheep moved higher whenever I came too near them. Sometimes I dropped to all fours and gave an imitation of a playful pup; stopping to sniff loudly at a chipmunk's hole or to dig furiously with both hands. The sheep crowded forward appreciatively. Evidently they had a weakness for vaudeville. No acrobat, no contortionist, ever had a more flatteringly attentive audience. I laughed at my foolishness, but the sheep were courteously grave. Toward noon the band set off for a steep cliff, where each day they took their siesta. The two old rams led the way. After making pictures of them silhouetted against the sky, I circled the cliff and hid at the end of a ledge. I counted on getting a good photograph when the old leaders surmounted the crag and marched forward at the head of their single-file column. To deceive them, I built a dummy at the spot where they turned aside upon the ledge. Coat and cap and camera case went into the sketchy figure, and after it had been propped in place to block the downward retreat, I hurried around the point and hid in some bushes behind a granite slab, first setting my camera, well camouflaged with stones, atop the rock, and focusing it toward the point where the sheep would pass in review. Minutes passed. Not a sheep rounded the point! More waiting. I sallied forth to reconnoiter. The sheep were feeding peacefully in the valley below. They had knocked down the dummy, trampled over it, and retreated along the ledge the way they had come! The joke was on me, but it had been a glorious day for all that. I retrieved the remains of my down-trodden dummy and started home. I halted midway down to the valley to study some queer records in the sand. Surely a crazy man had made them! What would a stranger have thought if he had happened upon that grotesque trail? But a stranger _had_ been there. On the heels of my crazy trail were the tracks of a mountain lion. He had been stalking me! From my experience with these sheep I made some naïve deductions and wrote them in my notebook. From it, lying open before me now, I transcribe these boyish but none the less accurate observations: "Mountain sheep have all-seeing eyes--therefore, one keeps in the open at all times and never attempts stalking them under cover. If you do, you are acting suspiciously, and they will treat you in the same manner." "They will not permit you to approach from above them. They are lofty minded; so keep your place beneath them." "If sheep are in the open, and on level ground, they will not permit a near approach." "Keep in the open, below them, permit them to retreat to the rocks. If these rocks give way to sheer cliffs the sheep will feel at home. They will then permit you to approach quite near." "Sheep are tremendously curious. Take advantage of this fact and offer them something in the way of entertainment. If you want to get on with sheep, make a fool of yourself." As spring advanced, the ewes left the flock and sought safety among the cliffs where they raised their young in partial concealment. While their lambs were yet mere infants, a week old or so, they hid them among the rocks. Instinctively the youngsters lay low, remaining immovable until their mothers returned from feeding near by, to claim them. Eagles hovered high overhead, waiting to drop like plummets upon the helpless babies. These great birds accounted for many a bleating little lamb's passing. Lions, likewise, visited the heights and took toll of mothers as well as of offspring; even bobcats pounced upon them. Sometimes coyotes or wolves surprised partly grown sheep, that had brashly ventured too far from sheltering rocks. While returning home one day I stumbled upon a very young sheep. The youngster lay low, like a wounded duck. Several times I walked within a few feet of him, coming closer each time until at length he sprang up and fled in terror. He took refuge by climbing an almost perpendicular cliff wall. Camera in hand, I followed as best I could. Fifty feet up, he came to a point where even his nimble feet could find no adequate footing. His retreat ended. He scrambled to a little jutting point not much larger than a hand's breadth, and took refuge there with all four feet bunched together. Carefully I worked up toward him. Several times he bleated for his mother and shifted his position. Every moment I feared he would lose his footing and plunge down the rock face. Twenty feet below I stopped because I could climb no higher. Carefully I turned about and faced the wall, hugging it as closely as possible. Holding the camera at arm's length, and pointing it straight up, I sprung the shutter. The click, slight as it was, startled the lamb. He leaped several feet to another nub of rock, teetered precariously several seconds, then suddenly his pedestal broke off. Sheep and rock dropped straight toward me. To avoid the rock, I sprang sideways. The sheep plunged down upon me as the rock hurtled past. Together we revolved, that sheep and I, the camera being abandoned in midair to shift for itself. Together the struggling youngster and I struck the rock, slid and bounded outward, turning over as we fell, first one on top, then the other, until at length I clutched a bush growing out of a crevice in the slide and stopped myself; but the lamb continued his bouncing fall down the mountain. In all, he must have rolled three hundred feet before he stopped, his feet sticking up out of the brush like the legs of an overturned bench. [Illustration: Sheep and rock dropped straight toward me.] It was some time before I was able to walk. But as quickly as possible I went to the rescue of that sheep because I had caused his downfall. He was still breathing, but unable to stand. With great effort, for he was heavy and I was shaking from my fall, I carried him down to the stream and soused him in its icy water. He revived at once. The camera had smashed to pieces before it finished its bouncing flight down the mountain. After all, it was a great experience, and though it cost me my camera, some of my hide and most of my clothes, I wouldn't have missed it for all Kit Carson's priceless furs! CHAPTER SIX A LOG CABIN IN THE WILDS--PRIMITIVE LIVING At last, that long-anticipated day dawned, when my dream cabin became a reality. High upon a shoulder of Twin Sisters Mountain, a thousand feet above the floor of the valley, where Parson Lamb's ranch stood, overlooking the ruins of Kit Carson's own cabin, I built it. Across the valley, towered Long's Peak and its lofty neighbors. Forty miles of snowcapped peaks were at my dooryard, and beyond, toward the rising sun, hazy plains stretched away to the illimitable horizon. Between its craggy shoulder and the main body of the mountain, lay an unsuspected, wedge-shaped valley, down which a little brook went gurgling. There ancient spruce and yellow pine and quaking aspens grew in sheltered luxuriance. "Silent valley," I named it, though "Peaceful," or "Hidden," or "Happy" might have fitted it as well. About eighty years previously, as I calculated by the age of the new trees since sprung up, fire had burned over Silent Valley. Many of the fire-killed trees were still standing, sound to the heart. These solid, seasoned trunks, I cut for the logs of my cabin walls. The Parson, almost as excitedly happy as I, lent me a team to drag them to the spot where the house was to stand. They were far too heavy for me to lift, so I had to roll them into place by an improvised system of skids. Construction was a toilsome work; I was not skilled at it, I handled my ax awkwardly, and squandered much energy in "lost motion." But how I sang and shouted at the task! Never could Kit Carson nor any other pioneer have exulted at his building as I did! No wonder the deer paused in the aspen trails and peered timidly out from their leafy retreat in amazement! No wonder those sages, the mountain sheep, watched from the cliffs above with sharp, incredulous eyes. Never before had the ring of an ax echoed in Silent Valley! [Illustration: Never before had the ring of an ax echoed in Silent Valley!] My cabin grew, as fast as young shoulders and eager hands could build it. Log walls snugly chinked, and log rafters boarded and sodded; two windows, "lazy" windows we maligned them, because they lay down instead of standing, one sash above the other, and opened by sliding past each other. The few dollars I had saved from my original stake and made from the sale of hides, I spent, extravagantly, it seemed then, for boards to make a door and lay a floor. That lumber cost nine dollars per thousand feet on the job, and had to be hauled eleven miles from a local sawmill--an exorbitant price that made a lasting impression on my thrifty mind and left my old leather pouch flat. That same lumber sells to-day for fifty-two dollars a thousand! Shades of Kit Carson! How fortunate I lived near your time! Built-in furniture is nothing new, "we pioneers" always used it! From the odds and ends of planks left from the door and floor, I built a wall seat, a chimney corner, a shelf cupboard and a bunk. My scanty furnishings were all homemade--a rough, pine-board table, which served for kitchen, dining and library purposes, and a bench which I always "saved," using the floor before the hearth instead. "Aunt Jane" insisted on giving me a featherbed to put on the rough slats of my bunk, and some pieced quilts; I used my camp blankets for sheets. She gave me, too, a strip of old rag carpet she had brought from her Eastern home. The crowning architectural feature of my mansion was the corner fireplace, raised of the native granite bowlders. With what care I selected the stones!--choosing those most richly encrusted with green lichens, fitting each into its place, discarding many, ranging afar for others to take their place. Chimney building is a job for an artisan, and even then much of a gamble. Imagine my delight, then, when, the last stone in place, I built a fire on my hearth, and it roared like a furnace, and all the smoke went up, and out, the chimney! Later, the eddying winds sometimes shot prankishly down it and playfully chased the smoke back into the room, but this only blackened the stones, giving my fireplace an air of antiquity. My open fire was cook stove as well as heater. I added to my camping utensils a Dutch oven, an iron pot with a heavy, deep-rimmed, tight-fitting iron lid, and a tin basin. My furnishings were complete! Long evenings I sat on the floor before my hearth, dreaming. Sometimes I read, but the windy days outdoors, tramping and climbing, left me relaxed and drowsy. I possessed, perhaps, a dozen books; among them "Treasure Island," which I read over and over, with my door bolted. My imagination gave piratical significance to the sighing of the pine trees and the scampering of the pack rats over my roof. Yes, my dream cabin was come true. There it stood on its lofty vantage, watching over me as I fared forth on my explorations, waiting faithfully for my return, never reproaching me for my absence, its snug walls always ready to welcome me like sheltering arms, its quickly blazing hearth cheering me like a warm, loving heart. So high was it perched, that I could see it, while on my excursions, from many miles away. It was a beacon to my wandering spirit, a compass and a guide to my wandering feet. From it, as my knowledge of woodcraft, which I came to know was nothing more than common sense and resourcefulness applied to outdoor living, increased, I ranged farther and farther, into the wilder, more remote regions, which, except for an occasional trapper, no other white man had ever penetrated. The country around my homestead, Long's Peak, and the adjacent mountains, which have since been made a part of Rocky Mountain National Park, is itself exceptionally high and rugged. There, in a comparatively small area, are more than sixty peaks over twelve thousand feet high, Long's, of course, being over fourteen thousand feet. As the years passed my wanderings took me along the Continental Divide, from the Wyoming line at the north to the southern boundary of Colorado. The vastness of the Rocky Mountains is beyond comprehension, they sprawl the length of the continent. No one can hope to see all their beauty, all their grandeur and awesomeness in a single lifetime. From the crest of the Divide, north, west, and south, stretches a world of rugged peaks. Range on range, tier on tier, like the waves of a solidified ocean in a Titanic storm they roll away to the distant horizon shore. Always, as a boy, that compelling panorama fascinated me. On pleasant, sunny days, those rugged slopes, from a distance, looked safe and plushy, for all the world like deerskin; the dark green cañons mysteriously beckoned to me, the myriad lakes sparkled knowingly, intimately, the swift brooks chattered incessantly, urging action, adventure. On stormy days, when violent winds swept over the Divide and hid the heads of the peaks beneath the scuttling clouds, that overwhelming vista, with its tremendous, deep-gashed cañons, its towering, forbidding cliffs, still challenged even while it repelled me. To explore every mile, vertical and horizontal, of that uncharted sea of peaks! That was my boyish ambition! that was what led me westward, that was what lured me on and on! And my field of exploration was limitless--one peak conquered, there was always another just beyond, a little higher, a little harder, waiting to be climbed. The wilder the region the greater was its fascination for me. No matter how difficult, how slow my progress, it never became tedious--there was always the unexpected, the mysterious, as a guarantee against monotony. Timberline always interested me and those vast, naked plateaus above it never ceased to move me to wonder--miles and miles of great, granite desert, up-flung into space. The very tip-top of the world. I used to marvel that so much of the earth was waste. It was an everlasting enigma. Timberline was not all grotesque trees with bleak winds forever scourging them. In late summer, it was a veritable hanging garden. Sweet blue and pink forget-me-nots hid in the moss of its bowlders, Edelweiss starred its stony trails. King's crown, alpine primrose, and many other flowers nodded a gracious welcome. And just below it, what a riot of bloom there was! I had learned, oft to my inconvenience, that the higher the altitude the greater the precipitation. Around and just below timberline are many lakes, and miles of marshy, boggy land. On those first winter excursions to the heights I marveled at the deep snowdrifts banked in the heavy Englemann forests just below timberline. Long after the last white patch had melted or evaporated from the exposed slopes, these sheltered drifts would lie undiminished and when summer really came, they gave birth to scores of trickling rills. Vegetation sprang up in that moist, needle-mulched soil as luxuriant as any in the tropics. From the time the furry anemone lifted its lavender-blue petals above the dwindling snow patch, until the apples formed on the wild rose bushes and the kinnikinic berries turned red, it was a continuous nosegay. Indian paintbrush, marigolds, blue and white columbines as big as my hand and nearly as high as my head, fragile orchids, hiding their heads in the dusky dells, thousands of varieties I never knew or learned. Some few I recognized as glorified cousins of my Kansas acquaintances. The denser towering spruce forests sheltered them, conserved the moisture, and scattered their needles over their winter beds. In spite of the Parson's experienced advice on my first trips, boylike, I ladened myself with blanket roll, cooking utensils and an unnecessary amount of food. I soon found, however, that besides tiring me early in the afternoon and robbing me of my zest for scenery, my pack limited the scope of my operations, for with it I did not dare attempt many precipitous slopes where a single slip might land me in eternity. I found, too, that without it I could practically double the length of a day's journey, and arrive at the end of it still fresh enough to enjoy things. So I soon simplified my camp equipment. Campfires took the place of blankets, a pocketful of raisins, a few shelled peanuts, some sweet chocolate bars provided satisfying feasts. Eventually, when I became adept at snaring game, I made a spit of twigs and roasted the game over hot coals. Sometimes this primitive method of camping was inconvenient, but it was lots of fun. It was pioneering! What boy has not wished himself Robinson Crusoe? Somehow, in this way I retrieved that early frontier period passed before my birth. So I met the challenge of the mountains, met whatever emergencies arose, with such resourcefulness as I could muster; made my own way with what ingeniousness I possessed, and lived off the land. Indians could do no more! Having given up my gun, I learned other, and for me, at least, more reliable methods of taking game for food. Setting snares was an intriguing sport, but when I did not have time for it, I resorted to a more primitive method, stone-throwing. Of course there were days when neither of these methods succeeded, when the meal hour had to be postponed, while I whetted my appetite, rather superfluously, with more miles of tramping. I was surprised to find I could go foodless for several days and still have strength to plod ahead and maintain my interest in the scenery. The cottontail of the Rockies is the commonest and easiest source of meat, not only to the camper, but to the rabbit's cannibalistic neighbors. He is a sort of universal food--a sort of staff of life to the animal world. But for him famine would stalk the big killers. Fortunately for himself and for his preying foes, he is most prolific, and holds his own, in numbers at least, despite man and beast. Occasionally some ravaging disease carries his kind off by the thousands, then starvation faces those dependent on him for food. The killers have to seek other hunting grounds, frequently far from their home range, and often they become gaunt and lank, driven to take desperate chances to save themselves from starvation and death. As you can easily imagine, it keeps Bunny Cottontail moving to outwit his many enemies. He has no briar patches in that rugged country, though the jumper thickets might serve as such, so he lives beneath the rocks, usually planning a front and back door to his burrow. In this way he has a private exit when weasels or bobcats make their uninvited visitations. A whole Rooseveltian family of bunnies live in congested districts. Learning this, I usually set a number of snares in their runways, or at likely holes beneath the rocks. Part of the game of making nature yield one a living is keeping an eye out at all times for possible food supplies. If a rabbit scurried across my path, I marked the spot of his refuge. If he dodged beneath a certain slab, I set my snare there. Then I poked about, hoping to scare him into the snare. I did not always succeed in this, though, for my stick could not turn the corners of his burrow, and he often appeared out of some other exit, laughing at my stupidity, no doubt. Sometimes, when very hungry, I tried smoking him out. The stone porch of his burrow usually sloped, so a small smudge started at its lower side would travel up-hill, into the tunnel. Mr. Rabbit, thinking the woods were on fire, would make a dash for the open and fall victim to the snare. But despite the fact that rabbits are credited with little wit, I have often known them to nose aside my traps and escape. Cottontails I found up to eight or nine thousand feet, but even higher I ran across their cousins, the snowshoe. He quite excelled me in manipulating his "webs"--his tremendous hind feet with long, clawlike toes, covered with stiff and, I judged, waterproof hairs. He made his way nimbly over the soft, deep snow, while I on my webs often floundered and fell. Like the ptarmigan and the weasel, the snowshoe rabbit changed to a white coat for winter. In the spring, he was bluish, though underneath he still retained his arctic snowiness. In the fall, with good taste and a sense of the fitness of things, he put on a tan coat, and then, as the winter snows began to drift, he once more donned his ermine robes. Grouse were plentiful, except during the winter months. Usually I found them between six thousand and nine thousand feet altitude, but as the fall coloring painted the mountain slopes, and the juniper berries ripened, they moved to the higher, exposed wind-swept cliffs. Above timberline were the ptarmigan, always easy targets for a well-aimed stone. Rabbits, grouse and ptarmigan were all available and filling, but the most abundant and most easily caught food in all the Rockies at that time were the mountain trout. When I was a boy, every stream, even as far down as the plains, was alive with them. Like salmon, they swam upstream till they came to rapids or cataracts which they could not leap. Those in the lakes were exceptionally large, but too well fed to be interested in my bait. In the valleys were deep pools made by beavers' dams and in these the trout "holed up" for the winter. Fishing through the ice was common sport years ago. I remember that one of Jim Oss's neighbors brought a mess of trout to him when he gave his homesteading dance in January. With fish so abundant and unwary, and fishermen few, fishing was easy. It took me only five or ten minutes to catch all the trout I could use. Usually a few feet of line, a hook, and a willow or aspen rod, was all I found necessary. Sometimes I used bait--grasshoppers, bugs or worms. Campfire cooking is an art comparatively primitive and elementary, but it requires experience and intelligence to master. Like most accomplishments worth learning, it takes application, and a world of patience. Since I did not carry any utensils with me, I invariably roasted or broiled the game I cooked, using hot rocks like the Indians. I heated stones in my campfire, dug a shallow hole, and when the stones were hot lined it with them, then put in my meat, covering it with a hot flat stone. From time to time, I renewed the cooled first stones for fresh ones, hot from the fire. Sometimes I intensified that heat of my "fireless" by covering its top with moss or with pine needles. If I decided to broil my bunny or grouse, I got out my short fishing line and tied one end of it to a limb of a tree or to a tripod which I made by fastening three poles together, setting them over the fire. The other end I fastened to a green stick, three or four feet long, which I skewered into the meat. Then I gave my "broiler" a spin which wound up the line. When it was twisted tight, it reversed itself, unwinding, and so revolving my cookery, exposing all sides to the fire. Of course it gradually lost its spin, then I gave it another twirl. Given plenty of time, over a slow fire of glowing coals, my bird would be done to a queen's taste--a much too delicious dish to waste on any king! During dry, warm weather, I raked pine or spruce needles together for a bed, but in the winter I used green pine or spruce boughs, putting heavy, coarse ones on the bottom, planting their butt ends deeps in the snow. Upon these I placed smaller twigs, which gave "spring" to my couch, and finally I tufted it with the soft, tender tips of the branches. Never have I rested better on mahogany beds than I did on such pungent bunks! Lying there, physically weary, mentally relaxed, drowsily gazing into my campfire, I lived over the day's adventures, and would not have changed places with any man alive! I found making camp in temperate weather was no task at all. It was when it was cold or wet that the real test of my woodcraft came. I learned that the first requisite in camp-making was the selection of a suitable camp site. It had to be chosen with thought of the accessibility to fuel and water. It had to be sheltered from the wind, which was not always easy to manage in high altitudes, for though the prevailing winter wind in the Rockies blows from the west, it swirls and eddies in the cañons, coming from most unexpected and unwelcome directions and often from all points of the compass in turn. Usually ready-made camps, overhanging cliffs, were available. When they were not, my ingenuity rose to the occasion and I thatched together twigs of willow or birch, or even spruce or pine, though the latter were stiffer and more difficult to fit tightly together. Beginning at the bottom, I worked upward, lapping each successive layer over the one beneath, as in laying shingles, and pointing the tips of the leaves or needles downward, so they would shed water. Sometimes I had difficulty in starting my fire. If there had been daily showers for weeks, and the needles and the deadwood, as well as the ground itself, were soaked, or if in winter the deadwood were buried beneath snow and the dead limbs of standing trees difficult to break off, it was a discouraging task. Sometimes after what seemed like eons of struggling, I would get a sickly little flame flickering, when, puff! along would come a blast of wind and smother it out with snow. I did learn eventually that pitch knots were so rich in gum or resin that they would always catch fire, and so I shaved off splinters with my trusty hunting knife and used them for tinder. One night as I lighted a candle in my cabin, it came to me that a piece of it would be handy to tuck in my pocket for emergencies. Ever afterwards I carried several short, burned-down ends along on my excursions. I discovered that one of these stubs, set solidly on the ground and lighted, would start my fire under the most adverse conditions. But for them I would have had many a cold camp. I had read of the Eskimo igloos and I tried to make them. But the snow at hand in my mountains was never packed hard enough to freeze solid so building blocks could be cut from it. It is blown about and drifted too much. I did get an idea from "Buck" in Jack London's "Call of the Wild," that I adapted. On winter explorations I always carried snowshoes, even though not compelled to wear them at the outset. These made handy shovels. When ready to make camp I selected a snowdrift three or four feet deep, and with my web shovel dug a triangular hole, about seven feet long on each side. In the angle farthest from the wind I built my fire. It soon assisted me in enlarging the corner. Opposite it, I roofed over my dugout with dead limbs, thatching them with green boughs, and finally heaping the excavated snow over all. I had a practically windproof nest which a little fire would keep snug and warm. True I had to fire up frequently throughout the night, for a big blaze is too hot in a snow-hole, but I soon learned to rouse up, put on more fuel, and drop back to sleep, all in a few minutes. But the smoke nuisance in my early dugouts was terrible. Pittsburgh had nothing on me! Many a morning I crawled out smelling like a smoked ham, my eyes smarting, my throat sore and dry. Years later, my rambles led me to Mesa Verde and the kivas of the cliff dwellers. Those primitive people built fires deep underground, with no chimneys or flues to conduct the smoke outside. They ingeniously constructed cold air passages down to the floor of the kivas near the fire bowl. These fed the fires fresh air, causing the smoke to rise steadily and pass out through a small aperture in the roof. I tried this, and to my delight, found it rid me of the strangling plague. I had discarded my gun, but my camera was with me always. Frequent dashing showers are common in the mountains. Often, too, I had to cross swollen streams, and sometimes got a ducking in transit. Matches, salt and camera plates were ruined by wetting, so I had to contrive a waterproof carrier for them. I hit upon a light rubber blanket, which added practically no pounds or bulk to my pack, and in it wrapped my perishables. It saved them more often than not, but even it could not protect them in some predicaments. There, was no month of the year I didn't camp out. Naturally I was caught in many kinds of weather. In severe storms I learned to stick close to camp, lying low and waiting for the furies to relent. In the early days, as in my first camp, I attempted to return home at once, but traveling over the soft, yielding snow only sapped my strength and got me nowhere. I learned that by remaining inactive by my campfire, I conserved both food and energy and had a far better chance to reach the shelter of my cabin without mishap. Being young and inexperienced, I was the recipient of much free advice, the most common being warnings about the imminent weather or the oncoming winter. Most of these prognosticators used the cone-storing squirrels or the beavers, working busily on their dams and houses, as barometers. But I found the old adage that only fools and newcomers could forecast weather to hold true in the mountains. I got so I didn't believe in signs. I saw the squirrels and the beavers make preparation for winter every fall. I took each day, with its vagaries, as it came and made the best of it. Returning from one of my midwinter trips to the wilds, one day I coasted down a very steep slope and shot out of the woods into a little clearing--a snug log cabin stood there, buried in snow up to its eyes. In a snow trench, not far from the door, an old trapper was chopping wood. As I burst upon the scene he dropped his ax and stared at me. Then he found words. "See all fools ain't dead yit," he observed with a grin. Then, as I started on he yelled after me. "But I bet they soon will be!" [Illustration: "See all fools ain't dead yit," he observed.] So I spent the days of my boyhood--tramping, climbing, exploring! Was ever another mortal so fortunate as I in the realization of his dreams? Was ever another lad so happy? CHAPTER SEVEN GLACIERS AND FOREST FIRES When I first came West, with my imagination fired by the reminiscent tales of my mother and my father, and our pioneer neighbors, I looked only for mountains made of gold, for roaming buffaloes and skulking savages, for fierce wild beasts and mighty hunters. That the mountains were golden only in the sunset, and the Indians and bison alive only in the immortal epics of the frontier, somehow did not disappoint me. So wonderful were those rocky upheavals in the reality, so intriguing were the traces of redskin and buffalo, I forgot my fantastic misconceptions. To my enthusiastic youth, everything was extraordinary, alluring, primitively satisfying. Parson Lamb said the big game were gone, but there were enough left to give me many a thrill. Naturally, at first, I saw only the more obvious wonders of the wilds, but as time passed I discovered other sources of interest, hitherto unheard of. High and dry upon the meadows and lower mountain sides were smooth, round bowlders, undoubtedly water-worn. The granite walls of many of the cañons I climbed were curiously scored--here and there were inlaid bands of varying colored stone. Running out from the loftier ranges were long, comparatively narrow heaps of earth, which resembled giant railroad fills as flat on top as though they had been sliced off by a titanic butcher knife. They were covered with forests, and small, jewel-like lakes were set in their level summits. At the foot of Long's and many other peaks were more lakes, with slick, glazed, granite sides. The water in them was usually greenish and always icy. There were immense, dirty "snowdrifts" that never diminished, but appeared to be perpetual. Following my trapline or trailing the Big-horn or watching the beaver, I noticed these things and wondered about them. How came those bowlders, round and polished, so far from water? What made those scratches upon those granite cliffs? What Herculean master-smith fused those decorative belts into their very substance? What engineer built those table-topped mounds? Who had gouged out the bowls for those icy lakes? Why were some snowdrifts perennial? I puzzled over these conundrums, until, bit by bit, I solved them. The answers were more amazing than anything else I encountered in the wilds. I learned that those sand-coated drifts were not drifts at all, but glaciers, probably the oldest living things in the world. For they were alive, moving deposits of ice and snow, the survivors of the ice age. Eons ago, they and their like had gouged out the huge bowls which later became lakes, had gashed the earth and scoured its cañon walls, leaving in their wakes those square-topped dumps or moraines; debris, once solid granite, now ground into rocks and sand and gravel by their slow-moving, irresistible force. Most of the glaciers I found were upon the eastern slope of the Divide. This is because the prevailing winter winds are from west to east. Glaciers are formed by thawing of the exposed snow on top of the huge deposits, the water trickling down through the moss, and freezing solidly. Gradually, through continued thawing and freezing, the whole drift is changed into a field of ice. The first sign of movement comes when the mass of ice breaks away from the cliffs at its upper edges. There is an infinitesimal downward sagging, as with incredible deliberation it moves on with its cargo of rock and sand. But, slowly as it moves, its power is overawing. A glacier is the embodiment of irresistible force. Its billion-ton roller cuts a trench through the very earth, with cañon-like walls; these latter turn upon their master and imprison him. It tears immense granite slabs from the cliffs and carries them along. It grinds granite into powder. I have seen water emerging from glaciers, milk-white with its load of ground-up rocks. By setting a straight line of stakes across the ice, I measured the movements of some glaciers. Some progressed several feet in a year, others traveled scarcely more than a few inches. All moved farthest nearest the center; for, as is true of streams, there the friction of the side walls does not retard them. They varied in width from a hundred feet to half a mile, in depth from forty to a hundred feet. During my first years in the Rockies, the winters were severe, with heavy snows, and the summers unusually rainy. The low temperature and great precipitation prevented the usual amount of thawing on the glaciers. But there came a season as arid as any in the Sahara desert. "It's miserable droughty," grieved the Parson one day when I met him on top of Long's Peak. "Springs are going dry and the streams are terrible low. See that drift down there?" Standing on Long's overtowering summit he pointed down the Divide. "The one with black rock at its edge. Well, sir, I've never seen that drift so small before--not in all the thirty years I've watched it. The glaciers will be opening up with all this hot weather! the crevasses'll widen and split clear down to the bowels of the earth. Wal; it's an ill wind that blows no good. This drought will make it easy for the tenderfoot to get a good look into 'em." I took the Parson's tip and next day packed a horse and started for Arapahoe glacier which lies south of Long's Peak. On the second day out, having taken my pack-horse as far up as possible, I unpacked him, hobbled him and turned him loose to crop what grass he could find. Then I set up camp. Camp made, I began the last lap of my climb up the glacier. Along the way, below snowbanks, wild flowers grew head-high, but in the woods beside the game trails they were scarce and stunted. As I plodded slowly up the steep slope I heard loud reports, as though some one were setting off heavy blasts. They echoed and reëchoed among the cliffs. A roaring stream dashed frothily down the slope, rocks rolled past. I climbed a pinnacle overlooking the glacier and looked down upon it. The Parson was right. All the snow which ordinarily hid the icy surface was melted away. The glacial ice lay uncovered. Its surface was split by numberless yawning crevasses. Water drenched their sides. Every little while ice would break away, and then reports, similar to the ones I had heard on my way up, would nearly deafen me. I climbed gingerly down and edged out upon the glacier, testing each foothold. I peeped into the crevasses, and dropped stones or chunks of ice into them to sound their depths. I ventured into a shallow crack and followed it until it pinched beneath a wall of solid ice. Then I tried another, a larger one. Gaining a little courage by these explorations, I ventured yet farther and climbed down into one of the deeper crevasses. Water showered down upon me, from melting walls above. I crept on down until I was about fifty feet below the top of the glacier. I paused; before me gaped a dark cavern fenced off by heavy icicles as large as my body. I peered through this crystal lattice into the darkness beyond. From somewhere came the tinkle of water, I decided to investigate. A stream pouring into the crevasse from above, had washed down a stone. Using it for a sledge, I set to work to break into that barred vault. I shattered one of the glassy bars and crawled inside. A ghostly blue light filled the place. With lighted candle I moved away from the entrance, turned a corner and plunged into the blackest darkness I have ever experienced. The silence was eerie, frightening. Just then it was shattered by a muffled report, followed almost at once by another that seemed to rend my cavern walls asunder. Bits of ice dropped about me. I suddenly remembered a number of things I wanted to do outside, I turned and sought the guarded cavern of the ghastly light. I mistook the way and turned aside into a blind alley for a moment. I grew panicky--my flesh went clammy--but that momentary delay no doubt saved my life. As I reached the opening, there came a rending crash, a splintering of ice, and broken blocks came hurtling into the crevasse just outside my cavern door. An inrush of air snuffed out my candle. My hands trembled as I relighted the candle. Ice still bombarded the opening. Somewhere water splashed. Before I had descended into the crevasse I had been perspiring freely, for the sun shone hot upon the surface of the glacier; now I was shivering, my feet were soaked with ice water, a dozen little streams trickled down from the cavern roof. I would soon be warm in the hot sun outside; then... I discovered the crevasse was blocked with ice. I lost my head and shouted for help. There were none to hear. I pushed against the barriers. I pulled myself together and began to search for a passage among the blocks of ice. The candle gave a feeble light. Without waiting to feel my way, I edged into a crack, wriggled forward and stuck tight. Cold sweat oozed as I wiggled backward into the cavern again. I had difficulty relighting the candle. Again and again I attempted to squeeze out among the pieces of broken ice; I climbed up the smooth wall, lost my footing and tumbled back. At last I found a larger opening among the ice blocks and squeezed into it like a rabbit into a rock pile. I knew I must hurry because these jumbled pieces would soon be solidly cemented together when the water pouring over them froze. I surged desperately against the pressing ice, held my breath and squeezed my way through into the sunshine at last--safe. Late that evening I reached my camp, my interest in glaciers chilled. Since that experience I have usually looked long before leaping into a crevasse and then have not leaped. The next morning I broke camp. I had had enough of close-ups of glaciers. I followed the crest of the Continental Divide northward, satisfied with such distant views of those treacherous juggernauts as could be had from the rim rocks. That was how I came to be camped at timberline above Allen's Park when the big forest fire set the region south of it ablaze. From my lofty station I watched a thunder shower gather around Long's Peak and move southward, tongues of lightning darting from it venomously. It was perhaps ten miles wide. It circled Wild Basin, then faced eastward toward the foothills, its forked tongues writhing wickedly. Those to the south struck repeatedly; I counted three fires they started, but two of these the shower extinguished; the third was miles beyond the edge of the rain, and began spreading even as I watched. Smoke soon hid the doomed forest, filling the cañon and boiling out beyond it. Everywhere in the mountains, I had found burned-over forests; ancient trees that had stood for centuries, had endured drought, flood, storm and pestilence, only to be burned at last by a fiendish flash and left, charred skeletons of their former green beauty. I hurried down from the heights as the fire spread upward along both sides of the gorge. Upon a bare, rocky ridge, several miles north, inside the edge of the shower limits, I deposited my pack and turned the horse homeward, alone. I hoped that I might be able to put out the fire before it spread too far. As I hurried in its direction I saw two deer standing in a little opening watching the smoke intently. They showed no fear, merely curiosity. But as I approached closer to its smouldering edge, I met birds in excited, zig-zagging flight. Along a brook I found fresh bear tracks. Bruin had galloped hastily from the danger zone. The fire was confined to the heavy timber near the bottom of a cañon, but was licking its way up both slopes, the backfire eating slowly downward while the headfire leaped upward. Trees exploded into giant sparklers. The heat of the approaching flames caused the needles to exude their sap, combustion occurred almost before the actual fire touched them. Black acrid smoke arose visible a hundred miles out on the plains. Not a breeze stirred where I stood, but the fire seemed fanned by a strong wind, that swayed it back and forth. It did not travel in a set direction; one moment it raced westward, paused, smoldered, then burst forth again, running southward. A little later a flood of flame would come toward the east. These scattered sorties cut narrow swaths through the forest, flaming lanes that smoldered at the edges, widened and combined. The smoke cloud grew denser. My eyes streamed with tears, my throat burned, I began to cough. I descended the ridge to cross the cañon--in the bottom I found little smoke and fairly good air. Flocks of panic-stricken birds veered uncertainly about. They would flee the fire, encounter dense smoke, and turn straight back toward the flames. They circled and alighted at the bottom of the gorge. No sooner safely there, then they'd take wing again and flutter back into the trees near the fire. Many dropped, overcome by the smoke, whole flocks disappeared into the roaring flames to return no more. They lost all sense of direction, all instinct for self-preservation. But the birds were not alone in their distress; the animals, too, were on the move. Down the slopes came deer, does with their young, bucks with tender, growing horns. To my surprise, they paid no attention to me. Whether they were unable to get my scent because of the fumes of burning woods, or whether the fire filled them with a greater fear, I could not decide. A coyote trotted calmly down a game trail, eyed me for a moment, and went on his way toward safety. He was the only one of the wild folk able to keep his wits about him. Occasionally one of the deer would break away from the refugees, head up or down without apparent reason, the rest of the band instantly following his lead. In less than a minute all would return. They feared to desert their usual haunts in time of trouble. The smoke robbed them of their sense of smell, the noise of the fire was too loud for their usually alert, big ears to catch the smaller, significant sounds. As their confusion grew their terror mounted; they bundled nervously away in all directions, rushing back together, heading upstream toward the fire, and leaping wildly over smoldering needles of the forest floor. The fawns were deserted, their mothers dashed about frantically as though unable to recognize their own offspring; they snorted wildly to rid their noses of the biting fumes that robbed them of scent. A fawn stopped within a few feet of me and stared about with luminous, innocent eyes. Its hair was singed and its feet burned. It lifted its left hind foot and stared at it perplexed; then I saw between its dainty, parted hoofs a burning stick. Other animals passed. A badger waddled slowly down the trail, pausing to grin at me comically. Two beavers splashed downstream, following the water, diving through the deeper pools and lumbering through the shallows of the brook. Other animals crashed through the woods, but I could not recognize them. A little brook sizzled down through the burning land. I stopped and, cupping my hands, scooped up some water and drank thirstily. The first swallow nearly strangled me, it was saturated by the fumes of the burning forest. I drank on nevertheless; it was wet and cooling to my parched throat. I soused my head in the brook and soaked my handkerchief in case of need. A faint breeze sprang up. Circling the fire, I moved up the slope, with the wind at my back. The needle-carpeted forest floor was a smoldering mass--the squirrels' hidden hoards were afire. Young trees, just starting from those stored-up nurseries were destroyed by tens of thousands. On raced the head fire, setting the dead trees and stumps furiously aflame, touching the needles of the living trees with swift, feverish fingers, igniting insidious spot-fires as it went. Its self-generated draft roared thunderingly. It snatched up countless firebrands and sent those flaming heralds forth to announce its coming to the trembling forest beyond. As it topped the cañon walls it seemed to leap beyond the clouds that hovered overhead and burn asunder the very heavens. Of a sudden I was enveloped by one of its serpentine arms. It writhed everywhere around me, hissing, striking at my face, singing my hair, scorching my frantic hands that would ward it off. My eyes could not face that venomous glare. My lungs were choked by its searing breath. I found a stick and, feeling my way with it, fled, like the beaver, to the brook for sanctuary. That flaming serpent pursued me. Its breath grew more acrid, more deadly. I coughed convulsively, strangled, stumbled, fell: when I regained my feet, I was dazed, confused. But I retained consciousness enough to know I must keep moving. I must reach the fire's immemorial enemy and enlist the aid of that watery ally to escape it. I took leaps over the ground, but blindly, with no such brilliant eyes as my relentless foe. The memory of that race for life is still vividly terrifying; blinded, choking, crashing into trees, falling, struggling to my feet, fighting on and on and on, for what seemed endless hours. In reality it was--it could only have been--a few moments. I plunged into the brook and submerged my burning clothes, my tortured body. I hurried on as fast as I could, downstream, halting now and then to dive beneath the grateful waters of the deeper pools, but never stopping, until, staggering, gasping, sobbing, I reached the safety of the cañon. [Illustration: The memory of that race for life is still vividly terrifying.] CHAPTER EIGHT THE PROVERBIAL BUSY BEAVER It was my boyish ambition to find some corner of those rocky wilds where no human being had ever set foot and to be the first person to behold it. What boy has not felt that Columbus had several centuries' advantage of him: that Balboa was a meddlesome old chap who might better have stayed in Spain and left American oceans to American boys to discover? Oh! the unutterable regret of youthful hearts that the Golden Fleece and the Holy Grail and other high adventures passed before their time! In searching for my virgin wilderness, I saw many spots that bore no trace of human existence, wild enough, remote enough, calm enough, to justify my willing credulity. But I had another notion which even my young enthusiasm had to acknowledge was in error. I fancied that the animals in such a spot as I have described, unwise to the ways of man, having had no experience to teach them fear and caution, would be gentle and trusting, and approachable. I was doomed to disappointment. I found that no matter how remote the region, how primeval its forests or how Eden-new its streams, its beasts were furtive, wary, distrustful. But after all, though these ideas, like many of my other youthful dreams, did not "pan out" in following them up, I found other leads which yielded rich experiences. When I first came to the mountains, the beavers were extremely wild. Rarely did I glimpse one or even see signs of their activities. True, all along the streams were deserted beaver homes, merely stick frames with most of the mud plaster fallen off, and through the meadows were a succession of dams which might easily have flooded them for miles around. No doubt large colonies had once lived there. Once in a while I found a fallen aspen, with the marks of a beaver's keen chisels upon it. But as for the beaver's renowned industry--it wasn't! "I thought beavers were busy animals," I complained to the Parson. "I've heard industrious folks called beavers all my life. I don't see how they got their reputation. Why, it wouldn't be hard for me to be busier'n these beavers!" The old man laughed. "Now, you're rather hard on the little critters," he defended. "They're not so indolent, considering their chances." Then he went on to explain. A horde of trappers, he said, had followed Kit Carson's successful trip into the region in 1840. They visited every stream and strung traps in all the valleys. Beaver fur was taken out by pack-train load. In twenty years the trappers had reaped the richest of the harvest; in ten years more they had practically "trapped out" all the beavers. They left only when trapping ceased to be profitable; and even so, the early settlers had found some small profit in catching a few beavers every winter. The survivors, my old friend said, were wiser if sadder animals than those the first trappers found. Many beavers had maimed or missing feet, reminders of the traps that caused their trouble. They deserted their ponds, neglected their dams and houses and sought refuge in holes in the banks of streams. Their tunnels entered the bank under water, thus making it difficult to locate their runways, or to set traps after the discovery of the runways. So that was the reason for the beavers scarcity and wariness! Few were the chances they gave me, on my early rambles, to observe their habits. But just when it seemed they were doomed to suffer the fate of the buffalo, Colorado and a few other states woke up to the fact that beavers were threatened to be classed with the dodo, and feeble measures were taken to protect them. Slowly their numbers increased, they returned to their normal habits of living, and rebuilt their dams and houses. Down in the valley below my cabin, within a few rods of the spot where the ruins of Kit Carson's cabin still stand, are two small streams along which I early found numerous traces of beaver. At the confluence of these streams were dams and houses that were not entirely deserted; for occasionally the beavers did some repair work. Since they were within five minutes' walk of my cabin I visited them frequently during all seasons of the year. Five times I saw the beavers return to the old home site, repair the dams and rebuild the houses. Four times I saw them forced to desert their home, once because a fire burned the surrounding trees which were their source of food, the other times to elude trappers. I discovered that this colony consisted of a trap-maimed old couple and their annual brood. The male had lost a portion of his right hind foot, his mate had only a stump for her left front one. I early dubbed them Mr. and Mrs. Peg, and came to have a real neighborly affection for them. Their infirmities made it easy for me to keep track of them, and to keep up with their social activities. Neighborly interest must be kept alive by the neighbors' doings, you know! They certainly showed no inclination to become dull from overwork! About the time the ice on their pond began to break up, they would take their youngsters and start upon their summer vacation. Upon a number of occasions I found their familiar tracks along the streams eight or ten miles below their home site; once more than fifteen miles away. On their rambles they met other beaver families, and stopped to visit; the young people of the combined families played and splashed about, while their more sedate elders lay contentedly basking in the sun. But late August or early September always saw Mr. and Mrs. Peg back home; usually without their youngsters. Those precocious paddlers had set up homes for themselves or had wedded into other tribes. The old couple at once set to work, toiling night and day, taking no time off for rest. They repaired their dam to raise the water to the desired level, replastered their house inside and out with mud, and in addition cut down a number of aspen trees, severed their trunks into lengths they could handle, and brought both trunks and limbs down into the pond. They towed the heavy green wood down first and piled it in the deep water near their house, the rest they piled upon these until their larder was full. They ate the whole of the smaller limbs of the aspen, but only the bark of the larger boughs and trunks. They used the wood for house and dam construction. Trappers have told me that the streams beaver live in are poor fishing places because the furry inhabitants eat the fish. By careful observation, I proved to my own satisfaction at least, that quite the opposite is true. For the deep ponds made by the dams they build are literally spawning pools for the trout, breeding grounds and hatcheries. They are also pools of refuge, to which the fish flee to elude the fisherman, and in their warmer depths the finny tribe "hole up" when the streams are frozen over in winter. I have lain motionless upon a bowlder overlooking a beaver-inhabited stream and watched large trout lazing about almost within reach of a preoccupied paddler, apparently in no alarm over his nearness. Neither paid the other "any mind." I am sure that beavers eat neither fish nor flesh. Which reminds me that early in my mountain experience I happened upon an old trapper's log cabin and stopped to visit him. Mountain hospitality generously insists that guests be fed, no home or hut is too poor to provide a bite for the chance visitor. Upon this occasion I was handed a tin plate with some meat on it. "Guess what it is," my host urged. I tasted the meat, examined it, smelled it and tried to make out what it was. It tasted somewhat like venison, yet not quite the same. It had something the flavor of cub-bear steak broiled over a campfire, but it was sweeter and not so strong. I guessed wrong several times before the trapper informed me. "Beaver tail," he laughed, pleased at outwitting me. Still chuckling he went outside to a little log meat house and returned with a whole beaver tail for my inspection. The tail was about ten inches in length, nearly five inches wide at the broadest part and perhaps an inch thick. The skin that covered the tail was dark in color and very tough, suggestive of alligator skin. The meat of the beaver tail was much prized by explorers and trappers, and visitors, such as I, were often given this meat as a special treat. The old fellow talked at length about the wise ways of the beaver he had caught. Though I made note of a number of his observations for future reference, I was skeptical of their authenticity. As years passed and I talked with many men, I found that their observations varied greatly. They were not always unprejudiced observers, their observations were colored by their personal point of view, under diverse conditions. I early learned that trappers and hunters, as a rule, are not real nature students. They are killers, and killers have not the patience to wait and watch, to take painstaking care and limitless time in the study of an animal. They will spend only a few minutes watching an animal that a man without a gun might study for days, or even weeks. They are prone to snap judgment. Then their over-active imaginations supply ready misinformation for missing facts. "A beaver has as many wives as he can git," my host informed me as we sat before his fire. "There's some that don't have many, and agin there's some that have a lot, and that's the reason we find some ponds with only a little house an' others with mighty big ones." A Brigham Youngish sort of conception of beaver domestic economy! That same summer another trapper in Middle Park, not many miles from the first, gave me his version of a beaver's domestic life. "Don't think they mate at all," he told me; "they're always working to beat time or else they're wanderin' off somewhere lookin' up good cuttin' timber and dam sites." Now, I am sure that Mr. and Mrs. Peg were mated, and for life. Indeed, I believe all beavers mate for life. They are by nature domestic, home-loving and industrious, and provident, storing up food for the winter, making provision against the time food will be scarce because of snow and ice. They have the coöperative instinct and often combine their efforts, constructing a house large enough for the whole colony in the deepest water of the pond, all joining in the harvesting of green aspen or cottonwood. Every fall I watched Mr. and Mrs. Peg at their repairs. Their tribe increased as the years passed, and the shielding laws of the state protected them. I called their group the "Old Settlers" colony. [Illustration: Every fall I watched Mr. and Mrs. Peg at their repairs.] One fall the Old Settlers abandoned their pond and constructed an entirely new dam above it, thus solving a number of problems. Sand and gravel carried down by the swift little stream had settled in the still water of the pool and almost filled it. The ever-increasing family outgrew the old house. All the near-by aspens had been cut; this necessitated the dragging of trees too great a distance before they could be pushed into the water and floated down. Coyotes had surprised and killed a number of the Old Settlers' kin as they worked on the long portage to the stream, and I am sure that the moving of their home was partly to overcome this danger. Then it was they earned the title, "Busy Beaver"! How they worked! That was before the days of ubiquitous automobiles and the beavers had not become nocturnal in their habits. They swarmed everywhere. Certain ones were detailed to inspect the dam, make necessary repairs and maintain the water at the same level all the time. Others worked at the new house, piling sicks and mud into a heap. It grew, the dam was raised, so the water was maintained within a few inches of the top of the unfinished wall. Occasionally I caught a glimpse of some workers in the deep water or near the shores of the ponds; they were digging safety-firsts, water escapes for emergency use. These canals led from the house to either bank and connected with tunnels that had their openings concealed beneath the surface of the water. Thus, should their pond be drained suddenly, they could escape by the canals to their emergency homes beneath the bank. Other beavers worked in the aspen grove, felling trees and cutting them into lengths that could be pushed or pulled or rolled to the bank and floated down the stream. Their work was impeded by the jamming of the logs in a narrow rocky neck down which they had to be skidded into the water. Then the engineers decided upon the construction of a canal around the rocky falls. They started digging at a point upstream, beyond the troublesome neck, swung outward, away from the water to the fringe of aspens, then back again to the stream below the rocks. In all the canal was two hundred feet long, about two feet wide and averaged fifteen inches deep. For a time all other work was suspended, and night and day the whole population toiled on the canal. Apparently each beaver had his own section to dig, and each went about his work in his own way. With tooth and claw they worked. Often they cut slides or runways down the sides of the canal giving them roads up which they carried their loose dirt. For thirty-seven nights they toiled in the dry ditch, then turned water in, and completed the work of deepening the canal. This transportation system saved them much labor and delay, and provided a safe route to and from the grove, for they could dive into the water when their enemies attacked. I suspected Mr. and Mrs. Peg directed the storing away of that wood, for it was piled in the deep water beside the house, now rising majestically several feet about the level of the pool, just as they always did theirs. The green wood was almost as heavy as the water, and required little weight to force it under. Thus they always had some food in their icebox, where they could reach it handily when the pool froze over. I have observed other beavers on larger streams come out of their tunnels in the banks and find food along the shores throughout the winter months. But the smaller the stream the closer the beaver sticks to his pond. This I believe is a matter of safety for beavers are slow travelers, and if they venture far from their pool they fall easy prey to such enemies as bobcats, coyotes, wolves and mountain lions. One day while following one of the small tributaries of the St. Vrain River south of Long's Peak, I heard a loud explosion just ahead of me, and when I emerged from the fringing woods I discovered two men busy dynamiting the largest of the three beaver dams in the valley. "Mining didn't pan out much," one of them replied in answer to my question, "so we callated we'd take sum beaver fur to tide us over the winter." They were prospectors, out of grub, up against starving or getting a job in the foothills town below, until with their golden promises, they could again talk some sympathetic listener out of a grub stake. Not content with obtaining beaver by the usual but slower method of trapping, they had decided to blow up the dam, drain the pond and shoot the animals as they sought to escape. Their rifles lay ready to their hands. For hours I lingered, to see what luck they would have. They set off three heavy charges before the dam was shattered. When the water was nearly drained out--it took but a few minutes--they grabbed their guns. Not a beaver did any of us see. They then set a charge of powder against the house and blew a gaping hole in its side--but there was nobody home! Evidently all had escaped by the canal in the bottom of the pond to the tunnel beneath the bank. The men would not admit defeat, but set about to dig the beavers out of the bank. Darkness saw their task unfinished so they camped for the night at the entrance of the tunnel; they piled heavy stones at its mouth hoping to trap the animals within. Next morning I watched them resume their work, feeling sympathy for the beavers, but not daring to interfere. Shortly after noon the quest ended quite unexpectedly. The diggers had discovered a hidden exit that was concealed among the willows, the beavers had followed the canal, which could not be drained, to their refuge tunnel in the bank; and when their enemies destroyed the tunnel, they had used the hidden exit, and had in all probability made good their retreat during the night. As more people settled in the valleys, there was an inevitable overlapping of claims. The settlers claimed both the water and the land, and they had government deeds to back them up in their claims. But the beaver had prior rights, and gamely adhered to them. A feud arose that is still unsettled between the Old Settlers and the newcomers. In my rambles I continually came upon homesteaders striving to drain the valleys and raise grass for their cattle, while simultaneously the beavers were working to maintain high water. Many of them lost their lives for their cause, but rarely did they forsake a home site once established. In the same sections, where the homesteaders had used aspen for their fence posts, the beavers, no doubt mistaking them for trees, cut them down. Sometimes their pluck and persistence won them the admiration of their enemies. In most cases they won out. One day, far up near the headwaters of the Cache la Podre River in Colorado, I came upon a rancher trying to drain a number of beaver ponds to secure water for irrigation; it was a very dry season and water was scarce. During the day he tore gaps in the dams, during the night the beavers repaired the breaks. When after opening the dams the rancher hurried down to his fields to regulate the flow of water, the beavers, even in the daytime, would swarm forth and plug up the holes. Finally in desperation, the man set traps in the gaps he had opened in the dams. He caught a few beavers and decided that his troubles were over. But the survivors met the emergency. They floated material down from above and wedged it into the breaks, without going near the traps. At this stage of the struggle an old prospector came down from the higher mountains, driving his burros ahead of him. Hearing of the rancher's predicament, he suggested his own panacea for all troubles, dynamite. Enthusiastically, the rancher accepted his proposal. Soon the dams were in ruins. A mile below where the dams had been destroyed an irrigation ditch tapped the river and carried a full head to the green fields. I saw the rancher standing in the middle of the field, water flowing all about him. He looked upstream and chuckled, then leaned triumphantly on his shovel handle. For a long time, he leaned thus, lost in dreams of prosperity. Suddenly he awoke and hurried along his supply ditch. Barely a trickle was coming down it. The beavers had dammed the intake. I once worked for a rancher who had a homestead on the North Fork of the St. Vrain River, which heads south of Long's Peak. He had just finished clearing a patch of ground to raise "truck" on. "We've got to get rid of some beaver," he told me the very first day. He shouldered his shovel and walked down to the dam that sprawled across the meadow for several hundred feet. "I cut her loose," he informed me on his return. "She'll soon dry out so we can put in the crop." Next morning, whistling happily, he started out for the meadow. His whistle died away as he caught sight of the water in the pond. It was as high as usual. The beavers had repaired the break. Day after day he cut the dam, night after night, the beavers repaired it. He trapped five of them before they became "trap-wise." After that they either turned the traps over or covered them with mud. After trying a number of ruses to frighten them away, the man hung a lighted lantern in the break he had opened in the dam. The next morning his whistle piped, merrily, the break was still open. But his joy was short-lived, for on the following night the beavers constructed a new section of dam above the break, curving it like a horseshoe. "Hope they appreciated my givin' 'em light to work by," he laughed; and gave up the contest. Beavers seem to possess sagacity in varying degrees. The old animals are wise according to their years; the stupid and lazy die young. They adapt themselves quickly to changed conditions; they outwit their enemies by sheer cunning, never in physical combat; rarely do they defend themselves--and not once have I known one to take the offensive side of a fray. Watching them waddling along, one wonders how they accomplish their great engineering feats in so short a time. Of course, they can move more rapidly in water than on land, but I suspect its "everlasting teamwork" that accounts for their achievements. They are prolific and, unlike the bees, drones are unknown to them. Coöperative industry--there lies the secret. I was absent from my cabin for more than a year; and upon my return at once visited the Old Settlers. Like any other thriving community, they had made several improvements--two new ponds and houses had been built. Tracks in the edge of a small new pond showed that my pioneer friends, Mr. and Mrs. Peg, had removed to a new home. Whether the increasing number of beavers in the larger pond got on the old folks' nerves, I do not know; but whatever the reason, they were living alone. I walked rapidly toward their home, instead of approaching slowly and giving them a chance to look me over. As I neared the edge of the road, one of them, I presume Pa Peg, smote the water a mighty whack with his tail. Both disappeared. I watched for their reappearance, for I knew that they were watching me from their concealment among the willows. I sang, whistled, called to them to come out--that I was their old friend returned. My persistence was at last rewarded. Shyly they came to the surface, watching me sharply the while, diving at my slightest movement, reappearing on the farther shore, cautious and canny as ever. It was spring. Within a few weeks after my homecoming the Pegs would permit my near approach as they had done before I went away. Though they worked mostly at night, they did venture out in daytime. If they were working at separate tasks, the first to discover me would thump the ground or give the water a resounding whack. One morning Daddy Peg was missing from the pond. Downstream I picked up his tracks and discovered that he was hastening away from home. As it was springtime, I was not concerned lest he was deserting his faithful wife. It was his habit to leave home when Mrs. Peg was "expecting." I knew he'd come waddling back in a few weeks to give the babies their daily plunge. Sure enough, Mrs. Peg came forth with four midgets in fur; a happy, romping family that splashed about the pool for hours at a time. Like all their kin, they had been born with their eyes open and were much "perter" then other animal infants. They swam, and ate, and took the trail at once. If Mrs. Peg showed fear of anything, the youngsters took quick alarm, and forever afterward shunned the object. Of me, Mrs. Peg took little notice, merely giving me the right of way if I intruded on one of her trails, or stopping work to watch me curiously whenever I came near. The beaver babies accepted me as a friend, permitted me to sit or stand near them as they played. One morning, as I approached the pool, I discovered the four youngsters in great agitation. They were not playing. They swam about restlessly, circled the pool, visited the dam, swam out to their house, dived inside it, only to reappear almost at once. I searched around the pond, and found their mother's fresh tracks leading toward the aspen grove. Near it she had been overtaken by a coyote. In vain I tried to catch the motherless waifs, but they eluded me. I went home, made a rude sort of dip-net from an old sack, and returned to the pool. During my absence a strange beaver mother with a brood of five babies had visited the pool where the orphans lived. She immediately adopted the wee bereft babies. Shortly the pool was merry with the rompings of the combined families. CHAPTER NINE MOUNTAIN CLIMBING Mountain climbing is the reverse of the general rule of life in that the ascent is easier than the descent, and much safer. Most climbers underestimate the time required to make a chosen trip, and, starting out with the day before them, ascend at their leisure, making frequent and unnecessarily long stops to rest, drinking in the beauty of the prospect from each rise attained, forgetting to allow themselves sufficient time for the even more difficult descent. Consequently the return trip is crowded on the edge of darkness, a dangerous condition on any trail any time, but especially hazardous when the climber is weary and, therefore, not alert. It is impossible for him to see the slight footholds or handholds on which he must put his trust, and weight. One day, as a boy, I came to grief because I was so absorbed by the interesting things about me that I took no note of the passing of time or of the altitude to which I had climbed. From my camp at Bear Lake I had followed the old Flattop trail to the Divide, from which I could see a hundred miles or more in all directions; to the north the mountains of Wyoming peeped through purple haze; eastward, the foothills dropped away to the flat and endless prairies, with gleaming lakes everywhere. West and south, my own Rockies rose, tier on tier, to snowy heights. Gay and fragrant flowers beckoned my footsteps off the trail; friendly conies "squee-eked" at me from their rocky lookout posts; fat marmots stuffed themselves, making the most of their brief summer. A buck deer left off polishing his new horns on a scraggly timberline tree to look at me. Overhead an eagle swept round and round in endless circles. From the rim of the cañon, between Flattop and Hallett, I viewed the spot where I had blundered over the edge of the snow-cornice on the way to the dance. Beneath lay Tyndall glacier, its greenish ice exposed by the summer thaw. I circled the head of the cañon and climbed to the top of Hallett. From my eerie height, I got an eagle's view of the world below--a hazy, hushed world where the birds called faintly, the brooks murmured quietly and even the wind spoke in whispers. From near by came the crash of glacier ice; falling rocks that thundered down the cliffs. All the afternoon I traveled along the crest of the Divide, wandering southward, away from familiar country into a new maze of peaks and glaciers, deep cañons and abrupt precipices. Suddenly a gale of wind struck me, blinded me with penetrating snow. In that instant, without preliminary or warning, summer changed to winter, and forced me off the heights. It was impossible to thread my way back over the route I had come; for it twisted in and out, around up-flung crags and cliffs. My compass showed that the wind was driving eastward, the direction in which I wanted to go; so I headed down wind, secure in the thought that I would soon be off the roof of the world. Lightning and heavy thunder accompanied the snowstorm, the clouds came down and blotted out the day; twilight descended upon the earth. A band of mountain sheep started up from their shelter behind an upthrust rock and ran ahead of me. I followed them, partly because they ran in the direction I was going, and partly because they are apt to select the safest way down the cliffs. But they turned aside the moment they were out of the wind, swung up on a protected ledge and there halted to wait out the storm. My compass had gone crazy. A dozen times I tried it out. It would point a different direction whenever I moved a few steps. However, the compass mattered little; the chief thing that concerned me was getting down off the roof of the world. Snow swirled down the cliffs, plastering rocks and ledges until both footholds and handholds were hidden. Still I had to go down, there was nothing else to do. The hardy sheep, with their heavy coats, could wait out the storm. But night, with numbing cold, and treacherous darkness in which I'd dare not move, would soon o'ertake and vanquish me. For an hour the ledges provided footing. By turning about, twisting and doubling, there was always a way down. Of a sudden the clouds parted; a long bar of sunshine touched the green forest far below me, focused for a moment upon a single treetop, then vanished as though the shutter of a celestial camera has snapped shut. At last I came to a ledge beneath which the sheer cliff dropped away into unfathomable snowy depths. After short excursions to right and left I discovered that a section of the cliff had split off and dropped into the cañon, leaving only sheer rock walls that offered nothing in the way of footholds. Irresolutely, I faced back the way I had come. Overhead the wind roared deafeningly; the snow came piling down. No hope of retracing my steps. I was tired; that upward climb would be slow and tortuous, would require great strength and endurance. I faced about and began a thorough, desperate search for a downward route. I stood marooned in the cañon wall shaped like a crude horseshoe. At its toe water had leaped down and eroded a slight groove in the solid rock. This was my only chance. It was not inviting, but I had no alternative. It led me down a hundred feet, then tightened into a sort of chimney. Just below I could see the swaying top of a big tree. Firewood must be near at hand! Wider ledges must lay close beneath! Fifty feet down the chimney, just as it deepened into a comfortable groove with rough, gripable sides, I came to a sudden halt, for the rock was broken away; the cleft bottom of the chute overhung the cliff below. Sweat streamed down my face, in spite of the cold wind. Visions of a leaping campfire died out of my mind. The Engelmann spruce swayed toward me encouragingly, as though offering to help me down. But its top was many feet from the wall. There was an abandoned bird's nest in it; a little below that was a dead limb with a woodpecker's incision at its base. By leaning out I could see, a hundred feet or more below the bottom of the swaying tree. In my extremity I shouted, even as I had done in the glacier crevasse, though there was no one to hear. The echo came back sharply. "There must be another wall angling this one," I thought. "It's got to be done, there's no other way." I spoke the words out loud to boost my courage. The tip of the old spruce rose to almost my level; but there was that intervening gulf between it and the rock on which I stood. How wide was that gulf, I wondered. Five feet? Ten? Too far! A score of times I surveyed the tree-top, tried to estimate the distance, sought a foothold in the cramped rock chute, and worked into position for the leap. No sharpshooter ever aligned his sights more carefully than I did my feet. My coat was buttoned tightly, cap pulled down. When at last I was all set, I hesitated, postponed the jump and cowered back against the wall. A dozen times I made ready, filled my lungs with deep breaths, stretched each leg out to make sure it was in working order, but every time my courage failed me. Suddenly resolute, not giving myself chance to think, I tensed, filled my lungs, leaned away from the rock, and launched headlong. As my body crashed into the treetop my fingers clutched like talons, my arms clasped the limbs as steel bands. I was safe in the arms of that centuries-old spruce. Never since that day have I taken such a chance. The thought of it, even now, sends cold, prickly chills along my spine. That time trouble came out of a clear sky, but sometimes a bit of innocent curiosity betrays one. Thus one day, with sunshine overhead and peaceful murmurs below, I stood upon a rock spire upthrust from the slope of Mount Chapin, watching a band of Bighorn sheep above timberline. The Fall River road now runs past the spot where they were feeding. When I climbed up toward them, they gathered close together, some of them scrambling up rocks for vantage points, all watching me interestedly. They were not excited. They moved away slowly at my near approach, stopping now and then to watch me or to feed. For several hours I kept my position below them; sometimes edging close to one of them, keeping in sight at all times, and being careful not to move quickly. The band worked its way to the foot of the steeper slopes, above the tree line, hesitated, eyed me, then started up a narrow little passage that led up between two cliffs. A rock-slide cluttered this granite stair. Stable footholds were impossible for the loose rocks slipped and slid, rolled from beneath the sheep's feet and bounded down the slope. Of a sudden something frightened the Bighorn, just what I had no time to learn. Instantly every one of those nineteen sheep was in full flight up the rock-slide. They bounded right and left, tacked across it, turned, scrambled up, slipped back, tumbled, somersaulted, but always regained their balance and made steady headway. They seemed to have lost their wits, for they scattered, each selecting his own route, all striving with great exertion to make speed up the steep slope. A barrage of stones fell all about me. Dust-puffs dotted the slide. Then the whole thing seemed to move downward, like the rapids of a river, dashing rock spray everywhere. The air was filled with flying granite, as hurtling rocks struck and exploded into smoky fragments. Bits, the size of wine-saps, scattered like birdshot; larger pieces, the size of bushel baskets and barrels, bounded and danced, leaped away from the slope, out into space, and dropped like plummets. Huge bowlders (sleeping Titans that they were) stirred, roused themselves, and came crashing down, plowing through the forest below, furrowing the earth and cutting a swath through the trees as clean as a scythe through grass. What was first merely the metallic clink of rolling stones changed to a steady bombardment, and then into a sullen, ominous roar as the giant bowlders got under way. For me the scene had changed abruptly; a moment since I had been following the wild sheep with ready camera, stalking them, entertaining them with antics, occasionally hiding for a moment to excite them. Now pandemonium reigned. The first few stones I dodged; then they came too thick to be avoided. I dived headlong behind a bowlder, partly buried in the slide. Like a rabbit I hid there, clinging as the stones hailed about me, afraid to lift my head. Rocks struck close, filling my eyes with gritty dust, choking me. Then a giant slab came grinding downward. I could hear it coming, its slow thunder drowned out all other sounds. The whole mountain heaved. My rock fort shook, flinging me backward amidst a deluge of smaller stones. Over and over I rolled, with the loosened rocks, fighting frantically every instant. Inside a few short, busy seconds the giant slab shot past, my bowlder had halted it for only a second. As I leaped aside I was pelted by a score of stones, battered, bruised, knocked half unconscious, eyes filled with sharp, cutting grit. At last I gained the outer edge of the whirlpool, where the movement was less rapid, where only the smaller stones trickled down. Dazed, bleeding and breathless, I was flung aside, too blinded to see and too stunned to avoid the projectiles shooting my way. The slide lessened; its roar diminished; only occasional rocks came down. Then came silence, vast, still and awesome after the uproar. But it was broken by the belated descent of tardy stones, loath to be left behind. Miniature slides started, hesitated and scattered. Like a battered bark I lay half submerged at the edge of the slide. My cap was gone, my camera lost, my clothes torn; in a score of places I was scratched or bruised. I crawled farther from the danger line, found a trickle of water below a melting snowbank, where I drank and laved my bruises. At length I started down the mountain, safe, but not sound; somewhat wiser, thrilled tremendously at the experience that had come unannounced. It is always thus in mountain climbing--the unexpected is the rule! The habit of estimating time by the number of miles to be traveled goes by the board in mountain work. A mile stood on end ceases to be a mile and becomes a nightmare. Trail miles, or those that stretch across the mountain tops, are not even related to the miles of straight, smooth highway of the lower levels. A new unit of measurement should be created for alpine climbers, to conform to the haughty attitude of the mountains. At times, upon the crest of the Continental Divide, and at an altitude of from ten to twelve thousand feet, I have covered from three to five miles in an hour. And again, while breaking a snow trail, creeping up treacherous glacier ice, or edging along the ledges, I have often reversed the digits, taking several hours to gain a single mile. Then, too, no trip is taken twice under the same conditions. The mountains are never the same: the weather, the wind, snow or rain conditions may alter decidedly the footing upon their slopes. Thus a climb that was accomplished on the first of June in one year without serious obstacles may, on the same date another year, be found to be impossible. Experienced mountaineers intuitively know when to proceed, or to turn back; and though they may not be able to explain why they abandon or continue a trip, they "feel" their actions imperative. So climbing tests a man's judgment, his physical endurance, and tries his soul. It brings out his true character. The veneer of convention wears through inside a few miles of trail work and reveals the individual precisely as he is, often to his shame but usually to his glory. Thus a silent, backward boy one day became a hero by diving headlong across smooth ice to rescue a trio of climbers who had lost their footing and had started to slide across a glacier. Again, upon a certain climb, two husky men who gave promise of conquering the ascent without trouble, turned out to be the weakest of weaklings, abusing all the party, demanding all the guide's help for themselves. "You can't never tell how fur a toad'll jump!" the Parson said disgustedly as he heard the tale of these two huskies who had turned babies; "nor which way neither." One of the things which I have found most helpful on hard climbs, is mental preparation. If there are certain, lurking dangers to be overcome, I have found it a decided help to admit the facts freely before attempting the climb; picturing as far as it can be done the situations that may arise. In this way it is possible, to a certain degree, to anticipate emergencies before they happen and to prepare for them. It also helps one to act with imperative promptness. It is less easy to prescribe for physical preparation. Equipment must vary with needs and these are as varied as the climbers themselves. However, I have found that it is well to dress lightly, for this permits freedom of movement. Personally I prefer light, low shoes that reach just above the ankle, the soles studded with soft-headed hob nails, not the iron ones. A change of socks is sometimes a life-saver, for frequently the footing leads through ice water or soft snow. Numb feet are always clumsy and slow, and dangerous besides. I have found it best to wear medium-weight wool underclothes and just enough outer garments to keep one warm. A staff is a handicap on rockwork, but helpful on glaciers or other ice climbing. On the mountain tops, as well as upon the highways, speed is dangerous. Haste on a mountain brings grief of various kinds, nausea, needless exhaustion, injuries. Never sprint! Climb slowly, steadily, like a sober old packhorse. You will make better time, and reach the summit in condition to enjoy your achievement. I came to distrust, and to test out, every rung in my rocky ladders. I found that even the most secure-appearing "stepping stones" were often rotten and treacherous, weathered by the continual freezing and thawing of the moisture in its seams. Often a mere touch was sufficient to shatter them, but sometimes it was not until I put my weight upon them, holding to a shrub or an earth-buried bowlder the while, that they gave way. I learned, too, that the wise selection of a route up and down is the crucial test of a good guide. In such selection there are no rules; for every climb presents problems particularly its own, and what worked out well on the last climb may turn out to be dangerous on the next. Thus, on one ascent of the cliffs of Black Cañon, my companion suggested that we follow a "chimney," a water-worn crack that offered convenient toe-holds. We ascended by the selected route without difficulty. But an hour later, when a similar ascent confronted us, we selected the same sort of route and came to grief, finding our way blocked by an overhanging wall impossible to surmount. The actual climbing of difficult places becomes a habit, so far as the physical effort is concerned, leaving one free to inspect the precipices above, and to feel out, instinctively, the possible routes to the top. The selection of a way up difficult places calls for the sixth sense, instinct, which cannot always be acquired by experience. Wild animals possess this "instinct" to a great degree; but human beings are not so unerring. One man may be blest with it, but another, with equal experience, will be unreliable. There is no accounting for the wide difference in their accuracy, it exists--that is all we know. There are times when even with this guiding instinct, one comes to grief; though I have noted that grief came to me most often when I was tired, less alert, and more prone to take chances or needless risks. Sometimes, under stress of haste to get off a dangerous place before darkness overtook me, I have had to leap without looking. No climber may expect to survive many such reckless steps. It is the rule of the mountains that you look--then do not leap. In most of life's experiences we may make a mistake and, if wise, profit by it. But in mountain climbing the first mistake is liable to be the last. Mountain climbing is a game, a big game; divided as are other sports into minor and major divisions. The minor climbs include the lesser peaks, safe, well-marked trails that lead to comfortable night camps: the major division includes almost everything from peeping into an active volcano to getting imprisoned in a glacier crevasse. Colorado offers wide variety of experience in both divisions. It has forty-odd peaks above fourteen thousand feet, with hundreds of others almost as high, yet unknown and unmapped. The peaks that are most widely known, and most often climbed are Pike's Peak near Colorado Springs and Long's Peak in the Rocky Mountain National (Estes) Park. Pike's has long been easily accessible by way of the famous cog road, and more recently an automobile road has reached its top. But Long's has no royal road to its summit. Only a foot trail partly encircles it. There are many other than these two peaks to challenge the climber. The Flattops, in western Colorado, are not necessarily low or smooth, though flat. The San Juan Mountains are extremely rough and rugged. The Sangre de Christo Range is at once rarely beautiful and forbidding. The Never-summer and Rabbit Ear ranges invite exploration, and the great Continental Divide has no peers. Every mountain offers its peculiar attractions and difficulties. All mountains entice the brave-hearted and the adventurous. Occasionally men lose their lives in conquering them and not infrequently women die heroically scaling their slopes. Long's Peak was early the objective of experienced mountain climbers. For a number of years it defied all efforts to scale it. From 1864 to 1868 a number of unsuccessful attempts to reach the top failed. In the summer of 1868 a party in charge of W. N. Byers, who had led the first unsuccessful party, reached the top. Since that time each year has seen an increasing number of successful climbers. Most climbers go in small parties, for large ones (more than five) are dangerous. Dogs are dangerous companions on a climb, because they start rock-slides. As a boy I lived at the foot of this forbidding Sphinx, climbed it every month in the year, and thus came to know its mighty moods, the terrific fury of its storms, the glory of its outlook. Miss Carrie J. Welton lost her life upon the Peak in 1884. She gave out near the top and her guide, Carlyle Lamb, son of the Parson, made heroic efforts to save her. But he, too, became exhausted and had to leave her alone while he went for help. But when help arrived, Miss Welton was dead, having perished from exhaustion and cold. Other casualties have occurred on this towering mountain. A boy left his parents in camp at the foot of the Peak and disappeared. Late in the summer, as the snowbanks diminished, his body was found, lying at the base of the three-thousand-foot precipice. One man was killed by the accidental discharge of a pistol. A doctor was killed by lightning. In January, 1925, occurred a double tragedy. Miss Agnes Vaille perished near the spot where Miss Welton lost her life, and under similar conditions. Herbert Sortland, member of the rescue party, became lost and perished in the storm that was raging over the heights. His body was found many weeks afterward within a few minutes' walk of home. CHAPTER TEN MODERN PATHFINDERS Back on the farm of my childhood, the names of Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, Buffalo Bill and other renowned frontiersmen were ever on the lips of my parents. Their reckless bravery that took no thought of self, their diplomatic cunning that cleverly kept the Indians friendly, their unlimited resourcefulness, equal to the most unprecedented emergencies, were the subjects of many a heroic tale. When I came West, no matter how far I penetrated into remote regions, if there were trapper or prospector about, I found the immortal fame of these intrepid pathfinders had traveled into those mountain-guarded wildernesses. They became the heroes of my boyish dreams, the patterns of my conduct, the inspiration of my ideals. I seized upon every written word concerning them and plowed through thick, poorly-printed volumes on the frontier for one brief sentence about these gallant scouts. I longed to emulate their fearless, immortal deeds. They left an indelible impress upon my character, even as they had upon the romantic annals of their country. My growing familiarity with the Rocky Mountain region opened up one trail in which I could follow their footsteps. Tourists were finding out the country, guides were in demand. In the early days, before the creation of the National Park, guides were unlicensed. Any experienced old-timer or climber could take parties up the Peak or on other alpine trips. I began guiding by taking occasional visitors up Long's. I furnished my horse, and on most trips, supplies, wrangled the pack-horses, made camp, cooked the meals, and gave invaluable advice and "first aid" all for the munificent wage of five dollars a day! That sum made the replacement of climb-shattered cameras, the purchasing of a few coarse, cheap garments, and the acquiring of a Montgomery Ward library, all such riches, possible. The work afforded none of the opportunities for fame and glory that had lurked in the trails of my heroes; I did not creep stealthily from a wagon train in the dead of night to thwart the redmen in a fiendish massacre; I was not compelled to kill game to furnish food for my charges; I did not have to find fords across wide, deep and treacherous unknown rivers, and steer panic-stricken cattle or heavily laden oxen across them. But even though the work lacked the glamour of the pioneers' primitive, golden day, it was not without engrossing interests. It was filled with drama, relieved by comedy, sometimes fraught with tragedy. Yes; styles in guides have changed since Bill Cody scouted the plains, even as they have changed since I piloted my first party up Long's Peak. A new breed has sprung up since the people have made such wide use of their National Parks. Not only the modern guides outwit the savage elements, but, under the National Park administration, they are required to have a fund of general information, especially nature lore, to be able to identify the thousands of varieties of wild flowers, the birds, animals and trees; to conduct field classes in geology, and to explain every phenomenon of weather and climate. Such a guide must have the patience to answer numberless questions. All this in addition to watching his charges, as a nurse watches her patients, feeling their pulses, so to speak, and taking their physical and moral temperatures. He must keep up their morale with entertaining yarns, he must restrain their too ambitious experience, must protect them from their own foolhardiness. He must have the charity to forbear deriding their stupidity. He must be as courageous and resourceful as the old-time guides, though his trials may not be so spectacular. A guide soon plumbs a man's character and fathoms its weakness and its strength. As a boy guide I trailed far into the wilds with hunting parties, and camped through the summers with fishermen, geologists, explorers and mountain climbers. The reaction of individuals to the open spaces has ever been interesting to me. I have seen voluble women silent before the awesome beauty. I have seen phlegmatic business men moved to tears. There was no way of anticipating people's reactions. Nearly all climbers dread the altitude of the high country. It is the "Old Man of the Sea" to most "tenderfeet." It has as many forms as the clouds and changes them as readily. It pounces upon the innocent but not unsuspicious wayfarer in the form of nosebleed, short wind, earache, balky watches, digestive troubles, sleeplessness and oversleeping. As guide one day for the wife of a well-known geologist, I secured a new idea regarding altitude. We were to spend the day above timberline, where we hoped to identify the distant mountain ranges, observe the wild life close at hand and collect flower specimens. We left the valley at dawn, let our horses pick their way slowly upward. We halted occasionally to watch a scampering chipmunk or to explain our harmless errand to a scolding squirrel. Near the timberline we emerged into a little grassy glade beside a rushing stream. Far above and deep below us grew a dense forest of Engelmann spruce. In the glade stood a detached grove of perhaps a dozen trees, dead and stripped almost bare of limbs and bark. My lady stopped abruptly and stared at these. She shook her head sadly, murmuring to herself. At last she spoke: "Isn't it too bad?" she grieved. I agreed sympathetically, then peered about to learn the cause of our sudden sadness. The lady pointed to the dead trees, wagged her head, and said: "Isn't it too bad the altitude killed them?" There were green trees a mile farther up the mountain above the dead ones in the glade. Yet my lady insisted that the altitude had singled out and killed the little grove in the midst of the forest--so we let it go at that. Of course, some persons really are affected by altitude, but weariness, lack of muscular as well as mental control, often creates altitudinous illusion. Of this condition I had an example while guiding a party of three women and one man to the top of Long's Peak. We climbed above timberline, headed through Storm Pass, and finally reached Keyhole without a single incident to mar the perfect day. The ladies were new, but plucky, climbers; the man rather blustery, but harmless. Beyond Keyhole lies rough going, smooth, sloping rocks and the "Trough" with its endless rock-slides that move like giant treadmills beneath the climber's feet. The pace I set was very slow. The man wanted to go faster, but I called attention to Glacier Gorge below, the color of the lakes in the cañon, in short, employed many tactics to divert him from his purpose. My refusal to travel faster excited him, he became extremely nervous and made slighting remarks regarding my guiding ability that ruffled me and embarrassed the ladies. Hoping to convince him of his error, I speeded up. He remonstrated at once, but when I slowed down to our customary pace he still objected, saying we'd never reach the top before dark. Suddenly he developed a new notion. Climbing out upon a ledge he lifted his arms and poised, as though to dive off the cliff. "Guide," he called, his voice breaking, "I must jump." After some confusion we were on our way again, the man within clutch of my hand. All progressed without further trouble until we reached the top of the trough, where we halted to rest and to look down into Wild Basin, memorable scene of my first camp! My charge craftily escaped my clutches, walked out on a promontory, and again threatened to jump. Secretly I hoped he would carry out his threat. Before we began scaling the home stretch, I tried to persuade the erratic idiot to remain behind, but he refused. However, we all made the top safely. He relapsed into glum silence, which I hoped would last until we were safely off the peak. But as we stood near the brink of the three-thousand-foot precipice overlooking Chasm Lake, we were startled to hear his voice once more, raised to high pitch. "I must jump over, I've got to jump," he screamed. He waved his arms wildly, as though trying to fly. The ladies begged me not to approach him lest he totter from his precarious perch. Summoning all the authority I could command, I ordered him to come down off the rock. My commandment unheeded, next I humored him and tried to coax him back upon the pretext of showing him something of special interest. But he stood firm, mentally at least, if not physically. Pushing the ladies ahead, I hurried on toward the trail. As I started, I waved good-by, and shouted: "Go on, jump. Get it over with, coward!" He turned back from the edge, swearing vengeance against me. In abusing me, however, he forgot his obsession to jump. During the summer of my experience with the man who wanted to jump, I guided a party of three men who behaved in a totally different, but in quite as unexpected, manner. They were three gentlemen from New York, who wished to make a night climb up Long's Peak. It was a beautiful moonlight night. Our party left the hotel at the foot of the Peak at eleven o'clock. Proceeding upward through the shadowy, moon-flecked forest, we sang songs, shouted, listened to the far-away calls of the coyotes in the valley below, and from timberline saw the distant lights of Denver. At one o'clock we reached the end of the horse trail. In two hours the horses had covered five miles and had climbed up thirty-five hundred feet. We were on schedule time. Though the sun would gild the summit of the Peak soon after four in the morning, we would arrive sufficiently ahead of it, to watch it rise. All at once my troubles began. The three men wanted to race across bowlderfield. It was sheer folly and I told them so, and why, but failed to convince them. They raced. They kidded me for being slow, dared me to race them, and gibingly assured me that they would wait for me on top and command the sun not to rise until I got there. They would have their little joke. They waited for me at Keyhole and we moved slowly along the shelf trail beyond. On that they raced again, but not far, for the steep slope of the trough with its slippery stones stood just beyond. Right there they insisted on eating their lunch, an untimely lunch hour for there was hard climbing yet to do. Not satisfied with emptying their lunch bags, they drank freely of some ice water that trickled out from beneath a snowbank. I got them going at last and we had gone only a short way when two of them fell ill. They felt they just had to lie down, and did so, and became thoroughly chilled, which added to their pangs of nausea. After awhile we proceeded very slowly. No longer their song echoed against the cliffs. They broke their pained silence only to grumble at one another. Midway of the rock-slide of the trough, they stopped, and like balky mules, refused to go forward or turn back. In vain I urged them to start down, assuring them the lower altitude would bring relief. The sick men didn't care what happened; they craved instant relief by death or any other instantaneous method, as seasick persons always do. Their more fortunate friend looked at them in disgust, as those who have escaped the consequences of their deeds often look at those who have not. He upbraided me for not keeping them from making fools of themselves. I knew argument with him would be futile in his quarrelsome frame of mind. I kept still. His sick companions crawled beneath an overhanging rock, and lay shivering and shaking, too miserable to sleep. Presently he joined them, sputtering at me as the author of all their troubles. His sputterings grew intermittent, ceased. He was audibly asleep. After a long time one of his pals demanded. "Who in the ---- proposed this ---- trip anyway?" The conduct of these men was not unique. Most climbers start out exuberantly, burn up more energy than they can spare for the first part of the trip, and find themselves physically bankrupt before they've reached their goal. The rarefied air of the high country seems to make them lightheaded! The most disagreeable character to have in a party, as in other situations, is the bully, or know-it-all, who spoils everyone's fun. A guide is a trifle handicapped in handling such people, in that his civilized inhibitions restrain him from pushing them off the cliffs or entombing them in a crevasse. I was too small to do them physical violence anyway, so I had to resort to more subtle weapons, the most effective being ridicule. If a joke could be turned on the disturber he generally subsided. The rest of the crowd were profuse in their expressions of gratitude to me for such service rendered. Such an individual was once a member of a fishing party I guided to Bear Lake. The trip was made on horseback and we hadn't gone a mile before he urged his horse out of line and raced ahead, calling to some kindred spirit to follow. They missed the turn and delayed the whole party more than an hour while being rounded up. "Lanky," as the party dubbed him out of disrespect, blamed me for their getting lost, but dropped behind when he saw the half-suppressed mirth of the others. Along the way were many inviting pools, and occasionally we saw a fisherman. "Lanky" soon raised the question of trying out the stream, but was outvoted by the others. He was inclined to argue the matter, but we rode up the trail, leaving him to follow or fish as he desired. At Bear Lake at that time was a canvas boat, cached twenty steps due west of a certain large bowlder that lay south of the outlet. The boat was small, would safely hold but two persons. As it was being carried to the water, "Lanky" appeared and insisted on having the first turn in it. To this the others agreed, much against my wishes. To save the others from the annoyance of the fellow, I went out with him in the boat. The trout were too well fed to be interested in our flies, though "Lanky" and I paddled around and across, and tempted them with a dozen lures. My passenger became abusive and blamed me for wasting a good fishing day by bringing the party to the lake. In the midst of his tirade the boat tilted strangely. For a few minutes he shamefully neglected me while he gave his whole attention to righting it. By sundown the party had caught a few small fish, and were ready to quit. They had gladly let "Lanky" monopolize the boat so as to be spared his society. To "Lanky's" disgust we had caught only two six-inch fish. Just as we started for the shore he made a farewell cast. Something struck his spinner; his reel sang, his rod bent, and he stood up in the boat, yelling instructions at me. The rest of the party quit fishing to watch him land the fish. The trout was a big one, and game, but we were in deep water with plenty of room. From the shore came excited directions: "Give him more line!" "Reel him in!" "Don't let him get under the boat!" "Head him toward the shore!" "Lanky" turned a superior deaf ear. After a tussle of ten minutes a two-pound trout lay in the boat, and "Lanky" raised an exultant yell in which the cliffs of Hallett joined. Now, indeed, was justice gone astray, when the one disagreeable member of the party had the only luck. When the last triumphant echo died away, I picked up his prize, inspected it critically, held it aloft for the others to witness. "I'm a deputy warden," I snapped at him disgustedly, "and you don't keep small ones while I'm around." With that I tossed the trout into the lake. Just as I finished, the boat mysteriously upset, and "Lanky" and I followed the fish. The early trips I made with parties were mostly short ones for game or fish, but as more and more visitors came each succeeding summer, longer trips became popular. From fishing, the summer guests turned to trail trips, camping en route and remaining out from five to ten days. To cross the Continental Divide was the great achievement. Everyone wanted to tell his stay-at-home neighbors about trailing over the crest of the continent, and snowballing in the summer. The route commonly chosen was the Flattop trail to Grand Lake, where camp was pitched for a day or two; then up the North Fork of the Grand River (known farther south as the Colorado River) to Poudre Lake, where another camp was made. From here they made a visit to Specimen, a mountain of volcanic formation which rises from the lake shore. This peak has ever been the home of mountain sheep. One can always count on seeing them there, sometimes just a few stragglers, but often bands of a hundred or more. However interesting the day's experience had been, the climax came after camp was made, supper served and cleared away, when a big bonfire was lighted and all sat about it talking over the happenings of the day, singing and putting on stunts. In the tourists' minds the guide and the grizzly were classed together; both were wild, strange and somewhat of a curiosity. Nothing delighted them more than to get the guide to talking about his life in the wilds. Most of them looked upon him as a sort of vaudeville artist. When several parties were out on the same trip they all assembled around a common campfire. The guides were given the floor, or ground, and they made the most of the occasion. Such competition as there was! Each, of course, felt obliged to uphold the honor of his party and out-yarn his fellows. Their stories grew in the telling, each more lurid than the last. There were thrilling tales of bear fights; of battles with arctic storms above timberline; of finding rich gold-strikes and losing them again. At first the guides stuck to authentic experiences. But as the demand outgrew their supply, they were forced to invention. They had no mean imaginations and entranced their tenderfoot audiences with their thrilling tales. Around the campfires of primitive peoples have started the folklore of races. These guides were more sophisticated than their rustic mien hinted, the points of their yarns more subtle than the city dwellers suspected. One evening I reached the Poudre Lake camp at dusk, to find two other parties ahead of mine. The others had finished supper and were gathered around the campfire, with North Park Ned the center of attraction. "I was camped over on Troublesome crick, an' havin' a busy time with cookin', wranglin' the hosses and doin' all the camp work. The fellers, they was all men, were too plumb loco to help, everything they touched spelt trouble. They admired to have flapjacks, same as we et, for supper, an' they watched jest how I made 'em, an' flipped 'em in the frypan. Then they wanted to do the flippin'." Ned chuckled quietly to himself and went on: "I hadn't realized afore that a tenderfoot with a pan of hot, smeary flapjacks is as dangerous as he is with a gun. He's liable to cut loose in any direction. He ain't safe nowhere. One of them I had out was called Doctor Chance; guess he got his name cause other folks took chances havin' him round. Well, Chance was the first flipper. I'd showed him the trick of rotatin' the frypan to loosen the jacks so't they wouldn't stick an' cause trouble. The doctor got the hang of flippin' 'em 'an did a good job 'til he wanted to do it fancy. The plain ordinary flip wasn't good enough for him, no siree. He wanted to do it extra fancy. Instead of a little flip so's they'd light batter side down, the doctor'd give 'em a double turn an' they'd come down in the pan with a splash. He got away with it two or three times; then he got careless--flipped a panful without loosen'n 'em proper--them jacks stuck at one edge, flopped over and come down on doc's hands. We had to stop cookin' and doctor the doctor. "Then another one of 'em thought he'd learnt how from watchin' the doc, so I set back an' let 'im have all the rope he wanted. It was their party, an' they could go the limit so far as I was concerned. But the new guy slung 'em high, wide an' crooked as a sunfishin' bronc. First thing I knowed there was a shower of sizzlin' flapjacks rainin' where I set, an' I had to make a quick getaway to keep from bein' branded for life. Then he heaved a batch so high they hit a dead limb over the fire an' wrapped aroun' it. "It was then the next feller's turn, and he started in, while Number Two shinned up the tree to get the jacks off en the limb. Number Four hadn't came to bat yet, so the performance was due to last some time. I got up on a big rock, outta range. "Number Two was in the tree; Number Three flippin'; Number Four was a rollin' up his sleeves an' gettin' ready for his turn. The third chef was sure fancy! He juggled them cakes just like a vodeville artist does. Of a sudden he cuts loose a batch that sailed up high an' han'some, turned over an' cum down on the back of Four's neck--him bein' entertained at the time by the feller in the tree." Ned had acquitted himself well, his story had the tang of reality in it, and he told it with rare enthusiasm. He was so clever, in fact, that the younger guides, including myself, decided not to enter the story contest that night. But there was one in camp who did not hesitate; Andrews was his name. I had not seen this man on the trail before, so listened as eagerly as the others to what he had to offer. "Remember the mountain sheep we saw on Flattop?" Ed recalled as he put aside his pipe. "Well, them wild sheep always has interested me. They're plumb human some ways, I reckon. They sure got a whale of a bump of curiosity, an' they beat country kids in town when it comes to starin' at strange sights. Reckon there ain't nuthin' short of a neighbor that's got more curiosity than them sheep. The old rams git so wise they live two or three times as long as the foolish ones that don't never seem to learn nothin'. "Ole Curiosity, up in back on Specimen, is the biggest ram I ever saw. He's sure curious, an' smart along with it. If trouble shows up around Specimen, why Old Curiosity just ain't home, that's all, but hid away somewheres in the cliffs. An' once when there was shootin' he went over to another mountain till the hunters was gone. That there ole ram got so famous that the fellers used to devil the life outta him. They'd make a show of takin' their gun up the mountain jest ter see the old feller hide out. "One day I was guidin' a party up toward Lulu Pass. We was down in a deep gully, with high walls. All to onct I looked up an' saw a bunch of sheep. They hadn't seen us yet on account of our bein' in the aspens. I flagged the party an' told 'em to watch. "Guess some one was after the sheep, for they was in a hurry to git across the gully. One at a time they jumped off the cliff an' landed in the sand along the river. Must have been fifty feet anyhow, maybe more; but that didn't phase 'em. Of a sudden out walked Ole Curiosity, lookin' as big as a house, with circlin' horns three feet long. The ole feller jumped last; and jest as he jumped I rode out of the woods." Ed eyed the circle of eager faces; his listeners tensed and leaned forward breathlessly. Then he continued: "When the ole ram was about halfway down he seen me. An' what do you reckon he did?" His hypnotized audience were too spellbound to hazard a guess. "He turned aroun' and went back." The story of the ram that turned back is still told around the campfires of the Rockies, and it has not grown leaner in the repetitions. But the old-time guides are giving way to younger ones, more scientific but not so entertaining. The Indians who have turned guides are unexcelled when it comes to following trails that are dim, or in tracking down runaway horses. Indians have a subtle sense of humor, even during the most serious situations. "Injun not lost, trail lost," one said when adrift in the woods. To prevent "trails from getting lost," the Park Service requires all to pass examinations on packing, making camp, handling horses, first aid, familiarity of the region and general aptness for the calling before granting them a license entitling them to conduct parties on the peaks and trails of Rocky Mountain National Park. When the first superintendent was giving these examinations he invited me to assist him. In order to focus the attention of the would-be guides upon certain important essentials, the questions started out by asking: "What is the first consideration of a guide?" "What is the second consideration of a guide?" The answer expected to the first, of course, was the safety of the party, and to the second the comfort of the party. The superintendent and I strolled about the room where a dozen or more young fellows were laboriously writing out their answers. One chap in particular attracted my attention, for he was from the woods, a big strapping fellow with clear eyes, and an eager, honest face. I peeped over his shoulder. Beneath "What is the first consideration of a guide?" he had written in unmistakable brevity: "HAM." Beneath "What is the second consideration of a guide?" in a clear, legible hand was the kindred word: "BACON." CHAPTER ELEVEN OFF THE TRAIL That same youthful ambition to emulate the early explorers and discover new worlds which had led me West also tempted my boyish feet off the beaten, man-made trails. I was told that trails were the safe, the sure routes into and out of the wilds, but their very existence proclaimed that other men had been there before me. I was not the first on those narrow, winding high roads. I preferred the game trails to them, but I liked better still to push beyond even those faint guides, into the unmarked, untracked wilderness. There I found the last frontier, as primitive as when bold Columbus dared the unknown seas, and my young heart thrilled at such high adventure. Late one fall, I climbed high above timberline on the Long's Peak trail, and, following my adventurous impulse, left the cairn-marked pathway and swung over to the big moraine that lay south. From its top I peeped into the chasm that lies between it and the Peak, then angled down its abrupt slope to a sparkling waterfall, and, following along the swift, icy stream above it, was climbing toward Chasm Lake, when an eerie wail rose from the gorge below. Somewhere down there a coyote was protesting the crimes committed against his race. His yammering notes rose and fell, ascending and descending the full run of the scale, swelled into a throaty howl and broke into jerky, wailing yaps like a chorus of satyrs. The uninitiated could never have believed all those sounds came from one wolfish throat; it seemed that it must be that the entire pack, or at least half a dozen animals, raised that woeful lamentation. Facing, first one way and then another, I tried to locate the brokenhearted mourner. But Long's sheer, precipitous face and the lofty cliffs around me formed a vast amphitheater about which echoes raced, crossing and recrossing, intermingling. For a full minute the coyote howled, his sharp staccato notes rising higher and higher, the echoes returning from all directions, first sharply, then blurred, faint, fainter. The higher the sounds climbed the gorge the longer were the intervals between echoes, for the cañon walls sloped back and were wider apart toward the top. I counted seven distant echoes of a single sharp bark before it trailed off into numberless indistinguishable echoes. The varying angles and heights of the walls altered their tones, but just as they reached the top they came in uniform volume, and then overflowed the lower north rim and were lost. For ten minutes that coyote howled, and I tried to locate him by the sound. I knew it would be impossible to sight him for his dun-colored coat blended perfectly with the surrounding bowlders. At last I decided he was due west of me. Cautiously I started toward him, but as soon as I moved he materialized from the jumbled pile of slide rock a hundred feet north of where I stood. The echoes had fooled me completely. I wondered then, and many times since, why he howled with me so near. He surely saw me. Was lie familiar with the echoes of the gorge? Did he know their trickery? Did he lift his voice there to confound me? He is somewhat of a ventriloquist anywhere, perhaps he liked to howl from that spot because the abetting echoes deluded him into thinking his talent was increasing and he excelled all his rivals in the mysterious art! Or perhaps like some singers I have known, he enjoyed the multitudinous repetition of the sound of his own voice! After more than a score of years I am no nearer a solution of the riddle. Twenty miles from the spot where the music-fond coyote sang, near the headwaters of the Poudre River, I rode one day in pursuit of a pair of marauding wolves. As soon as they discovered me tracking them, they took to an old game trail that climbed several thousand feet in ten miles distance and headed toward the timberline. From their tracks I could tell the country was strange to them, for animals, like men, are uneasy in unfamiliar surroundings. Somewhere a prospector set off a blast. The sound rolled around and echoed from all about. The wolves were startled at the repeated reports, as they thought them, and at sea as to the direction from which they came; so they hid away in a dense new growth of Engelmann spruce. When I rode in sight with rifle ready across my saddle, they lay low, no doubt fearing to blunder into an ambush if they took flight. A campbird sailed silently into the tops of the young trees and peered curiously downward. Its mate winged in and together they hopped from limb to limb, descending toward the concealed animals, and conversing in low tones of their discovery. My horse stopped at my low command; I raised my rifle and fired into the undergrowth beneath the trees. The wolves sprang out at a run, with lightning bounds, crossed a small opening and disappeared into the heavy forest beyond. I continued firing at them, without effect. Just before they vanished into the spruces, I fired a final salute. To my astonishment, they turned tail and came racing back, straight toward me, but glancing back fearfully as they came. For a foolish instant I thought they meant to attack, then the reason for their action dawned on me. A sharp echo of each shot had been flung back by a cliff beyond the grove. The fleeing animals on nearing the cliff had mistaken these echoes for another pursuer. They feared the unseen gun more than the gun in the open. [Illustration: They turned tail and came racing back, straight toward me.] I killed them from the saddle. An echo had betrayed them. But they were in unfamiliar country. I doubt if they would have been misled at home, for animals are commonly familiar with every sight, sound and scent of their home range, and wolves are uncannily shrewd. Thus I learned that the same phenomenon that had confounded me deceived the animals. Echoes make an interesting study and add mystery to the mountains. But animals, and most woodsmen, have a sixth sense upon which they rely, an intuitive faculty we call instinct. It is more infallible than their conscious reasoning or physical senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. It leads them unerringly through unblazened forests, during blinding storms or in the darkness of night. It helps them solve the enigma of echoes, and sometimes when the vagrant breezes trick their sensitive noses, and bring scents to them from the opposite direction of their sources, it senses the deception, and, setting them on the right path, delivers them from their enemies. I suppose I must have had this instinct to some degree or I would surely have been lost in those mountain mazes. Not that anticipation of such a possibility would have deterred me--it would really have added allurement to the adventure. As it was, I did get lost, but always succeeded in finding my way home again. But even with this instinct, people are often lost in the high country of the Rockies. Mountain trails twist and turn, tack and loop around unscalable cliffs. Let a stranger step off a trail for a moment to pick a flower blooming in the shade of the surrounding woods, and, unless he be an outdoor man, he is liable to be confused as to the trail's location when he tries to return to it. The sudden changing weather of high altitudes also causes the climber to lose his way. A sky which at sunrise is as innocently blue as a baby's eyes, may be overcast by lowering clouds by noon, or even sooner. A fog may settle below the summits of the peaks, and cloak all objects more than a few yards distant, distorting and magnifying those mistily discernible. A turn or a detour to survey the vicinity and attempt to get one's bearings almost invariably brings disaster. A fall that dazes one even for a few minutes is liable to befuddle one as to direction and cause one to lose one's way. Few persons lost in the mountains travel in a circle. The typography of the country prevents them, high ridges confine them to limited areas. They are as apt to travel in one direction as in the opposite, but they may usually be looked for and found in a shut-in valley or cañon. I was lost one day within a mile of home, almost in sight of the home buildings, upon a slope I knew well. It came about through my following a band of deer on my skis. The day was windy the snow blowing about in smothering clouds. I came upon the deer in a cedar thicket. At my approach they retreated to a gully and started up the slope. The snow grew so deep that after floundering in it a few yards, they deserted the gully, tacked back close to me, and cut around the slope about level with my position. I gave chase on skis, which almost enabled me to keep up with them. When they altered their direction and headed down hill, I easily outran them. Soon I was in their midst, but had difficulty in keeping my balance. All at once the animals indulged in queer antics. One lay upside down, his feet flailing the air; another stood on his head in space; two does on my left whirled round and round as though dancing with a phonograph record for a floor. The next instant I joined their troupe. In the flash that followed I remembered seeing the tops of small trees beneath me, remembered my skis whipping across in front of my face. In their panic to escape me, the deer's instinct had deserted them, and they had dashed full speed across a slope where a spring overflowed and froze, and the ice was coated with snow. When I regained my feet I was lost. Everything was unfamiliar. I set my course toward a prominent thumb of rock, but when I reached it, it had either changed its shape or moved. The whole valley was strange. After skiing for several hours, I topped an utterly foreign ridge. Below me were houses. I coasted down to the nearest that had smoke rising from its chimney. A neighbor, living just a mile from home, came to the door. Then I realized where I was, and recognized the "strange" valley, the "unfamiliar" ridge and my neighbors' houses. I had traveled in a ten-mile circle. The fall with the deer hadn't exactly dazed me--I wasn't unconscious--but it had jarred shut the window of my memory, and though almost at my own door, there was "nobody home." The best example of storm causing one to lose one's way is the experience of Miss Victoria Broughm, the first woman to climb Long's Peak alone. She started one September morning from a hotel at the foot of the Peak, taking a dog as her companion. She tethered her horse at bowlderfield, where horses are usually left, and without difficulty, or delay, made the summit. Just as she reached the top, a storm struck the mountain and, inside of a few minutes, hid the trail. Pluckily Miss Broughm worked her way down, tacking back and forth, mistaking the way but making progress. She was afraid to trust the dog to guide her. Late in the evening she descended the trough, a steep rock-filled gully that extends far below the timberline. The trail goes only part way down this slide, then tacks across to Keyhole. In the storm she could not distinguish the cairns that marked the turn-off, and continued on down the trough far below the trail and was lost. That evening when she did not return to the hotel, a searching party set out to find her. But a terrific hundred-mile gale was raging upon the heights. The searching party found it almost impossible to battle their way above the timberline and after many ineffectual attempts, they returned, nearly frozen, without tidings of the lost girl. William S. Copper, Carl Piltz and myself set out at midnight for the Peak. The wind that met us at the timberline halted our horses, even jolted them off the trail. Just above the timberline my horse pricked his ears toward a sheltered cove and gave a little whinny. We hurried forward hoping to find Miss Broughm. But only her horse was there, dragging its picket rope. We proceeded to bowlderfield. The night was moonless and half cloudy. The wind shrieked among the rim rocks and boomed against the cliffs. Our lantern would not stay lighted. Time and again we crept beneath a rock slab and relighted it only to have it snuffed out the instant we emerged into the wind. Across the rocks we crept, crouching like wary wrestlers. When sudden blasts knocked us off our feet, we dropped flat and clung to the rocks. But even with all our caution we were toppled headlong at times, or bowled over backward as the wind struck us. It was after three in the morning when we reached Keyhole, the pass in the knifelike ridge that separates bowlderfield from Glacier Gorge. The wind forced up the slope from below tore through Keyhole like water through a fire hose. One at a time we attempted to crawl through, but it hurled us back. Together, each holding to his fellow, we braced against the side walls, clung to little nubs on the floor, and edged forward an inch at a time. Even so we were blown back like so much chaff. We dropped back down below Keyhole and, creeping beneath some rocks, waited for daylight. No matter how far we crawled beneath the jumbled slabs the wind found us out. We shivered, all huddled together for warmth, and waited for dawn to light our way and to calm the hurricane. At daybreak we managed to get through Keyhole and made our way to the trough, where we separated, Cooper and Piltz following the trail to the top while I descended the trough toward Glacier Gorge. We had agreed to watch for silent signals, since it was impossible to hear even the loudest calls more than a few feet. In a little patch of sand not much larger than my hand, I discovered a human footprint, with a dog's track imposed upon it. I wigwagged to my companions, received their answering signal, and went on down the trough, whistling to the dog and shouting his name though I could not hope he would hear me above that gale. I searched beneath every likely slab as I went. Suddenly the dog appeared atop a huge rock. He howled in answer to my call; the wind blew him off his post and he disappeared. I hastened forward; then paused. What would I find beneath the rock? Resolutely I started to crawl beneath it--and met Miss Broughm coming out. She was cold, her lips were blue and cracked, but she had not given up hopes or lost her courage. With her hair blowing like the frayed remnants of a flag, she stood beside the bowlder and smiled a brave if twisted smile. She was too cold to walk unaided, so as soon as the others came up, we all supported her and started upon the return trip. We reached the hotel between ten and eleven o'clock in the morning with our lost lady still smiling wanly but rapidly recovering the use of her limbs. She retired for a few hours and reappeared in time for luncheon, little the worse for her night out on top of the world. A compass is limited in its usefulness partly because it is sometimes, though rarely, affected by mineral deposits and goes wrong, but mostly because a lost person seldom thinks he is lost and traveling in the wrong direction, but instead doubts the accuracy of the compass. At most he will admit he is off the trail, but he does not think that is synonymous with being lost. His tracks will record the uncertainty of his mind, wavering, haphazard, indefinite, but he will not admit, even to himself, that he is lost. There are a few general rules followed by searchers for lost people. If the proposed destination or general direction in which they disappeared is known, the rescuers take the trail and track them. Every trail, even across windswept bare rocks high above the timberline, as is the Long's Peak trail, has occasional deposits of soft sand in which footprints may be imprinted. And as I have said before, the area which must be searched is restricted by confining cliffs and ridges. A lost person who cannot find his way back over the trail he has come, shows wisdom in following down a stream which will eventually bring him to habitations in the valley below. Whether or not searching parties start out at once for the unfortunate climber depends on the character of the country he was bound for. If his goal is the summit of a high, bleak peak like Long's; or a glacier, it is imperative to start at once as the temperature above the timberline is often below freezing, even during the summer months. But if the country is not so menacing, the searchers delay, hoping the lost person, like Bo Peep's sheep, will come home unsought, as indeed he generally does. Most of the lost are found, but a few persons have vanished never to be seen again. The Reverend Sampson disappeared supposedly somewhere along the Continental Divide between Estes Park and Grand Lake, and though parties made up of guides, rangers and settlers searched for more than a week, they found no trace of the missing man. I was in the town of Walden, North Park, late one fall when a woodsman came down from the mountains west of the Park with some human bones he had found near the top of the Divide. By the marks on its barrel, the rusty rifle lying near the bones was identified as one belonging to a man who had been lost while on a hunting trip thirty years before. One moonlight night I had an extraordinary and ludicrous experience with a lost person, though at the time it seemed only exasperating. I had stepped outside my cabin to drink in the "moonshine" on my superb outlook. Across the valley, as clearly as in daylight. Long's Peak and its neighbors stood out. The little meadow brook shimmered like a silver ribbon. I walked out to Cabin Rock, a thousand feet above the valley, and sat down. Coyotes yip-yipped their salutations to the sailing moon. The murmur of the little brooks rose to my ears, subdued, distant. I listened for each familiar night sound as one does for the voices of old friends. I sat entranced, intoxicated with the beauty of the hour, refreshing my soul, at peace, content. A strange cry startled me from my reverie, a human cry, faint, as though far off. "Help!" Then a pause. "H-e-l-p!" Then more urgently: "H-E-L-P!" For a few minutes I sat still upon my crag, puzzling. Some one has stumbled into a bear trap, I thought, or been injured in a fall. After marking the locality from which the calls came, I ran down my zigzag trail, and hastened down the valley toward the spot whence the cries had come. Whenever I came to the open, parklike clearings, I stopped to listen. The floor of the wide valley had been burned over scores of years before, and a new growth of lodge-pole pines covered it. These trees were of nearly uniform height, about fifteen feet, and in places too dense to permit of passage. Three miles were covered in record time. Then, thinking that I must be close to the spot from which the calls had come, I climbed an upthrust of rock, searched the openings among the trees near by, and listened intently. I shouted; no reply. For perhaps ten minutes I waited. Then from far up the valley, close below my cabin, the distressing calls were repeated. "He's certainly not crippled," I thought. "He's traveled nearly as far as I." I set off at a run, for I know every little angle of the woods in the vicinity. But when I arrived, breathless and panting, there was no answer to my shouts. I gave up the chase in disgust, and started up the trail toward my cabin. I decided some one was having fun with me. Midway up the trail to my cabin, I heard the cries again, agonized, fearful. They came from across the valley, toward the west. Heading for the peaks! I must stop him! It certainly sounded serious. I'd have to see it through. I hurried across the valley, shouting at intervals, stopping to listen and to look for the person in distress. There was no answer, no one in sight. As I reached the steep slope, leading upward to the high peaks, I heard terrified, heart-rending cries, southward, toward the spot from which the first call had come. It was strange, and maddening, that I could hear him so distinctly, yet he could not hear me. He was certainly deaf or very stupid, for he continued calling for help, when help was pursuing him and yelling at the top of its lungs. Again calls. This time straight south of my position. It was a riddle; annoying, yet interesting. Never in my mountain experience had I encountered such a mystifying situation. However, with grim determination, but little enthusiasm, I turned south. My curiosity was aroused. I wanted to see what sort of fool ran around in dizzy circles yelling for help, yet not waiting for an answer to his supplications, nor acknowledging my answering shouts. I was in prime condition, and well warmed up with ten miles of travel. My endurance was too much for the will-o'-the-wisp. As, for the second time, I neared the spot from which he had first called, he shattered the silence with lusty appeals, then broke cover within a hundred yards of where I followed, hot on his trail. He looked able-bodied and goodness knows he'd been active, so I withdrew into the shadows of a thicket to watch what he would do. After his outcry, he kept mumbling to himself--his words were inaudible--lost his voice--don't wonder! Some rooter he'd make at a football game while he lasted! After muttering a minute, he stopped and listened intently, as though expecting an answer. Good heavens! He thinks he can be heard! He moved on, staggering crazily, stumbling, stopping to look at the shining peaks; then going on aimlessly. "Loco," I decided. I circled ahead of him and concealed myself behind an old stump. I wanted to hear what he was saying. Twice he had crossed the road that ran down the valley, the only road in that vicinity. From Cabin Rock I had seen a tent beside it. As he came toward me, I stepped from behind the stump. "What in time ails you?" I roared. He stared at me and walked completely around me before saying a word. "Huh," he grunted then. "Where'd you come from?" I explained with considerable emphasis that I had come from almost every point of the compass. "Will you tell me why in Sam Hill you are yelling for help when it's as light as day?" I demanded hotly. "I'm lost," he said meekly. "Lost!" I yelled. He nodded shamefacedly. "Went fishing and couldn't find my camp again," he confessed. I recalled the tent beside the road, I'd seen from Cabin Rock. It was the only camp, on the only road in the vicinity. "Why in thunder didn't you follow the road?" "Didn't know which way to go," he defended. "There's the Peak!" I gibed, pointing upward; "plain as day. Your camp is straight east of it--didn't you know that?" He winced, but did not answer. "Couldn't you see the Peak?" I insisted. "You couldn't help but recognize it." "Yes," he admitted. "I saw the Peak, but I thought it was in the wrong place." CHAPTER TWELVE DREAMERS OF GOLDEN DREAMS What with my hunting, trapping, exploring, cabin-building and guiding, my boyish dreams of striking it rich and sending home trainloads of glittering nuggets to my parents, who had been frustrated by illness in their trek across the plains to the golden mountains of Colorado, began to fade into the background. I was engrossed in getting acquainted with my wild neighbors, in learning their habits and customs, and in trying to photograph them in their natural habitat. Moreover there was no rich gold ore in the vicinity of my cabin. Though I was greatly disappointed in this fact at the time, I have since become reconciled to it. After seeing the naked, desolate, scarred-up country around Central City, Cripple Creek, Ouray and other mining localities, I am thankful that no such madness will ever tempt men to despoil the beauties of the region around Estes Park. But if there was no paying gold in the vicinity, there were plenty of prospectors. The slopes above the Parson's ranch were "gophered" all over by them. There were miles of outcrop showing and all bore traces of gold. Every summer some wanderer came probing among the countless holes sure he'd find riches where others had failed. The most persistent one was called "Old Mac" who returned repeatedly. Late one fall he took up his quarters in a log cabin belonging to a mining company. The cabin stood near Long's Peak trail, at an altitude of about ten thousand feet. There they had cached some left-over supplies. Old Mac, forever dreaming, stumbled on to the cache and decided to take up his residence there. Through October and November I saw Old Mac frequently as he pottered about the mine or picked up ore samples from the dump. He staked half a dozen claims, marked their locations, and dug some new holes to test the mineral. In December, when deep snows came, I left the region. When I returned in the spring the snow lay deep and undisturbed about the old cabin. Evidently Old Mac had got out before winter set in. However, I shouted his name, more in the spirit of talking to myself than of expecting a reply. I was surprised to hear a faint reply. From inside the cabin came a creaking as though some one were getting out of bed. Then the door opened and the old man, blinking owlishly, stood before me. His long white hair was unkempt and tangled. He yawned and stretched like a bear emerging from its winter hibernation. "Came up to bring them papers?" he asked, expectantly. I recalled then, when I last saw him in December, that he had asked to borrow some Denver papers that contained information about the Reno gold rush. I had forgotten about them. I explained and apologized. "What sort of a winter have you put in?" I asked by way of diverting him. He looked at me in a sort of maze. "Winter?" he mumbled perplexed. "It's sure settin' in like it meant business. But I'm plannin' to start a tunnel--got a rich vein I want to uncover--think come spring I'll have her where somebody'll want to build a mill an'----" "But you told me you were going to Reno," I recalled. "Yep; I am, come spring," he earnestly assured me. "Do you know the date?" I shot at him. He looked at me sheepishly. "No-o-o, don't reckon I do," he admitted, scratching his head and eying me quizzically. I waited. "Must be about Christmas, ain't it?" he guessed at length. It was the eighth of May! Old Mac was a typical prospector. They are all queer, picturesque characters, living in a world of golden dreams, oblivious to everything but the hole they are digging, the gold they are sure to find. They have a fanatical, unshakable, perennial faith in every prospect hole they open, no matter how many have been false leads. They are incorrigible optimists, the world's champion hopers. Unkempt, unhurried, dreaming, confiding, trustful, superstitious, they wander the length of the Rockies, seeking the materialization of their golden visions. They are seekers, far more concerned with finding gold than with digging it out. Like hunting dogs, their interest ceases with the capture of their quarry. They do not care whether the region they propose to search has been scientifically tested and thought to contain gold. They adhere to the miner's adage, "Gold is where you find it"; and they seem to have some occult power of divination for they have uncovered fabulous fortunes in regions which, like Cripple Creek, had been declared "barren of gold." Yet, as the old settlers say, "Prospectors never get anything out of their finds." Having struck it rich, they take to the trail again, to search endlessly, to probe ceaselessly, with patient faith, the inscrutable hills. In addition to their seemingly occult power of divining the location of earth's hidden treasure, these rugged old men of the mountains possess a mysterious means of learning news of gold strikes. Let a bonanza strike be made and every prospector in the region will be on his way to the new camp within a few hours. "How did you know that gold had been struck at Caribou?" I asked an old man whom I met on the trail, driving his pack burro ahead of him, hurrying considerably for a prospector. He looked at me, scratched his head, spanked the burro and started on. No doubt regretting his discourteous silence, he turned, "I knowed they was agoin' to," he told me. Nearly every prospector has a little pack burro, that seems to absorb all the patient philosophy of its master. To his shaggy burden-bearer, he gives his last flapjack, tells his golden dreams, confides the location of rich veins of ore, and turns for comfort when the false lead plays out. The knowing animal provides that rarest of companionship, a sympathetic, silent, attentive listener. Most of the prospectors I have met on the trails were old men, working alone, but two do sometimes cast their lot together, and become partners. The story I heard told once around a campfire, of two old prospectors who were always quarreling, is characteristic. Many times they separated, each to go his own way; sometimes they merely set up separate camps a few yards apart, refusing to speak or to take any notice of each other. Thus they bickered, fought and made up, close to forty years. They staked claims wherever they discovered promising outcrop. They were familiar with a hundred miles of ragged mountain ranges. After all those years, old and failing, they fell out over some trivial thing and separated for good. One traveled north, the other south. Both struck fine mineral that promised to make their dreams come true. But neither was content. Each wanted the other's companionship and yet each feared that pride would keep his poor partner from accepting his advances. They grew morose, and finally both blew up their holdings to conceal their riches and headed back along the Divide to meet, face to face, the partner they had deserted. Prospectors are philosophers, without hurry or worry. They meet each situation as it arises calmly, and let to-morrow take care of its own. When food and dynamite give out, they make a pilgrimage to the foothill towns and with alluring tales of leads, lodes and veins of hidden treasure soon to be revealed--just as soon as they have time to do a little more development work--they secure another grub stake and are on their way to high country again. They always find willing listeners, for the heart of many a less daring, conservative business man is in the hills. The listeners are easily inveigled into staking these old beggars, hypnotized and hypnotizing with dreams, and do it again and again, gambling on the next strike being a lucky one. The man who furnishes a grub stake shares half and half with the prospector he equips. No matter how little they have, prospectors will share with anyone who comes their way. Their hospitality is genuine, though perforce limited. They invite you first, and learn who you are and what your business may be later. One day I was picking my way down the bogs and marshes of Forest Cañon. All at once it narrowed, boxing up between high walls. To go on I had either to climb the walls or back-track for some distance. I elected to climb. After the struggle up the face of the rock I sat down to rest. "No one within miles," I panted as I sat down. "Don't look like there's ever been anyone here," I added as I recalled the way I had come. "What ya take me fur?" Ten feet away, standing motionless beside an old stump, stood a cadaverous fellow whose rags suggested the moss that hung from the trees. "Hungry?" he shot at me before I recovered from my surprise. "Camp's right hyar." He led the way with all the poise of a gentleman. But his camp! Beside an old tunnel that plunged beneath the side wall of the cañon was a lean-to. Upon green boughs were spread a single pair of ragged blankets. His campfire still smoldered. Upon its coals were his only culinary utensils, an old tin bucket, in which simmered his left-over coffee, and a gold pan containing a stew. The pan had seen better days--and worse ones, too, for one side of its rim was gone, and the bottom had been cleverly turned up to form a new one, making it semi-circular with a straight side. "Prospectin'?" my host ventured, eying me dreamily. "No, lookin'," I told him. "Humph." Then, "Hope you find it." But his curiosity ended there. "Say, if you're wantin' ter see sum'thin' good, looka that." He tossed over a piece of quartz. "Got er whole mountain uf it," he jerked his head toward the tunnel. He lowered his voice, glanced around, beckoned me to follow, and led the way inside his mine. At the edge of the darkness he halted, returned to the entrance and peered about. Then he leaned close that none might hear, and whispered the secret; the old, old secret no prospector ever keeps. Not that prospectors have anything to keep! Another time, in the rough region west of Ypsilon Mountain, I came upon a lean, wiry little old man leading a burro. He jerked at the lead rope in vain attempt to hurry the phlegmatic animal. "Com' on, durn ye," he squeaked as he tugged at the rope. "Don't ye know we're tracin' the float? Lead's right close now." But the burro was of little faith. He had lost his youthful enthusiasm. He carried all his master's possessions (except his golden dreams) on his back, but his pack was light. So engrossed was the old man that he passed within fifty yards of where I sat without seeing me. He was oblivious to everything but what might lie hidden on the mountainside. The float would lead to a bonanza strike, a mill would be built to handle the ore, a town would spring up--his town, named in his honor as the discoverer of the lead! He mumbled of these things as he worked. Sometimes he paused, looking abstractedly at the peaks above, without apparently seeing them at all. He babbled incoherently of leads, floats, lodes and veins. His actions were like those of a dog puzzling out the faint trail of a rabbit that had crossed and crisscrossed its own trail until nothing could track it down. Somewhere on the mountain above was the source of the float. The old man edged up the slope, tacking back and forth across the line of scattered quartz. He located the vein at last by trenching through a carpet of spruce needles. He set up camp and started digging, so I dropped down the cañon towards the Poudre River. But a week later, upon my return, he was still there. He had located his claim and staked his corner. His location notice, laboriously written with a blunt pencil, was fastened to a tree. The burro lay in philosophical contemplation in the grass beside the stream; while his master sat beside the shallow hole that perhaps marked the beginning of a mine. His pose was that of a sentinel. He watched the hole with an expectant air, as though from it something important would presently emerge, and he was waiting to pounce upon it. Years later when I passed that way again, the hole was no deeper, but the frayed remnants of the location notice flapped in the breeze. Only once in a quarter of a century have I seen a prospector hurry. It was while I was guiding a party of Eastern folks across the Rabbit Ear range that we met a gangling fellow named "Shorty," by way of contrast. I say he was hurrying, because he held a straight course across the mountains without paying heed to numberless diverting leads he ordinarily would have "sampled." Shorty was heading for Central City, where mining had been in full blast for forty years. He had no burro, he had cached his tools at the scene of his last camp. He had had a dream that revealed to him the location of a rich vein, right in the midst of miles of mines, but unsuspected and undiscovered. Every prospector has dreams by day as well as by night. My party "loaned" Shorty some grub and watched him disappear toward the Mecca of his dreams. Just before he left, Shorty confided to us that his dream vein lay just below a big bowlder and above some tall trees; that he knew the vein was right there--and it was. To my cabin one day, came Slide-Rock Pete, who dwelt in a realm of unreality. Pete was superstitious after the manner of his tribe. He knew all the luck signs, all the charms (good or bad), and he had conjured up counter-charms against ill omens. As he approached my cabin a visiting cat, a black one, crossed his path. Pete promptly turned around three times in the opposite direction to that in which the cat had gone and calmly entered, secure in his belief that he had broken pussy's dark spell. He was afflicted with rheumatism, which prevented him from prospecting. At length he figured out the cause of his trouble and a cure for it. It wasn't dampness, or rainy weather, he told me, but came from camping near mineral deposits. If he chanced to pitch his camp near mineral, especially iron, it caused his "rheumatics" to "come on." For protection he bought a compass with which we went over proposed camp sites. If the compass showed variation or disturbance, he abandoned the site. And once when the compass was out of order, he camped, unconsciously, at a spot where there was iron. Then as his rheumatism developed he found that his watch had stopped. Later when his aches at last left him, his watch started ticking of its own accord. His watch was so sympathetic that it couldn't bear to run when he couldn't walk! But when he felt good, it was so joyous it ran ahead to make up for lost time. Then he set it right by squinting at the sun! No matter what queer beliefs prospectors have they are never disgruntled. I had camped near the old Flattop trail at a spot where, sometime before, I had cached some food supplies. It was early in September. No wind reached the bottom of the cañon where I slept beside my fire. I awoke at the sound of a voice and sleepily I opened my eyes. No one would be traveling at night--surely I had been dreaming. But no--there was movement. "If I kin git the hole ten feet deeper before snow flies, I'll have something to show that ole skinflint at the lake." I sat up wondering. Then I remembered the voice. It was old Sutton, a prospector I had known for many years--one of the typical, plodding, babbling old fellows who live only in their dreams. My camp was in the shelter of small spruces while my visitor stood in the open. Playfully I picked up an empty tin can and tossed it into the air, that it might fall close beside him. At the fall of the can, the man spun around suddenly, and, walking over to it, prodded it with the stick he carried. "Gosh dern!" he exclaimed; "funny how things happen." He stood in silence, looking down at the can. Then I dropped another close to him. He muttered something unintelligible. The third and fourth cans made him hop around like a surprised robin beneath an apple tree, with fruit pelting the ground near it. At length he hobbled off, talking to himself about a new lead he had found, without solving the mystery of the tin cans dropping from a clear night sky. CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE CITY OF SILENCE For days I had been on the trail, or, rather, off it, for there were no trails in the high country through which I was traveling, excepting those made by game. I was hungry. The region lacked charm. It is difficult for a boy to appreciate scenery on a two-day-old empty stomach, which he has been urging up mountains and joggling down valleys. Had the bunnies been more accommodating and gone into their holes so I could snare them or smoke them out, or the grouse had been less flighty when I flushed them, and remained near enough so I could reach them with my stones, I might have stretched my food supply over the extended time of my unexpectedly prolonged travels. But no such good luck attended me on that excursion. The very first day I slipped off a foot-log while crossing a saucy little mountain brook and bruised my shin, tore my trousers and injured my camera. Like most small boys, I regretted that gratuitous bath. I began to wonder if Slide-Rock Pete was so crazy after all. Now the clouds were pinning themselves up to dry on the pointed summits of the peaks, and were already beginning to drip on the world below. Darkness threatened to set in early. I knew I ought to stop and make camp while it was still light enough to see, but I kept on going, hoping something might turn up. My empty stomach growled its disapproval, but I stubbornly ignored its protests. While my better judgment, my stomach and myself were all three arguing, I thought I glimpsed a building, far down on the slope below. Too excited to say "I told you so" to my companions, I quickened my steps and headed toward it. "A prospector! If he has any grub at all he'll share it, and I'll be protected from this downpour." By that time the celestial laundresses were emptying out their wash tubs and sloshing water all over the earth. When I drew near the shack, I discovered it was one of a group of straggling houses scattered along the sides and bottom of the gulch. A settlement! It was dark by then, yet not a light could I see. "Must go to bed with the chickens," I mused. "I hope they won't mind being gotten up to give a wayfarer shelter and a bite to eat." On my way down the slope, I passed two or three log cabins but these were silent, apparently empty, and I hastened on to the main group which faced on the single, grass-grown road that ran along the bottom of the gulch, intending to knock at the first which showed signs of life. I walked the length of the sprawling road, looking sharply at each house, listening for voices, a chance word or a peal of laughter. Not a sound greeted my ears except the thud of rain upon sod roofs, the drip of water through stunted, scraggly trees. Here was something queer; I thought of Slide-Rock Pete and his luck charms. I regretted more than ever that I had not got a single bunny. I felt the need of a rabbit's foot. Shaking myself to shed rain and forebodings, I crossed the street and knocked boldly upon the door of the nearest house. There was no response. Again I knocked, louder and more insistently. My raps came echoing back emptily. I knocked again. A door, creaking on rusty hinges, swung slowly inward, but no one peered out, inviting me to enter. I backed away from the yawning cavern, blacker than the starless night, into the open road. A little saw-whet owl, seeking, as I was, supper, swooped by on muffled wings, and sawed wood, saying nothing. I jeered back at him, and felt my courage rising. I stepped up resolutely to the next house and beat upon its door. There was instant commotion, a rattling of pans, the clink of dishes as though some one hurried to the door. Straightening up and facing the door expectantly, I smiled in anticipation of a hospitable welcome. Then the sounds ceased. My courage oozed away--an unreasonable fear crept over me. I lost my desire for food and rest--I would as soon have rested in a grave. Once more I stood in the rutted street, searching its brief length for a human form. I had the feeling that the inhabitants of the town were somewhere about, that they had just stepped out, leaving their doors unlocked against their early return. Perhaps there was a dance or a celebration of some sort in the neighboring village. Strange some one didn't stay behind. The sudden eerie notes of a coyote caused my hair to lift--why couldn't the brute respect the silence? The wind stirred uneasily, doors banged about me. The uncanny spell of the place overcame my last shred of courage--my feet started down the road of their own volition. I found myself breathing hard, running fast. I jerked to a standstill, laughing sheepishly at my fears--ashamed. Then I faced about, determined to stay. Something touched my elbows. I sprang ten feet and whirled, on the defensive. A dark, horned form stood before me. My muscles tensed for another sprint, I held my breath. The thing moved; I made out the outline of a burro. I breathed again, relieved. Here at last was something alive, something natural in this desert of silence. I wished the animal would bray, but he only nosed my pockets suggestively. I laid my hand upon him gratefully, and found he too was in sore straits, his coat as ragged as my own, his sides corrugated like a huge washboard. My spirits rose, my forebodings were forgotten. "Hello," I called joyfully. "What are you doing here?" Again he smelled my pockets, wagging his great ears the while, then waited expectantly. "Sorry, pal," I apologized. The little beggar's attitude expressed such dejection I laughed. "Never mind, old fellow. We'll go find something. There must be somebody here." I started out to renew my search and he followed at my heels. So, together, we wandered down the street on a tour of investigation. His coat was so black that often I could not distinguish him from the darker shadows that filled the street. At every door he crowded forward expectantly, focusing his long ears as though to catch the first longed-for salutation. Nearly every door was ajar. The log cabins were small, two or three rooms at the most, and easily searched. Their owners had apparently taken only their most portable and necessary possessions, for nearly every cabin contained something of value, bed springs, bunks, suspended by wire from the rafters, tables, chairs, dishes, cooking utensils, even miners' tools. One had a row of books upon its stone mantel. When we came to the one where sounds had answered my knocking, I paused before the door, hesitating to intrude. That first creepy feeling stole over me. I put my hand on the burro's neck. I jerked the latchstring and pushed open the door. The room was dark and silent. When I struck a match, there was a rapid scurrying of rats, darting for shelter. My burly bodyguard never once left my side. He waited patiently for my report, when I emerged from each cabin, and accepted with philosophical resignation my decision to postpone further search till daylight. Early next morning I was up and out, further to explore the village. No one had returned home, there was no doubt now that it was deserted. In one of the cabins I found some salt which I divided with the burro. Another yielded a little flour. I prepared a sticky mixture of flour and water, seasoned with salt, and cooked it in one of the fireplaces. When baked, it had the firmness of granite, but my appetite had a cutting edge, and the burro, no more particular, accepted the hardtack, and crunched it greedily. After breaking our fast, to say nothing of our teeth, we continued our--yes, excavations; for out of the dust and neglect of years of desertion, we dug the history of a buried past, of a forgotten civilization, where men had worked, women had loved and sacrificed, and little children had laughed and played. [Illustration: Out of the dust of years, we dug the history of a buried past.] One of the houses had evidently held the post office, for in it was a small cabinet holding a few pieces of uncalled-for mail addressed to various persons. There were unopened letters and papers, bearing the postmarks of towns back East; there were packages, showing marks of long journeys, still intact, their cords still tightly knotted. Many of the letters had been forwarded from other Western post offices, and had followed the men to whom they were addressed to this, then alive, town named Teller. The postmaster had apparently been a notary public. His book of records lay dusty on the shelf, near what had been the post office. Upon it, too, were filed copies of mining claims. "The Grizzly King," "Decoration Day," "Lady Forty," "Queen Victoria," "Tom Boy," "Last Chance," "Deep Water," "Black Mule," "Hope Ever," fantastic, picturesque names, suggesting many a tale of romance and adventure, revealing the hopes and fears of daring hearts. Something of these was hinted at in an open letter lying on the floor of one of the cabins. It was worn thin where it had been creased, as though its owner had long carried it around in his pocket, the better to read and reread it. The wind had pried into it, leaving it spread open for the next intruder's convenience. Somehow, I felt those frank spirits would not mind my reading it: Dear Fred: Hope you strike it rich in Teller, the new town you wrote about. Most anything out there would beat what we have here. Corn is all dried up in Iowa, and there's little to live on. Quite a lot of the neighbors have "pulled up stakes" and moved to Kansas. Ten wagons left last week, following the road west which so many have taken for better or worse. The last and smallest cabin in the town was as clean and tidy as though its owner might have been gone but a few days. Upon the table was a worn and frayed little book, weighted down by a rough piece of ore, a sort of diary, and yet it seemed to be written to some one. I copied extracts from it into my own notebook: My dear Katherine--I believe I've struck it rich at last. There was a rush up here three months ago, and I came in soon as the news reached Cheyenne. Must have been several hundred in the race to get here first--about twenty of us won out. I filed on several claims and tried to hire men to help me do assessment work; but no one would work for wages. Everyone is raving crazy, bound to strike it rich, and working double shift to hold as many claims as possible. Katy, dear, it's been a month since I started this letter. Things have settled down here now, and the fly-by-nights have vanished. But there's a few of us sticking to our holes with the notion if we go deep enough they'll pan out rich. But there's no way of... They came for me to help with a poor fellow who got hurt when his tunnel caved in on him. Guess he'll make a die of it too. Seems terrible, just when he thought he had struck a bonanza, to be killed that way. Makes me lonesome to think how things turned out for him. I've got a secret cache straight west of my cabin, forty-eight steps. Under a big rock I've hid a buckskin sack with the golddust another fellow and I panned from a bar in the Colorado river. It's not so very much; but it'll help out in a pinch. Kate, this camp's played out. I'm quitting, disgusted. After all the hard work here there's nothing rich; just low-grade stuff that won't pay freighting charges. Maybe if we had a mill--but there's no use talking mill, when every fellow here is in the same fix--on his last legs. We got to get out or starve; we're all living on deer and wild sheep, but its getting so we can hardly swallow it much longer. I'll let you know as soon... It was unfinished. The sides of the gulch were "gophered" with prospect holes, most of them very shallow, with little mounds of dirt beside them, like the graves of dead hopes. Occasionally a deeper hole had picked samples from the ore vein it followed piled near its opening. Likewise, outside, some of the cabin doors were little heaps of choice ore which hopeful owners had brought in against the time when shipments would be made, or an ore mill set up near by. I had chanced upon an abandoned mining town, left forever as casually as though its residents had gone to call upon a neighbor. There are many such in the mountains of Colorado. During the early gold rushes, when strikes were made, mining towns sprang up overnight, and later when leads played out or failed to pan out profitably, or rumor of a richer strike reached the inhabitants, they deserted them to try their luck in new fields of promise. Often they were eager to be the first ones in on the new finds and left without preparation or notice, trailing across mountains and through cañons, afoot, each anxious to be the first man on the ground, to have his choice of location, to stake his claim first. They could not carry all their household goods on their shoulders, nor pack them on a burro's back, and to freight them over a hundred miles of mountain trails cost more than the purchase of new goods in the new town. So they departed with only such necessities as they could carry, and abandoned the rest to pack rats and chance wanderers such as I. So these towns, born of their high hopes, died, as their dreams flickered out, and were abandoned when new hopes sprung up in their breasts. I forgot my hunger in unraveling the mysteries of the silent village, but my companion showed no such inclination. Being a pack burro, and having a prospector for a master, he had come to look upon tragedy with a philosophical eye. No doubt he had seen deserted towns before, and been the innocent victim of the desertion. He grew bored as I lingered over letters and the other evidence of bygone days and nudged me frequently to remind me of our original object in searching the cabins. At last he protested with a vigorous, "Aww-hee-awwhee, a-w-w-h-e-e--" Remembering his loyalty of the night before, to appease him I left off rummaging in those dust-covered cabins. "All right, pal, I'll come. We'll leave this grave-yard right away and try our luck at fishing." He seemed to understand for he capered about like a playful puppy. I knew of several small streams below the town, alive with trout. I headed for the nearest one, the burro plodding patiently behind, silent, expectant. The smell of smoke, coffee, and other camp odors came up the trail to meet us. Soon we came abruptly in sight of two prospectors who were eating a belated breakfast. "Reckon you better have a bite with us," invited one of the men as he set the tin-can coffee pot upon the coals of their fire. "Thet thar burro bin a pesterin' you?" asked the second man, fixing the burro with a searching gaze. "Oh, no!" I denied, remembering my debt to the animal. "We put in the night together, and he even ate some of my hardtack this morning," I ended laughing. "He's the tarnationist critter, always a galavantin' roun', an' a gittin' inter somebody's grub." The burro chose to overlook these insults and drew near the fire, unostentatiously. The old prospector slipped him part of his breakfast. "Which way you headin'?" asked the first man, plainly puzzled because I carried neither gun nor mining tools. "To climb Arapahoe peak." "Climb the peak," he repeated, much mystified. "What's the idear?" the second wanted to know. "Goin' way off thar jes' to git up a mountain, when thar's plenty right hyar, higher ones too?" He indicated the ranges to the east. "Any place up that way to get out of the rain?" I asked, for the clouds were dropping again with the threat of gathering storm. The men exchanged glances. Abruptly the small one got to his feet and led the burro out of sight among the willows. The other man faced me. "Better take a friend's advice and keep outen there," he swept a grimy hand westward. "What's up?" "Better do your climbin' round hyar," he replied suggestively. "But I want to climb Arapahoe; I have heard the Indians used it for a signal mountain and..." He beckoned me to follow, and led the way into the grove mysteriously. At length he stopped, peered about uneasily, then whispered. "There's an ole cabin up yonder"--he faced toward Arapahoe--"that's ha'nted." "Haunted?" my interest quickening, my fears of the depressing night forgotten. He nodded--dead earnest. "Are you sure about that? Did you ever see the, the----" His look silenced me. "Ole feller died up thar," he declared; "nobody knows how." His tone was awesome. I made a move down the trail, thanking him for the meal. "Wouldn't go, if I wus you," he persisted, following me as far as his camp. Then, as I took the unused trail that led down toward North Park, he called after me: "Remember, I've warned you!" Fishing was good in the stream a few miles below their camp, and I soon had all the trout I wanted and was on my way to the round dome of Arapahoe peak, jutting above some clouds that were banked against its lower slope. Through the willow flats and a dense forest of spruce, the way led up between parallel ridges over a game trail, deeply worn and recently used. I was right upon a log wall before I knew it. Then I circled and saw that the wall was part of an old cabin built in a little opening of the forest. A section of the roof had fallen in and the fireplace had lost part of its chimney; the slab door had a broken hinge, and swayed uneasily on the one remaining, and the dirt floor bore no traces of recent habitation. Having gathered wood for the night, for I had no blankets and must keep the fire burning, I broiled several trout for my supper. How I relished that meal! Supper over, I climbed upon a cliff behind the cabin and watched the moon rise silently above a ridge to the eastward, and listened to the faint clamor of the coyotes far below. Shadows crept closer to the cliffs as the moon climbed higher, while from the peaks above came the moaning of the wind. Never had been such a night! It was late when I went inside the old cabin, and the fire had burned low. I put on fresh wood, removed my shoes, and stretched out before the comforting blaze. I was asleep almost instantly. From time to time, as had become my habit, I roused enough to feed the fire; then quickly dropped off to sleep again. Just when, I am not sure, but I think about midnight, I awoke with a strange feeling that an unseen presence was in the room. The prospector's warning came to me vaguely, and I tried to rouse up to listen, but I dropped back to sleep almost immediately. Later, coming awake suddenly as though some one had shaken me, I sat up and, rubbing my eyes to open them, glanced around, but the interior of the cabin was dark, only the stars sparkled close above the broken roof. I yawned expansively, rolled nearer the low fire, and fell asleep. The next I knew I heard a thud close to my head, and I was wide awake upon the instant. I lay still, trying to convince myself that there was nothing in the cabin but myself; when a hot breath struck my face. I got up on end--so did my hair. I started for the door. A bulky shadow moved between it and myself. I postponed going in that direction for the moment and, turning, felt my way to a dark corner back by the fireplace. From the corner across the hearth came a faint sound. Thinking the time propitious for a prompt exit, I felt my way along the wall, turned the corner and made for the door. Unfortunately, my uninvited guest had the same thought, for as I sprang for the opening, I bumped into him, and the creaky slab door banged shut, leaving the cabin blacker than ever. An idea shot through my head. If the visitor, whatever it was--ha'nt or otherwise--wanted the location near the door, it could have it. Far be it from me to be discourteous. I groped my way back to the fireplace, stumbling over my wood as I went. I had a fleeting notion to fling fresh wood on the fire which had almost burned out. Again I collided with my dusky visitor. I hesitated no longer. I would vacate the cabin instantly, for good and all, without stopping to gather up my few belongings. Across the dirt floor I dashed, grabbed the creaky door and jerked it open. But before I could dart through I was shoved aside. In panic I sought that exit, but was buffeted about, and finally knocked headlong on the ground. Thoroughly scared, I leaped to my feet, ready to run. Standing a few feet in front of me, big ears thrust forward inquiringly, was the friendly burro of the night before. CHAPTER FOURTEEN BEARS AND BUGBEARS In my childish estimation, bear stories rivaled the tales of mad gold rushes, thundering bisons and savage Indians. No chore was so hard nor so long but that I managed to complete it in time to take my place in the fireside circle and listen to accounts of those huge animals that lived in the Rocky Mountains and were fiercer than any other bears in the world. "Ursus horribilis," my father called them, and a delicious little shudder would run down my back at the sound of the words. There was talk, too, of hunters who had tracked these monsters to their lairs and overcome them. Early I decided that when I went West, I would become, besides other things, a mighty bear hunter. The cows I drove to pasture were "ursus horribilis" (how I reveled in those words!) fleeing before me, and I was stalking them through the wilds with rifle upon my arm, and pistol and hunting knife in my belt! I planned to discard the ragged overalls and clumsy "clodhoppers" of the farm, as soon as I reached the mountains, for smoke-tanned, Indian-made buckskin suit and moccasins, all beaded and fringed. I wondered if the Indians wore coonskin caps like Davy Crockett--I felt it absolutely necessary that I should have one to wear to meet my first bear. My first venture into the woods below the Parson's ranch I remember vividly, because I was filled with eager, yet fearful anticipation. I expected to meet a grizzly around every bowlder. I kept wondering how fast a bear could run; I halted frequently beside trees, for I remembered my father's saying grizzlies did not climb, so I planned to shin up the tallest tree in the woods should one come in sight. In my dreams back on the farm, my only fear had been lest all the grizzlies be killed before I reached the Rockies; barring such dire calamity, I had never had a doubt of my prowess. But somehow, when at last I found myself alone in the dark forest, it seemed the better part of valor to postpone the actual encounters until I should become more skillful with my old black-powder rifle. So obsessed was I by the thought of bears that on my first excursions into the wilds, a rock never rolled down a slope nor dropped from a cliff, a crash sounded in a thicket, but that I was sure a bear was mysteriously responsible. I dreamed of them, day and night, until they became bugbears, grizzly bugbears! Considering my long-avowed intentions, my first camp alone in the Wild Basin country was not entirely unfortunate, for there, that first exciting afternoon, I met a bear face to face. Of course, I gave him the right of way. Was I not the intruder and he the rightful resident? Though years have elapsed since I dropped my rifle and sped in instant flight down the mountain side toward camp, I still like to think that my marvelous speed discouraged "ursus horribilis" and, therefore, he turned tail. During my first summer in the mountains, I saw bears several times, in each instance going about their business and making no move to attack me. After these glimpses of them I gathered courage and decided to postpone my career as a hunter no longer. Bears were the objectives of my hunting expeditions, but they always succeeded in eluding me. Many times in stalking them I came upon fresh tracks showing they had broken into flight at my approach. One day I turned homeward, empty-handed, and learned later I had been within gunshot of one without catching sight of him. Gradually my respect for them grew. The one I had watched stalk the marmot increased my admiration of their cunning. I eventually learned that they are extremely alert and agile, despite their seemingly stupid lumbering about, that they employ keen eyes and sensitive ears and high-power noses to the best advantage. As my respect for them grew, my ambition to become a mighty hunter of them gave way to a desire to learn more about them, to observe them in their natural state and study their habits. Just as they had inspired the most heroic dreams of my childhood, so they came to interest me more than any other animal of the wilds. To the south of the Parson's ranch lay a wild, rugged region, which I called the "bad lands" on account of its jungle of woods, streams, swamps and terminal moraines, where bowlders of all sizes had been deposited by an ancient glacier. Through this tangle it was impossible to move without making noise, for a fire had swept over it and young lodge-pole trees had sprung up so close together that it was impossible to move without crashing into them. It was while on hands and knees in one of these thickets of new growth that I came upon bear tracks. The tracks were the largest I had even seen, so I gripped my gun tightly and peered about warily. The tracks pointed west, so I headed east, crashing through the trees ponderously, giving an occasional yell to help the bear keep out of my way. I had gone about a hundred yards and was congratulating myself on my escape, when, to my horror, I discovered fresh tracks paralleling mine. Altering my course I went on, shouting vigorously, but with less confidence of scaring the bear out of the region. In this extremity I recalled a bit of advice the Parson had given me. "Don't ever let on you're afraid," he cautioned me one day, "because if you do the animal may turn on you." With this in mind I faced about, took up the bear's trail, and with ready rifle, followed it. I kept looking behind me, to the right and to the left. The wind was blowing snow off the high peaks above and it made the tracks easily followed, for it kept them fresh. They turned aside, angled off, tacked and came back close to their first line. Around and around I trailed. A dozen times I stopped with my heart in my mouth, the rifle at my shoulder, but my alarm was occasioned by some other denizen of the wilds. Twice deer crashed away and left me rooted fast; and once, a cock grouse took the air from a rock just above my head, and nearly precipitated a stampede. Finally I gave up the chase and started home, still watching warily for the bear. Better to guard against attack I climbed a little ridge that overlooked the irregular openings through which I had been trailing; and up there, paralleling my course, were bear tracks. Bruin had been craftily looking me over from his higher position. I at once advised that bear, by every means at my command, that he was no longer being hunted, and I made tracks for home as fast as my legs would let me, watching warily, or bearily, in all directions. The Parson laughed heartily when I told of my experience that night as together with Aunt Jane we sat before the glowing fire of his hearth. Despite Aunt Jane's gentle excuses for me, I felt ashamed and determined to return next day and take up the bear's trail. Running away from an unseen bear was ludicrous, not to say cowardly. But I comforted myself with the assurance that even the Parson might have no other chance to run, if the bear saw him first! The "bad lands" became the scene of many a hide-and-seek game, with the animals slipping silently away as I blundered along behind, puzzling out their trails, and imagining I was stalking them unawares. My many failures, while discouraging, were fruitful of experience, for I learned to hunt up-wind, thus discounting the high-power noses of the bears and muffling to some extent my clumsy movements from the deer. Repeated trips into that rough region informed me that one or two bears lived there, and that though they often left it to explore some other region, they eventually returned to their own home range. In tracing their movements I kept a sort of big-game Bertillon record; only instead of taking finger-prints, as is done with criminals, I measured footprints sketching them in my notebook, noting any slight peculiarity that would distinguish one track from another, and thus made positive identification possible. I was compelled to get my information concerning the bears' movements mostly from their tracks, for they were far too crafty to be seen "in person"! They evidently moved on the assumption that vigilance was the price of life. They used their wits as well as their keen senses, seemed to reason as well as to have instinct. Moreover they made use of other animals for their own defense. They were ever alertly watching the significant movements of their neighbors, for signals of dangers beyond the range of their own senses. The quiet retreat of a fox or coyote apprised them of something unusual in the wind; the sudden up-winging of magpies and jays warned them of the approach of an enemy. They distinguished between the casual flight of birds and their flying when bound toward a kill of mountain lion or other beasts of prey. They were tuned-in on every animal broadcasting station on their range. I learned that contrary to the lurid tales of the early explorers and hunters, they were peace-loving, deeming it no disgrace to run away from danger and leaving the vicinity as soon as man appeared in it. True, their curiosity sometimes tempted them to circle back and watch a man from some secure retreat, and at such times they slipped as silently from one thicket to another as a fox, sampling the air for tell-tale odors, standing erect to watch and listen. Bit by bit, as I learned more about them, I came to revise my early, gory opinion of them. My impression had been formed chiefly from tales of Lewis and Clark's expedition; when they made their memorable trip across the continent, grizzlies were not afraid of men because the arrows of the Indians were ineffective against them. Whenever food attracted them to an Indian camp they moseyed fearlessly among the tepees, helping themselves to it and scattering the redskins. Their attempts thus to raid white men's camps gave rise to blood-curdling stories of their savagery, and their fearless, deadly attacks on men. These tales, while pure fiction, led to the belief that all bears were bad and should be killed, at every opportunity; and ever since Lewis and Clark saw the first one, men with dogs and guns, traps and poison have been on their trail. While I do not believe bears guilty of the many offenses charged them, I am sure that they had been the "life of the party" at many a camp, having been led out of their retirement by their small-boy curiosity. In the region where first I followed a bear, or where it followed me, there ranged two of these animals, each recording a different track and displaying individual traits which I came to recognize. The smaller track had short claws that left their prints in the sand or soft places. In following this track I found that the maker was inclined to be indolent; that if the digging after a chipmunk was hard he left the job unfinished and sought easier sources of food. Thus the black bear that frequented the "bad lands" loafed across his range, living by the easiest means possible and rarely exerting himself. Twice when Blackie's trail crossed that of other black bears, the tracks showed that all stopped to play, romping much as children romp and showing a sociable disposition. It was usually late in November before the black bear denned up for the winter, commonly adapting the shelter beneath some windfall to make a winter home by enlarging and improving it and perhaps by raking in some dead pine needles. At the approach of fall Blackie left off distant wanderings, conserved energy by little exertion, and thus waxed fat. In the thickest of the rough jumble I found two of his deserted winter dens to which he never returned, and once in midwinter I found him out, asleep beneath some brush over which the snow had drifted. It was the thread of rising steam from a tiny hole above the den that first attracted my attention to it, but my nose gave me additional information. Blackie's tracks showed he had unusually large feet for his pounds, so I called him "Bigfoot." There was a marked difference between Blackie's and the other tracks I found in the "bad-lands." The other tracks were those of a grizzly, a fact I determined after collecting evidence for several years, and by sight of the animals themselves. There was a wide difference, too, in the actions of these animals whenever anything unusual happened. Blackie, commonly, ran away without waiting to learn what had caused the alarm. The grizzly displayed extreme caution, usually standing erect on his hind feet, remaining motionless, watching for silent signals of other animals and the birds, swinging his head slowly from side to side, training his high-power nose in all directions, cocking his ears alertly as a coyote. When he located the enemy he slipped away noiselessly, followed a trail with which he was familiar and left the vicinity, perhaps traveling ten or twenty miles before stopping. Unlike Blackie, too, the grizzly was a prodigious worker. No job was too big for him. Often he spent an hour or more in digging out a tiny titbit such as a chipmunk, and several times in his pursuit of a marmot he excavated in rockslides holes large enough for small basements. Daily he traveled many miles, foraging for food as he moved, sometimes eating swarms of grasshoppers, or stowing away bushels of grass or other greenery, or uprooting the ground for dogtooth violets of which he was very fond. Such spots, when he had finished his rooting, resembled a field which the hogs had plowed up. In one respect the black bear and the grizzly were alike: they never seemed to have enough to eat, but had the insatiable appetites of growing boys; never showing any signs of being finicky, but devouring everything edible. Ants, hoppers, chipmunks, marmots and rabbits, comprised their fresh meat; while roots, shoots, bulbs, grass, berries and practically everything growing served for vegetables. They both were inordinately fond of honey. Early one fall the grizzly left his home range and headed for the foothills. More than twenty miles away he found a bee tree, an old hollow cedar which he tore open. He devoured both bees and honey, then went lumbering home. Mountain lions made frequent kills about the region, leaving the carcasses of deer, cattle, horses and burros, which the bears located with their noses or by the flight of birds, and gorged themselves; afterward lying down in some retreat and sleeping long, peaceful hours. It was because of their scavenger habits that they came to be blamed for killing the animals upon which they fed. But not once did I find evidence that they had killed anything larger than a marmot. The grizzly was always working industriously, from dawn to dark, or at night; while Blackie dallied, even though making a "bear living." He preferred to go empty rather than to work for food. Three winters in succession the grizzly climbed to a den in an exposed spot on the northern slope of Mount Meeker. It was a low opening beneath a rock, the entrance to which was partially stopped with loose rubble, raked from inside the cave, and every fall he renovated it by chinking the larger cracks and by pawing together loose bits of rock for a bed. As fall approached, his tracks led to it; apparently he napped inside occasionally to try it out. His ultimate retirement for winter hibernation depended upon the weather and the food supply; if the fall were late, with plenty of food, he would still be about the woods as late as December, while one fall when snow came early and deep, and so made food unavailable, he disappeared at the end of October. The grizzly had many individual traits. Not once in the years I followed him, did he show any desire for others of his kind. He preferred being alone. His play consisted chiefly of elaborate stalkings of easily captured animals. If his hunger was appeased for a time he would turn to hunting grasshoppers. Marking the spot where one had alighted he would steal forward and pounce upon it as though it were an animal of size and fighting ability. Again he would take great pains to waylay a chipmunk, lying motionless while the unwary little spermophile ventured closer and closer, then, with a lightning-like slap of a huge paw, he would reduce his victim to the general shape and thinness of a pancake. Though the grizzly was somewhat awkward in appearance he could move with amazing speed, and his strength was incredible. From glimpses I had of him I estimated his weight at six hundred pounds, but he could move the carcass of a cow or horse twice that heavy. Once on Cabin Creek, not many miles from his accustomed haunts, a lion killed a horse. As he approached the kill, the grizzly circled warily around it, stood erect to sniff and listen, and growled warningly, informing all would-be intruders that it was his. When he had eaten his fill, he dragged the carcass nearly a hundred yards uphill over fallen timber, into a thicket, where he covered it against the prying eyes of birds, thinking, I presume, that they would signal other animals of its location. The date of his emergence from his den in the spring, like his holing up in the fall, depended upon the weather. Commonly though, he hibernated about one-third of the year. When he came out after his long sleep he was very thin, the great layers of fat he had taken care to put on before denning up were gone. One year I followed his tracks the day he came out to learn what he first ate, and was surprised to find that he scarcely ate at all. Instead of being ravenous, as I had supposed he would be, he seemed to have no appetite, and barely tasted a green shoot or two, and a little grass. His claws had grown out over winter and the tough soles of his feet soon shed off so that, though born to the wilds, he became a tenderfoot. Upon two occasions I found the tracks of this "bad lands" grizzly far from home; once he was at the edge of a snowbank near Arapahoe glacier, where he had gone for a frozen grasshopper feast; and another time, some years later, beyond Ypsilon Mountain, in an old sheep trail that led toward the headwaters of the Poudre River. He was more than thirty miles from home and still going. Experience with men has made the few surviving grizzlies of the Rockies crafty, and they are instinctively wary. Their habits have been much the same wherever I have had opportunity of observing them. Their extreme caution would perhaps lead one to believe them cowards, but nothing is farther from the truth, for they are fighters of first rank, and show unrivaled courage as well as lightning-like speed and prodigious strength in combat. A fighting grizzly is a deadly antagonist, never giving up, determined to win or die. When a grizzly turns killer, as occasionally one of them does, you may depend upon it, there are extenuating circumstances, and any fair-minded jury would exonerate him of blame. When his home range becomes settled up and the sources of his natural food are destroyed, he is forced to seek new haunts and to eat such food as his new location affords. It is not strange that, constricted in his range by ranchers and cattlemen, with no opportunity to seek food according to his instinctive habits, he sometimes turns cattle killer. His action brands him at once as a bad bear, a killer and his infamy quickly spreads the length of the mountains. He is blamed for the kills of mountain lions, and the death of stock killed by chance. He is hunted, becomes a fugitive from justice, and is kept so continuously on the move that he has to prey on cattle because he is not given time to forage in his former manner. Persecution sharpens his faculties; he eludes his pursuers and their dogs, poisoned bait and traps, with a shrewdness that puts their so-called intelligence to shame. It was my rare privilege one day to witness the chase of an accused "killer" by a dog pack. I was near timberline in the Rabbit Ear mountains when first I heard their distant baying and caught sight of them far down a narrow valley, mere moving specks. Close behind these small dots were larger ones, men on horseback. A mile ahead of the pack a lone object galloped into an opening and, as I focused my glasses, stood erect, listening. It was a grizzly. He paused but a moment, then tacked up the side of the mountain, crossed the ridge, dropped into a parallel valley, and doubled back the way he had come. Occasionally I caught a glimpse of him as he ambled along, seemingly without haste, yet covering the ground at surprising speed. Abruptly he left this second valley and recrossed the ridge to the first, taking up the trail he had been on when the pack disturbed him. The riders were still upon the ridge when the dogs recrossed it and started baying up the first valley. When the fresh scent led them back over the grizzly's first trail, they hesitated, confused, disagreeing among themselves as to the course to follow: and while the dogs delayed, the bear abandoned the lower ridges and timbered valleys and headed toward the cliffs. Here the going was slow. Sometimes he followed old, deep-worn game trails, but more often he chose his own way. He climbed up the face of a cliff, following narrow ledges. At the top, he turned and angled back, arriving at the base of the wall again, but some distance from the place where he had climbed up, and where he crossed his own trail, he swung back and forth repeatedly. Half an hour later, the pack came howling to the cliff, and began seeking a way up. They scattered, swung back and forth along the ledges, crossed and recrossed the grizzly's tracks, but seemed unable to follow the way he had gone, before they finally circled the cliff and picked up his trail again. The bear's ruse had succeeded, by it he gained several minutes' lead on his pursuers. The grizzly emerged above timberline near where I sat and galloped straight for a pass that overlooked the deep cañons, dark forests and rocky ridges on the other side of the range. Just before he gained it, three of the dogs broke cover and gave tongue, wildly excited at the sight of their quarry, and instantly hot on his trail. The bear coolly kept his same gait, until just short of the pass, at the top of a steep, smooth incline between two huge rock slabs, he halted and faced about, waiting for them to come up. When the dogs, panting and spent from running, dashed up, he had got his wind and was ready for them. The three dogs rushed pell-mell up the steep rock. With a deafening roar, the grizzly struck out right and left. Two of the dogs ceased howling and lay where they fell, the third turned tail and fled. The bear, stepping over the dead bodies of his vanquished foes, leisurely proceeded through the pass and down into the wild country beyond. I have watched other grizzlies under similar conditions, and they have all shown the same shrewd, cool, craftiness. They appear to reason, to plan; their actions indicate forethought, premeditation. They seem to have not only the marvelous instinct of the animal world, but also an almost human power to think. They conserve their energy, bide their time, choose their position and, in short, set the stage to their own advantage. They have an instinct for the psychological moment--it seems at times that they evolve it out of the chaos of chance. The Parson said, "You never can tell what a bear will do," and I, for one, believe him. The oddest performance of an individual bear I ever saw took place over on the banks of the Poudre River. Rambling through the forest I came, late one evening, upon the camp of two trappers. They were making a business of trapping and had extensive trap-lines set throughout the region, mostly for beavers, minks, bobcats and coyotes, but some for bears too. In a narrow, dry gulch, one of them had found fresh bear tracks--he thought of a medium-sized black bear--leading up to the scattered, bleached bones of a cow. Tracks about the skull indicated that the bear had rolled it about, much as a puppy worries a bone. One day the trapper found the skull hidden in some juniper bushes, and reasoned that the bear returned from day to day, played with it, then hid it away. So he returned to camp, got a trap and set it by the beast's toy. I was eager to learn the outcome of this action, so I gratefully accepted the trappers' invitation to stay over with them. Next day, I went along when they visited the trap. To our astonishment, the skull was gone and the trap still set. It was easy to trace the culprit for his tracks revealed that his left front foot was badly twisted, its track pointing in, almost at right angles, to the tracks of the other three feet, with the clawmarks almost touching the track of the right front foot. We followed his trail till we came to a sandy stretch upon which that bear had held high carnival. He had rolled the skull about, punted it with his good right paw, and leaped upon it, in mimic attack, as though it were a fat marmot. Then, playtime over, he had carried it a considerable distance and cached it beneath some logs. The trapper returned to camp for another trap, and set it and the first near the skull, concealing the traps cleverly in depressions scooped out in the sand, and covering their gaping, toothed jaws with loose, pine needles. Then he scattered a few pine cones about, and placed dead tree limbs near the traps in such a way that in stepping over them the bear would be liable to step squarely upon the concealed pan of one of them. Three times the bear rescued the precious cow skull, each time avoiding the traps. At last in desperation, the trapper took two more traps to the gulch and vowed that he'd pull up stakes and leave the bear alone if he did not get him with the set he purposed making. With boyish interest, I accompanied him to the gulch, carrying one of the traps for him. We left the traps a short distance from where the bear had concealed the old skull, while the trapper looked the ground over and decided to set the traps where the skull was hidden, for the spot was ideal for the purpose. On two sides logs formed a barrier and beyond them was a huge bowlder, the two forming a natural little cove. He expected the bear to approach his plaything from the unobstructed side. The trapper had further plans. Close beside the logs grew a stunted pine tree with wide-spreading limbs near the ground. In its crotch he placed the cow's skull, higher than the bear could reach, and fastened it there with wire. Then, after setting the traps in a semi-circle around the tree, just below the skull, and concealing them carefully, we returned to camp, jubilantly confident of catching Mr. Bruin. Three times we visited the set and found things undisturbed. We decided the bear had forsworn his toy and run away. However, I lingered at the camp in hope that the matter would yet come to a decisive end. Some days later, when we visited the gulch again, we came upon a surprise. From a distance we missed the skull from the tree. So we hastened forward, keeping a sharp eye out for the bear which we felt certain was in a trap and lying low. At the set we stopped short. The two traps nearest the open space had been carefully dug up and turned over, and lay "butter side down." The bear had climbed into the tree, wrenched his plaything free, and dropped it to the ground. Tracks in the sand showed that after climbing down he had cautiously placed his feet in the same tracks he had made when he advanced toward the tree. He had carried the skull a hundred yards from the traps and hidden it again; but there were no signs that he had stopped to play with it. The trapper was as good as his word; and after recovering from his astonishment, he sprung the traps, and we carried them back to camp. "Some smart, that ole twisted-foot bear," the trapper told his partner. "He's smart enough to live a hundred years--an' I'm willin' to let him." No campfire is complete without bear stories, and it was around one that I heard the funniest bear story imaginable. A lone trapper was caught one day in a trap of his own making, a ponderous wooden coop calculated to catch the bear alive by dropping a heavy log door in place at the open end. This door was on a trigger which a bear, in attempting to steal the bait, would spring. As this tale was told, the trapper had just completed his trap and was adjusting the trigger, when the heavy door crashed down, pinning him across the threshold, with his legs outside. The door caught on a section of log in the doorway, and saved him from broken legs, but he was a helpless prisoner. In struggling to free himself, he kicked over a can of honey he had brought along for bait, and the sticky fluid oozed over his thrashing legs. Four hours he lay, imprisoned, shouting at intervals, with the hope that some wandering prospector or trapper might hear him. Instead a bear came his way, tempted by the scent of the much-loved honey. The bear loitered near by some time, no doubt wary of the presence of man, but at last his appetite overcame his caution, and he started licking up the honey. Almost frantic with fear, dreading the gash of tearing teeth, the man lay quiet, while the animal licked the smears off his trembling legs. Fortunately for the trapper, the bear was not out for meat that day; so, after cleaning up the sweet, he went his way. The relieved and unharmed man was rescued shortly afterward. The only serious injury I have suffered from a wild animal was inflicted inside the city limits of Denver, Colorado's largest city and capital. The beginning of this story dated back to the time when I discovered that another grizzly had intruded into the "bad lands" of my bears. The first announcement of the strange bear's arrival was its tracks, together with those of two tiny cubs. This was in May, while yet the snowbanks lingered in that high country. Across the miles of fallen timber I lugged a steel bear trap and set it in a likely spot beside the frozen carcass of a deer. Afterwards I inspected it every day, though, to do so, I had to cross boggy, rough country, fretted over with fallen logs. I always found plenty of bear tracks--it was typical bear country--and there were many signs of their activities: old logs torn apart, ant hills disturbed, and lush grass trampled. The first week in June, I made a surprising catch--three grizzly bears and a fox. A mother grizzly had stepped into my trap, and her two cubs, of about fifteen pounds each, had lingered near by, until, growing hungry, they had ventured to their mother, and one had been caught in a coyote trap set to protect the bait. The fox had been caught before the bear's arrival. Mrs. Grizzly, frantic over her predicament, had demolished everything within her reach, tearing the red fox from its trap, literally shredding it, apparently feeling it was to blame for her misfortune. Her struggles soon exhausted her, for it was a warm day, and when I discovered her she was about spent, and easily dispatched. The cubs, very small, helpless and forlorn, howled lustily for their mother. I decided to tie their feet together, and their mouths shut. With ready cord, I dived headlong upon a cub, caught him by the scruff of the neck, lifted him triumphantly--then dropped him unceremoniously, the end of a finger badly bitten. I was compelled to return to my cabin for a sack, because the amount of tying required to render the cubs really harmless seemed likely to choke them to death before I got them home. It required about an hour's lively tussle to get the two young grizzlies stowed safely in the sack. But I learned that having them sacked was no guarantee of getting them home. If "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," a bear at home, chained up, is worth the whole Rockies' full in the woods. The old grizzly's hide, paws included, must have weighed fifty pounds; the cubs, sacked, thirty--a total load of 80 pounds to carry out over rocks and fallen trees, through bog and willows. With this load on my back, I struggled to my feet and started, picking my way slowly, circling logs and avoiding soft spots. The first half mile was the best, after that things thickened up, the bog deepened, the bears wanted to get out and walk. Where the stream emerges from between a wide moraine and Meeker Mountain, it is not broad, nor very deep, but it is exceedingly cold and swift, and the only crossing was a beaver-felled aspen, which lay top-foremost toward me, presenting an array of limbs that served as banisters. About midway over the limbs gave out, leaving the smooth aspen trunk as a foot-log. Many times I had crossed this without mishap, so I had no qualms about tackling it now. Deliberately I edged along, stepping slowly, carefully, progressing nicely until about midway. Just then one of the cubs sank his teeth into my back. I jerked away, twisted, tottered, half regained my balance, then pitched headlong into the icy water of the beaver pond beneath. For a moment there was a grand mêlée. The cubs did not like the ice water any more than I. They squirmed and clawed, fought free of the sack, and lightened my load considerably. I spent a busy hour catching and sacking them again. It required six hours to transport those cubs four miles! And I'm sure they were as thankful as their ferry when the trip ended at my cabin. From the first week in June until the middle of December, they grew from fifteen pounds to forty each. Although they were interesting pets, their keep became a problem. Such appetites! They could never get enough. They weren't finicky about the quality of their food; but oh, the quantity! Then, too, I couldn't leave them and go on long trips. So I decided to part with them. The City of Denver sent a representative to see me, for they wanted some grizzlies to show eastern tourists. It was with the feeling that I was betraying the cubs, however, that I finally took them to Denver. They were so obedient and well-behaved that I hesitated to deliver them into unknown hands. They knew their names, Johnny and Jenny, as well as children knew theirs. At command they would stand erect, walk about on their hind feet, whining eagerly for some treat, looking for all the world like funny, little old men. At the Denver City Zoo we were welcomed by the keeper, Mr. Hill, who courteously invited me to spend the day with him, and entertained me by taking me into many of the cages, permitting me to feed some of the animals, and telling me interesting tales of happenings at the Zoo. When we returned to the large inclosure surrounding the cage of the larger and fiercer animals, Mr. Hill asked me to assist in transfering a brown bear and a black bear to the cage where my pets were to be housed. These other bears were over a year old and more than double the size of Johnny and Jenny. The brown bear went willingly enough into the new cage, and we expected the black bear to follow, but when he reached the cage door, he stopped. Gently we urged him forward, but his mind was made up--he had gone as far as he intended and was homesick for his old cage. The keeper was tactful, and unobtrusively tried to maneuver the bear into the cage without exciting his obstinacy further, but he wouldn't yield. At last it came to a show down. We had the option of forcing the bear into the cage, or letting him go back. "You go inside and snub the rope around the bars," the keeper directed me. "I'll boost from behind--we'll show him a trick or two." A crowd had collected outside the heavy iron fence. Suggestions were abundant. No young man ever had so much advice in so short a time. However, we were too busily engaged to profit by what we were told. The keeper boosted the bear--and I took up the slack in the rope; but still the bear balked, though three times we double-teamed against him. Then, suddenly, he let go all holds and lunged through the doorway, charging headlong upon me and sank his teeth into my left knee. The bite and the force of his unexpected charge knocked me backward into the corner. Instantly the bear was on top of me, growling, biting and striking. With my uninjured leg I kicked out savagely and thrust him away, sliding him back across the slippery concrete. Again he charged, and once more I kicked him off. Outside the iron fence women were screaming and men trying futilely to enter, but the fence was ten feet high and the sharp iron points of its pickets were discouraging--and the gateway was locked against intruders. At this juncture the keeper rushed to another cage where he kept an iron bar for just such emergencies, but the bar was away from home that day. At this crisis, Johnny and Jenny arrived, Jenny collided with the bars of the cage and staggered back, dazed. But Johnny found the open cage door, and charged the black bear ferociously. The black bear outweighed my little grizzly three to one, but Johnny struck his sensitive snout, forcing him into a corner, and followed up, striking with both paws, lunging in and taking furry samples of his hide. Within a few seconds the black bear was climbing the side of the cage and howling for help. He gained the shelf near the roof. Johnny, unable to climb, sat below, growling maledictions in bear language, daring him to come down and fight it out. But the black bear had had more than enough. He stuck to the safety seat, whimpering with pain and fright. Thus, limping and reluctant, I took leave of my pets. The ambulance had arrived to rush me to the hospital where my knee was to be treated. As long as I could see them, they looked after me, wondering at my desertion. CHAPTER FIFTEEN ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK It had been my boyhood dream to find a region unspoiled by man, wild, primitive. When I saw that rugged wilderness called the Rockies I was sure I had found it. Miles and miles of virgin forest, innocent of ax and saw; miles and miles of fertile valleys, yet to feel the touch of plow; miles and miles of unclaimed homesteads with never the smoke of a settler's chimney! Deer and elk, sheep and bear roamed the forests, beavers preëmpted the valleys, trout spashed and rippled the waters of the lakes and rivers. Yes, this was purely primeval, natural, uncivilized. But the old-timers did not agree with me. Parson Lamb, whose nearest neighbor was ten miles away, complained that the country was being spoiled. "It's gotten so nowadays you can't see a mountain 'thout craning your neck around some fellow's shack; cabins everywhere cluttering up the scenery." I recalled my father's chuckling about the pioneers always moving on as soon as a country got settled up. Surely the Parson was having his little joke! One day when I was out looking for Mr. and Mrs. Peg, I ran upon an old trapper. "Huh!" he said, "won't be long till they won't be no critters atall. They ain't enough now to pay for trap-bait. Game ain't what it useter be in these parts, I tell you, sonny. I'm goin' ter pull up stakes for a real game country!" To me, lately from the thickly settled prairies of Kansas, practically destitute of game, their fears seemed unfounded. I thought they exaggerated, and could not understand their point of view. But I came to understand. I lived to see even greater changes take place, in the twenty-five years I wandered through the country, that Parson Lamb had witnessed from the day he hewed his way through the forest, that he might get his covered wagon into the valley, to that night when I fell across his threshold after pushing my bicycle over Bald Mountain. For even as I rambled and camped, a subtle change was taking place so slowly that for some time I was unaware of it. I saw fewer animals in a day's journey. At first, when I missed bands of deer or wild sheep, or some familiar bear, from their usual haunts, I assumed that they had shifted their range to more distant mountains. All at once I realized that for a long time I had not come upon a single elk nor even the tracks of one. I was startled. I made far excursions into the more remote regions, to verify my assumption that the game had merely retreated from the more settled parts. From the tops of lofty peaks, I looked down upon countless valleys with the hope that somewhere, surely, I would find them. I saw only a few stragglers. The wilds were like an empty house where once had lived happy children, where there had been music and laughter, shouts and romping, but now remained only silence, freighted with sadness. A great loneliness surged over me. Despite the grumbling complaints of the old settlers, I had taken for granted that the country would always stay as I had found it, that other boys would have it to explore, and that it would thrill them even as it had thrilled me. I awoke at last to the distressing truth that few of the easily accessible spots were unspoiled, that forests were falling, that the game was almost gone. I set out to see what could be done about it. I found others as concerned as I. Not only those in the immediate vicinity, but men of vision far removed from the scene. It seemed that similar conditions had arisen elsewhere and that far-sighted men had evolved a remedy. Back in 1872, Congress had set aside the Yellowstone region as a national park, guaranteeing the preservation of its wonders for all time. Not only that, but the harassed and hunted game in the country surrounding it had by some subtle instinct sensed its immunity to hunters, and had fled to it for sanctuary--grizzly bears migrated to it from long distances and found refuge. I recalled how scarce the beavers were when first I searched the valleys for them, and how, after the State had passed laws for their protection, they had multiplied. Here was the solution of the problem--protection; and the most permanent and effective protection could be procured by getting the government to preserve it as a National Park. But, just as nearsighted and self-interested individuals opposed and tried to thwart the building of the first transcontinental railroad, so there were persons who could see no reason for setting aside this region as a National Park, men who had for years cut government timber without restriction, or who had grazed livestock without hindrance, or who still hoped to strike rich mineral deposits in the proposed area to be reserved. Fortunately, the men of vision prevailed, and in 1915, Congress created the Rocky Mountain National Park, setting aside 400 square miles of territory, most of it straddling the Continental Divide, and as wild and primitive as when the Utes first hunted in it. Thus the snow-capped peaks and the verdant valleys, the deep-gashed cañons and the rushing rivers, the age-old glaciers and the primeval forests are preserved forever from exploitation. In administering the National Parks, the government takes into consideration that they are the property of the whole people, not just of those residing in adjacent or near territory. Not only does it consider them as belonging to the present generation, but to posterity. With this in mind, it has formulated certain general principles of administration applicable to all parks and has adopted special policies adapted to the peculiar needs of individual parks. For instance, it has found that in order to protect the visitors and insure their comfort, and convenience, it is necessary to have certain regulations of hotel management and transportation facilities. It has found it impossible to hold many individual concerns responsible for the enforcement of these regulations, so it has adopted the policy of granting concessions to one large company equipped to render the service required. Such a concern conducts its business under government jurisdiction, and is required to abide by the government regulations. The transportation companies, for example, are required to run their cars on regular schedule, at reasonable and approved rates. Their books are audited by the government, and they pay a certain percentage of their earnings to it. As funds are available roads and trails are developed, enabling thousands to enjoy the last frontier. And it is amazing, how, in this short time, wild life has increased within the borders of the park. Beavers have returned, their dams and houses are along every stream; deer and elk straggle along the trails to welcome wide-eyed visitors; upon the promontories curious, friendly mountain sheep are regal silhouettes against the sky. Here boys and girls of every land may explore even as I explored--and, with their trusty cameras for guns, shoot more game than Kit Carson ever trapped! THE END 
33653	----	A New Pocket Gopher (Genus Thomomys) From Wyoming and Colorado BY E. RAYMOND HALL University of Kansas Publications Museum of Natural History Volume 5, No. 13, pp. 219-222 December 15, 1951 University of Kansas LAWRENCE 1951 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS, MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Editors: E. Raymond Hall, Chairman, A. Byron Leonard, Edward H. Taylor, Robert W. Wilson Volume 5, No. 13, pp. 219-222 December 15, 1951 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS Lawrence, Kansas PRINTED BY FERD VOILAND, JR., STATE PRINTER TOPEKA, KANSAS 1951 24-1359 A New Pocket Gopher (Genus Thomomys) from Wyoming and Colorado By E. RAYMOND HALL Among small mammals accumulated, from Wyoming, in the Museum of Natural History of the University of Kansas, specimens of the wide-spread species _Thomomys talpoides_ are abundantly represented. Subspecific names are available for most of these, but specimens from the Sierra Madre Mountain Range of Wyoming and Colorado prove upon comparison to pertain to an heretofore unnamed subspecies which may be described and named as follows: #Thomomys talpoides meritus# new subspecies _Type._--Male, adult, skull and skin, no. 25628 Mus. Nat. Hist. Univ. Kansas; from 8 mi. N and 19-1/2 mi. E Savery, 8800 ft., Carbon County, Wyoming; obtained on July 19, 1948, by George M. Newton; original no. 4. _Range._--Sierra Madre Mountain Range of southern Wyoming and northern Colorado. _Diagnosis._--Size small (see measurements); color dark, upperparts in worn pelage of July darker than (near, _n_) Raw Umber (capitalized terms are of Ridgway, Color Standards and Color Nomenclature, Washington, D. C., 1912) and in fresh pelage of August between (near, 16') Prout's Brown and Mummy Brown; skull small; relative to basilar length, skull narrow across rostrum, zygomata and mastoids; nasals short and posteriorly truncate; premaxillae extending behind nasals; temporal lines faint and divergent posteriorly. _Comparisons._--From _Thomomys talpoides rostralis_ (North Platte River Valley, SW of Saratoga, Wyoming), the subspecies to the east and south, _T. t. meritus_ differs in: Lesser size, darker color, smaller and slenderer skull. The slenderness is especially noticeable in the breadth across the zygomata, mastoids, and rostrum. From _Thomomys talpoides clusius_ (topotypes), the subspecies to the north and west, _T. t. meritus_ differs in: Color much darker; rostrum longer; skull narrower across mastoids and zygomata; tympanic, and also mastoid, bullae smaller. Resemblance to _T. t. clusius_ is shown in the narrowness of the skull interorbitally and in the shortness of the tooth-row. _Remarks._--The specimens of _Thomomys_ from Wyoming on which the name _T. t. meritus_ is based were obtained by Mr. E. Lendell Cockrum and his associates with the thought that intergradation might be shown between _T. t. rostralis_ to the east and _T. t. clusius_ to the west. The animals showed instead, that there was a subspecies differing from each of the two mentioned subspecies in small size, dark color and slenderness of skull. Acknowledgment of assistance with field work is made to the Kansas University Endowment Association. _Measurements._--Average and extreme measurements of seven adult males and five adult females, from the type locality, are as follows: Total length, [Male] 204 (193-226), [Female] 207 (193-210); length of tail, 56 (46-68), 56 (50-63); length of hind foot, 27.6 (26-30), 27.4 (27-28); basilar length, 30.7 (29.0-33.0), 30.1 (29.5-30.7); zygomatic breadth, 20.4 (18.9-21.6), 19.5 (18.8-20.0); least interorbital breadth, 6.2 (5.8-6.6), 6.1 (5.9-6.3); mastoidal breadth, 17.9 (16.9-18.5), 17.2 (16.7-17.6); length of nasals, 13.7 (12.4-14.7), 13.2 (12.8-13.9); breadth of rostrum, 7.0 (6.5-7.5), 6.9 (6.7-7.3); length of rostrum, 16.3 (15.3-17.5), 15.8 (15.3-16.1); alveolar length of maxillary tooth-row, 7.1 (6.9-7.3), 7.1 (6.8-7.5). _Specimens examined._--Total number 26 and unless otherwise indicated in the Museum of Natural History of the University of Kansas. #Wyoming.#--_Carbon County_: Savery (8 mi. N and 19-1/2 mi. E, 8800 ft., 12; 7 mi. N and 17 mi. E, 8300 ft., 1; 6 mi. N and 12-1/2 mi. E, 8400 ft., 1; 6 mi. N and 13-1/2 mi. E, 8400 ft., 2; 6 mi. N and 14-1/2 mi. E, 8350 ft., 1; 5 mi. N and 3 mi. E, 6800 ft., 1; 4 mi. N and 8 mi. E, 7800 ft., 7300 ft., 3; 4 mi. N and 10 mi. E, 7800 ft., 3) 24. #Colorado#--_Routt Co._ ?: Elkhead Mts., 20 mi. SE Slater, 2 (U. S. B. S.). _Museum of Natural History, University of Kansas, Lawrence. Transmitted October 20, 1951._ 24-1359 
34412	----	A New Species of Heteromyid Rodent from the Middle Oligocene of Northeast Colorado with Remarks on the Skull BY EDWIN C. GALBREATH University of Kansas Publications Museum of Natural History Volume 1, No. 18, pp. 285-300, 2 plates August 16, 1948 University of Kansas LAWRENCE 1948 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS, MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Editors: E. Raymond Hall, Chairman; H. H. Lane, Edward H. Taylor Volume 1, No. 18, pp. 285-300, 2 plates August 16, 1948 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS Lawrence, Kansas PRINTED BY FERD VOILAND, JR., STATE PRINTER TOPEKA, KANSAS 1948 [Illustration] 22-3342 [Transcriber's Note: Words surrounded by tildes, like ~this~ signifies words in bold. Words surrounded by underscores, like _this_, signifies words in italics.] [Illustration: PLATE 2. _Heliscomys tenuiceps._ Univ. Kans. Mus. Nat. Hist., Vert. Paleo. Coll. No. 7702. A, dorsal view; B, lateral view; C, ventral view. All views approximately × 5.] [Illustration: PLATE 3. _Heliscomys tenuiceps._ Univ. Kans. Mus. Nat. Hist., Vert. Paleo. Coll. No. 7702. A, lateral view of right side of skull showing structures in orbital area. ALS, alisphenoid. FR, frontal. MAX, maxillary. OS, orbitosphenoid. PAL, palatine. PC, presphenoid canal. SF, sphenoidal fissure. SFr, sphenofrontal foramen. SPal, sphenopalatine foramen. Approximately × 9.3; B, occlusal view of P4-M3. Approximately × 23.4.] A New Species of Heteromyid Rodent from the Middle Oligocene of Northeast Colorado with Remarks on the Skull By EDWIN C. GALBREATH Heretofore our knowledge of the osteology of _Heliscomys_ Cope has been extremely limited; this genus previously was known by its teeth, fragmental maxillaries, incomplete palatine bone and mandible, and part of one forelimb. In the summer of 1946 the writer, as a member of the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History field party, discovered the anterior part of a skull of _Heliscomys_ in the middle Oligocene deposits of Logan County, Colorado. This specimen, representing a new species, yields a welcome, and greatly desired addition to our fund of information about the genus. The writer is indebted to Dr. Robert W. Wilson for advice and helpful criticism in the course of this study, and to Mr. Bryan Patterson of the Chicago Natural History Museum for the loan of comparative material. Mrs. Bernita Mansfield of the Geology Department, University of Kansas, prepared the plates. Family HETEROMYIDAE ~Heliscomys tenuiceps~, new species _Holotype._--Anterior part of a skull with left P4-M3, No. 7702, Vertebrate Paleontological Collection, Museum of Natural History, University of Kansas. _Geological Age and locality._--Silts of Orellan age in the Cedar Creek facies of the Brule formation in "Chimney Canyon," Sec. 3, T. 11 N, R. 54 W, Logan County, Colorado. _Diagnosis._--Size larger than any known species; P4 with posteroexternal cusp (metacone) anterior to central (hypocone) and lingual (entostyle) cusps, which are connected by a cingulum; internal cingula of molars undivided, and as high as paracone and metacone; style of each cingulum opposite the straight median valley; rostrum deep and laterally compressed. _Description._--The type consists of the preorbital and interorbital parts of a skull. Its size is comparable to that of the Recent heteromyid, _Liomys pictus_ Merriam. _L. pictus_ is the species referred to in the comparisons below when only the generic name _Liomys_ is mentioned. Both incisors have been broken off. The right tooth-row is missing, but the left row is complete, and its orientation indicates that the tooth rows were parallel. The zygomata are broken off close to the rostrum, which is relatively narrow in comparison with its length and depth. In this narrowness, the specimen resembles _Florentiamys_ Wood more than it does such Recent heteromyids as _Liomys_ or _Heteromys_, where the rostrum is much wider at the dorsal surface than at the ventral surface (correlating with the wide interorbital dimension). In No. 7702 the rostrum is not appreciably expanded on the dorsal surface. The wide interorbital dimension also gives a tapering appearance to the rostrum of the Recent heteromyids, when viewed dorsally, which is not seen in the fossil specimen. Like those of most heteromyids, the nasals and premaxillaries project forward beyond the incisors. _H. tenuiceps_ has a distinctly heteromyidlike appearance, and it is obvious that the features of the anterior part of the skull, which characterize the heteromyids, had been established by middle Oligocene time. The nasal bone extends caudad as far as does the premaxillary; they terminate at the anterior border of the orbit. The nasal is widest anteriorly where it curves downward on the side to meet the anterior projection of the premaxillary bone beyond the incisor. Posteriorly, the two nasals have practically parallel lateral borders much as in _Liomys_. The frontal bone dorsally is relatively narrower than in any Recent heteromyid, and closely resembles that of the geomyids. There is a slight depression in the midline of the skull where the two frontals unite, but no evidence of a ridge for the attachment of the temporal muscle. In lateral view, the ledge seen in _Liomys_ at the dorsal surface is absent, nor is this surface rounded as in _Geomys_. Preservation around the nasolacrimal canal is poor, but traces of sutures indicate that the frontal bone is not involved in the posteromedial wall of that canal. The orbital plate is broad, comparatively flat, and extends farther ventrad than in _Liomys_, and enters into the composition of the sphenopalatine foramina. Ventrally the frontal bone meets the orbital processes of the palatine and maxillary bones, and posterolaterally meets the orbitosphenoid. In the anterodorsal angle of the rim of the orbit the lacrimal bone rests against the frontal and maxillary bones, where the body of the lacrimal contributes to the formation of the posteromedial wall of the nasolacrimal canal. Only a slight part of the maxillary process of the lacrimal remains on each side. The premaxillary bone, which constitutes most of the anterior part of the rostrum, is typically heteromyid in shape. The frontal process is long and slender. On the side of the rostrum the premaxillary forms the anterointernal border of the infraorbital foramen. The ventrolateral border of the bone is expanded slightly and aids in the formation of the tuberosity made by the maxillary bone at the ventroposterior border of the foramen. Ventrally the premaxillary makes up the anterior two-thirds of the lateral wall of the incisive (anterior palatine) foramen. It is not possible to establish what part of the median septum between the foramina is made up of premaxillary bones. The incisor arches through the premaxillary in a manner similar to that in _Liomys_, with the upper wall of the root canal being formed by the upper surface of the bone. Due to the narrowness of the rostrum, the root of the incisor is prominently outlined on the side of the rostrum, both in the premaxillary and maxillary bones. With this modeling of the side of the rostrum because of the incisor root canal, and the flaring of the posterior and ventral edges of the infraorbital foramen, the side wall of the premaxillary appears as a depressed area. Anterior to the incisor root the tip of the premaxillary projects forward, and parallels its opposite, laterally, instead of turning inward as in _Liomys_. This condition, together with the prominence of the root canal, makes the anterior tip project as a flange. The premaxillary extends downward as a plate of bone, and embraces the posterior and lateral sides of the incisor as in Recent heteromyids. The interpremaxillary foramen, if present, is obscure. However, there appears to be a foramen posterior to the incisor, which possibly has taken over the function of the interpremaxillary foramen. Both maxillary bones are incomplete, and lack the zygomatic processes. The rostral part of the maxillary is compressed laterally, as is the premaxillary. The anterior border of the maxillary contributes to the formation of the border of the anterior opening of the infraorbital canal where, at the posteroventral border of the opening, the bone is produced into a prominent tuberosity which projects laterally approximately one millimeter on each side. The infraorbital foramen (anterior opening of the infraorbital canal) lies about midway between the anterior end of the skull and the root of the zygoma. High on each side of the rostrum, and beneath the dorsal edge of the masseteric plate, is an area containing small foramina. The zygomasseteric plate is inclined forward at the dorsal end, and extends anteriorly almost to the highest part of the arch of the canal for the root of the incisor. The posterior end of the infraorbital canal lies on the median side of the zygomatic root as it does in _H. hatcheri_ Wood. Ventrally the zygomatic root rises above the fourth premolar as in _H. gregoryi_ Wood, _H. hatcheri_, and in Recent heteromyids. The ventral part of the orbit, containing the sphenopalatine foramen, presphenoid foramen, and the sphenoidal fissure, is not constricted as in _Liomys_, but is open like that of the squirrels. This condition is emphasized by the narrowness of the interorbital part of the skull and the more vertical position of the orbital plate. The alisphenoid bone is large and forms part of the posteromedial wall of the orbit. The sphenofrontal foramen lies in the suture between the extreme anterior margin of this bone and the frontal bone. The orbitosphenoid bone makes up little of the orbital wall. It occupies the posterior area of the orbit between the alisphenoid and palatine, and is in contact with these bones and the frontal. The presphenoid canal between the orbits is large, and the entrance at each end is well separated from the sphenoidal fissure. Damage to the sphenoidal fissure, which occurred prior to preservation, obscures its relationship to the optic foramen. No bar was found that would indicate that the two openings were widely separate. Anteroventrally the sphenoidal fissure is bounded by the orbitosphenoid bone, and dorsolaterally by the alisphenoid bone. Between the presphenoid foramen and the orbitosphenoid-frontal suture there is a distinct ridge, and the suture between the two bones lies in an elongate pit or trough formed by the anterior sloping side of the ridge and the impressed lateral wall of the frontal bone. The palatine bone is represented by fragments joined to other bones of the skull. The maxillary process of the left palatine bone is united to the maxillary by a highly sinuous suture. The union of the palatines to the maxillaries make a suture in the shape of a "V" with the base forward and somewhat blunt. The canal for the palatine artery and nerve has a multiple opening on the palate. One major foramen opens on each side of the palatomaxillary suture, and two or possibly three smaller foramina open posteriorly on the palatine bone. Prominent on the palatine bone, posteromedial to the third molar, is the foramen (palatine pit) for the palatine vein. Collectively, this complex of foramina is often known as the posterior palatine foramina. Wood (1933) states that _H. gregoryi_ has two posterior palatine foramina as in Recent genera, the anterior one opening opposite the posterior end of M1, and the posterior one opposite the median part of M3. The orbital process of the left palatine bone lies inside (medial to) the palatine process of the maxillary. Anteriorly this orbital process meets the orbital process of the maxillary bone, and the sphenopalatine foramen is found in the suture between these two bones and the frontal. As previously mentioned, the preserved dentition of this specimen consists of the complete left row of cheek teeth and roots of the incisors. The incisor is compressed laterally, more so than in any Recent heteromyid. The anterior face is rounded, asulcate, and covered with a heavy band of enamel, whereas the posterior side, due to lateral compression, is drawn out into a thin blade. The root of the incisor is at the lateral border of the premaxillary, so it is obvious that the two incisors converged on each other at the midline to form a cutting surface. The writer has not examined the asulcate, laterally compressed incisors of _H. hatcheri_, and cannot say how they compare with this specimen. The most significant features of the cheek teeth are their size, and the undivided internal cingulum. The molars are well worn, but the pattern, as a whole, is easily discernable. P4 has an anterior cusp and three posterior cusps as in other members of the genus. However, the buccal cusp (metacone) of the metaloph is considerably anterior to the central (hypocone) and lingual (entostyle) cusps, and the three cusps do not form a curve as in other species. In size the central cusp is largest, the buccal cusp is practically as large, and the lingual cusp is small. A cingulum connects the lingual and central cusps at the posterior margin of the tooth. In the Pipestone Springs specimen of _Heliscomys_ reported by McGrew (1941) the central and buccal cusps were connected by a cingulum, and some _H. hatcheri_ specimens have all three cusps connected in a similar manner. A low arm or ridge extends from the lingual cusp forward to the lingual side of the base of the anterior cusp. The valleys between the posterior cusps are shallow. There is no sign of the small cuspule on the anteroexternal base of the anterior cusp seen in _H. gregoryi_, _H. hatcheri_, and the Pipestone Springs specimen. However, when one sees the variability of the cuspules on P4 of _H. hatcheri_, the presence of a minor cuspule does not seem to be of taxonomic importance. M1 deviates from the pattern typical of _Heliscomys_ more than do any of the other molar teeth. However, it must be kept in mind that some of the differences may be due to wear. For example, the protocone and paracone, and the hypocone and metacone are united to form protoloph and metaloph respectively. If the height of the external border of the paracone and metacone is taken into account and compared with the worn inner parts of these two cusps and the equally well-worn protocone and hypocone, it appears that these cusps formed no more of a true bilophodont tooth than do the cusps in other species of _Heliscomys_; in each of the species the cusps generally are separate entities. _H. gregoryi_ is reported to have an "incipient tendency to form lophs," and _H. hatcheri_ does the same when worn, but by union with the anterior cingulum. If cusps in _H. tenuiceps_ do form lophs, the process is definitely not by union of the cusps with the anterior cingulum. The transverse median valley is deep and divides the tooth on the buccal side. The anteroposterior valleys are shallow and hanging, and can be said to exist only as indentations between the two sets of cusps. The paracone and metacone are much higher than the other two cusps, but much of this disparity in height may be the result of greater wear on the protocone and hypocone; _H. gregoryi_ agrees with _H. tenuiceps_ in these respects. Possibly the protocone and hypocone were much larger than the paracone and metacone. The internal cingulum of M1 exhibits only one large cusp opposite the medial end of the transverse valley, and shows no evidence of having been divided into two cusps. It is barely possible that there may have been two cusps and that wear makes it appear that there was only one. I doubt that there were two cusps because the cingulum is still so high (as high as the outer edges of the paracone and metacone) as to suggest that it is only slightly worn. Posteriorly this single cusp in the cingulum is united with the hypocone. Anteriorly the cusp is confluent with an anterior cingulum that is small, but, nevertheless, plainly visible as it crosses the occlusal face of the tooth to the paracone. There is some reason to believe that there was a posterior cingulum, but wear, which has obliterated even the posterior wall of the hypocone, prevents my being certain about this. This cingulum is absent in _H. gregoryi_ and present in _H. hatcheri_. M2 compares favorably with M1 except for the following differences: The protocone and hypocone are equal to the paracone and metacone in area, but not in height; although the internal cingulum is undivided, there is no evidence of a cusp as in M1. Here, too, the cingulum is as high as the paracone and metacone. Possibly the cingulum was confluent with the hypocone. The internal cingulum continues around the margin of the tooth to the paracone as an anterior cingulum which is sharper and plainer than the anterior cingulum on M1. There is no evidence of a posterior cingulum. M3 shows a great amount of wear, and the occlusal pattern is not too clear. The median transverse valley is reduced almost to a pit, and the paracone and metacone are divided by a small notch. The protocone and paracone, the latter being much higher, are larger than the metacone which is reduced in size, and not all this difference in size can be the result of wear. The hypocone is absent. The internal cingulum is as high as the paracone and shows no evidence of division into two cusps, but in M3 this character is apparently variable for _H. gregoryi_ does not have the internal cingulum divided and _H. hatcheri_ has it markedly so. A slight anterior arm of the internal cingulum may have reached forward to the anterior face of the protocone. Wear prevents knowing whether a crest surrounds the tooth completely, or only on three sides. In size the teeth of _H. tenuiceps_ average twenty per cent larger than any of the upper teeth of _H. gregoryi_, _H. hatcheri_, or the Pipestone Springs specimen, and exceed any of the known lower teeth including those of _H. vetus_ and _H. senex_ by twenty-five per cent or more. Inasmuch as the upper teeth rarely exceed the lower in length in all the related genera of heteromyids, it is assumed that a similar relationship existed between the upper and lower molars of _H. tenuiceps_ and, therefore, that this species can be distinguished by its large size. The relative size of the premolars and molars is the same in _H. tenuiceps_ as in other species of _Heliscomys_. However, within the framework of this similar relationship there are two differences. P4 of _H. tenuiceps_ is relatively larger than the P4 of _H. gregoryi_, and relatively smaller than the P4 of _H. hatcheri_. The width of the molars is relatively greater in _H. tenuiceps_ and _H. gregoryi_ than in _H. hatcheri_. MEASUREMENTS (In millimeters) U. K. M. N. H. (Vert. Paleo.) No. 7702 Height of skull at M2 7.48 Length from anterior end of nasals to rear of M3 15.41 Length of nasal bones 10.50 Width of rostrum at highest point of root canal 3.97 Interorbital width 4.39 Estimated length of skull 25.00 I, anteroposterior length 1.56 I, transverse width 0.63 P4-M3 crown length 3.75 P4-M3 alveolar length 3.80 P4, anteroposterior length[A] 1.05 P4, transverse width 1.08 M1, anteroposterior length 0.93 M1, transverse width 1.17 M2, anteroposterior length 0.93 M2, transverse width 1.14 M3, anteroposterior length 0.78 M3, transverse width 0.93 [Note A: This and the following measurements at occlusal surface.] _Discussion._--_Heliscomys tenuiceps_ shows beyond any doubt that the heteromyid pattern of skull was developed by mid-Oligocene times, and in this species was already undergoing lateral compression. The major change later made in heteromyid skulls is broadening of the dorsal surface of the skull in the interorbital area. The complete confirmation of Wood's (1939) statement that the "sciuromorph" zygomasseteric structure had been developed by this time in the heteromyid rodents as it had been in the early Eomyids is demonstrated in this specimen. Further, it is to be noted that the infraorbital canal is not sciuridlike, but has been forced forward on the rostrum, as in the Geomyoidea. In some ways this skull shows similarities to _Florentiamys loomisi_ Wood, of the early Miocene, which aid in determining the relationship of that unusual genus to _Heliscomys_ and to the heteromyids in general. When Wood described _Florentiamys_ the peculiar combination of characters found in this animal prompted him to speculate that: (1) It was a typical heteromyid which had secondarily developed cingula; (2) its cheek teeth were nearer the primitive pattern than were those of any other known fossil heteromyid, and that _Heliscomys_ represented a simplification in the reduction of the cingula; or (3) it was not a heteromyid, but a parallel development from the "Paramys" stock. Wood favored the second possibility. Now that a part of the skull of one species of _Heliscomys_ is known, the undivided internal cingulum that is confluent with the hypocone, the lateral compression of the deep rostrum, and the general similarity to the heteromyids appear as points in common between the two skulls, and demonstrate the closeness of _Florentiamys_ to the heteromyids. However, the specimen does not contribute anything new to use in choosing between Wood's first two postulates. In the writer's opinion the undivided internal cingulum is a primitive condition that has survived in _Florentiamys_ and _Heliscomys tenuiceps_. This common character together with the laterally compressed rostrum leads me to think that structurally, _H. tenuiceps_ is a link between _Florentiamys_ and the ancestral form of _Heliscomys_. Admittedly P4 of _Florentiamys_ seems far from the _Heliscomys_ pattern, but I think that this highly specialized structure could have been derived from _Heliscomys_ or a common ancestor. LITERATURE CITED MCGREW, PAUL O. 1941. Heteromyids from the Miocene and Lower Oligocene. Geol. Ser. of Field Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. 8, pp. 55-57, 1 fig. WOOD, ALBERT E. 1933. A New Heteromyid Rodent from the Oligocene of Montana. Jour. Mamm., vol. 14, pp. 134-141, 5 figs. 1935. Evolution and Relationship of the Heteromyid Rodents with New Forms from the Tertiary of Western North America. Annals of the Carnegie Mus., vol. 24, pp. 73-262, 157 figs. 1937. Part II. Rodentia, in The Mammalian Fauna of the White River Oligocene; by William Berryman Scott and Glenn Lowell Jepsen. Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc., n.s., vol. 28, pp. 155-269, figs. 8-70, pls. 23-33. 1939. Additional Specimens of the Heteromyid Rodent Heliscomys from the Oligocene of Nebraska. Amer. Jour. Sci., vol. 237, pp. 550-561, 11 figs. _Transmitted March 1, 1948._ 22-3342 
34836	----	A New Pocket Gopher (Genus Thomomys) from Eastern Colorado BY E. RAYMOND HALL University of Kansas Publications Museum of Natural History Volume 5, No. 8, pp. 81-85 October 1, 1951 University of Kansas LAWRENCE 1951 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS, MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Editors: E. Raymond Hall, Chairman, A. Byron Leonard, Edward H. Taylor, Robert W. Wilson Volume 5, No. 8, pp. 81-85 October 1, 1951 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS Lawrence, Kansas PRINTED BY FERD VOILAND, JR., STATE PRINTER TOPEKA, KANSAS 1951 23-7439 A New Pocket Gopher (Genus Thomomys) from Eastern Colorado By E. RAYMOND HALL The pocket gophers of the species _Thomomys talpoides_ in east-central Colorado have long been referred to the subspecies _Thomomys talpoides clusius_ Coues with type locality at Bridger Pass, Wyoming. Recently, two subspecies, _T. t. attenuatus_ and _T. t. rostralis_ (see Hall and Montague, Univ. Kansas Publ., Mus. Nat. Hist., 5(3):25-32, February 28, 1951) were named from along the Wyoming-Colorado boundary with the result that the populations of _Thomomys talpoides_ in east-central Colorado are separated from _T. t. clusius_ of Wyoming by the geographic ranges now ascribed to the recently named _T. t. attenuatus_ and _T. t. rostralis_. The subspecific identity of the animals from east-central Colorado thus is left in doubt. Examination of pertinent materials was made in the expectation that the names _Thomomys talpoides macrotis_ F. W. Miller (Proc. Colorado Mus. Nat. Hist., 9:41, December 14, 1930) and _Thomomys talpoides cheyennensis_ Swenk (Missouri Valley Fauna, 4:5, March 1, 1941) would apply to the specimens, the identity of which is in doubt. This examination discloses instead, as set forth in more detail below, that neither of the two names mentioned immediately above does apply; the Coloradan specimens in question are referable to an heretofore unrecognized subspecies which may be named and described as follows: #Thomomys talpoides retrorsus# new subspecies _Thomomys clusius_, Warren, The Mammals of Colorado, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, p. 80, 1910; Cary, N. Amer. Fauna, 33:132, August 17, 1911. _Thomomys talpoides clusius_, Bailey, N. Amer. Fauna, 39:100, November 15, 1915; F. W. Miller, Proc. Colorado Mus. Nat. Hist., 9:41, December 14, 1930; Warren, The Mammals of Colorado, Univ. Oklahoma Press, Norman, p. 162, 1942. _Type._--Male, subadult, skull and skin, No. 69840 Biological Surveys Collection, U. S. Nat. Hist.; from Flagler, Kit Carson County, Colorado; obtained on November 26, 1894, by Clark P. Streator; original No. 4460. _Range._--Western end of the Arkansas Divide in Colorado from eight miles south of Seibert westward to Colorado Springs _Diagnosis._--Size medium (see measurements); upper parts grayish brown; underparts lighter; skull small; tympanic bullae moderately inflated and angular anterolaterally; interpterygoid space narrowly U-shaped; pterygoid hamuli without transverse enlargement; nasals truncate posteriorly; premaxillary tongues projecting posteriorly behind nasals for distance of eight-tenths (0.5-1.1) of a millimeter. _Comparisons._--In comparison with _T. t. fossor_ and _T. t. rostralis_, which occur farther west, selected differences of _T. t. retrorsus_ are: lighter color; larger skull; more inflated tympanic bullae; greater relative (to length of skull) breadth across upper incisors, rostrum, and zygomata. The difference in color is greater in comparison with _fossor_ than with _rostralis_. In comparison with _T. t. macrotis_ (specimens from the type locality), _T. t. retrorsus_ is indistinguishable in color, length of tail, and length of tooth-row, but averages smaller in all other measurements. There is no overlap in length of body, basilar length, zygomatic breadth, mastoidal breadth or length of nasals. The temporal ridges, which mark the limits of the temporal muscles, are straight as opposed to curved and are lower. The tympanic bullae are more angular anterolaterally in _T. t. retrorsus_. From _T. t. attenuatus_ to the north, _T. t. retrorsus_ differs in darker (more brown) color, consistently longer body, relatively (to length of skull) shorter rostrum and nasals. Linear measurements of the two latter structures and length of tail are approximately the same in the two subspecies but all other measurements average more in _T. t. retrorsus_. Also in the latter the temporal lines are approximately parallel instead of being bowed outward in their middle extent and instead of being more widely separated posteriorly than anteriorly. From _T. t. cheyennensis_ to the northeast, _T. t. retrorsus_ differs in slightly darker (more brownish) color, consistently shorter body and rostrum, usually a more narrowly V-shaped interpterygoid space, and smaller average dimensions of the skull, notably in mastoidal breadth and length of the rostrum. _Remarks._--Miller's (Proc. Colorado Mus. Nat. Hist., 9:42, December 14, 1930) mention of a specimen taken on November 9, 1930, "near the head of Beaver Creek in extreme northeastern Elbert County" refers to the specimen, No. 2426 Colo. Mus. Nat. Hist., which is labeled as "8 mi. N. E. Agate, Elbert Co., Colo." Specimens from Colorado Springs, in the collection of the late E. R. Warren, have not been examined but the fact that Cary, Warren 1942, and Bailey (see under synonymy above) each referred the specimens to _clusius_ instead of to the darker _fossor_ gives basis for tentatively referring the specimens to _T. t. retrorsus_. Grateful acknowledgment is made to those persons in charge of the mammal collections of the Denver Museum of Natural History and the Biological Surveys collection of mammals in the United States National Museum for permission to examine and report upon the material listed below (see specimens examined). The study here reported upon was aided also by a contract between the Office of Naval Research, Department of the Navy, and the University of Kansas (NR 161-791). Essential comparative materials were obtained with assistance from the Kansas University Endowment Association. _Measurements._--Measurements of the type, a male, are followed by the measurements of three adult females (69835, 69839 and 69838) from the type locality. Total length, 216, 207, 210, 200; length of tail, 59, 58, 64, 56; length of hind foot, 28, 28, 28, 26; basilar length of skull, 32.8, 32.2, 32.3, 30.8; zygomatic breadth, 23.1, 22.5, ----, 20.5; least interorbital breadth, 6.0, 6.7, 6.2, 6.1; mastoidal breadth, 18.2, 18.8, 17.7, 17.7; length of nasals, 13.0, 13.7, 13.9, 14.0; breadth of rostrum, 7.6, 7.9, 7.4, 7.2; length of rostrum, 14.8, 15.6, 15.7, 16.0; alveolar length of maxillary tooth-row, 7.6, 7.2, 7.7, 7.6. _Specimens examined._--Total number, 13, all from Colorado, as follows: _Elbert County_ (Colorado Mus. Nat. Hist. [= Denver Mus. Nat. Hist.]): Bijou Creek, "near El Paso Co. line", 3; 8 mi. NE Elbert, 1. _Lincoln Co._ (U. S. Biol. Surv. Coll.): Limon, 1. _Kit Carson Co._ (U. S. Biol. Surv. Coll.): Flagler, 7; 8 mi. S Seibert, 1. _Transmitted, February 28, 1951._ 23-7439 
31485	----	The BLUE GOOSE FRANK LEWIS NASON AUTHOR OF TO THE END OF THE TRAIL COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. NEW YORK Published, March, 1903, R Second Impression * * * * * "_So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise and behold a shaking, and the bones came together bone to bone._ "_And, lo, the sinews and the flesh came upon them, but there was no breath in them._ "_Son of man, prophesy unto the wind. Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these that they may live._ "_And the breath came into them and they lived._" To MY FRIEND OF TWENTY-ONE YEARS, CHARLES EMERSON BEECHER, who, with infinite skill and patience, has breathed the breath of life into the dry bones of Earth's untold ages of upward struggle, who has made them speak of the eternity of their past, and has made them prophesy hope for the eternity to come, this book is dedicated by the author. CONTENTS I. THE BLUE GOOSE II. THE OLD MAN III. ÉLISE IV. THE WATCHED POT BEGINS TO BOIL V. BENNIE OPENS THE POT AND FIRMSTONE COMES IN VI. THE FAMILY CIRCLE VII. MR. MORRISON TACKLES A MAN WITH A MIND OF HIS OWN AND A MAN WITHOUT ONE VIII. MADAME SEEKS COUNSEL IX. THE MEETING AT THE BLUE GOOSE X. ÉLISE GOES FORTH TO CONQUER XI. THE DEVIL'S ELBOW XII. FIGS AND THISTLES XIII. THE STORK AND THE CRANES XIV. BLINDED EYES XV. BENDING THE TWIG XVI. AN INSISTENT QUESTION XVII. THE BEARDED LION XVIII. WINNOWED CHAFF XIX. THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT XX. THE RIVER GIVES UP ITS PREY XXI. THE SWORD THAT TURNS XXII. GOOD INTENTIONS XXIII. AN UNEXPECTED RECRUIT XXIV. THE GATHERING TO ITS OWN XXV. A DIVIDED HOUSE XXVI. THE DAY OF RECKONING XXVII. PASSING CLOUDS THE BLUE GOOSE CHAPTER I _The Blue Goose_ "_Mais oui!_ I tell you one ting. One big ting. Ze big man wiz ze glass eyes, he is vat you call one slik stoff. Ze big man wiz ze glass eyes." "The old man?" "Zat's him! One slik stoff! _Écoutez!_ Listen! One day, you mek ze gran' trip. Look hout!" Pierre made a gesture as of a dog shaking a rat. The utter darkness of the underground laboratory was parted in solid masses, by bars of light that spurted from the cracks of a fiercely glowing furnace. One shaft fell on a row of large, unstoppered bottles. From these bottles fumes arose, mingled, and fell in stifling clouds of fleecy white. From another bottle in Pierre's hands a dense red smoke welled from a colourless liquid, crowded through the neck, wriggled through the bar of light, and sank in the darkness beneath. The darkness was uncanny, the fumes suffocating, the low hum of the furnace forcing out the shafts of light from the cracks of the imprisoning walls infernally suggestive. Luna shivered. He was ignorant, therefore superstitious, and superstition strongly suggested the unnatural. He knew that furnaces and retorts and acids and alkalies were necessary to the refinement of gold. He feared them, yet he had used them, but he had used them where the full light of day robbed them of half their terrors. In open air acids might smoke, but drifting winds would brush away the fumes. Furnaces might glow, but their glow would be as naught in sunlight. There was no darkness in which devils could hide to pounce on him unawares, no walls to imprison him. The gold he retorted on his shovel was his, and he had no fear of the law. In the underground laboratory of Pierre the element of fear was ever present. The gold that the furnace retorted was stolen, and Luna was the thief. There were other thieves, but that did not matter to him. He stole gold from the mill. Others stole gold from the mine. It all came to Pierre and to Pierre's underground furnace. He stood in terror of the supernatural, of the law, and, most of all, of Pierre. In the darkness barred with fierce jets of light, imprisoned by walls that he could not see, cut off from the free air of open day, stifled by pungent gases that stung him, throat and eye, he felt an uncanny oppression, fear of the unknown, fear of the law, most of all fear of Pierre. Pierre watched him through his mantle of darkness. He thrust forward his head, and a bar of light smote him across his open lips. It showed his gleaming teeth white and shut, his black moustache, his swarthy lips parted in a sardonic smile; that was all. A horrible grin on a background of inky black. Luna shrank. "Leave off your devil's tricks." "_Moi?_" Pierre replaced the bottle of acid on the shelf and picked up a pair of tongs. As he raised the cover of the glowing crucible a sudden transformation took place. The upper part of the laboratory blazed out fiercely, and in this light Pierre moved with gesticulating arms, the lower part of his body wholly hidden. He lifted the crucible, shook it for a moment with an oscillatory motion, then replaced it on the fire. He turned again to Luna. "Hall ze time I mek ze explain. Hall ze time you mek ze question. _Comment?_" Luna's courage was returning in the light. "You're damned thick-headed, when it suits you, all right. Well, I'll explain. Last clean-up I brought you two pounds of amalgam if it was an ounce. All I got out of it was fifty dollars. You said that was my share. Hansen brought you a chunk of quartz from the mine. He showed it to me first. If I know gold from sulphur, there was sixty dollars in it. Hansen got five out of it." Pierre interrupted. "You mek mention ze name." "There's no one to hear in this damned hell of yours." "_Non_," Pierre answered. "You mek mention in zis hell. Bimby you mek mention," Pierre gave an expressive upward jerk with his thumb, then shrugged his shoulders. "I'll look out for that," Luna answered, impatiently. "I'm after something else now. I'm getting sick of pinching the mill and bringing the stuff here for nothing. So are the rest of the boys. We ain't got no hold on you and you ain't playing fair. You've got to break even or this thing's going to stop." Pierre made no reply to Luna. He picked up the tongs, lifted the crucible from the fire, and again replaced it. Then he brought out an ingot mould and laid it on a ledge of the furnace. The crucible was again lifted from the fire, and its contents were emptied in the mould. Pierre and Luna both watched the glowing metal. As it slowly cooled, iridescent sheens of light swept over its surface like the changing colours of a dying dolphin. Pierre held up the mould to Luna. "How much she bin?" Luna looked covetously at the softly glowing metal. "Two hundred." "_Bien._ She's bin ze amalgam, ze quart', ze hozer stoff. Da's hall." Luna looked sceptical. "That's too thin. How many times have you fired up?" "Zis!" Pierre held up a single emphasizing finger. "We'll let that go," Luna answered; "but you listen now. One of the battery men is off to-night. I'm going to put Morrison on substitute. He's going to break a stem or something. The mortar's full to the dies. We're going to clean it out. I know how much it will pan. It's coming to you. You divide fair or it's the last you'll get. I'll hide it out in the usual place." "Look hout! Da's hall!" The other laughed impatiently. "Getting scared, Frenchy? Where's your nerve?" "Nerf! Nerf!" Pierre danced from foot to foot, waving his arms. "_Sacré plastron!_ You mek ze fuse light. You sit on him, heh? Bimeby, pretty soon, you got no nerf. You got noddings. You got one big gris-spot on ze rock. Da's hall." Pierre subsided, with a gesture of intense disgust. Luna snapped his watch impatiently. "It's my shift, Frenchy. I've got to go in a few minutes." "_Bien!_ Go!" Pierre spoke without spirit. "Mek of yourself one gran' _folie_. _Mais_, when ze shot go, an' you sail in ze air, don' come down on ze Blue Goose, on me, Pierre. I won't bin here, da's hall." Luna turned. "I tell you I've got to go now. I wish you'd tell me what's the matter with the old man." Pierre roused himself. "Noddings. Ze hol' man has noddings ze mattaire. It is you! You! Ze hol' man, he go roun' lak he kick by ze dev'. He mek his glass eyes to shine here an' twinkle zere, an' you mek ze gran' chuckle, 'He see noddings.' He see more in one look dan you pack in your tick head! I tol' you look hout; da's hall!" Luna jammed his watch into his pocket and rose. "It's all right, Frenchy. I'll give you another chance. To-day's Thursday. Saturday they'll clean up at the mill. It will be a big one. I want my rake-off. The boys want theirs. It all comes to the Blue Goose, one way or another. You think you're pretty smooth stuff. That's all right; but let me tell you one thing: if there's any procession heading for Cañon City, you'll be in it, too." Cañon City was the State hostelry. Occasionally the law selected unwilling guests. It was not over-large, nor was it overcrowded. Had it sheltered all deserving objects, the free population of the State would have been visibly diminished. Pierre only shrugged his shoulders. He followed Luna up the stairs to the outer door, and watched the big mill foreman as he walked down the trail to the mill. Then, as was his custom when perturbed in mind, Pierre crossed the dusty waggon trail and seated himself on a boulder, leaning his back against a scrubby spruce. He let his eyes rest contentedly on a big, square-faced building. Rough stone steps led up to a broad veranda, from which rose, in barbaric splendour, great sheets of shining plate-glass, that gave an unimpeded view of a long mahogany bar backed by tiers of glasses and bottles, doubled by reflection from polished mirrors that reached to the matched-pine ceiling. Across the room from the bar, roulette and faro tables, bright with varnish and gaudy with nickel trimmings, were waiting with invitations to feverish excitement. The room was a modern presentation of Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla, the bar, stimulated to the daring of Charybdis across the way, and Charybdis, the roulette, sent its winners to celebrate success, or its victims to deaden the pain of loss. At the far end of the room a glass-covered arcade stood in advance of doors to private club-rooms. At the arcade an obliging attendant passed out gold and silver coins, for a consideration, in exchange for crumpled time-checks and greasy drafts. Pierre grinned and rubbed his hands. Above the plate glass on the outside a gorgeous rainbow arched high on the painted front. Inscribed within, in iridescent letters, was: "The Blue Goose. Pierre La Martine." Beneath the spring of the rainbow, for the benefit of those who could not read, was a huge blue goose floating aimlessly in a sheet of bluer water. This was all of the Blue Goose that was visible to the eyes of the uninitiated; of the initiated there were not many. Beneath the floor was a large cellar, wherein was a fierce-looking furnace, which on occasion grew very red with its labours. There were pungent jars and ghostly vessels and a litter of sacks, and much sparkling dust on the earthen floor. All this Pierre knew, and a few others, though even these had not seen it. Beneath the shadow of the wings of the Blue Goose dwelt a very plain woman, who looked chronically frightened, and a very beautiful girl who did not. The scared woman was Madame La Martine; the unscared girl passed for their daughter, but about the daughter no one asked questions of Pierre. About the Blue Goose, its bar, and its gaming-tables Pierre was eloquent, even with strangers. About his daughter and other things his acquaintances had learned to keep silence; as for strangers, they soon learned. Obviously the mission of the Blue Goose was to entertain; with the multitude this mission passed current at its face value, but there were a few who challenged it. Now and then a grocer or a butcher made gloomy comments as he watched a growing accumulation of books that would not prove attractive to the most confirmed bibliophile. Men went to the Blue Goose with much money, but came out with none, for the bar and roulette required cash settlements. Their wives went in to grocers and butchers with no money but persuasive tongues, and came forth laden with spoils. Pandora could raise no taxes for schools, so there were none. Preachers came and offered their wares without money and without price, but there were no churches. For the wares of the preachers flushed no faces and burned no throats, nor were there rattles even in contribution boxes, and there was no whirr of painted wheels. Even the hundred rumbling stamps of the Rainbow mill might as well have pounded empty air or clashed their hard steel shoes on their hard steel dies for all the profit that came to the far-away stockholders of the great Rainbow mine and mill. So it came to pass that many apparently unrelated facts were gathered together by the diligent but unprosperous, and, being thus gathered, pointed to a very inevitable conclusion. Nothing and no one was prosperous, save Pierre and his gorgeous Blue Goose. For Pierre was a power in the land. He feared neither God nor the devil. The devil was the bogie-man of the priest. As for God, who ever saw him? But of some men Pierre had much fear, and among the same was "the hol' man" at the mill. CHAPTER II _The Old Man_ After leaving the Blue Goose Luna went straight to the superintendent's office. He was nettled rather than worried by Pierre's cautions. Worry implied doubt of his own wisdom, as well as fear of the old man. Superintendents had come to, and departed from, the Rainbow. Defiant fanfares had heralded their coming, confusion had reigned during their sojourn, their departure had been duly celebrated at the Blue Goose. This had been the invariable sequence. Through all these changes Pierre was complacently confident, but he never lost his head. The bottles of the Blue Goose bar were regularly drained, alike for welcoming and for speeding the departing incumbent at the Rainbow. The roulette whirred cheerfully, gold and silver coins clinked merrily, the underground furnace reddened and dulled at regular periods, and much lawful money passed back and forth between the Blue Goose and its patrons. Not that the passing back and forth was equal; Pierre attended to that. His even teeth gleamed between smiling lips, his swarthy cheeks glowed, and day by day his black hair seemed to grow more sleek and oily, and his hands smoother with much polishing. Pierre read printed words with ease. That which was neither printed nor spoken was spelled out, sometimes with wrinkling of brows and narrowing of eyes, but with unmistakable correctness in the end. From the faces and actions of men he gathered wisdom, and this wisdom was a lamp to his feet, and in dark places gave much light to his eyes. Thus it happened that with the coming of Richard Firmstone came also great caution to Pierre. The present superintendent blew no fanfares on his new trumpet, he expressed no opinion of his predecessors, and gave no hint of his future policy. Mr. Morrison, who oiled his hair and wore large diamonds in a much-starched, collarless shirt while at the bar of the Blue Goose, donned overalls and jumpers while doing "substitute" at the mill, and between times kept alive the spirit of rebellion in the bosoms of down-trodden, capitalist-ridden labour. Morrison freely voiced the opinion that the Rainbow crowd had experienced religion, and had sent out a Sunday-school superintendent to reform the workmen and to count the dollars that dropped from beneath the stamps of the big mill. In this opinion Luna, the mill foreman, concurred. He even raised the ante, solemnly averring that the old man opened the mill with prayer, sang hallelujahs at change of shift, and invoked divine blessing before chewing his grub. Whereat the down-trodden serfs of soulless corporations cheered long and loud, and called for fresh oblations at the bar of the Blue Goose. All these things Luna pondered in his mind, and his indignation waxed hot at Pierre. "The damned old frog-eater's losing his nerve; that's what! I ain't going to be held up by no frog-spawn." He opened the office door and clumped up to the railing. The superintendent looked up. "What is it, Luna?" "Long, on number ten battery, is sick and off shift. Shall we hang up ten, or put on Morrison?" The superintendent smiled. "Is it Morrison, or hang up?" he asked. The question was disconcerting. The foreman shifted his footing. "Morrison is all right," he said, doggedly. "He's a good battery man. Things ain't pushing at the Blue Goose, and he can come as well as not." "What's the matter with Morrison?" The superintendent's smile broadened. The foreman looked puzzled. "I've just been telling you--he's all right." "That's so. Only, back east, when a horse jockey gets frothy about the good points of his horse, we look sharp." The foreman grew impatient. "You haven't told me whether to hang up ten or not." "I'm not going to. You are foreman of the mill. Put on anyone you want; fire anyone you want. It's nothing to me; only," he looked hard, "you know what we're running this outfit for." The foreman appeared defiant. Guilty thoughts were spurring him to unwise defence. "If the ore ain't pay I can't get it out." "I'll attend to the ore, that's my business. Get out what there is in it, that's yours." He leaned forward to his papers. The foreman shifted uneasily. His defence was not complete. He was not sure that he had been attacked. He knew Morrison of the Blue Goose. He knew the workings of the mill. He had thought he knew the old man. He was not so sure now. He was not even sure how much or how little he had let out. Perhaps Pierre's words had rattled him. He shifted from foot to foot, twirling his hat on his fingers. He half expected, half hoped, and half waited for another opening. None came. Through the muffled roar of the stamps he was conscious of the sharp scratch of the superintendent's pen. Then came the boom of the big whistle. It was change of shift. The jar of the office door closing behind him was not heard. At the mill he found Morrison. "You go on ten, in Long's place," he said, gruffly, as he entered the mill. Morrison stared at the retreating foreman. "What in hell," he began; then, putting things together in his mind, he shook his head, and followed the foreman into the mill. The superintendent was again interrupted by the rasping of hobnailed shoes on the office floor and the startled creak of the office railing as a large, loose-jointed man leaned heavily against it. His trousers, tucked into a pair of high-laced, large-eyed shoes, were belted at the waist in a conspicuous roll. A faded gray shirt, rolled up at the sleeves, disclosed a red undershirt and muscular arms. A well-shaped head with grey streaked hair, and a smooth, imperturbable face was shaded by a battered sombrero that was thrust back and turned squarely up in front. The superintendent's smile had nothing puzzling now. "Hello, Zephyr. Got another Camp Bird?" "Flying higher'n a Camp Bird this time." "How's that?" "Right up to the golden gates this time, sure. It's straight goods. St. Peter ain't going to take no post-prandial siestas from now on. I'm timbering my shots to keep from breaking the sky. Tell you what, I'm jarring them mansions in heaven wuss'n a New York subway contractor them Fifth Avenue palaces." Zephyr paused and glanced languidly at the superintendent. Firmstone chuckled. "Go on," he said. "I've gone as far as I can without flying. It's a lead from the golden streets of the New Jerusalem. Followed it up to the foot of Bingham Pass; caught it above the slide, then it took up the cliff, and disappeared in the cerulean. Say, Goggles, how are you off for chuck? I've been up against glory, and I'm down hungrier than a she-bear that's skipped summer and hibernated two winters." "Good! Guess Bennie will fix us up something. Can you wait a few minutes?" "I think I can. I've been practising on that for years. No telling when such things will come in handy. You don't object to music, Goggles?" "Not to music, no," Firmstone answered, with an amused glance at Zephyr. Zephyr, unruffled, drew from his shirt a well-worn harmonica. "Music hath charms," he remarked, brushing the instrument on the sleeve of his shirt. "Referring to my savage breast, not yours." He placed the harmonica to his lips, holding it in hollowed hands. His oscillating breath jarred from the metal reeds the doleful strains of _Home, Sweet Home_, muffled by the hollow of his hands into mournful cadences. At last Firmstone closed his desk. "If your breast is sufficiently soothed, let's see what Bennie can do for your stomach." As they passed from the office Zephyr carefully replaced the harmonica in his shirt. "I'd rather be the author of that touching little song than the owner of the Inferno. That's my new claim," he remarked, distantly. Firmstone laughed. "I thought your claim was nearer heaven." "The two are not far apart. 'Death, like a narrow sea, divides.' But my reminiscences were getting historical, which you failed to remark. I ain't no Wolfe and Pierre ain't no Montcalm, nor the Heights of Abraham ain't the Blue Goose. Pierre's a hog. At least, he's a close second. A hog eats snakes and likewise frogs. Pierre's only got as far as frogs, last I heard. Pierre's bad. Morrison's bad. Luna ain't. He thinks he is; but he ain't. I'm not posting you nor nothing. I'm only meditating out loud. That's all." They entered the mill boarding-house. Bennie, the cook, greeted Zephyr effusively. "Goggles invited me to pay my respects to you," Zephyr remarked. "I'm empty, and I'm thinking you can satisfy my longing as nothing else can do." Zephyr addressed himself to Bennie's viands. At last he rose from the table. "To eat and to sleep are the chief ends of man. I have eaten, and now I see I am tired. With your consent, uttered or unexpressed, I'll wrap the drapery of my bunk around me and take a snooze. And say, Goggles," he added, "if, the next time you inventory stock, you are shy a sack of flour and a side of bacon, you can remark to the company that prospectors is thick around here, and that prospectors is prone to evil as the sparks fly upward. That's where the flour and bacon are going. Up to where St. Peter can smell them cooking; leastways he can if he hangs his nose over the wall and the wind's right." CHAPTER III _Élise_ Bennie was an early riser, as became a faithful cook; but, early as he usually was, this morning he was startled into wakefulness by a jarring chug, as Zephyr, with a relieved grunt, dropped a squashy sack on the floor near his bunk. Bennie sprang to a sitting posture, rubbing his sleepy eyes to clear his vision; but, before he could open his eyes or his mouth beyond a startled ejaculation, Zephyr had departed. He soon reappeared. There was another chug, another grunt, and another departure. Four times this was repeated. Then Zephyr seated himself on the bunk, and, pushing back his sombrero, mopped his perspiring brow. "What the--" Bennie started in, but Zephyr's uplifted hand restrained him. "The race is not to the swift, Julius Benjamin. The wise hound holds his yap till he smells a hot foot. Them indecisive sacks is hot footses, Julius Benjamin; but it isn't your yap, not by quite some." "What's up, Zephyr?" asked Bennie. "I'm not leaky." "Them gelatinous sacks," Zephyr went on, eyeing them meditatively, "I found hidden in the bushes near the mine, and they contain mighty interesting matter. They're an epitome of life. They started straight, but missed connections. Pulled up at the wrong station. I've thrown the switch, and now you and me, Julius, will make it personally conducted the rest of the trip." "Hm!" mused Bennie. "I see. That stuff's been pinched from the mill." "Good boy, Julius Benjamin! You're doing well. You'll go into words of two syllables next." Zephyr nodded, with a languid smile. "But, to recapitulate, as my old school-teacher used to say, there's thousands of dollars in them sacks. The Rainbow ain't coughing up no such rich stuff as that. That rock is broken; ergo, it's been under the stamps. It's coarse and fine, from which I infer it hasn't been through the screens. And furthermore----" Bennie interrupted eagerly. "They've just hung up the stamps and raked out the rich stuff that's settled between the dies!" "Naturally, gold being heavier than quartz. Julius Benjamin, you're fit for the second reader." Bennie laughed softly. "It's Luna or Morrison been robbing the mill. Won't Frenchy pull the long face when he hears of your find?" Zephyr made no farther reply than to blow _There'll Be a Hot Time_ from pursed lips as he rolled a cigarette. "So there will be," Bennie answered. "Not to-night, Bennie." Zephyr was puffing meditative whiffs in the air. "Great things move slowly. Richard Firmstone is great, Benjamin; leave it to him." Bennie was already dressed, and Zephyr, throwing the stub of his cigarette through the open window, followed him to the kitchen. He ate his specially prepared breakfast with an excellent appetite. "I think I'll raise my bet. I mentioned a sack of flour and a side of bacon. I'll take a can of coffee and a dab of sugar. St. Peter'll appreciate that. 'Tis well to keep on the right side of the old man. Some of us may have occasion to knock at his gate before the summer is over. You've heard of my new claim, Bennie?" Bennie made no reply. Between packing up Zephyr's supplies, attending to breakfast for the men, and thinking of the sacks of stolen ore, he was somewhat preoccupied. Zephyr stowed the supplies in his pack and raised it to his shoulder. Bennie looked up in surprise. "You're not going now, are you?" Zephyr was carefully adjusting the straps of his pack. "It looks pretty much that way, Benjamin. When a man's got all he wants, it's time for him to lope. If he stays, he might get more and possibly--less." "What will I do with these sacks?" Bennie asked hurriedly, as Zephyr passed through the door. Zephyr made no reply, further than softly to whistle _Break the News to Mother_ as he swung into the trail. He clumped sturdily along, apparently unmindful of the rarefied air that would ordinarily make an unburdened man gasp for breath. His lips were still pursed, though they had ceased to give forth sound. He came to the nearly level terrace whereon, among scattered boulders, were clustered the squat shanties of the town of Pandora. He merely glanced at the Blue Goose, whose polished windows were just beginning to glow with the light of the rising sun. He saw a door open at the far end of the house and Madame La Martine emerge, a broom in her hands and a dust-cloth thrown over one shoulder. Pierre's labours ended late. Madame's began very early. Both had an unvarying procession. Pierre had much hilarious company; it was his business to keep it so. He likewise had many comforting thoughts; these cost him no effort. The latter came as a logical sequence to the former. Madame had no company, hilarious or otherwise. Instead of complacent thoughts, she had anxiety. And so it came to pass that, while Pierre grew sleek and smooth with the passing of years, Madame developed many wrinkles and grey hairs and a frightened look, from the proffering of wares that were usually thrust aside with threatening snarls and many harsh words. Pierre was not alone in the unstinted pouring forth of the wine of pleasure for the good of his companions and in uncorking his vials of wrath for the benefit of his wife. Zephyr read the whole dreary life at a glance. A fleeting thought came to Zephyr. How would it have been with Madame had she years ago chosen him instead of Pierre? A smile, half pitying, half contemptuous, was suggested by an undecided quiver of the muscles of his face, more pronounced by the light in his expressive eyes. He left the waggon trail that zig-zagged up the steep grade beyond the outskirts of the town, cutting across their sharp angles in a straight line. Near the foot of an almost perpendicular cliff he again picked up the trail. Through a notch in the brow of the cliff a solid bar of water shot forth. The solid bar, in its fall broken to a misty spray, fell into a mossy basin at the cliff's foot, regathered, and then, sliding and twisting in its rock-strewn bed, gurgled among nodding flowers and slender, waving willows that were fanned into motion by the breath of the falling spray. Where the brook crossed the trail Zephyr stood still. Not all at once. There was an indescribable suggestion of momentum overcome by the application of perfectly balanced power. Zephyr did not whistle, even softly. Instead, there was a low hum-- _But the maiden in the garden Was the fairest flower of all._ Zephyr deliberately swung his pack from his shoulders, deposited it on the ground, and as deliberately seated himself on the pack. There was an unwonted commotion among the cluster of thrifty plants at which Zephyr was looking expectantly. A laughing face with large eyes sparkling with mischievous delight looked straight into his own. As the girl rose to her feet she tossed a long, heavy braid of black hair over her shoulder. "You thought you would scare me; now, didn't you?" She came forth from the tangled plants and stood before him. Zephyr's eyes were resting on the girl's face with a smile of quiet approbation. Tall and slender, she was dressed in a dark gown, whose sailor blouse was knotted at the throat with a red scarf; at her belt a holster showed a silver-mounted revolver. An oval face rested on a shapely neck, as delicately poised as the nodding flowers she held in her hand. A rich glow, born of perfect health and stimulating air, burned beneath the translucent olive skin. Zephyr made no direct reply to her challenge. "Why aren't you helping Madame at the Blue Goose?" "Because I've struck, that's why." There was a defiant toss of the head, a compressed frown on the arching brows. Like a cloud wind-driven from across the sun the frown disappeared; a light laugh rippled from between parted lips. "Daddy was mad, awfully mad. You ought to have seen him." The flowers fell from her hands as she threw herself into Pierre's attitude. "'Meenx,'" she mimicked, "'you mek to defy me in my own house? Me? Do I not have plenty ze troub', but you mus' mek ze more? _Hein?_ Ansaire!' And so I did. So!" She threw her head forward, puckered her lips, thrusting out the tip of her tongue at the appreciative Zephyr. "Oh, it's lots of fun to get daddy mad. 'Vaire is my whip, my dog whip? I beat you. I chastise you, meenx!'" The girl stooped to pick up her scattered flowers. "Only it frightens poor mammy so. Mammy never talks back only when daddy goes for me. I'd just like to see him when he comes down this morning and finds me gone. It would be lots of fun. Only, if I was there, I couldn't be here, and it's just glorious here, isn't it? What's the trouble, Zephyr? You haven't said a word to me all this time." "When your blessed little tongue gets tired perhaps I'll start in. There's no more telling when that will be than what I'll say, supposing I get the chance." "Oh, I knew there was something I wanted especially to see you about." The face grew cloudy. "What do you think? You know I was sixteen my last birthday, just a week ago?" She paused and looked at Zephyr interrogatively. "I want to know where you are all the time now. It's awfully important. I may want to elope with you at a moment's notice!" She looked impressively at Zephyr. Zephyr's jaw dropped. "What the mischief----" Élise interrupted: "No, wait; I'm not through. Daddy got very playful that day, chucked my chin, and called me _ma chère enfant_. That always means mischief. 'Élise bin seexten to-day, heh? Bimeby she tink to liv' her hol' daddy and her hol' mammy and bin gone hoff wiz anodder feller, _hein_?' Then he made another dab at my chin. I knew what he meant." She again assumed Pierre's position. "'What you say, _ma chérie_? I pick you hout one nice man! One ver' nice man! _Hein?_ M'sieu Mo-reeson. A ver' nice man. He ben took good care _ma chérie_!'" Zephyr was betrayed into a startled motion. Élise was watching him with narrowed eyes. There was a gleam of satisfaction. "That's all right, Zephyr. That's just what I did, only I did more. I told daddy I'd just like M'sieu Mo-reeson to say marry to me! I told daddy that I'd take the smirk out of M'sieu Mo-reeson's face and those pretty curls out of M'sieu Mo-reeson's head if he dared look marry at me. Only," she went on, "I'm a little girl, after all, and I thought the easiest way would be to elope with you. I would like to see M'sieu Mo-reeson try to take me away from a big, strong man like you." There was an expression of intense scorn on her face that bared the even teeth. Zephyr was not conscious of Élise. There was a hard, set look on his face. Élise noted it. She tossed her head airily. "Oh, you needn't look so terribly distressed. You needn't, if you don't want to. I dare say that the superintendent at the mill would jump at the chance. I think I shall ask him, anyway." Her manner changed. "Why do they always call him the old man? He is not such a very old man." "They'd call a baby 'the old man' if he was superintendent. Do they say much about him?" Zephyr asked, meditatively. "Oh yes, lots. M'sier Mo-reeson"--she made a wry face at the name--"is always talking about that minion of capitalistic oppression that's sucking the life-blood of the serfs of toil. Daddy hates the old man. He's afraid of him. Daddy always hates anyone he's afraid of, except me." Zephyr grunted absently. "That's so." Élise spoke emphatically. "That's why I'm here to-day. I told daddy that if I was old enough to get married I was old enough to do as I liked." In spite of his languid appearance Zephyr was very acute. He was getting a great deal that needed careful consideration. He was intensely interested, and he wanted to hear more. He half hesitated, then decided that the end justified the means. "What makes you think that Pierre hates the old man?" he ventured, without changing countenance. "Oh, lots of things. He tells Luna and M'sieu Mo-reeson"--another wry face--"to 'look hout.' He talks to the men, tells them that the 'hol' man ees sleek, ver' sleek, look hout, da's hall, an' go slow,' and a lot of things. I'm awfully hungry, Zephyr, and I don't want to go down for breakfast. Haven't you got something good in your pack? It looks awfully good." She prodded the pack with inquisitive fingers. Zephyr rose to his feet. "It will be better when I've cooked it. You'll eat a breakfast after my cooking?" Élise clapped her hands. "That will be fine. I'll just sit here and boss you. If you're good, and you are, you know, I'll tell you some more about M'sieu. Suppose we just call him M'sieu, just you and me. That'll be our secret." Zephyr gathered dry sticks and started a fire. He opened his pack, cut off some slices of bacon, and, impaling them on green twigs, hung them before the fire. A pinch of salt and baking powder in a handful of flour was mixed into a stiff paste, stirred into the frying-pan, which was propped up in front of the fire. He took some cups from his pack, and, filling them with water, put them on the glowing coals. Élise kept up a rattling chatter through it all. "Oh, I almost forgot. Daddy says M'sieu is going to be a great man, a great labour leader. That's what M'sieu says himself--that he will lead benighted labour from the galling chains of slavery into the glorious light of freedom's day." Élise waved her arms and rolled her eyes. Then she stopped, laughing. "It's awfully funny. I hear it all when I sit at the desk. You know there's only thin boards between my desk and daddy's private room, and I can't help but hear. That coffee and bacon smell good, and what a lovely bannock! Aren't you almost ready? It's as nice as when we were on the ranch, and you used to carry me round on your back. That was an awful long time ago, though, wasn't it?" Zephyr only grunted in reply. He pursed his lips for a meditative whistle, thought better of it, took the frying-pan from its prop, and sounded the browning bannock with his fingers. _For the babbling streams of youth Grow to silent pools of truth When they find a thirsty hollow On their way._ He spoke dreamily. "What are you talking about?" Élise broke in. "Oh, nothing in particular. I was just thinking--might have been thinking out loud." "That's you, every time, Zephyr. You think without talking, and I talk without thinking. It's lots more fun. Do you think I will ever grow into a dear, sober old thing like you? Just tell me that." She stooped down, taking Zephyr's face in both her hands and turned it up to her own. Zephyr looked musingly up into the laughing eyes, and took her hands into his. "Not for the same reasons, I guess, not if I can help it," he added, half to himself. "Now, if you'll be seated, I'll serve breakfast." He dropped the hands and pointed to a boulder. Élise ate the plain fare with the eager appetite of youth and health. From far down the gulch the muffled roar of the stamps rose and fell on the light airs that drifted up and down. Through it all was the soft swish of the falling spray, the sharp _blip! blip!_ as points of light, gathered from dripping boughs, grew to sparkling gems, then, losing their hold, fell into little pools at the foot of the cliff. High above the straggling town the great cables of the tram floated in the air like dusty webs, and up and down these webs, like black spiders, darted the buckets that carried the ore from mine to mill, then disappeared in the roaring mill, and dumping their loads of ore shot up again into sight, and, growing in size, swept on toward the cliff and passed out of sight over the falls above. Across the narrow gulch a precipice sheered up eight hundred feet, a hard green crown of stunted spruces on its retreating brow, above the crown a stretch of soft green meadow steeply barred with greener willows, above the meadow jagged spires of blackened lava, thrust up from drifts of shining snow: a triple tiara crowning this silent priest of the mountains. To the east the long brown slide was marked with clifflets mottled as was Joseph's coat of many colours, with every shade of red and yellow that rusting flecks of iron minerals could give, brightened here and there with clustered flowers which marked a seeping spring, up and up, broken at last by a jagged line of purple that lay softly against the clear blue of the arching sky. To the west the mountains parted and the vision dropped to miles of browning mesa, flecked with ranchers' squares of irrigated green. Still farther a misty haze of distant mountains rose, with the great soft bell of the curving sky hovering over all. Zephyr ate in a silence which Élise did not care to break. Her restless eyes glanced from Zephyr to the mountains, fell with an eager caress on the flowers that almost hid the brook, looked out to the distant mesa, and last of all shot defiance at the blazing windows of the Blue Goose that were hurtling back the fiery darts of the attacking sun. She sprang to her feet, brushing the crumbs from her clothes. "Much obliged, Mr. Zephyr, for your entertainment." She swept him a low courtesy. "I told you I was out for a lark to-day. Now you can wash the dishes." Zephyr had also risen. He gave no heed to her playful attitude. "I want you to pay especial attention, Élise." "Oh, gracious!" she exclaimed. "Now I'm in for it." She straightened her face, but she could not control the mischievous sparkle of her eyes. There was little of meditation but much decision in Zephyr's words. "Don't let Pierre tease you, persuade you, frighten you, or bulldoze you into marrying that Morrison. Do you hear? Get away. Run away." "Or elope," interrupted Élise. "Don't skip that." "Go to Bennie, the old man, or to anyone, if you can't find me." "What a speech, Zephyr! Did any of it get away?" Zephyr was too much in earnest even to smile. "Remember what I say." "You put in an awful lot of hard words. But then, I don't need to remember. I may change my mind. Maybe there'd be a whole lot of fun after all in marrying M'sieu. I'd just like to show him that he can't scare me the way daddy does mammy. It would be worth a whole box of chips. On the whole I think I'll take daddy's advice. Bye-bye, Zephyr." She again picked up her scattered flowers and went dancing and skipping down the trail. At the turn she paused for an instant, blew Zephyr a saucy kiss from the tips of her fingers, then passed out of sight. A voice floated back to the quiet figure by the fire. "Don't feel too bad, Zephyr. I'll probably change my mind again." CHAPTER IV _The Watched Pot Begins to Boil_ Of all classes of people under the sun, the so-called labouring man has best cause to pray for deliverance from his friends. His friends are, or rather were, of three classes. The first, ardent but wingless angels of mercy, who fail to comprehend the fact that the unlovely lot of their would-be wards is the result of conditions imposed more largely from within than from without; the second, those who care neither for lots nor conditions, regarding the labourer as a senseless tool with which to hew out his own designs; the third, those who adroitly knock together the heads of the labourer and his employer and impartially pick the pockets of each in the general _mêlée_ which is bound to follow. The past _were_ is designedly contrasted with the present _are_, for it is a fact that conditions all around are changing for the better; slowly, perhaps, but nevertheless surely. The philanthropic friend of the labourer is learning to develop balancing tail-feathers of judgment wherewith to direct the flights of wings of mercy. The employer is beginning to realise the beneficial results of mutual understanding and of considerate co-operation, and the industrious fomenter of strife is learning that bones with richer marrow may be more safely cracked by sensible adjustment than with grievous clubs wielded over broken heads. Even so, the millennium is yet far away, and now, as in the past, the path that leads to it is uphill and dim, and is beset with many obstacles. There are no short cuts to the summit. In spite of pessimistic clamours that the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer, frothy yowls for free and unlimited coinage at sixteen to one, or for fiat paper at infinity to nothing, the fact remains that, whereas kings formerly used signets for the want of knowledge to write their names, licked their greasy fingers for lack of knives and forks, and starved in Ireland with plenty in France, the poorest to-day can, if they will, indite readable words on well-sized paper, do things in higher mathematics, and avoid the thankless task of dividing eight into seven and looking for the remainder. Potatoes are worth fifty cents a bushel. Any yokel can dig a hole in the ground and plant the seed and in due time gather the ripened tubers. The engineer who drives his engine at sixty miles an hour, flashing by warning semaphores, rolling among coloured lights, clattering over frogs and switches, is no yokel. Therefore, because of this fact, with the compensation of one day he can, if he so elects, buy many potatoes, or employ many yokels. Had Sir Isaac Newton devoted to the raising of potatoes the energy which he gave to astronomy, he might have raised larger potatoes and more to the hill than his yokel neighbour. But, his conditions having been potatoes, his reward would have been potatoes, instead of the deathless glory of the discovery and enunciation of the law of gravity. The problem is very simple after all. The world has had a useless deal of trouble because no one has ever before taken the trouble to state the problem and to elaborate it. It is just as simple as is the obvious fact that _x_ plus _y_ equals _a_. There is a possibility, however, that we have been going too fast, and have consequently overlooked a few items of importance. We forgot for the moment, as often happens, that the factors in the problem are not homogeneous digits with fixed values, but complex personalities with decided opinions of their own as to their individual and relative importance, as well as pugnacious tendencies for compelling an acceptance of their assumptions by equally pugnacious factors which claim a differential valuation in their own favour. This consideration presents a somewhat different and more difficult phase of the problem. It really compels us to defer attempts at final solution, for the time being, at least; to make the best adjustment possible under present conditions, putting off to the future the final application, much on the same principle that communities bond their present public possessions for their own good and complacently bestow upon posterity the obligation of settling the bills. Considered in this light, the end of the struggle between capital and labour is not yet. Each is striving for the sole possession and control of things which belong to neither alone. Each looks upon the other not as a co-labourer but as a rival, instead of making intelligent and united effort for an object unattainable by either alone. If capital would smoke this in his cigar and labour the same in his pipe, the soothing effects might tend to more amicable and effective use of what is now dissipated energy. However, universal panaceas are not to be hoped for. The mailed fist puts irritating chips upon swaggering shoulders, and the unresentful turning of smitten cheeks is conducive to a thrifty growth of gelatinous nincompoops. The preceding _status quo_ existed in general at the Rainbow mines and mill, besides having a few individual characteristics peculiarly their own. Miners and millmen, for the most part recent importations from all countries of Europe, had come from the realms of oppression to the land of the free with very exaggerated notions of what freedom really was. The dominant expression of this idea was that everyone could do as he pleased, and that if the other fellow didn't like it, he, the other fellow, could get out. The often enunciating of abstract principles led to their liberal application to concrete facts. In this application they had able counsel in the ambitious Morrison. "Who opened these mountain wilds?" Morrison was wont to inquire, not for information, but for emphasis. "Who discovered, amidst toils and dangers and deprivations and snowslides, these rich mines of gold and silver? Who made them accessible by waggon trail and railroads and burros? Who but the honest sons of honest toil? Who, when these labours are accomplished, lolls in the luxurious lap of the voluptuous East, reaping the sweat of your brows, gathering in the harvest of hands toiling for three dollars a day or less? Who, but the purse-proud plutocrat who sits on his cushioned chair in Wall Street, sending out his ruthless minions to rob the labourer of his toil and to express his hard-won gold to the stanchless maw of the ghoulish East. Rise, noble sons of toil, rise! Stretch forth your horny hands and gather in your own! Raise high upon these mountain-peaks the banner of freedom's hope before despairing eyes raised from the greed-sodden plains of the effete East!" Whereat the sons of toil would cheer and then proceed to stretch forth hands to unripened fruits with such indiscriminating activity that both mine and mill ceased to yield expenses to the eastern plutocrat, and even the revenues of the Blue Goose were seriously impaired, to the great distress of Pierre. These rhodomontades of Morrison had grains of plausible truth as nuclei. The workmen never, or rarely, came in personal contact with their real employers. Their employers were in their minds men who reaped where others had sown, who gathered where they had not strewn. The labourer gave no heed to costly equipment which made mines possible, or at best weighed them but lightly against the daily toil of monotonous lives. They saw tons of hard-won ore slide down the long cables, crash through the pounding stamps, saw the gold gather on the plates, saw it retorted, and the shining bars shipped East. Against this gold of unknown value, and great because unknown, they balanced their daily wage, that looked pitifully small. The yield of their aggregate labour in foul-aired stopes and roaring mill they could see in one massive lump. They could not see the aggregate of little bites that reduced the imposing mass to a tiny dribble which sometimes, but not always, fell into the treasury of the company. They would not believe, even if they saw. For these reasons, great is the glory of the leaders of labour who are rising to-day, holding restraining hands on turbulent ignorance and taking wise counsel with equally glorious leaders who are striving to enforce the truth that all gain over just compensation is but a sacred trust for the benefit of mankind. These things are coming to be so to-day. But so long as sons of wealth are unmindful of their obligations, and so long as ignorance breathes forth noxious vapours to poison its victims, so long will there be battles to be fought and victories to be won. Thus was the way made ready for the feet of one of the labourer's mistaken friends. Morrison was wily, if not wise. He distinguished between oratory and logic. He kindled the flames of indignation and resentment with the one and fed them with the other. But in the performance of each duty he never lost sight of himself. Under the slack management of previous administrations, the conditions of the Rainbow mine and mill had rapidly deteriorated. In the mine a hundred sticks of powder were used or wasted where one would have sufficed. Hundreds of feet of fuse, hundreds of detonators, and pounds of candles were thrown away. Men would climb high in the mine to their work only to return later for some tool needed, or because their supplies had not lasted through their shift. If near the close of hours, they would sit and gossip with their fellow-workmen. Drills and hammers would be buried in the stope, or thrown over the dump. Rock would be broken down with the ore, and the mixed mass, half ore and half rock, would be divided impartially and sent, one-half to the dump and one-half to the mill. At the mill was the same shiftless state of affairs. Tools once used were left to be hunted for the next time they were wanted. On the night shift the men slept at their posts or deserted them for the hilarious attractions of the Blue Goose. The result was that the stamps, unfed, having no rock to crush, pounded steel on steel, so that stamps were broken, bossheads split, or a clogged screen would burst, leaving the half-broken ore to flow over the plates and into the wash-sluices with none of its value extracted. Among the evils that followed in the train of slack and ignorant management not the least was the effect upon the men. If a rich pocket of ore was struck the men stole it all. They argued that it was theirs, because they found it. The company would never miss it; the company was making enough, anyway, and, besides, the superintendent never knew when a pocket was opened, and never told them that it was not theirs. These pilfered pockets were always emptied at the Blue Goose. On these occasions the underground furnace glowed ruddily, and Pierre would stow the pilfered gold among other pilfered ingots, and would in due time emerge from his subterranean retreat in such cheerful temper that he had no heart to browbeat the scared-looking Madame. Whereupon Madame would be divided in her honest soul between horror at Pierre's wrong-doing and thankfulness for a temporary reprieve from his biting tongue. The miners stole supplies of all kinds and sold them or gave them to their friends. Enterprising prospectors, short of funds, as is usually the case, "got a job at the mine," then, having stocked up, would call for their time and go forth to hunt a mine of their own. The men could hardly be blamed for these pilferings. A slack land-owner who makes no protest against the use of his premises as a public highway, in time not only loses his property but his right to protest as well. So it happened at the Rainbow mine and mill that, as no locks were placed on magazines, as the supply-rooms were open to all, and as no protest was made against the men helping themselves, the men came to feel that they were taking only what belonged to them, whatever use was made of the appropriated supplies. These were some of the more obvious evils which Firmstone set about remedying. Magazines and supply-rooms were locked and supplies were issued on order. Workmen ceased wandering aimlessly about while on shift. Rock and ore were broken separately, and if an undue proportion of rock was delivered at the mill it was immediately known at the mine and in unmistakable terms. The effect of these changes on the men was various. Some took an honest pride in working under a man who knew his business. More chafed and fumed under unwonted restrictions. These were artfully nursed by the wily Morrison, with the result that a dangerous friction was developing between the better disposed men and the restless growlers. This feeling was also diligently stimulated by Morrison. "Go easy," was his caution; "but warm it up for them." "Warm it up for them!" indignantly protested one disciple. "Them fellers is the old man's pets." Morrison snorted. "Pets, is it? Pets be damned! It's only a matter of time when the old man will be dancing on a hot stove, if you've got any sand in your crops. The foreman's more than half with you now. Get the union organised, and we'll run out the pets and the old man too. You'll never get your rights till you're organised." At the mill, Firmstone's nocturnal visits at any unexpected hour made napping a precarious business and visits to the Blue Goose not to be thought of. The results of Firmstone's vigilance showed heavily in reduced expenses and in increased efficiency of labour; but these items were only negative. The fact remained that the yield of the mill in bullion was but slightly increased and still subject to extreme variations. The conclusion was inevitable that the mill was being systematically plundered. Firmstone knew that there must be collusion, not only among the workmen, but among outsiders as well. This was an obvious fact, but the means to circumvent it were not so obvious. He knew that there were workmen in the mill who would not steal a penny, but he also knew that these same men would preserve a sullen silence with regard to the peculations of their less scrupulous fellows. It was but the grown-up sense of honour, that will cause a manly schoolboy to be larruped to the bone before he will tell about his errant and cowardly fellow. Firmstone was well aware of the simmering discontent which his rigid discipline was arousing. He regretted it, but he was hopeful that the better element among the men would yet gain the ascendant. "He's square," remarked one of his defenders. "There was a mistake in my time, last payroll, and he looked over the time himself." "That's so," in answer to one objector. "I was in the office and saw him." "You bet he's square," broke in another. "Didn't I get a bad pair of boots out of the commissary, and didn't he give me another pair in their place? That's what." If Morrison and Pierre had not been in active evidence Firmstone would have won the day without a fight. CHAPTER V _Bennie Opens the Pot and Firmstone Comes in_ Firmstone was late to breakfast the day of Zephyr's departure, and Bennie was doing his best to restrain his impatience. When at last the late breakfaster appeared, Bennie's manner was noticeably different from the ordinary. He was a stanch defender of the rights of the American citizen, an uncompromising opponent of companies and trusts, a fearless and aggressive exponent of his own views; but withal a sincere admirer and loyal friend of Firmstone. Bennie knew that in his hands were very strong cards, and he was casting about in his mind for the most effective mode of playing them. "Good morning, Bennie," Firmstone called out, on entering the dining-room. Bennie returned the greeting with a silent nod. Firmstone glanced at the clock. "It is pretty late for good morning and breakfast, that's a fact." Bennie disappeared in the kitchen. He returned and placed Firmstone's breakfast before him. "What's the matter, Bennie?" Firmstone thought he knew, but events were soon to show him his mistake. "Matter enough, Mr. Firmstone, as you'll soon find." Bennie was getting alarming. Firmstone ate in silence. Bennie watched with impassive dignity. "Is your breakfast all right?" he finally asked, unbendingly. "All right, Bennie. Better than I deserve, pouncing on you at this hour." He again looked up at the clock. "Come when you like, late or early, you'll get the best I can give you." Bennie was still rigid. Firmstone was growing more puzzled. Bennie judged it time to support his opening. "I'm an outspoken man, Mr. Firmstone, as becomes an American citizen. If I take an honest dollar, I'll give an honest return." "No one doubts that, Bennie." Firmstone leaned back in his chair. He was going to see it out. Bennie's support was rapidly advancing. "You know, Mr. Firmstone, that I have my opinions and speak my mind about the oppression of the poor by the rich. I left my home in the East to come out here where it was less crowded and where there was more freedom. It's only change about, I find. In the East the rich were mostly Americans who oppressed the dagoes, being for their own good; but here it's the other way. Here's Mike the Finn, and Jansen the Swede, and Hansen the Dane, and Giuseppe the dago, and Pat the Irishman the boss of the whole dirty gang. Before God I take shame to myself for being an honest man and American born, and having this thieving gang to tell me how long I can work, and where I can buy, with a swat in the jaw and a knife in my back for daring to say my soul is my own and sticking to it against orders from the union." "Thunder and Mars, Bennie! What's the matter?" Bennie's reserves came up with a rush. He thrust open the door of his room and jerked a blanket from the sacks which Zephyr had left there. Firmstone gave a low whistle of surprise. "There's matter for you, Mr. Firmstone." "Where under the sun did you get these?" Firmstone had opened one of the sacks and was looking at the ore. "I didn't get them. Zephyr got them and asked me to see that you had them. There's a man for you! 'Twas little white paint the Lord had when he came West, but he put two good coats of it on Zephyr's back." Firmstone made no reply to Bennie's eulogy of Zephyr. He closed and retied the opened sacks. "There's mighty interesting reading in these sacks, Bennie." "Those were Zephyr's words, sir." "That ore was taken from the mill last night. Luna was on shift, Long was sick, and Luna put Morrison in his place." Firmstone looked at Bennie inquisitively. He was trying his facts on the cook. "That's so, sir," remarked Bennie. "But you'll never make a hen out of a rooster by pulling out his tail-feathers." Firmstone laughed. "Well, Bennie, that's about the way I sized it up myself. Keep quiet about this. I want to get these sacks down to the office some time to-day." He left the room and went to the office. Luna reported to the office that night as usual before going on shift. Firmstone gave a few directions, and then turned to his work. Shortly after twelve Luna was surprised at seeing the superintendent enter the mill. "Cut off the feed in the batteries." The order was curt, and Luna, much bewildered, hastened to obey. Firmstone followed him around back of the batteries, where automatic machines dropped the ore under the stamps. Firmstone waited until there began to come the sound of dropping stamps pounding on the naked dies, then he gave orders to hang up the stamps and shut down the mill. This was done. The rhythmic cadence of the falling stamps was broken into irregular blows as one by one the stamps were propped up above the revolving cams, till finally only the hum of pulleys and the click of belts were heard. These sounds also ceased as the engine slowed and finally stopped. "Shall I lay off the men?" asked the foreman. "No. Have them take out the screens." This also was done, and then Firmstone, accompanied by Luna, went from battery to battery. They first scraped out the loose rock, and afterward, with a long steel spoon, took samples of the crushed ore from between the dies. The operation was a long one; but at length the last battery was sampled. Firmstone put the last sample in a sack with the others. "Shall I carry the sack for you?" asked Luna. "No. Start up the mill, and then come to the office." Firmstone turned, and, with the heavy sack on his shoulder, left the mill. There were a hundred stamps in the mill. The stamps were divided into batteries of ten each. Each battery was driven separately by a belt from the main shaft. There was a man in attendance on every twenty stamps. Firmstone had taken samples from each battery, and each sample bore the number of the battery. He had taken especial care to call this to Luna's attention. The foreman saw to replacing the screens, and, when the mill was again started, he went to the superintendent's office. He knew very well that an unpleasant time awaited him; but, like the superintendent, he had his course of action mapped out. The foreman was a very wise man within a restricted circle. He knew that the battle was his, if he fought within its circumference. Outside of the circle he did not propose to be tempted. Firmstone could not force him out. Those who could, would not attempt it for very obvious and personal reasons. Luna was aware that Firmstone knew that there was thieving, and was morally certain as to who were the thieves, but lacked convincing proof. This was his protecting circle. Firmstone could not force him out of it. Morrison and Pierre knew not only of the thieving, but the thieves. They could force him out, but they would not. Luna was tranquil. Luna saw Firmstone in the laboratory as he entered the railed enclosure. He opened the railing gate, passed through the office, and entered the laboratory. Firmstone glanced at the foreman, but he met only a stolid face with no sign of confusion. "Pan these samples down." Without a word Luna emptied the sacks into little pans and carefully washed off the crushed rock, leaving the grains of gold in the pans. Eight of the pans showed rich in gold, the last two hardly a trace. Firmstone placed the pans in order. "What do you make of that?" he asked, sharply. Luna shook his head. "That's too much for me." "What batteries did these two come from?" Firmstone pointed to the two plates. "Nine and Ten," the foreman answered, promptly. "Who works on Nine and Ten?" "Clancy day and Long night," was the ready answer. "Did Long work last night?" "No. He was sick. I told you that, and I asked you if I should put on Morrison. You didn't say nothing against it." "Did Nine and Ten run all night?" "Except for an hour or two, maybe. Nine worked a shoe loose and Ten burst a screen. That's likely to happen any time. We had to hang up for that." "You say you can give no explanation of this?" Firmstone pointed to the empty pans. "No, sir." "Look this over." Firmstone went to his desk in the office and Luna followed him. He picked up a paper covered with figures marked "Mine Assays, May," and handed it to the foreman. Luna glanced over the sheet, then looked inquiringly at Firmstone. "Well?" he finally ventured. "What do you make of it?" Firmstone asked. Luna turned to the assay sheet. "The average of two hundred assays taken twice a week, twenty-five assays each time, gives twenty-five dollars a ton for the month of May." Luna read the summary. Firmstone wrote the number on a slip of paper, then took the sheet from the foreman. "You understand, then, that the ore taken from the mine and sent to the mill in May averaged twenty-five dollars a ton?" "Yes, that's right." Luna was getting puzzled. "Very good. You're doing well. Now look at this sheet." Firmstone handed him another paper. "Now read the summary." Luna read aloud: "Average loss in tailings, daily samples, May, two dollars and seventy-five cents a ton." "You understand from this, do you not, that the gold recovered from the plates should then be twenty-two dollars and twenty-five cents a ton?" "Yes, sir." Luna's face was reddening; beads of perspiration were oozing from his forehead. "Well, then," pursued Firmstone, "just look over this statement. Read it out loud." Luna took the paper offered him, and began to read. "What do you make out of that?" Firmstone was looking straight into the foreman's eyes. Luna tried his best to return the look, but his eyes dropped. "I don't know," he stammered. "Then I'll tell you. Not that I need to, but I want you to understand that I know. It means that out of every ton of ore that was delivered to this mill in May thirteen dollars and forty-five cents have been stolen." Luna fairly gasped. He was startled by the statement to a cent of the amount stolen. He and his confederates had been compelled to take Pierre's unvouched statements. Therefore he could not controvert the figures, had he chosen. He did not know the amount. "There must have been a mistake, sir." "Mistake!" Firmstone blazed out. "What do you say to this?" He pulled a canvas from the sacks of ore that had been brought to the office. He expected to see Luna collapse entirely. Instead, a look of astonishment spread over the foreman's face. "I'll give up!" he exclaimed. He looked Firmstone squarely in the face. He saw his way clearly now. "You're right," he said. "There has been stealing. It's up to me. I'll fire anyone you say, or I'll quit myself, or you can fire me. But, before God, I never stole a dollar from the Rainbow mill." He spoke the literal truth. The spirit of it did not trouble him. Firmstone was astonished at the man's affirmations, but they did not deceive him, nor divert him from his purpose. "I'm not going to tell you whom to let out or take in," he replied. "I'm holding you responsible. I've told you a good deal, but not all, by a good long measure. This stealing has got to stop, and you can stop it. You would better stop it. Now go back to your work." That very night Firmstone wrote a full account of the recovery of the stolen ore, the evils which he found on taking charge of the property, the steps which he proposed for their elimination. He closed with these words: "It must be remembered that these conditions have had a long time in which to develop. At the very least, an equal time must be allowed for their elimination; but I believe that I shall be successful." CHAPTER VI _The Family Circle_ On the morning of Élise's strike for freedom, Pierre came to breakfast with his usual atmosphere of compressed wrath. He glanced at his breakfast which Madame had placed on the table at the first sound which heralded his approach. There was nothing there to break the tension and to set free the pent-up storm within. Much meditation, with fear and trembling, had taught Madame the proper amount of butter to apply to the hot toast, the proportion of sugar and cream to add to the coffee, and the exact shade of crisp and brown to put on his fried eggs. But a man bent on trouble can invariably find a cause for turning it loose. "Where is Élise?" he demanded. "Élise," Madame answered, evasively, "she is around somewhere." "Somewhere is nowhere. I demand to know." Pierre looked threatening. "Shall I call her?" Madame vouchsafed. "If you know not where she is, how shall you call her? Heh? If you know, mek ansaire!" "I don't know where she is." "_Bien!_" Pierre reseated himself and began to munch his toast savagely. Madame was having a struggle with herself. It showed plainly on the thin, anxious face. The lips compressed with determination, the eyes set, then wavered, and again the indeterminate lines of acquiescent subjection gained their accustomed ascendency. Back and forth assertion and complaisance fled and followed; only assertion was holding its own. The eggs had disappeared, also the greater part of the toast. Pierre swallowed the last of his coffee, and, without a look at his silent wife, began to push his chair from the table. Madame's voice startled him. "Élise is sixteen," she ventured. Pierre fell back in his chair, astonished. The words were simple and uncompromising, but the intonation suggested that they were not final. "Well?" he asked, explosively. "When are you going to send Élise away to school?" "To school?" Pierre was struggling with his astonishment. "Yes." Madame was holding herself to her determination with an effort. "To school? _Baste!_ She read, she write, she mek ze figure, is it not suffice? Heh?" "That makes no difference. You promised her father that you would send her away to school." Pierre looked around apprehensively. "Shut up! Kip quiet!" "I won't shut up, and I won't keep quiet." Madame's blood was warming. The sensation was as pleasant as it was unusual. "I will keep quiet for myself. I won't for Élise." "Élise! Élise! Ain't I do all right by Élise?" Pierre asked, aggressively. "She have plenty to eat, plenty to wear, you tek good care of her. Don't I tek good care, also? Me? Pierre? She mek no complain, heh?" "That isn't what her father wanted, and it isn't what you promised him." Pierre looked thoughtful; his face softened slightly. "We have no children, you and me. We have honly Élise, one li'l girl, _la bonne_ Élise. You wan' mek me give up _la bonne_ Élise? _P'quoi?_" His face blazed again as he looked up wrathfully. "You wan' mek her go to school! _P'quoi?_ So she learn mek _teedle, teedle_ on ze piano? So she learn speak gran'? So she tink of me, Pierre, one li'l Frenchmens, not good enough for her, for mek her shame wiz her gran' friends? Heh? Who mek ze care for ze li'l babby? Who mek her grow up strong? Heh? You mek her go school. You mek ze gran' dam-zelle. You mek her go back to her pip'l. You mek me, Pierre, you, grow hol' wiz noddings? Hall ze res' ze time wiz no li'l Élise? How you like li'l Élise go away and mek ze marry, and w'en she have li'l children, she say to her li'l children, '_Mes enfants, voila!_ Pierre and Madame, _très bon_ Pierre and Madame,' and _les petits enfants_ mek big eyes at Pierre and Madame and li'l Élise? She say, '_Pauvres enfants_, Pierre and Madame will not hurt you. _Bon_ Pierre! _Bonne_ Madame!'" Pierre made a gesture of deprecating pity. Madame was touched to the quick. Starting tears dimmed the heavy eyes. Had she not thought of all this a thousand times? If Pierre cared so much for li'l Élise how much more reason had she to care? Li'l Élise had been the only bright spot in her dreary life, yet she was firm. Élise had been very dear to her in the past, but her duty was plain. Her voice was gentler. "Élise is not ours, Pierre. It is harder to do now what we ought to have done long ago." Pierre rose and walked excitedly back and forth. He was speaking half to himself, half to Madame. "Sixtin year 'go li'l Élise mammy die. Sixtin year! She no say, 'Madame Marie, tek my li'l babby back Eas' to my friend, _hein_? No. She say, 'Madame Marie, my poor li'l babby ain' got no mammy no mo'. Tek good care my poor li'l babby.' Then she go die. We mek good care of ze li'l Élise, me and you, heh? We sen' away Élise? _Sacré non!_ Nevaire!" Pierre stopped, and looked fiercely at Madame. "Yes," answered Madame. "Her mammy asked me to care for her little baby, but it was for her father. When her father died he made you promise to give her to her friends. Don't I know how hard it is?" Her tears were flowing freely now. "Every year we said, 'She is yet too young to go. Next year we will keep our promise,' and next year she was dearer to us. And now she is sixteen. She must go." Pierre broke in fiercely: "She shall not! Sixtin year? Sixtin year she know honly me, Pierre, her daddy, and you, her mammy. What you tink, heh? Élise go school in one beeg city, heh? She mek herself choke wiz ze brick house and ze stone street. She get sick and lonesome for ze mountain, for her hol' daddy and her hol' mammy, for ze grass and ze flower." "That is for her to say. Send her away as you promised. Then"--Madame's heavy eyes grew deep, almost beautiful--"then, if she comes back to us!" Pierre turned sullenly. "She is mine. Mine and yours. She shall stay." Madame's tears ceased flowing. "She shall go." Her temerity frightened her. "I will tell her all if you don't send her away." Pierre did not explode, as she expected. Instead, there was the calm of invincible purpose. He held up one finger impressively. "I settle hall zis. _Écoutez!_ She shall marry. Right away. Queek. Da's hall." He left the room before Madame had time to reply. Madame was too terrified to think. The possibility conveyed in her husband's declaration had never suggested itself to her. Élise was still the little baby nestling in her arms, the little girl prattling and playing indoors and out, on the wide ranch, and later, Madame shuddered, when Pierre had abandoned the ranch for the Blue Goose, waiting at the bar, keeping Pierre's books, redeeming checks at the desk, moving out and in among the throng of coarse, uncouth men, but through it all the same beautiful, wilful, loving little girl, so dear to Madame's heart, so much of her life. What did it matter that profanity died on the lips of the men in her presence, that at her bidding they ceased to drink to intoxication, that hopeless wives came to her for counsel, that their dull faces lighted at her words, that in sickness or death she was to them a comfort and a refuge? What if Pierre had fiercely protected her from the knowledge of the more loathsome vices of a mining camp? It was no more than right. Pierre loved her. She knew that. Pierre was hoarding every shining dollar that came to his hand. Was he lavish in his garnishment of the Blue Goose? It was only for the more effective luring of other gold from the pockets of the careless, unthinking men who worked in mines or mills, or roamed among the mountains or washed the sands of every stream, spending all they found, hoping for and talking of the wealth which, if it came, would only smite them with more rapid destruction. And all these little rivulets, small each one alone, united at the Blue Goose into a growing stream that went no farther. For what end? Madame knew. For Pierre, life began and ended in Élise. Madame knew, and sympathized with this; but her purpose was not changed. She knew little of life beyond the monotonous desolation of a western ranch, the revolting glamour of a gambling resort, where men revelled in the fierce excitement of shuffling cards and clicking chips, returning to squalid homes and to spiritless women, weighed down and broken with the bearing of many children, and the merciless, unbroken torture of thankless, thoughtless demands upon their lives. Madame saw all this. She saw and felt the dreary hopelessness of it all. Much as she loved Élise, if it parted her from all that made life endurable she would not shrink from the sacrifice. She knew nothing of life beyond her restricted circle, but anything outside this circle was a change, and any change must be for the better. "She shall marry. Right away." Pierre's words came to her again with overwhelming terror. Overwhelming, because she saw no way of averting the threatened blow. From behind, Madame felt two soft hands close on her straining eyes, and a sympathetic voice: "Has daddy been scolding you again? What was it about this time? Was it because I ran away this morning? I did run away, you know." For reply Madame only bowed her head from between the clasping hands that for the first time had distress instead of comfort for her groping soul. She did not pray for guidance. She never thought of praying. Why should she? The prisoned seed, buried in the dank and quickening soil, struggles instinctively toward the source of light and strength. But what instinct is there to guide the human soul that, quickened by unselfish love, is yet walled in by the Stygian darkness of an ignorant life? Madame's hands were clinched. Her hot eyes were dry and hard. No light! No help! Only a fierce spirit of resistance. At length she was conscious of Élise standing before her, half terrified, but wholly determined. Her eyes moistened, then grew soft. Her outstretched arms sought the girl and drew her within their convulsive grasp. "My poor Élise! My poor little girl, with no one to help her but me!" "What is it, mammy? What is it?" Madame only moaned. "My poor little Élise! My poor little girl!" Élise freed herself from the resisting arms. "Tell me at once!" She stamped her foot impatiently. Madame sprang to her feet. "You shall not marry that man. You shall not!" Her voice rose. "I will tell you all--everything. I will, if he kills me. I will! I will!" The door from the saloon was violently opened, and Pierre strode in. He pushed Élise aside, and, with narrowed eyes and uplifted hand, approached his wife. "You will? You will, heh?" The threatening blow fell heavily, but upon Élise. She thrust forth her hands. Pierre stumbled backward before the unexpected assault. His eyes, blazing with ungoverned fury, swept around the room. They rested upon a stick. He grasped it, and turned once more toward Madame. "You will! You will! I teach you bettaire. I teach you say 'I will' to me! I teach you!" Then he stopped. He was looking squarely into the muzzle of a silver-mounted revolver held in a steady hand and levelled by a steady eye. Pierre was like a statue. Another look came into his eyes. Youth toyed with death, and was not afraid. Pierre knew that. At threatening weapons in the hands of drink-crazed men Pierre smiled with scorn. The bad man stood in terror of the law as well as of Pierre. But when determined youth laid hold on death and shook it in his face Pierre knew enough to stand aside. Élise broke the tense silence. "Don't you ever dare to strike mammy again. Don't you dare!" Without a word Pierre left the room. He had loved Élise before with as unselfish a love as he could know. But hitherto he had not admired her. Now he rubbed his hands and chuckled softly, baring his teeth with unsmiling lips. "A-a-ah!" he breathed forth. "_Magnifique! Superb! La petite diable!_ She mek ze shoot in her eye! In ze fingaire! She bin shoot her hol' man, her hol' daddy, _moi!_ Pierre." Pierre thoughtfully rubbed his smooth chin. "_La petite diable!_" Poor Madame! Poor Pierre! The dog chases his tail with undiminished zest, and is blissfully rewarded if a straggling hair but occasionally brushes his nose. He licks his accessible paws, impelled alone by a sense of duty. CHAPTER VII _Mr. Morrison Tackles a Man with a Mind of His Own and a Man without One_ Mr. Morrison was a slick bird--in fact, a very slick bird. It was his soul's delight to preen his unctuous feathers and to shiver them into the most effective and comfortable position, to settle his head between his shoulders, and, with moistened lips, to view his little world from dreamy, half-closed eyes. This, however, only happened in restful moments of complacent self-contemplation. He never allowed these moods to interfere with business. He had broached the subject of marriage to Pierre, and Pierre had of course fallen in with his views. The fact that Élise evidently loathed him disturbed no whit his placid mind. He was in no hurry. He assumed Élise as his own whenever he chose to say the word. He regarded her in much the same way as a half-hungered epicure a toothsome dinner, holding himself aloof until his craving stomach should give the utmost zest to his viands without curtailing the pleasure of his palate by ravenous haste. He served Pierre with diligence and fidelity. The Blue Goose would sooner or later come to him with Élise. He had ambitions, political especially, not acquired, but instinctive. Not that he felt inspired with a mission to do good unto others, but that others should do good unto him, and also that the particular kind of good should be of his own choosing. He knew very well the temperaments of his chosen constituency, and he adapted himself to their impressionable peculiarities. To this end he dispensed heavily padded gratuities with much ostentation on selected occasions, but gathered his tolls in merciless silence. He did this without fear, for he knew that the blare of the multitude would drown the cries of the stricken few. Mr. Morrison had long meditated upon the proper course to take in order best to compass his ends. The unrest among the employees of the Rainbow Company came to him unsought, and he at once grasped the opportunity. The organisation of a miners' and millmen's union would be an obvious benefit to the rank and file; their manifestation of gratitude would naturally take the very form he most desired. To this end before the many he displayed the pyrotechnics of meaningless oratory, in much the same manner as a strutting peacock his brilliant tail; but individuals he hunted with nickel bullets and high-power guns. On various occasions he had displayed the peacock tail; this particular afternoon he took down his flat-trajectoried weapon and went forth to gun for Bennie. Bennie had washed the dinner dishes, reset his table, prepared for the coming meal, and now, as was his custom, was lying in his bunk, with an open book in his hands, prepared to read or doze, as the spirit moved him. Mr. Morrison appeared before him. "Howdy, Bennie! Taking a nap?" "I'm taking nothing but what's my own." Bennie looked meaningly at Morrison. Morrison slipped into what he mistook for Bennie's mood. "You're wise, if you get it all. Many's the ignorant devil that takes only what's given him and asks no questions, worse luck to him!" "You'll do well to go on," remarked Bennie, placidly. "There's many that gets more, and then damns the gift and the giver." "And just what might that mean, Bennie?" Morrison looked a little puzzled. "It means that, if more got what they deserved, 'twould be better for honest men." Bennie was very decided. Morrison's face cleared. He held out his hand. "Shake!" he said. Bennie took the proffered hand. "Here's hoping you'll come to your own!" he remarked, grimly. The clasped hands each fell to its own. Morrison's hands went to his pocket as he stretched out his crossed legs with a thankful look on his face. "I'm not specially troubled about myself. I've had fairly good luck looking out for Patrick Morrison, Esq. It's these poor devils around here that's troubling me. They get nipped and pinched at every turn of the cards." "It's God's truth you're talking. And you want to help them same poor devils?" "That's what." "Then listen to me. Smash your roulette and faro. Burn down the Blue Goose, first taking out your whisky that'll burn only the throats of the fools who drink it. Do that same, and you'll see fat grow on lean bones, and children's pants come out of the shade of the patches." Morrison lifted his hat, scratching his head meditatively. "That isn't exactly what I'm at." "Eagles to snowbirds 'tis not!" put in Bennie, aside. Morrison gave no heed to the interruption. "Every man has the right to spend his own money in his own way." "The poor devils get the money and the Blue Goose furnishes the way," Bennie again interpolated. Morrison was getting uneasy. He was conscious that he was not making headway. "You can't do but one thing at a time in good shape." "You're a damned liar! At the Blue Goose you're doing everyone all the time." Morrison rose impatiently. The nickel bullets were missing their billet. He began tentatively to unfold the peacock's tail. "You see," he said, "it's like this. In union is strength. What makes the rich richer? Because they hang together like swarming bees. You pick the honey of one and you get the stings of all. Learn from the rich to use the rich man's weapons. Let us poor workingmen band together like brothers in a common cause. Meet union with union, strength with strength. Then, and only then, can we get our own." "It took more than one cat to make strings for that fiddle," Bennie remarked, thoughtfully. "Just what might that mean?" Morrison again looked puzzled. He went back to his bullets. "To be specific," he spoke impressively, "as things stand now, if one workingman thinks he ought to have more pay he goes to the company and asks for it. The company says no. If he gets troublesome, they fire him. If one man works in a close breast with foul air the company tells him to go back to his work or quit. It costs money to timber bad ground. One poor workman's life doesn't count for much. It's cheaper for the company to take chances than to put in timber." He paused, looking sharply at Bennie. "You're talking sense now. How do you propose to help it?" Morrison felt solid ground beneath his feet. "Do as I said. Learn from the rich. Unite. If the men are not getting fair wages, the union can demand more." Bennie lifted an inquiring finger. "One word there. You want to organise a union?" "That's it. That's the stuff." Morrison was flatteringly acquiescent. "A company can turn down one man, but the union will shove it up to them hard." "If one man breaks five tons of ore a day, and another man breaks only one, will the union see that both get the same pay?" "A workingman is a workingman." Morrison spoke less enthusiastically. "A man that puts in his time earns all that he gets." Bennie looked musingly at the toes of his boots. "The union will equalise the pay?" "You bet it will!" "They'll make the company ventilate the mines and keep bad ground timbered?" "They'll look after these things sharp, and anything else that comes up." "The union will run the company, but who'll run the union?" Morrison waxed enthusiastic. "We'll take our turn at bossing all right. Every man in the union stands on the same floor, and when any of the boys have a grievance the president will see them through. The president and the executive committee can tie up the whole camp if the company bucks." "Is the union organised?" asked Bennie. "Not yet. It's like this." Morrison's voice had a tinge of patronage. "You see, I want to get a few of the level-headed men in the camp worked up to the idea; the rest will come in, hands down." "Who have you got strung?" "Well, there's Luna, and----" "Luna's a crowd by himself. He's got more faces than a town-clock telling time to ten streets. Who else?" "There's Thompson, the mine foreman----" "Jim Thompson? Don't I know him now? He'll throw more stunts than a small boy with a bellyful of green apples. Who else?" Morrison looked a little sulky. "Well, how about yourself. That's what I'm here to find out." Bennie glared up wrathfully. "You'll take away no doubts about me, if my tongue isn't struck by a palsy till it can't bore the wax of your ears. When it comes to bosses, I'll choose my own. I'm American and American born. I'd rather be bossed by a silk tile and kid gloves than by a Tipperary hat and a shillalah, with a damned three-cornered shamrock riding the necks of both. It's a pretty pass we've come to if we've got to go to Irish peat-bogs and Russian snow-banks to find them as will tell us our rights and how to get them, and then import dagoes with rings in their ears and Hungarians with spikes in their shoes to back us up. Let me talk a bit! I get my seventy-five dollars a month for knowing my business and attending to it, because my grub goes down the necks of the men instead of out on the dump; because I give more time to a side of bacon than I do to organising unions. And I'll tell you some more facts. The rich are growing richer for using what they have, and the poor are growing poorer because they don't know enough to handle what they've got. Organise a union for keeping damned fools out of the Blue Goose, and from going home and lamming hell out of their wives and children, and I'll talk with you. As it is, the sooner you light out the more respect I'll have for the sense of you that I haven't seen." Morrison was blazing with anger. "You'll sing another tune before long. We propose to run every scab out of the country." "Run, and be damned to you! I've got a thousand-acre ranch and five hundred head of cattle. I've sucked it from the Rainbow at seventy-five a month, and I've given value received, without any union to help me. Only take note of this. I've laid my eggs in my own nest, and not at the Blue Goose." Morrison turned and left the room. Over his shoulder he flung back: "This isn't the last word, you damned scab! You'll hear from me again." "'Tis not the nature of a pig to keep quiet with a dog at his heels." Bennie stretched his neck out of the door to fire his parting shot. Morrison went forth with a vigorous flea in each ear, which did much to disturb his complacency. Bennie had not made him thoughtful, only vengeful. There is nothing quite so discomposing as the scornful rejection of proffers of self-seeking philanthropy. Bennie's indignation was instinctive rather than analytical, the inherent instinct that puts up the back and tail of a new-born kitten at its first sight of a benevolent-appearing dog. Morrison had not gone far from the boarding-house before he chanced against Luna. Morrison was the last person Luna would have wished to meet. Since his interview with Firmstone he had scrupulously avoided the Blue Goose, and he had seen neither Morrison nor Pierre. His resolution to mend his ways was the result of fear, rather than of change of heart. Neither Morrison nor Pierre had fear. They were playing safe. Luna felt their superiority; he was doing his best to keep from their influence. "Howdy!" "Howdy!" Luna answered. "Where've you been this long time?" asked Morrison, suavely. Luna did not look up. "Down at the mill, of course." "What's going on?" pursued Morrison. "You haven't been up lately." "There's been big things going on. Pierre's little game's all off." Luna shrank from a direct revelation. "Oh, drop this! What's up?" "I'll tell you what's up." Luna looked defiant. "You know the last lot of ore you pinched? Well, the old man's got it, and, what's more, he's on to your whole business." Morrison's face set. "Look here now, Luna. You just drop that little _your_ business. It looks mighty suspicious, talking like that. I don't know what you mean. If you've been pulling the mill and got caught you'd better pick out another man to unload on besides me." "I never took a dollar from the mill, and I told the old man so. I----" But Morrison interrupted: "You've been squealing, have you? Well, you just go on, only remember this. If you're going to set in a little game of freeze-out, you play your cards close to your coat." Luna saw the drift of Morrison's remarks, and hastened to defend himself. "It's gospel truth. I haven't squealed." He gave a detailed account of his midnight interview with Firmstone, defining sharply between his facts and his inferences. He finally concluded: "The old man's sharp. There isn't a corner of the mine he doesn't know, and there isn't a chink in the mill, from the feed to the tail-sluice, that he hasn't got his eye on." Luna's mood changed from the defensive to the assertive. "I'll tell you one thing more. He's square, square as a die. He had me bunched, but he give me a chance. He told me that I could stop the stealing at the mill, that I had got to, and, by God, I'm going to, in spite of hell!" Morrison was relieved, but a sneer buried the manifestation of his relief. "Well," he exclaimed, "of all the soft, easy things I ever saw you're the softest and the easiest!" Luna only looked dogged. "Hard words break no bones," he answered, sullenly. "That may be," answered Morrison; "but it doesn't keep soft ones from gumming your wits, that's sure." "What do you mean?" "I mean just this. You say the old man had you bunched. Well, he's got you on your back now, and roped, too." Luna answered still more sullenly: "There's more'n one will be roped, then. If it comes to a show-down, I'll not be alone." "All right, Mr. Luna." Morrison spoke evenly. "When you feel like calling the game just go right ahead. I'm not going to stop you." Luna made no immediate reply. Morrison waited, ostentatiously indifferent. Luna finally broke the silence. "I don't see how the old man's got me roped." "Well, now you're acting as if you had sense. I'll tell you. I'm always ready to talk to a man that's got sense. Just answer a few straight questions. In the first place, you've been stealing from the mill." "I tell you I haven't," broke in Luna; "but I can tell you who has." He looked sharply at Morrison. Morrison waved his hand with wearied endurance. "Well, you're foreman at the mill. If there's been stealing, and you know your business, you know where it was done and how it was done. If you don't know your business what are you there for, and how long are you going to stay? You say yourself the old man is sharp, and he is. How long is he going to keep either a thief or a fool in your place?" "I'm not a thief," Luna answered, hotly. "I'm not a fool, either, and I'm not going to be made one any longer by you, either." "If you're not a fool listen to me, and keep quiet till I'm through." Morrison leaned forward, checking his words with his fingers. "The old man's sharp, and he's got you roped, any turn. There's been stealing at the mill. You say this. You're foreman there. It doesn't make any difference whether you stole or someone else. They hold you responsible. The old man's got the cards in his hands. The men saw him come in the mill, shut down, and take samples to back him up." "Well, what of it?" "What of it, you fool! This is what of it. He's got you just where he wants you. You'll walk turkey from now on, according to his orders. If there's any dirty work to be done you'll do it. You squeal or you kick, and he'll start the whole slide and bury you." "I'm not obliged to do any dirty work for him or any other man. Not even for you. I can quit." "And get another job?" Morrison asked, mockingly. "That's what." "Let me just point out a few things. You get mad and quit. Call for your time. Pack your turkey and go to another mill. They will ask your name. Then, 'Excuse me a minute.' Then they'll go to a little book, and they'll find something like this, 'Henry Luna, mill man, foreman Rainbow mill. Richard Firmstone, superintendent. Discharged on account of stealing ore from the mill.' Then they'll come back. 'No place for you, Mr. Luna,' and you'll go on till hell freezes, and that little record of yours will knock you, every clip. When you wear the skin off your feet, and the shirt off your back, you'll come back to the Rainbow, and Mr. Firmstone will politely tell you that, if you've walked the kick out of you, he'll give you another try." Luna was open-eyed. He had grasped but one thing. "What little book are you talking about?" he asked. "It's known as the Black List, little lambie. You'll know more about it if you keep on. Every company in Colorado or in the United States has one. You'll run up against it, all right, if you keep on." Luna had vague ideas of this powerful weapon; but it had never seemed so real before. He was growing suspicious. He recalled Firmstone's words, "I've told you a good deal, but not all by a good long measure." They had seemed simple and straightforward at the time, but Morrison's juggling was hazing them. "What's a fellow to do?" he asked, helplessly. "Nothing alone, except to take what's given you. You stand alone, and you'll be cut alone, worked overtime alone, kicked alone, and, when it gets unendurable, starve alone. But, if you've got any sense or sand, don't stand alone to get kicked and cuffed and robbed by a company or by a bunch of companies. Meet union with union, strength with strength, and, if worst comes to worst, fight with fight. Us workingmen have things in our own hands, if we stand together." Morrison was watching the foreman narrowly. "And there's another thing. When a long-toothed, sharp-nosed, glass-eyed company bull-dog puts up a padded deck on a workingman, he'll have the backing of the union to put him down." "The union ain't going to take up no private grievance?" Luna spoke, half questioningly. "They ain't, heh? What's it for, then? Bunching us up so they can pick us off one by one, without hunting us out like a flock of sheep. That ain't the union." Morrison paused, looking keenly at Luna. "There's no use scattering. There's nothing as skittish as a pocketful of dollars in a dress suit. If there's a grievance, private or common, go to the company in a bunch. Remonstrate. If that don't work, strike, fight, boycott! No weapons? The poor man's dollar will buy rifles and cartridges as quick as a rich man's checks. We've got this advantage, too. Rich men have to hire men to fight for them; but, by God, we can fight for ourselves!" Luna's thick wits were vibrating betwixt fear and vengeance. He had all the ignorant man's fear of superior brains, all the coward's sneaking resentment of a fancied imposition. He could see that fear had blinded his eyes to the real but covert threat of Firmstone's words. Here was his chance to free himself from Firmstone's clutches. Here his chance for revenge. Morrison was watching him closely. "Are you with us, or are you going down alone?" Luna held out his hand. "I'm with you, you bet!" "Come up to the Blue Goose some night when you're on day-shift. We'll talk things over with Pierre." Then they parted. CHAPTER VIII _Madame Seeks Counsel_ There are many evil things in the world which are best obviated by being let severely alone. The clumsy-minded Hercules had to be taught this fact. Tradition relates that at one time he met an insignificant-looking toad in his path which he would have passed by in disdain had it not been for its particularly ugly appearance. Thinking to do the world a service by destroying it he thumped the reptile with his club, when, to his surprise, instead of being crushed by the impact, the beast grew to twice its former size. Repeated and heavier blows only multiplied its dimensions and ugliness, until at length the thoroughly frightened hero divested himself of his clothing with the intention of putting an end to his antagonist. His formidable club was again raised, but before it could descend, he was counselled to wait. This he did, and to his greater surprise the ugly beast began to shrink, and finally disappeared. Pierre had no convenient goddess to instruct him in critical moments, so he depended on his own wit. Of this he had inherited a liberal portion, and this by diligent cultivation had been added to manyfold. So it happened that after Madame's surprising exhibition of an unsuspected will of her own, and her declaration of her intention to enforce it, Pierre had studiously let her alone. This course of action was as surprising to Madame as it was disconcerting. The consequences were such as her wily husband had foreseen. Encountering no externally resisting medium, its force was wasted by internal attrition, so that Madame was being reduced to a nervous wreck, all of which was duly appreciated by Pierre. This particular instance, being expanded into a general law, teaches us that oftentimes the nimble wit of an agile villain prevails against the clumsy brains of a lofty-minded hero. Madame had had long years of patient endurance to train her in waiting; but the endurance had been passive and purposeless, rather than active, and with a well-defined object. Now that an object was to be attained by action the lessons of patient endurance counted for naught. Instead of determined action against her open revolt, Pierre had been smilingly obsequious and non-resisting. She knew very well that Pierre had been neither cowed into submission nor frightened from his purpose; but his policy of non-interference puzzled and terrified her. She knew not at what moment he might confront her with a move that she would have neither time nor power to check. In this state of mind day after day passed by with wearing regularity. She felt the time going, every moment fraught with the necessity of action, but without the slightest suggestion as to what she ought to do. Pierre's toast might be burned to a crisp, his eggs scorched, or his coffee muddy, but there was no word of complaint. Regular or irregular hours for meals were passed over with the same discomposing smiles. She did not dare unburden her mind to Élise, for fear of letting drop some untimely word which would immediately precipitate the impending crisis. For the first time in her life Élise was subjected to petulant words and irritating repulses by the sorely perplexed woman. One evening, after a particularly trying day during which Élise had been stung into biting retorts, an inspiration came to Madame that rolled every threatening cloud from her mind. The next morning, after long waiting, Pierre came to the dining-room, but found neither breakfast nor Madame, and for the best of reasons. With the first grey light of morning, Madame had slipped from the door of the Blue Goose, and before the sun had gilded the head of Ballard Mountain she was far up the trail that led to the Inferno. Zephyr was moving deliberately about a little fire on which his breakfast was cooking, pursing his lips in meditative whistles, or engaged in audible discussion with himself on the various topics which floated through his mind. An unusual clatter of displaced rocks brought his dialogue to a sudden end; a sharp look down the trail shrank his lips to a low whistle; the sight of a hard knob of dingy hair, strained back from a pair of imploring eyes fringed by colourless lashes, swept his hat from his head, and sent him clattering down to Madame with outstretched hands. "You're right, Madame. You're on the right trail, and it's but little farther. It's rather early for St. Peter, it's likely he's taking his beauty sleep yet; but I'll see that it's broken, unless you have a private key to the Golden Gates, which you deserve, if you haven't got it." His address of welcome had brought him to Madame's side. Her only reply was a bewildered gaze, as she took his hands. With his help she soon reached the camp, and seated herself in a rude chair which Zephyr placed for her. Zephyr, having seen to the comfort of his guest, returned to his neglected breakfast. "It takes a pretty cute angel to catch me unawares," he glanced at Madame; "but you've got the drop on me this time. Come from an unexpected direction, too. I've heard tell of Jacob's vision of angels passing up and down, but I mostly allowed it was a pipe dream. I shall have to annotate my ideas again, which is no uncommon experience, statements to the contrary notwithstanding." Zephyr paused from his labours and looked inquiringly at Madame. Madame made no reply. Her bewildered calm began to break before the apparent necessity of saying or doing something. Not having a clear perception of the fitting thing in either case, she took refuge in a copious flood of tears. Zephyr offered no impediment to the flow, either by word or act. He was not especially acquainted with the ways of women, but being a close observer of nature and an adept at reasoning from analogy, he assumed that a sudden storm meant equally sudden clearing, so he held his peace and, for once, his whistle. Zephyr's reasoning was correct. Madame's tears dried almost as suddenly as they had started. Zephyr had filled a cup with coffee, and he tendered it deferentially to Madame. "A peaceful stomach favours a placid mind," he remarked, casually; "which is an old observation that doesn't show its age. From which I infer that it has a solid foundation of truth." Madame hesitatingly reached for the proffered coffee, then she thought better of it, and, much to Zephyr's surprise, again let loose the fountains of her tears. Zephyr glanced upward with a cocking eye, then down the steep pass to where the broken line of rock dropped sheer into Rainbow Gulch where lay Pandora and the Blue Goose. "About this time look for unsettled weather," he whispered to himself. Zephyr had dropped analogy and was reasoning from cold facts. He was thinking of Élise. Tears often clear the mind, as showers the air, and Madame's tears, with Zephyr's calm, were rapidly having a salubrious effect. This time she not only reached for the coffee on her own initiative, but, what was more to the purpose, drank it. She even ate some of the food Zephyr placed before her. Zephyr noted with approval. "Rising barometer, with freshening winds, growing brisk, clearing weather." Madame looked up at Zephyr's almost inaudible words. "How?" she ventured, timidly. "That's a fair question," Zephyr remarked, composedly. "The fact is, I get used to talking to myself and answering a fool according to his folly. It's hard sledding to keep up. You see, a fellow that gets into his store clothes only once a year or so don't know where to hang his thumbs." Madame looked somewhat puzzled, began a stammering reply, then, dropping her useless efforts, came to her point at once. "It's about Élise." Zephyr answered as directly as Madame had spoken. "Is Élise in trouble?" "Yes. I don't know what to do." Madame paused and looked expectantly at Zephyr. "Pierre wants her to marry that Morrison?" Madame gave a sigh of relief. There was no surprise in her face. "Pierre says she shall not go to school and learn to despise him and me. He says she will learn to be ashamed of us before her grand friends. Do you think she will ever be ashamed of me?" There was a yearning look in the uncomplaining eyes. Zephyr looked meditatively at the fire, pursed his lips, and, deliberately thrusting his hand into the bosom of his shirt, drew forth his harmonica. He softly blew forth a few bars of a plaintive melody, then, taking the instrument from his lips, began to speak, without raising his eyes. "If my memory serves me right, I used to know a little girl on a big ranch who had a large following of beasts and birds that had got into various kinds of trouble, owing to their limitations as such. I also remember that that same little girl on several appropriate occasions banged hell--if you will excuse a bad word for the sake of good emphasis--out of two-legged beasts for abusing their superior kind. Who would fly at the devil to protect a broken-winged gosling. Who would coax rainbows out of alkali water and sweet-scented flowers out of hot sand. My more recent memory seems to put it up to me that this same little girl, with more years on her head and a growing heart under her ribs, has sat up many nights with sick infants, and fought death from said infants to the great joy of their owners. From which I infer, if by any chance said little girl should be lifted up into heaven and seated at the right hand of God, much trouble would descend upon the Holy Family if Madame should want to be near her little Élise, and any of the said Holies should try to stand her off." Madame did not fully understand, but what did it matter? Zephyr was on her side. Of that she was satisfied. She vaguely gleaned from his words that, in his opinion, Élise would always love her and would never desert her. She hugged this comforting thought close to her cramped soul. "But," she began, hesitatingly, "Pierre said that she should not go to school, that she should marry right away." "Pierre is a very hard shell with a very small kernel," remarked Zephyr. "Which means that Pierre is going to do what he thinks is well for Élise. Élise has got a pretty big hold on Pierre." "But he promised her father that he would give back Élise to her friends, and now he says he won't." "Have you told Élise that Pierre is not her father?" "No; I dare not." "That's all right. Let me try to think out loud a little. The father and mother of Élise ran away to marry. That is why her friends know nothing of her. Her mother died before Élise was six months old, and her father before she was a yearling. Pierre promised to get Élise back to her father's family. It wasn't just easy at that time to break through the mountains and Injuns to Denver. You and Pierre waited for better times. When better times came you both had grown very fond of Élise. A year or so would make no difference to those who did not know. Now Élise is sixteen. Pierre realizes that he must make a choice between now and never. He's got a very soft spot in his heart for Élise. It's the only one he ever had, or ever will have. Élise isn't his. That doesn't make very much difference. Pierre has never had any especial training in giving up things he wants, simply because they don't belong to him. You haven't helped train him otherwise." Zephyr glanced at Madame. Madame's cheeks suddenly glowed, then as suddenly paled. A faint thought of what might have been years ago came and went. Zephyr resumed: "As long as Élise is unmarried, there is danger of his being compelled to give her up. Well," Zephyr's lips grew hard, "you can set your mind at rest. Élise isn't going to marry Morrison, and when the proper time comes, which will be soon, Pierre is going to give her up." Madame had yet one more episode upon which she needed light. She told Zephyr of Pierre's threatened attack, and of Élise's holding him off at the point of her revolver. She felt, but was not sure, that Élise by her open defiance had only sealed her fate. Zephyr smiled appreciatively. "She's got her father's grit and Pierre's example. Her sense is rattling round in her head, as her nonsense is outside of it. She'll do all right without help, if it comes to that; but it won't." Madame rose, as if to depart. Zephyr waved her to her seat. "Not yet. You rest here for a while. It's a hard climb up here and a hard climb down. I'll shake things up a little on my prospect. I'll be back by dinner-time." He picked up a hammer and drills and went still farther up the mountain. Having reached the Inferno, he began his work. Perhaps he had no thought of Jael or Sisera; but he smote his drill with a determined emphasis that indicated ill things for Pierre. Jael pinned the sleeping head of Sisera to the earth. Sleeping or waking, resisting or acquiescent, Pierre's head was in serious danger, if it threatened Élise. Zephyr loaded the hole and lighted the fuse, then started for the camp. A loud explosion startled Madame from the most peaceful repose she had enjoyed for many a day. After dinner Zephyr saw Madame safely down the worst of the trail. "Pierre is not all bad," he remarked, at parting. "You just _restez tranquille_ and don't worry. It's a pretty thick fog that the sun can't break through, and, furthermore, a fog being only limited, as it were, and the sun tolerably persistent, it's pretty apt to get on top at most unexpected seasons." Madame completed the remainder of her journey with very different emotions from those with which she had begun it. She entered the back door of the Blue Goose. Pierre was not in the room, as she had half expected, half feared. She looked around anxiously, then dropped into a chair. The pendulum changed its swing. She was under the old influences again. Zephyr and the mountain-top were far away. A thousand questions struggled in her mind. Why had she not thought of them before? It was no use. Again she was groping for help. She recalled a few of Zephyr's words. "Élise isn't going to marry Morrison, and Pierre's going to give her up." They did not thrill her with hope. She could not make them do so by oft repeating. Confused recollections crowded these few words of hope. She could not revivify them. She could only cling to them with blind, uncomprehending trust, as the praying mother clings to the leaden crucifix. CHAPTER IX _The Meeting at the Blue Goose_ An algebraic formula is very fascinating, but at the same time it is very dangerous. The oft-times repeated assumption that _x_ plus _y_ equals _a_ leads ultimately to the fixed belief that a is an attainable result, whatever values may be assigned to the other factors. If we assign concrete dollars to the abstract _x_ and _y_, _a_ theoretically becomes concrete dollars as well. But immediately we do this, another factor known as the personal equation calls for cards, and from then on insists upon sitting in the game. Simple algebra no longer suffices; calculus, differential as well as integral, enters into our problem, and if we can succeed in fencing out quaternions, to say nothing of the _nth_ dimension, we may consider ourselves fortunate. Pierre was untrained in algebra, to say nothing of higher mathematics; but it is a legal maxim that ignorance of the law excuses no one, and this dictum is equally applicable to natural and to human statutes. Pierre assumed very naturally that five dollars plus five dollars equals ten dollars, and dollars were what he was after. He went even further. Without stating the fact, he felt instinctively that, if he could tip the one-legged plus to the more stable two-legged sign of multiplication, the result would be twenty-five dollars instead of ten. He knew that dollars added to, or multiplied by, dollars made wealth; but he failed to comprehend that wealth was a variable term with no definite, assignable value. In other words, he never knew, nor ever would know, when he had enough. Pierre had started in life with the questionable ambition of becoming rich. As foreman on a ranch at five dollars a day and found, he was reasonably contented with simple addition. On the sudden death of his employer he was left in full charge, with no one to call him to account, and addition became more frequent and with larger sums. His horizon widened, the Rainbow mine was opened, and the little town of Pandora sprang into existence. Three hundred workmen, with unlimited thirst and a passion for gaming, suggested multiplication, and Pierre moved from the ranch to the Blue Goose. Had he fixed upon a definition of wealth and adhered to it, a few years at the Blue Goose would have left him satisfied. As it was, his ideas grew faster than his legitimate opportunities. The miners were no more content with their wages than he with his gains, and so it happened that an underground retort was added to the above-ground bar and roulette. The bar and roulette had the sanction of law; the retort was existing in spite of it. The bar and roulette took care of themselves, and incidentally of Pierre; but with the retort, the case was different. Pierre had to look out for himself as well as the furnace. As proprietor of a saloon, his garnered dollars brought with them the protection of the nine points of the law--possession; the tenth was never in evidence. As a vender of gold bullion, with its possession, the nine points made against rather than for him. As for the tenth, at its best it only offered an opportunity for explanation which the law affords the most obviously guilty. Morrison allowed several days to pass after his interview with Luna before acquainting Pierre with the failure to land their plunder. The disclosure might have been delayed even longer had not Pierre made some indirect inquiries. Pierre had taken the disclosure in a very different manner from what Morrison had expected. Morrison, as has been set forth, was a very slick bird, but he was not remarkable for his sagacity. His cunning had influenced him to repel, with an assumption of ignorance, Luna's broad hints of guilty complicity; but his sagacity failed utterly to comprehend Pierre's more cunning silence. Pierre was actively acquainted with Morrison's weak points, and while he ceased not to flatter them he never neglected to gather rewards for his labour. If the fabled crow had had the wit to swallow his cheese before he began to sing he would at least have had a full stomach to console himself for being duped. This is somewhat prognostical; but even so, it is not safe to jump too far. It sometimes happens that the fox and the crow become so mutually engrossed as to forget the possibility of a man and a gun. Late this particular evening Luna entered the Blue Goose, and having paid tribute at the bar, was guided by the knowing winks and nods of Morrison into Pierre's private club-room, where Morrison himself soon followed. Morrison opened the game at once. "That new supe at the Rainbow is getting pretty fly." He apparently addressed Pierre. Pierre bowed, in smiling acquiescence. "Our little game is going to come to an end pretty soon, too." "To what li'l game you refer?" Pierre inquired, blandly. Pierre did not mind talking frankly with one; with two he weighed his words. Morrison made an impatient gesture. "You know. I told you about the old man's getting back that ore." Pierre rubbed his hands softly. "Meestaire Firmstone, he's smooth stuff, ver' smooth stuff." "He's getting too smooth," interrupted Luna. "I don't mind a supe's looking out for his company. That's what he's paid for. But when he begins putting up games on the men, that's another matter, and I don't propose to stand it. Not for my part." "He's not bin populaire wiz ze boy?" inquired Pierre. "No." Pierre chuckled softly. "He keeps too much ze glass-eye on ze plate, on ze stamp, heh?" "That's not all." "No," Pierre continued; "he mek ze sample; he mek ze assay, hall ze time." "That's not all, either. He----" "A--a--ah! He bin mek ze viseete in ze mill in ze night, all hour, any hour. Ze boy can't sleep, bin keep awake, bin keep ze han'--" Pierre winked knowingly, making a scoop with his hand, and thrusting it into his pocket. Luna grinned. "At ze mine ze boy get two stick powdaire, four candle, all day, eh? No take ten, fifteen stick, ten, fifteen candle, use two, four, sell ze res'?" Pierre again winked smilingly. "You're sizing it up all right." "_Bien!_ I tol' you. Ze hol' man, he's bin hall right. I tol' you look out. Bimeby I tol' you again. Goslow. Da's hall." Morrison was getting impatient. "What's the use of barking our shins, climbing for last year's birds' nests? The facts are just as I told you. The old man's getting too fly. The boys are getting tired of it. The question is, how are we going to stop him? If we can't stop him can we get rid of him?" "I can tell you one way to stop him, and get rid of him at the same time," Luna broke in. "How is that?" asked Morrison. "Cut the cable when he goes up on the tram." "Will you take the job?" Morrison asked, sarcastically. Luna's enthusiasm waned under the question. "Such things have happened." "Some odder tings also happens." Pierre slipped an imaginary rope around his neck. Morrison passed the remark and started in on a line of his own. "I've been telling Luna and some of the other boys what I think. I don't mind their making a little on the side. It's no more than they deserve, and the company can stand it. It doesn't amount to much, anyway. But what I do kick about is this everlasting spying around all the time. It's enough to make a thief out of an honest man. If you put a man on his honour, he isn't going to sleep on shift, even if the supe doesn't come in on him, every hour of the night. Anyway, a supe ought to know when a man does a day's work. Isn't that so?" He looked at Luna. "That's right, every time." "Then there's another point. A man has some rights of his own, if he does work for $3 a day. The old man is all the time posting notices at the mine and at the mill. He tells men what days they can get their pay, and what days they can't. If a man quits, he's got to take a time-check that isn't worth face, till pay-day. Now what I want to know is this: Haven't the men just as good a right to post notices as the company has?" Morrison was industriously addressing Pierre, but talking at Luna. Pierre made no response, so Luna spoke instead. "I've been thinking the same thing." Morrison turned to Luna. "Well, I'll tell you. You fellows don't know your rights. When you work eight hours the company owes you three dollars. You have a right to your full pay any time you want to ask for it. Do you get it? Not much. The company says pay-day is the 15th of every month. You have nothing to say about it. You begin to work the first of one month. At the end of the month the company makes up the payroll. On the 15th you get pay for last month's work. The 15th, suppose you want to quit. You ask for your time. Do you get your pay for the fifteen days? Not much. They give you a time-check. If you'll wait thirty days you'll get a bank-check or cash, just as they choose. Suppose you want your money right away, do you get it?" Morrison looked fixedly at Luna. Luna shook his head in reply. "Of course not. What do you do? Why, you go to a bank, and if the company's good the bank will discount your check--one, two, three, or five per cent. Your time amounts to $60, less board. The bank gives you, instead of $60, $57, which means that you put in one hard day's work to get what's your due." "The law's done away with time-checks," objected Luna. "Oh, yes, so it has. Says you must be paid in full." Morrison called on all his sarcasm to add emphasis to his words. "So the company complies with the law. It writes out a bank-check for $60, but dates it thirty days ahead, so the bank gets in its work, just the same." Luna glanced cunningly from Morrison to Pierre. "It strikes me that the Blue Goose isn't giving the bank a fair show. I never cashed in at the bank." "What time ze bank open, eh?" Pierre asked, languidly. "Ten to four." Luna looked a trifle puzzled. "_Bien!_ Sunday an' ze holiday?" pursued Pierre. "'Tain't open at all." "_Très bien!_ Ze Blue Goose, she mek open hall ze time, day, night, Sunday, holiday." "Well, you get paid for it," answered Luna, doggedly. "Oh, that isn't all," Morrison interrupted, impatiently. "I just give you this as one example. I can bring up a thousand. You know them as well as I do. There's no use going over the whole wash." There was no reply. Morrison went on, "There's no use saying anything about short time, either. You keep your own time; but what does that amount to? You take what the company gives you. Of course, the law will take your time before the company's; but what does that amount to? Just this: You're two or three dollars shy on your time. You go to law about it, and you'll get your two or three dollars; but it will cost you ten times as much; besides, you'll be blacklisted." It may appear that Morrison was training an able-bodied Gatling on a very small corporal's guard, and so wasting his ammunition. The fact is, Morrison was an active dynamo to which Luna, as an exhausted battery, was temporarily attached. Mr. Morrison felt very sure that if Luna were properly charged he would increase to a very large extent the radius of dynamic activity. Inwardly Pierre was growing a little restless over Morrison's zeal. It was perfectly true that in the matter of paying the men the company was enforcing an arbitrary rule that practically discounted by a small per cent. the men's wages; but the men had never objected. Understanding the reason, they had never even considered it an injustice. There was no bank at Pandora, and it was not a very safe proceeding for a company, even, to carry a large amount of cash. Besides, the men knew very well that the discount did not benefit the company in the least. An enforcement of the law would interfere with Pierre's business. If Pierre found no butter on one side of his toast, he was accustomed to turn it over and examine the other side before he made a row. Recalling the fact that last impressions are the strongest, he proceeded to take a hand himself. He turned blandly to Luna. "How long you bin work in ze mill?" he asked. "About a year." "You get ze check every month?" "Why, yes; of course." "How much he bin discount?" "Nothing." "_Bien!_ You mek ze kick for noddings?" "I don't know about that," remarked Luna. "The way I size it up, that's about all that's coming my way. It's kick or nothing." There was a knock at the door. "Come in," called Morrison. The door swung open, and the mine foreman entered. "Why, howdy, Jim? You're just the fellow we've been waiting for. How's things at the mine?" "Damned if I know!" replied Jim, tossing his hat on the floor. "The old man's in the mix-up, so I don't know how much I'm supposed to know." "What are you supposed to know?" Morrison was asking leading questions. "Well, for one thing, I'm supposed to know when a man's doing a day's work." "Well, don't you?" "Not according to the old man. He snoops around and tells me that this fellow's shirking, and to push him up; that that fellow's not timbering right, doesn't know his business, that I'd better fire him; that the gang driving on Four are soldiering, that I'd better contract it." "Contract it, eh?" "Yes." "Did you?" "I had to!" "How are the contractors making out?" "Kicking like steers; say they ain't making wages." "Who measures up?" "The old man, of course." "Uses his own tape and rod, eh?" "Yes. Why?" "Oh, nothing; only, if I were you, I'd just look over his measures. You never heard of tapes that measured thirteen inches to the foot, did you? Nor of rods that made a hole three feet, when it was four?" "What are you feeding us?" the foreman asked, in surprise. "Pap. You're an infant. So's the gang of you." "What do you mean?" "Just this." Morrison looked wearied. "Thirteen inches to the foot means eight and one-third feet to the hundred. That is, it's likely the contractors are doing one hundred and eight feet and four inches, and getting pay for a hundred. No wonder they're kicking. That's $75 to the good for the company." "I never thought of that," replied the foreman. "I don't know that it's to be wondered at," answered Morrison. "After a man's pounded steel all day and got his head full of powder smoke, he's too tired and sick to think of anything. How are you coming on with the organisation?" "Oh, all right. Most of the boys will come in all right. Some are standing off, though. Say they'd as soon be pinched by the company as bled by the union." "Oh, well, don't trouble them too much. We'll attend to them later on. It's going to be a bad climate for scabs when we get our working clothes on." "It means a strike to get them out." To this sentiment Luna acquiesced with an emphatic nod. "Strike!" ejaculated Morrison. "That's just what we will do, and pretty soon, too!" He was still smarting with the memory of Bennie's words. Pierre again took a hand. "Who mek ze troub', heh? Meestaire Firmstone. I bin tol' you he's smooth stuff, ver' smooth stuff. You mek ze strike. _P'quoi?_ Mek Meestaire Firmstone quit, eh? _Bien!_ You mek ze strike, you mek Meestaire Firmstone keep his job. _P'quoi?_ Ze company say Meestaire Firmstone one good man; he mek ze boy kick. _Bien!_ Meester Firmstone, he stay." "He'll stay, anyway," growled Morrison, "unless we can get him out." Pierre shook his head softly. "Ze strike mek him to stay." "What do you propose, then?" asked Morrison, impatiently. "Meestaire Jim at ze mine bin foreman. Meestaire Luna at ze mill bin foreman. Slick men! Ver' slick men! An' two slick men bin ask hol' Pierre, one hol' Frenchmans, how mek for Meestaire Firmstone ze troub'." Pierre shook his head deprecatingly. "Mek one suppose. Mek suppose ze mill all ze time broke down. Mek suppose ze mine raise hell. _Bien!_ Bimeby ze company say, 'Meestaire Firmstone bin no good.'" "Frenchy's hitting pay dirt all right," commented Luna. "That's the stuff!" Pierre rose to his feet excitedly. "_Bien!_ Ze mill broke down and ze mine blow hup. Bimeby ze company say, 'Meestaire Firmstone mek _beaucoup_ ze troub' all ze time!' _Bien!_ Ze steel get hin ze roll, ze stamp break, ze tram break, ze men kick. Hall ze time Meestaire Firmstone mek ze explain. _Comment!_ 'Meestaire Firmstone, you ain't bin fit for no superintend. Come hoff; we bin got anodder fel'.'" Luna expressed his comprehension of Pierre's plan. He was seconded by the mine foreman. Morrison was not wholly enthusiastic; but he yielded. "Well," he said, "warm it up for him. We'll give it a try, anyway. I'd like to see that smooth-faced, glass-eyed company minion dancing on a hot iron." The assembly broke up. The very next day the warming process began in earnest. CHAPTER X _Élise Goes Forth to Conquer_ Élise had been environed by very plebeian surroundings. Being ignorant of her birth-right, her sympathies were wholly with her associates. Not that as yet they had had any occasion for active development; only the tendencies were there. In a vague, indefinite way she had heard of kings and queens, of lords and ladies, grand personages, so far above common folk that they needs must have mongrel go-betweens to make known their royal wills. Though she knew that kings and queens had no domain beneath the eagle's wings, she had absorbed the idea that in the distant East there was springing up a thrifty crop of nobilities who had very royal wills which only lacked the outward insignia. These, having usurped that part of the eagle's territory known as the East, were now sending into the as yet free West their servile and unscrupulous minions. This was common talk among the imported citizens who flocked nightly to the Blue Goose, and in this view of the case the home-made article coincided with its imported fellows. There were, however, a few independents like Bennie, and these had a hard row of corn. By much adulation the spirit of liberty was developing tyrannical tendencies, and by a kind of cross-fertilization was inspiring her votaries with the idea that freedom meant doing as they pleased, and dissenters be damned! On this evening Élise was in attendance as usual at the little arcade, which was divided from the council-room by a thin partition only. Consequently, she had overheard every word that passed between Pierre and his visitors. She had given only passive attention to Morrison's citation of grievances; but to his proposed plan of action she listened eagerly. Her sympathies were thoroughly enlisted over his proposed strike more than over Pierre's artful suggestion of covert nagging. Not that she considered an ambushed attack, under the circumstances, as reprehensible, but rather because open attack revealed one's personality as much as the other course concealed it. The first year only of humanity is wholly satisfied, barring colic, with the consciousness of existence. The remaining years are principally concerned with impressing it upon others. Élise was very far from possessing what might be termed a retiring disposition. This was in a large measure due to a naturally vivacious temperament; for the rest, it was fostered by peculiarly congenial surroundings. In this environment individuality was free to express itself until it encountered opposition, when it was still more freely stimulated to fight for recognition, and, by sheer brute force, to push itself to the ascendant. This being the case, Élise was sufficiently inspired by the exigencies of the evening to conceive and plan an aggressive campaign on her own account. Being only a girl, she could not take part either in Morrison's open warfare, or in Pierre's more diplomatic intrigues. Being a girl, and untrammelled by conventionalities, she determined upon a raid of her own. Her objective point was none other than Firmstone himself. Having come to this laudable conclusion, she waited impatiently an opportunity for its execution. Early one morning, a few days later, Élise saw Firmstone riding unsuspiciously by, on his way to the mine. Previous observations had taught her to expect his return about noon. So without ceremony, so far as Pierre and Madame were concerned, Élise took another holiday, and followed the trail that led to the mine. At the falls, where she had eaten breakfast with Zephyr, she waited for Firmstone's return. Toward noon she heard the click of iron shoes against the rocks, and, scattering the flowers which she had been arranging, she rose to her feet. Firmstone had dismounted and was drinking from the stream. She stood waiting until he should notice her. As he rose to his feet he looked at her in astonished surprise. Above the average height, his compact, athletic figure was so perfectly proportioned that his height was not obtrusive. His beardless face showed every line of a determination that was softened by mobile lips which could straighten and set with decision, or droop and waver with appreciative humour. His blue eyes were still more expressive. They could glint with set purpose, or twinkle with quiet humour that seemed to be heightened by their polished glasses. Élise was inwardly abashed, but outwardly she showed no sign. She stood straight as an arrow, her hands clasped behind her back, every line of her graceful figure brought out by her unaffected pose. "So you are the old man, are you?" The curiosity of the child and the dignity of the woman were humorously blended in her voice and manner. "At your service." Firmstone raised his hat deliberately. The dignity of the action was compromised by a twinkle of his eyes and a wavering of his lips. Élise looked a little puzzled. "How old are you?" she asked, bluntly. "Twenty-eight." "That's awfully old. I'm sixteen," she answered, decisively. "That's good. What next?" "What's a minion?" she asked. She was trying to deploy her forces for her premeditated attack. "A minion?" he repeated, with a shade of surprise. "Oh, a minion's a fellow who licks the boots of the one above him and kicks the man below to even up." Élise looked bewildered. "What does that mean?" "Oh, I see." Firmstone's smile broadened. "You're literal-minded. According to Webster, a minion is a man who seeks favours by flattery." "Webster!" she exclaimed. "Who's Webster?" "He's the man who wrote a lexicon." "A lexicon? What's a lexicon?" "It's a book that tells you how to spell words, and tells you what they mean." Élise looked superior. "I know how to spell words, and I know what they mean, too, without looking in a--. What did you call it?" "Lexicon. I thought you just said you knew what words meant." "I didn't mean big words, just words that common folks use." "You aren't common folks, are you?" "That's just what I am," Élise answered, aggressively, "and we aren't ashamed of it, either. We're just as good as anybody," she ended, with a toss of her head. "Oh, thanks." Firmstone laughed. "I'm common folks, too." "No, you aren't. You're a minion. M'sieu Mo-reeson says so. You're a capitalistic hireling sent out here to oppress the poor workingman. You use long tape-lines to measure up, and short rods to measure holes, and you sneak in the mill at night, and go prying round the mine, and posting notices, and--er--oh, lots of things. You ought to be ashamed of yourself." She paused in breathless indignation, looking defiantly at Firmstone. Firmstone chuckled. "Looks as if I were a pretty bad lot, doesn't it? How did you find out all that?" "I didn't have to find it out. I hear M'sieu Mo-reeson and Daddy and Luna and lots of others talking about it. Daddy says you're 'smooth, ver' smooth stuff,'" she mimicked. Élise disregarded minor contradictions. "'Twon't do you any good, though. The day is not far distant when down-trodden labour will rise and smite the oppressor. Then----" her lips were still parted, but memory failed and inspiration refused to take its place. "Oh, well," she concluded, lamely, "you'll hunt your hole all right." "You're an out-and-out socialist, aren't you?" "A socialist?" Élise looked aghast. "What's a socialist?" "A socialist is one who thinks that everyone else is as unhappy and discontented as he is, and that anything that he can't get is better than what he can. Won't you be seated?" Firmstone waved her to a boulder. Élise seated herself, but without taking her eyes from Firmstone's face. "Now you're making fun of me." "No, I'm not." "Yes, you are." "What makes you think so?" "Because you sit there and grin and grin all the time, and use big words that you know I can't understand. Where did you learn them?" "At school." "Oh, you've been to school, then, have you?" "Yes." "How long did you go to school?" "Ten or twelve years, altogether." "Ten or twelve years! What an awful stupid you must be!" She looked at him critically; then, with a modifying intonation, "Unless you learned a whole lot. I know I wouldn't have to go to school so long." She looked very decided. Then, after a pause, "You must have gone clear through your arithmetic. Zephyr taught me all about addition and division and fractions, clear to square root. I wanted to go through square root, but he said he didn't know anything about square root, and it wasn't any use, anyway. Did you go through square root?" "Yes. Do you want me to teach you square root?" "Oh, perhaps so, some time," Élise answered, indifferently. "What else did you study?" "Algebra, trigonometry, Latin, Greek." Firmstone teasingly went through the whole curriculum, ending with botany and zoology. Élise fairly gasped. "I never knew there was so much to learn. What's zoo--what did you call it--about?" "Zoology," explained Firmstone; "that teaches you about animals, and botany teaches you about plants." "Oh, is that all?" Élise looked relieved, and then superior. "Why, I know all about animals and plants and birds and things, and I didn't have any books, and I never went to school, either. Do all the big folks back East have to have books and go to school to learn such things? They must be awful stupids. Girls don't go to school out here, nor boys either. There aren't any schools out here. Not that I know of. Mammy says I must go to school somewhere. Daddy says I sha'n't. They have no end of times over it, and it's lots of fun to see daddy get mad. Daddy says I've got to get married right away. But I won't. You didn't tell me if girls went to school with you." "No; they have schools of their own." Élise asked many questions. Then, suddenly dropping the subject, she glanced up at the sun. "It's almost noon, and I'm awfully hungry. I think I'll have to go." "I'll walk down with you, if you'll allow me." He slipped his arm through the bridle and started down the trail. Élise walked beside him, plying him with questions about his life in the East, and what people said and did. Firmstone dropped his teasing manner and answered her questions as best he could. He spoke easily and simply of books and travel and a thousand and one things that her questions and comments suggested. Her manner had changed entirely. Her simplicity, born of ignorance of the different stations in life which they occupied, displayed her at her best. Her expressive eyes widened and deepened, and the colour of her cheeks paled and glowed under the influence of the new and strange world of which he was giving her her first glimpse. They reached the Blue Goose. Firmstone paused, raising his hat as he turned toward her. But Élise was no longer by his side. She had caught sight of Morrison, who was standing on the top step, glowering savagely, first at her, then at Firmstone. Morrison was habilitated in his usual full dress--that is, in his shirt-sleeves, unbuttoned vest, a collarless shirt flecked with irregular, yellowish dots, and a glowing diamond. Just now he stood with his hands in his pockets and his head thrust decidedly forward. His square, massive jaw pressed his protruding lips against his curled moustache. His eyes, narrowed to a slit, shot forth malignant glances, his wavy hair, plastered low upon a low forehead and fluffed out on either side, flattened and broadened his head to the likeness of a venomous serpent preparing to strike. Élise reached the foot of the stone steps, shot a look of fierce defiance at the threatening Morrison, then she turned toward Firmstone, with her head bent forward till her upturned eyes just reached him from beneath her arching brows. She swept him a low courtesy. "Good-bye, Mr. Minion!" she called. "I've had an awfully nice time." She half turned her head toward Morrison, then, as Firmstone lifted his hat in acknowledgment, she raised her hand to her laughing lips and flung him a kiss from the tips of her fingers. Gathering her skirts in her hand, she darted up the steps and nearly collided with Morrison, who had deliberately placed himself in her way. She met Morrison's indignant look with the hauteur of an offended goddess. Morrison's eyes fell from before her; but he demanded: "Where did you pick up that--that scab?" It was the most opprobrious epithet he could think of. Élise's rigid figure stiffened visibly. "It's none of your business." "What have you been talking about?" "It's none of your business. Is there any more information you want that you won't get?" "I'll make it my business!" Morrison burst out, furiously. "I'll----" "Go back to your gambling and leave me alone!" With unflinching eyes, that never left his face, she passed him almost before he was aware of it, and entered the open door. Could Morrison have seen the change that came over her face, as soon as her back was toward him, he might have gained false courage, through mistaking the cause. Loathing and defiance had departed. In their place were bewildering questionings, not definite, but suggested. For the first time in her life her hitherto spontaneous actions waited approbation before the bar of judgment. The coarse, venomous looks of Morrison ranged themselves side by side with the polished ease and deference of Firmstone. As she passed through the bar-room long accustomed sights were, for the first time, seen, not clearly, but comparatively. In the corridor that led to the dining-room she encountered Pierre. She did not speak to him. The quick eyes of the little Frenchman noted the unwonted expression, but he did not question her. At the proper time he would know all. Meantime his concern was not to forget. Élise opened the door of the dining-room and entered. Madame looked up as the door closed. Élise stood with distant eyes fixed upon the pathetically plain little woman. Never before had she noticed the lifeless hair strained from the colourless tan of the thin face, the lustreless eyes, the ill-fitting, faded calico wrapper that dropped in meaningless folds from the spare figure. Madame waited patiently for Élise to speak, or to keep silence as she chose. For a moment only Élise stood. The next instant Madame felt the strong young arms about her, felt hot, decided kisses upon her cheeks. Madame was surprised. Élise was fierce with determination. Élise was doing penance. Madame did not know it. Élise left Madame standing bewildered, and darted upstairs to her little room. She flung herself on her bed and fought--fought with ghostly, flitting shadows that elusively leered from darker shades, grasped at fleeting phantoms that ranged themselves beside the minatory demons, until at last she grew tired and slept. Élise had left the Blue Goose in the morning, a white-winged, erratic craft, skimming the sparkling, land-locked harbours of girlhood. She returned, and already the first lifting swells beyond the sheltering bar were tossing her in their arms. She had entered the shoreless ocean of womanhood. Pierre passed from the corridor to the bar-room. He glanced from the bar to the gaming-tables, where a few listless players were engaged at cards, and finally stepped out upon the broad piazza. He glanced at Morrison, who was following Firmstone with a look of malignant hatred. "Meestaire Firmstone, he bin come from ze mine?" "To hell with Firmstone!" growled Morrison. He turned and entered the saloon. Pierre followed him with knowing eyes. "To hell wiz Firmstone, heh?" He breathed softly. "_Bien!_" Pierre stood looking complacently over the broken landscape. Much understanding was coming to him. The harmlessness of the dove radiated from his beaming face, but the wisdom of the serpent was shining in his eyes. CHAPTER XI _The Devil's Elbow_ If Firmstone had flattered himself that his firm but just treatment of Luna in the case of the stolen ore had cleared his path of difficulties he would have been forced by current events to a rude awakening. He had been neither flattered nor deceived. He knew very well that a prop put under an unstable boulder may obscure the manifestation of gravity; but he never deceived himself with the thought that it had been eliminated. The warming-up process, recommended by Pierre, was being actively exploited. Scarcely a day passed but some annoying accident at the mine or mill occurred, frequently necessitating prolonged shut-downs. Day by day, by ones, by twos, by threes, his best men were leaving the mine. There was no need to ask them why, even if they would have given a truthful answer. He knew very well why. Yet he was neither disheartened nor discouraged. He realised the fact clearly, as he had written to his Eastern employers that it would take time and much patient endeavour to restore order where chaos had reigned so long undisturbed. There was another element impeding his progress which he by no means ignored--that was the Blue Goose. He had no tangible evidence against the resort beyond its obvious pretensions. He had no need of the unintentional but direct evidence of Élise's words that the habitués of the Blue Goose there aired their grievances, real or imagined, and that both Pierre and Morrison were assiduously cultivating this restlessness by sympathy and counsel. He was morally certain of another fact--that the Blue Goose was indirectly, at least, at the bottom of the extensive system of thieving, in offering a sure market for the stolen gold. This last fact had not especially troubled him, for he felt sure that the careful system of checks which he had inaugurated at the outset would eventually make the stealing so dangerous that it would be abandoned. So far in the history of the camp, when once the plates were cleaned and gold, as ingots, was in possession of the company, it had been perfectly safe. No attempts at hold-ups had ever been made. Yet Firmstone had provided, in a measure, safeguards against this possibility. The ingots had been packed in a small steel safe and shipped by stage to the nearest express office, about ten miles distant. Shipments had not been made every day, of course. But every day Firmstone had sent the safe, loaded with pigs of lead. The next day the safe was returned, and in it was the agent's receipt. Whether the safe carried gold or lead, the going and the returning weight was the same. If the safe carried gold enough lead was added by the express agent to make the returning weight the same. This fact was generally known, and even if a stage hold-up should be attempted, the chances were thirty to one that a few pounds of lead would be the only booty of the robbers. This afternoon Firmstone was at his office-desk in a meditative and relieved frame of mind. He was meditative over his troubles that, for all his care, seemed to be increasing. Relieved in that, but an hour before, $50,000 in bullion had been loaded into the stage, and was now rolling down the cañon on the way to its legitimate destination. His meditations were abruptly broken, and his sense of relief violently dissipated, when the office-door was thrust open, and hatless, with clothing torn to shreds, the stage-driver stood before him, his beard clotted with blood which flowed from a jagged cut that reached from his forehead across his cheek. Firmstone sprang to his feet with a startled exclamation. The driver swept his hand over his blood-clotted lips. "No; 'tain't a hold-up; just a plain, flat wreck. The whole outfit went over the cliff at the Devil's Elbow. I stayed with my job long's I could, but that wa'n't no decades." Firmstone dragged the man into his laboratory, and carefully began to wash the blood from his face. "That's too long a process, gov'ner." The driver soused his head into the bucket of cold water which Firmstone had drawn from the faucet. "Can you walk now?" Firmstone asked. "Reckon I'll try it a turn. Been flyin', for all I know. Must have been, to get up the cliff. I flew down; that much I know. Lit on a few places. That's where I got this." He pointed to the cut. Firmstone led the man to his own room adjoining the office, and opening a small chest, took out some rolls of plaster and bandages. He began drying the wound. The office-door again opened and the bookkeeper entered. "Go tell Bennie to come down right away," Firmstone ordered, without pausing in his work. Satisfied that the man's skull was not fractured, he drew the edges of the wound together and fastened them with strips of plaster. A few minutes later Bennie, followed by Zephyr, hurriedly entered the office. Paying no attention to their startled exclamations, Firmstone said: "I wish you would look after Jim. He's badly hurt. He'll tell you about it. You said at the Devil's Elbow?" turning to the driver. Zephyr glanced critically at the man; then, making up his mind that he was not needed, he said: "I'll go along with you. Are you heeled?" Firmstone made no audible reply, but took down his revolver and cartridge-belt, and buckled them on. "'Tain't the heels you want; it's wings and fins. They won't be much good, either. The whole outfit's in the San Miguel. I followed it that far, and then pulled out." The driver was attempting to hold out gamely, but the excitement and the severe shaking-up were evidently telling on him. Firmstone and Zephyr left the office and followed the wagon-trail down the cañon. Neither spoke a word. They reached the scene of the wreck and, still silent, began to look carefully about. A hundred feet below them the San Miguel, swollen by melting snows, foamed and roared over its boulder-strewn bed. Near the foot of the cliff one of the horses was impaled on a jagged rock; its head and shoulders in the lapping water. In mid-stream and further down the other was pressed by the current against a huge rock that lifted above the flood. No trace of the stage was to be seen. That, broken into fragments by the fall, had been swept away. The spot where the accident occurred was a dangerous one at best. For some distance after leaving the mill the trail followed a nearly level bench of hard slate rock, then, dipping sharply downward, cut across a long rock-slide that reached to the summit of the mountain a thousand feet above. On the opposite side a square-faced buttress crowded the trail to the very brink of the cañon. The trail followed along the foot of this buttress for a hundred feet or more, and at the edge it again turned from the gorge at an acute angle. At the turning-point a cleft, twenty feet wide, cut the cliff from the river-bed to a point far above the trail. A bridge had spanned the cleft, but it was gone. The accident had been caused by the giving way of the bridge when the stage was on it. "Well, what do you make of it?" Firmstone turned to Zephyr and Zephyr shook his head. "That's a superfluous interrogation. Your thinks and mine on this subject under consideration are as alike as two chicks hatched from a double-yolked egg." "This is no accident." Firmstone spoke decidedly. Zephyr nodded deliberately. "That's no iridescent dream, unless you and I have been hitting the same pipe." "The question is," resumed Firmstone, "was the safe taken from the stage before the accident?" He looked at Zephyr inquiringly. "That depends on Jim Norwood." Zephyr whistled meditatively, then spoke with earnest decision. "That safe's in the river. The Blue Goose has been setting for some time. This ain't the first gosling that's pipped its shell, and 'tain't going to be the last one, either, unless the nest is broken up." "That's what I think." Firmstone spoke slowly. "But this is a dangerous game. I didn't think it would go so far." "It's up to you hard; but that isn't the worst of it. It's going to be up to you harder yet. They never reckoned on Jim's getting out of this alive." Zephyr seated himself, and his hand wandered unconsciously to his shirt. Then, changing his mind, he spoke without looking up. "You don't need this, Goggles, but I'm going to give it to you, just the same. You're heavier calibre and longer range than the whole crowd. But I am with you, and there are others. The gang haven't landed their plunder yet, and, what's more, they aren't going to, either. I'll see to that. You just _restez tranquille_, and give your mind to other things. This little job is about my size." Firmstone made no reply to Zephyr. He knew his man, knew thoroughly the loyal sense of honour that, though sheltered in humourous, apparently indifferent cynicism, was ready to fight to the death in defence of right. "I think we might as well go back to the mill. We've seen all there is to be seen here." They walked back in silence. At the office-door Zephyr paused. "Won't you come in?" asked Firmstone. "I think not, dearly beloved. The spirit moveth me in sundry places. In other words, I've got a hunch. And say, Goggles, don't ask any embarrassing questions, if your grub mysteriously disappears. Just charge it up to permanent equipment account, and keep quiet, unless you want to inquire darkly whether anyone knows what's become of that fellow Zephyr." "Don't take any risks, Zephyr. A man's a long time dead. You know as well as I the gang you're up against. I think I know what you're up to, and I also think I can help you out." Firmstone entered the office with no further words. It was the hardest task of many that he had had, to send a report of the disaster to the company, but he did not shrink from it. He made a plain statement of the facts of the case, including the manner in which the bridge had been weakened to the point of giving way when the weight of the stage had been put upon it. He also added that he was satisfied that the purpose was robbery, and that he knew who was at the bottom of the whole business, that steps were being taken to recover the safe; but that the conviction of the plotters was another and a very doubtful proposition. Above all things, he asked to be let alone for a while, at least. The driver, he stated, had no idea that the wrecking of the stage was other than it appeared on the face, an accident pure and simple. The letter was sealed and sent by special messenger to the railroad. One thing troubled Firmstone. He was very sure that his request to be let alone would not be heeded. Hartwell, the Eastern manager of the company, was a shallow, empty-headed man, insufferably conceited. He held the position, partly through a controlling interest in the shares, but more through the nimble use of a glib tongue that so man[oe]uvred his corporal's guard of information that it appeared an able-bodied regiment of knowledge covering the whole field of mining. If Firmstone had any weaknesses, one was an open contempt of flatterers and flattery, the other an impolitic, impatient resentment of patronage. There had been no open breaks between the manager and himself; in fact, the manager professed himself an admiring friend of Firmstone to his face. At directors' meetings "Firmstone was a fairly promising man who only needed careful supervision to make in time a valuable man for the company." Firmstone had strongly opposed the shipping of bullion by private conveyance instead of by a responsible express company. In this he was overruled by the manager. Being compelled to act against his judgment, he had done his best to minimise the risk by making dummy shipments each day, as has been explained. The loss of the month's clean-up was a very serious one, and he had no doubt but that it would result in a visit from the manager, and that the manager would insist upon taking a prominent part in any attempt to recover the safe, if indeed he did not assume the sole direction. The opportunity to add to his counterfeit laurels was too good to be lost. In the event of failure, Firmstone felt that no delicate scruples would prevent the shifting of the whole affair upon his own shoulders. Firmstone had not made the mistake of minimising the crafty cunning of Pierre, nor of interpreting his troubles at the mine and mill at their obvious values. Cunningly devised as was the wreck of the stage, he felt sure that there was another object in view than the very obvious and substantial one of robbery. With the successful wrecking of the stage there were yet large chances against the schemers getting possession of the safe and its contents. Still, there was a chance in their favour. If neither Pierre nor the company recovered the bullion, Pierre's scheme would not have miscarried wholly. The company would still be in ignorance of the possibilities of the mine. Firmstone arranged every possible detail clearly in his mind, from Pierre's standpoint. His thorough grasp of the entire situation, his unwearying application to the business in hand made further stealing impossible. Pierre was bound to get him out of his position. The agitation inaugurated by Morrison was only a part of the scheme by means of which this result was to be accomplished. A whole month's clean-up had been made. If this reached the company safely, it would be a revelation to them. Firmstone's position would be unassailable, and henceforth Pierre would be compelled to content himself with the yield of the gambling and drinking at the Blue Goose. Whether the bullion ever found its way to the Blue Goose or not, the wrecking of the stage would be in all likelihood the culminating disaster in Firmstone's undoing. Firmstone's indignation did not burn so fiercely against Pierre and Morrison--they were but venomous reptiles who threatened every decent man--as at the querulous criticisms of his employers, which were a perpetual drag, clogging his every movement, and threatening to neutralise his every effort in their behalf. He recalled the words of an old and successful mine manager: "You've got a hard row of corn. When you tackle a mine you've got to make up your mind to have everyone against you, from the cook-house flunkey to the president of the company, and the company is the hardest crowd to buck against." Firmstone's face grew hard. The fight was on, and he was in it to win. That was what he was going to do. Zephyr, meantime, had gone to the cook-house. He found Bennie in his room. "How's Jim?" he asked. "Sleeping. That's good for him. He'll pull out all right. Get on to anything at the bridge?" Bennie was at sharp attention. "Nothing to get on to, Julius Benjamin. The bridge is gone. So's everything else. It's only a matter of time when Goggles will be gone, too. This last will fix him with the company." Zephyr glanced slyly at Bennie with the last words. "The jig is up. The fiddle's broke its last string, and I'm going, too." Bennie's eyes were flaming. "Take shame to yourself for those words, you white-livered frog-spawn, with a speck in the middle for the black heart of you! You're going? Well, here's the bones of my fist and the toe of my boot, to speed you!" "You'll have to put me up some grub, Benjamin." "Grub! It's grub, is it? I'll give you none. Stay here a bit and I'll grub you to more purpose. I'll put grit in your craw and bones in your back, and a sup of glue, till you can stand straight and stick to your friends. Lacking understanding that God never gave you, I'll point them out to you!" Zephyr's eyes had a twinkle that Bennie's indignation overlooked. "The Lord never passed you by on the other side, Julius. He put a heavy charge in your bell-muzzle. You're bound to hit something when you go off. If He'd only put a time-fuse on your action, 'twould have only perfect. Not just yet, Julius Benjamin!" Zephyr languidly lifted a detaining hand as Bennie started to interrupt. "I'm going a long journey for an uncertain time. This is for the public. But, Julius, if you'll take a walk in the gloaming each day, and leave an edible bundle in the clump of spruces above the Devil's Elbow you'll find it mysteriously disappears. From which you may infer that I'm travelling in a circle with a small radius. And say, Julius, heave over some of your wind ballast and even up with discretion. You're to take a minor part in a play, with Goggles and me as stars." "It's lean ore you're working in your wind-mill. Just what does it assay?" Bennie was yet a little suspicious. "For a man of abundant figures, Julius, you have a surprising appetite for ungarnished speech. But here's to you! The safe's in the river. There's fifty thousand in bullion in the safe that's in the river. The Blue Goose crowd is after the bullion that's in the safe that's in the river. Say, Julius Benjamin, this is hard sledding. It's the story of the House that Jack Built, adapted to present circumstances. I'm going to hang out in the cañon till the river goes down, or till I bag some of the goslings from the Blue Goose. Your part is to work whom it may concern into the belief that I've lit out for my health, and meantime to play raven to my Elijah. Are you on?" "Yes, I'm on," growled Bennie. "On to more than you'll ever be. You have to empty the gab from your head to leave room for your wits." CHAPTER XII _Figs and Thistles_ Though Zephyr had not explained his plan of operations in detail, Firmstone found no difficulty in comprehending it. It was of prime importance to have the river watched by an absolutely trustworthy man, and Firmstone was in no danger of having an embarrassing number from whom to choose. A day or two of cold, cloudy weather was liable to occur at any time, and this, checking the melting of the snow, would lower the river to a point where it would be possible to search for, and to recover the safe. It was with a feeling of relief that he tacitly confided the guarding of the river to Zephyr. While he offered no opposition to Zephyr's carrying out his scheme of having his mysterious disappearance reported, he was fully satisfied that it would not deceive Pierre for an instant. Firmstone, however, was deceived in another way. It was a case of harmless self-deception, the factors of which were wholly beyond his control. His reason assured him unmistakably that Hartwell would start at once for Colorado on learning of the loss of the bullion, and that the manager would be a hindrance in working out his plans, if indeed he did not upset them entirely. Firmstone's confidence in his ability to emerge finally triumphant from his troubles came gradually to strengthen his hope into the belief that he would be let alone. A telegram could have reached him within a week after he had reported the loss, but none came. He was now awaiting a letter. The bridge had been repaired, and travel resumed. A meagre account of the accident had been noted in the Denver, as well as in the local papers, but no hint was given that it was considered otherwise than as an event incidental to mountain travel. The miraculous escape of the driver was the sole item of interest. These facts gratified Firmstone exceedingly. Pierre was evidently satisfied that the cards were in his own hands to play when and as he would. He was apparently well content to sit in the game with Firmstone as his sole opponent. Firmstone was equally well content, if only---- There came the sharp click of the office gate. Inside the railing stood a slender man of medium height, slightly stooped forward. On his left arm hung a light overcoat. From a smooth face, with a mouth whose thin lips oscillated between assumed determination and cynical half-smiles, a pair of grey eyes twinkled with a humorously tolerant endurance of the frailties of his fellow-men. "Well, how are you?" The gloved right hand shot out an accompaniment to his words. Firmstone took the proffered hand. "Nothing to complain of. This is something of a surprise." This was true in regard to one mental attitude, but not of another. Firmstone voiced his hopes, not his judgment. "It shouldn't be." The eyes lost their twinkle as the mouth straightened to a line. "I'm afraid you hardly appreciate the gravity of the situation. The loss of $50,000 is serious, but it's no killing matter to a company with our resources. It's the conditions which make such losses possible." "Yes." Firmstone spoke slowly. The twinkle was in his eyes now. "As I understand it, this is the first time conditions have made such a loss possible." The significance of the words was lost on Hartwell. The possibility of a view-point other than his own never occurred to him. "We will not discuss the matter now. I shall be here until I have straightened things out. I have brought my sister with me. Her physician ordered a change of air. Beatrice, allow me to introduce my superintendent, Mr. Firmstone." A pink and white face, with a pair of frank, blue eyes, looked out from above a grey travelling suit, and acknowledged the curt introduction. "I am very happy to meet you." Firmstone took the proffered hand in his own. Miss Hartwell smiled. "Don't make any rash assertions. I am going to be here a long time. Where are you going, Arthur?" She turned to her brother, who, after fidgeting around, walked briskly across the room. "I'll be back directly. I want to look after your room. Make yourself comfortable for a few minutes." Then addressing Firmstone, "I suppose our quarters upstairs are in order?" "I think so. Here are the keys. Or will you allow me?" "No, thanks. I'll attend to it." Hartwell took the keys and left the room. Firmstone turned to Miss Hartwell. "What kind of a trip did you have out?" "Delightful! It was hot and dusty across the plains, but then I didn't mind. It was all so new and strange. I really had no conception of the size of our country before." "And here, even, you are only a little more than half way across." "I know, but it doesn't mean much to me." "Does the altitude trouble you?" "You mean Marshall Pass?" "Yes. In part, but you know Denver is over five thousand feet. Some people find it very trying at first." "Perhaps I might have found it so if I had stopped to think. But I had something else to think of. You know I had a ridiculous sensation, just as if I were going to fall off the world. Now you speak of it, I really think I did gasp occasionally." She looked up smilingly at Firmstone. "I suppose you are so accustomed to such sights that my enthusiasm seems a bore." "Do you feel like gasping here?" "No; why do you ask?" "Because you are a thousand feet higher than at Marshall Pass, and here we are three thousand feet below the mine. You would not only have the fear of falling off from the world up there, but the danger of it as well." Miss Hartwell looked from the office window to the great cliff that rose high above its steep, sloped talus. "I told Arthur that I was going to see everything and climb everything out here, but I will think about it first." "I would suggest your seeing about it first. Perhaps that will be enough." Hartwell bustled into the room with a preoccupied air. "Sorry to have kept you waiting so long." Miss Hartwell followed her brother from the room and up the stairs. "Make yourself as comfortable as you can, Beatrice. I gave you full warning as to what you might expect out here. You will have to look out for yourself now. I shall be very busy; I can see that with half an eye." "I think if Mr. Firmstone is one half as efficient as he is agreeable you are borrowing trouble on a very small margin." Miss Hartwell spoke with decided emphasis. "Smooth speech and agreeable manners go farther with women than they do in business," Hartwell snapped out. "I hope you have a good business equipment to console yourself with." Hartwell made no reply to his sister, but busied himself unstrapping her trunk. "Dress for supper as soon as you can. You have an hour," he added, looking at his watch. Hartwell did not find Firmstone on re-entering the office. He seated himself at the desk and began looking over files of reports of mine and mill. Their order and completeness should have pleased him, but, from the frown on his face, they evidently did not. Firmstone, meanwhile, had gone to the cook-house to warn Bennie of his coming guests, and to advise the garnishing of the table with the whitest linen and the choicest viands which his stores could afford. "What sort of a crowd are they?" Bennie inquired. "You'll be able to answer your own question in a little while. That will save you the trouble of changing your mind." "'Tis no trouble at all, sir! It's a damned poor lobster that doesn't know what to do when his shell pinches!" Firmstone, laughing, went to the mill for a tour of inspection before the supper hour. Entering the office a little later, he found Hartwell at his desk. "Well," he asked, "how do you find things?" Hartwell's eyes were intrenched in a series of absorbed wrinkles that threw out supporting works across a puckered forehead. "It's too soon to speak in detail. I propose to inform myself generally before doing that." "That's an excellent plan." Hartwell looked up sharply. Firmstone's eyes seemed to neutralise the emphasis of his words. "Supper is ready when you are. Will Miss Hartwell be down soon?" Miss Hartwell rustled into the room, and her brother led the way to the cook-house. Bennie had heeded Firmstone's words. Perhaps there was a lack of delicate taste in the assortment of colours, but scarlet-pinks, deep red primroses, azure columbines, and bright yellow mountain sunflowers glared at each other, each striving to outreach its fellow above a matted bed of mossy phlox. Hartwell prided himself, among other things, on a correct eye. "There's a colour scheme for you, Beatrice; you can think of it in your next study." Bennie was standing by in much the same attitude as a suspicious bumble-bee. "Mention your opinion in your prayers, Mr. Hartwell, not to me. They're as God grew them. I took them in with one sweep of my fist." Miss Hartwell's eyes danced from Firmstone to Bennie. "Your cook has got me this time, Firmstone." Hartwell grinned his appreciation of Bennie's retort. They seated themselves, and Bennie began serving the soup. Hartwell was the last. Bennie handed his plate across the table. They were a little cramped for room, and Bennie was saving steps. "It's a pity you don't have a little more room here, Bennie, so you could shine as a waiter." "Good grub takes the shortest cut to a hungry man with no remarks on style. There's only one trail when they meet." Hartwell's manner showed a slight resentment that he was trying to conceal. "This soup is excellent. It's rather highly seasoned"--he looked slyly at Bennie--"but then there's no rose without its thorns." "True for you. But there's a hell of a lot of thorns with the roses, I take note. Beg pardon, Miss!" Miss Hartwell laughed. "You have had excellent success in growing them together, Bennie." "Thank you, Miss!" Bennie was flushed with pleasure. "I've heard tell that there were roses without thorns, but you're the first of the kind I've seen." Bennie had ideas of duty, even to undeserving objects. Consequently, Hartwell's needs were as carefully attended to as his sister's or Firmstone's, but in spite of all duty there is a graciousness of manner that is only to be had by a payment in kind. Bennie paraded his duty as ostentatiously as his pleasure, and with the same lack of words. Hartwell noted, and kept silence. Hartwell looked across to the table which Bennie was preparing for the mill crew. "Do you supply the men as liberally as you do your own table, Firmstone?" "Just the same." "Don't think I want to restrict you, Firmstone. I want you to have the best you can get, but it strikes me as a little extravagant for the men." Bennie considered himself invaded. "The men pay for their extravagance, sir." "A dollar a day only, with no risks," Hartwell tendered, rather stiffly. "I'll trade my wages for your profits," retorted Bennie, "and give you a commission, and I'll bind myself to feed them no more hash than I do now!" The company rose from the table. For the benefit of Miss Hartwell and Firmstone, Bennie moved across the room with the dignity of a drum-major, and, opening the door, bowed his guests from his presence. CHAPTER XIII _The Stork and the Cranes_ In spite of Élise's declaration that she would see him again, Firmstone dropped her from his mind long before he reached his office. She had been an unexpected though not an unpleasant, incident; but he had regarded her as only an incident, after all. Her beauty and vivacity created an ephemeral interest; yet there were many reasons why it promised to be only ephemeral. The Blue Goose was a gambling, drinking resort, a den of iniquity which Firmstone loathed, a thing which, in spite of all, thrust itself forward to be taken into account. How much worse than a den of thieves and a centre of insurrection it was he had never stated to himself. He, however, would have had no hesitancy in completing the attributes of the place had he been asked. The fact that the ægis of marriage vows spread its protecting mantle over the proprietor, and its shadow over the permanent residents, would never have caused a wavering doubt, or certified to the moral respectability of the contracting parties. Firmstone was not the first to ask if any good thing could come out of Nazareth, or if untarnished purity could dwell in the tents of the Nazarenes. It occasionally happens that a stork is caught among cranes and, even innocent, is compelled to share the fate of its guilty, though accidental, associates. Thus it happened that when Élise, for the second time, met Firmstone at the falls he hardly concealed his annoyance. Élise was quick to detect the emotion, though innocence prevented her assigning it its true source. There was a questioning pain in the large, clear eyes lifted to Firmstone's. The look of annoyance on Firmstone's face melted. He spoke even more pleasantly than he felt. "Well, what I can do for you this time?" "You can go away from my place and stay away!" Élise flashed out. Firmstone's smile broadened. "I didn't know I was a trespasser." "Well, you are! I had this place before you came, and I'm likely to have it after you are gone!" The eyes were snapping. "You play Cassandra well." Firmstone was purposely tantalising. He was forgetting the cranes, nor was he displeased that the stork had other weapons than innocence. Élise's manner changed. "Who is Cassandra?" The eager, hungry look of the changing eyes smote Firmstone. The bantering smile disappeared. It occurred to him that Élise might be outdoing her prototype. "She was a very beautiful lady who prophesied disagreeable things that no one believed." Élise ignored the emphasis which Firmstone unconsciously placed on _beautiful_. She grew thoughtful, endeavouring to grasp his analogy. "I think," she said, slowly, "I'm no Cassandra." She looked sharply at Firmstone. "Daddy says you're going; Mo-reeson says you're going, and they put their chips on the right number pretty often." Firmstone laughed lightly. "Oh, well, it isn't for daddy and Morrison to say whether I'm to go or not." "Who's this Mr. Hartwell?" Élise asked, abruptly. "He's the man who can say." "Then you are up against it!" Élise spoke with decision. There was a suggestion of regret in her eyes. "These things be with the gods." Firmstone was half-conscious of a lack of dignity in seeming to be interested in personal matters, not intended for his immediate knowledge. Several times he had decided to end the episode, but the mobile face and speaking eyes, the half-childish innocence and unconscious grace restrained him. "I don't believe it." Élise looked gravely judicial. "Why not?" "Because God knows what he's about. Mr. Hartwell doesn't; he is only awfully sure he does." Firmstone chuckled softly over the unerring estimate which Élise had made. He began gathering up the reins, preparatory to resuming his way. Élise paid no attention to his motions. "Don't you want to see my garden?" she asked. "Is that an invitation?" "Yes." "You are sure I'll not trespass?" Élise looked up at him. "That's not fair. I was mad when I said that." She turned and hurriedly pushed through the matted bushes that grew beside the stream. There was a kind of nervous restlessness which Firmstone did not recall at their former meeting. They emerged from the bushes into a large arena bare of trees. It was completely hidden from the trail by a semicircle of tall spruces which, sweeping from the cliff on either side of the fall, bent in graceful curves to meet at the margin of the dividing brook. Moss-grown boulders, marked into miniature islands by cleaving threads of clear, cold water, were half hidden by the deep pink primroses, serried-massed about them. Creamy cups of marshmallows, lifted above the succulent green of fringing leaves, hid the threading lines of gliding water. On the outer border clustered tufts of delicate azure floated in the thin, pure air, veiling modest gentians. Moss and primrose, leaf and branch held forth jewelled fingers that sparkled in the light, while overhead the slanting sunbeams broke in iridescent bands against the beaten spray of the falling water. The air, surcharged with blending colours, spoke softly sibilant of visions beyond the power of words, of exaltation born not of the flesh, of opening gates with wider vistas into which only the pure in heart can enter. The girl stood with dreamy eyes, half-parted lips, an unconscious pose in perfect harmony with her surroundings. As Firmstone stood silently regarding the scene before him he was conscious of a growing regret, almost repentance, for the annoyance that he had felt at this second meeting. Yet he was right in harbouring the annoyance. He felt no vulgar pride in that at their first meeting he had unconsciously turned the girl's open hostility to admiration, or at least to tolerance of himself. But she belonged to the Blue Goose, and between the Blue Goose and the Rainbow Company there was open war. Suppose that in him Élise did find a pleasure for which she looked in vain among her associates; a stimulant to her better nature that hitherto had been denied her? That was no protection to her. Even her unconscious innocence was a weapon of attack rather than a shield of defence. She and she alone would be the one to suffer. For this reason Firmstone had put her from his mind after their first meeting, and for this reason he had felt annoyance when she had again placed herself in his path. But this second meeting had shown another stronger side in the girl before him. That deep in her nature was an instinct of right which her surroundings had not dwarfed. That this instinct was not to be daunted by fear of consequences. She had evidently come to warn him of personal danger to himself. This act carried danger--danger to her, and yet she apparently had not hesitated. Perhaps she did not realise the danger, but was he to hold it of less value on that account? Was he to accept what she gave him, and then through fear of malicious tongues abandon her to her fate without a thought? The idea was revolting, but what could he do? His lips set hard. There must be a way, and he would find it, however difficult. In some way she should have a chance. This chance must take one of two forms: to leave her in her present surroundings, and counteract their tendencies by other influences, or, in some way, to remove her from the Blue Goose. Firmstone was deeply moved. He felt that his course of action must be shaped by the calmest judgment, if Élise were to be rescued from her surroundings. He must act quickly, intelligently. If he had known of her real parentage he would have had no hesitancy. But he did not know. What he saw was Élise, the daughter of Pierre and Madame. To him they were her parents. Whatever opportunities he offered her, however much she might desire to avail herself of them, they could forbid; and he would be helpless. Élise was under age; she was Pierre's, to do with as he would. This was statute law. Firmstone rebelled against it instinctively; but it was hopeless. He knew Pierre, knew his greed for gold, his lack of scruple as to methods of acquiring it. He did not know Pierre's love for Élise; it would not have weighed with him had he known. For he was familiar with Pierre's class. Therefore he knew that Pierre would rather see Élise dead than in a station in life superior to his own, where she would either despise him or be ashamed of him. It was useless to appeal to Pierre on the ground of benefit to Élise. This demanded unselfish sacrifice, and Pierre was selfish. Firmstone tried another opening, and was confronted with another danger. If Pierre suspected that efforts were being made to weaken his hold on Élise there was one step that he could take which would forever thwart Firmstone's purpose. He had threatened to take this step. Firmstone's pulses quickened for a moment, then calmed. His course was clear. The law that declared her a minor gave her yet a minor's rights. She could not be compelled to marry against her own wishes. Élise must be saved through herself. At once he would set in motion influences that would make her present associates repugnant to her. The strength of mind, the hunger of soul, these elements that made her worth saving should be the means of her salvation. Should Pierre attempt to compel her marriage, even Firmstone could defeat him. Persuasion was all that was left to Pierre. Against Pierre's influence he pitted his own. "Where is Zephyr?" Élise broke the silence. "Why do you ask?" The Blue Goose was in the ascendant. Firmstone was casting about for time. The question had come from an unexpected direction. "Because he is in danger, and so are you." "In danger?" Firmstone did not try to conceal his surprise. "Yes." Élise made a slightly impatient gesture. "It's about the stage. They will kill him. You, too. I don't know why." "They? Who are they?" "Morrison and Daddy." "Did they know you would meet me to-day?" "I don't know, and I don't care." "You came to warn me?" "Yes." Firmstone stretched out his hand and took hers. "I cannot tell you how much I thank you. But don't take this risk again. You must not. I will be on my guard, and I'll look out for Zephyr, too." He laid his other hand on hers. At the touch, Élise looked up with hotly flaming cheeks, snatching her hand from his clasp. Into his eyes her own darted. Then they softened and drooped. Her hand reached for his. "I don't care. I can take care of myself. If I can't, it doesn't matter." Her voice said more than words. "If you are ever in trouble you will let me know?" Firmstone's hand crushed the little fingers in a tightening grasp. "Zephyr will help me." Firmstone turned to go. "I cannot express my thanks in words. In another way I can, and I will." CHAPTER XIV _Blinded Eyes_ An old proverb advises us to be sure we are right, then go ahead. To the last part of the proverb Hartwell was paying diligent heed; the first, so far as he was concerned, he took for granted. Hartwell was carrying out energetically his declared intention of informing himself generally. He was accumulating a vast fund of data on various subjects connected with the affairs of the Rainbow Company, and he was deriving great satisfaction from the contemplation of the quantity. The idea of a proper valuation of its quality never occurred to him. A caterpillar in action is a very vigorous insect; but by means of two short sticks judiciously shifted by a designing mind he can be made to work himself to a state of physical exhaustion, and yet remain precisely at the same point from whence he started. Hartwell's idea was a fairly laudable one, being nothing more nor less than to get at both sides of the question at issue individually from each of the interested parties. Early and late he had visited the mine and mill. He had interviewed men and foremen impartially, and the amount of information which these simple sons of toil instilled into his receptive mind would have aroused the suspicions of a less self-centred man. Of all the sources of information which Hartwell was vigorously exploiting, Luna, on the whole, was the most satisfactory. His guileless simplicity carried weight with Hartwell, and this weight was added to by a clumsy deference that assumed Hartwell's unquestioned superiority. "You see, Mr. Hartwell, it's like this. There's no need me telling you; you can see it for yourself, better than I can tell it. But it's all right your asking me. You've come out here to size things up generally." Luna was not particularly slow in getting on to curves, as he expressed it. "And so you are sizing me up a bit to see do I know my business and have my eyes open." He tipped a knowing wink at Hartwell. Hartwell nodded, with an appreciative grin, but made no further reply. Luna went on: "You see, it's like this, as I was saying. Us labouring men are sharp about some things. We have to be, or we would get done up at every turn. We know when a boss knows his business and when he don't. But it don't make no difference whether he does or whether he don't, we have to stand in with him. We'd lose our jobs if we didn't. I'm not above learning from anyone. I ain't one as thinks he knows it all. I'm willing to learn. I'm an old mill man. Been twenty years in a mill--all my life, as you might say--and I'm learning all the time. Just the other day I got on to a new wrinkle. I was standing watching Tommy; he's battery man on Five. Tommy was hanging up his battery on account of a loose tappet. Tommy he just hung up the stamp next the one with the loose tappet, and instead of measuring down, he just drove the tappet on a level with the other, and keyed her up, and had them dropping again inside of three minutes. I watched him, and when he'd started them, I up and says to Tommy, 'Tommy,' says I, 'I'm an old mill man, but that's a new one on me!' Tommy was as pleased as a boy with a pair of red-topped, copper-toed boots. It's too bad they don't make them kind any more; but then, they don't wear out as fast as the new kind. But, as I was saying, some bosses would have dropped on Tommy for that, and told him they didn't want no green men trying new capers." Luna paused and looked at Hartwell. Hartwell still beamed approbation, and, after casting about for a moment, Luna went on: "You see, a boss don't know everything, even if he has been to college. Most Eastern companies don't know anything. They send out a boss to superintend their work, and they get just what he tells them, and no more. None of the company men ever come out here to look for themselves. I ain't blaming them in general. They don't know. Now it's truth I'm telling you. I'm an old mill man. Been in the business twenty years, as I was telling you, and your company's the first I ever knew sending a man out to find what's the matter, who knew his business, and wa'n't too big to speak to a common workman, and listen to his side of the story." It was a strong dose, but Hartwell swallowed it without a visible gulp. Even more. He was immensely pleased. He was gaining the confidence of the honest toiler, and he would get the unvarnished truth. "This is all interesting, very interesting to me, Mr. Luna. I'm a very strict man in business, but I try to be just. I'm a very busy man, and my time is so thoroughly taken up that I am often very abrupt. You see, it's always so with a business man. He has to decide at once and with the fewest possible words. But I'm always ready to talk over things with my men. If I haven't got time, I make it." "It's a pity there ain't more like you, Mr. Hartwell. There wouldn't be so much trouble between capital and labour. But, as I was saying, we labouring men are honest in our way, and we have feelings, too." Luna was getting grim. He deemed that the proper time had arrived for putting his personal ax upon the whirling grindstone. He looked fixedly at Hartwell. "As I was saying, Mr. Hartwell, us labouring men is honest. We believe in giving a fair day's work for a fair day's pay, and it grinds us to have the boss come sneaking in on us any time, day or night, just like a China herder. He ain't running the mill all the time, and he don't know about things. Machinery won't run itself, and, as I was saying, there ain't no man knows it all. And if the boss happens to catch two or three of us talking over how to fix up a battery, or key up a loose bull-wheel, he ain't no right to say that we're loafing and neglecting our business, and jack us up for it. As I said, Mr. Hartwell, the labouring man is honest; but if we're sneaked on as if we wasn't, 'tain't going to be very long before they'll put it up that, if they're going to be hung for sheep-stealing, they'll have the sheep first, anyway." Luna paused more for emphasis than for approbation. That he could see in every line of Hartwell's face. At length he resumed: "As I said, that ain't all by a long shot. There's all sorts of pipe-dreams floating around about men's stealing from the mine and stealing from the mill. But, man to man, Mr. Hartwell, ain't the superintendent got a thousand chances to steal, and steal big, where a common workman ain't got one?" Luna laid vicious emphasis on the last words, and his expression gave added weight to his words. To do Hartwell simple justice, dishonesty had never for an instant associated itself in his mind with Firmstone. He deemed him inefficient and lacking a grasp of conditions; but, brought face to face with a question of honesty, there was repugnance at the mere suggestion. His face showed it. Luna caught the look instantly and began to mend his break. "I'm not questioning any man's honesty. But it's just like this. Why is it that a poor labouring man is always suspected and looked out for, and those as has bigger chances goes free? That's all, and, man to man, I'm asking you if that's fair." Luna's garrulity was taking a line which Hartwell had no desire to investigate, for the present, at least. He answered directly and abruptly: "When a man loses a dollar, he makes a fuss about it. When he loses a thousand, he goes on a still hunt." Luna took his cue. He winked knowingly. "That's all right. You know your business. That's plain as a squealing pulley howling for oil. But I wasn't telling you all these things because you needed to be told. Anyone can see that you can just help yourself. I just wanted to tell you so that you could see that us labouring men ain't blind, even if everyone don't see with eyes of his own the way you're doing. You are the first gentleman that has ever given me the chance, and I'm obliged to you for it. So's the men, too." Hartwell felt that, for the present, he had gained sufficient information, and prepared to go. "I'm greatly obliged to you, Mr. Luna, for the information you and your men have given me." He held out his hand cordially. "Don't hesitate to come to me at any time." Hartwell had pursued the same tactics at the mine, and with the same results. He had carefully refrained from mentioning Firmstone's name, and the men had followed his lead. Hartwell made a very common mistake. He underrated the mental calibre of the men. He assumed that, because they wore overalls and jumpers, their eyes could not follow the pea under the shell which he was nimbly manipulating. In plain English, he was getting points on Firmstone by the simple ruse of omitting to mention his name. There was another and far more important point that never occurred to him. By his course of action he was completely undermining Firmstone's authority. There is not a single workman who will ever let slip an opportunity to give a speeding kick to a falling boss on general principles, if not from personal motives. Hartwell never took this factor into consideration. His vanity was flattered by the deference paid to him, never for a moment dreaming that the bulk of the substance and the whole of the flavour of the incense burned under his nose was made up of resentment against Firmstone, nor that the waning stores were nightly replenished at the Blue Goose. Had Hartwell remained East, as devoutly hoped by Firmstone, it is all but certain that Firmstone's methods would have averted the trouble which was daily growing more threatening. Hartwell had occasionally dropped in for a social drink at the Blue Goose, and the deferential welcome accorded to him was very flattering. Each occasion was but the prologue to another and more extended visit. The open welcome tendered him by both Pierre and Morrison had wholly neutralised the warnings embodied in Firmstone's reports. He was certain that Firmstone had mistaken for deep and unscrupulous villains a pair of good-natured oafs who preferred to make a living by selling whisky and running a gambling outfit, to pounding steel for three dollars a day. In starting out on the conquest of the Blue Goose, Hartwell acted on an erroneous concept of the foibles of humanity. The greatness of others is of small importance in comparison with one's own. The one who ignores this truth is continually pulling a cat by the tail, and this is proverbially a hard task. Hartwell's plan was first to create an impression of his own importance in order that it might excite awe, and then, by gracious condescension, to arouse a loyal and respectful devotion. Considering the object of this attack, he was making a double error. Pierre was not at all given to the splitting of hairs, but in combing them along the line of least resistance he was an adept. Hartwell, having pacified the mine and the mill, had moved to the sanctum of the Blue Goose, with the idea of furthering his benign influence. Hartwell, Morrison, and Pierre were sitting around a table in the private office, Hartwell impatient for action, Pierre unobtrusively alert, Morrison cocksure to the verge of insolence. "Meestaire Hartwell will do me ze honaire to mek ze drink?" Pierre inquired. "Thanks." Hartwell answered the question addressed to him. "Mine is brandy." "A-a-ah! Ze good discrimination!" purred Pierre. "Not ze whisky from ze rotten grain; but ze _eau-de-vie_ wiz ze fire of ze sun and ze sweet of ze vine!" Morrison placed glasses before each, a bottle of soda, and Pierre's choicest brand of cognac on the table. "Help yourself," he remarked, as he sat down. Sipping his brandy and soda, Hartwell opened the game. "You see," he began, addressing Pierre, "things aren't running very smoothly out here, and I have come out to size up the situation. The fact is, I'm the only one of our company who knows a thing about mining. It's only a side issue with me, but I can't well get out of it. My people look to me to help them out, and I've got to do it." "Your people have ze great good fortune--ver' great." Pierre bowed smilingly. Hartwell resumed: "I'm a fair man. I have now what I consider sufficient knowledge to warrant me in making some radical changes out here; but I want to get all the information possible, and from every possible source. Then I can act with a perfectly clear conscience." He spoke decidedly, as he refilled his glass. "Then fire that glass-eyed supe of yours," Morrison burst out. "You never had any trouble till he came." Hartwell looked mild reproach. Morrison was going too fast. There was a pause. Morrison again spoke, this time sullenly and without raising his eyes. "He's queered himself with the men. They'll do him if he stays. They ain't going to stand his sneaking round and treating them like dogs. They----" "Mistaire Mo-reeson speak bad English, ver' bad." Pierre's words cut in like keen-edged steel. "On ze odder side ze door, it not mek so much mattaire." Morrison left the room without a word further. There was a look of sullen satisfaction on his face. Hartwell smiled approvingly at Pierre. "You've got your man cinched all right." "Hall but ze tongue." Pierre shrugged his shoulders, with a slight wave of his hands. "Well," Hartwell resumed, "I want to get at the bottom of this stage business. Fifty thousand doesn't matter so much to us; it's the thing back of it. What I want to know is whether it was an accident, or whether it was a hold-up." "Feefty tousand dollaire!" Pierre spoke musingly. "She bin a lot of monnaie. A whole lot." Pierre hesitated, then looked up at Hartwell. "Well?" Hartwell asked. "How you know she bin feefty tousand dollaire hin ze safe?" "Mr. Firmstone advised me of its shipment." "_Bien!_ Ze safe, where she bin now?" "In the river." "A-a-ah! You bin see her, heh?" "No. The water's too high." "When ze wattaire bin mek ze godown, you bin find her, heh?" "I suppose so." "_Bien!_ Mek ze suppose. When ze wattaire mek ze godown, you not find ze safe?" To some extent, Hartwell had anticipated Pierre's drift, but he preferred to let him take his own course. "It would look as if someone had got ahead of us." Pierre waved his hand impatiently. "Feefty tousand dollaire bin whole lot monnaie. Big lot men like feefty tousand dollaire, ver' big lot. Bimeby somebody get ze safe. Zey find no feefty tousand dollaire--only pig lead, heh?" Pierre looked up shrewdly. "Ze men no mek ze talk 'bout feefty tousand dollaire, no mek ze talk 'bout honly pig lead, heh?" "You think, then, the bullion was never put into the safe?" Hartwell had hardly gone so far as Pierre. "In other words, that Mr. Firmstone kept out the bullion, planned the wreck, caused the report to be spread that there was fifty thousand in the safe, with the idea of either putting it out of the way himself, or that someone else would get it?" Pierre looked up with well-feigned surprise. "_Moi?_" he asked. "_Moi?_" He shrugged his shoulders. "I mek ze fact, ze suppose. You mek ze conclude." Hartwell looked puzzled. "But," he said, "if what you say is true, there is no other conclusion." Pierre again shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "_Bien!_ I mek no conclude. You mek ze conclude. Ze suppose mek ze conclude. She's bin no mattaire _á moi_. I mek no conclude." Pierre's words and manner both intimated that, so far as he was concerned, the interview was closed. Pierre was a merciful man and without malice. When he felt that his dagger had made a mortal thrust he never turned it in the wound. In this interview circumstances had forced him farther than he cared to go. He was taking chances, and he knew it. Zephyr was booked to disappear. Others than Zephyr were watching the river. But Zephyr might escape; the company might recover the money. What, then? Only his scheme would have miscarried. The recovery of the money would clear Firmstone and leave him where he was before. Pierre's diagnosis of Hartwell was to the effect that, if an idea was once lodged in his mind, an earthquake would not jar it out again. Even in this event Pierre's object would be accomplished. Firmstone would have to go. Hartwell made several ineffectual attempts to draw out Pierre still farther, but the wily Frenchman baffled him at every turn. And there the matter rested. Had Hartwell taken less of Pierre's good brandy, he would hardly have taken so freely of his sinister suggestions. As it was, the mellow liquor began to impart a like virtue to his wits, and led him to clap the little Frenchman's back, as he declared his belief that Pierre was a slick bird, but that his own plumage was smoothly preened as well. Followed by Pierre, he rose to leave the room. His eyes fell upon Élise, sitting quietly at her desk, and he halted. His outstretched hand had hardly touched the unsuspecting girl when Pierre caught him by the collar, and, with a twist and shove, sent him staggering half-way across the room. Little short of murder was blazing from Pierre's eyes. "_Crapaud!_" he hissed. "You put ze fingaire hon my li'l Élise! _Sacré mille tonnerre!_ I kill you!" Pierre started as if to carry out his threat, but restraining hands held him back, while other hands and feet buffeted and kicked the dazed Hartwell into the street. The safe guarding of Élise was the one bright spot in Pierre's very shady career. To the fact that it was bright and strong his turning on Hartwell bore testimony. Every point in Pierre's policy had dictated conciliation and sufferance; but now this was cast aside. Pierre rapidly gained control of his temper, but he shifted his animus from the lust of gain to the glutting of revenge. CHAPTER XV _Bending the Twig_ Firmstone had done a very unusual thing for him in working himself up to the point where anything that threatened delay in his proposed rescue of Élise made him impatient. The necessity for immediate action had impressed itself so strongly upon him that he lost sight of the fact that others, even more deeply concerned than himself, might justly claim consideration. He knew that in some way Zephyr was more or less in touch with Pierre and Madame. Just how or why, he was in no mood to inquire. Only a self-reliant mind is capable of distinguishing between that which is an essential part and that which seems to be. So it happened that Firmstone, when for the second time he met Zephyr at the Devil's Elbow, listened impatiently to the latter's comments on the loss of the safe. When at last he abruptly closed that subject and with equal abruptness introduced the one uppermost in his mind the cold reticence of Zephyr surprised and shocked him. The two men had met by chance, almost the first day that Firmstone had assumed charge of the Rainbow properties, and each had impressed the other with a feeling of profound respect. This respect had ripened into a genuine friendship. Zephyr saw in Firmstone a man who knew his business, a man capable of applying his knowledge, whose duty to his employers never blinded his eyes to the rights of his workmen, a man who saw clearly, acted decisively, and yielded to the humblest the respect which he exacted from the highest. These characteristics grew on Zephyr until they filled his entire mental horizon, and he never questioned what might be beyond. Yet now he had fear for Élise. Firmstone was so far above her. Zephyr shook his head. Marriage was not to be thought of, only a hopeless love on the part of Élise that would bring misery in the end. This was Zephyr's limit, and this made him coldly silent in the presence of Firmstone's advances. Firmstone was not thus limited. Zephyr's silent reticence was quickly fathomed. His liking for the man grew. He spoke calmly and with no trace of resentment. "Of course, Élise is nothing to me in a way. But to think of a girl with her possibilities being dwarfed and ruined by her surroundings!" He paused, then added, "I wish my sister had come out with me. She wanted to come." Zephyr caught at the last words for an instant, then dropped them. His answer was abrupt and non-committal. "There are some things that are best helped by letting them alone." Firmstone rose. "Good night," he said, briefly, and started for the mill. Firmstone was disappointed at Zephyr's reception; but he had reasoned himself out of surprise. He had not given up the idea of freeing Élise from her associates. That was not Firmstone. The next morning, as usual, he met Miss Hartwell at breakfast. "I am going up to the mine, this morning. Wouldn't you like to go as far as the Falls? It is well worth your effort," he added. "I would like to go very much." She spoke meditatively. "If that means yes, I'll have a pony saddled for you. I'll be ready by nine o'clock." Miss Hartwell looked undecided. Firmstone divined the reason. "The trail is perfectly safe every way, and the pony is sure-footed, so you have nothing to fear." "I believe I will go. My brother will never find time to take me around." "I'll get ready at once." A seeming accident more often accomplishes desirable results than a genuine one. Firmstone was fairly well satisfied that one excursion to the Falls would incline Miss Hartwell to others. If she failed to meet Élise on one day she was almost certain to meet her on another. Promptly at nine the horses were at the door, and as promptly Miss Hartwell appeared in her riding habit. In her hand she carried a sketch-book. She held it up, smiling. "This is one weakness that I cannot conceal." "Even that needn't trouble you. I'll carry it." "You seem to have a weakness as well." She was looking at a small box which Firmstone was fastening to his saddle. "This one is common to us all. We may not be back till late, so Benny put up a lunch. The Falls are near Paradise; but yet far enough this side of the line to make eating a necessity." They mounted and rode away. Firmstone did not take the usual trail by the Blue Goose, though it was the shorter. The trail he chose was longer and easier. At first he was a little anxious about his guest; but Miss Hartwell's manner plainly showed that his anxiety was groundless. Evidently she was accustomed to riding, and the pony was perfectly safe. The trail was narrow and, as he was riding in advance, conversation was difficult, and no attempt was made to carry it on. At the Falls Firmstone dismounted and took Miss Hartwell's pony to an open place, where a long tether allowed it to graze in peace. Miss Hartwell stood with her eyes resting on reach after reach of the changing vista. She turned to Firmstone with a subdued smile. "I am afraid that I troubled you with a useless burden," she said. "I do not know to what you refer in particular; but I can truthfully deny trouble on general principles." "Really, haven't you been laughing at me, all this time? You must have known how utterly hopeless a sketch-book and water-colours would be in such a place. I think I'll try botany instead. That appeals to me as more attainable." Firmstone looked at his watch. "I must go on. You are quite sure you won't get tired waiting? I have put your lunch with your sketch-book. I'll be back by two o'clock, anyway." Miss Hartwell assured him that she would not mind the waiting, and Firmstone went on his way. Miss Hartwell gathered a few flowers, then opened her botany, and began picking them to pieces that she might attach to each the hard name which others had saddled upon it. At first absorbed and intent upon her work, at length she grew restless and, raising her eyes, she saw Élise. On the girl's face curiosity and disapprobation amounting almost to resentment were strangely blended. Curiosity, for the moment, gained the ascendency, as Miss Hartwell raised her eyes. "What are you doing to those flowers?" Élise pointed to the fragments. "I am trying to analyse them." "What do you mean by that?" "Analysis?" Miss Hartwell looked up inquiringly; but Élise made no reply, so she went on. "That is separating them into their component parts, to learn their structure." "What for?" Élise looked rather puzzled, but yet willing to hear the whole defence for spoliation. "So that I can learn their names." "How do you find their names?" It occurred to Miss Hartwell to close the circle by simply answering "analysis"; but she forebore. "The flowers are described in this botany and their names are given. By separating the flowers into their parts I can find the names." "Where did the book get the names?" If Miss Hartwell was growing impatient she concealed it admirably. If she was perplexed in mind, and she certainly was, perplexity did not show in the repose of her face. Her voice flowed with the modulated rhythm of a college professor reciting an oft-repeated lecture to ever-changing individuals with an unchanging stage of mental development. If her choice of answer was made in desperation nothing showed it. "Botanists have studied plants very carefully. They find certain resemblances which are persistent. These persistent resemblances they classify into families. There are other less comprehensive resemblances in the families. These are grouped into genera and the genera are divided into species and these again into varieties, and a name is given to each." Élise in her way was a genius. She recognised the impossible. Miss Hartwell's answers were impossible to her. "Oh, is that all?" she asked, sarcastically. "Have you found the names of these?" Again she pointed to the torn flowers. Miss Hartwell divided her prey into groups. "These are the Ranunculaceæ family. This is the Aquilegia Cærulea. This is the Delphinium Occidentale. This belongs to the Polemoniaceæ family, and is the Phlox Cæspitosa. These are Compositæ. They are a difficult group to name." Miss Hartwell was indulging in mixed emotions. Mingled with a satisfaction in reviewing her erudition was a quiet revenge heightened by the unconsciousness of her object. "You don't love flowers." There was no indecision in the statement. "Why, yes, I certainly do." "No; you don't, or you wouldn't tear them to pieces." "Don't you ever pick flowers?" "Yes; but I love them. I take them to my room, and they talk to me. They do, too!" Élise flashed an answer to a questioning look of Miss Hartwell, and then went on, "I don't tear them to pieces and throw them away. Not even to find out those hideous names you called them. They don't belong to them. You don't love them, and you needn't pretend you do." Élise's cheeks were flushed. Miss Hartwell was bewildered in mind. She acknowledged it to herself. Élise was teaching her a lesson that she had never heard of before, much less learned. Then came elusive suggestions, vaguely defined, of the two-fold aspect of nature. She looked regretfully at the evidences of her curiosity. She had not yet gone far enough along the new path to take accurate notes of her emotions; but she had an undefined sense of her inferiority, a sense of wrong-doing. "I am very sorry I hurt you. I did not mean to." Élise gave a quick look of interrogation. The look showed sincerity. Her voice softened. "You didn't hurt me; you made me mad. I can help myself. They can't." Miss Hartwell had left her sketch-book unclosed. An errant breath of wind was fluttering the pages. "What is that?" Élise asked. "Another kind of book to make you tear up flowers?" Her voice was hard again. Miss Hartwell took up the open book. "Perhaps you would like to see these. They may atone for my other wrong-doing." Élise seated herself and received the sketches one by one as they were handed to her. Miss Hartwell had intended to make comments as necessity or opportunity seemed to demand; but Élise forestalled her. "This is beautiful; only----" She paused. Miss Hartwell looked up. "Only what?" Élise shook her head impatiently. "You've put those horrid names on each one of them. They make me think of the ones you tore to pieces." Miss Hartwell stretched out her hand. "Let me take them for a moment, please." Élise half drew them away, looking sharply at Miss Hartwell. Then her face softened, and she placed the sketches in her hand. One by one the offending names were removed. "I think that is better." Élise watched curiously, and her expression did not change with the reception of the sketches. "Don't you ever get mad?" she asked. "Sometimes." "That would have made me awfully mad." "But I think you were quite right. The names are not beautiful. The flowers are." "That wouldn't make any difference with me. I'd get mad before I thought, and then I'd stick to it anyway." "That is not right." Élise looked somewhat rebuked, but more puzzled. "How old are you?" she asked. This was too much. Miss Hartwell could not conceal her astonishment. She recovered quickly and answered, with a smile: "I was twenty-five, last February." Élise resumed her examination of the water-colours. There was a look of satisfaction on her face. "Oh, well, perhaps when I get to be as old as that I won't get mad, either. How did you learn to make flowers?" Her attention was fixed all the time on the colours. "I took lessons." "Is it very hard to learn?" "Not very, for some people. Would you like to have me teach you?" Élise's face was flushed and eager. "Will you teach me?" she asked. "Certainly. It will give me great pleasure." "When can you begin?" "Now, if you like." Miss Hartwell had taste, and she had been under excellent instruction. Her efforts had been praised and herself highly commended; but no sweeter incense had ever been burned under her nostrils than the intense absorption of her first pupil. It was not genius; it was love, pure and simple. There was no element of self-consciousness, only a wild love of beauty and a longing to give it expression. Nominally, at least, Miss Hartwell was the instructor and Élise the pupil; but that did not prevent her learning some lessons which her other instructors had failed to suggest. The comments of Élise on the habits and peculiarities of every plant and flower that they attempted demonstrated to Miss Hartwell that the real science of botany was not wholly dependent upon forceps and scalpel. Another demonstration was to the effect that the first and hardest step in drawing, if not in painting, was a clear-cut conception of the object to be delineated. Élise knew her object. From the first downy ball that pushed its way into the opening spring, to the unfolding of the perfect flower, every shade and variety of colour Élise knew to perfection. Miss Hartwell's lessons had been purely mechanical. She had brought to them determination and faithful application; but unconsciously the object had been herself, not her subject, and her work showed it. Élise was no genius; but she was possessed of some of its most imperative essentials, an utter oblivion of self and an abounding love of her subjects. Miss Hartwell was astonished at her easy grasp of details which had come to her after much laborious effort. They were aroused by the click of iron shoes on the stony trail as Firmstone rode toward them. He was delighted that his first attempt at bringing Élise in contact with Miss Hartwell had been so successful. There was a flush of pleasure on Miss Hartwell's face. "I believe you knew I would not be alone. Why didn't you tell me about Élise?" "Oh, it's better to let each make his own discoveries, especially if they are pleasant." Firmstone looked at the paint-smudged fingers of Élise. "You refused my help in square root, and are taking lessons in painting from Miss Hartwell." "Miss who?" Firmstone was astonished at the change in the girl's face. "Miss Hartwell," he answered. Élise rose quickly to her feet. Brush and pencil fell unheeded from her lap. "Are you related to that Hartwell at the mill?" she demanded. "He is my brother." Fierce anger burned in the eyes of Élise. Without a word, she turned and started down the trail. Miss Hartwell and Firmstone watched the retreating figure for a moment. She was first to recover from her surprise. She began to gather the scattered papers which Élise had dropped. She was utterly unable to suggest an explanation of the sudden change that had come over Élise on hearing her name. Firmstone was at first astonished beyond measure. A second thought cleared his mind. He knew that Hartwell had been going of late to the Blue Goose. Élise, no doubt, had good grounds for resentment against him. That it should be abruptly extended to his sister was no matter of surprise to Firmstone. Of course, to Miss Hartwell he could not even suggest an explanation. They each were wholly unprepared for the finale which came as an unexpected sequel. A delicate little hand, somewhat smudged with paint, was held out to Miss Hartwell, who, as she took the hand, looked up into a resolute face, with drooping eyes. "I got mad before I thought, and I've come back to tell you that it wasn't right." Miss Hartwell drew the girl down beside her. "Things always look worse than they really are when one is hungry. Won't you share our lunch?" With ready tact she directed her words to Firmstone, and she was not disappointed in finding in him an intelligent second. Before many minutes, Élise had forgotten disagreeable subjects in things which to her never lacked interest. At parting Élise followed the direct trail to the Blue Goose. As Firmstone had hoped, another series of lessons was arranged for. CHAPTER XVI _An Insistent Question_ Had Firmstone been given to the habit of self-congratulation he would have found ample opportunity for approbation in the excellent manner with which his plan for the rescue of Élise was working out. The companionship of Élise and Miss Hartwell had become almost constant in spite of the unpropitious dénouement of their first meeting. This pleased Firmstone greatly. But there was another thing which this companionship thrust upon him with renewed interest. At first it had not been prominent. In fact, it was quite overshadowed while Miss Hartwell's unconscious part in his plan was in doubt. Now that the doubt was removed, his personal feelings toward Élise came to the front. He was neither conceited nor a philanthropist with more enthusiasm than sense. He did not attempt to conceal from himself that philanthropy, incarnated in youth, culture, and a recognised position, directed toward a young and beautiful girl was in danger of forming entangling alliances, and that these alliances could be more easily prevented than obviated when once formed. Firmstone was again riding down from the mine. He expected to find Élise and Miss Hartwell at the Falls, as he had many times of late. He placed the facts squarely before himself. He was hearing of no one so much as of Élise. Whether this was due to an awakening consciousness on his part or whether his interest in Élise had attracted the attention of others he could not decide. Certain it was that Miss Hartwell was continually singing her praise. Jim, who was rapidly recovering from his wounds and from his general shaking up at the wreck of the stage, let pass no opportunity wherein he might express his opinion. "Hell!" he remarked. "I couldn't do that girl dirt by up and going dead after all her trouble. Ain't she just fed me and flowered me and coddled me general? Gawd A'mighty! I feel like a delicatessen shop 'n a flower garden all mixed up with angels." Bennie was equally enthusiastic, but his shadowing gourd had a devouring worm. His commendation of Élise only aroused a resentful consciousness of the Blue Goose. "It's the way of the world," he was wont to remark, "but it's a damned shame to make a good dog and then worry him with fleas." There was also Dago Joe, who ran the tram at the mill. Joe had a goodly flock of graduated dagoes in assorted sizes, but his love embraced them all. That the number was undiminished by disease he credited to Élise, and the company surgeon vouched for the truth of his assertions. Only Zephyr was persistently silent. This, however, increased Firmstone's perplexity, if it did not confirm his suspicions that his interest in Élise had attracted marked attention. There was only one way in which his proposed plan of rescue could be carried out that would not eventually do the girl more harm than good, especially if she was compelled to remain in Pandora. Here was his problem--one which demanded immediate solution. He was at the Falls, unconsciously preparing to dismount, when he saw that neither Élise nor Miss Hartwell was there. He looked around a moment; then, convinced that they were absent, he rode on down the trail. As he entered the town he noted a group of boys grotesquely attired in miner's clothes. Leading the group was Joe's oldest son, a boy of about twelve years. A miner's hat, many sizes too large, was on his head, almost hiding his face. A miner's jacket, reaching nearly to his feet, completed his costume. In his hand he was swinging a lighted candle. The other boys were similarly attired, and each had candles as well. Firmstone smiled. The boys were playing miner, and were "going on shift." He was startled into more active consciousness by shrill screams of agony. The boys had broken from their ranks and were flying in every direction. Young Joe, staggering behind them, was almost hidden by a jet of flame that seemed to spring from one of the pockets of his coat. The boy was just opposite the Blue Goose. Before Firmstone could spur his horse to the screaming child Élise darted down the steps, seized the boy with one hand, with the other tore the flames from his coat and threw them far out on the trail. Firmstone knew what had happened. The miner had left some sticks of powder in his coat and these had caught fire from the lighted candle. The flames from the burning powder had scorched the boy's hand, licked across his face, and the coat itself had begun to burn, when Élise reached him. She was stripping the coat from the screaming boy as Firmstone sprang from his horse. He took the boy in his arms and carried him up the steps of the Blue Goose. Élise, running up the steps before him, reappeared with oil and bandages, as he laid the boy on one of the tables. Pierre and Morrison came into the bar-room as Firmstone and Élise began to dress the burns. Morrison laid his hand roughly on Firmstone's arm. "You get back to your own. This is our crowd." "Git hout! You bin kip-still." Pierre in turn thrust Morrison aside. "You bin got hall you want, Meestaire Firmstone?" "Take my horse and go for the doctor." Pierre hastily left the room. The clatter of hoofs showed that Firmstone's order had been obeyed. Élise and Firmstone worked busily at the little sufferer. Oil and laudanum had deadened the pain, and the boy was now sobbing hysterically; Morrison standing by, glaring in helpless rage. Another clatter of hoofs outside, and Pierre and the company surgeon hurried into the room. The boy's moans were stilled and he lay staring questioningly with large eyes at the surgeon. "You haven't left me anything to do." The surgeon turned approvingly to Élise. "Mr. Firmstone did that." The surgeon laughed. "That's Élise every time. She's always laying the blame on someone else. Never got her to own up to anything of this kind in my life." Joe senior and his wife came breathless into the room. Mrs. Joe threw herself on the boy with all the abandon of the genuine Latin. Joe looked at Élise, then dragged his wife aside. "The boy's all right now, Joe. You can take him home. I'll be in to see him later." The surgeon turned to leave the room. Joe never stirred; only looked at Élise. "It's all right, Joe." The surgeon shrugged his shoulders in mock despair. "There it is again. I'm getting to be of no account." Something in Élise's face caused him to look again. Then he was at her side. Taking her arm, he glanced at the hand she was trying to hide. "It doesn't amount to anything." Élise was trying to free her arm. From the palm up the hand was red and blistered. "Now I'll show my authority. How did it happen?" "The powder was burning. I was afraid it might explode." "What if it had exploded?" Firmstone asked the question of Élise. She made no reply. He hardly expected she would. Nevertheless he did not dismiss the question from his mind. As he rode away with the company surgeon, he asked it over and over again. Then he made answer to himself. CHAPTER XVII _The Bearded Lion_ Zephyr was doing some meditation on his own account after the meeting with Firmstone at the Devil's Elbow. That not only Firmstone's reputation, but his life as well, hung in the balance, Zephyr had visible proof. This material proof he was absently tipping from hand to hand, during his broken and unsatisfactory interview with Firmstone. It was nothing more nor less than a nickel-jacketed bullet which, that very morning, had barely missed his head, only to flatten itself against the rocks behind him. The morning was always a dull time at the Blue Goose. Morrison slept late. Élise was either with Madame or rambling among the hills. Only Pierre, who seemed never to sleep, was to be counted upon with any certainty. By sunrise on the day that Firmstone and Miss Hartwell were riding to the Falls Zephyr was up and on his way to the Blue Goose. He found Pierre in the bar-room. "_Bon jour, M'sieur._" Zephyr greeted him affably as he slowly sank into a chair opposite the one in which Pierre was seated. Pierre, with hardly a movement of his facial muscles, returned Zephyr's salutation. From his manner no one would have suspected that, had someone with sufficient reason inquired as to the whereabouts of Zephyr, Pierre would have replied confidently that the sought-for person was bobbing down the San Miguel with a little round hole through his head. Zephyr's presence in the flesh simply told him that, for some unknown reason, his plan had miscarried. Zephyr lazily rolled a cigarette and placed it between his lips. He raised his eyes languidly to Pierre's. "M'sieu Pierre mek one slick plan. Ze Rainbow Company work ze mine, ze mill. _Moi_, Pierre, mek ze gol' in mon cellaire." Zephyr blew forth the words in a cloud of smoke. Pierre started and looked around. His hand made a motion toward his hip pocket. Zephyr dropped his bantering tone. "Not yet, Frenchy. You'll tip over more soup kettles than you know of." He dropped the flattened bullet on the table and pointed to it. "That was a bad break on your part. It might have been worse for you as well as for me, if your man hadn't been a bad shot." Pierre reached for the bullet, but Zephyr gathered it in. "Not yet, M'sieur. It was intended for me, and I'll keep it, as a token of respect. I know M'sieur Pierre. Wen M'sieur Pierre bin mek up ze min' for shoot, M'sieur Pierre bin say,'_Comment!_ Zat fellaire he bin too damn smart _pour moi_.' Thanks! Me and Firmstone are much obliged." Pierre shrugged his shoulders impatiently. Zephyr noted the gesture. "Don't stop there, M'sieur. Get up to your head. You're in a mess, a bad one. Shake your wits. Get up and walk around. Explode some _sacrés_. Pull out a few handfuls of hair and scatter around. No good looking daggers. The real thing won't work on me, and you'd only get in a worse mess if it did. That's Firmstone, too. We both are more valuable to you alive than dead. Of what value is it to a man to do two others, if he gets soaked in the neck himself?" Pierre was angered. It was useless to try to conceal it. His swarthy cheeks grew livid. "_Sacré!_" he blurted. "What you mean in hell?" "That's better. Now you're getting down to business. When I find a man that's up against a thing too hard for him, I don't mind giving him a lift." "You lif' and bedam!" Pierre had concluded that pretensions were useless with Zephyr, and he gave his passion full play. Even if he made breaks with Zephyr, he would be no worse off. "I'll' lif'' all right. 'Bedam' is as maybe. Now, Frenchy, if you'll calm yourself a bit, I'll speak my little piece. You've slated Firmstone and me for over the divide. _P'quoi, M'sieur?_ For this. Firmstone understands his business and tends to it. This interferes with your cellar. So Mr. Firmstone was to be fired by the company. You steered that safe into the river to help things along. You thought that Jim would be killed and Firmstone would be chump enough to charge it to a hold-up, and go off on a wrong scent. Jim got off, and Firmstone was going to get the safe. I know you are kind-hearted and don't like to do folks; but Firmstone and me were taking unwarranted liberties with your plans. Now put your ear close to the ground, Frenchy, and listen hard and you'll hear something drop. If you do Firmstone you'll see cross-barred sunlight the rest of your days. I'll see to that. If you do us both it won't make much difference. I've been taking my pen in hand for a few months back, and the result is a bundle of papers in a safe place. It may not be much in a literary way; but it will make mighty interesting reading for such as it may concern, and you are one of them. Now let me tell you one thing more. If this little damned thing had gone through my head on the way to something harder, in just four days you'd be taking your exercise in a corked jug. My game is worth two of yours. Mine will play itself when I'm dead; yours won't." Pierre's lips parted enough to show his set teeth. "_Bien!_ You tink you bin damn smart, heh? I show you. You bin catch one rattlesnake by ze tail. _Comment?_ I show you." Pierre rose. "Better wait a bit, Frenchy. I've been giving you some information. Now I'll give you some instructions. You've been planning to have Élise married. Don't do it. You've made up your mind not to keep your promise to her dead father and mother. You just go back to your original intentions. It will be good for your body, and for your soul, too, if you've got any. You're smooth stuff, Pierre, too smooth to think that I'm talking four of a kind on a bob-tail flush. Comprenny?" Pierre's eyes lost their fierceness, but his face none of its determination. "I ain't going to give hup my li'l Élise. _Sacré, non!_" "That's for Élise to say. You've got to give her the chance." There was a moment's pause. "How you bin mek me, heh?" Pierre turned like a cat. There was a challenge in his words; but there were thoughts he did not voice. Zephyr was not to be surprised into saying more than he intended. "That's a slick game, Pierre; but it won't work. If you want to draw my fire, you'll have to hang more than an empty hat on a stick. In plain, flat English, I've got you cinched. If you want to feel the straps draw, just start in to buck." Pierre rose from the table. His eyes were all but invisible. There was no ursine clumsiness in his movements, as he walked to and fro in the bar-room. As became a feline, he walked in silence and on his toes. He was thinking of many a shady incident in his past career, and he knew that with the greater number of his shaded spots Zephyr was more or less familiar. With which of them was Zephyr most familiar, and was there any one by means of which Zephyr could thwart him by threatening exposure? Pierre's tread became yet more silent. He was half crouching, as if ready for a spring. Zephyr had referred to the cellar. There was his weakest spot. Luna, the mill foreman, dozens of men, he could name them every one--all had brought their plunder to the Blue Goose. Every man who brought him uncoined gold was a thief, and they all felt safe because in the eyes of the law he, Pierre, was one of them. He alone was not safe. Not one of the thieves was certainly known to the others; he was known to them all. It could not be helped. He had taken big chances; but his reward had been great as well. That would not help him, if--Unconsciously he crouched still lower. "If there's any procession heading for Cañon City you'll be in it, too." Someone had got frightened. Luna, probably. Firmstone was working him, and Zephyr was helping Firmstone. Pierre knew well the fickle favour of the common man. A word could destroy his loyalty, excite his fears, or arouse him to vengeance. Burning, bitter hatred raged in the breast of the little Frenchman. Exposure, ruin, the penitentiary! His hand rested on the butt of his revolver as he slowly turned. Zephyr was leaning on the table. There was a look of languid assurance, of insolent contempt in the eye that was squinting along a polished barrel held easily, but perfectly balanced for instant action. "Go it, Frenchy." Zephyr's voice was patronising. Pierre gave way to the passion that raged within him. "_Sacré nom du diable! Mille tonnerres!_ You bin tink you mek me scare, _moi_, Pierre! Come on, Meestaire Zephyr, come on! Fourtin more just like it! Strew de piece hall roun' ze dooryard!" Zephyr's boots thumped applause. "A-a-ah! Ze gran' _spectacle_! _Magnifique!_ By gar! She bin comedown firsrate. Frenchy, you have missed your cue. Take the advice of a friend. Don't stay here, putting addled eggs under a painted goose. Just do that act on the stage, and you'll have to wear seven-league boots to get out of the way of rolling dollars." CHAPTER XVIII _Winnowed Chaff_ Hartwell had a rule of conduct. It was a Procrustean bed which rarely fitted its subject. Unlike the originator of the famous couch, Hartwell never troubled himself to stretch the one nor to trim the other. If his subjects did not fit, they were cast aside. This was decision. The greater the number of the too longs or the too shorts the greater his complacence in the contemplation of his labours. There was one other weakness that was strongly rooted within him. If perchance one worthless stick fitted his arbitrary conditions it was from then on advanced to the rank of deity. Hartwell was strongly prejudiced against Firmstone, but was wholly without malice. He suspected that Firmstone was at least self-interested, if not self-seeking; therefore he assumed him to be unscrupulous. Firmstone's words and actions were either counted not at all, or balanced against him. In approaching others, if words were spoken in his favour, they were discounted or discarded altogether. Only the facts that made against him were treasured, all but enshrined. Even in his cynical beliefs Hartwell was not consistent. He failed utterly to take into account that it might suit the purpose of his advisers to break down the subject of his inquiry. For these reasons the interview with Pierre, even with its mortifying termination, left a firm conviction in his mind that Firmstone was dishonest, practically a would-be thief, and this on the sole word of a professional gambler, a rumshop proprietor, a man with no heritage, no traditions, and no associations to hold him from the extremities of crime. Not one of the men whom Hartwell had interviewed, not even Pierre himself, would for an instant have considered as probable what Hartwell was holding as an obvious truth. This, however, did not prevent Hartwell's actions from hastening to the point of precipitation the very crisis he was blindly trying to avert. He had not discredited Firmstone among the men, he had only nullified his power to manage them. Hartwell had succeeded in completing the operation of informing himself generally. Having reached this point, he felt that the only thing remaining to be done was to align his information, crush Firmstone beneath the weight of his accumulated evidence, and from his dismembered fragments build up a superintendent who would henceforth walk and act in the fear of demonstrated omniscient justice. He even grew warmly benevolent in the contemplation of the gratefully reconstructed man who was to be fashioned after his own image. Firmstone coincided with one of Hartwell's conclusions, but from a wholly different standpoint. Affairs had reached a state that no longer was endurable. Among the men there was no doubt whatever but that it was a question of time only when Firmstone, to put it in the graphic phrase of the mine, "would be shot in the ear with a time check." Firmstone had no benevolent designs as to the reconstruction of Hartwell, but he had decided ones as to the reconstruction of the company's affairs. The meeting thus mutually decided upon as necessary was soon brought about. Firmstone came into the office from a visit to the mine. It had been neither a pleasant nor a profitable one. The contemptuous disregard of his orders, the coarse insolence of the men, and especially of the foremen and shift bosses, organised into the union by Morrison, had stung Firmstone to the quick. To combat the disorders under present conditions would only expose him to insult, without any compensation whatever. Paying no attention to words or actions, he beat a dignified, unprotesting retreat. He would, if possible, bring Hartwell to his senses; if not, he would insist upon presenting his case to the company. If they failed to support him he would break his contract. He disliked the latter alternative, for it meant the discrediting of himself or the manager. He felt that it would be a fight to the death. He found Hartwell in the office. "Well," Hartwell looked up abruptly; "how are things going?" "Hot foot to the devil." "Your recognition of the fact does you credit, even if the perception is a little tardy. I think you will further recognise the fact that I take a hand none too soon." The mask on Hartwell's face grew denser. "I recognise the fact very clearly that, until you came, the fork of the trail was before me. Now it is behind and--we are on the wrong split." "Precisely. I have come to that conclusion myself. In order to act wisely, I assume that it will be best to get a clear idea of conditions, and then we can select a remedy for those that are making against us. Do you agree?" "I withhold assent until I know just what I am expected to assent to." Hartwell looked annoyed. "Shall I go on?" he asked, impatiently. "Perhaps your caution will allow that." Firmstone nodded. He did not care to trust himself to words. "Before we made our contract with you to assume charge of our properties out here I told you very plainly the difficulties under which we had hitherto laboured, and that I trusted that you would find means to remedy them. After six months' trial, in which we have allowed you a perfectly free hand, can you conscientiously say that you have bettered our prospects?" Hartwell paused; but Firmstone kept silence. "Have you nothing to say to this?" Hartwell finally burst out. "At present, no." Firmstone spoke with decision. "When will you have?" Hartwell asked. "When you are through with your side." Hartwell felt annoyed at what he considered Firmstone's obstinacy. "Well," he said; "then I shall have to go my own gait. You can't complain if it doesn't suit you. In your reports to the company you have complained of the complete disorganisation which you found here. That this disorganisation resulted in inefficiency of labour, that the mine was run down, the mill a wreck, and, worst of all, that there was stealing going on which prevented the richest ore reaching the mill, and that even the products of the mill were stolen. You laid the stealing to the door of the Blue Goose. You stated for fact things which you acknowledged you could not prove. That the proprietor of the Blue Goose was striving to stir up revolt among the men, to organise them into a union in order that through this organised union the Blue Goose might practically control the mine and rob the company right and left. You pointed out that in your opinion many of the men, even in the organisation, were honest; that it was only a scheme on the part of Morrison and Pierre to dupe the men, to blind their eyes so that, believing themselves imposed on and robbed by the company, they would innocently furnish the opportunity for the Blue Goose to carry on its system of plundering." Firmstone's steady gaze never flinched, as Hartwell swept on with his arraignment. "In all your reports, you have without exception laid the blame upon your predecessors, upon others outside the company. Never in a single instance have you expressed a doubt as to your own conduct of affairs. The assumed robbery of the stage I will pass by. Other points I shall dwell upon. You trust no one. You have demonstrated that to the men. You give orders at the mine, and instead of trusting your foremen to see that they are carried out you almost daily insist upon inspecting their work and interfering with it. The same thing I find to be true at the mill. Day and night you pounce in upon them. Now let me ask you this. If you understand men, if you know your business thoroughly, ought you not to judge whether the men are rendering an equivalent for their pay, without subjecting them to the humiliation of constant espionage?" He looked fixedly at Firmstone, as he ended his arraignment. Firmstone waited, if perchance Hartwell had not finished. "Is your case all in?" he finally asked. "For the present, yes." Hartwell snapped his jaws together decidedly. "Then I'll start." "Wait a moment, right there," Hartwell interrupted. "No. I will not wait. I am going right on. You've been informing yourself generally. Now I'm going to inform you particularly. In the first place, how did you find out that I had been subjecting the men to this humiliating espionage, as you call it?" Firmstone waited for a reply. "I don't know that I am under obligations to answer that question," Hartwell replied, stiffly. "Then I'll answer it for you. You've been to my foremen, my shift bosses, my workmen; you've been, above all other places, to the Blue Goose. You've been to anyone and everyone whose interest it is to weaken my authority and to render me powerless to combat the very evils of which you complain." Hartwell started to interrupt; but Firmstone waved him to silence. "This is a vital point. One thing more: instead of acquiring information as to the conditions that confront me and about my method of handling them, you go to my enemies, get their opinions and, what is worse, act upon them as your own." "Wait a minute right there." Hartwell spoke imperiously. "You speak of 'my foremen' and 'my shift bosses.' They are not your men; they are ours. We pay them, and we are going to see to it that we get an equivalent return, in any way we think advisable." Hartwell ignored Firmstone's last words. "That may be your position. If it is it is not a wise one, and, what is more, it is not tenable. You put me out here to manage your business, and you hold me responsible for results. I ask from you the same consideration I give to my foremen. I do not hire a single man at the mine or mill; my foremen attend to that. I give my orders direct to my foremen, and hold them strictly responsible. The men are responsible to my foremen, my foremen are responsible to me, and I in turn am wholly responsible to you. If in one single point you interfere with my organisation I not only decline to assume any responsibility whatever, but, farther, I shall tender my resignation at once." Hartwell listened impatiently, but nevertheless Firmstone's words were not without effect. They appealed to his judgment as being justified; but to accept them and act upon them meant a repudiation of his own course. For this he was not ready. In addition to his vanity, Hartwell had an abiding faith in his own shrewdness. He was casting about in his mind for a plausible delay which would afford him time to retreat from his position without a confession of defeat. He could find none. Firmstone had presented a clean-cut ultimatum. He was in an unpleasant predicament. Some one would have to be sacrificed. He was wholly determined that it should not be himself. Perhaps after all it would be better to arrange as best he might with Firmstone, rather than have it go farther. "It seems to me, Firmstone, as if you were going altogether too fast. There's no use jumping. Why not talk this over sensibly?" "There is only one thing to be considered. If you are going to manage this place I am going to put it beyond your power even to make me appear responsible." "You forget your contract with us," Hartwell interposed. "I do not forget it. If you discharge me, or force me to resign, I still demand a hearing." Hartwell was disturbed, and his manner showed it. Firmstone presented two alternatives. Forcing a choice of either of them would bring unpleasant consequences upon himself. Was it necessary to force the choice? "Suppose I do neither?" he asked. "That will not avert the consequences of what you have already done." "Are you determined to resign?" Hartwell asked, uneasily. "That is not what I meant." "What did you mean, then?" "This. Before you came out, I had things well in hand. In another month I would have had control of the men, and the property would have been paying a good dividend. As it is now----" Firmstone waved his hand, as if to dismiss a useless subject. "Well, what now?" Hartwell asked, after a pause. "It has to be done all over again, only under greater difficulties, the outcome of which I cannot foresee." "To what difficulties do you refer?" Firmstone's manner disturbed Hartwell. "The men were getting settled. Now you have played into the hands of two of the most unscrupulous rascals in Colorado. Between you, you've got the men stirred up to a point where a strike is inevitable." For a time, Hartwell was apparently crushed by Firmstone's unanswerable logic, as well as by his portentous forecasts. He could not but confess to himself that his course of action looked very different under Firmstone's analysis than from his own standpoint alone. He drummed his fingers listlessly on the desk before him. He was all but convinced that he might have been wrong in his judgment of Firmstone, after all. Then Pierre's suggestions came to him like a flash. "You are aware, of course, that I shall have to make a full report of the accident to the stage to our directors?" "I made a report of all the facts in the case, at the time. Of course, if you have discovered other facts, they will have to be given in addition." Hartwell continued, paying no attention to Firmstone. "That in the report which I shall make, I may feel compelled to arrange my data in such a manner that they will point to a conclusion somewhat at variance with yours?" "In which case," interrupted Firmstone; "I shall claim the right to another and counter statement." Hartwell looked even more intently at Firmstone. "In your report you stated positively that there were three thousand, one hundred and twenty-five ounces of bullion in your shipment; that this amount was lost in the wreck of the stage." "Exactly." Hartwell leaned forward, his eyes still fixed on Firmstone's eyes. Then, after a moment's pause, he asked, explosively,-- "Was there that amount?" Firmstone's face had a puzzled look. "There certainly was, unless I made a mistake in weighing up." His brows contracted for a moment, then cleared decisively. "That is not possible. The total checked with my weekly statements." Hartwell settled back in his chair. There was a look of satisfied cunning on his face. He had gained his point. He had attacked Firmstone in an unexpected quarter, and he had flinched. He had no further doubts. This, however, was not enough. He would press the brimming cup of evidence to his victim's lips and compel him to drink it to the last drop. "Who saw you put the bullion in the safe?" "No one." "Then, if the safe is never recovered, we have only your word that the bullion was put in there, as you stated?" Firmstone was slowly realising Hartwell's drift. Slowly, because the idea suggested appeared too monstrous to be tenable. The purple veins on his forehead were hard and swollen. "That is all," he said, from between compressed lips. "Under the circumstances, don't you think it is of the utmost importance that the safe be recovered?" "Under any circumstances. I have already taken all the steps possible in that direction." Firmstone breathed easier. He saw, as he thought, the error of his other half-formed suspicion. Hartwell was about to suggest that Zephyr should not be alone in guarding the river. Hartwell again leaned forward. He spoke meditatively, but his eyes were piercing in their intensity. "Yes. If in the event of the unexpected," he emphasised the word with a suggestive pause, "recovery of the safe, it should be found not to contain that amount, in fact, nothing at all, what would you have to say?" Every fibre of Firmstone's body crystallised into hard lines. Slowly he rose to his feet. Pale to the lips, he towered over the general manager. Slowly his words fell from set lips. "What have I to say?" he repeated. "This. That, if I stooped to answer such a question, I should put myself on the level of the brutal idiot who asked it." CHAPTER XIX _The Fly in the Ointment_ At last the union was organised at mill and mine. The men had been duly instructed as to the burden of their wrongs and the measures necessary for redress. They had been taught that all who were not for them were against them, and that scabs were traitors to their fellows, that heaven was not for them, hell too good for them, and that on earth they only crowded the deserving from their own. In warning his fellows against bending the knee to Baal, Morrison did not feel it incumbent upon him to state that there was a whole sky full of other heathen deities, and that, in turning from one deity to make obeisance to another, they might miss the one true God. He did not even take the trouble to state that there was a chance for wise selection--that it was better to worship Osiris than to fall into the hands of Moloch. With enthusiasm, distilled as much from Pierre's whisky as from Morrison's wisdom, the men had elected Morrison leader, and now awaited his commands. Morrison had decided on a strike. This would demonstrate his power and terrify his opponents. There was enough shrewdness in him to select a plausible excuse. He knew very well that even among his most ardent adherents there was much common sense and an inherent perception of justice; that, while this would not stand in the way of precipitating a strike, it might prevent its perfect fruition. Whatever his own convictions, Morrison felt intuitively that ideas in the minds of the majority of men were but characters written on sand which the first sweep of washing waves would wipe out and leave motiveless; that others must stand by with ready stylus, to write again and again that which was swept away. In other words, he must have aides; that these aides, if they were to remain steadfast, must be thinking men, impressed with the justice of their position. Hartwell had supplied just the motive that was needed. As yet, it was not apparent; but it was on the way. When it arrived there would be no doubt of its identity, or the course of action which must then be pursued. Morrison was sure that it would come, was sure of the riot that would follow. His face darkened, flattened to the similitude of a serpent about to strike. There was a flaw in Morrison's otherwise perfect fruit. Where hitherto had been the calm of undisputed possession was now the rage of baffled desire. Aside from momentary resentment at Élise's first interview with Firmstone, the fact had made little impression on him. As Pierre ruled his household, even so he intended to rule his own, and, according to Morrison's idea of the conventional, a temporary trifling with another man was one of the undeniable perquisites of an engaged girl. Morrison had been too sure of himself to feel a twinge of jealousy, rather considering such a course of action, when not too frequently indulged, an additional tribute to his own personality. What Morrison mistook for love was only passion. It was honourable, insomuch as he intended to make Élise his wife. Morrison ascribed only one motive to the subsequent meetings which he knew took place between Élise and Firmstone. Élise was drifting farther and farther from him, in spite of all that he could do. "Rowing," as he expressed it, had not been of infrequent occurrence between himself and Élise before Firmstone had appeared on the scene; but on such occasions Élise had been as ready for a "mix-up" as she was now anxious to avoid one. There was another thing to which he could not close his eyes. There had been defiance, hatred, an eager fierceness, both in attack and defence, which was now wholly lacking. On several recent occasions he had sought a quarrel with Élise; but while she had stood her ground, there was a contempt in her manner, her eyes, her voice, which could not do otherwise than attract his attention. To do Morrison the justice which he really deserved, there was in him as much of love for Élise as his nature was capable of harbouring for any one outside himself. He looked upon her as his own, and he was defending this idea of possession with the same pugnacity that he would protect his dollars from a thief. Morrison had been forced to the conclusion that Élise was lost to him. Hitherto Firmstone had been an impersonal obstacle in his path. Now--The eyes narrowed to a slit, the venomous lips were compressed. Morrison was a beast. Only the vengeance of a beast could wipe out the disgrace that had been forced upon him. In reality Élise was only a child. Unpropitious and uncongenial as had been her surroundings to her finer nature, these had only retarded development; they had not killed the germ. Her untrammelled life had been natural, but hardly neutral. To put conditions in a word, her undirected life had stored up an abundant supply of nourishing food that would thrust into vigorous life the dormant germ of noble womanhood when the proper time should come. There had been no hot-house forcing, but the natural growth of the healthy, hardy plant which would battle successfully the storms that were bound to come. In the cramped and sordid lives which had surrounded her there was much to repel and little to attract. The parental love of Pierre was strong and fierce, but it was animal, it was satiating, selfish, and undemonstrative. Hence Élise was almost wholly unconscious of its existence. As for Madame, hers was a love unselfish; but dominated and overshadowed, in terror of her husband, she stood in but little less awe of Élise. These two, the one selfish, with strength of mind sufficient to bend others to his purposes, the other unselfish, but with every spontaneous emotion repressed by stronger personalities, exerted an unconscious but corresponding influence upon their equally unconscious ward. These manifestations were animal, and in Élise they met with an animal response. She felt the domineering strength of Pierre, but without awe she defied it. She felt the unselfish and timorous love of Madame. She trampled it beneath her childish feet, or yielded to a storm of repentant emotion that overwhelmed and bewildered its timid recipient. She was surrounded and imbued with emotions, unguided, unanalysed, misunderstood, that rose supreme, or were blotted out as the strength of the individual was equal to or inferior to its opposition. They were animal emotions that one moment would lick and caress and fight to the death, the next in a moment of rage would smite to the earth. As Élise approached womanhood, these emotions were intensified, but were otherwise unmodified. There was another element which came as a natural temporal sequence. She had seen with unseeing eyes young girls given in marriage; she had no question but that a like fate was in store for her. So it happened that when Pierre, announcing to her her sixteenth birthday, had likewise broached the subject of marriage she opposed it not on rational grounds but simply on general principles. She was not at first conscious of any objections to Morrison. Being ignorant of marriage she had no grounds upon which to base a choice. To her Morrison was no better and no worse than any other man she had met. Morrison was perfectly right in his assumptions. Had not circumstances interfered, in the end he would have had his way. Morrison was also perfectly wrong. Élise was not Madame in any sense of the word. His reign would have been at least troubled, if not in the end usurped. The first circumstance which had already interfered to prevent the realisation of his desire was one which, very naturally, would be the last to appeal to him. This circumstance was Zephyr. From the earliest infancy of Élise, Zephyr had been, in a way, her constant guardian and companion. With enough strength of character to make him fearless, it was insufficient to arouse the ambition to carve out a distinctive position for himself. He absorbed and mastered whatever came in his way, but there his ambition ceased. He was respected and, to a certain extent, feared, even by those who were naturally possessed of stronger natures. There may be something in the fabled power of the human eye to cow a savage beast, but unfortunately it will probably never be satisfactorily demonstrated. A man confronted with the beast will invariably and instinctively trust to his concrete "44" rather than to the abstract force of human magnetism. Yet there is a germ of truth in the proverbial statement. Brought face to face with his human antagonist, the thinking man always stands in fear of himself, of his sense of justice, while the brute in his opponent has no scruples and no desires save those of personal triumph. These things Élise did not see. The things she saw which appealed to her and influenced her were, first of all, Zephyr's fearlessness of others who were feared, his good-natured, philosophical cynicism which ridiculed foibles that he did not feel called upon to combat, his protecting love for her which was always considerate but never obsequious, which was unrestraining yet restrained her in the end. Against his cynical stoicism the waves of her childish rage beat themselves to calm, or, hurt and wounded, she wept out her childish sorrows in his comforting arms. The protecting value of it she did not know, but in Zephyr, and that was the only name by which she knew him, was the only untrammelled outlet for every passion of her childish as well as for her maturing soul. Zephyr alone would have thwarted Morrison's designs on Élise. But Morrison despised Zephyr, even though he feared him. Zephyr in a neutral way had preserved Élise from herself and from her surroundings. Neutral, because his efforts were conserving, not developmental. Neutral, for, while he could keep her feet from straying in paths of destruction, he had through ignorance been unable to guide them in ways that led to a higher life. This mission had been left to Firmstone. Not that Zephyr's work had been less important, for the hand that fallows ground performs as high a mission as the hand that sows the chosen seed. Unconsciously at first, Firmstone had opened the eyes of Élise to vistas, to possibilities which hitherto had been undreamed of. It mattered little that as yet she saw men as trees, the great and saving fact remained, her eyes were opened and she saw. Morrison's eyes were also opened. He saw first the growing influence of Firmstone and later the association of Élise with Miss Hartwell. He could not see that Élise, with the influence of Firmstone, was an impossibility to him. Like a venomous serpent that strikes blindly at the club and not at the man who wields it, Morrison concentrated the full strength of his rage against Firmstone. Perhaps no characterisation of Élise could be stronger than the bald statement that as yet she was entirely oblivious of self. The opening vistas of a broader, higher life were too absorbing, too intoxicating in themselves, to permit the intrusion of the disturbing element of personality. Her eager absorption of the minutest detail, her keen perception of the slightest discordant note, pleased Miss Hartwell as much as it delighted Firmstone. Élise was as spontaneous and unreserved with the latter as with the former. She preferred Firmstone's company because with him was an unconscious personality that met her own on even terms. Firmstone loved strength and beauty for themselves, Miss Hartwell for the personal pleasure they gave her. She was flattered by the childish attention which was tendered her and piqued by the obvious fact that her personality had made only a slight impression upon Élise as compared with that of Firmstone. This particular afternoon Élise was returning from a few hours spent with Miss Hartwell at the Falls. It had been rather unsatisfactory to both. As the sun began to sink behind the mountain they had started down the trail together, but the walk was a silent one. Miss Hartwell had a slight flush of annoyance. Élise, sober and puzzled, was absorbed by thoughts that were as yet undifferentiated and unidentified. They parted at the Blue Goose. Élise turned at the steps and entered by the back door. Morrison was watching, unseen by either. He noted Élise's path, and as she entered he confronted her. Élise barely noticed him and was preparing to go upstairs. Morrison divined her intention and barred her way. "You're getting too high-toned for common folks, ain't you?" Élise paused perforce. There was a struggling look in her eyes. Her thoughts had been too far away from her surroundings to allow of an immediate return. She remained silent. The scowl on Morrison's face intensified. "When you're Mrs. Morrison, you won't go traipsing around with no high-toned bosses and female dudes more than once. I'll learn you." Élise came back with a crash. "Mrs. Morrison!" She did not speak the words, she shrank from them and left them hanging in their self-polluted atmosphere. "Learn me!" The words were vibrant with a low-pitched hum, that smote and bored like the impact of an electric wave. "You--you--snake; you--how dare you!" Morrison did not flinch. The blind fury of a dared beast flamed in his eyes. "Dare, you vixen! I'll make you, or break you! I've been in too many scraps and smelled too much powder to get scared by a hen that's trying to crow." The animal was dominant in Élise. Fury personified flew at Morrison. "You'll teach me; will you? I'll teach you the difference between a hen and a wild cat." The door from the kitchen was opened and Madame came in. She flung herself between Élise and Morrison. The repressed timorous love of years flamed upon the thin cheeks, flashed from the faded eyes. There was no trace of fear. Her slight form fairly shook with the intensity of her passion. "Go! Go! Go!" The last was uttered in a voice little less than a shriek. "Don't you touch Élise. She is mine. Why don't you go?" Her trembling hands pushed Morrison toward the open door. Bewildered, staggered, cowed, he slunk from the room. Madame closed the door. She turned toward Élise. The passion had receded, only the patient pleading was in her eyes. The next instant she saw nothing. Her head was crushed upon Élise's shoulder, the clasping arms caressed and bound, and hot cheeks were pressed against her own. Another instant and she was pushed into a chair. For the first time in her life, Madame's hungry heart was fed. Élise loved her. That was enough. The westward sinking sun had drawn the veil of darkness up from the greying east. Its cycles of waxing and waning were measured by the click of tensioned springs and beat of swinging pendulums. But in the growing darkness another sun was rising, its cycles measured by beating hearts to an unending day. CHAPTER XX _The River Gives up its Prey_ Because Zephyr saw a school of fishes disporting themselves in the water, this never diverted his attention from the landing of the fish he had hooked. This principle of his life he was applying to a particular event. The river had been closely watched; now, at last, his fish was hooked. The landing it was another matter. He needed help. He went for it. Zephyr found Bennie taking his usual after-dinner nap. "Julius Benjamin, it's the eleventh hour," he began, indifferently. Bennie interrupted: "The eleventh hour! It's two o'clock, and the time you mention was born three hours ago. What new kind of bug is biting you?" Zephyr studiously rolled a cigarette. "Your education is deficient, Julius. You don't know your Bible, and you don't know the special force of figurative language. I'm sorry for you, Julius, but having begun I'll see it through. Having put my hand to the plough, which is also figuratively speaking, it's the eleventh hour, but if you'll get into your working clothes and whirl in, I'll give you full time and better wages." Bennie sat upright. "What?" he began. Zephyr's cigarette was smoking. "There's no time to waste drilling ideas through a thick head. The wagon is ready and so is the block and ropes. Come on, and while we're on the way, I'll tackle your wits where the Almighty left off." Bennie's wits were not so muddy as Zephyr's words indicated. He sprang from his bed and into his shoes, and before the stub of Zephyr's cigarette had struck the ground outside the open window Bennie was pushing Zephyr through the door. "Figures be hanged, and you, too. If my wits were as thick as your tongue, they'd be guessing at the clack of it, instead of getting a wiggle on the both of us." The stableman had the wagon hooked up and ready. Zephyr and Bennie clambered in. Bennie caught the lines from the driver and cracking the whip about the ears of the horses, they clattered down the trail to the Devil's Elbow. Zephyr protested mildly at Bennie's haste. "Hold your hush," growled Bennie. "There's a hell of a fight on at the office this day. If you want to see a good man win the sooner we're back with the safe the better." There were no lost motions on their arrival at the Devil's Elbow. The actual facts that had hastened Zephyr's location of the safe were simple. He had studied the position which the stage must have occupied before the bridge fell, its line of probable descent. From these assumed data he inferred the approximate position of the safe in the river and began prodding in the muddy water. At last he was tolerably sure that he had located it. By building a sort of wing dam with loose rock, filling the interstices with fine material, the water of the pool was cut off from the main stream and began to quiet down and grow comparatively clear. Then Zephyr's heart almost stood still. By careful looking he could distinguish one corner of the safe. Without more ado he started for Bennie. The tackle was soon rigged. Taking a hook and chain, Zephyr waded out into the icy water, and after a few minutes he gave the signal to hoist. It was the safe, sure enough. Another lift with the tackle in a new position and the safe was in the wagon and headed for its starting-point. Bennie was rigid with important dignity on the way to the office and was consequently silent save as to his breath, which whistled through his nostrils. As for Zephyr, Bennie's silence only allowed him to whistle or go through the noiseless motions as seemed to suit his mood. The driver was alive with curiosity and spoiling to talk, but his voluble efforts at conversation only confirmed his knowledge of what to expect. When later interrogated as to the remarks of Zephyr and Bennie upon this particular occasion he cut loose the pent-up torrent within him. "You fellows may have heard," he concluded, "that clams is hell on keeping quiet; but they're a flock of blue jays cussin' fer a prize compared with them two fellers." As Firmstone turned to leave the office the door was thrust open and the two men entered. Bennie led, aggressive defiance radiating from every swing and pose. Zephyr, calm, imperturbable, confident, glanced at the red-faced Hartwell and at the set face of Firmstone. He knew the game, he knew his own hand. He intended to play it for its full value. He had an interested partner. He trusted in his skill, but if he made breaks it was no concern of his. "Assuming," he began; "that there's an interesting discussion going on, I beg leave to submit some important data bearing on the same." "Trim your switches," burst out Bennie. "They'll sting harder." The unruffled Zephyr bent a soothing eye on Bennie, moved his hat a little farther back from his forehead, placed his arms leisurely akimbo, and eased one foot by gradually resting his weight on the other. It was not affectation. It was the physical expression of a mental habit. "Still farther assuming," here his eyes slowly revolved and rested on Hartwell, "that truth crushed to earth sometimes welcomes a friendly boost, uninvited, I am here to tender the aforesaid assistance." He turned to Bennie. "Now, Julius, it's up to you. If you'll open the throttle, you can close your blow-off with no danger of bursting your boiler." He nodded his head toward the door. Hartwell's manner was that of a baited bull who, in the multiplicity of his assailants, knew not whom to select for first attack. For days and weeks he had been marshalling his forces for an overwhelming assault on Firmstone. He had ignored the fact that his adversary might have been preparing an able defence in spite of secrecy on his part. It is a wise man who, when contemplating the spoliation of his neighbour, first takes careful account of defensive as well as of offensive means. His personal assault on Firmstone had met with defeat. In the mental rout that followed he was casting about to find means of concealing from others that which he could not hide from himself. The irruption of Bennie and Zephyr threatened disaster even to this forlorn hope. Firmstone knew what was coming. Hartwell could not even guess. As he had seen Firmstone as his first object, so now he saw Zephyr. Blindly as he had attacked Firmstone, so now he lowered his head for an equally blind charge on the placid Zephyr. "Who are you, anyway?" he burst out, with indignant rage. "Me?" Zephyr turned to Hartwell, releasing his lips from their habitual pucker, his eyes resting for a moment on Hartwell. "Oh, I ain't much. I ain't a sack of fertilizer on a thousand-acre ranch." His eyes drooped indifferently. "But at the same time, you ain't no thousand-acre ranch." "That may be," retorted Hartwell; "but I'm too large to make it safe for you to prance around on alone." Zephyr turned languidly to Hartwell. "That's so," he assented. "I discovered a similar truth several decades ago and laid it up for future use. Even in my limited experience you ain't the first thorn-apple that I've seen pears grafted on to. In recognition of your friendly warning, allow me to say that I'm only one in a bunch." A further exchange of courtesies was prevented by the entrance of four men, of whom Bennie was one. Their entrance was heralded by a series of bumps and grunts. There was a final bump, a final grunt, and the four men straightened simultaneously; four bended arms swept the moisture from four perspiring faces. "That's all." Bennie dismissed his helpers with a wave of his hand, then stood grimly repressed, waiting for the next move. The scene was mildly theatrical; unintentionally so, so far as Zephyr was concerned, designedly so on the part of Bennie, who longed to push it to a most thrilling climax. It was not pleasant to Firmstone; but the cause was none of his creating, he was of no mind to interfere with the event. He was only human after all, and that it annoyed and irritated Hartwell afforded him a modicum of legitimate solace. Besides, Zephyr and Bennie were his stanch friends; the recovery of the safe and the putting it in evidence at the most effective moment was their work. The manner of bringing it into play, though distasteful to him, suited their ideas of propriety, and Firmstone felt that they had earned the right to an exhibition of their personalities with no interference on his part. He preserved a passive, dignified silence. As for Hartwell, openly attacked from without, within a no less violent conflict of invisible forces was crowding him to self-humiliation. To retreat from the scene meant either an open confession of wrong-doing, or a refusal on his part to do justice to the man whom he had wronged. To remain was to subject himself to the open triumph of Zephyr and Bennie, and the no less assured though silent triumph of Firmstone. Hartwell's reflections were interrupted by Zephyr's request for the keys to the safe. There was a clatter as Firmstone dropped them into his open hand. Hartwell straightened up with flushed cheeks. Pierre's words again came to him. The whole thing might be a bluff, after all. The safe might be empty. Here was a possible avenue of escape. With the same blind energy with which he had entered other paths, he entered this. He leaned back in his chair with tolerant resignation. "If it amuses you people to make a mountain out of a molehill I can afford to stand it." Bennie looked pityingly at Hartwell. "God Almighty must have it in for you bad, or he'd let you open your eyes t'other end to, once in a while." As the safe was finally opened and one by one the dull yellow bars were piled on the scales, there was too much tenseness to allow of even a show of levity. Zephyr had no doubts. No one could have got at the safe while in the river; he could swear to that. From its delivery to the driver by Firmstone there had been no time nor opportunity to tamper with its contents. As for Firmstone, he had too much at stake to be entirely free from anxiety, though neither voice nor manner betrayed it. He had had experience enough to teach him that it was not sufficient to be honest--one must at all times be prepared to prove it. The last ingot was checked off. Firmstone silently handed Hartwell the copy of his original letter of advice and the totalled figures of the recent weighing. Hartwell accepted them with a cynical smile and laid them indifferently aside. "Well," he remarked; "all I can say is, the company recovered the safe in the nick of time, from whom I don't pretend to say. We've got it, and that's enough." There was a grin of cunning defiance on his face. He had entered a covert where further pursuit was impossible. For once Bennie felt unequal to the emergency. He turned silently, but appealingly, to Zephyr. It was a new experience for Zephyr as well. For the first time in his life he felt himself jarred to the point of quick retort, wholly unconsonant with his habitual serenity. His face flushed. His hand moved jerkily to the bosom of his shirt, only to be as jerkily removed empty. The harmonica was decidedly unequal to the task. His lips puckered and straightened. His final resort was more satisfying. He deliberately seated himself on the safe and began rolling a cigarette. Placing it to his lips, he drew a match along the leg of his trousers. The shielded flame was applied to the cigarette. There came a few deliberate puffs, the cigarette was removed. His crossed leg was thrust through his clasped hands at he leaned backward. Through a cloud of soothing smoke his answer was meditatively voiced. "When the Almighty made man, he must have had a pot of sense on one hand and foolishness on the other, and he put some of each inside every empty skull. He got mighty interested in his work and so absent-minded he used up the sense first. Leastways, some skulls got an unrighteous dose of fool that I can't explain no other way. I ain't blaming the Almighty; he'd got the stuff on his hands and he'd got to get rid of it somehow. It's like rat poison--mighty good in its place, but dangerous to have lying around loose. He just forgot to mix it in, that's all, and we've got to do it for him. It's a heap of trouble and it's a nasty job, and I ain't blaming him for jumping it." CHAPTER XXI _The Sword that Turns_ As Zephyr and Bennie left the office Hartwell turned to Firmstone. There was no outward yielding, within only the determination not to recognise defeat. "The cards are yours; but we'll finish the game." The words were not spoken, but they were in evidence. Firmstone was silent for a long time. He was thinking neither of Hartwell nor of himself. "Well," he finally asked; "this little incident is happily closed. What next?" Hartwell's manner had not changed. "You are superintendent here. Don't ask me. It's up to you." Firmstone restrained himself with an effort. "Is it?" The question carried its own answer with it. It was plainly negative, only Hartwell refused to accept it. "What else are you out here for?" Firmstone's face flushed hotly. "Why can't you talk sense?" he burst out. "I am not aware that I have talked anything else." Hartwell only grew more rigid with Firmstone's visible anger. "If that's your opinion the sooner I get out the better." Firmstone rose and started to the door. "Wait a moment." Firmstone's decision was, by Hartwell, twisted into weakening. On this narrow pivot he turned his preparation for retreat. "The loss of the gold brought me out here. It has been recovered and no questions asked. That ends my work. Now yours begins. When I have your assurance that you will remain with the company in accordance with your contract, I am ready to go. What do you say?" Firmstone thought rapidly and to the point. His mind was soon made up. "I decline to commit myself." The door closed behind him, shutting off further discussion. The abrupt termination of the interview was more than disappointing to Hartwell. It carried with it an element of fear. He had played his game obstinately, with obvious defiance in the presence of Zephyr and Bennie; with their departure he had counted on a quiet discussion with Firmstone. He had no settled policy further than to draw Firmstone out, get him to commit himself definitely while he, with no outward sign of yielding, could retreat with flying colours. He now recognised the fact that the knives with which he had been juggling were sharper and more dangerous than he had thought, but he also felt that, by keeping them in the air as long as possible, when they fell he could at least turn their points from himself. Firmstone's departure brought them tumbling about his ears in a very inconsiderate manner. He must make another move, and in a hurry. Events were no longer even apparently under his control; they were controlling him and pushing him into a course of action not at all to his liking. The element of fear, before passive, was now quivering with intense activity. He closed his mind to all else and bent it toward the forestalling of an action that he could not but feel was immediate and pressing. Partly from Firmstone, partly from Pierre, he had gathered a clear idea that a union was being organised, and this knowledge had impelled him to a course that he would now have given worlds to recall. This act was none else than the engaging of a hundred or more non-union men. On their arrival, he had intended the immediate discharge of the disaffected and the installing of the new men in their places. He had chuckled to himself over the dismay which the arrival of the men would create, but even more over the thought of the bitter rage of Morrison and Pierre when they realised the fact that they had been outwitted and forestalled. The idea that he was forcing upon Firmstone a set of conditions for which he would refuse to stand sponsor had occurred to him only as a possibility so remote that it was not even considered. He was now taking earnest counsel with himself. If Firmstone had contemplated resignation under circumstances of far less moment than the vital one of which he was still ignorant--Hartwell drew his hand slowly across his moistening forehead, then sprang to his feet. Why had he not thought of it before? He caught up his hat and hurried to the door of the outer office. There was not a moment to lose. Before he laid his hand on the door he forced himself to deliberate movement. "Tell the stable boss to hitch up the light rig and bring it to the office." As the man left the room, Hartwell seated himself and lighted a cigar. In a few moments the rig was at the door and Hartwell appeared, leisurely drawing on a pair of driving-gloves. Adjusting the dust-robe over his knees, as he took the lines from the man, he said: "If Mr. Firmstone inquires for me tell him I have gone for a drive." Down past the mill, along the trail by the slide, he drove with no appearance of haste. Around a bend which hid the mill from sight, the horses had a rude awakening. The cigar was thrown aside, the reins tightened, and the whip was cracked in a manner that left no doubt in the horses' minds as to the desires of their driver. In an hour, foaming and panting, they were pulled up at the station. Hitching was really an unnecessary precaution, for a rest was a thing to be desired; but hitched they were, and Hartwell hurried into the dingy office. The operator was leaning back in his chair, his feet beside his clicking instrument, a soothing pipe perfuming the atmosphere of placid dreams. "I want to get off a message at once." Hartwell was standing before the window. The operator's placid dreams assumed an added charm by comparison with the perturbed Hartwell. "You're too late, governor." He slowly raised his eyes, letting them rest on Hartwell. "Too late!" Hartwell repeated, dazedly. "Yep. At once ain't scheduled to make no stops." The operator resumed his pipe and his dreams. "I've no time to waste," Hartwell snapped, impatiently. "Even so," drawled the man; "but you didn't give me no time at all. I don't mind a fair handicap; but I ain't no jay." "Will you give me a blank?" "Oh, now you're talking U. S. all right. I savvy that." Without rising, he pushed a packet of blanks toward the window with his foot. Hartwell wrote hurriedly for a moment, and shoved the message toward the operator. Taking his feet from the desk, he leaned slowly forward, picked up a pencil and began checking off the words. John Haskins, Leadville, Colorado. Do not send the men I asked for. Will explain by letter. Arthur Hartwell. "Things quieting down at the mine?" The operator paused, looking up at Hartwell. Hartwell could not restrain his impatience. "I'm Mr. Hartwell, general manager of the Rainbow Company. Will you attend to your business and leave my affairs alone?" "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Hartwell. My name is Jake Studley, agent for R. G. S. I get fifty dollars a month, and don't give a damn for no one." He began clearing the papers from before his instrument and drumming out his call. The call was answered and the message sent. The operator picked up the paper and thrust it on a file. Hartwell's face showed conflicting emotions. He wanted to force the exasperating man to action; but his own case was urgent. He drew from his pocket a roll of bills. Selecting a ten-dollar note, he pushed it toward the operator, who was refilling his pipe. "I want that message to get to Haskins immediately, and I want an answer." The operator shoved the bill into his pocket with one hand, with the other he began another call. There was a pause, then a series of clicks which were cut off and another message sent. The man closed his instrument and winked knowingly at Hartwell. "I squirted a little electricity down the line on my own account. Told them the G. M. was in and ordered that message humped. 'Tain't up to me to explain what G. M. is here." Hartwell went out on the platform and paced restlessly up and down. In about an hour he again approached the window. "How long before I can expect an answer?" "I can't tell. It depends on their finding your man. They'll get a wiggle on 'em, all right. I'll stir them up again before long. Jehosaphat! There's my call now!" He hurriedly answered, then read, word by word, the message as it was clicked off. Arthur Hartwell, Rainbow, Colorado. Message received. Too late. Men left on special last night. John Haskins. Hartwell caught up another blank. John Haskins, Leadville, Colorado. Recall the men without fail. I'll make it worth your while. Arthur Hartwell. There was another weary wait. Finally the operator came from his office. "Sorry, Mr. Hartwell, but Leadville says Haskins left on train after sending first despatch. Says he had a ticket for Salt Lake." "When will that special be here?" Hartwell's voice was husky in spite of himself. "Ought to be here about six. It's three now." "Is there no way to stop it?" "Not now. Haskins chartered it. He's the only one that can call it off, and he's gone." Hartwell's face was pale and haggard. He again began pacing up and down, trying in vain to find a way of doing the impossible. The fact that he had temporised, resolutely set his face against the manly thing to do, only to find the same alternative facing him at every turn, more ominous and harder than ever, taught him nothing. The operator watched him as he repeatedly passed. His self-asserting independence had gone, in its place was growing a homely sympathy for the troubled man. As Hartwell passed him again he called out: "Say, governor, I know something about that business at the mine, and 'tain't up to you to worry. Your old man up there is a corker. They're on to him all right. He'll just take one fall out of that crowd that'll do them for keeps." Hartwell paused, looking distantly at the speaker. He was not actively conscious of him, hardly of his words. The operator, not understanding, went on with more assurance. "I know Jack Haskins. This ain't the first time he's been called on to help out in this kind of a racket, you bet! He's shipped you a gang that 'ud rather fight than eat. All you've got to do is to say 'sick 'em' and then lay back and see the fur fly." Hartwell turned away without a word and went to his rig. He got in and drove straight for the mill. His mind was again made up. This time it was made up aright. Only--circumstances did not allow it to avail. As he drove away he did not notice a man in miner's garb who looked at him sharply and resumed his way. The operator was still on the platform as the man came to a halt. He was deriving great satisfaction from the crackling new bill which he was caressing in his pocket. The new bill would soon have had a companion, had he kept quiet, but this he could not know. Glancing at the miner, he remarked, benevolently: "Smelling trouble, and pulling out, eh?" "What do you mean?" The new-comer looked up stupidly. "Just this. I reckon you've run up against Jack Haskins's gang before, and ain't hankering for a second round." "Jack Haskins's gang comin'?" There was an eagerness in the man's manner which the operator misunderstood. "That's what, and a hundred strong." The man turned. "Thanks, pard. Guess I'll go back and tell the boys. Perhaps they'd like a chance to git, too; then again they mightn't." Tipping a knowing wink at the open-mouthed operator, he turned on his heel and walked briskly away. He too was headed for the mill. The operator's jaw worked spasmodically for a moment. "Hen's feathers and skunk oil! If he ain't a spy, I'll eat him. Oh, Lord! Old Firmstone and Jack Haskins's gang lined up against the Blue Goose crowd! Jake, my boy, listen to me. You can get another job if you lose this; but to-morrow you are going to see the sight of your life." CHAPTER XXII _Good Intentions_ Returning from the station, Hartwell drove rapidly until he came to the foot of the mountain that rose above the nearly level mesa. Even then he tried to urge his jaded team into a pace in some consonance with his anxiety; but the steep grades and the rarefied air appealed more strongly to the exhausted animals than did the stinging lash he wielded. As, utterly blown, they came to a rest at the top of a steep grade, Hartwell became aware of the presence of three men who rose leisurely as the team halted. Two of them stood close by the horses' heads, the third paused beside the wagon. "Howdy!" he saluted, with a grin. "What do you want?" A hold-up was the only thing that occurred to Hartwell. "Just a little sociable talk. You ain't in no hurry?" The grin broadened. "I am." Hartwell reached for his whip. "None of that!" The grin died away. The two men each laid a firm hand on the bridles. "Will you tell me what this means?" There was not a quaver in Hartwell's voice, no trace of fear in his eyes. "By-and-by. You just wait. You got a gun?" "No; I haven't." "I don't like to dispute a gentleman; but it's better to be safe. Just put up your hands." Hartwell complied with the request. The man passed his hands rapidly over Hartwell's body, then turned away. "All right," he said, then seated himself and began filling his pipe. "How long am I expected to wait?" Hartwell's tone was sarcastic. "Sorry I can't tell you. It just depends. I'll let you know when." He relapsed into silence that Hartwell could not break with all his impatient questions or his open threats. The men left the horses' heads and seated themselves in the road. It occurred to Hartwell to make a dash for liberty, but there was a cartridge-belt on each man and holsters with ready guns. In the deep cañon the twilight was giving way to darkness that was only held in check by the strip of open sky above and by a band of yellow light that burned with lambent tongues on the waving foliage which overhung the eastern cliff. Chattering squirrels and scolding magpies had long since ceased their bickerings; if there were other sounds that came with the night, they were overcome by the complaining river which ceased not day nor night to fret among the boulders that strewed its bed. Like a shaft of light piercing the darkness a whistle sounded, mellowed by distance. The man near the wagon spoke. "That's a special. Where in hell's Jack?" "On deck." A fourth man came to a halt. He paused, wiping the perspiration from his face. "They're coming, a hundred strong. Jakey coughed it up, and it didn't cost a cent." He laughed. "It's Jack Haskins's crowd, too." The man by the wagon addressed Hartwell. "I can tell you now. It's an all-night wait. Tumble out lively. Better take your blankets, if you've got any. It's liable to be cool before morning right here. It'll be hotter on the mountain, but you'd better stay here." Hartwell did not stir. "Out with you now, lively. We ain't got no time to waste." Hartwell obeyed. The man sprang into the wagon and, pitching out the blankets, gathered up the lines. "Come on, boys." Turning to his companion, he said, "You stay with him, Jack. He ain't heeled; but don't let him off." To Hartwell direct, "Don't try to get away. We'll deliver your message about the special." His companions were already in the wagon and they started up the trail. Jack turned to his charge. "Now, if you'll just be a good boy and mind me, to-morrow I'll take you to the circus." CHAPTER XXIII _An Unexpected Recruit_ Like the majority of men in the West, Jake Studley took the view that all men are equal, and that the interests of one are the concerns of all. A civil answer to what in other climes would be considered impertinent curiosity was the unmistakable shibboleth of the coequal fraternity. Hartwell's manner had been interpreted by Jakey as a declaration of heresy to his orthodox code and the invitation to mind his own business as a breach of etiquette which the code entailed. Jakey thereupon assumed the duties of a defender of the faith, and, being prepared for action, moved immediately upon the enemy. The attack developed the unexpected. Hartwell's bill, tendered in desperation, was accepted in error, not as a bribe, but as an apology. Jakey sounded "cease firing" to his embattled lines, and called in his attacking forces. He had taken salt, henceforth he was Hartwell's friend and the friend of his friends. Jakey took neither himself nor his life seriously. He was station agent, freight agent, express agent, and telegraph operator at Rainbow Station, R. G. S., and he performed his various duties with laudable promptness, when nothing more promising attracted his attention. Just now the "more promising" was in sight. The company had no scruples in dismissing employees without warning, and Jakey had no quixotic principles which restrained him for a moment from doing to others what they would do to him if occasion arose. Jakey did not hold that the world owed him a living, but he considered that it possessed a goodly store of desirable things and that these were held in trust for those who chose to take them. Being "broke" did not appal him, nor the loss of a job fill him with quaking. The railroad was not the whole push, and if he could not pump electric juice he could wield a pick or rope a steer with equal zeal. Just now the most desirable thing that the world held in trust was the coming fight at the Rainbow. Accordingly he wired the R. G. S. officials that there was a vacancy at Rainbow Station. The said officials, being long accustomed to men of Jakey's stamp, merely remarked, "Damn!" and immediately wired to the nearest junction point to send another man to take the vacant position. Jakey admired Firmstone, and this admiration prepossessed him in Firmstone's favour. The prepossession was by no means fixed and invulnerable, and had not Hartwell cleared himself of suspected heresy, he would have lent the same zeal, now kindling within him, to the Blue Goose rather than the Rainbow. In what he recognised as the first round of the opening fight Jakey realised that the Blue Goose had scored. But, before the special pulled in, he was ready, and this time he was sure of his move. "By the Great Spirit of the noble Red Man," Jakey was apostrophising the distant mountains in ornate language; "what kind of a low-down bird are you, to be gathered in by a goose, and a blue one at that?" Jakey paused, gazing earnestly at the retreating figure of the miner. Then, shaking his fist at the man's back, "Look here, you down-trodden serf of capitalistic oppression, I'll show you! Don't you fool yourself! Tipped me the grand ha-ha; did you? Well, you just listen to me! 'Stead of milking the old cow, you've just rubbed off a few drops from her calf's nose. That's what, as I'll proceed to demonstrate." Jakey's loyalty had been wavering, passive, and impersonal. Now his personal sympathies were enlisted, for the path of self-vindication lay through the triumph of the Rainbow. Before the special had come to a standstill its animated cargo began to disembark. Coatless men with woollen shirts belted to trousers, the belts sagging with their heavy loads of guns and cartridges, every man with a roll of blankets and many with carbines as well, testified to the recognition of the fact that the path of the miner's pick must be cleared by burning powder. Jakey, thrusting his way through the boisterous crowd, forced upon the resentful conductor his surrendered insignia of office, then mingled with his future associates. He met a hilarious welcome, as the knowledge spread from man to man that he was with them. Its practical expression was accompanied by the thrusting of uncorked bottles at his face and demands that he should "drink hearty" as a pledge of fellowship. Jakey waved them aside. "Put them up, boys, put them up. Them weapons ain't no use, not here. They're too short range, and they shoot the wrong way." The leader pushed his way through the crowd around Jakey. "That's right, boys. It's close to tally now. Where's the Rainbow trail?" With elaborate figures, punctuated by irreverent adjectives, Jakey pointed out the trail and his reasons against taking it. "It's good medicine to fight a skunk head on," he concluded; "but when you go up against a skunk, a coyote, and a grizzly wrapped up in one skin, you want to be circumspect. Morrison's a skunk, Pierre's a coyote, and the rest are grizzlies, and you don't want to fool yourselves just because the skin of the beast grows feathers instead of fur." The leader listened attentively and, from the thick husk of Jakey's figures, he stripped the hard grains of well-ripened truth. Jakey laid small emphasis on the manner in which the envoy of the Blue Goose had gained his information. He had personal reasons for that, but the fact that the information was gained sufficed. The men grew silent as they realised that the battle was on and that they were in the enemy's country. Under the guidance of Jakey they tramped up the track, turned toward what appeared as a vertical cliff, and clambered slowly and painfully over loose rocks, through stunted evergreens, and at last stood upon the rolling surface of the mesa above. From here on, the path was less obstructed. It was near midnight when the dull roar of the mill announced the proximity of their goal. As silently as they had followed the tortuous trail, so silently each wrapped himself in his blankets and lay down to sleep. CHAPTER XXIV _The Gathering to its Own_ Had Firmstone known of Hartwell's move, which was to bring affairs to an immediate and definite crisis, his actions would have been shaped along different lines. But the only one who could have given this knowledge blindly withheld it until it was beyond his power to give. At the mill Firmstone noticed a decided change in Luna. The foreman was sullen in look and act. He answered Firmstone's questions almost insolently, but not with open defiance. His courage was not equal to giving full voice to his sullen hatred. Firmstone paid little heed to the man's behaviour, thinking it only a passing mood. After a thorough inspection of the mill, he returned to the office. "Mr. Hartwell said, if you inquired for him, that I was to tell you he had gone for a drive." The man anticipated his duty before Firmstone inquired. "Very well," Firmstone replied, as he entered the office. He busied himself at his desk for a long time. Toward night he ordered his horse to be saddled. He had determined to go to the mine. He had decided to move with a strong hand, to force his authority on the rebellious, as if it had not been questioned, as if he himself had no question as to whether it would be sustained. Hartwell had refused to indicate his position; he would force him to act, if not to speak. His after course events would decide; but half-way measures were no longer to be tolerated. As he rode by the Falls, he met Zephyr on his way down. Zephyr was the first to speak. "A weather-cock," he remarked, "has a reputation for instability of character which it does not deserve. It simply pays impartial attention to a breeze or a hurricane. In fact, it's alive to anything that's going in the wind line. We call a weather-cock fickle and a man wide-awake for doing the same thing." He paused, looking inquiringly at Firmstone. Firmstone was in anything but an allegorical mood, yet he knew that Zephyr had something of interest to communicate, and so restrained any manifestation of impatience which he might have felt. "Well?" he answered. "Say, Goggles"--Zephyr continued his allegory--"I've studied weather-cocks. I take note that when one of them so-called fickle-minded inanimates goes jerking around the four cardinal points and feeling of what's between, it's just responding to the fore-running snorts of a pull-up and come-along cyclone. That's why I'm bobbing up and down like an ant looking for its long-lost brother. There's a cyclone on its way, Goggles, and it's going to light hereabouts right soon." "I guess you're right, Zephyr." Firmstone gathered his reins, preparatory to resuming his way, but Zephyr laid a detaining hand on the horse's neck. It was not in Zephyr to make haste easily. His undulating shoulders indicated a necessity for immediate speech. The words, sizzling from between closed lips, were a compromise. "You have more sense than many weather-cocks, and more sand than a gravel train." Zephyr's face began to twitch. "Wait!" The word came forth explosively; the detaining hand grasped the bridle firmly. "Say, Goggles, I was dead wrong. Do you hear? About Élise. You remember? At the Devil's Elbow. She ain't Pierre's girl. She's as much of a lady as you are. Keep still! Listen! A hurricane ain't got sense. It'll pull up a weed as quick as an oak. It's coming. For the love of God and me especially, if I get pulled, look out for her! Say yes, and go along. Don't fool with me! You'll swallow a barrel of water to get a drink of whisky." Firmstone only stretched out his hand. Zephyr took it for an instant, then flung it aside. The next moment he was striding down the trail. Firmstone heard the strain of the jarring reeds of the harmonica shrill triumphantly, penetrated now and then by louder notes as a plunging step jarred a stronger breath through his lips. At the mine, Firmstone found his work cut out for him. On the narrow platform of the mine boarding-house, the foreman was standing with his cap shoved far back on his head, his hands in his pockets. There was an insolent poise to the head that only intensified the sneering smile on the lips. He was surrounded by a dozen or more of the men whom Firmstone had marked as makers of trouble. "Well, what in hell you up here for? Think I can't run a mine?" The foreman called into play every expression of coarse contempt at his command. "Not this one for me. Go into the office, and I'll make out your time." The foreman did not move. Firmstone made no threatening gesture as he advanced. The foreman's eyes wavered, cast behind him at the gaping men, then he turned as Firmstone ordered. In the office Firmstone wrote out a time check and tendered it to the man. "Now pack up and get down the hill." There were discordant cries outside that grew nearer and more distinct. As the foreman opened the door to pass out he flung back a defiant grin, but his words were drowned by a babel of voices that were surging into the ante-room from the platform and dining-room. Firmstone closed and locked the office door behind him. In an instant he was surrounded by a crowd of gesticulating, shouting men. There was a spreading pressure on all sides, as men were pushed back from an opening ring in the centre of the room. A man with blood-stained face rose, only to be again hurled to the floor by a stunning blow. Firmstone crushed his way into the ring. "No fighting here." The man dropped his eyes. "I ain't going to be called down by no scab." "If you want to fight, get off the company's grounds!" Firmstone moved between them. "I want my time." The man's eyes were still downcast. "You'll get it." The ring closed up again. "Are we let out?" "The whole push fired?" A burly, red-faced man pushed his way to the front. "Say, Mr. Firmstone! Don't make no mistake. This ain't you. You're the whitest boss that ever looked down my shirt collar. That's so. That's what the boys all say. Just you pull out from the company and go with us. We'll carry you right up to glory on the back of a fire-snorting alligator." Firmstone paid no attention to the man. He went from end to end of the room. The men gave way in front, only closing in behind. There was a hushed silence. "There's no shut-down. Any man who wants work can have it and be taken care of. Any one who wants to quit, come for your time right now!" As Firmstone again turned toward the office he was conscious for the first time of a thick-set man with kindly eyes, now steely-hard, who followed his every motion. It was the night-shift boss. "You're with me?" "You bet, and plenty more." "Hold them down. Send the men in, one by one, who want to quit. How about the magazine?" "All right. Two men and four guns. They're with you till hell freezes, and then they'll skate." It was midnight before the last man called for his time. Firmstone laid down his pen. "I'm shy a foreman. Will you take the job?" Firmstone addressed the shift boss. "Yes, till you can do better." "All right. You better move around pretty lively for to-night. I'll stay in the office till morning." The man left the office. He had not been gone long before there was a timid knock at the office door. "Come in," Firmstone called. The door was opened hesitatingly and two men entered. They stood with lowered eyes, shifting their caps from hand to hand, and awkwardly balancing from foot to foot. "Well?" Firmstone spoke sharply. "Me and my partner want our jobs back." "You'll have to see Roner. He's foreman now." "Where is he?" "In the mine." "Can we take our bunks till morning, sir?" "Yes." The men left the office. Outside, their manner changed. Nudging elbows grated each other's ribs. The darkness hid their winks. Firmstone had made a sad mistake. He was not omniscient. The men knew what he did not. They had been down to the Blue Goose and had returned with a mission. CHAPTER XXV _A Divided House_ In her little alcove at the Blue Goose Élise was gaining information every day of the progress of affairs, but in spite of impatience, in spite of doubt, she had seen nothing, heard nothing that seemed to demand immediate action on her part. She had made up her mind that a crisis was approaching. She had also determined with whom she would cast in her lot. It was late when Hartwell's team pulled up at the Blue Goose. A crowd of excited men surrounded it, but the driver and his companions made no reply to loud questions as they sprang from the wagon and entered the door. Morrison was the first to halt them. The driver broke out with a string of oaths. "It's so. Jack Haskins's gang is coming. Hartwell is taken care of all right. If his crowd try to make it through the cañon, there won't a hundred show up, to-morrow." He ended with a coarse laugh. Morrison listened till the driver had finished. Then he turned toward Pierre. Pierre was standing just in front of the alcove, hiding Élise from Morrison. Morrison advanced, shaking his fist. "Now you've got it, you trimmer. What are you going to do? I told you they were coming, and I've fixed for it." Pierre stood with his hands in his pockets. There was the old oily smile on his face, but his eyes were dangerous. Morrison did not observe them. "Why don't you speak? You're called." Morrison glanced over his shoulder at the silent crowd. "He's got a frog in his throat! The last one he swallowed didn't go down." Morrison was very near death. He noticed the crowd part hurriedly and turned in time to look into the muzzle of Pierre's revolver. The parting of the crowd was explained. An unlighted cigar was between Pierre's teeth. They showed gleaming white under his black moustache. Only bright points of light marked his eyes between their narrowed lids. Still holding his revolver point-blank, with thumb and finger he raised and lowered the hammer. The sharp, even click pierced Morrison's nerves like electric shocks. It was not in man to endure this toying with death. Surprise gave place to fear, and this in turn to mortal agony. His face paled. Great drops stood out on his forehead, gathered and streamed down his face. He feared to move, yet he trembled. His legs shook under him. There was a final stagger, but his terrified eyes never left Pierre's face. With a shuddering groan, he sank helpless to the floor. Pierre's smile broadened horribly. He lowered his weapon and, turning aside, thrust it in his pocket. Morrison had died a thousand deaths. If he lived he would die a thousand more. This Pierre knew. For this reason and others he did not shoot. Pierre also knew other things. Morrison had refused to take heed to his words. He had gone his own way. He had made light of Pierre before the men. Last of all, he had gained courage to taunt Pierre to his face with weakening, had bitterly accused him of using Élise as a means of ingratiating himself with the Rainbow crowd. Pierre was not above taking a human life as a last resort; but even then he must see clearly that the gain warranted the risk. Morrison had been weighed and passed upon. A dead Morrison meant a divided following. A living Morrison, cowed and beaten and shamed before them all, was dead to Pierre. This was Pierre's reasoning, and he was right. The first step had been taken. The next one he was not to take; but this fact did not nullify Pierre's logic. Given time, Pierre knew that Morrison would be beaten, discredited, do what he would. Luna helped the fallen Morrison to his feet. The first thing Morrison noticed was Pierre walking away toward the private office. Luna again approached Morrison with a brimming glass of brandy. "Take this down. Lord! That was a nerve-peeler! I don't blame you for going under." Morrison swallowed the liquor at a gulp. The pallor died away and a hot flush mounted his face. "I've got him to settle with, too. I'll make him squeal before I'm done." The crowd had surged to the door to meet a swarm of howling men who had just come down from the mine. Three or four remained with Luna around Morrison. His voice was hoarse and broken. "He's thrown us over. You see that? It's up to us to play it alone. He's put it up to your face that he's with you, but he's playing against you. He can't stop us now. It's gone too far. The first tug is coming, to-morrow. We'll win out, hands down. The Rainbow first, then Pierre." He ended with a string of profanity. Luna took up Morrison's broken thread. "There's fifty men with rifles in the cañon. Hartwell's gang will never get through. The boys are going to shoot at sight." "Where's Firmstone?" Morrison's face writhed. "Up to the mine. He's getting in his work." Luna looked over his shoulder at the crowd of miners. "That's so. The foreman's fired. So am I. He is going to die boss." The man grinned, as he held out a time check. "He'll die, anyway." Morrison's jaws set. "You're sure he's at the mine?" "Dead sure. He's got his work cut out to-night. Lots of scabs held out. He's put the night boss in foreman." The man grinned again. Morrison laid a hand on his shoulder. "You're game?" "You bet I am!" "Go back to the mine to-night----" "And miss all the fun down here?" the man interrupted. Morrison's hand rested more heavily on the shoulder. "Don't get flip. Have some fun of your own up there. The supe will hear the racket down here early. He'll start down with his scabs to help out. Two men can start a racket there that will keep him guessing. If he's started it will fetch him back. If he hasn't he won't start at all." "What kind of a racket, for instance?" Morrison swung impatiently on his foot. "What's the matter with letting off a box or two of powder under the tram?" "Nothing. Is that our job?" "Yes. And see that it's done." "That's me. Come on, Joe. Let's have a drink first." These two were the penitents whom Firmstone had taken back. The greater number of the men were crowded around the gilded bar, drinking boisterously to the success of the union and death to scabs and companies. A few, more sober-minded, but none the less resolute, gathered around Morrison. They were the leaders upon whom he depended for the carrying out of his orders, or for acting independently of them on their own initiative, as occasion might demand. With logic fiendish in its cunning, he pointed out to them their right to organise, laid emphasis on their pacific intentions only to defend their rights, and having enlarged upon this, he brought into full play Hartwell's fatal error. "You see," he concluded; "right or wrong, the company's gone in to win. They ain't taking no chances, and the law's at their backs. You know Haskins's gang. You know what they're here for. They're here to shoot, and they'll shoot to kill. Suppose you go out like lambs? That won't make no difference. It'll be too tame for them, unless some one's killed. What if it is murder and one of the gang is pulled? They've got the whole gang at their back and the company's money. Suppose we go out one by one and shoot back? Self-defence?" Morrison snapped his fingers. "That's our chance to get off. We've got to pull together. In a general mix-up, we'll be in it together, and there ain't no law to string up the whole push. Stick together. That's our hold. If Haskins's gang is wiped out to-morrow, and that glass-eyed supe with them, who'll get jumped? If the mine and mill both get blowed up, who's done it? The fellows who did it ain't going to tell, and it won't be good medicine for any one else to do it, even if he wants to." "Who's going to open up?" one of the men asked, soberly. Morrison turned carelessly. "That's a fool question. Folks that ain't looking for trouble don't put caps and powder in a bag to play foot-ball with. Both sides are putting up kicks. Who's to blame?" The man looked only half convinced. "Well, we ain't, and we don't want to be. If we keep quiet, and they open up on us, we've got a right to defend ourselves. Unless," he added, meditatively, "we get out beforehand, then there won't be any questions to ask." Morrison turned fiercely. "How much did you get?" "Get for what?" "How much did the company put up to stand you off?" "I haven't been bought off by the company," the man answered, fiercely; "and I ain't going to be fooled off by you." Morrison lifted his hand, palm outward. "That's all right. Go right on, first door right. Go right in. Don't knock. You'll find Pierre. He's scab-herding now." Morrison passed among the thronging men, giving suggestions and orders for the morning's struggle. His manner was forced, rather than spontaneous. Pierre's leaven was working. To Élise at her desk it seemed as if the revel would never end. She had made up her mind what to do, she was awaiting the time to act. She did not dare to leave her place now; Morrison would be certain to notice her absence and would suspect her designs. There was nothing to do but wait. It was after one o'clock when, slipping out from the alcove, she ostentatiously closed the office-door and, locking it, walked through the passage that led to the dining-room. Her footsteps sounded loudly as she went upstairs to her room. She intended they should. In her room, she took down a dark, heavy cloak, and, throwing it over her shoulders, drew the hood over her head. A moment she stood, then turned and silently retraced her steps. As the outside door closed noiselessly behind her, there was a momentary tightening around her heart. After all, she was leaving the only friends she had ever known. They were crude, coarse, uncouth, but she knew them. She knew that they would not remain ignorant of her actions this night. It would cut her off from them forever, and what was her gain? Only those she had known for a day, those whose very words of kindness had shown her how wide was the gulf that parted her from them. How wide it was she had never realised till now when she was to attempt to cross it, with the return for ever barred. She recalled the easy grace of Miss Hartwell, considerate with a manner that plainly pointed to their separate walks in life. And Firmstone? He had been more than kind, but the friendly light in his eyes, the mobile sympathy of his lips, these did not come to her now. What if the steel should gleam in his eyes, the tense muscles draw the lips in stern rebuke, the look that those eyes and lips could take, when they looked on her, not as Élise of the Blue Goose, but Élise, a fugitive, a dependant? The colour deepened, the figure grew rigid. She was neither a fugitive nor a dependant. She was doing right; how it would be accepted was no concern of hers. The shadow of the great mountain fell across the gulch and lay sharp and clear on the flank of the slide beyond. Overhead, in the deep blue, the stars glinted and shone, steely hard. Élise shivered in a hitherto unknown terror as she crept into the still deeper shadow of the stunted spruces that fringed the talus from the mountain. She did not look behind. Had she done so she might have seen another shadow stealing cautiously, but swiftly, after her, only pausing when she passed from sight within the entrance to the office at the mill. Zephyr had despoiled the Blue Goose of its lesser prey. He had no intention of stopping at that. Élise had gained her first objective point. It was long before the light in Miss Hartwell's room over the office descended the stairs and appeared at the outer door. Her face was pale, but yet under control. Only, as she clasped the hand that had knocked for admission, she could not control the grasp that would not let go its hold, even when the door was relocked. "It was very good of you to come." CHAPTER XXVI _The Day of Reckoning_ If Miss Hartwell was a debtor she was a creditor as well. In spite of a calm exterior, the hand that so tightly clasped Élise's throbbed and pulsed with every tumultuous beat of the heart that was stirred with a strange excitement born of mortal terror. Gradually the rapid strokes slowed down till, with the restful calm that comes to strained nerves in the presence of a stronger, unquestioning will, the even ebb and flow of pulsing blood resumed its normal tenor. The bread that Élise had cast upon the waters returned to her in a manifold measure. The vague sense of oppression which she had felt on leaving the doors of the Blue Goose gave way to an equally vague sense of restful assurance. She could dissect neither emotion, nor could she give either a name. The sense of comfort was vague; other emotions stood out clearly. These demanded immediate attention. She rose gently, but decidedly. The calm beat of the clasping hand again quickened with her motion. "I must leave you now." Her voice was even, but full of sympathy. "Don't. Please don't. I can't bear it." "I must; and you must." She was gently freeing the clasping hand. "Where are you going?" "To the mine, to warn Mr. Firmstone." "Don't go! Why not telephone?" The last was spoken with eagerness born of the inspiration of despair. "The wires are cut." Her hand was free now and Miss Hartwell was also standing. There was a deathly pallor on the quiet face, only the rapid beat of the veins on her temples showed the violence of the emotion she was mastering so well. "But my brother?" "Your brother is perfectly safe." Élise told briefly the circumstances of Hartwell's capture and detention. "They have men posted in the cañon; they have men between here and the mine. Mr. Firmstone does not know it. He will try to come down. They will kill him. He must not try to come down." "How can you get up there?" Miss Hartwell clutched eagerly at this straw. Élise smiled resolutely. "I am going up on the tram. Now you must listen carefully." She unbuckled her belt and placed her revolver in Miss Hartwell's listless hands. "Keep away from the windows. If there is any firing lie down on the floor close to the wall. Nothing will get through the logs." She turned toward the door. "You must come and lock up after me." At the door Miss Hartwell stood for a moment, irresolute. She offered no further objections to Élise's going. That it cost a struggle was plainly shown in the working lines of her face. Only for a moment she stood, then, yielding to an overmastering impulse, she laid her hands on the shoulders of Élise. "Good-bye," she whispered. "You are a brave girl." Élise bent her lips to those of Miss Hartwell. "Yours is the hardest part. But it isn't good-bye." The door closed behind her, and she heard the click of the bolt shot home. There were a few resolute men in the mill. It was short-handed; but the beating stamps pounded out defiance. In the tram tower Élise spoke to the attendant. "Stop the tram." The swarthy Italian touched his hat. "Yes, miss." The grinding brake was applied and an empty bucket swung gently to and fro. "Now, Joe, do just as I tell you. I am going up in this bucket." She glanced at the number. "When three-twenty comes in stop. Don't start up again for a half hour at least." The man looked at her in dumb surprise. "You go in the tram?" he asked. "What for?" "To warn Mr. Firmstone." For reply, the man brushed her aside and began clambering into the empty bucket. "Me go," he said, grimly. Élise laid a detaining hand upon him. "No. You must run the tram. I can't." "Me go," he insisted. "Cable jump sheave? What matter? One damn dago gone. Plenty more. No more Élise." Élise pulled at him violently. He was ill-balanced. The pull brought him to the floor, but Élise did not loose her hold. Her eyes were flashing. "Do as I told you." The man brought a ladder and Élise sprang lightly up the rounds. "All right," she said. "Go ahead." The man unloosed the brake. There was a tremor along the cable; the next instant the bucket shot from the door of the tower and glided swiftly up the line. "Don't forget. Three-twenty." Already the voice was faint with distance. In spite of injunctions to the contrary, Miss Hartwell was looking out of the window. She saw, below the shafts of sunlight already streaming over the mountain, the line of buckets stop, swing back and forth, saw the cable tremble, and again the long line of buckets sway gently as the cable grew taut and the buckets again slid up and down. Her heart was beating wildly as she lifted her eyes to the dizzy height. She knew well what the stopping and the starting meant. Sharp drawn against the lofty sky, the great cable seemed a slender thread to hold a human life in trust. What if the clutch should slip that held the bucket in place? What if other clutches should slip and let the heavy masses of steel slide down the cable to dash into the one that held the girl who had grown so dear to her? In vain she pushed these possibilities aside. They returned with increased momentum and hurled themselves into her shrinking soul. There were these dangers. "All employees of the Rainbow Company are forbidden to ride on the tram. ANY EMPLOYEE VIOLATING THIS RULE WILL BE INSTANTLY DISCHARGED." These words burned themselves on her vision in characters of fire. Élise had explained all of these things to her, and now! She buried her face in her trembling hands. Not for long. Again her face, pale and drawn, was turned upward. She moaned aloud. A black mass clinging to the cable was rising and sinking, swaying from side to side, a slender figure poised in the swinging bucket, steadied by a white hand that grasped the rim of steel. She turned from the window resolved to see no more. Her resolution fled. She was again at the window with upturned face and straining eyes, white lips whispering prayers that God might be good to the girl who was risking her life for another. The slender threads even then had vanished. There was only a fleck of black floating high above the rambling town, above the rocks mercilessly waiting below. She did not see all. At the mine two stealthy men were even then stuffing masses of powder under the foundations that held the cables to their work. Even as she looked and prayed a flickering candle flame licked into fiery life a hissing, spitting fuse and two men scrambled and clambered to safety from the awful wreck that was to come. A smoking fuse eating its way to death and "320" not yet in the mill! She saw another sight. From out the shadow of the eastern mountain, a band of uncouth men emerged, swung into line and bunched on the level terrace beyond the boarding-house. Simultaneously every neighbouring boulder blossomed forth in tufts of creamy white that writhed and widened till they melted in thin air like noisome, dark-grown fungi that wilt in the light of day. Beyond and at the feet of the clustered men spiteful spurts of dust leaped high in air, then drifted and sank, to be replaced by others. Faint, meaningless cries wove through the drifting crash of rifles, blossoming tufts sprang up again and again from boulders near and far. Answering cries flew back from the opening cluster of men, other tufts tongued with yellow flame sprang out from their levelled guns. Now and then a man spun around and dropped, a huddled grey on the spurting sand. It was not in man long to endure the sheltered fire. Dragging their wounded, Jack Haskins's gang again converged, and headed in wild retreat for the office. The opposing tufts came nearer, and now and then a dark form straightened and advanced to another shelter, or was hidden from sight by a bubble of fleecy white that burst from his shoulder. Close at the heels of the fleeing men the spiteful spurts followed fast, till they died out in the thud of smitten logs and the crashing glass of the office. The answering fire of the beleaguered men died to silence. The dark, distant forms grew daring, ran from shelter and clustered at the foot of the slide, across the trail from the Blue Goose. Rambling shots, yells of defiance and triumph, broke from the gathering strikers. The shafts of sunlight had swept down the mountain, smiting hard the polished windows of the Blue Goose that blazed and flamed in their fierce glory. Suddenly the clustered throng of strikers broke and fled. Cries of terror pierced the air. "The cables! The cables!" Overhead the black webs were sinking and rising with spiteful snaps that whirled the buckets in wild confusion and sent their heavy loads of ore crashing to the earth, five hundred feet below. Then, with a rushing, dragging sweep, buckets and cables whirled downward. Full on the Blue Goose the tearing cables fell, dragging it to earth, a crushed and broken mass. Morrison's emissaries had done their work well. The tram-house at the mine had been blown up. They had accomplished more than he had hoped for. Pierre was in the bar-room when the cables fell. He had no time to escape, even had he seen or known. Momentarily forgetful, the strikers swarmed around the fallen building, tearing aside crushed timbers, tugging at the snarled cable, if perchance some of their own were within the ruins. There came the spiteful spat of a solitary bullet, then a volley. With a yell of terror, the strikers broke and fled to the talus behind the saloon. They were now the pursued. They paused to fire no return shots. Stumbling, scrambling, dodging, through tangled scrub and sheltering thicket, down by the mill, down through the cañon, spurred by zipping bullets that clipped twigs and spat on stones around them; down by the Devil's Elbow they fled, till sheltering scrub made pursuit dangerous; then, unmolested, they scattered, one by one, in pairs, in groups, never to return. Even yet the startled echoes were repeating to the peaceful mountains the tale of riot and death, but they bent not from their calm to the calm below that was looking up to them with the eyes of death. Set in its frame of splintered timbers, the body of Pierre rested, a ruined life in a ruined structure, and both still in death. Wide-open eyes stared from the swarthy face, the strained lips parted in a sardonic smile, showing for the last time the gleaming teeth. Morrison had triumphed, but the wide open eyes saw the triumph that was yet defeat. Far up on the mountain-side they looked and saw death pursuing death. They saw Morrison climbing higher and higher, saw him strain his eyes ever ahead, never behind, saw them rest on two figures, saw Morrison crouch behind a rock and a shimmer of light creep along the barrel of his levelled rifle. The eyes seemed eager as they rested on another figure above him that stretched forth a steady hand; saw jets of flame spring from two guns. Then they gleamed with a brighter light as they saw the rifle fall from Morrison's hand; saw Morrison straighten out, even as he lay, his face upturned and silent. That was all in life that Pierre cared to know. Perhaps the sun had changed, but the gleam of triumph in the staring eyes faded to the glaze of death. Élise knew well the danger that went with her up the line. It laid strong hold upon her, as the loosened brake shot the bucket up the dizzy cable. As she was swept up higher and higher she could only hope and pray that the catastrophe which she knew was coming might be delayed until the level stretch above the Falls was reached, where the cables ran so near the ground she might descend in safety. She had given Joe the right number, and she knew that nothing short of death would keep him from heeding her words. She turned her thoughts to other things. Cautiously she raised her eyes above the rim of the bucket and scanned the winding trail. She saw men crouching behind boulders, but Firmstone was not in sight, and strength and courage returned. Her bucket swept up over the crest of the Falls, and her heart stood still, as it glided along swiftly, eating up the level distance to another rise. The saddle clipped over the sheave, swung for an instant, then stood still. She clambered out, down the low tower, then sped to the trail and waited. She rose to her feet, as from behind a sheltered cliff Firmstone emerged, stern, erect, determined. He caught sight of Élise. "What are you doing here?" he asked, fiercely. "To keep you from going to the mill." There was an answering fierceness in her eyes. "Well, you are not going to." He brushed her aside. "I am." She was again in his path. He took hold of her almost harshly. "Don't be a fool." "Am I? Listen." There was the glint of steel on steel in the meeting eyes. Echoing shots dulled by distance yet smote plainly on their ears. "Morrison's men are guarding the trail. They are in the cañon. You can't get through." Firmstone's eyes softened as he looked into hers. The set line broke for an instant, then he looked down the trail. Suddenly he spun around on his heel, wavered, then sank to the ground. Élise dropped on her knees beside him, mumbling inaudible words with husky voice. The hands that loosened the reddening collar of his shirt were firm and decided. She did not hear the grate of Zephyr's shoes. She was only conscious of other hands putting hers aside. His knife cut the clothes that hid the wound. Zephyr took his hat from his head. "Water," he said, holding out the hat. Élise returned from the brook with the brimming hat. The closed eyes opened at the cooling drops. "It's not so bad." He tried to rise, but Zephyr restrained him. "Not yet." Élise was looking anxiously above the trail. Zephyr noted the direction. "No danger. 'Twas Morrison. He's done for." Three or four miners were coming down the trail. They paused at the little group. Zephyr looked up. "You're wanted. The old man's hit." A litter was improvised and slowly and carefully they bore the wounded man down the trail. Zephyr was far in advance. He returned. "It's all right. The gang's on the run." The little procession headed straight for the office, and laid their burden on the floor. The company surgeon looked grave, as he carefully exposed the wound. To Élise it seemed ages. Finally he spoke. "It's a nasty wound; but he'll pull through." CHAPTER XXVII _Passing Clouds_ In spite of the surgeon's hopeful words, the path to recovery lay fearfully near the gate of death. Firmstone had been shot from above, and the bullet, entering at the base of the neck just in front of the throat, had torn its way beneath the collar-bone, passing through the left arm below the shoulder. During the period of trying suspense, when Firmstone's life wavered in the balance, through the longer period of convalescence, he lacked not devotion, love, nor skill to aid him. Zephyr was omnipresent, but never obtrusive. Bennie, with voiceless words and aggressive manner, plainly declared that a sizzling cookstove with a hot temper that never cooled was more efficacious than a magazine of bandages and a college of surgeons. Élise cared for Firmstone, Madame for Élise. Zephyr's rod and rifle, with Bennie's stove, supplied that without which even the wisest counsel comes to an inglorious end. Over all Élise reigned an uncrowned queen, with no constitution, written or unwritten, to hamper her royal will. Even the company surgeon had to give a strict accounting. The soft, red lips could not hide the hard, straight lines beneath rounded curves, nor the liquid black of velvet eyes break the insistent glint of an active, decisive mind. Miss Hartwell was still pretty and willing, but yet helpless and oppressed. It was therefore with a regretted sense of relief that the arrival of Miss Firmstone removed the last appearance of duty that kept her in useless toleration. Hartwell's capacious sleeve held a ready card which awaited but an obvious opportunity for playing. No sooner was Firmstone pronounced out of danger than the card, in the form of urgent business, was played, and Hartwell and his sister left for the East. Like her brother, Miss Firmstone evidently had a will of her own, and, also like her brother, a well-balanced mind to control its manifestations. There was a short, sharp battle of eyes when first the self-throned queen was brought face to face with her possible rival. The conflict was without serious results, for Miss Firmstone, in addition to will and judgment, had also tact and years superior to Élise. These were mere fortuitous adjuncts which had been denied Élise. So it happened that, though a rebellious pupil, Élise learned many valuable lessons. She was ready and willing to defy the world individually and collectively; yet she stood in awe of herself. One afternoon Firmstone was sitting in his room, looking out of his window, and in spite of the grandeur of the mountain there was little of glory but much of gloom in his thoughts. The mine was in ruins; so, as far as he could see, were his labours, his ambitions, and his prospects. He tried to keep his thoughts on the gloom of the clouds and shut his eyes to their silver lining. The silver lining was in softly glowing evidence, but he could not persuade himself that it was for him. Step by step he was going over every incident of his intercourse with Élise. Their first meeting, her subsequent warning that his life was in serious danger, her calm, resolute putting aside of all thought of danger to herself, her daring ride up the tram to keep him from sure death when she knew that the tram-house was to be blown up, that the catastrophe might occur at any moment, her unremitting care of him, wounded near to death: all these came to him, filled him with a longing love that left no nerve nor fibre of heart or soul untouched with thrills that, for all their pain, were even yet not to be stilled by his own volition. Firmstone grew more thoughtful. He realised that Élise was only a girl in years, yet her natural life, untrammelled by conventional proprieties which distract and dissipate the limited energy in a thousand divergent channels, had forced her whole soul into the maturity of many waxing and waning seasons. Every manifestation of her restless, active mind had stood out clear and sharp in the purity of unconscious self. This was the disturbing element in Firmstone's anxious mind. Responsive to every mood, fiercely unsparing of herself, yet every attempted word of grateful appreciation from him had been anticipated and all but fiercely repelled. With all his acumen, Firmstone yet failed to comprehend two very salient features of a woman's heart, that, however free and spontaneous she may be, there is one emotion instinctively and jealously guarded, that she will reject, with indignation, gratitude offered as a substitute for love. Firmstone's meditations were interrupted by a knock on the door. Zephyr came in, holding out a bulky envelope. It was from the eastern office of the Rainbow Company. Firmstone's face stiffened as he broke the seals. Zephyr noted the look and, after an introductory whistle, said: "'Tisn't up to you to fret now, Goggles. Foolishness at two cents an ounce or fraction thereof is more expensive than passenger rates at four dollars a pound." Firmstone looked up absently. "What's that you're saying?" Zephyr waved his hand languidly. "I was right. Have been all along. I knew you had more sense than you could carry in your head. It's all over you, and you got some of it shot away. I'm trying to make it plain to you that foolishness on paper ain't near so fatal as inside a skull. Consequently, if them Easterners had had any serious designs on you, they'd sent the real stuff back in a Pullman instead of the smell of it by mail." Firmstone made no reply, but went on with his letter. There was amusement and indignation on his face as, having finished the letter, he handed it to Zephyr. The letter was from Hartwell and was official. Briefly, it expressed regret over Firmstone's serious accident, satisfaction at his recovery, and congratulations that a serious complication had been met and obviated with, all things considered, so slight a loss to the company. The letter concluded as follows: We have carefully considered the statement of the difficulties with which you have been confronted, as reported by our manager, and fully comprehend them. We have also given equal consideration to his plans for the rehabilitation of the mine and mill, and heartily assent to them as well as to his request that you be retained as our superintendent and that, in addition to your salary, you be granted a considerable share in the stock of our company. We feel that we are warranted in pursuing this course with you, recognising that it is a rare thing, in one having the ability which you have shown, to take counsel with and even frankly to adopt the suggestions of another. By order of the President and Board of Directors of the Rainbow Milling Company, by ARTHUR HARTWELL, Gen. Man. and Acting Secretary. Zephyr's face worked in undulations that in narrowing concentrics reached the puckered apex of his lips. "Bees," he finally remarked, "are ding-twisted, ornery insects. They have, however, one redeeming quality not common to mosquitoes and black flies. If they sting with one end they make honey with the other. They ain't neither to be cussed nor commended. They're just built on them lines." Firmstone looked thoughtful. "I'm inclined to think you're right. If you're looking for honey you've got to take chances on being stung." "Which I take to mean that you have decided to hive your bees in this particular locality." Firmstone nodded. Zephyr looked expectantly at Firmstone, and then continued: "I also wish to remark that there are certain inconveniences connected with being an uncommonly level-headed man. There's no telling when you've got to whack up with your friends." "All right." Firmstone half guessed at what was coming. "Madame," Zephyr remarked, "having been deprived by the hand of death of her legal protectors, namely, Pierre and Morrison, wishes to take counsel with you." Zephyr, waiting no further exchange of words, left the room and shortly returned with Madame. She paused at the door, darted a frightened look at Firmstone, then one of pathetic appeal to the imperturbable Zephyr. Again her eyes timidly sought Firmstone, who, rising, advanced with outstretched hand. Madame's hands were filled with bundled papers. In nervously trying to move them, in order to accept Firmstone's proffered hand, the bundles fell scattered to the floor. With an embarrassed exclamation, she hastily stooped to recover them and in her effort collided with Zephyr, who had been actuated by the same motive. Zephyr rubbed his head with one hand, gathering up the papers with the other. "If Madame wore her heart on her neck instead of under her ribs, I would have had two hands free instead of one. Which same being put in literal speech means that there's nothing against nature in having a hard head keeping step with a tender heart." Madame was at last seated with her papers in her lap. She was ill at ease in the fierce consciousness of self, but her flushed face and frightened eyes only showed the growing mastery of unselfish love over the threatening lions that waited in her path. One by one, she tendered the papers to Firmstone, who read them with absorbed attention. As the last paper was laid with its fellows Madame's eyes met fearlessly the calm look of the superintendent. Slowly, laboriously at first, but gathering assurance with oblivion of self, she told the story of Élise's birth. With the intuition of an overpowering love, she felt that she was telling the story to one absolutely trustworthy, able and willing to counsel her with powers far beyond her own. Firmstone heard far more than the stumbling words recited. His eyes dimmed, but his voice was steady. "I think I understand. You want Élise restored to her friends?" Madame's eyes slowly filled with tears that welled over the trembling lids and rolled down her cheeks. She did not try to speak. She only nodded in silent acquiescence. She sat silent for a few moments, then the trembling lips grew firm, but her voice could not be controlled. "We ought to have done it long ago, Pierre and I. But I loved her. Pierre loved her. She was all we had." It was worse than death. Death only removes the presence, it leaves the consoling sense of possession through all eternity. Zephyr started to speak, but Firmstone, turning to Madame, interrupted. "You have no need to fear. Where you cannot go Élise will not." Madame looked up suddenly. The rainbow of hope glowed softly for an instant in the tear-dimmed eyes. Then the light died out. "She will be ashamed of her hol' daddy and her hol' mammy before her gran' friends." Pierre's words came to her, laden with her own unworthiness. The door opened and Élise and Miss Firmstone came in. Miss Firmstone took in the situation at a glance. "You are reliable people to trust with a convalescent, aren't you? And after the doctor's warning that all excitement was to be avoided!" "Doctors don't know everything," Zephyr exploded, in violence to his custom. Then, more in accord with it, "It does potatoes no end of good to be hilled." Élise looked questioning surprise, as her glance fell on Madame, then on Zephyr. Her eyes rested lightly for a moment on Firmstone. There was a fleeting suggestion that quickened his pulses and deepened the flush on his face. Again her eyes were on Madame. Pity, love, glowed softly at sight of the bowed head. She advanced a step, and her hand and arm rested on Madame's shoulders. Madame shivered slightly, then grew rigid. Nothing should interfere with her duty to Élise. Élise straightened, but her arm was not removed. "What is it? What have you been saying?" She was looking fixedly at Firmstone. There was no tenderness in her eyes, only a demand that was not to be ignored. Firmstone began a brief capitulation of his interview with Madame. When he told her that she was not Madame's daughter, that she was to be restored to her unknown friends, that Madame wished it, the change that came over the girl amazed him. Her eyes were flashing. Her clinched hands thrust backward, as if to balance the forward, defiant poise of her body. "That is not so! You have frightened her into saying what she does not mean. You don't want me to leave you; do you? Tell me you don't!" She turned to Madame, fiercely. Firmstone gave Madame no time to answer. "Wait," he commanded. "You don't understand." His words were impetuous with the intensity of his emotion. "I don't want you to leave Madame. You are not going to. Don't you understand?" He laid his hand on hers, but she shook it off. He withdrew his hand. "Very well, but listen." Himself he put aside; but he was not to be diverted from his purpose. He felt that in the life of the girl before him a vital crisis was impending, that, unforeseeing of consequences, she, in the sheer delight of overcoming opposing wills, might be impelled to a step that would bring to naught all her glorious possibilities. The thought hardened his every mental fibre. He was looking into eyes that gleamed with open, resolute defiance. "You and Madame are not to be separated. You are going East with my sister and Madame is going with you: You are going to your father's friends." "Is that all?" The voice was mocking. "No. I want your word that you will do as I say." Without seeming to turn her defiant eyes, Élise laid her hand firmly on Madame. "Come." Madame rose in response to the impulse of hand and word. She cast a frightened, appealing look at Firmstone, then with Élise moved toward the door. On the threshold Firmstone barred the way. "I have not had my answer." "No?" "I can wait." Élise and Firmstone stood close. There was a measure of will opposed to will in the unflinching eyes. Élise felt a strange thrill, strange to her. With Pierre and Madame opposition only roused her anger, their commands only gave piquancy to revolt. But now, as she looked at the strong, resolute man before her, there was a new sensation fraught with subtler thrills of delight, the yielding to one who commanded and took from her even the desire to resist. She felt warm waves of blood surging to her face. The defiant poise of her head was unchanged, her eyes softened, but the drooping lids hid them from those that she acknowledged master. "May I go if I give my answer?" "If your answer is right, yes." The eyes were veiled, but the mobile lips were wavering. "Madame and I have decided to go East." The look on Firmstone's face changed from resolution to pleading. "I have no right to ask more, unless you choose to give it. Don't you know what I want to ask? Will you give me the right to ask?" The drooping head bent still lower, a softer flush suffused the quiet face. Firmstone took the girl's unresisting hands in his own. "Can't you give me my answer, dear? You have come to be all the world to me. You are going away for the sake of your friends. Will you come back some time for mine?" Élise slowly raised her eyes to his. He read his answer. There was a slight answering pressure, then her hands were gently withdrawn. Firmstone stood aside. Élise and Madame moved over the threshold, the door swinging to behind them, not quite shut; then it opened, just enough to show a flushed face, with teasing, roguish eyes. "I forgot to ask. Is that all, Mr. Minion?" Then the door closed with a decided click. THE END Other Book to Read By Arthur Stanwood Pier Author of "The Pedagogues" THE TRIUMPH The Triumph has fire and pathos and romance and exhilarating humor. It is a capital story that will keep a reader's interest from the first appearance of its hero, the young doctor Neal Robeson, to his final triumph--his triumph over himself and over the lawless, turbulent oil-drillers, his success in his profession and in his love affair. It displays a delightful appreciation of the essential points of typical American characters, a happy outlook on everyday life, a vigorous story-telling ability working in material that is thrilling in interest, in a setting that is picturesque and unusual. The action takes place in a little western Pennsylvania village at the time of the oil fever, and a better situation can scarcely be found. Mr. Pier's account of the fight between the outraged villagers and the oil-drillers around a roaring, blazing gas well is a masterpiece of story telling. _Illustrations by W. D. Stevens_ By James Weber Linn Author of "The Second Generation" THE CHAMELEON The author uses as his theme that trait in human nature which leads men and women to seek always the lime light, to endeavor always to be protagonists even at the expense of the truth. His book is a study of that most interesting and pertinent type in modern life, the sentimentalist, the man whose emotions are interesting to him merely as a matter of experience, and shows the development of such a character when he comes into contact with normal people. The action of the novel passes in a college town and the hero comes to his grief through his attempt to increase his appearance of importance by betraying a secret. His love for his wife is, however, his saving sincerity and through it the story is brought to a happy ending. By M. Imlay Taylor Author of "The House of the Wizard" THE REBELLION OF THE PRINCESS A book that is a story, and never loses the quick, on-rushing, inevitable quality of a story from the first page to the last. Stirring, exciting, romantic, satisfying all the essential requirements of a novel. The scene is laid in Moscow at the time of the election of Peter the Great, when the intrigues of rival parties overturned the existing government, and the meeting of the National Guard made the city the scene of a hideous riot. It resembles in some points Miss Taylor's successful first story, "On the Red Staircase," especially in the date, the principal scenes and the fact that the hero is a French nobleman. By Edward W. Townsend Author of "Chimmie Fadden," "Days Like These," etc. LEES AND LEAVEN No novel of New York City has ever portrayed so faithfully or so vividly our new world Gotham--the seething, rushing New York of to-day, to which all the world looks with such curious interest. Mr. Townsend, gives us not a picture, but the bustling, nerve-racking pageant itself. The titan struggles in the world of finance, the huge hoaxes in sensational news-paperdom, the gay life of the theatre, opera, and restaurant, and then the calmer and comforting domestic scenes of wholesome living, pass, as actualities, before our very eyes. In this turbulent maelstrom of ambition, he finds room for love and romance also. There is a bountiful array of characters, admirably drawn, and especially delightful are the two emotional and excitable lovers, young Bannister and Gertrude Carr. The book is unlike Mr. Townsend's "Chimmie Fadden" in everything but its intimate knowledge of New York life. By S. R. Crockett Author of "The Banner of Blue," "The Firebrand" FLOWER O' THE CORN Mr. Crockett has made an interesting novel of romance and intrigue. He has chosen a little town in the south of France, high up in the mountains, as the scene for his drama. The plot deals with a group of Calvinists who have been driven from Belgium into southern France, where they are besieged in their mountain fastness by the French troops. A number of historical characters figure in the book, among them Madame de Maintenon. "Flower o' the Corn" is probably one of Mr. Crockett's most delightful women characters. The book is notable for its fine descriptions. By Edith Wyatt Author of "Every One His Own Way" TRUE LOVE A Comedy of the Affections Here commonplace, everyday, ordinary people tread the boards. The characters whom Miss Wyatt presents are not geniuses, or heroes, or heroines of romance, but commonplace persons with commonplace tricks and commonplace manners and emotions. They do romantic things without a sense of romance in them, but weave their commonplace doings into a story of great human interest that the reader will find far from commonplace. The vein of humorous satire, keen, subtle and refined, permeating the story and the characterization, sets this work of Miss Wyatt's in a class by itself. By Pauline B. Mackie Author of "The Washingtonians" THE VOICE IN THE DESERT This is a story of subtle attractions and repulsions between men and women; of deep temperamental conflicts, accentuated and made dramatic by the tense atmosphere of the Arizona desert. The action of the story passes in a little Spanish mission town, where the hero, Lispenard, is settled as an Episcopal clergyman, with his wife Adele and their two children. The influence of the spirit of the desert is a leading factor in the story. Upon Lispenard the desert exerts a strange fascination, while upon his wife it has an opposite effect and antagonizes her. As their natures develop under the spell of their environment, they drift apart and the situation is complicated by the influence upon Lispenard of a second woman who seems to typify the spirit of the desert itself. The spiritual situation is delicately suggested and all is done with a rare and true feeling for human nature. By Shan F. Bullock Author of "The Barrys," "Irish Pastorals" THE SQUIREEN Mr. Bullock takes us into the North of Ireland among North-of-Ireland people. His story is dominated by one remarkable character, whose progress towards the subjugation of his own temperament we cannot help but watch with interest. He is swept from one thing to another, first by his dare-devil, roistering spirit, then by his mood of deep repentance, through love and marriage, through quarrels and separation from his wife, to a reconciliation at the point of death, to a return to health, and through the domination of the devil in him, finally to death. It is a strong, convincing novel suggesting, somewhat, "The House with the Green Shutters." What that book did for the Scotland of Ian Maclaren and Barrie, "The Squireen" will do for Ireland. By Seumas McManus Author of "Through the Turf Smoke" "A LAD OF THE O'FRIEL'S" This is a story of Donegal ways and customs; full of the spirit of Irish life. The main character is a dreaming and poetic boy who takes joy in all the stories and superstitions of his people, and his experience and life are thus made to reflect all the essential qualities of the life of his country. Many characters in the book will make warm places for themselves in the heart of the reader. By Joel Chandler Harris GABRIEL TOLLIVER A story filled with the true flavor of Southern life. The first important novel by the creator of "Uncle Remus." Those who have loved Mr. Harris's children's stories, will find in this story of boy and girl love in Georgia during the troublous Reconstruction period, the same genial and kindly spirit, the same quaintly humorous outlook on life that characterizes his earlier work. A host of charming people, with whom it is a privilege to become acquainted, crowd the pages, and their characters, thoughts and doings are sketched in a manner quite suggestive of Dickens. The fawn-like Nan is one of the most winsome of characters in fiction, and the dwarf negress, Tasma Tid, is a weird sprite that only Mr. Harris could have created. "A novel which ranks Mr. Harris as the Dickens of the South."--_Brooklyn Eagle._ "It is a pretty love-story, artistically wrought, a natural, healthy love-story, full of Joel Chandler Harris's inimitable naivete."--_Atlanta Constitution. 
42559	----	Transcriber's Notes: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. Small Caps replaced with ALL CAPS. * * * * * By Enos A. Mills YOUR NATIONAL PARKS. Illustrated. THE STORY OF SCOTCH. Illustrated. THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN WONDERLAND. Illustrated. THE STORY OF A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE. Illustrated. IN BEAVER WORLD. Illustrated. THE SPELL OF THE ROCKIES. Illustrated. WILD LIFE ON THE ROCKIES. Illustrated. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON AND NEW YORK THE STORY OF SCOTCH [Illustration: SCOTCH AND HIS MASTER] THE STORY OF SCOTCH. BY ENOS A. MILLS _With Illustrations from Photographs by the Author_ BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY _The Riverside Press Cambridge_ COPYRIGHT, 1909, 1911 AND 1916, BY ENOS A. MILLS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Published September 1916_ TO MARY KING SHERMAN AND JOHN KING SHERMAN WHO KNEW AND APPRECIATED SCOTCH PREFACE Scotch and I were companions through eight years. Winter and summer we explored the rugged mountains of the Continental Divide. Often we were cold; more often we were hungry. Together we fought our way through blizzards and forest fires. Never did he complain and at all times he showed remarkable intelligence and absolute fidelity. The thousands who have watched him play football by my cabin on the slope of Long's Peak and the other thousands who have read of his unusual experiences will be interested, I am sure, in this complete story of his life. I gave an account of Scotch in my _Wild Life on the Rockies_, and in _The Spell of the Rockies_ I related one of our winter experiences. These chapters and an article on him which I wrote for _Country Life in America_ are, together with additional matter, embodied in this little book. ILLUSTRATIONS SCOTCH AND HIS MASTER _Frontispiece_ HIS FIRST KENNEL 4 PUPPY SCOTCH 8 CHIPMUNKS? 12 PLAYING FOOTBALL 26 READY FOR A WALK 32 THE MOUNTAINS IN WINTER Scotch on Guard at the Timber-Line Cabin 40 SCOTCH NEAR TIMBER-LINE 54 THE STORY OF SCOTCH I A famous collie and her five little puppies came into the possession of a Swedish farmer of my acquaintance. For an unimportant and forgotten kindness which I had shown his children, he decided that I should have one of these promising puppies. To his delight I chose the "wisest one," wee "Scotch," who afterwards gave pleasure to hundreds of people and who for eight years was a factor in my life. I carried little Scotch all day long in my overcoat pocket as I rode through the mountains on the way to my cabin. His cheerful little face, his good behavior, and the bright way in which he poked his head out of my pocket, licked my hand, and looked at the scenery, completely won my heart before I had ridden an hour. We camped for the night by a dim road near a deserted ranch-house in the mountains. Scotch was quiet during the long ride, but while I was lighting the camp-fire he climbed out of my overcoat and proceeded, puppy fashion, to explore the camp. After one bark at my pony he went over to make her acquaintance. He playfully smelled of each of her feet, gave a happy bark, and jumped up to touch her nose with his own. Cricket, the pony, intently watched his performance with lowered head and finally nosed him in a friendly manner. I shut him up in a small abandoned cabin for the night. He at once objected and set up a terrible barking and howling, gnawing fiercely at the crack beneath the door and trying to tear his way out. Fearing he would break his little puppy teeth, or possibly die from frantic and persistent efforts to be free, I concluded to release him from the cabin. My fears that he would run away if left free were groundless. He made his way to my saddle, which lay on the ground near by, crawled under it, turned round beneath it, thrust his little head from beneath the arch of the horn, and lay down with a look of contentment, and also with an air which said: "I'll take care of this saddle. I'd like to see any one touch it." And watch it he did. At midnight a cowboy came to my camp-fire. He had been thrown from his bronco and was making back to his outfit on foot. Tiny Scotch flew at him ferociously; never have I seen such faithful ferocity in a dog so small and young. I took him in my hands and assured him that the visitor was welcome, and in a moment little Scotch and the cowboy were side by side gazing at the fire. On our arrival at my cabin he at once took possession of an old tub in a corner of the porch. This he liked, and it remained his kennel for a long time. Here, protected from wind and rain, he was comfortable even in cold weather. [Illustration: HIS FIRST KENNEL] We were intimate from the start, and we lived most of the time apart from the world. I watched his development with satisfaction. He grew rapidly in size, strength, comprehension, and accomplishments. He was watchful and fearless through life. His first experience with the unfriendly side of life came from a burro. A prospector came by with one of these long-eared beasts. Confiding Scotch went out to play with the burro and was kicked. Thenceforward he looked upon all burros with distrust, and every one that came near the cabin promptly and precipitously retreated before him like a boy before an aggressive bumblebee. The summer that Scotch was growing up, I raised Johnny, a jolly young grizzly bear. At first the smaller, Johnny early became the larger. Both these youngsters were keenly alert, playful, and inclined to be friendly. Each, however, was a trifle suspicious of the other. Unfortunately, I was away during the period in which a complete understanding between them could have been established and, as a result, there never came about the intimate companionship that really should have existed between these two highly developed animals; but their relations, though ever peculiar, were never strained. At times both had the freedom of the yard at once, and naturally they sometimes met while going to and fro. On these occasions each passed the other by as though unconscious of his presence. Sometimes they lay at close range for an hour at a time, quietly, half-admiringly watching each other. A bone was used as a medium the few times they played together. Each in turn guarded this bone while the other tried to take it away. This brought out from both a lively lot of striking, feinting, boxing, dodging, and grabbing, which usually ended in clinching and wrestling. In these vigorous, though good-natured mix-ups, it was Johnny's idea to get in a few good bites on Scotch's shaggy tail; while on the end of Johnny's sensitive nose Scotch landed slap after slap. Scotch was an old-fashioned collie and had a face that was exceptionally expressive and pleasing. He was short-nosed, and his fine eyes were set wide apart. When grown he was a trifle larger than the average dog, and was surprisingly agile and powerful for his size. His coat was a shaggy, silky black, with feet, tip of tail, and breast of pure white. He was always well dressed and took good care of his coat and feet. Daily he immersed himself in the cold waters of the brook, when it was not frozen, and he frequently lay in the water, lapping it and enjoying himself. [Illustration: PUPPY SCOTCH] I never knew of his killing anything, though often in the woods he merrily chased the lively, playful chipmunks. Never, however, did he disturb bird or chipmunk in the yard around the cabin. Often two or three chipmunks romped over him as he lay, with half-shut eyes, near the door. Occasionally a bird hopped upon him, and frequently birds, chipmunks, and Scotch ate together from the same bowl. Scotch did but little barking. In the country most dogs bow-wow at strangers, and frequently make the night hideous with prolonged barking at far-off sounds or imaginary objects. In summer Scotch allowed the scores of daily callers to come and go without a bark, but he reserved the right to announce, with a bark or two, the approach of the semi-occasional stranger who invaded our winter isolation. Talking to animals appears to make them gentler and more responsive. Scotch never tired of listening to me, and I often talked to him as if he were a child. He came to understand many of the words used. If I said "hatchet," he hastened to bring it; if "fire," he at once endeavored to discover where it was. Cheerfully and intelligently he endeavored to help me, and early became efficient in driving cattle, horses, and burros. Instinctively he was a "heeler," and with swift heel nips quickly awakened and gave directions to lazy or unwilling "critters." II Many of Scotch's actions were beyond the scope of instinct. One day, when still young, he mastered a new situation by the use of his wits. While he was alone at the house, some frightened cattle smashed a fence about a quarter of a mile away and broke into the pasture. He was after them in an instant. From a mountain-side ledge above, I watched proceedings with a glass. The cattle were evidently excited by the smell of some animal and did not drive well. Scotch ignored the two pasture gates, which were closed, and endeavored to hurry the cattle out through the break through which they had entered. After energetic encouragement, all but one went flying out through the break. This one alternated between stupidly running back and forth along the fence and trying to gore Scotch. Twice the animal had run into a corner by one of the gates, and his starting for the corner the third time apparently gave Scotch an idea. He stopped heeling, raced for the gate, and, leaping up, bit at the handle of the sliding wooden bar that secured it. He repeated this biting and tearing at the handle until the bar slid and the gate swung open. After chasing the animal through, he lay down by the gate. [Illustration: CHIPMUNKS?] When I came into view he attracted my attention with sharp barks and showed great delight when I closed the gate. After this, he led me to the break in the fence and then lay down. Though I looked at him and asked, "What do you want done here?" he pretended not to hear. That was none of his business! He had much more individuality than most dogs. His reserve force and initiative usually enabled him to find a way and succeed with situations which could not be mastered in his old way. The gate-opening was one of the many incidents in which these traits brought triumph. One of his most remarkable achievements was the mastering of a number of cunning coyotes which were persistent in annoying him and willing to make an opportunity to kill him. In a sunny place close to the cabin, the coyotes one autumn frequently collected for a howling concert. This irritated Scotch, and he generally chased the howlers into the woods. Now and then he lay down on their yelping-grounds to prevent their prompt return. After a time these wily little wolves adopted tantalizing tactics, and one day, while Scotch was chasing the pack, a lame coyote made a détour and came behind him. In the shelter of a willow-clump the coyote broke out in a maddening Babel of yelps and howls. Scotch instantly turned back to suppress him. While he was thus busy, the entire pack doubled back into the open and taunted Scotch with attitude and howls. Twice did the pack repeat these annoying, defying tactics. This serious situation put Scotch on his mettle. One night he went down the mountain to a ranch-house fifteen miles away. For the first time he was gone all night. The next morning I was astonished to find another collie in Scotch's bed. Scotch was in a state of worried suspense until I welcomed the stranger; then he was most gleeful. This move on his part told plainly that he was planning something still more startling. Indeed he was, but never did I suspect what this move was to be. That day, at the first howl of the coyotes, I rushed out to see if the visiting collie would assist Scotch. There were the coyotes in groups of two and three, yelping, howling, and watching. Both dogs were missing, but presently they came into view, cautiously approaching the coyotes from behind a screen of bushes. Suddenly the visiting collie dashed out upon them. At the same instant Scotch leaped into a willow-clump and crouched down; it was by this clump that the lame coyote had each time come to howl behind Scotch. While the visiting collie was driving the pack, the lame coyote again came out to make his sneaking flank movement. As he rounded the willow-clump Scotch leaped upon him. Instantly the other dog raced back, and both dogs fell fiercely upon the coyote. Though lame, he was powerful, and finally shook the dogs off and escaped to the woods, but he was badly wounded and bleeding freely. The pack fled and came no more to howl near the cabin. At bedtime, when I went out to see the dogs, both were away. Their tracks in the road showed that Scotch had accompanied the neighboring collie at least part of the way home. On rare occasions Scotch was allowed to go with visitors into the woods or up the mountain-side. However, he was allowed to accompany only those who appreciated the companionship and the intelligence of a noble dog or who might need him to show the way home. One day a young woman from Michigan came along and wanted to climb Long's Peak alone and without a guide. I agreed to consent to her wish if she would take Scotch with her and would also first climb one of the lesser peaks on a stormy day, unaided. This climbing the young woman did, and by so doing convinced me that she had a keen sense of direction and an abundance of strength, for the day was a stormy one and the peak was completely befogged with clouds. After this there was nothing for me to do but to allow her to climb Long's Peak. Just as she was starting for Long's Peak that cool September morning, I called Scotch and said to him: "Scotch, go with this young woman up Long's Peak. Keep her on the trail, take good care of her, and stay with her until she returns!" Scotch gave a few barks of satisfaction and started with the young woman up the trail, carrying himself in a manner which indicated that he was both honored and pleased. I felt that the strength and alertness of the young woman, when combined with the faithfulness and watchfulness of Scotch, would make the ascent a success, for the dog knew the trail as well as any guide. The young woman climbed swiftly until she reached the rocky alpine moorlands above timber-line. Here she lingered long to enjoy the magnificent scenery and the brilliant flowers. It was late in the afternoon when she arrived at the summit of the Peak. After she had spent a little time there, resting and absorbing the beauty and grandeur of the scene, she started to return. She had not gone far when clouds and darkness came on, and on a slope of slide rock she turned aside from the trail. Scotch had minded his own affairs and enjoyed himself in his own way all day long. Most of the time he had followed her closely, apparently indifferent to what happened. But the instant the young woman left the trail and started off in the wrong direction, he sprang ahead and took the lead with an alert, aggressive air. The way in which he did this should have suggested to her that he knew what he was about, but she did not appreciate this fact. She thought he had become weary and wanted to run away from her, so she called him back. Again she started in the wrong direction. This time Scotch got in front of her and refused to move. She pushed him out of the way. Once more he started off in the right direction and this time she scolded him and reminded him that his master had told him to stay with her. Scotch dropped his ears, fell in behind her, and followed meekly in her steps. He had tried to carry out the first part of his master's orders; now he was resigned to the second part of them. After going a short distance, the young woman realized that she had lost her trail but it never occurred to her that she had only to let Scotch have his way and he would lead her safely home. However, she had the good sense to stop where she was. And there, among the crags, by the stained remnants of winter's snow, thirteen thousand feet above sea-level, she knew she must pass the night. The wind blew a gale and the alpine brooklet turned to ice, while, in the lee of a crag, shivering with cold and hugging Scotch tight, she lay down to wait for daylight. When darkness had come that evening and the young woman had not returned, I sent a rescue party of four guides up the Peak. They suffered much from cold as they vainly searched among the crags through the dark hours of the windy night. Just at sunrise one of the guides found her. She was almost exhausted, but was still hugging Scotch tightly and only her fingers were frost-bitten. The guide gave her wraps and food and drink, and started with her down the trail. And Scotch? Oh, as soon as the guide appeared he left her and started home for breakfast. Scotch saved this young woman's life by staying with her through the long, cold night. She appreciated the fact, and was quick to admit that if she had allowed the dog to have his own way about the trail she would have had no trouble. III One summer a family lived in a cabin at the farther side of the big yard. Scotch developed a marked fondness for the lady of the house and called on her daily. He was so purposeful about this that from the moment he rose to start there was no mistaking his plans. Along the pathway toward the cabin he went, evidently with something definite in his mind. He was going somewhere; there was no stopping, no hurrying, and no turning aside. If the door was open, in he went; if it was closed, he made a scraping stroke across it and with dignified pose waited for it to be opened. Inside he was the gentleman. Generally he made a quiet tour through all the rooms and then lay down before the fireplace. If any one talked to him, he watched the speaker and listened with pleased attention; if the speaker was animated, Scotch now and then gave a low bark of appreciation. Usually he stayed about half an hour and then went sedately out. Without looking back, he returned deliberately to his own quarters. What an unconscious dignity there was in his make-up! He would not "jump for the gentlemen," nor leap over a stick, nor "roll over." No one ever would have thought of asking him to speak, to say grace, or to sit up on his hind legs for something to eat. All these tricks were foreign to his nature and had no place in his philosophy! Though Scotch admitted very few to the circle of his intimate friends, he was admired, respected, and loved by thousands. One of these admirers writes of him: "Of this little rustic Inn, Scotch was no less the host than was his master. He welcomed the coming and sped the parting guest. He escorted the climbers to the beginning of the trail up Long's Peak. He received the returning trout fishermen. He kept the burros on the other side of the brook. He stood between the coyotes and the inhabitants of the chicken yard. He was always ready to play football for the entertainment of the guests after dinner. He was really the busiest person about the Inn from morning till night." Though apparently matter-of-fact and stolid, he was ever ready for a romp and was one of the most playful dogs. Except at odd times, I was the only playmate he ever had. It was a pleasure to watch him or to play with him, for he played with all his might. He took an intense delight in having me kick or toss a football for him. He raced at full speed in pursuing the ball, and upon overtaking it would try to pick it up, but it was too large for him. As soon as I picked it up, he became all alert to race after it or to leap up and intercept it. If the ball was tossed easily to him, he sprang to meet it and usually struck it with the point of his chin and sent it flying back to me; at short range we were sometimes able to send the ball back and forth between us several times without either one moving in his tracks. If the ball was tossed above him, he leaped up to strike it with head, chin, or teeth, trying to make it bound upward; if it went up, he raced to do it over again. Occasionally he was clever enough to repeat this many times without allowing the ball to fall to the earth. [Illustration: PLAYING FOOTBALL] His enjoyment in make-believe play was as eager and refreshing as that of a child. This kind of play we often enjoyed in the yard. I would pretend to be searching for him, while he, crouching near in plain view, pretended to be hidden. Oh, how he enjoyed this! Again and again I would approach him from a different direction, and, when within touching distance, call, "Where is Scotch?" while he, too happy for barks, hugged the earth closely and silently. Now and then he took a pose and pretended to be looking at something far away, while all the time his eager eye was upon me. From time to time, with utmost stealth, he took a new hiding-place. With every pretense of trying not to be seen, he sometimes moved from behind to immediately in front of me! Silently, though excitedly happy, he played this delightful childish game. It always ended to his liking; I grabbed him with a "Hello, there's Scotch!" and carried him off on my shoulder. One day a family arrived at a nearby cottage to spend the summer. During the first afternoon of their stay, the toddling baby strayed away. Every one turned out to search. With enlarging circles we covered the surrounding country and at last came upon the youngster in the woods about a quarter of a mile from the house. Scotch was with him and was lying down with head up, while the baby, asleep, was using him for a pillow, and had one chubby arm thrown across his neck. He saw us approach and lift the baby as if nothing unusual had happened. He never failed to notice my preparations to journey beyond the mountains. Never would he watch me start on this kind of a journey, but an hour or so before leaving-time he would go to the side of the house opposite where I started. Here he would refuse attention from any one and for a few days would go about sadly. A little in advance of my home-coming, he showed that he expected me. Probably he heard my name used by the people in the house. Anyway, for two or three days before my arrival, he each evening would go down the road and wait at the place where he had greeted me many times on my return. When I went horseback-riding he was almost passionately happy if allowed to go along. Whenever my pony was brought out, he at once stopped everything and lay down near the pony to await my coming. Would I go out on the trail with him, or go to the post office and leave him behind? By the time I appeared, these questions had him in a high state of excitement. Usually he turned his head away and yawned and yawned; he rose up and sat down, altogether showing a strange combination of bashfulness and impatience; though plainly trying to be quiet, he was restless until my answer came. Usually he was able to make out what this was without waiting for any word from me. A hatchet, for example, would tell him I was going to the woods. On the other hand, the mail-bag meant that I was going to the village. This meant that he could not go, whereupon he would go off slowly, lie down, and look the other way. If the answer was "yes," he raced this way and that, leaping up once or twice to touch the pony's nose with his own. During each ride he insisted on a race with the pony; if I chanced to forget this, he never failed to remind me before the ride was over. As a reminder, he would run alongside me and leap as high as possible, then race ahead as swiftly as he could. This he repeated until I accepted his challenge. Both dog and pony gleefully enjoyed this and each tried to pass the other. Once we were clattering over the last stretch toward home. Scotch, who was in the lead, saw our pet chicken crouched in the pony's track, where it was in danger of being crushed. Unmindful of his own danger from the pony's hoofs, he swerved, gently caught up the chicken, and lifted it out of danger. After fondling it for a moment, he raced after us at full speed. [Illustration: READY FOR A WALK] No matter what the weather, he usually slept outdoors. He understood, however, that he was welcome to come into my cabin day or night, and was a frequent caller. In the cabin he was dignified and never used it as a place of amusement. IV Scotch enjoyed being with me, and great times we had together. Many of our best days were in the wilds. Here he often suffered from hunger, cold, hardships, and sometimes from accident; yet never did he complain. Usually he endured the unpleasant things as a matter of course. Though very lonely when left by himself, he never allowed this feeling to cause a slighting of duty. On one occasion he was supremely tried but did his duty as he understood it and was faithful under circumstances of loneliness, danger, and possible death. At the close of one of our winter trips, Scotch and I started across the Continental Divide of the Rocky Mountains in face of weather conditions that indicated a snowstorm or a blizzard before we could gain the other side. We had eaten the last of our food twenty-four hours before, and could no longer wait for fair weather. So off we started to scale the snowy steeps of the cold, gray heights a thousand feet above. The mountains already were deeply snow-covered and it would have been a hard trip even without the discomforts and dangers of a storm. I was on snowshoes, and for a week we had been camping and tramping through the snowy forests and glacier meadows at the source of Grand River, two miles above the sea. The primeval Rocky Mountain forests are just as near to Nature's heart in winter as in summer. I had found so much to study and enjoy that the long distance from a food-supply, even when the last mouthful was eaten, had not aroused me to the seriousness of the situation. Scotch had not complained, and appeared to have the keenest collie interest in the tracks and trails, the scenes and silences away from the haunts of man. The snow lay seven feet deep, but by keeping in my snowshoe-tracks Scotch easily followed me about. Our last camp was in the depths of an alpine forest, at an altitude of ten thousand feet. Here, though zero weather prevailed, we were easily comfortable beside a fire under the protection of an overhanging cliff. After a walk through woods the sun came blazing in our faces past the snow-piled crags on Long's Peak, and threw slender blue shadows of the spiry spruces far out in a white glacier meadow to meet us. Reëntering the tall but open woods, we saw, down the long aisles and limb-arched avenues, a forest of tree-columns, entangled in sunlight and shadow, standing on a snowy marble floor. We were on the Pacific slope, and our plan was to cross the summit by the shortest way between timber-line there and timber-line on the Atlantic side. This meant ascending a thousand feet and descending an equal distance, traveling five miles amid bleak, rugged environment. After gaining a thousand feet of altitude through the friendly forest, we climbed out and up above the trees on a steep slope at timber-line. This place, the farthest up for trees, was a picturesque, desolate place. The dwarfed, gnarled, storm-shaped trees amid enormous snow-drifts told of endless, and at times deadly, struggles of the trees with the elements. Most of the trees were buried, but here and there a leaning or a storm-distorted one bent bravely above the snows. Along the treeless, gradual ascent we started, realizing that the last steep icy climb would be dangerous and defiant. Most of the snow had slid from the steeper places, and much of the remainder had blown away. Over the unsheltered whole the wind was howling. For a time the sun shone dimly through the wind-driven snow-dust that rolled from the top of the range, but it disappeared early behind wild, wind-swept clouds. At last we were safe on a ridge, and we started merrily off, hoping to cover speedily the three miles of comparatively level plateau. How the wind did blow! Up more than eleven thousand feet above the sea, with not a tree to steady or break, it had a royal sweep. The wind appeared to be putting forth its wildest efforts to blow us off the ridge. There being a broad way, I kept well from the edges. The wind came with a dash and a heavy rush, first from one quarter, then from another. I was watchful and faced each rush firmly braced. Generally this preparedness saved me; but several times the wind seemed to expand or explode beneath me, and, with an upward toss, I was flung among the icy rocks and crusted snows. Finally I took to dropping and lying flat whenever a violent gust came ripping among the crags. There was an arctic barrenness to this alpine ridge,--not a house within miles, no trail, and here no tree could live to soften the sternness of the landscape or to cheer the traveler. The way wound amid snowy piles, icy spaces, and wind-swept crags. [Illustration: THE MOUNTAINS IN WINTER Scotch on Guard at the Timber-Line Cabin] The wind slackened and snow began to fall just as we were leaving the smooth plateau for the broken part of the divide. The next mile of way was badly cut to pieces with deep gorges from both sides of the ridge. The inner ends of several of these broke through the center of the ridge and extended beyond the ends of the gorges from the opposite side. This made the course a series of sharp, short zigzags. We went forward in the flying snow. I could scarcely see, but felt that I could keep the way on the broken ridge between the numerous rents and cañons. On snowy, icy ledges the wind took reckless liberties. I wanted to stop but dared not, for the cold was intense enough to freeze one in a few minutes. Fearing that a snow-whirl might separate us, I fastened one end of my light, strong rope to Scotch's collar and the other end to my belt. This proved to be fortunate for both, for while we were crossing an icy, though moderate, slope, a gust of wind swept me off my feet and started us sliding. It was not steep, but was so slippery I could not stop, nor see where the slope ended, and I grabbed in vain at the few icy projections. Scotch also lost his footing and was sliding and rolling about, and the wind was hurrying us along, when I threw myself flat and dug at the ice with fingers and toes. In the midst of my unsuccessful efforts we were brought to a sudden stop by the rope between us catching over a small rock-point that was thrust up through the ice. Around this in every direction was smooth, sloping ice; this, with the high wind, made me wonder for a moment how we were to get safely off the slope. The belt axe proved the means, for with it I reached out as far as I could and chopped a hole in the ice, while with the other hand I clung to the rock-point. Then, returning the axe to my belt, I caught hold in the chopped place and pulled myself forward, repeating this until on safe footing. In oncoming darkness and whirling snow I had safely rounded the ends of two gorges and was hurrying forward over a comparatively level stretch, with the wind at my back boosting me along. Scotch was running by my side and evidently was trusting me to guard against all dangers. This I tried to do. Suddenly, however, there came a fierce dash of wind and whirl of snow that hid everything. Instantly I flung myself flat, trying to stop quickly. Just as I did this I caught the strange, weird sound made by high wind as it sweeps across a cañon, and at once realized that we were close to a storm-hidden gorge. I stopped against a rock, while Scotch slid into the chasm and was hauled back with the rope. The gorge had been encountered between two out-thrusting side gorges, and between these in the darkness I had a cold time feeling my way out. At last I came to a cairn of stones that I recognized. I had missed the way by only a few yards, but this miss had been nearly fatal. Not daring to hurry in the darkness in order to get warm, I was becoming colder every moment. I still had a stiff climb between me and the summit, with timber-line three rough miles beyond. To attempt to make it would probably result in freezing or tumbling into a gorge. At last I realized that I must stop and spend the night in a snow-drift. Quickly kicking and trampling a trench in a loose drift, I placed my elkskin sleeping-bag therein, thrust Scotch into the bag, and then squeezed into it myself. I was almost congealed with cold. My first thought after warming up was to wonder why I had not earlier remembered the bag. Two in a bag would guarantee warmth, and with warmth, a snow-drift on the crest of the continent would not be a bad place in which to lodge for the night. The sounds of wind and snow beating upon the bag grew fainter and fainter as we were drifted and piled over with the snow. At the same time our temperature rose, and before long it was necessary to open the flap of the bag slightly for ventilation. At last the sounds of the storm could barely be heard. Was the storm quieting down, or was its roar muffled and lost in the deepening cover of snow? was the unimportant question occupying my thoughts when I fell asleep. Scotch awakened me in trying to get out of the bag. It was morning. Out we crawled, and, standing with only my head above the drift, I found the air still and saw a snowy mountain world all serene in the morning sun. I hastily adjusted sleeping-bag and snowshoes, and we set off for the final climb to the summit. The final hundred feet or so rose steep, jagged, and ice-covered before me. There was nothing to lay hold of; every point of vantage was plated with smooth ice. There appeared only one way to surmount this icy barrier and that was to chop toe- and hand-holes from the bottom to the top of this icy wall, which in places was close to vertical. Such a climb would not be especially difficult or dangerous for me, but could Scotch do it? He could hardly know how to place his feet in the holes or on the steps properly; nor could he realize that a slip or a misstep would mean a slide and a roll to death. Leaving sleeping-bag and snowshoes with Scotch, I grasped my axe and chopped my way to the top and then went down and carried bag and snowshoes up. Returning for Scotch, I started him climbing just ahead of me, so that I could boost and encourage him. We had gained only a few feet when it became plain that sooner or later he would slip and bring disaster to both of us. We stopped and descended to the bottom for a new start. Though the wind was again blowing a gale, I determined to carry him. His weight was forty pounds, and he would make a top-heavy load and give the wind a good chance to upset my balance and tip me off the wall. But, as there appeared no other way, I threw him over my shoulder and started up. Many times Scotch and I had been in ticklish places together, and more than once I had pulled him up rocky cliffs on which he could not find footing. Several times I had carried him over gulches on fallen logs that were too slippery for him. He was so trusting and so trained that he relaxed and never moved while in my arms or on my shoulder. Arriving at the place least steep, I stopped to transfer Scotch from one shoulder to the other. The wind was at its worst; its direction frequently changed and it alternately calmed and then came on like an explosion. For several seconds it had been roaring down the slope; bracing myself to withstand its force from this direction, I was about to move Scotch, when it suddenly shifted to one side and came with the force of a breaker. It threw me off my balance and tumbled me heavily against the icy slope. Though my head struck solidly, Scotch came down beneath me and took most of the shock. Instantly we glanced off and began to slide swiftly. Fortunately I managed to get two fingers into one of the chopped holes and held fast. I clung to Scotch with one arm; we came to a stop, both saved. Scotch gave a yelp of pain when he fell beneath me, but he did not move. Had he made a jump or attempted to help himself, it is likely that both of us would have gone to the bottom of the slope. Gripping Scotch with one hand and clinging to the icy hold with the other, I shuffled about until I got my feet into two holes in the icy wall. Standing in these and leaning against the ice, with the wind butting and dashing, I attempted the ticklish task of lifting Scotch again to my shoulder--and succeeded. A minute later we paused to breathe on the summit's icy ridge, between two oceans and amid seas of snowy peaks. V One cold winter day we were returning from a four days' trip on the Continental Divide, when, a little above timber-line, I stopped to take some photographs. To do this it was necessary for me to take off my sheepskin mittens, which I placed in my coat pocket, but not securely, as it proved. From time to time, as I climbed to the summit of the Divide, I stopped to take photographs, but on the summit the cold pierced my silk gloves and I felt for my mittens, to find that one of them was lost. I stooped, put an arm around Scotch and told him that I had lost a mitten and that I wanted him to go down for it to save me the trouble. "It won't take you very long," I said, "but it will be a hard trip for me. Go and fetch it to me." Instead of starting off quickly and willingly as he had invariably done before in obedience to my commands, he stood still. His eager, alert ears drooped. He did not make a move. I repeated the command in my most kindly tones. At this, instead of starting down the mountain for the mitten, he slunk slowly away toward home. Apparently he did not want to climb down the steep, icy slope of a mile to timber-line, more than a thousand feet below. I thought he had misunderstood me, so I called him back, patted him, and then, pointing down the slope, said, "Go for the mitten, Scotch; I will wait for you here." He started, but went unwillingly. He had always served me so cheerfully that I could not understand his behavior, and it was not until later that I realized how cruelly he had misunderstood. The summit of the Continental Divide where I stood when I sent Scotch back, was a very rough and lonely region. On every hand were broken, snowy peaks and rugged cañons. My cabin, eighteen miles away, was the nearest house, and the region was utterly wild. I waited a reasonable time for Scotch to return, but he did not come back. Thinking he might have gone by without my seeing him, I walked some distance along the summit, first in one direction and then in the other, but, seeing neither him nor his tracks, I knew that he had not yet returned. As it was late in the afternoon and growing colder, I decided to go slowly on toward my cabin. I started along a route I felt sure he would follow and I reasoned that he would overtake me. Darkness came on and still no Scotch, but I kept on going forward. For the remainder of the way I told myself that he might have got by me in the darkness. When, at midnight, I arrived at the cabin, I expected to be greeted by him. He was not there. I felt that something was wrong and feared that he had met with an accident. I slept two hours and rose, but he was still missing. I decided to tie on my snowshoes and go to meet him. The thermometer showed fourteen degrees below zero. [Illustration: SCOTCH NEAR TIMBER-LINE] I started at three o'clock in the morning, feeling that I should meet him before going far. I kept on and on and when at noon I arrived at the place on the summit from which I had sent him back, Scotch was not there to cheer the wintry, silent scene. Slowly I made my way down the slope and at two in the afternoon, twenty-four hours after I had sent Scotch down the mountain, I paused on a crag and looked below. There, in a world of white, Scotch lay by the mitten in the snow. He had misunderstood me and had gone back to guard the mitten instead of to get it. He could hardly contain himself for joy when we met. He leaped into the air, barked, rolled over, licked my hand, whined, seized the mitten in his mouth, raced round and round me, and did everything that an alert, affectionate, faithful dog could to show that he appreciated my appreciation of his supremely faithful services. After waiting for him to eat a luncheon we started for home, where we arrived at one o'clock in the morning. Had I not gone back for Scotch, I suppose he would have died beside the mitten. Without food or companionship, in a region cold, cheerless, and oppressive, he was watching the mitten because he had understood that I had told him to watch it. In the annals of the dog I do not know of any more touching instance of loyalty. VI Through the seasons and through the years Scotch and I wandered in the wilds and enjoyed nature together. Though we were often wet, hungry, or cold, he never ceased to be cheerful. Through the scenes and the silences we went side by side; side by side in the lonely night we gazed into the camp-fire, and in feeling lived strangely through "yesterday's seven thousand years" together. He was only a puppy the first time that he went with me to enjoy the woods. During this trip we came upon an unextinguished camp-fire that was spreading and about to become a forest fire. Upon this fire I fell with utmost speed so as to extinguish it before it should enlarge beyond control. My wild stampings, beatings, and hurling of firebrands made a deep impression on puppy Scotch. For a time he stood still and watched me, and then he jumped in and tried to help. He bit and clawed at the flames, burned himself, and with deep growlings desperately shook smoking sticks. The day following this incident, as we strolled through the woods, he came upon another smouldering camp-fire and at once called my attention to it with lively barking. I patted him and tried to make him understand that I appreciated what he had done, and then extinguished the fire. Through the years, in our wood wanderings, he was alert for fire and prompt to warn me of a discovery. His nose and eye detected many fires that even my trained and watchful senses had missed. One autumn, while watching a forest fire, we became enveloped in smoke and narrowly escaped with our lives. The fire had started in the bottom and was burning upward in the end of a long, wide mountain valley, and giving off volumes of smoke. In trying to obtain a clearer view, and also to avoid the smoke, we descended into a ravine close behind the fire. Shortly after our arrival a strong wind drove the wings of the fire outward to right and left, then backward down both sides of the valley, filling the ravine with smoke. This movement of the fire would in a short time have encircled us with flames. I made a dash to avoid this peril, and in running along a rock ledge in the smoke, stumbled into a rocky place and one of my shoes stuck fast. This threw me heavily and badly sprained my left leg. Amid thick smoke, falling ashes, and approaching flames, this situation was a serious one. Scotch showed the deepest concern by staying close by me and finally by giving a number of strange barks such as I had never before heard. After freeing myself I was unable to walk, and in hopping and creeping along my camera became so annoying that I gave it to Scotch; but in the brush the straps became so often entangled that throwing it away proved a relief to us both. Meanwhile we were making slow progress through the unburned woods and the fire was roaring close. Seeing no hope of getting out of the way, we finally took refuge to the leeward side of a rocky crag where the flames could not reach us. But could we avoid being smothered? Already we were dangerously near that and the fire had yet to surge around us. To send Scotch for water offered a possible means of escape. Slapping my coat upon the rocks two or three times I commanded, "Water, Scotch, water!" He understood, and with an eager bark seized the coat and vanished in the smoke. He would be compelled to pass through a line of flame in order to reach the water in the ravine, but this he would do or die. After waiting a reasonable time I began to call, "Scotch! Scotch!" as loudly as my parched throat and gasping permitted. Presently he leaped upon me, fearfully burned but with the saturated coat in his teeth. Most of his shaggy coat was seared off, one eye was closed, and there was a cruel burn on his left side. Hurriedly I bound a coat-sleeve around his head to protect his eyes and nose, then squeezed enough water from the coat to wet my throat. Hugging Scotch closely, I spread the wet coat over us both and covered my face with a wet handkerchief. With stifling smoke and fiery heat the flames surged around, but at last swept over and left us both alive. Without the help from Scotch I must have perished. It was this useful fire-fighting habit that caused the death of my faithful Scotch. One morning the men started off to do some road work. Scotch saw them go and apparently wanted to go with them. I had just returned from a long absence and had to stay in the cabin and write letters. About half an hour after the men had gone, Scotch gave a scratching knock at the door. Plainly he wanted to follow the men and had come for my consent to go without me. I patted him and urged him to go. He left the cabin, never again to return. Scotch arrived at the road work just as the men had lighted and run away from a blast. He saw the smoking fuse and sprang to extinguish it, as the blast exploded. He was instantly killed. THE END The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A * * * * * Transcriber's Note page 31: the word "for" changed to "from": text "any word from me" 
33306	----	THE KING OF ARCADIA BY FRANCIS LYNDE Author of "A Romance in Transit," "The Quickening," etc. ILLUSTRATED CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK 1909 COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Published February, 1909 To my daughter Dorothea, AMANUENSIS OF THE LOVING HEART AND WILLING HANDS IN ITS WRITING, THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. [Illustration: "You must help me," she pleaded; "I cannot see the way a single step ahead."] CONTENTS I THE CRYPTOGRAM II THE TRIPPERS III THE REVERIE OF A BACHELOR IV ARCADY V "FIRE IN THE ROCK!" VI ELBOW CANYON VII THE POLO PLAYERS VIII CASTLE 'CADIA IX THE BRINK OF HAZARD X HOSKINS'S GHOST XI GUN PLAY XII THE RUSTLERS XIII THE LAW AND THE LADY XIV THE MAXIM XV _HOSPES ET HOSTIS_ XVI THE RETURN OF THE OMEN XVII THE DERRICK FUMBLES XVIII THE INDICTMENT XIX IN THE LABORATORY XX THE GEOLOGIST XXI MR. PELHAM'S GAME-BAG XXII A CRY IN THE NIGHT XXIII DEEP UNTO DEEP ILLUSTRATIONS "You must help me," she pleaded; "I cannot see the way a single step ahead." "Señor Ballar', I have biffo' to-day killed a man for that he spik to me like-a-that!" The muscles of his face were twitching, and he was breathing hard, like a spent runner. "There is my notion--and a striking example of Mexican fair play." THE KING OF ARCADIA I THE CRYPTOGRAM The strenuous rush of the day of suddenly changed plans was over, and with Gardiner, the assistant professor of geology, to bid him God-speed, Ballard had got as far as the track platform gates of the Boston & Albany Station when Lassley's telegram, like a detaining hand stretched forth out of the invisible, brought him to a stand. He read it, with a little frown of perplexity sobering his strong, enthusiastic face. "_S.S. Carania_, NEW YORK. "_To_ BRECKENRIDGE BALLARD, _Boston_. "You love life and crave success. Arcadia Irrigation has killed its originator and two chiefs of construction. It will kill you. Let it alone. "LASSLEY." He signed the book, tipped the boy for his successful chase, and passed the telegram on to Gardiner. "If you were called in as an expert, what would you make of that?" he asked. The assistant professor adjusted his eye-glasses, read the message, and returned it without suggestive comment. "My field being altogether prosaic, I should make nothing of it. There are no assassinations in geology. What does it mean?" Ballard shook his head. "I haven't the remotest idea. I wired Lassley this morning telling him that I had thrown up the Cuban sugar mills construction to accept the chief engineer's billet on Arcadia Irrigation. I didn't suppose he had ever heard of Arcadia before my naming of it to him." "I thought the Lassleys were in Europe," said Gardiner. "They are sailing to-day in the _Carania_, from New York. My wire was to wish them a safe voyage, and to give my prospective address. That explains the date-line of this telegram." "But it does not explain the warning. Is it true that the Colorado irrigation scheme has blotted out three of its field officers?" "Oh, an imaginative person might put it that way, I suppose," said Ballard, his tone asserting that none but an imaginative person would be so foolish. "Braithwaite, of the Geodetic Survey, was the originator of the plan for constructing a storage reservoir in the upper Boiling Water basin, and for transforming Arcadia Park into an irrigated agricultural district. He interested Mr. Pelham and a few other Denver capitalists, and they sent him out as chief engineer to stand the project on its feet. Shortly after he had laid the foundations for the reservoir dam, he fell into the Boiling Water and was drowned." Gardiner's humour was as dry as his professional specialty. "One," he said, checking off the unfortunate Braithwaite on his fingers. "Then Billy Sanderson took it--you remember Billy, in my year? He made the preliminary survey for an inlet railroad over the mountains, and put a few more stones on Braithwaite's dam. As they say out on the Western edge of things, Sanderson died with his boots on; got into trouble with somebody about a camp-following woman and was shot." "Two," checked the assistant in geology. "Who was the third?" "An elderly, dyspeptic Scotchman named Macpherson. He took up the work where Sanderson dropped it; built the railroad over the mountain and through Arcadia Park to the headquarters at the dam, and lived to see the dam itself something more than half completed." "And what happened to Mr. Macpherson?" queried Gardiner. "He was killed a few weeks ago. The derrick fell on him. The accident provoked a warm discussion in the technical periodicals. A wire guy cable parted--'rusted off,' the newspaper report said--and there was a howl from the wire-rope makers, who protested that a rope made of galvanised wire couldn't possibly 'rust off.'" "Nevertheless, Mr. Macpherson was successfully killed," remarked the professor dryly. "That would seem to be the persisting fact in the discussion. Does none of these things move you?" "Certainly not," returned the younger man. "I shall neither fall into the river, nor stand under a derrick whose guy lines are unsafe." Gardiner's smile was a mere eye wrinkle of good-natured cynicism. "You carefully omit poor Sanderson's fate. One swims out of a torrent--if he can--and an active young fellow might possibly be able to dodge a falling derrick. But who can escape the toils of the woman 'whose hands are as bands, and whose feet----'" "Oh, piff!" said the Kentuckian; and then he laughed aloud. "There is, indeed, one woman in the world, my dear _Herr_ Professor, for whose sake I would joyfully stand up and be shot at; but she isn't in Colorado, by a good many hundred miles." "No? Nevertheless, Breckenridge, my son, there lies your best chance of making the fourth in the list of sacrifices. You are a Kentuckian; an ardent and chivalric Southerner. If the Fates really wish to interpose in contravention of the Arcadian scheme, they will once more bait the deadfall with the eternal feminine--always presuming, of course, that there are any Fates, and that they have ordinary intelligence." Ballard shook his head as if he took the prophecy seriously. "I am in no danger on that score. Bromley--he was Sanderson's assistant, and afterward Macpherson's, you know--wrote me that the Scotchman's first general order was an edict banishing every woman from the construction camps." "Now, if he had only banished the derricks at the same time," commented Gardiner reflectively. Then he added: "You may be sure the Fates will find you an enchantress, Breckenridge; the oracles have spoken. What would the most peerless Arcadia be without its shepherdess? But we are jesting when Lassley appears to be very much in earnest. Could there be anything more than coincidence in these fatalities?" "How could there be?" demanded Ballard. "Two sheer accidents and one commonplace tragedy, which last was the fault--or the misfortune--of poor Billy's temperament, it appears; though he was a sober enough fellow when he was here learning his trade. Let me prophesy awhile: I shall live and I shall finish building the Arcadian dam. Now let us side-track Lassley and his cryptogram and go back to what I was trying to impress on your mind when he butted in; which is that you are not to forget your promise to come out and loaf with me in August. You shall have all the luxuries a construction camp affords, and you can geologise to your heart's content in virgin soil." "That sounds whettingly enticing," said the potential guest. "And, besides, I am immensely interested in dams; and in wire cables that give way at inopportune moments. If I were you, Breckenridge, I should make it a point to lay that broken guy cable aside. It might make interesting matter for an article in the _Engineer_; say, 'On the Effect of the Atmosphere in High Altitudes upon Galvanised Wire.'" Ballard paid the tributary laugh. "I believe you'd have your joke if you were dying. However, I'll keep the broken cable for you, and the pool where Braithwaite was drowned, and Sanderson's inamorata--only I suppose Macpherson obliterated her at the earliest possible.... Say, by Jove! that's my train he's calling. Good-by, and don't forget your promise." After which, but for a base-runner's dash down the platform, Ballard would have lost the reward of the strenuous day of changed plans at the final moment. II THE TRIPPERS It was on the Monday afternoon that Breckenridge Ballard made the base-runner's dash through the station gates in the Boston terminal, and stood in the rearmost vestibule of his outgoing train to watch for the passing of a certain familiar suburb where, at the home of the hospitable Lassleys, he had first met Miss Craigmiles. On the Wednesday evening following, he was gathering his belongings in the sleeper of a belated Chicago train preparatory to another dash across platforms--this time in the echoing station at Council Bluffs--to catch the waiting "Overland Flyer" for the run to Denver. President Pelham's telegram, which had found him in Boston on the eve of closing a contract with the sugar magnates to go and build refineries in Cuba, was quite brief, but it bespoke haste: "We need a fighting man who can build railroads and dams and dig ditches in Arcadia. Salary satisfactory to you. Wire quick if you can come." This was the wording of it; and at the evening hour of train-changing in Council Bluffs, Ballard was sixteen hundred miles on his way, racing definitely to a conference with the president of Arcadia Irrigation in Denver, with the warning telegram from Lassley no more than a vague disturbing under-thought. What would lie beyond the conference he knew only in the large. As an industrial captain in touch with the moving world of great projects, he was familiar with the plan for the reclamation of the Arcadian desert. A dam was in process of construction, the waters of a mountain torrent were to be impounded, a system of irrigating canals opened, and a connecting link of railway built. Much of the work, he understood, was already done; and he was to take charge as chief of construction and carry it to its conclusion. So much President Pelham's summons made clear. But what was the mystery hinted at in Lassley's telegram? And did it have any connection with that phrase in President Pelham's wire: "We need a fighting man"? These queries, not yet satisfactorily answered, were presenting themselves afresh when Ballard followed the porter to the section reserved for him in the Denver sleeper. The car was well filled; and when he could break away from the speculative entanglement long enough to look about him, he saw that the women passengers were numerous enough to make it more than probable that he would be asked, later on, to give up his lower berth to one of them. Being masculinely selfish, and a seasoned traveller withal, he was steeling himself to say "No" to this request what time the train was rumbling over the great bridge spanning the Missouri. The bridge passage was leisurely, and there was time for a determined strengthening of the selfish defenses. But at the Omaha station there was a fresh influx of passengers for the Denver car, and to Ballard's dismay they appeared at the first hasty glance to be all women. "O good Lord!" he ejaculated; and finding his pipe retreated precipitately in the direction of the smoking-compartment, vaguely hoping to dodge the inevitable. At the turn around the corner of the linen locker he glanced back. Two or three figures in the group of late comers might have asked for recognition if he had looked fairly at them; but he had eyes for only one: a modish young woman in a veiled hat and a shapeless gray box travelling-coat, who was evidently trying to explain something to the Pullman conductor. "Jove!" he exclaimed; "if I weren't absolutely certain that Elsa Craigmiles is half-way across the Atlantic with the Lassleys--but she is; and if she were not, she wouldn't be here, doing the 'personally conducted' for that mob." And he went on to smoke. It was a very short time afterward that an apologetic Pullman conductor found him, and the inevitable came to pass. "This is Mr. Ballard, I believe?" A nod, and an uphanding of tickets. "Thank you. I don't like to discommode you, Mr. Ballard; but--er--you have an entire section, and----" "I know," said Ballard crisply. "The lady got on the wrong train, or she bought the wrong kind of ticket, or she took chances on finding the good-natured fellow who would give up his berth and go hang himself on a clothes-hook in the vestibule. I have been there before, but I have not yet learned how to say 'No.' Fix it up any way you please, only don't give me an upper over a flat-wheeled truck, if you can help it." An hour later the dining-car dinner was announced; and Ballard, who had been poring over a set of the Arcadian maps and profiles and a thick packet of documents mailed to intercept him at Chicago, brought up the rear of the outgoing group from the Denver car. In the vestibule of the diner he found the steward wrestling suavely with a late contingent of hungry ones, and explaining that the tables were all temporarily full. Ballard had broad shoulders and the Kentucky stature to match them. Looking over the heads of the others, he marked, at the farther end of the car, a table for two, with one vacant place. "I beg your pardon--there is only one of me," he cut in; and the steward let him pass. When he had dodged the laden waiters and was taking the vacant seat he found himself confronting the young woman in the veiled hat and the gray box-coat, identified her, and discovered in a petrifying shock of astoundment that she was not Miss Elsa Craigmiles's fancied double, but Miss Craigmiles herself. "Why, Mr. Ballard--of all people!" she cried, with a brow-lifting of genuine or well-assumed surprise. And then in mock consternation: "Don't tell me that _you_ are the good-natured gentleman I drove out of his section in the sleeping-car." "I sha'n't; because I don't know how many more there are of me," said Ballard. Then, astonishment demanding its due: "Did I only dream that you were going to Europe with the Herbert Lassleys, or----" She made a charming little face at him. "Do you never change your plans suddenly, Mr. Ballard? Never mind; you needn't confess: I know you do. Well, so do I. At the last moment I begged off, and Mrs. Lassley fairly scolded. She even went so far as to accuse me of not knowing my own mind for two minutes at a time." Ballard's smile was almost grim. "You have given me that impression now and then; when I wanted to be serious and you did not. Did you come aboard with that party at Omaha?" "Did I not? It's my--that is, it's cousin Janet Van Bryck's party; and we are going to do Colorado this summer. Think of that as an exchange for England and a yachting voyage to Tromsoe!" This time Ballard's smile was affectionately cynical. "I didn't suppose you ever forgot yourself so far as to admit that there was any America west of the Alleghany Mountains." Miss Elsa's laugh was one of her most effective weapons. Ballard was made to feel that he had laid himself open at some vulnerable point, without knowing how or why. "Dear me!" she protested. "How long does it take you to really get acquainted with people?" Then with reproachful demureness: "The man has been waiting for five full minutes to take your dinner order." One of Ballard's gifts was pertinacity; and after he had told the waiter what to bring, he returned to her question. "It is taking me long enough to get acquainted with you," he ventured. "It will be two years next Tuesday since we first met at the Herbert Lassleys', and you have been delightfully good to me, and even chummy with me--when you felt like it. Yet do you know you have never once gone back of your college days in speaking of yourself? I don't know to this blessed moment whether you ever had any girlhood; and that being the case----" "Oh, spare me!" she begged, in well-counterfeited dismay. "One would think----" "One would not think anything of you that he ought not to think," he broke in gravely; adding: "We are a long way past the Alleghanies now, and I am glad you are aware of an America somewhat broader than it is long. Do I know any of your sight-seers, besides Mrs. Van Bryck?" "I don't know; I'll list them for you," she offered. "There are Major Blacklock, United States Engineers, retired, who always says, 'H'm--ha!' before he contradicts you; the major's nieces, Madge and Margery Cantrell--the idea of splitting one name for two girls in the same family!--and the major's son, Jerry, most hopeful when he is pitted against other young savages on the football field. All strangers, so far?" Ballard nodded, and she went on. "Then there are Mrs. Van Bryck and Dosia--I am sure you have met them; and Hetty Bigelow, their cousin, twice removed, whom you have never met, if Cousin Janet could help it; and Hetty's brother, Lucius, who is something or other in the Forestry Service. Let me see; how many is that?" "Eight," said Ballard, "counting the negligible Miss Bigelow and her tree-nursing brother." "Good. I merely wanted to make sure you were paying attention. Last, but by no means least, there is Mr. Wingfield--_the_ Mr. Wingfield, who writes plays." Without ever having been suffered to declare himself Miss Elsa's lover, Ballard resented the saving of the playwright for the climax; also, he resented the respectful awe, real or assumed, with which his name was paraded. "Let me remember," he said, with the frown reflective. "I believe it was Jack Forsyth the last time you confided in me. Is it Mr. Wingfield now?" "Would you listen!" she laughed; but he made quite sure there was a blush to go with the laugh. "Do you expect me to tell you about it here and now?--with Mr. Wingfield sitting just three seats back of me, on the right?" Ballard scowled, looked as directed, and took the measure of his latest rival. Wingfield was at a table for four, with Mrs. Van Bryck, her daughter, and a shock-headed young man, whom Ballard took to be the football-playing Blacklock. In defiance of the clean-shaven custom of the moment, or, perhaps, because he was willing to individualise himself, the playwright wore a beard closely trimmed and pointed in the French manner; this, the quick-grasping eyes, and a certain vulpine showing of white teeth when he laughed, made Ballard liken him to an unnamed singer he had once heard in the part of _Mephistopheles_. The overlooking glance necessarily included Wingfield's table companions: Mrs. Van Bryck's high-bred contours lost in adipose; Dosia's cool and placid prettiness--the passionless charms of unrelieved milk-whiteness of skin and masses of flaxen hair and baby-blue eyes; the Blacklock boy's square shoulders, heavy jaw, and rather fine eyes--which he kept resolutely in his plate for the better part of the time. At the next table Ballard saw a young man with the brown of an out-door occupation richly colouring face and hands; an old one with the contradictory "H'm--ha!" written out large in every gesture; and two young women who looked as if they might be the sharers of the single Christian name. Miss Bigelow, the remaining member of the party, had apparently been lost in the dinner seating. At all events, Ballard did not identify her. "Well?" said Miss Craigmiles, seeming to intimate that he had looked long enough. "I shall know Mr. Wingfield, if I ever see him again," remarked Ballard. "Whose guest is he? Or are you all Mrs. Van Bryck's guests?" "What an idea!" she scoffed. "Cousin Janet is going into the absolutely unknown. She doesn't reach even to the Alleghanies; her America stops short at Philadelphia. She is the chaperon; but our host isn't with us. We are to meet him in the wilds of Colorado." "Anybody I know?" queried Ballard. "No. And--oh, yes, I forgot; Professor Gardiner is to join us later. I knew there must be one more somewhere. But he was an afterthought. I--Cousin Janet, I mean--got his acceptance by wire at Omaha." "Gardiner is not going to join you," said Ballard, with the cool effrontery of a proved friend. "He is going to join me." "Where? In Cuba?" "Oh, no; I am not going to Cuba. I am going to live the simple life; building dams and digging ditches in Arcadia." He was well used to her swiftly changing moods. What Miss Elsa's critics, who were chiefly of her own sex, spoke of disapprovingly as her flightiness, was to Ballard one of her characterizing charms. Yet he was quite unprepared for her grave and frankly reproachful question: "Why aren't you going to Cuba? Didn't Mr. Lassley telegraph you not to go to Arcadia?" "He did, indeed. But what do you know about it?--if I may venture to ask?" For the first time in their two years' acquaintance he saw her visibly embarrassed. And her explanation scarcely explained. "I--I was with the Lassleys in New York, you know; I went to the steamer to see them off. Mr. Lassley showed me his telegram to you after he had written it." They had come to the little coffees, and the other members of Miss Craigmiles's party had risen and gone rearward to the sleeping-car. Ballard, more mystified than he had been at the Boston moment when Lassley's wire had found him, was still too considerate to make his companion a reluctant source of further information. Moreover, Mr. Lester Wingfield was weighing upon him more insistently than the mysteries. In times past Miss Craigmiles had made him the target for certain little arrows of confidence: he gave her an opportunity to do it again. "Tell me about Mr. Wingfield," he suggested. "Is he truly Jack Forsyth's successor?" "How can you question it?" she retorted gayly. "Some time--not here or now--I will tell you all about it." "'Some time,'" he repeated. "Is it always going to be 'some time'? You have been calling me your friend for a good while, but there has always been a closed door beyond which you have never let me penetrate. And it is not my fault, as you intimated a few minutes ago. Why is it? Is it because I'm only one of many? Or is it your attitude toward all men?" She was knotting her veil and her eyes were downcast when she answered him. "A closed door? There is, indeed, my dear friend: two hands, one dead and one still living, closed it for us. It may be opened some time"--the phrase persisted, and she could not get away from it--"and then you will be sorry. Let us go back to the sleeping-car. I want you to meet the others." Then with a quick return to mockery: "Only I suppose you will not care to meet Mr. Wingfield?" He tried to match her mood; he was always trying to keep up with her kaleidoscopic changes of front. "Try me, and see," he laughed. "I guess I can stand it, if he can." And a few minutes later he had been presented to the other members of the sight-seeing party; had taken Mrs. Van Bryck's warm fat hand of welcome and Dosia's cool one, and was successfully getting himself contradicted at every other breath by the florid-faced old campaigner, who, having been a major of engineers, was contentiously critical of young civilians who had taken their B.S. degree otherwhere than at West Point. III THE REVERIE OF A BACHELOR It was shortly after midnight when the "Overland Flyer" made its unscheduled stop behind a freight train which was blocking the track at the blind siding at Coyote. Always a light sleeper, Ballard was aroused by the jar and grind of the sudden brake-clipping; and after lying awake and listening for some time, he got up and dressed and went forward to see what had happened. The accident was a box-car derailment, caused by a broken truck, and the men of both train crews were at work trying to get the disabled car back upon the steel and the track-blocking train out of the "Flyer's" way. Inasmuch as such problems were acutely in his line, Ballard thought of offering to help; but since there seemed to be no special need, he sat down on the edge of the ditch-cutting to look on. The night was picture fine; starlit, and with the silent wideness of the great upland plain to give it immensity. The wind, which for the first hundred miles of the westward flight had whistled shrilly in the car ventilators, was now lulled to a whispering zephyr, pungent with the subtle soil essence of the grass-land spring. Ballard found a cigar and smoked it absently. His eyes followed the toilings of the train crews prying and heaving under the derailed car, with the yellow torch flares to pick them out; but his thoughts were far afield, with his dinner-table companion to beckon them. "Companion" was the word which fitted her better than any other. Ballard had found few men, and still fewer women, completely companionable. Some one has said that comradeship is the true test of affinity; and the Kentuckian remembered with a keen appreciation of the truth of this saying a summer fortnight spent at the Herbert Lassleys' cottage on the North Shore, with Miss Craigmiles as one of his fellow-guests. Margaret Lassley had been kind to him on that occasion, holding the reins of chaperonage lightly. There had been sunny afternoons on the breezy headlands, and blood-quickening mornings in Captain Tinkham's schooner-rigged whale-boat, when the white horses were racing across the outer reef and the water was too rough to tempt the other members of the house-party. He had monopolised Elsa Craigmiles crudely during those two weeks, glorying in her beauty, in her bright mind, in her triumphant physical fitness. He remembered how sturdily their comradeship had grown during the uninterrupted fortnight. He had told her all there was to tell about himself, and in return she had alternately mocked him and pretended to confide in him; the confidences touching such sentimental passages as the devotion of the Toms, the Dicks, and the Harrys of her college years. Since he had sometimes wished to be sentimental on his own account, Ballard had been a little impatient under these frivolous appeals for sympathy. But there is a certain tonic for growing love even in such bucketings of cold water as the loved one may administer in telling the tale of the predecessor. It is a cold heart, masculine, that will not find warmth in anything short of the ice of indifference; and whatever her faults, Miss Elsa was never indifferent. Ballard recalled how he had groaned under the jesting confidences. Also, he remembered that he had never dared to repel them, choosing rather to clasp the thorns than to relinquish the rose. From the sentimental journey past to the present stage of the same was but a step; but the present situation was rather perplexingly befogged. Why had Elsa Craigmiles changed her mind so suddenly about spending the summer in Europe? What could have induced her to substitute a summer in Colorado, travelling under Mrs. Van Bryck's wing? The answer to the queryings summed itself up, for the Kentuckian, in a name--the name of a man and a playwright. He held Mr. Lester Wingfield responsible for the changed plans, and was irritably resentful. In the after-dinner visit with the sight-seeing party in the Pullman there had been straws to indicate the compass-point of the wind. Elsa deferred to Wingfield, as the other women did; only in her case Ballard was sure it meant more. And the playwright, between his posings as a literary oracle, assumed a quiet air of proprietorship in Miss Craigmiles that was maddening. Ballard recalled this, sitting upon the edge of the ditch-cutting in the heart of the fragrant night, and figuratively punched Mr. Wingfield's head. Fate had been unkind to him, throwing him thus under the wheels of the opportune when the missing of a single train by either the sight-seers or himself would have spared him. Taking that view of the matter, there was grim comfort in the thought that the mangling could not be greatly prolonged. The two orbits coinciding for the moment would shortly go apart again; doubtless upon the morning's arrival in Denver. It was well. Heretofore he had been asked to sympathise only in a subjective sense. With another lover corporeally present and answering to his name, the torture would become objective--and blankly unendurable. Notwithstanding, he found himself looking forward with keen desire to one more meeting with the beloved tormentor--to a table exchange of thoughts and speech at the dining-car breakfast which he masterfully resolved not all the playmakers in a mumming world should forestall or interrupt. This determination was shaping itself in the Kentuckian's brain when, after many futile backings and slack-takings, the ditched car was finally induced to climb the frogs and to drop successfully upon the rails. When the obstructing freight began to move, Ballard flung away the stump of his cigar and climbed the steps of the first open vestibule on the "Flyer," making his way to the rear between the sleeping emigrants in the day-coaches. Being by this time hopelessly wakeful, he filled his pipe and sought the smoking-compartment of the sleeping-car. It was a measure of his abstraction that he did not remark the unfamiliarity of the place; all other reminders failing, he should have realised that the fat negro porter working his way perspiringly with brush and polish paste through a long line of shoes was not the man to whom he had given his suit-cases in the Council Bluffs terminal. But thinking pointedly of Elsa Craigmiles, and of the joy of sharing another meal with her in spite of the Lester Wingfields, he saw nothing, noted nothing; and the reverie, now frankly traversing the field of sentiment, ran on unbroken until he became vaguely aware that the train had stopped and started again, and that during the pause there had been sundry clankings and jerkings betokening the cutting off of a car. A hasty question fired at the fat porter cleared the atmosphere of doubt. "What station was that we just passed?" "Short Line Junction, sah; whah we leaves the Denver cyar--yes, sah." "What? Isn't this the Denver car?" "No, indeed, sah. Dish yer cyar goes on th'oo to Ogden; yes, sah." Ballard leaned back again and chuckled in ironic self-derision. He was not without a saving sense of humour. What with midnight prowlings and sentimental reveries he had managed to sever himself most abruptly and effectually from his car, from his hand-baggage, from the prefigured breakfast, with Miss Elsa for his _vis-à-vis_; and, what was of vastly greater importance, from the chance of a day-long business conference with President Pelham! "Gardiner, old man, you are a true prophet; it isn't in me to think girl and to play the great game at one and the same moment," he said, flinging a word to the assistant professor of geology across the distance abysses; and the fat porter said: "Sah?" "I was just asking what time I shall reach Denver, going in by way of the main line and Cheyenne," said Ballard, with cheerful mendacity. "Erbout six o'clock in the evenin', sah; yes, sah. Huccome you to get lef', Cap'n Boss?" "I didn't get left; it was the Denver sleeper that got left," laughed the Kentuckian. After which he refilled his pipe, wrote a telegram to Mr. Pelham, and one to the Pullman conductor about his hand-baggage, and resigned himself to the inevitable, hoping that the chapter of accidents had done its utmost. Unhappily, it had not, as the day forthcoming amply proved. Reaching Cheyenne at late breakfast-time, Ballard found that the Denver train over the connecting line waited for the "Overland" from the West; also, that on this day of all days, the "Overland" was an hour behind her schedule. Hence there was haste-making extraordinary at the end of the Boston-Denver flight. When the delayed Cheyenne train clattered in over the switches, it was an hour past dark. President Pelham was waiting with his automobile to whisk the new chief off to a hurried dinner-table conference at the Brown Palace; and what few explanations and instructions Ballard got were sandwiched between the _consommé au gratin_ and the dessert. Two items of information were grateful. The Fitzpatrick Brothers, favourably known to Ballard, were the contractors on the work; and Loudon Bromley, who had been his friend and loyal understudy in the technical school, was still the assistant engineer, doing his best to push the construction in the absence of a superior. Since the chief of any army stands or falls pretty largely by the grace of his subordinates, Ballard was particularly thankful for Bromley. He was little and he was young; he dressed like an exquisite, wore neat little patches of side-whiskers, shot straight, played the violin, and stuffed birds for relaxation. But in spite of these hindrances, or, perhaps, because of some of them, he could handle men like a born captain, and he was a friend whose faithfulness had been proved more than once. "I shall be only too glad to retain Bromley," said Ballard, when the president told him he might choose his own assistant. And, as time pressed, he asked if there were any other special instructions. "Nothing specific," was the reply. "Bromley has kept things moving, but they can be made to move faster, and we believe you are the man to set the pace, Mr. Ballard; that's all. And now, if you are ready, we have fifteen minutes in which to catch the Alta Vista train--plenty of time, but none to throw away. I have reserved your sleeper." It was not until after the returning automobile spin; after Ballard had checked his baggage and had given his recovered suit-cases to the porter of the Alta Vista car; that he learned the significance of the fighting clause in the president's Boston telegram. They were standing at the steps of the Pullman for the final word; had drawn aside to make room for a large party of still later comers; when the president said, with the air of one who gathers up the unconsidered trifles: "By the way, Mr. Ballard, you may not find it all plain sailing up yonder. Arcadia Park has been for twenty years a vast cattle-ranch, owned, or rather usurped, by a singular old fellow who is known as the 'King of Arcadia.' Quite naturally, he opposes our plan of turning the park into a well-settled agricultural field, to the detriment of his free cattle range, and he is fighting us." "In the courts, you mean?" "In the courts and out of them. I might mention that it was one of his cow-men who killed Sanderson; though that was purely a personal quarrel, I believe. The trouble began with his refusal to sell us a few acres of land and a worthless mining-claim which our reservoir may submerge, and we were obliged to resort to the courts. He is fighting for delay now, and in the meantime he encourages his cow-boys to maintain a sort of guerrilla warfare on the contractors: stealing tools, disabling machinery, and that sort of thing. This was Macpherson's story, and I'm passing it on to you. You are forty miles from the nearest sheriff's office over there; but when you need help, you'll get it. Of course, the company will back you--to the last dollar in the treasury, if necessary." Ballard's rejoinder was placatory. "It seems a pity to open up the new country with a feud," he said, thinking of his native State and of what these little wars had done for some portions of it. "Can't the old fellow be conciliated in some way?" "I don't know," replied the president doubtfully. "We want peaceable possession, of course, if we can get it; capital is always on the side of peace. In fact, we authorised Macpherson to buy peace at any price in reason, and we'll give you the same authority. But Macpherson always represented the old cattle king as being unapproachable on that side. On the other hand, we all know what Macpherson was. He had a pretty rough tongue when he was at his best; and he was in bad health for a long time before the derrick fell on him. I dare say he didn't try diplomacy." "I'll make love to the cow-punching princesses," laughed Ballard; "that is, if there are any." "There is one, I understand; but I believe she doesn't spend much of her time at home. The old man is a widower, and, apart from his senseless fight on the company, he appears to be--but I won't prejudice you in advance." "No, don't," said Ballard. "I'll size things up for myself on the ground. I----" The interruption was the dash of a switch-engine up the yard with another car to be coupled to the waiting mountain line train. Ballard saw the lettering on the medallion: "08". "Somebody's private hotel?" he remarked. "Yes. It's Mr. Brice's car, I guess. He was in town to-day." Ballard was interested at once. "Mr. Richard Brice?--the general manager of the D. & U. P.?" The president nodded. "That's great luck," said Ballard, warmly. "We were classmates in the Institute, and I haven't seen him since he came West. I think I'll ride in the Naught-eight till bedtime." "Glad you know him," said the president. "Get in a good word for our railroad connection with his line at Alta Vista, while you're about it. There is your signal; good-by, and good luck to you. Don't forget--'drive' is the word; for every man, minute, and dollar there is in it." Ballard shook the presidential hand and swung up to the platform of the private car. A reluctant porter admitted him, and thus it came about that he did not see the interior of his own sleeper until long after the other passengers had gone to bed. "Good load to-night, John?" he said to the porter, when, the private car visit being ended, the man was showing him to his made-down berth. "Yes, sah; mighty good for de branch. But right smart of dem is ladies, and dey don't he'p de po' portah much." "Well, I'll pay for one of them, anyway," said the Kentuckian, good-naturedly doubling his tip. "Be sure you rout me out bright and early; I want to get ahead of the crowd." And he wound his watch and went to bed, serenely unconscious that the hat upon the rail-hook next to his own belonged to Mr. Lester Wingfield; that the hand-bags over which he had stumbled in the dimly lighted aisle were the _impedimenta_ of the ladies Van Bryck; or that the dainty little boots proclaiming the sex--and youth--of his fellow-traveller in the opposite Number Six were the foot-gear of Miss Elsa Craigmiles. IV ARCADY Arcadia Park, as the government map-makers have traced it, is a high-lying, enclosed valley in the heart of the middle Rockies, roughly circular in outline, with a curving westward sweep of the great range for one-half of its circumscribing rampart, and the bent bow of the Elk Mountains for the other. Apart from storming the rampart heights, accessible only to the hardy prospector or to the forest ranger, there are three ways of approach to the shut-in valley: up the outlet gorge of the Boiling Water, across the Elk Mountains from the Roaring Fork, or over the high pass in the Continental Divide from Alta Vista. It was from the summit of the high pass that Ballard had his first view of Arcadia. From Alta Vista the irrigation company's narrow-gauge railway climbs through wooded gorges and around rock-ribbed snow balds, following the route of the old stage trail; and Ballard's introductory picture of the valley was framed in the cab window of the locomotive sent over by Bromley to transport him to the headquarters camp on the Boiling Water. In the wide prospect opened by the surmounting of the high pass there was little to suggest the human activities, and still less to foreshadow strife. Ballard saw a broad-acred oasis in the mountain desert, billowed with undulating meadows, and having for its colour scheme the gray-green of the range grasses. Winding among the billowy hills in the middle distance, a wavering double line of aspens marked the course of the Boiling Water. Nearer at hand the bald slopes of the Saguache pitched abruptly to the forested lower reaches; and the path of the railway, losing itself at the timber line, reappeared as a minute scratch scoring the edge of the gray-green oasis, to vanish, distance effaced, near a group of mound-shaped hills to the eastward. The start from Alta Vista with the engine "special" had been made at sunrise, long before any of Ballard's fellow-travellers in the sleeping-car were stirring. But the day had proved unseasonably warm in the upper snow fields, and there had been time-killing delays. Every gulch had carried its torrent of melted snow to threaten the safety of the unballasted track, and what with slow speed over the hazards and much shovelling of land-slips in the cuttings, the sun was dipping to the westward range when the lumbering little construction engine clattered down the last of the inclines and found the long level tangents in the park. On the first of the tangents the locomotive was stopped at a watering-tank. During the halt Ballard climbed down from his cramped seat on the fireman's box and crossed the cab to the engine-man's gangway. Hoskins, the engine-driver, leaning from his window, pointed out the projected course of the southern lateral canal in the great irrigation system. "It'll run mighty nigh due west here, about half-way between us and the stage trail," he explained; and Ballard, looking in the direction indicated, said: "Where is the stage trail? I haven't seen it since we left the snow balds." "It's over yonder in the edge of the timber," was the reply; and a moment later its precise location was defined by three double-seated buckboards, passenger-laden and drawn by four-in-hand teams of tittupping broncos, flicking in and out among the pines and pushing rapidly eastward. The distance was too great for recognition, but Ballard could see that there were women in each of the vehicles. "Hello!" he exclaimed. "Those people must have crossed the range from Alta Vista to-day. What is the attraction over here?--a summer-resort hotel?" "Not any in this valley," said the engineman. "They might be going on over to Ashcroft, or maybe to Aspen, on the other side o' the Elk Mountains. But if that's their notion, they're due to camp out somewhere, right soon. It's all o' forty mile to the neardest of the Roaring Fork towns." The engine tank was filled, and the fireman was flinging the dripping spout to its perpendicular. Ballard took his seat again, and became once more immersed in his topographical studies of the new field; which was possibly why the somewhat singular spectacle of a party of tourists hastening on to meet night and the untaverned wilderness passed from his mind. The approach to the headquarters camp of the Arcadia Company skirted the right bank of the Boiling Water, in this portion of its course a river of the plain, eddying swiftly between the aspen-fringed banks. But a few miles farther on, where the gentle undulations of the rich grass-land gave place to bare, rock-capped hills, the stream broke at intervals into noisy rapids, with deep pools to mark the steps of its descent. Ballard's seat on the fireman's box was on the wrong side for the topographical purpose, and he crossed the cab to stand at Hoskins's elbow. As they were passing one of the stillest of the pools, the engineman said, with a sidewise jerk of his thumb: "That's the place where Mr. Braithwaite was drowned. Came down here from camp to catch a mess o' trout for his supper and fell in--from the far bank." "Couldn't he swim?" Ballard asked. "They all say he could. Anyhow, it looks as if he might 'a' got out o' that little mill-pond easy enough. But he didn't. They found his fishing tackle on the bank, and him down at the foot of the second rapid below--both arms broke and the top of his head caved in, like he'd been run through a rock crusher. They can say what they please; I ain't believin' the river done it." "What do you believe?" Ballard was looking across to a collection of low buildings and corrals--evidently the headquarters of the old cattle king's ranch outfit--nestling in a sheltered cove beyond the stream, and his question was a half-conscious thought slipping into speech. "I believe this whole blame' job is a hoodoo," was the prompt rejoinder. And then, with the freedom born of long service in the unfettered areas where discipline means obedience but not servility, the man added: "I wouldn't be standin' in your shoes this minute for all the money the Arcadia Company could pay me, Mr. Ballard." Ballard was young, fit, vigorous, and in abounding health. Moreover, he was a typical product of an age which scoffs at superstition and is impatient of all things irreducible to the terms of algebraic formulas. But here and now, on the actual scene of the fatalities, the "two sheer accidents and a commonplace tragedy" were somewhat less easily dismissed than when he had thus contemptuously named them for Gardiner in the Boston railway station. Notwithstanding, he was quite well able to shake off the little thrill of disquietude and to laugh at Hoskins's vicarious anxiety. "I wasn't raised in the woods, Hoskins, but there was plenty of tall timber near enough to save me from being scared by an owl," he asseverated. Then, as a towering derrick head loomed gallows-like in the gathering dusk, with a white blotch of masonry to fill the ravine over which it stood sentinel: "Is that our camp?" "That's Elbow Canyon," said the engineman; and he shut off steam and woke the hill echoes with the whistle. Ballard made out something of the lay of the land at the headquarters while the engine was slowing through the temporary yard. There was the orderly disorder of a construction terminal: tracks littered with cars of material, a range of rough shed shelters for the stone-cutters, a dotting of sleeping-huts and adobes on a little mesa above, and a huge, weathered mess-tent, lighted within, and glowing orange-hued in the twilight. Back of the camp the rounded hills grew suddenly precipitous, but through the river gap guarded by the sentinel derrick, there was a vista distantly backgrounded by the mass of the main range rising darkly under its evergreens, with the lights of a great house starring the deeper shadow. V "FIRE IN THE ROCK!" Bromley was on hand to meet his new chief when Ballard dropped from the step of the halted engine. A few years older, and browned to a tender mahogany by the sun of the altitudes and the winds of the desert, he was still the Bromley of Ballard's college memories: compact, alert, boyishly smiling, neat, and well-groomed. With Anglo-Saxon ancestry on both sides, the meeting could not be demonstrative. "Same little old 'Beau Bromley,'" was Ballard's greeting to go with the hearty hand-grip; and Bromley's reply was in keeping. After which they climbed the slope to the mesa and the headquarters office in comradely silence, not because there was nothing to be said, but because the greater part of it would keep. Having picked up the engine "special" with his field-glass as it came down the final zigzag in the descent from the pass, Bromley had supper waiting in the adobe-walled shack which served as the engineers' quarters; and until the pipes were lighted after the meal there was little talk save of the golden past. But when the camp cook had cleared the table, Ballard reluctantly closed the book of reminiscence and gave the business affair its due. "How are you coming on with the work, Loudon?" he asked. "Don't need a chief, do you?" "Don't you believe it!" said the substitute, with such heartfelt emphasis that Ballard smiled. "I'm telling you right now, Breckenridge, I never was so glad to shift a responsibility since I was born. Another month of it alone would have turned me gray." "And yet, in my hearing, people are always saying that you are nothing less than a genius when it comes to handling workingmen. Isn't it so?" "Oh, that part of it is all right. It's the hoodoo that is making an old man of me before my time." "The what?" Bromley moved uneasily in his chair, and Ballard could have sworn that he gave a quick glance into the dark corners of the room before he said: "I'm giving you the men's name for it. But with or without a name, it hangs over this job like the shadow of a devil-bat's wings. The men sit around and smoke and talk about it till bedtime, and the next day some fellow makes a bad hitch on a stone, or a team runs away, or a blast hangs fire in the quarry, and we have a dead man for supper. Breckenridge, it is simply _hell_!" Ballard shook his head incredulously. "You've let a few ill-natured coincidences rattle you," was his comment. "What is it? Or, rather, what is at the bottom of it?" "I don't know; nobody knows. The 'coincidences,' as you call them, were here when I came; handed down from Braithwaite's drowning, I suppose. Then Sanderson got tangled up with Manuel's woman--as clear a case of superinduced insanity as ever existed--and in less than two months he and Manuel jumped in with Winchesters, and poor Billy passed out. That got on everybody's nerves, of course; and then Macpherson came. You know what he was--a hard-headed, sarcastic old Scotchman, with the bitterest tongue that was ever hung in the middle and adjusted to wag both ways. He tried ridicule; and when that didn't stop the crazy happenings, he took to bullyragging. The day the derrick fell on him he was swearing horribly at the hoister engineer; and he died with an oath in his mouth." The Kentuckian sat back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head. "Let me get one thing straight before you go on. Mr. Pelham told me of a scrap between the company and an old fellow up here who claims everything in sight. Has this emotional insanity you are talking about anything to do with the old cattle king's objection to being syndicated out of existence?" "No; only incidentally in Sanderson's affair--which, after all, was a purely personal quarrel between two men over a woman. And I wouldn't care to say that Manuel was wholly to blame in that." "Who is this Manuel?" queried Ballard. "Oh, I thought you knew. He is the colonel's manager and ranch foreman. He is a Mexican and an all-round scoundrel, with one lonesome good quality--absolute and unimpeachable loyalty to his master. The colonel turns the entire business of the cattle raising and selling over to him; doesn't go near the ranch once a month himself." "'The colonel,'" repeated Ballard. "You call him 'the colonel,' and Mr. Pelham calls him the 'King of Arcadia.' I assume that he has a name, like other men?" "Sure!" said Bromley. "Hadn't you heard it? It's Craigmiles." "What!" exclaimed Ballard, holding the match with which he was about to relight his pipe until the flame crept up and scorched his fingers. "That's it--Craigmiles; Colonel Adam Craigmiles--the King of Arcadia. Didn't Mr. Pelham tell you----" "Hold on a minute," Ballard cut in; and he got out of his chair to pace back and forth on his side of the table while he was gathering up the pieces scattered broadcast by this explosive petard of a name. At first he saw only the clearing up of the little mysteries shrouding Miss Elsa's suddenly changed plans for the summer; how they were instantly resolved into the commonplace and the obvious. She had merely decided to come home and play hostess to her father's guests. And since she knew about the war for the possession of Arcadia, and would quite naturally be sorry to have her friend pitted against her father, it seemed unnecessary to look further for the origin of Lassley's curiously worded telegram. "Lassley's," Ballard called it; but if Lassley had signed it, it was fairly certain now that Miss Craigmiles had dictated it. Ballard thought her use of the fatalities as an argument in the warning message was a purely feminine touch. None the less he held her as far above the influences of the superstitions as he held himself, and it was a deeper and more reflective second thought that turned a fresh leaf in the book of mysteries. Was it possible that the three violent deaths were not mere coincidences, after all? And, admitting design, could it be remotely conceivable that Adam Craigmiles's daughter was implicated, even to the guiltless degree of suspecting it? Ballard stopped short in his pacing sentry beat and began to investigate, not without certain misgivings. "Loudon, what manner of man is this Colonel Craigmiles?" Bromley's reply was characteristic. "The finest ever--type of the American country gentleman; suave, courteous, a little inclined to be grandiloquent; does the paternal with you till you catch yourself on the edge of saying 'sir' to him; and has the biggest, deepest, sweetest voice that ever drawled the Southern 'r.'" "Humph! That isn't exactly the portrait of a fire-eater." "Don't you make any mistake. I've described the man you'll meet socially. On the other side, he's a fighter from away back; the kind of man who makes no account of the odds against him, and who doesn't know when he is licked. He has told us openly and repeatedly that he will do us up if we swamp his house and mine; that he will make it pinch us for the entire value of our investment in the dam. I believe he'll do it, too; but President Pelham won't back down an inch. So there you are--irresistible moving body; immovable fixed body: the collision imminent; and we poor devils in between." Ballard drew back his chair and sat down again. "You are miles beyond my depth now," he asserted. "I had less than an hour with Mr. Pelham in Denver, and what he didn't tell me would make a good-sized library. Begin at the front, and let me have the story of this feud between the company and Colonel Craigmiles." Again Bromley said: "I supposed, of course, that you knew all about it"--after which he supplied the missing details. "It was Braithwaite who was primarily to blame. When the company's plans were made public, the colonel did not oppose them, though he knew that the irrigation scheme spelled death to the cattle industry. The fight began when Braithwaite located the dam here at Elbow Canyon in the foothill hogback. There is a better site farther down the river; a second depression where an earthwork dike might have taken the place of all this costly rockwork." "I saw it as we came up this evening." "Yes. Well, the colonel argued for the lower site; offered to donate three or four homesteads in it which he had taken up through his employees; offered further to take stock in the company; but Braithwaite was pig-headed about it. He had been a Government man, and was a crank on permanent structures and things monumental; wherefore he was determined on building masonry. He ignored the colonel, reported on the present site, and the work was begun." "Go on," said Ballard. "Naturally, the colonel took this as a flat declaration of war. He has a magnificent country house in the upper valley, which must have cost him, at this distance from a base of supplies, a round half-million or more. When we fill our reservoir, this house will stand on an island of less than a half-dozen acres in extent, with its orchards, lawns, and ornamental grounds all under water. Which the same is tough." Ballard was Elsa Craigmiles's lover, and he agreed in a single forcible expletive. Bromley acquiesced in the expletive, and went on. "The colonel refused to sell his country-house holding, as a matter of course; and the company decided to take chances on the suit for damages which will naturally follow the flooding of the property. Meanwhile, Braithwaite had organised his camp, and the foundations were going in. A month or so later, he and the colonel had a personal collision, and, although Craigmiles was old enough to be his father, Braithwaite struck him. There was blood on the moon, right there and then, as you'd imagine. The colonel was unarmed, and he went home to get a gun. Braithwaite, who was always a cold-blooded brute, got out his fishing-tackle and sauntered off down the river to catch a mess of trout. He never came back alive." "Good heavens! But the colonel couldn't have had any hand in Braithwaite's drowning!" Ballard burst out, thinking altogether of Colonel Craigmiles's daughter. "Oh, no. At the time of the accident, the colonel was back here at the camp, looking high and low for Braithwaite with fire in his eye. They say he went crazy mad with disappointment when he found that the river had robbed him of his right to kill the man who had struck him." Ballard was silent for a time. Then he said: "You spoke of a mine that would also be flooded by our reservoir. What about that?" "That came in after Braithwaite's death and Sanderson's appointment as chief engineer. When Braithwaite made his location here, there was an old prospect tunnel in the hill across the canyon. It was boarded up and apparently abandoned, and no one seemed to know who owned it. Later on it transpired that the colonel was the owner, and that the mining claim, which was properly patented and secured, actually covers the ground upon which our dam stands. While Sanderson was busy brewing trouble for himself with Manuel, the colonel put three Mexicans at work in the tunnel; and they have been digging away there ever since." "Gold?" asked Ballard. Bromley laughed quietly. "Maybe you can find out--nobody else has been able to. But it isn't gold; it must be something infinitely more valuable. The tunnel is fortified like a fortress, and one or another of the Mexicans is on guard day and night. The mouth of the tunnel is lower than the proposed level of the dam, and the colonel threatens all kinds of things, telling us frankly that it will break the Arcadia Company financially when we flood that mine. I have heard him tell Mr. Pelham to his face that the water should never flow over any dam the company might build here; that he would stick at nothing to defend his property. Mr. Pelham says all this is only bluff; that the mine is worthless. But the fact remains that the colonel is immensely rich--and is apparently growing richer." "Has nobody ever seen the inside of this Golconda of a mine?" queried Ballard. "Nobody from our side of the fence. As I've said, it is guarded like the sultan's seraglio; and the Mexicans might as well be deaf and dumb for all you can get out of them. Macpherson, who was loyal to the company, first, last, and all the time, had an assay made from some of the stuff spilled out on the dump; but there was nothing doing, so far as the best analytical chemist in Denver could find out." For the first time since the strenuous day of plan-changing in Boston, Ballard was almost sorry he had given up the Cuban undertaking. "It's a beautiful tangle!" he snapped, thinking, one would say, of the breach that must be opened between the company's chief engineer and the daughter of the militant old cattle king. Then he changed the subject abruptly. "What do you know about the colonel's house-hold, Loudon?" "All there is to know, I guess. He lives in state in his big country mansion that looks like a World's Fair Forest Products Exhibit on the outside, and is fitted and furnished regardless of expense in its interiors. He is a widower with one daughter--who comes and goes as she pleases--and a sister-in-law who is the dearest, finest piece of fragile old china you ever read about." "You've been in the country house, then?" "Oh, yes. The colonel hasn't made it a personal fight on the working force since Braithwaite's time." "Perhaps you have met Miss--er--the daughter who comes and goes?" "Sure I have! If you'll promise not to discipline me for hobnobbing with the enemy, I'll confess that I've even played duets with her. She discovered my weakness for music when she was home last summer." "Do you happen to know where she is now?" "On her way to Europe, I believe. At least, that is what Miss Cauffrey--she's the fragile-china aunt--was telling me." "I think not," said Ballard, after a pause. "I think she changed her mind and decided to spend the summer at home. When we stopped at Ackerman's to take water this evening, I saw three loaded buckboards driving in this direction." "That doesn't prove anything," asserted Bromley. "The old colonel has a house-party every little while. He's no anchorite, if he does live in the desert." Ballard was musing again. "Adam Craigmiles," he said, thoughtfully. "I wonder what there is in that name to set some sort of bee buzzing in my head. If I believed in transmigration, I should say that I had known that name, and known it well, in some other existence." "Oh, I don't know," said Bromley. "It's not such an unusual name." "No; if it were, I might trace it. How long did you say the colonel had lived in Arcadia?" "I didn't say. But it must be something over twenty years. Miss Elsa was born here." "And the family is Southern--from what section?" "I don't know that--Virginia, perhaps, measuring by the colonel's accent, pride, hot-headedness, and reckless hospitality." The clue, if any there were, appeared to be lost; and again Ballard smoked on in silence. When the pipe burned out he refilled it, and at the match-striking instant a sing-song cry of "Fire in the rock!" floated down from the hill crags above the adobe, and the jar of a near-by explosion shook the air and rattled the windows. "What was that?" he queried. "It's our quarry gang getting out stone," was Bromley's reply. "We were running short of headers for the tie courses, and I put on a night-shift." "Whereabouts is your quarry?" "Just around the shoulder of the hill, and a hundred feet, or such a matter, above us. It is far enough to be out of range." A second explosion punctuated the explanation. Then there was a third and still heavier shock, a rattling of pebbles on the sheet-iron roof of the adobe, and a scant half-second later a fragment of stone the size of a man's head crashed through roof and ceiling and made kindling-wood of the light pine table at which the two men were sitting. Ballard sprang to his feet, and said something under his breath; but Bromley sat still, with a faint yellow tint discolouring the sunburn on his face. "Which brings us back to our starting-point--the hoodoo," he said quietly. "To-morrow morning, when you go around the hill and see where that stone came from, you'll say that it was a sheer impossibility. Yet the impossible thing has happened. It is reaching for you now, Breckenridge; and a foot or two farther that way would have--" He stopped, swallowed hard, and rose unsteadily. "For God's sake, old man, throw up this cursed job and get out of here, while you can do it alive!" "Not much!" said the new chief contemptuously. And then he asked which of the two bunks in the adjoining sleeping-room was his. VI ELBOW CANYON Ballard had his first appreciative view of his new field of labor before breakfast on the morning following his arrival, with Bromley as his sightsman. Viewed in their entirety by daylight, the topographies appealed irresistibly to the technical eye; and Ballard no longer wondered that Braithwaite had overlooked or disregarded all other possible sites for the great dam. The basin enclosed by the circling foothills and backed by the forested slopes of the main range was a natural reservoir, lacking only a comparatively short wall of masonry to block the crooked gap in the hills through which the river found its way to the lower levels of the grass-lands. The gap itself was an invitation to the engineer. Its rock-bound slopes promised the best of anchorages for the shore-ends of the masonry; and at its lower extremity a jutting promontory on the right bank of the stream made a sharp angle in the chasm; the elbow which gave the outlet canyon its name. The point or crook of the elbow, the narrowest pass in the cleft, had been chosen as the site for the dam. Through the promontory a short tunnel was driven at the river-level to provide a diverting spillway for the torrent; and by this simple expedient a dry river-bed in which to build the great wall of concrete and masonry had been secured. "That was Braithwaite's notion, I suppose?" said Ballard, indicating the tunnel through which the stream, now at summer freshet volume, thundered on its way around the building site to plunge sullenly into its natural bed below the promontory. "Nobody but a Government man would have had the courage to spend so much time and money on a mere preliminary. It's a good notion, though." "I'm not so sure of that," was Bromley's reply. "Doylan, the rock-boss, tells a fairy-story about the tunnel that will interest you when you hear it. He had the contract for driving it, you know." "What was the story?" Bromley laughed. "You'll have to get Mike to tell it, with the proper Irish frills. But the gist of it is this: You know these hogback hills--how they seem to be made up of all the geological odds and ends left over after the mountains were built. Mike swears they drove through limestone, sandstone, porphyry, fire-clay, chert, mica-schist, and _mud_ digging that tunnel; which the same, if true, doesn't promise very well for the foundations of our dam." "But the plans call for bed-rock under the masonry," Ballard objected. "Oh, yes; and we have it--apparently. But some nights, when I've lain awake listening to the peculiar hollow roar of the water pounding through that tunnel, I've wondered if Doylan's streak of mud mightn't under-lie our bed-rock." Ballard's smile was good-naturedly tolerant. "You'd be a better engineer, if you were not a musician, Loudon. You have too much imagination. Is that the colonel's country house up yonder in the middle of our reservoir-that-is-to-be?" "It is." Ballard focussed his field-glass upon the tree-dotted knoll a mile away in the centre of the upper valley. It was an ideal building site for the spectacular purpose. On all sides the knoll sloped gently to the valley level; and the river, a placid vale-land stream in this upper reach, encircled three sides of the little hill. Among the trees, and distinguishable from them only by its right lines and gable angles, stood a noble house, built, as it seemed, of great tree-trunks with the bark on. Ballard could imagine the inspiring outlook from the brown-pillared Greek portico facing westward; the majestic sweep of the enclosing hills, bare and with their rocky crowns worn into a thousand fantastic shapes; the uplift of the silent, snow-capped mountains to right and left; the vista of the broad, outer valley opening through the gap where the dam was building. "The colonel certainly had an eye for the picturesque when he pitched upon that knoll for his building-site," was his comment. "How does he get the water up there to make all that greenery?" "Pumps it, bless your heart! What few modern improvements you won't find installed at Castle 'Cadia aren't worth mentioning. And, by the way, there is another grouch--we're due to drown his power-pumping and electric plant at the portal of the upper canyon under twenty feet of our lake. More bad blood, and a lot more damages." "Oh, damn!" said Ballard; and he meant the imprecation, and not the pile of masonry which his predecessors had heaped up in the rocky chasm at his feet. Bromley chuckled. "That is what the colonel is apt to say when you mention the Arcadia Company in his hearing. Do you blame him so very much?" "Not I. If I owned a home like that, in a wilderness that I had discovered for myself, I'd fight for it to a finish. Last night when you showed me the true inwardness of this mix-up, I was sick and sorry. If I had known five days ago what I know now, you couldn't have pulled me into it with a two-inch rope." "On general principles?" queried Bromley curiously. "Not altogether. Business is business; and you've intimated that the colonel is not so badly overmatched in the money field--and when all is said, it is a money fight with the long purse to win. But there is a personal reason why I, of all men in the world, should have stayed out. I did not know it when I accepted Mr. Pelham's offer, and now it is too late to back down. I'm a thousand times sorrier for Colonel Craigmiles than ever you can be, Loudon; but, as the chief engineer of the Arcadia Company, I'm pledged to obliterate him." "That is precisely what he declares he will do to the company," laughed Bromley. "And there,"--pointing across the ravine to an iron-bound door closing a tunnel entrance in the opposite hillside--"is his advanced battery. That is the mine I was telling you about." "H'm," said the new chief, measuring the distance with his eyes. "If that mining-claim is the regulation size, it doesn't leave us much elbow room over there." "It doesn't leave us any--as I told you last night, the dam itself stands upon a portion of the claim. In equity, if there were any equity in a law fight against a corporation, the colonel could enjoin us right now. He hasn't done it; he has contented himself with marking out that dead-line you can see over there just above our spillway. The colonel staked that out in Billy Sanderson's time, and courteously informed us that trespassers would be potted from behind that barricade; that there was a machine-gun mounted just inside of that door which commanded the approaches. Just to see if he meant what he said, some of the boys rigged up a scarecrow dummy, and carefully pushed it over the line one evening after supper. I wasn't here, but Fitzpatrick says the colonel's Mexican garrison in the tunnel fairly set the air afire with a volley from the machine-gun." Ballard said "H'm" again, and was silent what time they were climbing the hill to the quarries on their own side of the ravine. When he spoke, it was not of the stone the night shift had been getting out. "Loudon, has it ever occurred to you that the colonel's mine play is a very large-sized trump card? We can submerge the house, the grounds, and his improvements up yonder in the upper canyon and know approximately how much it is going to cost the company to pay the bill. But when the water backs up into that tunnel, we are stuck for whatever damages he cares to claim." "Sure thing," said Bromley. "No one on earth will ever know whether we've swamped a five-million-dollar mine or a twenty-five-cent hole in the ground." "That being the case, I mean to see the inside of that tunnel," Ballard went on doggedly. "I am sorry I allowed Mr. Pelham to let me in for this; but in justice to the people who pay my salary, I must know what we are up against over there." "I don't believe you will make any bad breaks in that direction," Bromley suggested. "If you try it by main strength and awkwardness, as Macpherson did, you'll get what he very narrowly escaped--a young lead mine started inside of you by one of the colonel's Mexican bandits. If you try it any other way, the colonel will be sure to spot you; and you go out of his good books and Miss Elsa's--no invitations to the big house, no social alleviations, no ice-cream and cake, no heavenly summer nights when you can sit out on the Greek-pillared portico with a pretty girl, and forget for the moment that you are a buccaneering bully of labouring men, marooned, with a lot of dry-land pirates like yourself, in the Arcadia desert. No, my dear Breckenridge; I think it is safe to prophesy that you won't do anything you say you will." "Won't I?" growled the new chief, looking at his watch. Then: "Let's go down to breakfast." And, with a sour glance at the hill over which the roof-smashing rock of the previous night must have been hurled: "Don't forget to tell Quinlan to be a little more sparing with his powder up here. Impress it on his mind that he is getting out building stone--not shooting the hill down for concrete." VII THE POLO PLAYERS Ballard gave the Saturday, his first day in the new field, to Bromley and the work on the dam, inspecting, criticising, suggesting changes, and otherwise adjusting the wheels of the complicated constructing mechanism at the Elbow Canyon nerve centre to run efficiently and smoothly, and at accelerated speed. "That's about all there is to say," he summed up to his admiring assistant, at the close of his first administrative day. "You're keyed up to concert pitch all right, here, and the _tempo_ is not so bad. But 'drive' is the word, Loudon. Wherever you see a chance to cut a corner, cut it. The Fitzpatricks are a little inclined to be slow and sure: crowd the idea into old Brian's head that bonuses are earned by being swift and sure." "Which means that you're not going to stay here and drive the stone and concrete gangs yourself?" queried Bromley. "That is what it means, for the present," replied the new chief; and at daybreak Monday morning he was off, bronco-back, to put in a busy fortnight quartering the field in all directions and getting in touch with the various subcontractors at the many subsidiary camps of ditch diggers and railroad builders scattered over the length and breadth of the Kingdom of Arcadia. On one of the few nights when he was able to return to the headquarters camp for supper and lodging, Bromley proposed a visit to Castle 'Cadia. Ballard's refusal was prompt and decided. "No, Loudon; not for me, yet a while. I'm too tired to be anybody's good company," was the form the refusal took. "Go gossiping, if you feel like it, but leave me out of the social game until I get a little better grip on the working details. Later on, perhaps, I'll go with you and pay my respects to Colonel Craigmiles--but not to-night." Bromley went alone and found that Ballard's guess based upon his glimpse of the loaded buckboards _en route_ was borne out by the facts. Castle 'Cadia was comfortably filled with a summer house-party; and Miss Craigmiles had given up her European yachting voyage to come home and play the hostess to her father's guests. Also, Bromley discovered that the colonel's daughter drew her own conclusions from Ballard's refusal to present himself, the discovery developing upon Miss Elsa's frank statement of her convictions. "I know your new tyrant," she laughed; "I have known him for ages. He won't come to Castle 'Cadia; he is afraid we might make him disloyal to his Arcadia Irrigation salt. You may tell him I said so, if you happen to remember it." Bromley did remember it, but it was late when he returned to the camp at the canyon, and Ballard was asleep. And the next morning the diligent new chief was mounted and gone as usual long before the "turn-out" whistle blew; for which cause Miss Elsa's challenge remained undelivered; was allowed to lie until the dust of intervening busy days had quite obscured it. It was on these scouting gallops to the outlying camps that Ballard defined the limits of the "hoodoo." Its influence, he found, diminished proportionately as the square of the distance from the headquarters camp at Elbow Canyon. But in the wider field there were hindrances of another and more tangible sort. Bourke Fitzpatrick, the younger of the brothers in the contracting firm, was in charge of the ditch digging; and he had irritating tales to tell of the lawless doings of Colonel Craigmiles's herdsmen. "I'm telling you, Mr. Ballard, there isn't anything them devils won't be up to," he complained, not without bitterness. "One night they'll uncouple every wagon on the job and throw the coupling-pins away; and the next, maybe, they'll be stampeding the mules. Two weeks ago, on Dan Moriarty's section, they came with men and horses in the dead of night, hitched up the scrapers, and put a thousand yards of earth back into the ditch." "Wear it out good-naturedly, if you can, Bourke; it is only horse-play," was Ballard's advice. That grown men should seriously hope to defeat the designs of a great corporation by any such puerile means was inconceivable. "Horse-play, is it?" snapped Fitzpatrick. "Don't you believe it, Mr. Ballard. I can take a joke with any man living; but this is no joke. It comes mighty near being war--with the scrapping all on one side." "A night guard?" suggested Ballard. Fitzpatrick shook his head. "We've tried that; and you'll not get a man to patrol the work since Denny Flaherty took his medicine. The cow-punchers roped him and skidded him 'round over the prairie till it took one of the men a whole blessed day to dig the cactus thorns out of him. And me paying both of them overtime. Would you call that a joke?" Ballard's reply revealed some latent doubt as to the justification for Bromley's defense of Colonel Craigmiles's fighting methods. "If it isn't merely rough horse-play, it is guerrilla warfare, as you say, Bourke. Have you seen anything to make you believe that these fellows have a tip from the big house in the upper valley?" The contractor shook his head. "The colonel doesn't figure in the details of the cow business at all, as far as anybody can see. He turns it all over to Manuel, his Mexican foreman; and Manuel is in this guerrilla deviltry as big as anybody. Flaherty says he'll take his oath that the foreman was with the gang that roped him." Ballard was feeling less peaceable when he rode on to the next camp, and as he made the round of the northern outposts the fighting strain which had come down to him from his pioneer ancestors began to assert itself in spite of his efforts to control it. At every stopping-place Fitzpatrick's complaint was amplified. Depredations had followed each other with increasing frequency since Macpherson's death; and once, when one of the subcontractors had been provoked into resistance, arms had been used and a free fight had ensued. Turning the matter over in his mind in growing indignation, Ballard had determined, by the time he had made the complete round of the outlying camps, upon the course he should pursue. "I'll run a sheriff's posse in here and clean up the entire outfit; that's about what I'll do!" he was saying wrathfully to himself as he galloped eastward on the stage trail late in the afternoon of the final day. "The Lord knows I don't want to make a blood-feud of it, but if they will have it----" The interruption was a little object-lesson illustrating the grievances of the contractors. Roughly paralleling the stage trail ran the line of the proposed southern lateral canal, marked by its double row of location stakes. At a turn in the road Ballard came suddenly upon what appeared to be an impromptu game of polo. Flap-hatted herdsmen in shaggy overalls, and swinging long clubs in lieu of polo sticks, were riding in curious zigzags over the canal course, and bending for a drive at each right and left swerve of their wiry little mounts. It took the Kentuckian a full minute to master the intricacies of the game. Then he saw what was doing. The location stakes for the ditch boundaries were set opposite and alternate, and the object of the dodging riders was to determine which of them could club the greatest number of stakes out of the ground without missing a blow or drawing rein. Ballard singled out the leader, a handsome, well-built _caballero_, with the face, figure, and saddle-seat of the Cid, and rode into the thick of things, red wrath to the fore. "Hi! you there!" he shouted. "Is your name Manuel?" "_Si, Señor_," was the mild reply; and the cavalier took off his bullion-corded sombrero and bowed to the saddle-horn. "Well, mine is Ballard, and I am the chief engineer for the Arcadia Company." "Ha! Señor Ballar', I am ver' much delight to meet you." "Never mind that; the pleasure isn't mutual, by a damned sight. You tell your men to stop that monkey-business, and have them put those stakes back where they found them." Ballard was hot. "You give-a the h-order in this valley, señor?" asked the Mexican softly. "I do, where the company's property is concerned. Call your men off!" "Señor Ballar', I have biffo to-day killed a man for that he spik to me like-a that!" [Illustration: "Señor Ballar', I have biffo' to-day killed a man for that he spik to me like-a-that!"] "Have you?" snorted Ballard contemptuously. "Well, you won't kill me. Call your men off, I say!" There was no need. The makeshift polo game had paused, and the riders were gathering about the quarrelling two. "Bat your left eye once, and we'll rope him for you, Manuel," said one. "Wonder if I c'd knock a two-bagger with that hat o' his'n without mussin' his hair?" said another. "Say, you fellers, wait a minute till I make that bronc' o' his'n do a cake-walk!" interposed a third, casting the loop of his riata on the ground so that Ballard's horse would be thrown if he lifted hoof. It was an awkward crisis, and the engineer stood to come off with little credit. He was armed, but even in the unfettered cattle country one cannot pistol a laughing jeer. It was the saving sense of humour that came to his aid, banishing red wrath. There was no malice in the jeers. "Sail in when you're ready, boys," he laughed. "I fight for my brand the same as you'd fight for yours. Those pegs have got to go back in the ground where you found them." One of the flap-hatted riders dropped his reins, drummed with his elbows, and crowed lustily. The foreman backed his horse deftly out of the enclosing ring; and the man nearest to Ballard on the right made a little cast of his looped rope, designed to whip Ballard's pistol out of its holster. If the engineer had been the tenderfoot they took him for, the trouble would have culminated quickly. With the laugh still on his lips, the Kentuckian was watching every move of the Mexican. There was bloodthirst, waiting only for the shadow of an excuse, glooming in the handsome black eyes. Ballard remembered Sanderson's fate, and a quick thrill of racial sympathy for the dead man tuned him to the fighting pitch. He knew he was confronting a treacherous bully of the type known to the West as a "killer"; a man whose regard for human life could be accurately and exactly measured by his chance for escaping the penalty for its taking. It was at this climaxing moment, while Ballard was tightening his eye-hold upon the one dangerous antagonist, and foiling with his free hand the attempts of the playful "Scotty" at his right to disarm him, that the diversion came. A cloud of dust on the near-by stage trail resolved itself into a fiery-red, purring motor-car with a single occupant; and a moment later the car had left the road and was heading across the grassy interspace. Manuel's left hand was hovering above his pistol-butt; and Ballard took his eyes from the menace long enough to glance aside at the approaching motorist. He was a kingly figure of a man well on in years, white-haired, ruddy of face, with huge military mustaches and a goatee. He brought the car with a skilful turn into the midst of things; and Ballard, confident now that the Mexican foreman no longer needed watching, saw a singular happening. While one might count two, the old man in the motor-car stared hard at him, rose in his place behind the steering-wheel, staggered, groped with his hands as the blind grope, and then fell back into the driving-seat with a groan. Ballard was off his horse instantly, tendering his pocket-flask. But the old man's indisposition seemed to pass as suddenly as it had come. "Thank you, suh," he said in a voice that boomed for its very depth and sweetness; "I reckon I've been driving a little too fast. Youh--youh name is Ballard--Breckenridge Ballard, isn't it?" he inquired courteously, completely ignoring the dissolving ring of practical jokers. "It is. And you are Colonel Craigmiles?" "At youh service, suh; entiahly at youh service. I should have known you anywhere for a Ballard. Youh mother was a Hardaway, but you don't take after that side. No, suh"--with calm deliberation--"you are youh father's son, Mistah Ballard." Then, as one coming at a bound from the remote past to the present: "Was thah any--ah--little discussion going on between you and--ah--Manuel, Mistuh Ballard?" Five minutes earlier the engineer had been angry enough to prefer spiteful charges against the polo players all and singular. But the booming of the deep voice had a curiously mollifying effect. "It is hardly worth mentioning," he found himself replying. "I was protesting to your foreman because the boys were having a little game of polo at our expense--knocking our location stakes out of the ground." The kingly old man in the motor-car drew himself up, and there was a mild explosion directed at the Mexican foreman. "Manuel, I'm suhprised--right much suhprised and humiliated, suh! I thought it was--ah--distinctly undehstood that all this schoolboy triflin' was to be stopped. Let me heah no more of it. And see that these heah stakes are replaced; carefully replaced, if you please, suh." And then to the complainant: "I'm right sorry, I assure you, Mistuh Ballard. Let me prove it by carrying you off to dinneh with us at Castle 'Cadia. Grigsby, heah, will lead youh horse to camp, and fetch any little necessaries you might care to send for. Indulge me, suh, and let me make amends. My daughter speaks of you so often that I feel we ought to be mo' friendly." Under much less favourable conditions it is conceivable that the Kentuckian would have overridden many barriers for the sake of finding the open door at Castle 'Cadia. And, the tour of inspection being completed, there was no special duty call to sound a warning. "I shall be delighted, I'm sure," he burbled, quite like an infatuated lover; and when the cow-boy messenger was charged with the errand to the headquarters camp, Ballard took his place beside the company's enemy, and the car was sent purring across to the hill-skirting stage road. VIII CASTLE 'CADIA It was a ten-mile run to the bowl-shaped valley behind the foothills; and Colonel Craigmiles, mindful, perhaps, of his late seizure, did not speed the motor-car. Recalling it afterward, Ballard remembered that the talk was not once suffered to approach the conflict in which he and his host were the principal antagonists. Miss Elsa's house-party, the matchless climate of Arcadia, the scenery, Ballard's own recollections of his Kentucky boyhood--all these were made to do duty; and the colonel's smile was so winning, his deep voice so sympathetic, and his attitude so affectionately paternal, that Ballard found his mental picture of a fierce old frontiersman fighting for his squatter rights fading to the vanishing point. "Diplomacy," Mr. Pelham had suggested; and Ballard smiled inwardly. If it came to a crossing of diplomatic weapons with this keen-eyed, gentle-voiced patriarch, who seemed bent on regarding him as an honoured guest, the company's cause was as good as lost. The road over which the motor-car was silently trundling avoided the headquarters camp at the dam by several miles, losing itself among the hogback foothills well to the southward, and approaching the inner valley at right angles to the course of the river and the railway. The sun had sunk behind the western mountain barrier and the dusk was gathering when the colonel quickened the pace, and the car topped the last of the hills in a staccato rush. Ballard heard the low thunder of the Boiling Water in its upper canyon, and had glimpses of weird shapes of eroded sandstone looming in huge pillars and fantastic mushroom figures in the growing darkness. Then the lights of Castle 'Cadia twinkled in their tree-setting at the top of the little knoll; the drought-hardened road became a gravelled carriage-drive under the pneumatic tires; and a final burst of speed sent the car rocketing to the summit of the knoll through a maple-shadowed avenue. The great tree-trunk-pillared portico of the country house was deserted when the colonel cut out the motor-battery switch at the carriage step. But a moment later a white-gowned figure appeared in the open doorway, and the colonel's daughter came to the step, to laugh gayly, and to say: "Why, Mr. Ballard, I'm astounded! Have you really decided that it is quite safe to trust yourself in the camp of the enemy?" Ballard had seen Castle 'Cadia at field-glass range; and he had Bromley's enthusiastic description of the house of marvels to push anticipation some little distance along the way to meet the artistic reality. None the less, the reality came with the shock of the unexpected. In the softened light of the shaded electric pendants, the massive pillars of the portico appeared as single trees standing as they had grown in the mountain forest. Underfoot the floor was of hewn tree-trunks; but the house walls, like the pillars, were of logs in the rough, cunningly matched and fitted to conceal the carpentry. A man had come to take the automobile, and the colonel paused to call attention to a needed adjustment of the motor. Ballard made use of the isolated moment. "I have accounted for you at last," he said, prolonging the greeting hand-clasp to the ultimate limit. "I know now what has made you what you are." "Really?" she questioned lightly. "And all these years I have been vainly imagining that I had acquired the manner of the civilized East! Isn't it pathetic?" "Very," he agreed quite gravely. "But the pathos is all on my side." "Meaning that I might let you go and dress for dinner? I shall. Enter the house of the enemy, Mr. Ballard. A cow-punching princess bids you welcome." She was looking him fairly in the eyes when she said it, and he acquitted her doubtfully of the charge of intention. But her repetition, accidental or incidental, of his own phrase was sufficiently disconcerting to make him awkwardly silent while she led the way into the spacious reception-hall. Here the spell of the enchantments laid fresh hold on him. The rustic exterior of the great house was only the artistically designed contrast--within were richness, refinement, and luxury unbounded. The floors were of polished wood, and the rugs were costly Daghestans. Beyond portières of curious Indian bead-work, there were vistas of harmonious interiors; carved furnishings, beamed and panelled ceilings, book-lined walls. The light everywhere came from the softly tinted electric globes. There was a great stone fireplace in the hall, but radiators flanked the openings, giving an added touch of modernity. Ballard pulled himself together and strove to recall the fifty-mile, sky-reaching mountain barrier lying between all this twentieth-century country-house luxury and the nearest outpost of urban civilisation. It asked for a tremendous effort; and the realising anchor dragged again when Miss Craigmiles summoned a Japanese servant and gave him in charge. "Show Mr. Ballard to the red room, Tagawi," she directed. And then to the guest: "We dine at seven--as informally as you please. You will find your bag in your room, and Tagawi will serve you. As you once told me when I teased you in your Boston workshop--'If you don't see what you want, ask for it.'" The Kentuckian followed his guide up the broad stair and through a second-floor corridor which abated no jot of the down-stair magnificence. Neither did his room, for that matter. Hangings of Pompeian red gave it its name; and it was spacious and high-studded, and critically up to date in its appointments. The little brown serving-man deftly opened the bag brought by the colonel's messenger from Ballard's quarters at the Elbow Canyon camp, and laid out the guest's belongings. That done, he opened the door of the bath. "The honourable excellency will observe the hot water; also cold. Are the orders other for me?" Ballard shook his head, dismissed the smiling little man, and turned on the water. "I reckon I'd better take it cold," he said to himself; "then I'll know certainly whether I'm awake or dreaming. By Jove! but this place is a poem! I don't wonder that the colonel is fighting Berserk to save it alive. And Mr. Pelham and his millionaires come calmly up to the counter and offer to buy it--with mere money!" He filled the porcelain bath with a crystal-clear flood that, measured by its icy temperature, might have been newly distilled glacier drip; and the cold plunge did something toward establishing the reality of things. But the incredibilities promptly reasserted themselves when he went down a little in advance of the house-party guests, and met Elsa, and was presented to a low-voiced lady with silvery hair and the face of a chastened saint, named to him as Miss Cauffrey, but addressed by Elsa as "Aunt June." "I hope you find yourself somewhat refreshed, Mr. Ballard," said the sweet-voiced châtelaine. "Elsa tells me you have been in the tropics, and our high altitudes must be almost distressing at first; I know I found them so." "Really, I hadn't noticed the change," returned Ballard rather vaguely. Then he bestirred himself, and tried to live up to the singularly out-of-place social requirements. "I'm not altogether new to the altitudes, though I haven't been in the West for the past year or two. For that matter, I can't quite realise that I am in the West at this moment--at least in the uncitied part." Miss Cauffrey smiled, and the king's daughter laughed softly. "It does me so much good!" she declared, mocking him. "All through that dining-car dinner on the 'Overland Flyer' you were trying to reconcile me with the Western barbarities. Didn't you say something about being hopeful because I was aware of the existence of an America west of the Alleghanies?" "Please let me down as easily as you can," pleaded the engineer. "You must remember that I am only a plain workingman." "You are come to take poor Mr. Macpherson's place?" queried Miss Cauffrey; which was Ballard's first intimation that the Arcadian promotion scheme was not taboo by the entire house-hold of Castle 'Cadia. "That is what I supposed I was doing, up to this evening. But it seems that I have stumbled into fairyland instead." "No," said the house-daughter, laughing at him again--"only into the least Arcadian part of Arcadia. And after dinner you will be free to go where you are impatient to be at this very moment." "I don't know about that," was Ballard's rejoinder. "I was just now wondering if I could be heroic enough to go contentedly from all this to my adobe shack in the construction camp." Miss Craigmiles mocked him again. "My window in the Alta Vista sleeper chanced to be open that night while the train was standing in the Denver station. Didn't I hear Mr. Pelham say that the watchword--your watchword--was to be 'drive,' for every man, minute, and dollar there was in it?" Ballard said, "Oh, good Lord!" under his breath, and a hot flush rose to humiliate him, in spite of his efforts to keep it down. Now it was quite certain that her word of welcome was not a mere coincidence. She had overheard that brutal and uncalled-for boast of his about making love to "the cow-punching princesses"; and this was his punishment. It was a moment for free speech of the explanatory sort, but Miss Cauffrey's presence forbade it. So he could only say, in a voice that might have melted a heart of stone: "I am wholly at your mercy--and I am your guest. You shouldn't step on a man when he's down. It isn't Christian." Whether she would have stepped on him or not was left a matter indeterminate, since the members of the house-party were coming down by twos and threes, and shortly afterward dinner was announced. By this time Ballard was growing a little hardened to the surprises; and the exquisitely appointed dining-room evoked only a left-over thrill. And at dinner, in the intervals allowed him by Miss Dosia Van Bryck, who was his table companion, there were other things to think of. For example, he was curious to know if Wingfield's air of proprietorship in Miss Craigmiles would persist under Colonel Craigmiles's own roof. Apparently it did persist. Before the first course was removed Ballard's curiosity was in the way of being amply satisfied; and he was saying "Yes" and "No" like a well-adjusted automaton to Miss Van Bryck. In the seating he had Major Blacklock and one of the Cantrell girls for his opposites; and Lucius Bigelow and the other sharer of the common Cantrell Christian name widened the gap. But the centrepiece in the middle of the great mahogany was low; and Ballard could see over it only too well. Wingfield and Elsa were discussing playmaking and the playmaker's art; or, rather, Wingfield was talking shop with cheerful dogmatism, and Miss Craigmiles was listening; and if the rapt expression of her face meant anything.... Ballard lost himself in gloomy abstraction, and the colours of the electric spectrum suddenly merged for him into a greenish-gray. "I should think your profession would be perfectly grand, Mr. Ballard. Don't you find it so?" Thus Miss Dosia, who, being quite void of subjective enthusiasm, felt constrained to try to evoke it in others. "Very," said Ballard, hearing nothing save the upward inflection which demanded a reply. Miss Van Bryck seemed mildly surprised; but after a time she tried again. "Has any one told you that Mr. Wingfield is making the studies for a new play?" she asked. Again Ballard marked the rising inflection; said "Yes," at a venture; and was straightway humiliated, as he deserved to be. "It seems so odd that he should come out here for his material," Miss Van Bryck went on evenly. "I don't begin to understand how there can be any dramatic possibilities in a wilderness house-party, with positively no social setting whatever." "Ah, no; of course not," stammered Ballard, realising now that he was fairly at sea. And then, to make matters as bad as they could be: "You were speaking of Mr. Wingfield?" Miss Van Bryck's large blue eyes mirrored reproachful astonishment; but she was too placid and too good-natured to be genuinely piqued. "I fear you must have had a hard day, Mr. Ballard. All this is very wearisome to you, isn't it?" she said, letting him have a glimpse of the real kindness underlying the inanities. "My day has been rather strenuous," he confessed. "But you make me ashamed. Won't you be merciful and try me again?" And this time he knew what he was saying, and meant it. "It is hardly worth repeating," she qualified--nevertheless, she did repeat it. Ballard, listening now, found the little note of distress in the protest against play-building in the wilderness; and his heart warmed to Miss Dosia. In the sentimental field, disappointment for one commonly implies disappointment for two; and he became suddenly conscious of a fellow-feeling for the heiress of the Van Bryck millions. "There is plenty of dramatic material in Arcadia for Mr. Wingfield, if he knows where to look for it," he submitted. "For example, our camp at the dam furnishes a 'situation' every now and then." And here he told the story of the catapulted stone, adding the little dash of mystery to give it the dramatic flavour. Miss Dosia's interest was as eager as her limitations would permit. "May I tell Mr. Wingfield?" she asked, with such innocent craft that Ballard could scarcely restrain a smile. "Certainly. And if Mr. Wingfield is open to suggestion on that side, you may bring him down, and I'll put him on the trail of a lot more of the mysteries." "Thank you so much. And may I call it my discovery?" Again her obviousness touched the secret spring of laughter in him. It was very evident that Miss Van Bryck would do anything in reason to bring about a solution of continuity in the sympathetic intimacy growing up between the pair on the opposite side of the table. "It is yours, absolutely," he made haste to say. "I should never have thought of the dramatic utility if you hadn't suggested it." "H'm!--ha!" broke in the major. "What are you two young people plotting about over there?" Ballard turned the edge of the query; blunted it permanently by attacking a piece of government engineering in which, as he happened to know, the major had figured in an advisory capacity. This carrying of the war into Africa brought on a battle technical which ran on unbroken to the ices and beyond; to the moment when Colonel Craigmiles proposed an adjournment to the portico for the coffee and the tobacco. Ballard came off second-best, but he had accomplished his object, which was to make the shrewd-eyed old major forget if he had overheard too much; and Miss Van Bryck gave him his meed of praise. "You are a very brave man, Mr. Ballard," she said, as he drew the portières aside for her. "Everybody else is afraid of the major." "I've met him before," laughed the Kentuckian; "in one or another of his various incarnations. And I didn't learn my trade at West Point, you remember." IX THE BRINK OF HAZARD The summer night was perfect, and the after-dinner gathering under the great portico became rather a dispersal. The company fell apart into couples and groups when the coffee was served; and while Miss Craigmiles and the playwright were still fraying the worn threads of the dramatic unities, Ballard consoled himself with the older of the Cantrell girls, talking commonplace nothings until his heart ached. Later on, when young Bigelow had relieved him, and he had given up all hope of breaking into the dramatic duet, he rose to go and make his parting acknowledgments to Miss Cauffrey and the colonel. It was at that moment that Miss Elsa confronted him. "You are not leaving?" she said. "The evening is still young--even for country folk." "Measuring by the hours I've been neglected, the evening is old, very old," he retorted reproachfully. "Which is another way of saying that we have bored you until you are sleepy?" she countered. "But you mustn't go yet--I want to talk to you." And she wheeled a great wicker lounging-chair into a quiet corner, and beat up the pillows in a near-by hammock, and bade him smoke his pipe if he preferred it to the Castle 'Cadia cigars. "I don't care to smoke anything if you will stay and talk to me," he said, love quickly blotting out the disappointments foregone. "For this one time you may have both--your pipe and me. Are you obliged to go back to your camp to-night?" "Yes, indeed. I ran away, as it was. Bromley will have it in for me for dodging him this way." "Is Mr. Bromley your boss?" "He is something much better--he is my friend." Her hammock was swung diagonally across the quiet corner, and she arranged her pillows so that the shadow of a spreading potted palm came between her eyes and the nearest electric globe. "Am I not your friend, too?" she asked. Jerry Blacklock and the younger Miss Cantrell were pacing a slow sentry march up and down the open space in front of the lounging-chairs; and Ballard waited until they had made the turn and were safely out of ear-shot before he said: "There are times when I have to admit it, reluctantly." "How ridiculous!" she scoffed. "What is finer than true friendship?" "Love," he said simply. "Cousin Janet will hear you," she warned. Then she mocked him, as was her custom. "Does that mean that you would like to have me tell you about Mr. Wingfield?" He played trumps again. "Yes. When is it to be?" "How crudely elemental you are to-night! Suppose you ask him?" "He hasn't given me the right." "Oh. And I have?" "You are trying to give it to me, aren't you?" She was swinging gently in the hammock, one daintily booted foot touching the floor. "You are so painfully direct at times," she complained. "It's like a cold shower-bath; invigorating, but shivery. Do you think Mr. Wingfield really cares anything for me? I don't. I think he regards me merely as so much literary material. He lives from moment to moment in the hope of discovering 'situations.'" "Well,"--assentingly. "I am sure he has chosen a most promising subject--and surroundings. The kingdom of Arcadia reeks with dramatic possibilities, I should say." Her face was still in the shadow of the branching palm, but the changed tone betrayed her changed mood. "I have often accused you of having no insight--no intuition," she said musingly. "Yet you have a way of groping blindly to the very heart of things. How could you know that it has come to be the chief object of my life to keep Mr. Wingfield from becoming interested in what you flippantly call 'the dramatic possibilities'?" "I didn't know it," he returned. "Of course you didn't. Yet it is true. It is one of the reasons why I gave up going with the Herbert Lassleys after my passage was actually booked on the _Carania_. Cousin Janet's party was made up. Dosia and Jerry Blacklock came down to the steamer to see us off. Dosia told me that Mr. Wingfield was included. You have often said that I have the courage of a man--I hadn't, then. I was horribly afraid." "Of what?" he queried. "Of many things. You would not understand if I should try to explain them." "I do understand," he hastened to say. "But you have nothing to fear. Castle 'Cadia will merely gain an ally when Wingfield hears the story of the little war. Besides, I was not including your father's controversy with the Arcadia Company in the dramatic material; I was thinking more particularly of the curious and unaccountable happenings that are continually occurring on the work--the accidents." "There is no connection between the two--in your mind?" she asked. She was looking away from him, and he could not see her face. But the question was eager, almost pathetically eager. "Assuredly not," he denied promptly. "Otherwise----" "Otherwise you wouldn't be here to-night as my father's guest, you would say. But others are not as charitable. Mr. Macpherson was one of them. He charged all the trouble to us, though he could prove nothing. He said that if all the circumstances were made public--" She faced him quickly, and he saw that the beautiful eyes were full of trouble. "Can't you see what would happen--what is likely to happen if Mr. Wingfield sees fit to make literary material out of all these mysteries?" The Kentuckian nodded. "The unthinking, newspaper-reading public would probably make one morsel of the accidents and your father's known antagonism to the company. But Wingfield would be something less than a man and a lover if he could bring himself to the point of making literary capital out of anything that might remotely involve you or your father." She shook her head doubtfully. "You don't understand the artistic temperament. It's a passion. I once heard Mr. Wingfield say that a true artist would make copy out of his grandmother." Ballard scowled. It was quite credible that the Lester Wingfields were lost to all sense of the common decencies, but that Elsa Craigmiles should be in love with the sheik of the caddish tribe was quite beyond belief. "I'll choke him off for you," he said; and his tone took its colour from the contemptuous under-thought. "But I'm afraid I've already made a mess of it. To tell the truth, I suggested to Miss Van Bryck at dinner that our camp might be a good hunting-ground for Wingfield." "_You said that to Dosia?_" There was something like suppressed horror in the low-spoken query. "Not knowing any better, I did. She was speaking of Wingfield, and of the literary barrenness of house-parties in general. I mentioned the camp as an alternative--told her to bring him down, and I'd--Good heavens! what have I done?" Even in the softened light of the electric globes he saw that her face had become a pallid mask of terror; that she was swaying in the hammock. He was beside her instantly; and when she hid her face in her hands, his arm went about her for her comforting--this, though Wingfield was chatting amiably with Mrs. Van Bryck no more than three chairs away. "Don't!" he begged. "I'll get out of it some way--lie out of it, fight out of it, if needful. I didn't know it meant anything to you. If I had--Elsa, dear, I love you; you've known it from the first. You can make believe with other men as you please, but in the end I shall claim you. Now tell me what it is that you want me to do." Impulsively she caught at the caressing hand on her shoulder, kissed it, and pushed him away with resolute strength. "You must never forget yourself again, dear friend--or make me forget," she said steadily. "And you must help me as you can. There is trouble--deeper trouble than you know or suspect. I tried to keep you out of it--away from it; and now you are here in Arcadia, to make it worse, infinitely worse. You have seen me laugh and talk with the others, playing the part of the woman you know. Yet there is never a waking moment when the burden of anxiety is lifted." He mistook her meaning. "You needn't be anxious about Wingfield's material hunt," he interposed. "If Miss Dosia takes him to the camp, I'll see to it that he doesn't hear any of the ghost stories." "That is only one of the anxieties," she went on hurriedly. "The greatest of them is--for you." "For me? Because----" "Because your way to Arcadia lay over three graves. That means nothing to you--does it also mean nothing that your life was imperilled within an hour of your arrival at your camp?" He drew the big chair nearer to the hammock and sat down again. "Now you are letting Bromley's imagination run away with yours. That rock came from our quarry. There was a night gang getting out stone for the dam." She laid her hand softly on his knee. "Do you want to know how much I trust you? That stone was thrown by a man who was standing upon the high bluff back of your headquarters. He thought you were alone in the office, and he meant to kill you. Don't ask me who it was, or how I know--I _do_ know." Ballard started involuntarily. It was not in human nature to take such an announcement calmly. "Do you mean to say that I was coolly ambushed before I could----" She silenced him with a quick little gesture. Blacklock and Miss Cantrell were still pacing their sentry beat, and the major's "H'm--ha!" rose in irascible contradiction above the hum of voices. "I have said all that I dare to say; more than I should have said if you were not so rashly determined to make light of things you do not understand," she rejoined evenly. "They are things which I should understand--which I must understand if I am to deal intelligently with them," he insisted. "I have been calling them one part accident and three parts superstition or imagination. But if there is design----" Again she stopped him with the imperative little gesture. "I did not say there was design," she denied. It was an _impasse_, and the silence which followed emphasised it. When he rose to take his leave, love prompted an offer of service, and he made it. "I cannot help believing that you are mistaken," he qualified. "But I respect your anxiety so much that I would willingly share it if I could. What do you want me to do?" She turned to look away down the maple-shadowed avenue and her answer had tears in it. "I want you to be watchful--always watchful. I wish you to believe that your life is in peril, and to act accordingly. And, lastly, I beg you to help me to keep Mr. Wingfield away from Elbow Canyon." "I shall be heedful," he promised. "And if Mr. Wingfield comes material-hunting, I shall be as inhospitable as possible. May I come again to Castle 'Cadia?" The invitation was given instantly, almost eagerly. "Yes; come as often as you can spare the time. Must you go now? Shall I have Otto bring the car and drive you around to your camp?" Ballard promptly refused to put the chauffeur to the trouble. It was only a little more than a mile in the direct line from the house on the knoll to the point where the river broke through the foothill hogback, and the night was fine and starlit. After the day of hard riding he should enjoy the walk. Elsa did not go with him when he went to say good-night to Miss Cauffrey and to his host. He left her sitting in the hammock, and found her still there a few minutes later when he came back to say that he must make his acknowledgments to her father through her. "I can't find him, and no one seems to know where he is," he explained. She rose quickly and went to the end of the portico to look down a second tree-shadowed avenue skirting the mountainward slope of the knoll. "He must have gone to the laboratory; the lights are on," she said; and then with a smile that thrilled him ecstatically: "You see what your footing is to be at Castle 'Cadia. Father will not make company of you; he expects you to come and go as one of us." With this heart-warming word for his leave-taking Ballard sought out the path to which she directed him and swung off down the hill to find the trail, half bridle-path and half waggon road, which led by way of the river's windings to the outlet canyon and the camp on the outer mesa. When he was but a little distance from the house he heard the _pad pad_ of soft footfalls behind him, and presently a great dog of the St. Bernard breed overtook him and walked sedately at his side. Ballard loved a good dog only less than he loved a good horse, and he stopped to pat the St. Bernard, talking to it as he might have talked to a human being. Afterward, when he went on, the dog kept even pace with him, and would not go back, though Ballard tried to send him, coaxing first and then commanding. To the blandishments the big retriever made his return in kind, wagging his tail and thrusting his huge head between Ballard's knees in token of affection and loyal fealty. To the commands he was entirely deaf, and when Ballard desisted, the dog took his place at one side and one step in advance, as if half impatient at his temporary master's waste of time. At the foot-bridge crossing the river the dog ran ahead and came back again, much as if he were a scout pioneering the way; and at Ballard's "Good dog! Fine old fellow!" he padded along with still graver dignity, once more catching the step in advance and looking neither to right nor left. At another time Ballard might have wondered why the great St. Bernard, most sagacious of his tribe, should thus attach himself to a stranger and refuse to be shaken off. But at the moment the young man had a heartful of other and more insistent queryings. Gained ground with the loved one is always the lover's most heady cup of intoxication; but the lees at the bottom of the present cup were sharply tonic, if not bitter. What was the mystery so evidently enshrouding the tragedies at Elbow Canyon? That they were tragedies rather than accidents there seemed no longer any reasonable doubt. But with the doubt removed the mystery cloud grew instantly thicker and more impenetrable. If the tragedies were growing out of the fight for the possession of Arcadia Park, what manner of man could Colonel Craigmiles be to play the kindly, courteous host at one moment and the backer and instigator of murderers at the next? And if the charge against the colonel be allowed to stand, it immediately dragged in a sequent which was clearly inadmissible: the unavoidable inference being that Elsa Craigmiles was in no uncertain sense her father's accessory. Ballard was a man and a lover; and his first definition of love was unquestioning loyalty. He was prepared to doubt the evidence of his senses, if need be, but not the perfections of the ideal he had set up in the inner chamber of his heart, naming it Elsa Craigmiles. These communings and queryings, leading always into the same metaphysical labyrinth, brought the young engineer far on the down-river trail; were still with him when the trail narrowed to a steep one-man path and began to climb the hogback, with one side buttressed by a low cliff and the other falling sheer into the Boiling Water on the left. On this narrow ledge the dog went soberly ahead; and at one of the turns in the path Ballard came upon him standing solidly across the way and effectually blocking it. "What is it, old boy?" was the man's query; and the dog's answer was a wag of the tail and a low whine. "Go on, old fellow," said Ballard; but the big St. Bernard merely braced himself and whined again. It was quite dark on the high ledge, a fringe of scrub pines on the upper side of the cutting blotting out a fair half of the starlight. Ballard struck a match and looked beyond the dog; looked and drew back with a startled exclamation. Where the continuation of the path should have been there was a gaping chasm pitching steeply down into the Boiling Water. More lighted matches served to show the extent of the hazard and the trap-like peril of it. A considerable section of the path had slid away in a land- or rock-slide, and Ballard saw how he might easily have walked into the gulf if the dog had not stopped on the brink of it. "I owe you one, good old boy," he said, stooping to pat the words out on the St. Bernard's head. "I'll pay it when I can; to you, to your mistress, or possibly even to your master. Come on, old fellow, and we'll find another way with less risk in it," and he turned back to climb over the mesa hill under the stone quarries, approaching the headquarters camp from the rear. When the hill was surmounted and the electric mast lights of the camp lay below, the great dog stopped, sniffing the air suspiciously. "Don't like the looks of it, do you?" said Ballard. "Well, I guess you'd better go back home. It isn't a very comfortable place down there for little dogs--or big ones. Good-night, old fellow." And, quite as if he understood, the St. Bernard faced about and trotted away toward Castle 'Cadia. There was a light in the adobe shack when Ballard descended the hill, and he found Bromley sitting up for him. The first assistant engineer was killing time by working on the current estimate for the quarry subcontractor, and he looked up quizzically when his chief came in. "Been bearding the lion in his den, have you?" he said, cheerfully. "That's right; there's nothing like being neighbourly, even with our friend the enemy. Didn't you find him all the things I said he was--and then some?" "Yes," returned Ballard, gravely. Then, abruptly: "Loudon, who uses the path that goes up on our side of the canyon and over into the Castle 'Cadia valley?" "Who?--why, anybody having occasion to. It's the easiest way to reach the wing dam that Sanderson built at the canyon inlet to turn the current against the right bank. Fitzpatrick sends a man over now and then to clear the driftwood from the dam." "Anybody been over to-day?" "No." "How about the cow-puncher--Grigsby--who brought my horse over and got my bag?" "He was riding, and he came and went by way of our bridge below the dam. You couldn't ride a horse over that hill path." "You certainly could not," said Ballard grimly. "There is a chunk about the size of this shack gone out of it--dropped into the river, I suppose." Bromley was frowning reflectively. "More accidents?" he suggested. "One more--apparently." Bromley jumped up, sudden realization grappling him. "Why, Breckenridge!--you've just come over that path--alone, and in the dark!" "Part way over it, and in the dark, yes; but not alone, luckily. The Craigmiles's dog--the big St. Bernard--was with me, and he stopped on the edge of the break. Otherwise I might have walked into it--most probably should have walked into it." Bromley began to tramp the floor with his hands in his pockets. "I can't remember," he said; and again, "I can't remember. I was over there yesterday, or the day before. It was all right then. It was a good trail. Why, Breckenridge"--with sudden emphasis--"it would have taken a charge of dynamite to blow it down!" Ballard dropped lazily into a chair and locked his hands at the back of his head. "And you say that the hoodoo hasn't got around to using high explosives yet, eh? By the way, have there been any more visitations since I went out on the line last Tuesday?" Bromley was shaking his head in the negative when the door opened with a jerk and Bessinger, the telegraph operator whose wire was in the railroad yard office, tumbled in, white faced. "Hoskins and the Two!" he gasped. "They're piled up under a material train three miles down the track! Fitzpatrick is turning out a wrecking crew from the bunk shanties, and he sent me up to call you!" Bromley's quick glance aside for Ballard was acutely significant. "I guess I'd better change that 'No' of mine to a qualified 'Yes,'" he corrected. "The visitation seems to have come." Then to Bessinger: "Get your breath, Billy, and then chase back to Fitzpatrick. Tell him we'll be with him as soon as Mr. Ballard can change his clothes." X HOSKINS'S GHOST The wreck in the rocky hills west of the Elbow Canyon railroad yard proved to be less calamitous than Bessinger's report, handed on from the excited alarm brought in by a demoralized train flagman, had pictured it. When Ballard and Bromley, hastening to the rescue on Fitzpatrick's relief train, reached the scene of the accident, they found Hoskins's engine and fifteen cars in the ditch, and the second flagman with a broken arm; but Hoskins himself was unhurt, as were the remaining members of the train crew. Turning the work of track clearing over to Bromley and the relief crew, Ballard began at once to pry irritably into causes; irritably since wrecks meant delays, and President Pelham's letters were already cracking the whip for greater expedition. It was a singular derailment, and at first none of the trainmen seemed to be able to account for it. The point of disaster was on a sharp curve where the narrow-gauge track bent like a strained bow around one of the rocky hills. As the débris lay, the train seemed to have broken in two on the knuckle of the curve, and here the singularity was emphasised. The overturned cars were not merely derailed; they were locked and crushed together, and heaped up and strewn abroad, in a fashion to indicate a collision rather than a simple jumping of the track. Ballard used Galliford, the train conductor, for the first heel of his pry. "I guess you and Hoskins both need about thirty days," was the way he opened upon Galliford. "How long had your train been broken in two before the two sections came in collision?" "If we was broke in two, nobody knew it. I was in the caboose 'lookout' myself, and I saw the Two's gauge-light track around the curve. Next I knew, I was smashin' the glass in the 'lookout' with my head, and the train was chasin' out on the prairie. I'll take the thirty days, all right, and I won't sue the company for the cuts on my head. But I'll be danged if I'll take the blame, Mr. Ballard." The conductor spoke as a man. "Somebody's got to take it," snapped the chief. "If you didn't break in two, what did happen?" "Now you've got me guessing, and I hain't got any more guesses left. At first I thought Hoskins had hit something 'round on the far side o' the curve. That's what it felt like. Then, for a second or two, I could have sworn he had the Two in the reverse, backing his end of the train up against my end and out into the sage-brush." "What does Hoskins say? Where is he?" demanded Ballard; and together they picked their way around to the other end of the wreck, looking for the engineman. Hoskins, however, was not to be found. Fitzpatrick had seen him groping about in the cab of his overturned engine; and Bromley, when the inquiry reached him, explained that he had sent Hoskins up to camp on a hand-car which was going back for tools. "He was pretty badly shaken up, and I told him he'd better hunt the bunk shanty and rest his nerves awhile. We didn't need him," said the assistant, accounting for the engine-man's disappearance. Ballard let the investigation rest for the moment, but later, when Bromley was working the contractor's gang on the track obstructions farther along, he lighted a flare torch at the fire some of the men had made out of the wreck kindling wood, and began a critical examination of the derailed and débris-covered locomotive. It was a Baldwin ten-wheel type, with the boiler extending rather more than half-way through the cab, and since it had rolled over on the right-hand side, the controlling levers were under the crushed wreckage of the cab. None the less, Ballard saw what he was looking for; afterward making assurance doubly sure by prying at the engine's brake-shoes and thrusting the pinch-bar of inquiry into various mechanisms under the trucks and driving-wheels. It was an hour past midnight when Bromley reported the track clear, and asked if the volunteer wrecking crew should go on and try to pick up the cripples. "Not to-night," was Ballard's decision. "We'll get Williams and his track-layers in from the front to-morrow and let them tackle it. Williams used to be Upham's wrecking boss over on the D. & U. P. main line, and he'll make short work of this little pile-up, engine and all." Accordingly, the whistle of the relief train's engine was blown to recall Fitzpatrick's men, and a little later the string of flats, men-laden, trailed away among the up-river hills, leaving the scene of the disaster with only the dull red glow of the workmen's night fire to illuminate it. When the rumble of the receding relief train was no longer audible, the figure of a man, dimly outlined in the dusky glow of the fire, materialised out of the shadows of the nearest arroyo. First making sure that no watchman had been left to guard the point of hazard, the man groped purposefully under the fallen locomotive and drew forth a stout steel bar which had evidently been hidden for this later finding. With this bar for a lever, the lone wrecker fell fiercely at work under the broken cab, prying and heaving until the sweat started in great drops under the visor of his workman's cap and ran down to make rivulets of gray in the grime on his face. Whatever he was trying to do seemed difficult of accomplishment, if not impossible. Again and again he strove at his task, pausing now and then to take breath or to rub his moist hands in the dry sand for the better gripping of the smooth steel. Finally--it was when the embers of the fire on the hill slope were flickering to their extinction--the bar slipped and let him down heavily. The fall must have partly stunned him, since it was some little time before he staggered to his feet, flung the bar into the wreck with a morose oath, and limped away up the track toward the headquarters camp, turning once and again to shake his fist at the capsized locomotive in the ditch at the curve. It was in the afternoon of the day following the wreck that Ballard made the laboratory test for blame; the office room in the adobe shack serving as the "sweat-box." First came the flagmen, one at a time, their stories agreeing well enough, and both corroborating Galliford's account. Next came Hoskins's fireman, a green boy from the Alta Vista mines, who had been making his first trip over the road. He knew nothing save that he had looked up between shovelfuls to see Hoskins fighting with his levers, and had judged the time to be ripe for the life-saving jump. Last of all came Hoskins, hanging his head and looking as if he had been caught stealing sheep. "Tell it straight," was Ballard's curt caution; and the engineman stumbled through a recital in which haziness and inconsistency struggled for first place. He had seen something on the track or he thought he had, and had tried to stop. Before he could bring the train under control he had heard the crashing of the wreck in the rear. He admitted that he had jumped while the engine was still in motion. "Which way was she running when you jumped, John?--forward or backward?" asked Ballard, quietly. Bromley, who was making pencil notes of the evidence, looked up quickly and saw the big engine-man's jaw drop. "How could she be runnin' any way but forrards?" he returned, sullenly. Ballard was smoking, and he shifted his cigar to say: "I didn't know." Then, with sudden heat: "But I mean to know, Hoskins; I mean to go quite to the bottom of this, here and now! You've been garbling the facts; purposely, or because you are still too badly rattled to know what you are talking about. I can tell you what you did: for some reason you made an emergency stop; you _did_ make it, either with the brakes or without them. Then you put your engine in the reverse motion and _backed_; you were backing when you jumped, and the engine was still backing when it left the rails." Hoskins put his shoulders against the wall and passed from sullenness to deep dejection. "I've got a wife and two kids back in Alta Vista, and I'm all in," he said. "What is there about it that you don't know, Mr. Ballard?" "There are two or three other things that I do know, and one that I don't. You didn't come up to the camp on the hand-car last night; and after we left the wreck, somebody dug around in the Two's cab trying to fix things so that they would look a little better for John Hoskins. So much I found out this morning. But I don't care particularly about that: what I want to know is the first cause. What made you lose your head?" "I told you; there was something on the track." "What was it?" "It was--well, it was what once was a man." Ballard bit hard on his cigar, and all the phrases presenting themselves were profane. But a glance from Bromley enabled him to say, with decent self-control: "Go on; tell us about it." "There ain't much to tell, and I reckon you won't believe a thing 'at I say," Hoskins began monotonously. "Did you or Mr. Bromley notice what bend o' the river that curve is at?" Ballard said "No," and Bromley shook his head. The engineman went on. "It's where _he_ fell in and got drownded--Mr. Braithwaite, I mean. I reckon it sounds mighty foolish to you-all, sittin' here in the good old daylight, with nothin' happening: but I _saw_ him. When the Two's headlight jerked around the curve and picked him up, he was standing between the rails, sideways, and lookin' off toward the river. He had the same little old two-peaked cap on that he always wore, and he had his fishin'-rod over his shoulder. I didn't have three car lengths to the good when I saw him; and--and--well, I reckon I went plumb crazy." Hoskins was a large man and muscular rather than fat; but he was sweating again, and could not hold his hands still. Ballard got up and walked to the window which looked out upon the stone yard. When he turned again it was to ask Hoskins, quite mildly, if he believed in ghosts. "I never allowed to, before this, Mr. Ballard." "Yet you have often thought of Braithwaite's drowning, when you have been rounding that particular curve? I remember you pointed out the place to me." Hoskins nodded. "I reckon I never have run by there since without thinking of it." Ballard sat down again and tilted his chair to the reflective angle. "One more question, John, and then you may go. You had a two-hour lay-over in Alta Vista yesterday while the D. & U. P. people were transferring your freight. How many drinks did you take in those two hours?" "Before God, Mr. Ballard, I never touched a drop! I don't say I'm too good to do it: I ain't. But any man that'd go crookin' his elbow when he had that mountain run ahead of him would be _all_ fool!" "That's so," said Ballard. And then: "That will do. Go and turn in again and sleep the clock around. I'll tell you what is going to happen to you when you're better fit to hear it." "Well?" queried Bromley, when Hoskins was gone. "Say your say, and then I'll say mine," was Ballard's rejoinder. "I should call it a pretty harsh joke on Hoskins, played by somebody with more spite than common sense. There has been some little ill blood between Fitzpatrick's men and the railroad gangs; more particularly between the stone-cutters here at the dam and the train crews. It grew out of Fitzpatrick's order putting his men on the water-wagon. When the camp canteen was closed, the stone 'buckies' tried to open up a jug-line from Alta Vista. The trainmen wouldn't stand for it against Macpherson's promise to fire the first 'boot-legger' he caught." "And you think one of the stone-cutters went down from the camp to give Hoskins a jolt?" "That is my guess." Ballard laughed. "Mine isn't quite as practical, I'll admit; but I believe it is the right one. I've been probing Hoskins's record quietly, and his long suit is superstition. Half the 'hoodoo' talk of the camp can be traced back to him if you'll take the trouble. He confessed just now that he never passed that point in the road without thinking of Braithwaite and his taking-off. From that to seeing things isn't a very long step." Bromley made the sign of acquiescence. "I'd rather accept your hypothesis than mine, Breckenridge. I'd hate to believe that we have the other kind of a fool on the job; a man who would deliberately make scare medicine to add to that which is already made. What will you do with Hoskins?" "Let him work in the repair shop for a while, till he gets the fever out of his blood. I don't want to discharge him." "Good. Now that is settled, will you take a little walk with me? I want to show you something." Ballard found his pipe and filled it, and they went out together. It was a perfect summer afternoon, still and cloudless, and with the peculiar high-mountain resonance in the air that made the clink of the stone hammers ring like a musical chorus beaten out upon steel anvils. Peaceful, orderly industry struck the key-note, and for the moment there were no discords. Out on the great ramparts of the dam the masons were swinging block after block of the face wall into place, and the _burr-r_ and cog-chatter of the huge derrick hoisting gear were incessant. Back of the masonry the concrete mixers poured their viscous charges into the forms, and the puddlers walked back and forth on their stagings, tamping the plastic material into the network of metal bars binding the mass with the added strength of steel. Bromley led the way through the stone-yard activities and around the quarry hill to the path notched in the steep slope of the canyon side. The second turn brought them to the gap made by the land-slide. It was a curious breach, abrupt and clean-cut; its shape and depth suggesting the effect of a mighty hammer blow scoring its groove from the path level to the river's edge. The material was a compact yellow shale, showing no signs of disintegration elsewhere. "What's your notion, Loudon?" said Ballard, when they were standing on the edge of the newly made gash. Bromley wagged his head doubtfully. "I'm not so sure of it now as I thought I was when I came up here this morning. Do you see that black streak out there on the shale, just about at the path level? A few hours ago I could have sworn it was a powder burn; the streak left by a burning fuse. It doesn't look so much like it now, I'll confess." "You've 'got 'em' about as bad as Hoskins has," laughed Ballard. "A dynamite charge that would account for this would advertise itself pretty loudly in a live camp five hundred yards away. Besides, it would have had to be drilled before it could be shot, and the drill-holes would show up--as they don't." "Yes," was the reply; "I grant you the drill-holes. I guess I have 'got 'em,' as you say. But the bang wouldn't count. Quinlan let off half a dozen blasts in the quarry at quitting time yesterday, and one jar more or less just at that time wouldn't have been noticed." Ballard put his arm across the theorist's shoulders and faced him about to front the down-canyon industries. "You mustn't let this mystery-smoke get into your nostrils, Loudon, boy," he said. "Whatever happens, there must always be two cool heads and two sets of steady nerves on this job--yours and mine. Now let's go down the railroad on the push-car and see how Williams is getting along with his pick-up stunt. He ought to have the Two standing on her feet by this time." XI GUN PLAY Three days after the wreck in the Lava Hills, Ballard was again making the round of the outpost camps in the western end of the valley, verifying grade lines, re-establishing data stakes lost, or destroyed by the Craigmiles range riders, hustling the ditch diggers, and, incidentally, playing host to young Lucius Bigelow, the Forestry Service member of Miss Elsa's house-party. Bigelow's inclusion as a guest on the inspection gallop had been planned, not by his temporary host, but by Miss Elsa herself. Mr. Bigelow's time was his own, she had explained in her note to Ballard, but he was sufficiently an enthusiast in his chosen profession to wish to combine a field study of the Arcadian watersheds with the pleasures of a summer outing. If Mr. Ballard would be so kind ... and all the other fitting phrases in which my lady begs the boon she may strictly require at the hands of the man who has said the talismanic words, "I love you." As he was constrained to be, Ballard was punctiliously hospitable to the quiet, self-contained young man who rode an entire day at his pace-setter's side without uttering a dozen words on his own initiative. The hospitality was purely dutiful at first; but later Bigelow earned it fairly. Making no advances on his own part, the guest responded generously when Ballard drew him out; and behind the mask of thoughtful reticence the Kentuckian discovered a man of stature, gentle of speech, simple of heart, and a past-master of the wood- and plains-craft that a constructing engineer, however broad-minded, can acquire only as his work demands it. "You gentlemen of the tree bureau can certainly give us points on ordinary common sense, Mr. Bigelow," Ballard admitted on this, the third day out, when the student of natural conditions had called attention to the recklessness of the contractors in cutting down an entire forest of slope-protecting young pines to make trestle-bents for a gulch flume. "I am afraid I should have done precisely what Richards has done here: taken the first and most convenient timber I could lay hands on." "That is the point of view the Forestry Service is trying to modify," rejoined Bigelow, mildly. "To the average American, educated or ignorant, wood seems the cheapest material in a world of plenty. Yet I venture to say that in this present instance your company could better have afforded almost any other material for those trestle-bents. That slope will make you pay high for its stripping before you can grow another forest to check the flood wash." "Of course it will; that says itself, now that you have pointed it out," Ballard agreed. "Luckily, the present plans of the company don't call for much flume timber; I say 'luckily,' because I don't like to do violence to my convictions, when I'm happy enough to have any." Bigelow's grave smile came and went like the momentary glow from some inner light of prescience. "Unless I am greatly mistaken, you are a man of very strong convictions, Mr. Ballard," he ventured to say. "Think so? I don't know. A fair knowledge of my trade, a few opinions, and a certain pig-headed stubbornness that doesn't know when it is beaten: shake these up together and you have the compound which has misled you. I'm afraid I don't often wait for convincement--of the purely philosophical brand." They were riding together down the line of the northern lateral canal, with Bourke Fitzpatrick's new headquarters in the field for the prospective night's bivouac. The contractor's camp, a disorderly blot of shanties and well-weathered tents on the fair grass-land landscape, came in sight just as the sun was sinking below the Elks, and Ballard quickened the pace. "You'll be ready to quit for the day when we get in, won't you?" he said to Bigelow, when the broncos came neck and neck in the scurry for the hay racks. "Oh, I'm fit enough, by now," was the ready rejoinder. "It was only the first day that got on my nerves." There was a rough-and-ready welcome awaiting the chief engineer and his guest when they drew rein before Fitzpatrick's commissary; and a supper of the void-filling sort was quickly set before them in the back room of the contractor's quarters. But there was trouble in the air. Ballard saw that Fitzpatrick was cruelly hampered by the presence of Bigelow; and when the meal was finished he gave the contractor his chance in the privacy of the little cramped pay-office. "What is it, Bourke?" he asked, when the closed door cut them off from the Forest Service man. Fitzpatrick was shaking his head. "It's a blood feud now, Mr. Ballard. Gallagher's gang--all Irishmen--went up against four of the colonel's men early this morning. The b'ys took shelter in the ditch, and the cow-punchers tried to run 'em out. Some of our teamsters were armed, and one of the Craigmiles men was killed or wounded--we don't know which: the others picked him up and carried him off." Ballard's eyes narrowed under his thoughtful frown. "I've been afraid it would come to that, sooner or later," he said slowly. Then he added: "We ought to be able to stop it. The colonel seems to deprecate the scrapping part of it as much as we do." Fitzpatrick's exclamation was of impatient disbelief. "Any time he'll hold up his little finger, Mr. Ballard, this monkey-business will go out like a squib fuse in a wet hole! He isn't wanting to stop it." Ballard became reflective again, and hazarded another guess. "Perhaps the object-lesson of this morning will have a good effect. A chance shot has figured as a peacemaker before this." "Don't you believe it's going to work that way this time!" was the earnest protest. "If the Craigmiles outfit doesn't whirl in and shoot up this camp before to-morrow morning, I'm missing my guess." Ballard rapped the ashes from his briar, and refilled and lighted it. When the tobacco was glowing in the bowl, he said, quite decisively: "In that case, we'll try to give them what they are needing. Are you picketed?" "No." "See to it at once. Make a corral of the wagons and scrapers and get the stock inside of it. Then put out a line of sentries, with relays to relieve the men every two hours. We needn't be taken by surprise, whatever happens." Fitzpatrick jerked a thumb toward the outer room where Bigelow was smoking his after-supper pipe. "How about your friend?" he asked. At the query Ballard realised that the presence of the Forest Service man was rather unfortunate. Constructively his own guest, Bigelow was really the guest of Colonel Craigmiles; and the position of a neutral in any war is always a difficult one. "Mr. Bigelow is a member of the house-party at Castle 'Cadia," he said, in reply to the contractor's doubtful question. "But I can answer for his discretion. I'll tell him what he ought to know, and he may do as he pleases." Following out the pointing of his own suggestion, Ballard gave Bigelow a brief outline of the Arcadian conflict while Fitzpatrick was posting the sentries. The Government man made no comment, save to say that it was a most unhappy situation; but when Ballard offered to show him to his quarters for the night, he protested at once. "No, indeed, Mr. Ballard," he said, quite heartily, for him; "you mustn't leave me out that way. At the worst, you may be sure that I stand for law and order. I have heard something of this fight between your company and the colonel, and while I can't pretend to pass upon the merits of it, I don't propose to go to bed and let you stand guard over me." "All right, and thank you," laughed Ballard; and together they went out to help Fitzpatrick with his preliminaries for the camp defence. This was between eight and nine o'clock; and by ten the stock was corralled within the line of shacks and tents, a cordon of watchers had been stretched around the camp, and the greater number of Fitzpatrick's men were asleep in the bunk tents and shanties. The first change of sentries was made at midnight, and Ballard and Bigelow both walked the rounds with Fitzpatrick. Peace and quietness reigned supreme. The stillness of the beautiful summer night was undisturbed, and the roundsmen found a good half of the sentinels asleep at their posts. Ballard was disposed to make light of Fitzpatrick's fears, and the contractor took it rather hard. "I know 'tis all hearsay with you, yet, Mr. Ballard; you haven't been up against it," he protested, when the three of them were back at the camp-fire which was burning in front of the commissary. "But if you had been scrapping with these devils for the better part of two years, as we have----" The interruption was a sudden quaking tremor of earth and atmosphere followed by a succession of shocks like the quick firing of a battleship squadron. A sucking draught of wind swept through the camp, and the fire leaped up as from the blast of an underground bellows. Instantly the open spaces of the headquarters were alive with men tumbling from their bunks; and into the thick of the confusion rushed the lately posted sentries. For a few minutes the turmoil threatened to become a panic, but Fitzpatrick and a handful of the cooler-headed gang bosses got it under, the more easily since there was no attack to follow the explosions. Then came a cautious reconnaissance in force down the line of the canal in the direction of the earthquake, and a short quarter of a mile below the camp the scouting detachment reached the scene of destruction. The raiders had chosen their ground carefully. At a point where the canal cutting passed through the shoulder of a hill they had planted charges of dynamite deep in the clay of the upper hillside. The explosions had started a land-slide, and the patient digging work of weeks had been obliterated in a moment. Ballard said little. Fitzpatrick was on the ground to do the swearing, and the money loss was his, if Mr. Pelham's company chose to make him stand it. What Celtic rage could compass in the matter of cursings was not lacking; and at the finish of the outburst there was an appeal, vigorous and forceful. "You're the boss, Mr. Ballard, and 'tis for you to say whether we throw up this job and quit, or give these blank, blank imps iv hell what's comin' to 'em!" was the form the appeal took; and the new chief accepted the challenge promptly. "What are your means of communication with the towns in the Gunnison valley?" he asked abruptly. Fitzpatrick pulled himself down from the rage heights and made shift to answer as a man. "There's a bridle trail down the canyon to Jack's Cabin; and from that on you hit the railroad." "And the distance to Jack's Cabin?" "Twenty-five miles, good and strong, by the canyon crookings; but only about half of it is bad going." "Is there anybody in your camp who knows the trail?" "Yes. Dick Carson, the water-boy." "Good. We'll go back with you, and you'll let me have the boy and two of your freshest horses." "You'll not be riding that trail in the dark, Mr. Ballard! It's a fright, even in daylight." "That's my affair," said the engineer, curtly. "If your boy can find the trail, I'll ride it." That settled it for the moment, and the scouting party made its way up to the headquarters to carry the news of the land-slide. Bigelow walked in silence beside his temporary host, saying nothing until after they had reached camp, and Fitzpatrick had gone to assemble the horses and the guide. Then he said, quite as if it were a matter of course: "I'm going with you, Mr. Ballard, if you don't object." Ballard did object, pointedly and emphatically, making the most of the night ride and the hazardous trail. When these failed to discourage the young man from Washington, the greater objection came out baldly. "You owe it to your earlier host to ride back to Castle 'Cadia from here, Mr. Bigelow. I'm going to declare war, and you can't afford to identify yourself with me," was the way Ballard put it; but Bigelow only smiled and shook his head. "I'm not to be shunted quite so easily," he said. "Unless you'll say outright that I'll be a butt-in, I'm going with you." "All right; if it's the thing you want to do," Ballard yielded. "Of course, I shall be delighted to have you along." And when Fitzpatrick came with two horses he sent him back to the corral for a third. The preparations for the night ride were soon made, and it was not until Ballard and Bigelow were making ready to mount at the door of the commissary that Fitzpatrick reappeared with the guide, a grave-faced lad who looked as if he might be years older than any guess his diminutive stature warranted. Ballard's glance was an eye-sweep of shrewd appraisal. "You're not much bigger than a pint of cider, Dickie boy," he commented. "Why don't you take a start and grow some?" "I'm layin' off to; when I get time. Pap allows I got to'r he won't own to me," said the boy soberly. "Who is your father?" The query was a mere fill-in, bridging the momentary pause while Ballard was inspecting the saddle cinchings of the horse he was to ride; and evidently the boy so regarded it. "He's a man," he answered briefly, adding nothing to the supposable fact. Bigelow was up, and Ballard was putting a leg over his wiry little mount when Fitzpatrick emerged from the dimly lighted interior of the commissary bearing arms--a pair of short-barrelled repeating rifles in saddle-holsters. "Better be slinging these under the stirrup-leathers--you and your friend, Mr. Ballard," he suggested. "All sorts of things are liable to get up in the tall hills when a man hasn't got a gun." This was so patently said for the benefit of the little circle of onlooking workmen that Ballard bent to the saddle-horn while Fitzpatrick was buckling the rifle-holster in place. "What is it, Bourke?" he asked quietly. "More of the same," returned the contractor, matching the low tone of the inquiry. "Craigmiles has got his spies in every camp, and you're probably spotted, same as old man Macpherson used to be when he rode the work. If that cussed Mexican foreman does be getting wind of this, and shy a guess at why you're heading for Jack's Cabin and the railroad in the dead o' night----" Ballard's exclamation was impatient. "This thing has got on your digestion, Bourke," he said, rallying the big contractor. "Up at the Elbow Canyon camp it's a hoodoo bogey, and down here it's the Craigmiles cow-boys. Keep your shirt on, and we'll stop it--stop it short." Then, lowering his voice again: "Is the boy trustworthy?" Fitzpatrick's shrug was more French than Irish. "He can show you the trail; and he hates the Craigmiles outfit as the devil hates holy water. His father was a 'rustler,' and the colonel got him sent over the road for cattle-stealing. Dick comes of pretty tough stock, but I guess he'll do you right." Ballard nodded, found his seat in the saddle, and gave the word. "Pitch out, Dick," he commanded; and the small cavalcade of three skirted the circle of tents and shacks to take the westward trail in single file, the water-boy riding in advance and the Forestry man bringing up the rear. In this order the three passed the scene of the assisted land-slide, where the acrid fumes of the dynamite were still hanging in the air, and came upon ground new to Bigelow and practically so to Ballard. For a mile or more the canal line hugged the shoulders of the foothills, doubling and reversing until only the steadily rising sky-line of the Elks gave evidence of its progress westward. As in its earlier half, the night was still and cloudless, and the stars burned with the white lustre of the high altitudes, swinging slowly to the winding course in their huge inverted bowl of velvety blackness. From camp to camp on the canal grade there was desertion absolute; and even Bigelow, with ears attuned to the alarm sounds of the wilds, had heard nothing when the cavalcade came abruptly upon Riley's camp, the outpost of the ditch-diggers. At Riley's they found only the horse-watchers awake. From these they learned that the distant booming of the explosions had aroused only a few of the lightest sleepers. Ballard made inquiry pointing to the Craigmiles riders. Had any of them been seen in the vicinity of the outpost camp? "Not since sundown," was the horse-watcher's answer. "About an hour before candle-lightin', two of 'em went ridin' along up-river, drivin' a little bunch o' cattle." The engineer gathered rein and was about to pull his horse once more into the westward trail, when the boy guide put in his word. "Somebody's taggin' us, all right, if that's what you're aimin' to find out," he said, quite coolly. Ballard started. "What's that?" he demanded. "How do you know?" "Been listenin'--when you-all didn't make so much noise that I couldn't," was the calm rejoinder. "There's two of 'em, and they struck in just after we passed the dynamite heave-down." Ballard bent his head and listened. "I don't hear anything," he objected. "Nachelly," said the boy. "They-all ain't sech tenderfoots as to keep on comin' when we've stopped. Want to dodge 'em?" "There's no question about that," was the mandatory reply. The sober-faced lad took a leaf out of the book of the past--his own or his cattle-stealing father's. "We got to stampede your stock a few lines, Pete," he said, shortly, to the horse-watcher who had answered Ballard's inquiry. "Get up and pull your picket-pins." "Is that right, Mr. Ballard?" asked the man. "It is if Dick says so. I'll back his orders." The boy gave the orders tersely after the horse-guard had risen and kicked his two companions awake. The night herdsmen were to pick and saddle their own mounts, and to pull the picket-pins for the grazing mule drove. While this was doing, the small plotter vouchsafed the necessary word of explanation to Ballard and Bigelow. "We ride into the bunch and stampede it, headin' it along the trail the way we're goin'. After we've done made noise enough and tracks enough, and gone far enough to make them fellers lose the sound of us that they've been follerin', we cut out of the crowd and make our little _pasear_ down canyon, and the herd-riders can chase out and round up their stock again: see?" Ballard made the sign of acquiescence; and presently the thing was done substantially as the boy had planned. The grazing mules, startled by the sudden dash of the three mounted broncos among them, and helped along by a few judicious quirt blows, broke and ran in frightened panic, carrying the three riders in the thick of the rout. Young Carson, skilful as the son of the convict stock-lifter had been trained to be, deftly herded the thundering stampede in the desired direction; and at the end of a galloping mile abruptly gave the shrill yell of command to the two men whom he was piloting. There was a swerve aside out of the pounding melée, a dash for an opening between the swelling foothills, and the ruck of snorting mules swept on in a broad circle that would later make recapture by the night herders a simple matter of gathering up the trailing picket-ropes. The three riders drew rein in the shelter of the arroyo gulch to breathe their horses, and Ballard gave the boy due credit. "That was very neatly done, Dick," he said, when the thunder of the pounding hoofs had died away in the up-river distances. "Is it going to bump those fellows off of our trail?" The water-boy was humped over the horn of his saddle as if he had found a stomach-ache in the breathless gallop. But he was merely listening. "I ain't reskin' any money on it," he qualified. "If them cow-punch's 've caught on to where you're goin', and what you're goin' _fer_----" Out of the stillness filling the hill-gorge like a black sea of silence came a measured thudding of hoofs and an unmistakable squeaking of saddle leather. Like a flash the boy was afoot and reaching under his bronco's belly for a tripping hold on the horse's forefoot. "Down! and pitch the cayuses!" he quavered stridently; and as the three horses rolled in the dry sand of the arroyo bed with their late riders flattened upon their heads, the inner darkness of the gorge spat fire and there was a fine singing whine of bullets overhead. XII THE RUSTLERS In defiance of all the laws of precedence, it was the guest who first rose to the demands of the spiteful occasion. While Ballard was still struggling with the holster strappings of his rifle, Bigelow had disengaged his weapon and was industriously pumping a rapid-fire volley into the flame-spitting darkness of the gorge. The effect of the prompt reply in kind was quickly made manifest. The firing ceased as abruptly as it had begun, a riderless horse dashed snorting down the bed of the dry arroyo, narrowly missing a stumbling collision with the living obstructions lying in his way, and other gallopings were heard withdrawing into the hill-shadowed obscurities. It was Ballard who took the water-boy to task when they had waited long enough to be measurably certain that the attackers had left the field. "You were mistaken, Dick," he said, breaking the strained silence. "There were more than two of them." Young Carson was getting his horse up, and he appeared to be curiously at fault. "You're plumb right, Cap'n Ballard," he admitted. "But that ain't what's pinchin' me: there's always enough of 'em night-herdin' this end of the range so 'at they could have picked up another hand 'r two. What I cayn't tumble to is how they-all out-rid us." "To get ahead of us, you mean?" "That's it. We're in the neck of a little hogback draw that goes on down to the big canyon. The only other trail into the draw is along by the river and up this-a-way--'bout a mile and a half furder 'n the road we come, I reckon." It was the persistent element of mystery once more thrusting itself into the prosaic field of the industries; but before Ballard could grapple with it, the fighting guest cut in quietly. "One of their bullets seems to have nipped me in the arm," he said, admitting the fact half reluctantly and as if it were something to be ashamed of. "Will you help me tie it up?" Ballard came out of the speculative fog with a bound. "Good heavens, Bigelow! are you hit? Why didn't you say something?" he exclaimed, diving into the pockets of his duck coat for matches and a candle-end. "It wasn't worth while; it's only a scratch, I guess." But the lighted candle-end proved it to be something more; a ragged furrow plowed diagonally across the forearm. Ballard dressed it as well as he could, the water-boy holding the candle, and when the rough job of surgery was done, was for sending the Forestry man back to the valley head and Castle 'Cadia with the wound for a sufficient reason. But Bigelow developed a sudden vein of stubbornness. He would neither go back alone, nor would he consent to be escorted. "A little thing like this is all in the day's work," he protested. "We'll go on, when you're ready; or, rather, we'll go and hunt for the owner of that horse whose saddle I suppose I must have emptied. I'm just vindictive enough to hope that its rider was the fellow who pinked me." As it happened, the hope was to be neither confirmed nor positively denied. A little farther up the dry arroyo the candle-end, sputtering to its extinction, showed them a confusion of hoof tramplings in the yielding sand, but nothing more. Dead or wounded, the horse-losing rider had evidently been carried off by his companions. "Which proves pretty conclusively that there must have been more than two," was Ballard's deduction, when they were again pushing cautiously down the inner valley toward its junction with the great canyon. "But why should two, or a dozen of them, fire on us in the dark? How could they know whether we were friends or enemies?" Bigelow's quiet laugh had a touch of grimness in it. "Your Elbow Canyon mysteries have broken bounds," he suggested. "Your staff should include an expert psychologist, Mr. Ballard." Ballard's reply was belligerent. "If we had one, I'd swap him for a section of mounted police," he declared; and beyond that the narrow trail in the cliff-walled gorge of the Boiling Water forbade conversation. Three hours farther down the river trail, when the summer dawn was paling the stars in the narrow strip of sky overhead, the perpendicular walls of the great canyon gave back a little, and looking past the water-boy guide, Ballard saw an opening marking the entrance of a small tributary stream from the north; a little green oasis in the vast desert of frowning cliffs and tumbled boulders, with a log cabin and a tiny corral nestling under the portal rock of the smaller stream. "Hello!" said Bigelow, breaking the silence in which they had been riding for the greater part of the three hours, "what's this we are coming to?" Ballard was about to pass the query on to the boy when an armed man in the flapped hat and overalls of a range rider stepped from behind a boulder and barred the way. There was a halt, an exchange of words between young Carson and the flap-hatted trail-watcher in tones so low as to be inaudible to the others, and the armed one faced about, rather reluctantly, it seemed, to lead the way to the cabin under the cliff. At the dismounting before the cabin door, the boy cleared away a little of the mystery. "This yere is whar I live when I'm at home," he drawled, lapsing by the influence of the propinquity into the Tennessee idiom which was his birthright. "Pap'll get ye your breakfas' while I'm feedin' the bronc's." Ballard glanced quickly at his guest and met the return glance of complete intelligence in the steady gray eyes of the Forestry man. The cabin and the corral in the secluded canyon were sufficiently accounted for. But one use could be made of a stock enclosure in such an inaccessible mountain fastness. The trail station in the heart of the Boiling Water wilderness was doubtless the headquarters of the "rustlers" who lived by preying upon the King of Arcadia's flocks and herds. "Your allies in the little war against Colonel Craigmiles," said Bigelow, and there was something like a touch of mild reproach in his low tone when he added: "Misery isn't the only thing that 'acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.'" "Apparently not," said Ballard; and they went together into the kitchen half of the cabin which was built, in true Tennessee fashion, as "two pens and a passage." The welcome accorded them by the sullen-faced man who was already frying rashers of bacon over the open fire on the hearth was not especially cordial. "Mek' ye an arm and re'ch for yerselves," was his sole phrase of hospitality, when the bacon and pan-bread were smoking on the huge hewn slab which served for a table; and he neither ate with his guests nor waited upon them, save to refill the tin coffee cups as they were emptied. Neither of the two young men stayed longer than they were obliged to in the dirty, leather-smelling kitchen. There was freedom outside, with the morning world of fresh, zestful immensities for a smoking-room; and when they had eaten, they went to sit on a flat rock by the side of the little stream to fill and light their pipes, Ballard crumbling the cut-plug and stoppering the pipe for his crippled companion. "How is the bullet-gouge by this time?" he questioned, when the tobacco was alight. "It's pretty sore, and no mistake," Bigelow acknowledged frankly. Whereupon Ballard insisted upon taking the bandages off and re-dressing the wound, with the crystal-clear, icy water of the mountain stream for its cleansing. "It was a sheer piece of idiocy on my part--letting you come on with me after you got this," was his verdict, when he had a daylight sight of the bullet score. "But I don't mean to be idiotic twice in the same day," he went on. "You're going to stay right here and keep quiet until we come along back and pick you up, late this afternoon." Bigelow made a wry face. "Nice, cheerful prospect," he commented. "The elder cattle thief isn't precisely one's ideal of the jovial host. By the way, what was the matter with him while we were eating breakfast? He looked and acted as if there were a sick child in some one of the dark corners which he was afraid we might disturb." Ballard nodded. "I was wondering if you remarked it. Did you hear the sick baby?" "I heard noises--besides those that Carson was so carefully making with the skillet and the tin plates. The room across the passage from us wasn't empty." "That was my guess," rejoined Ballard, pulling thoughtfully at his short pipe. "I heard voices and tramplings, and, once in a while, something that sounded remarkably like a groan--or an oath." Bigelow nodded in his turn. "More of the mysteries, you'd say; but this time they don't especially concern us. Have you fully made up your mind to leave me here while you go on down to the railroad? Because if you have, you and the boy will have to compel my welcome from the old robber: I'd never have the face to ask him for a whole day's hospitality." "I'll fix that," said Ballard, and when the boy came from the corral with the saddled horses, he went to do it, leaving Bigelow to finish his pipe on the flat rock of conference. The "fixing" was not accomplished without some difficulty, as it appeared to the young man sitting on the flat stone at the stream side. Dick brought his father to the door, and Ballard did the talking--considerably more of it than might have been deemed necessary for the simple request to be proffered. At the end of the talk, Ballard came back to the flat stone. "You stay," he said briefly to Bigelow. "Carson will give you your dinner. But he says he has a sick man on his hands in the cabin, and you'll have to excuse him." "He was willing?" queried Bigelow. "No; he wasn't at all willing. He acted as if he were a loaded camel, and your staying was going to be the final back-breaking straw. But he's a Tennessean, and we've been kind to his boy. The ranch is yours for the day, only if I were you, I shouldn't make too free use of it." Bigelow smiled. "I'll be 'meachum' and keep fair in the middle of the road. I don't know anything that a prosecuting attorney could make use of against the man who has given me my breakfast, and who promises to give me my dinner, and I don't want to know anything. Please don't waste any more daylight on me: Dick has the horses ready, and he is evidently growing anxious." Ballard left the Forestry man smoking and sunning himself on the flat boulder when he took the down-canyon trail with the sober-faced boy for his file leader, and more than once during the rather strenuous day to which the pocket-gulch incident was the introduction, his thoughts went back to Bigelow, marooned in the depths of the great canyon with the saturnine cattle thief, the sick man, and doubtless other members of the band of "rustlers." It was therefore, with no uncertain feeling of relief that he returned in the late afternoon at the head of a file of as hard-looking miscreants as ever were gathered in a sheriff's posse, and found Bigelow sitting on the step of the Carson cabin, still nursing the bandaged arm, and still smoking the pipe of patience. "I'm left to do the honours, gentlemen," said the Forestry man, rising and smiling quaintly. "The owner of the ranch regrets to say that he has been unavoidably called away; but the feed in the corral and the provisions in the kitchen are yours for the taking and the cooking." The sheriff, a burly giant whose face, figure, garmenting and graceful saddle-seat proclaimed the ex-cattleman, laughed appreciatively. "Bat Carson knows a healthy climate as far as he can see the sun a-shinin'," he chuckled; and then to his deputies: "Light down, boys, and we'll see what sort o' chuck he's left for us." In the dismounting Ballard drew Bigelow aside. "What has happened?" he asked. "You can prove nothing by me," returned Bigelow, half quizzically. "I've been asleep most of the day. When I woke up, an hour or so ago, the doors were open and the cabin was empty. Also, there was a misspelled note charcoaled on a box-cover in the kitchen, making us free of the horse-bait and the provisions. Also, again, a small bunch of cattle that I had seen grazing in a little park up the creek had disappeared." "Um," said Ballard, discontentedly. "All of which makes us accessories after the fact in another raid on Colonel Craigmiles's range herd. I don't like that." "Nor do I," Bigelow agreed. "But you can't eat a man's bread, and then stay awake to see which way he escapes. I'm rather glad I was sleepy enough not to be tempted. Which reminds me: you must be about all in on that score yourself, Mr. Ballard." "I? Oh, no; I got in five or six hours on the railroad train, going and coming between Jack's Cabin and the county seat." The posse members were tramping into the kitchen to ransack it for food and drink, and Bigelow stood still farther aside. "You managed to gather up a beautiful lot of cutthroats in the short time at your disposal," he remarked. "Didn't I? And now you come against one of my weaknesses, Bigelow: I can't stay mad. Last night I thought I'd be glad to see a bunch of the colonel's cow-boys well hanged. To-day I'm sick and ashamed to be seen tagging this crew of hired sure-shots into the colonel's domain." "Just keep on calling it the Arcadia Company's domain, and perhaps the feeling will wear off," suggested the Forestry man. "It's no joke," said Ballard, crustily; and then he went in to take his chance of supper with the sheriff and his "sure-shots." There was still sufficient daylight for the upper canyon passage when the rough-riders had eaten Carson out of house and home, and were mounted again for the ascent to the Kingdom of Arcadia. In the up-canyon climb, the sheriff kept the boy, Dick, within easy bridle clutch, remembering a certain other canyon faring in which the cattle thief's son had narrowly missed putting his father's captors, men and horses, into the torrent of the Boiling Water. Ballard and Bigelow rode ahead; and when the thunderous diapason of the river permitted, they talked. "How did they manage to move the sick man?" asked Ballard, when the trail and the stream gave him leave. "That is another of the things that I don't know; I'm a leather-bound edition of an encyclopædia when it comes to matters of real information," was the ironical answer. "But your guess of this morning was right; there was a sick man--sick or hurt some way. I took the liberty of investigating a little when I awoke and found the ranch deserted. The other room of the cabin was a perfect shambles." "Blood?" queried the engineer; and Bigelow nodded. "Blood everywhere." "A falling-out among thieves, I suppose," said Ballard, half-absently; and again Bigelow said: "I don't know." "The boy knows," was Ballard's comment. "He knew before he left the ranch this morning. I haven't been able to get a dozen words out of him all day." Just here both stream-noise and trail-narrowing cut in to forbid further talk, and Bigelow drew back to let Ballard lead in the single-file progress along the edge of the torrent. It was in this order that they came finally into the Arcadian grass-lands, through a portal as abrupt as a gigantic doorway. It was the hour of sunset for the high peaks of the Elk range, and the purple shadows were already gathering among the rounded hills of the hogback. Off to the left the two advanced riders of the posse cavalcade saw the evening kitchen-smoke of Riley's ditch-camp. On the hills to the right a few cattle were grazing unherded. But two things in the prospect conspired to make Ballard draw rein so suddenly as to bring him awkwardly into collision with his follower. One was a glimpse of the Castle 'Cadia touring car trundling swiftly away to the eastward on the river road; and the other was a slight barrier of tree branches piled across the trail fairly under his horse's nose. Stuck upon a broken twig of the barrier was a sheet of paper; and there was still sufficient light to enable the chief engineer to read the type-written lines upon it when he dropped from the saddle. "Mr. Ballard:" it ran. "You are about to commit an act of the crudest injustice. Take the advice of an anxious friend, and quench the fire of enmity before it gets beyond control." There was no signature; and Ballard was still staring after the disappearing automobile when he mechanically passed the sheet of paper up to Bigelow. The Forestry man read the type-written note and glanced back at the sheriff's posse just emerging from the canyon portal. "What will you do?" he asked; and Ballard came alive with a start and shook his head. "I don't know: if we could manage to overtake that auto.... But it's too late now to do anything, Bigelow. I've made my complaint and sworn out the warrants. Beckwith will serve them--he's obliged to serve them." "Of course," said Bigelow; and together they waited for the sheriff's posse to close up. XIII THE LAW AND THE LADY It touched a little spring of wonderment in the Forestry man when Ballard made the waiting halt merely an excuse for a word of leave-taking with Sheriff Beckwith; a brittle exchange of formalities in which no mention was made of the incident of the brush barrier and the type-written note. "You have your warrants, and you know your way around in the valley; you won't need me," was the manner in which the young engineer drew out of the impending unpleasantness. "When you have taken your prisoners to the county seat, the company's attorneys will do the rest." Beckwith, being an ex-cattleman, was grimly sarcastic. "This is my job, and I'll do it up man-size and b'ligerent, Mr. Ballard. But between us three and the gate-post, you ain't goin' to make anything by it--barrin' a lot o' bad blood. The old colonel 'll give a bond and bail his men, and there you are again, right where you started from." "That's all right; I believe in the law, and I'm giving it a chance," snapped Ballard; and the two parties separated, the sheriff's posse taking the river road, and Ballard leading the way across country in the direction of Fitzpatrick's field headquarters. Rather more than half of the distance from the canyon head to the camp had been covered before the boy, Carson, had lagged far enough behind to give Bigelow a chance for free speech with Ballard, but the Forestry man improved the opportunity as soon as it was given him. "You still believe there is no hope of a compromise?" he began. "What the sheriff said a few minutes ago is quite true, you know. The cow-boys will be back in a day or two, and it will make bad blood." "Excuse me," said Ballard, irritably; "you are an onlooker, Mr. Bigelow, and you can afford to pose as a peacemaker. But I've had all I can stand. If Colonel Craigmiles can't control his flap-hatted bullies, we'll try to help him. There is a week's work for half a hundred men and teams lying in that ditch over yonder," pointing with his quirt toward the dynamited cutting. "Do you think I'm going to lie down and let these cattle-punchers ride rough-shod over me and the company I represent? Not to-day, or any other day, I assure you." "Then you entirely disregard the little type-written note?" "In justice to my employers, I am bound to call Colonel Craigmiles's bluff, whatever form it takes." Bigelow rode in silence for the next hundred yards. Then he began again. "It doesn't seem like the colonel: to go at you indirectly that way." "He was in that automobile: I saw him. The notice could scarcely have been posted without his knowledge." "No," Bigelow agreed, slowly. But immediately afterward he added: "There were others in the car." "I know it--four or five of them. But that doesn't let the colonel out." Again Bigelow relapsed into silence, and the camp-fires of Fitzpatrick's headquarters were in sight when he said: "You confessed to me a few hours ago that one of your weaknesses was the inability to stay angry. Will you pardon me if I say that it seems to have its compensation in the law of recurrences?" Ballard's laugh was frankly apologetic. "You may go farther and say that I am ill-mannered enough to quarrel with a good friend who cheerfully gets himself shot up in my behalf. Overlook it, Mr. Bigelow; and I'll try to remember that I am a partisan, while you are only a good-natured non-combatant. This little affair is a fact accomplished, so far as we are concerned. The colonel's cow-men dynamited our ditch; Sheriff Beckwith will do his duty; and the company's attorney will see to it that somebody pays the penalty. Let's drop it--as between us two." Being thus estopped, Bigelow held his peace; and a little later they were dismounting before the door of Fitzpatrick's commissary. When the contractor had welcomed and fed them, Ballard rolled into the nearest bunk and went to sleep to make up the arrearages, leaving his guest to smoke alone. Bigelow took his desertion good-naturedly, and sat for an hour or more on a bench in front of the storeroom, puffing quietly at his pipe, and taking an onlooker's part in the ditch-diggers' games of dice-throwing and card-playing going on around the great fire in the plaza. When the pipe went out after its second filling, he got up and strolled a little way beyond the camp limits. The night was fine and mild for the altitudes, and he had walked a circling mile before he found himself again at the camp confines. It was here, at the back of the mule drove, that he became once more an onlooker; this time a thoroughly mystified one. The little drama, at which the Forestry expert was the single spectator, was chiefly pantomimic, but it lacked nothing in eloquent action. Flat upon the ground, and almost among the legs of the grazing mules, lay a diminutive figure, face down, digging fingers and toes into the hoof-cut earth, and sobbing out a strange jargon of oaths and childish ragings. Before Bigelow could speak, the figure rose to its knees, its face disfigured with passion, and its small fists clenching themselves at the invisible. It was Dick Carson; and the words which Bigelow heard seemed to be shaken by some unseen force out of the thin, stoop-shouldered little body: "Oh, my Lordy! ef it could on'y be somebody else! But ther' ain't nobody else; an' I'll go to hell if I don't do it!" Now, at all events, Bigelow would have cut in, but the action of the drama was too quick for him. Like a flash the water-boy disappeared among the legs of the grazing animals; and a few minutes afterward the night gave back the sound of galloping hoofs racing away to the eastward. Bigelow marked the direction of the water-boy's flight. Since it was toward the valley head and Castle 'Cadia, he guessed that young Carson's errand concerned itself in some way with the sheriff's raid upon the Craigmiles ranch outfit. Here, however, conjecture tripped itself and fell down. Both parties in whatever conflict the sheriff's visit might provoke were the boy's natural enemies. Bigelow was wrestling with this fresh bit of mystery when he went to find his bunk in the commissary; it got into his dreams and was still present when the early morning call of the camp was sounded. But neither at the candle-lighted breakfast, nor later, when Ballard asked him if he were fit for a leisurely ride to the southern watershed for the day's outwearing, did he speak of young Carson's desertion. Fitzpatrick spoke of it, though, when the chief and his companion were mounting for the watershed ride. "You brought my water-boy back with you last night, didn't you, Mr. Ballard?" he asked. "Certainly; he came in with us. Why? Have you lost him?" "Him and one of the saddle broncos. And I don't much like the look of it." "Oh, I guess he'll turn up all right," said Ballard easily. It was Bigelow's time to speak, but something restrained him, and the contractor's inquiry died a natural death when Ballard gathered the reins and pointed the way to the southward hills. By nine o'clock the two riders were among the foothills of the southern Elks, and the chief engineer of the Arcadia Company was making a very practical use of his guest. Bigelow was an authority on watersheds, stream-basins, the conservation of moisture by forested slopes, and kindred subjects of vital importance to the construction chief of an irrigation scheme; and the talk held steadily to the technical problems, with the Forestry expert as the lecturer. Only once was there a break and a lapse into the humanities. It was when the horses had climbed one of the bald hills from the summit of which the great valley, with its dottings of camps and its streaking of canal gradings, was spread out map-like beneath them. On the distant river road, progressing by perspective inches toward the lower end of the valley, trotted a mixed mob of horsemen, something more than doubling in numbers the sheriff's posse that had ridden over the same road in the opposite direction the previous evening. "Beckwith with his game-bag?" queried Bigelow, gravely; and Ballard said: "I guess so," and immediately switched the talk back to the watershed technicalities. It was within an hour of the grading-camp supper-time when the two investigators of moisture-beds and auxiliary reservoirs rode into Fitzpatrick's headquarters and found a surprise awaiting them. The Castle 'Cadia runabout was drawn up before the commissary; and young Blacklock, in cap and gloves and dust-coat, was tinkering with the motor. "The same to you, gentlemen," he said, jocosely, when he took his head out of the bonnet. "I was just getting ready to go and chase you some more. We've been waiting a solid hour, I should say." "'We'?" questioned Ballard. "Yes; Miss Elsa and I. We've been hunting you in every place a set of rubber tires wouldn't balk at, all afternoon. Say; you don't happen to have an extra spark-plug about your clothes, either of you, do you? One of these is cracked in the porcelain, and she skips like a dog on three legs." Ballard ignored the motor disability completely. "You brought Miss Craigmiles here? Where is she now?" he demanded. The collegian laughed. "She's in the grand _salon_, and Fitzpatrick the gallant is making her a cup of commissary tea. Wouldn't that jar you?" Ballard swung out of his saddle and vanished through the open door of the commissary, leaving Bigelow and the motor-maniac to their own devices. In the littered storeroom he found Miss Craigmiles, sitting upon a coil of rope and calmly drinking her tea from a new tin can. "At last!" she sighed, smiling up at him; and then: "Mercy me! how savage you look! We are trespassers; I admit it. But you'll be lenient with us, won't you? Jerry says there is a broken spark-plug, or something; but I am sure we can move on if we're told to. You have come to tell us to move on, Mr. Ballard?" His frown was only the outward and visible sign of the inward attempt to grapple with the possibilities; but it made his words sound something less than solicitous. "This is no place for you," he began; but she would not let him go on. "I have been finding it quite a pleasant place, I assure you. Mr. Fitzpatrick is an Irish gentleman. No one could have been kinder. You've no idea of the horrible things he promised to do to the cook if this tea wasn't just right." If she were trying to make him smile, she succeeded. Fitzpatrick's picturesque language to his men was the one spectacular feature of the headquarters camp. "That proves what I said--that this is no place for you," he rejoined, still deprecating the camp crudities. "And you've been here an hour, Blacklock says." "An hour and twelve minutes, to be exact," she admitted, tilting the tiny watch pinned upon the lapel of her driving-coat. "But you left us no alternative. We have driven uncounted miles this afternoon, looking for you and Mr. Bigelow." Ballard flushed uncomfortably under the tan and sunburn. Miss Craigmiles could have but one object in seeking him, he decided; and he would have given worlds to be able to set the business affair and the sentimental on opposite sides of an impassable chasm. Since it was not to be, he said what he was constrained to say with characteristic abruptness. "It is too late. The matter is out of my hands, now. The provocation was very great; and in common loyalty to my employers I was obliged to strike back. Your father----" She stopped him with a gesture that brought the blood to his face again. "I know there has been provocation," she qualified. "But it has not been all on one side. Your men have told you how our range-riders have annoyed them: probably they have not told you how they have given blow for blow, killing cattle on the railroad, supplying themselves with fresh meat from our herd, filling up or draining the water-holes. And two days ago, at this very camp.... I don't know the merits of the case; but I do know that one of our men was shot through the shoulder, and is lying critically near to death." He nodded gloomily. "That was bad," he admitted, adding: "And it promptly brought on more violence. On the night of the same day your cow-men returned and dynamited the canal." Again she stopped him with the imperative little gesture. "Did you see them do it?" "Naturally, no one saw them do it. But it was done, nevertheless." She rose and faced him fairly. "You found my note last evening--when you were returning with Sheriff Beckwith?" "I found an unsigned note on a little barrier of tree-branches on the trail; yes." "I wrote it and put it there," she declared. "I told you you were about to commit an act of injustice, and you have committed it--a very great one, indeed, Mr. Ballard." "I am open to conviction," he conceded, almost morosely. She was confronting him like an angry goddess, and mixed up with the thought that he had never seen her so beautiful and so altogether desirable was another thought that he should like to run away and hide. "Yes; you are open to conviction--after the fact!" she retorted, bitterly. "Do you know what you have done? You have fallen like a hot-headed boy into a trap set for you by my father's enemies. You have carefully stripped Arcadia of every man who could defend our cattle--just as it was planned for you to do." "But, good heavens!" he began, "I----" "Hear me out," she commanded, looking more than ever the princess of her father's kingdom. "Down in the canyon of the Boiling Water there is a band of outlaws that has harried this valley for years. Assuming that you would do precisely what you have done, some of these men came up and dynamited your canal, timing the raid to fit your inspection tour. Am I making it sufficiently plain?" "O my sainted ancestors!" he groaned. And then: "Please go on; you can't make it any worse." "They confidently expected that you would procure a wholesale arrest of the Arcadia ranch force; but they did not expect you to act as promptly as you did. That is why they turned and fired upon you in Dry Valley Gulch: they thought they were suspected and pursued, not by you or any of your men, but by our cow-boys. Your appearance at the cabin at the mouth of Deer Creek yesterday morning explained things, and they let you go on without taking vengeance for the man Mr. Bigelow had shot in the Dry Valley affray. They were willing to let the greater matter outweigh the smaller." Ballard said "Good heavens!" again, and leaned weakly against the commissary counter. Then, suddenly, it came over him like a cool blast of wind on a hot day that this clear-eyed, sweet-faced young woman's intimate knowledge of the labyrinthine tangle was almost superhuman enough to be uncanny. Would the nerve-shattering mysteries never be cleared away? "You know all this--as only an eye-witness could know," he stammered. "How, in the name of all that is wonderful----" "We are not without friends--even in your camps," she admitted. "Word came to Castle 'Cadia of your night ride and its purpose. For the later details there was little Dick. My father once had his father sent to the penitentiary for cattle-stealing. In pity for the boy, I persuaded some of our Denver friends to start a petition for a pardon. Dick has not forgotten it; and last night he rode to Castle 'Cadia to tell me what I have told you--the poor little lad being more loyal to me than he is to his irreclaimable wretch of a father. Also, he told me another thing: to-night, while the range cattle are entirely unguarded, there will be another raid from Deer Creek. I thought you might like to know how hard a blow you have struck us, this time. That is why I have made Jerry drive me a hundred miles or so up and down the valley this afternoon." The situation was well beyond speech, any exculpatory speech of Ballard's, but there was still an opportunity for deeds. Going to the door he called to Bigelow, and when the Forestry man came in, his part in what was to be done was assigned abruptly. "Mr. Bigelow, you can handle the runabout with one good arm, I'm sure: drive Miss Craigmiles home, if you please, and let me have Blacklock." "Certainly, if Miss Elsa is willing to exchange a good chauffeur for a poor one," was the good-natured reply. And then to his hostess: "Are you willing, Miss Craigmiles?" "Mr. Ballard is the present tyrant of Arcadia. If he shows us the door----" Bigelow was already at the car step, waiting to help her in. There was time only for a single sentence of caution, and Ballard got it in a swift aside. "Don't be rash again," she warned him. "You have plenty of men here. If Carson can be made to understand that you will not let him take advantage of the plot in which he has made you his innocent accessory----" "Set your mind entirely at rest," he cut in, with a curtness which was born altogether of his determination, and not at all of his attitude toward the woman he loved. "There will be no cattle-lifting in this valley to-night--or at any other time until your own caretakers have returned." "Thank you," she said simply; and a minute later Ballard and young Blacklock stood aside to let Bigelow remove himself, his companion, and the smart little car swiftly from the scene. "Say, Mr. Ballard, this is no end good of you--to let me in for a little breather of sport," said the collegian, when the fast runabout was fading to a dusty blur in the sunset purplings. "Bigelow gave me a hint; said there was a scrap of some sort on. Make me your side partner, and I'll do you proud." "You are all right," laughed Ballard, with a sudden access of light-heartedness. "But the first thing to do is to get a little hay out of the rack. Come in and let us see what you can make of a camp supper. Fitzpatrick bets high on his cook--which is more than I'd do if he were mine." XIV THE MAXIM Ballard and Blacklock ate supper at the contractor's table in the commissary, and the talk, what there was of it, left the Kentuckian aside. The Arcadian summering was the young collegian's first plunge into the manful realities, and it was not often that he came upon so much raw material in the lump as the contractor's camp, and more especially the jovial Irish contractor himself, afforded. Ballard was silent for cause. Out of the depths of humiliation for the part he had been made to play in the plan for robbing Colonel Craigmiles he had promised unhesitatingly to prevent the robbery. But the means for preventing it were not so obvious as they might have been. Force was the only argument which would appeal to the cattle-lifters, and assuredly there were men enough and arms enough in the Fitzpatrick camps to hold up any possible number of rustlers that Carson could bring into the valley. But would the contractor's men consent to fight the colonel's battle? This was the crucial query which only Fitzpatrick could answer; and at the close of the meal, Ballard made haste to have private speech with the contractor in the closet-like pay office. "You see what we are up against, Bourke," he summed up when he had explained the true inwardness of the situation to the Irishman. "Bare justice, the justice that even an enemy has a right to expect, shoves us into the breach. We've got to stop this raid on the Craigmiles cattle." Fitzpatrick was shaking his head dubiously. "Sure, now; _I'm_ with you, Mr. Ballard," he allowed, righting himself with an effort that was a fine triumph over personal prejudice. "But it's only fair to warn you that not a man in any of the ditch camps will lift a finger in any fight to save the colonel's property. This shindy with the cow-boys has gone on too long, and it has been too bitter." "But this time they've got it to do," Ballard insisted warmly. "They are your men, under your orders." "Under my orders to throw dirt, maybe; but not to shoulder the guns and do the tin-soldier act. There's plinty of men, as you say; Polacks and Hungarians and Eyetalians and Irish--and the Irish are the only ones you could count on in a hooraw, boys! I know every man of them, Mr. Ballard, and, not to be mincin' the wor-rd, they'd see you--or me, either--in the hot place before they'd point a gun at anybody who was giving the Craigmiles outfit a little taste of its own medicine." Fitzpatrick's positive assurance was discouraging, but Ballard would not give up. "How many men do you suppose Carson can muster for this cattle round-up?" he asked. "Oh, I don't know; eighteen or twenty at the outside, maybe." "You've got two hundred and forty-odd here and at Riley's; in all that number don't you suppose you could find a dozen or two who would stand by us?" "Honestly, then, I don't, Mr. Ballard. I'm not lukewarm, as ye might think: I'll stand with you while I can squint an eye to sight th' gun. But the minute you tell the b'ys what you're wantin' them to do, that same minute they'll give you the high-ball signal and quit." "Strike work, you mean?" "Just that." Ballard went into a brown study, and Fitzpatrick respected it. After a time the silence was broken by the faint tapping of the tiny telegraph instrument on the contractor's desk. Ballard's chair righted itself with a crash. "The wire," he exclaimed; "I had forgotten that you had brought it down this far on the line. I wonder if I can get Bromley?" "Sure ye can," said the contractor; and Ballard sat at the desk to try. It was during the preliminary key-clickings that Blacklock came to the door of the pay office. "There's a man out here wanting to speak to you, Mr. Fitzpatrick," he announced; and the contractor went out, returning presently to break into Ballard's preoccupied effort to raise the office at Elbow Canyon. "One of the foremen came in to say that the Craigmiles men were coming back. For the last half-hour horsemen by twos and threes have been trailing up the river road and heading for the ranch headquarters," was the information he brought. "It's Carson's gang," said Ballard, at once. "Yes; but I didn't give it away to the foreman. Their scheme is to make as much of a round-up as they can while it's light enough to see. There'll be a small piece of a moon, and that'll do for the drive down the canyon. Oh, I'll bet you they've got it all figured out to a dot. Carson's plenty smooth when it comes to plannin' any devilment." Ballard turned back to the telegraph key and rattled it impatiently. Time was growing precious; was already temerariously short for carrying out the programme he had hastily determined upon in the few minutes of brown study. "That you, Loudon?" he clicked, when, after interminable tappings, the breaking answer came; and upon the heels of the snipped-out affirmative he cut in masterfully. "Ask no questions, but do as I say, quick. You said colonel had machine-gun at his mine: Rally gang stone-buckies, rush that gun, and capture it. Can you do it?" "Yes," was the prompt reply, "if you don't mind good big bill funeral expenses, followed by labour riot." "We've got to have gun." "The colonel would lend it if--hold wire minute, Miss Elsa just crossing bridge in runabout. I'll ask her." Ballard's sigh of relief was almost a groan, and he waited with good hope. Elsa would know why he wanted the Maxim, and if the thing could be done without an express order from her father to the Mexican mine guards, she would do it. After what seemed to the engineer like the longest fifteen minutes he had ever endured, the tapping began again. "Gun here," from Bromley. "What shall I do with it?" The answer went back shot-like: "Load on engine and get it down to end of branch nearest this camp quick." "Want me to come with it?" "No; stay where you are, and you may be next Arcadian chief construction. Hurry gun." Fitzpatrick was his own telegrapher, and as he read what passed through key and sounder his smile was like that which goes with the prize-fighter's preliminary hand-shaking. "Carson'll need persuading," he commented. "'Tis well ye've got the artillery moving. What's next?" "The next thing is to get out the best team you have, the one that will make the best time, and send it to the end of track to meet Bromley's special. How far is it--six miles, or thereabouts?" "Seven, or maybe a little worse. I'll go with the team myself, and push on the reins. Do I bring the gun here?" Ballard thought a moment. "No; since we're to handle this thing by ourselves, there is no need of making talk in the camps. Do you know a little sand creek in the hogback called Dry Valley?" "Sure, I do." "Good. Make a straight line for the head of that arroyo, and we'll meet you there, Blacklock and I, with an extra saddle-horse." Fitzpatrick was getting a duck driving-coat out of a locker. "What's your notion, Mr. Ballard?--if a man might be asking?" "Wait, and you'll see," was the crisp reply. "It will work; you'll see it work like a charm, Bourke. But you must burn the miles with that team of broncos. We'll be down and out if you don't make connections with the Maxim. And say; toss a coil of that quarter-inch rope into your wagon as you go. We'll need that, too." When the contractor was gone, Ballard called the collegian into the pay office and put him in touch with the pressing facts. A raid was to be made on Colonel Craigmiles's cattle by a band of cattle thieves; the raid was to be prevented; means to the preventing end--three men and a Maxim automatic rapid-fire gun. Would Blacklock be one of the three? "Would a hungry little dog eat his supper, Mr. Ballard? By Jove! but you're a good angel in disguise--to let me in for the fun! And you've pressed the right button, too, by George! There's a Maxim in the military kit at college, and I can work her to the queen's taste." "Then you may consider yourself chief of the artillery," was the prompt rejoinder. "I suppose I don't need to ask if you can ride a range pony?" Blacklock's laugh was an excited chuckle. "Now you're shouting. What I don't know about cow-ponies would make the biggest book you ever saw. But I'd ride a striped zebra rather than be left out of this. Do we hike out now?--right away?" "There is no rush; you can smoke a pipe or two--as I'm going to. Fitzpatrick has to drive fourteen miles to work off his handicap." Ballard filled his pipe and lighting it sat down to let the mental polishing wheels grind upon the details of his plan. Blacklock tried hard to assume the manly attitude of nonchalance; tried and failed utterly. Once for every five minutes of the waiting he had to jump up and make a trip to the front of the commissary to ease off the excess pressure; and at the eleventh return Ballard was knocking the ash out of his pipe. "Getting on your nerves, Jerry?" he asked. "All right: we'll go and bore a couple of holes into the night, if that's what you're anxious to be doing." The start was made without advertisement. Fitzpatrick's horse-keeper was smoking cigarettes on the little porch platform, and at a word from Ballard he disappeared in the direction of the horse-rope. Giving him the necessary saddling time, the two made their way around the card-playing groups at the plaza fire, and at the back of the darkened mess-tent found the man waiting with three saddled broncos, all with rifle holsters under the stirrup leathers. Ballard asked a single question at the mounting moment. "You haven't seen young Carson in the last hour or so, have you, Patsy?" "Niver a hair av him: 'tis all day long he's been gone, wid Misther Bourke swearing thremenjous about the cayuse he took." Ballard took the bridle of the led horse and the ride down the line of the canal, with Fitzpatrick's "piece of a moon" to silver the darkness, was begun as a part of the day's work by the engineer, but with some little trepidation by the young collegian, whose saddle-strivings hitherto had been confined to the well-behaved cobs in his father's stables. At the end of the first mile Blacklock found himself growing painfully conscious of every start of the wiry little steed between his knees, and was fain to seek comfort. "Say, Mr. Ballard; what do you do when a horse bucks under you?" he asked, wedging the inquiry between the jolts of the racking gallop. "You don't do anything," replied Ballard, taking the pronoun in the generic sense. "The bronco usually does it all." "I--believe this brute's--getting ready to--buck," gasped the tyro. "He's working--my knee-holds loose--with his confounded sh--shoulder-blades." "Freeze to him," laughed Ballard. Then he added the word of heartening: "He can't buck while you keep him on the run. Here's a smooth bit of prairie: let him out a few notches." That was the beginning of a mad race that swept them down the canal line, past Riley's camp and out to the sand-floored cleft in the foothills far ahead of the planned meeting with Fitzpatrick. But this time the waiting interval was not wasted. Picketing the three horses, and arming themselves with a pair of the short-barrelled rifles, the advance guard of two made a careful study of the ground, pushing the reconnaissance down to the mouth of the dry valley, and a little way along the main river trail in both directions. "Right here," said Ballard, indicating a point on the river trail just below the intersecting valley mouth, "is where you will be posted with the Maxim. If you take this boulder for a shield, you can command the gulch and the upper trail for a hundred yards or more, and still be out of range of their Winchesters. They'll probably shoot at you, but you won't mind that, with six or eight feet of granite for a breastwork, will you, Jerry?" "Well, I should say not! Just you watch me burn 'em up when you give the word, Mr. Ballard. I believe I could hold a hundred of 'em from this rock." "That is exactly what I want you to do--to hold them. It would be cold-blooded murder to turn the Maxim loose on them from this short range unless they force you to it. Don't forget that, Jerry." "I sha'n't," promised the collegian; and after some further study of the topographies, they went back to the horses. Thereupon ensued a tedious wait of an hour or more, with no sight or sound of the expected waggon, and with anxiety growing like a juggler's rose during the slowly passing minutes. Anyone of a dozen things might have happened to delay Fitzpatrick, or even to make his errand a fruitless one. The construction track was rough, and the hurrying engine might have jumped the rails. The rustlers might have got wind of the gun dash and ditched the locomotive. Failing that, some of their round-up men might have stumbled upon the contractor and halted and overpowered him. Ballard and Blacklock listened anxiously for the drumming of wheels. But when the silence was broken it was not by waggon noises; the sound was in the air--a distant lowing of a herd in motion, and the shuffling murmur of many hoofs. The inference was plain. "By Jove! do you hear that, Jerry?" Ballard demanded. "The beggars are coming down-valley with the cattle, _and they're ahead of Fitzpatrick_!" That was not strictly true. While the engineer was adding a hasty command to mount, Fitzpatrick's waggon came bouncing up the dry arroyo, with the snorting team in a lather of sweat. "Sharp work, Mr. Ballard!" gasped the dust-covered driver. "They're less than a mile at the back of me, drivin' a good half of the colonel's beef herd, I'd take me oath. Say the wor-rds, and say thim shwift!" With the scantest possible time for preparation, there was no wasting of the precious minutes. Ballard directed a quick transference of men, horses, and gun team to the lower end of the inner valley, a planting of the terrible little fighting machine behind the sheltering boulder on the main trail, and a hasty concealment of the waggon and harness animals in a grove of the scrub pines. Then he outlined his plan briskly to his two subordinates. "They will send the herd down the canyon trail, probably with a man or two ahead of it to keep the cattle from straying up this draw," he predicted. "The first move is to nip these head riders; after which we must turn the herd and let it find its way back home through the sand gulch where we came in. Later on----" A rattling clatter of horse-shoes on stone rose above the muffled lowing and milling of the oncoming drove, and there was no time for further explanations. As Ballard and his companions drew back among the tree shadows in the small inner valley, a single horseman galloped down the canyon trail, wheeling abruptly in the gulch mouth to head off the cattle if they should try to turn back by way of the hogback valley. Before the echo of his shrill whistle had died away among the canyon crags, three men rose up out of the darkness, and with business-like celerity the trail guard was jerked from his saddle, bound, gagged, and tossed into the bed of an empty waggon. "Now for the cut-out!" shouted Ballard; and the advance stragglers of the stolen herd were already in the mouth of the little valley when the three amateur line-riders dashed at them and strove to turn the drive at right angles up the dry gulch. For a sweating minute or two the battle with brute bewilderment hung in the balance. Wheel and shout and flog as they would, they seemed able only to mass the bellowing drove in the narrow mouth of the turn-out. But at the critical instant, when the milling tangle threatened to become a jam that must crowd itself from the trail into the near-by torrent of the Boiling Water, a few of the leaders found the open way to freedom up the hogback valley, and in another throat-parching minute there was only a cloud of dust hanging between the gulch heads to show where the battle had been raging. This was the situation a little later when the main body of the rustlers, ten men strong, ambled unsuspectingly into the valley-mouth trap: dust in the air, a withdrawing thunder of hoof-beats, and apparent desertion of the point of hazard. Carson was the first to grasp the meaning of the dust cloud and the vanishing murmur of hoof-tramplings. "Hell!" he rasped. "Billings has let 'em cut back up the gulch! That's on you, Buck Cummin's: I told you ye'd better hike along 'ith Billings." "You always _was_ one o' them 'I-told-ye-so' kind of liars," was the pessimistic retort of the man called Cummings; and Carson's right hand was flicking toward the ready pistol butt when a voice out of the shadows under the western cliff shaped a command clear-cut and incisive. "Hands up out there--every man of you!" Then, by way of charitable explanation: "You're covered--with a rapid-fire Maxim." There were doubters among the ten; desperate men whose lawless days and nights were filled with hair's-breadth chance-takings. From these came a scattering volley of pistol shots spitting viciously at the cliff shadows. "Show 'em, Jerry," said the voice, curtly; and from the shelter of a great boulder at the side of the main trail leaped a sheet of flame with a roar comparable to nothing on earth save its ear-splitting, nerve-shattering self. Blacklock had swept the machine-gun in a short arc over the heads of the cattle thieves, and from the cliff face and ledges above them a dropping rain of clipped pine branches and splintered rock chippings fell upon the trapped ten. It is the new and untried that terrifies. In the group of rustlers there were men who would have wheeled horse and run a gauntlet of spitting Winchesters without a moment's hesitation. But this hidden murder-machine belching whole regiment volleys out of the shadows.... "Sojers, by cripes!" muttered Carson, under his breath. Then aloud: "All right, Cap'n; what you say goes as it lays." "I said 'hands up,' and I meant it," rasped Ballard; and when the pale moonlight pricked out the cattle-lifters in the attitude of submission: "First man on the right--knee your horse into the clump of trees straight ahead of you." It was Fitzpatrick, working swiftly and alone, who disarmed, wrist-roped, and heel-tied to his horse each of the crestfallen ones as Ballard ordered them singly into the mysterious shadows of the pine grove. Six of the ten, including Carson, had been ground through the neutralising process, and the contractor was deftly at work on the seventh, before the magnitude of the engineer's strategy began to dawn upon them. "_Sufferin' Jehu!_" said Carson, with an entire world of disgust and humiliation crowded into the single expletive; but when the man called Cummings broke out in a string of meaningless oaths, the leader of the cattle thieves laughed like a good loser. "Say; how many of you did it take to run this here little bluff on us?" he queried, tossing the question to Fitzpatrick, the only captor in sight. "You'll find out, when the time comes," replied the Irishman gruffly. "And betwixt and between, ye'll be keeping a still tongue in your head. D'ye see?" They did see, when the last man was securely bound and roped to his saddle beast; and it was characteristic of time, place, and the actors in the drama that few words were wasted in the summing up. "Line them up for the back trail," was Ballard's crisp command, when Fitzpatrick and Blacklock had dragged the Maxim in from its boulder redoubt and had loaded it into the waggon beside the rope-wound Billings. "Whereabouts does this here back trail end up--for us easy-marks, Cap'n Ballard?" It was Carson who wanted to know. "That's for a jury to say," was the brief reply. "You've et my bread and stabled yo' hawss in my corral," the chief rustler went on gloomily. "But that's all right--if you feel called to take up for ol' King Adam, that's fightin' ever' last shovelful o' mud you turn over in th' big valley." Fitzpatrick was leading the way up the hoof-trampled bed of the dry valley with the waggon team, and Blacklock was marshalling the line of prisoners to follow in single file when Ballard wheeled his bronco to mount. "I fight my own battles, Carson," he said, quietly. "You set a deadfall for me, and I tumbled in like a tenderfoot. That put it up to me to knock out your raid. Incidentally, you and your gang will get what is coming to you for blowing a few thousand yards of earth into our canal. That's all. Line up there with the others; you've shot your string and lost." The return route led the straggling cavalcade through the arroyo mouth, and among the low hills back of Riley's camp to a junction with the canal line grade half way to Fitzpatrick's headquarters. Approaching the big camp, Ballard held a conference with the contractor, as a result of which the waggon mules were headed to the left in a semicircular detour around the sleeping camp, the string of prisoners following as the knotted trail ropes steered it. Another hour of easting saw the crescent moon poising over the black sky-line of the Elks, and it brought captors and captured to the end of track of the railroad where there was a siding, with a half-dozen empty material cars and Bromley's artillery special, the engine hissing softly and the men asleep on the cab cushions. Ballard cut his prisoners foot-free, dismounted them, and locked them into an empty box-car. This done, the engine crew was aroused, the Maxim was reloaded upon the tender, and the chief gave the trainmen their instructions. "Take the gun, and that locked box-car, back to Elbow Canyon," he directed. "Mr. Bromley will give you orders from there." "Carload o' hosses?" said the engineman, noting the position of the box-car opposite a temporary chute built for debarking a consignment of Fitzpatrick's scraper teams. "No; jackasses," was Ballard's correction; and when the engine was clattering away to the eastward with its one-car train, the waggon was headed westward, with Blacklock sharing the seat beside Fitzpatrick, Ballard lying full-length on his back in the deep box-bed, and the long string of saddle animals towing from the tailboard. At the headquarters commissary Blacklock tumbled into the handiest bunk and was asleep when he did it. But Ballard roused himself sufficiently to send a message over the wire to Bromley directing the disposal of the captured cattle thieves, who were to be transported by way of Alta Vista and the D. & U. P. to the county seat. After that he remembered nothing until he awoke to blink at the sun shining into the little bunk room at the back of the pay office; awoke with a start to find Fitzpatrick handing him a telegram scrawled upon a bit of wrapping-paper. "I'm just this minut' taking this off the wire," said the contractor, grinning sheepishly; and Ballard read the scrawl: "D. & U. P. box-car No. 3546 here all O. K. with both side doors carefully locked and end door wide open. Nothing inside but a few bits of rope and a stale smell of tobacco smoke and corn whiskey. "BROMLEY." XV HOSPES ET HOSTIS It was two days after the double fiasco of the cattle raid before Ballard returned to his own headquarters at Elbow Canyon; but Bromley's laugh on his friend and chief was only biding its time. "What you didn't do to Carson and his gang was good and plenty, wasn't it, Breckenridge?" was his grinning comment, when they had been over the interval work on the dam together, and were smoking an afternoon peace pipe on the porch of the adobe office. "It's the joke of the camp. I tried to keep it dark, but the enginemen bleated about it like a pair of sheep, of course." "Assume that I have some glimmerings of a sense of humour, and let it go at that," growled Ballard; adding; "I'm glad the hoodoo has let up on you long enough to give this outfit a chance to be amused--even at a poor joke on me." "It has," said Bromley. "We haven't had a shock or a shudder since you went down-valley. And I've been wondering why." "Forget it," suggested the chief, shortly. "Call it safely dead and buried, and don't dig it up again. We have grief enough without it." Bromley grinned again. "Meaning that this cow-boy cattle-thief tangle in the lower valley has made you _persona non grata_ at Castle 'Cadia? You're off; 'way off. You don't know Colonel Adam. So far from holding malice, he has been down here twice to thank you for stopping the Carson raid. And that reminds me: there's a Castle 'Cadia note in your mail-box--came down by the hands of one of the little Japs this afternoon." And he went in to get it. It proved to be another dinner bidding for the chief engineer, to be accepted informally whenever he had time to spare. It was written and signed by the daughter, but she said that she spoke both for her father and herself when she urged him to come soon. "You'll go?" queried Bromley, when Ballard had passed the faintly perfumed bit of note-paper across the arm's-reach between the two lazy-chairs. "You know I'll go," was the half morose answer. Bromley's smile was perfunctory. "Of course you will," he assented. "To-night?" "As well one time as another. Won't you go along?" "Miss Elsa's invitation does not include me," was the gentle reminder. "Bosh! You've had the open door, first, last, and all the time, haven't you?" "Of course. I was only joking. But it isn't good for both of us to be off the job at the same time. I'll stay and keep on intimidating the hoodoo." There was a material train coming in from Alta Vista, and when its long-drawn chime woke the canyon echoes, they both left the mesa and went down to the railroad yard. It was an hour later, and Ballard was changing his clothes in his bunk-room when he called to Bromley, who was checking the way-bills for the lately arrived material. "Oh, I say, Loudon; has that canyon path been dug out again?--where the slide was?" "Sure," said Bromley, without looking up. Then: "You're going to walk?" "How else would I get there?" returned Ballard, who still seemed to be labouring with his handicap of moroseness. The assistant did not reply, but a warm flush crept up under the sunburn as he went on checking the way-bills. Later, when Ballard swung out to go to the Craigmiles's, the man at the desk let him pass with a brief "So-long," and bent still lower over his work. Under much less embarrassing conditions, Ballard would have been prepared to find himself breathing an atmosphere of constraint when he joined the Castle 'Cadia house-party on the great tree-pillared portico of the Craigmiles mansion. But the embarrassment, if any there were, was all his own. The colonel was warmly hospitable; under her outward presentment of cheerful mockery, Elsa was palpably glad to see him; Miss Cauffrey was gently reproachful because he had not let them send Otto and the car to drive him around from the canyon; and the various guests welcomed him each after his or her kind. During the ante-dinner pause the talk was all of the engineer's prompt snuffing-out of the cattle raid, and the praiseful comment on the little _coup de main_ was not marred by any reference to the mistaken zeal which had made the raid possible. More than once Ballard found himself wondering if the colonel and Elsa, Bigelow and Blacklock, had conspired generously to keep the story of his egregious blunder from reaching the others. If they had not, there was a deal more charity in human nature than the most cheerful optimist ever postulated, he concluded. At the dinner-table the enthusiastic _rapport_ was evenly sustained. Ballard took in the elder of the Cantrell sisters; and Wingfield, who sat opposite, quite neglected Miss Van Bryck in his efforts to make an inquisitive third when Miss Cantrell insistently returned to the exciting topic of the Carson capture--which she did after each separate endeavour on Ballard's part to escape the enthusiasm. "Your joking about it doesn't make it any less heroic, Mr. Ballard," was one of Miss Cantrell's phrasings of the song of triumph. "Just think of it--three of you against eleven desperate outlaws!" "Three of us, a carefully planned ambush, and a Maxim rapid-fire machine-gun," corrected Ballard. "And you forget that I let them all get away a few hours later." "And I--the one person in all this valleyful of possible witnesses who could have made the most of it--_I_ wasn't there to see," cut in Wingfield, gloomily. "It is simply catastrophic, Mr. Ballard!" "Oh, I am sure you could imagine a much more exciting thing--for a play," laughed the engineer. "Indeed, it's your imagination, and Miss Cantrell's, that is making a bit of the day's work take on the dramatic quality. If I were a writing person I should always fight shy of the real thing. It's always inadequate." "Much you know about it," grumbled the playwright, from the serene and lofty heights of craftsman superiority. "And that reminds me: I've been to your camp, and what I didn't find out about that hoodoo of yours----" It was Miss Elsa, sitting at Wingfield's right, who broke in with an entirely irrelevant remark about a Sudermann play; a remark demanding an answer; and Ballard took his cue and devoted himself thereafter exclusively to the elder Miss Cantrell. The menace of Wingfield's literary curiosity was still a menace, he inferred; and he was prepared to draw its teeth when the time should come. As on the occasion of the engineer's former visit to Castle 'Cadia, there was an after-dinner adjournment to the big portico, where the Japanese butler served the little coffees, and the house-party fell into pairs and groups in the hammocks and lazy-chairs. Not to leave a manifest duty undone, Ballard cornered his host at the dispersal and made, or tried to make, honourable amends for the piece of mistaken zeal which had led to the attempted cattle-lifting. But in the midst of the first self-reproachful phrase the colonel cut him off with genial protests. "Not anotheh word, my dear suh; don't mention it"--with a benedictory wave of the shapely hands. "We ratheh enjoyed it. The boys had thei-uh little blow-out at the county seat; and, thanks to youh generous intervention, we didn't lose hoof, hide nor ho'n through the machinations of ouh common enemy. In youh place, Mistuh Ballard, I should probably have done precisely the same thing--only I'm not sure I should have saved the old cattleman's property afte' the fact. Try one of these conchas, suh--unless youh prefer youh pipe. One man in Havana has been making them for me for the past ten yeahs." Ballard took the gold-banded cigar as one who, having taken a man's coat, takes his cloak, also. There seemed to be no limit to the colonel's kindliness and chivalric generosity; and more than ever he doubted the old cattle king's complicity, even by implication, in any of the mysterious fatalities which had fallen upon the rank and file of the irrigation company's industrial army. Strolling out under the electric globes, he found that his colloquy with the colonel had cost him a possible chance of a _tête-à-tête_ with Elsa. She was swinging gently in her own particular corner hammock; but this time it was Bigelow, instead of Wingfield, who was holding her tiny coffee cup. It was after Ballard had joined the group of which the sweet-voiced Aunt June was the centre, that Miss Craigmiles said to her coffee-holder: "I am taking you at your sister's valuation and trusting you very fully, Mr. Bigelow. You are quite sure you were followed, you and Mr. Ballard, on the day before the dynamiting of the canal?" "No; I merely suspected it. I wasn't sure enough to warrant me in calling Ballard's attention to the single horseman who seemed to be keeping us in view. But in the light of later events----" "Yes; I know," she interrupted hastily. "Were you near enough to identify the man if--if you should see him again?" "Oh, no. Most of the time he was a mere galloping dot in the distance. Only once--it was when Ballard and I had stopped to wrangle over a bit of deforesting vandalism on the part of the contractors--I saw him fairly as he drew rein on a hilltop in our rear." "Describe him for me," she directed, briefly. "I'm afraid I can't do that. I had only this one near-by glimpse of him, you know. But I remarked that he was riding a large horse, like one of those in your father's stables; that he sat straight in the saddle; and that he was wearing some kind of a skirted coat that blew out behind him when he wheeled to face the breeze." Miss Craigmiles sat up in the hammock and pressed her fingers upon her closed eyes. When she spoke again after the lapse of a long minute, it was to ask Bigelow to retell the story of the brief fight in the darkness at the sand arroyo on the night of the explosion. The Forestry man went over the happenings of the night, and of the day following, circumstantially, while the growing moon tilted like a silver shallop in a sea of ebony toward the distant Elks, and the groups and pairs on the broad portico rearranged themselves choir-wise to sing hymns for which one of the Cantrell sisters went to the piano beyond the open windows of the drawing-room to play the accompaniments. When the not too harmonious chorus began to drone upon the windless night air, Miss Craigmiles came out of her fit of abstraction and thanked Bigelow for his patience with her. "It isn't altogether morbid curiosity on my part," she explained, half pathetically. "Some day I may be able to tell you just what it is--but not to-night. Now you may go and rescue Madge from the major, who has been 'H'm-ha-ing' her to extinction for the last half-hour. And if you're brave enough you may tell Mr. Ballard that his bass is something dreadful--or send him here and I'll tell him." The open-eyed little ruse worked like a piece of well-oiled mechanism, and Ballard broke off in the middle of a verse to go and drag Bigelow's deserted chair to within murmuring distance of the hammock. "You were singing frightfully out of tune," she began, in mock petulance. "Didn't you know it?" "I took it for granted," he admitted, cheerfully. "I was never known to sing any other way. My musical education has been sadly neglected." She looked up with the alert little side turn of the head that always betokened a shifting of moods or of mind scenery. "Mr. Bromley's hasn't," she averred. "He sings well, and plays the violin like a master. Doesn't he ever play for you?" Ballard recalled, with a singular and quite unaccountable pricking of impatience, that once before, when the conditions were curiously similar, she had purposefully turned the conversation upon Bromley. But he kept the impatience out of his reply. "No; as a matter of fact, we have seen very little of each other since I came on the work." "He is a dear boy." She said it with the exact shade of impersonality which placed Bromley on the footing of a kinsman of the blood; but Ballard's handicap was still distorting his point of view. "I am glad you like him," he said; his tone implying the precise opposite of the words. "Are you? You don't say it very enthusiastically." It was a small challenge, and he lifted it almost roughly. "I can't be enthusiastic where your liking for other men is concerned." Her smile was a mere face-lighting of mockery. "I can't imagine Mr. Bromley saying a thing like that. What was it you told me once about the high plane of men-friendships? As I remember it, you said that they were the purest passions the world has ever known. And you wouldn't admit that women could breathe the rarefied air of that high altitude at all." "That was before I knew all the possibilities; before I knew what it means to----" "Don't say it," she interrupted, the mocking mood slipping from her like a cast-off garment. "I shall say it," he went on doggedly. "Loudon is nearer to me than any other man I ever knew. But I honestly believe I should hate him if--tell me that it isn't so, Elsa. For heaven's sake, help me to kill out this new madness before it makes a scoundrel of me!" What she would have said he was not to know. Beyond the zone of light bounded by the shadows of the maples on the lawn there were sounds as of some animal crashing its way through the shrubbery. A moment later, out of the enclosing walls of the night, came a man, running and gasping for breath. It was one of the labourers from the camp at Elbow Canyon, and he made for the corner of the portico where Miss Craigmiles's hammock was swung. "'Tis Misther Ballard I'm lukin' for!" he panted; and Ballard answered quickly for himself. "I'm here," he said. "What's wanted?" "It's Misther Bromley, this time, sorr. The wather was risin' in the river, and he'd been up to the wing dam just below this to see was there anny logs or annything cloggin' it. On the way up or back, we don't know which, he did be stoomblin' from the trail into the canyon; and the dago, Lu'gi, found him." The man was mopping his face with a red bandana, and his hands were shaking as if he had an ague fit. "Is he badly hurt?" Ballard had put himself quickly between the hammock and the bearer of ill tidings. "'Tis kilt dead entirely he is, sorr, we're thinkin'," was the low-spoken reply. The assistant engineer had no enemies among the workmen at the headquarters' camp. Ballard heard a horrified gasp behind him, and the hammock suddenly swung empty. When he turned, Elsa was hurrying out through the open French window with his coat and hat. "You must not lose a moment," she urged. "Don't wait for anything--I'll explain to father and Aunt June. Hurry! hurry! but, oh, do be careful--_careful_!" Ballard dropped from the edge of the portico and plunged into the shrubbery at the heels of the messenger. The young woman, still pale and strangely perturbed, hastened to find her aunt. "What is it, child? What has happened?" Miss Cauffrey, the gentle-voiced, had been dozing in her chair, but she wakened quickly when Elsa spoke to her. "It is another--accident; at the construction camp. Mr. Ballard had to go immediately. Where is father?" Miss Cauffrey put up her eye-glasses and scanned the various groups within eye-reach. Then she remembered. "Oh, yes; I think I must be very sleepy, yet. He went in quite a little time ago; to the library to lie down. He asked me to call him when Mr. Ballard was ready to go." "Are you sure of that, Aunt June?" "Why--yes. No, that wasn't it, either; he asked me to excuse him to Mr. Ballard. I recollect now. Dear me, child! What has upset you so? You look positively haggard." But Elsa had fled; first to the library, which was empty, and then to her father's room above stairs. That was empty, too, but the coat and waistcoat her father had worn earlier in the evening were lying upon the bed as if thrown aside hurriedly. While she was staring panic-stricken at the mute evidences of his absence she heard his step in the corridor. When he came in, less familiar eyes than those of his daughter would scarcely have recognised him. He was muffled to the heels in a long rain-coat, the muscles of his face were twitching, and he was breathing hard like a spent runner. [Illustration: The muscles of his face were twitching, and he was breathing hard, like a spent runner.] "Father!" she called, softly; but he either did not hear or did not heed. He had flung the rain-coat aside and was hastily struggling into the evening dress. When he turned from the dressing-mirror she could hardly keep from crying out. With the swift change of raiment he had become himself again; and a few minutes later, when she had followed him to the library to find him lying quietly upon the reading-lounge, half-asleep, as it seemed, the transformation scene in the upper room became more than ever like the fleeting impression of an incredible dream. "Father, are you asleep?" she asked; and when he sat up quickly she told him her tidings without preface. "Mr. Bromley is hurt--fatally, they think--by a fall from the path into the lower canyon. Mr. Ballard has gone with the man who came to bring the news. Will you send Otto in the car to see if there is anything we can do?" "Bromley? Oh, no, child; it can't be _Bromley_!" He had risen to his feet at her mention of the name, but now he sat down again as if the full tale of the years had smitten him suddenly. Then he gave his directions, brokenly, and with a curious thickening of the deep-toned, mellifluous voice: "Tell Otto to bring the small car around at--at once, and fetch me my coat. Of cou'se, my deah, I shall go myself"--this in response to her swift protest. "I'm quite well and able; just a little--a little sho'tness of breath. Fetch me my coat and the doctor-box, thah's a good girl. But--but I assure you it can't be--Bromley!" XVI THE RETURN OF THE OMEN Loudon Bromley's principal wounding was a pretty seriously broken head, got, so said Luigi, the Tuscan river-watchman who had found and brought him in, by the fall from the steep hill path into the rocky canyon. Ballard reached the camp at the heels of the Irish newsbearer shortly after the unconscious assistant had been carried up to the adobe headquarters; and being, like most engineers with field experience, a rough-and-ready amateur surgeon, he cleared the room of the throng of sympathising and utterly useless stone "buckies," and fell to work. But beyond cleansing the wound and telegraphing by way of Denver to Aspen for skilled help, there was little he could do. The telegraphing promised nothing. Cutting out all the probable delays, and assuming the Aspen physician's willingness to undertake a perilous night gallop over a barely passable mountain trail, twelve hours at the very shortest must go to the covering of the forty miles. Ballard counted the slow beats of the fluttering pulse and shook his head despairingly. Since he had lived thus long after the accident, Bromley might live a few hours longer. But it seemed much more likely that the flickering candle of life might go out with the next breath. Ballard was unashamed when the lights in the little bunk-room grew dim to his sight, and a lump came in his throat. Jealousy, if the sullen self-centring in the sentimental affair had grown to that, was quenched in the upwelling tide of honest grief. For back of the sex-selfishness, and far more deeply rooted, was the strong passion of brother-loyalty, reawakened now and eager to make amends--to be given a chance to make amends--for the momentary lapse into egoism. To the Kentuckian in this hour of keen misery came an angel of comfort in the guise of his late host, the master of Castle 'Cadia. There was the stuttering staccato of a motor-car breasting the steep grade of the mesa hill, the drumming of the released engines at the door of the adobe, and the colonel entered, followed by Jerry Blacklock, who had taken the chauffeur's place behind the pilot wheel for the roundabout drive from Castle 'Cadia. In professional silence, and with no more than a nod to the watcher at the bedside, the first gentleman of Arcadia laid off his coat, opened a kit of surgeon's tools, and proceeded to save Bromley's life, for the time being, at least, by skilfully lifting the broken bone which was slowly pressing him to death. "Thah, suh," he said, the melodious voice filling the tin-roofed shack until every resonant thing within the mud-brick walls seemed to vibrate in harmonious sympathy, "thah, suh; what mo' there is to do needn't be done to-night. To-morrow morning, Mistuh Ballard, you'll make a right comfo'table litter and have him carried up to Castle 'Cadia, and among us all we'll try to ansuh for him. Not a word, my deah suh; it's only what that deah boy would do for the most wo'thless one of us. I tell you, Mistuh Ballard, we've learned to think right much of Loudon; yes, suh--right much." Ballard was thankful, and he said so. Then he spoke of the Aspen-aimed telegram. "Countehmand it, suh; countehmand it," was the colonel's direction. "We'll pull him through without calling in the neighbuhs. Living heah, in such--ah--close proximity to youh man-mangling institutions, I've had experience enough durin' the past year or so to give me standing as a regular practitioneh; I have, for a fact, suh." And his mellow laugh was like the booming of bees among the clover heads. "I don't doubt it in the least," acknowledged Ballard; and then he thanked young Blacklock for coming. "It was up to me, wasn't it, Colonel Craigmiles?" said the collegian. "Otto--Otto's the house-shover, you know--flunked his job; said he wouldn't be responsible for anybody's life if he had to drive that road at speed in the night. We drove it all right, though, didn't we, Colonel? And we'll drive it back." The King of Arcadia put a hand on Ballard's shoulder and pointed an appreciative finger at Blacklock. "That young cub, suh, hasn't any mo' horse sense than one of youh Dago mortah-mixers; but the way he drives a motor-car is simply scandalous! Why, suh, if my hair hadn't been white when we started, it would have tu'ned on me long befo' we made the loop around Dump Mountain." Ballard went to the door with the two Good Samaritans, saw the colonel safely settled in the runabout, and let his gaze follow the winding course of the little car until the dodging tail-light had crossed the temporary bridge below the camp, to be lost among the shoulders of the opposite hills. The elder Fitzpatrick was at his elbow when he turned to go in. "There's hope f'r the little man, Misther Ballard?" he inquired anxiously. "Good hope, now, I think, Michael." "That's the brave wor-rd. The min do be sittin' up in th' bunk-shanties to hear ut. 'Twas all through the camp the minut' they brought him in. There isn't a man av thim that wouldn't go t'rough fire and wather f'r Misther Bromley--and that's no joke. Is there annything I can do?" "Nothing, thank you. Tell the yard watchman to stay within call, and I'll send for you if you're needed." With this provision for the possible need, the young chief kept the vigil alone, sitting where he could see the face of the still unconscious victim of fate, or tramping three steps and a turn in the adjoining office room when sleep threatened to overpower him. It was a time for calm second thought; for a reflective weighing of the singular and ominous conditions partly revealed in the week agone talk with Elsa Craigmiles. That she knew more than she was willing to tell had been plainly evident in that first evening on the tree-pillared portico at Castle 'Cadia; but beyond this assumption the unanswerable questions clustered quickly, opening door after door of speculative conjecture in the background. What was the motive behind the hurled stone which had so nearly bred a tragedy on his first evening at Elbow Canyon? He reflected that he had always been too busy to make personal enemies; therefore, the attempt upon his life must have been impersonal--must have been directed at the chief engineer of the Arcadia Company. Assuming this, the chain of inference linked itself rapidly. Was Macpherson's death purely accidental?--or Braithwaite's? If not, who was the murderer?--and why was the colonel's daughter so evidently determined to shield him? The answer, the purely logical answer, pointed to one man--her father--and thereupon became a thing to be scoffed at. It was more than incredible; it was blankly unthinkable. The young Kentuckian, descendant of pioneers who had hewn their beginnings out of the primitive wilderness, taking life as they found it, was practical before all things else. Villains of the Borgian strain no longer existed, save in the unreal world of the novelist or the playwriter. And if, by any stretch of imagination, they might still be supposed to exist.... Ballard brushed the supposition impatiently aside when he thought of the woman he loved. "Anything but that!" he exclaimed, breaking the silence of the four bare walls for the sake of hearing the sound of his own voice. "And, besides, the colonel himself is a living, breathing refutation of any such idiotic notion. All the same, if it is not her father she is trying to shield, who, in the name of all that is good, can it be? And why should Colonel Craigmiles, or anyone else, be so insanely vindictive as to imagine that the killing of a few chiefs of construction will cut any figure with the company which hires them?" These perplexing questions were still unanswered when the graying dawn found him dozing in his chair, with the camp whistles sounding the early turn-out, and Bromley conscious and begging feebly for a drink of water. XVII THE DERRICK FUMBLES Bromley had been a week in hospital at the great house in the upper valley, and was recovering as rapidly as a clean-living, well-ancestored man should, when Ballard was surprised one morning by a descent of the entire Castle 'Cadia garrison, lacking only the colonel and Miss Cauffrey, upon the scene of activities at the dam. The chief of construction had to flog himself sharply into the hospitable line before he could make the invaders welcome. He had a workingman's shrewd impatience of interruptions; and since the accident which had deprived him of his assistant, he had been doing double duty. On this particular morning he was about to leave for a flying round of the camps on the railroad extension; but he reluctantly countermanded the order for the locomotive when he saw Elsa picking the way for her guests among the obstructions in the stone yard. "Please--oh, please don't look so inhospitable!" she begged, in well-simulated dismay, when the irruption of sight-seers had fairly surrounded him. "We have driven and fished and climbed mountains and played children's games at home until there was positively nothing else to do. Pacify him, Cousin Janet--he's going to warn us off!" Ballard laughingly disclaimed any such ungracious intention, and proceeded to prove his words by deeds. Young Blacklock and Bigelow were easily interested in the building details; the women were given an opportunity to see the inside workings of the men's housekeeping in the shacks, the mess-tent and the camp kitchen; the major was permitted and encouraged to be loftily critical of everything; and Wingfield--but Ballard kept the playwright carefully tethered in a sort of moral hitching-rope, holding the end of the rope in his own hands. Once openly committed as entertainer, the young Kentuckian did all that could be expected of him--and more. When the visitors had surfeited themselves on concrete-mixing and stone-laying and camp housekeeping, the chief engineer had plank seats placed on a flat car, and the invaders were whisked away on an impromptu and personally conducted railway excursion to some of the nearer ditch camps. Before leaving the headquarters, Ballard gave Fitzpatrick an Irish hint; and when the excursionists returned from the railway jaunt, there was a miraculous luncheon served in the big mess-tent. Garou, the French-Canadian camp cook, had a soul above the bare necessities when the occasion demanded; and he had Ballard's private commissary to draw upon. After the luncheon Ballard let his guests scatter as they pleased, charging himself, as before, particularly with the oversight and wardenship of Mr. Lester Wingfield. There was only one chance in a hundred that the playwright, left to his own devices, might stumble upon the skeleton in the camp closet. But the Kentuckian was determined to make that one chance ineffective. Several things came of the hour spent as Wingfield's keeper while the others were visiting the wing dam and the quarry, the spillway, and the cut-off tunnel, under Fitzpatrick as megaphonist. One of them was a juster appreciation of the playwright as a man and a brother. Ballard smiled mentally when he realised that his point of view had been that of the elemental lover, jealous of a possible rival. Wingfield was not half a bad sort, he admitted; a little inclined to pose, since it was his art to epitomise a world of _poseurs_; an enthusiast in his calling; but at bottom a workable companion and the shrewdest of observers. In deference to the changed point of view, the Kentuckian did penance for the preconceived prejudice and tried to make the playwright's insulation painless. The sun shone hot on the stone yard, and there was a jar of passable tobacco in the office adobe: would Wingfield care to go indoors and lounge until the others came to a proper sense of the desirability of shade and quietude on a hot afternoon? Wingfield would, gladly. He confessed shamelessly to a habit of smoking his after-luncheon pipe on his back. There was a home-made divan in the office quarters, with cushions and blanket coverings, and Ballard found the tobacco-jar and a clean pipe; a long-stemmed "churchwarden," dear to the heart of a lazy man. "Now this is what I call solid comfort," said the playwright, stretching his long legs luxuriously on the divan. "A man's den that is a den, and not a bric-a-brac shop masquerading under the name, a good pipe, good tobacco, and good company. You fellows have us world-people faded to a shadow when it comes to the real thing. I've felt it in my bones all along that I was missing the best part of this trip by not getting in with you down here. But every time I've tried to break away, something else has turned up." Ballard was ready with his bucket of cold water. "You haven't missed anything. There isn't much in a construction camp to invite the literary mind, I should say." And he tried to make the saying sound not too inhospitable. "Oh, you're off wrong, there," argued the playwright, with cheerful arrogance. "You probably haven't a sense of the literary values; a good many people haven't--born blind on that side, you know. Now, Miss Van Bryck has the seeing eye, to an educated finish. She tells me you have a dramatic situation down here every little so-while. She told me that story of yours about the stone smashing into your office in the middle of the night. That's simply ripping good stuff--worlds of possibilities in a thing like that, don't you know? By the way, this is the room, isn't it? Does that patch in the ceiling cover the hole?" Ballard admitted the fact, and strove manfully to throw the switch ahead of the querist to the end that the talk might be shunted to some less dangerous topic. "Hang the tobacco!" snapped the guest irritably, retorting upon Ballard's remark about the quality of his pet smoking mixture. "You and Miss Craigmiles seem to be bitten with the same exasperating mania for subject-changing. I'd like to hear that rock-throwing story at first hands, if you don't mind." Having no good reason for refusing point-blank, Ballard told the story, carefully divesting it of all the little mystery thrills which he had included for Miss Dosia's benefit. "Um!" commented Wingfield, at the close of the bald narration. "It would seem to have lost a good bit in the way of human interest since Miss Van Bryck repeated it to me. Did you embroider it for her? or did she put in the little hemstitchings for me?" Ballard laughed. "I am sorry if I have spoiled it for you. But you couldn't make a dramatic situation out of a careless quarryman's overloading of a shot-hole." "Oh, no," said the playwright, apparently giving it up. And he smoked his pipe out in silence. Ballard thought the incident was comfortably dead and buried, but he did not know his man. Long after Wingfield might be supposed to have forgotten all about the stone catapulting, he sat up suddenly and broke out again. "Say! you explained to Miss Dosia that the stone couldn't possibly have come from the quarry without knocking the science of artillery into a cocked hat. She made a point of that." "Oh, hold on!" protested the Kentuckian. "You mustn't hold me responsible for a bit of dinner-table talk with a very charming young woman. Perhaps Miss Dosia wished to be mystified. I put it to you as man to man; would you have disappointed her?" The playwright's laugh showed his fine teeth. "They tell me you are at the top of the heap in your profession, Mr. Ballard, and I can easily believe it. But I have a specialty, too, and I'm no slouch in it. My little stunt is prying into the inner consciousness of things. Obviously, there is a mystery--a real mystery--about this stone-throwing episode, and for some reason you are trying to keep me from dipping into it. Conversely, I'd like to get to the bottom of it. Tell me frankly, is there any good reason why I shouldn't?" Ballard's salvation for this time personified itself in the figure of Contractor Fitzpatrick darkening the door of the office to ask a "question of information," as he phrased it. Hence there was an excuse for a break and a return to the sun-kissed stone yard. The engineer purposefully prolonged the talk with Fitzpatrick until the scattered sight-seers had gathered for a descent, under Jerry Blacklock's lead, to the great ravine below the dam where the river thundered out of the cut-off tunnel. But when he saw that Miss Craigmiles had elected to stay behind, and that Wingfield had attached himself to the younger Miss Cantrell, he gave the contractor his information boiled down into a curt sentence or two, and hastened to join the stay-behind. "You'll melt, out here in the sun," he said, overtaking her as she stood looking down into the whirling vortex made by the torrent's plunge into the entrance of the cut-off tunnel. She ignored the care-taking phrase as if she had not heard it. "Mr. Wingfield?--you have kept him from getting interested in the--in the----" Ballard nodded. "He is interested, beyond doubt. But for the present moment I have kept him from adding anything to Miss Dosia's artless gossip. Will you permit me to suggest that it was taking rather a long chance?--your bringing him down here?" "I know; but I couldn't help it. Dosia would have brought him on your invitation. I did everything I could think of to obstruct; and when they had beaten me, I made a party affair of it. You'll have to forgive me for spoiling an entire working day for you." "Since it has given me a chance to be with you, I'm only too happy in losing the day," he said; and he meant it. But he let her know the worst in the other matter in an added sentence. "I'm afraid the mischief is done in Wingfield's affair, in spite of everything." "How?" she asked, and the keen anxiety in the grey eyes cut him to the heart. He told her briefly of the chance arousing of Wingfield's curiosity, and of the playwright's expressed determination to fathom the mystery of the table-smashing stone. Her dismay was pathetic. "You should never have taken him into your office," she protested reproachfully. "He was sure to be reminded of Dosia's story there." "I didn't foresee that, and he was beginning to gossip with the workmen. I knew it wouldn't be long before he would get the story of the happenings out of the men--with all the garnishings." "You _must_ find a way to stop him," she insisted. "If you could only know what terrible consequences are wrapped up in it!" He waited until a stone block, dangling in the clutch of the derrick-fall above its appointed resting-place on the growing wall of masonry, had been lowered into the cement bed prepared for it before he said, soberly: "That is the trouble--I _don't_ know. And, short of quarrelling outright with Wingfield, I don't think of any effective way of muzzling him." "No; you mustn't do that. There is misery enough and enmity enough, without making any more. I'll try to keep him away." "You will fail," he prophesied, with conviction. "Mr. Wingfield calls himself a builder of plots; but I can assure you from this one day's observation of him that he would much rather unravel a plot than build one." She was silent while the workmen were swinging another great stone out over the canyon chasm. The shadow of the huge derrick-boom swept around and across them, and she shuddered as if the intangible thing had been an icy finger to touch her. "You must help me," she pleaded. "I cannot see the way a single step ahead." "And I am in still deeper darkness," he reminded her gently. "You forget that I do not know what threatens you, or how it threatens." "I can't tell you; I can't tell any one," she said; and he made sure there was a sob at the catching of her breath. As once before, he grew suddenly masterful. "You are wronging yourself and me, Elsa, dear. You forget that your trouble is mine; that in the end we two shall be one in spite of all the obstacles that a crazy fate can invent." She shook her head. "I told you once that you must not forget yourself again; and you are forgetting. There is one obstacle which can never be overcome this side of the grave. You must always remember that." "I remember only that I love you," he dared; adding: "And you are afraid to tell me what this obstacle is. You know it would vanish in the telling." She did not answer. "You won't tell me that you are in love with Wingfield?" he persisted. Still no reply. "Elsa, dearest, can you look me in the eyes and tell me that you do not love _me_?" She neither looked nor denied. "Then that is all I need to know at present," he went on doggedly. "I shall absolutely and positively refuse to recognise any other obstacle." She broke silence so swiftly that the words seemed to leap to her lips. "There is one, dear friend," she said, with a warm upflash of strong emotion; "one that neither you nor I, nor any one can overcome!" She pointed down at the boulder-riven flood churning itself into spray in the canyon pot at their feet. "I will measure it for you--and for myself, God help us! Rather than be your wife--the mother of your children--I should gladly, joyfully, fling myself into that." The motion he made to catch her, to draw her back from the brink of the chasm, was purely mechanical, but it served to break the strain of a situation that had become suddenly impossible. "That was almost tragic, wasn't it?" she asked, with a swift retreat behind the barricades of mockery. "In another minute we should have tumbled headlong into melodrama, with poor Mr. Wingfield hopelessly out of reach for the note-taking process." "Then you didn't mean what you were saying?" he demanded, trying hard to overtake the fleeing realities. "I did, indeed; don't make me say it again. The lights are up, and the audience might be looking. See how manfully Mr. Bigelow is trying not to let Cousin Janet discover how she is crushing him!" Out of the lower ravine the other members of the party were straggling, with Bigelow giving first aid to a breathless and panting Mrs. Van Bryck, and Wingfield and young Blacklock helping first one and then another of the four younger women. The workmen in the cutting yard were preparing to swing a third massive face-block into place on the dam; and Miss Craigmiles, quite her serene self again, was asking to be shown how the grappling hooks were made fast in the process of "toggling." Ballard accepted his defeat with what philosophy he could muster, and explained the technical detail. Then the others came up, and the buckboards sent down from Castle 'Cadia to take the party home were seen wheeling into line at the upper end of the short foothill canyon. "There is our recall at last, Mr. Ballard," gasped the breathless chaperon, "and I daresay you are immensely relieved. But you mustn't be too sorry for your lost day. We have had a perfectly lovely time." "Such a delightful day!" echoed the two sharers of the common Christian name in unison; and the king's daughter added demurely: "Don't you see we are all waiting for you to ask us to come again, Mr. Ballard?" "Oh, certainly; any time," said Ballard, coming to the surface. Notwithstanding, on the short walk up to the waiting buckboards he sank into the sea of perplexity again. Elsa's moods had always puzzled him. If they were not real, as he often suspected, they were artistically perfect imitations; and he was never quite sure that he could distinguish between the real and the simulated. As at the present moment: the light-hearted young woman walking beside him up the steep canyon path was the very opposite of the sorely tried and anxious one who had twice let him see the effects of the anxiety, however carefully she concealed the cause. The perplexed wonder was still making him half abstracted when he put himself in the way to help her into one of the homeward-headed vehicles. They were a little in advance of the others, and when she faced him to say good-bye, he saw her eyes. Behind the smile in them the troubled shadows were still lurking; and when the heartening word was on his lips they looked past him, dilating suddenly with a great horror. "Look!" she cried, pointing back to the dam; and when he wheeled he saw that they were all looking; standing agape as if they had been shown the Medusa's head. The third great stone had been swung out over the dam, and, little by little, with jerkings that made the wire cables snap and sing, the grappling-hooks were losing their hold in mid-air. The yells of the workmen imperilled rose sharply above the thunder of the river, and the man at the winding-drums seemed to have lost his nerve and his head. Young Blacklock, who was taking an engineering course in college, turned and ran back down the path, shouting like a madman. Ballard made a megaphone of his hands and bellowed an order to the unnerved hoister engineer. "Lower away! Drop it, you blockhead!" he shouted; but the command came too late. With a final jerk the slipping hooks gave way, and the three-ton cube of granite dropped like a huge projectile, striking the stonework of the dam with a crash like an explosion of dynamite. Dosia Van Bryck's shriek was ringing in Ballard's ears, and the look of frozen horror on Elsa's face was before his eyes, when he dashed down the steep trail at Blacklock's heels. Happily, there was no one killed; no one seriously hurt. On the dam-head Fitzpatrick was climbing to a point of vantage to shout the news to the yard men clustering thickly on the edge of the cliff above, and Ballard went only far enough to make sure that there had been no loss of life. Then he turned and hastened back to the halted buckboards. "Thank God, it's only a money loss, this time!" he announced. "The hooks held long enough to give the men time to get out of the way." "There was no one hurt? Are you sure there was no one hurt?" panted Mrs. Van Bryck, fanning herself vigorously. "No one at all. I'm awfully sorry we had to give you such a shock for your leave-taking, but accidents will happen, now and then. You will excuse me if I go at once? There is work to be done." "H'm--ha! One moment, Mr. Ballard," rasped the major, swelling up like a man on the verge of apoplexy. But Mrs. Van Bryck was not to be set aside. "Oh, certainly, we will excuse you. Please don't waste a moment on us. You shouldn't have troubled to come back. So sorry--it was very dreadful--terrible!" While the chaperon was groping for her misplaced self-composure, Wingfield said a word or two to Dosia, who was his seat-mate, and sprang to the ground. "Hold on a second, Ballard!" he called. "I'm going with you. What you need right now is a trained investigator, and I'm your man. Great Scott! to think that a thing like that should happen, and I should be here to see it!" And then to Miss Craigmiles, who appeared to be trying very earnestly to dissuade him: "Oh, no, Miss Elsa; I sha'n't get underfoot or be in Mr. Ballard's way; and you needn't trouble to send down for me. I can pad home on my two feet, later on." XVIII THE INDICTMENT In the days following the episode of the tumbling granite block, Wingfield came and went unhindered between Castle 'Cadia and the construction camp at Elbow Canyon, sometimes with Jerry Blacklock for a companion, but oftener alone. Short of the crude expedient of telling him that his room was more to be desired than his company, Ballard could think of no pretext for excluding him; and as for keeping him in ignorance of the linked chain of accidents and tragedies, it was to be presumed that his first unrestricted day among the workmen had put him in possession of all the facts with all their exaggerations. How deeply the playwright was interested in the tale of disaster and mysterious ill luck, no one knew precisely; not even young Blacklock, who was systematically sounded, first by Miss Craigmiles, and afterward at regular intervals by Ballard. As Blacklock saw it, Wingfield was merely killing time at the construction camp. When he was not listening to the stories of the men off duty, or telling them equally marvellous stories of his own, he was lounging in the adobe bungalow, lying flat on his back on the home-made divan with his clasped hands for a pillow, smoking Ballard's tobacco, or sitting in one of the lazy-chairs and reading with apparent avidity and the deepest abstraction one or another of Bromley's dry-as-dust text-books on the anatomy of birds and the taxidermic art. "Whatever it is that you are dreading in connection with Wingfield and the camp 'bogie' isn't happening," Ballard told the king's daughter one morning when he came down from Bromley's hospital room at Castle 'Cadia and found Elsa waiting for him under the portières of the darkened library. "For a man who talks so feelingly about the terrible drudgery of literary work, your playwriter is certainly a striking example of simon-pure laziness. He is perfectly innocuous. When he isn't half asleep on my office lounge, or dawdling among the masons or stone-cutters, he is reading straight through Bromley's shelf of bird-books. He may be absorbing 'local color,' but if he is, he is letting the environment do all the work. I don't believe he has had a consciously active idea since he began loafing with us." "You are mistaken--greatly mistaken," was all she would say; and in the fulness of time a day came when the event proved how far a woman's intuition may outrun a man's reasoning. It was the occasion of Bromley's first return to the camp at Elbow Canyon, four full weeks after the night of stumbling on the steep path. Young Blacklock had driven him by the roundabout road in the little motor-car; and the camp industries paused while the men gave the "Little Boss" an enthusiastic ovation. Afterward, the convalescent was glad enough to lie down on the makeshift lounge in the office bungalow; but when Jerry would have driven him back in time for luncheon at Castle 'Cadia, as his strict orders from Miss Elsa ran, Bromley begged to be allowed to put his feet under the office mess-table with his chief and his volunteer chauffeur. To the three, doing justice to the best that Garou could find in the camp commissary stores, came Mr. Lester Wingfield, to drag up a stool and to make himself companionably at home at the engineers' mess, as his custom had come to be. Until the meal was ended and the pipes were filled, he was silent and abstracted to the edge of rudeness. But when Ballard made a move to go down to the railroad yard with Fitzpatrick, the spell was broken. "Hold up a minute; don't rush off so frantically," he cut in abruptly. "I have been waiting for many days to get you and Bromley together for a little confidential confab about matters and things, and the time has come. Sit down." Ballard resumed his seat at the table with an air of predetermined patience, and the playwright nodded approval. "That's right," he went on, "brace yourself to take it as it comes; but you needn't write your reluctance so plainly in your face. It's understood." "I don't know what you mean," objected Ballard, not quite truthfully. Wingfield laughed. "You didn't want me to come down here at first; and since I've been coming you haven't been too excitedly glad to see me. But that's all right, too. It's what the public benefactor usually gets for butting in. Just the same, there is a thing to be done, and I've got to do it. I may bore you both in the process, but I have reached a point where a pow-wow is a shrieking necessity. I have done one of two things: I've unearthed the most devilish plot that ever existed, or else I have stumbled into a mare's nest of fairly heroic proportions." By this time he was reasonably sure of his audience. Bromley, still rather pallid and weak, squared himself with an elbow on the table. Blacklock got up to stand behind the assistant's chair. Ballard thrust his hands into his pockets and frowned. The moment had probably arrived when he would have to fight fire with fire for Elsa Craigmiles's sake, and he was pulling himself together for the battle. "I know beforehand about what you are going to say," he interjected; "but let's have your version of it." "You shall have it hot and hot," promised the playwright. "For quite a little time, and from a purely literary point of view, I have been interesting myself in the curious psychological condition which breeds so many accidents on this job of yours. I began with the assumption that there was a basis of reality. The human mind isn't exactly creative in the sense that it can make something out of nothing. You say, Mr. Ballard, that your workmen are superstitious fools, and that their mental attitude is chiefly responsible for all the disasters. I say that the fact--the cause-fact--existed before the superstition; was the legitimate ancestor of the superstition. Don't you believe it?" Ballard neither affirmed nor denied; but Bromley nodded. "I've always believed it," he admitted. "There isn't the slightest doubt of the existence of the primary cause-fact; it is a psychological axiom that it _must_ antedate the diseased mental condition," resumed the theorist, oracularly. "I don't know how far back it can be traced, but Engineer Braithwaite's drowning will serve for our starting point. You will say that there was nothing mysterious about that; yet only the other day, Hoskins, the locomotive driver, said to me: 'They can say what they like, but _I_ ain't believing that the river stove him all up as if he'd been stomped on in a cattle pen.' There, you see, you have the first gentle push over into the field of the unaccountable." It was here that Ballard broke in, to begin the fire-fighting. "You are getting the cart before the horse. It is ten chances to one that Hoskins never dreamed of being incredulous about the plain, unmistakable facts until after the later happenings had given him the superstitious twist." "The sequence in this particular instance is immaterial--quite immaterial," argued the playwright, with obstinate assurance. "The fact stays with us that there _was_ something partly unaccountable in this first tragedy to which the thought of Hoskins--the thoughts of all those who knew the circumstances--could revert." "Well?" said Ballard. "It is on this hypothesis that I have constructed my theory. Casting out all the accidents chargeable to carelessness, to disobedience of orders, or to temporary aberration on the part of the workmen, there still remains a goodly number of them carrying this disturbing atom of mystery. Take Sanderson's case: he came here, I'm told, with a decent record; he was not in any sense of the words a moral degenerate. Yet in a very short time he was killed in a quarrel over a woman at whom the average man wouldn't look twice. Blacklock, here, has seen this woman; but I'd like to ask if either of you two have?"--this to Ballard and the assistant. Ballard shook his head, and Bromley confessed that he had not. "Well, Jerry and I have the advantage of you--we have seen her," said Wingfield, scoring the point with a self-satisfied smile. "She is a gray-haired Mexican crone, apparently old enough, and certainly hideous enough, to be the Mexican foreman's mother. I'll venture the assertion that Sanderson never thought of her as a feminine possibility at all." "Hold on; I shall be obliged to spoil your theory there," interrupted Bromley. "Billy unquestionably put himself in Manuel's hands. He used to go down to the ranch two or three times a week, and he spent money, a good bit of it, on the woman. I know it, because he borrowed from me. And along toward the last, he never rode in that direction without slinging his Winchester under the stirrup-leather." "Looking for trouble with Manuel, you would say?" interjected Wingfield. "No doubt of it. And when the thing finally came to a focus, the Mexican gave Billy a fair show; there were witnesses to that part of it. Manuel told Sanderson to take his gun, which the woman was trying to hide, get on his horse, and ride to the north corner of the corral, where he was to wheel and begin shooting--or be shot in the back. The programme was carried out to the letter. Manuel walked his own horse to the south corner, and the two men wheeled and began to shoot. Three or four shots were fired by each before Billy was hit." "Um!" said the playwright thoughtfully. "There were witnesses, you say? Some of the Craigmiles cow-boys, I suppose. You took their word for these little details?" Bromley made a sorrowful face. "No; it was Billy's own story. The poor fellow lived long enough to tell me what I've been passing on to you. He tried to tell me something else, something about Manuel and the woman, but there wasn't time enough." Wingfield had found the long-stemmed pipe and was filling it from the jar of tobacco on the table. "Was that all?" he inquired. "All but the finish--which was rather heart-breaking. When he could no longer speak he kept pointing to me and to his rifle, which had been brought in with him. I understood he was trying to tell me that I should keep the gun." "You did keep it?" "Yes; I have it yet." "Let me have a look at it, will you?" The weapon was found, and Wingfield examined it curiously. "Is it loaded?" he asked. Bromley nodded. "I guess it is. It hasn't been out of its case or that cupboard since the day of the killing." The playwright worked the lever cautiously, and an empty cartridge shell flipped out and fell to the floor. "William Sanderson's last shot," he remarked reflectively, and went on slowly pumping the lever until eleven loaded cartridges lay in an orderly row on the table. "You were wrong in your count of the number of shots fired, or else the magazine was not full when Sanderson began," he commented. Then, as Blacklock was about to pick up one of the cartridges: "Hold on, Jerry; don't disturb them, if you please." Blacklock laughed nervously. "Mr. Wingfield's got a notion," he said. "He's always getting 'em." "I have," was the quiet reply. "But first let me ask you, Bromley: What sort of a rifle marksman was Sanderson?" "One of the best I ever knew. I have seen him drill a silver dollar three times out of five at a hundred yards when he was feeling well. There is your element of mystery again: I could never understand how he missed the Mexican three or four times in succession at less than seventy-five yards--unless Manuel's first shot was the one that hit him. That might have been it. Billy was all sand; the kind of man to go on shooting after he was killed." "My notion is that he didn't have the slightest chance in the wide world," was Wingfield's comment. "Let us prove or disprove it if we can," and he opened a blade of his penknife and dug the point of it into the bullet of the cartridge first extracted from the dead man's gun. "There is my notion--and a striking example of Mexican fair play," he added, when the bullet, a harmless pellet of white clay, carefully moulded and neatly coated with lead foil, fell apart under the knife-blade. [Illustration: "There is my notion--and a striking example of Mexican fair play."] The playwright's audience was interested now, beyond all question of doubt. If Wingfield had suddenly hypnotised the three who saw this unexpected confirmation of his theory of treachery in the Sanderson tragedy, the awed silence that fell upon the little group around the table could not have been more profound. It was Bromley who broke the spell, prefacing his exclamation with a mirthless laugh. "Your gifts of deduction are almost uncanny, Wingfield," he asserted. "How could you reason your way around to that?"--pointing at the clay bullet. "I didn't," was the calm reply. "Imagination can double discount pure logic in the investigative field, nine times out of ten. And in this instance it wasn't my imagination: it was another man's. I once read a story in which the author made his villain kill a man with this same little trick of sham bullets. I merely remembered the story. Now let us see how many more there are to go with this." There were four of the cartridges capped with the dummy bullets; the remaining seven being genuine. Wingfield did the sum arithmetical aloud. "Four and five are nine, and nine and seven are sixteen. Sanderson started out that day with a full magazine, we'll assume. He fired five of these dummies--with perfect immunity for Manuel--and here are the other four. If the woman had had a little more time, when she was pretending to hide the gun, she would have pumped out all of the good cartridges. Being somewhat hurried, she exchanged only nine, which, in an even game and shot for shot, gave Manuel ten chances to Sanderson's one. It was a cinch." Ballard sat back in his chair handling the empty rifle. Bromley's pallid face turned gray. The tragedy had touched him very sharply at the time; and this new and unexpected evidence of gross treachery revived all the horror of the day when Sanderson had been carried in and laid upon the office couch to die. "Poor Billy!" he said. "It was a cold-blooded murder, and he knew it. That was what he was trying to tell me--and couldn't." "That was my hypothesis from the first," Wingfield asserted promptly. "But the motive seemed to be lacking; it still seems to be lacking. Have either of you two imagination enough to help me out?" "The motive?" queried Bromley. "Why, that remains the same, doesn't it?--more's the pity." The playwright had lighted the long-stemmed pipe, and was thoughtfully blowing smoke rings toward the new patch in the bungalow ceiling. "Not if my theory is to stand, Mr. Bromley. You see, I am proceeding confidently upon the supposition that Sanderson wasn't messing in Manuel's domestic affairs. I can't believe for a moment that it was a quarrel over the woman, with Manuel's jealousy to account for the killing. It's too absurdly preposterous. Settling that fact to my own complete satisfaction, I began to search for the real motive, and it is for you to say whether I am right or wrong. Tell me: was Sanderson more than casually interested in the details of Braithwaite's drowning? That story must have been pretty fresh and raw in everybody's recollection at that time." Bromley's rejoinder was promptly affirmative. "It was; and Sanderson _was_ interested. As Braithwaite's successor, and with the fight between the company and the colonel transferred to him, he couldn't shirk his responsibility. Now that you recall it, I remember very well that he had notions of his own about Braithwaite's taking off. He was a quiet sort; didn't talk much; but what little he did say gave me to understand that he suspected foul play of some kind. And here's your theory again, Mr. Wingfield: if a hint of what he suspected ever got wind in the camp, it would account for the superstitious twist given to the drowning by Hoskins and the others, wouldn't it?" Wingfield smote the table with his fist. "There is your connecting link!" he exclaimed. "We have just proved beyond doubt that Sanderson wasn't killed in a fair fight: he was murdered, and the murder was carefully planned beforehand. By the same token, Braithwaite was murdered, too! Recall the circumstances as they have been related by the eye-witnesses: when they found the Government man and took him out of the river, his skull was crushed and both arms were broken ... see here!" he threw himself quickly into the attitude of one fishing from a riverbank. "Suppose somebody creeps up behind me with a club raised to brain me: I get a glimpse of him or his shadow, dodge, fling up my arms, so--and one good, smashing blow does the business. That's all; or all but one little item. Manuel's woman knows who struck that blow, and Sanderson was trying to bribe her to tell." If the announcement had been an explosion to rock the bungalow on its foundations, the effect could scarcely have been more striking. Ballard flung the empty gun aside and sprang to his feet. The collegian sat down weakly and stared. Bromley's jaw dropped, and he glared across at Wingfield as if the clever deduction were a mortal affront to be crammed down the throat of its originator. The playwright's smile was the eye-wrinkling of one who prides himself upon the ability to keep his head when others are panic-stricken. "Seems to knock you fellows all in a heap," he remarked, calmly. "What have you been doing all these months that you haven't dug it out for yourselves?" Bromley was moistening his lips. "Go on, Mr. Wingfield, if you please. Tell us all you know--or think you know." "There is more; a good bit more," was the cool reply. "Three months ago you had a train wreck on the railroad--two men killed. 'Rough track,' was the cause assigned, Mr. Bromley; but that was one time when your cautious chief, Macpherson, fell down. The two surviving trainmen, questioned separately by me within the past week, both say that there were at least inferential proofs of pulled spikes and a loosened rail. A little later one man was killed and two were crippled by the premature explosion of a charge of dynamite in the quarry. Carelessness, this time, on the part of the men involved; and _you_ said it, Mr. Bromley. It was nothing of the kind. Some one had substituted a coil of quick-firing fuse for the ordinary slow-match the men had been using, and the thing went off before the cry of 'fire' could be given. How do I know?" "Yes; how _do_ you know?" demanded Bromley. "By a mere fluke, and not by any process of deduction, in this instance, as it happens. One of the survivors was crafty enough to steal the coil of substituted fuse, having some vague notion of suing the company for damages for supplying poor material. Like other men of his class, he gave up the notion when he got well of his injuries; but it was revived again the other day when one of his comrades told him I was a lawyer. He made a date with me, told me his tale, and showed me the carefully preserved coil of bad fuse. I cut off a bit of it and did a little experimenting. Look at this." He took a piece of fuse from his pocket, uncoiled it upon the table, and applied a match. It went off like a flash of dry gunpowder, burning through from end to end in a fraction of a second. "Go on," said Ballard, speaking for the first time since the playwright had begun his unravelling of the tangled threads of disaster. "We dismiss the quarry catastrophe and come to the fall of a great boulder from the hill-crags on the farther side of the river some two weeks later. This heaven-sent projectile smashed into the dam structure, broke out a chunk of the completed masonry, killed two men outright and injured half a dozen others--correct me if I distort the details, Mr. Bromley. This time there was no investigation worthy of the name, if I have gathered my information carefully enough. Other rocks had fallen from the same slope; and after Fitzpatrick had assured himself that there were no more likely to fall, the matter was charged off to the accident account. If you and Michael Fitzpatrick had been the typical coroner's jury, Mr. Bromley, you couldn't have been more easily satisfied with purely inferential evidence. I wasn't satisfied until I had climbed painfully to the almost inaccessible ledge from which the boulder had fallen. Once there, however, the 'act of God' became very plainly the act of man. The 'heel' used as a fulcrum in levering the rock from the ledge was still in place; and the man in the case, in his haste or in his indifference to discovery, had left the iron crowbar with which he had pried the stone from its bed. The crowbar is still there." "Is that all?" asked Bromley, wetting his lips again. "By no manner of means," was the equable rejoinder. "I could go on indefinitely. The falling derrick may or may not have been aimed specially at Macpherson; but it committed premeditated murder, just the same--the broken guy cable was rotted in two with acid. Again you will demand to know how I know. I satisfied myself by making a few simple tests on the broken ends with chemicals filched out of Colonel Craigmiles's laboratory up yonder in the second story of his electric plant. No; I'm no chemist. But you will find, when you come to write stories and plays, that a smattering knowledge of every man's trade comes in handy. Otherwise you'll be writing yourself down as a blundering ass in every second paragraph." Wingfield paused, but it was only to relight his pipe. When the tobacco was burning again he went on, in the same even tone. "The falling derrick brings us down to your _régime_, Mr. Ballard. I pass by the incident of the hurled stone that made that awkward patch necessary in your ceiling: you yourself have admitted that the stone could not have come from the blasting in the quarry. But there was another railroad accident which deserves mention. No doubt Hoskins has told you what he saw almost on the very spot where Braithwaite's snuffing-out occurred. He thought it was Braithwaite's ghost--he still thinks so. But we are less credulous; or, at least, I was. Like Sanderson, I have been making friends--or enemies--at the Craigmiles cattle ranch. In fact, I was down there the day following Hoskins's misfortune. Curiously enough, there was another man who saw the Braithwaite ghost--one 'Scotty,' a cow-boy. He was night-herding on the ranch bunch of beef cattle on the night of the accident, and he saw the ghost, leather leggings, Norfolk shooting-jacket, and double-visored British cap all complete, riding a horse down to the river a little while before the train came around the curve. And after the hullabaloo, he saw it again, riding quietly back to the ranch." Bromley was gripping the edge of the table and exchanging glances with Ballard. It was the Kentuckian who broke the silence which fell upon the group around the table when the playwright made an end. "Summing it all up, what is your conclusion, Wingfield? You have reached one long before this, I take it." The amateur Vidocq made a slow sign of assent. "As I have told you, I went into this thing out of sheer curiosity, and partly because there were obstructions put in my way. That's human nature. But afterward it laid hold of me and held me by its own grip. I'm not sure that there have been any simon-pure accidents at all. So far as I have gone, everything that has happened has been made to happen; has been carefully planned and prepared for in advance by some one of more than ordinary intelligence--and vindictiveness. And, unhappily, the motive is only too painfully apparent. The work on this irrigation project of yours is to be hampered and delayed by all possible means, even to the sacrificing of human life." Again there was a silence in the thick-walled office room; a silence so strained that the clickings of the stone hammers in the yard and the rasping cacophonies of the hoisting engines at the dam seemed far removed. It was Bromley who spoke first, and his question was pointedly suggestive. "You haven't stopped with the broad generalisation, Mr. Wingfield?" "Meaning that I have found the man who is responsible for all these desperate and deadly doings? I am afraid I have. There would seem to be only one man in the world whose personal interests are at stake. Naturally, I haven't gone very deeply into that part of it. But didn't somebody tell me there is a fight on in the courts between the Arcadia Company and Colonel Craigmiles?--a fight in which delay is the one thing needful for the colonel?" Ballard came back to the table and stood within arm's-reach of the speaker. His square jaw had taken on the fighting angle, and his eyes were cold and hard. "What are you going to do about it, Mr. Wingfield? Have you arrived at that conclusion, also?" Wingfield's doubtful glance was in young Blacklock's direction, and his reply was evasive. "That is a very natural question; but doesn't it strike you, Mr. Ballard, that this is hardly the time or place to go into it?" "No." "Very well.... Jerry, what we are talking about now is strictly between gentlemen: do you understand?" "Sure thing," said the collegian. "You ask me what I am going to do, Mr. Ballard; and in return I'll ask you to put yourself in my place. Clearly, it is a law-abiding citizen's plain duty to go and lay the bald facts before the nearest prosecuting attorney and let the law take its course. On the other hand, I'm only a man like other men, and----" "And you are Colonel Craigmiles's guest. Go on," said Ballard, straightening the path of hesitation for him. "That's it," nodded Wingfield. "As you say, I am his guest; and--er--well, there is another reason why I should be the last person in the world to make or meddle. At first, I was brashly incredulous, as anyone would be who was mixing and mingling with the colonel in the daily amenities. Later, when the ugly fact persisted and I was obliged to admit it, the personal factor entered the equation. It's bad medicine, any way you decide to take it." "Still you are not telling us what you mean to do, Mr. Wingfield," Bromley reminded him gently. "No; but I don't mind telling you. I have about decided upon a weak sort of compromise. This thing will come out--it's bound to come out in the pretty immediate hence; and I don't want to be here when the sheriff arrives. I think I shall have a very urgent call to go back to New York." Bromley laid hold of the table and pulled himself to his feet; but it was Ballard who said, slowly, as one who weighs his words and the full import of them: "Mr. Wingfield, you are more different kinds of an ass than I took you to be, and that is saying a great deal. Out of a mass of hearsay, the idle stories of a lot of workmen whose idea of humour has been to make a butt of you, you have built up this fantastic fairy tale. I am charitable enough to believe that you couldn't help it; it is a part of your equipment as a professional maker of fairy tales. But there are two things for which I shall take it upon myself to answer personally. You will not leave Castle 'Cadia until your time is out; and you'll not leave this room until you have promised the three of us that this cock-and-bull story of yours stops right here with its first telling." "That's so," added Bromley, with a quiet menace in his tone. It was the playwright's turn to gasp, and he did it, very realistically. "You--you don't believe it? with all the three-sheet-poster evidence staring you in the face? Why, great Joash! you must be stark, staring mad--both of you!" he raved. And then to Blacklock: "Are you in it, too, Jerry?" "I guess I am," returned the collegian, meaning no more than that he felt constrained to stand with the men of his chosen profession. Wingfield drew a long breath and with it regained the impersonal heights of the unemotional observer. "Of course, it is just as you please," he said, carelessly. "I had a foolish notion I was doing you two a good turn; but if you choose to take the other view of it--well, there is no accounting for tastes. Drink your own liquor and give the house a good name. I'll dig up my day-pay later on: it's cracking good material, you know." "That is another thing," Ballard went on, still more decisively. "If you ever put pen to paper with these crazy theories of yours for a basis, I shall make it my business to hunt you down as I would a wild beast." "So shall I," echoed Bromley. Wingfield rose and put the long-stemmed pipe carefully aside. "You are a precious pair of bally idiots," he remarked, quite without heat. Then he looked at his watch and spoke pointedly to Blacklock. "You're forgetting Miss Elsa's fishing party to the upper canyon, aren't you? Suppose we drive around to Castle 'Cadia in the car. You can send Otto back after Mr. Bromley later on." And young Blacklock was so blankly dazed by the cool impudence of the suggestion that he consented and left the bungalow with the playwright. For some little time after the stuttering purr of the motor-car had died away the two men sat as Wingfield had left them, each busy with his own thoughts. Bromley was absently fingering the cartridges from Sanderson's rifle, mute proofs of the truth of the playwright's theories, and Ballard seemed to have forgotten that he had promised Fitzpatrick to run a line for an additional side-track in the railroad yard. "Do you blame me, Loudon?" he asked, after the silence had wrought its perfect work. "No; there was nothing else to do. But I couldn't help being sorry for him." "So was I," was the instant rejoinder. "Wingfield is all kinds of a decent fellow; and the way he has untangled the thing is nothing short of masterly. But I had to tie his tongue; you know I had to do that, Loudon." "Of course, you had to." Silence again for a little space; and then: "There is no doubt in your mind that he has hit upon the true solution of all the little mysteries?" Bromley shook his head slowly. "None at all, I am sorry to say. I have suspected it, in part, at least, for a good while. And I had proof positive before Wingfield gave it to us." "How?" queried Ballard. Bromley was still fingering the cartridges. "I hate to tell you, Breckenridge. And yet you ought to know," he added. "It concerns you vitally." Ballard's smile was patient. "I am well past the shocking point," he averred. "After what we have pulled through in the last hour we may as well make a clean sweep of it." "Well, then; I didn't stumble over the canyon cliff that night four weeks ago: I was knocked over." "What!" "It's true." "And you know who did it?" "I can make a pretty good guess. While I was down at the wing dam a man passed me, coming from the direction of the great house. He was a big man, and he was muffled to the ears in a rain-coat. I know, because I heard the peculiar 'mackintosh' rustle as he went by me. I knew then who it was; would have known even if I hadn't had a glimpse of his face at the passing instant. It is one of the colonel's eccentricities never to go out after nightfall--in a bone-dry country, mind you--without wearing a rain-coat." "Well?" said Ballard. "He didn't see me, though I thought at first that he did; he kept looking back as if he were expecting somebody to follow him. He took the path on our side of the canyon--the one I took a few minutes later. That's all; except that I would swear that I heard the 'slither' of a mackintosh just as the blow fell that knocked me down and out. "Heavens, Loudon! It's too grossly unbelievable! Why, man, he saved your life after the fact, risking his own in a mad drive down here from Castle 'Cadia in the car to do it! You wouldn't have lived until morning if he hadn't come." "It is unbelievable, as you say; and yet it isn't, when you have surrounded all the facts. What is the reason, the only reason, why Colonel Craigmiles should resort to all these desperate expedients?" "Delay, of course; time to get his legal fight shaped up in the courts." "Exactly. If he can hold us back long enough, the dam will never be completed. He knows this, and Mr. Pelham knows it, too. Unhappily for us, the colonel has found a way to ensure the delay. The work can't go on without a chief of construction." "But, good Lord, Loudon, you're not the 'Big Boss'; and, besides, the man loves you like a son! Why should he try to kill you one minute and move heaven and earth to save your life the next?" Bromley shook his head sorrowfully. "That is what made me say what I did about not wanting to tell you, Breckenridge. That crack over the head wasn't meant for me; it was meant for you. If it had not been so dark under the hill that night--but it was; pocket-dark in the shadow of the pines. And he knew you'd be coming along that path on your way back to camp--knew you'd be coming, and wasn't expecting anybody else. Don't you see?" Ballard jumped up and began to pace the floor. "My God!" he ejaculated; "I was his guest; I had just broken bread at his table! Bromley, when he went out to lie in wait for me, he left me talking with his daughter! It's too horrible!" Bromley had stood the eleven cartridges, false and true, in a curving row on the table. The crooking line took the shape of a huge interrogation point. "Wingfield thought he had solved all the mysteries, but the darkest of them remains untouched," he commented. "How can the genial, kindly, magnanimous man we know, or think we know, be such a fiend incarnate?" Then he broke ground again in the old field. "Will you do now what I begged you to do at first?--throw up this cursed job and go away?" Ballard stopped short in his tramping and his answer was an explosive "No!" "That is half righteous anger, and half something else. What is the other half, Breckenridge?" And when Ballard did not define it: "I can guess it; it is the same thing that made you stuff Wingfield's theories down his throat a few minutes ago. You are sorry for the daughter." Through the open door Ballard saw Fitzpatrick coming across the stone yard. "You've guessed it, Loudon; or rather, I think you have known it all along. I love Elsa Craigmiles; I loved her long before I ever heard of Arcadia or its king. Now you know why Wingfield mustn't be allowed to talk; why I mustn't go away and give place to a new chief who might live to see Elsa's father hanged. She must be spared and defended at any cost. One other word before Fitzpatrick cuts in: When my time comes, if it does come, you and one other man will know how I passed out and why. I want your promise that you'll keep still, and that you will keep Wingfield still. Blacklock doesn't count." "Sure," said Bromley, quietly; and then, with the big Irish contractor's shadow fairly darkening the door: "You'll do the same for me, Breckenridge, won't you? Because--oh, confound it all!--I'm in the same boat with you; without a ghost of a show, you understand." Ballard put his back squarely to Michael Fitzpatrick scraping his feet on the puncheon-floored porch of the bungalow, and gripped Bromley's hand across the table. "It's a bargain," he declared warmly. "We'll take the long chance and stand by her together, old man. And if she chooses the better part in the end, I'll try not to act like a jealous fool. Now you turn in and lie down a while. I've got to go with Michael." This time it was Bromley who saved the situation. "What a pair of luminous donkeys we are!" he laughed. "She calls you 'dear friend,' and me 'little brother.' If we're right good and tractable, we may get cards to her wedding--with Wingfield." XIX IN THE LABORATORY Ballard had a small shock while he was crossing the stone yard with Fitzpatrick. It turned upon the sight of the handsome figure of the Craigmiles ranch foreman calmly rolling a cigarette in the shade of one of the cutting sheds. "What is the Mexican doing here?" he demanded abruptly of Fitzpatrick; and the Irishman's manner was far from reassuring. "'Tis you he'll be wanting to see, I'm thinking. He's been hanging 'round the office f'r the betther part of an hour. Shall I run him off the riservation?" "Around the office, you say?" Ballard cut himself instantly out of the contractor's company and crossed briskly to the shed where the Mexican was lounging. "You are waiting to see me?" he asked shortly, ignoring the foreman's courtly bow and sombrero-sweep. "I wait to h-ask for the 'ealth of Señor Bromley. It is report' to me that he is recover from hees sobad h-accident." "Mr. Bromley is getting along all right. Is that all?" The Mexican bowed again. "I bring-a da message from the Señorita to da Señor Wingfiel'. He is som'where on da camp?" "No; he has gone back to the upper valley. You have been waiting some time? You must have seen him go." For the third time the Mexican removed his hat. "I'll have been here one, two, t'ree little minute, Señor Ballar'," he lied smoothly. "And now I make to myself the honour of saying to you, _Adios_." Ballard let him go because there was nothing else to do. His presence in the construction camp, and the ready lie about the length of his stay, were both sufficiently ominous. What if he had overheard the talk in the office? It was easily possible that he had. The windows were open, and the adobe was only a few steps withdrawn from the busy cutting yard. The eavesdropper might have sat unremarked upon the office porch, if he had cared to. The Kentuckian was deep in the labyrinth of reflection when he rejoined Fitzpatrick; and the laying-out of the new side-track afterward was purely mechanical. When the work was done, Ballard returned to the bungalow, to find Bromley sleeping the sleep of pure exhaustion on the blanket-covered couch. Obeying a sudden impulse, the Kentuckian took a field-glass from its case on the wall, and went out, tip-toeing to avoid waking Bromley. If Manuel had overheard, it was comparatively easy to prefigure his next step. "Which way did the Mexican go?" Ballard asked of a cutter in the stone-yard. "The last I saw of him he was loungin' off towards the Elbow. That was just after you was talkin' to him," said the man, lifting his cap to scratch his head with one finger. "Did he come here horseback?" "Not up here on the mesa. Might 'a' left his nag down below; but he wa'n't headin' that way when I saw him." Ballard turned away and climbed the hill in the rear of the bungalow; the hill from which the table-smashing rock had been hurled. From its crest there was a comprehensive view of the upper valley, with the river winding through it, with Castle 'Cadia crowning the island-like knoll in its centre, with the densely forested background range billowing green and grey in the afternoon sunlight. Throwing himself flat on the brown hilltop, Ballard trained his glass first on the inner valley reaches of a bridle-path leading over the southern hogback. There was no living thing in sight in that field, though sufficient time had elapsed to enable the Mexican to ride across the bridge and over the hills, if he had left the camp mounted. The engineer frowned and slipped easily into the out-of-door man's habit of thinking aloud. "It was a bare chance, of course. If he had news to carry to his master, he would save time by walking one mile as against riding four. Hello!" The exclamation emphasised a small discovery. From the hilltop the entrance to the colonel's mysterious mine was in plain view, and for the first time in Ballard's observings of it the massive, iron-bound door was open. Bringing the glass to bear on the tunnel-mouth square of shadow, Ballard made out the figures of two men standing just within the entrance and far enough withdrawn to be hidden from prying eyes on the camp plateau. With the help of the glass, the young engineer could distinguish the shape of a huge white sombrero, and under the sombrero the red spark of a cigarette. Wherefore he rolled quickly to a less exposed position and awaited developments. The suspense was short. In a few minutes the Mexican foreman emerged from the gloom of the mine-mouth, and with a single swift backward glance for the industries at the canyon portal, walked rapidly up the path toward the inner valley. Ballard sat up and trained the field-glass again. Why had Manuel gone out of his way to stop at the mine? The answer, or at least one possible answer, was under the foreman's arm, taking the shape of a short-barrelled rifle of the type carried by express messengers on Western railways. Ballard screwed the glass into its smallest compass, dropped it into his pocket, and made his way down to the camp mesa. The gun meant nothing more than that the Mexican had not deemed it advisable to appear in the construction camp armed. But, on the other hand, Ballard was fully convinced that he was on his way to Colonel Craigmiles as the bearer of news. It was an hour later when Otto, the colonel's chauffeur, kicked out the clutch of the buzzing runabout before the door of the office bungalow and announced that he had come to take the convalescent back to Castle 'Cadia. Bromley was still asleep; hence there had been no opportunity for a joint discussion of the latest development in the little war. But when Ballard was helping him into the mechanician's seat, and Otto had gone for a bucket of water to cool the hissing radiator, there was time for a hurried word or two. "More trouble, Loudon--it turned up while you were asleep. Manuel was here, in the camp, while we were hammering it out with Wingfield. It is measurably certain that he overheard all or part of the talk. What he knows, the colonel doubtless knows, too, by this time, and----" "Oh, good Lord!" groaned Bromley. "It was bad enough as it stood, but this drags Wingfield into it, neck and heels! What will they do to him?" Ballard knitted his brows. "As Manuel could very easily make it appear in his tale-bearing, anything that might happen to Wingfield would be a pretty clear case of self-defence for Colonel Craigmiles. Wingfield knows too much." "A great deal too much. If I dared say ten words to Elsa----" "No," Ballard objected; "she is the one person to be shielded and spared. It's up to us to get Wingfield away from Castle 'Cadia and out of the country--before anything does happen to him." "If I were only half a man again!" Bromley lamented. "But I know just how it will be; I sha'n't have a shadow of chance at Wingfield this evening. As soon as I show up, Miss Cauffrey and the others will scold me for overstaying my leave, and chase me off to bed." "That's so; and it's right," mused Ballard. "You've no business to be out of bed this minute; you're not fit to be facing a ten-mile drive in this jig-wagon. By Jove: that's our way out of it! You climb down and let me go in your place. I'll tell them we let you overdo yourself; that you were too tired to stand the motor trip--which is the fact, if you'd only admit it. That will give me a chance at Wingfield; the chance you wouldn't have if you were to go. What do you say?" "I've already said it," was the convalescent's reply; and he let Ballard help him out of the mechanic's seat and into the bungalow. This is how it chanced that the chauffeur, coming back from Garou's kitchen barrel with the second bucket of water, found his fares changed and the chief engineer waiting to be his passenger over the ten miles of roundabout road. It was all one to the Berliner. He listened to Ballard's brief explanation with true German impassiveness, cranked the motor, pulled himself in behind the pilot-wheel, and sent the little car bounding down the mesa hill to the Boiling Water bridge what time the hoister whistles were blowing the six-o'clock quitting signal. The Kentuckian looked at his watch mechanically, as one will at some familiar reminder of the time. Seven o'clock was the Castle 'Cadia dinner hour: thirty minutes should suffice for the covering of the ten miles of country road, and with the fates propitious there would be an empty half-hour for the cajoling or compelling of Wingfield, imperilled in his character of overcurious delver into other people's affairs. So ran the reasonable prefiguring; but plans and prefigurings based upon the performance of a gasolene motor call for a generous factor of safety. Five miles from a tool-box in either direction, the engines of the runabout set up an ominous knocking. A stop was made, and Ballard filled and lighted his pipe while the chauffeur opened the bonnet and tapped and pried and screwed and adjusted. Ten minutes were lost in the testing and trying, and then the German named the trouble, with an emphatic "_Himmel!_" for a foreword. A broken bolt-head had dropped into the crank-case, and it would be necessary to take the engines to pieces to get it out. Ballard consulted his watch again. It lacked only a quarter of an hour of the Castle 'Cadia dinner-time; and a five-mile tramp over the hills would consume at least an hour. Whatever danger might be threatening the playwright (and the farther Ballard got away from the revelations of the early afternoon, the more the entire fabric of accusation threatened to crumble into the stuff nightmares are made of), a delay of an hour or two could hardly bring it to a crisis. Hence, when Otto lighted the lamps and got out his wrenches, his passenger stayed with him and became a very efficient mechanic's helper. This, as we have seen, was at a quarter before seven. At a quarter before nine the broken bolt was replaced, the last nut was screwed home, and the engines of the runabout were once more in commission. "A handy bit of road repairing, Otto," was Ballard's comment. "And we did it five miles from a lemon. How long will it take us to get in?" The Berliner did not know. With no further bad luck, fifteen or twenty minutes should be enough. And in fifteen minutes or less the little car was racing up the maple-shaded avenue to the Castle 'Cadia carriage entrance. Ballard felt trouble in the air before he descended from the car. The great portico was deserted, the piano was silent, and the lights were on in the upper rooms of the house. At the mounting of the steps, the Forestry man met him and drew him aside into the library, which was as empty as the portico. "I heard the car and thought it would be Mr. Bromley," Bigelow explained; adding: "I'm glad he didn't come. There has been an accident." "To--to Wingfield?" "Yes. How did you know? It was just after dinner. The colonel had some experimental mixture cooking in his electric furnace, and he invited us all down to the laboratory to see the result. Wingfield tangled himself in the wires in some unaccountable way and got a terrible shock. For a few minutes we all thought he was killed, but the colonel would not give up, and now he is slowly recovering." Ballard sat down in the nearest chair and held his head in his hands. His mind was in the condition of a coffer-dam that has been laboriously pumped out, only to be overwhelmed by a sudden and irresistible return of the flood. The theory of premeditated assassination was no nightmare; it was a pitiless, brutal, inhuman fact. Wingfield, an invited guest, and with a guest's privileges and immunities, had been tried, convicted, and sentenced for knowing too much. "It's pretty bad, isn't it?" he said to Bigelow, feeling the necessity of saying something, and realising at the same instant the futility of putting the horror of it into words for one who knew nothing of the true state of affairs. "Bad enough, certainly. You can imagine how it harrowed all of us, and especially the women. Cousin Janet fainted and had to be carried up to the house; and Miss Elsa was the only one of the young women who wasn't perfectly helpless. Colonel Craigmiles was our stand-by; he knew just what to do, and how to do it. He is a wonderful man, Mr. Ballard." "He is--in more ways than a casual observer would suspect." Ballard suffered so much of his thought to set itself in words. To minimise the temptation to say more he turned his back upon the accident and accounted for himself and his presence at Castle 'Cadia. "Bromley was pretty well tired out when Otto came down with the car, and I offered to ride around and make his excuses. We broke an engine bolt on the road: otherwise I should have been here two hours earlier. You say Wingfield is recovering? I wonder if I could see him for a few minutes, before I go back to camp?" Bigelow offered to go up-stairs and find out; and Ballard waited in the silence of the deserted library for what seemed like a long time. And when the waiting came to an end it was not Bigelow who parted the portières and came silently to stand before his chair; it was the king's daughter. "You have heard?" she asked, and her voice seemed to come from some immeasurable depth of anguish. "Yes. Is he better?" "Much better; though he is terribly weak and shaken." Then suddenly: "What brought you here--so late?" He explained the ostensible object of his coming, and mentioned the cause of the delay. She heard him through without comment, but there was doubt and keen distress and a great fear in the gray eyes when he was permitted to look into their troubled depths. "If you are telling me the truth, you are not telling me all of it," she said, sinking wearily into one of the deepest of the easy-chairs and shading the tell-tale eyes with her hand. "Why shouldn't I tell you all of it?" he rejoined evasively. "I don't know your reasons: I can only fear them." "If you could put the fear into words, perhaps I might be able to allay it," he returned gently. "It is past alleviation; you know it. Mr. Wingfield was with you again to-day, and when he came home I knew that the thing I had been dreading had come to pass." "How could you know it? Not from anything Wingfield said or did, I'm sure." "No; but Jerry Blacklock was with him--and Jerry's face is an open book for any one who cares to read it. Won't you please tell me the worst, Breckenridge?" "There isn't any worst," denied Ballard, lying promptly for love's sake. "We had luncheon together, the four of us, in honour of Bromley's recovery. Afterward, Wingfield spun yarns for us--as he has a habit of doing when he can get an audience of more than one person. Some of his stories were more grewsome than common. I don't wonder that Jerry had a left-over thrill or two in his face." She looked up from behind the eye-shading hand. "Do you dare to repeat those stories to me?" His laugh lacked something of spontaneity. "It is hardly a question of daring; it is rather a matter of memory--or the lack of it. Who ever tries to make a record of after-dinner fictions? Wingfield's story was a tale of impossible crimes and their more impossible detection; the plot and outline for a new play, I fancied, which he was trying first on the dog. Blacklock was the only one of his three listeners who took him seriously." She was silenced, if not wholly convinced; and when she spoke again it was of the convalescent assistant. "You are not going to keep Mr. Bromley at the camp, are you? He isn't able to work yet." "Oh, no. You may send for him in the morning, if you wish. I--he was a little tired to-night, and I thought----" "Yes; you have told me what you thought," she reminded him, half absently. And then, with a note of constraint in her voice that was quite new to him: "You are not obliged to go back to Elbow Canyon to-night, are you? Your room is always ready for you at Castle 'Cadia." "Thank you; but I'll have to go back. If I don't, Bromley will think he's the whole thing and start in to run the camp in the morning before I could show up." She rose when he did, but her face was averted and he could not see her eyes when he went on in a tone from which every emotion save that of mere friendly solicitude was carefully effaced: "May I go up and jolly Wingfield a bit? He'll think it odd if I go without looking in at him." "If you should go without doing that for which you came," she corrected, with the same impersonal note in her voice. "Of course, you may see him: come with me." She led the way up the grand stair and left him at the door of a room in the wing which commanded a view of the sky-pitched backgrounding mountains. The door was ajar, and when he knocked and pushed it open he saw that the playwright was in bed, and that he was alone. "By Jove, now!" said a weak voice from the pillows; "this is neighbourly of you, Ballard. How the dickens did you manage to hear of it?" "Bad news travels fast," said Ballard, drawing a chair to the bedside. He did not mean to go into details if he could help it; and to get away from them he asked how the miracle of recovery was progressing. "Oh, I'm all right now," was the cheerful response--"coming alive at the rate of two nerves to the minute. And I wouldn't have missed it for the newest thousand-dollar bill that ever crackled in the palm of poverty. What few thrills I can't put into a description of electrocution, after this, won't be worth mentioning." "They have left you alone?" queried Ballard, with a glance around the great room. "Just this moment. The colonel and Miss Cauffrey and Miss Dosia were with me when the buzzer went off. Whoever sent you up pressed the button down stairs. Neat, isn't it. How's Bromley? I hope you didn't come to tell us that his first day in camp knocked him out." "No; Bromley is all right. You are the sick man, now." Wingfield's white teeth gleamed in a rather haggard smile. "I have looked over the edge, Ballard; that's the fact." "Tell me about it--if you can." "There isn't much to tell. We were all crowding around the electric furnace, taking turns at the coloured-glass protected peep-hole. The colonel had warned us about the wires, but the warning didn't cut any figure in my case." "You stumbled?" The man in bed flung a swift glance across the room toward the corridor door which Ballard had left ajar. "Go quietly and shut that door," was his whispered command; and when Ballard had obeyed it: "Now pull your chair closer and I'll answer your question: No, I didn't stumble. Somebody tripped me, and in falling I grabbed at one of the electrodes." "I was sure of it," said Ballard, quietly. "I knew that in all human probability you would be the next victim. That is why I persuaded Bromley to let me take his place in the motor-car. If the car hadn't broken down, I should have been here in time to warn you. I suppose it isn't necessary to ask who tripped you?" The playwright rocked his head on the pillow. "I'm afraid not, Ballard. The man who afterward saved my life--so they all say--was the one who stood nearest to me at the moment. The 'why' is what is tormenting me. I'm not the Arcadia Company, or its chief engineer, or anybody in particular in this game of 'heads I win, and tails you lose.'" Ballard left his chair and walked slowly to the mountain-viewing window. When he returned to the bedside, he said: "I can help you to the 'why.' What you said in my office to-day to three of us was overheard by a fourth--and the fourth was Manuel. An hour or so later he came up this way, on foot. Does that clear the horizon for you?" "Perfectly," was the whispered response, followed by a silence heavy with forecastings. "Under the changed conditions, it was only fair to you to bring you your warning, and to take off the embargo on your leaving Castle 'Cadia. Of course, you'll get yourself recalled to New York at once?" said Ballard. Wingfield raised himself on one elbow, and again his lips parted in the grinning smile. "Not in a thousand years, Ballard. I'll see this thing out now, if I get killed regularly once a day. You say I mustn't write about it, and that's so. I'm not a cad. But the experience is worth millions to me--worth all the chances I'm taking, and more. I'll stay." Ballard gripped the womanish hand lying on the coverlet. Here, after all, and under all the overlayings of pose and craftsman egotism, was a man with a man's heart and courage. "You're a brave fool, Wingfield," he said, warmly; "and because you are brave and a man grown, you shall be one of us. We--Bromley and I--bluffed you to-day for a woman's sake. If you could have got away from the excitement of the man-hunt for a single second, I know your first thought would have been for the woman whose lifted finger silences three of us. Because you seemed to forget this for the moment, I knocked you down with your own theory. Does that clear another of the horizons for you?" "Immensely. And I deserved all you gave me. Until I'm killed off, you may comfort yourself with the thought that one of the gallant three is here, in the wings, as you might say, ready and willing to do what he can to keep the curtain from rising on any more tragedy." "Thank you," said Ballard, heartily; "that will be a comfort." Then, with a parting hand-grip and an added word of caution to the man who knew too much, he left the room and the house, finding his way unattended to the great portico and to the path leading down to the river road. The mile faring down the valley in the velvety blackness of the warm summer night was a meliorating ending to the day of revelations and alarms; and for the first time since Wingfield's clever unravelling of the tangled mesh of mystery, the Kentuckian was able to set the accusing facts in orderly array. Yet now, as before, the greatest of the mysteries refused to take its place in the wellnigh completed circle of incriminating discoveries. That the King of Arcadia, Elsa's father and the genial host of the great house on the knoll, was a common murderer, lost to every humane and Christian prompting of the soul, was still as incredible as a myth of the Middle Ages. "I'll wake up some time in the good old daylight of the every-day, commonplace world, I hope," was Ballard's summing-up, when he had traversed the reflective mile and had let himself into the office bungalow to find Bromley sleeping peacefully in his bunk. "But it's a little hard to wait--with the air full of Damocles-swords, and with the dear girl's heart gripped in a vise that I can't unscrew. That is what makes it bitterer than death: she knows, and it is killing her by inches--in spite of the bravest heart that ever loved and suffered. God help her; God help us all!" XX THE GEOLOGIST It was Miss Craigmiles herself who gave Ballard the exact date of Professor Gardiner's coming; driving down to the construction camp alone in the little motor-car for that avowed purpose. A cloud-burst in the main range had made the stage road from Alta Vista impassable for the moment, leaving the Arcadia Company's railroad--by some unexplained miracle of good fortune--unharmed. Hence, unless the expected guest could be brought over from Alta Vista on the material train, he would be indefinitely detained on the other side of the mountain. Miss Elsa came ostensibly to beg a favour. "Of course, I'll send over for him," said Ballard, when the favour had been named. "Didn't I tell you he is going to be _my_ guest?" "But he isn't," she insisted, playfully. Bromley was out and at work, Wingfield had entirely recovered from the effects of his electric shock, and there had been no untoward happenings for three peaceful weeks. Wherefore there was occasion for light-heartedness. Ballard descended from the bungalow porch and arbitrarily stopped the buzzing engines of the runabout by cutting out the batteries. "This is the first time I've seen you for three weeks," he asserted--which was a lover's exaggeration. "Please come up and sit on the porch. There is any number of things I want to say." "Where is Mr. Bromley?" she asked, making no move to leave the driving-seat. "He is out on the ditch survey--luckily for me. Won't you please 'light and come in?--as we say back in the Blue-grass." "You don't deserve it. You haven't been near us since Mr. Bromley went back to work. Why?" "I have been exceedingly busy; we are coming down the home-stretch on our job here, as you know." The commonplace excuse was the only one available. He could not tell her that it was impossible for him to accept further hospitalities at Castle 'Cadia. "Mr. Bromley hasn't been too busy," she suggested. "Bromley owes all of you a very great debt of gratitude." "And you do not, you would say. That is quite true. You owe us nothing but uncompromising antagonism--hatred, if you choose to carry it to that extreme." "No," he returned gravely. "I can't think of you and of enmity at the same moment." "If you could only know," she said, half absently, and the trouble shadow came quickly into the backgrounding depths of the beautiful eyes. "There is no real cause for enmity or hatred--absolutely none." "I am thinking of you," he reminded her, reverting to the impossibility of associating that thought with the other. "Thank you; I am glad you can make even that much of a concession. It is more than another would make." Then, with the unexpectedness which was all her own: "I am still curious to know what you did to Mr. Wingfield: that day when he so nearly lost his life in the laboratory?" "At what time in that day?" he asked, meaning to dodge if he could. "You know--when you had him here in your office, with Jerry and Mr. Bromley." "I don't remember all the things I did to him, that day and before it. I believe I made him welcome--when I had to. He hasn't been using his welcome much lately, though." "No; not since that day that came near ending so terribly. I'd like to know what happened." "Nothing--of any consequence. I believe I told you that Wingfield was boring us with the plot of a new play." "Yes; and you said you couldn't remember it." "I don't want to remember it. Let's talk of something else. Is your anxiety--the trouble you refuse to share with me--any lighter?" "No--yes; just for the moment, perhaps." "Are you still determined not to let me efface it for you?" "You couldn't; no one can. It can never be effaced." His smile was the man's smile of superior wisdom. "Don't we always say that when the trouble is personal?" She ignored the query completely, and her rejoinder was totally irrelevant--or it seemed to be. "You think I came down here to ask you to send over to Alta Vista for Professor Gardiner. That was merely an excuse. I wanted to beg you once again to suspend judgment--not to be vindictive." Again he dissimulated. "I'm not vindictive: why should I be?" "You have every reason; or, at least, you believe you have." She leaned over the arm of the driving-seat and searched his eyes pleadingly: "Please tell me: how much did Mr. Wingfield find out?" It was blankly impossible to tell her the hideous truth, or anything remotely approaching it. But his parrying of her question was passing skilless. "Not being a mind-reader, I can't say what Wingfield knows--or thinks he knows. Our disagreement turned upon his threat to make literary material out of--well, out of matters that were in a good measure my own private and personal affairs." "Oh; so there _was_ a quarrel? That is more than you were willing to admit a moment ago." "You dignify it too much. I believe I called him an ass, and he called me an idiot. There was no bloodshed." "You are jesting again. You always jest when I want to be serious." "I might retort that I learned the trick of it from you--in the blessed days that are now a part of another existence." "Oh!" she said; and there was so much more of distress than of impatience in the little outcry that he was mollified at once. "I'm going to crank the engines and send you home," he asseverated. "I'm not fit to talk to you to-day." And he started the engines of the motor-car. She put a dainty foot on the clutch-pedal. "You'll come up and see me?" she asked; adding: "Some time when you are fit?" "I'll come when I am needed; yes." He walked beside the slowly moving car as she sent it creeping down the mesa hill on the brakes. At the hill-bottom turn, where the camp street ended and the roundabout road led off to the temporary bridge, she stopped the car. The towering wall of the great dam, with its dotting of workmen silhouetted black against the blue of the Colorado sky, rose high on the left. She let her gaze climb to the summit of the huge dike. "You are nearly through?" she asked. "Yes. Two other weeks, with no bad luck, will see us ready to turn on the water." She was looking straight ahead again. "You know what that means to us at Castle 'Cadia?--but of course you do." "I know I'd rather be a 'mucker' with a pick and shovel out yonder in the ditch than to be the boss here when the spillway gates are closed at the head of the cut-off tunnel. And that is the pure truth." "This time I believe you without reservation, Breckenridge--my friend." Then: "Will Mr. Pelham come out to the formal and triumphal opening of the Arcadian Irrigation District?" "Oh, you can count on that--with all the trimmings. There is to be a demonstration in force, as Major Blacklock would say; special trains from Denver to bring the crowd, a barbecue dinner, speeches, a land-viewing excursion over the completed portion of the railroad, and fireworks in the evening while the band plays 'America.' You can trust Mr. Pelham to beat the big drum and to clash the cymbals vigorously and man-fashion at the psychological instant." "For purely commercial reasons, of course? I could go a step further and tell you something else that will happen. There will be a good many transfers of the Arcadia Company's stock at the triumphal climax." He was standing with one foot on the car step and his hands buried in the pockets of his short working-coat. His eyes narrowed to regard her thoughtfully. "What do you know about such things?" he demurred. "You know altogether too much for one small bachelor maid. It's uncanny." "I am the cow-punching princess of Arcadia, and Mr. Pelham's natural enemy, you must remember," she countered, with a laugh that sounded entirely care-free. "I could tell you more about the stock affair. Mr. Pelham has been very liberal with his friends in the floating of this great and glorious undertaking--to borrow one of his pet phrases. He has placed considerable quantities of the Arcadia Company's stock among them at merely nominal prices, asking only that they sign a 'gentlemen's agreement' not to resell any of it, so that my father could get it. But there is a wheel within that wheel, too. Something more than half of the nominal capitalisation has been reserved as 'treasury stock.' When the enthusiasm reaches the proper height, this reserved stock will be put upon the market. People will be eager to buy it--won't they?--with the work all done, and everything in readiness to tap the stream of sudden wealth?" "Probably: that would be the natural inference." "I thought so. And, as the company's chief engineer, you could doubtless get in on the 'ground floor' that Mr. Pelham is always talking about, couldn't you?" The question was one to prick an honest man in his tenderest part. Ballard was hurt, and his face advertised it. "See here, little girl," he said, flinging the formalities to the winds; "I am the company's hired man at the present moment, but that is entirely without prejudice to my convictions, or to the fact that some day I am going to marry you. I hope that defines my attitude. As matters stand, Mr. Pelham couldn't hand me out any of his stock on a silver platter!" "And Mr. Bromley?" "You needn't fear for Loudon; he isn't going to invest, either. You know very well that he is in precisely the same boat that I am." "How shocking!" she exclaimed, with an embarrassed little laugh. "Is Mr. Bromley to marry your widow? Or are you to figure as the consolation prize for his widow? Doubtless you have arranged it amicably between you." Having said the incendiary thing, he brazened it out like a man and a lover. "It's no joke. I suppose I might sidestep, but I sha'n't. You know very well that Bromley is in love with you--up to his chin, and I'm afraid you have been too kind to him. That is a little hard on Loudon, you know--when you are going to marry some one else. But let that rest, and tell me a little more about this stock deal. Why should there be a 'gentlemen's agreement' to exclude your father? To a rank outsider like myself, Arcadia Irrigation would seem to be about the last thing in the world Colonel Adam Craigmiles would want to buy." "Under present conditions, I think it is," she said. "_I_ shouldn't buy it now." "What would you do, O wise virgin of the market-place?" "I'd wait patiently while the rocket is going up; I might even clap my hands and say 'Ah-h-h!' with the admiring multitude. But afterward, when the stick comes down, I'd buy every bit of Arcadia Irrigation I could find." Again he was regarding her through half-closed eyelids. "As I said before, you know too much about such things--altogether too much." He said it half in raillery, but his deduction was made seriously enough. "You think your father will win his law-suit and so break the market?" "No; on the contrary, I'm quite sure he will be beaten. I am going, now. Don't ask me any more questions: I've said too much to the company's engineer, as it is." "You have said nothing to the company's engineer," he denied. "You have been talking to Breckenridge Ballard, your future----" She set the car in motion before he could complete the sentence, and he stood looking after it as it shot away up the hills. It was quite out of sight, and the sound of its drumming motor was lost in the hoarse grumbling of the river, before he began to realise that Elsa's visit had not been for the purpose of asking him to send for Gardiner, nor yet to beg him not to be vindictive. Her real object had been to warn him not to buy Arcadia Irrigation. "Why?" came the unfailing question, shot-like; and, like all the others of its tribe, it had to go unanswered. It was two days later when Gardiner, the assistant professor of geology, kept his appointment, was duly met at Alta Vista by Ballard's special engine and a "dinkey" way-car, and was transported in state to the Arcadian fastnesses. Ballard had it in mind to run down the line on the other engine to meet the Bostonian; but Elsa forestalled him by intercepting the "special" at Ackerman's with the motor-car and whisking the guest over the roundabout road to Castle 'Cadia. Gardiner walked down to the construction camp at Elbow Canyon bright and early the following morning to make his peace with Ballard. "Age has its privileges which youth is obliged to concede, Breckenridge, my son," was the form his apology took. "When I learned that I might have my visit with you, and still be put up at the millionaire hostelry in the valley above, I didn't hesitate a moment. I am far beyond the point of bursting into enthusiastic raptures over a bunk shake-down in a camp shanty, steel forks, tin platters, and plum-duff, when I can live on the fat of the land and sleep on a modern mattress. How are you coming on? Am I still in time to be in at the death?" "I hope there isn't going to be any death," was the laughing rejoinder. "Because, in the natural sequence of things, it would have to be mine, you know." "Ah! You are tarred a little with the superstitious stick, yourself, are you? What was it you said to me about 'two sheer accidents and a commonplace tragedy'? You may remember that I warned you, and the event proves that I was a true prophet. I predicted that Arcadia would have its shepherdess, you recollect." Thus, with dry humour, the wise man from the East. But Ballard was not prepared at the moment for a plunge into the pool of sentiment with the mildly cynical old schoolman for a bath-master, and he proposed, as the readiest alternative, a walking tour of the industries. Gardiner was duly impressed by the industrial miracles, and by the magnitude of the irrigation scheme. Also, he found fitting words in which to express his appreciation of the thoroughness of Ballard's work, and of the admirable system under which it was pressing swiftly to its conclusion. But these matters became quickly subsidiary when he began to examine the curious geological formation of the foothill range through which the river elbowed its tumultuous course. "These little wrinklings of the earth's crust at the foot of the great mountain systems are nature's puzzle-pieces for us," he remarked. "I foresee an extremely enjoyable vacation for me--if you have forgiven me to the extent of a snack at your mess-table now and then, and a possible night's lodging in your bungalow if I should get caught out too late to reach the millionaire luxuries of Castle 'Cadia." "If I haven't forgiven you, Bromley will take you in," laughed Ballard. "Make yourself one of us--when you please and as you please. The camp and everything in it belongs to you for as long as you can persuade yourself to stay." Gardiner accepted the invitation in its largest sense, and the afternoon of the same day found him prowling studiously in the outlet canyon with hammer and specimen-bag; a curious figure of complete abstraction in brown duck and service leggings, overshadowed by an enormous cork-lined helmet-hat that had been faded and stained by the sun and rains of three continents. Ballard passed the word among his workmen. The absent-minded stranger under the cork hat was the guest of the camp, who was to be permitted to go and come as he chose, whose questions were to be answered without reserve, and whose peculiarities, if he had any, were to pass unremarked. With the completion of the dam so near at hand, neither of the two young men who were responsible for the great undertaking had much time to spare for extraneous things. But Gardiner asked little of his secondary hosts; and presently the thin, angular figure prowling and tapping at the rocks became a familiar sight in the busy construction camp. It was Lamoine, the camp jester, who started the story that the figure in brown canvas was a mascot, imported specially by the "boss" to hold the "hoodoo" in check until the work should be done; and thereafter the Boston professor might have chipped his specimens from the facing stones on the dam without let or hindrance. The masons were setting the coping course on the great wall on a day when Gardiner's studious enthusiasm carried him beyond the dinner-hour at Castle 'Cadia and made him an evening guest in the engineer's adobe; and in the after-supper talk it transpired that the assistant in geology had merely snatched a meagre fortnight out of his work in the summer school, and would be leaving for home in another day or two. Both of the young men protested their disappointment. They had been too busy to see anything of their guest in a comradely way, and they had been looking forward to the lull in the activities which would follow the opening celebration and promising themselves a more hospitable entertainment of the man who had been both Mentor and elder brother to them in the Boston years. "You are not regretting it half as keenly as I am," the guest assured them. "Apart from losing the chance to thresh it out with you two, I have never been on more fascinatingly interesting geological ground. I could spend an entire summer among these wonderful hills of yours without exhausting their astonishing resources." Ballard made allowances for scholastic enthusiasm. He had slighted geology for the more strictly practical studies in his college course. "Meaning the broken formations?" he asked. "Meaning the general topsyturvyism of all the formations. Where you might reasonably expect to find one stratum, you find others perhaps thousands of years older--or younger--in the geological chronology. I wonder you haven't galvanised a little enthusiasm over it: you discredit your alma mater and me when you regard these marvellous hills merely as convenient buttresses for your wall of masonry. And, by the way, that reminds me: neither of you two youngsters is responsible for the foundations of that dam; isn't that the fact?" "It is," said Bromley, answering for both. Then he added that the specifications called for bed-rock, which Fitzpatrick, who had worked under Braithwaite, said had been uncovered and properly benched for the structure. "'Bed-rock,'" said the geologist, reflectively. "That is a workman's term, and is apt to be misleading. The vital question, under such abnormal conditions as those presenting themselves in your canyon, is, What kind of rock was it?" Bromley shook his head. "You can't prove it by me. The foundations were all in before I came on the job. But from Fitzpatrick's description I should take it to be the close-grained limestone." "H'm," said Gardiner. "Dam-building isn't precisely in my line; but I shouldn't care to trust anything short of the granites in such a locality as this." "You've seen something?" queried Ballard. "Nothing immediately alarming; merely an indication of what might be. Where the river emerges from your cut-off tunnel below the dam, it has worn out a deep pit in the old bed, as you know. The bottom of this pit must, in the nature of things, be far below the foundations of the masonry. Had you thought of that?" "I have--more than once or twice," Ballard admitted. "Very well," continued the Master of the Rocks; "that circumstance suggests three interrogation points. Query one: How has the diverted torrent managed to dig such a deep cavity if the true primitives--your workman's 'bed-rock'--under-lie its channel cutting? Query two: What causes the curious reverberatory sound like distant thunder made by the stream as it plunges into this pit--a sound suggesting subterranean caverns? Query three--and this may be set down as the most important of the trio: Why is the detritus washed up out of this singular pot-hole a friable brown shale, quite unlike anything found higher up in the bed of the stream?" The two young men exchanged swift glances of apprehension. "Your deductions, Professor?" asked Bromley, anxiously. "Now you are going too fast. True science doesn't deduce: it waits until it can prove. But I might hazard a purely speculative guess. Mr. Braithwaite's foundation stratum--your contractor's 'bed-rock'--may not be the true primitive; it may in its turn be underbedded by this brown shale that the stream is washing up out of its pot-hole." "Which brings on more talk," said Ballard, grappling thoughtfully with the new perplexities forming themselves upon Gardiner's guess. "Decidedly, one would say. Granting my speculative answer to Query Number Three, the Arcadia Company's dam may stand for a thousand years--or it may not. Its life may possibly be determined in a single night, if by any means the water impounded above it should find its way through Fitzpatrick's 'bed-rock' to an underlying softer stratum." Ballard's eyes were fixed upon a blue-print profile of Elbow Canyon pinned upon the wall, when he said: "If that pot-hole, or some rift similar to it, were above the dam instead of below it, for example?" "Precisely," said the geologist. "In five minutes after the opening of such an underground channel your dam might be transformed into a makeshift bridge spanning an erosive torrent comparable in fierce and destructive energy, to nothing milder than a suddenly released Niagara." Silence ensued, and afterward the talk drifted to other fields; was chiefly reminiscent of the younger men's university years. It was while Bromley and Gardiner were carrying the brunt of it that Ballard got up and went out. A few minutes later the out-door stillness of the night was shattered by the sharp crack of a rifle, and other shots followed in quick succession. Bromley sprang afoot at the first discharge, but before he could reach the door of the adobe, Ballard came in, carrying a hatful of roughly crumbled brown earth. He was a little short of breath, and his eyes were flashing with excitement. Nevertheless, he was cool enough to stop Bromley's question before it could be set in words. "It was only one of the colonel's Mexican mine guards trying a little rifle practice in the dark," he explained; and before there could be any comment: "I went out to get this, Gardiner"--indicating the hatful of earth. "It's a sample of some stuff I'd like to have you take back to Boston with you for a scientific analysis. I've got just enough of the prospector's blood in me to make me curious about it." The geologist examined the brown earth critically; passed a handful of it through his fingers; smelled it; tasted it. "How much have you got of this?" he asked, with interest palpably aroused. "Enough," rejoined the Kentuckian, evasively. "Then your fortune is made, my son. This 'stuff,' as you call it, is the basis of Colonel Craigmile's millions. I hope your vein isn't a part of his." Again Ballard evaded the implied question. "What do you know about it, Gardiner? Have you ever seen any of it before?" "I have, indeed. More than that, I have 'proved up' on it, as your Western miners say of their claims. A few evenings ago we were talking of expert analyses--the colonel and young Wingfield and I--up at the house of luxuries, and the colonel ventured to wager that he could stump me; said he could give me a sample of basic material carrying fabulous values, the very name of which I wouldn't be able to tell him after the most exhaustive laboratory tests. Of course, I had to take him up--if only for the honour of the Institute--and the three of us went down to his laboratory. The sample he gave me was some of this brown earth." "And you analysed it?" inquired Ballard with eagerness unconcealed. "I did; and won a box of the colonel's high-priced cigars, for which, unhappily, I have no possible use. The sample submitted, like this in your hat, was zirconia; the earth-ore which carries the rare metal zirconium. Don't shame me and your alma mater by saying that this means nothing to you." "You've got us down," laughed Bromley. "It's only a name to me; the name of one of the theoretical metals cooked up in laboratory experiments. And I venture to say it is even less than that to Breckenridge." "It is a very rare metal, and up to within a few years has never been found in a natural state or produced in commercial quantities," explained the analyst, mounting and riding his hobby with apparent zest. "A refined product of zirconia, the earth itself, has been used to make incandescent gas-mantles; and it was M. Léoffroy, of Paris, who discovered a method of electric-furnace reduction for isolating the metal. It was a great discovery. Zirconium, which is exceedingly dense and practically irreducible by wear, is supplanting iridium for the pointing of gold pens, and its value for that purpose is far in excess of any other known substance." "But Colonel Craigmiles never ships anything from his mine, so far as any one can see," Ballard cut in. "No? It isn't necessary. He showed us his reduction-plant--run by water-power from the little dam in the upper canyon. It is quite perfect. You will understand that the actual quantity of zirconium obtained is almost microscopic; but since it is worth much more than diamonds, weight for weight, the plant needn't be very extensive. And the fortunate miner in this instance is wholly independent of the transportation lines. He can carry his output to market in his vest pocket." After this, the talk, resolutely shunted by Ballard, veered aside from Arcadian matters. Later on, when Bromley was making up a shake-down bed in the rear room for the guest, the Kentuckian went out on the porch to smoke. It was here that Bromley found him after the Bostonian had been put to bed. "Now, then, I want to know where you got that sample, Breckenridge?" he demanded, without preface. Ballard's laugh was quite cheerful. "I stole it out of one of the colonel's ore bins at the entrance of the mine over yonder." "I thought so. And the shots?" "They were fired at me by one of the Mexican night guards, of course. One of them hit the hat as I was running away, and I was scared stiff for fear Gardiner's sharp old eyes would discover the hole. I'm right glad for one thing, Loudon; and that is that the mine is really a mine. Sometimes I've been tempted to suspect that it was merely a hole in the ground, designed and maintained purely for the purpose of cinching the Arcadia Company for damages." Bromley sat up straight and his teeth came together with a little click. He was remembering the professor's talk about the underlying shales, and a possible breach into them above the dam when he said: "Or to--" but the sentence was left unfinished. Instead, he fell to reproaching Ballard for his foolhardiness. "Confound you, Breckenridge! you haven't sense enough to stay in the house when it's raining out-of-doors! The idea of your taking such reckless chances on a mere whiff of curiosity! Let me have a pipeful of that tobacco--unless you mean to hog that, too--along with all the other risky things." XXI MR. PELHAM'S GAME-BAG The _fête champêtre_, as President Pelham named it in the trumpet-flourish of announcement, to celebrate the laying of the final stone of the great dam at the outlet of Elbow Canyon, anticipated the working completion of the irrigation system by some weeks. That the canals were not yet in readiness to furnish water to the prospective farmer really made little difference. The spectacular event was the laying of the top-stone; and in the promoter's plans a well-arranged stage-effect was of far greater value than any actual parcelling out of the land to intended settlers. Accordingly, no effort was spared to make the celebration an enthusiastic success. For days before the auspicious one on which the guest trains began to arrive from Alta Vista and beyond, the camp force spent itself in setting the scene for the triumph. The spillway gate, designed to close the cut-off tunnel and so to begin the impounding of the river, was put in place ready to be forced down by its machinery; the camp mesa was scraped and raked and cleared of the industrial litter; a platform was erected for the orators and the brass band; a towering flagstaff--this by the express direction of the president--was planted in the middle of the mesa parade ground; and with the exception of camp cook Garou, busy with a small army of assistants over the barbecue pits, the construction force was distributed among the camps on the canals--this last a final touch of Mr. Pelham's to secure the degree of exclusiveness for the celebration which might not have been attainable in the presence of an outnumbering throng of workmen. In the celebration proper the two engineers had an insignificant part. When the trains were in and side-tracked, and the working preliminaries were out of the way, the triumphal programme, as it had been outlined in a five-page letter from the president to Ballard, became automatic, moving smoothly from number to number as a well-designed masterpiece of the spectacular variety should. There were no hitches, no long waits for the audience. Mr. Pelham, carrying his two-hundred-odd pounds of avoirdupois as jauntily as the youngest promoter of them all, was at once the genial host, the skilful organiser, prompter, stage-manager, chorus-leader; playing his many parts letter-perfect, and never missing a chance to gain a few more notches on the winding-winch of enthusiasm. While the band and the orators were alternating, Ballard and Bromley, off duty for the time, lounged on the bungalow porch awaiting their cue. There had been no awkward happenings thus far. The trains had arrived on time; the carefully staged spectacle was running like a well-oiled piece of mechanism; the August day, despite a threatening mass of storm cloud gathering on the distant slopes of the background mountain range, was perfect; and, thanks to Mr. Pelham's gift of leadership, the celebrators had been judiciously wrought up to the pitch at which everything was applauded and nothing criticised. Hence, there was no apparent reason for Ballard's settled gloom; or for Bromley's impatience manifesting itself in sarcastic flings at the company's secretary, an ex-politician of the golden-tongued tribe, who was the oratorical spellbinder of the moment. "For Heaven's sake! will he never saw it off and let us get that stone set?" gritted the assistant, when the crowd cheered, and the mellifluous flood, checked for the applausive instant, poured steadily on. "Why in the name of common sense did Mr. Pelham want to spring this batch of human phonographs on us!" "The realities will hit us soon enough," growled Ballard, whose impatience took the morose form. Then, with a sudden righting of his tilted camp-stool: "Good Lord, Loudon! Look yonder--up the canyon!" The porch outlook commanded a view of the foothill canyon, and of a limited area of the bowl-shaped upper valley. At the canyon head, and on the opposite side of the river, three double-seated buckboards were wheeling to disembark their passengers; and presently the Castle 'Cadia house-party, led by Colonel Craigmiles himself, climbed the left-hand path to the little level space fronting the mysterious mine. "By Jove!" gasped Bromley; "I nearly had a fit--I thought they were coming over here. Now what in the name of----" "It's all right," cut in Ballard, irritably. "Why shouldn't the colonel want to be present at his own funeral? And you needn't be afraid of their coming over here. The colonel wouldn't wipe his feet on that mob of money-hunters around the band-stand. See; they are making a private box of the mine entrance." The remark framed itself upon the fact. At the colonel's signal the iron-bound tunnel door had swung open, and Wingfield and Blacklock, junior, with the help of the buckboard drivers, were piling timbers on the little plateau for the party's seating. It was Colonel Craigmiles's own proposal, this descent upon the commercial festivities at the dam; and Elsa had yielded only after exhausting her ingenuity in trying to defeat it. She had known in advance that it could not be defeated. For weeks her father's attitude had been explainable only upon a single hypothesis; one which she had alternately accepted and rejected a hundred times during the two years of dam-building; and this excursion was less singular than many other consequences of the mysterious attitude. She was recalling the mysteries as she sat on the pile of timbers with Wingfield, hearing but not heeding the resounding periods of the orator across the narrow chasm. With the inundation of the upper valley an impending certainty, measurable by weeks and then by days, and now by hours, nothing of any consequence had been done at Castle 'Cadia by way of preparing for it. Coming down early one morning to cut flowers for the breakfast-table, she had found two men in mechanics' overclothes installing a small gasolene electric plant near the stables; this, she supposed, was for the house-lighting when the laboratory should be submerged. A few days later she had come upon Otto, the chauffeur, building a light rowboat in a secluded nook in the upper canyon. But beyond these apparently trivial precautions, nothing had been done, and her father had said no word to her or to the guests of what was to be done when the closed-in valley should become a lake with Castle 'Cadia for its single island. Meanwhile, the daily routine of the country house had gone on uninterruptedly; and once, when Mrs. Van Bryck had asked her host what would happen when the floods came, Elsa had heard her father laughingly assure his guest in the presence of the others that nothing would happen. That Wingfield knew more than these surface indications could tell the keenest observer, Elsa was well convinced; how much more, she could only guess. But one thing was certain: ever since the day spent with Ballard and Bromley and Jerry Blacklock at the construction camp--the day of his narrow escape from death--the playwright had been a changed man; cynical, ill at ease, or profoundly abstracted by turns, and never less companionable than at the present moment while he sat beside her on the timber balk, scowling up and across at the band-stand, at the spellbound throng ringing it in, and at the spellbinding secretary shaming the pouring torrent in the ravine below with his flood of rhetoric. "What sickening rot!" he scoffed in open disgust. And then: "It must be delightfully comforting to Ballard and Bromley to have that wild ass of the market-place braying over their work! Somebody ought to hit him." But the orator was preparing to do a little of the hitting, himself. The appearance of the party at the mine entrance had not gone unremarked, and the company's secretary recognised the company's enemy at a glance. He was looking over the heads of the celebrators and down upon the group on the opposite side of the narrow chasm when he said: "So, ladies and gentlemen, this great project, in the face of the most obstinate, and, I may say, lawless, opposition; in spite of violence and petty obstruction on the part of those who would rejoice, even to-day, in its failure; this great work has been carried on to its triumphant conclusion, and we are gathered here on this beautiful morning in the bright sunshine and under the shadow of these magnificent mountains to witness the final momentous act which shall add the finishing stone to this grand structure; a structure which shall endure and subserve its useful and fructifying purpose so long as these mighty mountains rear their snowy heads to look down in approving majesty upon a desert made fair and beautiful by the hand of man." Hand-clappings, cheers, a stirring of the crowd, and the upstarting of the brass band climaxed the rhetorical peroration, and Elsa glanced anxiously over her shoulder. She knew her father's temper and the fierce quality of it when the provocation was great enough to arouse it; but he was sitting quietly between Dosia and Madge Cantrell, and the publicly administered affront seemed to have missed him. When the blare of brass ceased, the mechanical part of the spectacle held the stage for a few brief minutes. The completing stone was carefully toggled in the grappling-hooks of the derrick-fall, and at Ballard's signal the hoisting engine coughed sharply, besprinkling the spectators liberally with a shower of cinders, the derrick-boom swung around, and the stone was lowered cautiously into its place. With a final rasping of trowels, the workmen finished their task, and Ballard walked out upon the abutment and laid his hand on the wheel controlling the drop-gate which would cut off the escape of the river through the outlet tunnel. There was a moment of impressive silence, and Elsa held her breath. The day, the hour, the instant which her father had striven so desperately to avert had come. Would it pass without its tragedy? She saw Ballard give the last searching glance at the gate mechanism; saw President Pelham step out to give the signal. Then there was a stir in the group behind her, and she became conscious that her father was on his feet; that his voice was dominating the droning roar of the torrent and the muttering of the thunder on the far-distant heights. "Mistuh-uh Pelham--and you otheh gentlemen of the Arcadia Company--you have seen fit to affront me, suhs, in the most public manneh, befo' the members of my family and my guests. This was youh privilege, and you have used it acco'ding to youh gifts. Neve'theless, it shall not be said that I failed in my neighbo'ly duty at this crisis. Gentlemen, when you close that gate----" The president turned impatiently and waved his hand to Ballard. The band struck up "The Star-Spangled Banner," a round ball of bunting shot to the top of the flagstaff over the band-stand and broke out in a broad flag, and Elsa saw the starting-wheel turning slowly under Ballard's hand. The clapping and cheering and the band clamour drowned all other sounds; and the colonel's daughter, rising to stand beside Wingfield, felt rather than heard the jarring shock of a near-by explosion punctuating the plunge of the great gate as it was driven down by the geared power-screws. What followed passed unnoticed by the wildly cheering spectators crowding the canyon brink to see the foaming, churning torrent recoil upon itself and beat fiercely upon the lowered gate and the steep-sloped wall of the dam's foundation courses. But Elsa saw Ballard start as from the touch of a hot iron; saw Bromley run out quickly to lay hold of him. Most terrible of all, she turned swiftly to see her father coming out of the mine entrance with a gun in his hands--saw and understood. It was Wingfield, seeing all that she saw and understanding quite as clearly, who came to her rescue at a moment when the bright August sunshine was filling with dancing black motes for her. "Be brave!" he whispered. "See--he isn't hurt much: he has let go of the wheel, and Bromley is only steadying him a bit." And then to the others, with his habitual air of bored cheerfulness: "The show is over, good people, and the water is rising to cut us off from luncheon. Sound the retreat, somebody, and let's mount and ride before we get wet feet." A movement toward the waiting vehicles followed, and at the facing about Elsa observed that her father hastily flung the rifle into the mine tunnel-mouth; and had a fleeting glimpse of Ballard and Bromley walking slowly arm-in-arm toward the mesa shore along the broad coping of the abutment. At the buckboards Wingfield stood her friend again. "Send Jerry Blacklock down to see how serious it is," he suggested, coming between her and the others; and while she was doing it, he held the group for a final look down the canyon at the raging flood still churning and leaping at its barriers like some sentient wild thing trapped and maddened with the first fury of restraint. Young Blacklock made a sprinter's record on his errand and was back almost immediately. Mr. Ballard had got his arm pinched in some way at the gate-head, he reported: it was nothing serious, and the Kentuckian sent word that he was sorry that the feeding of the multitude kept him from saying so to Miss Elsa in person. Elsa did not dare to look at Wingfield while Blacklock was delivering his message; and in the buckboard-seating for the return to Castle 'Cadia, she contrived to have Bigelow for her companion. It was only a few minutes after Jerry Blacklock had raced away up the canyon path with his message of reassurance that Bromley, following Ballard into the office room of the adobe bungalow and locking the door, set to work deftly to dress and bandage a deep bullet-crease across the muscles of his chief's arm; a wound painful enough, but not disabling. "Well, what do you think now, Breckenridge?" he asked, in the midst of the small surgical service. "I haven't any more thinks coming to me," was the sober reply. "And it is not specially comforting to have the old ones confirmed. You are sure it was the colonel who fired at me?" "I saw the whole thing; all but the actual trigger-pulling, you might say. When Mr. Pelham cut him off, he turned and stepped back into the mouth of the mine. Then, while they were all standing up to see you lower the gate, I heard the shot and saw him come out with the gun in his hands. I was cool enough that far along to take in all the little details: the gun was a short-barrelled Winchester--the holster-rifle of the cow-punchers." "_Ouch!_" said Ballard, wincing under the bandaging. Then: "The mysteries have returned, Loudon; we were on the wrong track--all of us. Wingfield and you and I had figured out that the colonel was merely playing a cold-blooded game for delay. That guess comes back to us like a fish-hook with the bait gone. There was nothing, less than nothing, to be gained by killing me to-day." Bromley made the negative sign of assenting perplexity. "It's miles too deep for me," he admitted. "Three nights ago, when I was dining at Castle 'Cadia, Colonel Craigmiles spoke of you as a father might speak of the man whom he would like to have for a son-in-law: talked about the good old gentlemanly Kentucky stock, and all that, you know. I can't begin to sort it out." "I am going to sort it out, some day when I have time," declared Ballard; and the hurt being temporarily repaired, they went out to superintend the arrangements for feeding the visiting throng in the big mess-tent. After the barbecue, and more speech-making around the trestle-tables in the mess-tent, the railroad trains were brought into requisition, and various tours of inspection through the park ate out the heart of the afternoon for the visitors. Bromley took charge of that part of the entertainment, leaving Ballard to nurse his sore arm and to watch the slow submersion of the dam as the rising flood crept in little lapping waves up the sloping back-wall. The afternoon sun beat fiercely upon the deserted construction camp, and the heat, rarely oppressive in the mountain-girt altitudes, was stifling. Down in the cook camp, Garou and his helpers were washing dishes by the crate and preparing the evening luncheon to be served after the trains returned; and the tinkling clatter of china was the only sound to replace the year-long clamour of the industries and the hoarse roar of the river through the cut-off. Between his occasional strolls over to the dam and the canyon brink to mark the rising of the water, Ballard sat on the bungalow porch and smoked. From the time-killing point of view the great house in the upper valley loomed in mirage-like proportions in the heat haze; and by three o'clock the double line of aspens marking the river's course had disappeared in a broad band of molten silver half encircling the knoll upon which the mirage mansion swayed and shimmered. Ballard wondered what the house-party was doing; what preparations, if any, had been made for its dispersal. For his own satisfaction he had carefully run bench-levels with his instruments from the dam height through the upper valley. When the water should reach the coping course, some three or four acres of the house-bearing knoll would form an island in the middle of the reservoir lake. The house would be completely cut off, the orchards submerged, and the nearest shore, that from which the roundabout road approached, would be fully a half-mile distant, with the water at least ten feet deep over the raised causeway of the road itself. Surely the colonel would not subject his guests to the inconvenience of a stay at Castle 'Cadia when the house would be merely an isolated shelter upon an island in the middle of the great lake, Ballard concluded; and when the mirage effect cleared away to give him a better view, he got out the field-glass and looked for some signs of the inevitable retreat. There were no signs, so far as he could determine. With the help of the glass he could pick out the details of the summer afternoon scene on the knoll-top; could see that there were a number of people occupying the hammocks and lazy-chairs under the tree-pillared portico; could make out two figures, which he took to be Bigelow and one of the Cantrell sisters, strolling back and forth in a lovers' walk under the shade of the maples. It was all very perplexing. The sweet-toned little French clock on its shelf in the office room behind him had struck three, and there were only a few more hours of daylight left in Castle 'Cadia's last day as a habitable dwelling. And yet, if he could trust the evidence of his senses, the castle's garrison was making no move to escape: this though the members of it must all know that the rising of another sun would see their retreat cut off by the impounded flood. After he had returned the field-glass to its case on the wall of the office the ticking telegraph instrument on Bromley's table called him, signing "E--T," the end-of-track on the High Line Extension. It was Bromley, wiring in to give the time of the probable return of the excursion trains for Garou's supper serving. "How are you getting on?" clicked Ballard, when the time had been given. "Fine," was the answer. "Everything lovely, and the goose honks high. Enthusiasm to burn, and we're burning it. Just now the baa-lambs are surrounding Mr. Pelham on the canal embankment and singing 'For he's a jolly good fellow' at the tops of their voices. It's great, and we're all hypnotised. So long; and take care of that pinched arm." After Bromley broke and the wire became dumb, the silence of the deserted camp grew more oppressive and the heat was like the breath of a furnace. Ballard smoked another pipe on the bungalow porch, and when the declining sun drove him from this final shelter he crossed the little mesa and descended the path to the ravine below the dam. Here he found food for reflection, and a thing to be done. With the flow of the river cut off, the ground which had lately been its channel was laid bare; and recalling Gardiner's hint about the possible insecurity of the dam's foundations, he began a careful examination of the newly turned leaf in the record of the great chasm. What he read on the freshly-turned page of the uncovered stream-bed was more instructive than reassuring. The great pit described by Gardiner was still full of water, but it was no longer a foaming whirlpool, and the cavernous undercutting wrought by the diverted torrent was alarmingly apparent. In the cut-off tunnel the erosive effect of the stream-rush was even more striking. Dripping rifts and chasms led off in all directions, and the promontory which gave its name to the Elbow, and which formed the northern anchorage of the dam, had been mined and tunnelled by the water until it presented the appearance of a huge hollow tooth. The extreme length of the underground passage was a scant five hundred feet; but what with the explorations of the side rifts--possible only after he had gone back to the bungalow for candles and rubber thigh-boots--the engineer was a good half-hour making his way up to the great stop-gate with the rising flood on its farther side. Here the burden of anxiety took on a few added pounds. There was more or less running water in the tunnel, and he had been hoping to find the leak around the fittings of the gate. But the gate was practically tight. "That settles it," he mused gloomily. "It is seeping through this ghastly honeycomb somewhere, and it's up to us to get busy with the concrete mixers--and to do it quickly. I can't imagine what Braithwaite was thinking of; to drive this tunnel through one of nature's compost heaps, and then to turn a stream of water through it." The sun was a fiery globe swinging down to the sky-pitched western horizon when the Kentuckian picked his way out of the dripping caverns. There were two added lines in the frown wrinkling between his eyes, and he was still talking to himself in terms of discouragement. At a conservative estimate three months of time and many thousands of dollars must be spent in lining the spillway tunnel with a steel tube, and in plugging the caverns of the hollow tooth with concrete. And in any one of the ninety days the water might find its increasing way through the "compost heap"; whereupon the devastating end would come swiftly. It was disheartening from every point of view. Ballard knew nothing of the financial condition of the Arcadia Company, but he guessed shrewdly that Mr. Pelham would be reluctant to put money into work that could not be seen and celebrated with the beating of drums. None the less, for the safety of every future land buyer with holdings below the great dam, the work must be done. Otherwise---- The chief engineer's clean-cut face was still wearing the harassed scowl when Bromley, returning with the excursionists, saw it again. "The grouch is all yours," said the cheerful one, comfortingly, "and you have a good right and title to it. It's been a hard day for you. Is the arm hurting like sin?" "No; not more than it has to. But something else is. Listen, Bromley." And he briefed the story of the hollow-tooth promontory for the assistant. "Great ghosts!--worse and more of it!" was Bromley's comment. Then he added: "I've seen a queer thing, too, Breckenridge: the colonel has moved out, vanished, taken to the hills." "Out of Castle 'Cadia? You're mistaken. There is absolutely nothing doing at the big house: I've been reconnoitring with the glass." "No, I didn't mean that," was the qualifying rejoinder. "I mean the ranch outfit down in the Park. It's gone. You know the best grazing at this time of the year is along the river: well, you won't find hair, hoof or horn of the colonel's cattle anywhere in the bottom lands--not a sign of them. Also, the ranch itself is deserted and the corrals are all open." The harassed scowl would have taken on other added lines if there had been room for them. "What do you make of it, Loudon?--what does it mean?" "You can search me," was the puzzled reply. "But while you're doing it, you can bet high that it means something. To a man up a tall tree it looks as if the colonel were expecting a flood. Why should he expect it? What does he know?--more than we know?" "It's another of the cursed mysteries," Ballard broke out in sullen anger. "It's enough to jar a man's sanity!" "Mine was screwed a good bit off its base a long time ago," Bromley confessed. Then he came back to the present and its threatenings: "I'd give a month's pay if we had this crazy city crowd off of our hands and out of the Park." "We'll get rid of it pretty early. I've settled that with Mr. Pelham. To get his people back to Denver by breakfast-time to-morrow, the trains will have to leave here between eight and eight-thirty." "That is good news--as far as it goes. Will you tell Mr. Pelham about the rotten tooth--to-night, I mean?" "I certainly shall," was the positive rejoinder; and an hour later, when the evening luncheon in the big mess-tent had been served, and the crowd was gathered on the camp mesa to wait for the fireworks, Ballard got the president into the bungalow office, shut the door on possible interruptions, and laid bare the discouraging facts. Singularly enough, as he thought, the facts seemed to make little impression upon the head of Arcadia Irrigation. Mr. Pelham sat back in Macpherson's home-made easy-chair, relighted his cigar, and refused to be disturbed or greatly interested. Assuming that he had not made the new involvement plain enough, Ballard went over the situation again. "Another quarter of a million will be needed," he summed up, "and we shouldn't lose a single day in beginning. As I have said, there seems to be considerable seepage through the hill already, with less than half of the working head of water behind the dam. What it will be under a full head, no man can say." "Oh, I don't know," said the president, easily. "A new boat always leaks a little. The cracks, if there are any, will probably silt up in a few days--or weeks." "That is a possibility," granted the engineer; "but it is scarcely one upon which we have a right to depend. From what the secretary of the company said in his speech to-day, I gathered that the lands under the lower line of the ditch will be put upon the market immediately; that settlers may begin to locate and purchase at once. That must not be done, Mr. Pelham." "Why not?" "Because any man who would buy and build in the bottom lands before we have filled that hollow tooth would take his life in his hands." The president's smile was blandly genial. "You've been having a pretty strenuous day of it, Mr. Ballard, and I can make allowances. Things will look brighter after you have had a good night's rest. And how about that arm? I didn't quite understand how you came to hurt it. Nothing serious, I hope?" "The arm is all right," said Ballard, brusquely. Mr. Pelham's effort to change the subject was too crude and it roused a spirit of bulldog tenacity in the younger man. "You will pardon me if I go back to the original question. What are we going to do about that undermined hill?" The president rose and dusted the cigar-ash from his coat-sleeve. "Just at present, Mr. Ballard, we shall do nothing. To-morrow morning you may put your entire force on the ditch work, discharging the various camps as soon as the work is done. Let the 'hollow tooth' rest for the time. If a mistake has been made, it's not your mistake--or Mr. Bromley's. And a word in your ear: Not a syllable of your very natural anxiety to any one, if you please. It can do no good; and it might do a great deal of harm. I shouldn't mention it even to Bromley, if I were you." "Not mention it?--to Bromley? But Bromley knows; and we agree fully----" "Well, see to it that he doesn't talk. And now I must really beg to be excused, Mr. Ballard. My duties as host----" Ballard let him go, with a feeling of repulsive disgust that was almost a shudder, and sat for a brooding hour in silence while the fireworks sputtered and blazed from the platform on the mesa's edge and the full moon rose to peer over the background range, paling the reds and yellows of the rockets and bombs. He was still sitting where the president had left him when Bromley came in to announce the close of the _fête champêtre_. "It's all over but the shouting, and they are taking to the Pullmans. You don't care to go to the foot of the pass with one of the trains, do you?" "Not if you'll go. One of us ought to stay by the dam while the lake is filling, and I'm the one." "Of course you are," said Bromley, cheerfully. "I'll go with the first section; I'm good for that much more, I guess; and I can come back from Ackerman's ranch in the morning on one of the returning engines." Then he asked the question for which Ballard was waiting: "How did Mr. Pelham take the new grief?" "He took it too easily; a great deal too easily, Loudon. I tell you, there's something rotten in Denmark. He was as cold-blooded as a fish." Hoskins, long since reinstated, and now engineman of the first section of the excursion train, was whistling for orders, and Bromley had to go. "I've heard a thing or two myself, during the day," he averred. "I'll tell you about them in the morning. The company's secretary has been busy making stock transfers all day--when he wasn't spellbinding from some platform or other. There is something doing--something that the baa-lambs don't suspect. And Mr. Pelham and his little inside ring are doing it." Ballard got up and went to the door with the assistant. "And that isn't the worst of it, Loudon," he said, with an air of sudden and vehement conviction. "This isn't an irrigation scheme at all, it's a stock deal from beginning to end. Mr. Pelham knows about that hollow tooth; he knew about it before I told him. You mark my words: we'll never get orders to plug that tunnel!" Bromley nodded agreement. "I've been working my way around to that, too. All right; so let it be. My resignation goes in to-morrow morning, and I take it yours will?" "It will, for a fact; I've been half sorry I didn't saw it off short with Mr. Pelham when I had him here. Good-night. Don't let them persuade you to go over the pass. Stop at Ackerman's, and get what sleep you can." Bromley promised; and a little later, Ballard, sitting in the moonlight on the office porch, heard the trains pull out of the yard and saw the twinkling red eyes of the tail-lights vanish among the rounded hills. "Good-by, Mr. Howard Pelham. I shouldn't be shocked speechless if you never came back to Arcadia," he muttered, apostrophising the departing president of Arcadia Irrigation. Then he put away the business entanglement and let his gaze wander in the opposite direction; toward the great house in the upper valley. At the first eastward glance he sprang up with an exclamation of astonishment. The old king's palace was looming vast in the moonlight, with a broad sea of silver to take the place of the brown valley level in the bridging of the middle distance. But the curious thing was the lights, unmistakable electrics, as aforetime, twinkling through the tree-crownings of the knoll. The Kentuckian left the porch and went to the edge of the mesa cliff to look down upon the flood, rising now by imperceptible gradations as the enlarging area of the reservoir lake demanded more water. The lapping tide was fully half way up the back wall of the dam, which meant that the colonel's power plant at the mouth of the upper canyon must be submerged past using. Yet the lights were on at Castle 'Cadia. While he was speculating over this new mystery, the head-lamps of an automobile came in sight on the roundabout road below the dam, and presently a huge tonneau car, well filled, rolled noiselessly over the plank bridge and pointed its goblin eyes up the incline leading to the camp mesa. When it came to a stand at the cliff's edge, Ballard saw that it held Mrs. Van Bryck, Bigelow, and one of the Cantrell girls in the tonneau; and that Elsa was sharing the driving-seat with young Blacklock. "Good evening, Mr. Ballard," said a voice from the shared half of the driving-seat. And then: "We are trying out the new car--isn't it a beauty?--and we decided to make a neighbourly call. Aren't you delighted to see us? Please say you are, anyway. It is the least you can do." XXII A CRY IN THE NIGHT The little French office clock--Bromley's testimonial from his enthusiastic and admiring classmates of the _École Polytechnique_--had chimed the hour of ten; the August moon rose high in a firmament of infinite depths above the deserted bunk shanties and the silent machinery on the camp mesa; the big touring car, long since cooled from its racing climb over the hills of the roundabout road, cast a grotesque and fore-shortened shadow like that of a dwarfed band-wagon on the stone-chip whiteness of the cutting yard; and still the members of the auto party lingered on the porch of the adobe bungalow. For Ballard, though he was playing the part of the unprepared host, the prolonged stay of the Castle-'Cadians was an unalloyed joy. When he had established Mrs. Van Bryck in the big easy-chair, reminiscent of Engineer Macpherson and his canny skill with carpenter's tools, and had dragged out the blanket-covered divan for Miss Cantrell and Bigelow, he was free. And freedom, at that moment, meant the privilege of sitting a little apart on the porch step with Elsa Craigmiles. For the first time in weeks the Kentuckian was able to invite his soul and to think and speak in terms of comfortable unembarrassment. The long strain of the industrial battle was off, and Mr. Pelham's triumphal beating of drums had been accomplished without loss of life, and with no more serious consequences than a lamed arm for the man who was best able to keep his own counsel. Having definitely determined to send in his resignation in the morning, and thus to avoid any possible entanglement which might arise when the instability of the great dam's foundations should become generally known, the burden of responsibility was immeasurably lightened. And to cap the ecstatic climax in its sentimental part, Elsa's mood was not mocking; it was sympathetic to a heart-mellowing degree. One thing only sounded a jarring note in the soothing theme. That was young Blacklock's very palpable anxiety and restlessness. When the collegian had placed the big car, and had stopped its motor and extinguished its lights, he had betaken himself to the desert of stone chips, rambling therein aimlessly, but never, as Ballard observed, wandering out of eye-reach of the great gray wall of masonry, of the growing lake in the crooking elbow of the canyon, and the path-girted hillside of the opposite shore. Blacklock's too ostentatious time-killing was the latest of the small mysteries; and when the Kentuckian came to earth long enough to remark it, he fancied that Jerry was waiting for a cue of some kind--waiting and quite obviously watching. It was some time after Mrs. Van Bryck, plaintively protesting against being kept out so late, had begun to doze in her chair, and Bigelow had fetched wraps from the car wherewith to cloak a shuddery Miss Cantrell, that Ballard's companion said, guardedly: "Don't you think it would be in the nature of a charity to these two behind us if we were to share Jerry's wanderings for a while?" "I'm not sharing with Jerry--or any other man--just now," Ballard objected. None the less, he rose and strolled with her across the stone yard; and at the foot of the great derrick he pulled out one of the cutter's benches for a seat. "This is better than the porch step," he was saying, when Blacklock got up from behind a rejected thorough-stone a few yards away and called to him. "Just a minute, Mr. Ballard: I've got a corking big rattler under this rock. Bring a stick, if you can find one." Ballard found a stick and went to the help of the snake-catcher. "Don't give him a chance at you, Jerry," he warned. "Where is he?" The collegian drew him around to the farther side of the great thorough-block. "It was only a leg-pull," was the low-toned explanation. "I've been trying all evening to get a word with you, and I had to invent the snake. Wingfield says we're all off wrong on the mystery chase--'way off. You're to watch the dam--that's what he told me to tell you; watch it close till he comes down here from Castle 'Cadia." "Watch the dam?" queried the engineer. "What am I to look for?" "I don't know another blessed thing about it. But there's something doing; something bigger than--'sh! Miss Elsa's asking about the snake. Cut it out--cut it all out!" "It was a false alarm," Ballard explained, when he rejoined his companion at the derrick's foot. "Jerry has an aggravated attack of imaginationitis. You were saying----?" "I wasn't saying anything; but I shall begin now--if you'll sit down. You must be dying to know why we came down here to-night, of all the nights that ever were; and why we are staying so long past our welcome." "I never felt less like dying since the world began; and you couldn't outstay your welcome if you should try," he answered, out of a full heart. "My opportunities to sit quietly in blissful nearness to you haven't been so frequent that I can afford to spoil this one with foolish queryings about the whys and wherefores." "Hush!" she broke in imperatively. "You are saying light things again in the very thick of the miseries! Have you forgotten that to-day--a few hours ago--another attempt was made upon your life?" "No; I haven't forgotten," he admitted. "Be honest with me," she insisted. "You are not as indifferent as you would like to have me believe. Do you know who made the attempt?" "Yes." He answered without realising that the single word levelled all the carefully raised barriers of concealment; and when the realisation came, he could have bitten his tongue for its incautious slip. "Then you doubtless know who is responsible for all the terrible happenings; the--the _crimes_?" Denial was useless now, and he said "Yes," again. "How long have you known this?" "I have suspected it almost from the first." She turned upon him like some wild creature at bay. "Why are you waiting? Why haven't you had him arrested and tried and condemned, like any other common murderer?" He regarded her gravely, as the hard, white moonlight permitted. No man ever plumbs a woman's heart in its ultimate depths; least of all the heart of the woman he knows best and loves most. "You seem to overlook the fact that I am his daughter's lover," he said, as if the simple fact settled the matter beyond question. "And you have never sought for an explanation?--beyond the one which would stamp him as the vilest, the most inhuman of criminals?" she went on, ignoring his reason for condoning the crimes. "I have; though quite without success, I think--until to-day." "But to-day?" she questioned, anxiously, eagerly. He hesitated, picking and choosing among the words. And in the end he merely begged her to help him. "To-day, hope led me over into the valley of a great shadow. Tell me, Elsa, dear: is your father always fully accountable for his actions?" Her hands were tightly clasped in her lap, and there were tense lines of suffering about the sweet mouth. "You have guessed the secret--my secret," she said, with the heart-break in her tone. And then: "Oh, you don't know, you can't imagine, what terrible agonies I have endured: and alone, always alone!" "Tell me," he commanded lovingly. "I have a good right to know." "The best right of all: the right of a patient and loving friend." She stopped, and then went on in the monotone of despair: "It is in the blood--a dreadful heritage. Do you--do you know how your father died, Breckenridge?" "Not circumstantially; in an illness, I have been told. I was too young to know anything more than I was told; too young to feel the loss. Did some one tell me it was a fever?" "It was not a fever," she said sorrowfully. "He was poisoned--by a horrible mistake. My father and his brother Abner were practising physicians in Lexington, your old home and ours; both of them young, ardent and enthusiastic in their profession. Uncle Abner was called to prescribe for your father--his life-long friend--in a trivial sickness. By some frightful mistake, the wrong drug was given and your father died. Poor Uncle Abner paid for it with his reason, and, a few months later, with his own life. And a little while after his brother's death in the asylum, Father threw up his practice and his profession, and came here to bury himself in Arcadia." The Kentuckian remembered Colonel Craigmiles's sudden seizure at his first sight of the dead Ballard's son, and saw the pointing of it. Nevertheless, he said, soberly: "That proves nothing, you know." "Nothing of itself, perhaps. But it explains all the fearful things I have seen with my own eyes. Two years ago, after the trouble with Mr. Braithwaite, father seemed to change. He became bitterly vindictive against the Arcadia Company, and at times seemed to put his whole soul into the fight against it. Then the accidents began to happen, and--oh, I can't tell you the dreadful things I have seen, or the more dreadful ones I have suspected! I have watched him--followed him--when he did not suspect it. After dinner, the night you arrived, he left us all on the portico at Castle 'Cadia, telling me that he was obliged to come down here to the mine. Are you listening?" "You needn't ask that: please go on." "I thought it very strange; that he would let even a business errand take him away from us on our first evening; and so I--I made an excuse to the others and followed him. Breckenridge, I saw him throw the stone from the top of that cliff--the stone that came so near killing you or Mr. Bromley, or both of you." There had been a time when he would have tried to convince her that she must doubt the evidence of her own senses; but now it was too late: that milestone had been passed in the first broken sentence of her pitiful confession. "There was no harm done, that time," he said, groping loyally for the available word of comforting. "It was God's mercy," she asserted. "But listen again: that other night, when Mr. Bromley was hurt ... After you had gone with the man who came for you, I hurried to find my father, meaning to ask him to send Otto in the little car to see if there was anything we could do. Aunt June said that father was lying down in the library: he was not there. I ran up-stairs. His coat and waistcoat were on the bed, and his mackintosh--the one he always wears when he goes out after sundown--was gone. After a little while he came in, hurriedly, secretly, and he would not believe me when I told him Mr. Bromley was hurt; he seemed to be sure it must be some one else. Then I knew. He had gone out to waylay you on your walk back to the camp, and by some means had mistaken Mr. Bromley for you." She was in the full flood-tide of the heart-broken confession now, and in sheer pity he tried to stop her. "Let it all go," he counselled tenderly. "What is done, is done; and now that the work here is also done, there will be no more trouble for you." "No; I must go on," she insisted. "Since others, who have no right to know, have found out, I must tell you." "Others?" he queried. "Yes: Mr. Wingfield, for one. Unlike you, he has not tried to be charitable. He believes----" "He doesn't love you as I do," Ballard interrupted quickly. "He doesn't love me at all--that way; it's Dosia. Hadn't you suspected? That was why he joined Aunt Janet's party--to be with Dosia." "Thus vanishes the final shadow: there is nothing to come between us now," he exulted; and his unhurt arm drew her close. "Don't!" she shuddered, shrinking away from him. "That is the bitterest drop in the cup of misery. You refuse to think of the awful heritage I should bring you; but I think of it--day and night. When your telegram came from Boston to Mr. Lassley at New York, I was going with the Lassleys--not to Norway, but to Paris, to try to persuade Doctor Perard, the great alienist, to come over and be our guest at Castle 'Cadia. It seemed to be the only remaining hope. But when you telegraphed your changed plans, I knew I couldn't go; I knew I must come home. And in spite of all, he has tried three times to kill you. You know he must be insane; tell me you know it," she pleaded. "Since it lifts a burden too heavy to be borne, I am very willing to believe it," he rejoined gravely. "I understand quite fully now. And it makes no difference--between us, I mean. You must not let it make a difference. Let the past be past, and let us come back to the present. Where is your father now?" "After dinner he went with Mr. Wingfield and Otto to the upper canyon. There is a breakwater at the canyon portal which they hoped might save the power-house and laboratory from being undermined by the river, and they were going to strengthen it with bags of sand. I was afraid of what might come afterward--that you might be here alone and unsuspecting. So I persuaded Cousin Janet and the others to make up the car-party." From where they were sitting at the derrick's foot, the great boom leaned out like a giant's arm uplifted above the canyon lake. With the moon sweeping toward the zenith, the shadow of the huge iron beam was clearly cut on the surface of the water. Ballard's eye had been mechanically marking the line of shadow and its changing position as the water level rose in the Elbow. "The reservoir is filling a great deal faster than I supposed it would," he said, bearing his companion resolutely away from the painful things. "There have been storms on the main range all day," was the reply. "Father has a series of electrical signal stations all along the upper canyon. He said at the dinner-table that the rise to-night promises to be greater than any we have ever seen." Ballard came alive upon the professional side of him with a sudden quickening of the workaday faculties. With the utmost confidence in that part of the great retaining-wall for which he was personally responsible--the superstructure--he had still been hoping that the huge reservoir lake would fill normally; that the dam would not be called upon to take its enormous stresses like an engine starting under a full load. It was for this reason that he had been glad to time the closing of the spillway in August, when the flow of the river was at its minimum. But fate, the persistent ill-fortune which had dogged the Arcadian enterprise from the beginning, seemed to be gathering its forces for a final blow. "Cloud-bursts?" he questioned. "Are they frequent in the head basin of the Boiling Water?" "Not frequent, but very terrible when they do occur. I have seen the Elbow toss its spray to the top of this cliff--once, when I was quite small; and on that day the lower part of our valley was, for a few hours, a vast flood lake." "Was that before or after the opening of your father's mine over yonder?" queried Ballard. "It was after. I suppose the mine was flooded, and I remember there was no work done in it for a long time. When it was reopened, a few years ago, father had that immense bulkhead and heavy, water-tight door put in to guard against another possible flood." Ballard made the sign of comprehension. Here was one of the mysteries very naturally accounted for. The bulkhead and iron-bound door of the zirconium mine were, indeed, fortifications; but the enemy to be repulsed was nature--not man. "And the electric signal service system in the upper canyon is a part of the defence for the mine?" he predicated. "Yes. It has served on two or three occasions to give timely warning so that the miners could come up and seal the door in the bulkhead. But it has been a long time since a cloud-burst flood has risen high enough in the Elbow to threaten the mine." Silence supervened; the silence of the flooding moonlight, the stark hills and the gently lapping waters. Ballard's brain was busy with the newly developed responsibilities. There was a little space for action, but what could be done? In all probability the newly completed dam was about to be subjected to the supreme test, violently and suddenly applied. The alternative was to open the spillway gate, using the cut-off tunnel as a sort of safety-valve when the coming flood water should reach the Elbow. But there were an objection and an obstacle. Now that he knew the condition of the honeycombed tunnel, Ballard hesitated to make it the raceway for the tremendously augmented torrent. And for the obstacle there was a mechanical difficulty: with the weight of the deepening lake upon it, the stop-gate could be raised only by the power-screws; and the fires were out in the engine that must furnish the power. The Kentuckian was afoot and alert when he said: "You know the probabilities better than any of us: how much time have we before these flood tides will come down?" She had risen to stand with him, steadying herself by the hook of the derrick-fall. "I don't know," she began; and at that instant a great slice of the zirconium mine dump slid off and settled into the eddying depths with a splash. "It is nothing but a few more cubic yards of the waste," he said, when she started and caught her breath with a little gasp. "Not that--but the door!" she faltered, pointing across the chasm. "It was shut when we came out here--I am positive!" The heavy, iron-studded door in the bulkhead was open now, at all events, as they could both plainly see; and presently she went on in a frightened whisper: "Look! there is something moving--this side of the door--among the loose timbers!" The moving object defined itself clearly in the next half-minute; for the two at the derrick-heel, and for another--young Blacklock, who was crouching behind his rejected thorough-stone directly opposite the mine entrance. It took shape as the figure of a man, slouch-hatted and muffled in a long coat, creeping on hands and knees toward the farther dam-head; creeping by inches and dragging what appeared to be a six-foot length of iron pipe. The king's daughter spoke again, and this time her whisper was full of sharp agony. "_Breckenridge!_ it is my father--just as I have seen him before! That thing he is dragging after him: isn't it a--merciful Heaven! he is going to blow up the dam! Oh, for pity's sake can't you think of some way to stop him?" There are crises when the mind, acting like a piece of automatic machinery, flies from suggestion to conclusion with such facile rapidity that all the intermediate steps are slurred and effaced. Ballard marked the inching advance, realised its object and saw that he would not have time to intervene by crossing the dam, all in the same instant. Another click of the mental mechanism and the alternative suggested itself, was grasped, weighed, accepted and transmuted into action. It was a gymnast's trick, neatly done. The looped-up derrick-fall was a double wire cable, running through a heavy iron sheave which carried the hook and grappling chains. Released from its rope lashings at the mast-heel, it would swing out and across the canyon like a monster pendulum. Ballard forgot his bandaged arm when he laid hold of the sheave-hook and slashed at the yarn seizings with his pocket-knife; was still oblivious to it when the released pendulum surged free and swept him out over the chasm. XXIII DEEP UNTO DEEP Mechanically as such things are done, Ballard remembered afterward that he was keenly alive to all that was passing. He heard Elsa's half-stifled cry of horror, Blacklock's shout of encouragement from some point higher up on the mesa, and mingled with these the quick _pad-pad_ of footfalls as of men running. In mid-air he had a glimpse of the running men; two of them racing down the canyon on the side toward which his swinging bridge was projecting him. Then the derrick-fall swept him on, reached the extreme of its arc, and at the reversing pause he dropped, all fingers to clutch and tensely strung muscles to hold, fairly upon the crouching man in the muffling rain-coat. For Blacklock, charging in upon the battle-field by way of the dam, the happenings of the next half-minute resolved themselves into a fierce hand-to-hand struggle between the two men for the possession of the piece of iron pipe. At the pendulum-swinging instant, the collegian had seen the sputtering flare of a match in the dynamiter's hands; and in the dash across the dam he had a whiff of burning gunpowder. When the two rose up out of the dust of the grapple, Ballard was the victor. He had wrested the ignited pipe-bomb from his antagonist, and turning quickly he hurled it in a mighty javelin-cast far up the Elbow. There was a splash, a smothered explosion, and a geyser-like column of water shot up from the plunging-point, spouting high to fall in sheets of silver spray upon the two upcoming runners who were alertly springing from foothold to foothold across the dissolving mine dump. So much young Blacklock noted at the moment of uprushing. In the next breath he had wrapped the mackintoshed bomb-firer in a wrestler's hug from behind, and the knife raised to be driven into Ballard's back clattered upon the stones of the path. There was a gasping oath in a strange tongue, a fierce struggle on the part of the garroted one to turn and face his new assailant, and then the collegian, with his chin burrowing between the shoulder-blades of his man, heard swift footsteps approaching and a deep-toned, musical voice booming out a sharp command: "Manuel! you grand scoundrel!--drop that thah gun, suh!" Something else, also metallic, and weightier than the knife, clicked upon the stones; whereupon Blacklock loosed his strangler's grip and stepped back. Ballard stooped to pick up the knife and the pistol. Wingfield, who had been the colonel's second in the race along the hazardous mine path, drew aside; and master and man were left facing each other. The Mexican straightened up and folded his arms. He was breathing hard from the effect of Blacklock's gripping hug, but his dark face was as impassive as an Indian's. The white-haired King of Arcadia turned to Ballard, and the mellow voice broke a little. "Mistuh-uh Ballard, you, suh, are a Kentuckian, of a race that knows to the fullest extent the meaning of henchman loyalty. You shall say what is to be done with this po' villain of mine. By his own confession, made to me this afte'noon, he is a cutthroat and an assassin. Undeh a mistaken idea of loyalty to me"--the deep voice grew more tremulous at this--"undeh a mistaken idea of loyalty to me, suh, he has been fighting in his own peculiah fashion what he conceived to be my battle with the Arcadia Company. Without compunction, without remo'se, he has taken nearly a score of human lives since the day when he killed the man Braithwaite and flung his body into the riveh. Am I making it cleah to you, Mistuh Ballard?" How he managed to convey his sense of entire comprehension, Ballard scarcely knew. One thought was submerging all others under a mounting wave of triumphant joy: Colonel Adam, the father of the princess of heart's delight, was neither a devil in human guise nor a homicidal madman. Elsa's trouble was a phantom appeased; it had vanished like the dew on a summer morning. "I thank you, suh," was the courtly acknowledgment; and then the deep voice continued, with an added note of emotion. "I am not pleading for the murderer, but for my po' liegeman who knew no law of God or man higheh than what he mistakenly took to be his masteh's desiah. How long all this would have continued, if I hadn't suhprised him in the ve'y act of trying to kill you as you were lowering that thah stop-gate to-day, we shall neveh know. But the entiah matteh lies heavy on my conscience, suh. I ought to have suspected the true sou'ce of all the mysterious tragedies long ago; I should have suspected it if I hadn't been chin-deep myself, suh, in a similah pool of animosity against Mr. Pelham and his fellow-robbehs. What will you do with this po' scoundrel of mine, Mistuh Ballard?" "Nothing, at present," said Ballard, gravely, "or nothing more than to ask him a question or two." He turned upon the Mexican, who was still standing statue-like with his back to the low cliff of the path ledge. "Did you kill Macpherson?--as well as Braithwaite and Sanderson?" "I kill-a dem all," was the cool reply. "You say--he all say--'I make-a da dam.' I'll say: '_Caramba!_ You _no_ make-a da dam w'at da Colonel no want for you to make.' Dass all." "So it was you who hit Bromley on the head and knocked him into the canyon?" The statuesque foreman showed his teeth. "Dat was one bad _mees_take. I'll been try for knock _you_ on da haid, dat time, for sure, Señor Ballar'." "And you were wearing that rain-coat when you did it?" The Mexican nodded. "I'll wear heem h-always w'en da sun gone down--same like-a da Colonel." "Also, you were wearing it that other night, when you heaved a stone down on my office roof?" Another nod. "But on the night when you scared Hoskins and made him double up his train on Dead Man's Curve, you didn't wear it; you wore a shooting-coat and a cap like the one Braithwaite used to wear." The posing statue laughed hardily. "Dat was one--w'at you call heem?--one beeg joke. I'll been like to make dat 'Oskins break hees h'own neck, _si_: hees talk too much 'bout da man w'at drown' heself." "And the Carson business: you were mixed up in that, too?" "Dat was one _mees_take, al-so; one ver' beeg _mees_take. I'll hire dat dam'-fool Carson to shoot da ditch. I t'ink you and da beeg h-Irishman take-a da trail and Carson keel you. Carson, he'll take-a da money, and make for leetle scheme to steal cattle. Som' day I keel heem for dat." "Not in this world," cut in Ballard, briefly. "You're out of the game, from this on." And then, determined to be at the bottom of the final mystery: "You played the spy on Mr. Wingfield, Bromley, Blacklock and me one afternoon when we were talking about these deviltries. Afterward, you went up to Castle 'Cadia. That evening Mr. Wingfield nearly lost his life. Did you have a hand in that?" Again the Mexican laughed. "Señor Wingfiel' he is know too moch. Som' day he is make me ver' sorry for myself. So I'll hide be'ind dat fornace, and give heem one leetle push, so"--with the appropriate gesture. "That is all," said Ballard, curtly. And then to the colonel: "I think we'd better be moving over to the other side. The ladies will be anxious. Jerry, take that fellow on ahead of you, and see that he doesn't get away. I'm sorry for you, Colonel Craigmiles; and that is no empty form of words. As you have said, I am a Kentuckian, and I do know what loyalty--even mistaken loyalty--is worth. My own grudge is nothing; I haven't any. But there are other lives to answer for. Am I right?" "You are quite right, suh; quite right," was the sober rejoinder; and then Blacklock said "_Vamos!_" to his prisoner, airing his one word of Spanish, and in single file the five men crossed on the dam to the mesa side of the rising lake where Bigelow, with Elsa and Miss Cantrell and a lately awakened Mrs. Van Bryck, were waiting. At the reassembling, Ballard cut the colonel's daughter out of the storm of eager questionings swiftly, masterfully. "You were wrong--we were all wrong," he whispered joyously. "The man whom you saw, the man who has done it all in your father's absolute and utter ignorance of what was going on, is Manuel. He has confessed; first to his master, and just now to all of us. Your father is as sane as he is blameless. There is no obstacle now for either of us. I shall resign to-morrow morning, and----" It was the colonel's call that interrupted. "One moment, Mistuh Ballard, if you please, suh. Are there any of youh ditch camps at present in the riveh valley below heah?" Ballard shook his head. "Not now; they are all on the high land." Then, remembering Bromley's report of the empty ranch headquarters and corrals: "You think there is danger?" "I don't think, suh: I _know_. Look thah," waving an arm toward the dissolving mine dump on the opposing slope; "when the wateh reaches that tunnel and finds its way behind the bulkhead, Mistuh Ballard, youh dam's gone--doomed as surely as that sinful world that wouldn't listen to Preachuh Noah!" "But, Colonel--you can't know positively!" "I do, suh. And Mistuh Pelham knows quite as well as I do. You may have noticed that we have no pumping machinery oveh yondeh, Mistuh Ballard: _That is because the mine drains out into youh pot-hole below the dam!_" "Heavens and earth!" ejaculated Ballard, aghast at the possibilities laid bare in this single explanatory sentence. "And you say that Mr. Pelham knows this?" "He has known it all along. I deemed it my neighbo'ly duty to inform him when we opened the lower level in the mine. But he won't be the loseh; no, suh; not Mistuh Howard Pelham. It'll be those po' sheep that he brought up here to-day to prepare them for the shearing--if the riveh gives him time to make the turn." "The danger is immediate, then?" said Bigelow. The white-haired King of Arcadia was standing on the brink of the mesa cliff, a stark figure in the white moonlight, with his hand at his ear. "Hark, gentlemen!" he commanded; and then: "Youh ears are all youngeh than mine. What do you heah?" It was Ballard who replied: "The wind is rising on the range; I can hear it singing in the pines." "No, suh; that isn't the wind--it's wateh; torrents and oceans of it. There have been great and phenomenal storms up in the basin all day; storms and cloud-bursts. See thah!" A rippling wave a foot high came sweeping down the glassy surface of the reservoir lake, crowding and rioting until it doubled its depth in rushing into the foothill canyon. Passing the mine, it swept away other tons of the dump; and an instant later the water at the feet of the onlookers lifted like the heave of a great ground-swell--lifted, but did not subside. Ballard's square jaw was out-thrust. "We did not build for any such brutal tests as this," he muttered. "Another surge like that----" "It is coming!" cried Elsa. "The power dam in the upper canyon is gone!" and the sharer of the single Cantrell Christian name shrieked and took shelter under Bigelow's arm. Far up the moon-silvered expanse of the lake a black line was advancing at railway speed. It was like the ominous flattening of the sea before a hurricane; but the chief terror of it lay in the peaceful surroundings. No cloud flecked the sky; no breath of air was stirring; the calm of the matchless summer night was unbroken, save by the surf-like murmur of the great wave as it rose high and still higher in the narrowing raceway. Instinctively Ballard put his arm about Elsa and drew her back from the cliff's edge. There could be no chance of danger for the group looking on from the top of the high mesa; yet the commanding roar of the menace was irresistible. When the wave entered the wedge-shaped upper end of the Elbow it was a foam-crested wall ten feet high, advancing with the black-arched front of a tidal billow, mighty, terrifying, the cold breath of it blowing like a chill wind from the underworld upon the group of watchers. In its onrush the remains of the mine dump melted and vanished, and the heavy bulkhead timbering at the mouth of the workings was torn away, to be hurled, with other tons of floating débris, against the back-wall of the dam. Knowing all the conditions, Ballard thought the masonry would never withstand the hammer-blow impact of the wreck-laden billow. Yet it stood, apparently undamaged, even after the splintered mass of wreckage, tossed high on the crest of the wave, had leaped the coping course to plunge thundering into the ravine below. The great wall was like some massive fortification reared to endure such shocks; and Elsa, facing the terrific spectacle beside her lover, like a reincarnation of one of the battle-maidens, gave him his rightful meed of praise. "You builded well--you and the others!" she cried. "It will not break!" But even as she spoke, the forces that sap and destroy were at work. There was a hoarse groaning from the underground caverns of the zirconium mine--sounds as of a volcano in travail. The wave retreated for a little space, and the white line of the coping showed bare and unbroken in the moonlight. Silence, the deafening silence which follows the thunderclap, succeeded to the clamour of the waters, and this in turn gave place to a curious gurgling roar as of some gigantic vessel emptying itself through an orifice in its bottom. The white-haired king was nearest to the brink of peril. At the gurgling roar he turned with arms outspread and swept the onlooking group, augmented now by the men from Garou's cook camp, back and away from the dam-head. Out of the torrent-worn pit in the lower ravine a great jet of water was spurting intermittently, like the blood from a severed artery. "That is the end!" groaned Ballard, turning away from the death grapple between his work and the blind giant of the Boiling Water; and just then Blacklock shouted, snatched, wrestled for an instant with a writhing captive--and was left with a torn mackintosh in his hands for his only trophy. They all saw the Mexican when he slipped out of the rain-coat, eluded Blacklock, and broke away, to dart across the chasm on the white pathway of the dam's coping course. He was half-way over to the shore of escape when his nerve failed. To the spouting fountain in the gulch below and the sucking whirlpool in the Elbow above was added a second tidal wave from the cloud-burst sources; a mere ripple compared with the first, but yet great enough to make a maelstrom of the gurgling whirlpool, and to send its crest of spray flying over the narrow causeway. When the barrier was bared again the Mexican was seen clinging limpet-like to the rocks, his courage gone and his death-warrant signed. For while he clung, the great wall lost its perfect alignment, sagged, swayed outward under the irresistible pressure from above, crumbled, and was gone in a thunder-burst of sound that stunned the watchers and shook the solid earth of the mesa where they stood. * * * * * "Are you quite sure it wasn't all a frightful dream?" asked the young woman in a charming house gown and pointed Turkish slippers of the young man with his left arm in a sling; the pair waiting the breakfast call in the hammock-bridged corner of the great portico at Castle 'Cadia. It was a Colorado mountain morning of the sort called "Italian" by enthusiastic tourists. The air was soft and balmy; a rare blue haze lay in the gulches; and the patches of yellowing aspens on the mountain shoulders added the needed touch of colour to relieve the dun-browns and grays of the balds and the heavy greens of the forested slopes. Save for the summer-dried grass, lodged and levelled in great swaths by the sudden freeing of the waters, the foreground of the scene was unchanged. Through the bowl-shaped valley the Boiling Water, once more an August-dwindled mountain stream, flowed murmurously as before; and a mile away in the foothill gap of the Elbow, the huge steel-beamed derrick lined itself against the farther distances. "No, it wasn't a dream," said Ballard. "The thirty-mile, nerve-trying drive home in the car, with the half-wrecked railroad bridge for a river crossing, ought to have convinced you of the realities." "Nothing convinces me any more," she confessed, with the air of one who has seen chaos and cosmos succeed each other in dizzying alternations; and when Ballard would have gone into the particulars of that with her, the King of Arcadia came up from his morning walk around the homestead knoll. "Ah, you youngstehs!" he said, with the note of fatherly indulgence in the mellow voice. "Out yondeh undeh the maples, I run across the Bigelow boy and Madge Cantrell;--'Looking to see what damage the water had done,' they said, as innocent as a pair of turtle-doves! Oveh in the orcha'd I stumble upon Mistuh Wingfield and Dosia. I didn't make them lie to me, and I'm not going to make you two. But I should greatly appreciate a word with you, Mistuh Ballard." Elsa got up to go in, but Ballard sat in the hammock and drew her down beside him again. "With your permission, which I was going to ask immediately after breakfast, Colonel Craigmiles, we two are one," he said, with the frank, boyish smile that even his critics found hard to resist. "Will you so regard us?" The colonel's answering laugh had no hint of obstacles in it. "It was merely a little matteh of business," he explained. "Will youh shot-up arm sanction a day's travel, Mistuh Ballard?" "Surely. This sling is wholly Miss Elsa's idea and invention. I don't need it." "Well, then; heah's the programme: Afteh breakfast, Otto will drive you oveh to Alta Vista in the light car. From there you will take the train to Denver. When you arrive, you will find the tree of the Arcadia Company pretty well shaken by the news of the catastrophe to the dam. Am I safe in assuming so much?" "More than safe: every stockholder in the outfit will be ducking to cover." "Ve'y good. Quietly, then, and without much--ah--ostentation, as youh own good sense would dictate, you will pick up, in youh name or mine, a safe majority of the stock. Do I make myself cleah?" "Perfectly, so far." "Then you will come back to Arcadia, reorganise youh force--you and Mistuh Bromley--and build you anotheh dam; this time in the location below the Elbow, where it should have been built befo'. Am I still cleah?" "Why, clear enough, certainly. But I thought--I've been given to understand that you were fighting the irrigation scheme on its merits; that you didn't want your kingdom of Arcadia turned into a farming community. I don't blame you, you know." The old cattle king's gaze went afar, through the gap to the foothills and beyond to the billowing grass-lands of Arcadia Park, and the shrewd old eyes lost something of their militant fire when he said: "I reckon I was right selfish about that, in the beginning, Mistuh Ballard. It's a mighty fine range, suh, and I was greedy for the isolation--as some otheh men are greedy for money and the power it brings. But this heah little girl of mine she went out into the world, and came back to shame me, suh. Here was land and a living, independence and happiness, for hundreds of the world's po' strugglers, and I was making a cattle paschuh of it! Right then and thah was bo'n the idea, suh, of making a sure-enough kingdom of Arcadia, and it was my laying of the foundations that attracted Mr. Pelham and his money-hungry crowd." "Your idea!" ejaculated Ballard. "Then Pelham and his people were interlopers?" "You can put it that way; yes, suh. Thei-uh idea was wrapped up in a coin-sack; you could fai'ly heah it clink! Thei-uh proposal was to sell the land, and to make the water an eve'lasting tax upon it; mine was to make the water free. We hitched on that, and then they proposed to _me_--to _me_, suh--to make a stock-selling swindle of it. When I told them they were a pack of damned scoundrels, they elected to fight me, suh; and last night, please God, we saw the beginning of the end that is to be--the righteous end. But come on in to breakfast; you can't live on sentiment for always, Mistuh Ballard." They went in together behind him, the two for whom Arcadia had suddenly been transformed into paradise, and on the way the Elsa whom Ballard had first known and learned to love in the far-distant world beyond the barrier mountains reasserted herself. "What do you suppose Mr. Pelham will say when he hears that you have really made love to the cow-punching princess?" she asked, flippantly. "Do you usually boast of such things in advance, Mr. Ballard?" But his answer ignored the little pin-prick of mockery. "I'm thinking altogether of Colonel Adam Craigmiles, my dear; and of the honour he does you by being your father. He is a king, every inch of him, Elsa, girl! I'm telling you right now that we'll have to put in the high speed, and keep it in, to live up to him." And afterward, when the house-party guests had gathered, in good old Kentucky fashion, around the early breakfast-table, and the story of the night had been threshed out, and word was brought that Otto and the car were waiting, he stood up with his hand on the back of Elsa's chair and lifted his claret class with the loyal thought still uppermost. "A toast with me, good friends--my stirrup-cup: I drink to our host, the Knight Commander of Castle 'Cadia, and the reigning monarch of the Land of Heart's Delight--Long live the King of Arcadia!" And they drank it standing. THE END 
37182	----	[Illustration: A Portion of Estes Park, with Long's Peak in the Distance. (See Page 91.)] COLORADO THE BRIGHT ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY BY F. C. GRABLE PAINTINGS BY ALLEN TRUE COPYRIGHT 1911 F. C. GRABLE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE KISTLER PRESS DENVER COLO. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I. The Old, the New, and the Ocean Between 1 CHAPTER II. Coronado 14 CHAPTER III. Light in the East 40 CHAPTER IV. Lieutenant Pike 54 CHAPTER V. The Lost Period 75 CHAPTER VI. Major Long 85 CHAPTER VII. The Pioneers 99 CHAPTER VIII. Christopher Carson and His Contemporaries 106 CHAPTER IX. General Fremont and the Mormons 125 CHAPTER X. Opportunity 143 CHAPTER XI. A Vanishing Race 153 CHAPTER XII. The Lustre of Gold 171 CHAPTER XIII. Some Men of Visions 184 CHAPTER XIV. The Stone Which the Builders Rejected 222 ILLUSTRATIONS. A Glimpse of Estes Park Frontispiece CHAPTER I. Face Page The Ocean Explorer 1 CHAPTER II. Coronado Before a Zuni Village 16 CHAPTER IV. (_a_) Pike and His Frozen Companion 66 (_b_) One of the Approaches to Cheyenne Mt. 74 CHAPTER V. The Trapper 78 CHAPTER VI. The Buffalo Hunter 94 CHAPTER VII. Pioneers and Prairie Schooner 110 CHAPTER VIII. A Government Scout 126 CHAPTER IX. Indians Watching Fremont's Force 134 CHAPTER X. Ventura, Historian of Taos Indians 142 CHAPTER XI. (_a_) Indian Chief Addressing the Council 158 (_b_) Winnowing Grain 166 CHAPTER XII. Making a Clean-up 174 DEDICATED TO THE PIONEERS OF COLORADO: Whose work in laying the foundation of the magnificent superstructure of our great State, as Abraham Lincoln said of the heroes of Gettysburg, "is far beyond our poor power to add or detract." PREFACE. It is Emerson's beautiful thought that all true history is biography, and that men are but the pages of history. In felicitous language the author has pictured a period that is indeed the bright romance of American history. It is the story of the discovery of a new Continent in the Western Seas; the story of a graceful and cultured people of a mighty world-power in the Fifteenth Century; the story of the dream of a great Western Empire to be founded in the New World, where would be revived all the pomps and chivalries of Castile's ancient court; the story of the fading of that dream in the splendor of the great world-idea of the self-government of man carried by the Pilgrim Fathers to Plymouth Rock in 1620; the story that in the great drama of life man is ever changing from the old into the new, and from the bad into the better in unceasing, unchanging, inevitable evolution; the story of early Colorado, whose ancient Capital, Santa Fe,--in the sense that Colorado is a part of the old Spanish country--was the first white settlement west of the Floridas upon all this Western Continent within the present domain of the United States. But more than all, it is a story of the human touch of those still living and of great empire builders not long since passed away, whose "hands bent the arch of the new heavens" over our beloved State of Colorado; whose eyes were filled with far-away visions and their hearts with sublime faith; pioneers and history makers of whom we would say as Cinneas said when asked by his master Pyrrhus after his return from his Embassy at Rome, "What did the Roman Senate look like?" "An assembly of Kings!" replied Cinneas. Wendell Phillips, in the greatest of all his lectures, pictures the "Muse of history dipping her pen in the sunlight and writing in the clear blue" above all other names the name of his hero "Toussaint l'Ouverture." The author in these pages which so graphically portray the early history of our State would not write the name of Colorado above any sister state; but we can catch between his lines the deep undertones of the music of the Union, which overmaster all sectional notes in the thought, that Colorado is a glorious part of it all. And so it is enough that we read in the title of this book these magic words, as if traced in the clear sunlight of our mountain skies, "Colorado--The Bright Romance of American History." J. F. TUTTLE, JR. COLORADO--THE BRIGHT ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY [Illustration: The Ocean Explorer.] CHAPTER I. THE OLD, THE NEW, AND THE OCEAN BETWEEN. [Sidenote: 1504] The great Queen Isabella was dead. She had died amidst the splendor of the richest and most powerful Court on earth, beloved by some for her noble qualities, and execrated by others for her tyrannical laws, for the heartlessness and cruelty she had practiced, for the wars she had kindled, and for the lives she had sacrificed. Because of the turbulence of the elements, the superstitious believed that her unconquerable spirit refused to be tranquilized even by death. Darkness lay upon the world, and the slowly moving funeral cortege made its way the three hundred miles to Granada, menaced by the lightning's flash, and accompanied by the thunder's roar, the rain and the hurricane, and the floods which swept men and horses to their death. At last, after thirty years of a masterful and memorable reign, Isabella lay at rest in the marvelously beautiful Alhambra, the burial place of her choice which she had wrested from the Moorish Kings. And Ferdinand ruled in her stead. [Sidenote: 1506] Less than two years, and there was another notable death in Spain. The far-seeing eyes of a kingly man looked out upon the world for the last time. The active hands of a great navigator lay still, folded over the courageous heart that had long been broken; the heart that had been thrilled by the acclaim of the populace, and then chilled by the frowns of its sovereigns; the hands that had been bedecked with jewels by Ferdinand and Isabella, and later laden by them with chains. Columbus, the admiral of the ocean, who had joined two worlds by his genius and accomplished an event whose magnitude and grandeur history can never equal, and who had filled the center of a stage, brilliant with the famous actors of his time, had died; died in poverty and neglect; instead of chimes chanting a requiem in his praise, there was the rattle of the chains his hands had worn, as they went down into his sepulchre for burial with him according to his wish. Even his grave remained unmarked for ten years, until public opinion forced Ferdinand to a tardy recognition of his duty in the erection of a monument in honor of one of the greatest men of any age; a man great in thought and great in action; a man with such a mighty faith that we stand appalled at its mightiness! Isabella left a united country; a country at the pinnacle of greatness. She left a highly organized army; an army wrought out of a fragment of incompetency. She raised the standard of science and the arts, and advanced the cause of morality. But the greatest and most enduring monument she erected was the result of the slight encouragement and scant help that she gave to the enthusiastic Italian mendicant, who became the founder of a New World and whose fame will continue undimmed to the end of time. [Sidenote: 1516] "The King is dead" fell upon Ferdinand's unhearing ears. "Long live the King" greeted the advent of Charles, his successor. Charles, who was the son of the unfortunate Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella; Charles I, King of Spain; Charles V, Emperor of Germany; Ruler over the kingdom of Naples; Monarch of the New World. Power, such as the world has seldom seen, centered in this man; an empire so vast that it encircled the globe, and upon whose domain military activities never ceased. The cruelties of Spain are proverbial, and they reached their climax under the rule of Ferdinand, Isabella and Charles; and under them the decadence of their nation began, which in four hundred years has never ceased. Now, shorn of every dependency, its power forever destroyed, it lies crushed, humiliated and broken by the greatness of its fall. And here this sketch leaves Old Spain and we sail away across the ocean five thousand miles, to the New Spain of that period, in a ship whose sails flap lazily in the breeze, taking more weeks then than days now by the modern methods of this enlightened age. [Sidenote: 1519] Hernando Cortez sprang from a noble but impoverished family. Educated for the law, he chose an adventurous life instead, and at the age of nineteen left Spain for San Domingo to try his fortunes in the New World, resulting in his brilliant conquest of Mexico; a country whose early history we can only imagine. The unknowable is there; for its secrets lie buried beneath the weight of centuries. Tragedy is there; for what derelict, never heard of more, dropped in from over the seas and cast its human wreckage on those unknown shores for the beginning of a nation? Who were those who may have been lost to home and friends and wandered in from Asia over that narrow strip of land long ago submerged? Whence they came, whatever their nation or color, they were human beings, with thoughts and affections like ours, whose beginnings we can never fathom. They grew in numbers, had flocks and herds, and gold and jewels. They had tribal governments, with differing customs and languages. They had the wandering habit. The streams, the mountains, and the plains beckoned them and they came and went, happy, care-free and prosperous. Some one among them said: "Let us all come together and unite as a people; establish a uniform government; build a city, and select some one of our number to rule over us." And it was done. Mexico City was built and became the Capital. Montezuma was made the ruler. They had laws and Courts of Justice; they had well-constructed and highly-decorated buildings, with architectural features the equal of some European structures prized for their beauty and durability. Their streets were laid out symmetrically, and their parks and landscape gardening added to the city's attractiveness. They had a system of canals and well-developed agriculture; an organized army and thoroughly equipped ships. Whence came this high civilization? We can never know. We only know that it existed. Two million people lived in and adjacent to Mexico City. They were rich, intelligent and contented, until the coming of Cortez; and when he reached the shores of Mexico in the Spring of 1519 it was a memorable day for them. He came in ten ships with six hundred Spanish soldiers. He disembarked, and when the last man was ashore and all the ammunition and guns and supplies were landed, he performed a feat of courage bordering on the sublime. He set his ships on fire, and he stood with his resolute men and saw them burn to the water's edge, knowing that the flame and smoke and destruction meant for each that he must conquer or die. And they marched away, a handful against a host, and they won! But the fall of Mexico, like the fate of most nations, came from within and not from without. What could six hundred do against a united two million. That was where Cortez shone. To create discord, distrust and jealousy; to make them fight each other; to unite the disaffected under his own banner, was the work of a diplomat and general, and he was both. To their everlasting disgrace, the dissatisfied of the native race accomplished for Cortez the downfall of their own nation. And when, two years after he began his destructive warfare, the City of Mexico had been utterly destroyed; when a race had been subjugated; had been stripped of its vast treasure of gold and jewels for the greater glorification of the luxurious Court of Spain; had lost thousands by slaughter; then, and not till then, did the insurgents know that they had encompassed their own ruin. They were enslaved by the Spaniards. The last chapter in their national life was written. The Aztecs, as a people, were no more. They were given the name of Mexicans by the Spaniards, for "Mexitl" the national War God of the native race. Mexicans they have continued to this day, and Cortez as Captain General ruled over the Mexican Territory which he called "New Spain." He set four hundred thousand of the enslaved natives to rebuilding the City of Mexico, but their hearts were in the ruins of the old city, and not in the building of the new--for Cortez saw to it that there should be nothing in the new Spanish city that would remind them of the ancient grandeur of the old. Ten years after its completion there were not a thousand people in it. The old population was melting away, dying off from over-work in the mines to which they had been driven, and where they sickened from disease and hunger and heart yearning for the families from whom they had been forcibly separated, while nearly seven million dollars a year of their earnings were being sent to Spain, taken from the richest silver mines in all the world. You were great Empire builders, oh Spain! But your wanton cruelty to mankind will forever cloud your glory as the eclipse darkens the sun! You permitted the Inquisition! You pitted strength against helplessness, burned thousands alive, and confiscated their property! You permitted the slaughter of twelve hundred thousand human beings in the West Indies, and never heard their pitiful cry, until the lack of earnings ceased to swell the income of the Crown, and then you carried captives from the mainland to take the place of the dead! You permitted the institution of the American slave trade, which only ended at Appomattox, with the destruction of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, and millions of money! The power and fame of Cortez had grown beyond the limit set by the Crown of Spain. Every forceful and successful man in the Dominion of Spain was a marked man; not marked for preferment and encouragement, but marked for humiliation and disgrace. The battles that Cortez had won for the King were forgotten; the treasure he had sent home counted for naught; and for the territory he had subjugated, there was no appreciation. His authority was ended. An officer and soldiers came from Spain to take him back, not with honor, but in ignominy. He arrested the officer, and induced the soldiers to join his army. He was so powerful that he thought he could be King of the New World. Finally, threats and promises secured his peaceable return to Spain, where all promises were broken, and his life was tempest-tossed until he died. [Sidenote: 1528] Then Nuno de Guzman was named Governor General of New Spain. He started out to duplicate the successes of Cortez, whose ability he lacked, as well as the opportunity. He hunted in vain for another Mexico City to conquer and despoil. He pushed Northward hunting for riches, slaughtering the natives, burning their villages, and laying waste their country. He conquered a great territory on the western coast of Upper Mexico, along the Gulf of California, which he called "New Gallicia." His rule was so ruthless, cruel and desolating, that even Spain, hardened as she was to suffering, was shocked with his barbarous persecution of the natives, and after seven years, a warrant was sent out from Spain for his arrest and trial, on charges of inhuman cruelty. He was deprived of his office, taken to Mexico City, held there a prisoner for several years, and was then returned to Spain. [Sidenote: 1535] Don Antonio de Mendoza, known as the "Good Viceroy," succeeded to the rule of Mexico, and put in practice a new policy, one not before tried in the New World, that of kindness. It had come too late for many, for the dead were everywhere, and the living had settled into a degree of hopelessness that a whole decade of kind treatment could do little toward counteracting. Three hundred and seventy-six years have passed since that day, and the scars of those sixteen years of Spanish murder and plunder have not yet been removed. With which our narrative ends as to the mis-rule of New Spain. [Sidenote: 1536] Pamfilo de Narvaez had been made Governor of Florida in 1527 by the Spanish Government, with a grant to explore and colonize a vast territory bordering on the Gulf of Mexico. He outfitted in Spain, sailed to Cuba where he repaired his vessels, thence into the Gulf of Mexico, meeting with storms that drove him out of his course, and so confused his mariners that they lost their reckoning. Consequently, he was left by his ships with his three hundred men and horses on the coast of Florida, instead of on the coast of Texas, as he thought. They rode away into the wilderness and nearly all to their death. Their wanderings, hardships and sufferings, the mind cannot conceive nor the pen describe. They worked to the West and North, crossing rivers and swamps, plains and mountains, through heat and cold, hungry and finally starving when their last horse had been used for food, mistreated by hostile Indians, lost and in despair. Beating their spurs into nails, they made boats, and using the hides from their horses for sails, they were borne down one of the Gulf Rivers, and out into the swift ocean current where they were carried to sea and drowned--all save four. Eight years after they had disembarked on the Florida Coast, these four were found by some slave catchers, away up on the Coast of California, whither they had wandered, and taken to Mexico City. Their sufferings had been so great, that when they reached civilization, they could no longer appreciate comforts. They continued to sleep on the ground, to eat unwholesome food, and to cling to the primitive habits they had formed. Slavery had in the meantime become so common, that Mendoza bought of the three Spaniards the negro, Estevanico, to act as guide to the far North, to which country Mendoza proposed to send an expedition. [Sidenote: 1539] Fray Marcos, a Priest from Italy, had been a participant in the conquest of Peru, was a historian and theologian, picturesque in appearance and language, and was next to Mendoza in power. He was selected to go North on a visit preliminary to the proposed expedition, with the negro as guide. Rumors were in the air, and growing all the time, of wonderful cities and untold treasure in the North. Even the three returned Spaniards, rested from their wanderings, hinted at the fabulous wealth of which they persuaded themselves they had heard. The tales grew with the telling, so that Fray Marcos felt that he must be able to verify these reports, which he did, with the result that when the Coronado expedition found they did not exist, he had the great misfortune to ever after be called the "Lying Monk." CHAPTER II. CORONADO. [Sidenote: 1540] About four years after the death of Columbus at Valladolid, there was born at Salamanca, about sixty miles away, one who was to become an explorer in the world that Columbus had discovered. Francisco Vasquez de Coronado grew up to have ambitions of his own. He removed to New Spain, where he married Beatrice, the beautiful and accomplished daughter of King Charles' cousin. Her father, Alonzo Estranda, was the royal treasurer of the New Country. Even at that remote period those Spanish gentlemen had a way of coming across the seas and weighing their titles in the scales against the money, bonds and lands of the relatives of the prospective wife, in the process of which the wife did not apparently seem to be taken into account. Coronado received from the mother of Beatrice, a great landed estate that had come to her as a grant from the Crown. Then, too, they had a law in New Spain, that confiscated the property of a man if he failed to marry by a certain time. One who preferred poverty to matrimony, had his vast fortune taken from him, and given to Coronado, which was very bad for one, and very pleasant for the other. So Coronado started out on his career very rich. He was made an officer in the Spanish army, and almost immediately attracted attention to himself. The negroes in the mines at Ametepeque mutinied, and set up a king for themselves, in order that the wealth which they were producing might become the property of their own king and themselves, instead of being sent to the Court of Spain. The promptness with which Coronado shot many of them to death and took their king away, shows that he was neither lacking in decision nor initiative even at the very early age of twenty-seven. A year later, 1538, he received the appointment of Governor of New Gallicia, the country in the subjugation of which, Guzeman the Viceroy of New Spain, had accomplished his own undoing. Coronado had helped Fray Marcos and his negro guide on their way through his territory as they passed northward. They went unattended and unprotected. It had seemed to Mendoza that Fray Marcos, in his priestly capacity, might accomplish more for the Crown than could the royal troops; alone he could gain the confidence of the Indians and learn of their strength and treasure. So he went without weapons, and with only a few friendly Indian carriers. Spring turned to summer, and summer to autumn, and Estevenico, the negro guide, had become a memory only. The man who had so successfully faced the dangers of the wilds in his eight years of wanderings, was not to be so fortunate this time. He had an idea that he might become a person of importance himself, an explorer instead of guide, and reap the glory of the success of the trip. So at the first opportunity, he put his plans into practice. Fray Marcos had sent him on ahead for a few days of reconnoitering and then to wait. He reconnoitered, but he did not wait. Gathering an ever increasing number of the natives about him, he pressed on and Fray Marcos never did overtake him. He grew more arrogant all the time, until finally he was made prisoner by the Chief of one of the tribes, was tortured, put to death, his body cut into pieces and distributed as souvenirs among the tribes. Three hundred of his followers were killed, one escaping and bringing the news to Fray Marcos, who quickly began to retrace his steps, the Indians all the time becoming more threatening as he passed southward. Coronado met the Monk as he returned, and accompanied him to Mexico City where he went to make what proved to be a much over-drawn report. Coronado had by this time become so enthusiastic over the possibilities of his own aggrandizement, and the wealth to be reaped from an expedition of conquest, that he proposed to Mendoza to pay the entire cost of the expedition himself, if he were allowed to head the party and share in its results. Mendoza was too guardful of his own prestige and prospects, and of the interests of the Crown, to accept the offer. But he appointed Coronado, General of the Army, to the disappointment of a number of its prominent members who desired the position for themselves. Acting upon the suggestion that had come from Coronado, Mendoza mortgaged all of his estates and joined his money to that of the Crown to pay the tremendous expense of the expedition. Because of the number engaged, the extent of the preparations, the time involved and the distance traversed, this is counted as the most notable exploration party ever engaged in exploiting the North American Continent. It comprised a picked company of three hundred Spanish soldiers and horsemen, eight hundred seasoned Indian warriors, and two ships under Alercon carrying extra supplies of food and ammunition, which were to take the ocean route and be subject to call. All being in readiness, the army marched, the ships sailed, the trumpets sounded and the people shouted, all on that memorable morning of February 23, 1540. [Illustration: Coronado Before One of the Zuni Villages.] Up from Compostela, their starting point, northwest of Mexico City; up along the Pacific Coast; up through New Gallicia and on by the shore of the ocean they pushed, bearing inland to the east and away from their ships which they were never to see again. At last they passed through Sonora, across the northernmost boundary of Mexico, and were swallowed up in the wilderness of Arizona. Like the hunter traveling far for his prey, the expedition on July 7th found its quarry, and began the slaughter by the capture of the first of the "Seven cities of Cibola." Coronado named the captured city Granada, the city in Spain that was the birth place of Mendoza, and the burial place of Queen Isabella. The remaining six cities were much like the first; inhabited by the Zuni Indians, poor, ignorant and uncivilized. These were the cities which Fray Marcos had reported to be the rivals of the famous City of Mexico. They proved to be simple adobe houses, instead of imposing structures with classical architecture. The people were numbered by hundreds instead of by thousands, and were living in abject poverty instead of wealth. The outraged and indignant army brought Fray Marcos before them, and told him "Annanias estaba hambra vere fies a lado di te." The Monk was greatly chagrined and crest-fallen; his punishment consisted only in his being banished from the army and sent back to Mexico in disgrace. But would he have returned northward with the army if he thought he was deceiving them? Doubtless as he viewed the country of Cibola from a distance, what he described seemed to him true, though he may not have scrupulously controlled his imagination. The name Cibola is from Se-bo-la, meaning cow or buffalo. These seven cities were located in Upper New Mexico about one hundred miles west of Albuquerque. General Coronado having been badly injured in battle, the army went into camp pending his recovery, and detachments were sent out on trips of discovery. Alvarada with a party went east and found the Rio Grande River, lined with eighty native villages, and about 15,000 Indians. Crossing the river, he came out upon the great buffalo plains of northern Texas, and then made his way back to the army. Maldonado had previously gone with a party to the ocean in fruitless search of the ships, but found marks made by Alercon on a tree, at the foot of which was a letter; in it they told of their arrival, of their sailing quite a distance up the Colorado River, of their finding that they were in a Gulf instead of on the Ocean, and that, not finding the army, they were starting on their return trip. There is no record of their ever having reached home. If they had been on the Ocean instead of in the Gulf of California, and could have sailed on North, and had discovered the mild climate of California and its luxuriant foliage, unquestionably Spain would have colonized that country, the Rocky Mountains would have been the dividing wall between Spanish Territory and that of the United States, and Dewey, instead of going to the Philippines to fight the Spanish fleet, would have bombarded the Spanish City of San Francisco and have sunk their ships at the Golden Gate. The Pacific Ocean was then unknown. It had only been discovered twenty years before, when Magalhaes in 1520 sailed into its South American waters, and called it "Pacific" because of its calmness as compared with the storms which he had just encountered. Field Marshal Garcia Cardenas led a party westward, and found the Colorado River at the point now known as the Grand Canon of Arizona, where the river is seven thousand feet deep in the ground, and where the mighty rushing torrent is so far below, that it seems like a thread winding its way at the bottom of that wonderful gorge, to which the party tried in vain to descend. He was gone eighty days, and reported, upon his return, that the river was a barrier so frightful and insurmountable, that it would bar investigations to the westward forever. It is a river that is eleven hundred miles long, and is formed by the union in Utah, of the Green River from Wyoming, and the Grand River from Colorado. It is navigable for five hundred miles, and its mighty volume pours unceasingly through a channel fifty feet deep, and thirteen hundred feet wide at the point in Mexico where it hurls its turbulent waters into the Gulf of California. The stupendous gorge where Cardenas touched the river, is two hundred and fifty miles long, and is made up of a maze of giant gorges. It is the most sublime spectacle on earth. Below the Niagara Falls is a tempestuous whirl-pool, seething, roaring, and dashing against the towering walls of granite that vie with the turbulence of the waters for the mastery. A thousand whirl-pools, more majestic and more inspiring, are gripped within the walls of the canons of the Colorado River. It is for this King of Rivers, that our State is named; a Spanish name, meaning "ruddy." In the naming of the river and the state, two extremes have met. In the river Colorado--is the labyrinthian terrifying chasm, filled with the terrific rush and deafening roar of the pounding waters, of the turbulent tidal waters laboring under the mighty swells from the tempestuous ocean. While in Colorado the State--there is peace, peace everywhere; the silent mountains, the quiet plains, the mellow skies, the sunny lakes, the balmy air, the murmuring streams--all soothe and charm and thrill, and life is all too short for the enjoyment of its perfections. [Illustration: A map.] The army moved to the Rio Grande River and went into winter quarters, occupying the best of the houses of the natives whom they inhospitably turned out of doors to pass the winter. One of the Indians who had been taken prisoner by the Spaniards was a talkative person and told of a rich country far to the northeast, a country "filled with gold and lordly kings." It sounded good to the army, as just what they were seeking, and their enthusiasm grew as the winter passed. With the coming of Spring, April 23, 1541, Coronado began the march to the northeast with his whole excited army, guided by the Indian with the vivid imagination, whom they called the "Turk." After many days of travel with no result, and meeting different Indian tribes who said the guide's stories were untrue, and being repeatedly assured by other Indians that there was nothing to Turk's tales, the suspicions of the army became a certainty, and upon their insistent questions their guide yielded up his secret. To save his people, he was leading the army away on a far journey, in the hope that they would never get back, and if they did return, would be so weak and their horses so worn, that the natives could easily fall upon and destroy them. The work of the infuriated soldiers was cruel, swift and certain, and when it had ended, there on the ground lay the Indian, dead. As die the heroes of all ages, so died this Indian guide. He died for his people. Coronado's army had invaded his country, turned his people out of their homes in midwinter, confiscated the supplies of their families, had killed some and imprisoned many. Leading the army away, out of reach of water and food, hoping to encompass its destruction, knowing that every step took him nearer to the death sure to be meted out to him, he moved stoically and unfalteringly to his fate. "Make way for liberty," cried Winkelreid, as he fell pierced by a dozen bayonets pinning him to the earth, while through the gap in the solid ranks of the enemy, poured his compatriots, sweeping Switzerland to its freedom--and his name will live forever. Just as nobly died the Indian on the western plains, but the wind that scattered his dust, blew into oblivion the remembrance of the heroic act of a humble, courageous, and self-sacrificing martyr! The bewildered army halted for consultation. It was decided by Coronado that he would take thirty picked horsemen and proceed northeasterly on a tour of investigation, while the main army would return to the Rio Grande, to the point that had been the place of their winter quarters. He proceeded into Northern Kansas, and is supposed to have passed the boundary line between Nebraska and Kansas, and to have crossed the Platte River, whence he retraced his steps to the army, then at a place near the site of the present City of Albuquerque. Upon his arrival he wrote a letter to the King of Spain, which is hereafter quoted. It is interesting to note how highly he regards the country of Quivira, which afterwards was called "Kansas," and which he likens to the soil of Spain. His description of the products of that section gives much information. The "cows," so frequently referred to in his letter, were the buffalo which we found just as plentiful when we came to settle the country. The Indians moved with the buffalo, and lived upon them, moving their tents along with the herds as they grazed northward in summer to escape the heat, mosquitoes and flies, and journeying south together in the winter, to escape the cold. The Indians knew no such word as buffalo, but called this greatly appreciated animal Ni-ai, which meant shelter or protector. The distance travelled by the expedition was measured by a footman trudging along beside a horseman, his steps being counted by the riders, seventeen hundred and sixty steps making a mile. They traveled forty-two days on their way to the Northeast, shortening the distance to thirty-five days for their return, and were twenty-five days in the country of Quivira. The distance traveled was three hundred leagues, which is about seven hundred miles. The same year that Coronado was in Eastern Kansas, the eminent Spanish warrior and explorer De Soto, back from his conquest of Peru with Pizarro, had discovered the Mississippi River, the Father of Waters, and ascended it from the Gulf of Mexico; there was only the State of Iowa between his exploring party and that of Coronado, though neither of them were aware of the fact. "Holy Catholic Caesarian Majesty: "On April 20 of this year (1541) I wrote to your Majesty from this Province of Tiguex, in reply to a letter from your Majesty, dated in Madrid June 11 a year ago * * * I started from this Province on the 23 of last April for the place where the Indian wanted to guide me. After nine days march I reached some plains so vast that I did not find their limit anywhere that I went, although I traveled over them for more than 300 leagues, and I found such a quantity of cows in these plains * * * which they have in this country, that it is impossible to number them, for which I was journeying through these plains until I returned to where I first found them there was not a day that I lost sight of them. And after 17 days' march, I came to a settlement of Indians who are called 'Querechos,' who travel around with these cows, who do not plant and who eat the raw flesh and drink the blood of the cows they kill and they tan the skins of the cows with which all the people of this country dress themselves here. They have little field tents made of the hides of the cows, tanned and greased, very well made, in which they live while they travel around near the cows, moving with these. They have dogs which they load, which carry their tents and poles and belongings. These people have the best figures of any that I have seen in the Indies. They could not give me any account of the country where the guides were taking me * * * "It was the Lord's pleasure, that after having journeyed across these deserts 77 days, I arrived at the province they call Quivira to which the guides were conducting me and where they had described to me houses of stone with many stories and not only are they of stone but of straw, but the people in them are as barbarous as all those whom I have seen and passed before this. They do not have cloaks nor cotton of which to make these, but use the skins of the cattle they kill which they tan, because they are settled among these on a very large river * * * The country itself is the best I have ever seen for producing all the products of Spain, for besides the land itself being very fat and black, and being very well watered by the rivulets and springs and rivers, I found prunes like those of Spain * * * and nuts and very good sweet grapes and mulberries. I have treated the natives of this province and all the others whom I have wherever I went as well as was possible, agreeably to what your Majesty had commanded and they have received no harm in any way from me or from those who went in my Company * * * And what I am sure of is, that there is not any gold nor any other metal in all that country and the other things of which they had told me are nothing but little villages and in many of these they do not plant anything and do not have any houses except of skins and sticks and they wander around with the cows; so that the account they gave me was false, because they wanted to persuade me to go there with the whole force, believing that as the way was through such inhabited deserts, and from the lack of water, they would get us where we and our horses would die of hunger * * * I have done all that I possibly could to serve your Majesty and to discover a country where God our Lord might be served and the royal patrimony of your Majesty increased as your loyal servant and vassal. For since I reached the province of Cibola, to which the Viceroy of New Spain sent me in the name of your Majesty, seeing that there were none of the things there of which Fray Marcos had told, I have managed to explore this country for 200 leagues and more around Cibola and the best place I have found is this river of Tiguex, where I am now and the settlements here. It would not be possible to establish a settlement here, for besides being 400 leagues from the North Sea and more than 200 from the South Sea, with which it is impossible to have any sort of communication, the country is so cold as I have written to your Majesty that apparently the winter could not be spent here because there is no wood nor cloth with which to protect the men except the skins which the natives wear and some small amount of cotton cloaks. I send the Viceroy of New Spain an account of everything I have seen in the countries where I have been, and as Don Garcia Lopez de Cardenas is going to kiss your Majesty's hands who has done much and has served your Majesty very well on this expedition and he will give your Majesty an account of everything here as one who has seen it himself, I give way to him. And may our Lord protect the Holy Imperial Catholic person of your Majesty with increase of greater kingdoms and powers as your loyal servants and vassals desire. From this Province of Tiguex, Oct. 20 in the year 1541. Your Majesty's humble servant and vassal who would kiss the royal feet and hands. (Signed) "FRANCISCO VASQUEZ CORONADO." On August 5, 1540, Coronado wrote to Mendoza, the Viceroy of New Spain, a letter, of which a portion is introduced in these pages because of its reference to local conditions where the army wintered. The spelling in the letter to the King was changed for easier perusal, but the original quaint translation is preserved in the following, that the style may be observed. Both letters have been translated from the Spanish: "It remaineth now to certifie your Honour of the seuen cities, and of the kingdomes and prouinces whereof the Father produinciall made report vnto your Lordship. And to bee briefe, I can assure your honour, he sayd the trueth in nothing that he reported, but all was quite contrary, sauing onely the names of the cities, and great houses of stone: for although they bee not wrought with Turqueses, nor with lyme, nor brickes, yet are they very excellent good houses of three or foure or fiue lofts high, wherein are good lodgings and faire chambers with lathers instead of staires, and certaine cellars vnder the ground very good and paued, which are made for winter, they are in maner like stooues: and the lathers which they haue for their houses are all in a maner mooueable and portable, and they are made of two pieces of wood with their steppes, as ours be. The seuen cities are seuen small townes, all made with these kinde of houses that I speake of: and they stand all within foure leagues together, and they are all called the kingdome of Cibola, and euery one of them haue their particular name: and none of them is called Cibola, but altogether they are called Cibola. And this towne which I call a citie, I haue named Granada, as well because it is somewhat like vnto it, as also in remembrance of your lordship. In this towne where I nowe remaine, there may be some two hundred houses, all compassed with walles, and I thinke that with the rest of the houses which are not so walled, they may be together fiue hundred. There is another towne neere this, which is one of the seuen, & it is somewhat bigger than this, and another of the same bignesse that this is of, and the other foure are somewhat lesse: and I send them all painted vnto your lordship with the voyage. And the parchment wherein the picture is, was found here with other parchments. The people of this towne seeme vnto me of a reasonable stature, and wittie yet they seem not to bee such as they should bee, of that judgment and wit to builde these houses in such sort as they are. For the most part they goe all naked, except their priuie partes which are couered: and they haue painted mantles like those which I send vnto your lordship. They haue no cotton wooll growing, because the countrye is colde, yet they weare mantles thereof as your honour may see by the shewe thereof: and true it is that there was found in their houses certaine yarne made of cotton wooll. They weare their haire on their heads like those of Mexico, and they are well nurtured and condicioned: And they haue Turqueses I thinke good quantitie, which with the rest of the goods which they had, except their corne, they had conueyed away before I came thither: for I found no women there, nor no youth vnder fifteene yeres olde, nor no olde folkes aboue sixtie, sauing two or three olde folkes, who stayed behinde to gouerne all the rest of the youth and men of warre. There were found in a certaine paper two poynts of Emralds, and certaine small stones broken which are in colour somewhat like Granates very bad, and other stones of Christall, which I gaue one of my seruants to lay vp to send them to your lordship, and hee hath lost them as hee telleth me. Wee found heere Guinie cockes, but fewe. The Indians tell mee in all these seuen cities, that they eate them not, but that they keepe them onely for their feathers. I beleeue them not, for they are excellent good, and greater then those of Mexico. The season which is in this countrey, and the temperature of the ayre is like that of Mexico: for sometime it is hotte, and sometime it raineth: but hitherto I neuer sawe it raine, but once there fell a little showre with winde, as they are woont to fall in Spaine. "The snow and cold are woont to be great, for so say the inhabitants of the Countrey: and it is very likely so to bee, both in respect to the maner of the Countrey, and by the fashion of their houses, and their furres and other things which this people haue to defend them from colde. There is no kind of fruit nor trees of fruite. The Countrey is all plaine, and is on no side mountainous: albeit there are some hillie and bad passages. There are small store of Foules: the cause whereof is the colde, and because the mountaines are not neere. Here is no great store of wood, because they haue wood for their fuell sufficient foure leagues off from a wood of small Cedars. There is most excellent grasse within a quarter of a league hence, for our horses as well to feede them in pasture, as to mowe and make hay, whereof wee stoode in great neede, because our horses came hither so weake and feeble. The victuals which the people of this countrey haue, is Maiz, whereof they haue great store, and also small white Pease: and Venison, which by all likelyhood they feede vpon, (though they say no) for wee found many skinnes of Deere, of Hares and Conies. They eate the best cakes that euer I sawe, and euery body generally eateth of them. They haue the finest order and way to grind that wee euer sawe in any place. And one Indian woman of this countrey will grinde as much as foure women of Mexico. They haue no knowledge among them of the North Sea, nor of the Western Sea, neither can I tell your lordship to which wee bee nearest: But in reason they should seeme to bee neerest to the Western Sea: and at the least I thinke I am an hundred and fiftie leagues from thence: and the Northerne Sea should bee much further off. Your lordship may see how broad the land is here. Here are many sorts of beasts, as Beares, Tigers, Lions, Porkespicks, and certaine Sheep as bigge as an horse, with very great hornes and little tailes, I haue seene their hornes so bigge, that it is a wonder to behold their greatnesse. Here are also wilde goates whose heads likewise I haue seene, and the pawes of Beares, and the skins of wilde Bores. There is game of Deere, Ounces, and very great Stagges: and all men are of opinion that there are some bigger than that beast which your lordship bestowed vpon me, which once belonged to Iohn Melaz. They trauell eight dayes journey vnto certaine plaines lying toward the North Sea. In this Countrey there are certaine skinees well dressed, and they dresse them and paint them where they kill their Oxen, for so they say themselves. (Signed) "FRANCISCO VASQUEZ CORONADO." Emerging from the second wintering of the army on the Rio Grande, Coronado started in the Spring of 1542 with his disappointed soldiers on their return to Mexico City, where they arrived that Fall, and where they found grief corresponding to the gloom of the returning soldiers. Many had built their hopes on the result of the expedition, had borrowed money and given to those who were of the exploring party to make filings upon mines, and to pre-empt such treasure as could be found, as was the custom of those times. Mendoza was impoverished by the debts he had incurred in behalf of the expedition. Coronado instead of being a conquering hero, was greatly criticized, though not responsible for the disappointment attending his efforts. He reported to Mendoza who received him coldly. He returned to his province of New Gallicia, where he remained as Governor for a time and then resigned. Later we learn of the King sending a Commission over, to investigate the rumor that Coronado had vastly more than the allotted number of slaves working on his plantations. Did Coronado discover Colorado? On the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, there are nine judges, and the decision of five is final. If we were to apply that principle to this case, then we would unhesitatingly answer that the feet of Coronado were the first of any white man to tread the soil of Colorado and Kansas. Students of history differ in their opinion, but the majority believe that Coronado is the discoverer of Colorado. Much that has been written of this expedition has been lost. At the time of the massacre of the whites, and the destruction of the Missions at Santa Fe by the Indians, a great many Spanish manuscripts are supposed to have been burned, which might now throw light upon this question. In the monasteries of Old Spain there are many papers bearing upon the history of the New World, that are worn with age and buried in the dust and mould of cellars, many stories deep underground, that have not seen the light for centuries. These may someday be unearthed to answer positively our question. Scientific investigation is going on at this time under the direction and expense of Societies of Research of both Worlds. A map was issued by the Interior Department of the United States in 1908, that gives the supposed journeyings of Coronado and shows that he both went and returned through Colorado on his trip to Kansas. Other maps of writers give his journeyings both ways as following the old Santa Fe trail, which runs northeast and southwest along the Cimarron River, through the southeast corner of Colorado. So in either event, it is to be supposed that he was within the boundaries of our State, following either the Arkansas River or the Cimarron. Wonderful to contemplate are the possibilities that might have arisen had the Coronado expedition been a success! Our country might have been settled by the Spaniards, and we might have been a Spanish speaking race, even after becoming strong enough to throw off our allegiance to the Crown of Spain; and Washington would not have been the Father of our Country. Government might have centralized between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, where the Capital might have been established. The Pilgrim Fathers might not have landed on the forbidding shores of New England, eighty years after Coronado's expedition started out from Compostela, and there might have been no tea thrown overboard into the harbor at Boston. Those grand forests of the middle and eastern states, of value now beyond computation, might have remained standing, instead of being devastated by fire and axe. Irrigation would have been early developed, the country would have been covered with cement-lined ditches, and every depression would have been a storage reservoir. Coronado might have been the greatest man in the New World, and Coronado might have been King! CHAPTER III. LIGHT IN THE EAST. [Sidenote: 1776] Two hundred and thirty-six years had passed since Coronado's gaily caparisoned army moved out from Compostela. The bright yellow leggings and rich green coats of the soldiers, their waving white plumes and coats of mail, had long since turned to rags and rust, while the bones of the troopers had crumbled to dust. With the defeat of their expedition, the curtain of silence descended upon this vast Rocky Mountain region. The Indian Chiefs whom Coronado fought had long been wrapped in the mantle of death, and their places had been filled by the children of their children's children. The buffalo herds and the Indian bands still roamed the plains together, and the tender calves grew strong and became the leaders of the herd. It was the endless procession of life and death, of strength and weakness, of growth and decay. The wild flowers bloomed, and shed abroad their fragrance; the trees budded and blossomed, and their leaves withered and fell; the earth was clothed in its carpet of green, that yellowed with the autumn's frosts; the period of seed time and harvest came, but there was no seed time and there was no harvest. The summer rains fell upon valley and plain, and the rivers ran unceasingly to the sea, as they had done for centuries, and as they will do until time shall be no more; rivers, born on the dome of the Great Divide, and nurtured by the clouds amongst which they nestle. Each season, the stately peaks stretched their arms aloft towards the heavenly orbs to receive their snow's feathery drapery that fell like a benediction over them. Mountains, radiant in their ever-changing hues of yellow and green, of purple and gold; mountains, whose breath was fragrant with the delicate perfume from their carpet of a thousand species of wild flowers; mountains, kissed by pearly rain drops, glowing with morning sun baths, draped in slumber-robes of silvery moon-beams--glorious, sunlit, sky-communing mountains, standing in their grandeur, silent, proud, eternal. In Macaulay's eloquent and elevated treatment of the thirteenth century of English history, we find this pleasing sentiment, applicable to Colorado's rivers and mountains: "The sources of the noble rivers which spread fertility over continents, and bear richly ladened fleets to the sea, are to be sought in the wild and barren mountain tracts, incorrectly laid down in maps and rarely explored by travelers." We find similarity in our own uncharted streams and mountains; in the unapplied wealth of waters that our rivers bore to the seas; in the unwritten history of the Jesuit Fathers; in the romance of Spanish glory and Spanish defeat; in the tragedy of the red men; in the civilization that perished; in half a century's attainments in good government, in refining domestic influences, in Christianity, in intellectual growth, and in riches almost beyond computation. Again we face the mysterious. Once more the names of Cortez and Montezuma meet, not as on the battle fields of Mexico that left one a conqueror and the other a prisoner; not as aliens and rivals, but in the friendly attitude of mutual interest and mutual trust. Montezuma led into battle a people whose beginnings can never be known. Montezuma County, Colorado, with Cortez as its County Seat, sheltered a pre-historic race, whose beginning and end we can never fathom. At the southwestern corner of our State, at the only spot in the United States where four states come squarely together, we find Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, equally sharing in this unfathomable mystery. There, covering a stretch of country equal in extent to about eighty miles square, had lived a civilized people who followed the peaceful pursuit of agriculture, who farmed by irrigation and whose reservoirs were high up near the mountain tops. Their dwellings were amidst the cliffs along the canons tributary to the San Mancos and San Juan Rivers, as well as in the rocky and almost inaccessible gorges of those rivers themselves. The abandoned houses built of hand-dressed stone, are falling into ruins, but they still show painstaking care in their construction, and in their well-planned architecture. The decaying towns, towers and fortresses give every evidence of a state of preparedness for war. Whether these people were conquered, enslaved and carried into exile; whether they were warred upon by the marauding bands, and so weakened that they scattered and became lost; whether they may have been the very Aztecs, who, becoming more civilized and more prosperous, moved South, were finally subdued by Cortez and became the Mexican nation, are conjectures only, for those ancient foot prints have been forever submerged by the passing years. A vast area of the country of the Cliff Dwellers has been made into a National Park and given the name of Mesa Verde. For three years the restoration of the principal ruins has been carried on by eminent scientists under direction of the General Government. Spruce Tree House, one of the restored dwellings, is over two hundred feet long and it is estimated that when inhabited, it sheltered about four hundred people. In the East the light is breaking. A ray here and a ray there, at first, just the faintest touch of the awakening before the glorious bursting of the dawn. A voyager crossed the trackless seas, following Columbus; then another and another, all carrying the advance lights that were finally to illuminate the darkness and unfold the mysteries of a New World. It took one hundred years for nine voyagers on tours of discovery, scattered through the entire century, to sow the seeds of colonization along the Coast, which, when planted, failed to grow, withered and died. Much of the time of these navigators was spent in sailing up and down the eastern coast, seeking a channel through our Continent in search of the unknown, lying beyond. Came John Cabot, an Italian Mariner, bearing the English Flag, authorized to take possession of any lands he found. Four of his ships went to the bottom and the son continued the discoveries started by his father. Came Cortereal from Portugal in 1501, who left signs of his visit along our Coast at various points between the Bay of Fundy and the coast of Labrador, and then his vessels and all on board plunged to the bottom. The following year a brother came with a searching party and they all found graves beneath the waves that for four hundred years have been sweeping over them. Another brother about to start to seek the others, was prevented by command of the King. Came Ponce de Leon from Spain in 1512, having been with Columbus on his second voyage in 1493. He bore a patent from the King to what was supposed to be the marvellous Island of Bimini, which he renamed Florida, from "Pascua Florida," meaning in Spanish "Easter Sunday." Instead of finding a spring that the Indians claimed to possess great curative properties and supposed to be a fountain of perpetual youth, he found his death in an arrow wound from the Indians. Here he passed over the site of St. Augustine, which later became the oldest community in the United States, having been located in 1565. Came Pineda from Spain in 1519, entering the Gulf of Mexico, sailing all along the Florida Coast, by Louisiana, past Texas, searching for the "Western Passage." Here he met Cortez, the Governor-General of New Spain. Came Narvaez in 1520, the Spanish slave gatherer, who lost his life on the trip, lost it in a bad cause. And then in 1524 came Verrazano, the Spanish Pirate and outcast. One hundred years later, when Spain sought to establish her claim to the country he had visited which might inure to her through his discovery, she said he was a very honorable gentleman, that her colors were flying at his prow, instead of the black flag of the Freebooter. Oh, Spain! Spain! The more I study you, the less I admire you! Then came Gomez in 1525 from Portugal commissioned to sail all the way along our coast from Newfoundland to Florida, in search of a channel through the American Continent to the Western Sea. He was followed sixty years later by Greenville, a cousin of Sir Walter Raleigh, flying the English Flag. Raleigh's eyes were filled with visions of a golden future--a man of whom we would say in these days, that he always had an eye to the "main chance." "Whosoever commands the sea," he said, "commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world, commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself." For a little practical expression of that philosophy, he threw his cloak down in the mud one day for his proud Queen to step upon. Even he little realized the wealth-product beneath its soiled folds, for from that little incident came the introduction of the potato into England. Raleigh became a great favorite of the Queen, and what he asked she granted. He asked of her a royal charter for his cousin, Sir Richard Grenville, and funds for an expedition to the New World. It resulted in those ships taking back to England the potato and tobacco. Forty-three years before, we sent them their Christmas dinner in the delectable wild turkey; we now gave them as an accompaniment, the mealy and nutritious potato. Came Davis in this same year of 1585, who discovered the Straits named for him, and also Falkland Islands, which he found in 1592. And the century closed, with the lights going out all along the Atlantic Coast, for the attempts at colonization were failing. The roots of home-making would not take hold, with the buccaneers stirring up the savages to fight the colonists on one side, and the loneliness of the impassable sea terrifying them on the other. The next century found Champlain in 1603, making his voyage to Canada, starting the French settlement at Quebec, in 1608, and sailing up the St. Lawrence and around the lakes, hunting for locations for settlements, and for a way to China. There was Lord de la Warr, coming over in 1607, and finding a little English settlement on the mainland at Jamestown in Virginia. The same year came the capable Captain Smith, a soldier of fortune, who killed his Turkish task master, and whose life was saved by a Senorita, to be saved again by Pocahontas. There was the distinguished Sir Henry Hudson in 1607, trying to find another Cape Horn above Greenland; failing, he sailed south, entered New York harbor, thence up the Hudson River seeking China. Up past the monument of Grant, past the beautiful Palisades, by West Point and Poughkeepsie, beyond Albany, and all the time the water becoming more shallow and the banks narrower, until he had gone one hundred and fifty miles, sailing north instead of southwest to Southern California, which would put him opposite the country he was seeking. Turn back! Sir Henry, turn back! Your prow will soon be fast in the mud, your vessel's sides will scrape the river's banks, your boat will dam up the waters of the Hudson, and all the surrounding country will be inundated! It is not yet the day of the airship, so that you can sail over the Rocky Mountains, nor is it the time of tunnels, so that you can find a passage beneath them! Just north of you, at that very moment, sixty miles away, Champlain has turned back, and neither of you know it. This country is not for you, nor for him. There are no great waterways along which you both may sail, touching the shores, planting the flags of your countries, and claiming this Continent for your Kings. Go back! Sir Henry, and when Champlain has colonized Canada, and established Quebec, sail in and take it away from him! Which was the very thing that was done twenty-one years later. Where might seemed right then, so sometimes it seems right now, after all these years of Christianization. The settlements are coming fast now. All up and down the Coast, the people are gathering; the Plymouth Fathers have come; the Scotch are at Nova Scotia; the Swedes and Dutch are at Delaware and New Jersey; the French are in Virginia and Louisiana; the English are in New England; the Spanish have killed all the Huguenots and are in Florida. Then there is the conscientious William Penn, Quakerlike, out among the Indians buying their lands, and we are saying to him "why buy, when you can take all without asking?" And there is Daniel Boone, the native-born American explorer, hero of every boy and girl, who has made his way through the wilderness and with an axe blazed his way, as later he marked his path by rocks and mounds of earth, all the way to the Mississippi River. The echoes of Liberty Bell, ringing out our independence and ringing in the Continental Congress, had not ceased their reverberations, when the curtain that Coronado's defeat had rung down more than two centuries before, was again lifted, and we behold a new stage with a new setting, that had been prepared by the Church of Rome. Padre Junthero Serra who, as President of the California Missions, had for so long urged upon the Church the importance of laying out a route from the settlement of Santa Fe to the West, finally prevailed. Friar Francisco Andasio Dominquez, and Friar Sylvester Velez de Escalante, were selected for this undertaking, and on July 29, 1776, started from Santa Fe with eight soldiers and guides. Their route took them out of New Mexico, into Colorado, Nevada, Arizona and Utah. They were gone one summer, passed through the present site of Salt Lake City and laid out a route that could be followed. Otherwise their trip was wholly unproductive of any beneficial or permanent results. There are stations adjoining each other on the Rio Grande Railroad between Delta and Grand Junction named "Dominquez" and "Escalante" for these two explorers. If the laurels of Coronado's discovery are ever successfully removed from his crown, his mantle will fall upon the shoulders of these two Friars. So we come to the close of the century with the glorious dawn breaking all along the East, glowing in the heavens, shining over the people, over the farms and the mills, over the towns and the country, bringing prosperity and contentment to thousands. Its beams are resting on our own Declaration of Independence; on our own Continental Congress; on the benign countenance of the revered Washington, as he bids the people an affectionate adieu in the stirring words of his great farewell address, from which we quote this noble sentiment--and may it abide with us forever: "Profoundly penetrated with this idea, I shall carry it with me to the grave, as a strong incitement to unceasing vows that heaven may continue to use the choicest token of its beneficence--that your Union and brotherly affection may be perpetual, that the free constitution which is the work of your hands, may be sacredly maintained, that its administration in every department may be stamped with wisdom and virtue, that in fine the happiness of the people of these states under the auspices of liberty may be made complete by so careful a preservation and so prudent a use of this blessing as will acquire to them the glory of recommending it to the applause, affection and adoption of every nation which is yet a stranger to it." How rapidly we have passed over these three hundred years, from the days of the great Queen Isabella, to the time of the immortal Washington! How lightly we have moved along, flitting here and there, as the bee gathers honey for the comb, picking out events that seemed essential in the preparation of the frame work for our picture; passing by the great events of history, past the smiling and the weeping, past the feasting and the hungering, past the living and the dying--of all those who smiled and wept, who feasted and hungered, who lived and died, in that crowded three hundred years of human endeavor! And now for our picture: A simple picture of simple events, simply painted, with touches of human nature colorings, of the everyday joys and sorrows, of the hopes and disappointments that came to us out of the great West beyond the Mississippi River--in that portion of the marvellous century just closed, the most wonderful century of this most wonderful world! CHAPTER IV. LIEUTENANT PIKE. [Sidenote: 1803] Enters the great Napoleon. He is in the midst of his never-ending wars. He is fighting England and having a hard time. Spain has ceded the Louisiana Territory to France, Louisiana as it was then, with its one million square miles of territory, and not Louisiana as it is now, with less than fifty thousand square miles, only one-twentieth its original size. Napoleon sold us Louisiana in 1803, because he needed the Sixteen Million Dollars we paid him for it, and it is said that he stated, that in this transfer of territory he would make us so powerful as a nation, that we would accomplish the downfall of England, his hereditary enemy, after he was in his grave. St. Louis had been started by the early French Fur Traders in 1764, and it took it forty-one years to reach a population of two hundred and fifty families. They had called it "Pain Court," which means, "short of bread." It was in 1804, that the formal transfer of the Louisiana Territory had been made at St. Louis, first from Spain to France, and then from France to the United States. Time was unimportant in those days, and although France had owned her possessions in the New World for two years, she had not taken formal possession until the day of the transfer to the United States. This was accomplished on the morning of March 9, 1804, with such ceremony as was possible in that primitive community. Down came the Flag of Spain! Up went the Flag of France! Down came the Flag of France, and up went the Stars and Stripes to float forever! So at last, after three hundred years, was launched on its brilliant career, the country that Pope Alexander VI had given to Spain, and which she had lacked the ability to develop, and the capacity to govern. One hundred years later, the incident of the lowering and raising of the flags was celebrated on that very spot, by one of the greatest displays of modern times. To make it a fitting centennial celebration, St. Louis voted Five Million Dollars in bonds; there was a stock subscription of Five Million Dollars; the Government appropriated Five Million Dollars; and the State of Missouri donated One Million Dollars, making a total of the exact sum that was originally paid for a territory, out of which fourteen states and two territories have since been carved, that now contain the homes of 18,222,500 people, nearly a fifth of the 92,972,267 population of the United States, a population that in 1804 was but 6,081,040. In all these years, the Spanish did little in New Spain to extend and colonize the country. The Spanish race seemed to have lacked the pioneer instinct; they were a luxury loving people, and did not possess the hardy qualities and stout hearts that could conquer unmurmuringly nature's comparatively insurmountable barriers. They liked the plunder that had intoxicated them under the rule of Cortez, and the enslavement of the humble and effeminate natives of a territory whose climatic surroundings sapped their strength and made them weak. The subjugation of the active and warlike northern Indians was a very different thing, much to the surprise and disappointment of the Spanish. They would fight. Large in stature as Coronado states in his letter to the King, they were made of stern stuff, and their fierce attitude interposed a permanent barrier to the encroachments of the Spaniards from the south. They were never meant to be enslaved. Think of making a menial of a Comanche, or an Apache! Think of old Geronimo, a body servant! Think of taming a full-grown wild cat, with its glaring eyes, its tearing teeth, and scratching claws! When the Apaches found that the Spaniards were repopulating the West Indies with slaves from the mainland of this Continent, and had captured some of their own tribe and carried them into captivity, the indignation and wrath of these natives knew no bounds. They could fight like demons, and when cornered they could destroy themselves, but they could never be taken alive and enslaved. If this country had been inhabited by the docile and easily subdued negroes, we would have felt the domineering blight of Spain to this day. The reason Spain failed to rivet its paralyzing hold upon this nation was because the negro was not a native of this country, but a transplantment from Africa. So the Spaniards made no further efforts to penetrate northward into a territory which they claimed to be uninhabitable for civilized man. They had made but one settlement--Santa Fe in 1605, which, next to St. Augustine, Florida, is the oldest town in the United States. Near Santa Fe, Coronado twice wintered his army on the Rio Grande, in the Province of Tiguex. For eighty-five years the Spaniards possessed Santa Fe, when, in 1690, there was an uprising of the Indians, who captured the town, burned the buildings, and massacred or drove out its inhabitants. It was at this time that valuable manuscripts are supposed to have been burned, that might have had to do with Coronado's expedition. The Spaniards always made triplicate copies of their State papers, for their better preservation, and it is copies of these papers that the Archæological Society hopes to unearth, in the mouldy and cob-webbed cellars under the monasteries of Old Spain. For two years, the Indians held Santa Fe, when, defeated in battle, they again gave way to the Spaniards, who later on, were to abdicate in favor of the United States. [Sidenote: 1805] Washington made history at Trenton, New Jersey, in 1776, by the capture of a body of Hessian soldiers. About two years afterwards a child was born in that village whose name must have been given it by a pious mother with her Bible on her knee, and not, I ween, by the father, Captain Pike, of the Revolutionary Army, who would have doubtless called his son after one of the great generals of that time. It is in the thirtieth chapter of Genesis, we learn of a Zebulun for the first time, in the story of the sisters Leah and Rachael. Zebulon Montgomery Pike went to school at Easton, Pa., and before he was twenty-one was made a Captain in the Army, which shows that it is a good thing to have a father with influence. In 1805, Pike started, under the authority of President Jefferson, on an expedition to discover the source of the Mississippi River. His trip, lasting nine months, was successful, and upon his return, he started almost immediately with a party to explore geographically the Louisiana Purchase. He outfitted at St. Louis, which was the last western point where supplies could be obtained. In Lieutenant Pike's party there were twenty-four, including a guide and interpreter, and he had in his care fifty-one Indians whom he was to return to their tribe, the Government having rescued them from other tribes who had made them prisoners. He went by sail boats up the Missouri River from St. Louis, while the Indians traveled by land, the two parties camping near each other at night. He kept a journal in which he made a daily record of events, which he copied and sent in with his report of the expedition to the Government after his return. Some excerpts are given to help the reader to a better and closer knowledge of the man and the times. He records, as he passed through Missouri, his impression of that State in this language: "These vast plains of the Western Hemisphere may become in time as celebrated as the sandy deserts of Africa, but from these immense prairies may arise one great advantage to the United States, the restriction of our population to some certain limits and thereby a continuance of the Union. Our citizens being so prone to rambling and extending themselves on the frontier, will, through necessity, be constrained to limit their extent on the West to the borders of the Mississippi and the Missouri, while they leave the prairies incapable of cultivation to the wandering and uncivilized aborigines of the country." With regard to the Indians placed in his care, we read this: "* * * Every morning we were awakened by the mourning of the savages, who commenced crying about daylight and continued their lamentation for the space of an hour. I made inquiry of my interpreter with respect to this practice and was informed that it was a custom not only with those who had recently lost their relatives, but also with others, who recalled to mind the loss of some friend, dead long since, who joined the mourners purely from sympathy. They appeared extremely affected, tears ran down their cheeks and they sobbed bitterly, but in a moment they dry their cheeks and cease their cries." Of these same Indians, upon being turned over to their tribe, he says: "Lieutenant Wilkinson informed me that their meeting was very tender and affectionate. Wives throwing themselves into the arms of their husbands; parents embracing their children and children their parents; brothers and sisters meeting--one from captivity, the other from the towns; at the same time returning thanks to the good God for having brought them once more together." In Missouri, he records his first sight of a slaughter of animals by the Indians: "After proceeding about a mile, we discovered a herd of elk which we pursued; they took back in sight of the Pawnees who immediately mounted fifty or sixty young men and joined in the pursuit; then for the first time in my life, I saw animals slaughtered by the true savages by their original weapons, bows and arrows. They buried the arrow up to the plume in the animal." The Indians called the prairie dog the "wish-ton-wish" because of their shrill bark. He says, in part, of these little animals: "Their holes descend in a spiral form, on which account I could never ascertain their depth; but I once had 140 kettles of water poured into one of them in order to drive out the occupant but without effect. * * * We killed great numbers of these animals with our rifles and found them excellent meat after they were exposed a night or two to the frost by which means the rankness acquired by their subterranean dwelling is corrected." While still in Missouri we read from his diary this: "Friday 12th of September.--Commenced our march at 7:00 o'clock and passed some very rough flint hills; my feet blistered and were very sore. Standing on a hill, I beheld in one view below me, buffaloes, elks, deer, cabrie, and panther. Encamped on the main branch of Grand River which has very steep banks and was deep. Doctor Robinson, Bradley and Baromi arrived after dusk, having killed three buffaloes, which with one I had killed and two by the Indians, made in all six. The Indians alleging it was the Kansas Hunting Ground, said they would destroy all the game they possibly could. Distance advanced eighteen miles." In Missouri also, in addition to the many species of game which he daily describes in his journal, he speaks of the wild turkeys. A mistaken idea exists among some as to how this bird found its way to the western plains and mountains. In the Eastern States, before the time of easy transportation or cold storage, dealers would go through the country gathering the turkeys from the farmers, and driving them along the public highways to market, in great droves like sheep. From that, an impression went abroad that later, a drove of turkeys, crossing the plains to California, became scattered and wild. The facts are, wild turkeys were plentiful in New Spain and had been domesticated by the Aztecs before the conquest of Mexico by Cortez. They were never seen in England until 1541, when they reached there from New Spain, the very year Coronado was marching with his army towards Colorado. The highly ornamented head dresses of the Indians, which were first made from the feathers of the eagles and the owls, were later made from the glossy and richly hued feathers of the wild turkey. Lieutenant Pike and his party passed on westward into Kansas and followed the Arkansas River into Colorado. Soon after he entered our State, near the place where the Purgatoire River empties into the Arkansas, he discovered the Rocky Mountains, then known as the Mexican Mountains. A legend containing a note of sadness comes to us out the buried centuries. Soldiers going from Santa Fe to St. Augustine with gold for the army were never heard of beyond the junction of the Arkansas and Purgatoire Rivers. As the months and years passed with no tidings of the soldiers, a Priest named one of the rivers El Rio de las Animas Perdidas--the River of Lost Souls. The French trappers later changed the name to Purgatoire. Long afterwards it is said that an Indian confessed to a Priest that the Indians had surrounded the men and killed every one. Much gold has been spent since that day searching for the gold the soldiers were supposed to have buried when they knew they were to be attacked. It was on the afternoon of November 15, 1805, that, looking to the northwest, Pike saw what he took to be a small blue cloud. Then with a glass he discovered that it was a peak, towering above all the surrounding heights, and which then and after, his party spoke of as the Grand Peak. It was known by all the Indian tribes for hundreds of miles around, and the early hunters and trappers told that it was so high, the clouds could not get between it and the sky. It later became known as "Pike's Peak." Two days after the discovery of this Peak, whose altitude is 14,147 feet, he tells in his journal of the feast of marrow bones, and how deceptive distance is in this rarified air: "Monday, 17th November.--Marched at our usual hour; pushed on with an idea of arriving at the mountains but found at night no visible difference in their appearance from what we had observed yesterday. One of our horses gave out and was left in a ravine not being able to ascend the hill, but I sent back for him and had him brought to the camp. Distance advanced twenty-three miles and a half. "Tuesday, 18th of November.--As we discovered fresh signs of the savages, we concluded it best to stop and kill some meat for fear we should get into a country where we could not obtain game. Sent out the hunters. I walked myself to an eminence from whence I took the courses to the different mountains and a small sketch of their appearance. In the evening found the hunters had killed without mercy, having slain seventeen buffaloes and wounded at least twenty more. "Wednesday, 19th of November.--Having several carcasses brought in, I gave out sufficient meat to last this month. I found it expedient to remain and dry the meat for our horses were getting very weak, and the one died which was brought in yesterday. Had a general feast of marrow bones. One hundred and thirty-six of them furnishing the repast. "Saturday, 22d of November.--* * * We made for the woods and unloaded our horses, and the two leaders endeavored to arrange the party; it was with great difficulty they got them tranquil and not until there had been a bow or two bent on the occasion. When in some order, we found them to be sixty warriors, half with fire arms and half with bows and arrows and lances. Our party was in all sixteen * * * Finding this, we determined to protect ourselves as far as was in our power and the affair began to wear a serious aspect. I ordered my men to take their arms and separate themselves from the savages; at the same time declaring I would kill the first man who touched our baggage. * * *" It was on November 27th that he arrived at the base of Pike's Peak, and because of the lateness of the season could not ascend it. Instead, he reached the summit of Cheyenne Mountain, and looked up to the grand pinnacle that stood out so grandly majestic, seeming so close, yet estimated by him to be fifteen or sixteen miles away. He looked down on the billowy clouds below, that rose and lowered like the tossing of mighty waves in a storm at sea. He stood speechlessly gazing on such grandeur as his eyes had never yet beheld, and he felt the awe, and immensity, and sublimity of it, down to the end of his life. It was the same Cheyenne Mountain where Helen Hunt, the writer, so loved to be. Here, she was enthralled with the beauty and majesty that surrounded her, and here she received the inspiration for those glowing descriptions of nature as she saw it in its restful moods, and as she pictured it in its times of frenzy. Her love for that mountain was so great, that on its bosom, high up near the stars, beneath the trees that spoke to her as they rustled in the summer's breeze, her grave was made and there she was buried according to her wish. All winter, Pike prospected the mountains and the rivers, in the midst of such suffering as few people endure and survive. These few notes from his diary tell the story: "Wednesday, 24th of December.--* * * About eleven o'clock met Dr. Robinson on a prairie, who informed me that he and Baromi had been absent from the party two days without killing anything, also without eating * * * "Thursday, 25th of December.--* * * We had before been occasionally accustomed to some degree of relaxation and extra enjoyments; but the case was now far different; eight hundred miles from the frontiers of our country in the most inclement season of the year; not one person properly clothed for the winter; many without blankets, having been obliged to cut them up for socks and other articles; lying down, too, at night on the snow or wet ground, one side burning, whilst the other was pierced with the cold wind; that was briefly the situation of the party; while some were endeavoring to make a miserable substitute of raw buffalo hide for shoes and other covering. * * * [Illustration: Pike Leaving the Two Comrades with Frozen Feet at the Log Fort They Built Near Canon City.] "Tuesday, 20th of January.--The doctor and all the men able to march returned to the buffalo to bring in the remainder of the meat. On examining the feet of those who were frozen, we found it impossible for two of them to proceed, and two others only without loads by the help of a stick. One of the former was my waiter, a promising young lad of twenty, whose feet were so badly frozen as to present every possibility of his losing them. The doctor and party returned toward evening loaded with the buffalo meat. "Tuesday, 17th of February.--* * * This evening the corporal and three of the men arrived, who had been sent back to the camp of their frozen companions. They informed me that two more would arrive the next day, one of them was Menaugh, who had been left alone on the 27th of January; but the other two, Dougherty and Spark, were unable to come. They said that they had hailed them with tears of joy and were in despair when they again left them with a chance of never seeing them more. They sent on to me some of the bones taken out of their feet and conjured me by all that was sacred not to leave them to perish far from the civilized world. Oh! little did they know my heart if they could suspect me of conduct so ungenerous! No, before they should be left, I would for months have carried the end of a litter in order to secure them the happiness of once more seeing their native homes and being received in the bosom of a grateful country. Thus these poor fellows are to be invalids for life, made infirm at the commencement of manhood and in the prime of their course; doomed to pass the remainder of their days in misery and want. For what is the pension? Not sufficient to buy a man his victuals! What man would even lose the smallest of his joints for such a trifling pittance?" The Louisiana Purchase had left a disputed boundary, which, with other things, threatened war between the United States and Spain. When Pike crossed over the Rocky Mountains to the West side, he was exploring disputed territory, though he was lost and thought he was on the Red River, instead of the Rio Grande, the former being within the limits of the Louisiana Purchase. He had passed that River, however, above its source, and had gotten over on the Rio Grande, which territory was still claimed by Spain. Had he found the Red River, it was his intention to build rafts and follow it towards its junction with the Mississippi, landing on his way at Nachitoches in Louisiana, which is about one hundred and fifteen miles west of Natchez--that being the Military Post to which he was to report. Notice of his presence in the Mountains had reached Santa Fe, where Spanish soldiers were stationed. The Governor sent an officer and fifty dragoons to bring him out. He was taken south to Santa Fe, going peaceably, but all the time protesting in the name of his Government at the indignity. Here he was questioned, his papers examined, and those in authority being undecided as to how to handle the matter because of its national character, they sent him far away to the south, to Chihuahua in New Spain, the headquarters of the Military Chief of Upper Mexico, where he arrived April 2d. After being detained for some days, all his papers again gone over in a vain endeavor to find something incriminating, it was determined to send him East to his destination, with an escort, his party, however, not to be permitted to accompany him, but to be sent after him. In July, 1806, he arrived at Nachitoches, where he was warmly welcomed by his fellow officers. A little later he received a letter of thanks from the Government. He was made a Major in the Army in 1808; Lieutenant Colonel in 1809; Deputy Quartermaster-General and Colonel both, in 1812; Brigadier General in 1813. In that year he was sent by the Government on an expedition against York in Upper Canada, at the time of our second war with England. Here a magazine of the Fort exploded, a mass of stone fell on him and crushed him, and he died at the age of thirty-five. In his pocket was found a little volume containing a touching admonition to his son. He urged that he regard his honor above everything else, and that he be ready to die for his country at any time. Lieutenant Pike had a pleasing personality, and had he lived, he would doubtless have been prominent in the affairs of the Government. He had strong features, keen kindly eyes, firm chin, high forehead, a nose that showed breeding, was clean shaven, had closely cropped hair combed straight back, and his picture somewhat resembles the portrait of Thomas Jefferson, once President of the United States. His modesty would not permit the giving of his own untarnished name to the great Peak that through the ages will proudly bear his name. The name came from a popular demand of the people, who were here at an early date, and who did away with the name of "James Peak" which Major Long gave it in honor of one of his own exploring party. [Illustration: One of the Approaches to Cheyenne Mountain, Pike's Peak in the Background.] There is a singular coincidence attached to the name of this Peak. A pike in former times was the name given to anything with a sharp point. A road with toll gates was called a pike, because the gate consisted of a pole that swung up with the small end pointing towards the sky. In olden times the name of pike, instead of peak, was given to all summits of mountains. Gradually the word pike gave way to peak, and the former finally became obsolete. So in the name of Pike's Peak, we have it so securely named, that even the highest legislation in the land could not take away from it the name of Pike. And in this towering peak and its companions, if Prof. Agassiz is right, we have the first dry land that was lifted out of the great world's waste of waters. Colorado is to be congratulated that it has a monument in its midst that will forever commemorate the memory of a good man, who was intellectually, physically and morally clean and strong; who was faithful to every trust; tender in his sympathies; lofty in his ideals and character; and who loved his country so much, that he was willing to give it all he had--his life. CHAPTER V. THE LOST PERIOD. As footprints on the sands of the ocean's beach are blotted out by winds and waves, so a Chapter of Colorado's History has been torn from its pages and can never be reproduced--the hunter and trapper. Exploring parties sent out by the Government were required to make careful observations, and a minute record of all they saw. It is by this we can follow them through their wanderings amidst primeval scenes, and can picture them moving slowly over the plains, solitary or in little groups, struggling forward, often hungry, lame, sick and desolate. But there will ever remain an untold story of those early times; as it can never be written by the hands long stilled, nor ever spoken by the lips long silenced. In that buried period are blended the romance, tragedy and adventures of the hunters and trappers who frequented Colorado in the beginning of the last century. They were few in number, mostly of French extraction, with St. Louis as their home. They were a type whose like will never be seen again, for the reasons for their existing can never again be duplicated. They were Indian Traders, who went at first to the outskirts of civilization, exchanging inexpensive articles for the rich furs of the Indians. As their acquaintance grew with the natives, they crowded into the Indians' country, and following the streams, took the otter and beaver at first hand. Because of their being so few in number, they were rarely molested; then, too, they were a medium by which the natives could realize on their furs, pittance though it was. Some of these trappers would remain out on their expeditions for several years at a time, often living with the Indians and adopting their ways. As their clothes fell to pieces from age and use, they would replenish from the primitive blanket costumes of the Indians, whom in time they came to resemble. Often they would marry Indian wives and settle down to the nomadic life of the aborigines. Sometimes there would crowd upon them such stirring memories of the experiences they had once enjoyed, that the wives and children would be left to tears and loneliness, while the trapper with his face set toward the East, with his pack on his back, would tramp to the settlements, sometimes to remain, sometimes to return. We know some of the men who visited the mountains and streams of Colorado; knowledge of their presence here has floated down to us in various ways. When Major Long came on his exploring trip in 1819, he secured as guides two French Trappers, then living with the tribe of Pawnee Indians in southeastern Nebraska, who had trapped in the region of the Rocky Mountains. James Pursley was here in 1805 and traded among the Indians; Lieutenant Pike in his report, speaks of him as the first white man who ever crossed the plains. He made the first discovery of gold in Colorado, which he found at the foot of Lincoln Mountain, doubtless at Fairplay on the Platte River, where once extensive placer diggings existed. As late as 1875, the Company operating there had a large number of Chinamen at work. The immense grass-grown gulch, wide and deep and long, at the edge of Fairplay, is the excavation out of which hundreds of thousands of dollars were taken. Colorado has done well to commemorate the name of Abraham Lincoln in one of its loftiest mountains. A Frenchman named La Lande was sent out by an Illinois merchant in 1804, to make an investigation of the country and report. He came along the Platte Valley, crossed over to Santa Fe, where he concluded to remain. There was a party of French Trappers known to have been here about 1800 who went South into Arizona, in search of untouched territory to ply their avocation. Philip Covington in 1827 passed up the Cache La Poudre Valley with a pack train, on his way to Green River with supplies. He returned in 1828 and established a colony of trappers at La Porte, one of the oldest settlements in Colorado, and which is located near Ft. Collins. He was in the employ of the American Fur Company. [Illustration: The Trapper.] The trappers would often go alone into these vast solitudes, with pack horses to carry their supplies in, and their furs but. Sometimes they would die in their lonely retreats, and never be heard of again, only as some sign of the fate that had overtaken them would be found years later. After a time, there were wagon routes of travel along the Arkansas River, with a trading post at Fort Bent and one at Santa Fe; also up the South Platte River, with trading centers at Ft. St. Vrain and at Ft. Lupton; and up the North Platte River, with the business centering at Ft. Laramie. Sometimes trappers who were brought out in the freighting wagons in the Spring from St. Louis by the Fur-Trading Companies, would be left with supplies along the streams, and in the Fall they would be picked up and taken with their peltries back to St. Louis. The Astor Trail was made in 1810 through South Dakota west to the Coast. A great impetus was given to the fur business by the Lewis and Clark Exploring Party in 1804. They opened up the first Coast to Coast trail, and were the first white men to cross the Continent between the British operations on the North, and the Spanish on the South. Lewis had been President Jefferson's Private Secretary, and Captain Clark was his friend. They traveled eighty-five hundred miles, and they nationalized the fur business which grew to such proportions that years after they had opened up the line of travel, we were selling in London, alone, two million one hundred and seventy thousand furs annually. The rich peltries then were what gold and silver were later, and what grain, alfalfa, fruit, sugar beets and potatoes are now, and will be as long as water, soil, and sunshine blend. Buffalo and otter skins brought in the western market three dollars each; beaver skins four dollars; coon and muskrat twenty-five cents; deer skins thirty-eight cents per pound. The early trappers could have been of inestimable benefit to the Government, had they been called upon to help solve the perplexing Indian problems that for so many years confronted us. They knew the Indians, their languages, habits and customs; and had their knowledge and influence with the natives been utilized, we might have peaceably settled many of the difficulties that required the sacrifice of so many lives and the unnecessary expenditure of so much money. The fur industry, however, depended upon the keen perception of an awkward, unlettered, German boy for its growth and quick development. He came to London from Germany, with his bundle under his arm, to help in his brother's music store. John Jacob Ashdoer was his name, which by evolution became "Astor." With great frugality and unceasing industry, he saved enough in two years to pay his passage on a sailing ship to America, and there was enough left of his little hoard to buy seven flutes of his uncle, his sole stock in trade. When he reached this country, he traded one of his flutes for some furs; and that particular flute, and those particular furs, made history. It turned his attention to the fur trade, and laid the foundation for the greatest landed estate in America. With his pack on his back, he traveled among the Indian tribes of the Eastern States, and got their furs in exchange for gaudy trinkets, such as beads and ribbons. He personally took the furs to London, so as to realize the highest possible price for them and rapidly grew rich. In 1800 when he had only been in this country fifteen years, he was clearing fifty thousand dollars on a single trip of one of his sailing vessels. It was at this time that Astor founded Astoria as a fur trading point, on the Columbia River, expecting to operate by ship, as well as freighting overland by the way of Ft. Laramie, and thus control the fur traffic along the tributary rivers. The destruction of Astoria by the British kept him from realizing his dream of becoming "the richest man in the world." Washington Irving and John Jacob Astor were friends, and the latter placed in Irving's hands all the records of his Company's operations, from which Irving gathered much interesting data, and many thrilling experiences from the lives of the early trappers and hunters. He wrote "Astoria" as a compliment to his friend. In this book he pictures the Rocky Mountains as having an elevation in places of twenty-five thousand feet, but frankly states that it is only conjecture, since their altitude had never been measured. The average height of the Rocky Mountains exceed that of the famous Alps, a number of the noted peaks being above thirteen thousand feet. Some of Irving's interesting and pleasing prophecies of our country follow: "It is a region almost as vast and trackless as the ocean, and at the time of which we treat, but little known, excepting through the vague accounts of Indian hunters. A part of their route would lay across an immense tract, stretching North and South for hundreds of miles along the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and drained by the tributaries of the Missouri and the Mississippi. This region, which resembles one of the immeasurable steppes of Asia, has not inaptly been termed 'The Great American Desert.' It spreads forth into undulating and trackless plains and desolate sandy wastes, wearisome to the eye from their extent and monotony, and which are supposed by geologists to have formed the ancient floor of the ocean, countless ages since, when its primeval waves beat against the granite bases of the Rocky Mountains. "It is a land where no man permanently abides; for, in certain seasons of the year, there is no food, either for the hunter or his steed. The herbage is parched and withered; the brooks and streams are dried up; the buffalo, the elk and the deer have wandered to distant parts, keeping within the verge of expiring verdure, and leaving behind them a vast uninhabited solitude, seamed by ravines, the beds of former torrents, but now serving only to tantalize and increase the thirst of the traveler. Such is the nature of this immense wilderness of the far West, which apparently defies cultivation, and the habitation of civilized life * * * Here may spring up new and mongrel races * * * Some may gradually become pastoral hordes, like those rude and migratory people, half shepherd, half warrior, who, with their flocks and herds, roam the plains of Upper Asia; but, others, it is to be apprehended, will become predatory bands, mounted on the fleet steeds of the prairies, with the open plains for their marauding ground, and the mountains for their retreats and lurking places. Here they may resemble those great hordes of the North; 'Gog and Magog with their bands,' that haunted the gloomy imaginations of the prophets, 'A great Company and a mighty host all riding upon horses, and warring upon those nations which were at rest, and dwelt peaceably, and had gotten cattle and goods.'" CHAPTER VI. MAJOR LONG. [Sidenote: 1819] Fourteen years have passed since Lieutenant Pike sold his two little sail boats to the Osage Indians as he left the Missouri River and started on his overland journey. Within this brief period a great invention has marked the progress of the century. After years of experiments, failures and disappointments; after sinking one vessel and abandoning others; Robert Fulton has returned from his trip to France, bringing with him his steam engine with which he had perfected water navigation, and by his genius linked together all the nations of the earth, increased the wealth and commerce of the world, and won for himself enduring fame. The next exploring party was to start in a steamship owned by the Government of the United States, and under the leadership of Stephen Harriman Long. Born at Hopkington, New Hampshire, December 30, 1784, Long had graduated at Dartmouth College, and entered the corps of Engineers of the U.S. Army, in 1814; had been a professor of mathematics at the Military Academy at West Point, and had been transferred to the Topographical Engineers in 1815, with the brevet-rank of Major. James Monroe was President, and John C. Calhoun Secretary of War, and they gave Major Long elaborate instructions as to his duty. We had owned the vast Louisiana Territory for sixteen years, and knew but little more about it than when it came into our possession. So, Long was to explore it and make a very thorough investigation of the "country between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, the Missouri and its tributaries, the Red River, the Arkansas River, and the Mississippi above the mouth of the Missouri." On May 3, 1819, the party of nine started from the arsenal on the Allegheny River just above Pittsburgh, at which point they entered the Ohio River. Their steamer carried them down the Ohio to its junction with the Mississippi, a distance of about nine hundred miles, where they arrived May 30th. Here they turned north up the Mississippi River, about one hundred and seventy-five miles to St. Louis, which they reached June 9th. Then they steamed West up the Missouri, over the course that Pike had sailed fourteen years before, to the same point where the Osage River enters the Missouri, near the present location of Jefferson City and one hundred and thirty-three miles from the Mississippi River. The party divided; part of the number disembarked and proceeded with horses through Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska, meeting those of the party who remained on the boat at Council Bluffs on September 19th. There they established their winter quarters on the banks of the Missouri, about five miles below the present City of Council Bluffs, and so named because of a Council held with the Indians by the Government at that point. In the log houses, built by Pike and his party, and with the supplies they had brought on the ship, the party passed a comfortable and leisurely winter. On June 6, 1820, they started from Council Bluffs, the party then consisting of twenty men and twenty-eight horses. It is interesting to know what their pack ponies carried. Here is an invoice: 150 lbs. pork 500 lbs. biscuit 10 cannisters 300 flints 25 lbs. coffee 30 lbs. sugar 5 lbs. vermilion 2 lbs. beads 30 lbs. tobacco 2 doz. moccasin awls 1 doz. scissors 6 doz. looking glasses 1 doz. gun worms 1 doz. fire-steels 2 gross hawks bells 2 gross knives 1 gross combs 2 bu. parched corn 5 gal. whiskey Bullet pouches Powder horns Skin canoes Packing skins Canteens Forage bags Several hatchets A little salt A few trinkets Pack cards Small packing boxes for insects. They followed along the Platte River, and stopped for a time at the junction of the North Fork of that River with the South Fork, where North Platte is now situated. Here they tell of watching the beavers cut down a cottonwood tree. They observed that when it was nearly ready to fall, one of the beavers swam out into the river and posted itself as a sentinel. As soon as it saw the tops of the branches begin to move, it gave the signal by giving the water a resounding slap with its flat tail, when every beaver scampered out of reach of the falling tree. It must have been a moonlight night when they were there, otherwise they would not have seen the beavers at work, for they reverse nature's order and sleep in the daytime, working at night. They sleep in their houses, with their bodies in the water, and their heads resting out of the water on a stick. At twilight, a wise old mother beaver comes out and swims all around the pond or river, looking and smelling. Their sense of smell is very keen, and those who wish to observe them do so from treetops near the water. If after a careful investigation, the sentinel decides there are no man people, or wild animals around, one slap of the tail on the water is given, and out pops the nose of every beaver of the band, and all proceed with their work, exactly where it ended at sunrise. If the one on picket duty sees or hears anything that seems suspicious, three sharp resounding strokes of the tail sends every beaver in a flash to his hiding place, and nothing will tempt them out again that night. They have an instinct for making a tree fall in exactly the place where they want it, and it is used as a foundation for the numerous dams they build in the streams. On June 30th, Long's party got their first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains. Later on, when they were camped near Ft. Lupton, opposite the Peak, they gave it the name of Long, its altitude being fourteen thousand two hundred and seventy feet. None of the party were ever near the Peak. Two of them, more courageous than the others, rode out one memorable morning, under a cloudless sky, with their faces towards the snowy range--rode away to defeat and oblivion. As morning turned to noon and they seemed no nearer to the pinnacle than when they started, they retraced their steps across the silent plain. Thus they lost an opportunity of forever linking their names to undying fame. Had they proceeded, they could have electrified a nation by writing into their report a page that would have remained undimmed to the end of time. It was theirs, had they embraced it, to have discovered Estes Park, the gorgeous setting that crowns the approach to the King of Peaks. But they turned back; back from the snow-white mountains beckoning them onward; from the purple tints that veiled the mystic summits in a mellow haze; from the lights and shadows playing over hill and dale, under a canopy of fleecy clouds. Beautiful Estes Park! Rarest gem of all the sparkling jewels that adorn the bosom of this fair world! In you the Divine Hand has created the masterpiece of all earthly beauty! You are so freighted down with scenic blessings that the mould was broken in your formation and there can be no duplication! Glorious is your resting place under the cloudless sky, as you lie in the embraces of the soft and balmy air that envelops you! Beautiful are your grassy slopes and velvet meadows, asleep beneath the gleaming stars, awake under the mellow skies, reaching away in a panoramic view of exquisite colorings! Faultless are Nature's highways as they wind in and out among your fir and spruce, your pine and aspen, through silvery glades and leafy dells, by rocky gorges and towering cliffs! Lovely are the azure lakes that rest against your mountain sides, reflecting in their limpid depths your rocks and trees, your lights and shades, your fleecy clouds and snow-clad peaks! How gentle is the flow of your sounding streams; how they eddy and fall; how they tumble and roar, as they hurry along to their far-away home in the sea! How grand and terrible are the awe-inspiring storms that gather in the mountains high above you, as cloud rolls upon cloud, black, dense, lowering; how the terrific peals of thunder crash from peak to peak, like the duel of artillery meeting on the field of carnage in the mighty shock of battle! As light follows darkness, as sunshine comes after the rain, as peace succeeds strife, the clouds unveil, the tempest is calmed, the glory of the sun dispels the gloom, and the storm lashed pinnacles robed in eternal snow, light up under the glow of the lingering twilight. The tiny throated songsters warble their simple evening notes, ever old and forever new, rivaling the music of the streams, as they flood this paradise of parks with an ecstasy of melody. The eagle mounts skyward, rising higher and higher, in ever widening circles, standing out against the sky, then soaring away beyond the vision to his eyrie in the gaping gorge of the lofty crest. The opalescent hues envelop the mountain rims. The fiery red, flames into a glow, melts to the softest purple, blends to the rarest gray, and in a delirium of rich colors the sun goes down in a cloud of glory. The sublimity of the scene clings like a halo around the sky-piercing summits. The day darkens, and the rosy tints of sunset fade into a flood of moonlight that mirrors the shining stars in the rivers, flowing far below under the mysterious shadows of the mighty cliffs. Long and his party followed along the Platte River by the place where Denver is located, and on to Colorado Springs, at which point some of them attempted to climb Pike's Peak, but did not succeed. Greatly to their discredit, they named that Peak for "James," one of their number, instead of for "Pike," its discoverer. The people saw to it, however, that the name thus given it, should not be permanent. The people are nearly always right. The party proceeded on to Canon City and Pueblo, and then this exploring party made a discovery; they discovered that their biscuits were running short, so they immediately started home. They had left Council Bluffs, June 6th; they knew how long five hundred pounds of biscuits would last twenty men; so they knew they were on a pleasure trip and would have to start back July 19th, just one month and thirteen days after they set out, and ten days after they reached Colorado. When we think of the faithful Pike and his loyal men, freezing, starving, persisting; think of them with worn-out cotton clothing in winter, instead of warm flannel; of making shoes out of raw buffalo hides; of persevering in the face of every obstruction, and then read Long's report of starting back in midsummer, for the want of biscuits, our admiration grows for Lieutenant Pike and his devoted party of courageous men. [Illustration: The Buffalo Runner.] Major Long's report to the Government was of such a discouraging nature that it retarded the settlement of the country for nearly half a century, and it should never have been written. He was quoted in the newspapers, and people everywhere read of a "desert inhabited by savages," a sentiment that became so firmly fixed in the minds of many in the Eastern States that the prejudices of the people have only in recent years been wholly removed. He often refers in his report to the enormous herds of fat buffalo that "darken the plains." How this queer-shaped animal with its powerful front and slender hind parts originated, or where it came from, will forever remain an unsolved mystery like the beginning of the race of Indians. They were here in immense droves. Ernest Seton Thompson thinks that there were seventy millions within the compass of their range, which was from the Allegheny Mountains on the East, to Nevada on the West; and that fifty millions of them were west of the Mississippi River. He bases his estimate on the amount of acreage they grazed over, and the number of animals the pasturage would sustain. I think he is far too low in his estimate. If we assign forty feet of space to each buffalo they would occupy an area, if bunched together, of but sixty-four thousand two hundred and eighty acres, or only one hundred square miles, which would be equal to a herd twenty-five miles long and four miles wide. The Government reports give an estimate of two hundred and fifty millions killed, from 1850 to 1883. All the reports of explorers, scouts and emigrants dwell on the magnitude of these immense herds, which were so numerous that "the earth as far as the eye can reach, seems to be alive and to move." Coronado was never out of sight of them in traveling the seven hundred miles from New Mexico to Kansas, according to his letter to the King. Along every pioneer trail the prairies were covered in every direction with them, and away up in the Wind River Country, in the land of the Wyoming, Longfellow sings of the "Billowy bays of grass ever rolling in shadow and sunshine, Bright and luxuriant clusters of roses and purple amorphas, Over them wander the buffalo herds, and the elk and the roebuck." These peaceful herds, as they roamed over the plains, had their Nemesis at their heels, in the vast number of Indians trailing behind them and living upon them; while on all sides were thousands of hungry grey wolves devouring the calves or attacking the old, at will. In spite of these decimating influences, and their companion, the blizzard, the buffalo herds multiplied, and the Great Plains themselves seemed to be "alive and to move," as the countless numbers slowly grazed over them. Buffalo steak was good eating, and so adaptable that J. M. Bagley of Colorado, the veteran wood engraver, in relating early experiences tells how he started a restaurant on one buffalo ham, from which he served veal, beef, mutton, bear, venison, and all other wild game! The first telegraph line reaching out over the plains, was a very primitive one. The posts were short and light, and they carried but one wire. A great deal of trouble arose from the cattle rubbing against the poles and wrecking the line. This was remedied by driving long heavy spikes into the poles at the point where the cattle would do the rubbing. But the workman got out of the cattle plague, only to get into worse trouble from the buffalo. They liked the spikes, and used the sharp points to scratch their rough hides. There seemed to be a buffalo language, for those shaggy and amiable animals flocked to the spikes from all sections. They reveled in the luxury of having their backs scratched, and to show their appreciation rubbed so hard that they completely demolished the line. Telegraph wire entangled in the horns of a buffalo was found as far away as Canada when it was killed. Only the rebuilding of the line with heavy poles and leaving off the scratching comforts, enabled business to proceed. It seems strange that everyone lost sight of the productiveness that must lie in land that would sustain such quantities of grass-devouring animals; and that in the instructions given by Congress, the Presidents of the United States, and the Secretaries of War, to the leaders of these various exploring parties, the important question of irrigation should have never been considered, nor mentioned by the explorers themselves. It is true, irrigation was wholly unknown in our country at the time, but Egypt and China had been artificially watered for centuries, and it is strange that no Congressman or Government official, or enterprising newspaper editor called attention to this vital question. The Long party divided as it started East. Captain Bell with eleven men went down the Arkansas River, while Major Long with nine, went farther south in search of the Red River. They all met at Ft. Smith, in western Arkansas, the middle of September; thence the united party crossed through Arkansas to the Mississippi River, where their trip ended. Major Long looked like a college professor. He wore glasses over very black eyes; had thin, firm lips; high cheek bones; long wavy hair, and was close shaven, except for a little tuft of side whiskers back close to his ears. He later explored the source of the Mississippi River for the Government, and then became Engineer in Chief for the Western and Atlantic Railroad in Georgia. When Major Long in 1805 turned the prow of his steamer into the mouth of the Missouri River, the first that ever ploughed its waters, he little thought that just above the junction of those two rivers would some day, on the Illinois side of the Mississippi, be built a City that would be named Alton; and little did he think that, fifty-nine years later, at the age of eighty, his grave would there be dug, and there would he be buried. CHAPTER VII. THE PIONEERS. Of all those to whom we owe honor and loyalty, and affection; to whom belongs the first place of honor at the banqueting board; the highest monument to mark their passing; whose memory should be longest cherished, and beside whose grave we should tread most lightly; in all the generations of the past and future, we owe our allegiance first and always to the old settler! The very name marks the whole span of life. We see its spring time--youth and strength, teeming with energy; we see its autumn--the last leaf upon the tree, clinging, poised, ready to float away into eternal silence. Twilight, the lengthening shadows, the old settler; they blend into a harmonious setting for the slowly descending curtain upon the drama of life, ere the "silver cord is loosened or the golden bowl broken at the fountain." The old settler--what a train of thought the words suggest! He is the corner stone of civilization. He it is who pushes out beyond the confines of safety; out into scenes of privation and hardships; into conditions calling for sacrifices and disappointments; into danger and ofttimes death. Through it all he is so brave and so loyal, so earnest and capable, so patient and cheerful, so tender in his sympathies, so strong in his forceful grasp, so superior in his principles, that his name deserves to be written high up on the walls of the Temple of Fame! Nationally and locally, as a people, we have a feeling of veneration for those who clear the way and conquer the formidable obstacles that stand in the path of progress. They develop the highest type of rugged manhood and womanhood--strong, fearless, independent and self-sustaining. For nearly three centuries history has been repeating itself in this country of ours. As the Pilgrim Fathers endured and conquered, so in each succeeding generation have there been those who have given the days of their lives to labor, in the midst of loneliness, and the nights to vigil, surrounded by danger, that security and prosperity might come to those who followed them. They are the battle scarred veterans who fought for a foothold in a hostile country, and through their untiring efforts and indomitable courage made possible the enjoyment of others in the midst of congenial and ennobling surroundings. Napoleon, as all the world knows, instituted the Order of the Legion of Honor in recognition of merit, civil or military. To be a member of that Order was an honor so great that the decorations were cherished long afterwards by the descendants of the recipients. History records that a French Grenadier, returning from a leave of absence, was astonished to find the Austrian Army secretly advancing through the mountains by a comparatively unknown path. Hastening forward to give warning to the handful of soldiers stationed in a strong tower to defend the path, he found to his dismay that they had fled, leaving their thirty muskets behind. Undeterred by such a calamity, he entered the tower, barricaded the door and loaded his muskets, determined to hold the post against the whole Austrian Army. This he succeeded in doing for thirty-six hours. Every shot told. Artillerymen were killed the moment they appeared in the narrow path, and cannon were useless. Assaults were repulsed with great loss in killed and wounded. Finally, when not another round of ammunition was left, the Grenadier signalled that the Post would be evacuated if the garrison could march out with its arms, and with its colors flying proceed to the French Army. This was agreed to; and when the old Grenadier came staggering out under all the muskets he could carry, and it developed that he was the whole garrison, the admiration of the Austrians was boundless; they sent him with an escort and a note to the appreciative Napoleon, who knighted him on the spot. When, later, he was killed in battle, he was continued on the roll call of his regiment, and when the name of Latour d'Auvergne was called, the ranking sergeant stepped forward, saluted the commanding officer, and answered in a loud voice, "dead on the field of honor." To such a class belong the courageous, vigilant and enthusiastic advance guard of civilization everywhere. They placed the plowshare and the pruning hook where the rifle and the tomahawk long held sway. They worked with rough hands and stout hearts to solve the problems that beset the West, and to make gardens bloom where the desert had cast its blight for centuries. They brought order out of chaos and from the woof of time wove the lasting fabric of justice and good government. Such were the old settlers of our own beautiful mountain land. They came, many of them, in the slow, monotonous, wearisome, creaking, covered wagon drawn by heavy-footed oxen; through midday heat and wintry blasts, through blinding storms of sand and snow, they wended their way for months from far-off countries, sometimes leaving their dead in unmarked graves by the wayside, and with set faces and leaden hearts, pushed on to unknown scenes. Half a century has wrought wonderful changes! Now, the traveler sees the sun go down upon the middle west, with the Missouri winding its way to the sea; the morning's radiance glints the summit of the Great Divide, and unrolls a picture of rare beauty and majesty! Five hundred miles in a night; sleep, comfort, luxury; no hunger, or thirst, or fear, or discomfort; cushioned seats, soft carpets, fine linen; dining cars shining with polished woodwork, beveled mirrors, solid silver; a moving palace such as was unknown even in the days of luxurious Rome. I have listened to many pathetic stories of our old pioneers that touched me deeply. The history of those distant days is full of interest. An air of romance envelops those early western scenes. Many a troth was plighted in the long trip across the plains, and many a friendship was formed that ended only in death. The novelist clothes his characters with the imaginary joys and griefs of imaginary people; but imagery never was and never can be as interesting as real incidents in the lives of real people. A dignity crowns the memory of the men whose feet were set where never human feet were placed before; honors cling around the names of those who lived in the days when the buffalo roamed the plains unmolested, when the skulking savage lurked in hiding, and when the weird bark of the hungry coyote penetrated the solitude of night. Out of such experiences empires are born. The founders of our prosperous state little knew that here they were opening up the richest mineral and farming country in all the world! Nor did they realize that they would here plant the future metropolis of the Great Rocky Mountain Region. We honor them--the living and the dead--for what they are, and what they did! Their ranks are rapidly thinning. It will not be long until at Old Settlers Roll Call there will be no response--save only from out the stillness will be heard, like an appreciative echo, the voices of their successors as they answer, "Dead on the field of honor." CHAPTER VIII. CHRISTOPHER CARSON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. _Christopher Carson._ [Sidenote: 1826] Down in the blue-grass region of Kentucky; down in the land of the cotton, the corn and the banjo; where the tiny feathered warblers carol their sweetest roundelays; where perennial flowers unceasingly bloom, and the trees are early at their blossomings; where silvery streamlets are kissed by the moonlight, and linger in the embraces of the warm southern suns; in that land, the home of lovely women, splendid men and fine horses; that has sent out its great generals, polished orators and renowned statesmen--two children were born, nearby, in the very memorable year of 1809. Abraham Lincoln grew to an uncrowned kingship. Christopher Carson won the highest place in the hearts of the empire builders of this wonderful West; and their names will never die. Lincoln was splitting rails by day, studying by the light of a log fire by night, and climbing hand over hand to his bed on the floor of the loft, by means of pegs driven in the logs of the cabin, as later he went hand over hand straight into the confidence and hearts of his countrymen. Carson, the father, had apprenticed Kit, the son, to a saddler, as was the custom of those times. He rose before the break of dawn, made saddles and bridles all day and far into the night and was paid with poor food, a comfortless bed, and cheap and scanty clothing. Such was to be the lot of this unhappy boy until he was twenty-one. But he rebelled. Out into the blackness of the night, and to the light of freedom, crept the friendless youth, without a penny in his pocket or a bundle under his arm! And to such freedom! The limitless West with its stirring scenes beckoned him and he sped away, ahead of the advertisement that called him back, and in which the munificent reward of one cent for his return was offered by the man who had the legal right to call himself the master. At Franklin, where he lived, he had absorbed the spirit of the widening West that was calling him thither, and he quickly became an important factor in its upbuilding. Along that memorable Santa Fe trail, he crossed and re-crossed the southeastern part of Colorado. Kit Carson became noted as a fearless hunter, trapper, miner, stockman, farmer, scout, guide, Indian fighter, Indian pacificator, treaty maker, Indian agent--all culminating in his Brigadier-generalship in the Civil War. In every capacity, he was faithful, persevering, energetic and capable. He learned the languages of the different tribes with painstaking study. He grew to understand the Indians as individuals, their ways, and their thoughts; he became their advisor and counselor, settled differences between tribes, and between the tribes and the Government; was the Government's advisor in treaty making, and was the first man to urge the attempt to domesticate the Indians. He knew the Spanish language as well as the Mexican and Indian patois; and he aided the Government in the solution of its troubles with the Indians as well as with the Mexicans and Spaniards. His influence for good stretched across a country, beginning with the Missouri River on the East and ending where the restless waves of civilization listened to the beating of the surges on the shores of the Pacific. He was a Lincoln sort of man with malice toward none. He had few enemies, and many friends. He was for peace, when peace was possible, but how he could fight when nothing else would do! Abbott, who does not realize that the towering peaks, the murmuring streams and the boundless plains, develop high ideals through the silent language that is all their own, says of Carson, "It is strange that the wilderness could have formed so estimable a character." In Christopher Carson I see a serious man, modest and retiring, soft spoken, with quiet manners, medium in height, blue eyes and broad shouldered. I see a priestly looking man, with thoughtful mien, with face clean shaven; high, broad forehead, with receding hair flowing toward his shoulders, long and wavy; thin, firmly compressed lips; in all, very like the strong, splendid face of the world-famed artist, Liszt. I see a domestic man, adoring his amiable Spanish wife. I see him lying on his buffalo robe, with his children playing over him, and hunting the sugar lumps out of pockets that were never empty. I see him standing, gazing into the eyes of the Indian whose hand he clasps, vieing with each other in erectness, while at their feet lie the idle guns and cartridges, the broken bows and arrows, and the pruning hooks into which their swords have been beaten. I see him dying, two score and three years ago, with his honest homely face illuminated, as he smiles his "adios" to all about him and sinks gently into his last, long, dreamless sleep. _Richens Wooten._ [Sidenote: 1838] Seventy-five years have come and gone since Richens Wooten joined a wagon train at Independence, Missouri, and came out over the Santa Fe trail. Until 1859 he felt that he was temporarily in the West; that he would go back to his old Missouri home and end his days in the midst of the peaceful scenes of boyhood joys, the memory of which had clung to him through all the exciting years of his frontier life. Then when he had achieved success; had money and property; had loaded his belongings on his wagons; had turned the heads of the horses to the East; looked into the faces of the friends who had surrounded him all the years, at the plains he knew and loved, at the magnificent mountains, silent, majestic, eternal, at the rivers murmuring to him as they went by--his courage faltered! He awoke from the dream he had dreamed for years, unhitched his horses, unloaded his wagons, and lived and died in the country from which his heart-strings could not be severed. [Illustration: Pioneers and a Conestogal Wagon or Prairie Schooner.] Like those of his day, he was everything he should be. He hunted and trapped; he was a Government scout; he raised stock; he farmed; everyone knew him as "Uncle Dick," and they knew him wherever a trail was laid. He lived at the junction of the Huerfano River with the Arkansas River about twenty miles East of Pueblo. He farmed there by a process of simple irrigation, as far back as 1854, which made him the Pioneer farmer of Colorado. He had a mill that was built by his own hands, that was run by water power in a sleepy sort of way. He would empty a couple of sacks of grain into the hopper at night and the flour would be ready for breakfast in the morning. He trapped mostly along the streams of Colorado and New Mexico. By handling his furs himself, at St. Louis, he realized as high as Fifteen Dollars for a beaver skin. He says "robes" were the cause of the disappearance of the vast buffalo herds; that those killed for meat by the whites and Indians would have made no appreciable inroad on the numbers that inhabited the Great Western Plains, but desire for hides caused their ruthless slaughter by the tens of thousands; that while they were gentle at first and had to be driven out of the way of the emigrant trains, they were hunted so much that later they became savage and would fight. He started a buffalo farm in 1840 where Pueblo is located, and sold the young to menageries. Wooten hated the Indians with exceeding great hate. There was a reason. He had chased them many and many a time; shot at them, hit them, had seen them fall, and their riderless ponies flee over the prairies, while a form lay silent beneath the sun and beneath the stars. But sometimes the tables were turned, and sometimes the chaser was chased! Ah! There's the rub, for Wooten could never look defeat in the face and be happy. The Indians, he says, had a system of long distance communication, carried on among themselves by means of fire and smoke signals from the mountain tops. A puff of smoke was like a telephone message, and as easily understood; a second puff had its own peculiar meaning, and a blaze carried its special message to distant tribes. The whole country could be aroused in a day and night--the signals being taken up and repeated from mountain top to mountain top. The Indians spread themselves out to sleep in their tents, on buffalo robes or willow mattresses, with their feet towards a common fire in the center. They would place their dead in trees, or on a platform built on the top of four poles planted in the ground. The dead would be placed in a blanket, a buffalo robe wrapped around it, and then all bound together with strips of hide; the dead would thus lie for years. It was gruesome to happen upon these graveyard scenes at night, with the uncanny owls hooting in the treetops, and the wolves howling their warning notes. The Indians rode bareback with a rope for a bridle that would be fastened around the under jaw of the pony, which was trained to obey the slightest pressure of the knees or swaying of the body. One of the feats of which Wooten was proud, and with good reason, was taking a great drove of sheep through to California. To do this successfully in the face of possible depredations from the Indians, to whom the sheep is a savory morsel; to escape the bands of thousands of aggressive grey wolves; to swim unbridged rivers when sheep so dislike to swim; to follow narrow mountain paths where overcrowding would precipitate the herd into the chasms below; to get by the crops of the Mormons who were all the time hunting for trouble; to reach his destination with every sheep fatter than when he started--that, says Uncle Dick, was the work of an artist. Wooten came to Denver in 1858, where a few cabins had been built, and where a handful of people had centered. He started a store and built a two-story log house, the first pretentious building ever erected in Denver. Later, he built a frame residence when the saw mill came, a mill that had been stolen in the East and brought to this out-of-the-way country, where it was thought it could never be traced--in which, however, the plunderers were disappointed. But Uncle Dick felt crowded. He could not breathe. He was elbowed by the people who were settling here. The wilds called to him. He wanted to get out alone, under the quiet stars; to have the glories of the setting sun all to himself; to see the wonderful moonlight shadows in the rivers; to feel the great orb creeping up in the morning, as he had seen it out on the broad plains and from the mountain tops nearly all the years of his life. So he went away; off to New Mexico, upon whose mountains he got a Government Charter for building a toll road by the abysses and along the over shadowing crags to shorten the trail. And there, with the years creeping on, he set himself down by the side of his toll gate, which was never shut down for the Indians, for they could not understand that in all this great free world, a road was not as free as sunshine or air. But is not this all told by Richens Wooten himself, in his very own book, in the picturesque and forceful style of a picturesque and forceful pioneer? And finally, the toll that is taken from all mankind was collected from him, and he passed out alone by the road that every one must travel, and over which no one has ever traveled twice. _Oliver P. Wiggins._ [Sidenote: 1838] Straight as an arrow, towering six feet and three inches, stands Oliver P. Wiggins, the oldest living pioneer of all the "winners of the West." Eighty-nine years have brought a dimness to the eyes and a slowness to the steps, but they have not touched the keen intellect, trained by such experiences as no other living man will ever acquire. He remembers distinctly every event that has occurred during all the years of his life on the plains. He talks slowly and impressively, and you feel as you leave his presence that you have been in touch with another age and another race of people. He will tell you his story as he told it to me. "I was born on the Niagara River; that is, on an Island just above Niagara Falls, where my father had taken up some land. His father had selected his own land near by the American side of the Falls, and it became later on very valuable. Boylike, I wanted to fight Indians, and I dreamed about scouts and tomahawks, and the war dance, for I was a reader of the blood-curdling cheap Indian novels of that day. So I left home when I was fifteen and went by sailboat from Buffalo to Detroit, where I found some French emigrants just starting to Kankakee, Illinois, where they were going to take up land. I went with them as far as Ft. Dearborn, which afterwards became Chicago; it had but about three hundred people then and as many soldiers; there was one short street just South of the Chicago River, and among the houses was one they called a hotel that had nine rooms. A squaw man, that is, a white man with an Indian wife, was sent from the Fort with a paper to St. Louis, that had something to do with paying the Indians their annuities by the Government. I went along in the canoe down the Illinois River, and the Indians, knowing what we were going for, kept joining us in their canoes, until there must have been two thousand following us when we reached St. Louis. There was not a single house all the way from Chicago to St. Louis, which was not known as St. Louis then. Later my uncle settled there, and had the Wiggins Ferry, and four acres of land on what was known then as 'Bloody Island.' He sold it recently for Three Million Dollars. The Indians had some flour, bacon and blankets apportioned to them, and they traded a good deal of it off for whiskey, and many of them got drunk and had an awful time. "The following Spring, which was 1838, I went by steamer up to Independence, Missouri, which is just above where Kansas City was located later. It was the Eastern end of the Santa Fe Trail, while eight hundred miles away, Santa Fe was the Western terminus. At Independence, all the outfitting was done for the great overland freighting business, which at that early period had assumed important proportions. I joined a train, consisting of one hundred wagons and one hundred and twenty men. There were five yoke of oxen to each wagon, which made one thousand oxen; then there were a large number of extra oxen along to rest those that got sick or sore footed. By following close after each other, our wagon train stretched out about three miles. I was still on behind driving the cavy-yard, which was the name given to the sore-footed oxen. When we got to the Arkansas River where the trail crossed, which was very swift, we made boats out of two of the prairie schooners; calked them so they wouldn't leak, and loaded into these two boats all the loads that were on the rest of the wagons. A prairie schooner is a long deep wagon bed with flaring sides, about eight feet high and twenty feet long. The oxen swam across; then we chained all the empty wagons together, one behind the other, and hitched the oxen to a chain that reached back across the river to the wagons, pulled the wagons into the stream and on to the other side, where, as fast as one reached the bank, it was unchained from the rest, run up on the dry land, and the work of reloading began. It took four days to get all our outfit across. Our wagons were loaded mostly with merchandise for the stores to sell to the Mexicans, and with mining machinery. The wagons would carry on an average about seventy-five hundred pounds and the price of freight for the eight hundred miles from Independence to Santa Fe was generally eight dollars per hundred-weight, so the cost to the shippers of that trainload of freight run into the thousands. It would take from ten to sixteen weeks to cross the plains, owing to storms and the condition of the roads. We would shoe our own oxen and some of them had to be shod every morning. We would rope them and throw them for that purpose. It was not like a horseshoe, for the hoof of the ox is split and it requires a piece for each half of the hoof. We would make from fifteen to twenty miles a day. The dust was so great, that we traveled in a cloud of it all the time and the teams and drivers would change off; those who were ahead to-day, were behind to-morrow, all but me; I never got to go ahead with my cavy-yard, and I have never forgotten those weeks of frightful dust. They wouldn't let me stay back far, for fear the Indians would pick me off and run the cattle away. "About a day and a half after we left Big Bend, we met a friendly Indian, who was much excited when he saw us. He said we must not try to go on, for we would all be killed, as the Kiowas were on the war path. Be we couldn't stop, so we kept right on, knowing that Kit Carson was coming with an escort to meet us. We brought up the rear half of the wagon train, however, and put two abreast, thus shortening the train to about a mile and a half. Pretty soon Carson met us with forty-six men, who were all well armed and mounted on good horses and then we felt easy once more. When we reached the Kiowa country, where we were most likely to be attacked, Carson and his men all got inside the covered wagons and led their horses behind. After awhile we saw the Indians coming charging down upon us, yelling and shooting with their bows and arrows; all the drivers in the meantime having gotten on the other side of their wagons. Carson kept his men quiet until the Indians were close enough, when every man shot from the wagons, and about forty-six Indians tumbled off their ponies dead or wounded at the first shot. Then Carson's men mounted their horses and there was a great fight. About two hundred of the three hundred Indians were killed. Not one of Carson's men or of our party were killed. 'Did we bury the Indians?' No, we left them where they were; they made good coyote beef. "When we got opposite where Carson lived, which was at Taos above Santa Fe, he left the train, for there was no further danger and I went with him to his home about twenty miles off the trail, losing my pay because I did not go through with the party, this being a rule of freighting. I stayed with Carson two years. I became a guide and Government Scout and got eighty dollars a month. I was with General Fremont on his first and second trips. He wasn't liked by any of the men. He was very dictatorial and it didn't seem to us that he knew much. He had a German Scientist along whom all liked, and who knew his business. When we were with Fremont on his second trip, it was so late in the season when we reached the eastern foot of the Sierras, that twelve of us refused to go with him for we felt it was certain death. The snow falls in those mountains seventy feet deep at times, and it was the season for snows. Carson was along and had to go on because he had signed an agreement to go through, and he went, knowing he was taking his life in his hands. We were arrested for mutiny and put in charge of a sergeant, but soon got out of his reach, made a detour of several miles through the mountains, got on the back track and reached a place of safety after several days, thoroughly chilled from sleeping in that high cold country with no blankets, but glad to escape with any sacrifice. Fremont's party then consisted of fifteen, and they had a terrible time. They froze, and starved, and suffered, so that three men lost their minds and never recovered. Carson finally went on ahead, so weak he could hardly walk or crawl, and sent help back just in time to save the party. "The first gold discovered in Colorado, was in August or September, 1858, by Green Russell. He had stopped here on his way to California where he was going to mine. He came from Georgia and knew about gold mining there, and said there must be gold in Cherry Creek. He found it up at the head of that Creek at a place called "Frankstown" where the trail from Ft. Bent on the Arkansas River crossed over to Ft. Lupton. Russell and Gregory and others came together, and Russell stayed here a year and located Russell Gulch at Central City, which became a great paying property. I did a great deal of hunting and trapping in those early days and made money until 1858, when the fur business died down, as silk had taken the place of fur. I was the first white man to visit Trappers Lake, which is about thirty miles north of Glenwood Springs and was considered inaccessible, because of the density of the fallen timber. We brought out in one season about two thousand dollars worth of furs and hides. The elk covered that country and was comparatively tame as they had not been hunted. We took Indians along for guides, and their squaws to tan the hides. This they did by boiling the brains of the animals we killed and rubbing the soft brain powder into the pores of the skin, folding the hides together, and in a week they were cured and were soft and pliable. The brains were used because of certain properties they possessed, and because of their pliant nature. To catch the beaver we would set our steel traps in the water about seven inches below the surface so the young could swim over them and not get caught. Then just above where the trap was set, we would fasten a branch from the limb of a tree into the bank, the bark of which the beaver lives on. We would rub beaver oil into the bark of the limb, so the beaver would think others of his kind had been there ahead and found no harm; they are a very suspicious little animal. The trap would have a spring that would close on the hind legs of the beaver, as they would swim above it. "Until 1857, the trappers recognized the claim of the Indians, that one-half of all game and hides belonged to them. It was changed in that year by Government Treaty. In dividing with them they were very insistent, and they usually got the biggest half of the meat and the largest hides. We used to take hot mud baths at Glenwood Springs which is a very pleasant sensation. I fought the Indians and fought them hard, but had many friends among them and I did them many good turns which they appreciated. I have had an eventful life, had many thrilling experiences, saw life held very cheaply, and have seen such developments as I never dreamed I should witness." CHAPTER IX. GENERAL FREMONT AND THE MORMONS. _John C. Fremont._ [Sidenote: 1842] This noted explorer so prominently identified with our early Colorado history, was educated at Charleston College. He then became a teacher on a United States Sloop of War on board of which was detailed a young Lieutenant who later became famous as Admiral Farragut. Afterwards, Fremont was employed as a surveyor for a railroad in South Carolina. In 1838 he was made a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Topographical Corps--the same corps that gave us Major Long. He was selected to make a trip of geographical research and observation into Iowa, Minnesota and Dakota with a noted French Scientist named Nicollet, who had been sent to this country by his Government. In 1840 Fremont headed an expedition for the establishment of Military Posts in the West, and to definitely fix the position of South Pass on the head waters of the North Platte River, which was on the line of travel to the western coast. He was a long time getting ready, and did not leave Washington for St. Louis until May 2, 1842, from which point he took a public steamer up the Missouri River. On board he met Kit Carson, with whose personality he was so pleased that he dismissed the French trapper he had already engaged as guide, and selected Carson instead. Carson was then on his way back to the West, from having given his little girl into the care of the Sisters at a Convent in St. Louis; her mother, who was an Indian woman, having recently died. They left the steamer at the mouth of the Kansas River, which empties into the Missouri where Kansas City is now located. It was then a little settlement of a few rude houses, known as Kansas Landing, and later became Westport. A little way above was Roubidoux Landing, named for a French Fur Trapper and Trader who operated in Colorado. This Landing afterwards became St. Joseph. Fremont says, as they started out across the prairie to the westward, "It was like a ship leaving the shore for a long voyage, and carrying with her provisions against all needs in its isolation on the ocean." [Illustration: A Government Scout.] They traveled northwest until they reached the Platte River where the City of Kearney is now situated, near which a Fort was established, called "Fort Kearney." From this point they proceeded west along the south bank of that stream, one hundred miles to the junction of the two Platte Rivers. Here they divided, Fremont with three others following the South Platte, the remaining nine going by way of the North Platte to the fur-trading station that later became Fort Laramie, at which point the Laramie River joins the Platte. On the way, Fremont was entertained one night by the Indians at a feast. It was a banquet with no suggestion of fairyland, such as so often delights us now; no subdued strains from a hidden orchestra pouring forth its entrancing harmonies; no myriads of electric lights dazzling with their splendid brilliancy; no wealth of roses filling the air with their rich perfume; no polished mahogany, damask linen, glowing glassware or priceless silver; no well groomed men or richly gowned women, radiant in their loveliness. There were none of these accessories, but there was princely hospitality. There was the ushering of the guests to their places by the Chiefs, with the courtly dignity that white men might equal but never excel. In honor of the occasion the choicest robes were spread upon the ground for seats. There was the rich soup of fat buffalo meat and rice, served in deep wooden bowls, with tin spoons, by the women. There was the dog boiling in the pot for the second course, in token of a state occasion, while the disconsolate puppies moaned pitifully in the corner of the wigwam. On July 10th Fremont reached Fort St. Vrain on the Platte, established about ten miles south of where the Cache la Poudre River and the Platte unite. He remained here a few days and then headed north to Fort Laramie, getting too far East, however, over on Crow Creek, where he had to travel forty miles without water--the first and only hardship on his trip going and coming. He found the rest of the party waiting for him, and they proceeded west up the Platte to the South Pass, the point of his destination when he started from Washington. He found the Pass a well-established thoroughfare, made so by the fur-trading companies. He ascertained its height to be seven thousand eight hundred and seventy-three feet. There was no pass anywhere about of so low an altitude. It is about two hundred miles due west of Fort Laramie--which is not, however, the Laramie City located on the Union Pacific Railroad northwest of Cheyenne. Fremont saw to the perpetuation of his name in the highest mountain peak, about forty miles northwest of the Pass, and just east of Green River, having an elevation of thirteen thousand seven hundred and ninety feet. He then started on his return to St. Louis, where he arrived October 10, 1842, his journey both ways being without special value or interest. Fremont's second trip was made in 1843, and seems to have been principally for the purpose of establishing a shorter route through the mountains than the Oregon Trail by the way of South Pass. He came in from the east, up one of the branches of the Republican River to Fort St. Vrain on the Platte, where he arrived July Fourth. On his way he no doubt approached the Platte between Akron and Fort Morgan, where there is a Butte named for him. He tried to learn from the hunters, trappers and Indians, of a trail west through the great range of mountains, but there was no one who could give him any information. Following the Platte from Fort St. Vrain, he reports finding a Fort Lancaster about ten miles up the river, which was the trading post of Mr. Lupton and had then somewhat the appearance of a farm. He passed through a village of Arapahoe Indians, probably near the mouth of Clear Creek, camped a little above Cherry Creek, and followed the Platte River to its entrance into the mountains at the canon. Needing meat, he went east on to the plains in search of buffalo; crossed Cherry Creek and the road to Bent's Fort; reached Bijou Creek, thence up to its head on the divide where he reported an elevation of seventy-five hundred feet--being the same altitude as at Palmer Lake, twenty-three miles west. Altitudinal ascertainings are taken by the simple process of looking at a watchlike, vest-pocket instrument, whose delicately adjusted mechanism is affected by air-pressure. From this place, he made a sketch of Pike's Peak, and is "charmed with the view of the valley of Fountain Creek," on which Manitou and Colorado Springs are located, and which he reached a little north of its junction with the Arkansas River. He speaks of finding at this point a "Pueblo" where a settlement of mountaineers were living, married to Spanish wives, "who had collected together and occupied themselves with farming, and a desultory Indian trade." They had come from the Taos Valley settlements, the Valley that was later named the Rio Grande. "Pueblo" was the name given by the Mexicans to their civilized villages. Taos is taken from the name of the Taos tribe of Indians. Returning he followed up Fountain Creek to Manitou Springs, thence north over the Divide to Fort St. Vrain. Fremont then decided to go up the Cache la Poudre Valley and cross the Divide to the Laramie River. He describes the buttes he saw on this trip "with their sharp points and green colors"; the same so clearly defined now, on the automobile road beyond Dale Creek, between Fort Collins and Laramie City, one of the most picturesque scenes in the whole State of Colorado. He followed the Laramie River down to the present line of the Union Pacific Railroad, then west to the North Platte River and beyond, where, getting tangled up in the hills, he finally recognized the Sweetwater Mountains to the north to which he proceeded; thence to the familiar Oregon Trail which he followed to Salt Lake and on to California. On his return he entered Colorado near the mouth of Green River, went northeast and encountered some branch of the White River, possibly the Snake River, which he followed over the Divide to the North Platte River, and thence up into North Park. While in Middle Park, a number of squaws came to his camp greatly excited and made known the fact that nearby a great battle was in progress between two Indian tribes, and they wanted him to go with his party to help their side. He declined and hurriedly departed. He passed over into the Cripple Creek country, where after a few days of aimless traveling he descended a branch of the Arkansas River to Pueblo. Fremont's memoirs are very rambling, and contain such a mass of undigested material that it requires much reading and study to follow him in his wanderings through Colorado. The streams, mountains and localities had no names, and he gave them none. We can only trace his journeyings by his camping places where he gives his latitudes and longitudes, and which is only incidentally given and not in its regular order. He ascertained latitude and longitude by the use of a scientific instrument in its application to the sun, moon and fixed stars, as the Indians often found their own locations by the study of these same heavenly bodies, from centuries of observation without an instrument, the knowledge being passed down from father to son, generation after generation. On one of his trips, as he came in sight of Bent's Fort, the three cannon mounted on its parapets, belched forth a greeting that sounded sweet to the ears of the trained soldier, as the reverberating music of the booming of the guns rolled down the Valley of the Arkansas to meet him. A storm in the mountains is a frightful thing in winter and more than one was encountered by General Fremont and his party. A number of the men sacrificed their lives through the mistaken judgment of a leader, who ordered them forward to breast the fury of those icy blasts of snow and sleet. Oh! The terror of such a death! The awe of those cold, bleak, snow-capped pinnacles; how cruelly they look down upon the lost and helpless victim, prostrate at their feet, snow-bound, hopeless and in despair! How subtly and menacingly the sharp wind moans; how it shrieks and roars through the gulches, and how the giant pines creak, and writhe, and groan, as they bend before the gale! How the blinding, biting, swirling snow falls through the freezing air, burying the trail and filling the icy gorges with ever deepening drifts! And at last, the shivering sufferer meets his doom as he sinks in utter exhaustion on his bed of snow, and drifts away into the stupor of death. The inanimate form is buried deeper and deeper under its white shroud, and heedless of the tempest raging above, sleeps the sound, dreamless sleep of death. Fremont tells little of his last three trips; some being on secret missions for the Government; one was for his own benefit and that of Senator Benton of Missouri, whose daughter, Jessie Benton, he had married--a lady of many fine womanly qualities and personal charms. On one of his trips, William Gilpin was along, on a visit to the settlements of Oregon. Gilpin later became Colorado's first Governor. One expedition took him up the Rio Grande to Salt Lake and on to the Coast. [Illustration: Indians Watching Fremont's Force Fording the Platte.] When representing the Government, Fremont's work was along military lines principally, his operations leading up to the conquest of California in 1847. The name California appears in an old Spanish romance as an Island, where innumerable precious stones were found, and Cortez applied the name to the Bay and to the country that is now California which he thought was an Island. Fremont's work, however, was not all military, for at the same time he was mapping streams, taking altitudes, and making reports that would assist in ascertaining facts about a country then little known or understood. Colorado has a County named for him, of which Canon City is the County Seat. There are Counties in Wyoming, Idaho and Iowa, similarly named. Eighteen states of the union have towns bearing his name. "Fremont Basin" covers the western part of Utah, all of Nevada, and a part of the southeastern portion of California--in all, a region about four hundred and fifty miles square. "Fremont Pass" in the Rocky Mountains has an elevation of eleven thousand three hundred and thirteen feet and is in the Gore Range, about ten miles northwest of Leadville. General Fremont occupied many positions of trust under the Government. He was Governor of California when there was much trouble that diplomacy might have averted. He was Governor of Arizona from 1878 to 1882. His exploring trips had made him famous and he secured the Republican nomination for the Presidency in 1856, but was defeated by Buchanan. In 1864 his name was put in nomination for the Presidency but Lincoln's popularity so overshadowed him that his name was withdrawn. He was Major-General of the Army in the Civil War, with headquarters at St. Louis, where he promulgated the unauthorized order freeing the slaves of those in arms against the Government, which so embarrassed the Administration that the order was repealed and he was relieved of his authority. Later, reinstated, he refused to take part in a battle because command of the army had been given to General Pope whom he claimed to outrank. Fremont journeyed all over Colorado and failed to find anything worthy of note. While camped on the sites of Cripple Creek and Leadville, he saw no signs of the enormous gold deposits of the greatest gold mines in Colorado. While at North Park he did not observe the coal outcroppings there--probably the most extensive coal fields in the United States. While traveling through our valleys he could not look into the future and see them groaning under a diversity of crops, the most valuable ever raised in any country. He drank from our cool sparkling streams, but he did not see how that wealth of water could be supplied to the thirsty crops. He saw millions of fat buffalo on the plains, but he failed to realize that the same nutritious grasses would make beef equal to the corn-fed product of the East. He viewed the most sublime scenery ever looked upon by the eyes of man, but his reports contained no adequate description of the majestic outlines of the mountains whose grandeur thrills the beholders from all the countries of the world. _The Mormons._ [Sidenote: 1847] The Mormons as a religious body, attempting to get beyond the reach of the power of the United States Government which they claimed was persecuting them, sought solace in the bosom of the Dominion of Mexico, which then owned much of our country west of the Rocky Mountains, wrested by them from Spain in their war for freedom. At this very time the United States was fighting Mexico, and the Mormons had no more than gotten out of the United States before they were in again by Mexico ceding to our Government in 1848, the very territory which these much persecuted people had chosen for a new settlement. The Mormons had gathered from all quarters at Florence, Nebraska, just above Omaha, where the water works of that City are now located. They had wintered at this point in great discomfort, with much sickness, and so many deaths that the country seemed to be one vast grave yard. In January, 1847, Brigham Young started West with one hundred and forty-two in his party to find a location to which the rest should follow. They had seventy-three wagons which moved two abreast for protection, and they had a cannon and were well armed. They reported seeing hundreds of thousands of buffalo grazing along the Platte Valley, and were obliged to send outriders ahead to make a way through the herds for their caravan. They traveled on the north side of the Platte River so as to have an exclusive trail of their own, and it became known as the "Mormon Trail"; the fur traders having made their trail along the south side of that river. When they reached Fort Laramie, they ferried across to the south side of the river where the Government Post had been located; the change from the north to the south side being necessary because of the physical difficulties on the side of the river where they had been traveling. Here on June 1, 1847, they were joined by a party of Mormons who had started from Mississippi and Illinois; had wintered where Pueblo now is; had passed north through Colorado, and doubtless over the ground occupied by Denver following the Platte River to Greeley where they would travel almost due north to Fort Laramie. These Mormons at Pueblo were the very beginning of anything approaching white citizenship in Colorado, for no other white families had ever spent so long a time within the present limits of our State. General Fremont had passed by Salt Lake in 1843 on one of his expeditions, and doubtless the Mormons knew of that Valley from his report as well as of other points of the West. But the Mormons did not know where they were going to settle, and had started north-westerly from South Pass in search of a location and then turned to the south to Salt Lake Valley. Upon their arrival there, the first day, they planted six acres of potatoes because of the necessity of having food for the vast numbers who were to follow them. The rest of the people started from Florence July 4, 1847, and consisted of nearly two thousand persons, about six hundred wagons, over two thousand oxen, and many horses, cows, sheep, hogs and chickens. Following later, came hundreds with push carts, who started too late to get through before winter set in. Their suffering, starving, sickness, and the death of nearly a quarter of their number on the way is a sad story, and is the toll exacted in the settling of a new country. For many months, the Mormon Trail was lined with the traffic of thousands of emigrants from all parts of the United States and Europe. There were wagon trains hauling supplies of all kinds, such as merchandise, machinery, seed and building materials. There were the two-wheeled carts into which food and a small allowance of necessary apparel were placed for the trip; and those carts were pushed all the way across the plains by both old and young. It was said that every step of the way was marked by a grave. No such sight and no such suffering has ever been witnessed before in the settlement of any part of the world. Ten years afterwards, the Church, grown arrogant, defied the power of the United States Government and proposed war. General Albert Sidney Johnson was sent on an expedition against them. Starting too late to cross the mountains, the army became storm bound and was compelled to winter at Fort Bridger in the southwest corner of Wyoming, at a tremendous loss of lives, both of men and horses. They were short of supplies, and an expedition was sent to New Mexico for food. It was successful, and returned north through Colorado, skirting the eastern base of the mountains and, no doubt, passed through the site of Denver just before the gold excitement broke out in Colorado. They doubtless followed the trail taken by Fremont to Fort Laramie in 1842, and by the Mormons in 1847. [Sidenote: 1849] The rush for the new gold discoveries in California began in 1849 and in a year it became a panic, so great was the hurry to reach there from the East. It is estimated that seventeen thousand persons passed Fort Laramie in June, 1848, coming up the Platte from Omaha; while from Kansas City, Leavenworth and St. Joseph, many thousands passed through southeastern Colorado on the Santa Fe Trail, and thence to Salt Lake where the Mormons grew rich in their trade with these excited gold seekers. Nothing has ever been seen resembling the gold developments of California. Fortunes were made in a day when a treasure house was unlocked, and poverty claimed the affluent in a night, when a pocket pinched out. The wealth that was poured into the laps of the fortunate prospectors was fabulous. The Comstock Mine alone, named for the man who opened it up and lost it, yielded a solid mass of treasure, amounting to one hundred and eight million dollars to the four fortunate owners. It sent to the United States Senate, Fair, Stewart and Jones, three of the partners, and gave the Atlantic Cable Line to Mackey, the fourth, whose son still controls it. So, having been discovered by General Coronado and his army with their brilliant cavalcade and martial music; by the two black-robed Friars with their noiseless followers; by Lieutenant Pike and his loyal band; by Major Long and his associates; and last, by General Fremont with his five exploring parties; while the tidal wave of travel and excitement is sweeping by us to its destiny on the sunny western slope, and we are left in solitude, awaiting the bright awakening ten years hence; let us take an introspective view of the people whose history is forever interwoven with ours, whose race is nearly run, while ours is just begun. [Illustration: Ventura, Historian of the Tribe of Taos Indians, Garbed in His White Buffalo Robe--Made White by Tanning. Indian History was Transmitted Orally to the Youth, the Brightest of Whom Became in Turn the Historian.] CHAPTER X. OPPORTUNITY. "Master of human destinies am I, Fame, love and fortune on my footsteps wait, Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate Deserts and seas remote, and, passing by Hovel, and mart, and palace, soon or late I knock unbidden once at every gate! If sleeping, wake--if feasting, rise before I turn away. It is the hour of fate And they who follow me reach every state Mortals desire, and conquer every foe Save death; but those who doubt or hesitate, Condemned to failure, penury and woe, Seek me in vain and uselessly implore-- I answer not, and I return no more." --_Ingalls._ _A Fortune Won and Lost._ Hanging in a room of the White House when the magnetic, able and masterful Roosevelt was President, was this beautiful poem of Senator Ingalls. A gem of rarest value in word painting; a literary production beyond criticism; but in sentiment, harmful and discouraging! It is not true! Opportunity has knocked repeatedly at the door of countless numbers, and future generations will hear its call again and again. Only one chance to be given us? No! Life is too fine and means too much for "the hour of fate" to hang on so slender a thread as a single opportunity. It comes many times to some; it comes but once to others; it does not come to all. To Antoine Janis, a French Trapper, it knocked unbidden at his door but once; he failed to answer, and he lived to appreciate his great loss, for he had fortune placed within his grasp and did not realize it. Once, all the beautiful Cache la Poudre Valley was his; every acre of land from La Porte to the Box Elder; every lot in Fort Collins; wealth which would run into the millions. It was the gift of the Indians, and was his as absolutely as though it had come by Deed of Warranty with all its covenants, clear and indefeasible. The Government in its Treaties with the Indians recognized their grants, and had Janis asserted his rights to this vast property, his claim would undoubtedly have been recognized by the Government as in many similar cases. He continued his residence in Larimer County for thirty-four years, going then to the Indians at the Pine Ridge Agency and remaining there until his death. The close friendship, early formed between him and the Indians, was never broken, and they buried him with honors. I like to imagine that famous meeting at La Porte, when that Valley, then nameless, changed hands. The Indians as a race were dignified, serious, and on formal occasions acted with great deliberation. They were a generous people, and were about to make a present to the White Brother who had come to dwell among them. Bold Wolf, the Chief, called his counsellors together. From out the seven hundred tepees they came, in their brilliant dress of state. They gathered around the camp fire, seated on their feet, with Antoine Janis as their honored guest. They smoked the pipe of peace; not a pipe for each, but one for all, that would draw them closer in lasting friendship. Resting their painted cheeks on the palms of their hands, they listened with the utmost respect to those who spoke. The oratory of the Indian is proverbial. His dignified and serious bearing, his simple words and brief sentences, his profound earnestness and apt illustrations, made him a master of eloquence. It was an occasion for thrilling discourse. The land where they were assembled was theirs. It was the land of their fathers. It was theirs by right of discovery, by right of occupancy. Here they had lived their lives; here their children had been born; here their dead were buried, and here they had worshipped the Great Spirit to whom their ancestors had bowed. And they were to give away the best of their heritage; the luxuriant meadows of the richest and most beautiful valley in their vast domain were to go to the White Brother forever. Thereafter, every man, woman and child of the tribe recognized that the country they looked out upon, over which their ponies grazed, across which the buffalo roamed, even the very ground upon which their wigwams stood, was the property of Antoine Janis. _The Call of the Blood._ About the year 1800 some French trappers and hunters were passing out of Colorado, into New Mexico, in quest of new streams in which to ply their avocation. The pack ponies which they were driving on ahead suddenly stopped and centered about an object at which they sniffed intelligently. The trappers coming forward to investigate looked at each other in amazement as they gathered around a deserted child lying on the bosom of the unfeeling earth, hungry and helpless. These bronzed and bearded men were heavy handed, but not stony hearted; and they met the responsibility as best they could. Moses had been left in the bullrushes of a stream for his preservation. This child had been left in the tangled weeds on the bank of a stream for its destruction. Moses lived to become the leader of a nation. This child was saved--but let us see. It was taken by the trappers, named Friday for the day upon which it was found, as in the tale of Robinson Crusoe, an Indian youth was named Friday for the day of his discovery. Friday grew and thrived, was adopted by one of the party, and at the age of fourteen was taken along to St. Louis, where he was sent to school, and shared in the joys and griefs of other boys of his age. When he was twenty-one, the cry that had long been suppressed gave utterance. He wanted to see his people. Leaving home, he came to Colorado, and to the tribe of the Arapahoes, who had crossed the path of the trappers twenty-one years before. It was a new life to which he was admitted. During his visit a buffalo hunt was organized in his behalf. He watched the preparations, saw the gathering of the ponies from off the prairies, the testing of the bows and arrows, the night of feasting and dancing before the start at earliest dawn. Wending their way over the plains, they finally spied the herd. At once the dullness of the hunters gave place to trained alertness; absolute quiet reigned; the ponies crept forward slowly and softly, step by step, with their riders clinging to their sides to give the appearance of a band of grazing horses. At last they were near enough, and then the signal. Away went the horses and riders in a whirlwind of excitement, the eyes of the riders blazing, the nostrils of the horses dilating. Away went the herd, shaking the earth with the thunders of their flight; away flew the arrows to the twang of the bows, as they sped straight and true into the heaving sides of the struggling animals. Down went the buffalo, down on their trembling knees, down on their quivering sides, as they stretched themselves out for their final death struggle. Down went the Indians to dance in glee around the prostrate bodies of their trophies. And Friday? No one ever hunted as Friday hunted! The thirst of blood was upon him. He had plunged into the midst of danger, and knew no pity, no compunction, no fatigue. The instinct of his race that had been sleeping for years surged to the surface at a bound, never again to be dormant. That night he threw off the garb that stood for the civilizing influences of the past, donned the yellow blanket of his race and adopted the life of his people. That day of daring, and his education, marked him as a leader, and he became a Chief of the Arapahoe nation. Chief Friday had a son. He was called Jacob after that Patriarch, who, when asked his age by Pharaoh, replied so poetically "the days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years; few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, but have not attained unto the days of the years of the lives of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage." There is a superstition among the Indians that if they have lost a battle, they must sacrifice some member of another tribe as an offering to the Great Spirit. Jacob had been chosen for the sacrifice. Hearing of it he fled. Returning two years later when he supposed there was no further fear of his destruction, he was set upon and left dead upon the ground. Friday loved Jacob with a very great love, and so did he love the good of his people. He counseled peace, and instead of plunging two nations in war, he buried his son with a breaking heart, hidden by the stoicism of his race. Chief Friday had a daughter. A winsome lass. Light of foot, with a singing voice and dancing eyes. She was called "Little Niwot" by her father, because she used her left hand, and Niwot in the Indian tongue means "left hand." I asked a doctor once, those wisest of wise men, why it was that out of fifteen hundred million of the earth's inhabitants, so few used the left hand prominently, and this was his reply: "Upebanti manusinistra ob herededitatum." Niwot's education was not alone like that of the other Indian children, whose eyes were trained to see the beauty in the sun, the moon and the stars; whose ears were attuned to catch the voices in the murmuring brooks, the music in the rustling trees, the melody in the warbling birds; but she had learned of her father as well, who taught her from the remembrances of those far-off days in the St. Louis schools. Little Niwot loved an Indian youth, who was not the choice of her mother. So she ran away with her dusky mate and became the wife of the man of her choice. Friday was left alone. Jacob was dead and Niwot was gone; he grieved for them, and could not be comforted. Niwot became the name of a Creek near Longmont, and of a near-by station on the Colorado and Southern Railway. So in station and stream, the memory of a little Indian maiden is to always be kept green. And Friday died; died in the happy thought that in the civilizing processes that had been going on about him, he had always tried to stay the hand of his people when raised to check the white wave that was sweeping them to their destruction. Chief Friday was well known to the early settlers, and from them has come this story, here a little and there a little, and now woven into print for the first time. The unhappy ending of his life is like that of Chief Logan, whose heart-breaking plea has been handed down to us in this great burst of touching eloquence: "I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry and he gave him not meat; if ever he came naked and he clothed him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his camp, an advocate of peace. Such was my love for the whites that my countrymen pointed as I passed and said, 'Logan is a friend of the white man.' I had even thought to have lived with you but for the injuries of one man; Col. Cresap, who, the last Spring, in cold blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not even sparing my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in any living creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought it. I have killed many. I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country, I rejoice at the beams of peace; but do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one." CHAPTER XI. A VANISHING RACE. There was a white man once with an idea. So modest was this man that he was unwilling that even his name and the idea should be linked together. He wanted the Indians to become better known to the whites, to themselves, to their children, and to the future generations of children. So he passed from one tribe to another and made known his plan to them. They were to write a book; a book that would contain a record of their thoughts and ideals, their songs and unwritten music, their folk-lore, their views of the past, and their beliefs in the mysterious future. The idea pleased them, grew on them, and ended in their becoming deeply interested. The book was prepared and printed and it contains the following touching and stately introduction by the High Chief of the Indian Tribes. It moves forward so like a majestic anthem, so solemn in its unspoken sorrow, so full of gentle dignity that it sweeps into our souls like the cadence of a great Amen: "To the Great Chief at Washington, and the Chief of Peoples Across the Waters: "Long ago, the Great Mystery caused this land to be, and made the Indians to live in this land. Well has the Indian fulfilled all the intent of the Great Mystery for Him. Through this book may men know that the Indian was made by the Great Mystery for a purpose. "Once, only Indians lived in this land. Then came strangers from across the Great Waters. No land had they; we gave them of our land; no food had they; we gave them of our corn; the strangers have become many and they fill all the country. They dig gold--from my mountains; they build houses--of the trees of my forests; they rear cities--of my stones and rocks; they make fine garments--from the hides and wool of animals that eat my grass. None of the things that make their riches did they bring with them from across the Great Waters. All comes from my lands--the land the Great Mystery gave unto this Indian. "And when I think on this, I know that it is right, even thus. In the heart of the Great Mystery, it was meant that the stranger--visitors--my friends across the Great Waters should come to my land; that I should bid them welcome; that all men should sit down with me and eat together of my corn; it was meant by the Great Mystery that the Indian should give to all peoples. "But the white man never has known the Indian. It is thus: there are two roads, the white man's road, and the Indian's road. Neither traveler knows the road of the other. Thus ever has it been, from the long ago, even unto to-day. May this book help to make the Indian truly known in time to come. "The Indian wise speakers in the book are the best men of their tribe. Only what is true is within this book. I want all Indians and white men to read and learn how the Indians lived and thought in the olden time and may it bring holy--good upon the younger Indian to know of their fathers. A little while and the old Indians will no longer be and the young will be even as white men. When I think, I know it is the mind of the Great Mystery that the white man and the Indians who fought together should now be one people. "There are birds of many colors, red, blue, green, yellow--yet it is all one bird. There are horses of many colors, brown, black, yellow, white--yet it is all one horse. So cattle, so all living things--animals, flowers, trees. So man; in this land where once were only Indians and now men of every color--white, black, yellow, red--yet all one people. That this was to come to pass was in the heart of the Great Mystery. It is right thus, and everywhere there shall be peace." (Sgd.) By HIAMOVI (High Chief), Chief among the Cheyennes and Dakotas. Who is the Indian? This question has been asked for more than four hundred years, and from out the buried silence of the past has come no answering voice. Columbus asked it as approaching the border of a New Hemisphere he gazed thoughtfully upon the features of another race of beings. Ferdinand and Isabella asked it, as these strange men doomed to vassalage stood proudly before them speaking in an unknown tongue. Cortez asked it, as he riveted the chains of servitude upon two million of them in the Conquest of Mexico. Coronado asked it, as his army moved among the wandering tribes with their differing languages and customs. The Pilgrim Fathers asked it with varying emotions, as they viewed the curious natives waiting for them on the bleak New England shores. France asked it, and trusted its most highly cultured scientist to bring reply. "Nothing," he said as he returned, "Nothing." He had visited many tribes, studied their languages, customs and character, read everything ever written about them, and he knew nothing and nothing ever will be known. May not human life have had its very beginning on this hemisphere? May there not in the remote past have been a Columbus who sailed East and discovered the Continent of Europe making it the New World and leaving this the Old? The pendulum of the clock swings in seconds. The pendulum of the growth and decay of continents swings in centuries, in eons. The meteor of Rome blazing through the heavens took one thousand years to fall. Like the Ocean's tide is the ebb and flow of nations. That there was a prehistoric race on this continent and an extinct civilization, we know. We read it in the Valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi, in the copper beds by the side of Lake Superior, along the shores of Ecuador, and in the country to the southward. From time immemorial, from generation to generation, from father to son, has been handed down a tradition among the once powerful tribe of the Iroquois Indians, that their ancestors, overflowing their boundaries, had moved down from the northwest to the Mississippi; that on the east side of that river they had found a civilized nation with their towns, their crops and their herds; that permission was obtained to pass by on their way to the East; that as they were crossing the river, they were treacherously assailed, a great battle ensued, followed by a continuous warfare, until the enemy was totally destroyed and their civilization blotted out. [Illustration: An Indian Chief Addressing the Council.] The bones of human beings are dust by the side of mammals estimated by geologists to be fifty thousand years old. The allotted period of a man's life is three score years and ten. He could be born seven hundred times, live seven hundred lives, die seven hundred deaths in those five hundred centuries. It is not within the compass of the human mind to grasp the infinite detail in the rise and fall of nations within such a period. Read the story of nine generations of men, from Adam to Noah in the first five Chapters of Genesis, for the multiplication of the human race from just two people, and the destruction of a population so numerous that they were like the sands of the ocean's beach. Following on but a few pages, we find that out of the Ark had "grown many nations and many tongues," and they were so crowded that the Lord said unto Abram, "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee, and I will make of thee a great nation." Abram went, and he took his nephew Lot along, and directly we read that "the land was not able to bear them that they might dwell together," and they separated, one going to the right hand and the other to the left hand. With this historical data before us, do we ask whence came these millions of Indians and their confusion of tongues? There is a touch of similarity between the wandering tribes in early Bible history, with their many languages, their patriarchs, their flocks and herds, their peaceful lives and their dissensions and wars--and that of our Indians, with the earth before them, with their tribal Chiefs, their many dialects and their nomadic lives. If the North American Indians had possessed a written language; if after their discovery, they had been able to make recorded conveyances of vast tracts of lands to the subjects of the different Powers of the Old World; if international law could have been appealed to for the protection of these individual rights, there might have been a world war on this continent that would have made our rivers run red with blood. When we close our minds to months and years and think in centuries, it is easy to understand the diversity of languages. Tribes going off by themselves, drop words from their vocabulary as time goes on, and use other words that mean the same; after the passing of generations there is an entirely new dialect. It is so in nearly all the countries of the Old World; people living under the same government, neighbors, cannot talk to each other. Climate too has something to do with language. Russians and Eskimos use a speech that requires very little lip movement, so as not to inhale the cold air of those cold regions. In a mild climate there is the open language with many vowels. When we discovered the Indian, we found a character the like of which has no parallel in all history. It was the untutored mind of a child in the body of an adult; there was respect for each other and scrupulous honesty in their dealings among themselves; there was government by a Chief and his council, comprising the oldest of the tribe, to whom all questions of importance were submitted, the Chief being such because of inheritance, or daring, or possessions; there was the love of the parent for the child, and the teachings that developed the highest efficiency in hearing, tasting, smelling, seeing and touching, for upon these faculties thoroughly trained, depended success in war, and sustenance in peace; there was pride of ancestry and a reverence for the Great Spirit, the maker and ruler of the universe. It seems almost a pity that this Arcadia could not have remained untouched. We asked for a little land to pasture our cows and to use for gardens. It was given by them grandly. We asked for more, and it came cheerfully; we demanded still more, and it came gracefully. Then we quit asking and took it; took it with shot and shell, as we hungrily pressed on, doubling one tribe back upon another; bayonets in front, bows and arrows in the rear, and they fought each other, and they fought us. We called them savages; and they were savage, and so would we all be under like treatment. Justice and diplomacy would have saved thousands of lives and millions in money. We made many treaties with the Indians which were broken by us and this occasioned most of our Indian wars. Canada had the Indians and no wars. Her dealings with them were on principle and along steadfast and unchanging lines. Men grew old and died in the Indian Service, and those next in line took their places. They understood the Indian nature, and knew they possessed a high sense of honor and the dealings were fair to each side. Our politics have been at the bottom of nearly all our troubles. As parties have changed, men have changed. A promise made one day has been broken by the men who came on the morrow. The Interior Department failing to handle the perplexing question, the Indians were turned over to the various church organizations, who failed to get the right proportions in their mixture of morals and business. Then the War Department tried it; and all the time the lands of the red men diminished, and the land of the white man increased. Up to the year of Colorado's admittance into the Union as a Territory, 1861, there had been three hundred and ninety-three treaties made with the one hundred and seventy-five tribes of Indians embraced within the Territory of the United States, by which 581,163,188 acres of land were acquired. As tribes differed in their languages, so they differed in their customs; and the following traits are applicable to some tribes and not to others. The stoicism of the Indian is well known; but that trait of his character has its qualifications. He shows the taciturn side of his nature to strangers, but the world is not so serious as his austere countenance would indicate. Among his own people he is a fun-loving, story-telling, game-indulging human being. There are degrees in their social status measured by what they have done and the property they have accumulated. They have their ideas of propriety, and are shocked that a man and woman should dance together. The men dance in a ring by themselves, and the women dance in an outer ring, while a drum gives accents to their movements. Usually they sing something mournful, its weird rhythm following one for days. A child is usually named by its father, who walks abroad from the tent for that purpose, selecting the name of what he sees first that impresses him most. So they have such peculiar names as Rain in the Face, Yellow Mag-pie, Sleeping Bear, Thunder-cloud, Spotted Horse and White Buffalo. However, there are no white buffalo. They are black until the hot sun of each season fades the black to brown, which later sheds, to come out black again. When a buffalo hide is tanned on both sides, it becomes white, which gives rise to the name White Buffalo. They have but one name other than their tribal name. The name "squaw" was first found in the language of the Naragansett tribe of Indians and is doubtless an abbreviation of the word "Esquaw." Other tribes have their own peculiar name for women. The name squaw came into general use and spread all over the United States and Canada, was carried to the western tribes of Indians by the whites, and was used by all whites and all Indians. A squaw man is one who does a woman's work, or a white man who marries an Indian woman. A youth does not tell a maiden of his love for her. That is told and answered by heart telepathy in the old, old way. He tells his father, who calls his relatives to a council and a feast, to consider the matter. Then the young man's mother carries the proposal to the mother of the maid, who tells it to the girl's father, and a meeting is called by him of his relatives and friends, where there is much feasting and speaking. The two mothers then meet, and accept for their children. The girl prepares a dish and carries it to the tent of the young man daily as a token of her intention to serve him all her days. When the tepee is ready, and the presents accumulated, and house keeping begins, they are husband and wife, all the former preliminaries having constituted the wedding ceremony. An Indian never touches a razor to his face, for they are a beardless race. The tribes who occupied the eastern part of the United States, wore their hair clipped short like the Chinamen, excepting that instead of a queue, there was a scalp lock which they adorned with feathers. It was worn in defiance of the Indians of other tribes, who were thus dared to come and take their scalp. The picturesque and warlike appearance of the Indians that comes from painting their faces with deep and varying hues, originated in the preservation of the skin from burning and chapping in the sun and alkali dust. They used compounds made from roots or earth which they ground or baked and mixed with grease. There were many kinds of earth that had different tints which they liked, so this became a permanent custom which made their appearance seem fierce and warlike. They believe that the red men are made of earth, and the white men are made of sea foam. In surgery they had rude skill and in disease they had a limited knowledge of the proper application of roots and herbs. But they knew nothing of the science of medicine in its complicated form as practiced by the learned of the profession at the present time, who so thoroughly understand prophylaxis, serum therapy, and the role of antibodies in passive immunization. Dentistry was unknown among them; their simple food and outdoor lives kept them well, and the food they ate was thoroughly ground between their well-preserved teeth. The game that was formerly so abundant was their principal food, and its destruction by the whites took from the Indian his chief mode of existence, and occasioned his menacing attitude toward our people. Other food consisted of wild berries, sweet potatoes, rice and nuts, which they would gather and bury. As they had a practiced eye, they found the buried food of the squirrel, the otter and the muskrat, which they would dig up and appropriate to their own use. [Illustration: "Behold, he winnoweth barley to-night in the threshing floor." Ruth 3:2. As they did in biblical times, so do some of the Indian tribes to this day. They beat out the grain with a stick and then pour it out gently for its cleansing by the wind.] They mourn noisily with each other in case of death. Likewise did the tribes of the patriarchs, who "mourned with great and very sore lamentation." The Indians think that it takes four days for the soul to reach the land of the dead. So a light burns on the grave nightly for four nights, that the disembodied may not get lost. They believe that there are two souls, one that soars away in dreams, while the other remains in the body. In the absence of a clock in the wigwam and a watch in the pocket, they measure time in their own way; a sun is a day, a moon is a month, and a snow is a season. It is said the "hand that rocks the cradle is the lever that moves the world." If this be true, then the Indian mother takes no part in the world's movement, for she never has rocked a cradle. The cradle of a child is an oak board two and one-half feet long, and one and one-half feet wide, to which the babe is strapped in a way that the arms and legs are free for exercise and growth. This board lies on the ground, leans against the wigwam or a tree, is carried on the mother's back, or placed between tent poles like the shafts of a vehicle, to which a pony or dog is attached, leaving two of the ends dragging on the ground. The child is sometimes rocked by the wind when fastened high up among the branches of the trees; and that is where the little song comes from that the mother sings to her child to this day; "Rock-a-bye baby in the tree-top; when the wind blows the cradle will rock." The speeches of the Indians are always impressive. Their words are simple and direct, and there were developed great orators among them in the days when war between the tribes, and against the United States prevailed. Some of the simple pleas which they made for the land of their fathers, were as fine as could be produced by a higher education and a finer civilization. When the French demanded of the tribe of the Iroquois that they move farther back into the wilderness, the eloquent reply of their Chief has been pronounced by Voltaire to be superior to any sayings of the great men commemorated by Plutarch: "We were born on this spot; our fathers were buried here. Shall we say to the bones of our fathers, arise, and go with us into a strange land?" The same cannot be said of the Indian literature. Here is one of their classics: "Nike adiksk hwii draxzoq. Geipdet txanetkl wunax. Nike ia leskl txaxkdstge. Nike lemixdet. La Leskl lemixdet, nike haeidetge." Interpreted this means: "Then came the tribes. They ate it all the food. Then they finished eating. Then they sang. When they finished singing then they stopped." It is characteristic of the Indians for their feasting to end when their food is all gone, and for their singing to cease when it stops. A century ago Malthus, in his great work on the "Principle of Population," prophesied the extinction of the North American Indians. His theory was, that subsistence is the sole governing cause in the ebb and flow of the population of the world. That given pure morals, simple living, and food to support the increase, the inhabitants of any country would double every twenty-five years. He therefore predicted that it was an inevitable law of nature that the Indians, failing to take advantage of the bounties of nature, must of necessity give way before the needs of an ever increasing population. The Indian had the misfortune to have been improperly named. Columbus had sailed over the trackless ocean for many days; water in front of him, water behind him, to the right and to the left. He had gone so far that finally when he anchored, he thought he had sailed entirely around the world, and had come upon the eastern coast of the very country he had left behind when he sailed west out of Spain. Believing that he had reached the eastern coast of India, he called the Islands where he landed the "West Indies," and the inhabitants thereof "Indians." CHAPTER XII. THE LUSTRE OF GOLD. [Sidenote: 1858] In the incident of nearly sixty centuries ago, when Joseph's brothers came down two hundred miles from Canaan to Egypt with their sacks to be filled with corn, and of the money being put back with the grain, we have the first record in the civilized world of the ownership of gold. "How then should we steal out of thy Lord's house silver and gold." So its value was then known, though no doubt for decorative purposes only, from which it in time grew into use as money. Cortez found the Aztecs using domestic utensils made of copper, silver and gold. What made Gold? What deposited it in some parts of the earth's surface and not in others? Why is there not more of it? We do not know. We know it was one of the primitive elements; that it is held in solution in the waters of the ocean; that men have tried to make it and have always failed. It derives its name from its lustre. Though gold and yellow are in a measure synonymous, their difference is best seen in the glory of the sunset which is always golden, never yellow. It is the lustre that makes the lure of gold. Its value arises from the permanency of its lustre; from its imperishable properties; from the fact that so much can be done with it; because it is so limited in quantity; and because it requires so much time and money to find and refine it. If it would corrode it would be valueless for many of the uses to which it is put. Its soft beauty never tires the eye, nor becomes monotonous. It is the only metal that can be welded cold, as we can all testify from our experiences in painless dentistry. It can be spun out like a spider's web, or beaten so that a single grain of it can be spread over a space of seventy-five square inches. If it were as plentiful as earth or sand, it would still have great value because it is so permanent and malleable. The sawing and chiselling of the great blocks of marble and granite that are lifted by derricks into our public buildings, cost much more in their preparation than would the shaping of gold into similar blocks. If it were plentiful, our houses would all be built of gold; they would never burn; never rust; never decay; never need paint; they would endure forever; for even earthquakes that would destroy every other material, would not affect them; the mass of gold would not be destroyed and could be re-shaped and refitted together. However, if it were so plentiful that we could all live in it, it would be so common that its beautiful lustre would probably be debased by ordinary paint. Mining comes down to us through the centuries. The Romans were operating mines in England before the organization of that country into the British Empire. Africa produces the most gold of any country, and the United States next. Colorado produces the most gold of any state in the union. There is but little gold found in the eastern part of the United States and that mostly in Tennessee and North Carolina. It exists in paying quantities in the Black Hills of South Dakota, in the Rocky Mountains, and in California. Gold is found under two conditions: in veins and in placer formations. As the veins in our bodies are almost endless in their ramifications, so imbedded in the rocky fastnesses deep down in the earth, are the veins of gold which are mined and hoisted to the surface through shafts, or brought out through tunnels; the process of smelting sends the gold to the Mint for its refinement. Deep mining is expensive and requires costly machinery. Shafts are sunk down thousands of feet, sometimes through solid rock, and powerful pumping plants are often necessary. Sometimes hundreds of men are at work in one mine. [Illustration: Miners Making a "Clean-up" from Their "Jig-box."] Then there is placer mining, so-called because it is a place on the bank of a river where the gold is found. "Placer" is Spanish and means "pleasure." A prospector's outfit for finding gold by the latter process is very crude. He goes into the mountains with two pack ponies. These pack animals learn to climb over the rocks and along the precipitous mountain sides like Rocky Mountain sheep. On their backs are strapped his tent and simple belongings, among which is a wash basin. The prospector seldom uses it for the purpose for which it was made. He bathes in nature's basin--golden basin; that which a King might envy him--the stream, the rushing, tumbling stream, clear, cold and pure; fortunate man! he bathes in liquid gold. The pan he fills two-thirds full of dirt, then with water, rocks it gently with his hands, letting the water run over the sides, carrying the dirt away and leaving the particles of gold, which are heavy, at the bottom of the pan. When the miner finds it there, he does not call it gold, he calls it "color." This rude device that is simply motion, water, and a receptacle for the particles of gold, is the same process elaborated upon by expensive machinery, that tears up and runs through the mill thousands of tons of material found along streams, and in gulches, where streams ran ages ago, and which, changing their channels, have left their deposits of gold containing the wash from the lump or quartz gold, found in the veins of ore. A sluice is where water is made to run through a ditch into a trough that has cleats nailed across the bottom to check the water and form ripples. Into this the pay-dirt is shoveled, and the water flowing through it leaves the gold at the bottom and carries the dirt away. Gold dust is not fine like flour. A piece weighing less than a fourth of an ounce is called "dust." Above that it becomes a "nugget." Small counter-scales were kept in the early days by all business men, who weighed the money in, and weighed the flour and bacon out. An ounce of gold was taken over the counter from the miners at sixteen dollars, but when it left the Mint refined, which meant the elimination of all impurities, it brought twenty dollars. It is never entirely pure until refined. The nearest approach we now have to the hunter, trapper and scout, is the prospector hunting for gold. We find him wandering alone through the mountains, a silent figure, the pack pony, his only companion, sometimes driven ahead, sometimes following on behind. This quiet spoken, unobtrusive, hermit-like man is usually tall, gaunt, bearded, hopeful, always believing in the lucky find that is sure to be his--soon. Mining laws vary with different states and mining communities. But ordinarily they are the same in effect, that a miner must show good faith, do the work required to establish his claim, and must post a notice on the ground claimed by him; the spelling in the notice does not seem to matter. We do not hear that the following were rejected on account of errors or threats: "Notis--to all and everybody. This is my claim, 50 feet on the gulch. Cordin to Clear Creek District law backed up by shot gun amendments, (Sgd.) "THOMAS HALL." "To the Gunnison District: "The undersigned claims this lede with all its driffs, spurs, angels, sinosities, etc., etc., from this staik. a 100 feet in each direcshun, the same being a silver bearing load, and warning is hereby given to awl persons to keepe away at their peril, any person found trespassing on this claim will be persecuted to the full extent of the law. This is no monkey tale butt I will assert my rites at the pint of the sicks shuter if legally Necessary so taik head and good warnin accordin to law I post This Notiss, (Sgd.) " JOHN SEARLE." Singular it is that the laws governing mining claims originated with the miners themselves, and found their way through the Courts and Congress for ratification, which was done with hardly any changes, while the laws covering all other forms of ownership of Government lands originated in Congress. The author of much of our early land legislation, to whom our country can never be grateful enough, was that eminent statesman Alexander Hamilton. Gold started Colorado's growth; gold kept it growing; but gold is only one of many factors that will forever keep it growing. What busy scenes were enacted here in those memorable years when the attention of the entire country was centered on this region! Pike's Peak was the objective point of the gold seekers--not Denver which was then unknown. When James Purseley, Colorado's earliest white inhabitant, first found gold in 1805, at the foot of Lincoln Mountain, it did not assume the importance of a discovery. He had no use for the gold nuggets he picked up; the Indians did not know or appreciate the value of gold, and there was no one with whom he could utilize it, as he could in the exchange of ponies and furs. It is said that he finally threw the nuggets away because of the uncomfortable weight in his pockets. No doubt he thought he would live his life among the Indians, the wild, free life that was so fascinating, and would never return to the East, and perhaps never see a white man again. He was content with his lot, had no use for gold and why should he hoard it, when the Indian blanket he was now wearing had no convenient place in which to carry it. Green Russell is said to have found gold on Cherry Creek in August or September, 1858, just ten years after its discovery in California. It was also found by a party of six men on January 15, 1859, on a branch of Boulder Creek, which occasioned the location of the present City of Boulder. George Jackson went into the mountains on January 7, 1859, and discovered gold at the mouth of a branch of Clear Creek, and on April 17th organized at that point the first mining district; later, on May 1st, he found gold at Idaho Springs. But it remained for John H. Gregory to fan into a never dying glow the flame that had been gathering volume by these desultory discoveries. He found gold on Clear Creek, near the sites of Black Hawk and Central City, in February, 1859. Lacking provisions, he went to Golden for supplies, returned May 6th, and started a sluice on May 16th, from which he took as much as nine hundred dollars a day. He sold his discovery for twenty-one thousand dollars and set the country afire with excitement. From nearly every eastern community, the people came, and from many parts of the world. It is estimated that fifty thousand people poured into this mountain region the first year after the discovery of gold. Many of those who remained, and many who came later, made fortunes, some to keep them, some to lose them. Those who hurried out of the country did not witness the growth of Cripple Creek, of Leadville, of Camp Bird or of the San Juan and Clear Creek Districts. There are two smelters in Denver and one each in Golden, Leadville, Canon City, Pueblo and Salida. None but zinc ores are sent out of this State. The annual output of gold in Colorado is about twenty-two million dollars, or about six million dollars a year greater than California. There are three operated Mints in the United States: Denver, Philadelphia and San Francisco. At Denver there are six hundred million dollars of gold deposited in the vaults beneath the foundations of the Mint, and upon this reserve the paper currency of the Government has been issued. No such amount of gold is stored in any other building in the world. The Denver Mint will always remain the storage depository for the gold reserve of the nation, because of its inland location, where it is remote from attack by sea. Colorado has already produced in gold four hundred and eighty-eight million five hundred thousand dollars, and there is no indication of a diminution in the supply. Of the seven billions of the world's gold, nearly one-fourth, or approximately one billion six hundred million is held by the United States. When Columbus first started on his voyage of discovery there was less than two hundred million dollars of gold in the world; now, more than double that amount is produced in a single year. In 1500 the annual gold production was four million dollars, and it took two hundred years before the yearly output was doubled. Now, nearly five hundred million dollars in gold is taken out of the earth each year. Only in the past few years has the production of gold assumed such gigantic proportions as to be alarming. In 1800 it was but twelve million dollars annually. In 1900 it was two hundred and sixty-two million dollars yearly, and in the past ten years it reached the enormous output of more than four hundred and fifty-seven million dollars every year. The Transvaal country alone turns out over one hundred and fifty million yearly. This great increase is due to improved methods of mining. Machinery unknown ten years ago, has done away with the primitive methods that kept the production of gold constant and within bounds. In the Transvaal, the hills and valleys are being ground up by powerful machines that separate the gold from the earth and rock. Then, too, a giant stream of water is now turned against the base of a mountain that melts away like mist before the sun, and sends a stream of gold to the mint. Gold has always been the standard of values among all civilized nations. But its quantity is increasing so fast that its purchasing power is diminishing, and prices of all commodities are increasing correspondingly. When we will be producing one billion dollars of gold annually, which will be in about ten years at the present rate of increase, there must be a new standard of values agreed upon among the nations of the earth to fit the purchasing power of gold, or there will be an upheaval in the financial affairs of the world that will shake it to the very foundations, and affect the lives of every one of its inhabitants. The over-production of gold is relieved in a measure by the utter disappearance of a part of it. What becomes of all the gold? Nearly one million five hundred thousand dollars a day is taken from the mines of the world. Only a portion of this output is consumed by the arts and in jewelry, and in the natural legal reserve of Governments. From the best information obtainable, much of the surplus goes into the hoarding places of all classes. The people in poor and medium circumstances hide it away, and it is treasured in the vaults of the rich princes of India, and the dynasties of China and Egypt, who for centuries have been building vast burglar proof receptacles underground, where it is stored, and its hiding places are never allowed to become known. It is wrested from out of its hidden recesses in mountain fastnesses, by pick, drill, dynamite and arduous toil, flows through the arteries of trade, and again goes into its burial places to remain hidden for ages. CHAPTER XIII. SOME MEN OF VISIONS. [Sidenote: 1859] In this story of Colorado it has been the aim of the writer to leave the present, crowded with the interesting events that are passing before us in kaleidoscopic changings, to the enviable writers of a future period; and to keep well within the boundaries of the remote past, touching but briefly, if at all, upon those subjects so ably covered by the historians of the State. They have fully recorded the growth of the country, the towns and cities; the beginning of the railroads and telegraph lines that were such important factors in the development of the state; and the part that men of prominence, living and dead, took in the upbuilding of our commonwealth. It is all found in detail in the following histories: Frank Fossett's "Colorado," published in 1876; "History of Denver," compiled by W. B. Vickers in 1880; Frank Hall's Four Volumes which began to appear in 1890; Hubert Howe Bancroft's "History of Colorado," published in 1891; William N. Byers "Encyclopedia Biography of Colorado," in 1901; Jerome C. Smiley's elaborate "History of Denver," in 1901; Eugene Parsons "The Making of Colorado," in 1908. A few names have been selected for mention in these pages which appear in the above publications. Sketches of the lives of these men are here presented in order that the older civilization may be merged into the new, and to bring to the present generation a realization of the charm of the interesting personalities with which the history of our early days are replete. So the sketches in this Chapter will be like unto "Twice Told Tales." _William N. Byers._ Eighty years! Then, the frontier of this country had moved only a little beyond Ohio, the State that in 1831 was the birth place of William N. Byers. As we stand to-day in the midst of all that makes life comfortable and inspiring, and look back to the crude civilization and primitive methods of those early days in our country's history, it is difficult to believe that even in such a progressive age there could have been such developments in the lifetime of some now living. Then, the little hand printing press had only eight years before emerged into its perfected form after four centuries of struggle. Then, the first railroad in the United States had only been built for two years--built of wooden rails to connect Albany and Schenectady, seventeen miles apart. Then, telegraphing was unknown; it was not until 1837 that Morse perfected the first telegraphic instrument, and later listened to the little girl, his child friend, as she reverently touched the key and spelled out the message that went reverberating around the world: "What hath God wrought?" A United States surveying party enroute to Oregon took with it William N. Byers, a youth of twenty. They were five months crossing the plains. The next year, 1853, saw him starting West from Oregon homeward bound, instead of East. Down the Columbia River by boat, out on the Pacific Ocean and South to Cape Horn he sailed, up through the Atlantic waters North to New York, West by railroad, canal boat, stage coach and horseback, and he was at home in central Iowa on the very edge of western settlements. But much to the surprise of every one there was still to be a newer West. Out beyond the Missouri River had come a knocking which became so loud and persistent that finally they heard it at Washington, and Nebraska was admitted as a Territory in 1854. It is a short move now from Iowa to Nebraska, but Omaha then seemed far away to the young man who reached there when it comprised "one lone cabin surrounded by savage people." The savages grew less and the town grew more, and Byers, who was a surveyor, was soon at work platting it into a town site. When the gold excitement broke out in California in 1848, and Omaha became the outfitting point for the immense trading business that grew constantly, it kept him busy laying out additions to the town. Thus he experienced the rough side of life in a frontier village. He saw, too, how the Pacific Slope mines made great fortunes and built cities, so when the Colorado mining excitement started, he concluded to be a part of the new country's development and growth. In the early Spring of 1859, he started to Denver, after the fashion of that day, with an ox team and covered wagon. One of the most pleasing fables in Mythology, is that of Pandora and the box into which every god had put some blessing for her, and which she opened incautiously to see the blessings all escape--save hope. In this covered wagon, drawn by the slow-moving oxen, was a Pandora box containing two blessings, a little printing press which could not fly away--and hope. All the long weeks of journeying across the plains, this far-sighted man was thinking. He thought of the little six hundred pound press that he had with him, which with close work could print twenty-five hundred copies of a small newspaper in a day. He thought of the type that would be used over and over until it was so worn that it would blur the pages. He thought of his paper going to a few scattered strangers in a strange land. He looked ahead out over the plains and saw that strange atmospherical condition that produces the mirage, and which is so clear in its outlines and so misleading in its impressions, that the man on the desert dying of thirst sees a lake of pure water so near him that he seems to hear its waves dashing on the shores. Byers gazed with delight and awe as the mirage seemed to take form and resolve itself into a city; we can imagine that he saw a gilded dome on a towering building of symmetrical form and solidity that was set on an elevation of commanding beauty; that he saw streets and trees and parks; life, movement, bustle, prosperity; thousands of people each with a newspaper. And in imagination he stood beside the giant printing presses of that magic city, presses that were so capable and powerful as to seem endowed with life; so large and heavy that a freight car could not haul one, and which needed a double story beneath all other stories to house it. He sees himself standing beside this mammoth mass of mechanism at its home, while it is resting, at the time of polishing, oiling and testing, like the grooming of the horse at the meet, ere it starts on its record-breaking race. He listens to the telegraphic instruments clicking the news from every portion of the known world. He goes to the composing rooms where the copy grows into the newspaper pages of type, under the skillful fingers of the capable men playing over the keys of the intricate linotype. He follows the locked forms of type to the stereotyping department, where a matrix made of the most perfect and delicate paper that India can produce, is laid over the page of type and pressure sends its minutest imprint transversely into the paper which thus becomes an exact copy of the page of newspaper that is soon to appear. He sees this impress copy bent half way around a cylinder mold, with its duplicate on the other half of its cylinder into which the hot metal flows; pressure transfers from the India paper sheet every detail of the type, and the metal hardens into the exact shape to fit a roller of the great press to which it is to be transferred. He sees the type that was made an hour ago and used, now cast into the glowing furnace, and a minute later becomes a melted mass of metal. And we can imagine his soliloquy. "Oh! type! I see you boiling, and seething, and dissolving as if in expiation of your sins, for you are cruel and relentless. To-day you tell of men's sins that wreck their lives and they end their struggles in self-destruction. You tell of sickness and death, of poverty and defeat, of misery and crime; but in your purification by fire may all be forgotten, for tomorrow you tell of births and flowers, of love and marriage, of victory and success, and you crown your efforts by the advocacy of wise laws, of good government, of equal justice to all; for right will prevail while the liberty of the press can be maintained." We imagine that he looks again and sees the electric button pressed; the cogs of the great press begin to turn, the wheels to move, the different colored inks high up in the metal troughs to flow over the rollers that bathe the type, the immense roll of paper begins to unreel into the machine and over the cylinders which are each covered with their mold of type. Faster, faster, as the race horse speeds to victory. Faster, faster, as the colossal machine bends to its work. The folding attachment inside is busy doubling the paper into its proper shape as each printed page flies past. The knife descends like a flash, quicker than thought, and separates the page from the one following. Faster, faster, the completed folded papers drop from the machine into the endless chain elevator that sends them to the distributing room overhead at the rate of forty thousand an hour, where the restless newsboys are crowding, where the express deliveries are waiting, where the warning signals of the locomotives at the depot are heard, ready to hurry away with the papers over the mountains, across the plains, into the valleys--the news for each and all, news of the communities, news of the states, news of the world--this, this is the present-day experiences of the present century's civilization, the finest the world has ever seen, and which William Byers may have seen in the mirage, but which he did not live to see in its perfected form. He came at a time known as the "days of the reformation," when a handful of peace-loving citizens of Denver were trying to bring order out of that chaotic condition that seems to belong to a settlement on the frontier made up of people from all over the world attracted by the lure of gold. He was the pioneer editor of Colorado, and became spokesman through his paper for those associated with him in the preservation of property rights and in the protection of life. He was fearless as a writer and unsparing in his criticism of the lawless in the community. His editorial in the first issue of his paper shows the character of the man: "We make our debut in the far West, where the sunny mountains look down upon us in the hottest summer's day as well as in the winter's cold. Here, where a few months ago the wild beasts and wilder Indians held undisputed possession, where now surges the advancing wave of Anglo-Saxon enterprise and civilization, where soon we fondly hope will be erected a great and powerful state, another empire in the sisterhood of empires. Our course is marked out, we will adhere to it, with steadfast and fixed determination, to speak, write, and publish the truth, and nothing but the truth, let it work us weal or woe." _Horace W. Tabor._ From Vermont, that land of stone and marble, it was fitting that Tabor should come to our mountains where similar conditions prevail. He came by the way of Kansas where he farmed with indifferent success from 1855 to 1859. His entrance there into the political arena had a disastrous ending. There used to be the Free Soilers, a party whose battle cry was "free soil, free speech, free labor and free men." No state had more troubles in the way of political happenings than Kansas. One consisted in having this Free Soil party, to which Tabor belonged and which made him a member of the Legislature of that State in 1857, just after its admission into the Union. As Cromwell prorogued the Parliament, so did the Federal Troops under orders of the Secretary of War send every member of that Free Soil Legislature to their homes, robbed of their law-making prerogatives and relegated to common citizenship. Tabor came to Denver in 1859 and from this point his career reads like a story from the Arabian Nights. In the Spring of 1860 he started to California Gulch, which name gave way later to Leadville; he drove an ox team to a covered wagon that was six weeks in the going. With the close of the first season he had five thousand dollars of gold dust in his pocket. That amount of money suggested merchandising, which he followed in the winters, alternating to the mines every summer. At the end of the second year he had wrested fifteen thousand dollars more in gold from the mines. He was a likeable man, generous, and known to be such, always doing his fellowman a good turn. Two prospectors down on their luck, proposed that he should help them by "grub-staking," as it was called in those days. He was to give them what they would eat and wear, furnish them with tools for digging and powder for blasting. In return they would share with him if they won, while if they lost, it would be his sole loss. It turned out to be a most fortunate alliance for them all. They had no more than started to digging, having reached a depth of only twenty-six feet, when they struck a rich vein of ore, and every inch they went down after that, the rich deposit grew in extent, both in quantity and quality. "Little Pittsburg," they called it, and it began turning out eight thousand dollars a week to the three fortunate owners. In a little while Hook sold his share to his partners for ninety thousand dollars, that being all the money he said he needed. Soon Rische reached the limit of his money-making ambitions which was two hundred and sixty-two thousand dollars, and that sum was paid him by David H. Moffat and J. B. Chaffee. The three new partners, which included Tabor, purchased other mines in the vicinity and consolidated them, taking out over four million dollars in the two years from 1878 to 1880. The other two partners now bought out Tabor for one million dollars, that being as much he thought as he could ever spend. It seemed that these original partners only had to figure out how much they would need to be comfortable on the remainder of their lives, which fixed the price of their investment. Tabor, however, found that he could not quit this fascinating life, so he bought the Matchless Mine at Leadville for one hundred and seventeen thousand dollars, and in a year he had added nearly seven hundred thousand dollars to his wealth. Field, Leiter & Company of Chicago joined him in a number of mining ventures, all of which were immensely profitable. In 1879 he began to make purchases in Denver that had much to do with the rapid growth of this city. He paid thirty thousand dollars for the lots at the corner of 16th and Larimer Streets, upon which he erected what was the finest building of that time, known now as the Nassau Block. He sent all the way to Ohio for the sandstone that went into the building, the quarries of beautiful marble and stone in our mountains not then having been opened, or he would have used it, for he always wanted the best. He paid forty thousand dollars for the residence and block of ground, on a portion of which the Broadway Theater now stands; the ground alone so purchased is now worth one million dollars; its value in another thirty years--but that is another story, and it will be told when the hand that moves this pen lies silent. He purchased the location at 16th and Curtis Streets for a Theater Building, and sent Chicago Architects abroad to study the plans of the theaters of the Old World and their furnishings, with the result that a building was erected and equipped that was the talk of the entire country. The opening of the theater was one of the greatest occasions held in the West up to that time. Emma Abbott came all the way across the Continent with her Opera Company for the event. The newspapers everywhere devoted space to it and Eugene Field celebrated it in verse. The picture of Horace Tabor was placed just over the inner entrance, where it hangs to this day and where it should remain while the building stands. At the time of its erection it was considered to be the most perfect and convenient in arrangement of any theater in the United States. The boxes and proscenium were all finished in solid polished cherry wood. The drop curtain was painted by an eminent artist who came to Denver for that purpose; it was adorned with a picture of moldering ruins of Ancient Temples with a motto underneath containing a sermon in the following impressive quotation from Kingsley: "So fleet the works of man; Back to the earth again Ancient and holy things Fade like a dream." All these improvements inaugurated and completed by him alone, attracted almost world-wide attention and advanced Denver to an important place in her business standing throughout the entire East. He became Lieutenant Governor in 1878, and U.S. Senator in 1882, to which position he was appointed to fill out the term of Henry M. Teller, who was invited by President Arthur to enter his cabinet as Secretary of the Interior. Tabor only lacked one vote of being elected to succeed himself, Judge Bowen winning the prize. Tabor's financial rise was meteoric; his decline was equally rapid when it started. Unfortunate investments, mostly in distant locations, swept his entire fortune away. Though poor indeed, in material things towards the close of his life, it is given to few men to be so rich in experiences. His accomplishments in behalf of Denver will always be held by her citizens in grateful remembrance, and when he died in 1899 there was wide-spread sorrow. _William Gilpin._ [Sidenote: 1861] One thousand years of traceable ancestry! They spelled it "Guylphyn" in those far-away days of the Roman Empire, and in two hundred years it was softened to "Gilpin." One of this illustrious line was a great General and won a noted battle for Oliver Cromwell. One was Minister Plenipotentiary to The Hague, appointed by Queen Elizabeth. Queen Mary ordered one beheaded because of his religious teachings, but she died herself, after which he was pardoned and went on with his preaching. The ancestors of our own Washington were proud to form a union with the Gilpins by marriage. A meeting-house was erected by one of them and given to William Penn who used to preach in it. The home of one of them was turned over to LaFayette for his headquarters during the Battle of Brandywine. And there was that one who owned the mill that ground the grain for Washington and his army at Valley Forge. Colorado is to be congratulated that she had for her first Governor one who came bearing such an illustrious name. But no one thought of family, least of all Abraham Lincoln, when he signed the Commission that made William Gilpin Governor of the Territory of Colorado. His selection was under advisement at the first Cabinet meeting and he was chosen in recognition of his signal ability. As a youth he was tutored by his father who possessed more than ordinary culture. He pursued special studies under the author, Hawthorne; he learned under Lawrence Washington, when the latter was a resident of Mt. Vernon; then he was sent abroad for instructions at Yorkshire; he had the pick of masters at Liverpool; was graduated later at the University of Pennsylvania, and then won high honors in his later graduation from West Point. Such a course of study had made of him an intellectual athlete. Then he traveled abroad, hurrying home to fight the Spanish in the Everglades of Florida. This chivalrous disciplinarian was Major in the Army of twelve hundred that defeated the Mexican Army of over five thousand at Sacramento City, California, on February 28, 1847. He was an officer in the army, under General S. W. Kearny, that marched into Santa Fe on the 14th of August, 1846, and ran up the Flag of the United States for the first time. Soon after, Charles Bent, who was first Governor of New Mexico, was killed at Santa Fe in an up-rising of the natives. He had built Bent's Fort on the Arkansas River where he had his residence for years. It was at Santa Fe that Gen. Lew Wallace, while Governor of New Mexico from 1878 to 1881, wrote the concluding chapters of his great book Ben Hur. Gilpin's home was at Independence, Mo., where he practiced law. That place being near the end of the Santa Fe Trail, he often met Kit Carson. Gilpin possessed so much bravery that he started across the plains in 1843, a solitary horseman. Happening in with Fremont, he accompanied him to the Pacific Coast, it being Fremont's second expedition. The next year Gilpin returned by the way of Bent's Fort, thence down the Santa Fe Trail to his home. He was bearing a memorial, from the Oregon people, which he had helped to formulate, and which he was to present to the Administration at Washington. It set forth in detail the resources of the Great Northwest, the desire of the handful of people located there to be taken under the shelter of the Government and to be embraced within the limits of the Territory of the United States. He proceeded to Washington and presented this petition in person to President Polk, and urged in glowing terms, with all the eloquence he possessed, the future value and prospects of that unknown region. He had the freedom of both Houses of Congress and took a prominent part in turning the tide in favor of the Oregon movement. When President Lincoln started from Springfield to Washington to assume the reins of Government in February, 1861, Gilpin was one of thirteen who made the entire journey in the President's private car. He was a brilliant man and Lincoln recognized his mental gifts and learned minutely from him of his varied experiences, especially of his knowledge of the far West. So it was natural that his name should come before the very first meeting of the cabinet for appointment to the high place of Governor of the territory of Colorado. The next month he was hurrying westward with his commission in his pocket and with his appointment as well of Brigadier-General of the Army. "Long ago at the end of the route, The stage pulled up and the folks stepped out; They have all passed under the tavern door. The youth and his bride and the gray three-score; Their eyes are weary with dust and gleam For the day has passed like an empty dream. Soft may they slumber and trouble no more For the weary journey, its jolt and its roar In the old stage over the mountains." [Illustration: A stagecoach being pulled by six horses] So entered William Gilpin into the little City of Denver. It was the days of the stage coach, and the Denver end of the line was kept at the highest point of efficiency. Six horses were used, as fine as money could buy, high stepping and so well groomed that they shone resplendent under their costly harness glittering in the sun. The starting of the stage on its journey East and its return into Denver, was always an interesting event. It came dashing into town with the horses galloping, the whip cracking, the dogs barking and the people shouting. And they cheered when their new Governor stepped out. They cheered again when he stood before them tall and erect, with eyes flashing and head thrown back, and spoke in that matchless flow of language that was the gift of this eloquent and picturesque man. The character of his thought and its style of presentation is best seen in the following, taken from one of his many interesting speeches: "* * * These events arrive. We are in the midst of them. They surround us as we march. They are the present secretions of the aggregate activities and energies of the people. You, the pioneers of Colorado, have arched with this glorious state the summit ridge and barrier between two hemispheres. You bring to a close the numbered ages of their isolation and their hostility. You have opened and possess the highway, which alone connects, fuses, and harmonizes them together. Of this state, you are the first owners and occupants. You have displayed to the vision, and illustrated to mankind, the splendid concave structure of our continent, and the infinite powers of its august dimensions, its fertility, its salubrious atmosphere and ever resplendent beauty. You have discovered the profound want and necessity of human society, and your labor provides for its relief; gold, I mean; the indefinite supply of sound money for the people by their own individual and voluntary labor. You occupy the front of the pioneer army of the people, absolutely the leaders of mankind, heading the column to the Oriental shores. * * * "Hail to America, land of our birth; hail to her magnificent, her continental domain; hail to her generous people; hail to her victorious soldiers; hail to her matrons and her maidens; hail to the sacred union of her states; all hail to her as she is! Hail to the sublime mission which bears her on through peace and war, to make the continent her own and to endure forever." What did he do for Colorado? Much. He confronted unusual conditions; he was the Chief Executive of the Territory at the very beginning of its history when there was not one single beaten path for him to follow, and when there was no money and no credit. There was danger of the territory slipping away from the union through an armed incursion from the South. There were no weapons for either a defensive or an aggressive warfare. He posted notices along the trails, calling for the purchase of fire arms of any kind no matter what the age or condition, if there was accompanying ammunition. There were no soldiers not even a home guard. So as quickly as possible he began to muster in the soldiers, putting into their hands the weapons he had gotten together, bad though they were. The drilling of the men was carried on just outside of Denver; soon he had one Company of Infantry and ten Companies of Cavalry. The troops that had been in Utah during the Mormon war were returning East, and at Gov. Gilpin's request turned over to him at Laramie eighteen wagons containing eighteen hundred new rifles and a large supply of ammunition. Thus equipped, he marched down on Gen. Sibley and his army who had come up from the South and had captured Santa Fe. The battle of Glorietta was fought, resulting in Sibley's entire wagon train of ammunition and supplies being captured and his army destroyed or scattered. The expense of the year's military activities was paid by the Governor drawing drafts direct upon the Government at Washington, amounting to two hundred and twenty-seven thousand dollars, all of which drafts were returned unpaid, which occasioned a great deal of trouble, confusion and criticism. They were, however, paid in course of time. Governor Gilpin always claimed that he had verbal instructions from Simon Cameron, the Secretary of War in the beginning of Lincoln's Administration, to handle the payments in this way. No doubt the Governor made the mistake of not having vouchers regularly drawn, itemized, certified and forwarded in the regular course of business, leaving the creditors to await their acceptance, approval, and the remittance of the funds. In extenuation it might be said that we were remote from the center of supplies and money, communication was slow, time was pressing, and he did the best he could. It may be that any other course at that time would have resulted disastrously, not only to this Territory, but the Government as well. Even at this late date, the Legislatures of some states handle in a most informal manner the finances of the State Government, which requires years for adjustment. Because of these financial complications, Gilpin was relieved from his position as Governor in 1862, but he remained true to his State all his life, had no higher ambition than to see it grow, sounded its praises wherever he went, and said on all occasions: "It is the backbone of the Continent, protect and encourage it." He was one of the first to open up beautiful Capitol Hill, and used to say "I will give you two lots if you will build on one of them." He never valued money, but lived far above the ordinary affairs that surround us. There were times when he did not have the money to pay for a meal, but his interest in his fellowmen, in his State, and in the enjoyment of his mental gifts continued unabated to the end of his life. Governor Gilpin gave us the beautiful name of Colorado. He was in Washington in the Spring of 1861 when the Bill was before Congress for fixing the boundaries of this new Territory. The name of Jefferson had been proposed, also Idaho and other names. He preferred Colorado and gave that name to Senator Wilson of Massachusetts, on whose motion it was adopted. The name was taken, not from the river of that name in Texas, whose length is nine hundred miles, but from the great river to the west of us that is longer than the distance between Omaha and Ogden and is the King of the Rivers of the West. _John Evans._ "Build me straight, O worthy master! Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel, That shall laugh at all disaster, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle." [Sidenote: 1862] Like the perfect ship was the perfect Quaker stock that came to our shores and was absorbed into the body politic, to permeate the arteries of business and statesmanship of our whole country for generations. It was a stock built on simple lines; straight, strong, clear and pure; founded on morality, sobriety, integrity and frugality; and as simple in garb as it was simple and strong in faith. Soon after the arrival of the Plymouth Fathers, there entered at our eastern gateway, a Quaker who invented for us the screw auger; how could our present high civilization have reached its enviable position without that screw auger! Evans was the name of the man to whom we owe this great debt of gratitude and he it was who was the progenitor of Colorado's second Governor, a man of whose memory our State is justly proud. John Evans reached the zenith of his power and influence through the slow stages of solid preparation and ever broadening experiences. He was born in 1814 in Ohio, the State that is so prolific of good men. He graduated from the Clermont Academy in Philadelphia in 1838, when he was twenty-four years old, and immediately began the practice of medicine. His success was so pronounced, and he attained such standing, both as humanitarian and physician, that he was able at the early age of twenty-seven to impress upon the Legislature of the State of Illinois by his masterful arguments before them, the necessity for the establishment by the State of an institution for the insane. Four years later he was a conspicuous member of the faculty of the Rush Medical College of Chicago, which he served with devotion for eleven years. He founded the "Illinois General Hospital of the Lakes"; was editor of the Northwestern Medical and Surgical Journal; first projector of the Chicago and Fort Wayne Railroad and of its Chicago Terminals; member of the Republican National Convention that nominated Lincoln for the Presidency in 1860; was offered the Governorship of Washington Territory by Lincoln, which he declined. He was one of the prominent figures in the advancement of Methodism and was always prominent in its councils, both national and local. The writer, once in an eastern City where the general conference of the Methodist Church was being held, attended a session of that interesting assembly. One of the conspicuous members on the floor was pointed out as Governor Evans, who led the delegation from Colorado. At the time, this incident was related of him: He had settled at Denver in 1862, and having faith in its future, decided, after mature deliberation, the direction the City would take in its growth. He then purchased one hundred and sixty acres at the point where he thought the most benefit would accrue. A friend hearing of his investment and its reason, sought him out, commented on his mistaken rashness in coming to such an unwise decision, and advanced many reasons why the City would grow in exactly the opposite direction. The arguments were so strong that a purchase was made of another one hundred and sixty acres on the side of Denver suggested by his friend; the Governor, however, strong in his faith, clung to his original purchase as well. Friends continued to advise him of his mistakes in these two ventures and he continued to buy where they suggested, until he owned outlying farms on every side of Denver, and the City growing in all directions, his profits were fabulous. He was conspicuous in establishing the Methodist Episcopal Book Concern and the Northwestern Christian Advocate of Chicago; was one of the original promoters of the Northwestern University at Evanston and the first President of its Board of Trustees in which position he continued for forty-two years. He founded the beautiful City of Evanston, a suburb of Chicago, which was named for him, and he suggested the setting apart of one-fourth of every block in that city as a fund for the University, a movement that resulted in an enormous endowment for that great school; he brought about the purchase of ground in the center of Chicago that grew into millions in value and greatly enriched the University. His contributions to the Church throughout his long, successful and busy life, amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars in addition to the generous donations made by him to the Denver University located at University Park. A Territory is under the direct control of the Administration at Washington and its officers may be selected from outside its boundaries. President Lincoln in looking for a suitable successor to Governor Gilpin in 1862, centered on John Evans of Chicago, who was such a marked success as a business man. He received the appointment of Governor and gave to Colorado a most excellent administration. He was a leading factor in the building of the Denver-Pacific Railroad from Denver to Cheyenne, our first railroad, and was its President for years. One of his most gigantic undertakings was the building of the railroad up the South Platte River by the way of South Park to Leadville, in which he had the splendid help of Walter Cheesman, General Bela Hughes, J. W. Smith, William Barth, Brown Brothers, General D. C. Dodge and others. It was not easy to build railroads in those days; money was scarce, there was not much business for a railroad when constructed, and in this remote country whose future was not established, bonds were hard to sell. Many a man would have been discouraged by the efforts necessary for the financing of these railroads. Governor Evans worked unceasingly and showed his faith by putting in large sums of his own money, a fact that finally brought these undertakings to a successful consummation. Always he talked and worked for a line to the Gulf from Denver which would mean cheap freight rates and growth for Colorado, and now it has come and more, for we are to connect the Gulf with the far northwest, an ocean to ocean link. All his personal investments were so wisely made that his life's work went on smoothly to its close in 1897. In Denver, where he made his home to the end of his eighty-three years, his thoughts were always of the City and State of his choice. His wise counsel and untiring devotion has left its imprint upon many of the successful industries of the State, as well as upon the social, moral and æsthetic life of the community. By his untiring devotion and unflagging loyalty to the Union, he placed himself in the class of War Governors in the great struggle of '61 to '65. He was preeminently a business man and possessed of exceptional ability. He was in the Methodist Church the some powerful factor for good and moral uplift, that William E. Dodge of New York was in the Presbyterian Church. In fact, in sterling business integrity and high quality of christian manhood, the finest thing perhaps that could be said of these two men, is that each was the beautiful complement of the other. _George Francis Train._ [Sidenote: 1863] A child stared a tragedy in the face as he looked wide-eyed from the window of the family home in New Orleans and saw the rude box containing the body of his little sister pitched into the "dead wagon" with like boxes. There were no undertakers: all were dead. No tenderness or sympathy; only haste and roughness. No flowers; just tears. An epidemic of Yellow Fever was raging and the "dead wagons" were rattling through the streets and stopping at the desolate homes everywhere. Each time the child saw one stop at his home, which would have been eight times if he could have counted, there was one less in the household. And at last a big box was carried out, in which they had placed his mother, and little George Francis Train, a child of four, was left alone. He was put on board a Mississippi River Steamer, with his name and destination pinned to his coat, and was sent on his long journey to relatives near Boston. That was eighty-two years ago. That child, grown to manhood, became one of the picturesque figures in American History. He absorbed an education while working sixteen hours a day as a grocer's clerk. Then by sheer force of will and capability, he took a man's place in his uncle's shipping house in Boston, when he was but sixteen years of age, and in four years became a partner in the firm and was making ten thousand dollars a year. He revolutionized the shipping industry of the world by increasing the capacity of the largest ship then known, of seven hundred tons, to what then seemed an incredible size of two thousand tons. He had a fleet of forty vessels under him, mostly built up by his own energy. Then he went to Liverpool and at the age of twenty was the resident partner of the firm at that point where he doubled the business in a year. He then enlarged his horizon by going to Australia and establishing a similar business from which his commissions were ninety-five thousand dollars the first year. He was a man with ideas. They used to cut postage stamps apart with scissors; "perforate the paper," he said, and it was done. In London when the Grande Dames stopped their carriages, a footman appeared with a short step ladder to aid them in their descent; "attach a folding step to the carriage" he advised, and it has been in use ever since. He saw a man write something with a lead pencil, then reach into his pocket for a rubber to make an erasure; "fasten the rubber to the pencil," he told them, and the perfected idea is in the hands of everyone to-day. A dozen men were shoveling coal into sacks and carrying it from the wagon; "use an appliance to raise the front end of the wagon and let the coal run out," he suggested, and the idea carried into effect made a company of millionaires. A man spilled some ink as he poured it from a large bottle into a small one; "give the bottle a nose like a cream pitcher," he told them and the idea gave the man who patented it more money than he could ever use. He saw the Indians spearing salmon out of the Columbia River; "can them," he said, and it started a great industry that is still under way. He accompanied the officials of the Northern Pacific Railroad when they were locating the terminus of that system; "end the line here," he told them and Tacoma will stand on that spot forever. He prophesied, that as much of the soil of the East rested upon a rocky base and was intermixed with stone, it would become inert and of decreasing value; while from the western plains so vast in extent, with their great depths of rich soil, would come the supply for the nation, and an ever increasing value to the farms. The prediction has come true. Today, with one-tenth of the population, we are furnishing one-half the supply of the food of the nation. He was an observing man always and a student. Besides his own native language, the English, he spoke fluently French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. His newspaper articles from all over the world were read everywhere. He was an editor, author, and lecturer, speaking at times to houses that netted him in one instance five thousand dollars. He knew many of the greatest men of his own country: Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Rufus Choate, Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Nathaniel P. Banks--they were all his friends. He met Queen Victoria, the Duke of Wellington, and many more of the great of the earth. Judges, Bishops and Ambassadors were his intimates. He was offered the Presidency of the Australian Government which he declined. He headed the French Commune and when the government troops were ordered to fire on him, he wrapped himself in the Stars and Stripes and dared them to kill an American citizen protected by the American Flag--and they did not shoot. He led a Third Party against two presidential aspirants for the Presidency, Ulysses S. Grant and Horace Greeley, in the campaign of 1872, and was defeated. He was a great traveler and visited nearly every country on the globe. He went around the world in eighty days, which gave rise to the Romance by Jules Verne, that is read in every language. He kept going around the world just to shorten the time. He had a villa at Newport and his annual expenditure for entertainment there was one hundred thousand dollars. Toward the close of his career he lived on three dollars a week, because he had no more, and he claimed that it was the happiest period of his life. The first street car lines in England, Switzerland and Denmark were built by him. He was the first to suggest similar enterprises for Australia and India. Maria Christina was Queen of Spain, and Salamanca, a banker, was the Rothschild of that country. They backed him for two million dollars that started the building of the Atlantic and Great Western Railway which was followed later by the construction of a railroad to the Adirondacks. The banker Salamanca was descended from the long line of that name for which the Spanish City Salamanca was named that gave us Coronado. On the line of railroad which Salamanca helped to finance, a City is located in New York State named for him. All these experiences brought Train gradually to the accomplishment of his life's greatest achievement, the building of the Union Pacific Railroad which he began on December 3, 1863, at Omaha, but which was completed by others May 10, 1869, at Ogden. It was the missing link needed in the welding of the West to the East, and in the development of Colorado, a country rich in every natural resource. Later, when the Kansas Pacific was threatening Denver, and planning to build their road elsewhere if a large amount of money was not raised, the citizens of Denver in their dilemma sent for Train. He came, and made one of his characteristic addresses to a crowded house. "God helps them that help themselves," Benjamin Franklin had poor Richard say; Train said, "Build a line of railroad yourselves to connect with the Union Pacific Railroad at Cheyenne or Julesburg," the road that he had projected. And they did the very thing he told them to do. In the course of time, the Kansas Pacific Railroad was also built to Denver. Erratic, always. Egotistical, very, Crazy, many said he was. It may be that all his life he saw the "dead wagon" at the door, and heard it rattling through the street; early impressions have their effect upon the character of the mind. He was imprisoned fifteen times and said that he never committed a crime in his whole life. He was fearless as a speaker and writer, and much of his trouble was political. A peculiarity of this many-sided man was, that he would never shake hands with any person--be he king or plain man of the people. In retirement he frequented Madison Square in New York where the birds all knew him and would light upon him and feed out of his hands; where the children all loved him and flocked about him, sitting upon his knee while they listened to his wonder tales of every people of every clime; where memories of his brilliant career filled his thoughts as he saw again his bright vision of a coast to coast line, now fully realized--for the glistening sunlight was glinting the rails from the foot of the Statue of Liberty to the sunny calm of the Golden Gate. He was never without a flower in the lapel of his coat. The wearing of the flower in this way by men everywhere originated with him; he introduced the custom into London, Paris and New York, from which cities it spread all over the world. The idea came to him while in Java, that beautiful country of rare flowers and delicate odors. On a cold stormy day of January, 1903, the end came to a stormy career; the birds hungrily called to him, but he did not come; the children waited for him, and could not understand; a flower that was alive, was pinned to the shroud of its friend who was dead, and they went away together forever and aye. CHAPTER XIV. THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED. Colorado was once a waif; a child without parentage; no older brothers and sisters wanting it about; an outcast, unclaimed, lonely, wretched and friendless. No state in the union has had a career anywhere approaching that of Colorado. It was the center of more undefined boundaries, and a part of a greater number of countries, than any other portion of the world. This is the genealogy of Colorado that has never before been traced, and which has been gleaned with infinite care from many sources. It belonged in turn to each of the following potentates or powers: The Indians, Pope Alexander VI, Spain, New Spain, France, Louisiana District, Louisiana, No Man's Land, Missouri, The Indian Country, Texas Republic, The Unorganized Territory, Mexico, New Mexico, Upper California, Utah, The Arapahoe and Cheyenne Tribes, Nebraska, Kansas, Jefferson Territory--Colorado. King Solomon took the child and when he offered to divide it between the two mothers, he found to whom it belonged. [Sidenote: 1492] Pope Alexander VI took an imaginary map, drew an imaginary line across it, and parcelled out most of the New Hemisphere, giving one side to Portugal and the other to Spain, but he did not know that he had given Colorado to Spain. [Sidenote: 1521] When a Government was established on these shores in 1521 and called "New Spain," Colorado became a part of that country and slumbered for two hundred and eighty years. [Sidenote: 1801] La Salle, a French Explorer, in 1762, went on a tour of discovery and found a rich but weed-grown section that Spain was neglecting, which he claimed for France and called it the "Louisiana District" for Louis XIV, a name used by nearly every other King of France in those centuries. Spain expostulated and then became violent. Agitation went on. War was threatened. The trouble was not ended until 1801 when Napoleon, while strangling Spain, forced her to cede the disputed territory to him; it being the tract lying east of the Arkansas River up to a certain point, then crossing the Divide south to the Red River which it followed to its source, thence along the eastern foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains. This divided Colorado, leaving with Spain that portion lying west of the Rocky Mountains, and giving to France what was located east of the mountains. Thus was left "No Man's Land" out of the reckoning, which included these majestic, wealth-producing and health-yielding mountains. They seemed to be too inconsequential to be claimed by either country. Mountains, that by their impassive quietude have soothed into tranquility the restless nerves of thousands of sick; mountains, that brew unceasingly nature's healing balm for ailing lungs; that are the home of twenty-four rivers, whose never ending flood of life giving waters, lure riches from the farms, like the touch of an Aladdin's Lamp; that have produced in furs, lumber, gold, silver, lead, copper, zinc, iron, stone, marble, oil, live stock and agricultural products, nearly five billion dollars. "The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner." [Sidenote: 1803] Two years passed, and for the first time Colorado began to be appreciated. 1803 saw sixteen million dollars in gold flowing to France, and the Louisiana District, which included the eastern half of Colorado, coming to the United States. This brought under the flag of our Government for the first time, that part of Colorado lying east of the mountains. [Sidenote: 1812] Louisiana in 1812 was admitted into the union as a territory according to the State boundaries that exist at the present time. Missouri Territory was the name given to what was left of the Louisiana Purchase. Thus Colorado lying east of the mountains fell heir to Missouri. The name is taken from the Missouri's tribe of Indians. Next to the priceless heritage that came to us as a nation and as individuals in the vast domain that we received from the Indians, was the rich transference of Indian words into our language. It was like the transfusion of new corpuscles into blood emaciated and impoverished by disease. Here was a vacant world. Rivers, mountains, states, cities, towns, boundaries--all a blank. Ready at hand was a new language. It possessed crispness, freshness, strength, romance. We absorbed it and never awoke to the full appreciation of its beauties until Longfellow charmed and thrilled us with his matchless songs. [Sidenote: 1823] It was in 1521 that Cortez placed the foot of Spain on the neck of Mexico. Three hundred years later, Mexico rebelled. She had to fight, and succeeded in establishing her independence in 1823. This carried into the fold of Mexico, that part of Colorado lying west of the mountains, which had continued all these centuries to belong to Spain. When Mexico came from under the Dominion of Spain, she wanted to be free from slavery and objected to Texas bringing slaves into Mexican Territory and selling them. This quarrel between Texas and Mexico really brought about the war between Mexico and the United States. [Sidenote: 1834] In 1834 that portion of the Missouri Territory lying west of the Missouri River became the Indian Country, which was the official title; presumably "country" because there was no territorial government and it so remained for twenty years. So to the Indian country went all of Colorado east of the mountains, and north of the Arkansas River. [Sidenote: 1836] Texas was once a Republic. In 1836 it had a Government of its own separate from both Mexico and the United States, and independent of both. She proceeded to reach into and through Colorado, and claimed that part above the Arkansas River lying between Mexico's line on the west of the mountains, and the Missouri line on the east of the mountains. This made a home for "No Man's Land." [Sidenote: 1845] Texas was admitted into the Union in 1845, as a territory in her present form. This threw back into chaos all she had claimed of Colorado, and left it as "Unorganized Territory." In 1846 Texas plunged the United States into War with Mexico, supposedly over the western boundary of Texas. In two years twenty-three noted battles were fought, including Palo Alto, Buena Vista and Vera Cruz. Only twenty-three years after Mexico threw off the yoke of Spain, we marched into Mexico City and took from her practically all the territory north of her present boundary. It was ceded to the United States in 1848, and in 1850 became New or Upper California. It was divided in 1855 into three parts, named California, New Mexico and Utah, the latter called after the tribe of Utah Indians. This brought under the United States Flag for the first time, that portion of Colorado west of the mountains, which had been Mexican Territory, and which now became a part of the Territory of Utah, whose western boundary was California. New Mexico received that part of Colorado lying south of the Arkansas River, and east of the Rio Grande. [Sidenote: 1851] In 1851, by the Treaty of Fort Laramie, it was stipulated that the part of Colorado east of the Rocky Mountains and north of the Arkansas River should belong to the tribes of the Arapahoe and Cheyenne Indians, which title was later extinguished by the Treaty of Fort Wise. [Sidenote: 1854] Another turn of this endless chain, and 1854 saw the Indian Country legislated out of Colorado, and Nebraska and Kansas ushered in to take its place. Colorado east of the mountains was divided on an east and west line into Kansas and Nebraska, about one mile south of Boulder. So at this time we stood as follows: Utah on the west of the mountains, Nebraska in the northeast, Kansas in the central east, and New Mexico in the southeast. Here the cloud of Civil War, not much larger than a man's hand at first, became ominous, and the rumblings and mutterings grew louder each year until at last the storm broke. Missouri was for the perpetuation of slavery, and jealous of the territory that had been taken from her and given to Nebraska and Kansas, tried to compel those territories to continue pro-slavery, making a strong fight to force it into their Constitutions, which, on account of her work and influence, she succeeded in changing three or four times. Those states strongly objected to slavery, and there were fierce political conflicts, especially in Kansas, which at last broke out in endless raids. Quantrell with his guerillas massacred one hundred and fifty at one time at Lawrence, Kansas, and destroyed two million dollars worth of property. It has been said that every foot of eastern Kansas soil was reddened with the life blood of her anti-slavery citizens. This gave to that State the name of "Bleeding Kansas," and the bleeding did not cease until the close of the Civil War. The Legislature of Kansas created Arapahoe County, a stretch of country several hundred miles long, which included a part of Colorado, which then went by the name of the County. [Sidenote: 1859] The early settlers of Colorado, concluding to have a Government of their own, met in 1859, organized a temporary government which they called "Jefferson Territory," but which was never made a permanent government or recognized at Washington. [Sidenote: 1861] In the year that the clouds hung low and heavy over the Union; the year that saw the first gun belch forth the shot that cleaved the line between the North and the South; when brother was going to war against brother, father against son, and mothers with blanched faces were wringing their hands in an agony of despair; when the whole civilized world stood breathlessly apart to witness the fiercest human struggle of modern times; in that the most memorable year in our National history, here on this peaceful spot far removed from the noise of the conflict, from the flame and smoke, from the tears and death agonies, there was enacted a scene, picturesque, glorious, historical. Utah, Nebraska, Kansas and New Mexico, generously and loyally stepped aside, going to the east, to the west and to the south, bidding us adieu forever. In their place, Cinderella-like, there burst from its chrysalis the waif of centuries, smiling, gracious, brilliant, like a bride bejeweled and bedecked for her wedding, the fairest and gentlest in all the sisterhood of the Union; and may she bless the land forever--Colorado. THE END. 
45210	----	LEGENDS OF THE PIKE'S PEAK REGION LEGENDS OF THE PIKE'S PEAK REGION _The Sacred Myths of the Manitou_ BY ERNEST WHITNEY, M. A. ASSISTED BY WILLIAM S. ALEXANDER ILLUSTRATED BY THOMAS C. PARRISH PUBLISHED BY THE CHAIN & HARDY CO DENVER, COLORADO 1892 COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY THE CHAIN & HARDY BOOK. STATIONERY & ART CO. ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE ON THE WATERS TOWARD THE GATE OF HEAVEN 7 THE HEALING FOUNTAIN AND PIKE'S PEAK 17 THE GREAT DRAGON 31 TEMPLE OF THE LESSER SPIRITS 41 THE WIGWAM OF THE MANITOU 53 [Illustration] However uncouth they may be, the myths and legends of early nations, like the poetry of later, give the highest and truest exponents of their characters, and preserve with a singular fidelity the very essence of their daily lives, their fears and hopes, their assumptions and intuitions. It is proverbial that the songs of a people are stronger than their laws; and the myths and traditions embodying the sentiments upon which national character, national religion, are founded, are more powerful than the songs, which they inspire. A ballad of the people, a bit of folk lore, may teach us more than whole chapters of history; we can hardly understand history without such lights. A century ago Scotland was to England what Boeotia was to cultured Athens, proverbially the land of the uninteresting, the kingdom of dullness and prose; yet every lake and stream, every glen and rock wore the halo of poetry, the glamour of romance; and when the Wizard of the North drew aside the veil of prejudice, the eyes of all England were opened as to visions, and the "land of the mountain and the flood" became as familiar and dear as the favored haunts of home. Scott had discovered a new world, new even to the dwellers in it. Gathering the tangled, distorted fragments of tradition floating about his native hills and dales, traditions full of romance, yet despised or belittled as trifles even by those from whom he learned them, he gave to the world such pleasures of entertainment as it had seldom known before. And he gave to his country fame, and the intellectual stimulus which led to its prosperity. Thenceforth Scotland was one of the beloved spots of the earth. Our historian, Prescott, states that after the publication of "'The Lady of the Lake' the post-horse duty rose to an extraordinary degree in Scotland from the eagerness of travelers to visit the localities of the poem." Another has said that indeed the race of tourists was called into existence by the pen of Scott. What those neglected legends were to Scotland, Colorado's are to her. We scan the glories of her scenery, surpassing the marvels of the Alps, the beauties of the Rhine, and lament the absence of tradition to give them the charm of Old World scenes. The tourist notes this seeming sterility with a touch of prejudice. "But where are your traditions?" is the final, question; and the answer is, "We have none; our history is too recent." Yet the romantic Rhine cliffs, or even the land of sphinx and pyramid, did not rise above the ocean until its waves had beaten for ages at the base of Rocky Mountain peaks. This is the Old World, Europe and India are of the New. And if nature in fantastic play has made this the world's wonderland, much more has man through centuries written and rewritten its fading pages with the mysteries of immemorial myths, legends, and traditions. From Pike's Peak to Popocatepetl the land is a palimpsest, dotted with ruins of remotest antiquity, the relics of a people whose records are replete with poetry and strange romance. Their manuscripts enrich the archives of Mexico and Madrid, and yet we learn but little of them. They moulder in the missions of the suspicious Spanish priests, or among the mystic treasures of the Pueblos, and are decaying unread. When we come northward to the paths of later pioneers, to lands of less civilized races, where history lives by oral transmission only, hardly a legend but has lapsed into oblivion. Those only can live which are united to something concrete and enduring, or which are so vitally interwoven that the life of one tradition insures the life of another. The early hunters looked upon natives whom they met as savage aliens rather than possibly kindred beings, and cared more for their furs and gold dust than for any history of their peoples. But even yet much may be regained from a study of the records of Spanish priests, from the lips of living races, and from the thickly scattered ruins, many of which are even yet undiscovered, nearly all of which are practically uninvestigated. Indeed, much has been regained, and from the mass of material in the collections of Bancroft and others, and from results of original research, the present writer has sought to extract what is most interesting to the audience to whom this little book is offered. The perhaps most remarkable cycle of myths north of Mexico, the Sacred Myths of the Manitou, might have perished, or lost their home and identity at least, in another decade, though the loss of such interesting relics of aboriginal thought would have seemed inexcusable. But what we yet retain is sufficient to appeal to the imagination most vividly, and its restoration in this late day seems almost to partake of the nature of strange revelation. We ask who were the people among whom such fables originated. The question as to the identity of the earliest inhabitants in the Pike's Peak region is a difficult one to answer, but the conclusion of the latest historian is that a race which had made considerable progress in civilization dwelt for centuries in Colorado. Then a more barbarous people encroached upon its territory, and it was crowded southward step by step, advancing in civilization as it was driven from barbarism, leaving picturesque ruins along its later path. It is the conjecture of many students that this people was none other than "that mystic race of Aztlan, who, ages before, had descended into the valley [of Mexico] like an inundation from the north; the race whose religion was founded upon credulity; the race full of chivalry, but horribly governed by a crafty priesthood." The situation of Aztlan, the ancient home of the Aztecs, is the most puzzling question in Mexican history. At all events, it was almost certainly north of Mexico, but whether it linked the home of the Aztec and Toltec to California on the northwest, or to Colorado on the northeast, it seems impossible for the unprejudiced historian to decide. The latest and safest guide through the conflict of varying assertions, Mr. Justin Winsor, represents a consensus of the wisest and most conservative opinions. He is inclined to believe that undoubtedly two streams of immigration, one on each side of the Rocky Mountains, flowed together into Mexico. Toltec tradition tells of a long sojourn some twelve centuries ago in a land called Hue Hue Tlapallan, which means "Old Red Land," and a local historian has called attention to its hint of Colorado-- "Which fair Columbia, bending toward the West, Now wears a crimson rose upon her breast--" land of "crimson-hued rocks and yellow plains," the "land of red earth." Certainly no place but the wonderful Grand Caverns of Manitou and the several caves of William's Canon has been found in the probable range of Aztec migration, which can be so well identified with the mysterious "Seven Caves" of Aztlan, so often mentioned in Mexican myths. It was the sacred birth-place of their great god Huitzil, and to it sacerdotal embassies were sent even as late as the year before the invasion of Cortez. The early explorer whose name the great mountain now bears, shows that a Via Sacra from Mexico northward to the peak was long kept open. "Indeed," Pike wrote of the mountain in 1806, "it was so remarkable as to be known by all the savage nations for hundreds of miles around, and to be spoken of with admiration by the Spaniards of New Mexico, and was the bound of their travels northwest." It is not unlikely that the knowledge of an open and traveled path, and the belief that it led to temples rich in gold and jewels, led the earlier Spaniards to their northern settlements and later excursions. The tribe of Montezuma was but one of a group of tribes each of which contributed its quota to the phenomenal civilization of the empire of Anahuac during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Even granting that neither Aztecs nor Toltecs rose in Colorado, it may still be confidently believed that at least one of the most important Nahuan nations learned its early lessons of barbaric culture under the tuition of Pike's Peak. And this tribe or nation during the slow migration, or soon after, was completely absorbed by the Aztec stream, if it was not the leader of it. What more probable? If it did not join this stream what was its fate? [Illustration] [Illustration] Then in these "Sacred Myths of the Manitou," we perhaps see reflected some dim germs of that wonderful religion, which was at once the strength and weakness of the illustrious victims of Cortez. Five, ten, or perhaps fifteen centuries ago the dwellers along the great mountain slope and adjacent plains had learned to look upon that region around the eastern base of Pike's Peak as one made sacred by a thousand powerful associations. The great peak seen forty leagues away, towering among and wedged between the stars, "pinnacled dim in the intense inane," was to them the symbol of a god, the abode of the All-Father, the wigwam of the Manitou. The wide ranges of alps on either side of it--the broad plains sublime in their infinity--even the mysteriously-born Father of Waters--none of these had the influence upon the superstitious and super-religious native which was exerted by that ever-watching warden of the west. Probably these early comers first saw the mountain after months of dreary wanderings over the desolate prairies. Awful in loneliness when seen afar, silent and motionless as death, they drew near and found it filled with life strange and ennobling, and with a kindly nature, ready to stoop and mingle with the human and make them rich with blessings. It was a mountain of mystery. To the dwellers on the monotonous eastern levels, its ever varying miracles of light and shadow were revelations of infinite spiritual power, and the sun-worshiper was ever drawn nearer to its presence where the mysterious manifestations could be better seen. If the hunter wandered out of its sight, it was at times perhaps with a feeling of relief, as at escaping from an almost burdensome oversight; yet he dared not stay long in the lands lying beyond its guardianship. It was a never forgotten element in life. If he slew the deer or buffalo, a quick word of gratitude was sent across the plains. If sometime a dark thought came to him, he glanced furtively at this reader of thoughts, and faltered. If in lone venturing, perils confronted him, he would lift up his eyes to the hills whence came his help, and go forward with new courage. If the tribes rallied for the war path, they sat in reverence and hope before this god of peaceful heavens, until tempest darkened and hid his face, and then like storm swept down to certain victory. But if this oracle gave no show of anger, rash was the chieftain who dare attack a foe save in absolute and immediate self-defense. The story is told that a great and powerful nation from remote regions once invaded the lands of the children of the Manitou. Day after day the war band advanced toward this heart of the empire, and every day the threateningly severe mountain-god seemed more remote, more terrible, than before, until at last, overcome with superstitious dread, they turned back, believing it was impossible to harm his people or do battle in his awful presence. Such were some of the thoughts which this mysterious mountain inspired in primitive minds. To them whatever of nature was strange, beautiful, sublime, or powerful, was worshipful. It was not unnatural that the mountain should become dominant in their religious system. Sun worshipers already, what sublimer, nobler idolatry could there be than theirs for this priest of the sun in the land of undimmed heavens! Even the pilgrim of to-day would fain uncover and bend the knee before its tonsured head. That colossal Face upon the mountain side was the first of all American idols. Civilization made progress among the chosen people here, and there was much of nobility and thoughtfulness in individual characters. Their climate, the gift of the Manitou, made them a strong race physically, but they were, perhaps, chiefly feared and respected for their institutions and their distinguished religion. We have records full of detail of religious systems far more remarkable, or more completely developed, among the Nahuan nations. Torquemada estimates the number of temples in Anahuac to have been 80,000, and Clavigero places the number of priests in these temples at 1,000,000. Every year twenty to fifty-thousand human beings were sacrificed on their altars. The myths and fables of their religion fill huge volumes. But probably nowhere north of Old Mexico can be found traces of a theology anywhere nearly approaching in simplicity and grandeur this one which had its Ararat, its Eden, and its Salem in the Pike's Peak region. For here they looked as to the cradle and the Mecca of their race. The scant reflections which are given of this religion to-day, like the clouds of a fading sunset, can barely suggest the glory of that sunset, the wide-streaming radiance of the by-gone day. The archæologist, tracing the religious history of the Greeks, finds in the early home of one of their tribes the ruins of a temple, and the torsos and other fragments of a group of statues. It is his first duty to preserve these exactly as they are found. It is a second obligation so to study the temple, and the arrangement of the sculptured fragments around and within it, that, if possible, he may understand and interpret the spiritual meaning of the whole, as an exponent of the religion. In this work he will take assistance from history and from myth, and he will be aided by comparison with other temples. If obvious portions of the original group are hopelessly missing, his special knowledge may warrant the restoration of an arm or head or possibly an entire figure. After the manner of the archæologist, we have delved among the ruins of a forsaken temple. We have studied the history, actual and mythical, of the race who revered its shrines. And with the best lights vouchsafed to us, we have tried to give, in a form agreeable to the general reader, our restoration of the myths of that ancient religion. If we have felt it necessary here and there to add a touch of completeness almost arbitrarily, we have been so guided by careful study of the myth makers and of cognate religions as to feel warranted in each case. The breath and finer spirit of a purely human religion, if any religion is purely human, is not always well shown in those myths and fables which are its most conspicuous chronicles for later times. The fables may be full of the grotesque and the absurd, mere blind and awkward gropings after a system where all was vague and mystic at first. The first explanation of a crude theology will, it is likely, be accepted as the best. And in process of oral transmission through generations all the myths will suffer strange modifications without losing their main identity. Thus none of the earliest names of the deities in the myths before us have been preserved, and Manitou, the common name of the supreme deity of the later races, has been adopted from the legends of later tribes. The origin of a cycle of myths like the one we are interested in was probably very much in this wise, if we may trust the teaching of analogy. A tribe, naturally of a roving disposition, driven from their river home by a series of devastating floods, strikes boldly out for new fortunes in the unknown prairies. Long, toilsome journeys bring them at last to the foot of the peak, where they make a new home, won by the genial climate, fertile soil, and varied topography. Gradually the tribe increases, its power spreads, and it controls all the region round about. It is called the Mountain Tribe. Its members are children of the Mountain. It is not long before these dwellers by the Wigwam of the Manitou are called children of the Manitou, and they believe in a god as their creator and the mountain as their birthplace. Later the story develops into the true mythological form, uniting their earlier and later religious ideas; and traditions common to all races of mankind, wherever found, are woven into it. So in its later shape we have the following: At the beginning of all things the Lesser Spirits possessed the earth, and dwelt near the banks of the Great River. They had created a race of men to be their servants, but these men were far inferior to the present inhabitants of the earth, and made endless trouble for their creators. Therefore the Lesser Spirits resolved to destroy mankind and the earth itself; so they caused the Great River to rise until it burst its banks and overwhelmed everything. They themselves took each a large portion of the best of the earth, that they might create a new world, and a quantity of maize which had been their particular food, and returned to heaven. Arriving at the gate of heaven, which is at the end of the plains, where the sky and the mountains meet, they were told that they could not bring such burdens of earth into heaven. Accordingly they dropped them all then and there. These falling masses made a great heap on the top of the world which rose far above the waters, and this was the origin of Pike's Peak, which is thus shown to be directly under the gate of heaven. Formerly it was twice as high as it is now, but lost its summit as we shall see later on. The rock masses upon it and all about it, show plainly that they have been dropped from the sky. The extent and variety of mineral wealth in the region prove that the earth's choicest materials are deposited here. And still as the constellations move across the heavens and vanish above the mountain summits, we may see the spirits rise from the Great River, and pass to the gate of heaven. The falling stars are their falling burdens, or the dropping grains of maize. As the Lesser Spirits held their flight to the gate of heaven from time to time grains of their maize fell to the earth. These germs being especially blest by their contact with the immortals, sprang up with wonderful vigor even under the waters of the flood, and soon reached the surface, where they quickly ripened. Now among the inhabitants of the earth left to destruction, was one man who by secretly feeding upon the food of the Spirits, the sacred maize, had become much stronger and superior in every way to his fellow beings. Such was his strength that he succeeded in sustaining himself and his wife above the waters for a very long time. Suddenly a maize stalk rose before him and blossomed into fruit. Breaking a joint from it, he soon fashioned this into a rude boat in which he took refuge with his wife. In commemoration of this the maize stalk was ever after hollowed on one side. Not knowing what direction to take on the pathless waters, he paddled toward the only other object visible upon the face of the deep. On approaching, this proved to be another maize stalk. Upon it were a pair of field mice which shared with him their supply of grain. Launching forth again he paddled toward another object visible in the distance, which proved to be another maize plant. It was held by a pair of gophers which were as generous as the field mice with their corn, and gave enough to sustain life until he reached the next maize plant. Thus unconsciously following the course of the Lesser Spirits, he passed in turn the maize plants of the prairie dog, the squirrel, the rabbit, and all the animals, and then came to the maize plants of the birds, until passing from one to another he came to the mountain. Having landed his boat upon it, the man died of exhaustion, and the woman died soon after, in the pains of maternity, giving birth to a boy and girl. The Spirits, looking down from the gate of heaven, had watched the long voyage of hardship with deep interest, and their sympathies were aroused for the forsaken creatures on the bleak island peak. Thinking that there was after all something worth preserving here, they endowed the infants with gifts raising them above their ancestors in intelligence and power. And feeding upon the sacred maize which the Spirits had dropped on the top of the mountain, the children rapidly advanced to the age of maturity. One is minded of-- "There shall be a handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon; and they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth." [Illustration] Then the Spirits loosed one of the monsters of heaven, the Lizard Dragon, Thirst. Seeing the great satisfaction offered him, the huge creature plunged directly to the watery world beneath. The waters entirely engulfed him, and for the first time his unquenchable passion knew something like gratification. He drank and drank and drank, and every day the sea grew lower and the mountain higher, until at last the dragon's body was uncovered. He pursued the waters, still drinking, until they had receded beyond sight. Then fearing he would dry up all the oceans and rivers beyond, the all-powerful Spirits called him back. Seeking to return to the gate of heaven, his wings were unable to carry his swollen body, and he fell back to the earth with such force that his neck was broken off completely, and he lay a huge crushed carcass on the land. Such was the origin of the Mountain of the Dragon, or Cheyenne Mountain as it is called to-day. From his opened neck there issued a torrent of blood and water which made the soil over which it flowed the most fertile in the world. And after all the blood had flowed from his veins, there still issued a stream of the purest water, and the sweetest for quenching the thirst ever known. This fable of the Lizard Dragon, Thirst, is strikingly characteristic of a land where thirst was one of the familiar terrors; and perhaps no creature of the region is a fitter embodiment of the conception than the lizard, which frequents the dryest places. There is probably an allusion to this legend in the quaint old Indian chant, which in translation would run as follows: "On deer path or war path I wish I were like the lizard, Never thirsting because his grandfather Once had all he wanted to drink. But my grandfather was always thirsty." No one who looks upon Cheyenne from the heights to the east or northeast of the city of Colorado Springs can fail to recognize the bloated form of the petrified monster, even to the spurs upon its back. The mountain on which the parents of the new race were left was so steep and inaccessible that they could contrive no way to escape from it. At last when their supply of maize was nearly gone, and the land below began to grow beautiful with new verdure, the Spirits told them to get into the boat and, after the manner of Quetzalcoatl, to slide down. The track made by the boat may even yet be seen on the eastern face of the mountain, and was a favorite resort of Quetzalcoatl, the sliding god; and the boat itself, the cradle of the race, was of course preserved. From the campus of the college it can best be seen, riding the ridges of the granite waves that flow tumultuously by that eminence west of Cheyenne known as St. Peter's Dome. It is shaped like the familiar birch-bark canoe, curving high at either end, and in it sit two worshipful figures, one plying the paddle. One of the most frequent embellishments in Aztec MSS. pictures such a canoe moving over a flood toward a lone mountain. At the foot of the mountain they found the most beautiful climate in the world, for being directly under the portals of heaven it shared with the Spirits the overflowing effulgence of celestial light and atmosphere. But the subsiding waters had left about the foot of the mountain all manner of dead creatures, and these with the body of the dragon filled the air with pestilence. Then the parents of mankind prayed to the Spirits for help. And the Spirits heard their prayer. They turned the huge body of the dragon to stone, and they granted to the parents of mankind that this their home should never know the curse of disease, but that it should be held sacred as a place of healing for all the tribes. As a pledge of their promise they sent to them Waters of Life, so that the land was made sweet, the pestilence stayed, and all diseases healed. And such was the origin of the celebrated springs of Manitou, which retain all their miraculous virtues to this day. For a long time the inhabitants of the earth dwelt in the ease and luxury of a golden age. But soon their numbers so increased that it was no longer easy to live without care, and the people were obliged to diffuse themselves over the region round about. Then came three of the Lesser Spirits, and dwelt among them. One taught them agriculture; from the second they learned how to make weapons and set traps, and hunt successfully; and the third instructed them in religion and government. Each of these Spirits built for himself a magnificent titanic temple and home. Although it is impossible to identify each temple with its particular deity, the three are well known by their modern names as The Garden of the Gods, Glen Eyrie, and Blair Athol. It was the mission of the third Spirit to lead them to the worship of the one and single All Father, the great Manitou, whose home was in the heaven of heavens, and whose manifestation was the sun. It is a familiar fact that the worship of the sun, as the most obvious type of regenerative life, was one of the very earliest and most widely spread germs of religion, not only among the primitive nations of America, but in the Old World as well. And the purist of to-day who sees nothing worshipful in these manifestations of the deity, may by his own misconceptions know less of some of the attributes of that deity than did his more reverent fellow in days of ignorant barbarism. At first under the instruction of the Spirit, the people became so enthusiastically faithful in their devotion to the new religion, that when their eyes were closed, and even at night the image of the Manitou ever stood before them, and tradition tells us that they were often afflicted with blindness. It was not unnatural that awe and fear predominated over love in such religion, and that their god was at times a Moloch in their sight. Moreover only the clearer eyes of the royal family and of the higher priestly class, could discern the exact features of the Manitou in that blaze of glory. At last certain of the people, urged by some of the royal princes, implored the Spirit to intercede for them, and ask the Manitou graciously to throw aside this impenetrable and awful veil of splendor, wherewith he was wont to envelope his countenance, and favor them with a more endurable manifestation of his watchful care. After much persuasion the Spirit consented to undertake the precarious mission. Soon the people noted that the sun, which had hitherto passed directly above the mountain, was gradually withdrawing towards the south. His warmth lessened, plants perished, and the first Winter came with its new and strange hardships. Flocks of birds were seen flying after the departing sun. Many among the people followed their god, and despondency fell upon the children of the peak when they realized that their Manitou was offended. But soon those who remained were cheered by a new presence in the heavens, a milder, more acceptable manifestation of the Manitou. The silver moon appeared with its varying phases, now in one part of the sky, now in another, but ever showing clearly to all eyes the plain features of the Manitou. But the Manitou still showed the supremacy of the sun by paling the new image in its presence, and causing the moon to do reverence to the sun by wholly yielding to its glory for some days every month, after which the moon came forth with renewed beauty; for that invisible image in the sun was stamped anew upon the face of the moon each time that it drew near the god of day, thus insuring an accurate reproduction, much to the satisfaction of the thoughtful. These wonderful changes in heaven and earth caused consternation through all neighboring nations, and couriers were sent from tribe to tribe. When it was found that only the children of the peak could explain the inexplicable phenomena, great was the increase of their power and authority. The reverence for the Manitou now deepened among the people. They found that the rigors of Winter were after all a blessing with few disadvantages. And soon the Manitou became so pleased with the worshipers that he even brought back the sun from the low skies of the south, the birds returned, and some of those who had followed the sun in his retreat, sought their old homes, with strange tales of their travels. But votaries of the changing moon were themselves a fickle and restless folk of varying moods, though when a great discontentment arose again it was through their devotion to steadfastness. It was the old craving for a greater familiarity with the gods, which we find among the most religious races of mankind, that led the people to their new discontent. Only for a part of the time could they worship the inconstant moon, and the priests felt that when its face was turned from them there was a laxity of discipline which could not fail to be serious. So the tutelary Lesser Spirit was again implored to intercede for them and obtain the gracious favor of a more continuous revelation of the presence of the Manitou. They wished to see him and worship him daily and hourly if need be. The Lesser Spirit received their message, but in departing with it for the gate of heaven he bade them farewell forever. [Illustration] Soon after the great mountain was wrapped in dense clouds with thunders and lightnings. The mountain shook and the hills and plains vibrated as under the heavy blows of earthquake shocks. Day after day passed in terror until at length the clouds cleared away and all was calm again. Then, lo, a great light fell from the open portals of heaven full upon the towering mountain top which was at its threshold. And there from the highest point of the peak shone down upon them a majestic and godlike Face. Far out upon the plains, far as the heaven-meeting peak could be seen, its features were manifest to all, filling the observers with awe and an unknown sense of the power and nearness of the Manitou. As a final seal of sacredness the mark of the symbol which had already of old been stamped upon the face of the sun and the moon, was now set upon the earth, and upon the very mountain of their history and religion. And, the legend is careful to add, the nation became more unified and more powerful than ever, "Watched over by the solemn-browed And awful face of stone." There seemed now no reason for further entreaties to the Manitou, whose kind regard for his chosen had been so signally shown. But with that inspired belief which shows itself in all histories, that religion should stop short of nothing but absolute perfection according to the thinker's own ideas, it was not long before the devout priests felt the need of giving further information to their Overruler. It often happened that while perpetual sunshine and moonlight bathed the plains, dark clouds wrapped the summit of the mountain of the Manitou for days at a time, thus concealing their Keblah, and interrupting their devotions. Sorrow and murmuring rose among the simple people in those days of darkness. They dared not undertake a journey, perform a tribal ceremony, set their traps, plant their maize, or engage in any affair of consequence unless the visible face of the Manitou looked favorably upon them. They were too childlike to worship and trust the invisible when the Great Face had once been seen. They would that the veil of clouds which gathered about the summit of the mountains might be dispelled forever. After suns and moons of hesitancy and of longing for the counsel of the departed Lesser Spirit, the people were emboldened to send an embassy of priests and princes up the stairway of the mountain to the gate of heaven, with their petition to the Manitou. The last three steps of this vast stairway are still plainly seen just north of Cheyenne Mountain, and bear the modern names of Monte Rosa, Mount Grover, and Mount Cutler. Amid the prayers and sacrifices of the people these departed on their unprecedentedly presumptuous and hazardous mission to the Face of the Manitou, the gateway of heaven, and were never heard of more. Terrible was the punishment of their sacrilege in thus approaching the inapproachable. Violent storms enveloped the mountain to its very base in fire-riven folds of darkness. Great rocks came ruining down its precipitous sides, or fell from the clouds, and night succeeded night with no intervening comfort of light. The people fled in terror from their quaking homes, and scourges of bitter rain and biting hail drove them far out upon the plains. These tremendous convulsions threw them prostrate with fear with their faces in the dust. For dust, as though the mountain were ground to powder, filled the air, and has filled it many and many a time since in the region about the base of the peak, in commemoration of those days of reproof, when the stricken inhabitants of the earth realized that they were but as the dust of it, and were bowed in sack-cloth and ashes. At last when the anger of the Manitou was appeased the clouds of wrath rolled away, and the sun and moon and blue sky came once more. What was the bewilderment and awe of every beholder to see that the top of the sacred mountain had disappeared altogether, and no longer reached more than half way to the gate of heaven. Mortals should never again pass over that lofty stairway. The presumptuous ambassadors of the people had been hurled from the high threshold, and the top of the mountain cast upon them, like Ætna on Enceladus. It is a wonder that no Spanish priest has here woven in some fable of confusion of tongues and dispersion of races, but it comes later in the story. Though with angry reproof, their prayer had been answered. For on the plain before them, at the foot of the great peak, rose their colossal Palladium, that very threshold stone of heaven, the topmost step of the stairway of spirits, the summit and crown of the old peak, still bearing upon it the Great Face of the Manitou. Never again were the people presumptuous in their religion; and never again was the Face concealed from them, however heavy the clouds upon the peak, except when the spirits were displeased with the nation. To this day whoever looks from any point on the site of the old capital of the aborigines, where now stands the City of Colorado Springs, the city of refuge, can still see the calm, benignant features of the old god of these early Aztecs, on the side of Cameron's Cone, the old summit of the discrowned peak. The snows of winter hide its features for weeks at times; and when the noonday sun shines full in its face, the ancient superiority of the day-god is shown, for the features are then an indistinguishable mass of light and shadow. But through Spring, Summer, and Autumn, in the afternoon shade, or in the fullness of the morning light, it towers in the west like a clear vision. More majestic than the Zeus Otricoli, grander in design and proportions than the fabled dream of carven Athos, it stands as the most perfect, the sublimest of the sculptures with which unaided Nature or the skill of man has adorned the earth. One is slow to believe that Nature alone could so closely mimic the majesty of art, but it is impossible that Aztec hands could have wrought out such a colossal conception. "'Twas Nature's will who sometimes undertakes For the reproof of human vanity Art to outstrip in her peculiar walk." To one who would learn how step by step the savage mind groped onward, "through Nature up to Nature's God," it is clearer than all theological lectures. For many generations the favored nation increased in strength and intelligence. But at length a barbarian host, apparently from the northeast, came pressing upon them with the sweeping onslaught of a herd of buffaloes, with the fierceness of mountain lions. It may likely have been this very invasion which furnished to the laureate Southey the material for his noblest epic, the story of Madoc and the Aztecas of the Missouri Valley. The religious people of the peak, relying upon their gods alone, fell back before them until their very sanctuary was oppressed and profaned. It is true that in earlier times, when they were weaker in number and skill at war, such reliance had not been disregarded. For once a host of giants and of monsters had attacked them from the hostile north, before whom all resistance had seemed utterly vain. And then a great wonder had taken place. The Manitou had turned his mountain face, even as the face of an Ægis, upon the invading bands, and straightway each and all had changed to stone! It was a terrible sight indeed for future enemies to behold that gorgonized army of granite giants standing athwart all paths approaching from the north or northeast, no longer besiegers, but unwilling and silent defenders whom no foe had yet found courage to approach. And though flood and tempest have overthrown and buried many of them, yet by Austin Bluffs and still more in the strange, grim forms which give name to the world-famous Monument Park, the routed remnants of that ancient army may still be seen, some standing defiant with shield and club uplifted to meet the crash of Death's petrific mace, some crouching in eternized horror at their impending doom. But though the present had living witnesses of the truth of this encouraging tradition, yet the children of the Manitou had no longer any right to expect such needless intervention, and finally, encouraged by supernatural signs they turned against their enemies and repulsed them from their shrines. But on the day after the battle the sun arose eclipsed, clouds veiled the hills, and a great flood rolled southward from the mountain valleys. When light was restored to them after a long tempest, lo, the air was filled with omens. As once before beasts and birds were passing southward in the path of the waters, winds were blowing and strange clouds drifting in the same direction. The scouts brought word of a mighty mustering of myriads of the enemy from the north. In the midnight sky auroral warriors, red with slaughter, danced the war dance and menaced them with destruction. And most terrible, most astounding of all, the Great Face which had hitherto turned lovingly and fully upon them, now looked away to the south! It, too, had been eclipsed and turned in a single day. There was but one interpretation of the omens. Plainly they were to forsake their old kingdom, which had grown less and less fertile, and less able to support the increasing numbers of later generations. But all that was good should go with them. The changed face of the Manitou intimated that his watchful care would still follow them in their new home, nor would he look with favor upon the usurpers. The flood of water told that tides of fertility awaited them. The departure of birds and beasts in advance of their march showed that Nature was still their faithful steward. Yet they felt with sadness that because they had allowed sacrilegious invaders to violate the great sanctuary, they must henceforth be expelled from the immediate presence of the Manitou. With the departure of this interesting people from the cradle and home of their history, the chapter of their story which concerns us most is led to a natural end. Indeed it would be difficult to continue it, for such records of their wanderings as have been found are vague and incomplete; no two writers would interpret them alike. For these people mingled with others and lost their individual identity when they entered the broad path to Mexico over which such extensive migrations were then passing. The history of no one of the Nahuan nations is intelligible for its migratory period. Though the progressive line of architectural ruins stretching across the plains and down the valleys of New Mexico and Arizona into the Aztec empire, would seem to show the finger posts of the great marching route of these nations, yet so barren are the records of the so-called Cliff-Dwellers and other early inhabitants of our southwest territory, that many historians even doubt the connection between the architects of Casa Grande and of the palace of the Montezumas. To our minds the proofs which may be gathered from the preceding pages are sufficiently conclusive for our purpose. And it is not impossible that further researches among the records of these mediæval, these Dark Ages of aboriginal history, may set our conclusions beyond the reach of skepticism. If our little sketch be the means of suggesting to one reader how much there is of pleasure, of poetry, of truth, of religion, in Nature and natural associations,--if it be the means of prompting more thorough investigation and more careful preservation of every scrap of tradition now vanishing among the races of aboriginal America, we shall feel that it has not been written in vain. [Illustration] POPULAR BOOKS BY L. B. FRANCE (BOURGEOIS) PINE VALLEY, (NEW) Illustrated, 12mo, 75cts. Containing two charming stories of mountain life. WITH ROD AND LINE IN COLORADO WATERS Second Edition, Illustrated, 12mo, $1.00. Seventeen Sketches of Summer Sport in the Mountains. MOUNTAIN TRAILS AND PARKS IN COLORADO Second Edition, Illustrated, 12mo, $1.50. Sixteen Interesting Tales. MR. 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30318	----	MONEY MAGIC By HAMLIN GARLAND SUNSET EDITION HARPER & BROTHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON COPYRIGHT 1907 BY HAMLIN GARLAND [Illustration: HE ROSE AND WALKED UP AND DOWN] CONTENTS I. THE CLERK OF THE GOLDEN EAGLE II. MARSHALL HANEY CHANGES HEART III. BERTHA YIELDS TO TEMPTATION IV. HANEY MEETS AN AVENGER V. BERTHA'S UPWARD FLIGHT VI. THE HANEY PALACE VII. BERTHA REPULSES AN ENEMY VIII. BERTHA RECEIVES AN INVITATION IX. BERTHA MEETS BEN FORDYCE X. BEN FORDYCE CALLS ON HORSEBACK XI. BEN BECOMES ADVISER TO MRS. HANEY XII. ALICE HEATH HAS A VISION XIII. BERTHA'S YELLOW CART XIV. THE JOLLY SEND-OFF XV. MART'S VISIT TO HIS SISTER XVI. A DINNER AND A PLAY XVII. BERTHA BECOMES A PATRON OF ART XVIII. BERTHA'S PORTRAIT IS DISCUSSED XIX. THE FARTHER EAST XX. BERTHA MEETS MANHATTAN XXI. BERTHA MAKES A PROMISE XXII. THE SERPENT'S COIL XXIII. BERTHA'S FLIGHT XXIV. THE HANEYS RETURN TO THE PEAKS XXV. BERTHA'S DECISION XXVI. ALICE VISITS HANEY XXVII. MARSHALL HANEY'S SENTENCE XXVIII. VIRTUE TRIUMPHS XXIX. MARSHALL HANEY'S LAST TRAIL MONEY MAGIC CHAPTER I THE CLERK OF THE GOLDEN EAGLE Sibley Junction is in the sub-tropic zone of Colorado. It lies in a hot, dry, but immensely productive valley at an altitude of some four thousand feet above the sea, a village laced with irrigating ditches, shaded by big cotton-wood-trees, and beat upon by a genial, generous-minded sun. The boarders at the Golden Eagle Hotel can sit on the front stoop and see the snow-filled ravines of the mountains to the south, and almost hear the thunder crashing round old Uncompahgre, even when the broad leaves above their heads are pulseless and the heat of the mid-day light is a cataract of molten metal. It is, as I have said, a productive land, for upon this ashen, cactus-spotted, repellent flat men have directed the cool, sweet water of the upper world, and wherever this life-giving fluid touches the soil grass and grain spring up like magic. For all its wild and beautiful setting, Sibley is now a town of farmers and traders rather than of miners. The wagons entering the gates are laden with wheat and melons and peaches rather than with ore and giant-powder, and the hotels are frequented by ranchers of prosaic aspect, by passing drummers for shoes and sugars, and by the barbers and clerks of near-by shops. It is, in fact, a bit of slow-going village life dropped between the diabolism of Cripple Creek and the decay of Creede. Nevertheless, now and then a genuine trailer from the heights, or cow-man from the mesas, does drop into town on some transient business and, with his peculiar speech and stride, remind the lazy town-loafers of the vigorous life going on far above them. Such types nearly always put up at the Eagle Hotel, which was a boarding-house advanced to the sidewalk of the main street and possessing a register. At the time of this story trade was good at the Eagle for two reasons. Mrs. Gilman was both landlady and cook, and an excellent cook, and, what was still more alluring, Bertha, her pretty daughter, was day-clerk and general manager. Customers of the drummer type are very loyal to their hotels, and amazingly sensitive to female charm--therefore Bertha, who would have been called an attractive girl anywhere, was widely known and tenderly recalled by every brakeman on the line. She was tall and straight, with brown hair and big, candid, serious eyes--wistful when in repose, boyishly frank and direct as she stood behind her desk attending to business, or smiling as she sped her parting guests at the door. "I know Bertie ought to be in school," Mrs. Gilman said one day to a sympathetic guest. "But what can I do? We got to live. I didn't come out here for my health, but goodness knows I never expected to slave away in a hot kitchen in this way. If Mr. Gilman had lived--" It was her habit to leave her demonstrations--even her sentences--unfinished, a peculiarity arising partly from her need of hastening to prevent some pot from boiling over and partly from her failing powers. She had been handsome once--but the heat of the stove, the steam of the washtub, and the vexation and prolonged effort of her daily life had warped and faded and battered her into a pathetic wreck of womanhood. "I'm going to quit this thing as soon as I get my son's ranch paid for. You see--" She did not finish this, but her friend understood. Bertha's time for schooling was past. She had already entered upon the maiden's land of dreams--of romance. The men who had hitherto courted her, half-laughingly, half-guiltily, knowing that she was a child, had at last dropped all subterfuge. To them she was a "girl," with all that this word means to males not too scrupulous of the rights of women. "I oughtn't to quit now when business is so good," Mrs. Gilman returned to the dining-room to add. "I'm full all the time and crowded on Saturday. More and more of the boys come down the line on purpose to stay over Sunday. If I can stick it out a little while--" The reason why "the boys came down the line to stay over Sunday," was put into words one day by Winchell, the barber, who took his meals at the Eagle. He was a cleanly shaven young man of twenty-four or five, with a carefully tended brown mustache which drooped below the corners of his mouth. He began by saying to Bertha: "I wish I could get out of my business. Judas, but I get tired of it! When I left the farm I never s'posed I'd find myself nailed down to the floor of a barber-shop, but here I am and making good money. How'd you like to go on a ranch?" he asked, meaningly. "I don't believe I'd like it. Too lonesome," she replied, without any attempt to coquette with the hidden meaning of his question. "I kind o' like this hotel business. I enjoy having new people sifting along every day. Seems like I couldn't bear to step out into private life again, I've got so used to this public thing. I only wish mother didn't have to work so hard--that's all that troubles me at the present time." Her speech was quite unlike the birdlike chatter with which girls of her age entertain a lover. She spoke rather slowly and with the gravity of a man of business, and her blunt phrases made her smile the more bewitching and her big, brown eyes the more girlish. She did not giggle or flush--she only looked past his smirking face out into the street where the sun's rays lay like flame. And yet she was profoundly moved by the man, for he was a handsome fellow in a sleek way. "Just the same, you oughtn't to be clerk," said the barber. "It's no place for a girl, anyway. Housekeeping is all right, but this clerking is too public." "Oh, I don't know! We have a mighty nice run of custom, and I don't see anything bad about it. I've met a lot of good fellows by being here." The barber was silent for a moment, then pulled out his watch. "Well, I've got to get back." He dropped his voice. "Don't let 'em get gay with you. Remember, I've got a mortgage on you. If any of 'em gets fresh you let me know--they won't repeat it." "Don't you worry," she replied, with a confident smile. "I can take care of myself. I grew up in Colorado. I'm no tenderfoot." This boast, so childish, so full of pathetic self-assertion, was still on her lips when a couple of men came out of the dining-room and paused to buy some cigars at the counter. One of them was at first sight a very handsome man of pronounced Western sort. He wore a long, gray frock-coat without vest, and a dark-blue, stiffly starched shirt, over which a red necktie fluttered. His carriage was erect, his hands large of motion, and his profile very fine in its bold lines. His eyes were gray and in expression cold and penetrating, his nose was broad, and the corners of his mouth bitter. He could not be called young, and yet he was not even middle-aged. His voice was deep, and harsh in accent, but as he spoke to the girl a certain sweetness came into it. "Well, Babe, here I am again. Couldn't get along without coming down to spend Sunday--seems like Williams must go to church on Sunday or lose his chance o' grace." His companion, a short man with a black mustache that almost made a circle about his mouth, grinned in silence. Bertha replied, "I think I'll take a forenoon off to-morrow, Captain Haney, and see that you both go to mass for once in your life." The big man looked at her with sudden intensity. "If you'll take me--I'll go." There was something in his voice and eyes that startled the girl. She drew back a little, but smiled bravely, carrying out the jest. "I'll call you on that. Unless you take water, you go to church to-morrow." The big man shoved his companion away and, leaning across the counter, said, in a low and deeply significant tone: "There ain't a thing in this world that you can't do with Mart Haney--not a thing. That's what I came down here to tell you--you can boss my ranch any day." The girl was visibly alarmed, but as she still stood fascinated by his eyes and voice, struggling to recover her serenity, another group of diners came noisily past, and the big man, with a parting look, went out and took a seat on one of the chairs which stood in a row upon the walk. The hand which held the cigar visibly trembled, and his companion said: "Be careful, Mart--" Haney silenced him with a look. "You're on the outside here, partner." "I didn't mean to butt in--" "I understand, but this is a matter between that little girl and me," replied the big man in a tone that, while friendly, ended all further remark on the part of his companion, who rose, after a little pause, and walked away. Haney remained seated, buried in thought, amazed at the fever which his encounter with the girl had put into his blood. It was true that he had been coming down every Saturday for weeks--leaving his big saloon on the best evening in the week for a chance to see this child--this boyish school-girl. In a savage, selfish, and unrestrained way he loved her, and had determined to possess her--to buy her if necessary. He knew something of the toil through which the weary mother plodded, and he watched her bend and fade with a certainty that she would one day be on his side. When at home and afar from her, he felt capable of seizing the girl--of carrying her back with him as the old-time savage won his bride; but when he looked into her clear, calm eyes his villiany, his resolution fell away from him. He found himself not merely a man of the nearer time, but a Catholic--in training at least--and the words he had planned to utter fell dead on his lips. Libertine though he was, there were lines over which even his lawlessness could not break. He was a desperate character--a man of violence--and none too delicate in his life among women; but away back in his boyhood his good Irish mother had taught him to fight fair and to protect the younger and weaker children, and this training led to the most curious and unexpected acts in his business as a gambler. "I will not have boys at my lay-out," he once angrily said, to Williams, his partner, "and I will not have women there. I've sins enough to answer for without these. Cut 'em out!" He was oddly generous now and then, and often returned to a greenhorn money enough to get home on. "Stay on the farm, me lad--'tis better to milk a cow with a mosquito on the back of your neck than to fill a cell at Cañon City." In other ways he was inexorable, taking the hazards of the game with his visitors and raking in their money with cold eyes and a steady hand. He collected all notes remorselessly--and it was in this way that he had acquired his interests in "The Bottom Dollar" and "The Flora" mines--"prospects" at the time, but immensely valuable at the present. It was, indeed, this new and measurably respectable wealth which had determined him upon pressing his suit with Bertha. As he sat there he came to a most momentous conclusion. "Why not marry the girl and live honest?" he asked himself; and being moved by the memory of her sweetness and humor, he said, "I will," and the resolution filled his heart with a strange delight. He presented the matter first to the mother, not with any intention of doing the right thing, but merely because she happened into the room before the girl returned, and because he was overflowing with his new-found grace. Mrs. Gilman came in wiping her face on her apron--as his mother used to do--and this touched him almost like a caress. He rose and offered her a chair, which she accepted, highly flattered. "It must seem warm to you down here, Captain?" she remarked, as she took a seat beside him. "It does. I wouldn't need to suffer it if you were doing business in Cripple. I can't leave go your Johnny-cake and pie; 'tis the kind that mother didn't make--for she was Irish." "I've thought of going up there," she replied, matter-of-factly, "but I can't stand the altitude, I'm afraid--and then down here we have my son's little ranch to furnish us eggs and vegetables." "That's an advantage," he admitted; "but on the peak no one expects vegetables--it's still a matter of ham and eggs." "Is that so?" she asked, concernedly. "'Tis indeed. I live at the Palace Hotel, and I know. However, 'tis not of that I intended to speak, Mrs. Gilman. I'm distressed to see you working so hard this warm weather. You need a rest--a vacation, I'm thinkin'." "You're mighty neighborly, Captain, to say so, but I don't see any way of taking it." "Furthermore, your daughter is too fine to be clerkin' here day by day. She should be in a home of her own." "She ought to be in school," sighed the mother, "but I don't see my way to hiring anybody to fill her place--it would take a man to do her work." "It would so. She's a rare little business woman. Let me see, how old is she?" "Eighteen next November." "She seems like a woman of twenty." "I couldn't run for a week without her," answered the mother, rolling down her sleeves in acknowledgment that they had entered upon a real conversation. "She's a little queen," declared Haney. It was very hot and the flies were buzzing about, but the big gambler had no mind to these discomforts, so intent was he upon bringing his proposal before the mother. Straightened in his chair and fixing a keen glance upon her face, he began his attack. "'Tis folly to allow anything to trouble you, my dear woman--if anny debt presses, let me know, and I'll lift it for ye." The weary mother felt the sincerity of his offer, and replied, with much feeling: "You're mighty good, Captain Haney, but we're more than holding our own, and another year will see the ranch clear. I'm just as much obliged to you, though; you're a true friend." "But I don't like to think of you here for another year--and Bertie should not stand here another day with every Tom, Dick, and Harry passin' their blarney with her. She's fitter to be mistress of a big house of her own, an' 'tis that I've the mind to give her; and I can, for I'm no longer on the ragged edge. I own two of the best mines on the hill, and I want her to share me good-fortune with me." Mrs. Gilman, worn out as she was, was still quick where her daughter's welfare was concerned, and she looked at the big man with wonder and inquiry, and a certain accusation in her glance. "What do you mean, Captain?" The big gambler was at last face to face with his decision, and with but a moment's hesitation replied, "As my wife, I mean, of course." She sank back in her chair and looked at him with eyes of consternation. "Why, Captain Haney! Do you really mean that?" "I do!" He had a feeling at the moment that he had always been honorable in his intentions. "But--but--you're so old--I mean so much older--" "I know I am, and I'm rough. I don't deny that. I'm forty, but then I'm what they call well preserved," he smiled, winningly, "and I'll soon have an income of wan hundred thousand dollars a year." This turned the current of her emotion--she gasped. "One hundred thousand dollars!" He held up a warning hand. "Sh! now that's between us. There are those younger than I, 'tis true, but there is a kind of saving grace in money. I can take you all out of this daily tile like winkin'--all you need to do is to say the wan word and we'll have a house in Colorado Springs or Denver--or even in New York. For what did you think I left me business on the busiest day of every week? It was to see your sweet daughter, and I came this time to ask her to go back with me." "What did she say?" "She has not said. We had no time to talk. What I propose now is that we take a drive out to the ranch and talk it over. Williams will fill her place here. In fact, the house is mine. I bought it this morning." The poor woman sat like one in a stupor, comprehending little of what he said. The room seemed to be revolving. The earth had given way beneath her feet and the heavens were opening. Her first sensation was one of terror. She feared a man of such power--a man who could in a single moment, by a wave of his hand, upset her entire world. His enormous wealth dazzled her even while she doubted it. How could it be true while he sat there talking to her--and she in her apron and her hair in disorder? She rose hurriedly with instinct to make herself presentable enough to carry on this conversation. As she stood weakly, she apologized incoherently. "Captain, I appreciate your kindness--you've always been a good customer--one I liked to do for--but I'm all upset--I can't get my wits--" "No hurry, madam," he said, with a generous intent. "To-morrow is coming. Don't hurry at all--at all." She hurried out, leaving him alone--with the clock, the cat, and the hostler, who was spraying the sidewalk under the cotton-wood-trees. Quivering with fear of the girl's refusal, the gambler rose and went out into the sunsmit streets to commune with this new-found self. Life was no longer simple for Mrs. Gilman. It was, indeed, filled with a wind of terror. Haney's promise of relief from want was very sweet, yet disturbingly empty, like the joy of dreams, and yet his words took her breath--clouded her judgment, befogged her insight. She went back to the dining-room, where her daughter sat eating dinner, with a numbness in her limbs and a sense of dizziness in her brain, and dropping into a chair at the table gasped out: "Do you know--what Captain Haney just said to me?" "Not being a mind-reader, I don't," replied the girl, calmly, though she was moved by her mother's white, awed face. "He wants you!" Bertha flushed and braced both hands against the table as she replied, "Well, he can't have me!" With the opposition in her daughter's tone, Mrs. Gilman was suddenly moved to argue. "Think what it means, Bertie! He's rich. Did you know that? He owns two mines." "I know he is a gambler and runs two saloons. You see, the boys keep me posted, and I'm not marrying a gambler--not this summer," she ended, decisively. "But he's going to give that up, he says." He hadn't said this, but she was sure he would. "His income is a hundred thousand dollars a year. Think of that!" "I don't want to think of it," the girl answered, frowning slightly. "It makes my head ache. Nobody has a right to so much money. How did he get it?" "Out of his mine--and oh, Bertie, he says if you'll speak the word we needn't do another day's work in this hot, greasy old place! The house is his, anyway. Did you know that?" Bertha eyed her mother closely--with cool, bright, accusing eyes--for a moment, then she softened. "Poor old mammy, it's pretty tough lines on you--no two ways about that. You've got the heavy end of the job. I'd marry most anybody to give you a rest--but, mother, Captain Haney is forty, if he's a day, and he's a hard citizen. He has been a gambler all his life. You can't expect me to marry a sport like him. And then there's Ed." The mother's face changed. "A barber!" she exclaimed, scornfully. "Yes, he's a barber now, but he's going to make a break soon and get into something else." "Don't bank on Ed, Bertie; he'll never be anything more than he is now. No man ever got anywhere who started in as a barber." "Would you rather I married a gambler and a sure-shot? They tell me Haney has killed his man." "That may be all talk. Well, anyhow, he wants to see you and talk it over; and oh, Bertie, it does seem a wonderful chance--and my heart's so bad to-day it seems as though I couldn't see to another meal! I don't want you to marry him if you don't want to--I'm not asking you to. You know I'm not. But he is a noble-looking man--and I get awfully discouraged sometimes. It scares me to think of dying and leaving you without any security." One of the waiters, half-dead with curiosity, was edging near, under pretense of brushing the table, and so the mistress rose and took up the burdens of her stewardship. "But we'll talk it over to-night. Don't be hasty." "I won't," replied the girl. She was by no means as unmoved as she gave out. She had always admired and liked Captain Haney, though he never moved her in the same way that the young barber did (for Ed Winchell had youth as well as comeliness, and there is a divine suppleness in youth), yet he had been a welcome guest. "A hundred thousand dollars a year! And yet he's been coming to our little hotel for a year--to see me!" This consideration was the one that moved her most. All the bland words, the jocular phrases of his singular wooing came back to her now, weighted with deep significance. She had called it "joshing," and had put it all aside, just as she had parried the rude jests of the brakemen of her acquaintance. Now she saw that he had been in earnest. She was wise beyond her years, this calm-faced, keen-eyed girl, trained by adversity to take care of herself. She knew instinctively that she lived surrounded by wolves, and, much as she admired the big frame and bold profile of Captain Haney, she had placed him among her enemies. His coming always pleased her but at the same time put her upon the defensive. Strange to say, she enjoyed her position there in her battered little hotel. "If it weren't for poor old mother--" She arrested herself and went back to the counter with a certain timidity, a self-consciousness new to her, fearing to face the gambler now that she knew his intent was honorable. The room was empty, all the men having gone out upon the walk to escape the heat, and she took her seat behind her desk and gave herself up to a consideration of the life to which the possession of so much wealth would introduce her. She could have unlimited new gowns, she could travel, and she could rescue her mother from drudgery and worry. These things she could discern--but of the larger life which money could open to her she could only vaguely dream. The first effect of marrying Marshall Haney would be to cut short her life in Sibley; the second, the establishment of a home in the great camps about them. As she looked around the dingy room buzzing with flies, she experienced a premonitory pang of the pain she would suffer in going out of its doors forever. When Haney came back an hour later, he read in the cold, serious look she gave him a warning, therefore he spoke but a few words on commonplace subjects, and returned to his seat on the walk to await a change in her mood. This meekness on the part of a powerful man moved the girl, and a little later she went to the doorway and said to the crowd generally, "It's a wonder some fellow wouldn't open a cantaloupe or something." Haney put his finger to his mouth and whistled to the grocer opposite. He came on the run, alert for trade. "Roll up a couple of big melons," called Haney, largely. "We're all drying to cinders over here." The loafers cheered, but the girl said, in a lower voice, "I was only joking." "What you say goes," he replied, with significance. She did not stay to see the melons cut, but went back to her desk, and he brought a choice slice in to her. She took it, but she said, "You mustn't think you own me--not yet." Her tone was resentful. "I don't want you to say things like that--before people." "Like what?" he asked. She did not answer. He went on: "I don't mean to assume anything, God knows. I'm only waitin' and hopin'. I'll go away if you want me to and let you think it over alone." "I wish you would," she said, realizing that this committed her to at least a consideration of his proposal. He held out his hand. "Good-bye--till next Saturday." She put her small, brown hand in his. He crushed it hard and his bold face softened. "I need you, my girl. Sure I do!" And in his eyes was something very winning. CHAPTER II MARSHALL HANEY CHANGES HEART It was well for Haney that Bertie did not see him as he sat above his gambling boards, watchful, keen-eyed, grim of visage, for she would have trembled in fear of him. "Haney's" was both saloon and gambling hall. In the front, on the right, ran the long bar with its shining brass and polished mahogany (he prided himself on having the best bar west of Denver), and in the rear, occupying both sides of the room, stood two long rows of faro and roulette outfits, together with card-tables and dice-boards. It was the largest and most prosperous gambling hall in the camps, and always of an evening was crowded with gamesters and those who came as lookers-on. On the right side, in a raised seat about midway of the hall, Haney usually sat, a handsome figure, in broad white hat, immaculate linen, and well-cut frock-coat, his face as pale as that of a priest in the glare of the big electric light. On the other side, and directly opposite, Williams kept corresponding "lookout" over the dealers and the crowd. He was a bold man who attempted any shenanigan with Mart Haney, and the games of his halls were reported honest. To think of a young and innocent girl married to this remorseless gambler, scarred with the gun and the knife, was a profanation of maidenhood--and yet, as he fell now and then into a dream, he took on a kind of savage beauty which might allure and destroy a woman. Whatever else he was, he was neither commonplace nor mean. The visitors to whom he was pointed out as "a type of our modern Western desperado" invariably acknowledged that he looked the part. His smile was of singular sweetness--all the more alluring because of its rarity--and the warm clasp of his big, soft hand had made him sheriff in San Juan County, and his bravery and his love of fair play were well known and admired among the miners. The sombre look in his face, which resembled that of a dreaming leopard, was due to the new and secret plans with which his mind was now engaged. "If she takes me, I quit this business," he had promised himself. "She despises me in it, and so does the mother, and so I reckon 'tis up to me to clean house." Then he thought of his own mother, who had the same prejudice, and who would not have taken a cent of his earnings. "I see no harm in the business," he said. "Men will drink and they will gamble, and I might as well serve their wish as any other--better, indeed, for no man can accuse me of dark ways nor complain of the order of me house. I am a business man the same as him that runs a grocery store; but 'tis no matter, she dislikes it, and that ends it. She's a clear-headed wan," he thought, with a glow of admiration for her. "She's the captain." He no longer thought of her as his victim--as something to be ruthlessly enjoyed--he trembled before her, big and brave and relentless as he was in the world of men. "What has come over me?" he asked himself. "Sure she has me on me knees--the witch. Me mind is filled with her." All through the week his agents were at work attempting to sell his saloons. "I'm ready to close out at a moment's notice," he declared. At times, as he sat in his place, he lost consciousness of the crowding, rough-hatted, intent men and the monotonous calls of the dealers. The click of balls, the buzz of low-toned comment died out of his ears--he was back in Troy, looking for his father, whom he had not seen or written to in twenty years. He saw himself, with a dainty little woman on his arm, taking the boat to New York. "I will go to the biggest hotel in the city; the girl shall have the best the old town has. Nothing will be too good for her--" He roused himself to a touch on his elbow. One of his agents had a new offer for the two saloons. It was still less than he considered the business worth, but in his softened mood he said, "It goes!" "Make out your papers," replied the other man, with almost equal brevity. During the rest of the evening the gambler sat above his lay-out with mingled feelings of relief and regret. After all, he was in command here. He knew this business, and he loved the companionship and the admiration of the men who dropped round by his side to discuss the camp or the weather, or to invite him to join a hunting trip. He felt himself to be one of the chief men of the town, and that he could at any time become their Representative if he chose. For some years (he couldn't have told why) he had taken on a thrift unknown to him before, and had been attending strictly to business. He now saw that it must have been from a foreknowledge of Bertha. In him the superstitions of both miner and gambler mingled. The cards had run against him for three years, now they were falling in his favor. "I will take advantage of them," he declared. Slowly the crowd thinned out, and at one o'clock only a few inveterate poker-players and one or two young fellows who were still "bucking" the roulette wheel remained and, calling one of his men to take charge, Haney nodded to Williams and they went out on the street. As he reached the cold, crisp, deliciously rarefied air outside, he took off his hat and involuntarily looked up at the stars blazing thick in the deep-blue midnight sky. With solemn voice he said to his partner: "Well, 'Spot,' right here Mart Haney's saloon business ends. We're all in." Williams felt that his partner was acting rashly. "Oh, I wouldn't say that! You may get into it again." "No--the little girl and her mother won't stand for it, and, besides, what's the use? I don't need to do it, and if I'm ever going to see the world now is my chance. I'm goin' back East to discover how many brothers and sisters I have livin'. The old father is dodderin 'round somewheres back there. I'll surprise him, too. Now, have those papers all made out ready to sign by eleven o'clock to-morrow. I'm goin' down the valley on the noon train." "All right, Mart, but you're makin' a mistake." "Never you mind, me bucko. 'Tis me own game, and the mines will take all the gray matter you can spare." As the big man was walking away towards his hotel a woman met him. "Hello, Mart!" "Hello, Mag; what's doing?" She was humped and bedraggled, and her face looked white in the moonlight. "Nothing. Stake a fellow to a hot soup, won't you?" "Sure thing, Mag." He handed her a five-dollar gold piece. "Is it as bad as that? What's t' old man doin' these days?" "Servin' time," she answered, bitterly. "Oh, so he is!" replied Haney, hastily. "I'd forgotten. Well, take care o' yourself," he added, genially, walking on in instant forgetfulness of the woman's misery, for his mind was turned upon the talk which his younger brother Charley had given him not long before in Denver. It was not a cheerful conversation, for Charley flippantly confessed that he didn't hold any family reunions, and that all he knew of his brothers he gained by chance. "They're all great boozers," he said, in summing them up. "Tim is a ward heeler in Buffalo--came to see me at the stage-door loaded to the gunnels. Tom is a greasy, three-fingered brakeman on the Central. Fannie married a carpenter and has about seventeen young ones. Mary died, you know?" "No, I didn't know." "Yes, died about four years ago. She was like mother--a nice girl. Dad sent me a paper with a notice of her death. He never writes, but now and then, when Tim has a fight or Tom gets drunk and slips into the criminal column, I hear of them." Charles did not say so, but Mart knew that he was lumped among the other poverty-stricken, worthless members of the family. He did not at the time undeceive his brother, but now that he was no longer a gambler and saloon-keeper, now that he was rich, he resolved not only to let his father know of his good-fortune and his change of life, but also (and this was due to Bertie's influence) he earnestly desired to help his family out of their mire. "We had good stuff in us," he said, "but we went wrong after the mother left us." As he walked on down the street a strange radiance came into the world. The distant peaks of the Sangre de Cristo range rose in dim and shadowy majesty to the south, and, wondering, astonished at the emotion stirring in his heart, the regenerated desperado turned to see the moon lifting above the crown of the great peak to the east. For the first time in many years his heart was filled with a sense of the beauty of the world. CHAPTER III BERTHA YIELDS TO TEMPTATION Bertie looked older and graver when Haney entered the Eagle Hotel, and his heart expanded with a tenderness that was partly paternal. She seemed so young and looked so pale and troubled. She greeted him unsmilingly and calmly handed him the pen with which to register. "How are you all?" he asked, with genuine concern. "Pretty bum. Mother gave out this week. It's the heat, I guess. Hottest weather we've had since I came to town." "Why didn't you let me know?" She avoided his question. "We're too low here at Junction. Mother ought to go a couple of thousand feet higher. She needs rest and a change. I've sent her out to the ranch." "You're not running the house alone?" "Why, cert!--that is, except my brother's wife is taking mother's place in the kitchen. I'm runnin' the rest of it just as I've been doin' for three years." He looked his admiration before he uttered it. "You're a wonder!" "Don't you think it! How does it happen you're down to-day? You said Saturday." "I've sold out--signed the deeds to-day. I'm out of the liquor trade forever." She nodded gravely. "I'm glad of that. I don't like the business--not a little bit." He took this as an encouragement. "I knew you didn't. Well, I'm neither saloon-keeper nor gambler from this day. I'm a miner and a capitalist--and all I have is yours," he added, in a lover's voice, bending a keen glance upon her. The girl was standing very straight behind her desk, and her face did not change, but her eyes shifted before his gaze. "You'd better go in to supper while the biscuit are hot," she advised, coolly. He had tact enough to take his dismissal without another word or glance, and after he had gone she still stood there in the same rigid pose, but her face was softer and clouded with serious meditation. It was wonderful to think of this rich and powerful man changing his whole life for her. Winchell, the young barber, came in hurriedly, his face full of accusation and alarm. "Was that Haney who just came in?" he asked, truculently. "Yes, he's at supper--want to see him?" "See him? No! And I don't want _you_ to see him! He's too free with you, Bert; I don't like it." She smiled a little, curious smile. "Don't mix it up with _him_, Ed--I'd hate to see your remains afterwards." "Bert, see here! You've been funny with me lately." (By funny he meant unaccountable.) "And your mother has been hinting things at me--and now here is Haney leaving his business to come down the middle of the week. What's the meaning of it?" "It isn't the middle of the week. It's Friday," she corrected him. He went on: "I know what he keeps coming to see you for, but for God's sake don't you think of marrying an old tout and gambler like him." "He isn't old, and he isn't a gambler any more," she significantly retorted. "What do you mean?" "He's sold out--clean as a whistle." "Don't you believe it! It's a trick to get you to think better of him. Bert, don't you dare to go back on me," he cried out, warningly--"don't you dare!" The girl suddenly ceased smiling, and asserted herself. "See here, Ed, you'd better not try to boss me. I won't stand for it. What license have you got to pop in here every few minutes and tell me what's what? You 'tend to your business and you'll get ahead faster." He stammered with rage and pain. "If you throw me down--fer that--old tout, I'll kill you both." The girl looked at him in silence for a long time, and into her brain came a new, swift, and revealing concept of his essential littleness and weakness. His beauty lost its charm, and a kind of disgust rose in her throat as she slowly said, with cutting scorn: "If you really meant that!--but you don't, you're only talking to hear yourself talk. Now you shut up and run away. This is no place for chewing the rag, anyway--this is my busy day." For a moment the man's face expressed the rage of a wild-cat and his hands clinched. "Don't you do it--that's all!" he finally snarled. "You'll wish you hadn't." "Run away, little boy," she said, irritably. "You make me tired. I don't feel like being badgered by anybody, and, besides, I'm not mortgaged to anybody just yet." His mood changed. "Bertie, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be fresh. But don't talk to me that way, it uses me all up." "Well, then, stop puffing and blowing. I've troubles of my own, with mother sick and a new cook in the kitchen." "Excuse me, Bert; I'll never do it again." "That's all right." "But it riled me like the devil to think--" he began again. "Don't think," she curtly interrupted; "cut hair." Perceiving that she was in evil mood for his plea, he turned away so sadly that the girl relented a little and called out: "Say, Ed!" He turned and came back. "See here! I didn't intend to hurt your feelings, but this is one of my touchy days, and you got on the wrong side of me. I'm sorry. Here's my hand--now shake, and run." His face lightened, and he smiled, displaying his fine, white teeth. "You're a world-beater, sure thing, and I'm going to get you yet!" "Cut it out!" she slangily retorted, sharply, withdrawing her hand. "You'll see!" he shouted, laughing back at her, full of hope again. She was equally curt with two or three others who brazenly tried to buy a smile with their cigars. "Do business, boys; this is my day to sell goods," she said, and they took the hint. When Haney came out from his supper, he stepped quietly in behind the counter and said: "I'll take your place. Get your grub. Then put on your hat and we'll drive out to see how the mother is." The girl acknowledged a sense of relief as she left him in charge and went to her seat in the far corner of the dining-room--a relief and a dangerous relaxation. It was, after all, a pleasure to feel that a strong, sure hand was out-stretched in sympathy--and she was tired. Even as she sat waiting for her tea the collapse came, and bowing her head to her hands she shook with silent sobs. The waitresses stared, and young Mrs. Gilman came hurrying. "What's the matter, Bertie; are you sick?" "Oh no--but I'm worried--about mother." "You haven't heard anything--?" "No, but she looked so old and so worn when she went away. She ought to have quit here a month ago." "Well, I wouldn't worry. It's cooler out to the ranch, and the air is so pure she'll pick up right away--you'll see." "I hope so, but she ought to take it easy the rest of her days. She's done work enough--and I'm kind o' discouraged myself." Slowly she recovered her self-possession. She drank her tea in abstracted silence, and at last she said: "I'm going out there, Cassie; you'll have to look after things. I'll get some of the boys to 'tend the office." "You're not going alone?" "No, Mart Haney is going to drive me." "Oh!" There was a look of surprise and consternation in the face of the young wife, but she only asked, "You'll be back to-night?" "Yes, if mother is no worse." Haney had the smartest "rig" in town waiting for her as she came out, but as he looked at her white dress and pretty hat of flowers and tulle he apologized for its shortcomings--"'Tis lined with cream-colored satin it _should_ be." She colored a little at this, but quickly replied: "Blarney. Anybody'd know you were an Irishman." "I am, and proud of it." "I want to take the doctor out to see mother." "Not in this rig," he protested. She smiled. "Why not? No, but I want to go round to his office and leave a call." "I'll go round the world fer you," he replied. The air was deliciously cool and fragrant now that the sun was sinking, and the town was astir with people. It was the social hour when the heat and toil of the day were over, and all had leisure to turn wondering eyes upon Haney and his companion. The girl felt her position keenly. She was aware that a single appearance of this kind was equivalent to an engagement in the minds of her acquaintances, but as she shyly glanced at her lover's handsome face, and watched his powerful and skilled hands upon the reins, her pride in him grew. She acknowledged his kindness, and was tired and ready to lean upon his strength. "When did your mother quit?" he asked, after they had left the town behind. "Sunday night. You see, we had a big rush all day, and on top of that, about twelve o'clock, an alarm of fire next door. So she got no sleep. Monday morning she didn't get up, Tuesday she dressed but was too miserable to work, so finally I just packed her off to the ranch." "That was right--only you should have sent for me." She was silent, and her heart began to beat with a knowledge of the demand he was about to make. She felt weak and unprotected here--in the office they were on more equal terms--but she enjoyed in a subconscious way the swift rush of the horses, the splendor of the sunset, and the quiet authority in his voice--even as she lifted eyes to the mesa towards which they were driving he began to speak. "You know my mind, little girl. I don't mean to ask you till to-morrow--that's the day set--but I want to say that I've been cleaning house all the week, thinkin' of you. I'm to be a leading citizen from this day on. You won't need to apologize for me. I've never been a drinking man, but I have been a reckless devil. I don't deny that I've planted a wide field of wild oats. However, all that I put away from this hour. 'Tis true I'm forty, but that's not old--I'm no older than I was at twenty-one, sure--and, besides, you're young enough to make up." He smiled, and again she acknowledged the charm of his face when he smiled. "You'll see me grow younger whilst you grow older, and so wan day we'll be of an age." Her customary readiness of reply had left her, and she still sat in silence, a sob in her throat, a curious numbness in her limbs. He seemed to feel that she did not wish to talk. "If you come into partnership with me you need never worry about the question of bread or rent or clothes, and that's worth considerin'--Which road now?" She silently pointed to the left, and they drew near the foot of the great mesa whose level top was cutting the sun in half. The miner was filled with grateful homage. "'Tis a great world!" he exclaimed, softly. "Sure, 'tis only yesterday that I found it out, and lifting me head took a look at the hills and the stars for the first time in twenty years. 'Tis a new road I'm enterin'--whether you come to me or not." All this was wonderful to the girl. Could it be that she was capable of changing the life of a powerful man like this? It filled her with a sense of duty as well as exaltation, an emotion that made a woman of her. She seemed suddenly to have put the hotel and all its worriments far, far behind her. Seized by an impulse to acquaint her with his family, Haney began to tell about his father and his attempts to govern his five sons. "We were devils," he admitted--"broncos, if ever such walked on two legs. We wouldn't go to school--not wan of us except Charley; he did pretty well--and we fished and played ball and went to the circus--" He chuckled. "I left home the first time with a circus. I wanted to be a lion-tamer, but had to content meself with driving the cook wagon. Then I struck West, and I've never been back and I've never seen the old man since, but now I've made me pile, I think I'll go home and hunt him up and buy him new spectacles; it's ace to the three-spot he's using the same horn-rimmed ones he wore when I left." Bertha was interested. "How long did you stay with the circus?" "Not very long. I got homesick and went back, but the next time I left, I left for fair. I've been everywhere but East since. I've been in Colorado mostly. 'Tis a good State." "I like it--but I'd like to see the rest of the country." "You can. If you join hands with me we'll go round the ball together." She did not follow this lead. "I've been to Denver once--went on one of these excursion tickets." "How did you like it there?" "Pretty good; but I got awful tired, and the grub at the hotel was the worst ever--it was a cheap place, of course. Didn't dare to look in the door of the big places." "You can have a whole soot of rooms at the Royal Flush--if you will." Again she turned away. "I can't imagine anybody rich enough to live at such hotels--There's our ranch." "Shy as a coyote, ain't it?" he commented, as he looked where she pointed. "I'd prefer the Eagle House to that." "I love it out here," she said. "I helped plant the trees." "Did you? Then I want the place. I want everything your pretty hands planted." "Oh, rats!" was her reproving comment, and it made him laugh at his own sentimental speech. The ranch house stood at the foot of the mesa near a creek that came out of a narrow gorge and struck out upon the flat valley. It was a little house--a shack merely, surrounded by a few out-buildings, all looking as temporary as an Indian encampment, but there were trees--thriftily green--and some stacks of grain to testify to the energy and good husbandry of the owner. Mrs. Gilman was lying in a corner room, close to the stream which rippled through the little orchard, and its gentle murmur had been a comfort to her--it carried her back to her home in Oxford County (State of Maine), where her early girlhood had been spent. At times it seemed that she was in the little, old, gray house in the valley, and that her father's sharp voice might come at any moment to break her delicious drowse. Her breakdown had been caused as much by her mental turmoil as by her overtaxing duties. She was confronted by a mighty temptation (through her daughter) at a time when she was too weak and too ill to carry forward her ordinary duties. To urge this marriage upon Bertha would be to bring it about. That she knew, for the girl had said, "I'll do it if you say so, mother." "I don't want you to do it if you'd rather not," had been her weak answer. Bertie entered quietly, in a singularly mature, almost manly way, and bending to her mother, asked cordially, "Well, how are you to-day?" The sick woman took her daughter's hand and drew it to her tear-wet cheek. "Oh, my baby! I can't bear to leave you now." "Don't talk that way, mother. You're not going to leave me. The doctor is coming out to see you, and everything is going all right at the house, so don't you worry. You set to work to get well. That's your little stunt. I'll look after the rest of it." Bertie had never been one to bestow caresses, even on her parents, and her only sign of deep feeling now lay in the tremble of her voice. She drew her hand away, and putting her arm about her mother's neck patted her cheek. "Cassie's doing well," she said, abruptly, "and the girls are fine. They brace right up to the situation, and--and everybody's nice to us. I reckon a dozen of the church ladies called yesterday to ask how you were--and Captain Haney came down to-day on purpose to find out how things were going." The sufferer's eyes opened wide. "Bert, he's with you!" "Yes, he drove me out here," answered the girl, quietly. "He's come for an answer to his proposition. It's up to us to decide right now." The mother broke into a whimper. "Oh, darling, I don't know what to think. I'm afraid to leave this to you--it's an awful temptation to a girl. I guess I've decided against it. He ain't the kind of man you ought to marry." She hushed her mother's wail. "Sh! He'll hear you," she said, solemnly. "There are lots o' worse men than Mart Haney." "But he's so old--for you." "He's no boy, that's true, but we went all over that. The new fact in the case is this: he's sold out up there--cleared out his saloon business--and all for _me_. Think o' that--and I hadn't given him a word of encouragement, either! Now that speaks well for him, don't you think?" The mother nodded. "Yes, it surely does, but then--" The girl went on: "Well, now, it ain't as though I hated him, for I don't--I like him, I've always liked him. He's the handsomest man I know, and he's treated me right from the very start. He didn't come down to hurry me or crowd me at all, so he says. Well, I told him I wouldn't answer yet awhile--time isn't really up till to-morrow. I can take another week if I want to." The mother lay in silence for a few moments, and then with closed eyes, streaming with hot tears, she again prayed silently to God to guide her girl in the right path. When she opened her eyes the tall form of Marshall Haney towered over her, so handsome, so full of quiet power that he seemed capable of anything. His face was strangely sweet as he said: "You must not fret about anything another minute. You've but to lie quiet and get strong." He put his broad, soft, warm, and muscular hand down upon her two folded ones, and added: "Let me do fer ye as I would fer me own mother. 'Twill not commit ye to a thing." He seemed to understand her mood--perhaps he had overheard her plea. "I'm not asking a decision till you are well, but I wish you would trust me now--I could do so much more fer you and the girl. Here's the doctor, so put the whole thing by for the present. I ask nothing till you are well." If this was policy on his part it was successful; for the poor tortured mother's heart was touched and her nerves soothed by his voice, as well as by the touch of his hand, and when they left the house she was in peaceful sleep, and the doctor's report was reassuring. "But she must have rest," he said, positively, "and freedom from care." "She shall have it," said Haney, with equal decision. This bluff kindness, joined to the allurement of his powerful form, profoundly affected the girl. Her heart went out towards him in admiration and trust, and as they were on the way home she turned suddenly to him, and said: "You're good to me--and you were good to mother; you needn't wait till to-morrow for my answer. I'll do as you want me to--some time--not now--next spring, maybe." He put his arm about her and kissed her, his eyes dim with a new and softening emotion. "You've made Mart Haney over new--so you have! As sure as God lets me live, I'll make you happy. You shall live like a queen." CHAPTER IV HANEY MEETS AN AVENGER Haney took the train back to his mountain town in a mood which made him regard his action as that of a stranger. Whenever he recalled Bertha's trusting clasp of his hand he felt like removing his hat--the stir of his heart was close akin to religious reverence. "Faith, an' she's taking a big risk," he said. "But I'll not see her lose out," he added, with a return of the gambler's phrase. "She has stacked her chips on the right spot this time." With all his brute force, his clouded sense of justice, this gambler, this saloon-man, was not without qualifying characteristics. He was a Celt, and in almost every Celt there is hidden a poet. Quick to wrath, quick to jest and fierce in his loves was he, as is the typical Irishman whom England has not yet succeeded in changing to her own type. Moreover, he was an American as well as a Celt (and the American is the most sentimental of men--it is said); and now that he had been surprised into honorable matrimony he began to arrange his affairs for his wife's pleasure and glory. The words in which she had accepted him lingered in his ears like phrases of a little hesitating song. For her he had sold his gambling halls, for her he was willing at the moment to abandon the associates of a lifetime. He was sitting in the car dreamily smoking, his hat drawn low over his brows, when an acquaintance passing through the car stopped with a word of greeting. Ordinarily Haney would have been glad of his company, but he made a place for him at this time with grudging slowness. "How are ye, Slater? Set ye down." "I hear you've sold your saloons," Slater began, as he settled into place. Haney nodded, without smiling. His neighbor grinned. "You don't seem very sociable to-day, Mart?" "I'm not," Haney replied, bluntly. "I just dropped down beside you to say that young Wilkinson went broke in your place last night and has it in for you. He's plum fuzzy with drink, and you better look sharp or he'll do you. He's been on the rampage for two days--crazy as a loon." "Why does he go after me?" Haney asked, irritably. "I'm out of it. 'Tis like the fool tenderfoot. Don't he know I had nothing to do with his bust-up?" "He don't seem to--or else he's so locoed he's forgot it. All I know is he's full of some pizen notion against you, and I thought I'd put you on your guard." They talked on about this a few minutes, and then Slater rose, leaving Haney to himself. But his tender mood was gone. His brow was knit. He began to understand that a man could not run a bad business for twenty years, and then at a day's notice clear himself of all its trailing evil consequences. "I'll vamoose," he said to himself, with resolution. "I'll put me mines in order, and go down into the valley and take the girl with me--God bless her! We'll take a little turn as far as New York. I'll put long miles between the two of us and all this sporting record of mine. She don't like it, and I'll quit it. I'll begin a new life entirely." And a glow of new-found virtue filled his heart. Of Wilkinson he had no fear--only disgust. "Why should the fool pursue me?" he repeated. "He took his chances and lost out. If he weren't a 'farmer' he'd drop it." He ate his supper at the hotel in the same abstraction, and then, still grave with plans for his new career, went out into the street to find Williams, his partner. It was inevitable that he should bring up at the bar of his former saloon; no other place in the town was so much like home, after all. Habit drew him to its familiar walls. He was glad to find a couple of old friends there, and they, having but just heard of the sale of his outfit, hastened to greet and congratulate him. Of his greatest good-fortune, of his highest conquest, they, of course, knew nothing, and he was not in a mood to tell them of it. The bar-room was nearly empty, for the reason that the miners had not yet finished their evening meal, and Haney and his two cronies had just taken their second round of drinks when the side door was burst violently open, and a man, white and wild, with a double-barrelled shotgun in his hand, abruptly entered. Darting across the floor, he thrust the muzzle of his weapon almost against Haney's breast and fired, uttering a wild curse at the moment of recoil. The tall gambler reeled under the shock, swinging half way about, his hands clutching at the railing, a look of anguish and surprise upon his face. The assassin, intent, alert, would have fired again had not a by-stander felled him to the floor. The room filled instantly with excited men eager to strike, vociferous with hate; but Haney, with one palm pressed to his breast, stood silent--curiously silent--his lips white with his effort at self-control. At length two of his friends seized him, tenderly asking: "How is it, old man? Are you hurt bad?" His lips moved--they listened--as he faintly whispered: "He's got me, boys. Here's where I quit." "Don't say that, Mart. You'll pull through," said his friend, chokingly. Then with ferocious impatience he yelled: "Somebody get the doctor! Damn it all, get moving! Don't you see him bleed?" Haney moved his head feebly. "Lay me down, Pete--I'm torn to pieces--I'm all in, I'm afraid. Get me little girl--that's all I ask." Very gently they took him in their arms and laid him on one of the gambling-tables in the rear room, while the resolute barkeeper pushed the crowd out. Again Haney called, impatiently, almost fiercely: "Send for Bertie--quick!" The men looked at each other in wonder, and one of them tapped his brow significantly, for no one knew of his latest love-affair. While still they stared Williams came rushing wildly in. All gave way to him, and the young doctor who followed him was greeted with low words of satisfaction. To his partner, whom he recognized, Haney repeated his command: "Send for Bertie." With a hurried scrawl Williams put down the girl's name and address on a piece of paper, and shouted: "Here! Somebody take this and rush it. Tell her to come quick as the Lord will let her." Then, with the tenderness of a brother, he bent to Haney. "How is it, Mart?" Mart did not reply. His supreme desire attended to, he sank into a patient immobility that approached stupor, while the surgeon worked with intent haste to stop the flow of blood. The wound was most barbarous, and Williams' eyes filled with tears as he looked upon that magnificent torso mangled by buckshot. He loved his big partner--Haney was indeed his highest enthusiasm, his chief object of adoration, and to see him riddled in this way was devil's work. He lost hope. "It's all over with Mart Haney," he said, chokingly, a few minutes later to the men crowding the bar-room--and then his rage against the assassin broke forth. He became the tiger seeking the blood of him who had slain his mate. His curses rose to primitive ferocity. "Where is he?" he asked. To him stepped a man--one whose voice was quiet but intense. "We've attended to his case, Williams. He's toeing the moonlight from a lamp-post. Want to see?" For an instant his rage flared out against these officious friends who had cheated him of his share in the swift delight of the avenger. Then tears again misted his eyes, and with a dignity and pathos which had never graced his speech before he pronounced a slow eulogy upon his friend: "No man had a right to accuse Mart Haney of any trick. He took his chances, fair and square. He had no play with crooked cards or 'doctored' wheels. It was all 'above board' with him. He was dead game and a sport, you all know that, and now to be ripped to bits with buckshot--just when he was takin' a wife--is hellish." His voice faltered, and in the dead silence which followed this revelation of Haney's secret he turned and re-entered the inner room, to watch beside his friend. The hush which lay over the men at the bar lasted till the barkeeper softly muttered: "Boys, that's news to me. It does make it just too tough." Then those who had hitherto opposed the lynching of the murderer changed their minds and directed new malediction against him, and those who had handled the rope took keener comfort and greater honor to themselves. "Who is the woman?" asked one of those who waited. This question remained unanswered till the messenger to the telegraph office returned. Even then little beyond her name was revealed, but each of the watchers began to pray that she might reach the dying man before his eyes should close forever. "He can't live till sunrise," said one, "and there is no train from the Junction till morning. She can't get here without a special. Did you order a special for her?" "No, I didn't think of it," the messenger replied, with a sense of shortcoming. "It must be done!" "I'll attend to that," said Slater. "I know the superintendent. I'll wire him to see her--and bring her." "Well, be quick about it. Expense don't count now." It was beautiful to see how these citizens, rough and sordid as many of them were, rose to the poetic value of the situation. As one of them, who had seen (and loved) the girl, told of her youth and beauty, they all stood in rigidly silent attention. "She's hardly more than a child," he explained, "but you never saw a more level-headed little business woman in your life. She runs the Golden Eagle Hotel at Junction, and does it alone. That's what caught Mart, you see. She's as straight as a Ute, and her eyes are clear as agates. She's a little captain--just the mate for Mart. She'll save him if anybody can." "Will she come? Can she get away?" "Of course she'll come. She'll ride an engine or jump a flat-car to get here. You can depend on a woman in such things. She don't stop to calculate, she ain't that kind. She comes--you can bet high on that. I'm only worrying for fear Mart won't hold out till she gets here." Meanwhile, every man in the room where Haney lay, sat in silence, with an air of waiting--waiting for the inevitable end. The bleeding had been checked, but the sufferer's breathing was painful and labored, and the doctor, sitting close beside him, was studying means to prolong life--he had given up hope of saving it. With stiffened lips Haney repeated now and again: "Keep me alive till she comes, doctor. She must marry me--here. I want her to have all I've got--_everything_!" At another time he said: "Get the judge--have everything ready!" They understood. He wished to dower his love with his wealth, to place in her hands his will, beyond the reach of any contestant, and this resolution through the hours of his agony, through the daze of his weakness persisted heroically--till even the doctor's throat filled with sympathetic emotion, as he thought of the young maiden soon to be thrust into this tragic drama. He answered, soothingly: "I'll do all I can, Mart. There's a lot of vitality in you yet. We won't give up. You'll pull through, with her help." To this Haney made no reply, and the hours passed with ghostly step. It was a most moving experience for the young doctor to look round that wide room littered with scattered cards, the wheels of chance motionless at the hazard where the last gambler's bet had ended. In the "lookout's chair," where Haney himself used to sit, an unseen arbiter now gloomed, watching a game where life was the forfeit. A spectral finger seemed to rest upon the blood-red spot of every board. No sound came from the drinking-saloon in front. The miners had all withdrawn. Only the barkeeper and a few personal friends kept willing vigil. About nine o'clock an answering telegram came to Slater: "Girl just leaving on special. Will make all speed possible." Haney faintly smiled when Williams read this message to him. "I knew it," he whispered, "she'll come." Then his lips set in a grim line. "And I'll be here when she comes." Thereafter he had the look of a man who hangs with hooked fingers in iron resolution above an abyss, husbanding every resource--forcing himself to think only of the blue sky above him. A little later the priest knocked at the door and asked to see the dying man, but to this request Haney shook his head and whispered. "No, no; I've no strength to waste--'tis good of him. Wait! Tell him to be here--to marry us--" And with this request the priest was forced to be content. "May the Lord God be merciful to him!" he exclaimed fervently, as he turned away. Once again, about midnight, the wounded man roused up to say: "The ceremony must be legal--I want no lawsuits after. The girl must be protected." He was thinking of his brothers, of his own kind, rapacious and selfish. Every safeguard must be thrown around his sweetheart's life. "We'll attend to that," answered Williams, who seemed able to read his partner's thoughts. "We'll take every precaution. He wants the judge to be present as well as the priest," he explained to the doctor, "so that if the girl would rather she can be married by the Court as well as by the Church." Every man in the secret realized fully that the girl was being endowed with an immense fortune, and that she would inevitably be the quarry of every self-seeking relative whose interest would be served by attacking her rights in the premises. "The lawsuits must be cut out," was Williams' order to the judge. "Mart's brothers are a wolfish lot. We don't want any loose ends for them to catch on to." From time to time messages flashed between the oncoming train and the faithful watchers. "It's all up grade, but Johnson is breaking all records. At this rate she'll reach here by daylight," said Slater. "But that's a long time for Mart to wait on that rough bed," he added to Williams, with deep sympathy in his voice. "I know that, but to move him would hasten his death. The doctor is afraid to even turn him. Besides, Mart himself won't have it. 'I'm better here,' he says. So we've propped him into the easiest position possible. There's nothing to do but wait for the girl." CHAPTER V BERTHA'S UPWARD FLIGHT Bertha was eating her supper, after a hard day's work in her little hotel, when a little yellow envelope was handed to her. The words of the message were few, but they were meaning-full: "Come at once. Mart hurt, not expected to live." It was signed by Williams. While still she sat stunned and hesitant, under the weight of this demand, another and much more explicit telegram came: "Johnson, superintendent, is ordered to fetch you with special train. Don't delay. Mart needs you--is calling for you. Come at once!" The phrase "is calling for you" reached her heart--decided her. She rose, and, with a word of explanation to her housekeeper, put on her hat, and threw a cloak over her arm. "I've got to go to Cripple. Captain Haney is sick, and I've got to go to him. I don't know when I'll be back," she said. "Get along the best you can." Her face was white but calm, and her manner deliberate. "Send word to mother that Mart is hurt, and I've gone up to see him. Tell her not to worry." To her night clerk, who had come on duty, she quietly remarked: "I reckon you'll have to look after things to-morrow. I'll try to get back the day after. If I don't, Lem Markham will take my place." While still she stood arranging the details of her business a short, dark man stepped inside the door, and very kindly and gravely explained his errand. "I'm Johnson, the division superintendent. They've telegraphed me for a special, and I'm going to take you up myself. Mart is a friend of mine," he added, with some feeling. She thanked him with a look and a quick clasp of his hand, and together they hurried into the street and down to the station, where a locomotive coupled to a single coach stood panting like a fierce animal, a cloud of spark-lit smoke rolling from its low stack. The coach was merely a short caboose; but the girl stepped into it without a moment's hesitation, and the engine took the track like a spirited horse. As the fireman got up speed the car began to rock and roll violently, and Johnson remarked to the girl: "I guess you'd better take my chair; it's bolted to the floor, and you can hang on when we go round the curves." She obeyed instantly, and with her small hands gripping the arm-rests of the rude seat cowered in silence, while the clambering monster rushed and roared over the level lands and labored up the grades, shrieking now and again, as if in mingled pain and warning. Johnson and the brakeman, for the most part, kept to the lookout in the turret, and the girl rode alone--rode far, passing swiftly from girlhood to womanhood, so full of enforced meditation were the hours of that ride. It seemed that she was leaving something sweet and care-free behind her, and it was certain that she was about to face death. She had one perfectly clear conception, and that was that the man who had been most kind to her, and to whom she had given her promise of marriage, was dying and needed her--was calling for her through the night. Burdened with responsibility from her childhood, accustomed to make her own decisions, she had responded to this prayer, knowing dimly that this journey denoted a new and portentous experience--a fundamental change in her life. She had admired and liked Haney from the first, but her feeling even yet was very like that of a boy for a man of heroic statue--her regard had very little of woman's passion in it. She was appalled and benumbed by the thought that she was soon to look upon him lying prone. That she might soon be called upon to meet those bold eyes closing in death she had been warned, and yet she did not shrink from it. The nurse, latent in every woman, rose in her, and she ached with desire of haste, longing to lay her hand upon the suffering man in some healing way. His kindness, his gentleness, during the days of his final courtship had sunk deep--his generosity had been so full, so free, so unhesitating. She thought of her mother, and as a fuller conception of the alarm and anxiety she would feel came to her, she decided to send her a telegram. "She will know it was my duty to go," she decided. "As for the hotel--what does it matter now?" Nothing seemed to matter, indeed, save the speed of her chariot. The night was long, interminably long. Once and again Johnson came down out of his perch, and spoke a few clumsy words of well-meaning encouragement, but found her unresponsive. Her brain was too busy with taking leave of old conceptions and in mastering new duties to be otherwise than vaguely grateful to her companions. Her mind was clear on one other point--this journey committed her to Marshall Haney. There could be no further hesitation. "Some time, soon, if he lives, I must marry him," she thought, and the conception troubled her with a new revelation of what that relationship might mean. She felt suddenly very small, very weak, and very helpless. "He must be good to me," she murmured. And then, as the words of his prayer to her came back, she added: "And I'll be good to him." Far and farther below her shone the lights in the little hotel, and the busy and jocund scenes of her girlish life receded swiftly. At this moment her desk and the little sitting-room where the men lounged seemed a haven of peace and plenty, and the car, rocking and plunging through the night, was like a ship rising and falling on wild seas under unknown stars. * * * * * The clear light of the mountain dawn was burnishing brass into gold as the locomotive with its tolling bell slid up the level track at the end of its run, and came to a stealthy halt beside the small station. "Here we are!" called Johnson from his turret, and Bertha rose, stiff and sore with the long night's ride, her resolution cooled to a kind of passive endurance. "I'm ready!" she called back. Williams met her at the step. "It's all right, sis. Mart's still here--and waiting for you." Instantly, at sight of his ugly, familiar, friendly face, she became alert, clear-brained. "How is he?" "Pretty bad." "What's it all about? How did it happen?" "I'll clear that up as we go," he replied, and led the way to a carriage. Once inside, she turned her keen gaze upon him. "Now go ahead--straight." He did so in the blunt terms of a man whose life had been always on the border, and who has no nice shading in act or word. "Is he dying?" she asked at the first pause. "I'm afraid he is, sister," he replied, gently. "That's what's made the night seem long to us; but you're here and it's all right now." That she was to look on him dying had been persistently in her mind, but that she was to see him mangled by an assassin added horror to her dread. In spite of her intrepid manner, she was still girl enough to shudder at the sight of blood. Williams went on. "He's weak, too weak to talk much, and so I'm going to tell you what he wants. He wants you to marry him before he dies." The girl drew away. "Not this minute--to-night?" "Yes; he wants to give you legal rights to all he has, and you've got to do it quick. No tellin' what may happen." His voice choked as he said this. Bertha's blood chilled with dismay. Her throat filled and her bosom swelled with the effort she made at self-control, and Williams, watching her with bright eyes of admiration, hurried on to the end. "Everything is ready. There is a priest, if you want him, and Judge Brady with a civil ceremony, if that will please you better, or we'll get a Protestant minister; it's for you to say. Only the knot must be tied good and tight. I told the boys you'd take a priest for Mart's sake. He says: 'Make it water-proof.' He means so that no will-breaking brothers or cousins can stack the cards agin you. And now it's up to you, little sister. He has only a few hours anyway, and I don't see that you can refuse, specially as it makes his dying--" He stopped there. The street was silent as they drew up to the saloon door, and only Slater and one or two of his friends were present when Bertha walked into the bar-room, erect as a boy, her calm, sweet face ashen white in the electric light. For an instant; she stood there in the middle of the floor alone, her big dark eyes searching every face. Then Judge Brady, a kindly, gray-haired man, advanced, and took her hand. "We're very glad to see you," he gravely said, introducing himself. Williams, who had entered the inner room, returned instantly to say: "Come, he's waiting." Without a word the bride entered the presence of her groom, and the doctor, bending low to the gambler, said: "Be careful now, Mart. Don't try to rise. Be perfectly still. Bertie has come." Haney turned with a smile--a tender, humorous smile--and whispered: "Bertie, acushla mavourneen, come to me!" Then the watchers withdrew, leaving them alone, and the girl, bending above him, kissed him. "Oh, Captain, can't I do something? I _must_ do something." "Yes, darlin', ye can. You can marry me this minute, and ye shall. I'm dyin', girl--so the doctor says. I don't feel it that way; but, anyhow, we take no chances. All I have is for you, and so--" She put her hand ever his lips. "You must be quiet. I understand, and I will do it--but only to make you well." She turned to the door, and her voice was clear as she said to those who waited: "I am ready." "Will you have Father Kearney?" asked Williams. She turned towards Haney. "Just as he says." The stricken miner, ghastly with the pain brought on by movement, responded to the doctor's question, only by a whisper: "The priest--first." The girl heard, and her fine, clear glance rested upon the face of the priest. Tears were on her cheeks, but a kind of exultation was in her tone as she said: "I am willing, father." With a look which denoted his appreciation of the girl's courage, the priest stepped forward and led her to her place beside her bridegroom. She took Haney's big nerveless hand in her firm grasp, and together they listened to the solemn words which made them husband and wife. It seemed that the gambler was passing into the shadow during the opening prayer, but his whispered responses came at the proper pauses, and only when the final benediction was given, and the priest and the judge fell back before the rush of the young doctor, did the wounded man's eyes close in final collapse. He had indeed reached the end of his endurance. The young wife spoke then, imperiously, almost fiercely, asking: "Why is he lying here? This is no place for him." The doctor explained. "We were afraid to move him--till you came. In fact, he wouldn't let me move him. If you say so now, we will take him up." With these words the watchers shifted their responsibility to her shoulders, uttering sighs of deep relief. Whatever happened now, Mart's will had been secured. At her command they lifted the table on which her husband lay, and the wife walked beside it, unheeding the throngs of silent men walling her path. Every one made way for her, waited upon her, eager to serve her, partly because she was Marshall Haney's wife, but more because of her youth and the brave heart which looked from her clear and candid eyes. She showed no hesitation now, gave out no word of weakness; on the contrary, she commanded with certainty and precision, calling to her aid all that the city afforded. Not till she had summoned the best surgeons and was sure that everything had been done that could be done did she permit herself to relax--or to think of rest or her mother. When she had sunk to sleep upon a couch beside her husband's bed, Williams, with a note of deep admiration, demanded of the surgeon: "Ain't she a little Captain? Mart can't die now, can he? He's got too much to live for." CHAPTER VI THE HANEY PALACE One day early in the following summer a tall, thin man, with one helpless side, entered the big luminous hall of the Antlers Hotel at the Springs, upheld by a stalwart attendant, and accompanied by a sweet-faced, calm-lipped young woman. This was Marshall Haney and his young wife Bertha, down from the mountain for the first time since his illness, and those who knew their story and recognized them, stood aside with a thrill of pity for the man and a look of admiration for the girl, whose bravery and devotion had done so much to bring her husband back to life and to a growing measure of his former strength. Marshall Haney was, indeed, but a poor hulk of his stalwart self. One lung had been deeply torn, his left shoulder was almost wholly disabled, and he walked with a stoop and shuffle; but his physical weakening was not more marked than his mental mellowing. He was softened--"gentled," as the horsemen say. His eyes were larger, and his face, once so stern and masterful, gave out an appealing expression by reason of the deep horizontal wrinkles which had developed in his brow. He had grown a mustache, and this being gray gave him an older look--older and more military. It was plain, also, that he leaned upon his keen-eyed, impassive little wife, who never for one moment lost her hold upon herself or her surroundings. Her flashing glances took note of everything about her, and her lips were close-set and firm. Williams, ugly and wordless as ever, followed them with a proud smile till they entered the handsome suite of rooms which had been reserved for them. "There's nothing too good for Marshall Haney and his side-partner," he exulted to the bell-boy. Thereupon, Mart, with a look of reverence at his young bride, replied: "She's airned it--and more!" A sigh was in his voice and a singular appeal in his big eyes as he sank into an easy-chair. "I believe I do feel better down here; my heart seems to work aisier. I'm going to get well now, darlin'." "Of course you are," she answered, in the tone of a daughter; then added, with a smile: "I like it here. Why not settle?" To her Colorado Springs was a dazzling social centre. The beauty of the homes along its wide streets, the splendor of its private carriages, affected her almost as deeply as the magnitude and glory of Denver itself; but she was not of those who display their weaknesses and diffidence. She ate her first dinner in the lofty Antlers dining-hall with quiet dignity, and would not have been particularly noticed but for Haney, who was well-known to the waiters of the hotel. Her association with him had made her a marked figure in their mountain towns, and she was accustomed to comment. She met the men who addressed her with entire fearlessness and candor (she was afraid only of women in good clothes), speaking with the easy slanginess of a herder, using naturally and unconsciously the most picturesque phrases of the West. Her speech was incisive and unhesitating, yet not swift. She never chattered, but "you bet" and "all right" were authorized English so far as she was concerned. "They say you can't beat this town anywhere for society, and I sure like the looks of what we've seen. Suppose we hang around this hotel for a while--not too long, for it's mighty expensive." Here she smiled--a quick, flashing smile. "You see, I can't get used to spending money--I'm afraid all the time I'll wake up. It's just like a dream I used to have of finding chink--I always came to before I had a chance to handle it and see if it was real." Haney answered, indulgently: "'Tis all real, Bertie. I'll show you that when I'm meself again." "Oh, I believe it--at least, part of the time," she retorted. "But I'll have to flash a roll to do it--checks are no good. I could sign a million checks and not have 'em seem like real money. I'm from Missouri when it comes to cash." Mrs. Gilman, who had always stood in bewilderment and wonder of her daughter, was entirely subject now. She and Williams usually moved in silence, like adoring subjects in the presence of their sovereigns. They had no doubts whatsoever concerning the power and primacy of gold; and as for Haney himself, his unquestioning confidence in his little wife's judgment had come to be like an article of religious faith. After breakfast on the second day of her stay Bertha ordered a carriage, and they drove about the town in the brilliant morning sunshine, looking for a place to build. She resembled a little home-seeking sparrow. Every cosey cottage was to her an almost irresistible allurement. "There's a dandy place, Captain," she called several times. "Wouldn't you like a house like that?" He, with larger notions, shook his head each time. "Too small, Bertie. We've the right to a fine big place--like that, now." He nodded towards a stately gray-stone mansion, with the sign "For Sale" planted on its lawn. She was aghast. "Gee! what would we do with a state-house like that?" "Live in it, sure." "It would need four chamber-maids and two hired men to take care of a place like that. And think of the money it would spoil to stock it with furniture!" Nevertheless, she gazed at it longingly. "I'd sure like that big garden and that porch. You could sit on that porch and see the mountains, couldn't you? But my ears and whiskers, the expense of keeping it!" They passed on to other and less palatial possibilities, and returned to the hotel undecided. The two women, bewildered and weary, diverged and discussed the matter of dress till the mid-day meal. "I like being rich," remarked the young wife, as they took their seats in the lovely dining-room, and looked about at the tables so shining, so dainty. "It would be fun to run a house like this, don't you think?" She addressed her mother. "Good gracious, no! Think of the bill for help and the worry of looking after all this silver! No, it's too splendid for us." Haney still retained enough of his ancient humor to smile at them. "I'd rather see you manage that big stone house with the porch which I'm going to buy." "You don't mean it?" said Bertha, while Mrs. Gilman stared at him over her soup. He went on quietly. "Sure! Me mind's made up. You want the garden and I like the porch; so 'phone the agent after dinner, and we'll go up and see to it this very afternoon." Bertha's bosom heaved with excitement, and her eyes expanded. "I'd like just once to see the _inside_ of a house like that. It must be half as big as this hotel--but to own it! You're crazy, Captain." The remote possibility of walking through that wonderful mansion took away the young wife's appetite, and she became silent and reflective in the face of a delicious fried chicken. The magic of her husband's wealth began to make itself most potently felt. Haney insisted on smoking a cigar in the lobby. Bertha took her mother away to talk over the tremendous decision which was about to be thrust upon them. "We want a house," said she, decisively, "but not a palace like that. What would we do with it? It scares me up a tree to think of it." "I guess he was only joking," Mrs. Gilman agreed. "I can see the porch would be fine for him," Bertha went on. "But, jiminy spelter, we'd all be lost in the place!" Haney called Williams to his side, and told him of the house. "It's a big place, but I want it. Go you and see the agent. My little girl needs a roof, and why not the best?" "Sure!" replied Williams, with conviction. "She's entitled to a castle. You round up the women, and I'll do the rest." The house proved to be even more splendid and spacious than its exterior indicated, and Bertha walked its wide halls with breathless delight. After a hurried survey of the interior, they came out upon the broad veranda, and lingered long in awe and wonder of the outlook. To the west lay a glorious garden of fruits and flowers; a fountain was playing over the rich green grass; high above the tops of the pear and peach trees (which made a little copse) rose the purple peaks of the Rampart range. "Oh, isn't it great!" exclaimed Bertha. Haney turned to the agent with a tense look on his pale face--a look of exultant power. "Make out your papers," said he, quietly. "We take the place--as it stands." Bertha was overwhelmed by this flourish of the enchanter's wand--but only for a moment. No sooner was the contract signed than she roused herself as to a new business venture. "Well, now, the first thing is furniture. Let's see! There is some carpets and curtains in the place, isn't there? And a steel range. It's up to me to rustle the balance of the outfit together right lively." And so she set to work quite as she would have done in outfitting a new hotel--so many beds, so many chairs in a room, so many dressers, and soon had a long list made out and the order placed. She spent every available moment of her time for the next two days getting the kitchen and dining-room in running order, and when she had two beds ready insisted on moving in. "We can kind o' camp out in the place till we get stocked up. I'm crazy to be under our own roof." Haney, almost as eager as she, consented, and on the third day they drove up to the door, dismissed their hired coachman, and stepped inside the gate--master and mistress of an American chateau. Mart turned, and, with misty eyes and a voice choked with happiness, said: "Well, darlin', we have it now--the palace of the fairy stories." "It's great," she repeated, musingly; "but I can't make it seem like a home--mebbe it'll change when I get it filled with furniture, but the garden is sure all right." They took their first meal on the porch overlooking the mountains, listening to the breeze in the vines. It was heavenly sweet after the barren squalor of their Cripple Creek home, and they did little but gaze and dream. "We need a team," Bertha said, at last. "Buy one," replied Haney. So Bertha bought a carriage and a fine black span. This expenditure involved a coachman, and to fill that position an old friend of Williams'--a talkative and officious old miner--was employed. She next secured a Chinese cook, the best to be had, and a girl to do the chamber-work. They were all busy as hornets, and Bertha lived in a glow of excitement every waking hour of the day--though she did not show it. Haney's check-book was quite as wonderful in its way as Aladdin's lamp, and little by little the women permitted themselves to draw upon its magic. The shining span of blacks, with flowing manes and champing bits, became a feature of the avenue as the women drove up and down on their never-ending quest for household luxuries--they had gone beyond mere necessities. Mart usually went with them, sitting in the carriage while they "visited" with the grocery clerks and furniture dealers. They were very popular with these people, as was natural. "Little Mrs. Haney" became at once the subject of endless comment--mostly unfavorable; for Mart's saloon-made reputation was well-known, and the current notion of a woman who would marry him was not high. She was reported, in the alien circles of the town, to be a vulgar little chamber-maid who had taken a gambler for his money at a time when he was supposed to be on his death-bed, and her elevation to the management of a palatial residence was pointed out as being "peculiarly Western-American." The men, however, were much more tolerant of judgment than their women. They had become more or less hardened to seeing crude miners luxuriating in sudden, accidental wealth; therefore, they nodded good-humoredly at Haney and tipped their hats to his pretty wife with smiles. As bankers, tradesmen, and taxpayers generally they could not afford to neglect a citizen possessed of so much wealth and circumstance. Mrs. Gilman presented a letter of introduction to the nearest church of her own persuasion, and went to service quite as unassumingly as in Sibley, and was greeted by a few of the ladies there cordially and without hint of her son-in-law's connections. Two or three, including the pastor's wife, made special effort to cultivate her acquaintance by calling immediately, but they were not of those who attracted Bertha; and though she showed them about the house and answered their questions, she did not promise to call. "We're too busy," she explained. "I haven't got more than half the rooms into shape, and, besides, we're to have my brother's folks down from the Junction--we're on the hustle all day long." This was true. She had been quite besieged by her former neighbors in Sibley, who found it convenient to "put up with the Haneys" while visiting the town. They were, in fact, very curious to study her in her new and splendid setting; and though some of them peeked and peered amid the beds, and thumped the mattresses in vulgar curiosity, the young housewife merely laughed. All her life had been spent among folk of this directly inquisitive sort. She expected them to act as they did, and, being a hearty and generous soul, as well as a very democratic one, she sent them away happy. Indeed, she won praise from all who came to know her. But that small part of the Springs--alien and exclusive--which considered itself higher if not better than the rest of the Western world, looked askance at "the gambler's wife and her freak friends," and Mrs. Crego, who was inclined to be very censorious, alluded to the Haneys as "beggars on horseback" as she met them on the boulevard. Of all this critical comment Bertha remained, happily, unconscious, and it is probable that she would soon have won her way to a decent circle of friends had not Charles Haney descended upon them like a plague. Mart had been receiving letters from this brother, but had said nothing to Bertha of his demands. "Charles despised me when he met me in Denver," he explained to Williams. "I was busted at the time, ye mind." He winked. "And now when he reads in the papers that Mart Haney is rich, he comes down on me like a hawk on a June bug. 'Tis no matter. He may come--I'll not cast him out. But he does not play with me double-eagles--not he!" Charles Haney was not fitted to raise his brother's wife in the social scale, for he belonged to that marked, insistent variety of actor to be distinguished on trains and in the lobbies of hotels--a fat, sleek, loud-voiced comedian, who enacted scenes from his unwritten plays while ladling his soup, and who staggered and fell across chairs in illustration of highly emotional lines and, what was worse, he was of those who regard every unescorted woman as fair game. Bold of glance and brassy of smile, he began to make eyes at his sister-in-law from their first meeting. She amazed him. He had expected a woman of his own class--an adventuress, painted, designing; and to find this sweet little girl--"why, she's too good for Mart," he concluded, and shifted his hollow pretensions of sympathy from his brother to his sister-in-law. Before the first evening of his visit closed he sought opportunity to tell her, in hypocritic sadness, that Mart was a doomed man, and that she would soon be free of him. Bertha was disturbed by his gaze and repelled by his touch, but tried to like him on Mart's account. His mouthing disgusted her, and the good-will with which Haney greeted his brother turned into bitterness as the boaster and low wit began to display himself. "We all grew up in the street or in the saloon," Haney sadly remarked, "and you finished your education in the variety theatre, I'm thinking." The actor took this as a joke, and with a grin retorted: "That's better than running a faro-layout." "I dunno; a good quiet game has its power to educate a man," replied the gambler. That night, as she was preparing the Captain for bed, he remarked, with a sigh: "Life is a quare game! I mind Charley well as a cute little yellow-haired divil, always laughing, always in mischief, and me chasin' after him--a big slob of a boy. I used to carry him up an' down the tenement stairs. I learned him to skate--and now here he is drinkin' himself puffy, whilst I am an old broken-down hack at forty-five." He looked up at her with a sheen of tears in his eyes. "Darlin', 'tis a shame to be leanin' on you." She put her arm around his big grizzled head and drew it to her. "You can lean hard, Mart. I'm standin' by." "No, I'll not lean too hard," he answered. "I don't want your fine, straight back to stoop. I make no demands. I'll not spoil your young life. I'm not worth it. You're free to go when you can't stand me any longer." "Now, now, no more of that!" she warned. "When I have cause to knock, you won't need no ear-trumpet. Put up your hoof." He obeyed, and, stooping swiftly, she began to unlace the shoe which he could no longer reach. Her manner was that of a daughter who tyrannizes over an indulgent father. Her admiration and gratitude, so boyish once, were now replaced by an affection in which the element of sex had small place, and his love for her sprang also from a source far removed from the fierce instinct which first led him to seek her subduing. CHAPTER VII BERTHA REPULSES AN ENEMY Charles Haney had no scruples. From the moment of his first meeting with his brother's young wife he determined to make himself "solid" with her. Convinced that Mart was not long for this world, he set to work to win Bertha's favor, for this was the only way to harvest the golden fortune she controlled. "Mart is just fool enough and contrary enough to leave every cent of his money to her." Here he placed one finger against his brow. "Carlos, here is where you get busy. It's us to the haberdasher. We shine." Notwithstanding all his boasting, he was not only an actor out of an engagement, but flat broke, badly dressed, and in sorry disrepute with managers. "I've been playing in a stock company in San Francisco," he had explained, "and I'm now on my way to New York to produce a play of my own. Hence these tears. I need an 'angel.'" He distinctly said "the first of the month" in this announcement, but as the days went by he only settled deeper into the snug corners of the Haney home, making no further mention of his triumphal eastward progress. On the contrary, he had the air of a regular boarder, and turned up promptly for meals, rotund and glowing in the opulence of his brother's hospitality. On the strength of his name he found favor with the tailors, and bourgeoned forth a few days later in the best cloth the shops afforded, and strutted and plumed himself like a turkey-cock before Bertha, keeping up meanwhile a pretension of sympathy and good-fellowship with Mart. In this he miscalculated; for Bertha, youthful as she seemed, was accustomed, as she would say, to "standing off mashers," and her impassive face and keen, steady eyes fairly disconcerted the libertine. "For Mart's sake, we'll put up with him," she said to her mother. "He's a loafer; but I can see the Captain kind o' likes to have him around--for old times' sake, I reckon." This was true. When alone with his brother, Charles dropped his egotistic brag and dramatic bluster, and touched craftily upon the dare-devil, boyish life they had led together. He was shrewd enough to see and understand that this was his most ingratiating rôle, and he played it "to the limit," as Bertha would have said. And yet no one in the house realized how his presence reacted against Bertha. "What are we to think of a girl so obtuse that she permits a man like this fat, disgusting actor to dangle about her?" asked Mrs. Crego of her husband, who was Haney's legal adviser. "He's her husband's brother, you know," argued Crego. "All the same, I can't understand her. She looks nice and sweet, and you say she is so; and yet here she is married to a notorious gambler, and associating with mountebanks and all sorts of malodorous people. Why, I've seen her riding down the street with the upholsterer, and Mrs. Congdon told me that she saw her stop her carriage in front of a cigar store and talk with a barber in a white jacket for at least ten minutes." Crego laughed. "What infamy! However, I can't believe even the upholsterer will finally corrupt her. The fact is, my dear, we're all getting to be what some of my clients call 'too a-ristocratic.' Bertha Haney is sprung from good average American stock, and has associated with the kind of people you abhor all her life. She hasn't begun to draw any of your artificial distinctions. I hope she never will. Her barber friend is on the same level with the clerks and grocery-men of the town. They're all human, you know. She's the true democrat. I confess I like the girl. Her ability is astonishing. Williams and Haney both take her opinion quite as weightily as my own." Mrs. Crego was impressed. "Well, I'll call on her if you really think I _ought_ to do so." "I don't. I withdraw my suggestion. I deprecate your calling--in that spirit. I doubt if she expects you to call. I hardly think she has awakened to any slights put upon her by your set. Indeed, she seems quite happy in the society of Thomas, Richard, and Harry." "Don't be brutal, Allen." "I'm not. The girl is now serene--that's the main thing; and you might raise up doubts and discontents in her mind." "I certainly shall not go near her so long as that odious actor is hanging about. His smirk at me the other day made me ill." This conversation was typical of many others in homes of equal culture, for Bertha's position as well as her face and manner piqued curiosity. After all, the town was a small place--just large enough to give gossip room to play in--and the sheen of Mrs. Haney's wealth made her conspicuous from afar, while her youth and boyish beauty had been the subject of admiring club talk from the very first. Haney was only an old and wounded animal, whose mate was free to choose anew. "It makes me ache to see the girl go wrong," said Mrs. Frank Congdon, wife of a resident portrait-painter, also in delicate health (she was speaking to Mrs. Crego). "Think of that great house--Frank says she runs it admirably--filled with tinkers and tailors and candlestick-makers, not to mention touts and gamblers--when she might be entertaining--well, us, for example!" She laughed at the unbending face of her friend; then went on: "Dr. Cronk says the mother is a sweet old lady and of good New England family--a constitutional Methodist, he calls her. I wish she kept better company." "But what can you expect of a girl brought up in a pigsty. Her mother was mistress of a little miners' hotel in Junction City, Allen says, and the girl boasts of it." Mrs. Congdon smiled. "I'm dying to talk with her. She's far and away the most interesting of our newly rich, and I like her face. Frank has called, you know?" "Has he?" "On business, of course. She has decided to have him paint her husband's picture. She's taken her first step upward, you see." "I should think she'd be content to have her saloon-keeper husband's face fade out of her memory." "Frank is enthusiastic. I'm not a bit sure that he didn't suggest the portrait. He is shameless when he takes a fancy to a face. He's wild to paint them both and call it 'The Lion Tamer and the Lion.' He considers Haney a great character. It seems he saw him in Cripple Creek once, and was vastly taken by his pose. His being old and sad now--his face is one of the saddest I ever saw--makes it all the more interesting to Frank. So I'm going to call--in fact, we're going to lunch there soon." "Oh, well, yes. You artists can do anything, and it's all right. You must come over immediately afterwards and tell me all about it, won't you?" At this Mrs. Congdon laughed, but, being of generous mind, consented. Crego was right. Bertha had not yet begun to take on trouble about her social position. She had carried to her big house in the Springs all the ideas and usages of Sibley Junction--that was all. She acknowledged her obligations as a householder, carrying forward the New England democratic traditions. To be next door made any one a neighbor, with the right to run in to inspect your house and furniture and to give advice. The fact that near-at-hand residents did not avail themselves of this privilege troubled her very little at first, so busy was she with her own affairs; but it was inevitable that the talk of her mother's church associates should sooner or later open her eyes to the truth that the distinctions which she had read about as existing in New York and Chicago were present in her own little city. "Mrs. Crego and her set are too stuck up to associate with common folks," was the form in which the revelation came to her. From one loose-tongued sister she learned, also, that she and the Captain were subjects of earnest prayer in the sewing-circle, and that her husband's Catholicism was a source of deep anxiety, not to say proselyting hostility, on the part of the pastor and his wife, while from another of these officious souls she learned that the Springs, beautiful as it was, so sunlit, so pure of air, was a centre of marital infelicity, wherein the devil reigned supreme. Her mother's pastor called, and was very outspoken as to Mart and Charles--both of whom needed the Lord's grace badly. He expressed great concern for Bertha's spiritual welfare, and openly prayed for her husband, whose nominal submission to the Catholic Church seemed not merely blindness to his own sin, but a danger to the young wife. Haney, however, though wounded and suffering, was still a lion in resolution, and his glance checked the exhortation which the minister one day nerved himself to utter. "I do not interfere with any man's faith," said he, "and I do not intend to be put to school by you nor any other livin'. I was raised a Catholic, and for the sake of me mother I call meself wan to this day, and as I am so I shall die." And the finality of his voice won him freedom from further molestation. Bertha's concern for her creed was hardly more poignant than Haney's, and they never argued; but she did begin to give puzzled thought to the social complications which opened out day by day before her. Charles, embittered by his failures, enlightened her still more profoundly. He had a certain shrewdness of comment at times which bit. "Wouldn't it jar you," said he one day, "to see this little town sporting a 'Smart Set' and quoting _Town Topics_ like a Bible? Why, some of these dinky little two-spot four-flushers draw the line on me because I'm an actor! What d'ye think o' that? I don't mind your Methodist sistern walking wide of me, but it's another punch when these dubs who are smoking my cigars at the club fail to invite me to their houses." Bertha looked at him reflectively throughout this speech, putting a different interpretation on the neglect he complained of. She had gone beyond disliking him, she despised him (for he was growing bolder each day in his addresses), and took every precaution that he should not be alone with her; and she rose one morning with the determination to tell Mart that she would not endure his brother's presence another day. But his pleasure in Charles' company was too genuine to be disturbed, and so she endured. The actor's talk was largely concerned with the scandal-mongery of the town, and very soon the young wife knew that Mrs. May, whose husband was "in the last stages," was in love with young Mr. June, and that Mr. Frost, whose wife was "weakly," was going about shamelessly with Miss Bloom, and all this comment came to her ears freighted with its worst significance. Vile suggestion dripped from Charles Haney's reckless tongue. This was deep-laid policy with him. His purpose was to undermine her loyalty as a wife. His approaches had no charm, no finesse. Presuming on his relationship, he caught at her hand as she passed, or took a seat beside her if he found her alone on a sofa. At such moments she was furious with him, and once she struck his hand away with such violence that she suffered acute pain for several hours afterwards. His attentions--which were almost assaults--came at last to destroy a large part of her joy in her new home. Her drives, when he sat beside her, were a torture, and yet she could not bring herself to accuse him before the crippled man, who really suffered from loneliness whenever she was out of the house or busy in her household work. He had never been given to reading, and was therefore pathetically dependent upon conversation for news and amusement. He was much at home, too, for his maiming was still so fresh upon him that he shrank from exhibiting himself on the street or at the clubs (there are no saloons in the Springs). Crego, whom he liked exceedingly, was very busy, and Williams was away at the mines for the most part, and so, in spite of Bertha's care, he often sat alone on the porch, a pitiful shadow of the man who paid court to the clerk of the Golden Eagle. Sometimes he followed the women around the house like a dog, watching them at their dusting and polishing. "You'll strain yourself, Captain," Bertha warningly cried out whenever he laid hold of a chair or brush. And so each time he went back to his library to smoke, and wait until his wife's duties were ended. At such hours his brother was a comfort. He was not a fastidious man, even with the refinement which had come from his sickness and his marriage, and the actor (so long as he cast no imputations on any friend) could talk as freely as he pleased. Slowly, day by day, Charles regained Mart's interest and a measure of his confidence. Having learned what to avoid and what to emphasize, he now deplored the drink habits of his brothers, and gently suggested that the old father needed help. They played cards occasionally during such times as household cares drew Bertha away, and held much discussion of mines and mining--though here Mart was singularly reticent, and afforded little information about his own affairs. His trust in Charles did not go so far as that. With Crego, however, he freely discussed his condition, for the lawyer had written his new will, and was in possession of it. "I'm like a battered old tin can," he said once. "Did ye ever try to put a tin can back into shape? Ye cannot. If ye push it back here, it bulges there. The doctors are tryin' hard to take the kinks out o' me, but 'tis impossible--I see that--but I may live on for a long time. Already me mind misgives me about Bertie--she's too young to be tied up to a shoulder-shotten old plug like mesilf." To this Crego soothingly responded. "I don't think you need to worry. She's as happy as a blackbird in spring." Once he said to Bertha: "I niver intended to limp around like this. I niver thought to be the skate I am this day," and his despondency darkened his face as he spoke. "I could not blame you if you threw me out. I'm only a big nuisance." "You will be if you talk like that," she briskly answered, and that is all she seemed to make of his protest. She had indeed been reared in an atmosphere of loyalty to marriage as well as of chastity, and she never for a moment considered her vows weakened by her husband's broken frame. This fidelity Charles discovered to his own confusion one night as he came home inflamed by liquor and reckless of hand, to find her sitting alone in the library writing a letter. It was not late, but Mart, feeling tired, had gone to bed, and Mrs. Gilman was in Sibley. Bertha looked up as he entered, and without observing that he was drunk, went on with her writing, which was ever a painful ceremony with her. Dropping his coat where he stood, and with his hat awry on the red globe of his head, the dastard staggered towards her, his eyes lit with a glare of reckless desire. "Say," he began, "this is luck. I want 'o talk with you, Bertie. I want 'o find out why you run away from me? What's the matter with me, anyhow?" She realized now the foul, satyr-like mood of the man, and sprang up tense and strong, silently confronting him. He mumbled with a grin: "You're a peach! What's the matter? Why don't you like me? Ain't I all right? I'm a gentleman." His words were babble, but the look in his eyes, the loose slaver of his lips, both scared and angered her, and as he pushed against her, clumsily trying to hook his arm about her waist, she struck him sharply with the full weight of her arm and shoulder, and he tottered and fell sprawling. With a curse in his teeth he caught at a chair, recovered his balance, and faced her with a look of fury that would have appalled one less experienced than she. "You little fool," he snarled, "don't you do that again!" "_Stop!_" She did not lift her voice, but the word arrested him. "Do you want to die?" The word _die_ pierced the mist of his madness. "What do you think Mart will say to this?" He shivered and grew pale under the force of his brother's name uttered in that tone. He began to melt, subsiding into a jelly-mass of fear. "Don't tell Mart, for Christ's sake! I didn't mean nothing. Don't do it, I beg--I beg!" She looked at him and seemed to grow in years as she searched his wretched body for its soul. "If you don't pull out of this house to-morrow I'll let him know just the kind of dead-head boarder you are. You haven't fooled me any--not for a minute. I've put up with you for his sake, but to-night settles it. You go! I've stood a lot from you, but your meal-ticket is no good after to-morrow morning--you _sabe_? It's you to the outside to-morrow. Now get out, or I call Mart." He turned and shuffled from the room, leaving his battered hat at her feet. She waited till she heard him close his door; then, with a look of disgust on her face, picked up his hat and coat, and hung them on the rack in the hall. "I'm sorry for Mart," she said to herself. "He _was_ company for him, but I can't stand the loafer a day longer. I hope I never see him again." * * * * * He did not get down to breakfast, and for this she was glad; but he sought opportunity a little later to plead for clemency. "Give me another chance. I was drunk. I didn't mean it." She remained inexorable. "Not for a second," she succinctly replied. "I don't care how you fix it with Mart. Smooth it up as best you can, but fly this coop." And her face expressed such contempt that he crept away, flabby and faltering, to his brother. "I've been telegraphed for, and must go," he said. "And, by the way, I need a little ready mon to carry me to the little old town. As soon as I get to work I'll send you a check." Mart handed him the money in silence, and waited till he had folded and put away the bills. Then he said: "Charles, you was always the smart one of the family, and ye'd be all right now if ye'd pass the booze and get down to hard work. It's _time_ ye were off, for ye've done nothin' but loaf and drink here. I've enjoyed your talk--part of the time; but I can see ye'd grow onto me here like a wart, and that's bad for you and bad for me, and so I'm glad ye're going." "Can't you--" He was going to ask for a position--something easy with big pay--when he saw that such a request would make his telegram a lie. As he hesitated Mart continued: "No, I'll back no play for ye. I'm a gambler, but I take no chances of that kind. If you see the old father, write and tell me how he is." Charles, though filled with rising fury, was sober enough to know in what danger he stood, and forcing a smile to his face, shook hands and went out to his carriage--alone. As Mart met Bertha a few minutes later he remarked, with calm directness: "There goes a cheap rounder and a sponge. I've been a gambler and a saloon-keeper, but I never got the notion that I could live without doin' something. Charles was a smart lad, but the divil has him by the neck, and to give money is to give him drink." Bertha remained silent, her own indictment was so much more severe. CHAPTER VIII BERTHA RECEIVES AN INVITATION Colorado Springs lies in a shallow valley, under a genial sun, at almost the exact level of the summit of Mt. Washington. From the railway train, as it crawls over the hills to the east, it looks like a toy village, but is, in fact, a busy little city. To ride along its wide and leafy streets in summer, to breathe its crystalline airs in winter, is to lose belief in the necessity of disease. The grave seems afar off. And yet it was built, and is now supported, by those who, fearing death, fled the lower, miasmatic levels of the world, and who, having abandoned all hope (or desire) of return, are loyally developing and adorning their adopted home. These fugitives are for the most part contented exiles--men as well as women--who have come to enjoy their enforced stay here beside the peaks; and their devotion to the town and its surroundings is unmistakably sincere, for they believe that the climate and the water have prolonged their lives. Not all even of these seekers for health are ill, or even weakly, at present; on the contrary, many of them are stalwart hands at golf, and others are seasoned horsemen. In addition to those who are resident in their own behalf are many husbands attendant upon ailing wives, and blooming wives called to the care of weazened and querulous husbands, and parents who came bringing a son or daughter on whom the pale shadow of the White Death had fallen. But, after all, these Easterners color but they do not dominate the life of the town, which is a market-place for a wide region, and a place of comfort for well-to-do miners. It is, also, a Western town, with all a Western town's customary activities, and the traveller would hardly know it for a health resort, so cheerful and lively is the aspect of its streets, where everything denotes comfort and content. In addition to the elements denoted above, it is also taken to be a desirable social centre and a charming place of residence for men like Marshall Haney, who, having made their pile in the mountain camps, have a reasonable desire to put their gold in evidence--"to get some good of their dust," as Williams might say. Here and there along the principal avenues are luxurious homes--absurdly pretentious in some instances--which are pointed out to visitors as the residences of the big miners. They are especially given to good horses also, and ride or drive industriously, mixing very little with the more cultured and sophisticated of their neighbors, for whom they furnish a never-ending comedy of manners. "A beautiful mixture for a novelist," Congdon often said. Yes, the town has its restricted "Smart Set," in imitation of New York city, and its literary and artistic groups (small, of course), and its staid circle of wealth and privilege, and within defined limits and at certain formal civic functions these various elements meet and interfuse genially if not sincerely. However, the bitter fact remains that the microcosm is already divided into classes and masses in a way which would be humorous if it were not so deeply significant of a deplorable change in American life. Squire Crego, in discussing this very matter with Frank Congdon, the portrait-painter, put it thus: "This division of interest is inevitable. What can you do? The wife of the man who cobbles my shoes or the daughter of the grocer who supplies my sugar is, in the eyes of God, undoubtedly of the same value as my own wife, but they don't _interest_ me. As a social democrat, I may wish sincerely to do them good, but, confound it, to wish to do them good is an impertinence. And when I've tried to bring these elements together in my house I have always failed. Mrs. Crego, while being most gracious and cordial, has, nevertheless, managed to make the upholsterer chilly, and to freeze the grocer's wife entirely out of the picture." "There's one comfort: it isn't a matter of money. If it were, where would the Congdons be?" "No, it isn't really a matter of money, and in a certain sense it isn't a matter of brains. It's a question of--" "_Savoir faire._" "Precisely. You haven't a cent, so you say frequently--" Congdon stopped him, gravely. "I owe you fifty--I was just going down into my jeans to pay it, when I suddenly recalled--" "Don't interrupt the court. You haven't a cent, we'll say, but you go everywhere and are welcome. Why?" "That's just it. Why? If you really want to know, I'll tell you. It's all on account of Lee. Lee is a mighty smart girl. She has a cinch on the gray matter of this family." "You do yourself an injustice." "Thank you." Crego pursued his argument. "There isn't any place that a man of your type can't go if you want to, because you take something with you. You mix. And Haney, for example--to return to the concrete again--Haney would make a most interesting guest at one's dinner-table, but the wife, clever as she is, is impossible--or, at least, Mrs. Crego thinks she is." Congdon fixed a finger pistol-wise and impressively said: "That little Mrs. Haney is a wonder. Don't make any mistake about her. She'll climb." "I'm not making the mistake, it's Mrs. Crego. I've asked her to call on the girl, but she evades the issue by asking: 'What's the use? Her interests are not ours, and I don't intend to cultivate her as a freak.' So there we stand." Congdon looked thoughtful. "She may be right, but I don't think so. The girl interests me, because I think I see in her great possibilities." "Her abilities certainly are remarkable. She needs but one statement of a point in law. She seems never to forget a word I say. Sometimes this realization is embarrassing. When she fixes those big wistful eyes on me I feel bound to give her my choicest diction and my soundest judgments. Haney, too, for all his wild career, attaches my sympathy. You're painting his portrait--why don't you and Lee give them a dinner?" "Good thought! I told Lee this morning that it was a shame to draw the line on that little girl just because that rotten, bad brother-in-law of hers was base enough to slur her at the club. But, as you say, women can't be driv. However, I think Lee can manage a dinner if anybody can. As you say, we're only artists, and artists can do anything--except borrow money. However, if you want to know, Lee says that this barber lover of Mrs. Haney's has done more to queer her with our set than anything else. They think her tastes are low." "That incident is easily explained. Winchell knew her in Sibley, and though he has undoubtedly followed her over here for love of her, he seems a decent fellow, and I don't believe intends any harm. I will admit her stopping outside his door to talk with him was unconventional, but I can't believe that she was aware of any impropriety in the act. Nevertheless, that did settle the matter with Helen. 'You can dine with them any day if you wish,' she says, 'but--' And there the argument rests." "Of course, you and I can put the matter on a basis of trade courtesy," said Congdon; "but I confess they interest me enormously, and I would like to do them some little favor for their own sakes. Poor Haney will never be more of a man than he is to-day, and that little girl is going to earn all the money she gets before she is done with him." And so they parted, and Congdon went home to renew the discussion with his wife. "You must call. It's only the decent thing to do, now that the portrait is nearly done," he said. "I don't mind the calling, Frank," she briskly replied, "and I don't much mind giving a little dinner, but I don't want to get the girl on my mind. She has so much to learn, and I haven't the time nor energy to teach her." Congdon waved his finger. "Don't you grow pale over that," said he. "That girl's no fool--she's capable of development. She will amaze you yet." "Well, consider it settled. I'll call this afternoon and ask her to dinner; but don't expect me to advise her and follow her up. Now, who'll we ask to meet her--the Cregos?" "Yes, I'd thought of them." "Oh, I know all about it. You needn't stammer. You and Allen are getting a good deal out of the Haneys, and want to be decent in return. Well, I think well of you for it, and I'll do my mite. I'll have young Fordyce in, and Alice; being Quakers and 'plain people,' they won't mind. Ben is crazy to see the rough side of Western life, anyway. Now run away, little boy, and leave the whole business to me." As Crego had said, the Congdons were privileged characters in the Springs. They were at once haughty with the pride of esthetic cleverness, and humble with the sense of their unworthiness in the wide old-world of art. Lee was contemptuous of wealth when they had a pot of beans in the house, and Frank was imperiously truculent when borrowing ten dollars from a friend or demanding an advance of cash from a prospective patron. They both came of long lines of native American ancestry, and not only felt themselves as good as anybody, but a little better than most. They gave wit for champagne, art instruction for automobile rides, and never-failing good humor for house-room and the blazing fires of roomy hearths. Mrs. Congdon, of direct Virginian ancestry, was named Lee by a state's-rights mother, who sent her abroad to "study art." She ended by pretending to be a sculptor--and she still did occasionally model a figurine of her friends or her friends' babies; mainly, she was the aider and abettor of her husband, a really clever portrait-painter, whose ill health had driven him from New York to Colorado, and who was making a precarious living in the Springs--precarious for the reason that on bright days he would rather play golf than handle a brush, and on dark days he _couldn't_ see to paint (so he said). In truth, he was not well, and his slender store of strength did not permit him to do as he would. To cover the real seriousness of his case he loudly admitted his laziness and incompetency. Lee was a devoted wife, and when she realized that his interest in the Haneys was deep and genuine her slight opposition gave way. It meant a couple of thousand dollars to Frank, but money was the least of their troubles--credit seemed to come along when they needed it most, and each of them had become "trustful to the point of idiocy," Mrs. Crego was accustomed to say. Mrs. Crego really took charge of their affairs, and when they needed food helped them to it. Starting for the Haneys on the street-car that very afternoon, Lee reached the gate just as Bertie was helping Mart into his carriage. There was something so genuine and so touching in this picture of the slender young wife supporting her big and crippled husband that Mrs. Congdon's nerves thrilled and her face softened. Plainly this consideration on the part of Mrs. Haney was habitual and ungrudging. Bertie, as she faced her caller, saw only a pale little woman with flashing eyes and smiling mouth, whose dress was as neat as a man's and almost as plain (Lee prided herself on not being "artistic" in dress), and so waited for further information. "How do you do, Mrs. Haney?" Lee began. "I'm Mrs. Congdon." Bertha threw the rug over Mart's knees before turning to offer her hand. "I'm glad to meet you," she responded, with gravity. "I've seen you on the street." Lee couldn't quite make out whether this remark was intended for reproach or not, but she went on, quickly: "I was just about to call. Indeed, I came to ask you and Mr. Haney to dine with us on Thursday." She nodded and smiled at Mart, who sat with impassive countenance listening with attention--his piercing eyes making her rather uncomfortable. "We dine at seven. I hope you can come." Bertha looked up at her husband. "What do you say, Captain?" "I don't see any objection," he answered, without warmth. Bertha turned, with still passive countenance. "All right," she said, "we'll be there. Won't you jump in and take a ride with us?" Lee, burning with mingled flames of resentment and humor, replied: "Thank you, I have another call to make--Thursday, then, at seven o'clock." "We'll connect. Much obliged," replied Bertha, and sprang into the carriage. "Go ahead, Dan. Good-day, Mrs. Congdon." Lee stood for an instant in amazement at this easy, not to say indifferent, acceptance of her tremendous offering. "Well, if that isn't cool!" she gasped, and walked on thoughtfully. Humor dominated her at last, and when she entered Mrs. Crego's house she was flushed with laughter, and recounted the words of the interview with so many subtle interpretations of her own that Mrs. Crego was delighted. Mrs. Congdon did not spare herself. "Helen, she made me feel like a bill-collector! 'All right,' said she, 'I'll be there,' and left me standing in the middle of the street. You've got to come now, Helen, to preserve my dignity." "I'm wild to come, really. I want to see what she'll do to us 'professional people.' Maybe she will patronize us too." When Lee told Frank about it at night he failed to laugh as heartily as she had expected. "That's all very funny, the way you tell it, but as a matter of fact the girl did all she knew. She accepted your invitation and civilly asked you to take a ride. What more could mortal woman proffer?" "She might have invited me into the house." "Not at the moment. It was Mart's hour for a drive, and you were interfering with one of her duties. I think she treated you very well." "Anyhow, she's coming, and so is Helen. It tickled Helen nearly into fits, of course, and she's coming--just to see me 'put to it to manage these wet valley bronchos.'" "The girl may look like a bronk, but she's got good blood in her. She'll hold her own anywhere," replied Congdon, with conviction. CHAPTER IX BERTHA MEETS BEN FORDYCE For all her impassivity, Bertha was really elated by this invitation, for she liked Congdon, and had a very high opinion of his powers. She experienced no special dread of the dinner, for it appeared to her at the moment to be a simple sitting down to eat with some friendly people. She was not in awe of Mrs. Congdon, however much she might admire her husband's skill, and she knew their home. It was a small house on a side street, and did not compare for a moment with her own establishment, in which she had begun to take a settled pride. As they rode away she was mentally casting up in her mind a choice of clothes, when Haney remarked: "Bertie, I don't believe I'll go to that dinner." "Why not?" "Well, I'm not as handy with a cold deck as I used to be, and I don't think I ought to put me lame foot into another man's lap." "You're all right, Captain, and, besides, I'll be close by to help out in case you run up against a hard knock in the steak. Course you'll go--I want you to get out and see the people. Why, you haven't taken a meal out of the house since we moved, except that one at the Casino. You need more doin'." Haney was in a dejected mood. "So do you. I'm a heavy handicap to you, Bertie, sure I am. As I see ye settin' there bloomin' as a rose and feel me own age a-creepin' on me, I know I should be takin' me _congé_ out of self-respect--just to give you open road." "Stop that!" she warningly cried. "Hello, there's Ed! He seems in a rush. Wonder what's eating him?" Winchell, dressed in a new suit of clothes, darted from the sidewalk to the carriage, his face shining. "Say, folks, I'm called East. Old man died yesterday, and I've got to go home." He was breathing hard with excitement. "Get in and tell us about it," commanded Bertha. He climbed up beside the driver, and turned on his seat to continue. "Yes, I've got to go; and, say, the old man was well off. I don't do no more barberin', I tell you that. I'm goin' to study law. I'm comin' back here just as soon as things are settled up. I've been talking with a fellow here--Lawyer Hansall; he says he'll take me in and give me a chance. No more barberin' for me, you hear me!" "'Tis a poor business, but a necessary," remarked Haney. Bertha was sympathetic. "I'm glad you're goin' to get a raise. Of course, I'm sorry about your father." "I understand--so am I. But he's gone, and it's up to me to think of myself. I know you always despised my trade." "No, I didn't. Men have to be shaved and clipped. It's like dish-washin', somebody has to do it. We can't all sit in the parlor." Winchell acknowledged the force of this. "Well, I always felt sneakin' about it, I'll admit, but that was because I was raised a farmer, and barbers were always cheap skates with us. We didn't use 'em much, in fact. Well, it's all up now, and when I come back I want you to forget I ever cut hair. A third of the old farm is mine, and that will pay my board while I study." Neither Haney nor his young wife was surprised by this movement on his part any more than he was surprised at their rise to wealth and luxury; both were in accordance with the American tradition. But as they rode down the street certain scornful Easterners (schooled in European conventions) smiled to see the wife of an Irish millionaire gambler in earnest conversation with a barber. Mrs. Crego, driving down-town with Mrs. Congdon, stared in astonishment, then turned to Lee. "And you ask me to meet such a woman at dinner!" she exclaimed, and her tone expressed a kind of bewilderment. Lee laughed. "You can't fail me now. Don't be hasty. Trust in Frank." "I'd hate to have my dinner partners selected by Frank Congdon. I draw the line at barbers." "You're a snob, Helen. If you were really as narrow as you sound I'd cut you dead! Furthermore, the barber isn't invited." "I can't understand such people." "I can. She don't know any better. You impute a low motive where there is nothing worse than ignorance. As Frank says, the girl is a perfectly natural outgrowth of a little town. I hope our dinner won't spoil her." Mrs. Congdon had put the dinner-hour early, and when the Haneys drove up in their glittering new carriage, drawn by two splendid black horses, she too had a moment of bewilderment, but her sense of humor prevailed. "Frank," she said, "you can't patronize a turnout like that--not in my presence." "To-night art's name is mud," he replied, with conviction, and hastened down the steps to help Haney up. The gambler waved his proffered arm aside. "I'm not so bad as all that," said he. "I let me little Corporal help me--sometimes for love of it, not because I nade it." He was still gaunt and pale, but his eyes were of unconquerable fire, and the lift of his head from the shoulders was still leopard-like. He was dressed in a black frock-coat, with a cream-colored vest and gray trousers, and looked very well indeed--quite irreproachable. Bertha was clad in black also--a close-fitting, high-necked gown which made her fair skin shine like fire-flushed ivory, and her big serious eyes and vivid lips completed the charm of her singular beauty. Her bosom had lost some of its girlish flatness, but the lines of her hips and thighs still resembled those of a boy, and the pose of her head was like that of an athlete. "Won't you come in and take off your hat?" asked Mrs. Congdon. And she followed without reply, leaving the two men on the porch. Without appearing to do so she saw everything in the house, which was hardly more than an artistic camp, so far as the first floor was concerned. Navajo rugs were on the floor, Moqui plaques starred the walls, and Acoma ollas perched upon book-shelves of thick plank. The chairs were rude, rough, and bolted at the joints. The room made a pleasant impression on Bertha, though she could not have told why. The ceiling was dark, the walls green, the woodwork stained pine, and yet it had charm. Mrs. Congdon explained meanwhile that Frank had made the big centre-table of plank, and the book-shelves as well. "He likes to tinker at such things," she said. "Whenever he gets blue or cross I set him to shifting the dresser or making a book-shelf, and he cheers up like mad. He's a regular kid anyway--always doing the things he ought not to do." In this way she tried to put her guest at her ease, while Bertha sat looking at her in an absent-minded way, apparently neither frightened nor embarrassed--on the contrary, she seemed to be thinking of something else. At last, to force a reply, Mrs. Congdon asked: "How do you like my husband's portrait of Mr. Haney?" "I don't know," she slowly replied. "It looks like him, and then again it don't. I guess I'm not up to hand paintin's. Enlarged photographs are about my size." "You're disappointed, then?" "Well, yes, I don't know but I am. I didn't think it was going to look just that way. Mr. Congdon says blue shadows are under anybody's ears in the light, but I can't see 'em on the Captain, and I do see 'em in the picture; that's what gets me twisted. When I look at the picture I can't see nothin' else." Her hostess laughed. "I know just how you feel, but that's the insolence of the painter--he puts on canvas what _he_ sees, not what his patron sees. The more money you pay for a portrait the more insolent the artist." At this moment Mrs. Crego came in, and (as she said afterwards) was presented to the gambler's wife "as though I were a nobody and she a visiting countess." Bertha rose, offered her hand, like a boy, in silence; she stood very straight, with very cold and unmistakably suspicious face. And Alice Heath, who entered with Mrs. Crego, shared this chill reception. Bertha, in truth, instantly and cordially hated Mrs. Crego; but she pitied the younger woman, in whom she detected another fugitive fighting a losing battle with disease. Miss Heath was very fair and very frail, with burning deep-blue eyes and a lovely mouth. She greeted Bertha with such sincere pleasure that the girl inclined to her instantly, and they went out on the porch together. Alice put her hand on Bertha's arm, saying: "I've wanted to meet you, Mr. Congdon has told us so much of you. Your life seems very romantic to me." The men all rose to meet Mrs. Congdon, and before Bertha had time to recover from the effect of the girl's words she found herself confronted by Ben Fordyce, who looked like a college boy, athletic and smiling. He was tall and broad-chested, with a round blond face and yellow hair. His manner was frank, and his voice deep. His hand, broad and strong, was hardened by the tennis-racket and calloused by the golf-stick, and somehow its leathery clasp pleased the girl. The roughness of his palm made him less alien than either Congdon or Crego. They went out to dinner immediately, and as she walked beside Mart she felt the young athlete's eyes resting upon her face, and the knowledge of this troubled her unaccountably. Mrs. Congdon seated him opposite her at the table, and he continued to stare at her with the frankest curiosity. She returned his gaze at last with a certain defiance, but found no offence in his eyes, which were round as his face, and of a sincere, steady gray. He was smooth-shaven, and his blond hair was rather short. All these peculiarities appeared one by one in the intervals between her attentions to Mart and her study of the furnishings of the table, which was decorated with candles and flowers in a way quite new to her. Fordyce was as fine as he looked. Nothing equivocal was in "that magnificent boy," as his friends called him, and his interest in little Mrs. Haney was that of the Easterner who, having been told that strange things take place in the West, is disappointed if they do not happen under his nose. He had heard much of the Haneys from Congdon, and had been especially impressed with the story of Bertha's midnight ride to the bedside of the dying gambler. The wedding in the saloon, her devotion to the wounded man, their descent upon the Springs, and their domestication in a stone palace--all appealed to his imagination. Such things could not happen in Chester; they were of the mountain West, and most satisfying to his taste. Bertha, on her part, had to admit that the people at the table were most kindly, even considerate. They made her husband the centre of interest, and passed politely over all his disastrous attempts to use his left hand. There were no awkward pauses, for, excepting one or two slips of tongue, Haney rose to the occasion. He was big enough and self-contained enough not to apologize for what he had been or what he was, and under Congdon's skilful guidance told of his experiences as amateur miner and gambler, growing humorous as the wine mellowed and lightened his reminiscences. He felt the sympathy of his audience. All listened delightedly with no accusation in their eyes--except in the case of Mrs. Crego, who still breathed, so it seemed to Bertha, a certain contempt and inner repugnance. Young Fordyce glowed with delight in these tales, reading beneath the terse lines of Haney's slang something epic, detecting a perfect willingness to take any chance. The fact that his bravery led to nothing conventionally noble or moral did not detract from the inherent interest of the tale; on the contrary, the young fellow, being of unusual imaginative reach and freedom, took pleasure in the thought that a man would risk his life again and again merely for the excitement of it. Occasionally he glanced at Judge Crego, to find him looking upon Haney with thoughtful glance. It was a little like listening to a prisoner's confession of guilt (as he afterwards said), but to him, as to Congdon, it was a most interesting monologue. It added enormously to the romance, so far as Ben Fordyce was concerned, to look across the table at the grave, watchful face of the girl who unfolded her husband's napkin or cut up his roast with deft hand--always careful not to interrupt his talk. As he thought of the quiet Quaker neighborhood from which he came, and contrasted these singular and powerfully defined personalities with the "men of weight" and the demure maidens of his acquaintance, Ben's blood tingled with a sense of the bigness and strangeness of the greater America. The West was no longer a nation; it was a world. To be in it at last was a delight as well as an education. Bertha, on her part, felt no strangeness in her position. Her marriage was a logical outcome of her life and surroundings. The incomprehensible lay in the shining women about her. Their ideas of life, their comment, puzzled her. Their clothes were of a kind which her own money could buy, but their manners, their grace of speech, their gestures, came of something besides money. Mrs. Crego was especially formidable, and made her feel the inadequacy of the black gown which she had thought very fine when she selected it, ready made, in a Denver store. She did not know that Mrs. Crego had dressed "very simply," at the suggestion of her hostess; but she did feel a certain condescension of manner, even in Alice, and was glad the Captain absorbed so much of the table-talk. Her time of trial came when the ladies rose and, at Mrs. Congdon's suggestion, returned to the porch, leaving the men to finish their cigars. Not one of Ben's little courtesies towards the women escaped her. His acquiescence, Congdon's tone of exaggerated respect, Crego's compliments, were all new to her, and in a certain sense she resented them. She doubted their sincerity a little, notwithstanding their grateful charm. Alice took her to herself and this was a great relief; for she feared Mrs. Crego's sharp tongue, and was not entirely sure of her hostess. Laying a slim hand on her arm, the Eastern girl began: "I am fascinated by you, Mrs. Haney. You have had such an interesting life, and you have such an opportunity for doing good." Bertha looked at her in blank surprise. "What do you mean?" "With your great wealth you can accomplish so much. Had you thought of that?" "No, I hadn't." The answer was blunt. "I've been so busy getting settled and looking after the Captain, I haven't had time to think of anything else." "Oh, of course; but by and by you'll begin to look about you for things to help--I mean hospitals and charities, and all that. The only time when I envy great wealth is when I see some wrong which money can right. Mr. Fordyce is a lawyer, but not a very famous one--he's only twenty-eight; and while we are likely to have all we really need, we can't begin to do what we'd like to do for others. I suppose Mrs. Congdon has told you of us?" "Where do you live?" "We live in Chester, but Mr. Fordyce has an office in Philadelphia. We have been engaged a long time, but I couldn't think of marrying while I was so ill. I'm afraid I stayed so long that not even this climate can help me." This was indeed Bertha's conviction, and her untactful silence said as much. Therefore, Alice hastened on to other more general topics. She was very sprightly, but Bertha maintained a determined silence through it all, quite unable to understand the girl's confidences. When the men came out Alice took Haney to herself, and they seemed to enjoy each other's society very keenly; indeed, their mutual absorption became so complete that Ben remarked upon it to Bertha. "Miss Heath has been crazy to meet your husband, Mrs. Haney. His adventurous life appeals to her, as to me, very deeply. We don't mean to be offensive, but to us you seem typical of the West." What he said at this time made less impression on her than the way in which he spoke. The light of an electric street-lamp fell upon his face, revealing its charming lines. On his fine hand a ring gleamed. Autumn insects were singing sleepily in the grass and from the trees. The laughter of girls came from the dusk of neighboring lawns, and over all descended the magical light of a harvest moon, flecking the surface of the little garden with shadows almost as definite as those cast by the flaming white globes of the street-lamps. It is on such nights that the heart of youth expands with longing and sadness. Crego and Congdon fell into hot argument (their usual method of conversation), leaving the young people to themselves, and, Ben with intent to provoke the grave little wife to laughter, told a funny story which reflected on Congdon's improvidence. Bertha was really grateful, for she felt herself at a great disadvantage among these fluent and interesting folk, who talked like the characters in novels. Their jests, their comment, meant little to her; but their gestures, their graceful attitudes, their courtesies to each other, meant much. They were something more than polite; they were considerate in a way which showed their thoughtfulness to be deeply grounded in habitual action. They used slang, but they used it as a garnish, not as a habit of speech. Expressions which she had read in books, but had never before heard spoken, flowed from their lips. Their sentences were built up for effect; in Crego's case this was more or less expected, but the phrases of Fordyce and Congdon were still more disconcerting. The art of their stories was a revelation of the neatness and precision of cultivated speech. When Mrs. Congdon led the way back into the house Ben stepped to Alice's side, saying, in a low tone: "I hope you haven't taken a chill. I beg your pardon, dearest; I should have watched you more closely." Once within-doors Mrs. Congdon insisted on Ben's singing, which he did with smiling readiness, expressing, however, a profound ignorance of music. "I never take my songs as seriously as my friends seem to do," he explained to Bertha. "Music with me is a gift rather than an acquirement." His voice was indeed fresh and sweet, and he sang--as Bertha had never heard any one sing--certain love ballads, whose despairing cadences were made the more profoundly piercing, someway, by his happy boyish face and handsomely clothed and powerful figure. "'But I and my True Love Will Never Meet Again!'" seemed to be a fatalistic cry rather than a wail of sadness as it came from his lips, but its melody sank deep into the girl's heart. She sat in rigid absorption, her eyes fixed upon the splendid young singer as a child looks upon some new and complicated toy. The grace with which he pronounced his words, the spread of his splendid chest, his easy pose, his self-depreciating shrugs enthralled her. Surely this was one of the young princes of the earth. His voice came to her freighted with the passion of ideal manhood. He sang other songs--tunes not worthy of him--but ended with a ballad called "Fair Springtide," by MacDowell--a song so stern, so strange, so inexorably sad that the singer himself grew grave at last and rose to his best. Bertha was thrilled to the heart, saddened yet exalted by his voice. Her horizon--her emotional horizon--was of a sudden extended, and she caught glimpses of strange lands and dim peaks of fabled mountains; and when the singer declared himself at an end she sat benumbed while the others cheered--her hands folded on her lap. It seemed a profanation to applaud. Haney gloomed in silence also, but not for the same reason. "I might have sung like that once," he thought, for he had been choir-boy in his ragamuffin youth, and had regained a fine tenor voice at eighteen. Age and neglect had ruined it, however. For ten years he had not attempted to sing a note. This youth made him dream of the past--as it caused Bertha to forecast the future. While young Fordyce was putting away his music the Captain struggled to his feet, and Bertha, seeing a sudden paleness overspread his face, hastened to him. "I reckon we'd better be going," she said to Mrs. Congdon, with blunt directness. "It's early yet," replied her hostess. Haney replied: "Not for cripples. Time was when I could sit all night in the 'lookout's chair,' but not now. Ten o'clock finds me wishful towards the bed." He said this with a faint smile. But the pathos of it, the truth of it, went to Bertha's heart, as it did to Mrs. Congdon's. Not merely was his body maimed, but his mind had correspondingly been weakened by that tearing charge of shot. Something of his native Celtic gallantry came back to him as he said: "Sure, Mrs. Congdon, we've had a fine evening. You must come to see us soon." Ben was addressing himself to Bertha. "Do you ever ride?" "I used to--I don't now. You see, the Captain can't stand the jolt of a horse, so we mostly drive." "I was about to say that Alice and I would be glad to have you join us. We ride every morning--a very gentle pace, I assure you, for I'm no rough-rider, and, besides, she sets the pace." Bertha's face was pale and her eyes darkly luminous as she falteringly answered. "I'd like to--but--Perhaps I can some time. I'm much obliged," and then she gave him her hand in parting. Mrs. Congdon was subtly moved by something in the girl's face as she said good-night, and to her invitation to come and see her cordially responded: "I certainly shall do so." * * * * * Little Mrs. Haney rode away from her first dinner party in the silence of one whose thoughts are too swift and too new to find speech. Her brain, sensitive as that of a babe, had caught and ineffaceably retained a million impressions which were to influence all her after life. The most vivid and most powerful of these impressions rose from the glowing beauty of young Fordyce, whose like she had never seen; but as background to him was the lovely room, the shining table, the grace and charm of the conversation, and, dominating all, the music--quite the best she had ever heard. The evening--so simple, almost commonplace, to her hostess--was of unspeakable significance to the uncultured girl. She did not wish to talk, and when Haney spoke she made no reply to his comment. "A fine bunch of people," he repeated. "They sure treated us right. Crego's the fine man--we do well to make him our lawyer." As Bertha again failed to respond he resumed, with a little chuckle: "But Mrs. Crego is saying, 'I dunno--them Haneys is queer cattle.' And the little sick lady, sure she was as interested in me talk as Patsy McGonnigle. She drug out o' me some of me wildest scrapes. Poor little girl, 'twill soon be all up with her.... It's a fine young fellow she has. A Quaker by training, she says. My! my! What a prizefighter he'd make if his mind ran that way! Think of a Quaker with a chest like that--'tis something ferocious! He can sing, too, can't he? A fine lad--as fine as iver I see. Think of shoulders like his all wasted on a man of peace. I'm afraid the little lady will never put on the ring if she waits till she gets well." To this Bertha listened intently, but gave out no sign of interest. She was eager to be alone, eager to review all that had happened--all that had been said. For the first time since her marriage she felt Haney's presence to be just the least bit of a burden; and when they entered the house she urged his immediate retirement, though he was disposed to sit in the library and talk. "They were high-class," he said, again. "I never supposed I could make easy camp with such people. They sure treated us noble. They made us feel at home.... We must have some liquor like that. I've always despised wine and those that took it; but, bedad! I see there are two sides to that question. 'Tis not so thin as I thought it." Bertha at last got him safely bestowed, and was free to seek her own apartment, which she did at once. Her chamber, which adjoined her husband's to the west (he liked the morning sun), was a big room, and the young wife looked like a doll as she dropped into a broad tufted chair which stood in a square bay-window, and with folded hands looked out upon the ghostly shapes of the great peaks, snow-covered and moonlit. A thousand revelations of character as well as of manners lay in that short evening's contact with cultivated and thoughtful people. It argued much for her ancestry, for her own latent powers, that she responded with such bewildering readiness to the suggestions which rose like sparks of fire from that radiant hour. She had been made to feel dimly, vaguely, but multitudinously, the fibres and reaches of another world--the world of art, and that indefinable thing which the books call culture; and finally, in that splendid young Quaker, she was brought to know a man who could be jocular without being coarse, and whose glance was as sincere as it was flattering and alluring. She did not think of him as husband to Alice Heath, who seemed so much older in spirit as in body (more like an elder sister than a bride elect), and his consideration of her was that of brother rather than the devotion of a lover. How far he stood removed from Ed Winchell and the young fellows of Sibley! "And yet I can understand him," she thought. "He ain't funny, like Mr. Congdon. He don't say queer things, and he don't make game of people. And he don't orate like Judge Crego. He isn't laughing at us now, the way the others are. I bet they're havin' a good time over our blunders." She saw Marshall Haney in a new light also. For the first time he seemed like an old man, sitting there, supine, garrulous, in the midst of those self-contained people. "Gosh! how he did talk! He took too much wine, I reckon, but that didn't make all the difference." In truth, his imperiousness, his contempt, had been melted and charmed away by the genial smiles of his auditors. Even Mrs. Crego had listened with a show of interest. It was as if a lonely old man had at last found companionship. What did all this mean? "Are they interested in him only because he's what they call a desperado? Did they ask us there to hear him tell stories of his wild life?" Questions of this kind also troubled her. The moon slid behind the mountain range while still the girl sat with pale face and wide dark eyes thinking, thinking, the wings of her expanding soul fluttering with vague unrest. Only once in a lifetime can such an experience come to a human being. Her swift ride to Marshall Haney's side that summer night--now so far away--was momentous, but its import was simple compared with the experiences through which she had just passed. She rose at last, chilled and stiffened, and went to her bed with a sense of foreboding rather than of new-found happiness. * * * * * Mart rose late next morning. "I had a bad night," he explained. "The mixed liquors I tuck got into me wound, I guess. It woke me twice, achin' and burnin'. You're lookin' tired yersilf, little girl. This high life seems to be wearin' on the both of us." CHAPTER X BEN FORDYCE CALLS ON HORSEBACK Ben Fordyce and his affianced bride rode home talking of the Haneys. "Aren't they deliciously Western!" she said. "Mrs. Haney certainly is a quaint little thing," he replied, quite soberly; "she's like a quail--so bright-eyed, and so still. I think her devotion to her old husband very beautiful. She's more like a daughter than a wife, don't you think so?" "They're great fun if you don't feel sorry for him as I do," Alice thoughtfully responded. "They say he was magnificent as a gambler. He admitted to me to-night that he longed to go back to the camp, but that he had promised his wife and mother-in-law not to do so. I never ran a gambling-saloon, but I can imagine it would be exciting as a play all the time, can't you? Here, as he said to me, he can only sit in the sun like a lizard on a log. It must seem wonderful to her--having all this money and that big castle of a house. Don't you think so? Wasn't she reticent! She hardly uttered a word the whole evening. Some way I feel sorry for them both. They can't be happy. Don't you see that? It is plain she doesn't love him as a wife should, while he worships her. When she's away he is helpless. 'I'm no gairdner,' he said, pathetically; 'I was raised on the cobble-stones. I wouldn't know a growin' cabbage from a squash.' So you see he can't pass his time in gardening." Ben's reply was a question. "I wonder if she would ride with us?" "Perhaps we would do better not to follow up the acquaintance, Ben. It's all very interesting to meet them as we did to-night, but they are impossible socially--that you must admit. If there is any possibility of our settling down here I suppose we must be careful to do the right thing from the start." Ben was a little irritated by this. "If I'm to settle here as a lawyer I can't draw social distinctions of that sort." "Certainly not--as a lawyer. Of course, you ought to know Haney; but for me to ride or drive with Mrs. Haney is quite a different matter. However, I don't really care. She attracts me, and, so far as I know, is just a nice little uncultivated woman. We might call on her in the morning, and see if she can go with us. It will commit us; but really, Ben, I am not going to drag Eastern conventions into this fresh big country. I'm willing to risk the Haneys." "I'm glad you take that view of it," said Ben. * * * * * Bertha was in the yard when they rode up to the gate next morning. Dressed in a white sweater and a short skirt, and holding biscuits for a handsome collie to snatch from her hand, she made a charming picture of young and vigorous life. Her slim body was as strong and supple as the dog's, and her face glowed like a child's. Haney, sitting on the porch, was watching her with a proud smile. Alice glanced at her lover with admiration in her eyes. "What a glorious creature she really is!" Seeing visitors at her gate, Bertha came down without confusion to say good-morning, and to ask them to dismount. Ben, with doffed cap, replied by saying: "We've come to ask you to ride with us." Bertha looked up at him composedly. "Haven't a saddle, and I don't know that any of our horses are broken. But come again to-morrow, and I'll have an outfit." "There's no time like the present. Let me ride down to the barn and bring one up," volunteered Ben. "Don't need to do that, I'll 'phone. I didn't really expect you," she explained. "Get off and come in a few minutes, and I'll see what I can hustle together for an outfit. I haven't rode a lick since I left Sibley." Ben helped Alice to dismount, and Bertha led her to the house while he tethered the horses. "What a superb place you have here!" exclaimed Alice. "It is one of the best in the city." "We bought it for the porch," calmly replied the girl. "The Captain likes to sit where he can see the mountains. I'm not entirely done with the outfitting yet, but it beats a barn." Haney rose as they drew near, and smilingly greeted his visitors. "I should be out gatherin' the peanuts and harvestin' the egg-plants, but the dinner last night, not mentionin' Congdon's pink liquor, kept me awake till two." "Moral: Stick to Irish whiskey--or Scotch," laughed Ben. "I will. These strange liquors are not for strong men like ourselves." Ben took a seat at his invitation, while Bertha went in to 'phone for a horse and to "dig up" a riding-skirt. Alice was eager to see the interior of the house, but held her curiosity in check by walking about the beautiful garden, which ran to the very edge of a deep ravine. The trees hid the base of the mountain peaks, whose immitigable crags took on added majesty from the play of the delicate near-by branches against their distant rugged slopes. "You have a magnificent outlook here, Captain Haney." "'Tis so, and I try to be content with it; but it's hard for one who has roamed the air like a hawk all his life to be content with ridin' a wooden horse. I couldn't endure it if it weren't for me wife." His big form rested in his chair with a ponderous inertness which was a telltale witness to his essential helplessness. His left hand still failed to participate in the movements of his right, and yet, as he showed, he could, by special effort of will, use it. "I'm gaining all the time--but slowly," he went on. "I want to make a trip back up to the mines, and I think I'll be able to do it soon." He put aside his own troubles. "And you, miss, I hope the climate is doing you good?" "Oh, indeed, yes," she brightly responded. "I feel stronger every day." Ben at the moment experienced a sharp pang of uneasiness and pain, for Alice was looking particularly worn and thin and yellow; and when Bertha returned, flushed with her haste, the contrast between them was quite as distressing as that between the withered, dying rose and the opening, fragrant bud. The young man's heart rose to his throat. "We have waited too long," he thought, and resolved to again urge upon her a new treatment which they had discussed. "Come in and see the house," said Bertha, in brusque invitation. "It isn't ship-shape yet. I wanted to do it all myself, but I find it's a big proposition to go up against. It sure is. But I like it. I'd like nothing better than running a big hotel--not too big, but just big enough. I tell the Captain that when our mines 'pinch out' I'll go to Denver and start a hotel." She was quite communicative, but not at ease as she led them from room to room. Her manner was rather that of one seeking to conceal trepidation, and her fluency seemed a little out of character. In fact, she was trying to make the best possible impression on these people, whose sincere interest she felt; but with Ben's eyes fixed upon her so constantly, and a knowledge of Alice's delicate wit to trouble, she was more deeply embarrassed than ever before in her life. It was not her habit to blush or stammer, and she did not do so now, but she was carried out of her wonted reticence. "As I say, we bought the place for the porch. I didn't realize what I was being let into--if I had I might have shied. We're practically lost in the place. Except when some of the people come down from camp, we're alone. My mother helps out some, but she's up at the ranch a good deal." She opened the library door, and led the way before an easel, on which stood a huge canvas. "Here's the picture Mr. Congdon is paintin' of the Captain. I wanted him taken with his hat on, but Mr. Congdon said no, and his word went. I don't know whether I like this or not. It's got me twisted." Congdon had been after psychology rather than costume, that was evident at a glance, for the clothing counted for little in the portrait. Out of the shadow the face peered sadly, yet with a kind of ferocity, too--a look which made Alice Heath recoil from the man. In a certain way the artist had taken advantage of Mart's helplessness and loneliness. He had caught the sadness, sullenness, and remorselessness of his sitter rather than his gay, good-tempered smile. The face of this man was concerned with the past, not with the future; and yet on its surface it was a good likeness, as Ben said, and had both power and distinction. "I think it a cracker-jack piece of work," he ended. Bertha replied: "I suppose it is, and yet I can't see it. I'd rather it looked the way the Captain used to when he came down to the Junction. I'm sorry to have his sickness painted in that way." "That can't be helped. These artists are queer cattle; you can't drive 'em," Ben remarked. Bertha smiled. "He wants to paint me now. 'Not on your life' says I. 'You'd be doing double stunts with my freckles, and I won't stand for it.'" She laughed. "No sir-ree, I don't let any artist tip my freckles edgewise just to see how flip he is at it. I like Mr. Congdon, but I don't trust him--he's too much of a joker." Thereupon she led the way to the second floor, and showed them the furniture, which was mostly very costly and very bad, and at last said: "The third story is pretty empty yet. I don't know just what I'm going to do with it." She was looking at Alice. "I wish you'd come over and help me decide some day." "What fun!" cried Alice, speaking on the impulse. "I'd like to very much." "You see," Bertha went on, "my folks have always been purty poor, and I've lived in jay towns all my life; and when I came here I didn't know any more about life in a city than a duck does of mining. I had it all to learn, and they's a whole lot yet that I don't know." She smiled quaintly, then grew sober. "And what's worse, I haven't any one to tell me--except Mr. Congdon, and he's such a josher I don't trust him. He did give me a few points on the library, which ain't so bad, we think; but all the rest of it I had to dig out myself, and it's slow work. But I guess we better go down; my horse will be here in a few minutes." Then, with lowered voice, she added: "I can't stay out but a little while. The Captain dreads to have me leave him even to go down-town. I hadn't ought to go at all." Ben began to perceive a real slavery in her life, and reassured her. "I'm glad you're coming. It will do you good, and it will be a pleasure to us too. We'll only be away an hour." As they returned to the porch, Bertha put her hand on Haney's shoulder, in the manner of one man to another, saying: "I'm going for a little ride with these people, Captain, if you don't mind." "Not a whiff," he answered. "I'll be here when you come back." Again a subtle cadence in his voice so belied his smile that Alice's heart responded to it. Bertha's horse proved to be a spirited animal, but she mounted him with the ease and celerity of a boy--riding astride, in the mountain fashion. "I haven't a long skirt," she carelessly remarked to Alice. That was all the explanation she offered, and Ben thought he had never seen anything more alert, more graceful, than her slim figure poised alertly in the saddle, her face glowing, her hair blown across her face. Alice, a timid rider, admired them both from her position, which was always behind, though they tried to accommodate their pace to hers. A pang of envy that was almost jealousy pierced her heart as she looked at them--so young, so vigorous, and so blithe. "I should be sitting with Captain Haney on the porch," she thought, with bitterness. "I am out of place here." The words which passed between Bertha and her cavalier meant little, but their glances meant much. It was, indeed, a fateful ride. The liking, the deep interest, born of their first meeting, swept irresistibly into admiration. Their faces turned towards each other, youth to youth, as naturally as flowers swing towards the light. They fell into argument over saddles, over the difference between his manner of riding and her own. Her speech, so direct, so full of quaint slang, enchanted him, and Alice soon found herself the third party. And when they were for pushing into a gallop she acknowledged herself a clog. Concealing her disgust of herself under a bright smile, she called out: "Why don't you people gallop ahead, and let me jog along at my own gait?" "Oh no," replied Ben, "we don't want to do that. Are you tired?" He became anxious at once. "No, no! Please go! Mrs. Haney wants to race--I can see that; and I'd really like to see her ride--she sits her horse so beautifully." "Very well," Ben acquiesced, "we'll take a run ahead, and come back to you." Thereupon they set off, Bertha leading in a rushing gallop up a fine road which wound along a ravine, towards the top of a broad mesa. Alice, with slack rein in her small hand, rode slowly on in the vivid sunlight, a chill shadow rolling in upon her soul. As young as her lover in years, she nevertheless seemed at the moment twice his age. Everything interested him. Nothing interested her. He was never tired mentally or physically, and his smooth, unwrinkled face still reflected the morning sunlight of the world. "He is still the boy, while I am old and wrinkled and nerveless," she bitterly confessed. When they returned to her at the top of the mesa, flushed and laughing, her pain had deepened into despair. Up to that moment she had checked disease with a belief that some day she was to recover her health, that some day her wrinkles would be smoothed out and her cheeks resume their youthful charm; but now she knew herself as she was--a broken thing. The divine glow and grace of youth would never again come to her, while this vigorous and joyous girl would grow in womanly charm from month to month. "She is going to be very beautiful," she admitted; and even in the midst of her own discouragement she could not but admire Bertha's skill with the horse. She rode in the manner of a cowboy, holding her hands high and guiding her horse by pulling the reins across his neck. Ben was receiving lessons from her--absorbed and jocular. At the top of the mesa they all halted to look away over the landscape--a gray-green, tumbled land, out of which fantastic red rocks rose, and over which, to the west, the snowy peaks loomed. Ben drew a deep breath of joy. It seemed that the world had never been so beautiful. "Isn't it magnificent!" he cried. "I like this country! Alice, let's make our home here." She smiled a little constrainedly. "Just as you say, dear." "Why shouldn't we, when the climate is doing you so much good?" The horse that Bertha rode was prancing and foaming, eager for a renewal of the race, and Ben, seeing it, cried out: "Shall we go round by the hanging rock?" "I'm willing!" answered Bertha, her eyes shining with excitement. Alice shook her head. "I think I'll let you young things go your own gait, and I'll poke along back towards home." Ben rode near her, searching her face anxiously. "You're not tired--are you, sweetness?" "No, but I would be if I took that big circuit. But never mind me, I like to poke." "Very well," he answered, quite relieved, "we'll meet you at the bridge." And off they dashed with furious clatter, leaving her to slowly retrace her lonely way, feeling very tired, very old, and very sad. Bertha was perfectly, perilously happy. It was almost her first escape from the brooding care and weight of Haney's presence. She felt as she used to feel when speeding away on swift gallop to the ranch with some companion as care-free as herself. Since that fateful day when her mother fell ill and Marshall Haney asked her to marry him, she had not been permitted an hour's holiday. Even when absent from her husband her mind carried an inescapable picture of his loneliness and helplessness, and no complete relaxation had come with her temporary freedom. This day, this hour, she was suddenly free from care, from pain, from all uneasiness. She considered this feeling due to the saddle and to the clear air of the morning. "I will ride every day," she declared to Ben, with shining face, as they drew their horses to a walk. "I don't know when I've enjoyed a ride so much. I can't see why I haven't been out before. I used to ride a good lot; lately I've dropped it." "We'll call for you every morning," he replied. "As Alice gets stronger, we can go up into the cañons and take long rides." "I'll tell you what we'll do," she said; "we'll let her ride in the cart with the Captain, and take our dinner, and we'll all go up the North Cañon some day, and eat picnic dinner there." "Good idea," he said, accepting her disposition of Alice without even mental dissent. "That will be jolly fun." They planned this and other excursions, with no sense of leaving any one behind or of cutting across conventional boundaries. Their native honesty and innocence of any ill intention prevented even a suspicion of danger, and by the time they joined Alice at the bridge they were on terms of intimacy and good-fellowship which seemed to rise from years of long acquaintance. Ben had promised to help her select a horse, and she had agreed to bring the Captain to call on Alice, who was staying with some friends not far away. This change in Bertha's manner extended to Alice, who returned it in kind. The guilelessness which shone from the young wife's clear eyes was unmistakable. She was growing handsome, too. The flush of blood in her cheeks had submerged her freckles, and Alice began to realize how the poor child's devotion to Marshall Haney had reacted against her native good health. "She is but a child even now," she thought. Haney was sitting on the porch where they had left him, the collie at his feet, but at sight of them returning he rose and hobbled slowly down the walk, his heart filled with tenderness and admiration for his wife. He had never ridden with her, but he had once seen her mounted, and one of his expressed wishes had been that he might be able to sit a saddle once more and ride by her side. "Come in and stay to dinner!" he called, hospitably, and Bertha eagerly seconded the invitation. But Alice replied: "I'm pretty tired; I think I'll go home. You can stay if you like, Ben." Ben, smitten with sudden contrition, quickly said: "Oh no; I will go with you. I'm afraid you've ridden too far." She protested against this, for Bertha's relief. "Not at all. It's a good tiredness. It's been great fun." And with promises of another expedition of the same sort they rode away, while Bertha and Haney remained at the gate to examine the new horse. As little Mrs. Haney re-entered the house with her husband the day seemed to lose its magical brightness, and to decline to a humdrum, shadowless flare. The house became cold and gloomy and the day empty. For the first time since its purchase she mentally asked herself: "What will I do now?" It was as if some ruling motive had suddenly been withdrawn from her life. This empty, aching spot remained with her all through the day, even when she took Haney for his drive down-town, and only disappeared for a few moments as they met young Fordyce on the street. It troubled her as she returned to the house, and she was glad that Williams came in to take supper with them, for his talk of the mine diverted her and deeply interested her husband. Williams eyed his boss critically. "You're gainin', Captain. You'll soon be able to make camp again." "I hope so, but the doctor says my heart's affected and it wouldn't be safe for me to go any higher--for a while." Williams smiled at Bertha. "Better send the missus, then. The men all have a great idea of her. They say she's a kind of mascot. McGonnigle asks me every time what she thinks of our new shaft. I've a kind of reverence for her judgment myself. They say women kind o' feel their way to a conclusion. Now, I'd like her to pass judgment on our work in _The Diamond Ace_." "I'd like to go up," said Bertha. But, in truth, she was no longer thinking of the mine: she was considering how she might make her table look as pretty as Mrs. Congdon's. Her first dissatisfaction with her own way of life filled her mind. "I must have some of those candles," she said to herself, while the men were still intent upon the mine. Her first step towards social conformity was at this moment taken. She felt herself akin to these people, and this assertion, subconscious and unuttered, brought something between Marshall Haney and herself. It was not merely that she was younger and clearer of record, but she was perfectly certain that with education she could hold her own with the Congdons or any one else. "If my father had lived, I wouldn't be the ignoramus I am to-day." But she had no plan for acquiring the knowledge she needed other than by reading books. She resolved to read every day, though each hour so spent must be taken from her husband, now piteously dependent upon her. He managed his morning paper very well, but when she read aloud to him he almost always went to sleep. CHAPTER XI BEN BECOMES ADVISER TO MRS. HANEY Bertha was astir early the next morning, and quite ready to join the Fordyces as soon as breakfast was over; but they did not come. She waited and watched the whole forenoon, and when at twelve o'clock they had neither called nor sent word, her day suddenly sank into nothingness, like a collapsed balloon, and she faced her tasks with a weakness of will not native to her. Haney and Williams were both down street discussing some business matter with Crego, and this left her hours the more empty and unsatisfactory. As the dinner-hour drew near she drove to fetch her husband, hoping for a glimpse of the Fordyces on the way, but even this comfort was denied her, and she ached with dull pain which she could not analyze. As Haney settled himself in the carriage, he said: "Well, little woman, did ye have a good ride?" "I didn't go," she responded, with curt emphasis. "Ye did not--Why not?" "I had too much to do." This was a prevarication which she instantly repented. "Besides, they didn't turn up." "I'm sorry. I was hoping you'd had a good try at the new horse. Ye must mount him for me to see this afternoon." Later he said: "I'm feeling better each day now; soon I'll be able to take that trip East. Do you get ready at your ease." The thought of this trip, hitherto so wonderful in its possibilities, afforded her no pleasure; it scarcely interested her. And when another day went by with no further call or word from Ben Fordyce, she began to lose faith in her new-found friends and in herself. "They had enough of me," she said, bitterly. "I'm not their style." And in this lay her first acknowledgment of money's inefficiency: it cannot buy the friends you really care for. On the third day Fordyce called her up on the 'phone to say that Alice had been ill. "Our ride that day was a little too much for her," he explained, "but she will be all right again soon. I think we can go again to-morrow." This explanation brought sunshine back into the Haney castle, and its mistress went about the halls singing softly. In the afternoon, as she and Mart were starting on their "constitutional" she proposed that they call to see how Alice was. This Haney was glad to do. "I liked the little woman," said he; "she's sharp as a tack. And, besides, she listened to me gabble," he added. Miss Heath was stopping in the home of a friend--a rather handsome house, in the midst of thick shrubbery; and they found her wrapped in a blanket and sitting on the porch in a steamer-chair, with Ben reading to her. They were both instant and cordial in their demands that the Captain alight and come in, and Ben went down the walk to get him, while Alice, with envious, wistful eyes answered the glowing girl: "Oh no, I don't think the ride did me any harm. I have these little back-sets now and then. I'm glad you came." "How thin her hands are," thought Bertha. And she saw, too, that the delicate face was wrinkled and withered. Reading compassion in the girl's glance, Alice continued, brightly: "I'll be up to-morrow. I'm like a cork--nothing permanently depresses me. I'm suffering just now from an error of thought!" Bertha only smiled, and the gleam of her teeth, white and even as rows of corn, produced in her face the effect of innocent humor like that of a child. Then she said: "I've bought a new horse." "Have you, indeed?" "Yes, and I've been expecting you to ride up to the line fence and call me out--I wanted to show him to you. He's a cracker-jack, all right." "We'll come over in a day or two. I never stay _down_ more than three days." Haney, lumbering round the corner of the house, called out, mellowly: "Here you are! Now don't move a hair." He bent and offered a broad white hand. "How are ye the day?" "Better, thank you. Ben, put a chair beside me; I want to talk to Captain Haney. He was interrupted the other night in the very middle of one of his best stories, and I'm going to insist on his finishing it." Haney faced Bertha with a look of humorous amazement on his face. "Think o' that, now! She remembers one of my best." "Indeed I do, Captain, and I can tell you just where you left off. You had just sighted the camp of the robbers." Haney clicked with his tongue, as if listening to a child. "There now! I must have been taking more grape-juice than was good for me to start on that story, for it's all about meself and the great man I thought I was in those days." "I love to hear about people who can ride a hundred miles in a night, and live on roots and berries, and capture men who bristle with revolvers. Please go on. Ben, you needn't listen if you don't want to. You can show Mrs. Haney the automobile or the garden." Ben laughed. "I like to hear Captain Haney talk quite as well as anybody, but I'll be glad to show Mrs. Haney any of your neighbors' things she cares to see." Alice turned to Bertha. "I suppose the Captain's tales are all old songs in your ears?" "No, they're mostly all new to me. The Captain never tells stories to me." Haney winked. "She knows me too well. She wouldn't believe them." "Go on, please," said Alice. And so Haney took up the thread, though he protested. "'Tis a tale for candle-light," he explained. Ben was studying Bertha with renewed admiration. "Where did she get that exquisite profile?" he thought. The story was again interrupted by a group of callers, among them Mrs. Crego, and though Alice loyally stood by the Haneys and introduced them boldly, Mrs. Crego's cold nod and something that went out from the eyes of her companions made Bertha suffer, and she went away with a feeling of antagonism in her heart. Did these people consider her beneath their respect? Haney remarked as they rode away: "If black eyes could freeze, sure we'd be shiverin' this minute. Did ye see Mrs. Crego pucker up when she sighted us?" "I did, and it settled her for me," replied Bertha. The intimacy thus established between the Haneys and the Congdon circle furnished the gossip of the "upper ten" with vital material for discussion. Mrs. Crego most decidedly disapproved of their calling, and advised Alice Heath against any further connection with the gambler's wife. "What good can it possibly lead to? It's only curiosity on your part, and it isn't right to disturb the girl's ideals--if she has any." To this Alice made no reply, but Ben stoutly defended the young wife. "She would have been as good as any of us with the same education. The poor little thing has had to work since her childhood, and that has cut off all training. As for Haney, he isn't a bad man. I suppose he argues that as some one must keep a gambling-house, it is best to have a good man do it." The sense of being to a degree freed from the ordinary restraints of social life made Alice very tolerant. But, as it chanced, they did not go out the next day; indeed, it was several days before they again rode up to the Haney gate. They found Bertha dressed and ready for them (as she had been each morning), and when she came out to them her heart was glowing and her face alight. "We've come to see the new horse!" called Ben. Haney was at the gate with a smile of satisfaction on his face when the horse was brought round. "There is a steed worth the riding!" he boasted. "I told Bertie to get the best. I would not have her riding a 'skate' like that one the other morning. She'll keep ye company this day." Ben exclaimed, with admiration: "I see you know horse-kind, Captain!" "I do," responded Haney. "And now be off, and remember you take dinner with us to-day." As they moved away he took his customary seat on the porch to wait for their return--patient in outward seeming, but lonely and a little resentful within. Bertha suggested a ride up the Bear Cañon, but Ben was quick to say: "That is too far, I fear, for Alice." Bertha's glance at Alice revealed again, but in clearer lines, the sickness and weariness and the hopelessness of the elder woman's face, and Ben's consideration and watchful care of her took something out of the ride. The rapture, the careless gayety, of their first gallop was gone. An impatience rose in the girl's soul. With the cruelty of youth she unconsciously accused the other, resenting the interference with her own plans and pleasures. She felt cheated because Ben permitted himself no racing, no circuits with her--and yet outwardly and in reality she was deeply sympathetic. She pitied while she accused and resented. Their ride was short and unsatisfying. But as her guests remained for luncheon--Bertha was learning to call it that--the outing ended in a rare delight; for while "the two invalids" sat on the piazza, Bertha showed Ben her garden and stables, and the greenhouses she was building, and this hour was one of almost perfect peace. Ben, once outside Alice's depressing presence, grew gay and single-minded in his enjoyment of his hostess and her surroundings. "It must seem like Aladdin and his wonderful lamp to you," he said, as they stood watching the workmen putting in the glass to the greenhouses. "All you have to do is rub it, and miracles happen." "That's just what it does," she answered, with gravity. "I give myself a knock in the head every time I write out a check, just to see if I am awake; but I can see I'll get used to it in time. That's the funny thing: a feller can get used to anything. The trouble with me is I don't know what to do nor how to do it. I ought to be learning things: I ought to go to school, but I can't. You see, I had to buckle down to work before I finished the high-school, and I don't know a thing except running a hotel. I wish you'd give me a few pointers." "I'll do what I can, but I am afraid my advice wouldn't be very pertinent. What can I help you on?" "Well, I don't know. Alice"--she spoke the word with a little hesitation--"said something to me the other day about charity, and all that. Well, now, I'm helping mother's church--a little--and I'm helping up at Sibley, but I don't know what else to do. I suppose I ought to do some good with the money that's rolling in on us. I've got my house pretty well stocked and fitted up, and I'm about stumped. I can't sit down, and just eat and sleep, ride and drive, can I?" "There are women who do that and nothing else." "Well, I can't. I've always had something to do. I like to play as well as the next one, but I don't believe I could spend my time here just sitting around." "It's no small matter to run such a house as this." "Well, there's something in that; but the point is, what's it all for? We're alone in it most of the time, and it don't seem right. Another thing, most of our old friends fight shy of us now. I invite 'em in, and they come, but they don't stay--they don't seem comfortable. They are all wall-eyed to see the place once, but they don't say 'hello' as they used to. And the people next door here--well, they don't neighbor at all. You and the Congdons are the only people, except a few of mother's church folks, who even call. Now, what's the matter?" He was now quite as serious as she. "I suppose your own folks feel that your wealth is a barrier." "Why should they? I treat 'em just the same as ever. I'm not the kind to go back on my friends because I'm Marshall Haney's wife. If I'd earned this money I might put on airs; but I haven't--I've just married into it." "How did you come to do it?" he asked, quickly--almost accusingly. Her tone again faltered, and her eyes fell. "Well, it was like this: Mother was sick and getting old, and I was kind o' tired and discouraged, and the Captain was mighty nice and kind to us; and then I--And so when the word came that he was hurt--and wanted me--I went." Here she looked up at him. "And I did right, don't you think so?" He was twisting a twig in his fingers. "Oh yes, certainly. You've been a great comfort to him. You saved his life probably, and he really is a fine man in spite of--" He broke off. She took up his phrase. "In spite of his business. I know, that was mother's main objection to him. But, you see, he cleaned all out of that before I married him. He hasn't touched a card since." He was almost apologetic. "I've been brought up to despise gamblers--I'm a Quaker, you know, by family. But I like Captain Haney, and I can see that from his point of view a 'straight game,' as he calls it, is not a crime." "Yes, that's one good thing in his favor--he never let a crooked deal pass in his place. But, after all, I can't forget that he was a gambler, and other people can't, and his record is dead against us here." Her face was dark as she resumed. "I'm a gambler's wife. Ain't that so? Didn't you hear of me in that way? Weren't you warned against us?" His honest eyes quailed a little. "It is true your husband is called a gambler rather than a miner." "Well, he was. That's right, but he isn't now. I'm not complaining about the part that can't be helped, but I want to do something to show we are in line to-day, and so does the Captain. We want to make our money count, and if you can tell us what to do we'll be mightily obliged." The young Quaker was more profoundly enthralled by this unexpected confession of the girl than by any other word she could have uttered. His own knowledge of life was neither wide nor deep, and his sense of responsibility not especially keen; and yet he experienced a thrill of pleasure and a certain lift of spirit as he stood looking down at her--the attitude of confidential spiritual adviser began at the moment to yield a sweet satisfaction as well as an agreeable realization of power. How much Haney's mines were pouring forth he did not know, but their wealth was said to be enormous. Every day added to the potentiality of this gray-eyed girl who stood so trustfully, so like a pupil, before him. He spoke with emotion. "I'll do what I can to advise you and help you, and so will Alice. Allen Crego is a good man--he has your legal business, I believe?" "Yes, I think he's square, and I like him. But I can't go to Mrs. Crego; she despises us--that's one good reason." She smiled faintly. "But it ain't legal advice I want--it's something else. I don't know what it is. Our minister isn't the man, either. I guess I want somebody that knows life, and that ain't either a lawyer or a minister. I want some one to take our affairs in hand. I need all kinds of advice. Won't you give it to me?" He smiled. "I'd like to help, but I am only a lawyer--and a very young one at that." "I don't think of you as a lawyer; you're more than that to us." "What am I, then?" The color danced along her cheek as she uttered a phrase so current in the West that it has a certain humorous sound: "You're a gentleman and a scholar." "Thank you. But I fear you mean by that that I take life very easily." She grew serious again. "No, I don't. Anybody can see you're honest. I trust you more than I do Judge Crego, and so does the Captain. You can tell us things we want to know. We both know a little about business, but we don't know much about other things. That's where we both fall down." This frank expression of regard brought about a moment of emotional tension, and Ben hesitated before replying. At last he said: "I hope I shall always deserve your confidence. I wish I had the wisdom you credit me with. I wonder what I can tell you?" "Tell me what you would do if you were in my place." Quick as a sunbeam his smile flashed out. "Be your own good, joyous self. Whatever you do, don't lose what you are now--the quality which attracted Alice and me to you. Don't try to be like other rich people." The sight of the Captain and Alice walking slowly towards them cut short the further admission of his own careless inexperience, and they all took seats beneath a big pear-tree which shaded a semicircular wire settee. Haney had been confessing a little of his loneliness. "I will not believe that me work in the world is done. 'Tis true, I took very little care of me good days; but I was happy in me business, such as it was. Me little wife there saves me from the blue divils when she's about, but when I'm alone, sure it's deep in the dumps I go. Sometimes me mind misgives me, to think of her tied to an old stump of a tree like me! But maybe she's right--maybe I'm to recover me powers and be of use." To this Alice could only reply, as comfortingly as she could: "You've given her a good deal, Captain." "So I have, but I mean to give more. As soon as I'm able to travel we're going down the hill to see the world. Sometimes when we sit on our porch and talk of it, it seems as if I could see the whole of the States spread out before us--Chicago, Washington, New York, and all to choose from. I can't get over the surprise of having the stream of money keep comin'. I used to work hard--you may not believe that, but 'twas so. I used to have long days and nights of watching. 'Twas work of a kind, though you may not admire the kind. And now I have nothing to do but sit and twist me two thumbs--and one of them bog-spavined, at that." To this Alice had made no reply, for they were within earshot of Ben and Bertha. Haney called out: "Sure, it must be near dinner-time, Bertie!--I mean luncheon, ma'am--I'm lately instructed." They all laughed in tune to his humor, and Bertha replied: "No more twelve-o'clock dinners for us, Captain." Haney groaned. "This fashionable life will be the death of me. Sure, I eat and talk by rule a'ready. Where it will end I dunno." Happily the bell soon relieved the strain, but the talk at the table continued to be very personal--it could not be prevented, for each of these four people was at a turning-point in his or her life. Haney, feeling the slow tide of returning vigor in his limbs, was in trouble thinking of what he was to do. Bertha, just beginning to tremble beneath the mysterious stir of an all-demanding love, was uneasy, feverish, and self-conscious. Alice, sensing the approach of weakness and decay, yet struggling against it, was inwardly in despair. While Ben, hitherto careless, facing life with unwrinkled brow, was appreciating, for the first time, the positive responsibilities of manhood. Bertha's expressed wish to employ his best judgment exalted him while it troubled him. For a time the burden of the conversation was his. Haney was in a reflective mood, and Bertha busied with the table service, which she was trying to raise to the level of her honored guests, was distracted. Alice, tired and a little dispirited, added nothing to the youthful spirit of the meal. At last, just when the conversation seemed about to flag out, Haney, lifting his head, began in a new tone: "Mr. Fordyce, my little girl and I have decided we want you to take Crego's place as our lawyer. I hope you'll be able to do it." Alice looked up in surprise. "But you don't mean to take it from Mr. Crego?" Haney's face grew hard. "I am under no obligation to Crego, and I prefer to have as me lawyer a man who can neighbor with me, and whose wife is not above nodding when me own wife passes by." Alice hastened to defend the Cregos. "You mustn't be unjust to Mrs. Crego." "I'm not," said Haney, "nor to Crego either. I've paid for his time, and paid well--as I'm willing to pay for yours." He turned to Ben. "I need advice, and I want to feel free to go for it." Ben replied: "I'd like to accept your business, Captain, but you see it would not be professional for me to profit at the expense of my friend, and, besides, I haven't really settled here yet." Haney looked disappointed. "I thought ye had. Well, I am going to cut loose from Crego anyhow, and I shall tell him why." Bertha cried out: "No, don't do that." He acquiesced. "Very well, then I won't tell him why; but I'm going to quit him! So if you don't care to take on me business, I'll give it to Jim Beringer. It pays a good bit of money, and will pay more. I'll make it profitable to ye." Alice looked at Ben. "Of course, if he is going to leave Mr. Crego anyway--" "But that would mean making our permanent home here, and setting up an office." "Well, why not? I can't live in the East any more; that we have tested. I am willing to decide now. It would give you a start here, and, besides, I think you can be of use to the Captain." Ben still hesitated. "It seems rather treacherous to Crego some way. But if you have definitely decided against him--" "We have," said Bertha. "We talked it all over yesterday. We want you." Haney's face was very grave now. "There is one thing more, Mr. Fordyce. Mart Haney's reputation must be taken into account. It won't do you anny good to be associated with him. I don't know that it will do you anny harm, but I'm dom sure it will do you no good to be associated with me." Alice interposed, quickly. "A lawyer can't choose his clients--at least, a _young_ lawyer can't." Haney ignored the implications of her speech. "I'm not tryin' to cover up me tracks," said he. "I was a gambler for thirty years. Me whole life has been a game of chance. There are many who think gambling one of the high crimes an' misdemeanors, but I think a square game between men is defensible. I am a gambler by nature. Why shouldn't I be? I grew up a fat squab of a boy rollin' about on the pavin'-stones of Troy. 'Twas all luck, bedad, whether I lived or died. I lived, it fell out, and when I had learned to read I read wild-West stories. Of course, that led me to go West and jine the Indians, and by stealin' rides and beggin' me bread I reached Dodge City. 'Twas all chance that I didn't die on the way. Me mother, poor soul, was worried and I knew it, and finally I put me fist to it and wrote her a letter to say I was all right. She wrote beggin' me to return, which I did a couple of years later; but Troy was too slow for me then, and again I pulled out. I was always takin' risks. Danger was me delight. I had no trade, but I had faith in me luck. I won--I almost always won. And so I came to be a gambler along with bein' sheriff and city marshal, and the like o' that, in one mountain town or another, but I always played fair. A man who plays a square game is a gambler. The man who deals underhand is a crook. I'm no crook. I love the game. To know that the cards are stacked against the other player takes all the fun out of the deck for me. I want the other felly to have an equal chance with me--else 'tis no game, but a hold-up. No man ever rightfully accused me of dealing against him. Yes, 'tis true, me world is a world of risk." He looked at Alice. "Sure, the Look-Out up above--if there is such--is there to see that we all have a show for our ace. If anything interferes with that the game is a crooked one." Alice began to perceive something big and admirable in this man's spirit. She was not of his faith--quite the contrary. She was a fatalist. Nothing happened in her world. But she was imaginative enough to understand his point of view. Haney went on. "I know all the tricks. I lairned them, not to use in the game, but to keep them _out_ of the game. I had too much faith in me luck to ever weaken." "Did you never lose?" asked Ben. "Many the time, indeed, but only for a short streak. Take this mine, for instance. A man comes into me house full of confidence in himself, plays, and goes broke. The fury of the game bein' in him, he says: 'I'll put me prospect hole against five hundred dollars.' 'Roll the wheel,' says I, and I won his hole in the ground. 'Twas me luck. That prospect turned out a mine. 'Twas his luck to lose. He was a full-grown man; he knew the game and went into it with his eyes open. Truth was, he considered the mine a 'dead horse,' and was hopin' to take a fall out o' me. Me little girl here is disturbed about the way the mine came to us, but she needn't be. 'Twas all in the game. I'm sayin' 'twas in the game that another crazy fool should blow me to pieces--I don't complain. I take me chances. Now"--here he faced Ben, and his grave tone lightened--"as I understand it, you're not a rich man?" Ben flushed a little. "No, I haven't earned much so far; but it's up to me to get busy." "And ye expect to marry soon?" This question sent a thrill to the heart of each of the three young people listening--a thrill of fear, of doubt. And Ben said, slowly, perceiving Haney's fatherly good-will: "Yes, we expect to set up housekeeping, as the old-fashioned people say, as soon as Alice is a little stronger." "Very well, then," Haney went on like one who has made his point, "here's _your_ chance. Your fee with me will pay your coal bills anyway. We're likely to take a good dale of your time, but you'll lose nothing by that." Bertha, with big yearning eyes fixed upon Ben's face, waited in a quiver of hope as he replied: "Of course, Captain Haney, I can't subscribe to your defense of gambling, and if you were still a gambler, in the strict sense of the word, I couldn't accept this position, for it is something more than legal. But as you have given up all connection with cards and liquor selling, I see no reason why I should not accept your offer--provided I can be of service in the manner you expect." He looked across the table at Bertha, and reading there the same entreaty which she had expressed in the garden, he added, firmly and definitely: "Yes, I will accept, and be very much obliged to you." Haney extended his hand, and they silently clasped palms in the compact. They parted in a glow of mutual confidence and liking, and Alice's voice quivered as she thanked their host. "I think it very fine of you, Captain Haney. This may be the means of establishing Mr. Fordyce in business here." His eyes twinkled in reply. "I will do all I can to help him, for he takes me eye." Ben's last glance and the pressure of his hand left in Bertha's brain a glow which remained with her all the rest of the day, and she carolled like a robin as she trod her swift way about the house. The next morning, as they sat at breakfast, Mart briskly said: "Well, little woman, I've decided, now that I have a man I can trust with me business, to make the trip East. As soon as he has the mines in hand we'll start. Can you be ready to go Monday week?" "Sure thing," she answered, quickly. But even as she spoke a nameless pang that was neither joy nor exultation shot through her heart. For the first time she realized that she had lost her keen desire to explore the glittering plain which lay below her feet. A fairer world, a perfectly satisfying world, was opening before her in the high country which was her home. CHAPTER XII ALICE HEATH HAS A VISION This change of legal adviser, while very important to Ben Fordyce and the Haneys, did not seem to trouble Allen Crego very much. As a matter of fact, he was about to run for Congress, and had all the business he could attend to anyway. He liked the young Quaker, and responded "All right" in the frank Western fashion, sending the Haneys away quite as solidly friendly as before. To Ben he was most cordial. "I'm glad you're going to settle here, and I'm specially glad you've got a retainer; for the field is overcrowded, and it may take a long time for you to get a place. We old fellows who came down along with the pioneers have an immense advantage. I wish you every success." And he meant it. Only when he got home to Mrs. Crego did he come to realize what a horrible injury he had permitted "a young and inexperienced Eastern boy" to do himself. "This connection will ostracize them both," his wife said. He answered a little wearily. "Oh, now, my dear, I think you take your social Medes and Persians too seriously. We lawyers can't afford to inquire into the private affairs of our clients too closely--especially if they are derived from the pioneer West. Ben Fordyce doesn't become responsible for Haney's past; it is a business and not a social arrangement." "That's like a man," she responded; "they never see anything till it bumps their noses. They've both called on the Haneys and gone riding with them--or with the girl. They've even eaten luncheon there!" "How dreadful! Mrs. Crego, you shock me!" "If any evil comes of this--and there will be sorrow in it--you'll be morally responsible. In the old days it didn't matter, but now nobody who is anybody in this town can associate with people like the Haneys and not be hurt by it." The judge ceased to smile. "Now, let this end the discussion. Fordyce has sense enough to take care of himself. He's just the man for Haney--he has time, good nature, and splendid connections. I am glad to be rid of the business, and I am delighted to think this young fellow has pleased Haney--" "It isn't Haney. Don't you see? It's that girl. She has urged it--I'm perfectly sure." "Stop right there!" he commanded, sharply. "I don't want to hear a word of your insinuations. I'm tired of them. I'm ashamed of you." And he took up his paper and walked away from her. She was defeated at the moment, but hurried to the Congdons with her news. Lee looked quite serious enough. "I don't believe I like that either. What do you think, Frank?" "All depends on Ben. If he makes it a business deal and keeps it so all right; if he don't, it may go against him in the town, as Helen says." "Don't you think you'd better go see him and have a talk?" "Nixie!" he answered, in swift negation. "Little Willie don't want to tackle that delicate job. I'm subtle, but not so subtle as that. Alice Heath knows all we know and more, and you can bet they've talked the whole thing over." "But they may not realize the position of the Haneys." "They may not; but I suspect they think they can carry any connection they choose to make, and I mostly think they can--ten generations of Quaker ancestry--" "But the people there don't know their ancestry." "Well, go talk to them. I abdicate. Besides, I like the Haneys." Mrs. Crego now laid her joker on the table. "Here's the point. That girl is _taken_ with Ben--it's all her plan." Congdon started. "Sh! Don't say that out loud, Nell. That little wife is true as steel." "I don't care. My prophetic soul--" Lee put in. "Prophetic pollywogs! Why, Helen, the girl is as simple and straightforward as a boy of twelve." "She seems that way, but I could see she was wonderfully attracted by Ben and his singing that night here." "That may be; so was I. Anyhow, I agree with Frank: it would be cruel to say such a thing--even if it were so, which I don't for an instant believe. At the same time, I admit the connection will make talk and may create a prejudice. Maybe we'd better see Ben." She looked at her husband. He waved a protesting finger before his face. "Not on your life! Ben and I are friends. I like him immensely--too much to think of running such a frightful risk of offending him. If you interfere you do so at your own peril." Lee finally acquiesced in his judgment, and Mrs. Crego went home more deeply troubled than her acquaintance with Alice Heath would seem to warrant. "Helen's an estimable person," said Frank Congdon, "and on the whole I like her; but I wish she didn't take quite so much evil for granted." So as no one warned Ben Fordyce, he went gayly forward and hired a couple of nice rooms in a sightly block, and hung out a gilded sign. "I am a citizen of Colorado now," he said to the Captain and Bertha the first time they called at his office. Alice was there, and they were deep in discussion of the merits of a pile of new rugs which were to match the wall-paper. Ben stoutly stood for the "ox-blood" and she for the "old gold." Ben explained. "The entire extravagance of this office is due to her." He pointed an accusing finger at Alice, who nodded shamelessly. "I was all for second-hand stuff, both for economy's sake and to show I'd been in practice a long time." "You'd need a battered second-hand set of whiskers to match," she replied, and they all laughed at the notion. "No, Captain, being sure Ben couldn't deceive anybody as to his age and experience, I argued for signs of prosperity. New-born success has its weight, you know." "Sure it has." "People like silken rugs and mahogany furniture, even in the West." "They do," Haney agreed. Bertha, standing silently by, was vaguely resenting Alice's presence. This feeling was not defined, but it was strong enough to darken her face and take the sparkle out of her eyes. She would have liked to do this work of fitting up his rooms; and he, on his part, saw that she was in sombre mood, and sought opportunity to come to where she stood. "I'm being congratulated on all sides for becoming a citizen of Colorado. It's quite like being initiated into some new club. In an Eastern town they'd let me jolly well alone. I'm going to like it immensely, I know, and it's really due to you." She found words difficult at the moment. His face and voice dazzled her like an open door towards sunshine, and after a moment's pause she looked round the room, saying: "It's going to be fine." "I want it comfy, so that you and the Captain will feel like coming down often. We have a great deal to talk over before I shall really have a full understanding of your affairs. I'm going to bone into my books hard," he added, boyishly. "To tell the truth, I've taken life pretty easy. You see, my father left me a regular income, big enough to support me while I was studying law, but not enough to marry on." She couldn't have told why, but this subject troubled her and confused her. She turned away again as he continued: "Alice has a little, not much, in her own right, and so it is really up to me to settle down and get to work. Please don't think you are taking the time of a rich and busy man like Crego. I am very grateful to you. It will enable us to plan a home here in the West." Again that keen pang went through her heart, and he, looking towards Alice, so worn and drooping, was touched with dismay, almost fear. She was talking to the Captain, but was furtively watching Bertie and Ben. "How erect and radiant and happy they are," she thought, and a doubt of the girl came into her mind. "She is so untrained and so young!" And in this mental exclamation she put her first fear that Ben might find his position as legal adviser complicated by the admiration of the Captain's wife. Something weirdly intuitive had come to Alice Heath in these later years. As her health declined and her flesh purified, she had come to possess uncanny powers of vision, and at times seemed to read the very innermost thoughts of those about her. The loss of her beauty, which had been exquisite as that of a rose, had made her morbid--which she knew and struggled against. She forecast the future, and this is disquieting to any one. "Here at this moment," she often said to herself, "my world is flooded with sunshine--a static world in appearance. But how will it be ten years from now? The clock ticks, the sun passes, the universal sway of death extends." With the same acuteness with which she read other minds she read her own; but knowing that such imaginings were unnatural and distressing, she fought against them; yet they came in spite of herself. And the picture of Bertha standing there beside Ben filled her with a prophetic vision of what the girl-wife was to become: "She will grow in grace and in dignity, in understanding. She's of good stock. She's like a man in her power to raise herself above lowly conditions. Why are there not female Lincolns? There are, and she is one of them. Nearly all our great men were born and reared under conditions ruder than those which surrounded this girl. Why can't she rise? She will rise--and then--" She did not pursue the clew further, for the Captain was speaking. "And you, miss, can be of just as great service to me wife. She's alone with me here in this town, and I'm a heavy load for her to carry. I am so. Now that her house is in order the days are long. The people she'd like to know don't drop in, and I suspect it's because she's Mart Haney's wife." She resumed her sprightly manner. "Oh no; I'm afraid if she were a poor girl she'd find these same people still more indifferent." "True, miss. But would they act the same if she were Mart Haney's widow?" She flashed a deep-piercing, wondering glance at him. "Ah, that would be different. And yet," she hastened to say, "that would not make her acceptable to the really best people." "What would, miss?" he asked, simply. "I'm a rough man, and I've led a rough life. I begin to see things now that I never saw before. What would give Bertha standing among the people you speak of?" "Education, character. By character I mean she must be a personality." "That she is!" He was emphatic in this. "She certainly is a fascinating girl, and she promises to be a still more interesting woman." "I'm not a wooden-head, miss. As a gambler, it was me business to read men's faces. I see more than my little girl gives me credit for. I think I know why Mrs. Crego can't see us as we pass by, and I was wise to them friends of yours the other day when they curled their tails and showed their teeth at sight of us. It's because Bertie is the wife of a gambler. Isn't that so, now?" She rose with a start, for Bertha was coming towards them. "Hush! don't talk about it any more--at present." And at this moment there passed before her eyes a vision of this big man, crushed and writhing on a mountain-side, among deep green ferns. It lasted but an instant, like the memory of an event in childhood; a spot transient as a shadow--disconnected, without precursor or sequence; like a cloud over the wheat it gloomed a moment and was gone, and she gave herself up to the influence of the sunny room and Ben's joyous plans. This vision came back to her when she was alone in her own room an hour later, and stayed with her persistently. What did it mean? Did it presage an accident to him, or had it arisen from a vague knowledge of the cause of his wounding? This singular and distressing rule governed her dreams of the future. They were all of sorrow, death, physical calamities; never, or very rarely, of health and happiness; therefore, she seldom spoke of them. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," her father was wont to say, and she had come to the same conclusion. Besides her faith in her predictive dreams was by no means fixed. She had reached but one comforting conclusion, and that was negative. If no vision came to reveal the future of any friend, she rested secure in the belief that he or she at least was to be free of disaster. It was a sweet and comforting fact to remember that no vision of Ben's future had ever entered her consciousness. She did not even dream of him. And this was still more wonderful, for she had always understood that those we love are ever in our thoughts in slumber. For some reason the day had been most wearing, and to dress for dinner was an effort. But she made herself as lovely as she could for Ben's sake--and for the sake of the Congdons with whom they were to dine. "We are to be alone," Lee had 'phoned, "for I want to talk with you like a Dutch aunt." Alice knew as well as if Lee had spoken it what was coming. They were going to protest against Ben's intimacy with the Haneys. And as soon as they were in their carriage she warned Ben. "You want to be on your guard to-night. The Congdons are going to advise you against accepting this retainer from Captain Haney." He was too happy to do more than jokingly reply: "Too late! Bribe is in hand, and money mostly spent. What I want to ask you is more important. When are we to start our 'love in a cottage' idyl? It really looks possible now. Isn't it beautiful to think we can really keep house out here and pay our way?" "Oh, Ben!"--there was a wail in her voice--"I don't seem to gain as I should! I'm completely tired out to-night." He was all concern instantly, and putting his arm about her, tenderly exclaimed: "Dear heart, it was my fault. You shouldn't have gone down at all." "But don't you see how revealing it is? If I can't go down to your office to superintend the arrangement of a few rugs and chairs, how can I keep a house--your house--in order? No, dear boy, we mustn't think of it--not now; perhaps by spring, but certainly not now." He was both saddened and perplexed, and yet his disappointment was not so keen as it had been when she had put off their wedding-day the first time, and when she turned a white, despairing face up to him, saying wildly: "Oh, Benny, why don't you give me up and marry some nice young girl?" He only took her in his arms and shut her lips with a kiss. "No more such talk," he said; "you're tired and a little morbid. Lee's lecture will do you good. I hope she gets after you for letting yourself down into these detestable moods." Signs of their troubled ride were on their faces as they entered the Congdon sitting-room (which also served as hall), and Lee put her arm about her guest with compassion uppermost in her heart. "You don't look a bit well to-night. What have you been doing?" "Nothing. That's the worst of it. If I'd been scrubbing floors or cleaning silver I'd feel that I had a right to be tired, but I've only been down to Ben's new office overseeing the laying of three rugs. I didn't lift a hand, and now look at me!" When they were in the privacy of Lee's dressing-room the hostess studied her guest critically. "You've something on your mind," she announced. "I always have something on my mind." "I know you do, and if you're ever going to get well you must get it off your mind. Do I know what it is?" "If you don't, you ought to. Since this retainer from Captain Haney, Ben is urging an immediate marriage." Lee Congdon was an unconquerable realist and truth-teller, and she could not at the moment utter any other than a divergent word. "We got you here to-night to talk over that Haney business. We don't entirely like it; at least, I don't. Frank has no responsibility, never had. Haney is not a bad man, and she isn't a bit low or common; but folks think she is. And it's going to hurt you both, I'm afraid, to have anything to do socially with them." "Oh, socially!" Alice cried, in disgust. "I thought we were coming to the big and boundless West, where such things don't count." "You have, and you haven't. The Springs is a little of the West, a little of England, and a good deal of the East. It's a foolish town in some ways, and I warn you lots of nice people will find it inconvenient to call on you for fear of meeting Mrs. Haney." "Oh, rats!" "Absurd, isn't it? I'm glad you put on that dress. You don't look tired now; your cheeks are blazing." "With wrath--not health." "At me?" "Oh no. At these people who assume to dictate whom we shall know." "They don't do that, dear; they only think you're paying too much for Ben's new office. But come down to dinner; we'll fight this out later." Congdon was outspoken in his admiration. "By the Lord, the climate is getting in its work! Why, Alice, you're radiant. You're ten years younger to-night!" "That's because I'm angry." "What about?" "Your townspeople. Lee has made me feel as if I were the club-bar topic to-night." Congdon became solemn--grim as a brazen image. "Mrs. Congdon, you've been making some of your tactful remarks." "I have not. I've been talking straight from the shoulder, as I advise you to do." He capitulated. "After the turkey. Come on, Ben, we're in for a lecture by the Professor-Doctor Lee Congdon." Under the influence of his humor they took seats about the pretty, candle-lit table as gay a group as the city held--apparently; for Alice was of that temperament which responds quickly and buoyantly to humor, and Frank Congdon never took anything quite seriously--except his portrait-painting. He could do a cake-walk with any one, but he would not discuss art with the unsympathetic. He always had a new story to tell of his amazing experience. Something was always happening to him. Other men come and go up and down the whole earth without an adventure, but no sooner does Frank Congdon slip out of the door than the fates--generally the humorous ones--pounce upon him. Drunken women claim him for a son. Sheriffs arrest him in the mountains and transport him long distances, only to find him the wrong man. Confused Swedish mothers give him babies to hold in the cars, and rush out just in time to get left. And these tales lose nothing in his recount of them. In the present instance he took up half the dinner-hour with a description of his latest mishap. A neighbor's cook had suddenly gone mad, and had charged him with putting a spell over her. "Somebody calls me up on the 'phone this morning: 'Is this Frank Congdon?'... 'Yes.' ... 'Hello, Frank, this is Henry. What you been doing to my cook?' ... 'What does she say I have?' ... 'Says you've hypnotized her--put a spell over her.' ... 'I pass.' ... 'Fact; she's crazy as a bed-bug, and we can't do a thing with her--and she was _such_ a good girl. How could you, Frank?' ... 'I never saw the creature in my life.' ... 'Well, you'll see her now. You're to come right over and remove this spell, or we won't have any breakfast.'" Here Congdon looked solemnly round at his guests. "Now wouldn't that convulse a body? I didn't know her name; on my word, I couldn't remember how she looked. But my curiosity was roused, and over I toddled. It was all true. Karen was in the kitchen, armed with the jig-saw bread-knife and calling for me. Henry was all for my appearing suddenly at the door à la Svengali, and with a majestic wave of the hand lift the cloud from her brain. 'Not on your tintype,' says I; 'I guess this is a case for the police. If I put this spell on that hell-cat it must have been by "absent treatment" during sleep, and it's me to my studio again.' ... 'No you don't,' said Henry. 'You stay till this incubus is cleared away. It ain't reasonable to suppose that an ignorant maid like this is going to charge a complete stranger with a crime of this kind unless--' "'That's what I say. It isn't reasonable, I refuse to believe it.' Just then something seemed to break loose in the back part of the house. Wash-boilers seemed to be falling on the kitchen range, and wild yells made Mrs. Henry turn pale. "'That's your work, monster!' shrieked Henry. "'Is it?' I said. 'My opinion is she's broke into your wine-cellar. It's you to the police.' "'Go calm her. Come, it's a fine chance to experiment.' "'So it is--with a cannon. Do you mean to tell me seriously that she thinks I've hypnotized her?' "Then he got down to business, and assured me that he was telling the truth. This interested me, and I thought I'd chance opening the door--particularly as everything was quiet inside." His company was very tense now, so vividly had he set the whole scene before them. "I opened the door, and found her standing at the far side of the room, her hair in ropes and her eyes wild. She was 'bug-house' all right. 'Karen,' I said, in my most hypnotic voice, 'I lift the spell. You are free. Go back to work.'" "What happened?" asked Alice, breathless with excitement. His face was grave and his voice sad. "Not a thing! My Svengali pass didn't work. I was as the idle wind to her. Therefore, I withdrew and 'phoned the police." "What an extraordinary thing," said Ben. Mrs. Congdon brightly answered: "It would be for any one else, but I'm so used to that now I don't mind. Whenever the telephone bell rings I expect to hear that Frank is sued for breach of promise, or arrested for burglary, or some little thing like that. If he were only a novelist he'd make our everlasting fortune. But I know why he started this story--he wants to head off my talk with you about the Haneys, and I don't intend to let him do it. Have you taken on Haney's legal business?" "Yes." "For good and all?" "Yes. He's advanced me part of my fee, and I've spent it for desks, rugs, and office rent. I think I may say the offer is accepted." "I'm sorry," she said, simply. Her husband objected. "I don't see why. Haney is a man of large means, his mines are paying hugely, and he needs some one to look after the investment side of his income, and to keep tab on the output of the mines, and to be ready to settle any legal points that may come up. Ben's just the boy to do this." Lee was firm. "That's one side of it. But these young people should not start in wrong. Haney's past is said to be criminal, and Mrs. Haney is called low--" Congdon hotly interrupted. "Who says so? It's a lie!" "That's the talk over town. It was all right for Crego to transact their business, for he is an old and well-known lawyer here; but it's different with Ben, who is just starting." Ben laughed. "Yes, it is different. Crego didn't need the job, and I do." "How bad do you need it?" she asked. "Well, it makes it possible for us to marry at once and settle here." He looked at Alice with a renewal of the admiration he had felt for her in the days of their dancing feet. She shrank from his gaze, and Mrs. Congdon perceived it. "You're not so poor as all that," she stated rather than asked. "I don't suppose we're likely to need bread of a sort, but I don't feel able to buy or rent and keep house--or I didn't till Haney made this offer." "How did he come to make it?" His fair skin flushed at her question, for he couldn't quite bring himself to tell the whole truth. He knew the decision came from Bertha, and at the moment, and for the first time, he saw how it might be misconstrued. He evaded her. "Modesty forbids, but I suppose it must come out. It is all due to my open-faced Waterbury countenance. He thinks I am at once able and honest." "There you have it, Lee. Haney knows a good thing when he sees it." Mrs. Congdon, putting the rest of her lecture aside for future use, said: "Well, if it's all settled, then I've no more to say. Probably I'm too fussy about what the town thinks, anyway." "Precisely my contention, Mrs. Congdon," replied her husband. She was audaciously frank and truth-seeking, but she could not say to any one but her husband that Little Mrs. Haney, expanding into a dangerously attractive woman, was already in love with Ben Fordyce. "There are limits to advice, after all," she said to Frank, when they were alone. "I'm glad you recognize the limit in this case," he replied, "but I don't intend to worry. Ben is all right, and the girl has got to have her tragedy sooner or later. If it isn't Ben, it will be somebody else. A wonder it wasn't with me." "Oh, I don't know." She laughed. "I feel very secure about you." "Am I such a bad shape?" he asked, with comical inflection. CHAPTER XIII BERTHA'S YELLOW CART Ben found his office a most cheerful and pleasant resort--just what he needed. And each morning as soon as his breakfast was eaten, he went to his desk to write, to read his morning paper, and to glance at the law journals. He called this "studying." About eleven o'clock the Haneys regularly drove down, and they went over some paper, or some proposal for investment, or Williams came in with a report of the mines. This filled in the time till lunch. Not infrequently he got into the carriage, and they rode up to get Alice to fill out the table. In the afternoon they sometimes went out to the mesas, and it was this almost daily habit of driving and lunching with the Haneys which infuriated Mrs. Crego (who really loved Alice) and troubled Lee Congdon (who was, as she said, frankly in love with Ben). Gossips were already discussing the outcome of it all. "Just such a situation as that has produced a murderess," said Mrs. Crego to the judge one night. But he only shook his paper and scowled under its cover, refusing to say one word further concerning the Haneys. Alice, studying Ben with those uncanny eyes of hers, saw him slowly yielding to the charm of Bertha's personality, which was maturing rapidly under the influence of her love. She was as silent as ever, but her manner was less boyish. The swell of her bosom, the glow that came into her face, had their counterparts in the unconsciously acquired feminine grace of her bearing. She was giving up many of the phrases which jarred on polite ears, and she did this, naturally, by reason of her association with Alice. She saw and took on many of the little niceties of the older woman's way of eating and drinking. At Lee Congdon's suggestion, she abandoned the cross-saddle. It required a great deal of character to give up the free and natural way of riding (the way in which all women rode until these latter days), and to assume the helpless, cramped, and twisted position the side-saddle demands; but she did it in the feeling that Ben liked her better for the change. And he did. She could see approval in his eyes when she rode out for the first time in conventional riding-skirt, looking very slim and strong and graceful. "I can't stand for the 'hard hat,'" she confessed. "I'll wear a cap or a sombrero, but no skillet for me." These were perfect days for the girl-wife. Under these genial suns, with such companionship, such daily food, she rushed towards maturity like some half-wild colt brought suddenly from the sere range into abundant and peaceful pasture, the physical side of her being rounded out, glowing with the fires of youth, at the same time that the poor old Captain sank slowly but surely into inactivity and feebleness. She did not perceive his decline, for he talked bravely of his future, and called her attention to his increasing weight, which was indeed a sign of his growing inertness. And so the months passed with no one of the little group but Alice suffering, for Mart had attained a kind of resignation to his condition. He still talked of going up to the camp, but the doctor and Bertha persuaded him to wait, and so he endured as patiently as he could, and if he suffered, gave little direct sign of it. Alice, fully alive now to the gossip of the town (thanks to Mrs. Crego), found herself helpless in the matter. She believed the young people to be--as they were--innocent of all disloyalty, and she could not assume the rôle of the jealous woman. She was frightened at thought of the suffering before them all, and it was in this fear that she said to Ben one day: "Boy, you're giving up a deal of time to the Haneys." He answered, promptly. "They pay me for it." "I know they do. But, dearest, you ought to take more time to study--to prepare yourself for other clients--when they come." He laughed. "They're not likely to come right away, and, besides, I do get in an hour or two every day." "But you ought to study _six_ hours every day. Aren't the traditions of Lincoln and Daniel Webster all to that effect: work all day with the ax, and study in the light of pine knots all night?" He took her words as lightly as they were spoken. "Something like that. But I'm no Daniel Webster; I'm not sure I want to go in for criminal law at all." She spoke, sharply. "You mustn't think of getting your fees too easy, Ben. I don't think any good lawyer wins without work. Do you?" "I didn't mean that," he hastened to say. "You do me an injustice. I really read more than you think, and my memory is tenacious, you know. Besides, I can't refuse to give the Haneys the most of my time; for they are my only clients, and the Captain is most generous." "The mornings ought to be enough," she hazarded. "I know what you mean. I do go out with them afternoons a good deal, but I consider that a part of my duty. They are so helpless socially. You've always felt that yourself." "I feel it now, Bennie boy, but we mustn't neglect all friends for them. Other people don't know that you do this as a matter of business, and of course you can't tell any one; for if the Haneys heard of it they would be cut to the heart. Do they put it on a business basis?" "They never mention it. Bertha isn't given to talking subtleties, as you know, and the Captain takes it all as it comes these days." It hurt her to hear him speak of Mrs. Haney in that off-hand, habitual way, and she foretold further misconception on the part of Mrs. Crego in case he should forget--as he was likely to do--and allude to "Bertha" in her presence. But how could she tell him not to do that? She merely said: "I like Mrs. Haney, and I feel sorry for her--I mean I'm sorry she can't have a place in the town to which she is really entitled. She is improving very rapidly." "Isn't she!" he cried out. "That little thing is reading right through the town library--a book every other day, she tells me." "Novels, I fear." "No; that's the remarkable thing. She's reading history and biography. Isn't it too bad she couldn't have had Bryn Mawr or Vassar? I've advised her to have in some one of the university people to coach her. I've suggested Miss Franklin. I wish you'd uphold me in it." He had never told Alice of the talk in the garden that day, nor of the look in Bertha's eyes which decided him to assume the position of mentor as well as legal adviser, and he did not now intimate more than a casual supervision of her reading. As a matter of fact, he was directing her daily life as absolutely as a husband--more absolutely, in fact; for she obeyed his slightest wish or most minute suggestion. He withheld these facts from Alice, not from any perceived disloyalty to her, but from his feeling that his advice to Bertha was paid for and professional, and therefore not to be spread wide before any one. He did not conceal anything; he merely outlined without filling in the bare suggestion. He not merely gave his fair client lists of books, he talked with her upon them, and so far as he was able spoke seriously and conscientiously about them. She seized upon his suggestion, and got Miss Franklin, one of the teachers of the schools, to come in now and again of an evening to help her, and, being fond of music, she bought a piano and began to take lessons. All of which (Lee Congdon would have said) threatened to render her commonplace and uninteresting; but Alice Heath felt quite differently about that. "No; the more that girl gets, the more she'll have, Lee. As Ben says, she's the kind that if she were a boy would turn out a big self-made man. That's a little twisted as to grammar, but you see what I mean. Sex is one of the ultimate mysteries, isn't it? Now, why didn't I inherit my father's ability?" "You did, only you never use it. But this girl hasn't your father to draw from." "No; but her father was an educated man--a civil engineer, she tells me, who came out here for one of the big railroads. He was something of an inventor, too. That's the reason he died poor--they nearly all do." "But the mother?" "Well, she's weak and tiresome now, but she's by no means common. She's broken by hard work, but she's naturally refined. No, the girl isn't so bad; it's the frightful girlhood she endured in that little hotel. I think it's wonderful that she could associate with the people she did--barbers and railway hands, and all that--and be what she is to-day. If she had married a man like young Bennett, for example, she would have gone far." "She can't go far with Haney chained to her wrist," said the blunt Mrs. Congdon. "But think what will happen when she is his widow!" "And his legatee!" "Precisely." "She'll cut a wide swath. She's going to be handsome." They had reached a danger-point, for Lee was on the verge of saying something about Ben's infatuation; but she didn't, and Alice knew why she didn't, for she asked, rather abruptly: "Won't you come over Thursday night? I'm going to take the Haneys to dinner at the hotel." She flushed under Lee's gaze. "It's really Bennie's party, and I'm going to make it as pretty as I can." "Alice, I don't understand you. Why do you do this?" "Because I must. She and the Captain are going East on a visit, and Ben wants to give them a 'jolly send-off,' as he calls it. Besides, I like the girl." Lee mused in silence for a few moments. "I guess you're right. Of course I'll come. Who else will?" "Several of Ben's new friends and the Cregos--" "Not the missus?" "Yes; she comes because she's consumed with curiosity. Oh, it really promises to be smart!" Congdon came in just in time to hear these words, "Who promises to be smart--Mrs. Haney?" The women laughed. "Another person going about with a mind full of Mrs. Haney." "Well, why not? I just passed her on the street in her new dog-cart, and she was ripping good to look at. Say, that girl is too swift for this town. You people better keep close to her if you want to know what's doing in gowns and cloaks. Did you ever see such development in your life? Say, girls, I always believed in clothes. But, my eyes! I didn't think cotton and wool and leather could make such a change. Who is putting her on?" "The cart is a new development," said Alice. "I hope it wasn't yellow?" "Well, it was." "The Captain was in it?" "Not on your life. The Captain was at home in the easy-chair by the fire." The women looked at each other. Then Lee said: "The beginning of the end. Poor old Captain." Congdon was loyalty itself. "Now don't you jump at conclusions. Yes, she pulled up, and I went out to see her. She gave me her hand in the old way, and said; 'Isn't this a joke. The Captain ordered it from Chicago. He saw a picture in one of my magazines of a girl driving one of these things, and here I am. You don't think they'll charge me a special license, do you?' Oh, she's all right. Don't you worry about her. Then she said: 'What I don't like about it is the Captain can't ride in it. I'm not going to keep it,' she said." "That was for effect," remarked Lee. "Don't be nasty, Mrs. Congdon. You can't look into her big serious eyes and say such things." Lee looked at Alice. "Oh, well, if it comes down to 'big serious eyes,' then all criticism is valueless. Aren't men curious? Character is nothing, intellect is nothing--it's all a question of whether we're good-lookin' or not. Sometimes I'm discouraged. An artist husband is so hard to please." "I didn't use to be, dovey," he replied, with a mischievous gleam. "He means when he took me. I'm used to his slurs. Just think, Alice, I accepted this man fresh from Paris, with all his sins of omission and commission upon him, and now he reviles me to my teeth." She patted the hand he slipped round her neck. "Tell us more about Mrs. Haney. How was she dressed?" "In perfect good taste--almost too good. She looked like one of Joe Meyer's early posters. Gee! but she was snappy in drawing. She carries that sort of thing well--she's so clean and nifty in line. If she could have a year in Paris--wow!--well, us to Fifth Avenue, sure thing!" "All depends on what is at the bottom of that girl's soul," retorted Lee, sententiously. "A light woman with money is a flighty combination. I don't pretend to say what your little Mrs. Haney is at bottom. Thus far I like her. I talk about her freely, but I defend her in public. But, at the same time, fifty thousand dollars a year is a corrupting power." Congdon gravely assented to this. "You're perfectly right; that's the reason I keep our income down to fifteen hundred. I'd hate to see you look like a ready-made cloak advertisement." Alice rose rather wearily. "Thursday night, you said?" "Yes; and I guess, following the latest bulletin concerning Mr. Haney, we better put on our swellest ginghams." Alice, on her way home, continued to think of Mrs. Haney; indeed, she was seldom out of her mind. And she had a feeling of having known her for a long time--since girlhood; and yet less than a year had passed since that dinner at Lee Congdon's. Spring was coming; the hint of it was in the sweet air, and in the clear piping of a prairie lark in a vacant lot. Spring! And how long it had been since Ben had referred to their marriage! Perhaps he took it for granted. "Perhaps he sees in me only failing health, and dares not speak." She was not gaining; that she knew, and so did Lee. She had stayed too long in the raw climate of her native city. "He must not marry me!" she despairingly cried. "I must not let him ruin his life in that way!" And she sank back in the corner of her carriage with wrinkled, pallid face, and quivering lips; for Bertha was passing up the avenue, driving a smart-stepping cob, in her cart, and in the seat beside her, as radiant as herself, sat Ben Fordyce. CHAPTER XIV THE JOLLY SEND-OFF The Mrs. Haney who came to Alice Heath's dinner at the Antlers was in outward seeming an entirely different person from the constrained young wife who stepped into Lee Congdon's home that night of her first dinner. She was gowned now in that severe good taste which betokens a high-priced "ladies' tailor" combined with very judicious criticism. Her critic she had found in Miss Franklin, a young lady from the university who had passed easily and naturally from teaching history and etiquette up to the higher function of advising as to the cut and color of gowns. Bertha's black velvet was this time a close-clasping sheath which revealed her slender figure, and delicately and modestly disclosed the growing grace of her bosom. She wore, too, some jewels of diamond and turquoise--not showy (her mentor had taken great pains to warn her of all that). And she was not merely irreproachable, she was radiant, as she slowly entered with the Captain, who, having submitted like a martyr to evening dress, was uneasy as a colt in harness, and more than usually uncertain of step. Ben's eyes expanded with surprise and his heart warmed with pride as he greeted her. "You are beautiful!" he exclaimed to her, and the tone of his exclamation as well as the words exalted her. Her brain filled with a mist of gold. She hardly felt the floor beneath her feet. To be called beautiful--and by him--had been outside the circle of her most daring hope, and the repetition of this word in her mind was like the clash of musical bells--entrancing her. Mechanically she took her place at his right hand, silently, and with a far-away look, listening to the merry clamor of the table. She hardly knew what she ate or what any one said--except when Ben spoke to her. But she was aware of the Captain down at Alice's right, and wondered vaguely how he was getting on with his napkin and his fork. The first words that really roused her and stopped the musing smile on her lips were spoken by Ben in a lower voice--half-laughing, but tender also. "You mustn't stay away too long. I'll feel as if I weren't earning my salary while you're gone." "I wish you were going too," she said. She had thought this many times, but had not permitted herself to utter it. "Why can't you--and Alice--come with us?" "I can't afford it, for one thing. The Captain spoke of it, but it's out of the question." "He'll pay you wages just the same." "I wouldn't want pay. No, it isn't that; but Alice isn't able to go, and I can't think of going without her." This was a good reason, and Bertha, looking towards Alice, saw in her face the pain which masks itself in color and movement. The dinner-table was exquisite and the company gay, and Bertha felt herself a part of the great world of dignity and beauty, where eating is made to seem a graceful art, and wine is only a bit of color and not a lure. She vaguely comprehended that this little party was of a tone and quality of the best the world over--that it was of a part and interfused with the dining customs of London and Paris and New York. "It will be _au fait_," Miss Franklin had said, sententiously, "for Alice Heath _knows_." Mrs. Crego, who sat nearly opposite, stared at the girl in stupefaction. "She makes me feel dowdy," she had confessed to Lee in the dressing-room. "Why didn't you warn me to come in my best? Who has been coaching her? Alice Heath, I suppose." She now wondered as sharply over the girl's manner; for Bertha, carried out of herself by Ben's word of praise, felt no desire to drink or to eat, and her reticence and the delicacy of her appetite conferred a distinction which concealed her lack of small talk, and protected her from the criticism to which exuberance of manner ordinarily exposed her. She was deeply impressed, too, with Ben's management of the waiters, and with the ease and skill with which he supported Alice in carrying forward the courses. It was a revelation of training which instructed her absurdly, for her mind was quick to link and compare. It leaped so swiftly and so subtilely along connecting lines of thought that a hint alone sufficed to set in motion a hundred latent memories and inherited aptitudes. Her father had been a man of native refinement, and she possessed unstirred deeps of character, as Alice now well understood. And from her end of the table she glanced often at the sweetly smiling girl-wife whose beauty abashed Haney. At last she said to him: "Your wife is very lovely to-night, Captain." He hesitated a moment; then replied, slowly: "She is. She's as fine as anny queen!" Then after another pause, added: "And the more shame to me, being what I am! She's a good girl, miss, true as steel. Never a word of complaint or a frown. She bears with me like an angel." "You're doing a great deal for her." His face lightened. "So she says. I mean to do more. I mean to show her the world. That's the only comfort I have; my money is giving her nice clothes and a home as good as anny, and to-night I feel 'tis giving her friends." "But she is worth while, even without the money." "True," he quickly said. "But I take comfort in the consideration that had I not carried her away she'd be in Sibley Junction this night." "Sibley Junction! Can this radiant young creature sitting there at the head of my table be the clerk of the Golden Eagle Hotel?" thought Alice. "Money is magical! No wonder we all work for it--and worship it!" The dinner was both early and short, in order that Bertha and the Captain might take the train at ten o'clock. And as they were to have the drawing-room in the sleeping-car (Ben's suggestion), they went directly to the coach in their party clothes. And so it happened that this little woman, who had never occupied a berth in a Pullman, entered her compartment in the robes of a princess. Alice had suggested a maid, but Bertha would not hear to that; but she was willing that their coachman should go along to help the Captain. Ben had interposed here, and said: "You need some one used to travelling. I know a colored fellow who is out of service just now, and would like to come to you. He's a good, reliable man, and a fine nurse." So she had engaged him. He was on the platform as they drove up--a slight, quiet man, of gentle speech and indeterminable age, who took charge of the Captain at once, as if he had been his servant for years. Alice said good-bye at the carriage door, but Ben went with them into the coach. And in the excitement of getting to the train and into the car Bertha had been able to forget the sick feeling about her heart. But now, as he turned and said, "It's nearly time to start," and held out his hand in parting, a desolation, a loneliness, a helpless hunger swept over her, the like of which had never anguished her before. "I wish you were going too!" she faltered, her speech broken and full of sad cadences. He, too, was tense with emotion as he answered: "I wish I were, but I can't--I must not!" Then, with the gesture of a brother, he bent and kissed her and turned away, blind to everything else but his pain, and, so stumbling and shaken, vanished from her sight. For a moment she remained standing in the aisle, the touch of his lips still clinging to her cheek, surprised, full of bewildered defence; then, as reckless of on-lookers as he had been, she rushed to the window in swift attempt to catch a final glimpse of him. But in vain; he had hurried away without looking back, her look of wonder and surprise still dazzling him with its significance. A kiss with him, as with her, had never been a thing lightly given or received, and this caress, so simple to others, sprang from an impulse that was elemental. That he had both shocked and angered her he fully believed; but the arch of her brows, the wistful curve of her lips, and the pretty, almost childish, push of her hands against his breast were still so appealingly vivid that he entered the carriage and took his seat beside Alice with a kind of rebellious joy hot in his blood. However, as his passion ebbed his uneasiness deepened, and he went to his room that night with a feeling that his connection with the Haneys, so profitable and so pleasant, was in danger of being irremediably broken off. "She will be justified in refusing ever to see me again," he groaned. And in this spirit of self-condemnation and loneliness he took up his work next day. Bertha's self-revelation was slower. She was so young and so innately honest and good that no sense of guilt attached to the pleasure she felt in the sudden revelation that this splendid young man loved her--a pleasure which grew as the first shock of the parting, the pain, and the surprise wore away. "He likes me! He said I was beautiful! He kissed me!" These were the rounds in the ladder of her ascent, and she was carried high, only to fall into despair. For was she not leaving him and all the pleasant people she had come so recently to know--hurrying away into darkness with a crippled man, old before his time, out into a world of which she knew little--for which, at this moment, she cared nothing? She went back, a few moments later, with this sorrow written on her face, to find Lucius, the colored man, deftly preparing the Captain for bed. The old borderer looked up with a smile, in which shame and sadness mingled. "Well, Bertie, I didn't think I'd come to this--me, that could once sit in me saddle and pick a dollar out o' the dust. But so it is." "I'll take care of you!" she cried, in swift contrition. Turning almost fiercely to the valet, she said: "You can go, I'll 'tend to him!" The Captain stopped her gently. "No, darlin', Ben's right; I'm too clumsy and heavy for you. I need just such a handy man. Now, now! Let be!... Go ahead, Lucius, strip off these monkey-fixens, and dom the man that gets me into them again." Efficient as she was, the girl could not but admit that Lucius was better able to serve her husband than herself. He was both deft and strong; and though the swaying of the car troubled his master, he steadied him and guided him and stowed him away as featly as if it were the fiftieth instead of the first time; then, with a few words of explanation to the wife, he quietly withdrew, and shut the door with a final touch of considerate care which was new to her. She would have been less troubled by him had he been a black man, but he was not. He seemed more like a Spaniard, and his grizzled mustache, yellowish skin, and big dreamy black eyes lent him a curious distinction, and the thought that he was to take her place as crutch and cane to the Captain gave her a sense of uselessness which she had not, up to this moment, confessed. His suggestions, combined to the minute instructions of Miss Franklin, enabled her to get to her bunk in fair order, but no sleep came to her for hours. She longed for her mother more childishly than at any time since her marriage. She reproached herself for not bringing Miss Franklin. "Why did I come at all?" she wailed, in final accusation. There had been a time when the thought of this trip--of Chicago, New York, and Washington--was big in her mind, but it was so no longer. These great cities were but names--empty sounds compared to the realities she was leaving: her splendid house, her horses and dogs--and her daily joy in Ben Fordyce. She did not put these visits in their highest place, not even when remembering his parting kiss, but she dwelt upon the inspiriting morning drives, the talks in the mellow-tinted, sunshine-lighted office. She recalled the lunches they took together and the occasional wild gallops up the cañon--these she treasured as the golden realities, for the loss of which she was even now heart-sick. One thought alone steadied her--gave her a kind of resignation: the Captain wanted to find his sisters, to revisit the scenes of his youth, and it was her duty to go with him. And in this somewhat dreary comfort she fell asleep at last. She was awakened next morning by a pleasant voice saying: "The first call for breakfast has been made, Mrs. Haney." And she looked up to find Lucius peering in at the door with serious, kindly eyes. He added, formally: "If I can assist you in any way call me, and please let me know when you are ready to have me come in." His speech was so precise and his manner so perfect that Bertha was puzzled and a little embarrassed by them. It seemed abnormal to have a hired servant so polished, so thoughtful. She dressed hurriedly, while the Captain yawned and talked between his yawning. "That yellow chap is sure handy. I wish I'd had him before; 'twould have saved you a power o' work and worry. Did ye sleep last night?" "Not very well. I hope you did. You can't complain of the bunk." "'Tis luxurious--'tis so! But there's nothing like the west side of Colorado Avenue, after all, or a bed of pine boughs beside a roaring mountain stream. 'Twas a fine little supper Ben gave us last night." The level lands awed and depressed the mountain girl. They seemed to type the flat and desolate spiritual world into which she was entering, and the ride seemed interminable, carrying her every hour farther from the scenes and sounds to which her love clung. She was bitterly homesick, and nothing seemed to promise comfort. She gazed with lack-lustre eyes on the towns and rivers along the way, and she entered the great inland metropolis by the lake with dread and a deepening sense of her inexperience and youth. On the neighboring track stood the return sleepers headed for the hills, and she acknowledged a wild desire to take her place among the jocund folk who stood on the observation-platform exchanging good-byes with friends. Thunderous, smothering, and vast the city seemed as they drove through it on their way to the hotel, and upon reaching her room she flung herself down on her bed and sobbed in a frenzy of homesickness. Haney, who had never before perceived a tear on her face, was startled, and stood in puzzled pain looking down at her, while the tactful Lucius went about the unpacking of the trunks, confident that the shower would soon be over. "What's the ail of it?" asked the Captain. "Tell me, darlin'. Are ye sick?" She shook her head from side to side, like a suffering and weary child, and made no further answer. CHAPTER XV MART'S VISIT TO HIS SISTER Bertha woke next morning with a sense of weariness and desolation still at her heart, but she dressed and went to breakfast with Haney at an hour so early that the dining-room was nearly empty. Lucius, with quiet insistence upon the importance of his employers, had secured a place at a window overlooking the lake, and was glad to see his mistress brighten as her eyes swept the burnished shoreless expanse. Haney, still troubled by her languid air and gloomy face, took heart, and talked of what Chicago was in the days when he saw it and what it was now. "People say it don't improve. But listen: when I was here the Palmer House was the newly built wonder of the West, the streets were tinkling with bobtail horse-cars. And now look at it!" Bertha went back to her room, still in nerveless and despondent mood, not knowing what to do. The Captain proposed the usual round. "We'll take an auto-car, and go to the parks, and inspect the Lake Shore Drive and the Potter Palmer castle. Then we'll go down and see where the World's Fair was. Then we'll visit the Wheat Pit. 'Tis all there is, bedad." Lucius, who had been answering the 'phone in the hall, came in at the moment to say; "A lady wishes to speak with Mrs. Haney." "A lady! Who?" "A certain Mrs. Brent--a friend of Miss Franklin's." Bertha's face darkened. "Oh I'd forgot all about her. Miss Franklin gave me a letter to her," she explained, as she went out. She had no wish to see Mrs. Brent. On the contrary, she had an aversion to seeing or doing anything. But there was something compelling in the cool, sweet, quiet voice which came over the line, and before realizing it she had promised to meet her at eleven o'clock. Mrs. Brent then added: "I am consumed with desire to see you, for Dor--I mean Miss Franklin--has been writing to me about you. You're just in time to come to a little dinner of mine--don't make any engagement for to-morrow night. I'm coming down immediately." Bertha quite gravely answered, "All right, I'll be here," and hung up the receiver, committed to an interview that became formidable, now that the sweetness of the voice had died out of her ears. "Who was it?" asked the Captain. "A friend of Miss Franklin's--sounds just like her voice, but I think she's only a cousin. She wants to see me, and I've promised to be here at eleven." The Captain looked a little disappointed. "Well, we can take a spin up the lake. Lucius, go hire a buckboard and we're off." "There's an auto-car waiting, sir. I ordered it half an hour ago." The gambler looked at him humorously. "Ye must be a mind-reader." A tap on the door called the man out, and when he returned he bore a telegram. "For you, Captain," he said, presenting it on the salver. The gambler took it with sudden apprehension in his face. "I hope there's no trouble at the mine," he muttered. Bertha, leaning over his shoulder, read it first. "It's from Ben!" she called, joyously. "Ain't it just like him?" This message seemed a little bit foolish to Haney. "Just to say hello! All well here. Have a good time. "FORDYCE." To Bertha it made all the difference between sunshine and shadow. She thrilled to it as if it had been a voice. "He knew I'd be homesick, and so he sent this to cheer me up," she said. And in this she was right. Her shoulders lifted and her face cleared. "Come on, Captain, if we're going." As they came down the elevator, men in buttons met them, and attended them to the door, and turned them over to still other uniformed attendants, who were fain to help them into the auto-car; for Lucius had managed to convey to the hotel a proper sense of his employer's money value. He himself was always close to his master's side, for lately Haney had taken to stumbling at unexpected moments, and his increasing bulk made a fall a real danger. A thrill of delight, of elation, ran through the young wife as she glanced up and down Chicago's proudest avenue. It conformed to her notion of a city. The level park, flooded with spring sunshine, was walled on the west by massive buildings, while to the east stretched the shining lake. From here the city seemed truly cosmopolitan. It had dignity and wealth of color, and to the girl from Sibley Junction was completely satisfying--almost inspiring. It was uplifting also to be attended to a splendid auto-car by willing, alert servants, and to feel that the passers-by were all envious of her careless ease. Bertha forgot her homesickness, and took her seat in the spirit of one who is determined to have the worth of her money (for once anyhow), and the pedestrians, if they had any definite notion of her at all, probably said: "There goes a rich old cattle king and his pretty daughter. It's money that makes the 'mobile go." She held to this pose for half an hour, while they threaded the tumult of Wabash Avenue, and, crossing the river, swept up the Lake Shore Drive. But the lake filled her with other thoughts. "I wish we had this at the Springs," she said. "This is fine!" "We have our share," answered he. "If we had this at our door, there wouldn't be anything left to go to." They whizzed through the park, and down another avenue into the thick tangle of traffic, which scared them both, and so back to the hotel, the Captain saying: "My! my! but she has grown. 'Tis twenty years since I took this turn." In some strange way Bertha had drawn courage, resolution, pride, and ambition from what she saw on this short ride. That she was in a car and mistress of it was in itself a marvellous distinction, and the thought of what she would have been--as a "round-tripper" from Sibley Junction--added to her pleasure and pride. She was always doing sums in her head now. Thus: "Suppose our excursion does cost twenty dollars per day; that's only one hundred and fifty per week, six hundred per month, and our income is ten times that, and more." She had not risen above the habit of calculation, but she was fast rising to higher levels of expenditure. She met Mrs. Brent with something of this mood in her manner, but was instantly softened and won by her visitor, who did not in the least resemble Miss Franklin in appearance, though her voice was wonderfully the same. Her eyes were wide, her brow serene, and her lips smiling. "Why, you're a child," she said--"a mere babe! Dorothy didn't tell me that." Bertha stiffened a little, and Mrs. Brent laughingly added: "Please don't be offended--I am really surprised." And then her manner became so winning that before the Western girl realized it she had given her consent to join a dinner-party the following night. "Come early, for we are to go to the theatre afterwards. I'll have some of the university people in to see you. Miss Franklin has made us all eager to meet you." Bertha had a dim perception that this eagerness to meet her was curiosity, but her loyalty to her teacher and the charm of her visitor kept her from openly rebelling. The Captain was not so easily persuaded. "'Tis poor business for me," he said. "Time was when I went to bed like a wolf--when the time served; but now I'm as regular to me couch as a one-legged duck. However, to keep me wife in tune, I'll go or come, as the case may be." Mrs. Brent did not attempt to be funny with this wounded bear, and they parted very good friends. As her visitor was going, Bertha suddenly said, "Wait a minute," and, going to her hand-bag, brought out an envelope addressed in Congdon's big scrawling hand. "Do you know these people?" Mrs. Brent glanced at it. "Why, yes, Joe Moss is an artist. He's well-known here, and you'll like him. His wife is a very talented woman, and will be of great advantage to you. They know all the 'artistic gang,' as they call themselves, and they live a delightfully Bohemian life. They're right near here, and if I were you I'd go in to see them. I'd thought of having the Mosses to-morrow night, and this settles it. They must come. Good-bye till to-morrow at 7 P.M." And she went out, leaving the girl in a glow of increasing good-will. Haney was looking over a list of names and addresses which Lucius had brought to him, and as Bertha returned he put his finger on one, and said: "I believe, on me soul, that this Patrick McArdle is me second sister's husband. 'Patrick McArdle, pattern-maker.' Sure, Charles said he was in a stove foundry. 'Tis over on the West Side, Lucius says. How would it do to slide over and see?" "I'm agreeable," she carelessly answered, her mind full of Mrs. Brent and the dinner. Lucius interposed a word. "It's a very poor neighborhood, Captain. We can hardly get to it with a machine." "Well, then we'll drive. I want to make a stab at finding my sister anyhow." Lucius submitted, but plainly disapproved of the whole connection. On the way Haney talked of his sister Fanny. "She was a bouncing, jolly-tempered girl, always down at the heels, but good to me. She was two years older, and was mother's main guy, as the sailors say. She was fairly industrious, though none of us ever worked just for the fun of it. Fan married all the other girls off to saloon-keepers or aldermen, which is all the same in pay, and then ended up by takin' a man far older than herself, who was not very strong and not very smart. He makes patterns in sand for the leaves and acorns you see on stove doors. For all we know, he may have made them that's on your new range at home." The mention of that range brought to Bertha's mind a picture of her lovely kitchen, so light and bright and shining, and another spasm of homesickness and doubt seized her. "Mart, we had no business to come away and leave that house and all our nice things in it." "Miss Franklin will see after it." "But how can she? She's gone nearly all day. And, besides, she's not up to housekeeping--it ain't her line. I feel like going right back this minute!" This feeling of dismay was increased by the glimpses of the grimy West Side, into which they were plunging every moment deeper. After leaving the asphalt pavement the noise increased till they were unable to make each other hear without shouting, and so they sat in silence while the driver turned corners and dodged carts and cars till at last he turned abruptly into a side-street, and, driving slowly along over a rotting block pavement, drew up before a small, two-story frame house--a relic of the old-time city. The yards were full of children, who all stopped their play to stare at this carriage, especially impressed by Lucius, who sat very erect on the seat beside the driver, resolutely doing a very disagreeable duty. At the door he got down and said: "Now, Captain, you give me a pointer or two, and I'll find out whether this is your McArdle or not." "Just ask if Mrs. McArdle was Fan Haney, of Troy. That'll cover the specification," he answered. By this time a large, fair-haired, slovenly woman had opened the door, and, with truculent voice, called out: "Who do you want to find?" "Fan Haney, of Troy," answered the Captain. "That's me," the woman retorted. "Ye are so! Very well, thin, consider yourself under arrest this minute," said Haney, beginning to clamber out of the carriage. The woman stared a moment; then a slow grin developed on her face so like to Haney's own that Bertha laughed. The lost sister was found. As Haney neared her, he called out: "Well, Fan, ye're the same old sloven ye were when I used to kick your shins in Troy for soapin' me mouth." "Mart Haney, by the piper!" she exclaimed, wiping her lips and hands in anticipation of a caress. "Where did ye borry the funeral wagon?" He shook her hand--the kiss was out of his inclination--and responded in the same vein of mockery: "A friend of mine died the day, and I broke out of the procession to pay a call. Divil a bit the dead man cares." "Who's with you in the carriage?" "Mrs. Haney, bedad." "Naw, it is not!" "Sure thing!" "She's too young and pretty--and Mart, ye're lame! And, howly saints, man, ye look old! I wouldn't have known ye but fer the mouth and the eyes of ye. Ye have the same old grin." "The same to you." "I get little chance to practise it these days." "'Tis the same here." "But how came ye hurt?" "A felly with a grievance poured a load of buckshot into me side, and one of them lodged in me spine, so they say." She clicked her tongue in ready sympathy. "Dear, dear! But come in and sit ye down. Ask yer girl to come in--I'm not perticular." "She's me lawful wife," he said, and his tone changed her manner into something like sweetness and dignity. "Go ye in, Mart. I'll fetch her." As the young wife sat in her carriage before this wretched little home and watched that slatternly sister of her husband approach, she rose on a wave of self-appreciation. Haney lost in dignity and power by this association. For the first time in her life the girl acknowledged a fixed difference between her blood and that of Mart Haney. She was disgusted and ashamed as Mrs. McArdle, coming to the carriage side, said bluffly: "'Tis a poor parlor I have, Mrs. Haney, but if ye'll light out and come in I'll send for Pat. He'll be wantin' to see ye both." Bertha would have given a good deal to avoid this visit, but seeing no way to escape she stepped from the carriage under the keen scrutiny of her hostess and walked up the rickety steps with something of the same squeamish care she would have shown on entering a cow-barn. "Here, Benny!" called Mrs. McArdle. "Run you to Dad and tell him me brother Mart has come, and to hurry home. Off wid ye now!" The poverty of this city working-man's home was plain to see. It struck in upon Bertha with the greater power by reason of her six months of luxury. It was not a dirty home, but it was cluttered and hap-hazard. The old wooden chairs were worn with scouring, but littered with children's rags of clothing. The smell of boiling cabbage was in the air, for dinner-time was nigh. There were three rooms on the ground-floor and one of these was living-room and dining-room, the other the kitchen, and a small bedroom showed through an open door. For all its disorder it gave out a familiar odor of homeliness which profoundly moved Haney. "Ye've grown like the mother, Fan. And I do believe some of these chairs are her's." "They are. When Dad broke up the house and went to live with Kate I put in a bid for the stuff and I brought some of it out here with me." "I'm glad ye did. That old rocker now--sure it's the very one we used to fight for. I'll give ye twenty-five dollars for it, Fan." "Ye can have it for the askin', Mart," she generously replied--tears of pleasure in her eyes. "Sure, after all the tales I heard of ye--it's to see you takin' fine to the mother's chair. She was a good mother to us, Mart." "She was!" he answered. "And if the old Dad had been as much of a man as she was, we'd all stand in better light to-day I'm thinkin'--though the father did the best he knew." "The worst he did was to let us all run wild. A club about our shoulders now and then would have kept our tempers sweeter." Bertha, in rich new garments, seemed as alien to the scene as any fine lady visiting among the slums. She was struggling, too, between disgust of her sister-in-law's slovenly house and untidy dress, and the good humor, tender sentiment and innate motherliness of her nature. There was charm in her voice and in her big gray eyes. Irish to the core, she could storm at one child and coo with another an instant later. She was like Mart, or rather Mart became every moment more of her kind and less of the bold and remorseless desperado he had once seemed to be. The deeper they dug into the past the more of his essential kinship to this woman he discovered. He greeted her children with kindly interest, leaving a dollar in each chubby, dirty fist, and when McArdle came into the room Fan had quite conquered her awe of Bertha's finery. McArdle was a small bent man, with a black beard, a pale serious face and speculative eyes. He looked like a wondering, rather cautious animal as he came in. He wore a cheap gray suit and a celluloid collar, and was as careless in his way as his wife. It was plain that he was gentle, absent-minded, and industrious. He listened to his wife's voluble explanations in silence, inwardly digesting all that was said, then shook hands--still without a word. And when all these preliminaries were over he laid his hat aside and ran his fingers through his thin hair with a perplexed and troubled gesture, asking, irrelevantly: "How's the weather out there?" Nobody saw the humor of this but his wife, who explained: "Pat is a fiend on the weather. He was raised on a farm, ye see, and he can't get over it. I say to him: 'What difference does the state o' the weather make to you, that's under a roof all day?' But divil a change does it make in him. The first thing in the morning he turns to the weather report." McArdle's eyes showed traces of a smile. "If it weren't for the papers and the weather reports, me days would be alike. But sit by," he added, hospitably, waving his hand towards the table, on which the dinner was steaming. They were drawing up to the board when a puffing and blowing, and the furious clatter of feet announced the inrushing of the children. Not the mother's shrill whooping, but the sight of the strange guests, transformed them into mutes. The carriage outside had filled them with wild alarms, but the sight of their parents alive, and entertaining guests of shining quality, was almost as satisfyingly unusual as death and a funeral. They were a noisy, hearty throng, and Bertha's heart went out to poor Patrick McArdle, who sat amid the uproar, silent, patient, the heroic breadwinner for them all. No wonder he was old before his time. Slowly her antipathy died out. She began to find excuses even for the mother. To feed such a herd of little pigs and calves, even out of wooden troughs, would require much labor; to keep them buttoned, combed, and fit for school was an appalling task. "Mart must help these folks," she said to herself. McArdle had nothing to say during the meal, and Bertha could see that his family did not expect him to do more than answer a plain question. Indeed, the children created a hubbub that quite cut off any connected intercourse, and Fan, with a grin of despair, at last said: "They'll be gorged in a few minutes, and then we'll have peace." "This is what lack of money means," Bertha was thinking. And her house, her automobile, her horses, became at the moment as priceless, as remote, as crown jewels and papal palaces. Then, conversely, she grew to a larger conception of the possibilities which lay in sixty thousand dollars a year. Not only did it lift her and all hers above the heat and mire and distress of the world of toil, it enabled them to help others. Swiftly the children filled their stomachs, and, seizing each a piece of cake or pie, withdrew, leaving the old folks and their guests in peace. Thereupon, McArdle, taking a pipe from his pocket and knocking it absent-mindedly on the seat of the chair, dryly remarked: "Now that we can hear ourselves think, let's have it all over again. Who air ye, and why air ye here?" Being told a second time that this was his brother-in-law, a miner from Colorado, he shook hands all over again, and accepted Mart's cigar with careful fingers, as if fearing to drop and break the precious thing. Bertha said: "I think we'd better be going, Captain. Our carriage is outside." "Gracious Peter," cried Mrs. McArdle, "I forgot all about it! Is he by the day or by the hour?" Mart answered, with an amused smile. "Well, now, I don't know. I think by the hour." "Ye're makin' a big bluff, Mart. We're properly impressed," said his sister. "Go pay him off, and save the money." McArdle put in a query. "You must have a good thing out there?" "'Tis enough to pay me carriage hire," answered Mart. And his tone satisfied McArdle, who, with reflective eye on Bertha, puffed away at his cigar, while Mart gave his promise to call again. "I'll come over and get you all, and take you to the theatre in me auto-car," he said, as he rose. "But we must be going now." Fan was beginning to perceive in him more and more of the man of power and substance, and her manner changed. "Ye were always the smartest of the lot of us, Mart." "No, I was not. Charles was the bright boy." "So he was, but he was lazy. That was why he took up with play-acting--'tis an easy job." "Even that is too much work for him," remarked McArdle. "I reckon that's right," laughed Mart, as he turned towards the door. "Come again, if ye find time," called Fan, as they went down the steps. McArdle, with his cigar in his hand, waved it in a sign of parting. And so their visit to the McArdles closed. Mart turned to his silent and thoughtful wife, and said, with a great deal of meaning in his voice: "Well, now, what do you think of that for a fine litter of pups?" "They seem hearty." "They do. 'Tis on such that the future of the ray-public rests." And then he added: "Sure, Bertie, it gripped me heart to see the mother's old chair!" CHAPTER XVI A DINNER AND A PLAY Lucius seemed to know the city very well, and to have a list of its principal citizens in his memory. He knew the best places to shop and the selectest places to eat, and Bertha soon came to ask his advice about other and more intimate affairs. She showed him Mrs. Brent's card, and explained that they were going out there to dinner. "I know the locality," he said, much impressed, "and I think I know the house. It's likely to be quietly swell, and you'd better wear your best gown." "The black dress," said Haney, who was a deeply concerned witness. "I like that." Lucius was respectful, but firm. "You are very well in that, Mrs. Haney. But if I were you I'd have a new gown; you'll need it. I know just the saleslady to fit you out." "But I've only worn the black dress once!" she exclaimed, in dismay. Lucius explained that people who went out much in the city made a point of not wearing the same gown in the same circle a second time. "And as you only have two presentable evening gowns, you certainly need another." Haney joined in, emphatically. "Sure thing! What's the good of money if you don't use it to buy things?" Tremulous with the excitement of it, she went with the Captain to several of the largest and most sumptuous establishments on State Street. And Lucius, who accompanied them, ostensibly to be of service to his master, was of the greatest service to his mistress, he was so quiet, so unobtrusive, so thoroughly the footman in appearance, so helpful, and so masterful, in fact; a faint shake of his head, a nod, a gesture decided momentous questions. The girl, sitting there surrounded by scurrying clerks and saleswomen, had a return of her bewilderment and doubt. "Can it be true that I can buy any of these cloaks and hats?" she asked herself. What was the magic that had made her lightest wish realizable? When a splendid cloak fell round her shoulders, and she looked in the glass at the tall figure there, she glowed with pride. "Madam carries a cloak beautifully," the saleswoman said, with sincerity. "This is our smartest model--perfectly exclusive and new. Only such a figure as the madam's properly sets it off." While the women were making measurements for some slight alterations, Lucius said: "It would be nice if you decided on that automobile, and took Mrs. Haney to the dinner in it." Haney's face lighted up. "I will! Sh! not a word. We'll surprise her." "If you don't mind I'll hustle up a footman's livery." "So do. Anything goes--for her, Lucius." Bertha thought she had already rubbed the side of her wonderful lamp to a polish. But under the almost hypnotic spell of her West-Indian attendant she bought shoes, hats, hosiery, and toilet articles till her room looked "like Christmas morning," as Haney said, and yet there was little that could be called foolish or tawdry. She wore little jewelry, having resisted Haney's attempt to load her with rings and necklaces. Miss Franklin had impressed upon her the need of being "simple." When she put on her dinner-dress and faced him, Mart Haney was humbled to earth. "Sure, ye're beautiful as an angel!" he exulted, as if addressing a saint. And as she swept before the tall glass and saw her radiant self therein, she thought of Ben, and her face flamed with lovely color. "I wish he could see me now!" she inwardly exclaimed. Miss Franklin, in writing to her friend, Mrs. Brent, had said: "In a sense, the Haneys are 'impossible'--he is an ex-gambler, and she is the daughter of a woman who kept a miner's boarding-house in the mountains. But this sounds worse than it really is. I like the Captain. Whatever he was in the days before his accident I don't know--they say he was a terror. But when I entered the family he was as he is now--a pathetic figure. He isn't really old; but he's horribly crippled, and takes it very hard. He is kindness itself to his wife and to every one round him, and will be grateful for anything you do for him. Bertha is young but maturing very rapidly, and there's no telling where she will stop. She's been studying with me, and I've told her you will advise her while she's in Chicago. You needn't go far with her if you don't want to. The Hallidays and Voughts won't mind the back pages of the Haney history, and you needn't say anything about the Captain's career if you don't want to. He's a big mine-owner now, and is out of the gambling and saloon business altogether. Bertha is perfectly eligible in herself. And as many of us started on farms or poor little villages, we can't afford to take on any airs over her. She's of good parentage, and as true as steel. She likes the Captain, and is devoted to him." Dr. Brent was not connected with the university, but his wife's brother had been a student there, and was now an instructor in one of the scientific departments. And Mrs. Brent's charm of manner and the Doctor's easy-going hospitality made their fine little Kenwood home the centre of a certain intellectual Bohemia on the borders of the institution, and the "artistic gang" occasionally met and genially interfused with the professors round the big Brent fireplace. Being rich in his own right, Brent took his practice in such moderation as to be of the highest effectiveness when he consented to operate, and was in demand for difficult surgical cases. He was slender, blond, and languid of movement--not in the least suggestive of the Western hustle of Chicago, and yet he was born within twenty miles of the court-house. Indeed, it was the spread of the city which had enriched his father's estate, and which now permitted him to work when he felt like it, and to assemble round his hearthstone--an actual stone, by the way--the people he liked best. The amount of hickory wood he burned was stupendous. Mrs. Brent was known as "the audacious hostess," because she was not afraid to invite anybody who interested her. "You take your reputation in your hand," her friends often said to those about to make their first call. "You may meet an actor from New York or a stone-mason from the West Side--one never knows." Their house was an adaptation of the "mission style" of California and possessed one big room on the first floor which their friends called Congress Hall. Miss Franklin was certain that this circle would enjoy the Captain once he became at ease, and she really hoped Mrs. Brent would "advise the girl," and, as she put it, "Help her to get at the pleasant side of Chicago. She's very rich and she's intelligent, but she is very raw! She's very like a boy, but she's worth while. She wanted me to come with her, but I could have done so only by giving up here and going as her companion, and that I'm not ready to do--at present." After carefully considering all these points, Mrs. Brent 'phoned her friends, being careful to explain that Dorothy Franklin had sent her "some fleecy specimens of Colorado society," and that she was asking a few of "the bold and fearless" among her set to meet them. "Who are the guests of honor?" she was asked by each favored one. Each received the same reply: "Marshall Haney, the gambler prince of Cripple Creek, and his bride, Dead-shot Nell, biscuit-shooter, from Honey Gulch." "Honest?" "Hope to die!" "It's too good to be true! Of course I'll come. Do we have a quiet game after dinner?" "Ah, no, that would be too cruel--to Captain Haney. No; we go to the theatre. So be on hand at 7 P.M., sharp." In this way she had prepared her friends to be surprised by Bertha's good looks and the Captain's tame and courteous manner, but was herself soundly jarred when her "wild-West people" came up to the door in an auto-car that must have cost five or six thousand dollars, and when a colored footman, in bottle-green uniform, leaped out to open the door for them (it was Lucius in his new suit--he was playing all the parts). Brent, with a comical look at his wife, remarked: "I suppose this is in lieu of broncos?" "They _are_ branching out!" she gasped. "And see her clothes!" She might well exclaim, for Bertha, in her long cloak, her head bare, and her pretty dress showing, did not in the least resemble the picture Miss Franklin had drawn; neither did she resemble the demure, almost sullen girl Mrs. Brent had met in the hotel. The Captain, too, for the second time in his life, wore evening dress, but citing to his sombrero; so that he resembled a Tennessee congressman at the Inaugural Ball as he came slowly up the short walk, and Mrs. Brent deeply regretted that no one was present to take the shock with herself and the doctor. The maid at the door, who knew nothing of the wild reputation of the Haneys, guided them up-stairs to their respective dressing-rooms, and helped to remove their wraps so expeditiously that they were on their way back to the first floor before any other guests arrived. Bertha was delighted but not awed by the fine room into which they were ushered, for was not her own house larger and more splendid? She had grown accustomed to big things--it was the tasteful beauty of the room that moved her. In the side of the room a big plain brick fireplace was filled with a crackling fire, and in the light of it stood her host and hostess. Bertha was glad to find them alone--she had expected to face a room full of people. She was not specially attracted to Dr. Brent, and remained so coldly restrained that he was quite baffled and turned away to the Captain, who sought the fire, saying: "This looks good. I feel the cold now--I don't know why I should." This opened the way to a very confidential talk on wounds and diet. Bertha's new gown of pale blue made her look very young and very sweet, and the eager guests were sadly disappointed in her--that is to say, the ladies were; the men seemed quite content with her as she was. They took the "biscuit-shooter" description to be a piece of fooling on Mrs. Brent's part, and as they had no time after dinner to get the Captain started they remained quite convinced that he, too, had been maligned in their hostess's description. As a result, Mrs. Brent and her other guests were forced to do the talking, for Bertha had not only warned Mart against reminiscence, but had determined to keep a tight hold on her own tongue; and though she listened with the alertness of a bird, she answered only in curt phrase, making "yes" and "no" do their full duty. She perceived that the people round her were of intellectual companionship to the Crego and Congdon circles, and these young men, so easy and graceful of manner, reminded her of Ben. None of them were entirely strange to her now, and yet she dimly apprehended something uncomplimentary veiled beneath their polite regard. She did not entirely trust any of them--not even her host. Indeed, she liked Mrs. Brent less than at their first meeting in the hotel. The dinner was rather hurried, and they would have been late had it not been for Haney's new auto-car, which carried six, and made two trips to the station unnecessary. It was fine to see the Captain put his machine at the disposal of his hostess. "I told Lucius to wait," he boasted, "I thought we might need him." Dr. Brent succeeded at last in drawing his pretty guest into conversation by remarking on the Captain's color. "He's feeding improperly, if you don't mind my saying so. He's putting on weight, he tells me, but feels cold and nerveless. Cut him down on starchy foods. How long is it since he was hurt?" "About eight months." "Must have been a tearing beast of an accident to wing a man of his frame." "It was. Tore his whole side to pieces." "Who put him together--Steele, of Denver?" "No, a man in Cripple." "Sure he was the right man?" "He was the best I could get." "You arouse my professional egotism. I'd like to examine the Captain if you don't object--not for any fee, you understand. But a fellow of his build and years--he tells me he's only forty-five--" "Only forty-five," thought the girl. "What strange ideas these older people have! And Ben was twenty-six." Just what the doctor said afterwards she didn't hear, for she was thinking of the swift, wide arc of change through which her mind had swung from the time when Marshall Haney first came to Sibley--so grand of stride, so erect, so powerful. He, too, seemed young then; now he was old--old and feeble--a man to be advised, protected, humored. She dimly understood, too, that corresponding change had come to her; that she was far away from the girl who had stood behind the counter defending herself against the love-making of the bummers and drummers among her patrons--and yet she was the same, after all. "I've not changed as much as he has," was her conclusion. And she enjoyed the gayety and beauty of her companions, but she said little to express it. The play that night appalled her by its fury of passion, its mockery of woman, its cynical disbelief in man. With startling abruptness and in most colloquial method it delineated the beginning of a young wife's wrong-doing, and when the lover caught the innocent, ensnared woman to his bosom a flaming sword seemed to have been plunged into Bertha's own breast. She quivered and flushed. And when the actress displayed the awakened conscience of the erring one, putting into words as well as into facial expression her feeling of guilt and remorse, the girl-wife in the box shrank and whitened, her big eyes fixed upon the sobbing, suffering character before her, defending herself against the dramatist as against an enemy. He was a liar! There was no wrong in Ben's kiss and no remorse in her own heart as she remembered the caress. "Even if he loves me, that doesn't make him horrible!" The dramatist went remorselessly on. He showed the husband--old, coarse, brutal. He put him in sharpest relief in order that the woman should be tempted to her ruin, and in the end the lover--virile, handsome and unscrupulous--wins the tortured woman's soul--and they flee, leaving the usual note behind. "What can you expect?" remarked the cynical friend of the injured husband. "Given a young and lovely wife like Rose and an old limping warrior like you, and an elopement follows as a matter of course, Q. E. D." And so the curtain fell. Relentless realist in the first act, the dramatist in the second act began to hedge. He made the life of the erring woman conventionally miserable. Her lover beat her, neglected her, and finally deserted her. And in the last act she crawled back into her husband's home like a starved cat to die, while he, scarred old beast, cried out: "The wages of sin is death!" Whether the writer intended this scene to be ironical or not, the effect was to awaken a murmur of laughter among the ill-restrained of the auditors. But Bertha, hot with anger towards both author and players, could not join in Mrs. Brent's smiling comment: "Isn't that comical!" The doctor coolly said: "A good conventional British ending. Why didn't he clap a pair of wings on the old reprobate and run him up on a wire, the way they used to do in translating little Eva in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'?" Afterwards Mrs. Brent proposed that they go to a German restaurant and have some beer and skittles; but this struck harshly on Bertha, who still palpitated with the passion of the play. "I reckon we'd better not. The Captain is pretty tired, and, if you don't mind, we'll quit now." Without saying "I've had a lovely time," she shook hands all round, and, taking her husband's arm, moved off into the street, leaving her hostess a little uneasy and wholly perplexed. Mrs. Brent's joke about the Captain and his wife had, as the doctor expressed it, "queered the whole affair." "But how did she know?" "She's a good deal sharper than you gave her credit for being," he replied. "You Easterners never can learn to take diamonds in the rough." Bertha's mind was in tumult, and she wished to be alone. Mart irritated her. She refused to talk to him about the play or the dinner, and, turning him over to Lucius, went at once to her own bed. Thus far she had not attempted to closely analyze her relationship to Marshall Haney. He had been to her a good friend rather than a husband, a companion who needed her, and who had given her everything she asked for. Keenly forward, almost precocious on the calculative side, she had remained singularly untroubled on the emotional side. She knew that certain problems of sex existed in the world, and she was only mentally aware of temptations--she had never really felt them. Now all at once her whole nature awoke. Her mind engaged a legion of vaguely defined enemies. Out of the shadow stepped words of no weight, of no significance hitherto, encircling her, panoplied with meaning. The half-heard comment of the camp, the dimly perceived gossip of the Springs, the flattering looks of the artists--all helped her to see herself as she was: a handsome young girl, like that on the stage, married to a crippled middle-aged man of evil history. "But he is good to me," she argued against her new self. "I was poor, and he has made me rich; and all I've done is to nurse him and keep house for him." With this thought came a realization that she had never been a full and complete wife to him. And with a flush of shame and repulsion she added: "And now I never can be. No matter if he were to become as straight, as strong, and as handsome as he was in those days, I cannot love him as a wife should." Once having admitted this feeling of repulsion, once having clearly perceived the vast distance between herself and her husband, the repulsion deepened, the separating space widened. He seemed ten years older as they met next morning, and his face was heavy and his frame lax. Her pity had not lessened, but it was mixed now with a qualifying emotion which she had not yet acknowledged to be disgust. His skin was waxy white and his jowls drooping. "I'm not at all up to the work," he said, with a return of his humor. "'Tis a killing pace we've struck, Bertie, and the old man must take the flag if you keep it up." "I don't intend to keep it up," she answered, shortly. "I think we'd better go home." At the word "home" a little thrill went through her. It was so bright and big and desirable, that mansion under the purple peaks. "No; I must go trail up me old dad, and leave him provided for. Fan doesn't even know his address (the more shame to her), but I'll find him. If ye're tired and would rather go home, I'll go on alone." "Oh no, you mustn't do that!" she exclaimed instantly, feeling the sincerity of his desire to please her. "I'll go, but we mustn't stay long." And she took up the direction of his life again. The mood of the night had passed away, leaving only a clearer perception of his growing age and helplessness. "You must let Dr. Brent examine you," she said, a little later. "He don't think your lameness is caused by your wound. He says you're out of condition." He looked at her with shadowed face and sorrowful eyes. "I'm only a poor old skate, wind-broken and lazy. Ye have the right to cut me loose any time." "You mustn't talk like that," she said, sharply. "When I want to cut loose I'll let you know." "I hold ye to that," he answered, with intent look. CHAPTER XVII BERTHA BECOMES A PATRON OF ART Bertha, deeply engrossed in the conceptions called up by this visit, did not feel like calling upon the Mosses, even though they were almost next door. She was troubled, too, with a feeling of helplessness in the use of a pen. She wanted to write to Fordyce, but was afraid to do so, knowing that a letter would disclose her ignorance of polite forms; but this, instead of discouraging her, roused her to a determination to learn. This was the saving clause in her character. She acknowledged shortcomings, but not defeats. Here again she was of the spirit that lifts the self-made man. The Congdons had been most generous of letters of introduction, and in addition to those to Mrs. Brent and the Mosses, Bertha was in possession of two or three envelopes addressed to people in New York City, presumably artists also, as they bore the names of certain studios. The note to Moss was unaffected and simple in itself, quite innocent of any qualification, but the letter which had privately preceded it was in the true Congdon vein, and Moss, like Mrs. Brent, did not delay his call. His card was in the Haney box when they returned. "Sorry to miss you. Come into my studio at five if you can," he had pencilled on the back. "Your artistic bunch," Congdon had written, "won't mind meeting one of the most successful and picturesque of our gamblers, Marshall Haney, especially as the walls of his big house are bare and his wife is pretty. They are ripping types, old man; not in the 'best society,' you understand, but I know you'll like 'em. Be as good to 'em as you can without involving anybody. Little Mrs. Haney is a corker. Good start on a self-made career. They're both unsophisticated in a way, and a little real sympathy will drag their secret history to the light. Do a sketch of her for me. She's likely to be famous. Haney is rolling in dough these days--(miner)--and she's bound for some whooping big thing, I don't know what, but she's like a country boy with a stirring ambition. It wouldn't surprise me to see her on Fifth Avenue one of these days. With these few burning words I commend them into your plastic hands. Don't let Sammy paint her, for God's sake. Oh yes, I worked 'em for a couple of canvases. What do you think. In this buoyant climate we all move. Yours in the velvet." With such a letter before him Joe Moss awaited his amazing guests with impatience, cautioning the few who were in the secret not to dodge when the Captain reached for his pocket-handkerchief. "And, above all, you are to praise Colorado and condemn the East as a place of residence." Joe prided himself on his _savoir faire_ and on his apparel, which had nothing about it to distinguish the sculptor. "In fact," he often said, "there _are_ people who say I'm not a sculptor. Be that as it may, I manage by daily care to look like a clerk in a hardware store." And he did. He customarily wore a suit of pepper and salt, neat and trig, a "bowler hat" (as they say in London), a ready-made four-in-hand tie, and a small pearl scarf-pin. "No more fuzzy hair for me, no red tie, no dandruff," he had said on his return from Paris. "Right here we melt into the undistinguishable ocean of the millions, unless we can be distinguished by reason of our sculpture." He always included Julia, his wife, in this way (although she never "modelled a lick"), for she wrote all his letters, made out all his checks, and took charge of him generally. Some said his success was due to her management. She was a dark-eyed, smiling little woman, exquisite in her dress and brisk in her manner. Their studio occupied the whole north side of the attic of a big office building in the heart of the city's traffic. "We want to be in the midst of trade, but above it," Moss explained to those who wondered at his choice of location. "Sculpture, as I see it, is a part of architecture. I'm not above modelling a door-knocker if they'll only let me do it my way. Sculpture was a part of life in the old days, and we don't want to make it a thing too 'precious' now. I want to get close to the business men, not to avoid them. I like the roar of trade." The Haneys, therefore, led by the sagacious Lucius, soon found themselves in the Wisconsin Block, and shooting aloft in a bronze elevator that seemed fired from a cannon ("express to the 10th floor"), with nothing to suggest art in the men or in the signs about them. On the thirteenth story they alighted, and, walking up one flight of stairs, found themselves at the end of a bright hall, before a door which bore, in simple gold letters, "Jos. Moss, Sculptor." Bertha heard laughter within, and her heart misgave her. It was not easy for her to meet these artist folk. Of business men, miners, railway managers she was unafraid, but these people who joke and bully-rag each other and talk high philosophy one minute and gossip the next, like the Congdons, were "pretty swift" for her. After a moment's pause she said to the Captain, "They can't kill us; here goes!" and knocked gently. Moss himself opened the door, and his cordial, "How de do, Mrs. Haney," established him in her mind at once as a good fellow. He was quite as direct as Congdon. "I'm glad to see you," he said to the Captain. "Come in." He looked keenly at Lucius, who composedly explained himself. "The Captain is a little lame, and I just came along to see that he got here all right. I'll be back at 5.30." The door opened into a big room, which was darkened at the windows and lighted by shaded electric globes. It was cool and bare in effect. Around a small table in a far corner a half-dozen people were sitting. Mrs. Moss, who was pouring tea, rose in her place at the tea-urn as her husband approached, and cordially shook hands with her guests. "I'm very glad you came. Please tell me how you'll have your tea," she said. Bertha was accustomed to take her tea "any old way," and said so, being influenced by Mrs. Moss' candid eyes and merry smile. Haney, with a queer feeling of being on the stage as a character in a play, sank heavily into the chair at his hostess' right hand and said: "I never took tea in my life, but I'm not dodgin' anything you mix." Joe earnestly protested. "Don't do it, Captain, there's some Scotch down cellar." Mrs. Moss indicated one or two other dimly seen faces about her and introduced their owners in a most casual manner while she compounded a hot drink for her Western guest. "How long have you been in our horrible town, Mr. Haney?" she asked, heedful of Joe's warning. "One day, ma'am." "You're just 'passing through,' I presume--that's the way all Colorado people do." Haney smiled. He was getting the drift of her remarks. "'Tis natural, ma'am; for, you see, 'tis a long run and a heavy grade, and hard to side-track on the way." Bertha, to whom Moss addressed himself, was candidly looking about her--profoundly interested in what she saw. Dim forms in bronze and plaster stood on shelves, brackets, and pedestals, and at the end of the long room a big group of figures writhed as if in mortal combat. It was a work-shop--that was evident even to her--with one small nook devoted to tea and talk. "Would you like to poke about?" he asked, anticipating her request. "Yes, I would," she bluntly replied. "There isn't much to see," he said. "I'm the kind of sculptor who works on order. I believe in the 'art for service' idea, and when I get an order I fill it as well as I can, make it as beautiful as I can, and send it out on its mission. I'd like to model mantel-pieces and andirons, because they are seen and actually influence people's lives. What I started to say was this: my stuff all goes out--my real stuff; my fool failures stay by me--this thing, for instance." He indicated the big clump of nude forms. "I had an 'idea' when I started, but it was too ambitious and too literary. Moreover, it isn't democratic. It don't gibe with the present. I'd be a wild-animal sculptor if I knew enough about them." It was a profoundly moving experience for this raw mountain-bred girl to stand there beside that colossal group while the man who had modelled it took her into his confidence. There was no affectation in Moss's candor. He had come to a swift conclusion that Congdon had attempted to let him into a trap, for Bertha's reticence and dignity quite reassured him. If she had uttered a single one of the banal compliments with which visitors "kill" artists he would have stopped short; but she didn't, she only looked, and something in her face profoundly interested him. Suddenly she turned and said: "Tell me what it means." "It don't mean anything--now. Originally I intended it to mean 'The Conquest of Art by the Spirit of Business,' or something like that. I started it when I was fresh from Paris, and wore a red tie and a pointed beard. I keep it as a record of the folly into which exotic instruction will lead a man. If I were to go at it now I'd turn the whole thing around--I'd make it 'Art Inspiring Business.'" Bertha did not follow his thought entirely, but she felt herself in the presence of a serious problem and listening to something deep down in the heart of a strong man. Here was another world--not an altogether strange world, for Congdon had also talked to her of his work--but a world so far removed from her own life that it seemed some other planet. "How well he talks," she thought. "Like a book." "How charming she is," he was thinking. And the alert, aspiring pose of her head made his thumb nervously munch at the bit of clay he had picked up. They wandered up and down the long room while he showed her tiles for mantel decoration, bronze cats' heads for door-knobs, and curious and lovely figures for lamps and ash-trays. "I take a shy at 'most everything," he explained. "Do you sell these?" she asked, indicating some designs for electric desk-lamps. He smiled. "Sometimes--not as often as I'd like to." "How much are they?" "Fifty dollars each." "I'll take them both," she said, and her pulse leaped with the pride of being a patron of art. "Now see here, Mrs. Haney, I'm not displaying these to you as a salesman--not that I'm so very delicate about offering my things, but I try to wait till a second visit." He really did feel mean about it. "Don't take 'em--wait till to-morrow. They're pretty middling bad anyway. They're supposed to be mountain lions, but as a matter of fact I never saw a mountain lion outside the Zoo." "They're lions, all right. I want 'em, and I know the Captain will like 'em." She stepped back to call Haney. But finding him surrounded by all of the other callers (they had "got him going" telling stories of his wild life in the West), she turned to the sculptor with a smile, saying: "Never mind, _I_ know they're what he needs--if he don't." And Moss, recalling Congdon's description of the Haneys' material condition, answered: "Very well, if you insist; but I really feel as though I had played a confidence game on you." "Can you fix 'em up with lights?" she asked, eager as a child. "I mean right now." "Certainly." He unscrewed a couple of small bulbs from a near-by bracket, and, putting them into place on the lamps, turned on the current. She laughed out in delight. One of the lions was playing with the stem which supported the light. As if rising from a sleep, he lay upholding the globe on one high-raised paw. The other--a counterpart, or nearly so in pose--had a different expression. The cub was snarling and clutching at the light, as if it were a bird about to escape. "I had an idea of putting them on the corners of a mantel to light a piece of low relief," he explained, "but I never got at the relief. It ought to be characteristic Western scenery, and I've never seen the West. Shameful, isn't it?" "I want you to do that mantel for me," she said. "I don't know what you mean by 'low relief,' but I know it would be up to these, and they are _right_!" "Your trust in me is beautiful, Mrs. Haney, and maybe I'll come out this summer and try to meet it." "I wish you would," she said, and she meant it. "I'll show you Colorado." "If you're starting to be a patron of art, Mrs. Haney, don't overlook Congdon; he's a first-class man." He became humorous again. "We're moving swiftly, but I'm going to tell you that he wanted me to make a sketch of you. If you'll be so good as to give me two or three sittings, I'll do something we can send out to him--if you wish." "What do you mean by a sketch?" "Something like this." And, leading her before a curious, half-human, veiled object, he began to unwind damp yellow cloths till at last the head of a young woman appeared on a small revolving stand. It was very dainty, very sweet, and smiling. Bertha was puzzled. "It ain't your wife, and yet it looks like her." "It is my wife's sister--a quick study from life--just the kind of thing Frank wants. Will you sit for me A couple of mornings will answer." He was eager to do her now. Her profile, so clear, so firm, so strangely boyish, pleased him. He could feel the "snap" that the sketch would have when it was done. Bertha considered. She owed a great deal to the Congdons, and she liked this man. Her homesickness at the moment was abated, and to stay two, or even three, days in Chicago promised at the moment to be not so dreadful, after all. "Yes, I'll do it," she decided. "I don't know what Mr. Congdon will do with a picture of me, but that's his funeral." And her laughing lip made her seem again the untaught girl she really was. As they went back to the group around the Captain, Julia Moss treated her husband to a glance of commiseration, thinking him a bored and defeated man. "You've missed the Captain's racy talk," she whispered. Haney was enjoying himself very well in the "centre of the stage," and doing himself credit. Never in his life had he known a keener audience than these artists, who studied him from every point of view. "Yes," Haney was saying, "'tis possible to bust a bank if the game is straight--that is, at faro; but most machine games are built so that 'the house'--that is, the bank--is protected. My machines was always straight. I'd as soon turn a sausage-grinder as run a wheel that was 'fixed' in me favor." Bertha did not like this talk of his abandoned trade, and her cheeks burned as she put her hand on his shoulder. "I reckon we'd better be going." He recovered himself. "Of course I quit all that when I married," he explained, and dutifully rose. "Oh, Mrs. Haney," pleaded Mrs. Moss, "don't take him away! We were just getting light on the game of faro. Please sit down again." Bertha resented this tone. "No, we've got to go. Glad to have met you." She nodded towards the men who had risen. "Much obliged," she said again to Moss. "I'll send for them things to-morrow." Mrs. Moss cordially insisted on their coming again. "She's going to pose for me," reported Moss. "To-morrow morning at ten?" he inquired. "Ten suits me as well as any time," Bertha replied. Mrs. Moss beamed at Haney. "You come, too, Captain. I want to know more about those delightful games of chance." Bertha went back to her hotel with throbbing brain. The day had been so full of experience! She was tired out and fairly bewildered by it all. As her excitement ebbed and she had time to recover her own point of view, Colorado, her home, the Springs, and the memory of her own people came rushing back upon her, making the city and all it contained but a handful of east wind. Ben's kiss burned vividly again upon her lips. "Was it wrong of him to say what he did?" she began to ask herself. A good-bye kiss would not have so deeply stirred her; it was his face, his voice, his intensely uttered words which deeply thrilled her, even now, as she recalled them one by one. "You are beautiful and I love you." These were the most important words to a woman, and they had come at last to her. Then her cheek flushed with shame of her husband as she remembered his gambling talk at the studio. "Why _must_ he always go back to that?" she asked, hotly. They ate their dinner in the big dining-room surrounded by waiters, while the Captain discussed his sister and her family. "I'll do something for Fan," he said. "She's a different sort from Charles. McArdle seems a hard-workin' chap, the kind that a little help wouldn't spile. What do you think of buyin' them a bit of a house somewhere?" Bertha listened with a languor of interest new to her, and when he repeated his question and asked her if she were tired, she answered: "Yes; and I think I'll go to bed early to-night. It's been a hard day." CHAPTER XVIII BERTHA'S PORTRAIT IS DISCUSSED Joe Moss was delighted with the Haneys, for they talked of their native West as people should talk. They were as absolute in their convictions as a Kentuckian. For them there was no other "God's country," and as it was his latest dream to go West and "do a big thing on a cliff or something" he put off every other engagement to enjoy their racy speech. He said at the first sitting: "I've had an idea of working the Thorwaldsen trick: find some fine site out there, some wall of rock close to the railway, and hew out a monster grizzly or mountain lion. The railway could then advertise it, you see; trains could stop there 'five minutes to permit a view of Moss's Lion'; they could use a cut of it on all their folders. If there was a spring near by they could advertise the water and bottle it, a picture of my lion on the label. Ah, it is a fine scheme!" "'Tis so," said Haney. "I wonder nobody thought of it before." "It takes a Yankee, after all, to plan new suspender buttons," the sculptor replied. And all the time he talked his hands were dabbling, his thumbs gouging, his dibble cutting and smoothing. Haney watched him with amused glance. "Sure, I didn't know ye went at it so. I thought ye chipped each picture out o' stone." And when the process of molding in plaster was explained to him, he said: "'Tis like McArdle's trade entirely. He takes a rise in the world since I know he's an artist like yourself." "What is his 'line'?" "Pattern-maker for a stove foundry." Moss beamed. "Just what I'd like to be if they'd only pay a little more wages and furnish a better place to work." Bertha never knew when he was in earnest, so habitually mocking was his tone. But she grew towards a perception of his ideal, and dimly apprehended in him a mind far beyond any she had ever known. Mrs. Moss, almost as reticent as Mrs. Haney herself, came and went about the studio brightly, briskly, keeping vigilant eye on her husband's mail, moistening his "mud ladies," and defending him from inopportune callers, insistent beggars, and wandering models. Bertha, though sitting with the stolid patience of a Mississippi clam-fisher, was thinking at express speed. Her mind was of that highly developed type where a hint sets in motion a score of related cognitions, and a word here and there in Moss's rambling remarks instructed her like a flash of light. She was at school, in a high sense, and improving her time. The sketch was expanding into a carefully studied portrait bust and Moss was happy. One day a fellow-artist came in casually, and they both squinted, measured, and compared the portrait and herself with the calm absorption of a couple of prize-pig committeemen at a cattle-show. "You see, this line is shorter," the stranger said, almost laying his finger on Bertha's neck. "Not so straight, as you've got it. That's a fine line--" "I know it is!" "And you don't want to spoil it. I don't like your fad for cutting down the bust. The neck is nothing but a connecting link between the head and the bust. Now here you have a charming and youthful head and face--let the neck at least suggest the woman below." "Oh yes, that's good logic, provided you're after that. But what I want here is spring-time--just a fresh, alert, lovely fragment. This pure line must be kept free from any earthiness." "I suppose you know what you want; I won't say you don't. But if I were painting her, I'd get that sweeping line there that ends by suggesting the summer." They talked disjointedly, elliptically, and of course mainly of the clay; and yet Bertha grew each moment more clearly aware that they considered her not merely interesting but beautiful, and this was a most momentous and developing assurance. She had hoped to be called "good-looking," but no one thus far (excepting Ben Fordyce) had ever called her beautiful; and these judgments on the part of Joe Moss and his brother artist were made the more moving by reason of their precision of knowledge and their professional candor. They spoke as freely in discussion of her charm as if she were deaf and dumb. The painter, who had been introduced in a careless way as "Mr. Humiston, of New York," turned to Bertha at last, and, assuming the ordinary politeness of a human being, said: "I'd like to make a study of you, too, Mrs. Haney, if you'll permit. I can bring my canvas in here and work with Joe, so that it needn't be any trouble to you." Bertha, her wealth still new upon her, had no suspicion of the motives of those who addressed her, was deeply flattered by this request, and as Moss made no objection, she consented. The only thing that troubled Moss was her growing tendency to lapse into troubled thought. "Remember, now, you're the crocus, the first violet, or something like that--not the last rose of summer. Don't think, don't droop! There, that's right! What have you to think or droop about? When you're as old and blasé as Humiston there, you'll have a right to ponder the mysteries, but not now. You and I are young, thank God!" Humiston was dabbling at his small canvas swiftly, lightly, as unmoved by his fellow-artist as if his voice were the wind in the casement. He was a tall, sickly looking man with grizzled hair, and pale, deeply lined face. He was fresh from Paris with a small exhibition of his pictures, which were very advanced, as Mrs. Moss privately explained to Bertha. "And he's rather bitter against Americans because they don't appreciate his work. But Joe asks: 'Why should they?' They're undemocratic--little high-keyed 'precious' bits; pictures for other artists, not real paintings, or they are unacceptable otherwise. He's a wonderful technician, though, and he'll make an exquisite sketch of you." The Western girl-wife was completely fascinated by this small, dusky, dim, and richly colored heart of the fierce and terrible city whose material bulk alone is known to the world. To go from the crash and roar of the savage streets into this studio was like climbing from the level of the water in the Black Cañon to the sunlit, grassy peaks where the Indian pink blossoms in silence. She was of the aspiring nature. She had commonly played with children older than herself. She had read books she could not understand. She had always reached upward, and here she found herself surrounded by men and women who excited her imagination as Congdon had done. They helped her forget the doubt of herself and her future, which was gnawing almost ceaselessly in her brain, and she was sorry when Moss said to her: "Come in once more, to-morrow, and see me do the real sculptor's act. No, don't look at it" (he flung a cloth over his work); "you may look at it to-morrow." "May I see my picture?" she asked of Humiston. He turned the easel towards her without a word. "Good work!" cried Moss. Mrs. Moss came from her dark corner. "I knew you'd do something exquisite." Bertha looked at it in silence. It was as lovely in color as a flower, a dream-girl, not Bertha Haney. And at last she said: "It's fine, but it isn't me." Humiston broke forth almost violently. "Of course it isn't you; it's the way you look to me. I never paint people as they look to themselves nor to their friends. I am painting my impression of you." "Do you really see me like that?" she both asked and exclaimed. And at the moment she was more moving than she had ever been before, and Humiston, in a voice of anguish, cried: "My God, why didn't I do her like that?" And he fell to coughing so violently that Bertha shuddered. Moss defended himself. "I couldn't do her in _all_ her fine poses," he complained. "I had to select. Why didn't you do her that way yourself?" The painter put his short-hand sketch away with a sigh. "If you venture as far as New York, I hope you and the Captain will visit my studio," he said. With no suspicion of being passed from hand to hand, she promised to send him her address, and said: "I'd like to see the pictures you have here." Moss became abusive. "Now see here, Jerry, I can't let you take Mrs. Haney to that show of yours. I'll go myself to point out their weak points." "I know their weak points a bloody sight better than you do," answered Humiston, readily. "If you do you don't speak of 'em." "Why should I? You don't call out the defects of your 'hardware,' do you?" Mrs. Moss interposed. "That's just what he does do, and it hurts trade. I think I'll take Mrs. Haney over to see the pictures myself." Humiston brightened. "Very well; but you must all lunch with me. You're about the only civilized people I know in this crazy town, and I need you." "No," said Bertha. "It's our treat. You all come over and eat with us." Haney, who had been keeping in the background, now came forward. "I second that motion," he heartily said. "We don't get a chance every day to feed a bunch of artists." "You can have that pleasure any day here," said Moss. "Our noses are always over the bars, waiting." When she emerged from the gallery an hour later Bertha enjoyed an exalted sense of having been carried through some upper, serener world, where business, politics, and fashion had little place. It was "only a dip," as Mrs. Moss said--just to show the way; but it set the girl's brain astir with half-formed, disconnected aspirations. Only as she re-entered the hotel (the centre of obsequious servants) did she become again the wife of Marshall Haney, and Mrs. Moss, noting the eager attention of the waiters, was amazed and delighted at the look of calm command which came over the girl's face. "Art is fine and sweet as a side issue," said Julia to her husband, as they were going in, "but money makes the porters jump." Bertha, composed and serious, seated her guests at a table which had been reserved for her near a window and charmingly decorated with flowers. She put Moss at her left hand and Humiston at her right, and as the Eastern man settled into place, he said: "Really, now, this isn't so bad." His experienced eye had noted the swift flocking of the waiters, and with cynical amusement he commented upon it. "These people must _smell_ of money!" and in his heart acknowledged that he and Moss were not so very different from the servitors, after all. "They're out for tens, we're after thousands; that's the main point of difference." Bertha, once the cutlets were served, was able to give attention to the talk--Humiston's talk (he was celebrated as a monologist), for he had resumed the discussion into which he and Moss had fallen. "I don't believe in helping people to study art. I don't believe in charity. This interfering with the laws of the universe that kill off the crippled and the weakly is pure sentimentalism that will fill the world with deformed, diseased, and incapable persons." "You're a vile reactionary!" cried Moss. "I am not--I'm for the future. I want to see the world full of beauty." "Physical beauty?" "Yes, physical beauty. I want to see vice and crime and crooked limbs and low brows die out--not perpetuated. I believe in educating the people to the lovely in line and color." As he pursued this line of inexorable argument Bertha looked at him in wonder. Did he mean what he said? His burning eyes seemed sincere--and yet he did not fail to accept a second helping of the mushrooms. There was power in the man. He pushed the walls of her intellectual world very wide apart. He came from a strange, chaotic region--from a land where ordinary modes and motives seemed lost or perverted. He took a delight in shocking them all. Morality was a convention--a hypocritic agreement on the part of the few to reserve freedom to themselves at the expense of the many. "Art is impossible to little people, to those who starve the big side of their nature, for fear of Mrs. Grundy. Look at the real people--Rachel, Wagner, Turner, Bernhardt, and a thousand others. Were they bound by the marriage laws? What will these crowds of tiny men and petty women do who come from the country parlors and corn-shocks of the West? They will puddle around a little while, paint and muddle a few petty things, then marry and go back to the ironing-board and the furrow where they belong. What's the matter with American art? It's too cursed normal, that's what. It's too neat and sweet and restrained--no license, no "go" to it. What's the matter with you, to be personal?" "Too well balanced." "Precisely. You _talk_ like a man of power, but model like a cursed niggling prude. You're bitten with the new madness. You're the Bryan of art. 'The dear people' is your cry. Damn the people! They don't know a good thing when they see it. Why consider the millions? Consider the few, those who have the taste and the dollars. That's the way all the big men of the past had to do. Look at Rubens and Michael Angelo and Titian--all the big bunch; they were all frank, gross feeders, lovers of beauty, defiant of conventions." He had forgotten where he sat, but he was not neglecting his hostess. He took a satanic satisfaction in seeing her lovely eyes widen and glow as he went on. Subtly flattering her by including her among the very few who could understand his ideals, he seemed to draw her apart to his side--appealing to her for support against the coarse and foolish hosts represented by the Mosses, while Marshall Haney sat in a kind of stupor, his eyes alone speaking, as if to ask: "What the divil is the little man with the cough so hot about?" Moss, accustomed to Humiston's savage diatribes, roared out objections or laughed him to scorn, while Mrs. Moss tried her best to turn the mad artist's mind upon more suitable subjects. He had been deeply hurt and financially distressed by the failure of his exhibits in Pittsburg and Chicago, and was now taking it out on his friends. His passion, his bitter, vengeful cry against the ignorant masses of the world was something Bertha had read about, but never felt; but she quivered now with the half-disclosed fury of the disappointed austere soul. Could it be possible that this savage man, so worn and ill, had painted those dim, vague pictures of flower-like girls whose limbs were involved in blossoming vines? He concluded at last: "The only place in the world to-day for an artist is Paris. In no other city can he live his own life in frank fulness, and find patrons who see the subtlest meaning of a line." Bertha was tired of all this--mentally weary and confused; and she felt very grateful to Mrs. Moss, who came to the rescue the moment Humiston paused. "There, Mrs. Haney, that is the end of Professor Jerry Spoopendyke's lecture on the undesirability of America as a place of residence--_for him_. Of course, he don't mind selling his pictures just to enlighten our night of ignorance, but as for going to Sunday-school or keeping the decalogue, that's our job." Humiston had the grace to smile. "I beg your pardon, Mrs. Haney, I have been a fool. But that monkey over there--Joe Moss--provoked me with his accursed heresies about the democracy of art. Art has no democracy, and democracy will never have an art--" "There, there!" warned Moss, "you said all that before." The painter wrenched himself away and turned to Bertha. "You _are_ coming to New York, Mrs. Haney?" "I don't know," she said. "We may." "If you do, don't fail to let me know. I would like to see you." "All right," said Bertha, "I'll send you a line." And her frank smile made him sorry to say good-bye even for the day. As Mart was going up the elevator he sighed and said: "It takes all kinds of people to make up a world--Mr. Hummockstone is wan of the t'others. He has a grouch agin the universe. Sure but he's been housin' a gnawin' serpent. How 'twill all end I dunno." When alone in her room, Bertha's mind again reverted to Ben Fordyce. As she compared him with Humiston, he seemed handsomer and more boyishly frank than ever. What did Joe Moss mean by calling Mr. Humiston "blasé." She had seen that word in novels and it always meant something wicked. How could this weary, sick man be wicked? She pitied him and wished to help him. "Why should he take so much interest in me? He don't have to. Of course the Mosses are nice to me on Congdon's account, but why does this great artist want me to come to his studio in New York? He talks poor, so maybe he wants me to buy some of his pictures." That her money was a lure for wasps she did not yet realize. That the waiters and clerks buzzed round her because she was rich, she knew; but that these men, who talked of beauty and the higher life, could flatter her with attentions with a base motive was incredible. She was shrewd as her Yankee forbears, but she was also an idealist, and these artist folk now seemed to her the highest types she had ever known or was likely to know. She felt the mystery and the power in Humiston's personality, and his bitter and rebellious, almost blasphemous, words were counterpoised by his paintings, which she acknowledged to be beautiful--too beautiful for her to comprehend. He looked like a man of sorrow and weary of battle, and she longed to know more about him. When he was not fierce he was melancholy; evidently his life had been a failure. "Why shouldn't I buy some of his pictures?" she asked herself. Hitherto the answer to any such question had been, "Can we afford it?" but now another and deeper query came in answer, like an echo: "Is it right to spend Mart Haney's money? I am only his trained nurse, not his wife," and she now knew that she could not be his wife. She shrank from the weight of his hand, and each day made clearer the wide spaces of years, of family, of ideals, which lay between them. The kiss Ben Fordyce had pressed upon her lips had brought this revelation. But of this she was not yet aware; she was only conscious of a growing dread of the future. Her duties as his nurse were lightening. Lucius, indeed, now took many of her tasks upon himself, and she no longer helped him with his shoes or coat, and, what was still more significant, she could not calmly think of going back to these wifely services. She dwelt treacherously on Haney's own admission: that she had been in a sense entrapped. He had believed himself a dying man at the time, and she had been too excited, too exalted by the lurid romance of the scene to be clear about anything save the wish and the will to save him; and now she knew that at bottom of all her willingness to serve him lay the consciousness that he was on his death-bed. Afterwards he had been to her only a big-hearted, generous friend, in need of love and companionship. This understanding had made it easy for her to prepare his meals, to help him, as a nurse would help him, to dress and undress. She had lost all of the fear and much of the admiration in which she used to greet him as he swung into the office of her little hotel. He had become to her an invalid, a child to be jollied and humored, and yet respected; for no one could have been kinder or more scrupulously just than he. And it was the recollection of all his acts of self-sacrifice and loving patience which gave her assurance that he would never require obedience, though he might sue for it. Her danger lay in herself. "If he _does_ ask me to be his real wife--then I must either agree or leave. It won't be right for me to take all these benefits unless--" And with this thought, the big house in the Springs, the sleek horses, their shining carriages, the auto-car, her dresses, the service of the big hotel, and the consideration her husband's money gave to her, all assumed a new and corrupting lustre. She was growing accustomed to luxury and the thought of giving it up made her shiver like one who faces a plunge into a dark night and an icy river. Besides, her sacrifice would involve others. Her mother, her brother, were already roundly ensnared in Mart's bounty. Her head was aching with it all, when a comforting thought came to her. It was not necessary to decide it at that moment, and with a sigh of relief she threw it aside and sat down to write a letter to her mother. "I ought to have written before, but I've been jumped right into the middle of things here. The letters Frank Congdon gave me took me into an artistic bunch about as gay and queer as Frank is, but they've been mighty nice to me. I've been setting for my bust to Mr. Moss, who is a sculptor. He has a big studio clear on the top of one of the tallest blocks here and has some dandy lamps and things. I've bought some to bring back. I met a Mr. Humiston there from New York, and he made a sketch of me--wants me to see his studio in New York. I don't know whether I'll go on or let Mart go with Lucius. Lucius is all right--I don't see how I got on without him. He knows everything. I wish I had half the education he's got. He's up on all the society ways and puts me on. For instance, he told me the nice thing would be to give a dinner to this artist push and to the people that Dorothy give me a letter to, and I'm going to do it. Lucius will look out for the whole thing. You should see the way the waiters tend. I reckon Lucius has told 'em we're made of money. I'm afraid we're getting spoilt, Muzz. It would be pretty tough to go back to the hotel now, wouldn't it? "We went to see Mart's sister, Fanny. Her house was a sight. It was clean enough, but littered--well, litter is no name for it--but she's a good old thing and so is McArdle. He sat and looked at us the whole time like a turkey blind in one eye--never said a word the whole time but 'pass the p-taties.' I liked him though. He's a kind of sculptor, too--makes patterns for all these little acorns and leaves and do-funnies on stoves. They've got forty-'leven children and need help and I'm perfectly willing Mart should help 'em. We're looking up houses now. He's going to buy a place for 'em on the west side. Wednesday night I went to see the Doctor Brents, Dorothy's friends. They had a dinner--very nice, but they all kind o' sat 'round and waited for us to perform. I guess they thought we were mountain lions. But they didn't make much out o' me. They was one chap there with goggles who looked at Mart like an undertaker. He's a scientific doctor--one of these fellers that invent new ways of doing things. His name is Halliday. I liked Dr. Brent pretty well--but Mrs. Brent only so-so. The doctor wants to 'dagnose' Mart's case--says it won't cost a cent. We all went to a show at night and the Captain was just about petered to a point. He's better though. The lower altitude helps his circulation. I guess his heart _is_ affected. He's afraid now he won't ever be able to go back to the mines. He wants to slide on to New York and see his father and wants me to go--but I'd rather come home--I'm homesick for the hills. They're nice to me here--but I want to see the old Peak once more. Tell" (here she wrote "Ben" and blotted it) "tell Mr. Fordyce that we're all right and to keep us posted every day. We see by the papers that the mine-owners are going to throw the unions out of business. If they try that they'll be war again. We'll be home soon--or at least I will. I'm getting home-sicker every minute as I write." She added a postscript. "Don't show my letters to _any one_. I wish I'd 'a' had a little more schooling." CHAPTER XIX THE FARTHER EAST Haney visibly brightened as the days went by, and took long rides in his auto, sometimes with Bertha, sometimes alone with Lucius, and now and then with some old acquaintance, who, having seen his name in the paper, ventured to call. They were not very savory characters, to tell the truth, and he did not always introduce them to Bertha, but as his health improved he called upon a few of the more reputable of them, billiard-table agents, and the like of that, and to these proudly exhibited his wife. Bertha had hitherto accepted this with boyish tolerance, but now it irritated her. Some of these visitors presumed on her husband's past and treated her with a certain freedom of tone and looseness of tongue which made plain even to her unsuspecting nature that they put no high value on her virtue--in fact, one fellow went so far as to facetiously ask, "Where did Mart find you? Are there any more out there?" And she felt the insult, though she did not know how to resent it. Haney, so astute in many things, saw nothing out of the way in this off-hand treatment of his wife. He would have killed the man who dared to touch her, and yet he stood smilingly by while some chance acquaintance treated her as if she had been picked out of a Denver gutter. This threw Bertha upon her own defence, and at last she made even impudence humble itself. She carried herself like a young warrior, sure of her power and quick of defence. She refused to invite her husband's friends to lunch, and the first real argument she had thus far held with him came about in this way. She said, "Yes, you can ask Mr. Black or Mr. Brown to dinner, but I won't set at the same table with them." "Why not?" he asked. "Because they're not the kind of men I want to eat with," she bluntly replied. "They're just a little too coarse for me." "They're good business men and have fine homes--" "Do they invite you to their homes?" "They do not," he admitted, "but they may--after our dinner." "Lucius says it's their business to lead out--and he knows. I don't mind your lunching these dubs every day if you want to, but I keep clear of 'em. I tell you those!" And so it fell out that while she was going about with the Mosses and their kind, Mart was explaining to Black and Brown that his wife "was a little shy." "You see she grew up in the hills like a doe antelope, and it's hard for her to get wonted to the noise of a great city," he laboriously set forth, but at heart he did not blame her. He was coming to find them a little "coarse" himself. Humiston was deeply enthralled by Bertha's odd speech, her beauty, her calm use of money, and lingered on day by day, spending nearly all his time at Moss's studio or at the hotel, seeking Mrs. Haney's company. He had never met her like, and confessed as much to Moss, who jocularly retorted: "That's saying a good deal--for you've seen quite a few." Humiston ignored this thrust. "She has beauty, imagination, and immense possibilities. She don't know herself. When she wakes up to her power, then look out! She can't go on long with this old, worn-out gambler." "Oh, Haney isn't such a beast as you make him out. Bertha told me he had never crossed her will. He's really very kind and generous." "That may be true, and yet he's a mill-stone about her neck. It's a shame--a waste of beauty--for the girl is a beauty." It was with a sense of relief that Moss heard Bertha say to his wife: "I guess I've had enough of this. It's me to the high ground to-morrow." "Aren't you going on to the metropolis?" "I don't think it. I'm hungry for the peaks--and, besides, our horses need exercise. I think I'll pull out for the West to-morrow and leave the Captain and Lucius to go East together. I don't believe I need New York." To this arrangement Haney reluctantly consented. "You're missin' a whole lot, Bertie. I don't feel right in goin' on to Babylon without ye. I reckon you'd better reconsider the motion. However, I'll not be gone long, and if I find the old Dad hearty I may bring him home with me. He's liable to be livin' with John Donahue. Charles said he was a shiffless whelp, and there's no telling how he's treating the old man. Anyhow, I'll let you know." She relented a little. "Ma'be I ought to go. I hate to see you starting off alone." "Sure now! don't ye worry, darling. Lucius is handy as a bootjack, and we'll get along fine. Besides, I may come back immegitly, for them mine-owners are cooking a hell-broth for us all. Havin' a governor on their side now, they must set out to show their power." Ben kept them supplied with home papers, and as Bertha took up one of these journals she found herself played upon by familiar forms and faces. The very names of the streets were an appeal. She saw herself sporting with her hounds, riding with Fordyce over the flowery Mesa, or facing him in his sun-bright office discussing the world's events and deciding upon their own policies and expenditures. She grew very homesick as these pleasant, familiar pictures freshened in her vision, and her faith in Ben's honesty and essential goodness came back to her. Moreover her mind was not at rest regarding Haney; much as she longed to go home, she felt it her duty to remain with him, and as she lay in her bed she thought of him with much the same pity a daughter feels for a disabled father. "He's given me a whole lot--I ought to stay by him." She admitted also a flutter of fear at thought of meeting Ben Fordyce alone, and this unformulated distrust of herself decided her at last to go on with Mart and to have him for shield and armor when she returned to the Springs. There are certain ways in which books instruct women--and men, too, for that matter--but there are other and more vital processes in which only experience (individual or inherited) teaches. In her desultory reading, little Mrs. Haney, like every other citizen, had taken imaginative part in many murders, seductions, and marital infidelities; and yet the motives for such deeds had never before seemed human. Now the dark places in the divorce trials, the obscure charges in the testimony of deserted wives, were suddenly illumined. She realized how easy it would be to make trouble between Mart and herself. She understood the stain those strangers in the car could put upon her, and she trembled at the mere thought of Mart's inquiring eyes when he should know of it. Why should he know of it? It was all over and done with. There was only one thing to do--forget it. Surely life was growing complex. With bewildering swiftness the experiences of a woman of the world were advancing upon her, and she, with no brother or father to be her guard, or friend to give her character, with a husband whose very name and face were injuries, was finding men in the centres of culture quite as predatory as among the hills, where Mart Haney's fame still made his glance a warning. These few weeks in Chicago had added a year to her development, but she dared not face Ben Fordyce alone--not just yet--not till her mind had cleared. In the midst of her doubt of herself and of him a message came which made all other news of no account. He was on his way to Chicago to consult Mart (so the words ran), but in her soul she knew he was coming to see her. Was it to test her? Had he taken silence for consent? Was he about to try her faith in him and her loyalty to her husband? His telegram read: "Coming on important business." That might mean concerning the mine--on the surface; but beneath ran something more vital to them both than any mine or labor war, something which developed in the girl both fear and wonder--fear of the power that came from his eyes, wonder of the world his love had already opened to her. What was the meaning of this mad, sweet riot of the blood--this forgetfulness of all the rest of the world--this longing which was both pleasure and pain, doubt and delight, which turned her face to the West as though through a long, shining vista she saw love's messenger speeding towards her? Sleep kept afar, and she lay restlessly turning till long after midnight, and when she slept she dreamed, not of him, but of Sibley and her mother and the toil-filled, untroubled days of her girlhood. She rose early next morning and awaited his coming with more of physical weakness as well as of uncertainty of mind than she had ever known before. Haney was also up and about, an hour ahead of his schedule, sure that Ben's business concerned the mine. "It's the labor war breaking out again," he repeated. "I feel it in my bones. If it is, back I go, for the boys will be nading me." They went to the station in their auto-car, but, at Bertha's suggestion, Mart sent Lucius in to meet their attorney and to direct him where to find them. The young wife had a feeling that to await him at the gate might give him a false notion of her purpose. She grew faint and her throat contracted as if a strong hand clutched it as she saw his tall form advancing, but almost instantly his frank and eager face, his clear glance, his simple and cordial greeting disarmed her, transmuted her half-shaped doubts into golden faith. He was true and good--of that she was completely reassured. Her spirits soared, and the glow came back to her cheek. Fordyce, looking up at her, was filled with astonishment at the picture of grace and ease which she presented, as she leaned to take his hand. She shone, unmistakable mistress of the car, while Haney filled the rôle of trusted Irish coachman. As he climbed in, the young lawyer remarked merrily, "I don't know whether I approve of this extravagance or not." He tapped the car door. "It's mighty handy for the Captain," she replied. "You see he can't get round in the street-cars very well, and he says this is cheaper than cabs in the long run." "It has never proved economical to me; but it _is_ handy," he answered, with admiration of her growing mastery of wealth. And so with something fiercely beating in their hearts these youthful warriors struggled to be true to others--fighting against themselves as against domestic traitors, while they talked of the mine, the state judiciary, the operators, and the unions. Their words were impersonal, prosaic of association, but their eyes spoke of love as the diamond speaks of light. Ben's voice, carefully controlled, was vibrant with the poetry that comes but once in the life of a man, and she listened in that perfect content which makes gold and glory but the decorations of the palace where adoration dwells. The great, smoky, thunderous city somehow added to the sweetness of the meeting--made it the more precious, like a song in a tempest. It seemed to Ben Fordyce as if he had never really lived before. The very need of concealment gave his unspoken passion a singular quality--a tang of the wilding, the danger-some, which his intimacy with Alice had never possessed. The Haneys' suite of rooms at the hotel called for comment. "Surely Haney is feeling the power of money--but why not; who has a better right to lovely things than Bertha?" Then aloud he repeated: "How well you're looking--both of you! City life agrees with you. I never saw you look so well." This remark, innocent on its surface, brought self-consciousness to Bertha, for the light of his glance expressed more than admiration; and even as they stood facing each other, alive to the same disturbing flush, Lucius called Haney from the room, leaving them alone together. The moment of Ben's trial had come. For a few seconds the young wife waited in breathless silence for him to speak, a sense of her own wordlessness lying like a weight upon her. Into the cloud of her confusion his voice came bringing confidence and calm. "I feel that you have forgiven me--your eyes seem to say so. I couldn't blame you if you despised me. I won't say my feeling has changed, for it hasn't. It may be wrong to say so--it is wrong, but I can't help it. Please tell me that you forgive me. I will be happier if you do, and I will never offend again." His accent was at once softly pleading and manly, and, as she raised her eyes to his in restored self-confidence, she murmured a quaint, short, reassuring phrase: "Oh, that's all right!" Her glance, so shy, so appealing, united to the half-humorous words of her reply, were so surely of the Mountain-West that Ben was quite swept from the high ground of his resolution, and his hands leaped towards her with an almost irresistible embracing impulse. "You sweet girl!" he exclaimed. "Don't!" she said, starting back in alarm--"don't!" His face changed instantly, the clear candor of his voice reassured her. "Don't be afraid. I mean what I said. You need have no fear that I--that my offence will be repeated;" then, with intent to demonstrate his self-command, he abruptly changed the subject. "The Congdons sent their love to you, and Miss Franklin commissioned me to tell you that she will give you all her time next summer--if you wish her to do so." She was glad of this message and added: "I need her, sure thing. Every day I spend here makes me seem like Mary Ann--I don't see how people can talk as smooth as they do. I'm crazy to get to school again and make up for lost time. Joe Moss makes me feel like a lead quarter. Being here with all these nice people and not able to talk with them is no fun. Couldn't I whirl in and go to school somewhere back here?" "Oh no, that isn't necessary. You are getting your education by association--you are improving very fast." Her face lighted up. "Am I? Do you mean it?" "I do mean it. No one would know--to see you here--that you had not enjoyed all the advantages." "Oh yes, but I'm such a bluff. When I open my mouth they all begin to grin. They're onto my game all right." He smiled. "That's because of your picturesque phrases--they like to hear you speak. I assure you no one would think of calling you awkward or--or lacking in--in charm." Haney's return cut short this defensive dialogue, and with a sense of relief Bertha retreated--almost fled to her room--leaving the two men to discuss their business. At the moment she had no wish to participate in a labor controversy. She was entirely the woman at last, roused to the overpowering value of her own inheritance. Her desire to manage, to calculate, to plan her husband's affairs was gone, and in its place was a willingness to submit, a wish for protection which she had not hitherto acknowledged. She brooded for a time on Ben's words, then hurriedly began to dress--with illogical desire to make herself beautiful in his eyes. As she re-entered the room she caught Haney's repeated declaration--"I will be loyal to the men"--and Ben's reply. "Very well, I'll go back and do the best I can to keep them in line, but Williams says the governor is entirely on the side of the mine-operators." "Does he?" retorted Haney. "Well, you say to the governor that Mart Haney was a gambler and saloon-keeper during the other 'war,' and now that he's a mine-owner, with money to hire a regiment of deppyties, his heart is with the red-neckers--just where it was. Owning a paying mine has not changed me heart to a stone." Ben, as well as Bertha, understood the pride he took in not whiffling with the shift of wind, but at the same time he considered it a foolish kind of loyalty. "Very well, I'll take the six-o'clock train to-night in order to be on hand." "What's the rush?" said Haney; "stay on a day or two and see the town with us--'tis a great show." Bertha, re-entering at this moment in her shining gown, put the young attorney's Spartan resolution to rout. He stammered: "I ought to be on the ground before the mine-owners begin to open fire, and, besides--Alice is not very well." At the mention of Alice's name Bertha's glance wavered and her eyelids fell. She did not urge him to stay, and Haney spoke up, heartily: "I'm sorry to hear she's not well. She was pretty as a rose the night of the dinner." "She lives on her nerves," Ben replied, falling into sadness. "One day she's up in the clouds and dancing, the next she's flat in her bed in a darkened room unwilling to see anybody." "'Tis the way of the White Death," thought Haney, but he spoke hopefully: "Well, spring is here and a long summer before her--she'll be herself against October." "I trust so," said Ben, but Bertha could see that he was losing hope and that his life was being darkened by the presence of the death angel. Haney changed the current of all their thinking by saying to Bertha: "If you are minded to go home, now is your chance, acushla. You can return with Mr. Fordyce, while Lucius and I go on to New York the morning." "No, no!" she cried out in a panic. "No, I am going with you--I want to see New York myself," she added, in justification. The thought of the long journey with Ben Fordyce filled her with a kind of terror, a feeling she had never known before. She needed protection against herself. "Very well," said Haney, "that's settled. Now let's show Mr. Fordyce the town." Ben put aside his doubt and went forth with them, resolute to make a merry day of it. He seemed to regain all his care-free temper, but Bertha remained uneasy and at times abnormally distraught. She spoke with effort and listened badly, so busily was she wrought upon by unbidden thoughts. The question of her lover's disloyalty to Alice Heath, strange to say, had not hitherto troubled her--so selfishly, so childishly had her own relationship to him filled her mind. She now saw that Alice Heath was as deeply concerned in Ben's relationship to her as Haney, and the picture of the poor, pale, despairing lady, worn with weeping, persistently came between her and the scenes Mart pointed out on their trips about the city. Did Alice know--did she suspect? Was that why she was sinking lower and lower into the shadow? With these questions to be answered, as well as those she had already put to herself concerning Mart, she could not enjoy the day's outing. She rode through the parks with cold hands and white lips, and sat amid the color and bustle and light of the dining-room with only spasmodic return of her humorous, girlish self. The love which shone from Ben's admiring eyes only added to her uneasiness. She was very lovely in a new gown that disclosed her firm, rounded young bosom, like a rosebud within its calyx--the distraction upon her brow somehow adding to the charm of her face--and Ben thought her the most wonderful girl he had ever known, so outwardly at ease and in command was she. "Could any one," he thought, "be more swiftly adaptable?" They went to the theatre, and her beauty and her curiously unsmiling face aroused the admiration and curiosity of many others of those who saw her. At last, under the influence of the music, her eyes lost their shadow and grew tender and wistful. She ceased to question herself and gave herself up to the joy of the moment. The play and the melody--hackneyed to many of those present--appealed to her imagination, liberating her from the earth and all its concerns. She turned to Ben with eyes of rapture, saying, "Isn't it lovely!" And he, to whom the music was outworn and a little shoddy, instantly agreed. "Yes, it is very beautiful," and he meant it, for her pleasure in it brought back a knowledge of the charm it had once possessed. They dined together at the hotel, but the thought of Ben's departure brought a pang into Bertha's heart, and she fell back into her uneasy, distracted musing. She was being tempted, through her husband, who repeated with the half-forgetfulness of age and weakness, "You'd better go back with Mr. Fordyce, Bertie," but there was something stronger than her individual will in her reply--some racial resolution which came down the line of her good ancestry, and with almost angry outcry she answered: "There's no use talking that! I'm going with you," and with this she ended the outward siege, but the inward battle was not closed till she had taken and dropped the hand her lover held out in parting next morning, and even then she turned away, with his eyes and the tender cadences of his voice imprinted so vividly on her memory that she could not banish them, and she set face towards the farther East with the contest of duty and desire still going forward in her blood. CHAPTER XX BERTHA MEETS MANHATTAN It was a green land in which she woke. The leaves were just putting forth their feathery fronds of foliage, and the shorn lawns, the waving floods of growing wheat, and the smooth slopes of pastures presented pleasant pictures to the mountain-born girl. These thickly peopled farm-lands, the almost contiguous villages, the constant passing of trains roused in her a surprise and wonder which left her silent. Such weight of human life, such swarming populations, appalled her. How did they all live? At breakfast Haney was in unusual flow of spirits. "'Twas here I rode the trucks of a freight-car," he said once and again. "In this town I slept all night on a bench in the depot.... I know every tie from here to Syracuse. I wonder is the station agent living yet. 'Twould warm me heart to toss him out ten dollars for that night's lodging. Them was the great days! In Syracuse I worked for a livery-stableman as hostler, and I would have gone hungry but for the scullion Maggie. Cross-eyed was Maggie, but her heart beat warm for the lad in the loft, and many's the plates of beef and bowls of hot soup she handed to me--poor girl! I'd like to know where she is; had I the power of locomotion I'd look her up, too." Again Bertha was brought face to face with the great sacrifice she was obscurely contemplating. The magic potency of money was brought before her eyes as she contrasted the ragged, homeless boy with the man who sat beside her. The fact that he had not earned the money only made its magic the more clearly inherent in the gold itself. It panoplied the thief's carriage. It made dwarfs admirable, and gave dignity and honor to the lowly. It made it possible for Marshall Haney to retrace in royal splendor the perilous and painful journey he had made into the West some thirty years ago--rewarding with regal generosity those who threw him a broken steak or a half-eaten roll--and she could imaginatively enter into the exquisite pleasure this largess gave the man. "And there was Father McBreen," he resumed, with a chuckle--"'sure the mark of Satan is on the b'y,' he used to say every time my mother told him of one of my divilments. And he was right. All the same, I'd like to drop in on him and surprise him with a check"--at the moment he forgot that he was old and a cripple--"just to let him know the divil hadn't claimed me yet. I'd like to show him me wife." He put his hand on her arm and smiled. "Sure the old man would revise his prediction could he see you; he might say the divil had got _you_--but he couldn't pity me." She turned him aside from this by saying: "I reckon New York is a great deal bigger than Chicago. Mr. Moss says it makes any other town seem like a county seat. I'm dead leery of it. I want to see it, but it just naturally locoes me to think of it." "'Tis the only place to spend money--so the boys tell me. I've never been there but once, and then only for three days. I went on to get a man when I was sheriff in San Juan. I saw it then mostly as a wonderful fine swamp to lose a thief in." "Did you get your man?" she asked, with formal interest. "I did so--and nearly died for want of sleep on the way home; he was a desprit character, was black Hosay; but I linked him to me arm and tuck chances." Once she had listened to these stories with eager interest; now they were but empty boasting--so deeply inwrought was her soul with matters that more nearly concerned her woman's need and woman's nature. The potency of gold!--could any magic be greater? They lived like folk in a flying palace (with books and papers, easy-chairs and card-tables), eating carefully cooked meals, served by attendants as considerate and as constant as those at their own fireside. The broad windows gave streaming panorama of town and country, hill and river, and the young wife accepted it all with the haughty air of one who is wearied with splendor, but inwardly the knowledge that it all came to Haney (as to her) unearned troubled her. Luck was his God, but she, while accepting from him these marvellous, shining gifts, had another God--one derived from her Saxon ancestors, one to whom luxury was akin to harlotry. They left the train at Albany and went to the best hotel in the city to spend the night. "To-morrow I'll see if I can find anybody who knows where the old dad is," said Haney. "'Tis too late, and I'm too weary to do it to-night." Bertha was tired, too--mentally wearied, and glad of a chance to be alone. She went at once to her room, leaving the Captain and Lucius busy with the Troy directory. Haney set about his search next day with the eager zeal of a lad. He took an almost childish pleasure in displaying his good-fortune. Through Lucius he hired an auto-car as good as the one he had left in Chicago, and together he and Bertha rode into his native town, up into the bleak, brick-paved ward through which he had roamed when a cub. It had changed, of course, as all things American must, but it was so much the same, after all, that he could point out the alleys where he used to toss pennies and play cards and fight. Every corner was historic to him. "Phil O'Brien used to keep saloon here--and I've earned many a dime sweepin' out for his barkeeper. I was never a drunken lad," he gravely said; "I don't know why--I had all the chance there was. I've been moderate of drink all me life. No, I won't say that--I'll say I tuck it as it came, with no fear and no favor. When playin', I always let it alone--it spiled me nerve--I let the other felly do the drinkin'." Some of the signs were unchanged, and he sent Lucius in to ask the proprietor of the "Hoosac Market" to step out; and when he appeared, a plump man with close-clipped gray hair and smoothly shaven face, he shouted, "'Tis old Otto--just the man I nade. Howdy, Otto Siegel?" Siegel shaded his eyes and looked up at Haney. "You haff the edventege off me alretty." "I'm Mart Haney--you remember Mart Haney." Siegel grasped the situation. "Sure! Vy, how you vass dis dime, eh! Vell, vell--you gome pack in style, ain't it? Your daughter--yes?" "My wife," said Haney. Siegel raised a fat arm, which a dirty blue undershirt imperfectly draped, and Bertha shook hands with curt politeness. "Vell, vell, Mart, you must haff struck a cold-mine by now, hah?" "That's what." "Vell, vell! and I licked you fer hookin' apples off me vonce--aind dot right?" Mart grinned. "I reckon that's so. I said I'd cut you in two when I grew up; all boys say such things, but I reckon your whalin' did me good. But what I want to know is this, can you tell me where to find the old man?" "Your fader? He's in Brooklyn--so I heart. I don't know. My, my! he'll be clad to see you--" "You don't know his address?" "No, I heart he was livin' mit your sister Kate." "Donahue's in a saloon, I reckon." "Always. He tondt know nodding else. You can fint him in the directory--Chon Donahue, barkeep." "All right. Much obleeged." Haney looked around. "I don't suppose any of the boys are livin' here now?" "Von or two. Chake Schmidt iss a boliceman, Harry Sullivan iss in te vater-vorks department, ant a few oders. Mostly dey are scattered; some are teadt--many are teadt," he added, on second thought. "Well, good-luck," and Haney reached down to shake hands again, and the machine began to whiz. "Tell all the boys 'How.'" For half an hour they ran about the streets at his direction, while he talked on about his youthful joys and sorrows. "You wouldn't suppose a lad could have any fun in such a place as this," he said, musingly, "but I did. I was a careless, go-divil pup, and had a power of friends, and these alleys and bare brick walls were the only play-ground we had. You can't cheat a boy--he's goin' to have a good time if he has three grains of corn in his belly and a place to sleep when he's tired. I was all right till me old dad started to put me into the factory to work; then I broke loose. I could work for an hour or two as hard as anny one; but a whole long day--not for Mart! Right there I decided to emigrate and grow up with the Injuns." Bertha listened to his musing comment with a new light upon his life. She had little cause for the feeling of disgust which came to her while studying the scenes of his boyhood--her own childhood had been almost as humble, almost as cheerless--and yet she could not prevent a sinking at the heart. The gambler, so picturesque in his wickedness, was becoming commonplace. He rose from such petty conditions, after all. Thus far the question of his family relations had not troubled her very much, for, aside from the chance coming of Charles, she had had little opportunity of knowing anything about the Haneys, and they had seemed a very long way off; but now, as she was rushing down upon New York City, with the promise of not only finding the father, but of taking him back with them to live, she began to doubt. His character was of the greatest importance, in view of his taking a seat beside their fire. It was singular, it was bewildering, this change in her estimate of Marshall Haney. The deeper he sank in reminiscent meditation the farther he withdrew from the bold and splendid freebooter he had once seemed to her. She was now unjust to him for he was still capable of what his kind call "standing pat." The rough-and-ready borderman was still housed under the same thatch of hair with the sentimental old Irishman, and yet it would have sorely puzzled the keenest observer to discover the relationship of that handsome, rather serious-browed, richly clothed young woman and her big, elderly, garrulous companion. Bertha was not easy to classify, in herself, for she gave out an air of reserve not readily accounted for. She looked to be the well-clothed, carefully reared American girl, but her gestures, the silent, unsmiling way in which she received what was said to her--something indefinably alert and self-masterful without being self-conscious--gave her a mysterious charm. She was profoundly absorbed in the great, historic river on her right, and yet she did not cry out as other girls of her age would have done. She read her folder and kept vigilant eyes upon all the passing points of interest--even as Haney rumbled on about Charles and his father and Kate--more than half distraught by the vague recollections she had of her school histories and geographies. How little she knew! "I must buckle down to some kind of study," she repeatedly said to herself, as if it helped her to a more inflexible resolution. Soon the mighty city and its fabled sea-shore began to scare her soul with vague alarms and exultations. Manhattan was as remote to her as London, and as splendidly alien as Paris. It was, indeed, both London and Paris to her. Its millions of people appalled her. How could so many folk live in one place? Again the magic power of money bucklered her. It was good to think that they were to go to the best hotels, and that she had no need to trouble herself about anything, for Lucius settled everything. He telegraphed for rooms, he assembled all their baggage and tipped their porters: and when they rushed into the long tunnel in Harlem he was free to take the Captain by the arm and help him to the forward end of the car ready to alight, leaving Bertha to follow without so much as a satchel to burden her arm. Haney had accepted Lucius' assurance that the Park Palace was the smart hostelry, and to this they drove as to some unknown inn in a foreign capital. It was gorgeous enough to belong in the tale of Aladdin's lamp--a palace, in very truth, with entrance-hall in keeping with the glittering, roaring Avenue through which they drove, and which was to Bertha quite as strange as a boulevard in Berlin would have been. Lucius conducted them into the reception-room with an air of proprietorship, and soon had waiters, maids and bell-boys "jumping." His management was masterful. He knew just what time to give each man, and just how much to say concerning his master and mistress. He conveyed to the clerk that while Captain Haney didn't want any foolish display, he liked things comfortable round him, and the colored man's tone, as he spoke that word "comfortable," was far-reaching in effect. The best available places were put at his command. Bertha accepted it all with cold impassivity; it was only a little higher gloss, a little more glitter than they had suffered in Chicago; and she was getting used to seeing men in braid and buttons "hustle" when she came near. The suite of rooms to which they were conducted looked out on Fifth Avenue, as Lucius proudly explained; and from their windows he designated some of the houses of the millionaires who receive the homage of the less rich (and of the very poor) which only nobility can command in Europe. Bertha betrayed no eager interest in these notables, but she was very deeply impressed by the far-famed Avenue, which was already thickening with the daily five-o'clock parade of carriages, auto-cars, and pedestrians. Lucius explained this custom, and said: "If you'd like to go out I'll get a car." "Let's do it!" she exclaimed to Haney. "Sure! get one. These smell-wagons must have been invented for cripples like me." Bertha took that ride in the spirit of one who never expects to do it again, and so deeply did the city print itself upon her memory that she was able to recall years afterwards a hundred of its glittering points, angles, and facets. She felt herself up-borne by money. Without Haney's bank-book she would have been merely one of those minute insects who timidly sought to cross the street, and yet philosophers marvel at the race men make for gold! So long as silken parasols and automobiles mad with pride are keenly enjoyed, so long will Americans--and all others who have them not--struggle for them; for they are not only the signs of distinction and luxury, they are delights. A private car is not merely display; it is comfort. To have a suite of rooms at the Park Palace is not all show; it makes for homely ease, cleanliness, repose. And these people riding imperiously to and fro in Fifth Avenue buy not merely diamonds, but well-cooked food, warm and shining raiment, and freedom from the scramble on the pave. Some understanding of all this was beating home to Bertha's head and heart. She had as yet no keen desire for the glitter of wealth, but its grateful shelter, its power to defend and nurture, were qualities which had begun to make its lure almost irresistible. Haney liked the auto-car, not for its red and gold (which delighted Lucius), but for its handiness in taking him about the city. It saved him from climbing in and out of a high car door; it was swifter and safer than a carriage; therefore, he was ready to purchase its speed and convenience. He cared little for the sensation he would create in riding up to his sister's door in Brooklyn, though he chuckled mightily at the thought of what his old dad would say; and as they claimed a place among the millionaires he broke into a sly smile. "If ever a bog-trotter landed at Castle Garden, me father was wan o' them. I can remember the hat he wore. 'Twas a 'stovepipe,' sure enough. It had no rim at all at all! It was fuzzy as a cat. If he didn't have a green vest it was a wonder. He took me to see a play once just to show me how he did look. He was onto his own curves, was old dad. I hope he's livin' yet. I'd like to take him up the Avenue in this car and hear the speel he'd put up." Bertha was in growing uneasiness, and when alone at the close of her wonderful ride through this marvellous city, so clean, so vast, so packed with stores of all things rich and beautiful, she went to her room in a blur of doubt. Now that an unspoken, half-formed resolution to free herself was in her mind, she realized that every extravagance like this ride, these gorgeous rooms, sank her deeper into helpless indebtedness to Marshall Haney. And this knowledge now took away the keen edge of her delight, making her food bitter and her pillow hot. In the midst of her troubled thinking, Lucius knocked at the door to ask: "Will you go down to dinner or shall I have it sent up?" "Oh no, I'll go down." "They dress for dinner, ma'am." "Do they? What'll I wear?" He considered a moment. "Any light silk--semi-dress will do. I'll send a maid in to help you." "No, I don't need a maid. They're a nuisance," she quickly answered. Lucius' attitude towards her was more than respectful--it was paternal; for she made no more secret of her early condition than Haney, and the colored man enjoyed serving them. He seemed perfectly happy in advising, cautioning, directing them, and was deeply impressed with their powers of adaptability--was, in truth, developing a genuine affection for them both. He was a lonely little man, Bertha had learned, with no near kin in the States, and the fact that he came from an Island in the sea made him less of a "nigger" to the Captain, who had the usual amount of prejudice against both black and red men. The high-keyed, sumptuous dining-hall was filled with small tables exquisitely furnished, and the carpets underfoot, thick-piled and deep-toned, gave a singular solemnity to the function of eating. It was a temple raised to the glory of terrapin and "alligator pears"; and as the Captain moved slowly across the aisles, closely attended by a zealous waiter he smiled and said to his wife: "This is a long ways from Sibley and the Golden Eagle, Bertie, don't you think?" "It sure is," she replied, and her laughing lips and big pansy-purple eyes made her seem very young and very gay again. Around her men and women in evening dress were feeding subduedly, while bevies of hawklike waiters swooped and circled, bearing platters, tureens, and baskets of iced wine-bottles. It made the hotel at Chicago appear like a plain, old-fashioned tavern, so remote, so European, so lavish, and yet so exaggeratedly quiet, was this service. Some of the women at the tables were spangled like the queens of the stage; mainly they were not only gloriously gowned, but in harmony with the sumptuous beauty around them. Their adornments made Bertha feel very rural and very shy. "I wish I was younger," the Captain said, "I'd take ye to the theatre to-night, but I'm too tired. I could go for a couple of hours, but--to miss me sleep--" "Don't think of it," she hastened to command. "I don't want to go. I'm just about all in, myself." "'Tis a shame, darlin', surely it is, to keep you from havin' a good time just because I am an old helpless side o' beef. 'Tis not in me heart to play dog in the manger, Bertie. If ye'd like to go, do so. Lucius will take ye." "Nit," she curtly replied; "you rest up, and we'll go to-morrow night. We might take another turn and see the town by electric light; you could kind o' lean back in the car and take it easy." This they did; and it was more moving, more appalling, to the girl than by day. The fury of traffic on Broadway, the crowds of people, the endless strings of brilliantly lighted street-cars, the floods of 'busses, auto-cars, cabs, and carriages poured in upon the girl's receptive brain a tide of perceptions of the city's wealth, power, and complexity of social life which amazed while it exalted her. The idea that she might share in all this dazzled her. "We could live here," she thought; "the Captain's income would keep us just anyway we wanted to live." But a vision of her own beautiful house under the shadow of the great peak came back to reproach her. Her horses and dogs awaited her. This tumultuous island was only a place to visit, after all. "Do you suppose this goes on every night?" she said to Haney, as they turned off Broadway. "I reckon it does," he said. "How is that, Lucius?" he asked. "Is this a special performance, or does the old town do this every night?" "In the season, yes, sir. It's the last week of the Opera, and it'll be quieter now till November." They returned to their hotel with a sense of having touched the ultimate in civic splendor, human pride, and social complexity. New York had met most of their ideals. They were glad it was on American soil and in the nation's metropolis; but, after all, it remained alien and mysterious, of a rank with Paris and London--the gateway city of the nation, where the Old World meets and mingles with the New. CHAPTER XXI BERTHA MAKES A PROMISE As for Marshall Haney, as he went about New York and Brooklyn in search of his relations, he was astounded at the translation of the Irish laborer into something else. "In my time, when I left Troy, all the work in the streets was done by 'micks,' as they called 'em. Now they're gone--whisked away as ye'd sweep away a swarm of red ants, and here's these black Dagos in their places. Where's the Irishman gone--up or down? That's what's eatin' me. Is he dead or translated to a higher speer? 'Tis a mysterious dispensation, and troubles me much." He found a good many Donahues in Brooklyn, and plenty of them barkeepers; and after he'd pulled up half a dozen times at these "joints" Bertha began to pout. She didn't like such places; and as they were riding in a showy auto-car (the grandest Lucius could secure), they were pretty middling noticeable. At last she said, more sharply than she had ever spoken to him before: "Mart, I don't want any more of this. If you want to visit all the saloons in Brooklyn, I don't. Here's where I get out." He was instantly remorseful. "I was thinkin' of that myself, Bertie. Lucius and I will go on alone. We'll send you back to the hotel in the 'mobile whilst we take a hack." Half doubting, half glad, she consented to this arrangement, and was soon whirling back towards the ferry, her guilty feeling giving place to a sense of relief, as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders--for a moment. She began to understand that half the pleasure she had taken in her hours with Moss and Humiston lay in the freedom from her husband's over-shadowing presence. He was not a man to be ignored, as she had seen wives ignore and put aside their meek partners. Marshall Haney even yet was a dominating personality, even though his family affairs were so insistent and so difficult to manage or explain. If the father came her joy in her home would be gone, and yet she had no right to refuse him shelter. At the same time she was less sure of her place in the world, now that she was alone. She had the feeling that if anything were to happen--if the motorman should demand his pay at the door, or the hotel-keeper refuse to go her bond, she would be helpless. The Captain, for all his shortcomings and physical disability, was master of every situation. He had been schooled by stern powers, and his capabilities of defence were still equal to almost any need. On the ferry-boat she found herself surrounded by the swarms of people who are forever calculating expenditures, who never desert a garment, and who finger a nickel lovingly; and she caught them looking at her as upon one of those who enjoy without earning it the product of their toil. They made way for her, as she got down and walked to the railing, as they would have done for a millionaire's daughter, a little surlily, and she divined without understanding this enmity, but was too exalted by the glittering bay, with its romance of ship and sea and shore and town, to very much mind what her threadbare fellow-passengers thought of her. These dark-hulled, ocean-going vessels, these alien flags, widened her horizon--deepened her sense of the earth's wonder and the wide-flung nerves of national interest. From this sea-level she looked up in fancy to her brother's ranch near Sibley as at a cabin on a mountain-side. How still and faint and far it seemed at the moment! At the word of the chauffeur she climbed back into her car, returning to the isolation which money now provided for her. And so, girt about with velvet and costly wood and gilding, she rode up through the tearing throngs of the wharf, whirling past cars and trucks, outspeeding cabs and carriages, protected by a gambler's name, royally isolated and defensible by his money. As she spun through Fifth Avenue, so smooth of pave, so crowded, so sparkling, so far-reaching in its suggestions of security and power, the girl's soul entered upon a new and fierce phase of its struggle. It was a larger and more absorbing fairy story than any in the _Arabian Nights_. Without Marshall Haney, without the gold he brought, she could never have even looked upon this scene. She would at this moment have been standing inside her little counter at the Golden Eagle, selling cigars to some brakeman or cowboy. Ed Winchell would be coming to ask her, as usual, to marry him, and her mother would still be toiling in the hot kitchen or be at rest in her grave. Did ever Aladdin's lamp translate its owner farther or lift him higher? Was not her refusal to be Marshall Haney's wife the basest ingratitude? Not merely so, but the girl felt in herself potentialities not yet drawn upon, unlimited capabilities leading towards the accomplishment of good. Money had not merely the magic of exalting, educating, refining, and ennobling the individual (herself); it had radiating, transforming power for others. It could diffuse warmth like a flame, and send forth joy like a bell. "With it I am safe, strong: I can help the poor. Without it I am only a struggling girl, like millions of others, with no chance and no power to aid those who suffer." But at this point her love re-entered and her sense of right was confused. After all the heart ruled. At the hotel entrance the head porter was waiting to help her out, and the chauffeur, without a word or look of reminder, puffed away, secure in the reputation Lucius had given to Haney. As she went to her room the maid met her with gentle solicitude, and, after attending to her needs, considerately withdrew, leaving her deep-sunk in troubled musing. Up to the coming of Ben Fordyce she had accepted all that Haney gave her as from one good friend to another. Once having satisfied herself that the money was clean of any taint from gambling-hall and saloon, she had not hesitated to use it. But now something was rising within her which changed the current of her purpose. Haney was no longer before the bar of her conscience; the soul under question was her own. Dimly, yet with ever-growing definiteness, she saw the moment of decision approach. She must soon decide whether to continue on the smooth, broad highway with Haney, or to return to the mountain-trail from which he had taken her. While still she sat sombrely looking out over the city's roofs, Humiston's card was brought to her, and at the moment, in her loneliness and doubt, he seemed like an old friend. "Tell him to come up," she said, with instant cordiality, and her face shone with innocent pleasure when she met him. "I'm mighty glad to see you," she frankly said, in greeting. He misconceived her feeling, and took advantage of it to retain her hand. "I assure you I am delighted to find _you_ again." "I thought you'd forgot us." His eyes expressed a bold admiration as he answered: "I have done nothing but remember you. I've been in Pittsburg (only got back to town yesterday), and here I am." He looked about. "Where is the Captain?" She withdrew her hand. "He's out looking for his father. He'll return soon. He's liable to look in any minute now." "You are lovelier than ever. How is the Captain?" "Pretty well. He gets tired fairly easy, but he feels better than he did." His look of eager intensity embarrassed her. After a little pause, he remarked: "I am holding you to your promise. Can't you come over to my studio this afternoon?" "No, not to-day. I must be here when the Captain comes. He may bring the old father along, and he'd feel lost if I should be gone. Maybe I could come to-morrow." "Don't bring the Captain unless you have to--he'll be bored," he said, in the hope that she would get his full meaning. "I want to introduce you to some friends of mine." "Oh, don't do that!" she protested. "I'm afraid of your friends--they're all so way-wised while I am hardly bridle-broke." "You need not fear," he replied; "you are most to be envied. No one can have more than health, wealth, and youth and beauty. I would not hesitate to introduce you anywhere." His admiration was so outspoken, so choicely worded, that she could not distrust him, though Mrs. Moss had more than once hinted to her that he was not to be entirely honored. "He isn't a man to be careless with," she had once said, and yet he seemed so high-minded, so profoundly concerned with the beautiful world of art. How could a single-hearted Western girl believe ill of him? He could not be evil in the ways in which men were wicked in Sibley. His sensitive face was too weary and his eyes too sad. He was adroit enough to make his call short, and withdrew, leaving a very pleasant impression in her mind. She felt distinctly less lonely, now that she knew he was in the city, and she was still at the window musing about him when Haney returned, bringing his father with him. The elder Haney interested and amused her in spite of her perplexities--he was so quaintly of the old type of Irishman and so absurdly small to be the father of a giant. He carried a shrewd and kindly face, withered and toothless, yet not without a certain charm of line. Mart's fine profile was like his sire's, only larger, bolder, and calmer. With a chuckle he introduced him. "Bertie, this is me worthless old dad." And Patrick, though he was sidling and side-stepping with the awkwardness of a cat on wet ice, still retained his Celtic self-possession. "Lave Mart to slander the soorce av aal his good qualities," he retorted. "He was iver an uncivil divil to me--after the day he first thrun me down, the big gawk." Mart took the little man by the collar and twirled him about. "Luk at 'im! Did he ever feel the like of such cloes in his life?" Patrick grinned a wide, silent, mirthful grimace. "Sure me heart is warmed wid 'em. I feel as well trussed as me lady's footman." It was plain that every thread on the old man was new. Mart explained. "I stripped him to the buff and built him up plumb to his necktie, which is green--the wan thing he would have to his own taste. To-morrow we go to the tooth-factory." "'Tis a waste of good money," interjected Patrick. "I ate soup." "Soup be damned! Ye've many a steak to eat with me, ye contrary little baboon. 'Tis a pity if I can't do as I like with me own. Do as I say, and be gay." Patrick cackled again, and his little twinkling eyes were half hid. "Ye may load me with jewels and goold, me lad, but divil a once do I allow a man wid a feet-lathe boring-machine to enter me head." "Ye have nothing to bore, ye old jackass! Divil a rock is left to prospect in--so don't fuss." Bertha interjected a question. "Where did you find him?" "Marking up in a pool-room. Nice place for the father of Captain Haney! 'Come out o' that,' I says, 'or fight me.' And the old fox showed gooms at me, and says he: 'I notice ye're crippled, Mart. I think I'll jest take what ye owe me out of yer hide.'" They both chuckled at the recollection of it. Then Mart went on: "I'll not disgrace me wife by telling what the old tramp had on. I tuck him by the shoulder and I said: 'Have ye anny Sunday clothes?' I said. 'Narry a thread,' says he. 'Come along with me,' I says. 'You can't visit my wife in the hotel till every thread on yer corpus is changed,' for Donahue keeps a dirty place. So here he is--scrubbed, fumigated, barbered, and tailored; and when he gets his cellulide teeth he'll make as slick a little Irishman as ever left the old sod." Here his face became sadly tender. "I wish the mother was alive, too; I'd make her rustle in silks, so I would. Heaven rest her!" The father's face grew suddenly accusing in line. "Ye waited too long, ye vagabond. Yer change of heart comes too late." "I know it--I know it! But I could never find time till a man with a shotgun pointed the way to it. Now I have all the time there is, and she's gone." In this moment of passing shadow Bertha caught a glimpse of the significance of the scene--of the wonder, almost alarm, which filled the old man's heart as he stood there scared of the flaming splendor of the room into which the sunlight fell, exaggerating its gold and pink and green, but bringing out the excellence of the furnishing, the richness of the silk tapestry. The old man touched a gilded chair tenderly, and Mart cried out: "Lay hold, man, 'twill not rub off! Sit down and look about ye! Out with your new pipe and smoke up!" He took a seat with forced confidence, and looked about him. "I wish Donahue and Kate could see this." Mart turned a quietly humorous eye on Bertha. "Not this trip. I couldn't manage Kate," he explained. "She looks like Fan--only more so; and she has a litter o' young Donahues would make ye wonder could the world have room for them all." Haney the elder had something more than the bog-trotter in him, for as he grew towards a little more assurance that Mart would not be thrown out of his hotel for non-payment of bills, he settled down to enjoy his glass of rare whiskey and a costly cigar with an assumption of ease that almost deceived the maid, though Lucius, being in the secret, watched him anxiously for fear he might expectorate on the rug. Mart had some "p'otographs" of his house in the Springs, and showed them to Patrick. "Do ye see yerself smokin' a pipe on that porch?" "I do not," the father energetically replied. "I see meself goin' the rounds of that garden with a waterin'-pot and a pair of shears." "I thought ye was a bricklayer, or is it a billiard-marker?" asked Mart, with quizzical look. "I can turn me hand to anny honest work," he replied, with dignity. "An' can ye say as much?" "I cannot," confessed Mart. "Had ye put a club to me back and foorced me to a trade, sure I'd be layin' brick in Troy this day." This retort fairly blinded the sturdy little father. The charge was false, and yet here sat Mart--a gentleman. While still he puzzled over the dangerous acknowledgment involved in his son's accusation, Mart turned to Bertha. "Do ye mind the old man's spendin' the rest of his days with us, darlin'?" "You're the doctor, Mart. It's your house, not mine." He felt the change in her. "Oh no, it isn't; it's _our_ house. I never would have had it only for you." He paused a moment. "The dad is a well-meaning old rascal, and I'll go bail he don't do mischief." Patrick took this up. "He is so, and he means to kape to his own way of life. If I go West, me b'y, 'tis on wages as a gardener--and, bedad, I'll draw 'em reg'ler, too. I'd like well to go West ('twould rejice me to see Fan and McArdle), and I don't object to spendin' a year with you in Coloraydo, but don't think Patrick Haney is to be pinsioner on anny one, not even his son." Bertha's heart vibrated in sympathy with this note of independence, and she heartily said: "I hope you will come, Mr. Haney. The Captain is alone a good deal, and you'd be a comfort to him." "I'll consider," the old man said. "I must have time to rea-lize it," he quaintly added. "I must smoke me pipe in me own garret once more, and talk it all over with Kate and the Donahues." He refused to stay to dinner with them (which was a relief to Lucius), and went away jaunty as a bucko from County Clare. He was no sooner gone from the room than Bertha turned to her husband, and said: "Mart, I want to talk things over with you." Something in her voice, as well as in the words, made him turn quickly and regard her anxiously. "What about? What is it, darlin'?" "I have something on my mind, and I've got to spit it out before I can rest to-night. I've just about decided to leave you. I don't feel right livin' with you." He looked at her steadily, but a gray pallor began to show on his face. He asked, quietly: "Do ye mean to go fer good?" Her heart was beating fast, but she bravely faced him. "Yes, Mart, I don't feel right living with you, and spending your money the way I've been doing." "Why not? It isn't mine--it's yours. Ye airn every cent ye spend." "No, I don't!" she cried, passionately. "Now that you're getting better and Lucius has come, I'm not even a nurse." "I'll send him away." "No, no; he's worth more than I am." "I'll not listen to such talk, Bertie. Ye well know you're the thing most precious to me. I can't live without ye." His voice thickened. "For God A'mighty's sake, don't say such things; they make me heart shake! Me teeth are chatterin' this minute! Ye're jokin'; say you don't mean it." "But I do. Don't you see that I can't stay and let you do things for me like this"--she indicated their apartment--"when I do so little to earn it all? Mart, I've got to be honest about it. I can't let you spend any more money on me. Help your own people, and let me go. I do nothing to pay for what you do for me. It's better for me to go." She could not bring herself to be as explicit as she should have been, but he was not far from understanding her real meaning, as he brokenly replied: "I've been afraid of this, my girl. I've thought of it all. The money I spend fer ye is but a small part of my debt. You say you do nothing for me. Why, darlin', every time you come into the room or smile at me you do much for me! I'm a selfish old wolf, but I'm not so bad as you think I am. If anny nice young felly comes along--a good square man--I'll get off the track; but I want you to let me stay near you as long as I live." His voice was hoarse with pleading. "Ye're all I have in the world; all I live for now is to make you happy. Don't pull away now, when me old heart has grown all round ye. I can't live and I daren't die without ye--now that's the eternal truth. Darlin', promise ye won't go--yet awhile." Wordless, as full of pain as he, she sat silently weeping, unable to carry out her resolution--unable to express the change which had come into her life. He went on. "I mark the difference between us. I see ye goin' up while I am goin' down. My heart is big with pride in ye. You belong with people like the Congdons and the Mosses--whilst I am only an old broken-down skate. I'm worse than you know. I went down to Sibley first with hell in me heart towards you, but that soon passed away--I loved ye as a man should love the girl he marries--and I love ye now as I love the saints. I wouldn't mar your young life fer anything in this world--'tis me wish to lave you as beautiful and fresh as I found you, and to give you all I have besides--so stay with me, if you can, till the other man comes." Here a new thought intruded. "Has he come now? Tell me if he has. Did ye find him in Chicago? Be honest, darlin'." "No, no!" she answered. "It isn't that. It's just because--because it don't seem right." "Then ye must stay with me," he said, "and don't worry about not doing things for me. You do things for me every minute--just by being in the world. If I can see ye or hear ye I'm satisfied. An' don't cut me off from spending money for ye, for that's half me fun. How else can I pay ye for your help to me? I've been troubled by your face ever since we left home. You don't smile as ye used to do. Don't ye like it here? If ye don't we'll go back. Shall we do that?" She, overwhelmed by his generosity, could only nod. His face cleared. "Very well, the procession will head west whenever you say the word. I hope you don't object to the old father. If ye do--" "Oh no; I like him." "Then we'll take him; but, remember, I'll let no one come into our home that will trouble you. I'd as soon have a cinder in me eye as a man I don't like sitting beside me fire; and if the old man is a burden to ye, out he goes." He rose, and came painfully to where she sat, and in a voice of humble sorrow, slowly said: "I don't ask ye to love me--now--I'm not worth it; and once I thought I'd like a son to bear my name, but 'tis better not. I'll never lay that burden upon ye. All I ask is the touch of yer hand now and then, and your presence when I come to die--I'm scared to die alone. 'Twill be a dark, long journey for old Mart, and he wants your face to remember when he sets forth." CHAPTER XXII THE SERPENT'S COIL Lofty as Jerome Humiston talked, and poetic as his face seemed to Bertha Haney, he was at heart infinitely more destructive than any man she had ever known; for he took a satanic delight in proving that all women were alike in their frailty. He had reached also that period of decay wherein the libertine demands novelty--where struggle is essential, and to conquer easily is to fail of the joy of victory. He, too, had rushed to the conclusion that this girl had married an old and broken gambler for his money, and that she was of those to be easily won. Her air of demure reserve piqued him--pleased him. "She is no silly kitten," he mentally remarked, after their second meeting. "She's in for a big career. With beauty and youth and barrels of money she will go far, and I will be her guide--unless I have lost my cunning. She will share her fortune with me some day, and I will teach her to live." He met her at the door of his studio next day with a grave and tender smile. "I'm glad you've come," he said, "but I'll have to confess that I have very little to show you here. My pictures are all down at the gallery, and some of them not yet hung. Next week they will all be in place. But sit down while I boil some tea. My friends who own this work-shop are out; they'll be in soon." "I don't believe I can stay to-day. The Captain is below." "Please do sit down for a moment. I'll be hurt if you don't." The studio was a big bare barn of a place with a few broad canvases upon the walls--not a bit like Humiston; and he explained that his stay in America being short, he could not afford to have a studio of his own. "I'm glad you came. You must let me take you to see my 'show' next week. Your fresh, young, Western eyes are just what I need." This was false, for he was impatient of all criticism. "I need comfort," he added, wearily smiling. "I didn't sell enough in the West to pay my railway fare." He seemed ill as well as sad, and Bertha felt sorry for him. "Won't you come with us for a ride?" "I'd rather have you stay and talk with me." "Oh, I can't do that! The Captain is waiting for me. He said to bring you." "But I don't want to go. I hate automobiles. I hate seeing sights. I despise this town. I've a grouch against everything in America--except you. Let me go down and tell the Captain to take his spin alone." "No, no," she sharply said. "I keep my word. I said I'd be back in a few minutes, and I'm going." He sighed resignedly. "Very well; but you'll let me come to see you?" "Why, cert! Come to dinner any day. We don't browse around much outside the hotel. We're mostly always feeding at six." "I'll come, and you must not fail to let me show you my pictures." "Sure thing! I want to buy one to take home with me." He assumed great candor. "I won't say that your ability to buy one of my pictures is not of interest to me, for it is; but quite aside from that, there is something in you that appeals to me. You make me think better of the West--of America. I feel that you will find something in my pictures which the critics miss." Then, with mournful abruptness, he added: "No doubt Joe told you of my unhappy marriage--" "No, he didn't." "My wife cares nothing for my work. She takes no interest in anything but the frippery side of life. That's what appeals to me in you--you are so aspiring. I feel that you have such wonderful possibilities. You would spur a man to big things." They were both standing as if he had forgotten where he was, and she, embarrassed but fascinated by his words, and especially held by his voice, dared not make a motion till he released her. He looked round him. "I don't wonder you dislike this room; it's horribly cold and depressing to me. I can't work here. I wish you could see my den in Paris. Perhaps you will let me show it to you some day. All my happiest days have been spent in France. I am more French than American now." He took her hand again, and with a return to his studiedly cheerful manner called her to witness that she had promised to come to see his paintings. "And please remember that I am going to take you at your word and dine with you--perhaps this very night." "All right, come along," she replied, and went away filled with wonder at the familiar, almost humble attitude he had assumed towards her. He did indeed dine with them that night, and quite won the Captain to a belief in him. "Come again," he heartily said. And the great artist feelingly answered: "I mean to, for, strange to say, I am almost as lonesome in this big town as anybody could be." This was a lie, but Haney's sympathy was roused. "There'll always be an empty chair for you," he repeated, with a feeling that he, too, was encouraging art. Humiston pursued this game with singular and joyous skill. He talked of the West and of politics with the Captain, and of love and art and his essentially lonely life to Bertha. He returned often to the wish that they might meet in Paris. "A trip abroad would do you infinite good," he insisted. "What you need is three years of life in Paris. With your beauty and money, and, above all, with your personal magnetism, you could reign like a queen. I wonder that you don't go. It would be worth more to you than any other possible schooling. I don't know of anything in this world that would give me greater pleasure than to show you Paris." Bertha's silence in face of these approaches deceived him. The throbbing of her bosom, the fall of her eyelashes, were due to instinctive distrust of him. That he was more dangerous than the rough miners and cowboys of the West she could not believe, and yet she drew back in growing fear of one who openly claimed the right to plow athwart all the barriers of law and custom. His mind's flight was like that of the eagle--now rising to the sun in exultation, now falling to the gray sea to slay. At times she felt a kind of gratitude that he should be willing to sit beside her and talk--he, so skilled, so learned, so famous. The Chicago papers were still filled with criticism of his work and his theories, and this discussion, as well as the appearance of his portrait in the magazines, had made of him a very exalted person in little Mrs. Haney's eyes, and the interest he took in her was too subtly flattering not to affect her. He seemed fond of the Captain, too, and often joined them in their trips about the city, and the fellows who had known Humiston in Paris and who did not know Bertha nodded knowingly. "Jerry's amusing himself, as usual. I wonder who she is?" He explained his poverty one day as he sat with her in the little gallery where his paintings were hung. "The fact is, while other men have been painting to order and doing 'stunts' for the Salon, I've gone on refining, seeking new shades, new allurements, subordinating line to color, story to harmony, till my work is sublimated beyond my public. The people that bought my things once can't follow me; it is only now and then that a man, or a woman _feels_ what I'm after--and so I live. I hold all things beautiful to paint, America does not." He liked her all the better because she did not try to say what she thought of his pictures, and when she insisted on taking one of them home he quickly stopped her. "I'm not asking you to take pity on me," he sharply said. And in this lay the subtlest touch of flattery he had yet used: the idea that she, an ignorant mountain girl, could be accused of patronizing a man so distinguished, so gifted as he, moved her in spite of all warnings. Why should she not use her money to help this wonderful artist? She insisted on a picture, and asked him to select one for her. "I've got a big house out in the Springs, and I'd like something of yours." "Not out of this collection," he declared. "These are not the ones on which my fame rests. The ones that represent me are in the cellar." Her eyes were wide in question. "What do you mean by that?" "American dealers won't include my best things in the exhibit--they are too 'direct.' They are stored over here in a warehouse. I'd like to show them to you. Will you come?" he asked, with eager eyes. And she, with a sense of being distinguished above the great public, consented. Humiston rose animatedly. "Let's go over and see them now." His gentle _camaraderie_, his eagerness, touched Bertha, and when he took her arm to help her into the elevator or to make sure she did not stumble at the crossing she was stirred--not as Ben's hand had moved her, but her blood nevertheless palpably quickened. Was it not wonderful that she, so lately from the mountains, should be walking here in the midst of the thronging multitudes of a great city street in the company of one of the chief artists of the world? Humiston, crafty, cruel, unscrupulous, returned to his abuse of the city, and explained to her that American dealers had no real appreciation of art. "They sell anything that will sell, any cheap daub, and yet they dared to refuse to exhibit my best things! It was the same in Pittsburg and Buffalo; they're all alike. But what can you expect of these densely material towns? Beauty means only prettiness to them." The salesman of the shop, accustomed to seeing Humiston pass in and out with friends, paid no special heed to the painter as he led Bertha into the farther room, where a few of his pictures hung among a dozen others. No one was in the gallery, and just as she was wondering where the other paintings could be, he opened a door (which was cut out of the wall and partly concealed by paintings), and smilingly said: "Here is the inner temple. Enter." She obeyed with a little hesitation, for the storeroom was not well lighted, and she had a wild bird's distrust of dark, enclosing walls. Humiston shut the door behind him and followed her, plaintively saying: "Isn't it hard lines to have to bring my friends into this hole to show my masterpieces?" And by this she inferred that there was nothing unusual in the experience. It was a long, bare hall, filled with boxes and littered with bits of excelsior, and Bertha looked about her uneasily while Humiston bent over some canvases stacked on the floor. He seemed to be selecting one with care. An electric lamp was swinging from the ceiling, and under it stood a large easel, and on this he placed a canvas, and, stepping back with eyes fixed on her, said with spirit: "This is one of my best. It was in the new Salon--here is the number. And yet it may not be exhibited in this rotten town." Bertha inwardly recoiled from the canvas, for it was a painting of a nude figure of a girl at the bath. The critics had said, "It is naked, rather than nude," and the dealers objected to it on this ground, and to the Western girl it was both shocking and ugly. Before she had caught her breath he continued, in a tone that was at once a seduction and a defence: "There is nothing more beautiful in the world than the female form; it is the flower of flowers. Why should it not be painted?" And then, while still he argued for the return of the Greek's love of beauty, covering his moral depravity with the mantle of the philosopher, he placed another canvas before her--something so unrefined, so animal, so destructive of womanly modesty and of all reserve, that any one looking upon it would instantly know that the man who had painted it was a degenerate demon--an associate of dissolute models, an anarchist in the world of women. It was fit only for the banquet-halls of the damned. Bertha stared at it--fascinated by the sense of the tempter's nearness. It was as if a satyr had suddenly revealed his lawless soul to her. Her thinking for an instant chained her feet, and her silence emboldened him. Even as she turned to flee she felt his arm about her waist, his breath upon her cheek. "Don't go!" he pleaded, and in his eyes was the same look she had seen in the face of Charles Haney. At last he stood revealed. His artist soul could stoop as low in purpose as a drunken tramp. Beating him off with her strong hands, she ran down the hall and burst into the brilliantly lighted exhibition room such a picture of affrighted, outraged girlhood that the salesman stared upon her in wonder. His look of surprise warned Bertha of her danger. Composing herself by tremendous effort of the will, she closed the door and walked slowly out into the street, her brain in a tumult of anger and shame. It seemed at the moment as if every man she had ever known was a brute-demon seeking to destroy her. She understood now the reason for the great painter's flattering deference to her opinion. From the first he had sought to blind her. His ways were subtler than those of Charles Haney and his like, but his soul was no higher; it was indeed more ignoble, for he was of those who claim to dispense learning and light. Pretending to add beauty to the world, he was ready to feed himself at the cost of a woman's soul. She recalled Mrs. Moss' hints about his life in Paris, and understood at last that he had wilfully misread her homage and trust. A realization of this perfidy filled her with a fury of hate and disgust. Was Ben Fordyce like all the rest? Did his candor, his sweetness of smile, but veil another mode of approach? Was his kiss as vile in its disloyalty, his embrace as remorseless in its design? She walked back along the shining avenue to her hotel with drooping head. She knew the worst of Humiston now. She burned with helpless wrath as she dwelt upon his assumptions of superiority. She hated the whole glittering, unresting, lavish city at the moment, and her soul longed for the silence of the peaks to the west. She turned to her husband as one who seeks a tower of refuge in time of war. CHAPTER XXIII BERTHA'S FLIGHT Before she had fairly recovered her poise next day Lucius brought to her a letter from Humiston--a suave, impudent note wherein he expressed the hope that she was well, and went on to plead in veiled phrase: "I'm sorry you did not stay to see the rest of my pictures. I meant it all as a compliment to your innate good taste and purity of thought. I expected you to see them as I painted them--in pure artistic delight. You misunderstood me. I hope you will let me see you again. You must remember you promised to let me make a portrait sketch of you." Although not skilled in polite duplicity, Bertha was able to read beneath the serene insolence of these lines something so diabolically relentless that she turned cold with fear and repulsion. She had no experience which fitted her to deal with such a pursuer, and she shuddered at the rustling of the paper in her hand as she had once quivered in breathless terror of a rattlesnake stirring in the leaves near the door of her tent. Her first impulse was to lay the whole affair before the Captain, but the knowledge of his deadly temper when roused decided her to slip out at the other side of this fearsome thicket and leave the serpent in possession. She longed to return to the West. The little group of people in the Springs allured her; they were to be trusted. Congdon and Crego and Ben--these men she knew and respected. Her joy of the big outside Eastern world had begun to pass, and she dreaded to encounter again the bold eyes and coarse compliments of the men who loaf about the hotels and clubs. She turned to Haney as he came into her room, and said: "Mart, I want to go home--to-day." "All right, Bertie, I'm ready--or will be, as soon as I pick up the old father. But don't you want to see that show we've got tickets for?" "No, I've had enough of this old town. I'm crazy to go home." "Home it is, then." He called sharply; "Lucius!" The man appeared, impassive, noiseless, unhurried. The Captain issued his orders: "Thrun me garbage into a thrunk, and call some one to help the missus; we're goin' to hit the sunset trail to-night. 'Phone me old dad besides, and have him come over at wanst. Here we emigrate westward by the next express." The man quietly took control of the situation, and in a few moments the Captain's commands were being carried out with the precision of a military camp. Bertha, alarmed by Humiston's letter, refused to go down to the public dining-room. A fear that she might encounter the painter possessed her, and the thought of him was at once a shame and torment; therefore, she had her luncheon sent up, and Lucius himself found time to wait upon them. As they were in the midst of their meal, Haney remarked rather than asked: "Of course, you're going back with us, Lucius." "I have thought of it, sir, but it isn't in our contract." "We can put it in," said Bertha. "We can't do without you now," added Mart. Lucius seemed pleased. "Thank you for that, Captain. I don't particularly care for the West, but I find service with you agreeable." Haney chuckled. "Service, do ye call it? Sure, man, 'tis you are in command. I'm but a high private in the rear rank." Lucius's yellow face flushed and his eyes wavered. "I hope I haven't assumed--" "Assumed! No, 'tis we who are obligated. We need you as bad as a plainsman needs a guide in the green timber; and if you don't mind a steady job of looking after us social tenderfeet, I'm willing to make it right with you--and Mrs. Haney feels just the way I do." "Sure, Mart--only trouble with Lucius is, he leaves so little for me to do. He's _too_ handy--if anything." "That'll wear off," replied Haney. "Well, then, it's all settled but the price, and I reckon we can fix that. If I can't pay cash, I'll let you in on the mine." Lucius smiled. "Thank you, Captain; it's not entirely a question of pay with me; my wants are few." Bertha seized the moment to put a question she had been minded many times to ask. "Lucius, what's your plan? You can't intend to do this all your life? Tell us your ambition--maybe we can help you." He looked away, and a deeper shadow fell over his face. "I had ambitions once, Mrs. Haney, but my color was against me. Yes, I think I'll stay as I am. There is a certain security in being valet. You white people know exactly where to find me, and I know just how to meet you. In my profession it was different--I was always being cursed for presumption." "What was your profession?" asked Haney. "I studied law--and practised for a year or two in Washington; but I didn't like my position; I was neither white nor colored, so when I got a good chance I went out to service with a senator as body-servant." He stopped abruptly as though that were all of his tale. Haney said: "Well, if you can put up with an ignorant old hill-climber like meself, I'll be grateful, and I'll try not rub your fur the wrong way." Lucius became very earnest for the first time. "There, sir, is one point upon which I must insist. If I go with you, you are to treat me just as you have been doing--as a trusted servant. I'm sorry I told you anything about myself. My service thus far has been very pleasant, very satisfactory, and unless we can go on in the same way, I must leave." "Very well," replied Haney. "It's all settled--you're adjutant-general of the Haneys' forces." After Lucius went away Bertha said, thoughtfully: "I wish he hadn't told us that; I can't order him around the way I've been doing." Haney smiled. "Did ye order him around? I niver chanced to hear ye do anything but ask him questions. 'Lucius, will ye do this?' 'Lucius, won't ye do that?'" Bertha was troubled, and found herself embarrassed by the mulatto's services. She now perceived sadness beneath the quiet lines of his face and hard-won culture in the tones of his voice. The essential tragedy of his defeat grew more poignant to her as she watched him getting the trunks strapped, surrounded by maids and porters. How could she have misread his manner? He was performing his duties, not with quiet gusto, but in the spirit of the trained nurse. This mountain girl had always regarded Illinois as "the East," but after a few weeks in New York City she now looked away to Chicago as a Western town. She was glad to face the sunset sky again, and yet as she wheeled away to the train she acknowledged a regret. Under the skilful guidance of Lucius she had seen a great deal of the splendid and furious Manhattan. She had gazed with unenvious admiration on the palaces of upper Fifth Avenue and the Park. Together with Haney she had spun up Riverside Drive, past Grant's Tomb, and on through Washington Heights, with joy of the far-spreading panorama. She had visited the Battery and sailed the shining way to Staten Island in silent awe of the ship-filled bay. She had heard the sunset-guns thunder at Fort Hamilton, and had threaded the mazes of the Brooklyn Navy-Yard, and each day the mast-hemmed island widened in grandeur and thickened with threads of human purpose, making the America she knew very simple, very quiet, and very remote. Night by night she had gone to the music-halls and theatres, and her mind had been powerfully wrought upon by what she had seen and heard. In all these trips Haney had heroically accompanied his wife, though he frequently dropped asleep in his seat; and he, too, left the city with regret, though he said, "Thank God, I'm out of it," as they settled into their seats in the ferry. "'Tis not the night traffic that wears me down--I'm used to being on the night shift; 'tis the wild pace Lucius sets by day. Faith, 'twas the aquarium in the morning and the circus in the afternoon. Me dreams have been wan long procession of misbegotten fish, ballet-dancers, dirty monkeys, and big elephants the nights. 'Tis a great city, but I am ready to return to me peaceful perch above the faro-board; I think 'twould rest me soul to see a game of craps." "Why didn't you order Lucius to let up on the sight-seeing business?" Bertha said. "And expose me weak knees to me nigger? No, no, Mike." "I wanted you to let me rummage about alone." "You did. But I could not allow that, neyther. So long as I can sit the road-cart or run me arms into a biled shirt I'll stay by, darlin'. 'Tis not safe for you to go about alone in the hell-broth of these Eastern streets. Besides, while I'm losin' weight I'm lighter on me feet than when I came. I've enjoyed me trip, but it does seem sinful to think of our big house standing empty and the horses 'stockin'' in their stalls, and I'm glad we're edgin' along homeward." "So am I," Bertha heartily agreed, even as she looked lovingly back upon the mighty walls and towers which filled the sky behind her. It was a gloriously exciting place to live in, after all. "Some day I may come back," she promised herself, but the thought of Humiston lurking like a wolf in the shadow came to make her going more and more like an escape. The elder Haney amused her by his frank comment on everything that was strange to him. His new teeth, which did not fit him very securely, troubled him greatly, and he spoke with one hand held alertly, ready to catch them if they fell, but his smile was a radiant grin, and his shrewd old face was good to look at as he faced the splendors of the limited express. "'Tis foine as a bar-room," said he. "To be whisked about over the world like this is no hairdship. Bedad, if I'd known how aisy it was I'd a visited McArdle befoore." He pretended to believe that everybody travelled this way, and that Mart was merely doing the ordinary in the matter of meals and state-room; and as he wandered from end to end of the train and found only luxurious coaches, and people taking their ease, he had all the best of the argument. Lucius he regarded as a man of his own level, and they held long confabulations together--the colored man accepting this comradeship in the spirit of democracy in which it was given. Mart, for his part, sat looking out of the window, dreaming of the past. As she neared Chicago next day Bertha thought with pleasure of seeing the Mosses again. Now that Humiston was eliminated, she had only the pleasantest memories of the people she had met in the smoky city. It was as if in a dark forest of lofty trees she had found a pleasant mead on which the warm sunlight fell. The mellow charm of the studios was made all the more appealing by reason of the drab and desolate waste through which she was forced to pass to attain the light and laughter of those high places. Chicago had grown more gloomily impressive, and at the same time--by reason of her knowledge of the larger plans and mightier enterprises of New York--it seemed simpler, and Bertha re-entered the hotel which had once dazzled her in confidence, finding it cheerful and familiar. She liked it all the better because it was less pretentious. It gave her a pleasant sense of getting back home to have the men in buttons smile and say, "Glad to see you, Mrs. Haney." The head clerk was very cordial; he even found time to come out and shake hands. "I can't give you precisely your old quarters," he said, "but I can fix you out on the next floor. I'm sure you'll be very comfortable." Thereupon she took up her quietly luxurious life at the point where she had dropped it some weeks before. There lay in this Western girl a strongly marked tendency towards the culture and refinement of the East; and, though she had grown up far from anything æsthetic in home-life, she instinctively knew and loved the beautiful in nature, the right thing in art; and now that she was about to leave the East for the West--perhaps to abandon the town for the village--she found herself aching with a hunger which had hitherto been unconscious. She was torn with desire to go and a longing to stay. New York, Paris, the world, was open before her if only she were content to take Marshall Haney's money and use it to these ends. That night as she lay in her bed hearing the rumble and jar of the city's traffic, her mind recalled and dwelt upon the wonderful scenes, especially the beautiful pictures which her eyes had gleaned from the East. The magical, glittering spread of Manhattan harbor, the silver sweep of the Hudson at West Point, the mighty panorama from Grant's Tomb, the silken sheen of Fifth Avenue on a rainy night, the crash and glitter of upper Broadway, the splendid halls of art, literature, and especially of music and the drama--all these came back one by one to claim a place beside her peaks and cañons, sharing the glory of the purple deeps and the snowy heights of the mountains she had hitherto loved so single-heartedly and so well. She saw Sibley now for what it was--a village almost barren of beauty--a good, kindly, homey place, but so little and so dull! To go back there to live was quite impossible. "If I quit Mart I must find something to do here--in the East. I can't stand Sibley." She longed for the Springs because of her home there and because of Ben--but she realized that it possessed, after all, but very limited opportunities for the purchase of culture. The great centres had begun to exercise dominion over her. She had ever been a lonely little soul, with no confidante of her own sex. Speech had never been fluent with her, and she was still elliptical, curt, and in a sense inexpressive. She had no chatter, and the ways of women were in many directions alien to her. Miss Franklin had been her teacher, and yet, while respecting her, she had never learned to love her. Next to Ben Fordyce she leaned upon the judgment and sympathy of the sculptor, whose fine eyes were aglow with a high purpose. She was certain that he was both good and wise. Mart was much amused at his father, who refused to sleep a second night at the hotel. "It's too far from the street," said he. "I think I'll go stay with Fan if ye'll lay out the course that leads to her dure." So Lucius went with him, bearing a message from Haney: "Tell Fan I'll be over to see her to-morrow. I'm too tired to go to-day," and the father hurried away in joyous relief. "'Tis unnatural to see a son of mine in such Babylonish splendor," he confided to Lucius. "Faith, it gives me a turn every time I see him unwind a bill from that big wad he carries in his pocket. 'Tis like palin' a red onion to him--nothing more." The Captain was up early next day, and eager to see how his sister was getting along in her new house, and to please him Bertha went with him. The transposition of the McArdles, like most charitable enterprises, had not been entirely a success. The children had blubbered at being torn away from their playmates and the alleys and runways which they infested. They were like lusty rats suddenly let loose in a fine new barn with no dark corners, no burrows, no rotten planks, chips, or coal-heaps to dig into or hide beneath. The alleys in Glenwood were leafy lanes, the streets parked and concreted, and the school-yard unnaturally clean and shaded by fine young trees--which no one was allowed to climb. Furthermore, there was work to do in the garden--and this was onerous to the boys. Then, too, they had to fight their battles all over again. However, they did this with pleasure, establishing dreadful reputations among the neat, knickerbocker "sissies" who were foolish enough to cross them. Dress, Mrs. McArdle declared, was now a real trial. The girls had to be "in trim all the time," and the boys were as violently in contrast to their fellows as a litter of brindle barn-kits beside a well-groomed tabby-cat's family. "I'm clean worn out with it, Mart," she confessed. "We've been here two weeks the day, and the children howlin' the whole time to go back and McArdle workin' himself to the figger of a spoon with a mind to polish the lawn and get the garden into seed." But Mart only smiled. "'Tis good discipline, Fan." Haney senior was delighted with his daughter's household. "Faith, the roar and tumble of the whelps brings back to me me own wife and childer. Them was good days. 'Twas hard skirmishin' some weeks for bacon and p'taties, but I got 'em someway, and you ate ivery flick of it--snappin' and snarlin', but happy as a box of pups." His son and daughter looked at each other and laughed; then Mart said: "'Tis a sad memory the father has, a most inconvenient and embarrassing mind." They all stayed to dinner, and Bertha rolled up her sleeves and helped in the kitchen while the Captain went to market with Lucius. McArdle having got a half-day off, came home highly wrought up again at thought of meeting Captain Haney and his handsome wife. He looked distinctly less care-worn, though he confessed that it was hard to rise at the hour necessary to reach his work at seven. Bertha's heart warmed to him. In a certain dreamy, speculative turn of eye he was like her father--a man inventing new forms as naturally as other minds copy worn models. He was gaining in conversational powers, as he came to know Mart better, and took occasion to lay before him the plans for several inventions, small in themselves, but of possible value, so Lucius said. There was something hearty, wholesome, and satisfying in this visit, and Bertha went away with increased liking for the McArdles. "I'm glad you gave them a boost, Mart," she said, as they left the house, "and you fixed it fine. Mac talked to me a half-hour explaining that you hadn't put it on a charity basis--just sold the house on long time." "That was Lucius's idea. Wasn't it, Lucius?" Lucius did not appear to hear. They were whirring down an avenue bordered by elms in expanding leaf, the sky was filled with big white clouds like those which come and go over the great domes of the Rockies, and the air was warm and sweet, not yet dusked by the city's chimneys. Bertha's heart rose on joyous wing. "Let's call and take the Mosses for a ride," she suggested. "With all the pleasure in the world," he replied; and when they drew up before the side door of the huge block, Bertha sprang out and hurried in without waiting for Lucius to accompany her. Mrs. Moss came to the studio door, and Bertha's shining face so wrought upon her that she seized her and kissed her with sincere pleasure. "Joe, here's Mrs. Haney." Moss was modelling a small figure on a stand near one of the windows, but left his work and came towards her with beaming smile. "What a coincidence! We were just discussing you. How do you do? Shake my arm--my hands are muddy." She took his outbent wrist and shook it with frank heartiness. He explained: "I said you'd come back; Julia declared, 'No. Once she tastes the glories of New York, good-bye to Chicago and the West.'" Bertha interrupted: "I want you to lay off and go out for a whirl in our machine." "How gay!" cried Moss. "I ought to be working, for my rent is coming due; but what's the diff? Here goes! Come on, Julia, we'll shut up shop and let art wag." Julia was doubtful. "You know you promised--" "Of course I did--that's the prerogative of the artist. Come on, now; I'll work to-night." "To-night is the Hall's circus party." "So it is! Well, no matter. I'm hungry for some whizzing, lashing, cool, clear air." Dodging behind a screen in the corner, like an actor "doing a stunt," he reappeared a few moments later with clean hands, wearing a gray jacket and cap. "Hurry, hurry!" he called. He was like a lad invited to go fishing or swimming. "I've been all 'balled up' since you went away," he explained--"took a contract to produce a certain line of ornamental reliefs; it never pays to be mercenary. But there it is! I was greedy, I went out for money--now behold me in the grasp of a business agreement. Can't sleep, can't breathe country air--had to work all day Sunday." "It'll pay some of our debts, though," explained Mrs. Moss, "and buy the children's summer suits." "Summer suits! Why summer suits? I only had one complete suit a year when I was a child--and that was a buff." All the way down the elevator he gazed admiringly at Bertha. "My, my! how fit you look. Julia, why don't you get a hat and cloak like that?" "Why don't I? Do you know why?" Then as they came out in sight of the 'mobile she said, "Why don't you furnish me an auto-car like this?" "I will," he said, as though the notion had just risen in his mind. "I'll secure one this week." Mart, who had taken a seat with Lucius, was touched and warmed by their hearty greeting, and they rolled away up the street as merry as school-children--even the self-contained Lucius smiled at Joe's odd turns of speech. Bertha's heart swelled with the keen delight of giving pleasure to her friends. This was, indeed, the chief of all the wondrous powers of money--it enabled one to be hospitable, to possess a home wherein visitors were always welcome, to own a car in which dear friends could ride; for the moment her resolution to give it all up weakened. Moss was delirious with joy as they went sweeping up the Lake Shore Drive. He took off his cap and stood up in the car in order to drink deep of the wind that came over the water, crisp and clean and crystalline. On the park mead the boys were playing ball, and the combination of green grass and soft and feathery foliage was very beautiful. The water-fowl were out, the captive cranes crying, and the drives were full of carriages and cars. It was all very cheering, with death and winter far away. Moss, sobering somewhat, began to set forth his plan for making Chicago a new and greater Venice by bringing the lake into all the city boulevards and spanning these waterways with stately bridges of a new type, "designed by Joe Moss, of course," he added; "'twould make Venice look like a faded print in a lovely old song-book." His talk took hold of Bertha's imagination--not because she cared to see Chicago adorned, but because he was so singularly altruistic in his concernments. That a man should live to make the world more beautiful was a wondrous discovery for her. He was not specially troubled about the physical welfare or the morals of the average citizen, but the city's grossness, its willingness to perpetuate ugly forms, rasped him, angered him. She was eager to tell him of her own change of view, but waited till their ride was over and they were seated in the studio and a moment's private conversation was possible. Tingling with the stimulus of his fragmentary exclamations, she impulsively began: "If I were a poor girl who wanted to earn a living in the world, what would you advise me to do?" "Get married!" His answer was jocular, but, observing her displeasure, he added: "I'm sorry I said that in just that tone, but at the same time I really mean it. A woman can do other things, but marry she must if she is to fulfil her place in the world--and be happy." She was balked and disappointed, he perceived, and he was forced to go further: "I certainly wouldn't advise any girl to study painting or sculpture in the hope of making a living by it. The only side of art that isn't hopelessly out of the running is the decorative--home decoration is a sure and worthy profession. People don't feel keen need of sculpture, but they do like pretty walls and nice furniture. I know several highly successful women decorators--but I wouldn't advise that work for any one as an easy way to make a living, for the decorative sense is either a gift at birth or acquired after hard study." "Do they teach it over there?" She nodded towards the lake. "I liked it over there," she said, wistfully. "You see I didn't get much of a show at school. I began to stay out to help mother when I was fourteen. I missed a whole lot. I'd kind o' like to make it up now if I could." Moss was eager to probe a little deeper. "Your life is thrillingly romantic to us--the kind of thing we read of. Congdon writes that you have a superb home. I should think you'd hate to leave it, even for a visit." Her hands strained together as if in resistance to an impulse of pleading; then she answered: "Yes--but then, you see, it isn't really mine--it's the Captain's." "Yours by marriage." "That's what people say--but I don't know. Sometimes I think I have no right to any part of it. You have to earn what you own, don't you?" What was this doubt at her heart? The unexplained emotion in her voice moved him profoundly. He cautiously approached. "Of course, we know Frank Congdon--he likes to 'string' us Easterners and we take his yarns with due discount. I suppose Captain Haney, like many other Western men, is ready to try his luck now and again, and in that sense really is a gambler." She faced him squarely. "No, he has been the real thing. He kept a saloon--when I first knew him, but he gave it all up for me. I wouldn't promise to marry him till he did. Everybody out there knows his career, and most people think he got his money underhand, but he tells me he didn't, and I take his word. Every dollar he spends on me or on our home comes out of some mines he owns. I told him I wouldn't touch a dollar of the saloon money--and I won't. Some folks think I don't care, but I do. I don't like the saloon business, and he got out and he's livin' straight now, as straight as any man. It's pretty hard on him, too, though he won't admit it. He must get awful sick of sittin' round the way he does. I tell him he needn't cut out all his old cronies on my account. He says he ain't sufferin', but it's like shuttin' a bronco up in the corral and lettin' the herd go back into the hills." "Perhaps he thinks you're better fun than any of his cronies." She ignored the implied compliment and went on: "All the same, it's drawin' mighty close lines on him. You can't take a man living a free-and-easy life the way he was and wing him all at once and tie him down to a chair without seein' some suffering. Don't you know it?" "Does he complain?" "Not a whimper. Sometimes I wish he would. No, he just waits--but I'm afraid he'll get lonesome some day and break loose and go back to the game." In this way the sculptor had come very close to her secret, and she was trembling to deeper confidence, when he said, very gently: "Of course, it does seem a little strange to me that one so young and charming as you are should be married to a man of his type, but I suppose he was a handsome figure before his--accident." Her eyes glowed. "He was one of the grandest-looking men! I never liked his trade--and I mistrusted him, at first; but when he cut himself out of the whole business--for me--I couldn't help likin' him; he was so big-hearted and free-handed. We needed his help, all right. Mother was sick, and my brother's ranch was playing to hard luck. But don't think I married him for his money--I liked him then, and, besides--well, I _thought_ I was doing the right thing--but now--well, I'm guessing." She ended abruptly, and in the tremor of that final word Moss read her secret. She had never loved her husband. Pity and a kind of loyalty to her word had carried her to his side, and now a sense of duty bound her there. With sincere sympathy, he said: "We all do wrong at times that good may come out of it. You could not foresee the future--the best of us can _only guess_ at the effect of any action. You did the best you knew at the moment. The question you have to face now has only slight relation to the past. No one can enter wholly into another's perplexity--I'm not even sure of a single one of my inferences--but if you are thinking of--separation, I would say, meet this crisis as bravely as you met the other. But I don't believe we should decide any such question selfishly. I am not of those who always seek the side on which lies personal happiness, because a happiness that is essentially selfish won't last. The Captain lives only for you--any one can see that. What he does for you springs from deep affection. What would happen to him--if you left him?" He paused a moment and watched her subduing her tears; then added: "I won't say I was unprepared for what you've said, for the entire relationship, from our first meeting, seemed too abnormal to be altogether happy. Money will buy a great many desirable things, but it has its limits. At the same time, it is too much to expect of you--If your feeling for him has changed--" His delicacy, his sympathy for her, was made apparent by the unusual hesitation of his speech, and she would have broken down completely had not Julia Moss called out: "Joe, turn on the lights--it's getting dark." Conscious of Bertha's emotion, he did not immediately do as he was bidden. "I wish you'd talk this over with Julia," he ended gently; "she's a very wise little woman." Bertha shook her head. "I didn't intend to talk it over with you. I don't know what possessed me. I had no business to say what I did." He reassured her. "All you've told me and the part I've guessed is quite safe. I will not even permit Julia to share your confidence till you are willing to speak to her yourself." As he slowly lighted the studio Bertha was surprised and a little troubled to find that two or three other visitors had slipped in through the dusk, and were grouped about the tea-table, and that the Captain was again the centre of an eager-eyed group. "They treat him as if he were an Eskimo," she thought bitterly, and rose to join the circle and protect him from their inquisition. Haney was feeling extremely well, and talked with so much of his old time vigor and slash of epithet that his little audience was quite entranced. He enlarged upon the experiences of a year he had spent in Alaska. "Mining up there in them days made gambling slow business," he said. (He had told Bertha that he had made an attempt to get out of "the trade," but she was content to have him put it on less self-righteous grounds.) He contrived to make his hearers feel very keenly the pitiless, long-drawn ferocity of that sunless winter. He made it plain why men in that far land came together in vile dens to drink and gamble, and Moss glowed with the wonder and delight of those great boys who could rush away to the arctic edge of the world and die with laughing curses on their lips. "What did you all do it for?" he asked, bluntly. "For money?" "Partly--but more for the love of doing something hard. No man but a miser punishes himself for love of gold--it's for love of what the stuff will buy, that men fight the snows." While Haney talked of these things Bertha's eyes were musingly turned on the face of the sculptor, and her mind was far from the scenes which Mart so vividly described. This side of his life no longer amused her--on the contrary she shrank from any disclosure of his savage career. She was now as unjust in her criticism as she had been fond in her admiration, and when with darkening brow she cut short his garrulous flow of narrative Julia perceived her displeasure. Haney apologized, handsomely. "It's natural for the ould bedraggled eagle in the cage with a club on his wrist to dream of the circles he used to cut and the fish he set claw to. In them days I feared no man's weight, and no night or stream. 'Twas all joyous battle to me, and now, as I sit here on velvet with only to snap me fingers for anything I want, I look back at thim fierce old times with a sneaking kind o' wish to live 'em all over again. Bertie knows me weakness. I would talk forever did she lave me go on; but 'tis no blame to her--it was a cruel, bad, careless life." "When I come West," said Moss, sincerely, "we'll go camping together, and every night by the fire we'll smoke and you can tell me all about your journeys. I assure you they are epic to me." Dr. Brent, a little later, put in a private word to Bertie. "Now you're going back into the high country and you'll find it necessary to watch the Captain pretty closely. I suspect he'll find his heart thumping briskly when he reaches the Springs. He may stand that altitude all right, but don't let him go higher. He will be taking chances if he goes above six thousand feet. You'd better have Steel of Denver come down and examine him to see how he stands the first few days. I mention Steel because I know him--I've no doubt there are plenty of good men in the Springs." "What'll I do if he's worse?" "Bring him back here or go to sea level--only beware of high passes." CHAPTER XXIV THE HANEYS RETURN TO THE PEAKS The forces that really move most men are the small, concrete, individual experiences of life. The death of a child is of more account to its parents than the fall of a republic. Napoleon did not forget Josephine in his Italian campaigns, and Grant, inflexible commander of a half-million men, never failed, even in the Wilderness, to remember the plain little woman whose fireside fortunes were so closely interwoven with his epoch-making wars. As Ben Fordyce lost interest in the question of labor and capital and the political struggles of the state (because they were of less account than his own combat with the powers of darkness), so Bertha had little thought of the abstract, the sociologic, in her uneasiness--the strife was individual, the problems personal--and at last, weary of question, of doubt, she yielded once more to the protecting power which lay in Haney's gold and permitted herself to enjoy its use, its command of men. There was something like intoxication in this sense of supremacy, this freedom from ceaseless calculation, and to rise above the doubt in which she had been plunged was like suddenly acquiring wings. She accepted any chance to penetrate the city's life, determined to secure all that she could of its light and luxury, and in return intrusted Lucius with plans for luncheons and dinners, which he carried out with lavish hand. Mart seconded all her resolutions with hearty voice. "There's nothing too good for the Haneys!" he repeatedly chuckled. In the midst of other gayeties she had the McArdles over to mid-day dinner one Saturday, and afterwards took them all, a noisy gang, to the theatre--Patrick Haney as much of a boy as his grandsons, McArdle alone being unhappy as well as uneasy. She went about the shops, buying with reckless hand treasures for the house in the Springs, and this gave her husband more satisfaction than any other extravagance, for each article seemed a gage of the permanency of his home. In support of her mood he urged her to even larger expenditures. "Buy, buy like a queen," he often commanded, as she mused upon some choice. "Take the best!" There was instruction as well as a guilty delight in all this conjuring with a magic check-book, and Bertha grew in grace and dignity in her rôle as hostess. Her circle of acquaintances widened, but the Mosses, her first friends in the city, were not displaced in her affections. To them she continued to play the generous fairy in as many pleasant ways as they would permit. The theatre continued to be her delight, as well as her school of life, and a box-party followed nearly every dinner. She was like a child in the catholicity of her appetite, for she devoured Shakespearian bread, Ibsen roasts, and comic opera cream-puffs with almost equal gusto--and mentally thrived upon the mixture. To the outsider she seemed one of the most fortunate women in the world. And yet every day made her less tolerant of the crippled old man at her side. She did not pout or sulk or answer him shortly, but she often forgot him--failed to answer him--not out of petulance or disgust, but because her mind was busy with other people. Gradually, without realizing it, she got into the habit of leaving him to amuse himself, as he best could, for she knew he did not specially care for the pursuits which gave her the keenest joy. In consequence of this unintentional neglect he very naturally fell more and more into the hands of the bar-room spongers who loitered about the hotel corridors. He dreaded loneliness, and it was to keep his companions about him that he became a spendthrift in liquors. Sternly and deliberately temperate during his long career as a gambler, he fell at last into drinking to excess, and on one unhappy afternoon returned to Bertha quite plainly drunk. She was both startled and disgusted by this sign of weakness, and he was not so blinded by the mist of his potations but that he perceived the shrinking reluctance of her touch as she aided Lucius in lifting him into the bed. His inert, lumpish form was at the moment hideously repulsive to her, and physical contact with him a dreaded thing. What was left if he lost that self-control which had made him admirable? She had always been able to qualify his other shortcomings by saying, "Well, anyhow, he don't drink." She could boast of this no longer. It was a most miserable night for her. At dinner she was forced to lie about him (for the first time), and she did it so badly that Joe Moss divined her trouble and came generously to her aid with a long and amusing story about Whistler. The play to which she took her guests did not help her to laughter, for it set forth with diabolic skill the life of a woman who loathed her husband, dreaded maternity, and hated herself--a baffling, marvellously intricate and searching play--meat for well people, not for those mentally ill at ease or morally unstable. Of a truth, Bertha saw but half of it and comprehended less, for she could not forget the leaden hands and flushed face of the man she called husband--and whom she had left in his bed to sleep away his hours of intoxication. She pitied him now--but in a new fashion. Her compassion was mixed with contempt, and that showed more clearly than any other feeling could the depth to which Marshall Haney had sunk. When she came home at midnight she listened at his door, but did not enter, for Lucius--skilled in all such matters--reported the Captain to be "all right." She went to her own room in a more darkly tragic mood than she had ever known before. Her punishment, her time for trouble, had begun. "I reckon I'm due to pay for my fun," she said to herself, "but not in the way I've been figuring on." Haney seemed at the moment a complete physical ruin, and the change which his helplessness wrought in her was most radical. His deeply penitent mood next morning hurt and repelled her almost as much as his maudlin jocularity of the night before. She would have preferred a brazen levity to this humble confession. "'Twas me boast," he sadly asserted, "that no man ever caught me with me eyes full of sand and me tongue twisted--and now look at me! 'Tis what comes of having nothing to do but trade lies with a lot of flat-bottomed loafers in a gaudy bar-room. But don't worry, darlin', right here old Mart pulls up. You'll not see anny more of this. Forget it, dear-heart--won't you now?" She promised, of course, but the chasm between them was widened, and a fear of his again yielding to temptation cut short her stay in the city, for Lucius warningly explained: "The Captain is settling into a corner of the bar-room with a gang of sponging blackguards around him, and every day makes it less easy for him to break away. I'd advise going home," he ended, quietly. "The Springs is a safer place for him now." The hyenas were beginning to prowl around the disabled lion, and this the faithful servant knew even better than the wife. "All right, home we go," she replied, and the thought of "home" was both sweet and perilous. Haney met her decision with pathetic, instant joy. "I'm ready, I was only waitin'," he said. "After all, your own shack is better than a pearl palace in anny town, and it's gettin' hot besides." Bertha parted from the Mosses with keen sorrow. Joe had come to be like an elder brother to her--a brother and a teacher, and, next to Ben Fordyce, was more often in her thought than any other human being. She had lost part of her awe of him, but her affection had deepened as she came to understand the essential manliness and simplicity of his character. He redeemed the artist-world from the shame men like Humiston had put upon it. As she entered for the last time the studio in which she had spent so many happy hours and from whose atmosphere of work and high endeavor she had derived so much mental and moral development she was sad, and this sadness lent a beauty to her face that it had never before attained. She looked older, too; and contrasting her with the girl who had first looked in at his door, Moss could scarcely believe that less than half a year had affected this change in her. He was too keen an observer not to know that part of this was due to a refining taste in hats and gowns, but beneath all these superficial traits she had grown swiftly in the expression of security and power. He greeted her as usual with a frank nod and (his hands being free from clay) advanced to shake hands. "Don't tell me you've come to say good-bye." "That's what," she curtly said. "It's up to me to take the Captain home. He's getting into bad habits lying around this hotel." His face clouded. "I've been afraid of that," he answered, gently. "Yes, you'd better go home. It's harder for a man to have a good, easy time than it is for a woman. But sit down, Julia will be in soon; you mustn't go without seeing her." After some further talk on trains and other common-places she became abruptly personal. "I've been having a whole lot of fun buying things and planting dollars, but I'm beginning to see an end to that kind of business. After you've got your house filled up with furniture and jimcracks, what you going to do then?" "Burn 'em." "And begin all over again? You can't buy out the town. It's a real circus for a while, but I can see there's a limit to it. Once you find out you can just go down here to one of these jewelry-stores and order anything you want--you don't want anything. Here I am with a lot of money that ain't mine, having a gay whirl spending it, but I can see my finish right now. To go on in this line would take all the fun out of life. What am I to do?" Moss took a seat and looked at her thoughtfully. "I don't know. I used to think if I had money I'd start out and 'do good to people,' but I'm not at all sure that charity isn't all a damned impertinence. A couple of years ago I would have said go in for 'Neighborhood Settlements,' free libraries, 'Noonday Rests,' 'Open-air Funds,' and all the rest of it, but now I ask, 'Why?' We've had our wave of altruism, and I'm inclined to think a wave of selfishness would do us all good--but you're too young to be bothered with these problems. Go home and be happy while you can. Enjoy your gold while it glitters. Work is my only fun--real, enduring fun--and I'm not a bit sure _that_ will last. Whatever you do, be yourself. Don't try to be what you think I or some one else would like to have you. I like you because you are so straight-forwardly yourself; I shall be heart-broken if you take on the disease of the age and begin to prate of your duty." She listened to him with only partial comprehension of his meaning, but she answered: "I was brought up to think duty was the whole works." "Yes, and your teacher meant duty to God, duty to others. Well, there's duty to one's self. The war of money and duty is the biggest mix of our day. It's simpler to be poor; then all you've got to worry about is bread and shoes and shingles." "That's just it. Sometimes I wish I was back in the Golden Eagle, where I--" she ended in mid-sentence. He laughed. "You sound like a middle-aged financier who mourns (tattooed with dollar-marks) for the days when he used to husk corn at seventy cents a day." She saw the humor of this, but was aware that without a knowledge of Ben Fordyce Joe could not understand her problem, therefore she abandoned her search for light and leading. "Well, anyhow, right here I quit what you fellows call civilization. I hate to lose you and Julia and the rest of the folks, but it's me to the high hills. You'll never know how much you've helped me." "I hope you'll never know how thoroughly we've _done_ you. An evil-minded person would say we'd worked you for dinners and drives most shameful. However, if you have enjoyed our company as thoroughly as we've delighted in your champagne and birds, we'll cry quits. All my theories of art and life I advance _gratis_. I ought to do something handsome for you--you've listened so divinely." Underneath his banter Moss was sincerely moved. It was hard to say good-bye to this curious, earnest, seeking mind, this unspoiled child in whose face the world was being reflected as in a magical mirror. He loved her with frank affection--a pure passion that was more intimate than fraternal love and more exalted, in a sense, than the selfish, devouring passion of the suitor. It would have been difficult for him to say what his relationship to her at the moment was. It was more than friendship, more than brotherly care, and yet it was definably less than that of the lover. Julia came in and was quite as outspoken in her regret, and both refused to say good-bye at the moment. "We'll see you at the station," they said, and Bertha went away, feeling the pain of parting less keen by reason of this promise. Afterwards, as the hour for departure came near, she hoped they would not come. It was less difficult to say "I'll see you again" than to utter the curt "good-bye" which means so much in Anglo-Saxon life. They came, however, together with several others of her friends, but in the bustle and confusion of the depot not much of sentiment could be uttered, and, though she felt that she was going for a long stay, she was prodigal of promises to return soon. Patrick Haney was there, but refused to go with them. "Sure I'm at the jumpin'-off place now, and to immigrate furder would be to put meself in the hands of the murtherin' redskins." His talk was the touch of comedy which the situation needed. "Av ye don't mind I'll stay wid Fan," he said, a little more seriously, to Haney, who replied: "All right, 'tis as Fan says," and so they entered the train for the upward climb. Haney himself had only joy of the return. He sat at one of the windows of the library car and studied the prairie swells with a faint, musing smile, till the darkness fell, and was up early next morning, eager and curious, to see how the increasing altitude would affect him. Only towards the end of the second day after eating his dinner did he begin to feel oppressed. "I smell the altitude," he confessed--"me breath is shortenin' a bit, but 'tis good to see the peaks again." In this long ride the girl-wife dwelt dangerously on the bright face of Ben Fordyce. It was the thought of seeing him again that came at last to steal away her regret at parting from her Eastern friends. The splendor of the Eastern world faded at last, and she, too, soared gladly towards the mountains. Every doubt was swallowed up in a pleasure which was at once pure and beyond her control. Ben would be at the station, she was certain, for Lucius had wired to him the time of their arrival, and he had instantly replied. "I'll be there, and very glad to see you"--these words, few and simple, were addressed to Marshall Haney, but they thrilled her almost as if Ben had spoken them to her. Was he as glad to have her return as she was to meet him again? "A fine lad," remarked Haney, as he pocketed the envelope. "I wonder does he marry soon? He'd better decide now. I reckon Alice is not long for this climate--poor girl!" His remark, so simple in itself, pierced to the centre of Bertha's momentary self-deception. "I have no right to think of him. He belongs to Alice Heath!" But the feeling that she herself belonged to Marshall Haney was gone. That she owed him service was true, but since the night of his drunkenness she had definitely and finally abandoned all thought of being his wife, soul to soul, in the rite that sanctifies law. True, he had kept his word, he had not offended again, but the mischief was done. To return to the plane on which they had stood when she gave her promise was impossible. The day and the hour were such as make the plain lover content with his world. The earth, a mighty robe of closely woven velvet, mottled softly in variant greens, swept away to the west, under a soaring convexity of saffron sky, towards a cloudy altar whereon small wisps of vapor were burning down to golden embers, while beneath lay the dark-blue Rampart range. It was a world for horsemen, for free rovers, and for swift and tireless desert-kine. The course of winds, it lay, a play-ground for tempests that formed along the great divide and swept down over the antlike homes of men, acknowledging no barrier, exultant of their strength of wing and the weight of their horizon-touching armament. Bertha loved this land, but only because it was an approach to the hills. She would have shuddered at its desolate, limitless sweep, treeless, shelterless, had not the dim forms of the distant peaks she loved so well rose just beyond. She lost her doubt as they approached, welcoming them as the gates of home. She forgot all save the swelling tide of longing in her heart. As the train drew slowly in she caught sight of Ben's intent face among the throng, and was moved to the point of beating upon the window. He seemed care-worn and older in this glimpse, but at sight of her his sunny smile came back radiantly to his lips and glinted like sunshine from his eyes. In tremulous voice she called: "_There he is!_" Self-revelation lay in this ecstatic cry and in the glad haste which kept her on her feet; but Haney, unsuspicious, content, found no cause for jealousy in her innocent and unrestrained delight at getting home. Progress down the aisle seemed intolerably slow, for the passengers ahead of her, stubbornly sluggish, barred her way, but at last she stood looking into her lover's face, her eager hand pressed between his palms. "Welcome home!" he called, and drew her to him as if moved almost beyond his control with desire to clasp her to his bosom. In that instant they forgot all their doubts and scruples--overpowered by the sense of each other's nearness. She was the first to recover her self-command, and, pushing him away with a quick, decisive gesture, turned to aid Mart, whom Lucius was bringing slowly down the step. Her heart was still laboring painfully as she faced Congdon, but she contrived to return his greeting as he remarked with quizzical glance, "I hope you'll not find our little town dull, Mrs. Haney." Dull! She wanted to scream out her joy. She felt like racing to the big black team to throw her arms about their necks. Dull! There was no other spot in all the world so exalting as this small town and its over-peering peaks. "Where is Mrs. Congdon?" she succeeded in asking at last. "She has visitors and couldn't come," he answered. "But where's that 'mobile we've heard so much about?" "Coming by fast freight." "Freight! From all I've heard of your doings in Chicago I expected it to come as excess baggage." It was cool, delicious green dusk--not dark--with a small sickle of moon in the west, and as they drove up the broad avenue towards home the town, the universe, was strangely sweet and satisfying. It seemed as though she had been gone an age--so much had come to her--so thick was the crowd of new experiences standing between her going and her return--so swiftly had her mind expanded in these months of vivid city life. "I'll never go away again," she said to Ben. "This country suits me." "I'm glad to hear you say that," he answered, softly. In the most natural way he had put Congdon with Haney in the rear seat and had taken the place beside Bertha, and this nearness filled her with pleasure and an unwonted confusion. How big he was! and how splendid his clear, youthful profile seemed as it gleamed silver-white in the light of the big street-lamps. Never had his magnetic young body acted upon her so powerfully, so dangerously. His firm arm touching her own was at once a delight and a dread. She was all woman at last, awake, palpitant with love's full-flooding tide--bewildered, dizzy with rapture. Speech was difficult and her thought had neither sequence nor design. Fordyce was under restraint also, and the burden of the talk fell upon Congdon, who proceeded in his amusingly hit-or-miss way to detail the important or humorous happenings, of the town, and so they rolled along up the wide avenue to the big stone steps before the looming, lamp-lit palace which they called home. Ben sprang out first, glad of another opportunity to take Bertha's hand, a clasp that put the throbbing pain back in her bosom--filling her with a kind of fear of him as well as of herself--and without waiting for the Captain she ran up the walk towards the wide doorway where Miss Franklin stood in smiling welcome. Her greeting over, the young wife danced about the hall, crying: "Oh, isn't it big and fine! And aren't you glad it's our own!" She appeared overborne by a returning sense of security and ownership, and ran from room to room with all the ecstasy and abandon of a child--but she stopped suddenly in the middle of her own chamber as if a remorseless hand were clutching at her heart. "But it is _not_ mine!--I must give it all up!" Thrusting this intruding thought away, she hurried back to the library, where the men were seated at ease, sipping some iced liquor in gross content. Haney was beaming. "It makes me over new to sniff this air again," he was saying. "'Tis a bad plan to let go your hold on mountain air. Me lungs have contracted a trifle, but they'll expand again. I'll be riding a horse in a month." Ben was sympathetic, but had eyes only for Bertha, whose improvement (in mind as in bearing) astonished and delighted him. Her trip, coming just at the period when her observation was keenest and her memory most tenacious, had subtly, swiftly ripened her. Wrought upon by a thousand pictures, moved by strange words and faces, unconsciously changing to the color of each new conception, deriving sweetness and charm from every chance-heard strain of music and poetry, she had opened like a rose. The middle-aged are prone to go about the world carrying their habits, their prejudices, and their ailments with them to return as they went forth; but youth like Bertha's adventures out into the world eager to be built upon, ready to be transformed from child to adult, as it would seem, in a day. "She has achieved new distinction!" Ben exulted as he watched her moving about the room, so supple, so powerful, and so graceful, but, though he was careful not to utter one word of praise, he could not keep the glow of admiration from his eyes. An hour later as he said good-night and went away with Congdon, his heart burned with secret, rebellious fire. "Was it not hateful that this glorious girl should be doomed to live out the sweetest, most alluring of her years with a gross and crippled old man?" To leave her under the same roof with Mart Haney seemed like exposing her to profanation and despair. They were hardly out of the gate before Congdon broke forth in open praise of her. "When Mart dies, what a witching morsel for some man!" Fordyce did not answer on the instant, and when he did his voice was constrained. "You don't think he's in immediate danger of it--do you?" "Quite the contrary. He looks to be on the upgrade; but it's a safe bet she outlives him, and then think of her with a hundred thousand dollars a year to spend! Talk about honey-pots!--and flies!" After a moment's silence he added, musingly: "Funny how one's ideas change. A year ago I thought she was deeply indebted to him; now I feel that with all his money he can't possibly repay her for what she's giving up on his account. And yet his chink has made her what she is. Money is a weird power when applied to a woman. Tiled bath-rooms, silk stockings and bonnets work wonders with the sex. She's improved mightily on this trip." After leaving Congdon, Ben went to his apartment and telephoned Alice to say that the Haneys had arrived and that he had left them under their own roof in good repair. "How is the Captain's health?" she asked, with the morbid interest of the invalid gossip. "He feels the altitude a little, but that is probably only temporary. They both seem very glad to get home." "He's made a mistake. He can't live here--I am perfectly sure of it. How is she?" "Very well--and beautifully dressed, which is the main thing," he added, with a slight return of his humor. "They asked after you very particularly." Unable to sleep, he went out to walk the night, blind envy in his brain and a hot hunger in his heart, moved as he had never been moved before at thought of Haney's nearness to that glowing girl. Their union was monstrous, incredible. He no longer attempted to deceive himself. He loved this young wife whose expanding personality had enthralled him from their first meeting. It was not alone that she was possessed of bodily charm--she called to him through the mysterious ways which lead the one man to the predestined woman. The affection he had borne towards Alice Heath was but the violet ray of friendship compared to the lambent, leaping, red flame of his passion for Bertha Haney. She represented to him the mysterious potency and romance of the West--typifying its amazing resiliency, its limitless capability of adaptation. In a way that seemed roundabout and strange, but which was, after all, very simple and very direct, she had lifted her family as well as herself out of poverty back into the comfort which was their right. Odd, masculine, unexpected of phrase, she had never been awkward or cheap. Congdon was right, she was capable of high things. She made mistakes, of course, but they were not those which a shallow personality would make--they sprang rather from the overflow of a vigorous and abounding imagination. "All she needs is contact with people of the right sort. She is capable of the highest culture," he concluded. That she was more vital to him than any other woman in the world he now knew, but he acknowledged nothing base in this confession. He was not seeking ways to possess her of his love--on the contrary, he was resolved to conduct himself so nobly that she would again trust and respect him. "My love is honorable," he said. "I will go forward as in the beginning--why should I not?--enjoying her companionship as any honest man may do." The question of his relation to Alice was not so easily settled. She had come to irritate him now. Her changeable, swift-witted, moody, hysterical invalidism had begun to wear upon him intolerably. Everything she did was wrong. It was brutal even to admit this, but he could no longer conceal it either from himself or from her. It was deeply, sadly painful to recall the promise, the complete confidence and happiness with which they had both started towards the West. How sure of her recovery they had been, how gay and confident of purpose! Now she not only refused to listen to his demand for an early marriage, but hampered and annoyed him in a hundred ways. As he walked the silent night he was forced to acknowledge that she had been right in delaying their union. And yet how dependent upon him she was. Her life was so tragically inwound with his that to think of shaking away her hand seemed the act of a sordid egoist. "And even were I free, nothing is solved." The situation took on the insoluble and the tragic. In the fashion of well-bred, soundly nurtured American youth he had thought of such complications only as subjects for novelists. "There must be concealment, but not duplicity, in my attitude," he decided. He longed for the constant light of Bertha's face, the frequent touch of her hand. Her laughter was so endlessly charming, her step so firm, so light, so graceful. The grace of her bosom--the sweeping line of her side-- He stopped there. In that direction lay danger. "She trusts me, and I will repay her trust. She has chosen me to be her adviser, putting her wealth in my hands!--Well, why not? We will see whether an honorable man cannot carry forward even so difficult a relationship as this. I will visit her every day, I will enjoy her hospitality as freely as Congdon, and I will fulfil my promise to Alice--if she asks it of me." But deep under the sombre resolution lay an unuttered belief in his future, in his happiness--for this is the prerogative of youth. The dim mountains, the sinking crescent moon, and the silence of the plain all seemed somehow to prophesy both happiness and peace. CHAPTER XXV BERTHA'S DECISION It was good to wake in her old room and see the morning light breaking in golden waves against the peaks, to hear her dogs bay and to listen to the murmuring voice of the fountains on the lawn. It was deliciously luxurious to sit at breakfast on the vine-clad porch with the shining new coffee-boiler before her, while Miss Franklin expressed her admiration of the napery and china which the Mosses had helped her to select. It was glorious to go romping with the dogs about the garden, and most intoxicating to mount her horse and ride away upon the mesa, mad with speed and ecstatic of the wind. No one could have kept pace with her that first day at home. She ran from one thing to the other. She unpacked and spread out all her treasures. She telegraphed her mother and 'phoned her friends. She gave direction to the servants and examined every thing from the horses' hoofs to the sewing-machine. She went over the house from top to bottom to see that it was in order. She was crazy with desire of doing. Her mid-day meal was a mere touch-and-go lunch, but when at last she was seated in her carriage with Haney and Miss Franklin she fell back in her seat, saying, "I feel kind o' sleepy and tired." "I should think you would!" exclaimed her teacher. "Of all the galloping creatures you are the most wonderful. I hope you're not to keep this up." Haney put in a quiet word. "She will _not_. Sure, she cannot. There'll be nothin' left for to-morrow." Their ride was in the nature of a triumphal progress. Many people who had hesitated about bowing to them hitherto took this morning to unbend, and Mart observed, with a good deal of satisfaction: "The town seems powerful cordial. I think I'll launch me boom for the Senate." At the bank-door, where the carriage waited while Bertha transacted some business within, he held a veritable reception, and the swarming tourists, looking upon the sleek and shining team and the gray mustached, dignified old man leaning from his seat to shake hands, wondered who the local magnate was, and those who chanced to look in at the window were still more interested in the handsome girl in whose honor the president of the bank left his mahogany den. In truth, Bertha had won, almost without striving for it, the recognition of the town. Those who had never really established anything against her seized upon this return as the moment of capitulation. There was no mystery about her life. She was known now, and no one really knew anything evil of her--why should she be condemned? In such wise the current of comment now set, and Mrs. Haney found herself approached by ladies who had hitherto passed her without so much as a nod. She took it all composedly, and in answer to their invitations bluntly answered: "The Captain ain't up to going out much, and I don't like to leave him alone. Come and see us." She was composed with all save Fordyce, who now produced in her a kind of breathlessness which frightened her. She longed for, yet dreaded, his coming, and for several days avoided direct conversation with him. He respected this reserve in her, but was eager to get her comment on the East. "How did you like New York," he asked one night as they were all in the garden awaiting dinner. "It scared me," she answered. "Made me feel like a lady-bug in a clover-huller; but it never phased the Captain," she added, with a smile. "'There's nothin' too good for the Haneys,' says he, and we sure went the pace. We turned Lucius loose. We spent money wicked--enough to buy out a full-sized hotel." Her quaint, shrewd comment on her extravagances amused Ben exceedingly, and by keeping to a line of questioning he drew from her nearly all her salient experiences--excepting, of course, her grapple with the degenerate artist. "Lucius turned out the jewel they said he was?" She responded with enthusiasm. "I should say he did! He knew everything we wanted to know and more too. We'd have wandered around like a couple of Utes if it hadn't been for him. _When in doubt ask Lucius_, was our motto." She told stories of the elder Haney and the McArdles, and described the trials of the children in their new home till Ben laughingly said: "It's hard to run somebody else's life--I've found that out." And Haney admitted with a chuckle that Mac was "a little bewildered, like a hen with a red rag on her tail--divided in his mind like. As for Dad, he still thinks me a burglar on an improved plan." They also talked of Bertha's studies, for Miss Franklin began at once to give her daily instruction in certain arts which she considered necessary to women of Mrs. Haney's position, and always at the moment of meeting they spoke of Alice--that is to say, Haney with invariable politeness asked after her health, and quite as regularly Ben replied: "Not very well." Once he added: "I can hardly get her out any more. She seems more and more despondent." This report profoundly troubled Bertha, and the sight of Alice's drawn and tragic face made her miserable. There was something in the sick woman's gaze which awed her, and she was careful not to be left alone with her. The thought of her suffering and its effect on Ben threw a dark shadow over the brightness of her world. She was filled, also, with a growing uneasiness by reason of Mart's change of attitude towards herself. In the excitement of his home-coming he seemed about to regain a large part of his former health and spirits. His eyes brightened, his smile became more frequent, the appealing lines of his brow smoothed out, and save for an occasional shortening of the breath his condition appeared to be improving. This access of vitality was apparent to Bertha, and should have brought joy to her as to him; but it did not, for with returning vitality his attitude towards her became less of the invalid and more of the lover. He said nothing directly--at first--but she was able to interpret all too well the meaning of his jocular remarks and his wistful glances. Once he called her attention to the returning strength in his arm. "The ould man is not dead yet," he exulted, lifting his disabled arm and clinching his fist. "I feel younger than at any time since me accident," and as he spoke she perceived something of the lion in the light of his eyes. One night as she was passing his chair he reached for her and caught her and drew her down upon his knee. "Sit ye down a wink. Ye're always on the move like a flibberty-bidget." She struggled free of his embrace, her face clouded with alarm and anger. "Don't be a fool," she said, harshly. He released her, saying, humbly: "Don't be angry, darlin', 'tis foolish of me, an ould crippled wolf, to be thinking of matin' with a fawn like y'rself. I don't blame ye. Go your ways." She went to her room, with his voice--so humbly penitent and resigned--lingering in her ears, trembling with the weight of the burden which his amorous mood had laid upon her. She resented his action the more because life at the moment was so full of joy. Each morning was filled with pleasant duties, and each afternoon they drove to the office to discuss the mines with Ben, and in the evening he called to sit for an hour or two on the porch, smoking, talking, till Mart grew sleepy and yawned. These meetings were deliciously, calmly delightful, for Mrs. Gilman or Miss Franklin was always present, and, though the talk was general, Ben talked for her ears at times, but always impersonally, and she honored him for his delicacy, his reserve, his respect for her position as a married woman, recognizing the care with which he avoided everything which might embarrass her. And now, by force of Mart's humble suing, her half-forgotten scruples were revived. Her uneasiness began again. A decision was finally and definitely thrust upon her. Instantly she was beset by all her doubts and desires, and the sky darkened with clouds of trouble. To make Mart happy was still her wish, but the way was not so easy of choice, nor so simple to follow as it had once seemed. The briers were thick before her feet. There was so much of personal gratification, so much of selfish pleasure, in remaining his companion, warmed and defended by all the comfort and dignity which his wealth had brought to her, that it seemed a kind of treachery to halt with her duty half done. To be his spouse, to become the mother of his children, this alone would entitle her to his bounty. "I can't do it!" she cried out--"I can't, I can't!" And yet not to do his will was to remain a pensioner and to be under indictment as an adventuress. She had read somewhere these words from a great philosopher: "The woman who bears a child to any man should instantly be lawfully seized of one-half his goods, for by that sublime act she takes her life in her hand as truly as the soldier who charges upon an invading host. The anguish of maternity should sanctify every woman." On the other side of her hedge lay enticing freedom. It seemed at times as though to be again in the little office of the Golden Eagle Hotel would be a more perfect happiness than this she now enjoyed--but that, too, was illusory. How could she repay the money she had used? The moment she left Marshall Haney she would not only be poor, she would be profoundly in his debt. Where could she find the money to repay him and to make her schooling possible? Perplexity was in her darkened eyes. Happiness and sorrow, doubt and delight grew along each path--thickly interwoven--and decision became each day more difficult. It was hateful to lie under the charge of having married merely for a gambler's money, and yet to plunge her mother and herself back into poverty would seem to others the act of one insane. As she pondered the problem of her life she lost all of her girlish lightness of heart and lay in her luxurious bed a brooding, troubled woman. She could have gone on indefinitely with the half-filial, half-fraternal relationship into which she and Mart had fallen, but the thought of that other most intimate, most elemental union which his touch had made more definite than ever before produced in her a shudder of repulsion, of positive loathing. She could no longer endure the clasp of his hand, and in spite of herself she was forced, by contrasting experience, to acknowledge the allurement which lay in Ben Fordyce's handsome face and strong and graceful body. "I must go away--for a while at least. I'll go back to the ranch and think it over." And yet even the ranch was partly Haney's! How could she escape from her indebtedness to him? To what could she turn to make a living? To leave this big house and her horses, her garden, her dresses and jewels, required heroic resolution, but what of the long days of toil and dulness to which she must return? Worn with the ceaseless alternations of these thoughts, she fell into a dream that was half a waking vision. She thought she had just packed a bag with the gown she wore the night she came to Haney's rescue, when he came shuffling into her room and said: "Where are you goin', darlin'?" She replied: "To the ranch--to think things over." The tears came to his eyes, and he said: "'Tis the sun out of me sky when ye go, Bertie. Do not stay long." She promised to be back soon, but rode away with settled intent never to return. No one knew her on the train, for she had drawn her veil close and sat very still. It seemed that she went near the mine in some strange way, and at the switch Williams got on the train to stop her and persuade her to return. He was terribly agitated. "Didn't you know Mart is sick?" he said, in a tone of reproach. It seemed as if a broad river of years flowed between herself and the girl who used to see this queer little man enter her hotel door--but he was unchanged. "You can't do this thing!" he went on, his lips trembling with emotion. "What thing?" she asked. "Fordyce tells me you're going to throw poor old Mart overboard." "That's my notion--I can't be his wife, and so I'm getting out," she answered. "But, girl, you can't do that!" and he swore in his excitement. "Mart needs you--we all need you. It'll kill him." "I can't help it!" she answered, with infinite weariness in throat and brain. "I pass it up, and go back to my brother." "I don't see why." "Because I've no right to Mart's money." "You're crazy to think of such a thing. You a queen! Who's goin' to catch the money when you drop it?" he asked, and helplessly added: "I don't believe you. You're kiddin', you're tryin' us out." "I'm doing nothing to earn this luxury." "Doing nothing! My God, you've made Mart Haney over new. You've converted him--as they say, you've redeemed him. Let me tell you something, little sister, Mart worships you. It does him good just to _see_ you. You don't expect the moon to fry bacon, do you? Stars don't run pumps! Mart is satisfied. Every time you speak to him or pass by him he gets happy all the way through--I know, for I feel just the same." There was something in his eloquence that went to the heart of the dreaming girl. If any one in her world was to be trusted it was this ugly little man, who never presumed to ask even a smile for himself, and whose unswerving loyalty to Mart made her own flight a base and cruel act; and yet even as he pleaded his face faded and she fancied herself stepping from the train in Sibley, unnoticed by even the hackmen, who used to bring the humbler passengers of each train to the door of the Golden Eagle Hotel. She walked up the sidewalk, surprised to find it changed to brick. The hotel was gone, and in its place stood a saloon marked, "Haney's Place." This hardened her heart again. "That settles it!" she said, bitterly. "He's gone back to his old business." The road out to the ranch seemed very long and hot, but she had no money, not a cent left with which to hire a carriage, and she kept saying to herself: "If Mart knew this, he'd send Lucius and the machine. I reckon he'd be sorry to see me walking in this dust. It's a good thing I have my old brown dress on." She passed lovingly, regretfully over the splendid gowns which hung in her wardrobe. "What will become of them?" she asked. "Fan can't wear them." This called up a vision of Fan and her eldest daughter, sweeping about in her splendor, her opera-cloak only half encompassing the mother, while the girl swished over the floor in the gown she had worn at her last dinner in the East. She laughed and cried at the same time--it was painful to see them thus abused. Then she seemed suddenly to enter the grove of twisted, hag-like cedars which stood upon the mesa back of the ranch-house. "By-and-by I will look like this," she dreamed, and laid her hand on one that was ragged and gnarled and gray with a thousand years of sun and wind, and even as she stood there, with the old crones moaning round her, Ben suddenly confronted her. Her first impulse was for flight, so sad and bitter was his face. She began to pity him. His boyhood seemed to have slipped from him like a gay cloak, revealing the stern man beneath. He met her gravely, self-containedly, yet with restrained passion, and his voice was sternly calm as he began: "I have come to ask you what you wish to do with Marshall Haney's inheritance? I will not be a party to your action. I helped him plan out his will, and he said he could trust you to do the right thing, and I have come to tell you that his will must be yours." "What do you mean?" she asked. "He is dead!" he replied. Her heart turned to ice at the sound of his words, so clear, succinct, and piercing; then the cedars began to wail and wail, and sway in eldrich grief, but she who felt most remorse could not utter a sound to prove her own despair; and in the tumult her dream ended abruptly, and she woke to hear the night wind whistling weirdly through the screen of her open window. She lay in silence, shuddering with the subsiding terror of her vision, till she came to a full realization of the fact that it was all but a night terror and that Mart was still alive and her decision not yet irrevocably made. She shuddered again--not in grief, but in terror--as she relived the vivid hour of self-chosen poverty which her dream had brought her. Yes, the magic of wealth had spoiled her for Sibley and the ranch. To go back there was impossible. "I will try the East," she said. "The Mosses will help me." And yet to return to Chicago--after having played the grand lady--would be bitterly hard. Suppose her friends should meet her with cold eyes and hesitating words? Suppose they, too, had loved her money and not herself? Suppose even Joe, who seemed as true as Williams, should prove to be a selfish sycophant. Ah yes, it would be a different city with the magic of Haney's money no longer hers to command. In this hour of deepest misery and despair the sheen of his gold returned like sunlight after a storm; and yet, even as she permitted herself to imagine how sweetly the new day would dawn with her determination to remain the mistress of this great house, the old fear, the new disgust, returned to plague her. Her love for Ben Fordyce came also--and the knowledge that Alice was dying of a broken heart because of Ben's growing indifference--all these perplexities made the coming of sunlight a mockery. She rose to the new day quite as undecided as before and more deeply saddened. One thing was plain--Ben should come no more to visit her--for Alice's sake he must keep the impersonal attitude of the legal adviser. In that way alone could even the semblance of peace be won. CHAPTER XXVI ALICE VISITS HANEY Alice Heath was dying of something far subtler than "the White Death," to which Haney so often referred. Tortured by Ben's studied tenderness when at her side, she suffered doubly when he was away, knowing all too well that his keenest pleasure now lay in Bertha's companionship. Her doubt darkened into despair. In certain moments of exaltation she rose to such heights of impersonal passion as to acknowledge fully, generously, the claims of youth and health--admitting that she and Marshall Haney were the offenders and not the young lovers, whose desire for happiness was but an irresistible manifestation of the mystic force which binds the generations together. "Why do we not quietly take ourselves off and make them happy?" she asked herself. "Of what selfish quality is our love? Here am I only a spiteful, hopeless invalid--I hate myself, I despise my body and everything I am. I loathe my wrinkled face, my shrivelled hands, my flat chest. I am fit only to be bride to death. I'm tired of the world--tired of everything--and yet I do not die. Why can't I die?" These moods never soared high enough (or sank quite low enough) to permit the final severing stroke, and she ended each of them in a flood of tears, filled with ever-greater longing for the beautiful young lover whose heart had wandered away from her. It was hard not to welcome him when he came, but infinitely harder to send him away, for life held no other solace, the day no other aim. In her saner moments she was aware of her own misdemeanor. She knew that her morbid questioning, her ceaseless grievings were wearing away her vital force, and that no doctor could ever again medicine her to sweet sleep, that no wind or cloud would bring coolness to her burning brain. "I am no longer worthy of any man's love," she admitted to her higher self. She did not question Ben's honor--he was of those who keep faith. "He has no hope of ever being other than the distant lover of Bertha Haney, and he is ready to fulfil his word to me, but I will not permit him to bind himself to me. It would be a crime to lay upon him the burden of a wife old before her time, sterile and doomed to a slow decline." She revolted, too, at the thought of having a husband, whose heart was elsewhere, whose restless desire could not be held within the circuit of his wife's arms--and yet she could not give him up. As her flesh lost its weight and her blood its warmth, her mind burned with even more mysterious brightness, sending out rays of such perilous sublimation that she was able to perceive, as no earthly inhabitant should do, the jealously guarded secrets of those surrounding her, and on the night of Bertha's struggle against her fate she divined in some supersensuous way the tumult in the young wife's mind. She laughed at first with a cruel, bitter delight, but at last her nobler self conquered and she resolved to have private speech with Haney. She perceived a danger in the ever-deepening passion of the young lovers. She began to fear that their love might soon break over all barriers, and this she was still sane enough of thought and generous enough of soul to wish to prevent. Her decision to act was hastened by a slurring paragraph in the morning paper wherein veiled allusion was made to "a developing scandal." She lay abed all the forenoon brooding over it, and when she rose it was to dress for her visit to Haney. Sick as she was and almost hysterical with her mood, she ordered a carriage and drove to the gambler's house, hoping to find him alone, determined upon an interview. It chanced that he was sitting in his place upon the porch watching the gardener spraying a tree. He greeted his visitor most cordially, inviting her to a seat. "Bertie is down town, but she'll be back soon." "I'm glad she is away, Captain Haney, for I have something to say to you alone." "Have you, indeed? Very well, I've nothing to do but listen--'tis not for me to boss the gardener." She looked about with uneasy eyes, finding it very difficult to begin her attack. "How much you've improved the place," she remarked, irrelevantly, her voice betraying the deepest agitation. He looked at her white face in astonishment. "How are ye, the day, miss?" "I'm better, thank you, but a little out of breath--I walked too fast, I think." "Does the altitude make your heart jump, too?" he asked, solicitously. "No, my trouble is all in my mind--I mean my lungs," she answered. Then, with a ghastly attempt at sprightliness, she added: "Now let's have a nice long talk about symptoms--it's so comforting. How are _you_ feeling these days?" Haney answered with unwonted dejection. "I'm not so well to-day, worse luck. This is me day for thinkin' the doctors are right. They all agree that me heart's overworked up here." His dejection was really due to Bertha's moody silence. "I'm sorry to hear that. Do they think you may live safely at sea-level?" "They say so. Me own feeling is that the climate is not to blame. 'Tis age. I'm like a hollow-hearted tree, ready to fall with the first puff of ill wind. I've never been a man since that devil blew me to pieces." She put her right hand upon his arm. "Is it not a shame that you and I should stand in the way of two fine, wholesome, young people--shutting them off from happiness?" He turned a glance upon her quite too penetrating to be borne. "You mane--what?--who?" "I mean Bertha." "Do I stand in the way of her happiness?" She met the question squarely, speaking with tense, drawn lips. "Yes, just as I do in Ben's way. We're neither of us fit to be married, and they are." His eyes wavered. "That's true. I'm no mate for her--and yet I think I've made her happy." He was silent a moment, then faltered: "Ye lay your hand on a sore spot--ye do, surely. 'Tis true I've tried to have the money make up for me other shortcomings." He ended almost humbly. "Money can do much, but it can't buy happiness." "That's true, too--but 'tis able to buy comfort, and that's next door to happiness in the long-run, I'm thinkin'. But I'm watchin' her, and I don't intend to stand in her way, miss. I've told her so, and when the conquering lad comes along I mane to get out of the road." "Have you said that?" Her face reached towards his with sudden intensity, and a snakelike brilliancy glittered in her eyes. "You've gone as far as that?" "I have." "Then act, for the time has come to make your promise good. Bertha already loves a man as every girl should love who marries happily, and the gossips are even now busy with her name." He was hard hit, and slowly said: "I don't believe it! Who is the man?--tell me!" He demanded this in a tone that was not to be denied. She delivered her sentence quickly. "She loves Ben. Haven't you seen it? She has loved him from their first meeting. I have known it for a long time, almost from the first; now everybody knows it, and the society reporters are beginning their innuendoes. The next thing will be her picture in the sensational press, and a scandal. Don't you know this? It must not happen! We must make way for them--you and I. We cumber the path." He sank back into his seat and studied her from beneath his overhanging eyebrows as intently, as alertly, as silently as he was wont to do when watching the faces of his opponents in a game of high hazard. There was something uncanny, almost elfish, in the woman's voice and eyes, and yet even before her words were fully uttered the truth stood revealed to him. His eyes lost their stern glare, his hands, which had clutched the arms of his chair, relaxed. "Are you sure?" he asked again, but more gently. "You've got to be sure," he ended, almost in menace. "You may trust a jealous woman," she answered. "I don't blame them--observe that. We are the ones to blame--we who are crippled and in the way, and it is our duty to take ourselves off. What is the use of spoiling their lives just for a few years of selfish gratification of our own miserable selves?" He felt about for comfort. "They are young; they can wait," he stammered, huskily. "But they _won't_ wait!" she replied. "Love like theirs can't wait. Don't you understand? They are in danger of forgetting themselves? Can't you see it? Ben talks of nothing else, dreams of nothing else but her, and she is fighting temptation every day, and shows it. It's all so plain to me that I can't bear to see them together. They have loved each other from the very first night they met--I felt it that day we first rode together. I've watched her grow into Ben's life till she absorbs his every thought. He's a good boy, and I want to keep him so. He respects your claim, and he is trying to be loyal to me, but he can't hold out. I am ready to sacrifice myself, but that would not save him. He loves your wife, and until you free her he is in danger of wronging her and himself and you. I've given up. There is nothing more on this earth for me! What do _you_ expect to gain by holding to a wife's garment when she--the woman--is gone?" The wildness in her eyes and voice profoundly affected Haney, who was without subtlety in affairs of the heart. The women he had known had been mainly coarse-fibred or of brutish directness of passion and purpose, and this woman's words and tone at once confused and appalled him. All she said of his unworthiness as a husband was true. He had gone to Sibley at first to win Bertha at less cost than making her his wife--but of that he had repented, and on his death-bed (as he thought) he had sought to endow her with his gold. Since then he had lived, but only as half a man. Up to this moment he had hoped to regain his health, but now every hope died within him. Part of this he admitted at once, but he ended brokenly: "'Tis a hard task you set for me. She's the vein of me bosom. 'Tis easy talkin', but the doin' is like takin' y'r heart in your two hands and throwin' it away. I knew she liked the lad--I had no doubt the lad liked her--but I did not believe she'd go to him so. I can't believe it yet--but I will not stand in her way. As I told her, I did not expect to tie her to an old hulk; I thought I was dying when I married her, and I only had the ceremony then to make sure that me money should feed her and protect her from the storms of the world. I wanted to take her out of a hole where she was sore pressed, and I wanted to make her people comfortable. I've brought her to this house. Me money has always been to her hand. It rejoices me to see her spend it, and I've been hoping that these things--me money--would make up for me poor, old, crippled body. I've been a rough man. I lived as men who have no ties have always lived--till I met her, then I quit the game. I put aside everything that could make her ashamed. I'm no toad, miss--I know she has that in her soul that can take her out of my level. Were I twenty years younger and a well man I could folly her--but 'tis no use debating now. I'll talk with her this night--" He paused abruptly and turned upon her with piercing inquiry: "Have you discussed this with Ben?" She was beginning to tremble in face of the storm which she foresaw looming before her. "No--I lacked the courage." A faintly bitter smile stirred his upper lip. "Shall I tell him what you have said to me?" "No, no!" she exclaimed, in sudden affright, "I will tell him." "Be sure ye do. As for these editors, I have me own way of dealing with them. I will soon know whether you are right or wrong. Ye're a sick woman, and such, they say, have queer fancies. You admit you're jealous, and I've heard that jealous women are built of hell-fire and vitriol. Anyhow, you've not shaken me faith in me girl--but ye have in Ben, for I know the heart of man. We're all alike when it comes to the question of women." "Please don't misunderstand me--it is to keep them both what they are, good and true, that I come to you--we must not tempt them to evil." "I understand what you say, miss, and I think you're honest, but you may be mistaken. I saw her meet-up with fine young fellies in the East; I could see they admired her--but she turned them down easily. She's no weak-minded chippy, as I know on me own account--the more shame to me." "Of course she turns others down, for the reason that Ben fills her heart." She began to weary of her self-imposed task. He, too, was tired. "We'll see, we'll see," he repeated musingly, and gazed away towards the cloud-enshrouded peaks in sombre silence--the lines of his lips as sorrowful as those of an old lion dying in the desert, arrow-smitten and alone. He had forgotten the hand that pierced his heart. Thus dismissed, she rose, her eyes burning like deep opals in the parchment setting of her skin. "Life is so cruel!" she said. "I have wished a thousand times that love had never come to me. Love means only sorrow at the end. Ben has been my life, my only interest--and now--as he begins to forget--Oh, I can't bear it! It will kill me!" She sank back into her chair, and, burying her face, sobbed with such passion that her slight frame shook in the tempest of it. Haney turned and looked at her in silence--profoundly stirred to pity by her sobs, no longer doubting the reality of her despair. When he spoke his voice was brokenly sweet and very tender. "'Tis a bitter world, miss, and me heart bleeds for such as you. 'Tis well ye have a hope of paradise, for, if all you say is true, ye must go from this world cheated and hungry like meself. Ye have one comfort that I have not--'tis not your own doing. Ye've not misspent your life as I have done. What does it all show but that life is a game where each man, good or bad, takes his chance. The cards fall against you and against me without care of what we are. I can only say I take me chances as I take the rain and the sun." Her paroxysm passed and she rose again, drawing her veil closely over her face. "Good-bye. We will never meet again." "Don't say that," he said, struggling painfully to his feet. "Never is a long time, and good-bye a cruel, sad word to say. Let's call it 'so long' and better luck." "You are not angry with me?" she turned to ask. "Not at all, miss--I thank ye fer opening me eyes to me selfishness." "Good-bye." "So long! And may ye have better luck in the new deal, miss." As she turned at the gate she saw him standing as she had left him, his brow white and sad and stern, his shoulders drooping as if his strength and love of life had suddenly been withdrawn. While still in this mood she sent word to Ben that she wished to see him at once, and he responded without delay. He was appalled by the change in her. Her interview with Haney had profoundly weakened her, chilled her. She was like some exquisite lamp whose golden flame had grown suddenly dim, and Fordyce was filled with instant, remorseful tenderness. His sense of duty sprang to arms, and without waiting for her to begin he said: "I hate to think of you as a pensioner in this house. You should be in your own home--our home--where I could take care of you. Come, let me take you out of this private hospital--that's what it is." She struggled piteously to assure him that she would be back to par in a few days, but he was thoroughly alarmed and refused to listen to further delay. "Your surroundings are bad, you need a change." She read him to the soul, knew that this argument sprang not from love, but from pity and self-accusation; therefore, forcing a light tone, she answered: "I don't feel able to take command of a cook and second girl just yet, Bennie dear; besides, you're all wrong about this being a bad atmosphere for me. I'm horribly comfortable here, my own sister couldn't be kinder than Julia is. No, no, wait a few months longer till you get settled a little more securely in business; I may pick up a volt or two more of electricity by that time." Then as she saw his face darken and a tremor run over his flesh, she lost her self-control and broke forth with sudden, bitter intensity: "Why don't you throw me over and marry some nice girl with a healthy body and sane mind? Why cheat yourself and me?" He recoiled before her question, too amazed to do more than exclaim against her going on. She was not to be checked. "Let us be honest with ourselves. You know perfectly well I'm never going to get better--I do, if you don't. I may linger on in this way for years, but I will never be anything but a querulous invalid. Now that's the bitter truth. You mustn't marry me--I won't let you!" Then her mood changed. "And yet it's so hard to go on alone--even for a little way." Her eyes closed on her hot tears, her head drooped, and Ben, putting his arm about her neck and pressing her quivering face against his breast, reproached her very tenderly: "I won't let you say such things, dearest--you must not! You're not yourself to-day." "Oh yes, I am! My mind is very clear, too horribly clear. Ben dear, I mean all I say--you shall not link yourself to me. I have no delusions now. I'll never be well again--and you must know it." "Oh yes, you will! Don't give up! You're only tired to-day. You're really much better than you were last week." "No, I'm not! Let us not deceive ourselves any longer. The change of climate has not done me good. We waited too long. It has all been a mistake. Let me go back to Chester--I'm afraid to die out here. I can't bear the thought of being buried in this soil. It's so bleak and lonely and alien. I want to go back to the sweet, kindly hills--perhaps I can reconcile myself to death there--to sink into the earth on this plain is too dreadful." He struggled against the weight of her sorrowful pleadings. "This is only a mood, dearest; you are over-tired and things look black to you--I have such days--everybody has these hours of depression, but we must fight them. It would be so much better for us both if I were your husband, then I could be with you and watch over you every hour. I could help you fight these dismal moods. It would be my hourly care. Come, let's go out and seriously set to work to find a cottage." She was silenced for the moment, but when he had finished his counter-plea she looked up at him with deep-set glance and quietly said: "Ben, it's all wrong. It was wrong from the very beginning. You are lashing yourself into uttering these beautiful words, and you do not realize what you are saying. I am too old for you--Now listen--it's true! I'm twenty years older in spirit. I haven't been really well for ten years. You talk of fighting this. Haven't I fought? I've danced when I should have been in bed. I've had a premonition of early decay for years--that's why I've been so reckless of my strength. I couldn't bear to let my youth pass dully--and now it's gone! Wait!--I've deceived you in other ways. I've been full of black thoughts, I've been jealous and selfish all along. You deserve the loveliest girl in the world, and it is a cruel shame for me to stand in the way of your happiness just to have you light my darkness for a few hours. I know what you want to say--you think you can be happy with me. Ben, it's only your foolish sense of honor that keeps you loyal to me--I don't want that--I won't have it! Take back your pledge." She pushed away from him and twisted a ring from her finger. "Take this, dear boy, you are absolutely free. Go and be happy." He drew back from her hand in pain and bewilderment. "Alice, you are crazy to say such things to me." He studied her with suffering in his eyes. "You are delirious. I am going to send the doctor to you at once." "No, I'm not delirious. I know only too well what I'm saying--I have made my decision. I will never wear this ring again." She turned his words against himself. "You must not marry a crazy woman." "I didn't mean that--you know what I meant. All you say is morbid and unreasonable, and I will not listen to it. You are clouded by some sick fancy to-day, and I will go away and send a physician to cure you of your madness." She thrust the ring into his hand and rose, her face tense, her eyes wonderfully big and luminous. She seemed at the moment to renew her health and to recover the imperious grace of her radiant youth as she exaltedly said: "Now I am free! You must ask me all over again--and when you do, I will say _no_." He sat looking up at her, too bewildered, too much alarmed to find words for reply. He really thought that she had gone suddenly mad--and yet all that she said was frightfully reasonable. In his heart he knew that she was uttering the truth. Their marriage was now impossible--a bridal veil over that face was horrifying to think upon. She went on: "Now run away--I'm going to cry in a moment and I don't want you to see me do it. Please go!" He rose stiffly, and when he spoke his voice was quivering with anxiety. "I am going to send Julia to you instantly." "No, you're not. I won't see her if you do. She can't help me--nobody can, but you--and I won't let you even see me any more. I'm going home to Chester to-morrow; so kiss me good-bye--and go." He kissed her and went blindly out, their engagement ring tightly clinched in his hand. It seemed as if a wide, cold, gray cloud had (for the first time) entirely covered his sunny, youthful world. CHAPTER XXVII MARSHALL HANEY'S SENTENCE After Alice Heath's carriage had driven away, Haney returned to his chair, and with eyes fixed upon the distant peaks gave himself up to a review of all that the sick woman had said, and entered also upon a forecast of the game. He was not entirely unprepared for her revelation. He was, indeed, too wise not to know that Bertha must sometime surely find in another and younger man her heart's hunger, but his wish had set that dark day far away in the future. Moreover, he had relied on her promise to confide in him, and it hurt him to think that she had not fulfilled her pledge; yet even in this he sought excuses for her. "She may love him without knowing it. Anyhow, he's a fine young lad, far better for her than an old shoulder-shot cayuse like meself." His sense of unworthiness became the solvent of other and sweeter emotions. His wealth no longer seemed capable of bridging the deep chasm widening between them. This day had shown a black sky to him, even before Alice Heath's disturbing call, for Bertha had been darkly brooding at breakfast, and silent at lunch, and immediately after rising from the table had gone away alone, without a word of explanation to any member of her household. She had not even taken her dogs with her, and her face was set and almost sullen as she passed out of the door and down the walk. All this was so unlike her that Mart was greatly troubled. It gave weight and significance to every word of Alice Heath's warning. Bertha was gone till nearly six o'clock, and her mood seemed no whit lightened as she entered the gate and came slowly up the walk. To Mart's humbly spoken query, "What troubles ye, darlin'?" she made no reply, but went at once to her room. The old gambler seemed pitiably helpless and forlorn as he sat there in his accustomed chair waiting her return. The bees and birds were busy among the vines, and all the well-oiled machinery of his splendid home was going forward to the end that his sweet girl-wife should be served. If she were unhappy, of what value were these soft rugs, these savory dishes, this shining silver? There was, in truth, something mocking and terrifying in the swift, well-trained action of the servants, who went about their tasks unmoved and apparently unacquainted with any change in the mind of their young mistress. In the kitchen the cook was carefully compounding the soup while watching the roast. Lucius, deft and absorbed, was preparing the table, arranging the coffee service and deciding upon the china. On the seat under the pear-trees Miss Franklin was chatting with Mrs. Gilman, and in the barn the coachman could be heard giving the horses their evening taste of green grass--"and yet how empty, aimless, and foolish it all is if Bertha is unhappy," thought the master. He grew alarmed for fear she would not come down; but at last he heard her light step on the stairs, and when she came in view his dim eyes were startled by the transformation in her. She had put on the plainest of her gowns, and she wore no jewels. By other ways which he felt but could not analyze she expressed some portentous shift of mood. He could not define why, but her step scared him, so measured and resolute it seemed. She called to her mother and Miss Franklin and then asked, "Has dinner been announced?" Her tone was quiet and natural, and Mart was relieved. He answered with attempt at jocularity, "Lucius is this minute winkin' at me over the soup-tureen." As they took seats at the table Mrs. Gilman exclaimed, "Why, dearie, where did you dig up that old waist?" "Will it do to visit Sibley in?" "No indeed! I should say not. When you go back there I want you to wear the best you've got. They'll consider it an insult if you don't." A faint smile lighted Bertha's pale face. "I don't think they'll take it so hard as all that." "Are you goin' to Sibley?" asked Mart, an anxious tone in his voice. "I thought of it. Mother is going over to-night, and I rather guess I'll run over with her. I've never been back, you see, since that night." There was something ominous in her restraint, in her abstraction of glance, and especially in her lack of appetite. She took little account of her guests and seemed profoundly engaged upon some inward calculation. The beautifully spread table, which would have thrilled her a few short weeks ago, was powerless to even hold her gaze, and it was Lucius (deft and watchful) who brought the meal to a successful conclusion--for the mother was awed and helpless in the presence of the queenly daughter whom wealth had translated into something almost too high and shining for her to lay hand upon. Miss Franklin did her best, but she was not a person of light and dancing intellectual feet, and she had never understood Haney, anyhow. Altogether it was a dismal and difficult half-hour. When the coffee came on Bertha rose abruptly, saying, "Come out into the garden, Mart, I've got something to say to you." He obeyed with a sense of being called to account, and as they walked slowly across the grass, which the light of a vivid orange sunset had made transcendently green, he glanced to the west with foreboding that this was the last time he should look upon the kingly peak at sunset time. A flaming helmet of cloud shone upon the chief, and all the lesser heights were a deep, purple bank out of which each serrate summit rose without perspective, sharply set against the other like a monstrous silhouette of cardboard. It should have been indeed a very sweet and odorous and peaceful hour. The murmur of the water from the fountain had the lulling sound of a hive of bees as they settle to rest, and to the suffering man it seemed impossible that this, his cherished world, could change to the black chaos which the loss of his adorable wife would bring upon it. The settee was of wire, and curved so that when they had taken seats they faced each other, and the sight of her, so slender, so graceful, so womanly, filled him with a fury of hate against the assassin who had torn him to pieces, making him old before his time, a cripple, impotent, inert, and scarred. Bertha did not wait for him to begin, and her first words smote like bullets. "Mart, I'm going back to Sibley." He looked at her with startled eyes--his brow wrinkling into sorrowful lines. "For how long?" "I don't know--it may be a good while. I'm going away to think things over." Then she added, firmly, "I may not come back at all, Mart." "For God's sake, don't say that, girlie! You don't mean that!" His voice was husky with the agony that filled his throat. "I can't live without ye now. Don't go--that way." "I've _got_ to go, Mart. My mind ain't made up to this proposition. I don't know about living with you any more." "Why not? What's the matter, darlin'? Can't ye put up with me a little longer? I know I'm only a piece of a man--but tell me the truth. Can't you stay with me--as we are?" She met him with the truth, but not the whole truth. "Everybody thinks I married you for your money, Mart--it ain't true--but the evidence is all against me. The only way to prove it a lie is to just naturally pull out and go back to work. I hate to leave, so long as you--feel about me as you do--but, Mart, I'm 'bleeged' to do it. My mind is so stirred up--I don't enjoy anything any more. I used to like everything in the house--all my nice things--the dresses and trinkets you gave me. It was fun to run the kitchen--now it all goes against the grain some way. Fact is, none of it seems mine." His eyes were wet with tears as he said: "It's all my fault. It's all because of what I said last night--" She stopped him. "No, it ain't that--it ain't your fault, it's mine. Something's gone wrong with _me_. I love this home, and my dogs and horses and all--and yet I can't enjoy 'em any more. They don't belong to me--now that's the fact, Mart." "I'll make 'em yours, darlin', I'll deed 'em all over to you." "No, no, that won't do it. My mind has got to change. It's all in my mind. Don't you see? I've got to get away from the whole outfit and think it all out. If I can come back I will, but you mustn't bank on my return, Mart. You mustn't be surprised if I settle on the other side of the range." "I know," he said, sadly. "I know your reason and I don't blame you. 'Tis not for an old derelict like me to hold you--but you must let me give you some of me money--'tis of no value to me now. If ye do not let me share it with you me heart will break entirely." "I haven't a right to a cent of it, Mart--I owe you more than I can ever pay. No, I can't afford to take another cent." In the pause which followed his face took on a look of new resolution. "Bertie, I've had something happen to me to-day. I've learned something I should have known long since." Her look of surprise deepened into dismay as he went on: "I know what's the matter with you, girlie. 'Tis after seeing Ben your face always shines. You love him, Bertie--and I don't blame you--" A carriage driving up to the gate brought diversion, and she sprang up, her face flushed, her eyes big and scared. "There comes Dr. Steele! I'd plumb forgot about his call." "So had I," he answered, as he rose to meet his visitor. Dr. Steele, a gray-haired, vigorous man, entered the gate and came hurriedly up the path, something fateful in his stride. He greeted them both casually, smilelessly. "I've got to get that next train," he announced, mechanically looking at his watch, "and that leaves me just twenty minutes in which to thump you." Bertha was in awe of this blunt, tactless man of science, and as they moved towards the house listened in chilled silence while he continued: "Brent writes me that you were doing pretty well down by the lake. Why didn't you stay? He says he advised you not to come back." "This is me home," answered Haney, simply. Lucius took Bertha's place at Mart's shoulder and the three men went into the library, leaving her to wait outside in anxious solitude. There was something in the doctor's manner which awed her, filled her with new conceptions, new duties. Steele was one of these cold-blooded practitioners who do not believe in the old-fashioned manner. "Cheery suggestion" was nonsense to him. His examination was to Bertha, as to Haney, a dreaded ordeal. However, Brent had advised it, and they had agreed to submit to it, and now here he was, and upon his judgment she must rest. For half an hour she waited in the hall, almost without moving, so far-reaching did this verdict promise to be. Her anxiety deepened into fear as Steele came out of the room and walked rapidly towards her. "He's a very sick man," he burst forth, irritably. "Get him away from here as quickly as you can--but don't excite him. Don't let him exert himself at all till you reach a lower altitude. Keep him quiet and peaceful, and don't let him clog himself up with starchy food--and above all, keep liquors away from him. He shouldn't have come back here at all. Brent warned him that he couldn't live up here. Slide him down to sea-level--if he'll go--and take care of him. His heart will run along all right if he don't overtax it. He'll last for years at sea-level." "He hates to leave--he says he won't leave," she explained. The man of science shrugged his shoulders. "All right! He can take his choice of roads"--he used an expressive gesture--"up or down. One leads to the New Jerusalem and is short--as he'll find out if he stays here. Good-night! I must get that train." "Wait a minute!" she called after him. "Is there anything I can do? Did you leave any medicine?" He turned and came back. "Yes, a temporary stimulant, but medicine is of little use. If you can get away to-morrow, you do it." She stood a few minutes at the library door listening, waiting, and at last (hearing no sound), opened the door decisively and went in. Haney, ghastly pale, in limp dejection, almost in collapse, was seated in an easy-chair, with Lucius holding a glass to his lips. He was stripped to his undershirt and looked like a defeated, gray old gladiator, fallen helpless in the arena, deserted by all the world save his one faithful servant--and Bertha's heart was wrenched with a deep pang of pity and remorse as she gazed at him. The doctor's warning became a command. To desert him in returning health was bad enough, to desert him now was impossible. Running to him, all her repugnance gone, all her tenderness awake, she put her arm about his shoulders. "Oh, Mart, did he hurt you? Are you worse?" He raised dim eyes to her, eyes that seemed already filmed with death's opaque curtains, but bravely, slowly smiled. "I'm down but not out, darlin'. That brute of a doctor jolted me hard; I nearly took the count--but I'm--still in the ring. Harness me up, Lucius. I'll show that sawbones the power of mind over matter--the ould croaker!" He recovered rapidly and was soon able to stagger to his feet. Then, with a return of his wonted humor, he stretched out his big right arm. "I'm not to be put out of business by wan punch from an old puddin' like Steele. I am not the 'stiff' he thinks. He had me agin the ropes, 'tis true, but I'll surprise him yet." "What did he say?" she persisted in demanding. He shook his head. "That's bechune the two of us," he nodded warningly at Lucius. "For one thing, he says me heart can't stand the high country. 'It's you to the deep valley,' says he." Her decision was ready. "All right, then _we go_!" He faced her quickly. "Did ye say WE, Bertie? Did ye say it, sweetheart?" "I did, Mart--I've changed my mind once more. I'm goin' to stick by you--till you're settled somewhere. I won't leave till you're better." The tears blinded his eyes again, and his lips twitched. "You're God's own angel, Bertie, but I don't deserve it. No, stay you here--I'm not worth your sacrifice. No, no, I can't have it! Stay here with Ben and look after the mines." Her face settled in lines that were not girlish as she repeated: "It's up to me to go, and I'm going, Mart! I didn't realize how bad it was for you here--I didn't, really!" "It's all wrong, I'm afraid--all wrong," he answered, "but the Lord knows I need you worse than ever." "Shut off on all that!" she commanded. "Lucius, help me take him outside where the air is better." Mart put the man away. "One is enough," he said, brusquely; and so, leaning on his strong, young wife, he went slowly out into the dusk where the mother and Miss Franklin were sitting, quite unconscious of the deep significance of the doctor's visit. "Not a word to them," warned Haney--"at any rate, not to-night." They were now both facing the pain of instantly abandoning all these beautiful and ministering material conditions which money had called round them. It seemed so foolish, so incredibly silly--this mandate of the physician. Could any place on the earth be more healthful, more helpful to human life than this wide-porched, cool-halled house, this garden, this air? What difference could a few thousand feet make on the heart's action? The thought of putting away all hope of seeing Ben Fordyce came at last to overtop all Bertha's other regrets as the lordly peak overrode the clouds--and yet she was determined to go. Very quietly she told her mother that she had decided to put off her visit to Sibley, and at 10:30 she drove down to the station and sent her away composedly. At the moment she was glad to get her out of the town, so that she should not share in the grief of next day's departure. To Miss Franklin she then confided the doctor's warning, and together they began to pack. Haney, with lowering brow and bleeding heart, went to his bed denouncing himself. "I have no right to her. 'Tis the time for me to step out. If the doctor knows his business, 'tis only a matter of a few weeks, anyhow, when my seat in the game will be empty. Why not stay here in me own home and so end it all comfortably?" This was so simple--and yet he spent most of the night fighting the desire to live out those years the doctor had promised him. It was so sweet to sit opposite that dear girl-face of a morning, to feel her hand on his hair--now and again. "She's only a child--she can wait ten years and still be young." But then came the thought: "'Tis harder for her to wait than it is for me to go. 'Tis mere selfishness. What can I do in the world? I have no interest in the game outside of her. No, Mart, the consumptive is right, 'tis up to you to slip away, genteel and quiet, so that your widow will not be troubled by anny gossip." To use the pistol was easy, the handle fitted his hand, but to die so that no shock or shame would come to her, that was his problem. "I will not leave her the widow of a suicide," he resolved. "I must go so sly, so casual-like, that no one will be able to point the finger at her or Ben." "Can I visit the mine once more?" he had asked Steele. "No," the doctor had replied. "To go a thousand feet higher than this would be fatal." As he mused on this he began to feel the wonder of the body in which he dwelt. That a machine so bulky and so gross could be so delicate that a change in the pressure of the atmosphere might be fatal astonished him. "I'll soon know," he said, "for I cross the range to-morrow." The dark shadow of the unseen world, once so dim and far, now rose formidable as a mountain on the horizon of his thought. It was so difficult to leave the house in which he had found peace and a strange kind of happiness (the happiness of a soldier home on parole, convalescent and content under the apple-trees)--it was very hard--and the tenderness, the care, to which his little wife had returned and which filled his heart with sweetness, added to his irresolution. He fell into deep sleep at last, still in debate with himself. He woke quietly next morning, like a child, and as his eyes took in the big room in which he had slept for a year, surrounded by such luxury as he had never dreamed of having (even for a day), life seemed very easy of continuance, and Steele a mistaken egotist, a foul destroyer of men's peace; but as he rose to dress and saw himself in the glass, the figure he presented decided his hand. Was this Mart Haney--this unshaven, haggard, and wrinkled old man? Leaning close to the mirror, he studied his face as if it were a mask. Deep creases ran down on either side of the nose, giving to his gaze the morose expression of an aged, slavering mastiff. His nerveless cheeks depended. His neck was stringy. Puffy sacs lay under the eyes, and the ashen pallor of his skin told how the heart was laboring to maintain life's red current in its round. As he looked his decision was taken. "Mart, the game has run mostly in your favor for twenty-five years--but 'tis agin ye now. The quiet old gentleman with the bony grin holds the winning fist. Lay down your cards and quit the board this day, like a man. Why drag on like this for a year or two more, a burden to yourself and a curse to her." And yet, though crippled and gray, death was somehow more dreadful to him at this moment than when in his remorseless and powerful young manhood he had looked again and again into the murderous eyes of those who were eager to shed his blood. He shivered at the thought of the dark river, as those whose limbs having grown pale and thin dread the cold wind of the night. "I wonder is the mother over there waitin' fer me?" he half whispered. "If ye are, your soul will be floating far above me in the light, while I--burdened by me sins--must wallow below in purgatory. But I go, and the divil take his toll." There was not much preparation to be made. His will was written, fully attested, and filed in a safe place. His small personal belongings he was willing to leave in Bertha's hands. It was hardest of all to vanish without a word of good-bye to any soul, but this was essential to his plan. "No one must suspect design in me departure," he muttered. "I must drop out--_by accident_. I must cut loose during the day, too--no night trips for me--in a way that will look natural. If Steele knows his business, Mart Haney will go out of the game on the summit, if not, 'tis easy for a cripple to stagger and fall from a rock. Thank God, I leave her as I found her--small credit to me in that." Lucius, coming in soon after, found his master unexpectedly cheerful and vigorous. In answer to his query, the gambler said: "I take me medicine, Lucius, like a Cheyenne. 'Tis all in the game. Some man must lose in order that another may win. The wheel rolls and the board is charged in favor of the bank. Damn the man that squeals when the cards fall fair." CHAPTER XXVIII VIRTUE TRIUMPHS Mart maintained his deceptive cheer at the breakfast-table, and the haggard look of the earlier hour passed away as he resolutely attacked his chop. He spoke of his exile in a tone of resignation--mixed with humor. "Sure, the old dad will have the laugh on us. He told us this was the jumpin'-off place." "What will we do about the house?" asked Bertha. "Will we sell or rent?" "Nayther. Lave it as it is," replied he quickly. "So long as I live I want to feel 'tis here ready for ye whinever ye wish to use it. 'Tis not mine. Without you I never would have had it, and I want no other mistress in it. Sure, every chair, every picture on the walls is there because of ye. 'Tis all you, and no one else shall mar it while I live." This was the note which was most piercing in her ears, and she hastened to stop it by remarking the expense of maintaining the place--its possible decay and the like; but to all this he doggedly replied: "I care not. I'd rather burn it and all there is in it than turn it over to some other woman. Go you to Ben and tell him my will concerning it." This gave a new turn to her thought. "I don't want to do that. Why don't you go and tell him yourself?" "Didn't the doctor say I must save meself worry? I hate to ask ye to shoulder the heavy end of this proposition." His face lost its forced smile. "I'm a sick man, darlin'; I know it now, and I must save meself all I can. Ye may send Lucius down and bring him up, or we'll drive down and see him; maybe the ride would do me good, but I can't climb them stairs ag'in." The temptation to see Ben once more, alone in the bright office, proved too great for Bertha's resolution, and she answered: "All right, I'll go, but only to bring him down to you. You must give the orders about the house." In spite of his iron determination to be of good cheer in her presence, Mart's lips quivered with pain of parting as he looked round the splendid dining-room, into which the sunlight was pouring. Suddenly he broke forth: "Ye _must_ stay here, darlin'--never mind me. 'Tis a sin and a shame to ask ye to lave all this to go with a poor old--" "Stop that!" she called, sharply. "I won't listen to any such talk," and he said no more. They decided to go down about ten o'clock, when the daily tide of his life rode highest. This hour suited his own plan, for a train left for the mountains not long after, and he had resolved to make his escape while Bertha was with Ben in the office. "There will be no need of any change in the house," he thought, "but 'twill do no hurt for them to talk it all over." For an hour or two he hobbled about the yard and garden, taking a final look at the horses and dogs, and his face was very lax and gray and his voice broken as he talked with his men, who had learned of the doctor's orders, and were awkwardly silent with sympathy. He soon grew tired and came back to the porch to rest and wait for the hour of his departure. Settling into his accustomed chair, which faced directly upon the mountains over which the sun, wearing to the south, was beginning to hang its vivid shadows, he sat like a man of bronze. The clouds which each day clothed the scarred and naked peaks with a mantle of ermine and purple, were already assembling. The range assumed a new and overpowering grandeur in his eyes, for it typified the Big Divide, which lay between him and the country of the soundless, dawnless night. Up that deep fold which lay between the chieftain and his consort to the north ran the western way--a trail with no returning footprints; and the thought made his heart beat painfully, while a sense of the wonder and the terror of death came to him. He was going away as the wounded grizzly crawls to the thicket to die, unseen of his kind, even of his mate. To never return! To mount and mount, each league separating him forever from the mansion he had come to enjoy, the wife he loved better than his own life. "I cannot believe it," he whispered, "and yet I must make it so." Then he began to wonder, grimly, just when his heart would fail, just where it would burst like a rotten cinch. "Will it be on the train? Suppose I last to the coal-switch, then I must climb to the mine. Suppose I live to reach the mine, then what? Oh, well, 'tis easy to slip from the cliff." Meanwhile, out under the trees, the gardener was spading turf, the lawn-mower was purring briskly and as though no sentence of death had been passed upon the master of the place. In this Haney saw the world's action typified. The individual is of little value--the race alone counts. He shuffled down to meet the carriage at the gate, and Lucius helped him in before Bertha could reach him, and they drove off down the street so exactly in their usual way that Bertha was moved to say: "I don't believe it! I can't realize we're quitting this town to-morrow." "No more can I, but I reckon it's good-bye all the same--for me, anyhow. I despise meself for asking ye to go, darlin'--I _don't_ ask it. Stay you! I'm not demanding anything at all. 'Tis fitter for me to go alone. Stay on, darlin'--'twill comfort me to lave ye safe and happy here." She shook her head with quite as much determination as he. "No, Mart, my mind is made up--I know my job, and I'm going to muckle to it like a little lady, so don't fuss." The air was beautifully clear and bracing, and a minute later Haney remarked, sadly: "I reckon the doctor knows his trade, but 'tis bitter nonsense to me when a man says the murky wind of the low country is better for a sick man than this." She was very tender at heart as she replied: "I'm afraid he's right, Mart. I could see you weren't so well here; but I was selfish--I tried to argue different. You'll be better down below, that's dead certain." "Well, the bets are all laid and the wheel spinning. I'm ready to take me exile--but I hate to drag ye down with me." "Don't worry about me," she answered, with intent to reassure him. "To be honest, I kind o' like the East." At the door of Ben's office building she got out, leaving him in the carriage. As she looked back at him from the doorway something which seemed like anguish in his face moved her, and she returned to the wheel to say, "Never mind, Mart, we'll buy a new home down there." He was struggling as if with the pangs of death, but he said, "'Tis childish, I know, but I hate to say good-bye to it all." She patted his hand as if soothing a child, and, turning, mounted the stairway. How weak and old he seemed at the moment! Fordyce was at work. She could hear his typewriter click laboriously (he was his own typist as yet), and she stood for a moment in the hall with hand pressed hard upon her bosom, the full significance of this last visit overwhelming her. Here was the end of her own happiness--the beginning of long-drawn misery and heart-hunger. Her blood beat tumultuously in her throat, and each throb was a physical, smothering pain. At last she grew calmer and knocked. Ben opened the door, and his face shone with joy. "You're late!" he reproachfully exclaimed; then, as he peered into the hall, he asked, "Where's the Captain?" She was very white as she answered: "He can't come up this morning. He ain't able." "Is he worse?" His face expressed swift concern. "Yes--Dr. Steele came last night and examined him--" "What did he say?" "He told us to 'get out' of here--quick." He drew her in and shut the door. "Tell me all about it. What is the matter?" "It's his heart. He can't stand it here. We've got to get away--down the slope--to-morrow." "Not to stay?" "That's what Steele says. Mart's in bad shape." He searched her face with earnest gaze. "I can't understand that. He seemed so happy and so much better, too." "He's been a good deal worse than he let on, or else he fooled himself. The doctor found his heart jumping cogs right along." "And he positively ordered you to go below?" "Yes--he scared me. He said Mart might die any minute--if he stayed." In the silence that followed his face became almost as white as her own, for he understood and shared her temptation. At last he said, slowly, "And you are going with him?" "Yes, I must. Don't you see I must?" He understood, too. Haney had refused to go without her, and to stay would be to shorten his life. "How did the Captain take it?" he asked with effort. "Mighty hard at first, but he's fairly cheerful to-day. He wants to leave me here--but I'm going with him. It's my business to be where he is," she added. "He sure needs me now." "What are you going to do with the house?" "Leave it just as it is. He won't sell it or rent it. He wants you to look after all his business just the same--" "I can't do that." "Why not?" "Because I don't intend to stay here." As he spoke his excitement mounted. "My little world was all askew before you came. You've put the finishing-touch to it. I'm ready to make my own will at this moment." "You mustn't talk that way," she admonished. "I don't like to see you lose your grip." Her words were commonplace, but her hesitating, tremulous voice betrayed her and exalted him. "I'm--we are depending on you." His face, his eyes, filled her with light. She forgot all the rest of the world for the moment, and he, looking upon her with a knowledge that she loved him and was about to leave him, spoke fatefully--as if the words came forth in spite of his will. "You don't seem to realize how deeply I'm going to miss you. You cannot know how much your presence means to me here in this small town. I will not stay on without the hope of seeing you. If you go, I will not remain here another day." She fought against the feeling of pride, of joy, which these words gave her. "You mustn't say that--you've got to stay with Alice." "Alice!" his voice rose. "Alice has given me back my ring and is going home. When you are gone, what is left in this town for me?" He rose and walked up and down, a choking sob in his throat. "My God! It's horrible to feel our good days ending in a crash like this. What does it all mean? I refuse to admit that our shining little world is only a house of cards. Are we never to see each other again? I refuse to say good-bye. I won't have it so!" He faced her again with curt inquiry. "Where are you going to live?" "I don't know--maybe in Chicago--maybe in New York." "No matter where it is, I will come to you. I cannot lose you out of my life--I will not!" "No, you mustn't do that. It ain't square to Mart--I can't see you any more--now." He seized upon the significance of that little final word. "What do you mean by _now_? Do you mean because Mart is worse? Or do you mean that I have forfeited your good-will by my own action?" He came closer to her and his voice was low and insistent as he continued: "Or do you mean--something very sweet and comforting to me? Do you love me, Bertie? Do you? Is that your meaning?" She struggled against him as she answered: "I don't know--Yes, I do know--it ain't right for me--for you to say these things to me while I am Mart Haney's wife." He caught at her hands and looked upon her with face grown older and graver as he bitterly wailed: "Why couldn't we have met before you went to him? You must not go with him now, for you are mine at heart, you belong to me." She rose with instinctive desire to flee, but he held her hands in both of his and hurried on: "You do love me! I am sure of it! Why try to conceal it? You would marry me if you were free?" His eyes pierced her as he proceeded, transformed by the power of his own plea. "We belong to each other--don't you know we do? I am sorry for Alice, but I do not love her--I never loved her as I love you. She understands this. That is why she has returned my ring--there is nothing further for me to say to her. As for Marshall Haney I pity him, as you do, but he has no right to claim you." "He don't claim me. He wants me to stay here." "Then why don't you?" "Because he needs me." "So do I need you." "But not the way--I mean he is sick and helpless." He drew her closer. "You must not go. I will not let you go. You're a part of my life now." His words ceased, but his eyes called with burning intensity. She struggled, not against him, but in opposition to something within herself which seemed about to overwhelm her will. It was so easy to listen, to yield--and so hard to free her hands and turn away, but the thought of Haney waiting, and a knowledge of his confident trust in her, brought back her sterner self. "No!" she cried out sharply, imperiously. "I won't have it! You mustn't touch me again, not while he lives! You mustn't even see me again!" He understood and respected her resolution, but could not release her at the moment. "Won't you kiss me good-bye?" She drew her hands away. "No, it's all wrong, and you know it! I'll despise you if you touch me again! Good-bye!" Thereupon his clean, bright, honorable soul responded to her reproof, rose to dominion over the flesh, and he said: "Forgive me. I didn't mean to tempt you to anything wrong. Good-bye!" and so they parted in such anguish as only lovers know when farewells seem final, and their empty hearts, calling for a word of promise, are denied. CHAPTER XXIX MARSHALL HANEY'S LAST TRAIL Marshall Haney was a brave man, and his resolution was fully taken, but that final touch of Bertha's hand upon his arm very nearly unnerved him. His courage abruptly fell away, and, leaning back against the cushions of his carriage, with closed eyelids (from which the hot tears dripped), he gave himself up to the temptation of a renewal of his life. It was harder to go, infinitely harder, because of that impulsive, sweet caress. Her face was so beautiful, too, with that upward, tender, pitying look upon it! While still he sat weak and hesitant, a roughly dressed man of large and decisive movement stopped and greeted him. "Hello, Mart, how are you this fine day?" Haney put his tragic mask away with a stroke of his hand, and hastily replied: "Comin' along, Dan, comin' along. How are things up on the peak?" "Still pretty mixed," replied the miner, lightly; then, with a further look around, he stepped a little nearer the wheel. "Hell's about to break loose again, Mart." "What's the latest?" "I can't go into details, and I mustn't be seen talking with you, but Williams is in for trouble. Tell him to reverse engine for a few weeks. Good-day," and he walked off, leaving the impression of having been sent to convey a friendly warning. Haney seized upon this message. His resolution returned. His voice took on edge and decision. "Oscar," he called quickly, "drive me down to the station, I want to get that ten-thirty-seven train." As the driver chirruped to his horses and swung out into the street, Marshall Haney, with full understanding that this was to be his eternal farewell, turned and looked up, hoping to catch a last glimpse of his wife's sweet face at the window. A sign, a smile, a beckoning, and his purpose might still have faltered, but the recall did not take place, and facing the west he became again the man of will. When the carriage drew up to the platform he gave orders to his coachman as quietly as though this were his usual morning ride. "Now, Oscar, you heard what that friend of mine said?" "Yes, sir." "Well, forget it." "Very well, sir." "But tell Mrs. Haney I've gone up to the mine. You can say to her that Williams sent for me. You can tell her, but to no one else, what you heard Dan say. You understand?" "Yes, sir." "All right, that stands. Now you go home and wait till about twelve-thirty. Then go down for Mrs. Haney." The coachman, a stolid, reliable man, well trained to his duties, did not offer to assist his master, but sat in most approved alertness upon his box while Haney painfully descended to the walk. The train was about to move, and the conductor had already signalled the engineer to "go ahead," but at sight of the gambler, whom he knew, stopped the train and helped Haney aboard. "A minute more and you would have been left. Going up to the mine, I reckon?" They were still on the platform as Mart answered, "Yes, I'm due to take a hand in the game up there." He said this with intent to cover his trail. He was all but breathless as he dropped into a seat near the door. The sense of leaden weakness with which he had come to struggle daily had deepened at the moment into a smothering pain which threatened to blind him. "I must be quiet," he thought--"I will not die in the car." There seemed something disgraceful, something ignominious in such a death. Gradually his fear of this misfortune grew less. "What does it matter where death comes or when it comes? The quicker the better for all concerned." Nevertheless, he opened the little phial of medicine which Steele had given him and swallowed two of the pellets. That they were a powerful stimulant of the heart he knew, but that an overdose would kill he only suspected from Steele's word of caution. They were, indeed, magical in their effect. His brain cleared, his pulse grew stronger, and the feeling of benumbing weakness which dismayed him passed away. The conductor, on his round, found him sitting silently at the window, very pale and very stern, his eyes fixed upon the brawling stream along whose winding course the railway climbed. While noting the number of Mart's pass the official leaned over and spoke in a low voice, but Haney heard what he said as through a mist. He was no longer moved by the sound of the bugle. A labor war was temporary, like a storm in the pines. It might arrest the mining for a few weeks or a month, but through it all, no matter what happened, deep down in the earth lay Bertha's wealth, secure of any marauder. So much he was able to reason out. One or two of the passengers who knew him drew near, civilly inquiring as to his health, and to each one he explained that he was on the gain and that he was going up to the camp to study conditions for himself. They were all greatly excited by the news of battle, but they did not succeed in conveying their emotion to Haney. With impassive countenance he listened, and at the end remarked: "'Tis all of a stripe to me, boys. I'm like the soldier on the battle-field with both legs shot off. I hear the shouting and the tumult, but I'm out of the running." Without understanding his mood, they withdrew, leaving him alone. His mind went back to Bertha. "What will she do when she finds me gone? She will not be scared at first. She will wire to stop me; but no matter--before she can reach me, I'll be high in the hills." He could not prevent his mind from dwelling on her. He tried to fix his thoughts upon his life as a boyish adventurer, but could not keep to those earlier periods of his career. All of his days before meeting her seemed base or trivial or purposeless. She filled his memory to the exclusion of all other loves and desires. She was at once his wife and his child. He possessed a thousand bright pictures of her swift and graceful body, her sunny smile, her sweet, grave eyes. He recalled the first time he saw her on the street in Sibley, and groaned to think how basely he had planned against her. "She never knew that, thank God!" he said, fervently. Then came that unforgetable drive to the ranch, when she put her hand in his--and on this hour he dwelt long, searching his mind deeply in order that no grain of its golden store of incident should escape him. His throat again began to ache with a full sense of the loss he was inflicting upon himself. "'Tis a lonely trail I'm takin' for your sake, darlin'," he whispered, "but 'tis all for the best." Slowly the train creaked and circled up the heights, following the sharp turnings of the stream, passing small towns which were in effect summer camps of pleasure-seekers, on and upward into the moist heights where the grass was yet green and the slopes gay with flowers. A mood of exaltation came upon the doomed man as he rose. This was the place to die--up here where the affairs of men sank into insignificance like the sound of the mills and the rumble of trains. Here the centuries circled like swallows and the personal was lost in the ocean of silence. At one of these towns which stood almost at the summit of the pass the conductor brought a telegram, and Mart seized it with eager, trembling hands. It was (as he expected) a warning from Bertha. She implored him to let the mine go and to return by the next train. He was too nerveless of fingers to put the sheet back within its envelope, and so thrust it, a crumpled mass, into his pocket. It was as if her hand was at his shoulder, her voice in his ear, but he did not falter. To go back now would be but a renewal of his torture. There could not come a better time to go--to go and leave no suspicion of his purpose behind him. Just over the summit, at a bare little station, the train was held for orders, and Haney, who was again suffocating and almost blind, took another dose of the mysterious drug, and with its effect returned to a dim perception of his surroundings. He was able vaguely to recall that a trail which began just back of the depot mounted the hill towards his largest mine. A desire to see Williams, his faithful partner, his most loyal friend, came over him, and, rising to his feet, he painfully crept down the aisle to the rear of the car and dropped off unnoticed, just as the conductor's warning cry started a rush for the train. As the last coach disappeared round the turn the essential bleak loneliness of the place returned. The station seemed deserted by every human being, even the operator was lost to sight, and the gambler, utterly solitary, with clouded brain and laboring breath, turned towards the height, his left leg dragging like a shackle. For the first half-mile the way was easy, and by moving slowly he suffered less pain than he had expected. Around him the frost-smitten aspens were shivering in the wind, their sparse leaves dangling like coins of red-and-yellow gold, and all the billowing land below, to the west, was iridescent with green and flame-color and crimson. A voiceless regret, a dim, wide-reaching, wistful sadness came over him, but did not shake his resolution. He had but to look down at his crippled body to know that the beauty of the world was no longer his to enjoy. His days were now but days of pain. He had always loved the heights. From the time he had first sighted this range he had never failed to experience a peculiar exaltation as he mounted above the ranch and the mine. Gambler and night-owl though he had been, he had often spent his afternoons on horseback riding high above the camps, and now some small part of his love of the upper air came back to lead him towards his grave. With face turned to the solitudes of the snows, with ever-faltering steps, he commenced his challenging march towards death. At the first sharp up-raise in the way his heart began to pound and he swayed blindly to and fro, unable to proceed. For an instant he looked down in dismay at the rocky, waiting earth, a most inhospitable grave. A few minutes' rest against a tree, and his brain cleared. "Higher--I must go higher," he said to himself; "they'll find me here." As he rose he could see the town spread wide on the hill-tops beneath him--the cabins mere cubes, the mill a child's toy. He could discern men like ants moving to and fro as if in some special excitement--but he did not concern himself with the cause. His one thought was to mount--to blend with the firs and the rocks. He drew the phial from his pocket and held it in his hand in readiness, with a dull fear that the chemical would prove too small, too weak, to end his pain. It was utterly silent and appallingly lonely on this side of the great peak. Hunters were few and prospectors were seldom seen. These upward-looping trails led to no mine--only to abandoned prospect holes--for no mineral had ever been found on the western slope. The copses held no life other than a few minute squirrels, and no sound broke the silence save the insolent cry of an occasional jay or camp-bird. To die here was surely to die alone and to lie alone, as the fallen cedar lies, wrought upon by the wind and the snows and the rain. Nevertheless, his suicidal idea persisted. It had become the one final, overpowering, directing resolution. There is no passion more persistent than that which leads to self-destruction. In the midst of the blinding swirl of his thought he maintained his purpose to put himself above the world of human effort and to become a brother of the clod, to mix forever with the mould. Slowly he dragged himself upward, foot by foot, seeking the friendly shelter and obscurity of a grove of firs just above him. Twice he sank to his knees, a numbing pain at the base of his brain, his breath roaring, his lips dry, but each time he rose and struggled on, eager to reach the green and grateful shelter of the forest, filled with desire to thrust himself into its solitude; and when at last he felt the chill of the shadow and realized that he was surely hidden from all the world, he turned, poised for an instant on a mound where the trail doubled sharply, gave one long, slow glance around, then hurled himself down the rocky slope. Even as he leaped his heart seemed to burst and he fell like a clod and lay without further motion. It was as if he had been smitten in flight by a rifle-ball. Around him the small animals of the wood frolicked, and the jay called inquiringly, but he neither saw nor heard. He was himself but a gasping creature, with reason entirely engaged in the blind struggle which the physical organism was instinctively making to continue in its wonted ways. All the world and all his desires, save a longing for his fair young wife, were lost out of his mind, and he thought of Bertha only in a dim and formless way--feeling his need of her and dumbly wondering why she did not come. In final, desperate agony, he lifted the phial of strychnine to his lips, hoping that it might put an end to his suffering; but before this act was completed a sweet, devouring flood of forgetfulness swept over him, his hand dropped, and the unopened bottle rolled away out of his reach. Then the golden sunlight darkened out of his sky, and he died--as the desert lion dies--alone. * * * * * When they found him two days later he lay with his head pillowed upon his left arm, his right hand outspread upon the pine leaves--palm upward as if to show its emptiness. A bird--the roguish gray magpie--had stolen away the phial as if in consideration of the dead man's wish, and no sign of his last despairing act was visible to those who looked into his face. His going was well planned. Self-murder was never written opposite the name of Marshall Haney. THE END 
31930	----	http://www.archive.org/details/songofthewolf00mayerich THE SONG OF THE WOLF by FRANK MAYER Copyright, 1910, by Moffat, Yard and Company New York Published, April, 1910 CONTENTS I. A RIFT IN THE LUTE II. THE MARK OF THE BEAST III. AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING IV. IN THE MIDST OF ALARUMS V. "HER HEART WON'T BE BROKE NONE" VI. THE MAN AND THE WOMAN VII. BELSHAZZAR VIII. THE PASSING OF A CLOUD IX. IN PART PAYMENT X. THAT WHICH IS CÆSAR'S XI. FRENZIED FINANCE XII. NOT STRICTLY ACCORDING TO PROGRAM XIII. A LAUGH IN THE NIGHT XIV. A FAIR FIELD AND NO FAVORS XV. GREAT EXPECTATIONS XVI. THE SONG OF THE WOLF XVII. THE FROWNING GODDESS SMILES XVIII. IN THE HOUSE OF POTIPHAR XIX. MUTUAL ASSISTANCE XX. A PASSAGE AT ARMS XXI. THE WIDENING CHASM XXII. THE RENUNCIATION XXIII. BELSHAZZAR COMES BACK TO STAY "When a man gets through playin' thu goat he gin'rally feels some obligated to act the sheep foh a spell, so's to even up thu deal." Red McVey THE SONG OF THE WOLF CHAPTER I A RIFT IN THE LUTE Everything else was in harmony. If the sky turquoise was a shade or two paler than the prescribed robin's-egg, it blended perfectly with the unpronounced greens of the sprouting grass and the uncertain olive of the budding sagebrush. On the crest of the distant divide a silver-gray wreath of aspens lay against the tawny cheek of the mountain as daintily as an otter-fur collarette on the neck of a girl. Even the darker girdle of spruce and pine, lower down, lost its harsh individuality, merging insensibly into the faded umbers, sepias, lavenders and tans of the graduating background where the rocks and buckbrush fell away to the open slopes beneath. On the vega below, the alkaline scars, as yet uncalcined by the sun's fires into glaring chalkiness, gave no offense in their moist neutrality, and the coyote slinking dejectedly among the deserted prairie-dog mounds was, in his ash-colored surtout, as inconspicuous as the long wan shadows cast by the weak spring sun. In the hollow of the foothill's arm lay a little lake, fed by a brook born in heights so remote that its purl was deduced rather than heard, and over all lay the soft glow of the fading twilight, accentuated by the subtle incense of the young year's breath. It was a symphony of tender half-tone in minor key, one of these mystical, ethereal, God-painted Corots of the great West whose enchantment outlives life itself, calling with an insistence which will not be denied until the souls of its hearing yearn for its bondage again and return to the rack of the cow-range, the torments of the desert, the chain of the eternal hills. The only discord was in the heart and speech of the man who swore savagely at his over-ridden horse stumbling among the loose bowlders of the half-effaced trail. The anathema and succeeding spur thrust were alike cruel and undeserved, for the faithful beast had borne his rider bravely throughout a long and weary day's work, and despite the favorable temperature of the mild spring day, his chest was foam-flecked and sweat-crusted and his gaunt flanks heaved pitiably. And yet there was nothing particularly vicious in the face of the cowpuncher glaring so disconsolately over the tender vista. It was a bit thin-lipped and there was more than a suggestion of merciless hardness in the deep lines about the mouth, but the blue-gray eyes were calm and steady and there was a sturdy independence in the out-thrust of his prominent chin and the bird-like poise of his head which, bespoke either a clear conscience or the lethal indifference of an indomitable will. Bull-throated, yet withal of a lean, rangy, muscular conformation, his every movement betokened virility and force; an experienced frontiersman would have glanced approvingly at his well-ordered equipment, the wicked blue Colts in its Mexican holster sagging at just the proper angle for quick work on a cartridge belt filled to the last becket, the pliable reata hanging in unkinked coils with chafed honda evincing long usage. There was a significant absence of fringe and ornament about this man, yet the excellence of materials was noticeable, from the selected buckskin of his gauntlets to the tempered steel of his rowels and expensive Stetson hat; and women usually looked twice at the broad-chested, flat-thighed, bronze-faced fellow who returned their stares with disconcerting assurance. It was his habit to look all things squarely in the face, and before his level gaze women blushed unaccountably and men smiled, squirmed or turned quietly away as the circumstances warranted. Little children alone took liberties with him, and for these the bold eyes would soften wondrously and a rare gentleness creep into his usually crisp and terse speech. The panorama stretched out before him as he topped the ridge, halting his horse instinctively to reconnoitre the ground, was one that would ordinarily have appealed to him, for despite his prosaic avocation, his was the true artistic temperament; but to-day he looked with weary unappreciation bordering upon disgust, and mumbled profanely under his heavy mustache. The coyote sneaking stealthily among the short sagebrush caught his eye and he laughed mirthlessly. "Poor devil! Rustling like the rest of us to keep his miserable body and soul together--and making a damn poor job of it. It would be a mercy--" and he half drew the heavy revolver from its sheath. Just then the wolf sprang fiercely at a clump of grass and a plaintive squeal rose upon the air. Then the coyote trotted out into the open with a rabbit hanging limply from its jaws and made off across the vega in a swinging gallop instead of devouring its prey instantly, as one would have naturally anticipated, considering its gaunt and starved appearance. Under the tan of the cowboy's face a darker flush spread redly. "A bunch of starving pups in the arroyo yonder, and I would have wantonly killed her. God! what a brute I am." For a space he sat in silent self-abasement; then as his horse champed impatiently on the bit, he tightened the rein and rode slowly down to the little lake. At its edge he dismounted, and after removing the bridle so that his horse could drink and graze more comfortably, threw himself at full length upon the short grass. The well-trained broncho would not stray far, and both needed rest. The coyote was still in his thoughts, but his mood had changed. "After all," he meditated, "she got that rabbit unexpectedly when she sure needed it worst--and she won out by staying with the game. Maybe my turn will come, too, if I don't get buffaloed and stampede. Was it Seneca or Lucretius--no, Havard--who said that perseverance is a virtue 'that plucks success Even from the spear-proof crest of rugged danger.' Well, in this case I'll be virtuous from force of necessity. But how long, oh, Lord, how long?" From which it might be inferred that this particular cowboy had some time or other drank from springs Pierian as well as alkaline. Just now it was hard to say which was most bitter in his mouth. He shifted restlessly to his elbow and built a cigarette; through its thin blue mist he waded retrospectively in the stream of memory. Rapidly in review passed his boyhood days in the far East, his college career with its vast ambitions and roseate dreams, his migration to the cloud-kissed Rockies where he had suffered the undoing of all his mawkish illusions. An idealist of the most refined type, he writhed even now at the merciless rape of all his virginal conceptions by that unsympathetic iconoclast Practicality, that ironical cynic who laughs our adolescent theories to scorn and desecrates the holiest of our dream-woven holies. All his finespun hopes had been ruthlessly rent by the hand of reality. Contact with humanity in its primeval phase had worn his unusually refined sensibilities to the quick and the reaction was as unhealthy as it was inevitable. From enthusiastic optimism to hopeless pessimism is only a short step for exaggerated natures like his, and there were few things that this man now held sacred--and none that he held holy. Even life itself, and particularly that of other men, he held in contempt, and with the usual disastrous consequences. There were few, even in this land of reckless men, who cared to arouse the slumbering devil under the quiet demeanor of this gray-eyed range rider who killed first and argued afterward. From the pinnacle of a great faith in his kind he had been hurled headlong to the depths of unbelief and suspicion. He had seen Loyalty mocked and betrayed; starving Intelligence bought with a price by crime-opulent Ignorance; naked Virtue crouched shivering in the shadow of exalted, ermined Vice; the sots and trulls of bestial Sensuality deified and worshiped in the public places. He had seen the harlotry of Society set above the sacrament of Maternity, the butchery of embryonic souls so that their lawful heritage might be squandered in the prostitution of Love to Vanity and Indolence. He had witnessed the sacrifice of every civic virtue to the Moloch of Greed and Graft, the abasement of all human motives to the idol of Self. The fiercely-drawn cigarette burned his lips and he threw it away with a snarling curse, his whole sentience revolted with the odor of social corruption, his soul sickening in resentment of his own undeserved failure. He had been honest and industrious, energetic, leal and true, conscientious in all things--and to what end? That he might look every man fearlessly in the face by day and go ahungered to a scant bed at night. He had labored servilely in the vineyard of the Lord and been paid by the contemptuously-thrown lees of the vintage. Thrice had he lost employment because he had indignantly refused to be a party to mendacity and rascality, the recollection of his rather strenuous resentment in the last instance wrinkling his face with a grim, unlovely smile; it had made an outlaw of him. But the other was an object of compassion ever since. Another Ishmael, he had turned naturally to the clean, free independence of the life outdoors, drifting ultimately to the cow range. His natural ability and adaptiveness soon brought him recognition in a sphere where men are weighed in the scale of their actual worth as men, not as puppets in the pantomime of conventionality. It paid him bread and he bedded where and how he chose. In the first flush of independence he felt a certain content, but his was too intense a nature--he was cursed with too much knowledge and ambition--and the encysted leaven began to work. In one thing he was fortunate. The hard outdoor work had hammered the native iron of the man into finely-tempered steel and he was thewed and sinewed like a cougar. He had learned self-reliance, which is a good thing, and self-containment, which is a better. Best of all, he was beginning to place a value on himself; all he needed was incentive. And such men make their own opportunities. The fast waning light warned him that it was time to take the trail again. It was quite dark when he swung himself into the saddle with ten miles of rough country to negotiate, and the trail's difficulties in nowise lessened his mental discontent. For the first time he was resenting morosely the necessity of preparing his own supper at the end of his journey, and he was nowise gentle in the roping of a fresh mount for the morrow's work on his arrival at the outlying camp, where he ate perfunctorily and without gust; despite his harsh fatigue a great restlessness sent him wide, with pipe in mouth, into the stellar splendor that beatifies every clear Colorado night. The thin, pure air was surcharged with ozone and delicately perfumed with the aroma of the lemonia crushing beneath his feet. A big white moon topped the far-off crests of the Continental Divide, silvering the cottonwood fringe of the creek bank and transmuting the dull lead of the sagebrush waste into molten silver and liquid pearl. High up the aspens were a shimmering sea of aquamarine, and the snow fields at the foot of the moon were scintillating masses of opal; the cloudless sky above was a shield of steel-blue sapphire emblazoned with diamond stars. The sanctity of the profound solitude was as yet unbroken by the inevitable wolf wails; the tender benediction of a supernal beauty was over all; and everywhere, save in the hot heart of Ken Douglass, was a great Peace. Unseeing the glory spread about him, he tramped far into the night, torn by conflicting emotions, none of which could he analyze. He was conscious only of a great Desire whose inchoateness maddened and bewildered him, and he stumbled blindly through the mazes of his uncertainty, falling over the truth at every turn but never once realizing it. Vainly he evoked all the logic and reason at his command, but the analogies of a by no means inconsiderable experience failed him utterly. It was ordinarily characteristic of him to arrive at conclusions with a bound where he himself was the object under consideration, but to-night his powers of concentration were strangely deficient and he chafed as much under the sense of indecision as he did over his inability to diagnose his ailment. "What's the matter of me, anyhow?" he ruminated, lapsing whimsically into the range vernacular which he seldom affected. "Here I've been riding circle on myself all day and haven't rounded in even a sick maverick. I reckon I'm losing my grip on myself--and that's a bad sign. Guess I'm herding by my lonely too much and it's getting on my nerves. Might as well be a sheep-herd as hold down this job; then I'd have a dog to talk to at any rate. Well, wolfing it like this won't do my complexion any good; guess I'll go and get my beauty sleep!" But the gray eyes held an unusual languor when he rode out in the morning, and the look of worriment increased with every strenuous hour; all throughout the night had he lain wide-eyed, and the experience was a disturbing one. Never before had sleep been denied him; even on that memorable night when, in a difference of opinion as to whose horse was entitled to precedence at the public watering trough in Tin Cup, he had roped and dragged nigh to death the foreman of the C Bar outfit, he had audaciously crept into the bunkhouse of the outraged fellows who were vengefully seeking him in every place but the right one, and after calmly appropriating the personal blankets of his victim, had slept the sleep of vindicated virtue. That this necessitated his shooting his way out, on his discovery by the astonished outfit the next morning, in nowise affected the soundness of his slumbers; sleep was imperative to this hard-working young man, and the incident had gone far towards the establishment of his standing on the range. He had watered his horses unchallenged and slept undisturbedly ever since. Therefore his last night's experience was anomalous to a degree and one to be reckoned with seriously. In Douglass's perplexity he decided to extend the day's pascar to Tin Cup and get decently drunk; convinced that conviviality was the one essential lacking to his happiness. He dismounted at the ford of the creek on, the outskirts of the village and looked solicitously after the condition of his revolver. Not that he deliberately, contemplated "shooting up" the town; but there was always the possibility of the C Bar gang coming into town after their mail and it was only proper and wise to provide against contingencies. And Ken's favorite maxim was, "Never overlook no bets." CHAPTER II THE MARK OF THE BEAST As he rode slowly up the little squalid street, seemingly lost in a brown study and gazing abstractedly straight between his horse's ears, he was in reality keenly alive to his surroundings. Not a face or movement escaped him, and his mouth hardened ever so slightly as he noted a couple of C Bar horses tied to the hitching rail before the door of the Alcazar saloon. Dismounting leisurely before the grimy little shack which did combined duty as stationery store and post office, he nodded casually to the crowd of loafers about the entrance; if he noticed significant glances toward the horses tied to the railing across the street, he made no sign. And when the old postmaster quietly volunteered the information, "Matlock is in town," he merely smiled his comprehension and rolled a fresh cigarette. Matlock was the man whom he had so ignominiously dragged at his rope's end a month ago. And Matlock had been indiscreet of speech since. At the door he turned and came back with his hand extended to his friend, "I am sure grateful to you for your interest, Hank," he said gravely. "I noticed his horse as I came in. Well, so-long!" and thrusting into his pocket the bundle of mail at which he had scarcely glanced, went out, mounted his horse and rode unconcernedly toward the one hotel which the embryo metropolis boasted. Hank Williams scratched his head thoughtfully as he turned again to the task of assorting the afternoon's mail. "Of course he must play his own hand," he ruminated, "an' he'll come mighty nigh to winnin' out. But all the same I'd like to set in the game a deal or two myself. Guess I'll look in at the Alcazar to-night." "I ain't got no call to butt in," he continued as he puzzled over an unusually illegible address, "but that Matlock is a treacherous coyote an' there's no tellin' what lowdown play he'll make. I just nacherally have to keep cases to-night." His work finished, the old man proceeded to carefully fill the empty loops of his cartridge belt and there was a grim determination on his handsome hard old face as he spun the cylinder of his ".45" to test its perfect action. Up at the hotel an ambuscade was laid into which Douglass walked unwittingly. As his foot reached the first of the three low steps leading up to the rickety veranda, an arm shot around the corner of the house, there was a soft swis-h-h, a chuckle of tense triumph, and the folds of a lasso encircled his throat. Involuntarily his hand leaped to his holster on his hip and the ready gun came flashing half way up. But after a lightning glance at the chubby fist holding the other end of the reata, the twinkle in his eyes accorded but illy with his subsequent plunging and yelling as he sprawled on all fours and bawled like a choking calf. Then from around the corner rushed a sturdy little boy of five, gathering up the slack of the rope as he came, followed by a red-cheeked, star-eyed girl of four, who brandished a huge branding iron. Upon the prostrate cowpuncher they precipitated themselves with a yell, the boy deftly throwing a bight of the rope about Ken's feet and drawing up the slack. Then placing one foot on Douglass's neck he laconically announced: "Tied! Put the iron to 'im, Yule." The little girl thrust the end of the brand against the brawny shoulder now quivering with the suppressed laughter of its owner and made a quaint sizzling noise with her puckered lips. The cowboy emitted an agonized bawl wonderfully like that of a calf in the throes of the red-hot iron's bite and the boy stooped to a critical examination. Bueno! he said approvingly, and then he untied the restraining coils, stepped back a pace and gave Ken the ethical kick in the ribs. "Get up, you chump!" he ejaculated in comical imitation of Ken's accent and manner when at work in the branding corrals. Douglass was his model in everything, and only the week before he had the beatitude of seeing his hero actively engaged In a similar employment of the branding iron. But the little girl laid her soft cheek against the bronzed one of the cowboy and whispered sweetly, "Oh! Ten, youse is weally mine vewy own now, ain't youse? Buddy said youse would be if ve doed it." The man made two attempts before he could answer. Then he laid his lips reverently on the rosebud mouth. "Yes, honey, I'm sure in your brand now," he said gently. And he quietly but firmly declined the glass of whiskey proffered him by her father as he sat her on the end of the dingy counter. The sweetness of those little lips was too fresh for that. Old Blount gave him a keen look of approval as he set the bottle back. "Your head's level," he said, misinterpreting Douglass's motive. "Matlock is a quick mover even if he is a cur. And he's ugly to-night." "That so?" said Douglass indifferently, playing with the curls of the little child nestling against his breast. Mrs. Blount, coming to announce that supper was ready, shivered slightly and her kind brown eyes were filled with an unspoken entreaty. But he evaded their wistfulness and a certain doggedness gloomed in his own. All throughout the meal he held the child in his lap, and when he relinquished her to the troubled woman he said not unkindly: "I am not going to get drunk to-night and I shall do all I can to avoid trouble. Of course I am not going to let him kill me." "Ask him to go back to the ranch, dearie, to go back at once for your sake," the woman said to the child, nervously. "Just this once, Ken," she pleaded. "You are so young--and life certainly holds so much for you!" But the child here interposed tearfully: "Ten shan't do home! Ten tate me widin' to-mov-ver." "That's what, honey!" said Douglass, with quieting assurance. "Out of the mouth of babes--" he quoted whimsically and the woman turned away with a sigh. But all that night a light burned in her room and when little Eulalie said her prayers she knelt beside her with dumbly moving lips. She had known so much misery and heartache in this dreadful place--and this young man had once told her that his mother was dead. Strangely enough, she did not include Matlock in her appeal. Which was manifestly unfair and essentially feminine. Hank Williams, dropping casually into the Alcazar that night, noted with no small satisfaction that Douglass occupied that seat at the poker table which commanded the whole room with the minimum of exposure in his own rear. "Trust him for that!" he chuckled, but his nod of greeting was anything but demonstrative. All the same he unobtrusively sat down at a point where he could see in profile every man in the room and likewise catch the first view of all who entered at either rear or front doors. Matlock was not in the room, but leaning against the counter of the bar were three of the C Bar outfit talking earnestly together. At the other end of the counter Blount was lighting an unusually refractory pipe which persisted in going out at every third puff. Williams, noting a sharp projection in the side pocket of Blount's coat, smiled quizzically. "Derringer," he speculated. "Well, there ain't no accountin' for tastes. An' I've heard that Blount got two men in one scrap down in No Man's Land afore he come here. Guess Ken's good for a square deal all right. But I don't like Matlock's dodging the play in this way. Wonder what skunk trick he will try this time?" Nearly every other man in the room was indulging in a like speculation. The only possible exceptions were the C Bar men at the counter and a slight, well-dressed young fellow who was watching the faro game at the other side of the room. The latter was evidently a stranger both to Tin Cup and to the game in which he was so thoroughly absorbed. Williams looked him over indifferently. "Tenderfoot," he opined, "takin' in the sights. Maybe he'll see suthin' worth while if he hangs around a bit longer." And he smiled grimly and renewed his watch of the doors. Less than a year before, Matlock had an altercation with a sheep herder over a game of cards in this very room and had been soundly thrashed by the unarmed man. The next night the shepherd's camp had been raided by a masked mob, his sheep ruthlessly slaughtered, despite the fact that he was on the right side of the "dead line," therefore entirely within his rights, and himself shot to death by the merciless marauders. Of course there was no positive proof of their identity, but the consensus of opinion pointed to the C Bar outfit, and the decent element among the range men had held significantly aloof from Matlock ever since. Douglass's escapade had in nowise affected his popularity among the resentful cattle owners who had been seriously involved by the outrage on the sheepman; the law of the range demands fair play and the feeling against Matlock was further intensified by a dastardly trick perpetrated by him a few days before Douglass's unceremonious man-handling of him. Among the men working for the C Bar had been a quiet inoffensive German named Braun, whose ambition was to acquire a small ranch of his own. With this end in view he had allowed salary to accumulate in Matlock's hands until it had attained very respectable proportions. Upon this little hoard Matlock had long had designs, and one night he seduced Braun--who was a mere boy--into a game of cards where with the assistance of one of his confederate creatures he had deliberately robbed him of every cent. This in itself would have aroused but little comment; every man must protect himself in card play and any means that can be enforced to one's end in poker are admissible. But with the malicious brutality characteristic of all cowardly bullies, Matlock had subsequently taunted his victim with his lack of perspicuity, boasting openly of the means he had employed, until the boy, lashed into ungovernable fury, had fumblingly drawn his revolver, whereupon Matlock shot him through the head. In the light of self-defense even this would have been condoned, but one of the dead man's friends, collecting his effects for transmission to his widowed mother, had discovered that Braun's revolver had been rendered absolutely useless by having its hammer point shortened in such a way that it could not reach the primers of the cartridges, the weapon being therefore undischargeable. It was evident that the point had been first broken off and the fracture cunningly ground smoothly round so as to avoid detection. And it was whispered significantly among the C Bar boys that Braun's gun had hung for the better-part of a day in the ranch blacksmith shop while he was employed on a distant irrigation ditch, and that Matlock had been refurbishing some branding Irons in the smithy during the interim. And one of the boys who had been friendly with the dead man found on the edge of the grindstone a deeply-cut indentation such as is made by the bite of casehardened steel. It was now ten o'clock and Matlock had not put in his appearance; the smoke-dimmed atmosphere was heavy with expectancy but Douglass sat unconcernedly rolling cigarettes, occasionally making a bet and exchanging the rude badinage inseparable from the game. His face was sphinx-like in its immobility but the cold lethality of his eyes was apparent even to the inexperienced tenderfoot, who was growing strangely uncomfortable for some indefinable reason. The raucous clamor of the preceding hours had become unaccountably subdued and the soft flutter of the cards as they were dealt was distinctly heard. A sudden gust of wind slammed the insecurely fastened door with a sharp bang and a man sprang quickly behind the precarious shelter of the stove; even Williams stiffened perceptibly in his chair. The C Bar men had their hands on the butts of their revolvers. The gray-eyed man alone smiled contemptuously at the disconcerted fellow grinning behind the stove and said humorously: "Better take a little bromide, Jim. This night air is hell on the nerves." The tenderfoot was wavering between a conviction that it was time to go home and a morbid inclination to stay and see what all this portended. Impelled by an irresistible impulse, he went over and sat down beside Douglass, who courteously shoved back the chair for his better convenience. It was the one just vacated by the man behind the stove. Then of a sudden it happened. In through the door walked Matlock, his bloated face working ominously and an evil glitter in his closely-set eyes. The player opposite Douglass, immediately between him and the newcomer, rose with exaggerated deliberation and strolled over to the counter, asking for a match. There was a perfect litter of matches on the table about the very respectable heap of chips and coin which he had accumulated but these were curiously overlooked, and what was even more remarkable, he displayed no unseemly celeritude in returning to what was plainly a very profitable divertisement. Then the tenderfoot, comprehending, was obsessed by a great desire to go somewhere and he moved nervously in his chair. The hand of the man beside him had dropped carelessly to his side and involuntarily he shifted his chair a little farther away. He wished now that he had gone home. But the pride inherent in every man worthy of the name chained him to his seat. He paled perceptibly, but Williams, watching him cynically out of the corner of his eye, gave a grin of appreciative surprise at the resolute squaring of his jaw and firm compression of lips. "Blamed if the kid isn't game!" he ejaculated under his breath. "But all the same, if I was him I'd mosey off a leetle to one side--and that _muy pronto_. The work's apt to be a bit wild in all this yere durned smoke." Then Douglass did a generous thing. "I think," said he quietly to the young stranger, "that Blount over there wants to speak to you." The youngster looked him squarely in the eyes. "I don't know Blount--and if I did it can wait." He was going to see it out side by side with this man, come what might. Matlock was no fool. As he halted with a swagger beside his men, one of them spoke quickly in an undertone and he looked calculatingly about the room. Something in the unfriendly silence warned him that this time his metal would be fairly put to the test and the sheer cowardice of the man shrank from the ordeal. He would wait for more propitious conditions and with a well-simulated nonchalance he ordered drinks for the house. The scant acceptance of his hospitality flooded his bloodshot eyes with impotent rage, but he made no comment thereon. He merely remarked that it was time to hit the trail, ignoring the titter of contemptuous surprise and disgust which greeted the announcement. Was this the thing he had foresworn so rabidly a scant four hours before! Someone laughed jeeringly and he whirled like a kicked cur, the fires of hell in his eyes. "If anyone here's got any objections--!" he began furiously but he had been weighed and found wanting and the strain had been relaxed. The whole room was broadly smiling. Douglass's vis-a-vis had returned to his seat, and even the tenderfoot was laughing in pure relief. Matlock's undoing was so complete that he did not even resent Blount's deep-toned "Buffaloed, by God!" He groped unseeingly for the door, followed by the scowling trio whose faces were flushed with the awful shame of his cowardice. At the threshold they stopped as one man, these three; they were brave men, if evil ones, and their sense of ethics had been outraged unpardonably. "I'll take my time right now!" said one of them thickly. "I don't work for no d----d coward!" And the others acquiesced: "Same here!" Matlock glared at them fiendishly for an eternal moment, one hand fumbling at his throat, the other fiercely gripping his gun; but they stared at him with somber contempt and deliberately turned their backs. It was the last straw, and mumbling insanely through frothed lips, the now thoroughly discredited and wholly disgraced wretch stumbled pitiably out into the night of an ostracism more terrible than death. Never again would man of these ranges take order from him. Never again would women--even the sordid trollops of the slums--give him aught but a pitying glance. And even the little children, awed by his shame, would shrink wide-eyed from his contamination. For the one sin unpardonable, the one foul specter against which range mothers invoke the intercession of their gods, is Cowardice. CHAPTER III AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING Douglass, ambling around the hotel veranda with little Eulalie astride of his neck, the next morning, bumped into the tenderfoot who had sat beside him in the Alcazar. He grinned sheepishly, for his antics were anything but dignified and he and the child were both shouting at the top of their voices. But there was only appreciation in the younger man's eyes as he reflected "and this is the man who waited smilingly for possible death last night!" Aloud he said genially: "Good morning, Mr. Douglass. They told me over at the ranch--the C Bar I mean--that I might find you here. At your convenience I would like to have a talk with you." Douglass looked at him curiously. "The C Bar," he said wonderingly. The young man smiled. "Yes, I own it, as it happens. I am Robert Carter." The cowboy took his extended hand and the young fellow winced involuntarily. Eulalie, after grave deliberation, stuck out her chubby little fist. "I likes you, I fink," she said with much conviction, and Carter bowed over it with a courtesy that placed him instantly in the good graces of both. "I am honored!" he said with characteristic gentleness. "You are the first lady I have had the pleasure of meeting here, and your favor is an auspicious omen." He pressed his lips to the grimy fingers. The child smiled softly. "Youse may tiss my face if you wants." It is worthy of note that the cowboy watching him saw nothing incongruous in the flush of color that suffused this tenderfoot's face as he availed himself of the ingenuous permission. "Another critter in your brand, Yulie," he thought, "and this one's a thoroughbred!" They adjourned to the shady side of the veranda and Carter, proffering his cigar case, said without preamble: "You are a college man, Mr. Douglass?" Ken, puffing at the excellent Havana, nodded affirmation. "Yale '82." "Princeton '86 myself," said Carter, and after the fashion of hereditary rivals the world over, they solemnly shook hands again. For awhile they smoked in silence, then Carter turned abruptly. "Will you manage the C Bar for me?" Douglass puffed meditatively for a moment. A thunderbolt from the clear blue above would have surprised him less, but no stoic ever bore a face more immobile than that which he turned toward the owner of the biggest ranch on the Western Slope. "How about Matlock?" "He left this morning," said Carter grimly. "See here, Douglass, all I have in this world is invested in the ranch. My family--I have a mother and sister--has no other source of income. The outfit is badly run down and I find it to be in bad flavor with everybody in this section." Douglass looked at him in surprise. "Why, I thought--" "So did I," said Carter sententiously, "but I was wrong. I haven't had time to investigate the leak, but about half my fortune has seeped through it and it's got to be stopped. I want a capable man, whom I can trust, to take full charge and put it back on its feet. Will you take the job?" Ken looked at him with a new understanding; this was a different man from the white-lipped one who had writhed so uncomfortably beside him the night before. There was no indecision in the tense, vibrant voice, and the almost effeminately delicate features were strong with a great determination. The cowboy was suddenly filled with a conviction that Tin Cup had underweighed this tenderfoot. "Do I get a free hand?" he asked. "I can only work my own way." Carter nodded shortly. "The actual work will be yours absolutely but I will take care of the outside business end. I have a knack that way--and I need something to keep me busy. So far I've had no time for investigation--came in on the stage yesterday afternoon and put up at Vaughan's, old friends of mine--but will get at the bottom of things to-day. You'll take hold on the first; that will give you a week to clear up your work. You'll start at three thousand a year. And now I'll go back to the ranch and get busy." They shook hands and Douglass said slowly: "I'll do what I can." And Carter was filled with great satisfaction, for he knew that was a pledge which would see fulfillment. When he had gone, Ken sat for a long time in silent meditation. "I guess I've arrived!" he confided to the little girl who finally waked him out of this reverie. "Yulie dear, it pays to stay with the game!" And he went in to the congratulations of Blount and his wife, who were overjoyed at his good fortune. Down at the Alcazar he found the three riders who had deserted Matlock overnight. "I'm taking charge of the C Bar on the first, boys," he said simply, "and I'd like you to stay on with me if you will. There's going to be a clean-up and a new deal. I'll play square, and you're all good hands. What d'ye say?" The three looked interrogatively at each other and then Reddy McVey, the man who had taken the initiative the night before, said, "I reckon we'll stay." "That's good! Your pay will go right along without any docking and I want you to go back to the ranch after we've had a drink, and finish up your corral building. And you might tell all the other boys that I won't make any changes--unless I have to. Sabe?" They grinned their full understanding of the underlying significance of that qualifying clause, and Red assured him that the rest of the outfit would stay. "They're all good boys ef they are a leetle free on the bit," he confided. "An' they've only been obeying orders." Ken nodded his comprehension and the deal was properly ratified. Over at the post office Williams was frankly exultant. "Best move ever made on the C Bar," he swore. "That tenderfoot has more savvy than I giv' him credit for. He's a sandy cuss, too. I was keepin' cases on him las' night and he shore panned out good. Looks a heap more like his mam than he does like th' ole man; reckon that's why I didn't get onto the brand quicker. There's good leather in your new boss, Ken." "Kem in yere this mawnin'," continued the loquacious old fellow, "an' says--fust crack outer th' box--'What's th' name o' the feller who sits next to me las' night; the one who was waitin' fer Matlock to make a break?' er words to thet effect. 'How d'ye guess it?' I axes, bein' some took aback--fer I didn't think he was wise ter the play. 'Will ye tell me his name, man!' sez he, kinder impatient; 'I'm in a hurry.' Then I give him your handle an' bymeby he twisted your pedigree outer me, too. Not that he axes me any questions ter speak of, but somehow I slops over without thinkin' an' he listens sharp. 'You're a friend o' hisn?' he says, quiet like. 'Well, I don't wonder none. That's a man!' sez he. 'An he's going to be my manager if I can fix it. I'm Carter, o' ther C Bar!' "Say I, 'th' hell ye are! I knowed ole Bob Carter afore ye was earmarked. You don't look none like him.' But his jaws snaps amazin'. 'My father is daid,' he whips out, 'but I am Robert Carter all the same.' I axes his pardon an' he hikes out on your trail. An' I sez to myself, he's some man, too!" Douglass going out encountered a lady just entering the store. As he stepped aside to allow her passage-way through the narrow door, their eyes met momentarily and she flushed slightly at the unconscious boldness of his look. Yet, curiously enough, she took no offense thereat, and turned around as old Williams bawled out, "Hey, there! Douglass. Come back yere; I'v got a letter fer you I overlooked yisteday." Out of the tail of his eye the man saw that the woman was young, dressed quietly yet in exquisite taste, and that she was extremely good to look at. She was evidently a stranger, yet there was something intangibly familiar about her features. It was not until that night that he traced the resemblance to Carter, when he knew immediately that this was the sister of whom his employer had spoken. And although none knew better than he the disparity of their social planes, he dropped off to sleep wishing that her stay on the ranch would be indefinitely prolonged, for, next to a horse he deemed a woman the most creditable and handsome of divine creations, and beauty he adored both in the concrete and abstract. It would be very pleasant and agreeable to come in contact occasionally with this extremely pretty girl; it would ameliorate the coarse, hard routine of his work just as the finding of a cluster of mountain heart's-ease had often before dispelled the gloom of a hard day's ride. His thought of her was purely impersonal as yet. He slept dreamlessly the sleep of healthy, heart-whole youth and when he waked with the dawn he had practically forgotten her existence. And the woman? Well, after the fashion of woman, she thought more than once of the bronzed young fellow who had looked at her so audaciously. As she asked for her mail old Williams had volunteered some interesting information. "So you are Bob Carter's leetle gal, the one he used to brag on so much to the boys, eh? Well, durn my pictur', if he didn't have good reason to! You look like your mammy, Miss, and she were the puttiest filly that ever run over this range! An' as good as she were purty! I mind oncet--" and there followed an interminable string of reminiscences very interesting to the girl but of no moment to this story. "That feller thet jest went out is your brother's new foreman, Ken Douglass, the sandiest galoot an' best cowman on this range," he concluded. "Of course he didn't know who you was or he'd a spoke to you, 'deed he would! Ken's real polite." The girl smiled at his earnest assurance and said gently: "I am quite sure of it." "Betcher life!" affirmed the old man enthusiastically. "He's too da--er, hem! too much polite to some cattle as doesn't desarve it, accordin' to my way o' thinkin'. Why las' night he actoolly waited for a feller to begin killin' of him before drawin' his own gun! It waz plumb downright keerless o' him, an' some day he'll get it good an' plenty ef he don't watch out!" Then, seeing the look of white consternation in the girl's face, he shut up like a clam, saying only that Ken could "take a plenty good keer o' hisself, when he wanted to." She went away, wondering what manner of man that could be who had not his own personal welfare constantly in mind, that being proverbially the first law of nature. Her wonder increased when, on casually mentioning her chance encounter with him, Mrs. Vaughan had acquainted her with as much of Douglass's record as was common property. It was so new to her, so abnormal in every particular when compared with her own code of ethics, that she was a little bewildered. She was shocked not a little at Mrs. Vaughan's frank enjoyment of the watering-trough episode and the ensuing bravado of the dare-devil fellow who had deliberately entered the lion's den to intensify the indignity put upon her brother's outfit. Yet somehow the indomitable courage of the man appealed to her strongly; all women love personal valor and this was the most exaggerated example of it that had ever come to her notice. She distinctly disapproved of the motive of it, but she blushed to think how glad she was that he had come safely out of the jaws of death with colors flying. Strangely enough, she appreciated the Alcazar incident to the full, and at her brother's graphic relation evinced no surprise. She could readily understand this kind of courage and she only commended his tact. "He was master of the situation," she remarked, with an insight into the facts astonishing in one who had never in all her life heard a word spoken in anger; "and it is absurd to think that he was ignorantly exposing himself to inevitable death. He would have shot first in any event--and I think he would have hit." A conclusion so prescient that her brother gasped with astonishment. "I guess your estimate of him tallies with mine, sis," he said teasingly. "I fell in love with him at first sight." "How perfectly absurd!" she returned, with a rebuking hauteur, and deftly changing the subject proceeded to regale Mrs. Vaughan with the details of New York's latest operatic sensation. But she relented enough to clasp her soft white arm about her brother's neck just before retiring that night and whisper: "It was very lovely and noble of him to try and send you out of danger. Oh! Bobbie, what would I have done if--" Carter kissed her tenderly. "It was the whitest thing I ever saw, Gracie, and I want you to try and help me make it up to him. The man is a gentleman, too, no matter what his past has been. And with your aid we will keep him such. Besides, our fortune is in his hands to all intents and purposes and something tells me we are going to owe him much in the days to come." It may have been telepathy, and then again it may have only been coincidence; but certain it is that at the very moment Grace Carter knelt beside her little white bed, Ken Douglass sitting on the edge of his bunk took from about his neck a slender gold chain to which was attached a locket, opened it with trembling hands and laid his lips with infinite tenderness and reverence on the mouth of the sweet-faced woman pictured therein. "Oh! Mother," he prayed, "help me to make good!" CHAPTER IV IN THE MIDST OF ALARUMS Luxuriously hammocked in the delightful cool of the broad veranda surrounding three sides of the C Bar ranch house, Grace Carter lay dreamily watching the shadow-dance on the slope of the fast purpling range. Outside, the sun devils were whirling maliciously, here and there kicking up a dust-spout in the wake of the sadly-tormented breezlets which foolishly ventured out in that July inferno. Overhead the sun was herding his cloud flocks to their fold in the brassy west, wearily dipping out of sight momentarily amidst their billowy fleeces. There was an intolerable shimmer on the low-lying adobe flats to the east, and the sea of alfalfa to the north drooped flaccidly in the furnace heat. Her neglected novel lay limply on a bamboo tabour at her side and an open letter lay where it had fallen unrecked on the veranda floor. On the wide rail shelf blazed a glory of multi-colored cacti artistically potted in harmoniously contrasting cool-gray jars. A luxuriant wistaria at the porch angle behind her supplied the requisite foil for as perfect a picture as ever filled the eye of mortal man, and Douglass, coming noiselessly through the fetlock-deep dust of the driveway, reined up his tired horse in eager admiration. The girl, lulled to sleep by the languor of the hour, was very good to look, upon and his eyes drank in her beauty greedily. Her hands, locked together under the shapely head, were hidden in the wealth of golden brown hair that somehow had escaped its fastenings and lay in an aureole of glory about her delicately-chiseled face. The wide sleeves of the thin lavender-tinted silk kimono had fallen away from her arms, revealing their soft rounded contour and exquisite modeling. The clinging stuff of her filmy gown betrayed every perfection of outline, and peeping over one edge of the hammock was just a ravishing suspicion of silk-stockinged foot and ankle, dainty as a child's. Her skin, tanned golden tawny to the limit of the sun's daily caress, betrayed its true coloring in the creamy white hollow of her uncovered throat, where the treacherous fabric had failed in its trust. The lips, not too full but rather of a gentle firmness, were slightly parted, revealing well-shaped teeth, and the eyelashes and brows were long and beautifully arched. As he sat unconsciously glowering at her, she moved slightly and the kimono slipped to one side, exposing the bodice of thin stuff beneath. Through its folds the rise and fall of her bosom were distinctly perceptible. He whirled his horse with a deep-chested oath and rode unseen to the stables. Taking something from his saddle-roll, he tiptoed back to the veranda and without once looking at the sleeping girl laid it on the open novel. Waking an hour later, she chanced to look casually at the tabour. With a little cry of pleasure she picked up the heart-shaped bit of moist moss with its embedded cluster of mountain heart's-ease and her eyes were very soft as she laid it to her lips. There was no uncertainty as to their source; she knew that these were the first-offerings of the season, procurably only in the hardly penetrable cañons of the range, more than twenty dusty miles away, and she felt very grateful. She wore them on her corsage that night at dinner and later, coming on him smoking his post-prandial pipe under the stars, thanked him graciously. As he muttered the conventional commonplaces of depreciation, his gleaming eyes were riveted for a moment on the flowers. Something in the intensity of his glance struck her like a blow; she paled and instinctively covered the blossoms with both hands. Instantly her mind reverted to her afternoon's siesta and her cheeks flamed with consciousness. She was far from unsophistication; she had seen men look so before but never with a similar acceleration of her heart-beats, never with this fierce resentment which now coursed though her whole being. She was quivering with a sense of vague outrage and her breath came fast and hard. Then with the unaccountability of the unfathomable feminine, she deliberately detached one of the dainty blooms and, standing with the filmy laces on her bosom brushing against his chest, deftly fastened it on the lapel of his coat. After all, the man had ridden far that day for her pleasure, and she smiled inscrutably as she recalled, on retiring that night, how his hands had clenched and his breast heaved when she had given him the flower. The rest of the violets were sadly wilted now and she threw them out of the window with a sudden impatient anger. But an hour later a great horned owl, watching from a fence post the moonlit sward in front of the veranda in hopes of a possible mouse for his belated supper, hooted his contemptuous derision of another white-robed hunter groping in the shadows. And over at the bunkhouse a man with self-revilement was fumbling with a spray of heart's-ease and looking into vacancy. When she came down to breakfast the next morning Douglass was already far out on the range. He had thrown his whole heart and soul into his work and the effect was already visible to the most casual observer. The ranch grounds had been thoroughly policed, all the halting projects of Matlock's régime had been spurred to finality, and cleanliness, method and order had replaced the previous chaos and squalor of the C Bar. Everything radiated the new manager's virility and energy. The renovated ditches were glistening bank full with their life-giving floods; the alfalfa and grain fields, now properly kept and irrigated, were billowy seas of emerald fore-promise; everything betokened activity and thrift. In three short months he had wrought wonders with the really excellent material at hand and the C Bar was fast regaining its old-time prestige as the best-ordered ranch west of the Divide. Carter was openly enthusiastic over the wisdom of his choice of managers, a wisdom which he shrewdly supplemented by giving Douglass full sway in the conduct of affairs. At the latter's suggestion, he went East in June to secure certain necessary machinery, and the letter which had lain beneath her hammock the previous day was one written to Grace by her brother announcing his intention to have their mother accompany him on his return. The girl, interested by the novelty of her new environment, had elected to remain on the ranch, laughingly asserting that it was a precautionary measure in her brother's behalf, as she was sure Douglass had designs on the picturesque old ranch house and would tear down and rebuild it if not restrained by her presence. The real truth was that she knew in his loyal respect for her he would abstain from excesses in which he might be tempted to indulge in the absence of that restraint. She was not quite sure of the moral fortitude of this erratic young man, and even temporary interference with his work was a contingency calamitous to the C Bar interests. Up to last night she had felt only a great self-complacency over the result; but this morning, toying with her usually much-relished berries and cream, she was obsessed by the insistent thought that her self-congratulation was, after all, a trifle premature. The longer she reflected, the more she regretted that she had not gone back East with her brother. Not that she was in the slightest degree apprehensive of any untoward futurity; it was only that a new and unexpected factor had intruded itself into her already perfected scheme for the restoration of her brother's fortune--and the reclamation of Ken Douglass. Women are usually creatures of one idea, and she was no exception to the general rule; her whole mentality had been concentrated on this one achievement, and here at the very outset the fair fabric of her dreams was crumbling. She was oppressed with a sense of impending defeat that grew more and more disquieting as she recalled the stories she had heard of his indomitable will and pertinacity of purpose. She had been much impressed by a remark made by old Hank Williams on the morning of their first encounter, "Ken allus gits what he goes after!" At the time she deemed it a very grand, almost heroic attribute, but just now it was fraught with a new significance. Something in her cogitations sent the blood to her face, then it receded, leaving her pale. She pushed the untasted food away impatiently and rose from the table. Going swiftly to her room, she took from between the leaves of her diary a cluster of withered flowers and stepped to the open window. In the very act of their contemptuous casting away she hesitated irresolutely, looked at them once more compassionately and replaced them in the morocco-bound booklet. Then with an air of renewed determination she returned to her breakfast and ate everything comestible in sight. That night when Douglass returned, he bore in his arms a tiny antelope kid which he laughingly entrusted to her tender mercies. In his ride over the range he had come upon one of the pitiful little tragedies common to the great Outdoors with its unending struggle of the weak against the strong and merciless. In a little hollow of the foothills its mother, hamstrung by a pair of wolves and exhausted by her gallant fight against the inevitable, was making a last frantic effort to defend her offspring cowering between her feet. The revolver flashed twice vengefully and then a third time mercifully, for the poor doe's condition was hopeless. But of this third shot Douglass said nothing to Miss Carter, simply saying that the doe had succumbed to her injuries. Neither did he deem it advisable to tell her that with the economy and thrift inseparable from plainsmen, he had sent the carcass of the martyred mother to one of his outlying camps to eke out its larder, and so save the otherwise necessary sacrifice of a valuable yearling for camp meat. Nor did he mention the fact that this had occurred quite early in the afternoon, necessitating his "packing" the helpless kid about on his saddle for many weary miles. The girl's eyes had filled at his simple recital and she cooed assuringly to the kid, which nestled contentedly in her arms. But something in her eyes and about her lips as he threw the wolf pelts at her feet caused the man to look at her curiously. He had seen that expression once before on the face of the wife of the dead sheepman when some one had told her of the finding of a C Bar rider with a load of buckshot through his heart some weeks after the assassination of her husband. There had been no over-officious zeal displayed by the authorities in their attempts to fix the responsibility of the man's death, despite the fact that the sheepman's son possessed one of the only three shotguns in the county, the deceased being reputedly a "bad man" and notoriously the creature of Matlock. He it was who had assisted in the fleecing of poor Braun, and the general consensus of opinion was that "he only got what was coming to him!" The code of the range is as drastic as it is simple. "It's up to you now to mother this goat, Miss Grace," he said whimsically; "I'll send a man in to Tin Cup to-morrow for a gunnysackful of any pap-maker you nominate. We've got to assume the responsibility of him, his mother having come to grief on your demesne. When you are ready to christen him I'll get Red to stand godfather for him--that is, if you have no other preferred sponsor in mind." The girl looked up quickly; his tone seemed a bit patronizing and to her mind altogether too familiar. It was an opportune time to inaugurate a new order of things which all day she had been formulating. "I shall name him now," she said, icily. "He shall be known as Buffo and you are his sponsor." "Buffo--a buffoon!" He laughed a little constrainedly. "Well, I think the name is appropriate. He is a fool and so was his mother before him. Otherwise they'd have never ventured in where naught but angels have any license to tread." She bit her lip in chagrin as he lifted his sombrero and rode nonchalantly away. The intended rebuke had recoiled upon her and she was furious at her impotence. Retreating to the kitchen, she somewhat curtly ordered the cook--old Abigail Williams, sister to the postmaster, who in order to preserve the proprieties had been engaged in that capacity--to prepare some nourishment for her charge. "We've got to feed the thing," she snapped in a tone strangely variant from her endearing coo of a few minutes before. Abbie nodded briskly: "I'll fix up a rag on a bottle of new milk. I've raised 'em before. We bed two on em oncet--Hank ez thet foolish about sich critters." "It'll make quite a peart pet," went on the garrulous old body. "An' I s'pose ye'll be fer givin' it sum name? Ourn was Belshazzar an' Sappho. Hank got the buck's name outen a book where it said in slick soundin' poetry as how Belshazzar was king an' Belshazzar waz lord. Thet buck were sure the mos' uppity critter! Nuthin' waz good enuf fer him to sociate with and he herded by hisself mos'ly. He waz allus on thu prod, stompin' aroun' darin' thu other critters to fite. He waz powerful or'nary, that Belshazzar, lordin' it over everybody an' allus huntin' trouble. "He waz mean to thu she-goat an' treated her scan'lous! The more she tried to be sociable an' nice the more biggoty he got. She'd go up'n nuzzle 'im an' he'd back off an' look at her scornful and walk away high an' mighty-like on thu tips uv he's toes, jest like he's walkin' on aigs. He waz allus hurtin' uv her feelin's but he didn't seem to care none. An' thu poor critter would tag after 'im an' humor 'im ontil she made me sick! If he got outen her sight she'd blat an' take on suthin' drefful, an' one spring when he jumped thu fence an' went out gallivantin' with thu wild ones fer a spell, she went loco an' actooly cried tears! That's sure right. I seed 'em. "That was the spring that Ken Douglass hit this range. One day when she is actin' more foolish than, most he pats her on thu back an' calls her 'Sappho' an' spouts a lot o' hifalutin dago talk an' wipes her eyes with his new silk han'kerchief--really! Tenderfeets air cu'r'ous critters an' Ken acts loco a leetle hisself sumtimes. He takes a heap o' int'rest in her after that, and fetches her apples n' things every time he goes to Tin Cup. An' one day I hears that durn fool say to Sappho as how he wishes he was a goat so that he could teach her to fergit her sorrer. Did ye ever hear anythin' so plumb ridic-lous! Then one day he rides up to thu gate an' says: 'Miss Abbie'--he kin be real polite when he wants--'there's rejoicin' in Lesbos to-day. Belshazzar has come back!' Then he rides off laffin, an' I gits my sunbonnit and hikes down to ther pastur'. Sure 'nough, thar's thet fool buck, an' for the fust time _he's_ nuzzlin' her! An' thet Sappho she waz so foolish happy that I wanted to shake her." Grace put the kid down very gently on the floor. "I had thought of a name for him but--" A shadow darkened the door. "Hello, Buffo. You getting your first lesson, too?" The girl stiffened instantly. "I shall call him that, after all. Thank you, Mr. Douglass, for strengthening my resolution." "And as his godfather I, of course, must be Momus," said Ken, nothing abashed, though his eyes glittered. And in a not unpleasant if somewhat strident voice, he mischievously sang: "Why gall and wormwood in a throat Designed for hydromel! Far better be a Buffo goat And court the booze bot-tel." Her lips curled at what she mistook for an implied threat. With all the hauteur she could summon to her aid, she swept him with her scorn. "Oh! If you feel a really irresistible desire to get drunk," she said, "that is a waste of talent far more appreciable by the critics of the Alcazar; my brother, being unfortunately absent, will be desolated at missing _this_ performance." She regretted her temerity even before she had finished. His face seemed to age as she looked. A man putting such indignity upon him, at first view of that face, would have hastily laid his hand on his pistol-butt; the girl placed hers tremblingly above her heart. The man's self-restraint was wonderful. For an interminable moment which seemed an age to the frightened women--for even old Abbie was blanched with comprehension and stood with clasped hands and white lips--he was silent. Then in a voice whose calmness made the girl shiver with an undefinable fear, he said: "That is twice to-day, Miss Carter, that you have been pleased to insult me. I am most unfortunate in having incurred your disfavor. My intrusion here was to acquaint you with the news that your brother, accompanied by your mother, will be here to-morrow night, a rider having just brought a telegram to that effect. It will take me but a few minutes to gather my effects. I will submit a full account of my stewardship to Mr. Carter to-morrow--from Tin Cup. It will be sufficiently full and comprehensive enough to obviate the necessity of any explanations on your part. Have I your permission to retire?" Unable to think coherently she mutely nodded assent. Hat in hand, he turned on the threshold. "The performance will begin at ten, to-morrow night," he said. "Abbie, don't put any wormwood in Buffo's milk. It'll make him uppish." But the gods who dispose of man's proposals ordained that Douglass was not to leave the C Bar that night. As he swung out into the moonlight his nostrils were assailed with the pungent fumes of burning hay and a man came running toward him. "The stacks have been fired and the ditches cut! Red saw one of them and is on his trail!" Afar in the starlight a pistol snapped viciously; it was answered by a louder detonation, succeeded almost instantly by the fainter whip of the pistol. Then after a few seconds' interim came yet again the fainter report and all was silent. "That's Red's .45," said the man with curt positiveness. "T'other must have had a Winchester, and he didn't fire but one shot. Red shot last." They were running full speed toward the burning stacks and Ken chose to waste no breath in speculative reply. But he was seeing a different red than that of the flaming hay as he recalled Williams's warning: "Look out fer Matlock. He's a pizen skunk and he'll stoop to anythin' ter play even." The fire being incendiary, admitted but one deduction, and he was praying his gods to give this man into his hands. "'Twan't Matlock," said Red tersely, in answer to the interrogation in his comrade's eyes as he rode in to where they were standing helplessly watching the destruction of what was fortunately the smallest stack on the ranch, Ken's masterly directions executed by willing hands having extinguished the others. "'Twer that mizzuble Mexican side-kicker o' hisn, an' the damned varmint nearly got me. Shot his hoss an' he come back with his rifle. Got him second shot." "Yeh fired three," said the man who had summoned Douglass, tentatively. Red took a chew of tobacco. "Yep. Only winged him an' he possumed on me. Stuck his knife inter me but she glanced on a rib. He's daid now." His voice was unemotional but his face was white. Douglass, watching him sharply, laid his hand on the other's glove. "Better get up to the shack, Red," he said quietly, "You've lost a lot of juice." The man smiled wanly, reeled In his saddle, and clutching fruitlessly at the horn, slipped limply down into Douglass's supporting arms. Subsequent examination revealed that he had also been wounded by the Mexican's rifle shot. There was a ragged hole through the fleshy part of his thigh and hemorrhage had been profuse. Declining all offers of assistance, Douglass carried him to the bunkhouse and laid him on the rough bed. Looking at the white face of the fellow before him, his mouth resolved itself into a thin cruel line. "By God, Matlock, you will pay in full for this!" He had unconsciously sworn it aloud and the men gathered around the bed of their stricken comrade knew that supreme sentence had been passed. They made no comment, but as Douglass, rolling up his sleeves, bent to the clumsy but efficient surgery that was to save Red's life, one of them nudged his neighbor and said inconsequentially, "Red weighs good two hunnerd!" And he looked admiringly at the ripples playing silkily under the bronze satin of his foreman's arms. But far out on the prairie, riding in headlong guilty haste from the Nemesis that his craven heart dreaded as even his cowardice had never dreaded anything before, Matlock shivered telepathically and turned in his saddle. A startled night-fowl fluttered uncannily over his head and he crouched almost to his saddle-bow with terror. The flutter of Azrael's wings seemed very close! An hour later, as Douglass emerged from the bunkhouse, old Abigail hesitatingly accosted him. "Yuah to come up to thu house, Ken, right way! Now don' yuh be foolish, boy; remember she's only a gel--an' young at that!" He patted the wrinkled hand laid on his arm but shook his head in grim negation. "It isn't necessary, Abbie; you tell Miss Carter that it will all be in the report to-morrow!" And he gently but firmly put aside her restraining hand. But the old woman was wise in her generation. "Look heah, Ken Douglass," she indignantly stormed; "don't yuh try no hifalutin with me. I ain't goin' to be stood off with no such a bluff ez that! Who nussed yuh when yuh got shot up by this yeah very mizzuble outfit las' summeh? Yuh come along o' me without no moah talk. An' when yuh git theah yuh go down on yuh stubboahn knees to that little angel an' promise thet yuh'll be good." He laughed quizzically. "Is that one of the conditions she imposes--that getting down on my knees? I'm out of practice a little and my knees are all blacked up from that fire. I'm afraid I'd soil that immaculate carpet of hers." "Yuh hev soiled a heap moah than her cyapet already," said the old woman significantly, "an' yuh mind's been blacker than yuh knees. Did yuh think she was one o' them dance-hall huzzies yuh've been herdin' with all yuh mean life? An' up tha' she sits cryin'--" "Crying!" said the man sharply, and without another word he strode after the doddering old woman, who had knowingly turned even as she spoke. As he entered the living-room the girl rose with an involuntary cry. His hair, eyebrows and mustache had been badly singed, his face was smoke-grimed and dirty, great holes had been burned in the thin shirt, the flesh showing angrily red through the rents. He was in sharp contrast with her own white daintiness as he stood there grim and forbidding, but she thought she had never looked upon a manlier man. "I inferred from what Abbie said that you wished to see me?" The tone was cool and even but respectful. "Yes--I wished--I thought--" she faltered incoherently, looking appealingly at him. But he only waited impassively, and the girl nervously clasped her hands. "Tongue burned too?" snapped Abigail, with withering sarcasm, glowering wrathfully at him; the girl went up to him quickly, her eyes luminous with compassion. "Oh! You are injured--you are suffering--I did not know--" "It is nothing--merely a few slight scorches. Pray do not be concerned about it. And I am glad to assure you that McVey will recover. The bullet--" At the white terror which crept into the girl's face he stopped abruptly, clipping the words between his teeth and cursing his inadvertence. "The bullet--McVey--I do not understand," she was wild-eyed now with fear and her voice was very faint. Old Abigail with an incredibly quick movement caught her around the waist. "Sit down, honey, and we'll tell you about it. There! Thet's a dear. Matlock an' one uv his critters fired the haystacks an' cut the ditches so's Ken wouldn't hev no water to save 'em with. An' Red he see one uv 'em ridin' off an' runs him down an' shoots him up right! But the ornary cuss shoots back an' Red gets it in ther laig an' thet's all they is to it. Don't yuh worrit none; we only lost thu leetlest stack o' ther bunch." "And the other--the one who ran away?" asked the girl with quick concern. Abigail's lips curved in a grim smile. "Red shot three times. Once at the hoss." CHAPTER V "HER HEART WONT BE BROKE NONE" True to her intuition, he came to her, lying in the hammock waiting his coming the next morning. "I am afraid," he began apologetically, "that I will have to postpone my departure for some time, after all. It is imperative that the ditches be repaired, the crops needing immediate irrigation, and McVey's indisposition leaves us very short-handed. Besides, I am personally responsible for all these mishaps and must make them good." His speech was almost contrite in its humility and his manner had lost much of its assurance. It was a moment fraught with possibilities and she was fully aware that the smallest concession on her part would pave the way to reconciliation. But she did not know of the bitter travail in which he had labored the livelong night, and the significance of his closing words evaded her understanding. Attributing all the foregone evils to Matlock's personal hatred of him, and deeming himself therefore solely responsible for the damage inflicted by that worthy, he had quixotically resolved to remain in Carter's employ until his salary had accumulated to an amount sufficient to recoup the latter for all the loss sustained. That end attained, he would find Matlock--the rest was simple. Nothing of this she knew, and yet she was conscious of a great impellment to be kind to this man. She had half arisen with a gracious word of thanks for his herculean labors in the behalf of her brother on her lips, when, by some fatality, the morning wrap she was wearing dropped from her shoulders. It was unfortunate that his eyes fell on the instant. When he again raised them she had caught up the garment and with a care so exaggerated that it sent the blood to his face, was haughtily fastening it about her throat. Her intent was unmistakable and he hardened like adamant. All too late she repented; that one second of perversity had undone a whole night's chastening and his voice was as cold as ice when he resumed: "I will therefore be unable to meet your brother on his arrival. You can say to him that he will lose nothing by last night's work. I am going out to the ditch now and will not return until it has been fully restored." Then with an almost imperceptible inclination of his head, he left her without another look. Turning uneasily in the hammock, she discovered for the first time that the entrance to the bunkhouse was visible through the interstices of the wistaria. The door was open to admit the solace of the balmy air to the wounded man, whose pale face with its closed eyes was plainly discernible in the semi-gloom of the darkened room. Shuddering slightly, she put her hands before her eyes, lowering them at the very moment that Douglass, belted and spurred, led his saddled horse up to the door. She watched him enter, noting that he removed his sombrero on crossing the threshold. His every movement betokened care and caution, indicating his solicitude not to awaken the sleeper. Unconsciously she admired the sinuous, almost feline grace of the fellow who stood for quite a time looking down on his stricken comrade. Then she was startled to see him turn and raise his clenched fist in the air, his lips moving convulsively, and she shrank from what was written on his face when he again came softly out and mounted his horse. Ten minutes later she watched a cloud of dust blotting the horizon on the crest of the little rise to the north. When it had again settled, she went into her room and came out with a pair of shears in her hand. McVey, jaded and wan from the manipulations of the surgeon who had come down overnight from Tin Cup, waked to find an exquisite bouquet of freshly cut flowers in a quaint Japanese vase on the little stand beside his bed. He had seen that vase before on the window-sill of Miss Carter's room and he blinked incredulously at it. His wonder was only exceeded by his embarrassment when, a few minutes later, that lady herself in person entered the room, followed by Abigail, who bore a platter of daintily prepared food. "It's might good o' yuh, ma'am, too good!" he assured her in clumsy gratefulness, as she rearranged his pillows after the refection. "But yuh shouldn't go to so much trouble; I'd rest a heap easier in my mind if I knowed you wasn't puttin' yuhself out none. But," reminiscently, "that chicken soup were shore fine!" "You shall have some every day until you are well," she beamed on him from the doorway. He thanked her with a gravity whose solemnity of effect was somewhat offset by his next utterance. "Say, Miss Williams," he said seriously in a stage aside, "when yuh cal'late I am well enough to stand it, yuh go out an' git some other Greaser to come up here and shoot me some more!" "Yuh shet yuah trap, Red McVey," snapped the vestal addressed reprovingly, "an' rest yuah pore weak brain. Ain't yuh made trouble enough already, gettin' yuhself shot up right here in thu thick o' thu hayin' an' Ken short-handed as it was? What onaccountable idjits men is anyway! Now yuh be good fer a spell!" She flounced out with assumed asperity, halting at the threshold for a last admonishing look. The big fellow, his head hung in abashment, looked up pleadingly. "Kiss me, mommer, an' I'll go to sleep!" Routed horse, foot and dragoons, Abigail fled in confusion, and Red grinned in self-complacency as Miss Carter's silvery laugh tinkled in diminishing crescendo. Then he turned his face to the wall and really fell asleep. "Beats all," confided Abigail that afternoon, to Grace, watching her deft manipulation of the dinner's pie crust, "what misonderstandable fools these men critters be. Thar's thet Ken Douglas o' yourn,"--watching slyly out of the corner of her eye the flushing face and compressing lips of her auditor--"now 'tain't sca'cely six months since he was sky-hootin' around yeah, wishful o' killin' every blessed cowpuncha in this outfit; an' now they ain't ary one o' the pin-headed dogies that ain't a beggin' to be allowed to do his killin' fer him! He had quite a time makin' 'em promise not ter cut in on Matlock, las' night. I hear 'm jawbonin' about it oveh to thu shack. But they finally allows he's Ken's meat an' 'grees ter keep han's off. I'd feel some sorry fer that Matlock ef he wa'nt sech a pizen skunk. I r'ally do wisht he was moah of a man! Ken's too clean a boy to hev ter stomp out sech a snake." Miss Carter was not a woman of iron nerve and this dispassionate talk of killing affected her visibly. As the old woman proceeded with her disquieting recital, her face blanched, but with a great effort at self-control she held her peace; this was evidently the hour of revelations--and she had to know! "But he has it ter do--he suah has! An' I wisht 'twas oveh. I doan reckon Matlock will ketch him nappin'--Ken's eye tooths is cut--but yuh nevah kin tell!" She sighed lugubriously and the girl's blood ran cold in her veins. "Thar's allus a chanct--an' Ken is a heap keerless at times. I hope he gits him soon!" "But why?" said Grace unevenly, making a heroic struggle to retain the composure that was fast deserting her. "You talk as if he were compelled to kill this man." "Well, hain't he?" replied Abbie, with naïve surprise in her voice, as she stopped pinching the edges of a pie and looked up in astonishment. "Hain't Matlock declar'd hisself? Hain't he bragged as how he'd cut thu heart out o' Ken an' show it ter him? Didn't he crawfish like a cowardly coyote when Ken called his bluff in thu Alcazar, an' then came sneakin' around yeah in thu night an' buhn yuh haystacks? Why, what moah d'yuh want him to do?" The indignation in her voice was genuine. "But why--I cannot understand--" began the girl confusedly, "why is it necessary for Mr. Douglass to personally undertake the punishment of this wretch? Have you no laws that can be invoked to punish the one and protect the other?" "Laws!" snorted the old woman contemptuously, "what good would all the laws be to Ken arter Matlock had him pumped full o' lead? Thar's only one law fer rattlesnakes on ther range, honey--kill 'em befoah they gits a chanct ter strike!" The leathery old face twitched venomously and she slashed the pie top with suggestive vigor. "But that would be murder!" gasped the girl, her face gray with horror. "Murder, huh! An' what would it be if Matlock has his way? Didn't he kill thet sheepherd--who whopped him fair an' squar'--in cold blood? Didn't he jest nat'rally butcher thet pore Dutch boy arter fust cripplin' o' his gun on ther sly, ther tre'cherous haound! Murder--!" Her gray crest was erect and she was breathing audibly through passion-pinched nostrils. She put her hand kindly on the girl's shoulder. "Hit's got ter be one or t'other on 'em, honey. They hain't no other way. An' out yeah whar wimmin 'n children air left alone a heap at times hit's every good man's duty ter pertect his own. Did yuh heah what happened ter thet sheepman's wife thet night arter they killed her man? "Hit war one man done hit arter the rest was gone. He was masked, o' cose, but all thu rest o' yuh outfit was at thu Alcazar--Matlock with 'em--so's ter prove a alleyby. Thu one that were shy was thu feller they found on Hoss Creek a week later with nine buckshot in his rotten heart." And then she avoided the girl's eyes as she whispered something that brought Grace to her feet screaming with horror. "Naow I ain't sayin'," she went on slowly, "thet Matlock is as low as thet. T'other was a half-breed 'n some say a convick. But thar's no room fer him on this range naow, an' he knows it. An' that kind o' man allus goes bad. He's got it in specul fer Ken, an' hit's suah one er t'other on 'em." And then she shot her last bolt mercilessly: "Would yuh ruther he killed Ken?" Outside somewhere a raven, scavengering indolently about the corrals, croaked gutturally; never again as long as she lived would Grace Carter hear without shuddering the uncanny dissonance of that foul bird. In the silence of that suddenly oppressive room the ticking of the little cheap alarm clock on the mantel beat upon her brain like the strokes of a drum, seeming to her disordered mind to say "Kill-Ken!--Kill-Ken!" She passed her hand numbly over her forehead, mechanically adjusting a stray wisp of hair. She was dimly conscious of an agony of compunction on the wrinkled face before her, but it excited in her only a dull wonder. Why was Abbie looking so strangely at her? If only that tiresome clock would cease its muttering! What was this strange thing now happening to her, this slipping away of a part of herself, this new and perturbing sense of sudden oldness and wisdom and--and heart-wrenching fear! For a moment she plucked petulantly at the velvet band about her throat; the room seemed reeling about her and she swayed unsteadily on her feet. With a cry of keen self-reproach, Abigail threw her arm around the tottering girl and bore her into the darkened bedroom. When she emerged later it was with a sorely troubled mien. "I'm not quite settled in my mind thet I've done ther right thing in tellin' her so suddenly. Still, since he's goin' ter do it she hed best be prepared. Pore lamb! Why didn't Ken finish ther job in thu fust place and be done with it! Now it'll come between 'em an' like as not she won't hav' him on account of it. Ther Lawd do move in myster'ous ways fer a fac'! An' they do say thet ther trail o' troo love is rough an' crooked. An' them sech a well-matched span, too!" Abigail had evidently jumped to conclusions of her own, in her range-born simplicity overlooking the obvious disparity that a more captious conventionality would have interposed between the respective social planes of a society blossom and a "wild and woolly" cowpuncher. And if she had drawn any comparisons they would have been indubitably in favor of the latter. For in her environment she had acquired the faculty of properly estimating the worth of a real man. And then, again, Abigail was a woman, and there is a proverb about the contempt of familiarity. "I reckon 'twer ther heat," she opined barefacedly when the young woman, a girl no longer since the ticking of that clock, expressed her inability to account for her sudden indisposition. "I heve nevah fainted mahself; reckon I wouldn't know how," with a grim attempt at jocularity. "Nevah had the time, anyhow. Yuh feelin' peart again, honey?" Grace assented languidly. The antelope kid, fed to repletion, was blinking at her from his blanket nest in the corner. As she spoke he arose and wabbled over to her side, laying his cool, moist muzzle against her hand. "Jest look at thet, now!" said Abbie delightedly. "Thu leetle cuss wants ter be petted an' coddled. Well, he's like all other he-critters, got ter be humored an' made much of, whether they desarve it or not. An' I guess," with shrewd philosophy and a certain deliberate emphasis, "thet's what we poor she-males was mos'ly created for. Take Hank, now. He's a reg'lar baby about sech things--an' whines like a sick pup ef he's overlooked in the slightest. Thar now, you Buffo!--lawks a mussy, dearie, he's got yuh hand all slobbered up--you hont yuah hole! It don't do to giv' 'em too much rope. Ef yuh do they's suah ter run on it an' thar's trouble all raound. Feed 'em well, speak 'em kind, an' give 'em theah haids on a hahd pull er in a tight place, an' they gentle quick, an' easy an' come up pullin' arter every fall. But doan yuh never go to crowdin' of 'em onreasonable at thu wrong time er they'll balk an' lay down, er kick over thu dash-boahd an' run away, accordin' to thu natuah o' thu brute. Yuh kin keep 'em up on thu bit when thu goin's good, but doan spur 'em when they's excited 'n feelin' they cawn! "Thu mos' on 'ems ondependable at times! some on 'ems loco all thu time--thet kind espeshully" pointing toward the bunkhouse from which was issuing the tinkle of a guitar to the accompaniment of a stentorian wail: "Haow d-r-r-y I am! Haow d-r-r-y I am! Gawd o-h-h-nly knows haow-w-w dry I am!" "Yuah takin' thet tuhn quite upsot me, and I done quite forgot thet no 'count Red. Heah him yowl! Long ways from daid yet, 'pears to me!" Nevertheless, the cool hand laid on his hot brow was invested with a motherly tenderness, and the chiding voice was gentle and kind. "Yuh better go and lay in yuah hammock, dearie," she suggested to Grace, "an' rest up a bit; I got a lot o' tidyin' up to do yeah." The room was already painfully clean and the man on the bed knit his brows quizzically. "I do want my hair curled 'n' my mustache waxed 'n' some ody-kolone on my hank-chy," he murmured plaintively. "I shore do!" Abigail glared at him, but Grace, with a final pat to the pillows, smiled indulgently. "Get well quickly; we need you too much; and it must be dreadful to have to stay indoors in this weather." Then she went out rather abstractedly, McVey's eyes following her with the wistfulness of a dog's. Abbie, watching him, smiled satirically. "Red, too!" she ejaculated mentally; "well, why not? He's a whole lot of a man, hisself, an cats kin look at queens ef they likes. An' queens hev a lot o' things ter be done fer 'em thet only men kin do. I wonder now--!" She looked at him speculatively, her lips tightening with a sudden determination. The cowboy grinned with quick prescience. "Spit it out, Abbie. I caint help myself." "Red," she said quietly without an attempt at preamble, "will yuh kill Matlock fer me?" He stared his astonishment undisguisedly. There was absolutely no doubt as to the seriousness of her question; the grim set of her jaws, the anxiety in her eyes and general tenseness of muscle throughout the whole lean body betokened that. In this man's life surprises were not infrequent and now as ever he displayed only the nonchalance characteristic of all typical frontiersmen in moments of crisis. Something in her manner and attitude repressed the almost irresistible desire to answer her humorously, and his reply was grave to solemnity. "Yuh see, Miss Abbie, we-all promised Ken thet we wouldn't cut in on thet deal. But I'd jest love to oblige yuh, an' if yuh can square me with the old man I'll take Matlock's trail soon as I can straddle m' hoss agin. Yuh see, Ken's kinder got hes heart sot on doin' thet leetle stunt hisself, an' he's apt to r'ar up an' sweat under thu collar when anybody musses with hes things. Yuh onderstand how 'tis--" She withered him with a measureless scorn: "Yes, I onderstan'. Yuah afraid o' Matlock!" She turned to go. "An' I thought this was a man!" "Stop a minnit, Miss Willi'ms!" The words were scarcely audible but she wheeled instanter. He had not moved a muscle so far as she could detect but she felt as though she had been clutched in a grasp of steel and whirled on a pivot. But the erstwhile pallid face was now justifying his nickname and his eyes were black with menace. "Thet's not eggsactly squar' now, is it?" His voice was almost pleading, the trembling hands alone betrayed the strain he was laboring under. Mountain born and range bred, Abigail Williams was a woman of undaunted courage, but even her invincible spirit recoiled momentarily from the task she set herself. It was like plowing in a powder magazine with a red-hot share, but she was only concerned with the end in view and, deliberately considering the risk, employed the only means at hand. "Squar' er raound," she said incisively, "It's thu mizzable truth. Ef it wa'nt, yuh would take thu job offen Ken's ban's an' keep my lamb's heart from breakin'!" She could hear the beating of his heart in the absolute quiet that followed her audacious words. When she dared to raise her eyes he was very pale and wan but he met her pitying glance with a brave smile although his lips were twitching. "I reckon that I've been a bit thick-haided," he said simply. "I ought have knowed thet you wa'nt the kind o' woman to take no sech mean advantage of a feller. Yuh'll excuse _me_, Miss Abbie! Yuh see, I didn't savvy the how o' things." Abbie, torn with remorse and pity, was all woman again. In the reaction she wished she had left her words unsaid and impulsively went over and laid her hand on his. The cowboy covered it with his other bronzed paw and for a long time neither spoke. It was McVey who broke the silence. "I'll kill him, o' cose. Reckon it'll cost me me' job--an' then some! It's goin' to be mahnst'ous hard to make Ken see it thu right way an' he'll be some rambunctuous about it. He's awful sot in hes ways an' it's goin' to be hard to explain. I'd shore hate to have some one play me thet trick, I suttinly would!" The woman was crying now and as the weak drawl ended she grew hysterical. "Oh! Gawd, what hev I done?" she moaned under her breath; then she frantically implored him to forget what she had said, insisting that it was all a joke, that she was merely "tryin' to pay him back fer his imperence" the night before. But Red smiled his entire conviction. "Miss Abbie, don't yuh do it no moah, don't yuh, now! It shore ain't yuah strong suit, yuh giv' yuah han' away. Lyin's man's work, an' a powerful bad business it is, too! Gawd nevah intended a woman's lips to be dirtied that away." "An' besides, it's too late," he went on dispassionately. "Yuh've made many things plain to me that I was too locoed to see before. But tell me straight, is that true about her'n Ken?" She nodded mutely, not daring to meet his eyes. He looked long into the starlit sky, and Abbie, emboldened after a time by his seeming composure, rose and bade him good night. He reached out for the cigarette materials laid convenient to his hand. "Guess I'll make a terbacco smoke." Abbie struck a match and he luxuriously filled his capacious lungs. Then slowly exhaling the pungent wreath he flicked the ash from the cigarette tip and tentatively extended his sinewy arm. It was as devoid of tremor as that of a bronze statue and he nodded his satisfaction. "Her heart won't be broke none." His voice was very calm and even. CHAPTER VI THE MAN AND THE WOMAN At the junction of Horse and Squaw creeks, some seven miles from where Grace Carter was lying in her hammock awaiting the arrival of her brother and mother, Ken Douglass outspanned his weary scraper team and called his day's work done. The damage had been of even greater magnitude than he had feared and his most sanguine estimate placed the time required for complete repairs at three more days. He had impressed every available man and team into the service, leaving only one young fellow at the ranch to do the choring inseparable to a holding like the C Bar. Having outlined his plans and assigned to each man his specific duty, he had personally plunged into the thick of the work, driving his men only a trifle less strenuously than he did himself. In consequence whereof it was a sore-muscled crowd that ruefully rubbed their aching backs about the camp-fire that night, quaintly profane after the manner of their kind. "Gawd! But you make a bum driver, Punk," said one of them dispassionately to a short, squat fellow who was anointing his blistered hands with bacon drippings. "Yuh pushed so hawd on thu lines that yuh raised cawns on that claybank's gooms. Was yuh thinkin' yuh was polin dogies oveh to Glenwood again?" Now Punk Dixon was a bit sensitive on the dogie question; while employed in the engaging pursuit of prodding refractory yearlings up a loading chute that spring his flimsy footing had given way, precipitating him under the feet of two score frightened animals whose sharp hoofs had reduced his brand new "chaps" to rags and himself to a sadly dilapidated mass of incoherent blasphemy. But he grinned good-naturedly and wiped the surplus grease off his hands over the head of his tormenter. "Thar! That's better'n that pink axle-grease yuh been lavigatin' yuh pore old coco with, Woolly," vigorously massaging the viscid fat into the bald pate with his thumbs, much to the hilarious enjoyment of the inconstant crowd who laughed even louder at the last victim's discomfiture. It was a tradition that "Woolly" Priest had been born with exceedingly long hair in plenteous supply, losing it in the stress of a hard winter succeeding "thet awful calamity to Grand County," as the narrator generously put it, by reason of a goat's having dined upon it, mistaking it for wire grass! According to the veracious relator his head had been so soft and mushy that the goat had "pulled the bristles out by the roots 'n they wa'nt annythin' left fer a starter." Certain it is that the shiny poll was entirely devoid of any hirsute covering at the present time, despite its owner's unremitting applications of all the patent nostrums he could get--the latest being an unguent built by Red McVey's suggestion out of rattlesnake oil and Tobasco sauce! "Well," said one of the more optimistic among them as he kicked off his boots preparatory to turning in after supper, "this yeah life might be better, 'n it might be wuss. But I'm shore thankful fer this yeah leetle ole baid, an' thu knowin' that I'm goin' to roll out of it to-morrow mawnin' alive an' kickin'. They's a heap o' satisfaction in bein' able to ante when yuh are called to eat!" "An' thu daid don't eat none. Say, Hungry, haow d' yuh like to be Braun?" The speaker was the friend of the dead man who had discovered the mutilation of the revolver. The badinage ceased instantly and an ominous silence fell upon the whole assemblage. "Hungry" Thompson looked over to where Douglass was morosely glaring over the demolished ruins of his spring's labor. Even through the murk of the gathering night the clenched hands and swelling neck cords were visible to that sharp eye. "Haow d'yuh like to be Matlock?" A match snapped sharply as some inveterate smoker kindled his cigarette. A man sat bolt upright in his blankets and Hungry swore angrily. The camp sank to rest but not exactly to sleep, as the occasional clearing of a throat evinced. Eventually, when the fire had sunk to a heap of smouldering coals, tired nature asserted itself and the men slept. To Douglass alone came neither sleep nor rest. His mind was in a turmoil of doubt and anger--doubt as to the nature of the strange obsession under which he travailed, and anger directed chiefly against himself. His hatred of Matlock was very bitter, but it was inconsequential in comparison with his savage self-objurgation. He did not go to bed, as common sense would have dictated and overwrought frame pleaded, but sat by the dead coals smoking himself black in the face. "What an egregious ass I am!" he reflected, reviewing his senseless and stilted actions of the day before. "Here I am quarreling with the first bread and butter that ever came my way with jelly on it. After all, I am only a menial, Carter's hired man, and I presumed too far. What in the devil's name is the matter with me? My hide ought to be thick enough by this time, God knows! And yet that fool girl's little bodkin went through it like an electric spark and cut to the marrow! Well, she's taught me my place, all right, all right." He smiled his grim admiration of her cleverness. "But it's too late. It's a pity, too, for I think I could have made good." It was characteristic of him that he never entertained even a momentary thought of a possibility of reconciliation. He had told her what he was going to do and that was settled business. It was going to be a little rough on him to quit "broke"; it would take all his summer's wages to recoup Carter for that hay and the loss of the men's time incurred in the ditch mending. The fall round-up would be over by that time and work is scarce for unattached cowpunchers in the winter. It meant "choring for his board" until spring's activities widened the vista and the prospect was uninviting to one of energetic temperament. Even more characteristic was his utter lack of resentment of the young lady's rebuke; he had "presumed too far" and got what was coming to him. He was conscious that he had deserved it, in more ways than one. But even as he admitted this to himself there crept again into his eyes a something not altogether wholesome and reassuring to any woman arousing it. Of love so far he had known only two phases, the filial which is specifically restricted, and the universal which is diametrically diffused over so great an area that it is dubious whether it really merits that high classification. For his parents he had entertained an affection closely approximating idolatry, especially for his mother, whom he had known best, his father having died in his early childhood; he also had a certain affection for little children, for flowers, for the more frail and helpless things of creation in general, that might be dignified by the name of love but which more probably was merely the indulgent patronage of all strong natures for things weaker than themselves. At college he had made no special strong affiliations for the simple reason that few of his fellow-students were strong enough, physically, mentally, or morally, to greatly command his respect. And all unknowing to him he had come away from school with a hunger in his really affectionate heart that had not been appeased by precarious contact with the unsatisfying elements among which his lines had been cast. Not once in all his western career had he met with an affinitive soul on which he might have leaned and so gained that chastening sense of tender dependence without which no man ever yet attained happiness. Women's beauty he admired, but their virtue he revered not at all; yet he had a paradoxical respect for that quality, whenever he encountered it, that first begat and ultimately conserved in him that anomalous chivalry of the frontier which impels a man to the espousal of the under dog's cause without hesitation. He would have fought instantly and to the death for a woman insulted; but he would just as readily have sprang to the aid of a man battling against unfair odds. Of conventionality he had only a contemptuous disregard, taking the goods the gods gave him--when altogether to his fastidious taste--when and where they offered. The very recklessness displayed, and its all too frequent indulgence and participation in by the objects of its incitation, had made him calloused, and cynical to a degree very disastrous to a man of his tender years. For at twenty-six it is befitting to take off one's hat to a petticoat hanging on a clothes line, after the traditional habit of Lord Chesterfield. Let us not sit too hardly in judgment upon this red-corpuscled young savage. The fires of youth burn fiercely into the natural sequence of maturity's steady glow and senility's ashes. A boy's will is proverbially the wind's will, and youth must have its fling. In a land where every man is a law unto himself it is hard to fix limitations and the tide of license rolls high. There is no caste on the frontier, and the range of passion is as wide as the boundless horizon. He had been tenderly received in high places before, and so there was nothing incongruous in his quick desire for Grace Carter. Something of this was passing through his mind now, but somehow it savored of sophistry and he knit his brows. He had said or done nothing to which the most hypercritical could logically take exceptions, yet her resentment had been spontaneous and unmistakable. "_Honi soit qui mal y pense!_" he muttered, and again his eyes held that unlovely light. "One who divines, must feel--and she is only a woman after all." But the conclusion was not altogether satisfying and he shook his head. The cigarette was suddenly bitter in his mouth and he threw it away impatiently. "No, damned if I believe that, either! I don't know what I believe. Guess I better hit the feathers." He rolled into bed, blinked sleepily at the stars for a few minutes, and with an indifferent "What the hell do I care, anyway!" fell asleep. And in the hammock seven miles away she was making excuses for him. "He is very impatient of restraint," she was thinking, "and probably I misjudged him, he is so different from the others." Nevertheless a sudden flash of anger kindled in her eyes; then, strangely enough, she smiled softly into the starlight. She had yet two hours to wait and the balmy stillness of the night was conducive to reflection. Her thoughts went back to the scenes of her former life and the people she had known in that vastly different environment. Men had been plentiful. In that effete land of worrying necessities the shrine of beauty, when allied with reputed wealth, has many devotees; the Carters were known to be "cattle kings." She was familiar with many types, and with the arrogance of all youthful women, deemed herself an infallible judge of men and their motives. There had been men of parts among her acquaintances: soldiers, merchants, clergymen, writers, financiers, and fops galore. Some she had respected, a few she had admired, many she had tolerated, but none she had loved. She was generous in her estimation of their worth and strove to enthuse over their many excellences, but to her irritation, suddenly realized that she was weighing them all against a gray-eyed man in a fire-rent shirt, with smoke-grimed face and singed hair. She turned uneasily in her hammock, catching through the wistaria a glimpse of the open door of the dimly-lit bunkhouse. She could see the intermittent glow of Red's cigarette, and the glisten of the polished steel in the holster, hung carelessly on his bed-post. Suddenly she was infected by the magnificent extravagance of this western life, this queer jumble of loyalty, pride, poverty, sacrifice, sin, strength, suffering, fortitude and malignity. She felt a fierce satisfaction in living where men begged for the privilege of killing the enemies of their friends, and she felt almost grateful to Red for his savage appreciation of the courage which had transformed Douglass from his dearest foe into his dearest friend. She had even a greater reason to be grateful to him, had she only known it. "He must not leave," she said with a fine determination. "It will check his career--and we owe so much to him. I am a super-sensitive little fool and I will make amends. Bobbie said we must 'make it up to him' and I will. He is a gentleman, and he will not make it hard for me." Comforted by her intuitive assurance of that fact she laid her soft cheek on the pillow at precisely the moment of Douglass's line assumption of indifference, and fell asleep. But out in the kitchen an old woman was awkwardly stroking the head of an antelope kid. "I wonder ef I done right?" she mumbled. "I wonder!" CHAPTER VII BELSHAZZAR In October the Colorado mountain lands are very beautiful. They lack, it is true, the gorgeous coloring of the eastern Indian summer, with its beauty of scarlets, crimsons, ochres, maroons and mauves, the western color scheme being in half-tints of low tone. The barbaric splendor of the eastern autumn is here reflected only in the evening skies and in the glowing grays, blues, browns, blacks, bronzes and golds of the eyes, hair and faces of the hardy mountaineers. Over the foothills and valleys are spread tenderly the more delicate tints of the Master's palette; the enveiling haze is golden instead of purple, the tints of verdure and earth are softly subdued and blend together with all the exquisite harmony of an old Bokhara rug. Even the once-disfiguring alkali barrens appeal to the eye now, their velvet cloaks of ash-of-roses contrasting most agreeably with the delicate olive-grays and heliotropes of the sage and rabbit brush. Here and there a belated Indian-shot flaunts its brilliant lance and over yonder a cactus masks its treachery with a blush; an occasional larkspur or gentian raises blue eyes from the gentle hill slopes, and down on the plains the martial Spanish-bayonet parades its oriflamme. The whole landscape has an underlying wash of burnt sienna, glowing warmly through the superimposed color. The forests are mysterious with silent flitting mouse-blue and gray-tawny shadows, and the dim trails and passes are incised with the quaint hieroglyphics which tell the story of the migrant deer. The oily black-green splashes of spruce and fir, the silvery valance of the aspens, and the ermine of the snow coronal against the puce of protruding peaks in the higher ranges are the only decided colors in mass. Of early mornings the mountain bases in the distances are billows of smoked-pearl mist; as the light strengthens and the temperature rises, the mist rises with it, dissipating gradually into thin wreaths of dainty rose-pink, faint orange--and nothingness. In the as yet undisturbed shadows the bold cliffs suggest to the imaginative mind aggregations of uncut crystals; higher up, where they catch the downward reflected rays of the warming sun, they are amber and wine-colored topazes, and on the ice-capped summits they are scintillant as diamonds. At midday the pure rarified air is a marvel of transparent clarity and everything is as clear cut as a cameo. It is not until late in the afternoon that the great mystery evolves. All of a sudden one is aware of a decided and yet intangible change. Imperceptibly but surely the temperature falls, the quality of light alters, the heat shimmer is no more and a golden radiance replaces the brazen glare of the sun; into the nostrils steals an indescribable perfume, elusive and infrangible, the brown scent of autumn wafted to the senses on the cool breath of the frozen heights above. Instinctively the perceptions sharpen; this is the hour when beast and bird bestir themselves and the vista is enlivened with a new animation. Out of nowhere, seemingly, struts a sage hen with her brood; another and yet another materializes under your feet until it seems as if the very soil was being transmuted into patches of gray-speckled life. In the apparent vacancy of that soft-swelling knoll to the west looms up the phantom bulk of an antelope, disproportionately large and deceptively black against the sun. A dun-colored heap of trash at the foot of a sagebrush in the bight of the dry creek-bed below resolves itself into a very live-looking coyote which blinks yearningly at the unattainable venison on the knoll above, wistfully licks his chops and slinks evilly in the wake of the grouse broods. As the sun dips behind the detached mountain spurs in the west the shadows grow slightly blue and the high lights intensify. By some optical necromancy the clouds seem massed in the west, the whole eastern sweep of sky being an unbroken wash of salmon pink, relieved by tinges of apple-green at its nethermost edges. Against this tender background the minutest details of the majestic Rockies stand out with such vivid distinctness that one gasps with the wonder of it. Long after the low lands have gloomed these heights glow with a glory indescribable, and when it has finally passed one feels as though a glimpse of Heaven itself had been vouchsafed to the soul torn with Life's torturing skepticism. But what words can describe, what brush portray the awful grandeur of the western sky! Before that riot of color the eye falls abashed as did those of Moses on the mount. The sublimity of it shrivels man's pitiful egoism until he grovels in humility and awe. When God lays His hand upon the sky the dimmest eye sees and the most skeptical heart believes! She was saying as much in substance to him as they rode homeward in the soft afterglow, her face transfigured by the reverence in her heart. He assented gravely, his eyes dwelling admiringly upon her rare beauty. In the hallowing light of the hour she was invested with a new charm to this appreciative Pantheist and from some pigeon-hole of his well-stocked and retentive memory called the almost-inspired voice of old Ossian: "Fair was Colna-Dona, the daughter of kings, Her soul was a pure beam of light!" Unconsciously he put his thought into words and the voice was very gentle. She looked at him dubiously, almost apprehensively; it was hard to differentiate between this man's cynicism and sincerity. Then she dropped her eyes in rosy confusion, her heart leaping unaccountably. "That was a false note the Psalmist struck," he went on quietly, "when he sang of the wrath of his God. It were better he had dwelt only on the sweeter quantity of His love. I am sorry for that devotion inspired only by fear. _This_ is the manifestation best calculated to insure one's keeping in the right trail." He swept his hand comprehensively toward the western glory. "Men do not love the thing they fear--nor women either." His tone was quizzical and challenging. She looked up in sudden relief; this was more familiar ground and she laughed with sudden audacity. "How do you know?" "About women? Well, I'll admit that was a bluff; but I know all about men; I am one of them! The divinity that shapes our ends must kiss, not kick!" At this unconscious confirmation of old Abigail's sage conclusions her laugh pealed out merrily. "Feed 'em well, speak 'em kind, an' give 'em theah haids on a hawd pull er in a tight place," she quoted with inimitable mimicry, and he grinned with quick understanding. "Good old Abbie! I wonder who she loved enough to learn all that? And so you've been taking lessons, too!" "I thought we had done with that," she said almost pleadingly. "You make it very hard for me!" Instantly he was all contrition. "Forgive me! I shall not offend again." She took his extended hand frankly and for a time they rode in silence. The narrow cañon trail necessitated their riding very closely together and occasionally his leathern chaps brushed against her. Once, as they rounded an abrupt turn, the heavy revolver at his hip was jammed painfully against her gauntlet; she merely shut her teeth and smiled. They were returning from Tin Cup, whither they had gone in the morning in company with Robert and his mother, who were leaving for the East. The morning after his arrival at the ranch she had bravely told her brother the whole circumstances of the preceding week, magnanimously taking upon herself all the blame--in which truth compels us to say her brother entirely agreed--and thereafter had ridden out to the camp of the ditch repairers and patched up a truce with Douglass. "I am only a tenderfoot," she had wisely begun, "and always have had an unhappy faculty of doing the wrong thing unintentionally. You are a big, strong, generous man, and you will hold no malice against a foolish girl--!" He capitulated instantly; but he was over-voluble in his reassurances and somehow she divined that her apology had missed fire so far as it affected his determination to leave when he had recouped her brother for the losses he had unwittingly brought about. She was not for a moment deceived by his studiously polite words but was too politic to betray it. He had affected not to see the hand she had timidly extended in amity and for that he would pay, later! There was much of old Bob Carter's inflexible determination in this frail-looking daughter of his. To her mother she had, curiously enough, said nothing about it. She had even been unwise enough to impose secrecy upon her brother and Abigail as to the cause of the conflagration and Red's mishap, forgetting that Mrs. Carter was range bred and born, and that Nellie Vaughan was an incorrigible gossip! It would not have added to her equanimity to have known that inside of twenty-four hours her astute mother was in possession of all the facts and considerably perturbed thereover. She would, however, have appreciated the relief in her mother's eyes on her first encounter with Douglass. "Clean, manly and good to look at," had been her shrewd verdict. "Thoroughbred stock, too. A good friend and a bad enemy! A good cowman and a valuable accession all around. I really must congratulate Robbie. But what is Grace's mysterious interest in him? She was very anxious not to have me find out the facts about this latest outrage, poor dear! Was it that she was afraid that I would be unduly exercised over a trifle like this?" She smiled somewhat grimly as her mind went back to that day when, over her husband's unconscious form thrown at her feet by the benumbing bullets of a gang of rustlers, she had emptied the magazine of his Winchester to such effect that border men rode far out of their way to take off their hats to "Bob Carter's pard." The recollection sent the blood into the fine old cheeks and her hands were again clenched retrospectively upon that shapely bit of walnut and steel which had served her so well that day. Then the lips softened wondrously and a great sweetness flooded her eyes. She was thinking how tenderly he had kissed her powder-blackened hands and bruised shoulder, his heart throbbing with love and wonder and pride of her. She was very gracious to Douglass that night at dinner, leading him on with skill to talk of himself, and drawing him out to a degree that would have astonished him had he realized it. Under her charming personality, quick and sympathetic intelligence and clever induction, his reserve melted gradually and soon he was talking more freely than he had ever done to human being before. When he had finally made his exit she turned thoughtfully to her children. "We want to be very judicious in our dealings with that young man. He is of sterling quality, but super-sensitive and impulsive, and requires handling with gloves of velvet. I think he is scrupulously honest, and I should imagine inordinately brave--and vain! Do you know anything of his antecedents?" "Only that he is American born, of Scotch descent, mother," replied Robert, "and that he was educated at Yale. He is a civil engineer by profession, I believe, but he is hardly the kind of man from whom one would attempt to force confidences. All I know is that he is the pluckiest fellow in the world, and the most generous and considerate. Why, one night at the Alcazar--?" and he proceeded to the eager relation of his pet story. She listened attentively, nodding her full comprehension. "That is what I would have expected of him; I am seldom mistaken in my judgment of the type. And I presume his services here are in every way satisfactory? Well, let us make every consistent effort to retain him; such men are scarce even in this land of good men. I suppose that the man Matlock has left the country?" "He has not been seen since the night of which I spoke. Ken seems to have run him out for keeps!" His voice was distinctly boastful. "And if he knows what is good for him he'll stay out!" If Mrs. Carter, glancing casually at her daughter, noted the sudden compression of Grace's lips, she made no comment thereon. She had craftily wormed out of one of the men, the youngster detailed for chore-work, the story of the men's agreement to leave Matlock's punishment to Douglass. She understood the situation thoroughly, and, as a typical range woman she approved of Douglass's determination. The quarrel was eminently his, and upon him in person devolved its settlement. What she could not understand was the distress in her daughter's face as she said earnestly: "I am not so sure that you have seen the last of him. Such men as he are tenacious and revengeful; he fired our stacks, you remember! Don't look so surprised, Robbie. It was very nice and thoughtful of you and Grace to try to keep me from knowing, but your mother was born in this valley and is still in full possession of all her faculties. Besides, conversational topics are scarce, and your neighbors like to talk!" Then as an after-thought, "I think Mr. Douglass is fully able to cope with the situation!" Later, as she stood by the window of her darkened room looking abstractedly out into the beautiful night, she saw him enter the room where Red lay strumming on his guitar. Approvingly she noted his quick, springy stride, his alert, upright carriage, the whole sinewy grace of him as he bent kindly over his comrade. "What a splendid young animal it is," she mused smilingly, "one eminently calculated to fill the eye of a romantic young girl. After all, why should I interfere? As he said to-night, 'every one has to dree his own weird!' Then again, she has known all kinds of men, and this in all likelihood is merely a transient fancy bred of the novel environment and will doubtlessly pass in due course." Her face grew serious, however, as she recalled the concern in Grace's face at her reference to Matlock's revengefulness. "Propinquity--and youth--and passion! A precarious trio, indeed. Everything considered, I think I will take her back with me," concluded this astute woman of the world. She was, nevertheless, not unduly surprised at Grace's negation of that proposal when it was broached the week before her mother's departure. The young woman urged her very evident physical betterment since coming to the ranch, and her great desire to witness that most spectacular of range functions, the fall round-up. With the imposed condition that her stay would not extend over the holiday season, her mother consented, hesitatingly. But she took occasion, that very evening, to casually bring Douglass under discussion, concluding a very generous estimation of him with the significant words: "One can trust to an appeal to his honor when every other means fail!" That she directed the remark particularly to Grace, was doubtless without premeditation, and assuredly called for no reply. Yet there was a certain resentment in the girl's rather constrained answer: "Do you think it probable that such an exigency will ever arise?" The world-wise old woman looked thoughtfully at the flushed face, thinking how singularly beautiful it was. Then she scanned the perfectly proportioned figure beneath, its exquisite modeling revealed and accentuated by the clinging silk fabric of the thin evening gown. "Anything is probable to a man of his temperament," she said calmly. "Strong natures like his are contemptuous of limitations and laugh at ethical restrictions. That man, if I mistake not, will go straight to his desire as a bullet to the mark, regardless of what stands between." Robert laughed fatuously, missing entirely the drift of the undercurrent. "You have certainly got him sized up right, Mater. Ken is 'sure chain lightin',' as Williams says." "And if it be evil to stand in the path of a thunderbolt, how inconceivably foolish to invite its stroke!" The young man stared dubiously at her; all this seemed inconsequential to him, this talk of thunderbolts and bullets. Did these foolish women think that Ken Douglass was ass enough to expose himself recklessly to either. In some respects the master of the C Bar was as unimaginative and simple-minded as a new-born baby. "Don't yuh worrit none about thundeh-strikes," interjected Abbie with crisp assurance, entering the room in pursuit of the too-intrusive Buffo, who every evening persisted in joining the family circle. "They ain't goin' to be no thundeh-stawms so late in thu yeah; yuh suahly know thet, Mis' Cahtah, yuh was bawn heah!" The lady addressed smiled indulgently at her old friend. "I am hoping that there will be no storms of any sort which will cause suffering and misery to anybody, Abbie. Life is too short to be spoiled with heartaches." "Do you know whose property this is?" she asked Grace that night, coming into her bedroom as she was preparing to retire. "One of the men found it this morning just outside the main gate and brought it to me, thinking it belonged to Robert. But the handwriting is not his, I know, and I thought you might recognize it. There is no name on the fly-leaf." She handed her a thin, long, morocco-covered notebook, which opened of itself, as she laid it in the young lady's hand, at a place where the leaves were separated by a withered flower. It was a long-dried mountain heart's-ease, and, despite her efforts, her cheeks reddened consciously. The writing on the pages was in verse and she recognized the bold, free style at a glance. She had commented frequently on his firm, legible script when auditing his accounts in company with her brother. And once he had sent her a little formal note, asking if she had any commissions for him to execute in Denver, where he had gone on some private business shortly after her overtures at reconciliation. She had eagerly grasped the olive branch so chillingly extended, and his matching of the silk floss samples she sent him in reply was entirely to her satisfaction. It is a question if she would have appreciated the grim humor of her commission had she known his real mission to the capital city. He had been informed, on more or less reliable authority, that Matlock had been seen there a few days previously! The report proved to be false, and the note was now enveloping a cluster of withered heart's-ease in her sandalwood jewel case. Without hesitation she identified the handwriting. "I think it must belong to Mr. Douglass;" she said frankly, meeting her mother's eyes without a particle of indecision. "I am quite familiar with his writing, having helped Bobbie in auditing his accounts. And this flower, I think, is one I gave him some months ago." Mrs. Carter's eyes snapped with a fierce pride. She put her arm tenderly about the velvety neck. "Kiss me, dearie! You are very like your father, and he was the bravest man God ever made!" At the threshold she turned; "I think it entirely permissible--indeed, I much desire that you read that verse." For the first time since her coming to the ranch, Grace Carter turned the key in the door lock; then she laid the notebook on her dressing table and completed her preparations for rest. Finally, she sat down on the edge of the bed and opened the book. Carefully she removed the flower and laid it on a silk handkerchief, folded for its reception. For a time she sat looking at it reminiscently; then with a visible effort she turned to the clearly-written pages. She read with great deliberation, a second and then a third time, a hymn to love, boyishly crude, but charged to the full with youth and longing; no better and no worse, perhaps, than the average effusion of twenty-six in love, not with woman but with love; authentic, and for that reason sacred; overwrought, as became the heedless passion which inspired it; self-revealing, but of sex and temper rather than of mind. A few years back it would have shocked her; now, it made her think. She replaced the flower, closed the book and thrust it under her pillow. Far into the night she sat there, her arms clasped about her knees, her eyes luminous but unseeing. Finally the night chill aroused her and she slipped into bed. CHAPTER VIII THE PASSING OF A CLOUD But that was a week ago and now she was riding homeward with him in the moonlight. She had the notebook in the inside pocket of her riding jacket, having decided to return it to him in person, and this had been her first opportunity, he having been away for the whole of the previous week on some range matter requiring his personal attention. He had evidently dropped the book from his shirt pocket during his struggle with the refractory gate, and on his return had interrogated everyone on the ranch about it except the actual finder, that worthy being absent at the time of his return on some errand for Miss Carter. He was very anxious for its recovery for more reasons than one. It contained some valuable memoranda about his range work; and then, again, he had private reasons why none of the men should chance to fall afoul of his metrical effusion. He was familiar with the coarse badinage of the camp, a humor that respects no personage, however high his official position, and the possibilities worried him. He felt a great chagrin that he had as yet not been able to locate Matlock. In his supersensitiveness he was obsessed with an entirely unfounded impression that he was losing prestige among his men because of the unavoidable delay. If they were to learn that he had been farther guilty of the inexcusable weakness of writing verse of that sentimental character, his cup of bitterness would be running over! Imagine his unbounded relief when she handed it to him with the simple remark: "I have something here belonging to you, I think." But almost instantly he was filled with consternation. Had she by any miserable chance read that verse! Intuitively she felt what was passing in his mind and demurely fibbed for his reassurance: "Mamma recovered it--I think she said it was found at the gate--and brought it to me. I knew it was yours from the memoranda on the first page, but forgot to return it before. I sincerely hope I have not caused you any inconvenience?" He was almost vehement in his eagerness to assure her that it was altogether a matter of no moment, but her eyes twinkled mischievously as she noted the care with which he bestowed it in a safe place. "After all, men are only boys grown up," she thought, and her regard for him was ludicrously maternal. She felt an almost irresistible desire to lecture him on the folly of his ways and the dangerous possibilities attendant on the writing of erotic verse; she actually began a homily on the uncertainty of life and one's logical duty of the enjoyment of things actually in possession rather than the pitiable craving for the unattainable. She had cleverly led up to it by enthusiastically admiring the beauty of the perfect night and the understandable attraction that these glorious surroundings had for everyone who came into intimate contact with them. Once, in the emphasizing of some vital point in issue, she impulsively laid her gloved hand on his arm; the man started as if he had been stung and she recoiled from the hunger in his eyes. The mothering of a lion cub has its disadvantages, and thereafter her milk of human kindness overflowed no more. There was an evident suspicion evinced in the keen attention he was paying to her words as she trenched on the delicate topic of logical content with one's militant blessings, and she ingeniously proceeded to disarm it. "Why is it that among the thousands of susceptible and impressionable souls that have reveled in these delights, not one has had the moral courage to depict them in print? The labor would surely be one of love and the inspiration never lacks." "Possibly," he suggested, "it is a matter of sheer mental and literary inability. But few have been endowed with the gift of Genius. And then, again, authorship is necessarily an affair of leisure, and life is apt to be strenuous in these hills." He turned in his saddle and laughingly asked her: "How much time could your cowpunchers afford to devote to the Muses, Miss Grace?" "Genius knows no paltry restrictions of time and place," she said, with some acerbity, "and I know of at least one of the men you mention who has the ability if not the courage." He winced a little at that and the cloud of suspicion grew denser. But it was partly dissipated at her earnest inquiry: "Why do not you, a man of keen discernment and liberal education, essay the task? I am certain that you would achieve a great success." "I have other work to do," he said, gruffly. "And I am not sure that I find your suggestion at all complimentary. Am I to infer that in your estimation I am blessed with an inordinate amount of leisure time?" She shrugged her shoulders with wrathful impatience; he was a bigger baby than she had thought. "That was gratuitous," she said, with a fine show of indignation; "and you are not at all nice when you are insolent." To her disgust he chuckled audibly, leaning over his pommel in simulated humility. "Lesson number three. I'm getting that 'liberal education' fast," he murmured; "by and by I'll know enough to put into a book." For the life of her she could not resist the temptation. "If you do, don't write it in verse." Instantly she regretted her temerity. "There are so few people who write verse acceptably," she explained hurriedly, "and there are too many ambitious things that die 'abornin',' as Abbie would say, from that very reason. Prose has much more potentiality and is more acceptable to the masses. Of course"--the tone was that of innocence personified--"if you can do verse, that would be another matter. The essential thing is that you do write the book. Will you? Please." The voice was almost tenderly imploring; his brow cleared. He was almost ashamed of his momentary distrust of her. In polite society people do not read private documents; evidently this young woman had come dangerously close to his rash misjudgment and he was properly penitent. Still he was tormented by an insistent doubt. Why had she particularized that first page of memoranda? With a fatuous attempt at diplomacy he put his foot into it. "Why should you assume so flatteringly that I have any literary ability?" He thought the question almost Machiavelian in its adroitness. She had her cue, now. "Well, your aptness at quotation from obscure sources presupposes a wide range of reading, a retentive memory, and a love for literature. Then, again, you have rare constructiveness and--and--" her simulation of modest distress would have deceived even a wiser man--"a horribly clever knack of impromptu rhyme, as I have regretful reasons for knowing." Poor Machiavelli! He was at her feet figuratively in an instant. "That Buffo business! It was abominable of me! Don't judge me by a thing like that. I can do better things. Will you let bygones be bygones, if I plead guilty to the gentle impeachment and promise to let you criticise my future efforts?" She took his extended hand frankly. "Everything begins right here." She gave thanks for a timely cloud's momentary obscuration of the moon as he laid his lips on the tiny gauntlet. Then she impulsively urged her horse into a gallop, and before the moon had emerged from behind the cloud, they had crossed the ridge and the ranch lights twinkled in view though still a good five miles away. Up on the hillside above, behind a bowlder which commanded in easy range the point where their compact had been sealed, a man lay fumbling a rifle and fluently cursing the cloud which had so inopportunely spoiled his aim. His vicious face was distorted with rage and fury, his mouth foaming with passion. "Damn you," he raved, shaking his clenched fist at the offending white billow; "I'd got him if you had waited a second longer or crossed a second sooner. Everything goes against me, and he's got all the luck. I'll get him yet." And with hideous blasphemies trickling from his thick lips, he again shook his fist impotently at the derisively smiling face of the moon and slunk away to the horse tied in the shadows behind him. In blissful ignorance of that narrowly averted calamity, the pair on the other side of the ridge rode silently along in the restored moonlight. The woman was very happy and loth to break the spell; the man whirling in the maelstrom of a jumbled introspection. The victim of strongly opposed currents, he drifted aimlessly in the sea of troubled thought, seeing no shore and seeking none. Content to leave much to Chance and more to Opportunity, he had hitherto let his destiny shape itself, satisfied with merely aiding fate to the best of his physical ability as the occasion offered; but now he was conscious of a growing incitement to dictate his own future. The temptation to try and dominate things was very strong. He had compelled the smaller ones to come his way when he had so chosen, why not the greater ones. He glanced covertly at the woman riding by his side; in the soft moonlight she was very fair. It was she who first broke the silence, her words unconsciously pandering to his suddenly-formed resolution. "How splendidly you ride, Mr. Douglass!" Her admiration was frank and sincere. "You have that horse under perfect control, and yet, if I am not mistaken, he is the worst of the three 'outlaws' which all the other boys have declared unridable. Abbie told me this morning that everybody is afraid of them." "Abbie tells you a great many funny things, I reckon," he said, with an evasive grin, and she laughed reminiscently. "Well, old Highball here isn't just what you might call love-inspiring, and the boys have kind o' passed him up; they have too many other good gentle horses in their strings to justify my letting them take any chances. But as to their being 'afraid' of him, why that's all bosh. Cowpunchers who are afraid of any horse don't hold their jobs long, Miss Carter." "Yet you, yourself, take the very chances that you shield your men from." The tone was severe and distinctly reproachful, albeit her heart beat with an understanding pride. He shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly. "Well, the brutes have got to earn their keep, and hay is high this year." "Yes, about two inches, on that part of the public domain where this particular brute ranges," she said scornfully. "He has not been in the corrals for over two years, as I happen to know. I believe you overheard what Abbie said, and are riding him out of sheer perversity. You don't like to be thought afraid, do you?" "No, ma'am," he said, so humbly that she laughed despite her resolve. Then, with a sudden burst of confidence, "You see, he threw me last week and kind o' upset my conceit, and it's been on my conscience ever since. We just had to come to some definite conclusion as to who is bossing this job. He's going to be a good horse now." "Now, as to hating being thought afraid," he went on after a short silence, "I guess every man thinks that way. And yet there is something that every man fears, that he is more or less afraid of, if he is only honest enough to admit it." "And what are you afraid of?" There was much of incredulity and more of curiosity in her audacious question. "Myself." He answered quietly; she was very sorry she had asked. Just as they reached the main gate they were joined by Red McVey; who rode up from the opposite direction. He was riding another of the "outlaws" and Douglass noted that fact with a certain displeasure; his orders had been explicit about those horses. Red nonchalantly drawled an explanation: "We didn't expect yuh back to-night; Miss Willi'ms said yuh would stay oveh in Tin Cup. Bud Vaughan was oveh to-day and said as how Miss Nellie was sick, so Miss Willi'ms allows she'd go oveh an' sit with her to-night. I'll tell yuh about the hoss lateh," he concluded in an undertone to Douglass, whose look of keen inquiry changed to one of concern at Grace's irrepressible exclamation. "What is it?" His words were sharp and imperative. She was pale, but perfectly composed. Then, for the first time in her life she deliberately lied: "The horse crushed my hand against the gate; a mere trifle, but it startled me." "What are we going to do for something to eat?" she said in pretended dismay. "I'm as hungry as a--a--" "Tom-tit?" suggested Red drolly; she had, much to his abashment, once caught him feeding one with crumbs of cake, embellishing his service with profanely quaint ejaculations of delight. "As a wolf," she averred decidedly, "and I haven't tried to cook since I was a little girl." "Oh, that'll be all right," said Douglass cheerfully. "Red, here, is a wonder at making angel cake, and I can boil water without burning it, at a pinch. If you can stand camp chuck for once we'll make out to take the wire edge off your appetite, anyway." "Oh, I've et," said Red hurriedly, the reference to that angel cake filling him with apprehension. "Had supper oveh to Vaughan's. You two go to wras'lin' yuh grub an' I'll take keer o' yuah hosses." "Doan't yuh let him scoach thet wateh, Miss Cahteh," he volleyed as he retreated in good order, much relieved at his narrow escape. "He's a powahful wahm baby." While she was changing her dress, Douglass got a fire going in the big Charter Oak stove and filled the kettle with fresh water from the spring. He brought over from the meat dive a generously big and tender steak and fossicked about in the pantry until he found the egg basket. There were a couple of tempting broilers lying on a platter, but he concluded that Abbie had prepared these with a view to Miss Carter's breakfast. He was grinding the coffee when she came in and she sniffed the grateful aroma rapturously. She was very simply attired in a loose-fitting white dress with short sleeves, and about her slender waist was tied one of Abbie's huge gingham aprons. Her riding Hessians had been replaced with a pair of diminutive sandals which made a clicking little patter as she walked. He had unconsciously rolled up his sleeves, camp-cook fashion, the better to mix and mold the biscuit he contemplated making; the sight of her bare arms reminded him of his own and he hurriedly lowered the sleeves and began fumbling at the buttons. She came forward quickly and checked him with a pretty gesture. "Put them up again! Men always work better with their sleeves rolled up, I have noticed, and all good cooks have them so. That's why I am wearing this waist; I am going to help." She looked complacently at her round, dimpled arms, then at the corded brawn of his. An irresistible impulse sent her close to his side. "Why," she said, with a fine assumption of wonder at the portentous discovery, "my arms are tanned as brown as yours." And she coquettishly held hers so close to his in comparison that they momentarily touched. Through his veins there leaped a sudden fire as though his blood had turned to molten lava; he trembled. Stricken with a sudden terror she shrank away slightly, but her eyes never left his. The man was trying for self-control, and she wisely waited. The best time to play with fire is not when the coals are hottest. "You, too, hate to be thought afraid." It was hardly more than a whisper. "And your arms are very beautiful." Holding her wrists very carefully, yet with a grip of steel, he bent forward and deliberately kissed each arm in the dimpling hollows. Then he gently released them, and turned once more to his coffee grinding. So wise a man as Solomon declared, centuries ago, that the way of a man with a maid was beyond even his great understanding; but the composite intelligence of all the wise men that ever were or ever will be created cannot elucidate the greater mystery of the ways of a maid with a man. By all accepted rules and conventions, Miss Carter should have ostentatiously wiped her arms with a lace handkerchief, extravagantly casting it aside later with an air of loathing and disgust, and stalked out of the room with superior dignity without deigning him even a contemptuous glance. She did nothing of the kind. She merely laughed, a silvery, tinkling, infectious little ripple whose contagion was irresistible, and at his responsive grin the atmosphere cleared instantly. Her eyes fell upon the basket of eggs and she had a sudden inspiration: "I am going to make waffles. Now if we could only achieve the regulation fried chicken to go with it we should dine ideally." "There are two in the pantry, ready to your hand," he replied eagerly. She ran out excitedly, as if to verify the good news; but once in the seclusion of the pantry her interest in the broilers moderated unaccountably. She seemed more concerned with the hollows of her arms and in her rapt inspection of them held them singularly close to her face. Her cheeks were engagingly flushed and her lips moist when she bore the fowls into the kitchen. Douglass was inclined to be patronizing as she sat about her waffle-building; what could this pampered society pet possibly know about the plebeian craft of cookery? But his indulgence quickly changed to surprised admiration as he watched her deft manipulations. "How long has it been since you were a little girl?" She smiled her quick delight at the implied compliment. "Oh, waffles are easy; Dad always insisted on my making them for him and I had considerable experience, and one does not exactly forget little things like that. How long has it been since you were a little boy?" "I am one to-night," he averred, dextrously filching the first golden-brown disc as she laid it on the plate; as he danced about trying to bolt the hot dainty she rapped him on the head reprovingly with the huge spoon and they laughed with all the light-heartedness of the foolish children they really were. It was a memorable meal that they finally sat down to, and neither of them ever forgot it. Sitting opposite to her in that comfortable old kitchen--he had begged the privilege of eating there instead of in the more formal dining-room--the man's heart was filling with a subtle consciousness that it would be very pleasant to have her sit so always throughout the days to come. It came to him with a certain shock, nevertheless; in all his former associations with women, his emotions had been of a distinctly different nature, and somehow the recollection of them was not pleasing. He even felt a certain angry resentment of the insidious charm of the comforting domesticity of his surroundings. What right had an indigent pauper of a cowpuncher to aspire to a heaven like this? It was only to her natural gentleness, her inherent graciousness, possibly only to a passing indulgent whim, that he was indebted for the favor she was showing. What had he, who would be penniless in another month--for he still stubbornly adhered to his determination to recoup his employer--to offer the mistress of the C Bar with its broad acres and "cattle on a thousand hills"? All incredible as it may seem he actually forgot for the moment that he had, unreproved, kissed her arms a short half-hour before. It simply strengthened his resolution to get away from an environment provocative of such disturbing reflections. The woman was thinking how big and brave and strong he was, and how integral a part of--how entirely he belonged in the plan of her cogitations. She could imagine him always sitting there, a bulwark between her and the evils of life, and she was very happy. She realized how it would take time and diplomacy to leash this untamed tiger, to bring into leading-strings this unbound Sampson who foolishly deemed that the sum of Life was Delilah; but she was the daughter of "the bravest man God ever made," and this was her Man. She knew it now beyond the peradventure of a doubt, and looking at him as he sat there in all his manly beauty, she thanked God for it. His hand, outstretched toward the waffles, encountered hers, and he paled. It was very still and quiet in the room; even the little alarm clock on the mantelpiece, unwound for once, lacking Abbie's careful hand, was silent. He arose with cruel deliberation and walked around the table toward her; she met him half way, all composure now, her hand extended. The antelope kid, with a comical yawn, came and stood between them. "I am so grateful for your many kindnesses to me to-day," she said steadily, her eyes calm and unwavering. "I am more fatigued than I thought. Good night--and pleasant dreams." The kid butted him playfully as though to recall him to earth again; he had stood such an unconscionable time holding her hand. The woman smiled on him kindly again, and instantly he relinquished it. "Good night," he said dully, his face the color of copper. He went to the sofa where he had left his hat and holster and fumbled a while uncertainly. He took up the Stetson, leaving the weapon untouched. At the door he turned mechanically. "Good night," he mumbled; "good night. And may you have no dreams at all." The antelope butted him again, scornfully, as he passed out. Grace Carter stood for a moment in silent meditation. Then she went to the sofa and drew the Colt from its sheath. With the weapon in her hand she extinguished the light and went into her bedroom, locking the door behind her. When she had finished disrobing she laid the weapon on her reading stand within reach of her hand when abed. For a while she lay very quiet, open-eyed; then she arose, unlocked her door and replaced the revolver in its sheath, leaving both lying where he had tossed them. Over at the bunkhouse Douglass stood glaring at the imperturbable Red. "I thought," said he ominously, "that my orders were that nobody should ride those outlaws." McVey, having finished the cigarette he was rolling, gave it a final lick with his tongue, twisted the ends adroitly, struck a match, and between tentative puffs, remarked: "When they's nothing left in thu corral but one hoss I reckon it's ride thet er go afoot. When I got back from Vaughan's this evenin' I found thu pastur' bars down an' everything stompeded but thet buckskin outlaw. Reckon he were too or'nary to trail with thu bunch an' cut hisself out; ketched him in thu cow paddock." Douglass carefully selected a cigarette paper and reached for the tobacco pouch. The hand that held the lighting match was very steady. "How do you size it up, Red?" "Matlock," said the other, tersely. "Thu bars were not only down, but dragged away more'n a rod. It were one man thet done it--his hoss shod all around 'ceptin' left hind foot. 'Twere too dark to track after I lost him in thu timber, but the whole cavvy is scattered to hell an' gone. Say, Ken, I'm goin' to rue back on that promise; an' I don't see as it's eggsactly fair on the other boys, either. S'posen sum of us was to meet up with that skunk accidental: are we to let him slip jest because yuh don't happen to be cavortin' around conteegious? I, fer one, _won't_, an' right here I gives yuh notice." "Besides," he drawled softly, "I've got a privut grutch agin him of my own, an' I'm goin' to beat yuh to it if I kin." The other shook his head deprecatingly. "Don't do anything rash, Red. I preëmpted that right first. And my claim's been bearing interest ever since." CHAPTER IX IN PART PAYMENT The temporary loss of the horses was a twofold source of irritation to Douglass. They had been gathered with much labor for the forthcoming round-up and that work would all have to be done over again at quite an expenditure of time, patience and money; for this he deemed himself also responsible, and it added materially to the already large pecuniary obligation which he had assumed. Then, he also regarded the malicious scattering of his horses as a stigma on his care and watchfulness of his employer's interests, as well as a personal affront and challenge to himself. It would be a sorry reflection on his professional ability, as well as on his courage, and he writhed in the shock to his really abnormal vanity. By established code he should have "got" Matlock long ago; and now he would have to defer the wiping out of that blot on his escutcheon until after the season's work was over. In the cold fury of his bitter self-revilement, he actually forgot the woman who had stirred his blood almost as strongly a short half-hour ago. The mischief had been made possible only by the fact that the day after the horse round-up was ended he had indulgently granted a four days' leave of absence to his entire force, excepting only McVey, who had professed a lack of interest, to enable them to participate in a roping and riding tournament over in South Park. His own and Red's temporary absence to-day had given the perpetrator, of whose identity he had not even a momentary doubt, the chance to do the contemptible trick, the undoing of which would take a whole week's furious work with the entailed strain on both men and horses. His provocation was very great. The next day, working over the ground, he found the freshly-cast shoe of the marauder's mount; it was a peculiarly constructed "blind-bar" affair, and Matlock's horse, his own private property, taken with him when he left the ranch, had a bad frog on his left hind hoof. His conviction was made a certainty later when the blacksmith at Gunnison identified the shoe as one that he had made for and attached to the left hind foot of the deposed foreman's horse. The chain of evidence was complete and conclusive. By a rare bit of good fortune he discovered quite a large band of his best horses quietly feeding in a little valley some three miles from the house, and he quickly returned to the ranch, where he discussed with Red the likelihood of their being able to corral it; it was a big contract for two men, this particular band being a notoriously wild one and hard to handle, and now the animals would especially resent a return to durance vile after their previous week's confinement. But it meant an indispensable factor to the ultimate recovery of the other horses, without which, the outfit would be practically afoot. Red was logically pessimistic. "Three might do it, but two ain't got any more chanct than a snowball in hell," was his opinion, and Douglass knew that he was right. It had taken four of his best riders to turn the trick a week before. But the other men were absolutely unavailable and long before their earliest possible return this band of horses would be off to their favorite range twenty miles or more away. He determined to take a chance, saying hopefully, "Well, we might be able to corral a part of them, anyway, and that would give us a few to work with." Miss Carter, coming to summon them to breakfast, was made acquainted with the dilemma. "Can I be of any help?" she asked instantly. "I can ride fairly well, and under your instructions may really be of some assistance." Douglass looked at Red doubtfully, but that worthy was for some inscrutable reason, enthusiastically sanguine. "Why, shore yuh kin! Yuah hosses wa'nt done up any to speak of by yuah pasear yiste'day, an' the buckskin is fresh. That bunch is ourn." "Oh, I am so glad," she cried eagerly. "I'll be ready before you get saddled up." She was flushed with excitement as they slowly cantered out, but paid careful attention to Douglass's minutely detailed instructions as he outlined his plan of campaign. Red looking admiringly at her skillful handling of the rangy roan gelding, the kindling eyes and firmly compressed lips, decided that she would "make good." He remarked as much to Douglass, who nodded his conviction and said a word or two of caution in an undertone: "If they break back at the corral, see that she isn't in the way of the big blue; you know his trick. If there should be any danger, shoot quick and straight." To Grace he said with frank admonition: "The leader of this bunch is a big blue stallion which has a nasty habit of whirling about just as he touches the corral gate; he will run over anything that opposes him when he breaks back, and if he tries it to-day, ride to one side as fast as you can. Don't try to stop him in any event. You understand?" She merely nodded, her lips closing a bit more tightly. Then she smiled a protest: "Please don't try to 'buffalo' me--I think that is the proper word?--at the outset. This is my first round-up, you know. I'll 'make good,' as Mr. McVey said a while ago." Both men laughed heartily. "Red's whisper is a little stertorous," admitted Douglass, "but you remember what I say: fight shy of the blue if he breaks." Down in his heart he knew that this woman would surely "make good" in anything she attempted, but nevertheless, he saw to it that the revolver slid easily and without a hitch in the holster, and loosened up a few cartridges in his belt. Red had already taken that precaution. They circled the bunch without alarming it and with comparative ease started it corralwards, the leader proving unusually tractable for the nonce. Her roan was no novice at the business and covered his assigned arc as gracefully as a swallow, to the great delight of the young woman who was reveling in the pleasure of a new sensation. She wisely gave the horse his head, and the intelligent beast repaid her good judgment by cleverly heading off every straggler who essayed to dodge back to liberty. She was really proving of decided assistance and Red waved her a cordial encouragement from the left flank. The horses were bunched closely together as they neared the corral gate, the leader trotting easily and with apparently no concern, directly towards the entrance. He was seemingly resigned to the inevitable and the riders closed in sharply to urge them through. Grace was much elated over her successful debut and gave a little exultant shout as the massive head and shoulders of the blue stallion were momentarily framed in the opening. She was inclined to be contemptuous of the ease with which it had been accomplished, and in the relief of the thought dropped her rein loosely on the roan's neck. At that exact moment the cunning beast In the gateway whirled like a flash, lowered his head like a snake, and darted back through the plunging throng which opened before him as a dry pine butt splits to a stoutly driven wedge. Owing to the dense smother of dust about the gateway, and the further fact that the bunch, not missing their leader in its enveloping clouds, were crowding through the opening into the corral, neither of the men noted the maneuver of the stallion until he broke out of the press, heading obliquely to one side, between Douglass and Miss Carter. Then was she conscious of a hoarse cry that rang like the roar of an anguished lion above the din of trampling feet: "To the left! Get out of his way, for Christ's sake! To the left!" Out of the dust blur, an animated lead-blue bullet, shot the great stallion, his head held low, his body extended until his stomach brushed the sagebrush beneath. The roan, taking the bit between his teeth, turned as on a pivot, almost unseating his rider, and raced undirected towards the exact point where the escaping animal could be best intercepted, intent only on the well-understood work which was logically his duty. It was his business to head off and turn back the fugitive, and, unchecked by his helpless rider, who clung fearfully to her saddle-horn in her extremity, he ran the race of his life, putting his whole heart into the work, her light weight hampering him almost negligibly. The point of intersection was at least five hundred yards away, the horses racing along the converging sides of an obtuse angle, the roan some hundred yards in the lead; the point of convergence was just below the brow of a little hill, and the roan, running in open ground, had the advantage of the blue who was impeded by the thick sagebrush; he gained rapidly, changing the locus of intersection thereby, and finally swung at right angles across the stallion's course. Grace had been vaguely conscious of a crackle of pistol shots and a confused roar of profanely phrased implorations, but all her energies were concentrated to the end of keeping her seat on that plunging roan thunderbolt, whose speed was accelerated by the lashing reins which, dropping from her nerveless hand, were now flapping against his sides. Swinging in a beautiful arc of exactly the correct radius, the roan headed the blue in triumph, his legs stiffening as he crossed the latter's course, his hoofs tearing up the thin turf in a fifty-foot furrow as he essayed a turn in order to forestall any side divergence of the stallion. But the blue streak swerved not one iota. With ears flattened against his head, eyes green with malignity and pain, lips curled back and teeth bared to the gums, he charged directly at the unbalanced roan, squealing fiendishly as he came. The gallant gelding floundered ineffectually for a footing, fell directly in the path of the infuriated beast, and threw his rider over his head. Though dazed by her violent contact with the hard ground, Grace instinctively struggled to her knees, raising one hand as if to ward off that impending horror; twenty yards away the thudding hoofs beat on her ear drums like a funeral knell, her lips parted in a soundless gasp, then faintly as from a far distance she heard a dull concussion, felt a crashing blow, and lost consciousness. When her eyes opened again they were in close juxtaposition to a rough tan-colored shirt whose coarse fiber rasped her cheek; the whole universe seemed rocking with a gentle up and down motion as soothing as the swing of her beloved hammock, but there was a curious numbness across her chest and lower limbs like that induced by the pressure of closely-encircling iron bands. Gradually it dawned upon her that she was in the arms of a man who, carrying her weight with perceptibly no effort, was running swiftly towards the house. One little shy upward glance completed her inventory; she deliberately closed her eyes and cuddled closer, so close that she could distinctly hear and count the strong heart-beats against her temple. Nor did she open them again until he had lain her on a sofa in the living room and bent solicitously over her. "Thank God!" The relief in his voice was somehow very sweet to her. "I was afraid--tell me, are you hurt?" "Only frightened, I think." The tone was effectively languid and hesitating; she was loth to dissipate the tender concern in his eyes. "But oh, the horror of it. I can scarcely realize that I am alive. Death seemed so close." She hid her face, shudderingly. "Was the horse killed?" "The blue was," for some reason avoiding her glance, "but the roan is all right. You had a very close call. Why did you try to head him?" "Don't scold me, please!" she pleaded. "I could not help it; he bolted when the other horse broke away and I lost my reins. I had no control over him, whatever. How did I get here?" The question was a marvel of innocent nescience. And how could he know that her heart was beating even more furiously than his as he had held her close for those five blissful minutes. "I carried you," he said, simply. "There was no other way. Are you quite sure that you are not injured? That brute's head was lying on your shoulder when I picked you up. He must have struck you as he fell." "I do feel sorely bruised," tentatively rubbing her side, "but I am certain that is all." She arose and walked lamely across the room in confirmation, then came back and sat down on the sofa. "How silly of me to faint! And how kind of you to take such care of me! Was I _very_ heavy?" "I've carried heavier women," he said, unthinkingly, and could have bitten his tongue off in instant chagrin at his unfortunate slip. "You see," he said with forced attempt at humor, "I make a business of rescuing young damsels in distress and carrying them off to places of safety." "Really! How romantic!" hiding her sudden bitter anger under the mask of persiflage. "I assume they all came through their difficulties as happily as I?" "I can't remember any of them dying," he said caustically; then with deliberate malice: "None of them even pretended to faint." The evil bolt, although all unwittingly shot, came close home and she could have struck him in her shame and fury. How much did he know? And how dared he couple her with those nameless creatures! Taken at a disadvantage, the retort courteous failed her for once, and she was devoutly glad for the timely intervention of Red, who thrust his carroty shock into the door at that moment. "Miss Cahtah," he said with solemn gravity. "I'm almighty glad yuh ain't daid!" At her reassuring laugh of relief he added admiringly: "Yuh suttinly are quick on yuh feets, ma'am! Thet hoss was goin' some when yuh was standin' on yuah haid!" He had been quick to appreciate the strain she was laboring under and Red's panacea for any suffering was to make fun of it. She laughed again, a bit hysterically. "Did I look particularly ridiculous?" Red's protest was suspiciously grave: "Ridic'lous! suttinly not, ma'am. Yuh looked just like a angel, floppin hes wings--upside down." They all shouted at that, their hilarity exciting the antelope kid into a rear charge upon Red, who used the incident to cover his retreat. He turned at the door to impart some good news. "We've got the whole bunch corralled. Reckon thu shootin' an' yellin' you done, Ken, scared 'em in. I got thu bars up befoh I missed thu blue; fact is I didn't see him break, thu dust were so thick." A minute later he returned with the additional good; tidings that Abbie was in sight; ten minutes more and he strode into the room, bearing in his arms a struggling, scratching, scolding burden which he deposited with much aplomb on the sofa besides Miss Carter. "Reckon I'm some pumpkins on thu carry, mahself!" he said with much unction, grinning at the scandalized Abbie, who was quaintly anathematizing him. "No use yuh yowlin', Miss Abbie. The fashion's been sot an' yuh cloth is cut. But yuh shore got to gentle up a heap or Ken, yeah, will hev to do thu totin'." Quick as a flash the old woman's arms went around Grace and the fair head was pillowed upon her bosom. "What is it, honey?" she cooed, gently stroking the silken hair and entirely ignoring the men. The tensely strung nerves gave way and in the reaction the tears were softly welling. The two cowpunchers sneaked out sheepishly and once out of hearing, Red swore wonderingly. "Well, I'm damned! Never peeped till it was all over with, and then clapped on the water-works. Wouldn't that bust yuah cinche!" Douglass smiled but said nothing. Actuated by a common impulse, both men mounted their horses and rode over to where the blue stallion lay doubled up in a thickening pool of scarlet. Dismounting, they gave the dead beast a critical examination. "Good shootin'!" said Red, touching approvingly six blue-black blots on the muscular hip that could be covered with the open palm; "but the range were too far--over two hundred, I reckon--and they had lost their force. Stern on all thu time, wa'nt he?" Douglass nodded. "I tried to break his hip but the bullets were spent at that distance. This is what got him, Red." He touched an oozing puncture just forward of the shapely shoulder. "Looks like a small caliber high pressure to me; let's have it out." Some minutes later both men were bending over a bit of metal lying in Red's palm. They were very thoughtful and a curious expression was playing over their faces. "It's a seven millimeter Mauser," said Douglass, quietly, "and there's only one such gun on this range. It's a pretty big payment on account, Red!" McVey's lips hardened but he evaded the other's eye. "Let's get the direction," he said, "and maybe we can work it out." In an incredibly short time these experienced frontiersmen had not only located the spot from which had been fired the shot that undoubtedly saved Miss Carter's life, but Douglass had as well found the discharged cartridge shell. It was a seven millimeter Mauser case, and Matlock was the possessor of the only weapon of the kind on this range! Furthermore, they found the depressions in the loose soil where he had knelt when firing the shot. It was a good three hundred yards from where the horse lay and Red once more said, "Damn good shoot in,' Ken! It's worth remembering when the time comes. A six-shooter ain't deuce high against that Dutch joker at long range." Tracking the shooter's footprints back to the gully oil the other slope of the hill, they were found to lead to where a horse had been tied. The horse tracks showed that the beast had cast his left hind shoe! Back-tracking still farther, they ascertained that the tracks had proceeded to this spot from an eminence at the head of a wooded coulie which commanded the valley where the horses had been found. To these men it was as plain as a printed page that Matlock had followed their movements unseen, finally establishing his position on the crest of the little hill where the empty shell was found, a position that commanded the corral and all the country likely to be traversed by the blue in his attempt to escape! "He figgered the blue would break back, and that you would try to turn him," said Red. "Yuh have had a close call, son!" "Yet he saved her," said Douglass, steadily. "That's a big payment, Red, a big payment!" "Yep!" answered McVey, noncommittally, "but only part payment." CHAPTER X THAT WHICH IS CÆSAR'S The round-up was over, the marketable beef cut out and shipped, and life at the C Bar had resumed the normality of quiet routine. From now until spring the ranch labor would be nominal; a few weaklings to be fed and nurtured through the rigors of winter, a few likely colts to be broken and "gentled" against the next season's requirements, a few necessary repairs to equipment and fences, much wood hauling for the long night's consumption, and an engaging season of rest and recuperation for man and beast. All throughout the range there is a general reduction of working forces at this period, the superfluous men seeking the larger towns for the commendable purpose of putting into active circulation their season's hoardings; that they are almost always obsessed with a weird delusion that somewhere in the gilded halls of Chance the fickle dame Fortune awaits their coming with a whole cornucopia of royal favors, aces by preference, only insures the economy of time to that end. For whether she smile or not, there be always dames and favors of price to reward the ambitious; and to be lucky in love is even more expensive than to be unlucky at cards. The process may be conditionally prolonged, but the final result is always the same. By the time the grass greens again they have been divested of everything, even of their cares, and are ready to take up the broken threads of the endless chain that links them indissolubly to the old traditions. The C Bar outfit had narrowed down to four men besides Douglass. Red, Woolly, Punk and a saturnine-faced Texan whose addiction to unique expletives of an unconventional nature had secured for him the sobriquet of "Holy Joe." The two latter were detailed to "riding fences" while Red and Woolly did desultory choring and hauled wood. Robert Carter had returned for the rodeo and he and Douglass had enjoyed several hunting trips in company afterward; that is to say, the former did, Douglass evincing a certain restlessness which he, however, successfully strove to conceal from the younger man. He was all impatience for the departure of Carter and his sister, for reasons that he did not care to share with either, and he felt a positive relief when the day of their leaving was definitely announced. Carter had been vainly endeavoring to persuade him to accompany them, and one night enlisted his sister s influence to that end; her gentle insistence precipitated Douglass's proffer of repayment of the losses incurred through Matlock's emity. "I haven't either the time or means at my disposal for such a junket," he said with decision. "I alone am responsible for all the losses occurring on this ranch of late, and there's just about enough due me on salary account to square it up. I've got it all figured out here," producing a memorandum sheet, "and I think my estimate of the damage is a fair one; I'd like your approval of it. It leaves a trifle over a hundred left coming to me and I've got other and more urgent uses for it. Besides, I've got work to do that can't be postponed." Carter heard him in open-mouthed amazement, his astonishment changing first to amusement, then to indignation as he gathered the drift of Douglass's intent. Grace, suddenly comprehending many things previously only hinted at, looked genuinely distressed and tapped nervously on the carpet with her sandaled foot. "Why, man, you're crazy!" shouted Carter. "Do you think for a moment that I will permit you to even contemplate such an absurdity?" "Pardon me," said Douglass, suavely; "the question of your permit does not enter into the matter at all; and I've done all the thinking necessary. I have had it under contemplation for a long time. This business is going to be settled right here and now!" There was no mistaking his determination and Carter was dumb-foundered. "But--" he stammered, protestingly, "the thing is utterly inconceivable! I could not even momentarily entertain such a preposterous proposal. Why, supposing for argument's sake, that Matlock's private animosity to you in person had brought this about, how does that inculpate you? And if it did, do you think I would stand for your only taking a paltry hundred dollars for a whole season's hard work, the best work ever done on this range? Nonsense, old fellow; you've got another think coming!" "Well, I'm thinking that a hundred odd is just what's coming to me, and just what I'm going to get!" said Douglass, obstinately. "It'll be plenty for what I am going to do with it." Carter sprang up, stormily: "Don't be any more of an ass than God intended you to be. Quixotism went out centuries ago. You're going to get what's actually due you!" "And that is a hundred odd, I believe you make it, Mr. Douglass?" interrupted Grace, evenly, with a look of imperious warning at her brother. "Can't you see, dear, that he is right! Now no more petty bickering between you two foolish boys. Don't look so desolated, Bobbie; Mr. Douglass does not intend this as a preamble to his resignation; he is not going to leave us. There are no quitters on the C Bar." "Let me write the check," she continued, in hasty trepidation, not daring to look at the man she had so audaciously preëmpted to their service. "Not a word, leave it to me!" she whispered tensely to her brother, whose lips were again opening in protest. "For heaven's sake, don't spoil it all!" As she dipped the pen in the ink she hesitated: "Your given name, Mr. Douglass? I have never learned it in full." "Kenneth--Kenneth Malcolm," he said shortly. She bit her lip as she wrote hurriedly; he was so deliciously pompous! "And the exact amount?" He handed her the memorandum. "One hundred and six dollars. Please approve this, Bobbie." She extended the paper to her brother, pinching him viciously under the table as he hesitated. "Quick!" she breathed, almost hissingly, and he scrawled the necessary endorsement. Then she wrote the amount in the body of the check. Carter signed it wrathfully, and she tendered it to Douglass with a smile. "There! Now you are square with the world," she said, facetiously, but her lips were tremulous with anxiety; he had been so distressingly noncommittal as to that resignation! "Not exactly with the whole world!" he said, grimly. "I've got a few other trifling obligations to discharge before I can subscribe to that flattering assumption." "Don't think me ungrateful for your kindness," he continued, earnestly. "I appreciate your invitation more than you know; but you see, this would not go very far in luxurious old New York. It wouldn't more than hardly pay my fare there, and really my presence here is imperative for some indefinite time. I had no intention of resigning, but I am going to ask the favor of a month's leave of absence. McVey is perfectly competent to handle the outfit until my return." "Take two months if you like," said Carter, cordially. "And while I am not at all easy in mind about that money business, I respect your wishes in the matter and we will consider that over and done with. But I insist on your being our guest at the old home next year. I have your promise?" Douglass hesitated. "A great deal can happen in a year," he said, quietly; "but if I am alive and other conditions serve I shall be delighted." Bobbie's manner was not quite so genial and complaisant to his sister when they were again alone: "See here, sis, what the devil--!" "For shame, Bobbie!" she said, with laughing remonstrance, stopping further utterance with her soft palm. "Swearing isn't at all becoming to small boys. You are contracting very bad local habits." But she vouchsafed him no explanation whatever, merely rumpling his hair over his eyes and kissing him on the tip of his nose. The day of their departure Douglass accompanied them as far as Tin Cup, where they would take the stage for Alpine. He was all cordiality to Carter and deference to Grace, showing at his best all throughout the pleasant ride. As she laid her hand in his at parting her eyes were full of wistful entreaty: "Be good to Buffo and my roan, and very, very good to yourself! I am coming back in the spring and so will say _auf wiedersehen_, not good-by. You will write me occasionally? It will be manna to me until I can get back to 'God's country' again!" His face brightened approvingly; "I like that! It is 'God's country,' surely, even though abandoned for a space by its brightest angel. Come back to us soon!" "That was very sweet of you, and I am going to take it at full face value," she said, steadily. "That is the first compliment you have ever paid me and I am commensurably proud. But do you know"--her lips were very close to his ear--"it seems funny somehow! I had rather--oh, dear! I really can't help it!--but couldn't you manage to swear at me a little, Ken!" Her face was a vivid scarlet and she laughed a little hysterically. Before he had recovered from his astonishment she was in the arms of Abbie, who, attended by Red, had just driven up in the buckboard with the luggage. She persistently avoided his eyes as she shook hands with Red. "Mr. McVey," she said, laughingly, "we have so over-burdened Mr. Douglass with responsibility for innumerable things that he won't have time to take care of himself; will you kindly look after him for us?" Red's jaws closed spasmodically at the appeal underlying her forced levity; his grasp tightened ever so little but of other sign he was guiltless. Then he turned and looked at Douglass with preternatural gravity: "I'm shore honahed, Miss Grace, with yuah commission! Yuh leave it to me! I'll see he gits he's milk regulah an' goes to hes leetle baid at seven every night. On yuah return I'll hand him oveh to you all wropped up in cotton bats, tied with pink ribbon like thet about yuah naick, thet is, purvidin' I kin rustle thu ribbon." His meaning was unmistakable, and though blushing at his audacity, Grace took up the gage. Deliberately unclasping the tiny golden heart, which held the narrow band in place, she made a dainty little roll of the silk, fastened the end with the jewel and laid it in Red's bronze paw. Douglass, watching the little by-play with a curious interest, wondered at the quiver in that iron fist which could hold the weight of a heavy Colt's .45 with never a tremor. Among the mail handed him later by old Hank was an official-looking document dated Denver. It was from the office of the State Registrar of brands and was almost laconic in its brevity: "The brand O-O (left side); earmarks, square crop right, underbit left; is registered in the name of Bartholomew Coogan. He claims residence at Gunnison, and range in Gunnison County from Texas Creek to Quartz Creek. Date of record May 1st, 1898." He reread the letter three times with exceeding care, his eyes narrowing to mere slits, then thrust it into an inner pocket. He was very thoughtful on the homeward ride, his preoccupied air at the supper table emboldening Punk to irreverent levity: "These yeah partin's are shore deespiritin' things!" he observed, lugubriously, to nobody in particular. "I don't wonder none thet gloom has settled in one great gob oveh thu achin' souls of this yeah outfit. Why, I'm so sad, mahself, thet I kin hawdly eat pie!" Nevertheless he cast avaricious glances at Douglass's portion of that comestible and later took advantage of his abstraction to filch the savory morsel. "Yuh'll be sum sadder if yuh don't keep yuah hooks on yuah side of the table!" warned Red, sinisterly, as he successfully repelled a similar assault on his own reserves. "Yuh moon-faced pie-eater, what yuh got to be sad about 'ceptin' thet yuh are alive?" "Why," said Woolly, with well-feigned sympathy, "don't yuh know thet Punk's hed a great sorrer? He's been yirrigatin' the hull dum ranch with hes tears ontil yuh-ve gotter wear gum butes to git around in! Why, he's weeped so hawd thet hes years has got washed clean for oncet!" Holy chortled in blasphemous delight as Woolly went on: "Punk's been lef stranded on thu shoals o' woe. He's stah o' happiness is sot 'an' thu mune o' he's desiah won't rise no moah! Thu light has gone outen he's young life an' he's tooken to writin' potery an' herdin' by hisself. He was tooken thet way early this mawnin' an' hes mizzery hes been suthin' scand'lous. He's made up a leetle pome all outen hes own haid thet would make a Ute cry. Speak it for us, Punk, won't yuh!" Punk sighed dolorously and rested his head on his bowed arms. Then he raised it again and with a comical imitation of Douglass's abstraction looked into vacancy. Holy was gurgling ecstatically, his delight finding vent in a yell of irrepressible joy as Punk fumbled twistingly with his bare upper lip in emulation of Douglass's impatient twirls of his mustache. His wandering thoughts recalled by that raucous guffaw, Douglass glared with cold disfavor at the twain, somehow realizing that he was more or less concerned in their horse-play. "What's the matter with you damn fools?" he asked, incautiously. Punk looked at him in anguished protestation, shook his head in hopeless despondency and wailed: "Oh! Gawd--haow _kin_ I stand it? Haow kin I?" Woolly looked at Douglass reproachfully. "To be sworn at in thet heartless way, an' him so young and gentle!" He put his arm sympathetically about Punk's shoulders; Red's eyes were twinkling in anticipation. "Thar! thar! ole man! Don't yuh take it so hawd." Punk laid his head wearily on Woolly's breast. Then as Holy and Red almost cried in their hilarity, he clasped his hands and crooned with heart-rending pathos: "'Tis sweet tu love-- But oh! haow bitter To hev yuh gyurl Git up an' flit-ter!" Douglass swore softly under his breath; then he looked meaningly at Red and touched his throat carelessly. Red sobered instantly and felt of something in the breast pocket of his shirt. His own fences were a trifle shaky and the temper of this particular colt was proverbially short and uncertain. He rose and went over to the water pail on the bench behind Woolly as if to get a drink, turning with a world of compassion in his eyes as Punk gasped faintly and sank back in Woolly's arms. Instantly he was beside the twain, a huge dipper full of water in his hand. "Don't let him faint! don't yuh now, Woolly!" he yelled, in mock consternation. "Heah, put this on hes pore brow!" and he deliberately poured a quart of ice water down Punk's neck. The effect was as remarkable as it was instantaneous. Punk's head flew up spasmodically, catching Woolly's nose with a force that tilted that worthy's chair backwards and sent them to the floor locked in each other's arms. Tangled up with their chairs, the impact was attended with such a series of excruciating bruises that both men lashed out retaliatingly and in a second they were fighting like wolves. Holy, leaning up against the wall for support, was convulsed with ecstasy: "Bite him in thu flank, Woolly! Pull hes ha'r out, Punk! Oh! Gawd! Let me die now!" In the midst of the amenities entered Abbie with eyes aflame, a mopstick in her hand. Without hesitation, she impartially belabored both the combatants, calling frantically on Douglass and Red for aid. When their combined efforts had finally pried the two men apart she turned witheringly upon Douglass and lashed him with her scorn. "A fine boss yuh be to let these coyotes tear each other to pieces! Ef yuh cain't manage men any bettah than thet yuh bettah take yuh lettle pen an' write potery fer a livin'. Maybe yuh'd git yuh name in thu papehs that way!" Then she stopped suddenly, the flood of invective dying on her tongue. The man's face was a livid gray, the teeth showing blue through the thin white lips. She quailed before the unlovable smile that distorted his mouth as he bowed ironically to her and went silently out. "What hev I done wrong, now?" she muttered, speculatively. "He seemed touched on thu raw!" Her thrust had been a random one and entirely without malice or specific reference; Abbie merely had a wholesome contempt for rhymes and rhymsters in general and had inadvertently exercised that contempt in lieu of other more opprobious taunt. But this Douglass did not know; he leaped, instead, to a different and altogether unworthy conclusion, one that sickened him to the depths of his strong being and ultimately brought much unnecessary pain to another heart. And yet, as he walked into the bunkhouse a few minutes later, no one looking at the outward impassiveness of that calm face would have even the remotest suspicion of the hell of resentful anger and outraged vanity burning in his heart. His lip even twitched with indulgent amusement as he watched Woolly and Punk solicitously binding up each other's wounds, each with a studiously exaggerated commiseration of the other's disfiguration. "Gawd! Woolly, but yuh shore was playin' in luck when my haid hit yuh beak 'stead o' my fist!" Punk said, comfortingly, wiping that ensanguined member with a bit of wet burlap. Woolly grinned acquiescently: "Thet's so, Punk, thet's so! It were shore consid'rit o' yuh to jab me with the softest thing yuh had. Ef yuh'll put a leetle skunk-oil on thet chawed year o' yourn I guess it'll grow out again', er I kin eat off thu otheh one to match it. Honest, son, I didn't aim to chaw off more'n a foot, but my jaw slipped." "Thet must hev been when I swatted yuh against thu table laig," said Punk, regretfully. "Yuh know Ken has giv ordahs to kill everything with thu lumpy jaw, an' yuh mug is shore a heap outer place. Does yuh teeths track all right, old man?" The anxiety in his voice was very touching. "They've kissed an' made up," explained Holy to Douglass, with blood-curdling expletiveness. "Ain't they jest thu two mos' lovin' waddies yuh eveh see?" "When you two fellows get done monkeying with each other," said Douglass, impatiently, "I have something to tell you." Something in his tone enlisted their immediate attention. Red looked at him inquisitively. "It was only a bit of harmless hoss-play," he mumbled, apologetically. "They didn't mean nuthin'." Douglass nodded indifferently. He had already forgotten the incident in the consideration of more serious things. He took out of his pocket the letter he had that day received from Denver. "It's from the brand Registrar's office," he said, shortly. "I guess it clears up the mystery about that O Bar O brand." He read it with slow deliberation and at the mention of Coogan's name they exchanged meaning glances. Red whistled significantly. "Big Bart, eh!" The others said never a word. Douglass meditatively took out of his vest pocket a broad-leaded indelible pencil with which he traced upon the margin of a newspaper the characters which composed the Carter brand: "C--." As the others watched him in silence he retraced them, closing up the ends of the first character and adding another after the second. As amended the brand was "O-O." There was no need of comment, for every man knew what his action implied. In the midst of an impressive silence he rolled and lighted a cigarette; then he rose and strolled over to the fireplace, resting his arm on the mantel shelf. Red waited expectantly but there was visible discomfort in the uneasy demeanor of the other three men. "Boys," said Douglass, slowly but with incisive distinctness. "When I took charge here I was under the impression that the O Bar O brand was owned by a man in Middle Park named Wistar, a friend of Mr. Carter's. I was even so assured by two of the men most trusted by Mr. Carter--I think you know to whom I refer--as well as by Mr. Carter himself, who was evidently misinformed. I have reason to believe that every man of this outfit, except McVey, knew differently, but I have no intention of asking any embarrassing questions. I want to say, however, that I am satisfied that since I came to the C Bar none of our old cattle have been absorbed by the O Bar O. "But our tally sheets for the three previous years show a strange discrepancy with our present bunch; we are shy about five hundred head of cows, and our increase has fallen off unaccountably. And in this year's round-up I noticed a great many motherless calves and yearlings in the O Bar O brand. As a matter of curiosity I took a chance and killed a few of them, and here are the hides." He walked over to his bunk and took from underneath it three partly dried skins which he spread flesh side uppermost on the floor. To their experienced eyes it was plainly evident that the animals had been rebranded, the differently healed scars showing very plainly that the brands were originally C-- afterwards altered to O-O. "Every man in this room knows what this means; and every man also is aware that Mr. Matlock and Mr. Coogan always have been on terms of closest intimacy, it being the general impression that they are partners in several enterprises. Now, boys, I respect a man who keeps his own counsel at all times, and I am aware that when a fellow wants to know anything he is expected to find it out for himself. Well, I have been finding out enough to warrant my keeping you men on this job. I am sure that you are all right. But the fellows I let out this fall won't come back. I am going to see that there are a few more C Bar calves on the range this year, and a few less O Bar O's. If I had been reasonably sure of my premises before, the thing would have been straightened up long ago; but as I am going to acquire the O Bar O brand myself in a few days, it won't make any difference, as we will vent the brand and put the cattle under it back where they belong, in the C Bar." "One thing more," he continued dispassionately; "I expect every man who works for this outfit to play the limit in his employer's interest. I have set aside two thousand dollars out of our last sales to be used to defend any man who finds it necessary to shoot up a few of the skunks that are looting this range. I believe that you are all dependable men, and your wages will be raised twenty-five per cent, after the first of the month. McVey will act as assistant foreman, and you will take orders from him. I think that's all," he said with a yawn, "except that Red and I are going to Gunnison in the morning. You fellows keep tabs till we get back; we'll be gone about five or six days." He filled his pipe, a sure indication that he contemplated an extended stroll, and scooped up a hot coal from the fireplace; at the door he turned for a final word: "We will take those hides with us." After he had gone the men sat for a long time in silence. Then Holy swore enthusiastically: "By Gawd! fellers, that's a man!" Woolly felt of his swollen jaw tenderly and turned in pretended amazement: "Why, was yuh thinkin' he was a woman?" Punk ceased operations on his cigarette and stared meditatively into the fire. "Wonder haow he's goin' to ack-kwire that brand? Trade those hides fer it, mebbe." But Red McVey for once was silent. Going to his warbag he took therefrom his spare gun; it had a soft leather scabbard of the kind designed for wearing inside the coat under the left armpit. Very carefully he cleaned and recleaned the already speckless weapon and oiled it anew; he then bestowed a similar attention on the Colts in his belt, and filled both bandolier and belt with fresh cartridges from an unbroken box. Of the hides he made a neat package that would "ride" well on a pack-saddle. Then he took down his guitar and a moment later the night was vocal with the strains of "The Spanish Cavalier." When his pipe was empty, Douglass went up to the office to write a letter. The rapidity with which he wrote showed that he had perfectly rehearsed its text. It was addressed to Robert Carter at his New York residence: "DEAR MR. CARTER:-- "I have just proved to my entire satisfaction that you have been systematically robbed by Matlock and certain of his confederates in your employ, for the past three years. The proof is indisputable and I am going to secure restitution if I can. By the time you receive this the matter will be definitely settled one way or the other. "The O-O brand is not owned, as you suppose, by Mr. Wistar, but by a side partner of Matlock's named Coogan, a saloon keeper and tin-horned gambler in Gunniston. Their game has been to not only alter your C-- into O-O, but to have your own men, confederates of Matlock's and working under his directions, brand your calves in that brand, killing the mothers when necessary. I figure that your losses have been at least one thousand head. I have discharged every man implicated or under reasonable suspicion, retaining only four whom I deem dependable. I did not acquaint you of these facts before your departure for reasons that do not matter. "Should I be fortunate in my endeavor I will report promptly. Should you not hear from me within the next two weeks you may assume that my attempt has been unsuccessful. In the latter event you had better place the matter in the hands of competent counsel; sufficient proofs can be easily supplied by the men now in your employ, and an examination of young cattle in the O-O brands will give you sufficient evidence for an action for damages." On another sheet he wrote: "In case of my death from any cause, I hereby direct that all my effects be given to Red McVey if he be alive; if he be not, then it is my wish that they be divided among the other three boys employed at the time of this writing on the C Bar ranch." "BREWSTER." He signed and sealed them in separate envelopes, directing both to Robert Carter. Then he entrusted them to Abbie with the request that she have the former mailed at once to New York, but to retain the latter for two weeks before mailing. He was very explicit in his instructions and enjoined her to carry them out in every particular. She was inclined to ask questions but he calmly ignored them and went off to bed, after informing her that he wanted breakfast at daybreak in the morning. As he entered the bunkhouse the measured breaths from each bed were those of placidly sleeping men and he undressed in the dark so as not to disturb them. A single ray of moonlight lay across the room, hitting squarely the peg in the post above Red's bunk. It lit up the two revolvers hanging in their scabbards and Douglass smiled almost affectionately in the direction of their owner. When Red "packed" that extra gun he was enlisted for the whole war. He went over and looked down kindly upon the stalwart sleeper. In the relaxation of sleep the stern face was gentle and almost handsome. Was he justified in taking this comely young fellow into the grim uncertainty that lay ahead, into the jaws of the specter grinning waitingly behind the red lights of Bart Coogan's gambling hell at Gunnison? As he hesitatingly debated the question in his mind, Red turned slightly and mumbled in his sleep: "All right, honey--for yuah sake--" Douglass, stepping back involuntarily, laid his hand upon the breast of the shirt hanging under the guns; it encountered something round in the flannel pocket, and instantly his face hardened. He went over to his own bunk and laid down. "You've got to sit in the game, Red, for her sake. We are in the same boat and we've got to take our medicine. I wonder if she told old Abbie about that ribbon, too. Well, maybe we'll give her something more to laugh at before we are through." Then youth and healthful fatigue asserted itself and he rolled over and went to sleep. CHAPTER XI FRENZIED FINANCE Outside of a fixed determination to compel the restoration of the stolen cattle, Douglass had no specific plans in mind as they rode away in the gray dawn. His actions would be determined by the conditions that would confront him at Gunnison, and he left much to what he deemed his luck, but which in reality was rather his great capability and aptitude in moments of crisis. Of course, he would incidentally kill Matlock if justifying circumstances permitted, but he was not a killer in cold blood and the provocation would have to be amply sufficient. He resolved to let Matlock make the first hostile demonstration, after which matters were a thing of evolution purely; of the ultimate result he had not the slightest apprehension. Every fiber of him was tingling with resentment of what he deemed Grace's duplicity; she had begged for his friendship and then had maliciously exposed him to ridicule by showing that foolish poem to Abbie, and the Lord only knew who else besides. She had made of him a laughing stock of the whole community, a butt for the coarse witticisms of his fellows, and the deeply-driven barb in his vanity rankled sore. Of course, he opined, she had only been making a fool of Red, too, but despite the old time-honored saw about misery loving company, he took small comfort in the thought, being rather disposed to harsher judgment of her for so unscrupulously playing upon that ignorant cowpuncher's fatuous credulity. Red knew nothing of fine ladies and their heartless machinations and it was a shame to encourage him in his hopeless folly. No lady would take such cruel advantage of puerile innocence! It is possibly apparent to the reader by this time that Mr. Douglass was somewhat of an egotist, whose personal estimation of himself bulked large in his stock in trade. If it be true that a man's vanity is the real unit of the measure of his possibilities, then Ken Douglass, scaled by the miles of his self-containment, might logically have aspired beyond the stars. Not that he underestimated other men in the slightest; he was quick to recognize and commend courage, fortitude, honesty and skill in his compeers; indeed, he heartily despised anyone in whom these primal qualities were not ingrained; but the ego was first in his cosmos and when a man humbly urges that he is the equal of all other men it may be set down as an axiom that he really thinks himself immeasurably their superior. Now the world always accepts a man at his own valuation in absence of evidence to the contrary, and he had vindicated his position so far as his range work went; he was concededly the best rider, roper, pistol shot and poker player in his circumscribed little world, and had, besides, the enviable reputation of never "falling down" in anything he essayed. In the flush of his present successes he entirely overlooked his previous grievous failures, as is man's wont the world over; the world was his own succulent oyster, and he, himself, the proper blade for its opening. Therefore he arrogantly pitied Red's unsophistication; at which the gods laughed. As they rode along he made a clean breast of his dilemma. "It will have to be largely a case of bluff," he confided, "and we must make it stick. We have no time for lawing, and if we did, the shysters would get it all. Bart isn't easily buffaloed and will put up a stiff fight. Of course we've got the age on him--those hides are a strong card--but we're not going to have a walk-over. I can't see my way clear just yet, but it will work out as we go along. It sure won't be a picnic, but one thing is certain; we'll either get those cattle or Matlock will have to rustle a new partner." Red shifted his cud and spat unerringly on the crest of a loco weed in the trail. "D'yuh 'spose we'll meet up with Matlock there? Reckon 'tain't likely though." Through the labored indifference of his speech, Douglass detected a certain restrained hopefulness and his face grew serious. "I want to talk to you about that, Red. We've got nothing that we can fasten on him securely as yet, and we've got to go slow. Of course, if we get him to rights, or if he makes any bad breaks"--the pause was ominous. "But we don't want to raise any hell that we can't lay again. I'm going to give him all the rope that the game will stand; I think, however, that he has quit." "Them kind nevah quits," said McVey sententiously, "an' yuh don't want to take any fool chances, Ken. I seen a feller oncet thet was monkeying with a rattler an' ketched 'im by thu tail. He got bit! Thu best way with a pizen reptyle is to blow his damn haid off, 'specially one thet yuh've pulled thu rattles offen." They both grinned reminiscently at the reference to the Alcazar incident, but Douglass winced at the thought that although he had stopped Matlock's rattling for the time being, he had not neutralized the venom of his silent bite. And it is hard to side-step an unheralded stroke from behind. "Well," he said unemotionally, "it's his first move." "Hes last, yuh mean," muttered Red sotto voce, "fer I am to be first if he bats hes eye." But aloud he merely said, "That's what," and took a fresh chew of plug. Douglass's perplexity as how his coup was to be executed increased with every passing hour. He carefully formulated and as regretfully discarded at least a hundred schemes, each of which appealed less and less to his practical judgment as he critically reviewed them. Never in his experience had he faced anything so intangible as the problem which now confronted him. He was at a loss for a precedent, and what was still worse, was in total ignorance of the laws governing the unique conditions. Not that he cared a rap for the laws so far as they might affect him personally, and he had an inborn contempt for conditions; but he wanted that transfer of the brand to be legally absolute and without recourse, and he did not want to involve Mr. Carter in the slightest degree. When they eventually reached Gunnison he went straight to the office of the best lawyer in the town, a life-long friend of old Bob Carter, and succinctly and forcibly laid all the facts before him. After listening attentively to his explicit elucidation of the law in the case, and his logical course of procedure in the premises, Douglass shook his head. "That will take months of lawing and jawing and I want those stolen cattle returned at once. It's got to be settled before I leave town, and I won't consent to involving Carter in any long-drawn-out, expensive litigation. There must be some way of settling it man to man. Will the law protect a bill of sale made out to me or Red, here, if I win it in a card game or force it out of him with a gun? That's what I want to know." The old practitioner chuckled at this ingenuous imputation of the law's plasticity; his eyes twinkled in anticipation of the laugh he would raise in chambers when he got a chance to spring that joke on his dignified confreres. But his manner was gravity personified as he earnestly assured this exceedingly straightforward young fellow that much to his regret he would have to answer negatively. "Even if you did get a sufficient and properly-drawn bill of sale out of Coogan by either of the means you suggest, he could come back at you with the 'baby act' and nullify the transfer by pleading no real consideration and invoking the statute which declares gambling debts noncollectible, in the first instance; and in the second, by setting up the plea of unlawful stress and intimidation. In either case you would lose out if he brought action." "Supposin' he was daid an' couldn't get no action on hisself?" interjected Red, softly. The old lawyer, frontier-hardened as he was, started nervously. "You surely don't contemplate any such--?" "Any such what?" Red's face was a study in mild curiosity. "I was only asking yuh a question." The lawyer moistened his lips tentatively before replying. "That would complicate matters very much--to all parties concerned. I hope, gentlemen--" "An' if thu bill o' sale was made out to me, an' I was to trade it off to Ken, an' he was to tuhn it inter coin an' cache thu dough, what then?" The drawling voice was a sinister purr and somehow the half-shut eyes took on a feline expression. The lawyer suddenly achieved a new interest in this inquisitive young man; he looked at him from under his grizzled brows with professional appreciation. "Why, you're a pretty fair shyster, yourself, Red," said Douglass humorously; "that idea didn't occur to me. That could not possibly involve Carter, could it?" "No. But I trust--." The old man's voice was hesitating and tremulous. "O-h-h, put yuah trust in Jesus, An' yuh shall see thu Throne!" chanted Red, nasally; adding as an after-thought: "Thu C Bar pays cash." "And it wants to retain you, Mr. Brewster, as counsel in event of my failure to accomplish the restitution of Mr. Carter's property," supplemented Douglass quickly. "You see, I've got to fight the devil with fire. If I lose out you have full authority to thrash it out in your own way. But I play my hand first." "That's what," said Red laconically. "An' I'll keep cases on thu game." At the request of Douglass the attorney drew up the correct form of a bill of sale with notorial attest; he refused the fee tendered him, saying: "I am glad to be of service to Bob Carter's boy. And if at any time you need my aid, professional or otherwise, command me without hesitation." "Ken," said McVey oracularly, as they mounted their horses. "We're goin' to win out. We've seed a honest law-sharp an' our systems hev stood thu shock; an' we ain't been parted from our wealth none. I think thu Lawd took thet way o' breakin' thu news to us, gentle like, thet Fawtune is goin' to smile on us. Betcha we have pie an' ice cream feh suppah." He was still more optimistic when he came in, an hour or so after supper was over, to where Douglass sat thoughtfully smoking a cigar. His manner was even jubilant as he struck a match and sucked vivaciously at the proffered weed. "Matlock will be in town to-morrow; he was here yiste'day an' him an' Bart has gone out huntin'; so they say; like as not up ter sum lowdown meanness er 'tother; an' they're aixpected back to-morrer evenin'. Luck is suttinly comin' ouah way. "I thought I'd go projeckin' around a leetle so as to kinda size up thu layout," he explained, "an' get a line on thu fo'thcomin' festivities. So I nacherally draps in to thu Palace an' thu barkeep gits loquacious. Was yuh thinkin' o' drinkin' a sarsaperiller with me?" Time hanging heavy on their hands, the two cowpunchers strolled up the street in the search of diversion; at the Shoo Fly dance-hall the revelry seemed most promising and they went in to investigate. The usual quota of frowsy, bedraggled women were in evidence, wearily swinging in the eccentric mazes of a putative waltz or plying their blowsy victims with the stuff that had already stolen their souls and later would steal away what besotted senses they still held in precarious possession. It was an old experience to both of them and they looked listlessly about with the disinterestedness of bored familiarity. Time was when these young men would have entered into the orgies with a certain reckless aplomb; there were a few girls among the throng who had not yet lost all their pristine comeliness, who still retained some few pitiful shreds of the femininity that should have made of them the loving wives and good mothers that Nature's God creatively intended; but to-night none of them looked good to these two not usually over-discriminative animals, intrepidly fresh as they were from pasture. The whole thing jarred unaccountably upon both of them; Douglass looking disgustedly at the tawdry surroundings, at the flushed faces and professionally displayed charms, felt a great irritation at himself for coming here. Unconsciously he was comparing this sickening meretriciousness with the delightful reserve and dignity of another environment, and he felt the quick shame of a schoolboy detected in his first illicit adventure. Red grunted telepathically: "Gawd, Ken, this yeah's a punk layout. Let's go out wheah it's clean." They settled their score and were in the act of rising when, McVey touched Douglass on the arm. A woman had just entered by a side door and was looking at them with a strange intentness. "That's Coogan's woman," said Red, in a low voice; "Stunner, ain't she! Wonder he stands fer her comin' here." The woman came forward with a curious snake-like quickness and seated herself at the adjoining table. She was a very striking creature, evidently one of the higher class Mexicans occasionally still to be met with on the Colorado frontier. She was not more than twenty-four or five years old, with all the color and voluptuousness of the younger women of her race. Her hair and eyes were of a peculiar blue-black color, her complexion ordinarily very light olive with carmine cheek tints but now exhibiting a pallor that only intensified the gleam in her big eyes. She was neither painted nor powdered, as both men noted approvingly, and was finely gowned in a modest, though expensive style. The only inharmonious thing in her entourage was the blaze of the diamonds with which she was lavishly bedecked. She ordered brandy, and when it was brought drank it with reckless haste and called for more. Twice was her glass refilled, and the fiery stimulant flushed her face. At the third serving she paid the waiter and shudderingly pushed the glass away with every evidence of disgust. To Douglass, watching her out of the corner of his eye, for somehow, her manner did not invite the leer customary on such occasions, she turned suddenly: "You are the Señor Douglass of Rancho C Bar?" Her voice, though very musical and low-pitched, was tensely strained. As it was apparent that her English, though correct, was labored, he answered, hat in hand, in her own tongue: "_A las pies de usted, Señorita._" (At your feet, Miss.) She smiled gratefully, as much at his courteous consideration as in her relief at his knowledge of her tongue and its social ethics. "_Bese usted las manos, Señor._" (My hands for your kisses, Sir.) Red looked his appreciation of her favor; they were very pretty hands, and while he was not "up" in the flowery etiquette of sunny Spain, he understood its language indifferently well. "Ken's shore thu luckiest devil on yearth!" he muttered under his breath, enviously. It soon developed, however, that his hastily-formed conclusions were at fault. As he in duty bound slowly rose to his feet with a studious, "Well, I must be goin'--see you lateh," she protestingly laid her hand on his arm. "But no, Señor. It is that I wish to have the speech wis you bot'--but not here." She looked around in sudden alarm. "Can you to my room graciously come? I live in the ho-tel." Her manner was pleading and eager. The eyes of the men met inquiringly. Red unostentatiously flecked a speck of dust from a slight bulge in his coat under the left armpit. Douglass tentatively placed his hand in the side pocket of his reefer. Then as one man they both answered. "Why, certainly, Señorita." "In an hour, then. Come carefully. Numero 9, the one mos' far in the hall. I go first, now." And without further look at them she went out as unobtrusively as she had entered. Red calmly confiscated her rejected glass of brandy. "Shame to waste good likker, 'specially when it's paid fer. What's yuh ijea, Ken, a plant?" "Damfino! She's all worked up over something, that's sure. Well, it's all in the game." Then, with an inscrutable and not altogether pleasant flicker in his eyes, "Not a bad looker, eh, Red?" McVey emptied the glass. "Brandy's hell foh a woman," was his enigmatical reply. An hour later they gained her apartments unobserved, the hotel corridors being deserted at that hour. She had changed her gown and received them in a charming half-negligé of some filmy white stuff that set off her dark beauty ravishingly. Her eyes were out-gleaming her diamonds but her manner was quiet and composed. They sat down and respectfully awaited her pleasure; but every article in that room could have been accurately catalogued by either man. There was only one door in the room besides the one through which they had entered and that stood partly ajar, revealing beyond a luxuriously furnished bedroom. A large double window gave down on the main street; one-half of it was closely curtained, but the hangings of the other was looped aside, and for a time she stood beside it looking down into the squalid street. Suddenly she drew the curtains close and with a strength hardly to be looked for in that slender wrist, whirled a heavy Morris chair directly before them and seated herself. For a full minute she regarded them intently through half-closed eyes and then, addressing herself to Douglass, but keeping her eyes for the greater part of the time on McVey, she said slowly in her soft mother tongue: "Your friend understands Spanish?" "Sufficiently, Señorita," assured Red, "to follow your conversation." "It is well," she said quietly, "but your address flatters me. I am Señora, not Señorita." She held out her left hand with a curiously proud gesture; on the third finger was a heavy plain band of dull gold. "I am desolated--madame," said Red, instantly. Douglass bowed his polite acceptance of the correction. "Yes," she went on wearily, "I am a married woman, no matter what the world, what _you_ may think. The ceremony was performed by the Jefe Politico of Ameca, my natal town, though not solemnized by the church. There was a witness, but he is dead now. It was Pedro Rodriguez, the man you killed the night he and Señor Matlock burned the hay on your rancho." In the tense silence which followed, the ticking of Douglass's watch was distinctly audible. Red's hand, fumbling with his watch chain, went up swiftly to his armpit; but Douglass, interpreting her even intonation more correctly, never moved a muscle. She smiled reassuringly at McVey: "Nay, Señor. There is nothing to--to regret. He was a dog--and I love you for it." The hand sank to his knee and he flushed slightly. "I was only a young girl," she went on rapidly, "and he was as big and as fair as his words. My mother was dead, my father engrossed with business cares: he was owner of the 'San Christobal' mine. I met him at night, for my father liked him not and forbade me. It was my first affair, and I thought I loved him." She laughed, a mirthless sibilance that was marvelously like a snake's hissing, her eyes hard and dry. "I had a brother, an only one, Rafael. He was very dear to me and loved me greatly. He was, of the mine--what do you name it, the one who holds and pays the monies? Ah, mil gracias! the 'treasurer.' He was of the lively the liveliest and played much at the cards. And Don Bartholomew was of his friends the most esteemed. We knew not then that he made his living so: he had come to buy lands, he said, and he had letters, many from great men; they were not written by those whose names they bore as I know now, but we of Mejico know little of such things and trusted him fully. "Then, one night, mi padre discovered me in his arms and there was much sorrow. I was to the casa confined and to him was said that we should see him no more. But you know our adage: '_No ay cerradura si es de oro la ganzua_' (there is no lock but that will open to a golden key), and Pedro Rodriguez, our servidor, was very poor. Like Eve, I listened to the serpent's voice; I was very young." She covered her face with her hands and again the silence fell; Red licked his lips nervously: "The damned caterpillar!" he ejaculated. She roused at that and her manner changed. She seemed to speak mechanically and her words fell like drops of ice: "One night he came in great haste and said that we must fly at once; a great trouble had come to him and his life was in peril. I had to marry him, you understand, and I had no other choice. We went to the magistrate--he swore that we would be remarried by a priest of my faith when we reached his land, and so I consented. My father was absent and my brother--Oh! Rafael!" She broke down and sobbed bitterly. Red cursed aloud. Of a sudden she calmed; her eyes were hot but her voice was cold and emotionless. "Not until yesterday did I know that on that very night he had robbed my brother at cards and treacherously shot him dead when his guilt was discovered. My father, thinking I knew all--God, give me vengeance on this man--died two weeks ago, cursing me with his last breath. I had it from an old acquaintance whom I met here all unexpectedly yesterday morn. They never answered my letters you know, and I dared not return. The child was dead born. "The life with him has been hell. I had to live, and he was liberal in his brutal way. Long ago I learned from Pedro that he was robbing you, but for that I cared nothing. The men of your race have given me blood and gall to drink, and the thought of your wrongs was bitterly sweet to me; it would have been sweeter had your lives gone with it." They looked at her entirely without resentment; this was something they could understand. Douglass felt a great sympathy for her, but Red was revolving something in his mind that made his eyes gleam evilly. "Yesterday I upbraided him with the truth. God knows what I said, for my heart was hot and I think I was mad. He was devil enough to admit all, and taunt me with my helplessness. We are of a passionate blood, we people of the South, and I tried--. Enough! He beat me--me, Dolores Ysobel de Tejada! May his soul writhe in hell until I lave his accursed lips!" Her venomous fury was not shrill and vociferous; instead, it was cold and low-voiced, but Douglass breathed hard and Red clenched his lips, watching it. She sprang impulsively to her feet and tore violently at her bodice. As the thin silk ripped away they saw that arms, neck and breasts were purple. She came closer, thrusting her shame into their very faces. "See!" she hissed, "the chivalry of the American gringo! Do you Yanquis treat all your women so tenderly, caballeros?" Douglass's face hardened resentfully. "We are not all Coogans, Señora. Be seated, please, and for God's sake, cover up that horror! And now--why do you tell us this?" "So that you will kill him--for a price." Red laughed harshly. "By Gawd! Madame Dolores Ysobel de Tajeda--or Coogan, whatever yuah name is, I'd giv' a better price ef yuh was able to tuhn yuhself into a man fer a couple o' minnits. What d'yuh take us fer, greasers?" But Douglass, his own face very white and hard set, asked quietly, with an eager interest in his calm voice: "And the price, Señora?" "I will give him into your hands," she said coolly, "I have letters, some from Matlock, which he thought destroyed, and two from him to Matlock which were missent and returned here. In his absence, I received and kept them. I have also one from Rodriguez asking me for money and threatening me with exposure if I denied him. They are enough to prove your case and give you justification for killing him." Douglass rose quietly. "You do me much honor, Señora. But I think your acquaintance with American men is, after all, very inconsiderable." And with a stiff inclination he left the room. She ran after him impulsively but at the threshold of the door she paused. Then she swiftly returned and gently pushed Red down into the seat from which he had arisen. "Wait--a single little moment, Señor, I beg of you. I will return immediately." She ran into the bedroom and he heard a swift rustling. In ten minutes she returned, bearing in her hands a packet of letters. She had in some marvelous way succeeded in rerobing herself and was now arrayed in an exquisite tea gown which made Red's eyes light up with admiration. Inwardly exulting at the success of her experiment, she sat down close beside him on the divan and rapidly opened the letters. At her insistence he took them, though very reluctantly, and perfunctorily scanned their contents. Then he reread them with deliberate care, hesitated for a moment and then thrust them in his breast pocket. "I reckon I'll keep these for a few days at least; they may come in handy." "It is your right, Señor McVey. And now there is more that you must know. They have sworn the death of yourself and friend: his because he stands between them and their thefts and has brought to black shame the man Matlock; yours because you did slay the jackal of my husband. Do you know that in the hands of the sheriff there is a warrant for the arrest of you both, sworn out by my husband, charging you with murder, and the Señor Douglass with being accessory thereto? It is the plan to have you in the weak jail confined--one single night will serve their purpose--and when your friends come the next morning it will be too late. The sheriff is a weakling, as you know--worse, he is as wax in the hands of Bartholomew, who did win from him at cards much treasure that is to the county belonging, though why that should be cause to make him lick my husband's hand I can not understand. Maybe you, a man, do know? And while two unarmed men are striving with those who will do my husband's bidding--even now has he gone to summons them, your coming being known to him through a spy who rode faster than you--yet others will be sent to your rancho to burn and destroy." McVey stifled a great oath. "You are givin' me straight dope?" His strong hand was crushing her soft arm. "As Heaven is my witness, Señor. I swear it by the memory of my dead!" "Do you know when thu warrant is ter be served?" The question was curt and imperative. "At nightfall, as soon as Bartholomew arrives with his fellows." For a while he deliberated in silence, but into the woman's eyes crept triumph at sight of the grimly compressed lips and wrinkled brow. Then as she watched it was commingled with another expression that boded ill for the honor as well as the fortunes of Big Bart Coogan. "I reckon I'll say adios, Señora," he said finally. "I have things to attend to. When can I see you again?" Her raven locks brushed his as she bent forward to look at the tiny jeweled chatelaine watch on her bodice. "It is yet scarcely ten of the clock," she murmured, coyly dropping her eyes. "The night is young." His veins ran fire. The woman was very beautiful. Douglass nodded confirmation as Red told him her story five minutes later. "Just got a tip myself from Barton," he observed calmly. Barton was the clerk of the court from which the warrant had issued, and as it happened, was an old college mate of Douglass and his personal friend. He was not in sympathy with the ring of grafters dominating the county offices, and had hastened to Douglass's enlightenment as soon as he learned of his arrival. "They don't aim to give you a chance to secure bail for at least one night," he said significantly, "and while that may not mean anything in particular, I thought you had better be put 'wise.' And I've taken the liberty of asking Strang to send up three or four fellows from the Lazy K to-morrow. Hope you won't think me officious, old man; I thought it best to be on the safe side." Strang was a particular friend of both men. Douglass smashed his fist in silent gratitude. "Guess we'll manage to give them a run for their money. Have a cigar?" "I've got those letters, Ken," said Red casually. "Better read 'em oveh; they shore are interestin' lit'rachure. Thu gettin' of 'em ain't obleegated yuh none, an' mahself hawdly enough ter talk about. Naw, I didn't promise ter cook hes goose," meeting the other's eyes squarely; "I'm engagin' in anotheh kind o' frenzied fee-nawnce' altogetheh. Yuh hunt yuh leetle baid an' gatheh strength fer to-morrer's stren-u-hossity. I'm goin' on night-herd mahself." Douglass wheeled sharply. "Yuh are not going to--?" Red fumbled in the pocket of his shirt. "I'm agoin' ter ask yuh ter keep suthin' fer me to-night." Without raising his eyes he laid in Douglass's hand a small parcel wrapped in his best silk handkerchief. "I want ter keep it clean!" he muttered. CHAPTER XII NOT STRICTLY ACCORDING TO PROGRAM As they emerged from the dining-room the next morning they were greeted by a short but sturdily built man whose deeply-set blue eyes lighted up as he slapped Douglass familiarly on the shoulder. It was Dave Strang, foreman of the Lazy K outfit on Cibolla Creek. "Why, yuh old son of a gun, wheah d'yuah drap from?" asked Red, with a portentous wink. Douglass had just informed him of Barton s message and his remark was for the benefit of the loungers about the stove, among whom he had reason to believe were some of Coogan's familiars. He deemed it best to have them under the impression that the encounter was one of pure chance; being an enthusiastic devotee at the shrine of "stud poker," he believed in keeping inviolate the suit and value of his buried card. "Oh, just been atrailing and got plumb wore out fer a look at suthin' besides sagebrush," answered Strang, easily; he had a few cards up his sleeve, himself. "What brings yuh fellows inter thu tem'tations of thu meetropoliss? Don't yuh know thet this is thu home of the devourin' lion an' thu laih o' thu feroshus tigeh? Come an' look at yeh innercent selfs in thu bottom of a glass!" As they lined up at the bar Strang said quickly, in an undertone. "Six of us heah by dark. What's thu game?" "Come up to my room in an hour or two and I'll put you next," said Douglass, cautiously; "some of this gang is keeping tab on us." Then he turned to the crowd politely: "Will you gentlemen join us? This is on me, Dave; no foolishness!" After a few desultory commonplaces, during which Strang intimated that he would be in town only a few hours, Douglass said, casually, "Drop in and see us before you go out, Dave. Been a long time since we had a talk." Strang looked doubtful. "I only aim to stay till thu mail comes in an' I got a heap ter do. Mebby I kin spah a few minnits." Then he treated the crowd in turn with a nonchalant, "Well, so 'long!" hitched up his belt and strolled out. Up at the post office he met them a few minutes later. "I'll be on deck in your room in an hour. I'll go there first, ahead of you." They found him there at the appointed time and he was soon in possession of all the facts. Douglass's plan was quickly stated: "We'll let them arrest us without any suspicious resistance. Of course they'll make us give up our guns, but they won't get these," tapping his pocket and belt; "we'll buy a pair of cheap guns for them to relieve us of--our own guns will be in Barton's hands at noon. He will make some excuse to come in and see us, bringing our guns with him. We have a hundred shells apiece. I think their scheme is to shoot us first so as to make sure, and hang us afterward so as to make it look like a lynching. I think they will mostly all be greasers, friends of Rodriguez, with a sprinkling of Coogan's curs to keep them to the work. We may not need you boys, but we are sure thankful for your good will! With eight of us it would be child's play." "D'yuh reckon Matlock'll be among thu bunch?" asked Red, hopefully. "Not he!" scornfully said Douglass. "He hasn't sand enough to face a full-grown man's gun. He'll he down at the Palace with Coogan when the fun starts, so as to establish an alibi. This is to be a Roman holiday, you understand, with the 'Roman' spelled g-r-e-a-s-e-r! Pity to spoil such a pretty scheme, eh?" Just then there was a rap at the door. Red opened it and in entered one Lew Ballard, on whose neck they fell with much profane acclamation. He was United States Marshall for that district, an old cowpuncher and a warm friend of the trio. He grinned comprehensively at the three conspirators. "What's this fairy story about a portending lynching that Barton's been stuffing me with?" he asked, pleasantly. When they had told him he slapped his thigh with enjoyment. "Say, it reads just like a book! Gawd! to think I can't take a hand in it!" Then a thought struck him and he roared. "Say, I've got a scheme that will put the cap-sheaf on the stack!" "First of all, I'll swear the whole bunch of you in as deputy United States marshals. Then I'll arrest two of your boys, Strang, on some charge or another and get them in jail a few minutes before the mob comes. The other four you will hold in readiness outside. We'll switch cells and when the greasers get inside we'll lock them up in your places and you can go down and pass the time of day with your friend Coogan. Gawd! won't he be glad to see you! I forgot to say that Barton has already sent a rider over to the C Bar to put the boys wise to the gang that's going down there. Gee, but this will be a great night for Mexico!" So it was arranged. The marshall went out and secured two extra revolvers and the C Bar arsenal was turned over to Barton. Strang went to instruct his men, and the two prospective victims pretended to get royally drunk so as to allay any suspicion. They played their parts so well that Coogan was completely taken in. With these two fools drunk it was a veritable cinch, he thought. Matlock, for some occult reason, was not so sanguine. He would be more at ease when it was all over and he shrewdly made arrangements for a hasty departure in case of mishap. It was nearly ten o'clock before the chicken-hearted sheriff deemed the two cowpunchers sufficiently drunk enough to take chances with. At that hour he valiantly descended upon the Red Light saloon with a full posse and accomplished the arrest with scarcely any difficulty, the only casualty being to the sheriff's nose, which Red could not help flattening with the butt of his six-shooter. Emerging from the jail after the incarceration of his prisoners, the sheriff encountered Marshall Ballard in charge of two heavily-ironed captives whom he was exultantly informed were two dangerous counterfeiters. He overheard the marshall request the turnkey to place them in the steel dungeon in the basement, as they were important prisoners and very dangerous characters. He waited until the marshall rejoined him and invited that official to have a night-cap, remarking that he was tired and would "hit the hay" without unseemly delay. Could he have known that at the moment of lifting his glass, Red McVey was sitting astride of the turnkey's neck, industriously engaged in stuffing his silk neckerchief into that worthy's capacious mouth, the Angostura in his cocktail would have turned to gall. Down at the Palace with exaggerated ostentation Coogan and Matlock were seated in the main gambling room where their presence was very conspicuous; Matlock was nervous, but veiled his agitation under a stream of profanity that grew more and more vicious as the hours dragged along. His subterfuge did not deceive his more hardened accomplice, who looked at him with cynical contempt. Could Matlock have known the dark thoughts brooking in the evil mind of the big gambler, he would have sworn even more affrightedly. "That cur is getting dangerous," Big Bart was thinking. "He'd squeal any time to save his own cursed neck, and he knows too much! I'll attend to his case when this affair blows over." From under his shaggy eyebrows he regarded his confederate evilly; of genuine courage he had no dread, but of this man's moral as well as physical cowardice he was growing more and more afraid. The consummation of their present plot would only plunge him deeper into the toils of the law if Matlock should, in case of exposure, turn State's evidence. For another reason he was strangely perturbed; that afternoon he had seen a face which was irritatingly familiar but which he could not correctly place. In his avocation there are only two facial classifications: those of absolute strangers, which are to be studied with care, and those of people well known, which are to be watched jealously. A gambler dare risk no middle path in the physiognomy of his acquaintances; he must either know a face well or it must be that of a total stranger. And for the life of him he could not remember the time and place where he had formerly encountered it. Somehow he felt a presentiment of coming evil and he chafed under it. To-morrow he would make it his business to find out who and what that dignified old Mexican was! As he registered this mental resolution, the door opened and in walked the object of his cogitations; he was accompanied by Lew Ballard and another Mexican at sight of whom Coogan paled perceptibly. He knew them both now! The elder man was Don Ramon Seguro, joint owner of the San Christobal mine; the other was Don Luis Garcia, sheriff of Jalisco. Coogan was no coward; he had been in many a tight place before and escaped by reason of his brute courage and herculean strength. He furtively felt of his hip pocket, then quietly arose and went forward with extended hand. They had no proof of his killing Rafael de Tejada, he thought rapidly; the only eyewitness, Pedro Rodriguez, was dead; and he could fight extradition until such time as he could make his escape. He resolved to brazen it out. Affecting not to know the Mexicans, he shook Ballard's hand cordially. "Ah, good evening, Mr. Ballard. I was just going to open a bottle in my private office. Will your friends join us?" The marshall and his friends would be delighted! Ballard nodded casually to Matlock as they passed him. For some reason Coogan did not include him in the invitation. At the moment of opening the wine they heard in the distance the faint rattle of a fusillade of pistol shots. The Mexicans looked inquiringly at Ballard but he dismissed the matter with a careless, "Oh, just some drunken bunch of cowpunchers or railroad tarriers with more ammunition than sense; that kind of thing is getting altogether too prevalent; the authorities ought to put a stop to it! Say, that's a dandy bottle of fizz, Coogan! Do you drink of the wines of Champagne much in Arneca, Señores?" His Spanish was perfect, his voice and manner conventionally pleasant. On Coogan's brow was the glisten of a dense perspiration; Ballard covered his mouth with his hand to hide a cynical smile. Just as the glasses were filled there came from the rear of the saloon the rasping grate of a startled oath, succeeded by the hoof thuds of a rapidly-ridden horse. Coogan, involuntarily pushing aside the window blinds, cursed scornfully under his breath. "Got rattled and is hiking out for the timber, the cowardly dog! That settles his hash!" The rider was Matlock and he seemed to be in a hurry. As Coogan turned his back the Mexican sheriff made a quick motion toward his hip but Ballard warningly caught his arm. "Wait!" he breathed, "there is much sport toward. There will be those here soon who will do amusing things." Coogan flashed around in quick suspicion, angered to think that for one moment he had foolishly relaxed his guard, but Ballard was serenely lighting his cigarette at that of Don Luis and the glass of Don Ramon was just descending from his lips. When the wine was finished, Ballard insisted on ordering another bottle at his expense; this was followed by a third at the insistence of Don Luis. As the bubbles frothed over the crystal rims, Coogan, either from pure nerve or fearful bravado, raised his glass. "A toast, gentlemen: "Here's to good health and untroubled mind; Here's to good luck and fame; Here's to the girl that is fair and kind; And here's to the man who is game!" "A toast worthy of another bottle, especially the last clause," said an approving voice in the doorway, and at sight of Ken Douglass standing there smiling, Coogan's glass crashed on the floor as his hand flew to his hip pocket. "Easy, Bart!" There was no mirth in the eye gleaming menacingly behind the sights of the heavy .44 aligned so steadily upon the heart of the man into whose eyes had crept a superstitious terror at the sight of one risen from the dead. "Put both your hands on the table! Both, I said! There, that's more sensible! Mr. McVey, may I trouble you to remove that exceedingly uncomfortable thing from Mr. Coogan's pocket? It seems to be giving him a world of trouble and it will be in his way when he sits down to talk with me." Coogan's face was ashen as Red lounged languidly into sight; the sweat poured down his cheeks in a stream and his lips opened and shut convulsively. He was trembling all over as Red unconcernedly walked behind him and relieved him of the weapon, which he put in his own pocket. On Don Luis's face was a great contempt and Ballard was grinning broadly. "Now the derringers, Red, two of them, in his pants' pockets. You will excuse the liberty, Mr. Coogan, but accidents will happen occasionally and I wouldn't have you hurt yourself for the world! We are going to have a quiet little gentlemen's game of cards, you and I, and we don't want our foreign friends here to get a false impression about the ethics of our great national game. Sit down, please!" Coogan dropped nervelessly into his chair. At a sign from Douglass, there entered into the room a cowboy bearing three beef-hides which he laid on the table. As Douglass spread them flesh side up the Mexicans looked significantly at each other; they were both experienced cowmen and the altered brands told their own tale. Upon the skins Douglass laid successively a handful of gold coin and a packet of letters; opening the string which bound the latter he spread them out separately so that their signatures were easily read by the white-faced fellow sitting opposite to him. Then he turned to Strang, who was standing in the door behind him, watching his actions with deceptively mild interest. "Dave, could you manage to get us a new deck of cards and something to smoke?" Strang soon returned with a box of really excellent cigars and an unbroken package of cards. The former he had secured at the "Palace" bar, Coogan's weeds being the best in the city, a thing characteristic of all gambling hells whose whiskey and tobacco is always unexceptionable, but the cards he bought at the little drug store across the way. He had reason to be suspicious of the ornately-backed pasteboards affected by the Coogan establishment. In the combined gambling hall and bar adjacent to the private room, four Lazy K cowpunchers were languidly lounging about with disconsolation written all over their faces; but Strang's orders had been imperative, so they had to content themselves with smoking innumerable cigarettes and hoping that something might occur to enliven the monotony of their vigil. "It's up to yuh mugs to see that nobody gets offishus an' interrupts thu perceedin's!" had been his instructions; nevertheless they irresistibly gravitated toward the door of the private room, where they stood with thumbs hooked in their belts in suggestive proximity to the butts of their peacemakers. Somehow the atmosphere was charged with expectancy and a strange constraint had fallen on the usually boisterous throng. Something unusual was taking place in that private room, but Big Bart's privacy was a thing not healthy to violate; and then again there was something peculiarly discouraging to idle curiosity in the grim faces of the bronzed quartet just outside the door. There was not a man in that assemblage who would not have given half of his hoard for one peep into that room, and similarly there was not a man of them who for thrice that consideration would have essayed such a breach of etiquette. And up at the county jail another of the Lazy K outfit was cursing his luck and sarcastically requesting a horde of wretches in the basement dungeons to "holler a few, so's I kin use up a bunch o' these damn hulls. Holler just oncet!" In an unlighted room on the second story of the little hotel four short blocks away, a woman sat crouched behind the curtains of a window which commanded fully the Palace saloon. She was still dressed in the inconspicuous dark robe in which she had watched the sadly aborted attempt at the jail a short half-hour before. Feverishly had she witnessed the stealthy approach of the scant dozen of slinking forms which had silently stolen into the frowning portals which had accommodatingly opened for their ingress; breathlessly had she waited until there came the sound of savage oaths, muffled thuds and the clamor of men in mortal combat. She had almost screamed in frantic apprehension as the invading force had been suddenly reinforced by four other figures with gleaming weapons in their hands. She would have called out warning of this new and terrible peril to the now certainly doomed prisoners, but her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth and she only sobbed and swayed in hysterical rage at the balking of her revenge. But suddenly to her amazement there came forth seven men clad in vaquero costume, who laughed boisterously and shot their revolvers aimlessly into the air. She gave a sharp gasp of relief as she heard a familiar voice say with unfeigned regret: "Why, I've hed moah fun at a dawg fite! D'yuh reckon that theah was evah ary white man, ceptin' he were sick er asleep, that passed in his chips to sech a passd o' pulin' polecats like this yeah bunch we've jes' been bendin' ouah guns ovah? Gawd! Ken, I'll stink o' gawlic fer a week! Ef Coogan don't put up a betah scrap by hes lonesome than hes whole pack o' peccaries did, why, I'm goin' to swap my ole hawg laig fer a putty blowah an' hiah out on a sheep ranch whar they's suthin' doin'!" And now she was waiting, waiting with a fierce impatience that bruised the soft taper fingers gripping the jeweled hilt of a slender _cuchilla_ hidden in her bosom, waiting for the vicious crackle that would mercifully appease the maddening insistence of those two dead men calling from their graves in far-off Ameca. For the greater part of an hour she shivered in an ecstasy of expectation and fear. "Mother of God! What if they should let him escape after all!" Clutching her stiletto, she ran vengefully out into the night. CHAPTER XIII A LAUGH IN THE NIGHT Dave Ballard was the only man in the room who immediately lighted the cigar of Strang's passing; the others seemed indifferent to the blandishments of the odorous goddess for the nonce. Big Bart, with the forced composure of a trapped wolf waiting the next move of his captor, nonchalantly chewed on his with affected indifference, but on his bull neck the sinews stood out like whipcords. The man was no coward but just now he was up against a game new to his great and diversified experience, another man's game, the futility of "bucking" which is proverbial even among layman. If it be true that the uncertainty of the future alone makes living endurable, then Bart Coogan was just now having the time of his life! With his characteristic directness, Douglass came straight to the point without delay: "Mr. Coogan, I have just ascertained that you are the putative owner of the O Bar O brand, the registry and record standing in your name. May I presume so far as to ask whether the title is solely in you or is it a partnership affair?" His tone was very respectful but business-like. "While it's none of your damn business, I don't object to telling you that I am the whole firm," said Coogan, insolently. "And I'd like to know what in--!" He was beginning to get a grip on himself again and resorted to bluster. "Thank you!" said Douglass, quietly, restraining a great desire to send his fist against that snarling mouth. "Now we'll get down to brass tacks in a jiffy. In the brand referred to there are presently six hundred head of cattle, six hundred and four, to be exact, including motherless calves. Of this number more than two-thirds bear altered brands similar to these." He pointed to the hides on the table: "May I ask how they came into your possession?" "You can't prove nothing!" snarled the cornered wolf, viciously. The other smiled incredulously. "No? Evidently you have not considered these," touching the letters, significantly. "Well, we won't argue that point. The upshot of the matter is that I have a proposal to make to you. I am anxious to acquire the ownership of the brand myself, and as I have not got enough ready money to buy it outright, what do you say to a little game of freeze-out, with these for my stakes as against your bill of sale?" He pointed to the heap on the table. "You'll be getting much the best of it!" For a moment the gambler glared fiendishly at the imperturbable man facing him; his body was quivering all over with illy suppressed hate and fury. He crouched like a wild beast preparing to spring, his hands opening and closing nervously. Then out of the silence came the nasal humming of Red: "Yeah's to thu gyurl thet is faih an' kind, An' yeah's to thu man who is game!" The taunt stung him back to composure again. Every gambler is a fatalist by nature; the chance was, after all, more than he had any logical right to expect under the circumstances. And Big Bart Coogan was game to the core of his calloused heart! With an admirable effort he recovered his self-control, and the hand that held the lighted match to the fresh cigar which Strang politely tendered him was as steady as a rock. "Anything to oblige a fellow sport!" he said with a fine return to his professional deference. "Have you a blank form about you, Lew?" Ballard produced one already filled out; the gambler glanced at him meaningly. "Got it all framed up, eh?" "Framed up nothing!" said the marshall, indignantly. "If you win out this business will be dropped. I think, myself, that you are in big luck to get so favorable a deal! In his place I'd have settled it in another way." "Well," said Coogan, affably, as he scrawled his name with a fountain pen at the bottom of the instrument, "after I've won out suppose you take his place." Ballard jerked his head in instantaneous acquiescence. "If you win out!" he assented, gravely. Then he summoned the bartender, who was a notary public, to take Coogan's acknowledgment of signature; the stakes were removed to a side table and the men cut for the deal, each man was given ten chips. In poker everything goes that can be made go; Coogan knew perfectly well that there would be positively no interference on the part of the spectators, no matter how open and vile his attempts to cheat his antagonist. Douglass would be left severely alone in his self-defense, and he resolved to employ every means at his command to win, and that meant play of the foulest kind. Just so long as his opponent (for whom by the way he very foolishly felt the professional's contempt of amateurism) should not detect his crooked work, he would not be interfered with by his victim's friends. He had never watched Douglass's play before, but smiled confidently at what he mistook for awkwardness when Ken clumsily shuffled the cards, the deal having fallen to him. It was dealer ante and Douglass stayed when Coogan came in. The gambler filled his hand, aces on sixes, on a three card draw. He passed the bet and Douglass bet one chip; Coogan raised it two and Douglass called. The latter had three queens and Coogan took the pot. He was quite certain of his man now; this cowpuncher was either rattled and had lost his nerve, or else he was an amateur of the rawest kind, it being evident from the fact of his drawing only two cards that he had the three queens before the draw, his other cards being a deuce and seven. But his equanimity got a jar when Ken passed up the ante on his deal and subsequently regained all his lost chips on his own deal. The hands were astonishingly big for the stage of the game and the gambler essayed a crooked play which apparently was not detected by Douglass. He was vastly encouraged thereby and tried it repeatedly, winning only a chip or two each time. Fortune seemed very capricious and at last both men were again on even footing, each having in possession his full quota of counters. Emboldened by his previous successes in that line the gambler now went about systematically holding out cards; he finally secured the four aces, dealing Douglass a king full. When the latter called him all the chips of both men were in the pot. "What have you got?" The cowboy's voice was peculiarly clear, his manner suave and courteous. "What you got?" evasively retorted Coogan with a smirk. "King full--_and_ a .44 to your nothing! Your sleeve is too tight for this kind of work, Bart. I didn't think you'd dare try that on me; your work is very coarse!" He swept the heap of chips to his side of the table with the barrel of his revolver. "You'll find his real hand in his sleeve, Red. No, not that one--there's where he has the knife; the cards are in the left sleeve." "Did you really think I was that easy?" he said reproachfully to the discomfited gambler, as McVey laid the bowie and secreted cards on the table. "Why, you've even misjudged your own hold-out--see!" He rapidly took up his opponent's hand and spread them face up before the astonished eyes of the gambler. There were only three, instead of four aces, with a jack and deuce. "I had you beat on the showdown, Bart. Really, I am surprised!" Then to the profane delight of Red, he carelessly opened his hand, exposing the missing ace which he had adroitly palmed. The spectators to a man laughed and after a moment Coogan joined in the hilarity. He was really a man of big caliber and he felt an unwilling admiration of this audacious youngster who had so cleverly hoisted him with his own petard. Besides, there is a certain wisdom of magnanimity in defeat. "You've got me going and coming!" he admitted, laughingly; "I ain't got no kick coming." But his eyes wandered uneasily to the letters and hides on the floor and Douglass was generous. He took the bowie knife and with three rapid circular slashes cut out those parts branded; upon these he laid the package of letters and held them out to the gambler together with his knife. He took them mechanically, staring incredulously at the cowpuncher, who said not unkindly: "I reckon you've got more use for these than I have. But if I were you I'd keep out of the cattle business; the game isn't worth the candle!" Big Bart went over and tossed the bits of skin and the incriminating letters into the heart of the little coal fire blazing in the office stove. When they were finally consumed he turned to Red, who was nearest the door. "Call in all your outfit and tell Billy to send in a basket of wine." With his own hand he filled the glasses and then turned to the waiting throng with uplifted beaker: "To the new owner of the O Bar O!" They drank it vociferously and when the bottles were finally empty Coogan passed around the cigars. Douglass, though fully aware of the man's uncanny past, felt for the now apparently despondent wretch the involuntary pity which the huntsman feels always for the dangerous tiger which he has laid low after a titanic struggle. He tried to think of some service that he could consistently render him; there was so much in this man of gigantic frame and undaunted courage! He had shown himself game to an incredible degree, and somehow the thought of that herculean throat purpling in the noose of a Mexican rope was violently distasteful to him. Impelled by a sudden impulse he went over to him and while ostensibly bidding him good-by, contrived to whisper unperceived: "My horse, a roan, is tied just under this window. Nothing on this range can touch him! I'll hinder them all I can. Good luck to you!" Over the man's face swept a great wonder. He tried to speak but the words stuck in his throat; he dropped his eyes and gripped Ken's hand hard. "If I make it I'll live straight hereafter!" he mumbled, thankfully. There is no man so brave but what chills on the threshold of the Valley of the Shadow! As Douglass turned laughingly to reply to some witticism of Ballard's concerning "bloated cattle kings" and their liquorous obligations to the common community, Coogan put his hands behind his back and with head bowed as in deep meditation paced slowly toward the window. The Mexican sheriff, resolutely interposed between him and the opening, drew his revolver and curtly said: "Pardon! Señor Coogan, I would have speech with you. I have here a warrant--" He got no farther, having committed the fatal error of letting his man get too close. With a leap like that of a charging tiger, the gambler was upon him, one hand catching the wrist below the weapon, the other falling with frightful force upon the olive temple. Under the impact of their combined weight the flimsy window gave way like blotting paper and both men were precipitated on the ground outside. With a pretense of going to the sheriff's aid Douglass managed to trip up the marshall, whose quickly-drawn weapon was harmlessly discharged in the floor, and as the others stumbled and fell over his prostrate body Douglass managed to get himself somehow wedged in the window, thus effectually preventing any use of firearms. As he struggled with exaggerated strenuosity to free himself from the entangled debris, he saw Coogan gain his feet and run swiftly towards the tethered horse; he saw the halter rope severed with one deft slash of the bowie and the foot placed hastily in the stirrup. But the triumphant vault into the saddle was never made; the animal, alarmed at this summary and unusual method of release, was shying away from the man who was trying in his frenzied haste to mount on the wrong side. As Coogan hopped about with muttered oaths, trying to secure an effectual footing, a dark, slender figure seemed to rise out of the ground at his side. Douglass caught the blue gleam of polished steel in the moonlight just above Coogan's neck, heard the soft thud of a well-driven blow; he gave a great cry of warning but it fell upon unheeding ears. The man, releasing his hold upon the horse, staggered blindly about, thrusting savagely at random, a queer bubbling cry welling from his lips. Again and again as the stricken giant reeled tottering about, came that snake-like glide and merciless thrust until finally, his veins drained of their vital flood, Coogan fell on his face in the crimsoned snow. And then above the rush of hurrying feet, above the cries of blasphemous wonder and alarm as the Palace vomited out its raucous filth, there arose a cackling horror that Douglass would never forget as long as he lived, the vacuous gibbering of Dolores Ysobel de Tejada, kissing her blood-stained _cuchilla_ and screaming weird endearments to two dead men in Jalisco. Don Luis Garcia, a little giddy and tremulous from the effects of that awful blow, wept remorsefully on the neck of McVey, who promptly suggested vinous consolation. "_Ay de mi!_" he wailed, "why deed I heem not keel so when that I the chance haddest! Now there will not the hangin' be, and Señorita de Tejada--Ah, _pobre nina!_ She is what you call heem 'off-the-nut.' It is to weep--she of the ver' firs' familee was, and now--_Es muy lastima!_ Eet iss too damn bad!" Red assented dolorously. "An' Matlock got away, too! Señor, it are shore hell!" Then, remembering, he turned sharply aside so that the other could not see the dull flush on his cheek as Conscience slapped him in the face. By the advice of Mr. Brewster, the lawyer, Douglass and McVey returned to the jail and reincarcerated themselves therein. The entrapped Mexicans were released with a series of warnings, so effectively phrased by the Lazy K cowpuncher in charge of them, coupled by a few emphasizing kicks impartially administered by him to each by way of self-consolation for his having missed all the fun, that they took their permanent departure for parts unknown without standing on the order of their going. The turnkey, for obvious reasons, was only too glad to keep his own counsel. At the preliminary examination, which was held without delay, both men were fully exonerated on the grounds of self-defense and were as promptly discharged from custody. The bill of sale was duly recorded; another transfer of the brand and its contents from Douglass to Carter was executed and put on record, and relaxation was the logical order of the day. Douglass, suddenly remembering his promise to report the result of his attempt, went up to the telegraph office and indited a brief message. "Won out. O Bar O brand recorded in your name." He did not know that it had been preceded by another message to the same address, sent by Warren Brewster in reply to one received from Carter, and ascribed the unconcealed admiration of the girl operator to an entirely different cause from that which actually inspired it. Evidently his vanity had suffered no discouragement over night. But he only smiled indulgently at her; she was a pale, anæmic, washed-out blonde and he had but small regard for the type. Back in their palatial New York home Robert Carter and his sister were seated in the library, waiting with strained emotions for the ring of the messenger boy who would bring the answer to a message flashed an hour before to the far West. The man was visibly perturbed and ever and anon strode impatiently to the window, watch in hand, cursing the dilatoriness of telegraph companies in general and this one in particular. The woman sat very quiet and thoughtful in a big cozy chair before the open fire of sea coals, her head supported by one hand, the other lying clenched upon two open letters in her lap. Her face was very pale and there were lines of pain about the sensitive mouth. Her whole attitude betokened a great nervous tension and the eyes were luminous with dread. Mechanically she took up the letters and reread them for at least the hundredth time that morning. They were the two written by Douglass the night before his departure to Gunnison. It was evident that Abbie had either exceeded or misunderstood his instructions as to the posting of them, for they had arrived together in the same mail. Once more she yielded to the fatal fascination of the shorter note: "In case of my death--" this time she got no farther for the letters swam in a blinding mist; her reserve broke down and she laid her head on the cushioned arm of the chair. Robert came quickly to her side. "Don't! For God's sake, don't, Gracie! We will know in a minute." He put his arm tenderly around her. "There is absolutely nothing to apprehend; he is a man among a thousand and too wise to take any foolish risks. It is all right!" But his own agitation gave the lie to his brave assurance and he started nervously as the door-bell clanged harshly. He took the ominous yellow envelope from the hand of the pompous lackey who presented it and almost tore the enclosure in twain as he wrenched it from its flimsy covering. One hasty glance and he gave a great shout of joy. "Gracie--listen!" "Douglass secured bill sale from Coogan without trouble. Is well and hearty. Congratulations on your manager! He is a wonder! "BREWSTER." As she hastily confirmed his reading the bell clanged again and the obsequious waiter brought in Douglass's telegram. Quick as was the man, the girl reached the salver first. With a composure that strongly contrasted with her previous agitation, she handed it to her brother. "It is from Mr. Douglass," she said calmly, "and confirms Mr. Brewster's wire. After all we were needlessly exercised about the whole matter. I had no idea that your friend had such a predilection for dramatic effects." And to his open-mouthed consternation she swept out of the room with a scornful smile on her face. "Well, I'll be damned!" said Mr. Robert Carter, blankly, to the dignified effigy in plush. "Yessir," assented that functionary, gravely. "If you please, sir!" CHAPTER XIV A FAIR FIELD AND NO FAVORS! It was very pleasant at the C Bar ranch when the bluebirds came again. Under the magical touch of the revivifying spring the buds were bursting with the sheer joy of living and the earth was soft with thankfulness. The cool, balmy air of the lower mesas was rich with the delicate fragrance of the greening things, and higher up the breath of the cañons was faintly redolent of the balsamic incense of pine and fir. The meadows, lush with the largess of the melting snow fields above, resounded to the liquid gurgling of myriads of red and yellow-shouldered blackbirds wheeling and swinging over them in clouds of parti-colored animation; the streams, no longer mere empty stretches of thirsty sand and dry white bowlders, were roaring the lusty pean of well-filled bellies and over-flushed veins. Far and near the land was dotted with slowly-moving cattle, nipping gratefully at the succulent grass tips, their formerly lank and rough-haired flanks distended with the young year's generous bounty. In the barnyards was a scurrying of yellow balls of down as the clucking hens told of some juicy tidbit wriggling for their delectation. Everywhere was new young life, and all things were fat with promise. Scoured by the strenuous hand of winter, the ranch premises were delightfully clean and sweet; the fences and corrals, repaired and new-built, looked trim, strong and capable; the ditches were running bank-full in readiness for duty in the arid days to come. Everything betokened thrift and good management, and Douglass, looking at it with critical approvement, knew that so far he had made good. "She nevah looked bettah," was McVey's satisfied comment as he sat on his horse on the crest of the little divide overlooking the ranch. "Yuh suah hev got thu layout well in hand. We'll hev hay to buhn this fall." "There was too much burned last year," said Douglass grimly; "we'll try to put it to better use this time. I wonder what's become of him." It was the first reference he had made to Matlock for many weeks. Red spat indifferently. "Pulled hes freight fer good, I reckon. Mont Butler told me he saw him in Laramie two weeks afteh yuh broke jail." Both men chuckled reminiscently. "He were full o' talk, as usual, but I reckon thet hes blowin' won't cause no cyclones in these yeah pahts. I feel real bad to think thet he didn't stop long enough to say goo'by to me thet night." As they rode slowly in to lunch, warned by the blowing of a horn in the hands of the impatient Abbie, Douglass was unusually taciturn. As they unbridled their horses in the barn he said suddenly: "Red, I'm going to take my vacation to-morrow; will be gone for a month. Day after to-morrow Mr. and Miss Carter will be at Tin Cup--got a letter from him last week. I want you to go and meet them. Better take the extra wagon for their luggage, as well as the buckboard and Miss Carter's roan; she wants to ride in. The buckboard is for Carter and a woman friend they are bringing with them. Of course you will be in charge while I'm gone. I'm going prospecting and I'll stake you in if I find a gold mine." He said it as a matter of course; these two had become inseparable in most things. Red grunted suspiciously; he was evidently not so well pleased with prospective riches as he logically should have been. "Yuh are shore yuh ain't goin' to try an' develop a lead mine in somebody's haid oveh to Laramie?" His tone was almost peevish. Douglass gave him a reassuring thump amidships. "Not this trip, old man. I am going over to the head of the Roaring Fork to trace up some float I found there two years ago. I'd like mighty well to have you come along, but we both can't leave at the same time, you know." "It's very rich float," he said that night as they sat discussing final arrangements. "If I ever find that lead, Red, our working days are over. How'd you like to be a bloated bond-holder, eh, old-timer?" Red grinned skeptically. "I'm from Texas. Yuh've got ter put it in mah hand." "But in case we should strike it?" insisted the other with amused curiosity. Red hung his belt and scabbard on the peg above his bunk; then he hung his sombrero over them, taking considerable time to their satisfactory disposal. But his head was thrown well back and his reply was almost a challenge in its curt incisiveness: "Then I reckon I wouldn't have to baig what ribbons I took a fancy to." Douglass's eyes narrowed to mere slits and he breathed very softly; then his brows unbent again, and he laughed cynically. "That isn't very complimentary to--to wearers of the ribbons, Red. Do you really think money can buy that kind of thing?" "No, I reckon it wouldn't in her case," said McVey slowly, "but it would give a man thu right to sit in thu game." Then he raised his head proudly, sincerity, truth and resolution glowing in every lineament of his strong, bronzed face: "I love her," he said simply, "an' some day, when I've got thu right to, I'm goin' ter tell her so. An' now that I've been fool enough to let yuh fo'ce my hand, I wan't yuh to know that I only ask a faih field an' no favohs. To hell with yuh mine." He flung angrily out of the house, his spurs clinking as he went. For quite a time Douglass sat in statuesque silence; then he, too, went out into the night, wending his way to the office, where he wrote far into the wee sma' hours. Finally he dismounted his fountain pen and reread carefully the longer of the four documents on which he had been engaged. They were respectively a complete report of the stewardship, a receipt for one thousand dollars covering his four months' salary (he took that sum in cash from the little safe), a short letter to Mr. Carter, and his resignation. He sealed them all in one envelope, which he addressed and confided to Abbie's care for prompt delivery to Carter on his arrival. Then he went back to the bunkhouse and in ten minutes was fast asleep. As he pulled out in the morning Red noted that the horses which he rode and packed were Douglass's private property. Just before mounting he said, holding McVey's fist in a cordial grip, his other hand upon the brawny shoulder: "Red, I have decided to make my vacation a permanent one. I am not coming back. You are in full charge now and naturally will be retained in that capacity. You are a square, straight, _white_ man, and I am leaving you a free field. I wish you luck." He rode away, McVey watching him out of sight with wonder and consternation written all over his honest face. Over at Tin Cup he tarried long enough to bait and rest his horses and bid his friends good-by, confiding to them the scant information that he was tired of ranch work and was going to try his luck at mining. He made all kinds of exaggerated promises to little Eulalie as she clung to him sobbingly, and solemnly pledged himself to kill a bear for Bud, who wanted the hide to make a pair of _chaparejos_. He remained over night in town, leaving rather late the next day. The animals were fresh and the going good, nevertheless he did not get so far away but what the sweet face of Grace Carter glowed almost life-size in the field of his powerful prism binoculars as she sprang expectantly out of the stage and looked eagerly around with a keen disappointment growing in her eyes as McVey and Abbie alone appeared to welcome her. He saw her shake hands cordially with the former and a sneer disfigured his mouth; but it involuntarily dissipated as she was buried in the hug of the old woman who was patting her on the shoulder and crying for joy. He suddenly changed the focus of the glass as another face came in view; Robert Carter was assisting a woman to alight and as she reached terra firma the declining sun rays irradiated her face sharply. The man licked his lips nastily: "Hell!" he muttered with a fierce regret, "why didn't I know that this was coming? Guess I've overlooked the best bet of my life." And that, with Ken Douglass, was a sin. He watched them get under way for the ranch, and followed them with his glass until the distance swallowed them up. He had a broadside view for nearly the whole distance, as their course lay at nearly right angles to his line of vision. Occasionally he looked at the equestrienne on the prancing roan, but for the greater part of the time the lenses were centered on the face and form of the woman in the buckboard. For the first time in his life Red McVey had dodged a direct issue when Carter had asked him why Douglass had not met them in person. In response to that question he had equivocally replied that Douglass had gone away on his vacation and had delegated the duty to him. He was devoutly glad that he was not forced into particulars and avoided any embarrassing questions by devoting himself assiduously to the baggage. When he opened the envelope which Abbie handed to him after supper, Carter's irritation passed all bounds. With a forced politeness he excused himself to his guest and went into the office, where he was shortly joined by his sister, who intuitively surmised that something was wrong. He almost thrust the letter into her hand, asking angrily: "What the devil is the meaning of all this?" She scanned the page hurriedly, her face paling as she read. It was very short, but concise: "DEAR MR. CARTER:-- "In leaving your service I desire to thank you for the many courtesies enjoyed at your hands, and for the flattering confidence you have ever reposed in me. Enclosed please find a full statement of assets and liabilities which I ask you will confirm at your earliest convenience. I have done my best and I trust that my services have been satisfactory. "Mr. McVey is perfectly competent to assume full management of the outfit and I sincerely hope that you will consider him favorably in that connection; he is absolutely honest and dependable, and is, besides, by far the best cowman of my acquaintance. I am recommending him without either his knowledge or consent. "I have paid myself out of the funds in hand; please find voucher inclosed. "Wishing the C-- unbounded prosperity, and yourself the happiness and good fortune you deserve, Yours very respectfully, "KENNETH M. DOUGLASS." Never a word as to his underlying reasons; not an intimation of his future plans and purposes, not even a conventional word of farewell to her. She laid the letter quietly on the table. "Really, Robert, your question is astonishing," she said in cold asperity to his reiterated demand. "How could I possibly know of the reasons actuating Mr. Douglass? He has never taken me into his confidence and so I am more in the dark than you, his professed best friend, should logically be. Of course I share your regret at losing so valuable an employé; but assuredly I am not responsible for it in any way." Then she swept out haughtily to the entertainment of her guest, leaving him standing there furious and altogether unconvinced. He went over to the bunkhouse to interrogate McVey, but could get no enlightenment from that taciturn individual, who really knew nothing of Douglass's motives. So the next morning he made a virtue of necessity and offered the position to Red, who accepted it without comment, merely observing: "I'll try to please yuh." On leaving her brother, Grace went straight to Mrs. Brevoort with no little embarrassment in her manner. She realized now that both she and Robert had talked a great deal about their recalcitrant manager and she was at a loss how to explain the anomalous situation. But she went the best possible way about it, straight to the point. "I am afraid that your proposed conquest of all the cowboys on the ranch will have to be deferred in at least one particular instance, Connie," she said with a fine attempt at humorous condolence; "the most eligible one, our manager, Mr. Douglass, having severed his connection with the C Bar, so Bobbie informs me. I am genuinely sorry, for he was 'the noblest Roman of them all'!" It was cleverly done; so cleverly, in fact, that Constance Brevoort was completely nonplused, astute as she was. Long ago she had arrived at a conclusion not borne out by the seeming indifference of her hostess, who was placidly smiling at the regal beauty in the cozy armchair before the cheerful pinon fire. Under the cover of a pretended pout she watched Grace sharply. "I have not learned the particulars yet," continued Grace airily, "but I rather suspect that he got forewarned somehow and has beaten a masterly retreat while yet in possession of all his faculties. Seriously, dear, I am sorry that you did not meet him; he is a very attractive man and a forceful one. I am dubious of the outcome of a passage between you and him, despite your proficiency in the gentle game of hearts." She was laughing quite naturally now, if a little bitterly; there is much said in jest that is meant in earnest. Constance somehow detected the false note but gave no sign. She looked up languidly. "Really, I am getting interested. Maybe it is only a pleasure deferred. Is he handsome, this Sir Galahad of yours?" There was a covert malice in the question that failed of its intent, for Grace said steadily: "Not handsome in the common acceptance of the term, perhaps, but the manliest man I have ever seen." "And you have seen so many," murmured the other comprehensively. "He interests me more than ever. Is he irrevocably lost to me?" "That," said Grace truthfully, "I cannot say. It's a small world, you know, and strange things come to pass." She gave a little retrospective pat to the head of Buffo, lying in her lap. "And some beautiful things pass for ever." The antelope licked her cheek sympathetically as the last sentence was breathed softly in his ear. Constance Brevoort, unhearing that last piteous cry, smiled confidently. "It will come to pass, without question. And then--who knows." Carter entering at this juncture, the conversation was diverted to other topics. Later that night as Mrs. Brevoort divested herself of the surface paraphernalia of the sex, she smiled approvingly at the revelations of the long cheval mirror in her dressing-room. She was a handsome young matron of thirty, a perfect specimen of the southern type of brunette, with black eyes and hair, and creamy skin. Married at eighteen to Anselm Brevoort, a millionaire thirty years her senior, she had lived the life of luxury and dissipation inseparable from her social station, and was therefore naturally blasé and a bit enervated. Yet, as she stood there in the soft candle light, uncoiling her luxuriant masses of hair, it was evident that excesses had left no traces on her splendid physique. Her marriage had been one of convenience purely; she had from the very beginning frankly disavowed any love for the man who made her the mistress of his establishment and the custodian of his honor, and the waning years had not brought any accession of the tender passion. Brevoort was a very unemotional man at the best and was wholly engrossed in his business affairs, living for the better part of his time at the clubs or abroad. She was therefore thrown a great deal on her own resources for amusement, and it must be admitted that she made the most of the many opportunities accorded to every beautiful woman in her sphere. Her natural pride and discriminativeness had served her among temptations that would have been disastrous to a weaker nature. So it was that at the end of her "dolorous dozen" as she whimsically called her years of marital anomaly, she had run the gamut of every danger incident to such a career and had escaped without a scar. And her self-confidence was commensurably great. It was her laughing boast that no man had ever given her a sensation other than those of charity and weariness, and she was irritatingly frank in her expressions to that effect, even to her victims. Her visit to the Carter ranch was merely a caprice, occasioned by Grace's enthusiastic laudations of her pet western plainsmen and her mischievous intimation that beyond the Rockies was a world impregnable to even the prowess of this female Alexander. Grace was not a little alarmed at the prompt acceptance of her inadvertent challenge by the finished coquette, who really had no design whatever on her protégés but only utilized it as an excuse to get away for a time from an environment productive of ennui. She had heartily tired of the silly game and really welcomed the distraction of a new and unique experience. Nevertheless, she had gaily laid a wager with Grace that she would, in less than the allotted two-months of her stay, bedeck her belt with the scalp of every cowpuncher within a radius of ten miles from the C Bar. And when, as the day of their departure for the West approached, Miss Carter realized that Mrs. Brevoort was in earnest, she wished that she had been less urgent in her conventional invitation: it is ever a dubious venture, this turning of one's pet preserve over to the questionable mercies of a skillful and calloused hunter. Well, there was no danger now, she was thinking with a sad sinking of heart, as she looked wistfully at a cluster of long-dried heart's-ease in her escritoire. It was over and done with, and that chapter of her life was closed forever. For Abbie had, in a fit of self-reproach, told her of her taunt on that eventful night and she had instantly divined his thoughts and deductions. Her first impulse had been to write him and indignantly deny--what? He had not given voice to any such belief in her duplicity, and how was she to assume that he entertained such a thought without giving color and grounds for his suspicion? And then, again, he had not left any address and it would be impossible to reach him by mail. She knew him well enough to know that he would never again look upon her willingly in his foolish and unjustified resentment, and the probabilities of a consistent explanation were all against her. He had never written her one word during her eastern sojourn; his letters had been all of a purely business nature, curt and brief, always addressed to her brother and only containing the conventionally-required remembrances to herself. And now the over-wide gulf was forever unbridgable. In her desolation and heartache she cried herself to sleep. CHAPTER XV GREAT EXPECTATIONS Constance Brevoort's two months had lengthened into five and it was now October. Her experience had been unique and so diverting that the attractions of the eastern metropolis had paled before the more virile and exciting possibilities of this life primitive, and it had required but slight persuasion on the part of the Carters to induce her to prolong her stay until the time of their own return to New York. The healthful outdoor life, to which she took with avidity, had worked wonders for her really splendid and responsive constitution, and her normal great beauty had been freshened and intensified to a degree that made her conquest of the unsophisticated cowpunchers a thing of almost unenjoyable ease. With the single exception of Red, who loyally worshiped at the shrine of his first-loved divinity, every man for miles around did open and unblushing homage to the bewitching goddess, who found in their frank adoration a charm and satisfaction unknown to her previous inane piracies on the placid shallows of the social millpond. Out here on the high seas of unshackled independence, where every man was a viking in his own right and cruised with unbridled license through the deeps of his own will, each conquest was a victory to be written large on the tablet of her vanity. In her own land she had found many men who would languidly live for her favors; out here there was not one who would not eagerly die for the privilege of carrying out her most whimsical commands. And with womanly lack of philosophy she very much preferred those who would die to those who would live. Under the jealous ministrations of her Centaur swains she had developed a great skill of horsewoman-ship, and in their company she and Grace Carter had ridden the range thoroughly, leaving not one point thereof unexplored. Each man vied with the other in the breaking of a safe mount for her, and tradition has it that there were more gentle horses on the range that year than had ever been known before on the whole western slope. These extended rides were a Godsend for Grace, diverting her mind from its cankering memories and bringing a new beauty to both face and figure, until at last the amorous cowpunchers were frankly divided as to the supremacy of the two women's respective charms. Red, alone, had no indecision, either in thought or strenuous expression on that point. "Thu black ain't in thu runnin' with thu bay; an' she ain't in her class, nuther," had been his unequivocal opinion when approached on that topic. "Thu one's good enough to put yuh wad on fer a quick spurt, but yuh kin trus' yuah life on thu otheh. Thu filly fer me, every time." But then Red was in love, and that always has a strongly modifying influence on one's convictions. That he was nearly alone in his judgment may be ascribed to the difference of tastes. And it may be stated as a curious coincidence that most of the cowpunchers were blondes. Not a word had been heard from Douglass since his departure and he had actually passed out of the mind of Mrs. Brevoort altogether. When their paths did finally cross, however, it was under conditions that stamped him indelibly upon her mind and soul both. She and Grace had ridden over to Tin Cup in the cool of the morning, spending the day with Mrs. Blount. They had, on their return, essayed a short cut through William's pasture field, with the intention of thereby shortening the distance and evading the dust which hung in big yellow clouds above a herd of cattle being driven up the county road. In the field adjoining Grace saw, with an instantaneous recognition which sent the color from her cheeks, a rider engaged in corralling a pair of dusty pack-horses whose appearance betokened a long day's plodding. There could be no mistaking that erect, lithe figure, or the long, rangy "strawberry roan" he was so gracefully bestriding, and her heart leaped at sight of him. Constance, following the direction of her gaze, asked quickly: "Who is that? What a superb seat he has!" Even as her lips opened in reply, Grace saw Mrs. Brevoort's horse give a frantic kick at something entangling his legs, then leap affrightedly from side to side, while his rider screamed in terror. As he plunged again Grace screamed in unison as she realized her companion's peril; she never knew that at that moment of supreme dread she had instinctively cried out the name of the rider in the next field, conscious only of that terrible strand of barbed wire which was goading Constance's horse to frenzy. It was a thing of all too common occurrence in this land of wire fences; a loosely-coiled strand of the barbed steel had been left lying in the high grass where some careless repairsman had indolently flung it, and the horse had become hopelessly entangled in its trap. Scared and anguished by the ripping barbs, the horse was plunging madly about in his attempt to free himself from its cruel fetters, momentarily approaching a greater danger, as in his struggles he neared a high cut bank of the arroyo traversing the pasture. At that shrill scream of "Ken! Ken!" the man whirled his horse about and looked inquiringly in their direction; one lightning-like glance and he sent the rowells home hard into the flank of the roan, which left the ground in one mighty leap. Over the intervening twenty rods he came like a thunderbolt, clearing the dividing fence by a good two feet as Douglass lifted him to the jump and gaining the side of the plunging horse just as the bank's edge crumbled under its feet. He was not one moment too soon, for as his arm encircled Constance's waist, her horse went floundering down to a broken neck on the rocks thirty feet below. Even then for a few moments the issue was in doubt; Mrs. Brevoort was an exceedingly well-nurtured young woman, and one hundred and forty pounds of limp humanity is difficult to sustain with one arm while on the back of a horse struggling to retain his footing on the treacherous edge of a loose-earth precipice. But that arm had the strength of a steel bar, and its possessor was the best horseman in a land where all men rode for a living. Inside of ten seconds he was dismounting in safety, still holding the fainting woman with that one clasping arm. As he touched the ground he placed the other arm around her supportingly, her weight for the first time telling on him. On his snatching her out of the saddle she had instinctively thrown her arms about his neck, and they were still there; her head lay drooped upon his shoulder and her loosened hair, whipping in the fresh breeze, was stinging his cheek and blinding his eyes as Grace rode up and flung herself from the saddle. There was a suggestiveness in the pose of the two that went to her heart with a pang: they looked so lover-like, this man with his arms about the clinging woman. For five long months she had been schooling her heart to resignation in the conviction that they would never meet in the flesh again, and here he had come back to her--with another woman in his arms. In that moment she hated Constance Brevoort with all the fervor of her strong young aching heart. For as she stood there, torn by passion and pulsating with joy at the sight of him whom she had deemed lost to her forever, she saw the black eyes cautiously open and close again, the rose-red lips curve in a peculiar smile, and the white arms tighten about Douglass's neck. In the first fury of her jealous rage she could have killed them both without compunction, but pride came to her rescue and as he gently laid his burden down in the deep grass, reason reasserted itself. Taking Constance's head in her lap, she said curtly: "Get some water at once! There is plenty in the arroyo." He was back in a half minute with his inverted sombrero full of the tepid fluid which Grace rather unceremoniously poured over Mrs. Brevoort's face and neck, sneering cynically at the well-simulated gasp of returning consciousness that rewarded her efforts. At the second douche Mrs. Brevoort's eyes opened a bit hastily; the water was a trifle turbid as well as tepid, and Constance doubted the benefits of that alkaline lotion on her zealously-preserved complexion. Grace smiled grimly and emptying the remainder of the water out of his sombrero handed it to him with exaggerated thankfulness. He took it with a modest declaimer and turned to the readjustment of his saddle which had been displaced during the rescue. Then he went to the recovery of the accoutrements of the dead horse in the arroyo and when he returned Mrs. Brevoort was in more appropriate condition to receive his formal introduction and convey her gratitude for the supreme service he had rendered. He evaded most of the latter by hastily riding back to town in the hopes of securing her another mount. He returned with the discomfiting report that there was not a single ridable animal available, and suggested that the ladies return to Tin Cup and stay over night, a rider being meanwhile sent to the C Bar ranch for a horse that she could handle with safety. As it was already well along in the heel of the day they were compelled to accept his advice and the return to the hotel was soon effected. He was all deference to Miss Carter throughout the evening meal and the short succeeding hour of his company which he accorded them. He was frank in his confession of failure to find the mineral deposits of which he had been in search, although positive in his conviction that he would be ultimately successful. He was exceedingly affable in his manner and Grace was all sweetness in return. Constance Brevoort, watching the little by-play, was genuinely amused; with the wisdom of the old serpent she effaced herself as much as possible, and as soon as conventionality would permit, excused herself and retired to her room, leaving the leaven of her beauty to work in what she correctly judged to be warm and fertile soil. It was a clever bit of strategy that would in nine out of ten instances have been altogether successful and she smiled as she looked into the little mirror. "This one will be worth while," she mused aloud, her mouth full of hair-pins. "But he will require different treatment from the others, and will have to be handled carefully. But why did she say he was not handsome? The man is as beautiful as a Greek god done in bronze. And he has the strength of ten. He caught me up like a feather." She looked with a strange admiration at the slight discoloration of the white flesh where his arm had gripped her waist. "Yes, he will be worth while." But fate had capriciously designed this to be the tenth instance; after she had left the room an embarrassing silence had fallen upon the stuffy little parlor and after awhile, Douglass rose diffidently and stalked toward the door, mumbling some conventional excuse for his departure. His hand was already on the door knob when his name, softly spoken, caused him to turn instantly. Grace had also risen and was standing beside the table with one hand partly extended and something very like entreaty in her eyes. "Tell me," she said without preamble, coming straight to the point, "why did you leave the C Bar? My brother says you gave no reason; and I think I have a right to know." For the eternal half of a minute he regarded her with somber scorn. "I guess you've got another think coming," he said with slangy impoliteness. "When, and where, and how, and by whom was conferred upon you the right to demand of me an accounting of my private affairs?" Her bosom was heaving in hot resentment of his studied incivility and her lips trembled with a fierce desire to give him scorn for scorn. But she had too much at stake and another opportunity might not offer if she let the present one escape her. So she wisely availed herself of woman's best weapon and a tear glistened in her eye as she said humbly: "I presumed too greatly; and I am fully rebuked. I have no right--not even the right to expect courtesy and justice at your hands. Yet you are a fair man, and some terrible mistake seems to have been made somehow. Tell me, please, why did you leave us as you did?" He answered her, Yankee-wise, with a counter question: "Why did you show Abbie my poem?" "Abbie--your poem--! I do not understand!" Her genuine wonder and surprise made him feel uneasy. 'Could it be possible, after all, that she was guiltless? If so--God! what a fool he had made of himself! He crossed the room impulsively, and laying his hand on her shoulder, looked squarely into her dewy eyes. She met his look bravely, then gently removing his hand, walked in her turn to the door. He intercepted her with a quick movement, his jaws squaring with determination. "Let us have this thing out, here and now! Why did you deliberately make a laughing stock of me by exhibiting that foolish bit of verse and so expose me to the ridicule of the whole range? I want the truth." "And you could think me guilty of that!" There was more of sorrowful pity than indignation in the words and they cut him like a bullet. "Let me pass, please. I have no further curiosity to satisfy." He barred the way obstinately, a shamed contrition struggling with sullen incredulity for the mastery. "Wait a minute," he said thickly. "If I am wrong in this I humbly beg your pardon, but I am going to be sure before I humiliate myself unnecessarily." Angry as she was, she had much difficulty to repress a smile at the arrogance of his vanity. "Abbie taunted me with writing poetry and the men joined in her insinuations. Their only knowledge of my foolishness could have been derived from one source--the notebook which I lost and which you returned to me. There was no reference to it made before it came into your possession. What was I to infer?" "That book was handed to me by my mother, who, as I understand, got it from one of the men who found it at the gate. He thought it belonged to my brother and so gave it to her. I beg to assure you that no one saw or handled it while in my possession but myself. And I certainly have not discussed its contents with any one." Reading full belief in his eyes, she recovered her composure instantly and thereafter had him on the defensive. "Was the poetry really as bad as all that?" she asked with such apparent innocent naïveté that he was compelled against his will to smile somewhat sheepishly. "It was arrant nonsense," he confessed. And then, somewhat bitterly. "Yet it was written in good faith, every word of it." "Then I should like to read it," she said, with hypocritical interest. "I am curious to learn what could be the nature of the impressions that you could be impelled to perpetuate in verse." "I thought you had no further curiosity to satisfy," he retorted evasively, his suspicions now entirely dissipated. "And I do not care to risk subjecting myself to any further indignities." "That is very unkind of you." The reproof was gravely gentle. "My interest is not that of mere curiosity, believe me. I prophesied once that you could write poetry, remember. It would be a great pleasure to read the vindication of my intuition. _That_ is woman's best trump card, you know. Please." She laid her hand on his arm and he fumbled irresolutely with his hat; she smiled confidently, knowing well that he who hesitates with a woman is lost. Although greatly against his inclination he took the book from his inside pocket and put it in her hand, opened at the verse she was so familiar with. With a great pretense at its more convenient reading, she went over to the lamp or the table; but it was really to hide a sudden trepidation she felt at her own audacity in thus forcing his hand. In order to gain time she reread it a second and then a third time. In the presence of the man standing there silently waiting her judgment, the lines took on a new and strange meaning, an intensity of pathetic appeal that filled her eyes with tears. She made no attempt to conceal them as she returned the booklet. "I thank you," she said very gently. "It is my vindication--and my answer as well. 'A great Love's ecstasy!' May it be yours--and without the penalty." Her face was drawn and wan, and the hand she extended to him as she bade him good night trembled visibly. He took it in both his and for an immortal second, happiness was very close to those two young people, had they only known. But Cupid was ever a mischievous imp and one of his arrows had only glanced; he laughed derisively and turned his back, resolving to drive the shaft home mercilessly when time and longing had worn to the quick this big simpleton's armor of obtuse vanity, as Douglass, restraining a sudden mad desire to take this woman in his arms and bruise her mouth with kisses, merely laid his lips respectfully on the little hand and deferentially held open the door. At the entrance of the hotel he encountered Red McVey, coming to assure himself of the safety of the ladies. He had ridden out to meet them on their return journey, as was his wont, and, meeting the rider sent for a new mount for Mrs. Brevoort, had sent him on to the ranch with definite instructions, electing himself to ride through to town and as a matter of precaution, accompany them home the next day. The rider had not mentioned Douglass's participation in the mishap, and his presence was therefore a surprise to McVey, who was unaffectedly glad to see his best friend again. At the Alcazar, a little later, Red had a sapient suggestion to make: "Befoh yuh squandah all thu gold yuh been diggin' outen yuh leetle ole mine, Ken, on this yeah mad-wateh outfit, yuh betteh lay yuh a leetle nest aig. Thu Vaughans want to sell theah ranch an' go east; reckon twenty thousand would buy it, cattle an' all. If yuh got that much denario in yuh jeans it's a mighty big bahgaln." "Twenty thousand!" said Douglass derisively. "You haven't heard of a lone cowpuncher about my size that's been holding up any banks or treasure trains, have you? Twenty thousand! Why say, you old redheaded funny-bone, I'm ashamed to tell you what I'd do for one-half that much money, honest I am. I'm just seven bones to the good and I've come down here to make it a couple of hundred, so's I can eat till the grass comes. It's next year I'll be buying twenty thousand-dollar bargains; the gold is there, all right, and I'm going to find it. "I bought out a claim up there," he continued, "and who do you think owned it first?" He chuckled at thought of the surprise he was going to spring on Red. But his mirth got a sudden check as McVey nodded his head knowingly. "Yes, I heered about it; 'twer Matlock, an' he's been talkin' a heap disrespec'ful about how he broke it off in yuh, oveh to Cheyenne. Says as how he is seven hundred dollars nearer even with yuh. I didn't think yuh'd let that coyote soak yuh thataway." His words were distinctly reproachful. Douglass smiled mysteriously. "Don't you worry about my soaking, old-timer. He'll talk even more disrespectfully of himself about this time next year. That claim lies lengthwise along the top of the ridge, on both sides of it, and so constitutes the 'apex' of every vein below it throughout its full length. I am perfectly aware that he salted it for my benefit with ore taken from the Bonanza mine. I saw him doing it! But even if I hadn't known all about it I wouldn't have been fooled. The formation is entirely different from the Bonanza locality and any miner, let alone a professional mining engineer as I happen to be, would have tumbled to the salting at first sight of the stuff the fool scattered about the place. And that apex controls the vein that this came from!" He fished a bit of rock from his pocket and passed it to Red, whose eyes bulged out as he looked. Through its center, from side to side, ran a ribbon of dull yellow metal as wide as one's finger. Even to Red's unmetallurgical eyes its identity was plain. "Gold! Pure gold!" he murmured with respectful awe. Then his big paw went out congratulatingly. "Shake! Gawd, ole man, but I'm shore glad!" "What's a 'apex'?" he inquired of Douglass, some six hundred dollars winner for the night, as he left the faro table and walked arm in arm with him to the hotel. Douglass was very explicit in his explanation. "Nearly all true fissure veins in these mountains are to all practical intents and purposes vertical; that is, they run straight up and down instead of lying horizontal. It naturally follows that, if they don't pinch out before they get there, they come to the surface at or near the top of the hill. The courts have decided that a claim located on the top or 'apex' of such veins controls them to whatever depth they may run; that is, an 'apex' claim holds all the veins under it clean down to China! So the fellow who owns the 'apex' practically owns the whole mountain for a space as long as the length of his claim. To make sure of catching the apex of any veins in the hill I took up two extensions--one on each side of the claim I bought from Matlock and his partner, so that my holdings are fifteen hundred feet long by nine hundred feet wide; as the hill crest is almost a knife-edge in sharpness I cover every vein in it. And somewhere under the loose slide-rock on that hill lies the lode from which this comes! Do you _sabe_ now?" Red gurgled his full comprehension. "Why yuh damned ole foxy gran'pa! I orter knowed thet yuh wouldn't let thet swab do yuh! But howd' yuh come to be dealin' with Matlock? I been a heap oneasy in my mind about that." "Well, it was this way: Two years ago his partner, old Eric Olsen, the big Swede that Coogan bought the Palace from, you know, saw me prospecting on that mountain and naturally figured that I had found some good indications of mineral there or I would not be fooling around. So they plotted to salt a claim or two and swindle me a bit, their own prospecting of the ground revealing nothing at all. The whole mountain side is covered with slide-rock and there is no mineral in sight. So, calculating that a fool cowpuncher knew nothing about geology and so would bite at anything he could see with his own eyes, they stole a lot of rich ore from the Bonanza, over at Breckenridge, and salted her up good! As it happened, they chose the very claim I wanted to file on, the apex, and so I had to buy them out. I never came in contact with either of them at all; I bought it through a mining broker. But for a whole day I watched them through my field glasses salting the ground. The funny part of it is that by a very little work--Olsen is a good man with a drill and powder, you know--they did enough linear shafting to enable me to patent the ground. And in the five months that I have been at work on the extensions I have done enough work on each of them to patent them also. That's what I wanted this six hundred for. In ten days I'll have them patented, too, and then no one can jump them or cause me any trouble when I come to work the leads which I am sure lie under my apex claims." On the first of the new year he received his patents from Washington; and in the interim he had secured work that promised to put him in sufficient funds to prosecute developments on his mining claims. CHAPTER XVI THE SONG OF THE WOLF The next morning, yielding to McVey's urgencies, he consented to take part in the fall round-up just at hand, working in the interests of the C Bar outfit. In the ensuing days of strenuous toil he worked harder than he had ever done before in all his range experience, spurred with the idea that he owed Carter some reparation for leaving his service so unceremoniously, and his staunch yeomanry appealed particularly to Anselm Brevoort, who had run out to see a rodeo and have a month's hunt with Carter. As the best hunter among the C Bar men it naturally devolved upon Douglass, after the range work was done, to act as guide to Brevoort and the ladies, who developed a great interest in the sport. It was upon one of these trips that Brevoort casually mentioned his temptation to buy a ranch as an investment, asking Douglass's advice in the matter. The latter expressing some diffidence in the premises, Brevoort brought the point in issue to a definite focus by asking him if he thought the price asked for the Vaughan holdings, twenty thousand dollars, was excessive. Douglass thought it was excessively cheap, to the contrary, and said so emphatically. "I would gladly give thirty for it if I had the money. There are more than twenty thousand dollars' worth of cattle in the VN brand without counting the ranch lands, which are worth nearly as much more. I think the Vaughans are loco to sell at the price!" They had just finished luncheon and were lounging about a little spring enjoying their post-prandial pipes. Mrs. Brevoort was dallying with a dainty papelito and Grace was fussing with her pocket camera. Constance, gracefully exhaling a perfumed wraith, looked significantly to her husband, who gave an imperceptible nod and after a few thoughtful puffs came to the marrow of his subject. "That's Carter's opinion, too, and McVey thinks it a great bargain, also. And as Mrs. Brevoort has taken a great fancy to the place for some reason, I think I will take it; that is, if I can secure some competent man to manage it for me. It would be a position of entire trust as I know nothing of the business and would necessarily be unable to give it scarcely any attention, my time being fully occupied otherwise. Are you open to such an engagement, Mr. Douglass?" Grace Carter, her attention apparently riveted upon some intricate adjustment of her camera, scarcely breathed; Constance Brevoort, flicking the ash from her cigarette, never moved an eyelash. In the silence which followed the question, the champing of the horses on the grain in their nose-bags sounded to the women like a threshing machine. "I am much flattered!" said Douglass, slowly. "But I am afraid that I will not be able to accept your offer. I have some mining interests to look after and--" "But I understood you to say that you would gladly give thirty thousand dollars for it if you were in funds. That presupposes that you could find the time if necessary," said Breevort, with humorous insistence. "Look here, Douglass, I am not in the habit of loading myself up with dubious investments, and I wouldn't give ten dollars for the whole layout unless I can secure you as manager. In your hands I feel as though I would get fair returns on my outlay. I am frank to say I have 'looked you up' as we say in town, and I want you to give it further consideration before turning my offer down. As to your mining interests, perhaps I could be of some assistance to you in that direction. Think it over; I won't take no for an answer right off the reel." As he was unsaddling the horses on their return that night, Miss Carter, coming with some sugar lumps for her pet roan, stopped long enough to shyly venture the hope that he would be able to become one of the neighbors. "The sale of their ranch will allow Nellie Vaughan to achieve the dream of her life, an extended trip abroad, and one realizes so few of one s dreams in this life, you know! Besides, you are part of the environment to me. You really 'belong'! I do hope you will accept Mr. Brevoort's proposal--for Nellie's sake!" Very deliberately he hung the saddle on the rack. Then he came close to her, looking very masterful and Strong in the white moonlight. "Nellie is to be congratulated on the thoughtfulness of her loving friends! But why should I, who am not one of them, take her into consideration at all? Promiscuous philanthropy is not my forte. The inducement is small. Have you nothing better to offer?" "For our sakes, then;" she said ambiguously. "We will feel easier if you remain on this range, feel more secure in our lives and property." He flushed at the immensity of the compliment but ruthlessly forced her hand. "That's rather high, but still not enough. Bid again!" "For _my_ sake!" It was nearly a whisper, but he heard. His eyes were triumphantly bright as, deftly eluding his curving arm, she sped swiftly away in the benign darkness. But it was a different glow from any which had ever irradiated them before: This was that of a soft, sweet tenderness that vaguely soothed even while strongly disconcerting him. He was very quiet under the spell of it as he went into supper, and noticeably distrait during the game of chess which he subsequently played with Mrs. Brevoort in the big living room later on. Beating him with ridiculous ease she declined another game, saying, laughingly: "You are not in form to-night, Mr. Douglass, and I like victories more difficult of achievement. Time was when I was content with mere winning, no matter how easy the attainment of that end. But this life out here has spoiled me for inanities forever. I have still the insatiable desire for conquest, but now I want to go up against odds and win, to bring into camp only opponents worthy of my steel." "But that," he said, with conventional politeness, "is unthinkable. There can be none entirely worthy of you!" She made a little _moué_ at the wearisome compliment. "Why do all men say the same things! I'm quite sure I've heard something like that a hundred times before. In fact, I've come three thousand miles to get away from it. Say something original, please, even if it be something wicked!" He looked at her queerly but she met his gaze with eyes as audacious as her words. Over at the piano Grace was playing with much tender feeling one of Chopin's delicious nocturnes; before the open fireplace, Carter, Brevoort and McVey were discussing the possibilities of a well-managed ranch. The big room with its happy combination of modern and primitive amenities was the epitome of cheerfulness and comfort. "Original? No man can say anything that is that. The possibilities were exhausted centuries ago. Even. Sin is stereotyped. There have always been women like you and men like me! What on earth could a man in my position say to a woman in yours that would be acceptably wicked?" She smiled inscrutably; there was no abstraction in his manner now. "And yet you are so bold in other things!" she said, tauntingly. "To the brave all things are possible." From far out in the darkness came the weird, long-drawn, mournful howl of some gaunt timber wolf foraging with his mate. It was very faint and the others, deeply engrossed in music and money matters, were unconscious of it. At its eerie repetition she laid her hand lightly on his arm. "Listen! That is something new to me at all events. What can it be?" "Only 'the voice of one crying in the wilderness,'" he whimsically quoted. "A gray wolf calling to his mate." He laid his hand restrainingly on hers and leaned so close that his hot breath swept her cheek. "I wonder how brave, or wicked, you could really be, you wonderful creature!" he murmured, insidiously. Her color heightened but she made no reply. The pulse was very distinct in the veins of the soft little warm hand lying tremulously beneath his. "Listen! There it is again, the call of the Wild, the voice out of the Primitive inviting strong souls back into the boundless realm of the great First Cause. Are you brave enough to accept it, to go out and be the most gloriously fierce wolf of them all?" "Why," she exclaimed, with a labored vivacity that deceived neither of them, "that is certainly original!" "With--say with me for a running mate!" His voice was scarcely audible. "And that is decidedly wicked!" She gently withdrew her hand. But there was small reproof in the seductive smile playing about her red lips. With the arrogance of the youthfully virile and strong he glanced contemptuously at the slight figure before the fireplace, old and worn and gray, debilitated with the fierce excesses of the chase after money; then he looked at the radiant beauty of the voluptuous young woman beside him and laughed grimly at the painful disparity between man and wife. "And they say marriages are made in heaven!" To his credit be it said that he had intended the sneer to be mental only, but somehow or other, perhaps telepathically, the woman bent her head and a wave of crimson suffused her face. "Wolves know no conventions," he went on with tense vehemence. "Out there in the wild soul calls to soul, body leaps to body in the fitness of true affinity. It is all Life, and therefore all Love; for Life is Love incarnated. The senile moralists of Humanity, that least fit race of all earthly animals, preach the equality of the sexes. As applied to human beings that is a lie. It is only out there among the wolves that She is the equal of He in all things, his mental, physical, psychical and sexual peer. That is why the type is kept pure and eternal. The wolf of twenty centuries hence will be fully the equal of the wolf of to-day. And why? Because of the virtue of perfect natural selection--the fittest to the fittest, without the let and hindrance of sickly sentimentality, the unnatural joining by Man-god made crimes of the unfit to the fit. Wolves breed wolves, with full powers of the highest enjoyment of Life and Love. Humanity begets weaklings, cowards, driveling idiots whose highest evolution is that shapeless thing called Hope, whose greatest virtue is submission to the anomalies of civilization. Even you, who could be the peer of any wolf that ever ran untrammeled--" He stopped abruptly, ashamed of his vehemence, and somewhat abashed by the indulgent if slightly satirical smile of his amused listener. "Even if I could run, and howl, and go hungry; every man's hand, and what is infinitely worse, every woman's tongue against me! And what could the Wolf give me in exchange for this?" waving her hand around the room comprehensively and incidentally fondling her jewels. "He could give you something in exchange for _that_," he said, with a sinister glance towards the fireplace and again she dropped her eyes. He drew the chess board towards him and began mechanically arranging the pieces. Then he swept them impatiently into a heap and made as if to arise. She leaned forward suddenly and again laid her hand on his arm. "The wolf subject is an interesting one to me. It is really a pity that I will not be accorded an opportunity of studying them in their native haunts. If it were not for your, to us, unfortunate obligations elsewhere, I should devote quite a portion of my time to the pursuit of more definite information about them." His hot hand almost burned hers. "Why shouldn't you investigate the matter if you want to? Your husband is going to buy the VN ranch!" In silence more eloquent than words she gave him her hand. After a few desultory minutes with the group about the fireplace, he strolled over to the piano. Grace welcomed him shyly, her touch on the keys a little uncertain as in compliance with her request he sang to her accompaniment the Toreador song from Carmen. The request was an inspiration on her part, she never having heard him sing before, and she had preferred it only to cover her soft confusion as she suddenly felt rather than saw his presence behind her. If his instant compliance had surprised her, his execution of it was a revelation to everyone in the room. He sang it easily and freely, a little raucously from lack of practice, it is true, but with the power and richness of voice that made even Constance Brevoort, hypercritical as she was in things musical, sit breathless to its conclusion. The silence which followed was first broken by Red. "Gee, Ken," he said quaintly, "who'd ever thought yuh could beller so melojious as that! Why, yuh're a reg'lah preemoh-johnny!" In the hilarity which this evoked Grace said, reproachfully: "And to think I never knew!" He was almost boyishly elated at the implied compliment, and, at the insistence of his audience sang several other operatic selections very creditably. Then he turned in modest explanation to Carter's demand. "We all sang a little at college, you know, and my mother was an accomplished musician. It is four years since I last sang. You are overkind to me." "Do you not play as well?" impulsively asked Mrs. Brevoort. He shook his head negatively. "Only a few accompaniment chords that I smash out indifferently! and I am dubious of my ability to do that after all these years of roping and ditch digging." Anselm Brevoort, watching him speculatively through a fragrant cloud of cigar smoke, suddenly sprang a bomb. "Have you ever composed, Mr. Douglass, written any songs, for instance? I have heard that you range men have an aptitude in that direction." Douglass surveyed him levelly for a moment, his face hardening with quick suspicion. "I have done most things foolish, after the manner of my kind, Mr. Brevoort," he said, curtly; "but I hardly think you would find even a passing interest in anything I have accomplished in that direction." Whereupon that astute financier subsided promptly, evincing no further curiosity as to the poetic attainments of this uncomfortably straight-speaking young personage. He was a very shrewd man and had long since learned to respect the moods and idiosyncrasies of others. But Constance, his wife, detecting the sharp irritation in Douglass's voice, was seized with a malicious desire to know its cause; like her husband she was thinking: "That caught him on the raw, somehow. I wonder why?" "You should allow your friends to be the judge of that, Mr. Douglass," she said, pleasantly. "I am quite certain myself that we should find much more than a passing interest if we could induce you to favor us. The songs inspired by this environment must naturally be full of color and strength. I should very much enjoy hearing one." "Upon your heads be it, then!" He seated himself at the piano. "This," he said, turning to Mrs. Brevoort, meaningly, "I call 'The Song of the Wolf.'" Through the silence of the room crept a queer, faint murmur like the breath of an æolian harp or the sighing of the wind through far-off pines. There was no attempt at harmonious arrangement and concordance; it was rather a vague, erratic and intangible dissonance, a weird jumble of soft discords that alternately pleased and pained. Gradually it increased in volume, as the wind rises to the approach of a storm, culminating finally in a thunderous crash of double bass. Then out of the contrastive silence of the succeeding lull came unmistakably the mournful howl of a wolf, wonderfully rendered by a few soft tremulous touches of those strong yet sensitive fingers. Another rolling crash, a diminishing rumble, and then the rich, deep voice of the singer: "Child of the Wind and Sun, I glide Like a tongue of flame o'er the mountain's side. Wherever falleth my blighting tread Lie the whitening bones of the silent Dead. For trail of wrath Is my red-wet path From the Sea's low rim to the glaciers high, _Ai y-u-u--yu--yu-u-u-u!_ I live the better that others die. _Ai yu-u-u-u-u-u!_ "Oh! sweet is the scent in the evening gale, Of the dun deer wending adown the trail Where I lie, grim ambushed, with bated breath, A gray lance couched in the hand of Death! At that maddening tang White-bared each fang, Dripping anon with ambrosia red; _Ai y-u-u--yu--yu-u-u-u!_ Haste, sweetheart, to the feast outspread! _Ai yu-u-u-u-u-u!_ "But sweeter even than Life's rich wine, As, hot from the kill--ah-h! draught divine!-- It trickles adown my ravished throat, Is my gaunt mate's deep-toned, chesty note. As o'er hill and plain She calls amain Till the welkin quivers with ecstasy: _Ai y-u-u--yu--yu-u-u-u!_ 'Oh come, Beloved, to Love and me!' _Ai yu-u-u-u-u-u!_ "Manlings spawned in the cities' slime. Weaklings, withered before your prime. What ken ye of the joys there be Of Life and of Love and of Liberty! Better hill and dell As free Ishmael Than the shackles of pomp and pageantry: _Ai yu-u-u--yu--yu-u-u-u!_ Come out, oh! faint hearts, and howl with me! _Ai yu-u-u-u-u-u!_" In the storm of applause that rewarded his unique performance he rose and went over to the fireplace. "If you are still disposed to the purchase of the Vaughan holdings I will accept your offer," he said to Brevoort. "But I must be free to come and go at will. I am one of the wolves, you know!" Brevoort nodded a brisk acquiescence. "That is perfectly satisfactory to me. We will arrange the details." McVey was genuinely pleased and said so; Carter rather grudgingly extended his congratulations; he would rather Douglass were the manager of his own estate. His grievance was still fresh and rankling. Constance Brevoort, toying with the ivory chessmen, smiled commiseratingly at the soft irradiation of Grace's face. CHAPTER XVII THE FROWNING GODDESS SMILES It was arranged that the transfer of the VN interests should be made at the last day of the year. The weather was still open and the days very delightful, and Brevoort evincing a lively interest in Douglass's mining venture, his wife proposed a junket over to the claims on the head of the Roaring Fork, something less than forty miles away as the crow flies. As the trip would have to be made over rather difficult trails it was decided to go on horseback, the camp paraphernalia being loaded on pack animals in charge of McVey, who somewhat eagerly volunteered his services. The trail led through a very rugged country alive with big game and Brevoort was in the seventh heaven of a hunter's delight. For three days the cavalcade slowly wended its way through scenery unequaled anywhere on earth, and every minute was fraught with enjoyment. On the afternoon of the third day, when they finally reached the rough claim-cabin nestling in the giant spruces on the edge of a little sun-kissed park, their delight was unbounded. Artistic in nature, Douglass had selected a most charming spot for his habitation. The little park, sloping to the westward, was knee-deep with grass, studded with the belated blooms of the high altitudes. Down one side purled a little brook, fed from a beautiful waterfall in easy view from the cabin door. To the south lay the snow-capped purple reaches of the Taylor Range over which they had just come, and to the east, behind the cabin, towered the majestic grandeur of the continent-dividing Rockies, the "Backbone of the World" in the poetical phraseology of the Ute Indians. From the cabin door one looked over an immense vista of mountain, plain, valley and river too exquisite for description by words. Having come leisurely and comfortably, all were in the proper frame of mind and body for its enjoyment, and the scrupulously clean cabin came in for its share of deserved encomiums. It was immediately given over for the personal use of the ladies, who were delighted with the cozy bunks and foot-deep mattresses of aromatic spruce needles. The men, as much from preference as from necessity, spread their blankets under the open sky. The sportsman's instinct was strong in Brevoort, so he and Douglass went out with their rifles, returning in less than an hour with a splendid buck deer and a dozen grouse. The little stream had also yielded up to Carter, who was an expert fly-fisherman, some two-score delicious trout, and the resulting meal was one fit for the gods. All cowboys are from necessity good cooks, and the fluffy, golden brown biscuits and fragrant coffee of Red's making were unexceptionable. Despite the chill of the evening they sat around a roaring camp-fire until long after the moon rose, regaled by the quaint narratives of McVey, who was a born raconteur. What added to their subtle humor immensely was the fact that the embodied jokes were almost always turned at his own expense. But the last of his relations brought tears into the eyes of one woman at least, and made Douglass kick embarrassedly at the glowing log heap until the sparks arose in an inverted cascade of fire. "Theah is some people in thu wohld that seem just bawn foh trubble! They are built a-puppos, like a woodpecker, an' mizzery nacherally poahs upon 'em when everybody else is so allfired happy that it hurts. "I mind a fambly o' that kind which come oveh yeah from thu Picketwire (Purgatoire River) three yeah ago. They was foah on 'em, two ole ones an' a couple o' kids, boy 'n gyurl, 'bout sixteen yeahs ole, each." "How old, each?" asked Douglass, artlessly. "'Bout sixteen yeah ole, each, I said, an' I didn't stuttah, neither! They was twinneds. Thu boy was tow-haided an' ornary; thu gyurl were a roan, even redder'n me! I think she were thu freckledst critter I eveh see, an' ugly! Say, honest, she was afeared to look inter a lookin' glass an' every time she see her face axcidental she hollered! "Thet outfit were shore onlucky! Fust theah hosses got into a loco patch, an' one dawk night walked oveh a clift thinkin' it were thu aidge o' a sun crack. Then theah cow gits lumpy jaw an' haster be shot. Thu hekid tried to hold out kyards one night when Lem Bowers was feelin' mean, an' it took thu waggin an' hawness to pay fer sawin off hes laig. An' when he got so's he could mosey about agin, hes krutch got stuck in thu frawg o' the railroad crossin' in Gunnison an' a freight train mussed him up redic'lous! "Naow yuh'd think thet thu two thousand plunks thu Company paid hes paw fer dammitches was a purty faih standoff fer past hawdships, but thet fambly's luck was suthin' scandalous! It were all in hunner dollah bills, an' thu ole woman cached 'em in thu mattrass of her baid. Thu mattrass were stuffed with wild hay, an' one day when thu ole woman were out pickin' Oregan grape an' osho-root fer thu ole man's rheumatiz, a burro loafered into camp an' et up thu hull shootin' match! "The she-kid rustles a jawb as biscuit-shooter in a Swede beanery oveh to Crested Butte, but she was so plum ugly thet she scahed away all thu feeders an' thu boss sues her foh his come-back. Then she hikes out with a tinhawn Greaser an' ketches thu small-pawx down to Taos, an' passes out accordin'! "One day thu ole man goes shy on meat and goes out huntin'. He don't see no deer but he finds a mine--just hes dum luck, ye see; he were lookin' fer chuck an' thu best he got was a stone! Well, he gits so axcited thet he tries to break a chunk offen thu laidge with his gun butt, an' thu blame ole shootin' iron jars loose an' blows hes fool wing off. Fawtuhn were a leetle severe on thu ole fellah, don't yuh think? But he manages ter git home with hes leetle ole hunk o' quawtz, tells thu ole woman wheah he found it, an' petehs out, hisself. They's so pooh thet she had ter go an' git hes gun so's ter be able ter sell it an' git enough mazuma ter plant him with thu 'propriate trimmin's. Them kind is allus great on perprieties! "Well, she finds thu gun wheah he had drapped it on thu croppin's an' brings it an' a hull apern full o' thu rock home with her. Then she bawls it all out, foolish like, to ther neighbors; she hocks her weddin' dress fer enough ter pay a rock-sharp fer a assay on thu truck--an' o' cose thu durn skunk sneaks out an' jumps thu claim!" He rolled a fresh cigarette and lit it with a red-hot coal juggled deftly between his palms. Douglass kicked the fire impatiently and yawned. "Cut it short, Red! It's getting late. Of course she got so much gold out of her mine that she took the yellow fever and swallowed her false teeth, or was guilty of some other fantastic foolishness. You incorrigible old faker, you are making that up as you go!" Red looked undecidedly after him as he strode away in the moonlight in the direction of the picketed horses. For a moment he hesitated, then he flung a fresh log on the fire and began to untie his blanket roll. "It is gettin' along about beddin' down time, fer a fac'." But there was much of disconsolation in his voice. Red hated to spoil a good story. "But the woman, the mine, finish your story!" came in rapid fire from his audience. He fumbled with his "soogans" a moment, then came over and looked thoughtfully into the fire. "Thu fellah who jumped thu Las' Chance lode was a kind o' mine brokeh, one o' thu damn sharks as is allus raidy to take a low down advantage of thu mis-fort-unit an' helpless." Brevoort winced slightly and his wife smiled behind her hand. "He had anotheh felleh workin' fer him, a real white man! When this yeah las' felleh I'm tellin' yuh about finds out what the brokeh cuss's game is, he done raises--well, he nacherally buhns th' air! He acts real foolish about what he calls justice to the ignerent an' weak, an' when hes bawss perposes to let him shaih in thu profits an' holp do thu ole woman outen her rights, he jes' up an' bends hes gun oveh thu dawg's haid--he's been on thu puny list eveh since! Then he, thu white felleh, goes out, pulls up thu jumpah's stakes an' re-locates thu mine in thu ole woman's name." "That's a man after my own heart!" said Grace, enthusiastically. Red seemed a little put out over her assertion but he bravely swallowed his dose and continued. "He's got a few hunnerd saved up and he makes it go far enough in development work to git her a patent on it. Bein' a United States Deputy he surveys thu claim hisself an' saves thet much. In sho't he makes her claim good so's no one kin steal it from her, an' thet ole woman owns a hat store, a ho-tel, a bank, an' foweh saloons in Gunnison now. She jes' wallers in wealth!" Again he turned to his blankets. Out in the white moonlight Douglass stood looking over the silvered landscape, a retrospective bitterness curling his lip. "And the surveyor, the man who saved her mine and in reality gave her this great wealth?" asked Grace, with a fierce wild pride burning in her heart. "Well," said Red, gravely, "I told yuh she was a critter bawn to misfohtuhn. She went loco oveh thu thing, got in too much of a hurry, an' sold out the claim, unbeknownst ter him who were managin' it fer her, fer a measly hunnerd thousand, jes' two hours befoh he closed a deal with a big Denveh outfit foh a quateh million. An' she got so het up oveh her hawd luck thet she lost her memory an' couldn't remember thet she was owin' him anything when they come ter settle up. Thet were shore thu mos' unfawchinit thing 'at eveh happened to her. I reckon thet she'll go to hell on account of it!" "But why did he not bring suit for a just and proper accounting?" asked Brevoort, impatiently. "He had a good case. The man must be a rank fool! What has become of him?" Red spat speculatively into the fire. "I reckon he kinda hated ter fuss with a woman. He is a cow-punchaw now, an' all cowpunchaws is loco! Thu las' time I see him he were glommerin' all by hes lonesome in a moonlight jes' like this'n, an' I have an' ijea thet he were wishtful o' kickin' somebody's pants." The moon was high in the heavens when Douglass came back to the fire. It had burned down to a heap of ruby coals and the others had long since entered the land of Nod. He lighted a last cigarette, crouching over the scant warmth as he smoked it. Brevoort, not yet fully inured to the chill of these great heights, shivered in his sleep despite his generous covering. Douglass took a well-furred bearskin from his own bed and laid it gently over the thin-blooded sleeper. Then he pulled off his high-heeled boots and joined the silent majority. The gray mare was flicking her tail in the east when he opened his eyes again. For five blissful days there was much of hunting, fishing and exploring of the charming neighborhood by the Carters and Brevoorts. Douglass and McVey expended their time and energies mostly on the development of the claims. But the covering of slide-rock was very thick and the vein persistently eluded them. Probe and strip where they would nothing but country-rock rewarded their efforts. Carter and Brevoort were inclined to a kindly expressed skepticism as to the existence of the lode, and even Red's optimistic faith in Douglass's good judgment was waning. The women alone, for some occult reason, gave him cheering encouragement, Grace in particular expressing her conviction of his ultimate success. But up to the day preceding their intended departure nothing had materialized to vindicate his expenditure of time and money. On the morning of that day he had gone up alone to the shallow tunnel which he was driving into the hillside near the top of the ridge, intending to blast down a wide shelf of rock in the face of the adit in order to "square up" his work and leave everything in ship-shape for the next season's new operations. He was using dynamite, the rock being very hard; and as this explosive exerts its force most powerfully against the object of most resistance, with an especial tendency to blow downward, he had merely placed a couple of the cartridge sticks with detonaters and fuses attached on the top of the shelf, covering them slightly with loose sand, depending on the well-defined cleavage of the rock to accomplish his purpose. As it happened to be the last of both powder and fuse supply on the claim, he did not trim off the fuse as short as usual; it was about four times the ordinary length, but as fuse is the least expensive item in such work he was unusually extravagant in this single instance. It is singular upon what strange things the pivot of fate and fortune turns. Had he been ordinarily economical of that fuse these annals would end grewsomely with this chapter. For, as he lighted the fuse and walked leisurely out of the short tunnel, directing his steps toward a sheltering abutment of the ledge which assured protection from the flying fragments loosened by the explosion of the heavy charge, Grace Carter slowly sauntered into view on the other side of the tunnel mouth, her hands full of some mountain blooms which she had gathered on the opposite slope of the ridge. Neither saw the other until she stood directly in front of the excavation. He was lighting his pipe, his back towards her; she, thinking him to be about to leave the mine on his descent to the cabin, gayly called out: "What's your hurry?" Not dreaming of her dangerous proximity to the tunnel's mouth, he turned slowly, for the wind was fairly strong and he had not as yet secured a satisfactory light. He was about forty yards away. For one nerve-paralyzing second he was incapable of motion or speech. Then the pipe clattered on the slide-rocks and he was leaping like a cougar over the treacherous footing, a great cry bursting hoarsely from his white lips: "Run! For God's sake, run! Away from the tunnel!" Dazed by the awful fear in his voice, and misinterpreting the only two distinct words of his otherwise inarticulate command: "Run" and "Tunnel," she bolted obediently into the yawning mouth of the excavation. For a few seconds, with eyes blinded by the sudden transition from sun-glare to comparative darkness, she did not perceive the spluttering flare of the fuse. Then all at once came comprehension and in the shock of it she was as a marble statue. Paralyzed with horror at the awful death hissing there a scant five feet away, she seemed rooted to the ground; for the life of her she could not move hand or foot, standing numbly there waiting for the end. Each second seemed an eternity before his coming. His coming--to what? To share the horrible death that menaced her? She found her voice in one agonized scream of warning, but even as it left her lips he came dashing into the tunnel, shouting incoherent blasphemies and holding out both arms. A pile of litter on the floor of the tunnel entrapped his foot. A treacherous stone turned beneath his flying tread, and wildly striving to regain his balance, he pitched forward to her feet, striking his head on the rocks. He lay very still, a thin stream of blood trickling down his forehead. As a tigress protects her young, so did she cast her body between him and the fiery serpent hissing on the rock, her one thought being for his preservation. As she crouched above him there came vaguely into her mind the remembrance of a story told her in the long ago by her father, the story of a man who had saved his comrade by the plucking out of the burning fuse from a blast which was on the point of killing the man caught beneath some falling timbers. The details came painfully slow to her dazed mind and over there the fuse was hissing ominously. Suddenly it was all clear to her and unhesitatingly she sprang to the shelf and clutched the smoking terror with both hands. One frantic tug and the deadly dynamite was dangling before her; with the swiftness of a swallow she reached the mouth of the tunnel and, summoning all her strength for one mighty effort, cast it far down the mountain side. Then she turned unsteadily and slowly groped her way, like one who is blind, to the silent figure on the tunnel floor. Everything was swimming about her in a confused whirl; with a great effort she raised his head to her shoulder. A broad red stain spread over her white bodice but her eyes were unseeing, her lips passing searchingly over his face. As they found his mouth and rested there, a sharp explosion, followed by a tremendous rumble, jarred the air. As though awakened from sleep by that detonation, Douglass opened his eyes. Her face was still upon his and he blinked uncomprehendingly. She was crying softly, helplessly, and his face was wet with her tears. Impulsively he put his arm around her and sat up erect. With returning consciousness came remembrance and he cast his eyes fearfully towards the shelf, springing to his feet as he did so, with the girl firmly clasped in his arms. He took two steps towards the mouth of the tunnel and safety. Then he looked again at the little innocuous heap of sand; he passed his hand wonderingly over his eyes. There was a dull smear on the bronzed finger backs and he noticed the stain on her bodice. "You are hurt!" His voice was husky with fear and sympathy. She shook her head negatively, not trusting herself to speak. "But the blast--the powder--where is it?" "I threw it down the mountain side. You stumbled and fell. There was no other way." He felt of his head tentatively; then he looked again at the stain on her bosom. He turned her face inquiringly to the light; upon lips and cheek lay a red like that on the back of his hand. In the semi-twilight his eyes grew luminous. Very tenderly he raised the tear-stained face and looked reverently into the dewy pools brimming over with that which made him close them with a kiss. "Sweetheart!" he said softly. "Sweetheart!" She put her white arms about his neck, and, clinging to him as though she would never let go, cried as if her heart would break. From the head of the waterfall where she washed the jagged wound in his head, Douglass looking down to where she had thrown the dynamite, noted that the whole hillside was changed in appearance. Where once had been a shoulder-deep mass of loose slide-rock was now the bare face of the mountain, out of which cropped a ten-foot wide ledge of parti-colored rock which he instantly, even at that considerable distance, classified as quartz. In that one comprehensive glance he divined the whole truth. As a result of the violent explosion, the mass of loose rock had been set in motion and an avalanche had ensued; the whole mountain side had been denuded of its covering of detritus which now lay heaped up at the base of the declivity. In the clear light a sheen glittered over those portions of the ledge where its surface had been freshly abraded by the mass of rock grinding over it in the avalanche's descent; it was indubitably quartz, quartz in place, the only body of it found in situ so far on that mountain. His rich float had been of quartz gangue! Very quietly he turned and put his arms about the girl, conviction growing every minute. "Dearie, I think you have killed two birds with one stone. Do you see that projecting ledge of rock yonder? I am certain it is the blind lode I have been looking for. If it is, we will be rich beyond the wildest dreams of avarice." She laughed shyly and took his face between both pink palms. "I am that already, Ken, dear." Very rich indeed was the treasure she laid on his lips. He caught her up to him fiercely, his face as white as the kerchief which she had bound about his brow. Unconsciously he was bruising her soft flesh, but she gloried in the pain of it. Red McVey, coming over the crest of the ridge to investigate the explosion and the succeeding rumble of the avalanche which he had heard while hunting on the other slope, paused abruptly at sight of that tender tableau. Very cautiously, as one coming suddenly in the hunting trail upon a dangerous beast who is as yet unaware of the hunter's proximity, he took the rifle from his shoulder and cocked it, crouching as he did so to avoid detection and to insure a better aim. But even as his knee touched the ground a cold perspiration broke out all over his body; the red left his vision, something clicked in his throat, and licking his dry lips nervously, he lowered the hammer of his weapon and backed over the ridge out of sight. Hand in hand the twain picked their way carefully down to the ledge. By a curious freak of chance the explosive had landed directly above the outcrop, and the ground about was strewn with fragments torn off by the concussion. One of the bits which Grace eagerly picked up was spangled with dull yellow points. The man with his hand on the ledge looked out dreamily into the blue ether; the woman cuddled in the hollow of his arm looked only at him. CHAPTER XVIII IN THE HOUSE OF POTIPHAR Mrs. Robert Carter was far too astute a politician to openly offer any opposition to her daughter's devotion for Douglass, though fully determined to unravel what she deemed a preposterous and altogether undesirable entanglement. Having herself fought the hard fight against the ogres of Poverty and Adversity, she had no foolish illusions in the premises, and had long ago resolved that her daughter should be spared the grim heartaches that even love cannot wholly bar from the proverbial cottage. Her chief ambition was to see Grace established in a position commanding at the very outset all the amenities to which the girl had been accustomed from childhood, both of her children having come after Carter pere had achieved a substantial competence. There were many among the girl's suitors who offered this and more, and she felt a bitter impatience with the extravagance of youthful passion which now so perversely menaced all her plans. While cordially conceding the beauty of love in the abstract, the concreteness of wealth and social position appealed far more potently to the world-worn old woman, who temporarily forgot her own girlish exaltations of days long gone in her apprehensions for her daughter's future. Never was woman better qualified or disposed to appreciate youthful virility and sterling manliness; her personal esteem for Douglass was very high, and had it not been for the, to her, insuperable bar of his comparative poverty, she would have welcomed him with open arms. As it was, she was very indulgently disposed towards him. If his mines really developed into bonanza she would interpose no obstacle in his way. But in her wide experience she had known all too many just as promising prospects as his turn out miserable failures; when he had incontrovertibly established the value of his claims it would be time enough to consider his proposed alliance with her family. All this she said to him with frank candor in a letter answering his request for her sanction to his engagement to Grace. "I will give you two years," she concluded, "in which to demonstrate your ability to give her all the comforts to which she is accustomed. In the interim I shall take her abroad, and if at the expiration of that time you have 'made good,' and both of you are still of the same mind, I will give you my blessing with all my heart. "But it must be distinctly understood that until then I recognize no manner of bond between you; she must be free to change her mind if she so chooses. I have no objection to a friendly exchange of correspondence between you during our absence, relying upon your honor to use no undue coercion. Please regard these stipulations as imperative and final." He sent her a rather constrained acceptance and so it was arranged. Directly after the holidays Mrs. Carter and Grace sailed for Europe. One balmy day in the following spring he was over at Tin Cup awaiting the coming of the stage. Two days before he had been advised by letter of the coming of the Brevoorts for a season's outing on their lately-acquired ranch. He had rather expected a letter from Grace by the same mail and was proportionately elated. Everything had gone well with him in the new year. He had secured the services of an experienced and altogether dependable miner, an old friend of his assaying days, to develop his mining claims, and the reports were eminently satisfying. With every foot of depth attained on the vein the ore grew better, and the property was yielding enough values to pay for its extensive exploitation. The ore chute, paying from grass roots down, was getting wider and richer; two promising "blind leads" had been struck in addition, and the opinion of all the visiting experts was that Douglass had struck it exceedingly rich. Should the improvement continue, his term of probation would be over before snow flew again. He did not need many more tons of that honeycombed quartz to satisfy Mrs. Carter's most stringent exactions. He was therefore in a wonderfully complaisant frame of mind as old Timberline Tobe reined in his leaders with a flourish before Blount's hotel. Constance Brevoort, clad in an exceedingly well-fitting traveling costume of neutral gray, smiled her delight as he went forward with uplifted hands to assist her descent from the seat of honor on the box beside the driver. Of the two other passengers inside the stage he took small note; Brevoort could look after himself and be hand-shaken later. Just now the woman engrossed his whole attention. Stiffened doubtlessly by her necessarily cramped position on the box throughout a half-day's jolting over rough mountain roads, she slipped awkwardly from the wheel and landed plump in his arms, her lips brushing his in her descent as he protectingly caught her close to save her from falling. His face was crimson, possibly from over-exertion, as he slowly released her. But even though the vice-like grip of his arms had been a moment or two overlong, Mrs. Brevoort made no protest; she only smiled at his discomposure and said somewhat ambiguously: "Don't look so distressed, Mr. Douglass. I alone am to blame for that slip; and there have been no consequences." He took her extended hand and shook it heartily. Into his eyes there crept a flicker of amusement tinged with audacity. "I am not so sure of that," he said with pretended ruefulness, feeling in the breast pocket of his shirt. "My cigars are demolished. Were you really so glad to see me as all that?" She looked at him coquettishly through half-closed lids. "Can you doubt, remembering how I threw myself into your arms in the recklessness of my transports?" She laughed unaffectedly, but underneath the dimples of her peachy cheeks spread the veriest wraith of a soft rose tint. For into his eyes had suddenly flamed something, a subtle spark that burned down through her body's jeweled sheath like a white-hot coal. A little frightened at the hot wave surging through her veins she was betrayed into another indiscretion. "And you," she murmured seductively, "are you glad to see me?" "I'll tell you later, when I am calm enough to phrase my joy in more conventional words than my present distraction permits." They both laughed a little constrainedly and he turned to greet the man who had just descended from the stage. Imagine his surprise to see, instead of the shriveled form of the financier, the portly bulk of a grinning white-headed old negro who was assisting an equally robust damsel of like ebon complexion, but considerably less years, to alight from the dusty vehicle. Constance laughed at his frank bewilderment. "Two family retainers from my girlhood's home, Uncle 'Rastus, my butler, and Lucindy, his daughter, my cook. At the last moment Mr. Brevoort was called away to Europe on business," she explained somewhat hurriedly. "He hopes to be able to join us in time for the fall hunting." It was characteristic of the man that he did not mumble the conventional regrets over the defection of her husband; on the contrary, he did not hesitate to express his pleasure. "That's nice!" was his rather startling comment to which, however, she took no exception, mischievously misinterpreting the reference of his words. "Yes, I know you enjoy those hunting trips," she said demurely, "and Mr. Brevoort is even more enthusiastic. He says you are positively the most indefatigable man in the chase that he ever met. Have you chased much since we left?" He glanced at her dubiously; she was the embodiment of naïve innocence as she stood there struggling with her pearl-colored suedes, the delicious color coming and going in her fresh, fair cheeks. He was not at all sure of her, and he hesitated a little as he caught up her valise and relieved her of her discarded wraps. "I wonder if there was any double meaning in that?" he thought, watching her out of the corner of his eye; but it was this man's creed, as has been previously noted, to overlook no bets. Aloud he said: "The open season ended the day you left, and I haven't been to town since." She bit her lip in discomfiture; there was a prematureness about this frontier lance that made him exceedingly difficult to parry, skilled as she was in the subtle art of fence. The insolent assurance of that thrust through her guard angered and alarmed her. "You will pay for that," she resolved mentally, wrathful at his coarse arrogance. But her frown was only that of gentle wonderment as she turned inquiringly. "The town! I do not understand. Is there any game to be hunted there?" "Only faro, and poker, and roulette, with other divertisements of divers kinds and sorts," he said humorously. "But one does not have to hunt much for any of them so far as my experience goes. Yet I've even left the seductive tiger unbucked in his lair for over six long weary months. I've been so good that even the very thought of it hurts." "You poor thing," she said with mock compassion; "how your talents have been wasted. What a pity that the virtue born of necessity is not entitled to commendation." "Is there any virtue entitled to that?" he asked shamelessly. She drew a little apart from him, really shocked and not a little apprehensive. "Certainly not that of Evolution," she said with some acerbity. "Against the stone ax and brutal strength of the Cave Man, woman's helpless trust, love and dependency are just as inadequate as it was in the beginning, æons ago. But even barbarians can, with profit, learn the lesson of decent forbearance." "Stung!" His comical grimace and slangy confession of her sharper point completely disarmed her and she sheathed her rapier with a smile. But for the life of her she could not resist the temptation to bait this good-natured bear. "After all, we are only a step removed from the Primitive," she said plaintively, "and in this wonderful environment of yours one comes actually within touch. Here we are at swords-points already, and only a few moments ago I was in your arms." Her heart was quaking at her great audacity as he made a sudden movement that brought him so near that his elbow grazed her shapely waist. "Backward, oh! backward, turn, Time, in thy flight!" he hummed longingly. Unconsciously she swayed towards him for the fraction of an inch. She was even closer to the border-land than she had deemed. Red McVey, coming for the mail, greeted them as they ascended the porch steps of the little hostelry. She very graciously laid her hand in his, and her face beamed with positive pleasure as he awkwardly congratulated her upon her splendid appearance. "Well, little ole N'Yawk ain't done you no hurt as I kin see. Reckon I'll have to winter theah a spell mahself when mah caows come home," he said enthusiastically. "Yuah lookin' purtier 'n a red heifer." Douglass grinned at her rosy confusion. "You've got a good eye for color, Red. But you ought to cultivate the virtue of forbearance, ought he not, Mrs. Brevoort?" But she scornfully ignored him and was rather profuse in her protestations to Red of her happiness at being back in "God's country" again. At the dinner table that night Douglass maliciously reverted to the topic of forbearance. Turning to McVey he assumed a becoming gravity which the twinkle in his eyes belied. "Say, old-timer, Mrs. Brevoort is skeptical of we poor cowpunchers' virtue; she thinks we have no power of forbearance. Can't you help me to convince her that we often keep from doing wicked things just for the pure love of being good." Red, catching the mischievous note in his question, rose to the occasion manfully. "Why, yuh ain't thinkin' that bad of us, are yuh?" he said with sorrowful reproach to Constance. "Indeed, ma'am, we are real gentle by spells. Why, I mind las' yeah when I was ridin' fences foh thu C Bar I got to thinkin' haow foolish it were o' me to keep hankerin' after thu delusions o' thu Alcazah, an' to keep wantin' to go oveh theah simultaneous an' waste my hawd eahned money on thu see-ductions o' thu flowin' bowl. So I braces up, an' says to thu devil o' temptation, kinda contemptuous-like, 'Hit thu back trail, Satan!' "Every time I feels thu iniquity o' thust comin' on me I jes' swaps the price o' a drink from my sack to a leetle ole terbacca bag I totes especial foh thet puppos, and goes an' dips my beak in healthy alkali wateh like a sensibul, fohbeahing Christian should. It were two bits every time an' by thu time Chris'mas comes raound thu smoke bag were plumb full. I suttinly fohboah a heap thet summah." Genuinely interested at the simple relation, Constance asked sympathetically: "And what did you do with the money so heroically saved, may I ask?" "Well, I had thu price O' nine bottles o' booze in thu bag when I counted her oveh at Tin Cup on Chrismus eve. Theah's five bottles goes to a gallon, yuh know, so I rattles thu bones with thu perfessor an' o' cose I wins thu odd bottle. Then I blows six bits fer a two-gallon jug an'--" Constance glared at him severely. Douglass laid his head on the table and cried. The greater portion of the next day was spent by Constance in shopping and resting after her wearisome stage ride. Douglass had some saddlery matters to attend to and Grace's letter to answer. Red had volunteered to drive 'Rastus and Lucindy over to the VN ranch with the luggage and so it happened that Douglass and Mrs. Brevoort rode out together alone in the pleasant evening to her home-coming. They jogged along very leisurely, talking only the veriest commonplaces after they had exhausted the more interesting topics of ranch and mine. Curiously enough, neither referred once to Grace Carter, her name not being mentioned throughout the whole journey. Toward the end of their ride both man and woman grew strangely silent. The white May moon was just peeping over the horizon as he dismounted before the door of the ranch house to assist her to alight. As she released her foot from the stirrup and held out her hands, from somewhere far out on the prairie came the call of a wolf. Telepathically both turned toward the moonlit plain awaiting the answering cry; as it rang out in not unmusical cadence through the stilly night she shivered slightly and her hands trembled in his warm grasp. He leaned toward her, his eyes gleaming. "Come," he said, masterfully. Shifting her left hand to his shoulder he threw his arm about her waist and lifted her from the saddle. But before her feet touched the ground he had gathered her up in his arms and was striding towards the house. Taken by surprise, she clung to him breathlessly, one arm still tightly clasped about his neck as he placed her feet upon the threshold. Very gently she disengaged herself from his embrace but made no effort to enter the house. He looked hungrily at her full red lips for a second, then stooped and laid his own upon the hand which he still retained. "Welcome, oh, Queen, to your lair!" he said softly. "May you have good hunting." Then, sombrero in hand, he bowed again and turning abruptly left her standing there silent in the white moonlight. Not until the shadows of the corral had swallowed him up did she so much as move a muscle. Unto him a half hour later came old 'Rastus with her invitation to dine. When he finally joined her she was secretly relieved at the very presentable appearance he made in the modest suit of gray negligee which, he apologetically stated with engaging candor, was the nearest approximation he could make to full dress. All other cowboys of her acquaintance, while delightfully picturesque in their range costume, had looked disappointingly commonplace and uninteresting when clothed in civilized habiliments; but there was neither _gaucherie_ nor self-consciousness about this exceedingly self-possessed young fellow, whose evident familiarity with the niceties of etiquette came as an agreeable surprise. Every slave to Convention is more or less a snob, and she had been under the yoke a whole lifetime. Her relief at his perfect deportment changed to an irritating sense of chagrin as she realized her own obtuseness in not recognizing from the first that this man had assuredly been bred, if not born, a gentleman. How was she to know if he were not even mentally amused at her inexcusable lack of perspicacity? The truth of the matter was that Douglass thought nothing at all about it; he was thinking only of how attractive this woman was--in a different way from Grace Carter. Old 'Rastus he had captivated instanter by his critical commendation of the really superb wine which she had, whimsically, it must be confessed, and to the secret indignation of the old darkey, ordered served. 'Rastus had mumbled something about the casting of pearls, but he melted instantly at Douglass's evident appreciation. "Chateau Yquem, is it not, and of a vintage surely previous to '57!" he averred with the confidence of a connoisseur, lovingly rolling the delicious liquor under his tongue. "You are an exaggerated Lady Bountiful, my dear Mrs. Brevoort. This is ambrosia for the gods rather than a tipple for an obscure cowpuncher!" "Yes, this Yquem has been in our cellars since '59; so Mr. Brevoort informs me. I am extremely fortunate in having selected it since it meets with your favor!" Her tone was sweetly sincere and he was inordinately flattered. She on her part was not a little amazed at the anomaly of a mere ranch hand's knowledge of rare old vintages and looked at him with a new interest. He was surely going to be worth exploitation! When the cloth had been removed they adjourned to a little room which had been fitted up as a den by Brevoort. Here the coffee was served, and over her cigarette she watched him deftly preparing the cognac and kirschenwasser with all the assurance of an epicure, the caraffe having been set beside him by the old servitor as a matter of course; there was no doubt now in 'Rastus's mind about this "cow-gentleman" being to the manner born. It being an unusually mild night, the windows, which faced on the open prairie land to the north, were partly open. The air was sweet with the fragrance of the purpling lucerne, punctuated by the aroma of her Turkish tobacco. In the mellow light of the rose-tinted acetylene globe suspended overhead everything was invested with a deliciously soft warmth. Douglass, puffing luxuriously at his havana, was filled with a great conviction that he had not been so happy for years. This was what he would have when his mines were in bonanza and he had come to his own! But try as he would, he could not permanently establish Grace's presence on the divan over yonder; somehow the conditions did not lend themselves concordantly. The woman furtively watching him smiled intuitively; he was a very transparent young man, after all! And yet how perfectly he fitted into the environment's scheme! In the soft rose light his clean-cut aquiline profile was as perfect as a well-chiseled cameo in red bronze. Vigor, strength and indomitable power breathed from every well-balanced line of his well-knit frame. "Fit, and ready, to fight for his strong young life!" she was thinking admiringly, "a man among a thousand in these degenerate days. A 'running mate' who would go far with the wolf of his choosing. I wonder what he ever saw in that insipid goody-goody. She will tame him down to mediocrity, never realizing what she is desecrating, what she is robbing some other better-fitted woman of. She ought to have married Anselm!" At the thought of her husband her face hardened. Very contemptuous did she wax in her merciless comparison of him with the stalwart young fellow sitting there so lordly in the arrogance of lusty manliness. Now that it was too late she realized that she had sold herself for a price! Of course Brevoort had paid, generously, magnificently, and without demur; but how had she benefited thereby? To the end only of being the leader of her social set, queen regnant of a symposium of sexless degenerates with whom she had not one mental or physical desire in common! The best proof of it was that she was here, far from their wearying inanities and hollow gilded gauds by deliberate choice. Her meditations terminated abruptly at this point; was that the real reason of her coming? She turned to him with a curious shyness, thankful for that rose-colored globe. "You are fond of children, Mr. Douglass?" It was more an assertion than a question. His face lit up rarely. "I love them!" he said, simply. "They are the sweetest flowers in God's garden!" "Even as I do!" There was something strangely like a sob in her low voice, but she had not meant him to hear. "I congratulate you on your conquest of the little Blount girl; her adoration of you is actually idyllic!" "Oh, Eulalie and I have been sweethearts for ages," he said, laughingly. "It was a case of love at first sight." "Happy Eulalie!" she said, enviously. "She has been favored beyond the computation of the gods. That beatitude falls to the lot of but few of her sex." "Are you voicing a personal grievance?" His eyes were full of amused incredulity. She smiled a little bitterly but evaded his question. "What do you hear from Grace?" she asked, inconsequentially. He was sobered instantly. "She is well; and enjoying herself, I gather from her last letter. They are on the wing constantly, you know, and it was unusually short. They are now headed for Venice, with a certain Lord Ellerslie in train. Do you happen to know him?" There was a mild anxiety in his tone. "Yare Ellerslie? Yes, I know him very well. One of England's 'best' types; a fine gentleman of mildewed lineage. He Is immensely wealthy!" "Oh! I say, don't rub it into a fellow!" he protested, laughingly, but his eyes held a glitter that caught Constance's attention disagreeably. She rather pitied Lord Ellerslie at that moment. "Oh! he is perfectly innocuous," she hastened to assure him; "nearly every designing mamma has given him up as impossible. His price is above the rubies of any woman's offering!" Her lip curled scornfully. "His _metier_ is platonics." "And you don't believe in their possibility," he concluded, dryly. She eyed him narrowly. "Do you?" "Not in their putative purity at any event. Of course, I am not a competent authority and my circle of acquaintances is limited to people of flesh and blood. Imagine such an absurdity as platonics between--" "Between--?" she prompted audaciously, her seductive face close his. "Between you and me, for instance!" he finished, calmly, his cool demeanor betraying nothing of the seething volcano beneath that unruffled surface. She rose somewhat precipitately and went over and stood by the window. Faint and eerie from the muffling mazes of some far-off coulie came again the wolf cry. She turned shudderingly away. "It sounds like the wail of a lost soul!" "Calling to another affinitive soul, neither of them knowing or caring, in the all-compensative ecstasy of their own making, that they have lost anything at all! Do you imagine that fellow is mouthing platonics out there?" He had risen unconsciously and laid his hot hand on her bare arm; she shrank from it as though it burned her and deliberately placed the table between them. She rang the silver call bell. "I can imagine nothing more to-night but that it is time to retire," she said, humorously. Before he could reply, Lucindy entered, bearing a salver on which was a glass of milk and a pitcher of water. Constance gave him her hand in gentle dismissal. "Go to bed, Wolf," she said, mischievously, "and dream of--of platonics, as befits your rugged constitution. Personally, I am not equal to more than the inspirations of milk-and-water--as yet!" As he opened the door the wolf howled in the distance. He turned with a smile of sinister significance as an answering call rang out in the night. The fair hand holding the diluting pitcher wavered a trifle. A few drops of water failed of their destination and spattered on the table. CHAPTER XIX MUTUAL ASSISTANCE It was three days before she saw him again, he having left at daybreak for a distant part of the range where he went to investigate a disturbing report of mysteriously disappearing cattle whose loss puzzled the most astute of his men. The news had come in over night, and reasoning that she would be a late riser after her fatiguing trip, he merely wrote her a short note saying that he was suddenly called away on urgent business and could not say just when he would return. He was, however, very explicit as to the horses that he deemed safe for her use, particularly recommending a bay filly which he had broken especially for her personal service. He did not deem it necessary to say that the filly was his own personal property, originally designed as a gift for Grace. An inexplicable disappointment wrinkled her smooth brows as she read the carelessly polite words; this was such a note as her husband might have written and she tossed it aside impatiently. Somehow or other it seemed like a rebuff, this cold formality after their intimate conversation of the preceding night, and she resented it strongly. Had she, after all, made so little impression on this springald despite her tacit encouragement of him! Could it be possible that he was only maliciously amusing himself at her expense, playing even a more skillful game than she was capable of doing against such an unusual antagonist? This man was vastly different from those of her previous experience and she was far from her habitual calm as she musingly weighed the possibilities. At her request the filly was saddled and she rode over the ranch, critically inspecting her new possessions. It was an unusually well-situated property, and under Douglass's strenuous management it had assumed an entirely new aspect. Everything was in perfect order and her eye dwelt in pleased approval on the countless evidences of his handiwork. With professional care and exactness he had reduced everything to a science, and although not as extensive as the C Bar holdings it was plain to the most casual observer that Constance Brevoort's ranch was a close second in pecuniary value and even excelled it in point of desirability as a place of habitation. Its income, in proportion to the respective investments, was at least twice as great as that of the Carter property, and promised to become even greater under a proposed change of policy now in Douglass's contemplation. "It is a labor of love," she said appreciatively. "He could not have worked more faithfully or assiduously had the property been his own. What heights an ambitious soul could attain to if working in loving conjunction with so strong an executive nature as his." For a while she sat musing introspectively, a rapt smile on her beautiful face; then of a sudden she was filled with an unreasonable anger at Grace Carter. "To think of his being wasted upon a colorless entity like that chit!" On her return to the house she sought the seclusion of the little den and wrathfully consumed a half dozen cigarettes. When dinner was announced she ate perfunctorily and at its conclusion sought the den again. It was far into the night when she finally arose and sought her bedchamber. As she turned down the silken coverlet her ear caught faintly that for which she had been waiting since the moon rose. She hesitated a moment and then went swiftly to the open window. The cry had come from the east, in the direction of the mountains where Douglass was at work. With a warm color rioting across her face she opened her mouth and made a queer little gurgling noise in her throat. On the night of his return, tired, dusty and with a sullen anger burning in his heart, he somewhat curtly declined her invitation to dine, pleading fatigue and the necessity of a conference with his men. His tour of investigation had resulted in the discovery that very extensive depredations were being made upon the VN herds by what was evidently a well-organized and shrewdly commanded band of rustlers far more audaciously aggressive than any of his previous experience. At an audience which he requested the next morning, he urged the advantage of the immediate adoption of the change in policy previously referred to. This policy was to dispose of the rather mediocre lot of cattle at present in the VN brand for cash, and with the proceeds purchase a smaller bunch of high-grade stock, which could be close-herded and ranch-fed at a largely decreased expense and with an increased revenue, the VN conditions being peculiarly adapted to such a policy. She unhesitatingly authorized him to use his own discretion absolutely in anything connected with her interests and he immediately ordered a round-up with that end in view. He had already arranged for the sale of the cattle, he somewhat abashedly confessed to her secret amusement, and at a price rather above current quotations. The change could be made without either delay or loss and he was openly sanguine of the outcome of his new plans. During his absence he had partly succeeded in rounding up the cattle to be sold, and in ten days more he had delivered into her hand the buyer's check covering the transaction. To her great surprise it was for an amount some five thousand dollars in excess of the original purchase price of the whole ranch; evidently her manager had driven a very good bargain. He did not think it necessary to tell her that he had caught the cowboys of a big syndicate in the act of running a bunch of VN steers out of the country under the pretense of a general round-up, or that he had gone directly to the headquarters of the outfit with a rather peremptory request that they buy the rest of the cattle together with the brand, a suggestion that the guilty parties found it advisable to accept in view of the direct evidence with which he confronted them of not only this, but several other shady transactions of a similar nature. Nor was she aware, until several days later, that in the course of a slight argument which he had indulged in with one of the syndicate's men, whom he had caught red-handed in the act of branding a VN calf whose mother lay in a nearby gully with a bullet hole in her head, he had resorted to a little "six-gun suasion" with the result that the other fellow was in the hospital at Leadville, while Douglass nursed an ugly flesh wound in his shoulder. The syndicate, composed largely of eastern men who for obvious reasons could not afford to have their acts unduly ventilated, were very glad to close with his rather excessive demands, backed as they were by the smoothest-working gun and handiest shot on the range. She made the discovery In a rather unexpected way. They were out riding together one pleasant afternoon, and seduced by the magnificent going and delightful weather had prolonged their pasear into the twilight hours. On the return canter, Douglass's horse, affrightened by a viciously whirring rattlesnake on which it narrowly escaped treading, began to "pitch" violently and for a few minutes Constance was treated to an exhibition of superb horsemanship which made her blood tingle. It was an unusually severe and long-sustained struggle between horse and rider, but the man conquered as a matter of course and the rest of the journey was without incident. She had acquired the knack of dismounting by placing one hand on his left shoulder; in doing so, this evening, her bare hand encountered something wet and sticky. At that moment the door opened and a flood of light from the living-room illuminated them sharply. Looking curiously at her wet hand Constance caught her breath with a gasp. "It is blood!" she cried in horror. "You are hurt!" Despite his muttered assurance that it was nothing to be alarmed about she drew him into the living-room, where she became almost hysterical at the black-red blotch on his thin tan-colored silk shirt. Almost before he suspected what she was about she had unknotted the kerchief from around his throat and hastily bared his shoulder. In the violent plunging of the horse the clumsily-fixed bandage had become displaced, the wound had reopened and was bleeding freely. Although entirely unaccustomed to the sight of any kind of wounds, she knew intuitively from the tiny blue-rimmed red puncture on the massive shoulder that this was a gun-shot injury. She ran over to her work basket and secured a pair of scissors with which she unhesitatingly cut away the shirt from the collar downwards, exposing the ragged gash of exit on the other side. To 'Rastus, watching her with open mouth and protruding eyes, she said sharply: "Water, and some clean linen cloths, quick!" She was a different woman now, and her subsequent ministrations were as deft and as effectual as those of a trained nurse. Very tenderly she bathed the shoulder, wondering all the while at its contrastive whiteness with the bronzed face and throat, marveling at the silky rippling of the muscles beneath as he obediently flexed his arm at her command. In less than ten minutes she had completed her surgery and in five more he was again rehabilitated in garments fetched by 'Rastus from his room in the bunkhouse. She would not hear of his attending to the horses, but had one of the men summoned, to whom their care was delegated. If she detected Douglass's dejected wink at the smiling young fellow, she made no sign, saying merely that she would be pleased to have him dine with her as she wished to discuss some business matters of importance with him. Not until they had adjourned to the den did she evince the slightest curiosity as to the time and cause of his mishap. Then when he had his cigar nicely under way she demanded imperatively: "And now be good enough to tell me, please, who shot you--why, where and when! I want the whole truth with no evasions." Thus cornered, he told her the story in its most important details, ending with a regret that he had caused her so much apprehension and unnecessary trouble. Her eyes were bright with wonder and admiration when he finished but she nodded approval. "Served the wretch right!" she snapped. "I almost wished you had killed him." "Well, ma'am," he said apologetically, "I tried all I knew how, but my horse bucked outrageously at his shot--he got his work in first, you know--and he seemed quiet enough when I shot. If you say so, I'll go and finish him." She smiled at the grim pleasantry, knowing it to be such. "And in all probability get your other arm shot off! No, thanks, I prefer you as you are." He brightened at this amazingly, but a mischievous twinkle stole into his eye. "I am glad to hear that. Now that I am acquainted with your preferences, I'll see that I keep in this winged condition. And yet, do you know that your predilection for one-armed men is a surprise to me." He looked quizzically at her sudden confusion. "Most ladies are partial to men with two good arms; but just so that you keep on preferring me I am content, no matter how anomalous the conditions." She lit another papelito and smiled mockingly at him. "That was very clumsy. I must get you well as soon as possible, poor wolf. You run rather indifferently on one leg. What can such a benighted Ishmael as you possibly know of the partialities of ladies?" "Not much," he confessed humbly, "and yet a few have been undeservedly generous to me. I am eager to learn, however, if the opportunity be graciously accorded me." She evaded his bold glance a little nervously. For a one-legged wolf he was coming disconcertingly fast. The water was getting rather deep for drifting, and in the face of this baffling head-wind she promptly tried another tack. "Tell me," she asked curiously, "of the most wonderful thing in your certainly unique experience." "You," he said promptly, and the crimson suffused her face. "I think you are the most wonderful thing that could ever happen to any man. There are times when I can hardly believe the evidence of my senses. Imagine me, a common menial, sitting here in the lap of luxury, holding familiar converse with a queen like you and not feeling in the least embarrassed, drinking in your ineffable loveliness unchecked, unrebuked, unafraid, as the desert sands thirstily absorb the heavenly ram, drunk with the rich wine of your sympathy and maddened with the subtle delirium of your personal charms." His voice, low and tense in the beginning, was now vibrant; he had risen and was leaning across the low table, his muscles quivering, yet the woman felt not the slightest fear of him. On the contrary, she was thrilling to the core with a mad joy that she wanted to shout from the housetops. Her face was very pale, but her eyes were jet black and sparkling with a flame that burned down to the steel of the man, inciting him to recklessness, and he threw reason to the winds. "Constance!" His whisper was hoarse with suppressed emotion. He walked swiftly to her side and held out his arms appealingly. She was quivering all over, her bosom heaving tumultuously. He bent over her slowly until his hot breath scorched her cheek. "Constance!" Panting like a wounded animal she sprang to her feet; at the touch of his encircling arms she gave a tremulous little sigh and her head sank on his shoulder. Very tenderly, but firmly, he put one hand beneath her soft chin and forced her face upward toward his. Almost had his lips touched hers, when, with a gasping cry, she put both her hands against his chest and violently pushed him away. "No! My God, no!" The words were a broken sob. "We are both mad! It cannot be! Think of my husband, of Grace!" "It's a little late to think of them now. And what do they, or the rest of the whole world, signify to us?" Smiling confidently he again approached her with outstretched arms, but she swiftly evaded him, and snatched up a pearl-handled stiletto which she had been utilizing as a paper cutter. At his grim smile of contempt she flung it down on the table and laid her hand on the call bell. He gave a shrug and dropped his arms. "That is unnecessary," he said quietly. "Your pitiful fear is an efficient safeguard against any further importunity. Courage is an indispensable quantity in the composition of a wolf. I have been ludicrously mistaken. May I hope that you will forgive and forget?" "There is nothing to forgive, but neither of us must forget, again. Not ever again!" She was struggling for composure, her hard-clenched hand pressed against her heart. "I never dreamed--" He laughed harshly. "You never dreamed that in the veins of men there could be red, as well as white corpuscles? Were there nothing but emasculates among your circle of acquaintance in the vaunted 'Four Hundred'?" Wincing at his coarseness as though it had been a blow, she went over and leaned against the casement of the window, looking silently out at the stars. After a time he took up his sombrero and moved toward the door, pausing at the threshold to courteously bid her good night. At the sound of his voice she turned quickly. "Wait!" She motioned to an easy chair. "Sit down, please. There is something which in justice to us both, must be said before you go." He took the seat indicated and she turned again to the window. For quite a time she stared mutely into the night, the man waiting in patient silence. When she finally spoke it was in a tone so low that he had to bend forward to catch the words. "You were right when you said that I was afraid; but it is not convention that has made me a coward. It is of myself that I am afraid, the new, strange self that has evolved since I came here, a year ago, filled with the pitiful conceit that I knew life--and men--thoroughly. "Remember that I lived In a different world, in an artificial and enervating atmosphere where nothing is real but Rank, nothing sweet but Station, nothing precious but Money. As a girl I was sold to the highest bidder; he gave me all that wealth and genealogy could give, and up to six months ago I kept faith. Not one of the countless men with whom I amused myself ever aroused in me even one moment's serious thought; for twelve weary years I played at the inane game of platonics, with no further effect than to come finally to regard the vaunted 'love' of the poets as a libel on human intelligence. It had been proffered me in all tongues, in all climes, at all times, by all sorts and conditions of men; at first to my listless amusement and at last to my contemptuous disgust. It was part of my strained and unnatural environment; I wore these 'loves' on my sleeve as I wore hothouse orchids on my corsage, finding their emanations as nauseous and unwholesome. "I was fed on sweets of flattery and wine of adulation, when all the time I was thirsting for pure affection, hungry for the strong meat of a real love. Yesterday I heard one of your men singing a plaintive ditty whose refrain absolutely portrays my miserable existence: "'A bird in a gilded cage'!" She threw out her hand passionately, her eyes filling with tears. It was with great effort that she recovered her self-control sufficiently to continue. "I never realized what possibilities Life held until six months ago. Then for the first time I learned the difference in men--and the bitterness that comes with knowledge acquired too late. The confession may be unwomanly, but I glory in it. No, keep your seat." He had eagerly arisen and was holding out his arms. "I have been disloyal to my husband in the learning and this is part of my atonement." She went over and stood beside him, breathing softly. In the subdued light her pallor only accentuated her ravishing beauty. Douglass thought he had never beheld so heavenly a thing. Very gently he leaned forward and touched her hand but she as gently shook her head in negation. "I was foolishly, criminally weak to come back here. But I had to see you again. Oh! I am mad! mad! mad! I know only too well the nature of the passion I have inspired in you, and the humiliation of it is the bitterest part of my deserved punishment. Yet even your avid, brutal lust is a thousand times dearer to me than the refined insipidity of any other man's purest love. Stop! I say, or--!" She placed her hand resolutely on the bell, her determination indubitable. "It is the hour of my shame and you must know all. I had rather be your running mate--Oh! you grand, lovable, vicious, merciless beast--than be queen regnant in heaven. But that can never be. I am the wife of Anselm Brevoort and you are the betrothed husband of another woman. But she will breed you no wolves, my lost Ishmael; your getlings will be bleating lambs. Ah, God! the shame of it!" She struck the bell savagely as he sprang to his feet with a choking cry. "And, now that you know, I confidently invoke your honor, your clean manliness, for my protection. You will help me against myself, will you not, dear?" "And who will help me?" he muttered hoarsely. The perspiration was standing in white beads on his forehead. Swift as a flash she crossed over to him and laid her hand trustfully on his arm. "We will help each other, beloved. Good night." But hours after he had succumbed to the seductions of his coarse blankets she lay on her dainty bed with clenched hands and sleepless eyes, trying to pierce the gloomy veil of futurity and tearfully striving to reconcile a great misery with a greater joy. "I love him! I love him!" she moaned passionately, "and if it were not for that milk-and-water baby he would love me with all the savage strength and intensity of his fierce nature. Oh! my Wolf, my strong, wild Wolf! What can that vapid ninny offer you in comparison to what I would give?" She sat up erect, her eyes blazing in the darkness like those of a hunted wild beast. "She shall not--I swear it! Home, station, wealth, honor, body and soul--I will sacrifice all! He is mine! mine! mine!" After awhile, in sheer exhaustion of passion, she fell into a troubled sleep. The next day he obtained leave of absence for a fortnight's inspection of his mines. En route he mailed several letters entrusted by Mrs. Brevoort, one of which was addressed to a woman in New York. She was one of those inveterate gossips of high station who act as purveyors of "exclusive information" to the society editors of the great fashionable journals. Some days later he stopped at Tin Cup for the ranch mail; it included a rather short and unsatisfactory note from Grace, written hurriedly in transit, announcing her party's embarkation on Lord Ellerslie's yacht for a cruise on the Mediterranean. The girl was really homesick in truth, but relying too implicitly on Love's divination had omitted to make that fact clear, ending her missive with the ambiguous sentence: "I wish we had never left home. I am so unhappy." It was the first communication he had received from her for over six weeks. He did not know that her customary budget, a sort of daily diary mailed once a month, had gone down with the fated _Peruvia_ in mid-ocean, and he was uneasy and resentful. Mrs. Brevoort was out riding when he reached the ranch, so he merely instructed 'Rastus to inform her of his return, and dined at the common mess house. In the interim of waiting he glanced casually over the contents of the New York papers which he had received in the mail. Unto Constance Brevoort, awaiting him with a great trepidation in the little den, came a white-lipped, stern-faced man with a paper crushed In his hand. "Read that!" he said curtly, pointing to a paragraph at the head of the "Society Column." She caught her breath sharply but with no other visible evidence of emotion held the paper up to the light. He watched her grimly, a mirthless smile on his lips. With a well-simulated gasp of horror she let the sheet fall on the floor and turned to him breathlessly. "It cannot be true! It is a lie! Oh! my poor friend!" Her voice was a curious commingling of fear and exultation. The gossip had done her work with artistic efficiency. He picked up the paper and calmly read the paragraph aloud. It was short but succinct: "We have it on indisputable authority that the engagement of one of Gotham's most lovely daughters, the beautiful Miss Grace Carter, to lord Yare Ellerslie, of ellesmere, Surrey, one of Britain's most eligible scions, will be formally announced on the return of his lordship's yacht from the Mediterranean, where he is at present cruising in company with his fiancée, her mother, and a party of mutual friends. It is said to be one of those delightful love-at-first-sight affairs, and society is all agog over the romantic outcome of what was merely intended to be a short pleasure trip. Lord Ellerslie is said to be immensely wealthy in his own right and will, besides, succeed to the title and vast estates of his father, the present earl. Miss Carter is a joint heiress of the millions of the famous 'cattle king,' Robert Carter. We understand that the honeymoon will include a cruise around the world in his lordship's magnificent yacht, which has been rechristened the 'Gracie' in honor of his prospective bride." He laid the paper down on the table and stood looking silently at It. It seemed to the woman watching him nervously that he aged a dozen years since she last saw him. She almost relented at the sight of his fiercely-controlled misery, but she shut her teeth with determination. One cannot make an omelet without the breaking of eggs. The game was a desperate one, but she had everything at stake. She would play it out and win. She was about to speak when he looked up with a harsh laugh. "Your nobleman wasn't so very 'innocuous' after all, it seems. Her mother certainly lost no time. What is the accepted form of a letter of congratulation on such occasions?" "Oh! it cannot be true!" she faltered, evading his eyes unaccountably. "There has been some terrible mistake!" "And I have made It." He handed her Grace's little note. "This is the amount of her correspondence in the last two months. It seems to clinch the certainty of the glad tidings. And to think that I was fool enough to imagine that there was one pure, true heart among your fair, false sex." He turned upon her scornfully. "I wonder how much of what you said the other night was a lie. It is a rare accomplishment, this clever ability to turn an impending tragedy into a harmless comedy. Tell me, how long did you laugh after I had gone?" She paled, for his mood was a dangerous one and a single false move might imperil everything. But she was a past-master of the gentle craft of love-making and all her finesse had been to this very end. She had calculated on the ease with which a heart may be caught in the rebound, and her opportunity was at hand. And she knew now, with a certainty that terrified and yet emboldened her, that she loved this man better than life and that existence without him would be one eternal curse. She was a brave woman and her hesitation was only momentary. "Suffering has made you unjust, my friend," she said quietly. "I take bitter shame to myself for having bared my heart so nakedly to you that dreadful night, since it has been so pitiably unavailing. I did not laugh that night--I cried. I only wish I could lie to you, dear. It might be the means of conserving my honor and self-respect in those hours of danger--the every hour I spend in your company. Must I abase myself more? Must I tell you that I have prayed that this pain should come to you so that I might comfort you with a love so tender, so all-giving that you would blush in self-commiseration of your callow infatuation for that foolish fledgling who deserted the eyrie of an eagle for the flat commons of an English goose pasture? And now that the measure of my shame is complete, go--and leave me to the agony of it. Oh! my Wolf! my Wolf! I could have given so much, and so willingly! But now I hate you! I hate you! Go, I say! Go!" She pointed imperiously to the door with streaming eyes. "Will you go or must I summon the servants?" But with eyes flaming and extended arms he advanced Instead. With a little cry of alarm she evaded him and took refuge on the divan, where she cowered with covered eyes. With a strange forced smile he sank on his knee beside her. Very gently he removed her hands from her face and compelled her to look at him. She was quivering all over and her eyes were gleaming like stars. "What is the need of other servants when you have a loving slave here at your feet? Connie! Connie!" Afar in the distance rang a familiar cry; at the eerie sound their pulses leaped in unison. The man put his whole soul into one fierce appeal: "Connie! my Queen!" From without stole the answering call of the she-wolf. With a soft little cry that was half a laugh, half a sob, she drew his face down upon her bosom. CHAPTER XX A PASSAGE AT ARMS At Brindisi, a month later, Grace found Douglass's letter awaiting her. She kissed it furtively and thrust it in her bosom, reserving its reading for the privacy of her room. Not until she had crept into bed did she open the prosaic government-stamped envelope which he methodically used. She always read his letters so, punctuating each tender sentence with a kiss and going to sleep with It tucked In her nightdress next her heart. This was an unusually bulky enclosure and she hugged it in anticipation; how sweet it was of him to devote so much of his time to her in his busiest season. Passionately she pressed her lips to it again and with a sigh of delight drew out--a single sheet of note paper enclosing a closely-folded page of printed matter. As though doubting her senses, she sat erect in bed and unfolded the newspaper; there was nothing enclosed therein and with perplexity writ large all over her face she turned curiously to the written sheet. Slowly, as one in a daze, she read and reread it a dozen times; it was very short and in nowise ambiguously phrased, yet she did not seem able to grasp its meaning: "My congratulations on the speed and facility with which your very astute and clever mother has extricated you from what must certainly have been a very embarrassing entanglement. May you be as happy in your new exalted station as you once made me imagine I was going to be! "Owing you, as I do, not only my life but my fortune as well, for my mines are now in bonanza, I confess to even a greater indebtedness: you gave me a six-month of the only happiness I have ever known. But you would have rendered me an incalculably greater service had you left those dynamite cartridges undisturbed that day. "If in the mutations of time and chance you should ever have need of me, the life and fortune which you gave are at your command. Good-by." In an agony of bewilderment she took up the newspaper, intuitively seeking the Society Columns. Mrs. Robert Carter, leisurely preparing for her night's rest in the adjoining apartment, looked up with a pleasant smile as the communicating door opened, a word of loving greeting on her lips. But there was little of answering affection in the glittering eyes and white face of the girl who, with clenched hands and dilating nostrils, advanced upon her. Something in the unnatural demeanor of Grace alarmed her and she nervously dropped her hair brush and rose to her feet. "Gracie! What is It?" Very deliberately the girl thrust the printed sheet Into her mother's hand and in a calm voice demanded: "Tell me, what part did you have in this?" In astonishment the elder woman ran her eye hurriedly over the item the rigid finger was pointing out; her face hardened with anger and annoyance. "None whatever, my child," she said with an evident truthfulness that carried with it instant conviction. "I am as much surprised and pained as you are. Instead of sanctioning such an alliance it would have received my firmest opposition. Lord Ellerslie scarcely approximates to my ideals of a son-in-law. This is the work of some contemptible penny-a-liner with a superfluity of space to fill; it is not worth refuting, dear; women of our station are always exposed to these petty annoyances and this may have been written with the very object of inciting our space-filling denial. Don't be unduly exercised over such a trifle." And then a bit reproachfully, "You really could not think me accessory to such a contemptible thing as that, daughtie?" At the endearing diminutive the hardness left the girl's face and her lips trembled pitifully. Unable to speak she mutely held out Douglass's letter and the mother, comprehending, took her shelteringly to her bosom while she read it. At its conclusion she patted the silken hair caressingly. "Don't worry, dearie," she said reassuringly. "A cablegram will set this matter right. It is unfortunate that he should have seen this particular paper." She paused abruptly, a sudden suspicion intruding itself. But she did not voice it, and bent to the consolation of the now weeping girl. "Oh! Mummy," she sobbed, "I love him so! I love him so! Let us go home before my heart breaks!" Mrs. Carter took up the letter again. "My mines are now in bonanza," she read. "We will take the next steamer," she said quietly. "And upon second thought I think we had better not cable. Better make your denial in person; it will be more effective." While Grace Carter was speeding homeward with a heavy heart, out at the VN ranch Constance Brevoort was In a delirium of feverish happiness, and Douglass, thrilled by her passionate abandon, had not yet tired. Upon him she showered all the affection so long repressed; and her fervor and intensity, which awed him not a little, was very flattering to his vanity. Too subtly wise to risk wearying him with too great exactions on his time, she was rather shy and disposed to hold him aloof, thus skillfully shifting the onus of importunity on to his shoulders and so keeping alive and burning the flame at which she had lighted all her hopes. But in the occasional moments of their intimate communion she flooded him with sweetness even as the "Serpent of the old Nile" washed reason from the mind of Antony and laved his soul with living fire. Of what the world might think or say, of her husband's fury and probable revenge, of her friends Inevitable ostracism she thought with indifference if at all; in this new-found happiness everything else was lost. She lived entirely in the present, obstinately refusing to reckon with the future. Once, when he hesitatingly broached the subject of their future relations, she stopped his mouth with kisses and breathed Into his ear the sophistry of the old Tent-maker of Naishapur: "Ah, fill the Cup; what boots it to repeat How Time is slipping underneath our Feet? Unborn TO-MORROW and dead YESTERDAY, Why fret about them if TO-DAY be sweet?" She was very frankly in love with him, and he not at all with her. So far as she was concerned he was simply a wolf, with a wolf's wild desire. Of course, the situation had Its attractions, and the risks incurred lent an added charm to this danger-loving young animal. He was infatuated with her physically, but that was all. Of this she was fully conscious, but with a hope born of desperation she determined to hold him while she could; who knows what a day may bring forth? Anselm Brevoort was getting old; she would be a very wealthy widow; and this man, despite his very humble station, had been reared in luxury and had a keen appreciation of the higher amenities. She was more than content to drift, leaving the ultimate harbor in the lap of the gods. The story of a rich strike spreads very rapidly in a mining region; within three months after the explosion of that wild-flung dynamite all the Rocky Mountain country was agog with marvelous tales of Douglass's luck and a great rush of prospectors was made to the new Eldorado. At the time of the discovery of the quartz ledge, at Douglass's suggestion, Brevoort, Carter and McVey had conjointly located three extension claims on the vein, and the two women, Grace and Constance, had also located two claims in their joint names. The assessment work legally required to hold these claims had all been done and the necessary excavations had shown all the five extensions to contain values. The additional work required to make the holdings patentable was rushed to completion, and before the inrush of the prospective Midases had fairly begun, the titles had been made incontestibly secure. In the parlance of the camps Douglass's original discoveries "paid from grass-roots down" and his exploitation work was all in high grade ore. With the proceeds derived from its sale he installed a diamond drilling plant with which he thoroughly prospected the formation within his boundary lines with the result of indisputably establishing the continuity of the rich deposits. So extensive and valuable did these prove that he was fairly inundated with offers of purchase from the shrewd representatives of various syndicates, the figures rising with each successive bid as the vein was definitely proved. But the offers as yet were scarcely half the amount which Douglass had sturdily demanded for his holdings, although at his advice the two women and Red McVey sold out their interests to a syndicate headed and promoted by Anselm Brevoort. His good judgment was fully vindicated later, when, after extensive exploitation the consolidated five extension claims barely yielded ore enough to pay the purchase price, the real ore chimney being confined inside Douglass's property. And as the three lucky venders received in the neighborhood of one hundred thousand dollars each, with only a nominal outlay for assessment work and patenting, the transaction was very satisfactory to them. Before sailing for Europe, Grace had at her brother's suggestion given Douglass power of attorney for the handling of her interests, and he had duly deposited her share of the proceeds to her credit in Denver's best bank, notifying her brother of the disposition of the fund and suggesting that it be retained there until her return, when it could be presented as an agreeable surprise. Constance's share simply swelled an already very respectable private banking account, and Red McVey had very wisely taken Douglass's earnest advice and Invested his entire fortune in Denver Tramway stock, eventually buying with the resultant dividends a splendid ranch. But that is another story. Brevoort's syndicate was composed altogether of European investors, and that astute financier, fully aware of the great value of Douglass's holdings, was in conference with his colleagues in London, urging their acceptance of the cool million demanded by the hard-headed owner. The day Grace Carter and her mother landed in New York on their homeward passage he had finally achieved his point and immediately cabled Douglass and his Denver banking correspondent to that effect, authorizing the latter to make an initial payment of one-tenth of the required amount to bind the transaction pending his immediate return to complete the deal. At his earnest request Douglass left immediately on receipt of his advice for Denver. Considering the unattractive conditions at the ranch in event of his absence for an indefinite time, it is scarcely to be wondered at that Constance Brevoort elected to accompany him. Three days after their arrival at the metropolis, Grace Carter accompanied by her brother reached Denver on their way to the ranch, having no intimation of the others' presence in the city. In order to distract his sister's mind from her nervous brooding, Robert insisted upon her attendance at the opera, the night of their arrival, and at her listless acquiescence had procured box seats. It chanced to be Carmen, with Calve in the title role. The assemblage was a brilliant one and Calve was at her best. Always an emotional creature, Grace yielded to the fascination of the story and had temporarily forgotten her own troubles when she chanced to glance at the lower box immediately opposite, into which had just entered a man and woman. The woman was Constance Brevoort and her escort was Ken Douglass! Even though clad in the conventional full dress in which she had never before beheld him, there was no mistaking that lean, muscular form and bronzed face. Eagerly she leaned forward, her lips parted and her face flushed with excitement. How wonderful to find him here so unexpectedly; it would shorten her agony at least five blessed days! But--but--why was Constance with him? Unconsciously a chilling wave swept over her and she drew back into the shelter of the box with a vague uneasiness tugging at her heart. Carter, frankly interested in the voluptuous Carmen, had no eyes except for the stage, and did not notice his sister's perturbation. It is worthy of note that she did not call his attention to the occupants of the other box. For as she stealthily watched her betrothed husband's removal of Constance's cloak there was something in the manner of both that drove the color from her face. And when, in an intermission, as he leaned over her, she saw Constance Brevoort's lips laid surreptitiously on his throat, she gave a heart-broken gasp and nervously implored her brother to take her back to the hotel. All unconscious of the cause, and with never a look at the opposite box, he instantly complied, reproaching himself with having subjected her to this unadvisable strain on her nerves. On their arrival at their hotel she pleaded a slight indisposition from weariness of travel and at once retired. With clenched hands and white face she lay staring into the darkness. It was all plain to her now! For with an intuition that went straight to the mark, she knew who was the instigator of the report of her engagement to Lord Ellerslie; and she knew why! Curiously enough, she attached no blame to him, but she felt a deep and increasing hatred for the woman who had robbed her. There could be only one interpretation of their relations and her whole nature resented it passionately. But her love for him was very great and she was eager to give him the benefit of the doubt, even while her whole sentience shrieked his guilt. The next morning she called a bellboy and handed him a bank note upon which lay a slip of paper. "Find out for me, please," she said, with a forced smile, "the hotel where these two friends of mine are registered, without letting them know. I want to call upon them unexpectedly and surprise them." The lad bowed his appreciation of her generosity and in less than a half hour returned with the desired information. It was "dead easy to locate swells of that kind," as he shrewdly remarked to an envious colleague who had begrudged him that magnificent tip. She was all honied complaisance when she called upon Constance that morning immediately after breakfast, much to that lady's consternation and surprise. For a moment Mrs. Brevoort was speechless and panic-stricken, but she was an old campaigner and soon recovered her composure. She professed her delight at the unexpected pleasure and then boldly played a false card. "Your coming was so unexpected, dear, that it has deprived me of my good manners. I sincerely congratulate you on your engagement to Lord Ellerslie. It was a great surprise to me; I was, er--under the impression--" Grace looked at her steadily, a cynical contempt faintly curling the red lips. "Really! How strange! I should have imagined that my own surprise would have been the greater, considering that, as you know, there was not a word of truth in that announcement so maliciously dictated by some contemptible wretch to subserve her own vicious purpose. By this time our lawyers will have determined the responsibility for that pitiful lie, although I have already a full conviction as to its authorship! It's really dreadful, Connie! But, as mamma says, women of our station are proverbially exposed to such annoyances. And people have absolutely no regard for the probable consequences of their malicious gossip. Think of what it would mean to you, dear, for Instance, if someone were to mercilessly convey to Mr. Brevoort an insinuation that you had been guilty of--of a great indiscretion! Think of the publicity, the scandal, the shame of it; the loss of home, rank, station and friends." Under the lash of the bitterly deliberate words Constance Brevoort winced and cringed. This thing of white flame and quiet fury was scarcely the "colorless entity" of her misplaced contempt. How much did she really know, anyway? The doubt was cutting her soul into ribbons. Summoning all her really great courage to her aid, she affected to treat the matter humorously and gave an exaggerated little shiver of deprecation. But all the time her heart was quaking with a fear of the outraged girl before her. Yet she had all the proverbial courage--or Is it the desperation--of the cornered wolf she knew herself to be, and metaphorically bared her teeth. "How dramatically grewsome your suggestion, _cherie_! It really gives me the shivers! But supposing the absurdly impossible; what then? Don't you know that the world and all its hollow shams are well lost for a love like the one you are intimating?" It was a distinct challenge; one could read it diviningly in the set lips and flashing eyes as well. But love fights doggedly and unconqueredly long after volatile and ephemeral passion has fled a stubborn field, and this was the love of the daughter of "the bravest man God ever made." "You are jumping at conclusions, dear," she said, with a careless indulgence which made her hearer's jaws meet with a venomous click. "I have intimated nothing, not even the possibility of your ever being tempted by the arising of such a contingency. And yet, having had many lovers--if the tales be true--you should be able to speak authoritatively!" If looks could have slain, the world would have been forever lost to Grace Carter at that moment. It took Constance quite a time to control herself sufficiently to avoid betraying her rage at this chit's insolent assurance. When she did speak her words were sweetly vitriolic: "One can imagine the shock Ellerslie's vanity will encounter when he learns of that canard! Such things require so much explanation, too! I am really sorry, dear, at your humiliating predicament. And what in the name of Venus are you going to say in conciliation to Kenneth Douglass?" Grace flinched pitifully at this double _touche_ of her adversary's keen weapon, but her eyes glinted like burnished steel. The duel was to be _a l'outrance_ now, and she put all her indignation and subtlety behind her blow. The older woman had noted with a malicious pleasure a dull flushing of the fair face and throat but had wrongly ascribed its cause. The battle ground was her bedchamber, and over on a chair, carelessly thrown, lay a man's light topcoat and a pair of gloves many sizes too large for Constance's dainty hands! With a world of scornful meaning the girl looked at the chair, and the eyes of the woman following the direction of that glance, grew black with confusion. "I think he has been sufficiently appealed to in the name of your patron goddess," she said, icily, "and as for Lord Ellerslie, I rejected his proposal even before I had learned of his relations with the author of that despicable lie. As for Mr. Douglass--" The words died on her tongue as the door, evidently communicating with another room adjoining, suddenly opened and a well-known voice said familiarly: "Did I leave my coat and gloves in here last night, Connie? There would be the devil to pay if the chambermaid--!" Standing there in his shirt sleeves, Ken Douglass was, for the first time in his reckless life, at a disadvantage too great for even his conceded adroitness to overcome. In a coma of stupefaction, with horror and shame written all over his gray-white face, he stood staring at the pale, haughty face so relentlessly directed toward him. For a full minute she held him on the rack of her scorn; then with a hard composure in her voice, which accorded but poorly with the unutterable loathing and aversion in her eyes, she said coldly: "I am doubly fortunate in this rencounter. It saves much unnecessary waste of time, and fatigue, and verbiage to find you here! In justice to us both I have come all the way from Europe to tell you that my reported engagement to Lord Ellerslie was a cruel lie!" And without another word she swept proudly out of the room without deigning one look at the woman cowering on the cushioned divan. "Take me home, Bobbie!" she sobbed piteously to her brother, as she clung forsakenly to him in their sitting-room. And further explanation she would vouch him none, despite his bewildered implorations. "Take me home; I want Mummy!" That night after she had retired he picked up from the floor, where it had fluttered unnoticed, a scrap of paper containing two names and a hotel address. He stared at it uncomprehendingly and then a cold sweat stood on his wrinkled brow. He went over to his dressing-case and took out a shining nickel-plated revolver. Tiptoeing cautiously into his sister's room he gently kissed the tear-stained face. Then he went out very softly and called for a cab. In the ordinary of the vast hostelry he found Douglass sitting on an easy-chair, staring into vacancy. At his curt address the man looked up wearily and gravely motioned him toward the elevator. It was noticeable that neither offered to shake hands, despite the closeness of their relations and the further fact that they had not met in better than half a year. In silence Carter strode after him until they reached Douglass's apartments; then turning to the silent man before him, he sternly asked: "What have you done to my sister?" Douglass, leaning against the window jamb, looking out into the soft summer night, made no reply. Carter crossed over fiercely and wrenched him around. "Answer me! Or by God, I'll tear it out of you with my hands!" His breath was coming thickly but there was no fear in the eyes of old Bob Carter's boy. Douglass looked at him with apathetic wonder. "I've lost her!" he answered dully. Carter looked at him with impatient amazement, mingled with suspicion. Was the man crazy, or was this only a weak attempt at evasion? He was going to know and that without any more foolishness. Savagely he caught hold of the other's coat lapel and shook him with an incredible strength. "She came across an ocean and two continents to tell you that she was true to you, damn you! And she has just cried herself to sleep! I want the truth, do you hear!" His boyish face was convulsed with passion and his whole effeminate body was aquiver. "I've lost her!" repeated Douglass, unemotionally, offering not the slightest resistance to the other's vehemence. "I've lost her!" as though that were the Alpha and Omega of all things. Then he turned fiercely to the younger man. "What in hell do you want?" The boy blazed back at him as fiercely, fumbling the weapon in his pocket. "I want the whole truth of this miserable thing--the whole truth! And if you have made my sister suffer through anything unworthy, I want your heart's blood as well! Damn you, are you going to speak?" He clutched frantically at Douglass's throat. Very calmly the bronzed giant circled his wrists with a grip of steel and held him off at arms' length. "Sit down, Carter," he said in a normal tone. "It is your right to know and you shall. I have wronged your sister! No, you fool, not in that way!" as the boy struggled furiously in his vice-like grip. "But I am deserving of any punishment you may choose to inflict." And without preamble he told Carter the whole story, only suppressing the name of the woman concerned. At its conclusion the boy breathed easier and the truculence went out of him entirely as Douglass laid his head on his arms and muttered hoarsely: "I love her! I love her! And now I've lost her!" Bobbie Carter rose and put his hand on the brawny shoulder. His voice was harsh with sympathy, after the fashion of man. "You've been all kinds of a senseless ass, Ken," he said, affectionately, his faith in his hero once more restored, "but it is not as bad as I thought. You want to break off with Mrs.--" he had almost betrayed his knowledge of that which Douglass had been chivalrously trying to conceal--"with that woman, whoever she is, and in course of time, after she has bawled her foolish little eyes out, Gracie will forgive you. I know her like a book. I'm her brother, you know! Buck up, old man! She'll make it hard for you, and you are going to get a bitter lesson. But it will come out all right in time--If you don't go loco again and spoil it all." But all his pleading and remonstrances were unavailing with his sister when he sought to effect a reconciliation. She had been irremediably hurt, and, in her misery, actually hoped that she would never see him again. She insisted upon returning home; and then consented to go on to the ranch for a short, and, as she firmly resolved, a final visit! Douglass, watching her as he thought unseen, the next morning at the Union Depot, as she entered the west-bound train, was filled with a great repentance and remorse. He did not know that she stood at the proper angle to see his disconsolate face until the train pulled out. It must be confessed, however, that it was a hard, unrelenting mouth that scornfully curved as he strode away with depressed head as the train glided out with accelerating speed. "Like as not he will go straight back to that shameless creature as soon as we are safely out of sight!" she thought, with stiffly-erected head. And as a curious vindication of that strange quantity in women, which, for lack of some better name, we term "intuition," we are truthfully compelled to admit that is just exactly what he did! CHAPTER XXI A WIDENING CHASM Ten days later Brevoort arrived in Denver and the deal was fully consummated. As the possessor of a million, cowpunching lost its charms for Douglass, who resigned his connection with the VN interests. Brevoort, realizing his own inability to make a success of ranching without expert assistance, made Douglass a very favorable proposition to take over his ranch holdings, which was promptly accepted. Within thirty days he had purchased a fine "bunch" of high-grade cattle, placing the whole "outfit" under the efficient supervision of Punk Wilson, who, reinforced by a trio of Lazy K boys, who transformed their allegiance to Douglass, soon had matters running along swimmingly. The ranch was thereafter known as the Circle D, that being Douglass's private brand. Immediately upon taking possession of his new property he had made an ineffectual overture towards Grace's conciliation; the girl, stung by jealousy and smarting under a sense of his disloyalty, had scornfully rejected his advances and the breach was wider than ever in consequence. Yet her visit was prolonged far into the autumn, possibly because she was determined not to give a clear field to Constance Brevoort, who had also apparently become a fixture. All relations between the two women had been severed irrevocably, each keeping to her own respective bailiwick. Constance had, with a reluctant regard for the proprieties, established herself at the Blounts, in Tin Cup, and after Grace's contemptuous treatment of Douglass, he spent the major portion of his time in the village. Brevoort, engrossed in his mining schemes, gravitated between Tin Cup and the Roaring Fork, unseeingly. Over at the C Bar the situation was fast growing intolerable to Grace Carter. Although she would rather have died than admit it even to herself, her love for Douglass only increased with every heart-wrenching report of his recklessly open relations with the object of her deepest hatred, which were constantly sifting down to her through the neighbors' gossip. As their engagement had not been made public, she was spared the irritating commiseration which would otherwise have been her uneviable lot. All knowledge of it was fortunately restricted to Abbie, McVey, Brevoort and his wife; for obvious reasons it gained no further publicity. Therefore Douglass's affair was regarded enviously by the other range men, and it must be confessed, rather indulgently by the range women, who found not a great deal of fault with his conquest of this supercilious "big-bug" who had weaned the hearts of their men away from proper altars of devotion. Old Abbie, alone, was bitterly vituperative of both the man and his condoning admirers. "Why is it," she indignantly snorted to Mrs. Blount, on the occasion of one of that lady's garrulous visits, "that all wimmen, even r'ally good ones, have a kinda sneakin' likin' foah a rake? Thu worse thu mizzable he-critters be, thu moah yuh giggle at theah nastiness! It's a wondeh to me thet men eveh get married at all any moah. I disremembeh eveh hearin' any she-male talkin' about thu goodness of any r'ally decent man, married er single; but jest let some tur'ble mean-minded cuss get to cuttin' capehs with some fool woman er tother, an' every ole brindle on thu range chaws on thu cud of it like a dogie on May blue-joint; an' as fer thu heifers, every blessed one on 'em purtends to be buffaloed if he crosses theah trail an' skitteh away, lookin' back disap'inted if he don't folleh an' try to raound 'em up. An' bimeby, when he gets good an' plenty tiahed o' hell-ahootin' araound, he jes' ups an' nach'rally takes hes pick o' thu cream o' thu bunch, leavin' thu skim milk fer better men whose shoes he ain't fitten to lick! "I don't know why," she went on regretfully, calmly ignoring the indignant protest of her scandalized hearer, "an' I reckon Gawd, Hisself, don't know eitheh, but we locoed wimmen allus love bad men a heap better'n we do good ones. I've been seein' it all my life ontil I'm got plumb ashamed o' my sect." But to Grace, that night, she said inconsistently, her gray crest bristling with impatience: "Honey, anything in this wohld that's worth havin' is worth fightin' foh! Yuh are no Cahteh if yuh stand foh anybody's runnin' off yuah stock. Neveh yuh mind haow wild an' ornary he 'peahs to be just now, that fool boy is a thorrerbred at heart, and the best on 'em go loco by spells. Thu betteh the breed, thu worse they bolt when things go wrong, but they are mighty good critters to have in yuah brand! Thu trouble is that you been feedin' him on bran mash when he's system was ahollerin' foh star-shavin's! Ken Douglass ain't no yeahlin' no moah, honey; he ain't no child to be tooken' an' raised like we did Buffo; he's a strong man an' wants strong meat with salt an' peppeh on it. An' long's he's not robbin' yuah lahdeh what yuh gotta kick about?" But she turned her head away as the girl said bitterly: "And you, too? It Is part of the Divine scheme, then, that only women should keep themselves pure and sweet and clean in order to merit the beatitudes of 'holy' matrimony! Delilah gets the kernel, and Ruth the husks! You shameless old woman! To think that _you_ would dare preach such a wickedness with unblushing face!" "Dearie," said the old woman slowly, "Theah's been Delilahs eveh since theah's been Samsons an' they allus will be. I reckon Gawd made 'em to kinda take thu aige offen men's sharp desiah so as to keep it from cuttin' puah hearts apaht. Yuh cain't change natuh, lammie; wild oats will be agrowin' long afteh thu second comin' o' Christ! But theah allus sown in wild an' waste places as is right an' fitten, an' thu seed runs out in time. Thu betteh growths need pureh soil, an' men wisely sow theah good seed in the clean gahdens that Gawd intended thu otheh kind o' wimmins' hearts to be. Yuh kin allus cook betteh, too, on thu steady heat of thu coals afteh the flame O' fierce fiah has buhned itself out, an' thu brand that holds a man bites deepeh if it's heated In the glowin' heart of Love afteh thu flame an' smoke of passion has drifted away. "Theah's things In a man's natuh that's gotta be buhned out; yuh cain't prune 'em away. An' like measles, mumps an' small-pox, it's bettah to happen when he's young. When that Brevoort critter has trimmed Ken's lamps so's they'll burn steady without flickerin' he'll light up yuah life foh all time, honey. An' she's almost got thu jawb done, or I miss my guess! Yuh take my advice, an' when he comes cavortin' about yeah again within ropin' distance get yuah string on him and corral him foh keeps. He'll be good from now on if you give him thu chanct. An' if yuh don't, he'll run rampageous to the bad--an' yuh'll be to blame!" And the wise old woman was even wiser than she knew. At that very moment, Douglass, looking at a picture that should have logically thrilled him to the core, was travailing in a morose discontent quite incompatible with his environment. The woman for whose sake he had imperiled all that a man holds dear, was sitting opposite him on the hotel veranda In the soft moonlight, with little Eulalie cuddled closely to her. Every full, round line of her betokened her perfect fitness for maternity and the motherhood implanted in every woman's heart was softly irradiating her face as she bent caressingly over the sleeping child. Intended by Nature as a mother of soldiers, here by the caprice of fate she was fostering the weak offspring of another less fit, denied woman's highest mission, debarred from Nature's most noble function. And he had but to say the word! For that afternoon, in an agony of passion, she had whispered a temptation in his ear, clinging to him with all the seductiveness in her nature: "Let us go away, dear, anywhere, anywhere, so that we are together! There will be a separation without any publicity, for he is very proud; and he really never cared! Make me the wife and mother that Nature intended me to be; give me the fulfillment that is every woman's due!" It came to him with a shock, for he had been living only in the enjoyment of the present. Brought face to face with the eternal future, he realized a great unpreparedness, abnormal as it was disquieting. He had answered her evasively, with a politic tenderness that satisfied her temporarily; but he knew that her insistence was only deferred, and his answer was not ready. And to-night he was cursing the inevitable brutality that he knew he would ultimately be compelled to exercise. For even as his soul yearned at the tender appeal of that picture most exquisite to man, the mothering of a child, the beauteous face before him was replaced by another, reproachful and haughty yet fair with a purity and beauty indescribable, the patrician mouth trembling and the sweet eyes brimming with appeal. Sharply he shut his teeth and sat erect. Only one woman in the world should be mother to his children--and that woman was not the beauty crooning softly to that sleeping babe! He had lost her for a little while but he would find her, and the way back into her favor! And having found her, at whatever bitter cost, he would never let her go again! He resolved that on the morrow he would ride over to the C Bar and grovel in abasement at her feet if need be. The woman sitting opposite him shivered telepathically and a tear fell on the face of the child. "He is weighing me against her," she thought, fearfully, "and I am afraid--afraid! But I will not give him up! Oh, my God! I can not!" And down at the C Bar Grace was crying to her heart: "Will he come? Will he come?" But it was Red McVey who came awooing in the soft dusk of the succeeding evening, his handsome face bright with a great love, his six feet of stalwart manliness begroomed with appropriate care. He was far from possessing his ordinary confidence, but he came bravely to the point and the girl's eyes held as much pride as they did sympathy for him. "Your love is an honor to me," she said, gently. "I am proud to have inspired such a feeling in so grand a man, and I shall thank God on my knees for it to-night! But it is impossible, my dear friend; you will be generous and spare me explanations--" "Don't cry!" he said, gently, but his face was very white and drawn. "I understand. Yuh are shore they ain't any hope. I'd wait foh yeahs?" "No, dear friend, there is none. I do not think I shall ever marry. And I am going away to-morrow." She held out her hand and he bent awkwardly over it. Very softly he pressed his lips upon the little pink palm. Then he stood erect, still holding the fluttering fingers in both his bronzed hands. "Yuh will neveh know what yuh've been to me," he said, gravely, "and what yuh will always be to me still. It's goin' to hurt a little, of course; but I'll have my dreams, and that's something. And I'm shore yuah friend as you said. Gawd make yuh happy!" Then he went quietly out, carefully closing the door behind him. The girl waited until the last echo of his firm steps had died away. Then she sat down beside the table, laid her face on her arms and cried bitterly. It never occurred to either of them that he had made no reference to her engagement to Douglass, whose severance he could not possibly have known except by deduction. The next afternoon he drove her over to a point where the stage could be intercepted without going to Tin Cup. She desired to avoid the possibility of a chance meeting with Constance Brevoort or Douglass, despite an almost irresistible temptation to see him for the last time. In ten days more she was aboard an ocean liner, her mother unquestioningly complying with her request for a continental tour, wisely leaving the girl to her own time in the matter of explanations. Besides, she had adroitly drawn out of Robert enough to confirm her suspicions, and she was unqualifiedly glad to encourage any distractions for the pale girl whose eyes were heavy with misery. As Grace expressed no preference she decided on Egypt, and the departure was made without unnecessary loss of time. Had Grace gone direct to Tin Cup that day, instead of intercepting the stage some twenty miles out, or if the driver had been a more loquacious man than "Timberline," she would have been spared many heartaches at the price of a sickening terror. For the day before, the man that she loved, bleeding and senseless, had been carried into the hotel at Tin Cup, where a white-faced, wild-eyed woman sat by his bedside waiting the arrival of the doctor, stonily facing a despair too great for words. With the firm intention of riding out to the C Bar that afternoon to make a last appeal to Grace for forgiveness and reconciliation, Douglass had rather reluctantly accompanied Constance for her morning's constitutional on horseback. Divining his intention in some mysterious manner known only to the loving jealous, she had determined to frustrate his purpose by making her ride unusually long, thus keeping him with her until too late to reach the C Bar that night. She was fighting for time, and every moment of delay was vital, she having been informed of the intended departure of Grace within the next few days. If she could manage to prevent their meeting before that time the chasm between the two would become permanently unbridgable. Some ten miles out of town, in a magnificent cañon, reachable only by a somewhat difficult trail, was an exquisite little spot well known to both. It was one of their favorite rendezvous in the trout-fishing season, where they stopped to fry the delicious fish and boil the coffee indispensable to an _al fresco_ luncheon. Hither, too, they had come on other innumerable occasions when absolute privacy was the desire of both, and it was to this place of tender associations and more or less compelling memories that she diplomatically led the way. Here, in the great outdoor temple of this pantheist's loving, with no other goddess to divert him from her own homage, was the place of all places to regain her fast waning influence over him. If she could only hold him for a little time longer success was assured. Cleverly disregarding his taciturnity she kept up a merry chatter as they rode along, finally drawing him skillfully into a discussion of the geological features of the interesting region which they were slowly traversing; like every mining expert he was a bit professionally pedantic on this subject, and to this woman of abnormally clear perceptions it was a positive pleasure to him to impart the really great information with which his mind was stored. Once she got him warmed up to his subject he waxed enthusiastic in his dissertation on dykes, fissures, blanket veins and the like, even riding out of their course to point out confirming formations and collect specimens of their characteristic components. By the time they reached the embowered little glade in the cañon his sullenness was completely dissipated, and he kissed her very passionately as he lifted her from her horse. There was much of the old fire in him as she clung distractingly about his neck, and her eyes gleamed with triumph. So absorbed had they become in each other that neither noticed the slinking figure which stole out of the glade at the sound of their approach, or the charcoal of a hastily-extinguished fire swirling in the eddies of the little pool. And mercifully they did not know, as they stood there in close-held rapture, drinking with clinging lips the Lethe of all things save love, that twenty feet away, from the vantage of a dense clematis tangle veiling a clump of dwarf box-elder, a pair of evil eyes burned above a snarling mouth, as a grimy hand drew cautiously back the firing bolt of a Mauser. CHAPTER XXII THE RENUNCIATION Ballard, riding ahead of his posse, reined in his horse sharply at the head of the trail leading down to the stream as a shot crackled viciously in the depths of the cañon below. There was no mistaking that crisp, whip-like report of a small-calibered, high-pressure rifle cartridge, and he wondered much that it was not accompanied by the whine of the long metal-cased bullet about his ears. For the last twenty-four hours had he been in momentary expectation of that sinister song, of a possible succeeding agony of blindness, for he realized that he was now in the hands of the gods, and more or less at the mercy of the desperate man whom he had been relentlessly pursuing for the last three days, a man who would just as relentlessly kill him if the opportunity offered, a man who knew every inch of these mountain fastnesses in which he had taken refuge in his last extremity. But despite all hazards of ambush he had kept doggedly on the trail, and now he was within reach of his quarry. Hurriedly directing two of his best mounted followers to cover the cañon's mouth below, and the remaining two to guard the only other possible exit above, he rode at breakneck speed down the precipitous trail, spurred to recklessness by a woman's wailing scream. Four days before, the Gunnison Express had been boarded at a watering tank, some fifty miles out of the city, by a particularly villainous band of desperadoes who, not content with looting the passengers, mails and express matter, had maliciously aggravated their crime with murder, deliberately shooting down the conductor and express messenger after the robbery had been accomplished. It was an unheard-of brutality, the men being helpless, unarmed and unresisting, and pursuit of the wretches had been so prompt and successful that every member of the gang, save the one now in the cañon before him, was presently decorating a series of telegraph posts on the outskirts of the city, their captors having given them but exceedingly short shrift. And one of them, in an unavailing attempt to enlist the mercy of his grim executioners, had confessed that Matlock was the leader of the gang; but with characteristic cowardice had refrained from personal active participation in the robbery, merely directing their operations from a safe distance as arch plotter. His trail was soon found and had been skillfully followed so far by the expert marshal, whose long experience in trailing cattle on the cow range had made him one of the best trackers in the mountains. Ballard was at a loss to account for the fatal recklessness of that shot. Matlock must certainly have known that It would betray his whereabouts and he was far too shrewd a villain to so unnecessarily expose himself to the risk of possible capture. There was but one explanation, and the marshal sent the spurs home with a great foreboding at heart. "He _had_ to fire that shot!" was the quick conjecture. "But why? He is either in a tight place or else Is up to some fearful deviltry. That was certainly a woman's cry!" He was using both spur and cuerto now, and his gallant horse was responding grandly. But before he reached the little glade, the echoes wakened to a rumbling roar at the duller concussion of a revolver shot. Then followed that most unnerving thing, the mourning of a woman for her dead. With a magnificent leap the horse cleared the brawling torrent and in the edge of the glade Ballard checked him with a savage oath. Flinging himself from the saddle, he ran eagerly forward, pulling his revolver as he went. In the middle of the glade, beside a little spring which bubbled up amidst the grass, sat a stylishly-gowned woman holding to her bosom the head of his best friend. Across the white forehead trickled down a thin crimson stream which sadly stained and discolored the fawn-colored riding habit and left its grewsome horror on the lips passionately pressed to those of the man lying so still and quiet in her rocking arms. And ten feet away, with his sightless eyes staring up at the blue sky, his shirt still smouldering from a powder burn above his heart, lay Matlock, still clutching the Mauser in his stiffening hand. Douglass, on dismounting, had picketed the horses and thrown himself at full length on the grass with his head in Constance's lap. She had temporarily regained dominion over him and was deliriously happy in consequence, lavishing upon him all the tenderness of her really unselfish affection. With tact she induced him to talk of his earlier life and its vicissitudes, and in the relation he was so frank and confiding that he was invested with a new glory in her sight. Of his amours he was considerately reticent, his innate chivalry prompting him to repress anything which would give her pain, and she was wise enough to refrain from any embarrassing questions. Their communion was intimate, and she had not been so happy in many months. Then by some unfortunate vagary she chanced to refer to his first difficulty with Matlock, asking him for the real facts in the case, and the man crouched in the clematis gnashed his teeth at Douglass's contemptuous reflections upon his cowardice. "Oh, I took no particular risk," Douglass said carelessly; "the man was not only a cowardly cur, but a blundering fool as well, as was plainly shown in his foolish sale of that apex mine. Why, he might just as well have got the million out of it that I did, if he had been honest and only ordinarily intelligent. I knew the vein was there all the time, and I really think he had a suspicion of it. But his great mistake was his insane hatred of me, and he bungled his revenge badly. He really thought he was cleverly swindling me, when the fact was that he was playing directly into my hand." He laughed scornfully and drew down the fair head to his. "Let us forget about the fool. I had sworn to kill him once, but now that he was unconsciously the cause of all my good fortune I feel only pity for him." Over in the clematis the sun was gleaming on a polished tube of steel that was leveled directly at his heart, the eyes aligned along its sights malignant with insane fury. But the finger crooked about the trigger was restrained by a fiendish thought and with a chuckle Matlock waited. The distance was absurdly short and at that range he could clip the head of a match. Just two more inches of elevation of that hated head and he could send the jacketed bullet shearing just through the bridge of the aquiline nose, splitting both eyeballs and blinding his enemy for the little space of life he would thereafter accord him. It would be passing sweet to have that helpless, sightless thing listen unseeingly to his maltreatment of the woman. At that moment his horse, which had been picketed some distance away in the brush, discovered the presence of the two horses in the glade and gave a loud whinny of salutation. Douglass was on his feet in a second, his hand upon his revolver butt. The presence of another horse in that cañon was a suspicious thing and as he inclined his head toward the direction from which the whinny had come, his sharp eye discerned the gleam in the clematis. Instantly the gun leaped from its scabbard, but in the moment of its release there came a faint haze from the leafy screen, a sharp report, and Douglass pitched forward, face down, beside the little spring, the revolver falling from his nerveless hand directly into the lap of the screaming woman. Baffled of his proposed torture, and intent now only on making sure of the man he feared even in death, Matlock came running forward, working the bolt of his rifle as he ran. At the side of his victim he paused and thrust the muzzle of the weapon against the motionless head. He would not bungle this job, at any rate. But even as his finger closed about the trigger, Constance Brevoort was upon him with a spring like that of a lioness fighting for her mate, her arms fully extended and both hands clutching the butt of the heavy .44 Colt. Instinctively he raised his weapon to fend off this new and unlooked-for antagonist; but he was a moment too late. As the flame leaped from the muzzle to his breast he numbly lowered the rifle, turned half around, and walking forward a few steps, clutched blindly at the air and sank limply to the ground. One spasmodic struggle in which he turned over on his back and then he lay very still, his mouth distorted by a ghastly grin. At Ballard's signaling call, he was hastily rejoined by his posse and a hurried examination of Douglass's wound was made. The bullet had entered the skull just above the left temple, making its exit at the back of the head just where the parting of the hair ended. From all appearances it had passed directly through the upper portion of the brain, and Ballard shook his head hopelessly. But the heart was still beating vigorously and there was a very perceptible pulse. A rider was dispatched instantly to the nearest ranch, some two miles away, for a conveyance, returning quickly with a buckboard. A rude stretcher was improvised, on which Douglass was tenderly carried to the head of the trail, and with his head in Constance's lap he was carefully but quickly driven to the hotel. A dozen riders were soon scouring the suburbs for the doctor, who was out making his round of daily calls, and just at noon he came riding post-haste. As it most fortunately happened, he was a practitioner of ability and experience, having filled for years the responsible position of operating surgeon in one of the East's most famous hospitals. "It's an extra thousand on the side from me if you save him, Doc," said Ballard earnestly. "Don't you let my pard die!" The surgeon paused long enough from his examination to give him an assuring hand-grip. "That was superfluous, Ballard," he said quietly. "He is my friend, too." And there was an appeal in the eyes of Constance Brevoort that outweighed all the treasures of Golconda. Ballard, looking at her sympathetically, suddenly received an inspiration. Taking her quietly to one side he coughed apologetically and finally stammered out: "I don't want to butt in, Mrs. Brevoort, but there will have to be a more or less rigid investigation of this affair by the coroner and--well, there is no use of your being put to any annoyance or embarrassment. And I reckon you really _don't_ know what happened after Ken was shot. The coroner is a friend of ours and will not deem It necessary to question you at all; you will not have to appear at the inquest. It's a lucky thing I happened to get there in time to kill Matlock before he could do any further mischief." He looked meaningly at her and she gasped with relief and wonder as the significance of his words dawned upon her. "And you would do that for me, a stranger!" she said incredulously. "How noble you are!" "Well," he said slowly, confused by the gratitude streaming from her eyes, "you are a friend of his, and I think he would prefer it so. So don't discuss the matter at all with anyone; just stand 'em all off somehow. Say you fainted when the first shot was fired. And let me do all the explaining. I was justified in doing it in my official capacity, you know, and my statement will end the matter." And so the world was none the wiser. In the days to come two others were to learn the truth, and to these four alone was It restricted for all time. That night after the inquest the body of the dead desperado was taken to Gunnison, and Justice was satisfied. To the woman waiting in the darkened room that afternoon it seemed an age before the surgeon returned with the implements necessary for the operation he had promptly determined on. Ever and anon she would look fearfully at her hands and shudder at what she thought she saw there. It would be easier to bear if she could only be assured that it had not all been in vain; the figure on the bed lay so alarmingly still. A dozen times she placed her ear to his heart to convince herself that it was still beating. The door creaked shrilly on its rusty hinges and the doctor entered. After him followed Blount and Ballard, bearing between them a long deal table requisitioned from the dining-room. Raising the curtains, the room was flooded with a strong white light, in which the table was placed. When the wounded man had been removed thereto, the surgeon turned to Constance. "All operations are more or less attended with unpleasant features, Madam," he said kindly. "Had you not better retire?" She begged piteously to be allowed to remain, even insisting upon her ability to render any necessary assistance. But he saw her shudder of apprehension as he opened the case of glittering instruments and he hesitated dubiously. She clasped her hands in prayerful entreaty and he turned to his work. A few skillful strokes of the scalpel and he nodded his satisfaction. "Merely a scalp wound with a slight depression of the parietal bone," he said reassuringly. "It will require trephining but that is at the worst only a minor operation. As soon as the pressure on the brain is relieved he will recover consciousness. The bullet did not penetrate the skull at all, being deflected by its acute angle of impact. It was an exceedingly close call, but in six weeks he will never know he was shot at all, provided no unforeseen complications arise." A half hour later Douglass opened his eyes. His vision was still uncertain and he blinked uncomprehendingly at the white faces about him. Then he caught sight of the woman kneeling at the bedside in an agony of thanksgiving, her face hidden in her hands. He half rose from the table where he was lying and held out his arms pleadingly through the mists that clouded brain and eyes alike: "Gracie, sweetheart, forgive--!" As he fell back fainting in the arms of the irate doctor, who was taken unawares by his patient's unexpected action, and who was savagely cursing his own remissness in not having strapped him to the table, the woman rose from her knees and with one hand pressed to her heart, tottered unsteadily towards the door. Ballard, springing to her assistance, recoiled at the hopeless despair and misery written on that face. At the threshold she hesitated a moment, steadying herself with one hand braced against the casing. Then of a sudden she turned and walked firmly to the table; disregarding the surgeon's indignant remonstrance, she leaned over the unconscious man and laid her lips on his. For a full minute she held them there, her form as motionless as his, then with the slowness of one who is wearied unto death, she raised her head and stood with closed eyes beside him. The men's faces were averted and their heads bowed as she went silently out. For not a one of them but was fully conversant with her relations to Douglass, and one of them at least knew of his engagement to Grace Carter. But all of them were awed by the tragedy of this woman's misspent love, all reverently silenced by the atoning sacrifice offered up in that heart-breaking kiss of renunciation. A week later when Douglass had regained full consciousness he was informed that Mr. and Mrs. Brevoort had returned to New York. He felt not a little hurt at her unceremonious departure without a word of farewell to him and was inclined to be morose and splenetic during the succeeding fortnight of convalescence. From Red McVey he had learned of Grace's departure on the day of his mishap, and was much relieved to know that she was probably unaware of his injury at the time of leaving, it being very doubtful if she had even heard of it up to the present time; her foreign address being unknown to any of her western friends, there had been no interchange of correspondence, and local happenings of this nature were not of sufficient Interest to the eastern public to receive insertion in the New York papers. At least that is what he thought, forgetting that a robbery of the mails is an item of universal interest and also overlooking the fact that he was now a millionaire, whose attempted assassination by a ringleader of the desperadoes had been the welcome justification for glaring scare-heads in all the metropolitan dailies. It would have cut him to the quick had she been cognizant of his trouble and evinced no interest. He was also cynically resentful of Constance's apparent defection, ungenerously attributing it to her fear of being compromised. Imagine his contrition when Ballard one day sought him out and delivered unto him an envelope addressed in Constance's familiar dainty chirography, admitting its detention for over three weeks by her express command. "I was not to give it to you until you were fairly off the puny list," said the marshal gravely, "and there is something else that you should know before you read that letter." And he proceeded to relate without any embellishment the facts in the matter of Matlock's taking off, supplementing them with other details of interest to the man who sat for hours after his friend had gone in bitter self-communion. It was quite dark when he went supperless to his room and opened the cream-tinted envelope. The hours came and passed unrecked, and the gray dawn found him still sitting by the rickety little table, head in hands, poring dully over the lines that to his disordered fancy seemed written in her heart's blood. "I am going away to-morrow, out into the pitiful Nothing in which all things end; and soon I will be even less than a memory to you. It is best so, for I would not have you hampered by a single regret in your enjoyment of the happiness that the future holds for you. "You owe me nothing, although I have given you all--and gloried in the giving. For you at least vouchsafed me, through barred windows, a glimpse into the sanctuary where such as I may not enter. I realize now that it was impossible for me to have ever entered into the holy of holies; and yet, dear, can you blame me for hoping? "I know now that I could never have entered fully into your life; the clay of my being leans too awry for that. But am I to blame for the shaking of the Potter's hand? I sought with all the assiduity of a weak woman's love, but there was a door to which I never found the key, a veil behind which I could not peer. Yet to me was given the rapture of the outer temple--and it was the bread of life. "Be generous to me in this, the hour of my bitter atonement, and believe that my love was as pure and unselfish as it is possible for a woman to give. The proof of it is that I am giving you up now when I know that by a little finesse I could pull you down to hell with me. For I have spilled the Red Wine for you, my Wolf, and the reek of it would have been a bond and heel-rope between us. "It is because of my love for you that I am giving you up, giving you into the hands of another woman. I have been but a flame to you, burning out the dross from your nature so that she might pour into her heart's crucible only the pure gold. God grant she mold the chalice aright. "And now farewell while I have yet strength to say it. Forget me if you can. But if from the heights you ever look backward and downward, and in the sea of memory catch one faint reflection of me, let the thought be a kindly one. "For oh, Man, who was more than God to me, I loved you too well!" Very reverently he kissed the letter, then burned it in the flame of the smoky lamp. It was a long and weary ride to the nearest telegraph office at Gunnison, yet he never dismounted from his staggering horse until he heard the clicking of the sounders in the dingy little office. "My life is yours alone," he wrote firmly; "let me make amends. Will you mold the chalice?" Feverishly he strode up and down his apartment at the hotel until her answering wire was laid in his hand: "You are even more noble than I thought, and shall have your reward. Grace waits you at Cairo. Have written her all that she must ever know. Go at once and God bless you both!" He left that night for the East, and at the house of the Brevoorts learned that Mr. Brevoort and his wife had taken their departure two days before on an extended tour of the Orient. Yes, Mrs. Brevoort had left an enclosure for him. It contained only a little note from Grace Carter to Constance and in his misery he could not understand why the latter had urged him to go to Cairo: "I forgive you, even as I think God has forgiven you," Grace wrote, "for I, too, have been whirled in the maelstrom of his irresistible passion. I do not presume to sit in judgment of you, for you have given him his life--and at what an awful price! May God grant you forgetfulness, the boon that has been denied me." Underneath this was written in Mrs. Carter's angular hand: "I found this on my daughter's table the day after she was stricken down by brain fever, and an investigation of her correspondence shows it to have been intended for you. Now that the danger is passed and she is on the way to recovery, I send it to you with my contempt. Deem yourself fortunate that it is not my curse, instead." On the forward deck of the great ocean grayhound that was cleaving the waters at record speed, a man stood that night with his face turned ever to the East. It would be ten days more before he could kiss the hem of her garment in supplication, ten days of hell in whose torturing fires his soul shriveled with a sickening fear. If he had lost her, after all! CHAPTER XXIII BELSHAZZAR COMES BACK TO STAY In her apartments at the Grand Hotel de Esbekie-yeh in Cairo, a wan-faced girl was looking wearily out over the splendid panorama spread before her. In the heel of the afternoon the level rays of the sun were gilding parti-colored minarets of mosque and palaces with barbaric splendor. In the distance the Shoubrah palaces gleamed even more fairy-like than usual; the Abbasieyeh camps were astir with multi-hued life, and on its frowning rock the distant citadel was a gem in red bronze. On the bosom of the world's most mysterious river, the brown sails were gleaming like the wings of great birds, and inshore the graceful lateens under the dipping shadoofs were closely folded as they lay at rest. Over beyond Ghizeh loomed the Pyramids which she was to visit on the morrow, the Sphinx in its majesty between. It was fairyland, in truth, the most gorgeous riot of color and mystery in the whole world, and yet she saw it not. The languorous air was heavy almost to oppression with the blended odor of jasmine, orange, citron, and the thousand and one flowers of the myriad gardens, mingled with the reek of the bazaars and the indescribable breath of the Nile. And yet she was all unconscious of it. For in the nostrils of her introspection there was only the spicy tang of lemonias and sagebrush, and the eyes of her soul saw only a little glade embowered with artemesia and clematis, nestled deep in the forbidding cleft in the Rocky Mountains, many thousand miles away. A glade where lay a dead man with the snarl of baffled hatred petrified on his discolored lips, and another wounded almost to death, his head clasped close to the bosom of a woman whom she should be logically hating as woman was never hated before. And yet in the heart of her there was only pity for the woman, whose letter lay in her lap. For the hundredth time she read the tear-stained words, feeling a new accession of tenderness at each transcribed sob: "Yesterday, at the 'horse-shoe bend' in Lost Cañon, I killed the man called Jasper Matlock, after he had shot Kenneth Douglass from ambush. Mr. Douglass was not injured seriously, but at the time I thought him dead. Somehow I found his revolver in my hands and the man was making a second attempt. "Mr. Ballard--ah, the great hearts of these westerners--magnanimously sought to shield me from the consequences and publicity. As though all the publicity in the world mattered now. "I have wronged you, but in one thing only: the lie about your engagement to Ellerslie. That was my doing. In everything else I had the justification of every law of Nature; I loved him far better than you could ever do, and he was logically mine if I could but win him. I was ready and eager to sacrifice all, while you in your pitiful selfishness and egotism turned from the glory laid at your feet and yielded him nothing. Oh, you fool! You poor, weak fool! To deny him even the small assurance of your vain little body, when you should have found, as I did, ecstatic exaltation in letting him trample on my soul. "Oh! child, in your wealth of possession be generous and give me a little of your kindness, a little of your forgiveness. I have so little, so little of him. I know now that I have never even had his respect, at times barely his tolerance. And, God help me, I loved him so. Can you understand when I say that I love him even the more that he was always greater than the manifold arts I exercised upon him? That all my sacrifices, my tenderness, my adoration gave him out apathetic amusement? I was ever but a toy to divert him from the agony your neglect caused him and any other woman as fair would have sufficed as well. "To my shame be it said that I knew it all the time; but I was hoping against hope. To-day I go away from here, and from him, forever. He will come to you as certainly as the iron flies to the magnet, and he will be suffering, penitent and purified. My share of him has been the coarse dross of passion that must be skimmed from the crucible of every strong man's hot heart; yours will be the refined gold of his soul's first and last real love. For God's sake, child, play with happiness no more, lest you lose it as I have done. "In the bitterness of the days to come it would lessen the pain if I thought you could ever come to forgive me. I can see to write no more. Mayhap these tears will in time wash out the stain on my soul. That on my hands I must see forever. It is the visible proof of my atonement, for by it I gave back his life to you." The paper was wet with her tears as she thrust it into the bosom of her dress. Beside the open window she knelt and prayed for the peace of a troubled soul. But it could never be--this home-coming of her lost love. Her heart, too, was dead; the feet of her idol had crumbled and the glorious fabric of her dreams was dust. The yellow drifting sands of the Libyan desert shimmering before her aching eyes were no more dry and lifeless than the dead love moldering In her heart. Never again would her pulses leap at the sound of his voice or her senses reel at his touch. That was as much a thing of the past as Thebes, Luzor, Karnak and Athor out yonder, a dead thing buried in the ashes of a murdered hope. Over in the aridity of the eternal desert, where for ages she had watched in contemptuous silence the petty tragedies enacted on the worn old stage of Life by the gibbering puppets who call themselves Man, the woman-breasted Sphinx, touched by the shadow of a passing cloud, smiled cynically into the vacancy of the everlasting East. Two hours after her carriage had entered the airline avenue from Ghizeh to the Pyramids, the incoming train from Alexandria bore into the composite Bedlam called "Masr el Kahira" a bronzed young American at sight of whom more than one _yashmak_ fluttered eagerly as its dark-eyed owner beamed approval of this handsome _giaour_. Even the lounging pith-hatted Englishmen nodded their appreciation of this lithe Yankee who so hurriedly bounded up the steps of Shepheard's Hotel and spoke imperiously to the Maitre d' Hotel of that famous hostelry. Money is everything in Cairo, and Lord Frederick Chillingham of H. R. M. Hussars was open in his admiration of the horsemanship of the newcomer as, a short half-hour afterward, Douglass, mounted on a superb barb, swept out into the square. How he obtained accouterments and that magnificent mount in so short a time is a mystery only known to the smiling factotums who bowed and scraped their enjoyment of one of the most princely _douceurs_ that had ever been lavished upon them. "Cowboy, b'gad!" drawled the honorable Freddie knowingly to a fair-faced young English girl who was watching the rider with a degree of interest rather distasteful to the stalwart guardsman. "I wonder now where the beggar got that horse. Best looker I've seen in Egypt." "Best lookers, you mean, Freddie," corrected the girl mischievously; "but how do you know he is a cowboy?" "By the seat of him," tersely explained the blond giant. "Rides straight up, grips with his thighs, don't know he's got stirrups; and don't need them, either. Those Yankees can ride no end!" he concluded grudgingly. "This one seems to be in a rush!" But once out on the tawny stretch that lay between him and his heart's desire, Douglass checked the swallow-like flight of that wonderful blue-blood and paced more leisurely along in profound meditation. He was not at all sure of his reception. What was he going to say in pleading to his outraged queen? What God-given words would be vouchsafed him to offer in palliation? He groaned at thought of the hopelessness of it. What had he deserved but her contemptuous scorn! He licked his lips nervously and a cold sweat broke on his brow despite the stifling heat that beat up in shimmering waves against his face. He fumbled a moment in the bosom of his shirt, and prayed for the second time in many years: "Oh! Mother, help me!" Suddenly, to the trained far-seeing eyes sweeping that cheerless waste hungrily, appeared a faint speck of color on one of the sand dunes at the base of the Sphinx. With eyes fixed unwaveringly upon it he put the barb at full speed. What he would do, what he would say--all hesitation dropped away in his fierce desire to look into her eyes once more, to hear that sweet voice again, though it were only to send him hurtling down into the hell of his deserts. Grace Carter, sitting alone in the carriage, watched listlessly the rest of her party kodaking at a distance the immobile face of the Great Mystery. But she saw them as in a dream and ere long she was looking, with a heart as old and cold and dead as that of the grim Mistress of the Nile, as far and unseeingly into the west as the Sphinx stared into the east. Before her fast-misting eyes blazed one line in Constance's letter: "For God's sake, play with happiness no more!" It would be easy to obey that prayer, she thought bitterly, for never more would happiness come anigh her. Afar in the desert a sand spout flared up, whirled along feverishly for a few minutes, and was gone. She watched it with a strange fascination and muttered brokenly: "Just like his love, fierce, threatening, grand and evanescent. And yet I was to blame! Oh, why did I ever let him go?" The twanging of some stringed instrument in one of the Bedouin black tents clustered about the base of the Sphinx woke a long-forgotten chord and she mechanically crooned the words of a song that once wailed a heart misery as great as hers: "'Could you come back to me, Douglass, Douglass, Back with the old-time smile that I knew? I'd be so faithful and loving, Douglass! Douglass, Douglass, tender and true! "Could you come back with--'" Her voice broke and she buried her face in her hands, her form convulsed by a paroxysm of tears. Then to her numbed senses came vaguely another remembrance of the buried past, frantic hoof-beats. For a second she cowered as she had done on that awful day, then she turned with a sigh of relief to welcome, this time, the end of all things. Through her tear-blinded eyes she saw the blue stallion sweeping down upon her but she never flinched. God was going to be kind after all. But even as the lean head ranged beside her, the foam splattering on her bosom as she involuntarily covered her eyes with her hands, from out of Chaos came a cry: "Gracie, forgive--!" Slowly she dropped her hands and stared incredulously. What was this wonder that had come to her in the moment of death? She tottered unsteadily, swaying to and fro like a wind-tossed leaf. As in a fog she saw him there with arms extended, waiting to carry her across the dark ford. Then, by God's mercy, her brain cleared and she knew. * * * * * At the Court of Europe's greatest prince men strive with each other doing honor to the beautiful wife of the new American Ambassador, Anselm Brevoort. "As good as she is beautiful, God bless her!" was Frederick, Lord Chillingham's enthusiastic eulogy one night when her name was mentioned at the United, and his comrades silently drank her health standing. "As pure and as cold as the stars above, God bless her!" sighs the silver-haired Ambassador, looking wistfully at her where she sits with her protégé, little Eulalie Blount, in her lap, patiently explaining that the tail makes all the difference between O and Q. "I love oo, Tonnie!" lisps the little tot kneeling by her little white bed. And the woman, clasping in her bosom a tiny satin bag containing a common yellow telegraph blank on which are written a few now undecipherable words, looks dry-eyed into the night and wonders. * * * * * In the marshal's office at Gunnison, over their cigars and a big-bellied bottle, Red McVey and Ballard are looking reminiscently at a Mauser hanging on the wall. "I reckon that were thu best jawb yuh evah done, Lew," says the cowboy with much conviction. Ballard, dropping his eyes unaccountably, hesitates long over his selection of a fresh weed. "What the hell else was there to do?" he says gruffly. But the recording angel, looking kindly and indulgently at the honest face, smiles softly and forgets the pen in his hand. For a long time the men smoke in a silence more eloquent than words. Then Ballard shifts the threads in the loom. "That's a great kid that Ken's got, I hear. Think I'll take a pasear over there with you when you go back and look at his points." "That kid!" says Red enthusiastically. "Say, Lew, hush! He's thu biggest thing on thu range. Why, thu damn leetle cuss actooly kin make fists already, an' he jes' nacherally pre-empts my ole hawg laig every time I goes there. Thu han'le is good to cut his teeths on, Ken says, an' he kin eat it cleah off if he wants. I m thinkin' o leavin my spah gun foh him to nibble on at odd times." "An' Ken?" There is a certain diffidence in the sturdy fellow's voice. Red looking at him with a world of reassurance in his laughing blue eyes, grins broadly. "Hell!" he says succinctly. "Yuh go oveh theah and watch hes eyes follerin' of her. When a man gits through playin' thu goat he gin'rally feels some obligated to act sheep foh a spell, so's to even up thu deal." * * * * * Over at the Circle D ranch a broad-shouldered man in flannel shirt and "fair leather" _chaparejos_ lies sprawled on the veranda beside a low-hung hammock in which is lying a brown-haired woman. Pressed to her lips is a spray of mountain heart's-ease, and In her heart is the sweeter ease of mountains removed. The man is dusty and saddle-worn, but in his heart is a great Peace. Tenderly he lays his lips on the hand shyly touching his bronzed cheek and the woman crimsons with pleasure. For a long time they lie in understanding silence, then the grave rich voice of the man says: "Tell me, sweetheart, do you never long for the pleasant gayety, the diversions, the distractions of your old social world? Are you really happy and content here in this circumscribed little sphere?" She slips quickly from the hammock to the floor beside him and draws his head up to her bosom. "Do I ever long? Yes, sweetheart, I have wept with longing--for the hour of your daily return. I have sighed--for the coming of the dusk that would bring you home to baby and me! I have pined--for the music of the hoof-beats that would thrill me if they passed over my grave." From the little nursery comes the lusty insistence of a child clamoring for his desires. Very gently she releases herself from his embrace. Then this Madonna of the Range goes proudly to the mothering of her first-born. Old Abigail, hastening likewise to obey that imperious summons, smiles approvingly as the man, catching at the garment trailing above his face, lays his lips to its hem. "I kinda reckon," she says softly to herself, "that Belshazzar has come back to stay!" 
38551	----	[Illustration: Book Cover] THE CRUX BOOKS BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN Women and Economics $1.50 Concerning Children 1.25 In This Our World (verse) 1.25 The Yellow Wallpaper (story) 0.50 The Home 1.00 Human Work 1.00 What Diantha Did (novel) 1.00 The Man-Made World; or, Our Androcentric Culture 1.00 Moving the Mountain 1.00 The Crux 1.00 Suffrage Songs 0.10 THE CRUX A NOVEL BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN CHARLTON COMPANY NEW YORK 1911 Copyright, 1911 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman THE CO-OPERATIVE PRESS, 15 SPRUCE STREET, NEW YORK PREFACE This story is, first, for young women to read; second, for young men to read; after that, for anybody who wants to. Anyone who doubts its facts and figures is referred to "Social Diseases and Marriage," by Dr. Prince Morrow, or to "Hygiene and Morality," by Miss Lavinia Dock, a trained nurse of long experience. Some will hold that the painful facts disclosed are unfit for young girls to know. Young girls are precisely the ones who must know them, in order that they may protect themselves and their children to come. The time to know of danger is before it is too late to avoid it. If some say "Innocence is the greatest charm of young girls," the answer is, "What good does it do them?" CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE BACK WAY 9 II. BAINVILLE EFFECTS 31 III. THE OUTBREAK 60 IV. TRANSPLANTED 81 V. CONTRASTS 101 VI. NEW FRIENDS AND OLD 126 VII. SIDE LIGHTS 149 VIII. A MIXTURE 174 IX. CONSEQUENCES 204 X. DETERMINATION 229 XI. THEREAFTER 256 XII. ACHIEVEMENTS 283 _Who should know but the woman?--The young wife-to-be? Whose whole life hangs on the choice; To her the ruin, the misery; To her, the deciding voice._ _Who should know but the woman?--The mother-to-be? Guardian, Giver, and Guide; If she may not foreknow, forejudge and foresee, What safety has childhood beside?_ _Who should know but the woman?--The girl in her youth? The hour of the warning is then, That, strong in her knowledge and free in her truth, She may build a new race of new men._ CHAPTER I THE BACK WAY Along the same old garden path, Sweet with the same old flowers; Under the lilacs, darkly dense, The easy gate in the backyard fence-- Those unforgotten hours! The "Foote Girls" were bustling along Margate Street with an air of united purpose that was unusual with them. Miss Rebecca wore her black silk cloak, by which it might be seen that "a call" was toward. Miss Jessie, the thin sister, and Miss Sallie, the fat one, were more hastily attired. They were persons of less impressiveness than Miss Rebecca, as was tacitly admitted by their more familiar nicknames, a concession never made by the older sister. Even Miss Rebecca was hurrying a little, for her, but the others were swifter and more impatient. "Do come on, Rebecca. Anybody'd think you were eighty instead of fifty!" said Miss Sallie. "There's Mrs. Williams going in! I wonder if she's heard already. Do hurry!" urged Miss Josie. But Miss Rebecca, being concerned about her dignity, would not allow herself to be hustled, and the three proceeded in irregular order under the high-arched elms and fence-topping syringas of the small New England town toward the austere home of Mr. Samuel Lane. It was a large, uncompromising, square, white house, planted starkly in the close-cut grass. It had no porch for summer lounging, no front gate for evening dalliance, no path-bordering beds of flowers from which to pluck a hasty offering or more redundant tribute. The fragrance which surrounded it came from the back yard, or over the fences of neighbors; the trees which waved greenly about it were the trees of other people. Mr. Lane had but two trees, one on each side of the straight and narrow path, evenly placed between house and sidewalk--evergreens. Mrs. Lane received them amiably; the minister's new wife, Mrs. Williams, was proving a little difficult to entertain. She was from Cambridge, Mass., and emanated a restrained consciousness of that fact. Mr. Lane rose stiffly and greeted them. He did not like the Foote girls, not having the usual American's share of the sense of humor. He had no enjoyment of the town joke, as old as they were, that "the three of them made a full yard;" and had frowned down as a profane impertinent the man--a little sore under some effect of gossip--who had amended it with "make an 'ell, I say." Safely seated in their several rocking chairs, and severally rocking them, the Misses Foote burst forth, as was their custom, in simultaneous, though by no means identical remarks. "I suppose you've heard about Morton Elder?" "What do you think Mort Elder's been doing now?" "We've got bad news for poor Miss Elder!" Mrs. Lane was intensely interested. Even Mr. Lane showed signs of animation. "I'm not surprised," he said. "He's done it now," opined Miss Josie with conviction. "I always said Rella Elder was spoiling that boy." "It's too bad--after all she's done for him! He always was a scamp!" Thus Miss Sallie. "I've been afraid of it all along," Miss Rebecca was saying, her voice booming through the lighter tones of her sisters. "I always said he'd never get through college." "But who is Morton Elder, and what has he done?" asked Mrs. Williams as soon as she could be heard. This lady now proved a most valuable asset. She was so new to the town, and had been so immersed in the suddenly widening range of her unsalaried duties as "minister's wife," that she had never even heard of Morton Elder. A new resident always fans the languishing flame of local conversation. The whole shopworn stock takes on a fresh lustre, topics long trampled flat in much discussion lift their heads anew, opinions one scarce dared to repeat again become almost authoritative, old stories flourish freshly, acquiring new detail and more vivid color. Mrs. Lane, seizing her opportunity while the sisters gasped a momentary amazement at anyone's not knowing the town scapegrace, and taking advantage of her position as old friend and near neighbor of the family under discussion, swept into the field under such headway that even the Foote girls remained silent perforce; surcharged, however, and holding their breaths in readiness to burst forth at the first opening. "He's the nephew--orphan nephew--of Miss Elder--who lives right back of us--our yards touch--we've always been friends--went to school together, Rella's never married--she teaches, you know--and her brother--he owned the home--it's all hers now, he died all of a sudden and left two children--Morton and Susie. Mort was about seven years old and Susie just a baby. He's been an awful cross--but she just idolizes him--she's spoiled him, I tell her." Mrs. Lane had to breathe, and even the briefest pause left her stranded to wait another chance. The three social benefactors proceeded to distribute their information in a clattering torrent. They sought to inform Mrs. Williams in especial, of numberless details of the early life and education of their subject, matters which would have been treated more appreciatively if they had not been blessed with the later news; and, at the same time, each was seeking for a more dramatic emphasis to give this last supply of incident with due effect. No regular record is possible where three persons pour forth statement and comment in a rapid, tumultuous stream, interrupted by cross currents of heated contradiction, and further varied by the exclamations and protests of three hearers, or at least, of two; for the one man present soon relapsed into disgusted silence. Mrs. Williams, turning a perplexed face from one to the other, inwardly condemning the darkening flood of talk, yet conscious of a sinful pleasure in it, and anxious as a guest, _and_ a minister's wife, to be most amiable, felt like one watching three kinetescopes at once. She saw, in confused pictures of blurred and varying outline, Orella Elder, the young New England girl, only eighteen, already a "school ma'am," suddenly left with two children to bring up, and doing it, as best she could. She saw the boy, momentarily changing, in his shuttlecock flight from mouth to mouth, through pale shades of open mischief to the black and scarlet of hinted sin, the terror of the neighborhood, the darling of his aunt, clever, audacious, scandalizing the quiet town. "Boys are apt to be mischievous, aren't they?" she suggested when it was possible. "He's worse than mischievous," Mr. Lane assured her sourly. "There's a mean streak in that family." "That's on his mother's side," Mrs. Lane hastened to add. "She was a queer girl--came from New York." The Foote girls began again, with rich profusion of detail, their voices rising shrill, one above the other, and playing together at their full height like emulous fountains. "We ought not to judge, you know;" urged Mrs. Williams. "What do you say he's really done?" Being sifted, it appeared that this last and most terrible performance was to go to "the city" with a group of "the worst boys of college," to get undeniably drunk, to do some piece of mischief. (Here was great licence in opinion, and in contradiction.) "_Anyway_ he's to be suspended!" said Miss Rebecca with finality. "Suspended!" Miss Josie's voice rose in scorn. "_Expelled!_ They said he was expelled." "In disgrace!" added Miss Sallie. Vivian Lane sat in the back room at the window, studying in the lingering light of the long June evening. At least, she appeared to be studying. Her tall figure was bent over her books, but the dark eyes blazed under their delicate level brows, and her face flushed and paled with changing feelings. She had heard--who, in the same house, could escape hearing the Misses Foote?--and had followed the torrent of description, hearsay, surmise and allegation with an interest that was painful in its intensity. "It's a _shame_!" she whispered under her breath. "A _shame_! And nobody to stand up for him!" She half rose to her feet as if to do it herself, but sank back irresolutely. A fresh wave of talk rolled forth. "It'll half kill his aunt." "Poor Miss Elder! I don't know what she'll do!" "I don't know what _he'll_ do. He can't go back to college." "He'll have to go to work." "I'd like to know where--nobody'd hire him in this town." The girl could bear it no longer. She came to the door, and there, as they paused to speak to her, her purpose ebbed again. "My daughter, Vivian, Mrs. Williams," said her mother; and the other callers greeted her familiarly. "You'd better finish your lessons, Vivian," Mr. Lane suggested. "I have, father," said the girl, and took a chair by the minister's wife. She had a vague feeling that if she were there, they would not talk so about Morton Elder. Mrs. Williams hailed the interruption gratefully. She liked the slender girl with the thoughtful eyes and pretty, rather pathetic mouth, and sought to draw her out. But her questions soon led to unfortunate results. "You are going to college, I suppose?" she presently inquired; and Vivian owned that it was the desire of her heart. "Nonsense!" said her father. "Stuff and nonsense, Vivian! You're not going to college." The Foote girls now burst forth in voluble agreement with Mr. Lane. His wife was evidently of the same mind; and Mrs. Williams plainly regretted her question. But Vivian mustered courage enough to make a stand, strengthened perhaps by the depth of the feeling which had brought her into the room. "I don't know why you're all so down on a girl's going to college. Eve Marks has gone, and Mary Spring is going--and both the Austin girls. Everybody goes now." "I know one girl that won't," was her father's incisive comment, and her mother said quietly, "A girl's place is at home--'till she marries." "Suppose I don't want to marry?" said Vivian. "Don't talk nonsense," her father answered. "Marriage is a woman's duty." "What do you want to do?" asked Miss Josie in the interests of further combat. "Do you want to be a doctor, like Jane Bellair?" "I should like to very much indeed," said the girl with quiet intensity. "I'd like to be a doctor in a babies' hospital." "More nonsense," said Mr. Lane. "Don't talk to me about that woman! You attend to your studies, and then to your home duties, my dear." The talk rose anew, the three sisters contriving all to agree with Mr. Lane in his opinions about college, marriage and Dr. Bellair, yet to disagree violently among themselves. Mrs. Williams rose to go, and in the lull that followed the liquid note of a whippoorwill met the girl's quick ear. She quietly slipped out, unnoticed. The Lane's home stood near the outer edge of the town, with an outlook across wide meadows and soft wooded hills. Behind, their long garden backed on that of Miss Orella Elder, with a connecting gate in the gray board fence. Mrs. Lane had grown up here. The house belonged to her mother, Mrs. Servilla Pettigrew, though that able lady was seldom in it, preferring to make herself useful among two growing sets of grandchildren. Miss Elder was Vivian's favorite teacher. She was a careful and conscientious instructor, and the girl was a careful and conscientious scholar; so they got on admirably together; indeed, there was a real affection between them. And just as the young Laura Pettigrew had played with the younger Orella Elder, so Vivian had played with little Susie Elder, Miss Orella's orphan niece. Susie regarded the older girl with worshipful affection, which was not at all unpleasant to an emotional young creature with unemotional parents, and no brothers or sisters of her own. Moreover, Susie was Morton's sister. The whippoorwill's cry sounded again through the soft June night. Vivian came quickly down the garden path between the bordering beds of sweet alyssum and mignonette. A dew-wet rose brushed against her hand. She broke it off, pricking her fingers, and hastily fastened it in the bosom of her white frock. Large old lilac bushes hung over the dividing fence, a thick mass of honeysuckle climbed up by the gate and mingled with them, spreading over to a pear tree on the Lane side. In this fragrant, hidden corner was a rough seat, and from it a boy's hand reached out and seized the girl's, drawing her down beside him. She drew away from him as far as the seat allowed. "Oh Morton!" she said. "What have you done?" Morton was sulky. "Now Vivian, are you down on me too? I thought I had one friend." "You ought to tell me," she said more gently. "How can I be your friend if I don't know the facts? They are saying perfectly awful things." "Who are?" "Why--the Foote girls--everybody." "Oh those old maids aren't everybody, I assure you. You see, Vivian, you live right here in this old oyster of a town--and you make mountains out of molehills like everybody else. A girl of your intelligence ought to know better." She drew a great breath of relief. "Then you haven't--done it?" "Done what? What's all this mysterious talk anyhow? The prisoner has a right to know what he's charged with before he commits himself." The girl was silent, finding it difficult to begin. "Well, out with it. What do they say I did?" He picked up a long dry twig and broke it, gradually, into tiny, half-inch bits. "They say you--went to the city--with a lot of the worst boys in college----" "Well? Many persons go to the city every day. That's no crime, surely. As for 'the worst boys in college,'"--he laughed scornfully--"I suppose those old ladies think if a fellow smokes a cigarette or says 'darn' he's a tough. They're mighty nice fellows, that bunch--most of 'em. Got some ginger in 'em, that's all. What else?" "They say--you drank." "O ho! Said I got drunk, I warrant! Well--we did have a skate on that time, I admit!" And he laughed as if this charge were but a familiar joke. "Why Morton Elder! I think it is a--disgrace!" "Pshaw, Vivian!--You ought to have more sense. All the fellows get gay once in a while. A college isn't a young ladies' seminary." He reached out and got hold of her hand again, but she drew it away. "There was something else," she said. "What was it?" he questioned sharply. "What did they say?" But she would not satisfy him--perhaps could not. "I should think you'd be ashamed, to make your aunt so much trouble. They said you were suspended--or--_expelled_!" He shrugged his big shoulders and threw away the handful of broken twigs. "That's true enough--I might as well admit that." "Oh, _Morton_!--I didn't believe it. _Expelled!_" "Yes, expelled--turned down--thrown out--fired! And I'm glad of it." He leaned back against the fence and whistled very softly through his teeth. "Sh! Sh!" she urged. "Please!" He was quiet. "But Morton--what are you going to do?--Won't it spoil your career?" "No, my dear little girl, it will not!" said he. "On the contrary, it will be the making of me. I tell you, Vivian, I'm sick to death of this town of maiden ladies--and 'good family men.' I'm sick of being fussed over for ever and ever, and having wristers and mufflers knitted for me--and being told to put on my rubbers! There's no fun in this old clamshell--this kitchen-midden of a town--and I'm going to quit it." He stood up and stretched his long arms. "I'm going to quit it for good and all." The girl sat still, her hands gripping the seat on either side. "Where are you going?" she asked in a low voice. "I'm going west--clear out west. I've been talking with Aunt Rella about it. Dr. Bellair'll help me to a job, she thinks. She's awful cut up, of course. I'm sorry she feels bad--but she needn't, I tell her. I shall do better there than I ever should have here. I know a fellow that left college--his father failed--and he went into business and made two thousand dollars in a year. I always wanted to take up business--you know that!" She knew it--he had talked of it freely before they had argued and persuaded him into the college life. She knew, too, how his aunt's hopes all centered in him, and in his academic honors and future professional life. "Business," to his aunt's mind, was a necessary evil, which could at best be undertaken only after a "liberal education." "When are you going," she asked at length. "Right off--to-morrow." She gave a little gasp. "That's what I was whippoorwilling about--I knew I'd get no other chance to talk to you--I wanted to say good-by, you know." The girl sat silent, struggling not to cry. He dropped beside her, stole an arm about her waist, and felt her tremble. "Now, Viva, don't you go and cry! I'm sorry--I really am sorry--to make _you_ feel bad." This was too much for her, and she sobbed frankly. "Oh, Morton! How could you! How could you!--And now you've got to go away!" "There now--don't cry--sh!--they'll hear you." She did hush at that. "And don't feel so bad--I'll come back some time--to see you." "No, you won't!" she answered with sudden fierceness. "You'll just go--and stay--and I never shall see you again!" He drew her closer to him. "And do you care--so much--Viva?" "Of course, I care!" she said, "Haven't we always been friends, the best of friends?" "Yes--you and Aunt Rella have been about all I had," he admitted with a cheerful laugh. "I hope I'll make more friends out yonder. But Viva,"--his hand pressed closer--"is it only--friends?" She took fright at once and drew away from him. "You mustn't do that, Morton!" "Do what?" A shaft of moonlight shone on his teasing face. "What am I doing?" he said. It is difficult--it is well nigh impossible--for a girl to put a name to certain small cuddlings not in themselves terrifying, nor even unpleasant, but which she obscurely feels to be wrong. Viva flushed and was silent--he could see the rich color flood her face. "Come now--don't be hard on a fellow!" he urged. "I shan't see you again in ever so long. You'll forget all about me before a year's over." She shook her head, still silent. "Won't you speak to me--Viva?" "I wish----" She could not find the words she wanted. "Oh, I wish you--wouldn't!" "Wouldn't what, Girlie? Wouldn't go away? Sorry to disoblige--but I have to. There's no place for me here." The girl felt the sad truth of that. "Aunt Rella will get used to it after a while. I'll write to her--I'll make lots of money--and come back in a few years--astonish you all!--Meanwhile--kiss me good-by, Viva!" She drew back shyly. She had never kissed him. She had never in her life kissed any man younger than an uncle. "No, Morton--you mustn't----" She shrank away into the shadow. But, there was no great distance to shrink to, and his strong arms soon drew her close again. "Suppose you never see me again," he said. "Then you'll wish you hadn't been so stiff about it." She thought of this dread possibility with a sudden chill of horror, and while she hesitated, he took her face between her hands and kissed her on the mouth. Steps were heard coming down the path. "They're on," he said with a little laugh. "Good-by, Viva!" He vaulted the fence and was gone. "What are you doing here, Vivian?" demanded her father. "I was saying good-by to Morton," she answered with a sob. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself--philandering out here in the middle of the night with that scapegrace! Come in the house and go to bed at once--it's ten o'clock." Bowing to this confused but almost equally incriminating chronology, she followed him in, meekly enough as to her outward seeming, but inwardly in a state of stormy tumult. She had been kissed! Her father's stiff back before her could not blot out the radiant, melting moonlight, the rich sweetness of the flowers, the tender, soft, June night. "You go to bed," said he once more. "I'm ashamed of you." "Yes, father," she answered. Her little room, when at last she was safely in it and had shut the door and put a chair against it--she had no key--seemed somehow changed. She lit the lamp and stood looking at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were star-bright. Her cheeks flamed softly. Her mouth looked guilty and yet glad. She put the light out and went to the window, kneeling there, leaning out in the fragrant stillness, trying to arrange in her mind this mixture of grief, disapproval, shame and triumph. When the Episcopal church clock struck eleven, she went to bed in guilty haste, but not to sleep. For a long time she lay there watching the changing play of moonlight on the floor. She felt almost as if she were married. CHAPTER II. BAINVILLE EFFECTS. Lockstep, handcuffs, ankle-ball-and-chain, Dulltoil and dreary food and drink; Small cell, cold cell, narrow bed and hard; High wall, thick wall, window iron-barred; Stone-paved, stone-pent little prison yard-- Young hearts weary of monotony and pain, Young hearts weary of reiterant refrain: "They say--they do--what will people think?" At the two front windows of their rather crowded little parlor sat Miss Rebecca and Miss Josie Foote, Miss Sallie being out on a foraging expedition--marketing, as it were, among their neighbors to collect fresh food for thought. A tall, slender girl in brown passed on the opposite walk. "I should think Vivian Lane would get tired of wearing brown," said Miss Rebecca. "I don't know why she should," her sister promptly protested, "it's a good enough wearing color, and becoming to her." "She could afford to have more variety," said Miss Rebecca. "The Lanes are mean enough about some things, but I know they'd like to have her dress better. She'll never get married in the world." "I don't know why not. She's only twenty-five--and good-looking." "Good-looking! That's not everything. Plenty of girls marry that are not good-looking--and plenty of good-looking girls stay single." "Plenty of homely ones, too. Rebecca," said Miss Josie, with meaning. Miss Rebecca certainly was not handsome. "Going to the library, of course!" she pursued presently. "That girl reads all the time." "So does her grandmother. I see her going and coming from that library every day almost." "Oh, well--she reads stories and things like that. Sallie goes pretty often and she notices. We use that library enough, goodness knows, but they are there every day. Vivian Lane reads the queerest things--doctor's books and works on pedagoggy." "Godgy," said Miss Rebecca, "not goggy." And as her sister ignored this correction, she continued: "They might as well have let her go to college when she was so set on it." "College! I don't believe she'd have learned as much in any college, from what I hear of 'em, as she has in all this time at home." The Foote girls had never entertained a high opinion of extensive culture. "I don't see any use in a girl's studying so much," said Miss Rebecca with decision. "Nor I," agreed Miss Josie. "Men don't like learned women." "They don't seem to always like those that aren't learned, either," remarked Miss Rebecca with a pleasant sense of retribution for that remark about "homely ones." The tall girl in brown had seen the two faces at the windows opposite, and had held her shoulders a little straighter as she turned the corner. "Nine years this Summer since Morton Elder went West," murmured Miss Josie, reminiscently. "I shouldn't wonder if Vivian had stayed single on his account." "Nonsense!" her sister answered sharply. "She's not that kind. She's not popular with men, that's all. She's too intellectual." "She ought to be in the library instead of Sue Elder," Miss Rebecca suggested. "She's far more competent. Sue's a feather-headed little thing." "She seems to give satisfaction so far. If the trustees are pleased with her, there's no reason for you to complain that I see," said Miss Rebecca with decision. * * * * * Vivian Lane waited at the library desk with an armful of books to take home. She had her card, her mother's and her father's--all utilized. Her grandmother kept her own card--and her own counsel. The pretty assistant librarian, withdrawing herself with some emphasis from the unnecessary questions of a too gallant old gentleman, came to attend her. "You _have_ got a load," she said, scribbling complex figures with one end of her hammer-headed pencil, and stamping violet dates with the other. She whisked out the pale blue slips from the lid pockets, dropped them into their proper openings in the desk and inserted the cards in their stead with delicate precision. "Can't you wait a bit and go home with me?" she asked. "I'll help you carry them." "No, thanks. I'm not going right home." "You're going to see your Saint--I know!" said Miss Susie, tossing her bright head. "I'm jealous, and you know it." "Don't be a goose, Susie! You know you're my very best friend, but--she's different." "I should think she was different!" Susie sharply agreed. "And you've been 'different' ever since she came." "I hope so," said Vivian gravely. "Mrs. St. Cloud brings out one's very best and highest. I wish you liked her better, Susie." "I like you," Susie answered. "You bring out my 'best and highest'--if I've got any. She don't. She's like a lovely, faint, bright--bubble! I want to prick it!" Vivian smiled down upon her. "You bad little mouse!" she said. "Come, give me the books." "Leave them with me, and I'll bring them in the car." Susie looked anxious to make amends for her bit of blasphemy. "All right, dear. Thank you. I'll be home by that time, probably." * * * * * In the street she stopped before a little shop where papers and magazines were sold. "I believe Father'd like the new Centurion," she said to herself, and got it for him, chatting a little with the one-armed man who kept the place. She stopped again at a small florist's and bought a little bag of bulbs. "Your mother's forgotten about those, I guess," said Mrs. Crothers, the florist's wife, "but they'll do just as well now. Lucky you thought of them before it got too late in the season. Bennie was awfully pleased with that red and blue pencil you gave him, Miss Lane." Vivian walked on. A child ran out suddenly from a gate and seized upon her. "Aren't you coming in to see me--ever?" she demanded. Vivian stooped and kissed her. "Yes, dear, but not to-night. How's that dear baby getting on?" "She's better," said the little girl. "Mother said thank you--lots of times. Wait a minute--" The child fumbled in Vivian's coat pocket with a mischievous upward glance, fished out a handful of peanuts, and ran up the path laughing while the tall girl smiled down upon her lovingly. A long-legged boy was lounging along the wet sidewalk. Vivian caught up with him and he joined her with eagerness. "Good evening, Miss Lane. Say--are you coming to the club to-morrow night?" She smiled cordially. "Of course I am, Johnny. I wouldn't disappoint my boys for anything--nor myself, either." They walked on together chatting until, at the minister's house, she bade him a cheery "good-night." Mrs. St. Cloud was at the window pensively watching the western sky. She saw the girl coming and let her in with a tender, radiant smile--a lovely being in a most unlovely room. There was a chill refinement above subdued confusion in that Cambridge-Bainville parlor, where the higher culture of the second Mrs. Williams, superimposed upon the lower culture of the first, as that upon the varying tastes of a combined ancestry, made the place somehow suggestive of excavations at Abydos. It was much the kind of parlor Vivian had been accustomed to from childhood, but Mrs. St. Cloud was of a type quite new to her. Clothed in soft, clinging fabrics, always with a misty, veiled effect to them, wearing pale amber, large, dull stones of uncertain shapes, and slender chains that glittered here and there among her scarfs and laces, sinking gracefully among deep cushions, even able to sink gracefully into a common Bainville chair--this beautiful woman had captured the girl's imagination from the first. Clearly known, she was a sister of Mrs. Williams, visiting indefinitely. Vaguely--and very frequently--hinted, her husband had "left her," and "she did not believe in divorce." Against her background of dumb patience, he shone darkly forth as A Brute of unknown cruelties. Nothing against him would she ever say, and every young masculine heart yearned to make life brighter to the Ideal Woman, so strangely neglected; also some older ones. Her Young Men's Bible Class was the pride of Mr. Williams' heart and joy of such young men as the town possessed; most of Bainville's boys had gone. "A wonderful uplifting influence," Mr. Williams called her, and refused to say anything, even when directly approached, as to "the facts" of her trouble. "It is an old story," he would say. "She bears up wonderfully. She sacrifices her life rather than her principles." To Vivian, sitting now on a hassock at the lady's feet and looking up at her with adoring eyes, she was indeed a star, a saint, a cloud of mystery. She reached out a soft hand, white, slender, delicately kept, wearing one thin gold ring, and stroked the girl's smooth hair. Vivian seized the hand and kissed it, blushing as she did so. "You foolish child! Don't waste your young affection on an old lady like me." "Old! You! You don't look as old as I do this minute!" said the girl with hushed intensity. "Life wears on you, I'm afraid, my dear.... Do you ever hear from him?" To no one else, not even to Susie, could Vivian speak of what now seemed the tragedy of her lost youth. "No," said she. "Never now. He did write once or twice--at first." "He writes to his aunt, of course?" "Yes," said Vivian. "But not often. And he never--says anything." "I understand. Poor child! You must be true, and wait." And the lady turned the thin ring on her finger. Vivian watched her in a passion of admiring tenderness. "Oh, you understand!" she exclaimed. "You understand!" "I understand, my dear," said Mrs. St. Cloud. When Vivian reached her own gate she leaned her arms upon it and looked first one way and then the other, down the long, still street. The country was in sight at both ends--the low, monotonous, wooded hills that shut them in. It was all familiar, wearingly familiar. She had known it continuously for such part of her lifetime as was sensitive to landscape effects, and had at times a mad wish for an earthquake to change the outlines a little. The infrequent trolley car passed just then and Sue Elder joined her, to take the short cut home through the Lane's yard. "Here you are," she said cheerfully, "and here are the books." Vivian thanked her. "Oh, say--come in after supper, can't you? Aunt Rella's had another letter from Mort." Vivian's sombre eyes lit up a little. "How's he getting on? In the same business he was last year?" she asked with an elaborately cheerful air. Morton had seemed to change occupations oftener than he wrote letters. "Yes, I believe so. I guess he's well. He never says much, you know. I don't think it's good for him out there--good for any boy." And Susie looked quite the older sister. "What are they to do? They can't stay here." "No, I suppose not--but we have to." "Dr. Bellair didn't," remarked Vivian. "I like her--tremendously, don't you?" In truth, Dr. Bellair was already a close second to Mrs. St. Cloud in the girl's hero-worshipping heart. "Oh, yes; she's splendid! Aunt Rella is so glad to have her with us. They have great times recalling their school days together. Aunty used to like her then, though she is five years older--but you'd never dream it. And I think she's real handsome." "She's not beautiful," said Vivian, with decision, "but she's a lot better. Sue Elder, I wish----" "Wish what?" asked her friend. Sue put the books on the gate-post, and the two girls, arm in arm, walked slowly up and down. Susie was a round, palely rosy little person, with a delicate face and soft, light hair waving fluffily about her small head. Vivian's hair was twice the length, but so straight and fine that its mass had no effect. She wore it in smooth plaits wound like a wreath from brow to nape. After an understanding silence and a walk past three gates and back again, Vivian answered her. "I wish I were in your shoes," she said. "What do you mean--having the Doctor in the house?" "No--I'd like that too; but I mean work to do--your position." "Oh, the library! You needn't; it's horrid. I wish I were in your shoes, and had a father and mother to take care of me. I can tell you, it's no fun--having to be there just on time or get fined, and having to poke away all day with those phooty old ladies and tiresome children." "But you're independent." "Oh, yes, I'm independent. I have to be. Aunt Rella _could_ take care of me, I suppose, but of course I wouldn't let her. And I dare say library work is better than school-teaching." "What'll we be doing when we're forty, I wonder?" said Vivian, after another turn. "Forty! Why I expect to be a grandma by that time," said Sue. She was but twenty-one, and forty looked a long way off to her. "A grandma! And knit?" suggested Vivian. "Oh, yes--baby jackets--and blankets--and socks--and little shawls. I love to knit," said Sue, cheerfully. "But suppose you don't marry?" pursued her friend. "Oh, but I shall marry--you see if I don't. Marriage"--here she carefully went inside the gate and latched it--"marriage is--a woman's duty!" And she ran up the path laughing. Vivian laughed too, rather grimly, and slowly walked towards her own door. The little sitting-room was hot, very hot; but Mr. Lane sat with his carpet-slippered feet on its narrow hearth with a shawl around him. "Shut the door, Vivian!" he exclaimed irritably. "I'll never get over this cold if such draughts are let in on me." "Why, it's not cold out, Father--and it's very close in here." Mrs. Lane looked up from her darning. "You think it's close because you've come in from outdoors. Sit down--and don't fret your father; I'm real worried about him." Mr. Lane coughed hollowly. He had become a little dry old man with gray, glassy eyes, and had been having colds in this fashion ever since Vivian could remember. "Dr. Bellair says that the out-door air is the best medicine for a cold," remarked Vivian, as she took off her things. "Dr. Bellair has not been consulted in this case," her father returned wheezingly. "I'm quite satisfied with my family physician. He's a man, at any rate." "Save me from these women doctors!" exclaimed his wife. Vivian set her lips patiently. She had long since learned how widely she differed from both father and mother, and preferred silence to dispute. Mr. Lane was a plain, ordinary person, who spent most of a moderately useful life in the shoe business, from which he had of late withdrawn. Both he and his wife "had property" to a certain extent; and now lived peacefully on their income with neither fear nor hope, ambition nor responsibility to trouble them. The one thing they were yet anxious about was to see Vivian married, but this wish seemed to be no nearer to fulfillment for the passing years. "I don't know what the women are thinking of, these days," went on the old gentleman, putting another shovelful of coal on the fire with a careful hand. "Doctors and lawyers and even ministers, some of 'em! The Lord certainly set down a woman's duty pretty plain--she was to cleave unto her husband!" "Some women have no husbands to cleave to, Father." "They'd have husbands fast enough if they'd behave themselves," he answered. "No man's going to want to marry one of these self-sufficient independent, professional women, of course." "I do hope, Viva," said her mother, "that you're not letting that Dr. Bellair put foolish ideas into your head." "I want to do something to support myself--sometime, Mother. I can't live on my parents forever." "You be patient, child. There's money enough for you to live on. It's a woman's place to wait," put in Mr. Lane. "How long?" inquired Vivian. "I'm twenty-five. No man has asked me to marry him yet. Some of the women in this town have waited thirty--forty--fifty--sixty years. No one has asked them." "I was married at sixteen," suddenly remarked Vivian's grandmother. "And my mother wasn't but fifteen. Huh!" A sudden little derisive noise she made; such as used to be written "humph!" For the past five years, Mrs. Pettigrew had made her home with the Lanes. Mrs. Lane herself was but a feeble replica of her energetic parent. There was but seventeen years difference in their ages, and comparative idleness with some ill-health on the part of the daughter, had made the difference appear less. Mrs. Pettigrew had but a poor opinion of the present generation. In her active youth she had reared a large family on a small income; in her active middle-age, she had trotted about from daughter's house to son's house, helping with the grandchildren. And now she still trotted about in all weathers, visiting among the neighbors and vibrating as regularly as a pendulum between her daughter's house and the public library. The books she brought home were mainly novels, and if she perused anything else in the severe quiet of the reading-room, she did not talk about it. Indeed, it was a striking characteristic of Mrs. Pettigrew that she talked very little, though she listened to all that went on with a bright and beady eye, as of a highly intelligent parrot. And now, having dropped her single remark into the conversation, she shut her lips tight as was her habit, and drew another ball of worsted from the black bag that always hung at her elbow. She was making one of those perennial knitted garments, which, in her young days, were called "Cardigan jackets," later "Jerseys," and now by the offensive name of "sweater." These she constructed in great numbers, and their probable expense was a source of discussion in the town. "How do you find friends enough to give them to?" they asked her, and she would smile enigmatically and reply, "Good presents make good friends." "If a woman minds her P's and Q's she can get a husband easy enough," insisted the invalid. "Just shove that lamp nearer, Vivian, will you." Vivian moved the lamp. Her mother moved her chair to follow it and dropped her darning egg, which the girl handed to her. "Supper's ready," announced a hard-featured middle-aged woman, opening the dining-room door. At this moment the gate clicked, and a firm step was heard coming up the path. "Gracious, that's the minister!" cried Mrs. Lane. "He said he'd be in this afternoon if he got time. I thought likely 'twould be to supper." She received him cordially, and insisted on his staying, slipping out presently to open a jar of quinces. The Reverend Otis Williams was by no means loathe to take occasional meals with his parishioners. It was noted that, in making pastoral calls, he began with the poorer members of his flock, and frequently arrived about meal-time at the houses of those whose cooking he approved. "It is always a treat to take supper here," he said. "Not feeling well, Mr. Lane? I'm sorry to hear it. Ah! Mrs. Pettigrew! Is that jacket for me, by any chance? A little sombre, isn't it? Good evening, Vivian. You are looking well--as you always do." Vivian did not like him. He had married her mother, he had christened her, she had "sat under" him for long, dull, uninterrupted years; yet still she didn't like him. "A chilly evening, Mr. Lane," he pursued. "That's what I say," his host agreed. "Vivian says it isn't; I say it is." "Disagreement in the family! This won't do, Vivian," said the minister jocosely. "Duty to parents, you know! Duty to parents!" "Does duty to parents alter the temperature?" the girl asked, in a voice of quiet sweetness, yet with a rebellious spark in her soft eyes. "Huh!" said her grandmother--and dropped her gray ball. Vivian picked it up and the old lady surreptitiously patted her. "Pardon me," said the reverend gentleman to Mrs. Pettigrew, "did you speak?" "No," said the old lady, "Seldom do." "Silence is golden, Mrs. Pettigrew. Silence is golden. Speech is silver, but silence is golden. It is a rare gift." Mrs. Pettigrew set her lips so tightly that they quite disappeared, leaving only a thin dented line in her smoothly pale face. She was called by the neighbors "wonderfully well preserved," a phrase she herself despised. Some visitor, new to the town, had the hardihood to use it to her face once. "Huh!" was the response. "I'm just sixty. Henry Haskins and George Baker and Stephen Doolittle are all older'n I am--and still doing business, doing it better'n any of the young folks as far as I can see. You don't compare them to canned pears, do you?" Mr. Williams knew her value in church work, and took no umbrage at her somewhat inimical expression; particularly as just then Mrs. Lane appeared and asked them to walk out to supper. Vivian sat among them, restrained and courteous, but inwardly at war with her surroundings. Here was her mother, busy, responsible, serving creamed codfish and hot biscuit; her father, eating wheezily, and finding fault with the biscuit, also with the codfish; her grandmother, bright-eyed, thin-lipped and silent. Vivian got on well with her grandmother, though neither of them talked much. "My mother used to say that the perfect supper was cake, preserves, hot bread, and a 'relish,'" said Mr. Williams genially. "You have the perfect supper, Mrs. Lane." "I'm glad if you enjoy it, I'm sure," said that lady. "I'm fond of a bit of salt myself." "And what are you reading now, Vivian," he asked paternally. "Ward," she answered, modestly and briefly. "Ward? Dr. Ward of the _Centurion_?" Vivian smiled her gentlest. "Oh, no," she replied; "Lester F. Ward, the Sociologist." "Poor stuff, I think!" said her father. "Girls have no business to read such things." "I wish you'd speak to Vivian about it, Mr. Williams. She's got beyond me," protested her mother. "Huh!" said Mrs. Pettigrew. "I'd like some more of that quince, Laura." "My dear young lady, you are not reading books of which your parents disapprove, I hope?" urged the minister. "Shouldn't I--ever?" asked the girl, in her soft, disarming manner. "I'm surely old enough!" "The duty of a daughter is not measured by years," he replied sonorously. "Does parental duty cease? Are you not yet a child in your father's house?" "Is a daughter always a child if she lives at home?" inquired the girl, as one seeking instruction. He set down his cup and wiped his lips, flushing somewhat. "The duty of a daughter begins at the age when she can understand the distinction between right and wrong," he said, "and continues as long as she is blessed with parents." "And what is it?" she asked, large-eyed, attentive. "What is it?" he repeated, looking at her in some surprise. "It is submission, obedience--obedience." "I see. So Mother ought to obey Grandmother," she pursued meditatively, and Mrs. Pettigrew nearly choked in her tea. Vivian was boiling with rebellion. To sit there and be lectured at the table, to have her father complain of her, her mother invite pastoral interference, the minister preach like that. She slapped her grandmother's shoulder, readjusted the little knit shawl on the straight back--and refrained from further speech. When Mrs. Pettigrew could talk, she demanded suddenly of the minister, "Have you read Campbell's New Theology?" and from that on they were all occupied in listening to Mr. Williams' strong, clear and extensive views on the subject--which lasted into the parlor again. Vivian sat for awhile in the chair nearest the window, where some thin thread of air might possibly leak in, and watched the minister with a curious expression. All her life he had been held up to her as a person to honor, as a man of irreproachable character, great learning and wisdom. Of late she found with a sense of surprise that she did not honor him at all. He seemed to her suddenly like a relic of past ages, a piece of an old parchment--or papyrus. In the light of the studies she had been pursuing in the well-stored town library, the teachings of this worthy old gentleman appeared a jumble of age-old traditions, superimposed one upon another. "He's a palimpsest," she said to herself, "and a poor palimpsest at that." She sat with her shapely hands quiet in her lap while her grandmother's shining needles twinkled in the dark wool, and her mother's slim crochet hook ran along the widening spaces of some thin, white, fuzzy thing. The rich powers of her young womanhood longed for occupation, but she could never hypnotize herself with "fancywork." Her work must be worth while. She felt the crushing cramp and loneliness of a young mind, really stronger than those about her, yet held in dumb subjection. She could not solace herself by loving them; her father would have none of it, and her mother had small use for what she called "sentiment." All her life Vivian had longed for more loving, both to give and take; but no one ever imagined it of her, she was so quiet and repressed in manner. The local opinion was that if a woman had a head, she could not have a heart; and as to having a body--it was indelicate to consider such a thing. "I mean to have six children," Vivian had planned when she was younger. "And they shall never be hungry for more loving." She meant to make up to her vaguely imagined future family for all that her own youth missed. Even Grandma, though far more sympathetic in temperament, was not given to demonstration, and Vivian solaced her big, tender heart by cuddling all the babies she could reach, and petting cats and dogs when no children were to be found. Presently she arose and bade a courteous goodnight to the still prolix parson. "I'm going over to Sue's," she said, and went out. * * * * * There was a moon again--a low, large moon, hazily brilliant. The air was sweet with the odors of scarce-gone Summer, of coming Autumn. The girl stood still, half-way down the path, and looked steadily into that silver radiance. Moonlight always filled her heart with a vague excitement, a feeling that something ought to happen--soon. This flat, narrow life, so long, so endlessly long--would nothing ever end it? Nine years since Morton went away! Nine years since the strange, invading thrill of her first kiss! Back of that was only childhood; these years really constituted Life; and Life, in the girl's eyes, was a dreary treadmill. She was externally quiet, and by conscience dutiful; so dutiful, so quiet, so without powers of expression, that the ache of an unsatisfied heart, the stir of young ambitions, were wholly unsuspected by those about her. A studious, earnest, thoughtful girl--but study alone does not supply life's needs, nor does such friendship as her life afforded. Susie was "a dear"--Susie was Morton's sister, and she was very fond of her. But that bright-haired child did not understand--could not understand--all that she needed. Then came Mrs. St. Cloud into her life, stirring the depths of romance, of the buried past, and of the unborn future. From her she learned to face a life of utter renunciation, to be true, true to her ideals, true to her principles, true to the past, to be patient; and to wait. So strengthened, she had turned a deaf ear to such possible voice of admiration as might have come from the scant membership of the Young Men's Bible Class, leaving them the more devoted to Scripture study. There was no thin ring to turn upon her finger; but, for lack of better token, she had saved the rose she wore upon her breast that night, keeping it hidden among her precious things. And then, into the gray, flat current of her daily life, sharply across the trend of Mrs. St. Cloud's soft influence, had come a new force--Dr. Bellair. Vivian liked her, yet felt afraid, a slight, shivering hesitancy as before a too cold bath, a subtle sense that this breezy woman, strong, cheerful, full of new ideas, if not ideals, and radiating actual power, power used and enjoyed, might in some way change the movement of her life. Change she desired, she longed for, but dreaded the unknown. Slowly she followed the long garden path, paused lingeringly by that rough garden seat, went through and closed the gate. CHAPTER III. THE OUTBREAK There comes a time After white months of ice-- Slow months of ice--long months of ice-- There comes a time when the still floods below Rise, lift, and overflow-- Fast, far they go. Miss Orella sat in her low armless rocker, lifting perplexed, patient eyes to look up at Dr. Bellair. Dr. Bellair stood squarely before her, stood easily, on broad-soled, low-heeled shoes, and looked down at Miss Orella; her eyes were earnest, compelling, full of hope and cheer. "You are as pretty as a girl, Orella," she observed irrelevantly. Miss Orella blushed. She was not used to compliments, even from a woman, and did not know how to take them. "How you talk!" she murmured shyly. "I mean to talk," continued the doctor, "until you listen to reason." Reason in this case, to Dr. Bellair's mind, lay in her advice to Miss Elder to come West with her--to live. "I don't see how I can. It's--it's such a Complete Change." Miss Orella spoke as if Change were equivalent to Sin, or at least to Danger. "Do you good. As a physician, I can prescribe nothing better. You need a complete change if anybody ever did." "Why, Jane! I am quite well." "I didn't say you were sick. But you are in an advanced stage of _arthritis deformans_ of the soul. The whole town's got it!" The doctor tramped up and down the little room, freeing her mind. "I never saw such bed-ridden intellects in my life! I suppose it was so when I was a child--and I was too young to notice it. But surely it's worse now. The world goes faster and faster every day, the people who keep still get farther behind! I'm fond of you, Rella. You've got an intellect, and a conscience, and a will--a will like iron. But you spend most of your strength in keeping yourself down. Now, do wake up and use it to break loose! You don't have to stay here. Come out to Colorado with me--and Grow." Miss Elder moved uneasily in her chair. She laid her small embroidery hoop on the table, and straightened out the loose threads of silk, the doctor watching her impatiently. "I'm too old," she said at length. Jane Bellair laughed aloud, shortly. "Old!" she cried. "You're five years younger than I am. You're only thirty-six! Old! Why, child, your life's before you--to make." "You don't realize, Jane. You struck out for yourself so young--and you've grown up out there--it seems to be so different--there." "It is. People aren't afraid to move. What have you got here you so hate to leave, Rella?" "Why, it's--Home." "Yes. It's home--now. Are you happy in it?" "I'm--contented." "Don't you deceive yourself, Rella. You are not contented--not by a long chalk. You are doing your duty as you see it; and you've kept yourself down so long you've almost lost the power of motion. I'm trying to galvanize you awake--and I mean to do it." "You might as well sit down while you're doing it, anyway," Miss Elder suggested meekly. Dr. Bellair sat down, selecting a formidable fiddle-backed chair, the unflinching determination of its widely-placed feet being repeated by her own square toes. She placed herself in front of her friend and leaned forward, elbows on knees, her strong, intelligent hands clasped loosely. "What have you got to look forward to, Rella?" "I want to see Susie happily married--" "I said _you_--not Susie." "Oh--me? Why, I hope some day Morton will come back----" "I said _you_--not Morton." "Why I--you know I have friends, Jane--and neighbors. And some day, perhaps--I mean to go abroad." "Are you scolding Aunt Rella again, Dr. Bellair. I won't stand it." Pretty Susie stood in the door smiling. "Come and help me then," the doctor said, "and it won't sound so much like scolding." "I want Mort's letter--to show to Viva," the girl answered, and slipped out with it. She sat with Vivian on the stiff little sofa in the back room; the arms of the two girls were around one another, and they read the letter together. More than six months had passed since his last one. It was not much of a letter. Vivian took it in her own hands and went through it again, carefully. The "Remember me to Viva--unless she's married," at the end did not seem at all satisfying. Still it might mean more than appeared--far more. Men were reticent and proud, she had read. It was perfectly possible that he might be concealing deep emotion under the open friendliness. He was in no condition to speak freely, to come back and claim her. He did not wish her to feel bound to him. She had discussed it with Mrs. St. Cloud, shrinkingly, tenderly, led on by tactful, delicate, questions, by the longing of her longing heart for expression and sympathy. "A man who cannot marry must speak of marriage--it is not honorable," her friend had told her. "Couldn't he--write to me--as a friend?" And the low-voiced lady had explained with a little sigh that men thought little of friendship with women. "I have tried, all my life, to be a true and helpful friend to men, to such men as seemed worthy, and they so often--misunderstood." The girl, sympathetic and admiring, thought hotly of how other people misunderstood this noble, lovely soul; how they even hinted that she "tried to attract men," a deadly charge in Bainville. "No," Mrs. St. Cloud had told her, "he might love you better than all the world--yet not write to you--till he was ready to say 'come.' And, of course, he wouldn't say anything in his letters to his aunt." So Vivian sat there, silent, weaving frail dreams out of "remember me to Viva--unless she's married." That last clause might mean much. Dr. Bellair's voice sounded clear and insistent in the next room. "She's trying to persuade Aunt Rella to go West!" said Susie. "Wouldn't it be funny if she did!" In Susie's eyes her Aunt's age was as the age of mountains, and also her fixity. Since she could remember, Aunt Rella, always palely pretty and neat, like the delicate, faintly-colored Spring flowers of New England, had presided over the small white house, the small green garden and the large black and white school-room. In her vacation she sewed, keeping that quiet wardrobe of hers in exquisite order--and also making Susie's pretty dresses. To think of Aunt Orella actually "breaking up housekeeping," giving up her school, leaving Bainville, was like a vision of trees walking. To Dr. Jane Bellair, forty-one, vigorous, successful, full of new plans and purposes, Miss Elder's life appeared as an arrested girlhood, stagnating unnecessarily in this quiet town, while all the world was open to her. "I couldn't think of leaving Susie!" protested Miss Orella. "Bring her along," said the doctor. "Best thing in the world for her!" She rose and came to the door. The two girls make a pretty picture. Vivian's oval face, with its smooth Madonna curves under the encircling wreath of soft, dark plaits, and the long grace of her figure, delicately built, yet strong, beside the pink, plump little Susie, roguish and pretty, with the look that made everyone want to take care of her. "Come in here, girls," said the doctor. "I want you to help me. You're young enough to be movable, I hope." They cheerfully joined the controversy, but Miss Orella found small support in them. "Why don't you do it, Auntie!" Susie thought it an excellent joke. "I suppose you could teach school in Denver as well as here. And you could Vote! Oh, Auntie--to think of your Voting!" Miss Elder, too modestly feminine, too inherently conservative even to be an outspoken "Anti," fairly blushed at the idea. "She's hesitating on your account," Dr. Bellair explained to the girl. "Wants to see you safely married! I tell her you'll have a thousandfold better opportunities in Colorado than you ever will here." Vivian was grieved. She had heard enough of this getting married, and had expected Dr. Bellair to hold a different position. "Surely, that's not the only thing to do," she protested. "No, but it's a very important thing to do--and to do right. It's a woman's duty." Vivian groaned in spirit. That again! The doctor watched her understandingly. "If women only did their duty in that line there wouldn't be so much unhappiness in the world," she said. "All you New England girls sit here and cut one another's throats. You can't possible marry, your boys go West, you overcrowd the labor market, lower wages, steadily drive the weakest sisters down till they--drop." They heard the back door latch lift and close again, a quick, decided step--and Mrs. Pettigrew joined them. Miss Elder greeted her cordially, and the old lady seated herself in the halo of the big lamp, as one well accustomed to the chair. "Go right on," she said--and knitted briskly. "Do take my side, Mrs. Pettigrew," Miss Orella implored her. "Jane Bellair is trying to pull me up by the roots and transplant me to Colorado." "And she says I shall have a better chance to marry out there--and ought to do it!" said Susie, very solemnly. "And Vivian objects to being shown the path of duty." Vivian smiled. Her quiet, rather sad face lit with sudden sparkling beauty when she smiled. "Grandma knows I hate that--point of view," she said. "I think men and women ought to be friends, and not always be thinking about--that." "I have some real good friends--boys, I mean," Susie agreed, looking so serious in her platonic boast that even Vivian was a little amused, and Dr. Bellair laughed outright. "You won't have a 'friend' in that sense till you're fifty, Miss Susan--if you ever do. There can be, there are, real friendships between men and women, but most of that talk is--talk, sometimes worse. "I knew a woman once, ever so long ago," the doctor continued musingly, clasping her hands behind her head, "a long way from here--in a college town--who talked about 'friends.' She was married. She was a 'good' woman--perfectly 'good' woman. Her husband was not a very good man, I've heard, and strangely impatient of her virtues. She had a string of boys--college boys--always at her heels. Quite too young and too charming she was for this friendship game. She said that such a friendship was 'an ennobling influence' for the boys. She called them her 'acolytes.' Lots of them were fairly mad about her--one young chap was so desperate over it that he shot himself." There was a pained silence. "I don't see what this has to do with going to Colorado," said Mrs. Pettigrew, looking from one to the other with a keen, observing eye. "What's your plan, Dr. Bellair?" "Why, I'm trying to persuade my old friend here to leave this place, change her occupation, come out to Colorado with me, and grow up. She's a case of arrested development." "She wants me to keep boarders!" Miss Elder plaintively protested to Mrs. Pettigrew. That lady was not impressed. "It's quite a different matter out there, Mrs. Pettigrew," the doctor explained. "'Keeping boarders' in this country goes to the tune of 'Come Ye Disconsolate!' It's a doubtful refuge for women who are widows or would be better off if they were. Where I live it's a sure thing if well managed--it's a good business." Mrs. Pettigrew wore an unconvinced aspect. "What do you call 'a good business?'" she asked. "The house I have in mind cleared a thousand a year when it was in right hands. That's not bad, over and above one's board and lodging. That house is in the market now. I've just had a letter from a friend about it. Orella could go out with me, and step right into Mrs. Annerly's shoes--she's just giving up." "What'd she give up for?" Mrs. Pettigrew inquired suspiciously. "Oh--she got married; they all do. There are three men to one woman in that town, you see." "I didn't know there was such a place in the world--unless it was a man-of-war," remarked Susie, looking much interested. Dr. Bellair went on more quietly. "It's not even a risk, Mrs. Pettigrew. Rella has a cousin who would gladly run this house for her. She's admitted that much. So there's no loss here, and she's got her home to come back to. I can write to Dick Hale to nail the proposition at once. She can go when I go, in about a fortnight, and I'll guarantee the first year definitely." "I wouldn't think of letting you do that, Jane! And if it's as good as you say, there's no need. But a fortnight! To leave home--in a fortnight!" "What are the difficulties?" the old lady inquired. "There are always some difficulties." "You are right, there," agreed the doctor. "The difficulties in this place are servants. But just now there's a special chance in that line. Dick says the best cook in town is going begging. I'll read you his letter." She produced it, promptly, from the breast pocket of her neat coat. Dr. Bellair wore rather short, tailored skirts of first-class material; natty, starched blouses--silk ones for "dress," and perfectly fitting light coats. Their color and texture might vary with the season, but their pockets, never. "'My dear Jane' (This is my best friend out there--a doctor, too. We were in the same class, both college and medical school. We fight--he's a misogynist of the worst type--but we're good friends all the same.) 'Why don't you come back? My boys are lonesome without you, and I am overworked--you left so many mishandled invalids for me to struggle with. Your boarding house is going to the dogs. Mrs. Annerly got worse and worse, failed completely and has cleared out, with a species of husband, I believe. The owner has put in a sort of caretaker, and the roomers get board outside--it's better than what they were having. Moreover, the best cook in town is hunting a job. Wire me and I'll nail her. You know the place pays well. Now, why don't you give up your unnatural attempt to be a doctor and assume woman's proper sphere? Come back and keep house!' "He's a great tease, but he tells the truth. The house is there, crying to be kept. The boarders are there--unfed. Now, Orella Elder, why don't you wake up and seize the opportunity?" Miss Orella was thinking. "Where's that last letter of Morton's?" Susie looked for it. Vivian handed it to her, and Miss Elder read it once more. "There's plenty of homeless boys out there besides yours, Orella," the doctor assured her. "Come on--and bring both these girls with you. It's a chance for any girl, Miss Lane." But her friend did not hear her. She found what she was looking for in the letter and read it aloud. "I'm on the road again now, likely to be doing Colorado most of the year if things go right. It's a fine country." Susie hopped up with a little cry. "Just the thing, Aunt Rella! Let's go out and surprise Mort. He thinks we are just built into the ground here. Won't it be fun, Viva?" Vivian had risen from her seat and stood at the window, gazing out with unseeing eyes at the shadowy little front yard. Morton might be there. She might see him. But--was it womanly to go there--for that? There were other reasons, surely. She had longed for freedom, for a chance to grow, to do something in life--something great and beautiful! Perhaps this was the opening of the gate, the opportunity of a lifetime. "You folks are so strong on duty," the doctor was saying, "Why can't you see a real duty in this? I tell you, the place is full of men that need mothering, and sistering--good honest sweethearting and marrying, too. Come on, Rella. Do bigger work than you've ever done yet--and, as I said, bring both these nice girls with you. What do you say, Miss Lane?" Vivian turned to her, her fine face flushed with hope, yet with a small Greek fret on the broad forehead. "I'd like to, very much, Dr. Bellair--on some accounts. But----" She could not quite voice her dim objections, her obscure withdrawals; and so fell back on the excuse of childhood--"I'm sure Mother wouldn't let me." Dr. Bellair smiled broadly. "Aren't you over twenty-one?" she asked. "I'm twenty-five," the girl replied, with proud acceptance of a life long done--as one who owned to ninety-seven. "And self-supporting?" pursued the doctor. Vivian flushed. "No--not yet," she answered; "but I mean to be." "Exactly! Now's your chance. Break away now, my dear, and come West. You can get work--start a kindergarten, or something. I know you love children." The girl's heart rose within her in a great throb of hope. "Oh--if I _could_!" she exclaimed, and even as she said it, rose half-conscious memories of the low, sweet tones of Mrs. St. Cloud. "It is a woman's place to wait--and to endure." She heard a step on the walk outside--looked out. "Why, here is Mrs. St. Cloud!" she cried. "Guess I'll clear out," said the doctor, as Susie ran to the door. She was shy, socially. "Nonsense, Jane," said her hostess, whispering. "Mrs. St. Cloud is no stranger. She's Mrs. Williams' sister--been here for years." She came in at the word, her head and shoulders wreathed in a pearl gray shining veil, her soft long robe held up. "I saw your light, Miss Elder, and thought I'd stop in for a moment. Good evening, Mrs. Pettigrew--and Miss Susie. Ah! Vivian!" "This is my friend, Dr. Bellair--Mrs. St. Cloud," Miss Elder was saying. But Dr. Bellair bowed a little stiffly, not coming forward. "I've met Mrs. St. Cloud before, I think--when she was 'Mrs. James.'" The lady's face grew sad. "Ah, you knew my first husband! I lost him--many years ago--typhoid fever." "I think I heard," said the doctor. And then, feeling that some expression of sympathy was called for, she added, "Too bad." Not all Miss Elder's gentle hospitality, Mrs. Pettigrew's bright-eyed interest, Susie's efforts at polite attention, and Vivian's visible sympathy could compensate Mrs. St. Cloud for one inimical presence. "You must have been a mere girl in those days," she said sweetly. "What a lovely little town it was--under the big trees." "It certainly was," the doctor answered dryly. "There is such a fine atmosphere in a college town, I think," pursued the lady. "Especially in a co-educational town--don't you think so?" Vivian was a little surprised. She had had an idea that her admired friend did not approve of co-education. She must have been mistaken. "Such a world of old memories as you call up, Dr. Bellair," their visitor pursued. "Those quiet, fruitful days! You remember Dr. Black's lectures? Of course you do, better than I. What a fine man he was! And the beautiful music club we had one Winter--and my little private dancing class--do you remember that? Such nice boys, Miss Elder! I used to call them my acolytes." Susie gave a little gulp, and coughed to cover it. "I guess you'll have to excuse me, ladies," said Dr. Bellair. "Good-night." And she walked upstairs. Vivian's face flushed and paled and flushed again. A cold pain was trying to enter her heart, and she was trying to keep it out. Her grandmother glanced sharply from one face to the other. "Glad to've met you, Mrs. St. Cloud," she said, bobbing up with decision. "Good-night, Rella--and Susie. Come on child. It's a wonder your mother hasn't sent after us." For once Vivian was glad to go. "That's a good scheme of Jane Bellair's, don't you think so?" asked the old lady as they shut the gate behind them. "I--why yes--I don't see why not." Vivian was still dizzy with the blow to her heart's idol. All the soft, still dream-world she had so labored to keep pure and beautiful seemed to shake and waver swimmingly. She could not return to it. The flat white face of her home loomed before her, square, hard, hideously unsympathetic-- "Grandma," said she, stopping that lady suddenly and laying a pleading hand on her arm, "Grandma, I believe I'll go." Mrs. Pettigrew nodded decisively. "I thought you would," she said. "Do you blame me, Grandma?" "Not a mite, child. Not a mite. But I'd sleep on it, if I were you." And Vivian slept on it--so far as she slept at all. CHAPTER IV TRANSPLANTED Sometimes a plant in its own habitat Is overcrowded, starved, oppressed and daunted; A palely feeble thing; yet rises quickly, Growing in height and vigor, blooming thickly, When far transplanted. The days between Vivian's decision and her departure were harder than she had foreseen. It took some courage to make the choice. Had she been alone, independent, quite free to change, the move would have been difficult enough; but to make her plan and hold to it in the face of a disapproving town, and the definite opposition of her parents, was a heavy undertaking. By habit she would have turned to Mrs. St. Cloud for advice; but between her and that lady now rose the vague image of a young boy, dead,--she could never feel the same to her again. Dr. Bellair proved a tower of strength. "My dear girl," she would say to her, patiently, but with repressed intensity, "do remember that you are _not_ a child! You are twenty-five years old. You are a grown woman, and have as much right to decide for yourself as a grown man. This isn't wicked--it is a wise move; a practical one. Do you want to grow up like the rest of the useless single women in this little social cemetery?" Her mother took it very hard. "I don't see how you can think of leaving us. We're getting old now--and here's Grandma to take care of----" "Huh!" said that lady, with such marked emphasis that Mrs. Lane hastily changed the phrase to "I mean to _be with_--you do like to have Vivian with you, you can't deny that, Mother." "But Mama," said the girl, "you are not old; you are only forty-three. I am sorry to leave you--I am really; but it isn't forever! I can come back. And you don't really need me. Sarah runs the house exactly as you like; you don't depend on me for a thing, and never did. As to Grandma!"--and she looked affectionately at the old lady--"she don't need me nor anybody else. She's independent if ever anybody was. She won't miss me a mite--will you Grandma?" Mrs. Pettigrew looked at her for a moment, the corners of her mouth tucked in tightly. "No," she said, "I shan't miss you a mite!" Vivian was a little grieved at the prompt acquiescence. She felt nearer to her grandmother in many ways than to either parent. "Well, I'll miss you!" said she, going to her and kissing her smooth pale cheek, "I'll miss you awfully!" Mr. Lane expressed his disapproval most thoroughly, and more than once; then retired into gloomy silence, alternated with violent dissuasion; but since a woman of twenty-five is certainly free to choose her way of life, and there was no real objection to this change, except that it _was_ a change, and therefore dreaded, his opposition, though unpleasant, was not prohibitive. Vivian's independent fortune of $87.50, the savings of many years, made the step possible, even without his assistance. There were two weeks of exceeding disagreeableness in the household, but Vivian kept her temper and her determination under a rain of tears, a hail of criticism, and heavy wind of argument and exhortation. All her friends and neighbors, and many who were neither, joined in the effort to dissuade her; but she stood firm as the martyrs of old. Heredity plays strange tricks with us. Somewhere under the girl's dumb gentleness and patience lay a store of quiet strength from some Pilgrim Father or Mother. Never before had she set her will against her parents; conscience had always told her to submit. Now conscience told her to rebel, and she did. She made her personal arrangements, said goodbye to her friends, declined to discuss with anyone, was sweet and quiet and kind at home, and finally appeared at the appointed hour on the platform of the little station. Numbers of curious neighbors were there to see them off, all who knew them and could spare the time seemed to be on hand. Vivian's mother came, but her father did not. At the last moment, just as the train drew in, Grandma appeared, serene and brisk, descending, with an impressive amount of hand baggage, from "the hack." "Goodbye, Laura," she said. "I think these girls need a chaperon. I'm going too." So blasting was the astonishment caused by this proclamation, and so short a time remained to express it, that they presently found themselves gliding off in the big Pullman, all staring at one another in silent amazement. "I hate discussion," said Mrs. Pettigrew. * * * * * None of these ladies were used to traveling, save Dr. Bellair, who had made the cross continent trip often enough to think nothing of it. The unaccustomed travelers found much excitement in the journey. As women, embarking on a new, and, in the eyes of their friends, highly doubtful enterprise, they had emotion to spare; and to be confronted at the outset by a totally unexpected grandmother was too much for immediate comprehension. She looked from one to the other, sparkling, triumphant. "I made up my mind, same as you did, hearing Jane Bellair talk," she explained. "Sounded like good sense. I always wanted to travel, always, and never had the opportunity. This was a real good chance." Her mouth shut, tightened, widened, drew into a crinkly delighted smile. They sat still staring at her. "You needn't look at me like that! I guess it's a free country! I bought my ticket--sent for it same as you did. And I didn't have to ask _anybody_--I'm no daughter. My duty, as far as I know it, is _done_! This is a pleasure trip!" She was triumph incarnate. "And you never said a word!" This from Vivian. "Not a word. Saved lots of trouble. Take care of me indeed! Laura needn't think I'm dependent on her _yet_!" Vivian's heart rather yearned over her mother, thus doubly bereft. "The truth is," her grandmother went on, "Samuel wants to go to Florida the worst way; I heard 'em talking about it! He wasn't willing to go alone--not he! Wants somebody to hear him cough, I say! And Laura couldn't go--'Mother was so dependent'--_Huh!_" Vivian began to smile. She knew this had been talked over, and given up on that account. She herself could have been easily disposed of, but Mrs. Lane chose to think her mother a lifelong charge. "Act as if I was ninety!" the old lady burst forth again. "I'll show 'em!" "I think you're dead right, Mrs. Pettigrew," said Dr. Bellair. "Sixty isn't anything. You ought to have twenty years of enjoyable life yet, before they call you 'old'--maybe more." Mrs. Pettigrew cocked an eye at her. "My grandmother lived to be a hundred and four," said she, "and kept on working up to the last year. I don't know about enjoyin' life, but she was useful for pretty near a solid century. After she broke her hip the last time she sat still and sewed and knitted. After her eyes gave out she took to hooking rugs." "I hope it will be forty years, Mrs. Pettigrew," said Sue, "and I'm real glad you're coming. It'll make it more like home." Miss Elder was a little slow in accommodating herself to this new accession. She liked Mrs. Pettigrew very much--but--a grandmother thus airily at large seemed to unsettle the foundations of things. She was polite, even cordial, but evidently found it difficult to accept the facts. "Besides," said Mrs. Pettigrew, "you may not get all those boarders at once and I'll be one to count on. I stopped at the bank this morning and had 'em arrange for my account out in Carston. They were some surprised, but there was no time to ask questions!" She relapsed into silence and gazed with keen interest at the whirling landscape. Throughout the journey she proved the best of travelers; was never car-sick, slept well in the joggling berth, enjoyed the food, and continually astonished them by producing from her handbag the most diverse and unlooked for conveniences. An old-fashioned traveller had forgotten her watchkey--Grandma produced an automatic one warranted to fit anything. "Takes up mighty little room--and I thought maybe it would come in handy," she said. She had a small bottle of liquid court-plaster, and plenty of the solid kind. She had a delectable lotion for the hands, a real treasure on the dusty journey; also a tiny corkscrew, a strong pair of "pinchers," sewing materials, playing cards, string, safety-pins, elastic bands, lime drops, stamped envelopes, smelling salts, troches, needles and thread. "Did you bring a trunk, Grandma?" asked Vivian. "Two," said Grandma, "excess baggage. All paid for and checked." "How did you ever learn to arrange things so well?" Sue asked admiringly. "Read about it," the old lady answered. "There's no end of directions nowadays. I've been studying up." She was so gleeful and triumphant, so variously useful, so steadily gay and stimulating, that they all grew to value her presence long before they reached Carston; but they had no conception of the ultimate effect of a resident grandmother in that new and bustling town. To Vivian the journey was a daily and nightly revelation. She had read much but traveled very little, never at night. The spreading beauty of the land was to her a new stimulus; she watched by the hour the endless panorama fly past her window, its countless shades of green, the brown and red soil, the fleeting dashes of color where wild flowers gathered thickly. She was repeatedly impressed by seeing suddenly beside her the name of some town which had only existed in her mind as "capital city" associated with "principal exports" and "bounded on the north." At night, sleeping little, she would raise her curtain and look out, sideways, at the stars. Big shadowy trees ran by, steep cuttings rose like a wall of darkness, and the hilly curves of open country rose and fell against the sky line like a shaken carpet. She faced the long, bright vistas of the car and studied people's faces--such different people from any she had seen before. A heavy young man with small, light eyes, sat near by, and cast frequent glances at both the girls, going by their seat at intervals. Vivian considered this distinctly rude, and Sue did not like his looks, so he got nothing for his pains, yet even this added color to the day. The strange, new sense of freedom grew in her heart, a feeling of lightness and hope and unfolding purpose. There was continued discussion as to what the girls should do. "We can be waitresses for Auntie till we get something else," Sue practically insisted. "The doctor says it will be hard to get good service and I'm sure the boarders would like us." "You can both find work if you want it. What do you want to do, Vivian?" asked Dr. Bellair, not for the first time. Vivian was still uncertain. "I love children best," she said. "I could teach--but I haven't a certificate. I'd _love_ a kindergarten; I've studied that--at home." "Shouldn't wonder if you could get up a kindergarten right off," the doctor assured her. "Meantime, as this kitten says, you could help Miss Elder out and turn an honest penny while you're waiting." "Wouldn't it--interfere with my teaching later?" the girl inquired. "Not a bit, not a bit. We're not so foolish out here. We'll fix you up all right in no time." It was morning when they arrived at last and came out of the cindery, noisy crowded cars into the wide, clean, brilliant stillness of the high plateau. They drew deep breaths; the doctor squared her shoulders with a glad, homecoming smile. Vivian lifted her head and faced the new surroundings as an unknown world. Grandma gazed all ways, still cheerful, and their baggage accrued about them as a rampart. A big bearded man, carelessly dressed, whirled up in a dusty runabout, and stepped out smiling. He seized Dr. Bellair by both hands, and shook them warmly. "Thought I'd catch you, Johnny," he said. "Glad to see you back. If you've got the landlady, I've got the cook!" "Here we are," said she. "Miss Orella Elder--Dr. Hale; Mrs. Pettigrew, Miss Susie Elder, Miss Lane--Dr. Richard Hale." He bowed deeply to Mrs. Pettigrew, shook hands with Miss Orella, and addressed himself to her, giving only a cold nod to the two girls, and quite turning away from them. Susie, in quiet aside to Vivian, made unfavorable comment. "This is your Western chivalry, is it?" she said. "Even Bainville does better than that." "I don't know why we should mind," Vivian answered. "It's Dr. Bellair's friend; he don't care anything about us." But she was rather of Sue's opinion. The big man took Dr. Bellair in his car, and they followed in a station carriage, eagerly observing their new surroundings, and surprised, as most Easterners are, by the broad beauty of the streets and the modern conveniences everywhere--electric cars, electric lights, telephones, soda fountains, where they had rather expected to find tents and wigwams. The house, when they were all safely within it, turned out to be "just like a real house," as Sue said; and proved even more attractive than the doctor had described it. It was a big, rambling thing, at home they would have called it a hotel, with its neat little sign, "The Cottonwoods," and Vivian finally concluded that it looked like a seaside boarding house, built for the purpose. A broad piazza ran all across the front, the door opening into a big square hall, a sort of general sitting-room; on either side were four good rooms, opening on a transverse passage. The long dining-room and kitchen were in the rear of the hall. Dr. Bellair had two, her office fronting on the side street, with a bedroom behind it. They gave Mrs. Pettigrew the front corner room on that side and kept the one opening from the hall as their own parlor. In the opposite wing was Miss Elder's room next the hall, and the girls in the outer back corner, while the two front ones on that side were kept for the most impressive and high-priced boarders. Mrs. Pettigrew regarded her apartments with suspicion as being too "easy." "I don't mind stairs," she said. "Dr. Bellair has to be next her office--but why do I have to be next Dr. Bellair?" It was represented to her that she would be nearer to everything that went on and she agreed without more words. Dr. Hale exhibited the house as if he owned it. "The agent's out of town," he said, "and we don't need him anyway. He said he'd do anything you wanted, in reason." Dr. Bellair watched with keen interest the effect of her somewhat daring description, as Miss Orella stepped from room to room examining everything with a careful eye, with an expression of growing generalship. Sue fluttered about delightedly, discovering advantages everywhere and making occasional disrespectful remarks to Vivian about Dr. Hale's clothes. "Looks as if he never saw a clothes brush!" she said. "A finger out on his glove, a button off his coat. No need to tell us there's no woman in his house!" "You can decide about your cook when you've tried her," he said to Miss Elder. "I engaged her for a week--on trial. She's in the kitchen now, and will have your dinner ready presently. I think you'll like her, if----" "Good boy!" said Dr. Bellair. "Sometimes you show as much sense as a woman--almost." "What's the 'if'" asked Miss Orella, looking worried. "Question of character," he answered. "She's about forty-five, with a boy of sixteen or so. He's not over bright, but a willing worker. She's a good woman--from one standpoint. She won't leave that boy nor give him up to strangers; but she has a past!" "What is her present?" Dr. Bellair asked, "that's the main thing." Dr. Hale clapped her approvingly on the shoulder, but looked doubtingly toward Miss Orella. "And what's her future if somebody don't help her?" Vivian urged. "Can she cook?" asked Grandma. "Is she a safe person to have in the house?" inquired Dr. Bellair meaningly. "She can cook," he replied. "She's French, or of French parentage. She used to keep a little--place of entertainment. The food was excellent. She's been a patient of mine--off and on--for five years--and I should call her perfectly safe." Miss Orella still looked worried. "I'd like to help her and the boy, but would it--look well? I don't want to be mean about it, but this is a very serious venture with us, Dr. Hale, and I have these girls with me." "With you and Dr. Bellair and Mrs. Pettigrew the young ladies will be quite safe, Miss Elder. As to the woman's present character, she has suffered two changes of heart, she's become a religious devotee--and a man-hater! And from a business point of view, I assure you that if Jeanne Jeaune is in your kitchen you'll never have a room empty." "Johnny Jones! queer name for a woman!" said Grandma. They repeated it to her carefully, but she only changed to "Jennie June," and adhered to one or the other, thereafter. "What's the boy's name?" she asked further. "Theophile," Dr. Hale replied. "Huh!" said she. "Why don't she keep an eating-house still?" asked Dr. Bellair rather suspiciously. "That's what I like best about her," he answered. "She is trying to break altogether with her past. She wants to give up 'public life'--and private life won't have her." They decided to try the experiment, and found it worked well. There were two bedrooms over the kitchen where "Mrs. Jones" as Grandma generally called her, and her boy, could be quite comfortable and by themselves; and although of a somewhat sour and unsociable aspect, and fiercely watchful lest anyone offend her son, this questionable character proved an unquestionable advantage. With the boy's help, she cooked for the houseful, which grew to be a family of twenty-five. He also wiped dishes, helped in the laundry work, cleaned and scrubbed and carried coal; and Miss Elder, seeing his steady usefulness, insisted on paying wages for him too. This unlooked for praise and gain won the mother's heart, and as she grew more at home with them, and he less timid, she encouraged him to do the heavier cleaning in the rest of the house. "Huh!" said Grandma. "I wish more sane and moral persons would work like that!" Vivian watched with amazement the swift filling of the house. There was no trouble at all about boarders, except in discriminating among them. "Make them pay in advance, Rella," Dr. Bellair advised, "it doesn't cost them any more, and it is a great convenience. 'References exchanged,' of course. There are a good many here that I know--you can always count on Mr. Dykeman and Fordham Grier, and John Unwin." Before a month was over the place was full to its limits with what Sue called "assorted boarders," the work ran smoothly and the business end of Miss Elder's venture seemed quite safe. They had the twenty Dr. Bellair prophesied, and except for her, Mrs. Pettigrew, Miss Peeder, a teacher of dancing and music; Mrs. Jocelyn, who was interested in mining, and Sarah Hart, who described herself as a "journalist," all were men. Fifteen men to eight women. Miss Elder sat at the head of her table, looked down it and across the other one, and marvelled continuously. Never in her New England life had she been with so many men--except in church--and they were more scattered. This houseful of heavy feet and broad shoulders, these deep voices and loud laughs, the atmosphere of interchanging jests and tobacco smoke, was new to her. She hated the tobacco smoke, but that could not be helped. They did not smoke in her parlor, but the house was full of it none the less, in which constant presence she began to reverse the Irishman's well known judgment of whiskey, allowing that while all tobacco was bad, some tobacco was much worse than others. CHAPTER V CONTRASTS Old England thinks our country Is a wilderness at best-- And small New England thinks the same Of the large free-minded West. Some people know the good old way Is the only way to do, And find there must be something wrong In anything that's new. To Vivian the new life offered a stimulus, a sense of stir and promise even beyond her expectations. She wrote dutiful letters to her mother, trying to describe the difference between this mountain town and Bainville, but found the New England viewpoint an insurmountable obstacle. To Bainville "Out West" was a large blank space on the map, and the blank space in the mind which matched it was but sparsely dotted with a few disconnected ideas such as "cowboy," "blizzard," "prairie fire," "tornado," "border ruffian," and the like. The girl's painstaking description of the spreading, vigorous young town, with its fine, modern buildings, its banks and stores and theatres, its country club and parks, its pleasant social life, made small impression on the Bainville mind. But the fact that Miss Elder's venture was successful from the first did impress old acquaintances, and Mrs. Lane read aloud to selected visitors her daughter's accounts of their new and agreeable friends. Nothing was said of "chaps," "sombreros," or "shooting up the town," however, and therein a distinct sense of loss was felt. Much of what was passing in Vivian's mind she could not make clear to her mother had she wished to. The daily presence and very friendly advances of so many men, mostly young and all polite (with the exception of Dr. Hale, whose indifference was almost rude by contrast), gave a new life and color to the days. She could not help giving some thought to this varied assortment, and the carefully preserved image of Morton, already nine years dim, waxed dimmer. But she had a vague consciousness of being untrue to her ideals, or to Mrs. St. Cloud's ideals, now somewhat discredited, and did not readily give herself up to the cheerful attractiveness of the position. Susie found no such difficulty. Her ideals were simple, and while quite within the bounds of decorum, left her plenty of room for amusement. So popular did she become, so constantly in demand for rides and walks and oft-recurring dances, that Vivian felt called upon to give elder sisterly advice. But Miss Susan scouted her admonitions. "Why shouldn't I have a good time?" she said. "Think how we grew up! Half a dozen boys to twenty girls, and when there was anything to go to--the lordly way they'd pick and choose! And after all our efforts and machinations most of us had to dance with each other. And the quarrels we had! Here they stand around three deep asking for dances--and _they_ have to dance with each other, and _they_ do the quarreling. I've heard 'em." And Sue giggled delightedly. "There's no reason we shouldn't enjoy ourselves, Susie, of course, but aren't you--rather hard on them?" "Oh, nonsense!" Sue protested. "Dr. Bellair said I should get married out here! She says the same old thing--that it's 'a woman's duty,' and I propose to do it. That is--they'll propose, and I won't do it! Not till I make up my mind. Now see how you like this!" She had taken a fine large block of "legal cap" and set down their fifteen men thereon, with casual comment. 1. Mr. Unwin--Too old, big, quiet. 2. Mr. Elmer Skee--Big, too old, funny. 3. Jimmy Saunders--Middle-sized, amusing, nice. 4. P. R. Gibbs--Too little, too thin, too cocky. 5. George Waterson--Middling, pretty nice. 6. J. J. Cuthbert--Big, horrid. 7. Fordham Greer--Big, pleasant. 8. W. S. Horton--Nothing much. 9. A. L. Dykeman--Interesting, too old. 10. Professor Toomey--Little, horrid. 11. Arthur Fitzwilliam--Ridiculous, too young. 12. Howard Winchester--Too nice, distrust him. 13. Lawson W. Briggs--Nothing much. 14. Edward S. Jenks--Fair to middling. 15. Mr. A. Smith--Minus. She held it up in triumph. "I got 'em all out of the book--quite correct. Now, which'll you have." "Susie Elder! You little goose! Do you imagine that all these fifteen men are going to propose to you?" "I'm sure I hope so!" said the cheerful damsel. "We've only been settled a fortnight and one of 'em has already!" Vivian was impressed at once. "Which?--You don't mean it!" Sue pointed to the one marked "minus." "It was only 'A. Smith.' I never should be willing to belong to 'A. Smith,' it's too indefinite--unless it was a last resort. Several more are--well, extremely friendly! Now don't look so severe. You needn't worry about me. I'm not quite so foolish as I talk, you know." She was not. Her words were light and saucy, but she was as demure and decorous a little New Englander as need be desired; and she could not help it if the hearts of the unattached young men of whom the town was full, warmed towards her. Dr. Bellair astonished them at lunch one day in their first week. "Dick Hale wants us all to come over to tea this afternoon," she said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. "Tea? Where?" asked Mrs. Pettigrew sharply. "At his house. He has 'a home of his own,' you know. And he particularly wants you, Mrs. Pettigrew--and Miss Elder--the girls, of course." "I'm sure I don't care to go," Vivian remarked with serene indifference, but Susie did. "Oh, come on, Vivian! It'll be so funny! A man's home!--and we may never get another chance. He's such a bear!" Dr. Hale's big house was only across the road from theirs, standing in a large lot with bushes and trees about it. "He's been here nine years," Dr. Bellair told them. "That's an old inhabitant for us. He boarded in that house for a while; then it was for sale and he bought it. He built that little office of his at the corner--says he doesn't like to live where he works, or work where he lives. He took his meals over here for a while--and then set up for himself." "I should think he'd be lonely," Miss Elder suggested. "Oh, he has his boys, you know--always three or four young fellows about him. It's a mighty good thing for them, too." Dr. Hale's home proved a genuine surprise. They had regarded it as a big, neglected-looking place, and found on entering the gate that the inside view of that rampant shrubbery was extremely pleasant. Though not close cut and swept of leaves and twigs, it still was beautiful; and the tennis court and tether-ball ring showed the ground well used. Grandma looked about her with a keen interrogative eye, and was much impressed, as, indeed, were they all. She voiced their feelings justly when, the true inwardness of this pleasant home bursting fully upon them, she exclaimed: "Well, of all things! A man keeping house!" "Why not?" asked Dr. Hale with his dry smile. "Is there any deficiency, mental or physical, about a man, to prevent his attempting this abstruse art?" She looked at him sharply. "I don't know about deficiency, but there seems to be somethin' about 'em that keeps 'em out of the business. I guess it's because women are so cheap." "No doubt you are right, Mrs. Pettigrew. And here women are scarce and high. Hence my poor efforts." His poor efforts had bought or built a roomy pleasant house, and furnished it with a solid comfort and calm attractiveness that was most satisfying. Two Chinamen did the work; cooking, cleaning, washing, waiting on table, with silent efficiency. "They are as steady as eight-day clocks," said Dr. Hale. "I pay them good wages and they are worth it." "Sun here had to go home once--to be married, also, to see his honored parents, I believe, and to leave a grand-'Sun' to attend to the ancestors; but he brought in another Chink first and trained him so well that I hardly noticed the difference. Came back in a year or so, and resumed his place without a jar." Miss Elder watched with fascinated eyes these soft-footed servants with clean, white garments and shiny coils of long, braided hair. "I may have to come to it," she admitted, "but--dear me, it doesn't seem natural to have a man doing housework!" Dr. Hale smiled again. "You don't want men to escape from dependence, I see. Perhaps, if more men knew how comfortably they could live without women, the world would be happier." There was a faint wire-edge to his tone, in spite of the courteous expression, but Miss Elder did not notice it and if Mrs. Pettigrew did, she made no comment. They noted the varied excellences of his housekeeping with high approval. "You certainly know how, Dr. Hale," said Miss Orella; "I particularly admire these beds--with the sheets buttoned down, German fashion, isn't it? What made you do that?" "I've slept so much in hotels," he answered; "and found the sheets always inadequate to cover the blankets--and the marks of other men's whiskers! I don't like blankets in my neck. Besides it saves washing." Mrs. Pettigrew nodded vehemently. "You have sense," she said. The labor-saving devices were a real surprise to them. A "chute" for soiled clothing shot from the bathroom on each floor to the laundry in the basement; a dumbwaiter of construction large and strong enough to carry trunks, went from cellar to roof; the fireplaces dropped their ashes down mysterious inner holes; and for the big one in the living-room a special "lift" raised a box of wood up to the floor level, hidden by one of the "settles." "Saves work--saves dirt--saves expense," said Dr. Hale. Miss Hale and her niece secretly thought the rooms rather bare, but Dr. Bellair was highly in favor of that very feature. "You see Dick don't believe in jimcracks and dirt-catchers, and he likes sunlight. Books all under glass--no curtains to wash and darn and fuss with--none of those fancy pincushions and embroidered thingummies--I quite envy him." "Why don't you have one yourself, Johnny?" he asked her. "Because I don't like housekeeping," she said, "and you do. Masculine instinct, I suppose!" "Huh!" said Mrs. Pettigrew with her sudden one-syllable chuckle. The girls followed from room to room, scarce noticing these comments, or the eager politeness of the four pleasant-faced young fellows who formed the doctor's present family. She could not but note the intelligent efficiency of the place, but felt more deeply the underlying spirit, the big-brotherly kindness which prompted his hospitable care of these nice boys. It was delightful to hear them praise him. "O, he's simply great," whispered Archie Burns, a ruddy-cheeked young Scotchman. "He pretends there's nothing to it--that he wants company--that we pay for all we get--and that sort of thing, you know; but this is no boarding house, I can tell you!" And then he flushed till his very hair grew redder--remembering that the guests came from one. "Of course not!" Vivian cordially agreed with him. "You must have lovely times here. I don't wonder you appreciate it!" and she smiled so sweetly that he felt at ease again. Beneath all this cheery good will and the gay chatter of the group her quick sense caught an impression of something hidden and repressed. She felt the large and quiet beauty of the rooms; the smooth comfort, the rational, pleasant life; but still more she felt a deep keynote of loneliness. The pictures told her most. She noted one after another with inward comment. "There's 'Persepolis,'" she said to herself--"loneliness incarnate; and that other lion-and-ruin thing,--loneliness and decay. Gerome's 'Lion in the Desert,' too, the same thing. Then Daniel--more lions, more loneliness, but power. 'Circe and the Companions of Ulysses'--cruel, but loneliness and power again--of a sort. There's that 'Island of Death' too--a beautiful thing--but O dear!--And young Burne-Jones' 'Vampire' was in one of the bedrooms--that one he shut the door of!" While they ate and drank in the long, low-ceiled wide-windowed room below, she sought the bookcases and looked them over curiously. Yes--there was Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Plato, Emerson and Carlisle--the great German philosophers, the French, the English--all showing signs of use. Dr. Hale observed her inspection. It seemed to vaguely annoy him, as if someone were asking too presuming questions. "Interested in philosophy, Miss Lane?" he asked, drily, coming toward her. "Yes--so far as I understand it," she answered. "And how far does that go?" She felt the inference, and raised her soft eyes to his rather reproachfully. "Not far, I am afraid. But I do know that these books teach one how to bear trouble." He met her gaze steadily, but something seemed to shut, deep in his eyes. They looked as unassailable as a steel safe. He straightened his big shoulders with a defiant shrug, and returned to sit by Mrs. Pettigrew, to whom he made himself most agreeable. The four young men did the honors of the tea table, with devotion to all; and some especially intended for the younger ladies. Miss Elder cried out in delight at the tea. "Where did you get it, Dr. Hale? Can it be had here?" "I'm afraid not. That is a particular brand. Sun brought me a chest of it when he came from his visit." When they went home each lady was given a present, Chinese fashion--lychee nuts for Sue, lily-bulbs for Vivian, a large fan for Mrs. Pettigrew, and a package of the wonderful tea for Miss Orella. "That's a splendid thing for him to do," she said, as they walked back. "Such a safe place for those boys!" "It's lovely of him," Sue agreed. "I don't care if he is a woman-hater." Vivian said nothing, but admitted, on being questioned, that "he was very interesting." Mrs. Pettigrew was delighted with their visit. "I like this country," she declared. "Things are different. A man couldn't do that in Bainville--he'd be talked out of town." That night she sought Dr. Bellair and questioned her. "Tell me about that man," she demanded. "How old is he?" "Not as old as he looks by ten years," said the doctor. "No, I can't tell you why his hair's gray." "What woman upset him?" asked the old lady. Dr. Bellair regarded her thoughtfully. "He has made me no confidences, Mrs. Pettigrew, but I think you are right. It must have been a severe shock--for he is very bitter against women. It is a shame, too, for he is one of the best of men. He prefers men patients--and gets them. The women he will treat if he must, but he is kindest to the 'fallen' ones, and inclined to sneer at the rest. And yet he's the straightest man I ever knew. I'm thankful to have him come here so much. He needs it." Mrs. Pettigrew marched off, nodding sagely. She felt a large and growing interest in her new surroundings, more especially in the numerous boys, but was somewhat amazed at her popularity among them. These young men were mainly exiles from home; the older ones, though more settled perhaps, had been even longer away from their early surroundings; and a real live Grandma, as Jimmy Saunders said, was an "attraction." "If you were mine," he told her laughingly, "I'd get a pianist and some sort of little side show, and exhibit you all up and down the mountains!--for good money. Why some of the boys never had a Grandma, and those that did haven't seen one since they were kids!" "Very complimentary, I'm sure--but impracticable," said the old lady. The young men came to her with confidences, they asked her advice, they kept her amused with tales of their adventures; some true, some greatly diversified; and she listened with a shrewd little smile and a wag of the head--so they never were quite sure whether they were "fooling" Grandma or not. To her, as a general confidant, came Miss Peeder with a tale of woe. The little hall that she rented for her dancing classes had burned down on a windy Sunday, and there was no other suitable and within her means. "There's Sloan's; but it's over a barroom--it's really not possible. And Baker's is too expensive. The church rooms they won't let for dancing--I don't know what I _am_ to do, Mrs. Pettigrew!" "Why don't you ask Orella Elder to rent you her dining-room--it's big enough. They could move the tables----" Miss Peeder's eyes opened in hopeful surprise. "Oh, if she _would_! Do _you_ think she would? It would be ideal." Miss Elder being called upon, was quite fluttered by the proposition, and consulted Dr. Bellair. "Why not?" said that lady. "Dancing is first rate exercise--good for us all. Might as well have the girls dance here under your eye as going out all the time--and it's some addition to the income. They'll pay extra for refreshments, too. I'd do it." With considerable trepidation Miss Orella consented, and their first "class night" was awaited by her in a state of suppressed excitement. To have music and dancing--"with refreshments"--twice a week--in her own house--this seemed to her like a career of furious dissipation. Vivian, though with a subtle sense of withdrawal from a too general intimacy, was inwardly rather pleased; and Susie bubbled over with delight. "Oh what fun!" she cried. "I never had enough dancing! I don't believe anybody has!" "We don't belong to the Class, you know," Vivian reminded her. "Oh yes! Miss Peeder says we must _all_ come--that she would feel _very_ badly if we didn't; and the boarders have all joined--to a man!" Everyone seemed pleased except Mrs. Jeaune. Dancing she considered immoral; music, almost as much so--and Miss Elder trembled lest she lose her. But the offer of extra payments for herself and son on these two nights each week proved sufficient to quell her scruples. Theophile doubled up the tables, set chairs around the walls, waxed the floor, and was then sent to bed and locked in by his anxious mother. She labored, during the earlier hours of the evening, in the preparation of sandwiches and coffee, cake and lemonade--which viands were later shoved through the slide by the austere cook, and distributed as from a counter by Miss Peeder's assistant. Mrs. Jeaune would come no nearer, but peered darkly upon them through the peep-hole in the swinging door. It was a very large room, due to the time when many "mealers" had been accommodated. There were windows on each side, windows possessing the unusual merit of opening from the top; wide double doors made the big front hall a sort of anteroom, and the stairs and piazza furnished opportunities for occasional couples who felt the wish for retirement. In the right-angled passages, long hat-racks on either side were hung with "Derbies," "Kossuths" and "Stetsons," and the ladies took off their wraps, and added finishing touches to their toilettes in Miss Elder's room. The house was full of stir and bustle, of pretty dresses, of giggles and whispers, and the subdued exchange of comments among the gentlemen. The men predominated, so that there was no lack of partners for any of the ladies. Miss Orella accepted her new position with a half-terrified enjoyment. Not in many years had she found herself so in demand. Her always neat and appropriate costume had blossomed suddenly for the occasion; her hair, arranged by the affectionate and admiring Susie, seemed softer and more voluminous. Her eyes grew brilliant, and the delicate color in her face warmed and deepened. Miss Peeder had installed a pianola to cover emergencies, but on this opening evening she had both piano and violin--good, lively, sole-stirring music. Everyone was on the floor, save a few gentlemen who evidently wished they were. Sue danced with the gaiety and lightness of a kitten among wind-blown leaves, Vivian with gliding grace, smooth and harmonious, Miss Orella with skill and evident enjoyment, though still conscientious in every accurate step. Presently Mrs. Pettigrew appeared, sedately glorious in black silk, jet-beaded, and with much fine old lace. She bore in front of her a small wicker rocking chair, and headed for a corner near the door. Her burden was promptly taken from her by one of the latest comers, a tall person with a most devoted manner. "Allow _me_, ma'am," he said, and placed the little chair at the point she indicated. "No lady ought to rustle for rockin' chairs with so many gentlemen present." He was a man of somewhat advanced age, but his hair was still more black than white and had a curly, wiggish effect save as its indigenous character was proven by three small bare patches of a conspicuous nature. He bowed so low before her that she could not help observing these distinctions, and then answered her startled look before she had time to question him. "Yes'm," he explained, passing his hand over head; "scalped three several times and left for dead. But I'm here yet. Mr. Elmer Skee, at your service." "I thought when an Indian scalped you there wasn't enough hair left to make Greeley whiskers," said Grandma, rising to the occasion. "Oh, no, ma'am, they ain't so efficacious as all that--not in these parts. I don't know what the ancient Mohawks may have done, but the Apaches only want a patch--smaller to carry and just as good to show off. They're collectors, you know--like a phil-e-a-to-lol-o-gist!" "Skee, did you say?" pursued the old lady, regarding him with interest and convinced that there was something wrong with the name of that species of collector. "Yes'm. Skee--Elmer Skee. No'm, _not_ pronounced 'she.' Do I look like it?" Mr. Skee was an interesting relic of that stormy past of the once Wild West which has left so few surviving. He had crossed the plains as a child, he told her, in the days of the prairie schooner, had then and there lost his parents and his first bit of scalp, was picked up alive by a party of "movers," and had grown up in a playground of sixteen states and territories. Grandma gazed upon him fascinated. "I judge you might be interesting to talk with," she said, after he had given her this brief sketch of his youth. "Thank you, ma'am," said Mr. Skee. "May I have the pleasure of this dance?" "I haven't danced in thirty years," said she, dubitating. "The more reason for doing it now," he calmly insisted. "Why not?" said Mrs. Pettigrew, and they forthwith executed a species of march, the gentleman pacing with the elaborate grace of a circus horse, and Grandma stepping at his side with great decorum. Later on, warming to the occasion, Mr. Skee frisked and high-stepped with the youngest and gayest, and found the supper so wholly to his liking that he promptly applied for a room, and as soon as one was vacant it was given to him. Vivian danced to her heart's content and enjoyed the friendly merriment about her; but when Fordham Greer took her out on the long piazza to rest and breathe a little, she saw the dark bulk of the house across the street and the office with its half-lit window, and could not avoid thinking of the lonely man there. He had not come to the dance, no one expected that, of course; but all his boys had come and were having the best of times. "It's his own fault, of course; but it's a shame," she thought. The music sounded gaily from within, and young Greer urged for another dance. She stood there for a moment, hesitating, her hand on his arm, when a tall figure came briskly up the street from the station, turned in at their gate, came up the steps---- The girl gave a little cry, and shrank back for an instant, then eagerly came forward and gave her hand to him. It was Morton. CHAPTER VI NEW FRIENDS AND OLD 'Twould be too bad to be true, my dear, And wonders never cease; Twould be too bad to be true, my dear, If all one's swans were geese! Vivian's startled cry of welcome was heard by Susie, perched on the stairs with several eager youths gathered as close as might be about her, and several pairs of hands helped her swift descent to greet her brother. Miss Orella, dropping Mr. Dykeman's arm, came flying from the ball-room. "Oh, Morton! Morton! When did you come? Why didn't you let us know? Oh, my _dear_ boy!" She haled him into their special parlor, took his hat away from him, pulled out the most comfortable chair. "Have you had supper? And to think that we haven't a room for you! But there's to be one vacant--next week. I'll see that there is. You shall have my room, dear boy. Oh, I am so glad to see you!" Susie gave him a sisterly hug, while he kissed her, somewhat gingerly, on the cheek, and then she perched herself on the arm of a chair and gazed upon him with affectionate interest. Vivian gazed also, busily engaged in fitting present facts to past memories. Surely he had not looked just like that! The Morton of her girlhood's dream had a clear complexion, a bright eye, a brave and gallant look--the voice only had not changed. But here was Morton in present fact, something taller, it seemed, and a good deal heavier, well dressed in a rather vivid way, and making merry over his aunt's devotion. "Well, if it doesn't seem like old times to have Aunt 'Rella running 'round like a hen with her head cut off, to wait on me." The simile was not unjust, though certainly ungracious, but his aunt was far too happy to resent it. "You sit right still!" she said. "I'll go and bring you some supper. You must be hungry." "Now do sit down and hear to reason, Auntie!" he said, reaching out a detaining hand and pulling her into a seat beside him. "I'm not hungry a little bit; had a good feed on the diner. Never mind about the room--I don't know how long I can stay--and I left my grip at the Allen House anyway. How well you're looking, Auntie! I declare I'd hardly have known you! And here's little Susie--a regular belle! And Vivian--don't suppose I dare call you Vivian now, Miss Lane?" Vivian gave a little embarrassed laugh. If he had used her first name she would never have noticed it. Now that he asked her, she hardly knew what answer to make, but presently said: "Why, of course, I always call you Morton." "Well, I'll come when you call me," he cheerfully replied, leaning forward, elbows on knees, and looking around the pretty room. "How well you're fixed here. Guess it was a wise move, Aunt 'Rella. But I'd never have dreamed you'd do it. Your Dr. Bellair must have been a powerful promoter to get you all out here. I wouldn't have thought anybody in Bainville could move--but me. Why, there's Grandma, as I live!" and he made a low bow. Mrs. Pettigrew, hearing of his arrival from the various would-be partners of the two girls, had come to the door and stood there regarding him with a non-committal expression. At this address she frowned perceptibly. "My name is Mrs. Pettigrew, young man. I've known you since you were a scallawag in short pants, but I'm no Grandma of yours." "A thousand pardons! Please excuse me, Mrs. Pettigrew," he said with exaggerated politeness. "Won't you be seated?" And he set a chair for her with a flourish. "Thanks, no," she said. "I'll go back," and went back forthwith, attended by Mr. Skee. "One of these happy family reunions, ma'am?" he asked with approving interest. "If there's one thing I do admire, it's a happy surprise." "'Tis some of a surprise," Mrs. Pettigrew admitted, and became rather glum, in spite of Mr. Skee's undeniably entertaining conversation. "Some sort of a fandango going on?" Morton asked after a few rather stiff moments. "Don't let me interrupt! On with the dance! Let joy be unconfined! And if she must"--he looked at Vivian, and went on somewhat lamely--"dance, why not dance with me? May I have the pleasure, Miss Lane?" "Oh, no," cried Miss Orella, "we'd much rather be with you!" "But I'd rather dance than talk, any time," said he, and crooked his elbow to Vivian with an impressive bow. Somewhat uncertain in her own mind, and unwilling to again disappoint Fordham Greer, who had already lost one dance and was visibly waiting for her in the hall, the girl hesitated; but Susie said, "Go on, give him part of one. I'll tell Mr. Greer." So Vivian took Morton's proffered arm and returned to the floor. She had never danced with him in the old days; no special memory was here to contrast with the present; yet something seemed vaguely wrong. He danced well, but more actively than she admired, and during the rest of the evening devoted himself to the various ladies with an air of long usage. She was glad when the dancing was over and he had finally departed for his hotel, glad when Susie had at last ceased chattering and dropped reluctantly to sleep. For a long time she lay awake trying to straighten out things in her mind and account to herself for the sense of vague confusion which oppressed her. Morton had come back! That was the prominent thing, of which she repeatedly assured herself. How often she had looked forward to that moment, and felt in anticipation a vivid joy. She had thought of it in a hundred ways, always with pleasure, but never in this particular way--among so many strangers. It must be that which confused her, she thought, for she was extremely sensitive to the attitude of those about her. She felt an unspoken criticism of Morton on the part of her new friends in the house, and resented it; yet in her own mind a faint comparison would obtrude itself between his manners and those of Jimmie Saunders or Mr. Greer, for instance. The young Scotchman she had seen regarding Morton with an undisguised dislike, and this she inwardly resented, even while herself disliking his bearing to his aunt--and to her grandmother. It was all contradictory and unsatisfying, and she fell asleep saying over to herself, "He has come back! He has come back!" and trying to feel happy. Aunt Orella was happy at any rate. She would not rest until her beloved nephew was installed in the house, practically turning out Mr. Gibbs in order to accommodate him. Morton protested, talked of business and of having to go away at any time; and Mr. Gibbs, who still "mealed" with them, secretly wished he would. But Morton did not go away. It was a long time since he had been petted and waited on, and he enjoyed it hugely, treating his aunt with a serio-comic affection that was sometimes funny, sometimes disagreeable. At least Susie found it so. Her first surprise over, she fell back on a fund of sound common sense, strengthened by present experience, and found a good deal to criticise in her returned brother. She was so young when he left, and he had teased her so unmercifully in those days, that her early memories of him were rather mixed in sentiment, and now he appeared, not as the unquestioned idol of a manless family in a well-nigh manless town, but as one among many; and of those many several were easily his superiors. He was her brother, and she loved him, of course; but there were so many wanting to be "brothers" if not more, and they were so much more polite! Morton petted, patronized and teased her, and she took it all in good part, as after the manner of brothers, but his demeanor with other people was not to her mind. His adoring aunt, finding no fault whatever with this well-loved nephew, lavished upon him the affection of her unused motherhood, and he seemed to find it a patent joke, open to everyone, that she should be so fond. To this and, indeed, to his general walk and conversation, Mrs. Pettigrew took great exception. "Fine boy--Rella's nephew!" she said to Dr. Bellair late one night when, seeing a light over her neighbor's transom, she dropped in for a little chat. Conversation seemed easier for her here than in the atmosphere of Bainville. "Fine boy--eh? Nice complexion!" Dr. Bellair was reading a heavy-weight book by a heavier-weight specialist. She laid it down, took off her eyeglasses, and rubbed them. "Better not kiss him," she said. "I thought as much!" said Grandma. "I _thought_ as much! Huh!" "Nice world, isn't it?" the doctor suggested genially. "Nothing the matter with the world, that I know of," her visitor answered. "Nice people, then--how's that?" "Nothing the matter with the people but foolishness--plain foolishness. Good land! Shall we _never_ learn anything!" "Not till it's too late apparently," the doctor gloomily agreed, turning slowly in her swivel chair. "That boy never was taught anything to protect him. What did Rella know? Or for that matter, what do any boys' fathers and mothers know? Nothing, you'd think. If they do, they won't teach it to their children." "Time they did!" said the old lady decidedly. "High time they did! It's never too late to learn. I've learned a lot out of you and your books, Jane Bellair. Interesting reading! I don't suppose you could give an absolute opinion now, could you?" "No," said Dr. Bellair gravely, "no, I couldn't; not yet, anyway." "Well, we've got to keep our eyes open," Mrs. Pettigrew concluded. "When I think of that girl of mine----" "Yes--or any girl," the doctor added. "You look out for any girl--that's your business; I'll look out for mine--if I can." Mrs. Pettigrew's were not the only eyes to scrutinize Morton Elder. Through the peep-hole in the swing door to the kitchen, Jeanne Jeaune watched him darkly with one hand on her lean chest. She kept her watch on whatever went on in that dining-room, and on the two elderly waitresses whom she had helped Miss Elder to secure when the house filled up. They were rather painfully unattractive, but seemed likely to stay where no young and pretty damsel could be counted on for a year. Morton joked with perseverance about their looks, and those who were most devoted to Susie seemed to admire his wit, while Vivian's special admirers found it pointless in the extreme. "Your waitresses are the limit, Auntie," he said, "but the cook is all to the good. Is she a plain cook or a handsome one?" "Handsome is as handsome does, young man," Mrs. Pettigrew pointedly replied. "Mrs. Jones is a first-class cook and her looks are neither here nor there." "You fill me with curiosity," he replied. "I must go out and make her acquaintance. I always get solid with the cook; it's worth while." The face at the peep-hole darkened and turned away with a bitter and determined look, and Master Theophile was hastened at his work till his dim intelligence wondered, and then blessed with an unexpected cookie. Vivian, Morton watched and followed assiduously. She was much changed from what he remembered--the young, frightened, slender girl he had kissed under the lilac bushes, a kiss long since forgotten among many. Perhaps the very number of his subsequent acquaintances during a varied and not markedly successful career in the newer states made this type of New England womanhood more marked. Girls he had known of various sorts, women old and young had been kind to him, for Morton had the rough good looks and fluent manner which easily find their way to the good will of many female hearts; but this gentle refinement of manner and delicate beauty had a novel charm for him. Sitting by his aunt at meals he studied Vivian opposite, he watched her in their few quiet evenings together, under the soft lamplight on Miss Elder's beloved "center table;" and studied her continually in the stimulating presence of many equally devoted men. All that was best in him was stirred by her quiet grace, her reserved friendliness; and the spur of rivalry was by no means wanting. Both the girls had their full share of masculine attention in that busy houseful, each having her own particular devotees, and the position of comforter to the others. Morton became openly devoted to Vivian, and followed her about, seeking every occasion to be alone with her, a thing difficult to accomplish. "I don't ever get a chance to see anything of you," he said. "Come on, take a walk with me--won't you?" "You can see me all day, practically," she answered. "It seems to me that I never saw a man with so little to do." "Now that's too bad, Vivian! Just because a fellow's out of a job for a while! It isn't the first time, either; in my business you work like--like anything, part of the time, and then get laid off. I work hard enough when I'm at it." "Do you like it--that kind of work?" the girl asked. They were sitting in the family parlor, but the big hall was as usual well occupied, and some one or more of the boarders always eager to come in. Miss Elder at this moment had departed for special conference with her cook, and Susie was at the theatre with Jimmie Saunders. Fordham Greer had asked Vivian, as had Morton also, but she declined both on the ground that she didn't like that kind of play. Mrs. Pettigrew, being joked too persistently about her fondness for "long whist," had retired to her room--but then, her room was divided from the parlor only by a thin partition and a door with a most inefficacious latch. "Come over here by the fire," said Morton, "and I'll tell you all about it." He seated himself on a sofa, comfortably adjacent to the fireplace, but Vivian preferred a low rocker. "I suppose you mean travelling--and selling goods?" he pursued. "Yes, I like it. There's lots of change--and you meet people. I'd hate to be shut up in an office." "But do you--get anywhere with it? Is there any outlook for you? Anything worth doing?" "There's a good bit of money to be made, if you mean that; that is, if a fellow's a good salesman. I'm no slouch myself, when I feel in the mood. But it's easy come, easy go, you see. And it's uncertain. There are times like this, with nothing doing." "I didn't mean money, altogether," said the girl meditatively, "but the work itself; I don't see any future for you." Morton was pleased with her interest. Reaching between his knees he seized the edge of the small sofa and dragged it a little nearer, quite unconscious that the act was distasteful to her. Though twenty-five years old, Vivian was extremely young in many ways, and her introspection had spent itself in tending the inner shrine of his early image. That ikon was now jarringly displaced by this insistent presence, and she could not satisfy herself yet as to whether the change pleased or displeased her. Again and again his manner antagonized her, but his visible devotion carried an undeniable appeal, and his voice stirred the deep well of emotion in her heart. "Look here, Vivian," he said, "you've no idea how it goes through me to have you speak like that! You see I've been knocking around here for all this time, and I haven't had a soul to take an interest. A fellow needs the society of good women--like you." It is an old appeal, and always reaches the mark. To any women it is a compliment, and to a young girl, doubly alluring. As she looked at him, the very things she most disliked, his too free manner, his coarsened complexion, a certain look about the eyes, suddenly assumed a new interest as proofs of his loneliness and lack of right companionship. What Mrs. St. Cloud had told her of the ennobling influence of a true woman, flashed upon her mind. "You see, I had no mother," he said simply--"and Aunt Rella spoiled me--." He looked now like the boy she used to know. "Of course I ought to have behaved better," he admitted. "I was ungrateful--I can see it now. But it did seem to me I couldn't stand that town a day longer!" She could sympathize with this feeling and showed it. "Then when a fellow knocks around as I have so long, he gets to where he doesn't care a hang for anything. Seeing you again makes a lot of difference, Vivian. I think, perhaps--I could take a new start." "Oh do! Do!" she said eagerly. "You're young enough, Morton. You can do anything if you'll make up your mind to it." "And you'll help me?" "Of course I'll help you--if I can," said she. A feeling of sincere remorse for wasted opportunities rose in the young man's mind; also, in the presence of this pure-eyed girl, a sense of shame for his previous habits. He walked to the window, his hands in his pockets, and looked out blankly for a moment. "A fellow does a lot of things he shouldn't," he began, clearing his throat; she met him more than half way with the overflowing generosity of youth and ignorance: "Never mind what you've done, Morton--you're going to do differently now! Susie'll be so proud of you--and Aunt Orella!" "And you?" He turned upon her suddenly. "Oh--I? Of course! I shall be very proud of my old friend." She met his eyes bravely, with a lovely look of hope and courage, and again his heart smote him. "I hope you will," he said and straightened his broad shoulders manfully. "Morton Elder!" cried his aunt, bustling in with deep concern in her voice, "What's this I hear about you're having a sore throat?" "Nothing, I hope," said he cheerfully. "Now, Morton"--Vivian showed new solicitude--"you know you have got a sore throat; Susie told me." "Well, I wish she'd hold her tongue," he protested. "It's nothing at all--be all right in a jiffy. No, I won't take any of your fixings, Auntie." "I want Dr. Bellair to look at it anyhow," said his aunt, anxiously. "She'll know if it's diphtheritic or anything. She's coming in." "She can just go out again," he said with real annoyance. "If there's anything I've no use for it's a woman doctor!" "Oh hush, hush!" cried Vivian, too late. "Don't apologize," said Dr. Bellair from her doorway. "I'm not in the least offended. Indeed, I had rather surmised that that was your attitude; I didn't come in to prescribe, but to find Mrs. Pettigrew." "Want me?" inquired the old lady from her doorway. "Who's got a sore throat?" "Morton has," Vivian explained, "and he won't let Aunt Rella--why where is she?" Miss Elder had gone out as suddenly as she had entered. "Camphor's good for sore throat," Mrs. Pettigrew volunteered. "Three or four drops on a piece of sugar. Is it the swelled kind, or the kind that smarts?" "Oh--Halifax!" exclaimed Morton, disgustedly. "It isn't _any_ kind. I haven't a sore throat." "Camphor's good for cold sores; you have one of them anyhow," the old lady persisted, producing a little bottle and urging it upon Morton. "Just keep it wet with camphor as often as you think of it, and it'll go away." Vivian looked on, interested and sympathetic, but Morton put his hand to his lip and backed away. "If you ladies don't stop trying to doctor me, I'll clear out to-morrow, so there!" This appalling threat was fortunately unheard by his aunt, who popped in again at this moment, dragging Dr. Hale with her. Dr. Bellair smiled quietly to herself. "I wouldn't tell him what I wanted him for, or he wouldn't have come, I'm sure--doctors are so funny," said Miss Elder, breathlessly, "but here he is. Now, Dr. Hale, here's a foolish boy who won't listen to reason, and I'm real worried about him. I want you to look at his throat." Dr. Hale glanced briefly at Morton's angry face. "The patient seems to be of age, Miss Elder; and, if you'll excuse me, does not seem to have authorized this call." "My affectionate family are bound to have me an invalid," Morton explained. "I'm in imminent danger of hot baths, cold presses, mustard plasters, aconite, belladonna and quinine--and if I can once reach my hat--" He sidled to the door and fled in mock terror. "Thank you for your good intentions, Miss Elder," Dr. Hale remarked drily. "You can bring water to the horse, but you can't make him drink it, you see." "Now that that young man has gone we might have a game of whist," Mrs. Pettigrew suggested, looking not ill-pleased. "For which you do not need me in the least," and Dr. Hale was about to leave, but Dr. Bellair stopped him. "Don't be an everlasting Winter woodchuck, Dick! Sit down and play; do be good. I've got to see old Mrs. Graham yet; she refuses to go to sleep without it--knowing I'm so near. By by." Mrs. Pettigrew insisted on playing with Miss Elder, so Vivian had the questionable pleasure of Dr. Hale as a partner. He was an expert, used to frequent and scientific play, and by no means patient with the girl's mistakes. He made no protest at a lost trick, but explained briefly between hands what she should have remembered and how the cards lay, till she grew quite discouraged. Her game was but mediocre, played only to oblige; and she never could see why people cared so much about a mere pastime. Pride came to her rescue at last; the more he criticised, the more determined she grew to profit by all this advice; but her mind would wander now and then to Morton, to his young life so largely wasted, it appeared, and to what hope might lie before him. Could she be the help and stimulus he seemed to think? How much did he mean by asking her to help him? "Why waste a thirteenth trump on your partner's thirteenth card?" Dr. Hale was asking. She flushed a deep rose color and lifted appealing eyes to him. "Do forgive me; my mind was elsewhere." "Will you not invite it to return?" he suggested drily. He excused himself after a few games, and the girl at last was glad to have him go. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts. Mrs. Pettigrew, sitting unaccountably late at her front window, watched the light burn steadily in the small office at the opposite corner. Presently she saw a familiar figure slip in there, and, after a considerable stay, come out quietly, cross the street, and let himself in at their door. "Huh!" said Mrs. Pettigrew. CHAPTER VII. SIDE LIGHTS. High shines the golden shield in front, To those who are not blind; And clear and bright In all men's sight, The silver shield behind. In breadth and sheen each face is seen; How tall it is, how wide; But its thinness shows To only those Who stand on either side. Theophile wept aloud in the dining-room, nursing one hand in the other, like a hurt monkey. Most of the diners had departed, but Professor Toomey and Mr. Cuthbert still lingered about Miss Susie's corner, to the evident displeasure of Mr. Saunders, who lingered also. Miss Susie smiled upon them all; and Mr. Saunders speculated endlessly as to whether this was due to her general friendliness of disposition, to an interest in pleasing her aunt's boarders, to personal preference, or, as he sometimes imagined, to a desire to tease him. Morton was talking earnestly with Vivian at the other end of the table, from which the two angular waitresses had some time since removed the last plate. One of them opened the swing door a crack and thrust her head in. "He's burnt his hand," she said, "and his Ma's out. We don't dare go near him." Both of these damsels professed great terror of the poor boy, though he was invariably good natured, and as timid as a rabbit. "Do get the doctor!" cried Susie, nervously; she never felt at ease with Theophile. "Dr. Bellair, I fear, is not in her office," Professor Toomey announced. "We might summon Dr. Hale." "Nonsense!" said Mr. Cuthbert, rising heavily. "He's a great baby, that's all. Here! Quit that howling and show me your hand!" He advanced upon Theophile, who fled toward Vivian. Morton rose in her defence. "Get out!" he said, "Go back to the kitchen. There's nothing the matter with you." "Wait till you get burned, and see if you think it's nothing," Jimmy Saunders remarked with some acidity. He did not like Mr. Elder. "Come here youngster, let me see it." But the boy was afraid of all of them, and cowered in a corner, still bawling. "Stop your noise," Mr. Cuthbert shouted, "Get out of this, or I'll put you out." Vivian rose to her feet. "You will do nothing of the kind. If you, all of you, will go away, I can quiet Theophile, myself." Susie went promptly. She had every confidence in her friend's management. Mr. Cuthbert was sulky, but followed Susie; and Mr. Saunders, after some hesitation, followed Susie, too. Morton lingered, distrustful. "Please go, Morton. I know how to manage him. Just leave us alone," Vivian urged. "You'd better let me put him out, and keep him out, till the old woman comes back," Morton insisted. "You mean kindly, I don't doubt, but you're making me very angry," said the girl, flushing; and he reluctantly left the room. Professor Toomey had departed long since, to fulfill his suggestion of calling Dr. Hale, but when that gentleman appeared, he found that Vivian had quieted the boy, stayed him with flagons and comforted him with apples, as it were, and bound up his hand in wet cooking soda. "It's not a very bad burn," she told the doctor, "but it hurt, and he was frightened. He is afraid of everybody but his mother, and the men were cross to him." "I see," said Dr. Hale, watching Theophile as he munched his apple, keeping carefully behind Vivian and very near her. "He does not seem much afraid of you, I notice, and he's used to me. The soda is all right. Where did you learn first aid to the injured, and how to handle--persons of limited understanding?" "The former I studied. The latter comes by nature, I think," replied the girl, annoyed. He laughed, rather suddenly. "It's a good quality, often needed in this world." "What's all this rumpus?" demanded Grandma, appearing at the door. "Waking me up out of my nap!" Grandma's smooth, fine, still dark hair, which she wore in "water waves," was somewhat disarranged, and she held a little shawl about her. "Only the household baby, playing with fire," Dr. Hale answered. "Miss Lane resolved herself into a Red Cross society, and attended to the wounded. However I think I'll have a look at it now I'm here." Then was Vivian surprised, and compelled to admiration, to see with what wise gentleness the big man won the confidence of the frightened boy, examined the hurt hand, and bound it up again. "You'll do, all right, won't you Theophile," he said, and offered him a shining nickel and a lozenge, "Which will you have, old man?" After some cautious hesitation the boy chose the lozenge, and hastily applied it where it would do the most good. "Where's Mrs. Jones all this time?" suddenly demanded Grandma, who had gone back to her room and fetched forth three fat, pink gumdrops for the further consolation of the afflicted. "She had to go out to buy clothes for him, she hardly ever leaves him you know," Vivian explained. "And the girls out there are so afraid that they won't take any care of him." This was true enough, but Vivian did not know that "Mrs. Jones" had returned and, peering through her favorite peephole, had seen her send out the others, and attend to the boy's burn with her own hand. Jeanne Jeaune was not a sentimental person, and judged from her son's easy consolation that he was little hurt, but she watched the girl's prompt tenderness with tears in her eyes. "She regards him, as any other boy;" thought the mother. "His infirmity, she does not recall it." Dr. Hale had long since won her approval, and when Theophile at last ran out, eager to share his gumdrops, he found her busy as usual in the kitchen. She was a silent woman, professionally civil to the waitresses, but never cordial. The place pleased her, she was saving money, and she knew that there must be _some_ waitresses--these were probably no worse than others. For her unfortunate son she expected little, and strove to keep him near her so far as possible; but Vivian's real kindness touched her deeply. She kept a sharp eye on whatever went on in the dining-room, and what with the frequent dances and the little groups which used to hang about the table after meals, or fill a corner of the big room for quiet chats, she had good opportunities. Morton's visible devotion she watched with deep disapproval; though she was not at all certain that her "young lady" was favorably disposed toward him. She could see and judge the feelings of the men, these many men who ate and drank and laughed and paid court to both the girls. Dr. Hale's brusque coldness she accepted, as from a higher order of being. Susie's gay coquetries were transparent to her; but Vivian she could not read so well. The girl's deep conscientiousness, her courtesy and patience with all, and the gentle way in which she evaded the attentions so persistently offered, were new to Jeanne's experience. When Morton hung about and tried always to talk with Vivian exclusively, she saw her listen with kind attention, but somehow without any of that answering gleam which made Susie's blue eyes so irresistible. "She has the lovers, but she has _no_ beauty--to compare with my young lady!" Jeanne commented inwardly. If the sad-eyed Jeanne had been of Scotch extraction instead of French, she might have quoted the explanation of the homely widow of three husbands when questioned by the good-looking spinster, who closed her inquiry by saying aggrievedly, "And ye'r na sae bonny." "It's na the bonny that does it," explained the triple widow, "It's the come hither i' the een." Susie's eyes sparkled with the "come hither," but those who came failed to make any marked progress. She was somewhat more cautious after the sudden approach and overthrow of Mr. A. Smith; yet more than one young gentleman boarder found business called him elsewhere, with marked suddenness; his place eagerly taken by another. The Cottonwoods had a waiting list, now. Vivian made friends first, lovers afterward. Then if the love proved vain, the friendship had a way of lingering. Hers was one of those involved and over-conscientious characters, keenly sensitive to the thought of duty and to others, pain. She could not play with hearts that might be hurt in the handling, nor could she find in herself a quick and simple response to the appeals made to her; there were so many things to be considered. Morton studied her with more intensity than he had ever before devoted to another human being; his admiration and respect grew with acquaintance, and all that was best in him rose in response to her wise, sweet womanliness. He had the background of their childhood's common experiences and her early sentiment--how much he did not know, to aid him. Then there was the unknown country of his years of changeful travel, many tales that he could tell her, many more which he found he could not. He pressed his advantage, cautiously, finding the fullest response when he used the appeal to her uplifting influence. When they talked in the dining-room the sombre eye at the peephole watched with growing disapproval. The kitchen was largely left to her and her son by her fellow workers, on account of their nervous dislike for Theophile, and she utilized her opportunities. Vivian had provided the boy with some big bright picture blocks, and he spent happy hours in matching them on the white scoured table, while his mother sewed, and watched. He had forgotten his burn by now, and she sewed contentedly for there was no one talking to her young lady but Dr. Hale, who lingered unaccountably. To be sure, Vivian had brought him a plate of cakes from the pantry, and he seemed to find the little brown things efficiently seductive, or perhaps it was Grandma who held him, sitting bolt upright in her usual place, at the head of one table, and asking a series of firm but friendly questions. This she found the only way of inducing Dr. Hale to talk at all. Yes, he was going away--Yes, he would be gone some time--A matter of weeks, perhaps--He could not say--His boys were all well--He did not wonder that they saw a good deal of them--It was a good place for them to come. "You might come oftener yourself," said Grandma, "and play real whist with me. These young people play _Bridge_!" She used this word with angry scorn, as symbol of all degeneracy; and also despised pinochle, refusing to learn it, though any one could induce her to play bezique. Some of the more venturous and argumentative, strove to persuade her that the games were really the same. "You needn't tell me," Mrs. Pettigrew would say, "I don't want to play any of your foreign games." "But, Madam, bezique is not an English word," Professor Toomey had insisted, on one occasion; to which she had promptly responded, "Neither is 'bouquet!'" Dr. Hale shook his head with a smile. He had a very nice smile, even Vivian admitted that. All the hard lines of his face curved and melted, and the light came into those deep-set eyes and shone warmly. "I should enjoy playing whist with you very often, Mrs. Pettigrew; but a doctor has no time to call his own. And a good game of whist must not be interrupted by telephones." "There's Miss Orella!" said Grandma, as the front door was heard to open. "She's getting to be quite a gadder." "It does her good, I don't doubt," the doctor gravely remarked, rising to go. Miss Orella met him in the hall, and bade him good-bye with regret. "We do not see much of you, doctor; I hope you'll be back soon." "Why it's only a little trip; you good people act as if I were going to Alaska," he said, "It makes me feel as if I had a family!" "Pity you haven't," remarked Grandma with her usual definiteness. Dykeman stood holding Miss Orella's wrap, with his dry smile. "Good-bye, Hale," he said. "I'll chaperon your orphan asylum for you. So long." "Come out into the dining-room," said Miss Orella, after Dr. Hale had departed. "I know you must be hungry," and Mr. Dykeman did not deny it. In his quiet middle-aged way, he enjoyed this enlarged family circle as much as the younger fellows, and he and Mr. Unwin seemed to vie with one another to convince Miss Orella that life still held charms for her. Mr. Skee also hovered about her to a considerable extent, but most of his devotion was bestowed upon damsels of extreme youth. "Here's one that's hungry, anyhow," remarked Dr. Bellair, coming out of her office at the moment, with her usual clean and clear-starched appearance. "I've been at it for eighteen hours, with only bites to eat. Yes, all over; both doing well." It was a source of deep self-congratulation to Dr. Bellair to watch her friend grow young again in the new atmosphere. To Susie it appeared somewhat preposterous, as her Aunt seems to her mind a permanently elderly person; while to Mrs. Pettigrew it looked only natural. "Rella's only a young thing anyway," was her comment. But Jane Bellair marked and approved the added grace of each new gown, the blossoming of lace and ribbon, the appearance of long-hoarded bits of family jewelry, things held "too showy to wear" in Bainville, but somehow quite appropriate here. Vivian and Grandma made Miss Orella sit down at her own table head, and bustled about in the pantry, bringing cheese and crackers, cake and fruit; but the doctor poked her head through the swing door and demanded meat. "I don't want a refection, I want food," she said, and Jeanne cheerfully brought her a plate of cold beef. She was much attached to Dr. Bellair, for reasons many and good. "What I like about this place," said Mrs. Pettigrew, surveying the scene from the head of her table, "is that there's always something going on." "What I like about it," remarked Dr. Bellair, between well-Fletcherized mouthfuls, "is that people have a chance to grow and are growing." "What I like," Mr. Dykeman looked about him, and paused in the middle of a sentence, as was his wont; "is being beautifully taken care of and made comfortable--any man likes that." Miss Orella beamed upon him. Emboldened, he went on: "And what I like most is the new, delightful"--he was gazing admiringly at her, and she looked so embarrassed that he concluded with a wide margin of safety--"friends I'm making." Miss Orella's rosy flush, which had risen under his steady gaze, ebbed again to her usual soft pink. Even her coldest critics, in the most caustic Bainvillian circles, could never deny that she had "a good complexion." New England, like old England, loves roses on the cheeks, and our dry Western winds play havoc with them. But Miss Orella's bloomed brighter than at home. "It is pleasant," she said softly; "all this coming and going--and the nice people--who stay." She looked at no one in particular, yet Mr. Dykeman seemed pleased. "There's another coming, I guess," remarked Grandma, as a carriage was heard to stop outside, the gate slammed, and trunk-burdened steps pounded heavily across the piazza. The bell rang sharply, Mr. Dykeman opened the door, and the trunk came in first--a huge one, dumped promptly on the hall floor. Behind the trunk and the man beneath it entered a lady; slim, elegant, graceful, in a rich silk dust coat and soft floating veils. "My dear Miss Elder!" she said, coming forward; "and Vivian! Dear Vivian! I thought you could put me up, somewhere, and told him to come right here. O--and please--I haven't a bit of change left in my purse--will you pay the man?" "Well, if it isn't Mrs. St. Cloud," said Grandma, without any note of welcome in her voice. Mr. Dykeman paid the man; looked at the trunk, and paid him some more. The man departed swearing softly at nothing in particular, and Mr. Dykeman departed also to his own room. Miss Orella's hospitable soul was much exercised. Refuse shelter to an old acquaintance, a guest, however unexpected, she could not; yet she had no vacant room. Vivian, flushed and excited, moved anew by her old attraction, eagerly helped the visitor take off her wraps, Mrs. Pettigrew standing the while, with her arms folded, in the doorway of her room, her thin lips drawn to a hard line, as one intending to repel boarders at any risk to life or limb. Dr. Bellair had returned to her apartments at the first sound of the visitor's voice. She, gracious and calm in the midst of confusion, sat in a wreath of down-dropped silken wrappings, and held Vivian's hand. "You dear child!" she said, "how well you look! What a charming place this is. The doctors sent me West for my health; I'm on my way to California. But when I found the train stopped here--I didn't know that it did till I saw the name--I had them take my trunk right off, and here I am! It is such a pleasure to see you all." "Huh!" said Mrs. Pettigrew, and disappeared completely, closing the door behind her. "Anything will do, Miss Elder," the visitor went on. "I shall find a hall bedroom palatial after a sleeping car; or a garret--anything! It's only for a few days, you know." Vivian was restraining herself from hospitable offers by remembering that her room was also Susie's, and Miss Orella well knew that to give up hers meant sleeping on a hard, short sofa in that all-too-public parlor. She was hastily planning in her mind to take Susie in with her and persuade Mrs. Pettigrew to harbor Vivian, somewhat deterred by memories of the old lady's expression as she departed, when Mr. Dykeman appeared at the door, suitcase in hand. "I promised Hale I'd keep house for those fatherless boys, you know," he said. "In the meantime, you're quite welcome to use my room, Miss Elder." And he departed, her blessing going with him. More light refreshments were now in order. Mrs. St. Cloud protesting that she wanted nothing, but finding much to praise in the delicacies set before her. Several of the other boarders drifted in, always glad of an extra bite before going to bed. Susie and Mr. Saunders returned from a walk, Morton reappeared, and Jeanne, peering sharply in, resentful of this new drain upon her pantry shelves, saw a fair, sweet-faced woman, seated at ease, eating daintily, while Miss Elder and Vivian waited upon her, and the men all gathered admiringly about. Jeanne Jeaune wagged her head. "Ah, ha, Madame!" she muttered softly, "Such as you I have met before!" Theophile she had long since sent to bed, remaining up herself to keep an eye on the continued disturbance in the front of the house. Vivian and Susie brought the dishes out, and would have washed them or left them till morning for the maids. "Truly, no," said Jeanne Jeaune; "go you to your beds; I will attend to these." One by one she heard them go upstairs, distant movement and soft dissuasion as two gentlemen insisted on bearing Mrs. St. Cloud's trunk into her room, receding voices and closing doors. There was no sound in the dining-room now, but still she waited; the night was not yet quiet. Miss Elder and Susie, Vivian also, hovered about, trying to make this new guest comfortable, in spite of her graceful protests that they must not concern themselves in the least about her, that she wanted nothing--absolutely nothing. At last they left her, and still later, after some brief exchange of surprised comment and warm appreciation of Mr. Dykeman's thoughtfulness, the family retired. Vivian, when her long hair was smoothly braided for the night, felt an imperative need for water. "Don't you want some, Susie? I'll bring you a glass." But Susie only huddled the bedclothes about her pretty shoulders and said: "Don't bring me _anything_, until to-morrow morning!" So her room-mate stole out softly in her wrapper, remembering that a pitcher of cool water still stood on one of the tables. The windows to the street let in a flood of light from a big street lamp, and she found her way easily, but was a bit startled for a moment to find a man still sitting there, his head upon his arms. "Why, Morton," she said; "is that you? What are you sitting up for? It's awfully late. I'm just after some water." She poured a glassful. "Don't you want some?" "No, thank you," he said. "Yes, I will. Give me some, please." The girl gave him a glass, drank from her own and set it down, turning to go, but he reached out and caught a flowing sleeve of her kimono. "Don't go, Vivian! Do sit down and talk to a fellow. I've been trying to see you for days and days." "Why, Morton Elder, how absurd! You have certainly seen me every day, and we've talked hours this very evening. This is no time for conversation, surely." "The best time in the world," he assured her. "All the other times there are people about--dozens--hundreds--swarms! I want to talk to just you." There were certainly no dozens or hundreds about now, but as certainly there was one, noting with keen and disapproving interest this midnight tête-à-tête. It did not last very long, and was harmless and impersonal enough while it lasted. Vivian sat for a few moments, listening patiently while the young man talked of his discouragements, his hopes, his wishes to succeed in life, to be worthy of her; but when the personal note sounded, when he tried to take her hand in the semi-darkness, then her New England conscience sounded also, and she rose to her feet and left him. "We'll talk about that another time," she said. "Now do be quiet and do not wake people up." He stole upstairs, dutifully, and she crept softly back to her room and got into bed, without eliciting more than a mild grunt from sleepy Susie. Silence reigned at last in the house. Not for long, however. At about half past twelve Dr. Bellair was roused from a well-earned sleep by a light, insistent tap upon her door. She listened, believing it to be a wind-stirred twig; but no, it was a finger tap--quiet--repeated. She opened the door upon Jeanne in her stocking feet. "Your pardon, Mrs. Doctor," said the visitor, "but it is of importance. May I speak for a little? No, I'm not ill, and we need not a light." They sat in the clean little office, the swaying cottonwood boughs making a changeful pattern on the floor. "You are a doctor, and you can make an end to it--you must make an end to it," said Jeanne, after a little hesitation. "This young man--this nephew--he must not marry my young lady." "What makes you think he wants to?" asked the doctor. "I have seen, I have heard--I know," said Jeanne. "You know, all can see that he loves her. _He!_ Not such as he for my young lady." "Why do you object to him, Jeanne?" "He has lived the bad life," said the woman, grimly. "Most young men are open to criticism," said Dr. Bellair. "Have you anything definite to tell me--anything that you could _prove_?--if it were necessary to save her?" She leaned forward, elbows on knees. Jeanne sat in the flickering shadows, considering her words. "He has had the sickness," she said at last. "Can you prove that?" "I can prove to you, a doctor, that Coralie and Anastasia and Estelle--they have had it. They are still alive; but not so beautiful." "Yes; but how can you prove it on him?" "I know he was with them. Well, it was no secret. I myself have seen--he was there often." "How on earth have you managed not to be recognized?" Dr. Bellair inquired after a few moments. Jeanne laughed bitterly. "That was eight years ago; he was but a boy--gay and foolish, with the others. What does a boy know?... Also, at that time I was blonde, and--of a difference." "I see," said the doctor, "I see! That's pretty straight. You know personally of that time, and you know the record of those others. But that was a long time ago." "I have heard of him since, many times, in such company," said Jeanne. They sat in silence for some time. A distant church clock struck a single deep low note. The woman rose, stood for a hushed moment, suddenly burst forth with hushed intensity: "You must save her, doctor--you will! I was young once," she went on. "I did not know--as she does not. I married, and--_that_ came to me! It made me a devil--for awhile. Tell her, doctor--if you must; tell her about my boy!" She went away, weeping silently, and Dr. Bellair sat sternly thinking in her chair, and fell asleep in it from utter weariness. CHAPTER VIII. A MIXTURE. In poetry and painting and fiction we see Such praise for the Dawn of the Day, We've long since been convinced that a sunrise must be All Glorious and Golden and Gay. But we find there are mornings quite foggy and drear, With the clouds in a low-hanging pall; Till the grey light of daylight can hardly make clear That the sun has arisen at all. Dr. Richard Hale left his brood of temporary orphans without really expecting for them any particular oversight from Andrew Dykeman; but the two were sufficiently close friends to well warrant the latter in moving over to The Monastery--as Jimmie Saunders called it. Mr. Dykeman was sufficiently popular with the young men to be welcome, even if he had not had a good excuse, and when they found how super-excellent his excuse was they wholly approved. To accommodate Miss Orella was something--all the boys liked Miss Orella. They speculated among themselves on her increasing youth and good looks, and even exchanged sagacious theories as to the particular acting cause. But when they found that Mr. Dykeman's visit was to make room for the installation of Mrs. St. Cloud, they were more than pleased. All the unexpressed ideals of masculine youth seemed centered in this palely graceful lady; the low, sweet voice, the delicate hands, the subtle sympathy of manner, the nameless, quiet charm of dress. Young Burns became her slave on sight, Lawson and Peters fell on the second day; not one held out beyond the third. Even Susie's attractions paled, her very youth became a disadvantage; she lacked that large considering tenderness. "Fact is," Mr. Peters informed his friends rather suddenly, "young women are selfish. Naturally, of course. It takes some experience to--well, to understand a fellow." They all agreed with him. Mr. Dykeman, quiet and reserved as always, was gravely polite to the newcomer, and Mr. Skee revolved at a distance, making observations. Occasionally he paid some court to her, at which times she was cold to him; and again he devoted himself to the other ladies with his impressive air, as of one bowing low and sweeping the floor with a plumed hat. Mr. Skee's Stetson had, as a matter of fact, no sign of plumage, and his bows were of a somewhat jerky order; but his gallantry was sweeping and impressive, none the less. If he remained too far away Mrs. St. Cloud would draw him to her circle, which consisted of all the other gentlemen. There were two exceptions. Mr. James Saunders had reached the stage where any woman besides Susie was but a skirted ghost, and Morton was by this time so deeply devoted to Vivian that he probably would not have wavered even if left alone. He was not wholly a free agent, however. Adela St. Cloud had reached an age when something must be done. Her mysterious absent husband had mysteriously and absently died, and still she never breathed a word against him. But the Bible Class in Bainville furnished no satisfactory material for further hopes, the place of her earlier dwelling seemed not wholly desirable now, and the West had called her. Finding herself comfortably placed in Mr. Dykeman's room, and judging from the number of his shoe-trees and the quality of his remaining toilet articles that he might be considered "suitable," she decided to remain in the half-way house for a season. So settled, why, for a thousand reasons one must keep one's hand in. There were men in plenty, from twenty year old Archie to the uncertain decades of Mr. Skee. Idly amusing herself, she questioned that gentleman indirectly as to his age, drawing from him astounding memories of the previous century. When confronted with historic proof that the events he described were over a hundred years passed, he would apologize, admitting that he had no memory for dates. She owned one day, with gentle candor, to being thirty-three. "That must seem quite old to a man like you, Mr. Skee. I feel very old sometimes!" She lifted large eyes to him, and drew her filmy scarf around her shoulders. "Your memory must be worse than mine, ma'am," he replied, "and work the same way. You've sure got ten or twenty years added on superfluous! Now me!" He shook his head; "I don't remember when I was born at all. And losin' my folks so young, _and_ the family Bible--I don't expect I ever shall. But I 'low I'm all of ninety-seven." This being palpably impossible, and as the only local incidents he could recall in his youth were quite dateless adventures among the Indians, she gave it up. Why Mr. Skee should have interested her at all was difficult to say, unless it was the appeal to his uncertainty--he was at least a game fish, if not edible. Of the women she met, Susie and Vivian were far the most attractive, wherefore Mrs. St. Cloud, with subtle sympathy and engaging frankness, fairly cast Mr. Saunders in Susie's arms, and vice versa, as opportunity occurred. Morton she rather snubbed, treated him as a mere boy, told tales of his childhood that were in no way complimentary--so that he fled from her. With Vivian she renewed her earlier influence to a great degree. With some inquiry and more intuition she discovered what it was that had chilled the girl's affection for her. "I don't wonder, my dear child," she said; "I never told you of that--I never speak of it to anyone.... It was one of the--" she shivered slightly--"darkest griefs of a very dark time.... He was a beautiful boy.... I never _dreamed_----" The slow tears rose in her beautiful eyes till they shone like shimmering stars. "Heaven send no such tragedy may ever come into your life, dear!" She reached a tender hand to clasp the girl's. "I am so glad of your happiness!" Vivian was silent. As a matter of fact, she was not happy enough to honestly accept sympathy. Mrs. St. Cloud mistook her attitude, or seemed to. "I suppose you still blame me. Many people did. I often blame myself. One cannot be _too_ careful. It's a terrible responsibility, Vivian--to have a man love you." The girl's face grew even more somber. That was one thing which was troubling her. "But your life is all before you," pursued the older woman. "Your dream has come true! How happy--how wonderfully happy you must be!" "I am not, not _really_," said the girl. "At least----" "I know--I know; I understand," Mrs. St. Cloud nodded with tender wisdom. "You are not sure. Is not that it?" That was distinctly "it," and Vivian so agreed. "There is no other man?" "Not the shadow of one!" said the girl firmly. And as her questioner had studied the field and made up her mind to the same end, she believed her. "Then you must not mind this sense of uncertainty. It always happens. It is part of the morning clouds of maidenhood, my dear--it vanishes with the sunrise!" And she smiled beatifically. Then the girl unburdened herself of her perplexities. She could always express herself so easily to this sympathetic friend. "There are so many things that I--dislike--about him," she said. "Habits of speech--of manners. He is not--not what I----" She paused. "Not all the Dream! Ah! My dear child, they never are! We are given these beautiful ideals to guard and guide us; but the real is never quite the same. But when a man's soul opens to you--when he loves--these small things vanish. They can be changed--you will change them." "Yes--he says so," Vivian admitted. "He says that he knows that he is--unworthy--and has done wrong things. But so have I, for that matter." Mrs. St. Cloud agreed with her. "I am glad you feel that, my dear. Men have their temptations--their vices--and we good women are apt to be hard on them. But have we no faults? Ah, my dear, I have seen good women--young girls, like yourself--ruin a man's whole life by--well, by heartlessness; by lack of understanding. Most young men do things they become ashamed of when they really love. And in the case of a motherless boy like this--lonely, away from his home, no good woman's influence about--what else could we expect? But you can make a new man of him. A glorious work!" "That's what he says. I'm not so sure--" The girl hesitated. "Not sure you can? Oh, my child, it is the most beautiful work on earth! To see from year to year a strong, noble character grow under your helping hand! To be the guiding star, the inspiration of a man's life. To live to hear him say: "'Ah, who am I that God should bow From heaven to choose a wife for me? What have I done He should endow My home with thee?'" There was a silence. Vivian's dark eyes shone with appreciation for the tender beauty of the lines, the lovely thought. Then she arose and walked nervously across the floor, returning presently. "Mrs. St. Cloud----" "Call me Adela, my dear." "Adela--dear Adela--you--you have been married. I have no mother. Tell me, ought not there to be more--more love? I'm fond of Morton, of course, and I do want to help him--but surely, if I loved him--I should feel happier--more sure!" "The first part of love is often very confusing, my dear. I'll tell you how it is: just because you are a woman grown and feel your responsibilities, especially here, where you have so many men friends, you keep Morton at a distance. Then the external sort of cousinly affection you have for him rather blinds you to other feelings. But I have not forgotten--and I'm sure you have not--the memory of that hot, sweet night so long ago; the world swimming in summer moonlight and syringa sweetness; the stillness everywhere--and your first kiss!" Vivian started to her feet. She moved to the window and stood awhile; came back and kissed her friend warmly, and went away without another word. The lady betook herself to her toilet, and spent some time on it, for there was one of Miss Peeder's classes that night. Mrs. St. Cloud danced with many, but most with Mr. Dykeman; no woman in the room had her swimming grace of motion, and yet, with all the throng of partners about her she had time to see Susie's bright head bobbing about beneath Mr. Saunders down-bent, happy face, and Vivian, with her eyes cast down, dancing with Morton, whose gaze never left her. He was attention itself, he brought her precisely the supper she liked, found her favorite corner to rest in, took her to sit on the broad piazza between dances, remained close to her, still talking earnestly, when all the outsiders had gone. Vivian found it hard to sleep that night. All that he had said of his new hope, new power, new courage, bore out Mrs. St. Cloud's bright promise of a new-built life. And some way, as she had listened and did not forbid, the touch of his hand, the pressure of his arm, grew warmer and brought back the memories of that summer night so long ago. He had begged hard for a kiss before he left her, and she quite had to tear herself away, as Susie drifted in, also late; and Aunt Orella said they must all go to bed right away--she was tired if they were not. She did look tired. This dance seemed somehow less agreeable to her than had others. She took off her new prettinesses and packed them away in a box in the lower drawer. "I'm an old fool!" she said. "Trying to dress up like a girl. I'm ashamed of myself!" Quite possibly she did not sleep well either, yet she had no room-mate to keep her awake by babbling on, as Susie did to Vivian. Her discourse was first, last and always about Jimmie Saunders. He had said this, he had looked that, he had done so; and what did Vivian think he meant? And wasn't he handsome--and _so_ clever! Little Susie cuddled close and finally dropped off asleep, her arms around Vivian. But the older girl counted the hours; her head, or her heart, in a whirl. Morton Elder was wakeful, too. So much so that he arose with a whispered expletive, took his shoes in his hand, and let himself softly out for a tramp in the open. This was not the first of his love affairs, but with all his hot young heart he wished it was. He stood still, alone on the high stretches of moonlit mesa and looked up at the measureless, brilliant spaces above him. "I'll keep straight--if I can have her!" he repeated under his breath. "I will! I will!" It had never occurred to him before to be ashamed of the various escapades of his youth. He had done no more than others, many others. None of "the boys" he associated with intended to do what was wrong; they were quite harsh in judgment of those who did, according to their standards. None of them had been made acquainted with the social or pathological results of their amusements, and the mere "Zutritt ist Verboten" had never impressed them at all. But now the gentler influences of his childhood, even the narrow morality of Bainville, rose in pleasant colors in his mind. He wished he had saved his money, instead of spending it faster than it came in. He wished he had kept out of poker and solo and barrooms generally. He wished, in a dumb, shamed way, that he could come to her as clean as she was. But he threw his shoulders back and lifted his head determinedly. "I'll be good to her," he determined; "I'll make her a good husband." In the days that followed his devotion was as constant as before, but more intelligent. His whole manner changed and softened. He began to read the books she liked, and to talk about them. He was gentler to everyone, more polite, even to the waitresses, tender and thoughtful of his aunt and sister. Vivian began to feel a pride in him, and in her influence, deepening as time passed. Mrs. Pettigrew, visiting the library on one of her frequent errands, was encountered there and devotedly escorted home by Mr. Skee. "That is a most fascinating young lady who has Mr. Dykeman's room; don't you think so, ma'am?" quoth he. "I do not," said Mrs. Pettigrew. "Young! She's not so young as you are--nothing like--never was!" He threw back his head and laughed his queer laugh, which looked so uproarious and made so little noise. "She certainly is a charmer, whatever her age may be," he continued. "Glad you think so, Mr. Skee. It may be time you lost a fourth!" "Lost a fourth? What in the--Hesperides!" "If you can't guess what, you needn't ask me!" said the lady, with some tartness. "But for my own part I prefer the Apaches. Good afternoon, Mr. Skee." She betook herself to her room with unusual promptness, and refused to be baited forth by any kind of offered amusement. "It's right thoughtful of Andy Dykeman, gettin' up this entertainment for Mrs. St. Cloud, isn't it, Mrs. Elder?" Thus Mr. Skee to Miss Orella a little later. "I don't think it is Mr. Dykeman's idea at all," she told him. "It's those boys over there. They are all wild about her, quite naturally." She gave a little short sigh. "If Dr. Hale were at home I doubt if he would encourage it." "I'm pretty sure he wouldn't, Ma'am. He's certainly down on the fair sex, even such a peacherino as this one. But with Andy, now, it's different. He is a man of excellent judgment." "I guess all men's judgment is pretty much alike in some ways," said Miss Orella, oracularly. She seemed busy and constrained, and Mr. Skee drifted off and paid court as best he might to Dr. Bellair. "Charmed to find you at home, Ma'am," he said; "or shall I say at office?" "Call it what you like, Mr. Skee; it's been my home for a good many years now." "It's a mighty fine thing for a woman, livin' alone, to have a business, seems to me," remarked the visitor. "It's a fine thing for any woman, married or single, to my mind," she answered. "I wish I could get Vivian Lane started in that kindergarten she talks about." "There's kids enough, and goodness knows they need a gardener! What's lackin'? House room?" "She thinks she's not really competent. She has no regular certificate, you see. Her parents would never let go of her long enough," the doctor explained. "Some parents _are_ pretty graspin', ain't they? To my mind, Miss Vivian would be a better teacher than lots of the ticketed ones. She's got the natural love of children." "Yes, and she has studied a great deal. She just needs an impetus." "Perhaps if she thought there was 'a call' she might be willing. I doubt if the families here realize what they're missin'. Aint there some among your patients who could be stirred up a little?" The doctor thought there were, and he suggested several names from his apparently unlimited acquaintance. "I believe in occupation for the young. It takes up their minds," said Mr. Skee, and departed with serenity. He strolled over to Dr. Hale's fence and leaned upon it, watching the preparations. Mr. Dykeman, in his shirt-sleeves, stood about offering suggestions, while the young men swarmed here and there with poles and stepladders, hanging Chinese lanterns. "Hello, Elmer; come in and make yourself useful," called Mr. Dykeman. "I'll come in, but I'll be switched if I'll be useful," he replied, laying a large hand on the fence and vaulting his long legs over it with an agility amazing in one of his alleged years. "You all are sure putting yourself out for this occasion. Is it somebody's birthday?" "No; it's a get-up of these youngsters. They began by wanting Mrs. St. Cloud to come over to tea--afternoon tea--and now look at this!" "Did she misunderstand the invitation as bad as that?" "O, no; just a gradual change of plan. One thing leads to another, you know. Here, Archie! That bush won't hold the line. Put it on the willow." "I see," said Mr. Skee; "and, as we're quotin' proverbs, I might remark that 'While the cat's away the mice will play.'" Mr. Dykeman smiled. "It's rather a good joke on Hale, isn't it?" "Would be if he should happen to come home--and find this hen-party on." They both chuckled. "I guess he's good for a week yet," said Mr. Dykeman. "Those medical associations do a lot of talking. Higher up there, George--a good deal higher." He ran over to direct the boys, and Mr. Skee, hands behind him, strolled up and down the garden, wearing a meditative smile. He and Andrew Dykeman had been friends for many long years. Dr. Bellair used her telephone freely after Mr. Skee's departure, making notes and lists of names. Late in the afternoon she found Vivian in the hall. "I don't see much of you these days, Miss Lane," she said. The girl flushed. Since Mrs. St. Cloud's coming and their renewed intimacy she had rather avoided the doctor, and that lady had kept herself conspicuously out of the way. "Don't call me Miss Lane; I'm Vivian--to my friends." "I hope you count me a friend?" said Dr. Bellair, gravely. "I do, Doctor, and I'm proud to. But so many things have been happening lately," she laughed, a little nervously. "The truth is, I'm really ashamed to talk to you; I'm so lazy." "That's exactly what I wanted to speak about. Aren't you ready to begin that little school of yours?" "I'd like to--I should, really," said the girl. "But, somehow, I don't know how to set about it." "I've been making some inquiries," said the doctor. "There are six or eight among my patients that you could count on--about a dozen young ones. How many could you handle?" "Oh, I oughtn't to have more than twenty in any case. A dozen would be plenty to begin with. Do you think I _could_ count on them--really?" "I tell you what I'll do," her friend offered; "I'll take you around and introduce you to any of them you don't know. Most of 'em come here to the dances. There's Mrs. Horsford and Mrs. Blake, and that little Mary Jackson with the twins. You'll find they are mostly friends." "You are awfully kind," said the girl. "I wish"--her voice took on a sudden note of intensity--"I do wish I were strong, like you, Dr. Bellair." "I wasn't very strong--at your age--my child. I did the weakest of weak things--" Vivian was eager to ask her what it was, but a door opened down one side passage and the doctor quietly disappeared down the other, as Mrs. St. Cloud came out. "I thought I heard your voice," she said. "And Miss Elder's, wasn't it?" "No; it was Dr. Bellair." "A strong character, and a fine physician, I understand. I'm sorry she does not like me." Mrs. St. Cloud's smile made it seem impossible that anyone should dislike her. Vivian could not, however, deny the fact, and was not diplomatic enough to smooth it over, which her more experienced friend proceeded to do. "It is temperamental," she said gently. "If we had gone to school together we would not have been friends. She is strong, downright, progressive; I am weaker, more sensitive, better able to bear than to do. You must find her so stimulating." "Yes," the girl said. "She was talking to me about my school." "Your school?" "Didn't you know I meant to have a sort of kindergarten? We planned it even before starting; but Miss Elder seemed to need me at first, and since then--things--have happened----" "And other things will happen, dear child! Quite other and different things." The lady's smile was bewitching. Vivian flushed slowly under her gaze. "Oh, my dear, I watched you dancing together! You don't mind my noticing, do you?" Her voice was suddenly tender and respectful. "I do not wish to intrude, but you are very dear to me. Come into my room--do--and tell me what to wear to-night." Mrs. St. Cloud's clothes had always been a delight to Vivian. They were what she would have liked to wear--and never quite have dared, under the New England fear of being "too dressy." Her own beauty was kept trimly neat, like a closed gentian. Her friend was in the gayest mood. She showed her a trunkful of delicate garments and gave her a glittering embroidered scarf, which the girl rapturously admired, but declared she would never have the courage to wear. "You shall wear it this very night," declared the lady. "Here--show me what you've got. You shall be as lovely as you _are_, for once!" So Vivian brought out her modest wardrobe, and the older woman chose a gown of white, insisted on shortening the sleeves to fairy wings of lace, draped the scarf about her white neck, raised the soft, close-bound hair to a regal crown, and put a shining star in it, and added a string of pearls on the white throat. "Look at yourself now, child!" she said. Vivian looked, in the long depths of Mr. Dykeman's mirror. She knew that she had beauty, but had never seen herself so brilliantly attired. Erect, slender, graceful, the long lines of her young body draped in soft white, and her dark head, crowned and shining, poised on its white column, rising from the shimmering lace. Her color deepened as she looked, and added to the picture. "You shall wear it to-night! You shall!" cried her admiring friend. "To please me--if no one else!" Whether to please her or someone else, Vivian consented, the two arriving rather late at the garden party across the way. Mr. Dykeman, looking very tall and fine in his evening clothes, was a cordial host, ably seconded by the eager boys about him. The place was certainly a credit to their efforts, the bare rooms being turned to bowers by vines and branches brought from the mountains, and made fragrant by piled flowers. Lights glimmered through colored shades among the leaves, and on the dining table young Peters, who came from Connecticut, had rigged a fountain by means of some rubber tubing and an auger hole in the floor. This he had made before Mr. Dykeman caught him, and vowed Dr. Hale would not mind. Mr. Peters' enjoyment of the evening, however, was a little dampened by his knowledge of the precarious nature of this arrangement. He danced attendance on Mrs. St. Cloud, with the others, but wore a preoccupied expression, and stole in once or twice from the lit paths outside to make sure that all was running well. It was well to and during supper time, and the young man was complimented on his ingenuity. "Reminds me of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon," said Mr. Skee, sentimentally. "Why?" asked Mrs. Pettigrew. "Oh, _why_, Ma'am? How can a fellow say why?" he protested. "Because it is so--so efflorescent, I suppose." "Reminds me of a loose faucet," said she, _sotto voce_, to Dr. Bellair. Mr. Peters beamed triumphantly, but in the very hour of his glory young Burns, hastening to get a cup of coffee for his fair one, tripped over the concealed pipe, and the fountain poured forth its contributions among the feet of the guests. This was a minor misadventure, however, hurting no one's feeling but Mr. Peters', and Mrs. St. Cloud was so kind to him in consequence that he was envied by all the others. Mr. Dykeman was attentive to his guests, old and young, but Mrs. Pettigrew had not her usual smile for him; Miss Orella declined to dance, alleging that she was too tired, and Dr. Bellair somewhat dryly told him that he need not bother with her. He was hardly to be blamed if he turned repeatedly to Mrs. St. Cloud, whose tactful sweetness was always ready. She had her swarm of young admirers about her, yet never failed to find a place for her host, a smile and a word of understanding. Her eyes were everywhere. She watched Mr. Skee waltzing with the youngest, providing well-chosen refreshments for Miss Orella, gallantly escorting Grandma to see the "Lovers' Lane" they had made at the end of the garden. Its twin lines of lights were all outside; within was grateful shadow. Mrs. St. Cloud paced through this fragrant arbor with each and every one of the receiving party, uttering ever-fresh expressions of admiration and gratitude for their kind thoughtfulness, especially to Mr. Dykeman. When she saw Susie and Mr. Saunders go in at the farther end, she constituted herself a sort of protective agency to keep every one else out, holding them in play with various pleasant arts. And Vivian? When she arrived there was a little gasp from Morton, who was waiting for her near the door. She was indeed a sight to make a lover's heart leap. He had then, as it were, surrounded her. Vainly did the others ask for dances. Morton had unblushingly filled out a card with his own name and substituted it for the one she handed him. She protested, but the music sounded and he whirled her away before she could expostulate to any avail. His eyes spoke his admiration, and for once his tongue did not spoil the impression. Half laughing and half serious, she let him monopolize her, but quite drove him away when Mr. Dykeman claimed his dance. "All filled up!" said Morton for her, showing his card. "Mine was promised yesterday, was it not, Miss Lane?" said the big man, smiling. And she went with him. He took her about the garden later, gravely admiring and attentive, and when Susie fairly rushed into her arms, begging her to come and talk with her, he left them both in a small rose-crowned summer-house and went back to Mrs. St. Cloud. "Oh, Vivian, Vivian! What do you think!" Susie's face was buried on Vivian's shoulder. "I'm engaged!" Vivian held her close and kissed her soft hair. Her joyous excitement was contagious. "He's the nicest man in the world!" breathed Susie, "and he loves me!" "We all supposed he did. Didn't you know it before?" "Oh, yes, in a way; but, Vivian--he kissed me!" "Well, child, have you never in all your little life been kissed before?" Susie lifted a rosy, tearful face for a moment. "Never, never, never!" she said. "I thought I had, but I haven't! Oh, I am so happy!" "What's up?" inquired Morton, appearing with a pink lantern in his hand, in impatient search for his adored one. "Susie--crying?" "No, I'm _not_," she said, and ran forthwith back to the house, whence Jimmy was bringing her ice cream. Vivian started to follow her. "Oh, no, Vivian; don't go. Wait." He dropped the lantern and took her hands. The paper cover flared up, showing her flushed cheeks and starry eyes. He stamped out the flame, and in the sudden darkness caught her in his arms. For a moment she allowed him, turning her head away. He kissed her white shoulder. "No! No, Morton--don't! You mustn't!" She tried to withdraw herself, but he held her fast. She could feel the pounding of his heart. "Oh, Vivian, don't say no! You will marry me, won't you? Some day, when I'm more worth while. Say you will! Some day--if not now. I love you so; I need you so! Say yes, Vivian." He was breathing heavily. His arms held her motionless. She still kept her face turned from him. "Let me go, Morton; let me go! You hurt me!" "Say yes, dear, and I'll let you go--for a little while." "Yes," said Vivian. The ground jarred beside them, as a tall man jumped the hedge boundary. He stood a moment, staring. "Well, is this my house, or Coney Island?" they heard him say. And then Morton swore softly to himself as Vivian left him and came out. "Good evening, Dr. Hale," she said, a little breathlessly. "We weren't expecting you so soon." "I should judge not," he answered. "What's up, anyhow?" "The boys--and Mr. Dykeman--are giving a garden party for Mrs. St. Cloud." "For whom?" "For Adela St. Cloud. She is visiting us. Aren't you coming in?" "Not now," he said, and was gone without another word. CHAPTER IX. CONSEQUENCES. You may have a fondness for grapes that are green, And the sourness that greenness beneath; You may have a right To a colic at night-- But consider your children's teeth! Dr. Hale retired from his gaily illuminated grounds in too much displeasure to consider the question of dignity. One suddenly acting cause was the news given him by Vivian. The other was the sight of Morton Elder's face as he struck a match to light his cigarette. Thus moved, and having entered and left his own grounds like a thief in the night, he proceeded to tramp in the high-lying outskirts of the town until every light in his house had gone out. Then he returned, let himself into his office, and lay there on a lounge until morning. Vivian had come out so quickly to greet the doctor from obscure motives. She felt a sudden deep objection to being found there with Morton, a wish to appear as one walking about unconcernedly, and when that match glow made Morton's face shine out prominently in the dark shelter, she, too, felt a sudden displeasure. Without a word she went swiftly to the house, excused herself to her Grandmother, who nodded understandingly, and returned to The Cottonwoods, to her room. She felt that she must be alone and think; think of that irrevocable word she had uttered, and its consequences. She sat at her window, rather breathless, watching the rows of pink lanterns swaying softly on the other side of the street; hearing the lively music, seeing young couples leave the gate and stroll off homeward. Susie's happiness came more vividly to mind than her own. It was so freshly joyous, so pure, so perfectly at rest. She could not feel that way, could not tell with decision exactly how she did feel. But if this was happiness, it was not as she had imagined it. She thought of that moonlit summer night so long ago, and the memory of its warm wonder seemed sweeter than the hasty tumult and compulsion of to-night. She was stirred through and through by Morton's intense emotion, but with a sort of reaction, a wish to escape. He had been so madly anxious, he had held her so close; there seemed no other way but to yield to him--in order to get away. And then Dr. Hale had jarred the whole situation. She had to be polite to him, in his own grounds. If only Morton had kept still--that grating match--his face, bent and puffing, Dr. Hale must have seen him. And again she thought of little Susie with almost envy. Even after that young lady had come in, bubbled over with confidences and raptures, and finally dropped to sleep without Vivian's having been able to bring herself to return the confidences, she stole back to her window again to breathe. Why had Dr. Hale started so at the name of Mrs. St. Cloud? That was puzzling her more than she cared to admit. By and by she saw his well-known figure, tall and erect, march by on the other side and go into the office. "O, well," she sighed at last, "I'm not young, like Susie. Perhaps it _is_ like this--" Now Morton had been in no special need of that cigarette at that special moment, but he did not wish to seem to hide in the dusky arbor, nor to emerge lamely as if he had hidden. So he lit the match, more from habit than anything else. When it was out, and the cigarette well lighted, he heard the doctor's sudden thump on the other side of the fence and came out to rejoin Vivian. She was not there. He did not see her again that night, and his meditations were such that next day found him, as a lover, far more agreeable to Vivian than the night before. He showed real understanding, no triumph, no airs of possession; took no liberties, only said: "When I am good enough I shall claim you--my darling!" and looked at her with such restrained longing that she quite warmed to him again. He held to this attitude, devoted, quietly affectionate; till her sense of rebellion passed away and her real pleasure in his improvement reasserted itself. As they read together, if now and then his arm stole around her waist, he always withdrew it when so commanded. Still, one cannot put the same severity into a prohibition too often repeated. The constant, thoughtful attention of a man experienced in the art of pleasing women, the new and frankly inexperienced efforts he made to meet her highest thoughts, to learn and share her preferences, both pleased her. He was certainly good looking, certainly amusing, certainly had become a better man from her companionship. She grew to feel a sort of ownership in this newly arisen character; a sort of pride in it. Then, she had always been fond of Morton, since the time when he was only "Susie's big brother." That counted. Another thing counted, too, counted heavily, though Vivian never dreamed of it and would have hotly repudiated the charge. She was a woman of full marriageable age, with all the unused powers of her woman's nature calling for expression, quite unrecognized. He was a man who loved her, loved her more deeply than he had ever loved before, than he had even known he could love; who quite recognized what called within him and meant to meet the call. And he was near her every day. After that one fierce outbreak he held himself well in check. He knew he had startled her then, almost lost her. And with every hour of their companionship he felt more and more how much she was to him. Other women he had pursued, overtaken, left behind. He felt that there was something in Vivian which was beyond him, giving a stir and lift of aspiration which he genuinely enjoyed. Day by day he strove to win her full approval, and day by day he did not neglect the tiny, slow-lapping waves of little tendernesses, small affectionate liberties at well-chosen moments, always promptly withdrawing when forbidden, but always beginning again a little further on. Dr. Bellair went to Dr. Hale's office and sat herself down solidly in the patient's chair. "Dick," she said, "are you going to stand for this?" "Stand for what, my esteemed but cryptic fellow-practitioner?" She eyed his calm, reserved countenance with friendly admiration. "You are an awfully good fellow, Dick, but dull. At the same time dull and transparent. Are you going to sit still and let that dangerous patient of yours marry the finest girl in town?" "Your admiration for girls is always stronger than mine, Jane; and I have, if you will pardon the boast, more than one patient." "All right, Dick--if you want it made perfectly clear to your understanding. Do you mean to let Morton Elder marry Vivian Lane?" "What business is it of mine?" he demanded, more than brusquely--savagely. "You know what he's got." "I am a physician, not a detective. And I am not Miss Lane's father, brother, uncle or guardian." "Or lover," added Dr. Bellair, eyeing him quietly. She thought she saw a second's flicker of light in the deep gray eyes, a possible tightening of set lips. "Suppose you are not," she said; "nor even a humanitarian. You _are_ a member of society. Do you mean to let a man whom you know has no right to marry, poison the life of that splendid girl?" He was quite silent for a moment, but she could see the hand on the farther arm of his chair grip it till the nails were white. "How do you know he--wishes to marry her?" "If you were about like other people, you old hermit, you'd know it as well as anybody. I think they are on the verge of an engagement, if they aren't over it already. Once more, Dick, shall you do anything?" "No," said he. Then, as she did not add a word, he rose and walked up and down the office in big strides, turning upon her at last. "You know how I feel about this. It is a matter of honor--professional honor. You women don't seem to know what the word means. I've told that good-for-nothing young wreck that he has no right to marry for years yet, if ever. That is all I can do. I will not betray the confidence of a patient." "Not if he had smallpox, or scarlet fever, or the bubonic plague? Suppose a patient of yours had the leprosy, and wanted to marry your sister, would you betray his confidence?" "I might kill my sister," he said, glaring at her. "I refuse to argue with you." "Yes, I think you'd better refuse," she said, rising. "And you don't have to kill Vivian Lane, either. A man's honor always seems to want to kill a woman to satisfy it. I'm glad I haven't got the feeling. Well, Dick, I thought I'd give you a chance to come to your senses, a real good chance. But I won't leave you to the pangs of unavailing remorse, you poor old goose. That young syphilitic is no patient of mine." And she marched off to perform a difficult duty. She was very fond of Vivian. The girl's unselfish sweetness of character and the depth of courage and power she perceived behind the sensitive, almost timid exterior, appealed to her. If she had had a daughter, perhaps she would have been like that. If she had had a daughter would she not have thanked anyone who would try to save her from such a danger? From that worse than deadly peril, because of which she had no daughter. Dr. Bellair was not the only one who watched Morton's growing devotion with keen interest. To his aunt it was a constant joy. From the time her boisterous little nephew had come to rejoice her heart and upset her immaculate household arrangements, and had played, pleasantly though tyrannically, with the little girl next door, Miss Orella had dreamed this romance for him. To have it fail was part of her grief when he left her, to have it now so visibly coming to completion was a deep delight. If she had been blind to his faults, she was at least vividly conscious of the present sudden growth of virtues. She beamed at him with affectionate pride, and her manner to Mrs. Pettigrew was one of barely subdued "I told you so." Indeed, she could not restrain herself altogether, but spoke to that lady with tender triumph of how lovely it was to have Morton so gentle and nice. "You never did like the boy, I know, but you must admit that he is behaving beautifully now." "I will," said the old lady; "I'll admit it without reservation. He's behaving beautifully--now. But I'm not going to talk about him--to you, Orella." So she rolled up her knitting work and marched off. "Too bad she's so prejudiced and opinionated," said Miss Elder to Susie, rather warmly. "I'm real fond of Mrs. Pettigrew, but when she takes a dislike----" Susie was so happy herself that she seemed to walk in an aura of rosy light. Her Jimmie was so evidently the incarnation of every masculine virtue and charm that he lent a reflected lustre to other men, even to her brother. Because of her love for Jimmie, she loved Morton better--loved everybody better. To have her only brother marry her dearest friend was wholly pleasant to Susie. It was not difficult to wring from Vivian a fair knowledge of how things stood, for, though reserved by nature, she was utterly unused to concealing anything, and could not tell an efficient lie if she wanted to. "Are you engaged or are you not, you dear old thing?" demanded Susie. And Vivian admitted that there was "an understanding." But Susie absolutely must not speak of it. For a wonder she did not, except to Jimmie. But people seemed to make up their minds on the subject with miraculous agreement. The general interest in the manifold successes of Mrs. St. Cloud gave way to this vivid personal interest, and it was discussed from two sides among their whole circle of acquaintance. One side thought that a splendid girl was being wasted, sacrificed, thrown away, on a disagreeable, good-for-nothing fellow. The other side thought the "interesting" Mr. Elder might have done better; they did not know what he could see in her. They, that vaguely important They, before whom we so deeply bow, were also much occupied in their mind by speculations concerning Mr. Dykeman and two Possibilities. One quite patently possible, even probable, giving rise to the complacent "Why, anybody could see that!" and the other a fascinatingly impossible Possibility of a sort which allows the even more complacent "Didn't you? Why, I could see it from the first." Mr. Dykeman had been a leading citizen in that new-built town for some ten years, which constituted him almost the Oldest Inhabitant. He was reputed to be extremely wealthy, though he never said anything about it, and neither his clothing nor his cigars reeked of affluence. Perhaps nomadic chambermaids had spread knowledge of those silver-backed appurtenances, and the long mirror. Or perhaps it was not woman's gossip at all, but men's gossip, which has wider base, and wider circulation, too. Mr. Dykeman had certainly "paid attentions" to Miss Elder. Miss Elder had undeniably brightened and blossomed most becomingly under these attentions. He had danced with her, he had driven with her, he had played piquet with her when he might have played whist. To be sure, he did these things with other ladies, and had done them for years past, but this really looked as if there might be something in it. Mr. Skee, as Mr. Dykeman's oldest friend, was even questioned a little; but it was not very much use to question Mr. Skee. His manner was not repellant, and not in the least reserved. He poured forth floods of information so voluminous and so varied that the recipient was rather drowned than fed. So opinions wavered as to Mr. Dykeman's intentions. Then came this lady of irresistible charm, and the unmarried citizens of the place fell at her feet as one man. Even the married ones slanted over a little. Mr. Dykeman danced with her, more than he had with Miss Elder. Mr. Dykeman drove with her, more than he had with Miss Elder. Mr. Dykeman played piquet with her, and chess, which Miss Elder could not play. And Miss Elder's little opening petals of ribbon and lace curled up and withered away; while Mrs. St. Cloud's silken efflorescence, softly waving and jewel-starred, flourished apace. Dr. Bellair had asked Vivian to take a walk with her; and they sat together, resting, on a high lonely hill, a few miles out of town. "It's a great pleasure to see this much of you, Dr. Bellair," said the girl, feeling really complimented. "I'm afraid you won't think so, my dear, when you hear what I have to say: what I _have_ to say." The girl flushed a little. "Are you going to scold me about something? Have I done anything wrong?" Her eyes smiled bravely. "Go on, Doctor. I know it will be for my best good." "It will indeed, dear child," said the doctor, so earnestly that Vivian felt a chill of apprehension. "I am going to talk to you 'as man to man' as the story books say; as woman to woman. When I was your age I had been married three years." Vivian was silent, but stole out a soft sympathetic hand and slipped it into the older woman's. She had heard of this early-made marriage, also early broken; with various dark comments to which she had paid no attention. Dr. Bellair was Dr. Bellair, and she had a reverential affection for her. There was a little silence. The Doctor evidently found it hard to begin. "You love children, don't you, Vivian?" The girl's eyes kindled, and a heavenly smile broke over her face. "Better than anything in the world," she said. "Ever think about them?" asked her friend, her own face whitening as she spoke. "Think about their lovely little soft helplessness--when you hold them in your arms and have to do _everything_ for them. Have to go and turn them over--see that the little ear isn't crumpled--that the covers are all right. Can't you see 'em, upside down on the bath apron, grabbing at things, perfectly happy, but prepared to howl when it comes to dressing? And when they are big enough to love you! Little soft arms that will hardly go round your neck. Little soft cheeks against yours, little soft mouths and little soft kisses,--ever think of them?" The girl's eyes were like stars. She was looking into the future; her breath came quickly; she sat quite still. The doctor swallowed hard, and went on. "We mostly don't go much farther than that at first. It's just the babies we want. But you can look farther--can follow up, year by year, the lovely changing growing bodies and minds, the confidence and love between you, the pride you have as health is established, strength and skill developed, and character unfolds and deepens. "Then when they are grown, and sort of catch up, and you have those splendid young lives about you, intimate strong friends and tender lovers. And you feel as though you had indeed done something for the world." She stopped, saying no more for a little, watching the girl's awed shining face. Suddenly that face was turned to her, full of exquisite sympathy, the dark eyes swimming with sudden tears; and two soft eager arms held her close. "Oh, Doctor! To care like that and not--!" "Yes, my dear;" said the doctor, quietly. "And not have any. Not be able to have any--ever." Vivian caught her breath with pitying intensity, but her friend went on. "Never be able to have a child, because I married a man who had gonorrhea. In place of happy love, lonely pain. In place of motherhood, disease. Misery and shame, child. Medicine and surgery, and never any possibility of any child for me." The girl was pale with horror. "I--I didn't know--" She tried to say something, but the doctor burst out impatiently: "No! You don't know. I didn't know. Girls aren't taught a word of what's before them till it's too late--not _then_, sometimes! Women lose every joy in life, every hope, every capacity for service or pleasure. They go down to their graves without anyone's telling them the cause of it all." "That was why you--left him?" asked Vivian presently. "Yes, I left him. When I found I could not be a mother I determined to be a doctor, and save other women, if I could." She said this with such slow, grave emphasis that Vivian turned a sudden startled face to her, and went white to the lips. "I may be wrong," the doctor said, "you have not given me your confidence in this matter. But it is better, a thousand times better, that I should make this mistake than for you to make that. You must not marry Morton Elder." Vivian did not admit nor deny. She still wore that look of horror. "You think he has--That?" "I do not know whether he has gonorrhea or not; it takes a long microscopic analysis to be sure; but there is every practical assurance that he's had it, and I know he's had syphilis." If Vivian could have turned paler she would have, then. "I've heard of--that," she said, shuddering. "Yes, the other is newer to our knowledge, far commoner, and really more dangerous. They are two of the most terrible diseases known to us; highly contagious, and in the case of syphilis, hereditary. Nearly three-quarters of the men have one or the other, or both." But Vivian was not listening. Her face was buried in her hands. She crouched low in agonized weeping. "Oh, come, come, my dear. Don't take it so hard. There's no harm done you see, it's not too late." "Oh, it _is_ too late! It is!" wailed the girl. "I have promised to marry him." "I don't care if you were at the altar, child; you _haven't_ married him, and you mustn't." "I have given my word!" said the girl dully. She was thinking of Morton now. Of his handsome face, with it's new expression of respectful tenderness; of all the hopes they had built together; of his life, so dependent upon hers for its higher interests. She turned to the doctor, her lips quivering. "He _loves_ me!" she said. "I--we--he says I am all that holds him up, that helps him to make a newer better life. And he has changed so--I can see it! He says he has loved me, really, since he was seventeen!" The older sterner face did not relax. "He told me he had--done wrong. He was honest about it. He said he wasn't--worthy." "He isn't," said Dr. Bellair. "But surely I owe some duty to him. He depends on me. And I have promised--" The doctor grew grimmer. "Marriage is for motherhood," she said. "That is its initial purpose. I suppose you might deliberately forego motherhood, and undertake a sort of missionary relation to a man, but that is not marriage." "He loves me," said the girl with gentle stubbornness. She saw Morton's eyes, as she had so often seen them lately; full of adoration and manly patience. She felt his hand, as she had felt it so often lately, holding hers, stealing about her waist, sometimes bringing her fingers to his lips for a strong slow kiss which she could not forget for hours. She raised her head. A new wave of feeling swept over her. She saw a vista of self-sacrificing devotion, foregoing much, forgiving much, but rejoicing in the companionship of a noble life, a soul rebuilt, a love that was passionately grateful. Her eyes met those of her friend fairly. "And I love him!" she said. "Will you tell that to your crippled children?" asked Dr. Bellair. "Will they understand it if they are idiots? Will they see it if they are blind? Will it satisfy you when they are dead?" The girl shrank before her. "You _shall_ understand," said the doctor. "This is no case for idealism and exalted emotion. Do you want a son like Theophile?" "I thought you said--they didn't have any." "Some don't--that is one result. Another result--of gonorrhea--is to have children born blind. Their eyes may be saved, with care. But it is not a motherly gift for one's babies--blindness. You may have years and years of suffering yourself--any or all of those diseases 'peculiar to women' as we used to call them! And we pitied the men who 'were so good to their invalid wives'! You may have any number of still-born children, year after year. And every little marred dead face would remind you that you allowed it! And they may be deformed and twisted, have all manner of terrible and loathsome afflictions, they and their children after them, if they have any. And many do! dear girl, don't you see that's wicked?" Vivian was silent, her two hands wrung together; her whole form shivering with emotion. "Don't think that you are 'ruining his life,'" said the doctor kindly. "He ruined it long ago--poor boy!" The girl turned quickly at the note of sympathy. "They don't know either," her friend went on. "What could Miss Orella do, poor little saint, to protect a lively young fellow like that! All they have in their scatter-brained heads is 'it's naughty but it's nice!' And so they rush off and ruin their whole lives--and their wives'--and their children's. A man don't have to be so very wicked, either, understand. Just one mis-step may be enough for infection." "Even if it did break his heart, and yours--even if you both lived single, he because it is the only decent thing he can do now, you because of a misguided sense of devotion; that would be better than to commit this plain sin. Beware of a biological sin, my dear; for it there is no forgiveness." She waited a moment and went on, as firmly and steadily as she would have held the walls of a wound while she placed the stitches. "If you two love each other so nobly and devotedly that it is higher and truer and more lasting than the ordinary love of men and women, you might be 'true' to one another for a lifetime, you see. And all that friendship can do, exalted influence, noble inspiration--that is open to you." Vivian's eyes were wide and shining. She saw a possible future, not wholly unbearable. "Has he kissed you yet?" asked the doctor suddenly. "No," she said. "That is--except----" "Don't let him. You might catch it. Your friendship must be distant. Well, shall we be going back? I'm sorry, my dear. I did hate awfully to do it. But I hated worse to see you go down those awful steps from which there is no returning." "Yes," said Vivian. "Thank you. Won't you go on, please? I'll come later." An hour the girl sat there, with the clear blue sky above her, the soft steady wind rustling the leaves, the little birds that hopped and pecked and flirted their tails so near her motionless figure. She thought and thought, and through all the tumult of ideas it grew clearer to her that the doctor was right. She might sacrifice herself. She had no right to sacrifice her children. A feeling of unreasoning horror at this sudden outlook into a field of unknown evil was met by her clear perception that if she was old enough to marry, to be a mother, she was surely old enough to know these things; and not only so, but ought to know them. Shy, sensitive, delicate in feeling as the girl was, she had a fair and reasoning mind. CHAPTER X. DETERMINATION. You may shut your eyes with a bandage, The while world vanishes soon; You may open your eyes at a knothole And see the sun and moon. It must have grieved anyone who cared for Andrew Dykeman, to see Mrs. St. Cloud's manner toward him change with his changed circumstances--she had been so much with him, had been so kind to him; kinder than Carston comment "knew for a fact," but not kinder than it surmised. Then, though his dress remained as quietly correct, his face assumed a worn and anxious look, and he no longer offered her long auto rides or other expensive entertainment. She saw men on the piazza stop talking as he came by, and shake their heads as they looked after him; but no one would tell her anything definite till she questioned Mr. Skee. "I am worried about Mr. Dykeman," she said to this ever-willing confidant, beckoning him to a chair beside her. A chair, to the mind of Mr. Skee, seemed to be for pictorial uses, only valuable as part of the composition. He liked one to stand beside, to put a foot on, to lean over from behind, arms on the back; to tip up in front of him as if he needed a barricade; and when he was persuaded to sit in one, it was either facing the back, cross-saddle and bent forward, or--and this was the utmost decorum he was able to approach--tipped backward against the wall. "He does not look well," said the lady, "you are old friends--do tell me; if it is anything wherein a woman's sympathy would be of service?" "I'm afraid not, Ma'am," replied Mr. Skee darkly. "Andy's hard hit in a worse place than his heart. I wouldn't betray a friend's confidence for any money, Ma'am; but this is all over town. It'll go hard with Andy, I'm afraid, at his age." "Oh, I'm so sorry!" she whispered. "So sorry! But surely with a man of his abilities it will be only a temporary reverse!--" "Dunno 'bout the abilities--not in this case. Unless he has ability enough to discover a mine bigger'n the one he's lost! You see, Ma'am, it's this way," and he sunk his voice to a confidential rumble. "Andy had a bang-up mine, galena ore--not gold, you understand, but often pays better. And he kept on putting the money it made back into it to make more. Then, all of a sudden, it petered out! No more eggs in that basket. 'Course he can't sell it--now. And last year he refused half a million. Andy's sure down on his luck." "But he will recover! You western men are so wonderful! He will find another mine!" "O yes, he _may_! Certainly he _may_, Ma'am. Not that he found this one--he just bought it." "Well--he can buy another, there are more, aren't there?" "Sure there are! There's as good mines in the earth as ever was salted--that's my motto! But Andy's got no more money to buy any mines. What he had before he inherited. No, Ma'am," said Mr. Skee, with a sigh. "I'm afraid its all up with Andy Dykeman financially!" This he said more audibly; and Miss Elder and Miss Pettigrew, sitting in their parlor, could not help hearing. Miss Elder gave a little gasp and clasped her hands tightly, but Miss Pettigrew arose, and came outside. "What's this about Mr. Dykeman?" she questioned abruptly. "Has he had losses?" "There now," said Mr. Skee, remorsefully, "I never meant to give him away like that. Mrs. Pettigrew, Ma'am, I must beg you not to mention it further. I was only satisfyin' this lady here, in answer to sympathetic anxiety, as to what was making Andrew H. Dykeman so down in the mouth. Yes'm--he's lost every cent he had in the world, or is likely to have. Of course, among friends, he'll get a job fast enough, bookkeepin', or something like that--though he's not a brilliant man, Andy isn't. You needn't to feel worried, Mrs. Pettigrew; he'll draw a salary all right, to the end of time; but he's out of the game of Hot Finance." Mrs. Pettigrew regarded the speaker with a scintillating eye. He returned her look with unflinching seriousness. "Have a chair, Ma'am," he said. "Let me bring out your rocker. Sit down and chat with us." "No, thanks," said the old lady. "It seems to me a little--chilly, out here. I'll go in." She went in forthwith, to find Miss Orella furtively wiping her eyes. "What are you crying about, Orella Elder! Just because a man's lost his money? That happens to most of 'em now and then." "Yes, I know--but you heard what he said. Oh, I can't believe it! To think of his having to be provided for by his friends--and having to take a small salary--after being so well off! I am so sorry for him!" Miss Elder's sorrow was increased to intensity by noting Mrs. St. Cloud's changed attitude. Mr. Dykeman made no complaint, uttered no protest, gave no confidences; but it soon appeared that he was working in an office; and furthermore that this position was given him by Mr. Skee. That gentleman, though discreetly reticent as to his own affairs, now appeared in far finer raiment than he had hitherto affected; developed a pronounced taste in fobs and sleeve buttons; and a striking harmony in socks and scarfs. Men talked openly of him; no one seemed to know anything definite, but all were certain that "Old Skee must have struck it rich." Mr. Skee kept his own counsel; but became munificent in gifts and entertainments. He produced two imposing presents for Susie; one a "betrothal gift," the other a conventional wedding present. "This is a new one to me," he said when he offered her the first; "but I understand it's the thing. In fact I'm sure of it--for I've consulted Mrs. St. Cloud and she helped me to buy 'em." He consulted Mrs. St. Cloud about a dinner he proposed giving to Mr. Saunders--"one of these Farewell to Egypt affairs," he said. "Not that I imagine Jim Saunders ever was much of a--Egyptian--but then----!" He consulted her also about Vivian--did she not think the girl looked worn and ill? Wouldn't it be a good thing to send her off for a trip somewhere? He consulted her about a library; said he had always wanted a library of his own, but the public ones were somewhat in his way. How many books did she think a man ought really to own--to spend his declining years among. Also, and at considerable length he consulted her about the best possible place of residence. "I'm getting to be an old man, Mrs. St. Cloud," he remarked meditatively; "and I'm thinking of buying and building somewhere. But it's a ticklish job. Lo! these many years I've been perfectly contented to live wherever I was at; and now that I'm considering a real Home--blamed if I know where to put it! I'm distracted between A Model Farm, and A Metropolitan Residence. Which would you recommend, Ma'am?" The lady's sympathy and interest warmed to Mr. Skee as they cooled to Mr. Dykeman, not with any blameworthy or noticeable suddenness, but in soft graduations, steady and continuous. The one wore his new glories with an air of modest pride; making no boast of affluence; and the other accepted that which had befallen him without rebellion. Miss Orella's tender heart was deeply touched. As fast as Mrs. St. Cloud gave the cold shoulder to her friend, she extended a warm hand; when they chatted about Mr. Skee's visible success, she spoke bravely of the beauty of limited means; and when it was time to present her weekly bills to the boarders, she left none in Mr. Dykeman's room. This he took for an oversight at first; but when he found the omission repeated on the following week, he stood by his window smiling thoughtfully for some time, and then went in search of Miss Orella. She sat by her shaded lamp, alone, knitting a silk tie which was promptly hidden as he entered. He stood by the door looking at her in spite of her urging him to be seated, observing the warm color in her face, the graceful lines of her figure, the gentle smile that was so unfailingly attractive. Then he came forward, calmly inquiring, "Why haven't you sent me my board bill?" She lifted her eyes to his, and dropped them, flushing. "I--excuse me; but I thought----" "You thought I couldn't conveniently pay it?" "O please excuse me! I didn't mean to be--to do anything you wouldn't like. But I did hear that you were--temporarily embarrassed. And I want you to feel sure, Mr. Dykeman, that to your real friends it makes no difference in the _least_. And if--for a while that is--it should be a little more convenient to--to defer payment, please feel perfectly at liberty to wait!" She stood there blushing like a girl, her sweet eyes wet with shining tears that did not fall, full of tender sympathy for his misfortune. "Have you heard that I've lost all my money?" he asked. She nodded softly. "And that I can't ever get it back--shall have to do clerk's work at a clerk's salary--as long as I live?" Again she nodded. He took a step or two back and forth in the quiet parlor, and returned to her. "Would you marry a poor man?" he asked in a low tender voice. "Would you marry a man not young, not clever, not rich, but who loved you dearly? You are the sweetest woman I ever saw, Orella Elder--will you marry me?" She came to him, and he drew her close with a long sigh of utter satisfaction. "Now I am rich indeed," he said softly. She held him off a little. "Don't talk about being rich. It doesn't matter. If you like to live here--why this house will keep us both. If you'd rather have a little one--I can live _so_ happily--on _so_ little! And there is my own little home in Bainville--perhaps you could find something to do there. I don't care the least in the world--so long as you love me!" "I've loved you since I first set eyes on you," he answered her. "To see the home you've made here for all of us was enough to make any man love you. But I thought awhile back that I hadn't any chance--you weren't jealous of that Artificial Fairy, were you?" And conscientiously Miss Orella lied. Carston society was pleased, but not surprised at Susie's engagement; it was both pleased and surprised when Miss Elder's was announced. Some there were who protested that they had seen it from the beginning; but disputatious friends taxed them with having prophesied quite otherwise. Some thought Miss Elder foolish to take up with a man of full middle age, and with no prospects; and others attributed the foolishness to Mr. Dykeman, in marrying an old maid. Others again darkly hinted that he knew which side his bread was buttered--"and first-rate butter, too." Adding that they "did hate to see a man sit around and let his wife keep boarders!" In Bainville circles the event created high commotion. That one of their accumulated maidens, part of the Virgin Sacrifice of New England, which finds not even a Minotaur--had thus triumphantly escaped from their ranks and achieved a husband; this was flatly heretical. The fact that he was a poor man was the only mitigating circumstance, leaving it open to the more captious to criticize the lady sharply. But the calm contentment of Andrew Dykeman's face, and the decorous bliss of Miss Elder's were untroubled by what anyone thought or said. Little Susie was delighted, and teased for a double wedding; without success. "One was enough to attend to, at one time," her aunt replied. * * * * * In all this atmosphere of wooings and weddings, Vivian walked apart, as one in a bad dream that could never end. That day when Dr. Bellair left her on the hill, left her alone in a strange new horrible world, was still glaring across her consciousness, the end of one life, the bar to any other. Its small events were as clear to her as those which stand out so painfully on a day of death; all that led up to the pleasant walk, when an eager girl mounted the breezy height, and a sad-faced woman came down from it. She had waited long and came home slowly, dreading to see a face she knew, dreading worst of all to see Morton. The boy she had known so long, the man she was beginning to know, had changed to an unbelievable horror; and the love which had so lately seemed real to her recoiled upon her heart with a sense of hopeless shame. She wished--eagerly, desperately, she wished--she need never see him again. She thought of the man's resource of running away--if she could just _go_, go at once, and write to him from somewhere. Distant Bainville seemed like a haven of safety; even the decorous, narrow, monotony of its dim life had a new attraction. These terrors were not in Bainville, surely. Then the sickening thought crept in that perhaps they were--only they did not know it. Besides, she had no money to go with. If only she had started that little school sooner! Write to her father for money she would not. No, she must bear it here. The world was discolored in the girl's eyes. Love had become a horror and marriage impossible. She pushed the idea from her, impotently, as one might push at a lava flow. In her wide reading she had learned in a vague way of "evil"--a distant undescribed evil which was in the world, and which must be avoided. She had known that there was such a thing as "sin," and abhorred the very thought of it. Morton's penitential confessions had given no details; she had pictured him only as being "led astray," as being "fast," even perhaps "wicked." Wickedness could be forgiven; and she had forgiven him, royally. But wickedness was one thing, disease was another. Forgiveness was no cure. The burden of new knowledge so distressed her that she avoided the family entirely that evening, avoided Susie, went to her grandmother and asked if she might come and sleep on the lounge in her room. "Surely, my child, glad to have you," said Mrs. Pettigrew affectionately. "Better try my bed--there's room a-plenty." The girl lay long with those old arms about her, crying quietly. Her grandmother asked no questions, only patted her softly from time to time, and said, "There! There!" in a pleasantly soothing manner. After some time she remarked, "If you want to say things, my dear, say 'em--anything you please." In the still darkness they talked long and intimately; and the wise old head straightened things out somewhat for the younger one. "Doctors don't realize how people feel about these matters," said Mrs. Pettigrew. "They are so used to all kinds of ghastly things they forget that other folks can't stand 'em. She was too hard on you, dearie." But Vivian defended the doctor. "Oh, no, Grandma. She did it beautifully. And it hurt her so. She told me about her own--disappointment." "Yes, I remember her as a girl, you see. A fine sweet girl she was too. It was an awful blow--and she took it hard. It has made her bitter, I think, perhaps; that and the number of similar cases she had to cope with." "But, Grandma--is it--_can_ it be as bad as she said? Seventy-five per cent! Three-quarters of--of everybody!" "Not everybody dear, thank goodness. Our girls are mostly clean, and they save the race, I guess." "I don't even want to _see_ a man again!" said the girl with low intensity. "Shouldn't think you would, at first. But, dear child--just brace yourself and look it fair in the face! The world's no worse than it was yesterday--just because you know more about it!" "No," Vivian admitted, "But it's like uncovering a charnel house!" she shuddered. "Never saw a charnel house myself," said the old lady, "even with the lid on. But now see here child; you mustn't feel as if all men were Unspeakable Villains. They are just ignorant boys--and nobody ever tells 'em the truth. Nobody used to know it, for that matter. All this about gonorrhea is quite newly discovered--it has set the doctors all by the ears. Having women doctors has made a difference too--lots of difference." "Besides," she went on after a pause, "things are changing very fast now, since the general airing began. Dr. Prince Morrow in New York, with that society of his--(I can never remember the name--makes me think of tooth brushes) has done much; and the popular magazines have taken it up. You must have seen some of those articles, Vivian." "I have," the girl said, "but I couldn't bear to read them--ever." "That's it!" responded her grandmother, tartly; "we bring up girls to think it is not proper to know anything about the worst danger before them. Proper!--Why my dear child, the young girls are precisely the ones _to_ know! it's no use to tell a woman who has buried all her children--or wishes she had!--that it was all owing to her ignorance, and her husband's. You have to know beforehand if it's to do you any good." After awhile she continued: "Women are waking up to this all over the country, now. Nice women, old and young. The women's clubs and congresses are taking it up, as they should. Some states have passed laws requiring a medical certificate--a clean bill of health--to go with a license to marry. You can see that's reasonable! A man has to be examined to enter the army or navy, even to get his life insured; Marriage and Parentage are more important than those things! And we are beginning to teach children and young people what they ought to know. There's hope for us!" "But Grandma--it's so awful--about the children." "Yes dear, yes. It's pretty awful. But don't feel as if we were all on the brink of perdition. Remember that we've got a whole quarter of the men to bank on. That's a good many, in this country. We're not so bad as Europe--not yet--in this line. Then just think of this, child. We have lived, and done splendid things all these years, even with this load of disease on us. Think what we can do when we're rid of it! And that's in the hands of woman, my dear--as soon as we know enough. Don't be afraid of knowledge. When we all know about this we can stop it! Think of that. We can religiously rid the world of all these--'undesirable citizens.'" "How, Grandma?" "Easy enough, my dear. By not marrying them." There was a lasting silence. Grandma finally went to sleep, making a little soft whistling sound through her parted lips; but Vivian lay awake for long slow hours. * * * * * It was one thing to make up her own mind, though not an easy one, by any means; it was quite another to tell Morton. He gave her no good opportunity. He did not say again, "Will you marry me?" So that she could say, "No," and be done with it. He did not even say, "When will you marry me?" to which she could answer "Never!" He merely took it for granted that she was going to, and continued to monopolize her as far as possible, with all pleasant and comfortable attentions. She forced the situation even more sharply than she wished, by turning from him with a shiver when he met her on the stairs one night and leaned forward as if to kiss her. He stopped short. "What is the matter, Vivian--are you ill?" "No--" She could say nothing further, but tried to pass him. "Look here--there _is_ something. You've been--different--for several days. Have I done anything you don't like?" "Oh, Morton!" His question was so exactly to the point; and so exquisitely inadequate! He had indeed. "I care too much for you to let anything stand between us now," he went on. "Come, there's no one in the upper hall--come and 'tell me the worst.'" "As well now as ever." thought the girl. Yet when they sat on the long window seat, and he turned his handsome face toward her, with that newer, better look on it, she could not believe that this awful thing was true. "Now then--What is wrong between us?" he said. She answered only, "I will tell you the worst, Morton. I cannot marry you--ever." He whitened to the lips, but asked quietly, "Why?" "Because you have--Oh, I _cannot_ tell you!" "I have a right to know, Vivian. You have made a man of me. I love you with my whole heart. What have I done--that I have not told you?" Then she recalled his contrite confessions; and contrasted what he had told her with what he had not; with the unspeakable fate to which he would have consigned her--and those to come; and a sort of holy rage rose within her. "You never told me of the state of your health, Morton." It was done. She looked to see him fall at her feet in utter abashment, but he did nothing of the kind. What he did do astonished her beyond measure. He rose to his feet, with clenched fists. "Has that damned doctor been giving me away?" he demanded. "Because if he has I'll kill him!" "He has not," said Vivian. "Not by the faintest hint, ever. And is _that_ all you think of?-- "Good-bye." She rose to leave him, sick at heart. Then he seemed to realize that she was going; that she meant it. "Surely, surely!" he cried, "you won't throw me over now! Oh, Vivian! I told you I had been wild--that I wasn't fit to touch your little slippers! And I wasn't going to ask you to marry me till I felt sure this was all done with. All the rest of my life was yours, darling--is yours. You have made me over--surely you won't leave me now!" "I must," she said. He looked at her despairingly. If he lost her he lost not only a woman, but the hope of a life. Things he had never thought about before had now grown dear to him; a home, a family, an honorable place in the world, long years of quiet happiness. "I can't lose you!" he said. "I _can't_!" She did not answer, only sat there with a white set face and her hands tight clenched in her lap. "Where'd you get this idea anyhow?" he burst out again. "I believe it's that woman doctor! What does she know!" "Look here, Morton," said Vivian firmly. "It is not a question of who told me. The important thing is that it's--true! And I cannot marry you." "But Vivian--" he pleaded, trying to restrain the intensity of his feeling; "men get over these things. They do, really. It's not so awful as you seem to think. It's very common. And I'm nearly well. I was going to wait a year or two yet--to make sure--. Vivian! I'd cut my hand off before I'd hurt you!" There was real agony in his voice, and her heart smote her; but there was something besides her heart ruling the girl now. "I am sorry--I'm very sorry," she said dully. "But I will not marry you." "You'll throw me over--just for that! Oh, Vivian don't--you can't. I'm no worse than other men. It seems so terrible to you just because you're so pure and white. It's only what they call--wild oats, you know. Most men do it." She shook her head. "And will you punish me--so cruelly--for that? I can't live without you, Vivian--I won't!" "It is not a question of punishing you, Morton," she said gently. "Nor myself. It is not the sin I am considering. It is the consequences!" He felt a something high and implacable in the gentle girl; something he had never found in her before. He looked at her with despairing eyes. Her white grace, her stately little ways, her delicate beauty, had never seemed so desirable. "Good God, Vivian. You can't mean it. Give me time. Wait for me. I'll be straight all the rest of my life--I mean it. I'll be true to you, absolutely. I'll do anything you say--only don't give me up!" She felt old, hundreds of years old, and as remote as far mountains. "It isn't anything you can do--in the rest of your life, my poor boy! It is what you have done--in the first of it!... Oh, Morton! It isn't right to let us grow up without knowing! You never would have done it _if_ you'd known--would you? Can't you--can't we--do something to--stop this awfulness?" Her tender heart suffered in the pain she was inflicting, suffered too in her own loss; for as she faced the thought of final separation she found that her grief ran back into the far-off years of childhood. But she had made up her mind with a finality only the more absolute because it hurt her. Even what he said of possible recovery did not move her--the very thought of marriage had become impossible. "I shall never marry," she added, with a shiver; thinking that he might derive some comfort from the thought; but he replied with a bitter derisive little laugh. He did not rise to her appeal to "help the others." So far in life the happiness of Morton Elder had been his one engrossing care; and now the unhappiness of Morton Elder assumed even larger proportions. That bright and hallowed future to which he had been looking forward so earnestly had been suddenly withdrawn from him; his good resolutions, his "living straight" for the present, were wasted. "You women that are so superior," he said, "that'll turn a man down for things that are over and done with--that he's sorry for and ashamed of--do you know what you drive a man to! What do you think's going to become of me if you throw me over!" He reached out his hands to her in real agony. "Vivian! I love you! I can't live without you! I can't be good without you! And you love me a little--don't you?" She did. She could not deny it. She loved to shut her eyes to the future, to forgive the past, to come to those outstretched arms and bury everything beneath that one overwhelming phrase--"I love you!" But she heard again Dr. Bellair's clear low accusing voice--"Will you tell that to your crippled children?" She rose to her feet. "I cannot help it, Morton. I am sorry--you will not believe how sorry I am! But I will never marry you." A look of swift despair swept over his face. It seemed to darken visibly as she watched. An expression of bitter hatred came upon him; of utter recklessness. All that the last few months had seemed to bring of higher better feeling fell from him; and even as she pitied him she thought with a flicker of fear of how this might have happened--after marriage. "Oh, well!" he said, rising to his feet. "I wish you could have made up your mind sooner, that's all. I'll take myself off now." She reached out her hands to him. "Morton! Please!--don't go away feeling so hardly! I am--fond of you--I always was.--Won't you let me help you--to bear it--! Can't we be--friends?" Again he laughed that bitter little laugh. "No, Miss Lane," he said. "We distinctly cannot. This is good-bye--You won't change your mind--again?" She shook her head in silence, and he left her. CHAPTER XI. THEREAFTER. If I do right, though heavens fall, And end all light and laughter; Though black the night and ages long, Bitter the cold--the tempest strong-- If I do right, and brave it all-- The sun shall rise thereafter! The inaccessibility of Dr. Hale gave him, in the eye of Mrs. St. Cloud, all the attractiveness of an unscaled peak to the true mountain climber. Here was a man, an unattached man, living next door to her, whom she had not even seen. Her pursuance of what Mr. Skee announced to his friends to be "one of these Platonic Friendships," did not falter; neither did her interest in other relations less philosophic. Mr. Dykeman's precipitate descent from the class of eligibles was more of a disappointment to her than she would admit even to herself; his firm, kind friendliness had given a sense of comfort, of achieved content that her restless spirit missed. But Dr. Hale, if he had been before inaccessible, had now become so heavily fortified, so empanoplied in armor offensive and defensive, that even Mrs. Pettigrew found it difficult to obtain speech with him. That his best friend, so long supporting him in cheerful bachelorhood, should have thus late laid down his arms, was bitterly resented. That Mr. Skee, free lance of years standing, and risen victor from several "stricken fields," should show signs of capitulation, annoyed him further. Whether these feelings derived their intensity from another, which he entirely refused to acknowledge, is matter for the psychologist, and Dr. Hale avoided all psychologic self-examination. With the boys he was always a hero. They admired his quiet strength and the unbroken good nature that was always presented to those about him, whatever his inner feelings. Mr. Peters burst forth to the others one day, in tones of impassioned admiration. "By George, fellows," he said, "you know how nice Doc was last night?" "Never saw him when he wasn't," said Archie. "Don't interrupt Mr. Peters," drawled Percy. "He's on the brink of a scientific discovery. Strange how these secrets of nature can lie unrevealed about us so long--and then suddenly burst upon our ken!" Mr. Peters grinned affably. "That's all right, but I maintain my assertion; whatever the general attraction of our noble host, you'll admit that on the special occasion of yesterday evening, which we celebrated to a late hour by innocent games of cards--he was--as usual--the soul of--of----" "Affability?" suggested Percy. "Precisely!" Peters admitted. "If there is a well-chosen word which perfectly describes the manner of Dr. Richard Hale--it is affable! Thank you, sir, thank you. Well, what I wish to announce, so that you can all of you get down on your knees at once and worship, is that all last evening he--had a toothache--a bad toothache!" "My word!" said Archie, and remained silent. "Oh, come now," Percy protested, "that's against nature. Have a toothache and not _mention_ it? Not even mention it--without exaggeration! Why Archimedes couldn't do that! Or--Sandalphon--or any of them!" "How'd you learn the facts, my son? Tell us that." "Heard him on the 'phone making an appointment. 'Yes;' 'since noon yesterday,' 'yes, pretty severe.' '11:30? You can't make it earlier? All right.' I'm just mentioning it to convince you fellows that you don't appreciate your opportunities. There was some exceptional Female once--they said 'to know her was a liberal education.' What would you call it to live with Dr. Hale?" And they called it every fine thing they could think of; for these boys knew better than anyone else, the effect of that association. His patients knew him as wise, gentle, efficient, bringing a sense of hope and assurance by the mere touch of that strong hand; his professional associates in the town knew him as a good practitioner and friend, and wider medical circles, readers of his articles in the professional press had an even higher opinion of his powers. Yet none of these knew Richard Hale. None saw him sitting late in his office, the pages of his book unturned, his eyes on the red spaces of the fire. No one was with him on those night tramps that left but an hour or two of sleep to the long night, and made that sleep irresistible from self-enforced fatigue. He had left the associations of his youth and deliberately selected this far-off mountain town to build the life he chose; and if he found it unsatisfying no one was the wiser. His successive relays of boys, young fellows fresh from the East, coming from year to year and going from year to year as business called them, could and did give good testimony as to the home side of his character, however. It was not in nature that they should speculate about him. As they fell in love and out again with the facility of so many Romeos, they discoursed among themselves as to his misogyny. "He certainly has a grouch on women," they would admit. "That's the one thing you can't talk to him about--shuts up like a clam. Of course, he'll let you talk about your own feelings and experiences, but you might as well talk to the side of a hill. I wonder what did happen to him?" They made no inquiry, however. It was reported that a minister's wife, a person of determined character, had had the courage of her inquisitiveness, and asked him once, "Why is it that you have never married, Dr. Hale?" And that he had replied, "It is owing to my dislike of the meddlesomeness of women." He lived his own life, unquestioned, now more markedly withdrawn than ever, coming no more to The Cottonwoods. Even when Morton Elder left, suddenly and without warning, to the great grief of his aunt and astonishment of his sister, their medical neighbor still "sulked in his tent"--or at least in his office. Morton's departure had but one explanation; it must be that Vivian had refused him, and she did not deny it. "But why, Vivian, why? He has improved so--it was just getting lovely to see how nice he was getting. And we all thought you were so happy." Thus the perplexed Susie. And Vivian found herself utterly unable to explain to that happy little heart, on the brink of marriage, why she had refused her brother. Miss Orella was even harder to satisfy. "It's not as if you were a foolish changeable young girl, my dear. And you've known Morton all your life--he was no stranger to you. It breaks my heart, Vivian. Can't you reconsider?" The girl shook her head. "I'm awfully sorry, Miss Orella. Please believe that I did it for the best--and that it was very hard for me, too." "But, Vivian! What can be the reason? I don't think you understand what a beautiful influence you have on the boy. He has improved so, since he has been here. And he was going to get a position here in town--he told me so himself--and really settle down. And now he's _gone_. Just off and away, as he used to be--and I never shall feel easy about him again." Miss Orella was frankly crying; and it wrung the girl's heart to know the pain she was causing; not only to Morton, and to herself, but to these others. Susie criticised her with frankness. "I know you think you are right, Vivian, you always do--you and that conscience of yours. But I really think you had gone too far to draw back, Jimmie saw him that night he went away--and he said he looked awfully. And he really was changed so--beginning to be so thoroughly nice. Whatever was the matter? I think you ought to tell me, Vivian, I'm his sister, and--being engaged and all--perhaps I could straighten it out." And she was as nearly angry as her sunny nature allowed, when her friend refused to give any reason, beyond that she thought it right. Her aunt did not criticise, but pleaded. "It's not too late, I'm sure, Vivian. A word from you would bring him back in a moment. Do speak it, Vivian--do! Put your pride in your pocket, child, and don't lose a lifetime's happiness for some foolish quarrel." Miss Orella, like Susie, was at present sure that marriage must mean a lifetime's happiness. And Vivian looked miserably from one to the other of these loving women-folk, and could not defend herself with the truth. Mrs. Pettigrew took up the cudgels for her. She was not going to have her favorite grandchild thus condemned and keep silence. "Anybody'd think Vivian had married the man and then run away with another one!" she said tartly. "Pity if a girl can't change her mind before marrying--she's held down pretty close afterward. An engagement isn't a wedding, Orella Elder." "But you don't consider the poor boy's feelings in the least, Mrs. Pettigrew." "No, I don't," snapped the old lady. "I consider the poor girl's. I'm willing to bet as much as you will that his feelings aren't any worse than hers. If _he'd_ changed his mind and run off and left _her_, I warrant you two wouldn't have been so hard on him." Evading this issue, Miss Orella wiped her eyes, and said: "Heaven knows where he is now. And I'm afraid he won't write--he never did write much, and now he's just heartbroken. I don't know as I'd have seen him at all if I hadn't been awake and heard him rushing downstairs. You've no idea how he suffers." "I don't see as the girl's to blame that he hadn't decency enough to say good-bye to the aunt that's been a mother to him; or to write to her, as he ought to. A person don't need to forget _all_ their duty because they've got the mitten." Vivian shrank away from them all. Her heart ached intolerably. She had not realized how large a part in her life this constant admiration and attention had become. She missed the outward agreeableness, and the soft tide of affection, which had risen more and more warmly about her. From her earliest memories she had wished for affection--affection deep and continuous, tender and with full expression. She had been too reserved to show her feeling, too proud by far to express it, but under that delicate reticence of hers lay always that deep longing to love and to be loved wholly. Susie had been a comfort always, in her kittenish affection and caressing ways, but Susie was doubly lost, both in her new absorption and now in this estrangement. Then, to bring pain to Miss Orella, who had been so kind and sweet to her from earliest childhood, to hurt her so deeply, now, to mingle in her cup of happiness this grief and anxiety, made the girl suffer keenly. Jimmie, of course, was able to comfort Susie. He told her it was no killing matter anyhow, and that Morton would inevitably console himself elsewhere. "He'll never wear the willow for any girl, my dear. Don't you worry about him." Also, Mr. Dykeman comforted Miss Orella, not only with wise words, but with his tender sympathy and hopefulness. But no one could comfort Vivian. Even Dr. Bellair seemed to her present sensitiveness an alien, cruel power. She had come like the angel with the flaming sword to stand between her and what, now that it was gone, began to look like Paradise. She quite forgot that she had always shrunk from Morton when he made love too warmly, that she had been far from wholly pleased with him when he made his appearance there, that their engagement, so far as they had one, was tentative--"sometime, when I am good enough" not having arrived. The unreasoning voice of the woman's nature within her had answered, though but partially, to the deep call of the man's; and now she missed more than she would admit to herself the tenderness that was gone. She had her intervals of sharp withdrawal from the memory of that tenderness, of deep thanksgiving for her escape; but fear of a danger only prophesied, does not obliterate memory of joys experienced. Her grandmother watched her carefully, saying little. She forced no confidence, made no comment, was not obtrusively affectionate, but formed a definite decision and conveyed it clearly to Dr. Bellair. "Look here, Jane Bellair, you've upset Vivian's dish, and quite right; it's a good thing you did, and I don't know as you could have done it easier." "I couldn't have done it harder--that I know of," the doctor answered. "I'd sooner operate on a baby--without an anæsthetic--than tell a thing like that--to a girl like that. But it had to be done; and nobody else would." "You did perfectly right. I'm thankful enough, I promise you; if you hadn't I should have had to--and goodness knows what a mess I'd have made. But look here, the girl's going all to pieces. Now we've got to do something for her, and do it quick." "I know that well enough," answered her friend, "and I set about it even before I made the incision. You've seen that little building going up on the corner of High and Stone Streets?" "That pretty little thing with the grass and flowers round it?" "Yes--they got the flowers growing while the decorators finished inside. It's a first-rate little kindergarten. I've got a list of scholars all arranged for, and am going to pop the girl into it so fast she can't refuse. Not that I think she will." "Who did it?" demanded Mrs. Pettigrew. "That man Skee?" "Mr. Skee has had something to do with it," replied the doctor, guardedly; "but he doesn't want his name mentioned." "Huh!" said Mrs. Pettigrew. Vivian made no objection, though she was too listless to take up work with enthusiasm. As a prescription nothing could have worked better. Enough small pupils were collected to pay the rent of the pretty place, and leave a modest income for her. Dr. Bellair gathered together the mothers and aunts for a series of afternoon talks in the convenient building, Vivian assisting, and roused much interest among them. The loving touch of little hands, the pleasure of seeing the gay contentment of her well-ordered charges, began to lighten the girl's heart at last. They grew so fond of her that the mothers were jealous, but she played with and taught them so wisely, and the youngsters were so much improved by it, that no parent withdrew her darling. Further than that, the new interest, the necessary reading and study, above all the study hours of occupation acted most beneficently, slowly, but surely steadying the nerves and comforting the heart. There is a telling Oriental phrase describing sorrow: "And the whole world became strait unto him." The sense of final closing down of life, of a dull, long, narrow path between her and the grave, which had so oppressed the girl's spirit, now changed rapidly. Here was room to love at least, and she radiated a happy and unselfish affection among the little ones. Here was love in return, very sweet and honest, if shallow. Here was work; something to do, something to think about; both in her hours with the children and those spent in study. Her work took her out of the house, too; away from Susie and her aunt, with their happy chatter and endless white needlework, and the gleeful examination of presents. Never before had she known the blessed relief of another place to go to. When she left The Cottonwoods, as early as possible, and placed her key in the door of the little gray house sitting among the roses, she felt a distinct lightening of the heart. This was hers. Not her father's, not Miss Elder's; not anybody's but hers--as long as she could earn the rent. She paid her board, too, in spite of deep and pained remonstrance, forcing Miss Elder to accept it by the ultimatum "would you rather make me go away and board somewhere else?" She could not accept favors where she was condemned. This, too, gave her a feeling hitherto inexperienced, deep and inspiring. She began to hold her graceful head insensibly higher, to walk with a freer step. Life was not ended after all, though Love had gone. She might not be happy, but she might be useful and independent. Then Dr. Bellair, who had by quiet friendliness and wise waiting, regained much of her former place with the girl, asked her to undertake, as a special favor to her, the care of a class of rather delicate children and young girls, in physical culture. "Of course, Johanna Johnson is perfectly reliable and an excellent teacher. I don't know a better; but their mothers will feel easier if there's someone they know on the spot. You keep order and see that they don't overdo. You'll have to go through their little exercises with them, you see. I can't pay you anything for it; but it's only part of two afternoons in the week--and it won't hurt you at any rate." Vivian was more than glad to do something for the doctor, as well as to extend her friendship among older children; also glad of anything to further fill her time. To be alone and idle was to think and suffer. Mrs. Pettigrew came in with Dr. Bellair one afternoon to watch the exercises. "I don't see but what Vivian does the tricks as well as any of them," said her grandmother. "She does beautifully," the doctor answered. "And her influence with the children is just what they needed. You see there's no romping and foolishness, and she sets the pace--starts them off when they're shy. I'm extremely obliged to her." Mrs. Pettigrew watched Vivian's rhythmic movements, her erect carriage and swinging step, her warm color and sparkling eyes, as she led the line of happy youngsters and then turned upon the doctor. "Huh!" she said. At Susie's wedding, her childhood's friend was so far forgiven as to be chief bridesmaid, but seeing the happiness before her opened again the gates of her own pain. When it was all over, and the glad young things were safely despatched upon their ribboned way, when all the guests had gone, when Mrs. St. Cloud felt the need of air and with the ever-gallant Mr. Skee set forth in search of it, when Dr. Bellair had returned to her patients, and Miss Orella to her own parlor, and was there consoled by Mr. Dykeman for the loss of her niece, then Vivian went to her room--all hers now, looking strangely large and empty--and set down among the drifts of white tissue paper and scattered pins--alone. She sank down on the bed, weary and sad at heart, for an hour of full surrender long refused; meaning for once to let her grief have its full way with her. But, just as on the night of her hurried engagement she had been unable to taste to the full the happiness expected, so now, surrender as she might, she could not feel the intensity of expected pain. She was lonely, unquestionably. She faced a lonely life. Six long, heavy months had passed since she had made her decision. "I am nearly twenty-seven now," she thought, resignedly. "I shall never marry," and she felt a little shiver of the horror of last year. But, having got this far in melancholy contemplation, her mind refused to dwell upon it, but filled in spite of her with visions of merry little ones, prancing in wavering circles, and singing their more wavering songs. She was lonely and a single woman--but she had something to do; and far more power to do it, more interest, enthusiasm, and skill, than at the season's beginning. She thought of Morton--of what little they had heard since his hurried departure. He had gone farther West; they had heard of him in San Francisco, they had heard of him, after some months, in the Klondike region, then they had heard no more. He did not write. It seemed hard to so deeply hurt his aunt for what was no fault of hers; but Morton had never considered her feelings very deeply, his bitter anger, his hopelessness, his desperate disappointment, blinding him to any pain but his own. But her thoughts of him failed to rouse any keen distinctive sorrow. They rambled backward and forward, from the boy who had been such a trouble to his aunt, such a continuous disappointment and mortification; to the man whose wooing, looked back upon at this distance, seemed far less attractive to the memory than it had been at the time. Even his honest attempt at improvement gave her but a feeling of pity, and though pity is akin to love it is not always a near relation. From her unresisting descent into wells of pain, which proved unexpectedly shallow, the girl arose presently and quietly set to work arranging the room in its new capacity as hers only. From black and bitter agony to the gray tastelessness of her present life was not an exciting change, but Vivian had more power in quiet endurance than in immediate resistance, and set herself now in earnest to fulfill the tasks before her. This was March. She was planning an extension of her classes, the employment of an assistant. Her work was appreciated, her school increased. Patiently and steadily she faced her task, and found a growing comfort in it. When summer came, Dr. Bellair again begged her to help out in the plan of a girls' camp she was developing. This was new work for Vivian, but her season in Mrs. Johnson's gymnastic class had given her a fresh interest in her own body and the use of it. That stalwart instructress, a large-boned, calm-eyed Swedish woman, was to be the manager of the camp, and Vivian this time, with a small salary attached, was to act as assistant. "It's a wonderful thing the way people take to these camps," said Dr. Bellair. "They are springing up everywhere. Magnificent for children and young people." "It is a wonderful thing to me," observed Mrs. Pettigrew. "You go to a wild place that costs no rent; you run a summer hotel without any accommodations; you get a lot of parents to pay handsomely for letting their children be uncomfortable--and there you are." "They are not uncomfortable!" protested her friend, a little ruffled. "They like it. And besides liking it, it's good for them. It's precisely the roughing it that does them good." It did do them good; the group of young women and girls who went to the high-lying mountain lake where Dr. Bellair had bought a piece of wild, rough country for her own future use, and none of them profited by it more than Vivian. She had been, from time to time, to decorous "shore places," where one could do nothing but swim and lie on the sand; or to the "mountains," those trim, green, modest, pretty-picture mountains, of which New England is so proud; but she had never before been in an untouched wilderness. Often in the earliest dawn she would rise from the springy, odorous bed of balsam boughs and slip out alone for her morning swim. A run through the pines to a little rocky cape, with a small cave she knew, and to glide, naked, into that glass-smooth water, warmer than the sunless air, and swim out softly, silently, making hardly a ripple, turn on her back and lie there--alone with the sky--this brought peace to her heart. She felt so free from every tie to earth, so like a soul in space, floating there with the clean, dark water beneath her, and the clear, bright heaven above her; and when the pale glow in the east brightened to saffron, warmed to rose, burst into a level blaze of gold, the lake laughed in the light, and Vivian laughed, too, in pure joy of being alive and out in all that glittering beauty. She tramped the hills with the girls; picked heaping pails of wild berries, learned to cook in primitive fashion, slept as she had never slept in her life, from dark to dawn, grew brown and hungry and cheerful. After all, twenty-seven was not an old age. She came back at the summer-end, and Dr. Bellair clapped her warmly on the shoulder, declaring, "I'm proud of you, Vivian! Simply proud of you!" Her grandmother, after a judicious embrace, held her at arm's length and examined her critically. "I don't see but what you've stood it first rate," she admitted. "And if you _like_ that color--why, you certainly are looking well." She was well, and began her second year of teaching with a serene spirit. In all this time of slow rebuilding Vivian would not have been left comfortless if masculine admiration could have pleased her. The young men at The Cottonwoods, now undistracted by Susie's gay presence, concentrated much devotion upon Vivian, as did also the youths across the way. She turned from them all, gently, but with absolute decision. Among her most faithful devotees was young Percy Watson, who loved her almost as much as he loved Dr. Hale, and could never understand, in his guileless, boyish heart, why neither of them would talk about the other. They did not forbid his talking, however, and the earnest youth, sitting in the quiet parlor at The Cottonwoods, would free his heart to Vivian about how the doctor worked too hard--sat up all hours to study--didn't give himself any rest--nor any fun. "He'll break down some time--I tell him so. It's not natural for any man to work that way, and I don't see any real need of it. He says he's working on a book--some big medical book, I suppose; but what's the hurry? I wish you'd have him over here oftener, and make him amuse himself a little, Miss Vivian." "Dr. Hale is quite welcome to come at any time--he knows that," said she. Again the candid Percy, sitting on the doctor's shadowy piazza, poured out his devoted admiration for her to his silent host. "She's the finest woman I ever knew!" the boy would say. "She's so beautiful and so clever, and so pleasant to everybody. She's _square_--like a man. And she's kind--like a woman, only kinder; a sort of motherliness about her. I don't see how she ever lived so long without being married. I'd marry her in a minute if I was good enough--and if she'd have me." Dr. Hale tousled the ears of Balzac, the big, brown dog whose head was so often on his knee, and said nothing. He had not seen the girl since that night by the arbor. Later in the season he learned, perforce, to know her better, and to admire her more. Susie's baby came with the new year, and brought danger and anxiety. They hardly hoped to save the life of the child. The little mother was long unable to leave her bed. Since her aunt was not there, but gone, as Mrs. Dykeman, on an extended tour--"part business and part honeymoon," her husband told her--and since Mrs. Pettigrew now ruled alone at The Cottonwoods, with every evidence of ability and enjoyment, Vivian promptly installed herself in the Saunders home, as general housekeeper and nurse. She was glad then of her strength, and used it royally, comforting the wretched Jim, keeping up Susie's spirits, and mothering the frail tiny baby with exquisite devotion. Day after day the doctor saw her, sweet and strong and patient, leaving her school to the assistant, regardless of losses, showing the virtues he admired most in women. He made his calls as short as possible; but even so, Vivian could not but note how his sternness gave way to brusque good cheer for the sick mother, and to a lovely gentleness with the child. When that siege was over and the girl returned to her own work, she carried pleasant pictures in her mind, and began to wonder, as had so many others, why this man, who seemed so fitted to enjoy a family, had none. She missed his daily call, and wondered further why he avoided them more assiduously than at first. CHAPTER XII. ACHIEVEMENTS. There are some folk born to beauty, And some to plenteous gold, Some who are proud of being young, Some proud of being old. Some who are glad of happy love, Enduring, deep and true, And some who thoroughly enjoy The little things they do. Upon all this Grandma Pettigrew cast an observant eye, and meditated sagely thereupon. Coming to a decision, she first took a course of reading in some of Dr. Bellair's big books, and then developed a series of perplexing symptoms, not of a too poignant or perilous nature, that took her to Dr. Hale's office frequently. "You haven't repudiated Dr. Bellair, have you?" he asked her. "I have never consulted Jane Bellair as a physician," she replied, "though I esteem her much as a friend." The old lady's company was always welcome to him; he liked her penetrating eye, her close-lipped, sharp remarks, and appreciated the real kindness of her heart. If he had known how closely she was peering into the locked recesses of his own, and how much she saw there, he would perhaps have avoided her as he did Vivian, and if he had known further that this ingenious old lady, pursuing long genealogical discussions with him, had finally unearthed a mutual old-time friend, and had forthwith started a correspondence with that friend, based on this common acquaintance in Carston, he might have left that city. The old-time friend, baited by Mrs. Pettigrew's innocent comment on Dr. Hale's persistence in single blessedness, poured forth what she knew of the cause with no more embellishment than time is sure to give. "I know why he won't marry," wrote she. "He had reason good to begin with, but I never dreamed he'd be obstinate enough to keep it up sixteen years. When he was a boy in college here I knew him well--he was a splendid fellow, one of the very finest. But he fell desperately in love with that beautiful Mrs. James--don't you remember about her? She married a St. Cloud later, and he left her, I think. She was as lovely as a cameo--and as hard and flat. That woman was the saintliest thing that ever breathed. She wouldn't live with her husband because he had done something wrong; she wouldn't get a divorce, nor let him, because that was wicked--and she always had a string of boys round her, and talked about the moral influence she had on them. "Young Hale worshipped her--simply worshipped her--and she let him. She let them all. She had that much that was god-like about her--she loved incense. You need not ask for particulars. She was far too 'particular' for that. But one light-headed chap went and drowned himself--that was all hushed up, of course, but some of us felt pretty sure why. He was a half-brother to Dick Hale, and Dick was awfully fond of him. Then he turned hard and hateful all at once--used to talk horrid about women. He kept straight enough--that's easy for a mysogynist, and studying medicine didn't help him any--doctors and ministers know too much about women. So there you are. But I'm astonished to hear he's never gotten over it; he always was obstinate--it's his only fault. They say he swore never to marry--if he did, that accounts. Do give my regards if you see him again." Mrs. Pettigrew considered long and deeply over this information, as she slowly produced a jersey striped with Roman vividness. It was noticeable in this new life in Carston that Mrs. Pettigrew's knitted jackets had grown steadily brighter in hue from month to month. Whereas, in Bainville, purple and brown were the high lights, and black, slate and navy blue the main colors; now her worsteds were as a painter's palette, and the result not only cheered, but bade fair to inebriate. "A pig-headed man," she said to herself, as her needle prodded steadily in and out; "a pig-headed man, with a pig-headedness of sixteen years' standing. His hair must 'a turned gray from the strain of it. And there's Vivian, biddin' fair to be an old maid after all. What on _earth_!" She appeared to have forgotten that marriages are made in heaven, or to disregard that saying. "The Lord helps those that help themselves," was one of her favorite mottoes. "And much more those that help other people!" she used to add. Flitting in and out of Dr. Hale's at all hours, she noted that he had a fondness for music, with a phenomenal incapacity to produce any. He encouraged his boys to play on any and every instrument the town afforded, and to sing, whether they could or not; and seemed never to weary of their attempts, though far from satisfied with the product. "Huh!" said Mrs. Pettigrew. Vivian could play, "Well enough to know better," she said, and seldom touched the piano. She had a deep, full, contralto voice, and a fair degree of training. But she would never make music unless she felt like it--and in this busy life, with so many people about her, she had always refused. Grandma meditated. She selected an evening when most of the boarders were out at some entertainment, and selfishly begged Vivian to stay at home with her--said she was feeling badly and wanted company. Grandma so seldom wanted anything that Vivian readily acquiesced; in fact, she was quite worried about her, and asked Dr. Bellair if she thought anything was the matter. "She has seemed more quiet lately," said that astute lady, "and I've noticed her going in to Dr. Hale's during office hours. But perhaps it's only to visit with him." "Are you in any pain, Grandma?" asked the girl, affectionately. "You're not sick, are you?" "O, no--I'm not sick," said the old lady, stoutly. "I'm just--well, I felt sort of lonesome to-night--perhaps I'm homesick." As she had never shown the faintest sign of any feeling for their deserted home, except caustic criticism and unfavorable comparison, Vivian rather questioned this theory, but she began to think there was something in it when her grandmother, sitting by the window in the spring twilight, began to talk of how this time of year always made her think of her girlhood. "Time for the March peepers at home. It's early here, and no peepers anywhere that I've heard. 'Bout this time we'd be going to evening meeting. Seems as if I could hear that little old organ--and the singing!" "Hadn't I better shut that window," asked Vivian. "Won't you get cold?" "No, indeed," said her grandmother, promptly. "I'm plenty warm--I've got this little shawl around me. And it's so soft and pleasant out." It was soft and pleasant, a delicious May-like night in March, full of spring scents and hints of coming flowers. On the dark piazza across the way she could make out a still figure sitting alone, and the thump of Balzac's heel as he struggled with his intimate enemies told her who it was. "Come Ye Disconsolate," she began to hum, most erroneously. "How does that go, Vivian? I was always fond of it, even if I can't sing any more'n a peacock." Vivian hummed it and gave the words in a low voice. "That's good!" said the old lady. "I declare, I'm kinder hungry for some of those old hymns. I wish you'd play me some of 'em, Vivian." So Vivian, glad to please her, woke the yellow keys to softer music than they were accustomed to, and presently her rich, low voice, sure, easy, full of quiet feeling, flowed out on the soft night air. Grandma was not long content with the hymns. "I want some of those old-fashioned songs--you used to know a lot of 'em. Can't you do that 'Kerry Dance' of Molloy's, and 'Twickenham Ferry'--and 'Lauriger Horatius?'" Vivian gave her those, and many another, Scotch ballads, English songs and German Lieder--glad to please her grandmother so easily, and quite unconscious of a dark figure which had crossed the street and come silently to sit on the farthest corner of their piazza. Grandma, meanwhile, watched him, and Vivian as well, and then, with the most unsuspected suddenness, took to her bed. Sciatica, she said. An intermittent pain that came upon her so suddenly she couldn't stand up. She felt much better lying down. And Dr. Hale must attend her unceasingly. This unlooked for overthrow of the phenomenally active old lady was a great blow to Mr. Skee; he showed real concern and begged to be allowed to see her. "Why not?" said Mrs. Pettigrew. "It's nothing catching." She lay, high-pillowed, as stiff and well arranged as a Knight Templar on a tombstone, arrayed for the occasion in a most decorative little dressing sack and ribbony night-cap. "Why, ma'am," said Mr. Skee, "it's highly becomin' to you to be sick. It leads me to hope it's nothin' serious." She regarded him enigmatically. "Is Dr. Hale out there, or Vivian?" she inquired in a low voice. "No, ma'am--they ain't," he replied, after a glance in the next room. Then he bent a penetrating eye upon her. She met it unflinchingly, but as his smile appeared and grew, its limitless widening spread contagion, and her calm front was broken. "Elmer Skee," said she, with sudden fury, "you hold your tongue!" "Ma'am!" he replied, "I have said nothin'--and I don't intend to. But if the throne of Europe was occupied by you, Mrs. Pettigrew, we would have a better managed world." He proved a most agreeable and steady visitor during this period of confinement, and gave her full accounts of all that went on outside, with occasional irrelevant bursts of merriment which no rebuke from Mrs. Pettigrew seemed wholly to check. He regaled her with accounts of his continuous consultations with Mrs. St. Cloud, and the wisdom and good taste with which she invariably advised him. "Don't you admire a Platonic Friendship, Mrs. Pettigrew?" "I do not!" said the old lady, sharply. "And what's more I don't believe you do." "Well, ma'am," he answered, swaying backward and forward on the hind legs of his chair, "there are moments when I confess it looks improbable." Mrs. Pettigrew cocked her head on one side and turned a gimlet eye upon him. "Look here, Elmer Skee," she said suddenly, "how much money have you really got?" He brought down his chair on four legs and regarded her for a few moments, his smile widening slowly. "Well, ma'am, if I live through the necessary expenses involved on my present undertaking, I shall have about two thousand a year--if rents are steady." "Which I judge you do not wish to be known?" "If there's one thing more than another I have always admired in you, ma'am, it is the excellence of your judgment. In it I have absolute confidence." Mrs. St. Cloud had some time since summoned Dr. Hale to her side for a severe headache, but he had merely sent word that his time was fully occupied, and recommended Dr. Bellair. Now, observing Mrs. Pettigrew's tactics, the fair invalid resolved to take the bull by the horns and go herself to his office. She found him easily enough. He lifted his eyes as she entered, rose and stood with folded arms regarding her silently. The tall, heavy figure, the full beard, the glasses, confused even her excellent memory. After all it was many years since they had met, and he had been but one of a multitude. She was all sweetness and gentle apology for forcing herself upon him, but really she had a little prejudice against women doctors--his reputation was so great--he was so temptingly near--she was in such pain--she had such perfect confidence in him-- He sat down quietly and listened, watching her from under his bent brows. Her eyes were dropped, her voice very weak and appealing; her words most perfectly chosen. "I have told you," he said at length, "that I never treat women for their petty ailments, if I can avoid it." She shook her head in grieved acceptance, and lifted large eyes for one of those penetrating sympathetic glances so frequently successful. "How you must have suffered!" she said. "I have," he replied grimly. "I have suffered a long time from having my eyes opened too suddenly to the brainless cruelty of women, Mrs. James." She looked at him again, searchingly, and gave a little cry. "Dick Hale!" she said. "Yes, Dick Hale. Brother to poor little Joe Medway, whose foolish young heart you broke, among others; whose death you are responsible for." She was looking at him with widening wet eyes. "Ah! If you only knew how I, too, have suffered over that!" she said. "I was scarce more than a girl myself, then. I was careless, not heartless. No one knew what pain I was bearing, then. I liked the admiration of those nice boys--I never realized any of them would take it seriously. That has been a heavy shadow on my life, Dr. Hale--the fear that I was the thoughtless cause of that terrible thing. And you have never forgiven me. I do not wonder." He was looking at her in grim silence again, wishing he had not spoken. "So that is why you have never been to The Cottonwoods since I came," she pursued. "And I am responsible for all your loneliness. O, how dreadful!" Again he rose to his feet. "No, madam, you mistake. You were responsible for my brother's death, and for a bitter awakening on my part, but you are in no way responsible for my attitude since. That is wholly due to myself. Allow me again to recommend Dr. Jane Bellair, an excellent physician and even more accessible." He held the door for her, and she went out, not wholly dissatisfied with her visit. She would have been far more displeased could she have followed his thoughts afterward. "What a Consummate Ass I have been all my life!" he was meditating. "Because I met this particular type of sex parasite, to deliberately go sour--and forego all chance of happiness. Like a silly girl. A fool girl who says, 'I will never marry!' just because of some quarrel * * * But the girl never keeps her word. A man must." The days were long to Vivian now, and dragged a little, for all her industry. Mrs. St. Cloud tried to revive their former intimacy, but the girl could not renew it on the same basis. She, too, had sympathized with Mr. Dykeman, and now sympathized somewhat with Mr. Skee. But since that worthy man still volubly discoursed on Platonism, and his fair friend openly agreed in this view, there seemed no real ground for distress. Mrs. Pettigrew remained ailing and rather captious. She had a telephone put at her bedside, and ran her household affairs efficiently, with Vivian as lieutenant, and the ever-faithful Jeanne to uphold the honor of the cuisine. Also she could consult her physician, and demanded his presence at all hours. He openly ignored Mrs. St. Cloud now, who met his rude treatment with secret, uncomplaining patience. Vivian spoke of this. "I do not see why he need be so rude, Grandma. He may hate women, but I don't see why he should treat her so shamefully." "Well, I do," replied the invalid, "and what's more I'm going to show you; I've always disliked that woman, and now I know why. I'd turn her out of the house if it wasn't for Elmer Skee. That man's as good as gold under all his foolishness, and if he can get any satisfaction out of that meringue he's welcome. Dr. Hale doesn't hate women, child, but a woman broke his heart once--and then he made an idiot of himself by vowing never to marry." She showed her friend's letter, and Vivian read it with rising color. "O, Grandma! Why that's worse than I ever thought--even after what Dr. Bellair told us. And it was his brother! No wonder he's so fond of boys. He tries to warn them, I suppose." "Yes, and the worst of it is that he's really got over his grouch; and he's in love--but tied down by that foolish oath, poor man." "Is he, Grandma? How do you know? With whom?" "You dear, blind child!" said the old lady, "with you, of course. Has been ever since we came." The girl sat silent, a strange feeling of joy rising in her heart, as she reviewed the events of the last two years. So that was why he would not stay that night. And that was why. "No wonder he wouldn't come here!" she said at length. "It's on account of that woman. But why did he change?" "Because she went over there to see him. He wouldn't come to her. I heard her 'phone to him one evening." The old lady chuckled. "So she marched herself over there--I saw her, and I guess she got her needin's. She didn't stay long. And his light burned till morning." "Do you think he cares for her, still?" "Cares for her!" The old lady fairly snorted her derision. "He can't bear the sight of her--treats her as if she wasn't there. No, indeed. If he did she'd have him fast enough, now. Well! I suppose he'll repent of that foolishness of his all the days of his life--and stick it out! Poor man." Mrs. Pettigrew sighed, and Vivian echoed the sigh. She began to observe Dr. Hale with new eyes; to study little matters of tone and manner--and could not deny her grandmother's statement. Nor would she admit it--yet. The old lady seemed weaker and more irritable, but positively forbade any word of this being sent to her family. "There's nothing on earth ails me," she said. "Dr. Hale says there's not a thing the matter that he can see--that if I'd only eat more I'd get stronger. I'll be all right soon, my dear. I'll get my appetite and get well, I have faith to believe." She insisted on his coming over in the evening, when not too busy, and staying till she dropped asleep, and he seemed strangely willing to humor her; sitting for hours in the quiet parlor, while Vivian played softly, and sang her low-toned hymns. So sitting, one still evening, when for some time no fretful "not so loud" had come from the next room, he turned suddenly to Vivian and asked, almost roughly--"Do you hold a promise binding?--an oath, a vow--to oneself?" She met his eyes, saw the deep pain there, the long combat, the irrepressible hope and longing. "Did you swear to keep your oath secret?" she asked. "Why, no," he said, "I did not. I will tell you. I did not swear never to tell a woman I loved her. I never dreamed I should love again. Vivian, I was fool enough to love a shallow, cruel woman, once, and nearly broke my heart in consequence. That was long years ago. I have never cared for a woman since--till I met you. And now I must pay double for that boy folly." He came to her and took her hand. "I love you," he said, his tense grip hurting her. "I shall love you as long as I live--day and night--forever! You shall know that at any rate!" She could not raise her eyes. A rich bright color rose to the soft border of her hair. He caught her face in his hands and made her look at him; saw those dark, brilliant eyes softened, tear-filled, asking, and turned sharply away with a muffled cry. "I have taken a solemn oath," he said in a strained, hard voice, "never to ask a woman to marry me." He heard a little gasping laugh, and turned upon her. She stood there smiling, her hands reached out to him. "You don't have to," she said. * * * * * A long time later, upon their happy stillness broke a faint voice from the other room: "Vivian, I think if you'd bring me some bread and butter--and a cup of tea--and some cold beef and a piece of pie--I could eat it." * * * * * Upon the rapid and complete recovery of her grandmother's health, and the announcement of Vivian's engagement, Mr. and Mrs. Lane decided to make a visit to their distant mother and daughter, hoping as well that Mr. Lane's cough might be better for a visit in that altitude. Mr. and Mrs. Dykeman also sent word of their immediate return. Jeanne, using subtle powers of suggestion, caused Mrs. Pettigrew to decide upon giving a dinner, in honor of these events. There was the betrothed couple, there were the honored guests; there were Jimmie and Susie, with or without the baby; there were the Dykemans; there was Dr. Bellair, of course; there was Mr. Skee, an even number. "I'm sorry to spoil that table, but I've got to take in Mrs. St. Cloud," said the old lady. "O, Grandma! Why! It'll spoil it for Dick." "Huh!" said her grandmother. "He's so happy you couldn't spoil it with a mummy. If I don't ask her it'll spoil it for Mr. Skee." So Mrs. St. Cloud made an eleventh at the feast, and neither Mr. Dykeman nor Vivian could find it in their happy hearts to care. Mr. Skee arose, looking unusually tall and shapely in immaculate every-day dress, his well-brushed hair curling vigorously around the little bald spots; his smile wide and benevolent. "Ladies and Gentlemen, both Domestic and Foreign, Friends and Fellowtownsmen and Women--Ladies, God Bless 'em; also Children, if any: I feel friendly enough to-night to include the beasts of the fields--but such would be inappropriate at this convivial board--among these convivial boarders. "This is an occasion of great rejoicing. We have many things to rejoice over, both great _and_ small. We have our healths; all of us, apparently. We are experiencing the joys of reunion--in the matter of visiting parents that is, and long absent daughters. "We have also the Return of the Native, in the shape of my old friend Andy--now become a Benedict--and seeming to enjoy it. About this same Andy I have a piece of news to give you which will cause you astonishment and gratification, but which involves me in a profuse apology--a most sincere and general apology. "You know how a year or more ago it was put about in this town that Andrew Dykeman was a ruined man?" Mrs. St. Cloud darted a swift glance at Mr. Dykeman, but his eyes rested calmly on his wife; then at Mr. Skee--but he was pursuing his remorseful way. "I do not wish to blame my friend Andy for his reticence--but he certainly did exhibit reticence on this occasion--to beat the band! He never contradicted this rumor--not once. _He_ just went about looking kind o' down in the mouth for some reason or other, and when for the sake o' Auld Lang Syne I offered him a job in my office--the cuss took it! I won't call this deceitful, but it sure was reticent to a degree. "Well, Ladies--and Gentlemen--the best of us are liable to mistakes, and I have to admit--I am glad to humble myself and make this public admission--I was entirely in error in this matter. "It wasn't so. There was nothing in it. It was rumor, pure and simple. Andy Dykeman never lost no mine, it appears; or else he had another up his sleeve concealed from his best friends. Anyhow, the facts are these; not only that A. Dykeman as he sits before you is a prosperous and wealthy citizen, but that he has been, for these ten years back, and we were all misled by a mixture of rumor and reticence. If he has concealed these facts from the wife of his bosom I submit that that is carrying reticence too far!" Again Mrs. St. Cloud sent a swift glance at the reticent one, and again caught only his tender apologetic look toward his wife, and her utter amazement. Mr. Dykeman rose to his feet. "I make no apologies for interrupting my friend," he said. "It is necessary at times. He at least can never be accused of reticence. Neither do I make apologies for letting rumor take its course--a course often interesting to observe. But I do apologize--in this heartfelt and public manner, to my wife, for marrying her under false pretenses. But any of you gentlemen who have ever had any experience in the attitude of," he hesitated mercifully, and said, "the World, toward a man with money, may understand what it meant to me, after many years of bachelorhood, to find a heart that not only loved me for myself alone, but absolutely loved me better because I'd lost my money--or she thought I had. I have hated to break the charm. But now my unreticent friend here has stated the facts, and I make my confession. Will you forgive me, Orella?" "Speech! Speech!" cried Mr. Skee. But Mrs. Dykeman could not be persuaded to do anything but blush and smile and squeeze her husband's hand under the table, and Mr. Skee arose once more. "This revelation being accomplished," he continued cheerfully; "and no one any the worse for it, as I see," he was not looking in the direction of Mrs. St. Cloud, whose slippered foot beat softly under the table, though her face wore its usual sweet expression, possibly a trifle strained; "I now proceed to a proclamation of that happy event to celebrate which we are here gathered together. I allude to the Betrothal of Our Esteemed Friend, Dr. Richard Hale, and the Fairest of the Fair! Regarding the Fair, we think he has chosen well. But regarding Dick Hale, his good fortune is so clear, so evidently undeserved, and his pride and enjoyment thereof so ostentatious, as to leave us some leeway to make remarks. "Natural remarks, irresistible remarks, as you might say, and not intended to be acrimonious. Namely, such as these: It's a long lane that has no turning; There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip; The worm will turn; The pitcher that goes too often to the well gets broken at last; Better Late than Never. And so on and so forth. Any other gentleman like to make remarks on this topic?" Dr. Hale rose, towering to his feet. "I think I'd better make them," he said. "No one else could so fully, so heartily, with such perfect knowledge point out how many kinds of a fool I've been for all these years. And yet of them all there are only two that I regret--this last two in which if I had been wiser, perhaps I might have found my happiness sooner. As that cannot be proven, however, I will content myself with the general acknowledgment that Bachelors are Misguided Bats, I myself having long been the worst instance; women, in general, are to be loved and honored; and that I am proud and glad to accept your congratulations because the sweetest and noblest woman in the world has honored me with her love." "I never dreamed you could put so many words together, Doc--and really make sense!" said Mr. Skee, genially, as he rose once more. "You certainly show a proper spirit at last, and all is forgiven. But now, my friends; now if your attention is not exhausted, I have yet another Event to confide to you." Mr. and Mrs. Lane wore an aspect of polite interest. Susie and Jim looked at each other with a sad but resigned expression. So did Mrs. Dykeman and her husband. Vivian's hand was in her lover's and she could not look unhappy, but they, too, deprecated this last announcement, only too well anticipated. Only Mrs. St. Cloud, her fair face bowed in gentle confusion, showed anticipating pleasure. Mr. Skee waved his hand toward her with a large and graceful gesture. "You must all of you have noticed the amount of Platonic Friendship which has been going on for some time between my undeserving self and this lovely lady here. Among so many lovely ladies perhaps I'd better specify that I refer to the one on my left. "What she has been to me, in my lonely old age, none of you perhaps realize." He wore an expression as of one long exiled, knowing no one who could speak his language. "She has been my guide, counsellor and friend; she has assisted me with advice most wise and judicious; she has not interfered with my habits, but has allowed me to enjoy life in my own way, with the added attraction of her companionship. "Now, I dare say, there may have been some of you who have questioned my assertion that this friendship was purely Platonic. Perhaps even the lady herself, knowing the heart of man, may have doubted if my feeling toward her was really friendship." Mr. Skee turned his head a little to one side and regarded her with a tender inquiring smile. To this she responded sweetly: "Why no, Mr. Skee, of course, I believed what you said." "There, now," said he, admiringly. "What is so noble as the soul of woman? It is to this noble soul in particular, and to all my friends here in general, that I now confide the crowning glory of a long and checkered career, namely, and to wit, that I am engaged to be married to that Peerless Lady, Mrs. Servilla Pettigrew, of whose remarkable capacities and achievements I can never sufficiently express my admiration." A silence fell upon the table. Mr. Skee sat down smiling, evidently in cheerful expectation of congratulations. Mrs. Pettigrew wore an alert expression, as of a skilled fencer preparing to turn any offered thrusts. Mrs. St. Cloud seemed to be struggling with some emotion, which shook her usual sweet serenity. The others, too, were visibly affected, and not quick to respond. Then did Mr. Saunders arise with real good nature and ever-ready wit; and pour forth good-humored nonsense with congratulations all around, till a pleasant atmosphere was established, in which Mrs. St. Cloud could so far recover as to say many proper and pretty things; sadly adding that she regretted her imminent return to the East would end so many pleasant friendships. * * * * * BOOKS BY Charlotte Perkins Gilman Moving the Mountain. A Utopia at short range. How we might change this country in thirty years, if we changed our minds first. Mrs. Gilman's latest book, like her earliest verse, is a protest against the parrot cry that "you can't alter human nature." By mail of Charlton Co., $1.10 What Diantha Did. A Novel. 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Minor punctuation . , ; " ' changes have been made without annotation. Other changes to the original text are listed as follows: Page 2 Man-made/Man-Made: The Man-Made World Page 45 evclaimed/exclaimed: exclaimed his wife Page 110 Removed repeated word a: were a real Page 115 who/why: why his hair's Page 134 though/thought: I thought as much Page 164 Mr./My: My dear Miss Page 169 Removed repeated word and: her own and set it Page 174 Removed redundant word a: he had not had Page 194 though/thought: I thought I heard Page 197 litle/little: a little dampened Page 240 weedings/weddings: wooings and weddings Page 260 irrestible/irresistible: sleep irresistible from Page 261 Cottonwood/Cottonwoods: to The Cottonwoods Page 285 busband/husband: live with her husband Page 317 massages/messages: its messages are not only 
38959	----	Transcriber's Note Italic text is presented as _Text_. UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Volume 18, No. 5, pp. 421-504 August 20, 1969 Comparative Ecology of Pinyon Mice and Deer Mice in Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado BY CHARLES L. DOUGLAS UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS LAWRENCE 1969 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS, MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Editors of this number: Frank B. Cross, Philip S. Humphrey, J. Knox Jones, Jr. Volume 18, No. 5, pp. 421-504 Published August 20, 1969 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS Lawrence, Kansas PRINTED BY ROBERT R. (BOB) SANDERS, STATE PRINTER TOPEKA, KANSAS 1969 [Illustration] 32-6879 CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION 424 Physiography 425 Vegetation and Climate 427 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 427 DESCRIPTIONS OF MAJOR TRAPPING LOCALITIES 428 HOME RANGE 435 Calculations of Home Range 437 Analysis by Inclusive Boundary Strip 439 Analysis by Exclusive Boundary Strip 440 Adjusted Length of Home Range 440 Distance Between Captures 441 VEGETATIONAL ANALYSIS OF HABITATS 446 MICROCLIMATES OF DIFFERENT HABITATS 450 HABITAT PREFERENCE 459 NESTING AND NEST CONSTRUCTION 461 REPRODUCTION 465 GROWTH 469 PARENTAL BEHAVIOR 471 Transportation of Young 472 CHANGES OWING TO INCREASE IN AGE 475 ANOMALIES AND INJURIES 476 Losses Attributed to Exposure in Traps 477 Dental Anomalies 478 Anomalies in the Skull 478 FOOD HABITS 479 WATER CONSUMPTION 482 PARASITISM 491 PREDATION 493 DISCUSSION 495 Factors Affecting Population Densities 497 Adaptations to Environment 499 LITERATURE CITED 501 INTRODUCTION Centuries ago in southwestern Colorado the prehistoric Pueblo inhabitants of the Mesa Verde region expressed their interest in mammals by painting silhouettes of them on pottery and on the walls of kivas. Pottery occasionally was made in the stylized form of animals such as the mountain sheep. The silhouettes of sheep and deer persist as pictographs or petroglyphs on walls of kivas and on rocks near prehistoric dwellings. Mammalian bones from archeological sites reveal that the fauna of Mesa Verde was much the same in A. D. 1200, when the Pueblo Indians were building their magnificent cliff dwellings, as it is today. One of the native mammals is the ubiquitous deer mouse, _Peromyscus maniculatus_. The geographic range of this species includes most of the United States, and large parts of Mexico and Canada. Another species of the same genus, the pinyon mouse, _P. truei_, also lives on the Mesa Verde. The pinyon mouse lives mostly in southwestern North America, occurring from central Oregon and southern Wyoming to northern Oaxaca. This species generally is associated with pinyon pine trees, or with juniper trees, and where the pinyon-juniper woodland is associated with rocky ground (Hoffmeister, 1951:vii). _P. maniculatus rufinus_ of Mesa Verde was considered to be a mountain subspecies by Osgood (1909:73). The center of dispersion for _P. truei_ was in the southwestern United States, and particularly in the Colorado Plateau area (Hoffmeister, 1951:vii). The subspecies _P. truei truei_ occurs mainly in the Upper Sonoran life-zone, and according to Hoffmeister (1951:30) rarely enters the Lower Sonoran or Transition life-zones. _P. maniculatus_ and _P. truei_ are the most abundant of the small mammals in Mesa Verde National Park, which comprises about one-third of the Mesa Verde land mass. Under the auspices of the Wetherill Mesa Archeological Project, the flora of the park recently was studied by Erdman (1962), and by Welsh and Erdman (1964). These studies have revealed stands of several distinct types of vegetation in the park and where each type occurs. This information greatly facilitated my study of the mammals inhabiting each type of association. The flora and fauna within the park are protected, in keeping with the policies of the National Park Service, and mammals, therefore, could be studied in a relatively undisturbed setting. Thus, the abundance of these two species of _Peromyscus_, the botanical studies that preceded and accompanied my study, the relatively undisturbed nature of the park, and the availability of a large area in which extended studies could be carried on, all contributed to the desirability of Mesa Verde as a study area. My primary purpose in undertaking a study of the two species of _Peromyscus_ was to analyze a number of ecological factors influencing each species--their habitat preferences, how the mice lived within their habitats, what they ate, where they nested, what preyed on them, and how one species influenced the distribution of the other. In general, my interest was in how the lives of the two species impinge upon each other in Mesa Verde. Physiography The Mesa Verde consists of about 200 square miles of plateau country in southwestern Colorado, just northeast of Four Corners, where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah meet. In 1906, more than 51,000 acres of the Mesa Verde were set aside, as Mesa Verde National Park, in order to protect the cliff dwellings for which the area is famous. The Mesa Verde land mass is composed of cross-bedded sandstone strata laid down by Upper Cretaceous seas. These strata are known locally as the Mesaverde group, and are composed, from top to bottom, of Cliff House sandstone, the Menefee formation, the Point Lookout sandstone, the well known Mancos shale, and the Dakota sandstone, the lowest member of the Cretaceous strata. The Menefee formation is 340 to 800 feet thick, and contains carbonaceous shale and beds of coal. There are surface deposits of Pleistocene and Recent age, with gravel and boulders of alluvial origin; colluvium composed of heterogeneous rock detritus such as talus and landslide material; and alluvium composed of soil, sand, and gravel. A layer of loess overlays the bedrock of the flat mesa tops in the Four Corners area. The earliest preserved loess is probably pre-Wisconsin, possibly Sangamon in age (Arrhenius and Bonatti, 1965:99). The North Rim of Mesa Verde rises majestically, 1,500 feet above the surrounding Montezuma Valley. Elevations in the park range from 8,500 feet at Park Point to about 6,500 feet at the southern ends of the mesas. The Mesa Verde land mass is the remnant of a plateau that erosion has dissected into a series of long, narrow mesas, joined at their northern ends, but otherwise separated by deep canyons. The bottoms of these canyons are from 600 to 900 feet below the tops of the mesas. The entire Mesa Verde land mass tilts southward; Park Headquarters, in the middle of Chapin Mesa (Fig. 1), is at about the same elevation as is the entrance of the park, 20 miles by road to the north. [Illustration: FIG. 1: Map of Mesa Verde National Park and vicinity, showing major trapping localities from 1961-1964. Trapping localities are designated in the text as follows: 1) North End Wetherill Mesa 2) Rock Springs 3) Mug House 4) Bobcat Canyon Drainage 5) North of Long House 6) Juniper-Pinyon-Bitterbrush Site 7) Navajo Hill 8) West of Far View Ruins 9) South of Far View Ruins, also general location of trapping grid 10) M-2 Weather Station 11) East Loop Road Site 12) Big Sagebrush Stand, Southern end Chapin Mesa 13) Grassy Meadow, Southern end Moccasin Mesa 14) Bedrock Outcroppings, Southern end Moccasin Mesa 15) 1/4 mi. SE Park Entrance 16) Meadow, 1 mi. SE Park Entrance 17) Morfield Ridge.] Vegetation and Climate Mesa Verde is characterized by pinyon-juniper woodlands that extend throughout much of the West and Southwest. Although the pinyon-juniper woodland dominates the mesa tops, stands of Douglas fir occur in some sheltered canyons and on north-facing slopes. Thickets of Gambel oak and Utah serviceberry cover many hillsides and form a zone of brush at higher elevations in the park. Aspens grow in small groups at the base of the Point Lookout sandstone and at a few other sheltered places where the supply of moisture suffices. Individual ponderosa pine are scattered through the park, and stands of this species occur on some slopes and in the bottoms of some sheltered canyons. Tall sagebrush grows in deep soils of canyon bottoms, and in some burned areas, and was found to be a good indicator of prehistoric occupation sites. The climate of Mesa Verde is semi-arid, and most months are dry and pleasant. Annual precipitation has averaged about 18.5 inches for the last 40 years. July and August are the months having the most rainfall. Snow falls intermittently in winter, and may persist all winter on north-facing slopes and in valleys. In most years, snow is melting and the kinds of animals that hibernate are emerging by the first of April. Because of the great differences in elevation between the northern and southern ends of the mesas, differences in climate are appreciable at these locations. Winter always is the more severe on the northern end of the park, owing to persistent winds, lower temperatures, and more snow. The northern end of the park is closer to the nearby La Platta Mountains where ephemeral storms of summer originate. They reach the higher elevations of the park first, but such storms dissipate rapidly and are highly localized. The northern end of the park therefore receives much more precipitation in summer and winter than does the southern end. The difference in precipitation and the extremes in weather between the northern and southern ends of the mesas affect the distribution of plants and animals. Species of mammals, plants, and reptiles are most numerous on the middle parts of the mesas, as also are cliff-dwellings, surface sites, and farming terraces of the prehistoric Indians. Anderson (1961) reported on the mammals of Mesa Verde National Park, and Douglas (1966) reported on the amphibians and reptiles. In each of these reports, earlier collections are listed and earlier reports are summarized. I lived in Mesa Verde National Park for 28 months in the period July 1961 to September 1964, while working as Biologist for the Wetherill Mesa Archeological Project, and the study here reported on is one of the faunal studies that I undertook. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This study could not have been completed without the assistance and encouragement of numerous persons. I am grateful to Dr. Olwen Williams, of the University of Colorado, for suggesting this study and helping me plan the early phases of it. Mr. Chester A. Thomas, formerly Superintendent, and Mrs. Jean Pinkley, formerly Chief of Interpretation at Mesa Verde National Park, permitted me to use the park's facilities for research, issued collecting permits, and in 1965 appointed me as a research collaborator in order that I might complete my studies. Dr. H. Douglas Osborne, California State College, Long Beach, formerly Supervisory Archeologist of the Wetherill Mesa Project, took an active interest in my research and provided supplies, transportation and laboratory and field assistance under the auspices of the Wetherill Project. His assistance and encouragement are gratefully acknowledged. Mrs. Marilyn A. Colyer of Mancos, Colorado, ably assisted in analyzing vegetation in the trapping grid; Mr. Robert R. Patterson, the University of Kansas, assisted me in the field in October of 1963 and in August of 1965. Mr. James A. Erdman, United States Geological Survey, Denver, formerly Botanist for the Wetherill Mesa Project, and Dr. Stanley L. Welsh, Brigham Young University, identified plants for me in the field, and checked my identifications of herbarium specimens. I owe my knowledge of the flora in the park to my association with these two capable botanists. I am grateful to the following persons for identification of invertebrates: D. Eldon Beck, fleas and ticks; Paul Winston, mites; V. Eugene Nelson, mites; William Wrenn, mites; Wayne W. Moss, mites; William B. Nutting, mites (_Desmodex_); Marilyn A. Colyer, insects; John E. Ubelaker, endoparasites; Veryl F. Keen, botflies. George A. King, Architect, of Durango, Colorado, prepared the original map for Figure 1. Mr. Harold Shepherd of Mancos, Colorado, Senior Game Biologist, Colorado Department of Fish, Game and Parks, obtained permission for me to use the department's trapping grid near Far View Ruins, and provided me with preserved specimens of mice. Mr. Fred E. Mang Jr., Photographer, National Park Service, processed large numbers of photomicrographs of plant epidermis. Dr. Kenneth B. Armitage, The University of Kansas, offered valuable suggestions for the study of water consumption in the two species of _Peromyscus_, and permitted me to use facilities of the Zoological Research Laboratories at The University of Kansas. Dr. Richard F. Johnston, The University of Kansas, permitted me to house mice in his controlled-temperature room at the Zoological Research Laboratories. I am grateful to all of the above mentioned persons for their aid. I acknowledge with gratitude the guidance, encouragement, and critical assistance of Professor E. Raymond Hall throughout the course of the study and preparation of the manuscript. I also extend my sincere thanks to Professors Henry S. Fitch, Robert W. Baxter, and William A. Clemens for their helpful suggestions and assistance. To my wife, Virginia, I am grateful for encouragement and assistance with many time-consuming tasks connected with field work and preparation of the manuscript. Travel funds provided by the Kansas Academy of Science permitted me to work in the park in August, 1965. The Wetherill Mesa Project was an interdisciplinary program of the National Park Service to which the National Geographic Society contributed generously. I am indebted to the Society for a major share of the support that resulted in this report. This is contribution No. 44 of the Wetherill Mesa Project. DESCRIPTIONS OF MAJOR TRAPPING LOCALITIES Trapping was begun in September of 1961 in order to analyze the composition of rodent populations within the park. I used the method of trapping employed by Calhoun (1948) in making the Census of North American Small Mammals (N. A. C. S. M.). It consisted of two lines of traps, each 1,000 feet long having 20 trapping stations that were 50 feet apart. The lines were either parallel at a distance of 400 feet from each other, or were joined to form a line 2,000 feet long. Three snap traps were placed within a five-foot radius of each station, and were set for three consecutive nights. More than a dozen areas were selected for extensive trapping (Fig. 1). Some of these were retrapped in consecutive years in order to measure changes in populations. One circular trapline of 159.5 feet radius was established in November 1961, and was tended for 30 consecutive days to observe the effect of removing the more dominant species (Calhoun, 1959). Other mouse traps and rat traps were set in suitable places on talus slopes, rocky cliffs, and in cliff dwellings. Most of these traps were operated for three consecutive nights. In order to test hypotheses concerning habitat preferences of each of the species of _Peromyscus_, several previously untrapped areas that appeared to be ideal habitat for one species, but not for the other, were selected for sampling. In the summers of 1963 and 1964 snap traps were set along an arbitrary line through each of these areas. Traps were placed in pairs; each pair was 20 feet from the adjacent pairs. A mixture of equal parts of peanut butter, bacon grease, raisins, roman meal and rolled oats was used as bait. Rolled oats or coarsely ground scratch feed was used in areas where insects removed the mixture from the traps. Rodents trapped by me were variously prepared as study skins with skulls, as flat skins with skulls, as skeletons, as skulls only, or as alcoholics. Representative specimens were deposited in The University of Kansas Museum of Natural History. In the course of my study, traps were set in the following areas: _Morfield Ridge_ In July 1959 a fire destroyed more than 2,000 acres of pinyon-juniper forest (_Pinus edulis_ and _Juniperus osteosperma_) in the eastern part of the park. The burned area extends from Morfield Canyon to Waters Canyon, encompassing several canyons, Whites Mesa, and a ridge between Morfield Canyon and Waters Canyon that is known locally as Morfield Ridge (Fig. 1). Beginning on September 4, 1961, three pairs of traplines were run on this ridge at elevations of 7,300 to 7,600 feet. Vegetation in the trapping area consisted of dense growths of grasses and herbaceous plants, which had covered the ground with seeds. In this and in the following accounts, the generic and specific names of plants are those used by Welsh and Erdman (1964). The following plants were identified from the trapping area on Morfield Ridge: _Lithospermum ruderale_ _Chenopodium pratericola_ _Achillea millefolium_ _Artemisia tridentata_ _Aster bigelovii_ _Chrysothamnus depressus_ _Chrysothamnus nauseosus_ _Helianthus annuus_ _Helianthella_ sp. _Lactuca_ sp. _Lepidium montanum_ _Quercus gambelii_ _Agropyron smithii_ _Bromus inermis_ _Bromus japonicus_ _Oryzopsis hymenoides_ _Calochortus nuttallii_ _Linum perenne_ _Sphaeralcea coccinea_ _Polygonum sawatchense_ _Solidago petradoria_ _Wyethia arizonica_ _Nicotiana attenuata_ _Fendlera rupicola_ _Penstemon linarioides_ Only _Peromyscus maniculatus_, _Perognathus apache_ and _Reithrodontomys megalotis_ were taken in this area (Table 1). Many birds inhabit this area, including hawks, ravens, towhees, jays, juncos, woodpeckers, doves, sparrows and titmice. Rabbits, badgers and mule deer also live in the area. Only two reptiles, a horned lizard and a collared lizard, were seen. _South of Far View Ruins_ Two parallel trap lines were established on October 4, 1961, in the area immediately south of Far View Ruins (Fig. 1). In altitude, latitude and geographical configuration the area is similar to that trapped in the Morfield burn, but the Chapin Mesa site had not been burned. Canopy vegetation is pinyon-juniper forest. A dense understory was made up of _Amelanchier utahensis_ (serviceberry), _Cercocarpos montanus_ (mountain mahogany), _Purshia tridentata_ (bitterbrush), and _Quercus gambelii_ (Gambel oak). The ground cover consisted of small clumps of _Poa fendleriana_ (muttongrass), and _Koeleria cristata_ (Junegrass), intermingled with growths of one or more of the following: _Artemisia nova_ _Solidago petradoria_ _Sitanion hystrix_ _Astragalus scopulorum_ _Lupinus caudatus_ _Eriogonum alatum_ _Penstemon linarioides_ _Eriogonum racemosum_ _Eriogonum umbellatum_ _Polygonum sawatchense_ _Amelanchier utahensis_ _Purshia tridentata_ _Comandra umbellata_ Seeds of _Cercocarpos montanus_ covered the ground under the bushes in much of the trapping area, and large numbers of juniper berries were on the ground beneath the trees. Individuals of _P. truei_ and _P. maniculatus_ were caught in this area (Table 1). Several deer, rabbits, one coyote, and numerous birds were seen in the area. No reptiles were noticed, but they were not searched for. A mountain lion was seen in this general area two weeks after trapping was completed. _West of Far View Ruins_ Three pairs of traplines were run west of Far View Ruins in an area comparable in vegetation, altitude, general topography, and configuration to the area previously described. The elevations concerned are typical of the middle parts of mesas throughout the park. This area differs from the trapping area south of Far View Ruins and the one on Morfield Ridge in being wider and on the western side of the mesa. The woody understory was sparse in most places, and where present was composed of _Cercocarpos montanus_, _Purshia tridentata_, _Fendlera rupicola_ (fendlerbush), _Amelanchier utahensis_, _Quercus gambelii_, and _Artemisia tridentata_ (sagebrush). The herbaceous ground cover was dominated by _Solidago petradoria_ (rock goldenrod), and grasses--including _Poa fendleriana_, _Oryzopsis hymenoides_, and _Sitanion hystrix_. Other herbaceous species were as follows: _Echinocercus coccineus_ _Achillea millefolium_ _Aster bigelovii_ _Wyethia arizonica_ _Lepidium montanum_ _Lupinus caudatus_ _Yucca baccata_ _Linum perenne_ _Eriogonum racemosum_ _Eriogonum umbellatum_ _Polygonum sawatchense_ _Delphinium nelsonii_ _Penstemon linarioides_ Fresh diggings of pocket gophers were observed along the trap lines. Badger tunnels were noted in numerous surface mounds that are remnants of prehistoric Indian dwellings, but no badgers were seen. Numerous deer and several rabbits were present. Juncos, two species of jays, and woodpeckers were seen daily. No reptiles were observed. Both _Peromyscus maniculatus_ and _P. truei_ were caught in this area (Table 1). _Big Sagebrush Stand, South Chapin Mesa_ A circular trapline, 1,000 feet in circumference, was established on November 16, 1961, in a stand of big sagebrush, and was operated for 30 consecutive nights. The vegetation of the trapping area was predominantly _Artemisia tridentata_ (big sagebrush), interspersed with a few scattered seedlings of pinyon and juniper. This stand was burned in 1858 (tree-ring date by David Smith) and some charred juniper snags still stood. The deep sandy soil also supported a variety of grasses and a few other small plants. The following species were common in this area: _Bromus inermis_ _Oryzopsis hymenoides_ _Poa fendleriana_ _Sitanion hystrix_ _Solidago petradoria_ _Orthocarpus purpureo-albus_ The 15 to 20 acres of sagebrush were surrounded by pinyon-juniper forest. The trapping station closest to the forest was approximately 100 feet from the edge of the woodland. More _P. truei_ than _P. maniculatus_ were caught here (Table 1). _East Loop Road, Chapin Mesa_ The trapping area lies north of Cliff Palace, eastward of the loop road, at elevations of 6,875 to 6,925 feet. Two pairs of traplines were run from January 9, 1962, to January 12, 1962, and from February 13 to 15, 1962. Vegetation was pinyon-juniper woodland with an understory of mixed shrubs. One to four inches of old snow covered the ground during most of the trapping period, but the ground beneath trees and shrubs was generally clear, providing suitable location for traps. Numerous juncos and jays were seen in this area; deer and rabbits also were present. Individuals of _P. truei_ and of _P. maniculatus_ were taken (Table 1). _Navajo Hill, Chapin Mesa_ Navajo Hill is the highest point (8,140 feet) on Chapin Mesa. The top of the hill is rounded and the sides slope gently southward and westward until they level out into mesa-top terrain at elevations of 7,950 to 8,000 feet. The northern and eastern slopes of the hill drop abruptly into the respective canyon slopes of the East Fork of Navajo Canyon and the West Fork of Little Soda Canyon. The gradually tapering southwestern slope of the hill extends southward for one mile and is bisected by the main highway, which runs the length of the mesa top. Heavy growths of grasses cover the ground; _Amelanchier utahensis_, _Cercocarpos montanus_, and _Fendlera rupicola_ comprise the only tall vegetation. Trees are lacking on this part of the mesa, except on the canyon slopes, where _Quercus gambelii_ forms an almost impenetrable barrier. Four traplines were run from May 4-7, 1962, and from May 9-12, 1962. _P. maniculatus_ was taken but _P. truei_ was not present here in 1962, or in 1964 or 1965 when additional trapping was performed as a check on populations (Table 1). Other species trapped include the montane vole, long-tailed vole, and Colorado chipmunk. Mule deer and coyotes were abundant in the area. Striped whipsnakes, rattlesnakes and gopher snakes are known to occur in this vicinity (Douglas, 1966). _North End Wetherill Mesa_ In 1934 a widespread fire deforested large areas of pinyon-juniper woodland on the northern end of Wetherill Mesa. The current vegetation consists of shrubs with a dense ground cover of grasses. Many dead trees still remain on the ground, providing additional cover for wildlife. The trapping area was a wide, grassy meadow, three and a half miles south of the northern end of the mesa. A pronounced drainage runs through this area and empties into Rock Canyon. Four traplines were run parallel to each other. The first lines were established on May 23, 1962, and the second pair on June 3, 1962. Another pair of lines was run in a grassy area two miles south of the northern escarpment of Wetherill Mesa. This area was one and a half miles north of the above-mentioned area. These lines ran along the eastern side of a drainage leading into Long Canyon. The vegetation was essentially the same in both areas, and they will be considered together. The vegetation was composed predominantly of grasses. _Quercus gambelii_ and _Amelanchier utahensis_ were the codominant shrubs. _Artemisia tridentata_ and _Chrysothamnus depressus_ (dwarf rabbitbrush), were common. Plants in the two areas included the following: _Juniperus scopulorum_ _Symphoricarpos oreophilus_ _Artemisia ludoviciana_ _Sitanion hystrix_ _Stipa comata_ _Astragalus scopulorum_ _Artemisia tridentata_ _Chrysothamnus depressus_ _Helianthus annuus_ _Tetradymia canescens_ _Quercus gambelii_ _Bromus tectorum_ _Poa fendleriana_ _Lupinus caudatus_ _Yucca baccata_ _Sphaeralcea coccinea_ _Eriogonum umbellatum_ _Amelanchier utahensis_ _Fendlera rupicola_ _Lomatium pinatasectum_ Individuals of _P. maniculatus_ and of _Reithrodontomys megalotis_ were caught (Table 1). TABLE 1--Major Trapping Localities in Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. Vegetational Key as Follows: 1) Pinyon-Juniper-Muttongrass 2) Pinyon-Juniper-Mixed Shrubs 3) Juniper-Pinyon-Bitterbrush 4) Juniper-Pinyon-Mountain Mahogany 5) Grassland with Mixed Shrubs 6) Big Sagebrush 7) Pinyon-Juniper-Big Sagebrush 8) Grassland. Column headings: A: Date B: No. trap nights C: _P. truei_ D: _P. man._ E: Type of vegetation ========================+=============+=======+=====+=====+=== Locality | A | B | C | D | E ------------------------+-------------+-------+-----+-----+--- Morfield Ridge | Sept. 1961 | 1080 | 0 | 83 | 5 | Oct. 1963 | 360 | 0 | 13 | 5 | | | | | S. of Far View | Oct. 1961 | 360 | 10 | 13 | 2 | | | | | W. of Far View | Oct. 1961 | 1080 | 22 | 17 | 2 | | | | | South Chapin Mesa | Nov.-Dec. | 3600 | 16 | 9 | 6 | 1961 | | | | | | | | | East Loop Road | Jan. 1962 | 720 | 6 | 2 | 2 | | | | | Navajo Hill | May 1962 | 720 | 0 | 18 | 5 | Aug. 1964 | 20 | 0 | 2 | 5 | Aug. 1965 | 50 | 0 | 8 | 5 | | | | | N. Wetherill Mesa | May-June | 1080 | 0 | 57 | 5 | 1962 | | | | | | | | | Bobcat Canyon Drainage | June 1962 | 360 | 0 | 0 | 6 | | | | | N. of Long House | June 1962 | 1080 | 3 | 4 | 1 | | | | | Mug House--Rock Springs | Aug. 1962 | 720 | 8 | 14 | 4 | Aug. 1963 | 720 | 9 | 7 | 4 | | | | | S. Wetherill Mesa | Aug. 1962 | 720 | 0 | 5 | 3 | | | | | 1 mi. SE Park Entr. | June 1963 | 50 | 0 | 16 | 7 | | | | | 1/4 mi. SE Park Entr. | July 1963 | 100 | 0 | 7 | 8 | | | | | M-2 Weather Sta. | May 1964 | 25 | 2 | 0 | 1 | | | | | 8 mi. S North Rim | | | | | Moccasin Mesa | Aug. 1964 | 100 | 0 | 3 | 8 | | | | | 10 mi. S North Rim | | | | | Moccasin Mesa | Aug. 1964 | 25 | 2 | 0 | 2 ------------------------+-------------+-------+-----+-----+--- _Bobcat Canyon Drainage_ Bobcat Canyon, a large secondary canyon on the eastern side of Wetherill Mesa, is a major drainage for much of the mesa at its widest part. The mesa top drains southeast into a pour-off at the head of Bobcat Canyon. A stand of big sagebrush, _Artemisia tridentata_, grows in the sandy soil of the drainage, and extends northwest for several hundred yards from the pour-off. The sagebrush invades the pinyon-juniper forest at the periphery of the area. Two traplines were set in the drainage, with trapping stations at intervals of 25 feet. The lines traversed elevations of 7,000 to 7,100 feet, and were run from June 26 to 29, 1962. Grasses are the most abundant plants in the ground cover. _Artemisia dracunculus_ is common in the drainage, and _A. nova_ grows around the periphery of the drainage. Other species occurring in this stand include: _Aster bigelovii_ _Tetradymia canescens_ _Tragopogon pratensis_ _Bromus tectorum_ _Poa fendleriana_ _Sitanion hystrix_ _Stipa comata_ _Lupinus argenteus_ _Calochortus gunnisonii_ _Sphaeralcea coccinea_ _Phlox hoodii_ _Eriogonum umbellatum_ _Peraphyllum ramosissimum_ _Purshia tridentata_ _Penstemon linarioides_ No mice were caught in three nights of trapping (360 trap nights), and only one mammal, a _Spermophilus variegatus_, was seen. _North of Long House, Wetherill Mesa_ Pinyon-juniper forest with a dominant ground cover of _Poa fendleriana_ was described by Erdman (1962) as one of the three distinct types of pinyon-juniper woodland on Wetherill Mesa. Such a woodland occurs adjacent to the Bobcat Canyon drainage, and is continuous across the Mesa from above Long House to the area near Step House. Plants in the ground cover include: _Cryptantha bakeri_ _Opuntia rhodantha_ _Chrysothamnus depressus_ _Solidago petradoria_ _Koeleria cristata_ _Lupinus argenteus_ _Yucca baccata_ _Phlox hoodii_ _Eriogonum racemosum_ _Eriogonum umbellatum_ _Cordylanthus wrightii_ _Pedicularis centranthera_ _Penstemon linarioides_ _Penstemon strictus_ Two traplines were run from July 9 to 12, 1962, in the area south of the Bobcat Canyon drainage at an elevation of 7,100 feet. No mice were caught in three nights of trapping. Four additional lines were established on July 24, 1962, and were run for three nights, in the area north of the Bobcat Canyon drainage at elevations of 7,100 to 7,150 feet. _P. maniculatus_ and _P. truei_ were caught here (Table 1). This vegetational association may have few rodents because there is a shortage of places where they can hide. Although _Poa fendleriana_ is abundant, the lack of shrubs leaves little protective cover for mammals. _Mug House--Rock Springs_ A juniper-pinyon-mountain mahogany association extends from the area of Mug House to Rock Springs, on Wetherill Mesa. On that part of the ridge just above Mug House, the understory is predominantly _Cercocarpos montanus_ (mountain mahogany), but northward toward Rock Springs the understory changes to _Fendlera rupicola_, _Amelanchier utahensis_, _Cercocarpos_, and _Purshia tridentata_. The ground cover is essentially the same as that in the pinyon-juniper-muttongrass association described previously. Four traplines were run from July 31 to August 2, 1962, and from August 13 to 15, 1963. These lines ran northwest-southeast, starting 1,000 feet southeast of, and ending 3,000 feet northwest of, Mug House. The lines traversed elevations of 7,225 to 7,325 feet. Individuals of _P. maniculatus_ and _P. truei_ were caught here (Table 1). Deer and rabbits inhabit the trapping area. Bobcats have been seen, by myself and by others, near Rock Springs. Lizards of the genera _Cnemidophorus_ and _Sceloporus_, as well as gopher snakes were seen in this area. _Juniper--Pinyon--Bitterbrush_ Three pairs of traplines were run from August 7-9, 1962, in a juniper-pinyon-bitterbrush stand on the southern end of Wetherill Mesa, starting 200 yards southwest of Double House (Fig. 1). The forest on the southern end of the mesas consists of widely-spaced trees, which reflect the low amounts of precipitation at these lower elevations. Juniper trees are more numerous than pinyons, and both species are stunted in comparison to trees farther north on the mesa. _Purshia tridentata_ (bitterbrush) is the understory codominant. _Artemisia nova_ (black sagebrush) is present and grasses are the most abundant plants in the ground cover. Herbaceous species in the sparse ground cover include the following: _Opuntia polyacantha_ _Solidago petradoria_ _Lathyrus pauciflorus_ _Penstemon linarioides_ _Lupinus caudatus_ _Yucca baccata_ _Phlox hoodii_ Only _P. maniculatus_ was caught in this stand; all mice were caught in the first night of trapping. Five areas were selected for trapping in the summers of 1963 or 1964, in order to test hypotheses concerning habitat preferences of each of the species of _Peromyscus_. Four of these areas appeared to be ideal habitat for one species, but not for the other. The fifth area was expected to produce both species of _Peromyscus_. Each of these areas is discussed below. _One Mile Southeast of Park's Entrance_ A small stand of _Artemisia tridentata_, occurring one mile southeast of the entrance to the park, is bordered to the north and northeast by a grassy meadow, discussed in the following account. Kangaroo rats have been reported in this general area, and I wanted to determine whether _P. maniculatus_ and _Dipodomys_ occurred together there. Fifty trap nights in this sagebrush, on June 20, 1963, yielded only _P. maniculatus_ (Table 1). _Meadow, One-Quarter Mile Southeast of Park's Entrance_ A grassy meadow lies just to the east of the highway into the park, one-quarter of a mile southeast of the park's entrance. On July 30, 1963, one hundred traps were placed in two lines through the meadow, and were run for one night. Only individuals of _P. maniculatus_ were caught (Table 1). _M-2 Weather Station, Chapin Mesa_ The M-2 weather station of the Wetherill Mesa Archeological Project was on the middle of Chapin Mesa at an elevation of 7,200 feet. This site was in an old C. C. C. area, about one mile north of the park's U. S. Weather Bureau station. The vegetation surrounding the M-2 site was a pinyon-juniper-muttongrass association. It was thought that both species of _Peromyscus_ would occur in this habitat. On May 10, 1964, 25 traps were placed in this area and were run for one night. Only individuals of _P. truei_ were caught (Table 1). _Grassy Meadow, Southern End Moccasin Mesa_ This large meadow is located eight miles south of the northern rim of Moccasin Mesa. The meadow lies in a broad, shallow depression that forms the head of a large drainage (Fig. 1). To the south of the meadow the drainage deepens, then reaches bedrock as it approaches the pour-off. On August 23, 1964, one hundred traps were set in pairs in a line through the middle of the meadow; adjacent pairs were 20 feet from each other. Only individuals of _P. maniculatus_ were caught (Table 1). Grasses are dominant in the ground cover, and _Sphaeralcea coccinea_ (globe mallow) is codominant. The abundance of globe mallow is due to the present and past disturbance of this meadow by a colony of pocket gophers. Trees are absent in the meadow. Species of plants include the following: _Opuntia polyacantha_ _Chenopodium_ sp. _Artemisia ludoviciana_ _Chrysothamnus nauseosus_ _Koeleria cristata_ _Poa pratensis_ _Lupinus ammophilus_ _Calochortus gunnisonii_ _Erigeron speciosus_ _Gutierrezia sarothrae_ _Tetradymia canescens_ _Tragopogon pratensis_ _Bromus tectorum_ _Sphaeralcea coccinea_ _Eriogonum racemosum_ _Polygonum sawatchense_ _Comandra umbellata_ _Penstemon strictus_ _Bedrock Outcroppings, Southern End Moccasin Mesa_ Two miles south of the preceding site, much of the mesa is a wide expanse of exposed bedrock, which extends approximately 100 feet inward from the edges of the mesa. Pinyon-juniper-mixed shrub woodland adjoins the bedrock. On August 23, 1964, 25 traps were placed along the bedrock, near the edge of the forest. Only two mice, both _P. truei_, were caught. (Table 1). HOME RANGE In order to learn how extensively mice of different ages travel within their habitats, whether their home ranges overlap, and how many animals live within an area, it was necessary to determine home ranges for as many mice, of each species, as possible (Hayne, 1949; Mohr and Stumpf, 1966; Sanderson, 1966). In 1961, the Colorado Department of Fish, Game and Parks established a permanent trapping grid in the area south of Far View Ruins (Fig. 1). The grid was constructed and used by Mr. Harold R. Shepherd, Senior Game Biologist, and his assistant, in the summers of 1961 and 1962, in a study concerning the effect of rodents on browse plants used by deer. The Department of Fish, Game and Parks allowed me to use the grid during 1963 and 1964, and also permitted me to use its Sherman live traps. The grid is divided into 16 units, each with 28 stations (Fig. 2). Traps at four stations (1a, 1b, 1c, 1d) are operated in each unit at the same time, with two traps being set at each station. The traps are moved each day in a counter-clockwise rotation to the next block of four stations (2a, 2b, 2c, 2d) within each unit. The stations are arranged so that on any given night, traps in adjacent units are separated by at least 200 feet. As a result, animals are less inclined to become addicted to traps, for even within one unit they must move at least 50 feet to be caught on consecutive nights. [Illustration: FIG. 2: Diagram of trapping grid for small mammals, showing units of subdivision. Trapping stations were numbered in each unit as shown in unit A.] Traps were carefully shaded and a ball of kapok was placed in each trap to provide protection against the killing temperatures that can develop inside. In spite of these precautions, mice occasionally succumbed from heat or cold. The traps were baited with coarsely-ground scratch feed. Mammals trapped in the grid were inspected for molt, sexual maturity, larvae of botflies, anomalies, and other pertinent data. Each animal was marked by toe- and ear-clipping and then released. Four toes were used on each front foot, and all five toes were used on each hind foot; two toes were clipped on the right front foot to signify number nine. The tip of the left ear was clipped to signify number 100, and the tip of the right ear was clipped to signify 200. If 300 or more animals had been captured, the tip of the tail would have been clipped to represent number 300. A maximum of 799 animals could have been marked with this system, which was used by Shepherd. I continued with it, starting my listings with number one. Only two mice were caught that had been marked in the previous season by Shepherd. Live traps were operated in the trapping grid from July 9 through October 25, 1963, and from June 25 through August 21, 1964. Traps were rotated through all stations five different times (35 days) in 1963, and twice (14 days) in 1964. Approximately three man hours were required each day to service and rotate the traps to the next group of stations. By the autumn of 1964, a total of 282 mice had been captured, marked and released; these were handled 817 times. In 1963, 235 mice were caught for an average of 20 captures per day; in 1964, 47 mice were caught for an average of 9 captures per day. Calculations of Home Range A diagrammatic map of the trapping grid was drawn to scale with one centimeter equal to 100 linear feet. Trapping stations were numbered on the diagram to correspond with stations in the field. An outline of this drawing also was prepared to the same scale, but station numbers were omitted. Mimeographed copies of such a form could be placed over the diagrammatic map and marks made at each station where an animal was caught. A separate form was kept for each animal that was caught four or more times. In calculating home range, it was assumed that animals would venture half-way from the peripheral stations, at which they were caught, to the next station outside the range. A circle having a scaled radius of 25 feet (half the distance between stations) was inscribed around each station on the periphery of the home range by means of a drafting compass. The estimated range for each animal was then outlined on the form by connecting peripheries of the circles. Both the inclusive boundary-strip method and the exclusive boundary-strip method (Stickel, 1954:3) were used to estimate the ranges. The area encompassed within the home ranges was measured by planimetering the outline of the drawing. At least two such readings were taken for each home range; then these planimeter values were converted into square feet. The customary practice in delimiting home ranges on a scaled map of a grid is to inscribe squares around the peripheral stations at which the animal was trapped, and then to connect the exterior corners of these squares (Stickel, 1954:3). If the distance between stations was 50 feet, such squares would have sides 50 feet long. An easier method is to inscribe a circle having a scaled radius of 25 feet around the peripheral stations by means of a drafting compass. To my knowledge this method has not been used previously and consequently has not been tested by experiments with artificial populations. To test the accuracy of this method, a "grid of traps" was constructed by using 8-1/2 by 11 inch sheets of graph paper with heavy lines each centimeter. The intersects of the heavier lines were considered as trap stations. A "home range" of circular shape, 200 feet (4 cm.) in diameter, with an area of 31,146 square feet (0.71 acre), was cut from a sheet of transparent plastic. Another "home range" was made in an oblong shape with rounded ends. This range measured 2 by 65 centimeters (100 by 325 feet) and had an area of 32,102 square feet (0.74 acre). Each plastic range was tossed at random on sheets of graph paper for fifty trials each. The range was outlined on the graph paper, then circles having a scaled radius of 25 feet were inscribed around each "trap station" within the range. The peripheries of the inscribed circles were then connected and the estimated home range was delimited by the exclusive boundary-strip method. The estimated range was measured by planimetering, and the data were compared with the known home range (Table 2). It was found that when calculated by the exclusive boundary-strip method, the circular home range was overestimated by 2.22 per cent. The oblong home range was overestimated by only 1.50 per cent. Stickel (1954:4) has shown that the exclusive boundary-strip method is the most accurate of several methods of estimating home ranges, and in her experiments this method gave an overestimate of two per cent of the known range. Thus, my method of encircling the peripheral stations yields results that are, on the average, as accurate as the more involved method of inscribing squares about the trap stations, and saves a great deal of time as well. My method probably yields better accuracy; a perfect circle is easily drawn by means of a compass, whereas a perfect square is more difficult to construct without a template. It is generally understood that the estimated home range of an animal tends to increase in size with each additional capture; this increase is rapid at first, then slows. Theoretically, the more often an animal is captured, the more reliable is the estimate of its home range. Most animals, however, rarely are captured more than a few times. The investigator must decide how many captures are necessary before the data seem to be valid for estimating home ranges. An animal must be trapped at a minimum of three stations before its home range can be estimated, and even then the area enclosed in the triangle will be much less than the actual home range. Some investigators have plotted home ranges from only three captures (Redman and Selander, 1958:391), whereas others consider that far more captures are needed to make a valid estimate of range (Stickel, 1954:5). TABLE 2--Summary of Data from Experiments in Calculating Home Ranges for an Artificial Population. =======+========+=========+==========+========+================+======== | | | | Actual | Calculated | | No. | Trap | Shape | area | area of range | Series | of | spacing | of | of | by exclusive | ± S. D. | trials | in ft. | range | range | boundary-strip | | | | | in ft. | method | -------+--------+---------+----------+--------+----------------+-------- A | 50 | 50 | Circular | 31,146 | 31,782 | 9,600 B | 50 | 50 | Oblong | 32,102 | 32,583 | 9,466 -------+--------+---------+----------+--------+----------------+-------- In my study, 161 individuals of _P. truei_ were caught from one to 13 times each. The estimated home ranges of 10 individuals of _P. truei_, each caught from eight to 13 times, were plotted and measured after each capture from the fourth to the last. The percentage of the total estimated range represented by the fourth through tenth captures was, respectively, 52, 65, 73, 85, 88, 93, and 96 per cent. Ninety-seven individuals of _P. maniculatus_ were caught from one to 10 times each. For five individuals that were each caught from seven to 10 times, the percentage of total estimated range represented by the fourth through seventh captures was, respectively, 59, 69, 85, and 93 per cent. The above percentages do not imply that the true home range of individuals of these species can be reliably estimated after seven or 10 captures; the average percentages do, however, indicate a fairly rapid increase in known size of home ranges between the fourth and tenth captures. The estimated home ranges of _P. maniculatus_ tended to reach maximum known size at about seven captures, whereas the estimated ranges of _P. truei_ tended to attain maximum known size after nine or more captures. The controversy over the number of captures of an individual animal required for a reliable estimate of its home range was not settled by my data. I initially decided to estimate home ranges for animals caught five or more times and at three or more stations. Of the 282 animals caught and marked, only 48 were caught five or more times. Because of the small numbers of _P. maniculatus_ that were caught five or more times, I wanted to determine whether mice caught four times had an estimated range that was significantly smaller than that of mice caught five times. Eight individuals of _P. maniculatus_ were caught four times each, and it seemed desirable to use the data from these mice if such use was justified. Data from the 48 mice caught five or more times were used for this testing. By means of a T-test, I compared the estimated ranges of those 48 mice following their fourth capture with ranges estimated after the fifth capture. The results did not demonstrate significant differences between the two sets of estimates; therefore, I decided to use data resulting from four or more captures, and at three or more stations. Table 3 shows estimations of the home ranges of males and females of each species of _Peromyscus_. When the inclusive boundary-strip method is used, the area encompassed by the range tends to be larger than the area of the same range when estimated by the exclusive boundary-strip method. Stickel (1954:4) has shown that the inclusive boundary-strip method overestimates the home range by about 17 percent. Analysis of Home Range by Inclusive Boundary-Strip Method When all age groups were considered, the ranges of 16 males of _P. truei_ averaged 20,000 to 80,000 square feet (ave. 47,333; S. D. 19,286). The sizes of home ranges were not significantly different (P > 0.05) between adult and subadult (including juveniles and young) males. All females of _P. truei_ (22) had ranges encompassing 16,666 to 83,333 square feet (ave. 40,666; S. D. 17,566). Sizes of home ranges between adult and non-adult females did not differ significantly. The mean range of adult males of _P. truei_ did not differ from that of adult females (P > 0.05). Fifteen males of _P. maniculatus_ had ranges of 16,666 to 66,666 square feet (ave. 34,222; S. D. 16,000); six adult males had ranges of 33,333 to 53,333 square feet (ave. 38,666). Sizes of home ranges of adult and non-adult males of this species did not differ significantly. Five females of _P. maniculatus_ had ranges of 33,333 to 76,666 square feet (ave. 51,333; S. D. 15,913); of these, four adults had ranges of 33,333 to 53,333 square feet (ave. 45,000). Sizes of home ranges of adult males of this species did not differ (P > 0.05) from those of adult females. The ranges of adult males of _P. truei_ were compared with ranges of adult male of _P. maniculatus_; likewise the ranges of adult females of each species were compared. In each case no difference was demonstrable in sizes of ranges between the species. The largest home range of any _P. truei_ was that of animal number 18, a young male with an estimated home range of 133,333 square feet. This animal was caught only five times, and his home range appeared unusually large in relation to that of other young males of this species; hence some of the widely-spaced sites of capture probably represent excursions from the animal's center of activity, rather than the true periphery of his range. These data were, therefore, not used in further computations. Stickel (1954:13) pointed out the advisability of removing such records from data to be used in calculations of home range. Number eight had the largest home range of any female of _P. truei_; she was captured ten times, and had a range of 83,333 square feet. The vegetation within her range was pinyon-juniper woodland with understories of _Amelanchier_, _Artemisia nova_ and _Purshia_. Most of her home range was in the western half of unit H, but extended into parts of units D, I, G and N. The largest home range for adult males of either species was number three of _P. truei_; he had a range of 80,000 square feet. The largest range for an adult of _P. maniculatus_ was 66,666 square feet (Table 3). Analysis of Home Range by Exclusive Boundary-Strip Method Stickel (1954:4) has shown that under theoretical conditions the exclusive boundary-strip method is the most accurate of several methods of estimating home range. This method overestimates the known range by only two percent. Table 3 shows a comparison of home range calculations obtained for each species, when calculated by inclusive and exclusive boundary-strip methods. The data for males and for females of each species were compared in the same manner as in the inclusive boundary-strip method. The ranges of 16 male individuals of _P. truei_ encompassed 14,000 to 56,666 square feet (ave. 34,333; S. D. 13,266); of these, the ranges of 10 adult males were from 23,333 to 53,333 square feet (ave. 39,733). Twenty-two females of this species had ranges of 13,333 to 50,000 square feet (ave. 27,199; S. D. 8,820). Eighteen adult females had the same extremes, but the average size of range, 28,000 square feet, was larger. Sizes of home ranges of males and females did not differ significantly. The ranges of fifteen males of _P. maniculatus_ encompassed 13,333 to 46,666 square feet (ave. 26,666; S. D. 10,180). Of these, six adults had the same extremes in range, but an average size of 31,440 square feet. The ranges of five females of _P. maniculatus_ varied from 28,000 to 53,333 square feet (ave. 37,199; S. D. 10,140). All but one of these females were adults. The sizes of home ranges of males and females did not differ significantly. No differences were found when ranges of adult males, or adult females, of both species were compared. Adjusted Length of Home Range The adjusted length of the range also can be used as an expression of home range. In this method, one-half the distance to the next trapping station is added to each end of the line drawn between stations at either end of the long axis of the range (Stickel, 1954:2). The average length of home range for 15 males of _P. truei_ was 363 feet (S. D. 105 ft.); for 22 females of this species 326 feet (S. D. 94 ft.); for 14 males of _P. maniculatus_ 286 feet long (S. D. 94 ft.); and for four females of this species 347 feet (S. D. 83 ft.). The mean lengths of range of males and females differed significantly in _P. maniculatus_, but not in _P. truei_. However, no difference was demonstrable in mean sizes of ranges between males, or between females, of the two species. Distance Between Captures The distance between captures has been used by several investigators as an index of the extent of home range. More short than long distances tend to be recorded when traps are visited at random, and when inner traps of the range are more strongly favored (Stickel, 1954:10). TABLE 3--Summary of Data for Estimated Home Ranges of Mice from a Wild Population. ================+==================+=====+======+============+========= | | | | Estimated | Type of | Species | Sex | No. | home range | ± S. D. Estimate | | | | in sq. ft. | ----------------+------------------+-----+------+------------+--------- Inclusive | _P. truei_ | M | 16 | 47,333 | 19,286 boundary-strip | " " | F | 22 | 40,666 | 17,566 | | | | | | _P. maniculatus_ | M | 15 | 34,222 | 16,000 | " " | F | 5 | 51,333 | 15,913 ----------------+------------------+-----+------+------------+--------- Exclusive | _P. truei_ | M | 16 | 34,333 | 13,266 boundary-strip | " " | F | 22 | 27,199 | 8,820 | | | | | | _P. maniculatus_ | M | 15 | 26,666 | 10,180 | " " | F | 5 | 37,199 | 10,140 ----------------+------------------+-----+------+------------+--------- Adjusted Length | _P. truei_ | M | 16 | 363 | 105 | " " | F | 22 | 326 | 94 | | | | | | _P. maniculatus_ | M | 14 | 286 | 94 | " " | F | 4 | 347 | 83 ----------------+------------------+-----+------+------------+--------- It is important to know approximately how far mice travel in one night. The distances traveled between captures on successive nights were calculated for all mice. Even animals caught most frequently usually were caught only once or twice on successive nights. Data from animals caught less than four times, and hence not usable for calculations of home range, could be used in calculating the distance between captures on successive nights. Thus the data were sampled in a more or less random manner for each species. The mean distance traveled between captures on successive nights was determined for adult and non-adult animals (juvenile, young and subadult) of both sexes. Adult males of _P. maniculatus_ traveled an average of 151.66 feet (n = 24); young males of this species traveled an average of 134.28 feet (n = 7). Adult females of _P. maniculatus_ traveled 170.00 feet (n = 4); no data were available for young females. Adult males of _P. truei_ traveled an average of 169.47 feet (n = 38); and young males traveled 159.44 feet (n = 18). Adult females of this species traveled 155.71 feet between captures (n = 35), while young females traveled 140.66 feet (n = 15). The means were tested for differences in the distances traveled between young and adult males and between young and adult females of each species, as well as between males and between females of opposite species. In all cases, there were no demonstrable differences in the distance traveled between captures. One of the more striking journeys between captures was that of number 59, a juvenal male of _P. maniculatus_, which traveled 1,070 feet between captures on July 16 and 17, 1963. The route between the two capture sites was over the most rugged part of the trapping grid. This datum was excluded from further calculations. The only other animal that approached this distance was a young female _P. truei_ that traveled 750 feet between captures. Figure 3 shows the distribution of distances traveled by mice of each species between successive captures. Since there were no demonstrable differences between age groups or sexes in the distances traveled, these data represent a composite of the ages and sexes of each species. They show 101-125 feet to be the most prevalent of the distances traveled by both species, and 51-75 feet to have a higher percentage of occurrence among _P. maniculatus_. These distances indicate that if an animal was trapped on successive nights, it tended to be trapped within the same unit of the grid. It would have been necessary for an animal to travel 200 feet or more in order to be caught in traps in an adjoining unit of the grid. The distance between captures also was calculated by the more customary method of averaging the distances between sites of capture, regardless of the time intervening between captures. Only data from mice caught four or more times were used because these individuals probably had home ranges in the study area, whereas those caught fewer than four times may have been migrants. The mean distance between captures (n = 95) for 15 males and five females of _P. maniculatus_ was 161 feet. Sixteen males and 22 females of _P. truei_ traveled an average of 143 feet between captures (n = 248). For purposes of comparison, these average distances between captures could be considered as radii of the estimated home ranges. When the range for each species is calculated by considering average distance between captures as the radius of the estimated home range, the average range of _P. truei_ is 64,210 square feet, and that of _P. maniculatus_ is 81,392 square feet. Both of these estimations are larger than those made by the inclusive and exclusive boundary-strip method (Table 3), and smaller than those calculated by using adjusted length of range as the radius. Since it is known that ranges of some animals tend to be longer than wide (Mohr and Stumpf, 1966), calculations of estimated range based on average distance between captures probably are more accurate than those based on adjusted length of range. Usually the estimated home ranges were not symmetrical, and did not resemble oblongs or circles in outline. Rather, the ranges tended to follow parts of vegetational zones. Since trapping grids are geometrical in form, there is a tendency among investigators to consider home ranges of animals as conforming to geometrical design. This may or may not be the true situation; telemetric studies on larger animals indicate that home ranges do not conform to geometrical design. At present there is a poverty of knowledge concerning methods for determining the precise home ranges of small mammals. Telemetry appears to offer an unlimited potential for studies of this kind. [Illustration: FIG. 3: Graphs showing the distribution of distances between stations at which mice were captured on successive nights in Mesa Verde National Park. Graphs for each species represent records of both males and females.] Individuals of _P. truei_ and _P. maniculatus_ usually do not have mutually exclusive home ranges. When the home ranges for all females or males of one species are drawn on a single map of the trapping grid, almost every one of their ranges overlaps with the range of at least one other mouse. In some instances, the home range of an individual overlaps ranges of several other individuals. In extreme cases an animal's range lies completely within the estimated boundaries of another individual's range. Such an enclosed range was always that of a juvenile or of a young animal. However, an adult may have more than half of its range overlapping with that of another adult of the same sex and of the same, or different, species. In general, the two species tended to be restricted to certain areas of the trapping grid where the respective habitats were more favorable for their needs. Figure 4 shows the parts of the trapping grid utilized by each species. Of course there is overlap in the areas utilized by each species; a few individuals of _P. maniculatus_ may be found in what appears to be _P. truei_ habitat, and _vice versa_. In such cases, an inspection of the vegetation usually reveals an intermediate type of habitat--for example, an open sagebrush area in pinyon-juniper woodland--that is habitable for either or both species. The ranges of _P. truei_ tend to be clustered in the western half of the trapping grid, whereas the ranges of _P. maniculatus_ are clustered in the eastern half of the grid (Fig. 4). The vegetation of the grid and the preferred habitats of each species are discussed in following chapters. On the basis of the sizes of estimated home ranges, it is possible to compute the approximate number of individuals of each species that occur in each acre of appropriate habitat. [Illustration: FIG. 4: Diagram of trapping grid south of Far View Ruins, showing the preferred habitats of _P. truei_ and _P. maniculatus_.] On the basis of an average home range of 30,206 ± 25,545 square feet (one standard deviation) for both male and female individuals of _P. truei_, there should be approximately 0.781 to 9.345 individuals of this species per acre of pinyon-juniper woodland. An average home range of 29,400 ± 24,570 square feet for males and females of _P. maniculatus_ indicates that the density of this species is between 0.807 and 9.018 animals per acre in mixed shrub or shrub and sagebrush types of vegetation. Figure 4 shows that approximately 10 of the 16 units of the trapping grid are suitable habitat for _P. truei_; the remaining six units are habitat of _P. maniculatus_. From the preceding calculations of density one could expect to find between seven and 90 individuals of _P. truei_, and between five and 54 individuals of _P. maniculatus_ as residents within the 22.95 acres of the trapping grid. The higher estimates of density appear to be large enough to compensate for any overlapping of home ranges. The calculation of density of each species within the trapping grid is dependent upon the precision with which the home ranges of individuals can be estimated. At this time, home ranges of small rodents can not be measured with great precision, therefore any such calculations are, at best, only approximations. This does not imply that estimations of home range are of little value; however, calculations of density, using home ranges as a basis, tend to amplify the variance inherent in the data. This amplification is reflected in the wide range between low and high limits of the densities for each species within the trapping grid. In order to check on the accuracy of the above calculations, an estimate of density was made for each species on the basis of trapping data. Trapping records kept for each animal were checked for the year 1963. More data on home ranges were obtained in that year due to higher population densities than in 1964. If an animal was caught four or more times in 1963, it was considered to be a resident; animals caught in both 1963 and 1964 were considered to be residents even if caught fewer than four times. Mice caught three times, with at least a month elapsing between the first and third captures, were considered to be probable residents. Other animals caught three or fewer times were considered to be migrants. In 1963, 15 individuals of _P. truei_ were caught four or more times, or in both years, and considered to be residents; six other mice were classed as probable residents. Of _P. maniculatus_, 18 individuals were classed as residents, and two as probable residents. Thus the trapping data for 1963 indicate that 21 individuals of _P. truei_ and 20 of _P. maniculatus_ were residents of the trapping grid. These estimates lie well within the estimated limits of density of each species, as calculated from data on home range while taking into account the relative proportions of available habitat for each species within the trapping grid. Analyses of trapping data indicate that the density of each species probably is overestimated by calculations of density based on home range data. Males and females of both species of _Peromyscus_ appeared to be highly individualistic in the amount of area they utilized. Some adult males of _P. truei_ covered large areas, whereas others were relatively sedentary. The same was true of young males of _P. truei_, although the younger males tended to have smaller ranges than adult males. Most pregnant or lactating females, of both species, tended to use smaller areas for their daily activities than did non-pregnant or non-lactating females. There were notable exceptions to this generality, for some lactating females had exceptionally large home ranges. Size of home range apparently was not influenced by the location of an animal's range within the grid. Far more data would be needed to correlate minor differences in vegetational associations with sizes of ranges in different parts of the grid. It is surprising that adults of _P. truei_ do not have larger home ranges than adults of _P. maniculatus_. _P. truei_ is the larger, more robust animal, capable of rapid running and occasional saltatorial bounding; individuals of this species can traverse large areas with ease. The semi-arboreal nature of _P. truei_ may explain why individuals of this species do not have larger ranges than individuals of _P. maniculatus_. _P. truei_ has a three-dimensional home range, whereas _P. maniculatus_ has a range that is two-dimensional only (excluding the relatively minor amount of burrowing done by each species). VEGETATIONAL ANALYSIS OF HABITATS Detailed maps of vegetation within the trapping grid were needed to aid in analyzing distribution of mice within the grid. In preparing such maps, I recorded all plants within a 25 foot radius of each trapping station. The dominant and codominant plants in the overstory (trees or shrubs) were noted at each station. Next the three most abundant plants other than the dominant and codominants were rated for each station, where possible. Finally a listing was made of all remaining species of plants. On the basis of this analysis, four vegetational maps were prepared. One shows associations of dominant overstory and understory plants. Individual maps are devoted to the first, second and third most abundant plants in the ground cover within the trapping grid (Figs. 5-8). Approximately seven man-hours were required to analyze each trapping unit, and 112 man-hours to analyze the entire grid. The home range grid encompasses approximately one million square feet. At least four different vegetational stands occur within the grid: 1) pinyon-juniper woodland with various associations in the understory; 2) _Artemisia tridentata_ (big sagebrush), or _A. nova_ (black sagebrush); 3) _Quercus gambelii_ (Gambel oak); and 4) mixed shrubs--_Fendlera rupicola_ (fendlerbush), _Amelanchier utahensis_ (Utah serviceberry), and _Cercocarpos montanus_ (mountain mahogany). Flora in the ground cover is regulated, at least in part, by the canopy cover; hence different associations of pinyon-juniper woodland and each of the stands mentioned above have different plants, or a different distribution of the same kinds of plants, in their ground cover. Units A, B, E, and parts of D and G in the western third of the grid are in pinyon-juniper woodland (Fig. 5). A relatively pure understory of _Poa fendleriana_ (muttongrass), is typical of such woodland on the middle parts of the mesas. Woodland on the western third of the grid differs somewhat in that, when the area occupied by each plant is considered, _Artemisia tridentata_ is codominant there with _Poa fendleriana_. As far as individual plants are concerned, _Poa_ far outnumbers _Artemisia_. The next most abundant plants in the ground cover are _Solidago petradoria_ (rock goldenrod), _Chrysothamnus depressus_ (dwarf rabbitbrush), and _Penstemon linarioides_ (penstemon), in that order. In unit E there is a large depression, about 200 by 60 feet, created by removal of soil (Fig. 8). _Artemisia nova_ grows there, and pioneering plants adapted to early stages of succession are present. A zone of woodland, where _Artemisia nova_ replaces _A. tridentata_ as an understory codominant with _Poa fendleriana_, borders the pinyon-juniper-muttongrass community to the east. The next most abundant plants in the ground cover are _Solidago petradoria_, _Penstemon linarioides_ and _Comandra umbellata_ (bastard toadflax). _Koeleria cristata_ (Junegrass) is as abundant as _Comandra_, but probably is less important as a source of food for mice. A small strip of the pinyon-juniper-muttongrass community with an understory of _Artemisia nova_ and _Purshia tridentata_ (bitterbrush) adjoins the above area to the east (Figs. 5-8). _Solidago petradoria_, _Balsamorrhiza sagittata_ (balsamroot), and _Comandra umbellata_ are the three most abundant plants in the ground cover. The terrain slopes eastward from this zone into a large drainage. [Illustration: FIG. 5: Diagram showing the major associations of understory and overstory vegetation in a trapping grid located south of Far View Ruins, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado.] As the forest floor begins to slope into the drainage, the ground becomes rocky and shrubs assume more importance in the understory. Most of this shrubby zone is on the slope; on the western side this zone abuts pinyon-juniper woodland, and on the eastern side is bordered by _Artemisia tridentata_ in the sandy bottom of the drainage. Shrubs become more abundant and pinyon and juniper trees become less abundant as one approaches the drainage. In the vegetation maps, this brushy zone is delimited on the east by a heavy line passing vertically through the middle of the grid (Figs. 5-8). The codominant shrubs in the understory of this zone are _Amelanchier utahensis_, _Artemisia nova_ and _Purshia tridentata_. The three most abundant plants on the ground are _Artemisia ludoviciana_, _Chrysothamnus depressus_ and _Penstemon linarioides_. The drainage occupies most of unit N and parts of Units I, J and M. Unit N is at the head of the drainage; the ground slopes rapidly southward and the bottom of the drainage in unit J is approximately 50 feet lower than in unit N. The canopy cover of the drainage is _Artemisia tridentata_ (Fig. 5). The same three plants that are most abundant in the ground cover of the slope are also most abundant in the drainage. [Illustration: FIG. 6: Diagram showing the most abundant species of plants in the ground cover of the trapping grid south of Far View Ruins.] The eastern slope of the drainage is covered with oak chaparral (_Quercus gambelii_); this zone occupies parts of units J, L, M, and P. _Artemisia ludoviciana_, _Solidago petradoria_, and _Viguiera multiflora_ (goldeneye), are the most abundant plants of the ground cover. Mixed shrubs (_Amelanchier_, _Cercocarpos_, and _Fendlera_) form large islands in the oak chaparral, in units K, L and P. The brushy areas of oak and mixed shrub give way at the top of the slope to pinyon-juniper forest with an understory of _Artemisia nova_ and _Purshia tridentata_. The three most abundant plants in the ground cover of the shrub zones are _Solidago petradoria_, _Balsamorrhiza sagittata_, and _Comandra umbellata_. The eastern part of unit O has _Amelanchier utahensis_ in the understory, in addition to _Artemisia nova_ and _Purshia tridentata_ (Fig. 5). The northeastern corner of unit O is in pinyon-juniper woodland with an understory of _Cercocarpos montanus_. [Illustration: FIG. 7: Diagram showing the second most abundant species of plants in the ground cover of the trapping grid south of Far View Ruins.] There are two relatively pure stands of sagebrush in the grid: one is in unit N, and the other in unit F and part of unit G. As figures 5 to 8 show, unit N has a relatively pure stand of _Artemisia tridentata_ (big sagebrush), with _Artemisia ludoviciana_, _Agropyron smithii_ (western wheatgrass), and _Koeleria cristata_ (Junegrass), being most abundant in the ground cover. _Artemisia tridentata_ and _Artemisia nova_ form the overstory in unit F and part of G. The three most abundant plants in the ground cover there are _Chrysothamnus depressus_, _Solidago petradoria_, and _Penstemon linarioides_ (Figs. 6-8). [Illustration: FIG. 8: Diagram showing the third most abundant species of plants in the ground cover of the trapping grid south of Far View Ruins.] MICROCLIMATES OF DIFFERENT HABITATS Four microclimatic stations were established in units D, F, L and M of the trapping grid to record air temperatures and relative humidities at ground level. These sites were chosen as being representative of larger topographic or vegetational areas within the grid. Belfort hygrothermographs were installed on June 10, 1964, and were serviced once each week through October 31, 1964, at which time the stations were dismantled. Each station consisted of a shelter 18 by 9 by 11.5 inches, having a false top to minimize heating (Fig. 9). The shelters were painted white. Several rows of holes, each one inch in diameter, were drilled in all four sides of each shelter, to provide circulation of air. The holes were covered by brass window screening to prevent entry of insects and rodents. Preliminary tests with several U. S. Weather Bureau maximum and minimum thermometers, suspended one above the other, from the top to the bottom of the shelter, revealed that there was no stratification of air within the shelters. Nevertheless, each shelter was placed so that the sun did not strike the sensing elements of the hygrothermograph inside it. [Illustration: FIG. 9: (above) Photograph of microclimatic shelter built to house hygrothermograph. False top minimizes heating, and ventilation holes are covered with screening. (below) Photograph showing shelter in use.] Accuracy of the hair elements was checked by means of a Bendix-Friez battery driven psychrometer, in periods when humidity conditions were stable (on clear days the relative humidity is at its lowest limits and is "stable" for several hours during early afternoon). The four microclimatic stations were in the following places: 1) a stand of big sagebrush near Far View Ruins; 2) a pinyon-juniper-muttongrass association; 3) a stand of big sagebrush at the head of a drainage; and 4) a stand of Gambel oak on a southwest-facing slope of the drainage. Table 4 shows monthly averages of maximum and minimum air temperatures and relative humidities at each of the four sites. Vegetation and microclimates of the sites are discussed below. _Far View Sagebrush Site, 7,650 feet elevation_ The shelter housing the hygrothermograph was next to the stake of station F4a in the trapping grid (Fig. 10), in a stand of big sagebrush on the flat, middle part of the mesa top, approximately 100 yards southwest of Far View Ruins. The sagebrush extends approximately 200 feet in all directions from the station (Fig. 5). Pinyon pine and Utah juniper trees are encroaching upon this area, and scattered trees are present throughout the sagebrush. This area is one of the habitats of _P. maniculatus_. Sagebrush tends to provide less shade for the ground than pinyon-juniper woodland, and therefore the surface temperatures of the soil rise rapidly to their daily maximum. In mid-June, air temperatures rise rapidly from 6 A. M. until they reach the daily maximum between 2 and 4 P. M. Shortly after 4 P. M. the air temperatures decrease rapidly and reach the daily low by about 5 A. M. Relative humidities follow an inverse relationship to air temperatures; when air temperatures are highest, relative humidities approach their lowest values. Thus, on clear days, humidities decrease during the day, reaching a minimum slightly later than air temperatures attain their maximum. Unless it rains, the highest humidities of the day occur between midnight and 6 A. M. _Drainage Site, 7,625 feet elevation_ This site was in the bottom of the drainage that runs through the eastern side of the trapping grid, and through parts of units M, N, I, and J. The site was at station M4d on a level bench at the head of the drainage (Fig. 11). Southward from the station the drainage deepens rapidly, and the bottom loses approximately 25 feet in elevation for every 200 feet of linear distance. _P. maniculatus_ lives here. The microclimate of the drainage differs markedly from that of other stations. The major difference is attributable to the topography of the drainage itself. Nocturnal cold air flows from the surrounding mesa top to lower elevations. A lake of cold air forms in the bottom of the drainage; the depth of the lake depends in part upon the depth of the drainage. The same phenomenon occurs in canyons and causes cooler night time temperatures on the floor of canyons than on adjacent mesa tops (Erdman, Douglas, and Marr, in press). Drainage of cold air into lower elevations affects both nocturnal air temperatures and relative humidities. Table 4 shows that maximum air temperatures in the drainage did not differ appreciably from those at other stations. Mean minimum temperatures, however, were considerably lower in the drainage than at the other sites. This phenomenon is reflected also in the mean air temperatures at this station. [Illustration: FIG. 10: (above) Photograph of microclimatic station at the Far View Sagebrush Site, at trapping station F4a in the grid south of Far View Ruins. Dominant vegetation is _Artemisia tridentata_.] [Illustration: FIG. 11: (below) Photograph of microclimatic station at the Drainage Site, in the bottom of a shallow drainage at trapping station M4d of the grid south of Far View Ruins.] The drainage site had the highest humidities of all stations each month in which data were collected (Table 4). Relative humidities of 90 to 100 per cent were common in the drainage, but occurred at other stations only in rainy periods. For example, in the month of August, 26 of the daily maximum readings were between 95 and 100 per cent at the drainage site, but at the other stations relative humidities were above 95 per cent for an average of only nine nights. Minimum humidities were about the same for all stations, since they are affected by insolation received during the day, and not by the drainage of cold air at night. _Oak Brush Site, 7,640 feet elevation_ The station was in an oak thicket at trapping station L4a, 250 feet south and 50 feet east of the drainage site on a southwest-facing slope of about 30 degrees (Fig. 12). The station was on the lower third of the slope, approximately 15 feet higher than M4d, the station in the bottom of the drainage. _P. truei_ and _P. maniculatus_ occur together in this area. Air temperatures and relative humidities at this station did not differ appreciably from mean temperatures and humidities at the other stations. The unusual feature is the lack of evidence of cold air drainage. The lake of cold air in the bottom of the drainage apparently is too shallow to reach this station. This site is near the head of the drainage, and the cold, nocturnal air probably moves rapidly down slope into the deeper parts of the canyon, rather than piling up at the shallow head of the drainage. In spite of the shade afforded the ground by the oak brush, temperatures reached the same maximum values as at the drainage site, owing to the orientation of the slope. South-facing slopes receive more direct insolation throughout the day and throughout the year than north-facing slopes and mesa tops (Geiger, 1965:374). In Mesa Verde, south-facing slopes tend to be more arid; snow melts rapidly, and most of this moisture evaporates. As a consequence, south-facing slopes have less soil moisture and more widely-distributed vegetation than north-facing slopes where snows often persist all winter and melt in spring. (For a detailed discussion of climates on northeast-versus-southwest-facing slopes in Mesa Verde, see Erdman, Douglas, and Marr, in press.) _Pinyon-Juniper-Muttongrass Site, 7,600 feet elevation_ The station was in the trapping grid at D5b (Fig. 13). The pinyon-juniper woodland surrounding this site resembles much of the woodland on the middle part of the mesa. The forest floor is well shaded by the coniferous canopy, and muttongrass is the dominant plant in the ground cover. _P. truei_ lives in this habitat. The climate at this site is moderate. Shade from the canopy greatly moderates the maximum air temperatures during the day; minimum air temperatures, however, are about the same as at the other stations (Table 4). Mean temperatures are somewhat lower at this site than at the others because of the lower maximum temperatures. Relative humidities do not differ markedly from those at other stations. Figure 14 shows hygrothermograph traces at all stations for a typical week. An interesting phenomenon is illustrated by several of these traces. By about midnight, air temperatures have cooled to within a few degrees of their nightly low. At this time, heat is given up by the surface of the ground in sufficient quantities to elevate the air temperature at ground level. This release of reradiated energy lasts from one to several hours, then air temperatures drop to the nightly low just before sunrise. A depression in the percentage of relative humidity accompanies this surge of warmer air. On some nights winds apparently disturb, or mix, the layers of air at ground level. On such nights the reradiation of energy is not apparent in the traces of the thermographs. Reradiation of energy is restricted to ground level, and traces of hygrothermographs in standard Weather Bureau shelters, approximately four feet above the ground surface, at other sites on the mesa top did not record it. [Illustration: FIG. 12: (left) Photograph of microclimatic station at the Oak Brush Site, at trapping station L4a of the grid south of Far View Ruins. (right) General view of the stand of Gambel oak in unit L of the trapping grid.] [Illustration: FIG. 13: Photograph of microclimatic station at the Pinyon-Juniper-Muttongrass Site, at trapping station D5b of the grid south of Far View Ruins. Grass in the foreground is muttongrass, _Poa fendleriana_.] The instruments used in this study were unmodified Belfort hygrothermographs containing as sensing units a hair element for relative humidity and a Bourdon tube for air temperatures. The hair element, especially, does not register changes in humidity at precisely ground level; rather, it reflects changes in the layer of air from about ground level to about a foot above. Thus data from these instruments give only approximations of the conditions under which mice live while they are on the ground. Climatic conditions greatly influence trapping success. Larger numbers of mice generally were caught on nights when humidities were higher than average. Rain in part of the evening almost invariably resulted in more mice of each species being caught. This was probably due to increased metabolism, by the mice, to keep warm. Apparently the mice began foraging as soon as the rains subsided; mice were always dry when caught after a rain. Few mice were caught if rains continued throughout the night and into the daylight hours. TABLE 4--Monthly Averages of Daily Means for Maximum, Minimum, and Mean Air Temperatures and Relative Humidities at Four Sites in Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. ===================+========================+======================== Site | Maximum Temps. | Maximum R. H. | J J A S O | J J A S O | | Far View Sagebrush | 89 91 86 77 74 | 68 84 82 88 71 Drainage | 86 91 85 78 78 | 87 94 93 96 84 Oak Brush | 86 88 82 76 81 | 57 78 80 80 66 Pinyon-Juniper-Poa | 75 80 74 66 64 | 59 83 82 88 58 | | | Minimum Temps. | Minimum R. H. | J J A S O | J J A S O | | Far View Sagebrush | 42 53 50 42 31 | 18 24 25 29 21 Drainage | 36 48 45 38 26 | 21 26 27 29 30 Oak Brush | 42 52 50 42 32 | 19 25 30 31 21 Pinyon-Juniper-Poa | 44 54 50 42 34 | 22 30 29 32 25 | | | Mean Temps. | Mean R. H. | J J A S O | J J A S O | | Far View Sagebrush | 66 72 68 60 52 | 43 54 54 48 46 Drainage | 61 70 65 58 52 | 54 60 60 62 52 Oak Brush | 64 70 66 59 56 | 38 51 55 56 44 Pinyon-Juniper-Poa | 60 67 62 54 49 | 41 56 55 60 42 -------------------+------------------------+------------------------ [Illustration: FIG. 14: Diagram of hygrothermograph traces showing daily progressions of air temperatures and relative humidities at each of four microclimatic stations, from the morning of July 1 through the morning of July 8, 1964. Slanting vertical lines on each chart designate midnight (2400 Hrs.) of each day.] Nights of high trapping success usually were associated with days having solar insolation below the average. Insolation was measured with a recording pyrheliometer at a regional weather station (M-2) on the middle of Chapin Mesa, at an elevation of 7,150 feet (Erdman, Douglas, and Marr, in press). This station was approximately one mile south of the trapping grid; isolation at this site would have been essentially the same as that received by the trapping grid. Below-average isolation for one day indicates cloudy conditions, which are accompanied by increased humidity, but may or may not be accompanied by precipitation. Trapping on nights preceded and followed by days of average or above average isolation with average humidities--indicative of clear days and clear moonlit nights--did not yield appreciably higher catches of mice than other nights. Hence there was no evidence that mice tended to avoid, or to seek out, traps on clear moonlit nights. On cold, humid nights in autumn numerous mice caught in Sherman live traps succumbed from exposure, even though nesting material (kapok or cotton) and food were in the traps. Occasionally mice succumbed to heat when traps were inadvertently exposed to too much sunlight. Apparently little heat is required to kill individuals of either species. Traps in which animals died due to excessive heat usually were not hot to the touch; in most instances the traps were checked before 9:00 A. M., several hours before the sun caused maximum heating. Such individuals may have licked the fur of their chests in an attempt to lower their body temperatures. Although mice characteristically salivate before succumbing from heat, these individuals had moist fur over the entire chest and upper parts of the front legs, indicating licking. Mice killed by exposure to heat or cold usually were juveniles or young; subadult and adult individuals of both species were more tolerant. Older animals would be expected to have better homeostatic controls than younger individuals. HABITAT PREFERENCE In Mesa Verde _P. truei_ and _P. maniculatus_ occur together only at the fringes of the pinyon-juniper woodland, where ecotonal areas provide less than optimum habitats for both species. Almost all individuals of _P. truei_ occur only in pinyon-juniper woodland, whereas _P. maniculatus_ occurs only in more open habitats, such as grassy meadows and stands of sagebrush. Pinyon mice were abundant in a variety of associations within the pinyon-juniper woodland. The highest population densities were in pinyon-juniper woodland having an understory of mixed shrubs. In such an association, _Poa fendleriana_ usually is the dominant grass in the ground cover. _P. truei_ was especially abundant along brushy slopes where mixed shrubs (_Amelanchier_, _Cercocarpos_ and _Fendlera_) were codominant with pinyon pines and Utah junipers. The pinyon-juniper-mixed shrub area west of Far View Ruins was almost optimum habitat for _P. truei_. _P. truei_ was abundant on the rocky ridge of Wetherill Mesa near Mug House; the pinyon-juniper woodland here has a _Cercocarpos_ understory, and appears to provide close to optimum conditions for this species. Not all associations of the pinyon-juniper woodland support large numbers of _P. truei_. Pinyon-juniper woodland having a ground cover of _Poa fendleriana_, and no shrubs, supports few mice; the woodland on Wetherill Mesa near Long House is an example. Juniper-pinyon woodland having a _Purshia tridentata_ understory also supports only a few mice. Such areas occur on the southern ends of the mesas and are characterized by widely-spaced trees and little ground cover--a reflection of the relatively low amounts of precipitation received by the southern end of the park. _P. truei_ was not found in grasslands on Navajo Hill, or in meadows at the southern end of Moccasin Mesa. The old burned areas on the northern end of Wetherill Mesa and on Morfield Ridge now support numerous grasses and shrubs, but _P. truei_ appears not to live there. _P. truei_ tends to avoid stands of sagebrush, or grasslands, lacking pinyon or juniper trees. _P. truei_ may venture into such areas while feeding. This species is found in thickets of Gambel oak and in areas with an overstory of mixed shrubs only when a living pinyon-juniper canopy is present, or when a woodland adjoins these areas. Rocky terrain apparently is not a requirement for _P. truei_, since much of the pinyon-juniper woodland that is free of rocks supports large numbers. Optimum habitat, however, had a rocky floor. In such places, rocks probably are of secondary importance, whereas the shrubs and other plants growing on rocky soils are important for food and cover. Rocks likely provide additional nesting sites, and allow a larger population to live in an area than might otherwise be possible. In Mesa Verde the deer mouse, _P. maniculatus_, prefers open areas having dense stands of grasses, or brushy areas adjoining open terrain. This species lives in stands of big sagebrush; in grassy areas having an oak-chaparral or mixed-shrub-overstory; and in grasslands without shrubs, such as on the southern end of Moccasin Mesa. Pure stands of sagebrush did not support large numbers of mice unless there was additional cover nearby in the form of shrubs or oak brush. Optimum habitats for _P. maniculatus_ were on Navajo Hill, in the burned areas on Morfield Ridge, on the northern end of Wetherill Mesa, and in the grassy areas near the entrance of the park. The trapping areas in the first three mentioned had heavy growths of grass and an overstory of shrubs. Some individuals of _P. maniculatus_ ventured into pinyon-juniper woodland and entered traps. Such animals usually were found in places having a heavy understory of sagebrush, or in disturbed places within the woodland. _P. maniculatus_, but not _P. truei_, was taken in the arid pinyon-juniper-bitterbrush stand on the southern end of Wetherill Mesa. _P. maniculatus_ also was present, in about equal numbers with _P. truei_, in a pinyon-juniper-muttongrass stand north of Long House. Both of these localities supported only a few mice. _P. maniculatus_ is found more frequently in pinyon-juniper woodland when the population density is high, and when such woodlands adjoin grasslands or sagebrush areas. As mentioned earlier, _P. truei_ and _P. maniculatus_ occur together in ecotonal areas between the forest and grassy or brushy areas. In Mesa Verde the deer mouse inhabits exposed grassy areas that have mostly shrubs in the open canopy. _P. maniculatus_ is the first to colonize areas that have been burned; this species invades such areas as soon as primary successional vegetation becomes established. It can be stated that in general, _P. maniculatus_ will be found in the harsher, more arid habitats. If the habitat is so inhospitable that only a few mice can survive there, _P. maniculatus_ will be present. _P. truei_ apparently requires the more moderate conditions found in the pinyon-juniper forest, and this species does not venture far from the edge of the forest. NESTING AND NEST CONSTRUCTION Ten individuals of _P. truei_ and three of _P. maniculatus_ were followed to their nesting places. Photographs were taken of the nesting sites before and after uncovering. Plants or other materials used in their construction and any commensal arthropods present were saved and later identified. Nests of _P. truei_ usually were associated with juniper trees. Dead branches and trunks of juniper trees decay from the inside, and the resulting hollows are favored sites for the nests. Pinyon pine trees tend to decay from the outside and were not used as nesting sites by _P. truei_. Nests of _P. truei_ were found in hollow trunks and branches of otherwise healthy juniper trees, and in hollow logs lying on the ground. The heartwood apparently rots rapidly in juniper trees, but the sapwood remains intact for many years--even after the tree is lying on the ground. For example, a part of the pinyon-juniper woodland on the southern end of Chapin Mesa was burned in 1858, and the hollow trunks of junipers were still standing in 1966. Almost all of the pinyon pine trees that were killed by that fire have since decayed; their former presence is verified only by the crumbling remnants of their trunks that lie on the ground throughout the burned area. The following accounts illustrate the preferences of the two species of mice in selection of nesting sites: No. 105, _P. truei_, adult. On July 22, 1964, after being released from a trap, this female ran to a serviceberry bush 10 feet south of station I4d, preened herself, ate a berry from the bush, and disappeared under a large rock at the base of the bush. Subsequent excavation revealed a large nest composed of grasses (_Poa fendleriana_, _Sitanion hystrix_, _Agropyron smithii_, _Koeleria cristata_), and a few leaves of serviceberry. There were three entrances to the nest, one on each side of the rock. This mouse was captured again on August 12, 1964, released and followed to a hollow juniper log 15 feet south of station C7b, and 245 feet from the above nest. This log was dismantled, but no nest was found. A large number of chewed juniper seeds around the log indicated that this mouse, or others, had frequented the area. On August 20, 1964, this female was followed to a large juniper log 20 feet northeast of station I4b. A small nest of shredded juniper bark was found inside the log, and there were numerous nuts of pinyon pine and seeds of Utah juniper that had been gnawed open. This site was about 320 feet from that at C7b, and about 240 feet from station I4d (Fig. 15). No. 118, _P. truei_, young. On August 29, 1963, this male ran into a hollow branch of a partly dead juniper tree 15 feet south of station C5d. Part of this branch had been sawed off at some earlier time, and a hole about one-and-a-half inches in diameter was present in the center of the remaining part. The branch was not dissected, but probing revealed that the hole extended far into the branch and enlarged as it approached the trunk. No. 177, _P. truei_, adult. This lactating female ran into the hollow trunk of a juniper 10 feet north of station G7a. Both lateral branches of the main trunk were rotten and hollow, but the tree appeared to be healthy. Chewed juniper seeds were present in the trunks and around the base of the tree. This female later ran to a juniper log 30 feet north of station N4d. Apparently there was no permanent nest at this site (Fig. 15). No. 178, _P. truei_, adult. This female ran into a hollow juniper tree 10 feet south of station H3c. Hundreds of old juniper seeds, with their embryos chewed out, were present at the base of the tree. The tree was not cut down. No. 238, _P. truei_, adult. This male ran into a dead juniper log 10 feet south of station O4b. Chewed juniper seeds were present on the ground, but no nest was found in the log. [Illustration: FIG. 15: Diagrams showing estimated home ranges of six individuals of two species of _Peromyscus_, and location of these ranges in the trapping grid. Nesting or hiding places are described in the text, and are indicated on each diagram by an X. Shaded areas represent home ranges estimated from trapping records for 1963; outlined, unshaded areas represent estimated home ranges for 1964.] No. 241, _P. truei_, adult. This male ran into a small hole at the base of a juniper tree 25 feet south of station G7c. The hole was at the fork of the tree, four inches above the ground, and led to a large subterranean chamber in the basal part of the trunk. This male later ran into a dead juniper log lying on the ground 20 feet southwest of station N3b. No nest was found in the log. After another capture, this mouse ran to a small juniper log 40 feet southeast of station G3d. There was a nest of shredded juniper bark and many juniper seeds inside the log (Figs. 15-17). No. 245, _P. truei_, adult. This female ran into a large, hollow juniper log 20 feet northwest of station D4d. No nest was seen, but chewed juniper seeds were noted in and around the log (Fig. 15). No. 251, _P. truei_, juvenile. This female ran into a dead juniper log beside station P4b. Chewed cones of pinyon pine and chewed juniper seeds were on the ground. A small nest of shredded juniper bark, and a few leaves of serviceberry, were found inside the log. Chewed pinyon nuts and juniper seeds also were present in the nest. [Illustration: FIG. 16: (above) Photograph of juniper log at station G3d, which contained the nest of _P. truei_ # 241.] [Illustration: FIG. 17: (below) Photograph of dissected juniper log at station G3d, showing the nest of _P. truei_ # 241, at end of mattock handle. The nest of shredded juniper bark contained chewed seeds of juniper trees.] No. 267, _P. truei_, juvenile. This male ran into a fallen juniper log 40 feet southwest of station P7a and then disappeared into a hole leading under an adjacent rock. Dissection of the log revealed many chewed juniper seeds inside and beneath the log, but no nest. I did not overturn the large rock or excavate under it. No. 268, _P. truei_, adult. This pregnant and lactating female ran into a hollow branch of a partly-dead juniper tree 10 feet south of station O7d. The limb and base of the tree were hollow, and there were large numbers of chewed juniper seeds nearby. Because of time limitations, the branch was not dissected. No. 74, _P. maniculatus_, juvenile. This female ran into a small circular hole in the ground 13 feet north of station J3a. Excavation revealed that this hole led into the abandoned tunnel of a pocket gopher (_Thomomys bottae_). The tunnel was followed for about four feet, but no nest was found and the tunnel led under a thicket of oak brush which made further excavation impractical (Fig. 15). No. 247, _P. maniculatus_, adult. This male was followed to a large nest situated at the base of a stump and under a juniper log lying beside the stump, five feet from station I2c. This large nest was built on the ground and was constructed of grasses (_Poa fendleriana_, _Stipa comata_, and _Koeleria cristata_), and contained a few leaves of Gambel oak. It was the largest nest found. Chewed pinyon nuts were in the nest. (Fig. 15). No. 276, _P. maniculatus_, juvenile. This male ran into a small hole at the base of a dead juniper tree 40 feet north of station O2c. It would have been necessary to cut the tree down to uncover the nest, and this was not deemed to be worthwhile. The preceding accounts indicate that, in Mesa Verde, nests of _P. truei_ usually are associated with hollow juniper logs or branches. In one instance a nest of _P. truei_ was found on the ground, under a rock. Shredded juniper bark, and, in one case, grasses were the materials most commonly used for nest building. Individuals of _P. maniculatus_ did not build nests in trees. One nest was found under a stump and adjacent log. Another site was in the abandoned tunnel of a pocket gopher, and a third was under a large rock. The only nest that was unquestionably built by a _P. maniculatus_ was constructed of grasses and a few leaves. It seems unlikely that competition for nesting sites between the two species of _Peromyscus_ affects the local distribution of each species. The analysis of nesting sites suggests that _P. truei_ is restricted, in Mesa Verde, by the availability of fallen logs, hollow branches, or hollow trunks of juniper trees. My observations lead me to think that within the pinyon-juniper woodland there is a surplus of nesting sites for individuals of _P. truei_. Many juniper trees have dead branches, and hollow juniper logs are abundant throughout the forest. It is inconceivable to me that the population of _P. truei_ could reach densities sufficient to saturate every nesting site available to them in the trapping grid. Sagebrush areas, or brushy zones adjacent to the pinyon-juniper woodland usually do not contain juniper logs; when hollow juniper trees or logs are not available, _P. truei_ is not found as resident of such areas. As mentioned earlier, individuals of _P. truei_ may venture into such areas to feed if they are adjacent to pinyon-juniper woodland. An individual of _P. truei_ may have more than one nest within its home range (for example Nos. 105 and 241 cited above). Each mouse probably has refuges, each containing a nest, strategically located in its home range. Thus, if a mouse is chased by a predator, or by another mouse, it need not return to its main nest, but can seek refuge in one of its secondary nests. These secondary nests were small and were invariably constructed from shredded juniper bark. Some of these nests were little more than a scant handful of shredded bark that formed a platform to sit upon. Other nests were larger and ball-shaped, with one opening on the side. All of the secondary nests that were found were inside hollow juniper logs. The bark used in construction of the nests had, in each case, been transported from nearby living trees. The logs had previously lost their bark through decay. The evidence indicates that these secondary refuges are prepared with considerable care. Not only is the bark transported for some distance, but it is shredded into a soft mass of fibers. When a mouse first establishes itself in a new area, perhaps it begins several such nests before settling upon the most favorable site. The less desirable sites, if still within the animal's range, are then available (barring competition by a new inhabitant) for outlying refuges. My data do not indicate whether individuals of _P. maniculatus_ use a similar arrangement of nests within their home ranges. The population of _P. maniculatus_ was sparse in the trapping grid, and the habitat these mice occupied was such as to make following them extremely difficult. In captivity, both species constructed nests that were indistinguishable to me, when the mice were given cotton, kapok, or pieces of burlap as building material. The cotton or kapok was used directly, but the burlap was shredded into a fine mass of fluffy fibers. The burlap seemed to me to be the best building material, for it maintained its shape best. Both species constructed nests that resembled inverted bowls. Solitary mice naturally built smaller nests than those built by females with young. The entrance to the closed nests varied; often the female would bolt through the side of the nest where there was no opening. Sometimes the mice would exit and enter through the top of the nest. In some cases it appeared that the entire nest was closed; probably the occupant had closed the entrance. Such a closed nest would have the advantage of greatly moderating the microenvironment within the nest, and would allow the animal within to remain comfortable with a minimum expenditure of energy. The larger nests found in the trapping grid resembled those built by captives. Nests built of grasses were always larger than those built of juniper bark. Juniper bark is as easily worked into nests as are grasses, in my judgment. Therefore, difficulty of construction of nests from this material probably does not account for the smaller size of the nests composed of bark. I think the difference in insulating characteristics between the two materials probably accounts for the difference in size of the nests. REPRODUCTION In Mesa Verde, _Peromyscus_ reproduces from April through September. Reproduction is greatly reduced in the autumn, and most females complete reproduction before October. Ten of the 20 females of _P. maniculatus_, taken in May, contained embryos; five others were lactating. Lactating and pregnant females were collected on May 5, 1962, indicating that reproduction in some females began in early April. In September, 15 of 34 females were pregnant or lactating, whereas in October only two out of 15 females of _P. maniculatus_ were reproducing. Only one female of _P. maniculatus_ was found to contain embryos in October. This large adult was taken on October 3, 1963, and had six embryos, each five millimeters long. She probably would have produced a litter later in October, and would have been nursing into November. A report of October breeding in north-central Colorado described nine of 23 females of _P. maniculatus_ as being in a reproductive state; seven were lactating and one was pregnant between October 26 and 31, 1952 (Beidleman, 1954:118). In the Museum of Natural History, the University of Kansas, there are 35 females of _P. maniculatus_ more than 144 millimeters in total length taken from Mesa Verde in November, 1957 (Anderson, 1961:53). None of these contained embryos, and no pregnant females have been taken from the park in November. _P. truei_ and _P. maniculatus_ reproduce at about the same time. A female of _P. truei_ prepared as a specimen on May 10, 1964, contained four embryos, each 20 millimeters long, indicating a breeding time in mid-April. Svihla (1932:19) reported the gestation period for non-lactating _P. truei_ to be 25 to 27 days and for lactating individuals, 40 days. Lactation tends to increase the gestation period of other _Peromyscus_ by about five days (Asdell, 1964:266). The gestation period of nine non-lactating females of _P. m. rufinus_ was reported by Svihla to be 23 to 24 days. Lactation increased the length of the period of gestation in this subspecies to between 23 and 32 days (mean for seven females 26.57 ± 0.73, Svihla, 1932:19). Females of _P. truei_ were observed in various stages of reproduction from June through September. Ten of the 20 females of _P. truei_ taken in September were reproducing; four contained embryos and the other six were lactating. In October, only one of 17 females caught in snap traps was lactating. Lactating females were caught in live-traps as late as October 23, although most females had ceased reproduction by then. No pregnant or lactating females were observed in November. In _P. maniculatus_, puberty has been placed at 32 to 35 days for females weighing 13 grams, and in males at from 40 to 45 days, at weights of 15 to 16 grams (Jameson, 1953:45). In _P. truei_, the weight of the testes is reported to rise in March and diminish through September, with accessory organs following the same cycle (Asdell, 1964:267). Young of _P. truei_ nurse for about one month, although some litters may not be weaned until 40 days of age. Young of _P. maniculatus_ are weaned between 22 and 37 days of age (Svihla, 1932:30). Twenty-six pregnant females of _P. maniculatus_, taken in the breeding seasons of 1961-1964, contained from one to eight embryos each; the mean was 4.65 ± 1.67. Other investigators have found similar mean values in this species (Asdell, 1964:266). Thirteen females of _P. truei_ taken in the breeding seasons of 1961-1964, contained from three to six embryos each; the mean was 4.0 ± .912. Svihla (1932:25) reported litter sizes, at birth, of two to five and a mean of 2.84, in 19 litters. Other investigators have reported litter sizes of one to five with a mean of 3.4, and one to six with a mean of 3.6 (Asdell, 1964:268). Apparently _P. truei_ does not have more than six young per litter. In captivity, females of both species began reproduction in early February. These captives had been kept for several months at a temperature of 21 degrees Centigrade, and on a daily photoperiod of 15 hours. Some captive males had enlarged, scrotal testes in January; the extended photoperiod and warm temperature probably influenced the breeding condition. In both species testes of wild males caught in autumn after late September and on through the winter were abdominal, except for one male of _P. maniculatus_ which had enlarged, scrotal testes on October 15. Dates at which different animals arrived at breeding condition varied, in part owing to subadults (young of the year) appearing in the catch from early summer to late autumn. Some adult females appeared to be pregnant or lactating throughout much of the summer and early autumn, whereas other females, that were caught a number of times, apparently reproduced only once in the summer. Some females may fail to breed even though they are mature enough to do so. One female of _P. truei_ captured eight times (August 30 to September 20) was a juvenile when first caught, and was classed as young (in postjuvenal molt) on September 10. She did not reproduce in her first breeding season, unless she did so after September 20, which is unlikely. Another female of _P. truei_ was an adult when first caught, and was caught 12 times (August 21 to October 25). At no time were her mammae enlarged and she was not lactating or pregnant. It is improbable that she reproduced earlier in the season, for teats of mice that have reproduced earlier usually are enlarged to such a degree that previous parturition is clearly indicated. It was surprising to catch a female, of any age, 12 times in two months without sign of reproductive activity. Only one female of _P. maniculatus_ did not show reproductive activity. She was a juvenile on July 19 when first caught; a subadult on August 28 when caught the third time, and an adult on October 23 when caught the fifth time. Burt reported a rest period of a month or more in the summer, in Michigan, during which many females of _P. leucopus_ did not reproduce. They began to breed again in late summer at about the time when young of the year began reproducing (Burt, 1940:17, 19). Abundant mast was correlated with reproductivity in autumn, according to Jameson (1953:54), who thought that "food is a basic determinant of the autumn reproduction" of _P. leucopus_. Little has been written about the length of time males remain in breeding condition. Difficulties in determining breeding condition are many. Fertility customarily is determined by sectioning testes and noting the presence or absence, and relative abundance, of sperm. This procedure necessarily sacrifices the individual and indicates the breeding condition at only one moment and for only the individuals sacrificed. My observations of males caught a number of times in live traps shed some light on the breeding condition of males, but the investigator is likely to err in extrapolating physiological data from morphology when he notes whether the testes are abdominal or scrotal and whether they are enlarged or small. It was assumed that testes that have not descended, and that lie within the abdominal cavity, are not capable of producing viable sperm. This is the condition in most juveniles, and in all males during winter. As the breeding condition is attained, testes descend into the scrotum. Soon the testes and their accessory organs enlarge and are readily apparent. Howard (1950:320) reported that numerous males of _P. leucopus_ sired litters when their testes appeared to be abdominal, and therefore questioned whether the criterion of descended testes is valid as an indicator of breeding condition. My captive males of _P. maniculatus_ and _P. truei_ did not sire litters when their testes were abdominal, even though such males were left with adult females for as long as four to five months (August through December). Captive pairs of both species yielded no evidence of reproductive activity until January when, as mentioned earlier, some of the males had scrotal testes. Young were born first in early February, although their parents had been confined together since the preceding August. Jameson reported the testes of fecund males of _P. maniculatus_ as almost always 8.0 millimeters or larger (Jameson, 1953:50). Testes that are at least partly scrotal must be considered as being capable of producing motile sperm, even though this may not be the case for all individuals. Toward the beginning and end of the breeding season the testes and accessory organs of wild mice were small and probably produced few if any sperm. At these times some males apparently were so frightened by being handled that the testes were retracted into the inguinal canals. It would have been easy to consider such males as having abdominal testes when in fact they did not. In such cases the scrotum usually was noticeably enlarged; it was found also that in many cases the testes returned to the scrotal position if the mouse was held gently for a few minutes. Careful handling of animals was found to prevent, or at least retard, retraction of the testes. Retraction of the testes from the scrotum was not a problem at the height of the breeding season when the testes were engorged. I had originally assumed that all adult males would be fertile throughout the breeding season, and that any males with abdominal testes would be subadults or young of the year. This assumption was an oversimplification; all adult males did not reach breeding condition at the same time of year. My data do not support a firm conclusion, for it is difficult to follow non-captive individuals throughout a breeding season, owing to sporadic appearance of animals in traps. Nevertheless, observations of mice that were trapped a number of times indicated the following: 1) Some adult males that had abdominal testes in the middle of July reached breeding condition as late as late August and even late September. 2) Some juvenal males had scrotal testes at the time their postjuvenal molt was just beginning to be apparent on their sides. Most juvenal males did not have scrotal testes, and many juveniles that appeared repeatedly in traps from mid-July through late October did not attain breeding condition. A mouse that was a juvenile in mid-July must have been born in mid-June. 3) Apparently animals born early in the breeding season may reproduce later in that season, whereas those born later in the breeding season tend not to breed until the following year. Possibly cooler evening temperatures in July and August, due to the relatively larger amounts of precipitation in those months, inhibit reproductive development of late-born young. Most plants have ceased vegetative growth and have produced seeds by this time; but the interrelationships between growing seasons, climatic conditions, and reproductive physiology are unknown. Only one adult of each species had scrotal testes after late September; the _P. truei_ had scrotal testes on October 24, 1963, and the _P. maniculatus_ had scrotal testes on October 15 of that year. GROWTH Growth of captive _P. maniculatus_ and _P. truei_ is discussed in several reports. One of the most complete is that of McCabe and Blanchard (1950) on _P. m. gambelii_ and _P. t. gilberti_ in California. A detailed discussion of the dentition in _P. truei_ and wear of the teeth in different age groups is given by Hoffmeister (1951). Molt in these species has been considered by a number of authors (Collins, 1918; McCabe and Blanchard, 1950; Hoffmeister, 1951; Anderson, 1961). The report by McCabe and Blanchard is valuable because molt is compared between the two species from the first to the twenty-first week of postnatal development. [Illustration: FIG. 18: Scatter diagram of postnatal growth of captive mice, showing increase in length of bodies from birth to 70 days of age. The records for _P. truei_ represent 11 individuals of five litters; those for _P. maniculatus_ represent 17 individuals of four litters.] The thoroughness of the above-mentioned studies is readily apparent to those who have worked with mice of the genus _Peromyscus_. Nevertheless, the ecology of local populations of _P. maniculatus_ and _P. truei_ as reported for the San Francisco Bay area (McCabe and Blanchard, 1950) has little relationship to the ecology of mice of other subspecies of these species, in southwestern Colorado. Indeed, the preferred habitats, and to some extent the behavior, differ strikingly in Colorado and California. [Illustration: FIG. 19: Graphs showing postnatal growth of solitary captive individuals of _P. truei_ and _P. maniculatus_, representing the only young in each of two litters.] Figures 18 and 19 show that some litters grow appreciably faster than others, but the end results are about the same. Since the young were measured at irregular intervals, statistical procedures for calculating confidence limits of the curves were not applicable. Solitary young reared by one female of each species, attained maximum size more rapidly than animals having litter mates (Fig. 19). Nevertheless, solitary individuals and individuals from litters all reach essentially the same size 50 days after birth. The gestation time of _P. truei_ is several days longer than that of _P. maniculatus_, and the young of _truei_ are fewer and heavier than those of _maniculatus_. As would be expected, _truei_ remains in the nest longer and nurses longer than _maniculatus_. Young of each species grow rapidly for the first month, and attain, in that time, the largest percentage of their adult size; they grow rapidly up to sometime between the thirtieth and fiftieth days. Thereafter the rate of growth diminishes and the animals begin to gain weight rather than continuing to extend the lengths of the body and appendages. Figure 19 reveals that the appendages of young _maniculatus_ attain most of their length about a week earlier than those of _truei_. Young _truei_ acquire mobility and coordination somewhat later than young _maniculatus_, but both species are seemingly equal in these respects by about the end of the second week. Length of gestation period, number and size of embryos, amount of time spent in the nest, and time required for bodily growth are all of major importance in determining the relative success of _truei_ and _maniculatus_. These parameters will be considered further in the discussion. PARENTAL BEHAVIOR In the laboratory, pregnant females were supplied with either kapok, cotton, or a piece of burlap with which to make a nest. The kapok or cotton was used directly by the mice in constructing a hollow, compact, moundlike nest. When burlap was used for nest building, the female first completely frayed the cloth by chewing it into a fluffy mass of fibers. When the top of a nest was opened to inspect young, the female would attempt to pull the nesting material back into shape by means of forefeet and teeth. The mother's defensive posture was to cover the young with her body, often lying over them and facing upward, toward the investigator. In this semi-recumbent position, the female would attack the investigator's fingers with her forefeet and teeth. Often the female would stand bipedally and use the forefeet and teeth to mount the attack. If at this time a young chanced to wander away from the mother, she would quickly pick it up and place it in the nest at her feet. When disturbed, females of both species, but especially _P. maniculatus_, often dove headlong under their nest or into the wood shavings on the floor of the cage. This type of retreat was most often used when young were nursing. Time is required even by the mother to disengage nursing young, and this mode of escape is the most expedient. The mother disengaged nursing young by licking around their faces and pushing with her paws. Nursing females of both species tolerated the male parent in the nest. A male and female often sat side by side in the nest and by means of their bodies participated in covering the young. Males were not observed to attempt any defense of the nest, or of the young. Females were tolerant of older young in the nest when another litter was born and was being nursed. In one nest, a female of _P. truei_ gave birth to a litter of three when her older litter was 29 days old. The three older young continued to nurse until they were 37 days old, at which time they were removed from the cage. The female appeared tolerant of this nursing by members of the older litter, but appeared to give preference to the wants of the younger offspring. One female of _P. truei_ lost or killed all but one young of her litter; at about the same time, a _P. maniculatus_ and all but one of her young inexplicably died. Since the remaining young _maniculatus_, a male, was just weaned and was considered expendable, I placed him in the cage with the female _truei_ and her 33-day-old, male offspring. The reaction to the newcomer was unexpected. The female immediately covered the _P. maniculatus_ and her own young and prepared to defend them against me. Later, when the _P. maniculatus_ was disturbed, he had only to emit a squeak and the female _truei_ would run to cover and protect him. When the young male of _P. truei_ was 69 days old the female kept him out of the nest, but still kept the male _maniculatus_ in the nest with her. Although the female was somewhat antagonistic to her own young, she did not injure him, but only kept him out of the nest. The male _truei_ was left in the cage with his mother and the _P. maniculatus_ from September 23 to December 10. None of the mice had any apparent cuts on the ears or tail to indicate fighting. As much as seven months after the _P. maniculatus_ was introduced into the cage, the female _truei_ continued to cover him with her body whenever there was a disturbance. The male _maniculatus_ not only tolerated this attention, but ran under the female _truei_ when frightened. "Adoption" of young of another species has been reported for a number of animals, but, without further evidence, it is not possible to postulate that such adoptions occur between species of _Peromyscus_ in nature. Young males are tolerated by their mothers after weaning. One young male _maniculatus_ was left in the cage with his mother from the time of his birth in autumn until late February of the following year. A litter was born on February 24. A young male _P. truei_ was also left in the cage with his mother until he had acquired most of his postjuvenal pelage; the female and male usually sat together in the cage. Females of both species sometimes eat their young when the young die shortly after birth. One female of each species killed three of her four young, and ate their brains and viscera. In one of these cases, the female, of _P. maniculatus_, also died; the female of _P. truei_ was the same one that adopted the surviving _P. maniculatus_. The female _truei_ continued to nurse her one remaining young for at least several days after killing three of his litter mates. A reason for this cannibalism might have been that I had fed these mice for several weeks on a mixture of grains low in protein content. Inadequacy of this diet for nursing females may have caused them to become cannibalistic. The feed of all captives was changed to Purina Laboratory Chow after the young were killed. Transportation of Young Females of both species transported their young either by dragging them collectively while the young were attached to mammae, or by carrying them one at a time in the mouth. Since mice of the subgenus _Peromyscus_ have three pairs of nipples, they probably transport only six young collectively. Svihla (1932:13) has stated that both pectoral and inguinal teats are used in transporting young, in contrast to Seton's reputed assertion that only inguinal nipples were used. But Svihla neglected to cite Seton's complete statement. Seton (1920:137) recorded a litter of three as using only the inguinal mammae, but on the following page recorded the use of both inguinal and pectoral mammae by another litter of four. My findings agree with those of Svihla. Nursing females of both species were removed periodically from cages by lifting them by the tail. The young would hang onto the mammae and the female would clutch the young to her with all four feet. Young two weeks old or older crawled behind the mother while nursing. The method of transporting young in the mouth has been mentioned by Seton (1920:136) and described by Lang (1925) and Hall (1928:256). These authors report that the mother picks the young up in her paws, and places it ventral-side up in her mouth, with her incisors around it. The young are not picked up by the skin on the nape of the neck, as are the juveniles of dogs and cats. I have found that females of both species of _Peromyscus_ carry their young ventral-side up in their mouth while the young are small, and sometimes when the young are older. Generally, when females of _P. truei_ moved young weighing more than 10 grams, the female grasped the young from the dorsal side, across the thorax just posterior to the shoulders, and held them with the incisors more or less around the animal. Perhaps this method was used with older young because of the observed tendency of the larger young to resist being turned over and grasped from the ventral side, and because their increased weight would have made it difficult, if not impossible, for the mother to pick them up with her paws. The young rarely resisted the efforts of the mother to move them by this method; when grasped across the thorax by the mother, the young would remain limp until released. Some females of _P. truei_ would drag almost fully grown young back into the nest in this manner. I have not observed older young of a comparable age to be moved by females of _P. maniculatus_. The females of _P. maniculatus_ appear to be somewhat less concerned than those of _P. truei_ for the welfare of their young once they are mobile and close to being weaned. The following listing describes changes in postnatal development of young, of each species, from birth to nine weeks of age. _P. maniculatus_ _P. truei_ ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- FIRST WEEK: At birth, young are | At birth, young are helpless, red helpless, red overall, small | overall, smaller than _P. truei_, with wrinkled skin. Pinna of ear | skin wrinkled. Ear, eyes, and folded over and closed; eyes | digits as in _P. truei_. closed; digits not separated | from rest of foot. | | Redness diminished by fourth day. | Redness decreases and disappears by | fourth day. | Hair apparent by fifth day; | Hair apparent by fourth day; body dorsal one-half or two-thirds of | bicolored by end of week. body more darkly pigmented than | venter by fourth day. | | Young squeak loudly and suck; | Young squeak loudly; sucking more sometimes crawl, but drag hind | pronounced than in _P. truei_; may legs. | crawl, but drag hind legs. ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- | SECOND WEEK: Appreciable increase | As in _P. truei_. in size; head about 60 percent | larger than at birth, by 14th | day, and still large in | proportion to body. | | Toes on hind foot separated more | As in _P. truei_, but somewhat more from foot. | advanced. | Body well haired by end of week; | Body well haired by end of week; dorsum dark gray, venter whitish; | dorsum dark gray with brownish tail bicolored in most, but not | tint; venter whitish; tail haired. | bicolored in most, but not haired. | Pinna of ear unfolded and open by | As in _P. truei_, but development end of week. | somewhat more advanced. | Through day 10, use hind legs to | Crawl well by end of week; push, but by end of week use legs | difficult to hold, squirm but do to crawl; difficult to hold, | not bite; agile. squirm but do not bite. | | Walk behind mother while nursing; | agile. | ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- | THIRD WEEK: Eyes open on 16th to | Eyes open on 16th to 20th day, 21st day. | partly open earlier. | Gray pelage of dorsum brownish. | Pelage of dorsum brownish; molt Apparently there is a molt line | line across shoulders progressing progressing posteriorly from | posteriorly; browner anterior to nose; the molt line has moved to | line, grayer posterior to it. shoulder region by end of week; | pelage anterior to line browner, | grayer posterior to it. | | Tail haired and weakly bicolored | Tail haired and bicolored in all in some individuals by end of | individuals. week. | | Young walk and jump well; squirm | Young walk and jump well; fight and but rarely bite. | bite when handled. ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- | FOURTH WEEK: Begin to eat solid | Some young eat grain by 24th day; foods at 23-29 days, but also | others continue to nurse. nurse. | | Molt line about 3/4 inch | Juvenal pelage complete; no sign of posterior to head. Juvenal pelage | postjuvenal molt. completed by end of week. Some | young have brownish hair on front | legs. | | Young roll over on backs and use | As in _P. truei_; also, all jump feet to ward off litter mates | well, and fight fiercely when that are dropped into nest, or | handled. into container, with them. | ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- | FIFTH WEEK: Young weaned on 30th | All young weaned before or by end to 40th day; some nurse beyond | of week; none observed to nurse 30th day if female is lactating. | beyond 30th day, even if female is | lactating. | Juvenal pelage complete and no | Juvenal pelage complete; postjuvenal molt apparent on | postjuvenal pelage not apparent on dorsum. | most, but probably present on all, | and concealed under juvenal pelage. ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- | SIXTH WEEK: Postjuvenal pelage | Postjuvenal molt apparent in most apparent in most individuals | young; almost complete in some, under juvenal pelage, especially | except above tail and on flanks. along lateral line. | ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- | SEVENTH WEEK: Postjuvenal pelage | Postjuvenal pelage apparent in all apparent in most young; in some | young; less distinct molt line than the molt line has progressed well | in _P. truei_. up on the sides, but not to | mid-dorsum. | ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- | EIGHTH WEEK: All individuals | Growth completed in some growing; total lengths of 156-170 | individuals; those in larger millimeters; weight 17-22 grams. | litters have total lengths of | 128-144 millimeters; weight | 14-17 grams. ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- | NINTH WEEK: Testes partly scrotal | Scrotum in season usually large, in one male on 59th day. | vaginae open, evidence of coitus | common. (McCabe and Blanchard, | 1950:39). | New brown pelage encroaching on | Postjuvenal molt completed in some saddle and on hind legs; | individuals by end of week. New postjuvenal molt completed in | pelage tends to be concealed under some individuals by eleventh | juvenal pelage longer than in _P. week. | truei_. ----------------------------------+------------------------------------- CHANGES OWING TO INCREASE IN AGE Increase in length of limb bones, changes in proportion of bones in the skull, eruption and degree of wear of teeth, and changes in pelage can be used to ascertain relative age. Different investigators might choose different limits for the three categories young, subadult, and adult. Museum specimens were assigned to one of five age groups listed below mostly on the basis of tooth wear, essentially as described by Hoffmeister (1951:1). Juvenile: M3 just breaking through bony covering of jaw or showing no wear whatsoever. Young: M3 worn smooth except for labial cusps, and M1 and M2 showing little or no wear. Subadult: M3 worn smooth; labial cusp may persist, but is well worn; M1 and M2 having lingual cusps worn, but not smooth; labial cusps showing little wear. Adult: Lingual cusps worn smooth and labial cusps showing considerable wear; labial cusp of M3 may persist. Old: Cusps worn smooth; not more than one re-entrant angle per tooth discernible, frequently none. For live animals examined in the field, criteria based on pelage and breeding condition were used, as follows: Juvenile: Only gray, juvenal pelage present. Young: Subadult pelage apparent on lateral line or on sides; body usually smaller than in adults. Subadults: Subadult pelage having mostly replaced juvenal pelage; mice often as large as adults; testes of males often abdominal in breeding season; gray juvenal pelage may persist on head of some individuals. Adult: Adult pelage present; body usually largest of all animals in population; females may have enlarged mammae from nursing previous litters; testes of males usually scrotal in breeding season; gray pelage may be present on head of some individuals. Old individuals in the field could not be distinguished from adults; hence any animals that appeared older, or more developed, than subadults were classified as adults. In _P. truei_, subadult pelage appears first on the lateral line or on the flanks; new pelage is ochraceous and contrasts markedly with the gray juvenal coat. In _P. maniculatus_, the subadult pelage contrasts less with the juvenal coat; the new pelage progresses from anterior to posterior over the body in the same manner as in _truei_, but replaces the juvenal coat in a less distinct manner than in _truei_. As a result, contrast often is lacking between juvenal and subadult pelages in _maniculatus_ making it difficult to assign an individual to one of these two age categories when examined in the field. In museum specimens, the subadult pelage is much more noticeable because it can be compared with the pelages of other specimens. The subadult pelage in _P. maniculatus_ is duller than the adult pelage: In _P. truei_ the subadult and adult pelages appear to have an equal sheen. In early winter, the postjuvenal pelage acquired by young individuals of _P. truei_ was thick and luxuriant and indistinguishable from the winter pelage of adults. My observations lead me to conclude that individuals born late in the breeding season molt from juvenal summer pelage directly into winter adult pelage. Technically, this new coat is the postjuvenal one, yet it cannot be distinguished as such after the molt is completed. ANOMALIES AND INJURIES Anatomical anomalies were rare in the individuals of _Peromyscus_ that I examined. When anomalies were found they were striking, principally because of their low rate of occurrence. One female of _P. truei_, born in captivity, had a congenital defect of the pinna of the right ear, noted on the fifteenth day after birth. Closer examination then and later revealed that the pinna was normal in all respects except that the tip was missing. The tip showed no evidence of injury. When the mouse was subadult, this defective pinna was approximately half as long as the normal pinna. The topmost part of the defective pinna was somewhat more constricted in circumference than the normal one. On September 11, 1963, a subadult male of _P. truei_ was captured that had five functional toes on its right front foot, the only one of more than 175 individuals caught and handled in the field that exhibited polydactyly. The front foot was examined closely in the field, but it could not be determined how or where the extra bones of the sixth toe articulated. _Peromyscus_ normally has four full-sized toes on each front foot, and a small inner toe hardly more than an enlarged tubercle, having no nail. A few mice of both species had broken toes or claws torn off. Such injuries were more common on toes of the hind foot. In several instances the toes were shortened, as if by marking, although the animals concerned had been marked earlier by clipping toes other than the injured toes. The reason for these injuries is not apparent, although they could have been caused by fighting, or from having been caught in doors of Sherman live traps. Toes of several mice were swollen and inflamed due to small glochids of cacti that were stuck in them. Apparently the mice had stepped on the glochids by chance, for I found no evidence that _Peromyscus_ of either species eats cacti. One _P. truei_ had a broken tail; three other individuals had tails about one-half normal length. One _P. maniculatus_ had a shortened tail. Some of these injuries probably were caused by the Sherman live traps; several individuals of _P. truei_ were released after having been caught by the tail by the spring-loaded door of these traps. On October 17, 1963, an adult _P. truei_ had a bleeding penis; when this mouse was recaptured on October 25, the injury was healed. Losses Attributed to Exposure in Traps Observations of wild mice caught in live traps suggest that metabolic maturity is reached later than physical and reproductive maturity. In such trapping, it became apparent that juvenal and young mice suffered from exposure to cold and to heat much more than did subadult or adult mice. Although traps were carefully shaded and ample nesting material and food provided, some mice died in the traps. An overwhelming majority of these mice were juveniles and young. Traps were checked in the morning, both in the summer and autumn, yet mice died in traps that were barely warm to the touch, in summer, and cool to the touch in autumn. Older mice frequently were found in traps that were warm, or even hot, to the touch; yet the older mice rarely died in such traps. Apparently the tolerance of adults is much greater to heating and chilling. Greater bulk and perhaps longer pelage in adults might provide sufficiently better insulation to account for this difference. Occasionally juvenal mice were found in traps in a sluggish and weakened condition, especially in autumn when nights were cool. In such cases the mice were either cupped in the hands and warmed until lively enough to fend for themselves, or, if especially weakened, were taken to the laboratory. None of such animals that were returned to the laboratory lived for more than two weeks. Most of those released in the field did not reappear in the traps. I conclude that juvenal and young mice placed under stress by overheating or cooling die immediately or live only a few days. Subadult and adult animals tolerate more extreme conditions of overheating or cooling, presumably because they are able to regulate their internal temperature better, by either losing or retaining heat more effectively. Mice found dead in overheated traps had salivated heavily, and may also have licked the fur on their chests to increase heat dissipation. One such adult, of _P. truei_, had a wet chest when he was taken from a warm trap; when released, this mouse ran to a nearby plant of _Comandra umbellata_, and ate a few of the succulent leaves before running off. This individual was trapped several times later in the summer, and apparently suffered no ill effects from the exposure. Dental Anomalies Abnormalities in the formation and occlusion, or decay of teeth, are relatively rare in wild mammals. Of all bodily structures, the teeth apparently are under the most rigid genetic controls; they form early in the embryo and follow rigidly specified patterns in their ontogeny. Apparently any deviation from the normal pattern of tooth formation is quickly selected against. All specimens of _P. m. rufinus_ and _P. t. truei_ in the collection of the Museum of Natural History at the University of Kansas, and in my collection, were examined for dental anomalies. A total of 317 specimens of _P. m. rufinus_ and 54 specimens of _P. t. truei_ were examined. The following specimens were found to have abnormalities: K. U. 69361, _P. maniculatus_, adult: Small bundles of plant fibers are lodged between all upper teeth and have penetrated the maxilla anterior to the left M1. The maxillary bone is eroded away from the roots of all teeth. The anteriormost roots of both lower first molars are almost completely exposed, because the dentary has been abraded away. K. U. 76041, _P. maniculatus_, young: A piece of plant fiber is wedged between the left M2 and M3. The maxillary bone has eroded away from around the roots of M3, indicating the presence of an abscess in this area. K. U. 69362, _P. maniculatus_, adult: All teeth in the lower right tooth-row are greatly worn, especially on the lingual side. The labial half of the right M1 is all that remains; decay is apparent both in the crown and roots on the lingual side of this tooth. K. U. 69397, _P. maniculatus_, old: The maxillae have eroded away from around the anterior roots of each first upper molar, leaving these roots unsupported. C. L. D. 231, _P. maniculatus_, old: The teeth in this female are greatly worn; re-entrant angles are not visible in any teeth. A circular hole, 0.1 millimeter in diameter, exists in the dentine immediately over (when viewed from the underside of the skull) the posterior root of the right M1. The crowns of the teeth are greatly reduced in height, and the dentine is thin. Anomalies in the Skull Wormian bones and other abnormalities in the roofing bones are noted, as follows: K. U. 76090, _P. maniculatus_, young: The interparietal is divided; the divided suture is in line with the suture between the parietals. The interparietal is 7.8 millimeters long. K. U. 76091, _P. maniculatus_, young: A wormian bone, 0.5 millimeter by 0.2 millimeter, lies between the anterior border of the interparietal and the posterior border of the left parietal, at a point midway between the center line of the skull and the posterolateral border of the parietal bone. C. L. D. 248, _P. maniculatus_, adult: An oval wormian bone, 1.1 millimeters long and 0.6 millimeter wide, lies between the parietals at their posterior margin; the long axis of the bone is parallel to the long axis of the skull. C. L. D. 246, _P. maniculatus_, juvenal: The interparietal is divided equally by a suture. An oval wormian bone, 0.3 millimeter long and 0.1 millimeter wide, lies between the frontals, midway between the anterior and posterior borders of these bones. C. L. D. 656, _P. maniculatus_, young: A small, rounded wormian bone lies between the right parietal and interparietal, lateral to the posterior junction of the suture between the parietals. This bone extends anteriorly into the parietal bone from the suture of the interparietal and parietal. This bone is 0.7 millimeter wide, and extends 0.6 millimeter into the parietal. C. L. D. 662, _P. maniculatus_, subadult: An elongated, diamond shaped wormian bone closes the suture between the parietal bones. This bone is 2.3 millimeters long and 0.8 millimeter wide. K. U. 34735, _P. truei_, old: The anterior one-quarter of the left parietal bone is slightly depressed; and the posterior one-third of the left frontal and anterior one-quarter of the left parietal are thin and sculptured. This malformation of the roofing bones posterior to the orbit probably is not the result of a break, for the orbital part of the frontal bone is normal. The frontal-parietal sutures are in the normal positions on both sides of the skull. The above-mentioned anomalies do not appear to be correlated with age or locality at which the specimens were taken. Apparently such anomalies are present throughout the population, but in a small percentage of specimens. FOOD HABITS Mice of the genus _Peromyscus_ are known to eat a wide variety of plants and arthropods, and to be highly opportunistic in selection of food (Cogshall, 1928; Hamilton, 1941; Williams, 1955, 1959a; Jameson, 1952; Johnson, 1962). In order to determine possible food preferences, captive mice of both species were fed plants indigenous to Mesa Verde. Entire plants were used whenever possible; available seeds also were offered (Tables 5, 6). All feeding experiments were replicated with at least six different individuals in order to minimize the trends resulting from individual preferences or dislikes. The mice of each species tended to be consistent in their feeding. The plant species listed in Tables 5 and 6 were those that were eaten or rejected by a majority of the individuals tested. Plant material eaten by _P. maniculatus_ and refused by _P. truei_ included only the leaves and stem of _Viguiera multiflora_. Plant material eaten by _P. truei_ and refused by _P. maniculatus_ included the leaves of _Calochortus gunnisonii_ and the leaves and stem of _Erigeron speciosus_. TABLE 5--Plants, or Parts of Plants, Eaten by Captive Individuals of _P. truei_ in Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. 0 = not eaten, + = eaten, - = not offered. =============================+========+======+========+======= Species of Plant | Leaves | Stem | Flower | Seeds -----------------------------+--------+------+--------+------- _Amelanchier utahensis_ | - | - | - | + _Calochortus gunnisonii_ | + | + | - | + _Chaenactis douglasii_ | 0 | 0 | - | - _Chrysothamnus depressus_ | 0 | 0 | 0 | - _Chrysothamnus nauseosus_ | + | 0 | 0 | - _Comandra umbellata_ | + | + | - | - _Erigeron speciosus_ | + | + | - | - _Eriogonum alatum_ | - | - | - | + _Juniperus osteosperma_ | - | - | - | + _Lupinus caudatus_ | 0 | 0 | + | - _Lithospermum ruderale_ | 0 | 0 | - | 0 _Mellilotus alba_ | + | + | + | + _Mellilotus officinalis_ | + | + | + | - _Orthocarpus purpureo-albus_ | + | + | + | + _Pedicularis centranthera_ | + | + | - | - _Penstemon linarioides_ | + | + | - | + _Pinus edulis_ | - | - | - | + _Polygonum sawatchense_ | + | + | - | 0 _Solidago petradoria_ | 0 | 0 | 0 | - _Viguiera multiflora_ | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 -----------------------------+--------+------+--------+------- Plant material eaten by captives of both species included _Calochortus gunnisonii_--stem and seeds; _Comandra umbellata_--leaves and stem; _Eriogonum alatum_--seeds; _Penstemon linarioides_--leaves and stem; _Pinus edulis_--seeds; and _Juniperus osteosperma_--seeds. Plant materials refused by both species of mice included the leaves and stem of _Chaenactis douglasii_, the leaves, stem and seeds of _Lithospermum ruderale_, and the leaves, stem and flowers of _Solidago petradoria_. Cricetine rodents chew plant and animal foods thoroughly; contents of their stomachs appear as finely-particulate fragments. These fragments invariably contain pieces of epidermis from ingested plants. Due to the presence of cutin in the cell walls, epidermis is last to be digested. Microscopic analysis of plant epidermis is useful in helping to determine food habits of various animals (Dusi, 1949; Williams, 1955, 1959a; Brusven and Mulkern, 1960; Johnson, 1962). The microscopic analysis of stomach contents provides a practical method of determining which plants are eaten by rodents. Contents of stomachs and intestines were removed from mice caught in snap traps, and from preserved specimens. The contents were placed on a piece of bolting silk, washed thoroughly with running water, stained with iron-hematoxylin and mounted on slides, or stored in 70 per cent ethanol (Williams, 1959a; Douglas, 1965). TABLE 6--Plants, or Parts of Plants, Eaten by Captive Individuals of _P. maniculatus_ in Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. 0 = not eaten, + = eaten, - = not offered. =============================+========+======+========+======= Species of Plant | Leaves | Stem | Flower | Seeds -----------------------------+--------+------+--------+------- _Artemisia ludoviciana_ | 0 | 0 | - | - _Calochortus gunnisonii_ | 0 | + | - | + _Chaenactis douglasii_ | 0 | 0 | - | - _Comandra umbellata_ | + | + | - | - _Erigeron speciosus_ | 0 | 0 | - | - _Eriogonum alatum_ | - | - | - | + _Juniperus osteosperma_ | - | - | - | + _Lappula redowskii_ | 0 | 0 | - | + _Lithospermum ruderale_ | 0 | 0 | - | 0 _Orthocarpus purpureo-albus_ | 0 | 0 | + | + _Penstemon linarioides_ | + | + | + | - _Pinus edulis_ | - | - | - | + _Purshia tridentata_ | + | + | - | - _Sitanion hystrix_ | 0 | 0 | - | 0 _Solidago petradoria_ | 0 | 0 | 0 | - _Sphaeralcea coccinea_ | + | + | - | + _Stipa comata_ | 0 | 0 | - | + _Viguiera multiflora_ | + | + | - | - -----------------------------+--------+------+--------+------- In order to analyze these epidermal fragments, a collection of plants was made within the park. Slides of the epidermis of these plants were prepared and analyzed for diagnostic characters (Douglas, 1965:197-199). Features such as the stomatal arrangement in relation to subsidiary cells; the types of trichomes, scales and glands; the cellular inclusions such as starch grains, mucilage and resins are of taxonomic value (Metcalfe and Chalk, 1950). The configuration of the anticlinal cell walls is useful in separating species that are similar in other respects (Douglas, 1965:199). The following species of plants, and other food items, were identified in the stomach or intestinal contents of _Peromyscus maniculatus_: _Agropyron smithii_ _Artemisia_ sp. _Eriogonum umbellatum_ _Lupinus ammophilus_ _Penstemon linarioides_ _Phlox hoodii_ _Stipa comata_ Arachnid legs Stomach and intestinal contents of _P. truei_ contained the following food items: _Artemisia nova_ _Artemisia_ sp. _Penstemon_ cf. _barbatus_ _Penstemon_ cf. _linarioides_ _Poa fendleriana_ Arachnid legs _Eriogonum_ sp. _Gutierrezia sarothrae_ _Yucca_ sp. Chitin Feathers Many of the plants eaten by the mice had large numbers of crystals in the epidermis. Druses were the most abundant, but raphid crystals also were seen. Every slide contained at least one species of plant which contained druses. Such crystals are composed mostly of calcium oxalate (Esau, 1960:41). In Mesa Verde, families of plants having crystals include: Boraginaceae, Chenopodiaceae, Compositae, Cruciferae, Leguminosae, Liliaceae, Malvaceae, Ornargraceae, Rosaceae, and Saxifragaceae. Calcium oxalate is a highly insoluble compound and is innocuous if it passes through the gastro-intestinal tract without being absorbed. In rats of the genus _Neotoma_, some calcium oxalate passes through the intestines unchanged, but large amounts of calcium are absorbed through the intestine. The urine of pack rats is creamy in color and contains calcium carbonate. It is not understood how these rats metabolize the highly toxic oxalic acid, when converting calcium oxalate to calcium carbonate (Schmidt-Nielsen, 1964:147-148). Apparently calcium oxalate passes through the intestine unchanged in both species of _Peromyscus_, for their urine is clear and yellowish. Although both species of mice appear to prefer plants having soft leaves, some plants having coarse leaves also are eaten. Many of the slides contained isolated sclerids. The stomach contents of one individual of _P. truei_ contained a small fragment of the epidermis of _Yucca_. This fragment may have come from a young shoot. It is unlikely that _Peromyscus_ would eat the larger, coarser leaves of _Yucca_. Pinyon and juniper nuts were found in nests of all mice. Captive mice were especially fond of pinyon nuts, and these probably provide a substantial part of the diet of _Peromyscus_ in the autumn and early winter. The winter staple of _P. truei_ appears to be juniper seeds. Nesting sites of this mouse often could be located by the mounds of discarded seeds lying nearby. Both species eat pinyon and juniper seeds; since _P. truei_ lives in the forest, it has better access to these foods than does _P. maniculatus_. Mice remove the embryos of juniper seeds by chewing a small hole in the larger end of the seed. The seed coats of juniper are extremely hard, and a considerable amount of effort must be expended to remove the embryo. Captives discarded the resinous and pithy, outer layers of juniper berries. Individuals of _P. truei_ are adept climbers. Since many juniper berries remain on branches throughout the winter, the ability of these mice to forage in the trees would be especially advantageous when snow covers the ground. WATER CONSUMPTION _Peromyscus maniculatus_ is ubiquitous, occurring in habitats ranging from mesic boreal forests to arid southwestern deserts. Most subspecies of _P. maniculatus_ live in moderately mesic or near-mesic environments, but a few have adapted to arid conditions. It has been assumed that the success of _P. maniculatus_ in inhabiting such diverse habitats is associated with its adaptability to different kinds of food and varying amount of available water (Williams, 1959b:606). Throughout its range _P. maniculatus_ coexists with one or more other species of _Peromyscus_ that are more restricted in distribution. _Peromyscus truei_ is one such species. Both species live under xeric or near-xeric conditions, for the climate of Mesa Verde is semi-arid. Other than a few widely-scattered springs, there are no sources of free water on the top of the Mesa Verde land mass; thus animals inhabiting the park must rely upon moisture in the plants and other foods they eat, or upon dew. Several investigators have studied water consumption in mice of the genus _Peromyscus_ (Table 7). Dice (1922) did so for the prairie deer mouse, _P. m. bairdii_, and the forest deer mouse, _P. leucopus noveboracensis_, under varying environmental conditions. He found that both species drank about the same amounts of water per gram of body weight, and that food and water requirements did not differ sufficiently to be the basis for the habitat differences between these species. Neither of his samples was from an arid environment. Chew (1951) studied water consumption in _P. leucopus_, and recently reviewed the literature on water metabolism of mammals (Chew, 1965). In his studies of five subspecies of two species of _Peromyscus_, Ross (1930) found significant differences in water consumption between species but not between subspecies within a species. One of the subspecies of _P. maniculatus_ tested was from a desert region, whereas the other two were from mesic areas along the coast of California. Lindeborg (1952) was the first to measure water consumption of both _P. m. rufinus_ and _P. t. truei_, the species and subspecies with which my experiments are concerned. Lindeborg also tested the ability of five races of _Peromyscus_ to survive reduced water rations. Unfortunately, the subspecies chosen for these experiments did not include _P. t. truei_ or _P. m. rufinus_. Lindeborg (1952:25) found that the "amounts of water consumed by various species of _Peromyscus_ from different habitats within the same climatic region were not conclusively different." However, he did find significant differences between some subspecies from different geographical areas. For example, he found no significant difference in water consumption between _P. m. bairdii_ from Michigan and either _P. m. blandus_ or _P. m. rufinus_ from New Mexico, but he found a highly significant difference between _P. l. noveboracensis_ from Michigan and _P. l. tornillo_ from New Mexico. Lindeborg also found that the subspecies of _Peromyscus_ that consumed the least water, and that were best able to survive a reduced water ration, were those from the more xeric climatic areas. Some mammals may be able to change their diets in times of water stress, and thereby compensate for a shortage of water. At such times, _Dipodomys_ selects foods with high percentages of carbohydrates and conserves water by reducing the amounts of nitrogenous wastes to be excreted (Schmidt-Nielsen _et al._, 1948). Williams (1959b) found that _P. m. osgoodi_ from Colorado drank more water on a diet rich in protein than on one rich in carbohydrates. But, her mice on a high carbohydrate diet used less than a normal amount of water for a period of only five weeks; at the end of the five weeks they were drinking about as much as they had been when on the control diet of laboratory chow. Likewise, mice adjusted to the high protein diet by consuming more water; but by the end of the fifth week their daily water consumption approximated the amount drunk when fed on laboratory chow. Because of these results, Williams questioned the validity of the assumption that _P. maniculatus_ is able to inhabit a diversity of habitats because of its adaptability with respect to food and water requirements. I conducted a series of experiments on water and food consumption by individuals of _P. truei_ and _P. maniculatus_. It was thought that if there were differences in water or food consumption, or both, knowledge of them might help to explain the obvious differences in habitat preferences of these two species in Mesa Verde National Park. In August of 1965, 30 individuals of _P. truei_ and _P. maniculatus_ were trapped in Mesa Verde National Park at elevations of 7000-8400 feet, and transported to Lawrence, Kansas, where the experiments were carried out. Mice were housed in individual metal cages (10 x 7.5 x 5 inches), having removable tops of wire mesh, and an externally-mounted water bottle that had a drop-type spout extending into the cage. Cages were on one of five shelves of a movable tier of shelving, and were rotated randomly, from one shelf to another, each week. A layer of dry wood shavings covered the bottom of each cage. A control cage was similarly equipped. The mice were kept in a room in which temperature and photoperiod were controlled. The ambient air temperature of this room was 20 to 23 degrees Centigrade throughout the experiments, and averaged 21 degrees. Humidity was not controlled, but remained low throughout the experiments. The room was illuminated for eight hours each day, from about 9 A. M. to 5 P. M. The animals were fed at least once a week, at which time all remaining food was weighed and discarded, and the remaining water was measured. Tap water was used in all of the experiments. The cages were cleaned each week. Each time the cages containing mice were handled, the control cage was handled in the same way. The amount of evaporation was determined each week by measuring the water remaining in the bottle of the control cage. Water and food consumption of individuals of _P. maniculatus_ and _P. truei_ were measured when the mice were fed diets of differing protein content. To my knowledge, the only other study in which water consumption was measured for mice of the genus _Peromyscus_ on diets of different protein contents was by Williams (1959b). Because of the limited number of animals available, it was decided that the best results could be obtained by placing all individuals on the same diet for a predetermined number of weeks, then on a second diet for a certain period, and so on. Each mouse was weighed at the beginning, at the mid-point, and at the end of each experiment. The mice were weighed on the same days, at times when they were inactive. Because weights of individual mice differ, water and food consumption was calculated on the basis of the amount consumed per gram of body weight per day. All foods were air-dry and contained a negligible amount of water. First, food and water consumption was measured for nine individuals of each species on a diet of Purina Laboratory Chow. This chow contains not less than 23 per cent protein and 4.5 per cent fat, and about 57 per cent carbohydrate. Since the mice had been maintained on this diet for several months prior to the experiments, food and water consumption was measured for a period of only two weeks. Individuals of _P. truei_ consumed more total water and more water per gram of body weight than individuals of _P. maniculatus_ (Table 7). Next, 10 mice of each species were placed on a diet of Purina Hog Chow for a period of four weeks. This chow contains not less than 36 per cent protein and one per cent fat, and about 42 per cent carbohydrate. Both species increased their daily water consumption immediately after being placed on this diet (tables 7 and 11). On the high protein diet, _P. truei_ again consumed much more water than did _P. maniculatus_ (tables 7 and 9). TABLE 7--Food and Water Consumption of _Peromyscus maniculatus_ and _P. truei_ When Fed Diets of Different Protein Content. Food and Water Consumption Are Determined for the Grams, or Milliliters, Consumed per Gram of Body Weight per Day; Daily Totals Are also Given. ==================================================================== _Peromyscus maniculatus rufinus_ ------------+------+---------------+-------+---------------+-------- Diet | | Food | Total | Water | Total per cent | No. | /gram | grams | /gram | water protein | mice | /day ± S. D. | /day | /day ± S. D. | /day ------------+------+---------------+-------+---------------+-------- Lab Chow 23 | 9 | .201 .074 | 4.455 | .262 .183 | 5.751 ------------+------+---------------+-------+---------------+-------- Hog Chow 36 | 10 | .238 .060 | 5.232 | .496 .186 | 10.749 ------------+------+---------------+-------+---------------+-------- Corn 11 | 11 | .149 .044 | 3.144 | .174 .012 | 3.696 ------------+------+---------------+-------+---------------+-------- _Peromyscus truei truei_ ------------+------+---------------+-------+---------------+-------- Diet | | Food | Total | Water | Total per cent | No. | /gram | grams | /gram | water protein | mice | /day ± S. D. | /day | /day ± S. D. | /day ------------+------+---------------+-------+---------------+-------- Lab Chow 23 | 10 | .216 .070 | 6.353 | .373 .119 | 10.880 ------------+------+---------------+-------+---------------+-------- Hog Chow 36 | 10 | .230 .079 | 6.966 | .653 .189 | 19.571 ------------+------+---------------+-------+---------------+-------- Corn 11 | 10 | .158 .010 | 4.318 | .332 .016 | 9.034 ------------+------+---------------+-------+---------------+-------- The tendency of both species to eat more of the hog chow than they ate when fed standard laboratory chow may reflect a higher palatability of the hog chow. Both species consumed similar amounts of food per gram of body weight, on each of the diets (Table 7). The larger _P. truei_ requires more grams of food per day than the smaller _P. maniculatus_, but this slight difference in food consumption probably has no effect on the distribution of these species within Mesa Verde. The results obtained with the low protein diet were strikingly different from those of the first two experiments. In this experiment the same groups of mice were placed on a diet of whole, shelled corn for a period of six weeks. The corn contained less than 11 per cent protein, about three per cent fat, and about 80 per cent carbohydrate. By the end of the first week, on the low protein diet, all mice had reduced their water intake by about half the amount used per day on the high protein diet (Table 7). There was not a statistically significant difference, for either species, between the average amounts of water drunk in the first and in the sixth weeks of the experiment. The data in Table 7 show that on all three diets, individuals of _P. maniculatus_ drank less water per gram of body weight than individuals of _P. truei_. Variation in water consumption was high; some individuals of _P. maniculatus_ that drank more than the average amount for the species, consumed as much water as some individuals of _P. truei_ that drank less than the average amount. In general, individuals of _P. maniculatus_ drank about half as much water each day as individuals of _P. truei_. Individuals of both species were consistent in their day-to-day consumption. TABLE 8--Amounts of Mean Daily Water Consumption as Reported in the Literature for Species of _Peromyscus_. Figures in Parentheses are Means; Those Not in Parentheses Are Extremes. Column headings: A: Mean daily ml./gm. wt./day B: Water consumption total ml. per day C: Temperature D: Humidity E: Per cent dietary protein F: Investigator ================+===========+=============+=======+=======+====+===== | A | B | C | D | E | F ----------------+-----------+-------------+-------+-------+----+----- | (.262) | (5.70) | | | | _P. m. rufinus_ | .124-.699 | 2.71-15.07 | 20-23 | low | 23 | [A] | | | | | | _P. m. rufinus_ | (.101) | (2.39) | 20-25 | 24-47 | | [B] | | | | | | _P. m. osgoodi_ | .16-.25 | 3.2-4.3 | 18-22 | 10-20 | 23 | [C] | | | | | | | (.126) | (1.74) | | | | _P. m. bairdii_ | .082-.177 | 1.12-2.72 | 21 | 25-68 | | [D] | | | | | | _P. m. bairdii_ | .124-.182 | (2.37-3.17) | 20-25 | 24-47 | | [B] | | | | | | | (.372) | (10.80) | | | | _P. t. truei_ | .224-.561 | 7.0-16.92 | 20-23 | low | 23 | [A] | | | | | | _P. t. truei_ | (.085) | (2.77) | 20-25 | 24-47 | | [B] | | | | | | _P. l. nov._ | .057-.117 | 1.36-2.29 | 21 | 25-68 | | [D] | | | | | | _P. l. nov._ | | (5.36) | 18 | 62.5 | | [E] ----------------+-----------+-------------+-------+-------+----+----- [A] Douglas [B] Lindeborg, 1952 [C] Williams, 1959 [D] Dice, 1922 [E] Chew, 1951 Table 8 shows average water consumption for several species of _Peromyscus_ as reported in the literature, and as determined in my study. It is difficult to compare my results with most of the data in the literature, because of a lack of information as to protein, fat, carbohydrate, and mineral contents of foods used in other studies. Lindeborg (1952) and Dice (1922) fed mice on a mixture of rolled oats, meat scraps, dry skimmed milk, wheat germ, etc. described by Dice (1934). Their data on water consumption in _P. maniculatus_ indicate that this mixture probably is lower in protein content than Purina Laboratory Chow, that was used in my experiments and those of Williams' (tables 8 and 9). The amount of dietary protein consumed under natural conditions is not known for most wild animals. One index of the minimum amount of protein necessary is the amount required for an animal to maintain its weight. At best, this can be only an approximation of the required amount, for other factors, such as stress, disease, change in tissues during oestrus or gonadal descent, and changes in constituents of the diet other than protein, would all be expected to affect the body weight (Chew, 1965:145-147). The data in Table 7 show that both species vary their food intake with changes in diet. Table 10 shows weight changes that took place in individual mice when fed each of the three diets. A change in weight of one gram cannot be considered as important, for the weight of an individual mouse fluctuates depending upon when he last drank, ate, defecated or urinated. The only significant changes in weight occurred when mice were fed low protein food (Table 10). Individuals of _P. truei_ lost 15.72 per cent and individuals of _P. maniculatus_ lost 10.03 per cent of their total body weights on this diet. This indicates that food having a protein content of more than 10 per cent but less than 23 per cent is required for maintenance of weight in these animals. Although knowledge of the amount of water consumed, _ad libitum_, by adult mice is valuable information, maintenance of the population depends upon reproduction and dispersal of young individuals. My trapping data indicate that only two to three per cent of the adults live long enough to breed in consecutive breeding seasons. In spring, the breeding population is composed largely of mice that were juveniles or subadults during the latter parts of the breeding season. Therefore, the critical time for the population may well be the time when the season's young are being produced. Any unfavorable circumstances, such as a shortage of food or water, that would affect pregnant or lactating females would be of primary importance to the integrity of the population. TABLE 9--A Comparison of Mean Daily Water Consumption of Mice on High Protein Diets. Numbers in Parentheses Are Average Values; All Others Are Ranges of Values. Column headings: A: Temperature B: Relative humidity C: Investigator ================+===========================+=========+=======+========= | Mean daily H_{2}O | | | | consumption | | | Species +-------------+-------------+ A | B | C | cc./gm. wt. | Total cc. | | | ----------------+-------------+-------------+---------+-------+--------- _P. m. osgoodi_ | (0.27-0.54) | (4.6-9.3) | 18-22 C | 10-20 |Williams, | | | | | 1959 ----------------+-------------+-------------+---------+-------+--------- | (0.496) | (10.74) | | | _P. m. rufinus_ | 0.186-0.764 | 4.54-16.57 | 20-23 C | low |Douglas ----------------+-------------+-------------+---------+-------+--------- | (0.653) | (19.57) | | | _P. t. truei_ | 0.429-1.031 | 13.28-30.28 | 20-23 C | low |Douglas ----------------+-------------+-------------+---------+-------+--------- One would assume that pregnant and lactating females require more water than non-pregnant females. One might also assume that juveniles require different amounts of water and food than adults. Juveniles have less dense pelage than adults, and probably are affected more by their immediate environment because of their relatively poor insulation. Juveniles might also be in an unfavorable situation insofar as water conservation is concerned, because they are actively growing, and in most cases, acquiring new pelage; it is well known that these are times of stress for the individual. TABLE 10--Weights of Mice at Start and Finish of Experiments, Showing Changes in Weight and Mean Weights, and Means of Changes in Weight (mean delta). ======================================================================== _Peromyscus truei truei_ ----+---------------------+----------------------+---------------------- | Lab Chow | Hog Chow | Corn +------+------+-------+-------+------+-------+-------+------+------- No. |Start | End |[Delta]| Start | End |[Delta]| Start | End |[Delta] ----+------+------+-------+-------+------+-------+-------+------+------- 1 | 31.0 | 31.3 | 0.3 | 31.3 | 32.3 | 1.0 | 32.3 | 29.0 | 3.3 5 | 31.1 | 30.5 | 0.6 | 30.5 | 32.8 | 2.3 | 32.8 | 28.7 | 4.1 6 | 27.6 | 27.1 | 0.5 | 27.1 | 29.5 | 2.4 | 29.5 | 27.3 | 2.2 7 | 28.0 | 26.3 | 1.7 | 26.3 | 27.5 | 1.2 | 27.5 | 22.2 | 5.3 13 | 25.8 | 30.6 | 4.8 | 30.6 | 27.0 | 3.6 | 27.0 | 22.2 | 4.8 14 | 26.9 | 30.7 | 3.8 | 30.7 | 31.4 | 0.7 | 31.4 | 27.3 | 4.1 15 | 25.4 | 29.4 | 4.0 | 29.4 | 29.8 | 0.4 | 29.8 | 24.0 | 5.8 16 | 33.0 | 32.9 | 0.1 | 32.9 | 30.5 | 2.4 | 30.5 | 26.0 | 4.5 19 | 37.6 | 38.1 | 0.5 | 38.1 | 31.8 | 6.3 | 31.8 | 22.0 | 9.8 20 | 23.5 | 25.8 | 2.3 | 25.8 | 26.2 | 0.4 | 26.2 | 22.9 | 3.1 ----+------+------+-------+-------+------+-------+-------+------+------- [=Y]| 28.9 | 30.2 | 1.8 | 30.2 | 29.8 | 2.0 | 29.8 | 25.2 | 4.7 ----+------+------+-------+-------+------+-------+-------+------+------- _Peromyscus maniculatus rufinus_ ----+---------------------+----------------------+---------------------- | Lab Chow | Hog Chow | Corn +------+------+-------+-------+------+-------+-------+------+------- No. |Start | End |[Delta]| Start | End |[Delta]| Start | End |[Delta] ----+------+------+-------+-------+------+-------+-------+------+------- 2 | 23.0 | 20.7 | 2.3 | 20.7 | 21.1 | 0.4 | 21.1 | 18.6 | 2.5 3 | 22.7 | 23.1 | 0.4 | 23.1 | 23.8 | 0.7 | 23.8 | 20.7 | 3.1 4 | 22.0 | 21.1 | 0.9 | 21.1 | 21.8 | 0.7 | 21.8 | 21.3 | 0.5 8 | 26.3 | 28.1 | 1.8 | 28.1 | 15.8 | 2.3 | 25.8 | 23.8 | 2.0 9 | 21.5 | 24.0 | 2.5 | 24.0 | 25.1 | 1.1 | 25.1 | 21.8 | 3.3 10 | | | | | | | 22.5 | 20.0 | 2.5 11 | 21.0 | 22.1 | 1.1 | 22.1 | 20.8 | 1.3 | 20.8 | 19.0 | 1.8 12 | 22.3 | 23.2 | 0.9 | 23.2 | 21.3 | 1.9 | 21.3 | 20.4 | 0.9 17 | 18.9 | 20.0 | 1.1 | 20.0 | 19.2 | 0.8 | 19.2 | 19.4 | 0.2 18 | 17.0 | 17.5 | 0.5 | 17.5 | 19.5 | 2.0 | 19.5 | 17.3 | 2.2 21 | 18.9 | 18.1 | 0.8 | 18.1 | 20.2 | 2.1 | 20.2 | 17.3 | 2.9 ----+------+------+-------+-------+------+-------+-------+------+------- [=Y]| 21.4 | 21.8 | 1.2 | 21.8 | 21.8 | 1.3 | 21.9 | 19.9 | 2.2 ----+------+------+-------+-------+------+-------+-------+------+------- Lindeborg (1950:76) found that 15 days before parturition, pregnant and non-pregnant females of _P. m. bairdii_ drank about the same amounts of water, that females consumed more water after the young were born and until they were weaned, and that water consumption increased with an increase in weight in young, growing individuals. He found that in the later stages of pregnancy, females of _P. m. bairdii_ required 36 per cent more water than non-breeding females; at 14 days after parturition, nursing females required 111 per cent more water than non-breeding females, and at weaning time, 158 per cent more water. Dice (1922:35) reported a 217 per cent increase in drinking of _P. m. bairdii_ before parturition, and 171 per cent increase while nursing. Several females of both species were bred prior to the start of the experiments described herein. As a consequence, it was possible to determine water and food consumption for lactating females of each species, and later, for their litters. Pregnant and lactating females, and newly-weaned litters, were fed laboratory chow throughout this experiment. The litters were separated from their mothers as soon as the young were observed to be eating, or no later than 33 days after birth. Table 11 shows the amounts of water and food consumed by two females of each species while they were either in the later stages of pregnancy, or were nursing. Although the data in Table 11 do not cover the full developmental time of the litters involved, it is obvious that both lactating females of _P. truei_ and one female of _P. maniculatus_ consumed more water than the average for their species (Table 7). Water and food consumption was measured for both females of _P. truei_ while they were nursing. The female that gave birth to litter A was left in the cage with the male for several days after the litter was born, resulting in another litter being born about 27 days after the first. Therefore, the record of this female represents an extreme case of stress (probably a common occurrence in nature) in which a female is nursing one litter while she is pregnant with a second. The record of the female of _P. truei_ that gave birth to litter B is the most complete, including data from the fifth day after parturition until the young were weaned on the thirty-third day after parturition. The record of the female of _P. maniculatus_ that gave birth to litter C covers the last 10 days of nursing before the young were weaned. After being separated from her litter, this female drank more than the average amounts of water, on both high and low protein diets. Although the food and water were lost several times for the female of _P. maniculatus_ with litter D, the period of time covered by the 14 days when water and food consumption were measured includes times just prior to parturition and to weaning of the young. TABLE 11--Water and Food Consumed by Nursing Females of _P. truei_ and _P. maniculatus_. Consumption Is Calculated on the Basis of Amount (Milliliters or Grams) Consumed per Gram of Body Weight per Day, as well as Total Amounts Used per Day. Column headings: A: Water used B: No. days C: Average weight D: ml. H_{2}O/gm./day E: Total water/day F: No. in litter G: Food used H: gms. food/gm./day I: Total food/day =====================+=======+====+=======+======+=======+=== Female | A | B | C | D | E | F ---------------------+-------+----+-------+------+-------+--- _P. truei_ (A) | 447 | 17 | 33.00 | .796 | 26.29 | 3 _P. truei_ (B) | 676 | 28 | 32.70 | .738 | 24.14 | 3 _P. maniculatus_ (C) | 191 | 10 | 19.45 | .983 | 19.10 | 5 _P. maniculatus_ (D) | 133 | 14 | 24.35 | .224 | 5.46 | 6 ---------------------+-------+----+-------+------+-------+--- Female | G | B | C | H | I | F ---------------------+-------+----+-------+------+-------+--- _P. truei_ (A) | 214.7 | 26 | 33.00 | .250 | 8.26 | 3 _P. truei_ (B) | 120.5 | 24 | 32.70 | .153 | 5.02 | 3 _P. maniculatus_ (C) | 47.8 | 10 | 19.45 | .246 | 4.78 | 5 _P. maniculatus_ (D) | 180.1 | 21 | 27.42 | .312 | 8.58 | 6 ---------------------+-------+----+-------+------+-------+--- It is interesting that the female of _P. maniculatus_ with litter C used much more than the average amount of water for the species, and even more per gram of body weight than lactating females of _P. truei_. Conversely, water consumption of the female with litter D was within one standard deviation of the mean for all adults of _P. maniculatus_. I infer that at least some lactating females of _P. maniculatus_ are better adapted to aridity than are some lactating females of _P. truei_. Table 11 also shows food consumption of the four females discussed above. All females, with the exception of the female with litter D, consumed amounts of food that lie within one standard deviation of the means for their species. The female with litter D had the most young, consumed the most food but drank the least water of the four females. Later, when separated from her litter and placed on the low protein diet, this female drank only .046 milliliters of water per gram of body weight per day. This figure is less than one-third of the average amount (.174) for this species (Table 7). The records of water and food consumption for litters A, C, and D are given in Table 12; the mice in litter B persisted in placing wood shavings in the opening of the spout on their water bottle, causing loss of the water. The data show that mice in all three litters had an average water and food consumption within one standard deviation of the mean for adults of their respective species (Tables 7 and 12). It is interesting that juveniles of both species require no more food and water per gram of body weight than adults. This indicates that if a young animal survives the rigors of postnatal life until it is weaned, it is then at no disadvantage as far as food and water consumption are concerned. This would be greatly advantageous to the species, as a population, for the young could disperse immediately upon weaning, and go into any areas that would be habitable for adults of the species. TABLE 12--Food and Water Consumed by Young Mice in Litters, After Weaning. Consumption Is Calculated on the Basis of the Amount (Milliliters or Grams) Consumed per Gram of Litter Weight per Day; Total Amounts Are Shown and Can Be Divided by Litter Size for Average Individual Consumption. Litter Sizes Are as Follows: A=3; C=5; D=6. =====================+=======+=========+=====+=========+========+====== | Total | | | Average | ml. | Total Litter | water | Total | No. | total |H_{2}O/ | water | used |corrected|days | weight |gm./day | /day ---------------------+-------+---------+-----+---------+--------+------ _P. truei_ (A) | 1207 | 1120 | 57 | 58.30 | .337 | 19.64 _P. maniculatus_ (C) | 1427 | 1340 | 57 | 76.14 | .308 | 23.50 _P. maniculatus_ (D) | 700 | 670 | 31 | 58.80 | .367 | 21.61 ---------------------+-------+---------+-----+---------+--------+------ | Total | | Average | Gms./ | Total Litter | food | No. | total |gms. wt.| food | used |days | weight | /day | /day -----------------------------+---------+-----+---------+--------+------ _P. truei_ (A) | 651.2 | 50 | 58.30 | .223 | 13.02 _P. maniculatus_ (C) | 743.8 | 57 | 76.14 | .171 | 13.04 _P. maniculatus_ (D) | 471.1 | 31 | 58.80 | .258 | 15.19 -----------------------------+---------+-----+---------+--------+------ The young of pregnant and lactating females are the animals in the population most likely to be affected by a deficient supply of water. Drought could reduce the water content of the vegetation to such a level that pregnant or lactating females might find it difficult, if not impossible, to raise litters successfully. If such a drought persisted throughout an entire breeding season, the next year's population would be reduced in numbers, for even under normal climatic conditions it is almost exclusively the juveniles that survive from one breeding season to the next. If such a hypothetical drought occurred, lactating females of _P. truei_ would be in a more critical position than lactating females of _P. maniculatus_. In order to determine how much water was available to mice in the peak of the breeding season, samples of the three most common plants in the study area were collected each week for analysis of their moisture content. Plants were placed in separate plastic bags that were sealed in the field. About a dozen plants of each species were used in each determination. Only the new tender shoots of the plants were collected, for it was assumed that mice would eat these in preference to the tougher basal portions of the plants. The plants were taken immediately to the laboratory and were weighed in the bag. Then the bag was opened and it and the contents placed in an incubator at 85 degrees Fahrenheit for a period of at least 72 hours. About 48 hours were required to dry the plants to a constant weight. The dried plants were weighed and their percentages of moisture were determined. Plants lose some water upon being placed in a closed bag; small drops of water appear immediately on the inner surface of the bag. Therefore, the bag must be weighed at the same time as the plants and the weight of the dried bag must be subtracted later. The three kinds of plants chosen were among the most widely distributed species in the study area, and all three grow close to the ground, within reach of mice. Stems and leaves of two of the plants, _Comandra umbellata_ and _Penstemon linarioides_, were readily eaten by captive animals. Mice also were observed to eat leaves of _Comandra_ after being released from metal live traps. The third species, _Solidago petradoria_, differs from the other two in having a short woody stem that branches at ground level. The more succulent shoots arise from this woody stem. The leaves of _Solidago_ are coarse and were not eaten by captive mice. Nevertheless, this species was chosen because it is widely distributed and has the growth form of several other species of plants in the area. The graph in Figure 20 shows that _Comandra_ contains the highest percentage of water through most of the summer. Water content of both _Penstemon_ and _Comandra_ was greatly reduced in the dry period that occurred in early July. _Solidago_ maintained a relatively constant percentage of moisture; perhaps its woody stem serves for water storage. The rains of July and August increased the percentage of moisture in the plants, but not to the extent expected. Neither _Solidago_ nor _Comandra_ reached the levels of hydration of early June. All plants were collected at or about 11 A. M. At night, when mice are active, these plants would be expected to contain a higher percentage of water than in the daytime. The data in Figure 20 indicate that mice probably are not endangered by water shortages in most years. The average percentage of moisture in the plants studied was as follows: _Comandra umbellata_ 62.33 per cent; _Solidago petradoria_ 53.0 per cent; _Penstemon linarioides_ 49.28 per cent. If a mouse were to eat ten grams of plant material containing 50 per cent moisture, it would provide him with five grams of food and five grams of water, both of which exceed the minimum daily needs for non-pregnant adults of either species. The data indicate that there are sufficient differences in water consumption between _P. maniculatus_ and _P. truei_ to account for their habitat preferences in Mesa Verde National Park. In years having average precipitation, water present in the vegetation has the potential for providing enough moisture for the needs of both species. Extended drought would affect individuals of _P. truei_ more adversely than individuals of _P. maniculatus_. [Illustration: FIG. 20: Graph showing percentages of moisture contained during the summer of 1964, by three abundant and widely-distributed species of plants in Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado.] PARASITISM Ectoparasites were collected by placing specimens of _Peromyscus_ in separate plastic bags soon after death, adding cotton saturated with carbon tetrachloride, closing the bag for about five minutes, then brushing the fur of the specimen above a sheet of white paper. The ectoparasites were sorted and sent to specialists for identification. Endoparasites were saved when stomach and intestinal contents were examined. Larvae of botflies were collected from mice in the autumn of 1962, placed in sand in containers, and kept over winter until they hatched. Eyelids of alcoholic specimens were inspected for mites by an authority on these organisms. In 1961, the incidence of parasitism by botflies was the highest for the period 1960-1966. _P. maniculatus_ was more heavily infected with warbles than was _P. truei_. In 84 individuals of _P. maniculatus_ taken in September 1961, from Morfield Ridge, 32.1 per cent had warbles. The average number of warbles per animal was 1.24, and it was not uncommon to find two or three warbles per mouse. Sixty-nine per cent of the warbles were in the third instar stage, and the rest were in the second instar stage. Warble infestation was higher in the first half of September (40 per cent of mice infected) than in the second half of the month (30 per cent infected), but a larger percentage of the warbles were found (69 per cent) in the second half of the month. In October 1961, 12.9 per cent of 62 _P. truei_ were infected with warbles. The average number of warbles per infected mouse was 1.37. Seventy-three per cent of the warbles were in the third instar stage; the rest were in the second instar stage. Warble infestation was higher in the first half of October (16 per cent of the mice infected) than in the second half of the month (5.5 per cent infected). These mice were collected from several localities on Chapin Mesa, in pinyon-juniper woodland. In Mesa Verde the greatest incidence of infestations is in late September and early October. This agrees with the finding of other investigators (Sealander, 1961:58). Sealander (1961) investigated hematological values in deer mice infected with botflies, and found that infected mice had significantly lower concentrations of hemoglobin than non-infected mice. Myiasis, associated with infection by _Cuterebra_, is likely to lead to a lowering of the physiological resistance of a segment of the population, and perhaps to a subsequent decline in the population (Sealander, 1961:60). Mice infected by warbles were less agile than non-infected mice. Other investigators also have reported awkwardness in locomotion in infected mice (Scott and Snead, 1942:95; Sealander, 1961:58). Test and Test (1943:507) noted that parasitized mice did not appear to be emaciated, and this was also true of parasitized mice at Mesa Verde. Healed wounds, where warbles had emerged, were apparent on a number of mice. The warbles, and wounds, usually were found on the flanks and backs of the mice. The large, third instar larvae weighed about one gram apiece; there is little doubt that such large larvae induce trauma in their hosts. The highest rate of infestation by botflies occurred in 1961, the year in which the population density of _P. maniculatus_ was near its peak. The population of this species was reduced considerably in 1962, and remained low through 1964. In 1965, the density of _P. maniculatus_ appeared to be increasing. Other investigators have reported that increased incidence of _Cuterebra_ infestation in deer mice coincides with lower population densities and with a downward trend in the population (Scott and Snead, 1942:95; Wilson, 1945). My data indicate that this may not be the situation in Mesa Verde. The intestines or stomachs of almost all individuals of _P. maniculatus_ contained parasites. Endoparasites were less abundant in individuals of _P. truei_. This heavier infestation of _P. maniculatus_ by tapeworms, roundworms, and spiny-headed worms probably reflects the larger proportion of insects eaten by _P. maniculatus_ than by _P. truei_. The most common endoparasite encountered was the nematode, _Mastophorus numidica_ Seurat, 1914; it was found in the stomachs of many individuals of both species of _Peromyscus_. This nematode has been reported from _Felis ocreata_ in Algeria, _Bitis arietans_ in the Congo, and from the following mammals in the United States: _Canis latrans_, _Peromyscus crinitus_, _P. gossypinus_, _P. maniculatus_, _P. truei_, _Onychomys leucogaster_, _Dipodomys ordii_, _Reithrodontomys megalotis_, and _Eutamias minimus_. Individuals of _P. maniculatus_ obtained on the northern end of Wetherill Mesa in May and June of 1962 had numerous ectoparasites. At this time, the population of _P. maniculatus_ was high, but on a downward trend. My data and observations lead me to conclude that individuals of _P. maniculatus_ are more heavily parasitized by both botflies and endoparasites than are individuals of _P. truei_. The reasons for this unequal amount of parasitism in two species of mice occurring in the same general area remain obscure. The kinds of endoparasites and ectoparasites collected from _P. maniculatus_ and from _P. truei_ are listed below (m = present in _P. maniculatus_, t = present in _P. truei_). ACARINA: Ixodidae: _Dermacentor andersoni_ mt, _Ixodes angustus_ mt, _Ixodes spinipalpis_ m. Laelaptidae: _Androlaelaps glasgowi_ m. Myobiidae: _Blarinobia_ sp. m. Trombiculidae: _Euschoengastia lanei_ mt, _Euschoengastia criceticola_ m, _Euschoengastia dicipiens_ t, _Euschoengastia peromysci_ m, _Leewenhoekia americana_ m, _Trombicula loomisi_ m. DIPTERA: Cuterebridae: _Cuterebra cyanella_ mt. SIPHONAPTERA: _Callistopsyllus deuterus_ m, _Catallagia decipiens_ m, _Epetedia stanfordi_ mt, _Malaraeus sinomus_ mt, _Malaraeus telchinum_ mt, _Megarthroglossus procus_ mt, _Monopsyllus wagneri wagneri_ mt, _Orchopeas leucopus_ mt, _Peromyscopsylla hesperomys adelpha_ mt, _Phalacropsylla allos_ t, _Rhadinopsylla sectilis goodi_ t, _Stenistomera macrodactyla_ m, _Stenoponia_ (_ponera_ or _americana_) mt. CESTODA: _Choanotaenia_ sp. m, _Hymenolepis_ sp. t. NEMATODA: _Mastophorus numidica_ mt, _Syphacia obvelata_ mt, _Trichuris stansburyi_ t. ACANTHOCEPHALA: _Moniliformis clarki_ mt. PREDATION In order to determine the relative numbers of each species of _Peromyscus_ that were taken on a seasonal basis by predators, scats of coyotes and foxes were collected from trails and roads at least twice each month, from September 1963 through August 1964. Scats were identified, labeled and dried; all bones and samples of hair were later removed from each scat. Scats that were intermediate in size between the droppings of foxes and coyotes, and that could not be identified readily in the field, were not collected. Bones from the scats were identified to species, and hair was identified to genus or species by comparing color patterns or cuticular patterns with samples from known mammals. More than 200 impression slides and whole mounts of guard hair and underfur were prepared. Seven individuals of _P. truei_ and three individuals of _P. maniculatus_ were represented in 114 coyote scats (Table 13). Both species of _Peromyscus_ comprised only 3.9 per cent of the 253 items of food represented in the 114 scats. Rabbits, _Sylvilagus_ sp. and mule deer, _Odocoileus hemionus_ were the major food items of coyotes. Mice of the genus _Peromyscus_ apparently were preyed upon mostly in autumn (September through November), when mouse populations were near their yearly peaks. Foxes also prey upon _Peromyscus_ in the park. One _P. truei_ was represented in the 16 scats of foxes that were analyzed. This individual was taken in the winter quarter (December through February). The bobcat may be an important predator upon _Peromyscus_ in this region, but few scats of this animal were found. Since these could not be assigned to a specific month, they were not saved for analysis. Anderson (1961:58) believed that bobcats and gray foxes were the most abundant predators in the park. My observations over a period of two years led me to conclude that coyotes were more abundant than foxes and that foxes were, in turn, more abundant than bobcats. TABLE 13--Food Present in 114 Coyote Scats Collected at Mesa Verde National Park each Month from September 1963 through August 1964. ============================+=============+============ | Number | Percentage Food Item | of | of total | occurrences | items ----------------------------+-------------+------------ _Sylvilagus_ sp. | 32 | 12.65 _Spermophilus variegatus_ | 5 | 1.97 _Eutamias_ sp. | 12 | 4.74 _Reithrodontomys megalotis_ | 4 | 1.58 _Peromyscus boylei_ | 2 | 0.79 _Peromyscus maniculatus_ | 3 | 1.18 _Peromyscus truei_ | 7 | 2.76 _Neotoma cinerea_ | 2 | 0.79 _Neotoma mexicana_ | 9 | 3.56 _Neotoma albigula_ | 5 | 1.97 _Neotoma_ sp. | 3 | 1.18 _Microtus longicaudus_ | 1 | 0.39 _Microtus mexicanus_ | 11 | 4.34 _Microtus montanus_ | 1 | 0.39 _Microtus_ sp. | 1 | 0.39 _Odocoileus hemionus_ | 59 | 23.32 Grass | 34 | 13.44 Juniper berries | 23 | 9.09 Pinyon needles | 14 | 5.53 Pinyon nuts | 1 | 0.39 Arthropods | 7 | 2.76 Juniper needles | 3 | 1.18 Rodent or Lagomorph bones | 5 | 1.97 _Sceloporus_ sp. | 1 | 0.39 Unidentified fruit | 2 | 0.79 Rocks | 3 | 1.18 Paper | 4 | 1.58 Soil | 3 | 1.18 Feathers | 5 | 1.97 +-------------+------------ Total | 253 | ----------------------------+-------------+------------ Hawks, owls and eagles live in the park. Red-tailed hawks were seen frequently in the burned area on the northern end of Wetherill Mesa. Both hawks and owls probably prey upon _Peromyscus_ in Mesa Verde, for they are well-known predators upon mice and small rodents in other areas. I tried to find owl and hawk nests that were occupied, but located only nests that were abandoned or impossible to reach. Captive gopher snakes, _Pituophis melanoleucus_, ate adults of both species of _Peromyscus_. Gopher snakes probably are the most abundant snake in the park; they feed mostly on mice and other rodents. Fur of _Peromyscus_ was found in the stomach of a striped whipsnake, _Masticophis taeniatus_ (Douglas, 1966:734). DISCUSSION Five species of _Peromyscus_ inhabit Mesa Verde National Park (Anderson, 1961). Two of these species, _P. crinitus_ and _P. difficilis_ are rare, and none was taken in more than 14,000 trap nights. Several individuals of _P. boylei_ were taken in live traps, but this species could not be regarded as common. The two remaining species, _P. truei_ and _P. maniculatus_, are the most abundant species in the park. Comparison of the habitats and life-cycles of these two forms and analyses of their interrelationships have been the objectives of this study. The distribution of _P. truei_ in the park is regulated by the presence of living pinyon-juniper woodland where logs and hollow trees of _Juniperus osteosperma_ provide nesting and hiding places, and where seeds of juniper trees and nuts of pinyon trees provide food. Several other investigators have reported _P. truei_ to be associated with trees, but apparently these findings have not assumed the importance they warrant in understanding the ecology of this species. Bailey (1931:152) observed an individual of _P. truei_ nesting in a tree on Conchas Creek, New Mexico, and thought that this species might be more arboreal than was generally supposed. The type specimen of _P. t. truei_ was taken by Shufeldt from a "nest protruding from an opening in the dead and hollow trunk of a small pinon, at least 2 feet above the ground.... The nest, composed of the fine fibers of the inner bark of the pinon, was soon pulled out, and its owner dislodged...." (Shufeldt, 1885:403). Individuals of _P. truei_ usually build nests in trees, or in hollow logs, and are therefore more abundant in pinyon-juniper woodland where there are many such nesting sites. Rocks and stones are not necessary in the habitat of _P. truei_, although this species was most abundant where there was stony soil. The coincidence of rock or stones and a high density of _P. truei_ is thought to be explainable in terms of vegetation. Stony soils support mixed shrubs as well as pinyon and juniper trees; the additional cover and source of food probably allow a greater abundance of _P. truei_ than would be possible without the shrubs. Secondarily, the rock provides nesting sites for more mice. Stands of mixed shrubs, lacking a pinyon-juniper canopy, do not support _P. truei_. Its absence was noteworthy on Navajo Hill and on the northern end of Wetherill Mesa where only _P. maniculatus_ lived among the mixed shrubs and grassland. On the Mesa Verde, pinyon and juniper trees must be present in order for _P. truei_ to live in an area; and, these trees must be alive. Dead pinyons and junipers still stand in the burned part of Morfield Ridge, but no _P. truei_ were found there. Although a few individuals of _P. truei_ were taken in stands of sagebrush adjacent to pinyon-juniper woodlands, this species does not ordinarily venture far from the forest. _P. maniculatus_ lives almost everywhere in Mesa Verde; the preferred habitats are open and grassy with an overstory of mixed shrubs. Individuals of _P. maniculatus_ venture into ecotonal areas lying between grasslands and pinyon-juniper forest, or between sagebrush and pinyon-juniper forest. _P. maniculatus_ is found also in disturbed areas and in stands of sagebrush that occur in clearings of the pinyon-juniper woodland. In such areas, _P. maniculatus_ and _P. truei_ are sympatric; their home ranges overlap and any inter-specific competition that might occur would be expected in these places. The ability of _P. maniculatus_ to live in many different habitats is correlated in part with its ability to build nests in a variety of sites. Whereas _P. truei_ usually builds nests only in dead branches or logs, _P. maniculatus_ builds nests in such varied places as spaces under rocks, at the bases of rotten trees, and in abandoned tunnels of pocket gophers. This adaptability is advantageous for the dispersal of young individuals and the movement of adults into new areas. Nesting sites have important bearing on survival of the young. In Mesa Verde the rainy season occurs in July and August, while both species of _Peromyscus_ are reproducing. It is reasonable to assume that young animals that remain dry survive better than those that become wet and chilled. The nestling young of _P. truei_ are in a more favorable position to remain dry and warm than are nestling young of _P. maniculatus_. Captives of each species differed in the amounts of water consumed per gram of body weight. Individuals of _P. truei_ consumed more water per gram of body weight than individuals of _P. maniculatus_. Animals may drink more water than they require when allowed to drink _ad libitum_, but Lindeborg (1952) has shown that species which consume less water when it is not restricted also fare better on a reduced ration. _P. maniculatus_ appears to be better adapted to aridity than _P. truei_. The preferred habitats of each species are in accord with these findings. Within the trapping grid, the most moderate microenvironment, in terms of temperature and humidity, was in the pinyon-juniper forest, where _P. truei_ lives. The temperature extremes were wider in the microenvironments of a thicket of oak brush and of two different stands of sagebrush, where _P. maniculatus_ lives, than in the forest. _P. maniculatus_ tends to live in the harsher, more arid parts of Mesa Verde. Because of its propensity to build nests under things, or in the ground, and because of its ability to use less water per gram of body weight, _P. maniculatus_ is better adapted to withstand harsh environments than is _P. truei_. _P. truei_ may be restricted to the pinyon-juniper woodland because of its need for more mesic conditions. Still, Mesa Verde is semi-arid and there are few permanent sources of water available for animals. The primary source of moisture for rodents must be their food. Analysis of the percentages of moisture contained in the three most common plants in the trapping grid showed that _P. truei_ could obtain the required moisture by eating about ten grams of these plants daily; individuals of _P. maniculatus_ would need to eat less in order to satisfy their water needs. Individuals of _P. truei_ died more frequently in warm live-traps than did individuals of _P. maniculatus_. This indicates that _P. truei_ can tolerate less desiccation, or a narrower range of temperatures, than can _P. maniculatus_. Both species of mice eat some of the same plants, but these plants occur widely. _P. truei_ seems to rely more upon the nuts of pinyons and the seeds of junipers than does _P. maniculatus_. Mounds of discarded juniper seeds were associated with all nesting sites of _P. truei_. Bailey (1931:153) also noticed the fondness of this species for pine nuts and juniper seeds. Apparently, the availability of these foods is one of the major factors affecting the distribution of _P. truei_. However, this is not the only factor, as is shown by the presence of _P. maniculatus_ but lack of _P. truei_ in a juniper-pinyon association with an understory of bitterbrush. This habitat was seemingly too arid for _P. truei_. Factors Affecting Population Densities The production of young, and success in rearing them, is essential to continuity of any population. _P. maniculatus_ is favored in this respect, because the females produce more young and wean them sooner than do females of _P. truei_. In addition, lactating females of _P. maniculatus_ require significantly less water than do females of _P. truei_. Since young mice of both species require no more water per gram of body weight than do adults, the young can disperse into any area that is habitable by their species. _P. maniculatus_ probably is affected less by prolonged drought than is _P. truei_. Since lactating females require the most water of any animal in the population, they are the weakest link in the system. Females of _Peromyscus_ are known to reabsorb embryos when conditions are unfavorable for continued pregnancy. If prolonged drought occurred in the reproductive season, and desiccated the vegetation upon which the mice depend for moisture, the populations should diminish the following year. Lactating females of _P. truei_ would be affected more seriously by a shortage of water than would lactating females of _P. maniculatus_. Of two species, the one producing the more young probably would be subjected to more parasitism and predation than the species producing fewer young. A favorable season for botflies, _Cuterebra_ sp., revealed that _P. maniculatus_ has a higher incidence of parasitism by these flies than has _P. truei_; possibly the adult flies concentrate in the open, grassy areas where _P. maniculatus_ is more abundant, rather than in the woodlands where _P. truei_ lives. Perhaps the lower parasitism of _P. truei_ by warbles is related to the physiology of this species of mouse. Near Boulder, Colorado, the incidence of infection by warbles is lower in _P. difficilis_, a species closely related to _P. truei_, than in _P. maniculatus_ (V. Keen, personal communication). Although predation by carnivores would be expected to be higher on _P. maniculatus_, because this species does not climb, my data show that more individuals of _P. truei_ were taken by coyotes. I lack confidence in these findings, suspecting that another sample might indicate the reverse. Birds of prey probably catch more individuals of _P. maniculatus_, because this species lives in more open habitats. My data do not warrant firm conclusions regarding predation. The length of time females must care for their young influences the rate at which individuals can be added to the population. Females of _P. truei_ nurse their young longer and keep them in the nest longer than do females of _P. maniculatus_. Although this may enhance the chances of survival of young of _P. truei_, it also reduces the number of litters that each female can have in each breeding season. Females of _P. maniculatus_ can produce more young per litter, and each female probably can produce more litters per year than females of _P. truei_. Captives of _P. truei_ were tolerant of other individuals of the same species, even when kept in close confinement. However, when there was slight shortage of food or water they killed their litter mates, or females killed their young. Only a short period of time was necessary for one mouse to dispatch all others in the litter. The attacked mice were bitten through the head before being eaten; the brains and viscera were the first parts consumed. The population might be decimated rapidly if drought forced this species to cannibalism. When the supply of food or water was restored, the captive mice resumed their tolerant nature. In captivity, _P. maniculatus_ is amazingly tolerant of close confinement with members of the same species; individuals did not tend to kill their litter mates, or their young, even during shortage of food and water. This tolerance, especially under stressful conditions, probably enables _P. maniculatus_ to persist in relatively unfavorable areas. Adaptations to Environment Each of the two species of _Peromyscus_ illustrates one or more adaptations to its environment. _P. truei_ is adapted to climbing by possession of long toes, a long tail, and large hind feet. The tail is used as a counterbalance when climbing (Horner, 1954). When frightened, individuals of _P. truei_ often ran across the ground in a semi-saltatorial fashion, bounding over clumps of grass that were as much as 18 inches high. Such individuals usually ran to the nearest tree and climbed to branches 10 to 20 feet above the ground. Large eyes are characteristic of the _truei_ group of mice, and may be an adaptation to a semi-arboreal mode of life. A similar adaptation is shared by some other arboreal mammals, and of arboreal snakes. The large eyes of _P. truei_ in comparison to those of _P. maniculatus_, probably increase the field of vision, and permit the animal to look downward as well as in other directions. The above-mentioned adaptations of _P. truei_ permit these graceful mice to use their environment effectively. By climbing, this species can nest above-ground in the hollow branches of trees, and can rear its young in a comparatively safe setting. The ability to climb also permits vertical as well as horizontal use of a limited habitat. Because of the three-dimensional nature of the home range of _truei_, its range is actually larger than that of _maniculatus_ although the standard trapping procedures makes the home range of the two appear to be about the same size. Finally, trees may offer safety from predators, and a source of food that probably is the winter staple of this species. _Peromyscus maniculatus_ has adapted differently to its environment. Small size of body and appendages permit this species to use a variety of nesting sites and hiding places even though it is restricted, by its anatomy, to life on the ground. The tail and hind feet are shorter than in _P. truei_, and _P. maniculatus_ is an inefficient climber. I have placed individuals in bushes, and found that many walk off into space from a height of several feet. Perhaps the relative smallness of their eyes accounts for their seeming lack of awareness of how high they are above the ground. When frightened, individuals of _P. maniculatus_ ran rapidly in a zig-zag path and dove into the nearest cover. Mice, released from live traps, often stuck their heads under leaves, leaving their bodies exposed. This species tends to hide as rapidly as possible, and remain motionless. This tactic would not be of much value as an escape from carnivores, but it could be effective against birds of prey. In Mesa Verde, _P. maniculatus_ inhabits the more arid, open areas. When the population is dense, individuals of this species are found also in pinyon-juniper woodland. Apparently _P. maniculatus_ prefers the grassy areas and the thickets of oak brush. Although such habitats have harsh climatic conditions, they offer innumerable hiding places, and thus have great advantage for a species confined to the ground. The low requirements of water per gram of body weight, the ability to eat diversified foods, the use of varied habitats, the high fecundity, and the ability to use any nook for retreat or nesting make _P. maniculatus_ a successful inhabitant of most parts of Mesa Verde, and indeed, of most of North America. LITERATURE CITED ANDERSON, S. 1961. Mammals of Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. Univ. Kansas Publ., Mus. Nat. Hist., 14:29-67, 2 pls., 3 figs. ARRHENIUS, G., and E. BONATTI 1965. The Mesa Verde loess, pp. 92-100, _in_ Contributions of the Wetherill Mesa Archeological Project, Memoirs Soc. Amer. Archeol., 19; American Antiquity, 31, No. 2, Pt. 2. ASDELL, S. A. 1964. Patterns of mammalian reproduction. Comstock Publ. Co., Ithaca, viii + 1-670 pp. BAILEY, V. 1931. Mammals of New Mexico. N. Amer. Fauna, 53:1-412, 22 pls., 58 figs. BEIDLEMAN, R. G. 1954. October breeding of _Peromyscus_ in north central Colorado. Jour. Mamm., 35:118. BRUSVEN, M. A., and G. B. MULKERN 1960. 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A comparative study of daily water-intake among certain taxonomic and geographic groups within the genus _Peromyscus_. Biol. Bull., 59:326-338. SANDERSON, G. C. 1966. The study of mammal movements--a review. Jour. Wildlife Mtg., 30:215-235. SCHMIDT-NIELSEN, K. 1964. Desert animals: physiological problems of heat and water. Oxford Univ. Press, London, xv + 1-277 pp. SCHMIDT-NIELSEN, K., B. SCHMIDT-NIELSEN, and A. BROKAW 1948. Urea excretion in desert rodents exposed to high protein diets. Jour. Cell. Comp. Physiol., 32:361-379. SCOTT, T. G., and E. SNEAD 1942. Warbles in _Peromyscus leucopus noveboracensis_. Jour. Mamm., 23:94-95. SEALANDER, J. A. 1961. Hematological values in deer mice in relation to botfly infection. Jour. Mamm., 42:57-60. SETON, E. T. 1920. Notes on the breeding habits of captive deer mice. Jour. Mamm., 1:134-138. SHUFELDT, R. W. 1885. Description of Hesperomys truei, a new species belonging to the subfamily Murinae. Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., 8:403-408, 21 pls. STICKEL, L. F. 1954. A comparison of certain methods of measuring ranges of small mammals. Jour. Mamm., 35:1-15. SVIHLA, A. 1932. A comparative life history study of the mice of the genus _Peromyscus_. Univ. Michigan Mus. Zool., Misc. Publ., 24:1-39. TEST, F. H., and A. R. TEST 1943. Incidence of dipteran parasitosis in populations of small mammals. Jour. Mamm., 24:506-508. WELSH, S. L., and J. A. ERDMAN 1964. Annotated checklist of the plants of Mesa Verde, Colorado. Brigham Young Univ. Sci. Bull., Biol. Ser., 4(2):1-32. WILLIAMS, O. 1955. The food of mice and shrews in a Colorado montane forest. Univ. Colorado Studies, Ser. in Biol., 3:109-114. 1959a. Food habits of the deer mouse. Jour. Mamm., 40:415-419. 1959b. Water intake in the deer mouse. Jour. Mamm., 40:602-606. 1959c. Modified gum syrup. Turtox News, Vol. 37, No. 10. WILSON, L. W. 1945. Parasites collected from wood mouse in West Virginia. Jour. Mamm., 26:200. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes All obvious typographic errors corrected. The notation [=Y] in Table 10 represents the Mean Value for that column. The notation H_{2}O represents the water molecule where the _{2} represents the subscripted 2. The notation 8-1/2 represents 8 and one half. Page Correction ==== ============== 429 nuaseosus => nauseosus 430 Orthocarpos => Orthocarpus 450 ludovociana => ludoviciana 456 phrheliometer => pyrheliometer 480 rudale => ruderale 481 rates => rats 482 bases => basis 499 clumbs => clumps 
35866	----	[Frontispiece: _The Captain tore at the shoulders and neck of the gray horse with his gleaming teeth_. Page 96] "I Conquered" By HAROLD TITUS With Frontispiece in Colors By CHARLES M. RUSSELL A. L. BURT COMPANY Publishers New York Published by Arrangements with Rand, McNally & Company _Copyright, 1916,_ By Rand McNally & Company THE CONTENTS CHAPTER I. Denunciation II. A Young Man Goes West III. "I've Done My Pickin'" IV. The Trouble Hunter V. Jed Philosophizes VI. Ambition Is Born VII. With Hoof and Tooth VIII. A Head of Yellow Hair IX. Pursuit X. Capture XI. A Letter and a Narrative XII. Woman Wants XIII. VB Fights XIV. The Schoolhouse Dance XV. Murder XVI. The Candle Burns XVII. Great Moments XVIII. The Lie XIX. Through the Night XX. The Last Stand XXI. Guns Crash XXII. Tables Turn; and Turn Again XXIII. Life, the Trophy XXIV. Victory XXV. "The Light!" XXVI. To the Victor "__I CONQUERED" CHAPTER I Denunciation Danny Lenox wanted a drink. The desire came to him suddenly as he stood looking down at the river, burnished by bright young day. It broke in on his lazy contemplation, wiped out the indulgent smile, and made the young face serious, purposeful, as though mighty consequence depended on satisfying the urge that had just come up within him. He was the sort of chap to whom nothing much had ever mattered, whose face generally bore that kindly, contented smile. His grave consideration had been aroused by only a scant variety of happenings from the time of a pampered childhood up through the gamut of bubbling boyhood, prep school, university, polo, clubs, and a growing popularity with a numerous clan until he had approached a state of established and widely recognized worthlessness. Economics did not bother him. It mattered not how lavishly he spent; there had always been more forthcoming, because Lenox senior had a world of the stuff. The driver of his taxicab--just now whirling away--seemed surprised when Danny waved back change, but the boy did not bother himself with thought of the bill he had handed over. Nor did habits which overrode established procedure for men cause him to class himself apart from the mass. He remarked that the cars zipping past between him and the high river embankment were stragglers in the morning flight businessward; but he recognized no difference between himself and those who scooted toward town, intent on the furtherance of serious ends. What might be said or thought about his obvious deviation from beaten, respected paths was only an added impulse to keep smiling with careless amiability. It might be commented on behind fans in drawing rooms or through mouths full of food in servants' halls, he knew. But it did not matter. However--something mattered. He wanted a drink. And it was this thought that drove away the smile and set the lines of his face into seriousness, that sent him up the broad walk with swinging, decisive stride, his eyes glittering, his lips taking moisture from a quick-moving tongue. He needed a drink! Danny entered the Lenox home up there on the sightly knoll, fashioned from chill-white stone, staring composedly down on the drive from its many black-rimmed windows. The heavy front door shut behind him with a muffled sound like a sigh, as though it had been waiting his coming all through the night, just as it had through so many nights, and let suppressed breath slip out in relief at another return. A quick step carried him across the vestibule within sight of the dining-room doorway. He flung his soft hat in the general direction of a cathedral bench, loosed the carelessly arranged bow tie, and with an impatient jerk unbuttoned the soft shirt at his full throat. Of all things, from conventions to collars, Danny detested those which bound. And just now his throat seemed to be swelling quickly, to be pulsing; and already the glands of his mouth responded to the thought of that which was on the buffet in a glass decanter--amber--and clear--and-- At the end of the hallway a door stood open, and Danny's glance, passing into the room it disclosed, lighted on the figure of a man stooping over a great expanse of table, fumbling with papers--fumbling a bit slowly, as with age, the boy remarked even in the flash of a second his mind required to register a recognition of his father. Danny stopped. The yearning of his throat, the call of his tightening nerves, lost potency for the moment; the glitter of desire in his dark eyes softened quickly. He threw back his handsome head with a gesture of affection that was almost girlish, in spite of its muscular strength, and the smile came back, softer, more indulgent. His brow clouded a scant instant when he turned to look into the dining room as he walked down the long, dark, high-ceilinged hall, and his step hesitated. But he put the impulse off, going on, with shoulders thrown back, rubbing his palms together as though wholesomely happy. So he passed into the library. "Well, father, it's a good morning to you!" At the spontaneous salutation the older man merely ceased moving an instant. He remained bent over the table, one hand arrested in the act of reaching for a document. It was as though he held his breath to listen--or to calculate quickly. The son walked across to him, approaching from behind, and dropped a hand on the stooping, black-clothed shoulder. "How go--" Danny broke his query abruptly, for the other straightened with a half-spoken word that was, at the least, utmost impatience; possibly a word which, fully uttered, would have expressed disgust, perhaps--even loathing! And on Danny was turned such a mask as he had never seen before. The cleanly shaven face was dark. The cold blue eyes flashed a chill fire and the grim slit of a tightly closed mouth twitched, as did the fingers at the skirts of the immaculate coat. Lenox senior backed away, putting out a hand to the table, edging along until a corner of it was between himself and his heir. Then the hand, fingers stiffly extended, pressed against the table top. It trembled. The boy flushed, then smiled, then sobered. On the thought of what seemed to him the certain answer to the strangeness of this reception, his voice broke the stillness, filled with solicitude. "Did I startle you?" he asked, and a smile broke through his concern. "You jumped as though--" Again he broke short. His father's right hand, palm outward, was raised toward him and moved quickly from side to side. That gesture meant silence! Danny had seen it used twice before--once when a man of political power had let his angered talk rise in the Lenox house until it became disquieting; once when a man came there to plead. And the gesture on those occasions had carried the same quiet, ominous conviction that it now impressed on Danny. The voice of the old man was cold and hard, almost brittle for lack of feeling. "How much will you take to go?" he asked, and breathed twice loudly, as though struggling to hold back a bursting emotion. Danny leaned slightly forward from his hips and wrinkled his face in his inability to understand. "What?" He drawled out the word. "Once more, please?" "How much will you take to go?" Again the crackling, colorless query, by its chill strength narrowing even the thought which must transpire in the presence of the speaker. "How much will I take to go?" repeated Danny. "How much what? To go where?" Lenox senior blinked, and his face darkened. His voice lost some of its edge, became a trifle muffled, as though the emotion he had breathed hard to suppress had come up into his throat and adhered gummily to the words. "How much money--how much money will you take to go away from here? Away from me? Away from New York? Out of my sight--out of my way?" Once more the fingers pressed the table top and the fighting jaw of the gray-haired man protruded slowly as the younger drew nearer a faltering step, two--three, until he found support against the table. There across the corner of the heavy piece of furniture they peered at each other; one in silent, mighty rage; the other with eyes widening, quick, confusing lights playing across their depths as he strove to refuse the understanding. "How much money--to go away from New York--from you? Out of your _way_?" Young Danny's voice rose in pitch at each word as with added realization the strain on his emotions increased. His body sagged forward and the hands on the table bore much of its weight; so much that the elbows threatened to give, as had his knees. "To go away--why? Why--is this?" In his query was something of the terror of a frightened child; in his eyes something of the look of a wounded beast. "You ask me why!" Lenox senior straightened with a jerk and followed the exclamation with something that had been a laugh until, driven through the rage within him, it became only a rattling rasp in his throat. "You ask me why!" he repeated. "You ask me why!" His voice dropped to a thin whisper; then, anger carrying it above its normal tone: "You stand here in this room, your face like suet from months and years of debauchery, your mind unable to catch my idea because of the poison you have forced on it, because of the stultifying thoughts you have let occupy it, because of the ruthless manner in which you have wasted its powers of preception, of judgment, and ask me why!" In quick gesture he leveled a vibrating finger at the face of his son and with pauses between the words declared: "_You_--are--why!" Danny's elbows bent still more under the weight on them, and his lips worked as he tried to force a dry throat through the motions of swallowing. On his face was reflected just one emotion--surprise. It was not rage, not resentment, not shame, not fear--just surprise. He was utterly confused by the abruptness of his father's attack; he was unable to plumb the depths of its significance, although an inherent knowledge of the other's moods told him that he faced disaster. Then the older man was saying: "You have stripped yourself of everything that God and man could give you. You have thrown the gems of your opportunity before your swinish desires. You have degenerated from the son your mother bore to a worthless, ambitionless, idealless, thoughtless--drunkard!" Danny took a half-step closer to the table, his eyes held on those others with mechanical fixity. "Father--but, dad--" he tried to protest. Again the upraised, commanding palm. "I have stood it as long as I can. I have suggested from time to time that you give serious consideration to things about you and to your future; suggested, when a normal young man would have gone ahead of his own volition to meet the exigencies every individual must face sooner or later. "But you would have none of it! From your boyhood you have been a waster. I hoped once that all the trouble you gave us was evidence of a spirit that would later be directed toward a good end. But I was never justified in that. "You wasted your university career. Why, you weren't even a good athlete! You managed to graduate, but only to befog what little hope then remained to me. "You have had everything you could want; you had money, friends, and your family name. What have you done? Wasted them! You had your polo string and the ability to play a great game, but what came of it? You'd rather sit in the clubhouse and saturate yourself with drink and with the idle, parasitic thoughts of the crowd there! "You have dropped low and lower until, everything else gone, you are now wasting the last thing that belongs to you, the fundamental thing in life--your vitality! "Oh, don't try to protest! Those sacks under your eyes! Your shoulders aren't as straight as they were a year ago; you don't think as quickly as you did when making a pretense of playing polo; your hand isn't steady for a man of twenty-five. You're going; you're on the toboggan slide. "You have wasted yourself, flung yourself away, and not one act or thought of your experience has been worth the candle! Now--what will you take to get out?" The boy before him moved a slow step backward, and a flush came up over his drawn face. "You--" he began. Then he stopped and drew a hand across his eyes, beginning the movement slowly and ending with a savage jerk. "You never said a word before! You never intimated you thought this! You never--you--" He floundered heavily under the stinging conviction that of such was his only defense! "No!" snapped his father, after waiting for more to come. "I never said anything before--not like this. You smiled away whatever I suggested. Nothing mattered--nothing except debauchery. Now you've passed the limit You're a common drunk!" His voice rose high and higher; he commenced to gesticulate. "You live only to wreck yourself. Yours is the fault--and the blame! "It is natural for me to be concerned. I've hung on now too long, hoping that you would right yourself and justify the hopes people have had in you. I planned, years ago, to have you take up my work where I must soon leave off--to go on in my place, to finish my life for me as I began yours for you! I've had faith that you would do this, but you won't--you can't! "That isn't all. You're holding _me_ back. I must push on now harder than ever, but with the stench of your misdeeds always in my nostrils it is almost an impossibility." Danny raised his hands in a half-gesture of pleading, but the old man motioned him back. "Don't be sorry; don't try to explain. This had to come. It's an accumulation of years. I have no more faith in you. If I thought you could ever rally I'd give up everything and help you, but not once in your life have you shown me that you possessed one impulse to be of use." His voice dropped with each word, and its return to the cold normal sent a stiffness into the boy's spine. His head went up, his chin out; his hands closed slowly. "How much money will you take to get out?" The old man moved from behind the table corner and approached Danny, walking slowly, with his hands behind him. He came to a stop before the boy, slowly unbuttoned his coat, reached to an inner pocket, and drew out a checkbook. "How much?" Danny's gesture, carried out, surely would have resulted in a blow strong enough to send the book spinning across the room; but he stopped it halfway. His eyes were puffed and bloodshot; his pulse hammered loudly under his ears, and the rush of blood made his head roar. Before him floated a mist, fogging thought as it did his vision. The boy's voice was scarcely recognizable as he spoke. It was hard and cold--somewhat like the one which had so scourged him. "Keep your money," he said, looking squarely at his father at the cost of a peculiar, unreal effort. "I'll get out--and without your help. Some day I'll--I'll show you what a puny thing this faith of yours is!" The elder Lenox, buttoning his coat with brisk motions, merely said, "Very well." He left the room. Danny heard his footsteps cross the hall, heard the big front door sigh when it closed as though it rejoiced at the completion of a distasteful task. Then he shut his eyes and struck his thighs twice with stiff forearms. He was boiling, blood and brain! At first he thought it anger; perhaps anger had been there, but it was not the chief factor of that tumult. It was humiliation. The horrid, unanswerable truth had seared Danny's very body--witness the anguished wrinkles on his brow--and his molten consciousness could find no argument to justify himself, even to act as a balm! "He never _said_ it before," the boy moaned, and in that spoken thought was the nearest thing to comfort that he could conjure. He stood in the library a long time, gradually cooling, gradually nursing the bitterness that grew up in the midst of conflicting impulses. The look in his eyes changed from bewilderment to a glassy cynicism, and he began to walk back and forth unsteadily. He paced the long length of the room a dozen times. Then, with a quickened stride, he passed into the hall, crossed it, and entered the dining room, the tip of his tongue caressing his lips. On the buffet stood a decanter, a heavy affair of finely executed glassworker's art. The dark stuff in it extended halfway up the neck, and as he reached for it Danny's lips parted. He lifted the receptacle and clutched at a whisky glass that stood on the same tray. He picked it up, looked calculatingly at it, set it down, and picked up a _tumbler_. The glass stopper of the bottle thudded on the mahogany; his nervous hand held the tumbler under its gurgling mouth. Half full, two-thirds, three-quarters, to within a finger's breadth of the top he filled it. Then, setting the decanter down, he lifted the glass to look through the amber at the morning light; his breath quick, his eyes glittering, Danny Lenox poised. A smile played about his eager lips--a smile that brightened, and lingered, and faded--and died. The hand holding the glass trembled, then was still; trembled again, so severely that it spilled some of the liquor; came gradually down from its upraised position, down below his mouth, below his shoulder, and waveringly sought the buffet. As the glass settled to the firm wood Danny's shoulders slacked forward and his head drooped. He turned slowly from the buffet, the aroma of whisky strong in his dilated nostrils. After the first faltering step he faced about, gazed at his reflection in the mirror, and said aloud: "And it's not been worth--the candle!" Savagery was in his step as he entered the hall, snatched up his hat, and strode to the door. As the heavy portal swung shut behind the hurrying boy it sighed again, as though hopelessly. The future seemed hopeless for Danny. He had gone out to face a powerful foe. CHAPTER II A Young Man Goes West From the upper four hundreds on Riverside Drive to Broadway where the lower thirties slash through is a long walk. Danny Lenox walked it this June day. As he left the house his stride was long and nervously eager, but before he covered many blocks his gait moderated and the going took hours. Physical fatigue did not slow down his progress. The demands upon his mental machinery retarded his going. He needed time to think, to plan, to bring order out of the chaos into which he had been plunged. Danny had suddenly found that many things in life are to be considered seriously. An hour ago they could have been numbered on his fingers; now they were legion. It was a newly recognized fact, but one so suddenly obvious that the tardiness of his realization became of portentous significance. Through all the hurt and shame and rage the great truth that his father had hammered home became crystal clear. He had been merely a waster, and a sharp bitterness was in him as he strode along, hands deep in pockets. The first flash of his resentment had given birth to the childish desire to "show 'em," and as he crowded his brain against the host of strange facts he found this impulse becoming stronger, growing into a healthy determination to adjust his standard of values so that he could, even with this beginning, justify his existence. Oh, the will to do was strong in his heart, but about it was a clammy, oppressive something. He wondered at it--then traced it back directly to the place in his throat that cried out for quenching. As he approached a familiar haunt that urge became more insistent and the palms of his hands commenced to sweat. He crossed the street and made on down the other side. He had wasted his ability to do, had let this desire sap his will. He needed every jot of strength now. He would begin at the bottom and call back that frittered vitality. He shut his teeth together and doggedly stuck his head forward just a trifle. The boy had no plan; there had not been time to become so specific. His whole philosophy had been stood on its head with bewildering suddenness. He knew, though, that the first thing to do was to cut his environment, to get away, off anywhere, to a place where he could build anew. The idea of getting away associated itself with one thing in his mind: means of transportation. So, when his eyes without conscious motive stared at the poster advertising a railroad system that crosses the continent, Danny Lenox stopped and let the crowd surge past him. A man behind the counter approached the tall, broad-shouldered chap who fumbled in his pockets and dumped out their contents. He looked with a whimsical smile at the stuff produced: handkerchiefs, pocket-knife, gold pencil, tobacco pouch, watch, cigarette case, a couple of hat checks, opened letters, and all through it money--money in bills and in coins. The operation completed, Danny commenced picking out the money. He tossed the crumpled bills together in a pile and stacked the coins. That done, he swept up the rest of his property, crammed it into his coat pockets, and commenced smoothing the bills. The other man, meanwhile, stood and smiled. "Cleaning up a bit?" he asked. Danny raised his eyes. "That's the idea," he said soberly. "To clean up--a bit." The seriousness of his own voice actually startled him. "How far will that take me over your line?" he asked, indicating the money. The man stared hard; then smiled. "You mean you want that much worth of ticket?" "Yes, ticket and berth--upper berth. Less this." He took out a ten-dollar bill. "I'll eat on the way," he explained gravely. The other counted the bills, turning them over with the eraser end of his pencil, then counted the silver and made a note of the total. "Which way--by St. Louis or Chicago?" he asked. "We can send you through either place." Danny lifted a dollar from the stack on the counter and flipped it in the air. Catching it, he looked at the side which came up and said: "St. Louis." Again the clerk calculated, referring to time-tables and a map. "Denver," he muttered, as though to himself. Then to Danny: "Out of Denver I can give you the Union Pacific, Denver and Rio Grande, or Santa Fé." "The middle course." "All right--D. and R.G." Then more referring to maps and time-tables, more figuring, more glances at the pile of money. "Let's see--that will land you at--at--" as he ran his finger down the tabulation--"at Colt, Colorado." Danny moved along the counter to the glass-covered map, a new interest in his face. "Where's that--Colt, Colorado?" he asked, leaning his elbows on the counter. "See?" The other indicated with his pencil. "You go south from Denver to Colorado Springs; then on through Pueblo, through the Royal Gorge here, and right in here--" he put the lead point down on the red line of the railroad and Danny's head came close to his--"is where you get off." The boy gazed lingeringly at the white dot in the red line and then looked up to meet the other's smile. "Mountains and more mountains," he said with no hint of lightness. "That's a long way from this place." He gazed out on to flowing Broadway with a look somewhat akin to pleading, and heard the man mutter: "Yes, beyond easy walking from downtown, at least." Danny straightened and sighed. That much was settled. He was going to Colt, Colorado. He looked back at the map again, possessed with an uneasy foreboding. Colt, Colorado! "Well, when can I leave?" he asked, as he commenced putting his property back into the proper pockets. "You can scarcely catch the next train," said the clerk, glancing at the clock, "because it leaves the Grand Central in nineteen min--" "Yes, I can!" broke in Danny. "Get me a ticket and I'll get there!" Then, as though to himself, but still in the normal speaking tone: "I'm through putting things off." Eighteen and three-quarters minutes later a tall, young man trotted through the Grand Central train shed to where his Pullman waited. The porter looked at the length of the ticket Danny handed the conductor. "Ain't y'll carryin' nothin', boss?" he asked. "Yes, George," Danny muttered as he passed into the vestibule, "but nothing you can help me with." With the grinding of the car wheels under him Danny's mind commenced going round and round his knotty problem. His plan had called for nothing more than a start. And now--Colt, Colorado! Behind him he was leaving everything of which he was certain, sordid though it might be. He was going into the unknown, ignorant of his own capabilities, realizing only that he was weak. He thought of those burned bridges, of the uncertainty that lay ahead, of the tumbling of the old temple about his ears-- And doubt came up from the ache in his throat, from the call of his nerves. He had not had a drink since early last evening. He needed--No! That was the last thing he needed. He sat erect in his seat with the determination and strove to fight down the demands which his wasting had made so steely strong. He felt for his cigarette case. It was empty, but the tobacco pouch held a supply, and as he walked toward the smoking compartment he dusted some of the weed into a rice paper. Danny pushed aside the curtain to enter, and a fat man bumped him with a violent jolt. "Oh, excuse me!" he begged, backing off. "Sorry. I'll be back in a jiffy with more substantial apologies." Three others in the compartment made room for Danny, who lighted his cigarette and drew a great gasp of smoke into his lungs. In a moment the fat man was back, his eyes dancing. In his hand was a silver whisky flask. "Now if you don't say this is the finest booze ever turned out of a gin mill, I'll go plumb!" he declared. "Drink, friend, drink!" He handed the flask to one of the others. "Here's to you!" the man saluted, raising the flask high and then putting its neck to his mouth. Danny's tongue went again to his lips; his breath quickened and the light in his eyes became a greedy glitter. He could hear the gurgle of the liquid; his own throat responded in movement as he watched the swallowing. He squeezed his cigarette until the thin paper burst and the tobacco sifted out. "Great!" declared the man with a sigh as he lowered the flask. "Great!" He smacked his lips and winked. "Ah! No whisky's bad, but this's better'n most of it!" Then, extending the flask toward Danny, he said: "Try it, brother; it's good for a soul." But Danny, rising to his feet with a suddenness that was almost a spring, strode past him to the door. His face suddenly had become tight and white and harried. He paused at the entry, holding the curtain aside, and turned to see the other, flask still extended, staring at him in bewilderment. "I'm not drinking, you know," said Danny weakly, "not drinking." Then he went out, and the fat man who had produced the liquor said soberly: "Not drinking, and havin' a time staying off it. But say--ain't that some booze?" Long disuse of the power to plan concretely, to think seriously of serious facts, had left it weak. Danny strove to route himself through to that new life he knew was so necessary, but he could not call back the ability of tense thinking with a word or a wish. And while he tried for that end the boy commenced to realize that perhaps he had not so far to seek for his fresh start. Perhaps it was not waiting for him in Colt, Colorado. Perhaps it was right here in his throat, in his nerves. Perhaps the creature in him was not a thing to be cleared away before he could begin to fight--perhaps it was the proper object at which to direct his whole attack. Enforced idleness was an added handicap. Physical activity would have made the beginning much easier, for before he realized it Danny was in the thick of battle. A system that had been stimulated by poison in increasing proportion to its years almost from boyhood began to make unequivocal demands for the stuff that had held it to high pitch. Tantalizingly at first, with the thirsting throat and jumping muscles; then with thundering assertions that warped the vision and numbed the intellect and toyed with the will. He gave up trying to think ahead. His entire mental force went into the grapple with that desire. Where he had thought to find possible distress in the land out yonder, it had come to meet him--and of a sort more fearful, more tremendous, than any which he had been able to conceive. Through the rise of that fevered fighting the words of his father rang constantly in Danny's mind. "He was right--right, right!" the boy declared over and over. "It was brutal; but he was right! I've wasted, I've gone the limit. And he doesn't think I can come back!" While faith would have been as a helping hand stretched down to pull him upward, the denial of it served as a stinging goad, driving him on. A chord deep within him had been touched by the raining blows from his father, and the vibrations of that chord became quicker and sharper as the battle crescendoed. The unbelief had stirred a retaliating determination. It was this that sent a growl of defiance into Danny's throat at sight of a whisky sign; it was the cause of his cursing when, walking up and down a station platform at a stop, he saw men in the buffet car lift glasses to their lips and smile at one other. It was this that drew him away from an unfinished meal in the diner when a man across the table ordered liquor and Danny's eyes ached for the sight of it, his nostrils begged for the smell. So on every hand came the suggestions that made demands upon his resistance, that made the weakness gnaw the harder at his will. But he fought against it, on and on across a country, out into the mountains, toward the end of his ride. The unfolding of the marvels of a continent's vitals had a peculiar effect on Danny. Before that trip he had held the vaguest notions of the West, but with the realization of the grandeur of it all he was torn between a glorified inspiration and a suffocating sense of his own smallness. He had known only cities, and cities are, by comparison, such puny things. They froth and ferment and clatter and clang and boast, and yet they are merely flecks, despoiled spots, on an expanse so vast that it seems utterly unconscious of their presence. The boy realized this as the big cities were left behind, as the stretches between stations became longer, the towns more flimsy, newer. A species of terror filled him as he gazed moodily from his Pullman window out across that panorama to the north. Why, he could see as far as to the Canadian boundary, it seemed! On and on, rising gently, ever flowing, never ending, went the prairie. Here and there a fence; now a string of telephone poles marching out sturdily, bravely, to reduce distance by countless hours. There a house, alone, unshaded, with a woman standing in the door watching his speeding train. Yonder a man shacking along on a rough little horse, head down, listless--a crawling jot under that endless sky. Even his train, thing of steel and steam, was such a paltry particle, screaming to a heaven that heard not, driving at a distance that cared not. Then the mountains! Danny awoke in Denver, to step from his car and look at noble Evans raising its craggy, hoary head into the salmon pink of morning, defiant, ignoring men who fussed and puttered down there in its eternal shadow; at Long's Peak, piercing the sky as though striving to be away from humans; at Pike, shimmering proudly through its sixty miles of crystal distance, taking a heavy, giant delight in watching beings worry their way through its hundred-mile dooryard. Then along the foothills the train tore with the might of which men are so proud; yet it only crawled past those mountains. Stock country now, more and more cattle in sight. Blasé, white-faced Herefords lifted their heads momentarily toward the cars. They heeded little more than did the mountains. Then, to the right and into the ranges, twisting, turning, climbing, sliding through the narrow defiles at the grace of the towering heights which--so alive did they seem--could have whiffed out that thing, those lives, by a mere stirring on their complacent bases. And Danny commenced to draw parallels. Just as his life had been artificial, so had his environment. Manhattan--and this! Its complaining cars, its popping pavements, its echoing buildings--it had all seemed so big, so great, so mighty! And yet it was merely a little mud village, the work of a prattling child, as compared with this country. The subway, backed by its millions in bonds, planned by constructive genius, executed by master minds, a thing to write into the history of all time, was a mole-passage compared to this gorge! The Woolworth, labor of years, girders mined on Superior, stones quarried elsewhere, concrete, tiling, cables, woods, all manner of fixtures contributed by continents; donkey engines puffing, petulant whistles screaming, men of a dozen tongues crawling and worming and dying for it; a nation standing agape at its ivory and gold attainments! And what was it? Put it down here and it would be lost in the rolling of the prairie as it swelled upward to meet honest heights! No wonder Danny Lenox felt inconsequential. And yet he sensed a friendly something in that grandeur, an element which reached down for him like a helping hand and offered to draw him out of his cramped, mean little life and put him up with stalwart men. "If this rotten carcass of mine, with its dry throat and fluttering hands, will only stick by me I'll show 'em yet!" he declared, and held up one of those hands to watch its uncertainty. And in the midst of one of those bitter, griping struggles to keep his vagrant mind from running into vinous paths, the brakes clamped down and the porter, superlatively polite, announced: "This is Colt, sah." A quick interest fired Danny. He hurried to the platform, stood on the lowest step, and watched the little clump of buildings swell to natural size. He reached into his pocket, grasped the few coins remaining there, and gave them to the colored boy. The train stopped with a jolt, and Danny stepped off. The conductor, who had dropped off from the first coach as it passed the station, ran out of the depot, waved his hand, and the grind of wheels commenced again. As the last car passed, Danny Lenox stared at it, and for many minutes his gaze followed its departure. After it had disappeared around the distant curve he retained a picture of the white-clad servant, leaning forward and pouring some liquid from a bottle. The roar of the cars died to a murmur, a muttering, and was swallowed in the cañon. The sun beat down on the squat, green depot and cinder platform, sending the quivering heat rays back to distort the outlines of objects. Everywhere was a white, blinding light. From behind came a sound of waters, and Danny turned about to gaze far down into a ragged gorge where a river tumbled and protested through the rocky way. Beyond the stream was stretching mesa, quiet and flat and smooth looking in the crystal distance, dotted with pine, shimmering under the heat. For five minutes he stared almost stupidly at that grand sweep of still country, failing to comprehend the fact of arrival. Then he walked to the end of the little station and gazed up at the town. A dozen buildings with false fronts, some painted, some without pretense of such nicety, faced one another across a thoroughfare four times as wide as Broadway. Sleeping saddle ponies stood, each with a hip slumped and nose low to the yellow ground. A scattering of houses with their clumps of outbuildings and fenced areas straggled off behind the stores. Scraggly, struggling pine stood here and there among the rocks, but shade was scant. Behind the station were acres of stock pens, with high and unpainted fences. Desolation! Desolation supreme! Danny felt a sickening, a revulsion. But lo! his eyes, lifting blindly for hope, for comfort, found the thing which raised him above the depression of the rude little town. A string of cliffs, ranging in color from the bright pink of the nearest to the soft violet of those which might be ten or a hundred miles away, stretched in mighty columns, their varied pigments telling of the magnificent distances to which they reached. All were plastered up against a sky so blue that it seemed thick, and as though the color must soon begin to drip. Glory! The majesty of the earth's ragged crust, the exquisite harmony of that glorified gaudiness! Danny pulled a great chestful of the rare air into his lungs. He threw up his arms in a little gesture that indicated an acceptance of things as they were, and in his mind flickered the question: "The beginning--or the end?" CHAPTER III "I've Done My Pickin'" Then he felt his gaze drawn away from those vague, alluring distances. It was one of those pulls which psychologists have failed to explain with any great clarity; but every human being recognizes them. Danny followed the impulse. He had not seen the figure squatting there on his spurs at the shady end of the little depot, for he had been looking off to the north. But as he yielded to the urge he knew its source--in those other eyes. The figure was that of a little man, and his doubled-up position seemed to make his frame even more diminutive. The huge white angora chaps, the scarlet kerchief about his neck and against the blue of his shirt, the immense spread of his hat, his drooping gray mustache, all emphasized his littleness. Yet Danny saw none of those things. He looked straight into the blue eyes squinting up at him--eyes deep and comprehensive, set in a copper-colored face, surrounded by an intricate design of wrinkles in the clear skin; eyes that had looked at incalculably distant horizons for decades, and had learned to look at men with that same long-range gaze. A light was in those eyes--a warm, kindly, human light--that attracted and held and created an atmosphere of stability; it seemed as though that light were tangible, something to which a man could tie--so prompt is the flash from man to man that makes for friendship and devotion; and to Danny there came a sudden comfort. That was why he did not notice the other things about the little man. That was why he wanted to talk. "Good morning," he said. "'Mornin'." Then a pause, while their eyes still held one another. After a moment Danny looked away. He had a stabbing idea that the little man was reading him with that penetrating gaze. The look was kindly, sincere, yet--and perhaps because of it--the boy cringed. The man stirred and spat. "To be sure, things kind of quiet down when th' train quits this place," he remarked with a nasal twang. "Yes, indeed. I--I don't suppose much happens here--except trains." Danny smiled feebly. He took his hat off and wiped the brow on which beads of sweat glistened against the pallor. The little man still looked up, and as he watched Danny's weak, uncertain movements the light in his eyes changed. The smile left them, but the kindliness did not go; a concern came, and a tenderness. Still, when he spoke his nasal voice was as it had been before. "Take it you just got in?" "Yes--just now." Then another silence, while Danny hung his head as he felt those searching eyes boring through him. "Long trip this hot weather, ain't it?" "Yes, very long." Danny looked quickly at his interrogator then and asked: "How did you know?" "Didn't. Just guessed." He chuckled. "Ever think how many men's been thought wise just guessin'?" But Danny caught the evasion. He looked down at his clothes, wrinkled, but still crying aloud of his East. "I suppose," he muttered, "I do look different--_am_ different." And the association of ideas took him across the stretches to Manhattan, to the life that was, to-- He caught his breath sharply. The call of his throat was maddening! The little man had risen and, with thumbs hooked in his chap belt, stumped on his high boot heels close to Danny. A curious expression softened the lines of his face, making it seem queerly out of harmony with his garb. "You lookin' for somebody?" he ventured, and the nasal quality of his voice seemed to be mellowed, seemed to invite, to compel confidence. "Looking for somebody?" Danny, only half consciously, repeated the query. Then, throwing his head back and following that range of flat tops off to the north, he muttered: "Yes, looking for somebody--looking for myself!" The other shifted his chew, reached for his hat brim, and pulled it lower. "No baggage?" he asked. "To be sure, an' ain't you got no grip?" Danny looked at him quickly again, and, meeting the honest query in that face, seeing the spark there which meant sympathy and understanding--qualities which human beings can recognize anywhere and to which they respond unhesitatingly--he smiled wanly. "Grip?" he asked, and paused. "Grip? Not the sign of one! That's what I'm here for--in Colt, Colorado--to get a fresh grip!" After a moment he extended an indicating finger and asked: "Is that all of Colt--Colt, Colorado?" The old man did not follow the pointing farther than the uncertain finger. And when he answered his eyes had changed again, changed to searching, ferreting points that ran over every puff and seam and hollow in young Danny's face. Then the older man set his chin firmly, as though a grim conclusion had been reached. "That's th' total o' Colt," he answered. "It ain't exactly astoundin', is it?" Danny shook his head slowly. "Not exactly," he agreed. "Let's go up and look it over." An amused curiosity drove out some of the misery that had been in his pallid countenance. "Sure, come along an' inspect our metropolis!" invited the little man, and they struck off through the sagebrush. Danny's long, free stride made the other hustle, and the contrast between them was great; the one tall and broad and athletic of poise in spite of the shoulders, which were not back to their full degree of squareness; the other, short and bowlegged and muscle-bound by years in the saddle, taking two steps to his pacemaker's one. They attracted attention as they neared the store buildings. A man in riding garb came to the door of a primitive clothing establishment, looked, stepped back, and emerged once more. A moment later two others joined him, and they stared frankly at Danny and his companion. A man on horseback swung out into the broad street, and as he rode away from them turned in his saddle to look at the pair. A woman ran down the post-office steps and halted her hurried progress for a lingering glance at Danny. The boy noticed it all. "I'm attracting attention," he said to the little man, and smiled as though embarrassed. "Aw, these squashies ain't got no manners," the other apologized. "They set out in there dog-gone hills an' look down badger holes so much that they git loco when somethin' new comes along." Then he stopped, for the tall stranger was not beside him. He looked around. His companion was standing still, lips parted, fingers working slowly. He was gazing at the front of the Monarch saloon. From within came the sound of an upraised voice. Then another in laughter. The swinging doors opened, and a man lounged out. After him, ever so faint, but insidiously strong and compelling, came an odor! For a moment, a decade, a generation--time does not matter when a man chokes back temptation to save himself--Danny stood in the yellow street, under the white sunlight, making his feet remain where they were. They would have hurried him on, compelling him to follow those fumes to their source, to push aside the flapping doors and take his throat to the place where that burning spot could be cooled. In Colt, Colorado! It had been before him all the way, and now he could not be quit of its physical presence! But though his will wavered, it held his feet where they were, because it was stiffened by the dawning knowledge that his battle had only commenced; that the struggle during the long journey across country had been only preliminary maneuvering, only the mobilizing of his forces. When he moved to face the little Westerner his eyes were filmed. The other drew a hand across his mouth calculatingly and jerked his hat-brim still lower. "As I was sayin'," he went on a bit awkwardly as they resumed their walk, "these folks ain't got much manners, but they're good hearted." Danny did not hear. He was casting around for more resources, more reserves to reinforce his front in the battle that was raging. He looked about quickly, a bit wildly, searching for some object, some idea to engage his thoughts, to divert his mind from that insistent calling. His eyes spelled out the heralding of food stuffs. The sun stood high. It was time. It was not an excuse; it was a Godsend! "Let's eat," he said abruptly. "I'm starving." "That's a sound idee," agreed the other, and they turned toward the restaurant, a flat-roofed building of rough lumber. A baby was playing in the dirt before the door and a chained coyote puppy watched them from the shelter of a corner. On the threshold Danny stopped, confusion possessing him. He stammered a moment, tried to smile, and then muttered: "Guess I'd better wait a little. It isn't necessary to eat right away, anyhow." He stepped back from the doorway with its smells of cooking food and the other followed him quickly, blue eyes under brows that now drew down in determination. "Look here, boy," the man said, stepping close, "you was crazy for chuck a minute ago, an' now you make a bad excuse not to eat. To be sure, it ain't none of my business, but I'm old enough to be your daddy; I ain't afraid to ask you what's wrong. Why don't you want to eat?" The sincerity of it, the unalloyed interest that precluded any hint of prying or sordid curiosity, went home to Danny and he said simply: "I'm broke." "You didn't need to tell me. I knowed it. I ain't, though. You eat with me." "I can't! I can't do that!" "Expect to starve, I s'pose?" "No--not exactly. That is," he hastened to say, "not if I'm worth my keep. I came out here to--to get busy and take care of myself. I'll strike a job of some sort--anything, I don't care what it is or where it takes me. When I'm ready to work, I'll eat. I ought to get work right away, oughtn't I?" In his voice was a sudden pleading born of the fear awakened by his realization of absolute helplessness, as though he looked for assurance to strengthen his feeble hopes, but hardly dared expect it. The little man looked him over gravely from the heels of his flat shoes to the crown of his rakishly soft hat. He pushed his Stetson far back on his gray hair. "To be sure, and I guess you won't have to look far for work," he said. "I've been combin' this town dry for a hand all day. If you'd like to take a chance workin' for me I'd be mighty glad to take you on--right off. I'm only waitin' to find a man--can't go home till I do. Consider yourself hired!" He turned on his heel and started off. But Danny did not follow. He felt distrust; he thought the kindness of the other was going too far; he suspected charity. "Come on!" the man snapped, turning to look at the loitering Danny. "Have I got to rope an' drag you to grub?" "But--you see it's--this way," the boy stammered. "Do you really want me? Can I do your work? How do you know I'm worth even a meal?" A slow grin spread over the Westerner's countenance. "Friend," he drawled in his high, nasal tone, "it's a pretty poor polecat of a man who ain't worth a meal; an' it's a pretty poor specimen who goes hirin' without makin' up his mind sufficient. They ain't many jobs in this country, but just now they's fewer men. We've got used to bein' careful pickers. I've done my pickin'. Come on." Only half willingly the boy followed. They walked through the restaurant, the old man saluting the lone individual who presided over the place, which was kitchen and dining room in one. "Hello, Jed," the proprietor cried, waving a fork. "How's things?" "Finer 'n frog's hair!" the other replied, shoving open the broken screen door at the rear. "This is where we abolute," he remarked, indicating the dirty wash-basin, the soap which needed a boiling out itself, and the discouraged, service-stiffened towel. Danny looked dubiously at the array. He had never seen as bad, to say nothing of having used such; but the man with him sloshed water into the basin from a tin pail and said: "You're next, son, you're next." And Danny plunged his bared wrists into the water. It was good, it was cool; and he forgot the dirty receptacle in the satisfaction that came with drenching his aching head and dashing the cooling water over his throat. The other stood and watched, his eyes busy, his face reflecting the rapid workings of his mind. They settled in hard-bottomed, uncertain-legged chairs, and Jed--whoever he might be, Danny thought, as he remembered the name--gave their order to the man, who was, among other things, waiter and cook. "Make it two sirloins," he said; "one well done an' one--" He lifted his eyebrows at Danny. "Rare," the boy said. "An' some light bread an' a pie," concluded the employer-host. Danny saw that the cook wore a scarf around his neck and down his back, knotted in three places. When he moved on the floor it was evident that he wore riding boots. On his wrists were the leather cuffs of the cowboy. Danny smiled. A far cry, indeed, this restaurant in Colt, Colorado, from his old haunts along the dark thoroughfare that is misnamed a lighted way! The other was talking: "We'll leave soon's we're through an' make it on up th' road to-night. It'll take us four days to get to th' ranch, probably, an' we might's well commence. Can you ride?" Danny checked a short affirmative answer on his lips. "I've ridden considerably," he said. "You people wouldn't call it riding, though. You'll have to teach me." "Well, that's a good beginnin'. To be sure it is. Them as has opinions is mighty hard to teach--'cause opinions is like as not to be dead wrong." He smeared butter on a piece of bread and poked it into his mouth. Then: "I brought out my last hand--I come with him, I mean. Th' sheriff brought him. His saddle an' bed's over to th' stable. You can use 'em." "Sheriff?" asked Danny. "Get into trouble?" "Oh, a little. He's a good boy, mostly--except when he gets drinkin'." Danny shoved his thumb down against the tines of the steel fork he held until they bent to uselessness. CHAPTER IV The Trouble Hunter Knee to knee, at a shacking trot, they rode out into the glory of big places, two horses before them bearing the light burden of a Westerner's bed. "My name's Jed Avery," the little man broke in when they were clear of the town. "I'm located over on Red Mountain--a hundred an' thirty miles from here. I run horses--th' VB stuff. They call me Jed--or Old VB; mostly Jed now, 'cause th' fellers who used to call me Old VB has got past talkin' so you can hear 'em, or else has moved out. Names don't matter, anyhow. It ain't a big outfit, but I have a good time runnin' it. Top hands get thirty-five a month." Danny felt that there was occasion for answer of some sort. In those few words Avery had given him as much information as he could need, and had given it freely, not as though he expected to open a way for the satisfaction of any curiosity. He wanted to forget the past, to leave it entirely behind him; did not want so much as a remnant to cling to him in this new life. Still, he did not deem it quite courteous to let the volunteered information come to him and respond with merely an acknowledgment. He cleared his throat. "I'm from Riverside Drive, New York City," he said grimly. "Names don't matter. I don't know how to do a thing except waste time--and strength. If you'll give me a chance, I'll get to be a top hand." An interval of silence followed. "I never heard of th' street you mention. I know New York's on th' other slope an' considerable different from this here country. Gettin' to be a top hand's mostly in makin' up your mind--just like gettin' anywhere else." Then more wordless travel. Behind them Colt dwindled to a bright blotch. The road ran close against the hills, which rose abruptly and in scarred beauty. The way was ever upward, and as they progressed more of the country beyond the river spread out to their view, mesas and mountains stretching away to infinite distance, it seemed. Even back of the sounds of their travel the magnificent silence impressed itself. It was weird to Danny Lenox, unlike anything his traffic-hardened ears had ever experienced, and it made him uneasy--it, and the ache in his throat. That ache seemed to be the last real thing left about him, anyhow. Events had come with such unreasonable rapidity in those last few days that his harassed mind could not properly arrange the impressions. Here he was, hired out to do he knew not what, starting a journey that would take him a hundred and thirty miles from a place called Colt, in the state of Colorado, through a country as unknown to him as the regions of mythology, beside a man whose like he had never seen before, traveling in a fashion that on his native Manhattan had worn itself to disuse two generations ago! Out of the whimsical reverie he came with a jolt. Following the twisting road, coming toward them at good speed, was the last thing he would have associated with this place--an automobile. He reined his horse out of the path, saw the full-figured driver throw up his arm in salutation to Jed, and heard Jed shout an answering greeting. The driver looked keenly at Danny as he passed, and touched his broad hat. "Who was that?" the boy asked, as he again fell in beside his companion. "That's Bob Thorpe," the other explained. "He's th' biggest owner in this part of Colorado--mebby in th' whole state. Cattle. S Bar S mostly, but he owns a lot of brands." "Can he get around through these mountains in a car?" "He seems to. An' his daughter! My! To be sure, she'd drive that dog-gone bus right up th' side of that cliff! You'll see for yourself. She'll be home 'fore long--college--East somewheres." The boy looked at him questioningly but said nothing. "College--East--home 'fore long--" Might it not form a link between this new and that old--a peculiar sort of link--as peculiar as this sudden, unwarranted interest in this girl? Through the long afternoon Danny eagerly awaited the coming of more events, more distractions. When they came--such as informative bursts from Jed or the passing of the automobile--he forgot for the brief passage of time the throb in his throat, that wailing of the creature in him. But when the two rode on at the shambling trot, with the silence and the immense grandeur all about them, the demands of his appetite were made anew, intensified perhaps by a feeling of his own inconsequence, by the knowledge that should he fail once in standing off those assaults it would mean only another beginning, and harder by far than this one he was experiencing. Every hour of sober reflection, of sordid struggle, added to his estimate of the strength of that self he must subdue. He was going away into the waste places, and a sneaking fear of being removed from the stuff that had kept him keyed commenced to grow, adding to the fleshly wants. If he should be whipped and a surrender be forced? What then? He realized that that doubting was cowardice. He had come out here to have freedom, a new beginning, and now he found himself begging for a way back should the opposition be too great. It was sheer weakness! Cautiously Jed Avery had watched Danny's face, and when he saw anxiety show there as doubt rose, he broke into words: "Yes, sir, Charley was sure a good boy, but th' booze got him." He looked down at his horse's withers so he could not see the start this assertion gave Danny. "He didn't want to be bad, but it's so easy to let go. To be sure, it is. Anyhow, Charley never had a chance, never a look-in. He was good hearted an' meant well--but he didn't have th' backbone." And Danny found that a rage commenced to rise within him, a rage which drove back those queries that had made him weak. Day waned. The sun slid down behind the string of cliffs which stretched on before them at their left. Distances took on their purple veils, a canopy of virgin silver spread above the earth, and the stillness became more intense. "Right on here a bit now we'll stop," Jed said. "This's th' Anchor Ranch. They're hayin', an' full up. We'll get somethin' to eat, though, an' feed for th' ponies. Then we'll sleep on th' ground. Ever do it?" "Never." "Well, you've got somethin' comin', then. With a sky for a roof a man gets close to whatever he calls his God--an' to himself. Some fellers out here never seem to see th' point. Funny. I been sleepin' out, off an' on, for longer than I like to think about--an' they's a feelin' about it that don't come from nothin' else in th' world." "You think it's a good thing, then, for a man to get close to himself?" "To be sure I do." "What if he's trying to get away from himself?" Jed tugged at his mustache while the horses took a dozen strides. Then he said: "That ain't right. When a man thinks he wants to get away from himself, that's th' coyote in him talkin'. Then he wants to get closer'n ever; get down close an' fight again' that streak what's come into him an' got around his heart. Wants to get down an' fight like sin!" He whispered the last words. Then, before Danny could form an answer, he said, a trifle gruffly: "Open th' gate. I'll ride on an' turn th' horses back." They entered the inclosure and rode on toward a clump of buildings a half-mile back from the road. Off to their right ran a strip of flat, cleared land. It was dotted with new haystacks, and beyond them they could see waving grass that remained to be cut. At the corral the two dismounted, Danny stiffly and with necessary deliberation. As they commenced unsaddling, a trio of hatless men, bearing evidences of a strenuous day's labor, came from the door of one of the log houses to talk with Jed. That is, they came ostensibly to talk with Jed; in reality, they came to look at the Easterner who fumbled awkwardly with his cinch. Danny looked at them, one after the other, then resumed his work. Soon a new voice came to his ears, speaking to Avery. He noticed that where the little man's greeting to the others had been full-hearted and buoyant, it was now curt, almost unkind. Curious, Danny looked up again--looked up to meet a leer from a pair of eyes that appeared to be only half opened; green eyes, surrounded by inflamed lids, under protruding brows that boasted but little hair, above high, sunburned cheek bones; eyes that reflected all the small meanness that lived in the thin lips and short chin. As he looked, the eyes leered more ominously. Then the man spoke: "Long ways from home, ain't you?" Although he looked directly at Danny, although he put the question to him and to him alone, the boy pretended to misunderstand--chose to do so because in the counter question he could express a little of the quick contempt, the instinctive loathing that sprang up for this man who needed not to speak to show his crude, unreasoning, militant dislike for the stranger, and whose words only gave vent to the spirit of the bully. "Are you speaking to me?" Danny asked, and the cool simplicity of his expression carried its weight to those who stood waiting to hear his answer. The other grinned, his mouth twisting at an angle. "Who else round here'd be far from home?" he asked. Danny turned to Jed. "How far is it?" he asked. "A hundred an' ten," Jed answered, a swift pleasure lighting his serious face. Danny turned back to his questioner. "I'm a hundred and ten miles from home," he said with the same simplicity, and lifted the saddle from his horse's back. It was the sort of clash that mankind the world over recognizes. No angry word was spoken, no hostile movement made. But the spirit behind it could not be misunderstood. The man turned away with a forced laugh which showed his confusion. He had been worsted, he knew. The smiles of those who watched and listened told him that. It stung him to be so easily rebuffed, and his laugh boded ugly things. "Don't have anything to do with him," cautioned Jed as they threw their saddles under a shed. "His name's Rhues, an' he's a nasty, snaky cuss. He'll make trouble every chance he gets. Don't give him a chance!" They went in to eat with the ranch hands. A dozen men sat at one long table and bolted immense quantities of food. The boiled beef, the thick, lumpy gravy, the discolored potatoes, the coarse biscuit were as strange to Danny as was his environment. His initiation back at Colt had not brought him close to such crudity as this. He tasted gingerly, and then condemned himself for being surprised to find the food good. "You're a fool!" he told himself. "This is the real thing; you've been dabbling in unrealities so long that you've lost sense of the virtue of fundamentals. No frills here, but there's substance!" He looked up and down at the low-bent faces, and a new joy came to him. He was out among men! Crude, genuine, real men! It was an experience, new and refreshing. But in the midst of his contemplation it was as though fevered fingers clutched his throat. He dropped his fork, lifted the heavy cup, and drank the coffee it contained in scorching gulps. Once more his big problem had pulled him back, and he wrestled with it--alone among men! After the gorging the men pushed back their chairs and yawned. A desultory conversation waxed to lively banter. A match flared, and the talk came through fumes of tobacco smoke. "Anybody got th' makin's?" asked Jed. "Here," muttered Danny beside him, and thrust pouch and papers into his hand. Danny followed Jed in the cigarette rolling, and they lighted from the same match with an interchange of smiles that added another strand to the bond between them. "That's good tobacco," Jed pronounced, blowing out a whiff of smoke. "Ought to be; it cost two dollars a pound." Jed laughed queerly. "Yes, it ought to," he agreed, "but we've got a tobacco out here they call Satin. Ten cents a can. _It_ tastes mighty good to us." Danny sensed a gentle rebuke, but he somehow knew that it was given in all kindliness, that it was given for his own good. "While I fight up one way," he thought, "I must fight down another." And then aloud: "We'll stock up with your tobacco. What's liked by one ought to be good enough for--" He let the sentence trail off. Jed answered with: "Both." And the spirit behind that word added more strength to their uniting tie. The day had been a hard one. Darkness came quickly, and the workers straggled off toward the bunk house. Tossing away the butt of his cigarette, Jed proposed that they turn in. "I'm tired, and you've got a right to be," he declared. They walked out into the cool of evening. A light flared in the bunk house, and the sound of voices raised high came to them. "Like to look in?" Avery asked, and Danny thought he would. Men were in all stages of undress. Some were already in their beds; others, in scant attire, stood in mid-floor and talked loudly. From one to another passed Rhues. In his hand he held a bottle, and to the lips of each man in turn he placed the neck. He faced Jed and Danny as they entered. At sight of the stranger a quick hush fell. Rhues stood there, bottle in hand, leering again. "Jed, you don't drink," he said in his drawling, insinuating voice, "but mebby yer friend here 'uld like a nightcap." He advanced to Danny, bottle extended, an evil smile on his face. Jed raised a hand as though to interfere; then dropped it. His jaw settled in grim resolution, his nostrils dilated, and his eyes fixed themselves fast on Danny's face. Oh, the wailing eagerness of those abused nerves! The cracking of that tortured throat! All the weariness of the day, of the week; all the sagging of spirit under the assault of the demon in him were concentrated now. A hot wave swept his body. The fumes set the blood rushing to his eyes, to his ears; made him reel. His hand wavered up, half daring to reach for the bottle, and the strain of his drawn face dissolved in a weak smile. Why hold off? Why battle longer? Why delay? Why? Why? Why? Of a sudden his ears rang with memory of his father's brittle voice in cold denunciation, and the quick passing of that illusion left another talking there, in nasal twang, carrying a great sympathy. "No, thanks," he said just above a whisper. "I'm not drinking." He turned quickly and stepped out the door. Through the confusion of sounds and ideas he heard the rasping laughter of Rhues, and the tone of it, the nasty, jeering note, did much to clear his brain and bring him back to the fighting. Jed walked beside him and they crossed to where their rolls of bedding had been dropped, speaking no word. As they stooped to pick up the stuff the older man's hand fell on the boy's shoulder. His fingers squeezed, and then the palm smote Danny between the shoulder blades, soundly, confidently. Oh, that assurance! This man understood. And he had faith in this wreck of a youth that he had seen for the first time ten hours before! Shaken, tormented though he was, weakened by the sharp struggle of a moment ago, Danny felt keenly and with something like pride that it had been worth the candle. He knew, too, with a feeling of comfort, that an explanation to Jed would never be necessary. Silently they spread the blankets and, with a simple "Good night," crawled in between. Danny had never before slept with his clothes on--when sober. He had never snuggled between coarse blankets in the open. But somehow it did not seem strange; it was all natural, as though it should be so. His mind went round and round, fighting away the tingling odor that still clung in his nostrils, trying to blot out the wondering looks on the countenances of those others as they watched his struggle to refuse the stuff his tormentor held out to him. He did not care about forgetting how Rhues's laughter sounded. Somehow the feeling of loathing for the man for a time distracted his thought from the pleading of his throat, augmented the singing of that chord his father had set in motion, bolstered his will to do, to conquer this thing! But the effect was not enduring. On and on through the narrow channels that the fevered condition made went his thinking; forever and forever it must be so--the fighting, fighting, fighting; the searching for petty distractions that would make him forget for the moment! Suddenly he saw that there were stars--millions upon countless millions of them dusted across the dome of the pale heavens as carelessly as a baker might dust silvered sugar over the icing of a festal cake. Big stars and tiny stars and mere little diffusive glows of light that might come from a thousand worlds, clustering together out there in infinite void. Blue stars and white stars, orange stars, and stars that glowed red. Stars that sent beams through incalculable space and stars that swung low, that seemed almost attainable. Stars that blinked sleepily and stars that stared without wavering, purposeful, attentive. Stars alone and lonely; stars in bunches. Stars in rows and patterns, as though put there with design. Danny breathed deeply, as though the pure air were stuffy and he needed more of it, for the vagary of his wandering mind had carried him back to the place where light points were arranged by plan. He saw again the electric-light kitten and the spool of thread, the mineral-water clock, the cigarette sign with flowing border, the-- Whisky again! He moved his throbbing head from side to side. "Is it a blank wall?" he asked quite calmly. "Shall I always come up against it? Is there no way out?" CHAPTER V Jed Philosophizes Morning: a flickering in the east that gives again to the black hold of night. Another attempt, a longer glimmer. It recedes, returns stronger; struggles, bursts from the pall of darkness, and blots out the stars before it. And after that first silver white come soft colors--shoots of violet, a wave of pink, then the golden glory of a new day. Jed Avery yawned loud and lingeringly, pushing the blankets away from his chin with blind, fumbling motions. He thrust both arms from the covers and reached above his head, up and up and--up! until he ended with a satisfied groan. He sat erect, opening and shutting his mouth, rubbed his eyes--and stopped a motion half completed. Danny Lenox slept with lips parted. His brown hair--the hair that wanted to curl so badly--was well down over the brow, and the skin beneath those locks was damp. One hand rested on the tarpaulin covering of the bed, the fingers in continual motion. "Poor kid!" Jed muttered under his breath. "Poor son of a gun! He's in a jack-pot, all right, an' it'll take all any man ever had to pull--" "'Mornin', sonny!" he cried as Danny opened his eyes and raised his head with a start. For a moment the boy stared at him, evidencing no recognition. Then he smiled and sat up. "How are you, Mr. Avery?" "Well," the other began grimly, looking straight before him, "Mr. Avery's in a bad way. He died about thirty year ago." Danny looked at him with a grin. "But Old Jed--Old VB," he went on, "he's alive an' happy. Fancy wrappin's is for boxes of candy an' playin' cards," he explained. "They ain't necessary to men." "I see--all right, Jed!" Danny stared about him at the freshness of the young day. "Wouldn't it be slick," Jed wanted to know, "if we was all fixed like th' feller who makes th' days? If yesterday's was a bad job he can start right in on this one an' make it a winner! Now, if this day turns out bad he can forget it an' begin to-morrow at sun-up to try th' job all over again!" "Yes, it would be fine to have more chances," agreed Danny. Jed sat silent a moment. "Mebby so, an' mebby no," he finally recanted. "It would be slick an' easy, all right; but mebby we'd get shiftless. Mebby we'd keep puttin' off tryin' hard until next time. As 'tis, we have to make every chance our only one, an' work ourselves to th' limit. Never let a chance get away! Throw it an' tie it an' hang on!" "In other words, think it's now or never?" Jed reached for a boot and declared solemnly: "It's th' only thing that keeps us onery human bein's on our feet an' movin' along!" Breakfast was a brief affair, brief but enthusiastic. The gastronomic feats performed at that table were things at which to marvel, and Danny divided his thoughts between wonder at them and recalling the events of the night before. Only once did he catch Rhues's eyes, and then the leer which came from them whipped a flush high in his cheeks. Jed and Danny rode out into the morning side by side, smoking some of the boy's tobacco. As the sun mounted and the breeze did not rise, the heat became too intense for a coat, and Danny stripped his off and tied it behind the saddle. Jed looked at the pink silk shirt a long time. "To be sure an' that's a fine piece of goods," he finally declared. Danny glanced down at the gorgeous garment with a mingled feeling of amusement and guilt. But he merely said: "I thought so, too, when I bought it." And even that little tendency toward foppishness which has been handed down to men from those ancestors who paraded in their finest skins and paints before the home of stalwart cave women seemed to draw the two closer to each other. As though he could sense the young chap's bewilderment and wonder at the life about him, Jed related much that pertained to his own work. "Yes, I raise some horses," he concluded, "but I sell a lot of wild ones, too. It's fun chasin' 'em, and it gets to be a habit with a feller. I like it an' can make a livin' at it, so why should I go into cattle? Those horses are out there in th' hills, runnin' wild, like some folks, an' doin' nobody no good. I catch 'em an' halter-break 'em an' they go to th' river an' get to be of use to somebody." "Isn't it a job to catch them?" Danny asked. "Well, I guess so!" Jed's eyes sparkled. "Some of 'em are wiser than a bad man. Why, up in our country's a stallion that ain't never had a rope on him. Th' Captain we've got to call him. He's th' wildest an' wisest critter, horse or human, you ever see. Eight years old, an' all his life he's been chased an' never touched. He's big--not so big in weight; big like this here man Napoleon, I mean. He rules th' range. He has th' best mares on th' mountain in his bunch, an' he handles 'em like a king. We've tossed down our whole hand time an' again, but he always beats us out. We're no nearer catchin' him to-day than we was when he run a yearlin'." The little man's voice rose shrilly and his eyes flashed until Danny, gazing on him, caught some of his fever and felt it run to the ends of his body. "Oh, but that's a horse!" Jed went on. "Why, just to see him standin' up on the sky line, head up, tail arched-like, ready to run, not scared, just darin' us to come get him--well, it's worth a hard ride. There's somethin' about th' Captain that keeps us from hatin' him. By all natural rights somebody ought to shoot a stallion that'll run wild so long an' drive off bunches of gentle mares an' make 'em crazy wild. But no. Nobody on Red Mountain or nobody who ever chased th' Captain has wanted to harm him; yet I've heard men swear until it would make your hair curl when they was runnin' him! He's that kind. He gets to somethin' that's in real men that makes 'em light headed. I guess it's his strength. He's bigger'n tricks, that horse. He's learned all about traps an' such, an' th' way men generally catch wild horses don't bother him at all. Lordy, boy, but th' Captain's somethin' to set up nights an' talk about!" His voice dropped on that declaration, almost in reverence. "Well, he's so wise and strong that he'll just keep right on running free; is that the idea?" asked Danny. Jed gnawed off a fresh chew and repocketed the plug, shifted in his saddle, and shook his head. "Nope, I guess not," he said gravely. "I don't reckon so, because it ain't natural; it ain't th' way things is done in this world. Did you ever stop to think that of all th' strong things us men has knowed about somethin' has always turned up to be a little bit stronger? We've been all th' time pattin' ourselves on th' back an' sayin', 'There, we've gone an' done it; that'll last forever!' an' then watchin' a wind or a rain carry off what we've thought was so strong. Either that, I say, or else we've been fallin' down on our knees an' prayin' for help to stop somethin' new an' powerful that's showed up. An' when prayin' didn't do no good up pops somebody with an idea that th' Lord wants us folks to carry th' heavy end of th' load in such matters, an' gets busy workin'. An' his job ends up by makin' somethin' so strong that it satisfied all them prayers--folks bein' that unparticular that they don't mind where th' answer comes from so long as it comes an' they gets th' benefits! "That's th' way it is all th' time. We wake up in th' mornin' an' see somethin' so discouragin' that we want to crawl back to bed an' quit tryin'; then we stop to think that nothin' has ever been so great or so strong that it kept right on havin' its own way all th' time; an' we get our sand up an' pitch in, an' pretty soon we're on top! "All we need is th' sand to tackle big jobs; just bein' sure that they's some way of doin' or preventin' an' makin' a reg'lar hunt for that one thing. So 'tis with th' Captain. He's fooled us a long time now, but some day a man'll come along who's wiser than th' Captain, an' he'll get caught. "Nothin' strange about it. Just th' workin' out of things. 'Course, it'll all depend on th' man. Mebby some of us on th' mountain has th' brains; mebby some others has th' sand, but th' combination ain't been struck yet. We ain't _men_ enough. Th' feller who catches that horse has got to be all man, just like th' feller who beats out anythin' else that's hard; got to be man all th' way through. If he's only part man an' tackles th' job he's likely to get tromped on; if he's all man, he'll do th' ridin'." Jed stopped talking and gazed dreamily at the far horizon; dreamily, but with an eye which moved a trifle now and then to take into its range the young chap who rode beside him. Danny's head was down, facing the dust which rose from the feet of the horses ahead. The biting particles irritated the membrane of his throat, but for the moment he did not heed. "Am I a man--all the way through?" he kept asking himself. "All the way through?" And then his nerves stung him viciously, shrieking for the stimulant which had fed them so long and so well. His aching muscles pleaded for it; his heart, miserable and lonely, missed the close, reckless friendships of those days so shortly removed, in spite of his realization of what those relations had meant; he yearned for the warming, heedless thrills; his eyes ached and called out for just the one draft that would make them alert, less hurtful. From every joint in his body came the begging! But that chord down in his heart still vibrated; his father's arraignment was in his ears, its truth ringing clearly. The incentive to forge ahead, to stop the wasting, grew bigger, and his will stood stanch in spite of the fact that his spinning brain played such tricks as making the click of pebbles sound like the clink of ice in glasses! Then, too, there was Jed, the big-hearted, beside him. And Jed was saying, after a long silence, as though he still thought of his theme: "Yes, sir, us men can do any old thing if we only think so! Nothin' has ever been too much for us; nothin' ever will--if we only keep on thinkin' as men ought to think an' respectin' ourselves." Thus they traveled, side by side, the one fighting, the other uttering his homely truths and watching, always watching, noting effects, detecting temptations when the strain across the worried brow and about the tight mouth approached the breaking point. With keen intuition he went down into the young fellow and found the vibrating chord, the one that had been set humming by scorn and distrust. But instead of abusing it, instead of goading it on, Jed nursed it, fed it, strengthening the chord itself with his philosophy and his optimism. They went on down Ant Creek, past the ranches which spread across the narrow valley. Again they slept under the open skies, and Danny once more marveled at the stars. That second morning was agony, but Jed knew no relenting. "You're sore an' stiff," he said, "but keepin' at a thing when it hurts is what counts, is what gets a feller well--an' that applies to more things than saddle sores, too." He said the last as though aside, but the point carried. At the mouth of the creek, where it flows into Clear River, they swung to the west and went downstream. Danny's condition became only semi-conscious. His head hung, his eyes were but half opened. Living resolved itself into three things. First and second: the thundering demands and the stubborn resistance of his will. When Jed spoke and roused him the remaining element come to the fore: his physical suffering. That agony became more and more acute as the miles passed, but in spite of its sharpness it required the influence of his companion's voice to awaken him to its reality. Always, in a little back chamber of his mind, was a bit of glowing warmth--his newly born love for the man who rode beside him. It was night when they reached the ranch. "We're arrived, sonny! This is home!" cried Jed, slapping Danny on the shoulder. "Our home." The boy mastered his senses with an effort. When he dismounted he slumped to one knee and Jed had to help him stand erect. Danny remembered nothing of the bed going, nor could he tell how long the little, gray-haired man stood over him, muttering now and then, rubbing his palms together; nor of how, when he turned toward the candle on the table, burning steadily and brightly there in the night like a young Crusader fighting back the shadows into the veriest corner of the room, his eyes were misted. It was a strange awakening, that which followed. Danny felt as though he had slept through a whole phase of his existence. At first he was not conscious of his surroundings, did not try to remember where he was or what had gone before. He lay on his back, mantled in a strange peace, wonderfully content. Torture seemed to have left him, bodily torments had fled. His heart pumped slowly; a vague, pleasing weakness was in his bones. It was rest--rest after achievement, the achievement of stability, the arrival at a goal. Then, breaking into full consciousness, his nostrils detected odors. He sniffed slightly, scarcely knowing that he did so. Cooking! It was unlike other smells from places of cookery that he had known; it was attractive, compelling. All that had happened since his departure from Colt came back to him with his first movement. His body was a center of misery, as though it were shot full of needles, as though it had been stretched on a rack, then blistered. Dressing was accomplished to the accompaniment of many grunts and quick intakings of breath. When he tried to walk he found that the process was necessarily slow--slower than it had ever been before. Setting each foot before the other gingerly, as if in experiment, he walked across the tiny room toward the larger apartment of the cabin. "Mornin'!" cried Jed, closing the oven door with a gentleness that required the service of both hands. "I allowed you'd be up about now. Just step outside an' wash an' it'll be about ready. Can you eat? Old VB sure can build a breakfast, an' he's never done better than this." "By the smell, I judge so," said Danny. The warm breath of baking biscuits came to him from the oven. A sputtering gurgle on the stove told that something fried. The aroma of coffee was in the air, too, and Jed lifted eggs from a battered pail to drop them into a steaming kettle. The table, its plain top scrubbed to whiteness, was set for two, and the sunlight that streamed through the window seemed to be all caught and concentrated in a great glass jar of honey that served as a centerpiece. Danny's eyes and nostrils and ears took it all in as he moved toward the outer doorway. When he gained it he paused, a hand on the low lintel, and looked out upon his world. Away to the south stretched the gulch, rolling of bottom, covered with the gray-green sage. Over east rose the stern wall, scarred and split, with cedars clinging in the interstices, their forms dark green against the saffron of the rocks. Up above, towering into the unstained sky of morning, a rounded, fluted peak, like the crowning achievement of some vast cathedral. The sun was just in sight above the cliff, but Danny knew that day was aging, and felt, with his peace, a sudden sharp affection for the old man who, with an indulgence that was close to motherly, had let him sleep. It made him feel young and incompetent, yet it was good, comforting--like the peace of that great stillness about him. Except for the soft sounds from the stove, there was no break. Above, on the ridges, a breeze might be blowing; but not an intimation of it down here. Just quiet--silvery and holy. The sun shoved itself clear of the screening trees. A jack rabbit, startled by nothing at all, sprang from its crouching under a brush shelter and made off across the gulch with the jerky lightness of a stone skipping on water. As he bobbed the grass and bushes dewdrops flew from them, catching sunbeams as they hurtled out to their death, for one instant of wondrous glory flashing like gems. Danny Lenox, late of New York, drew a deep, quivering breath and leaned his head against the crude doorway. He was sore and weak and felt almost hysterical, but perhaps this was only because he was so happy! CHAPTER VI Ambition is Born And then began Danny's apprenticeship. Jed, the wise, did not delay activity. He commenced with the boy as soon as breakfast had been eaten and the dishes washed. That first day they shod a horse, Danny doing nothing really, but taking orders from Jed as though the weight of a vast undertaking rested on his shoulders. The next day they mended fences from early morning until evening. Gradually the realization came to Danny that he was doing something, that he was filling a legitimate place--small, surely: nevertheless he was being of use, he was creating. A pleasing sensation! One of the few truly wholesome delights he had ever experienced. Danny thought about it with almost childish happiness; then, letting his mind return again to the established rut, he was surprised to know that mere thinking about his simple, homely duties had stilled for the time it endured the restless creature within him. The boy's bodily hurts righted themselves. Long hours of sleep did more than anything else to speed recovery. Those first two nights he was between covers before darkness came to the gulch, and Jed let him sleep until the sun was well up. On the third evening they sat outside, Danny watching Jed put a new half-sole on a cast-off riding boot. "They're your size," the old man said, "an' you'll have to wear boots, to be sure. Them things you got on ain't what I'd call exactly fitted to ridin' a horse." Danny looked down at his modish Oxfords and smiled. Then he glanced up at the man beside him, who hammered and cut and grunted while he worked as though his very immortality depended on getting those boots ready for his new hand to wear. Oh, the boy from the city could not then appreciate the big feeling of man for mankind which prompted such humble labor. It was a labor of love, the mere mending of that stiff old boot! In it Jed Avery found the encompassing happiness which comes to those who understand, happiness of the same sort he had felt back there at Colt when he saw that there was a human being who needed help and that it was in his power to give him that help. And the peace this happiness engendered created an atmosphere which soothed and made warm the heart of the boy, though he did not know why. "Guess we'd better move inside an' get a light," Jed muttered finally. "I'll shut the corral gate. You light th' candle, will you? It's on th' shelf over th' table--stickin' in a bottle." Danny watched him go away into the dusk and heard the creak of the big gate swinging shut before he stepped into the house and groped his way along for the shelf. He found it after a moment and fumbled along for the candle Jed had said was there. His fingers closed on something hard and cold and cylindrical. He slid his fingers upward; then staggered back with a half-cry. "What's wrong?" asked Jed, coming into the house. Danny did not answer him, so the old man stepped forward toward the shelf. In a moment a match flared; the cold wick of the candle took the flame, warmed, sent it higher, and a glow filled the room. The boy looked out from eyes that were dark and wide and filled with the old horror. The hand held near his lips shook, and he turned on Jed a look that pleaded, then gazed back at the light. The candle was stuck in the neck of a whisky bottle. Danny opened his lips to speak, but the words would not come. That terror was back again, shattering his sense of peace, melting the words in his throat with its heat. Jed moved near to him. "It's a bright light--for such a little candle," he said slowly, and a stout assurance was in his tone. "But I--I touched the bottle--in the dark!" Danny's voice was high and strained, and the words, when finally they did come, tripped over one another in nervous haste. His knees were weak under him. Such was the strength of the tentacles which reached up to stay his struggles and to drag him back into the depths from which he willed to rise. Such was the weakness of the nervous system on which the strain of the ordeal was placed. Jed put a hand on the boy's shoulder and gazed into the drawn face. "It's all right, sonny," he said softly, his voice modulating from twang to tenderness in the manner it had. "Most men touches it in th' dark. But don't you see what this bottle's for? Don't you see that candle? Burnin' away there, corkin' up th' bottle, givin' us light so we can see?" Then the other hand went up to the boy's other shoulder, and the little old rancher shook young Danny Lenox gently, as though to joggle him back to himself. "I know, sonny," he said softly. "I know--" Then he turned away quickly and smote his palms together with a sharp crack. "Now get to bed. I'll finish these here boots to-night and in th' mornin' we ride. If you're goin' to get to be a top hand, we've got to quit foolin' around home an' get to learn th' country. They's a lot of colts we got to brand an' a bunch of wild ones to gather. It means work--lots of it--for you an' me!" He set to work, busily thumping on the boot. In the morning, Danny was subdued, subdued and shaking. The spontaneity that had characterized his first days on the ranch had departed. He was still eager for activity, but not for the sake of the new experiences in themselves. That gnawing was again in his throat, tearing his flesh, it seemed, and to still the trembling of his hand it was necessary for him to clutch the saddle horn and keep his fingers clamped tightly about it as they rode along. They climbed out of the gulch, horses picking their way up an almost impossible trail, and on a high ridge, where country rolled and tossed about them for immeasurable distances, Jed stopped and pointed out the directions to his companion. Thirty miles to the south was Clear River with its string of ranches, and the town of Ranger, their post office. Twenty miles to the southeast was the S Bar S Ranch, the center of the country's cattle activity, and over west, on Sand Creek, a dozen miles' ride across the hills and double that distance by road, was another scattering of ranches where Dick Worth, deputy sheriff for that end of Clear River County, lived. "An' to th' north of us," continued Jed, with a sweep of his hand, "they's nothin' but hills--clean to Wyoming! We're on th' outskirts of settlements. South of th' river it's all ranches, but north--nothin'. Couple of summer camps but no ranches. It's a great get-away country, all right!" The riding was easy that day, and in spite of his stiffness Danny wished it were harder, because the turmoil kept up within him, and even the unbroken talk of Jed, giving him an intelligent, interesting idea of the country, could not crowd out his disquieting thoughts. But it was easier the next day, and Danny took a deep interest in the hunt for a band of mares with colts that should be branded. Jed's low, warning "H-s-s-t! There they are!" set his heart pounding wildly, and he listened eagerly to the directions the old man gave him; then he waited in high excitement while Jed circled and got behind the bunch. The horses came toward him, and Danny, at Jed's shout, commenced to ride for the ranch. It was a new, an odd, an interesting game. The horses came fast and faster. Now and then to his ears floated Jed's repeated cry: "Keep goin'! Keep ahead!" And he spurred on, wondering at every jump how his horse could possibly keep his feet longer in that awful footing. But he had faith in the stout little beast he rode, and his spirit was of the sort that would not question when a man as skilled in the game as was Jed urged him along. The mares with their colts pressed closely, but Danny kept going, kept urging speed. Straight on for the ranch he headed, and when they reached the level bottom of the gulch the race waxed warm. "Into th' round corral!" cried Jed. "Keep goin'! You're doin' fine!" And into the round corral Danny headed his mount, while the nose of the lead mare reached out at his pony's flank. The gate swung shut; the mares trotted around the inclosure, worried, for there their offspring had been taken from them before. The colts hung close to their mothers, snorting and rolling their wide eyes, while the saddle horses stood with legs apart, getting their wind. Danny's eyes sparkled. "That's sport!" he declared. "But, say, will these horses always follow a rider that way?" Jed loosed his cinch before he answered: "Horses is like some men. As long as they're bein' pushed from behind an' they's somebody goin' ahead of 'em, they'll follow--follow right through high water! But once let 'em get past th' rider who's supposed to be holdin' 'em up--why, then they's no handlin' 'em at all. They scatter an' go their own way, remainin' free. "As I said, they're like men. To be sure, lots of men has got to give that what's leadin' 'em such a run that they beat it to death an' get a chance to go free!" Danny rubbed his horse's drenched withers and agreed with a nod as Jed walked over to the gate and fumbled with the fastening. "Say," he said, turning round, "I like th' way you ride!" Danny looked up quickly, pleased. "I'm glad," he said, but in the simple assertion was a great self-pride. "Most fellers strange in th' country wouldn't fancy takin' that kind of a bust down off a point. No, sir. Not such a ride for us old heads, but for a greenhorn-- Well, I guess you'll get to be a top hand some day, all right!" And the influence which more than all else was to help Danny become a top hand, which was to set up in his heart the great ambition, which was to hold itself up as a blazing ideal, came early in his novitiate as a horse hunter--came in a fitting setting, on a day richly golden, when the air seemed filled with a haze of holy incense, holy with the holiness of beauty. It was one of those mountain days when the immensity of nature becomes so obvious and so potent that even the beasts leave off their hunting or their grazing to gaze into wondrous distances. The sage is green and brash in the near sunlight, soft and purple out yonder; the hills sharp and hard and detailed under the faultless sky for unthinkable miles about, then soft and vague, melting in color and line, rolling, reaching, tossing in a repetition of ranges until eyes ache in following them and men are weak about their middles from the feeling of vastnesses to which measurements by figures are profane. Jed and Danny searched for horses along two parallel ridges. Now and then they saw each other, but for the most part it had been a day of solitary riding. Late afternoon arrived, and Danny had about abandoned hope of success. He was considering the advisability of mounting the ridge above the gulch into which he had ridden and locating Jed, though loath to leave the solitudes. His pony picked them out and stopped before Danny's eyes registered the sight. The boy searched quickly, and over against a clump of cedars, halfway up the rise, he saw horses. "No, that's not they," he muttered. "Jed said there were two white mares among them. Not--" His pony started under him, gave a sharp little shudder, then moved a step backward and stood still, a barely perceptible tremor shaking his limbs. Then a sound new and strange came to Danny. He did not know its origin, but it contained a quality that sent a thrill pulsing from his heart. Shrill it was, but not sharply cut, wavering but not breaking; alarm, warning, concern, caution--the whistle of a stallion! Then silence, while the mares stood rigid and the saddle horse held his breath. Again it came, and a quick chill struck down Danny's spine. His searching eyes encountered the source. There, halfway between the mares and the crown of the ridge he stood, out on a little rim-rock that made a fitting pedestal, alert, defiant, feet firmly planted, with the poise of a proud monarch. Even across the distance his coat showed the glossiness seen only on fine, short hair; his chest, turned halfway toward the rider, was splendid in breadth and depth, indicating superb strength, endurance, high courage. Danny looked with a surge of appreciation at the arch of the neck, regal in its slim strength, at the fine, straight limbs, clean as a dancing girl's; at the long, lithe barrel with its fine symmetry. A wandering breath of breeze came up the gulch, fluttering the wealth of tail, lifting the heavy mane and forelock. The horse raised a front foot and smote the ledge on which he stood as though wrath rose that a mere man should ride into his presence, and he would demand departure or homage from Danny Lenox. He shook his noble head impatiently, to clear his eyes of the hair that blew about them. And once more came the whistle. The mares stirred. One, a bright buckskin, trotted up the rise a dozen yards, and stopped to turn and look. The others moved slowly, eyes and ears for Danny. Again the whistle; a clatter of loosened stones as the black leader bounded up the hillside; and the bunch was away in his wake. "The Captain!" Danny breathed, and then, in a cry which echoed down the gulch--"The Captain!" He was scarcely conscious of his movements, but his quirt fell, his spurs raked the sides of his pony, and the sturdy little animal, young and not yet fully developed, doing his best in making up the ridge, labored effectively, perhaps drawn on by that same raw desire which went straight to the roots of Danny's spirit and came back to set the fires glowing in his eyes. The boy rode far forward in his saddle, his gaze on the plunging band that scattered stones and dirt as they strove for the top. But he was many lengths behind when the last mare disappeared over the rim. He fanned his pony again, and the beast grunted in his struggles for increased speed in the climbing, lunging forward with mighty efforts which netted so little ground. As he toiled up the last yards Danny saw the Captain again, standing there against the sky, watching, waiting, mane and tail blowing about him. His strong, full, ever delicate body quivered with the singing spirit of confidence within him and communicated itself to the weakling pursuer. Just a glimpse of the man was all that the black horse wanted, then--he was off. As Danny's horse caught the first stride in the run down the ridge he saw the Captain stretch that fine nose out to the flank of a lagging mare, and saw the animal throw her head about in pain as the strong teeth nipped her flesh, commanding more speed. Danny Lenox was mad! He pulled off his hat and beat his pony's withers with it. He cried aloud the Captain's name. He went on and on, dropping far down on his horse's side as they brushed under the cedars, settling firmly to the seat when the animal leaped over rocks. His shirt was open at the neck, and his throat was chilled with the swift rush of air, while hot blood swirled close to the skin. His eyes glowed with the fire set there by this new fascination, the love of beautiful strength; and through his body sang the will to conquer! It was an unfair race. Danny and his light young horse had no chance. Off and away drew the stallion and his bunch, without effort after that first crazy break down the ridge. The last Danny saw of him was with head turned backward, nose lifted, as though he breathed disdainful defiance at the man who would come in his wake with the thirst for possession high within him! And so the boy pulled up, dropped off, and let his breathing pony rest. His legs were uncertain under him, and he knew that his pulses raced. For many minutes he strove to analyze his emotion but could not. Jed slid off the next ridge and came up at a trot. His face was radiant. "Well, he got you, didn't he?" He laughed aloud. "I thought he would, all along; and I knowed he had you when I see you break up over th' ridge. You've got th' fever now, like a lot of th' rest of us! Mebby you'll chase horses here for years, but you'll always have an eye out for just one thing--th' Captain. You won't be satisfied until you've got him--like all of us; not satisfied until we've done th' biggest thing there is in sight to do." Then, as though parenthetically: "An' when we've done that we've only h'isted ourselves up to where we can see that they's a hunderd times as much to do." "Gad, but he goes right into a fellow's heart!" breathed Danny, looking into the sunset. "I didn't know I was following him, Jed, until the pony here commenced to tire." He laughed apologetically, as though confessing a foolishness, but his face was glowing with a new light. A fresh incentive had come to him with this awakening admiration, inciting him to emulation. The spirit of the stallion stirred in him again that vibrant chord which had been urging him to fight on, not to give up. His ambition to overcome his weakness began to take quick, definite direction. Added to the effort of overcoming his vices would henceforth be the endeavor to achieve, to compass some worthy object. This was his aim: to be a leader to whom men would turn for inspiration; to be unconquerable among men, as the Captain was unconquerable among his kind. As the ideal took shape, springing full-born from his excitement, Danny Lenox felt lifted above himself, felt stronger than human strength, felt as though he were forever beyond human weaknesses. When they had ridden twenty minutes in silence Jed broke out: "Sonny, I don't want to act like 'n old woman, but I guess I'm gettin' childish! I've knowed you less than a month. I don't even know who you was when you come. We don't ask men about theirselves when they come in here. What a feller wants to tell, we take; what he keeps to hisself we wonder at without mentionin' it. "But you, sonny--you couldn't keep it from me. I know what it is, I know. I seen it when you got off th' train at Colt--seen that somethin' had got you down. I knowed for sure what it was when you stopped by th' saloon there. I knowed how honest you was with yourself in that little meetin' with Rhues. I know all about it--'cause I've been through th' same thing--alone, an' years ago." After a pause he went on: "An' just now, when I seen you comin' down that ridge after th' Captain, I knowed th' right stuff was in you--because when a thing like that horse touches a man off it's a sign he's th' right kind, th' kind that wants to do things for th' sake of knowin' his own strength. You've got th' stuff in you to be a man, but you're fightin' an awful fight. You need help; you ought to have friends--you ought to have a daddy!" He gulped, and for a dozen strides there were no more words. "I feel like adoptin' you, sonny, 'cause I know. I feel like makin' you a part of this here outfit, which ain't never branded a colt that didn't belong to it, which ain't never done nothin' but go straight ahead an' be honest with itself, good times an' bad. "I used to be proud when they called me Old VB, 'cause they all knowed th' brand was on th' level, an' when they, as you might say, put it on me, I felt like I was wearin' some sort of medal. I feel just like makin' you part of th' VB--Young VB--'cause I can help you here an'--an' 'fore God A'mighty you need help, man that you are!" An hour and a half later, when the last dish had been wiped, when the dishpan had been hung away, Danny spoke the next words. He walked close to the old man, his face quiet under the new consciousness of how far he must go to approach this new ideal. He took the hard old hand in his own, covered its back with the other, and muttered in a voice that was far from clear: "Good night, Old VB." And the other, to cover the tenderness in his tone, snapped back: "Get to bed, Young VB; they's that ahead of you to-morrow which'll take every bit of your courage and strength!" CHAPTER VII With Hoof and Tooth So it came to pass that Danny Lenox of New York ceased to exist, and a new man took his place--Young VB, of Clear River County, Colorado. "Who's your new hand?" a passing rider asked Jed one morning, watching with interest as the stranger practiced with a rope in the corral. "Well, sir, he's th' ridin'est tenderfoot you ever see!" Jed boasted. "I picked him up out at Colt an' put him to work--after Charley went away." "Where'd he come from? What's his name?" the other insisted. "From all appearances, he ain't of these parts," replied Jed, squinting at a distant peak. "An' around here we've got to callin' him Young VB." The rider, going south, told a man he met that Jed had bestowed his brand on a human of another generation. Later, he told it in Ranger. The man he met on the road told it on Sand Creek; those who heard it in Ranger bore it off into the hills, for even such a small bit of news is a meaty morsel for those who sit in the same small company about bunk-house stoves months on end. The boy became known by name about the country, and those who met him told others what the stranger was like. Men were attracted by his simplicity, his desire to learn, by his frank impulse to be himself yet of them. "Oh, yes, he's th' feller," they would recall, and then recite with the variations that travel gives to tales the incident that transpired in the Anchor bunk house. Young VB fitted smoothly into the work of the ranch. He learned to ride, to rope, to shoot, to cook, and to meet the exigencies of the range; he learned the country, cultivated the instinct of directions. And, above all, he learned to love more than ever the little old man who fathered and tutored him. And Young VB became truly useful. It was not all smooth progress. At times--and they were not infrequent--the thirst came on him with vicious force, as though it would tear his will out by the roots. The fever which that first run after the Captain aroused, and which made him stronger than doubtings, could not endure without faltering. The ideal was ever there, but at times so elusive! Then the temptings came, and he had to fight silently, doggedly. Some of these attacks left him shaking in spite of his mending nerves--left him white in spite of the brown that sun and wind put on him. During the daytime it was bad enough, but when he woke in the night, sleep broken sharply, and raised unsteady hands to his begging throat, there was not the assuring word from Jed, or the comfort of his companionship. The old man took a lasting pride in Danny's adaptability. His comments were few indeed, but when the boy came in after a day of hard, rough, effective toil, having done all that a son of the hills could be expected to do, the little man whistled and sang as though the greatest good fortune in the world had come to him. One morning Jed went to the corral to find VB snubbing up an unbroken sorrel horse they had brought in the day before. He watched from a distance, while the young man, after many trials, got a saddle on the animal's back. "Think you can?" he asked, his eyes twinkling, as he crawled up on the aspen poles to watch. "I don't know, Jed, but it's time I found out!" was the answer, and in it was a click of steely determination. It was not a nice ride, not even for the short time it lasted. Young VB "went and got it" early in the mêlée. He clung desperately to the saddle horn with one hand, but with the other he plied his quirt and between every plunge his spurs raked the sides of the bucking beast. He did not know the art of such riding, but the courage was there and when he was thrown it was only at the moment when the sorrel put into the battle his best. VB got to his feet and wiped the dust from his eyes. "Hurt?" asked Jed. "Nothing but my pride," muttered the boy. He grasped the saddle again, got one foot in the stirrup, and, after being dragged around the inclosure, got to the seat. Again he was thrown, and when he arose and made for the horse a third time Jed slipped down from the fence to intervene. "Not again to-day," he said, with a pride that he could not suppress. "Take it easy; try him again to-morrow." "But I don't want to give up!" protested the boy. "I _can_ ride that horse." "You ain't givin' up; I made you," the other smiled. "You ought to have been born in the hills. You'd have made a fine bronc twister. Ain't it a shame th' way men are wasted just by bein' born out of place?" VB seemed not to hear. He rubbed the nose of the frantic horse a moment, then said: "If I could get this near the Captain-- Jed, if I could ever get a leg over that stallion he'd be mine or I'd die trying!" "Still thinkin' of him?" "All the time! I never forget him. That fellow has got into my blood. He's the biggest thing in this country--the strongest--and I want to show him that there's something a little stronger, something that can break the power he's held so long--and that _I_ am that something!" "That's considerable ambition," Jed said, casually, though he wanted to hug the boy. "I know it. Most people out here would think me a fool if they heard me talk this way. Me, a greenhorn, a tenderfoot, talking crazily about doing what not one of you has ever been able to do!" "Not exactly, VB. It's th' wantin' to do things bad enough that makes men do 'em, remember. This feller busted you twice, but you've got th' stuff under your belt that makes horses behave. That's th' only stuff that'll ever make th' Captain anything but th' wild thing he is now. Sand! _Grit!_ Th' _wantin'_ to do it!" A cautious whistle from Jed that afternoon called VB into a thicket of low trees, from where he looked down on a scene that drove home even more forcibly the knowledge of the strength of spirit that was incased in the glossy coat of the great stallion. "Look!" the old man said in a low voice, pointing into the gulch. "It's a Percheron--one of Thorpe's stallions. He's come into th' Captain's band an' they're goin' to fight!" VB looked down on the huge gray horse, heavier by three hundred pounds than the black, stepping proudly along over the rough gulch bottom, tossing his head, twisting it about on his neck, his ears flat, his tail switching savagely. Up the far rise huddled the mares. The Captain was driving the last of them into the bunch as VB came in sight. That done, he turned to watch the coming of the gray. Through the stillness the low, malicious, muffled crying of the Percheron came to them clearly as he pranced slowly along, parading his graces for the mares up there, displaying his strength to their master, who must come down and battle for his sovereignty. The Captain stood and watched as though mildly curious, standing close to his mares. His tail moved slowly, easily, from side to side. His ears, which had been stiffly set forward at first, slowly dropped back. The gray drew nearer, to within fifty yards, forty, thirty. He paused, pawed the ground, and sent a great puff of dust out behind him. Then he swung to the left and struck up the incline, headed directly for the Captain, striding forward to humble him under the very noses of his mares--the band that would be the prize of that coming conflict! He stopped again and pawed spitefully. He rose on his hind legs slowly, head shaking, forefeet waving in the air, as though flexing his muscles before putting them to the strain of combat. He settled to the ground barely in time, for with a scream of rage the black horse hurtled. He seemed to be under full speed at the first leap, and the speed was terrific! Foam had gathered on his lips, and the rush down the pitch flung it spattering against his glossy chest. His shrilling did not cease from the time he left his tracks until, with front hoofs raised, a catapult of living, quivering hate, he hurled himself at the gray. It ended then in a wail of frenzy--not of fear, but of royal rage at the thought of any creature offering challenge! The gray dropped back to all fours, whirled sharply, and took the impact at a glancing blow, a hip cringing low as the ragged hoofs of the black crashed upon it. The Captain stuck his feet stiffly into the ground, plowing great ruts in the earth in his efforts to stop and turn and meet the rush of the other, as he recovered from the first shock, gathered headway, and bore down on him. He overcame his momentum, turning as he came to a stop, lifted his voice again, and rose high to meet hoof for hoof the ponderous attack that the bigger animal turned on him. The men above heard the crash of their meeting. The impact of flesh against flesh was terrific. For the catch of an instant the horses seemed to poise, the Captain holding against the fury that had come upon him, holding even against the odds of lightness and up-hill fighting. Then they swayed to one side, and VB uttered a low cry of joy as the Captain's teeth buried themselves in the back of the Percheron's neck. Close together then they fought, throwing dirt and stones, ripping up the brush as their rumbling feet found fresh hold and then tore away the earth under the might that was brought to bear in the assault and resistance. A dozen times they rushed upon each other, a dozen times they parted and raised for fresh attack. And each time the gray body and the black met in smacking crash it was the former that gave way, notwithstanding his superior weight. "Look at him!" whispered Jed. "Look at that cuss! He hates that gray so that he's got th' fear of death in him! Look at them ears! Hear him holler! He's too quick. Too quick, an' he's got th' spirit that makes up th' difference in weight--an' more, too!" He stopped with a gasp as the Captain, catching the other off balance, smote him on the ribs with his hoofs until the blows sounded like the rumble of a drum. The challenger threw up his head in agony and cringed beneath the torment, running sidewise with bungling feet. "He like to broke his back!" cried Jed. "And look at him bite!" whispered VB. The Captain tore at the shoulders and neck of the gray horse with his gleaming, malevolent teeth. Again and again they found fleshhold, and his neck bowed with the strength he put into the wrenching, while his feet kept up their terrific hammering. No pride of challenge in the gray now; no display of graces for the onlooking mares; no attacking; just impotent resistance, as the Captain drove him on and on down the gulch, humbled, terrified, routed. The sounds of conflict became fainter as the Percheron strove to make his escape and the Captain relentlessly followed him, the desire to kill crying from his every line. The battling beasts rounded a point of rocks, and the two men sprang to their horses to follow the moving fight. But they were no more than mounted when the Captain came back, swinging along in his wonderful trot, ears still flat, head still shaking, anger possessing him--anger and pride. He was unmarked by the conflict, save with sweat and dust and foam; he was still possessed of his superb strength. He went up the pitch to his band with all the vigor of stride he had displayed in flying from it to answer the presumption of the gray. And the mares, watching him, seemed to draw long breaths, dropped their heads to the bunch grass, and, one by one, moved along in their grazing. Jed looked at VB. What he saw in the boy's face made him nod his head slowly in affirmation. "You're that sort, too," he whispered exultingly. "You're that sort! _His_ kind!" CHAPTER VIII A Head of Yellow Hair The next day Jed declared for a trip to Ranger after grub. The trip was necessary, and it would be an education for VB, he said with a chuckle, to see the town. But when they were ready to start a rider approached the ranch. "If it ain't Kelly!" Jed cried. Then, in explanation: "He's a horse buyer, an' must be comin' to see me." And the man's desire to look over the VB stuff was so strong that Jed declared it would be business for him to stay at home. In a way, Danny was glad of the opportunity to go alone. It fed the glowing pride in his ability to do things, to be of use, and after a short interchange of drolleries with the man Kelly, whom he instinctively liked, the boy mounted to the high wagon seat and drove off down the gulch. It was a long drive, and hours alone are conducive to thought. Danny's mind went back over the days that had passed, wandering along those paths he had followed since that July morning in the luxuriously dim house on Riverside Drive. And the reason for his departing from the old way came back to him now, because he was alone, with nothing to divert his attention. The old turbulence arose; it wore and wore with the miles, eating down to his will, teasing, coaxing, threatening, pleading, fuming. "Will it always be so?" he asked the distances. "When it comes to challenge me, to take away all that I hold dear, shall I always be afraid? Shan't I be able to stand and fight and triumph, merely raging because it dares tempt me instead of fearing this thing itself?" And he spoke as he thought in terms of his ideal, as materialized in the Captain. "But will it always be so with him?" he asked again. "Won't some horse come to challenge him some day and batter him down and make defeat all the more bitter because of the supremacy he has enjoyed? Would it then be--worth the candle?" And as he bowed his head he thought once more of the beacon in the bottle, corking it up, driving back the shadows, making a livable place in the darkness. Nothing is ever intrinsically curious. Curiousness comes solely from relationships. Time and place are the great factors in creating oddities. Five miles farther on VB saw a curious thing. This was at the forks of the road. To his right it went off behind the long, rocky point toward Sand Creek; to the left it wandered through the sage brush over toward the S Bar S Ranch, and ahead it ran straight on to Ranger. Along the prong that twisted to the left went an automobile. Nothing curious about that to VB, for many times he had seen Bob Thorpe driving his car through the country. But at the wheel was a lone figure crowned by a mass of yellow hair. That was the curious thing he saw! All VB could distinguish at that distance with his hot eyes was yellow hair. The machine picked its way carefully along the primitive road, checking down here, shooting ahead there, going on toward the horizon, bearing the yellow hair away from him, until it was only a crawling thing with a long, floating tail of dust. But it seemed to him he could still make out that bright fleck even after the automobile had become indistinguishable. "She's alone," muttered VB. "She's driving that car alone--and out here!" Then he wondered with a laugh why he should think it so strange. Many times he had ridden down Fifth Avenue in the afternoon traffic congestion beside a woman who piloted her own car. Surely the few hazards of this thoroughfare were not to be compared with that! But it was the incongruity which his association of ideas brought up that made him tingle a little. That hair! It did not belong out here. He had not been near enough to see the girl's face--he was sure it was a girl, not a grown woman--but the color of her crowning adornment suggested many and definite things. And those things were not of these waste places; were not rough and primal. They were finer, higher. Once before he had experienced this nameless, pleasurable sensation of being familiar with the unknown. That had been when Jed had sketched with a dozen unrelated words a picture of the daughter of the house of Thorpe. The motor car with its fair-haired pilot had been gone an hour when Danny, watching a coyote skulk among distant rocks, said aloud: "East--college--I'll bet--I--I wonder--" Dusk had come when Young VB entered Ranger and put up at the ranch, which made as much pretense of buildings as did the town itself. Morning found him weak and drawn, as it always did after a night of the conflict, yet he was up with the sun, eager to be through with his task and back with Jed. Purchasing supplies is something of a rite in Ranger, and under other conditions, on another day perhaps, it might have amused VB; but with the unrest within him he found little about the procedure that did not irritate. In the store there one may buy everything in hardware from safety pins to trace chains; groceries range from canned soup to wormy nuts; in drugs anything, bounded on one end by horse liniment and on the other extreme by eye-drops guaranteed to prevent cataracts, is for sale; and overalls and sewing silk are alike popular commodities. All is in fine order, and the manager is a walking catalogue of household necessities. VB was relieved when the buying had been accomplished. He crowded a can of ten-cent tobacco into the pocket of his new overalls and started for the team. A dozen strides away from the store building he paused to look about. It was his first inspection of Ranger in daylight, and now as he surveyed its extent his sense of humor rose above the storm within him, and he grinned. The store, with its conventional false front, stood beside the post office, which was built as a lean-to. Next to it was a building of red corrugated iron, and sounds of blacksmithing issued from it. Behind VB was a tiny house, with a path running from it to the store, the home of the manager. Next it a log cabin. Down at the left, near the river, was another house, deserted, the ranch where he had stayed, and beyond it a trio of small shacks on the river bank. "Ranger," he muttered, and chuckled. The road, brown and soft with fine dust, stretched on and on toward Utah, off to the west where silence was supreme. The buildings were all on the north side of the road. "A south front was the idea, I suppose," VB murmured. "Mere matter of--" His gaze had traveled across the road to a lone building erected there, far back against a sharp rise of ground. It stood apart, as though consciously aloof from the rest, a one-story structure, and across its front a huge white sign, on which in black characters was painted the word: [Illustration: SALOON] Unconsciously his tongue came out to wet the parched lips and his fingers plucked at the seams of the new overalls. Why not? the insidious self argued, why not? All changes must come gradually. Nothing can be accomplished in a moment. Just one drink to cool his throat, to steady his nerves, and brace him for the fight he would make--later. As he stood there listening to that inner voice, yet holding it off, he did not hear the fall of hoofs behind him or the jingle of spurs as a rider dismounted and approached. But he did hear the voice--drawling, nasty, jeering: "Was you considerin' havin' a bit o' refreshment, stranger?" VB wheeled quickly and looked straight into the green glitter of Rhues's red-lidded eyes. The cruel mouth was stretched in an angular grin, and the whole countenance expressed the incarnate spirit of the bully. Into Danny's mind leaped the idea that this thing before him, this evil-eyed, jeering, leering, daring being, typified all that was foul in his heart--just as the Captain typified all that was virtuous. The intuitive repulsion surged to militant hate. He wanted to smother the breath which kept alive such a spirit, wanted to stamp into the dust the body that housed it--because it mocked him and tempted him! But Young VB only turned and brushed past the man without a word. He heard Rhues's laughter behind him, and heard him call: "Ranger ain't no eastern Sunday school. Better have one an' be a man, like th' rest o' th' boys!" However, when Rhues turned back to his pony the laugh was gone and he was puzzling over something. After he had mounted, he looked after the boy again maliciously. VB was on the road in half an hour, driving the horses as fast as he dared. He wanted to be back in Jed's cabin, away from Ranger. This thing had followed him across the country to Colt; from Colt to the Anchor; and now It lurked for him in Ranger. The ranch was his haven. The settlement by the river reached its claws after him as he drove, fastening them in his throat and shaking his will until it seemed as though it had reached the limit of its endurance. It was dark when he reached home. A mile away he had seen the light and smiled weakly at thought of it, and the horses, more than willing, carried the wagon over the remaining distance with a bouncing that threatened its contents. When VB pulled up before the outer gate Jed hurried from the cabin. "VB," he called, "are you all right?" "All right, Jed," he answered, dropping from the seat. And the boy thought he heard the older man thank his God. Without words, they unharnessed and went to the cabin. Kelly was sleeping loudly in the adjoining room. The table had been moved from its usual place nearer to the window, and the bottle with its burning candle was close against the pane. Jed looked at the candle, then at VB. "I'm sorry," he said, seeing the strain about the boy's mouth. "I never thought about it until come night, Young VB. I never thought about it. I--I guess I'm an old fool, gettin' scared th' way I do. So I shoved this candle up against th' window--because I'm an old fool and thought--it might help a little." And VB answered: "It does help, Jed! Every little thing helps. And oh, God, how I need it!" He turned away. CHAPTER IX Pursuit Summer drew toward its close and the work became more exacting. Jed was sure that more of his colts ran the range without brands, and the two rode constantly, searching every gulch and break for the strays. One day they went far to the east, and at noon encountered three of Bob Thorpe's men building fence. "It's his new drift fence," Jed explained. "He's goin' to have a lot of winter pasture, to be sure he is. It'll help us, too. When we come takin' these here willow tails off this ridge they'll find somethin' new. It's so close up to the foot of the rise that they can't jump it." "Thorpe must be rich," remarked Young VB as they went on along the fence. "Rich don't say it! He's rollin' in money, an' he sure knows how to enjoy it. Every winter, when things gets squared away, he takes his wife an' goes to California. I s'pose he'll be takin' his girl, too--now that she's quit goin' to school." The boy wanted to ask questions about this daughter of Bob Thorpe's, but a diffidence, for which there was no accounting, held him back. He was curious as he had been whenever he heard of or thought of her, and as he had been when he had once seen her. But somehow he did not care to admit that curiosity even to Jed, and when he tried to analyze the reason for his reticence there was no doing so. Now came more knowledge of the waste places with weeks of riding; more knowledge of the barren area in his own heart with self-study; more pertinent, that which the Captain typified. And all the time that struggle continued, which at times seemed only the hopeless floundering of a man in quicksands--life on the river bank so close; death below, certain, mocking his efforts. "He has faith in himself because he is physically equipped," VB murmured one day as he saw the Captain standing against the sky on a distant ridge. "His belief in himself is justified. But I--what do I know about my own capabilities?" Yet a latent quality in the boy was the sort that offsets doubts, else why this emulation of the stallion, why this feeling that was almost love, constant, always growing, never hesitating? Like most men, Young VB was unprepared for the big moments of his life. Could we only foresee them, is the plaint of men! Could we only know and go out to meet them in spirit proper! And yet that very state of preparation might take from the all-encompassing grandeur of those passages a potent element. After all, this scheme of things has its compensations, and inability to foretell the future may be one of the greatest. With fear in his heart and black discouragement and lack of faith, Young VB went out to meet what proved to be his first great moment. Jed had gone to the railroad, bound for the Springs, to untangle a mess of red tape that had snarled about his filing on some land. VB was left alone, and for days the young fellow saw no one. In the natural loneliness that followed, the assault came upon him with manifold force. He could not sleep, could not eat, could not remain in one place or keep his mind on a fixed purpose. He walked about, talking to himself in the silence, trying ineffectually to do the necessary work of the ranch, trying to stifle the loud voice that begged him to forego all the struggle and let his impulses carry him where they would. But were not his impulses carrying him? Was it not his first impulse to go on with the fight? He did not think of that. At times it was hard indeed to differentiate between the real and the unreal. The voice that wheedled was such a twister of words and terms, and its ally, the thirst, raged with such virility that he was forced to do something with his body. To remain an unresisting victim to the torture would only invite disaster. Throwing a saddle on his "top" horse, Young VB set out, leaving the half-prepared dinner as it was, unable even to wait for food. He rode swiftly up the gulch to where it forked, and then to the right, letting the stanch animal under him cover the ground at a swinging trot. In three hours he was miles from the ranch, far back in the hills, and climbing to the top of a stretching ridge. He breathed through his mouth, to let the air on his burning throat, and twisted his bridle reins until the stout leather was misshapen, utterly lost in the conflict which went on within, heedless of all else. Suddenly he realized that his horse had come a long distance without rest. He dismounted in a thicket of cedars, sharply repentant that his own torment had led him to forget the beast that served him, and even the distraction of that concern brought relief. With the cinch eased the horse stood and breathed gratefully. But he was not fagged, he was still alert and eager. His ears were set stiffly forward, and he gazed upwind, sniffing softly now and then. "What you see, cayuse?" VB asked, trying to make out the cause of that attentiveness. Again the sniffing, and of a sudden the horse froze, stopped his breathing, and VB, a hand on the beast's hip, felt a quick tremor run through him. Then the man saw that which had caused the animal to tremble, and the sight set him tingling just as it always did. A hundred yards up the ridge, sharp against the sky, commanding, watchful, stood the Captain. He had not seen or scented VB, for he looked in other directions, moving his head from point to point, scanning every nook of the country below him. Something mannish there was about that beast, a comprehensive, planned vigilance. Down below him in a sag fed the mares. As VB looked at that watcher he felt the lust to possess crawling up, surging through him, blotting out that other desire, that torment, making his breath congest, making his mouth dry. He tightened his cinch and mounted. The Captain did not see VB until the rider came clear of the cover in which he had halted. For the instant only, as the rushing horseman broke through the cedars, a scudding, fluttering object hurtling across the low brush, the black stallion stood as though his feet were imbedded in the rock under him, his head full toward the rushing rider, nose up, astonishment in the very angle of his stiff ears. Then those ears went flat; the sleek body pivoted on its dainty hind feet, and a scream of angered warning came from the long throat. Even as the Captain's front hoofs clawed the ground in his first leap, the mares were running. They drew close together, frightened by the abruptness of the alarm, scuttling away from the punishment they knew would be coming from their master if they wasted seconds. VB was possessed again. His reason told him that a single horseman had no chance in the world with that bunch, that he could not hope to keep up even long enough to scatter the band, that he would only run his mount down, good horse that he was. But the lust urged him on, tugging at his vitals, and he gave vent to his excitement in sharp screams of joy, the joy of the hunt--and the joy of honest attempt at supreme accomplishment. The dust trailed behind the bunch, enveloping the rushing Captain in a dun mantle, finally to be whipped away by the breeze. They tore down stiff sagebrush in their flight; and so great was the strain that their bellies skimmed incredibly close to the ground. VB's horse caught the spirit of the chase, as do all animals when they follow their kind. He extended himself to the last fiber, and with astonishment--a glad astonishment that brought a whoop of triumph--the boy saw that the mares were not drawing away--that he was crawling up on them! But the Captain! Ah, he was running away from the man who gave chase, was putting more distance between them at every thundering leap, was drawing closer to his slower mares, lip stretched back over his gleaming teeth, jaws working as he strained to reach them and make that band go still faster. VB's quirt commenced to sing its goading tune, slashing first on one side, then on the other. He hung far forward over the fork of his saddle, leaning low to offer the least possible resistance to the wind. Now and then he called aloud to his pony, swearing with glad savagery. The Captain reached his bunch, closing in on them with a burst of speed that seemed beyond the abilities of blood and bone. The man behind thought he heard those long teeth pop as they caught the rump of a scurrying mare; surely he heard the stallion's scream of rage as, after nipping mare after mare, running to and fro behind them, he found that they had opened their hearts to the last limit and could go no faster. They _could not_ do it--and the rider behind was crawling up, jump for jump, gaining a yard, losing a foot, gaining again, steadily, relentlessly. VB did not know that Kelly, the horse buyer, and one of Dick Worth's riders had given the outlaws a long, tedious race that morning as they were coming in from the dry country to the west for water and better feed. He did not know that the band had been filling their bellies with great quantities of water, crowding them still more with grasses, until there was no room left for the working of lungs, for the stretching of taxed muscles. He saw only the one fact: that he was gaining on the Captain. He did not stop even to consider the obvious ending of such a chase. He might scatter the band, but what of it? When the last hope had been cast the Captain would strike out alone, would turn all the energy that now went to driving his mares to making good his own escape, and then there would be no more race--just a widening of a breach that could not be closed. But VB did not think of anything beyond the next stride. His mind was possessed with the idea that every leap of the laboring beast under him must bring him closer to the huddle of frantic horses, nearer to the flying hindquarters of the jet leader who tried so hard to make his authority override circumstance. The slashing of the quirt became more vicious. VB strained farther forward. His lips were parted, his eyes strained open with excitement, and the tears started by that rushing streamed over his cheeks. "E-e-eyah!" he shrieked. The buckskin mare found a hole. Her hind legs went into the air, sticking toward the sky above that thundering clump of tossing, rushing bodies with its fringes of fluttering hair. Her legs seemed to poise a moment; then they went down slowly. The Captain leaped her prostrate body, to sink his teeth into the flank of a sorrel that lagged half a length behind the others. VB passed so near the buckskin as she gained her faltering feet that he could have slashed her with his quirt. Yet he had no eyes for her, had no heed for any of the mares. He was playing for the bigger game. The sorrel quit, unable to respond to that punishment, fearful of her master. She angled off to the right, to be rid of him, and disappeared through a clump of trees. The stallion shrilled his anger and disgust, slowing his gallop a half-dozen jumps as though he wanted to follow and punish her cruelly. Then he glanced backward, threw his nose in the air and, stretching to his own tremendous speed again, stormed on. The huddle of mares became less compact, seemed to lose also its unity of purpose. The Captain had more to do. His trips from flank to flank of the band were longer. By the time he had spurred the gray at the left back into the lead the brown three-year-old on the other wing was a loiterer by a length. Then, when she was sent ahead, the gray was lagging again. And another by her side, perhaps. "E-e-eyah!" VB's throat was raw from the screaming, but he did not know it--no more than he knew that his hat was gone or that his nerves still yearned for their stinging stimulant. The cry, coming again and again, worried the Captain. Each time it crackled from VB's lips the black nose was flung high and an eye which glared orange hate even at that distance rolled back to watch this yelling pursuer. VB saw, and began to shout words at the animal, to cry his challenge, to curse. The galloping gray quit, without an attempt to rally. The Captain brought to bear a terrific punishment, dropping back to within thirty yards of the man who pressed him, but it was useless, for she was spent. The water and luscious grass in her dammed up the reservoirs of her vitality, would not let her respond. When the stallion gave her up and tore on after the others she dropped even her floundering gallop, and as VB raced past her he heard the breath sob down her throat. On and across they tore, dropping into sags of the ridge, climbing sharp little pitches, swinging now to the right and bending back to the left again in a sweeping curve. The uneven galloping of the horse under him, the gulps for breath the pony made as the footing fooled him and he jolted sharply, the shiftings and duckings and quick turnings as they stormed through groups of trees, the rattle of brush as it smote his boot toes and stirrups were all unheeded by VB. Once his shoulder met a tough cedar bough, and the blow wrenched it from its trunk. His face was whipped to rawness by smaller branches, and one knee throbbed dully where it had skimmed a bowlder as they shot past. But he saw only that floundering band ahead. The buckskin was gone, the sorrel, the gray; next, two mares quit together, and the Captain, seeing them go, did not slacken his speed, did not even scream his rage. Only four remained, and he gambled on them as against the slight chance of recovering any of those others; for that screaming rider was closing in on him all the time. Oh, water and grass! How necessary both are to life, but how dangerous at a time like this! Pop-pop! The teeth closed on those running hips. The vainness of it all! They could go no faster. They had tried first from instinct, then from willingness; now they tried from fear as their lord tortured them. But though the will was there, the ability could not come, not even when the Captain pushed through them, and in a desperate maneuver set the pace, showing them his fine heels and clean limbs, demonstrating how easy it was to go on and on and draw away from that rider who tugged at his muffler that wind might find and cool his throat, burning now from unalloyed hope. And so VB, the newest horse runner on the range, scattered the Captain's band, accomplishing all that the best of the men who rode that country had ever been able to boast. The stallion tried once more to rally his mates into escape, but their hearts were bursting, their lungs clogged. They could do no more. Then away he went alone, head high and turning from side to side, mane flaunting, tail trailing gracefully behind him, beauty in every regal line and curve, majestic superiority in each stride he took. He raced off into the country that stretched eastward, the loser for the time of one set of conquests but free--free to go on and make himself more high, more powerful, more a thing to be emulated even by man. He ran lightly, evenly, without effort, and the gap between him and the rider behind, narrowed by such tremendous exertion from that lathered pony, widened with scarce an added effort. But VB went on, driving his reeking pony mercilessly. He had ceased yelling now. His face was set; blood that had been whipped into it by his frenzy, by the rushing of the wind, by the smiting of branches, left the skin. It became white, and from that visage two eyes glowed abnormally brilliant. For the Captain was taking off the ridge where it bent and struck into the north, was plunging down over the pitch into the shadows. He was going his best, in long, keen strides that would carry him to the bottom with a momentum so tremendous that on the flat he would be running himself into a blur. And VB's face was colorless, with eyes brilliant, because he knew that along the bottom of the drop ran the new drift fence that Bob Thorpe's men were erecting. He began to plead with his pony, to talk to him childishly, to beg him to keep his feet, to coax him to last, to pray him to follow--and in control of himself, and on time! As they dropped off the ridge, down through the sliding shale and scattered brush, VB's right hand, upraised to keep his balance, held the loop of his rope, and the other, flung behind the cantle of his saddle, grasped the coils of the sturdy hemp. Oh, Captain, your speed was against you! You took off that ridge with those ground-covering leaps, limbs flying, heart set on reaching the bottom with a swirl of speed that would dishearten your follower. But you did not reckon on an obstruction, on the thing your eyes encountered when halfway down that height and going with all the power within you. Those fresh posts and the wires strung between them! A fence! Men had invaded your territory with their barriers, and at such a time! You knew, too, that there was no jumping it; they had set the posts so far up on the pitch that no take-off had been left. So the Captain tried to stop. With haunches far under him, front feet straight before, belly scrubbing the brush, he battled to overcome the awful impetus his body had received up above. Sprawling, sliding, feet shooting in any direction as the footing gave, he struggled to stop his progress. It was no simple matter; indeed, checking that flight was far more difficult than the attaining of that speed. In the midst of rolling, bounding stones, sliding dust, breaking brush, the great stallion gradually slowed his going. Slow and more slowly he went on toward the bottom; almost stopped, but still was unable to bring his muscles into play for a dash to right or left. On behind, pony floundering in the wake of the Captain, rode VB, right hand high, snapping back and forth to hold him erect, rope dangling from it crazily. He breathed through his mouth, and at every exhalation his vocal chords vibrated. Perhaps even then the Captain might have won. The odds of the game were all against him, it is true, for breaking down the pitch as he did, it required longer for him to reach the bottom in possession of his equilibrium than it did the slower-moving horse that bore VB. It would have been a tight squeeze for the horse, but the man was in a poor position to cast his loop with any degree of accuracy. But a flat sliding stone discounted all other factors. Nothing else mattered. The Captain came to a stop, eyes wild, ears back. With a slow-starting, mighty lunge, he made as though to turn and race down along the line of fence before VB could get within striking distance. The great muscles contracted, his ragged hoofs sought a hold. The hind legs straightened, that mighty force bore on his footing--and the stone slipped! The Captain was outlucked. His hind legs shot backward, staggering him. His hindquarters slipped downhill, throwing his head up to confront VB. His nostrils flared, that orange hate in his eyes met the glow from his pursuer's, who came down upon him--only half a dozen lengths away! CHAPTER X Capture It does not take a horse that is bearing a rider downhill an appreciable length of time to take one more stride. Gravity does the work. The horse jerks his fore legs from under his body and then shoots them out again for fresh hold to keep his downward progress within reason. VB's pony went down the drop with much more rapidity than safety, in short, jerky, stiff-legged plunges, hindquarters scrooged far under his body; alert, watching his footing, grunting in his care not to take too great risks. When the Captain, fooled by false footing, was whirled about to face the down-coming rider, the pony's fore feet had just drawn themselves out of the way to let his body farther down the slope. And when the sturdy legs again shot out to strike rock and keep horse and VB upright, the black stallion had started to wheel. But in the split second which intervened between the beginning and ending of that floundering jump, eyes met eyes. The eyes of a man met the eyes of a beast, and heart read heart. The eyes of a man who had frittered his life, who had flaunted his heritage of strength in body and bone until he had become a weakling, a cringing, whining center of abnormal nervous activities, fearing himself, met the eyes of a beast that knew himself to be a paragon of his kind, the final achievement of his strain, a commanding force that had never been curbed, that had defied alike his own kingdom and the race from which had sprung the being now confronting him. The eyes of him who had been a weakling met the eyes of that which had been superstrong and without a waver; they held, they penetrated, and, suddenly born from the purposeless life of Danny Lenox, flamed Young VB's soul. All the emulation, all the lust this beast before him had roused in his heart, became amalgamated with that part of him which subtly strove to drag him away from debauchery, and upon those blending elements of strength was set the lasting stamp of his individuality. His purpose flamed in his eyes and its light was so great that the horse read, and, reading, set his ears forward and screamed--not so much a scream of anger as of wondering terror. For the beast caught the significance of that splendid determination which made for conquest with a power equal to his own strength, which was making for escape. The telepathic communication from the one to the other was the same force that sends a jungle king into antics at the pleasure of his trainer--the language that transcends species! The pony's hoofs dug shale once more, and the upraised right arm whipped about the tousled head. The rope swished angrily as it slashed the air. Once it circled--and the Captain jumped, lunging off to the left. Twice it cut its disk--and the stallion's quivering flanks gathered for a second leap. It writhed; it stretched out waveringly, seekingly, feelingly as though uncertain, almost blindly, but swiftly--so swiftly! The loop flattened and spread and undulated, drawing the long stretch of hemp after it teasingly. It stopped, as though suddenly tired. It poised with uncanny deliberation. Then, as gently as a maiden's sigh, it settled--settled--drooped--and the Captain's nose, reaching out for liberty, to be free of this man whose eyes flamed a determination so stanch that it went down to his beast heart, thrust itself plumb through the middle. The hoarse rip of the hard-twist coming through its hondu, the whistle of breath from the man's tight teeth, the rattle of stone on stone; then the squeal from the stallion as for the first time in his life a bond tightened on him! He shook his head angrily, and even as he leaped a third time back toward his free hills one forefoot was raised to strike from him the snaring strand. The pawing hoof did not reach its mark, did not find the thin, lithe thing which throttled down on him, for the Captain's momentum carried him to the end of the rope. They put the strain on the hemp, both going away, those horses. VB struggled with his mount to have him ready for the shock, but before he could bring about a full stop that shock arrived. It seemed as though it would tear the horn from the saddle. The pony, sturdy little beast, was yanked to his knees and swung half about, and VB recovered himself only by grabbing the saddle fork. The black stallion again faced the man--faced him because his heels had been cracked in a semicircle through the air by the force of that burning thing about his neck. For ten long seconds the Captain stood braced against the rope, moving his head slowly from side to side for all the world as a refractory, gentled colt might do, with as much display of fight as would be shown by a mule that dissented at the idea of being led across a ditch. He just stood there stupidly, twisting his head. The thick mane rumpled up under the tightening rope, some of the drenched hair of the neck was pulled out as the hemp rolled upward, drawing closer, shutting down and down. The depression in the flesh grew deeper. One hind foot lost its hold in the shale and shot out; the Captain lifted it and moved it forward again slowly, cautiously, for fresh, steady straining. Then it came. The windpipe closed; he coughed, and like the sudden fury of a mountain thunderstorm the Captain turned loose his giant forces. The thing had jerked him back in his rush toward freedom. It held him where he did not want to be held! And it choked! Forefeet clawing, rearing to his hind legs with a quivering strength of lift that dragged the bracing pony through the shale, the great, black horse-regal screamed and coughed his rage and beat upon that vibrating strand which made him prisoner--that web--that fragile thing! Again and again he struck it, but it only danced--only danced, and tightened its clutch on his throat! He reached for it with his long teeth and clamped them on it, but the thing would not yield. He settled to all fours again, threw his head from side to side, and strove to move backward with a frenzied floundering that sent the pebbles rattling yards about him. It was a noble effort. Into the attempt to drag away from that anchorage the Captain put his very spirit. He struggled and choked and strained. And all the time that man sat there on his horse, tense, watching silently, moving his free hand slightly to and fro, as though beating time to music. His lips were parted, his face still blanched. And in his eyes glowed that purpose which knows no defeat! System departed. Like a hot blast wickedness came. Teeth bared, ears flat, with sounds like an angered child's ranting coming from his throat, the stallion charged his man enemy just as he had charged the powerful Percheron who had come to challenge him a month ago. The saddle horse, seeing it, avoided the brunt of the first blind rush, taking the Captain's shoulder on his rump as the black hurtler went past, striking thin air. VB felt the Captain's breath, saw from close up the lurid flame in his eyes, sensed the power of those teeth, the sledge-hammer force behind those untrimmed hoofs. And he came alive, the blood shooting close under his skin again and making the gray face bronze, then deeper than bronze. His eyes puffed under the stress of that emotion, and he felt a primitive desire to growl as the Captain whirled and came again. It was man to beast, and somewhere down yonder through the generations a dead racial memory came back and Young VB, girded for the conflict, ached to have his forest foe in reach, to have the fight run high, to have his chance to dare and do in fleshly struggle! It was not long in coming. The near hoof, striking down to crush his chest, fell short, and the hair of VB's chap leg went ripping from the leather, while along his thigh crept a dull, spreading ache. He did not notice that, though, for he was raised in his stirrups, right hand lifted high, its fingers clutched about the lash of his loaded quirt. He felt the breath again, hot, wet, and a splatter of froth from the flapping lips struck his cheek. Then the right hand came down with a snap and a jerk, with all the vigor of muscular force that VB could summon. His eye had been good, his judgment true. The Captain's teeth did not sink into his flesh, for the quirt-butt, a leaden slug, crunched on the horse's skull, right between the ears! The fury of motion departed, like the going of a cyclone. The Captain dropped to all fours and hung his head, staggered a half-dozen short paces drunkenly, and then sighed deeply-- He reached the end of the rope. It came tight again, and with the tightening--the battle! Thrice more he charged the man with all the hate his wild heart could summon, but not once did those dreadful teeth find that which they sought. Again the front hoof met its mark and racked the flesh of VB's leg, but that did not matter. He could stand that punishment, for he was winning! He was countering the stallion's efforts, which made the contest an even break; and his rope was on and he had dealt one telling blow with his quirt. Two points! And the boy screamed his triumph as the missile he swung landed again, on the soft nose this time, the nose so wrinkled with hateful desire--and the Captain swung off to one side from the stinging force of it. Not in delight at punishment was that cry. The blow on the skull, the slug at the nose stabbed VB to his tenderest depths. But he knew it must be so, and his shout was a shout of conquest--of the first man asserting primal authority, of the last man coming into his own! The dust they stirred rose stiflingly. Down there under the hill no moving breath of air would carry it off. The pony under VB grunted and strained, but was jerked sharply about by the rushes of the heavier stallion, heavier and built of things above mere flesh and bone and tendon. The Captain's belly dripped water; VB's face was glossy with it, his hair plastered down to brow and temple. The three became tired. In desperation the Captain dropped the fight, turned to run, plunged out as though to part the strands. VB's heart leaped as his faith in the rope faltered--but it held, and the stallion, pulled about, lost his footing, floundered, stumbled, went down, and rolled into the shale, feet threshing the air. It was an opening--the widest VB had had, wider than he could have hoped for, and he rushed in, stabbing his horse shamelessly with spurs and babbling witlessly as he strove to make slack in the rope. The slack came. Then the quick jerk of the wrist--the trick he had perfected back there in Jed's corral--and a potential half-hitch traveled down the rope. The Captain floundered to get his feet under him, and the loop in the rope dissolved. Again the wrist twitch, again the shooting loop and-- "Scotched!" screamed Young VB. "Scotched! You're my property!" Scotched! The rope had found its hold about the off hind ankle of the soiled stallion, and there it clung in a tight, relentless grasp. The rope from neck to limb was so short that it kept the foot clear of the ground, crippling the Captain, and as the great horse floundered to his feet VB had him powerless. The stallion stood dazed, looking down at the thing which would not let him kick, which would not let him step. Then he sprang forward, and when the rope came tight he was upended, a shoulder plowing the shale. "It's no use!" the man cried, his voice crackling in excitement. "I've got you right--right--_right!_" But the Captain would not quit. He tried even then to rise to his hind legs and make assault, but the effort only sent him falling backward, squealing--and left him on his side, moaning for his gone liberty. For he knew. He knew that his freedom was gone, even as he made his last floundering, piteous endeavors. He got up and tried to run, but every series of awkward moves only sent his black body down into the dust and dirt, and at last he rested there, head up, defiance still in his eyes, but legs cramped under him. And then VB wanted to cry. He went through all the sensations--the abrupt drop of spirits, the swelling in the throat, the tickling in the nostrils. "Oh, Captain!" he moaned. "Captain, don't you see I wouldn't harm you? Only you had to be mine! I had to get bigger than you were, Captain--for my own salvation. It was the only way, boy; it was the only way!" And he sat there for a long time, his eyes without the light of triumph, on his captive. His heart-beats quickened, a new warmth commenced to steal through his veins, a new faith in self welled up from his innermost depths, making his pulses sharp and hard, making his muscles swell, sending his spirit up and up. He had fought his first big fight and he had won! Blood began to drip from the stallion's nose. "It's where I struck you!" whispered VB, the triumph all gone again, solicitation and a vast love possessing him. "It's where I struck you, Captain. Oh, it hurts me, too--but it must be so, because things are as they are. There will be more hurts, boy, before we're through. But it must be!" His voice gritted on the last. Sounds from behind roused VB, and he looked around. The sunlight was going even from the ridge up there, and the whole land was in shadow. He was a long way from the ranch with this trophy--his, but still ready to do battle at the end of his rope. "Got one?" a man cried, coming up, and VB recognized him as one of the trio of fence builders, riding back to their camp. "Yes--one," muttered VB, and turned to look at the Captain. Then the man cried: "You've got th' Captain!" "It's the Captain," said VB unsteadily, as though too much breath were in his lungs. "He's mine--you know--mine!" The others looked at him in silent awe. CHAPTER XI A Letter and a Narrative Jed Avery had been away from Young VB almost two weeks, and he had grown impatient in the interval. So he pushed his bay pony up the trail from Ranger, putting the miles behind him as quickly as possible. The little man had fretted over every step of the journey homeward, and from Colt on into the hills it was a conscious effort that kept him from abusing his horse by overtravel. "If he should have gone an' busted over while I was away I'd--I'd never forgive myself--lettin' that boy go to th' bad just for a dinky claim!" It was the thousandth time he had made the declaration, and as he spoke the words a thankfulness rose in his heart because of what he had not heard in Ranger. He knew that VB had kept away from town. Surely that was a comfort, an assurance, a justification for his faith that was firm even under the growling. Still, there might have been a wanderer with a bottle-- And as he came in sight of his own buildings Jed put the pony to a gallop for the first time during that long journey. Smoke rose from the chimney, the door stood open, an atmosphere of habitation was about the place, and that proved something. He crowded his horse close against the gate, leaned low, unfastened the hasp, and rode on through. "Oh, VB!" he called, and from the cabin came an answering hail, a scraping of chair legs, and the young fellow appeared in the doorway. "How's th'--" Jed did not finish the question then--or ever. His eagerness for the meeting, the light of anticipation that had been in his face, disappeared. He reined up his horse with a stout jerk, and for a long moment sat there motionless, eyes on the round corral. Then his shoulders slacked forward and he raised a hand to scratch his chin in bewilderment. For yonder, his nose resting on one of the gate bars, watching the newcomer, safe in the inclosure, alive, just as though he belonged there, stood the Captain! After that motionless moment Jed turned his eyes back to Young VB, and stared blankly, almost witlessly. Then he raised a limp hand and half pointed toward the corral, while his lips formed a soundless question. VB stepped from the doorway and walked toward Jed, smiling. "Yes," he said with soft pride, as though telling of a sacred thing, "the Captain is there--in our corral." Jed drew a great breath. "Did you do it--and alone?" "Well, there wasn't any one else about," VB replied modestly. Again Jed's chest heaved. "Well, I'm a--" He ended in inarticulate distress, searching for a proper expletive, mouth open and ready, should he find one. Then he was off his horse, both hands on the boy's shoulders, looking into the eyes that met his so steadily. "You done it, Young VB!" he cried brokenly. "You done it! Oh, I'm proud of you! Your old adopted daddy sure is! You done it all by yourself, an' it's somethin' that nobody has ever been able to do before!" Then they both laughed aloud, eyes still clinging. "Come over and get acquainted," suggested VB. "He's waiting for us." They started for the corral, Jed's eyes, now flaming as they took in the detail of that wonderful creature, already seen by him countless times, but now for the first time unfree. The stallion watched them come, moving his feet up and down uneasily and peering at them between the bars. VB reached for the gate fastening, and the horse was away across the corral, snorting, head up, as though fearful. "Why, Captain!" the boy cried. "What ails you?" "What ails him?" cried Jed. "Man alive, I'd expect to see him tryin' to tear our hearts out!" "Oh, but he's like a woman!" VB said softly, watching the horse as he swung the gate open. They stepped inside, Jed with caution. VB walked straight across to the horse and laid his hand on the splendid curve of the rump. "Well, I'm a--" Again Jed could find no proper word to express his astonishment. He simply took off his hat and swung it in one hand, like an embarrassed schoolgirl. "Come over and meet the boss, Captain," VB laughed, drawing the black head around by its heavy forelock. And the Captain came--unexpectedly. The boy realized the danger with the first plunge and threw his arms about the animal's neck, crying to him to be still. And Jed realized, too. He slipped outside, putting bars between himself and those savage teeth which reached out for his body. Foiled, the stallion halted. "Captain," exclaimed VB, "what ails you?" "To be sure, nothin' ails him," said Jed sagely. "You're his master; you own him, body and soul; but you ain't drove th' hate for men out of his heart. He seems to love you--but not others--yes--" His voice died out as he watched the black beast make love to the tall young chap who scolded into his dainty ear. The soft, thin lips plucked at VB's clothing, nuzzling about him as he stood with arms clasped around the glossy neck. The great cheek rubbed against the boy's side until it pushed him from his tracks, though he strained playfully against the pressure. Such was the fierceness of that horse's allegiance. His nostrils fluttered, but no sound came from them: the beast whisperings of affection. All the time VB scolded softly, as a father might banter with a child. And when the boy looked up a great pride was in his face, and Jed understood. "That's right, Young VB--be proud of it! Be proud that he's yours; be proud that he's yours, an' yours only. Keep him that way; to be sure, an' you've earned it!" Then he stepped close to the bars and gazed at the animal with the critical look of a connoisseur. "Not a hair that ain't black," he muttered. "Black from ankle to ear; hoofs almost black, black in th' nostrils. Black horses generally have brown eyes, but you can't even tell where th' pupil is in his! "Say, VB, he makes th' ace of spades look like new snow, don't he?" "He does that!" cried VB, and putting his hands on the animal's back, he leaped lightly up, sitting sidewise on the broad hips and playing with the heavy tail. "VB, I'm a-- Lord, a thousand dollars for a new oath!" At VB's suggestion they started back to the cabin. "Why, boy, you're limpin'!" the old man exclaimed. "An' in both legs!" He stopped and looked the young fellow over from hat to heel. "One side of your face's all skinned. Looks as though your left hand'd all been smashed up, it's that swelled. You move like your back hurt, too--like sin. VB?" The boy stopped and looked down at the ground. Then his eyes met those of the old rancher, and Jed Avery understood--he had seen the bond between man and horse; he realized what must have transpired between them. And he knew the love that men can have for animals, something which, if you have never felt it, is far beyond comprehension. So he asked just this question: "How long?" And VB answered: "Six days--from dawn till dark. One to get a halter on him, another to get my hand on his head; three days in the Scotch hobble, and the last--to ride him like a hand-raised colt." Jed replaced his hat, pulling it low to hide his eyes. "Ain't I proud to be your daddy?" he whispered. An overwhelming pride--a pride raised to the _n_th degree, of the sort that is above the understanding of most men--was in the tone _timbre_ of the question. They went on into the house. "Jed," VB said, as though he had waited to broach something of great import, "I've written a letter this morning, and I want to read it to you, just to see how it sounds out loud." He sat down in a chair and drew sheets of small tablet paper toward him. Jed, without answer, leaned against the table and waited. VB read: "My Dear Father: "I am writing merely to say that I know you were right and I was wrong. "I am in a new life, where men do big, real things which justify their own existence. I am finding myself. I am getting that perspective which lets me see just how right you were and how wrong I was. "Since coming here I have done something real. I have captured and made mine the wildest horse that ever ran these hills. I am frankly proud of it. I may live to do things of more obvious greatness, but that will be because men have had their sense of values warped. For me, this attainment is a true triumph. "I am now in the process of taming another beast, more savage than the one I have mastered, and possessing none of his noble qualities. It is a beast not of the sort we can grapple with, though we can see it in men. It is giving me a hard battle, but try to believe that my efforts are sincere and, though it may take my whole lifetime, I am bound to win in the end. "This letter will be mailed in Kansas City by a friend. I am many days' travel from that point. When I am sure of the other victory I shall let you know where I am. "Your affectionate son," He tossed the sheets back to the table top. "I'm going to get it over to Ant Creek and let some of the boys take it to the river when they go with beef," he explained. "Now, how does it sound?" "Fine, VB, fine!" Jed muttered, rubbing one cheek. "To be sure, it ain't so much what you say as th' way you say it--makin' a party feel as though you meant it from th' bottom of your feet to th' tip of th' longest hair on your head!" "Well, Jed, I do mean it just that way. That horse out there--he--he stands for so much now. He stands for everything I haven't been, and for all that I want to be. He ran free as the birds, but it couldn't always be so. He had to succumb, had to give up that sort of liberty. "I took his power from him, made him my own, made him my servant. Yet it didn't scathe his spirit. It has changed all that bitterness into love, all that wasted energy into doing something useful. I didn't break him, Jed; I converted him. Understand?" "I do, VB; but we won't convert this here other beast. We'll bust him wide open, won't we? Break him, body an' spirit!" The boy smiled wanly. "That's what we're trying to do." He pointed to the candle in its daubed bottle. "Just to keep the light burning, Jed--just to keep its light fighting back the darkness. The little flame of that candle breaks the power of the black thing which would shut it in--like a heart being good and true in spite of the rotten body in which it beats. And when my body commences to want the old things--to want them, oh, so badly--I just think of this little candle here, calm and quiet and steady, sticking out of what was once a cesspool, a poison pot, and making a place in the night where men can see." While a hundred could have been counted slowly they remained motionless, quiet, not a sound breaking the silence. Then Jed began talking in a half-tone: "I know, Young VB; I know. You've got time now to light it and nurse th' flame up so's it won't need watchin'--an' not miss things that go by in th' dark. Some of us puts it off too long--like a man I know--now. I didn't know him then--when it happened. He was wanderin' around in a night that never turned to day, thinkin' he knowed where he was goin', but all th' time just bein' fooled by th' dark. "And there was a girl back in Kansas. He started after her, but it was so dark he couldn't find th' way, an' when he did-- "Some folks is fools enough to say women don't die of broken hearts. But--well, when a feller knows some things he wants to go tell 'em to men who don't know; to help 'em to understand, if he can; to give 'em a hand if they do see but can't find their way out--" He stopped, staring at the floor. VB had no cause to search for identities. From the corral came a shrill, prolonged neighing. VB arose and laid a hand gently on Jed's bowed shoulder. "That's the Captain," he said solemnly; "and he calls me when he's thirsty." While he was gone Jed remained as he had been left, staring at the floor. CHAPTER XII Woman Wants Gail Thorpe rose from the piano in the big ranch house of the S Bar S, rearranged the mountain flowers that filled a vase on a tabouret, then knocked slowly, firmly, commandingly, on a door that led from the living room. "Well, I don't want you; but I s'pose you might as well come in and get it off your mind!" The voice from the other side spoke in feigned annoyance. It continued to grumble until a lithe figure, topped by a mass of hair like pulled sunshine, flung itself at him, twining warm arms about his neck and kissing the words from the lips of big Bob Thorpe as he sat before his desk in the room that served as the ranch office. "Will you ever say it again--that you don't want me?" she demanded. "No--but merely because I'm intimidated into promising," he answered. His big arms went tight about the slender body and he pulled his daughter up on his lap. A silence, while she fussed with his necktie. Her blue eyes looked into his gray ones a moment as though absently, then back to the necktie. Her fingers fell idle; her head snuggled against his neck. Bob Thorpe laughed loud and long. "Well, what is it this morning?" he asked between chuckles. The girl sat up suddenly, pushed back the hair that defied fastenings, and tapped a stretched palm with the stiff forefinger of the other hand. "I'm not a Western girl," she declared deliberately; and then, as the brown face before her clouded, hastened: "Oh, I'm not wanting to go away! I mean, I'm not truly a Western girl, but I want to be. I want to fit better. "When we decided that I should graduate and come back here with my mommy and daddy for the rest of my life, I decided. There was nothing halfway about it. Some of the other girls thought it awful; but I don't see the attraction in their way of living. "When I was a little girl I was a sort of tom-cow-boy. I could do things as well as any of the boys I ever knew could do them. But after ten years, mostly away in the East, where girls are like plants, I've lost it all. Now I want to get it back." "Well, go to it!" "Wait! I want to start well--high up. I want to have the best that there is to have. I--want--a--horse!" "Horse? Bless me, _bambino_, there are fifty broken horses running in the back pasture now, besides what the boys have on the ride. Take your pick!" "Oh, I know!" she said with gentle scoffing. "That sort of a horse--just cow-ponies. I love 'em, but I guess--well--" "You've been educated away from 'em, you mean?" he chuckled. "Well, whatever it is--I want something better. I, as a daughter of the biggest, best man in Colorado, want to ride the best animal that ever felt a cinch." "Well?" "And I want to have him now, so I can get used to him this fall and look forward to coming back to him in the spring." Bob Thorpe took both her hands in one of his. "And if a thing like that will make my bambino happy, I guess she'll have it." The girl kissed him and held her cheek close against his for a breath. "When I go to Denver for the stock show I'll pick the best blue ribbon--" "Denver!" she exclaimed indignantly, sitting straight and tossing her head. "I want a real horse--a horse bred and raised in these mountains--a horse I can trust. None of your blue-blooded stock. They're like the girls I went to college with!" Bob Thorpe let his laughter roll out. "Well, what do you expect to find around here? Have you seen anything you like?" She pulled her hands from his grasp and stretched his mouth out of shape with her little fingers until he squirmed. "No, I haven't seen him; but I've heard the cowboys talking. Over at Mr. Avery's ranch they've caught a black horse--" Bob Thorpe set her suddenly up on the arm of his chair and shook her soundly. "Look here, young lady!" he exclaimed. "You're dreaming! I know what horse you're talking about. He's a wild devil that has run these hills for years. I heard he'd been caught. Get the notion of having him out of your head. I've never seen him but once, and then he was away off; but I've heard tales of him. Why-- "Nonsense! In the first place, he couldn't be broken to ride. Men aren't made big enough to break the spirit of a devil like that! They're bigger than humans. So we can end this discussion in peace. It's impossible!" "All right," Gail said sweetly. "I just let you go on and get yourself into a corner. You don't know what you're talking about. He has been ridden. So there! I want him!" He thrust her to one side, rose, and commenced to pace the room, gesticulating wildly. But it all came to the invariable end of such discussions, and twenty minutes later Gail Thorpe, her smoking, smiling dad at her side, piloted the big touring car down the road, bound for Jed Avery's ranch. Young VB sat on a box behind the cabin working with a boot-heel that insisted on running over. He lifted the boot, held it before his face, and squinted one eye to sight the effect of his work--then started at a cry from the road. The boot still in his hands, VB stopped squinting to listen. Undoubtedly whoever it was wanted Jed; but Jed was away with the horse buyer, looking over his young stuff. So Young VB, boot in hand, its foot clad in a service-worn sock, made his uneven way around the house to make any necessary explanations. "That must be he!" The light, high voice of the girl gave the cry just as VB turned the corner and came in sight, and her hand, half extended to point toward the corral, pointed directly into the face of the young man. He did not hear what she had said, did not venture a greeting. He merely stood and stared at her, utterly without poise. In a crimson flash he realized that this was Gail Thorpe, that she was pretty, and that his bootless foot was covered by a sock that had given way before the stress of walking in high heels, allowing his great toe, with two of its lesser conspirators, to protrude. To his confusion, those toes seemed to be swelling and for the life of him he could make them do nothing but stand stiffly in the air almost at right angles with the foot. His breeding cried out for a retreat, for a leap into shelter; but his wits had lost all grace. He lifted the half-naked foot and carefully brushed the dirt from the sock. Then, leaning a shoulder against the corner of the cabin, he drew the boot on. Stamping it to the ground to settle his foot into place, he said, "Good morning," weakly and devoid of heartiness. Bob Thorpe had not noticed this confusion, for his eyes were on the corral. But Gail, a peculiar twinkle in her eyes, had seen it all--and with quick intuition knew that it was something more than the embarrassment of a cow-puncher--and struggled to suppress her smiles. "Good afternoon," Thorpe corrected. "Jed here?" "No; he's riding," VB answered. The cattleman moved a pace to the left and tilted his head to see better the Captain, who stormed around and around the corral, raising a great dust. "We came over to look at a horse I heard was here--this one, I guess. Isn't he the wild stallion?" "Used to be wild." "He looks it yet. Watch him plunge!" Thorpe cried. "He's never seen an automobile before," VB explained, as the three moved nearer the corral. The horse was frightened. He quivered when he stood in one place, and the quivering always grew more violent until it ended in a plunge. He rose to his hind legs, head always toward the car, and pawed the air; then settled back and ran to the far side of the inclosure, with eyes for nothing but that machine. They halted by the bars, Thorpe and his daughter standing close together, Young VB nearer the gate. The boy said something to the horse and laughed softly. "Why, look, daddy," the girl cried, "he's beginning to calm down!" The Captain stopped his antics and, still trembling, moved gingerly to the bars. Twice he threw up his head, looked at the machine, and breathed loudly, and once a quick tremor ran through his fine limbs, but the terror was no longer on him. Bob Thorpe turned a slow gaze on VB. The girl stood with lips parted. A flush came under her fine skin and she clasped her hands at her breast. "Oh, daddy, what a horse!" she breathed. And Bob Thorpe echoed: "Lord, what a horse! Anybody tried to ride him?" he asked a moment later. "He gets work every day," VB answered. "_Work?_ Don't tell me you work that animal!" The young chap nodded. "Yes; he works right along." The Captain snorted loudly and tore away in a proud circle of the corral, as though to flaunt his graces. "Oh, daddy, it took a _man_ to break that animal!" the girl breathed. The bronze of VB's face darkened, then paled. He turned a steady look on the sunny-haired woman, and the full thanks that swelled in his throat almost found words. He wanted to cry out to her, to tell her what such things meant; for she was of his sort, highly bred, capable of understanding. And he found himself thinking: "You are! You are! You're as I thought you must be!" Then he felt Thorpe's gaze and turned to meet it, a trifle guiltily. "Yours?" the man asked. "Mine." Thorpe turned back to the Captain. Gail drew a quick breath and turned away from him--to the man. "I thought so when he commenced to quiet," muttered Thorpe. He looked then at his daughter and found her standing still, hands clasped, lips the least trifle parted, gazing at Young VB. Something in him urged a quick step forward. It was an alarm, something primal in the fathers of women. But Bob Thorpe put the notion aside as foolishness--or tenderness--and walked closer to the corral, chewing his cigar speculatively. The stallion wrinkled his nose and dropped the ears flat, the orange glimmer coming into his eyes. "Don't like strangers, I see." "Not crazy about them," VB answered. Thorpe walked off to the left, then came back. He removed his cigar and looked at Gail. She fussed with her rebellious hair and her face was flushed; she no longer looked at the horse--or at VB. He felt a curiosity about that flush. "Well, want to get rid of him?" Thorpe hooked his thumbs in his vest armholes and confronted VB. No answer. "What do you want for him?" The young fellow started. "What?" he said in surprise. "I was thinking. I didn't catch your question." The fact was, he had heard, but had distrusted the sense. The idea of men offering money for the Captain had never occurred to him. "What do you want for him?" VB smiled. "What do I want for him?" he repeated. "I want--feed and water for the rest of his life; shelter when he needs it; the will to treat him as he should be treated. And I guess that's about all." The other again removed his cigar, and his jaw dropped. A cow-puncher talking so! He could not believe it; and the idea so confused him that he blundered right on with the bargaining. "Five hundred? Seven-fifty? No? Well, how much?" VB smiled again, just an indulgent smile prompted by the knowledge that he possessed a thing beyond the power of even this man's wealth. "The Captain is not for sale," he said. "Not to-day--or ever. That's final." There was more talk, but all the kindly bluffness, all the desire instinctive in Bob Thorpe to give the other man an even break in the bargain, fell flat. This stranger, this thirty-five-dollar-a-month ranch hand, shed his offers as a tin roof sheds rain and with a self-possession characterized by unmistakable assurance. "Tell Jed I was over," the big man said as they gave up their errand and turned to go. "And"--as he set a foot on the running board of his car--"any time you're our way drop in." "Yes, do!" added the girl, and her father could not check the impulse which made him turn halfway as though to shut her off. CHAPTER XIII VB Fights Jed returned that evening, worn by a hard day's riding. He was silent. VB, too, was quiet and they spoke little until the housework was finished and Jed had drawn off his boots preparatory to turning in. Then VB said: "Bob Thorpe was over to-day." "So?" "Uh-huh; wanted to buy the Captain." After a pause Jed commented: "That's natural." "Wanted me to give you the good word." The old man walked through the doorway into the little bunk room and VB heard him flop into the crude bed. A short interval of silence. "Jed," called VB, "ever hear where his daughter went to school?" A long yawn. Then: "Yep--don't remember." Another pause. "She was over, too." "Oh-ho-o-o!" The boy felt himself flushing, and then sat bolt upright, wondering soberly and seriously why it should be so--without reason. Young VB slept restlessly that night. He tossed and dreamed, waking frequently under a sense of nervous tension, then falling back to half-slumber once more. Thorpe came, and his daughter, offering fabulous sums for the Captain, which were stubbornly refused. Then, shouting at the top of her voice, the girl cried: "But I will give you kisses for him! Surely that is enough!" And VB came back to himself, sitting up in bed and wadding the blankets in his hands. He blinked in the darkness and herded his scattered senses with difficulty. Then the hands left off twisting the covers and went slowly to his throat. For the thirst was on him and in the morning he rose in the grip of the same stifling desire, and his quavering hands spilled things as he ate. Jed noticed, but made no comment. When the meal was finished he said: "S'pose I could get you to crawl up on the Captain an' take a shoot up Curley Gulch with an eye out for that black mare an' her yearlin'?" VB was glad to be alone with his horse, and as he walked to the corral, his bridle over his arm, he felt as though, much as Jed could help him, he could never bring the inspiration which the black beast offered. He opened the gate and let it swing wide. The Captain came across to him with soft nickerings, deserting the alfalfa he was munching. He thrust his muzzle into the crook of VB's elbow, and the arm tightened on it desperately, while the other hand went up to twine fingers in the luxurious mane. "Oh, Captain!" he muttered, putting his face close to the animal's cheek. "You know what it is to fight for yourself! You know--but where you found love and help when you lost that fight, I'd find--just blackness--without even a candle--" The stallion moved closer, shoving with his head until he forced VB out of the corral. Then with his teasing lips he sought the bridle. "You seem to understand!" the man cried, his tired eyes lighting. "You seem to know what I need!" Five minutes later he was rushing through the early morning air up the gulch, the Captain bearing him along with that free, firm, faultless stride that had swept him over those mountains for so many long, unmolested years. Throughout the forenoon they rode hard. VB looked for the mare and colt, but the search did not command much of his attention. "Why can't I turn all this longing into something useful?" he asked the horse. "Your lust for freedom has come to this end; why can't my impulses to be a wild beast be driven into another path?" And the Captain made answer by bending his superb head and lipping VB's chap-clad knee. The quest was fruitless, and an hour before noon VB turned back toward the ranch, making a short cut across the hills. In one of the gulches the Captain nickered softly and increased his trotting. VB let him go, unconscious of his brisker movement, for the calling in his throat had risen to a clamor. The horse stopped and lowered his head, drinking from a hole into which crystal water seeped. The man dropped off and flopped on his stomach, thrusting his face into the pool close to the nose of the greedily drinking stallion. He took the water in great gulps. It was cold, as cold as spring water can be, yet it was as nothing against the fire within him. The Captain, raising his head quickly, caught his breath with a grunt, dragging the air deep into his great lungs and exhaling slowly, loudly, as he gazed off down the gulch; then he chewed briskly on the bit and thrust his nose again into the spring. VB's arm stole up and dropped over the horse's head. "Oh, boy, you know what one kind of thirst is," he said in a whisper. "But there's another kind that this stuff won't quench! The thirst that comes from being in blackness--" They went on, dropped off a point, and made for the flat little buildings of the ranch. As he approached, VB saw three saddled horses standing before the house, none of which was Jed's property. Nothing strange in that, however, for one man's home is another's shelter in that country, whether the owner be on the ground or not, and to VB the thought of visitors brought relief. Contact with others might joggle him from his mood. He left the Captain, saddled, at the corral gate, bridle reins down, and he knew that the horse would not budge so much as a step until told to do so. Then he swung over toward the house, heels scuffing the hard dirt, spurs jingling. At the threshold he walked squarely into the man Rhues. The recognition was a distinct shock. He stepped backward a pace--recoiled rather, for the movement was as from a thing he detested. Into his mind crowded every detail of his former encounters with this fellow; in the Anchor bunk house and across the road from the saloon in Ranger. They came back vividly--the expression of faces, lights and shadows, even odors, and the calling in him for the help that throttles became agonizing. Rhues misconstrued his emotion. His judgment was warped by the spirit of the bully, and he thought this man feared him. He remembered that defiant interchange of questions, and the laugh that went to VB on their first meeting. He nursed the rankling memory. He had told it about that Avery's tenderfoot was afraid to take a drink--speaking greater truth than he was aware--but his motive had been to discredit VB in the eyes of the countrymen, for he belonged to that ilk who see in debauchery the mark of manhood. Coming now upon the man he had chosen to persecute, and reading fear in VB's eyes, Rhues was made crudely happy. "You don't appear to be overglad to see us," he drawled. VB glanced into the room. A Mexican sat on the table, smoking and swinging his legs; a white man he remembered having seen in Ranger stood behind Rhues. Jed was nowhere about. He looked back at the snaky leer in those half-opened green eyes, and a rage went boiling into his brain. The unmistakable challenge which came from this bully was of the sort that strips from men civilization's veneer. "You've guessed it," he said calmly. "I don't know why I should be glad to see you. These others"--he motioned--"are strangers to me." Then he stepped past Rhues into the room. The man grinned at him as he tossed his hat to a chair and unbuckled the leather cuffs. "But that makes no difference," he went on. "Jed isn't here. It's meal time, and if you men want to eat I'll build a big enough dinner." Rhues laughed, and the mockery in his tone was of the kind that makes the biggest of men forget they can be above insult. "We didn't come here to eat," he said. "We come up to see a horse we heerd about--th' Captain. We heerd Jed caught him." VB started. The thought of Rhues inspecting the stallion, commenting on him, admiring him, was as repulsive to Young VB as would be the thought to a lover of a vile human commenting vulgarly on the sacred body of the woman of women. The Mexican strolled out of the house as VB, turning to the stove, tried to ignore the explanation of their presence. He walked on toward the ponies. A dozen steps from the house he stopped, and called: _"Por Dios, hombre!"_ Rhues and the other followed him, and VB saw them stand together, staring in amazement at the Captain. Then they moved toward the great horse, talking to one another and laughing. VB followed, with a feeling of indignation. The trio advanced, quickening their pace. "Hold on!" he cried in sudden alarm. "Don't go too near; he's dangerous!" Already the Captain had flattened his ears, and as VB ran out he could see the nose wrinkling, the lips drawing back. "What's got into you?" demanded Rhues, turning, while the Mexican laughed jeeringly. "I guess if you can ride him a _man_ can git up clost without gittin' chawed up! Remember, young kid, we've been workin' with hosses sence you was suckin' yer thumb." The others laughed again, but VB gave no heed. He was seeing red again; reason had gone--either reason or the coating of conventions. "Well, if you won't stand away from him because of danger, you'll do it because I say so!" he muttered. "O-ho, an' that's it!" laughed Rhues, walking on. VB passed him and approached the Captain and took his bridle. "Be still, boy," he murmured. "Stand where you are." He stroked the nose, and the wrinkles left it. Rhues laughed again harshly. "Well, that's a fine kind o' buggy horse!" he jeered. "Let a tenderfoot come up an' steal all th' man-eatin' fire outen him!" He laughed again and the others joined. The Mexican said something in Spanish. "Yah," assented Rhues. "I thought we was comin' to see a _hoss_--th' kind o' nag this feller pertended to be. But now--look at him! He's just a low-down ----" VB sprang toward him. "You--" he breathed, "you--you hound! Why, you aren't fit to come into sight of this horse. You--you apologize to that horse!" he demanded, and even through his molten rage the words sounded unutterably silly. Yet he went on, fists clenched, carried beyond reason or balance by the instinctive hate for this man and love for the black animal behind him. Rhues laughed again. "Who says so, besides you, you ----. Why, you ain't no more man'n that hoss is hoss!" He saw then that he had reckoned poorly. The greenhorn, the boy who cowered at the thought of a man's dissipation, had disappeared, and in his stead stood a quivering young animal, poising for a pounce. Being a bully, Rhues was a coward. So when VB sprang, and he knew conflict was unavoidable, his right hand whipped back. The fingers closed on the handle of his automatic as VB made the first step. They made their hold secure as the Easterner's arm drew back. They yanked at the gun as that fist shot out. It was a good blow, a clean blow, a full blow right on the point of the chin, and, quickly as it had been delivered, the right was back in an instinctive guard and the left had rapped out hard on the snarling mouth. Rhues went backward and down, unbalanced by the first shock, crushed by the second; and the third, a repeated jab of the left, caught him behind the ear and stretched him helpless in the dust. His fingers relaxed their hold on the gun that he had not been quick enough to use, so lightning-like was the attack from this individual he had dubbed a "kid." VB stepped over the prostrate form, put his toe under the revolver, and flipped it a dozen yards away. Then Jed Avery pulled up his horse in a shower of dust, and VB, his rage choking down words, turned to lead the Captain into the corral. The animal nosed him fiercely and pulled back to look at Rhues, who, under the crude ministrations of his two companions, had taken on a semblance of life. A moment later VB returned from the inclosure, bearing his riding equipment. He said to Jed: "This man insulted the Captain. I had to whip him." Then he walked to the wagon shed, dropped his saddle in its shelter, and came back. Rhues sat up and, as VB approached, got to his feet. He lurched forward as if to rush his enemy, but the Mexican caught him and held him back. VB stood, hands on hips, and glared at him. He said: "No, I wouldn't come again if I were you. I don't want to have to smash you again. I'd enjoy it in a way, but when a man is knocked out he's whipped--in my country--judged by the standards we set there. "You're a coward, Rhues--a dirty, sneaking, low-down coward! Every gun-man is a coward. It's no way to settle disputes--gun fighting." He glared at the fellow before him, who swore under his breath but who could not summon the courage to strike. "You're a coward, and I hope I've impressed that on you," VB went on, "and you'll take a coward's advantage. Hereafter I'm going to carry a gun. You won't fight in my way because you're not a man, so I'll have to be prepared for you in your way. I just want to let you know that I understand your breed! That's all. "Don't start anything, because I'll fight in two ways hereafter--in my way and in yours. And that goes for you other two. If you run with this--this _thing_, it marks you. I know what would have happened if Jed hadn't come up. You'd have killed me! That's the sort you are. Remember--all three of you--I'm not afraid, but it's a case of fighting fire with fire. I'll be ready." Rhues stood, as though waiting for more. When VB did not go on he said, just above a whisper: "I'll get you--yet!" And VB answered, "Then I guess we all understand one another." When the three had ridden away Jed shoved his Colt tight into its holster again and looked at the young chap with foreboding. "There'll be trouble, VB; they're bad," he said. "He's a coward. The story'll go round an' he'll try to get you harder 'n ever. If he don't, those others will--will try, I mean. Matson and Julio are every bit as bad as Rhues, but they ain't quite got his fool nerve. "They're a thievin' bunch, though it ain't never been proved. Nobody trusts 'em; most men let 'em alone an' wait fer 'em to show their hand. They've been cute; they've been suspected, but they ain't never got out on a limb. They've got a lot to cover up, no doubt. But they've got a grudge now. An' when cowards carry grudges--look out!" "If a man like Rhues were all I had to fear, I should never worry," VB muttered, weak again after the excitement. "He's bad--but there are worse things--that you can't have the satisfaction of knocking down." And his conspiring nostrils smelled whisky in that untainted air. CHAPTER XIV The Schoolhouse Dance Young VB held a twofold interest for the men of Clear River. First, the story of his fight with the Captain spread over the land, percolating to the farthest camps. Men laughed at first. The absurdity of it! Then, their surprise giving way to their appreciation of his attainment, their commendation for the young Easterner soared to superlatively profane heights. When he met those who had been strangers before it was to be scrutinized and questioned and frankly, honestly admired. Now came another reason for discussing him about bunk-house stoves. He had thrashed Rhues! Great as had been the credit accorded VB for the capture of the stallion, just so great was men's delight caused by the outcome of that other encounter. They remembered, then, how Rhues had told of the greenhorn who was afraid to take a drink; how he had made it a purpose to spread stories of ridicule, doing his best to pervert the community's natural desire to let the affairs of others alone. And this recollection of Rhues's bullying was an added reason for their saying: "Good! I'm glad to hear it. Too bad th' kid didn't beat him to death!" Though his meetings with other men were few and scattered, VB was coming to be liked. It mattered little to others why he was in the country, from where he came, or who he had been. He had accomplished two worthy things among them, and respect was accorded him across vast distances. Dozens of these men had seen him only once, and scores never, yet they reckoned him of their number--a man to be taken seriously, worthy of their kindly attention, of their interest, and of their respect. Bob Thorpe helped to establish VB in the mountains. He thought much about his interview with the young chap, and told to a half-dozen men the story which, coming from him, had weight. His daughter did not abandon her idea of owning the Captain. Bob told her repeatedly that it was useless to argue with a man who spoke as did Jed's rider; but the girl chose to disagree with him. "I think that if you'd flatter him enough--if we both would--that he would listen. Don't you?" she asked. Bob Thorpe shook his head. "No," he answered. "You can't convince me of that. You don't know men, and I do. I've seen one or two like him before--who love a thing of that sort above money; and, I've found you can't do a thing with 'em--ding 'em!" The girl cried: "Why, don't feel that way about it! I think it's perfectly fine--to love an animal so much that money won't buy him!" "Sure it is," answered her father. "That's what makes me out of patience with them. They're--they're better men than most of us, and--well, they make a fellow feel rather small at times." Then he went away, and Gail puzzled over his concluding remark. A week to a day after her first visit she drove again to Jed's ranch. "I came over to see the Captain," she told the old man gayly. "Well, th' Captain ain't here now," he answered, beaming on her; "but VB'll be back with him before noon." She looked for what seemed to be an unnecessarily long time at her watch, and then asked: "Is that his name?" "What--th' Captain?" "No--VB." Jed laughed silently at her. "Yep--to be sure an' that's his name--all th' name he's got." "Well, I wish Mr. VB would hurry back with the Captain," she said. But that easy flush was again in her cheeks, and the turn she gave the conversation was, as they say in certain circles, poor footwork. Within an hour the Captain bore his rider home. Gail stayed for dinner and ate with the two men. It was a strange meal for VB. Not in months had he eaten at the same table with a woman; not in years had he broken bread with a woman such as this, and realization of the fact carried him back beyond those darkest days. He remembered suddenly and quite irrelevantly that he once had wondered if this daughter of Bob Thorpe's was to be a connecting link with the old life. That had been when he first learned that the big cattleman had a daughter, and that she was living in his East. Now as he sat before neglected food and watched and listened, feasting his starved spirit on her, noting her genuine vivacity, her enthusiasm, the quick come and go of color in her fine skin, he knew that she was a link, but not with the past that he had feared. She took him back beyond that, into his earlier boyhood, that period of adolescence when, to a clean-minded boy, all things are good and unstained. She was attractive in all the ways that women can be attractive, and at the same time she was more than a desirable individual; she seemed to stand for classes, for modes of living and thinking, that Young VB had put behind him--put behind first by his wasting, now by distance. But as the meal progressed a fresh wonder crept up in his mind. Was all that really so very far away? Was not the distance just that between them and the big ranch house under the cotton woods beyond the hills? And was the result of his wasting quite irreparable? Was he not rebuilding what he had torn down? He felt himself thrilling and longing suddenly for fresher, newer experiences as the talk ran on between the others. The conversation was wholly of the country, and VB was surprised to discover that this girl could talk intelligently and argue effectively with Jed over local stock conditions when she looked for all the world like any of the hundreds he could pick out on Fifth Avenue at five o'clock of any fine afternoon. He corrected himself hastily. She was _not_ like those others, either. She possessed all their physical endowments, all and more, for her eye was clearer, her carriage better, she was possessed of a color that was no sham; and a finer body. Put her beside them in their own environment, and they would seem stale by comparison; bring those others here, and their bald artificiality would be pathetic. The boy wanted her to know those things, yet thought of telling her never came to his consciousness. Subjectively he was humble before her. The interest between the two young people was not centered completely in VB. Each time he lowered his gaze to his plate he was conscious of those frank, intelligent blue eyes on him, studying, prying, wondering, a laugh ever deep within them. Now and then the girl addressed a remark to him, but for the most part she spoke directly to Jed; however, she was studying the boy every instant, quietly, carefully, missing no detail, and by the time the meal neared its end the laughter had left her eyes and they betrayed a frank curiosity. When the meal was finished the girl asked VB to take her to the corral. She made the request lightly, but it smote something in the man a terrific blow, stirring old memories, fresh desires, and he was strangely glad that he could do something for her. As they walked from the cabin to the inclosure he was flushed, embarrassed, awkward. He could not talk to her, could scarcely keep his body from swinging from side to side with schoolboy shyness. The stallion did not fidget at sight of the girl as he had done on the approach of other strangers. He snorted and backed away, keeping his eyes on her and his ears up with curiosity, coming to a halt against the far side of the corral and switching his fine tail down over the shapely hocks as though to make these people understand that in spite of his seeming harmlessness he might yet show the viciousness that lurked down in his big heart. "I think he'll come to like you," said VB, looking from his horse to the girl. "I don't see how he could help it--to like women, understand," he added hastily when she turned a wide-eyed gaze on him. "He doesn't like strange men, but see--he's interested in you; and it's curiosity, not anger. I--I don't blame him--for being interested," he ventured, and hated himself for the flush that swept up from his neck. They both laughed, and Gail said: "So this country hasn't taken the flattery out of you?" "Why, it's been years--years since I said a thing like that to a girl of your sort," VB answered soberly. An awkward pause followed. "Dare I touch him?" the girl finally asked. "No, I wouldn't to-day," VB advised. "Just let him look at you now. Some other time we'll see if--That is, if you'll ever come to see us--to see the Captain again." "I should like to come to see the Captain very much, and as often as is proper," she said with mocking demureness. And she did come again; and again and yet again. Always she took pains to begin with inquiries about the horse. When she did this in Jed Avery's presence it was with a peculiar avoidance of his gaze, that might have been from embarrassment; when she asked Young VB those questions it was with a queer little teasing smile. A half-dozen times she found the boy alone at the ranch, and the realization that on such occasions she stayed longer than she did when Jed was about gave him a new thrill of delight. At first there was an awkward reserve between them, but after the earlier visits this broke down and their talk became interspersed with personal references, with small, inconsequential confidences that, intrinsically worthless, meant much to them. Yet there was never a word of the life both had lived far over the other side of those snowcaps to the eastward. Somehow the girl felt intuitively that it had not all been pleasant for the man there, and VB maintained a stubborn reticence. He could have told her much of her own life back in the East, of the things she liked, of the events and conditions that were irksome, because he knew the environment in which she had lived and he felt that he knew the girl herself. He would not touch that topic, however, for it would lead straight to _his_ life; and all that he wanted for his thoughts now were Jed and the hills and the Captain and--this girl. They composed a comfortable world of which he wanted to be a part. Gail found herself feeling strangely at home with this young fellow. She experienced a mingled feeling compounded of her friendship for the finished youths she had known during school days and that which she felt for the men of her mountains, who were, she knew, as rugged, as genuine, as the hills themselves. To her Young VB rang true from the ground up, and he bore the finish that can come only from contact with many men. That is a rare combination. It came about that after a time the Captain let Gail touch him, allowed her to walk about him and caress his sleek body. Always, when she was near, he stood as at attention, dignified and self-conscious, and from time to time his eyes would seek the face of his master, as though for reassurance. Once after the girl had gone VB took the Captain's face between his hands and, looking into the big black eyes, muttered almost fiercely: "She's as much of the real stuff as you are, old boy! Do you think, Captain, that I can ever match up with you two?" Before a month had gone by the girl could lead the Captain about, could play with him almost as familiarly as VB did; but always the horse submitted as if uninterested, went through this formality of making friends as though it were a duty that bored him. Once Dick Worth, the deputy from Sand Creek, and his wife rode up the gulch to see the black stallion. While the Captain would not allow the man near him, he suffered the woman to tweak his nose and slap his cheeks and pull his ears; then it was that Jed and VB knew that the animal understood the difference between sexes and that the chivalry which so became him had been cultivated by his intimacy with Gail Thorpe. After that, of course, there was no plausible excuse for Gail's repeated visits. However, she continued coming. VB was always reserved up to a certain point before her, never yielding beyond it in spite of the strength of the subtle tactics she employed to draw him out. A sense of uncertainty of himself held him aloof. Within him was a traditional respect for women. He idealized them, and then set for men a standard which they must attain before meeting women as equals. But this girl, while satisfying his ideal, would not remain aloof. She forced herself into VB's presence, forced herself, and yet with a delicacy that could not be misunderstood. She came regularly, her visits lengthened, and one sunny afternoon as they stood watching the Captain roll she looked up sharply at the man beside her. "Why do you keep me at this?" "This? What? I don't get your meaning." "At coming over here? Why don't you come to see me? I-- Of course, I haven't any fine horse to show you, but--" Her voice trailed off, with a hint of wounded pride in the tone. The man faced her, stunning surprise in his face. "You--you don't think I fail to value this friendship of ours?" he demanded, rallying. "You--Why, what can I say to you? It has meant so much to me--just seeing you; it's been one of the finest things of this fine country. But I thought--I thought it was because of this,"--with a gesture toward the Captain, who stood shaking the dust from his hair with mighty effort. "I thought all along you were interested in the horse; not that you cared about knowing me--" "Did you really think that?" she broke in. VB flushed, then laughed, with an abrupt change of mood. "Well, it _began_ that way," he pleaded weakly. "And you'd let it end that way." "Oh, no; you don't understand, Miss Thorpe," serious again. "I--I can't explain, and you don't understand now. But I've felt somehow as though it would be presuming too much if I came to see you." She looked at him calculatingly a long moment as he twirled his hat and kicked at a pebble with his boot. "I think it would be presuming too much if you let me do all the traveling, since you admit that a friendship does exist," she said lightly. "Then the only gallant thing for me to do is to call on you." "I think so. I'm glad you recognize the fact." "When shall it be?" "Any time. If I'm not home, stay until I get back. Daddy likes you. You'll love my mother." The vague "any time" occurred three days later. Young VB made a special trip over the hills to the S Bar S. The girl was stretched in a hammock, reading, when he rode up, and at the sound of his horse she scrambled to her feet, flushed, and evidently disconcerted. "I'd given you up!" she cried. "In three days?" taking the hand she offered. "Well--most boys in the East would have come the next morning--if they were really interested." "This is Colorado," he reminded her. He sat crosslegged on the ground at her feet, and they talked of the book she had been reading. It was a novel of music and a musician and a rare achievement, she said. He questioned her about the story, and their talk drifted to music, on which they both could converse well. "You don't know what it means--to sit here and talk of these things with you," he said hungrily. "Well, I should like to know," she said, leaning forward over her knees. For two long hours they talked as they never had talked before; of personal tastes, of kindred enthusiasms, of books and plays and music and people. They went into the ranch house, and Gail played for him--on the only grand piano in that section of the state. They came out, and she saddled her pony to ride part way back through the hills with him. "_Adios,_ my friend," she called after him, as he swung away from her. "It's your turn to call now," he shouted back to her, and when the ridge took him from sight he leaned low to the Captain's ear and repeated gently,--"my friend!" So the barrier of reserve was broken. VB did not dare think into the future in any connection--least of all in relation to this new and growing friendship; yet he wanted to make their understanding more complete though he would scarcely admit that fact even to himself. A week had not passed when Gail Thorpe drove the automobile up to the VB gate. "I didn't come to see the Captain this time," she announced to them both. "I came to pay a party call to Mr. VB, and to include Mr. Avery. Because when a girl out here receives a visit from a man it's of party proportions!" As she was leaving, she asked, "Why don't you come down to the dance Friday night?" "A big event?" "Surely!" She laughed merrily. "It's the first one since spring, and everybody'll be there. Mr. Avery will surely come. Won't you, too, Mr. VB?" He evaded her, but when she had turned the automobile about and sped down the road, homeward bound, he let down the bars for youth's romanticism and knew that he would dance with her if it meant walking every one of the twenty-two miles to the schoolhouse. For the first time in years VB felt a thrill at the anticipation of a social function, and with it a guilty little thought kept buzzing in the depths of his mind. The thought was: Is her hair as fragrant as it is glorious in color and texture? Jed and VB made the ride after supper, over frozen paths, for autumn had aged and the tang of winter was in the air. Miles away they could see the glow of the bonfire that had been built before the little stone schoolhouse; and VB was not sorry that Jed wanted to ride the last stages of the trip at a faster pace. Clear River had turned out, to the last man and woman--and to the last child, too! The schoolhouse was no longer a seat of learning; it was a festal bower. The desks had been taken up and placed along the four walls, seats outward, tops forming a ledge against the calcimined stones, making a splendid place for those youngest children who had turned out! Yes, a dozen babies slumbered there in the confusion, wrapped in many thicknesses of blankets. Three lamps with polished reflectors were placed on window ledges, and the yellow glare filled the room with just sufficient brilliance to soften lines in faces and wrinkles in gowns that clung to bodies in unexpected places. The fourth window ledge was reserved for the music--a phonograph with a morning-glory horn, a green morning-glory horn that would have baffled a botanist. The stove blushed as if for its plainness in the center of the room, and about it, with a great scraping of feet and profound efforts to be always gentlemanly and at ease, circled the men, guiding their partners. VB stood in the doorway and watched. He coughed slightly from the dust that rose and mantled everything with a dulling blanket--everything, I said, but the eyes must be excepted. They flashed with as warm a brilliance as they ever do where there is music and dancing and laughter. The music stopped. Women scurried to their seats; some lifted the edges of blankets and peered with concerned eyes at the little sleepers lying there, then whirled about and opened their arms to some new gallant; for so brief was the interval between dances. "Well, are you never going to see me?" VB started at the sound of Gail's voice so close to him. He bowed and smiled at her. "I was interested," he said in excuse. "Getting my bearings." She did not reply, but the expectancy in her face forced his invitation, and they joined the swirl about the stove. "I can't dance in these riding boots," he confided with an embarrassed laugh. "Never thought about it until now." "Oh, yes, you can! You dance much better than most men. Don't stop, please!" He knew that no woman who danced with Gail's lightness could find pleasure in the stumbling, stilted accompaniment of his handicapped feet; and the conviction sent a fresh thrill through him. He was glad she wanted him to keep on! She had played upon the man down in him and touched upon vanity, one of those weak spots in us. She wanted him near. His arm, spite of his caution, tightened a trifle and he suddenly knew that her _hair_ was as fragrant as it should be--a heavy, rich odor that went well with its other wealth! For an instant he was a bit giddy, but as the music came to a stop he recovered himself and walked silently beside Gail to a seat. After that he danced with the wife of a cattleman, and answered absently her stammered advances at communication while he watched the floating figure of Gail Thorpe as it followed the bungling lead of her father's foreman. The end of the intermission found him with her again. As they whirled away his movements became a little quicker, his tongue a little looser. It had been a long time since he had felt so gay. He learned of the other women, Gail telling him about them as they danced, and through the thrill that her warm breath aroused he found himself delighting in the individuality of her expression, the stamping of a characteristic in his mind by a queer little word or twisted phrase. He discovered, too, that she possessed a penetrating insight into the latent realities of life. The red-handed, blunt, strong women about him, who could ride with their husbands and brothers, who could face hardships, who knew grim elementals, became new beings under the interpretation of this sunny-haired girl; took on a charm tinged with pathos that brought up within VB a sympathy that those struggles in himself had all but buried. And the knowledge that Gail appreciated those raw realities made him look down at her lingeringly, a trifle wonderingly. She was of that other life--the life of refinements--in so many ways, yet she had escaped its host of artificialities. She had lifted herself above the people among whom she was reared; but her touch, her sympathies, her warm humanness remained unalloyed! She was real. And then, when he was immersed in this appreciation of her, she turned the talk suddenly to him. He was but slightly responsive. He put her off, evaded, but he laughed; his cold reluctance to let her know him had ceased to be so stern, and her determination to get behind his silence rose. As they stood in the doorway in a midst of repartee she burst on him: "Mr. VB, why do you go about with that awful name? It's almost as bad as being branded." He sobered so quickly that it frightened her. "Maybe I am branded," he said slowly, and her agile understanding caught the significance of his tone. "Perhaps I'm branded and can't use another. Who knows?" He smiled at her, but from sobered eyes. Confused by his evident seriousness, she made one more attempt, and laughed: "Well, if you won't tell me who you are, won't you please tell me what you are?" The door swung open then, and on the heels of her question came voices from without. One voice rose high above the rest, and they heard: "Aw, come on; le's have jus' one more little drag at th' bottle!" VB looked at Gail a bit wildly. Those words meant that out there whisky was waiting for him, and at its mention that searing thing sprang alive in his throat! "What am I?" he repeated dully, trying to rally himself. "What am I?" Unknowingly his fingers gripped her arm. "Who knows? I don't!" And he flung out of the place, wanting but one thing--to be with the Captain, to feel the stallion's nose in his arms, to stand close to the body which housed a spirit that knew no defeat. As he strode past the bonfire a man's face leered at him from the far side. The man was Rhues. CHAPTER XV Murder The incident at the schoolhouse was not overlooked. Gail Thorpe was not the only one who heard and saw and understood; others connected the mention of drink with VB's sudden departure. The comment went around in whispers at the dance, to augment and amplify those other stories which had arisen back in the Anchor bunk house and which had been told by Rhues of the meeting in Ranger. "Young VB is afraid to take a drink," declared a youth to a group about the fire where they discussed the incident. He laughed lightly and Dick Worth looked sharply at the boy. "Mebby he is," he commented, reprimand in his tone, "an' mebby it'd be a good thing for some o' you kids if you was afraid. Don't laugh at him! We know he's pretty much man--'cause he's done real things since comin' in here a rank greenhorn. Don't laugh! You ought to help, instead o' that." And the young fellow, taking the rebuke, admitted: "I guess you're right. Maybe the booze has put a crimp in him." So VB gave the community one more cause for watching him. Quick to perceive, ever taking into consideration his achievements which spoke of will and courage, Clear River gave him silent sympathy, and promptly put the matter out of open discussion. It was no business of theirs so long as VB kept it to himself. Yet they watched, knowing a fight was being waged and guessing at the outcome, the older and wiser ones hoping while they guessed. When Bob Thorpe announced to his daughter that he was going to Jed Avery's ranch and would like to have her drive him over through the first feathery dusting of snow, a strain of unpleasant thinking which had endured for three days was broken for the girl. In fact, her relief was so evident that the cattleman stared hard at his daughter. "You're mighty enthusiastic about that place, seems to me," he remarked. "Why shouldn't I be?" she asked. "There's where they keep the finest horse in this country!" "Is that all?" he asked, a bit grimly. She looked at him and laughed. Then, coming close, she patted one of the weathered cheeks. "He's awfully nice, daddy--and so mysterious!" The giggle she forced somehow reassured him. He did not know it was forced. They arrived at Jed's ranch as Kelly, the horse buyer, was preparing to depart after long weeks in the country. His bunch was in the lower pasture and two saddle horses waited at the gate. Thorpe and his daughter found Jed, VB, and Kelly in the cabin. The horse buyer was just putting bills back into his money belt, and Jed still fingered the roll that he had taken for his horses. "Aren't you afraid to pack all that around, Kelly?" Thorpe asked. "No--nobody holds people up any more," he laughed. "There's only an even six hundred there, anyhow--and a fifty-dollar bill issued by the Confederate States of America, which I carry for luck. My father was a raider with Morgan," he explained, "and I was fifteen years old before I knew 'damn Yank' was two words!" VB was preparing to go with the buyer, to ride the first two days at least to help him handle the bunch. They expected to make it well out of Ranger the second day, and after that Kelly would pick up another helper. Gail followed VB when he went outside. "I'm going away, too," she said. "So?" "Yes; mother and I will leave for California day after to-morrow, for the winter." "That will be fine!" "Will I be missed?" He shrank from this personal talk. He remembered painfully their last meeting. He was acutely conscious of how it had ended, and knew that the incident of his abrupt departure must have set her wondering. "Yes," he answered, meeting her answer truthfully, "I shall miss you. I like you." Such a thing from him was indeed a jolt, and Gail stooped to pick up a wisp of hay to cover her confusion. "But I'm sorry," he said, "I must be going." She looked up in surprise. The horse buyer still talked and the discussion bade fair to go on for a long time. "You're not starting?" she asked. "Oh, no. Not for half an hour, anyhow. But you see, the Captain found a pup-hole yesterday and wrenched his leg a little. Not much, but I don't want him to work when anything's wrong. So I'm leaving him behind and I must look after him. Will you excuse me? Good-by!" She was so slow in extending her hand that he was forced to reach down for it. It was limp within his, and she merely mumbled a response to his hasty farewell. Gail watched him swing off toward the corral, saw him enter through the gate and put his face against the stallion's neck. She strolled toward the car, feet heavy. "He wouldn't even ask me to go--go with him. He cares more about--that horse--than--" She clenched her fists and whispered: "I hate you! I hate you!" Then mounting to the seat and tucking the robe about her ankles, she blew her nose, wiped her eyes, and in a voice strained high said: "No, I don't, either." VB and Kelly took their bunch down the gulch at a spanking trot. Most of the stock was fairly gentle and they had little difficulty. They planned to stop at a deserted cabin a few miles north of Ranger where a passable remnant of fenced pasture still remained. They reached the place at dark and made a hasty meal, after which VB rolled in, but his companion roped a fresh horse and made on to Ranger for a few hours' diversion. It was nearly dawn when Kelly returned with a droll account of the night's poker, and although VB was for going on early, wanting to be rid of the task, the other insisted on sleeping. "I don't want to get too far, anyhow," he said. "Those waddies like to rimmed me last night. Got all I had except what's in old Betsy, the belt. I'm goin' back to-night and get their scalp!" It was noon before they reached Ranger and swung to the east. "Oh, I'll be back to-night and get you fellows!" Kelly called to a man who waved to him from the saloon. VB held his gaze in the opposite direction. He knew that even the sight of the place might raise the devil in him again. A man emerged from one of the three isolated shacks down on the river bank. It was Rhues. The two rode slowly, for the buyer was in no mood for fast travel, and for a long time Rhues stood there following them with his eyes. At dusk the horsemen turned the bunch into a corral and prepared to spend the night with beds spread in the ruin of a cabin near the inclosure. Before the bed-horses had been relieved of their burdens a cowboy rode along who was known to Kelly, and arrangements were made for him to take VB's place on the morrow. "Well, then, all you want me to do is to stay here to-night to see that things don't go wrong. Is that it?" VB asked. "Yep-- Oh, I don't know," with a yawn. "I guess I won't sit in that game to-night. I'll get some sleep. Mebby if I did go back I'd only have to dig up part of my bank here." He patted his waist. "You can go on home if you want to." VB was glad to be released, for he could easily reach the ranch that night. He left Kelly talking with the cowboy, making their plans for the next day, and struck across the country for Jed's ranch. Left alone, the horse buyer munched a cold meal. Then, shivering, he crept into his thick bed and slept. An hour passed--two--three. A horse dropped slowly off a point near the corral. A moment later two more followed. One rider dismounted and walked away after a low, hoarse whisper; another pushed his horse into the highway and stood still, listening; the third held the pony that had been left riderless. A figure, worming its way close to the ground, crawled up on the sleeping horse buyer. It moved silently, a yard at a time; then stopped, raised its head as though to listen; on again, ominously, so much a part of the earth it covered that it might have been just the ridge raised by a giant mole burrowing along under the surface. It approached to within three yards of the sleeping man; to within six feet; three; two. Then it rose to its knees slowly, cautiously, silently, and put out a hand gently, lightly feeling the outlines of the blankets. A shoot of orange scorched the darkness--and another, so close together that the flame was almost continuous. The blankets heaved, trembled, settled. The man on his knees hovered a long moment, revolver ready, listening intently. Not a sound--even the horses seemed to be straining their ears for another break in the night. The man reached out a hand and drew the blankets away from the figure beneath, thrusting his face close. The starlight filtered in and he drew a long, quivering breath--not in hate or horror, but in surprise. He got to his feet and listened again. Then he moved into the open, over the way he had come. After a dozen quick, stealthy paces he stopped and turned back. He unbuttoned the jumper about the figure under the blankets, unbuttoned the shirt, felt quickly about the waist, fumbled a moment, and jerked out a long, limp object. Again he strode catlike into the open, and as he went he tucked the money belt into his shirt-front. VB rode straight to the ranch. He made a quick ride and arrived before ten. "Mighty glad Kelly got that man," he told Jed. "I'm like a fish out of water away from the Captain." At dusk the next day a horseman rode up the gulch to Jed's outfit. The old man stood in the doorway, watching him approach. "Hello, Dick!" he called, recognizing the deputy from Sand Creek. "How's things, Jed?" "Better'n fine." Worth left his horse and entered the cabin. "VB around?" he asked. "Uh-huh; out in th' corral foolin' with th' Captain." Dick dropped to a chair and pushed his hat back. He looked on the other a moment, then asked: "What time did VB get home last night?" Jed showed evident surprise, but answered: "Between half-past nine an' ten." "Notice his horse?" "Saw him this mornin'. Why?" "Was it a hard ride th' boy made?" "No--sure not. I rode th' pony down to th' lower pasture myself this afternoon." Worth drew a deep breath and smiled as though relieved. "Bein' 'n officer is mighty onpleasant sometimes," he confessed. "I knew it wasn't no use to ask them questions, but I had to do it--'cause I'm a deputy." With mouth set, Jed waited for the explanation he knew must come. "Kelly was killed while he slept last night." Horror was the first natural impulse for a man to experience on the knowledge of such a tragedy, but horror did not come to Jed Avery then or for many minutes. He put out a hand slowly and felt for the table as though dizzy. Then, in a half tone, "You don't mean you suspected VB? Dick--_Dick!_" The sheriff's face became troubled. "Jed, didn't I tell you I knew it wasn't no use to ask them questions?" he said reassuringly. "I'd 'a' gambled my outfit on th' boy, 'cause I know what he is. When you tell me he got here by ten an' it wasn't a hard ride, I know they's no use even thinkin' about it. But th' fact is-- "You see, Jed, everybody in th' country has got to know what's up with VB. They know he's fightin' back th' booze! That gang o' skunks down at Ranger--Rhues an' his outfit--started out to rub it into VB, but everybody knew they was tellin' lies. An' everybody's thought lots of him fer th' fight he's made." He got to his feet and walked slowly about the room. "But th' truth is, Jed--an' you know it--when a man's been hittin' th' booze, an' we ain't sure he's beat it out, we're always lookin' fer him to slip. Nobody down at Ranger has thought one word about VB in this, only that mebby he could tell who'd been round there. "But, bein' 'n officer, I had th' sneakin', dirty idee I ought to ask them questions about VB. That's all there is to it, Jed. That's all! I'm deputy; VB's been a boozer. "But I tell you, Jed Avery, it sure's a relief to know it's all right." The warmth of sincerity was in his tone and his assurances had been of the best, but Jed slumped limply into a chair and rested his head on his hands. "It's a rotten world, Dick--a rotten, rotten world!" he said. "I know you're all right; I know you mean what you say; but ain't it a shame that when a man's down our first thought is to kick him? Always expect him to fall again once he gets up! Ain't it rotten?" And his love for Young VB, stirred anew by this sense of the injustice of things, welled into his throat, driving back more words. Dick Worth was a man of golden integrity; Jed knew well that no suspicion would be cast on VB. But the knowledge that serious-minded, clear-thinking men like the deputy would always remember, in a time like this, that those who had once run wild might fall into the old ways at any hour, stung him like a lash. VB opened the door. "Hello, Dick!" he greeted cheerily. "Want me?" Worth laughed and Jed started. "No; I come up to get a little help from you if I can, though." "Help?" "Kelly was shot dead in his bed last night." For a moment VB stared at him. "Who?" "That's what we don't know. That's what I came up here for--to see if you could help us." And Jed, face averted, drew a foot quickly across the boards of the floor. "One of Hank Redden's boys was with him--th' one who took your place--until dark. Little after eight old Hank heard two shots, but didn't think nothin' of it. Kelly was shot twice. That must 'a' been th' time." VB put down his hat, his eyes bright with excitement. "He'd planned to go back to Ranger," he said. "But, after being up most of the night before, he was too tired. He told them at Ranger he'd be back. And if I'd been there they'd have got me," he ended. "Unless they was lookin' for Kelly especial," said Dick. "They took his money belt." "Mebby," muttered Jed,--"mebby they made a mistake." CHAPTER XVI The Candle Burns Time went on, and the country dropped back from the singing pitch of excitement to which the killing of the horse buyer raised it. Men agreed that some one of that country had fired the shots into that blanket, but it is not a safe thing to suspect too openly. Dick Worth worked continually, but his efforts were without result. A reward of two hundred and fifty dollars for the slayer, dead or alive, disclosed nothing. After the evidence had been sifted, and each man had asked his quota of questions and passed judgment on the veracity of the myriad stories, Dick said to himself: "We'll settle down now and see who leaves the country." Jed and VB went about the winter's work in a leisurely way. For days after the visit of Worth the old man was quieter than usual. The realization of how the world looked on this young fellow he had come to love had been driven in upon him. There could be no mistaking it; and as he reasoned the situation out, he recognized the attitude of men as the only logical thing to expect. With his quietness came a new tenderness, a deeper devotion. The two sat, one night, listening to the drawing of the stove and the whip of the wind as it sucked down the gulch. The candle burned steadily in its bottle. Jed watched it a long time, and, still gazing at the steady flame, he said, as though unconscious that thoughts found vocal expression: "Th' candle's burnin' bright, VB." The other looked slowly around at it and smiled. "Yes, Jed; it surely burns bright." At the instant an unusually vicious gust of wind rattled the windows and a vagrant draft caught the flame of the taper, bending it low, dulling its orange. "But yet sometimes," the younger man went on, "something comes along--something that makes it flicker--that takes some of the assurance from it." Jed had started in his chair as the flame bowed before the draft. "But it-- You ain't been flickerin' lately, have you?" he asked, with a look in the old eyes that was beseeching. Young VB rose and commenced to walk about thumbs hooked in his belt. "I don't know, Jed," he said. "That's the whole of it: I don't know. Sometimes I'm glad I don't; but other times I wish--_wish_ that whatever is coming would come. I seem to be gaining; I can think of drink now without going crazy. Now and then it gets hold of me; but moving around and getting busy stifles it. Still, I know it's there. That's what counts. I know I've had the habit, been down and out, and there's no telling which way it's going to turn. If I could ever be sure of myself; if I could ever come right up against it, where I needed a drink, where I wanted it--then, if I could refuse, I'd be sure." He quickened his stride. "Seems to me you're worryin' needless," Jed argued. "Don't you see, VB, this is th' worst night we've had; th' worst wind. An' yet it ain't blowed th' candle out! It bends low an' gets smoky, to be sure. But it always keeps on shinin'!" "But when it bends low and gets smoky its resistance is lower," VB said. "It wouldn't take much at such a time to blow it out and let the darkness come in. You never can tell, Jed; you never can tell." Ten minutes later he added: "Especially when you're afraid of yourself and daren't hunt out a test." Another time they talked of the man that he had been before he came to Colt. They were riding the hills, the Captain snuggling close to the pinto pony Jed rode. The sun poured its light down on the white land. Far away, over on the divide, they could see huge spirals of snow picked up by the wind and carried along countless miles, finally to be blasted into veils of silver dust that melted away into distance. An eagle flapped majestically to a perch on a scrub cedar across the gulch; a dozen deer left off their browsing, watched the approach of the riders a moment, and then bounded easily away. The sharp air set their blood running high, and it was good to live. "Ain't this a good place, VB?" Jed asked, turning his eyes away from a snow-capped crag that thrust into the heavens fifty miles to the east. VB slapped the Captain's neck gladly. "I never saw a finer, Jed!" he cried. "If those people back in New York could only get the _feel_ of this country! You bet if they once did, it would empty that dinky little island." "You never want to go back?" the older man ventured. VB did not answer for a long time. When he did he said: "Some day I shall go back, Jed, but not to stay. I will not go back, either, until I've come to be as good and as strong a man as the Captain is a good and strong horse. That's something to set up as a goal, isn't it? But I mean every word. When I left the city I was--nothing. When I go back I want to be everything that a man should be--as this old fellow is everything that a horse should be." He leaned forward and pulled the Captain's ears fondly, while the stallion champed the bit and lifted his forefeet high in play. VB straightened then, and looked dreamily ahead. "I hope that time will come before a man there gets to the end of things. He was hard with me, my father, Jed--mighty hard. But I know he was right. Perhaps I'm not doing all I could for his comfort, perhaps I'm making a bad gamble, but when I go back I want to be as I believe every man can be--at some time in his life." He turned his eyes on the little, huddled figure that rode at his side. "Then, when I've seen New York once more, with all its artificiality and dishonest motives and its unrealities--from the painted faces of its women to its very reasons for living and doing--I'll come back here, Jed; back to the Captain and to the hills. "I've seen the other! Oh, I've seen it, not from the ground up, but from the ground down! I've gone to the very subcellars of rottenness--and there's nothing to attract. But here there's a bigness, a freedom, an incentive to be real that you won't find in places where men huddle together and lie and cheat and scheme!" They returned to the ranch in late afternoon and found that a passing cowboy had left mail for them--papers and circulars--and a picture postal card. VB had picked up the bundle of mail first, and for a long time he gazed at the gaudy colorings of that card. Palm trees, faultlessly kept lawns, a huge, rambling building set back from the road that formed a foreground, and a glimpse of a superblue Pacific in the distance. He held it in his fingers and took in every detail. Then, with a queer little feeling about his middle, he turned it over. A small hand--he remembered just how firm the fingers were that held the pen--had written: +--------------------------+ | Mr. VB | | Ranger, Colorado | +--------------------------+ And across the correspondence section of the card was inscribed this: Give my very best regards to the Captain and to Mr. Avery. Home early in April. He read the message again and again, looking curiously at the way she had formed the letters. Then he muttered: "Why didn't she send it to Jed--or to the Captain?" When Jed came into the cabin VB asked him, as though it were a matter of great concern: "Where's that calendar we had around here?" That night the young fellow lay awake long hours. The thirst had come again. Not so ravishing as it used to be, not inspiring all the old terror, but still it was there, and as it tugged at his throat and teased from every fiber of his being, he thought of Gail Thorpe--and tossed uneasily. "Why?" he asked himself. "Why is it that the thirst calls so loudly when I think of that girl?" He could not answer, and suddenly the query seemed so portentous that he sat up in bed, prying the darkness with his eyes, as though to find a solution of the enigma there. And his wandering mind, circling and doubling and shooting out in crazy directions, settled back on the Captain, and with it the hurt of his jumping nerves became dulled. He closed his eyes, picturing the great stallion as he had first seen him, standing there on a little rim-rock protecting his band of mares, watching with regal scorn the approach of his adversary. "And his spirit didn't break," VB muttered. "It's all there, just as sound as it ever was--but it's standing for different things. It's no longer defiance--it's love." When March was well on its way Jed and VB drove to Ranger for more supplies. The Captain had been turned into the lower pasture, and followed them as far as he could. When stopped by the fence he stood looking after them inquiringly, and when they topped a little swell in the road, ready to drop out of sight, a long-drawn neighing came from him. "Poor Captain!" muttered VB. "It's like going away from a home--to leave him." "You're foolish!" snorted Jed. Later he said sharply: "No, you ain't, either!" When they reached Ranger three cowboys were shooting at a tin can out on the flat, and before entering the store they stopped to watch. A man came out of the saloon and walked swiftly toward the buildings along the road. As he approached both recognized Rhues. "Better come in," said Jed, moving toward the door. "Wait!" With apparent carelessness VB lounged against a post that supported the wooden awning. Rhues slowed his pace a trifle as he saw who the men were, and VB could see his mouth draw into an expression of nasty hate as he passed close and entered the blacksmith shop. No further sign of recognition had passed between them. When the trading was finished and they walked back toward the corral Jed remarked uneasily: "I don't feel right--havin' you around Rhues, VB. He's bound to try to get you some time. I know his breed. He'll never forget th' beatin' you give him, an' th' first time he sees an openin' he'll try for you. Men like him lives just to settle one big grudge--nothin' else counts." VB raised a hand to his side and gripped the forty-five that was slung in a shoulder holster under his shirt. "I know it, Jed. I hate to pack this gun--makes me feel like a yellow dog or a Broadway cow-puncher--I don't know which. But I know he means business. I don't want to let him think I'd step an inch out of his way, though; that's why I didn't go into the store." He lowered his voice and went on: "Jed, I wouldn't say a word that would send the worst man in the world into trouble with the law unless I was absolutely certain. I've never mentioned it even to you--but I think when Kelly was killed the man who did that shooting believed he was getting me." Jed spat lingeringly. "VB, I've thought so, too," he said. They reached the ranch the next afternoon, greeted by a shrilling from the Captain that endured from the time they came in sight until VB was beside him. "Captain," the boy whispered, rubbing the velvety nose, "making them respect you is worth having a gunman on my trail--it is." CHAPTER XVII Great Moments They were a long way from camp, and night impended. "We won't go back," Jed decided. "We'll go on over to th' S Bar S an' put up for th' night." VB said nothing, but of a sudden his heart commenced to hammer away so lustily that the pulse in the back of his neck felt like blows from metal. It was beyond the middle of April, and he knew that Gail must have returned from the coast; for days he had been wondering when he would see her again, had been itching to ask questions of every chance passer who might know of her return. Yet that unaccountable diffidence had kept him from mentioning it even to Jed. Now, though, that he was to go for himself, that he was to see her-- He gripped the Captain fiercely with his knees. He told himself, in an attempt to be sane, that this discomfiture was merely because he had been out of the sight of women so long. They rode into the Thorpe ranch after dark. Lights shone from the windows, and Jed, knowing the place, declared that they were eating. "Hello, Bob!" he cried when Thorpe himself threw the door open. "Keep a couple of stoppers to-night?" "Well, Jed, you're a rough-looking old rascal; but I s'pose we'll have to take you in. Who else--that young animal-tamer, VB?" "Right!" laughed Jed. VB, peering into the lighted room, saw a figure jump up from the table and hurry toward the door. As it came between him and the light it seemed to be crowned with a halo, a radiant, shimmering, golden aura. Then her voice called in welcome: "Hello, Mr. Avery!" Before Jed could make answer she had gone on, as though ignoring him. "Hello, Mr. VB! Aren't you coming in to shake hands?" VB wanted to laugh, like a boy with a new gun; his spirits bubbled up into his throat and twisted into laughter any words that might have formed, but he managed to answer: "I'll feed the Captain--then I'll be in." Without a word she turned back. Long ago--years ago, it seemed--he had drawn away from her to go to the Captain; then it was the love of the horse that took him. Now, however, it was nothing but confusion that drove him away. Not that he held the Captain less dear, but he wanted to put off that meeting with Gail, to delay until he could overcome that silly disorganization of his powers of self-control. Out in the corral he flung his arms about the black's head and laughed happily into the soft neck. "VB, you're a fool--a silly fool!" he whispered. But if it was so, if being a fool made him that happy, he never wanted to regain mental balance. It was a big evening for VB, perhaps the biggest of his life. Bob Thorpe and his family ate with the men. Democracy unalloyed was in his soul. He mingled with them not through condescension, but through desire, and his family maintained the same bearing. Not a cow-puncher in the country but who respected Mrs. Thorpe and Gail and would welcome an opportunity to fight for them. The men had finished their meal before VB and Jed entered. Mrs. Thorpe made excuses and went out, leaving the four alone. While Jed talked to her father, Gail, elbows on the table, chatted with VB, and Young VB could only stare at his plate and snatch a glance at her occasionally and wonder why it was that she so disturbed him. Later Bob took Jed into his office, and when Gail and VB were left alone the constraint between them became even more painful. Try as he would, the man could not bring his scattered wits together for coherent speech. Just being beside that girl after her long absence was intoxicating, benumbing his mind, stifling in him all thought and action, creating a thralldom which was at once agony and peace. An intuitive sensing of this helplessness had made him delay seeing her that evening; now that he was before her he never wanted to leave; he wanted only to sit and listen to her voice and watch the alert expressiveness of her face--a mute, humble worshiper. And this attitude of his forced a reaction on the girl. At first she talked vivaciously, starting each new subject with an enthusiasm that seemed bound to draw him out, but when he remained dumb and helpless in spite of her best efforts to keep the conversation going, her flow of words lagged. Long, wordless intervals followed, and a flush came into the girl's cheeks, and she too found herself woefully self-conscious. She sought for the refuge of diversion. "Since you won't talk to me, Mr. VB," she said with an embarrassed laugh, "you are going to force me to play for you." "It isn't that I won't--I _can't_," he stammered. "And please play." He sat back in his chair, relieved, and watched the fine sway of her body as she made the big full-toned instrument give up its soul. Music, that--not the tunes that most girls of his acquaintance had played for him; a St. Saens arrangement, a MacDowell sketch, a bit of Nevin, running from one theme into another, easily, naturally, grace everywhere, from the phrasing to the movements of her firm little shoulders. And VB found his self-possession returning, found that he was thinking evenly, sanely, under the quieting influence of this music. Then Gail paused, sitting silent before the keyboard, as though to herald a coming climax. She leaned closer over the instrument and struck into the somber strains of a composition of such grim power and beauty that it seemed to create for itself an oddly receptive attitude in the man, sensitizing his emotional nature to a point where its finest shades were brought out in detail. It went on and on through its various phases to the end, and on the heavy final chord the girl's hands dropped into her lap. For a moment she sat still bent toward the keyboard before turning to him. When she did face about her flush was gone. She was again mistress of the situation and said: "Well, are you ever going to tell me about yourself?" VB's brows were drawn, and his eyes closed, but before he opened them to look at her a peculiar smile came over his face. "That man Chopin, and his five-flat prelude--" he said, and stirred with a helpless little gesture of one hand as though no words could convey the appreciation he felt. "I wonder if you like that as well as I do?" she asked. He sat forward in his chair and looked hard at her. The constraint was wholly gone; he was seriously intent, thinking clearing, steadily now. "I used to hear it many times," he said slowly, "and each time I've heard it, it has meant more to me. There's something about it, deep down, covered up by all those big tones, that I never could understand--until now. I guess," he faltered, "I guess I've never realized how much a man has to suffer before he can do a big thing like that. Something about this,"--with a gesture of his one hand,--"this house and these hills, and what I've been through out here, and the way you play, helps me to understand what an accomplishment like that must have cost." She looked at him out of the blue eyes that had become so grave, and said: "I guess we all have to suffer to do big things; but did you ever think how much we have to suffer to appreciate big things?" And she went on talking in this strain with a low, even voice, talking for hours, it seemed, while VB listened and wondered at her breadth of view, her sympathy and understanding. She was no longer a little, sunny-haired girl, a bit of pretty down floating along through life. Before, he had looked on her as such; true, he had known her as sympathetic, balanced, with a keen appreciation of values. But her look, her tone, her insight into somber, grim truths came out with emphasis in the atmosphere created by that music, and to Young VB, Gail Thorpe had become a woman. A silence came, and they sat through it with that ease which comes only to those who are in harmony. No constraint now, no flushed faces, no awkward meeting of eyes. The new understanding which had come made even silence eloquent and satisfying. Then the talk commenced, slowly at first, gradually quickening. It was of many things--of her winter, of her days in the East, of her friends. And through it Gail took the lead, talking as few women had ever talked to him before; talking of personalities, yet deviating from them to deduce a principle here, apply a maxim there, and always showing her humanness by building the points about individuals and the circumstances which surround them. "Don't you ever get lonely here?" he asked abruptly, thinking that she must have moments of discontent in these mountains and with these people. "No. Why should I?" "Well, you've been used to things of a different sort. It seems to be a little rough for a girl--like you." "And why shouldn't a nicer community be too fine for a girl like me?" she countered. "I'm of this country, you know. It's mine." "I hadn't thought of that. You're different from these people, and yet," he went on, "you're not like most women outside, either. You've seemed to combine the best of the two extremes. You--" He looked up to see her gazing at him with a light of triumph in her face. VB never knew, but it was that hour for which she had waited months, ever since the time when she declared to her father, with a welling admiration for the spirit he must have, that he who broke the Captain was a _man_. Here he was before her, talking personalities, analyzing her! Four months before he would not even linger to say good-by! Surely the spell of her womanhood was on him. "Oh!" she cried, bringing her hands together. "So you've been thinking about me--what sort of a girl I am, have you?" Her eyes were aflame with the light of conquest. Then she said soberly: "Well, it's nice to have people taking you seriously, anyhow." "That's all any of us want," he answered her; "to be taken seriously, and to be worthy of commanding such an attitude from the people about us. Sometimes we don't realize it until we've thrown away our best chances and then--well, maybe it's too late." On the words he felt a sudden misgiving, a sudden waning of faith. And, bringing confusion to his ears, was the low voice of this girl-woman saying: "I understand, VB, I understand. And it's never too late to mend!" Her hand lay in her lap, and almost unconsciously he reached out for it. It came to meet his, frankly, quickly, and his frame was racked by a great, dry sob which came from the depths of his soul. "Oh, do you understand, Gail?" he whispered doubtfully. "Can you--without knowing?" He had her hands in both his and strained forward, his face close to hers. The small, firm fingers clutched his hardened ones almost desperately and the blue eyes, so wide now, looking at him so earnestly, were filmed with tears. "I think I've understood all along," she said, keeping her voice even at the cost of great effort. "I don't know it all--the detail, I mean. I don't need to. I know you've been fighting, VB, nobly, bravely. I know--" He rose to his feet and drew her up with him, pulling her close to him, closer and closer. One arm slipped down over her shoulders, uncertainly, almost timidly. His face bent toward hers, slowly, tenderly, and she lifted her lips to meet it. It was the great moment of his life. Words were out of place; they would have been puerile, disturbing sounds, a mockery instead of an agency to convey an idea of the strength of his emotions. He could feel her breath on his cheek, and for an instant he hung above her, delaying the kiss, trembling with the tremendous passion within him. And then he backed away from her--awkwardly, threatening to fall, a limp hand raised toward the girl as though to warn her off. "Oh, Gail, forgive me!" he moaned. "Not yet! Great God, Gail, I'm not worthy!" His hoarse voice mounted and he stood backed against the far wall, fists clenched and stiff arms upraised. She took a faltering step toward him. "Don't!" she begged. "You are--you--" But he was gone into the night, banging the door behind him, while the girl leaned against her piano and let the tears come. He was not worthy! He loved; she knew he loved; she had come to meet that great binding, enveloping emotion willingly, frank with the joy of it, as became her fine nature. Then he had run from her, and for her own sake! All the ordeals he had been through in those last months were as brief, passing showers compared with the tempest that raged in him as he rode through the night; and it continued through the hours of light and of darkness for many days. Young VB was a man who feared his own love, and beyond that there can be no greater horror. He sought solace in the Captain, in driving himself toward the high mark he had set out to attain, but the ideal exemplified in the noble animal seemed more unattainable than ever and he wondered at times if the victory he sought were not humanly impossible. The knowledge that only by conquering himself could he keep his love for Gail Thorpe unsullied never left him, and beside it a companion haunter stalked through and through his consciousness--the fact that they had declared themselves to each other. He was carrying not alone the responsibility of reclaiming his own life; he must also answer for the happiness of a woman! In those days came intervals when he wondered if this thing were really love. Might it not be something else--a passing hysteria, a reaction from the inner battle? But he knew it was a love stronger than his will, stronger than his great tempter, stronger than the prompting to think of the future when he saw the Thorpe automobile coming up the road that spring day on the first trip the girl had made to the ranch that year. And under the immense truth of the realization he became bodily weak. Doubt of his strength, too, became more real, more insistent than it had ever been; its hateful power mingled with the thirst, and his heart was rent. What if that love should prove stronger than this discretion which he had retained at such fearful cost, and drag him to her with the stigma he still bore and wreck her! Gail saw the constraint in him the instant she left the car, and though their handclasp was firm and long and understanding, it sobered her smile. She tried to start him talking on many things as they sat alone in the log house, but it was useless. He did not respond. So, turning to the subject that had always roused him, that she knew to be so close to his heart, she asked for the Captain. "In the corral," said VB, almost listlessly. "We'll go out." So they went together and looked through the gate at the great animal. The Captain stepped close and stretched his nose for Gail to rub, pushing gently against her hand in response. "Oh, you noble thing!" she whispered to him. "When you die, is all that strength of yours to be wasted? Can't it be given to some one else?" She looked full on VB, then down at the ground, and said: "You've never told me how you broke the Captain. No one in the country knows. They know that he almost killed you; that you fought him a whole week. But no one knows how. Won't--won't you tell me? I want to know, because it was a real achievement--and _yours_." He met her gaze when it turned upward, and for many heartbeats they stood so, looking at each other. Then VB's eyes wavered and he moved a step, leaning on the bars and staring moodily at the stallion. "It hurts to think about it," he said. "I don't like to remember. That is why I have never told any one. It hurt him and it hurt me." She waited through the silence that followed for him to go on. "I've worked and rubbed it and curried it, and nursed the hair to grow over the place. It looks just like a cinch mark now--like the mark of service. No one would ever notice. But it isn't a mark of labor. _I_ marked the Captain--I had to do it--had to make him understand me. It laid his side open, and all the nursing, all the care I could give wouldn't make up for it. It's there. The Captain knows it; so do I." She followed his gaze to the little rough spot far down on the sleek side. "All wild things have to be broken," she said. "None of them ever become tame of their own volition. And in the breaking a mark is invariably left. The memory hurts, but the mark means nothing of itself, once it is healed. Don't you realize that? "We all bear marks. The marks of our environment, the marks of our friends, the marks of those we--we love. Some of them hurt for a time, but in the end it is all good. Don't you believe that? We see those who are very dear to us suffer, and it marks us; sometimes just loving leaves its mark. But--those are the greatest things in the world. They're sacred. "The marks on a woman who goes through fire for a man, say; the marks of a--a mother. They hurt, but in the end they make the bond tighter, more holy." She waited. Then asked again: "Don't you believe that?" After a long pause VB answered in a peculiarly bitter voice: "I wish I knew what I believe--if I do believe!" CHAPTER XVIII The Lie VB's eyes burned after Gail as she drove away. He followed the car in its flight until it disappeared over the hump in the road; then continued staring in that direction with eyes that did not see--that merely burned like his throat. Jed came up the gulch with a load of wood, and VB still stood by the gate. "I never can get used to these here city ways," he grumbled, "no more'n can these ponies." VB noticed casually that a tug had been broken and was patched with rope. "Runaway?" he asked, scarcely conscious of putting the question. "Oh, Bob Thorpe's girl come drivin' her automobile along fit to ram straight through kingdom come, an' don't turn out till she gets so close I thought we was done for; to be sure, I did. Peter, here, took a jump an' busted a tug." He looked keenly at VB. "Funny!" he remarked. "She didn't see me, I know. An' she looked as if she'd been cryin'!" He could not know the added torture those words carried to the heart of the young fellow battling there silently, covering up his agony, trying to appear at ease. For the thirst had returned with manifold force, augmenting those other agonies which racked him. All former ordeals were forgotten before the fury of this assault. By the need of stimulant he was subjected to every fiendish whim of singing nerves; from knowing that in him was a love which must be killed to save a woman from sacrifice arose a torment that reached into his very vitals. The glands of his mouth stopped functioning, and it seemed as though only one thing would take the cursed dryness from his tongue and lips. His fingers would not be still; they kept plucking and reaching out for that hidden chord which would draw him back to himself, or on down into the depths--somehow, he did not care which. Anything to be out of that killing uncertainty! As he had gained in strength during those months, so it now seemed had the thirst grown. It battered down his spirit, whipped it to a pulp, and dragged it through the sloughs of doubt and despair. His will--did he have a will? He did not know; nor did he seem to care. It had come--the slipping backward. He had battled well, but now he could feel himself going, little by little, weakening, fighting outwardly but at heart knowing the futility of it all. And going because of Gail Thorpe! "I can't put this mark on her!" he moaned against the Captain's neck. "She said it--that even those we love must bear the mark. And she said it was all good. She was wrong, wrong! Such a thing can't be good! "Suppose I did keep above it, was sure of myself for a time in a sham way, wouldn't it only be running the risk of a greater disaster? Wouldn't it surely come some time? Wouldn't it, if-- "And then it would kill her, too!" He hammered the Captain's shoulder with his clenched fist and the great stallion snuggled his cheek closer to the man, trying to understand, trying to comfort. Then would come moments when his will rallied and Young VB fought with the ferocity of a jungle cat, walking back and forth across the corral, talking to the Captain, condemning his weaker self, gesticulating, promising. At those times he doubted whether it was so much the actual thirst that tore him as it was wondering if he could be worthy of her. Then the old desire would come again, in an engulfing wave, and his fighting would become empty words. Jed, who had ridden up the gulch to look after a gap in the fence, returned at dusk. As he watched VB feed the Captain he saw in the gloom the straining of the boy's face; heard him talk to the stallion piteously; and the old man's lips framed silent words. "If it's that girl," he declared, shaking his fist at the skies--"if it's that girl, she ought to be--ought to be spanked. An' if it's th' wantin' of whisky, God pity th' boy!" Supper was a curious affair. VB tried to help in the preparation but spoiled everything he touched, so far removed was his mind from the work of his hands. Jed ate alone. VB sat down, but could not touch the food offered. He gulped coffee so steaming hot that Jed cried aloud a warning. "Burned?" scoffed VB. "Burned by that stuff? Jed, you don't know what burning is!" He got to his feet and paced the floor, one hand pressed against his throat. The boy sat down twice again and drank from the cup the old man kept filled, but his lips rebelled at food; his hands would not carry it from the plate. Once Jed rose and tried to restrain the pacing. "VB, boy," he implored, "set down an' take it easy. Please do! It's been bad before, you know, but it's always turned out good in th' end. It will this time--same as always. Just--" "Don't, Jed." He spoke weakly, averting his white face and pushing the old man away gently with trembling hands. "You don't understand; you don't understand!" For the first time he was beyond comfort from the little old man who had showed him the lighted way, who had encouraged and comforted and held faith in him. After a while a calm fell on VB and he stopped his walking, helped with the work, and then sat, still and white, in his chair. Jed watched him narrowly and comfort came to the old soul, for he believed the boy had won another fight over the old foe; was so sure of it that he whistled as he prepared for the night. The candle burned on, low against the neck of the bottle, but still bright and steady. VB watched it, fascinated, thought tagging thought through his mind. Then a tremor shot through his body. "Jed," he said in a voice that was strained but even, "let's play a little pitch, won't you?" It was his last hope, the last attempt to divert the attack on his will and bolster his waning forces. His nerves jumped and cringed and quivered, but outwardly he was calm, his face drawn to mask the torture. Jed, aroused, rubbed his sleepy eyes and lighted his pipe. He put on his steel-rimmed spectacles and took down the greasy, cornerless deck of cards to shuffle them slowly, with method, as though it were a rite. VB sat motionless and a little limp in his chair, too far from the table for comfortable playing. Jed peered at him over his glasses. "You might get th' coffee beans," he said, with a great yawn. When the other did not answer he said again: "You might get th' coffee beans, VB. Sleepy?" The young chap arose then to follow the suggestion, but ignored the query. He went to the cupboard and brought back a handful of the beans, the cowman's poker chips. His hand was waiting for him. "Good deal?" Jed asked. VB shook his head. "Not better than a couple." "O-ho, I'm better off!" and Jed slammed down the ace of hearts. VB leaned low and played the four-spot, almost viciously, gritting his teeth to force his mind into the game. It rebelled, told him the uselessness of such things, the hopelessness before him, tried to play on the aridness of his throat. But for the moment his will was strong and he followed the game as though gambling for a life. Suddenly the thought surged through him that he was gambling for a life--his _own_ life, and possibly for a woman's life! Jed made his points, and again, on his own bid, he swept up the coffee counters. Then he took off his glasses and laid them aside with another yawn. VB wanted to cry aloud to him to keep on playing; he wanted to let Jed Avery know all that the simple, foolish little game of cards meant to him. But somehow his waning faith had taken with it the power to confide. Jed made four inexcusable blunders in playing that hand, and each time his muttered apologies became shorter. When the hand was over and he had won a point he did not notice that the boy failed to give him the counter. VB dealt, picked up his cards, and waited for the bid. But Jed's chin was on his breast, one hand lay loosely over the scattered cards before him; the other hung at his side limply. His breath came and went regularly. Sleep had stolen in on VB's final stand! Oh, if Jed Avery had only known! If his kindly old heart had only read VB better, divining the difference between calm and peace! For a long time VB looked at the old man, his breath gradually quickening, the flame in his eyes growing sharper, more keen, as the consuming fire in him ate away the last barriers of resistance. Once his gaze went to the candle, burning so low against the bottle, yet so brightly, its molten wax running down and adding to the incrustment. He stared wanly at the bright little beacon and shook his head, terror wiping out the vestiges of a smile. Action! That was what he wanted! Action! He must move or lose his mind and babble and scream! He must move and move rapidly--as rapidly as the rush of those thoughts through his inflamed mind. He trembled in every limb as he sat there, realizing the need for bodily activity. And yet, guilefully, craftily, softly, that voice down within him told that action could be of only one sort, could take him only in one direction. It whined and wheedled and gave him a cowardly assurance, made him lie in his own thoughts; made him cautious in his sneaking determination, for he knew any question Jed might ask would bring frenzy. VB rose, slowly, carefully, so that there might be no creaking of the boots or scraping of chair legs. He picked up his hat, his muffler, his jumper, and moved stealthily toward the door, opened it inch by inch, and shut it behind him quickly, silently, cutting off the draft of night air--for such a thing might be as disastrous as a cry aloud. The moon rode above the ridge and the air had lost its winter's edge. It was mild, but with the tang of mountain nights. It was quiet below, but as he stood in the open, pulling on his jumper, he heard the stirring of wind on the points above. It was a soughing, the sort of wind that makes stock uneasy; and VB caught that disquieting vibration. He stepped out from the cabin and a soft calling from the corral reached him. "Coming, Captain, coming," he answered. And with a guilty glance behind him he felt for the gun nestling against his side. His jaw-muscles tightened as he assured himself it was fastened there securely. The Captain was waiting at the gate. VB let it swing open, then turned and walked toward the saddle rack. The horse followed closely, ears up as though in wonder at this procedure. "It's all right, Captain," VB whispered as he threw on the saddle blanket. As he drew the cinch tight he muttered: "Or else all wrong!" Action, action! his body begged. He must have it; nothing else would suffice! He wanted to fly along, skimming the tops of those ghost bushes, ripping through the night, feeling the ripple of wind on that throat, the cooling currents of air against those hammering temples. And VB knew it was a lie! A rank, deliberate, hypocritical lie! He knew what that action meant, he knew in what direction it would take him. He knew; he knew! "Oh, Captain!" he sobbed, drawing the bridled head against his chest. "You know what it is to fight! You know what it is to yield! But the yielding didn't break you, boy! It couldn't. You were too big, too great to be broken; they could only bend and--" With a breath of nervous rage he was in the saddle. The Captain's feet rattled on the hard ground with impatience. An instant VB hesitated, gathering the reins, separating them from the strands of thick mane. Then, leaning low, uttering a throaty wail, he gave the Captain his head and into the veiled night they bolted. The cattle were coming on him, and he was powerless to move! They were bunched, running shoulder to shoulder, and his bed was in their path! Jed tried to raise his arms and could barely move them; his legs rebelled. The stampede was roaring at him! Oh, the rumble of those hoofs, those sharp, cloven, blind, merciless hoofs, that would mangle and tear and trample! Jed Avery awoke with a start. He was on his feet in the middle of the floor before consciousness came, gasping quickly at the horror of his dream, his excited heart racing! But it was no stampede. Running hoofs, but no stampede! He stumbled to the door and flung it open. His old eyes caught the flash of a lean, dark object as it raced across the dooryard straight at the gate, never pausing, never hesitating, and taking the bars with a sturdy leap that identified the horse instantly. "VB!" He called the name shrilly into the night, but his cry was drowned to the rider's ears, for the Captain's hoofs had caught ground again and were spurning it viciously as he clawed for the speed, the action, that was to satisfy the outraged nerves of his master! That lie! It was not the action that would satisfy. The flight was only an accessory, an agency that would transport VB to the scene of the renunciation of all that for which he had battled through those long months. For a long moment Jed stood in the doorway as he had poised at first, stiff, rigid. The sounds of the rushing horse diminuendoed quickly and became only a murmur in the night. Jed Avery's figure lost its tensity, went slack, and he leaned limply against the door frame. "He's gone!" he moaned. "He's gone! It's broke in on him--Oh, VB, I'm afraid it has! No good takes you south at this time, after th' spell you've had!" He slammed the door shut and turned back into the room. Unsteady feet took him to his chair, and he settled into it heavily, leaning against the table, his eyes registering the sight of no objects. "He was fightin' harder'n ever," he whispered dryly, "an' I set here sleepin'. To be sure, I wasn't on hand when VB needed me most!" The ending of his self-accusation was almost a sob, and his head dropped forward. He sat like that for an hour. The fire in the stove went out, and the cool of night penetrated the log walls of the cabin. He gazed unblinkingly at the floor; now and then his lips formed soundless words. The candle, burning low, fed the flame too fiercely with the last bit of itself. The neck of the bottle was a globule of molten wax in which the short wick swam. The flame had become larger, but it was dead and the smoke rose thickly from its heavy edges. The grease seemed to be disturbed. It quivered, steadied, then settled. The flame slipped down the neck of the bottle and was snuffed out by the confines of the thing. Jed Avery drew a long, quivering breath, a breath of horror. He turned his face toward the place where the light had been, hoping that his sight had failed. Then he reached out and found the bottle. His hard fingers ran over it, felt the empty neck, paused, and drew away as though it were an infectious thing. The old man sagged forward to the table, his face in his arms. CHAPTER XIX Through the Night On into the night went the Captain, bearing VB. Over the gate the bridle-rein drew against his neck and the big beast swung to the right, following the road southward, on down the gulch, on toward Ranger--a fierceness in his rider's heart that was suicidal. All the bitterness VB had endured, from the stinging torrent his father turned upon him back in New York to the flat realization that to let himself love Gail Thorpe might bring him into worse hells, surged up into his throat and mingled with the craving there. It seeped through into his mind, perverted his thoughts, stamped down the optimism that had held him up, shattered what remnants of faith still remained. "Faster, Captain!" he cried. "Faster!" And the stallion responded, scudding through the blue moonlight with a speed that seemed beyond the power of flesh to attain. He shook his fine head and stretched out the long nose as though the very act of thrusting it farther would give more impetus to his thundering hoofs. VB sat erect in the saddle, a fierce delight aroused by the speed running through his veins like fire--and, reaching to his throat, adding to the scorching. He swung his right hand rhythmically, keeping time to the steady roll of the stallion's feet. The wind tore at him, vibrating his hat brim, whipping the long muffler out from his neck, and he shook his head against it. He was free at last! Free after those months of doubt, of foolish fighting! He was answering the call that came from the depths of his true self--that hidden self--the call of flesh that needs aid! He cared not for the morrow, for the stretching future. His one thought was on the now--on the rankling, eating, festering moment that needed only one thing to be wiped out forever. And always, in the back of his mind, was the picture of Gail Thorpe as she had turned from him that afternoon. It loomed large and larger as he tore on to the south through the solitude, ripping his way through the cool murk. "I won't put my mark on her!" he cried, and whipped the Captain's flanks with his heavy hat, the thought setting his heart flaming. "I won't!" he cried. And again, "I won't!" He was riding down into his particular depths so to stultify himself that it would be impossible to risk that woman's happiness against the chance that some time, some day, he would go down, loving her, making her know he loved her, but fighting without gain. That, surely, is one sort of love, faulty though the engendering spirit may be. The whipping with the hat sent the horse on to still greater endeavor. A slight weariness commenced to show in the ducking of his head with every stride, but he did not slacken his pace. His ears were still set stiffly forward, flipping back, one after the other, for word from his rider; the spurn of his feet was still sharp and clear and unfaltering; the spirit in that rippling, dripping body still ran high. And closing his eyes, drinking the night air through his mouth in great gulps, VB let the animal carry him on and on,--yet backward, back into the face of all that fighting he had summoned, doubling on his own tracks, slipping so easily down the way he had blazed upward with awful sacrifice and hardship. An hour--two--nine--eleven--the Captain might have been running so a week, and VB would not have known. His mind was not on time, not on his horse. He had ceased to think beyond the recognition of a craving, a craving that he did not fight but encouraged, nursed, teased--for it was going to be satisfied! The stallion's pace began to slacken. He wearied. The bellows lungs, the heart of steel, the legs of tireless sinew began to feel the strain of that long run. The run waned to a gallop, and the gallop to a trot. There his breathing becoming easier, he blew loudly from his nostrils as though to distend them farther and make way for the air he must have. VB realized this dully but his heeding of that devilish inner call had taken him so far from his more tender self, from his instinctive desire to love and understand, that he did not follow out his comprehension. "Go it, boy!" he muttered. "It's all I'll ask of you--just this one run." And the Captain, dropping an ear back for the word, leaned to the task, resuming the steady, space-eating gallop mile after mile. All the way into Ranger they held that pace. In the last mile the stallion stumbled twice, but after both breaks in his stride ran on more swiftly for many yards, as though to make up to his master for the jolting the half falls gave him. He was a bit unsteady on those feet as he took the turn and dropped down the low bank into the river. They forded it in a shimmer of silver as the horse's legs threw out the black water to be frozen and burnished by the light of the moon. The stallion toiled up the far bank at a lagging trot, and on the flat VB pulled the panting animal down to a walk. Oh, VB, it was not too late then, had you only realized it! Your ideal was still there, more exemplary than ever before, but you could not recognize it through those eyes which saw only the red of a wrecking passion! You had drained to the last ounce of reserve the strength of that spirit you had so emulated, which had been as a shining light, an unfaltering candle in the darkness. It was stripped bare before you as that splendid animal gulped between breaths. Could you have but seen! Could something only have _made_ you see! But it was not to be. VB had forgotten the Captain. In the face of his wretched weakening the stallion became merely a conveyance, a convenience, a means for stifling the neurotic excitement within him. He forgot that this thing he rode represented his only achievement--an achievement such as few men ever boast. He guided the stallion to a half-wrecked log house south of the road, dismounted, and stood a moment before the shack, his glittering eyes on the squares of light yonder under the rising hill. He heard a faint tinkling from the place, and a voice raised in laughter. As he watched, a mounted man passed between him and the yellow glare. In a moment he saw the man enter the saloon door. "Come, boy," he muttered, moving cautiously through the opening into the place. "You'll be warm in here. You'll cool off slowly." Then, in a burst of hysterical passion, he threw his arms about the stallion's head and drew it to him fiercely. "Oh, I won't be gone long, Captain!" he promised. "Not long--just a little while. It's not the worst, Captain! I'm not weakening!" Drunk with the indulgence of his nervous weakness, he lied glibly, knowing he lied, without object--just to lie, to pervert life. And as the Captain's quick, hot breath penetrated his garments, VB drew the head still tighter. "You're all I've got, Captain," he muttered, now in a trembling calm. "You'll wait. I know that. I know what you will do better than I know anything else in the world--better than I know what--what _I'll_ do! Wait for me, boy--wait right here!" His voice broke on the last word as he stumbled through the door and set off toward the building against the hill. He did not hear the Captain turn, walk as far as the door of the shack, and peer after him anxiously. Nor did he see the figure of a man halted in the road, watching him go across the flat, chaps flapping, brushing through the sage noisily. VB halted in the path of light, swaying the merest trifle from side to side as he pulled his chap belt in another hole and tried to still the twitching of his hands, the weakening of his knees. The tinkling he had heard became clear. He could see now. A Mexican squatted on his spurs, back against the wall, and twanged a fandango on a battered guitar. His hat was far back over his head, cigarette glowing in the corner of his mouth, gay blue muffler loose on his shoulders. He hummed to the music, his voice rising now and then to float out into the night above the other sounds from the one room. The bar of rough boards, top covered with red oilcloth, stretched along one side. Black bottles flashed their high lights from a shelf behind it, above which hung an array of antlers. The bartender, broad Stetson shading his face, talked loudly, his hands wide apart on the bar and bearing much of his weight. Now and then he dropped his head to spit between his forearms. Three men in chaps lounged before the bar, talking. One, the tallest, talked with his head flung back and gestures that were a trifle too loose. The shortest looked into his face with a ceaseless, senseless smile, and giggled whenever the voice rose high or the gestures became unusually wild. The third, elbows on the oilcloth, head on his fists, neither joined in nor appeared to heed the conversation. Back in the room stood two tables, both covered with green cloth. One was unused; the other accommodated four men. Each of the quartet wore a hat drawn low over his face; each held cards. They seldom spoke; when they did, their voices were low. VB saw only their lips move. Their motions were like the words--few and abrupt. When chips were counted it was with expertness; when they were shoved to the center of the table it was with finality. Near them, tilted against the wall in a wire-trussed chair, sat a sleeping man, hat on the floor. Two swinging oil lamps lighted the smoke-fogged air of the place, and their glow seemed to be diffused by it, idealizing everything, softening it-- Everything except the high lights from the bottles on the shelf. Those were stabs of searing brightness; they hurt VB's eyeballs. His gaze traveled back to the Mexican. The melody had drifted from the fandango into a swinging waltz song popular in the cities four years before. He whistled the air through his teeth. The cigarette was still between his lips. The face brought vague recollections to VB. Then he remembered that this was Julio, the Mexican who ran with Rhues. He belonged to Rhues, they had told him, body and soul. Thought of Rhues sent VB's right hand to his left side, up under the arm. He squeezed the gun that nestled there. Of a sudden, nausea came to the man who looked in. It was not caused by fear of Rhues--of the possibility of an encounter. The poignant fumes that came from the open door stirred it, and the sickness was that of a man who sees his great prize melt away. For the moment VB wanted to rebel. He tore his eyes from those glittering bottles; tried to stop his breathing that treacherous nostrils might not inhale those odors. But it was useless--his feet would not carry him away. He knew he must move, move soon, and though he now cried out in his heart against it he knew which way his feet would carry him. He half turned his body and looked back toward the shack where the Captain waited, and a tightening came in his throat to mingle with the rapaciousness there. "Just a little while, Captain," he whispered, feeling childishly that the horse would hear the words and understand. "Just a little while--I'm just--just going to take a little hand in the card game." And as the Mexican finished his waltz with a rip of the thumb clear across the six strings of his instrument, Young VB put a foot on the threshold of the saloon and slowly drew himself to his full height in the doorway. Framed by darkness he stood there, thumbs in his belt, mouth in a grim line, hat down to hide the pallor of his cheeks, the torment in his eyes; his shoulders were braced back in resolution, but his knees, inside his generous chaps, trembled. CHAPTER XX The Last Stand Even the vibrating guitar strings seemed to be stilled suddenly. For VB, an abrupt hush crushed down on the scene. He felt the eyes as, pair after pair, they followed those of the Mexican and gazed at him; even the man slumbering in his chair awoke, raised his head, and stared at him sleepily. He stood in the doorway, leaning lightly against the logs, returning each gaze in turn. "Hello, VB!" one of the trio before the bar said. "Hello, Tom!" answered the newcomer--and stepped into the room. Then what hush had fallen--real or imaginary--lifted and the talk went on, the game progressed. Perhaps the talk was not fully sincere, possibly the thoughts of the speakers were not always on their words, for every man in the place stole glances at the tall young fellow as he moved slowly about the room. They had known for months the fight that was going on up there on Jed Avery's ranch. They knew that the man who had mastered the Captain and set his name forever in the green annals of the country had been fighting to command himself against the attacks of the stuff they peddled here in the saloon at Ranger. They knew how he had fought off temptation, avoided contact with whisky--and now, late at night, he had walked slowly into the heart of the magnet that had exerted such an influence on him. So they watched VB as he moved about. The sharp lights from those black bottles! Like snakes' eyes, they commanded his--and, when this power had been exerted, they seemed to stab the brain that directed sight at them. In the first few steps across the rough floor VB answered their call to look a half dozen times, and after each turning of his gaze jerked his eyes away in pain. He did not turn toward the bar--rather, kept close to the wall, passing so near the squatting Mexican that the flap of his chaps brushed the other's knees. The Greaser picked at the strings of his instrument aimlessly, striking unrelated chords, tinkling on a single string; then came a few bars from the fandango. His head was tilted to one side and a glittering eye followed the slow-moving figure of Young VB. By the time the newcomer was halfway toward the poker table the Mexican got to his feet, sliding his back slowly up the wall until he reached a standing position. Then, for the first time taking his eyes from VB, he stepped lightly toward the door. After a final tinkling chord had fallen he disappeared, guitar slung under one arm, walking slowly away from the lighted place. But when he was beyond sight of those within, he ran. VB went on, past the just-awakened man in his chair, close to the poker table. The players looked up again, first one, with a word of recognition; then two spoke at once, and after he had raked in the pot the fourth nodded with a welcoming grunt. The young fellow leaned a shoulder against the log wall and watched the game. That is, he looked at it. But continually his fevered memory retained a vision of those glares from the bottles. His mind again played crazy tricks, as it always did when the thirst clamored loudly. The rattle of the chips sounded like ice in glasses, and he turned his head quickly toward the bar, following the imaginary sound. The four men there were just drinking. He followed their movements with wild eyes. The bartender lifted his glass to the level of his forehead in salute, then drained its contents slowly, steadily, every movement from the lifting to the setting down of the empty glass smooth, deliberate--even polished--the movements of a professedly artful drinker. The silent man offered no good word--merely lifted the glass and drank, tipping his head but slightly, emptying the glass with an uneven twisting of the wrist, something like an exaggerated tremble. The short man tossed his drink off by elevating the glass quickly to his lips and throwing his head back with a jerk to empty it into his mouth. The tall man, who talked loudly and motioned much, waved his drink through the air to emphasize a declaration, and with an uncertain swoop directed it to his lips. He leaned backward from the hips to drink, and the movement made him reel and grasp the bar for support. As he had followed the movements of those men, so VB followed the course of the stuff they drank down their throats; in imagination, down his throat, until it hit upon and glossed over that spot which wailed for soothing! Oh, how he wanted it! Still, all those months of battling had not been without result. The rigid fight he had made carried him on, even in face of his resolve to yield, and he delayed, put it off just a moment--lying to himself! He turned back to the game. "Sit in, VB?" one of the players asked. "Don't mind." He dragged another chair to the table, unbuttoned and cast off his jumper, gave the hat another low tug, and tossed a yellow-backed twenty to the table. The chips were shoved toward him. "Jacks or better," the dealer said, and shot the cards about the board. VB won a pot. He bet eagerly on the next and lost. Then he won again. The game interested him for the moment. "Oh, just one more li'l' drink!" cried the garrulous cowboy at the bar. VB had passed the opening, went in later, drew three cards, failed to help his tens, and hiked the bet! Called, he dropped the hand; and the winner, showing aces up, stared at the boy who had bet against openers on lone tens. He noticed that VB's hands trembled, and he wondered. He could not feel VB's throat. Nor could he hear the careless plea of the sotted rider for just one more drink ringing in VB's burning brain. A big pot was played and the winner, made happy, said: "Well, I'll buy a drink." The bartender, hearing, came to the table. "What'll it be?" he asked. "Whisky," said the man on VB's right, and the word went around the circle. Then a moment's pause, while the cards fluttered out. "VB?" There it was, reaching out for him, holding out its tentacles that ceased to appear as such and became soft, inviting arms. It was that for which he had ridden through the night; it was that against which he had fought month after month until, this night, he realized that a fight was useless; it was the one solace left him, for indirectly it had brought into his life the glorious thing--and wiped it out again. So why hold off? Why refuse? But those months of fighting! He could not overcome that impetus which his subjective self had received from the struggle. Consciously he wanted the stuff--oh, how he wanted it! But deep in him _something_-- "Not now--thanks," he managed to mutter, and clasped his cards tightly. The bartender turned away, rubbing his chin with one finger, as though perplexed. VB dealt, and with lightning agility. He even broke in on the silence of the playing with senseless chatter when the drinks were brought. He held his cards high that he might not see the glasses, and was glad that the men did not drink at once. Nor did they drink for many moments. The opener was raised twice; few cards were drawn. A check passed one man, the next bet, the next raised, and VB, the deal, came in. The opener raised again and the bartender, seeing, stepped across to watch. The drowsy lounger, sensing the drift of the game, rose to look on. VB dropped out. He held threes, but felt that they had no place in that game. The betting went on and on, up and up, three men bent on raising, the fourth following, intent on having a look, anyhow. VB threw his cards down and dropped his hands loosely on the table. The back of his right hand touched a cold object. He looked down quickly. It was resting against a whisky glass. "And ten more," a player said. "Ten--and another ten." More chips rattled into the pile. His hand stole back and hot fingers reached out to touch with sensitive tips that cool surface. His nostrils worked to catch the scent of the stuff. His hand was around the glass. "I'm staying." "You are--for five more." VB's fingers tightened about the thing, squeezed it in the palm of his hand. It had felt cool at first; now it was like fire. The muscles of that arm strove to lift it. His inner mind struggled, declared against the intention, weakened, yielded, and-- "Well, I'm through. Fight it out." The man at VB's right dropped his cards in disgust and with a quick movement reached for his drink. His nervous, hot hand closed on VB's and their surprised glances met. "Excuse me," muttered VB. "Sure!" said the other, surly over his lost stake, and gulped down the whisky. Two of the players went broke in that pot. The fourth had a scant remnant of his original stack left, and VB was loser. The two who had failed shoved back their hats and yawned, almost simultaneously. "How about it?" asked the winner, stacking his chips. "I'm satisfied," said the man at VB's right. "And VB?" "Here, too!" The boy sat back in his chair with a long-drawn breath after shoving his chips across to be cashed. He pushed his hat back for the first time, and a man across the table stared hard as he saw the harried face. The others were busy, cashing in. "Just get in, VB?" some one asked. He heard the question through a tumult. His muscles had already contracted in the first movement of rising; his will already directed his feet across the room to the bar to answer the call of those searching bottle eyes. Inwardly he raged at himself for holding off so long, for wasting those months, for letting that other new thing come into his life only to be torn away again; when it all meant mere delay, a drawing out of suffering! Only half consciously he framed the answer: "Yes, I rode down to-night." "Goin' on out?" "What?" he asked, forcing his mind to give heed to the other. "Goin' on out, or goin' to hang around a while?" "I don't know." The boy got to his feet, and the reply was given with rare bitterness. "I don't know," he said again, voice mounting. "I may go out--and I may not. I may hang around a while, and it mayn't take long. I'm here to finish something I started a long time ago, something that I've been putting off. I'm going to put a stop to a lying, hypocritical existence. I'm--" He broke off thickly and moved away from the table. No imagination created a hush this time. On his words the counting of chips ceased. They looked at him, seeing utter desperation, and not understanding. A face outside that had been pressed close to a window was lowered, darkness hiding the glitter of green eyes and the leering smile of triumph. A figure slunk along carefully to the corner of the building and joined two others. It was his chance! Rhues was out to get his man this moonlight night, and there was now no danger. Young VB was no longer afraid to take a drink. He would give up his fight, give up his hard-wrung freedom, and when drunken men go down, shot in a quarrel, there is always cause. He had him now! VB lurched across the room toward the bar. In mid-floor he paused, turned, and faced those at the poker table. "Don't mistake me," he said with a grin. "Don't think I'm talking against any man in the country. It's myself, boys--just _me_. I'm the liar, the hypocrite. I've tried to lie myself into being what I never can be. I've come out here among you to go by the name of the outfit I ride for. You don't know me, don't even know my name, say nothing of my own rotten self. Well, you're going to know me as I am." He swung around to face the bar. The bartender pulled nervously on his mustache. "What'll it be, VB?" he asked, surprised knowledge sending the professional question to his lips. "The first thing you come to," the boy muttered, and grasped the bar for support. CHAPTER XXI Guns Crash Out in the shadow of the building three men huddled close together, talking in whispers--Rhues, Matson, and the Mexican. Rhues had watched the progress of the poker game, waiting the chance he had tried to seek out ever since that day up at Avery's when he had been beaten down by the flailing fists of that tall young tenderfoot. He had seen VB start for the bar; he knew the hour had struck. "We've got him!" he whispered. "He won't get away this time. They won't be no mistakes." "S-s-s-s!" the Greaser warned. "Aw, nobody'll ever know," Rhues scoffed in an undertone. "They'll never know that unless you spill. An' if you do--it'll mean three of us to th' gallows, unless--we're lynched first!" Silence a moment, and they heard VB's voice raised. Then Rhues whispered his quick plans. "Take it easy," he warned in conclusion. "Don't start nothin'. Let him git drunk; then he'll do th' startin' an' it'll be easy." Inside a bottle was thumped on the bar, a glass beside it. Feverishly VB reached for both, lifting the glass with uncertain hand, tilting the bottle from the bar, not trusting his quaking muscles to raise it. The neck touched the glass with a dull clink; the mouth of the bottle gurgled greedily as the first of the liquor ran out--for all the world as if it had waited these months for that chuckle of triumph. And then that romanticism of youth came to the surface of his seething thoughts again. It would be the closing of a chapter, that drink. It was for her sake he would lift it to his lips. He wanted to bid her a last, bitter farewell. She was over there, far across the hills, sleeping and dreaming--with her golden hair--over there in the northeast. He laughed harshly, set the bottle back on the bar, and turned his face in her direction. Those who watched from the other end of the room saw him turn his head unsteadily; saw the sudden tenseness which spread through his frame, stiffening those faltering knees. He turned slowly toward the door and thrust his face forward as though to study and make certain that he saw rightly. Like a rush of fire the realization swept through him. A man stood there in the moonlight, and the sheen from the heavens was caught on the dull barrel of a gun in his hand. VB was covered, and he knew by whom! The man who had fought less than half a dozen times in his life, and then with bare fists, was the object of a trained gun hand. He could almost see the glitter of the green eyes that were staring at him. Instinct should have told him to spring to one side; a leap right or left would have carried him out of range, but instinct had been warped by all those months of struggle. He was on the brink, at the point of losing his balance; but the battling spirit within him still throbbed, though his frenzy, his lack of faith, had nearly killed it. Now the thing came alive pulsing, bare! An instant before he had not cared what happened. Now he did, and the end was not the only thing in view; the means counted with Young VB. He did not jump for shelter. He roared his rage as he prepared to stand and fight. The others understood before his hand reached his shirt front. The bartender dropped behind the fixture and the others in the room sprang behind the barrels and stove. By the time VB's hand had clasped the neck of his shirt he stood alone. When the vicious yank he gave the garment ripped it open from throat halfway to waist the first belch of fire came from that gun out there. The bottle on the bar exploded, fine bits of glass shooting to the far corners of the room. "Come on--you--yellow--" VB's fingers found the butt of his Colt, closed and yanked. It came from the holster, poised, muzzle upward, his thumb over the hammer. Possibly he stood thus a tenth part of a second, but while he waited for his eyes to focus well a generation seemed to parade past. He was hunted down by a crawling piece of vermin! A parallel sprang to his mind. While Rhues sought his body did not another viper seek his soul? Was-- Then he made out the figure--crouched low. The forty-five came down, and the room resounded with its roar. He stood there, a greenhorn who had never handled a weapon in his life until the last year, giving battle to a gun fighter whose name was a synonym! Out of the moonlight came another flash, and before VB could answer the hunched figure had leaped from the area framed by the doorway. "You won't stand!" the boy cried, and strode across the room. "Don't be a fool! VB!" The bartender's warning might as well have been unheard. Straight for the open door went the boy, gun raised, coughing from the powder smoke. But the mustached man, though panderer by profession, revolted at unfairness; perhaps it was through the boy's ignorance, but he knew VB walked only to become a target. Twice his gun roared from behind the bar and the two swinging lamps became scattered, tinkling fragments. VB seemed not to heed, not to notice that he was in darkness. He reached the door, put his left hand against the casing, and looked out. With lights behind he would have been riddled on the instant. But, looking from blackness to moonlight, he was invisible for the moment--but only for a moment. The stream of yellow stabbed at him again and Young VB, as though under the blow of a sledge, spun round and was flattened against the wall. His left breast seemed to be in flames. He reached for it, fired aimlessly with the other hand in the direction of his hidden foe, and let the gun clatter to the floor. He wondered if it were death--that darkness. He felt the fanning of the wind, heard, dimly, its uneasy soughing. It was very dark. A movement and its consequent grip of pain brought him back. He saw then that a heavy cloud, wind driven, had blotted out the moon. In a frenzy he came alert! He was wounded! He had dropped his gun and they were waiting for him out there, somewhere; waiting to finish him! He could feel the smearing of blood across his chest as his clothing held it in. His legs commenced to tremble, from true physical weakness this time. And the Captain was waiting! That thought wiped out every other; he was possessed with it. He might be dying, but if he could only get to the Captain; if he could only feel that silken nose against his cheek! Nothing would matter then. If he could get up, if he could mount, the Captain would take care of him. He could outrun those bullets--the Captain. He would take him home, away from this inferno. "I'm coming, Captain!" he muttered brokenly. "You're waiting! Oh, I know where to find you. I'm coming, boy, coming!" He stepped down from the doorway and reeled, a hand against his wounded breast. It seemed as though it required an eternity to regain his balance. Then he lurched forward a step. Oh, they were merciless! They opened on him from behind--when he had no weapon, when his life was gushing away under his shirt! Those shots never came from one gun alone. More than one man fired on him! His salvation then was flight. He ran, staggering, stumbling. He plunged forward on his face and heard a bullet scream over him. "Oh, Captain!" he moaned. "Can't you come and get me? Can't you?" He snarled his determination to rally those senses that tried to roam off into vagaries. He got to his hands and knees and crawled, inch by inch. He heard another shot, but it went wild. He got to his feet and reeled on. They thought they'd done for him when he fell! He heard himself laughing crazily at the joke. "Oh, you'll laugh, too--Captain!" he growled. "It's a joke--you'll--if I can only get to--you!" His numb, lagging legs seemed to make conscious efforts to hold him back. His head became as heavy as his feet and rolled about on his neck, now straight forward, now swinging from side to side. His arms flopped as no arm ever should flop. And he heard the blood bubbling under his vest. Perhaps he would never get there! Perhaps he was done for! "Oh, no--I can't quit before--I get to--you, Captain!" he muttered as he fell again. "You're waiting--where I told you to wait! I've got to--get--there!" Of only one thing in this borderland between consciousness and insensibility was he certain--the Captain was waiting. The Captain was waiting! If he could get that far-- It was the climax of all things. To reach his horse; to touch him; to put his arms about those ankles as he fell and hold them close; to answer trust with trust. For through all this the Captain had waited! The shack where he had left the horse swam before his eyes. He heard the breath making sounds in his throat as he crawled on toward it, counting each hand-breadth traveled an achievement. He tried to call out to the horse, but the words clogged and he could not make his voice carry. "Just a moment, boy!" he whispered. "Only--a moment longer--then you won't have--to wait!" He was conscious again that his pursuers fired from behind. It was moonlight once more, and they could see him as he reeled on toward the shack. He sprawled again as his foot met a stone, and the guns ceased to crash. But VB did not think on this more than that instant. He found no comfort in the cessation of firing. For him, only one attainable object remained in life. He wanted to be with the thing of which he was certain, away from all else--to know a faith was justified; to sense once again stability! His hand struck rough wood. He strained his eyes to make out the tumble-down structure rising above him. "Captain!" he called, forcing his voice up from a whisper. "Come--boy, I'm--ready--to go--home!" Clinging to the logs, he raised himself to his feet and swayed in through the door. "Captain," he muttered, closing his eyes almost contentedly and waiting. "Captain?" He started forward in alarm, a concern mounting through his torture and dimming his sensibilities. "Captain--are you--here?" He stumbled forward, arms outstretched in the darkness, feeling about the space. He ran into a wall; turned, met another. "Captain!" he cried, his voice mounting to a ranting cry. The Captain was gone! Reason for keeping on slipped from VB's mind. He needed air, so his reflexes carried him through the doorway again, out of the place where he had left the stallion, out of the place where his trust had been betrayed. He stumbled, recovered his balance, plunged on out into the moonlight, into the brush, sobbing heavily. His knees failed. He crashed down, face plowing into cool soil. "Captain"! he moaned. "Oh, boy--I didn't think--_you_ would--fail-- No wonder--I couldn't keep--going--" He did not hear the running feet, did not know they rolled him over, Rhues with his gun upraised. "I got him, th' ----" he muttered. "Then let's get out--_pronto_!" Twenty minutes later a man with a lantern stepped out of the shack in which the Captain had stood. Two others were with him. "Yes, he left his horse there, all right," the man with the light muttered. "He got to him an' got away. Nobody else could lead that horse off. He couldn't 'a' been hard hit or he couldn't 'a' got up." CHAPTER XXII Tables Turn; and Turn Again A young chap from the East who was in Clear River County because of his lungs named her Delilah when she was only a little girl--Delilah Gomez. She cooked now for the Double Six Ranch, the buildings of which clustered within a stone's throw of the Ranger post office. And that night as she sat looking from her window she thought, as she did much of the time, about the smiling Julio with his guitar--the handsome fellow who lived with Señor Rhues and did no work, but wore such fine chaps and kerchiefs! She sighed, then started to her feet as she saw him come through the gate and up the path, and hastened to open the door for him. Julio took off his hat. "It is late," he said, flashing his teeth. "I come to ask you to do something for me, Delilah." "What is it--now--so late?" she asked breathlessly. "In the old house across the road"--he pointed--"is a horse. It is the horse of a friend. A friend, also, of Señor Rhues. He is now in the saloon. He is drunk. Will you take the horse away? To the place of Señor Rhues? And put him in the barn? And be sure to fasten the door so he will not get out?" Delilah was puzzled a moment. "But why," she asked, "why so late?" Julio bowed profoundly again. "We go--Señor Rhues, Señor Matson, and I, Julio, to take our friend away from the saloon. We are busy. Senor Rhues offers this." He pressed a dollar into her palm. And for the dollar and a flash of Julio's teeth, Delilah went forth upon her commission. The three men watched her go. "That devil'd tear a man to pieces," Rhues muttered. "Any woman can handle him, though. Git him locked up, an' th' ---- tenderfoot can't make it away! He'll have to stay an' take what's comin'!" The girl led the Captain down the road, past the Double Six Ranch, on to the cramped little barn behind the cabin where lived Rhues and his two companions. It was not an easy task. The Captain did not want to go. He kept stopping and looking back. But the girl talked to him kindly and stroked his nose and--VB himself had taught him to respect women. This woman talked softly and petted him much, for she remembered the great horse she had seen ridden by the tall young fellow. Besides, the dollar was still in her hand. She led him into the cramped little barn, left him standing and came out, closing the doors behind her. Then she set out for home, clasping the dollar and thinking of Julio's smile. The first shot attracted her. The second alarmed, and those that followed terrified the girl. She ran from the road and hovered in the shadow of a huge bowlder, watching fearfully, uttering little moans of fright. She heard everything. Some men ran past her in the direction of Rhues's cabin, and she thought one of them must be Julio. But she was too frightened to stir, to try to determine; too frightened to do anything but make for her own home. The girl moved stealthily through the night, facing the moon that swung low, unclouded again, making all radiant. She wanted to run for home, where she could hide under blankets, but caution and fear held her to a walk. She did not cry out when she stumbled over the body; merely cowered, holding both hands over her lips. For a long time she stood by it, looking down, not daring to stoop, not daring to go away. Then the hand that sprawled on the dirt raised itself fell back; the lips parted, a moan escaped, and the head rolled from one side to the other. The fear of dead things that had been on her passed. She saw only a human being who was hurt. She dropped to her knees and took the head in her lap. "Oh, _por Dios_! It is the _señor_ who rode the horse!" she muttered, and looked quickly over her shoulder at the Rhues cabin. "They left him; they thought he was dead," she went on aloud. "They should know; he should be with them. They were going for him when the shooting began!" She looked closer into VB's face and he moaned again. His eyes opened. The girl asked a sharp question in Spanish. "Is the _señor_ much hurt?" she repeated in the language he understood. "Oh, Captain!" he moaned. "Why? Why did you--quit?" She lifted him up then and he struggled sluggishly to help himself. Once he muttered: "Oh, Gail! It hurts so!" She strained to the limits of her lithe strength until she had him on his feet. Then she drew one of his arms about her neck, bracing herself to support his lagging weight. "Come," she said comfortingly. "We will go--to them." No light showed from the Rhues cabin, but the girl was sure the men were there, or would come soon. Loyal to Julio for the dollar and the memory of his graciousness, she worked with the heart of a good Samaritan, guiding the unconscious steps of the muttering man toward the little dark blot of houses. It was a floundering progress. Twice in the first few rods the man went down and she was sorely put to get him on his feet again. But the moving about seemed to bring back his strength, and gradually he became better able to help himself. They crossed the road and passed through the gap in the fence by the cabin. VB kept muttering wildly, calling the girl Gail, calling for the Captain in a plaintive voice. "There they are now! See the light?" she whispered. "It is not much. They have covered the window. Yes." "What?" VB asked, drawing a hand across his eyes. She repeated her assertion that the men were in the cabin and he halted, refusing drunkenly to go on. "No," he said, shaking his head. "I'm unarmed--they--" But she tugged at him and forced him to go beside her. They progressed slowly, painfully, quietly. There was no sound, except VB's hard breathing, for they trod in dust. They approached the house and the girl put out a hand to help her along with the burden. A thin streak of light came from a window. It seemed to slash deeply into the staggering man, bringing him back to himself. Then a sound, the low, worried nickering of a horse! The Mexican girl felt the arm about her neck tighten and tremble. "The Captain!" VB muttered, looking about wildly. He opened his lips to cry out to the horse as the events of the night poured back into his consciousness, to cry his questioning and his sorrow, to put into words the mourning for a faith, but that cry never came from his throat. The nickering of the stallion and the flood of memory had brought him to a clear understanding of the situation; a sudden glare of light from the abruptly uncovered window before which he and the girl stood provoked an alertness which was abnormally keen, that played with the subjective rather than the more cumbersome objective. He stooped with the quickness of a drop and scuttled into the shadows, cautious, the first law of man athrob. The man who had brushed away the blanket that had screened the window burst into irritated talk. VB recognized him as Matson. Back in the shadows of the room he saw the Mexican standing. A table was close to the window, so close that in crowding behind it Matson had torn down the blanket that had done service as a curtain. A lamp burned on the table, its wick so high that smoke streamed upward through the cracked chimney. And close beside the lamp, eyes glittering, cruel cunning in every line, the flush of anger smearing it, was the face of Rhues! VB, crouching there, saw then that Matson's finger was leveled at Rhues. "It ain't good money!" That was the declaration Matson had made as the blanket slipped down and disclosed the scene. He repeated it, and his voice rose to a snarl. Delilah started to rise but VB jerked her back with a vehemence that shot a new fear through the girl, that made her breathe quickly and loudly. For the first time he turned and looked at the girl, not to discover who this might be that had brought him to the nest of those who sought his life, but to threaten. "You stay here," he whispered sharply. "If you make a sound, I'll--you'll never forget it!" His face was close to hers and he wagged his head to emphasize the warning. Where she had expected to find a friend the Mexican girl realized that she had encountered a foe. Where she had, from the fullness of her heart and for a dollar and the admiration of Julio, sought to help, she knew now that she had wronged. His intensity filled her with this knowledge and sent her shrinking against the wall of the cabin, a hand half raised to her cheek, trembling, wanting to whimper for mercy. "Keep still!" he warned again, and, stretching one hand toward her as though to do sentry duty, ready to throttle any sound, to stay any flight, to bolster his commands, he crept closer to the window. "Why ain't it good?" Rhues was asking in a voice that carried no great conviction, as though he merely stalled for time. VB saw him stretch a bill close to the lamp and Matson lean low beside him. The light fell on the piece of currency, not six feet from VB's fever-bright eyes. He saw that they were inspecting a fifty-dollar bill issued by the Confederate States of America! And Rhues said grudgingly: "Well, if that ain't good, they's only six hunderd 'n all!" Up came the buried memories, struggling through all the welded events in the furnace consciousness of the man who pressed his face so close to the window's crinkly glass. His eyes sought aimlessly for some object that might suggest a solution for the slipping thought he tried to grasp. They found it--found it in a rumpled, coiled contrivance of leather that lay beside the lamp. It was a money belt. The money belt that Kelly, the horse buyer, had worn! Six hundred dollars! And a Confederate States fifty-dollar bill! They were quarreling over the spoils of that chill murder! VB swayed unsteadily as he felt a rage swell in him, a rage that nullified caution. He turned his eyes back to the Mexican girl cringing just out of his reach and moved the extended hand up and down slowly to keep his warning fresh upon her. He wanted time to think, just a moment to determine what action would be most advisable. His heart raced unevenly and he thought the hot edges of his wound were blistering. "That's two hundred apiece, then," Rhues said, and straightened. VB saw that the hand which had dropped the worthless piece of paper held a roll of yellow-backed bills. "Two hundred we all git," he growled. "You git it, Julio gits it, I git it--an' I'm th' party what done th' work!" VB stooped and grasped Delilah roughly by the arm. He held a finger to his lips as he dragged the shaking girl out to where she could see. "Watch!" he commanded, close in her ear. "Watch Rhues--and the others!" Rhues counted slowly, wetting his thumb with hasty movements and dropping bills from the roll to the table top. "Both you"--he looked up to indicate Matson and Julio--"gits 's much 's me, an' I done th' work!" "An' if we're snagged, we stand as good a chanct o' gettin' away as you," Matson remarked, and laughed shortly. Rhues looked up again and narrowed the red lids over his eyes. "You said it!" he snarled. "That's why it's good to keep yer mouths shut! That's why you got to dig out--with me. "If I'm snagged--remember, they's plenty o' stories I could tell about you two--an' I will, too, if I'm snagged 'cause o' you!" He worked his shoulders in awkward gesture. "An' that's why we want our share," Matson growled back. "An' want it quick! We watched th' road; you done th' killin'. We thought it was jus' to settle things with that ----, but it wasn't. It was profitable." He ended with another short laugh. "Well, I said I'd git him, didn't I? An' I did, didn't I? An' if th' first time went wrong it was--profitable, wasn't it?" "Yes, but queek, queeker!" the Mexican broke in. "They might come--now!" "Well, quit snivelin'!" snapped Rhues. "It didn't go as we planned. I had to shoot 'fore I wanted to. But I got him, didn't I?" Julio reached for the pile of bills Rhues shoved toward him; Matson took his; Rhues pocketed the rest. And outside, VB relaxed his hold on the girl's wrist, raising both hands upward and out, fingers stiff and claw-like. Kelly, good-natured, careless, likable, trusting Kelly, had gone out to pay toll to this man's viciousness; had gone because he, VB, would not submit to Rhues's bullying! And now they laughed, and called it a profitable mistake! All his civilized, law-abiding nature rose in its might. All that spirit which demands an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, which makes for statutes and courts and the driving of nations into fixed paths, lifted VB above any caution that the circumstances could have engendered. His whole nature cried out for the justice he had been trained to respect; his single remaining impulse was to make this man Rhues suffer for the act of which there was such ample evidence. He struggled to find a way toward retribution, for in a moment it might be too late. He had no thought beyond the instant, no idea but to possess himself of something more, to make the case stronger for society. He had seen, he had heard, he had the girl beside him, but he wanted more evidence. Matson moved away from the window and as he did so the sash sagged inward. It was a hinged casing! His hands numb from excitement, VB forced his arms against it, shoving stoutly. The force of his effort precipitated his head and shoulders into the room! He had a flash of the three men as they whirled and poised, with oaths, but his mind did not linger on them. His fingers clutched the money belt, drew it to him, and as Rhues dropped a hand to his hip VB staggered backward out of the window, stuffing the money belt inside his shirt, in against the hot wound, and stared about him. For an instant, silence, as Rhues stood, gun drawn, shoulders forward, gazing at the empty window. Then upon them came a shrill, quavering, anxious cry--the call of the Captain. CHAPTER XXIII Life, the Trophy To VB, at the sound of the stallion's neighing, came the realization of his position--weaponless in the midst of men who, now of all times, would shoot to kill! His righteous abhorrence of the murder Rhues had done and in which the others had been conspirators did not lessen. He did not falter in his determination for vengeance; but his thirst for it did not detract one whit from his realization of the situation's difficulties. Seconds were precious. Just a lone instant he poised, looking quickly about, and to his ears came again the cry of the horse, plaintive, worried, appealing. "Captain!" he cried, and started to run. "Captain! You didn't fail! They _brought_ you!" His voice lifted to a shout as he rounded the corner of the house, and the Captain answered. With the horse located, VB stumbled across the short intervening space, one hand to his breast doing the double duty of attempting to still the searing of that wound and hold fast to the money belt. He flung himself at the door of the low little stable, jerked the fastening apart, and, backing in, saw men run from the house, heard them curse sharply, and saw them turn and look, each with his shooting hand raised. VB drew the door shut after him, trembling, thinking swiftly. The Captain nosed him and nickered relief, stepping about in his agitation as though he knew the desperate nature of the corner into which they had been driven. "We've got to get out, boy," VB cried, running his numb hands over the animal's face in caress. "We're up against it, but there's a way out!" It was good to be back. It was good to feel that thick, firm neck again, to have the warm breath of the vital beast on his cheek, to sense his dominating presence--for it did dominate, even in that strained circumstance, and in the stress VB found half hysterical joy and voiced it: "You didn't quit, Captain!" he cried as he felt the cinch hastily. "You didn't quit. They--that woman! She brought you here!" He flung his arms about the stallion's head in a quick, nervous embrace at the cost of a mighty cutting pain across his chest. Then the cautious voice of Rhues, outside and close up to the door, talking lowly and swiftly: "Julio, saddle th' buckskin! Quick! I'll hold him here till we're ready! Then I'll shoot th' ---- down in his tracks! We got to ride, anyhow--nothin' 'll make no difference now!" Raising his voice, Rhues taunted: "Pray, you ----! Yer goin' to cash!" VB pressed his face to a crack and saw Rhues in the moonlight, close up to the door. He also saw another man, Julio, leading a horse from the corral on the run. Two other animals, saddled, stood near. He was cornered, helpless, in their hands--hard hands, that knew no mercy. But he did not give up. His mind worked nimbly, skipping from possibility to possibility, looking, searching for a way out. He reeled to the black horse and felt the animal's breath against the back of his neck. "We're up against it, boy," he whispered. And the voice of Rhues again: "They'll find him to-morrow--with th' belt!" He broke off suddenly, as though the words had set in his mind a new idea. VB did not hear; would not have heeded had his senses registered the words, because an odd apathy had come over him, dulling the pain of his wound, deadening the realization of his danger. He sighed deeply and shook himself and tried to rally, but though a part of him insisted that he gather his faculties and force them to alertness, another tired, lethargic self overbore the warning. Half consciously he pulled the stirrup toward him, put up his foot with an unreal effort, and laboriously drew himself to the saddle. There, he leaned forward on his arms, which were crossed on the Captain's neck, oblivious to all that transpired. But the great stallion was not insensible to the situation. He could not know the danger, but he did know that he had been led into a strange place, shut there and left virtually a prisoner; that his master had burst in upon him atremble with communicable excitement; that strange voices were raised close to him; that men had been running to and fro; that the sounds of struggling horses were coming from out there; that some man was standing on the other side of the door, closer than most men had ever stood to him. He breathed loudly; then stilled that breath to listen, his head moving with frequent, short jerks as he saw objects move past the cracks in the building. He switched his tail about his hindquarters sharply, and backed a step. Another voice called softly to Rhues, and Rhues answered: "Dah! When I rolled him over his holster flopped out of his shirt, empty. He dropped it in th' s'loon. If he'd had a gun he'd done fer us 'n there, wouldn't he?" Then his voice was raised in a sharp command: "Help him, Julio! Hang on to his ear an' he'll stand. _Pronto!_" Sounds of men grunting, of a horse striving to break from them; a sharp cry. These things--and emanating from a scene taking place outside the Captain's sight! He half wheeled and scrubbed the back wall of the stable with his hip, blowing loudly in fright. He stamped a forefoot impatiently; followed that by a brisk, nervous pawing. He tossed his head and chewed his bit briskly; then shook his head and blew loudly again. He shied violently as a man ran past the door, wheeled, crashed into the wall again and, crouching, quivered violently. VB moaned with pain. When the horse under him had shied the boy had pushed himself erect in the saddle and the effort tore at the wound in his chest. The pain roused him, and as the Captain again wheeled, frantic to find a way out of this pen, VB's heels clapped inward to retain his seat, the spurs drove home, and with a whimper the horse reared to his hind legs, lunged forward, and the front hoofs, shooting out, crashed squarely against the closed door! Under the force of the blow the door swept outward, screaming on its rusty hinges. A third of the way open it struck resistance, quivered, seemed to hesitate, then continued on its arc. A surprised, muffled shout, the sound of a body striking ground, a shot, its stream of fire spitting toward the night sky. Then the vicious smiting of hoofs as the Captain, bearing his witless rider, swung in a short circle and made for the river. Rhues, caught and knocked flat by the bursting open of the door, was perhaps a half-dozen seconds in getting to his feet. He came up shooting, a stream of leaden missiles shrieking aimlessly off into space. Julio and Matson, busy with the refractory buckskin, heard the crash and creak of the swinging door, heard the shout, heard the shot; they turned to see the black stallion sweep from the little building and swirl past them, ears back, teeth gleaming, and bearing to the north. Still clinging to the buckskin's head, the Mexican drew his gun; Matson, utterly bewildered, fearful of impending consequences, gave the cinch a final tug, but before Julio could fire the water of the river was thrown in radiant spray as the Captain floundered into midstream with VB low on his neck. Then Rhues was on them, putting into choking words the vileness of his heart. He did not explain beyond: "Th' ---- horse! Th' door got me!" He seized the cheek strap of the buckskin's bridle and swung up, while the others watched the horse running out into the moonlit river. The pony reared and pivoted on his hind legs. "Git on yer hosses!" Rhues screeched, yanking at the bit. "He can't git away, with his hoss run down once to-night! An' if we let him--we swing!" Goaded by that terror they obeyed, hanging spurs in their horses' flanks before they found stirrups, and the trio whirled down to the water. "He's goin' home!" Rhues cried above the splashing. "That's our way out; we'll git him as we go 'long! We'll ride him down; he ain't got a gun! An' they'll find him out yonder with th' money belt on him! We--" He broke short with a laugh. "We could claim th' reward! Two fifty, dead 'r alive!" Matson snarled something. Then, as their horses struggled up the far bank of the stream, completed it: "---- with th' reward! What we want's a get-away!" "We're on our way now," growled Rhues, and lashed his pony viciously with the ends of his bridle reins. Knee to knee they raced, the ponies stretching their heads far out in efforts to cover that light ribbon of road which clove the cloudlike sage brush and ate up the distance between their position and that scudding blur ahead. Each had his gun drawn and held high in the right hand ready for use; each, with eyes only for that before them, with minds only for speed--and quick speculation on what might happen should they fail. The creak of leather, the sharp batter of hoofs, the rattle of pebbles as they were thrown out against the rocks, the excited breathing of horses: A race, with human life the trophy! And VB, looking back, saw. With set teeth he leaned still lower over the Captain's neck in spite of the raging the posture set up in his torn breast. No will of his had directed the stallion in that flight northward. His unexpected dash through the barn door, the quick recognition of the point they had scored, the sharp pang which came when VB realized the fact that the horse's, break for home had cut him off from help that might have remained in Ranger, left the wounded man in a swirl of confused impressions. Behind all the jumble was the big urge to reach that place which had been the only true haven of his experience. He felt a glimmer of solace when he sensed that he was going home which quite neutralized the terror that the glance at those oncoming riders provoked. The comfort inculcated by the idea grew into clear thinking; from there on into the status of an obsession. He was going home! He was on the way, with that mighty beast under him! He raised more of his weight to the stirrups and laid a reassuring hand on the snapping shoulder of his horse. And on his trail rode the merciless three, their eyes following the bending course of the road, hat-brims now blown back against the crowns, now down over their eyes in the rush through the night. Rhues rode a quarter of a length ahead of the others, and his automatic was raised higher than were their gun-hands. Now and then one of the trio spoke sharply to his horse and grunted as he raked with a spur, but for the greater part of the time they did not lift their voices above the thunder of the race. They knew what must happen; they held their own, and waited! "Go, boy, go!" whispered VB. "We'll run their legs off; they'll never get in range!" The Captain held an attentive ear backward a moment, then shot it forward, watching the road, holding his rolling, space-eating stride. VB turned his head and again looked back. They were still there! No nearer--but he had not shaken them off. Two, perhaps three, miles had been covered and they hung by him, just within sight, just beyond that point where they might fire with an even chance of certainty. He pressed his arm against his burning breast, crowding the treasured money belt tighter against the wound. Somehow, it seemed to dull the torment, and for minutes he held the pressure constant, still lifted to supreme heights of endeavor and ability to withstand suffering by the rage that had welled up from his depths as he stood back in the shadow of the cabin and had the suspicion of how and why Kelly had met death become certainty. Another mile, and he turned to look back again. They still hung there, making a blur in the moonlight, fanciful, half floating, but he knew they were real, knew that they hammered their way through the night with lust for his life! "Captain!" he cried, apprehension rising. "Go it, boy; go it!" He pressed a spur lightly against his side and felt the great beast quiver between strides. The pace quickened a trifle, but VB saw that the ears were no longer held steadily to the fore, that the head ducked with each leap forward as he had never seen it duck before. And as the thought with its killing remorse thundered into his intelligence, VB sat erect in the saddle with a gasp and a movement which staggered the running animal that bore him. The Captain's strength had been drained! For twenty strides VB sat there, inert, a dead weight, while grief came into his throat, into his vision, deadening his mind. In all that melodrama which began when he stared through the saloon door and saw Rhues standing in the moonlight, gun ready, the reason for his presence in Ranger, the history of the earlier night, had been obliterated for the time being. Now, as he felt the beast under him labor, heard his heavy breathing, saw the froth on his lips, it all came back to Young VB. "Oh, Captain!" he wailed, leaning forward again, eyes burning, throat choking. And for a long time he rode as though unable to do else but hold his position over the fork of the saddle. He was stunned, beaten down by poignant remorse. The Captain had made the long ride from Jed's to Ranger at a killing pace. VB remembered acutely now that the stallion had staggered as he emerged from Clear River and came into view of the saloon lights. And he had been there how long? An hour of poker, perhaps; an hour more at the outside. Two hours for the horse to regain the strength that had been taken from him in that cruel ride--a ride taken to satisfy the viciousness which made VB a man uncertain of himself! The Captain had been wasted! He had gone, as had VB's heart and mind, to be a sacrifice for hideous gods! In an hour of weakness he had been offered, had been given gladly, and without thought of his value! For had not VB gloried in that ride to Ranger? Had it not been the end of all things for him? An end for which he was thankful? Had it not been all conscious, witting, planned? It had--and it had not been worth the candle! The boy moaned aloud and wound his fingers in the flapping mane. "Captain!" he cried. "It was all wrong--all false! I threw you away an hour ago, and now--you're _life_ to me! Oh, boy, will you forgive? Can you?" No fear of death tapped the wells of his grief. There was only sorrow for his wasting of that great animal, that splendid spirit, that clean strength! After a moment he sobbed: "You can't do anything else but go on, boy! You're that sort! You'll go, then I'll go; anyhow, it will be together!" And the great beast, blowing froth from his lips, struggled on, while from behind came the sounds of other running horses--perhaps a trifle nearer. CHAPTER XXIV Victory The road writhed on through the sage brush sixteen miles from Ranger before it branched. Then to the right ran the S Bar S route, while straight on it headed into Jed's ranch, and the left-hand course, shooting away from the others behind a long, rocky point, followed Sand Creek up to the cluster of buildings which marked the domicile of Dick Worth. It was more than halfway. The Captain, now trotting heavily, now breaking once more into a floundering gallop, passed the first fork, that leading toward Worth's. With a gulp of relief VB saw that the moon hung low in the west--so low that the road home would be in the shadow of the point, which seemed to come down purposely to split the highway. He might then find refuge in darkness somewhere. He must have refuge! At the tenth mile he had suspected, now he knew, that it would be impossible to stand off his pursuers clear to the ranch, and there were no habitations between him and Jed's. "They haven't gained on you, boy!" he cried as he made out the distinct outlines of the point. "They're right where they were at the start! No other horse in the world could have done it; not even you should be asked to do it--but--but--" He choked back the sob that fought to come. He knew he must concentrate his last energy, now. If he came through there would be time to think of his crime against the Captain! But now-- Futures depend on lives. His life dangled in the balance, and he wanted it, as men can want life only when they feel it slipping. Back there three men raked the streaming sides of their ponies with vicious spurs. "He can't make it!" Rhues swore. "Th' black's quittin' now! If he gits away, what chance we got? We got to git him! It'll give us th' last chance!" "We're killin' our horses," growled Matson. And Julio, a length behind, flogged his pinto mercilessly. No craving for VB's life prompted Rhues now. He must go on for the sake of his own safety. He and those other two had all to gain and nothing to lose. If they could drop the man ahead it would be possible to skirt the ranches, catch fresh horses, and make on toward Wyoming. But let VB gain shelter with Jed or any one else, and a posse would be on their trail before they could be beyond reach. No, there could be no turning back! They had made their bet; now they must back it with the whole stack. And before them--that blot in the moonlight--a wounded, suffering man cried aloud to the horse that moved so heavily under him. "Make it to the point, Captain!" he begged. "Just there! It'll be dark! Only a little faster, boy!" The stallion grunted under the stress of his effort, moving for the moment with less uncertainty, with a jot more speed. They crawled up to the point and followed the bend of the road as it led into the dimness of the gulch. Across the way, far to the right, moonlight fell on the cliffs, but where the road hung close to the rise at the left all was in shadow. To VB, entering the murk was like plunging from the heat of glaring day to the cool of a forest. The men behind him would be forced to come twice as close before they could make firing effective. Then, when he reached the ranch-- He threw out an arm in a gesture of utter hopelessness. Reach the ranch? He laughed aloud, mocking his own guilelessness. He had come only a little more than half the distance now, and Captain could scarcely be held at a trot. Three miles, possibly five, he might last, and then his rider would have to face his pursuers with empty hands. His was the very epitome of despair. A weaker man would have quit then, would have let the stallion flounder to his finish, would have waited submissively for Rhues to come and shoot him down. But VB possessed the strength of his desperation. Rhues might get him now, as he had tried to get him twice before, but he would get him by fighting. Not wholly for himself did the boy think, but for the likable, friendly Kelly, who had died there in his blankets without warning. If he could rid men of the menace which Rhues represented he would have done service, and the life of those last months had implanted within him the will to be of use--though, a few hours back, he might have thought it all a delusion. So VB was alert with the acute alertness of mind which is given to humans when forced to fight to preserve life--when everything, the buried subconscious impulses, the forgotten, tucked-away memories, are in the fore, crying to help. Abandoning hope of reaching Jed's, he turned all his physical force, even, into the mental effort to seek a way out; fought his way to clarified thought, fought his way into logic. He could not go on much longer; there was no such thing as turning back, for he could hear them, nearer now! He could hear the click of pebbles as his pursuers' horses sent them scattering, and a pebble click will not travel far. Ahead--weakening muscles; behind--guns ready; to the right--moonlight; to the left-- The bridle rein drew across the Captain's lathered neck. The big beast swung to the left, out of the road, crashed through the brush, and lunged against the rise of rocks. The horse seemed to sense the fact that this was the one remaining chance, the last possibility left in their bag of tricks. He picked his way up among the ragged bowlders and spiked brush with a quickness of movement that told of the breaking through into those reservoirs of strength which are held in man and beast until a last hope is found. VB went suddenly faint. The loss of blood, the pain, the stress of nervous thought, the knowing that his full hand was on the table, caused him to reel dizzily in the saddle. He made no pretense of guiding the Captain. He merely sagged forward and felt the horse lunge and plunge and climb with him, heard the rasping breath that seemed to come from a torn throat. Below and behind, the trailers swept from moonlight into shadow, horses wallowing as though that hard road were in deep mud, so great was the race that the stallion, spent though he might be, had given them. Rhues was ahead, revolver held higher than before, Matson's pony at his flank and Julio a dozen lengths behind. Bridle reins, knotted, hung loosely on their horses' necks; the three left hands rose and fell and quirts swished viciously through the night air. "We got to close in!" Rhues cried. "We'll have him 'n a mile!" And he called down on the heads of the horses awful imprecations for their weakness. On into the darkness they stormed, Julio trailing. And when Rhues had passed by fifty yards the point where the Captain had turned to take the steep climb the Mexican opened his throat in a cry, half of fright, half of exultation. The Captain, almost at the end of his climb, leaping from rise to rise, had missed his footing. The soft earth slid as he jumped for a ledge of rock, and the front feet, coming down on the smooth surface in frantic clawing to prevent a fall, sent fire streaming from their shoes. In the darkness Julio had seen the orange sparks. At his cry the others set their ponies back on haunches and, following the Mexican, who now led, cursing VB and their weakening mounts, they commenced the climb. VB knew. The flash from the stallion's feet had roused him; he heard the shout; he knew what must follow. He gave no heed to the bullet which bored the air above him as he was silhouetted for the instant against moonlit space before he commenced the drop to the road leading up Sand Creek. Where now? With a sigh which ended in a quick choking, as though he were through, ready to give up this ghost of a chance, ready to quit struggling on, the Captain dropped from the last little rim and turned into the road. Not on ahead--into that void where they could ride him down. Not back toward Ranger, for it was impossibly far. Where then? What was there? Sand Creek! And up Sand Creek was Dick Worth's! VB caught his breath in a sob. It was the one goal open to him, though the odds were crushing. He pressed the money belt tightly. Dick Worth was the man who should have that--Dick Worth, deputy sheriff! He lifted his voice and cried aloud the name of the deputy. To the north once more the Captain headed, and with no word from VB took up the floundering way again. The boy looked behind and saw the others commence the drop down the moonlit point--saw one of the blurs slump quickly and heard a man scream. Then he leaned low on the stallion and talked to the horse as he would talk to a child who could pilot him to safety. Behind him, along the road, came the blot again, now, however, smaller. VB did not know that it was Julio who had fallen, but he knew with a fierce delight that the Captain, running on his bare spirit, had killed off one of the pursuers! The boy grew hysterical. He chattered to the stallion, knowing nothing of the words he uttered. At times his lips moved but uttered no sound. Continually his hands sought his breast. He knew from the dampness that crept down his side, on down into the trouser leg, that the wound still bled, that his life was running out through the gash. Through the clamoring of his heart a familiar ache came into his throat, and the boy lifted his voice into the night with a rant of rage, of self-denunciation. "Oh, Captain! You were the price!" he moaned. But still he wanted--just one drink! Not to satisfy that craving now, but to keep him alive, a legitimate use for stimulant. The stallion ceased pretense of galloping. Now and then he even dropped from his uncertain trotting to a walk. VB, watching behind, could just make out those other travelers in the light of the low-hanging moon which seemed to balance on the ragged horizon and linger for sight of the finish of this grim drama worked out in the lonely stretches. As the horse stumbled more and more frequently under him VB knew that those who pressed him were coming closer. Then a flash of flame and a bullet spattered itself against a rock ahead and to the right. "They're closer, Captain!" he muttered grimly. "The game's going against us--against you. I'm too much of a burden--too much weight." His mind seized upon the aimless words. The suddenness of his shifting in the saddle made the stallion stagger, for VB's whole weight went into the right stirrup. He drew the other up with fiendish tinges shooting through his breast and tore at the cinch. It came loose. The saddle turned. VB flung his arms about the Captain's neck and kicked it from under him. "Fifty pounds gone!" he muttered triumphantly, and the horse tossed his head, quickening the trot, trying once again the heavy gallop. VB could hear the horse breathing through his mouth. He looked down and saw that the long tongue flopped from the lips with every movement of the fine head. Tears came to his eyes as he caressed the Captain's withers frantically. "Can I do more, boy?" he asked in a strained voice. "Can I do more?" It was as though he pleaded with a dying human. "Yes, I can do more!" he cried a moment later in answer to his own question. "You've given your whole to me; now I'll give you back your freedom, make you as free as you were the day I took you. I'll strip you, boy!" He reached far out along the neck, drawing his weight up on the withers, and loosed the head-stall. The bridle fell into the road and the Captain ran naked! And, as though to show his gratitude, the horse shook his head groggily and reeled on in his crazy progress. A half mile farther on the Captain fell. VB went down heavily and mounted the waiting horse again in a daze--from which he was roused by the fresh gushing on his breast. Another shot from behind--then two close together. Dawn was coming. He looked around vaguely. The moon was slipping away. Perhaps yet it would be in at the finish. The shimmering light of new day was taking from objects their ghostly quality; making them real. The men behind could see VB--and they were firing! The boy said no word to the Captain. He merely clamped his knees tighter and leaned lower on his neck. He had ceased to think, ceased to struggle. His trust, his life, was in the shaking legs of the animal he rode, whose sweat soaked through his clothing to mingle with the blood there. The stallion breathed in great moaning sobs, as though his heart were bursting, as though his lungs were raw and bleeding. He reeled from side to side crazily. Now and then he ran out of the road and floundered blindly back. His head hung low, almost to his knees, and swung from side to side with each step, and at intervals he raised it as though it were a great weight, to gasp--and to sob! From behind, bullets. Rhues and Matson fired grimly. They had ceased to lash their ponies, for it was useless. The beasts were beyond giving better service in return for punishment. Their sides dripped blood, but they were beyond suffering. Handicapped as he had been, the Captain had held them off, almost stride for stride. Better light now, but their shooting could not hope to find a mark except through chance. They cursed in glad snarls as they saw the stallion reel, sink to his knees; then snarled again as they saw him recover and go on at his drunken trot. Before VB's eyes floated a blotch of color. It was golden, a diffused light that comforted him; that, for some incomprehensible reason, was soothing to the senses. It eased the wound, too, and put new strength in his heart so that he could feel the warm blood seeping slowly into his numb arms and hands and fingers. He smiled foolishly and hugged the Captain's neck as the horse reeled along. Oh, it was a glorious color! He remembered the day he had seen a little patch of it scudding along the roadway in the sunshine. Why, it had seemed like concentrated sunshine itself. "Gail," he murmured. "It was you--I didn't want to put--that mark--on you!" The nature of that color became clear to him and he roused himself. It was a light--a light in a window--the window of a ranch house--Dick Worth's ranch house! Bullets had ceased to zip and sing and spatter. He did not turn to see what had become of his pursuers, for he was capable of only one thought at a time. "Dick Worth! Dick Worth!" he screamed. Then he looked behind. Away to the left he saw two riders pushing through the dawn, détouring. And he laughed, almost gayly. Another blotch of light, a bigger one, showed in the young day. It was an opened door, and a deep chest gave forth an answer to his cry. Dick Worth stepped from the threshold of his home and ran to the gate to see better this crazy figure which lurched toward him. It was a man on foot, hatless, his face gray like the sky above, hair tousled, eyes glowing red. He stumbled to the fence and leaned there for support, holding something forward, something limp and bloodstained. "Dick--it's Kelly's money belt--Rhues--he killed him-- He shot me--he's got the money--on him--he's swinging off west--two of 'em-- Their horses are--all in-- He--he shot Kelly because--I wouldn't take--a drink--he--and I need--a--drink--" He slumped down against the fence. After an uncertain age VB swam back from that mental vacuity to reality. He saw, first, that the Captain was beside him, standing there breathing loudly, eyes closed, sobbing low at every heave of his lungs. A quavering moan made its way to the boy's throat and he moved over, reaching out groping arms for the stallion's lowered head. "Captain!" he moaned. "Oh, boy--it was our last ride--I can never--ask you to carry me--again." He hugged the face closer to his. Then he heard a man's voice saying: "Here, VB, take this--it'll brace you up!" He turned his face slowly, for the strength that remained was far from certain. His wound was on fire, every nerve of his body laid bare. His will to do began and ended with wanting to hold that horse's head close. He was as a child, stripped of every effect that the experiences of his life could have had. He was weak, broken, unwittingly searching for a way back to strength. He turned his head halfway and beheld the man stooping beside him who held in his hands a bottle, uncorked, and from it came a strong odor. The boy dilated his nostrils and drew great breaths laden with the fumes of the stuff. A new life came into his eyes. They shone, they sparkled. Activity came to those bare nerves, and they raised their demands. He opened his mouth and let the odor he inhaled play across that place in his throat. The smell went on out through his arteries, through his veins, along the nerves to the ends of his being, to the core of his soul! He was down, down in the depths, his very ego crying for the stimulant, for something to help it come back. He coaxed along that yearning, let it rise to its fullest. Then he raised his eyes to meet the concerned gaze of the other man. And the man saw in those eyes a look that made him sway back, that made him open his lips in surprise. "To hell with that stuff!" the boy screamed. "To hell with it! To hell--_to hell!_ It belongs there! It--it killed the Captain!" Tears came with the sobs, and strength to the arms that held the stallion's head; strength that surged through his entire body, stilling those nerves, throttling the crying of his throat. For VB had gone down to his test, his real ordeal, and had found himself not wanting. CHAPTER XXV "The Light!" Jed Avery sat alone. It was night, a moonlight night in Colorado, the whole world bathed in a cold radiance that conduces to dreams and fantasies. But as he sat alone Jed's mind wove no light reveries. Far from it, indeed. He was sodden in spirit, weakened in nerve. He rested his body on the edge of a chair seat and leaned far forward, elbows on his knees. His fingers twined continually, and on occasion one fist hammered the palm of the other hand. "You old fool!" he whispered. "You old fool! Now, if he's gone--" For twenty-four hours he had not dared frame the words. He lifted his eyes to the window, and against the moonlight stood a bottle, its outlines distorted by incrustings of tallow. No candle was in its neck. There was only the bottle. After a time the old man got up and paced the floor, three steps each way from the splotch of moonlight that came through the window. He had been walking that way for a night and a day--and now it was another night. While it was daylight he had walked outside, eyes ever on the road, hoping, fearing. And no one had come! Now, as the night wore on and the boy did not return, Jed's condition bordered on distraction. His pacing became faster and more fast. He lengthened the limits of his walk to those of the room, and finally in desperation jerked open the door to walk outside. But he did not leave the threshold. Two figures, a man and a horse, coming up the road held him as though robbed of the will to move. He stood and stared, breathing irregularly. The man, who walked ahead, made his way slowly toward the gate. He was followed by the horse, followed as a dog might follow, for not so much as a strap was on the animal. The man's movements were painful, those of the horse deliberate. Jed knew both those figures too well to be mistaken, even though his sight dimmed. He wanted to cry out, but dared not. One question alone crowded to get past his teeth. The answer would mean supremest joy or sorrow. Fear of the latter held him mute. The man unfastened the gate and let it swing open. "Come, boy," he said gently, and the big animal stepped inside. With the same slow movements again, the man closed the bars. Jed stood silent. A coyote high on the hills lifted his voice in a thin yapping, and the sound made Old VB shiver. The boy came slowly toward the house. He saw Jed, but gave no sign, nor did the old man move. He stood there, eyes on the other in a misted stare, and VB stopped before him, putting a hand against the wall for support. Then came the question, popping its way through unwilling, tight lips: "Shall I light th' candle, Young VB?" His voice was shrill, strained, vibrant with anxiety. But VB did not answer--merely lifted a hand to his hot head. "VB, when you left last night th' candle dropped down into th' bottle an' went out. I didn't dare light a new one to-night--" His voice broke, and he paused a moment. "I didn't dare light it until I knowed. I've been settin' in th' dark here, thinkin' things--tryin' not to think dark things." One hand went halfway to his mouth in fear as he waited for the other to answer. VB put a hand on Jed's shoulder, and the old man clamped his cold fingers over it desperately. "Yes, Jed--light it," he said huskily. Then he raised his head and looked at the old man with a half smile. "Light it, Jed. Let it burn on and on, just for the sake of being bright. But we--we don't need it any more. Not for the old reason, Jed." The cold hand twitched as it gripped the hot one. "Not for the old reason, Jed," VB continued. "There's a bigger, better, truer light burning now. It won't slip into the bottle; it can't be blown out. It didn't waver when the true crisis came. It'll always burn; it won't slip down into the bottle. It's--it's the real thing." He staggered forward, and Jed caught him, sobbing like a woman, a happy woman. They had the whole story over then by the light of a fresh candle. When Jed started forward with a cry at the recital of the shooting VB pushed him off. "It's only a flesh wound; it don't matter--much. Mrs. Worth dressed it, and I'm all right. It's the Captain I want to tell about--the Captain, Jed!" And he told it all, in short, choking sentences, stripping his soul naked for the little rancher. He did not spare himself, not one lone lash. He ended, crushed and bleeding before the eyes of his friend. After a pause he straightened back in his chair, the new fire in his eyes, the fire the man at Worth's had seen when he offered drink. "But I've got to make it up to the Captain now," he said with a wild little laugh. "I've got to go on. He gave me the chance. He took me into blackness, into the test I needed, and brought me back to light. I've got to be a man, Jed--a man--" And throughout the night Jed Avery tended the wound and watched and muttered--with joy in his heart. Morning came, with quieted nerves for VB. He lay in the bunk, weak, immobile. Jed came in from tending the horses. "He didn't bleed, did he, VB?" "No." "It ain't what you thought, sonny. It ain't bad. Give him a rest an' he'll be better'n ever. Why, he's out there now, head up, whisperin' for you! You can't break a spirit like his unless you tear his vitals out!" VB smiled, and the smile swelled to a laugh. "Oh, Jed, it makes me so happy! But it won't be as it was. I can never let him carry me again." The old man turned on the boy a puzzled look. "What you goin' to do with him, VB--turn him loose again?" "Not that, Jed; he wouldn't be happy. He'll never carry me again, but perhaps--perhaps he could carry a light rider--a girl--a woman." And from Jed: "Oh-o-o-o!" An interval of silence. "That is," muttered VB, "if she'll take him, and--" "Would you want him away from you?" the old man insisted. "Oh, I hope it won't be that, Jed! I hope not--but I want her to-- You understand. Jed? You understand?" The other nodded his head, a look of grave tenderness in the old eyes. "Then--then, Jed, I'm all right. I can get along alone. Would you mind riding over and--asking her if she'd come-- "You see, Jed, I know now. I didn't before--I'm sure it's worth the candle--and there'll be no more darkness; no lasting night for her if--" Jed walked slowly out into the other room and picked up his spurs. VB heard him strap them on, heard his boots stamp across the floor and stop. "I'd go, VB, but it ain't necessary." The boy raised his head, and to his ears came the bellow of a high-powered motor, the sound growing more distinct with each passing second. "Lord, how that woman's drivin'!" Jed cried. "Lordy!" And he ran from the house. The bellow of the motor rose to a sound like batteries of Gatlings in action; then came the wail of brakes. With a pulsing thrill VB heard her voice upraised--with such a thrill that he did not catch the dread in her tone as she questioned Jed. She came to him swiftly, eyes dimmed with tears, without words, and knelt by his bunk, hands clasped about his head. For many minutes they were so, VB gripping her fine, firm forearms. Then she raised her face high. "And you wouldn't let me help?" she asked querulously. He looked at her long and soberly, and took both her hands in his. "It was the one place you couldn't help," he muttered. "It was that sort--my love, I mean. I had to know; had to know that I wouldn't put a hateful mark on you by loving. I had to know that. Don't you see?" She moved closer and came between him and the sunshine that poured through the open door. The glorious light was caught by her hair and thrown, it seemed, to the veriest corners of the dingy little room. "The light!" he cried. She settled against him, her lips on his, and clung so. From outside came the shrilling call of the Captain. VB crushed her closer. CHAPTER XXVI To the Victor Up the flagged walk to the house of chill, white stone overlooking the North River went a messenger, and through the imposing front portal he handed a letter, hidden away in a sheaf of others. A modest-appearing letter; indeed, perhaps something less than modest; possibly humble, for its corners were crumpled and its edges frayed. Yet, of all the packages handed him, Daniel Lenox, alone at his breakfast, singled it out for the earliest attention. And what he read was this: Dear Father: In my last letter--written ten years ago, it seems--I promised to tell you my whereabouts when I had achieved certain ends. I now write to tell you that I am at the Thorpe Ranch, one hundred and thirty miles northwest of Colt, Colorado, the nearest railroad point. I can inform you of this now because I have won my fight against the thing which would have stripped me of my manhood. And I want to make clear the point that it was you, father, who showed me the way, who made me realize to what depths I had gone. I am very humble, for I know the powers that rule men. When I left New York there was little in me to interest you, but I am making bold enough to tell you of the greatest thing in my life. I have won the love of a good woman. We are to be married here the twentieth, and some day I will want to bring her East with me. I hope you will want to see her. Your son, Danny. While the hand of the big clock made a quarter circle the man sat inert in his chair; limp, weak in body, spirit, and mind, whipped by the bitterest lashes that human mind can conjure. Then he raised his chin from his breast and rested his head against the back of the chair, while his hands hung loose at his sides. His lips moved. "Hope--you will want to see her," he repeated in a whisper. A pause, and again words: "He wouldn't even ask me--wouldn't dream I wanted to--be there!" An old man, you would have said, old and broken. The snap, the precision that had been his outstanding characteristic, was gone. But not for long. The change came before the whispering had well died; the lines of purpose, of decision, returned to his face, his arms ceased to hang limp, the look in the eyes--none the less warm--became definite, focused. Suddenly Daniel Lenox sat erect and raised the letter to the light once more. "The twentieth!" he muttered. "And this is--" Another train fumed at the distances, left cities behind, and crawled on across prairies to mountain ranges. As it progressed, dispatchers, one after another, sat farther forward in their chairs and the alert keenness of their expression grew a trifle sharper. For the Lenox Special, New York to Colt, Colorado, invited disaster with every mile of its frantic rush across country. Freights, passenger trains, even the widely advertised limiteds, edged off the tracks to let it shriek on unhampered. In the swaying private car sat the man who had caused all this disarray of otherwise neat schedules. At regular, short intervals his hand traveled to watch-pocket and his blue eyes scrutinized the dial of his timepiece as though to detect a lie in the sharp, frank characters. In the other hand, much of the time, were held sheets of limp paper. They had been folded and smoothed out again so many times and, though he was an old man and one who thought mostly in figures, fondled so much, that the ink on them was all but obliterated in places. He read and reread what was written there as the train tore over the miles, and as he read the great warmth came back to his eyes. With it, at times, a fear came. When fear was there, he tugged at his watch again. Up grades, through cañons, the special roared its way. At every stop telegrams zitted ahead, and hours before the train was due an automobile waited by the depot platform at Colt. Daniel Lenox heeded not the enthusiastic train-men who held watches and calculated the broken record as brakes screamed down and the race by rail ended. Bag in hand, he strode across the cinder platform and entered the waiting automobile, without a single glance for the group that looked at him wonderingly. "You know the way to the Thorpe Ranch?" he asked the driver of the car. "Like a book!" "Can you drive all night?" "I can." "Good! We must be there as early to-morrow as possible." And ten minutes before noon the next day the heavy-eyed driver threw out his clutch and slowed the car to a stop before the S Bar S ranch house. Saddled horses were there, a score of them standing with bridle reins down. Sounds of lifted voices came from the house, quickly lulled as an exclamation turned attention on the arrival. From the ample door came a figure--tall and lean, well poised, shoulders square, feet firm on the ground. Pale, true, but surely returning strength was evidenced in his very bearing. VB's lips moved. His father, halfway to him, stopped. "Dad!" "Am I on time?" queried the older man. "_Dad!_" With a cry the boy was up on him, grasping both hands in his. "I didn't--dare hope you'd want--Dad, it makes me so--" The other looked almost fiercely into the boy's face, clinging to the hands that clutched his, shaking them tremblingly now and then. The penetrating blue eyes searched out every line in the boy's countenance, and the look in them grew to be such as VB had never seen before. "Did you think I'd stay back there in New York and let you do all this alone? Did you think I wouldn't come on, in time if I could, and tell you how ashamed I am to have ever doubted you, my own blood, how mean a thing was that which I thought was faith?" His gaze went from VB to Gail, coming toward him clad all in simple white, flushing slightly as she extended her hand. He turned to her, took the hand, and looked deep into her big eyes. He tried to speak, but words would not come and he shook his head to drive back the choking emotion. "Bless you!" he finally muttered. "Bless you both. You're a man--Danny. And you--" His voice failed again and he could only remain mute, stroking the girl's hand. Then Jed came up and greeted the newcomer silently, a bit grimly, as though he had just forgiven him something. "Come over here, you three," said VB, and led them over to where two horses stood together. One was the bay the boy had ridden that afternoon he charged down the ridge to make the great stallion his, and beside him, towering, head up, alert, regally self-conscious, stood the Captain. The bay bore VB's saddle. On the Captain's back perched one of smaller tree, silver mounted and hand tooled, with stirrups that were much too short for a man. They looked the great horse over silently, moving about him slowly, and Danny pointed out his fine physical qualities to his father. A rattling of wheels attracted them and they looked up to see a team of free-stepping horses swing toward them, drawing a light buckboard. The vehicle stopped and from it stepped a man in the clothing of a clergyman. "He's here, VB," Jed muttered. "To be sure, an' he's got his rope down, too. Th' iron's hot; th' corral gate's open and he's goin' to head you in. 'T ain't often you see such a pair of high-strung critters goin' in so plumb docile, Mister Lenox!" And from the corner of his eye he saw the man beside him wipe his hand across his cheek, as though to brush something away. The Captain pawed the ground sharply. Then he lifted his head high, drew a great breath, and peered steadily off toward the distant ridges, eagerly, confidently, as though he knew that much waited--out yonder. 
42266	----	generously made available by Biodiversity Heritage Library.) SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 51 ANTIQUITIES OF THE MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK CLIFF PALACE BY JESSE WALTER FEWKES [Illustration] WASHINGTON GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1911 LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY, _Washington, D. C., May 14, 1910_. SIR: I have the honor to submit the accompanying manuscript, entitled "Antiquities of the Mesa Verde National Park: Cliff Palace," by Dr. Jesse Walter Fewkes, with the recommendation that it be published, subject to your approval, as Bulletin 51 of this Bureau. Yours, very respectfully, F. W. HODGE, _Ethnologist in Charge_. DR. CHARLES D. WALCOTT, _Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution_, _Washington, D. C._ CONTENTS Page Introduction 9 Cliff Palace a type of prehistoric culture 11 Recent history 13 Site of Cliff Palace 20 Prehistoric trails to Cliff Palace 23 General features 23 Destruction by the elements 23 Vandalism 24 Repair of walls 25 Major antiquities 25 General plan of Cliff Palace 26 Terraces and retaining walls 27 Tower quarter 27 Plaza quarter 28 Old quarter 28 Northern quarter 28 Masonry 29 Adobe bricks 30 Plastering 31 Paintings and rock markings 32 Refuse heaps 33 Secular rooms 33 Doors and windows 34 Floors and roofs 35 Fireplaces 36 Living rooms 36 Milling rooms 37 Granaries 38 Crematories 38 Ledge rooms 40 Enumeration of the rooms in Cliff Palace 40 Secular rooms 40 Kivas 48 Kivas of the first type 49 Kiva A 51 Kiva B 52 Kiva C 53 Kiva D 53 Kiva E 53 Kiva F 54 Kiva G 54 Kiva H 55 Kiva I 55 Kiva J 56 Kiva K 57 Kiva L 57 Kiva N 57 Kiva P 58 Kiva Q 58 Kiva S 59 Kiva T 59 Kiva U 60 Kiva V 60 A subtype of kivas (Kiva M) 61 Kivas of the second type 62 Kiva O 63 Kiva R 63 Kiva W 63 Minor antiquities 64 Stone implements 65 Pounding stones 66 Grinding stones 66 Miscellaneous stones 66 Pottery 67 Relations as determined by pottery 70 Symbols on pottery 71 Pottery rests 72 Basketry 72 Sandals 72 Wooden objects 73 Drills 74 Bone implements 74 Turquoise ear pendants and other objects 75 Seeds 75 Textiles 76 Human burials 77 Conclusions 78 ILLUSTRATIONS Page PLATE 1. Cliff Palace, from the Speaker-chief's house to the southern end 9 2. Cliff Palace, from the opposite side of the canyon 11 3. The southern end, after and before repairing 12 4. Central part before repairing 15 5. The round tower, from the north. General view of the ruin, before repairing 16 6. Central part, after repairing 19 7. Southern end, after repairing 20 8. Ground plan 22 9. Main entrance. Southern end, showing repaired terraces 24 10. Tower quarter, after repairing. Terraces at southern end, after repairing 27 11. Tower quarter 29 12. The square tower, before and after repairing 31 13. Details of Cliff Palace 33 14. Square tower, after repairing. Old quarter 34 15. Speaker-chief's house, after repairing 36 16. Northern part, from the Speaker-chief's house to the western end 39 17. Details of kiva A 41 18. Kiva H, before repairing 43 19. Southeastern wall of kiva Q, before repairing 45 20. Axe with original handle 47 21. Stone hatchets 48 22. Stone objects 50 23. Various objects from Cliff Palace 52 24. Food bowls 55 25. Vases and food bowls 56 26. Pottery 58 27. Pitch balls and vase 60 28. Rests for jars 63 29. Basket hopper--side and bottom views 64 30. Sandals 66 31. Sandals 66 32. Sandals 66 33. Wooden objects 73 34. Bone implements 74 35. Bone implements 76 FIG. 1. View down Navaho canyon 21 2. Coil of basket plaque 73 3. Planting sticks 74 4. Woven forehead band 76 [Illustration: PLATE 1 PHOTOGRAPHED BY F. K. VREELAND CLIFF PALACE, FROM THE SPEAKER-CHIEF'S HOUSE TO THE SOUTHERN END] ANTIQUITIES OF THE MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK CLIFF PALACE By JESSE WALTER FEWKES INTRODUCTION In the summer of 1909 the writer was detailed by the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, at the request of the Secretary of the Interior, to continue the excavation and repair of ruins in the Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. This work was placed under his sole charge and continued through the months May to August, inclusive. In that time the writer was able to repair completely this great ruin and to leave it in such condition that tourists and students visiting it may learn much more about cliff-dwellings than was possible before the work was undertaken. The force of laborers, numbering on an average 15 workmen, was from Mancos, Colorado. Many of them had worked on Spruce-tree House during the previous year and had become expert in repairing ruins. By their aid it was possible to accomplish more and at less expense than was expected. It has fallen to the writer to prepare the report on the work which he had the honor to direct, and he is conscious how difficult it is to put it into a form that will adequately express the devotion with which those under him have accomplished their respective tasks. A report on the general results accomplished at Cliff Palace was published by the Secretary of the Interior in 1909; the following account considers in a more detailed way the various scientific phases. The purpose of the present paper is to present a more accurate account of Cliff Palace than was possible before the excavation and repair work was done, and to increase existing knowledge by directing attention to the scientific data revealed by excavations of this largest, most picturesque, and most typical cliff-dwelling in the Southwest. In order to give this account a monographic form there have been introduced the most important descriptions of Cliff Palace previously published. There is also included a description of the few minor antiquities brought to light in the progress of the work. These specimens are now in the United States National Museum, where they form the nucleus of a collection from Cliff Palace. The increasing interest, local and national, in the prehistoric culture of the Southwest and the influence of these antiquities in attracting visitors to localities where they exist, furnish a reason for considering in some detail various other questions of general interest connected with cliff-dwellings that naturally suggest themselves to those interested in the history of man in America. The method of work in this undertaking has been outlined in the report on Spruce-tree House published by the Secretary of the Interior.[1] The primary thought has been to increase the educational value of Cliff Palace by attracting tourists and students of archeology. [Footnote 1: In his Annual Report for 1908. See also _Bulletin 41 of the Bureau of American Ethnology_.] The reader is reminded that from the nature of the work at Cliff Palace very few specimens can be expected from it in the future, and that so far as the minor antiquities are concerned the objective material from this ruin is now all deposited in public museums or in private collections. Additional specimens can be obtained, however, from other ruins near it which will throw light on the culture of Cliff Palace. It is appropriate, therefore, to point out, at the very threshold of our consideration, that a continuation of archeological work in the Mesa Verde National Park is desirable, as it will add to our knowledge of the character of prehistoric life in these canyons. The next work to be undertaken should be the excavation and repair of a Mesa Verde pueblo. The extensive mounds of stone and earth on the promontory west of Cliff Palace have not yet been excavated, and offer attractive possibilities for study and a promise of many specimens. Buried in these mounds there are undoubtedly many rooms, secular and ceremonial, which a season's work could uncover, thus enlarging indirectly our knowledge of the cliff-dwellers and their descendants.[2] [Footnote 2: A few holes that have been dug here and there in these mounds have brought to light sections of walls with good masonry, but no excavations that could be called extensive or scientific have yet been attempted on this site. The excavation of these mounds might reveal a pueblo like Walpi, and a comparison of objects from them with those from Cliff Palace would be important in tracing the relationship of cliff-dwellings and pueblos.] The writer considers it an honor to have been placed in charge of the excavation and repair of Cliff Palace, and takes this occasion to express high appreciation of his indebtedness to both the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and the Secretary of the Interior for their confidence in his judgment in this difficult undertaking. Maj. Hans M. Randolph, superintendent of the Mesa Verde National Park, gave assistance in purchasing the equipment, making out accounts, and in other ways. During the sojourn at Cliff Palace the writer was accompanied by Mr. R. G. Fuller, of the Peabody Museum of Harvard University, a volunteer assistant, who contributed some of the photographs used in the preparation of the plates that accompany this report. The writer is indebted also to Mr. F. K. Vreeland, of Montclair, New Jersey, for several fine photographs of Cliff Palace taken before the repairing was done. [Illustration: PLATE 2 CLIFF PALACE, FROM THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE CANYON] CLIFF PALACE A TYPE OF PREHISTORIC CULTURE In the following pages the walls and other remains of buildings and the objects found in the rooms have been treated from their cultural point of view. Considering ethnology, or culture history, as the comparative study of mental productions of groups of men in different epochs, and cultural archeology as a study of those objects belonging to a time antedating recorded history, there has been sought in Cliff Palace one type of prehistoric American culture, or rather a type of the mental production of a group of men in an environment where, so far as external influences are concerned, caves, mesas, and cliffs are predominant and aridity is a dominant climatic factor. Primarily archeology is a study of the expression of human intelligence, and it must be continually borne in mind that Cliff Palace was once the home of men and women whose minds responded to their surroundings. It is hoped that this monograph will be a contribution to a study of the influence of environment on the material condition of a group of prehistoric people. The condition of culture here brought to light is in part a result of experiences transmitted from one generation to another, but while this heritage of culture is due to environment, intensified by each transmission, there are likewise in it survivals of the culture due to antecedent environments, which have also been preserved by heredity, but has diminished in proportion, pari passu, as the epoch in which they originated is farther and farther removed in time from the environment that created them. These survivals occur mostly in myths and religious cult objects, and are the last to be abandoned when man changes his environment. It is believed that one advantage of a series of monographic descriptions of these ruins is found in the fact that the characteristics of individual ruins being known, more accurate generalizations concerning the entire culture will later be made possible by comparative studies. There is an individuality in Cliff Palace, not only in its architecture but also in a still greater measure in the symbolism of the pottery decoration. These features vary more or less in different ruins, notwithstanding their former inhabitants were of similar culture. These variations are lost in a general description of that culture. The reader is asked to bear in mind that when the repair of Cliff Palace was undertaken the vandalism wrought by those who had dug into it had destroyed much data and greatly reduced the possibility of generalizations on the character of its culture. The ruin had been almost completely rifled of its contents, the specimens removed, and its walls left in a very dilapidated condition. Much of the excavation carried on under the writer's supervision yielded meager scientific results so far as the discovery of specimens was concerned; throughout the summer earth was being dug over that had already been examined and cult objects removed. Had it been possible to have begun work on Cliff Palace just after the ruin was deserted by the aboriginal inhabitants, or, as that was impossible, at least anticipated only by the destruction wrought by the elements, these explorations might have illumined many difficult problems which must forever remain unsolved. The present monograph is the second in a series dealing with the antiquities of the Mesa Verde National Park and opening with the account of the excavation and repair of Spruce-tree House.[3] An exhaustive account of all known antiquities from Cliff Palace is not intended, and no reference is made even to many objects from that ruin now in museums. Discussion of details is not so much aimed at as brevity in the statement of results and a contribution to our knowledge of a typical form of Southwestern culture. Believing that modern Pueblo culture is the direct descendant of that of cliff-dwellers, the writer has not hesitated to make use of ethnology, when possible, in an interpretation of the archeological material. [Footnote 3: _Bulletin 41 of the Bureau of American Ethnology._] Although the name Cliff Palace is not altogether an appropriate one for this ruin, it is now too firmly fixed in the literature of cliff-dwellings to be changed. The term "palace" implies a higher social development than that which existed in this village, which undoubtedly had a house chief similar to the village chief (_kimongwi_) of the Hopi, who occupied that position on account of being the oldest man of the oldest clan; but this ruin is not the remains of a "palace" of such a chief. The population of Cliff Palace was composed of many clans, more or less distinct and independent, which were rapidly being amalgamated by marriage; so we may regard the population as progressing toward a homogeneous community. Cliff Palace was practically a pueblo built in a cave; its population grew from both without and within: new clans from time to time joined those existing, while new births continually augmented the number of inhabitants. There was no water at Cliff Palace[4] when work began, but a good supply was developed in the canyon below the ruin, where there is every reason to believe the former inhabitants had their well. In a neighboring canyon, separated from that in which Cliff Palace is situated by a promontory at the north, there is also a meager seepage of water which was developed incidentally into a considerable supply. In the cliff above this water is a large cave in which was discovered the walls of a kiva of the second type, but the falling of a large block of rock upon it--which occurred subsequent to the construction of this kiva--led to its abandonment. This cave is extensive enough for a cliff-house as large as Cliff Palace; but for this accident it might have developed into a formidable rival of the latter. [Footnote 4: All potable water for camp had to be brought from Spruce-tree House, about 2 miles away.] [Illustration: PLATE 3 PHOTOGRAPHED BY R. G. FULLER THE SOUTHERN END, AFTER AND BEFORE REPAIRING] RECENT HISTORY It is remarkable that this magnificent ruin (pl. 1) so long escaped knowledge of white settlers in the neighboring Montezuma valley. Cliff Palace is not mentioned in early Spanish writings, and, indeed, the first description of it was not published until about 1890. Efforts to learn the name of the white man who discovered Cliff Palace were not rewarded with great success. According to Nordenskiöld it was first seen by Richard Wetherill and Charley Mason on a "December day in 1888," but several residents of the towns of Mancos and Cortez claim to have visited it before that time. One of the first of these visitors was a cattle owner of Mancos, Mr. James Frink, who told the author that he first saw Cliff Palace in 1881, and as several stockmen were with him at that time it is probable that there are others who visited it the same year. We may conclude that Cliff Palace was unknown to scientific men in 1880, and the most we can definitely say is that it was first seen by white men some time in the decade 1880-1890.[5] [Footnote 5: It is generally stated by stockmen and others who claim to have seen Cliff Palace "years ago," that the walls of the buildings were much higher in the early eighties than they are at present.] While there is considerable literature on the cliff-dwellings of the Mesa Verde, individual ruins have not been exhaustively described. Much less has been published on Spruce-tree House than on Cliff Palace, which latter ruin, being the largest, has attracted more attention than any other in the Park. As every cliff-house has its peculiar architectural features it is well in describing these buildings to refer to the ruins by names. This individuality in architecture pertains likewise to specimens, the majority of which in museums unfortunately are labeled merely "Mancos" or "Mesa Verde." A large number of these objects probably came from Spruce-tree House and Cliff Palace, but it is now impossible to determine their exact derivation. The first extended account of Cliff Palace, accompanied with illustrations, which is worthy of special mention, was published by Mr. F. H. Chapin, and so far as priority of publication is concerned he may be regarded as the first to make Cliff Palace known to the scientific world. Almost simultaneously with his article there appeared an account of the ruin by Doctor Birdsall, followed shortly by the superbly illustrated memoir of Baron Gustav Nordenskiöld. All these writers adopt the name Cliff Palace, which apparently was first given to the ruin by Richard Wetherill, one of the claimants for its discovery. Nordenskiöld's work contains practically all that was known about Cliff Palace up to the beginning of the summer's field work herein described. Mr. Chapin[6] thus referred to Cliff Palace in a paper read before The Appalachian Mountain Club on February 13, 1890: [Footnote 6: _Appalachia_, VI, 28-30, May, 1890, Boston, 1892.] After a long ride we reached a camping-ground at the head of a branch of the left-hand fork of Cliff Cañon. Hurriedly unpacking, we hobbled the horses that were the most likely to stray far, and taking along our photographic kit, wended our way on foot toward that remarkable group of ruins of which I have already spoken, and which Richard has called "the Cliff-Palace." At about three o'clock we reached the brink of the cañon opposite the wonderful structure. Surely its discoverer had not overstated the beauty and magnitude of this strange ruin. There it was, occupying a great oval space under a grand cliff wonderful to behold, appearing like an immense ruined castle with dismantled towers. The stones in front were broken away, but behind them rose the walls of a second story; and in the rear of these, in under the dark cavern, stood the third tier of masonry. Still farther back in the gloomy recess, little houses rested on upper ledges. A short distance down the cañon are cosey buildings perched in utterly inaccessible nooks. The neighboring scenery is marvelous; the view down the cañon to the Mancos is alone worth the journey to see. We stopped to take a few views, and then commenced the descent into the gulf below. What would otherwise have been a hazardous proceeding, was rendered easy by using the steps which had been cut in the wall by the builders of the fortress. There are fifteen of these scouped-out hollows in the rock, which covered perhaps half of the distance down the precipice. At that point the cliff had probably fallen away; but luckily for our purpose, a dead tree leaned against the wall, and descending into its branches we reached the base of the parapet. In the bed of the cañon is a secondary gulch, which required care in descending. We hung a rope or lasso over some steep, smooth ledges, and let ourselves down by it. We left it hanging there and used it to ascend by on our return. Nearer approach increased our interest in the marvel. From the south end of the ruin, which we first attained, trees hide the northern walls, yet the view is beautiful. We remained long, and ransacked the structure from one end to the other. According to Richard's measurements, the space covered by the building is 425 feet long, 80 feet high in front, and 80 feet deep in the centre. One hundred and twenty-four rooms have been traced on the ground floor, and a thousand people may have lived within its confines. So many walls have fallen that it is difficult to reconstruct the building in imagination; but the photographs show that there must have been many stories. There are towers and circular rooms, square and rectangular enclosures; yet all with a seeming symmetry, though in some places the walls look as if they were put up as additions in later periods. One of the towers is barrel-shaped; other circles are true. The diameter of one circular room, or estufa, is sixteen feet and six inches. There are six piers, which are well plastered. There are five recess-holes, which appear as if constructed for shelves. In several rooms we observed good fireplaces. In another room, where the outer walls have fallen away, we found that an attempt had been made at ornamentation: a broad band had been painted across the wall, and above it is a peculiar decoration which shows in one of our photographs. The lines are similar to embellishment on pottery which we found. We observed in one place corn-cobs imbedded in the plaster in the walls, showing that the cob is as old as that portion of the dwelling. The cobs, as well as kernels of corn which we found, are of small size, similar to what the Ute squaws raise now without irrigation. We found a large stone mortar, which may have been used to grind the corn. Broken pottery was everywhere; like specimens in the other cliff houses, it was similar in design to that which we picked up in the valley ruins near Wetherill's ranch, convincing us of the identity of the builders of the two classes of ruins. We also found parts of skulls and bones, fragments of weapons, and pieces of cloth. One nearly complete skeleton lies on a wall waiting for some future antiquarian. The burial-place of the clan was down under the rear of the cave. [Illustration: PLATE 4 PHOTOGRAPHED BY F. K. VREELAND CENTRAL PART, BEFORE REPAIRING] Dr. W. R. Birdsall,[7] who in 1891 gave an account of the cliff-dwellings of the canyons of the Mesa Verde, which contains considerable information regarding these buildings, thus refers specially to Cliff Palace: [Footnote 7: _Jour. Amer. Geog. Soc._, XXIII, no. 4, 598, New York, 1891.] Richard Wetherill discovered an unusually large group of buildings which he named "The Cliff Palace," in which the ground plan showed more than one hundred compartments, covering an area over four hundred feet in length and eighty feet in depth in the wider portion. Usually the buildings are continuous where the configuration of the cliffs permitted such construction. In the following account Baron Nordenskiöld has given us the most exhaustive description of Cliff Palace yet published:[8] [Footnote 8: In The Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde (a translation in English from the Swedish edition, Stockholm, 1893), (pp. 59-66), unfortunately not accessible to most readers on account of the limited edition and the cost. For this reason the description is here reproduced in extenso. (The references to illustrations and the footnotes in this excerpt follow Nordenskiöld.)] In a long, but not very deep branch of Cliff Cañon, a wild and gloomy gorge named Cliff Palace Cañon, lies the largest of the ruins on the Mesa Verde, the Cliff Palace. Strange and indescribable is the impression on the traveller, when, after a long and tiring ride through the boundless, monotonous piñon forest, he suddenly halts on the brink of the precipice, and in the opposite cliff beholds the ruins of the Cliff Palace, framed in the massive vault of rock above and in a bed of sunlit cedar and piñon trees below (Pl. XII). This ruin well deserves its name, for with its round towers and high walls rising out of the heaps of stones deep in the mysterious twilight of the cavern, and defying in their sheltered site the ravages of time, it resembles at a distance an enchanted castle. It is not surprising that the Cliff Palace so long remained undiscovered. An attempt to follow Cliff Palace Cañon upward from Cliff Cañon meets with almost insurmountable obstacles in the shape of huge blocks of stone which have fallen from the cliffs and formed a barrier across the narrow water course, in most parts of the cañon the only practicable path between the steep walls of rock. Through the piñon forest, which renders the mesa a perfect labyrinth to the uninitiated, chance alone can guide the explorer to the exact spot from which a view of Cliff Palace is possible. The descent to the ruin may be made from the mesa either on the opposite side of the cañon, or on the same a few hundred paces north or south of the cliff-dwelling. The Cliff Palace is probably the largest ruin of its kind known in the United States. I here give a plan of the ruin (Pl. XI) together with a photograph thereof, taken from the south end of the cave (Pl. XII). In the plan, which represents the ground floor, over a hundred rooms are shown. About twenty of them are estufas. Among the rubbish and stones in front of the ruin a few more walls, not marked in the plan, may possibly be distinguished. Plate XIII, as I have just mentioned, is a photograph of the Cliff Palace from the south. To the extreme left of the plate a number of much dilapidated walls may be seen. They correspond to rooms 1-12 in the plan. To the right of these walls lies a whole block of rooms (13-18), several stories high and built on a huge rock which has fallen from the roof of the cave. The outermost room (14 in the plan; to the left in Pl. XIII) is bounded on the outside by a high wall, the outlines of which stand off sharply from the dark background of the cave. The wall is built in a quadrant at the edge of the rock just mentioned, which has been carefully dressed, the wall thus forming apparently an immediate continuation of the rock. The latter is coursed by a fissure which also extends through the wall. This crevice must therefore have appeared subsequent to the building operation. To the right of this curved wall (still in Pl. XIII) lie four rooms (15-18 in the plan), and in front of them two terraces (21-22) connected by a step. One of the rooms is surrounded by walls three stories high and reaching up to the roof of the cave. The terraces are bounded to the north (the left in Pl. XIII) by a rather high wall, standing apart from the remainder of the building. Not far from the rooms just mentioned, but a little farther back, lie two cylindrical chambers (21 _a_, 23). The wall of 21 _a_ is shown in Pl. XIII with a beam resting against it. The beam had been placed there by one of the Wetherills to assist him in climbing to an upper ledge, where low walls, resembling the fortress at Long House (p. 28), rise almost to the roof of the cave. The round room 23 is joined by a wall to a long series of chambers (26-41), which are very low, though their walls extend to the rock above them. They probably served as storerooms. These chambers front on a "street," on the opposite side of which lie a number of apartments[9] (42-50), among them a remarkable estufa (44) described at greater length below. In front of 44 lies another estufa (51), and not far from the latter a third (52). [Footnote 9: The room marked 48 in the plan is visible in Pl. XIII. Almost in the center of the plate, but a little to the right, two small loopholes may be seen, and to their right a doorway, all of which belong to room 48; the walls of 49 and 50 are much lower than those of 48. Behind 48 the high walls of 43 may be distinguished.] The "street" leads to an open space. Here lie three estufas (54, 55, 56), partly sunk in the ground. Much lower down is situated another estufa (57) of the same type as 44. It is surrounded by high walls.[10] South of the open space lie a few large rooms (58-61). A tower (63 in the plan; the large tower to the right in Pl. XIII) is situated still farther south, beside a steep ledge. This ledge, north of the tower (to the left in the plate), once formed a free terrace (62), bounded on the outside by a low wall along the margin. South of the tower is an estufa (76) surrounded by an open space, southeast of which are a number of rooms (80-87). In most of them, even in the outermost ones, the walls are in an excellent state of preservation. The wall nearest to the talus slope is 6 metres high and built with great care and skill.[11] South of these rooms and close to the cliff lies a well-preserved estufa (88), and south of the latter four rooms are situated, two of them (90, 92) very small. The walls of the third (91) are very high and rise to the roof of the cave. At one corner the walls have fallen in. This room is figured in a subsequent chapter in order to show a painting found on one of its walls. Near the cliff lies the last estufa (93), in an excellent state of preservation. The rooms south of this estufa are bounded on the outer side by a high wall rising to the rock above it. An excellent defense was thus provided against attack in this quarter. [Footnote 10: They are shown in the plate just to the left of the fold at its middle, rather low down.] [Footnote 11: A part of this wall may be seen to the extreme right of Pl. XIII, and also in Fig. 34 behind and to the right of the tower.] [Illustration: PLATE 5 PHOTOGRAPHED BY F. K. VREELAND THE ROUND TOWER, FROM THE NORTH GENERAL VIEW OF THE RUIN, BEFORE REPAIRING] Two of the estufas in the Cliff Palace deviate from the normal type. This is the only instance where I have observed estufas differing in construction from the ordinary form described in Chapter III. The northern estufa (44 in the plan) is the better preserved of the two. To a height of 1 meter from the floor it is square in form (3�3 m.) with rounded corners (see figs. 35 and 36). Above it is wider and bounded by the walls of the surrounding rooms, a ledge (_b_, _b_) of irregular shape being thus formed a few feet from the floor. In two of the rounded corners on a level with this ledge (a little to the right in fig. 36) niches or hollows (_d_, _d_; breadth 48 cm., depth 45 cm.) have been constructed, and between them, at the middle of the south-east wall, a narrow passage (breadth 40 cm.), open at the top. At the bottom of one side of this passage a continuation thereof was found, corresponding probably to the tunnel in estufas of the ordinary type. At the north corner of the room the wall is broken by three small niches (_e_, _e_, _e_) quite close together, each of them occupying a space about equal to that left by the removal of two stones from the wall. The sandstone blocks of which the walls are built are carefully hewn, as in the ordinary cylindrical estufas. Whether the usual hearth, in form of a basin, and the wall beside it, had been constructed here I was unfortunately unable to determine, more than half of the room being filled with rubbish. I give the name of estufas to these square rooms with rounded corners, built as described above, because they are furnished with the passage characteristic of the round estufas in the cliff-dwellings. Perhaps they mark the transition to the rectangular estufa of the Moki Indians. Besides the estufas there are some other round rooms or towers (21 _a_, 23, 63), which evidently belonged to the fortifications of the village. They differ from the estufas in the absence of the characteristic passage and also of the six niches. Furthermore, they often contain several stories, and in every respect but the form resemble the rectangular rooms. The long wall just mentioned, built on a narrow ledge above the other ruins, and visible at the top of Pl. XIII was probably another part of the village fortifications. The ledge is situated so near the roof of the cave that the wall, though quite low, touches the latter, and the only way of advancing behind it is to creep on hands and knees. A comparison between Pl. VIII and Pl. XIII shows at once that the inhabitants of the Cliff Palace were further advanced in architecture than their more western kinsfolk on the Mesa Verde. The stones are carefully dressed and often laid in regular courses; the walls are perpendicular, sometimes leaning slightly inwards at the same angle all round the room--this being part of the design. All the corners form almost perfect right angles, when the surroundings have permitted the builders to observe this rule. This remark also applies to the doorways, the sides of which are true and even. The lintel often consists of a large stone slab, extending right across the opening. On closer observation we find that in the Cliff Palace we may discriminate two slightly different methods of building. The lower walls, where the stones are only rough-hewn and laid without order, are often surmounted by walls of carefully dressed blocks in regular courses. This circumstance suggests that the cave was inhabited during two different periods. I shall have occasion below to return to this question. The rooms of the Cliff Palace seem to have been better provided with light and air than the cliff-dwellings in general, small peep-holes appearing at several places in the walls. The doorways, as in other cliff-dwellings, are either rectangular or T-shaped. Some of the latter are of unusual size, in one instance 1.05 m. high and 0.81 m. broad at the top. The thickness of the walls is generally about 0.3 m., sometimes, in the outer walls, as much as 0.6 m. As a rule they are not painted, but in some rooms covered with a thin coat of yellow plaster. At the south end of the ruin lies an estufa (93) which is well-preserved (fig. 37). This estufa is entered by a doorway in the wall, one of the few instances where I have observed this arrangement. In most cases, as I have already mentioned, the entrance was probably constructed in the roof. The dimensions of this estufa were as follows: diameter 3.9 m., distance from the floor to the bottom of the niches 1.2 m., height of the niches 0.9 m., breadth of the same 1.3 m., depth of the same 0.5 to 1.3 m., height of the passage at its mouth 0.75 m., breadth of the same 0.45 m. Five small quadrangular holes or niches were scattered here and there in the lower part of the wall. I cannot refrain from once more laying stress on the skill to which the walls of Cliff Palace in general bear witness, and the stability and strength which has been supplied to them by the careful dressing of the blocks and the chinking of the interstices with small chips of stone. A point remarked by Jackson in his description of the ruins of Southwestern Colorado, is that the finger marks of the mason may still be traced in the mortar, and that those marks are so small as to suggest that the work of building was performed by women. This conclusion seems too hasty, for within the range of my observations the size of the finger marks varies not a little. Like Sprucetree House and other large ruins the Cliff Palace contains at the back of the cave extensive open spaces where tame turkeys were probably kept. In this part of the village three small rooms, isolated from the rest of the building, occupy a position close to the cliff; two of them (103, 104), built of large flat slabs of stones, lie close together, the third (105), of unhewn sandstone (fig. 38), is situated farther north. These rooms may serve as examples of the most primitive form of architecture among the cliff people. In the Cliff Palace, the rooms lie on different levels, the ground occupied by them being very rough. In several places terraces have been constructed in order to procure a level foundation, and here as in their other architectural labours, the cliff-dwellers have displayed considerable skill. One very remarkable circumstance in the Cliff Palace is that all the pieces of timber, all the large rafters, have disappeared. The holes where they passed into the walls may still be seen, but throughout the great block of ruins two or three large beams are all that remain. This is the reason why none of the rooms is completely closed. At Sprucetree House there were a number of rooms where the placing of the door stone in position was enough to throw the room into perfect darkness, no little aid to the execution of photographic work. It is difficult to explain the above state of things. I observed the same want of timber in parts of other ruins (at Long House for example). In several of the cliff-dwellings it appears as if the beams had purposely been removed from the walls to be applied to some other use. Seldom, however, have all the rafters disappeared, as in the Cliff Palace. There are no traces of the ravages of fire. Perhaps the inhabitants were forced, during the course of a siege, to use the timber as fuel; but in that case it is difficult to understand how a proportionate supply of provisions and water was obtained. This is one of the numerous circumstances which are probably connected with the extinction or migration of the former inhabitants, but from which our still scanty information of the cliff-dwellers cannot lift the veil of obscurity. [Illustration: PLATE 6 PHOTOGRAPHED BY R. G. FULLER CENTRAL PART, AFTER REPAIRING] In addition to his description Nordenskiöld gives a ground plan of Cliff Palace[12] (pl. XI); a magnificent double page view of the ruin from the west (pl. XIII); a fine picture of Speaker-chief's House (pl. XII); a view of the Round Tower (fig. 34); a figure and a plan of an estufa of singular construction (T); a view of the interior of Kiva C and of a small room at the back of the main rows of rooms. No specimens of pottery, stone implements, and kindred antiquities from Cliff Palace are figured by Nordenskiöld. In various places throughout his work this author refers to Cliff Palace in a comparative way, and in his descriptions of other ruins the student will find more or less pertaining to it. [Footnote 12: The illustrations referred to in this paragraph are in Nordenskiöld's work.] In his book The Cliff Dwellers and Pueblos,[13] Rev. Stephen D. Peet devotes one chapter (VII) to Cliff Palace and its surroundings, compiling and quoting from Chapin, Birdsall, and Nordenskiöld. No new data appear in this work, and the illustrations are copied from these authors. [Footnote 13: As stated in a note (Peet, p. 133) Chapter VII is a reprint of Doctor Birdsall's article in the _Journal of the American Geographical Society_, op. cit.] Dr. Edgar L. Hewett[14] briefly refers to Cliff Palace as follows (p. 54): [Footnote 14: In Les Communautés Anciennes dans le Désert Américain. In this work may be found a ground plan of Cliff Palace by Morley and Kidder, the interior of kiva Q (pl. VIII, _e_), and a large view of the ruin taken from the north (pl. I, _b_). (Plate and figure designations from Hewett.)] Il suffira de décrire les traits principaux d'un seul groupement de ruines, et nous choisirons Cliff Palace, qui en est le spécimen le plus remarquable (pl. I _b_). Il est situé dans un bras de Ruin Canyon. La vue présentée ici est prise d'un point plus élevé, au sud, d'où l'on contemple les ruines d'une ville ancienne, avec des tours rondes et carrées, des maisons, des entrepôts pour le grain, des habitations et des lieux de culte. Le Cliff Palace remplit une immense caverne bien défendue et à l'abri des ravages des éléments. Un sentier conduit aux ruines. Le plan (Fig. 2) représente les restes de 105 chambres au plain-pied. On ne sait combien il y en avait dans les 3 étages supérieurs, mais il est probable que Cliff-Palace n'abritait pas moins de 500 personnes. Nous remarquons à Cliff-Palace de grands progrès dans l'art de la construction. Les murs sont faits de grès gris, taillé avec des outils de pierre, dont on voit encore les traces. Lorsqu'on se servait de pierres irrégulières, les crevasses étaient remplies avec des fragments ou des éclats de grès, puis on plâtrait les murs avec du mortier d'adobe. On prenait de grosses poutres pour les plafonds et les planchers, et l'on peut voir que ces poutres étaient dégrossies avec des instruments peu tranchants. Many newspaper and magazine accounts of the Mesa Verde ruins appeared about the time Mr. Chapin's description was published, but the majority of these are somewhat distorted and more or less exaggerated, often too indefinite for scientific purposes. References to them, even if here quoted, could hardly be of great value to the reader, as in most cases it would be impossible for him to consult files of papers in which they occur even if the search were worth while. Much that they record is practically a compilation from previous descriptions. The activity in photographing Cliff Palace has done much to make known its existence and structure. Many excellent photographs of the ruin have been taken, among which may be mentioned those of Chapin, Nordenskiöld, Vreeland, Nusbaum, and others. Oil paintings, some of which are copied from photographs, others made from the ruin itself, adorn the walls of some of our museums. Almost every visitor to the Mesa Verde carries with him a camera, and many good postal cards with views of the ruin are on the market. Negatives of Cliff Palace taken before its excavation and repair will become more valuable as time passes, because they can no longer be duplicated. From a study of a considerable number of these photographs it seems that very little change has taken place in the condition of the ruin between the time the first pictures were made and the repair work was begun. SITE OF CLIFF PALACE Cliff Palace is situated in a cave in Cliff-palace canyon, a branch of Cliff canyon, which is here about 200 feet deep. It occupies practically the whole of the cave, the roof of which overhangs about two-thirds of the ruin, projecting considerably beyond its middle. This cave is much more capacious than that in which Spruce-tree House is situated, as shown by comparing illustrations and descriptions of the latter in the former report. The configuration of Spruce-tree House cave and that of Cliff Palace, and the relation of its floor to the talus, also differ. The canyon in which Cliff Palace lies is thickly wooded, having many cedars and a few pines and scrub oaks; the almost total failure of water at certain seasons of the year at Cliff Palace renders floral life in the vicinity less exuberant than in Spruce-tree canyon, a branch of Navaho canyon (fig. 1). On the level plateau above the ruin there are many trees--pines and cedars--but even this area is not so thickly wooded as the summit of the mesa above Spruce-tree House.[15] [Footnote 15: Clearings in the forest indicate the positions of the former farms of the inhabitants of Cliff Palace.] [Illustration: PLATE 7 PHOTOGRAPHED BY R. G. FULLER SOUTHERN END, AFTER REPAIRING] The geological formation of the cave in which Cliff Palace is situated is similar to that at Spruce-tree House, consisting of alternating layers of hard and soft sandstone, shale, and even layers of coal. Both canyons and caves appear to have been formed by the same processes. In past ages the elements have eroded and undermined the soft layers of sandstone or shale to such an extent that great blocks of rock, being left without foundations, have broken away from above, falling down the precipice. Many of these great bowlders remained on the floor of a cave where it was broad enough to retain them. The surface of the roof arching over Cliff Palace cave is perhaps smoother than that of Spruce-tree House. The progress of cave erosion was greatly augmented by the flow of water from the mesa summit during heavy rains, as hereinafter described. [Illustration: FIG. 1.--View down Navaho Canyon.] To understand the general plan of Cliff Palace it is necessary to take into consideration the method of formation and the configuration of the cave floor on which the ruin stands. This cave, as already stated, was formed by erosion or undercutting the softer rock at a lower level than the massive sandstone, leaving huge blocks of stone above the eroded cavities. Naturally these blocks, being without support, fell, and in falling were broken, the larger fragments remaining on the floor practically in the places where they fell, but many of the smaller stones were washed out of the cave entrance, forming a talus extending down the side of the cliff. The floor of the cave was thus strewn with stones, large and small, resting on the same general level which is that on which the foundations of the buildings were constructed. The level of the cave floor was interrupted by the huge blocks of stone forming its outer margin; and the buildings constructed on these fallen rocks were lofty, even imposing. The talus composed of fallen rock and débris, piled against the canyon side in front of these buildings and below these huge blocks of stone, extends many feet down the cliff in a gradual slope, covering the terraced buildings and burying their retaining walls from sight.[16] A great part of this talus is composed of fallen walls, but considerable earth and small stones are contained in it, probably precipitated over the rim of the cave roof by the torrents of water which sometimes fall during heavy rains. It is probable also that the foresting of the talus has been due more or less to bushes and small trees washed over the cliff from the mesa summit. [Footnote 16: Access to Cliff Palace from the bottom of the canyon, although difficult, is possible, and a pathway might be constructed down its sides or along the top of the talus to several other cliff-dwellings. In the vicinity of Cliff Palace there are at least 20 ruins, large and small.] Three terraces or tiers containing rooms, as shown in the accompanying ground plan, were revealed by excavations in this talus. At the western extension, where the second and third terraces cease, the tops of large rocks begin at the level of the fourth terrace, and on the southern end the first terrace is absent. At the western extremity, the large blocks of rock having dropped down entire from the side of the cliff, fill the interval elsewhere occupied by the lower terraces, and their tops now form a ledge upon which rest the foundations of rooms level with the plaza. It is thus evident that whereas the front wall of Spruce-tree House is simple, the level of the kiva roofs and floors of buildings above ground being continuous, the front of Cliff Palace is complicated, being at different levels, consisting of terraces in the talus. As one approached Cliff Palace, when inhabited, it must have presented, from below, an imposing structure, the lower terraces being occupied by many large kivas above which rose lofty buildings arranged in tiers, several being four stories high. Although the height was much increased by the presence of huge foundation blocks of sandstone, from the lowest terrace to the highest room there were seven floor levels, including those of the kivas in the terraces. An examination of Cliff Palace cave shows that from the southern end to the section over the main entrance its roof arches upward and that the part over the rear of the ruin is lower than that over its front. Between the lower and upper roof levels there is a sharp break formed by a vertical cleavage plane. Where this plane joins the upper level there is a shelf forming a recess in which has been constructed a row of ledge rooms.[17] [Footnote 17: One of these rooms had been chosen by eagles for their nests, but both nests and eggs were abandoned by the birds after the repair work was begun.] The great rock roof arching over Cliff Palace is broken about midway between the vertical plane above mentioned and the rim by another and narrower vertical plane where no ledge exists. Here multitudes of swallows had made their home, and there are wasps' nests in several places. [Illustration: PLATE 8 FROM SURVEY BY R. G. FULLER GROUND PLAN] PREHISTORIC TRAILS TO CLIFF PALACE It is evident that the prehistoric farmers of Cliff Palace repeatedly visited their fields among the cedars on top of the mesa, and well-worn trails led from their habitation to these clearings. Several such trails have long been known, one of which was formerly exclusively used by white visitors and was facetiously called "Fat Man's Misery." To another ancient pathway, near which ladders were placed, the name "Ladder Trail" may be applied. The pathways now used by visitors follow approximately these old trails, which were simply series of shallow footholes cut in the cliff. Although the lapse of time since they were pecked in the rock has somewhat diminished their depth, they can still be used by an adventurous climber. GENERAL FEATURES Cliff Palace (pls. 1, 2), the most instructive cliff-house yet discovered in the Mesa Verde National Park, if not in the United States, is one of the most picturesque ruins in the Southwest. While its general contour follows that of the rear of the cave in which it is situated, its two extremities project beyond the cavern. The entire central part is protected by the cave roof; the ends are exposed. The general orientation of Cliff Palace is north and south, the cave lying at the eastern end of the canyon of which it is an extension. The southern end is practically outside this cave, and the few rooms westward from kiva V are unprotected. An isolated kiva, W, with high surrounding walls, is situated some distance beyond the extreme western end of the ruin. Although not in the same cave as the main ruin, certain other rooms in the vicinity of Cliff Palace may have been ceremonially connected with it. They are built in shallow depressions in the cliffs and may have been shrines or rooms to which priests retreated for the purpose of performing their rites. In the category of dependent structures may also be mentioned numerous rings of stones on top of the mesa. The existence of calcined human bones in the soil over which these stones are heaped indicates the practice of cremation, of which there is also evidence in the ruin itself. DESTRUCTION BY THE ELEMENTS The constant beating of rain and snow, often accompanied in winter by freezing of water in the crevices of the masonry, has sadly dilapidated a large part of the front walls of Cliff Palace, especially those at the northern and southern ends (pl. 3) where they do not have the protection of the overhanging roof of the cave. While the sections known as the old quarter, the plaza quarter, and much of the tower quarter are protected by the roof of the cave, even here there has been exposure and destruction from the same cause. Torrential rains on the mesa in the late summer form streams of water which, following depressions,[18] flow over the rim of the cave roof and are precipitated into the trees beyond the lowest terrace of the ruin. The destruction of walls from these flows is much less than that from smaller streams which, following the edge of the cave roof, run under the roof and drip on the walls, washing the mortar from between the component stones, and eventually undermining their foundation and leading to their fall. The former presence of these streams is indicated by the black discoloration of the cave roof shown in photographs. [Footnote 18: In some of these waterways are found good examples of "potholes," some of considerable size, which often retain water for a long time. Their capacity was increased in prehistoric times by the construction of dams.] A visitor to Cliff Palace in the dry season can hardly imagine the amount of rain that occasionally falls during the summer months, and it is difficult for him to appreciate the destructive force it exerts when precipitated over the cliff. When Cliff Palace was occupied, damage to walls could be immediately repaired by the inhabitants after every torrent, but as the ruin remained for centuries uninhabited and without repair, the extent of the destruction was great. The torrents falling over the ruin not only gain force from the distance of the fall, but sweep everything before them, bringing down earth, stones, small trees, and bushes. At such a time the bottom of the canyon is filled with a roaring torrent fed by waterfalls that can be seen at intervals far down the gorge. The observer standing in Cliff Palace during such a downpour can behold a sheet of water falling over the projecting cliff in front of him. These cataracts fortunately are never of long duration, but while they last their power is irresistible.[19] [Footnote 19: While there has probably been considerable erosion in the bed of the canyon since Cliff Palace was constructed, this does not mean that "the action of the water carved out the valley, leaving at an inaccessible height buildings originally constructed on almost level land." See History N. Y. State Chapter, Colorado Cliff Dwellings Assoc., p. 11.] VANDALISM No ruin in the Mesa Verde Park had suffered more from the ravages of "pot hunters" than Cliff Palace; indeed it had been much more mutilated than the other ruins in the park (pls. 1, 4, 5). Parties of workmen had remained at the ruin all winter, and many specimens had been taken from it and sold. There was good evidence that the workmen had wrenched beams from the roofs and floors to use for firewood, so that not a single roof and but few rafters remained in place. However, no doubt many of the beams had been removed, possibly by cliff-dwellers, long before white men first visited the place. [Illustration: PLATE 9 MAIN ENTRANCE SOUTHERN END, SHOWING REPAIRED TERRACES] Many of the walls had been broken down and their foundations undermined, leaving great rents through them to let in light or to allow passage from the débris thrown in the rooms as dumping places. Hardly a floor had not been dug into, and some of the finest walls had been demolished.[20] All this was done to obtain pottery and other minor antiquities that had a market value. The arrest of this vandalism is fortunate and shows an awakened public sentiment, but it can not repair the irreparable harm that has been done. [Footnote 20: Some, possibly considerable, of this mutilation may be ascribed to the former occupants. The Ute Indians will not now enter cliff-dwellings and probably are not responsible for their destruction.] REPAIR OF WALLS The masonry work necessary to repair a ruin as large and as much demolished as Cliff Palace was very considerable. The greatest amount was expended on those walls in front of the cave floor hidden under the lower terraces, at the northern and southern extremities. The latter portion was so completely destroyed that it had to be rebuilt in some places, while at the southern end an equal amount of repair work was necessary. (Pls. 3, 6, 7, 9.) To permanently protect these sections of the ruin the tops of the walls and the plazas were liberally covered with Portland cement, and runways were constructed to carry off the surface water into gutters by which it was diverted over the retaining walls to fall on the rock foundations beyond. It would be impossible permanently to protect some of these exposed walls without constructing roofs above them; at present every heavy rain is bound to cover the floors of the kivas with water and thus eventually to undermine their foundations. The preservation of walls deep in the cave under protection of the roof was not a difficult problem. The work in this part consisted chiefly in the repair of kiva walls, building them to their former height at the level of neighboring plazas. MAJOR ANTIQUITIES Under this term are embraced those immovable objects as walls of houses and their various structural parts--floors, roofs, and fireplaces. These features must of necessity be protected in place and left where they were constructed. Minor antiquities, as implements of various kinds, stone objects, pottery, textiles, and the like, can best be removed and preserved in a museum, where they can be seen to greater advantage and by a much larger number of people. The ideal way would be to preserve both major and minor antiquities together in the same neighborhood, or to install the latter in the places in which they were found. While at present such an arrangement at Spruce-tree House and Cliff Palace is not practicable, large specimens, as metates and those jars that are embedded in the walls, have, as a rule, been left as they were found. As the repair work at Cliff Palace was limited to the protection of the major antiquities, the smaller objects for the greater part having been removed before our work began, this report deals more especially with the former, the whole ruin being regarded as a great specimen to be preserved in situ. Very little attention was given to labeling rooms, kivas, and their different parts, the feeling being that this experiment has been sufficiently well carried out at Spruce-tree House, an examination of which would logically precede that of Cliff Palace. Spruce-tree House has been made a "type ruin" from which the tourist can gain his first impression of the major antiquities of the Mesa Verde National Park, and while it was well to indicate on its walls the different features characteristic of these buildings, it would be redundant to carry out the same plan in the other ruins.[21] [Footnote 21: The author's hope is to excavate and repair in different sections of the Southwest a number of "type ruins," each of which will illustrate the major antiquities of the area in which it occurs. From an examination of these types the tourist and the student may obtain, at first hand, an accurate knowledge of the prehistoric architecture.] No attempt was made to restore the roof of any of the Cliff Palace kivas for the reason that one can gain a good idea of how the roof of a circular kiva is constructed from its restoration in Kiva C of Spruce-tree House, and an effort to roof a kiva of Cliff Palace would merely duplicate what has already been accomplished without adding essentially to our knowledge. GENERAL PLAN OF CLIFF PALACE The ground plans of Cliff Palace which have been published were made from surface indications before excavations were undertaken and necessarily do not represent all the rooms. Nordenskiöld's map outlines 17 kivas and 102 rooms, indicating several kivas by dotted lines. The Morley-Kidder map, which represents positions of 18 or 19 kivas, notes 105 secular rooms.[22] Although this ground plan is an improvement on that of Nordenskiöld, it also was based on surface indications and naturally fails to indicate those kivas that were buried under the fallen walls of the terraces. Strangely enough, in Nordenskiöld's ground plan Kiva K is omitted, notwithstanding the tops of one or two pilasters were readily seen before any excavation was made. Neither of these plans distinguishes those buildings that have more than a single story, although they show the parts of walls that extend to the roof. Neither Chapin nor Birdsall published maps of Cliff Palace. (See pl. 8.) [Footnote 22: In "Report, House of Representatives, No. 3703, 58th Congress," Mr. Coert Dubois ascribes to Cliff House (Cliff Palace) 146 rooms and 5 estufas (kivas). Unfortunately the error in the count of kivas has been given wide circulation. As stated in the present article, there are at least 23 rooms in Cliff Palace that may be called kivas.] [Illustration: PLATE 10 TOWER QUARTER, AFTER REPAIRING TERRACES AT SOUTHERN END, AFTER REPAIRING] TERRACES AND RETAINING WALLS The terraces in front of the rooms occupying the floor of the cave are characteristic features of Cliff Palace (pls. 9, 10). The excavations revealed three of these terraces, of which the floor of the cave is the fourth. This fourth terrace, or cave floor, is in the main horizontal, but on account of the accumulated talus the slope from the southern end of the portion in front of kiva G was gradual and continued at about this level to the northern end of the ruin. This slope brought it about that kivas in the terraces are at different levels. The floors of kivas H and I lie on about the level of the first terrace, that of G on the terrace above, and F lies on the third terrace; the remaining kivas are all excavated in the cave floor, or fourth terrace. From the main entrance to the ruin, extending northward, there are representations of the second and third terraces, both of which extend to the cliff in front of kiva U. It is probable from the general appearance of the ruin that when all the terraces and walls were intact Cliff Palace was also terraced with houses along the front, which recalls architectural features in certain cliff-dwellings in Canyon de Chelly. TOWER QUARTER For convenience of description Cliff Palace is arbitrarily divided into four quarters, known as tower quarter, plaza quarter, old quarter, and northern quarter. The tower quarter (pls. 10-14) occupies the whole southern portion of the ruin and extends to the extreme southern end from a line drawn perpendicular to the cliff through the round tower. It includes 8 kivas, A to G, and J, 6 of which, A, B, C, D, E, and J, are situated on the fourth terrace, the level of the kiva floor being that of the third terrace. Kiva F lies in the third, and G in the second terrace. It will be seen from an inspection of the ground plan that there are in all 29 rooms in this quarter, besides the 8 kivas, an instructive fact when compared with Spruce-tree House with its 8 kivas and 114 rooms. It must be remembered that several of the rooms in this quarter are of two stories, one is of three stories, and one of four stories, thus adding from 15 to 20 rooms to the 8 enumerated as occupying the ground floor. The proportion of ceremonial rooms to kivas in this quarter would be a little more than 2 to 1. PLAZA QUARTER The plaza quarter, as its name indicates, is a large open space, the floor of which is formed mainly by the contiguous roofs of the several kivas (K to O) that are sunk below it. The main entrance to the village opens into this plaza at its northwestern corner, and on the northern side it is continued into a court which connects with the main street or alley of the cliff village. From its position, relations, and other considerations, it is supposed that this quarter was an important section of Cliff Palace and that here were held some of the large open-air gatherings of the inhabitants of the place; here also no doubt were celebrated the sacred dances which we have every reason to believe were at times performed by the former inhabitants. The roof levels of kivas H and I did not contribute to the size of the main plaza, but show good evidence of later construction. Judging from the number of fireplaces in this quarter there is reason to believe that much cooking was done in this open space, in addition to its use for ceremonial or other gatherings of the inhabitants. OLD QUARTER The section of Cliff Palace that has been designated the old quarter (pls. 14, 15) lies between a line drawn from the main entrance of the ruin to the rear of the cave and the extreme northern end, culminating in a high castle-like cluster of rooms. It may well be called one of the most important sections of Cliff Palace, containing, as it does, the largest number of rooms, the most varied architecture, and the best masonry. Its protected situation under the roof of the cave is such that we may consider it and the adjoining plaza quarter the earliest settled sections of the village. It contains all varieties of inclosures known in cliff-dwellings: kivas of two types, round rooms, rectangular rooms, an alley or a street, and a court. The floor of the cave on which the rooms are built is broadest at this point, which is one of the best protected sites and the least accessible to enemies in the whole building. It may be theoretically supposed that originally the kiva quarter was an annex of this section and that some of the kivas in this quarter may also have been owned and used by the clans which founded Cliff Palace. The old quarter is divided into two parts, a northern and a southern, the former being arbitrarily designated the Speaker-chief's House. The "street" running approximately north and south bisects the old quarter, making a front and a rear section. NORTHERN QUARTER This quarter (pl. 16) of Cliff Palace extends from the high rocks on which the Speaker-chief's House is perched, in a westerly direction, ending with a milling room and adjacent inclosures 92 to 94, situated west of kiva V. It includes three kivas; two, U and V, being situated on the fourth terrace; and one, T, on the first terrace. Kivas U and V are built on top of large rocks, the floor of kiva V being excavated in solid rock. Much of this quarter, especially the western end, is under the sky, and consequently without the protection of the cave roof, on which account it was considerably destroyed by rain water flowing over the canyon rim. The walls of this quarter, especially where it joins the old quarter, exhibit fine masonry, suggesting that it was inhabited by important clans. [Illustration: PLATE 11 PHOTOGRAPHED BY R. G. FULLER TOWER QUARTER] MASONRY The walls of Cliff Palace present the finest masonry known to any cliff-dwelling and among the best stonework in prehistoric ruins north of Mexico. A majority of the stones used in the construction were well dressed before laying and smoothed after they were set in the wall. The joints are often broken, but it is rare to find intersecting walls or corners bonded. Stones of approximately the same size are employed, thereby making the courses, as a rule, level. Although commonly the foundations are composed of the largest stones, this is not an invariable rule, often larger stones being laid above smaller ones; the latter, even when used for foundations, are sometimes set on edge. As a rule, the walls are not plumb or straight. The custom of laying stone foundations on wooden beams is shown in several instances, especially in cases where it was necessary to bridge the intervals between projecting rocks. The arch was unknown to the masons of Cliff Palace; there are no pillars to support floors or roofs as in Spruce-tree House. It is not rare, especially in the kivas, to find instances of double or reenforced walls which may or may not be bonded by connecting stones. The masonry of the kivas as a rule is superior to that of the secular rooms. The mortar employed in the construction is hard; the joints are chinked with spalls, fragments of pottery, or clay balls. The fact that much more mortar than was necessary was employed resulted in weakening the walls. Several walls were laid without mortar; in some of these the joints were pointed, in others not.[23] The ancient builders did not always seek solid bases for foundations, but built their walls in several instances on ashes or sand, evidently not knowing when the foundations were laid that other stories would later be constructed upon them. [Footnote 23: Fragments of mortar from the walls and floors, ground to powder, were used in the repair work.] In several sections of the ruin there are evidences that old walls, apparently of houses formerly used, served in part as walls for new buildings. There are also several instances of secondary construction in which old entrances are walled up or even buried and old passageways covered with new structures. Similar reconstruction is common in Hopi pueblos, where it has led to enlargement of rooms and other variations in form. Among the several examples of such secondary building in Cliff Palace may be mentioned a long wall, evidently the front of a large building, which serves as a rear wall of several rooms arranged side by side. The obvious explanation of such a condition is that the walls of the small rooms are of later construction. As above mentioned the foundations of many walls are of larger stones, and the masonry here is coarser than higher up, which has led some authors to ascribe this fact as due to two epochs of construction. But this conclusion does not appear to be wholly justifiable, although there is evidence in many places that there has been rebuilding over old walls and consequent modification in new constructions, by which older walls have ceased to be necessary, a condition not unlike that existing in several of the Hopi pueblos. In this category may be included the several doors and windows that have been filled in with new masonry or even concealed by new walls. From the fragile character of certain foundations of high walls it would appear that it was not the intention, when they were laid, to erect on them walls more than one story high; the construction of higher stories upon them was an afterthought. Evidences occur of repair of breaks in the walls and corners by the aboriginal occupants, one of the most apparent of which appears at the end of the court in the southern wall of room 59. ADOBE BRICKS The walls, as a rule, were made of stone; indeed it is unusual to find adobe walls in cliff-dwellings of the Mesa Verde. In prehistoric buildings in our Southwest, evidences that the ancients made adobe bricks, sun-dried before laying, are very rare. Bricks made of clay are set in the walls of the Speaker-chief's House and were found in the fallen débris at its base. These bricks were made cubical in form before laying, but there is nothing to prove that they were molded in forms or frames, nor do they have a core of straw as in the case of the adobes used in the construction of Inscription House in the Navaho National Monument, Arizona.[24] The use of adobes in the construction of cliff-house walls has not been previously mentioned, although we find references to "lumps of clay" in the earliest historic times among Pueblos. Thus the inhabitants of Tiguex, according to Castañeda, were acquainted with adobes. "They collect," says this author, "great heaps of thyme and rushes and set them on fire; when the mass is reduced to ashes and charcoal they cast a great quantity of earth and water upon it and mix the whole together. They knead this stuff into round lumps, which they learn to dry and use instead of stone." [Footnote 24: See _Bulletin 50, Bureau of American Ethnology_.] [Illustration: PLATE 12 PHOTOGRAPHED BY R. G. FULLER THE SQUARE TOWER, BEFORE AND AFTER REPAIRING] Attention may be called to the fact that not only the adobes found at Cliff Palace but also the mortar used in the construction of the walls contain ashes and sometimes even small fragments of charcoal. Clay or adobe plastered on osiers woven between upright sticks, so common in the walls of cliff-dwellings in Canyon de Chelly and in the ruins in the Navaho Monument, while not unknown in the Mesa Verde, is an exceptional method of construction and was not observed at Cliff Palace. The survival[25] of this method of building a wall, if survival it be, may be seen in the deflector of kiva K. [Footnote 25: In at least one of the Oraibi kivas the plastering of the wall is laid on sticks that form a kind of lathing. Whether this is a survival of an older method of construction or is traceable to European influence has not been determined, but it is believed to be a survival of prehistoric wall construction.] PLASTERING The walls of a number of rooms were coated with a layer of plastering of sand or clay. This was found on the outside of some walls, where it is generally worn, but it is best preserved on the interior surfaces. Perhaps the most striking examples of plastering on exterior walls occurs on the Speaker-chief's House, where the smoothness of the finish is noteworthy. From impressions of hands and fingers on this plastering it is evident that it was laid on not with trowels but with the hands, and as the impressions of hands are small the plasterers were probably women or children. In several instances where the plastering is broken several successive layers are seen, often in different colors, sometimes separated by a thin black layer deposited by smoke. The color of the plastering varies considerably, sometimes showing red, often yellow or white, depending on the different colored sand or mud employed.[26] The plastering not only varies in color but also in thickness and in finish. In the most protected rooms of the cave practically all the superficial plastering still remains on both the interior and the exterior of the walls, but for the greater part it has been washed from the surfaces and out of the joints in the outer buildings. The mortar was evidently rubbed smooth with the hands, aided, perhaps, with flat stones. The exterior of one or two rooms shows several coats of plaster, and different parts of the same walls are of different colors. Indistinct figures are scratched on several walls, but the majority of these are too obscure to be traced or deciphered. The plastering on the exterior and the interior of the same wall is often of different color. [Footnote 26: The red color is derived from the red soil common everywhere on the mesa. Yellow was obtained from disintegrated rock, and white is a marl which is found at various places. The mortar used by the ancient masons became harder, almost cement, when made of marl mixed with adobe.] PAINTINGS AND ROCK MARKINGS Figures are painted on the white plastering of the third story of room 11 and on the lower border of the banquette of kiva I, the former being the most elaborate mural paintings known in cliff-dwellings, showing several symbols which are reproduced on pottery. A reversed symbolic rain-cloud figure, painted white, occurs on the exterior of the low ledge house.[27] Mural paintings of unusual form are found on the under side of the projecting rock forming part of the floor of room 3, and there are scratches on the plastering of the wall of kiva K. The latter figures were intended to represent animals, heads of grotesque beings, possibly birds, and terraced designs symbolic of rain clouds. As one or more of these symbols occur on pottery fragments, there appears no doubt that both were made by the same people. Among rock markings may also be mentioned shallow, concave grooves made by rubbing harder stones, which can be seen on the cliffs in front of rooms 92 and 93 and in the court west of room 51. [Footnote 27: This figure resembles closely that on the outside walls of the third story of room 11 of Spruce-tree House. (See pls. 4, 5, 6, _Bulletin 41, Bureau of American Ethnology_.)] Among the figures painted on whitewashed walls of room 11 may be mentioned triangles, parallel red lines with dots, and a square figure, in red, crossed by zigzags, recalling the designs on old Navaho blankets. The parallel lines are placed vertically and are not unlike, save in color, those which the Hopi make with prayer meal on the walls of their kivas, in certain ceremonies. But it is to be noted that the Hopi markings are made horizontally instead of vertically, as at Cliff Palace. The dots represented on the sides of some of these parallel lines (room 11) are similar to those appearing on straight lines or triangles in the decoration of Mesa Verde pottery. The triangular figures still used by the Hopi in decorating the margins of dados in their houses also occur on some of the Cliff-Palace walls, but are placed in a reversed position. They are said to represent a butterfly, a rain cloud, or a sex symbol. It is interesting to note in passing that two or more triangles placed one above another appear constantly in the same position in Moorish tile and stucco decorations, but this, of course, is only a coincidence, as there is no evidence of a cultural connection. [Illustration: PLATE 13 PHOTOGRAPHED BY R. G. FULLER _a_ Third story of square tower, showing dado and decoration _b_ Deflector and flue of kiva DETAILS OF CLIFF PALACE] REFUSE HEAPS Almost every Mesa Verde cliff-dwelling has an unoccupied space back of the rooms,[28] as in the rear of rooms 28 to 40, which served as a depository for all kinds of rubbish. Here the inhabitants of Cliff Palace also deposited certain of their dead, which became mummified on account of the dryness of the air in the cave. [Footnote 28: Isolated cliff-dwellings are scattered throughout the Southwest, but there are several areas, as the Mesa Verde, in which they are concentrated. Among these clusters may be mentioned the Canyon de Chelly, the Navaho National Monument, the Red Rocks area, and that of the upper Gila. One characteristic feature in which the cliff-dwellings of the Mesa Verde differ from some others is the independence of all of the upright walls from support of the sides of the cliffs. In the cliff-houses of the Navaho Monument a large majority of the houses have the rear wall of the cave as a wall of the building; a few of the houses in Cliff Palace have the same, but the largest number are entirely free from the cliff. This separation on all sides is due largely to the geological structure of the rear of the cavern in which the cliff-house stands.] There is also a vacant space between the rear of the Speaker-chief's House and the cave wall, but this space was almost entirely free of refuse. The amount of débris in the refuse heaps back of the so-called plaza quarter lends weight to other evidence that this is one of the oldest sections of Cliff Palace. The accumulation of débris was so deep in these places, and the difficulties of removal so great, that it was not attempted. It had all been dug over by relic seekers who are said to have found many specimens therein.[29] [Footnote 29: Workmen could operate in these parts only by tying sponges over their nostrils, so difficult was it to breathe on account of the fine dust.] SECULAR ROOMS The majority of the rooms in Cliff Palace were devoted to secular purposes. These are of several types, and differ in form, in position, and in function. Their form is either circular or rectangular, or some modification of these two. As a rule, the secular rooms lie deep under the cliffs, several extending as far back as the rear of the cave. The front of Cliff Palace shows at least two tiers or terraces of secular rooms, the roof of the lower one being level with that of the floor of the tier above. The front walls of secular rooms lower than the fourth terrace are as a rule destroyed, but the lateral walls are evident, especially in the tower quarter. The passage from one of these terraces to the room above was made by means of ladders or by stone steps along the corners. The following classification of secular rooms, based on their function, may be noted: (1) Living rooms; (2) milling rooms; (3) storage rooms; (4) rooms of unknown function;[30] (5) towers; (6) round rooms. It is difficult to distinguish in some instances to which of the above classes some of the rooms belong. The secular houses were probably owned by the oldest women of the clan, and the kivas were the property of the men of their respective clans, but courts, plazas, and passageways were common property. [Footnote 30: Possibly some of these may have been used sometimes for ceremonial purposes, or rather for the less important rites.] The masonry[31] of all secular rooms is practically identical and as a rule is inferior to that of kivas, their walls varying in width and having a uniform thickness from foundation to top. There are instances where the lower part projects somewhat beyond the upper, from which it is separated by a ledge, but this feature is not common. Minor features of architecture, as floors and roofs, doors and windows, fireplaces, banks, and cubby-holes, some or all of which may be absent, vary in form and in distribution according to the purpose for which the room was intended. The few timbers that remain show that the beams of the houses were probably cut with stone hatchets aided by the use of fire. The labor of hauling these timbers and of stripping them of their branches must have been great, considering the rude appliances at hand. It would seem that the cliff-dwellers were not ignorant of the use of the wedge with which to split logs, since the surfaces of split sticks are always more or less fibrous, never smooth, as would be expected if metal implements had been used. All transportation was manual, without the assistance of beasts of burden or of any but the rudest mechanical contrivances. [Footnote 31: Probably both men and women of one clan worked together in the construction of houses, the men being the masons, the women the plasterers. Each clan built its own rooms, and there were no differentiated groups of mechanics in the community.] DOORS AND WINDOWS There is difficulty in distinguishing doorways from windows in cliff-dwellings, on which account they are here treated together. Both are simple openings in the walls, the former as a rule being larger than the latter. As door openings are regularly situated high above the floor, there may have been ladders by which the doorways of the second and third stories were reached. The rooms may have been entered by means of balconies, evidences of which still remain. No instance of a hatchway in the roof is now recognizable, although the absence of side entrances in several rooms implies that there were roof entrances, several good examples of which occur at Spruce-tree House. Doorways of Cliff Palace have two forms, rectangular and T-shaped, the latter generally opening on the second story or in such a position that they were approached by ladders or notched logs. The theory that these doorways were constructed larger at the top than at the bottom so that persons with packs on their backs might pass through them more readily is not wholly satisfactory, nor does the theory that the notch at the lower rim served to keep the ladder from slipping wholly commend itself. No satisfactory explanation of the form of the T-shaped doorway has been yet determined. Generally the tops of both doorways and windows are narrower than the bottoms, the sides being slightly inclined; but the lower part is rarely narrower than the top. Sills sometimes project slightly, and evidences occur that the sides as well as the upper part of the window and doorway were made of adobe, now no longer in place. The jambs also were probably of clay, and the doors, made of slabs of stone, neatly fitted the orifices. [Illustration: PLATE 14 PHOTOGRAPHED BY R. G. FULLER SQUARE TOWER, AFTER REPAIRING OLD QUARTER] The prevailing storms in winter at Cliff Palace sweep up the canyon from the southwest, but there does not seem to have been a systematic effort to avoid the cold by placing doors and windows on the opposite side of the building; the openings, for instance, of the Speaker-chief's House face this direction and are open to storms of snow and rain. Many of the openings never had doors and windows, but were probably closed with sticks tied together, or with matting[32]. Certain windows were half closed, probably to temper the winter blasts. The sills of doors were commonly placed a foot or more above the floor[33]; transoms above the door opening and peepholes at the side are not common in Cliff Palace. In some cases a stepping-stone projects from the wall below the door opening to facilitate entrance; in others a foot hole is found in the same relative place. [Footnote 32: Some of the doorways were filled with rude masonry; evidently the rooms were thus closed in some instances before the buildings were deserted.] [Footnote 33: The placing of the sill at a level with the floor is a modern innovation at Walpi. The oldest houses still have it elevated, as in Cliff Palace. In some of the cliff-houses of the Navaho Monument sills and floor levels are continuous.] As the jambs, sills, and lintels were built hard and fast in the mortar, evidently both door openings and windows were constructed when the corresponding wall was built. The jambs in some instances and the lintels in others are of split sticks, the surfaces of which are fibrous and were evidently not split by means of iron implements. There is evidence that the size of the door openings was sometimes reduced by a ridge of mortar which was arched above, as at Spruce-tree House, the intention being to make in this way a jamb to hold in place the stone door. There are no round windows of large size, but both doors and windows are quadrilateral in shape; the small circular openings in some of the walls may have served for lookouts. FLOORS AND ROOFS Not a single entire roof remained in Cliff Palace, and only one or two rooms retained remnants of rafters. It would seem, however, from the position of the holes in the walls into which the rafters once extended that they were constructed like those of Spruce-tree House, a good example of which is shown in plate 9 of the report on that ruin. The floors seem to have been formed of clay hardened by tramping, but there is no evidence of paving with flat stones. The hardened adobe is sometimes laid on sticks without bark and stamped down. Although no instance of extensive rock cutting of the floor was observed in secular rooms, this is a common feature of kiva floors. Floors were generally level, but in some instances, when rock was encountered, the surface was raised in part above the other level. The majority of the floors had been dug into for buried specimens before the repair work was begun, but here and there fragments of floors were still intact, showing their former level. Banquettes or ledges around the walls are rare. In a few instances the unplastered roof of the cave served as the roof of the highest rooms. FIREPLACES Many fireplaces still remain in rooms, but the majority are found in convenient corners of the plazas[34]. The most common situation is in an angle formed by two walls; in which case the fire-pit is generally rimmed with a slightly elevated rounded ridge of adobe. In room 84 there is a fireplace in the middle of the floor. At one side of this depression there extends a supplementary groove in the floor, rimmed with stone, the use of which is not known. Although fireplaces are ordinarily half round, a square one occurs in the northwestern corner of room 81. All the fireplaces contained wood ashes, sometimes packed hard; but no cinders, large fragments of charcoal, or coal ashes were evident. The sides of the walls above the fireplaces are generally blackened with smoke. [Footnote 34: Smoke on the walls of certain second and third stories shows that fireplaces were not restricted to the ground floor.] The fire-holes of the kivas, being specially constructed, are different in shape from those in secular houses. While the cooking fire-pits are generally shallow, kiva fire-holes a foot deep are not exceptional, and several are much deeper. The fire was kindled in the kiva not so much for heating the room, as for lighting it, there being no windows for that purpose. Certain kinds of fuel were probably prescribed, but logs were not burned in kivas on account of the heat. No evidences of smoke-hoods or chimneys have been found in any of the Cliff Palace rooms. The walls of many kivas showed blackening by soot or smoke. LIVING ROOMS It is difficult to distinguish rooms in which the inhabitants lived from others used by them for storage and other purposes, since most of their work, as cooking, pottery making, and like domestic operations, was conducted either on the house-tops or in the plazas. Under living rooms are included the women's rooms[35], or those in which centered the family life; and, in a general way, we may suppose the large rooms and those with banquettes were sleeping rooms. The popular misconception that the cliff-dwellers were of small stature has undoubtedly arisen from the diminutive size of all the secular rooms, but it must be remembered that the life of the cliff-dwellers was really an out-of-door one, the roof of the cave affording the necessary protection. [Footnote 35: Among the Hopi the oldest woman, as a clan representative, owns the living rooms, but kivas are the property of the men, the kiva chief of certain fraternities being the direct descendant of the clan chief of the ceremony when limited to his clan.] [Illustration: PLATE 15 PHOTOGRAPHED BY R. G. FULLER SPEAKER-CHIEF'S HOUSE, AFTER REPAIRING] MILLING ROOMS There are several rooms in Cliff Palace which appear to have been given up solely to the operation of grinding corn. The mills are box-like structures, constructed of slabs of stone set on edge, each containing a slanting stone called a metate, from which the mill is called by the Hopi the _metataki_, or "metate house." The following description of a metataki in pueblos seen by Castañeda in 1540 applies, in a general way, to the small milling troughs in Cliff Palace: One room is appointed for culinary purposes, another for the grinding of corn; the latter is isolated [not so in Cliff Palace] and contains an oven and three stones [one, two, three, or four in Cliff Palace], cemented finely together. Three women sit [kneel] before these stones; the first crushes the corn, the second grinds it, and the third reduces it quite to a powder. In grinding corn, which was generally the work of the girls or young women, the grinder knelt before the metataki and used a flat stone, which was rubbed back and forth on the metate. The corn meal thus ground fell into a squarish depression, made of smooth stones, at the lower end of the metate. Commonly the corners of this receptacle for the meal that had been ground were filled in with clay, and on each side of the metate were inserted fragments of pottery, which rounded the corners and made it easier to brush the meal into a heap. In room 92, where there are four metates, occupying almost the whole milling room, there are upright stones on the side of the wall, back of the place where the women knelt, against which they braced their feet. Most of the grinding boxes were destroyed, but those in the Speaker-chief's house and others west of kiva V, especially the latter, were still in good condition, the metates being in place. Evidences of former metatakis were apparent in the floor of several other rooms, as in a room back of kiva K. It is evident from the number of metates found in Cliff Palace that several milling rooms, not now recognizable, formerly existed, and it is probable that every large clan had its own milling room, with, one or more metatakis, according to necessity. Although, many metates without metatakis occur in Cliff Palace, that in itself is not evidence that they were moved from place to place by the inhabitants. These milling rooms were apparently roofed, low, and one-storied, possibly in some instances open on top, but generally had a small peephole or window for the entrance of light or for permitting the grinders to see passers-by. GRANARIES Under the general name of granaries are included storage rooms, some of which are situated below living rooms.[36] Here corn for consumption was stacked, and if we may follow Hopi customs in our interpretation of cliff-dwellers' habits, the people of Cliff Palace no doubt had a supply sufficient to prevent famine by tiding over a failure of crops for two or more years. Many of these chambers were without doorways or windows; they were not limited to storage of corn, but served for the preservation of any food products or valuable cult paraphernalia. Each clan no doubt observed more or less secrecy in the amount of corn it kept for future use, and on that account the storage rooms were ordinarily, hidden from view. [Footnote 36: Genetically the room for storage of property was of earliest construction. This custom, which was necessary among agriculturists whose food supply was bulky, may have led to the choice of caves, natural or artificial, for habitation.] The droppings of chipmunks and other rodents show that these commensals were numerous, and their presence made necessary the building of storage rooms in such manner that they would be proof against the ravages of such animals. The three cists constructed of stone slabs placed vertically, situated back of the Speaker-chief's House, sometimes called "eagle houses," were probably storage bins; in support of this hypothesis may be mentioned the fact that the cobs, tassels, and leaves of corn are said to have been abundant in them when Cliff Palace was first visited by white men. Although eagle bones are found in the refuse in the unoccupied part of the cave back of the houses, their abundance does not necessarily prove that eagles were confined in them by the inhabitants of Cliff Palace. Perhaps the eagle nests in the canyon were owned by different clans and were visited yearly or whenever feathers were needed, and the dead eagles were probably buried ceremonially in these places, which therefore may be called eagle cemeteries, as among the Hopi.[37] [Footnote 37: See Property Rights in Eagles, _American Anthropologist_, vol. II, pp. 690-707, 1907.] CREMATORIES As is well known to students of the Southwest, the tribes of Indians dwelling along the lower Colorado river disposed of their dead by cremation, and evidences of burning the dead are found among all the ruins along the Gila and Salt rivers in southern Arizona. The custom was also practiced in the San Pedro and Salt River valleys, and along other tributaries of the Gila river. Castañeda (1540) says that the inhabitants of Cibola, identified with Zuñi, burned their dead, but no indication of this practice is now found among existing Pueblos. The ancient Pueblo inhabitants of the Little Colorado, so far as known, did not burn their dead, and no record has been made of the practice among their descendants, the Hopi and Zuñi. [Illustration: PLATE 16 NORTHERN PART, FROM THE SPEAKER-CHIEF'S HOUSE TO THE WESTERN END] In his excellent work on the ruins of the Mesa Verde, Baron Nordenskiöld speaks of calcined human bones being found in a stone cist at Step House, and Mr. Wetherill is referred to as having observed evidence of cremation elsewhere among the Mesa Verde cliff-dwellings. There can be no doubt from the observations made in the refuse heaps at Cliff Palace that the inhabitants of this village not only burned their dead but there was a special room in the depths of the cave which was set aside for that purpose.[38] One of these rooms, situated at the northern end of the refuse heap, was excavated in the progress of the work and found to contain bushels of very fine phosphate ashes, mixed with fragments of bones, some of which are well enough preserved to enable their identification as human. Accompanying these calcined bones were various mortuary objects not unlike those occurring in graves where the dead were not cremated. The existence of great quantities of ashes, largely containing phosphates, apparently derived from the burned bones, forming much of the refuse, and the densely smoke-blackened roof of the cave above them, are interpreted to indicate that the dead were cremated in the cave back of the houses. [Footnote 38: While only one place where bodies were burned was found in Cliff Palace, several such places were found on top of the mesa. Evidences of similar inclosures occur at Spruce-tree House and at Step House.] In addition to these burning places, or crematories, in the rear of the buildings of Cliff Palace, there is good evidence of the same practice on the mesa top. Here and there, especially in the neighborhood of the clearings where the cliff-dwellers formerly had their farms, are round stone inclosures, oftentimes several feet deep, in which occur great quantities of bone ashes, fragments of pottery, and some stone objects. The surface of the stones composing these inclosures shows the marks of intense fire, which, taken in connection with the existence of fragments of human bones more or less burned, indicate that the dead were cremated in these inclosures. It is not clear, however, that the dead were not interred before cremation, and there is reason for believing that the bodies were dried before they were committed to the flames. The mortuary offerings, especially pottery, seem to have been placed in the burning places after the heat had subsided, for beautiful jars showing no action of fire were found in some of these inclosures. The existence of cremation among the cliff-dwellers is offered as an explanation of the great scarcity of skeletons in their neighborhood. When it is remembered that Cliff Palace must have had a population of several hundred, judging from the number of the buildings, and was inhabited for several generations, it otherwise would be strange that so few skeletons were found. It would appear that the chiefs or the priestly class were buried either in the ground or in the floors of the rooms, which were afterward sealed, whereas the bodies of the poorer class, or the people generally, were cremated. The former existence of Pueblo peoples who buried their dead in the region between the Gila valley and Mesa Verde where the dead were cremated is a significant fact, but further observations are necessary before it can be interpreted. It may be that in ancient times all the sedentary tribes practiced cremation, and that the region in question was settled after this custom had been abandoned. LEDGE ROOMS In a shallow crevice in the roof of the cave on a higher level than the roofs of the tallest houses there is a long wall, the front of inclosures that may be called "ledge rooms."[39] Some of these rooms have plastered walls, others are roughly laid; the latter form one side of a court and served to shield those passing from one room to another. On this outer wall, about midway, there is painted in white an inverted terrace figure, which may represent a rain cloud. Attention should be called to the resemblance in form and position of this figure to that on an outside wall overlooking plaza C of Spruce-tree House. This series of ledge rooms was probably entered from the roof of a building in front, and the opening or doorway above room 66 served as such an entrance, according to several stockmen who visited Cliff Palace in earlier days. [Footnote 39: This type of building is believed to be the oldest in those sections of the Southwest where cliff habitations occur.] ENUMERATION OF THE ROOMS IN CLIFF PALACE SECULAR ROOMS The rooms in Cliff Palace, now numbered from 1 to 94, include all those on the ground floor, but do not embrace the second, third, and fourth stories nor the elevated ledge rooms secluded in the crevices of the cave roof at a high level. Their classification by function already having been considered, a brief enumeration by form and other characters will be given. [Illustration: PLATE 17 PHOTOGRAPHED BY R. G. FULLER _a_ Tunnel to Kiva B _b_ Passageway with steps to room 3 DETAILS OF KIVA A] Room 1, situated at the extreme southern end, presents no striking features except that one of its entrances is by stairs through the floor from kiva A. Its western and northern walls are of masonry; the remaining sides are formed by the vertical cliff. The walls of room 2 are constructed of masonry on the northern, western, and southern sides; the eastern side is the cliff face. As the floor of this room is made of hardened clay laid on small sticks, it was at first supposed that a human burial was concealed beneath, but excavation showed no signs of an interment. Room 3 (pl. 17) is a square inclosure between walls of other rooms. A portion of its floor is level with that of rooms 1 and 2, but a projecting rock forms an elevated bench on the eastern side. On the underside of this rock there are pictographs, apparently aboriginal, one of which has a well-known terrace form, recalling the outlines of a T-shaped doorway and the white figures on the outer wall of the ledge room above mentioned. Room 4 is three stories high, without openings into adjoining rooms or exterior entrances. Its western corner is rounded below and angular above. Room 5 was apparently two stories high, with a fireplace in its southeastern corner. The foundation rests on a large rock. The arrangement of post holes in the south and west walls of this dwelling is exceptional, and their purpose enigmatical. There is a passage from room 5 to the neighboring plaza, which is occupied by kiva D. Room 6 is a small rectangular chamber, about 2 feet square and 7 feet high; it has an entrance on the western side into room 7, and, as it utilizes the walls of the adjacent rooms, it was doubtless built subsequent to them. Evidences of rebuilding or secondary construction of walls on old foundations are so numerous in this section of the ruin that this may be the oldest part of Cliff Palace. Rooms 7, 8, and 9 are outside rooms, the western walls of which are more or less broken, while the front is entirely destroyed. It appears that their connected roofs once formed a terrace overlooking kiva D on the west. There are doorways in walls of one of these rooms, but entrance may have been gained by means of hatchways. It was approached from plaza B by the aid of ladders or stone steps. Room 11, which may be called the square tower, is the only four-story building standing in Cliff Palace, its walls reaching from the floor to the roof of the cave. When work began on this building the whole northwestern angle had fallen, and the remaining walls were tottering. To prevent total destruction, the entire corner was built up from a foundation laid on the floor level of the neighboring kiva. A small entrance to the ground floor, or the lowest of the four rooms, is from a banquette (10) on the western side, where there is a passageway from this lower story of room 11 to room 12, situated in its rear. Room 12 has a good floor, and room 11 a fireplace in the southwestern corner of the lowest room of the square tower. Almost all the beams of the higher rooms of this tower had been taken out, leaving nothing but the holes in the walls to indicate the former existence of floors. The beams now connecting the walls were placed there by our workmen to serve as staging and for tying the sides together. The second and third stories of the square tower are also without floors. Their inner walls are plastered a reddish color, in places whitewashed, and the third wall is decorated with interesting paintings. In the western wall of the second story was a small window, and portions of a large T-shaped doorway still show on the northern wall of the third story. Split sticks support the section of wall from the top of this doorway to the roof of the cave. From the arrangement of its rear walls it would appear that the whole of this tower was built subsequently to the rooms back of it, which extend on each side, north and south. The repair of a doorway of the northern wall was difficult, the foundation walls of the eastern and northern corners of the tower being slabs of stone set on edge, quite inadequate to support the lofty wall above. This insufficient foundation leads to the belief that when the base of the square tower was constructed there was no thought of erecting upon it the four stories that we now find. (Pl. 12, 13_a_, 14_a_.) Some of the rooms of the square tower bear evidence of having been living rooms, and possibly the approaches to the upper chambers were by ladders from the outside; otherwise the T-shaped doorway on the northern side, above the painted room, remains unexplained. Room 12, situated east of the square tower, has no characteristic features, being more a passageway than a room, opening at one end into room 13 and connecting with kiva D at the other end. Room 13 likewise presents no distinctive features; its rear wall is considerably blackened by smoke, and it has a large square window opening into room 12. A large part of the front walls of rooms 14, 16, and 24 has fallen, having been destroyed by falling water. To obviate future destruction, the southwestern corner of room 16 was repaired with cement, thus preventing further harm from dripping water. Rooms 16 and 24 evidently formed a front terrace, perhaps one story high, their rear wall being the front wall of rooms 17 and 18. Rooms 17 and 18 are of two stories; both are square. The upper part of its walls shows that a portion of room 18 was formerly one story high and that the walls were erected before those of room 17. A coping of masonry around three walls is a feature of room 18, the construction of which is superior to that of room 17. This room has a large front window and two smaller openings higher up in the second story of the western wall. The combined front walls of rooms 17 and 18 may be ranked among the finest examples of masonry in Cliff Palace. The large embrasures made in this wall by vandals were repaired. [Illustration: PLATE 18 PHOTOGRAPHED BY R. G. FULLER KIVA H, BEFORE REPAIRING] Rooms 19 and 20 also present fine examples of masonry and were evidently constructed before rooms 21, 22, and 23. The inner walls of room 19 were plastered; the outer wall was left rough. Room 20 shows crude masonry; its rear wall is the vertical cliff, and the inner surfaces of the three remaining walls of the upper story were plastered, and painted with yellow sand or pigment. Apparently the lower room was used as a granary, having no entrance, except possibly through a hatchway in its roof, which forms the floor of the room above. The presence of sticks projecting from the walls of this room adds weight to the conclusion that it was used for storage. There is no indication of a fireplace. Room 22 has a stepping-stone, which may have facilitated entrance, projecting from the wall under an opening that probably served as a doorway. Room 23 has a fireplace in one corner, and rooms 25, 26, and 27, which are situated in a row, have for their rear wall the vertical face of the cliff. Although these rooms are only one story high, the roof of the cave slopes down low enough in the rear to form their roofs. The outer walls were plastered, and each room was entered by a separate doorway. Although their side walls were somewhat destroyed, they appear not to have been intercommunicating. It is, in fact, rare to find a doorway from one room into another on the same level, or suites of rooms communicating with one another, but chambers one above another are generally provided with hatchways. Room 28 is a two-story structure of excellent masonry, with an entrance on its southern side and a window frame of stone. Its second story formerly opened on the western side into room 29. Not much now remains of the plastering that once covered the inner walls of room 28, but the interior walls of room 29 still show well-preserved plaster. Although the latter room has excellent masonry, its southern wall, or that facing kiva J, is entirely destroyed. The floor was so well preserved that but little work was required to put it in good condition. Rooms 30 to 33 are represented almost entirely by the side walls, the front walls being more or less destroyed. Their floors lie on the same level as those of the second terrace, and their roofs may have been continuous with the third terrace. There is indication of a room (unnumbered) in the southwestern corner of plaza J, and another, too mutilated to be described, on the second terrace below it. Room 34 is irregularly rectangular in shape; its floor is on the level of the roof of kiva H. It has good masonry and a smoothed stone sill with a groove cut in the upper surface for the slab that formed the door. Its interior walls show evidences of plastering. Room 35, situated on the same level as the kiva roof, has no window, but there is an opening directly into kiva H. Its roof is a continuation of that of the kiva, and has the old rafters, some still in place, supporting a few of the flat stones which formed the upper walls. As this chamber opens directly into the kiva, we may regard it as a repository for kiva paraphernalia;[40] the Hopi designate a similar chamber _Katcinakihu_, "Katcina house." On the roof of this room the writer set in place a smooth, ovoid stone with flat base, artificially worked. Possibly this stone was formerly used as an idol. [Footnote 40: The Mongkiva at Walpi has such a chamber which is closed by a door and is opened only when paraphernalia for certain ceremonies are desired. In the Warrior House at Walpi there is a similar chamber, ordinarily closely sealed, in which the fetishes of the Warrior Society are kept. Masked dancers among the Pueblos are called Katcinas, and the masks they wear would naturally be kept in a house (_kihu_) called "Katcinakihu."] In Hano, a pueblo on the East mesa of the Hopi, masks are kept in a special room back of a living room, a custom common to all the Hopi. There is no evidence that the Cliff Palace people performed masked dances. The most picturesque building of Cliff Palace is the round tower, room 36, perched on a high rock overlooking kivas G and H. From it the observer may have a fine view of the entire ruin and the canyon, especially the view down the latter, which is unsurpassed. This tower is not unlike other towers in the San Juan and Mesa Verde regions, one of the most perfect of which is that in Navaho canyon, repeatedly figured. This prominent tower is built of worked stones laid in reddish mortar, and apparently was plastered both inside and outside. It is two stories high, but is without a floor in the upper story, or a roof. The theory in certain quarters that this round tower formerly extended to the roof of the cave is not accepted by the author, who believes that it was formerly only a few feet higher than at present. The break in the upper wall adds much to its picturesque character, which is likewise increased by its association with neighboring buildings. The round tower has a doorway in its lower story, and above is another smaller opening, possibly a window. Several small peepholes are present on the western side. The sides of this structure are symmetrical, its walls slanting gradually inward from the base upward, and its vertical lines curving slightly on the western side. (Pl. 4_a_, 11.) Room 37 is a well-preserved room with a metataki, or grinding bin, in the middle. While rooms 38 and 39 appear to be living rooms, they present no special peculiarities. The northern wall of room 39 was wholly undermined and tottering when the work of repair was commenced, so that its foundations had to be built up from the floor of kiva M. To make this difficult repair work effective it was necessary to enlarge the base of the wall, making the side of kiva M curve slightly inward and thereby insuring a good foundation. [Illustration: PLATE 19 PHOTOGRAPHED BY F. K. VREELAND SOUTHEASTERN WALL OF KIVA Q, BEFORE REPAIRING] The walls of rooms 41 and 42 are well preserved; the top of the cave served as the roof. These rooms were entered from the plaza containing kiva M. In room 42 a stepping-stone is set in the outer wall below the doorway, the object being to facilitate entrance. It is said that this room, the roof of which shows signs of smoke, was occupied by campers while engaged in rifling the ruin of its contents. The cluster of rooms numbered 43 to 45 have well-constructed walls, but they have been considerably mutilated. Pegs from which, no doubt, objects were formerly hung, project from the smoothly plastered interior walls of one of these rooms. Rooms 47 and 48 show the holes of floor joists, so placed as to indicate two stories. These rooms form the southern side of the court, which extends from the main plaza of the settlement to the round rooms at the northern extremity. In front of room 50 there is a low platform from which one steps into the room through an entrance situated about midway of its length. Room 51 has a very well preserved fireplace in the northwestern corner and a doorway about midway in the northern wall. Its well-plastered walls show impressions of the hands and fingers of the plasterers. The eastern side of the "street"[41] is bordered by rooms 60 to 63, inclusive, which open into it. In the wall of the last room (61) to the south there is a small peephole that enabled the owners to see from within the room anyone entering the street from the court. Room 59, probably the largest angular room in Cliff Palace, is without an entrance. Its high walls form a part of the northern and eastern ends of the court and almost the whole western side of the street. A large embrasure in its southern wall had been repaired by the ancient masons before Cliff Palace was deserted. North of room 59 remains of the foundations of rooms (not numbered on the plan) were found, and it may be possible that at this point there was a small open space, without a kiva; if so, it would have been exceptional in Cliff Palace. [Footnote 41: A passage or inclosure surrounded by high walls is called kisombi by the Hopi.] Rooms 66 and 68 are round rooms, not kivas, although possibly ceremonial in character. From the roof of room 66, the walls of which are now lower than formerly, it was possible to pass on a level into one of the series of ledge rooms previously described. The floor of room 68 is exceptional in being lower than that of the cave outside, so that on entering it one descends by a step or two. Room 67 appears to have been more a passageway (_kisombi_) than a room, a step from it leading down to the level of the triangular plaza in front of the Speaker-chief's House, south of room 70. Room 70 is a milling room, with two well-preserved metatakis in one corner, each with a set of metates. In the wall above these mealing troughs there is a small window through which the women engaged in grinding corn could see the passers through the court east of this room. The opposite corner is occupied by a fireplace, and the adjacent wall is pierced by a doorway with elevated threshold, through which one passed from the milling room to the broad Speaker-chief's platform south of rooms 71 and 72. The inclosed space west of rooms 71 and 73 is separated from the rear of the cave by a high wall which shuts off entrance on this side. The series of rooms numbered 71 to 74, and the two rooms west of these, form, with the banquette and the neighboring plaza, what is here arbitrarily designated the Speaker-chief's House, the walls of which consist of some of the finest masonry in Cliff Palace. It is protected on the western side by a high, well-plastered wall extending southward from the corner of room 72, so placed as to shield the plaza from storms from this side. The banquette south of rooms 72 and 73 is also finely plastered, and is approached from the plaza by a single step. This banquette probably was designed for the use of the Speaker-chief, but a similar structure on the eastern side of the plaza quarter served another purpose. The masonry, the doors and windows, and other structural features of the Speaker-chief's House are the best in Cliff Palace. Lintels, jambs, and door and window sills are of smooth-dressed stones and project beyond the wall. The rear rooms of this cluster extend to the roof of the cave, being three stories high, while those in front are two stories in height. The line of holes shown in plate 15 indicates the former position of rafters, but all signs of woodwork have disappeared from this section of the ruin. On the western side of the Speaker-chief's House are two rooms, 79 and 80, likewise well built. The former has a banquette extending across the eastern side, and the latter is triangular in shape, with the exterior side rounded. The foundations of these rooms rest upon a large rock that has settled and cracked, the crack extending vertically into the walls, showing that it has developed since the wall was constructed. The inclosures 76 to 78, extending to the cave roof, are more like granaries for the storage of corn. They are built of flat stone slabs placed on edge, and rest on bowlders that have fallen from the cave roof, which is here lower than in the middle part of the cavern. Of these inclosures, 78 is the best preserved, all holes in its angles being skillfully closed with adobe mortar, so that even now if the door were replaced it would be almost rat proof. The door opening is square, and is situated at the western side. There is no adequate evidence that these rooms served as turkey houses, as some have interpreted them. [Illustration: PLATE 20 AX WITH ORIGINAL HANDLE] The rear walls of rooms 89 and 90 are well preserved, but those in front have been completely destroyed. The former has a banquette like that of the Speaker-chief's House. The walls of rooms situated north and east of kiva U, now reduced in height, formerly extended to the roof of the cave, which is here somewhat lower than in the middle of the cavern. The existence of these former walls is indicated by light bands on the smoke-covered surface of the cave roof, and fragments of clay still adhering to the side of the cliff show that the walls here were two and three stories high. In rooms 84, 85, and 86 the builder took advantage of the cliff for rear walls. The middle of the floor of 84 has a depression lined with vertical slabs of stone, evidently a fireplace, as it contained a quantity of wood ashes. In the floor on the eastern side of this fireplace there is a short trench also lined with stone and containing wood ashes, the relation of which to the other inclosure is unknown. It appears that this exceptional structure was not used in the same way as the fireplaces so constantly met with in other rooms, but that it might have been used for baking paper-bread, called _piki_ by the Hopi. In a corner of room 91 there is another depression, half under the floor, covered with a flat stone, that appears quite likely to have been used for this purpose. Unlike the fireplaces sunken in the floor, the one in room 84 is partially or wholly above the floor, its confining stones being several inches above the floor level. Room 92 is the best example of a milling room in Cliff Palace. It has four grinding bins, or metatakis, arranged side by side, with all the parts entire and in working condition. When excavation was begun in this part of the ruin these structures were wholly concealed under fallen rocks. As streams of water from a vertical cleft in the cliff poured down upon them after exposure during periods of rain, it was necessary to construct a roof to protect them.[42] The discovery of this and of other grinding rooms shows that the cliff-house metatakis are the same in structure as those in the Hopi pueblos. In an inclosure south of these metatakis was found a granary. Fragments of walls projecting from the cliff west of room 93 show the former existence of rooms in this section, but as their front walls have been obliterated by the downpour of water their form is obscure. [Footnote 42: On the top of the rock that forms the foundation of the walls of these rooms, and south of them, are hollows or grooves where the metates were ground, and shallow pits used in some prehistoric game. There are similar pits in some of the kiva floors.] KIVAS There are in Cliff Palace 23 ceremonial rooms that may be called kivas.[43] These consist of two types: (1) generally circular or cylindrical subterranean rooms, with pilasters to support the roof, and with fireplace, deflector, and ventilator. (2) Circular or rectangular rooms with rounded corners, without pilasters, fireplace, or deflector. In the first group may be placed provisionally a subtype (kiva M, for example), without pilasters but with a single large banquette. As this subtype is the dominant one in the western part of the San Juan drainage, it may be necessary later to regard it as a type. As a rule rooms of the second type are not subterranean, but are commonly surrounded by high walls, being entered by a doorway at one side. There are 20 rooms pertaining to the first type and three to the second type in Cliff Palace.[44] [Footnote 43: The word _kiva_, now universally employed in place of the Spanish designation "estufa" to designate a ceremonial room of the Pueblos, is derived from the Hopi language. The designation is archaic, the element ki being both Pima and Hopi for "house." It has been sought to connect this word with a part of the human body, and esoterically the kiva represents one of the underworlds or womb of the earth from which the races of man were born. It is highly appropriate that ancient ceremonies should take place in a kiva, the symbolic representation of an underworld, for many of the ceremonies are said to have been practiced while man still lived within the Earth Mother. The word _kiva_ is restricted to subterranean chambers, rectangular or circular, in which secret ceremonies are or were held, and the term _kihu_ is suggested for ceremonial rooms above ground. The five kivas at Walpi are examples of the true kiva, while the Flute chamber may be called a _kihu_.] [Footnote 44: The so-called "warrior room" in Spruce-tree House belongs to the second type.] The majority of the kivas are situated in front of the secular buildings, but several are in the rear of the cave, with high rooms in front of them. The largest cluster of kivas on the cave floor lies in the so-called plaza quarter, which takes its name from the open space occupied by the kivas in that section. The rooms on the terraces, especially those near the southern end of the ruin, were covered with fallen rocks and other débris when the excavation and repair work began. The walls of most of the kivas, whether in front or in the rear, were greatly dilapidated and in all instances it was necessary to rebuild them to the level of the plazas in which the kivas are situated. Following comparisons with modern pueblos, there is every reason to suppose that the kivas preserve the oldest types of buildings of the cliff-dweller culture, and it is believed that the form of these archaic structures is a survival of antecedent conditions. They belonged to the men of different clans, as in a measure is the case among the Hopi at the present day, with whom every kiva is spoken of as that of a certain man who is a clan chief. The male and female members of every Hopi clan have affiliation with certain kivas (a survival of archaic conditions), and in certain clan gatherings, as the dramatic exhibition which occurs in March, the celebration takes place in their respective kivas. [Illustration: PLATE 21 STONE HATCHETS] As the kiva is the men's room, and as religious exercises are largely controlled by men, such ceremonies occur in kivas, which are practically the ceremonial rooms.[45] [Footnote 45: In certain ceremonies of Hopi women's societies the kiva has also come to be a meeting place for these sororities and where they erect their altars.] KIVAS OF THE FIRST TYPE All kivas of the first type are constructed on the same general plan, the different parts being somewhat modified by surrounding conditions. While their general form is circular or cylindrical, some are square with rounded angles, others oblong, and others more or less heart-shaped. Their diameter and height vary according to circumstances, but this type is always subterranean when possible, even though excavation in the rock may be necessary. The walls of the kivas are sometimes double, and the masonry is generally well constructed. The walls show evidences of plastering, which is decorated in some instances with paintings or incised figures. The number of pilasters is commonly 6, but 4 and 8 are also evident; rarely, as in kiva M (the subtype), all are missing. Between these pilasters are the so-called banquettes, one of which is usually larger than the others. The banquettes are generally built 3 or 4 feet in height, consequently they could scarcely have been intended for seats. The pilasters are commonly rectangular, sometimes square, the size being about uniform from base upward. In rare instances a pilaster has a cubby-hole[46] in one side. Where circumstances require the ventilator penetrates the rear portion of the pilaster, but the flue never enters the side of the kiva under a pilaster. [Footnote 46: These small holes, generally square, are usually found in the wall below the banquette.] The pilasters, which are almost universal in kivas of the first type, as has been shown in the description and illustrations of the eight kivas of Spruce-tree House, served as supports for the roof beams. These rafters of pine rested upon and served to support other logs laid one over another, so that finally the roof opening was covered. Across the middle of the walls, at the top, two long parallel logs were placed, in order to add stability to the roof structure. These beams were set far enough apart to allow a hatch midway between their ends, which served the purpose of an entrance and also permitted the escape of smoke from the fire directly below. Over the framework of logs were laid small sticks, filling the interstices, and above these was spread a layer of cedar bark; the whole was then covered with clay, thus bringing the upper surface of the roof to the level of the adjacent plaza. Whether the kiva walls projected above the plaza and roof level is unknown, but possibly they did, and there may have been a slight elevation of the hatchway, as in the Hopi kivas. It is commonly believed that the kiva roof was level with the surrounding plaza and that the entrance was through a hatchway, but no depression or other sign of a ladder or of its resting place on the kiva floor has yet been found in any of the Mesa Verde ruins. The floors of the kivas are commonly of hardened adobe; unlike those of the Hopi kivas they are never paved with stones, but the natural rock often serves for that purpose. It is not rare to find the surface of solid rock that forms the kiva floor cut down a few feet to a lower level. Although generally smooth, when the floor is the natural rock there are sometimes found in it small, cup-like, artificial depressions similar to those in the horizontal surfaces of the cliff or in slabs of detached rock. The fire-pit, which is found in all kivas of the first type,[47] is a circular depression situated slightly to one side of the middle of the room. While generally lined with adobe, slabs of stone sometimes form its border, and it is also to be noted that one or two of these small stones sometimes project above the floor level. The fire-hole is sometimes deep, and is generally filled with wood ashes, indicating long use. [Footnote 47: The fire in these rooms was more for light than for heat, for when roofed a large fire would have produced so much smoke and heat that the occupants would be driven out. The character of the ashes indicates that logs were not used as firewood, but that the prescribed kiva fuel was, as at Walpi, small twigs or brush. No evidence of lamps has been found in cliff-dwellings, the lamp-shaped pottery objects having been used for purposes other than illumination.] Every kiva of the first type has a lateral passageway for the admission of air, opening into the chamber on the floor level, generally under the large banquette. This passage, or tunnel, here designated a flue, communicates either directly with the outside or turns upward at a right angle and forms a small vertical ventilator which opens at the level of the plaza. Between the entrance into the flue from the kiva and the fire-hole there rises from the floor a device called the deflector (sometimes called an altar), the object of which was to prevent flames and smoke being drawn into the ventilator, or to evenly circulate the inflowing fresh air in the chamber. This deflector may be (1) a low stone wall, free on both ends; (2) a curved wall connected with the kiva wall on each side with orifices to allow the passage of air; (3) a stone slab in the kiva floor; (4) a bank, free at each end, supported by upright stakes between which are woven twigs, the whole being plastered with clay.[48] [Footnote 48: Cosmos Mindeleff quotes from Nordenskiöld a description of a Mesa Verde kiva, the deflector of which was made in the same way.] The supposed functions of the flue, the vertical passage, and the ventilator have been discussed by several archeologists. The uses to which the flue has been ascribed are as follows: (1) a chimney, (2) a ceremonial opening, (3) an entrance, (4) a ventilator. There is no sign of smoke on the interior of the vertical passage, which, being too small to admit a person, would seem to prove the first and third theories untenable. In the Navaho National Monument, where there are square rooms, or _kihus_, with banks similar to the deflectors of the circular kivas, a door takes the place of the flue and the vertical passage, and affords the only means for admitting fresh air to the room. Although it may have originated as a simple entrance to the room, it became so modified that it could no longer have served that purpose, ceremonially or otherwise. [Illustration: PLATE 22 STONE OBJECTS _a_ Pounding stone _b_ Projectile point _c_ Cover for vase _d_ Flat stone slab] The position of the entrance to the Cliff Palace kiva is yet to be definitely determined. Analogy, together with the structure of the roof, would indicate that it was by means of a hatchway, but no remains of a ladder were found, and no indication in the floor where a ladder formerly rested is visible. It may be that the large banquette indicates the position of the hatchway.[49] [Footnote 49: On this supposition the large banquette may have been the forerunner of the spectator's section in the modern rectangular Hopi kivas, of which it is a modification.] The subterranean passageway under the flue and beneath the floor of kiva V should not be overlooked in a study of the origin and function of the ventilator. This structure is without apparent connection with the ventilator, and yet it is so carefully constructed under it that it may have had some relation, a knowledge of which will eventually enlighten us regarding the meaning of both structures. The kivas of the Mesa Verde are much smaller than those of Walpi and other Hopi pueblos, one of them being barely 9 feet in diameter and the largest measuring not more than 19 feet, whereas the chief kiva at Walpi is 25 feet long by 15 feet wide. Evidently kivas of such diminutive size as those found at Cliff Palace could accommodate only a few at a time, and it is probable that they were not occupied by fraternities of priests but by a few chiefs; indeed, the religious fraternity, as we understand its composition in modern pueblos, had in all probability not yet been developed. Nevertheless the smallest kiva in Cliff Palace is as large as the room in Walpi in which the Sun priests, mainly of one clan, celebrate their rites. KIVA A Kiva A (pl. 17) is the most southerly kiva of Cliff Palace, the first of the series excavated in the talus, its roof having been on the level of the cave floor, or the fourth terrace. The walls of this kiva required little repair. Its height from the floor to the top of the walls is 8 feet 6 inches, and from the floor to the top of the pilasters 7 feet; the height of the banquette is 3 feet 6 inches. The interior diameter is 11 feet. There are six pilasters, with an average breadth of 20 inches; the distance between them averages 4 feet 6 inches. The opening into the ventilator is situated in the southwestern wall; its height is 2 feet 4 inches, the breadth, at the base, 14 inches, contracted to 11 inches at the top. The deflector, which is broken, is a thin slab of stone. The distance from the flue opening to the deflector is 2 feet 6 inches, and from the deflector to the round fire-hole 8 inches. The diameter of the fire-hole is 1 foot 8 inches, its depth 2 feet. Its western side is lined with small stones set on edge. There were possibly 4 niches in the side wall of the banquette, 3 of them on the east, measuring respectively 16 by 20 by 12 inches, 9 by 9 by 12 inches, and 3 by 3 by 5 inches, and the remaining one situated north by east from the middle of the kiva and measuring 6 by 4 by 8 inches.[50] [Footnote 50: The measurements of the kivas here given were determined by Mr. R. G. Fuller, who served as voluntary assistant during the summer.] There is a subterranean passageway (pl. 17, _b_), 6 feet 6 inches long, from this kiva into room 1, and also a tunnel (pl. 17, _a_), 6 feet in length, between kivas A and B. The former has stone steps and rises above the banquette; its width averages 18 inches. KIVA B Kiva B adjoins kiva A, and is the second of the terraced rooms, its roof being originally on the same level as the former. It is circular in shape, and the height from the floor to the top of the room is 9 feet 6 inches. The height of the top of the pilasters from the floor is 7 feet, and that of the banquette 3 feet 6 inches. The inner diameter of the kiva is 13 feet 6 inches. There are 6 pilasters, averaging 2 feet in width. The position of the ventilator opening is south by west; its depth 4 feet, and height 2 feet 6 inches. The breadth of this opening at the top (it narrows somewhat at the base) is 18 inches. The deflector[51] is a slab of stone about 3 feet 10 inches wide. The distance from the deflector to the kiva wall is 2 feet 6 inches, and from the deflector to the fire-hole 14 inches. The diameter of the fire-hole measures 2 feet, and its depth 9 inches. The distance from the ceremonial opening, or sipapû, to the fire-hole is 4 feet. The diameter of the sipapû is 4 inches and its depth the same. There are 5 niches in the kiva wall. [Footnote 51: With the exception of that in kiva Q there has not been found in any deflector a large stone ("fire stone") forming the cap or top. In deflectors formed of a slab of stone such a "fire stone" on top would be impossible.] The masonry of this kiva is fairly good, its western wall naturally being the most destroyed. The banquette over the tunnel into kiva A is broader than any of the others. On the eastern side the kiva walls are apparently double. [Illustration: PLATE 23 VARIOUS OBJECTS FROM CLIFF PALACE _a_ Pottery fragment with bird-claw decoration in relief _b_, _d_ Food bowls _c_ Incised stone _e_ Decorated fragment of earthenware _f_ Cover for vase] KIVA C This kiva is circular; it measures 13 feet in diameter, and 5 feet 6 inches from the floor to the top of the pilasters. The height of the banquette is 3 feet. The number of pilasters is 6; their average breadth is 2 feet. The deflector is a stone wall laid in mortar; its width is 3 feet 6 inches; the thickness, 8 inches. From the flue to the deflector is 2 feet 4 inches, and from the same to the fire-hole, 8 inches. The diameter of the fire-hole is 2 feet, its depth 1 foot. The sipapû is 2 feet from the fire-hole; it is 6 inches deep and 4 inches in diameter. The masonry of this kiva was in very poor condition, most of the upper part being wholly broken down. There are 4 niches in the walls. The surface is thickly plastered and shows a deposit of smoke. The pilasters are of uniform size. The deep banquette is situated above the flue back of the deflector. KIVA D Kiva D is square, with rounded corners; it is 13 feet in diameter; its walls are 10 feet high and measure 7 feet from the floor to the top of the pilasters. The height of the banquette is 4 feet. The number of pilasters is 6; their average distance apart is 4 feet 6 inches, and their width 2 feet. The eastern wall of this kiva is the side of the cave, and the whole was inclosed by high walls. On the southern side of the kiva is a passageway. The walls of the kiva and the cave roof above it are blackened with smoke. There are two deep banquettes. The flue opens in the western wall of the kiva; its height is 2 feet, and its width at the top is 13 inches. The distance from the flue to the deflector is 2 feet 6 inches; from the deflector to the fire-hole, 13 inches. The diameter of the fire-hole is 2 feet and its depth 1 foot. The distance from the fire-hole to the sipapû is 2 feet 2 inches; the diameter of the latter is 3 inches. This kiva has 5 finely made rectangular niches in the walls. The walls are well plastered and were painted yellow. Wherever the masonry is visible it is found inferior to none except possibly that of kiva Q.[52] [Footnote 52: This kiva, which is one of the best in Cliff Palace, is illustrated by Nordenskiöld.] KIVA E Kiva E is square, with rounded corners; it measures 11 feet 6 inches in diameter, and is 9 feet 10 inches high. The elevation of the banquette is 4 feet, and of the pilasters 7 feet. The number of pilasters is 6. The flue opens on the western side. The deflector consists of a wall of stone, 2 feet high; its width is 3 feet 6 inches, the thickness 9 inches. The distance from the deflector to the flue is 1 foot 10 inches, and from the fire-hole 3 inches. There are 4 mural niches. As the projecting rock on the eastern side interfered with the symmetry of this kiva, when constructed it was necessary to peck the rock away 8 inches deep over an area 10 feet square, thus exhibiting, next to the floor of kiva V, the most extensive piece of kiva stone-cutting in Cliff Palace. Although this kiva was generally in a fair state of preservation, it was necessary to rebuild much of the eastern wall. The fire-hole of this kiva is lined with a rude jar set with adobe mortar. No sipapû was discovered in the floor. Kiva E is one of the few kivas in Cliff Palace surrounded by the walls of rooms. As it is situated in the rear of the cave, projecting walls of the cliff were necessarily cut away to a considerable extent in order to obtain the form of room desired on the eastern side. This side of the kiva is blackened by smoke antedating the construction of the room. There is abundant evidence in this portion of the ruin of secondary construction of buildings on the same site. Several walls built upon others show that some rooms may have been abandoned and new ones added, an indication that this portion of the ruin is very old, perhaps having the oldest walls still standing. KIVA F Kiva F, situated on a lower terrace than the kivas already described, is square, with rounded corners, and is 9 feet high. The height of the pilasters is 6 feet 10 inches, and the top of the banquette is 4 feet 1 inch above the floor. The diameter of the kiva is 13 feet. There are 6 pilasters; the distance between them averages 5 feet; their average width is 2 feet 4 inches. The deflector, a wall of masonry, is 3 feet wide and averages 9 inches in thickness. The deflector is 2 feet from the flue and 18 inches from the fire-hole, which is 2 feet in diameter and the same in depth. The distance from the fire-hole to the sipapû is 2 feet 4 inches. The diameter of the sipapû is 2½ inches, and its depth 5 inches. There are 3 mural niches, similar to those previously described. The roof of this kiva was of the same level as the floors of rooms 16 and 24, the roofs of which overlooked the kiva situated in the terrace below. The walls of this kiva are black with smoke. The room is surrounded by a second wall, the interval between which and that of the kiva is filled with rubble. KIVA G This kiva may be called "heartshaped." Its height from the floor to the top of the roof is 9 feet, and it measures 6 feet from the floor to the top of the pilasters. The banquette is 4 feet high, and the interior diameter of the kiva is 12 feet. The numbers of pilasters is 6; their average breadth is a little more than 2 feet, and the intervals between them averages 3 feet 6 inches. [Illustration: PLATE 24 FOOD BOWLS] The deflector is a stone slab 3 feet wide and 2 feet high. The distance from the flue to the deflector is 2 feet; from the deflector to the fire-hole 11 inches. The diameter of the fire-hole is 2 feet, its depth 18 inches. The sipapû is 2 feet 8 inches from the fire-hole; its diameter is 2 inches, and its depth 4 inches. There are 4 mural niches. This kiva is situated in the terrace below that last mentioned, that is, in the second terrace, and was wholly buried when excavations began. The roofs of rooms 30 and 31 overlooked this kiva, their floors being on the same level as the kiva roof. KIVA H Kiva H (pl. 18) measures 8 feet from the floor to the top of the wall, and 6 feet from the floor to the top of the pilasters. The height of the banquette is 4 feet 6 inches. The diameter of the kiva is 11 feet 6 inches. The deflector is a curved stone wall joining the kiva wall on each side of the flue.[53] It is built of stone, 7 feet 6 inches high, 10 inches wide, and 20 inches high. The deflector is 1 foot 6 inches from the flue and 15 inches from the fire-hole. The diameter of the fire-hole is 2 feet and its depth 1 foot. [Footnote 53: A similar deflector is recorded by Mr. Morley as existing in the Cannonball ruin, and is figured by Nordenskiöld from the Mesa Verde.] The sipapû is situated 2 feet from the fire-hole; it is 3 inches in diameter and 4 inches deep. There are 2 mural niches. Exceptional features of this kiva are the curved deflector and the opening into a small room at the northwestern corner. Instead of extending straight from the kiva to the vertical ventilator, the flue turns at a right angle midway in its course. The ventilator is built at one corner of the kiva wall. As this kiva lies deep below the base of the round tower, a fine view of these several characteristics may be obtained from that point. KIVA I When work began there was no indication of the walls of this kiva, except a fragment of one which at first was supposed to belong to a small secular room. The kiva had been filled with débris by those who had dug into the upper rooms, and a large hole[54] was broken through the high western wall of kiva L, through which to throw débris. The removal of this accumulation was a work of considerable magnitude, and the repair of the kiva wall was very difficult, as it was necessary to reconstruct the foundations that had been blasted away to make the opening above mentioned. [Footnote 54: This entrance in the wall appears in all photographs of this portion of Cliff Palace.] When this débris was removed and the floor of the kiva was reached, it was found that its walls were much disintegrated, the component stones having practically turned into sand, necessitating the construction of buttresses to support them. The dimensions of kiva I are as follows: The height of the top of the wall from the floor is 8 feet, and that of the pilasters 6 feet 8 inches. The banquette rises 3 feet 8 inches above the floor. The interior diameter of the kiva is 10 feet 10 inches. The number of pedestals is 4, averaging 4 feet in height. The flue is situated at the southwestern side. The distance from the flue to the deflector is 21 inches; from the deflector to the fire-hole, 2 inches. There are two mural niches, one at the northeast measuring 13 by 11 by 8 inches, and one at the southeast measuring 13 by 11 by 7 inches. A dado, painted red, surrounded the kiva, the color being most conspicuous, because best protected, in the mural niches, half of which are above, half below the upper margin of the dado. On this margin are traceable triangular figures like those on the painted wall of room 11. On the level of what was formerly the roof of this kiva was set into the roof a vase covered with a flat stone and containing desiccated bodies of lizards.[55] [Footnote 55: For a note on a similar vase and its use, see remarks on kiva S. It is probable that these dried lizards were regarded by the Cliff Palace priests as very potent "medicine."] KIVA J Kiva J is round; it is 14 feet in diameter and measures 8 feet 4 inches from the floor to the top of the wall. The height from the floor to the top of one of the pilasters is 5 feet 10 inches. The banquette is 3 feet 2 inches high. The deep banquette, as is usually the case, is above the flue, which opens in the southwestern wall. The number of pedestals is 6; their average breadth is 2 feet. The deflector consists of a stone wall rising 20 inches above the kiva floor. There are 7 mural niches. The kiva walls were thickly plastered with adobe, and show the action of smoke.[56] [Footnote 56: From all appearances the kivas were plastered from time to time after the walls had become blackened.] The open space east of the kiva, formerly continuous with its roof, is somewhat larger than is usually the case, making this the largest plaza in Cliff Palace, except that of the plaza quarter. There are remnants of rooms southwest of the kiva. [Illustration: PLATE 25 _a_ _b_ _c_ _d_ _c'_ _d'_ VASES AND FOOD BOWLS] KIVA K Kiva K[57] is round in form, and its height from the floor to the roof is 7 feet. The height of the pilasters is 5 feet, and that of the banquette 3 feet. The diameter of the kiva is 9 feet 6 inches. The pilasters are 5 in number, and average about 20 inches in width. The deflector of this kiva is exceptional, being the only known instance where this structure is constructed of upright stakes bound with twigs or cedar bark and plastered with adobe.[58] The distance from the flue to the deflector is 18 inches, and from the deflector to the fire-hole, 8 inches. The diameter of the fire-hole is 20 inches, the depth 8 inches. The walls of this smallest of the kivas are formed partly of masonry, but in places the chamber is excavated out of solid rock, the ancient builders having pecked away projections in order to produce the desired form. [Footnote 57: This kiva, one of the finest and in some features the most exceptional in Cliff Palace, is not indicated in Nordenskiöld's plan.] [Footnote 58: Nordenskiöld describes a ventilator constructed in the same way.] The marks of smoke are clearly visible, especially on the flue; and on the surface of the eastern side are scratched several figures representing birds and other animals. Eyelets of osiers set in the wall are also exceptional, and their use is problematical. KIVA L The height of kiva L is 7 feet 5 inches, that of the pilasters 5 feet 4 inches, and of the banquette 3 feet 3 inches. The diameter is 12 feet 2 inches. Number of pilasters 6. The flue opens on the western side; its height is 2 feet. Only a single mural niche was recognizable. The walls of this kiva were very badly damaged, the whole of its front having fallen inward, covering the floor. The construction of the room demanded considerable rock cutting, especially on the eastern side, to secure the requisite depth. Whatever masonry remained in position was, as a rule, good. Probably no kiva in Cliff Palace was more dilapidated when work began. It had been used as a dump by those who had mutilated the ruins, and a great opening had been torn in its western wall. Excavations showed that the floor had been wholly destroyed. KIVA N The height of kiva N is 7 feet 4 inches, and that of the pilasters 5 feet 4 inches. The banquette is 3 feet high. The diameter of the kiva is 11 feet. There are 6 pilasters and 5 mural niches. This kiva was in bad condition when the work began, but it is now in good repair and exhibits interesting features. The deflector was wholly destroyed, and it was impossible to find the sipapû. There are evidences of considerable rock cutting on the northern side, and of a little on the eastern and southwestern sides. The kiva walls are blackened by smoke. KIVA P The height of kiva P is 8 feet, its diameter 11 feet 3 inches. The height from the floor to the top of a pilaster is 5 feet 10 inches, and to the top of the banquette 3 feet 4 inches. The number of pilasters is 6, and their average breadth about 20 inches. From the flue to the deflector the distance is 2 feet 8 inches, and the deflector is situated 6 inches from the fire-hole. There are 5 mural niches. The walls of this kiva are much blackened by smoke. The masonry is fair, but much broken on the northern and western sides. There is evidence that a considerable amount of rock has been pecked away on the northern side to the floor level. The kiva occupies almost the whole open space in which it is constructed, and the walls of neighboring buildings surround it on all sides, rising from the edge of the kiva. In order to secure a level foundation, parallel beams to support the floor were laid from a projecting rock to a masonry wall. The ends of these logs project above the path that leads to the main entrance. KIVA Q This kiva (pl. 19) is round in shape and measures 8 feet 6 inches from the floor to the top of the wall. There were formerly eight pilasters, which averaged 18 inches in breadth. The height of the pilasters is 6 feet, and of the top of the banquette 3 feet 3 inches. The diameter of the kiva is 13 feet 8 inches. The fire-hole is 22 inches from the deflector; the thickness of the latter is 10 inches, and its width 3 feet 3 inches. There are four mural niches, all in fine condition. Although the masonry of this kiva is the finest in Cliff Palace, its whole western end is destroyed. The floor west of the deflector has a slightly convex surface.[59] [Footnote 59: In ceremonial rooms of ruins in the Navaho National Monument this curve is represented by a raised step.] No ceremonial opening, or sipapû, such as occurs in several other Cliff Palace kivas, was found in kiva Q. At the place where this feature usually appears the floor was broken, but as several of the Cliff Palace kivas have no specialized sipapûs it is possible that this device may be looked for in another opening in the floor. There are no sipapûs in the Hano kivas of the East Mesa of the Hopi, and the priests of that pueblo assert that the Tewa have no special hole in the kiva floor to represent this ceremonial opening. Apparently the Pueblos of the Rio Grande are like the Tewa of Hano in this respect. All the kivas of Spruce-tree House and a number of those in Cliff Palace have this ceremonial opening, thus following the Hopi rather than the Tewa custom. Whether the fireplace was used by those who performed rites in kiva Q as a symbolic opening into or from the "underworld" is unknown, to the writer. The subterranean passage in kiva V leading to the fire-hole, but not entering it, is interesting in this particular. Kiva V, however, as pointed out, has in addition to the fire-hole a fine pottery-lined sipapû corresponding to the sipapûs in Hopi kivas, but made in the solid rock floor. [Illustration: PLATE 26 _a_ Mugs from crematory _b_ Dipper-bowl and corrugated vase POTTERY] KIVA S This kiva is square, with rounded corners. Its height is 8 feet, and the height of one of the pilasters above the floor 5 feet 10 inches. The banquettes are 3 feet 3 inches above the floor. The diameter of the kiva is 10 feet 4 inches. The number of pilasters is 6; their average breadth is 20 inches. The distance from flue to deflector, which is a slab of stone, is 3 feet 2 inches; the height of the deflector is 1 foot 7 inches and its width 3 feet. From the deflector to the fire-hole the distance is 7 inches. The diameter of the fire-hole is 2 feet, its depth 9 inches. There are 2 mural niches. The large banquette is 3 feet 6 inches broad. The shaft of the flue, after passing 18 inches under the kiva wall, turns southeastward 4 feet 4 inches and then takes a vertical course. The masonry of kiva S is fairly good. A jar is set into one of the banquettes, and was perhaps formerly used for containing sacred meal.[60] This receptacle was left as found, and a slab of stone placed slantingly above it to shield it from falling stones. Under the huge rock above it there are light masonry walls outlining diminutive rooms used possibly for storage but not for habitation. [Footnote 60: Among the Hopi at the present day certain fetishes, as the effigies of the Great Plumed Serpent, are regarded as so sacred that when not in use they are kept in jars set in a banquette, the surface of which is level with the neck of the jar. These receptacles are closely sealed with a stone slab when the images are deposited in them. Possibly the jars set in the kiva banquettes of Cliff Palace may have been used for a similar purpose: i. e., were receptacles for fetishes held in such veneration that, as is the case with the Great Serpent effigies of the Hopi, one even touching them may, in the belief of the people, be afflicted with direful disorders.] KIVA T This kiva stands on an elevated rock, and has double walls, the intervals between the wall of the kiva and the outside walls being filled with rubble. The height of kiva T is 7 feet 6 inches, that of one of the pilasters 6 feet 6 inches. The banquette is 3 feet 9 inches above the floor. The diameter of the kiva is 10 feet 5 inches. There were probably 6 pilasters and 2 mural niches. Although the greater part of the walls of this kiva was destroyed, a deep banquette still remains above the air shaft. The floor has the same level as the second terrace, or one story above kiva S, the roof of which is consequently at the level of the floor of kiva T. Kiva T was in bad condition when work began, as part of its front wall had fallen and only the tops of the others were visible above the débris. Even the floor level was difficult to determine. KIVA U The form of kiva U is round, and its height is 7 feet 6 inches. The height of one of the pilasters is 4 feet 11 inches, and that of the banquette 3 feet 4 inches. The diameter of the kiva is 12 feet. There are 5 pilasters. The fire-hole is 4 inches from the flue; the diameter of the fire-hole is 20 inches, its depth 6 inches. There are 6 mural niches, so arranged that two large niches are situated above two small ones. The presence of but 5 pedestals is accounted for by the joining of 2 above the flue. Much rock-cutting was necessary in constructing this kiva, especially on the northern and southwestern sides. As the front wall of the kiva had fallen, it had to be practically rebuilt. The foundations were unstable, apparently having been constructed on loose stones carelessly laid. KIVA V This kiva is round and measures 5 feet 6 inches from the floor to the top of one of the pilasters. The top of the banquette is 3 feet 4 inches above the floor. The diameter of the kiva is 12 feet 8 inches. The number of pilasters is 6 and their average breadth 20 inches. The distance from the deflector to the line of the wall is 23 inches; the height, of the deflector is 22 inches, the thickness 9 inches, and the width 3 feet 2 inches. The fire-hole is 18 inches from the sipapû; the latter is 10 inches deep and 3 inches in diameter, and is lined with a pottery tube cemented in place. There are three mural niches. Kiva V is exceptional in the amount of rock-cutting that was necessary for lowering the floor to the desired level. Probably the greatest amount of stone-cutting was done in this kiva. There remains to be mentioned a unique tunnel which may eventually throw some light on ceremonial openings in the kivas of cliff-dwellings. Just beneath the adobe floor, extending from a vertical flue outside the kiva to the fire-hole, which it does not, however, enter, there is a passage through which a small person may crawl. Exteriorly this opens into a vertical flue which was broken down; inside it ends bluntly at the fire-hole. About midway of its length there extends from it a lateral passageway, slightly curved, forming a well-worn doorway. This curved passage opens through the kiva floor by a manhole. The walls of these passages are constructed of good masonry. Their function is unknown, but as most structures connected with kivas are ceremonial, this may provisionally be called a ceremonial opening. [Illustration: PLATE 27 PITCH BALLS AND VASE] It is evident that this ceremonial passage had nothing to do or at least had no connection with the ventilator and deflector of the kiva. The opening is situated under the floor, passing in its course beneath the deflector, and its external opening is by a vertical passage outside the ventilator. It also differs from the ventilator in having a lateral branch likewise situated under the floor. Passing to kivas outside the Mesa Verde region, we find homologous passages recorded as present under the floor in Pueblo Bonito, a ruin on the Chaco, and in the kiva of a ruin not far from Chama, where the passage under the floor is excavated in solid rock. Evidently we have in this structure a ceremonial opening the true significance of which is yet to be determined. Is it connected with the Tewa concept that the fire-hole is a sipapû, or was it used in fire rites that were performed about the fireplace? These and other questions that might be proposed must remain unanswered until more is known of similar passages in other cliff-dwelling kivas. A SUBTYPE OF KIVA (KIVA M) The method of roof construction, which is the main difference that distinguishes a kiva of the subtype from one of the first type, is due to the absence of pilasters. Kiva M of Cliff Palace may be assigned to this subtype, although many examples of it occur in ruins farther down the San Juan, as well as in the Navaho National Monument and in Canyon de Chelly. Kivas of the subtype are similar to those of the second type in that pilasters are absent, but they differ from them in the presence of a large banquette and in the subterranean position, which features also characterize the first type. The only circular kivas known to the ruins near the East Mesa of the Hopi of Arizona belong to the first type, two of which are found at Kukuchomo, the two ruins on the summit of the mesa above Sikyatki. The method of roofing a kiva of the subtype may be clearly observed in the kiva of Scaffold House in the Navaho National Monument.[61] The rafters here are parallel, and extend across the top of the kiva, their ends resting on the wall. The middle beam, which is the largest, is flanked on each side by another. Upon these supporting beams are laid others at right angles, and on these were placed the brush, bark, and clay that covered the roof. Entrance was gained by means of a hatchway on one side of the roof near the large banquette, which occupies a position, as respects the entrance and the place supposedly occupied by the ladder and the fire-pit, similar to the spectator's platform of a modern rectangular Hopi kiva, except that it is higher above the floor and is relatively smaller. If the banquettes were depressed and enlarged into a platform, the form of the kiva being changed from circular to rectangular, thus modified the banquette would form a structure like the spectator's platform of a typical modern Hopi kiva.[62] [Footnote 61: See _Bulletin 50, Bureau of American Ethnology_.] [Footnote 62: The two circular kivas of Kukuchomo, near Sikyatki, have this large banquette and in other respects resemble the ruins of Canyon de Chelly. Kukuchomo marks the site of a settlement, of the Coyote clan of the Hopi in prehistoric times.] Perhaps of all the ceremonial rooms repaired the walls of kiva M were in the most dangerous condition. The front of the northern wall of room 39 had been undermined and was without foundation, hanging without basal support except at the ends. A support was constructed under this hanging wall, and to give additional strength the foundations were rebuilt a little broader at the base than formerly, causing the wall to bulge almost imperceptibly into the kiva. Although no pilasters were seen, the deep banquette on the northwestern side places it among the kivas of the first type. KIVAS OF THE SECOND TYPE The architecture of the two kivas O and R are so different from those already considered that they are set apart from the others in a second type. The form and structure of kiva W indicate that this room also may be classed as of the same type. In the side canyon north of that in which Cliff Palace is situated, where water was obtained throughout the summer, there is another kiva, also supposed to belong to the second type.[63] [Footnote 63: As a huge rock had fallen from the roof of the cave in which this kiva lies, since it was first occupied, it would appear that the place was abandoned on that account.] The main difference in construction between the two types of kivas is the absence of pilasters, which implies the absence of a roof in the second type. The suggestion that a kiva of the second type is simply an unfinished form of the first type has little to support it, but whether the architectural difference in the two types has any functional importance or meaning is unknown. It has been suggested that one type was used by the Winter, the other by the Summer people.[64] [Footnote 64: Nordenskiöld's description of this kiva has been quoted earlier in this paper. In the description of a ceremonial room of a somewhat similar or of the same type in Spruce-tree House the term "warrior room" is used; there is nothing to warrant this designation, however, and it would be better to consider it simply as a kiva of the second type.] [Illustration: PLATE 28 RESTS FOR JARS] KIVA O Kiva O is rounded below and square above, with a north-south diameter of 11 feet 10 inches, and an east-west diameter of 10 feet 6 inches. The ventilator opens in the western wall. There are 2 mural niches. Both the plastered floor and the deflector are lacking, and there is no fire-hole nor sipapû. No roof or pilasters to support it were detected. It is difficult to measure the surrounding wall on account of its varying height. The masonry is good, but there are no signs on the walls that a fire had ever burned within the chamber. It would appear that this kiva was roofless, and that it had broad banquettes at the northern and southern sides. KIVA R In shape this kiva is oval below and square above, without pilasters or other evidences of a roof. There are no signs of a floor, a deflector, or a fire-hole. The surrounding wall of the kiva is high; apparently there was an entrance at the eastern side. Banquettes are present on the northern and southern ends, and a narrow ledge skirts the other two sides. There are 4 mural niches: (1) south by east, measuring 15 by 11 by 13 inches; (1) north by east, measuring 11½ by 8 by 15 inches; (2) in the north wall, measuring 13 by 8 by 12 inches, and 12 by 8 by 13 inches; the latter three being placed in a row and separated by slabs of stone. In the south wall there is a tunnel terminating bluntly and bifurcated at the end. Although kiva R was regarded by Nordenskiöld as furnishing evidence of a transition form connecting circular and rectangular kivas, it seems to the author a new type rather than a modification of the circular or the rectangular kivas. KIVA W Kiva W is not generally included among the Cliff Palace ceremonial rooms on account of its isolation from the houses, but there is no doubt that it should be so enumerated. It lies about 50 feet west of the end of the last room in the cliff-dwelling, and is not accompanied with secular rooms. Although situated on the same level as the houses, its walls rise two tiers high, but no part of the inclosure is subterranean. From the height of the walls it at first seemed as if in kiva W there were evidences of a room above. This condition would be contrary to the rule and, to the Hopi mind, ceremonially impossible; but if its upper walls are regarded as homogeneous with the high walls that surround kivas O and R, and we interpret this as an example of the second type of kiva, the anomaly is explained. Although this kiva is placed provisionally in the second type mainly because of these lofty side walls, on account of its isolation at the end of Cliff Palace several observers have not regarded it as belonging to the ruin. Neither Nordenskiöld nor Morley and Kidder included it in their ground plans, nor does Nordenskiöld mention it in his enumeration of Cliff Palace kivas. As kiva W is almost wholly unprotected by the cave roof, its walls have greatly suffered from the downpour of rains to which they are exposed. The masonry is fairly good. Evidently it was an important building, and was isolated from other rooms possibly for some special purpose. As there are few or no walls of secular rooms near it, one may believe that it was resorted to by the villagers on special occasions and did not belong to any one clan. MINOR ANTIQUITIES In the preceding pages have been described the major antiquities, such as walls and those permanent objects which could not be removed from the places where they were constructed without more or less harm. There remain to be considered the minor antiquities, or the smaller objects which are movable and of a more perishable nature, especially if left in the places where they were found. It was mainly in search of such objects that much of the mutilation of Cliff Palace was done. It was not expected that excavations would yield any considerable number of specimens, since for years Cliff Palace had been dug over in search of them, and many hundreds of objects had already been found and carried away to be sold either to museums or to individuals. Notwithstanding these unfavorable conditions, the collection of objects, now deposited in the National Museum, is sufficient to afford some idea of the culture of the Cliff Palace people. Among the objects that may be mentioned in the category of minor antiquities are pottery, basketry, implements of stone, bone, and wood, fabrics of various kinds, ornaments, fetishes, and the like--all those objects commonly called artifacts that make up collections from cliff-dwellings generally. The excavations at Cliff Palace have revealed no specimens strikingly different from those already described as from Spruce-tree House. We would expect some variation in the symbols on pottery from the two ruins, but the differences are not conspicuous in the few specimens that have been compared. Nor is there any peculiarity in the form of the pottery, as the ceramic objects from Cliff Palace practically duplicate those from Spruce-tree House, already described, and probably are not much unlike those still buried in Long House, Balcony House, and the House with the Square Tower. [Illustration: PLATE 29 BASKET HOPPER--SIDE AND BOTTOM VIEWS] As many ceremonial objects, being highly prized, may have been removed from Cliff Palace when the place was deserted by its inhabitants, the few that remained present scant material from which to add to our knowledge of the ceremonial life of the people. The existence of so many kivas would point to many rites, although a large number of sacred rooms does not necessarily indicate more complex or elaborate rites than a smaller number: multiplicity of kivas does not necessarily mean multiplicity of ceremonies, nor few kivas a limited ritual. In no pueblo are there more complicated ceremonies than at Walpi, where there are only five of these sacred rooms; but it must be remembered that many of the religious rites of Walpi are performed in kihus, or secular rooms. The same may have been true of Cliff Palace. The writer's belief is that in historic times, by which is meant since the advent of missionaries, altars have become more elaborate and rites more complex at Walpi than in prehistoric times, and that through the same influence the use of images or idols has also increased. This increase in the complexity of rites may be traced to the amalgamation of clans or to a substitution of the fraternities of priesthoods for simple clan ancestor worship. The elaborate character of ceremonial paraphernalia may likewise be due to acculturation,[65] which increases in complication with the lapse of time. [Footnote 65: For instance, the complicated reredos of many of the modern Hopi altars is made of flat wooden slabs, the manufacture of which would be very difficult for a people ignorant of iron. These probably replaced painted stone slabs of simpler character, examples of which have been found in ruins and indeed still survive in some of the oldest rites.] STONE IMPLEMENTS The stone implements from Cliff Palace consist of axes, mauls, paint grinders, pecking stones, metates, balls, flakes, spear and arrow points, and various other articles (pls. 20-22). There is great uniformity in these implements, the axes, for instance, being generally single edged, although a good specimen of double-edged hatchet is in the collection. A fragment of the peculiar stone implement called _tcamahia_[66] by the Hopi was found. [Footnote 66: This object probably came from near Tokónabi, the ancient home of the Snake people of Walpi, on San Juan river. Fourteen of these tcamahias form part of the Antelope altar in the Snake Dance at Walpi.] While as a rule the hatchets are without handles, one specimen (pl. 20) is exceptional in this particular. The handle of this hatchet from Cliff Palace, like that from Spruce-tree House, elsewhere described, is a stick bent in a loop around the stone head. POUNDING STONES Anyone who will examine the amount of stone-cutting necessary to lower the floor of kiva V, for instance, to its present depth, or to peck away the projecting rock in some of the other kivas, will realize at once that the Cliff Palace people were industrious stone workers. A number of the pounding stones (pl. 22, _a_) with which this work was done have been found. These stones are cubical in form, or rounded or pointed at one end or both ends, and provided with two or more pits on the sides. They were evidently held directly in the hand and used without handles. Although generally small, they sometimes are of considerable size. The stone of which they are made is foreign to the vicinity; it is hard, as would be absolutely necessary to be effectual in the use to which they were put. GRINDING STONES The most common variety of grinding stones is, of course, the metate, or mill-stone, used in grinding corn. These implements have a variety of forms. They may be flat above and rounded below, or flat on both sides, triangular on each face, or simply convex on each side. None of them have feet like the Mexican metates. The stone with which the grinding was done, or the one held in the hand, also varies in shape, size, and evidences of use.[67] Stones with a depression in one face served as mortars. A stone in the form of a pestle, flat on the end, served as a paint grinder. Several flat stones with smooth surface, showing the effect of grinding, and others with slight concavities, undoubtedly served the same purpose. Smooth stones showing grinding on one or more faces were evidently the implements with which the builders smoothed the walls of the houses after the masonry had been laid; others were used in polishing pottery. [Footnote 67: At several places on the surfaces of projecting rocks forming the foundations of buildings may be noticed grooves where metates were sharpened. One or more of these occur at the entrance to the "street" in front of room 51. The foundation of a wall in one room was built directly upon one of these grooves, part of the groove being in sight, the rest covered with masonry. Near room 92 there are many of these grooves as well as small pits.] MISCELLANEOUS STONES Many stone balls, large or small, were found. Some of these show chipping, others are ground smooth. Certain of these balls were evidently used in a game popular at Cliff Palace, in which they were rolled or dropped into deep pits and grooves. It appears that this game was played by occupants of the sacred rooms, as the pits are common in the kiva floors. Other stone balls were formerly tied to the end of a handle with a thong of hide and used as a weapon. [Illustration: PLATE 30 SANDALS] [Illustration: PLATE 31 SANDALS] [Illustration: PLATE 32 SANDALS] A half oval stone, smooth and flat at one pole, is supposed to have been an idol, possibly the earth goddess, who is repeatedly represented by the Hopi in a similar way. It was left near where it was found at the northwest corner of kiva H. Our masons used rectangular slabs of soft stone, which were doubtless door-closes, as mortar boards. They were held in place in the door opening by jambs made of mortar laid on sticks, and by a horizontal rod which passed between two osier eyelets set in the uprights of the door-frame and projecting from it. These stone doors were sometimes held in place by a groove cut in the threshold or by a ledge of adobe. Two thin, flat, circular stone disks (pl. 22, _c_), with smooth surfaces and square edges, accompanied the calcined human bones in the inclosure at the northern end of the large refuse heap. It is probable that some of these disks were used as covers for mortuary vases. Irregularly shaped flat stones with pits and incised figures pecked in their surface were used in a game, and a slab covered with incised figures but without the pits (pl. 23, _c_) probably served a similar purpose. Several large stones, which the builders of Cliff Palace had begun to dress and had later rejected, show the method adopted by them in cutting stones the required size. When stones were found to be too large to be laid, or had projections that interfered with the required shape, a groove was pecked where the fracture was desired and the stone broken along the groove. POTTERY No ruin in the Mesa Verde National Park has yielded more specimens of pottery than Cliff Palace, many pieces of which are preserved in various museums in Colorado and elsewhere. The collection gathered by the writer was small compared with some of these, and although only a few whole pieces were found, by restoration from fragments a fair number of specimens, ample perhaps for generalization, were procured. In the following mention of the pottery obtained from the ruin a very comprehensive idea of the perfection in the ceramic art attained in Cliff Palace can hardly be hoped. Southwestern pottery may be divided into two types, so far as superficial appearance goes: (1) coiled or indented undecorated ware; (2) smooth polished ware. Of the latter there are two sub-types: (_a_) pottery with a surface slip, generally white, on which designs are painted, and (_b_) decorated pottery without a superficial slip, and generally reddish in color. Cliff Palace pottery, when decorated, belongs to the last two divisions, but some of the best made specimens belong to the coiled or indented type. Although there are several fragments of red pottery ornamented with designs painted in black, and one or two specimens in which the basal color is orange, the majority of the specimens belong to the so-called black-and-white ware, which may therefore be called a type of this region. The whole pieces of pottery collected were chiefly mortuary vessels, and probably contained food offerings, indicating, like the sipapûs in the kivas, that the cliff-dwellers had a distinct conception of a future life. In addition to the limited number of pieces of unbroken pottery, many of the fragments were decorated with novel patterns. Fragments of corrugated and indented ware are by far the most numerous, but although many of these were obtained, not a whole piece was found, with the exception of a single specimen plastered in a fire-hole and three others similarly fixed in the banquettes of kivas. These were left as they were found. The same forms of pottery, as dippers, ladles, vases, canteens, jars, and similar objects, occur at Cliff Palace as at Spruce-tree House (pl. 23-27). All varieties were repeatedly found, some with old cracks that had been mended, and one is still tied with the yucca cord with which it had been repaired. It is evident from the frequency with which the Cliff Palace people mended their old pottery that they prized the old vessels and were very careful to preserve them, being loth to abandon even a cracked jar (pl. 23, _d_). None of the Cliff Palace pottery is glazed.[68] Some specimens of smooth pottery are coarse in texture and without decoration; others have elaborate geometrical figures; but animate objects are confined almost entirely to a few pictures of birds or other animals and rudely drawn human figures. The pictography of the pottery affords scant data bearing on the interpretation of the ancient symbolism of the inhabitants, as compared with that of Sikyatki, for example, in the Hopi country. [Footnote 68: The first description of "glazed" pottery in the Pueblo region is given by Castañeda (1540), who says: "Throughout this province [Tiguex] are found glazed pottery and vessels truly remarkable both in shape and execution." This has sometimes been interpreted to mean the glossy but unglazed pottery of Santa Clara. Glazed pottery was found by the writer in 1896 in ruins on the Little Colorado. It appears to be intrusive in the Arizona ruins.] _Food bowls._--In form the food bowls[69] from Cliff Palace (pls. 23-25) are the same as those from other prehistoric sites of the Southwest, but as a rule the Cliff Palace bowls are smaller than those of Sikyatki and the ruins on the Little Colorado. They have, as a rule, a thicker lip, which is square across instead of tapering to a thin edge or flaring, as is sometimes the case elsewhere. The surface, inside and out, is commonly very smooth, even glossy. The pottery was built up by coiling the clay, and the colors were made permanent by the firing. [Footnote 69: Food bowls with handles, so common to the ruins of northern Arizona, were not found at Cliff Palace.] The basis of the study of symbolism was of course the pottery decoration. As a rule the center of the inside of the food bowls is plain, but several have this portion ornamented with squares, triangles, and other figures. The outside of several bowls from Cliff Palace and Spruce-tree House is decorated, notwithstanding Nordenskiöld speaks of exterior decoration as rare in his collections from the Mesa Verde. The geometric ornaments consist of rectangular figures.[70] [Footnote 70: No curved lines are present in the many examples of decoration on the outside of food bowls from Sikyatki.] _Mugs._--Some authors have questioned whether the prehistoric people of the Southwest were familiar with this form of pottery. The collections from Cliff Palace (pl. 24-26) and Spruce-tree House set at rest any reasonable doubt on this point. There are, however, peculiarities in the form of mugs from Mesa Verde. The diameter of the base is generally larger, tapering gently toward the mouth, and one end of the handle is rarely affixed to the rim. The inside of the mug is not usually decorated, but the exterior bears geometrical designs in which terraces, triangles, and parallel lines predominate. Curved lines are rare, and spirals are absent. Mugs with two handles are unrepresented. There are no ladles in the collection, but several broken handles of ladles were found in the refuse. One of these is decorated with a series of parallel, longitudinal, and transverse lines, a design as widely spread as Pueblo pottery, extending across the boundary into Mexico. _Globular Vessels._--The globular form of pottery was used for carrying water and seems to have been common at Cliff Palace. One of these vessels (pl. 25, _b_) has a small neck, and attached to it are two eyelets for insertion of the thong by which it was carried. Some of the globular vessels (pl. 25, _a_) have the neck small, the orifice wide, and the lip perforated with holes for strings. Double-lipped globular vessels, having a groove like that of a teapot, have been found in Cliff Palace as well as in other ruins of Mesa Verde and Montezuma canyon. The rims of these are generally perforated, as if for the insertion of thongs to facilitate carrying. The bottoms of these vessels are rarely concave. They are sometimes decorated on the outside, but never on the interior. _Vases._--Small vases with contracted neck and lip slightly curved, and larger vases with the same characters, occur sparingly. These (pls. 26, 27, _b_) are decorated on the exterior in geometrical designs; the interior is plain. The bases are rounded, sometimes flat, and in rare instances concave. _Disks._--Among pottery objects should be mentioned certain disks, some large, others small, some perforated in the middle, others imperforate. Several are decorated. These disks served as covers for bowls, and similar disks were employed as counters in games or as spindle whorls. None of the clay disks from Cliff Palace has a central knob or handle like those from Spruce-tree House. RELATIONS AS DETERMINED BY POTTERY In the report on Spruce-tree House, using pottery as a basis, the prehistoric culture of the Southwest, including the Gila-Salt area, which can not strictly be designated Pueblo, has been provisionally divided into several subcultural areas. Among these are the Hopi, a specialized modification of the Little Colorado, the Little Colorado proper, the San Juan, and the Gila-Salt areas. Cliff Palace pottery symbols are not closely related to those on old Hopi ware, as typified by the collections from Sikyatki.[71] Neither Cliff Palace nor Spruce-tree House pottery is closely allied to that of the Little Colorado, as exemplified by Homolobi ware, but both have a closer likeness to that from Wukóki, a settlement ascribed to the Snake clans, situated near Black Falls, not far from Flagstaff, Arizona. As a rule the symbolism on pottery from the Little Colorado, which includes that of its upper tributaries, as the Zuñi, Puerco, Leroux, and Cottonwood washes, is a mixture of all types. This river valley has exerted a distributing influence in Pueblo migrations, and in its ruins are found symbols characteristic of many clans, some of which, following up the tributaries of the Salt and the Gila, have brought Casas Grandes decorative elements; others, with sources in the northeast, have contributed designs from an opposite direction. The predominating directions of ceramic culture migration in this valley have been from south to north and from west to east.[72] [Footnote 71: Sikyatki ware is more closely related to that of the ancient Jemez and Pajarito subarea than to that made by the Snake clans when they lived at Tokónabi, their old home, or at Black Falls shortly before they arrived at Walpi. Careful study of ancient Walpi pottery made by the Bear clan before the arrival of the Snake clans shows great similarity to Sikyatki pottery, and the same holds regarding the ware from old Shongopovi.] [Footnote 72: In the ruins found on the banks of the Little Colorado at Black Falls, the predominating influence, as shown by pottery symbols, has been from the north. It is known from legends that Wukóki was settled by clans from the north, the close likeness to the symbols of the San Juan valley supporting traditions still current at Walpi.] The relation of Cliff Palace pottery designs to the symbolism or decorative motives characteristic of the Gila valley ruins is remote. Several geometrical patterns are common to all areas of the Southwest, but specialized features characterize each of these areas. The pottery from Cliff Palace finds its nearest relation throughout the upper San Juan region; the most distant to that of ruins in northern Arizona near Colorado Grande.[73] [Footnote 73: A thorough comparative study of Pueblo pottery symbolism is much restricted on account of lack of material from all ceramic culture areas of the Southwest. It is likewise made difficult by a mixture of types produced by the migration of clans from one area to another. The subject is capable of scientific treatment, but at present is most difficult of analysis.] SYMBOLS ON POTTERY The symbols on the Cliff Palace pottery are reducible to rectangular geometrical figures; life forms, with the rare exceptions noted above, are not represented, and the exceptional examples are crude. Contrast this condition with the pottery from Sikyatki, where three-fourths of the decorations are life designs, as figures of men or animals, many of which are highly symbolic. The "sky band" with hanging bird design, peculiar to old Hopi ware, was unknown to Cliff Palace potters. Encircling lines are unbroken, no specimen being found with the break so common to the pottery from the Hopi, Little Colorado, Gila, and Jemez subareas. The designs on food bowls are often accompanied with marginal dots. No example of the conventionalized "breath-feather" so common in Sikyatki pottery decoration occurs. Spattering with color was not practiced. An analysis of the pottery decorations shows that the dominant forms may be reduced to a few types, of which the terrace, the spiral, the triangle, and the cross in its various forms are the most common. Various forms and sizes of triangles, singly or in combination, constitute one of the most constant devices used by the cliff-dwellers of the Mesa Verde in the decoration of their pottery. It is common to find two series of triangles arranged on parallel lines. When the component triangles are right-angled they sometimes alternate with each other, forming a zigzag which may be sinistral or dextral. This design may be called an alternate right-angular figure. If instead of two parallel series of right-angle triangles there are isosceles triangles, they may be known as alternate isosceles triangles. These triangles, when opposite, form a series of hour-glass figures or squares. This form is commonly accompanied by a row of dots, affixed to top and base, known as the dotted square or hour-glass figure. Hour-glass designs are commonly represented upright, but the angles of the triangles may be so placed that the series is horizontal, forming a continuous chain. Often the bases of these serially arrayed hour-glass figures are separated by rows of dots or by blank spaces. A row of triangles, each so placed that the angles touch the middles of the sides of others in the same series, form an arc called linear triangles. The St. Andrews cross, which occurs sparingly on Mesa Verde pottery, is formed by joining the vertical angles of four isosceles triangles. The cross and the various forms of the familiar swastika also occur on Cliff Palace pottery. The star symbol, made up of four squares so arranged as to leave a space in the middle, is yet to be found in Mesa Verde. Parallel curved lines, crooked at the end or combined with triangles and squares, occur commonly in the pottery decoration of Cliff Palace. S-shaped figures are known. Rectangles or triangles with dots, or even a line of dots alone, are not rare in the decoration. No designs representing leaves or flowers occur on pottery from Cliff Palace, nor has the spider-web pattern been found. The most common geometrical decorations are the stepped or terraced figures, generally called rain-clouds. POTTERY RESTS Among the objects found in the refuse heaps of Cliff Palace are rings, about 6 inches in diameter, woven of corn husks or cedar bark bound together with fiber of yucca or other plants. These rings (pl. 28) were evidently used as supports for earthenware vases, the bases of which are generally rounded, so that otherwise they would not stand upright. Similar rings may have been used by the women in carrying jars of water on their heads,[74] as among the Zuñi of to-day. Some of these rings may have been used in what is called the "ring and dart" game, which is often ceremonial in nature. The best made of all these objects, found by Mr. Fuller on his visit to a neighboring canyon, is shown in the accompanying illustration (pl. 28, _b_). The specimen is made of tightly woven corn husks, around which the fiber is gathered so as to form an equatorial ridge rarely present in these objects. [Footnote 74: The Hopi use large clay canteens for this purpose, no vessels resembling which, whole or in fragments, have been found at Cliff Palace.] BASKETRY A few instructive specimens of basketry or wicker ware were exhumed at Cliff Palace. One of the most interesting of these is the unfinished plaque shown in the accompanying figure 2. One specimen of basketry (pl. 29) has the form of a hopper; its whole central part was purposely omitted, but the basket is finished on the inner and outer margins. It recalls a basket used by the Ute and other Shoshonean Indians, but it is different in form from any figured in Nordenskiöld's work, and, so far as the author is acquainted with other specimens of basketry from Mesa Verde ruins, is unique. It is supposed that when used this hopper was placed on a flat or rounded stone and that corn or other seeds to be pounded were placed in it, the stone thus forming the surface upon which the seeds were treated, and the sides of the basket serving to retain the meal. SANDALS The sandals found at Cliff Palace (pls. 30-32) are practically the same in form, material, and weave as those recorded from Spruce-tree House. The shape of these, however, is particularly instructive, as it appears to shed light on the meaning of certain flat stones, rare in cliff-dwellings, called "sandal lasts." These stones, one of which is figured in the report on Spruce-tree House, are rectangular, flat, thin, smooth, with rounded corners, and sometimes have a notch in the rim at one end. The exceptionally formed sandal from Cliff Palace (pl. 32) is similar in shape and has a notch identical with that of the problematical stone objects, supporting the theory that the latter were used as sandal lasts, as interpreted by several authors. [Illustration: PLATE 33 _a_ Billet _b_ Objects used in game _c_ Billet WOODEN OBJECTS] [Illustration: FIG. 2.--Coil of basket plaque.] The sandals are ordinarily made of plaited yucca leaves, their upper side being sometimes covered with corn leaves for protection of the feet. The thongs that passed between the toes are made either of yucca or other vegetable fiber, or of hide. WOODEN OBJECTS There are several objects made of wood in the collection from Cliff Palace, some of the least problematical of which are long, pointed rods (fig. 3) with which the ancients probably made the holes in which they planted corn, in much the same way as the Hopi plant at the present day. These implements are commonly pointed at the end, but one or two are broadened and flattened. No example of the spatular variety of dibble found by others, and none showing the point of attachment of a flat stone blade, occurs in the collection. One or two short broken sticks, having a knob cut on the unbroken end, are interpreted as handles of weapons--a use that is not definitely proven. There are several sticks that evidently were used for barring windows or for holding stone door-closes in place. Among problematical wooden objects may be mentioned billets (pl. 33), flattened on one side and rounded at each end. Two of these were found, with calcined human bones, in the inclosure used for cremation of the dead, situated at the northern end of the large refuse heap. These, like the bowls with which they were associated, were coated with a white salt-like deposit. None of the many wooden objects figured by Nordenskiöld are exactly the same as those above mentioned, although the one shown in his plate XLIII, figure 17, is very close in form and size. Several bent twigs or loops of flexible wood from the refuse heaps were found; these are supposed to have been inserted in the masonry, one on each side of door and window openings, to hold in place the stick which served as a bolt for fastening the door or window stone in position. [Illustration: FIG. 3.--Planting sticks.] Bent sticks, of dumb-bell shape, having a knob at each end (pl. 33, _b_), are believed to have been used in games. A similar object from the Mancos region is figured by Mr. Stewart Culin in his account of the games of the cliff-dwellers.[75] The ancient people of the semi-deserts of Atacama, in South America, employed a similar but larger stick, to which cords were attached for strapping bundles on their beasts of burden. [Footnote 75: _Twenty-fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology._] DRILLS A small pointed stone attached with fiber to the end of a stick, similar to those found by Nordenskiöld in ruin 9 and at Long House, was found. The Cliff Palace people kindled fire by means of the fire-drill and fire-stick (hearth), a specimen of which, similar to one collected at Spruce-tree House, is contained in the collection. Both of these fire-making implements were broken when found, apparently thrown away on that account either by the original people or by subsequent visitors. BONE IMPLEMENTS Many bone implements (pl. 34, 35) were found during the excavation of Cliff Palace. They are of the bones of birds and small mammals, or, now and then, of those of antelope or bear, the latter furnishing the best material for large scrapers. These implements were evidently sharpened by rubbing on the stones of walls or on the face of the cliff, as grooves, apparently made in this way, are there visible in several places. Scratches made in shaping or sharpening bones, repeatedly found on the masonry of Cliff Palace, are not peculiar, resembling those referred to in the report on Spruce-tree House. A small tube with a hole midway of its length doubtless served as a whistle, similar instruments being still often used in Hopi ceremonies to imitate the calls of birds. [Illustration: PLATE 34 BONE IMPLEMENTS] Sections of bones were found tied in pairs, and while it is not clear that these were threaded on a cord and worn as necklaces or armlets, as Nordenskiöld suggests, they may have been tied side by side, forming a kind of breastplate not unlike that used by the Plains tribes. In a room of Spruce-tree House, according to Nordenskiöld, eight similar pieces of bone were found strung on a fine thong of tide. Among other bone objects there is one, of unknown use, about an inch long and one-fourth of an inch in diameter, nearly cylindrical in shape. A bone with a hole in one end, similar to those figured by Nordenskiöld, forms part of the collection. TURQUOISE EAR PENDANTS AND OTHER OBJECTS The single specimen of turquoise found at Cliff Palace was probably an ear pendant, and a black jet bead was apparently used for the same purpose. With the polished cylinder of hematite found one can still paint the face or body a reddish color, as the Hopi do with a similar object. From the sipapû of kiva D there was taken a small deerskin bag, tied with yucca fiber and containing a material resembling iron pyrites, evidently an offering of some kind to the gods of the underworld. A button made of lignite, and beads of the same material, were found in the refuse heap in front of the ruin after a heavy rain. The former is broken, but it resembles that found at Spruce-tree House, although it is not so finely made, and also one from Homólobi, a ruin on the Little Colorado, near Winslow, Arizona. SEEDS The cobs and seeds of corn, squash and pumpkin seeds, beans, and fragments of gourds give some idea of the vegetable products known to the Cliff Palace people. Corn furnished the most important food of the people, and its dried leaves, stalks, and tassels were abundant in all parts of their refuse heaps. Naturally, in a cave where many small rodents have lived for years, it is rare to find seed corn above ground that has not been appropriated by these animals, and in the dry, alkaline bone-phosphate dust edible corn is not very common, although now and then occurs a cob; with attached seeds. The corn of Cliff Palace, already figured by Nordenskiöld, resembles that still cultivated by some of the Hopi. TEXTILES The Cliff Palace people manufactured fairly good cloth, the component cords or strings being of two or three strands and well twisted. So finely made and durable are some of these cords that they might be mistaken for white men's work; some of them, however, are very coarse, and are tied in hanks. Among varieties of cords, may be mentioned those wound with feathers, from which textiles, ordinarily called "feather cloth," was made. Yucca and cotton were employed in the manufacture of almost all kinds of fabrics. A few fragments of netting were found. [Illustration: FIG. 4.--Woven forehead band.] The finest cloth was manufactured from cotton, a good specimen, of which, showing a pattern woven in different colors, is contained in the collection. Several woven belts, and also a head-band similar to that figured in the report on Spruce-tree House, were uncovered by the excavations. The largest fragment of cloth was taken out of the crematory, or inclosure containing the calcined human bones, at the northern end of the larger refuse heap. It appears to have been a portion of a bag, or possibly of a head covering, but it is so fragmentary that its true use is unknown. The pattern is woven in darker colored threads, with a selvage at two ends. The material out of which it was made has not been definitely determined, but it closely resembles that of the specimen figured by Nordenskiöld (plate L) from Mug House. Our excavations were rewarded with a fine woven head-band with loops at the ends (fig. 4), similar to that described and figured in the report on Spruce-tree House. Several small fragments of cloth were recovered from the refuse heap, but none of them was large enough to indicate the form of the garment to which they originally belonged. [Illustration: PLATE 35 BONE IMPLEMENTS] In the group of fabrics may be included nets and cloth with feathers wound around warp and woof, similar to those figured from Spruce-tree House. There were several specimens of yucca strings, tied in loops, generally six in number, which presumably were devoted to the same purpose as by the present Hopi, who attach to the string six ears of corn, representing the cardinal points on the six-directions altar, and hang them on the walls of a priest's house. If the cliff-dwellers used this string for a similar purpose, it would appear that they, like the Hopi, recognized six cardinal points--north, west, south, east, above, and below--and worshiped gods of these directions, to which they erected altars.[76] [Footnote 76: For a Hopi six-directions altar, see _Journal of American Ethnology and Archæology_, Vol. II, 1892.] HUMAN BURIALS As has been seen, there were two methods of disposing of the dead--by inhumation and by cremation. The former may have been either house burial or burial in the refuse heaps in the rear of the buildings. With both forms of disposing of the dead mortuary food offerings were found. Evidences of prehistoric burials and cremation were found both on the mesa above Cliff Palace and in the ruin.[77] [Footnote 77: The house burials appear to have been mainly those of priests or other important personages.] The practice of cremation among the cliff-dwellers has long been known. Nordenskiöld writes (p. 49): That cremation, however, was sometimes practiced by the Cliff Dwellers seems probable from the fact that Richard Wetherill observed in the same ruin, when the above-mentioned burial chamber was found, bodies which had apparently been burnt, together with the pottery belonging to the dead. The evidences of cremation found in the inclosure at the northern end of the refuse space of Cliff Palace is conclusive. The calcined bones uncovered here were also accompanied with mortuary pottery, cloth, and wooden objects. The flexed position of the bodies of the dead occurs constantly in the earth burials, which may be explained by the almost universal belief among primitive people that when the body is returned to "mother earth" it should be placed in the posture it normally had before birth. In house burials at Spruce-tree House the bodies were sometimes extended at full length, which may be interpreted to mean that the dead were not returned to the earth mother. There was no uniformity of posture in the burials at Cliff Palace. The work at Cliff Palace was undertaken at too late a day to recover any mummified human remains, all having been previously removed. Nordenskiöld's figures and descriptions of desiccated human bodies from other Mesa Verde cliff-dwellings would apply, in a measure, to those from Cliff Palace. CONCLUSIONS While the work of excavation and repair of Cliff Palace described in the preceding pages adds nothing distinctly new to existing knowledge of cliff-dweller culture, it renders a more comprehensive idea of the conditions of life in one of the largest of these interesting ancient settlements in our Southwest. Of all the questions that present themselves after a work of this kind, perhaps the most important, from a scientific point of view, is, What relation exists between the culture of Cliff Palace and that of the neighboring pueblos? Directly across the canyon, in full view of Cliff Palace, there is a typical pueblo ruin, almost identical in character with many others scattered throughout the Southwest, some of which are known to have been inhabited in historic times by ancestors of Pueblo peoples still living. The contribution here made to the knowledge of cliff-dwelling culture will, it is hoped, shed light on the question, In what way are the cliff-dwellers and the Pueblos related? The relationship in culture of the former people of Cliff Palace to those of the large pueblo ruin on the mesa across the canyon is most instructive. How were the inhabitants of these two settlements related; and were the two sites inhabited simultaneously, or is the pueblo ruin older than Cliff Palace? So far as the culture of the inhabitants of the two is known (and knowledge of the pueblo is scant), the two settlements were synchronously inhabited, but nothing in them gives indication of the period of their occupancy. These questions can be settled only by the excavation of this pueblo or of some similar ruin on the plateau.[78] Nordenskiöld, with the data possessed by him, did not hesitate to express decided views on this point: [Footnote 78: A true comparison of the mesa habitation and the cliff-dwelling can be made only by renewed work on the former, which is now little more than a huge pile of fallen walls. Present indications show a greater antiquity of the mesa ruin, the site of which afforded more adequate protection. On this supposition the mesa ruins would be considered older than the cliff ruins, and those of the valley the most ancient. If the ruins in Montezuma valley are the oldest, we can not suppose that the culture originated in the cliffs and spread to the valley. The circular subterranean kiva bears indication of having originated in valleys rather than in caverns. Nordenskiöld does not mention the large ruin on the bluff west of Cliff Palace.] We are forced to conclude that they [cliff-houses] were abandoned later than the villages on the mesa. Some features, for example, the superposition of walls constructed with the greatest proficiency on others built in a more primitive fashion (see plate XIII) indicate that the cliff-dwellings have been inhabited at two different periods. They were first abandoned, and had partly fallen into ruin, but were subsequently repeopled, new walls being now erected on the ruins of the old. The best explanation hereof seems to be the following: On the plateaux and in the valleys the Pueblo tribes attained their widest distribution and their highest development. The numerous villages at no great distance from each other were strong enough to defy their hostile neighbors. But afterwards, from causes difficult of elucidation, a period of decay set in, the number and population of the villages gradually decreased, and the inhabitants were again compelled to take refuge in the remote fastnesses. Here the people of the Mesa Verde finally succumbed to their enemies. The memory of their last struggle is preserved by the numerous human bones found in many places, strewn among the ruined cliff-dwellings. These human remains occur in situations where it is impossible to assume that they have been interred. Closely connected with the relative age and the identity of the Mesa Verde cliff-house and pueblo culture are the age and relationship of different cliff-houses of the same region, for example, Cliff Palace and Spruce-tree House. The relative number of kivas may shed light on this point. The relative proportion of the number of kivas to secular houses varies in Cliff Palace and Spruce-tree House. In the former there are about 7 secular rooms to every kiva; in the latter about 15. Long House has a still more marked difference, there being here only a few secular houses and a maximum number of kivas. Whether this variation has any meaning it is impossible to say definitely; theoretically, as compared with modern pueblos, the proportionately larger number of kivas points to a sociological condition in Cliff Palace characteristic of more primitive times. The larger the number of kivas relatively to secular rooms the older the ruin. Long House would be regarded as older than Cliff Palace, and Cliff Palace older than Spruce-tree House, Balcony House being the most modern and the last of the four to be deserted. A cliff-dwelling with a kiva but without secular rooms is rare, and one with secular rooms but without kivas is likewise unusual. Where the latter exists it is so situated as to indicate that it was subordinated to neighboring large cliff-dwellings. The relative number of circular kivas in ruins and in modern inhabited pueblos where the circular form of room is found is larger in the ruins than in the inhabited pueblos. The proportionate number of circular rooms to secular rooms in cliff-dwellings of the Mesa Verde is also larger than in pueblo ruins like those of the Chaco. Apparently the older the pueblo the greater the relative number of kivas. If, as is suspected, a larger number of kivas indicates relatively greater age, the explanation may be sought in the amalgamation of clans and the development of religious fraternities. Hypothetically, in early days each clan had its own men's room, or kiva, but when clans were united by marriage and secret ceremonies were no longer limited to individual clans, the participants belonging to several clans, a religious fraternity was developed and several clan kivas consolidated or were enlarged into fraternity kivas such as we find among the Hopi and other Pueblos. From a study of kivas the conclusion is that Spruce-tree House is more modern than Cliff Palace. This conclusion is borne out also by the fact that the water supply at Spruce-tree House is more abundant than that at Cliff Palace. In one or two architectural features Cliff Palace is unique, although sharing with other cliff-houses of the Mesa Verde National Park many minor characters. The first difference between Cliff Palace and Spruce-tree House, outside of the disparity in their size and the relatively large proportion of secular to ceremonial rooms in the latter, is the existence in the former of terraces and retaining walls. Spruce-tree House is built on one level, above which rise the secular houses while below are the ceremonial rooms or kivas. The contrast of this simple condition with that of Cliff Palace, with its three terraces and the complicated front wall at several levels thereby necessitated, is apparent. There are several other ruins in the Mesa Verde Park in which the configuration of the rear of the cave led to the construction of the cliff-house in terrace form. This is well exemplified in the Spring House, where buildings on an upper level occupy much the same relation to those below as the ledge houses to the main ruin, and in ruins in the Canyon de Chelly, like those in Mummy Cave, where this relation of the buildings on the ledge to those on top of the talus is even more pronounced. Architectural features in cliff-houses are due to the geological structure of the cave in which they are situated rather than to cultural differences. Nothing was found to indicate that Cliff Palace was inhabited during the historic period. The inhabitants were not acquainted with metals brought by white men to the Southwest. The absence of glass and of glazed pottery is also significant. No sheep, horses, or other beasts of burden paid them tribute. In fact, there is no evidence that they had ever heard of white men. These ruins belong to the stone age in America and show no evidence of white man's culture. Except that it is prehistoric, the period at which Cliff Palace was inhabited is therefore largely a matter for archeological investigation to determine, and thus far no decisive evidence bearing on that point has been produced. It has been held that Cliff Palace is five hundred years old, and some writers have added five centuries to this guess; but the nature of the evidence on which this extreme antiquity is ascribed to the ruin is not warranted by the evidence available. No additional information was obtained bearing on current theories of the causes that led the ancient occupants of the Mesa Verde cliff-dwellings to adopt this inhospitable and inconvenient habitat. It is probable that one and the same cause led to the abandonment of Spruce-tree House, Cliff Palace, and other Mesa Verde cliff-houses. The inhabitants of these buildings struggled to gain a livelihood against their unfavorable environment until a too-exacting nature finally overcame them. There are no indications that the abandonment of Cliff Palace was cataclysmic in nature: it seems to have been a gradual desertion by one clan after another. One of the primary reasons was change of climate, which caused the water supply to diminish and the crops to fail; but long before its final desertion many clans abandoned the place, and drifting from point to point sought home-sites where water was more abundant. All available data lend weight to a belief that the cliff-houses of Mesa Verde were not abandoned simultaneously, but were deserted one by one. Possibly the inhabitants retired to the river valleys, where water was constant, and later gave up life on the mesa. But even then the culture was not allowed to continue unmodified by outside influences. Where the descendants of Cliff Palace now dwell, or whether they are now extinct, can be determined only by additional research. Evidence is rapidly accumulating in support of the theory that the "cliff-dweller culture" of our Southwest was preceded by a "pit-house culture," the most prominent feature of which is the small circular or rectangular rooms, artificially excavated laterally in cliffs or vertical in the ground, which served this ancient people either as dwellings or for storage. The side walls of these rooms were supported in some instances by upright logs, and commonly clay was plastered directly on the walls of the excavations. The architectural survival of subterranean rooms exists among the cliff-dwellings in circular underground kivas, the variations of which are so well illustrated in Cliff Palace. In connection with these "pit rooms," which are never large, may be mentioned the large subterranean artificial excavations found scattered over the Pueblo area of the Southwest. Such occur in the Gila valley, and have been reported from the San Juan drainage; they have been identified as reservoirs and also as kivas. Some of these subterranean rooms are rightly identified as kivas, but others have architectural features that render this interpretation improbable. What their function was and how they are connected with the people who built the smaller subterranean rooms of the Southwest can be determined only by excavations and a study of the features of both types. The most important step that remains to be taken in the scientific study of the ruins of the Mesa Verde National Park is to discover the relation of the culture of Cliff Palace to that of the neighboring pueblo. This will necessitate the scientific excavation and repair of the latter ruin and a comparison of its major and minor antiquities with those of Cliff Palace. The age of cliff-dwellings in different parts of the Southwest undoubtedly varies. Certain Pueblo ruins are older than some cliff-dwellings, and there are cliff-houses more ancient than Pueblo ruins. Continued research in the Mesa Verde region will doubtless shed light on the relative age of Cliff Palace and the great pueblo ruin opposite it. [Illustration] * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Obvious minor typographical errors have been corrected silently. Footnotes and illustrations have been moved to the end of paragraphs so as to not disrupt the flow of the text. Variations in hyphenation, word spacing and spelling left as printed. Changes made are denoted by [square brackets]: Pg. 19: "d'un point plus elévé[élevé]" " " "d'ou[d'où] l'on contemple les ruines" " " "de grands progrés[progrès] dans l'art" " " "Les murs sont faits de grés[grès] gris," 
59514	----	AFTER SOME TOMORROW BY MACK REYNOLDS _Alan's plan might save the race from extinction--but he was the clan's only husband and had to be protected from his own folly...._ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, June 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Before the first shots rang out, Alan had been sitting with some twenty young people of the Wolf clan in a grove of aspen approximately half way between the fields and the citadel on the hill-top. He had been teaching them myth-legend and, as usual, the girls were bored and unbelieving, the boys open mouthed. He realized, even as he spoke, that the telling had changed even since his own youth. As a boy of ten, before it was definitely known whether or not he was a sterilie, he had sat at the feet of the Turtle clan's husband as open mouthed as those who sat at his feet now. But the telling was different. Now, had he spoken openly of when men bore weapons and women lived at home with the children, he would have crossed the boundaries of decency. It hadn't been so in his own youth, but then, when he was a boy, they had been one generation nearer to the old days, which weren't so far back after all. Helen complained, "This is so silly, Alan. Why don't you tell us something about ... well, about hunting, or true fighting?" He looked at her. Could this be a daughter of his? Tall for her fourteen years and straight, clear of eye, aggressive and brooking of no nonsense. The old books told of the femininity of women, but.... The shots went _bang, bang, bang_, from below, faint in the half mile or more of distance. And then _bang, bang_ again and several _booms_ from the new muzzle loading muskets. Helen was on her feet first, her eyes flashing. Instantly she was in command. "Alan," she snapped. "Quick, to the citadel. All of you boys, hurry! To the citadel!" She whirled to her older classmates. "Ruth, Margo, Jenny, Paula. Get stones, sharp stones. You younger girls go with Alan. See if you can help at the citadel. We'll come last. Hurry Alan." Alan was already off, herding the boys before him. Possibly all of them were sterilies and so wouldn't count. But you never knew. As they climbed the hill, he looked back over his shoulder. Down in the fields he could see the workers scattering for their weapons and for cover. One stumbled and was down. In the distance he couldn't make out whether she had fallen accidentally or been wounded. Further beyond the fields he could see the smoke from a half dozen or more places where the shots had originated. It didn't seem to be an attack in force. Not far up the hill from the field workers, on a overhanging boulder in a lookout position, he could make out Vivian, the scout chief. She sat, seemingly in unconcerned ease, one elbow supported on a knee as her telescoped rifle went _crack, crack, crack_. If he knew Vivian there was more than one casualty among the raiders. Who could it be this time? Deer from the south, Coyote or Horse from the east? Possibly Eagles, Crows or Dogs from Denver way. The clan couldn't stand much more of this pressure. It was the third raid in six months. They couldn't stand it and put in a crop, nor could the drain on the arsenal be maintained. He had heard that the Turtle clan, near Colorado Springs, the clan of his birth, had got to the point where they were using bows and arrows even for defense. If so, it wouldn't be long before they would be losing their husband. He was puffing somewhat by the time they reached the citadel. Helen and her four girls were coming much more slowly, watching the progress of the fight below them, keeping their eyes peeled for a possible break through of individual enemies. The stones in their hands were pathetically brave. The rounded citadel building, stone built, loopholed for rifles, loomed before them. He swung open the door and hurried inside. "Hello, honey," a strange voice said pseudo-pleasantly. "Hey, you're kind of cute." Alan's eyes went from the two figures before him, automatic rifles cuddled under their arms, to the two Wolf clan sentries collapsed in their own blood on the floor. They had paid for lack of vigilance with their lives. He could see that the strangers were of different clans by their kilts, one a Horse the other a Crow. This would mean two clans had united in order to raid the Wolves and that, in turn, would mean the Wolves were outnumbered as much as two to one. "Relax, darling," the second one said, a lewd quality in her voice. "Nothing's going to happen to _you_." Her eyes took in the dozen boys ranging in age from five to twelve. "Look like a bunch of sterilies to me," she sneered. "Get them up above, and those girls too. You stay here where we can watch you, honey." The Crow went to a small window, stared down below. "Wanda is holding them pretty well but they're beginning to work their way back in this direction." She laughed harshly. "These Wolves never could fight." Her companion fingered the Bren gun which lay on the heavy table top in the round room's center. Aside from four equally heavily constructed chairs the table was the large room's sole furniture. While Alan was ushering the boys and younger girls up to the second floor where they would be safe, the Horse said musingly, "We could turn this loose on them even at this distance." The Crow shook her head. "No. It'll be better to wait until they're closer. Besides, by that time Peggy and her group'll be coming up from the arroyo. There won't be a Wolf left half an hour from now." Alan, his stomach empty, stared out the loophole nearest him. One of the women said, grinning, "You better get away from there, honey. Make you sick. That's a mighty pretty suit you've got on. Make it yourself?" "No," Alan said. As a matter of fact one of the sterilies had made it. She laughed. "Well, don't be so uppity. You're going to have to learn how to be nice to me, you know." Both of them laughed, but Alan said nothing. He wondered how long the women of these clans had been without a husband. Down below he could make out the progress of the fighting and then realized the battle plan of the aggressors. They must have planned it for months, waiting until the season was such that practically the whole Wolf clan, and particularly the fighters, would be at work in the fields. They'd sent these two scouts, probably their best warriors, to take the citadel by stealth. Only two of them, more would have been conspicuous. They had then, with a limited force, opened fire on the field workers, pinning them down temporarily. Meanwhile, the main body was ascending the arroyo to the left, completely hidden from the defending forces although they would have been in open sight from above had the citadel remained uncaptured. Alan could see plainly what the next fifteen minutes would mean. The Wolf clan would draw back on the citadel, Vivian and her younger warriors bringing up the rear. When they broke into the clear and started the last dash for the safety of their fortress, they would be in the open and at the mercy of the crossfire from arroyo and citadel. If only these two had failed in their attempt to.... The Crow woman said, "Look at this. Five young brats with stones in their hands. What do you say?" It was Helen and her four girls. Alan said, "They're only children! You can't...." "You be quiet, sweetheart. We can't be bothered with you." The Horse said, "Two years from now they'll all be warriors. Here, let me turn this on them." Alan closed his eyes and he wanted to retch as he heard the automatic rifle speak out in five short bursts. In spite of himself he opened them again. Helen, his first born, Paula, his second. Ruth, Margo and Jenny, all his children. They were crumbled like rag dolls, fifty feet from the citadel door. Now he was able to tell himself that he should have called out a warning. One or two of them, at least, might have escaped. Might have escaped to warn the approaching fighters of the trap behind them. Tradition had been too strong within him, the tradition that a man did not interfere in the business of the warriors, that war was a thing apart. Jenny's body moved, stirred again, and she tried to drag herself away. Little Jenny, twelve years old. The rifle spat just once again and she slumped forward and remained quiet. "Little bitch," the Crow woman said. The heavy chair was in his hands and high above his head, he had brought it down on her before the rage of his hate had allowed him to think of what he was doing. The chair splintered but there was still a good half of it in his hands when he spun on the Horse woman. She stepped back, her eyes wide in disbelief. As her companion went down, the side of her face and her scalp welling blood, the Horse at first brought up her rifle and then, in despair, tried to reverse it to use its butt as a club. She was stumbling backward, trying to get out of the way of his improvised weapon, when her heel caught on the body of one of the fallen Wolf sentries. She tried to catch herself, her eyes still staring horrified disbelief, even as he caught her over the head, and then once again. He beat her, beat her hysterically, until he knew she must be dead. He worked now in a mental vacuum, all but unconsciously. He ran to the stair bottom and called, "Come down," his voice was shrill. "Alice, Tommy, all of you." * * * * * They came, hesitantly, and when they saw the shambles of the room stared at him with as much disbelief as had the enemy women. He pointed a finger at the oldest of the girls. "Alice," he said, "you've been given instruction by the warriors. How is the Bren gun fired?" The eleven year old bug eyed at him. "But you're a husband, Alan...." "How is it fired?" he shrilled. "Unless you tell me, there will be no Wolf clan left!" He lugged the heavy gun to the window, mounted it there as he had seen the women do in practice. "Tommy," he said to a thirteen year old boy. "Quick, get me a pan of ammunition." "I can't," Tommy all but wailed. "Get it!" "I can't. It's ... it's _unmanly_!" Tommy melted into a sea of tears, utterly confused. "Maureen," Alan snapped, cooler now. "Get me a pan of ammunition for the Bren gun. Quickly. Alice, show me how the gun is charged." Alice was at his side, trying to explain. He would have let her take over had she been larger, but he knew she couldn't handle the bucking of the weapon. Maureen had returned with the ammunition, slipped it expertly into place. She too had had instructions in the gun's operation. Alan ran his eyes down the arroyo. There were possibly forty of them, Horses and Crows--well armed, he could see. Less than a quarter of them had the new muzzle loaders being resorted to by many as ammunition stocks for the old arms became increasingly rare. The others had ancient arms, rifles, both military and sport, one or two tommy guns. He waited another three or four minutes, one eye cocked on the progress of the running battle below. Vivian, the scout chief, had dropped back to take over command of the younger warriors. She was probably beginning to smell a rat. The intensity of fire wasn't such as to suggest a large body of enemy. The women in the arroyo were placed now as he wanted them. He forced himself to keep his eyes open as he pressed the trigger. _Blat, blat, blat._ The gun spoke, kicking high the dust and gravel before the Horse and Crow warriors advancing up the arroyo. They stopped, startled. The citadel was supposedly in their hands. They reversed themselves and scurried back to get out of their exposed position. He touched the trigger again. _Blat, blat, blat._ The heavy slugs tore up the arroyo wall behind them, they could retreat no further without running into his fire. They stopped, confused. Alan said, "Maureen, get another pan of ammunition. I'll have to hold them there until Vivian comes up. Alice, run down to the matriarch and tell her about the warriors in the arroyo. Quickly, now." Little Alice said sourly, "A husband shouldn't interfere in warrior affairs," but she went. * * * * * When Vivian strode into the citadel she had her sniper rifle slung over her back and was admiring a tommy gun she had taken from one of the captured Horses. "Perfect," she said, stroking the stock. "Perfect shape. And they seem to have worlds of ammunition too. Must have made some kind of deal with the Denver clans." Her eyes swept the room and her mouth turned down in sour amusement. The Horse woman was dead and the Crow had by now been marched off to take her place with the other prisoners who were being held in the stone corral. "What warriors," she said contemptuously. "A _man_ overcomes two of them. _Two_ of them, mind you." She looked at Alan, the reaction was upon him now and he was white faced and couldn't keep his hands from trembling. "What a cutie you turned out to be. Who ever heard of such a thing?" Alan said, defensively, "They didn't expect it. I took them unawares." Vivian laughed aloud, her even white teeth sparkling in the redness of her lips. She was tall, shapely, a twenty-five year old goddess in her Wolf clan kilts. "I'll bet you did, sweetie." One of the other warriors entered from behind Vivian, looked at the dead Horse woman and shuddered. "What a way to die, not even able to defend yourself." She said to Vivian worriedly, "They've got an awful lot of equipment, chief." Vivian said, "Well, what're you worrying about, Jean? _We_ have it now." The girl said, "They have three tommy guns, four automatic rifles, twenty grenades and forty sticks of dynamite." Vivian was impatient. "They had them, now they're ours. It's good, not bad." Jean said doggedly, "These raids are coming more and more often. We've lost ten fighters in less than a year. And each time they come at us they're better equipped and there're more of them." She looked over at Alan. "If it hadn't been for this ... this queer way things worked out, they'd have our husband now and we'd be done for." "Well, it didn't happen that way," Vivian said abruptly, "and we still have our husband and we're going to keep him. This wasn't a bad action at all. They killed three of us, we've got more than forty of them." "Not three, eight," Jean said. "You forget the five girls. In another couple of years they'd have been warriors. And besides, what difference does it make if we've got forty of them? There're always more of them where they came from. There must be a thousand women toward Denver without a husband between them." Vivian quieted. "Let's hope they don't all decide on Alan at once," she said. "I wonder if the Turtles are having the same trouble." "They're having more," Alan said. He had lowered himself wearily into one of the chairs. The two warriors looked at him. "How do you know, sweetie?" Vivian asked him. "I was talking to Warren, a few weeks ago. He's husband of the Turtle clan now, they traded him from the Foxes. Both clans were getting too interbred...." "Get to the point, honey," Jean said, embarrassed at this man talk. "The Turtles are having more trouble than we are. They have a stronger natural fortress at the center of their farm lands, but they've had so many raids that their arsenal is depleted and half their warriors dead or wounded. They're getting desperate." "That's too bad," Vivian muttered. "They make good neighbors." Jean said, "The matriarch told me to let you know there'd be a meeting this afternoon in the assembly hall. Clan meeting, all present." "What about?" Vivian said, her attention going back to the beauty of her captured weapon again. "About the prisoners. We've got to decide what to do with them." "Do with them? We'll push them over the side of the canyon. Nobody thought we'd waste bullets on them did they?" Alan said, mildly, "The question has come up whether we ought to destroy them at all." Vivian looked at him in gentle annoyance. "Sweetie," she said, "don't bother your handsome head with these things. You've had enough excitement to last a nice looking fellow like you a lifetime." Jean said, echoing her chief's disgust, "Anyway, that's what the meeting is about. Alan, here, has been talking to the matriarch and she's agreed to bring it up for discussion." Vivian said nastily, "Sally is beginning to lose her grip. If there's anything a clan needs it's a strong matriarch." "A wise matriarch," Alan amended, knowing he shouldn't. Vivian stared at him for a moment, then threw her head back and laughed. "I'm going to have to spank your bottom one of these days," she told him. "You get awfully sassy for a man." * * * * * As chairman, Alan had a voice but not a vote in the meetings of the Wolf clan. He sometimes wondered at the institution which had come down from pre-bomb days. Why was it necessary to have a chair_man_. Of course, myth-legend had it that men were once just as numerous and active in society's economic (and even martial!) life as were women. But that was myth-legend. It all had a _basis_ in reality, perhaps, but some of it was undoubtedly stretched all but to the breaking point. Of course if all men _had_ been fertile in the old days. But if you started with _if_, as a beginning point, you could go as far as you wished in any direction. He called the meeting to order in the assembly hall which stood possibly a hundred feet below the citadel in one direction, another hundred from the stone corral which housed their prisoners, in the other. The Wolf clan was present in its entirety with the exception of children under ten and except for four scouts who were holding the prisoners. As chairman, Alan sat on the dais flanked by Sally, the matriarch, 35 years of age, tall, Junoesque, on one side and by Vivian the scout chief, on the other. Before them sat, first, the active warrior-workers, some thirty-five of them. Second, the older women, less than a score. Further back were the sterilies, possibly twenty of these and quite young, only within recent memory had they been allowed to become part of the clan, in the past they had been driven away or killed. Further back still were the children above ten but too young to join the ranks of either warrior-workers or sterilies. Alan called the meeting to order, quieted them somewhat and then invited the matriarch to take the floor. Sally stood and looked out over her clan, the dignity of her presence silencing them where Alan's plea had not. She said, "We have two matters to bring to our attention. First, I believe the clan should make it clear to Alan, our husband, that such interference in the affairs of women is utterly out of the question. I am speaking of his unmanly activities in the raid this morning." There were mumblings of approval throughout the hall. Alan came to his feet, his face bewildered. "But, Sally, what else could I do? If I hadn't overcome the enemy warriors and turned the Bren gun on the others you would all be gone now. Possibly none of you would have survived." Sally quieted him with a chill look. "Let me repeat what is well known to every member of the clan. We consist of less than sixty women, a few more than thirty-five of whom are active. There are twenty sterilies and twenty-five or so children. And one husband. A few more than one hundred in all." Her voice slowed and lowered for the sake of emphasis. "All of our women--except for two or three--might die and the clan would live on. The sterilies certainly might all die, and the clan live on. Even the children could all die and the clan live on. _But if our husband dies, the clan dies._ The greatest responsibility of every member of any clan is to protect the husband. Under no circumstances is he to be endangered. You know this, it should not have to be brought to your attention." There was a strong murmur of assent from those seated before them. Alan said, "But, Sally, I saved your lives! And if I hadn't, I would have been captured by the Crows and Horses and you would have lost me at any rate." This was hard for Sally Wolf, but she said, "Then, at least, _they_ would have had you. If you had died, in your foolhardiness, you would have been gone for all of us. Alan, two clans, husbandless clans, united in this attempt to capture you from us. While we fought to protect our husband, the life of our clan, we hold no rancor against them. In their position, we would have done the same. Much rather would we see you taken by them, than to see you dead. Even though the Wolf clan might die, the race must go on." She added, but not very believably, "If they had captured you, perhaps we could have, in our turn, captured a husband from some other clan." "The reason we probably couldn't," Vivian said mildly, "is that since we've turned to agriculture and settled, our numbers have dropped off by half. We had more than sixty warriors while we were hunter-foragers." "That's enough, Vivian," Sally snapped. "The question isn't being discussed this afternoon." "Ought to be," somebody whispered down in front. "Order," Alan said. He knew it was a growing belief in the clan that giving up the nomadic life had been a mistake. From raiders, they had become the raided. Sally said, "The second order of business is the disposal of the Horse and Crow prisoners captured in the action today." Vivian said, "We can't afford to waste valuable ammunition. I say shove them into the canyon." Most of those seated in the hall approved of that. Some were puzzled of face, wondering why the matter hadn't been left simply in the scout chief's hands. Sally said, dryly, "I haven't formed an opinion myself. However, our chairman has some words to say." Vivian looked at Alan as though he was a precocious child. She shook her head. "You cutie, you. You're getting bigger and bigger for your britches every day." Two or three of the warriors echoed her by chuckling fondly. Alan said nothing to that, needing to maintain what dignity and prestige he could muster. He stood and faced them and waited for their silence before saying, "You feminine members of the clan are too busy with work and with defense to pursue some of the studies for which we men find time." Vivian murmured, "You ain't just a whistlin', honey. But we don't mind. You do what you want with your time, honey." He tried to smile politely, but went on. "It has come to the point where few women read to any extent and most learning has fallen into the hands of the men--few as we are." Sally said impatiently, "What has this got to do with the prisoners, Alan dear?" It would seem that he had ignored her when he said, "I have been discussing the matter with Warren of the Turtle clan and two or three other men with whom I occasionally come in contact. At the rate the race is going, there will be no men left at all in another few generations." There was quiet in the long hall. Deathly quiet. Sally said, "How ... how do you mean, dear?" "I mean our present system can't go on. It isn't working." "Of course it's working," Vivian snapped. "Here we are aren't we? It's always worked, it always will. Here's the clan. You're our husband. After we've had you for twenty years, we'll trade you to another clan for their husband--prevents interbreeding. If you have a fertile son, the clan will either split, each half taking one husband, or we'll trade him off for land, or guns, or whatever else is valuable. Of course, it works." He shook his head, stubbornly. "Things are changing. For a generation or two after bomb day, we were in chaos. By time things cleared we were divided as we are now, in clans. However, we were still largely able to exist on the canned goods, the animals, left over from the old days. There was food and guns for all and only a few of the men were sterilies." Vivian began to say something again, but he shook a hand negatively at her, pleading for silence. "No, I'm not talking about myth-legend now. Warren's great-grandfather, whom he knew as a boy, remembers when there were four times or more the number of men we have today and when the sterilies were very few." Vivian said impatiently, "What's this got to do with the prisoners? There they are. We can kill them or let them go. If we let them go, they'll be coming back, six months from now, to take another crack at us. Alan is cute as a button, but I don't think he should meddle in women's affairs." But most of them were silent. They looked up at him, waiting for him to go on. "I suppose," Sally said, "that you're coming to a point, dear?" He nodded, his face tight. "I'm coming to the point. The point is that we've got to change the basis of clan society. This isn't working any more--if it ever did. There's such a thing as planned breeding ..." it had been hard to say this, and the younger women in the audience, in particular, tittered "... and we're going to have to think in terms of it." Sally had flushed. She said now, "A certain dignity is expected at a clan meeting, Alan dear. But just what did you mean?" Vivian said, "This is nonsense, I'm leaving," and she was up from the speaker's table and away. Two or three of her younger girls looked after, scowling, but they didn't follow her out of the hall. "I mean," Alan said doggedly, "that one of those Crow women has been the mother of two fertile men. To my knowledge she is the only woman within hundreds of miles this can be said about. We men have been keeping records of such things." Sally was as mystified as the rest of the clan. Alan said, "I say bring these women into the clan. Unite with the Turtles and the Burros so that we'll have three clans, five counting the Horses and Crows. Then we'll have enough strength to fight off the forager-hunters, and we'll have enough men to experiment in selective breeding." Half of the hall was on its feet in a roar. "Share you with these ... these desert rats who just raided us, who killed eight of our clan?" Sally snapped, flabbergasted. He stood his ground. "Yes. I'll repeat, one of those Crow women has borne two fertile men children. We can't afford to kill her. For all we know, she might have a dozen more. This haphazard method of a single husband for a whole clan must be replaced...." The hall broke down into chaos again. Sally held up a commanding hand for silence. She said, "And if we share you with another forty or fifty women, to what extent will the rest of us have any husband at all?" He pointed out the sterilies, seated silently in the back. "It would be healthier if you gave up some of this superior contempt you hold for sterile males and accept their companionship. Although they cannot be fathers, they can be mates otherwise. As it is, how much true companionship do you secure from me--any of you? Less than once a month do you see me more than from a distance." "Mate with sterilies?" someone gasped from the front row. "Yes," Alan snapped back. "And let fertile men be used expressly for attempting to produce additional fertile men. Confound it, can't you warriors realize what I'm saying? I have reports that there is a woman among the Crows who has borne two fertile male children. Have you ever heard of any such phenomenon before? Do you realize that in the fifteen years I have been the husband of this clan, we have not had even one fertile man child born? Do you realize that in the past twenty years there has been born not one fertile man child in the Turtle clan? Only one in the Burro clan?" He had them in the palm of his hand now. "What--what does the Turtle clan think of this plan of yours?" Sally said. "I was talking to Warren just the other day. He thinks he can win their approval. We can also probably talk the Burros into it. They're growing desperate. Their husband is nearly sixty years old and has produced only one fertile male child, which was later captured in a raid by the Denver foragers." Sally said, "And we'd have to share you with all these, and with our prisoners as well?" "Yes, in an attempt to breed fertile men back into the race." Sally turned to the assembled clan. A heavy explosion, room-shaking in its violence, all but threw them to the floor. Half a dozen of the younger warriors scurried to the windows, guns at the ready. In the distance, from the outside, there was the chatter of a machine gun, then individual pistol shots. "The corral," Jean the scout said, her lips going back over her teeth. Vivian came sauntering back into the assembly hall, patting the stock of her new tommy gun appreciately. "Works like a charm," she said. "That dynamite we captured was fresh too. Blew 'em to smithereens. Only had to finish off half a dozen." Alan said, agonizingly, "Vivian! You didn't ... the prisoners?" She grinned at him. "Alan, you're as cute as a button, but you don't know anything about women's affairs. Now you be a honey and go back to taking care of the children." 
37492	----	THE CHALICE OF COURAGE _A Romance of Colorado_ BY CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY Author of "The Island of Regeneration," "The Better Man," "Hearts and the Highway," "As the Sparks Fly Upward," etc., etc. _With Illustrations By HARRISON FISHER and J. N. MARCHAND_ NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1912 COPYRIGHT, 1911 BY W. G. CHAPMAN COPYRIGHT, 1912 BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY _Published, February, 1912_ To My Beloved Friend _JOHN B . WALKER, JR._ Great-hearted, Great-souled, High-spirited Man of Colorado. [Illustration: "Leave me to myself, I would not take the finest, noblest man on earth--"] PREFACE Prefaces, like much study, are a weariness to the flesh; to some people, not to me. I can conceive of no literary proposition more attractive than the opportunity to write unlimited prefaces. Let me write the preface and I care not who writes the book. Unfortunately for my desires, I can only be prefatory in the case of my own. Happily my own are sufficiently numerous to afford me some scope in the indulgence of this passion for forewords. I suppose no one ever sat down to write a preface until after he had written the book. It is like the final pat that the fond parent gives to the child before it is allowed to depart in its best clothes. I have seen the said parent accompany the child quite a distance on the way, keeping up a continual process of adjustment of raiment which it was evidently loath to discontinue. And that is my case exactly. Here is the novel with which I have done my best, which I have written and rewritten after long and earnest thought, and yet I cannot let it go forth without some final, shall I say caress? And as it is, I really have nothing of importance to say! The final pats and pulls and tugs and smoothings do not materially add to the child's appearance or increase its fascination, and I am at a loss to find a reason for the preface except it be the converse of the statement about the famous and much disliked Dr. Fell! Perhaps, if I admit to you that I have been in the cañon, that I have followed the course of the brook, that I have seen that lake, that I have tramped those trails, it will serve to make you understand, dear reader, how real and actual it all is to me. Yes, I have even looked over the precipice down which the woman fell. I have talked with old Kirkby; Robert Maitland is an intimate friend of mine; I have even met his brother in Philadelphia and as for that glorious girl Enid--well, being a married man, I will refrain from any personal appraisement of her qualities. But I can with propriety dilate upon Newbold, and even Armstrong, bad as he was, has some place in my regard. If these people shall by any chance seem real to you and become your friends as they are mine, another of those pleasant ties that bind the author and his public together will have been woven, knotted, forged. Never mind the method so long as there is a tie. And with this hope, looking out up the winter snows that might have covered the range, as I have often seen them there, I bid you a happy good morning. CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY _St. George's Rectory, Kansas City, Missouri._ _Thanksgiving Day, 1911._ CONTENTS BOOK I THE HIGHER LAW I THE CUP THAT WOULD NOT PASS 1 II ALONE UPON THE TRAIL 16 BOOK II THE EAST AND THE WEST III THE YOUNG LADY FROM PHILADELPHIA 29 IV THE GAME PLAYED IN THE USUAL WAY 43 V THE STORY AND THE LETTERS 55 VI THE POOL AND THE WATER SPRITE 72 VII THE BEAR, THE MAN AND THE FLOOD 88 VIII DEATH, LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION 101 BOOK III FORGETTING AND FORGOT IX A WILD DASH FOR THE HILLS 123 X A TELEGRAM AND A CALLER 136 XI OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY 149 XII ON THE TWO SIDES OF THE DOOR 166 XIII THE LOG HUT IN THE MOUNTAINS 179 XIV A TOUR OF INSPECTION 193 XV THE CASTAWAYS OF THE MOUNTAINS 203 BOOK IV OH YE ICE AND SNOW, PRAISE YE THE LORD XVI THE WOMAN'S HEART 223 XVII THE MAN'S HEART 236 XVIII THE KISS ON THE HAND 248 XIX THE FACE IN THE LOCKET 261 XX THE STRENGTH OF THE WEAK 276 BOOK V THE CUP IS DRAINED XXI THE CHALLENGE OF THE RANGE 291 XXII THE CONVERGING TRAILS 310 XXIII THE ODDS AGAINST HIM 327 XXIV THE LAST RESORT OF KINGS AND MEN 339 XXV THE BECOMING END 357 XXVI THE DRAUGHT OF JOY 368 ILLUSTRATIONS "LEAVE ME TO MYSELF, I WOULD NOT TAKE THE FINEST, NOBLEST MAN ON EARTH--" _FRONTISPIECE_ "READ THE LETTERS," HE SAID. "THEY'LL TELL THE STORY. GOOD-NIGHT." _FACING PAGE_ 70 "WAIT! I AM A WOMAN, ABSOLUTELY ALONE, ENTIRELY AT YOUR MERCY" " " 156 IT WAS ALL UP WITH ARMSTRONG " " 354 THE CHALICE OF COURAGE (Courtesy of _The Outlook_) Drink of the Chalice of Courage! Pressed to the trembling lip, The dark-veiled fears From the passing years, Like a dusty garment slip. Drink of the Chalice of Courage! Poured for the Hero's feast, When the strength divine Of its subtle wine Is shared with the last and least. Drink of the Chalice of Courage! The mead of mothers and men, And the sinewed might Of the Victor's might, Be yours, again and again. Marie Hemstreet BOOK I THE HIGHER LAW CHAPTER I THE CUP THAT WOULD NOT PASS The huge concave of the rocky wall towering above them threw the woman's scream far into the vast profound of the cañon. It came sharp to the man's ear, yet terminated abruptly; as when two rapidly moving trains pass, the whistle of one is heard shrill for one moment only to be cut short on the instant. Brief as it was, however, the sound was sufficiently appalling; its suddenness, its unexpectedness, the awful terror in its single note, as well as its instantaneity, almost stopped his heart. With the indifference of experience and long usage he had been riding carelessly along an old pre-historic trail through the cañon, probably made and forgotten long before the Spaniards spied out the land. Engrossed in his thoughts, he had been heedless alike of the wall above and of the wall below. Prior to that moment neither the over-hanging rock that curved above his head nor the almost sheer fall to the river a thousand feet beneath the narrow ledge of the trail had influenced him at all. He might have been riding a country road so indifferent had been his progress. That momentary shriek dying thinly away into a strange silence changed everything. The man was riding a sure-footed mule, which perhaps somewhat accounted for his lack of care, and it seemed as if the animal must also have heard and understood the meaning of the woman's scream, for with no bridle signal and no spoken word the mule stopped suddenly as if petrified. Rider and ridden stood as if carved from stone. The man's comprehending, realizing fear almost paralyzed him. At first he could scarcely force himself to do that toward which his whole being tended--look around. Divining instantly the full meaning of that sudden cry, it seemed hours before he could turn his head; really her cry and his movement were practically simultaneous. He threw an agonized glance backward on the narrow trail and saw--nothing! Where there had been life, companionship, comradeship, a woman, there was now vacancy. The trail made a little bend behind him, he could see its surface for some distance, but not what lay beneath. He did not need the testimony of his eyes for that. He knew what was down there. It seemed to his distorted perceptions that he moved slowly, his limbs were like lead, every joint was as stiff as a rusty hinge. Actually he dropped from the mule's back with reckless and life-defying haste and fairly leaped backward on his path. Had there been any to note his progress, they would have said he risked his own life over every foot of the way. He ran down the narrow shelf, rock strewn and rough, swaying upon the unfathomable brink until he reached the place where she had been a moment since. There he dropped on one knee and looked downward. She was there! A few hundred feet below the trail edge the cañon wall, generally a sheer precipice, broadened out into a great butte, or buttress, which sloped somewhat more gently to the foaming, roaring river far beneath. About a hundred and fifty feet under him a stubby spur with a pocket on it jutted out from the face of the cliff; she had evidently struck on that spur and bounded off and fallen, half rolling, to the broad top of the butte two hundred or more feet below the pocket. Three hundred and fifty feet down to where she lay he could distinguish little except a motionless huddled mass. The bright blue of her dress made a splotch of unwonted color against the reddish brown monotones of the mountain side and cañon wall. She was dead, of course; she must be dead, the man felt. From that distance he could see no breathing, if such there were; indeed as he stared she grew less and less distinct to him, his eyes did not fill with tears, but to his vision the very earth itself, the vast depths of the cañon, the towering wall on the other side, seemed to quiver and heave before him. For the first time in his life the elevation made him dizzy, sick. He put his hands to his face to shut out the sight, he tore them away to look again. He lifted his eyes toward the other side across the great gulf to the opposing wall which matched the one upon which he stood, where the blue sky cloudless overhung. "God!" he whispered in futile petition or mayhap expostulation. He was as near the absolute breaking point as a man may go and yet not utterly give way, for he loved this woman as he loved that light of heaven above him, and in the twinkling of an eye she was no more. And so he stared and stared dumbly agonizing, wondering, helpless, misty-eyed, blind. He sank back from the brink at last and tried to collect his thoughts. What was he to do? There was but one answer to that question. He must go down to her. There was one quick and easy way; over the brink, the way she had gone. That thought came to him for a moment, but he put it away. He was not a coward, life was not his own to give or to take, besides she might be alive, she might need him. There must be some other way. Determining upon action, his resolution rose dominant, his vision cleared. Once again he forced himself to look over the edge and see other things than she. He was a daring, skillful and experienced mountaineer; in a way mountaineering was his trade. He searched the side of the cañon to the right and the left with eager scrutiny and found no way within the compass of his vision to the depths below. He shut his eyes and concentrated his thoughts to remember what they had passed over that morning. There came to him the recollection of a place which as he had viewed it he had idly thought might afford a practicable descent to the river's rim. Forgetful of the patient animal beside him, he rose to his feet and with one last look at the poor object below started on his wild plunge down the trail over which some men might scarcely have crept on hands and knees. Sweat bedewed his forehead, his limbs trembled, his pulses throbbed, his heart beat almost to bursting. Remorse sharpened by love, passion quickened by despair, scourged him, desperate, on the way. And God protected him also, or he had fallen at every uncertain, hurried, headlong step. And as he ran, thoughts, reproaches, scourged him on. Why had he brought her, why had he allowed her to take that trail which but for him and for her had probably not been traversed by man or woman or beast, save the mountain sheep, the gray wolves, or the grizzly bear, for five hundred years. She had protested that she was as good a mountaineer as he--and it was true--and she had insisted on accompanying him; he recollected that there had been a sort of terror in her urgency,--he must take her, he must not leave her alone, she had pleaded; he had objected, but he had yielded, the joy of her companionship had meant so much to him in his lonely journeying, and now--he accused himself bitterly as he surged onward. After a time the man forced himself to observe the road, he discovered that in an incredibly short period, perhaps an hour, he had traversed what it had taken them four times as long to pass over that very day. He must be near his goal. Ah, there it was at last, and in all the turmoil and torture of his brain he found room for a throb of satisfaction when he came upon the broken declivity. Yes, it did afford a practicable descent; some landslide centuries back had made there a sort of rude, rough, broken, megalithic stairway in the wall of the cañon. The man threw himself upon it and with bleeding hands, bruised limbs and torn clothing descended to the level of the river. Two atoms to the eye of the Divine, in that vast rift in the gigantic mountains. One unconscious, motionless, save for faint gasping breaths; the other toiling blindly along the river bank, fortunately here affording practicable going, to the foot of the great butte upon whose huge shoulder the other lay. The living and the dead in the waste and the wilderness of the everlasting hills. Unconsciously but unerringly the man had fixed the landmarks in his mind before he started on that terrific journey. Without a moment of incertitude, or hesitation, he proceeded directly to the base of the butte and as rapidly as if he had been fresh for the journey and the endeavor. Up he climbed without a pause for rest. It was a desperate going, almost sheer at times, but his passion found the way. He clawed and tore at the rocks like an animal, he performed feats of strength and skill and determination and reckless courage marvelous and impossible under less exacting demands. Somehow or other he got to the top at last; perhaps no man in all the ages since the world's first morning when God Himself upheaved the range had so achieved that goal. The last ascent was up a little stretch of straight rock over which he had to draw himself by main strength and determination. He fell panting on the brink, but not for a moment did he remain prone; he got to his feet at once and staggered across the plateau which made the head of the butte toward the blue object on the further side beneath the wall of the cliff above, and in a moment he bent over what had been--nay, as he saw the slow choking uprise of her breast, what was--his wife. He knelt down beside her and looked at her for a moment, scarce daring to touch her. Then he lifted his head and flung a glance around the cañon as if seeking help from man. As he did so he became aware, below him on the slope, of the dead body of the poor animal she had been riding, whose misstep, from whatever cause he would never know, had brought this catastrophe upon them. Nothing else met his gaze but the rocks, brown, gray, relieved here and there by green clumps of stunted pine. Nothing met his ear except far beneath him the roar of the river, now reduced almost to a murmur, with which the shivering leaves of aspens, rustled by the gentle breeze of this glorious morning, blended softly like a sigh of summer. No, there was nobody in the cañon, no help there. He threw his head back and stretched out his arms toward the blue depths of the heavens above, to the tops of the soaring peaks, and there was nothing there but the eternal silence of a primeval day. "God! God!" he murmured again in his despair. It was the final word that comes to human lips in the last extremity when life and its hopes and its possibilities tremble on the verge. And no answer came to this poor man out of that vast void. He bent to the woman again. What he saw can hardly be described. Her right arm and her left leg were bent backward and under her. They were shattered, evidently. He was afraid to examine her and yet he knew that practically every other bone in her body was broken as well. Her head fell lower than her shoulders, the angle which she made with the uneven rock on which she lay convinced him that her back was broken too. Her clothing was rent by her contact with the rocky spur above, it was torn from the neck downward, exposing a great red scar which ran across her sweet white young breast, blood oozing from it, while in the middle of it something yellow and bright gleamed in the light. Her cheek was cut open, her glorious hair, matted, torn and bloody, was flung backward from her down-thrown head. She should have been dead a thousand times, but she yet lived, she breathed, her ensanguined bosom rose and fell. Through her pallid lips bloody foam bubbled, she was still alive. The man must do something. He did not dare to move her body, yet he took off his hat, folded it, lifted her head tenderly and slipped it underneath; it made a better pillow than the hard rock, he thought. Then he tore his handkerchief from his neck and wiped away the foam from her lips. In his pocket he had a flask of whiskey, a canteen of water that hung from his shoulder somehow had survived the rough usage of the rocks. He mingled some of the water with a portion of the spirit in the cup of the flask and poured a little down her throat. Tenderly he took his handkerchief again, and wetting it laved her brow. Except to mutter incoherent prayers again and again he said no word, but his heart was filled with passionate endearments, he lavished agonized and infinite tenderness upon her in his soul. By and by she opened her eyes. In those eyes first of all he saw bewilderment, and then terror and then anguish so great that it cannot be described, pain so horrible that it is not good for man even to think upon it. Incredible as it may seem, her head moved, her lips relaxed, her set jaw unclenched, her tongue spoke thickly. "God!" she said. The same word that he had used, that final word that comes to the lips when the heart is wrung, or the body is racked beyond human endurance. The universal testimony to the existence of the Divine, that trouble and sometimes trouble alone, wrings from man. No human name, not even his, upon her lips in that first instant of realization! "How I--suffer," she faltered weakly. Her eyes closed again, the poor woman had told her God of her condition, that was all she was equal to. Man and human relationships might come later. The man knelt by her side, his hands upraised. "Louise," he whispered, "speak to me." Her eyes opened again. "Will," the anguished voice faltered on, "I am--broken--to pieces--kill me. I can't stand--kill me"--her voice rose with a sudden fearful appeal--"kill me." Then the eyes closed and this time they did not open, although now he overwhelmed her with words, alas, all he had to give her. At last his passion, his remorse, his love, gushing from him in a torrent of frantic appeal awakened her again. She looked him once more in the face and once more begged him for that quick relief he alone could give. "Kill me." That was her only plea. There has been One and only One, who could sustain such crucifying anguish as she bore without such appeal being wrested from the lips, yet even He, upon His cross, for one moment, thought God had forsaken and forgotten Him! She was silent, but she was not dead. She was speechless, but she was not unconscious, for she opened her eyes and looked at him with such pitiful appeal that he would fain hide his face as he could not bear it, and yet again and again as he stared down into her eyes he caught that heart breaking entreaty, although now she made no sound. Every twisted bone, every welling vein, every scarred and marred part on once smooth soft flesh was eloquent of that piteous petition for relief. "Kill me" she seemed to say in her voiceless agony. Agony the more appalling because at last it could make no sound. He could not resist that appeal. He fought against it, but the demand came to him with more and more terrific force until he could no longer oppose it. That cup was tendered to him and he must drain it. No more from his lips than from the lips of Him of the Garden could it be withdrawn. Out of that chalice he must drink. It could not pass. Slowly, never taking his eyes from her, as a man might who was fascinated or hypnotized, he lifted his hand to his holster and drew out his revolver. No, he could not do it. He laid the weapon down on the rock again and bowed forward on his knees, praying incoherently, protesting that God should place this burden on mere man. In the silence he could hear the awful rasp of her breath--the only answer. He looked up to find her eyes upon him again. Life is a precious thing, to preserve it men go to the last limit. In defense of it things are permitted that are permitted in no other case. Is it ever nobler to destroy it than to conserve it? Was this such an instance? What were the conditions? There was not a human being, white or red, within five days' journey from the spot where these two children of malign destiny confronted each other. That poor huddled broken mass of flesh and bones could not have been carried a foot across that rocky slope without suffering agonies beside which all the torture that might be racking her now would be as nothing. He did not dare even to lay hand upon her to straighten even one bent and twisted limb, he could not even level or compose her body where she lay. He almost felt that he had been guilty of unpardonable cruelty in giving her the stimulant and recalling her to consciousness. Nor could he leave her where she was, to seek and bring help to her. With all the speed that frantic desire, and passionate adoration, and divine pity, would lend to him, it would be a week before he could return, and by that time the wolves and the vultures--he could not think that sentence to completion. That way madness lay. The woman was doomed, no mortal could survive her wounds, but she might linger for days while high fever and inflammation supervened. And each hour would add to her suffering. God was merciful to His Son, Christ died quickly on the cross, mere man sometimes hung there for days. All these things ran like lightning through his brain. His hand closed upon the pistol, the eternal anodyne. No, he could not. And the tortured eyes were open again, it seemed as if the woman had summoned strength for a final appeal. "Will," she whispered, "if you--love me--kill me." He thrust the muzzle of his weapon against her heart, she could see his movement and for a moment gratitude and love shone in her eyes, and then with a hand that did not tremble, he pulled the trigger. A thousand thunder claps could not have roared in his ear with such detonation. And he had done it! He had slain the thing he loved! Was it in obedience to a higher law even than that writ on the ancient tables of stone? For a moment he thought incoherently, the pistol fell from his hand, his eyes turned to her face, her eyes were open still, but there was neither pain, nor appeal, nor love, nor relief in them; there was no light in them; only peace, calm, darkness, rest. His hand went out to them and drew the lids down, and as he did so, something gave way in him and he fell forward across the red, scarred white breast that no longer either rose or fell. CHAPTER II ALONE UPON THE TRAIL They had started from their last camp early in the morning. It had been mid-day when she fell and long after noon when he killed her and lapsed into merciful oblivion. It was dusk in the cañon when he came to life again. The sun was still some distance above the horizon, but the jutting walls of the great pass cut off the light, the butte top was in ever deepening shadow. I have often wondered what were the feelings of Lazarus when he was called back to life by the great cry of his Lord. "Hither--Out!" Could that transition from the newer way of death to the older habit of living have been accomplished without exquisite anguish and pain, brief, sudden, but too sacred, like his other experiences, to dwell upon in mortal hours? What he of Bethany might perhaps have experienced this man felt long after under other circumstances. The enormous exertions of the day, the cruel bruises and lacerations to which clothes and body gave evidence, the sick, giddy, uncertain, helpless, feeling that comes when one recovers consciousness after such a collapse, would have been hard enough to bear; but he took absolutely no account of any of these things for, as he lifted himself on his hands, almost animal-like for a moment, from the cold body of his wife, everything came across him with a sudden, terrific, overwhelming, rush of recollection. She was dead, and he had killed her. There were reasons, arguments, excuses, for his course; he forgot them confronted by that grim, terrific, tragic fact. The difference between that mysterious thing so incapable of human definition which we call life, and that other mysterious thing equally insusceptible of explanation which we call death, is so great that when the two confront each other the most indifferent is awed by the contrast. Many a man and many a woman prays by the bedside of some agonized sufferer for a surcease of anguish only to be brought about by death, by a dissolution of soul and body, beseeching God of His mercy for the oblivion of the last, long, quiet, sleep; but when the prayer has been granted, and the living eyes look into the dead, the beating heart bends over the still one--it is a hard soul indeed which has the strength not to wish again for a moment, one little moment of life, to whisper one word of abiding love, to hear one word of fond farewell. Since that is true, what could this man think whose hand had pointed the weapon and pulled the trigger and caused that great gaping hole through what had once been a warm and loving heart? God had laid upon him a task, than which none had ever been heavier on the shoulders of man, and he did not think as he stared at her wildly that God had given him at the same time strength to bear his burden. Later, it might be that cold reason would come to his aid and justify him for what he had done, but now, now, he only realized that she was dead, and he had killed her. He forgot her suffering in his own anguish and reproach of himself. He found time to marvel at himself with a strange sort of wonder. How could he have done it. Something broke the current of his thoughts, and it was good for him that it was so. He heard a swish through the air and he looked away from his dead wife in the direction of the sound. A little distance off upon a pinnacle of rock he saw a vulture, a hideous, horrible, unclean, carrion bird. While he watched, another and another settled softly down. He rose to his feet and far beneath him from the tree clad banks of the river the long howl of a wolf smote upon his ear. Gluttony and rapine were at hand. Further down the declivity the body of the dead mule was the object of the converging attack from earth and air. The threat of that attack stirred him to life. There were things he had to do. The butte top was devoid of earth or much vegetation, yet here and there in hollows where water settled or drained, soft green moss grew. He stooped over and lifted the body of the woman. She seemed to fall together loosely and almost break within his hands--it was evidence of what the fall had done for her, justification for his action, too, if he had been in a mood to reason about it, but his only thought then was of how she must have suffered. By a strange perversion he had to fight against the feeling that she was suffering now. He laid her gently and tenderly down in a deep hollow in the rock shaped almost to contain her. He straightened her poor twisted limbs. He arranged with decent care the ragged dress, covering over the torn breast and the frightful wound above her heart. With the last of the water in the canteen, he washed her face, he could not wash out the scar of course. With rude unskillful hands, yet with pitiable tenderness, he strove to arrange her blood-matted hair, he pillowed her head upon his hat again. Sometimes the last impression of life is stamped on the face of death, sometimes we see in the awful fixity of feature that attends upon dissolution, the index of the agony in which life has passed, but more often, thank God, death lays upon pain and sorrow a smoothing, calming hand. It was so in this instance. There was a great peace, a great relief, in the face he looked upon; this poor woman had been tortured not only in body, that he knew, but she had suffered anguish of soul of which he was unaware, and death, had it come in gentler form would perhaps not have been unwelcome. That showed in her face. There was dignity, composure, surcease of care, repose--the rest that shall be forever! The man had done all that he could for her. Stop, there was one thing more; he knelt down by her side, he was not what we commonly call a religious man, the habit that he had learned at his mother's knee he had largely neglected in maturer years, but he had not altogether forgotten, and even the atheist--and he was far from that--might have prayed then. "God, accept her," he murmured. "Christ receive her,"--that was all but it was enough. He remained by her side some time looking at her; he would fain have knelt there forever; he would have been happy at that moment if he could have lain down by her and had someone do for them both the last kindly office he was trying to do for her. But that was not to be, and the growing darkness warned him to make haste. The wolf barks were sharper and nearer, he stooped over her, bent low and laid his face against hers. Oh that cold awful touch of long farewell. He tore himself away from her, lifted from her neck a little object that had gleamed so prettily amid the red blood. It was a locket. He had never seen it before and had no knowledge of what it might contain. He kissed it, slipped it into the pocket of his shirt and rose to his feet. The plateau was strewn with rock; working rapidly and skillfully he built a burial mound of stone over her body. The depression in which she lay was deep enough to permit no rock to touch her person. The cairn, if such it may be called, was soon completed. No beast of the earth or bird of the air could disturb what was left of his wife. It seemed so piteous to him to think of her so young, and so sweet and so fair, so soft and so tender, so brave and so true, lying alone in the vast of the cañon, weighted down by the great rocks that love's hands had heaped above her. But there was no help for it. Gathering up the revolver and canteen he turned and fell rather than climbed to the level of the river. It was quite dark in the depths of the cañon, but he pressed rapidly on over the uneven and broken rocks until he reached the giant stairway. Up them he toiled painfully until he attained again the trail. It was dark when he reached the wooded recess where they had slept the night before. There were grass and trees, a bubbling spring, an oasis amid the desert of rocks; he found the ashes of their fire and gathering wood heaped it upon the still living embers until the blaze rose and roared. He realized at last that he was weary beyond measure, he had gone through the unendurable since the morning. He threw himself down alone where they had lain together the night before and sought in vain for sleep. In his ears he heard that sharp, sudden, breaking cry once more, and her voice begging him to kill her. He heard again the rasp of her agonized breathing, the crashing detonation of the weapon. He writhed with the anguish of it all. Dry-eyed he arose at last and stretched out his hands to that heaven that had done so little for him he thought. Long after midnight he fell into a sort of uneasy, restless stupor. The morning sun of the new and desolate day recalled him to action. He arose to his feet and started mechanically down the trail alone--always and forever alone. Yet God was with him though he knew it not. Four days later a little party of men winding through the foothills came upon a wavering, ghastly, terrifying figure. Into the mining town two days before had wandered a solitary mule, scraps of harness dangling from it. They had recognized it as one of a pair the man had purchased for a proposed journey far into the unsurveyed and inaccessible mountains--to hunt for the treasures hidden within their granite breasts. It told too plainly a story of disaster. A relief party had been hurriedly organized to search for the two, one of whom was much beloved in the rude frontier camp. The man they met on the way was the man they had come to seek. His boots were cut to pieces, his feet were raw and bleeding for he had taken no care to order his going or to choose his way. His clothes were in rags, through rents and tatters his emaciated body showed its discolored bruises. His hands were swollen and soiled with wounds and the stains of the way. The front of his shirt was sadly and strangely discolored. He was hatless, his hair was gray, his face was as white as the snow on the crest of the peak, his lips were bloodless yet his eyes blazed with fever. For four days without food and with but little water this man had plodded down the mountain toward the camp. All his energies were merged in one desire, to come in touch with humanity and tell his awful story; the keeping of it to himself, which he must do perforce because he was alone in the world, added to the difficulty of endurance. The sun had beaten down upon him piteously during the day. The cold dew had drenched him in the night. Apparitions had met his vision alike in the darkness and in the light. Voices had whispered to him as he plodded on. But something had sustained him in spite of the awful drain, physical and mental, which had wasted him away. Something had sustained him until he came in touch with men, thereafter the duty would devolve upon his brethren not upon himself. They caught him as he staggered into the group of them, these Good Samaritans of the frontier; they undressed him and washed him, they bound up his wounds and ministered to him, they laid him gently down upon the ground, they bent over him tenderly and listened to him while he told in broken, disjointed words the awful story, of her plunge into the cañon, of his search for her, of her last appeal to him. And then he stopped. "What then?" asked one of the men bending over him as he hesitated. "God forgive me--I shot her--through the heart." There was appalling stillness in the little group of rough men, while he told them where she lay and begged them to go and bring back what was left of her. "You must bring her--back," he urged pitifully. None of the men had ever been up the cañon, but they knew of its existence and the twin peaks of which he had told them could be seen from afar. He had given them sufficient information to identify the place and to enable them to go and bring back the body for Christian burial. Now these rude men of the mining camp had loved that woman as men love a bright and cheery personality which dwelt among them. "Yes," answered the spokesman, "but what about you?" "I shall be--a dead man," was the murmured answer, "and I don't care--I shall be glad--" He had no more speech and no more consciousness after that. It was a sardonic comment on the situation that the last words that fell from his lips then should be those words of joy. "Glad, glad!" BOOK II THE EAST AND THE WEST CHAPTER III THE YOUNG LADY FROM PHILADELPHIA Miss Enid Maitland was a highly specialized product of the far east. I say far, viewing Colorado as a point of departure not as identifying her with the orient. The classic shades of Bryn Mawr had been the "Groves of Academus where with old Plato she had walked." Incidentally during her completion of the exhaustive curriculum of that justly famous institution she had acquired at least a bowing acquaintance with other masters of the mind. Nor had the physical in her education been sacrificed to the mental. In her at least the _mens sana_ and the _corpore sano_ were alike in evidence. She had ridden to hounds many times on the anise-scented trail of the West Chester Hunt! Exciting tennis and leisurely golf had engaged her attention on the courts and greens of the Merion Cricket Club. She had buffeted "Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste" on the beach at Cape May and at Atlantic City. Spiritually she was a devoted member of the Episcopal Church, of the variety that abhors the word "Protestant" in connection therewith. Altogether she reflected great credit upon her pastors and masters, spiritual and temporal, and her up-bringing in the three departments of life left little to be desired. Upon her graduation she had been at once received and acclaimed by the "Assembly Set," of Philadelphia, to which indeed she belonged unquestioned by right of birth and position--and there was no other power under heaven by which she could have effected entrance therein; at least that is what the "outs" thought of that most exclusive circle. The old home of the Maitlands overlooking Rittenhouse Square had been the scene of her début. In all the refined and decorous gayeties of Philadelphia's ultra-fastidious society she had participated. She had even looked upon money standardized New York in its delirium of extravagance, at least in so far as a sedate and well-born Philadelphia family could countenance such golden madness. During the year she had ranged like a conqueror--pardon the masculine appellation--between Palm Beach in the South and Bar Harbor in the North. Philadelphia was proud of her, and she was not unknown in those unfortunate parts of the United States which lay without. In all this she had remained a frank, free, unspoiled young woman. Life was full of zest for her, and she enjoyed it with the most un-Pennsylvanian enthusiasm. The second summer after her coming out found her in Colorado. Robert Maitland was one of the big men of the west. He had departed from Philadelphia at an early age and had settled in Colorado while it was still in the formative period. There he had grown up with the state. The Philadelphia Maitlands could never understand it or explain it. Bob Maitland must have been, they argued, a reversion to an ancient type, a throwback to some robber baron long antecedent to William Penn. And the speculation was true. The blood of some lawless adventurer of the past, discreetly forgot by the conservative section of the family, bubbled in his veins unchecked by the repressive atmosphere of his home and his early environment. He had thoroughly identified himself with his new surroundings and had plunged into all the activities of the west. During one period in his life he had actually served as sheriff of one of the border counties, and it was a rapid "bad man" indeed, who enjoyed any advantage over him when it came to drawing his "gun." His skill and daring had been unquestioned. He had made a name for himself which still abides, especially in the mountains where things yet remained almost as primitive as they had been from the beginning. His fame had been accompanied by fortune, too; the cattle upon a thousand hills were his, the treasures of mines of fabulous richness were at his command. He lived in Denver in one of the greatest of the bonanza palaces on the hills of that city, confronting the snow-capped mountain range. For the rest he held stock in all sorts of corporations, was a director in numerous concerns and so on--the reader can supply the usual catalogue, they are all alike. He had married late in life and was the father of two little girls and a boy, the oldest sixteen and the youngest ten. Going east, which he did not love, on an infrequent business trip he had renewed his acquaintance with his brother and the one ewe lamb of his brother's flock, to wit, the aforementioned Enid. He had been struck, as everybody was, by the splendid personality of the girl and had striven earnestly to disabuse her mind of the prevalent idea that there was nothing much worth while on the continent beyond the Alleghanies except scenery. "What you need, Enid, is a ride across the plains, a sight of real mountains, beside which these little foothills in Pennsylvania that people back here make so much of wouldn't be noticed. You want to get some of the spirited glorious freedom of the west into your conservative straight-laced little body!" "In my day, Robert," reprovingly remarked his brother, Enid's father, "freedom was the last thing a young lady gently born and delicately nurtured would have coveted." "Your day is past, Steve," returned the younger Maitland with shocking carelessness. "Freedom is what every woman desires now, especially when she is married. You are not in love with anybody are you, Enid?" "With not a soul," frankly replied the girl, greatly amused at the colloquy between the two men, who though both mothered by the same woman were as dissimilar as--what shall I say, the east is from the west? Let it go at that. "That's all right," said her uncle, relieved apparently. "I will take you out west and introduce you to some real men and--" "If I thought it possible," interposed Mr. Stephen Maitland in his most austere and dignified manner, "that my daughter," with a perceptible emphasis on the "my," as if he and not the daughter were the principal being under consideration, "should ever so far forget what belongs to her station in life and her family as to allow her affections to become engaged by anyone who, from his birth and up-bringing in the er--ah--unlicensed atmosphere of the western country would be _persona non grata_ to the dignified society of this ancient city and--" "Nonsense," interrupted the younger brother bluntly. "You have lived here wrapped up in yourselves and your dinky little town so long that mental asphyxiation is threatening you all." "I will thank you, Robert," said his brother with something approaching the manner in which he would have repelled a blasphemy, "not to refer to Philadelphia as--er--What was your most extraordinary word?" "'Dinky,' if my recollection serves." "Ah, precisely. I am not sure as to the meaning of the term but I conceive it to be something opprobrious. You can say what you like about me and mine, but Philadelphia, no." "Oh, the town's right enough," returned his brother, not at all impressed. "I'm talking about people now. There are just as fine men and women in the west as in New York or Philadelphia." "I am sure you don't mean to be offensive, Robert, but really the association of ideas in your mention of us with that common and vulgar New York is er--unpleasant," fairly shuddered the elder Maitland. "I'm only urging you to recognize the quality of the western people. I dare say they are of a finer type than the average here." "From your standpoint, no doubt," continued his brother severely and somewhat wearily as if the matter were not worth all this argument. "All that I want of them is that they stay in the west where they belong and not strive to mingle with the east; there is a barrier between us and them which it is not well to cross. To permit any intermixtures of er--race or--" "The people out there are white, Steve," interrupted his brother sardonically. "I wasn't contemplating introducing Enid here to Chinese, or Negroes, or Indians, or--" "Don't you see," said Mr. Stephen Maitland, stubbornly waving aside this sarcastic and irrelevant comment, "from your very conversation the vast gulf that there is between you and me? Although you had every advantage in life that birth can give you, we are--I mean you have changed so greatly," he had quickly added, loath to offend. But he mistook the light in his brother's eyes, it was a twinkle not a flash. Robert Maitland laughed, laughed with what his brother conceived to be indecorous boisterousness. "How little you know of the bone and sinew of this country, Steve," he exclaimed presently. Robert Maitland could not comprehend how it irritated his stately brother to be called "Steve." Nobody ever spoke of him but as Stephen Maitland--"But Lord, I don't blame you," continued the Westerner. "Any man whose vision is barred by a foothill couldn't be expected to know much of the main range and what's beyond." "There isn't any danger of my falling in love with anybody," said Enid at last, with all the confidence of two triumphant social seasons. "I think I must be immune even to dukes," she said gayly. "I referred to worthy young Americans of--" began her father who, to do him justice, was so satisfied with his own position that no foreign title 'dazzled' him in the least degree. "Rittenhouse Square," cut in Robert Maitland with amused sarcasm. "Well, Enid, you seem to have run the gamut of the east pretty thoroughly, come out and spend the summer with me in Colorado. My Denver house is open to you, we have a ranch amid the foothills, or if you are game we can break away from civilization entirely and find some unexplored, unknown cañon in the heart of the mountains and camp there. We'll get back to nature, which seems to be impossible in Philadelphia, and you will see things and learn things that you will never see or learn anywhere else. It'll do you good, too; from what I hear, you have been going the pace and those cheeks of yours are a little too pale for so splendid a girl, you look too tired under the eyes for youth and beauty." "I believe I am not very fit," said the girl, "and if father will permit--" "Of course, of course," said Stephen Maitland. "You are your own mistress anyway, and having no mother"--Enid's mother had died in her infancy--"I suppose that I could not interfere or object if I wished to, but no marrying or giving in marriage: Remember that." "Nonsense, father," answered the young woman lightly. "I am not anxious to assume the bonds of wedlock." "Well, that settles it," said Robert Maitland. "We'll give you a royal good time. I must run up to New York and Boston for a few days, but I shall be back in a week and I can pick you up then." "What is the house in Denver, is it er--may I ask, provided with all modern conveniences and--" began the elder Maitland nervously. Robert Maitland laughed. "What do you take us for, Steve? Do you ever read the western newspapers?" "I confess that I have not given much thought to the west since I studied geography and--_The Philadelphia Ledger_ has been thought sufficient for the family since--" "Gracious!" exclaimed Maitland. "The house cost half a million dollars if you must know it, and if there is anything that modern science can contribute to comfort and luxury that isn't in it, I don't know what it is. Shall it be the house in Denver, or the ranch, or a real camp in the wilds, Enid?" "First the house in Denver," said Enid, "and then the ranch and then the mountains." "Right O! That shall be the program." "Will my daughter's life be perfectly safe from the Cowboys, Indians and Desperadoes?" "Quite safe," answered Robert, with deep gravity. "The cowboys no longer shoot up the city and it has been years since the Indians have held up even a trolley car. The only real desperado in my acquaintance is the mildest, gentlest old stage driver in the west." "Do you keep up an acquaintance with men of that class, still?" asked his brother in great surprise. "You know I was Sheriff in a border county for a number of years and--" "But you must surely have withdrawn from all such society now." "Out west," said Robert Maitland, "when we know a man and like him, when we have slept by him on the plains, ridden with him through the mountains, fought with him against some border terror, some bad man thirsting to kill, we don't forget him, we don't cut his acquaintance, and it doesn't make any difference whether the one or the other of us is rich or poor. I have friends who can't frame a grammatical sentence, who habitually eat with their knives, yet who are absolutely devoted to me and I to them. The man is the thing out there." He smiled and turned to Enid. "Always excepting the supremacy of woman," he added. "How fascinating!" exclaimed the girl. "I want to go there right away." And this was the train of events which brought about the change. Behold the young lady astride of a horse for the first time in her life in a divided skirt, that fashion prevalent elsewhere not having been accepted by the best equestriennes of Philadelphia. She was riding ahead of a lumbering mountain wagon, surrounded by other riders, which was loaded with baggage, drawn by four sturdy broncos and followed by a number of obstinate little burros at present unencumbered with packs which would be used when they got further from civilization and the way was no longer practicable for anything on wheels. Miss Enid Maitland was clad in a way that would have caused her father a stroke of apoplexy if he could have been suddenly made aware of her dress, if she had burst into the drawing-room without announcement for instance. Her skirt was distinctly short, she wore heavy hobnailed shoes that laced up to her knees, she had on a bright blue sweater, a kind of a cap known as a tam-o-shanter was pinned above her glorious hair, which was closely braided and wound around her head. She wore a silk handkerchief loosely tied around her neck, a knife and revolver hung at her belt, a little watch was strapped to one wrist, a handsomely braided quirt dangled from the other, a pair of spurs adorned her heels and, most discomposing fact of all, by her side rode a handsome and dashing cavalier. How Mr. James Armstrong might have appeared in the conventional black and white of evening clothes was not quite clear to her, for she had as yet never beheld him in that obliterating raiment, but in the habit of the west, riding trousers, heavy boots that laced to the knees, blue shirt, his head covered by a noble "Stetson," mounted on the fiery restive bronco which he rode to perfection, he was ideal. Alas for the vanity of human proposition! Mr. James Armstrong, friend and protégé these many years of Mr. Robert Maitland, mine owner and cattle man on a much smaller scale than his older friend, was desperately in love with Enid Maitland, and Enid, swept off her feet by a wooing which began with precipitant ardor so soon as he laid eyes on her, was more profoundly moved by his suit, or pursuit, than she could have imagined. _Omne ignotum pro magnifico!_ She had been wooed in the conventional fashion many times and oft, on the sands of Palm Beach, along the cliffs of Newport, in the romantic glens of Mount Desert, in the old fashioned drawing-room overlooking Rittenhouse Square. She had been proposed to in motor cars, on the decks of yachts and once even while riding to hounds, but there had been a touch of sameness about it all. Never had she been made love to with the headlong gallantry, with the dashing precipitation of the west. It had swept her from her moorings. She found almost before she was aware of it that her past experience now stood her in little stead. She awoke to a sudden realization of the fact that she was practically pledged to James Armstrong after an acquaintance of three weeks in Denver and on the ranch. Business of the most important and critical nature required Armstrong's presence east at this juncture, and willy-nilly there was no way he could put off his departure longer. He had to leave the girl with an uneasy conscience that though he had her half-way promise, he had her but half-way won. He had snatched the ultimate day from his business demands to ride with her on the first stage of her journey to the mountains. CHAPTER IV THE GAME PLAYED IN THE USUAL WAY The road on which they advanced into the mountains was well made and well kept up. The cañon through the foothills was not very deep--for Colorado--and the ascent was gentle. Naturally it wound in every direction following the devious course of the river which it frequently crossed from one side to the other on rude log bridges. A brisk gallop of a half mile or so on a convenient stretch of comparatively level going put the two in the lead far ahead of the lumbering wagon and out of sight of those others of the party who had elected to go a horseback. There was perhaps a tacit agreement among the latter not to break in upon this growing friendship or, more frankly, not to interfere in a developing love affair. The cañon broadened here and there at long intervals and ranch houses were found in every clearing, but these were few and far between and for the most part Armstrong and Enid Maitland rode practically alone save for the passing of an occasional lumber wagon. "You can't think," began the man, as they drew rein after a splendid gallop and the somewhat tired horses readily subsided into a walk, "how I hate to go back and leave you." "And you can't think how loath I am to have you return," the girl flashed out at him with a sidelong glance from her bright blue eyes and a witching smile from her scarlet lips. "Enid Maitland," said the man, "you know I just worship you. I'd like to sweep you out of your saddle, lift you to the bow of mine and ride away with you. I can't keep my hands off you, I--" Before she realized what he would be about he swerved his horse toward her, his arm went around her suddenly. Taken completely off her guard she could make no resistance, indeed she scarcely knew what to expect until he crushed her to him and kissed her, almost roughly, full on the lips. "How dare you!" cried the girl, her face aflame, freeing herself at last, and swinging her own horse almost to the edge of the road which here ran on an excavation some fifty feet above the river. "How dare I?" laughed the audacious man, apparently no whit abashed by her indignation. "When I think of my opportunity I am amazed at my moderation." "Your opportunity, your moderation?" "Yes; when I had you helpless I took but one kiss, I might have held you longer and taken a hundred." "And by what right did you take that one?" haughtily demanded the outraged young woman, looking at him beneath level brows while the color slowly receded from her face. She had never been kissed by a man other than a blood relation in her life--remember, suspicious reader, that she was from Philadelphia--and she resented this sudden and unauthorized caress with every atom and instinct of her still somewhat conventional being. "But aren't you half-way engaged to me?" he pleaded in justification, seeing the unwonted seriousness with which she had received his impudent advance. "Didn't you agree to give me a chance?" "I did say that I liked you very much," she admitted, "no man better, and that I thought you might--" "Well, then--" he began. But she would not be interrupted. "I did not mean that you should enjoy all the privileges of a conquest before you had won me. I will thank you not to do that again, sir." "It seems to have had a very different effect upon you than it did upon me," replied the man fervently. "I loved you before, but now, since I have kissed you, I worship you." "It hasn't affected me that way," retorted the girl promptly, her face still frowning and indignant. "Not at all, and--" "Forgive me, Enid," pleaded the other. "I just couldn't help it. You were so beautiful I had to. I took the chance. You are not accustomed to our ways." "Is this your habit in your love affairs?" asked the girl swiftly and not without a spice of feminine malice. "I never had any love affairs before," he replied with a ready masculine mendacity, "at least none worth mentioning. But you see this is the west, we have gained what we have by demanding every inch that nature offers, and then claiming the all. That's the way we play the game out here and that's the way we win." "But I have not yet learned to play the 'game,' as you call it, by any such rules," returned the young woman determinedly, "and it is not the way to win me if I am the stake." "What is the way?" asked the man anxiously. "Show me and I'll take it no matter what its difficulty." "Ah, for me to point out the way would be to play traitor to myself," she answered, relenting and relaxing a little before his devoted wooing. "You must find it without assistance. I can only tell you one thing." "And what is that?" "You do not advance toward the goal by such actions as those of a moment since." "Look here," said the other suddenly. "I am not ashamed of what I did, and I'm not going to pretend that I am, either." "You ought to be," severely. "Well, maybe so, but I'm not. I couldn't help it any more than I could help loving you the minute I saw you. Put yourself in my place." "But I am not in your place, and I can't put myself there. I do not wish to. If it be true, as you say, that you have grown to--care so much for me and so quickly--" "If it be true?" came the sharp interruption as the man bent toward her fairly devouring her with his bold, ardent gaze. "Well, since it is true," she admitted under the compulsion of his protest, "that fact is the only possible excuse for your action." "You find some justification for me, then!" "No, only a possibility, but whether it be true or not, I do not feel that way--yet." There was a saving grace in that last word, which gave him a little heart. He would have spoken, but she suffered no interruption, saying: "I have been wooed before, but--" "True, unless the human race has become suddenly blind," he said softly under his breath. "But never in such ungentle ways." "I suppose you have never run up against a real red-blooded man like me before." "If red-blooded be evidenced mainly by lack of self-control, perhaps I have not. Yet there are men whom I have met who would not need to apologize for their qualities even to you, Mr. James Armstrong." "Don't say that. Evidently I make but poor progress in my wooing. Never have I met with a woman quite like you."--And in that indeed lay some of her charm, and she might have replied in exactly the same language and with exactly the same meaning to him.--"I am no longer a boy. I must be fifteen years older than you are, for I am thirty-five." The difference between their years was not quite so great as he declared, but woman-like the girl let the statement pass unchallenged. "And I wouldn't insult your intelligence by saying you are the only woman that I have ever made love to, but there is a vast difference between making love to a woman and loving one. I have just found that out for the first time. I marvel at the past, and I am ashamed of it, but I thank God that I have been saved for this opportunity. I want to win you, and I am going to do it, too. In many things I don't match up with the people with whom you train. I was born out here, and I've made myself. There are things that have happened in the making that I am not especially proud of, and I am not at all satisfied with the results, especially since I have met you. The better I know you the less pleased I am with Jim Armstrong, but there are possibilities in me, I rather believe, and with you for inspiration, Heavens!"--the man flung out his hand with a fine gesture of determination. "They say that the east and west don't naturally mingle, but it's a lie, you and I can beat the world." The woman thrilled to his gallant wooing. Any woman would have done so, some of them would have lost their heads, but Enid Maitland was an exceedingly cool young person, for she was not quite swept off her feet, and did not quite lose her balance. "I like to hear you say things like that," she answered. "Nobody quite like you has ever made love to me, and certainly not in your way, and that's the reason I have given you a half-way promise to think about it. I was sorry that you could not be with us on this adventure, but now I am rather glad, especially if the even temper of my way is to be interrupted by anything like the outburst of a few moments since." "I am glad, too," admitted the man. "For I declare I couldn't help it. If I have to be with you either you have got to be mine, or else you would have to decide that it could never be, and then I'd go off and fight it out." "Leave me to myself," said the girl earnestly, "for a little while; it's best so. I would not take the finest, noblest man on earth--" "And I am not that." "Unless I loved him. There is something very attractive about your personality. I don't know in my heart whether it is that or--" "Good," said the man, as she hesitated. "That's enough," he gathered up the reins and whirled his horse suddenly in the road, "I am going back. I'll wait for your return to Denver, and then--" "That's best," answered the girl. She stretched out her hand to him, leaning backward. If he had been a different kind of a man he would have kissed it, as it was he took it in his own hand and almost crushed it with a fierce grip. "We'll shake on that, little girl," he said, and then without a backward glance he put spurs to his horse and galloped furiously down the road. No, she decided then and there, she did not love him, not yet. Whether she ever would she could not tell. And yet she was half bound to him. The recollection of his kiss was not altogether a pleasant memory; he had not done himself any good by that bold assault upon her modesty, that reckless attempt to rifle the treasure of her lips. No man had ever really touched her heart, although many had engaged her interest. Her experiences therefore were not definitive or conclusive. If she had truly loved James Armstrong, in spite of all that she might have said, she would have thrilled to the remembrance of that wild caress. The chances, therefore, were somewhat heavily against him that morning as he rode hopefully down the trail alone. His experiences in love affairs were much greater than hers. She was by no means the first woman he had kissed--remember suspicious reader that he was _not_ from Philadelphia!--hers were not the first ears into which he had poured passionate protestations. He was neither better nor worse than most men, perhaps he fairly enough represented the average, but surely fate had something better in store for such a superb woman--a girl of such attainments and such infinite possibilities, she must mate higher than with the average man. Perhaps there was a sub-consciousness of this in her mind as she silently waited to be overtaken by the rest of the party. There were curious glances and strange speculations in that little company as they saw her sitting her horse alone. A few moments before James Armstrong had passed them at a gallop, he had waved his hand as he dashed by and had smiled at them, hope giving him a certain assurance, although his confidence was scarcely warranted by the facts. His demeanor was not in consonance with Enid's somewhat grave and somewhat troubled present aspect. She threw off her preoccupation instantly and easily, however, and joined readily enough in the merry conversation of the way. Mr. Robert Maitland, as Armstrong had said, had known him from a boy. There were things in his career of which Maitland did not and could not approve, but they were of the past, he reflected, and Armstrong was after all a pretty good sort. Mr. Maitland's standards were not at all those of his Philadelphia brother, but they were very high. His experiences of men had been different; he thought that Armstrong, having certainly by this time reached years of discretion, could be safely entrusted with the precious treasure of the young girl who had been committed to his care, and for whom his affection grew as his knowledge of and acquaintanceship with her increased. As for Mrs. Maitland and the two girls and the youngster, they were Armstrong's devoted friends. They knew nothing about his past, indeed there were things in it of which Maitland himself was ignorant, and which had they been known to him might have caused him to withhold even his tentative acquiescence in the possibilities. Most of these things were known to old Kirkby who with masterly skill, amusing nonchalance and amazing profanity, albeit most of it under his breath lest he shock the ladies, tooled along the four nervous excited broncos who drew the big supply wagon. Kirkby was Maitland's oldest and most valued friend. He had been the latter's deputy sheriff, he had been a cowboy and a lumberman, a mighty hunter and a successful miner, and now although he had acquired a reasonable competence, and had a nice little wife and a pleasant home in the mountain village at the entrance to the cañon, he drove stage for pleasure rather than for profit. He had given over his daily twenty-five mile jaunt from Morrison to Troutdale to other hands for a short space that he might spend a little time with his old friend and the family, who were all greatly attached to him, on this outing. Enid Maitland, a girl of a kind that Kirkby had never seen before, had won the old man's heart during the weeks spent on the Maitland ranch. He had grown fond of her, and he did not think that Mr. James Armstrong merited that which he evidently so overwhelmingly desired. Kirkby was well along in years, but he was quite capable of playing a man's game for all that, and he intended to play it in this instance. Nobody scanned Enid Maitland's face more closely than he, sitting humped up on the front seat of the wagon, one foot on the high brake, his head sunk almost to the level of his knee, his long whip in his hand, his keen and somewhat fierce brown eyes taking in every detail of what was going on about him. Indeed there was but little that came before him that old Kirkby did not see. CHAPTER V THE STORY AND THE LETTERS Imagine, if you please, the forest primeval; yes, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks of the poem as well, by the side of a rapidly rushing mountain torrent fed by the eternal snows of the lofty peaks of the great range. A level stretch of grassy land where a mountain brook joined the creek was dotted with clumps of pines and great boulders rolled down from the everlasting hills--half an acre of open clearing. On the opposite side of the brook the cañon wall rose almost sheer for perhaps five hundred feet, ending in jagged, needle-edged pinnacles of rock, sharp, picturesque and beautiful. A thousand feet above ran the timber line, and four thousand feet above that the crest of the greatest peak in the main range. The white tents of the little encampment which had gleamed so brightly in the clear air and radiant sunshine of Colorado, now stood dim and ghost-like in the red reflection of a huge camp fire. It was the evening of the first day in the wilderness. For two days since leaving the wagon, the Maitland party with its long train of burros heavily packed, its horsemen and the steady plodders on foot, had advanced into unexplored and almost inaccessible retreats of the mountains--into the primitive indeed! In this delightful spot they had pitched their tents and the permanent camp had been made. Wood was abundant, the water at hand was as cold as ice, as clear as crystal and as soft as milk. There was pasturage for the horses and burros on the other side of the mountain brook. The whole place was a little amphitheater which humanity occupied perhaps the first time since creation. Unpacking the burros, setting up the tents, making the camp, building the fire had used up the late remainder of the day which was theirs when they had arrived. Opportunity would come to-morrow to explore the country, to climb the range, to try the stream that tumbled down a succession of waterfalls to the right of the camp and roared and rushed merrily around its feet until, swelled by the volume of the brook, it lost itself in tree-clad depths far beneath. To-night rest after labor, to-morrow play after rest. The evening meal was over. Enid could not help thinking with what scorn and contempt her father would have regarded the menu, how his gorge would have risen--hers too for that matter!--had it been placed before him on the old colonial mahogany of the dining-room in Philadelphia. But up there in the wilds she had eaten the coarse homely fare with the zest and relish of the most seasoned ranger of the hills. Anxious to be of service, she had burned her hands and smoked her hair and scorched her face by usurping the functions of the young ranchman who had been brought along as cook, and had actually fried the bacon herself! Imagine a goddess with a frying pan! The black thick coffee and the condensed milk, drunk from the graniteware cup, had a more delicious aroma and a more delightful taste than the finest Mocha and Java in the daintiest porcelain of France. _Optimum condimentum._ The girl was frankly, ravenously hungry, the air, the altitude, the exertion, the excitement made her able to eat anything and enjoy it. She was gloriously beautiful, too; even her brief experience in the west had brought back the missing roses to her cheek, and had banished the bister circles from beneath her eyes. Robert Maitland, lazily reclining propped up against a boulder, his feet to the fire, smoking an old pipe that would have given his brother the horrors, looked with approving complacency upon her, confident and satisfied that his prescription was working well. Nor was he the only one who looked at her that way. Marion and Emma, his two daughters, worshiped their handsome Philadelphia cousin and they sat one on either side of her on the great log lying between the tents and the fire. Even Bob junior condescended to give her approving glances. The whole camp was at her feet. Mrs. Maitland had been greatly taken by her young niece. Kirkby made no secret of his devotion; Arthur Bradshaw and Henry Phillips, each a "tenderfoot" of the extremest character, friends of business connections in the east, who were spending their vacation with Maitland, shared in the general devotion; to say nothing of George the cook, and Pete, the packer and "horse wrangler." Phillips, who was an old acquaintance of Enid's, had tried his luck with her back east and had sense enough to accept as final his failure. Bradshaw was a solemn young man without that keen sense of humor which was characteristic of the west. The others were suitably dressed for adventure, but Bradshaw's idea of an appropriate costume was distinguished chiefly by long green felt puttees which swathed his huge calves and excited curious inquiry and ribald comment from the surprised denizens of each mountain hamlet through which they had passed, to all of which Bradshaw remained serenely oblivious. The young man, who does not enter especially into this tale, was a vestryman of the church in his home in the suburbs of Philadelphia. His piety had been put to a severe strain in the mountains. That day everybody had to work on the trail--everybody wanted to for that matter. The hardest labor consisted in the driving of the burros. Unfortunately there was no good and trained leader among them through an unavoidable mischance, and the campers had great difficulty in keeping the burros on the trail. To Arthur Bradshaw had been allotted the most obstinate, cross-grained and determined of the unruly band, and old Kirkby and George paid particular attention to instructing him in the gentle art of manipulating him over the rocky mountain trail. "Wall," said Kirkby with his somewhat languid, drawling, nasal voice, "that there burro's like a ship w'ich I often seed 'em w'n I was a kid down east afore I come out to God's country. Nature has pervided 'em with a kind of a hellum. I remember if you wanted the boat to go to the right you shoved the hellum over to the left. Sta'boad an' port was the terms as I recollects 'em. It's jest the same with burros, you takes 'em by the hellum, that's by the tail, git a good tight twist on it an' ef you want him to head to the right, slew his stern sheets around to the left, an' you got to be keerful you don't git no kick back w'ich if it lands on you is worse 'n the ree-coil of a mule." Arthur faithfully followed directions, narrowly escaping the outraged brute's small but sharp pointed heels on occasion. His efforts not being productive of much success, finally in his despair he resorted to brute strength; he would pick the little animal up bodily, pack and all--he was a man of powerful physique--and swing him around until his head pointed in the right direction; then with a prayer that the burro would keep it there for a few rods anyway, he would set him down and start him all over again. The process, oft repeated, became monotonous after a while. Arthur was a slow thinking man, deliberate in action, he stood it as long as he possibly could. Kirkby who rode one horse and led two others, and therefore was exempt from burro driving, observed him with great interest. He and Bradshaw had strayed way behind the rest of the party. At last Arthur's resistance, patience and piety, strained to the breaking point, gave way suddenly. Primitive instincts rose to the surface and overwhelmed him like a flood. He deliberately sat down on a fallen tree by the side of a trail, the burro halting obediently, turned and faced him with hanging head apparently conscious that he merited the disapprobation that was being heaped upon him, for from the desperate tenderfoot there burst forth so amazing, so fluent, so comprehensive a torrent of assorted profanity, that even the old past master in objurgation was astonished and bewildered. Where did Bradshaw, mild and inoffensive, get it? His proficiency would have appalled his Rector and amazed his fellow vestrymen. Not the Jackdaw of Rheims himself was so cursed as that little burro. Kirkby sat on his horse in fits of silent laughter until the tears ran 'down his cheeks, the only outward and visible expression of his mirth. Arthur only stopped when he had thoroughly emptied himself, possibly of an accumulation of years of repression. "Wall," said Kirkby, "you sure do overmatch anyone I ever heard w'en it comes to cursin'. W'y you could gimme cards an' spades an' beat me, an' I was thought to have some gift that-a-way in the old days." "I didn't begin to exhaust myself," answered Bradshaw, shortly, "and what I did say didn't equal the situation. I'm going home." "I wouldn't do that," urged the old man. "Here, you take the hosses an' I'll tackle the burro." "Gladly," said Arthur. "I would rather ride an elephant and drive a herd of them than waste another minute on this infernal little mule." The story was too good to keep, and around the camp fire that night Kirkby drawled it forth. There was a freedom and easiness of intercourse in the camp, which was natural enough. Cook, teamster, driver, host, guest, men, women, children, and I had almost said burros, stood on the same level. They all ate and lived together. The higher up the mountain range you go, the deeper into the wilderness you plunge, the further away from the conventional you draw, the more homogeneous becomes society and the less obvious are the irrational and unscientific distinctions of the lowlands. The guinea stamp fades and the man and the woman are pure gold or base metal inherently and not by any artificial standard. George, the cattle man who cooked, and Peter, the horse wrangler, who assisted Kirkby in looking after the stock, enjoyed the episode uproariously, and would fain have had the exact language repeated to them, but here Robert Maitland demurred, much to Arthur's relief, for he was thoroughly humiliated by the whole performance. It was very pleasant lounging around the camp fire, and one good story easily led to another. "It was in these very mountains," said Robert Maitland, at last, when his turn came, "that there happened one of the strangest and most terrible adventures that I ever heard of. I have pretty much forgotten the lay of the land, but I think it wasn't very far from here that there is one of the most stupendous cañons through the range. Nobody ever goes there--I don't suppose anybody has ever been there since. It must have been at least five years ago that it all happened." "It was four years an' nine months, exactly, Bob," drawled old Kirkby, who well knew what was coming. "Yes, I dare say you are right. I was up at Evergreen at the time, looking after timber interests, when a mule came wandering into the camp, saddle and pack still on his back." "I knowed that there mule," said Kirkby. "I'd sold it to a feller named Newbold, that had come out yere an' married Louise Rosser, old man Rosser's daughter, an' him dead, an' she bein' an orphan, an' this feller bein' a fine young man from the east, not a bit of a tenderfoot nuther, a minin' engineer he called hisself." "Well, I happened to be there too, you remember," continued Maitland, "and they made up a party to go and hunt up the man, thinking something might have happened." "You see," explained Kirkby, "we was all mighty fond of Louise Rosser. The hull camp was actin' like a father to her at the time, so long's she hadn't nobody else. We was all at the weddin', too, some six months afore. The gal married him on her own hook, of course, nobody makin' her, but somehow she didn't seem none too happy, although Newbold, who was a perfect gent, treated her white as far as we knowed." The old man stopped again and resumed his pipe. "Kirkby, you tell the story," said Maitland. "Not me," said Kirkby. "I have seen men shot afore for takin' words out'n other men's mouths an' I ain't never done that yit." "You always were one of the most silent men I ever saw," laughed George. "Why, that day Pete yere got shot accidental an' had his whole breast tore out w'en we was lumbering over on Black Mountain, all you said was, 'Wash him off, put some axle grease on him an' tie him up.'" "That's so," answered Pete, "an' there must have been somethin' powerful soothin' in that axle grease, for here I am, safe an' sound, to this day." "It takes an old man," assented Kirkby, "to know when to keep his mouth shet. I learned it at the muzzle of a gun." "I never knew before," laughed Maitland, "how still a man you can be. Well, to resume the story, having nothing to do, I went out with the posse the sheriff gathered up--" "Him not thinkin' there had been any foul play," ejaculated the old man. "No, certainly not." "Well, what happened, Uncle Bob," inquired Enid. "Just you wait," said young Bob, who had heard the story. "This is an awful good story, Cousin Enid." "I can't wait much longer," returned the girl. "Please go on." "Two days after we left the camp, we came across an awful figure, ragged, blood stained, wasted to a skeleton, starved--" "I have seen men in extreme cases afore," interposed Kirkby, "but never none like him." "Nor I," continued Maitland. "Was it Newbold?" asked Enid. "Yes." "And what had happened to him?" "He and his wife had been prospecting in these very mountains, she had fallen over a cliff and broken herself so terribly that Newbold had to shoot her." "What!" exclaimed Bradshaw. "You don't mean that he actually killed her?" "That's what he done," answered old Kirkby. "Poor man," murmured Enid. "But why?" asked Phillips. "They were five days away from a settlement, there wasn't a human being within a hundred and fifty miles of them, not even an Indian," continued Maitland. "She was so frightfully broken and mangled that he couldn't carry her away." "But why couldn't he leave her and go for help?" asked Bradshaw. "The wolves, the bears, or the vultures would have got her. These woods and mountains were full of them then and there are some of them, left now, I guess." The two little girls crept closer to their grown up cousin, each casting anxious glances beyond the fire light. "Oh, you're all right, little gals," said Kirkby, reassuringly, "they wouldn't come nigh us while this fire is burnin' an' they're pretty well hunted out I guess; 'sides, there's men yere who'd like nothin' better'n drawin' a bead on a big b'ar." "And so," continued Maitland, "when she begged him to shoot her, to put her out of her misery, he did so and then he started back to the settlement to tell his story and stumbled on us looking after him." "What happened then?" "I went back to the camp," said Maitland. "We loaded Newbold on a mule and took him with us. He was so crazy he didn't know what was happening, he went over the shooting again and again in his delirium. It was awful." "Did he die?" "I don't think so," was the answer, "but really I know nothing further about him. There were some good women in that camp, and we put him in their hands, and I left shortly afterwards." "I kin tell the rest," said old Kirkby. "Knowin' more about the mountains than most people hereabouts I led the men that didn't go back with Bob an' Newbold to the place w'ere he said his woman fell, an' there we found her, her body, leastways." "But the wolves?" queried the girl. "He'd drug her into a kind of a holler and piled rocks over her. He'd gone down into the cañon, w'ich was somethin' frightful, an' then climbed up to w'ere she'd lodged. We had plenty of rope, havin' brought it along a purpose, an' we let ourselves down to the shelf where she was a lyin'. We wrapped her body up in blankets an' roped it an' finally drug her up on the old Injun trail, leastways I suppose it was made afore there was any Injuns, an' brought her back to Evergreen camp, w'ich the only thing about it that was green was the swing doors on the saloon. We got a parson out from Denver an' give her a Christian burial." "It that all?" asked Enid as the old man paused again. "Nope." "Oh, the man?" exclaimed the woman with quick intuition. "He recovered his senses so they told us, an' w'en we got back he'd gone." "Where?" was the instant question. Old Kirkby stretched out his hands. "Don't ax me," he said. "He'd jest gone. I ain't never seed or heerd of him sence. Poor little Louise Rosser, she did have a hard time." "Yes," said Enid, "but I think the man had a harder time than she. He loved her?" "It looked like it," answered Kirkby. "If you had seen him, his remorse, his anguish, his horror," said Maitland, "you wouldn't have had any doubt about it. But it is getting late. In the mountains everybody gets up at daybreak. Your sleeping bags are in the tents, ladies, time to go to bed." As the party broke up, old Kirkby rose slowly to his feet. He looked meaningly toward the young woman, upon whom the spell of the tragedy still lingered, he nodded toward the brook, and then repeated his speaking glance at her. His meaning was patent, although no one else had seen the covert invitation. "Come, Kirkby," said the girl in quick response, "you shall be my escort. I want a drink before I turn in. No, never mind," she said, as Bradshaw and Phillips both volunteered, "not this time." The old frontiersman and the young girl strolled off together. They stopped by the brink of the rushing torrent a few yards away. The noise that it made drowned the low tones of their voices and kept the others, busy preparing to retire, from hearing what they said. "That ain't quite all the story, Miss Enid," said the old trapper meaningly. "There was another man." "What!" exclaimed the girl. "Oh, there wasn't nothin' wrong with Louise Rosser, w'ich she was Louise Newbold, but there was another man. I suspected it afore, that's why she was sad. W'en we found her body I knowed it." "I don't understand." "These'll explain," said Kirkby. He drew out from his rough hunting coat a package of soiled letters; they were carefully enclosed in an oil skin and tied with a faded ribbon. "You see," he continued, holding them in his hand, yet carefully concealing them from the people at the fire. "W'en she fell off the cliff--somehow the mule lost his footin', nobody never knowed how, leastways the mule was dead an' couldn't tell--she struck on a spur or shelf about a hundred feet below the brink. Evidently she was carryin' the letters in her dress. Her bosom was frightfully tore open an' the letters was lying there. Newbold didn't see 'em, because he went down into the cañon an' came up to the shelf, or butte head, w'ere the body was lyin', but we dropped down. I was the first man down an' I got 'em. Nobody else seein' me, an' there ain't no human eyes, not even my wife's, that's ever looked on them letters, except mine and now yourn." "You are going to give them to me?" "I am," said Kirkby. "But why?" "I want you to know the hull story." "But why, again?" "I rather guess them letters'll tell," answered the old man evasively, "an' I like you, and I don't want to see you throwed away." [Illustration: "Read the letters," he said. "They'll tell the story. Good night."] "What do you mean?" asked the girl, curiously, thrilling to the solemnity of the moment, the seriousness, the kind affection of the old frontiersman, the weird scene, the fire light, the tents gleaming ghost-like, the black wall of the cañon and the tops of the mountain range broadening out beneath the stars in the clear sky where they twinkled above her head. The strange and terrible story, and now the letters in her hand which somehow seemed to be imbued with human feeling, greatly affected her! Kirkby patted her on the shoulder. "Read the letters," he said. "They'll tell the story. Good-night." CHAPTER VI THE POOL AND THE WATER SPRITE Long after the others in the camp had sunk into the profound slumber of weary bodies and good consciences, a solitary candle in the small tent occupied by Enid Maitland alone, gave evidence that she was busy over the letters which Kirkby had handed to her. It was a very thoughtful girl indeed who confronted the old frontiersman the next morning. At the first convenient opportunity when they were alone together she handed him the packet of letters. "Have you read 'em?" he asked. "Yes." "Wall, you keep 'em," said the old man gravely. "Mebbe you'll want to read 'em agin." "But I don't understand why you want me to have them." "Wall, I'm not quite sure myself why, but leastways I do an'--" "I shall be very glad to keep them," said the girl still more gravely, slipping them into one of the pockets of her hunting shirt as she spoke. The packet was not bulky, the letters were not many nor were they of any great length. She could easily carry them on her person and in some strange and inexplicable way she was rather glad to have them. She could not, as she had said, see any personal application to herself in them, and yet in some way she did feel that the solution of the mystery would be hers some day. Especially did she think this on account of the strange but quiet open emphasis of the old hunter. There was much to do about the camp in the mornings. Horses and burros to be looked after, fire wood to be cut, plans for the day arranged, excursions planned, mountain climbs projected. Later on unwonted hands must be taught to cast the fly for the mountain trout which filled the brook and pool, and all the varied duties, details and fascinating possibilities of camp life must be explained to the new-comers. The first few days were days of learning and preparation, days of mishap and misadventure, of joyous laughter over blunders in getting settled, or learning the mysteries of rod and line, of becoming hardened and acclimated. The weather proved perfect; it was late October and the nights were very cold, but there was no rain and the bright sunny days were invigorating and exhilarating to the last degree. They had huge fires and plenty of blankets and the colder it was in the night the better they slept. It was an intensely new experience for the girl from Philadelphia, but she showed a marked interest and adaptability, and entered with the keenest zest into all the opportunities of the charming days. She was a good sportswoman and she soon learned to throw a fly with the best of them. Old Kirkby took her under his especial protection, and as he was one of the best rods in the mountains, she enjoyed every advantage. She had always lived in the midst of life. Except in the privacy of her own chamber she had rarely ever been alone before--not twenty feet from a man: she thought whimsically; but here the charm of solitude attracted her, she liked to take her rod and wander off alone. She actually enjoyed it. The main stream that flowed down the cañon was fed by many affluents from the mountain sides, and in each of them voracious trout appeared. She explored them as she had opportunity. Sometimes with the others but more often by herself. She discovered charming and exquisite nooks, little stretches of grass, the size perhaps of a small room, flower decked, ferny bordered, overshadowed by tall gaunt pine trees, the sunlight filtering through their thin foliage, checkering the verdant carpet beneath. Huge moss covered boulders, wet with the everdashing spray of the roaring brooks, lay in mid-stream and with other natural stepping stones hard-by invited her to cross to either shore. Waterfalls laughed musically in her ears, deep still pools tempted her skill and address. Sometimes leaving rod and basket by the waterside, she climbed some particularly steep acclivity of the cañon wall and stood poised, wind blown, a nymph of the woods, upon some pinnacle of rock rising needle like at the cañon's edge above the sea of verdure which the wind waved to and fro beneath her feet. There in the bright light, with the breeze blowing her golden hair, she looked like some Norse goddess, blue eyed, exhilarated, triumphant. She was a perfectly formed woman on the ancient noble lines of Milo rather than the degenerate softness of Medici. She grew stronger of limb and fuller of breath, quicker and steadier of eye and hand, cooler of nerve, in these demanding, compelling adventures among the rocks in this mountain air. She was not a tall woman, indeed slightly under rather than over the medium size, but she was so ideally proportioned, she carried herself with the fearlessness of a young chamois, that she looked taller than she was. There was not an ounce of superfluous flesh upon her, yet she had the grace of Hebe, the strength of Pallas Athene, and the swiftness of motion of Atalanta. Had she but carried bow and spear, had she worn tunic and sandals, she might have stood for Diana and she would have had no cause to blush by comparison with the finest model of Praxiteles' chisel or the most splendid and glowing example of Appelles' brush. Uncle Robert was delighted with her. His contribution to her western outfit was a small Winchester. She displayed astonishing aptitude under his instructions and soon became wonderfully proficient with that deadly weapon and with a revolver also. There was little danger to be apprehended in the daytime among the mountains the more experienced men thought, still it was wise for the girl always to have a weapon in readiness, so in her journeyings, either the Winchester was slung from her shoulder or carried in her hand, or else the Colt dangled at her hip. At first she took both, but finally it was with reluctance that she could be persuaded to take either. Nothing had ever happened. Save for a few birds now and then she had seemed the only tenant of the wildernesses of her choice. One night after a camping experience of nearly two weeks in the mountains, and just before the time for breaking up and going back to civilization, she announced that early the next morning she was going down the cañon for a day's fishing excursion. None of the party had ever followed the little river very far, but it was known that some ten miles below the stream merged in a lovely gem-like lake in a sort of crater in the mountains. From thence by a series of waterfalls it descended through the foothills to the distant plains beyond. The others had arranged to climb one especially dangerous and ambition provoking peak which towered above them and which had never before been surmounted so far as they knew. Enid enjoyed mountain climbing. She liked the uplift in feeling that came from going higher and higher till some crest was gained, but on this occasion they urged her to accompany them in vain. When the fixity of her decision was established she had a number of offers to accompany her, but declined them all, bidding the others go their way. Mrs. Maitland, who was not feeling very well, old Kirkby, who had climbed too many mountains to feel much interest in that game, and Pete, the horse wrangler, who had to look after the stock, remained in camp; the others, with the exception of Enid, started at daybreak for their long ascent. She waited until the sun was about an hour high and then bade good-by to the three and began the descent of the cañon. Traveling light for she was going far--farther indeed than she knew--she left her Winchester at home, but carried the revolver with the fishing tackle and substantial luncheon. Now the river--a river by courtesy only--and the cañon turned sharply back on themselves just beyond the little meadow where the camp was pitched. Past the tents that had been their home for this joyous period the river ran due east for a few hundred feet, after which it curved sharply, doubled back and flowed westward for several miles before it gradually swung around to the east on its proper course again. It had been Enid's purpose to cut across the hills and strike the river where it turned eastward once more, avoiding the long detour back. In fact she had declared her intention of doing that to Kirkby and he had given her careful directions so that she should not get lost in the mountains. But she had plenty of time and no excuse or reason for saving it; she never tired of the charm of the cañon; therefore, instead of plunging directly over the spur of the range, she followed the familiar trail and after she had passed westward far beyond the limits of the camp to the turning, she decided, in accordance with that utterly irresponsible thing, a woman's will, that she would not go down the cañon that day after all, but that she would cross back over the range and strike the river a few miles above the camp and go up the cañon instead. She had been up in that direction a few times, but only for a short distance, as the ascent above the camp was very sharp; in fact for a little more than a mile the brook was only a succession of waterfalls; the best fishing was below the camp and the finest woods were deeper in the cañon. She suddenly concluded that she would like to see what was up in that unexplored section of the country and so, with scarcely a momentary hesitation, she abandoned her former plan and began the ascent of the range. Upon decisions so lightly taken what momentous consequences depend? Whether she should go up the stream or down the stream, whether she should follow the rivulet to its source or descend it to its mouth, was apparently a matter of little moment, yet her whole life turned absolutely upon that decision. The idle and unconsidered choice of the hour was fraught with gravest possibilities. Had that election been made with any suspicion, with any foreknowledge, had it come as the result of careful reasoning or far-seeing of probabilities, it might have been understandable, but an impulse, a whim, the vagrant idea of an idle hour, the careless chance of a moment, and behold! a life is changed. On one side were youth and innocence, freedom and contentment, a happy day, a good rest by the cheerful fire at night; on the other, peril of life, struggle, love, jealousy, self-sacrifice, devotion, suffering, knowledge--scarcely Eve herself when she stood apple in hand with ignorance and pleasure around her and enlightenment and sorrow before her, had greater choice to make. How fortunate we are that the future is veiled, that the psalmist's prayer that he might know his end and be certified how long he had to live is one that will not and cannot be granted; that it has been given to but One to foresee His own future, for no power apparently could enable us to stand up against what might be, because we are only human beings not sufficiently alight with the spark divine. We wait for the end because we must, but thank God we know it not until it comes. Nothing of this appeared to the girl that bright sunny morning. Fate hid in those mountains under the guise of fancy. Lighthearted, carefree, fitted with buoyant joy over every fact of life, she left the flowing water and scaled the cliff beyond which in the wilderness she was to find, after all, the world. The ascent was longer and more difficult and dangerous than she had imagined when she first confronted it, perhaps it was typical and foretold her progress. More than once she had to stop and carefully examine the face of the cañon wall for a practicable trail; more than once she had to exercise extremest care in her climb, but she was a bold and fearless mountaineer by this time and at last surmounting every difficulty she stood panting slightly, a little tired but triumphant, upon the summit. The ground was rocky and broken, the timber line was close above her and she judged that she must be several miles from the camp. The cañon was very crooked, she could see only a few hundred yards of it in any direction. She scanned her circumscribed limited horizon eagerly for the smoke from the great fire that they always kept burning in the camp, but not a sign of it was visible. She was evidently a thousand feet above the river whence she had come. Her standing ground was a rocky ridge which fell away more gently on the other side for perhaps two hundred feet toward the same brook. She could see through vistas in the trees the up-tossed peaks of the main range, bare, chaotic, snow covered, lonely, majestic, terrible. The awe of the everlasting hills is greater than that of the heaving sea. Save in the infrequent periods of calm, the latter always moves, the mountains are the same for all time. The ocean is quick, noisy, living; the mountains are calm, still--dead. The girl stood as it were on the roof of the world, a solitary human being, so far as she knew, in the eye of God above her. Ah, but the Eyes Divine look long and see far; things beyond the human ken are all revealed. None of the party had ever come this far from the camp in this direction she knew. And she was glad to be the first, as she fatuously thought, to observe that majestic solitude. Surveying the great range she wondered where the peak climbers might be. Keen sighted though she was she could not discover them. The crest that they were attempting lay in another direction hidden by a nearer spur. She was in the very heart of the mountains; peaks and ridges rose all about her, so much so that the general direction of the great range was lost. She was at the center of a far flung concavity of crest and range. She marked one towering point to the right of her that rose massively grand above all the others. To-morrow she would climb to that high point and from its lofty elevation look upon the heavens above and the earth beneath, aye and the waters under the earth far below. To-morrow!--it is generally known that we do not usually attempt the high points in life's range at once, content are we with lower altitudes to-day. There was no sound above her, the rushing water over the rocks upon the nearer side she could hear faintly beneath her, there was no wind about her, to stir the long needles of the pines. It was very still, the kind of a stillness of body which is the outward and visible complement of that stillness of the soul in which men know God. There had been no earthquake, no storm, the mountains had not heaved beneath her feet, the great and strong wind had not passed by, the rocks had not been rent and broken, yet Enid caught herself listening as if for a Voice. The thrall of majesty, silence, loneliness was upon her. She stood--one stands when there is a chance of meeting God on the way, one does not kneel until He comes--with her raised hands clasped, her head uplifted in exultation unspeakable, God-conquered with her face to heaven upturned. "I will lift up mine eyes to the hills whence cometh my salvation," her heart sang voicelessly. "We praise Thee, O God, we magnify Thy Holy Name forever," floated through her brain, in great appreciation of the marvelous works of the Almighty Shaping Master Hand. Caught up as it were into the heavens, her soul leaped to meet its maker. Thinking to find God she waited there on the heaven-kissing hill. How long she stayed she did not realize; she took no note of time, it did not occur to her even to look at the watch on her wrist; she had swept the skyline cut off as it were by the peaks when first she came, and when at last she turned away--even divinest moments must have an end--she looked not backward. She saw not a little cloud hid on the horizon behind the rampart of ages, as it were, no bigger than a man's hand, a cloud full of portent and which would alarm greatly the veteran Kirkby in the camp and Maitland on the mountain top. Both of them unfortunately were unable to see it, one being on the other side of the range, and the other deep in the cañon, and for both of them as for the girl the sun still shone brightly. The declivity to the river on the upper side was comparatively easy and Enid Maitland went slowly and thoughtfully down to it until she reached the young torrent. She got her tackle ready, but did no casting as she made her way slowly up the ever narrowing, ever rising cañon. She was charmed and thrilled by the wild beauty of the way, the spell of the mountains was deep upon her. Thoughtfully she wandered on until, presently she came to another little amphitheater like that where the camp was pitched, only smaller. Strange to say the brook, or river, here broadened into a little pool perhaps twenty feet across; a turn had thrown a full force of water against the huge boulder wall and in ages of effort a giant cup had been hollowed out of the native rock. The pool was perhaps four or five feet deep, the rocky bottom worn smooth, the clearing was upon the opposite side and the banks were heavily wooded beyond the spur of the rock which formed the back of the pool. She could see the trout in it. She made ready to try her fortune, but before she did so an idea came to her--daring, unconventional, extraordinary, begot of innocence and inexperience. The water of course was very cold, but she had been accustomed all her life to taking a bath at the natural temperature of the water at whatever season. She knew that the only people in that wilderness were the members of her own party; three of them were at the camp below, the others were ascending a mountain miles away. The cañon was deep sunk, and she satisfied herself by careful observation that the pool was not overlooked by any elevations far or near. Her ablutions in common with those of the rest of the campers had been by piecemeal of necessity. Here was an opportunity for a plunge in a natural bath tub. She was as certain that she would be under no observation as if she were in the privacy of her own chamber. Here again impulse determined the end. In spite of her assurance there was some little apprehension in the glance that she cast about her, but it soon vanished. There was no one. She was absolutely alone. The pool and the chance of the plunge had brought her down to earth again; the thought of the enlivening exhilaration of the pure cold water dashing against her own sweet warm young body changed the current of her thoughts--the anticipation of it rather. Impulsively she dropped her rod upon the grass, unpinned her cap, threw the fishing basket from her shoulder. She was wearing a stout sweater; that too joined the rest. Nervous hands manipulated buttons and the fastenings. In a few moments the sweet figure of youth, of beauty, of purity and of innocence brightened the sod and shed a white luster upon the green of the grass and moss and pines, reflecting light to the gray brown rocks of the range. So Eve may have looked on some bright Eden morning. A few steps forward and this nymph of the woods, this naiad of the mountains, plunged into the clear, cold waters of the pool--a water sprite and her fountain! CHAPTER VII THE BEAR, THE MAN AND THE FLOOD The water was deep enough to receive her dive and the pool was long enough to enable her to swim a few strokes. The first chill of the icy water was soon lost in the vigorous motions in which she indulged, but no mere human form however hardened and inured could long endure that frigid bath. Reluctantly, yet with the knowledge that she must go, after one more sweeping dive and a few magnificent strokes, she raised her head from the water lapping her white shoulders, and shaking her face clear from the drops of crystal, faced the shore. It was no longer untenanted, she was no longer alone. What she saw startled and alarmed her beyond measure. Planted on her clothes, looking straight at her, having come upon her in absolute silence, nothing having given her the least warning of his approach, and now gazing at her with red, hungry, evil, vicious eyes, the eyes of the covetous filled with the cruel lust of desire and carnal possession, and yet with a glint of surprise in them, too, as if he did not know quite what to make of the white loveliness of this unwonted apparition flashing so suddenly at him out of the water, this strange invader of the domain of which he fancied he was sole master and lord paramount, stood a great, monstrous frightful looking Grizzly Bear. _Ursus Horribilis_, indeed. He was an aged monarch of the mountains, reddish brown in color originally, but now a hoary dirty gray. His body was massive and burly, his legs short, dark colored and immensely powerful. His broad square head moved restlessly. His fanged mouth opened and a low hoarse growl came from the red cavern of his throat. He was an old and terrible monster who had tasted the blood of man and who would not hesitate to attack even without provocation especially anything at once so harmless and so whitely inviting as the girl in the pool. The girl forgot the chill of the water in the horror of that moment. Alone, naked, defenseless, lost in the mountains, with the most powerful, sanguinary and ferocious beast of the continent in front of her, she could neither fight nor fly, she could only wait his pleasure. He snuffed at her clothing a moment and stood with one fore foot advanced for a second or two growling deeply, evidently, she thought with almost superhuman keenness of perception, preparing to leap into the pool and seize upon her. The rush of the current as it swirled about her caused her to sway gently, otherwise she stood motionless and apprehensive, terribly expectant. She had made no sound, and save for that low growl the great beast had been equally silent. There was an awful fixity in the gaze she turned upon him and he wavered under it. It annoyed him. It bespoke a little of the dominance of the human. But she was too surprised, too unnerved, too desperately frightened to put forth the full power of mind over matter. There was piteous appeal in her gaze. The bear realized this and mastered her sufficiently. She did not know whether she was in the water or in the air, there were but two points upon which her consciousness was focussed in the vast ellipse of her imagination. Another moment or two and all coherency of thought would be gone. The grizzly, still unsettled and uneasy before her awful glance, but not deterred by it, turned its great head sideways a little to escape the direct immobile stare, brought his sharp clawed foot down heavily and lurched forward. Scarcely had a minute elapsed in which all this happened. That huge threatening heave of the great body toward her relieved the tension. She found voice at last. Although it was absolutely futile she realized as she cried, her released lips framed the loud appeal. "Help! for God's sake." Although she knew she cried but to the bleak walls of the cañon, the drooping pines, the rushing river, the distant heaven, the appeal went forth accompanied by the mightiest conjuration known to man. "For God's sake, Help!" How dare poor humanity so plead, the doubter cries. What is it to God if one suffers, another bleeds, another dies. What answer could come out of that silent sky? Sometimes the Lord speaks with the loud voice of men's fashioning, instead of in that still whisper which is His own and the sound of which we fail to catch because of our own ignoble babble! The answer to her prayer came with a roar in her nervous frightened ear like a clap of thunder. Ere the first echo of it died away, it was succeeded by another and another and another, echoing, rolling, reverberating among the rocks in ever diminishing but long drawn out peals. On the instant the bear rose to his feet, swayed slightly and struck as at an imaginary enemy with his weighty paws. A hoarse, frightful guttering roar burst from his red slavering jaws, then he lurched sideways and fell forward, fighting the air madly for a moment, and lay still. With staring eyes that missed no detail, she saw that the brute had been shot in the head and shoulder three times, and that he was apparently dead. The revulsion that came over her was bewildering; she swayed again, this time not from the thrust of the water but with sick faintness. The tension suddenly taken off, unstrung, the loose bow of her spirit quivered helplessly; the arrow of her life almost fell into the stream. And then a new and more appalling terror swept over her. Some man had fired that shot. Actæon had spied upon Diana. With this sudden revelation of her shame, the red blood beat to the white surface in spite of the chill water. The anguish of that moment was greater than before. She could be killed, torn to pieces, devoured, that was a small thing, but that she should be so outraged in her modesty was unendurable. She wished the hunter had not come. She sunk lower in the water for a moment fain to hide in its crystal clarity and realized as she did how frightfully cold she was. Yet, although she froze where she was and perished with cold she could not go out on the bank to dress, and it would avail her little she saw swiftly, since the huge monster had fallen a dead heap on her clothes. Now all this, although it takes minutes to tell, had happened in but a few seconds. Seconds sometimes include hours, even a life time, in their brief composition. She thought it would be just as well for her to sink down and die in the water, when a sudden splashing below her caused her to look down the stream. She was so agitated that she could make out little except that there was a man crossing below her and making directly toward the body of the bear. He was a tall black bearded man, she saw he carried a rifle, he looked neither to the right nor to the left, he did not bestow a glance upon her. She could have cried aloud in thanksgiving for his apparent obliviousness to her as she crouched now neck deep in the benumbing cold. The man stepped on the bank, shook himself like a great dog might have done and marched over to the bear. He up-rooted a small near-by pine, with the ease of a Hercules--and she had time to mark and marvel at it in spite of everything--and then with that as a lever he unconcernedly and easily heaved the body of the monster from off her clothing. She was to learn later what a feat of strength it was to move that inert carcass weighing much more than half a ton. Thereafter he dropped the pine tree by the side of the dead grizzly and without a backward look tramped swiftly and steadily up the cañon through the trees, turning at the point of it, and was instantly lost to sight. His gentle and generous purpose was obvious even to the frightened, agitated, excited girl. The woman watched him until he disappeared, a few seconds longer, and then she hurled herself through the water and stepped out upon the shore. Her sweater, which the bear had dragged forward in its advance, lay on top of the rest of her clothes covered with blood. She threw it aside and with nervous, frantic energy, wet, cold, though she was, she jerked on in some fashion enough clothes to cover her nakedness and then with more leisurely order and with necessary care she got the rest of her apparel in its accustomed place upon her body, and then when it was all over she sank down prone and prostrate upon the grass by the carcass of the now harmless monster which had so nearly caused her undoing, and shivered, cried and sobbed as if her heart would break. She was chilled to the bone by her motionless sojourn, albeit it had been for scarcely more than a minute, in that icy water, and yet the blood rushed to her brow and face, to every hidden part of her in waves as she thought of it. It was a good thing that she cried, she was not a weeping woman, her tears came slowly as a rule and then came hard. She rather prided herself upon her stoicism, but in this instance the great deeps of her nature had been undermined and the fountains thereof were fain to break forth. How long she lay there, warmth coming gradually to her under the direct rays of the sun, she did not know, and it was a strange thing that caused her to arise. It grew suddenly dark over her head. She looked up and a rim of frightful, black, dense clouds had suddenly blotted out the sun. The clouds were lined with gold and silver and the long rays shot from behind the somber blind over the yet uncovered portions of the heaven, but the clouds moved with the irresistible swiftness and steadiness of a great deluge. The wall of them lowered above her head while they extended steadily and rapidly across the sky toward the other side of the cañon and the mountain wall. A storm was brewing such as she had never seen, such as she had no experience to enable her to realize its malign possibilities. Nay, it was now at hand. She had no clew, however, of what was toward, how terrible a danger overshadowed her. Frightened but unconscious of all the menace of the hour her thoughts flew down the cañon to the camp. She must hasten there. She looked for her watch which she had picked from the grass and which she had not yet put on; the grizzly had stepped upon it, it was irretrievably ruined. She judged from her last glimpse of the sun that it must now be early afternoon. She rose to her feet and staggered with weakness, she had eaten nothing since morning, and the nervous shock and strain through which she had gone had reduced her to a pitiable condition. Her luncheon had fortunately escaped unharmed. In a big pocket of her short skirt there was a small flask of whiskey, which her Uncle Robert had required her to take with her. She felt sick and faint, but she knew that she must eat if she was to make the journey, difficult as it might prove, back to the camp. She forced herself to take the first mouthful of bread and meat she had brought with her, but when she had tasted she needed no further incentive, she ate to the last crumb; she thought this was the time she needed stimulants too, and mingling the cold water from the brook with a little of the ardent spirit from the flask she drank. Some of the chill had worn off, some of the fatigue had gone. She rose to her feet and started down the cañon; her bloody sweater still lay on the ground with other things of which she was heedless. It had grown colder but she realized that the climb down the cañon would put her stagnant blood in circulation and all would be well. Before she began the descent of the pass, she cast one long glance backward whither the man had gone. Whence came he, who was he, what had he seen, where was he now? She thanked God for his interference in one breath and hated him for his presence in the other. The whole sky was now black with drifting clouds, lightning flashed above her head, muttered peals of thunder, terrifically ominous, rocked through the silent hills. The noise was low and subdued but almost continuous. With a singular and uneasy feeling that she was being observed, she started down the cañon, plunging desperately through the trees, leaping the brook from side to side where it narrowed, seeking ever the easiest way. She struggled on, panting with sudden inexplicable terror almost as bad as that which had overwhelmed her an hour before--and growing more intense every moment, to such a tragic pass had the day and its happenings brought her. Poor girl, awful experience really was to be hers that day. The Fates sported with her--bodily fear, outraged modesty, mental anguish and now the terror of the storm. The clouds seemed to sink lower, until they almost closed about her. Long gray ghostly arms reached out toward her. It grew darker and darker in the depths of the cañon. She screamed aloud--in vain. Suddenly the rolling thunder peals concentrated, balls of fire leaped out of the heavens and struck the mountains where she could actually see them. There are not words to describe the tremendous crashings which seemed to splinter the hills, to be succeeded by brief periods of silence, to be followed by louder and more terrific detonations. In one of those appalling alternations from sound to silence she heard a human cry--an answering cry to her own! It came from the hills behind her. It must proceed, she thought, from the man. She could not meet that man; although she craved human companionship as never before, she did not want his. She could not bear it. Better the wrath of God, the fury of the tempest. Heedless of the sharp note of warning, of appeal, in the voice ere it was drowned by another roll of thunder, she plunged on in the darkness. The cañon narrowed here, she made her way down the ledges, leaping recklessly from rock to rock, slipping, falling, grazing now one side, now the other, hurling herself forward with white face and bruised body and torn hands and throbbing heart that would fain burst its bonds. There was once an ancient legend of a human creature, menaced by all the furies, pitilessly pursued by every malefic spirit of earth and air; like him this sweet young girl, innocent, lovely, erstwhile happy, fled before the storm. And then the heavens opened, the fountains of the great deeps were broken down, and with absolute literalness the floods descended. The bursting clouds, torn asunder by the wild winds, riven by the pent up lightning within their black and turgid breasts, disburdened themselves. The water came down, as it did of old when God washed the face of the world, in a flood. The narrow of the cañon was filled ten, twenty, thirty feet in a moment by the cloud burst. The black water rolled and foamed, surging like the rapids at Niagara. The body of the girl, utterly unprepared, was caught up in a moment and flung like a bolt from a catapult down the seething sea filled with the trunks of the trees and the débris of the mountains, tossing almost humanly in the wild confusion. She struck out strongly, swimming more because of the instinct of life than for any other reason. A helpless atom in the boiling flood. Growing every minute greater and greater as the angry skies disgorged themselves of their pent up torrents upon her devoted head. CHAPTER VIII DEATH, LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION The man was coming back from one of his rare visits to the settlements. Ahead of him he drove a train of burros who, well broken to their work, followed with docility the wise old leader in the advance. The burros were laden with his supplies for the approaching winter. The season was late, the mountains would soon be impassable on account of the snow, indeed he chose the late season always for his buying in order that he might not be followed and it was his habit to buy in different places in different years that his repeated and expected presence at one spot might not arouse suspicion. Intercourse with his fellow men was limited to this yearly visit to a settlement and even that was of the briefest nature, confined always to the business in hand. Even when busy in the town he pitched a small tent in the open on the outskirts and dwelt apart. No men there in those days pried into the business of other men too closely. Curiosity was neither safe nor necessary. If he aroused transient interest or speculation it soon died away. He vanished into the mountains and as he came no more to that place, he was soon forgotten. Withdrawing from his fellow men and avoiding their society, this man was never so satisfied as when alone in the silent hills. His heart and spirit rose with every step he made away from the main traveled roads or the more difficult mountain trails. For several days he journeyed through the mountains, choosing the wildest and most inaccessible parts for his going. Amid the cañons and peaks he threaded his way with unerring accuracy, ascending higher and higher until at last he reached the mountain aerie, the lonely hermitage, where he made his home. There he reveled in his isolation. What had been punishment, expiation, had at last become pleasure. Civilization was bursting through the hills in every direction, railways were being pushed hither and thither, the precious metals were being discovered at various places and after them came hoards of men and with them--God save the mark--women; but his section of the country had hitherto been unvisited even by hunters, explorers, miners or pleasure seekers. He was glad, he had grown to love the spot where he had made his home, and he had no wish to be forced, like little Joe, to move on. Once a man who loved the strife, noble or ignoble, of the madding crowd, he had grown accustomed to silence, habituated to solitude. Winter and summer alike he roamed the mountains, delving into every forest, exploring every hidden cañon, surmounting every inaccessible peak; no storm, no snow, no condition of wind or weather daunted him or stopped him. He had no human companionship by which to try his mettle, but nevertheless over the world of the material which lay about him he was a master as he was a man. He found some occupation, too, in the following of old Adam's inheritance, during the pleasant months of summer he made such garden as he could. His profession of mining engineer gave him other employment. Round about him lay treasures inestimable, precious metals abounded in the hills. He had located them, tested, analyzed, estimated the wealth that was his for the taking--it was as valueless to him as the doubloons and golden guineas were to Selkirk on his island. Yet the knowledge that it was there gave him an energizing sense of potential power, unconsciously enormously flattering to his self esteem. Sometimes he wandered to the extreme verge of the range and on clear days saw far beneath him the smoke of great cities of the plains. He could be a master among men as he was a master among mountains, if he chose. On such occasions he laughed cynically, scornfully, yet rarely did he ever give way to such emotion. A great and terrible sorrow was upon him; cherishing a great passion he had withdrawn himself from the common lot to dwell upon it. From a perverted sense of expiation, in a madness of grief, horror and despair, he had made himself a prisoner to his ideas in the desert of the mountains. Back to his cabin he would hasten, and there surrounded by his living memories--deathless yet of the dead!--he would recreate the past until dejection drove him abroad on the hills to meet God if not man--or woman. Night-day, sunshine-shadow, heat-cold, storm-calm; these were his life. Having disburdened his faithful animals of their packs and having seen them safely bestowed for the winter in the corral he had built near the base of the cliff upon which his rude home was situated, he took his rifle one morning for one of those lonely walks across the mountains from which he drew such comfort because he fancied the absence of man conduced to the nearness of God. It was a delusion as old nearly as the Christian religion. Many had made themselves hermits in the past in remorse for sin and for love toward God; this man had buried himself in the wilderness in part for the first of these causes, in other part for the love of woman. In these days of swift and sudden change he had been constant to a remembrance and abiding in his determination for five swift moving years. The world for him had stopped its progress in one brief moment five years back--the rest was silence. What had happened since then out yonder where people were mated he did not know and he did not greatly care. In his visits to the settlements he asked no questions, he bought no papers, he manifested no interest in the world; something in him had died in one fell moment, and there had been, as yet, no resurrection. Yet life, and hope, and ambition do not die, they are indeed eternal. _Resurgam!_ Life with its tremendous activities, its awful anxieties, its wearing strains, its rare triumphs, its opportunities for achievement, for service; hope with its illuminations, its encouragements, its expectations; ambition with its stimulus, its force, its power; and greatest of all love, itself alone--all three were latent in him. In touch with a woman these had gone. Something as powerful and as human must bring them back. It was against nature that a man dowered as he should so live to himself alone. Some voice should cry to his soul in its cerements of futile remorse, vain expiations and benumbing recollection; some day he should burst these grave clothes self-wound about him and be once more a man and a master among men, rather than the hermit and the recluse of the solitudes. He did not allow these thoughts to come into his life, indeed it is quite likely that he scarcely realized them at all yet; such possibilities did not present themselves to him; perhaps the man was a little mad that morning, maybe he trembled on the verge of a break--upward, downward I know not so it be away--unconsciously as he strode along the range. He had been walking for some hours, and as he grew thirsty it occurred to him to descend to the level of the brook which he heard below him and of which he sometimes caught a flashing glimpse through the trees. He scrambled down the rocks and found himself in a thick grove of pine. Making his way slowly and with great difficulty through the tangle of fallen timber which lay in every direction, the sound of a human voice, the last thing on earth to be expected in that wilderness, smote upon the fearful hollow of his ear. Any voice or any word then and there would have surprised him, but there was a note of awful terror in this voice, a sound of frightened appeal. The desperation in the cry left him no moment for thought, the demand was for action. The cry was not addressed to him, apparently, but to God, yet it was he who answered--sent doubtless by that Over-looking Power who works in such mysterious ways His wonders to perform! He leaped over the intervening trees to the edge of the forest where the rapid waters ran. To the right of him rose a huge rock, or cliff, in front of him the cañon bent sharply to the north, and beneath him a few rods away a speck of white gleamed above the water of a deep and still pool that he knew. _There was a woman there!_ He had time for but the swiftest glance, he had surmised that the voice was not that of a man's voice instantly he heard it, and now he was sure. She stood white breast deep in the water staring ahead of her. The next instant he saw what had alarmed her--a Grizzly Bear, the largest, fiercest, most forbidding specimen he had ever seen. There were a few of those monsters still left in the range, he himself had killed several. The woman had not seen him. He was a silent man by long habit; accustomed to saying nothing, he said nothing now. But instantly aiming from the hip with a wondrous skill and a perfect mastery of the weapon, and indeed it was a short range for so huge a target, he pumped bullet after bullet from his heavy Winchester into the evil monarch of the mountains. The first shot did for him, but making assurance doubly and trebly sure, he fired again and again. Satisfied at last that the bear was dead, and observing that he had fallen upon the clothes of the bather, he turned, descended the stream for a few yards until he came to a place where it was easily fordable, stepped through it without a glance toward the woman shivering in the water, whose sensation, so far as a mere man could, he thoroughly understood and appreciated, and whose modesty he fain would spare, having not forgotten to be a gentleman in five years of his own society--high test of quality, that. He climbed out upon the bank, up-rooted a small tree, rolled the bear clear of the heap of woman's clothing and marched straight ahead of him up the cañon and around the bend. Thereafter, being a man, he did not faint or fall, but completely unnerved he leaned against the cañon wall, dropped his gun at his feet and stood there trembling mightily, sweat bedewing his forehead, and the sweat had not come from his exertions. In one moment the whole even tenor of his life was changed. The one glimpse he had got of those white shoulders, that pallid face, that golden head raised from the water had swept him back five years. He had seen once more in the solitude a woman. Other women he had seen at a distance and avoided in his yearly visits to the settlements of course; these had passed him by remotely, but here he was brought in touch intimately with humanity. He who had taken life had saved it. A woman had sent him forth, was a woman to call him back? He cursed himself for his weakness. He shut his eyes and summoned other memories. How long he stood there he could not have told; he was fighting a battle and it seemed to him at last that he triumphed. Presently the consciousness came to him that perhaps he had no right to stand there idle, it might be that the woman needed him, perhaps she had fainted in the water, perhaps--He turned toward the bend which concealed him from her and then he stopped. Had he any right to intrude upon her privacy? He must of necessity be an unwelcome visitor to her, he had surprised her at a frightful disadvantage; he knew instinctively, although the fault was none of his, although he had saved her life thereby, that she would hold him and him alone responsible for the outrage to her modesty, and although he had seen little at first glance and had resolutely kept his eyes away, the mere consciousness of her absolute helplessness appealed to him--to what was best and noblest in him, too. He must go to her. Stay, she might not yet be clothed, in which event--But no, she must be dressed, or dead, by this time and in either case he would have a duty to discharge. It devolved upon him to make sure of her safety, he was in a certain sense responsible for it, until she got back to her friends wherever they might be; but he persuaded himself that otherwise he did not want to see her again, that he did not wish to know anything about her future; that he did not care whether it was well or ill with her; and it was only stern obligation which drove him toward her--oh fond and foolish man! He compromised with himself at last by climbing the ridge that had shut off a view of the pool, and looking down at the place so memorable to him. He was prepared to withdraw instantly should circumstances warrant, and he was careful so to conceal himself as to give no possible opportunity for her to discover his scrutiny. With a beating heart and eager eyes he searched the spot. There lay the bear and a little distance away prone on the grass, clothed but whether in her right mind or not he could not tell, lay the woman. For a moment, as he bent a concentrated eager gaze upon her, he thought she might have fainted or that she might have died. In any event he reflected that she had strength and nerve and will to have dressed herself before either of these things had happened. She lay motionless under his gaze for so long that he finally made up his mind that common humanity required him to go to her assistance. He rose to his feet on the instant and saw the woman also lift herself from the grass as if moved by a similar impulse. In his intense preoccupation he had failed to observe the signs of the times. A sense of the overcast sky came to him suddenly, as it did to her, but with a difference. He knew what was about to happen, his experience told him much more as to the awful potentialities of the tempest than she could possibly imagine. She must be warned at once, she must leave the cañon and get up on the higher ground without delay. His duty was plain and yet he did it not. He could not. The pressure upon him was not yet strong enough. A half dozen times as he watched her deliberately sitting there eating, he opened his mouth to cry to her, yet he could not bring himself to it. A strange timidity oppressed him, halted him, held him back. A man cannot stay away five years from men and woman and be himself with them in the twinkling of an eye. And when to that instinctive and acquired reluctance against which he struggled in vain, he added the assurance that whatever his message he would be unwelcome on account of what had gone before, he could not force himself to go to her or even to call to her, not yet. He would keep her under surveillance, however, and if the worst came he could intervene in time to rescue her. He counted without his cost, his usual judgment bewildered. So he followed her through the trees and down the bank. Now he was so engrossed in her and so agitated that his caution slept, his experience was forgotten. The storm in his own breast was so great that it overshadowed the storm brewing above. Her way was easier than his and he had fallen some distance behind when suddenly there rushed upon him the fact that a frightful and unlooked for cloudburst was about to occur above their heads. A lightning flash and a thunder clap at last arrested his attention. Then, but not until then, he flung everything to the winds and amid the sudden and almost continuous peals of thunder he sent cry after cry toward her which were lost in the tremendous diapason of sound that echoed and re-echoed through the rifts of the mountains. "Wait," he cried again and again. "Come up higher. Get out of the cañon. You'll be drowned." But he had waited too long, the storm had developed too rapidly, she was too far ahead of and beneath him. She heard nothing but the sound of a voice, shrill, menacing, fraught with terror for her, not a word distinguishable; scarcely to her disturbed soul even a human voice, it seemed like the weird cry of some wild spirit of the storm. It sounded to her overwrought nerves so utterly inhuman that she only ran the faster. The cañon swerved and then doubled back, but he knew its direction; losing sight of her for the moment he plunged straight ahead through the trees, cutting off the bend, leaping with superhuman agility and strength over rocks and logs until he reached a point where the rift narrowed between two walls and ran deeply. There and then the heavens opened and the floods came and beat into that open maw of that vast crevasse and filled it full in an instant. As the deluge came roaring down, bearing onward the sweepings and scourings of the mountains, he caught a glimpse of her white desperate face rising, falling, now disappearing, now coming into view again, in the foamy midst of the torrent. He ran to the cliff bank and throwing aside his gun he scrambled down the wall to a certain shelf of the rock over which the rising water broke thinly. Ordinarily it was twenty feet above the creek bed. Bracing himself against a jagged projection he waited, praying. The cañon was here so narrow that he could have leaped to the other side and yet it was too wide for him to reach her if the water did not sweep her toward his feet. It was all done in a second--fortunately a projection on the other side threw the force of the torrent toward him and with it came the woman. She was almost spent; she had been struck by a log upheaved by some mighty wave, her hands were moving feebly, her eyes were closed, she was drowning, dying, but indomitably battling on. He stooped down and as a surge lifted her he threw his arm around her waist and then braced himself against the rock to sustain the full thrust of the mighty flood. As he seized her she gave way suddenly, as if after having done all that she could there was now nothing left but to trust herself to his hand and God's. She hung a dead weight on his arm in the ravening water which dragged and tore at her madly. He was a man of giant strength, but the struggle bade fair to be too much even for him. It seemed as if the mountain behind him was giving way. He set his teeth, he tried desperately to hold on, he thrust out his right hand, holding her with the other one, and clawed at the dripping rock in vain. In a moment the torrent mastered him and when it did so it seized him with fury and threw him like a stone from a sling into the seething vortex of the mid-stream. But in all this he did not, he would not, release her. Such was the swiftness of the motion with which they were swept downward that he had little need to swim; his only effort was to keep his head above water and to keep from being dashed against the logs that tumbled end over end, or whirled sideways, or were jammed into clusters only to burst out on every hand. He struggled furiously to keep himself from being overwhelmed in the seething madness, and what was harder, to keep the lifeless woman in his arms from being stricken or wrenched away. He knew that below the narrows where the cañon widened the water would subside, the awful fury of the rain would presently cease. If he could steer clear of the rocks in the broad he might win to land with her. The chances against him were thousands to nothing. But what are chances in the eyes of God. The man in his solitude had not forgotten to pray, his habits stood him in good stead now. He petitioned shortly, brokenly, in brief unspoken words, as he battled through the long dragging seconds. Fighting, clinging, struggling, praying, he was swept on. Heavier and heavier the woman dragged in an unconscious heap. It would have been easier for him if he had let her go; she would never know and he could then escape. The idea never once occurred to him. He had indeed withdrawn from his kind, but when one depended upon him all the old appeal of weak humanity awoke quick response in the bosom of the strong. He would die with the stranger rather than yield her to the torrent or admit himself beaten and give up the fight. So the conscious and the unconscious struggled through the narrow of the cañon. Presently with the rush and hurl of a bullet from the mouth of a gun, they found themselves in a shallow lake through which the waters still rushed mightily, breaking over rocks, digging away shallow rooted trees, leaping, biting, snarling, tearing at the big walls spread away on either side. He had husbanded some of his strength for this final effort, this last chance of escape. Below them at the other end of this open the walls came together again; there the descent was sharper than before and the water ran to the opening with racing speed. Once again in the torrent and they would be swept to death in spite of all. Shifting his grasp to the woman's hair, now unbound, he held her with one hand and swam hard with the other. The current still ran swiftly, but with no gigantic upheaving waves as before. It was more easy to avoid floating timber and débris, and on one side where the ground sloped somewhat gently the quick water flowed more slowly. He struck out desperately for it, forcing himself away from the main stream into the shallows and ever dragging the woman. Was it hours or minutes or seconds after that he gained the battle and neared the shore at the lowest edge? He caught with his forearm, as the torrent swerved him around, a stout young pine so deeply rooted as yet to have withstood the flood. Summoning that last reserve of strength that is bestowed upon us in our hour of need, and comes unless from God we know not whence, he drew himself in front of the pine, got his back against it, and although the water thundered against him still--only by comparison could it be called quieter--and his foothold was most precarious, he reached down carefully and grasped the woman under the shoulders. His position was a cramped one, but by the power of his arms alone he lifted her up until he got his left arm about her waist again. It was a mighty feat of strength indeed. The pine stood in the midst of the water, for even on the farther side the earth was overflowed but the water was stiller; he did not know what might be there, but he had to chance it. Lifting her up he stepped out, fortunately meeting firm ground; a few paces and he reached solid rock above the flood. He raised her above his head and laid her upon the shore, then with the very last atom of all his force, physical, mental and spiritual, he drew himself up and fell panting and utterly exhausted but triumphant by her side. The cloud burst was over, but the rain still beat down upon them, the thunder still roared above them, the lightning still flashed about them, but they were safe, alive if the woman had not died in his arms. He had done a thing superhuman--no man knowing conditions would have believed it. He himself would have declared a thousand times its patent impossibility. For a few seconds he strove to recover himself; then he thought of the flask he always carried in his pocket. It was gone; his clothes were ragged and torn, they had been ruined by his battle with the waves. The girl lay where he had placed her on her back. In the pocket of her hunting skirt he noticed a little protuberance; the pocket was provided with a flap and tightly buttoned. Without hesitation he unbuttoned it. There was a flask there, a little silver mounted affair; by some miracle it had not been broken. It was half full. With nervous hands he opened it and poured some of its contents down her throat; then he bent over her his soul in his glance, scarcely knowing what to do next. Presently she opened her eyes. And there, in the rain, by that raging torrent whence he had drawn her as it were from the jaws of death by the power of his arm, in the presence of the God above them, this man and this woman looked at each other and life for both of them was no longer the same. BOOK III FORGETTING AND FORGOT CHAPTER IX A WILD DASH FOR THE HILLS Old Kirkby, who had been lazily mending a saddle the greater part of the morning, had eaten his dinner, smoked his pipe and was now stretched out on the grass in the warm sun taking a nap. Mrs. Maitland was drowsing over a book in the shadow of one of the big pines, when Pete, the horse wrangler, who had been wandering rather far down the cañon rounding up the ever straying stock, suddenly came bursting into the camp. "Heavens!" he cried, actually kicking the prostrate frontiersman as he almost stumbled over him. "Wake up, old man, an'--" "What the--" began Kirkby fiercely, thus rudely aroused from slumber and resentful of the daring and most unusual affront to his dignity and station, since all men, and especially the younger ones, held him in great honor. "Look there!" yelled Pete in growing excitement and entirely oblivious to his _lèse-majesté_, pointing at a black cloud rolling over the top of the range. "It'll be a cloud burst sure, we'll have to git out o' here an' in a hurry too. Oh, Mrs. Maitland." By this time Kirkby was on his feet. The storm had stolen upon him sleeping and unaware, the configuration of the cañon having completely hid its approach. At best the three in the camp could not have discovered it until it was high in the heavens. Now the clouds were already approaching the noonday sun. Kirkby was alive to the situation at once; he had the rare ability of men of action, of awakening with all his faculties at instant command; he did not have to rub his eyes and wonder where he was, and speculate as to what was to be done. The moment that his eyes, following Pete's outstretched arm, discovered the black mass of clouds, he ran toward Mrs. Maitland, and standing on no ceremony he shook her vigorously by the shoulder. "We'll have to run for our lives, ma'm," he said briefly. "Pete, drive the stock up on the hills, fur as you kin, the hosses pertikler, they'll be more to us an' them burros must take keer of themselves." Pete needed no urging, he was off like a shot in the direction of the improvised corral. He loosed the horses from their pickets and started them up the steep trail that led down from the hogback to the camp by the water's edge. He also tried to start the burros he had just rounded up in the same direction. Some of them would go and some of them would not. He had his hands full in an instant. Meanwhile Kirkby did not linger by the side of Mrs. Maitland; with incredible agility for so old a man he ran over to the tent where the stores were kept and began picking out such articles of provision as he could easiest carry. "Come over here, Mrs. Maitland," he cried. "We'll have to carry up on the hill somethin' to keep us from starvin' till we git back to town. We hadn't orter camped in this yere pocket noways, but who'd ever expected anything like this now." "What do you fear?" asked the woman, joining him as she spoke and waiting for his directions. "Looks to me like a cloud bust," was the answer. "Creek's pretty full now, an' if she does break everything below yere'll go to hell on a run." It was evidence of his perturbation and anxiety that he used such language which, however, in the emergency did not seem unwarranted even to the refined ear of Mrs. Maitland. "Is it possible?" she exclaimed. "Taint only possible, it's sartin. Now ma'm," he hastily bundled up a lot of miscellaneous provisions in a small piece of canvas, tied it up and handed it to her, "that'll be for you." Immediately after he made up a much larger bundle in another tent fly, adding, "an' this is mine." "Oh, let us hurry," cried Mrs. Maitland, as a peal of thunder, low, muttered, menacing, burst from the flying clouds now obscuring the sun, and rolled over the camp. "We've got time enough yit," answered Kirkby coolly calculating their chances. "Best git your slicker on, you'll need it in a few minutes." Mrs. Maitland ran to her own tent and soon came out with sou'wester and yellow oil skins completely covering her. Kirkby meantime had donned his own old battered soiled rain clothes and had grabbed up Pete's. "I brought the children's coats along," said Mrs. Maitland, extending three others. "Good," said Kirkby, "now we'll take our packs an'--" "Do you think there is any danger to Robert?" "He'll git nothin' worse'n a wettin'," returned the old man confidently. "If we'd pitched the tents up on the hogback, that's all we'd a been in for." "I have to leave the tents and all the things," said Mrs. Maitland. "You can stay with them," answered Kirkby, dryly, "but if what I think's goin' to happen comes off, you won't have no need of nothin' no more--Here she comes." As he spoke there was a sudden swift downpour of rain, not in drops, but in a torrent. Catching up his own pack and motioning the woman to do likewise with her load, Kirkby caught her by the hand, and half led, half dragged her up the steep trail from the brook to the ridge which bordered the side of the cañon. The cañon was much wider here than further up and there was much more room and much more space for the water to spread. Yet, they had to hurry for their lives as it was. They had gone up scarcely a hundred feet when the disgorgement of the heavens took place. The water fell with such force, directness and continuousness that it almost beat them down. It ran over the trail down the side of the mountain in sheets like waterfalls. It required all the old man's skill and address to keep himself and his companion from losing their footing and falling down into the seething tumult below. The tents went down in an instant. Where there had been a pleasant bit of meadow land was now a muddy tossing lake of black water. Some of the horses and most of the burros which Pete had been unable to do anything with were engulfed in a moment. The two on the mountain side could see them swimming for dear life as they swept down the cañon. Pete himself, with a few of the animals, was already scrambling up to safety. Speech was impossible between the noise of the falling rain and the incessant peals of thunder, but by persistent gesture old Kirkby urged the terrified trembling woman up the trail until they finally reached the top of the hogback, where under the poor shelter of the stunted pines they joined Pete with such of the horses as he had been able to drive up. Kirkby taking a thought for the morrow, noted that there were four of them, enough to pull the wagon if they could get back to it. After the first awful deluge of the cloud burst it moderated slightly, but the hard rain came down steadily, the wind rose as well and in spite of their oil skins they were soon wet and cold. It was impossible to make a fire, there was no place for them to go, nothing to be done, they could only remain where they were and wait. After a half hour of exposure to the merciless fury of the storm, a thought came suddenly to Mrs. Maitland; she leaned over and caught the frontiersman by his wet sleeve. Seeing that she wished to speak to him he bent his head toward her lips. "Enid," she cried, pointing down the cañon; she had not thought before of the position of the girl. Kirkby, who had not forgotten her, but who had instantly realized that he could do nothing for her, shook his head, lifted his eyes and solemnly pointed his finger up to the gray skies. He had said nothing to Mrs. Maitland before, what was the use of troubling her. "God only kin help her," he cried; "she's beyond the help of man." Ah, indeed, old trapper, whence came the confident assurance of that dogmatic statement? For as it chanced at that very moment the woman for whose peril your heart was wrung was being lifted out of the torrent by a man's hand! And, yet, who shall say that the old hunter was not right, and that the man himself, as men of old have been, was sent from God? "It can't be," began Mrs. Maitland in great anguish for the girl she had grown to love. "Ef she seed the storm an' realized what it was, an' had sense enough to climb up the cañon wall," answered the other, "she won't be no worse off 'n we are; ef not--" Mrs. Maitland had only to look down into the seething caldron to understand the possibility of that "if." "Oh," she cried, "let us pray for her that she sought the hills." "I've been a doin' it," said the old man gruffly. He had a deep vein of piety in him, but like other rich ores it had to be mined for in the depths before it was apparent. By slow degrees the water subsided, and after a long while the rain ceased, a heavy mist lay on the mountains and the night approached without any further appearance of the veiled sun. Toward evening Robert Maitland with the three men and the three children joined the wretched trio above the camp. Maitland, wild with excitement and apprehension, had pressed on ahead of the rest. It was a glad faced man indeed who ran the last few steps of the rough way and clasped his wife in his arms, but as he did so he noticed that one was missing. "Where is Enid?" he cried, releasing his wife. "She went down the cañon early this mornin' intendin' to stay all day," slowly and reluctantly answered old Kirkby, "an'--" He paused there, it wasn't necessary for him to say anything more. Maitland walked to the edge of the trail and looked down into the valley. It had been swept clean of the camp. Rocks had been rolled over upon the meadow land, trunks of trees torn up by the roots had lodged against them, it was a scene of desolate and miserable confusion and disaster. "Oh, Robert, don't you think she may be safe?" asked Mrs. Maitland. "There's jest a chance, I think, that she may have suspicioned the storm an' got out of the cañon," suggested the old frontiersman. "A slim chance," answered Maitland gloomily. "I wouldn't have had this happen for anything on earth." "Nor me; I'd a heap ruther it had got me than her," said Kirkby simply. "I didn't see it coming," continued Maitland nodding as if Kirkby's statement were to be accepted as a matter of course, as indeed it was. "We were on the other slope of the mountain, until it was almost over head." "Nuther did I. To tell the truth I was lyin' down nappin' w'en Pete, yere, who'd been down the cañon rounding up some of the critters, came bustin' in on us." "I ain't saved but four hosses," said Pete mournfully, "and there's only one burro on the hogback." "We came back as fast as we could," said Maitland. "I pushed on ahead. George, Bradshaw and Phillips are bringing Bob and the girls. We must search the cañon." "It can't be done to-night, old man," said Kirkby. "I tell you we can't wait, Jack!" "We've got to. I'm as willin' to lay down my life for that young gal as anybody on earth, but in this yere mist an' as black a night as it's goin' to be, we couldn't go ten rod without killin' ourselves an' we couldn't see nothin' noways." "But she may be in the cañon." "If she's in the cañon 'twon't make no difference to her w'ether we finds her to-morrer or next day or next year, Bob." Maitland groaned in anguish. "I can't stay here inactive," he persisted stubbornly. "It's a hard thing, but we got to wait till mornin'. Ef she got out of the cañon and climbed up on the hogback she'll be all right; she'll soon find out she can't make no progress in this mist and darkness. No, old friend, we're up agin it hard; we jest got to stay the night w'ere we are an' as long as we got to wait we might as well make ourselves as comfortable as possible. For the wimmen an' children anyway. I fetched up some ham and some canned goods and other eatin's in these yere canvas sacks, we might kindle a fire--" "It's hardly possible," said Maitland, "we shall have to eat it cold." "Oh, Robert," pleaded his wife, "isn't it possible that she may have escaped?" "Possible, yes, but--" "We won't give up hope, ma'am," said Kirkby, "until to-morrer w'en we've had a look at the cañon." By this time the others joined the party. Phillips and Bradshaw showed the stuff that was in them; they immediately volunteered to go down the cañon at once, knowing little or nothing of its dangers and indifferent to what they did know, but as Kirkby had pointed out the attempt was clearly impossible. Maitland bitterly reproached himself for having allowed the girl to go alone, and in those self reproaches old Kirkby joined. They were too wet and cold to sleep, there was no shelter and it was not until early in the morning they succeeded in kindling a fire. Meanwhile the men talked the situation over very carefully. They were two days' journey from the wagons. It was necessary that the woman and children should be taken back at once. Kirkby hadn't been able to save much more than enough to eat to get them back to a ranch or settlement, and on very short rations at best. It was finally decided that George and Pete with Mrs. Maitland, the two girls and the youngster should go back to the wagon, drive to the nearest settlement, leave the women and then return on horseback with all speed to meet Maitland and Kirkby who would meanwhile search the cañon. The two men from the east had to go back with the others although they pleaded gallantly to be allowed to remain with the two who were to take up the hunt for Enid. Maitland might have kept them with him, but that meant retaining a larger portion of the scanty supplies that had been saved, and he was compelled against his will to refuse their requests. Leaving barely enough to subsist Maitland and Kirkby for three or four days, or until the return of the relief party, the groups separated at daybreak. "Oh, Robert," pleaded his wife, as he kissed her good-by, "take care of yourself, but find Enid." "Yes," answered her husband, "I shall, never fear, but I must find the dear girl or discover what has become of her." There was not time for further leave taking. A few hand clasps from man to man and then Robert Maitland standing in the midst of the group bowed his head in the sunny morning, for the sky again was clear, and poured out a brief prayer that God would prosper them, that they would find the child and that they would all be together again in health and happiness. And without another word, he and Kirkby plunged down the side of the cañon, the others taking up their weary march homeward with sad hearts and in great dismay. CHAPTER X A TELEGRAM AND A CALLER "You say," asked Maitland, as they surveyed the cañon, "that she went down the stream?" "She said she was goin' down. I showed her how to cut across the mountains an' avoid the big bend, I've got no reason to suspicion that she didn't go w'ere she said." "Nevertheless," said Maitland, "it is barely possible that she may have changed her mind and gone up the cañon." "Yep, the female mind does often change unexpected like," returned the other, "but w'ether she went up or down, the only place for us to look, I take it, is down, for if she's alive, if she got out of the cañon and is above us, nacherly she'd follow it down yere an' we'd a seed her by this time. If she didn't git out of the cañon, why, all that's left of her is bound to be down stream." Maitland nodded, he understood. "We'd better go down then," continued Kirkby, whose reasoning was flawless except that it made no allowance for the human-divine interposition that had been Enid Maitland's salvation. "An' if we don't find no traces of her down stream, we kin come back here an' go up." It was a hard desperate journey the two men took. One of them followed the stream at its level, the other tramped along in the mountains high above the high water mark of the day before. If they had needed any evidence of the power of that cloud burst and storm, they found it in the cañon. In some places where it was narrow and rocky, the pass had been fearfully scoured; at other places the whole aspect of it was changed. The place was a welter of up-rooted trees, logs jammed together in fantastic shapes; it was as if some wanton besom of destruction had swept the narrow rift. Ever as they went they called and called. The broken obstructions of the way made their progress slow; what they would have passed over ordinarily in half a day, they had not traversed by nightfall and they had seen nothing. They camped that night far down the cañon and in the morning with hearts growing heavier every hour they resumed their search. About noon of the second day they came to an immense log jam where the stream now broadened and made a sudden turn before it plunged over a fall of perhaps two hundred feet into the lake. It was the end of their quest. If they did not find her there, they would never find her anywhere, they thought. With still hearts and bated breath they climbed out over the log jam and scrutinized it. A brownish gray patch concealed beneath the great pines caught their eyes. They made their way to it. "It's a b'ar, a big grizzly," exclaimed Kirkby. The huge brute was battered out of all semblance of life, but that it was a grizzly bear was clearly evident. Further on the two men caught sight suddenly of a dash of blue. Kirkby stepped over to it, lifted it in his hand and silently extended it to Maitland. It was a sweater, a woman's sweater. They recognized it at once. The old man shook his head. Maitland groaned aloud. "See yere," said Kirkby, pointing to the ragged and torn garment where evidences of discoloration still remained, "looks like there'd bin blood on it." "Heavens!" cried Maitland, "not that bear, I'd rather anything than that." "W'atever it is, she's gone," said the old man with solemn finality. "Her body may be in these logs here--" "Or in the lake," answered Kirkby gloomily; "but w'erever she is we can't git to her now." "We must come back with dynamite to break up this jam and--" "Yep," nodded the old man, "we'll do all that, of course, but now, arter we search this jam o' logs I guess there's nothin' to do but go back, an' the quicker we git back to the settlement, the quicker we can git back here. I think we kin strike acrost the mountains an' save a day an' a half. There's no need of us goin' back up the cañon now, I take it." "No," answered the other. "The quicker the better, as you say, and we can head off George and the others that way." They searched the pile eagerly, prying under it, peering into it, upsetting it, so far as they could with their naked hands, but with little result, for they found nothing else. They had to camp another day and next morning they hurried straight over the mountains, reaching the settlement almost as soon as the others. Maitland with furious energy at once organized a relief party. They hurried back to the logs, tore the jam to pieces, searched it carefully and found nothing. To drag the lake was impossible; it was hundreds of feet deep and while they worked it froze. The weather had changed some days before, heavy snows had already fallen, they had to get out of the mountains without further delay or else be frozen up to die. Then and not till then did Maitland give up hope. He had refrained from wiring to Philadelphia, but when he reached a telegraph line some ten days after the cloud burst, he sent a long message east, breaking to his brother the awful tidings. And in all that they did he and Kirkby, two of the shrewdest and most experienced of men, showed with singular exactitude how easy it is for the wisest and most capable of men to make mistakes, to leave the plain trail, to fail to deduce the truth from the facts presented. Yet it is difficult to point to a fault in their reasoning, or to find anything left undone in the search. Enid had started down the cañon, near the end of it they had discovered one of her garments which they could not conceive any reason for her taking off. It was near the battered body of one of the biggest grizzlies that either man had ever seen, it held evidence of blood stains upon it still, they had found no body, but they were as profoundly sure that the mangled remains of the poor girl lay within the depths of that mountain lake as if they had actually seen her there. The logic was all flawless. It so happened that on that November morning, when the telegram was approaching him, Mr. Stephen Maitland had a caller. He came at an unusually early hour. Mr. Stephen Maitland, who was no longer an early riser, had indeed just finished his breakfast when the card of Mr. James Armstrong of Colorado was handed to him. "This, I suppose," he thought testily, "is one of the results of Enid's wanderings into that God-forsaken land. Did you ask the man his business, James?" he said aloud to the footman. "Yes, sir; he said he wanted to see you on important business, and when I made bold to ask him what business, he said it was none of mine, and for me to take the message to you, sir." "Impudent," growled Mr. Maitland. "Yes, sir; but he is the kind of a gentleman you don't talk back to, sir." "Well, you go back and tell him that you have given me his card, and I should like to know what he wishes to see me about, that I am very busy this morning and unless it is a matter of importance--you understand?" "Yes, sir." "I suppose now I shall have the whole west unloaded upon me; every vagabond friend of Robert's and people who meet Enid," he thought, but his reveries were shortly interrupted by the return of the man. "If you please, sir," began James hesitatingly, as he re-entered the room, "he says his business is about the young lady, sir." "Confound his impudence!" exclaimed Mr. Maitland, more and more annoyed at what he was pleased to characterize mentally as western assurance. "Where is he?" "In the hall, sir." "Show him into the library and say I shall be down in a moment." "Very good, sir." It was a decidedly wrathful individual who confronted Stephen Maitland a few moments afterwards in the library, for Armstrong was not accustomed to such cavalier treatment, and had Maitland been other than Enid's father he would have given more outward expression of his indignation over the discourtesy in his reception. "Mr. James Armstrong, I believe," began Mr. Maitland, looking at the card in his hand. "Yes, sir." "Er--from Colorado?" "And proud of it." "Ah, I dare say. I believe you wished to see me about--" "Your daughter, sir." "And in what way are you concerned about her, sir?" "I wish to make her my wife." "What!" exclaimed the older man in a voice equally divided between horror and astonishment. "How dare you, sir? You amaze, me beyond measure with your infernal impudence." "Excuse me, Mr. Maitland," interposed Armstrong quickly and with great spirit and determination, "but where I come from we don't allow anybody to talk to us in this way. You are Enid's father and a much older man than I, but I can't permit you to--" "Sir," said the astounded Maitland, drawing himself up at this bold flouting, "you may be a very worthy young man, I have no doubt of it, but it is out of the question. My daughter--" Again a less excited hearer might have noticed the emphasis on the pronoun. "Why, she is half way engaged to me now," interrupted the younger man with a certain contemptuous amusement in his voice. "Look here, Mr. Maitland, I've knocked around the world a good deal, I know what's what, I know all about you Eastern people, and I don't fancy you any more than you fancy me. Miss Enid is quite unspoiled yet and that is why I want her. I'm well able to take care of her too; I don't know what you've got or how you got it, but I can come near laying down dollar for dollar with you and mine's all clean money, mines, cattle, lumber, and it's all good money. I made it myself. I left her in the mountains three weeks ago with her promise that she would think very seriously of my suit. After I came back to Denver--I was called east--I made up my mind that I'd come here when I'd finished my business and have it out with you. Now you can treat me like a dog if you want to, but if you expect to keep peace in the family you'd better not, for I tell you plainly whether you give your consent or not I mean to win her. All I want is her consent, and I've pretty nearly got that." Mr. Stephen Maitland was black with wrath at this clear, unequivocal, determined statement of the case from Armstrong's point of view. "I would rather see her dead," he exclaimed with angry stubbornness, "than married to a man like you. How dare you force yourself into my house and insult me in this way? Were I not so old a man I would show you, I would give you a taste of your own manner." The old man's white mustache fairly quivered with what he believed to be righteous indignation. He stepped over to the other and looked hard at him, his eyes blazing, his ruddy cheeks redder than ever. The two men confronted each other unblenchingly for a moment, then Mr. Maitland touched a bell button in the wall by his side. Instantly the footman made his appearance. "James," said the old man, his voice shaking and his knees trembling with passion, which he did not quite succeed in controlling despite a desperate effort, "show this--er--gentleman the door. Good morning, sir, our first and last interview is over." He bowed with ceremonious politeness as he spoke, becoming more and more composed as he felt himself mastering the situation. And Armstrong, to do him justice, knew a gentleman when he saw him, and secretly admired the older man and began to feel a touch of shame at his own rude way of putting things. "Beg pardon, sir," said the footman, breaking the awkward silence, "but here is a telegram that has just come, sir." There was nothing for Armstrong to do or say. Indeed, having expressed himself so unrestrainedly to his rapidly increasing regret, as the old man took the telegram he turned away in considerable discomfiture, James bowing before him at the door opening into the hall and following him as he slowly passed out. Mr. Stephen Maitland mechanically and with great deliberation and with no premonition of evil tidings, tore open the yellow envelope and glanced at the dispatch. Neither the visitor nor the footman had got out of sight or hearing when they heard the old man groan and fall back helplessly into a chair. Both men turned and ran back to the door, for there was that in the exclamation which gave rise to instant apprehension. Stephen Maitland now as white as death sat collapsed in the chair gasping for breath, his hand on his heart. The telegram lay open on the floor. Armstrong recognized the seriousness of the situation, and in three steps was by the other's side. "What is it?" he asked eagerly, his hatred and resentment vanished at the sight of the old man's ghastly, stricken countenance. "Enid!" gasped her father. "I said I would rather see her--dead, but--it is not true--I--" James Armstrong was a man of prompt decision. Without a moment's hesitation he picked up the telegram; it was full and explicit, thus it read: "We were encamped last week in the mountains. Enid went down the cañon for a day's fishing alone. A sudden cloud burst filled the cañon, washed away the camp. Enid undoubtedly got caught in the torrent and was drowned. We have found some of her clothing but not her body. Have searched every foot of the cañon. Think body has got into the lake now frozen. Snow falling, mountains impassable, will search for her in the spring when the winter breaks. I am following this telegram in person by first train. Would rather have died a thousand deaths than had this happen. God help us." "ROBERT MAITLAND." Armstrong read it, stared at it a moment frowning heavily, passed it over to the footman and turned to the stricken father. "Old man, I loved her," he said simply. "I love her still, I believe that she loves me. They haven't found her body, clothes mean nothing, I'll find her, I'll search the mountains until I do. Don't give way, something tells me that she's alive, and I'll find her." "If you do," said the broken old man, crushed by the swift and awful response to his thoughtless exclamation, "and she loves you, you shall have her for your wife." "It doesn't need that to make me find her," answered Armstrong grimly. "She is a woman, lost in the mountains in the winter, alone. They shouldn't have given up the search; I'll find her as there is a God above me whether she's for me or not." A good deal of a man this James Armstrong of Colorado, in spite of many things in his past of which he thought so little that he lacked the grace to be ashamed of them. Stephen Maitland looked at him with a certain respect and a growing hope, as he stood there in the library stern, resolute, strong. Perhaps-- CHAPTER XI "OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY" Recognition--or some other more potent instantaneous force--brought the woman to a sitting position. The man drew back to give her freedom of action, as she lifted herself on her hands. It was moments before complete consciousness of her situation came to her; the surprise was yet too great. She saw things dimly through a whirl of driving rain, of a rushing mighty wind, of a seething sea of water, but presently it was all plain to her again. She had caught no fair view of the man who had shot the bear as he splashed through the creek and tramped, across the rocks and trees down the cañon, at least she had not seen his front face, but she recognized him immediately. The thought tinged with color for a moment, her pallid cheek. "I fell into the torrent," she said feebly, putting her hand to her head and striving by speech to put aside that awful remembrance. "You didn't fall in," was the answer. "It was a cloud burst, you were caught in it." "I didn't know." "Of course not, how should you." "And how came I here?" "I was lucky enough to pull you out." "Did you jump into the flood for me?" The man nodded. "That's twice you have saved my life this day," said the girl, forcing herself woman-like to the topic that she hated. "It's nothing," deprecated the other. "It may be nothing to you, but it is a great deal to me," was the answer. "And now what is to be done?" "We must get out of here at once," said the man. "You need shelter, food, a fire. Can you walk?" "I don't know." "Let me help you." He rose to his feet, reached down to her, took her hands in the strong grasp of his own and raised her lightly to her feet in an effortless way which showed his great strength. She did not more than put the weight of her body slightly on her left foot when a spasm of pain shot through her, she swerved and would have fallen had he not caught her. He sat her gently on the rock. "My foot," she said piteously. "I don't know what's the matter with it." Her high boots were tightly laced of course, but he could see that her left foot had been badly mauled or sprained, already the slender ankle was swelling visibly. He examined it swiftly a moment. It might be a sprain, it might be the result of some violent thrust against the rocks, some whirling tree trunks might have caught and crushed her foot, but there was no good in speculating as to causes; the present patent fact was that she could not walk, all the rest was at that moment unimportant. This unfortunate accident made him the more anxious to get her to a place of shelter without delay. It would be necessary to take off her boot and give the wounded member proper treatment. For the present the tight shoe acted as a bandage, which was well. When the man had withdrawn himself from the world, he had inwardly resolved that no human being should ever invade his domain or share his solitude, and during his long sojourn in the wilderness his determination had not weakened. Now his consuming desire was to get this woman, whom fortune--good or ill!--had thrown upon his hands, to his house without delay. There was nothing he could do for her out there in the rain. Every drop of whiskey was gone; they were just two half-drowned, sodden bits of humanity cast up on that rocky shore, and one was a helpless woman. "Do you know where your camp is?" he asked at last. He did not wish to take her to her own camp, he had a strange instinct of possession in her. In some way he felt he had obtained a right to deal with her as he would; he had saved her life twice, once by chance, the other as the result of deliberate and heroic endeavor, and yet his honor and his manhood obliged him to offer to take her to her own people if he could. Hence the question, the answer to which he waited so eagerly. "It's down the cañon. I am one of Mr. Robert Maitland's party." The man nodded. He didn't know Robert Maitland from Adam, and he cared nothing about him. "How far down?" he asked. "I don't know; how far is it from here to where you--where--where we--" "About a mile," he replied quickly, fully understanding her reason for faltering. "Then I think I must have come at least five miles from the camp this morning." "It will be four miles away then," said the man. The girl nodded. "I couldn't carry you that far," he murmured half to himself. "I question if there is any camp left there anyway. Where was it, down by the water's edge?" "Yes." "Every vestige will have been swept away by that, look at it," he pointed over to the lake. "What must we do?" she asked instantly, depending upon his greater strength, his larger experience, his masculine force. "I shall have to take you to my camp." "Is it far?" "About a mile or a mile and a half from here." "I can't walk that far." "No, I suppose not. You wouldn't be willing to stay here while I went down and hunted for your camp?" The girl clutched at him. "I couldn't be left here for a moment alone," she said in sudden fever of alarm. "I never was afraid before, but now--" "All right," he said, gently patting her as he would a child, "we'll go up to my camp and then I will try to find your people and--" "But I tell you I can't walk!" "You don't have to walk," said the man. He did not make any apology for his next action, he just stooped down and disregarding her faint protests and objections, picked her up in his arms. She was by no means a light burden, and he did not run away with her as the heroes of romances do. But he was a man far beyond the average in strength, and with a stout heart and a resolute courage that had always carried him successfully through whatever he attempted, and he had need of all his qualities, physical and mental, before he finished that awful journey. The woman struggled a little at first, then finally resigned herself to the situation; indeed, she thought swiftly, there was nothing else to do; she had no choice, she could not have been left alone there in the rocks in that rain, she could not walk. He was doing the only thing possible. The compulsion of the inevitable was upon them both. They went slowly. The man often stopped for rest, at which times he would seat her carefully upon some prostrate tree, or some rounded boulder, until he was ready to resume his task. He did not bother her with explanation, discussion or other conversation, for which she was most thankful. Once or twice during the slow progress she tried to walk, but the slightest pressure on her wounded foot nearly caused her to faint. He made no complaint about his burden and she found it after all pleasant to be upheld by such powerful arms; she was so sick, so tired, so worn out, and there was such assurance of strength and safety in his firm hold of her. By and by, in the last stage of their journey, her head dropped on his shoulder and she actually fell into an uneasy troubled sleep. He did not know whether she slumbered or whether she had fainted again. He did not dare to stop to find out, his strength was almost spent; in this last effort the strain upon his muscles was almost as great as it had been in the whirlpool. For the second time that day the sweat stood out on his forehead, his legs trembled under him. How he made the last five hundred feet up the steep wall to a certain broad shelf perhaps an acre in extent where he had built his hut among the mountains, he never knew; but the last remnant of his force was spent when he finally opened the unlatched door with his foot, carried her into the log hut and laid her upon the bed or bunk built against one wall of the cabin. Yet the way he put her down was characteristic of the man. That last vestige of strength had served him well. He did not drop her as a less thoughtful and less determined man might have done; he laid her there as gently and as tenderly as if she weighed nothing, and as if he had carried her nowhere. So quiet and easy was his handling of her that she did not wake up at once. So soon as she was out of his arms, he stood up and stared at her in great alarm which soon gave way to reassurance. She had not fainted; there was a little tinge of color in her cheek that had rubbed up against his rough wet shoulder; she was asleep, her regular breathing told him that. Sleep was of course the very best medicine for her and yet she should not be allowed to sleep until she had got rid of her wet clothing and until something had been done for her wounded foot. It was indeed an embarrassing situation. He surveyed her for a few moments wondering how best to begin. Then realizing the necessity for immediate action, he bent over and woke her up. Again she stared at him in bewilderment until he spoke. "This is my house," he said, "we are home." "Home!" sobbed the girl. "Under shelter, then," said the man. "You are very tired and very sleepy, but there is something to be done. You must take off those wet clothes at once, you must have something to eat, and I must have a look at that foot, and then you can have your sleep out." The girl stared at him; his program, if a radical one under the circumstances, was nevertheless a rational one, indeed the only one. How was it to be carried out? The man easily divined her thoughts. [Illustration: "Wait! I am a woman, absolutely alone, entirely at your mercy"] "There is another room in this house, a store room, I cook in there," he said. "I am going in there now to get you something to eat, meanwhile you must undress yourself and go to bed." He went to a rude set of box-like shelves draped with a curtain, apparently his own handiwork, against the wall, and brought from it a long and somewhat shapeless woolen gown. "You can wear this to sleep in," he continued. "First of all, though, I am going to have a look at that foot." He bent down to where her wounded foot lay extended on the bed. "Wait!" said the girl, lifting herself on her arm and as she did so he lifted his head and answered her direct gaze with his own. "I am a woman, absolutely alone, entirely at your mercy, you are stronger than I, I have no choice but to do what you bid me. And in addition to the natural weakness of my sex I am the more helpless from this foot. What do you intend to do with me? How do you mean to treat me?" It was a bold, a splendid question and it evoked the answer it merited. "As God is my judge," said the man quietly, "just as you ought to be treated, as I would want another to treat my mother, or my sister, or my wife--" she noticed how curiously his lips suddenly tightened at that word--"if I had one. I never harmed a woman in my life," he continued more earnestly, "only one, that is," he corrected himself, and once again she marked that peculiar contraction of the lips. "And I could not help that," he added. "I trust you," said the girl at last after gazing at him long and hard as if to search out the secrets of his very soul. "You have saved my life and things dearer will be safe with you. I have to trust you." "I hope," came the quick comment, "that it is not only for that. I don't want to be trusted upon compulsion." "You must have fought terribly for my life in the flood," was the answer. "I can remember what it was now, and you carried me over the rocks and the mountains without faltering. Only a man could do what you have done. I trust you anyway." "Thank you," said the man briefly as he bent over the injured foot again. The boot laced up the front, the short skirt left all plainly visible. With deft fingers he undid the sodden knot and unlaced it, then stood hesitatingly for a moment. "I don't like to cut your only pair of shoes," he said as he made a slight motion to draw it off, and then observing the spasm of pain, he stopped. "Needs must," he continued, taking out his knife and slitting the leather. He did it very carefully so as not to ruin the boot beyond repair, and finally succeeded in getting it off without giving her too much pain. And she was not so tired or so miserable as to be unaware of his gentleness. His manner, matter-of-fact, business-like, if he had been a doctor one would have called it professional, distinctly pleased her in this trying and unusual position. Her stocking was stained with blood. The man rose to his feet, took from a rude home-made chair a light Mexican blanket and laid it considerately across the girl. "Now if you can manage to get off your stocking, yourself, I will see what can be done," he said turning away. It was the work of a few seconds for her to comply with his request. Hanging the wet stocking carefully over a chair back, he drew back the blanket a little and carefully inspected the poor little foot. He saw at once that it was not an ordinary sprained ankle, but it seemed to him that her foot had been caught between two tossing logs, and had been badly bruised. It was very painful, but would not take so long to heal as a sprain. The little foot, normally so white, was now black and blue and the skin had been roughly torn and broken. He brought a basin of cold water and a towel and washed off the blood, the girl fighting down the pain and successfully stifling any outcry. "Now," he said, "you must put on this gown and get into bed. By the time you are ready for it I will have some broth for you and then we will bandage that foot. I shall not come in here for some time, you will be quite alone and safe." He turned and left the room, shutting the door after him as he went out. For a second time that day Enid Maitland undressed herself and this time nervously and in great haste. She was almost too excited and apprehensive to recall the painful circumstances attendant upon her first disrobing. She said she trusted the man absolutely, yet she would not have been human if she had not looked most anxiously toward that closed door. He made plenty of noise in the other room, bustling about as if to reassure her. She could not rest the weight of her body on her left foot and getting rid of her wet clothes was a somewhat slow process in spite of her hurry, made more so by her extreme nervousness. The gown he gave her was far too big for her, but soft and warm and exquisitely clean. It draped her slight figure completely. Leaving her sodden garments where they had fallen, for she was not equal to anything else, she wrapped herself in the folds of the big gown and managed to get into bed. For all its rude appearance it was a very comfortable sleeping place, there were springs and a good mattress. The unbleached sheets were clean; although they had been rough dried, there was a delicious sense of comfort and rest in her position. She had scarcely composed herself when he knocked loudly upon her door. "May I come in?" he asked. When she bade him enter she saw he had in his hand a saucepan full of some steaming broth. She wondered how he had made it in such a hurry, but after he poured it into a granite ware cup and offered it to her, she took it without question. It was thick, warming and nourishing. He stood by her and insisted that she take more and more. Finally she rebelled. "Well, perhaps that will do for to-night," he said, "now let's have a look at your foot." She observed that he had laid on the table a long roll of white cloth; she could not know that he had torn up one of his sheets to make bandages, but so it was. He took the little foot tenderly in his hands. "I am going to hurt you," he said, "I am going to find out if there is anything more than a bruise, any bones broken." There was no denying that he did pain her exquisitely. "I can't help it," he said as she cried aloud. "I have got to see what's the matter, I am almost through now." "Go on, I can bear it," she said faintly. "I feel so much better anyway now that I am dry and warm." "So far as I can determine," said the man at last, "it is only a bad ugly bruise; the skin is torn, it has been battered, but it is neither sprained nor broken and I don't think it is going to be very serious. Now I am going to bathe it in the hottest water you can bear, and then I will bandage it and let you go to sleep." He went out and came back with a kettle of boiling water, with which he laved again and again, the poor, torn, battered little member. Never in her life had anything been so grateful as these repeated applications of hot water. After awhile he applied a healing lotion of some kind, then he took his long roll of bandage and wound it dexterously around her foot, not drawing it too close to prevent circulation, but just tight enough for support, then as he finished she drew it back beneath the cover. "Now," said he, "there is nothing more I can do for you to-night, is there?" "Nothing." "I want you to go to sleep now, you will be perfectly safe here. I am going down the cañon to search--" "No," said the girl apprehensively. "I dare not be left alone here; besides I know how dangerous it would be for you to try to descend the cañon in this rain. You have risked enough for me, you must wait until the morning. I shall feel better then." "But think of the anxiety of your friends." "I can't help it," was the nervous reply. "I am afraid to be left alone here at night." Her voice trembled, he was fearful she would have a nervous breakdown. "Very well," he said soothingly, "I will not leave you till the morning." "Where will you stay?" "I'll make a shakedown for myself in the store room," he answered. "I shall be right within call at any time." It had grown dark outside by this time and the two in the log hut could barely see each other. "I think I shall light the fire," continued the man; "it will be sort of company for you and it gets cold up here of nights at this season. I shouldn't wonder if this rain turned into snow. Besides, it will dry your clothes for you." Then he went over to the fireplace, struck a match, touched it to the kindling under the huge logs already prepared, and in a moment a cheerful blaze was roaring up through the chimney. Then he picked up from the floor where she had cast them in a heap, her bedraggled garments. He straightened them out as best he could, hung them over the backs of chairs and the table which he drew as near to the fire as was safe. Having completed this unwonted task he turned to the woman who had watched him curiously and nervously the while. "Is there anything more that I can do for you?" "Nothing; you have been as kind and as gentle as you were strong and brave." He threw his hand out with a deprecating gesture. "Are you quite comfortable?" "Yes." "And your foot?" "Seems very much better." "Good night then, I will call you in the morning." "Good night," said the girl gratefully, "and God bless you for a true and noble man." CHAPTER XII ON THE TWO SIDES OF THE DOOR The cabin contained a large and a small room. In the wall between them there was a doorway closed by an ordinary batten door with a wooden latch and no lock. Closed it served to hide the occupant of one room from the view of the other, otherwise it was but a feeble barrier. Even had it possessed a lock, a vigorous man could have burst it through in a moment. These thoughts did not come very clearly to Enid Maitland. Few thoughts of any kind came to her. Where she lay she could see plainly the dancing light of the glorious fire. She was warm; the deftly wrapped bandage, the healing lotion upon her foot, had greatly relieved the pain in that wounded member. The bed was hard but comfortable, much more so than the sleeping bags to which of late she had been accustomed. Few women had gone through such experiences mental and physical as had befallen her within the last few hours and lived to tell the story. Had it not been for the exhaustive strains of body and spirit to which she had been subjected, her mental faculties would have been on the alert and the strangeness of her unique position would have made her so nervous that she could not have slept. For the time being, however, the physical demands upon her entity were paramount. She was dry, she was warm, she was fed, she was free from anxiety and she was absolutely unutterably weary. Her thoughts were vague, inchoate, unconcentrated. The fire wavered before her eyes, she closed them in a few moments and did not open them. Without a thought, without a care, she fell asleep. Her repose was complete, not a dream even disturbed the profound slumber into which she sank. Pretty picture she made; her head thrown backward, her golden hair roughly dried and quickly plaited in long braids, one of which fell along the pillow while the other curled lovingly around her neck. Her face in the natural light would have looked pallid from what she had gone through, but the fire cast red glows upon it; the fitful light flickered across her countenance and sometimes the color wavered, it came and went as if in consciousness; and sometimes deep shadows unrelieved accentuated the paleness born of her sufferings. There is no light that plays so many tricks with the imagination, or that so stimulates the fancy as the light of an open fire. In its sudden outbursts it sometimes seems to add life touches to the sleeping and the dead. Had there been any eye to see this girl, she would have made a delightful picture in the warm glow from the stone hearth. There were no eyes to look, however, save those which belonged to the man on the other side of the door. On the hither side of that door in the room where the fire burned on the hearth, there was rest in the heart of the woman, on the farther side where the fire only burned in the heart of the man, there was tumult. Not outward and visible, but inward and spiritual, and yet there was no lack of apparent manifestation of the turmoil in the man's soul. Albeit the room was smaller than the other, it was still of a good size. He walked nervously up and down from one end to the other as ceaselessly as a wild animal impatient of captivity stalks the narrow limits of his contracted cage. The even tenor of his life had suddenly been diverted. The ordinary sequence of his days had been abruptly changed. The privacy of five years, which he had hoped and dreamed might exist as long as he, had been rudely broken in upon. Humanity, which he had avoided, from which he had fled, which he had cast away forever, had found him. _Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit!_ And, lo, his departures were all in vain! The world, with all its grandeur and its insignificance, with all its powers and its weaknesses, with all its opportunities and its obligations, with all its joys and its sorrows, had knocked at his door; and that the knocking hand was that of a woman, but added to his perplexity and to his dismay. He had cherished a dream that he could live to himself alone with but a memory to bear him company, and from that dream he had been thunderously awakened. Everything was changed. What had once been easy had now become impossible. He might send her away, but though he swore her to secrecy she would have to tell her story and something of his; the world would learn some of it and seek him out with insatiable curiosity to know the rest. Eyes as keen as his would presently search and scrutinize the mountains where he had roamed alone. They would see what he had seen, find what he had found. Mankind, gold-lusting, would swarm and hive upon the hills and fight and love and breed and die. He would of course move on, but where? And went he whithersoever he might, he would now of necessity carry with him another memory which would not dwell within his mind in harmony with the memory which until that day had been paramount there alone. Slowly, laboriously, painfully, he had built his house upon the sand, and the winds had blown and the floods had come, not only in a literal but in a spiritual significance, and in one day that house had fallen. He stood amid the wrecked remains of it trying to recreate it, to endow once more with the fitted precision of the past the shapeless broken units of the fabric of his fond imagination. Whiles he resented with fierce, savage, passionate intensity the interruption of this woman into his life. Whiles he throbbed with equal intensity and almost as much passion at the thought of her. Have you ever climbed a mountain early in the morning while it was yet dark and having gained some dominant crest stood staring at the far horizon, the empurpled east, while the "dawn came up like thunder?" Or, better still, have you ever stood within the cold dark recesses of some deep valley of river or pass and watched the clear light spread its bars athwart the heavens, like nebulous mighty pinions, along the light touched crest of a towering range until all of a sudden, with a leap almost of joy, the great sun blazed in the high horizon? You might be born a child of the dark, and light might sear and burn your eyeballs accustomed to cooler, deeper shades, yet you could no more turn away from this glory, though you might hate it, than by mere effort of will you could cease to breathe the air. The shock that you might feel, the sudden surprise, is only faintly suggestive of the emotions in the breast of this man. Once long ago the gentlest and tenderest of voices called from the dark to the light, the blind. And it is given to modern science and to modern skill sometimes to emulate that godlike achievement. Perhaps the surprise, the amazement, the bewilderment, of him who having been blind doth now see, if we can imagine it, not having been in the case ourselves, will be a better guide to the understanding of this man's emotion when this woman came suddenly into his lonely orbit. His eyes were opened although he would not know it. He fought down his new consciousness and would have none of it. Yet it was there. He loved her! With what joy did Selkirk welcome the savage sharer of his solitude! Suppose she had been a woman of his own race; had she been old, withered, hideous, he must have loved her on the instant, much more if she were young and beautiful. The thing was inevitable. Such passions are born. God forbid that we should deny it. Even in the busy haunts of men where women are as plenty as blackberries, to use Falstaff's simile, and where a man may sometimes choose between a hundred, or a thousand, often such loves are born, forever. A voice in the night, a face in the street, a whispered word, the touch of a hand, the answering throb of another heart--and behold! two walk together where before each walked alone. Sometimes the man or the woman who is born again of love knows it not, declines to admit it, refuses to recognize it. Some birth pain must awake the consciousness of the new life. If those things are true and possible under every day conditions and to ordinary men and women, how much more to this solitary. He had seen this woman, white breasted like the foam, rising as the ancient goddess from the Paphian Sea. Over that recollection, as he was a gentleman and a Christian, he would fain draw a curtain, before it erect a wall. He must not dwell upon that fact, he would not linger over that moment. Yet he could not forget it. Then he had seen her lying prone, yet unconsciously graceful in her abandonment, on the sward; he had caught a glimpse of her white face desperately up-tossed by the rolling water; he had looked into the unfathomable depths of her eyes at that moment when she had awakened in his arms after such a struggle as had taxed his manhood and almost broken his heart; he had carried her unconsciously, ghastly white with her pain-drawn face, stumbling desperately over the rocks in the beating rain to this his home. There he had held that poor, bruised slender little foot in his hand, gently, skillfully treating it, when he longed to press his lips passionately upon it. Last of all he had looked into her face warmed with the red light of the fire, searched her weary eyes almost like blue pools, in whose depths there yet lurked life and light, while her golden hair tinged crimson by the blaze lay on the white pillow--and he loved her. God pity him, fighting against fact and admission of it, yet how could he help it? He had loved once before in his life with the fire of youth and spring, but it was not like this; he did not recognize this new passion in any light from the past, therefore he would not admit it, hence he did not understand it. But he saw and admitted and understood enough to know that the past was no longer the supreme subject in his life, that the present rose higher, bulked larger and hid more and more of his far-off horizon. He felt like a knave and a traitor, as if he had been base, disloyal, false to his ideal, recreant to his remembrance. Was he indeed a true man? Did he have that rugged strength, that abiding faith, that eternal consciousness, that lasting affection beside which the rocky paths he often trod were things transient, perishable, evanescent? Was he a weakling that he fell at the first sight of another woman? He stopped his ceaseless pace forward and backward, and stopped near that frail and futile door. She was there and there was none to prevent. His hand sought the latch. What was he about to do? God forbid that a thought he could not freely share with humanity should enter his brain then. He held all women sacred, and so he had ever done, and this woman in her loveliness, in her helplessness, in her weakness, trebly appealed to him. But he would look upon her, he would fain see if she were there, if it were all not a dream, the creation of his disordered imagination. Men had gone mad in hermitages in the mountains, they had been driven insane in lonely oases in vast deserts; and they had peopled their solitudes with men and women. Was this same working of a disordered brain too much turned upon itself and with too tremendous a pressure upon it producing an illusion? Was there in truth any woman there? He would raise the latch and open the door and look. Once more the hand went stealthily to the latch. The woman slept quietly on. No thin barricade easily unlocked or easily broken protected her. Something intangible yet stronger than the thickest, the most rigid, bars of steel guarded her; something unseen, indescribable, but so unmistakable when it throbs in the breast that those who depend on it feel that their dependence is not in vain, watched over her. Cherishing no evil thought, the man had power to gratify his desire which might yet bear a sinister construction should his action be observed. It was her privacy he was invading; she had trusted to him, she had said so, to his honor and that stood her in good stead. His honor! Not in five years had he heard the word or thought the thing, but he had not forgotten it. She had not appealed to an unreal thing. Upon a rock her trust was based. His hand left the latch, it fell gently, he drew back and turned away trembling, a conqueror who mastered himself. He was awake to the truth again. What had he been about to do? Profane, uninvited, the sanctity of her chamber, violate the hospitality of his own house. Even with a proper motive imperil his self-respect, shatter her trust, endanger that honor which so suddenly became a part of him on demand. She would not probably know, she could never know unless she awoke. What of that? That ancient honor of his life and race rose like a mountain whose scarped face cannot be scaled. He fell back with a swift turn, a feeling almost womanly--and more men perhaps if they lived in feminine isolation, as self-centered as women are so often by necessity, would be as feminine as their sisters--influenced him, overcame him. His hand went to his hunting shirt; nervously he tore it open, he grasped a bright object that hung against his breast; as he did so, the thought came to him that not before in five years had he been for a moment unconscious of the pressure of that locket over his heart, but now that this other had come, he had to seek for it to find it. The man dragged it out, held it in his hand and opened it. He held it so tightly that it almost gave beneath the strong grasp of his strong hand. From a near-by box he drew another object with his other hand; he took the two to the light, the soft light of the candle upon the table, and stared from one to the other with eyes brimming. Like crystal gazers he saw other things than those presented to the casual vision, he heard other sounds than the beat of the rain upon the roof, the roar of the wind down the cañon. A voice that he had sworn he would never forget, but which, God forgive him, had not now the clearness that it might have had yesterday, whispered awful words to him. Anon he looked into another face, red too, but with no hue from the hearth or leaping flame, but red with the blood of ghastly wounds. He heard again that report, the roar louder and more terrible than any peal of thunder that rived the clouds above his head and made the mountains quake and tremble. He was conscious again of the awful stillness of death that supervened. He dropped on his knees, buried his face in his hands where they rested on picture and locket on the rude table. Ah, the past died hard; for a moment he was the lover of old--remorse, passionate expiation, solitude--he and the dead together--the world and the living forgot! He would not be false, he would be true; there was no power in any feeble woman's tender hand to drive him off his course, to shake his purpose, to make him a new, another man. _O, Vanitas, Vanitatum!_ On the other side of the door the unconscious woman slept quietly on. The red fire light died away, the glowing coals sank into gray ash. Within the smaller room the cold dawn stealing through the unshaded window looked upon a field of battle--deaths, wounds, triumphs, defeats--portrayed upon one poor human face, upturned as sometimes victors and vanquished alike upturn stark faces from the field to the God above who may pity but who has not intervened. So Jacob may have looked after that awful night when he wrestled until the day broke with the angel and would not let him go until he blessed him, walking, forever after, with halting step as memorial but with his blessing earned. Hath, this man blessing won or not? And must he pay for it if he hath achieved it? And all the while the woman slept quietly on upon the other side of that door. CHAPTER XIII THE LOG HUT IN THE MOUNTAINS What awakened the woman she did not know; in all probability it was the bright sunlight streaming through the narrow window before her. The cabin was so placed that the sun did not strike fairly into the room until it was some hours high, consequently she had her long sleep out entirely undisturbed. The man had made no effort whatever to awaken her. Whatever tasks he had performed since daybreak had been so silently accomplished that she had not been aware of them. So soon as he could do so, he had left the cabin and was now busily engaged in his daily duties outside the cabin and beyond earshot. He knew that sleep was the very best medicine for her and it was best that she should not be disturbed until in her own good time she awoke. The clouds had emptied themselves during the night and the wind had at last died away toward morning and now there was a great calm abroad in the land. The sunlight was dazzling. Outside, where the untempered rays beat full upon the crests of the mountains, it was doubtless warm, but within the cabin it was chilly--the fire had long since burned completely away and he had not entered the room to replenish it. Yet Enid Maitland had lain snug and warm under her blankets. She presently tested her wounded foot by moving it gently and discovered agreeably that it was much less painful than she had anticipated. The treatment of the night before had been very successful. She did not get up immediately, but the coldness of the room struck her so soon as she got out of bed. Upon her first awakening she was hardly conscious of her situation; her sleep had been too long and too heavy and her awakening too gradual for any sudden appreciation of the new condition. It was not until she had stared around the walls of the rude cabin for some time that she realized where she was and what had happened. When she did so she arose at once. Her first impulse was to call. Never in her life had she felt such death-like stillness. Even in the camp almost always there had been a whisper of breeze through the pine trees, or the chatter of water over the rocks. But here there were no pine trees and no sound of rushing brook came to her. It was almost painful. She was keen to dress and go out of the house. She stood upon the rude puncheon floor on one foot scarcely able yet to bear even the lightest pressure upon the other. There were her clothes on chairs and tables before the fireplace. Such had been the heat thrown out by that huge blaze that a brief inspection convinced her that everything was thoroughly dry. Dry or wet she must needs put them on since they were all she had. She noticed that there were no locks on the doors and she realized that the only protection she had was the sense of decency and the honor of the man. That she had been allowed her sleep unmolested made her the more confident on that account. She dressed hastily, although it was the work of some difficulty in view of her wounded foot and of the stiff condition of her rough dried apparel. Presently she was completely clothed save for that disabled foot. With the big clumsy bandages upon it she could not draw her stocking over it and even if she succeeded in that she could in no way make shift to put on her boot. The situation was awkward, the predicament annoying; she was wearing bloomers and a short skirt for her mountain climbing and she did not know quite what to do. She thought of tearing up one of the rough unbleached sheets and wrapping it around her leg, but she hesitated as to that. It was very trying. Otherwise she would have opened the door and stepped out into the open air, now she felt herself virtually a prisoner. She had been thankful that no one had disturbed her, but now she wished for the man. In her helplessness she thought of his resourcefulness with eagerness. The man however did not appear and there was nothing for her to do but to wait for him. Taking one of the blankets from the bed, she sat down and drew it across her knees and took stock of the room. The cabin was built of logs, the room was large, perhaps twelve by twenty feet, with one side completely taken up by the stone fireplace; there were two windows, one on either side of the outer door which opened toward the southwest. The walls were unplastered save in the chinks between the rough hewn logs of which it was made. Over the fireplace and around on one side ran a rude shelf covered with books. She had no opportunity to examine them, although later she would become familiar with every one of them. Into the walls on the other side were driven wooden pegs; from some of them hung a pair of snow shoes, a heavy Winchester rifle, fishing tackle and other necessary wilderness paraphernalia. On the puncheon floor wolf and bear skins were spread. In one corner against the wall again were piled several splendid pairs of horns from the mountain sheep. The furniture consisted of the single bed or berth in which she had slept, built against the wall in one of the corners, a rude table on which were writing materials and some books. A row of curtained shelves, evidently made of small boxes and surmounted by a mirror, occupied another space. There were two or three chairs, the handiwork of the owner, comfortable enough in spite of their rude construction. On some other pegs hung a slicker and a sou'wester, a fur overcoat, a fur cap and other rough clothes; a pair of heavy boots stood by the fireplace. On another shelf there were a number of scientific instruments the nature of which she could not determine, although she could see that they were all in a beautiful state of preservation. There was plenty of rude comfort in the room which was excessively mannish. In fact there was nothing anywhere which in any way spoke of the existence of woman--except a picture in a small rough wooden frame which stood on the table before which she sat down. The picture was of a handsome woman--naturally Enid Maitland saw that before anything else; she would not have been a woman if that had not engaged her attention more forcibly than any other fact in the room. She picked it up and studied it long and earnestly, quite unconscious of the reason for her interest, and yet a certain uneasy feeling might have warned her of what was toward in her bosom. This young woman had not yet had time to get her bearings, she had not been able to realize all the circumstances of her adventure; so soon as she did so she would know that into her life a man had come and whatever the course of that life might be in the future, he would never again be out of it. It was therefore with mingled and untranslatable emotions that she studied this picture. She marked with a certain resentment the bold beauty quite apparent despite the dim fading outlines of a photograph never very good. So far as she could discern the woman was dark haired and dark eyed--her direct antithesis! The casual viewer would have found little to find fault with in the presentment, but Enid Maitland's eyes were sharpened by--what, pray? At any rate she decided that the woman was of a rather coarse fiber, that in things finer and higher she would be found wanting. She was such a woman, so the girl reasoned acutely, as might inspire a passionate affection in a strong hearted, reckless youth, but whose charms being largely physical would pall in longer and more intimate association; a dangerous rival in a charge, but not so formidable in a steady campaign. These thoughts were the result of long and earnest inspection and it was with some reluctance that the girl at last put the photograph aside and looked toward the door. She was hungry, ravenously so. She began to be a little alarmed and had just about made up her mind to rise and stumble out as she was, when she heard steps outside and a knock on the door. "What is it?" she asked in response. "May I come in?" "Yes," was the quick answer. The man opened the door, left it ajar and entered the room. "Have you been awake long?" he began abruptly. "Not very." "I didn't disturb you because you needed sleep more than anything else. How do you feel?" "Greatly refreshed, thank you." "And hungry, I suppose?" "Very." "I will soon remedy that. Your foot?" "It seems much better, but I--" The girl hesitated, blushing. "I can't get my shoe on and--" "Shall I have another look at it?" "No, I don't believe it will be necessary. If I may have some of that liniment, or whatever it was you put on it, and more of that bandage, I think I can attend to it myself, but you see my stocking and my boot--" The man nodded, he seemed to understand; he went to his cracker box chiffonier and drew from it a long coarse woolen stocking. "That is the best that I can do for you," he said, extending it toward her somewhat diffidently. "And that will do very nicely," said the girl. "It will cover the bandage and that is the main thing." The man laid on the table by the side of the stocking another strip of bandage torn from the same sheet; as he did so he noticed the picture. He caught it up quickly, a dark flush spreading over his face, and holding it in his hand he turned abruptly away. "I will go and cook you some breakfast while you get yourself ready. If you have not washed, you'll find a bucket of water and a basin and towel outside the door." He went through the inner door as suddenly as he had come through the outer one. He was a man of few words and whatever of social grace he might once have possessed and in more favorable circumstances exhibited, was not noticeable now; the tenderness with which he had cared for her the night before had also vanished. His bearing had been cool almost harsh and forbidding and his manner was as grim as his appearance. The conversation had been a brief one and her opportunity for inspection of him consequently limited, yet she had taken him in. She saw a tall splendid man, no longer very young, perhaps, but in the prime of life and vigor. His complexion was dark and burned browner by long exposure to sun and wind, winter and summer. In spite of the brown there was a certain color, a hue of health in his cheeks. His eyes were hazel, sometimes brown, sometimes gray, and sometimes blue, she afterward learned. A short thick closely cut beard and mustache covered the lower part of his face, disguising but not hiding the squareness of his jaw and the firmness, of his lips. He had worn his cap when he entered and when he took it off she noticed that his dark hair was tinged with white. He was dressed in a leather hunting suit, somewhat the worse for wear, but fitting him in a way to give free play to all his muscles. His movements were swift, energetic and graceful; she did not wonder that he had so easily hurled the bear to one side and had managed to carry her--no light weight, indeed!--over what she dimly recognized must have been a horrible trail, which burdened as he was would have been impossible to a man of less splendid vigor than he. The cabin was low ceiled and as she had sat looking up at him he had towered above her until he seemed to fill it. Naturally she had scrutinized his every action, as she had hung upon his every word. His swift and somewhat startled movement, his frowning as he had seized the picture on which she had gazed with such interest aroused the liveliest surprise and curiosity in her heart. Who was this woman? Why was he so quick to remove the picture from her gaze? Thoughts rushed tumultuously through her brain, but she realized at once that she lacked time to indulge them. She could hear him moving about in the other room, she threw aside the blanket with which she had draped herself, changed the bandage on her foot, drew on the heavy woolen stocking which of course was miles too big for her, but which easily took in her foot and ankle encumbered as they were by the rude, heavy but effective wrapping. Thereafter she hobbled to the door and stood for a moment almost aghast at the splendor and magnificence before her. He had built his cabin on a level shelf of rock perhaps fifty by a hundred feet in area. It was backed up against an overtowering cliff, otherwise the rock fell away in every direction. She divined that the descent from the shelf into the pocket or valley spread before her was sheer, except off to the right where a somewhat gentler acclivity of huge and broken boulders gave a practicable ascent--a sort of titantic stairs--to the place perched on the mountain side. The shelf was absolutely bare save for the cabin and a few huge boulders. There were a few sparse, stunted trees further up on the mountain side above; a few hundred feet beyond them, however, came the timber line, after which there was nothing but the naked rock. Below several hundred feet lay a clear emerald pool, whose edges were bordered by pines where it was not dominated by high cliffs. Already the lakelet was rimmed with ice on the shaded side. This enchanting little body of water was fed by the melting snow from the crest and peaks, which in the clear pure sunshine and rarefied air of the mountains seemed to rise and confront her within a stone's throw of the place where she stood. On one side of the lake in the valley or pocket beneath there was a little grassy clearing, and there this dweller in the wilderness had built a rude corral for the burros. On a rough bench by the side of the door she saw the primitive conveniences to which he had alluded. The water was delightfully soft and as it had stood exposed to the sun's direct rays for some time, although the air was exceedingly crisp and cold, it was tempered sufficiently to be merely cool and agreeable. She luxuriated in it for a few moments and while she had her face buried in the towel, rough, coarse, but clean, she heard a step. She looked up in time to see the man lay down upon the bench a small mirror and a clean comb. He said nothing as he did so and she had no opportunity to thank him before he was gone. The thoughtfulness of the act affected her strangely and she was very glad of a chance to unbraid her hair, comb it out and plait it again. She had not a hair pin left of course, and all she could do with it was to replait it and let it hang upon her shoulders; her coiffure would have looked very strange to civilization, but out there in the mountains, it was eminently appropriate. Without noticing details the man felt the general effect as she limped back into the room toward the table. Her breakfast was ready for her; it was a coarse fare, bacon, a baked potato hard tack crisped before the fire, coffee black and strong, with sugar but no cream. The dishes matched the fare, too, yet she noticed that the fork was of silver and by her plate there was a napkin, rough dried but of fine linen. The man had just set the brimming smoking coffee pot on the table when she appeared. "I am sorry I have no cream," he said, and then before she could make comment or reply, he turned and walked out of the door, his purpose evidently being not to embarrass her by his presence while she ate. Enid Maitland had grown to relish the camp fare, bringing to it the appetite of good health and exertion. She had never eaten anything that tasted so good to her as that rude meal that morning, yet she would have enjoyed it better, she thought, if he had only shared it with her, if she had not been compelled to eat it alone. She hastened her meal on that account, determined as soon as she had finished her breakfast to seek the man and have some definite understanding with him. And after all she reflected that she was better alone than in his presence, for there would come stealing into her thoughts the distressing episode of the morning before, try as she would to put it out of her mind. Well, she was a fairly sensible girl, the matter was passed, it could not be helped now, she would forget it as much as was possible. She would recur to it with mortification later on, but the present was so full of grave problems that there was not any room for the past. CHAPTER XIV A TOUR OF INSPECTION The first thing necessary, she decided, when she had satisfied her hunger and finished her meal, was to get word of her plight and her resting place to her uncle and the men of the party; and the next thing was to get away, where she would never see this man again and perhaps be able to forget what had transpired--yet there was a strange pang of pain in her heart at that thought! No man on earth had ever so stimulated her curiosity as this one. Who was he? Why was he there? Who was the woman whose picture he had so quickly taken from her gaze? Why had so splendid a man buried himself alone in that wilderness? These reflections were presently interrupted by the reappearance of the man himself. "Have you finished?" he asked unceremoniously, standing in the doorway as he spoke. "Yes, thank you, and it was very good indeed." Dismissing this politeness with a wave of his hand but taking no other notice, he spoke again. "If you will tell me your name--" "Maitland, Enid Maitland." "Miss Maitland?" The girl nodded. "And where you came from, I will endeavor to find your party and see what can be done to restore you to them." "We were camped down that cañon at a place where another brook, a large one, flows into it, several miles I should think below the place where--" She was going to say "where you found me," but the thought of the way in which he had found her rushed over her again; and this time with his glance directly upon her, although it was as cold and dispassionate and indifferent as a man's look could well be, the recollection of the meeting to which she had been about to allude rushed over her with an accompanying wave of color which heightened her beauty as it covered her with shame. She could not realize that beneath his mask of indifference so deliberately worn, the man was as agitated as she, not so much at the remembrance of anything that had transpired, but at the sight, the splendid picture, of the woman as she stood, there in the little cabin then. It seemed to him as if she gathered up in her own person all the radiance and light and beauty, all the purity and freshness and splendor of the morning, to shine and dazzle in his face. As she hesitated in confusion, perhaps comprehending its causes he helped out her lame and halting sentence. "I know the cañon well," he said. "I think I know the place to which you refer; is it just about where the river makes an enormous bend upon itself?" "Yes, that is it. In that clearing we have been camped for ten days. My uncle must be crazy with anxiety to know what has become of me and--" The man interposed. "I will go there directly," he said. "It is now half after ten. That place is about seven miles or more from here across the range, fifteen or twenty by the river; I shall be back by nightfall. The cabin is your own." He turned away without another word. "Wait," said the woman, "I am afraid to stay here." She had been fearless enough before in these mountains but her recent experiences had somehow unsettled her nerves. "There is nothing on earth to hurt you, I think," returned the man. "There isn't a human being, so far as I know, in these mountains." "Except my uncle's party." He nodded. "But there might be another--bear," she added desperately, forcing herself. "Not likely, and they wouldn't come here if there were any. That's the first grizzly I have seen in years," he went on unconcernedly, studiously looking away from her, not to add to her confusion at the remembrance of that awful episode which would obtrude itself on every occasion. "You can use a rifle or gun?" She nodded; he stepped over to the wall and took down the Winchester which he handed her. "This one is ready for service, and you will find a revolver on the shelf. There is only one possible way of access to this cabin, that's down those rock stairs; one man, one woman, a child even, with these weapons could hold it against an army." "Couldn't I go with you?" "On that foot?" Enid pressed her wounded foot upon the ground; it was not so painful when resting, but she found she could not walk a step on it without great suffering. "I might carry you part of the way," said the man. "I carried you last night, but it would be impossible, all of it." "Promise me that you will be back by nightfall with Uncle Bob and--" "I shall be back by nightfall, but I can't promise that I will bring anybody with me." "You mean?" "You saw what the cloud burst nearly did for you," was the quick answer. "If they did not get out of that pocket there is nothing left of them now." "But they must have escaped," persisted the girl, fighting down her alarm at this blunt statement of possible peril. "Besides, Uncle Robert and most of the rest were climbing one of the peaks and--" "They will be all right then, but if I am to find the place and tell them your story, I must go now." He turned and without another word or a backward glance scrambled down the hill. The girl limped to the brink of the cliff over which he had plunged and stared after him. She watched him as long as she could see him until he was lost among the trees. If she had anybody else to depend upon she would certainly have felt differently toward him. When Uncle Robert and her Aunt and the children and old Kirkby and the rest surrounded her again she could hate that man in spite of all he had done for her, but now, as she stared after him determinedly making his way down the mountain and through the trees, it was with difficulty she could restrain herself from calling him back. The silence was most oppressive, the loneliness was frightful; she had been alone before in these mountains, but from choice; now the fact that there was no escape from them made the sensation a very different one. She sat down and brooded over her situation until she felt that if she did not do something and in some way divert her thoughts she would break down again. He had said that the cabin and its contents were hers. She resolved to inspect them more closely. She hobbled back into the great room and looked about her again. There was nothing that demanded careful scrutiny; she wasn't quite sure whether she was within the proprieties or not, but she seized the oldest and most worn of the volumes on the shelf. It was a text book on mining and metallurgy she observed, and opening it at the fly leaf, across the page she saw written in a firm vigorous masculine hand a name, "William Berkeley Newbold," and beneath these words, "Thayer Hall, Harvard," and a date some seven years back. The owner of that book, whether the present possessor or not, had been a college man. Say that he had graduated at twenty-one or twenty-two, he would be twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old now, but if so, why that white hair? Perhaps though the book did not belong to the man of the cabin. She turned to other books on the shelf. Many of them were technical books which she had sufficient general culture to realize could be only available to a man highly educated and a special student of mines and mining--a mining engineer, she decided, with a glance at those instruments and appliances of a scientific character plainly, but of whose actual use she was ignorant. A rapid inspection of the other books confirmed her in the conclusion that the man of the mountains was indeed the owner of the collection. There were a few well worn volumes of poetry and essays. A Bible, Shakespeare, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Tennyson, Keats, a small dictionary, a compendious encyclopedia, just the books, she thought, smiling at her conceit, that a man of education and culture would want to have upon a desert island where his supply of literature would be limited. The old ones were autographed as the first book she had looked in; others, newer editions to the little library if she could judge by their condition, were unsigned. Into the corner cupboard and the drawers of course she did not look. There was nothing else in the room to attract her attention, save some piles of manuscript neatly arranged on one of the shelves, each one covered with a square of board and kept in place by pieces of glistening quartz. There were four of these piles and another half the size of the first four on the table. These of course she did not examine, further than to note that the writing was in the same bold free hand as the signature in the books. If she had been an expert she might have deduced much from the writing; as it was she fancied it was strong, direct, manly. Having completed her inspection of this room, she opened the door and went into the other; it was smaller and less inviting. It had only one window and a door opening outside. There was a cook stove here and shelves with cooking utensils and granite ware, and more rude box receptacles on the walls which were filled with a bountiful and well selected store of canned goods and provisions of various kinds. This was evidently the kitchen, supply room, china closet. She saw no sign of a bed in it and wondered where and how the man had spent the night. By rights her mind should have been filled with her uncle and his party and in their alarm she should have shared, but she was so extremely comfortable, except for her foot, which did not greatly trouble her so long as she kept it quiet, that she felt a certain degree of contentment not to say happiness. The Adventure was so romantic and thrilling--save for those awful moments in the pool--especially to the soul of a conventional woman who had been brought up in the most humdrum and stereotyped fashion of the earth's ways, and with never an opportunity for the development of the spirit of romance which all of us exhibit some time in our life and which thank God some of us never lose, that she found herself reveling in it. She lost herself in pleasing imaginations of the tales of her adventures that she could tell when she got back to her uncle and when she got further back to staid old Philadelphia. How shocked everybody would be with it all there! Of course she resolved that she would never mention one episode of that terrible day, and she had somehow absolute confidence that this man, in spite of his grim, gruff taciturnity, who had shown himself so exceedingly considerate of her feelings would never mention it either. She had so much food for thought, that not even in the late afternoon of the long day, could she force her mind to the printed pages of the book she had taken at random from the shelf which lay open before her, where she sat in the sun, her head covered by an old "Stetson" that she had ventured to appropriate. She had dragged a bear skin out on the rocks in the sun and sat curled up on it half reclining against a boulder watching the trail, the Winchester by her side. She had eaten so late a breakfast that she had made a rather frugal lunch out of whatever had taken her fancy in the store room, and she was waiting most anxiously now for the return of the man. The season was late and the sun sank behind the peaks quite early in the afternoon, and it grew dark and chill long before the shadows fell upon the dwellers of the lowlands. Enid drew the bear skin around her and waited with an ever growing apprehension. If she should be compelled to spend the night alone in that cabin, she felt that she could not endure it. She was never so glad of anything in her life as when she saw him suddenly break out of the woods and start up the steep trail, and for a moment her gladness was not tempered by the fact, which she was presently to realize with great dismay, that as he had gone, so he now returned, alone. CHAPTER XV THE CASTAWAYS OF THE MOUNTAINS The man was evidently seeking her, for so soon as he caught sight of her he broke into a run and came bounding up the steep ascent with the speed and agility of a chamois or a mountain sheep. As he approached the girl rose to her feet and supported herself upon the boulder against which she had been leaning, at the same time extending her hand to greet him. "Oh," she cried, her voice rising nervously as he drew near, "I am so glad you are back, another hour of loneliness and I believe I should have gone crazy." Now whether that joy in his return was for him, personally or for him abstractly, he could not tell; whether she was glad that he had come back simply because he was a human being who would relieve her loneliness or whether she rejoiced to see him individually, was a matter not yet to be determined. He hoped the latter, he believed the former. At any rate he caught and held her outstretched hand in the warm clasp of both his own. Burning words of greeting rushed to his lips torrentially, what he said, however, was quite commonplace; as is so often the case, thought and outward speech did not correspond. "It's too cold for you out here, you must go into the house at once," he declared masterfully and she obeyed with unwonted meekness. The sun had set and the night air had grown suddenly chill. Still holding her hand they started toward the cabin a few rods away. Her wounded foot was of little support to her and the excitement had unnerved her; in spite of his hand she swayed; without a thought he caught her about the waist and half lifted, half led her to the door. It seemed as natural as it was inevitable for him to assist her in this way and in her weakness and bewilderment she suffered it without comment or resistance. Indeed there was such strength and power in his arm, she was so secure there, that she liked it. As for him his pulses were bounding at the contact; but for that matter even to look at her quickened his heart beat. Entering the main room he led her gently to one of the chairs near the table and immediately thereafter lighted the fire which he had taken the precaution to lay before his departure. It had been dark in the cabin, but the fire soon filled it with glorious light. She watched him at his task and as he rose from the hearth questioned him. "Now tell me," she began, "you found--" "First your supper, and then the story," he answered, turning toward the door of the other room. "No," pleaded the girl, "can't you see that nothing is of any importance to me but the story? Did you find the camp?" "I found the place where it had been." "Where it had been!" "There wasn't a single vestige of it left. That whole pocket, I knew it well, had been swept clean by the flood." "But Kirkby, and Mrs. Maitland and--" "They weren't there." "Did you search for them?" "Certainly." "But they can't have been drowned," she exclaimed piteously. "Of course not," he began reassuringly. "Kirkby is a veteran of these mountains and--" "But do you know him?" queried the girl in great surprise. "I did once," said the man, flushing darkly at his admission. "I haven't seen him for five years." So that was the measure of his isolation, thought the woman, keen for the slightest evidence as to her companion's history, of which, by the way, he meant to tell her nothing. "Well?" she asked, breaking the pause. "Kirkby would certainly see the cloudburst coming and he would take the people with him in the camp up on the hogback near it. It is far above the flood line, they would be quite safe there." "And did you look for them there?" "I did. The trail had been washed out, but I scrambled up and found undisputed evidence that my surmise was correct. I haven't a doubt that all who were in the camp were saved." "Thank God for that," said the girl, greatly relieved and comforted by his reassuring words. "And my uncle, Mr. Robert Maitland, and the rest on the mountain, what do you think of them?" "I am sure that they must have escaped too. I don't think any of them have suffered more than a thorough drenching in the downpour and that they are all safe and perhaps on their way to the settlements now." "But they wouldn't go back without searching for me, would they?" cried the girl. "Certainly not, I suppose they are searching for you now." "Well then--" "Wait," said the man. "You started down the cañon, you told everybody that you were going that way. They naturally searched in that direction; they hadn't the faintest idea that you were going up the river." "No," admitted Enid, "that is true. I did not tell anyone. I didn't dream of going up the cañon when I started out in the morning; it was the result of a sudden impulse." "God bless that--" burst out the man and then he checked himself, flushing again, darkly. What had he been about to say? The question flashed into his own mind and into the woman's mind at the same time when she heard, the incompleted sentence; but she, too, checked the question that rose to her lips. "This is the way I figure it," continued the man hurriedly to cover up his confusion. "They fancy themselves alone in these mountains, which save for me they are; they believe you to have gone down the cañon. Kirkby with Mrs. Maitland and the others waited on the ridge until Mr. Maitland and his party joined them. They couldn't have saved very much to eat or wear from the camp, they were miles from a settlement, they probably divided into two parties; the larger with the woman and children started for home, the second went down the cañon searching for your dead body!" "And had it not been for you," cried the girl impulsively, "they had found it." "God permitted me to be of service to you," answered the man simply. "I can follow their speculations exactly; up or down, they believed you to have been in the cañon when the storm broke, therefore there was only one place and one direction to search for you." "And that was?" "Down the cañon." "What did you do then?" "I went down the cañon myself. I think I saw evidences that someone had preceded me, too." "Did you overtake them!" "Certainly not; they traveled as rapidly as I, they must have started early in the morning and they had several hours the advantage of me." "But they must have stopped somewhere for the night and--" "Yes," answered the man. "If I had had only myself to consider, I should have pressed on through the night and overtaken them when they camped." "Only yourself?" "You made me promise to return here by nightfall. I don't know whether I should have obeyed you or not. I kept on as long as I dared and still leave myself time to get back to you by dark." She had no idea of the desperate speed he had made to reach her while it was still daylight. "If you hadn't come when you did, I should have died," cried the girl impetuously. "You did perfectly right. I don't think I am a coward, I hope not, I never was afraid before, but--" "Don't apologize or explain to me, it's not necessary; I understand everything you feel. It was only because I had given you my word to be back by sunset that I left off following their trail. I was afraid that you might think me dead or that something had happened and--" "I should, I did," admitted the girl. "It wasn't so bad during the day time, but when the sun went down and you did not come I began to imagine everything. I saw myself left alone here in these mountains, helpless, wounded, without a human being to speak to. I could not bear it." "But I have been here alone for five years," said the man grimly. "That's different. I don't know why you have chosen solitude, but I--" "You are a woman," returned the other gently, "and you have suffered, that accounts for everything." "Thank you," said Enid gratefully. "And I am so glad you came back to me." "Back to you," reiterated the man and then he stopped. If he had allowed his heart to speak he would have said, back to you from the very ends of the world--"But I want you to believe that I honestly did not leave the trail until the ultimate moment," he added. "I do believe it," she extended her hand to him. "You have been very good to me, I trust you absolutely." And for the second time he took that graceful, dainty, aristocratic hand in his own larger, stronger, firmer grasp. His face flushed again; under other circumstances and in other days perhaps he might have kissed that hand; as it was he only held it for a moment and then gently released it. "And you think they are searching for me?" she asked. "I know it. I am sure of what I myself would do for one I love--I loved I mean, and they--" "And they will find me?" The man shook his head. "I am afraid they will be convinced that you have gone down with the flood. Didn't you have a cap or--" "Yes," said the woman, "and a sweater. The bear you shot covered the sweater with blood. I could not put it on again." As she spoke she flushed a glorious crimson at the remembrance of that meeting, but the man was looking away with studied care. She thanked him in her heart for such generous and kindly consideration. "They will have gone down the stream with the rest, and it's just possible that the searchers may find them, the body of the bear too. This river ends in a deep mountain lake and I think it is going to snow, it will be frozen hard to-morrow." "And they will think me--there?" "I am afraid so." "And they won't come up here?" "It is scarcely possible." "Oh!" exclaimed the woman faintly at the dire possibility that she might not be found. "I took an empty bottle with me," said the man, breaking the silence, "in which I had enclosed a paper saying that you were here and safe, save for your wounded foot, and giving directions how to reach the place. I built a cairn of rocks in a sheltered nook in the valley where your camp had been pitched and left the tightly corked bottle wedged on top of it. If they return to the camp they can scarcely fail to see it." "But if they don't go back there." "Well, it was just a chance." "And if they don't find me?" "You will have to stay here for a while; until your foot gets well enough to travel," returned the man evasively. "But winter is coming on, you said the lake would freeze to-night, and if it snows?" "It will snow." The woman stared at him, appalled. "And in that case--" "I am afraid," was the slow reply, "that you will have to stay here"--he hesitated in the face of her white still face--"all winter," he added desperately. "Alone!" exclaimed the girl faintly. "With you?" "Miss Maitland," said the man resolutely, "I might as well tell you the truth. I can make my way to the settlements now or later, but it will be a journey of perhaps a week. There will be no danger to me, but you will have to stay here. You could not go with me. If I am any judge you couldn't possibly use your foot for a mountain journey for at least three weeks, and by that time we shall be snowed in as effectually as if we were within the Arctic Circle. But if you will let me go alone to the settlement I can bring back your uncle, and a woman to keep you company, before the trails are impassable. Or enough men to make it practicable to take you through the cañons and down the trails to your home again. I could not do that alone even if you were well, in the depth of the winter." The girl shook her head stubbornly. "A week alone in these mountains and I should be mad," she said decisively. "It isn't to be thought of." "It must be thought of," urged the man. "You don't understand. It is either that or spend the winter here--with me." The woman looked at him steadily. "And what have I to fear from you?" she asked. "Nothing, nothing," protested the other, "but the world?" "The world," said the woman reflectively. "I don't mean to say that it means nothing to me, but it has cause enough for what it would fain say now." She came to her decision swiftly. "There is no help for it," she continued; "we are marooned together." She smiled faintly as she used the old word of tropic island and southern sea. "You have shown me that you are a man and a gentleman, in God and you I put my trust. When my foot gets well, if you can teach me to walk on snow shoes and it is possible to get through the passes, we will try to go back; if not, we must wait." "The decision is yours," said the man, "yet I feel that I ought to point out to you how--" "I see all that you see," she interrupted. "I know what is in your mind, it is entirely clear to me, we can do nothing else." "So be it. You need have no apprehension as to your material comfort; I have lived in these mountains for a long time, I am prepared for any emergency, I pass my time in the summer getting ready for the winter. There is a cave, or recess rather, behind the house which, as you see, is built against the rock wall, and it is filled with wood enough to keep us warm for two or three winters; I have an ample supply of provisions and clothing for my own needs, but you will need something warmer than that you wear," he continued. "Have you needle and thread and cloth?" she asked. "Everything," was the prompt answer. "Then I shall not suffer." "Are you that wonder of wonders," asked the man, smiling slightly, "an educated woman who knows how to sew?" "It is a tradition of Philadelphia," answered the girl, "that her daughters should be expert needlewomen." "Oh, you are from Philadelphia." "Yes, and you?" She threw the question at him so deftly and so quickly that she caught him unaware and off his guard a second time within the hour. "Baltimore," he answered before he thought and then bit his lip. He had determined to vouchsafe her no information regarding himself and here she had surprised him into an admission in the first blush of their acquaintance, and she knew that she had triumphed for she smiled in recognition of it. She tried another tack. "Mr. Newbold," she began at a venture, and as it was five years since he had heard that name, his surprise at her knowledge, which after all was very simple, betrayed him a third time. "We are like stories I have read, people who have been cast away on desert islands and--" "Yes," said the man, "but no castaways that I have ever read of have been so bountifully provided with everything necessary to the comfort of life as we are. I told you I lacked nothing for your material welfare, and even your mind need not stagnate." "I have looked at your books already," said the woman, answering his glance. This was where she had found his name he realized. "You will have this room for your own use and I will take the other for mine," he continued. "I am loath to dispossess you." "I shall be quite comfortable there, and this shall be your room exclusively except when you bid me enter, as when I bring you your meals; otherwise I shall hold it inviolate." "But," said the woman, "there must be an equal division of labor, I must do my share." "There isn't much to do in the winter, except to take care of the burros, keep up the fire and prepare what we have to eat." "I am afraid I should be unequal to outdoor work, but in the rest I must do my part." He recognized at once that idleness would be irksome. "So you shall," he assented heartily, "when your foot is well enough to make you an efficient member of our little society." "Thank you, and now--" "Is there anything else before I get supper?" "You think there is no hope of their searching for me here?" The man shook his head. "If James Armstrong had been in the party," she said reflectively, "I am sure he would never have given up." "And who is James Armstrong, may I ask?" burst forth the other bluntly. "Why he--I--he is a friend of my uncle's and an--acquaintance of my own." "Oh," said the man shortly and gloomily, as he turned away. Enid Maitland had been very brave in his presence, but when he went out she put her head down on her arms on the table and cried softly to herself. Was ever a woman in such a predicament, thrown into the arms of a man who had established every conceivable claim upon her gratitude, forced to live with him shut up in a two-room log cabin upon a lonely mountain range, surrounded by lofty and inaccessible peaks, pierced by terrific gorges soon to be impassable from the snows? She had read many stories of castaways from Charles Reade's famous "Foul Play" down to more modern instances, but in those cases there had always been an island comparatively large over which to range, with privacy, seclusion, opportunity for withdrawal; bright heavens, balmy breezes, idyllic conditions. Here were two uplifted from the earth upon a sky-piercing mountain; they would have had more range of action and more liberty of motion if they had been upon a derelict in the ocean. And she realized at the same time that in all those stories the two castaways always loved each other. Would it be so with them? Was it so! And again the hot flame within outvied the fire on the hearth as the blood rushed to the smooth surface of her cheek again. What would her father say if he could know her position, what would the world say, and above all what would Armstrong say? It cannot be denied that her thoughts were terribly and overwhelmingly dismayed, and yet that despair was not without a certain relief. No man had ever so interested her as this one. What was the mystery of his life, why was he there, what had he meant when he had blessed the idle impulse that had sent her into his arms? Her heart throbbed again. She lifted her face from her hands and dried her tears, a warm glow stole over her and once again not altogether from the fire. Who and what was this man? Who was that woman whose picture he had taken from her? Well, she would have time to find out. And meantime the world outside could think and do what it pleased. She sat staring into the firelight, seeing pictures there, dreaming dreams. She was as lovely as an angel to the man when he came back into the room. BOOK IV OH YE ICE AND SNOW, PRAISE YE THE LORD CHAPTER XVI THE WOMAN'S HEART That upper earth on which they lived was covered with a thick blanket of snow. The lakes and pools were frozen from shore to shore. The mountain brooks, if they flowed at all, ran under thick arches of ice. The deepest cañons were well nigh impassable from huge drifts that sometimes almost rose level with the tops of the walls. In every sheltered spot great banks of white were massed. The spreading branches of the tall pine trees in the valleys drooped under heavy burdens of snow. Only here and there sharp gaunt peaks were swept clean by the fierce winter winds and thrust themselves upward in the icy air, naked and bare. The cold was polar in its bitter intensity. The little shelf, or plateau, jutting out from the mountain side upon which the lonely cabin stood was sheltered from the prevailing winds, but the house itself was almost covered with the drifts. The constant fire roaring up the huge stone chimney had melted some of the snow at the top and it had run down the slanting roof and formed huge icicles on what had been the eaves of the house. The man had cut away the drifts from doors and windows for light and liberty. At first every stormy night would fill his laborious clearings with drifting snow, but as it became packed down and frozen solid he was able to keep his various ways open without a great deal of difficulty. A little work every morning and evening sufficed. Every day he had to go down the mountain stairway to the bottom of the pocket to feed and water the burros. What was a quick and simple task in milder, warmer seasons, sometimes took him half a day under the present rigorous conditions. And the woman never saw him start out in the storm without a sinking heart and grave apprehension. On his return to the cabin half frozen, almost spent and exhausted, she ever welcomed him with eager gratitude and satisfaction which would shine in her eyes, throb in her heart and tremble upon her lips, control it as she might. And he thought it was well worth all the trouble and hardships of his task to be so greeted when he came back to her. Winter had set in unusually early and with unprecedented severity. Any kind of winter in the mountains would have amazed the girl, but even the man with his larger experiences declared he had never before known such sharp and sudden cold, or such deep and lasting snow. His daily records had never shown such low temperatures, nor had his observation ever noted such wild and furious storms as raged then and there. It seemed as if Nature were in a conspiracy to seal up the mountains and all they contained, to make ingress and egress alike impossible. A month had elapsed and Enid's foot was now quite well. The man had managed to sew up her boot where his knife had cut it, and although the job was a clumsy one the result was a usable shoe. It is astonishing the comfort she took when she first put it on and discarded for good the shapeless woolen stocking which had covered the clumsy bandage, happily no longer necessary. Although the torn and bruised member had healed and she could use it with care, her foot was still very tender and capable of sustaining no violent or long continued strain. Of necessity she had been largely confined to the house, but whenever it had been possible he had wrapped her in his great bear skin coat and had helped her out to the edge of the cliff for a breath of fresh air. Sometimes he would leave her there alone, would perhaps have left her alone there always had she not imperiously required his company. Insensibly she had acquired the habit--not a difficult one for a woman to fall into--of taking the lead in the small affairs of their circumscribed existence, and he had acquiesced in her dominance without hesitation or remonstrance. It was she who ordered their daily walk and conversation. Her wishes were consulted about everything; to be sure no great range of choice was allowed them, or liberty of action, or freedom, in the constraints with which nature bound them, but whenever there was any selection she made it. The man yielded everything to her and yet he did it without in any way derogating from his self respect or without surrendering his natural independence. The woman instinctively realized that in any great crisis, in any large matter, the determination of which would naturally affect their present or their future, their happiness, welfare, life, he would assert himself, and his assertion would be unquestioned and unquestionable by her. There was a delightful satisfaction to the woman in the whole situation. She had a woman's desire to lead in the smaller things of life and yet craved the woman's consciousness that in the great emergencies she would be led, in the great battles she would be fought for, in the great dangers she would be protected, in the great perils she would be saved. There was rest, comfort, joy and satisfaction in these thoughts. The strength of the man she mastered was evidence of her own power and charm. There was a sweet, voiceless, unconscious flattery in his deference of which she could not be unaware. Having little else to do, she studied the man and she studied him with a warm desire and an enthusiastic predisposition to find the best in him. She would not have been a human girl if she had not been thrilled to the very heart of her by what the man had done for her. She recognized that whether he asserted it or not, he had established an everlasting and indisputable claim upon her. The circumstances of their first meeting, which as the days passed did not seem quite so horrible to her, and yet a thought of which would bring the blood to her cheek still on the instant, had in some way turned her over to him. His consideration of her, his gracious tenderness toward her, his absolute abnegation, his evident overwhelming desire to please her, to make the anomalous situation in which they stood to each other bearable in spite of their lonely and unobserved intimacy, by an absolute lack of presumption on his part--all those things touched her profoundly. Although she did not recognize the fact then, perhaps, she loved him from the moment her eyes had opened in the mist and rain after that awful battle in the torrent to see him bending over her. No sight that had ever met Enid Maitland's eyes was so glorious, so awe inspiring, so uplifting and magnificent as the view from the verge of the cliff in the sunlight of some bright winter morning. Few women had ever enjoyed such privileges as hers. She did not know whether she liked the winter crowned range best that way, or whether she preferred the snowy world, glittering cold in the moonlight; or even whether it was more attractive when it was dark and the peaks and drifts were only lighted by the stars which shone never so brightly as just above her head. When he allowed her she loved to stand sometimes in the full fury of the gale with the wind shrieking and sobbing, like lost souls in some icy inferno, through the hills and over the pines, the snow beating upon her, the sleet cutting her face if she dared to turn toward the storm. Generally he left her alone in the quieter moments, but in the tempest he stood watchful, on guard by her side, buttressing her, protecting her, sheltering her. Indeed, his presence then was necessary; without him she could scarce have maintained a footing. The force of the wind might have hurled her down the mountain but for his strong arm. When the cold grew too great he led her back carefully to the hut and the warm fire. Ah, yes, life and the world were both beautiful to her then, in night, in day, by sunlight, by moonlight, in calm and storm. Yet it made no difference what was spread before the woman's eyes, what glorious picture was exhibited to her gaze, she could not look at it more than a moment without thinking of the man. With the most fascinating panorama that the earth's surface could spread before human vision to engage her attention she looked into her own heart and saw there this man! Oh, she had fought against it at first, but lately she had luxuriated in it. She loved him, she loved him! And why not? What is it that women love in men? Strength of body? She could remember yet how he had carried her over the mountains in the midst of the storm, how she had been so bravely upborne by his arms to his heart. She realized later what a task that had been, what a feat of strength. The uprooting of that sapling, and the overturning of that huge grizzly were child's play to the long portage up the almost impassable cañon and mountain side which had brought her to this dear haven. Was it strength of character she sought, resolution, determination? This man had deliberately withdrawn from the world, buried himself in this mountain; and had stayed there deaf to the alluring call of man or woman; he had had the courage to do that. Was it strength of mind she admired? Enid Maitland was no mean judge of the mental powers of her acquaintance. She was just as full of life and spirit and the joy of them as any young woman should be, but she had not been trained by and thrown with the best for nothing. _Noblesse oblige!_ That his was a mind well stored with knowledge of the most varied sort she easily and at once perceived. Of course the popular books of the last five years had passed him by, and of such he knew nothing, but he could talk intelligently, interestingly, entertainingly upon the great classics. Keats and Shakespeare were his most thumbed volumes. He had graduated from Harvard as a Civil Engineer with the highest honors of his class and school and the youngest man to get his sheepskin! Enid Maitland herself was a woman of broad culture and wide reading and she deliberately set herself to fathom this man's capabilities. Not infrequently, much to her surprise, sometimes to her dismay, but generally to her satisfaction, she found that she had no plummet with which to sound his greater depths. Did she seek in him that fine flower of good breeding, gentleness and consideration? Where could she find these qualities better displayed? She was absolutely alone with this man, entirely in his power, shut off from the world and its interference as effectually as if they had both been abandoned on an ice floe at the North Pole or cast away on some lonely island in the South Seas, yet she felt as safe as if she had been in her own house, or her uncle's, with every protection that human power could give. He had never presumed upon the situation in the least degree, he never once referred to the circumstances of their meeting in the remotest way, he never even discussed her rescue from the flood, he never told her how he had borne her through the rain to the lonely shelter of the hills, and in no way did he say anything that the most keenly scrutinizing mind would torture into an allusion to the pool and the bear and the woman. The fineness of his breeding was never so well exhibited as in this reticence. More often than not it is what he does not rather than what he does that indicates the man. It would be folly to deny that he never thought of these things. Had he forgotten them there would be no merit in his silence; but to remember them and to keep still--aye, that showed the man! He would close his eyes in that little room on the other side of the door and see again the dark pool, her white shoulders, her graceful arms, the lovely face with its crown of sunny hair rising above the rushing water. He had listened to the roar of the wind through the long nights, when she thought him asleep if she thought of him at all, and heard again the scream of the storm that had brought her to his arms. No snow drop that touched his cheek when he was abroad but reminded him of that night in the cold rain when he had held her close and carried her on. He could not sit and mend her boot without remembering that white foot before which he would fain have prostrated himself and upon which he would have pressed passionate kisses if he had given way to his desires. But he kept all these things in his heart, pondered them and made no sign. Did she ask beauty in her lover? Ah, there at last he failed. According to the canons of perfection he did not measure up to the standard. His features were irregular, his chin a trifle too square, his mouth a thought too firm, his brow wrinkled a little; but he was good to look at, for he looked strong, he looked clean and he looked true. There was about him, too, that stamp of practical efficiency that men who can do things always have. You looked at him and you felt sure that what he undertook, that he would accomplish; that decision and capability were incarnate in him. But after all the things are said, love goes where it is sent, and I, at least, am not the sender. This woman loved this man neither because nor in spite of these qualities. That they were might account for her affection, but if they had not been, it may be that that affection, that that passion, would have sprung up in her heart still. No one can say, no one can tell how or why those things are. She had loved him while she raged against him and hated him. She did neither the one nor the other of those two last things, now, and she loved him the more. Mystery is a great mover, there is nothing so attractive as a problem we cannot solve. The very situation of the man, how he came there, what he did there, why he remained there, questions to which she had yet no answer, stimulated her profoundly. Because she did not know she questioned in secret; interest was aroused and the transition to love was easy. Propinquity, too, is responsible for many an affection. "The ivy clings to the first met tree." Given a man and woman heart free and throw them together and let there be decent kindness on both sides, and it is almost inevitable that each shall love the other. Isolate them from the world, let them see no other companions but the one man and the one woman and the result becomes more inevitable. Yes, this woman loved this man. She said in her heart--and I am not one to dispute her conclusions--that she would have loved him had he been one among millions to stand before her, and it was true. He was the complement of her nature. They differed in temperament as much as in complexion, and yet in such differences as must always be to make perfect love and perfect union, there were striking resemblances, necessary points of contact. There was no reason whatever why Enid Maitland should not love this man. The only possible check upon her feelings would have been her rather anomalous relation to Armstrong, but she reflected that she had promised him definitely nothing. When she had met him she had been heart whole, he had made some impression upon her fancy and might have made more with greater opportunity, but unfortunately for him, luckily for her, he had not enjoyed that privilege. She scarcely thought of him longer. She would not have been human if her mind had not dwelt upon the world beyond the skyline on the other side of the range. She knew how those who loved her must be suffering on account of her disappearance, but knowing herself safe and realizing that within a short time, when the spring came again, she would go back to them and that their mourning would be turned into joy by her arrival, she could not concern herself very greatly over their present feelings and emotions; and besides, what would be the use of worrying over those things. There was subject more attractive for her thoughts close at hand. And she was too blissfully happy to entertain for more than a moment any sorrow. She pictured her return and never by any chance did she think of going back to civilization alone. The man she loved would be by her side, the church's blessing would make them one. To do her justice in the simplicity and purity of her thoughts she never once thought of what the world might say about that long winter sojourn alone with this man. She was so conscious of her own innocence and of his delicate forbearance, she never once thought how humanity would elevate its brows and fairly cry upon her from the house tops. She did not realize that were she ever so pure and so innocent she could not now or ever reach the high position which Cæsar, who was none too reputable himself, would fain have had his wife enjoy? CHAPTER XVII THE MAN'S HEART Now love produces both happiness and unhappiness, dependent upon conditions, but on the whole I think the happiness predominates, for love itself if it be true and high is its own reward. Love may feel itself unworthy and may shrink even from the unlatching of the shoe lace of the beloved, yet it joys in its own existence nevertheless. Of course its greatest satisfaction is in the return, but there is a sweetness even in the despair of the truly loving. Enid Maitland, however, did not have to endure indifference, or fight against a passion which met with no response, for this man loved her with a love that was greater even than her own. The moon, in the trite aphorism, looks on many brooks, the brook sees no moon but the one above him in the heavens. In one sense his merit in winning her affection for himself from the hundreds of men she knew was the greater; in many years he had only seen this one woman. Naturally she should be everything to him. She represented to him not only the woman but womankind. He had been a boy practically when he had buried himself in those mountains, and in all that time he had seen nobody like Enid Maitland. Every argument which has been exploited to show why she should love him could be turned about to account for his passion for her. Those arguments are not necessary, they are all supererogatory, like idle words. To him also love had been born in an hour. It had flashed into existence as if from the fiat of the Divine. Oh, he had fought against it. Like the eremites of old he had been scourged into the desert by remorse and another passion, but time had done its work. The woman he first loved had ministered not to the spiritual side of the man, or if she had so ministered in any degree it was because he had looked at her with a glamour of inexperience and youth. During those five years of solitude, of study and of reflection, the truth had gradually unrolled itself before him. Conclusions vastly at variance with what he had ever believed possible as to the woman upon whom he had first bestowed his heart had got into his being and were in solution there, this present woman was the precipitant which brought them to life. He knew now what the old appeal of his wife had been. He knew now what the new appeal of this woman was. In humanity two things in life are inextricably intermingled, body and soul. Where the function of one begins and the function of the other ends no one is able to say. In all human passions there are admixtures of the earth earthy. We are born the sons of the Old Adam as we are re-born the sons of the New. Passions are complex. As in harvest wheat and tares grow together until the end, so in love earth and heaven mingle ever. He remembered a clause from an ancient marriage service he had read. "With my body I thee worship," and with every fiber of his physical being, he loved this woman. It would be idle to deny that, impossible to disguise the facts, but in the melting pot of passion the preponderant ingredients were mental and spiritual; and just because higher and holier things predominated, he held her in his heart a sacred thing. Love is like a rose: the material part is the beautiful blossom, the spiritual factor is the fragrance which abides in the rose jar even after every leaf has faded away, or which may be expressed from the soft petals by the hard circumstances of pain and sorrow until there is left nothing but the lingering perfume of the flower. His body trembled if she laid a hand upon him, his soul thirsted for her; present or absent he conjured before his tortured brain the sweetness that inhabited her breast. He had been clear-sighted enough in analyzing the past, he was neither clear-sighted nor coherent in thinking of the present. He worshiped her, he could have thrown himself upon his knees to her; if it would have added to her happiness she could have killed him, smiling at her. Rode she in the Juggernaut car of the ancient idol, with his body would he have unhesitatingly paved the way and have been glad of the privilege. He longed to compass her with sweet observances. The world revenged itself upon him for his long neglect, it had summed up in this one woman all its charm, its beauty, its romance, and had thrust her into his very arms. His was one of those great passions which illuminate the records of the past. Paolo had not loved Francesca more. Oh, yes, the woman knew he loved her. It was not in the power of mortal man, no matter how iron his restraint, how absolute the imposition of his will, to keep his heart hidden, his passion undisclosed. No one could keep such things secret. His love for her cried aloud in a thousand ways: even his look when he dared to turn his eyes upon her was eloquent of his feeling. He never said a word, however; he held his lips at least fettered and bound for he believed that honor and its obligations weighed down the balance upon the contrary side to which his inclinations lay. He was not worthy of this woman. In the first place all he had to offer her was a blood-stained hand. That might have been overcome in his mind; but pride in his self-punishment, his resolution to withdraw himself from man and woman until such time as God completed his expiation and signified His acceptance of the penitent by taking away his life, held him inexorably. The dark face of his wife rose before him. He forced himself to think upon her; she had loved him, she had given him all that she could. He remembered how she had pleaded with him that he take her on that last and most dangerous of journeys, her devotion to him had been so great she could not let him go out of her sight a moment, he thought fatuously! And he had killed her. In the queer turmoil of his brain he blamed himself for everything. He could not be false to his purpose, false to her memory, unworthy of the passion in which he believed she had held him and which he believed he had inspired. If he had gone out in the world, after her death, he might have forgotten most of these things, he might have lived them down. Saner, clearer views would have come to him. His morbid self-reproach and self-consciousness would have been changed. But he had lived with them alone for five years and now there was no putting them aside. Honor and pride, the only things that may successfully fight against love, overcame him. He could not give way. He wanted to, every time he was in her presence he longed to, sweep her to his heart and crush her in his arms and bend her head back and press kisses of fire on her lips. But honor and pride held him back. How long would they continue to exercise dominion over him? Would the time come when his passion rising like a sea would thunder upon these artificial embankments of his soul, beat them down and sweep them away? At first the disparity between their situations, not so much on account of family or of property--the treasures of the mountains, hidden since creation, he had discovered and let lie--but because of the youth and position of the woman compared to his own maturer years, his desperate experience, and his social withdrawal, had reinforced his determination to live and love without a sign. But he had long since got beyond this. Had he been free he would have taken her like a viking of old, if he had to pluck her from amid a thousand swords and carry her to a beggar's hut which love would have turned to a palace. And she would have come with him on the same conditions. He did not know that. Women have learned through centuries of weakness that fine art of concealment which man has never mastered. She never let him see what she thought of him. Yet he was not without suspicion; if that suspicion grew to certainty, would he control himself then? At first he had sought to keep out of her way, but she had compelled him to come in. The room that was kitchen and bedroom and store-room for him was cheerless and somewhat cold. Save at night or when he was busy with other tasks outside they lived together in the great room. It was always warm, it was always bright, it was always cheerful, there. The little piles of manuscript she had noted were books he had written. He made no effort to conceal such things from her. He talked frankly enough about his life in the hills, indeed there was no possibility of avoiding the discussion of such topics. On but two subjects was he inexorably silent. One was the present state of his affections and the other was the why and wherefore of his lonely life. She knew beyond peradventure that he loved her, but she had no faint suspicion even as to the reason why he had become a recluse. He had never given her the slightest clew to his past save that admission that he had known Kirkby, which was in itself nothing definite and which she never connected with that package of letters which she still kept with her. The man's mind was too active and fertile to be satisfied with manual labor alone, the books that he had written were scientific treatises in the main. One was a learned discussion of the fauna and flora of the mountains. Another was an exhaustive account of the mineral resources and geological formations of the range. He had only to allow a whisper, a suspicion of his discovery of gold and silver in the mountains to escape him and the cañons and crests alike would be filled with eager prospectors. Still a third work was a scientific analysis of the water powers in the cañons. He had willingly allowed her to read them all. Much of them she found technical and, aside from the fact that he had written them, uninteresting. But there was one book remaining in which he simply discussed the mountains in the various seasons of the year; when the snows covered them, when the grass and the moss came again, when the flowers bloomed, when autumn touched the trees. There was the soul of the man, poetry expressed in prose, man-like but none the less poetry for that. This book she pored over, she questioned him about it, they discussed it as they discussed Keats and the other poets. Those were happy evenings. She on one side of the fire sewing, her finger wound with cloth to hold his giant thimble, fashioning for herself some winter garments out of a gay colored, red, white and black ancient and exquisitely woven Navajo blanket, soft and pliable almost as an old fashioned piece of satin--priceless if she had but known it--which he put at her disposal. While on the other side of the same homely blaze he made her out of the skins of some of the animals that he had killed, shapeless foot coverings, half moccasin and wholly legging, which she could wear over her shoes in her short excursions around the plateau and which would keep her feet warm and comfortable. By her permission he smoked as he worked, enjoying the hour, putting aside the past and the future and for a few moments blissfully content. Sometimes he laid aside his pipe and whatever work he was engaged upon and read to her from some immortal noble number. Sometimes the entertainment fell to her and she sang to him in her glorious contralto voice, music that made him mad. Once he could stand it no longer. At the end of a burst of song which filled the little room--he had risen to his feet while she sang, compelled to the erect position by the magnificent melody--as the last notes died away and she smiled at him, triumphant and expectant of his praise and his approval, he hurled himself out of the room and into the night; wrestling for hours with the storm which after all was but a trifle to that which raged in his bosom. While she, left alone and deserted, quaked within the silent room till she heard him come back. Often and often when she slept quietly on one side the thin partition, he lay awake on the other, and sometimes his passion drove him forth to cool the fever, the fire in his soul, in the icy, wintry air. The struggle within him preyed upon him, the keen loving eye of the woman searched his face, scrutinized him, looked into his heart, saw what was there. She determined to end it, deciding that he must confess his affections. She had no premonition of the truth and no consideration of any evil consequences held her back. She could give free range to her love and her devotion. She had the ordering of their lives and she had the power to end the situation growing more and more impossible. She fancied the matter easily terminable. She thought she had only to let him see her heart in such ways as a maiden may, to bring joy to his own, to make him speak. She did not dream of the reality. One night, therefore, a month or more after she had come, she resolved to end the uncertainty. She believed the easiest and the quickest way would be to get him to tell her why he was there. She naturally surmised that the woman of the picture, which she had never seen since the first day of her arrival, was in some measure the cause of it; and the only pain she had in the situation was the keen jealousy that would obtrude itself at the thought of that woman. She remembered everything that he had said to her and she recalled that he had once made the remark that he would treat her as he would have his wife treated if he had one; therefore whoever and whatever the picture of this woman was, she was not his wife. She might have been someone he had loved, who had not loved him. She might have died. She was jealous of her, but she did not fear her. After a long and painful effort the woman had completed the winter suit she had made for herself. He had advised her and had helped her. It was a belted tunic that fell to her knees, the red and black stripes ran around it, edged the broad collar, cuffed the warm sleeves and marked the graceful waist line. It was excessively becoming to her. He had been down into the valley, or the pocket, for a final inspection of the burros before the night, which promised to be severe, fell, and she had taken advantage of the opportunity to put it on. She knew that she was beautiful; her determination to make this evening count had brought an unusual color to her cheeks, an unwonted sparkle to her eye. She stood up as she heard him enter the other room, she was standing erect as he came through the door and faced her. He had only seen her in the now somewhat shabby blue of her ordinary camp dress before, and her beauty fairly smote him in his face. He stood before her, wrapped in his great fur coat, snow and ice clinging to it, entranced. The woman smiled at the effect she produced. "Take off your coat," she said gently, approaching him. "Here, let me help you. Do you realize that I have been here over a month now? I want to have a little talk with you. I want you to tell me something." CHAPTER XVIII THE KISS ON THE HAND "Did it ever occur to you," began Enid Maitland gravely enough, for she quite realized the serious nature of the impending conversation, "did it ever occur to you that you know practically all about me, while I know practically nothing about you?" The man bowed his head. "You may have fancied that I was not aware of it, but in one way or another you have possessed yourself of pretty nearly all of my short and, until I met you, most uneventful life," she continued. Newbold might have answered that there was one subject which had been casually introduced by her upon one occasion and to which she had never again referred, but which was to him the most important of all subjects connected with her; and that was the nature of her relationship to one James Armstrong whose name, although he had heard it but once, he had not forgotten. The girl had been frankness itself in following his deft leads when he talked with her about herself, but she had shown the same reticence in recurring to Armstrong that he had displayed in questioning her about him. The statement she had just made as to his acquaintance with her history was therefore sufficiently near the truth to pass unchallenged and once again he gravely bowed in acquiescence. "I have withheld nothing from you," went on the girl; "whatever you wanted to know, I have told you. I had nothing to conceal, as you have found out. Why you wanted to know about me, I am not quite sure." "It was because--" burst out the man impetuously, and then he stopped abruptly and just in time. Enid Maitland smiled at him in a way that indicated she knew what was behind the sudden check he had imposed upon himself. "Whatever your reason, your curiosity--" "Don't call it that, please." "Your desire, then, has been gratified. Now it is my turn. I am not even sure about your name. I have seen it in these books and naturally I have imagined that it is yours." "It is mine." "Well, that is really all that I know about you. And now I shall be quite frank. I want to know more. You evidently have something to conceal or you would not be living here in this way. I have never asked you about yourself, or manifested the least curiosity to solve the problem you present, to find the solution of the mystery of your life." "Perhaps," said the man, "you didn't care enough about it to take the trouble to inquire." "You know," answered the girl, "that is not true. I have been consumed with desire to know?" "A woman's curiosity?" "Not that," was the soft answer that turned away his wrath. She was indeed frank. There was that in her way of uttering those two simple words that set his pulses bounding. He was not altogether and absolutely blind. "Come," said the girl, extending her hand to him, "we are alone here together. We must help each other. You have helped me, you have been of the greatest service to me. I can't begin to count all that you have done for me; my gratitude--" "Only that?" "But that is all that you have ever asked or expected," answered the young woman in a low voice, whose gentle tones did not at all accord with the boldness and courage of the speech. "You mean?" asked the man, staring at her, his face aflame. "I mean," answered the girl swiftly, willfully misinterpreting and turning his half-spoken question another way, "I mean that I am sure that some trouble has brought you here. I do not wish to force your confidence--I have no right to do so--yet I should like to enjoy it. Can't you give it to me? I want to help you. I want to do my best to make some return for what you have been to me and have done for me." "I ask but one thing," he said quickly. "And what is that?" But again he checked himself. "No," he said, "I am not free to ask anything of you." And that answer to Enid Maitland was like a knife thrust in the heart. The two had been standing, confronting each other. Her heart grew faint within her. She stretched out her hand vaguely, as if for support. He stepped toward her, but before he reached her she caught the back of the chair and sank down weakly. That he should be bound and not free, had never once occurred to her. She had quite misinterpreted the meaning of his remark. The man did not help her; he could not help her. He just stood and looked at her. She fought valiantly for self-control a moment or two and then utterly oblivious to the betrayal of her feelings involved in the question--the moments were too great for consideration of such trivial matters--she faltered: "You mean there is some other woman?" He shook his head in negation. "I don't understand." "There was some other woman?" "Where is she now?" "Dead." "But you said you were not free." He nodded. "Did you care so much for her that now--that now--" "Enid," he cried desperately. "Believe me, I never knew what love was until I met you." The secret was out now, it had been known to her long since, but now it was publicly proclaimed. Even a man as blind, as obsessed, as he could not mistake the joy that illuminated her face at this announcement. That very joy and satisfaction produced upon him, however, a very different effect than might have been anticipated. Had he been free indeed he would have swept her to his breast and covered her sweet face with kisses broken by whispered words of passionate endearment. Instead of that he shrank back from her and it was she who was forced to take up the burden of the conversation. "You say that she is dead," she began in sweet appealing bewilderment, "and that you care so much for me and yet you--" "I am a murderer," he broke out harshly. "There is blood upon my hands, the blood of a woman who loved me and whom, boy as I was, I thought that I loved. She was my wife, I killed her." "Great Heaven!" cried the girl, amazed beyond measure or expectation by this sudden avowal which she had never once suspected, and her hand instinctively went to the bosom of her dress where she kept that soiled, water-stained packet of letters, "are you that man?" "I am that man that did that thing, but what do you know?" he asked quickly, amazed in his turn. "Old Kirkby, my uncle Robert Maitland, told me your story. They said that you had disappeared from the haunts of men--" "And they were right. What else was there for me to do? Although innocent of crime, I was blood guilty. I was mad. No punishment could be visited upon me like that imposed by the stern, awful, appalling fact. I swore to prison myself, to have nothing more forever to do with mankind or womankind with whom I was unworthy to associate, to live alone until God took me. To cherish my memories, to make such expiation as I could, to pray daily for forgiveness. I came here to the wildest, the most inaccessible, the loneliest, spot in the range. No one ever would come here I fancied, no one ever did come here but you. I was happy after a fashion, or at least content. I had chosen the better part. I had work, I could read, write, remember and dream. But you came and since that time life has been heaven and hell. Heaven because I love you, hell because to love you means disloyalty to the past, to a woman who loved me. Heaven because you are here, I can hear your voice, I can see you, your soul is spread out before me in its sweetness, in its purity; hell because I am false to my determination, to my vow, to the love of the past." "And did you love her so much, then?" asked the girl, now fiercely jealous and forgetful of other things for the moment. "It's not that," said the man. "I was not much more than a boy, a year or two out of college. I had been in the mountains a year. This woman lived in a mining camp, she was a fresh, clean, healthy girl, her father died and the whole camp fathered her, looked after her, and all the young men in the range for miles on either side were in love with her. I supposed that I was, too, and--well, I won her from the others. We had been married but a few months and a part of the time my business as a mining engineer had called me away from her. I can remember the day before we started on the last journey. I was going alone again, but she was so unhappy over my departure, she clung to me, pleaded with me, implored me to take her with me, insisted on going wherever I went, would not be left behind. She couldn't bear me out of her sight, it seemed. I don't know what there was in me to have inspired such devotion, but I must speak the truth, however it may sound. She seemed wild, crazy about me. I didn't understand it; frankly, I didn't know what such love was--then--but I took her along. Shall I not be honest with you? In spite of the attraction physical, I had begun to feel even then that she was not the mate for me. I don't deserve it, and it shames me to say it of course, but I wanted a better mind, a higher soul. That made it harder--what I had to do, you know." "Yes, I know." "The only thing I could do when I came to my senses was to sacrifice myself to her memory because she had loved me so; as it were, she gave up her life for me, I could do no less than be true and loyal to the remembrance. It wasn't a sacrifice either until you came, but as soon as you opened your eyes and looked into mine in the rain and the storm upon the rock to which I had carried you after I had fought for you, I knew that I loved you. I knew that the love that had come into my heart was the love of which I had dreamed, that everything that had gone before was nothing, that I had found the one woman whose soul should mate with mine." "And this before I had said a word to you?" "What are words? The heart speaks to the heart, the soul whispers to the soul. And so it was with us. I had fought for you, you were mine, mine. My heart sang it as I panted and struggled over the rocks carrying you. It said the words again and again as I laid you down here in this cabin. It repeated them over and over; mine, mine! It says that every day and hour. And yet honor and fidelity bid me stay. I am free, yet bound; free to love you, but not to take you. My heart says yes, my conscience no. I should despise myself if I were false to the love which my wife bore me, and how could I offer you a blood stained hand?" He had drawn very near her while he spoke; she had risen again and the two confronted each other. He stretched out his hand as he asked that last question, almost as if he had offered it to her. She made the best answer possible to his demand, for before he could divine what she would be at, she had seized his hand and kissed it, and this time it was the man whose knees gave way. He sank down in the chair and buried his face in his hands. "Oh, God! Oh, God!" he cried in his humiliation and shame. "If I had only met you first, or if my wife had died as others die, and not by my hand in that awful hour. I can see her now, broken, bruised, bleeding, torn. I can hear the report of that weapon. Her last glance at me in the midst of her indescribable agony was one of thankfulness and gratitude. I can't stand it, I am unworthy even of her." "But you could not help it, it was not your fault. And you can't help--caring--for me--" "I ought to help it, I ought not love you, I ought to have known that I was not fit to love any woman, that I had no right, that I was pledged like a monk to the past. I have been weak, a fool. I love you and my honor goes, I love you and my self respect goes, I love you and my pride goes. Would God I could say I love you and my life goes and end it all." He stared at her a little space. "There is only one ray of satisfaction in it at all, one gleam of comfort," he added. "And what is that?" "You don't know what the suffering is, you don't understand, you don't comprehend." "And why not?" "Because you do not love me." "But I do," said the woman quite simply, as if it were a matter of course not only that she should love him, but that she should also tell him so. The man stared at her, amazed. Such fierce surges of joy throbbed through him as he had not thought the human frame could sustain. This woman loved him, in some strange way he had gained her affection. It was impossible, yet she had said so! He had been a blind fool. He could see that now. She stood before him and smiled up at him, looking at him through eyes misted with tears, with lips parted, with color coming and going in her cheek and with her bosom rising and falling. She loved him, he had but to step nearer to her to take her in his arms. There was trust, devotion, surrender, everything, in her attitude and between them, like that great gulf which lay between the rich man and the beggar, that separated heaven and hell, was that he could not cross. "I never dreamed, I never hoped--oh," he exclaimed as if he had got his death wound, "this cannot be borne." He turned away, but in two swift steps she caught him. "Where do you go?" "Out, out into the night." "You cannot go now, it is dark; hark to the storm, you will miss your footing; you would fall, you would freeze, you would die." "What matters that?" "I cannot have it." "It would be better so." He strove again to wrench himself away, but she would not be denied. She clung to him tenaciously. "I will not let you go unless you give me your word of honor that you will not leave the plateau, and that you will come back to me." "I tell you that the quicker and more surely I go out of your life, the happier and better it will be for you." "And I tell you," said the woman resolutely, "that you can never go out of my life again, living or dead," she released him with one hand and laid it upon her heart, "you are here." "Enid," cried the man. "No," she thrust him gently away with one hand yet detained him with the other--that was emblematic of the situation between them. "Not now, not yet, let me think, but promise me you will do yourself no harm, you will let nothing imperil your life." "As you will," said the man regretfully. "I had purposed to end it now and forever, but I promise." "Your word of honor?" "My word of honor." "And you won't break it?" "I never broke it to a human being, much less will I do so to you?" She released him. He went into the other room and she heard him cross the floor and open the door and go out into the night, into the storm again. CHAPTER XIX THE FACE IN THE LOCKET Left alone in the room she sat down again before the fire and drew from her pocket the packet of letters. She knew them by heart, she had read and re-read them often when she had been alone. They had fascinated her. They were letters from some other man to this man's wife. They were signed by an initial only and the identity of the writer was quite unknown to her. The woman's replies were not with the others, but it was easy enough to see what those replies had been. All the passion of which the woman had been capable had evidently been bestowed upon the writer of the letters she had treasured. Her story was quite plain. She had married Newbold in a fit of pique. He was an Eastern man, the best educated, the most fascinating and interesting of the men who frequented the camp. There had been a quarrel between the letter writer and the woman, there were always quarrels, apparently, but this had been a serious one and the man had savagely flung away and left her. He had not come back as he usually did. She had waited for him and then she had married Newbold and then he had come back--too late! He had wanted to kill the other, but she had prevented, and while Newbold was away he had made desperate love to her. He had besought her to leave her husband, to go away with him. He had used every argument that he could to that end and the woman had hesitated and wavered, but she had not consented; she had not denied her love for him any more than she had denied her respect and a certain admiration for her gallant trusting husband. She had refused again and again the requests of her lover. She could not control her heart, nevertheless she had kept to her marriage vows. But the force of her resistance had grown weaker and she had realized that alone she would perhaps inevitably succumb. Her lover had been away when her husband returned prior to that last fateful journey. Enid Maitland saw now why she had besought him to take her with him. She had been afraid to be left alone! She had not dared to depend upon her own powers any more, her only salvation had been to go with this man whom she did not love, whom at times she almost hated, to keep from falling into the arms of the man she did love. She had been more or less afraid of Newbold. She had soon realized, because she was not blinded by any passion as he, that they had been utterly mismated. She had come to understand that when the same knowledge of the truth came to him, as it inevitably must some day, nothing but unhappiness would be their portion. Every kind of an argument in addition to those so passionately adduced in these letters urging her to break away from her husband and to seek happiness for herself while yet there was time, had besieged her heart, had seconded her lover's plea and had assailed her will, and yet she had not given way. Now Enid Maitland hated the woman who had enjoyed the first young love of the man she herself loved. She hated her because of her priority of possession, because her memory yet came between her and that man. She hated her because Newbold was still true to her memory, because Newbold, believing in the greatness of her passion for him, thought it shame and dishonor to his manhood to be false to her, no matter what love and longing drew him on. Yet there was a stern sense of justice in the bosom of this young woman. She exulted in the successful battle the poor woman had waged for the preservation of her honor and her good name, against such odds. It was a sex triumph for which she was glad. She was proud of her for the stern rigor with which she had refused to take the easiest way and the desperation with which she had clung to him she did not love, but to whom she was bound by the laws of God and man, in order that she might not fall into the arms of the man she did love, in defiance of right. Enid Maitland and this woman were as far removed from each other as the opposite poles of the earth, but there was yet a common quality in each one, of virtuous womanhood, of lofty morality. Natural, perhaps, in the one and to be expected; unnatural, perhaps, and to be unexpected in the other, but there! Now that she knew what love was and what its power and what its force--for all that she had felt and experienced and dreamed about before were as nothing to what it was since he had spoken--she could understand what the struggle must have been in that woman's heart. She could honor her, reverence her, pity her. She could understand the feeling of the man, too, she could think much more clearly than he. He was distracted by two passions, for his pride and his honor and for her; she had as yet but one, for him. And as there was less turmoil and confusion in her mind, she was the more capable of looking the facts in the face and making the right deduction from them. She could understand how in the first frightful rush of his grief and remorse and love the very fact that Newbold had been compelled to kill his wife, of whom she guessed he was beginning to grow a little weary, under such circumstances had added immensely to his remorse and quickened his determination to expiate his guilt and cherish her memory. She could understand why he would do just as he had done, go into the wilderness to be alone in horror of himself and in horror of his fellow men, to think only, mistakenly, of her. Now he was paying the penalty of that isolation. Men were made to live with one another, and no one could violate that law natural, or by so long an inheritance as to have so become, without paying that penalty. His ideas of loyalty and fidelity were warped, his conceptions of his duty were narrow. There was something noble in his determination, it is true, but there was something also very foolish. The dividing line between wisdom and folly is sometimes as indefinite as that between comedy and tragedy, between laughter and tears. If the woman he had married and killed had only hated him and he had known, it would have been different, but since he believed so in her love he could do nothing else. At that period in her reflections Enid Maitland saw a great light. The woman had not loved her husband after all, she had loved another. That passion of which he had dreamed had not been for him. By a strange chain of circumstances Enid Maitland held in her hand the solution of the problem. She had but to give him these letters to show him that his golden image had stood upon feet of clay, that the love upon which he had dwelt was not his. Once convinced of that he would come quickly to her arms. She cried a prayer of blessing on old Kirkby and started to her feet, the letters in hand, to call Newbold back to her and tell him, and then she stopped. Woman as she was, she had respect for the binding conditions and laws of honor as well as he. Chance, nay, Providence, had put the honor of this woman, her rival, in her hands. The world had long since forgotten this poor unfortunate; in no heart was her memory cherished save in that of her husband. His idea of her was a false one, to be sure, but not even to procure her own happiness could Enid Maitland overthrow that ideal, shatter that memory. She sat down again with the letters in her hand. It had been very simple a moment since, but it was not so now. She had but to show him those letters to remove the great barrier between them. She could not do it. It was clearly impossible. The reputation of her dead sister who had struggled so bravely to the end was in her hands, she could not sacrifice her even for her own happiness. Quixotic, you say? I do not think so. She had blundered unwittingly, unwillingly, upon the heart secret of the other woman, she could not betray it. Even if the other woman had been really unfaithful in deed as well as in thought to her husband, Enid could hardly have destroyed his recollection of her. How much more impossible it was since the other woman had fought so heroically and so successfully for her honor. Womanhood demanded her silence. Loyalty, honor, compelled her silence. A dead hand grasped his heart and the same dead hand grasped hers. She could see no way out of the difficulty. So far as she knew, no human soul except old Kirkby and herself knew this woman's story. She could not tell Newbold and she would have to impose upon Kirkby the same silence as she herself exercised. There was absolutely no way in which the man could find out. He must cherish his dream as he would. She would not enlighten him, she would not disabuse his mind, she could not shatter his ideal, she could not betray his wife. They might love as the angels of heaven and yet be kept forever apart--by a scruple, an idea, a principle, an abstraction, honor, a name. Her mind told her these things were idle and foolish, but her soul would not hear of it. And in spite of her resolutions she felt that eventually there would be some way. She would not have been a human woman if she had not hoped and prayed that. She believed that God had created them for each other, that He had thrown them together. She was enough of a fatalist in this instance at least to accept their intimacy as the result of His ordination. There must be some way out of the dilemma. Yet she knew that he would be true to his belief, and she felt that she would not be false to her obligation. What of that? There would be some way. Perhaps somebody else knew, and then there flashed into her mind the writer of the letters. Who was he? Was he yet alive? Had he any part to play in this strange tragedy aside from that he had already essayed? Sometimes an answer to a secret query is made openly. At this juncture Newbold came back. He stopped before her unsteadily, his face now marked not only by the fierceness of the storm outside, but by the fiercer grapple of the storm in his heart. "You have a right," he began, "to know everything now. I can withhold nothing from you." He had in his hand a picture and something yellow that gleamed in the light. "There," he continued, extending them toward her, "is the picture of the poor woman, who loved me and whom I killed, you saw it once before." "Yes," she nodded, taking it from him carefully and looking again in a strange commixture of pride, resentment and pity at the bold, somewhat coarse, entirely uncultured, yet handsome face which gave no evidence of the moral purpose which she had displayed. "And here," said the man, offering the other article, "is something that no human eye but mine has ever seen since that day. It is a locket I took from her neck. Until you came I wore it next my heart." "And since then?" "Since then I have been unworthy her as I am unworthy you, and I have put it aside." "Does it contain another picture?" "Yes." "Of her?" "A man's face." "Yours?" He shook his head. "Look and see," he answered. "Press the spring." Suiting action to word the next second Enid Maitland found herself gazing upon the pictured semblance of Mr. James Armstrong! She was utterly unable to suppress an exclamation and a start of surprise at the astonishing revelation. The man looked at her curiously, he opened his mouth to question her, but she recovered herself in part at least and swiftly interrupted him in a panic of terror lest she should betray her knowledge. "And what is the picture of another man doing in your wife's locket?" she asked to gain time, for she very well knew the reply; knew it, indeed, better than Newbold himself; who, as it happened, was equally in the dark both as to the man and the reason. "I don't know," answered the other. "Did you know this man?" "I never saw him in my life that I can recall." "And have you--did you--" "Did I suspect my wife?" he asked. "Never. I had too many evidences that she loved me and me alone for a ghost of suspicion to enter my mind. It may have been a brother, or her father in his youth." "And why did you wear it?" "Because I took it from her dead heart. Some day I shall find out who the man is, and when I shall I know there will be nothing to her discredit in the knowledge." Enid Maitland nodded her head. She closed the locket, laid it on the table and pushed it away from her. So this was the man the woman had loved, who had begged her to go away with him, this handsome Armstrong who had come within an ace of winning her own affection, to whom she was in some measure pledged! How strangely does fate work out its purposes. Enid had come from the Atlantic seaboard to be the second woman that both these two men loved! If she ever saw Mr. James Armstrong again, and she had no doubt that she would, she would have some strange things to say to him. She held in her hands now all the threads of the mystery, she was master of all the solutions, and each thread was as a chain that bound her. "My friend," she said at last with a deep sigh, "you must forget this night and go on as before. You love me, thank God for that, but honor and respect interpose between us. And I love you, and I thank God for that, too, but for me as well the same barrier rises. Whether we shall ever surmount these barriers God alone knows. He brought us together, He put that love in our hearts, we will have to leave it to Him to do as He will with us both. Meanwhile we must go on as before." "No," cried the man, "you impose upon me tasks beyond my strength; you don't know what love like mine is, you don't know the heart hunger, the awful madness I feel. Think, I have been alone with a recollection for all these years, a man in the dark, in the night, and the light comes, you are here. The first night I brought you here I walked that room on the other side of that narrow door like a lion pent up in bars of steel. I had only my own love, my own passionate adoration to move me then, but now that I know you love me, that I see it in your eyes, that I hear it from your lips, that I mark it in the beat of your heart, can I keep silent? Can I live on and on? Can I see you, touch you, breathe the same air with you, be shut up in the same room with you hour after hour, day after day, and go on as before? I can't do it; it is an impossibility. What keeps me now from taking you in my arms and from kissing the color into your cheeks, from making your lips my own, from drinking the light from your eyes?" He swayed near to her, his voice rose, "What restrains me?" he demanded. "Nothing," said the woman, never shrinking back an inch, facing him with all the courage and daring with which a goddess might look upon a man. "Nothing but my weakness and your strength." "Yes, that's it; but do not count too much upon the one or the other. Great God, how can I keep away from you. Life on the old terms is insupportable. I must go." "And where?" "Anywhere, so it be away." "And when?" "Now." "It would be death in the snow and in the mountains to-night. No, no, you can not go." "Well, to-morrow then. It will be fair, I can't take you with me, but I must go alone to the settlements, I must tell your friends you are here, alive, well. I shall find men to come back and get you. What I cannot do alone numbers together may effect. They can carry you over the worst of the trails, you shall be restored to your people, to your world again. You can forget me." "And do you think?" asked the woman, "that I could ever forget you?" "I don't know." "And will you forget me?" "Not as long as life throbs in my veins, and beyond." "And I too," was the return. "So be it. You won't be afraid to stay here alone, now." "No, not since you love me," was the noble answer. "I suppose I must, there is no other way, we could not go on as before. And you will come back to me as quickly as you can with the others?" "I shall not come back. I will give them the direction, they can find you without me. When I say good-by to you to-morrow it shall be forever." "And I swear to you," asserted the woman in quick desperation, "if you do not come back, they shall have nothing to carry from here but my dead body. You do not alone know what love is," she cried resolutely, "and I will not let you go unless I have your word to return." "And how will you prevent my going?" "I can't. But I will follow you on my hands and knees in the snow until I freeze and die unless I have your promise." "You have beaten me," said the man hopelessly. "You always do. Honor, what is it? Pride, what is it? Self respect, what is it? Say the word and I am at your feet, I put the past behind me." "I don't say the word," answered the woman bravely, white faced, pale lipped, but resolute. "To be yours, to have you mine, is the greatest desire of my heart, but not in the coward's way, not at the expense of honor, of self respect--no not that way. Courage, my friend, God will show us the way, and meantime good night." "I shall start in the morning." "Yes," she nodded reluctantly but knowing it had to be, "but you won't go without bidding me good-bye." "No." "Good night then," she said extending her hand. "Good night," he whispered hoarsely and refused it backing away. "I don't dare to take it. I don't dare to touch you again. I love you so, my only salvation is to keep away." CHAPTER XX THE STRENGTH OF THE WEAK Although Enid Maitland had spoken bravely enough while he was there, when she was alone her heart sank into the depths as she contemplated the dreadful and unsolvable dilemma in which these two lovers found themselves so unwittingly and inextricably involved. It was indeed a curious and bewildering situation. Passionate adoration for the other rose in each breast like the surging tide of a mighty sea and like that tide upon the shore it broke upon conventions, ideas, ideals and obligations intangible to the naked eye but as real as those iron coasts that have withstood the waves' assaults since the world's morning. The man had shaped his life upon a mistake. He believed absolutely in the unquestioned devotion of a woman to whom he had been forced to mete out death in an unprecedented and terrible manner. His unwillingness to derogate by his own conduct from the standard of devotion which he believed had inhabited his wife's bosom, made it impossible for him to allow the real love that had come into his heart for this new woman to have free course; honor, pride and self respect scourged him just in proportion to his passion for Enid Maitland. The more he loved her, the more ashamed he was. By a curious combination of circumstances, Enid Maitland knew the truth, she knew that from one point of view the woman had been entirely unworthy the reverence in which her husband held her memory. She knew that his wife had not loved him at all, that her whole heart had been given to another man, that what Newbold had mistaken for a passionate desire for his society because there was no satisfaction in life for the wife away from him was due to a fear lest without his protection she should be unable to resist the appeal of the other man which her heart seconded so powerfully. If it were only that Newbold would not be false to the obligation of the other woman's devotion, Enid might have solved the problem in a moment. It was not so simple, however. The fact that Newbold cherished this memory, the fact that this other woman had fought so desperately, had tried so hard not to give way, entitled her to Enid Maitland's admiration and demanded her highest consideration as well. Chance, or Providence, had put her in possession of this woman's secret. It was as if she had been caught inadvertently eavesdropping. She could not in honor make use of what she had overheard, as it were; she could not blacken the other woman's memory, she could not enlighten this man at the expense of his dead wife's reputation. Although she longed for him as much as he longed for her, although her love for him amazed her by its depth and intensity, even to bring her happiness commensurate with her feelings she could not betray her dead sister. The imposts of honor, how hard they are to sustain when they conflict with love and longing. Enid Maitland was naturally not a little thrown off her balance by the situation and the power that was hers. What she could not do herself she could not allow anyone else to do. The obligation upon her must be extended to others. Old Kirkby had no right to the woman's secret any more than she, he must be silenced. Armstrong, the only other being privy to the truth, must be silenced too. One thing at least arose out of the sea of trouble in a tangible way, she was done with Armstrong. Even if she had not so loved Newbold that she could scarcely give a thought to any other human being, she was done with Armstrong. A singular situation! Armstrong had loved another woman, so had Newbold, and the latter had even married this other woman, yet she was quite willing to forgive Newbold, she made every excuse for him, she made none for Armstrong. She was an eminently sane, just person, yet as she thought of the situation her anger against Armstrong grew hotter and hotter. It was a safety valve to her feelings, although she did not realize it. After all, Armstrong's actions rendered her a certain service; if she could get over the objection in her soul, if she could ever satisfy her sense of honor and duty, and obligation, she could settle the question at once. She had only to show the letters to Newbold and to say, "These were written by the man of the picture; it was he and not you your wife loved," and Newbold would take her to his heart instantly. These thoughts were not without a certain comfort to her. All the compensation of self-sacrifice is in its realization. That she could do and yet did not somehow ennobled her love for him. Even women are alloyed with base metal. In the powerful and universal appeal of this man to her, she rejoiced at whatever was of the soul rather than of the body. To possess power, to refrain from using it in obedience to some higher law is perhaps to pay oneself the most flattering of compliments. There was a satisfaction to her soul in this which was yet denied him. Her action was quite different from his. She was putting away happiness which she might have had in compliance with a higher law than that which bids humanity enjoy. It was flattering to her mind. In his case it was otherwise: he had no consciousness that he was a victim of misplaced trust, of misinterpreted action; he thought the woman for whom he was putting away happiness was almost as worthy, if infinitely less desirable, as the woman whom he now loved. Every sting of conscious weakness, every feeling of realized shame, every fear of ultimate disloyalty, scourged him. She could glory in it; he was ashamed, humiliated, broken. She heard him savagely walking up and down the other room, restlessly impelled by the same Erinnyes who of old scourged Orestes, the violater of the laws of moral being, drove him on. These malign Eumenides held him in their hands. He was bound and helpless; rage as he might in one moment, pray as he did in another, no light came into the whirling darkness of his torn, tempest tossed, driven soul. The irresistible impulse and the immovable body the philosophers puzzled over were exemplified in him. While he almost hated the new woman, while he almost loved the old, yet that he did neither the one thing nor the other absolutely was significant. Indeed he knew that he was glad Enid Maitland had come into his life. No life is complete until it is touched by that divine fire which for lack of another name we call love. Because we can experience that sensation we are said to be made in God's image. The image is blurred as the animal predominates, it is clearer as the spiritual has the ascendency. The man raved in his mind. White faced, stern, he walked up and down, he tossed his arms about him, he stopped, his eyes closed, he threw his hands up toward God, his heart cried out under the lacerations of the blows inflicted upon it. No flagellant of old ever trembled beneath the body lash as he under the spiritual punishment. He prayed that he might die at the same moment that he longed to live. He grappled blindly for solutions of the problem that would leave him with untarnished honor and undiminished self-respect and fidelity, and yet give him this woman; and in vain. He strove to find a way to reconcile the past with the present, realizing as he did so the futility of such a proposition. One or the other must be supreme; he must inexorably hold to his ideas and his ideals, or he must inevitably take the woman. How frightful was the battle that raged within his bosom. Sometimes in his despair he thought that he would have been glad if he and she had gone down together in the dark waters before all this came upon him. The floods of which the heavens had emptied themselves had borne her to him. Oh, if they had only swept him out of life with its trouble, its trials, its anxieties, its obligations, its impossibilities! If they had gone together! And then he knew that he was glad even for the torture, because he had seen her, because he had loved her, and because she had loved him. He marveled at himself curiously and in a detached way. There was a woman who loved him, who had confessed it boldly and innocently; there were none to say him nay. The woman who stood between had been dead five years, the world knew nothing, cared nothing; they could go out together, he could take her, she would come. On the impulse he turned and ran to the door and beat upon it. Her voice bade him enter and he came in. Her heart yearned to him. She was shocked, appalled, at the torture she saw upon his face. Had he been laid upon the rack and every joint pulled from its sockets, he could not have been more white and agonized. "I give up," he cried. "What are honor and self-respect to me? I want you. I have put the past behind. You love me, and I, I am yours with every fiber of my being. Great God! Let us cast aside these foolish quixotic scruples that have kept us apart. If a man's thoughts declare his guilt I am already disloyal to the other woman; deeply, entirely so. I have betrayed her, shamed her, abandoned her. Let me have some compensation for what I have gone through. You love me, come to me." "No," answered the woman, and no task ever laid upon her had been harder than that. "I do love you, I will not deny it, every part of me responds to your appeal. I should be so happy that I cannot even think of it, if I could put my hand in your own, if I could lay my head upon your shoulder, if I could feel your heart beat against mine, if I could give myself up to you, I would be so glad, so glad. But it can not be, not now." "Why not?" pleaded the man. He was by her side, his arm went around her. She did not resist physically, it would have been useless; she only laid her slender hand upon his broad breast and threw her head back and looked at him. "See," she said, "how helpless I am, how weak in your hands? Every voice in my heart bids me give way. If you insist I can deny you nothing. I am helpless, alone, but it must not be. I know you better than you know yourself, you will not take advantage of affection so unbounded, of weakness so pitiable." Was it the wisdom of calculation, or was it the wisdom of instinct by which she chose her course? Resistance would have been unavailing, in weakness was her strength. _Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth!_ Yes, that was true. She knew it now if never before, and so did he. Slowly the man released her. She did not even then draw away from him; she stood with her hand still on his breast, she could feel the beating of his heart beneath her fingers. "I am right," she said softly. "It kills me to deny you anything, my heart yearns toward you, why should I deny it, it is my glory not my shame." "There is nothing above love like ours," he pleaded, wondering what marvelous mastery she exercised that she stopped him by a hand's touch, a whispered word, a faith. "No; love is life, love is God, but even God Himself is under obligations of righteousness. For me to come to you now, to marry you now, to be your wife, would be unholy. There would not be that perfect confidence between us that must endure in that relation. Your honor and mine, your self-respect and mine would interpose. If I can't have you with a clear conscience, if you can't come to me in the same way, we are better apart. Although it kills me, although life without you seems nothing and I would rather not live it, we are better apart. I cannot be your wife until--" "Until what and until when?" demanded Newbold. "I don't know," said the woman, "but I believe that somewhere, somehow, we shall find a way out of our difficulty. There is a way," she said a little incautiously, "I know it." "Show it to me." "No, I can not." "What prevents?" "The same thing which prevents you, honor, loyalty." "To a man?" "To a woman." "I don't understand." "No, but you will some day," she smiled at him. "See," she said, "through my tears I can smile at you, though my heart is breaking. I know that in God's good time this will work itself out." "I can't wait for God, I want you now," persisted the other. "Hush, don't say that," answered the woman, for a moment laying her hand on his lips. "But I forgive you, I know how you suffer." The man could say nothing, do nothing. He stared at her a moment and his hand went to his throat as if he were choking. "Unworthy," he said hoarsely, "unworthy of the past, unworthy of the present, unworthy of the future. May God forgive me, I never can." "He will forgive you, never fear," answered Enid gently. "And you?" asked her lover. "I have ruined your life." "No, you have ennobled it. Let nothing ever make you forget that. Wherever you are and whatever you do and whatever you may have been, I love you and I shall love you to the end. Now you must go, it is so late, I can't stand any more. I throw myself on your mercy again. I grow weaker and weaker before you. As you are a man, as you are stronger, save me from myself. If you were to take me again in your arms," she went on steadily, "I know not how I could drive you back. For God's sake, if you love me--" That was the hardest thing he had ever done, to turn and go out of the room, out of her sight and leave her standing there with eyes shining, with pulses throbbing, with breath coming fast, with bosom panting. Once more, and at a touch she might have yielded! BOOK V THE CUP IS DRAINED CHAPTER XXI THE CHALLENGE OF THE RANGE Mr. James Armstrong sat at his desk before the west window of his private room in one of the tallest buildings in Denver. His suite of offices was situated on one of the top floors and from it over the intervening house tops and other buildings, he had a clear and unobstructed view of the mighty range. The earth was covered with snow. It had fallen steadily through the night but with the dawn the air had cleared and the sun had come out brightly although it was very cold. Letters, papers, documents, the demands of a business extensive and varied, were left unnoticed. He sat with his elbow on the desk and his head on his hand, looking moodily at the range. In the month that had elapsed since he had received news of Enid Maitland's disappearance he had sat often in that way, in that place, staring at the range, a prey to most despondent reflections, heavy hearted and disconsolate indeed. After that memorable interview with Mr. Stephen Maitland in Philadelphia he had deemed it proper to await there the arrival of Mr. Robert Maitland. A brief conversation with that distracted gentleman had put him in possession of all the facts in the case. As Robert Maitland had said, after his presentation of the tragic story, the situation was quite hopeless. Even Armstrong reluctantly admitted that her uncle and old Kirkby had done everything that was possible for the rescue or discovery of the girl. Therefore the two despondent gentlemen had shortly after returned to their western homes, Robert Maitland in this instance being accompanied by his brother Stephen. The latter never knew how much his daughter had been to him until this evil fate had befallen her. Robert Maitland had promised to inaugurate a thorough and extensive search to solve the mystery of her death, which he felt was certain, in the spring when the weather permitted humanity to have free course through the mountains. Mr. Stephen Maitland found a certain melancholy satisfaction in being at least near the place where neither he nor anyone had any doubt his daughter's remains lay hid beneath the snow or ice on the mountains in the freezing cold. Robert Maitland had no other idea than that Enid's body was in the lake. He intended to drain it--an engineering task of no great difficulty--and yet he intended also to search the hills for miles on either side of the main stream down which she had gone; for she might possibly have strayed away and died of starvation and exposure rather than drowning. At any rate he would leave nothing undone to discover her. He had strenuously opposed Armstrong's recklessly expressed intention of going into the mountains immediately to search for her. Armstrong was not easily moved from any purpose he once entertained or lightly to be hindered from attempting any enterprise that he projected, but by the time the party reached Denver the winter had set in and even he realized the futility of any immediate search for a dead body lost in the mountains. Admitting that Enid was dead the conclusions were sound of course. The others pointed out to Armstrong that if the woman they all loved had by any fortunate chance escaped the cloud burst she must inevitably have perished from cold, starvation and exposure in the mountain long since. There was scarcely a possibility that she could have escaped the flood, but if she had it would only to be devoted to death a little later. If she was not in the lake what remained of her would be in some lateral cañon. It would be impossible to discover her body in the deep snows until the spring and the warm weather came. When the snows melted what was concealed would be revealed. Alone, she could do nothing. And admitting again that Enid was alone this conclusion was as sound as the other. Now no one had the faintest hope that Enid Maitland was yet alive except perhaps her father, Mr. Stephen Maitland. They could not convince him, he was so old and set in his opinions and so utterly unfamiliar with the conditions that they tried to describe to him, that he clung to his belief in spite of all, and finally they let him take such comfort as he could from his vain hope without any further attempt at contradiction. In spite of all the arguments, however, Mr. James Armstrong was not satisfied. He was as hopeless as the rest, but his temperament would not permit him to accept the inevitable calmly. It was barely possible that she might not be dead and that she might not be alone. There was scarcely enough possibility of this to justify a suspicion, but that is not saying there was none at all. Day after day he had sat in his office denying himself to everyone and refusing to consider anything, brooding over the situation. He loved Enid Maitland, he loved her before and now that he had lost her he loved her still more. Not altogether admirable had been James Armstrong's outwardly successful career. In much that is high and noble and manly his actions--and his character--had often been lacking, but even the base can love and sometimes love transforms if it be given a chance. The passion of Cymon for Iphigenia, made a man and prince out of the rustic boor. His real love for Enid Maitland might have done more for Armstrong than he himself or anyone who knew him as he was--and few there were who had such knowledge of him--dreamed was possible. There was one thing that love could not do, however; it could not make him a patient philosopher, a good waiter. His rule of life was not very high, but in one way it was admirable in that prompt bold decisive action was its chiefest characteristic. On this certain morning a month after the heart breaking disaster his power of passive endurance had been strained to the vanishing point. The great white range was flung in his face like a challenge. Within its secret recesses lay the solution of the mystery. Somewhere, dead or alive, beyond the soaring rampart was the woman he loved. It was impossible for him to remain quiet any longer. Common sense, reason, every argument that had been adduced, suddenly became of no weight. He lifted his head and stared straight westward. His eyes swept the long semi-circle of the horizon across which the mighty range was drawn like the chord of a gigantic arc or the string of a mighty bow. Each white peak mocked him, the insolent aggression of the range called him irresistibly to action. "By God," he said under his breath, rising to his feet, "winter or no winter, I go." Robert Maitland had offices in the same building. Having once come to a final determination there was no more uncertainty or hesitation about Armstrong's course. In another moment he was standing in the private room of his friend. The two men were not alone there. Stephen Maitland sat in a low chair before another window removed from the desk somewhat, staring out at the range. The old man was huddled down in his seat, every line of his figure spoke of grief and despair. Of all the places in Denver he liked best his brother's office fronting the rampart of the mountains, and hour after hour he sat there quietly looking at the summits, sometimes softly shrouded in white, sometimes swept bare by the fierce winter gales that blew across them, sometimes shining and sparkling so that the eye could scarce sustain their reflection of the dazzling sun of Colorado; and at other times seen dimly through mists of whirling snow. Oh, yes, the mountains challenged him also to the other side of the range. His heart yearned for his child, but he was too old to make the attempt. He could only sit and pray and wait with such faint and fading hope as he could still cherish until the break up of the spring came. For the rest he troubled nobody; nobody noticed him, nobody marked him, nobody minded him. Robert Maitland transacted his business a little more softly, a little more gently, that was all. Yet the presence of his brother was a living grief and a living reproach to him. Although he was quite blameless he blamed himself. He did not know how much he had grown to love his niece until he had lost her. His conscience accused him hourly, and yet he knew not where he was at fault or how he could have done differently. It was a helpless and hopeless situation. To him, therefore, entered Armstrong. "Maitland," he began, "I can't stand it any longer, I'm going into the mountains." "You are mad!" "I can't help it. I can't sit here and face them, damn them, and remain quiet." "You will never come out alive." "Oh, yes I will, but if I don't I swear to God I don't care." Old Stephen Maitland rose unsteadily to his feet and gripped the back of his chair. "Did I hear aright, sir?" he asked with all the polished and graceful courtesy of birth and breeding which never deserted him in any emergency whatsoever. "Do you say--" "I said I was going into the mountains to search for her." "It is madness," urged Robert Maitland. But the old man did not hear him. "Thank God!" he exclaimed with deep feeling. "I have sat here day after day and watched those mighty hills, and I have said to myself that if I had youth and strength as I have love, I would not wait." "You are right," returned Armstrong, equally moved, and indeed it would have been hard to have heard and seen that father unresponsively, "and I am not going to wait either." "I understand your feeling, Jim, and yours too, Steve," began Robert Maitland, arguing against his own emotions, "but even if she escaped the flood, she must be dead by this time." "You needn't go over the old arguments, Bob. I'm going into the mountains and I'm going now. No," he continued swiftly, as the other opened his mouth to interpose further objections, "you needn't say another word. I'm a free agent and I'm old enough to decide what I can do. There is no argument, there is no force, there is no appeal, there is nothing that will restrain me. I can't sit here and eat my heart out when she may be there." "But it's impossible!" "It isn't impossible. How do I know that there may not have been somebody in the mountains, she may have wandered to some settlement, some hunter's cabin, some prospector's hut." "But we were there for weeks and saw nothing, no evidence of humanity." "I don't care. The mountains are filled with secret nooks you could pass by within a stone's throw and never see into, she may be in one of them. I suppose she is dead and it's all foolish, this hope, but I'll never believe it until I have examined every square rod within a radius of fifty miles from your camp. I'll take the long chance, the longest even." "Well, that's all right," said Robert Maitland. "Of course I intend to do that as soon as the spring opens, but what's the use of trying to do it now?" "It's use to me. I'll either go mad here in Denver, or I must go to seek for her there." "But you will never come back if you once get in those mountains alone." "I don't care whether I do or not. It's no use, old man, I am going and that's all there is about it." Robert Maitland knew men, he recognized finality when he heard it or when he saw it and it was quite evident that he was in the presence of it then. It was of no use for him or anyone to say more. "Very well," he said, "I honor you for your feeling even if I don't think much of your common sense." "Damn common sense," cried Armstrong triumphantly, "it's love that moves me now." At that moment there was a tap on the door. A clerk from an outer office bidden to enter announced that old Kirkby was in the ante-room. "Bring him in," directed Maitland, eager to welcome him. He fancied that the new comer would undoubtedly assist him in dissuading Armstrong from his foolhardy, useless enterprise. "Mornin', old man," drawled Kirkby. "Howdy, Armstrong. My respects to you, sir," he said, sinking his voice a little as he bowed respectfully toward Mr. Stephen Maitland, a very sympathetic look in the old frontiersman's eyes at the sight of the bereaved father. "Kirkby, you've come in the very nick of time," at once began Robert Maitland. "Allus glad to be Johnny-on-the-spot," smiled the older man. "Armstrong here," continued the other intent upon his purpose, "says he can't wait until the spring and the snows melt, he is going into the mountains now to look for Enid." Kirkby did not love Armstrong, he did not care for him a little bit, but there was something in the bold hardihood of the man, something in the way which he met the reckless challenge of the mountains that the old man and all the others felt that moved the inmost soul of the hardy frontiersman. He threw an approving glance at him. "I tell him that it is absurd, impossible; that he risks his life for nothing, and I want you to tell him the same thing. You know more about the mountains than either of us." "Mr. Kirkby," quavered Stephen Maitland, "allow me. I don't want to influence you against your better judgment, but if you could sit here as I have done and think that maybe she is there and perhaps alive still, and in need, you would not say a word to deter him." "Why, Steve," expostulated Robert Maitland, "surely you know I would risk anything for Enid; somehow it seems as if I were being put in the selfish position by my opposition." "No, no," said his brother, "it isn't that. You have your wife and children, but this young man--" "Well, what do you say, Kirkby? Not that it makes any difference to me what anybody says. Come, we are wasting time," interposed Armstrong, who, now that he had made up his mind, was anxious to be off. "Jim Armstrong," answered Kirkby decidedly, "I never thought much of you in the past, an' I think sence you've put out this last projick of yourn that I'm entitled to call you a damn fool, w'ich you are, an' I'm another, for I'm goin' into the mountains with you." "Oh, thank God!" cried Stephen Maitland fervently. "I know you don't like me," answered Armstrong; "that's neither here nor there. Perhaps you have cause to dislike me, perhaps you have not; I don't like you any too well myself; but there is no man on earth I'd rather have go with me on a quest of this kind than you, and there's my hand on it." Kirkby shook it vigorously. "This ain't committin' myself," he said cautiously. "So far's I'm concerned you ain't good enough for Miss Maitland, but I admires your spirit, Armstrong, an' I'm goin' with you. Tain't no good, twon't produce nothin', most likely we'll never come back agin; but jest the same I'm goin' along; nobody's goin' to show me the trail; my nerve and grit w'en it comes to helpin' a young feemale like that girl is as good as anybody's I guess. You're her father," he drawled on, turning to Stephen Maitland, "an' I ain't no kin to her, but by gosh, I believe I can understand better than anyone else yere what you are feelin'." "Kirkby," said Robert Maitland, smiling at the other two, "you have gone clean back on me. I thought you had more sense. But somehow I guess it's contagious, for I am going along with you two myself." "And I, cannot I accompany you?" pleaded Stephen Maitland, eagerly drawing near to the other three. "Not much," said old Kirkby promptly. "You ain't got the stren'th, ol' man, you don't know them mountains, nuther; you'd be helpless on a pair of snow shoes, there ain't anything you could do, you'd jest be a drag on us. Without sayin' anything about myself, w'ich I'm too modest for that, there ain't three better men in Colorado to tackle this job than Jim Armstrong an' Bob Maitland an'--well, as I said, I won't mention no other names." "God bless you all, gentlemen," faltered Stephen Maitland. "I think perhaps I may have been wrong, a little prejudiced against the west, you are men that would do honor to any family, to any society in Philadelphia or anywhere else." "Lord love ye," drawled Kirkby, his eyes twinkling, "there ain't no three men on the Atlantic seaboard that kin match up with two of us yere, to say nothin' of the third." "Well," said Robert Maitland, "the thing now is to decide on what's to be done." "My plan," said Armstrong, "is to go to the old camp." "Yep," said Kirkby, "that's a good point of deeparture, as my seafarin' father down Cape Cod way used to say, an' wot's next." "I am going up the cañon instead of down," said the man, with a flash of inspiration. "That ain't no bad idea nuther," assented the old man; "we looked the ground over pretty thoroughly down the cañon, mebbe we can find something up it." "And what do you propose to take with you?" asked Maitland. "What we can carry on the backs of men. We will make a camp somewhere about where you did. We can get enough husky men up at Morrison who will pack in what we want and with that as a basis we will explore the upper reaches of the range." "And when do we start?" "There is a train for Morrison in two hours," answered Armstrong. "We can get what we want in the way of sleeping bags and equipment between now and then if we hurry about it." "Ef we are goin' to do it, we might as well git a move on us," assented Kirkby, making ready to go. "Right," answered Robert Maitland grimly. "When three men set out to make fools of themselves the sooner they get at it and get over with it the better. I've got some business matters to settle, you two get what's needed and I'll bear my share." A week later a little band of men on snow shoes, wrapped in furs to their eyes, every one heavily burdened with a pack, staggered into the clearing where once had been pitched the Maitland camp. The place was covered with snow of course, but on a shelf of rock half way up the hogback, they found a comparatively level clearing and there, all working like beavers, they built a rude hut which they covered with canvas and then with tightly packed snow and which would keep the three who remained from freezing to death. Fortunately they were favored by a brief period of pleasant weather and a few days served to make a sufficiently habitable camp. Maitland, Kirkby and Armstrong worked with the rest. There was no thought of search at first. Their lives depended upon the erection of a suitable shelter and it was not until the helpers, leaving their burdens behind them, had departed that the three men even considered what was to be done next. "We must begin a systematic search to-morrow," said Armstrong decisively as the three men sat around the cheerful fire in the hut. "Yes," assented Maitland. "Shall we go together, or separately?" "Separately, of course. We are all hardy and experienced men, nothing is apt to happen to us, we will meet here every night and plan the next day's work. What do you say, Kirkby?" The old man had been quietly smoking while the others talked. He smiled at them in a way which aroused their curiosity and made them feel that he had news for them. "While you was puttin' the finishin' touches on this yere camp, I come acrost a heap o' stuns, that somehow the wind had swept bare. There was a big drift in front of it w'ich kep' us from seein' it afore; it was built up in the open w'ere there want no trees, an' in our lumberin' operations we want lookin' that-a-way. I came acrost a bottle by chance an'--" "Well, for God's sake, old man," cried Armstrong impatiently, "what did you find in it, anything?" "This," answered Kirkby, carefully producing a folded scrap of paper from his leather vest. Armstrong fell on it ravenously, and as Maitland bent over him they both read these words by the fire light. "_Miss Enid Maitland, whose foot is so badly crushed as to prevent her traveling, is safe in a cabin at the head of this canon. I put this notice here to reassure any who may be seeking her as to her welfare. Follow the stream up to its source._" _Wm. Berkeley Newbold._ "Thank God!" exclaimed Robert Maitland. "You called me a damn fool, Kirkby," said Armstrong, his eyes gleaming. "What do you think of it now?" "It's the damn fool, I find," said Kirkby sapiently, "that gener'ly gits there. Providence seems to be a-watchin' over 'em." "You said you chanced on this paper, Jack," continued Maitland, "it looks to me like the deliberate intention of Almighty God." "I reckon so," answered the other simply. "You see He's got to look after all the damn fools on earth to keep 'em from doin' too much damage to theirselves an' to others in this yere crooked trail of a world." "Let us start now," urged Armstrong. "Tain't possible," said the old man, taking another puff at his pipe, and only a glistening of the eye betrayed the joy that he felt; otherwise his phlegmatic calm was unbroken, his demeanor just as undisturbed as it always was. "We'd jest throw away our lives a wanderin' round these yere mountains in the dark, we've got to have light an' clear weather. Ef it should be snowin' in the mornin' we'd have to wait until it cleared." "I won't wait a minute," cried Armstrong. "At daybreak, weather or no weather, I start." "What's your hurry, Jim?" continued Kirkby calmly. "The gal's safe, one day more or less ain't goin' to make no difference." "She's with another man," answered Armstrong quickly. "Do you know this Newbold?" asked Maitland, looking at the note again. "No, not personally, but I have heard of him." "I know him," answered Kirkby quickly, "an' you've seed him too, Bob; he's the fellow that shot his wife, that married Louise Rosser." "That man!" "The very same." "You say you never saw him, Jim?" asked Maitland. "I repeat I never met him," said Armstrong, flushing suddenly, "but I knew his wife." "Yes, you did that--" drawled the old mountaineer. "What do you mean?" flashed Armstrong. "I mean that you knowed her, that's all," answered the old man with an innocent air that was almost childlike. When the others woke up in the morning Armstrong's sleeping bag was empty. Kirkby crawled out of his own warm nest, opened the door and peered out into the storm. "Well," he said, "I guess the damn fool has beat God this time; it don't look to me as if even He could save him now." "But we must go after him at once," urged Maitland. "See for yourself," answered the old man, throwing wider the door. "We've got to wait 'til this wind dies down unless we give the Almighty the job o' lookin' after three instid o' one." CHAPTER XXII THE CONVERGING TRAILS Whatever the feelings of the others, Armstrong found himself unable to sleep that night. It seemed to him that fate was about to play him the meanest and most fantastic of tricks. Many times before in his crowded life he had loved other women, or so he characterized his feelings, but his passion for Louise Rosser Newbold had been in a class by itself until he had met Enid Maitland. Between the two there had been many women, but these two were the high points, the rest was lowland. Once before, therefore, this Newbold had cut in ahead of him and had won the woman he loved. Armstrong had cherished a hard grudge against him for a long time. He had not been of those who had formed the rescue party led by old Kirkby and Maitland which had buried the poor woman on the great butte in the deep cañon. Before he got back to the camp the whole affair was over and Newbold had departed. Luckily for him, Armstrong had always thought, for he had been so mad with grief and rage and jealousy that if he had come across him helpless or not he would have killed him out of hand. Armstrong had soon enough forgotten Louise Rosser, but he had not forgotten Newbold. All his ancient animosity had flamed into instant life again, at the sight of his name last night. The inveteracy of his hatred had been in no way abated by the lapse of time it seemed. Everybody in the mining camp had supposed that Newbold had wandered off and perished in the mountains, else Armstrong might have pursued him and hunted him down. The sight of his name on that piece of paper was outward and visible evidence that he still lived. It had almost the shock of a resurrection, and a resurrection to hatred rather than to love. If Newbold had been alone in the world, if Armstrong had chanced upon him in the solitude, he would have hated him just as he did; but when he thought that his ancient enemy was with the woman he now loved, with a growing intensity, beside which his former resentment seemed weak and feeble, he hated him yet the more. He could not tell when the notice, which he had examined carefully, was written; there was no date upon it, but he could come to only one conclusion. Newbold must have found Enid Maitland alone in the mountains very shortly after her departure and he had had her with him in his cabin alone for at least a month. Armstrong gritted his teeth at the thought. He did not undervalue the personality of Newbold, he had never happened to see him, but he had heard enough about him to understand his qualities as a man. The tie that bound Armstrong to Enid Maitland was a strong one, but the tie by which he held her to him, if indeed he held her at all, was very tenuous and easily broken; perhaps it was broken already, and so he hated him still more and more. Indeed his animosity was so great and growing that for the moment he took no joy in the assurance of the girl's safety, yet he was not altogether an unfair man and in calmer moments he thanked God in his own rough way that the woman he loved was alive and well, or had been when the note was written. He rejoiced that she had not been swept away with the flood or that she had not been lost in the mountains and forced to wander on, finally to starve and freeze and die. In one moment her nearness caused his heart to throb with joyful anticipation. The certainty that at the first flush of day he would seek her again sent the warm blood to his cheeks. But these thoughts would be succeeded by the knowledge that she was with his enemy. Was this man to rob him of the latest love as he had robbed him of the first? Perhaps the hardest task that was ever laid upon Armstrong was to lie quietly in his sleeping bag and wait until the morning. So soon as the first indication of dawn showed through the cracks of the door, he slipped quietly out of his sleeping bag and without disturbing the others drew on his boots, put on his heavy fur coat and cap and gloves, slung his Winchester and his snow shoes over his shoulder and without stopping for a bite to eat softly opened the door, stepped out and closed it after him. It was quite dark in the bottom of the cañon, although a few pale gleams overhead indicated the near approach of day. It was quite still, too. There were clouds on the mountain top heavy with threat of wind and snow. The way was not difficult, the direction of it that is. Nor was the going very difficult at first; the snow was frozen and the crust was strong enough to bear him. He did not need his snow shoes and indeed would have had little chance to use them in the narrow broken rocky pass. He had slipped away from the others because he wanted to be the first to see the man and the woman. He did not want any witness to that meeting. They would have to come on later of course, but he wanted an hour or two in private with Enid and Newbold without any interruption. His conscience was not clear. Nor could he settle upon a course of action. How much Newbold knew of his former attempt to win away his wife, how much of what he knew he had told Enid Maitland, Armstrong could not surmise. Putting himself into Newbold's place and imagining that the engineer had possessed entire information, he decided that he must have told everything to Enid Maitland so soon as he had found out the quasi relation between her and Armstrong. And Armstrong did not believe the woman he loved could be in anybody's presence a month without telling something about him. Still it was possible that Newbold knew nothing and that he told nothing therefore. The situation was paralyzing to a man of Armstrong's decided, determined temperament. He could not decide upon the line of conduct he should pursue. His course in this, the most critical emergency he had ever faced, must be determined by circumstances of which he felt with savage resentment he was in some measure the sport. He would have to leave to chance what ought to be subject to his will. Of only one thing was he sure--he would stop at nothing, murder, lying, nothing to win that woman, and to settle his score with that man. There was really only one thing he could do and that was to press on up the cañon. He had no idea how far it might be or how long a journey he would have to make before he reached that shelf on the high hill where stood that hut in which she dwelt. As the crow flies it could not be a great distance, but the cañon zigzagged through the mountains with as many curves and angles as a lightning flash. He plodded on therefore with furious haste, recklessly speeding over places where a misstep in the snow or a slip on the icy rocks would have meant death or disaster to him. He had gone about an hour, and had perhaps made four miles from the camp, when the storm burst upon him. It was now broad day and the sky was filled with clouds and the air with driving snow. The wind whistled down the cañon with terrific force, it was with difficulty that he made any headway at all against it. It was a local storm; if he could have looked through the snow he would have discovered calmness on the top of the peaks. It was one of those sudden squalls of wind and snow which rage with terrific force while they last but whose range was limited and whose duration would be as short as it was violent. A less determined man than he would have bowed to the inevitable and sought some shelter behind a rock until the fury of the tempest was spent, but there was no storm that blew that could stop this man so long as he had strength to drive against it. So he bent his head to the fierce blast and struggled on. There was something titantic and magnificent about the iron determination and persistence of Armstrong. The two most powerful passions which move humanity were at his service; love led him and hate drove him. And the two were so intermingled that it was difficult to say which predominated, now one and now the other. The resultant of the two forces however was an onward move that would not be denied. His fur coat was soon covered with snow and ice, the sharp needles of the storm cut his face wherever it was exposed. The wind forced its way through his garments and chilled him to the bone. He had eaten nothing since the night before and his vitality was not at its flood, but he pressed onward and upward and there was something grand in his indomitable progress. _Excelsior!_ Back in the hut Kirkby and Maitland sat around the fire waiting most impatiently for the wind to blow itself out and for that snow to stop falling through which Armstrong struggled forward. As he followed the windings of the cañon, not daring to ascend to the summit of either wall and seek short cuts across the range, he was sensible that he was constantly rising. There were many indications to his experienced mind; the decrease in the height of the surrounding pines, the increasing rarity of the icy air, the growing difficulty in breathing under the sustained exertion he was making, the quick throbbing of his accelerated heart, all told him he was approaching his journey's end. He judged that he must now be drawing near the source of the stream, and that he would presently come upon the shelter. He had no means of ascertaining the time, he would not have dared to unbutton his coat to glance at his watch, and it is difficult to measure the flying minutes in such scenes as those through which he passed, but he thought he must have gone at least seven miles in perhaps three hours, which he fancied had elapsed, his progress in the last two having been frightfully slow. Every foot of advance he had to fight for. Suddenly, after a quick turn in the cañon, a passage through a narrow entrance between lofty cliffs, and he found himself in a pocket or a circular amphitheater which he could see was closed on the further side. The bottom of this enclosure or valley was covered with pines, now drooping under tremendous burdens of snow. In the midst of the pines a lakelet was frozen solid, the ice was covered with the same dazzling carpet of white. He could have seen nothing of this had not the sudden storm now stopped as precipitately almost as it had begun. Indeed, accustomed to the grayness of the snowfall, his eyes were fairly dazzled by the bright light of the sun, now quite high over the range, which struck him full in the face. He stopped, panting, exhausted, and leaned against the rocky wall of the cañon's mouth which, here rose sheer over his head. This certainly was the end of the trail, the lake was the source of the frozen rivulet along whose rocky and torn banks he had tramped since dawn. Here if anywhere he would find the object of his quest. Refreshed by the brief pause and encouraged by the sudden stilling of the storm, he stepped out of the cañon and ascended a little knoll whence he had a full view of the pocket over the tops of the pines. Shading his eyes from the light with his hand as best he could, he slowly swept the circumference with his eager glance, seeing nothing until his eye fell upon a huge broken trail of rocks projecting from the snow, indicating the ascent to a broad bare shelf of the mountains across the lake to the right. Following this up he saw a huge block of snow which suggested dimly the outlines of a hut! Was that the place? Was she there? He stared fascinated and as he did so a thin curl of smoke rose above the snow heap and wavered up in the cold quiet air! That was a human habitation then, it could be none other than the hut referred to in the note. Enid Maitland must be there, and Newbold! The lake lay directly in front of him beyond the trees at the foot of the knoll and between him and the slope that led up to the hut. If it had been summer, he would have been compelled to follow the water's edge to the right or to the left, both journeys would have led over difficult trails with little to choose between them, but the lake was now frozen hard and covered with snow. He had no doubt that the snow would bear him, but to make sure he drew his snow shoes from his shoulder, slipped his feet in the straps, and sped straight on through the trees and then across the lake like an arrow from a bow. In five minutes he was at the foot of the giant stairs. Kicking off his snow shoes he scrambled up the broken way, easily finding in the snow a trail which had evidently been passed and repassed daily. In a few moments he was at the top of the shelf. A hard trampled path ran between high walls of snow to a door! Behind that door what would he find? Just what he brought to it, love and hate he fancied. We usually find on the other side of doors no more and no less than we bring to our own sides. But whatever it might be, there was no hesitation in Armstrong's course. He ran toward it, laid his hand on the latch and opened it. What creatures of habit we are! Early in that same morning, after one vain attempt again to influence the woman who was now the deciding and determining factor and who seemed to be taking the man's place, Newbold, ready for his journey, had torn himself away from her presence and had plunged down the giant stair. He had done everything that mortal man could do for her comfort; wood enough to last her for two weeks had been taken from the cave and piled in the kitchen and elsewhere so as to be easily accessible to her, the stores she already had the run of and he had fitted a stout bar to the outer door which would render it impregnable to any attack that might be made against it, although he saw no quarter from which any assault impended. Enid had recovered not only her strength but a good deal of her nerve. That she loved this man and that he loved her had given her courage. She would be fearfully lonely of course, but not so much afraid as before. The month of immunity in the mountains without any interruption had dissipated any possible apprehensions on her part. It was with a sinking heart however that she saw him go at last. They had been so much together in that month they had learned what love was. When he came back it would be different, he would not come alone. The first human being he met would bring the world to the door of the lonely but beloved cabin in the mountains--the world with its questions, its inferences, its suspicions, its denunciations and its accusations! Some kind of an explanation would have to be made, some sort of an answer would have to be given, some solution of the problem would have to be arrived at. What these would be she could not tell. Newbold's departure was like the end of an era to her. The curtain dropped, when it rose again what was to be expected? There was no comfort except in the thought that she loved him. So long as their affections matched and ran together nothing else mattered. With the solution of it all next to her sadly beating heart she was still supremely confident that Love, or God--and there was not so much difference between them as to make it worth while to mention the One rather than the Other--would find the way. Their leave taking had been singularly cold and abrupt. She had realized the danger he was apt to incur and she had exacted a reluctant promise from him that he would be careful. "Don't throw your life away, don't risk it even, remember that it is mine," she had urged. And just as simply as she had enjoined it upon him he had promised. He had given his word that he would not send help back to her but that he would bring it back, and she had confidence in that word. A confidence that had he been inclined to break his promise would have made it absolutely impossible. There had been a long clasp of the hands, a long look in the eyes, a long breath in the breast, a long throb in the heart and then--farewell. They dared no more. Once before he had left her and she had stood upon the plateau and followed his vanishing figure with anxious troubled thought until it had been lost in the depths of the forest below. She had controlled herself in this second parting for his sake as well as her own. Under the ashes of his grim repression she realized the presence of live coals which a breath would have fanned into flame. She dared nothing while he was there, but when he shut the door behind him the necessity for self-control was removed. She had laid her arms on the table and bowed her head upon them and shook and quivered with emotions unrelieved by a single tear--weeping was for lighter hearts and less severe demands! His position after all was the easier of the two. As of old it was the man who went forth to the battle field while the woman could only wait passively the issue of the fight. Although he was half blinded with emotion he had to give some thought to his progress, and there was yet one task to be done before he could set forth upon his journey toward civilization and rescue. It was fortunate, as it turned out, that this obligation detained him. He was that type of a merciful man whose mercies extended to his beasts. The poor little burros must be attended to and their safety assured so far as it could be, for it would be impossible for Enid Maitland to care for them. Indeed he had already exacted a promise from her that she would not leave the plateau and risk her life on the icy stairs with which she was so unfamiliar. He had gone to the corral and shaken down food enough for them which if it had been doled out to them day by day would have lasted longer than the week he intended to be absent; of course he realized that they would eat it up in half that time, but even so they would probably suffer not too great discomfort before he got back. All these preparations took some little time. It had grown somewhat late in the morning before he started. There had been a fierce storm raging when he first looked out and at her earnest solicitation he had delayed his departure until it had subsided. His tasks at the corral were at last completed; he had done what he could for them both, nothing now remained but to make the quickest and safest way to the settlement. Shouldering the pack containing his ax and gun and sleeping bag and such provisions as would serve to tide him over until he reached human habitations, he set forth. He did not look up to the hut; indeed, he could not have seen it for the corral was almost directly beneath it; but if it had been in full view he would not have looked back, he could not trust himself to; every instinct, every impulse in his soul would fain drag him back to that hut and to the woman. It was only his will and, did he but know it, her will that made him carry out his purpose. He would have saved perhaps half a mile on his journey if he had gone straight across the lake to the mouth of the cañon. We are creatures of habit. He had always gone around the lake on the familiar trail and unconsciously he followed that trail that morning. He was thinking of her as he plodded on in a mechanical way over the trail which followed the border of the lake for a time, plunged into the woods, wound among the pines and at last reached that narrow rift in the encircling wall through which the river flowed. He had passed along the white way oblivious to all his surroundings, but as he came to the entrance he could not fail to notice what he suddenly saw in the snow. Robinson Crusoe when he discovered the famous footprint of Man Friday in the sand was not more astonished at what met his vision than Newbold on that winter morning. For there, in the virgin whiteness, were the tracks of a man! He stopped dead with a sudden contraction of the heart. Humanity other than he and she in that wilderness? It could not be! For a moment he doubted the evidence of his own senses. He shook his pack loose from his shoulders and bent down to examine the tracks to read if he could their indications. He could see that some one had come up the cañon, that someone had leaned against the wall, that someone had gone on. Where had he gone? To follow the new trail was child's play for him. He ran by the side of it until he reached the knoll. The stranger had stopped again, he had shifted from one foot to another, evidently he had been looking about him seeking someone, only Enid Maitland of course. The trail ran forward to the edge of the frozen lake, there the man had put on his snow shoes, there he had sped across the lake like an arrow and like an arrow himself, although he had left behind his own snow shoes, Newbold ran upon his track. Fortunately the snow crest upbore him. The trail ran straight to the foot of the rocky stairs. The newcomer had easily found his way there. With beating heart and throbbing pulse, Newbold himself bounded up the acclivity after the stranger, marking as he did so evidences of the other's prior ascent. Reaching the top like him he ran down the narrow path and in his turn laid his hand upon the door. He was not mistaken, he heard voices within. He listened a second and then flung it open, and as the other had done, he entered. Way back on the trail, old Kirkby and Robert Maitland, the storm having ceased, were rapidly climbing up the cañon. Fate was bringing all the actors of the little drama within the shadow of her hand. CHAPTER XXIII THE ODDS AGAINST HIM The noise of the opening of the door and the in-rush of cold air that followed awoke Enid Maitland to instant action. She rose to her feet and faced the entrance through which she expected Newbold to reappear--for of course the newcomer must be he--and for the life of her she could not help that radiating flash of joy at that momentary anticipation which fairly transfigured her being; although if she had stopped to reflect she would have remembered that not in the whole course of their acquaintance had Newbold ever entered her room at any time without knocking and receiving permission. Some of that joy yet lingered in her lovely face when she tardily recognized the newcomer in the half light. Armstrong, scarcely waiting to close the door, sprang forward joyfully with his hands outstretched. "Enid!" he cried. Naturally he thought the look of expectant happiness he had surprised upon her face was for him and he accounted for its sudden disappearance by the shock of his unexpected, unannounced, abrupt, entrance. The warm color had flushed her face, but as she stared at him her aspect rapidly changed. She grew paler. The happy light that had shone in her eyes faded away and as he approached her she shrank back. "You!" she exclaimed almost in terror. "Yes," he answered smilingly, "I have found you at last. Thank God you are safe and well. Oh, if you could only know the agonies I have gone through. I thought I loved you when I left you six weeks ago, but now--" In eager impetuosity he drew nearer to her. Another moment and he would have taken her in his arms, but she would have none of him. "Stop," she said with a cold and inflexible sternness that gave pause even to his buoyant joyful assurance. "Why, what's the matter?" "The matter? Everything, but--" "No evasions, please," continued the man still cheerfully but with a growing misgiving. His suspicions in abeyance for the moment because of his joy at seeing her alive and well arose with renewed force. "I left you practically pledged to me," he resumed. "Not so fast," answered Enid Maitland, determined to combat the slightest attempt to establish a binding claim upon her. "Isn't it true?" asked Armstrong. "Here, wait," he said before she could answer, "I am half frozen, I have been searching for you since early morning in the storm." He unbuttoned and unbelted his huge fur coat as he spoke and threw it carelessly on the floor by his Winchester leaning against the wall. "Now," he resumed, "I can talk better." "You must have something to eat then," said the girl. She was glad of the interruption since she was playing for time. She did not quite know how the interview would end, he had come upon her so unexpectedly and she had never formulated how she should say to him that which she felt she must say. She must have time to think, to collect herself, which he on his part was quite willing to give her, for he was not much better prepared for the interview than she. He really was hungry and tired; his early journey had been foolhardy and in the highest degree dangerous. The violence of his admiration for her, added to the excitement of her presence and the probable nearness of Newbold as to whose whereabouts he wondered, were not conducive to rapid recuperation. It would be comfort to him also to have food and time. "Sit down," she said. "I shall be back in a moment." The fire of the morning was still burning in the stove in the kitchen; to heat a can of soup, to make him some buttered toast and hot coffee were the tasks of a few moments. She brought them back to him, set them on the table before him and bade him fall to. "By Jove," exclaimed the man after a little time as he began to eat hastily but with great relish what she had prepared, while she stood over him watching him silently, "this is cozy. A warm, comfortable room, something to eat served by the finest woman in the world, the prettiest girl on earth to look at--what more could a man desire? This is the way it's going to be always in the future." "You have no warrant whatever for saying or hoping that," answered the girl slowly but decisively. "Have I not?" asked the man quickly. "Did you not say to me a little while ago that you liked me better than any man you had ever met and that I might win you if I could? Well, I can, and what's more I will in spite of yourself." He laughed. "Why, the memory of that kiss I stole from you makes me mad." He pushed away the things before him and rose to his feet once more. "Come, give me another," he said; "it isn't in the power of woman to stand out against a love like mine." "Isn't it?" "No, indeed." "Louise Newbold did," she answered very quietly, but with the swiftness and the dexterity of a sword thrust by a master hand, a mighty arm. Armstrong stared at her in open-mouthed astonishment. "What do you know about Louise Rosser or Newbold?" he asked at last. "All that I want to know." "And did that damned hound tell you?" "If you mean Mr. Newbold, he never mentioned your name, he does not know you exist." "Where is he now?" thundered the man. "Have no fear," answered the woman calmly, "he has gone to the settlements to tell them I am safe and to seek help to get me out of the mountains." "Fear!" exclaimed Armstrong, proudly, "I fear nothing on earth. For years, ever since I heard his name in fact, I have longed to meet him. I want to know who told you about that woman, Kirkby?" "He never mentioned your name in connection with her." "But you must have heard it somewhere," cried the man thoroughly bewildered. "The birds of the air didn't tell it to you, did they?" "She told me herself," answered Enid Maitland. "She told you! Why, she's been dead in her grave five years, shot to death by that murderous dog of a husband of hers." "A word with you, Mr. Armstrong," said the woman with great spirit. "You can't talk that way about Mr. Newbold; he saved my life twice over, from a bear and then in the cloud burst which caught me in the cañon." "That evens up a little," said Armstrong. "Perhaps for your sake I will spare him." "You!" laughed the woman contemptuously. "Spare him! Be advised, look to yourself; if he ever finds out what I know, I don't believe any power on earth could save you." "Oh," said Armstrong carelessly enough, although he was consumed with hate and jealousy and raging against her clearly evident disdain, "I can take care of myself, I guess. Anyway, I only want to talk about you, not about him or her. Your father--" "Is he well?" "Well enough, but heart-broken, crushed. I happened to be in his house in Philadelphia when the telegram came from your uncle that you were lost and probably dead. I had just asked him for your hand," he added, smiling grimly at the recollection. "You had no right to do that." "I know that." "It was not, it is not, his to give." "Still, when I won you I thought it would be pleasant all around if he knew and approved." "And did he?" "Not then, he literally drove me out of the house; but afterward he said if I could find you I could have you; and I have found you and I will have you whether you like it or not." "Never," said the woman decisively. The situation had got on Armstrong's nerves, and he must perforce show himself in his true colors. His only resources were his strength, not of mind but of body. He made another most damaging mistake at this juncture. "We are alone here, and I am master, remember," he said meaningly. "Come, let's make it up. Give me a kiss for my pains and--" "I have been alone here for a month with another man," answered Enid Maitland, who was strangely unafraid in spite of his threat. "A gentleman, he has never so much as offered to touch my hand without my permission; the contrast is quite to your disadvantage." "Are you jealous of Louise Rosser?" asked Armstrong, suddenly seeing that he was losing ground and casting about desperately to account for it, and to recover what was escaping him. "Why, that was nothing, a mere boy and girl affair," he ran on with specious good humor, as if it were all a trifle. "The woman was, I hate to say it, just crazy in love with me, but I really never cared anything especially for her, it was just a harmless sort of flirtation anyway. She afterward married this man Newbold and that's all there was about it." The truth would not serve him and in his desperation and desire he staked everything on this astounding lie. The woman he loved looked at him with her face as rigid as a mask. "You won't hold that against me, will you?" pleaded the man. "I told you that I'd been a man among men, yes among women, too, here in this rough country and that I wasn't worthy of you; there are lots of things in my past that I ought to be ashamed of and I am, and the more I see you the more ashamed I grow, but as for loving any one else all that I've ever thought or felt or experienced before now is just nothing." And this indeed was true, and even Enid Maitland with all her prejudice could realize and understand it. Out of the same mouth, it was said of old, proceeded blessing and cursing, and from these same lips came truth and falsehood; but the power of the truth to influence this woman was as nothing to the power of falsehood. She could never have loved him, she now knew; a better man had won her affections, a nobler being claimed her heart; but if Armstrong had told the truth regarding his relationship to Newbold's wife and then had completed it with his passionate avowal of his present love for her, she would have at least admired him and respected him. "You have not told me the truth," she answered directly, "you have deliberately been false." "Can't you see," protested the man, drawing nearer to her, "how much I love you?" "Oh, that, yes I suppose that is true; so far as you can love anyone I will admit that you do love me." "So far as I can love anyone?" he repeated after her. "Give me a chance and I'll show you." "But you haven't told the truth about Mrs. Newbold. You have calumniated the dead, you have sought to shelter yourself by throwing the burden of a guilty passion upon the weaker vessel, it isn't man-like, it isn't--" Armstrong was a bold fighter, quick and prompt in his decisions. He made another effort to set himself right. He staked his all on another throw of the dice, which he began to feel were somehow loaded against him. "You are right," he admitted, wondering anxiously how much the woman really knew. "It wasn't true, it was a coward's act, I am ashamed of it. I'm so mad with love for you that I scarcely know what I am doing, but I will make a clean breast of it now. I loved Louise Rosser after a fashion before ever Newbold came on the scene. We were pledged to each other, a foolish quarrel arose, she was jealous of other girls--" "And had she no right to be?" "Oh, I suppose so. We broke it off anyway, and then she married Newbold, out of pique, I suppose, or what you will. I thought I was heart-broken at the time, it did hit me pretty hard; it was five or six years ago, I was a youngster then, I am a man now. The woman has been dead long since. There was some cock-and-bull story about her falling off a cliff and her husband being compelled to shoot her. I didn't half believe it at the time and naturally I have been waiting to get even with him. I have been hating him for five years, but he has been good to you and we will let bygones be bygones. What do I care for Louise Rosser, or for him, or for what he did to her, now? I am sorry that I said what I did, but you will have to charge it to my blinding passion for you. I can truthfully say that you are the one woman that I have ever craved with all my heart. I will do anything, be anything, to win you." It was very brilliantly done, he had not told a single untruth, he had admitted much, but he had withheld the essentials after all. He was playing against desperate odds, he had no knowledge of how much she knew, or where she had learned anything. Everyone about the mining camp where she had lived had known of his love for Louise Rosser, but he had not supposed there was a single human soul who had been privy to its later developments, and he could not figure out any way by which Enid Maitland could have learned by any possibility any more of the story than he had told her. He had calculated swiftly and with the utmost nicety, just how much he should confess. He was a keen witted, clever man and he was fighting for what he held most dear, but his eagerness and zeal, as they have often done, overrode his judgment, and he made another mistake at this juncture. His evil genius was at his elbow. "You must remember," he continued, "that you have been alone here in these mountains with a man for over a month; the world--" "What, what do you mean?" exclaimed the girl, who indeed knew very well what he meant, but who would not admit the possibility. "It's not every man," he added, blindly rushing to his doom, "that would care for you or want you--after that." He received a sudden and terrible enlightenment. "You coward," she cried, with upraised hand, whether in protest or to strike him neither ever knew, for at that moment the door opened the second time that morning to admit another man. CHAPTER XXIV THE LAST RESORT OF KINGS AND MEN The sudden entrant upon a quarrel between others is invariably at a disadvantage. Usually he is unaware of the cause of difference and generally he has no idea of the stage of development of the affair that has been reached. Newbold suffered from this lack of knowledge and to these disadvantages were added others. For instance, he had not the faintest idea as to who or what was the stranger. The room was not very light in the day time, Armstrong happened to be standing with his back to it at some distance from the window by the side of which Enid stood. Six years naturally and inevitably make some difference in a man's appearance and it is not to be wondered that at first Newbold did not recognize the man before him as the original of the face in his wife's locket, although he had studied that face over and over again. A nearer scrutiny, a longer study would have enlightened him of course, but for the present he saw nothing but a stranger visibly perturbed on one side and the woman he loved apparently fiercely resentful, sternly indignant, confronting the other with an upraised hand. The man, whoever he was, had affronted her, had aroused her indignation, perhaps had insulted her, that was plain. He went swiftly to her side, he interposed himself between her and the man. "Enid," he asked, and his easy use of the name was a revelation and an illumination to Armstrong, "who is this man, what has he done?" It was Armstrong who replied. If Newbold were in the dark, not so he; although they had never spoken, he had seen Newbold. He recognized him instantly, indeed recognized or not the newcomer could be no other than he. There was doubtless no other man in the mountains. He had expected to find him when he approached the hut and was ready for him. To the fire of his ancient hatred and jealousy was added a new fuel that increased its heat and flame. This man had come between Armstrong and the woman he loved before and had got away unscathed, evidently he had come between him and this new woman he loved. Well, he should be made to suffer for it this time and by Armstrong's own hands. The instant Newbold had entered the room Armstrong had thirsted to leap upon him and he meant to do it. One or the other of them, he swore in his heart, should never leave that room alive. But Newbold should have his chance. Armstrong was as brave, as fearless, as intrepid, as any man on earth. There was much that was admirable in his character; he would not take any man at a disadvantage in an encounter such as he proposed. He would not hesitate to rob a man of his wife if he could and he would not shrink from any deceit necessary to gain his purpose with a woman, for good or evil, but he had his own ideas of honor, he would not shoot an enemy in the back for instance. Singular perversion, this, to which some minds are liable! To take from a man his wife by subtle and underhand methods, to rob him of that which makes life dear and sweet--there was nothing dishonorable in that! But to take his life, a thing of infinitely less moment, by the same process--that was not to be thought of. In Armstrong's code it was right, it was imperative, to confront a man with the truth and take the consequences; but to confront a woman with a lie and take her body and soul, if so be she might be gained, was equally admirable. And there are other souls than Armstrong's in which this moral inconsistency and obliquity about men and women has lodgment. Armstrong confronted Newbold therefore, lustful of battle; he yearned to leap upon him, his fingers itched to grasp him, then trembled slightly as he rubbed them nervously against his thumbs; his face protruded a little, his eyes narrowed. "My name is Armstrong," he said, determined to precipitate the issue without further delay and flinging the words at the other in a tone of hectoring defiance which, however, strange to say, did not seem to affect Newbold in exactly the degree he had anticipated. Yet the name was an illumination to Newbold, though not at all in the way the speaker had fancied; the recollection of it was the one fact concerning the woman he loved that rankled in the solitary's mind. He had often wanted to ask Enid Maitland what she had meant by that chance allusion to Armstrong which she had made in the beginning of their acquaintance, but he had refrained. At first he had no right to question her, there could be no natural end to their affections; and latterly when their hearts had been disclosed to each other in the wild, tempestuous, passionate scenes of the last two or three days, he had had things of greater moment to engage his attention, subjects of more importance to discuss with her. He had for the time being forgotten Armstrong and he had not before known what jealousy was until he had entered that room. To have seen her with any man would have given him acute pain, perhaps just because he had been so long withdrawn from human society, but to see her with this man who flashed instantly into his recollection upon the utterance of his name was an added exasperation. Newbold turned to the woman, to whom indeed he had addressed his question in the first place, and there was something in his movement which bespoke a galling, almost contemptuous, obliviousness to the presence of the other man which was indeed hard for him to bear. Hate begets hate. He was quite conscious of Armstrong's antagonism, which was entirely undisguised and open and which was growing greater with every passing moment. The score against Newbold was running up in the mind of his visitor. "Ah," coolly said the owner of the cabin to the latest of his two guests, "I do remember Miss Maitland did mention your name the first day she spent here. Is he a--a friend of yours?" he asked of the woman. "Not now," answered Enid Maitland. She too was in a strange state of perturbation on account of the dilemma in which she found herself involved. She was determined not to betray the unconscious confidence of the dead. She hoped fervently that Newbold would not recognize Armstrong as the man of the locket, but if he did she was resolute that he should not also be recognized as the man of the letters, at least not by her act. Newbold was ignorant of the existence of those letters and she did not intend that he should be enlightened so far as she could prevent it. But she was keen enough to see that the first recognition would be inevitable; she even admitted the fact that Armstrong would probably precipitate it himself. Well, no human soul, not even their writer, knew that she had the letters except old Kirkby and he was far away. She wished that she had destroyed them; she had determined to do so at the first convenient opportunity. Before that, however, she intended to show them not to Newbold but to Armstrong, to disclose his perfidy, to convict him of the falsehood he had told her and to justify herself even in his eyes for the action she had taken. Mingled with all these quick reflections was a deadly fear. She was quick to perceive the hatred Armstrong cherished against Newbold on the one hand because of the old love affair, the long standing grudge breaking into sudden life; on the other because of her own failure to come to Armstrong's hand and her love for Newbold which she had no desire to conceal. The cumulation of all these passionate antagonisms would only make him the more desperate, she knew. Whether or not Newbold found out Armstrong's connection with his past love there was sufficient provocation in the present to evoke all the oppugnation and resentment of his nature. Enid felt as she might if the puncheons of the floor had been sticks of dynamite with active detonators in every heel that pressed them; as if the slightest movement on the part of anyone would bring about an explosion. The tensity of the situation was bewildering to her. It had come upon her with such startling force; the unexpected arrival of Armstrong, of all the men on earth the one who ought not to be there, and then the equally startling arrival of Newbold, of whom perhaps the same might have been said. If Newbold had only gone on, if he had not come back, if she had been rescued by her uncle or old Kirkby--But "ifs" were idle, she had to face a present situation to which she was utterly unequal. She had entirely repudiated Armstrong, that was one sure point; she knew how guilty he had been toward Newbold's wife, that was another; she realized how he had deceived her, that was the third. These eliminated the man from her affections. But it is one thing to thrust a man out of your heart and another to thrust him out of your life; he was still there. And by no means the sport of blind fate, Armstrong intended to have something to say as to the course of events, to use his own powers to determine the issue. Of but one thing besides her hatred for Armstrong was Enid Maitland absolutely certain; she would never disclose to the man she loved the fact that the woman, the memory of whose supposed passion he cherished, had been unfaithful to him in heart if not in deed. Nothing could wrest that secret from her. She had been infected by Newbold's quixotic ideas, the contagion of his perversion of common sense had fastened itself upon her. She would not have been human either if she had not experienced a thrill of pride and joy at the possibility that in some way, of which she yet swore she would not be the instrument blind or otherwise, the facts might be disclosed which would enable Newbold to claim her openly and honorably, without hesitation before or remorse after, as his wife. This fascinating flash of expectant hopeful feeling she thought unworthy of her and strove to fight it down, but with manifest impossibility. It has taken time to set these things down; to speak or to write is a slow process and the ratio between outward expressions and inward is as great as that between light and sound. Questions and answers between these three followed as swiftly as thrust and parry between accomplished swordsmen, and yet between each demand and reply they had time to entertain these swift thoughts--as the drowning compass life experiences in seconds! "I may not be her friend," said Armstrong steadily, "but she left me in these mountains a month ago with more than a half way promise to marry me, and I have sought her through the snows to claim the fulfillment." "You never told me that," exclaimed Newbold sternly and again addressing the woman rather than the man. "There was nothing to tell," she answered quickly. "I was a young girl, heart free. I liked this man, perhaps because he was so different from those to whom I had been accustomed and when he pressed his suit upon me, I told him the truth. I did not love him, I did not know whether I might grow to care for him or not; if I did, I should marry him and if I did not no power on earth could make me. And now--I hate him!" She flung the hard and bitter words at him savagely. Armstrong was beside himself with fury at her remark, and Newbold's cool indifference to him personally was unendurable. In battle such as he waged he had the mistaken idea that anything was fair. He could not really tell whether it was love of woman or hate of man that was most dominant; he saw at once the state of affairs between the two. He could hurt the man and the woman with one statement; what might be its ulterior effect he did not stop to consider; perhaps if he had he would not have cared greatly then. He realized anyway that since Newbold's arrival his chance with Enid was gone; perhaps whether Newbold were alive or dead it was gone forever, although Armstrong did not think that, he was not capable of thinking very far into the future in his then condition, the present bulked too large for that. "I did not think after that kiss in the road that you would go back on me this way, Enid," he said quickly. "The kiss in the road!" cried Newbold, staring again at the woman. "You coward," repeated she, with one swift envenomed glance at the other man and then she turned to her lover. She laid her hand upon his arm, she lifted her face up to him. "As God is my judge," she cried, her voice rising with the tragic intensity of the moment and thrilling with indignant protest, "he took it from me like the thief and the coward he was and he tells it now like the liar he is. We were riding side by side, I was utterly unsuspicious, I thought him a gentleman, he caught me and kissed me before I knew it, I drove him from me. That's all." "I believe you," said Newbold gently, and then, for the second time, he addressed himself to Armstrong. "You came doubtless to rescue Miss Maitland, and in so far your purpose was admirable and you deserve thanks and respect, but no further. This is my cabin, your words and your conduct render you unwelcome here. Miss Maitland is under my protection, if you will come outside I will be glad to talk with you further." "Under your protection?" sneered Armstrong, completely beside himself. "After a month with you alone I take it she needs no further protection." Newbold did not leap upon the man for that mordant insult to the woman, his approach was slow, relentless, terrible. Eight or ten feet separated them. Armstrong met him half way, his impetuosity was the greater, he sprang forward, turned about, faced the full light from the narrow window. "Well," he cried, "have you got anything to say or do about it?" For Newbold had stopped, appalled. He stood staring as if petrified; recognition, recollection rushed over him. Now and at last he knew the man. The face that confronted him was the same face that had stared out at him from the locket he had taken from the bruised breast of his dead wife, which had been a mystery to him for all these years. "Well," tauntingly asked Armstrong again, "what are you waiting for, are you afraid?" From Newbold's belt depended a holster and a heavy revolver. As Armstrong made to attack him he flashed it out with astonishing quickness and presented it. The newcomer was unarmed, his Winchester leaned against the wall by his fur coat and he had no pistol. "If you move a step forward or backward," said Newbold with deadly calm, "I will kill you without mercy." "So you'd take advantage of a weaponless man, would you?" sneered Armstrong. "Oh, for God's sake," cried the woman, "don't kill him." "You both misjudge me," was the answer. "I shall take no advantage of this man. I would disdain to do so if it were necessary, but before the last resort I must have speech with him, and this is the only way in which I can keep him quiet for a moment, if as I suspect, his hate measures with mine." "You have the advantage," protested Armstrong. "Say your say and get it over with. I've waited all these years for a chance to kill you and my patience is exhausted." Still keeping the other covered, Newbold stepped over to the table, pulled out the drawer and drew from it the locket. Enid remembered she had hastily thrust it there when he had handed it to her and there it had lain unnoted and forgotten. It was quite evident to her what was toward now. Newbold had recognized the other man, explanations were inevitable. With his left hand Newbold sought the catch of the locket and pressed the spring. In two steps he faced Armstrong with the open locket thrust toward him. "Your picture?" he asked. "Mine." "Do you know the locket?" "I gave it to a woman named Louise Rosser five or six years ago." "My wife." "Yes, she was crazy in love with me but--" With diabolic malice Armstrong left the sentence uncompleted. The inference he meant should be drawn from his reticence was obvious. "I took it from her dead body," gritted out Newbold. "She was beside herself with love for me, an old affair, you know," said Armstrong more explicitly, thinking to use a spear with a double barb to pierce the woman's and the man's heart alike. That he defamed the dead was of no moment then. "She wanted to leave you," he ran on glibly, "she wanted me to take her back and--" "Untrue," burst forth from Enid Maitland's lips. "A slanderous, dastardly, cowardly untruth." But the men paid no attention to her in their excitement, perhaps they did not even hear her. Newbold thrust his pistol violently forward. "Would you murder me as you murdered the woman?" gibed Armstrong in bitter taunt. Then Enid Maitland found it in her heart to urge Newbold to kill him where he stood, but she had no time if she could have carried out her design, for Newbold flung the weapon from him and the next moment the two men leaped upon each other, straining, struggling, clawing, battling like savage beasts, each seeking to clasp his fingers around the throat of the other and then twist and crush until life was gone. Saying nothing, fighting in a grim silence that was terrible, they reeled crashing about the little room. No two men on earth could have been better matched, yet Newbold had a slight advantage in height and strength, as he had also the advantage in simple life and splendid condition. Armstrong's hate and fierce temper counterbalanced these at first and with arms locked and legs twined, with teeth clenched and eyes blinded and pulses throbbing and hearts beating, they strove together. The woman shrank back against the wall and stared frightened. She feared for her lover, she feared for herself. Strange primitive feelings throbbed in her veins. It was an old situation, when two male animals fought for supremacy and the ownership of a female, whose destiny was entirely removed from her own hands. Armstrong had shown himself in his true colors at last. She would have nothing to hope from him if he were the victor and she even wondered in terror what might happen to her if the man she loved triumphed after the passions aroused in such a battle. She grew sick and giddy, her bosom rose and fell, her breath came fast as she followed the panting, struggling, clinging, grinding figures about the room. At first there had been no advantage to either, but now after five minutes--or was it hours?--of fierce fighting, the strength and superior condition of her lover began to tell. He was forcing the other backward. Slowly, inch by inch, foot by foot, step by step, he mastered him. The two intertwining figures were broadside to her now, she could see their faces inflamed by the lust of the battle, engorged, blood red with hate and fury. There was a look of exultation in one and the shadow of approaching disaster in the other. But the consciousness that he was being mastered ever so little only increased Armstrong's determination and he fought back with the frenzy, the strength of a maddened gorilla, and again for a space the issue was in doubt. But not for long. The table, a heavy, cumbersome, four-legged affair, solid almost as a rock, stood in the way. Newbold at last backed Armstrong up against it and by superhuman effort bent him over it, held him with one arm and using the table as a support, wrenched his left hand free, and sunk his fingers around the other's throat. It was all up with Armstrong. It was only a question of time now. [Illustration: It was all up with Armstrong] "Now," Newbold guttered out hoarsely, "you slandered the dead woman I married, and you insulted the living one I love. Take back what you said before you die." "I forgive him," cried Enid Maitland. "Oh, don't kill him before my eyes." Armstrong was past speech. The inveteracy of his hatred could be seen even in his fast glazing eyes, the indomitableness of his purpose yet spoke in the negative shake of his head. He could die, but he would die in his hate and in his purpose. Enid ran to the two, she grappled Newbold's arm with both her own and strove with all her might to tear it away from the other's throat. Her lover paid no more attention to her than if a summer breeze had touched him. Armstrong grew black in the face, his limbs relaxed, another second or two and it would have been over with him. Once more the door was thrown open, through it two snow covered men entered. One swift glance told them all, one of them at least had expected it. On the one side Kirkby, on the other Maitland, tore Newbold away from his prey just in time to save Armstrong's life. Indeed the latter was so far gone that he fell from the table to the floor unconscious, choking, almost dying. It was Enid Maitland who received his head in her arms and helped bring him back to life while the panting Newbold stood staring dully at the woman he loved and the man he hated on the floor at his feet. CHAPTER XXV THE BECOMING END "Why did you interfere?" when at last he got his breath again, asked Newbold of Maitland who still held him firmly although restraint was now unnecessary, the heat and fire of his passion being somewhat gone out of him. "I meant to kill him." "He'd oughter die sure nuff," drawled old Kirkby, rising from where he had been kneeling by Armstrong's side, "but I don't know's how you're bound to be his executioner. He's all right now, Miss Enid," said the old man. "Here"--he took a pillow from the bunk and slipped it under his head and then extending his hands he lifted the excited almost distraught woman to her feet--"tain't fittin' for you to tend on him." "Oh," exclaimed Enid, her limbs trembling, the blood flowing away from her heart, her face deathly white, fighting against the faintness that came with the reaction, while old Kirkby supported and encouraged her. "I thank God you came. I don't know what would have happened if you had not." "Has this man mistreated you?" asked Robert Maitland, suddenly tightening his grip upon his hard breathing but unresisting passive prisoner. "No, no," answered his niece. "He has been everything that a man should be." "And Armstrong?" continued her uncle. "No, not even he." "I came in time, thank God!" ejaculated Newbold. By this time Armstrong had recovered consciousness. To his other causes for hatred were now added chagrin, mortification, shame. He had been overcome. He would have been a dead man and by Newbold's hands if the others had not interfered. He almost wished they had let his enemy alone. Well, he had lost everything but a chance for revenge on them all. "She has been alone here with this man in this cabin for a month," he said thickly. "I was willing to take her in spite of that, but--" "He made that damned suggestion before," cried Newbold, his rage returning. "I don't know who you are--" "My name is Robert Maitland, and I am this girl's uncle." "Well, if you were her father, I could only swear--" "It isn't necessary to swear anything," answered Maitland serenely. "I know this child. And I believe I'm beginning to find out this man." "Thank you, Uncle Robert," said Enid gratefully, coming nearer to him as she spoke. "No man could have done more for me than Mr. Newbold has, and no one could have been more considerate of me. As for you," she turned on, Armstrong, who now slowly got to his feet, "your insinuations against me are on a par with your charges against the dead woman, beneath contempt." "What did he say about her?" asked Old Kirkby. "You know my story?" asked Newbold. "Yes." "He said that my wife had been unfaithful to me--with him--and that he had refused to take her back." "And it was true," snarled Armstrong. It was all Maitland could do to check Newbold's rush, but in the end it was old Kirkby who most effectively interposed. "That's a damned lie," he said quietly with his usual drawling voice. "You can say so," laughed Armstrong, "but that doesn't alter the facts." "An' I can prove it," answered the old man triumphantly. It was coming, the secret that she had tried to conceal was about to be revealed, thought Enid. She made a movement toward the old man. She opened her mouth to bid him be silent and then stopped. It would be useless she knew. The determination was no longer hers. The direction of affairs had been withdrawn from her. After all it was better that the unloving wife should be proved faithful, even if her husband's cherished memory of her love for him had to be destroyed thereby. Helpless she listened knowing full well what the old frontiersman's next word would be. "Prove it!" mocked Armstrong. "How?" "By your own hand, out of your own mouth, you dog," thundered old Kirkby. "Miss Enid, w'ere are them letters I give you?" "I--I--" faltered the girl, but there was no escape from the keen glance of the old man, her hand went to the bosom of her tunic. "Letters!" exclaimed Armstrong. "What letters?" "These," answered Enid Maitland, holding up the packet. Armstrong reached for them but Kirkby again interposed. "No, you don't," he said dryly. "Them ain't for your eyes yit. Mr. Newbold, I found them letters on the little shelf w'ere your wife first struck w'en she fell over onto the butte w'ere she died. I figgered out her dress was tore open there an' them letters she was carryin' fell out an' lodged there. We had ropes an' we went down over the rocks that way. I went first an' I picked 'em up. I never told nobody about it an' I never showed 'em to a single human bein' until I give 'em to Miss Maitland at the camp." "Why not?" asked Newbold, taking the letters. "There wasn't no good tellin' nobody then, jest fer the sake o' stirrin' up trouble." "But why did you give them to her at last?" "Because I was afeered she might fall in love with Armstrong. I supposed she'd know his writin', but w'en she didn't I jest let her keep 'em anyway. I knowed it'd all come out somehow; there is a God above us in spite of all the damned scoundrels on earth like this un." "Are these letters addressed to my dead wife?" asked Newbold. "They are," answered Enid Maitland; "look and see." "And did Mr. Armstrong write them?" "He'll deny it, I suppose," answered Kirkby. "But I am familiar with his handwriting," said Maitland. Taking the still unopened packet from Newbold he opened it, examined one of the letters and handed them all back. "There is no doubt about it," he said. "It's Armstrong's hand, I'll swear to it." "Oh, I'll acknowledge them," said Armstrong, seeing the absolute futility of further denial. He had forgotten all about the letters. He had not dreamed they were in existence. "You've got me beat between you, the cards are stacked against me, I've done my damndest--" and indeed that was true. Well, he had played a great game, battling for a high stake he had stuck at nothing. A career in which some good had mingled with much bad was now at an end. He had lost utterly, would he show himself a good loser? "Mr. Armstrong," said Newbold, quietly extending his hand, "here are your letters." "What do you mean?" "I am not in the habit of reading letters addressed to other people without permission and when the recipient of them is dead long since, I am doubly bound." "You're a damned fool," cried Armstrong contemptuously. "That kind of a charge from your kind of a man is perhaps the highest compliment you could pay me. I don't know whether I shall ever get rid of the doubt you have tried to lodge in my soul about my dead wife, but--" "There ain't no doubt about it," protested old Kirkby earnestly. "I've read them letters a hundred times over, havin' no scruples whatsomever, an' in every one of 'em he was beggin' an' pleadin' with her to go away with him an' fightin' her refusal to do it. I guess I've got to admit that she didn't love you none, Newbold, an' she did love this here wuthless Armstrong, but for the sake of her reputation I'll prove to you all from them letters of hisn, from his own words, that there didn't live a cleaner hearted, more virtuous, upright feemale than that there wife of yourn, even if she didn't love you. It's God's truth an' you kin take it from me." "Mr. Armstrong," cried Enid Maitland, interposing at this juncture, "not very long ago I told you I liked you better than any man I had ever seen, I thought perhaps I might have loved you, and that was true. You have played the coward's part and the liar's part in this room--" "Did I fight him like a coward?" asked Armstrong. "No," answered Newbold for her, remembering the struggle, "you fought like a man." Singular perversion of language and thought there! If two struggled like wild beasts that was fighting like men! "But let that pass," continued the woman. "I don't deny your physical courage, but I am going to appeal to another kind of a courage which I believe you possess. You have showed your evil side here in this room, but I don't believe that's the only side you have, else I couldn't even have liked you in the past. You have made a charge against two women, one dead and one living. It makes little difference what you say about me; I need no defense and no justification in the eyes of those here who love me and for the rest of the world I don't care. But you have slain this man's confidence in a woman he once loved, and whom he thought loved him. As you are a man, tell him that it was a lie and that she was innocent of anything else although she did love you." What a singular situation, an observer who knew all might have reflected? Here was Enid Maitland pleading for the good name of the woman who had married the man she now loved, and whom by rights she should have jealously hated. "You ask me more than I can," faltered Armstrong, yet greatly moved by this touching appeal to his better self. "Let him speak no word," protested Newbold quickly. "I wouldn't believe him on his oath." "Steady now, steady," interposed Kirkby with his frontier instinct for fair play. "The man's down, Newbold, don't hit him now." "Give him a chance," added Maitland earnestly. "You would not believe me, eh?" laughed Armstrong horribly; "well then this is what I say, whether it is true or a lie you can be the judge." What was he about to say? They all recognized instinctively that his forthcoming deliverance would be a final one. Would good or evil dominate him now? Enid Maitland had made her plea and it had been a powerful one; the man did truly love the woman who urged him, there was nothing left for him but a chance that she should think a little better of him than he merited, he had come to the end of his resources. And Enid Maitland spoke again as he hesitated. "Oh, think, think before you speak," she cried. "If I thought," answered Armstrong quickly, "I should go mad. Newbold, your wife was as pure as the snow. That she loved me I cannot and will not deny. She married you in a fit of jealousy and anger after a quarrel between us in which I was to blame, and when I came back to the camp in your absence I strove to make it up and used every argument that I possessed to get her to leave you and to go with me. Although she had no love for you she was too good and too true a woman for that. Now you've got the truth, damn you; believe it or not as you like. Miss Maitland," he added swiftly, "if I had met you sooner, I might have been a better man. Good-by." He turned suddenly and none preventing, indeed it was not possible, he ran to the outer door; as he did so his hand snatched something that lay on the chest of drawers. There was a flash of light as he drew in his arm but none saw what it was. In a few seconds he was outside the door. The table was between old Kirkby and the exit, Maitland and Newbold were nearest. The old man came to his senses first. "After him," he cried, "he means--" But before anybody could stir, the dull report of a pistol came through the open door! They found Armstrong lying on his back in the snowy path, his face as white as the drift that pillowed his head, Newbold's heavy revolver still clutched in his right hand and a bloody, welling smudge on his left breast over his heart. It was the woman who broke the silence. "Oh," she sobbed, "It can't be--" "Dead," said Maitland solemnly. "And it might have been by my hand," muttered Newbold to himself in horror. "He'll never cause no more trouble to nobody in this world, Miss Enid an' gents," said old Kirkby gravely. "Well, he was a damned fool an' a damned villain in some ways," continued the old frontiersman reflectively in the silence broken otherwise only by the woman's sobbing breaths, "but he had some of the qualities that go to make a man, an' I ain't doubtin' but what them last words of hisn was mighty near true. Ef he had met a gal like you earlier in his life he mought have been a different man." CHAPTER XXVI THE DRAUGHT OF JOY The great library was the prettiest room in Robert Maitland's magnificent mansion in Denver's most favored residence section. It was a long, low studded room with a heavy beamed ceiling. The low book cases, about five feet high, ran between all the windows and doors on all sides of the room. At one end there was a huge open fireplace built of rough stone, and as it was winter a cheerful fire of logs blazed on the hearth. It was a man's room preëminently. The drawing room across the hall was Mrs. Maitland's domain, but the library reflected her husband's picturesque if somewhat erratic taste. On the walls there were pictures of the west by Remington, Marchand, Dunton, Dixon and others, and to set them off finely mounted heads of bear and deer and buffalo. Swords and other arms stood here and there. The writing table was massive and the chairs easy, comfortable and inviting. The floor was strewn with robes and rugs. From the windows facing westward, since the house was set on a high hill, one could see the great rampart of the range. There were three men in the room on that brilliant morning early in January something like a month after these adventures in the mountains which have been so veraciously set forth. Two of them were the brothers Maitland, the third was Newbold. The shock produced upon Enid Maitland by the death of Armstrong, together with the tremendous episodes that had preceded it, had utterly prostrated her. They had spent the night at the hut in the mountains and had decided that the woman must be taken back to the settlements in some way at all hazards. The wit of old Kirkby had effected a solution of the problem. Using a means certainly as old as Napoleon and the passage of his cannon over the Great St. Bernard--and perhaps as old as Hannibal!--they had made a rude sled from the trunk of a pine which they hollowed out and provided with a back and runners. There was no lack of fur robes and blankets for her comfort. Wherever it was practicable the three men hitched themselves to the sled with ropes and dragged it and Enid over the snow. Of course for miles down the cañon it was impossible to use the sled. When the way was comparatively easy the woman supported by the two men, Newbold and Maitland, made shift to get along afoot. When it became too difficult for her, Newbold picked her up as he had done before and assisted by Maitland carried her bodily to the next resting place. At these times Kirkby looked after the sled. They had managed to reach the temporary hut in the old camp the first night and rested there. They gathered up their sleeping bags and tents and resumed their journey in the morning. They were strong men, and, save for old Kirkby, young. It was a desperate endeavor but they carried it through. When they hit the open trails the sledding was easy and they made great progress. After a week of terrific going they struck the railroad and the next day found them all safe in Maitland's house in Denver. To Mr. Stephen Maitland his daughter was as one who had risen from the dead. And indeed when he first saw her she looked like death itself. No one had known how terrible that journey had been to the woman. Her three faithful attendants had surmised something, but in spite of all even they did not realize that in these last days she had been sustained only by the most violent effort of her will. She had no sooner reached the house, greeted her father, her aunt and the children than she collapsed utterly. The wonder was, said the physician, not that she did it then but that she had not done it before. For a short time it appeared as if her illness might be serious, but youth, vigor, a strong body and a good constitution, a heart now free from care and apprehension and a great desire to live and love and be loved, worked wonders. Newbold had enjoyed no opportunity for private conversation with the woman he loved, which was perhaps just as well. He had the task of readjusting himself to changed conditions; not only to a different environment, but to strange and unusual departures from his long cherished view points. He could no longer doubt Armstrong's final testimony to the purity of his wife, although he had burned the letters unread, and by the same token he could no longer cherish the dream that she had loved him and him alone. Those words that had preceded that pistol shot had made it possible for him to take Enid Maitland as his wife without doing violence to his sense of honor or his self-respect. Armstrong had made that much reparation. And Newbold could not doubt that the other had known what would be the result of his speech and had chosen his words deliberately. Score that last action to his credit. He was a sensitive man, however; he realized the brutal and beastlike part he and Armstrong had both played before this woman they both loved, how they had battled like savage animals and how but for a lucky interposition he would have added murder to his other disabilities. He was honest enough to say to himself that he would have done the same thing over under the same circumstances, but that did not absolve his conscience. He did not know how the woman looked at the transaction or looked at him, for he had not enjoyed one moment alone with her to enable him to find out. They had buried Armstrong in the snow, Robert Maitland saying over him a brief but fervent petition in which even Newbold joined. Enid Maitland herself had repeated eloquently to her Uncle and old Kirkby that night before the fire the story of her rescue from the flood by this man, how he had carried her in the storm to the hut and how he had treated her since, and Maitland had afterwards repeated her account to his brother in Denver. Maitland had insisted that Newbold share his hospitality, but that young man had refused. Kirkby had a little place not far from Denver and easily accessible to it and the old man had gladly taken the younger one with him. Newbold had been in a fever of anxiety over Enid Maitland's illness, but his alarm had soon been dispelled by the physician's assurance and there was nothing now left for him but to wait until she could see him. He inquired for her morning and evening at the great house on the hill, he kept her room a bower of beauty with priceless blossoms, but he had sent no word. Robert Maitland had promised to let him know, however, so soon as Enid could see him and it was in pursuance of a telephone message that he was in the library that morning. He had not yet become accustomed to the world, he had lived so long alone that he had grown somewhat shy and retiring, the habits and customs of years were not to be lightly thrown aside in a week or a month. He had sought no interview with Enid's father heretofore, indeed had rather avoided it, but on this morning he had asked for it, and when Robert Maitland would have withdrawn he begged him to remain. "Mr. Maitland," Newbold began, "I presume that you know my unfortunate history." "I have heard the general outlines of it, sir, from my brother and others," answered the other kindly. "I need not dwell upon it further then. Although my hair is tinged with gray and doubtless I look much older, I was only twenty-eight on my last birthday. I was not born in this section of the country, my home was in Baltimore." "Do you by any chance belong to the Maryland Newbolds, sir?" "Yes, sir." "They are distantly related to a most excellent family of the same name in Philadelphia, I believe?" "I have always understood that to be the truth." "Ah, a very satisfactory connection indeed," said Stephen Maitland with no little satisfaction. "Proceed, sir." "There is nothing much else to say about myself, except that I love your daughter and with your permission I want her for my wife." Mr. Stephen Maitland had thought long and seriously over the state of affairs. He had proposed in his desperation to give Enid's hand to Armstrong if he found her. It had been impossible to keep secret the story of her adventure, her rescue and the death of Armstrong. It was natural and inevitable that gossip should have busied itself with her name. It would therefore have been somewhat difficult for Mr. Maitland to have withheld his consent to her marriage to almost any reputable man who had been thrown so intimately with her, but when the man was so unexceptionably born and bred as Newbold, what had appeared as a more or less disagreeable duty, almost an imperative imposition, became a pleasure! Mr. Maitland was no bad judge of men when his prejudices were not rampant and he looked with much satisfaction on the fine, clean limbed, clear eyed, vigorous man who was at present suing for his daughter's hand. Newbold had shaved his beard and had cropped close his mustache, he was dressed in the habits of civilization and he was almost metamorphosed. His shyness wore away as he talked and his inherited ease of manner and his birthright of good breeding came back to him and sat easily upon him. Under the circumstances the very best thing that could happen would be a marriage between the two; indeed, to be quite honest, Mr. Stephen Maitland would have felt that perhaps under any circumstances his daughter could do no better than commit herself to a man like this. "I shall never attempt," he said at last, "to constrain my daughter. I think I have learned something by my touch with this life here, perhaps we of Philadelphia need a little broadening in airs more free. I am sure that she would never give her hand without her heart, and therefore, she must decide this matter herself. From her own lips you shall have your answer." "But you, sir; I confess that I should feel easier and happier if I had your sanction and approval." "Steve," said Mr. Robert Maitland, as the other hesitated, not because he intended to refuse but because he was loath to say the word that so far as he was concerned would give his daughter into another man's keeping, "I think you can trust Newbold. There are men here who knew him years ago; there is abundant evidence and testimony as to his qualities; I vouch for him." "Robert," answered his brother, "I need no such testimony; the way in which he saved Enid, the way he comported himself during that period of isolation with her, his present bearing--in short, sir, if a father is ever glad to give away his daughter, I might say that I should be glad to entrust her to you. I believe you to be a man of honor and a gentleman, your family is almost as old as my own, as for the disparity in our fortunes, I can easily remedy that." Newbold smiled at Enid's father, but it was a pleasant smile, albeit with a trace of mockery and a trace of triumph in it. "Mr. Maitland I am more grateful to you than I can say for your consent and approval which I shall do my best to merit. I think I may claim to have won your daughter's heart, to have added to that your sanction completes my happiness. As for the disparity in our fortunes, while your generosity touches me profoundly, I hardly think that you need be under any uneasiness as to our material welfare." "What do you mean?" "I am a mining engineer, sir; I didn't live five years alone in the mountains of Colorado for nothing." "Pray explain yourself, sir." "Did you find gold in the hills?" asked Robert Maitland, quicker to understand. "The richest veins on the continent," answered Newbold. "And nobody knows anything about it?" "Not a soul." "Have you located the claims?" "Only one." "We'll go back as soon as the snow melts," said the younger Maitland, "and take them up. You are sure?" "Absolutely." "But I don't quite understand?" queried Mr. Stephen Maitland. "He means," said his brother, "that he has discovered gold." "And silver too," interposed Newbold. "In unlimited quantities," continued the other Maitland. "Your daughter will have more money than she knows what to do with, sir," smiled Newbold. "God bless me!" exclaimed the Philadelphian. "And that, whether she marries me or not, for the richest claim of all is to be taken out in her name," added her lover. Mr. Stephen Maitland shook the other by the hand vigorously. "I congratulate you," he said, "you have beaten me on all points. I must therefore regard you as the most eligible of suitors. Gold in these mountains, well, well!" "And may I see your daughter and plead my cause in person, sir?" asked Newbold. "Certainly, certainly. Robert, will you oblige me--" In compliance with his brother's gesture, Robert Maitland touched the bell and bade the answering servant ask Miss Maitland to come down to the library. "Now," said Mr. Stephen Maitland as the servant closed the door, "you and I would best leave the young people alone, eh, Robert?" "By all means," answered the younger and opening the door again the two older men went out leaving Newbold alone. He heard a soft step on the stair in the hall without, the gentle swish of a dress as somebody descended from the floor above. A vision appeared in the doorway. Without a movement in opposition, without a word of remonstrance, without a throb of hesitation on her part, he took her in his arms. From the drawing room opposite, Mr. Robert Maitland softly tiptoed across the hall and closed the library door, neither of the lovers being aware of his action. Often and often they had longed for each other on the opposite side of a door and now at last the woman was in the man's arms and no door rose between them, no barrier kept them apart any longer. There was no obligation of loyalty or honor, real or imagined, to separate them now. They had drunk deep of the chalice of courage, they had drained the cup to the very bottom, they had shown each other that though love was the greatest of passions, honor and loyalty were the most powerful of forces and now they reaped the reward of their abnegation and devotion. At last the woman gave herself up to him in complete and entire abandonment without fear and without reproach; and at last the man took what was his own without the shadow of a reservation. She shrank from no pressure of his arms, she turned her face away from no touch of his lips. They two had proved their right to surrender by their ability to conquer. Speech was hardly necessary between them and it was not for a long time that coherent words came. Little murmurs of endearment, little passionate whispers of a beloved name--these were enough then. When he could find strength to deny himself a little and to hold her at arm's length and look at her, he found her paler, thinner and more delicate than when he had seen her in the mountains. She had on some witching creation of pale blue and silver, he didn't know what it was, he didn't care, it made her only more like an angel to him than ever. She found him, too, greatly changed and highly approved the alterations in his appearance. "Why, Will," she said at last, "I never realized what a handsome man you were." He laughed at her. "I always knew you were the most beautiful woman on earth." "Oh, yes, doubtless when I was the only one." "And if there were millions you would still be the only one. But it isn't for your beauty alone that I love you. You knew all the time that my fight against loving you was based upon a misinterpretation, a mistake; you didn't tell me because you were thoughtful of a poor dead woman." "Should I have told you?" "No. I have thought it all out: I was loyal through a mistake but you wouldn't betray a dead sister, you would save her reputation in the mind of the one being that remembered her, at the expense of your own happiness. And if there were nothing else I could love you for that." "And is there anything else?" asked she who would fain be loved for other qualities. "Everything," he answered rapturously, drawing her once more to his heart. "I knew that there would be some way," answered the satisfied woman softly after a little space. "Love like ours is not born to fall short of the completest happiness. Oh, how fortunate for me was that idle impulse that turned me up the cañon instead of down, for if it had not been for that there would have been no meeting--" She stopped suddenly, her face aflame at the thought of the conditions of that meeting, she must needs hide her face on his shoulder. He laughed gayly. "My little spirit of the fountain, my love, my wife that is to be! Did you know that your father has done me the honor to give me your hand, subject to the condition that your heart goes with it?" "You took that first," answered the woman looking up at him again. There was a knock on the door. Without waiting for permission it was opened; this time three men entered, for old Kirkby had joined the group. The blushing Enid made an impulsive movement to tear herself away from Newbold's arms, but he shamelessly held her close. The three men looked at the two lovers solemnly for a moment and then broke into laughter. It was Kirkby who spoke first. "I hear as how you found gold in them mountains, Mr. Newbold." "I found something far more valuable than all the gold in Colorado in these mountains," answered the other. "And what was that?" asked the old frontiersman curiously and innocently. "This!" answered Newbold as he kissed the girl again. THE END 
38610	----	BOOKS FOR YOUNG MEN MERRIWELL SERIES Stories of Frank and Dick Merriwell PRICE FIFTEEN CENTS _Fascinating Stories of Athletics_ A half million enthusiastic followers of the Merriwell brothers will attest the unfailing interest and wholesomeness of these adventures of two lads of high ideals, who play fair with themselves, as well as with the rest of the world. These stories are rich in fun and thrills in all branches of sports and athletics. They are extremely high in moral tone, and cannot fail to be of immense benefit to every boy who reads them. They have the splendid quality of firing a boy's ambition to become a good athlete, in order that he may develop into a strong, vigorous right-thinking man. _ALL TITLES ALWAYS IN PRINT_ 1--Frank Merriwell's School Days By Burt L. Standish 2--Frank Merriwell's Chums By Burt L. Standish 3--Frank Merriwell's Foes By Burt L. Standish 4--Frank Merriwell's Trip West By Burt L. Standish 5--Frank Merriwell Down South By Burt L. 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Standish 25--Frank Merriwell's Vacation By Burt L. Standish 26--Frank Merriwell's Cruise By Burt L. Standish In order that there may be no confusion, we desire to say that the books listed below will be issued, during the respective months, in New York City and vicinity. They may not reach the readers, at a distance, promptly, on account of delays in transportation. To Be Published in January, 1922. 27--Frank Merriwell's Chase By Burt L. Standish 28--Frank Merriwell in Maine By Burt L. Standish To Be Published in February, 1922. 29--Frank Merriwell's Struggle By Burt L. Standish 30--Frank Merriwell's First Job By Burt L. Standish To Be Published in March, 1922. 31--Frank Merriwell's Opportunity By Burt L. Standish 32--Frank Merriwell's Hard Luck By Burt L. Standish To Be Published in April, 1922. 33--Frank Merriwell's Protégé By Burt L. Standish 34--Frank Merriwell on the Road By Burt L. Standish To Be Published in May, 1922. 35--Frank Merriwell's Own Company By Burt L. Standish 36--Frank Merriwell's Fame By Burt L. Standish 37--Frank Merriwell's College Chums By Burt L. Standish To Be Published in June, 1922. 38--Frank Merriwell's Problem By Burt L. Standish 39--Frank Merriwell's Fortune By Burt L. Standish FRANK MERRIWELL'S NEW COMEDIAN OR, THE RISE OF A STAR BY BURT L. STANDISH Author of the famous Merriwell Stories. STREET & SMITH CORPORATION, PUBLISHERS 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York Copyright, 1899 By STREET & SMITH Frank Merriwell's New Comedian (Printed in the United States of America) All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian. FRANK MERRIWELL'S NEW COMEDIAN CHAPTER I. "NEVER SAY DIE!" It is not a pleasant experience to wake up on a beautiful morning to the realization that one has failed. There seems a relentless irony in nature herself that the day that dawns on a night when our glittering hopes have become dead, dull ashes of despair and ruin should be bright and warm with the sun's genial rays. So Frank Merriwell felt this fine morning in Puelbo, Colorado. The night before, with high hopes, he had produced his new play, "For Old Eli." He recalled the events of that first production with almost a shudder. "For Old Eli" had been a failure, a flat, appalling, stupefying failure. From the rise of the curtain everything and everybody had gone wrong; lines were forgotten, Ephraim Gallup had had stage fright, his own best situations had been marred. How much of this was due to the lying handbills which had been scattered broadcast, asserting that he was not the real Frank Merriwell, but an impostor, a deadbeat and a thorough scoundrel, Frank could not tell. He believed that these efforts to ruin him had little effect, for when, at the close of the performance, he had made a speech from the stage, assuring the audience that he would bring his play back and give a satisfactory performance, his reception had been cordial. But the play had failed. Parker Folansbee, his backer, had acted queerly, and Frank knew that, after the company had reached Denver, the relations between him and his backer would cease. "For Old Eli" had been well-nigh ruinous, and when they got back to Denver, Merry and his friends would be without funds. Then the thought came to him of the prejudice expressed against a poor black cat he had allowed to travel with the company. He could not restrain a smile as he perceived that the superstitious members of the company would feel that the cat had hoodooed them. As if a cat could affect the fortunes of men! The thought of the cat gave a pleasant turn to his reflections, and he cheered up immensely. He had failed? No! He would not acknowledge failure, defeat, disaster. He would not lie down and abandon the struggle, for he was not built of such weak material. Where was the fault? Was it in the piece, or in the way it had been played? He realized that, although the piece was well constructed, it was not of a high, artistic character, such as must appeal by pure literary merit to the best class of theater patrons. It could not be ranked with the best productions of Pinero, Jones, Howard, Thomas, or even Clyde Fitch. He had not written it with the hope of reaching such a level. His aim had been to make a "popular" piece, such as would appeal to the masses. He fell to thinking over what had happened, and trying to understand the cause of it all. He did not lay the blame entirely on the actors. It was not long before he decided that something about his play had led the spectators to expect more than they had received. What was it they had expected? While he was thinking of this alone in his room at the hotel, Bart Hodge, his old friend and a member of his company, came in. Hodge looked disgruntled, disappointed, disgusted. He sat down on the bed without speaking. "Hello, old man," said Frank, cheerfully. "What's the matter with your face? It would sour new milk." "And you ought to have a face that would sour honey!" growled Bart. "I should if I were in your place." "What's the use? That wouldn't improve things." "If I were in your place, I'd take a gun and go forth and kill a few stiffs." "I always supposed a 'stiff' was dead. Didn't know one could be killed over again." "Oh, you can joke if you want to, but I don't see how you can feel like joking now. Anybody else would swear." "And that would be foolish." "Perhaps so; but you know, as well as I do, that your play was murdered and mangled last night." "That's so, b'gosh!" drawled a doleful voice, and Ephraim Gallup, another of the company, Frank's boy friend from Vermont, came stalking into the room, looking quite as disgusted and dejected as Hodge. "An' I'm one of the murderers!" Frank looked Ephraim over and burst out laughing. "Why," he cried, "your face is so long that you'll be hitting your toes against your chin when you walk, if you're not careful." "Whut I need is somebuddy to hit their toes against my pants jest where I set down, an' do it real hard," said Ephraim. "I wisht I'd stayed to hum on the farm when I went back there and giv up the idee that I was an actor. I kin dig 'taters an' saw wood a darn sight better'n I kin act!" "You're all right, Ephraim," assured Merry. "You had to fill that part in a hurry, and you were not sure on your lines. That worried you and broke you up. If you had been sure of your lines, so that you would have felt easy, I don't think there would have been any trouble as far as you were concerned." "I dunno abaout that. I never felt so gosh-darn scat as I did larst night. Why, I jest shook all over, an' one spell I didn't think my laigs'd hold me up till I got off ther stage. It was awful!" "You had an attack of stage fright. They say all great actors have it once in their lives." "Waal, I never want to feel that air way ag'in! An' I spoilt that scene in the dressin' room of the clubhaouse. Oh, jeewhillikins! I'm goin' aout of the show business, Frank, an' git a job paoundin' sand. It don't take no brains to do that." "Cheer up! You are going to play that same part in this play, and you'll play it well, too." "Whut? Then be yeou goin' to keep right on with the play?" asked the Vermonter, in astonishment. "No," said Merry, "I am not going to keep right on with it. I am going to put it into shape to win, and then I'm going out with it again. My motto is, 'Never say die.' You heard what I told the audience last night. I promised them that I would play in this town and would make a success. I shall keep that promise." Hodge shook his head. "You are smart, Frank, but there's a limit. I'm afraid your luck has turned. You are hoodooed." Just then a coal-black cat came out from under the bed and walked across the room. "And I suppose you think this is my hoodoo?" smiled Merry, as the cat came over and rubbed against his leg. "That's where you are away off. This cat is my mascot, and she shall travel with me till the piece wins. She has stuck to me close enough since she walked onto the stage where we were rehearsing in Denver." "The cat is not the hoodoo," said Bart, shaking his head. "I know what is." "You do?" "Sure." "Name it." "I am!" "You?" "Yes." Frank stared at Bart in surprise, and then burst out laughing. "Well, how in the world did you happen to get such a foolish notion into your head?" he cried. "It's not foolish," declared Bart, stubbornly. "It's straight, I know it, and you can't make me think differently." Frank rose and walked over to Hodge, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Now you are talking silly, old man," he said. "You never were bad luck to me in the past; why should you be now. You're blue. You are down in the mouth and your head is filled with ridiculous fancies. Things would have happened just as they have if you had not joined the company." "I don't believe it." "You always were superstitious, but I believe you are worse than ever now. You have been playing poker too much. That's what ails you. The game makes every man superstitious. He may not believe in luck at the beginning, but he will after he has stuck to that game a while. He will see all the odd things that happen with cards, and the conviction that there is such a thing as luck must grow upon him. He will become whimsical and full of notions. That's what's the matter with you, Hodge. Forget it, forget it!" "I think you are likely to forget some things altogether too early, Merriwell. For instance, some of your enemies." "What's the use to remember unpleasant things?" "They remember you. One of them did so to an extent that he helped ruin the first presentation of your play." "How?" "It isn't possible that you have forgotten the lying notices circulated all over this city, stating that you were not the real Frank Merriwell, accusing you of being a fake and a thief?" Something like a shadow settled on Merry's strong face. "No, I have not forgotten," he declared, "I remember all that, and I'd like to know just who worked the game." "It was a gol-dinged measly trick!" exploded Ephraim. "You thought it would not hurt you, Frank," said Hodge. "You fancied it would serve to advertise you, if anything. It may have advertised you, but it did you damage at the same time. When the audience saw everything was going wrong, it grew angry and became convinced that it was being defrauded. Then you had trouble with that big ruffian who climbed over the footlights with the avowed purpose of breaking up the show." "Oh, well," smiled Merry, in a peculiar way, "that fellow went right back over the footlights." "Yes, you threw him back. That quieted the audience more than anything else, for it showed that you were no slouch, even if you were a fake." "Oh, I suppose I'll find out some time just who did that little piece of advertising for me." "Perhaps so; perhaps not." Tap, tap, tap--a knock on the door. "Come!" Frank called. The door opened, and Billy Wynne, the property man, looked in. "Letter for you, Mr. Merriwell," he said. Frank took the letter, and Wynne disappeared, after being thanked for bringing it. "Excuse me," said Merry, and he tore open the envelope. A moment later, having glanced over the letter, he whistled. "News?" asked Bart. "Just a note from the gentleman we were speaking of just now," answered Frank. "It's from the party who gave me the free advertising." "Waal, I'll be kicked by a blind kaow!" exploded Gallup. "An' did he hev ther gall to write to ye?" "Yes," said Frank. "Listen to this." Then he read the letter aloud. "Mr. Frank Merriwell. "Dear Sir: By this time you must be aware that you are not the greatest thing that ever happened. You received it in the neck last night, and I aided in the good work of knocking you out, for I circulated the 'warning' notice which denounced you as an impostor, a deadbeat and a thief. The public swallowed it all, and, in disguise, I was at the theater to witness your downfall. It was even greater than I had dared hope it would be. I understand the managers in other towns have canceled with you, Folansbee has declined to back your old show any longer, and you are on the beach. Ha! ha! ha! This is revenge indeed. You are knocked out at last, and I did it. You'll never appear again as the marvelous young actor-playwright, and the name of Frank Merriwell will sink into oblivion. It is well. Yours with satisfaction, LESLIE LAWRENCE." "I knew well enough it was that dirty rascal who did the job!" cried Hodge, springing up. "The cur!" "Waal, dinged if he hadn't oughter be shot!" burst from Gallup. "An' he knows Folansbee's gone back on ye." "It's no use, Frank," said Hodge, disconsolately; "you are done for. The story is out. Folansbee has skipped us, and----" "He has not skipped us. He's simply decided to go out of the theatrical business. It was a fad with him, anyhow. As long as everything was going well, he liked it; but I see he is a man who cannot stand hard luck. He is changeable and that makes him a mighty poor man to back a venture. It takes a man with determination and a fixed purpose to win at anything. Changing around, jumping from one thing to another, never having any clear ideas is enough to make a failure of any man. Folansbee doesn't need to follow the show business for a living. He went into it because it fascinated him. The glamour is all worn off now, and he is ready to get out if it. Let him go." "It's all right to say let him go, but what are you going to do without him? You are talking about putting your play out again, but how will you do it?" "I'll find a way." "That is easier said than done. You have been lucky, Frank, there is no question about that. You can't be that lucky all the time." "There are more ways than one to catch an angel." "I rather think you'll find that angels are not so thick. Once in a while there is a soft thing who is ready to gamble with his money by putting it behind a traveling theatrical company, but those soft things are growing scarcer and scarcer. Too many of them have been bitten." "Still, I have a feeling that I'll find a way to succeed." "Of course you can advertise for a partner to invest in a 'sure thing,' and all that, but those games are too near fraud. Rascals have worked those schemes so much that honest men avoid them." "I shall not resort to any trickery or deception. If I catch an 'angel' I shall get one just as I obtained Folansbee, by telling him all the risks and chances of failure." "Well, you'll not get another that way." "Darned if I ain't afraid now!" nodded Ephraim. "But Mr. Folansbee's goin' to take keer of this comp'ny, ain't he? He's goin' to take it back to Denver?" "He has agreed to do so." At this moment there was another sharp rap on the door, which, happening to be near, Frank opened. Cassie Lee walked in, followed by Roscoe Havener, the soubrette and the stage manager of "For Old Eli," Cassie showed excitement. "Well, what do you think of him?" she cried. "Of whom--Havener?" asked Merry, "No, Folansbee." "What about him?" "He's skipped." "Skipped?" "Sure thing. Run away." "Impossible!" "It's a straight fact," declared the little soubrette. "There's no doubt of it," corroborated Havener. "Waal, may I be tickled to death by grasshoppers!" ejaculated Gallup. "This caps the whole business!" burst from Hodge. "I can't believe that," said Merriwell, slowly. "How do you know, Havener?" "His baggage is gone. Garland and Dunton traced him to the station. They were just in time to see him board an eastbound train as it pulled out. He has deserted us." CHAPTER II. DARKNESS AND DAWN. Frank could not express his astonishment. "I can't believe it," he repeated. "Folansbee would not do such a thing." Hodge laughed shortly, harshly. "You have altogether too much confidence in human nature, Merry," he said. "I never took much stock in this Folansbee. He is just the sort of person I would expect to do such a trick." "The company is hot, Merriwell," said Havener. "They're ready to eat you." "Me?" "Yes." "For what?" "For getting them into this scrape." "I don't see how they can blame me." There came a sound of feet outside and a bang on the door, which was flung open before Frank could reach it. Into the room stalked Granville Garland, followed by the remainder of the company. Plainly all were excited. "Well, Mr. Merriwell," said Garland, assuming an accusing manner and striking a stage pose, "we are here." "So I see," nodded Frank, calmly. "What's the matter?" "You engaged us to fill parts in your play." "I did." "We hold contracts with you." "I beg your pardon. I think you are mistaken." "What?" "I made no contracts with you; I simply engaged you. You hold contracts with Parker Folansbee." "Folansbee has deserted us, sir," declared Garland, accusingly. "We have been tricked, fooled, deceived! We hold contracts. You were concerned with Folansbee in putting this company on the road, and you are responsible. We have come to you to find out what you mean to do." "I am very sorry----" began Frank. "Being sorry for us doesn't help us a bit," cut in Garland, rudely. "I believe you knew Folansbee was going to skip." Frank turned his eyes full on the speaker, and he seemed to look his accuser straight through and through. "Mr. Garland," he said, "you are rude and insulting. I do not fancy the way you speak to me." "Well, what are you going to do about it?" "That's what I'd like to know," put in Lloyd Fowler. "I want my money. I didn't come out here to be fooled this way." "Mr. Fowler," spoke Frank, "you have not earned any money. Instead, you have earned a fine by appearing on the stage last night in a state of intoxication." "Who says so?" "I do." "Then you li----" Fowler did not quite finish the word. Frank had him by the neck and pinned him against the wall in a moment. Merry's eyes were flashing fire, but his voice was steady, as he said: "Take it back, sir! Apologize instantly for that!" Garland made a move as if he would interfere, but Bart Hodge was before him in an instant, looking straight into his face, and saying: "Hands off! Touch him and you get thumped!" "Get out!" cried Garland. "Not a bit of it. If you want a scrap, I shall be pleased to give you what you desire." "Here, fellows!" called Garland; "get in here all of you and give these two tricksters a lesson! Come on!" "Wait!" cried Havener, stepping to the other side of Merriwell. "Don't try it, for I shall stand by him!" "Me, too, boys!" cried Cassie Lee, getting into line with her small fists clinched, and a look of determination on her thin face. "Don't nobody jump on Frank Merriwell unless I take a hand in the racket." The rest of the company were astonished. They realized that Frank had some friends, but it was not until after he had awakened to realize just what the situation meant that Ephraim Gallup drew himself together and planted himself with Merry's party. "Whe-ee!" he squealed. "If there's goin' ter be a ruction, yeou kin bet I'll fight fer Merry, though I ain't much of a fighter. I'd ruther run then fight any day, onless I have ter fight, but I reckon I'll hev ter fight in this case, if there is any fightin'." Immediately Granville Garland became very placid in his manner. "We didn't come here to fight," he said, "but we came here to demand our rights." "An' to sass Frank," put in the Vermonter. "But, b'gosh! yeou are barkin' up ther wrong tree when yeou tackle him! He kin jest natterally chaw yeou up." Frank still held Fowler against the wall. Now he spoke to the fellow in a low, commanding tone: "Apologize at once," he said. "Come, sir, make haste!" "I didn't mean anything," faltered the frightened actor. "I think I was too hasty. I apologize." "Be careful in the future," advised Merry, releasing him. Then Merry turned to the others, saying: "Ladies and gentlemen, until Havener just brought the news, I did not know that Parker Folansbee was gone. It was a great surprise for me, as I did not dream he was a person to do such a thing. Even now I cannot feel that he has entirely deserted us. He may have left town rather than face us, but I hope he has been man enough to leave money behind that will enable us to return to Denver, at least. You must see that we are in the same box together. I am hit as hard as any of you, for I had hoped that Folansbee would stand by me so that I would be able to put the play in better shape and take it out again. I have lost him as a backer, and if he has skipped without leaving us anything, I have barely enough money to enable me to get back to Denver." "Haven't you any way of getting hold of money?" asked Harper. "Unfortunately, I have not," answered Merry. "If I had money in my pocket I would spend the last cent to square this thing with you." "And I know that's on the level!" chirped Cassie Lee. "Well, it's mighty tough!" muttered Billy Wynne. "That's all I've got to say." "We'll have to get up some kind of a benefit for ourselves," said Havener. "That's the only thing left to do." "Come up to my room," invited Miss Stanley, "and we'll try to devise a scheme for raising the dust. Come on." They followed her out, leaving Ephraim, Bart and Frank. "Whew!" breathed Gallup, sitting down on the bed. "Hanged if I didn't kinder think there was goin' to be a ruction one spell. I wanted to run, but I warn't goin' to leave Frank to be thrashed by a lot of hamfatters, b'gee!" "They were excited when they came in," said Merry, apologizing for the ones who had departed. "If it hadn't been for that, they would not have thought of making such a scene." "Well, Frank," spoke Bart, "I hope this will teach you a lesson." "How?" "I hope it will teach you not to put so much confidence in human nature after this. Have less confidence and do more business in writing. I haven't a doubt but Folansbee would have stuck by you all right if the new play had proved a winner, but he saw a chance to squeal when it turned out bad, and he jumped you." "I had a contract with him about the other piece," said Merry; "but you know he did not return from St. Louis till just before we were ready to start out, and so I had not been able to arrange matters about this piece." "And that lets him out easy." "Yes, he gets out without any trouble, and I don't believe I can do a thing about it." Again there came a rap on the door. When it was opened, a bell boy, accompanied by a gray-bearded gentleman, stood outside. "Mr. Merriwell," said the bell boy, "here is a gentleman to see you." The man entered. "Walk right in, sir," invited Merry. "What can I do for you?" Frank closed the door. The stranger slowly drew off his gloves, critically looking Merriwell over. "So you are Mr. Frank Merriwell?" he said. "Yes, sir." "I recognize you," nodded the man. "Do you remember me?" "No, sir; I can't say that I do, although I believe I have seen your face before." "I think you have, but I did not wear a full beard then." "Ah! Then it is possible the beard has made the change that prevents me from recognizing you." "Quite likely." "Will you sit down?" "I have some important business with you," explained the stranger, with a glance toward Gallup and Hodge. Immediately Bart started for the door. "See you later, Frank," he said. "Come on, Ephraim." Gallup followed Hodge from the room. When they were gone, Frank again invited the stranger to be seated. "Thank you," said the man, as he accepted a chair. "For reasons I wish you would look at me closely and see if you recognize me. I recognize you, although you are older, but I must proceed with the utmost caution in this matter, and I wish you would recognize me and state my name, so that I may feel absolutely certain that I am making no mistake." Frank sat down opposite the gentleman, at whom he gazed searchingly. He concentrated his mind in the effort to remember. Frank had found that he could do many difficult things by concentration of his mental forces. Now he sought to picture in his mind the appearance of this man without a beard. Gradually, he felt that he was drawing nearer and nearer the object he sought. Finally he made a request: "Please speak again, sir." "Why do you wish me to, speak again?" said the stranger, smiling. "So that your voice may aid me in remembering. I wish to associate your voice and your face." "Very well. What do you wish me to say?" "You have said enough. I have your voice now." "I'm afraid you'll not be able to remember," said the stranger. "It doesn't make any great difference, for I recognize you, and I can make assurance doubly sure by asking you a few questions. First, I wish to ask----" "Excuse me," interrupted Merry. "You are from Carson City, Nevada. You are connected with the bank in Carson, where I deposited a certain amount of valuable treasure, found by myself and some friends years ago in the Utah Desert. Your name is Horace Hobson." "Correct!" cried the man, with satisfaction. "Now, can you produce the receipt given you for that treasure?" "Yes, sir," nodded Frank, immediately producing a leather pocketbook and opening it. "I have it here." In a moment he had found the paper and handed it to Mr. Hobson. The gentleman adjusted some gold-rimmed nose-glasses and looked the receipt over. "This is the receipt," he nodded. "You instructed the bank officials to use every effort and spare no expense to find the relatives of Prof. Millard Fillmore and the rightful heirs to the treasure." "I did." "I am here to inform you that the bank has carried out your instructions faithfully." "Then you have found Prof. Fillmore's relatives?" quickly asked Merry, his heart sinking a bit. "On the contrary, we have found that he has no relatives living. He seems to have been the last of his family--the end of it----" "Then----" "It has been necessary for us to go to considerable expense to settle this point beyond a doubt, but we have done so, in accordance with your directions. Of course, we shall not lose anything. We have ascertained the exact value of the treasure, and have deducted for our expense and trouble. At a meeting of the bank directors I was instructed to turn over the remainder to you. I have here papers showing the exact valuation of the treasure as deposited with us. Here is a complete account of all our expenses and charges. We have found a balance remaining of forty-three thousand seven hundred and thirty-eight dollars. I was sent to turn this money over to you, as I could identify you beyond doubt, and there could be no mistake. To make it certain in my own mind, I wished you to recognize me. You did so, and I knew I could not be making a mistake. I will take up this receipt here, and in return will give you a check for the amount, if that is satisfactory to you." Frank sat like one dazed, staring at Horace Hobson. Was it possible that he was not dreaming? Was he in his hour of need to receive this immense sum of money? No wonder he fancied he was dreaming. At last he gave himself a slight shake, and his voice did not falter as he said: "It is perfectly satisfactory to me, sir. I will accept the check." CHAPTER III. MERRIWELL'S GENEROSITY. Mr. Hobson departed, and then Frank rang for a bell boy and sent for Bart and Ephraim. Merry's two friends came in a short time. "I have called you up," said Merry, "to talk over the arrangements for putting 'For Old Eli' on the road again without delay. I have decided on that. It will take some little time to manufacture the costly mechanical effect that I propose to introduce into the third act, and we shall have to get some new paper. I believe I can telegraph a description to Chicago so a full stand lithograph from stone can be made that will suit me, and I shall telegraph to-day." Hodge stared at Frank as if he thought Merry had lost his senses. "You always were a practical joker," he growled; "but don't you think it's about time to let up? I don't see that this is a joking matter. You should have some sympathy for our feelings, if you don't care for yourself." Merry laughed a bit. "My dear fellow," he said, "I assure you I was never more serious. I am not joking. I shall telegraph for the paper immediately." "Paper like that costs money, and the lithographers will demand a guarantee before they touch the work." "And I shall give them a guarantee. I shall instruct them to draw on the First National Bank of Denver, where my money will be deposited." "Your money?" gasped Hodge. "Jeewhillikins!" gurgled Gallup. Then Frank's friends looked at each other, the same thought in the minds of both. Had Merry gone mad? Had his misfortune turned his brain? "I believe I can have the effect I desire to introduce manufactured for me in Denver," Frank went on. "I shall brace up that third act with it. I shall make a spectacular climax on the order of the mechanical horse races you see on the stage. I shall have some dummy figures and boats made, so that the boat race may be seen on the river in the distance. I have an idea of a mechanical arrangement to represent the crowd that lines the river and the observation train that carries a load of spectators along the railroad that runs beside the river. I think the swaying crowd can be shown, the moving train, the three boats, Yale, Harvard and Cornell, with their rowers working for life. Harvard shall be a bit in the lead when the boats first appear, but Yale shall press her and take the lead. Then I will have the scene shifted instantly, so that the audience will be looking into the Yale clubhouse. The rear of the house shall open direct upon the river. There shall be great excitement in the clubhouse, which I will have located at the finish of the course. The boats are coming. Outside, along the river, mad crowds are cheering hoarsely, whistles are screeching, Yale students are howling the college cry. Here they come! Now the excitement is intense. Hurrah! Yale has taken the lead! The boats shoot in view at the back of the stage, Yale a length ahead, Harvard next, Cornell almost at her side, and in this form they cross the line, Yale the victor. The star of the piece, myself, who has escaped from his enemies barely in time to enter the boat and help win the race, is brought on by the madly cheering college men, and down comes the curtain on a climax that must set any audience wild." Hodge sat down on the bed. "Frank," he said, grimly, "you're going crazy! It would cost a thousand dollars to get up that effect." "I don't care if it costs two thousand dollars, I'll have it, and I'll have it in a hurry!" laughed Merriwell. "I am out for business now. I am in the ring to win this time." "Yes, you are going crazy!" nodded Hodge. "Where is all the money coming from?" "I've got it!" Bart went into the air as if he had received an electric shock. "You--you've what?" he yelled. "Got the money," asserted Frank. "Where?" shouted Bart. "Right here." "May I be tickled to death by muskeeters!" gasped Gallup. "Got two thousand dollars?" said Hodge. "Oh, come off, Merriwell! You are carrying this thing too far now!" "Just take a look at this piece of paper," invited Frank, as he passed over the check he had received from Horace Hobson. Bart took it, he looked at it, he was stricken dumb. Gallup looked over Bart's shoulder. His jaw dropped, his eyes bulged from his head, and he could not utter a sound. "How do you like the looks of it?" smiled Merry. "What--what is it?" faltered Bart. "A check. Can't you see? A check that is good for forty-three thousand seven hundred and thirty-eight dollars." "Good for that? Why, it can't be! Now, is this more of your joking, Merriwell? If it is, I swear I shall feel like having a fight with you right here!" "It's no joke, old man. That piece of paper is good--it is good for every dollar. The money is payable to me. I've got the dust to put my play out in great style." Even then Bart could not believe it. He groped for the bed and sat down, limply, still staring at the check, which he held in his hand. "What's this for?" he asked. "It's for the Fillmore treasure, which I found in the Utah Desert," exclaimed Frank. "It was brought to me by the man who came in here a little while ago." Then Gallup collapsed. His knees seemed to buckle beneath him, and he dropped down on the bed. "Waal, may I be chawed up fer grass by a spavin hoss!" he murmured. Hodge sat quite still for some seconds. "Merry," he said, at last, beginning to tremble all over, "are you sure this is good? Are you sure there is no crooked business behind it?" "Of course I am," smiled Frank. "How can you be?" asked Bart. "I received it from the very man with whom I did the business in Carson when I made the deposit. In order that there might be no mistake he came on here and delivered it to me personally." "I think I'm dyin'!" muttered Ephraim. "I've received a shock from which I'll never rekiver! Forty-three thousan' dollars! Oh, say, I know there's a mistake here!" "Not a bit of a mistake," assured Merriwell, smiling, triumphant. "And all that money is yourn?" "No." "Why--why, ther check's made out to yeou." "Because the treasure was deposited by me." "And yeou faound it?" "I found it, but I did so while in company with four friends." Now Hodge showed still further excitement. "Those friends were not with you at the moment when you found it," he said. "I've heard your story. You came near losing your life. The mad hermit fought to throw you from the precipice. The way you found the treasure, the dangers you passed through, everything that happened established your rightful claim to it. It belongs to you alone." "I do not look at it in that light," said Frank, calmly and positively. "There were five of us in the party. The others were my friends Diamond, Rattleton, Browning, and Toots." "A nigger!" exclaimed Bart. "Do you call him your friend?" "I do!" exclaimed Merry. "More than once that black boy did things for me which I have never been able to repay. Although a coward at heart so far as danger to himself was concerned, I have known him to risk his life to save me from harm. Why shouldn't I call him my friend? His skin may be black, but his heart is white." "Oh, all right," muttered Hodge. "I haven't anything more to say. I was not one of your party at that time." "No." "I wish I had been." "So yeou could git yeour share of the boodle?" grinned Ephraim. "No!" cried Hodge, fiercely. "So I could show the rest of them how to act like men! I would refuse to touch one cent of it! I would tell Frank Merriwell that it belonged to him, and he could not force me to take it. That's all." "Mebbe the others'll do that air way," suggested the Vermont youth. "Not on your life!" sneered Bart. "They'll gobble onto their shares with both hands. I know them, I've traveled with them, and I am not stuck on any of them." "I shall compel them to take it," smiled Frank. "I am sorry, fellows, that you both were not with me, so I could bring you into the division. I'd find a way to compel Hodge to accept his share." "Not in a thousand years!" exploded Bart. "Waal," drawled Ephraim, "I ain't saying, but I'd like a sheer of that money well enough, but there's one thing I am sayin'. Sence Hodge has explained why he wouldn't tech none of it, I be gol-dinged if yeou could force a single cent onter me ef I hed bin with yeou, same as them other fellers was! I say Hodge is jest right abaout that business. The money belongs to yeou, Frank, an' yeou're the only one that owns a single dollar of it, b'gosh!" "That's right, Ephraim," nodded Hodge. "And there isn't another chap in the country who would insist on giving away some of his money to others under similar circumstances. Some people might call it generosity; I call it thundering foolishness!" "I can't help what you call it," said Frank; "I shall do what I believe is right and just, and thus I will have nothing to trouble my conscience." "Conscience! conscience! You'll never be rich in the world, for you have too much conscience. Do you suppose the Wall Street magnates could have become millionaires if they had permitted their conscience to worry them over little points?" "I fancy not," acknowledged Merry, shaking his head. "I am certain I shall never become wealthy in just the same manner that certain millionaires acquired their wealth. I'd rather remain poor. Such an argument does not touch me, Hodge." "Oh, I suppose not! But it's a shame for you to be such a chump! Just think what you could do with forty-three thousand dollars! You could give up this show business, you could go back to Yale and finish your course in style. You could be the king-bee of them all. Oh, it's a shame!" "Haow much'll yeou hev arter yeou divide?" asked Ephraim. "The division will give the five of us eight thousand seven hundred and forty-six dollars and eighty cents each," answered Frank. "He's figured that up so quick!" muttered Hodge. "I snum! eight thaousan' dollars ain't to be sneezed at!" cried the Vermonter. "It's a pinch beside forty-three thousand," said Bart. "Yeou oughter be able to go back to college on that, Frank." "He can, if he'll drop the show business," nodded Bart. "And confess myself a failure! Acknowledge that I failed in this undertaking? Would you have me do that?" "Oh, you wouldn't confess anything of the sort. What were you working for? To go back to Yale, was it not?" "Sure." "Well, I don't suppose you expected to make so much money that you would be able to return with more than eight thousand dollars in your inside pocket?" "Hardly." "Then what is crawling over you? If you are fool enough to make this silly division, you can go back with money enough to take you through your course in style." "And have the memory of what happened in this town last night rankle in my heart! Hardly! I made a speech from the stage last night, in which I said I would play again in this city, and I promised that the audience should be satisfied. I shall keep that promise." "Oh, all right! I suppose you'll be thinking of rewarding the ladies and gentlemen who called here a short time ago and attempted to bulldoze you?" "I shall see that the members of the company, one and all, are treated fairly. I shall pay them two weeks salary, which will be all they can ask." Hodge got up, thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and stared at Frank, with an expression on his face that was little short of disgust. "You beat them all!" he growled. "I'd do just like that--I don't think! Not one of those people has a claim on you. I'd let them all go to the deuce! It would be serving them right." "Well, I shall do nothing of the sort, my dear fellow." "I presume you will pay Lloyd Fowler two weeks salary?" "I shall." Bart turned toward the door. "Where are you going?" "I'm going out somewhere all alone by myself, where I can say some things about you. I am going to express my opinion of you to myself. I don't want to do it here, for there would be a holy fight. I've got to do it in order to let off steam and cool down. I shall explode if I keep it corked up inside of me." He bolted out of the room, slamming the door fiercely behind him. Frank and Ephraim went up to the room of Stella Stanley, which was on the next floor. They found all the members of the company packed into that room. "May we come in?" asked Merry, pleasantly. "We don't need him," muttered Lloyd Fowler, who was seated in a corner. "Don't get him into the benefit performance. Let him take care of himself." "Come right in, Mr. Merriwell," invited Stella Stanley. "I believe you can sing. We're arranging a program for the benefit, you know. Shall we put you down for a song?" "I hardly think so," smiled Frank. "Ah!" muttered Fowler, triumphantly. "He thinks himself too fine to take part in such a performance with the rest of us." "I rather think you've hit it," whispered Charlie Harper. "And I know you are off your trolley!" hissed Cassie Lee, who had not missed the words of either of them. "He's on the level." "Really!" exclaimed Miss Stanley, in surprise and disappointment. "Do you actually refuse?" "Yes." "Why?" "Because there will be no performance." "Won't?" "No." "Why not?" "I refuse to permit it," said Frank, a queer twinkle in his eyes. Then several of the company came up standing, and shouted: "What!" "That beats anything I ever heard of in my life!" said Fowler. "For genuine crust, it surely does!" spoke up Harper. Cassie Lee looked surprised, and Havener was amazed. "Surely you are not in earnest, Merriwell?" the stage manager hastened to say. "Never more so in my life!" answered Frank, easily. "Then you're crazy." "Oh, I guess not." "Well, you are," said Garland. "You have gone over the limit. We are not engaged to you in any way. You said so. You explained that we could not hold you responsible. You cannot come here and dictate to us. We shall carry out this performance. If you try to prevent it, you will make a great mistake." "Be calm," advised Merry. "You are unduly exciting yourself, Mr. Garland." "Well, it's enough to excite anyone!" "Meow!" Out of the room trotted Frank's black cat, which had followed him up the stairs. "Put that cat out!" cried Agnes Kirk. "It has caused all our bad luck!" Frank picked the cat up. "I told you the cat was a mascot," he said. "It has proved so!" "I should say so!" sneered Fowler. "Let him take himself out of here, cat and all!" cried Charlie Harper. "Let him explain what he means by saying we shall not give a benefit performance," urged Havener, who really hoped that Frank could say something to put himself in a better light with the company. "Yes," urged Cassie. "What did you mean by that, Frank?" "Such a performance is quite unnecessary," assured Merry. "We've got to do something to raise money to get out of this city." "I will furnish you with the money, each and every one." "You?" shouted several. "Yes." "How?" asked Havener. "You said a short time ago that you hadn't enough money to amount to anything." "At that time I hadn't. Since then I have been able to make a raise." Now there was another bustle of excitement. "Oh!" cried several, "that's different." "I knew there was something behind it!" exclaimed Cassie, with satisfaction. "Have you been able to raise enough to take us all back to Denver, Frank?" "I think so, and I believe I shall have a few dollars left after we arrive there." "How much have you raised?" asked Havener. "Forty-three thousand dollars," answered Frank, as coolly as if he were saying forty-three dollars. For a moment there was silence in the room, then expressions of incredulity and scorn came from all sides. Fowler set up a shout of mocking laughter. "Well, of all the big bluffs I ever heard this is the biggest!" he sneered. "Say, I don't mind a joke," said Stella Stanley; "but don't you think you are carrying this thing a trifle too far, Mr. Merriwell?" "I would be if it were a joke," confessed Frank, easily; "but, as it happens to be the sober truth, I think no one has a chance to ask. I will not only pay your fare to Denver, but each one shall receive two weeks salary, which I think you must acknowledge is the proper way to treat you." "I'll believe it when I get my hands on the dough," said Fowler. "Forty-three thousand fiddlesticks!" "Any person who doubts my word is at liberty to take a look at this certified check," said Merry, producing the check and placing it on the little table. Then they crushed and crowded about that table, staring at the check. Fowler nudged Harper, to whom he whispered: "I believe it's straight, so help me! I'd like to kick myself!" "Yes, it's straight," acknowledged Harper, dolefully. "I am just beginning to realize that we have made fools of ourselves by talking too much." "What can we do?" "Take poison!" "We'll have to eat dirt, or he'll throw us down." "It looks that way." Thus it came about that Fowler was almost the first to offer congratulations. "By Jove, Mr. Merriwell," he cried, "I'm delighted! You are dead in luck, and you deserve it! It was pretty hard for you to be deserted by Folansbee, in such a sneaking way. I have said all along that you were a remarkably bright man and merited success." "That's right," put in Harper; "he said so to me last night. We were talking over your hard luck. I congratulate you, Mr. Merriwell. Permit me!" "Permit me!" Both Harper and Fowler held out their hands. Frank looked at the extended hands, but put his own hands in his pockets, laughing softly, somewhat scornfully. "It is wonderful," he said, "how many true friends a man can have when he has money, and how few true friends he really has when he doesn't have a dollar." "Oh, my dear Mr. Merriwell!" protested Fowler. "I know I was rather hasty in some of my remarks, but I assure you that you misunderstood me. It was natural that all of us should be a trifle hot under the collar at being used as we were. I assure you I did not mean anything by what I said. If I spoke too hastily, I beg a thousand pardons. Again let me congratulate you." Again he held out his hand. "You are at liberty to congratulate me," said Merry, but still disdaining the proffered hand. "I shall pay you the same as the others. Don't be afraid of that. But I shall give you your notice, for I shall not need you any more. With several of the others I shall make contracts to go out with this piece again, as soon as I can make some alterations, get new paper, and start the company." Fowler turned green. "Oh, of course you can do as you like, sir," he said. "I don't think I care to go out with this piece again. It is probable I should so inform you, even if you wanted me." Harper backed away. He did not wish to receive such a calling down as had fallen to the lot of Fowler. Cassie Lee held out her hand, her thin face showing actual pleasure. "You don't know how glad I am, Frank!" she said, in a low tone. "Never anybody deserved it more than you." "That's right," agreed Havener. Douglas Dunton had not been saying much, but now he stood forth, struck a pose, and observed: "Methinks that, along with several of me noble colleagues, I have made a big mistake in making offensive remarks to you, most noble high muck-a-muck. Wouldst do me a favor? Then apply the toe of thy boot to the seat of me lower garments with great vigor." Frank laughed. "The same old Dunton!" he said. "Forget it, old man. It's all right. There's no harm done." While the members of the company were crowding around Merriwell, Fowler and Harper slipped out of the room and descended the stairs. Straight to the bar of the hotel they made their way. Leaning against the bar, they took their drinks, and discussed Frank's fortune. Another man was drinking near them. He pricked up his ears and listened when he heard Merriwell's name, and he grew excited as he began to understand what had happened. "Excuse me, gentlemen," he said, after a time. "I do not wish to intrude, but I happen to know Mr. Merriwell. Will you have a drink with me?" They accepted. They were just the sort of chaps who drink with anybody who would "set 'em up." "Do you mind telling me just what has happened to Mr. Merriwell?" asked the stranger, who wore a full beard, which seemed to hide many of the features of his face. "Has he fallen heir to a fortune?" "Rather," answered Harper, dryly. "More than forty-three thousand dollars has dropped into his hands this morning." "Is it possible?" asked the stranger, showing agitation. "Are you sure?" "Yes, I am sure. I saw the certified check on a Carson City bank. He was broke this morning, but now he has money to burn." The stranger lifted a glass to his lips. His hand trembled somewhat. All at once, with a savage oath, he dashed the glass down on the bar, shivering it to atoms. As he did so, the hairs of his beard caught around the stone of a ring on his little finger, and the beard was torn from his face, showing it was false. The face revealed was black with discomfiture and rage. It was the face of Leslie Lawrence! Frank's old enemy was again discomfited! CHAPTER IV. IN THE SMOKER. So Frank took the company back to Denver. He was able to do so without depositing the check till Denver was reached, as Horace Hobson furnished the funds, holding the check as security. Hobson went along at the same time. While on the train Frank made arrangements with several members of his company in the revised version of "For Old Eli," when the play went on the road again. He said nothing to Lloyd Fowler nor Charlie Harper. Although he did not make arrangements with Granville Garland, he asked Garland if he cared to go out with the company again, informing him that he might have an opening for him. Fowler saw Merry talking with some of the members, and he surmised what it meant. He began to feel anxious as time passed, and Frank did not come to him. He went to Harper to talk it over. Harper was in the smoker, pulling at a brierwood pipe and looking sour enough. He did not respond when Fowler spoke to him. "What's the matter?" asked Fowler. "Sick?" "Yes," growled Harper. "What ails you?" "Disgusted." "At what?" "Somebody." "Who?" "Myself for one." "Somebody else?" "Yes." "Who?" "You're it." Fowler fell back and stared at Harper. He had taken a seat opposite his fellow actor. Harper returned his stare with something like still greater sourness. "What's the matter with me?" asked Fowler, wondering. "You're a confounded idiot!" answered Harper, bluntly. "Well, I must say I like your plain language!" exclaimed Fowler, coloring and looking decidedly touched. "You were in a bad temper when we started for Denver, but you seem to be worse now. What's the matter?" "Oh, I see now that I've put a foot in the soup. I am broke, and I need money. All I am liable to get is the two weeks salary I shall receive from Merriwell. If I'd kept my mouth shut I might have a new engagement with him, like the others." "Then some of the others have a new engagement?" "All of them, I reckon, except you and I. We are the fools of the company." "Well, what shall we do?" "Can't do anything but keep still and swallow our medicine." "Perhaps you think that, but I'm going to hit Merriwell up." "Well, you'll be a bigger fool if you do, after the calling down you received from him to-day." At that moment Frank entered the smoker, looking for Hodge, who had been unable to procure a good seat in one of the other cars. Bart was sitting near Harper and Fowler. As Frank came down the aisle, Fowler arose. "I want to speak to you, Mr. Merriwell," he said. "All right," nodded Frank. "Go ahead." "I have heard that you are making new engagements with the members of the company." "Well?" "You haven't said anything to me." "No." "I suppose it is because I made some foolish talk to you this morning. Well, I apologized, didn't I?" "Yes." "Well, I presume you will give me a chance when you take the play out again?" "No, sir." Frank said it quietly, looking Fowler full in the face. "So you are going to turn me down because I made that talk? Well, I have heard considerable about your generosity, but this does not seem very generous." "Ever since joining the company and starting to rehearse, Mr. Fowler, you have been a source of discord. Once or twice you came near flatly refusing to do some piece of business the way I suggested. Once you insolently informed me that I was not the stage manager. You completely forgot that I was the author of the piece. I have heard that you told others not to do things as I suggested, but to do them in their own way. Several times before we started out I was on the verge of releasing you, which I should have done had there been time to fill your place properly. Last night you were intoxicated when the hour arrived for the curtain to go up. You went onto the stage in an intoxicated condition. You did not do certain pieces of business as you had been instructed to do them, but as you thought they should be done, therefore ruining a number of scenes. You were insolent, and would have been fined a good round sum for it had we gone on. In a number of ways you have shown that you are a man I do not want in my company, so I shall let you go, after paying you two weeks salary. I believe I have given the best of reasons for pursuing such a course." Then Frank stepped past Fowler and sat down with Hodge. The actor took his seat beside Harper, who said: "I hope you are satisfied now!" "Satisfied!" muttered Fowler. "I'd like to punch his head off!" "Very likely," nodded Harper; "but you can't do it, you know. He is a holy terror, and you are not in his class." Behind them was a man who seemed to be reading a newspaper. He was holding the paper very high, so that his face could not be seen, and he was not reading at all. He was listening with the keenest interest to everything. As Frank sat down beside Hodge he observed a look of great satisfaction on Bart's face. "Well, Merriwell," said the dark-faced youth, with something like the shadow of a smile, "you have done yourself proud." "Let's go forward," suggested Merry. "The smoke is pretty thick here, and some of it from those pipes is rank. I want to talk with you." So they got up and left the car. As they went out, Fowler glared at Merriwell's back, hissing: "Oh, I'd like to get even with you!" Instantly the man behind lowered his paper, leaned forward, and said: "I see you do not like Mr. Merriwell much. If you want to get even with him, I may be able to show you how to do it." With startled exclamations, both Harper and Fowler turned round. The man behind was looking at them over the edge of his paper. "Who are you?" demanded Fowler. "I think you know me," said the man, lowering his paper. Lawrence sat there! In Denver Frank was accompanied to the bank by Mr. Hobson. It happened that Kent Carson, a well-known rancher whom Frank had met, was making a deposit at the bank. "Hello, young man!" cried the rancher, in surprise. "I thought you were on the road with your show?" "I was," smiled Frank, "but met disaster at the very start, and did not get further than Puelbo." "Well, that's tough!" said Carson, sympathetically. "What was the matter?" "A number of things," confessed Frank. "The play was not strong enough without sensational features. I have found it necessary to introduce a mechanical effect, besides rewriting a part of the play. I shall start out again with it as soon as I can get it into shape." "Then your backer is all right? He's standing by you?" "On the contrary," smiled Merry, "he skipped out from Puelbo yesterday morning, leaving me and the company in the lurch." "Well, that was ornery!" said Carson. "What are you going to do without a backer?" "Back myself. I have the money now to do so. I am here to make a deposit." Then it came about that he told Mr. Carson of his good fortune, and the rancher congratulated him most heartily. Frank presented his check for deposit, asking for a check book. The eyes of the receiving teller bulged when he saw the amount of the check. He looked Frank over critically. Mr. Hobson had introduced Frank, and the teller asked him if he could vouch for the identity of the young man. "I can," was the answer. "So can I," spoke up Kent Carson. "I reckon my word is good here. I'll stand behind this young man." "Are you willing to put your name on the back of this check, Mr. Carson?" asked the teller. "Hand it over," directed the rancher. He took the check and endorsed it with his name. "There," he said, "I reckon you know it's good now." "Yes," said the teller. "There will be no delay now. Mr. Merriwell can draw on us at once." Frank thanked Mr. Carson heartily. "That's all right," said the cattleman, in an offhand way. "I allow that a chap who will defend a ragged boy as you did is pretty apt to be all right. How long will it take to get your play in shape again?" "Well, I may be three or four days rewriting it. I don't know how long the other work will be." "Three or four days. Well, say, why can't you come out to my ranch and do the work?" "Really, I don't see how I can do that," declared Frank. "I must be here to see that the mechanical arrangement is put up right." "Now you must come," declared Carson. "I won't take no for your answer. You can give instructions for that business. I suppose you have a plan of it?" "Not yet, but I shall have before night." "Can you get your business here done to-day?" "I may be able to, but I am not sure." "Then you're going with me to-morrow." "I can't leave my friends who are----" "Bring them right along. It doesn't make a bit of difference if there are twenty of them. I'll find places for them, and they shall have the best the Twin Star affords. Now, if you refuse that offer, you and I are enemies." The man said this laughingly, but he placed Frank in an awkward position. He had just done a great favor for Merriwell, and Frank felt that he could not refuse. "Very well, Mr. Carson," he said, "if you put it in that light, I'll have to accept your hospitality." "That's the talk! Won't my boy at Yale be surprised when I write him you've been visiting me? Ha! ha! ha!" Mr. Carson was stopping at the Metropole, while Frank had chosen the American. The rancher urged Merry to move right over to the Metropole, and the young actor-playwright finally consented. But Frank had business for that day. First he telegraphed to the lithographers in Chicago a long description of the scene which he wanted made on his new paper. He ordered it rushed, and directed them to draw on his bankers for any reasonable sum. Then he started out to find the proper men to construct the mechanical effect he wished. He went straight to the theater first, and he found that the stage manager of the Broadway was a genius who could make anything. Frank talked with the man twenty minutes, and decided that he had struck the person for whom he was looking. It did not take them long to come to terms. The man had several assistants who could aid him on the work, and he promised to rush things. Frank felt well satisfied. Returning to his hotel, Merry drew a plan of what he desired. As he was skillful at drawing, and very rapid, it did not take him more than two hours to draw the plan and write out an explicit explanation of it. With that he returned to the stage manager. They spent another hour talking it over, and Frank left, feeling satisfied that the man perfectly understood his wants and would produce an arrangement as satisfactory as it could be if it were overseen during its construction by Frank himself. Frank was well satisfied with what he had accomplished. He went back to the American and drew up checks for every member of the old company, paying them all two weeks salary. Lloyd Fowler took the check without a word of thanks. The others expressed their gratitude. Then Frank moved over to the Metropole, where he found Kent Carson waiting for him. Hodge and Gallup came along with Frank. "These are the friends I spoke of, Mr. Carson," explained Frank. "Where's the rest of them?" asked the rancher, looking about. "These are all." "All?" "Yes, sir." "Why, by the way you talked, I reckoned you were going to bring your whole company along." He remembered Hodge, whom he had seen with Frank once before, and he shook hands with both Bart and Ephraim. "You are lucky to be counted as friends of a young man like Mr. Merriwell," said the cattleman. "That is, you're lucky if he's anything like what my boy wrote that he was. My boy is a great admirer of him." "It's strange I don't remember your son," said Frank. "Why, he's a freshman." "Yes, but I know a large number of freshmen." "So my boy said. Said you knew them because some of them had been trying to do you a bad turn; but he was glad to see you get the best of them, for you were all right. He said the freshmen as a class thought so, too." "Your son was very complimentary. If I return to Yale, I shall look him up." "Then you contemplate returning to college?" "I do." "When?" "Next fall, if I do not lose my money backing my play." "Oh, you won't lose forty-three thousand dollars." "That is not all mine to lose. Only one-fifth of that belongs to me, and I can lose that sum." "Then why don't you let the show business alone and go back to college on that?" "Because I have determined to make a success with this play, and I will not give up. Never yet in my life have I been defeated in an undertaking, and I will not be defeated now." The rancher looked at Frank with still greater admiration. "You make me think of some verses I read once," he said. "I've always remembered them, and I think they've had something to do with my success in life. They were written by Holmes." The rancher paused, endeavoring to recall the lines. It was plain to Frank that he was not a highly educated man, but he was highly intelligent--a man who had won his way in the world by his own efforts and determination. For that reason, he admired determination in others. "I have it!" exclaimed the rancher. "Here it is: "'Be firm! One constant element in luck Is genuine, solid, old Teutonic pluck. See yon tall shaft; it felt the earthquake's thrill, Clung to its base and greets the sunrise still. Stick to your aim; the mongrel's hold will slip, But only crowbars loose the bulldog's grip; Small as he looks, the jaw that never yields Drags down the bellowing monarch of the fields.'" CHAPTER V. NATURE'S NOBLEMAN. Frank found the Twin Star Ranch a pleasant place. The house was large and well furnished, everything being in far better taste than he had expected. Merry knew something of ranches and ranch life which, however, he said nothing about. He was supposed to be a very tender tenderfoot. Nobody dreamed he had ever handled a lariat, ridden a bucking broncho, or taken part in a round-up. Gallup roamed about the ranch, inspecting everything, and he was a source of constant amusement to the "punchers," as the cowboys were called. After one of these tours of inspection, he came back to the room where Frank and Bart were sitting, filled with amazement. "Vermont farms are different from this one," smiled Merry. "Waal, naow yeou're talkin'! I'd like ter know haow they ever do the milkin' here. I don't b'lieve all ther men they've got kin milk so menny caows. Why, I saw a hull drove of more'n five hundred cattle about here on the farm, an' they told me them warn't a pinch of what Mr. Carson owns. Gosh all hemlock! but he must be rich!" "Mr. Carson seems to be pretty well fixed," said Merry. "That's so. He's got a fine place here, only it's too gol-dinged mernoternous." "Monotonous? How?" "The graound's too flat. Ain't any hills to rest a feller's eyes ag'inst. I tell yeou it does a man good to go aout where he kin see somethin' besides a lot of flatness an' sky. There ain't northin' in the world purtier than the Varmount hills. In summer they're all green an' covered with grass an' trees, an' daown in the valleys is the streams an' rivers runnin' along, sometimes swift an' foamin', sometimes slow an' smooth, like glars. An' ther cattle are feedin' on ther hills, an' ther folks are to work on their farms, an' ther farm haouses, all painted white, are somethin' purty ter see. They jest do a man's heart an' soul good. An' then when it is good summer weather in Varmount, I be dad-bimmed if there's any better weather nowhere! Ther sun jest shines right daown as if it was glad to git a look at sech a purty country, an' ther sky's as blue as Elsie Bellwood's eyes. Ther birds are singin' in ther trees, an' ther bees go hummin' in ther clover fields, an' there's sich a gol-durn good feelin' gits inter a feller that he jest wants ter larf an' shaout all ther time. Aout here there ain't no trees fer ther birds ter sing in, an' there don't seem ter be northin' but flat graound an' cattle an' sky." Frank had been listening with interest to the words of the country boy. A lover of nature himself, Merry realized that Gallup's soul had been deeply impressed by the fair features of nature around his country home. "Yes, Ephraim," he said, "Vermont is very picturesque and beautiful. The Vermont hills are something once seen never to be forgotten." Gallup was warmed up over his subject. "But when it comes to daownright purtiness," he went on, "there ain't northing like Varmount in the fall fer that. Then ev'ry day yeou kin see ther purtiest sights human eyes ever saw. Then is the time them hills is wuth seein'. First the leaves on ther maples, an' beeches, an' oaks they begin ter turn yaller an' red a little bit. Then ther frost comes more, an' them leaves turn red an' gold till it seems that ther hull sides of them hills is jest like a purty painted picter. The green of the cedars an' furs jest orfsets the yaller an' gold. Where there is rocks on the hills, they seem to turn purple an' blue in the fall, an' they look purty, too--purtier'n they do at any other time. I uster jest go aout an' set right daown an' look at them air hills by the hour, an' I uster say to myself I didn't see haow heaven could be any purtier than the Varmount hills in ther fall. "But there was folks," he went on, whut lived right there where all them purty sights was an' never saw um. They warn't blind, neither. I know some folks I spoke to abaout how purty the hills looked told me they hedn't noticed um! Naow, what du yeou think of that? I've even hed folks tell me they couldn't see northin' purty abaout um! Naow whut do yeou think of that? I ruther guess them folks missed half ther fun of livin'. They was born with somethin' ther matter with um. "It uster do me good ter take my old muzzle-loadin' gun an' go aout in the woods trampin' in the fall. I uster like ter walk where the leaves hed fell jest to hear um rustle. I'd give a dollar this minute ter walk through the fallen leaves in the Varmount woods! I didn't go out ter shoot things so much as I did to see things. There was plenty of squirrels, but I never shot but one red squirrel in my life. He come aout on the end of a limb clost to me an' chittered at me in a real jolly way, same's to say, 'Hello, young feller! Ain't this a fine day? Ain't yeou glad yeou're livin'?' An' then I up an' shot him, like a gol-durn pirut!" Ephraim stopped and choked a little. Bart was looking at him now with a strange expression on his face. Frank did not speak, but he was fully in sympathy with the tender-hearted country youth. Bart rose to his feet, heaving a deep sigh. "I'm afraid I missed some things when I was a boy," he said. "There were plenty of woods for me, but I never found any pleasure in them. I used to think it fun to shoot squirrels; but now I believe it would have been greater pleasure for me if I had not shot them. I never listened to the music of the woods, for I didn't know there was any music in them. Gallup, you have shown me that I was a fool." Then, with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, he walked out of the room. Because Ephraim was very verdant the cowboys on the Twin Star fancied that Mr. Carson's other visitors must be equally as accustomed to Western ways. Frank was hard at work on his play, and that caused him to stick pretty close to the house. However, he was a person who believed in exercise when he could find it, and so, on the afternoon of the second day, he went out and asked one of the punchers if he could have a pony. The man looked him over without being able to wholly conceal his contempt. "Kin you ride?" he asked. "Yes," answered Frank, quietly. "Hawse or kaow?" asked the cowboy. "If you have a good saddle horse, I'd like to have him," said Merry. "And be good enough to restrain your sarcasm. I don't like it." The puncher gasped. He was angry. The idea of a tenderfoot speaking to him in such a way! "All right," he muttered. "I'll git ye a critter, but our Western hawses ain't like your Eastern ladies' hawses." He departed. Hodge had overheard all this, and he came up. "You want to look out, Merry," he said. "That chap didn't like the way you called him down, and he'll bring you a vicious animal." "I know it," nodded Merry, pulling on a pair of heavy gloves. "It is what I expect." Bart said no more. He had seen Merry ride, and he knew Frank was a natural horse breaker. The puncher returned in a short time, leading a little, wiry, evil-eyed broncho. He was followed by several other cowboys, and Merry heard one of them say: "Better not let him try it, Hough. He'll be killed, and Carson will fire you." "I'll warn him," returned the one called Hough, "an' then I won't be ter blame. He wants ter ride; let him ride--if he kin." Frank looked the broncho over. "Is this the best saddle horse you have?" he asked. "Waal, he's the only one handy now," was the sullen answer. "He's a bit onreliable at times, an' you'd better look out fer him. I wouldn't recommend him for a lady ter ride." "By that I presume you mean he is a bucker?" "Waal, he may buck some!" admitted the puncher, surprised that Frank should ask such a question. "You haven't anything but a hackamore on him," said Merry. "Why didn't you put a bit in his mouth? Do people usually ride with hackamores out here?" "He kinder objects to a bit," confessed the cowboy, his surprise increasing. "People out here ride with any old thing. Mebbe you hadn't better try him." "Has he ever been ridden?" "Certainly." "You give your word to that?" "Yep." "All right. Then I'll ride him." Frank went into the saddle before the puncher was aware that he contemplated such a thing. He yanked the halter out of the man's hand, who leaped aside, with a cry of surprise and fear, barely escaping being hit by the broncho's heels, for the creature wheeled and kicked, with a shrill scream. Frank was entirely undisturbed. He had put on a pair of spurred riding boots which he found in the house, and now the broncho felt the prick of the spurs. Then the broncho began to buck. Down went his head, and up into the air went his heels; down came his heels, and up went his head. Then he came down on all fours, and his entire body shot into the air. He came down stiff-legged, his back humped. Again and again he did this, with his nose between his knees, but still the tenderfoot remained in the saddle. "Good Lord!" cried the wondering cowboys. Bart Hodge stood at one side, his hands in his pockets, a look of quiet confidence on his face. From an upper window of the ranch a pretty, sad-faced girl looked out, seeing everything. Frank had noticed her just before mounting the broncho. He wondered not a little, for up to that moment he had known nothing of such a girl being there. He had not seen her before since coming to the ranch. All at once the broncho began to "pitch a-plunging," jumping forward as he bucked. He stopped short and whirled end-for-end, bringing his nose where his tail was a moment before. He did that as he leaped into the air. Then he began to go up and down fore and aft with a decidedly nasty motion. He screamed his rage. He pitched first on one side and then on the other, letting his shoulders alternately jerk up and droop down almost to the ground. "Good Lord!" cried the cowboys again, for through all this Frank Merriwell sat firmly in the saddle. "Is this yere your tenderfoot what yer told us ye was goin' ter learn a lesson, Hough?" they asked. "Waal, I'll be blowed!" was all the reply Hough made. The broncho pitched "fence-cornered," but even that had no effect on the rider. Hough told the truth when he said the animal had been ridden before. Realizing at last the fruitlessness of its efforts, it suddenly ceased all attempts to unseat Frank. Two minutes later Merriwell was riding away on the creature's back, and Hough, the discomfited cowboy, was the laughing-stock of the Twin Star Ranch. CHAPTER VI. A CHANGE OF NAME. At the open upper window of the ranch the sad-faced, pretty girl watched and waited till Frank Merriwell came riding back over the prairie. "Here he comes!" she whispered. "He is handsome--so handsome! He is the first man I have seen who could be compared with Lawton." Kent Carson had heard of Frank's departure on Wildfire, the bucking broncho. He found it difficult to believe that his guest had really ridden away on the animal, and he was on hand, together with Bart and Ephraim, when Merry came riding back. Near one of the corrals a group of cowboys had gathered to watch the remarkable tenderfoot, and make sarcastic remarks to Hough, who was with them, looking sulky and disgusted. Mr. Carson hurried to greet Frank. "Look here, young man," he cried, "I'd like to know where you ever learned to ride bucking bronchos?" "This is not the first time I have been on a cattle ranch, Mr. Carson," smiled Frank, springing down from Wildfire. One of the cowboys came shuffling forward. It was Hough. "Say, tenderfoot," he said, keeping his eyes on the ground, "I allows that I made some onnecessary remarks ter you a while ago. I kinder hinted as how you might ride a kaow bettern a hawse. I'll take it all back. You may be a tenderfoot, but you knows how ter ride as well as any of us. I said some things what I hadn't oughter said, an' I swallers it all." "That's all right," laughed Frank, good-naturedly. "You may have had good reasons for regarding tenderfeet with contempt, but now you will know all tenderfeet are not alike. I don't hold feelings." "Thankee," said Hough, as he led Wildfire away. Frank glanced up toward the open window above and again he caught a glimpse of that sad, sweet face. Mr. Carson shook hands with Frank. "Now I know you are the kind of chap to succeed in life," he declared. "I can see that you do whatever you undertake to do. I am beginning to understand better and better how it happened that my boy thought so much of you." He took Frank by the arm, and together they walked toward the house. Again Merry glanced upward, but, somewhat to his disappointment, that face had vanished. It was after supper that Merry and Hodge were sitting alone on the veranda in front of the house, when Bart suddenly said, in a low tone: "Merriwell, I have a fancy that there is something mysterious about this place." "Is that so?" said Frank. "What is it?" "I think there is some one in one of those upper rooms who is never seen by the rest of the people about the place." "What makes you think so?" "There is a room up there that I've never seen anyone enter or leave. The door is always closed. Twice while passing the door I have heard strange sounds coming from that room." "This grows interesting," admitted Frank. "Go on." "The first time," said Bart, "I heard some one in there weeping and sobbing as if her heart would break." "Her heart?" came quickly from Merry's lips. "Yes." "Then it is a female?" "Beyond a doubt. The second time I heard sounds in that room to-day after you rode away on the broncho. I heard some one singing in there." "Singing?" "Yes. It was a love song. The voice was very sad and sweet, and still there seemed something of happiness in it." Hodge was silent. "Well, you have stumbled on a mystery," nodded Frank, slowly. "What do you make of it?" "I don't know what to make of it, unless some friend or relative of Carson's is confined in that room." "Why confined there?" "You know as well as I do." Frank opened his lips to say something about the face he had seen at the window, but at that moment Carson himself came out onto the veranda, smoking his pipe. The rancher took a chair near, and they chatted away as twilight and darkness came on. "How are you getting along on your play, Mr. Merriwell?" asked the man. "Very well." answered Frank. "You know it is a drama of college life--life at Yale?" "No, I didn't know about that." "It is. just now I am puzzled most to find a name for it." "What was the name before?" "'For Old Eli.'" "U-hum. Who was Old Eli?" "There!" cried Merry. "That shows me there is a fault with the name. Even though your boy is in Yale, you do not know that Yale College is affectionately spoken of by Yale men as 'Old Eli.'" "No, never knew it before; though, come to think about it, Berlin did write something in some of his letters about Old Eli. I didn't understand it, though." "And the public in general do not understand the title of my play. They suppose Old Eli must be a character in the piece, and I do not fancy there is anything catching and drawing about the title. I must have a new title, and I'm stuck to find one that will exactly fit." "I suppose you must have one that has some reference to college?" "Oh, yes! That is what I want. One that brings Yale in somehow." "All you Yale men seem to be stuck on that college. You're true blue." Frank leaped to his feet with a cry of delight. "I have it!" he exclaimed. "What?" gasped Mr. Carson. "The title!" "You have?" "Yes; you gave it to me then!" "I did?" "Sure thing." "What is it?" "'True Blue.' That is a title that fits the play. Yale's color is blue, you know. People may not understand just what the title means, but still I believe there is something attractive about it, something that will draw, and the audience will understand it before the play is over. 'True Blue' is the name! I have been well paid for coming out here, Mr. Carson! Besides entertaining me royally, you have given me a striking name for my play." "Well, I'm sure I'm glad if I've done that," laughed Kent Carson. "I must put that title down on the manuscript," said Frank. "I feel an inspiration. I must go to work at once. I am in the mood now, and I can write." Excusing himself, he hurried into the house. Soon a light gleamed from the window of the room in which he worked, which was on the ground floor. Looking in at that window, Hodge saw Frank had started a fire in the grate and lighted a lamp. He was seated at a table, writing away swiftly. Kent Carson got up and stood beside Hodge looking into the room. "Merriwell is a great worker," said the rancher. "He's a steam engine," declared Bart. "I never saw a fellow who could do so much work and so many things. There is no telling how long he will drive away at that play to-night. Now that he has the title, he may finish it to-night, and be ready to leave here in the morning." "If that happens, I shall be sorry I gave the title so soon," said the cattleman, sincerely. "I have taken a great liking to that young man." Frank worked away a long time, utterly unconscious of the flight of the hours. At last he became aware that the fire in the open grate had made the room uncomfortably warm. He had replenished it several times, as there was something wonderfully cheerful in an open fire. He arose and flung wide the window. The moon, a thin, shining scimitar, was low down in the west. Soon it would drop from view beyond the horizon. There was a haze on the plain. Slowly out of that haze came two objects that seemed to be approaching. "Cattle," said Merry, turning back from the window and sitting down at the table again. He resumed work on the play. He did not hear the door open softly, he did not hear a light footstep behind him, he did not hear a rustling sound quite near, and it was not until a deep, tremulous sigh reached his ears that he became aware of another presence in the room. Like a flash Frank whirled about and found himself face to face with---- The girl he had seen at the window! In astonishment Frank gazed at the girl, who was dressed in some dark material, as if she were in mourning. He saw that she was quite as pretty as he had fancied at first, although her face was very pale and sad. The color of her dress and hair made her face seem paler than it really was. Only a moment did Frank remain thus. Then he sprang up, bowing politely, and saying: "I beg your pardon! I did not know there was a lady in the room." She bowed in return. "Do not rise," she said. "I saw you to-day from my window, and I could not sleep till I had seen you again. Somehow you seemed to remind me of Lawton. I thought so, then, but now it does not seem so much that way. Still you made me think of him. I have been shut up there so long--so long! I have not talked to anybody, and I wanted to talk to somebody who could tell me something of the world--something of the places far away. I am buried here, where nobody knows anything to talk about but cattle and horses." Frank's heart was thrilled with sympathy. "Do they keep you shut up in that room?" he asked. "No; I stay there from choice. This is the first time I have been downstairs for weeks. I have refused to leave the room; I refused to see my father. I can't bear to have him look at me with such pity and anger." "Your father--he is Mr. Carson?" "Yes." "It is strange he has never spoken to me of you. I was not aware he had a daughter, although he spoke proudly of his son." In an instant Frank regretted his words. A look of anguish swept over the face of the girl, and she fell back a step, one thin hand fluttering up to her bosom. "No!" she cried, and her voice was like the sob of the wind beneath the leaves of a deserted house; "he never speaks of me! He says I am dead--dead to the world. He is proud of his son, Berlin, my brother; but he is ashamed of his daughter, Blanche." Frank began to suspect and understand the truth. This girl had met with some great sorrow, a sorrow that had wrecked her life. Instantly Merry's heart was overflowing with sympathy, but his situation was most embarrassing, and he knew not what to say. The girl seemed to understand this. "Don't think me crazy because I have come here to you in this way," she entreated. "Don't think me bold! Oh, if you could know how I have longed for somebody with whom I could talk! I saw you were a gentleman. I knew my father would not introduce me to you, but I resolved to see you, hoping you would talk to me--hoping you would tell me of the things going on in the world." "I shall be glad to do so," said Merry, gently. "But don't you have any papers, any letters, anything to tell you the things you wish to know?" "Nothing--nothing! I am dead to the world. You were writing. Have I interrupted you?" "No; I am through working on my play to-night." "Your play?" she cried, eagerly. "What are you doing with a play? Perhaps--perhaps----" She stopped speaking, seeming to make an effort to hold her eagerness in check. "I am writing a play," Frank explained. "That is, I am rewriting it now. I wrote it some time ago and put it on the road, but it was a failure. I am going out again soon with a new company." Her eagerness seemed to increase. "Then you must know many actors," she said. "Perhaps you know him?" "Know whom?" "Lawton--Lawton Kilgore." Frank shook his head. "Never heard of him." She showed great disappointment. "I am so sorry," she said. "I hoped you might be able to tell me something about him. If you can tell me nothing, I must tell you. I must talk to somebody. You see how it is. Mother is dead. Father sent me to school in the East. It was there that I met Lawton. He was so handsome! He was the leading man in a company that I saw. Then, after the company disbanded for the season, he came back to spend the summer in the town where I was at school. I suppose I was foolish, but fell in love with him. We were together a great deal. We became engaged." Frank fancied he knew what was coming. The girl was skipping over the story as lightly as possible, but she was letting him understand it all. "I didn't write father about it," she went on, "for I knew he would not approve of Lawton. He wanted me to marry Brandon King, who owns the Silver Forks Ranch. I did not love King. I loved Lawton Kilgore. But the principal of the school found out what was going on, and he wrote father. Then Lawton disappeared, and I heard nothing from him. They say he deserted me. I do not believe it. I think he was driven away. I waited and waited for him, but I could not study, I could not do anything. He never came back, and, at last, father came and took me away. He brought me here. He was ashamed of me, but he said he would not leave me to starve, for I was his own daughter. His kindness was cruel, for he cut me off from the world. Still I believe that some day Lawton will come for me and take me away from here. I believe he will come--if they have not killed him!" She whispered the final words. "They? Who?" asked Frank, startled. "My father and my brother," she answered. "They were furious enough to kill him. They swore they would." She had told Merry her story, and she seemed to feel relieved. She asked him many questions about the actors he knew. He said he had the pictures of nearly all who had taken parts in his two plays. She asked to see them, and he brought them out from his large traveling case, showing them to her one by one. She looked at them all with interest. Of a sudden, she gave a low, sharp cry. Her hand darted out and caught up one of the photographs. "Here--here!----" she panted. "You have his picture here! This is Lawton Kilgore--Lawton, my lover!" It was the picture of Leslie Lawrence! CHAPTER VII. THE TRAGEDY AT THE RANCH. "That?" exclaimed Frank. "You must be mistaken! That man's name is not Kilgore, it is Lawrence." He fancied the girl was crazy. He had wondered if her misfortune had affected her brain. "This is the picture of Lawton Kilgore!" she repeated, in a dull tone. "Do you think I would not know him anywhere--under any circumstances? This is the man who promised to marry me! This is the man my father hates as he hates a snake!" "Well, that man is worthy of your father's hatred," said Merry, "for he is a thoroughbred villain. But I think you must be mistaken, for your father met him in Denver. This man had me arrested, and your father followed to the police station, and was instrumental in securing my release. If this man was Kilgore, your father would have found his opportunity to kill him." "You do not understand," panted the girl. "Father has never seen him to know him--has never even seen his picture. If Lawton was known by another name, father would not have recognized him, even though they met in Denver." Frank began to realize that the girl was talking in a sensible manner, and something told him she spoke the truth. To his other crimes, Lawrence had added that of deceiving an innocent girl. "And he is in Denver?" panted the rancher's daughter. "He is so near! Oh, if he would come to me!" Frank was sorry that he had permitted her to see the photographs, but it was too late now for regrets. The girl pressed the picture to her lips. "You must give it to me!" she panted. "I will take it to my room! I wish to be alone with it at once! Oh, I thank you!" Then she hurried from the room, leaving Merry in anything but a pleasant frame of mind. There was a sound outside the window. Frank got up and went over to the window. Looking out, he saw two horses standing at a little distance from the ranch. A man was holding them, and the faint light of the moon fell on the man's face. "Well, I wonder what that means?" speculated Frank. "Those horses are saddled and bridled. Who is going to ride them to-night?" Then he remembered the two forms he had seen coming out of the mist that lay on the plain, and he wondered if they had not been two horsemen. Something about the appearance of the man at the heads of the horses seemed familiar. He looked closer. "About the size and build of Lloyd Fowler," he muttered. "Looks like Fowler, but of course it is not." There was a step on the veranda, and a figure appeared at the open window. Into the room stepped a man. Frank sprang back, and was face to face with the intruder. "Leslie Lawrence!" he whispered. "Yes," said the man, advancing insolently; "I am Leslie Lawrence." "What do you want?" "I want an engagement in your new company. I have come here for it. Will you give it to me?" Frank was astounded by the insolence of the fellow. "I should say not!" he exclaimed. "What do you take me for? No, Leslie Lawrence, alias Lawton Kilgore, villain, deceiver of innocent girls, wretch who deserves hanging, I will not give you an engagement, unless it is with an outraged father. Go! If you wish to live, leave instantly. If Kent Carson finds you here, he will know you now, and your life will not be worth a cent!" At this moment the door was flung open, and Ephraim Gallup came striding into the room, saying as he entered: "Darned if I knowed there was a purty young gal in this haouse! Thought I'd come daown, Frank, an' see if yeou was goin' to stay up all night writin' on that play of---- Waal, I be gosh-blamed!" Ephraim saw Lawrence, and he was astounded. "Didn't know yeou hed visitors, Frank," he said. "So you refuse me an engagement, do you, Merriwell?" snarled Lawrence. "All right! You'll wish you hadn't in a minute!" He made a spring for the table and caught up the manuscript lying on it. Then he leaped toward the open grate, where the fire was burning. "That's the last of your old play!" he shouted, hurling the manuscript into the flames. Both Frank and Ephraim sprang to save the play, but neither of them was in time to prevent Lawrence's revengeful act. "You miserable cur!" panted Frank. Out shot his fist, striking the fellow under the ear, and knocking him down. At the same time Ephraim snatched the manuscript from the fire and beat out the flames which had fastened on it. Lawrence sat up, his hand going round to his hip. He wrenched out a revolver and lifted it. Frank saw the gleam of the weapon, realized his danger, and dropped an instant before the pistol spoke. The shot rang out, but even as he pressed the trigger, Lawrence realized that Merriwell had escaped. But beyond Frank, directly in line, he saw a pale-faced girl who had suddenly appeared in the open door. He heard her cry "Lawton!" and then, through the puff of smoke, he saw her clutch her breast and fall on the threshold, shot down by his own hand! Horror and fear enabled him to spring up, plunge out of the open window, reach the horses, leap on one and go thundering away toward the moonlight mists as if Satan were at his heels. There was a tumult at the Twin Star. There was hot mounting to pursue Lawrence and his companion. Carson had heard the shot. He had rushed down to find his daughter, shot in the side, supported in the arms of Frank Merriwell. A few words had told Carson just what had happened. He swore a fearful oath to follow Lawrence to death. The girl heard the oath. She opened her eyes and whispered: "Father--don't! He didn't mean--to shoot--me! It was--an--accident!" "I'll have the whelp stiff at my feet before morning!" vowed the revengeful rancher. He gave orders for the preparing of horses. He saw his daughter carried to her room. He lingered till the old black housekeeper was at the bedside to bind up the wound and do her best to save the girl. Then Carson bounded down the stairs and sent a cowboy flying off on horseback for the nearest doctor, a hundred miles away. "Kill the horse under ye, if necessary, Prescott!" he had yelled at the cowboy. "Get the doctor here as quick as you can!" "All right, sir!" shouted Prescott, as he thundered away. "Now!" exclaimed Kent Carson--"now to follow that murderous hound till I run him to earth!" He found men and horses ready and waiting. He found Frank Merriwell and Bart Hodge there, both of them determined to take part in the pursuit. "We know him," said Merriwell. "He fired that shot at me. We can identify him." Frank believed that Lawrence had murdered the rancher's daughter, and he, like the others, was eager to run the wretch down. They galloped away in pursuit, the rancher, four cowboys, Merriwell and Hodge, all armed, all grim-faced, all determined. The sun had risen when they came riding back to the ranch. Ephraim Gallup met Frank. "Did ye git ther critter?" he asked, in a whisper. "No," was the answer. "Then he got erway?" came in accents of disappointment from the Vermonter. "No." "Whut? Haow's that?" "Neither Lawrence nor Fowler escaped." "Then it was Fowler with him?" "I believe so." "Whut happened to um?" "They attempted to ford Big Sandy River." "An' got drownded?" "No. Where they tried to cross is nothing but a bed of quicksands. Horses and men went down into the quicksands. They were swallowed up forever." The doctor came at last. He extracted the bullet from Blanche Carson's side, and he told her she would get well, as the wound was not dangerous. Kent Carson heard this with deep relief. He went to the bedside of the girl and knelt down there. "Blanche," he whispered, huskily, "can you forgive your old dad for treating you as he has? You are my own girl--my little Blanche--no matter what you have done." "Father!" she whispered, in return, "I am glad you have come to me at last. But you know you are ashamed of me--you can never forget what I have done." "I can forget now," he declared, thinking of the man under the quicksands of Big Sandy. "You are my daughter. I am not ashamed of you. You shall never again have cause for saying that of me." "Kiss me, papa!" she murmured. Sobbing brokenly, he pressed his lips to her cheeks. And when he was gone from the room she took a photograph from beneath her pillow and gazed at it long and lovingly. She knew not that the man had been swallowed beneath the quicksands of the Big Sandy. * * * * * The tragic occurrences of the night hastened the departure of Frank and his friends from Twin Star Ranch, although Kent Carson urged them to remain. Frank had, however, finished his play, which, thanks to the prompt act of Ephraim, had been only slightly injured by its fiery experience, and was anxious to put it in rehearsal. So, a day or so later, Frank, Bart and Ephraim were once more in Denver. CHAPTER VIII. THE OLD ACTOR'S CHAMPIONS. Along a street of Denver walked a man whose appearance was such as to attract attention wherever seen. That he had once been an actor could be told at a glance, and that he had essayed great rôles was also apparent. But, alas! it was also evident that the time when this Thespian trod the boards had departed forever, and with that time his glory had vanished. His ancient silk hat, although carefully brushed, was shabby and grotesque in appearance. His Prince Albert coat, buttoned tight at the waist, and left open at the bosom, was shabby and shining, although it also betokened that, with much effort, he had kept it clean. His trousers bagged at the knees, and there were signs of mannish sewing where two or three rents and breaks had been mended. The legs of the trousers were very small, setting tightly about his thin calves. His shoes were in the worst condition of all. Although they had been carefully blackened and industriously polished, it was plain that they could not hold together much longer. The soles were almost completely worn away, and the uppers were breaking and ripping. The "linen" of this frayed gentleman seemed spotlessly white. His black silk necktie was knotted in a broad bow. The man's face was rather striking in appearance. The eyes had once been clear and piercing, the mouth firm and well formed; but there was that about the chin which belied the firmness of the mouth, for this feature showed weakness. The head was broad at the top, with a high, wide brow. The eyes were set so far back beneath the bushy, grayish eyebrows that they seemed like red coals glowing in dark caverns--for red they were and bloodshot. The man's long hair fell upon the collar of his coat. And on his face was set the betraying marks of the vice that had wrought his downfall. The bloodshot eyes alone did not reveal it, but the purplish, unhealthy flush of the entire face and neck plainly indicated that the demon drink had fastened its death clutch upon him and dragged him down from the path that led to the consummation of all his hopes and aspirations. He had been drinking now. His unsteady step told that. He needed the aid of his cane in order to keep on his feet. He slipped, his hat fell off, rolled over and over, dropped into the gutter, and lay there. The unfortunate man looked round for the hat, but it was some time before he found it. When he did, in attempting to pick it up, he fell over in the gutter and rolled upon it, soiling his clothes. At last, with a great effort, he gathered himself up, and rose unsteadily to his feet with his hat and cane. "What, ho!" he muttered, thickly. "It seems the world hath grown strangely unsteady, but, perchance, it may be my feet." Some boys who had seen him fall shouted and laughed at him. He looked toward them sadly. "Mock! mock! mock!" he cried. "Some of you thoughtless brats may fall even lower than I have fallen!" "Well, I like that--I don't think!" exclaimed one of the boys. "I don't 'low no jagged stiff to call me a brat!" Then he threw a stone at the old actor, striking the man on the cheek and cutting him slightly. The unfortunate placed his crushed and soiled hat on his head, took out a handkerchief, and slowly wiped a little blood from his cheek, all the while swaying a bit, as if the ground beneath his feet were tossing like a ship. "'Now let it work,'" he quoted. "'Mischief, thou art afoot; take thou what course thou wilt. How now, fellow?'" The thoughtless young ruffians shouted with laughter. "Looker the old duffer!" cried one. "Ain't that a picture fer yer!" "Look!" exclaimed the actor. "Behold me with thy eyes! Even lower than I have fallen may thou descend; but I have aspired to heights of which thy sordid soul may never dream. Out upon you, dog!" With these words he reached the walk and turned down the street. "Let's foller him!" cried one of the gang. "We can have heaps of fun with him." "Come on! come on!" With a wild whoop, they rushed after the man. They reached him, danced around him, pulled his coat tails, jostled him, crushed his hat over his eyes. "Give the old duffer fits!" cried the leader, who was a tough young thug of about eighteen. There were seven boys in the gang, and four or five others came up on the run, eager to have a hand in the "racket." The old actor pushed his hat back from his eyes, folded his arms over his out-thrown breast and gazed with his red, sunken eyes at the leader. As if declaiming on the stage he spoke: "'You have done that you should be sorry for. There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats; For I am armed so strong in honesty That they pass me by as the idle wind, Which I respect not.'" This caused the boys to shout with laughter. "Git onter ther guy!" "What ails him?" "He's locoed." "Loaded, you mean." "He's cracked in the nut." "And he needs another crack on the nut," shouted the leader, dancing up, and again knocking the hat over the old man's eyes. Once more pushing it back, the aged actor spoke in his deep voice, made somewhat husky by drink: "Be patient till the last. Romans, countrymen and lovers! hear me for my cause; and be silent that you may hear; believe me for mine honor; and have respect to mine honor, that you may believe; censure me in your wisdom, and awaken your senses, that you may----" "Oh, that's too much!" cried the ruffianly young leader. "We can't stand that kind of guy. What're yer givin' us, anyway?" "He's drunk!" shouted several. "Alas and alack!" sighed the old man. "I fear thou speakest the truth. "'Boundless intemperance In nature is a tyranny; it hath been The untimely emptying of the happy throne, And the fall of many kings.'" "That's what causes your fall," declared the ruffianly leader, as he tripped the actor, causing him to fall heavily. "What's this?" exclaimed Frank Merriwell, who, with Hodge for a companion, just returned from Twin Star Ranch, at this moment came into view round a corner. "What are those fellows doing to that poor man?" "Raising hob with him," said Bart, quickly. "The old fellow is drunk and they are abusing him." "Well, I think it's time for us to take a hand in that!" "I should say so!" "Come on!" Frank sprang forward; Bart followed. The old actor was just making an effort to get up. The young ruffian who led the gang kicked him over. The sight made Frank's blood leap. "You cowardly young cur!" he cried, and he gave the fellow a crack on the ear that sent him spinning. Hodge struck out right and left, quickly sending two of the largest fellows to the ground. "Permit me to assist you, sir," said Frank, stooping to aid the actor to rise. The leader of the gang had recovered. He uttered a mad howl. "At 'em fellers! Knock the stuffin's outer them!" he screamed, rushing on Frank. Merry straightened up instantly. He whirled about and saw the biggest tough coming at him, with the rest of the gang at his back. Then Frank laughed. "Walk right up, you young terriers!" he cried, in a clear, ringing voice. "We'll make it rather interesting for you! Give it to them, Hodge!" Hodge did so. Together the two friends met the onslaught of the gang. Their hard fists cracked on the heads of the young ruffians, and it was astonishing how these fellows were bowled over. Bart was aroused. His intense anger was betrayed by his knotted forehead, his flashing eyes, and his gleaming teeth. He did not speak a word, but he struck swift, strong and sure. If those chaps had expected an easy thing with the two well-dressed youths who had interfered with their sport, they met the disappointment of their lives. It actually seemed that, at one time, every one of the gang had been knocked sprawling, and not one was on his feet to face the fighting champions of the old actor. It was a terrible surprise for the toughs. One after another, they sprang up and took to their heels. "What have we struck?" gasped the leader, looking up at Frank. "Get up!" invited Merry, standing over him--"get up, and I will give you another dose!" "Excuse me!" gasped the fellow, as he scrambled away on his hands and knees, sprang up and followed the rest of the young thugs. It was over; the gang had been put to flight, and it had been accomplished in a very few moments. Hodge stood there, panting, glaring about, looking surprised and disappointed, as well as angry. "That was too easy!" he exclaimed. "I thought we were in for a fight." "Evidently they did not stand for our kind of fighting," smiled Frank. "It surprised them so that they threw up the sponge before the fight was fairly begun." "I didn't get half enough of it," muttered Bart. During the fight the old actor had risen to his feet. Now Frank picked up his hat and restored it to him, after brushing some dirt from it. The man received it with a profound bow. Placing it on his head, he thrust his right hand into the bosom of his coat, struck a pose, and cried: "'Are yet two Romans living such as these? The last of all the Romans!'" "We saw you were in trouble," said Merry, "and we hastened to give you such assistance as we could." "It was a goodly deed, a deed well done. Thy arms are strong, thy hearts are bold. Methinks I see before me two noble youths, fit to have lived in the days of knighthood." "You are very complimentary," smiled Frank, amused at the old man's quaint way. The actor took his hand from his bosom and made a deprecating gesture, saying: "'Nay, do not think I flatter; for what advancement may I hope from thee?' I but speak the thoughts my heart bids me speak. I am old, the wreck of a once noble man; yet you did not hesitate to stand by me in my hour of need, even at peril to yourselves. I cannot reward you. I can but offer the thanks of one whose name it may be you have never heard--one whose name to-day, but for himself and his own weakness, might be on the tongues of the people of two continents. Gentlemen, accept the thanks of William Shakespeare Burns." "Mr. Burns," said Frank, "from your words, and your manner, I am led to believe that you are an actor." "Nay, nay. Once I trod the boards and interpreted the characters of the immortal bard, for whom I was named. That time is past. I am an actor no longer; I am a 'has been.' My day is past, my sun hath set, and night draweth on apace." "I thought I could not be mistaken," said Frank. "We, too, are actors, although not Shakespearian ones." "Is this true?" exclaimed the old tragedian. "And I have been befriended by those who wouldst follow the noble art! Brothers, I greet thee! But these are sad, sad days, for the drama hath fallen into a decline. The legitimate is scoffed at, the stage is defiled by the ribald jest, the clownish low-comedy star, the dancing and singing comedian, and vaudeville--ah, me! that we should have fallen into such evil ways. The indecencies now practiced in the name of art and the drama are enough to make the immortal William turn in his grave. Oh, for the good old days! But they are gone--forever gone!" "It seems strange to meet an actor like you 'at liberty,' and so far from the Rialto," declared Merry. "I have been touring the country, giving readings," Burns hastened to explain. "Ah, it is sad, sad! Once I might have packed the largest theater of the metropolis; to-day I am doing well if I bring out a round dozen to listen to my readings at some crossroad schoolhouse in the country. Thus have the mighty fallen!" "I presume you are thinking of getting back to New York?" "Nay, nay. What my eyes have beheld there and my ears have heard is enough. My heart is sick within me. I was there at the opening of the season. One Broadway theater was given over to burlesque of the very lowest order, while another was but little better in character. A leading theater close to Broadway was packed every night by well-dressed people who went there to behold a vile French farce, in which the leading lady disrobed upon the stage. Ah, me! In truth, the world hath gone wrong! The ways of men are evil, and all their thoughts are vile. It is well that Shakespeare cannot rise from his grave to look upon the horrors now perpetrated on the English-speaking stage. If he were to be restored to life and visit one of our theaters, I think his second funeral would take place the following day. He would die of heart failure." Frank laughed heartily. "I believe you are right. It would give William a shock, that is certain. But there are good modern plays, you know." The actor shook his head. "I do not know," he declared. "I have not seen them. If there is not something nasty in the play of to-day, then it must of a certainty have its 'effect' in the way of some mechanical contrivance--a horse race, a steamboat explosion, a naval battle, or something of the sort. It seems that a piece cannot survive on its merits as a play, but must, perforce, be bolstered up by some wretched device called an 'effect.'" "Truer words were never spoken," admitted Frank. "And still there are a few plays written to-day that do not depend on such devices. In order to catch the popular fancy, however, I have found it necessary to introduce 'effects.'" "You speak as one experienced in the construction of plays." "I have had some experience. I am about to start on the road with my own company and my own play." Of a sudden Frank seemed struck by an idea. "By Jove!" he exclaimed. "Did you say you were at liberty?" "Just at present, yes." "Then, if I can get you, you are the very man I want." The old man shook his head. "Your play can contain no part I would care to interpret," he said, with apparent regret. "But I think it is possible that you might be induced to play the part. I had a man for it, but I lost him. I was on my way to the Orpheum, to see if I could not find another to fill his place." "What sort of a part is it?" asked Burns, plainly endeavoring to conceal his eagerness. "It is comedy." "What!" cried the old actor, aghast and horrified. "Wouldst offer me such a part? Dost think I--I who have played _Hamlet_, _Brutus_, _Lear_ and _Othello_--would stoop so low? 'This is the most unkindest cut of all!'" "But there is money in it--good, sure money. I have several thousand dollars to back me, and I am going out with my piece to make or break. I shall keep it on the road several weeks, at any cost." The old actor shook his head. "It cannot be," he sadly said. "I am no comedian. I could not play the part." "If you will but dress as you are, if you will add a little that is fantastic to your natural acting, you can play the part. It is that of a would-be tragedian--a Shakespearian actor." "Worse and worse!" moaned the old man. "You would have me burlesque myself! Out upon you!" "I will pay you thirty-five dollars a week and railroad expenses. How can you do better?" "Thirty-fi----" The old actor gasped for breath. He seemed unable for some moments to speak. It was plain that the sum seemed like a small fortune to him. At last his dignity and his old nature reasserted itself. "Young man," he said, "dost know what thou hast done? I--I am William Shakespeare Burns! A paltry thirty-five per week! Bah! Go to!" "Well, I'll make it forty, and I can get a hundred good men for that at this time of the season." The aged Thespian bowed his head. Slowly he spoke, again quoting: "Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck to the heart of my mystery." "But the money, you seem to need that. Money is a good thing to have." "'Methinks there is much reason in his sayings.' It is true. Ah! but how can I thus lower myself?" "As you have said, the good old days are past. It is useless to live for them. Live for the present--and the future. Money is base stuff, but we must have it. Come, come; I know you can do the part. We'll get along splendidly." "'Good reasons must, of force, give place to better.' As Cassius saith, 'Men at some time in their lives are masters of their fates;' but I think for me that time is past. But forty dollars--ye gods!" "It is better than reading to a scant dozen listeners at crossroads schoolhouses." "Ah, well! You take advantage of my needs. I accept. But I must have a dollar at once, with which to purchase that which will drown the shame my heart doth feel." "You shall have the dollar," assured Frank. "Come along with us, and we will complete arrangements." So the old actor was borne away, outwardly sad, but inwardly congratulating himself on the greatest streak of luck he had come upon in many moons. CHAPTER IX. WELCOME LETTERS. Frank Merriwell was determined to give a performance of his revised play in Denver for advertising purposes. He had the utmost confidence in "True Blue," as he had rechristened the piece, but the report of his failure in Puelbo had spread afar in dramatic circles, being carried broadcast by the Eastern dramatic papers, and managers were shy of booking the revised version. Some time before, after receiving the fortune from the Carson City Bank, Merry had made a fair and equal division, sending checks for their share to Browning, Diamond and Rattleton. Toots' share he had been unable to forward, not knowing the address of the faithful darky, who had been forced to go forth into the world to win his way when Frank met with the misfortune that caused him to leave Yale. And now came three letters from three Yale men. Diamond's was brief. "Dear Old Comrade: It is plain you are still a practical joker. Your very valuable (?) check on the First National of Denver received. I really do not know what to do with so much money! But I am afraid you are making a mistake by using a check on an existing bank. Why didn't you draw one on 'The First Sand Bank of Denver'? It would have served your purpose just as well. "Can't write much now, as I am making preparations for vacation, which is only a month away. I'm afraid it will be a sorry vacation for me this year; not much like the last one. Then we were all together, and what times we did have at Fardale and in Maine! I'm blue to-night, old friend, and do not feel like writing. I fancy it has made me feel bluer than ever to read in the _Dramatic Reflector_ of your unfortunate failure in Puelbo and the disbanding of your company after your backer deserted you. Hard luck, Frank--hard luck! All the fellows have been hoping you would make money enough to come back here in the fall, but all that is over now. "What are you doing? Can't you find time to write to us and let us know? We are very anxious about you. I will write you again when I am more in the mood. Hoping your fortune may turn for the better, I remain, "Always your friend, "Jack Diamond." Frank read this aloud to Hodge and Gallup in his room at the Metropole Hotel. "Waal, by ginger!" exploded Ephraim. "What do yeou think of that?" "Now you see what your reputation as a practical joker is doing for you, Merry," said Hodge. "Well, I'll be hanged if I don't believe Diamond considers it a joke!" laughed Frank. "Of course he does," nodded Bart. "Well, he is putting a joke on himself. He'll be somewhat surprised when he discovers that." Ephraim began to grin. "That's so, by thutter!" he cried. "Here is a letter from Rattleton," said Merry, picking up another from the mail he had just received. "I wonder how he takes it?" "Read it and find aout," advised Gallup. "A wise suggestion," bowed Frank, with mock gravity, tearing it open. This is what he read: "Dear Merry: Cheese it! What do you take us for--a lot of chumps? We're onto you! Eight thousand fiddlesticks! I'm going to have the check framed and hang it in my room. It will be a reminder of you. "Say, that was tough about your fizzle in Puelbo! It came just when we were hoping, you know. The fellows have been gathering at the fence and talking about you and your return to college since Browning came back and told us how you were making a barrel of money with your play. Now the report of your disaster is spread broadcast, and we know you cannot come back. It's tough. "Diamond is in a blue funk. He hasn't been half the man he was since you went away. Hasn't seemed to care much of anything about studying or doing anything else, and, as a result, it is pretty certain he'll be dropped a class. "But Diamond is not the only one. You know Browning was dropped once. He is too lazy to study, but, in order to keep in your class, he might have pulled through had you been here. Now it is known for an almost certain thing that he will not be able to pass exams, and you know what that means. "I'm not going to say anything about myself. It's dull here. None of your friends took any interest in the college theatricals last winter, and the show was on the bum. The whole shooting match made a lot of guys of themselves. "Baseball has been dead slow, so far this season. We are down in the mud, with Princeton crowing. It takes you, Merry, to twist the Tiger's tail! What was the matter? Everything. All the pitchers could do for us was to toss 'em up and get batted out of the box. The new men were not in it. They had glass arms, and the old reliables had dead wings. It was pitiful! I can't write any more about it. "I'd like to see you, Frank! Would I? Ask me! Oh, say! don't you think you can arrange it so you can come East this summer? Come and see me. Say, come and stay all summer with me at my home! We won't do a thing but have a great time. Write to me and give me your promise you will come. Don't you refuse me, old man. "Yours till death, "Rattles. "Here's another!" cried Frank. "If that doesn't beat! Why, they all think those checks fakes!" "As I said before," said Hodge, "you see what your reputation as a practical joker is doing for you." "I see," nodded Frank. "It is giving me a chance to get a big joke on those fellows. They will drop dead when they learn those checks actually are good." "Waal, I should say yes!" nodded Ephraim. "Jest naow they're kainder thinkin' yeou are an object fer charity." "Here's Browning's letter." "Mr. Frank Merriwell, Millionaire and Philanthropist. "Dear Sir: I seize my pen in my hand, being unable to seize it with my foot, and hasten to acknowledge the receipt of your princely gift. With my usual energy and haste, I dash off these few lines at the rate of ten thousand words a minute, only stopping to rest after each word. After cashing your check with the pawnbroker, I shall use the few dollars remaining to settle in part with my tailor, who has insisted in a most ungentlemanly manner on the payment of his little bill, which has been running but a short time--less than two years, I think. The sordid greed and annoying persistence of this man has much embarrassed me, and I would pay him off entirely, if it were not that I wish to get my personal property out of my 'uncle's' safe-deposit vault, where it has been resting for some time. "It is evident to me that you have money to burn in an open grate. That is great, as Griswold would say. And it was so kind of you to remember your old friends. The little hint accompanying each check that thus you divided the spoils of our great trip across the continent was not sufficient to deceive anyone into the belief that this was other than a generous act on your part and a free gift. "There is not much news to write, save that everybody is in the dumps and everything has turned blue. I suppose some of the others will tell you all about things, so that will save me the task, which you know I would intensely enjoy, as I do love to work. It is the joy of my life to labor. I spend as much time as possible each day working on a comfortable couch in my room; but I will confess that I might not work quite so hard if it was not necessary to draw at the pipe in order to smoke up. "When are you coming East? Aren't you getting tired of the West? Why can't you make a visit to Yale before vacation time? You would be received with great _éclat_. Excuse my French. I have to fling it around occasionally, when I can't think of any Latin or Greek. Why do you suppose Latin and Greek were invented? Why didn't those old duffers use English, and save us poor devils no end of grinding? "Unfortunately, I have just upset the ink, and, having no more, I must quit. "Yours energetically, "Bruce Browning." "Well, it's simply marvelous that he stuck to it long enough to write all that!" laughed Frank. "And he, like the others, thinks the check a fake." Hodge got up and stood looking sullenly out of the window. "What's the matter, Bart?" asked Merry, detecting that there was something wrong. "Nothing," muttered the dark-faced fellow. "Oh, come! Was there anything in those letters you did not like?" "No. It was something there was not in the letters." "What?" "Not one of those fellows even mentioned me!" cried Hodge, fiercely whirling about. "I didn't care a rap about Diamond and Rattleton, but Browning would have showed a trace of decency if he had said a word about me. He made a bad blunder and was forced to confess it, but I'll bet he doesn't think a whit more of me now." "Oh, you are too sensitive, old man. They did not even write anything in particular for news, and think how many of my friends at college they failed to mention." "Oh, well; they knew I was with you, and one of them might have asked for me. I hope you may go back to Yale, Merry, but wild horses could not drag me back there! I hate them all!" "Hate them, Hodge?" "Yes, hate them!" Bart almost shouted. "They are a lot of cads! There is not a whole man among them!" Then he strode out of the room, giving the door a bang behind him. Of course Frank made haste to reply to the letters of his college chums, assuring them that the checks were perfectly good, and adding that, although he had some reputation as a practical joker, he was not quite crazy enough to utter a worthless check on a well-known bank, as that would be a criminal act. Frank mentioned Hodge, and, without saying so in so many words, gave them to understand that Bart felt the slight of not being spoken of in any of the letters from his former acquaintances. One thing Frank did not tell them, and that was that he was on the point of starting out again with his play, having renamed it, and rewritten it, and added a sensational feature of the "spectacular" order in the view of a boat race between Yale, Harvard and Cornell. Even though he was venturing everything on the success of the piece, Merry realized now better than ever before that no man was so infallible that he could always correctly foretell the fate of an untried play. It is a great speculation to put a play on the road at large expense. The oldest managers are sometimes deceived in the value of a dramatic piece of property, and it is not an infrequent thing that they lose thousands of dollars in staging and producing a play in which they have the greatest confidence, but which the theater-going public absolutely refuses to accept. Frank had been very confident that his second play would be a winner in its original form, but disaster had befallen it at the very start. He might have kept it on the road as it stood, for, at the very moment when he seemed hopelessly stranded without a dollar in the world, fortune had smiled upon him by placing in his hands the wealth which he had found in the Utah Desert at the time of his bicycle tour across the continent. But Merry had realized that, in the condition in which it then stood, it was more than probable that the play would prove an utter failure should he try to force it upon the public. This caused him to take prompt action. First he brought the company to Denver, holding all of them, save the two men who had caused him no small amount of trouble, namely, Lloyd Fowler and Charlie Harper. Calmly reviewing his play at Twin Star Ranch, Frank decided that the comedy element was not strong enough in the piece to make it a popular success on the road; accordingly he introduced two new characters. It would be necessary, in order to produce the effect that he desired, to employ a number of "supers" in each place where the play was given, as he did not believe he would be warranted in the expense of carrying nonspeaking characters with him. On his return to Denver Frank had hastened at once to look over the "mechanical effect" which had been constructed for him. It was not quite completed, but was coming on well, and, as far as Frank could see, had been constructed perfectly according to directions and plans. Of course, one man had not done the work alone. He had been assisted by carpenters and scene painters, and the work had been rushed. Merry got his company together and began rehearsing the revised play. His paper from Chicago came on, and examination showed that it was quite "up to the mark." In fact, Havener, the stage manager, was delighted with it, declaring that it was the most attractive stuff he had seen in many years. But for the loss of one of the actors he had engaged to fill one of the comedy parts, Merry would have been greatly pleased by the manner in which things moved along. Now, however, he believed that in William Shakespeare Burns he had found a man who could fill the place left vacant. Although Hodge had been ready enough to defend Burns from the young ruffians who were hectoring him on the street, he had little faith in the man as a comedian. Hodge could see no comedy in the old actor. To tell the truth, it was seldom that Hodge could see comedy in anything, and low comedy, sure to appeal to the masses, he regarded as foolish. For another reason Hodge felt uncertain about Burns. It was plain that the aged tragedian was inclined to look on the wine "when it was red," and Bart feared he would prove troublesome and unreliable on that account. "I am done with the stuff!" Hodge had declared over and over. "On that night in the ruffians' den at Ace High I swore never to touch it again, for I saw what brutes it makes of men. I have little confidence in any man who will drink it." "Oh, be a little more liberal," entreated Frank. "You know there are men who drink moderately, and it never seems to harm them." "I know there are such men," admitted Bart; "but it is not blood that runs in their veins. It's water." "Not all men are so hot-blooded and impulsive as you and Jack Diamond." "Don't speak of Diamond! I don't think anything of that fellow. I am talking about this Burns. He is a sot, that's plain. Drink has dragged him down so far that all the powers in the world cannot lift him up. Some night when everything depends on him, he will fail you, for he will be too drunk to play his part. Then you will be sorry that you had anything to do with him." "All the powers in this world might not be able to lift him up," admittted Frank; "but there are other powers that can do so. I pity the poor, old man. He realizes his condition and what he has missed in life." "But the chances are that the audience will throw things at him when he appears as a comedian." "Instead of that, I believe he will convulse them with laughter." "Well, you have some queer ideas. We'll see who's right." Frank kept track of Burns, dealing out but little money to him, and that in small portions, so that the old actor could not buy enough liquor to get intoxicated, if he wished to do so. The first rehearsal was called on the stage of the theater in Denver. Merry had engaged the theater for that purpose. The entire company assembled. Frank addressed them and told them that he was glad to see them again. One and all, they shook hands with him. Then Burns was called forward and introduced as the new comedian. At this he drew himself up to his full height, folded his arms across his breast, and said: "Ay! 'new' is the word for it, for never before, I swear, have I essayed a rôle so degraded or one that hath so troubled me by night and by day. Comedy, comedy, what sins are committed in thy name!" Granville Garland nudged Douglas Dunton in the ribs, whispering in his ear: "Behold your rival!" "Methinks he intrudeth on my sacred territory," nodded Dunton. "But he has to do it on the stage, and on the stage I am a villain. We shall not quarrel." Burns proved to be something of a laughing-stock for the rest of the company. "He's a freak," declared Billy Wynne, known as "Props." "All of that," agreed Lester Vance. "I don't understand why Merriwell should pick up such a creature for us to associate with," sniffed Agnes Kirk. "But Merriwell is forever doing something freakish. Just think how he carried around that black tramp cat that came onto the stage to hoodoo us the first time we rehearsed this piece." "And there is the cat now!" exclaimed Vance, as the same black cat came walking serenely onto the stage. "Yes, here is the cat," said Frank, who overheard the exclamation. "She was called a hoodoo before. I have determined that she shall be a mascot, and it is pretty hard to get me to give anything up when I am determined upon it." "Well, I haven't a word to say!" declared Agnes Kirk, but she looked several words with her eyes. The rehearsal began and progressed finely till it was time for Burns to enter. The old actor came on, but when he tried to say his lines the words seemed to stick in his throat and choke him. Several times he started, but finally he broke down and turned to Frank, appealingly, saying, huskily: "I can't! I can't! It is a mockery and an insult to the dead Bard of Avon! It's no use! I give it up. I need the money, but I cannot insult the memory of William Shakespeare by making a burlesque of his immortal works!" Then he staggered off the stage. CHAPTER X. AT THE FOOT OF THE BED. Late that evening, after the work and rehearsing of the day was over, Frank, Bart and Ephraim gathered in the room of the first-mentioned and discussed matters. "I told you Burns was no good," said Hodge, triumphantly, "I knew how it would be, but he showed up sooner than I expected. I suppose you will get rid of him in a hurry now?" "I think not," answered Merry, quietly. "What?" cried Hodge, astounded. "You don't mean to say you will keep him after what has happened?" "I may." "Well, Frank, I'm beginning to believe the theatrical business has turned your head. You do not seem to possess the good sense you had once." "Is that so?" laughed Merry. "Just so!" snapped Hodge. "Oh, I don't know! I rather think Burns will turn out all right." "After making such a fizzle to-day? Well, you're daffy!" "You do not seem to understand the man at all. I can appreciate his feelings." "I can't!" "I thought not. It must be rather hard for him, who has always considered himself a tragedian and a Shakespeare scholar, to burlesque the parts he has studied and loved." "Bah! That's nonsense! Why, the man's a pitiful old drunkard! You give him credit for too fine feelings." "And you do not seem to give him credit for any feelings. Even a drunkard may have fine feelings at times." "Perhaps so." "Perhaps so! I know it. It is drink that degrades and lowers the man. When he is sober, he may be kind, gentle and lovable." "Well, I haven't much patience with a man who will keep himself filled with whisky." Frank opened his lips to say something, but quickly changed his mind, knowing he must cut Hodge deeply. He longed, however, to say that the ones most prone to err and fall in this life are often the harshest judges of others who go astray. "I ruther pity the pore critter," said Ephraim; "but I don't b'lieve he'll ever make ennyboddy larf in the world. He looks too much like a funeral." "That is the very thing that should make them laugh, when he has his make-up on. I have seen the burlesque tragedian overdone on the stage, so that he was nauseating; but I believe Burns can give the character just the right touch." "Well, if you firmly believe that, it's no use to talk to you, for you'll never change your mind till you have to," broke out Hodge. "I have seen a sample of that in the way you deal with your enemies. Now, there was Leslie Lawrence----" "Let him rest in peace," said Frank. "He is gone forever." "An' it's a dinged good riddance!" said Gallup. "The only thing I'm sorry fer is that the critter escaped lynchin'!" "Yes, he should have been lynched!" flashed Bart. "At the Twin Star Ranch now the poor girl he deserted is lying on a bed of pain, shot down by his dastardly hand." "He did not intend the bullet for her," said Frank, quickly. "No; but he intended it for you! It was a great case of luck that he didn't finish you. If you had pushed the villain to the wall before that, instead of dealing with him as if he had the least instinct of a gentleman in his worthless body, you would have saved the girl from so much suffering." "She loves him still," said Frank. "Her last words to me were a message to him, for she does not know he is dead beneath the quicksands of Big Sandy." "The quicksands saved him from the gallows." "An' they took another ungrateful rascal along with him, b'gee!" said Ephraim, with satisfaction. "Yes," nodded Frank; "I think there is no doubt but Lloyd Fowler perished with Lawrence, for I fancied I recognized Fowler in the fellow who accompanied Lawrence that fatal night." "And Fowler was a drinking man, so I should think he would be a warning to you," said Hodge. "I shouldn't think you'd care to take another sot into the company." "You must know that there is as little resemblance between Fowler and Burns as there is between night and day." "Perhaps so, but Burns can drink more whisky than Fowler ever could." "And he is ashamed of himself for it. I have talked with him about it, and I know." "Oh, he made you believe so. He is slick." "He was not trying to deceive me." "So you think. He knows where his money comes from to buy whisky. It's more than even chance that, when you are ready to start on the road, he will give you the slip." "He asked me to release him to-day." "And you refused?" "I did. I urged him to stay with us." Hodge got up. "That settles it!" he exclaimed. "Now I know theatricals have wrought your downfall! Your glory is fast departing." "Then let it depart!" laughed Frank. "You have been forced to confess yourself mistaken on other occasions; you may on this." "Good-night," said Hodge, and he went out. Ephraim grinned. "Some fellows would say it'd be a gol-danged sensible thing fer yeou to git rid of that feller," he said, nodding toward the door. "He's gittin' to be the greatest croaker I ever knew." "Hodge is getting worse," admitted Frank, gravely. "I think the unfortunate end of his college course has had much to do with it. He broods over that a great deal, and it is making him sour and unpleasant. I can imagine about how he feels." "If he ever larfed he'd be more agreeable. Danged if I like a feller that alwus looks so sollum an' ugly. Sometimes he looks as ef he could snap a spike off at one bite an' not harf try." "Wait," said Frank. "If I am successful with this play, I hope to go back to Yale in the fall and take Hodge with me. I think he is getting an idea into his head that his life career has been ruined at the very start, and that is making him bitter. I'll take him back, run him into athletics, get his mind off such unpleasant thoughts, and make a new man of him." "Waal, I hope ye do," said Gallup, rising and preparing to go. "There's jest one thing abaout Hodge that makes me keer a rap fer him." "What's that?" "It's ther way he sticks to yeou. Be gosh! I be'lieve he'd wade through a red-hot furnace to reach yeou an' fight for yeou, if yeou was in danger!" "I haven't a doubt but he'd make the attempt," nodded Frank. "An' he kin fight," the Vermonter went on. "Aout at Ace High, when we was up against all them ruffians, he fought like a dozen tigers all rolled inter one. That's ernnther thing that makes me think a little somethin' of him." "Yes," agreed Merry, "Bart is a good fighter. The only trouble with him is that he is too ready to fight. There are times when one should avoid a fight, if possible; but Hodge never recognizes any of those times. I never knew him to try to avoid a fight." "Waal," drawled Ephraim, with a yawn, "I'm goin' to bed. Good-night, Frank." "Good-night." Merry closed the door after Gallup and carefully locked and bolted it. Then he sat down, took a letter from his pocket, and read it through from beginning to end. When he had finished, he pressed the missive to his lips, murmuring: "Elsie! Elsie! dear little sweetheart!" For some time he sat there, thinking, thinking. His face flushed and paled softened and glowed again; sometimes he looked sad, and sometimes he smiled. Had a friend been there, he might have read Frank's thoughts by the changing expressions on his face. At last Merry put away the letter, after kissing it again, and, having wound up his watch, undressed and prepared for bed. His bed stood in a little alcove of the room, and he drew the curtains back, exposing it. Donning pajamas, he soon was in bed. Reaching out, he pressed a button, and--snap!--out went the gas, turned off by electricity. Frank composed himself to sleep. The dull rumble of the not yet sleeping city came up from the streets and floated in at his open window. The sound turned after a time to a musical note that was like that which comes from an organ, and it lulled him to sleep. For some time Merry seemed to sleep as peacefully as a child. Gradually the roaring from the streets became less and less. Frank breathed softly and regularly. And then, without starting or stirring, he opened his eyes. He lay quite still and listened, but heard no sound at first. For all of this, he was impressed by a feeling that something was there in that room with him! It was a strange, creepy, chilling sensation that ran over Frank. He shivered the least bit. Rustle-rustle! It was the lightest of sounds, but he was sure he heard it. Some object was moving in the room! Frank remembered that he had closed and locked the door. Not only had he locked it, but he had bolted it, so that it could not be opened from the outside by the aid of a key alone. What was there in that room? How had anything gained admittance? Frank attempted to convince himself that it was imagination, but he was a youth with steady nerves, and he knew he was not given to imagining such things without cause. Rustle--rustle! There it was again! There was no doubt of it this time! Something moved near the foot of the bed! Still without stirring, Merriwell turned his gaze in that direction. At the foot of the bed a dark shape seemed to tower! Impressed by a sense of extreme peril, Frank shot his hand out of the bed toward the electric button on the wall. By chance he struck the right button. Snap!--up flared the gas. And there at the foot of the bed stood a man in black, his face hidden by a mask. The sudden up-flaring of the gas seemed to startle the unknown intruder and disconcert him for a moment. With a hiss, he started backward. Bolt upright sat Frank. Merry's eyes looked straight into the eyes that peered through the twin holes in the mask. Thus they gazed at each other some seconds. There was no weapon in the hands of the masked man, and Merriwell guessed that the fellow was a burglar. That was Frank's first thought. Then came another. Why had the man sought the bed? Frank's clothes were lying on some chairs outside the alcove, and in order to go through them it had not been necessary to come near the bed. Then Merry remembered the feeling of danger that had come over him, and something told him this man had entered that room to do him harm. Somehow, Frank became convinced that the fellow had been creeping up to seize a pillow, fling himself on the bed, press the pillow over the sleeper's face, and commit a fearful crime. Even then Frank wondered how the man could have gained admittance to the room. Up leaped the former Yale athlete; backward sprang the masked man. Over the foot of the bed Merry recklessly flung himself, dodging a hand that shot out at him, and placing himself between the man and the door. As he bounded toward the door, Merriwell saw, with a feeling of unutterable amazement, that it was tightly closed and that the bolt was shot in place, just as he had left it. He whirled about, with his back toward the door. "Good-evening!" he said. "Isn't this rather late for a call? I wasn't expecting you." The man was crouching before him, as if to spring toward him, but Frank's cool words seemed to cause further hesitation. A muttering growl came from behind the mask, but no words did the unknown speak. "It is possible you dropped into the wrong room," said Merry. "I trust you will be able to explain yourself, for you are in a rather awkward predicament. Besides that, you have hidden your face, and that does not speak well for your honest intentions." Without doubt, the intruder was astonished by Merriwell's wonderful coolness. Although startled from slumber in such a nerve-shocking manner, Frank now seemed perfectly self-possessed. Silence. "You don't seem to be a very sociable sort of caller," said Merry, with something like a faint laugh. "Won't you take off your mask and sit down a while." The youth asked the question as if he were inviting the stranger to take off his hat and make himself at home. The man's hand slipped into his bosom. Frank fancied it sought a weapon. Now it happened that Merry had no weapon at hand, and he felt that he would be in a very unpleasant position if that other were to "get the drop" on him. Frank made a rush at the stranger. The man tried to draw something from his bosom, but it seemed to catch and hang there, and Merry was on him. The unknown tried to dodge, and he partly succeeded in avoiding Frank's arms. However, he did not get fully away, and, a second later, they grappled. The man, however, had the advantage; for all that Frank had rushed upon him, he had risen partly behind Merry, after dodging. He clutched Frank about the waist and attempted to hurl him to the floor with crushing force. Frank Merriwell was an expert wrestler, and, although taken thus at a disadvantage, he squirmed about and broke his fall, simply being forced to one knee. "Now I have ye!" panted the man, hoarsely. "Have you?" came from Frank's lips. "Oh, I don't know!" There was a sudden upward heaving, and the ex-Yale athlete shot up to his feet. But the man was on his back, and a hand came round and fastened on Merry's throat with a terrible, crushing grip. Frank realized that he was dealing with a desperate wretch, who would not hesitate at anything. And Merriwell's life was the stake over which they were struggling! Frank got hold of the man's wrist and tore those fingers from his throat, although it seemed that they nearly tore out his windpipe in coming away. On his back the fellow was panting, hoarsely, and Merry found it no easy thing to dislodge him. Round and round they whirled. Frank might have shouted for aid, but he realized that his door was bolted on the inside, and no assistance could reach him without breaking it down. Besides that, Merry's pride held him in check. There was but one intruder, and he did not feel like shouting and thus seeming to confess himself outmatched and frightened. They were at a corner of the alcove. The partition projected sharply there, and, of a sudden, with all his strength, Merry flung himself backward, dashing the man on his back against that projecting corner. There was a grunt, a groan, and a curse. It seemed that, for an instant, the shock had hurt and dazed the man, and, in that instant, Merry wrenched himself free. "Now this thing will be somehow more even," he whispered, from his crushed and aching throat. He whirled to grapple with the fellow, but again the slippery rascal dodged him, leaping away. Frank followed. The man caught up a chair, swung it and struck at Merriwell's head with force enough to crush Frank's skull. Merry could not dodge, but he caught the chair and saved his head, although he was sent reeling backward by the blow. Had the fellow followed him swiftly then it is barely possible he might have overcome Frank before Merry could steady himself. A moment of hesitation, however, was taken advantage of by the youth. The chair was tossed aside, and Merry darted after the fellow, who was astounded and dismayed by his persistence. Round to the opposite side of the table darted the intruder, and across the table they stared at each other. "Well," said Frank, in grim confession, "you are making a right good fight of it, and I will say that you are very slippery. I haven't been able to get a hold of you yet, though. You'll come down on the run when I do." The man was standing directly beneath the gas jet which Merry had lighted by pressing the electric button. Of a sudden he reached up and turned off the gas, plunging the room in darkness. Then, as Frank sprang toward the jet, something swooped down on him, covering his head and shoulders in a smothering manner! CHAPTER XI. A MYSTERY TO SOLVE. Frank realized that some of the clothing from the bed had been torn off and flung over his head. He attempted to cast it aside, but it became tangled so he could not accomplish his purpose as readily as he wished, although he was not long in doing so. Retreating, he was prepared for an assault, for it seemed that the masked unknown would follow up the advantage he had gained. No assault came. Frank paused and listened, and, to his amazement, he could hear no sound in the room. Still, he felt that the man must be there, awaiting for an opportunity to carry out the deadly purpose which had brought him into his apartment at that hour. It was not pleasant to stand there in the darkness, half expecting to feel a knife buried between his shoulders at any instant. Gradually Frank's eyes became accustomed to the semi-gloom of the room. Still, he could see nothing that lived and moved. Beyond him was the window, standing open as he had left it, the light wind gently moving the draperies. "Well," thought Merry, "I wonder how long the fellow will keep still. He'll have to make a move sometime." He backed up against the door and stood there, facing the window. Placing a hand behind him, he took hold of the knob of the door, which he found was still locked securely. This assured him that the intruder had not escaped in that direction. Merry felt certain that the man was close at hand. He knew he could unlock and unbolt the door and leap out quickly. He could slam the door behind him and lock it, thus penning the man in there. Then he could descend to the office and inform the clerk that he had captured a burglar. Somehow, he did not feel like doing that; that seemed too much as if he were running away. He did not fancy doing anything that seemed in the least cowardly, even though it might be discreet. Further than that, however, it was by no means certain that, even though he locked and secured the door behind him after leaping out of the room, he could hold the intruder captive. In some manner the man had entered that room without disturbing the lock or bolt on the door. How had he entered? Frank looked toward the open window, but he knew it opened upon the face of the hotel, four stories from the level of the street, and that settled in his mind all doubts about the window, for he instantly decided that it had not been possible for the masked unknown to get into the room that way. Had he been in some old colonial house he would have fancied the fellow had gained admittance by means of a panel in the wall and a secret passage; but he was in a modern hotel, and it was beyond the range of probability that there were secret passages or moving wall panels in the structure. These thoughts flitted through his mind swiftly as he stood there, trying to hear some sound that would tell him where the intruder was in the room. All was still. Below in the street a cab rattled and rumbled along. The silence was even more nerve-racking than the unexpected appearance of the masked man had been. The mystery of the whole affair was beginning to impress Merry, and a mystery always aroused his curiosity to the highest pitch. "Take your time, sir," he thought, as he leaned against the door and waited. "I believe I can stand it as long as you can." Near at hand the door of another room swiftly opened and closed. The sound of hurried footsteps passed the door of Merriwell's room. Frank was tempted to fling open his door and call to the man, but he hesitated about that till it was too late. "Let him go," he thought. "Perhaps he would have been frightened to death had I called him in here." The push button by which he could call assistance from the office was in the alcove. At this time of night it was not likely there would be anything but a tardy answer to his call should he make it. But the electric button which turned on and ignited the gas was also in the alcove. Frank longed to reach that button. He longed to light the gas in order to look around for the intruder. Of course he could have lighted it with a match; but he realized that such a thing might be just what the unknown hoped for and expected. The man might be waiting for him to strike a match. The minutes fled. "Something must be done," Merry at last decided. Then he resolved to leave the door, move slowly along the wall, reach the button and light the gas--if possible. With the silence of a creeping cat, he inched along. Every sense was on the alert. It took him a long time to come to the foot of the bed at the opening of the alcove, but he reached it at last. Was the masked man waiting for him in the darkness of the alcove? It seemed certain that he could be nowhere else in the room. Frank hesitated, nerving himself for what might come. Surely it required courage to enter that alcove. He listened, wondering if he could hear the breathing of the man crouching in the alcove. He heard nothing. Then every nerve and muscle seemed to grow taut in Merriwell's body, and, with one panther-like spring, he landed on the bed. In the twinkling of an eye he was at the head of the bed, and his fingers found the push button. Snap!--the gas came on, with a flare. It showed him standing straight up on the bed, his hands clinched, ready for anything that might follow. Nothing followed. Frank began to feel puzzled. "Why in the name of everything peculiar doesn't he get into gear and do something--if he's going to do anything at all?" thought the youth on the bed. Again a bound carried him over the footboard and out into the middle of the room, where he whirled to face the alcove, his eyes flashing round the place. The bed covering which had been flung over his head lay in the middle of the floor, where he had cast it aside. Nothing stirred in the room. On a chair near at hand Frank could hear his watch ticking in his pocket. Then the intruder had not taken the watch, which was valuable. Frank glanced toward his clothes. He had carefully placed them in a certain position when he undressed, and there they lay, as if they had not been touched or disturbed in the least. "Queer burglar," meditated Merry. "Should have thought he'd gone through my clothes first thing." But where was the fellow? There seemed but one place for him, and Frank stopped to look beneath the bed. There was no one under the bed. The wardrobe door stood slightly ajar. "Ah!" thought Frank. "At last! He must be in there, for there is no other place in this room where he could hide." Without hesitation, Frank flung open the door of the wardrobe, saying: "Come out, sir!" But the wardrobe was empty, save of such clothing and things as Frank had placed there with his own hands. Merriwell fell back, beginning to feel very queer. He looked all around the room, walking over to a sofa across a corner and looking behind that. In the middle of the floor he stopped. "This beats anything I ever came against!" he exclaimed. "Was it a spook?" Then the pain in his throat, where those iron hands had threatened to crush his windpipe, told him that it was no "spook." "And it could not have been a dream," he decided. "I know there was a living man in this room. How did he escape? That is one question. When it is answered, I shall know how he obtained admittance. And why did he come here?" Frank examined his clothes to make sure that nothing had been taken. He soon discovered that his watch, money and such valuables as he carried about with him every day, were there, not a thing having been disturbed. That settled one point in Frank's mind. The man had not entered that room for the purpose of robbery. If not for robbery, what then? It must have been for the purpose of wreaking some injury on Merriwell as he slept. "I was warned by my feelings," Frank decided. "I was in deadly peril; there is no doubt of that." Frank went to the window and looked out. It seemed a foolish thing to do, for he had looked out and seen that there was not even a fire escape to aid a person in gaining admittance to his room. The fire escape, he had been told, was at the end of the corridor. It was a night without a moon, but the electric lights shone in the street below. Something caused Merry to turn his head and look to his left. What was that? Close against the face of the outer wall something dangled. A sudden eagerness seized him. He leaned far out of the window, doing so at no small risk, and reached along the wall toward the object. With the tip of his fingers he grasped it and drew it toward him. It was a rope! "The mystery is solved!" muttered Frank, with satisfaction. "This explains how the fellow entered my room." He shook the rope and looked upward. He could see that it ran over the sill of a window two stories above. "Did he come down from there? Should have thought he would have selected a window directly over this. And did he climb back up this swaying, loosely dangling rope?" Frank wondered not a little. And then, as he was leaning out of his window, the light of the street lamps showed him that a window beyond the dangling rope, on a level with his, was standing open. The sight gave Merry a new idea. "I believe I understand how the trick was worked," he muttered. "That must explain how the fellow was able to vanish so swiftly while my head was covered by the bedclothes. With the aid of this rope, he swung out from his window and into mine. He could do it easily and noiselessly. While my head was covered, he plunged out of the window, caught the rope, and swung back. That's it!" Frank drew his head in quickly, but he still clung to the end of the rope. This he drew in and lay over the sill. "Yes," he decided, "that is the way the fellow escaped. He had the rope right here, so that he could catch it in a moment, and, grasping it, he plunged outward through the window. His momentum carried him right across and into the other window. It was a reckless thing to do, but perfectly practical." Then he remembered how he had heard, while standing with his back against his own door, the door of an adjoining room open and close, followed by the sound of swift footsteps passing outside. "That was when he left his room," Merry decided. It did not take Frank long to resolve to explore that room--to seek for some clew to the identity of the masked intruder. With the aid of the rope, he could swing into the open window; with its aid he could swing back to his own room. He would do it. Of course, Merry realized what a rash thing he was about to do. Of course he understood that he might be rushing to the waiting arms of his late antagonist. Still he was not deterred. All his curiosity was aroused, and he was bent on discovering the identity of the man, if such a thing were possible. He grasped the rope and climbed upon the window sill. Looking out, he carefully calculated the distance to the next window and the momentum he would require to take him there. Having decided this, he prepared to make the swing. And then, just at the very instant that he swung off from the window sill, he heard a hoarse, triumphant laugh above. He looked up. Out of the window from which ran the rope, a man was leaning. In his hand was something on which the light from the street lamps glinted. It was a knife! With that knife the wretch, whose face was covered by a mask, gave a slash at the rope, just as Merry swung off from the sill. With a twang, the rope parted! It was sixty feet to the street below. Frank fell. CHAPTER XII. THE NAME ON THE REGISTER. Not far, however, for he released the rope and shot out his arms. He had swung across so that he was opposite the open window when the rope was cut. Merriwell knew all his peril at the instant when he swung from the sill of his own window, but it was too late for him to keep himself from being carried out by the rope. In a twinkling, his one thought was to reach the other window quickly, knowing he would be dashed to death on the paving below if he did not. He flung himself toward that window, just as the rope parted. His arms shot in over the sill, and there he dangled. Down past his head shot the rope, twisting and writhing in the air, like a snake. He heard it strike on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. An exclamation of rage broke from the lips of the man in the window above, for he realized that Frank had not fallen with the rope. He leaned far out, lifted his arm, made a quick motion, and something went gleaming and darting through the air. He had flung the knife at Frank. It missed Merriwell, shot downward, and struck with a ringing clang on the stones below. "Missed!" snarled the man. "Well, I'll get you yet!" Then Merriwell drew himself in at the window, and the peril was past. No wonder he felt weak and limp. No wonder that he was jarred and somewhat bewildered. It was a marvel that he was not lying dead in the street below. Frank understood the full extent of the peril through which he had passed, and a prayer welled from his lips. "Thank God!" He was grateful in his heart, and he felt that he had been spared through the kindness of an all-wise Providence. It was some moments before he could stir. He lay on the floor, panting, and regaining his strength. He heard no sound in the room, for all the noise he had made in coming in, and more than ever he became convinced that the room had been occupied by his desperate enemy who had sought to destroy him that night. There was now no longer a doubt concerning the purpose of the man who had gained admission to Frank's room. The fellow had not come there for plunder, but for the purpose of harming Merriwell. Frank rose and sought the gas jet, which he lighted. Then he looked around. Somehow, it seemed that the room had been occupied that night, although the bed was undisturbed, showing that no person had slept in it. Frank fancied that his enemy had sat by the window, waiting, waiting till he felt sure Merry was sound asleep. And Frank had been sleeping soundly. He realized that, and he knew something had caused him to awaken, just in time. What was it? Was it some good spirit that hovered near to protect him? He looked all round the room, but could find nothing that served as a clew to the identity of the man who had occupied the apartment. But the register would tell to whom the room had been let. Having decided to go down and look the register over, Frank wondered how he was to get back into his own room, for the door was locked and bolted on the inside. He went to the window and looked out. There was no way for him to reach his window now that the rope had been cut. "And I should not be surprised if I am locked in this room," thought Merry. Investigation showed, however, that the door was unlocked, and he was able to step out into the corridor. But there he was, shut out from his own room by lock and bolt, and dressed in nothing but a suit of pajamas. The adventure had assumed a ludicrous aspect. Frank wondered what he could do. It was certain that they would not break into his room at that hour of the night, for the sound of bursting the bolt would disturb other sleepers. The watchman came down the corridor. He saw Frank and came onward with haste, plainly wondering what Merry was doing there. "Look here," said Frank, "I want to know the name of the man who occupies No. 231, this room next to mine." "What is the matter?" asked the watchman. "This person has disturbed me," said Frank, truthfully. "I am not going to raise a kick about it to-night, but I shall report it to the clerk in the morning." "Does he snore loudly?" inquired the watchman. "I didn't think you could hear through those partitions." "Here," said Frank, who had seen the watchman before, "you know me. My name is Merriwell. I haven't a cent in these pajamas, but I'll give you two dollars in the morning if you will go down to the office, look on the register, find out who occupies No. 231, and come back here and tell me." Now it happened that Frank had given the watchman fifty cents the night before to do something for him, and so the man was persuaded to go down to the office, although it is quite probable that he did not expect to see the promised two dollars in the morning. Frank waited. The watchman came back after a time. "Well," asked Merry, "did you look on the register and find out the name of the man who was given No. 231?" "I did," nodded the watchman. "What is his name?" "William Shakespeare Burns," was the astonishing answer. Frank staggered. He told the watchman he had made a mistake, but the man insisted that he had not. That was enough to excite Merry more than anything that had happened to date. Could it be that Burns, the old actor, whom he had befriended, had sought his life? It did not seem possible. If it were true, then, beyond a doubt, the man had been bribed to do the deed by some person who remained in the background. It did not take Frank long to tell the watchman what had happened. The man could scarcely believe it. He seemed to regard Merriwell as somewhat deranged. "If you do not think I am telling the truth," said Merry, "get your keys and try my door. If you are able to open it, I shall be greatly pleased." The watchman did so, but he could not open the door of the room. "Now," said Merry, "to make yourself doubly sure, go down to the sidewalk in front of the hotel and you will find the rope there." The man went down and found the rope. He came back greatly agitated. "This is a most astonishing occurrence," he said. "Never knew anything like it to happen here before." "Keep your eyes open for the man who had No. 231," said Merry. "I am going to take that room and sleep there the rest of the night. In the morning the door of my room must be opened for me." He went into that room, closed the door, locked it and bolted it, closed and fastened the window, and went to bed. Of course he did not go to sleep right away, but he forced himself to do so, after a time, and he slept peacefully till morning. In the morning Frank found the door of his room had been forced, so he was able to go in immediately on rising. He had been unable to obtain a room with a private bath connected, but there was a bathroom directly across the corridor, and he took his morning "dip," coming out as bright as a new dollar. But the mystery of the midnight intruder weighed heavily on Merry. He felt that he would give anything to solve it, and it must be solved in some manner. Bart came around before breakfast, and he found Merriwell standing in the middle of his room, scowling at the carpet. Frank was so unlike his accustomed self that Hodge was astounded. "What's happened?" asked Bart. "One of the most singular adventures of my life," answered Frank, and he proceeded to tell Bart everything. "Singular!" cried Hodge. "I should say so! You are dead in luck to be alive!" "I consider myself so," confessed Merry; "but I would give any sum to know who entered my room last night. Of course the name on the register was false." "Are you certain?" "Certain! Great Scott! You do not fancy for an instant that Burns was the man, do you?" "I don't know." "Well, I do!" "You mean you think you do." "No; I mean that I know. Burns was not the man." "How do you know?" "Why, hang it, Hodge! Why should that unfortunate old fellow wish to harm me, who has been his friend?" "Somebody may have hired him to do it." "Oh, you're daffy on that point! Reason will teach you that. If it had been Burns, he would not have registered under his own name. But I absolutely know it was not Burns I encountered. Besides being ridiculous that a man of his years and habits should venture to enter my room in such a manner, the man whom I encountered was supple, strong, and quick as a flash. Burns could not have fought like that; he could not have escaped in such an astonishing manner." "Oh, well, perhaps not," admitted Hodge, who seemed reluctant to give up. "But I have warned you against Burns all along, and----" "Oh, drop him now! Somebody else is trying to injure the poor fellow. I want to know who did the job last night, and W. S. Burns will not be able to tell me anything." Bart had no more to say, and they went down to breakfast together. Of course the hotel people promised to do everything possible to discover who had made the assault, but Frank had little confidence in their ability to accomplish anything. In fact, he believed the time had passed to do anything, for it seemed that his enemy had escaped from the hotel without leaving a trace behind him. Frank thought over the list of enemies who had sought to injure him since he entered theatricals, and he was startled. Three of his enemies were dead. Arthur Sargent had been drowned; Percy Lockwell was lynched, and Leslie Lawrence met his death in the quicksands of Big Sandy River. Of his living enemies, who might be desperate enough to enter his room and seek to harm him Philip Scudder stood alone. Where was Scudder? Was he in Denver? If so---- "If so, he is the man!" decided Frank. Merry resolved to be on his guard, for something told him another attempt would be made against him. CHAPTER XIII. THE RACE. All that forenoon he worked in the theater setting up the new mechanical arrangement, which had been completed, and preparing for the rehearsal that afternoon. Rehearsal time came, and the members of the company assembled. All but Burns. He was missing. "What do you think about it now?" asked Bart, grimly. "The same as I thought before," declared Frank. "Burns was almost broken-hearted at rehearsal yesterday. It is possible he may not come to-day, for you know he wished to be released." "Ah," said a sad voice, as the person in question appeared; "it is necessity that brings me. I fain would have remained away, but I need the money, and I must do that which my heart revolts against." "I believed you would come," said Frank, greeting the old tragedian. "You will get used to the part after a while. It is better to make people laugh than to make them weep." "But it is too late for me to turn myself into a clown." "Where did you stay last night?" asked Merry. "At my humble lodgings," was the answer. "A man by your name registered at the hotel where I stop, and had the room next to mine. Is it possible there are two William Shakespeare Burns in the city of Denver?" The old man drew himself up, thrusting his hand into the bosom of his coat, with his familiar movement of dignity. "There is but one," he said--"but one real William Shakespeare Burns in the whole world! I am he!" "But you were not at the hotel last night?" "Of a certainty I was not. To that I will pledge mine honor. If another was there under my name, he is an impostor." Frank was satisfied, but Bart was not; or, if Hodge was satisfied, he would not confess it. The rehearsal began. Frank had engaged some people to work the mechanical arrangement used in the third act, and they had been drilled and instructed by Havener. The first act went off well, the storm at the conclusion being worked up in first-class style. Scarcely a word of that act had Frank altered, so there was very little trouble over it. The second act was likewise a success, Havener finding it necessary to interrupt and give instructions but twice. Then came the third act, which Merry had almost entirely rewritten. In that act the burlesque tragedian was given an opportunity, and Burns showed that he had his lines very well, although he ran over them after the style of the old-time professional who disdains to do much more than repeat the words till the dress rehearsal comes. The third act was divided into three scenes, the second scene being an exterior, showing the river in the distance, lined by a moving, swaying mass of people. Along the river raced the three boats representing Yale, Harvard and Cornell. Keeping pace with them on the shore was the observation train, black with a mass of spectators. As the boats first came on, Harvard had a slight lead, but Yale spurted on appearing, and when they passed from view Yale was leading slightly. All this was a mechanical arrangement made to represent boats, a train, the river, and the great crowd of spectators. The rowers in the boats were inanimate objects, but they worked with such skill that it was hard to believe they were not living and breathing human beings. Even the different strokes of the three crews had been imitated. This arrangement was an invention of Merriwell's own. In fact, it was more of an optical illusion than anything else, but it was most remarkable in its results, for, from the front of the house, a perfect representation of the college boat race appeared to be taking place in the distance on the stage. Havener was a man who said very little, but he showed excitement and enthusiasm as this scene was being worked out. When the boats had disappeared, the stage grew dark, and there was a quick "shift" to the interior of the Yale boathouse. The entire front of the house, toward the river, had been flung wide open. Behind the scenes the actors who were not on the stage at the moment and the supers hurrahed much like the cheering of a vast multitude. Whistles shrieked, and then the three boats shot into view, with Yale still in the lead. The characters on the stage proper, in the boathouse, had made it known that the finish was directly opposite the boathouse, and so, when the boats flew across with Yale in advance, it was settled that the blue had won. Then Frank Merriwell, who had escaped from scheming enemies, and rowed in the race for all the attempts to drug him, was brought on by his admirers, and with the Yale cheer of victory, the curtain came down. Roscoe Havener came rushing onto the stage and caught Frank Merriwell by the hand, crying: "Merriwell, you are a genius! I want to say right here that I have doubted the practicability of this invention of yours, but now I confess that it is the greatest thing I ever saw. Your sawmill invention in 'John Smith' was great, but this lays way over it! You should make your fortune with this, but you must protect it." "I shall apply for a patent on the mechanism," said Frank. "I am having a working model made for that purpose." "That's right. You have your chance to make a fortune, and I believe you can make it with this piece." "It is a chance," agreed Frank, gravely; "but I shall take it for better or worse. I am going into this thing to make or break. I've got some money, and I'll sink every dollar I'm worth in the attempt to float this piece." Frank spoke with quiet determination. Hodge stood near and nodded his approval and satisfaction. "It's great, Merry," he said, in approval. "It's something new, too. You will not have any trouble over this, the way you did about the sawmill scene." "I hope not." Cassie Lee, the little soubrette, who was engaged to Havener, found an opportunity to get hold of Frank's hand. She gave it a warm pressure. "I'm so glad!" she whispered, looking into his eyes. "If Ross says it will go, you can bet it will! He knows his business. I've been waiting for him to express himself about it, and, now that he has, I feel better. You are right in it, Frank! I think you are a dandy!" "Thank you, Cassie," smiled Frank, looking down at her. And even though he liked Cassie, who had always been his friend, he was thinking at that moment of another little girl who was far away, but whom he had once hoped would create the part in "True Blue" that had been given to Cassie. In the fourth act Frank had skillfully handled the "fall" of the play, keeping all in suspense as he worked out the problem, one of the chief arts of successful play constructing. Too often a play falls to pieces at once after the grand climax is reached, and the final act is obviously tacked on to lengthen it out. This one fault Frank had worked hard to avoid, and he had succeeded with masterly skill, even introducing a new element of suspense into the final act. Merry had noticed that, in these modern days, the audience sniffs the "and-lived-happy-forever-after" conclusion of a play from afar, and there was always a rustling to get hats and coats and cloaks some moments before the end of most plays. To avoid this, he determined to end his play suddenly and in an original manner. This he succeeded in doing in a comedy scene, but not until the last speech was delivered was the suspense entirely relieved. Havener, who could not write a play to save his life, but who understood thoroughly the construction of a piece, and was a discriminating critic, was nearly as well pleased by the end of the piece as by the mechanical effect in the third act. "If this play does not make a big hit I shall call myself a chump," he declared. "I was afraid of it in its original form, but the changes have added to it the elements it needed to become immensely popular." When the rehearsal was over Cassie Lee found Burns seated on a property stump behind the scenes, his face bowed on his hands, his attitude that of one in deep sorrow. "Now, what's the matter with you?" she asked, not unkindly. "Are you sick?" The old tragedian raised his sad face and spoke: "'Join not with grief, fair woman, do not so, To make my end too sudden; learn good soul, To think our former state a happy dream; From which awaked, the truth of what we are Shews to us but this: I am sworn brother, sweet, To grim necessity; and he and I Will keep a league till death.'" There was something strangely impressive in the old man's words and manner, and the laugh she tried to force died on Cassie's lips. "I s'pose that's Shakespeare you are giving me," she said. "I don't go much on Shake. He was all right in his day, but his day is past, and he won't go down with people in general now. The public wants something up to date, like this new play of Merriwell's, for instance." "Ah, yes," sighed Burns; "I think you speak the truth. In these degenerate days the vulgar rabble must be fed with what it can understand. The rabble's meager intellects do not fathom the depths of the immortal poet's thoughts, but its eyes can behold a mechanical arrangement that represents a boat race, and I doubt not that the groundlings will whoop themselves hoarse over it." "That's the stuff!" nodded Cassie. "That's what we want, for I rather reckon Mr. Merriwell is out for the dust." "The dust! Ah, sordid mortals! All the world, to-day, seems 'out for the dust.'" "Well, I rather think that's right. What do you want, anyway? If you have plenty to eat and drink and wear you're in luck." "'What is a man If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.'" "That's all right; but just think of the ones who can't get all they want to eat, and who are driven to work like dogs, day after day, without ever getting enough sleep to rest them." "Ah, but few of them have hopes or aspirations. They are worms of the earth." "Oh, I don't know! I reckon some of them are as good as anybody, but they're down on their luck. The world has gone against them." "But they have never climbed to the heights, only to slip back to the depths. Then is when the world turns dark." The old tragedian bowed his head again, and, feeling that she could say nothing to cheer him up, Cassie left him there. Frank came in later, and had a talk with Burns. The old man acknowledged that he believed the play would be a success, but he bemoaned his fate to be forced to play a part so repulsive to him. Merry assured him that he would get over that in time, and succeeded in putting some spirit into the old fellow. CHAPTER XIV. FRANK'S NEW COMEDIAN. The day came for the great dress rehearsal of "True Blue," to which the theatrical people of Denver, the newspaper men, and a great number of prominent people had been invited. Frank had determined on this course at great expense, but he believed he would be repaid for the outlay. His chief object was to secure good newspaper notices and recommendations from the theater managers in the city. It was to be an afternoon performance, so that it would not interfere with any of the regular theatrical attractions to play in town that night. Early in the day Hodge advised Frank to keep a sharp watch on Burns. "Don't let him have any money, Merry. He fancies he will have to go through a terrible ordeal this afternoon, and he wishes to brace up for it. If he gets all he wants to drink, he will be loaded to the muzzle when the time comes to play." Frank feared this, and so, when Burns appealed to him for money, he refused the old man, telling him he could have some after the performance. Then Merry set Gallup to watch the tragedian. Frank was at work in the theater, where various members of the company were practicing specialties, and the stage hands were arranging everything so that there would be no hitch about the performance. Within thirty minutes after Gallup was set to watch the old actor, he came to Frank in a hurry, saying: "If you want to keep Mr. Burns sober, I advise yeou to come with me an' git him aout of a grog shop daown the street, Merry." "What's that?" exclaimed Frank. "Why, he hasn't the money to buy liquor, even if he has gone into a saloon." "He won't hev to buy it, I guess." "Why not?" "Well, I saw two men pick him up an' take him inter the gin mill. They axed him would he come in an' have somethin' with them." "Did he know them?" "Didn't seem ter. He looked kainder s'prised, but he accepted the invite in a hurry." "Then it is time that we looked after him," nodded Merry, grimly. "Show me where he has gone, Ephraim." Hodge followed them. They left the theater and hurried along the street to a saloon. "He went in here," said Ephraim. Without a word, Frank entered. The moment Merry was within the place he saw Burns standing near the bar, while a crowd had gathered around him. The old man had placed his hat on the bar, tossed back his long, black hair, which was streaked with gray, struck a pose, and was just beginning to declaim from Shakespeare. "Go it, old chap!" cried a half-intoxicated man. "We'll put up the red eye for you as long as you will spout." The old man's voice rang out clear and strong. His pronunciation was perfect, and his enunciation clear and distinct. Involuntarily Merry paused a moment to listen. At that moment it came to Frank that Burns might, beyond a doubt, have been an actor of no small merit had he eschewed drink and followed his ambition with unswerving purpose. For the first time Merry fully appreciated the outraged feelings of the old fellow who was compelled to burlesque the tragedian on the stage. Frank strode forward into the crowd, followed by his friends. "Burns," he said, quietly, interrupting the old man, "I want you to come with me." The aged actor stopped speaking, all the dignity seemed to melt from him in a moment, and he reached for his hat, murmuring: "I merely came in for one small bracer. I needed it, and the gentlemen were good enough to invite me." "Here!" coarsely cried a man. "What's this mean? Who's this that's comin' here to spoil our fun?" "Throw the feller out!" cried another. Growls of anger came from the others gathered about, and they crowded nearer. "Look out for trouble!" whispered Hodge, in Frank's ear. "Get out of here," ordered the first speaker, confronting Merry. "We're bein' entertained." "I beg your pardon--gentlemen," said Merry, smoothly, hesitating slightly before the final word. "There are reasons why I come here to take Mr. Burns with me. I am sorry to spoil your entertainment, but it is necessary." "Is the old fellow bound out to you?" sneeringly, asked one. "Do you own him?" "No man owns me!" cried the tragedian, drawing himself up and staring round. "I am my own master." "I'll bet you don't dare take another drink," said the man, quickly thrusting a brimming glass of whisky toward Burns. "You're afraid of the young gent." "I'm afraid of nobody," declared Burns, eagerly reaching for the glass. "I have drunk all I could get, and I always shall, for all of anybody." "That's the talk!" "Down with it!" "Take your medicine!" "You're the boy!" The crowd shouted its approval. Burns lifted the glass. Frank's hand fell gently on his arm. "Mr. Burns," he said, swiftly, "I ask you as a particular favor not to drink that liquor. I ask you as a gentleman not to do it." Merry knew how to appeal to the old man in a manner that would touch the right spot. Burns looked straight into Frank's eyes an instant, and then he placed the glass on the bar. "If you ask me that way," he said, "ten thousand fiends cannot force me to touch the stuff!" There was a groan from the crowd. "The old duffer caves!" sneered one man. "He hasn't any backbone." "Oh, say!" sibilated Hodge, in Merry's ear; "get him out of here in a hurry! I can't stand much of this! I feel like thumping a few of these ruffians." "Steady!" cautioned Frank. "We do not want to get into a barroom brawl if we can avoid it." "They're a purty darn tough-lookin' craowd," muttered Ephraim. "Why wouldn't it be a purty good thing fer ther young chaps all ter take a drink?" suggested somebody. "That's right!" cried the leader. "I'll stand for them all, and the actor shall drink with them." "Don't let them git out, gents, till they've taken their bitters." The rough men hemmed them in. "I fear you are in an unfortunate predicament," said Burns. "You will have to drink with them." "I never drink," said Merry, quietly. "Yer can't refuse here," declared the man who had offered to buy the drinks. "It's a mortal insult ter refuse ter drink hyar." "I never took a drink in my life, gentlemen," said Merriwell, speaking calmly, and distinctly, "and I shall not begin now. You will have to excuse me." He started to force his way through the crowd. A hand reached out to clutch him, and he wheeled like a flash toward the man, at whom he pointed squarely, crying: "Take off that false beard! If you are a man, show your face! You are in disguise! I believe you are a criminal who does not dare show his face!" His ringing words drew the attention of the crowd to the man whom he accused. Merry improved the opportunity and hurried his friends and Burns toward the door. Before the gang was aware of it, they were out of the saloon, and Frank breathed his relief. Not till they had reached the theater did a thought come to Frank that made him regret his hasty departure from the saloon. "Heavens!" he exclaimed. "I believe the man who wore the false beard was the same one who entered my room at the hotel by means of the rope!" He dashed back to the saloon, followed by Hodge and Gallup; but when he reached the place nearly all the crowd had left, the man he sought having departed with the others. Frank was disappointed. He learned at the saloon that the accused man had not removed the beard, but had sneaked out in a hurry after Frank was gone. Returning to the theater, Merry was informed that Burns was behaving strangely. "He seems to be doped," declared Hodge. "I think he has been drugged." Burns was in a dressing room, and Havener was working to keep the man awake, although the old actor was begging to be allowed to sleep. As soon as Frank saw him he dispatched one of the supers for a physician. The doctor came and gave Burns a powerful emetic, following that with a dose of medicine that seemed to brace the man up. Thus Burns was pulled into shape for the afternoon performance, although Frank realized that he had very nearly wrecked everything. Burns remained in the theater, and lunch was brought him there. "Mr. Merriwell," he said, "I will surprise you by the manner in which I'll play my part this afternoon. It shall be burlesque of a kind that'll satisfy you." The performance was to begin at two o'clock. Some time before that people began to arrive, and they came fast. At two o'clock there were nearly five hundred persons in the auditorium. The company was all made up and waiting behind the scenes. Cassie Lee started to find Frank to ask him how he liked her make-up. In a corner behind the scenes she saw a man stopping near a mass of piled-up scenery. Something about the man's appearance and his actions attracted her attention. She saw him pick up a can and pour some of the contents on the scenery. Then he crouched down there, taking a match safe from his pocket. In a moment it dawned on Cassie that the fellow was up to deviltry. He had saturated the scenery with oil, and he was about to set it on fire! Cassie screamed, and Frank Merriwell, who was near at hand, heard her. He came bounding to the spot, just as the startled man lighted his match. "Quick, Frank!" cried Cassie. "He's setting the scenery afire!" Frank saw the fellow and leaped at him. The scenery flared up where the match had touched it. Then the fire bug turned to run. Merriwell was on him, had him, hurled him down. "No, you don't, you dog!" grated Frank. "You shall pay for this dastardly trick!" Cassie, with rare presence of mind, caught up a rug, which happened to be near, and beat out the fire before it had gained much headway. A terrible struggle was going on between Frank and the man he had captured. The fellow was fighting with all his strength to hurry off and escape. "No, you don't!" came through Merriwell's teeth. "I know you! You are the chap who entered my room! You it was who attempted to drug Burns so that this performance would be ruined! And now you have made a fatal mistake by attempting to fire the theater. I have you, and I shall hold you. You will be safely lodged behind prison bars for this trick." "Curse you!" panted the man. "That does not hurt me," said Merry. "Now, be quiet." He pinned the fellow to the floor and held him till others came up. Then the man's hands were tied. "Now, we'll have a look at him," said Merry, rolling the captive over on his back and pulling the old hat from his head. Then he gave a cry of amazement, staggering back. Hodge was there, and he was no less astounded. Gallup was speechless with astonishment and incredulity. "The dead alive!" cried Frank. The man he had captured was the one he believed beneath the quicksands of Big Sandy River, Leslie Lawrence! "I'm not dead yet!" grated Lawrence. "Fowler went down in the quicksands, but I managed to float away. I hid under the river's bank, and there I stayed, like a hunted wolf, till you gave up looking for me. I swore to settle the score with you, but----" "You tried hard enough. You were the one who entered my room at the hotel." "Was I? Prove it." "I don't have to. The job you tried to do here is enough. That will put you safely away. Somebody call an officer." An officer was called, and Lawrence was taken away. The audience in front had heard some of the commotion behind the scenes and had grown rather restless, but they were soon calmed. An orchestra was on hand to play, and everything was carried out as if it had been a regular performance. The first act went off well, and it received mild applause. The second act seemed to take full better, but still, the audience had not been aroused to any great show of enthusiasm. Then came the third act. The first surprise was Burns. He literally convulsed the audience by the manner in which he burlesqued the Shakespearian tragedian. He astonished Frank, for Merry had not dreamed the old actor could be so intensely funny. Even Hodge was seen to smile once! When Burns came off after doing an exceptionally clever piece of work, which caused the audience to applaud most heartily, Frank met him and grasped his hand, saying: "My dear Mr. Burns, you have made the comedy hit of the piece! Your salary shall be fifty dollars a week, instead of forty." But William Shakespeare Burns burst into tears, sobbing brokenly: "The comedy hit of the piece! And I have broken my own heart!" It was impossible to cheer him up. The boat race followed swiftly, and it wrought the audience up to a high pitch of enthusiasm and excitement. When the curtain came down, there was a perfect shout of applause, such as an enthusiastic Western audience alone can give. "Frank Merriwell! Frank Merriwell!" was the cry that went up from all parts of the house. Frank was obliged to come before the curtain and make a speech, which he did gracefully and modestly. When he was behind the curtain again, Havener had him by the hand, saying: "You will get some rousing press notices to-morrow, Merriwell! This play will be the hit of your life!" A manager of one of the local theaters came behind the scenes and offered Frank three thousand dollars for the piece. When Frank declined, the man promptly made it five thousand, but even that sum was not accepted. Then came the fourth act, in which Burns again appeared as the burlesque tragedian. In this he was to repeat a parody on _Hamlet's_ soliloquy, but, apparently, before he was aware of it, he began to give the soliloquy itself. In a moment the man had flung off the air of the clown. He straightened to his full height, his eyes gleamed with a strange fire, his chest heaved, and his voice sounded clear as the ring of steel. He electrified every person who heard him. With all the dramatic fire of a Booth, he swung into the soliloquy, and a hush fell over the audience. He held them spellbound, he swayed them at his will, he thrilled them as never had they been thrilled. At that moment William Shakespeare Burns was the tragedian sublime, and it is probable that he reached such heights as he had never before attained. He finished. It was over, and then, realizing what he had done, he tottered off the stage. Then the audience applauded long and loud, trying to call him back again; but behind the scenes he had fallen into Frank Merriwell's arms, faintly murmuring: "It is finished!" Frank bore the man to a dressing room. The play went on to the end without a break, but it was not necessary for Burns to enter again. When the curtain fell on the final act, Havener came hurrying to Merry: "Burns wants to see you in the dressing room," he said. "You had better come at once." Frank went there. The moment he saw the old actor, who was reclining on some rugs, his face ashen, his eyes looking dim and sunken still deeper into his head, Frank said: "Somebody go for a doctor at once!" He knelt beside the man, and the old actor murmured: "It is useless to go for a doctor. I heard you tell them, but it is--no use. I told you--my heart--was broken. I spoke the--truth. It broke my heart when I--had to--burlesque----" His words died out in his throat. "He's going!" somebody whispered, for the company was gathered around. There was a brief silence, and then the old man seemed to draw himself up with pride, as they had seen him do in life. "Yes, sir," he said, distinctly, "my name is Burns--William Shakespeare Burns--tragedian--at liberty." The old eyes closed, a faint sigh escaped his bloodless lips, and the old actor was "at liberty." CHAPTER XV. A NEWSPAPER NOTICE. "Yesterday afternoon, through the courtesy of Manager Frank Merriwell, an invited audience of at least five hundred persons witnessed the first performance of Mr. Merriwell's revised and rewritten play at the Orpheum Theater, and the verdict of that audience, which represented the highest and most cultured element of Denver society, was that the sprightly, sensational, four-act comedy drama was a success in every way. The play, which is now named 'True Blue,' was originally christened 'For Old Eli,' and, after a single performance, Mr. Merriwell withdrew it for the purpose of rewriting it, correcting certain faults he had discovered, and strengthening one or two weak points. As he wrote the piece, he was able to do this work of reconstruction quickly and thoroughly, and the result is a play of which he, as author, manager and star performer, may well be proud. The following is the cast: DICK TRUEHEART FRANK MERRIWELL Barry Hattleman Douglas Dunton Spruce Downing Rufus Small Crack Hyerman Bartley Hodge Reuben Grass Ephraim Gallup Manny Sizzwell William Wynne Prof. Gash Roscoe Havener Edwin Treadwell William Shakespeare Burns Carius Dubad Granville Garland Spike Dubad Lester Vance Millie Blossom Miss Cassie Lee Inez Dalton Miss Stella Stanley Nancy Noodle Miss Agnes Kirk "College life is the principal theme of 'True Blue,' and Mr. Merriwell, having studied at Yale, is quite capable of catching the air and spirit of Old Eli, and reproducing it on the stage. This he has done with a deftness and fidelity that makes the play remarkable in its class, or, possibly with greater accuracy, lifts it out of its class, for, up to the production of this piece, all college plays have been feeble attempts to catch the spirit of the life they represent, or have descended into the realm of farce or burlesque. "While the author of 'True Blue' has written a play to suit the popular fancy, he has not considered it necessary to write down to the general public, and, for all of the college slang, which of a necessity is used by several of the characters, there is nothing offensive in the entire piece--nothing to shock the sensibilties of the most refined. The comedy in places is a trifle boisterous, but that was to be expected, and it does not descend to mere buffoonery. It is the kind of comedy at which the spectator must laugh, even though he may resolve that he will not, and, when it is all over, he feels better for his laughter, instead of feeling foolish, as he does in many cases after witnessing other 'popular plays.' "The pathos strikes the right chord, and the strongest situations and climaxes are stirring enough to thrill the most sluggish blood. In some respects the story of the play is rather conventional, but it is handled in a manner that makes it seem almost new. Through the four acts _Dick Trueheart_, the hero, is pursued by his enemies, _Carius Dubad_, and his, worthy son, _Spike_, and on various occasions they succeed in making things extremely unpleasant for the popular young athlete. "Through two acts the villains pursue the hero, keeping the audience on the _qui vive_. "The climax of the third act was the great sensational feature of the play. In this act _Dick_ escapes from his enemies and all sorts of crafty snares, and is barely in time to take his place in the Yale boat, which is to race against Harvard and Cornell. _Carius Dubad_ has appeared on the scene, and, at the last moment, in order to break _Dick's_ spirit, he reveals that _Dick's_ guardian has squandered his fortune, so that the hero is penniless and will be forced to leave college. For all of this revelation, _Trueheart_ enters the boat and aids in winning the race against Harvard and Cornell, greatly to the discomfiture of the villainous father and son, who have bet heavily against Yale. Of course, Mr. Merriwell made Yale win in his play. The mechanism that showed the boat race on the distant river, the moving observation train, the swaying crowds with waving flags, hats, and handkerchiefs, was truly a most wonderful arrangement, and it filled the spectators with admiration and astonishment. A quick 'dark shift' followed, and then the boats actually appeared, with Yale the winner, and _Trueheart_ was brought onto the stage in the arms of his admiring fellow collegians, while the curtain descended amid a burst of genuine enthusiastic applause such as is seldom heard in any theater. Mr. Merriwell was called before the curtain, and he made a brief speech, which seemed modest and characteristic of this young actor and playwright, who is certain to follow a brilliant career on the American stage. "In the final act the hero was in straitened circumstances, but all ends well, with the discomfiture of old _Dubad_ and his worthy son, and the final settlement of all jealousies between the other characters. "Not only as author of the play, but as the star does Frank Merriwell merit a full meed of credit and praise. Although he is young and impulsive, and his acting might not meet the approval of certain critics, there was a breeziness and freshness about him that captivated and carried the audience. It is said that he has never attended a school of acting, and this may readily be believed, for there is nothing affected, nothing stiff, nothing stilted and mechanical about his work on the stage. In his case, at least, it has been greatly to his advantage not to attend a dramatic school. He is a born actor, and he must work out his own methods without being hampered by convention and instruction from those who believe in doing everything by rule. He is a handsome young man, and his stage presence is both striking and effective. Worthy of note was it that he enunciated every word distinctly and pronounced it correctly, in great contrast to many other stars, who sometimes mangle speech in a most distressing manner. He has a voice that seems in perfect keeping with his splendid figure, being clear as a mellow bell, full of force, and delightful to hear. "The work of Douglas Dunton as _Barry Hattleman_ was good. Mr. Small, who is a very large man, faithfully portrayed _Spruce Downing_, the lazy student. _Crack Hyerman_, the hot-blooded Southerner, as represented by Bartley Hodge, who made the Southerner a thorough fire-eater, who would fight for his 'honor' at the drop of the hat. As _Reuben Grass_, Ephraim Gallup literally convulsed the audience. Without doubt his delineation of the Down-East Yankee was the best ever seen in Denver. "Miss Cassie Lee played the sweet and winsome _Millie Blossom_, and her singing and dancing met approval. The _Inez Dalton_ of Miss Stanley was handled with great skill, and she was jealous, passionate, resentful, and loving in turn, and in a manner that seemed true to life. As _Nancy Noodle_, an old maid in love with _Prof. Gash_, Miss Agnes Kirk was acceptable. "And now comes the duty of mentioning a man who was the surprise of the evening. His name was given on the program as William Shakespeare Burns, and, as he represented a burlesque tragedian, it was supposed that the name was assumed. It has been learned, however, that this is the name by which he was known in real life. Mr. Burns first appeared in the second act, and as _Edwin Treadwell_, the frayed, back-number tragedian, he literally caused many of the audience to choke in the effort to repress their uncontrollable laughter. At the close of the third act, a local theatrical man declared that W. S. Burns far excelled as a comedian anybody he had ever seen essay a similar part. But the sensation came in the fourth act, when the actor started to parody _Hamlet's_ soliloquy, but seemed to forget himself and the parody together, and swung into the original William Shakespeare. The laughter died out, the audience sat spellbound, scarcely breathing. The eyes of every person were fixed on the actor, who went through the soliloquy to the end, giving it with all the power of a Forrest or a Booth. As the actor retired, the audience awoke, realized it had seen and heard a man who was no clown, but a real tragedian, and the applause was long and loud. "William Shakespeare Burns did not appear again on the stage of that theater; he will not appear again on any stage. He is dead! But few particulars have been learned about him, but it seems that this was his first attempt to play comedy--and his last. He regarded himself as the equal of any interpreter of Shakespeare, living or dead, but misfortune and his own weakness had never permitted him to rise to the heights to which he aspired. Grim necessity had compelled him to accept Mr. Merriwell's offer to play in 'True Blue' the part of the burlesque tragedian. His heart and soul had rebelled against doing so, and often at rehearsals he had wept with mortification after going through with his part. His body was weakened by privation. He declared last night that his heart was broken. A few minutes after leaving the stage the last time he expired in one of the dressing rooms of the theater. Thus ended a life that might have been a grand success but for the failings of weak human nature. "Mr. Merriwell will go on the road at once with 'True Blue.' He has engaged a competent man to fill the place made vacant by the death of Mr. Burns. His route for some little time is booked, and he leaves Denver to-day for Puelbo, where he opens to-morrow. The play, the star, and the company merit success, and we hope Mr. Merriwell will find it convenient to play a regular engagement in this city before long. It is certain, if he does, he will be greeted by packed houses."--_Denver Herald and Advertiser._ * * * * * All the Denver papers contained notices of the performance, but the one quoted was the longest and the most elaborate. Not one of the notices was unfavorable. They were enough to make the heart of any manager glad, and it was not strange that Frank felt well satisfied. But he was inexpressibly saddened by the sudden and tragic death of William Burns, for he had recognized the genius in the old actor, who had been dragged down from a highroad to prosperity and fame by the hands of the relentless demon that has destroyed so many men of genius, drink. On account of his bookings, Frank could not remain in Denver to attend the funeral of the veteran tragedian, but he resolved that Burns should be buried with all honors, and he made arrangements for a suitable funeral. Of course, the papers announced the funeral, and, the story of Burns' remarkable death having become familiar to all, the church was packed to the doors. The man whose wretched life had promised a wretched death and a nameless grave was buried without pomp, but with such honors as might have been given to one well known and highly esteemed. Above his grave a modest marble was placed, and chiseled on it was a single line from the "Immortal Bard," whom he loved and understood and interpreted with the faithfulness and fire of genius: "After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well." And every expense Frank Merriwell provided for. Nothing was neglected; everything was done that good taste and a good heart demanded. CHAPTER XVI. THE VEILED WOMAN. As may be understood, the members of Frank's company were individually and collectively delighted with the apparent success of the play and their efforts. Perhaps Agnes Kirk was the only one who complained. She was not at all pleased by the notices she obtained. Frank immediately secured a supply of Denver papers and, marking the notices, mailed them to the managers of theaters and the editors of papers along the route "True Blue" was to follow. Then he had typewritten copies made of extracts from these notices, which he added to his collection of press notices already manufactured for advertising purposes, and sent them on to his advance agent, who had been out on the road several days. Frank knew how to work every point to the best advantage, and he did not lose anything. He was tireless in his efforts, and it was wonderful what an immense amount of work he accomplished. No one knows how much he can do till he makes the test. Hodge aided him as far as possible, and Frank found Bart a valuable assistant. Hodge was fully as eager as Merriwell for the play to be a great success. Frank had opened with the piece under its original name in Puelbo, and it had met disaster there. He vowed that he would return to that place with the play and make a success of his engagement. He engaged the leading theater in the city for three nights, being obliged to pay in advance for it, as the manager had no confidence in the revised play. Frank had been working the papers of the city. One of them was edited by a remarkably genial gentleman by the name of Osgood, and this editor had seen in the original play material for a strong piece. He admired Merry's pluck in opening the second time in that city, and he literally opened the columns of his paper to Frank, who telegraphed down extracts from the Denver papers as soon as the notices appeared. The house in Puelbo was to be well "papered" the first night, but was to depend entirely on the drawing qualities of the play for the audience on the following two nights. Frank was making a great hustle to get away from Denver, and he was returning from the theater to his hotel, after seeing the last of the special scenery moved to the railroad station, when a heavily veiled woman stopped directly in his path. As he was walking hastily, he nearly ran against her. "I beg your pardon, madam!" exclaimed Frank, lifting his hat. "Very awkward of me." "Not at all," she said, in a low voice, that was not unpleasant nor unmusical. "You were hurrying, and I stopped directly in your way. I am the one who should beg to be excused." "Not at all," he hastened to say. "I assure you that it was entirely on account of my awkwardness." He was about to pass on, but her gloved hand fell on his arm, and she said: "I wish to speak with you, Mr. Merriwell." "You know me?" exclaimed Frank, surprised. "Indeed, I do. Why should I not? All Denver knows you to-day." "Am I so famous as that?" smiled Merry. "I fear you flatter, madam." "It is not flattery. You must not doubt my sincerity." "Very well, I will not; but you must speak hastily, for I have a train to catch in an hour and thirty minutes, and I haven't too much time to attend to all I have to do." "But you must give me a little of your time--you really must," she said, persuasively, putting her hand on his arm again. "If you will come with me--please do!" "Where?" "Oh, I know a nice, quiet place, where we can talk." Somehow Frank did not like her words or manner. A feeling that there was something wrong about her came over him. "Really, you must excuse me," he said. "I have not the time to go anywhere to talk. If you have anything to say to me, you can say it here." "Now, don't be obstinate. You'll not regret it if you come." "But I do not even know who you are. That veil----" "If you come, I may remove the veil," she murmured. Frank drew back, so that her hand fell from his arm. "Madam," he said, "you have placed me in a very awkward position. I do not like to appear rude to a lady, but----" "Of course you do not, and so you will grant my request. It is a small matter." "But not to me, for my time is valuable just now. I am ready to hear anything you have to say, but you must say it here." "Would you keep a lady standing on the street?" she exclaimed, with a slight show of resentment. "I cannot say all I have to tell you in a minute." "And I have explained that I cannot spare time to talk over anything for more than a few moments. I think you will have to excuse me. Good-day." He lifted his hat and started to pass on, but again she placed herself squarely in front of him, to his great annoyance. "Mr. Merriwell," she said, "I have seen you on the stage, and I admire you greatly. You will not be rude to one of your admirers, I know. You are far too gallant for that." It was plain she sought to cajole him by flattery, and that was the surest way to repulse him. "Is it possible she is one of those foolish women who fall in love with actors?" Frank asked himself. Somehow she did not seem like that. There was nothing of the giddy, gushing girl about her. He could not see her face, but her figure was that of a matured woman, and he judged that she must be twenty-five years old, at least. It seemed, too, that there was a purpose in her words and movements. But Frank resolved on action, for he had found that it was useless to waste words talking to her. He made a quick move to one side and passed her, intending to hasten away. Barely had he done so when she flung her arms about his neck and screamed loudly! Frank was astounded by this unexpected move of the veiled woman. "She's crazy!" That was the thought that flashed through Merry's mind. He realized that he was in an awkward predicament, and he attempted to whirl about. The woman was very strong, and, having taken him by surprise, she nearly threw him down. To save himself, he caught hold of her. "Help!" she cried. Some men came running up. "Madam," said Frank, hurriedly, "are you demented? What is the meaning of this?" "You wretch!" she blazed. "Oh, you cowardly scoundrel, to assault a lady on the public street in broad daylight!" "Surely you are----" "I saw him do it!" declared a little man, with red whiskers. "I saw him assault you, madam." "Call an officer!" palpitated the woman. "Quick, before he gets away!" "He shall not get away," declared a big man with a crooked eye, glowering at Frank. "If he tries it, I'll attend to him!" "Looks like a would-be masher," piped a slim man, with a very long neck, ducking and nodding his head in an odd manner. "He should be taught a lesson." One or two others expressed themselves in a similar manner. Frank had thought of making a break and hastening away, but now he saw it would not do, for he would have a howling mob at his heels the instant he attempted such a move. He realized it would seem cowardly to run away in such a manner, and would look like a confession of guilt, which caused him to decide to stay and face it out, even though the predicament was most embarrassing. "Gentlemen," he said, looking squarely at them, and seeming to pay very little attention to the mysterious woman, even though he was perfectly on his guard, not knowing what move she might make next, "I trust you will give me a chance to explain what has happened." "Explain it in the police court," growled the big man with a crooked eye. "That's the proper place for you to make your explanations." "The judge will listen to you," cried the slim man, his head bobbing on his long neck, like the head of a crane that is walking along the edge of a marsh. "Don't attempt to escape by means of falsehoods, you rascal!" almost shouted the little man with the red whiskers, bristling up in a savage manner, but dodging back the moment Frank turned on him. "Gentlemen, I have been insulted by this fellow!" came from behind the baffling veil worn by the woman. "He is a low wretch, who attacked me in a most brutal manner." "We will see that you are protected, madam," assured the little man, his red whiskers seeming to bristle like porcupine quills, as he dodged round Frank and placed himself on the opposite side of the veiled unknown. "Madam," he repeated, "I will see that you are protected--I will!" "You are very kind," she fluttered; "but where is the officer? The reaction--the shock--the weakness!" "Permit me to offer you any assistance possible," gallantly spoke a man in a sack coat and a silk hat, stepping forward and raising the latter piece of wearing apparel, thereby disclosing a shining bald spot on the top of his head, which he covered as quickly as possible, evidently hoping it had escaped the woman's notice. "You are in a city, my dear lady, where insults to the fair sex never go unpunished." He attempted to smile on her in a pleasant manner, but there was a sort of leer in his eyes and around his sensual mouth that betrayed his true character plainly enough. The woman did not accept his arm which was half tendered, but she made a great show of agitation and distress, which affected the various witnesses. "It's a shame!" piped the man with the long neck and the bobbing head. "It's an outrage!" blustered the little man with the bristling whiskers and savage manner. "It's most unfortunate!" murmured the gallant man with the silk hat and sack coat. "It's a bad break for Mr. Masher!" ejaculated the big man with the crooked eye and glowering look. Frank smiled; he could not help it, for he was impressed by the comedy of the affair, despite the unpleasantness of the situation he was in at that moment. "This would be good stuff for a scene in a play," he thought, and he made a mental note of it. Then he turned to the woman. "Madam," he said, "what have I ever done to you that you should attempt to injure me in this manner?" "Don't let him speak to me, the scoundrel!" she entreated, appealing to the men. "But it is no more than fair that you should answer me," persisted Merry. "I do not know you; I have not even seen your face. Will you not lift your veil and permit me to see your face, so that I may know who has brought me into this unpleasant position?" "He adds to his insults by requesting me to expose my identity on the street after such an affair as this!" she almost sobbed. "He would disgrace me! He would have my name in all the newspapers!" "Reprehensible!" purred the gallant man. "Terrible!" cackled the man with the bobbing head. "Dastardly!" exploded the individual with the red whiskers. "Criminal!" grated the giant with the crooked eye. And they all glared at Frank--at least all of them but the one with the crooked eye. It is possible that he, also, glared at the supposed offender, but he seemed to be glaring at a white horse on the opposite side of the street. Repressing his laughter with difficulty, Merry said: "I assure you, gentlemen, I never saw this lady, to my knowledge, before a few minutes ago, when she stopped me on the street, and----" Again the woman screamed. "Will you listen to his base falsehoods?" she cried, with a show of the greatest indignation and distress. "He is trying to disgrace me still further by asserting that I stopped him on the street--stopped him! As if a lady would do such a thing!" "The idea!" squawked the man with the long neck, his head seeming to bob faster than ever, as if it sought to express by its excited movements the indignant emotions his tongue could not utter. "My dear lady, I would not remain here to be thus insulted," declared the gallant man, bending toward her, and endeavoring to summon a look of concern to his treacherous countenance. "He should be placed in irons!" blurted the fierce-appearing little man, his red whiskers seeming to work and squirm with intense excitement and anger. "He ought to have his head broken!" roared the big man, his crooked eye still seeming to glare at the white horse in a most terrible and awesome manner. Others of the assembled crowd murmured to themselves in a most indignant manner, all seeming to regard Frank as the offender. Frank took out his watch and looked at it. "Gracious!" he mentally exclaimed, "time is flying. If this keeps up much longer, I'll not reach Puelbo to-day." "Now he shows his anxiety and concern," said a voice in the crowd. "He's beginning to be frightened," said another voice. "He's anxious to get away," said a third. "But he can't get away," said a fourth. "This is all very interesting," thought Frank; "but it is decidedly unpleasant." "Waal, whut in time's sake is goin' on here, I'd like ter know?" cried a voice that was familiar to Frank, and a tall, lank, countrified-appearing youth came up to the outskirts of the crowd, stood on his tiptoes, and peered over. It was Ephraim Gallup, and he saw Frank. "Waal, darned if it ain't----" Merry made a swift movement, clapping a finger to his lips, and Gallup, usually rather slow to tumble to anything, understood him at once, relapsing into silence. "Let me git in here where I kin see the fun," he said, and he elbowed the people aside as he forced his way through the crowd. It did not take him long to reach the center of the throng, although a number of persons were indignant at his manner of thrusting them aside or stepping on their feet. "Whut's up?" he asked. "Ef there's anything goin' on, I kainder want to see it." "This young masher has insulted this lady!" explained the man with the bobbing head. "Sho!" exclaimed Gallup. "Yeou don't say so, mister! Waal, I am s'prised!" "He has treated her in an outrageous manner!" added the man with the agitated and fiery whiskers. "I do declare!" ejaculated Ephraim. "I'd never thought it of him, by thutter!" "The lady requires protection," declared the gallant man with the mismated wearing apparel. "Yeou don't tell me!" gasped the Vermonter, his surprise seeming to increase. "Ain't it awful!" "But the fellow needs a lesson!" rasped the man with the eye that persisted in looking in the wrong direction. "I think I'll hit him once or twice." "My gracious!" fluttered Gallup. "Hev ye gotter hit him real hard? Don't yeou s'pose he might hit back?" "Let him try it!" came fiercely from the giant. "Be yeou goin' to hit where ye're lookin'?" asked the country youth. "Cause ef yeou be, I'd advise that man with the wart on his nose to move." At this the man who owned the wart dodged with a suddenness that provoked a titter of laughter from several witnesses. Ephraim was adding to the comedy of the affair, and Frank bit his lips to keep from laughing outright, despite his annoyance over being thus detained. The big man with the crooked eye flourished his fists in the air in a most belligerent fashion, and instantly Merriwell gazed at him sternly, saying: "Be careful, sir! You are imperiling the lives of everyone near you, and you may strain yourself." "That's right, by gum!" nodded Gallup, whimsically. "Yeou may warp one of them air arms, flingin' it araound so gol-darn permiscuous like." "Here comes an officer!" Somebody uttered the cry. "It is high time!" exclaimed the little man, trying to soothe his agitated whiskers by pulling at them. "It surely is," croaked the lank individual, his head bobbing with renewed excitement. "Madam, the law will give you redress," bowed the gallant man, again taking off his silk hat and again clapping it on suddenly, as if a breath of cool air on his shining pate had warned him of the exposure he was making. "Oh, why didn't the officer stay away a minute longer, so I might have thumped him!" regretfully grunted the fighting man with the misdirected eye. The policeman came up and forced his way through the crowd, demanding: "What does this mean? What is happening here?" "A lady is in trouble," the bobbing man hastened to explain. "In serious trouble," chirped the bewhiskered man. "She has been insulted," declared the gallant man. "By a masher," finished the man with the errant eye. "Where is the lady?" asked the officer. "There!" All bowed politely toward the masked woman. "Where is the masher?" was the next question. "There!" Their scornful fingers were leveled straight at Frank Merriwell. CHAPTER XVII. ARRESTED. "Oh, sir!" exclaimed the woman, "I beg you to protect me from his insults!" The officer was a gallant fellow. He touched his hat and bowed with extreme politeness. Then he frowned on Merry, and that frown was terrible to behold. He gripped Frank by the collar, gruffly saying: "You'll have to come with me." Merry knew it was useless to attempt to explain under such circumstances. Every one of the assembled crowd would be a witness against him. "Very well," he said, quietly. "I am quite willing to do so. Please do not twist my necktie off." "Don't worry about your necktie!" advised the policeman, giving it a still harder twist. "I know how to deal with chaps of your caliber." Now of a sudden Ephraim Gallup began to grow angry. He did not fancy seeing his idol treated in such a manner, and his fists were clenched, while he glared at the officer as if contemplating hitting that worthy. "It's a gol-dern shame!" he grated. "This jest makes my blood bile!" "I don't wonder a bit," piped the long-necked man, misunderstanding the Vermonter; "but the officer will take care of him now. He'll get what he deserves." "Oh, will he!" exploded Gallup. "Waal, ef I was yeou, I'd hire myself aout to some dime museum as the human bobber. Yeou teeter jest like a certun bird that I won't name." "Wh--a--at?" squealed the individual addressed, in great excitement. "This to me! Why, I'll----" "I wish ter great goshfrey yeou would!" hissed Ephraim, glaring at him. "I'd jest like to hev yeou try it! I'd give yeou a jolt that'd knock yeou clean inter the middle of next week!" "Why, who is this fellow that seeks to create a disturbance?" blustered the little man, his fiery whiskers beginning to bristle and squirm again. "He should be sat upon." The country youth turned on him. "I wish yeou'd tackle the job, yeou condemned little red-whiskered runt;" he shot at the blusterer with such suddenness that the little man staggered back and put up his hands, as if he had been struck. "Yeou are another meddler! I'd eat yeou, an' I'd never know I'd hed a bite!" "This is very unfortunate, madam," purred the gallant man at the veiled woman's side. "I am extremely sorry that you have had such an unpleasant experience. Now, if that creature----" He designated Ephraim by the final word, and Gallup cut him short right there. "Yeou're the cheapest one of the hull lot, old oil-smirk!" he flung at the speaker. "Such fellers as yeou are more dangerous to real ladies than all the young mashers goin', fer yeou are a hypocrite who pretends to be virtuous." The man gasped and tried to say something, but seemed stricken speechless. Now the cock-eyed man was aroused once more. He seemed on the point of making a swing at somebody or something. He pushed his face up close to Ephraim, but still his rebellious eye seemed looking in quite another direction. "If you want any trouble here," he said, hoarsely, "I'll attend to you. I can do that very well." Ephraim looked at him, began to smile, broke into a grin, and burst into a shout of laughter. "Haw! haw! haw!" he roared. "I couldn't fight with yeou ef I wanted to, fer I'd think yeou didn't mean me all the time, but that yeou really ought to be fightin' with some other feller yeou was lookin' at. Yeou're the funniest toad in the hull puddle!" "I'll arrest the whole lot of you!" threatened the policeman. "Quit that business! Come along to the police station if you want to make any complaints." Then he turned to the woman, saying: "Madam, I presume you will make a complaint against this fellow," indicating Frank. "I certainly shall," she promptly answered; "for it is my duty to teach him a lesson." "Will you come to the station?" "Yes." "Permit me to accompany you," urged the gallant man. "You are very kind," she said; "but I think I can get along. I will follow at a distance." "All right," nodded the officer, once more gripping Merriwell's collar savagely. "March, sir!" And then they started toward the station. The bobbing man, the little man, the cock-eyed man, and the gallant man formed behind. Then the crowd fell in, and away they went, with the mysterious veiled woman following at a distance. Ephraim placed himself at Frank's side. "This is a gol-darn outrage!" fumed the Vermonter, speaking to Merry. "Whut be yeou goin' to do abaout it?" "I shall have to do the best I can," answered the unfortunate youth, quietly. "But yeou won't be able to start for Puelbo with the rest of the people." "It doesn't look that way now." "That's tough!" "It is decidedly unfortunate, but I hope to get off in time to join the company before the first performance to-morrow night." "Haow did it happen?" "I hardly know. The woman stopped me and insisted that I should go somewhere to talk with her. I explained that my time was limited, but that seemed to make no impression on her. When I tried to get away she flung her arms around me and screamed. That brought a crowd together, and then she declared I had assaulted her." The policeman on the other side of Frank laughed in ridicule. Although he said nothing, it was plain he took no stock in Frank's story. "Larf!" grated Gallup, under his breath. "Yeou think yeou know so gol-darned much that----" "Hush!" warned Frank. "I do not wish you to get into trouble. You must inform the others what has happened to me." "It's purty gol-darn hard to keep still," declared Ephraim. "I never see sich a set of natteral born fools in all my life! How many of the craowd saw what happened 'tween yeou an' the woman?" "No one, I think." "An' I'll bet a squash they'll all go up an' swear to any kind of a story she'll tell. Who is she?" "I don't know." "That's queer. Wut was her little game?" "Don't know that." "By gum! it's some kind of a put-up job!" "I have a fancy there is something more than appears on the surface. It is an attempt to make trouble for me." "That's right." "I hope to see the woman's face at the police station." "Yeou won't!" "Why not?" "She won't show it." "Perhaps the judge will request her to lift her veil." "Not by a gol-darned sight! Men are too big fools over women. They'll take any old thing she'll say abaout yeou, an' lock yeou up fer it. She'll give some kind of name and address, an' they'll let her go at that." "Well, unless I can get bail right away I shall be in a bad fix. If Kent Carson were in town he would pull me out of it, as he did before." The officer pricked up his ears. "Ha!" he exclaimed. "Then you have been arrested in Denver before? This is a second offense! I rather think you'll not get off as easy as you did the first time." "Oh, yeou are enough to----" "Ephraim!" With that word Frank cut Gallup short. In a short time they approached the police station. "I have been here before," said Merry, quietly. "This is the station to which I was taken when Leslie Lawrence made his false charge against me." Entering, he was taken before the desk of the sergeant, the bobbing man, the little man, the cock-eyed man, and the gallant man following closely, while others also came in. The sergeant looked up. "Ah, Brandon," he said to the officer, "another one?" "Yes, sir," answered the policeman. "What is the charge?" "Insulting a lady on the street." "Who was the lady?" "She is coming. She will be here directly to make the complaint against him." Then the sergeant took a good look at the accused. He started, bent forward, and looked closer. "Mr. Merriwell!" he exclaimed; "is it you?" "Yes, sergeant," bowed Frank, with a smile. "It seems to be my luck to cause you trouble once more." "Trouble!" ejaculated the man behind the desk. "Why, this is very surprising! And you are accused of insulting a lady?" "I am," was the quiet answer. "Well! well! well! It hardly seems possible. I fail to understand why you should do such a thing. It was very kind of you to send me tickets for your performance yesterday, and I was fortunate to be able to attend. I was greatly pleased, both with your play and yourself, to say nothing of your supporting company. I see the papers have given you a great send-off, but it is no better than you merit." "Thank you, sir," said Frank, simply. The policeman began to look disturbed, while the bobbing man, the little man, the gallant man, and the cock-eyed man all stared at Frank and the sergeant in surprise. "You seem to recognize the offender, sir," said the officer who had arrested Frank. "I recognize the gentleman, Brandon," said the sergeant, putting particular emphasis on the word "gentleman." "He said he had been arrested before." "He was, on a trumped-up charge, and he was promptly dismissed by me." The officer looked still more disturbed. "But this is no trumped-up charge," he declared. "I have witnesses." "Where are they?" "Here." He motioned toward the men, who had followed closely on entering the station, whereupon the little man drew himself up stiffly, as if he imagined he must be six feet tall, at least; the bobbing man bobbed in a reckless manner, as if he had quite lost control of himself; the gallant man lifted his hat and mopped the shiny spot on the top of his head with a silk handkerchief, attempting to appear perfectly at ease; and the cock-eyed man made a desperate attempt to look the sergeant straight in the eye, but came no nearer than the upper corner of the station window, which was several yards away to the left. "And where is the lady who makes the charge?" demanded the man behind the desk. Where, indeed! It was time for her to appear, but all looked for her in vain. "She must be here directly," said the sergeant, "if she is coming at all." "Oh, she is coming!" hastily answered the officer. "She may be waiting outside, hesitating about coming in," said the sergeant. "You may go out and bring her in, Brandon." The policeman hesitated an instant, as if he feared to leave Frank. "It is all right," asserted the sergeant. "I will guarantee that Mr. Merriwell is quite safe." Then Brandon hurried out. "I believe you are going on the road with your play, Mr. Merriwell?" said the sergeant, in a most friendly and affable manner. "I am," answered Frank, "if I succeed in getting started." "How is that?" "Well," smiled Merry, "I was due to take a train in one hour and thirty minutes when I was accosted by the unknown woman whom it is said I insulted. I hardly think I shall be able to catch that train now." The sergeant looked at his watch. "How much time have you now?" he asked. Frank consulted his timepiece. "Just forty-one minutes," he said. "Will you kindly tell me what occurred on the street?" invited the sergeant. "But wait--first I wish to know who witnessed this assault." There was some hesitation as the official behind the desk looked the assembled crowd over. "Come," he cried, sharply. "Who knows anything about this affair?" "I do," asserted the man with the cock-eye, summoning courage to step forward a bit. "And here are others." "Which ones?" "Him, and him, and him," answered the crooked-eyed man, jabbing a pudgy and none too clean forefinger at the gallant man, the little man, and the bobbing man, although he seemed to look at three entirely different persons from those he named. The gallant man was perspiring, and looked as if he longed to escape. He also seemed anxious over the non-appearance of the veiled lady. The bobbing man took a step backward, but somebody pushed him from behind, and he bobbed himself nearly double. The little man tugged at his fluttering whiskers, looking to the right and left, as if thinking of dodging and attempting to escape in a hurry. "And these are the witnesses?" said the sergeant, his eyes seeming to pierce them through and through. "Their testimony against you shall be carefully heard, Mr. Merriwell, and it will be well for them to be careful about giving it." "If I understand what is proper," said the cock-eyed man, who seemed the only one who dared speak outright, "this is not the court, and you are not the judge." But he subsided before the piercing eyes of the sergeant, so that his final words were scarcely more than a gurgle in his throat. "Now, Mr. Merriwell," said the sergeant, "I will listen to your story. Officer at the door, take care that none of the witnesses depart until they are given permission." Frank told his story briefly, concisely, and convincingly. Barely had he finished when the officer who made the arrest came in, looking crestfallen and disgusted. "Where is the lady, Brandon?" asked the sergeant. "I can't find her, sir," confessed the policeman. "She is nowhere in the vicinity." "Then it seems you have been very careless in permitting her to slip away. Now there is no one to make a charge against the prisoner." "The witnesses--perhaps some of them will do so." The sergeant turned sharply on the little man, to whom he fired the question: "Did you witness this assault on the unknown lady, sir?" The little man jumped. "No, sus-sus-sir," he stammered; "but I----" "That will do!" came sternly from the man behind the desk. "Step aside." The little man did so with alacrity, plainly relieved. Then the sergeant came at the gallant man with the same question: "Did you witness the assault on the lady, sir?" "I was not present when it took place, but I----" "That will do! Step aside." The gallant man closed up and stepped. Next the bobbing man was questioned: "Did you witness the assault on the lady, sir?" "I arrived just after it was committed, but I can tell you----" "Nothing! That will do! Step aside." The cock-eyed man folded his arms across his breast and glared fiercely at the window, which seemed to offend him. "You are next." said the sergeant. "What did you see?" "I saw quite enough to convince me that the assault had been committed before I reached the spot, but----" "Another 'but.' 'But me no buts.' There seems to be no one present who witnessed the assault, and so no one can prefer a charge against Mr. Merriwell. Mr. Merriwell, you have now exactly thirty minutes in which to catch your train. Don't stop to say a word, but git up and git. You are at liberty." And Frank took the sergeant's advice, followed closely by Ephraim. CHAPTER XVIII. AT THE LAST MOMENT. Frank Merriwell's company had gathered at the railway station to take the train for Puelbo. All but Merriwell and Gallup were on hand. Havener had purchased the tickets. Hodge restlessly paced up and down the platform, his face dark and disturbed. There were inquiries for Frank. Stella Stanley came to Havener and asked: "Where is Mr. Merriwell?" "I do not know," confessed the stage manager, who had been deputized for the occasion by Frank to look out for tickets, and make necessary arrangements. "He hasn't come?" "No; but he'll be here before the train pulls out. You know he has a way of always appearing on time." Hodge stopped in his walk, and stared at Havener. "I'd like to know when he left the hotel," said Bart. "I called for him several times before coming here, but each time I found he was not in his room, and no one knew anything about him. His bill was not settled, either." "But his baggage came down with the others," said Havener. "Because the hotel people permitted it, as he was vouched for by Mr. Carson, who seems to be well known to everybody in this city." "You don't suppose anything has happened to detain him, do you?" anxiously asked the actress. "I do hope we shall not make another bad start, same as we did before. Agnes Kirk says she knows something will happen, for Mr. Merriwell gave away the cat Mascot." "Agnes Kirk is forever prophesying something dismal," said Hodge. "She's a regular croaker. If she didn't have something to croak about, she wouldn't know what to do. She declared the cat a hoodoo in the first place, but now she says we'll have bad luck because Frank let it go. She makes me a trifle weary!" Hodge was not in a pleasant humor. Granville Garland and Lester Vance came up. "It's almost train time," said Garland. "Where is our energetic young manager?" "He will be along," Havener again asserted. "I hope so," said Vance. "I sincerely hope this second venture will not prove such a miserable fizzle as the first one. Everything depends on Frank Merriwell." "Something depends on you!" flashed Hodge, who seemed easily nettled. "Frank Merriwell's company did all it could to make the first venture a fizzle. Now they should do all they can to make this one a success." "Hello, Thundercloud is lowering!" exclaimed Garland. "Save your epithets!" exclaimed Bart. "My name is Hodge." "My dear Hodge," said Garland, with mock politeness, "you must know it is but natural that we should feel a bit anxious." "I may feel as anxious as any of you, but I do not go round croaking about it." "But our first failure----" "There it is again! I'm tired of hearing about that! You and Vance are dead lucky to be in this second company, for you both joined in the attempted assault on Merriwell when Folansbee skipped, and the company seemed to be stranded in Puelbo. If I'd been Frank Merriwell I'd sent you flying, and you can bet I would not have taken you back." "Then it's fortunate for us that you were not Frank Merriwell," Garland sneered. "It is," agreed Hodge. "Some people do not know when they are treated well." "That will do!" came sharply from Havener. "This is no time to quarrel. By Jove! it's time for that train, and Merriwell's not here." "Perhaps he's backed out at the last minute and decided not to take the play out," said Vance. "It may be that his courage has failed him." "Now that kind of talk makes me sick!" exploded Hodge. "If you had any sense you wouldn't make it!" "I like that!" snapped Vance, his face flushing. "I'm glad you do!" flung back Bart. "Didn't think you would. Hoped you wouldn't. Only a fool would suppose that, after all this trouble and expense, any man with an ounce of brains in his head would back out without giving a single performance of the play." "Well, where is Merriwell?" Again Havener declared: "He'll be here." "But here comes the train!" The train was coming. There was activity and bustle at the station. The platform was alive with moving human beings. Agnes Kirk and Cassie Lee came out of the ladies' waiting room. The male members of the company got together quickly. "He has not come!" exclaimed Agnes Kirk, her keen eyes failing to discover Frank. "I feared it! I knew it!" Hodge half turned away, grumbling something deep in his throat. The actors looked at each other in doubt and dismay. With a rush and a roar the train came in, and drew up at the station. Passengers began to get off. A heavily veiled woman in black came out of the ladies' room, and started for the train. As she passed the group of actors some of their conversation seemed to attract her notice. She paused an instant and looked them over, and then she turned toward the steps of a car. "Excuse me, madam," said Hodge, quickly. "You have dropped your handkerchief." He picked it up and passed it to her. As he did so, he noticed the letters "L. F." on one corner. "Thank you," she said, in a low voice. At that moment, for the last time, Havener was reiterating: "I believe Frank Merriwell will be here. All get onto the train. He never gets left." Then the woman tossed her head a bit and laughed. It was a scornful laugh, and it attracted the attention of several of the group. She turned quickly, and stepped into the nearest car. "Something tells me he will not arrive," declared Agnes Kirk. "The hoodoo is still on. This company will meet the same fate the other did." "Don't talk so much about it," advised Havener, rather rudely. "Get onto the train--everybody!" Hodge was staring after the veiled woman. "Wonder what made her laugh like that?" he muttered. "Seems to me I've heard that laugh before. It seemed full of scornful triumph. I wonder----" He did not express his second wonder. "Come, Hodge," said Havener, "get aboard. Follow the others." "I'll be the last one," said Hodge. "I'm waiting for Frank. "I'm afraid," confessed Havener, beginning to weaken. "Afraid of what?" Hodge almost hissed. "It begins to look bad," admitted the stage manager. "I'm afraid something has happened to Frank. If he doesn't come----" "I don't go," declared Bart. "I shall stay and find out what has happened to him. You must go. You must sit on those croakers. Your place is with the company; mine is with Frank Merriwell." "All aboard!" The conductor gave the warning. "What's this?" Rattle-te-bang, on the dead jump, a cab was coming along the street. The cabman was putting the whip to his foaming horses. "He's coming," said Hodge, with cool triumph, putting his hands into his trousers pockets, and waiting the approach of the cab. Something made him feel certain of it. Up to the platform dashed the cab, the driver flinging the horses back, and flinging himself to the platform to fling open the door. Dong dong! The train was starting. Out of the cab leaped Frank Merriwell, grip in hand. At his heels Ephraim Gallup came sprawling. Bart was satisfied, Havener was delighted. Both of them sprang on board the train. Across the platform dashed Frank and the Vermont youth, and they also boarded the moving cars. "Well," laughed Merry, easily, "that was what I call a close call. Ten dollars to the cabby did it, and he earned his sawbuck." "I congratulate you!" cried Havener. "I confess I had given you up. But what happened to detain you?" "Nothing but a little adventure," answered Merry, coolly. "I'll tell you about it." They followed him into the car. Several members of the company had been looking from the car window, and the arrival of Frank had been witnessed. They gave a shout as he entered the car, and all were on their feet. "Welcome!" cried Douglas Dunton, dramatically--"welcome, most noble one! Methinks thou couldst not do it better in a play. It was great stuff--flying cab, foaming horses, moving train, and all that. Make a note of it." "I believe he did it on purpose," declared Agnes Kirk, speaking to Vance, with whom she had taken a seat. "Very likely," admitted Lester. "Wanted to do something to attract attention." "I think it was mean! He fooled us." But several members of the company shook hands with Frank, and congratulated him. "I told you he would not get left," said Havener, with triumph. At the rear end of the car was a veiled woman, who seemed to sink down behind those in front of her, as if she sought to avoid detection. Somehow, although her face could not be seen, there was in her appearance something that betokened disappointment and chagrin. Of course Frank was pressed for explanations, but he told them that business had detained him. He did not say what kind of business. At length, however, with Hodge, Havener and Gallup for listeners, all seated on two facing seats, he told the story of his adventure with the veiled woman, and his arrest, which ended in a discharge that barely permitted him to leap into a cab, race to the hotel, get his grip, pay his bill, and dash to the station in time to catch the train. As the story progressed Hodge showed signs of increasing excitement. When Merry finished, Bart exclaimed: "How did the woman look?" "I did not see her face." "How was she dressed? Describe her." "Don't know as I can." "Do the best you can." Frank did so, and Bart cried: "I've seen her!" "What?" Merry was astonished. "I am sure of it," asserted Bart. "I have seen that very same woman!" "When?" "To-day." "How long ago?" "A very short time." "Where?" "At the station while we were waiting for you to appear." "Is it possible. How do you know it was her?" Then Bart told of the strange woman who had dropped her handkerchief, of the initials he had seen when he picked it up, and of her singularly scornful laugh when she heard Havener declare that Merriwell never got left. All this interested Frank very much. Bart concluded by saying: "That woman is on this very train!" "Waal, may I be tickled to death by grasshoppers!" ejaculated the youth from Vermont. "Whut in thunder do yeou s'pose she's up to?" "It may be the same one," said Frank. "It would be remarkable if it should prove to be the same one. Two women might look so much alike that the description of one would exactly fit the other--especially if both were heavily veiled." Bart shook his head. "Something tells me it is the same woman," he persisted. "But why should she be on this train?" "Who can answer that? Why did she try such a trick on the street?" "Don't know," admitted Merry. "Once I thought it might be that she was mashed on me, but it didn't prove that way." "Oh, I dunno," drawled Gallup, with a queer grin. "Yeou turned her daown, an' that made her sore. Ef she'd bin mashed on ye, perhaps she'd done jest as she did to git revenge fer bein' turned daown." "No, something tells me this was more than a simple case of mash," said Frank. "What do you make of it?" asked Havener. "An attempt to bother me." "For what?" "Who knows? Haven't I had enough troubles?" "I should say so! But I thought your troubles of this sort were over when you got rid of Lawrence. You left two of the assistants who saw him try to fire the theater to appear as witnesses against him." "Oh, I hardly think Lawrence was in this affair in any way or manner. I confess I do not know just what to make of it. Heretofore my enemies have been men, but now there seems to be a woman in the case." "If this woman follows you, what will you do?" "I shall endeavor to find out who she is, and bring her to time, so she will drop the game." "See that you do," advised Hodge. "And don't be soft with her because she is a woman." "Go look through the train and see if you can find the woman you saw," directed Frank. "If you find her, come back here and tell me where she is." "I'll do it!" exclaimed Bart, getting up at once. "That fellow is faithful to you," said Havener, when Bart had walked down the aisle; "but he is awfully disagreeable at times. It's nothing but his loyalty that makes me take any stock in him." "His heart is in the right place," asserted Merry. "Nothing makes him doubt you. Why, I believe he wanted to fight the whole company when you failed to appear." "An' he's a fighter, b'gosh! when he gits started," declared Gallup. "I've seen him plunk some critters an' he plunked them in great style." Hodge was gone some little time, but there was a grim look of triumph when he returned. "Find her?" asked Merry. "Sure," nodded Bart. "Where?" "Last car. She did not get onto this one, but I rather think she moved after you came on board. That makes me all the more certain that it is the woman. She's near the rear end of the car, on the left side, as you go down the aisle." "Well," said Frank, rising, "I think I'll go take a look at her. Is she alone?" "Yes." "That's good. And she cannot escape from the train till it stops, if it should happen to be the right woman, which I hope it is." Bart wished to accompany Frank to point the woman out, but Merry objected. "No," he said, "let me go alone." "I can show her to you." "If the woman I am looking for is in the car I'll find her." Merry passed slowly through the train, scanning each passenger as he went along. He entered the last car. In a few moments he would know if the mysterious veiled woman really were on that train. If he found her, he would be certain the strange encounter on the street had a meaning that had not appeared on the surface. The train was flying along swiftly, taking curves without seeming to slacken speed in the least. Frank's progress through the car was rather slow, as the swaying motion made it difficult for him to get along. But when he had reached the rear of the car he was filled with disappointment. Not a sign of a veiled woman had he seen in the car. More than that, there was no woman in black who resembled the woman who had stopped him on the street in Denver. Could it be Hodge had been mistaken? No! Something told him Bart had made no mistake in the matter of seeing a woman who answered the description given by Frank. He had said she was in the last car. She was not there when Frank passed through the car. Then she had moved. Why? Was the woman aware that she was being watched? Had she moved to escape observation? Frank stopped by the door at the rear end of the car. He looked out through the glass in the door. Some one was on the platform at one side of the door. Frank opened the door and looked out. The person on the platform was a woman in black, and she wore a veil! CHAPTER XIX. ON THE REAR PLATFORM. A feeling of exultant satisfaction flashed over Merriwell, and he quickly stepped out onto the platform, closing the door behind him. The woman turned and looked toward him. The train was racing along, the track seeming to fly away from beneath the last car. It was a strange place for a woman to be, out there on the rear platform, and Merry's first thought had been that it must be the woman he sought, for had she not come out there to escape him? She had fancied he would look through the car, fail to find her, and decide that she was not on the train. It must be that she had seen Hodge come in, and had realized at once why he had entered the car. When he departed to carry the information to Frank, the desperate woman had fled to the rear platform. Immediately on stepping out onto the platform, however, Frank decided that his reasoning was at fault. It was a veiled woman, and she was in black, but it was not the woman he sought. It was not the woman who had caused his arrest in Denver! Merry was disappointed. The unknown looked at him, and said nothing. He looked at her and wondered. The veil was thick and baffling. "Madam," he said, "this is a dangerous place." She said nothing. "You are liable to become dizzy out here and meet with an accident," he pursued. "If you should fall--well, you know what that would mean. It is remarkable that you should come out here." "The air," she murmured, in a hoarse, husky voice. "The car was stifling, and I needed the air. I felt ill in there." "All the more reason why you should not come out here," declared Frank, solicitously. "You could have had a window opened, and that would have given you air." "The window stuck." "It must be some of them would open. If you will return, I'll endeavor to find you a seat by an open window." "Very kind of you," she said, in the same peculiar, husky voice. "Think I'll stay out here. Don't mind me." "Then I trust you will permit me to remain, and see that you do not meet with any misfortune?" "No. Go! Leave me! I had rather remain alone." She seemed like a middle-aged lady. He observed that her clothes fitted her ill, and her hands were large and awkward. She attempted to hide them. All at once, with a suddenness that staggered him, the truth burst on Frank. The woman was no woman at all! It was a man in disguise! Merry literally gasped for a single instant, but he recovered at once. Through his head flashed a thought: "This must be some criminal who is seeking to escape justice!" Immediately Frank resolved to remain on the platform at any hazard. He would talk to the disguised unknown. "The motion of the train is rather trying to one who is not accustomed to it," he said. "Some people feel it quite as much as if they were on a vessel. Car sickness and seasickness are practically the same thing." She looked at him through the concealing veil, but did not speak. "I have traveled considerable," he pursued, "but, fortunately, I have been troubled very little with sickness, either on sea or land." "Will you be kind enough to leave me!" came from behind the veil, in accents of mingled imploration and anger. "I could not think of such a thing, madam!" he bowed, as gallantly as possible. "It is my duty to remain and see that you come to no harm." "I shall come to no harm. You are altogether too kind! Your kindness is offensive!" "I am very sorry you regard it thus, but I know my duty." "If you knew half as much as you think, you would go." "I beg your pardon; it is because I do know as much as I think that I do not go." The unknown was losing patience. "Go!" he commanded, and now his voice was masculine enough to betray him, if Frank had not dropped to the trick before. "No," smiled Merry, really beginning to enjoy it, "not till you go in yourself, madam." The train lurched round a curve, causing the disguised unknown to swing against the iron gate. Frank sprang forward, as if to catch and save the person from going over, but his real object was to apparently make a mistake and snatch off the veil. The man seemed to understand all this, for he warded off Frank's clutch, crying: "I shall call for aid! I shall seek protection!" "It would not be the first time to-day that a veiled woman has done such a thing," laughed Frank, The disguised man stared at him again. Merry fairly itched to snatch away the veil. "If you are seeking air, madam," he suggested, "you had better remove your veil. It must be very smothering, for it seems to be quite thick." "You are far too anxious about me!" snapped the disguised man. "I would advise you to mind your own business!" This amused Merry still more. The situation was remarkably agreeable to him. "In some instances," he said, politely, "your advice would be worth taking, but an insane person should be carefully watched, and that is why I am minding your business just now." "An insane person?" "Exactly." "Do you mean that I am insane?" "Well, I trust you will excuse me, but from your appearance and your remarkable behavior, it seems to me that you should be closely guarded." That seemed to make the unknown still more angry, but it was plain he found difficulty in commanding words to express himself. "You're a fool!" he finally snapped. "Thank you!" smiled Frank. "You're an idiot!" "Thank you again." "You are the one who is crazy!" "Still more thanks." "How have I acted to make you fancy me demented?" "You are out here, and you may be contemplating self-destruction by throwing yourself from this train." "Don't worry about that. I am contemplating nothing of the sort." "But there are other evidences of your insanity." "Oh, there are?" "Yes." As the disguised unknown did not speak, Merry went on: "The strongest evidence of your unbalanced state of mind is the ill-chosen attire you are wearing." "What do you mean?" "Why are you not dressed in the garments of your sex?" "Sir?" "You are not a woman," declared Frank, coolly; "but a man in the garments of a woman. Your disguise is altogether too thin. It would not deceive anybody who looked you over closely. You are----" Frank got no further. With a cry of anger, the disguised unknown sprang at him, grappled with him, panted in his ear: "You are altogether too sharp, Frank Merriwell! This time you have overshot yourself! This ends you!" Then he tried to fling Merry from the swiftly moving train. Frank instantly realized that it was to be a struggle for life, and he met the assault as quickly and stiffly as he could; but the disguised man seemed, of a truth, to have the strength of an insane person. In his quick move, the fellow had forced Frank back against the gate, and over this, he tried to lift and hurl him. "No you don't!" came from Merry's lips. "Curse you!" panted the fellow. "I will do it!" "Yes, you will--I don't think!" In the desperate struggle, both seemed to hang over the gate for a moment. Then Frank slid back, securing a firm grip, and felt safe. Just then, however, the door of the car flew open, and out sprang Hodge. Bart saw what was happening in a moment, and he leaped to Merry's aid. Out on a high trestle that spanned a roaring, torrent-like river rumbled the train. Bart clutched Frank, gave the disguised man a shove, and---- Just how it happened, neither of them could tell afterward, but over the gate whirled the man, and down toward the seething torrent he shot! Up from that falling figure came a wild cry of horror that was heard above the fumbling roar of the train on the trestle bridge. Over and over the figure turned, the skirts fluttering, and then headlong it plunged into the white foam of the torrent, disappearing from view. On the rear platform of the last car two white-faced, horrified young men had watched the terrible fall. They stared down at the swirling river, looking for the unfortunate wretch to reappear. Off the bridge flew the train, and no longer were they able to see the river. "He's gone!" came hoarsely from Bart. "Then you saw--you knew it was a man?" cried Frank. "Yes, I saw his trousers beneath the skirts as I came out the door." "This is terrible!" muttered Frank. "He was trying to throw you over?" "Yes; attempted to take me off my guard and hurl me from the train." "Then the wretch has met a just fate," declared Bart. But now it seemed that the struggle on the platform had been noticed by some one within the car. There were excited faces at the glass in the door, and a trainman came out, demanding: "What is all this? Why are you out here? They tell me a woman came out. Where is she?" With unusual readiness, Bart quickly answered: "She's gone--jumped from the train." "Jumped?" "Yes. We both tried to save her. Just as I reached the door I saw my friend struggling to hold her, but she was determined to fling herself over." "Well, this is a fine piece of business!" came angrily from the trainman. "What ailed her?" "She must have been insane," asserted Bart. "She attacked my friend here, and then tried to jump off. He could not hold her. I did not get hold of her in time." "What was he doing out here?" "Watching her. You will admit it was rather queer for a woman to come out here on the platform and stand. He thought so, and so he came out to watch her." "Well, you can both come in off this platform!" growled the trainman, in anything but a civil manner. They did so. The passengers swarmed round them when they entered the car, literally flinging questions at them. "Who was the woman?" "What ailed her?" "Why did she go out there?" "What did she do?" "Tell us about it!" Again Bart made the explanation, and then there arose a babel. "I noticed her," declared one. "I saw she looked queer." "I noticed her," asserted another. "I saw she acted queer." "I saw her when she went out," put in a third, "and I thought it was a crazy thing to do." "Without doubt the woman was insane," declared a pompous fat man. "She must have been instantly killed." "She jumped into the river." "Then, she was drowned." "Who knows her?" "She was all alone." Frank had been thinking swiftly all the while. He regretted that Bart had been so hasty in making his explanation, and now he resolved to tell as near the truth as possible without contradicting Hodge. "Gentlemen and ladies," he said, "I have every reason for believing that the person was a man." Then there were cries of astonishment and incredulity. "A man?" "Impossible!" "Never!" "Ridiculous!" But an elderly lady, who wore gold-bowed spectacles, calmly said: "The young gentleman is correct, I am quite sure. The person in question sat directly in front of me, and I discovered there was something wrong. I felt almost certain it was a man before he got up and went out on the platform." Then there was excitement in the car. A perfect torrent of questions was poured on Frank. Merry explained that he had thought it rather remarkable that a woman should be standing all alone on the rear platform, and, after going out and speaking to the person, he became convinced that it was a man in disguise. Then he told how the man, on being accused, had attacked him furiously, and finally had seemed to fling himself over the iron gate. It was a great sensation, but no one accused either Merry or Bart of throwing the unknown over, not a little to Frank's relief. At last, they got away and went forward into the car where the company was gathered. Havener and Gallup had been holding the double seat, and Frank and Bart sat down there. "Well, I fancy you failed to find the lady you were looking for," said Havener. "But what's the matter? You look as if something has happened." "Something has," said Frank, grimly. "Gol-darned ef I don't b'lieve it!" exclaimed Ephraim. "Both yeou an' Hodge show it. Tell us abaout it." Frank did so in a very few words, astonishing both Ephraim and the stage manager. "Waal," said the Vermonter, "the gal who tackled yeou in Denver warn't no man." "Not much," said Frank, "and it is remarkable that Hodge should have mistaken a man for such a woman as I described." "Didn't," said Bart. "But you have acknowledged that you believed this was a man." "Yes, but this man was not the veiled woman I saw." "Wasn't?" "Not much!" "By Jove!" exclaimed Frank. "The mystery deepens!" "Did you mistake this person for the veiled woman I meant?" "Sure thing." "And did not find another?" "Not a sign of one. I do not believe there is another on the train." "Well, this is a mystery!" confessed Hodge. "I saw nothing of the one I meant when I went to look for you." "It must be you saw no one but that man in the first place." Bart shook his head, flushing somewhat. "Do you think I would take that man for a woman with a perfect figure, such as you described? What in the world do you fancy is the matter with my eyes?" "By gum!" drawled Gallup. "This air business is gittin' too thick fer me. I don't like so much mystery a bit." "If that man was not the one you meant, Hodge," said Merry, "then the mysterious woman is still on this train." "That's so," nodded Bart. "Find her," urged Frank. "I want to get my eyes on her more than ever. Surely you should be able to find her." "I'll do it!" cried Bart, jumping up. Away he went. Frank remained with Havener and Gallup, talking over the exciting and thrilling adventure and the mystery of it all till Hodge returned. At a glance Merry saw that his college friend had not been successful. "Well," he said, "did you find her?" "No," confessed Bart, looking crestfallen. "I went through the entire train, and I looked every passenger over. The woman I meant is not on this train." "Then, it must be that your woman was the man who met his death in the river. There is no other explanation of her disappearance. You must give up now, Hodge." But Hodge would not give up, although he could offer no explanation, and the mystery remained unsolved. There were numerous stops between Denver and Puelbo, and it was nightfall before the train brought them to their destination. The sun had dropped behind the distant Rockies, and the soft shades of a perfect spring evening were gathering when they drew up at the station in Puelbo. Lights were beginning to twinkle in windows, and the streets were lighted. "Props" had gone to look after the baggage, and the company was gathered on the platform. Cabmen were seeking to attract fares. Of a sudden, a cry broke from the lips of Bart Hodge: "There she is!" All were startled by his sudden cry. They saw him start from the others, pointing toward a woman who was speaking to a cabman. That woman had left the train and crossed the platform, and she was dressed in black and heavily veiled. Frank saw her--recognized her. "By heavens! it is the woman," he exclaimed. CHAPTER XX. MAN OR WOMAN. Into the cab sprang the woman. Slam! the door closed behind her. Crack!--the whip of the driver fell on the horses, and away went the cab. "Stop!" shouted Hodge. Cabby did not heed the command. Frank made a rush for another cab. "Follow!" he cried, pointing toward the disappearing vehicle. "I will give you five dollars--ten dollars--if you do not lose sight of that cab!" "In!" shouted the driver. "I'll earn that ten!" In Frank plunged, jerking the door to behind him. The cab whirled from the platform with a jerk. Away it flew. "It will be worth twenty dollars to get a peep beneath that veil!" muttered Frank Merriwell. The windows were open. He looked out on one side. He could see nothing of the cab they were pursuing. Back he dodged, and out he popped his head on the other side. "There it is!" He felt that he was not mistaken. The fugitive cab was turning a corner at that moment. They were after it closely. Frank wondered where the woman could have been hidden on the train so that she had escaped observation. He decided that she must have been in one of the toilet rooms. But what about the veiled man who was disguised as a woman? That man had known Frank--had spoken his name. It was a double mystery. The pursuit of the cab continued some distance. At last the cab in advance drew up in front of a hotel, and a man got out! Merriwell had leaped to the ground, and cabby was down quite as swiftly, saying: "There, sir, I followed 'em. Ten plunks, please." The door of the other cab had been closed, and the man was paying the driver. He wore no overcoat, and carried no baggage. "Fooled!" exclaimed Frank, in disappointment. "You have followed the wrong cab, driver!" "I followed the one you told me to follow," declared the driver. "No; you made a mistake." "Now, don't try that game on me!" growled the man. "It's your way of attempting to get out of paying the tenner you promised." "No; I shall pay you, for you did the best you could. It was not your fault that you made a mistake in the mass of carriages at the depot." "Didn't make no mistake," asserted the cabby, sullenly. "Well, it's useless to argue over it," said Merry, as he gave the man the promised ten dollars. "I am sure you made a mistake." "Think I couldn't follow Bill Dover and his spotted nigh hawse?" exploded the driver. "I couldn't have missed that hawse if I'd tried." Frank saw one of the horses attached to the other cab was spotted. He had noticed that peculiarity about one of the horses attached to the cab the mysterious woman had entered. "It's the same horse!" exclaimed Merry. "'Course it is," nodded the driver. The man had paid his fare and was carelessly sauntering into the hotel. As he disappeared through the door-way, Frank sprang to the door of the other cab, flung it wide open, and looked in, more than half expecting to discover the woman still inside. No woman was there! Frank caught his breath in astonishment, and stood there, staring into the empty cab. "Hi, there! wot cher doin'?" called the man on the box. Frank did not answer. He reached into the cab and felt on the floor. He found something, brought it forth, looked at it amazed. It was a woman's dress! But where was the woman? Garment after garment Frank lifted, discovering that all a woman's outer wearing apparel lay on the floor of that cab. "Vanished!" he muttered. "Disappeared--gone? What does it mean?" Then he thought of the man who had left the cab and entered the hotel, and he almost reeled. "That was the woman!" He had seen one woman change into a man on the train, and here was another and no less startling metamorphosis. "Driver," he cried, "didn't you take a person on in woman's clothes at the station and let one off in man's clothes just now?" "None of yer business!" came the coarse reply. "I knows enough not ter answer questions when I'm paid ter keep still." That was quite enough; the driver might as well have answered, for he had satisfied Merriwell. Frank was astonished by the remarkable change that the woman had made while within the cab, but now he believed he understood why she had not been detected while on the train. She had been able to make a change of disguises in the toilet room, and had passed herself off as a man. Hodge had looked for a veiled woman, and he had looked for a veiled woman; it was not strange that both of them had failed to notice a person in masculine attire who must have looked like a woman. Up the hotel steps Frank leaped. He entered the office, he searched and inquired. At last, he found out that a beardless man had entered by the front door, but had simply passed through and left by a side door. "Given me the slip," decided Frank. He realized that he had encountered a remarkably clever woman. And the mystery was deeper than ever. Frank went to the hotel at which the company was to stop, and found all save Wynne had arrived. Hodge was on the watch for Merry, and eagerly inquired concerning his success in following the woman. Frank explained how he had been tricked. "Well, it's plain this unknown female is mighty slippery," said Bart. "You have not seen the last of her." "I am afraid there are some things about this double mystery which will never be solved," admitted Frank. "For instance, the identity of the man who fell into the river." "We'll be dead lucky if we do not have trouble over that affair," said Hodge. "How do you mean?" "Some fool is liable to swear out a warrant charging us with throwing the unknown overboard." "I thought of that," nodded Frank, "and that is why I took occasion on the train to straighten out your story somewhat. It is always best, Bart, to stick to the straight truth." Hodge flushed and looked resentful, but plainly sought to repress his feelings, as he said: "I am not the only person in the world who believes the truth should not be spoken at all times." "If one cannot speak the truth," said Merry, quietly, "he had better remain silent and say nothing at all, particularly in a case like this. There is an old saying that 'the truth can afford to travel slowly, but a lie must be on the jump all the time, or it will get caught.'" "Well, I don't think this is any time to moralize," came a bit sharply from Bart. "If we were to go into an argument, I rather think I could show logically that a white lie is sometimes more commendable than the truth." "In shielding another, possibly," admitted Merry; "but never in shielding the one who tells it. The more a person lies, the more he has to lie, for it becomes necessary to tell one falsehood to cover up another, and, after a while, the unfortunate individual finds himself so ensnared in a network of fabrications that it is impossible for him to clear himself. Then disaster comes." "Oh, don't preach!" snapped Bart. "Let's go to your room and talk this matter of the veiled woman over. There is trouble brewing for you, and you must be prepared to meet it. Havener has registered for the company, and all you have to do is call for your key." So Frank and Bart went to the room of the former. Puelbo had been well "papered." The work was done thoroughly, and every board, every dead wall, and every available window flaunted the paper of "True Blue." The failure of "For Old Eli" was still fresh in the minds of the people of the city, but neither had they forgotten Frank Merriwell's plucky promise to bring the play back to that place and perform it successfully there. The newspapers of the place had given him their support, but Frank was determined that extracts from the notices in the Denver papers should reach the eyes of those who did not read the Puelbo papers closely. With this end in view, he had the extracts printed on flyers, as small bills are called, and the flyers were headed in startling type: "Five Hundred Dollars Fine!" To this he added: "Each and every person who reads the following clippings from Denver newspapers will be fined Five Hundred Dollars!" It is needless to say that nearly every one who could read was careful to read the clippings through to the end. This manner of attracting attention was effective, even though it may seem rather boyish in its conception. His printing was done on the very night that he arrived in Puelbo, and the flyers were scattered broadcast the following day. He obtained the names of a large number of prominent citizens, to whom he sent complimentary tickets, good for the first night's performance. Frank was determined to have a house, even if it was made up principally of deadheads. On the occasion of his former visit to Puelbo he had received some free advertising through Leslie Lawrence, who had circulated printed accusations against him. He scarcely expected anything of the sort on this occasion, and he was rather startled when, on the morning following his arrival, he discovered that a circular had been scattered broadcast, which seemed to be even more malicious than the former attempt upon him. In this circular he was plainly charged with the murder of an unknown woman shortly after leaving Denver, and it was said he had been aided in the crime by Bartley Hodge. Frank was calmly reading this bold accusation when Hodge came bursting into the room in a manner that reminded Merry of his entrance under similar circumstances on the former occasion. Seeing the paper in Merry's hand, Bart hoarsely cried: "So you've got it! Then you know about it! Well, now, sir, what do you think of that?" "Sit down, Hodge," said Frank, calmly. "You seem all out of breath. You are excited." "Excited!" shouted the dark-faced youth. "Well, isn't that enough to excite a man of stone!" "Do you mean this?" "Yes, that! What in the name of creation do you suppose I meant?" "I wasn't certain." "Wasn't cert---- Oh, say; that's too much! What do you think? What are you made of, anyway?" "Now, my dear fellow, you must stop going on like this. You'll bring on heart disease if you keep it up." Hodge dropped down on a chair and stared at Merry. "Well--I'll--be--blowed!" he gasped. "You are nearly blowed now," said Frank. "You seem quite out of breath." "Is it possible you have read that paper you hold in your hand?" asked Bart, with forced calmness. "Yes, I have read it." "Well, I do not understand you yet! I thought I did, but I'm willing to confess that I don't." Then he jumped up, almost shouting: "Why, man alive, don't you understand that we are charged with murder--with murder?" "Yes," said Frank, still unruffled, "it seems so by this." "And you take it like that!" "What is the use to take it differently?" "Use? Use? Sometimes I think you haven't a drop of good, hot blood in your body." "If a person has plenty of good, hot blood, it is a good thing for him to cool it off with good, cool brains. Hot blood is all right, but it should be controlled; it should not control the man." "I don't see how you can talk that way, under such circumstances. Why, we may be arrested for murder any moment!" "We shall not." "Shall not?" "No." "Why not?" "Because our unknown enemy does not dare come out into the open and make the charge against us." "What makes you think so?" "This." Frank held up the accusing paper. "That?" "Yes." "Why should that make you think so?" "If our enemy had intended to come out and make the charge against us openly, this would not have appeared. It is simply an attempt to hurt us from under cover, or to arouse others against us--against me, in particular." Bart could see there was logic in Merry's reasoning, but still he was fearful of what might happen. "Well, even you must acknowledge that the unknown enemy may succeed in his purpose," said Hodge. "There were a number of persons who saw something of the struggle on the train. This may arouse some of them, or one of them, at least, to do something." "It may." "You confess that?" "Yes." "Didn't think you would." "I don't believe it will. Hodge, I have a fancy that, in this case, same as in the other, my enemy will overshoot the mark." "How?" "Something tells me that this warning, intended to turn suspicion against me, will serve as an advertisement. Of course, it will be a most unpleasant notoriety to have, but it may serve to bring people out to see me." Bart looked thoughtful. "I never thought of that," he confessed, hesitatingly. "I had far rather not had the notoriety," admitted Frank; "but that can't be helped now. Let the people turn out to see 'True Blue.' Perhaps I'll get a chance at my enemy later." "The veiled woman----" "Is in it, I fancy. I believe there was some connection between the veiled woman and the veiled man--the one who plunged from the train into the river." "I have thought of that, but I've been unable to figure out what the connection could be. Why was the man veiled and disguised thus?" "So that I would not recognize him." "Then, it must be that you would know him if you saw him face to face." "As he knew me. He called me by name as he sprang upon me." "Well, he's done for, but I believe the woman will prove the most dangerous. Something tells me she was the real mover in this business." "I fancy you are right, Hodge. At first, in Denver, I thought she had been piqued by the manner in which I replied to her, but since all these strange things have happened, I know it was more than a case of pique." "When you make a woman your enemy, she is far more dangerous than a man, for women are more reckless--less fearful of consequences." "That's right," nodded Frank. "Women know they will not be punished to the full extent of the law, no matter what they do. Juries are easily hypnotized by pretty women. Where a woman and a man are connected in committing a crime, and the woman is shown to be the prime mover, a jury will let the woman off as easily as possible. A jury always hesitates about condemning a woman to death, no matter if she has committed a most fiendish murder. In the East, women adventuresses ply their nefarious arts and work upon the sympathies of the juries so that, when called to the bar, they are almost always acquitted. It is remarkable that men should be so soft. It is not gallantry; it is softness. The very man who would cry the loudest if he had been hit by an adventuress is the most eager to acquit the woman in case he happens to be on the jury to pronounce the verdict in her case." "Well," said Hodge, "you are sound and level in that statement, Frank. It's plain you do not think true chivalry consists of acquitting female blackmailers and assassins." "Don't let this little attempt to injure us frighten you, Hodge," advised Frank, rising. "I think it will miscarry entirely. We've got plenty of work for to-day, and to-night I believe I shall be able to tell beyond a doubt whether 'True Blue' is a success or a failure. I think the test will come right here in Puelbo, where we met disaster before." CHAPTER XXI. GALLUP MEETS THE MYSTERIOUS WOMAN. The mechanical arrangements and special scenery had arrived and were moved into the theater. Supers had been engaged to attend rehearsal in the afternoon, so that they might know their business when evening came. Frank attended to the details of much of the work of making ready, although he had full confidence in Havener and Hodge, who assisted him. He saw that the mechanical effect representing the boat race was put up and tested, making sure it worked perfectly. He was anxious about this, for any hitch in that scene was certain to ruin the whole play. Gallup proved valuable. He worked about the stage, and he was of great assistance to Havener, who wished Merriwell to appoint him assistant stage manager. Of course, everybody was anxious about the result, but the majority of the company had confidence in Merriwell and his play. Cassie Lee, perhaps, was the only one who was never assailed by a doubt concerning the outcome. "I shall do my best to-night--at any cost," she told Frank. At that moment he did not pause to consider the real meaning of her words. Afterward he knew what she meant. She still carried a tiny needle syringe and a phial that contained a certain dangerous drug that had so nearly wrought her ruin. The various members of the company drifted into the theater by the stage entrance, looked over their dressing rooms and the stage and drifted out again. They had been engaged to act, and they did not propose to work when it was not necessary. Gallup whistled as he hustled about the work Havener directed him to do. He made his long legs carry him about swiftly, although he sometimes tripped over his own feet. Ephraim was arranging a mass of scenery so that every piece would be handy for use that night when the time came to use it. While doing this, he was surprised to see one of the dressing-room doors cautiously open and a person peer out. "Gosh!" exclaimed the Vermonter, stepping back out of sight. "Who's that?" Again the person peered out of the dressing room, as if to make sure the coast was clear. "I must be dreamin'!" thought the Vermont youth, rubbing his eyes. "I've got 'em jest from hearin' Frank and Hodge talk so much about her." A moment later he changed his mind. "No, by ginger!" he hissed, as the person slipped out of the dressing room. "It's her!" It was "her," and that means that it was the mysterious veiled woman! Recovering instantly from the shock of his surprise, Gallup sprang out from behind the scenery and made a rush for the unknown. "Hold on!" he cried. "B'gosh! yeou've gotter give a 'count of yerself, an' don't yeou fergit it!" She started, turned on him, dodged. He flung out his hand and clutched at her, catching hold of the chain that encircled her neck and suspended her purse. "I want yeou!" palpitated the Yankee youth. "Yeou're jest the----" Flirt!--the woman made a quick motion toward him. Something struck Ephraim in his eyes, burning like fire. He was nearly knocked down by the shock, and a yell of pain escaped his lips. "I'm blinded!" he groaned. It was true; he could not see. With something like a scornful laugh, the woman flitted away and disappeared, leaving poor Ephraim bellowing with pain and clawing at his eyes, as if he would dig them out of his head. "Murder!" he howled. "Oh, I'm dyin'! Somebody come quick! My eyes hev been put aout! Oh, wow-wow! Oh, I wisht I'd staid to hum on the farm!" Down on the floor he fell, and over and over he rolled in the greatest agony. Havener and some of the regular theater hands heard his wild cries and came rushing to the spot. They found him on the floor, kicking and thrashing about. "What's the matter?" demanded the stage manager. Gallup did not hear him. "I'm dyin'!" he blubbered. "Oh, it's an awful way ter die! My eyes are gone! Ow-yow!" "What is the matter?" Havener again cried, getting hold of the thrashing youth. "What has happened?" "Stop her!" roared Ephraim, realizing that some person had come and thinking instantly that the woman must be detained. "Don't let her git erway!" "Don't let who get away?" "The woman! Ow-wow! Bring a pail of warter an' let me git my head inter it! I must do somethin' ter put aout the fire! Oh, my eyes! my eyes!" "What is the matter with your eyes?" "She threw somethin' inter 'em." "She?" "Yes." "Who?" "The woman." "What woman?" "The veiled woman--the one that has made all the trouble fer Merry! Oh, this is jest awful!" "What are you talking about?" demanded Havener, impatiently. "There is no veiled woman here! Have you lost your senses?" Then, realizing that they were doing nothing to prevent her from making her escape, Gallup sat up and howled: "She was here! I saw her comin' aout of a dressin' room. Oh, dear! Yow! I tried to ketch her! Oh, my eyes! She flung somethin' inter my face an' put both my eyes out!" "Something has been thrown into his eyes!" exclaimed Havener. "It's red pepper! He is telling the truth! Somebody get some water! Somebody run to a drug store and get something for him to use on his eyes!" "Darn it all!" shouted Gallup. "Let me die, ef I've gotter! but don't let that infarnal woman git erway!" "I will try to see to that," said Havener, rushing away. He dashed down to the stage door, but he was too late, for the doorkeeper told him the veiled woman had gone out. "Why in the world did you let her in?" angrily demanded the irate stage manager. "She said she belonged to the company." "She lied! She has half killed one of the company!" "I heard the shouts," said the doorkeeper, "and I thought somebody was hurt. But it wasn't my fault." "If she tries to come in here again, seize and hold her. I'll give you five dollars if you hold her till I can reach her! She is a female tiger!" Then Havener rushed back to see what could be done for Gallup. Groaning and crying, Gallup was washing the pepper from his eyes, which were fearfully inflamed and swollen. He could not see Havener, but heard his voice, and eagerly asked: "Did ye ketch the dratted critter?" "No; she got out before I reached the door." "Darn her!" grated Ephraim. "I say darn her! Never said ennything as bad as that about a female woman before, but I jest can't help it this time! I won't be able to see fer a week!" "Oh, yes, you will," assured Havener. "But I rather think your eyes will look bad for some time to come." "Here is something he had in his hand," said one of the supers. "It's her purse, I reckon; but there ain't no money in it." Havener took it. "Are you sure there wasn't any money in it when you examined it?" he asked, sharply. The super seemed to feel insulted, and he angrily protested that he would not have touched a cent if there had been five hundred dollars in it. "But I notice you had curiosity enough to examine the contents of it," came dryly from the stage manager. "I'll just keep this. It may prove to be a valuable clew to the woman's identity." Everything possible was done for Ephraim's eyes, but it was a long time before he was much relieved from the agony he was suffering. Then he was taken to the hotel, with a bandage over his eyes, and a doctor came to attend him. The physician said he would do everything possible to get Ephraim into shape to play that evening, but he did not give a positive assurance that he would be able to do so. As soon as Frank heard of the misfortune which had befallen the Vermont youth, he hastened to the hotel and to the room where Ephraim was lying on the bed. Gallup heard his step and recognized it when he entered. "I'm slappin' glad yeou've come, Frank!" he exclaimed. "And I am terribly sorry you have met with such a misfortune, Ephraim," declared Merry. "So be I, Frank--so be I! But I'm goin' ter play my part ter-night ur bu'st my galluses tryin'! I ain't goin' to knock aout the show ef I kin help it." "That was not what I meant. I was sorry because of the pain you must have suffered." "Waal, it was ruther tough," the faithful country lad confessed. "By gum! it was jest as ef somebody'd chucked a hull lot of coals right inter my lookers. It jest knocked me silly, same ez if I'd bin hit with a club." "How did it happen? Tell me all about it." Ephraim told the story of his adventure, finishing with: "I kainder guess that red pepper warn't meant fer me, Frank. That was meant fer yeou. That woman was in there ter fix yeou so yeou couldn't play ter-night." "It's quite likely you may be right, Ephraim; but she had to give it to you in order to escape. But where is this purse you snatched from her?" "On the stand, there. Havener tuck possession of it, but I got him to leave it here, so yeou might see it right away when yeou came." Frank found the purse and opened it. From it he drew forth a crumpled and torn telegram. Smoothing this out, he saw it was dated at Castle Rock the previous day. It read as follows: "Mrs. Hayward Grace, Puelbo, Colo. "All right. Close call. Fell from train into river. Came near drowning, but managed to swim out. Will be along on first train to-morrow. Keep track of the game. "P. F." Frank jumped when he read that. "By Jove!" he cried. "Whut is it?" Ephraim eagerly asked. "I believe I understand this." "Do ye?" "Sure! This was from the man who fell from the train into the river--the man disguised as a woman, who attacked me on the rear platform!" "Looks zif yeou might be right." "I am sure of it! The fellow escaped with his life! It is marvelous!" "I sh'u'd say so!" "He dispatched his accomplice, the woman, to let her know that he was living." "Yeou've struck it, Frank!" "And she was the one who got out the accusing flyers, charging me with the crime of murder!" "I bet!" "The man is in this city now, and they are working together again." "I dunno'd I see whut they're goin' to make aout of it, but mebbe yeou do." "Not yet. They must be enemies I have made." "Who's Mrs. Hayward Grace?" "Never heard the name before." "Waal, he didn't sign his name Hayward Grace, so it seems he ain't her husband; don't it, Frank?" "He signed 'P. F.' Now, I wonder what one of my enemies can be fitted to those initials?" "I dunno." "Nor do I. But this telegram has given me a feeling of relief, for I am glad to know the man was not drowned." "Drownin's too good fer him! He oughter be hung!" "Although my conscience was clear in the matter, I am glad to know that I was in no way connected with his death. Hodge will not be so pleased, for he will not stop to reason that the chances of a charge of murder being brought against us are about blotted out. Ephraim, I am very sorry you were hurt, but I'm extremely glad you snatched this purse and brought me this telegram. I shall take care of it. I shall use it to trace my enemies, if possible." "Waal, I'm glad I done somethin', though I'd bin a 'tarnal sight gladder if I hed ketched that woman." Frank carefully placed the purse and the telegram in his pocket, where he knew it would be safe. Assuring Ephraim that everything possible should be done for him, he hastened out. That afternoon the rehearsal took place, with another person reading Ephraim's part. It was feared that Gallup would not be able to see to play when it came night, but Frank hoped that he could, and the Vermont youth vowed he'd do it some way. The rehearsal passed off fairly well, although there were some hitches. Havener looked satisfied. "I'd rather it would go off this way than to have it go perfectly smooth," he declared. "I've noticed it almost always happens that a good, smooth rehearsal just before a first performance means that the performance will go bad, and vice versa." Frank had not been long in the business, but he, also, had observed that it often happened as Havener had said. The theater orchestra rehearsed with them, getting all the "cue music" arranged, and having everything in readiness for the specialties. The night came at last, and the company gathered at the theater, wondering what the outcome would be. Gallup was on hand, but he still had the bandage over his eyes. He was wearing it up to the last minute, so that he would give them as much rest as possible. "Somebody'll hev ter make me up ter-night," he said. "I don't believe I kin see well enough ter do that." Havener agreed to look after that. While the various members were putting the finishing touches on their toilet and make-up, word came that people were pouring into the theater in a most satisfactory manner. The orchestra tuned up for the overture. Frank went round to see that everybody was prepared. He had fallen into that habit, not feeling like depending on some one else to do it. Most of the men were entirely ready. A few were making the last touches. Stella Stanley and Agnes Kirk were all ready to go on. "Where is Cassie?" asked Merry. "In the dressing room," said Stella. "She told us not to wait for her. Said she would be right out." Frank went to the dressing room. The door was slightly open, and, through the opening, he saw Cassie. She had thrust back the sleeve of her left arm, and he saw a tiny instrument in her right hand. He knew in a twinkling what she was about to do. With a leap, Frank went into that room and caught her by the wrist. "Cassie!" he cried, guardedly. "You told me you had given it up! You told me you'd never use morphine again!" "Frank!" she whispered, looking abashed. "I know I told you so! I meant it, but I must use it just once more--just to-night. I am not feeling at my best. I'm dull and heavy. You know how much depends on me. If I don't do well I shall ruin everything. It won't hurt me to use it just this once. The success of 'True Blue' may depend on it!" "If the success of 'True Blue' depended on it beyond the shadow of a doubt, I would not let you use it, Cassie! Great heavens! girl, you are mad! If you fall again into the clutches of that fiend nothing can save you!" "But the play----" "Do you think I would win success with my play at the price of your soul! No, Cassie Lee! If I knew it meant failure I would forbid you to use the stuff in that syringe. Here, give it to me!" He took it from her and put it into his pocket. "Now," he said, "it is out of your reach. You must play without it. There goes the overture. The curtain will go up in a few minutes. All I ask of you is to do your best, Cassie, let it mean success or failure." CHAPTER XXII. THE END OF THE ROPE. The theater was packed. Under no circumstances had Frank anticipated such an audience on the opening night. He felt sure that the advertising given him through the effort of his enemies to injure him had done much to bring people out. Another thing had brought them there. Curiosity led many of them to the theater. They remembered Merriwell's first appearance in Puelbo and its outcome, and they had not forgotten how, in a speech from the stage, he had vowed that he would bring the play back there and give a successful performance. He had rewritten the piece, and it had been played in Denver to an invited audience, every member of which went away highly pleased. The Denver papers had pronounced in favor of it. Puelbo people admired pluck and determination. They could not help feeling admiration for the dogged persistency of Frank Merriwell. And they really hoped he would make good his promise to give a successful performance. Frank's first entrance was carefully worked up to in the play, and he was astounded when he came laughing and singing onto the stage, to be greeted by a perfect whirlwind of applause. Nor did the applause cease till he had recognized it by bowing. Then, as everything quieted down and the play was about to move on again, there came a terrible cry that rang through the house: "Fire!" Frank understood in a twinkling that it was a false alarm, given for the purpose of producing a stampede and raising the performance. After that cry for a moment everybody sat as if turned to stone. It was the calm before the panic. Then Frank's voice rang out clear as a bell: "There is no fire! Keep your seats!" Some had sprung up, but his clear voice reached every part of the house, and it checked the movement. "Fire! fire!" Shrill and piercing was the cry, in the voice of a woman. "Arrest that woman!" cried Frank. "She is trying to ruin this performance! She is the one who circulated a lying and malicious circular charging me with the crime of murder. It was a part of a plot to ruin me!" Frank confessed afterward that he did not understand why the audience remained without stampeding after that second alarm. It must have been that there was a magic something in his voice and manner that convinced them and held them. At any rate, there was no rush for the doors. All at once there was a commotion in the first balcony, from which the cries had come. Two policemen had seized a man and a woman, and the arrested pair were taken from the theater. Quiet was restored, and Frank made a few soothing remarks to the audience, after which the play proceeded. And now he had the sympathy of every person in the great audience. When an actor has once fairly won the sympathy of his audience, he is almost sure of success. The first act went off beautifully. The storm and shipwreck at the close of the act took with the spectators. There was hearty applause when the curtain fell. Frank had arranged that things should be rushed in making ready for the second act. He wanted no long waits between acts, for long waits weary the patience of the best audiences. The second act seemed to go even better than the first, if such a thing were possible. The singing of the "Yale Quartet" proved a great hit, and they were obliged to respond to encore after encore. Cassie's dancing and singing were well appreciated, and Frank, who was watching her, decided that she could not have done better under any circumstances. He did not know how hard she was working for success. He did not know that she had actually prayed that she might do better than she had ever done before in all her life. The discomfiture of _Spike Dubad_ at the close of the second act was relished by all. At last the curtain rose on the third act, round which the whole plot of the play revolved. Now, the interest of the audience was keyed up to the right pitch, and the anxiety of the actors was intense. The first scene went off all right, and then came the change to the scene where the boat race was shown on the river. Everything worked perfectly, and there was a tumult in that theater when the stage suddenly grew dark, just as the Yale boat was seen to forge into the lead. And then, in a few moments, the distant sounds of cheering and the screaming of steam whistles seemed to burst out close at hand, filling the theater with an uproar of sound. Then up flashed the lights, and the open boathouse was shown, with the river beyond. The boats flashed in at the finish, the Yale cheer drowned everything else, and Frank Merriwell was brought onto the stage in the arms of his college friends. The curtain came down, but the audience was standing and cheering like mad, as if it had just witnessed the success of its favorite in a real college race. The curtain went up for the tableau again and again, but that audience would not be satisfied till Frank Merriwell came out and said something. Frank came at last, and such an ovation as he received it brought a happy mist to his eyes. "There he is!" somebody cried. "He said he would come back here with his play and do the trick!" "Well, he has done it!" cried another. "And he is the real Frank Merriwell, who has shown us the kind of never-say-die pluck that has made Yale famous the world over. Three cheers for Frank Merriwell!" They were given. Then all Frank could say was a few choking words: "My friends, I thank you from the bottom of my heart! You cannot know how much was depending on the success or failure of this play. Perhaps all my future career depended on it. I vowed I would win----" "And you have!" shouted a voice. "It seems so. Again, I thank you. I am too happy to say more. Words are idle now." He retired. * * * * * Frank Merriwell had won with his play; "True Blue" was a success. In his happiness he forgot his enemies, he forgot that two persons had been arrested in the balcony. It was not till the next morning when he was invited by a detective to come to the jail to see the prisoners that he thought of them. The detective accompanied him. "I have been on this fellow's track for a long time," he explained. "Spotted him in the theater last night, but was not going to arrest him till the show was over. The woman with him created the disturbance, and two policemen took them both in. I don't want her for anything, but I shall take the man back to Chicago, to answer to the charge of forgery. I shall hold him here for requisition papers." The jail was reached, and first Frank took a look at the woman. He felt that she would prove to be the mysterious woman of the veil, and he was right. She looked up at him, and laughed. "Good-morning, Mr. Merriwell," she said. "Pres and I have made things rather warm for you, you must confess. I reckon we made a mistake last night. We'd both been looking on the wine when it was red, or we'd not attempted to stampede the audience." "Why, it is the woman who claimed to be Havener's wife!" cried Frank. "Here is the man," said the detective. Frank turned to another cell. He was face to face with Philip Scudder, his old-time enemy, who had reached the end of his rope at last! But, in the hour of victory, Frank gave little heed to those who had made his path to this present success a hard and stormy one. He was successful! As a playwright and as an actor he had won the palm of victory, the future seemed to promise all the rewards his energy and enterprise deserved. He had started out from college with the determination to win wealth and fame. He had left the scenes of his early triumphs and first misfortunes, with the firm purpose to return honored and enriched by his own labors. Now he was on the eve of accomplishing that purpose. And as he looked into the future, the lines of will power and determination that had always marked his handsome countenance grew firmer, as he murmured: "I will myself be 'True Blue!' Come what may, let my paths for the next few months be as untoward as they ever have been, difficulties shall but act as a spur to me in my purpose. For I shall be, soon, I hope, once more a son of 'Old Eli.'" THE END. No. 41 of The Merriwell Series, entitled "Frank Merriwell's Prosperity," by Burt L. Standish, shows our hero as a successful playwright, and on a fair way to fame and fortune. BUFFALO BILL King of the Plains William Cody, Colonel U.S.A., is little known under his real name, but when you call him by the title conferred upon him by the hard-headed, harder-fisted Western pioneers, why, the whole world knows him--BUFFALO BILL! Stories of his adventures would be most difficult to write for one who had not shared his camp-fire days; but Colonel Prentiss Ingraham, who wrote the stories in Buffalo Bill's Border Stories, was his boon companion, sharing all of his marvelous adventures--even to being wounded with him. Therefore, while apparently they are fiction, actually, these stories are based upon fact and written by a clever pen. If you like good Western adventure, look up the Buffalo Bill Border Stories at your news dealer's. There are many different ones--you are bound to find them interesting and surprisingly good at the price. STREET & SMITH CORPORATION 79 Seventh Avenue--New York City NICK CARTER CAPTURED The Heart of the World Twenty years ago, when Nick Carter first appeared upon the literary stage as a fiction character, he was looked upon as a curiosity--more to be smiled at than taken seriously. Now, however, he is the favorite of countless millions of readers in every walk of life. Stories of his adventures have been translated into nearly every foreign tongue; he appears on the screen in a series of most fascinating pictures produced by Broadwell Productions, Inc. In short, Nick Carter's great triumph lies in the fact that he has captured the heart of the world. Have you ever met him? If not, buy any of the following three books and prepare to be cheered up: New Magnet Library. 1025 "Wildfire" 1021 "The Secret of the Marble Mantel" 1017 "A Spinner of Death" STREET & SMITH CORPORATION 79 Seventh Avenue--New York City 
42030	----	The Rocky Mountain Wonderland [Illustration: A WILD GARDEN IN THE WONDERLAND On the Eastern Boundary-Line of the Rocky Mountain National Park] The Rocky Mountain Wonderland By Enos A. Mills With Illustrations from Photographs [Illustration] Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company The Riverside Press Cambridge COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY ENOS A. MILLS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Published April 1915_ To George Horace Lorimer Preface Colorado has one thousand peaks that rise more than two miles into the sky. About one hundred and fifty of these reach up beyond thirteen thousand feet in altitude. There are more than twice as many peaks of fourteen thousand feet in Colorado as in all the other States of the Union. An enormous area is entirely above the limits of tree-growth; but these heights above the timber-line are far from being barren and lifeless. Covering these mountains with robes of beauty are forests, lakes, meadows, brilliant flowers, moorlands, and vine-like streams that cling to the very summits. This entire mountain realm is delightfully rich in plant and animal life, from the lowest meadows to the summits of the highest peaks. Each year the State is colored with more than three thousand varieties of wild flowers, cheered by more than four hundred species of birds, and enlivened with a numerous array of other wild life. Well has it been called the "Playground of America." It is an enormous and splendid hanging wild garden. This mountain State of the Union has always appealed to the imagination and has called forth many graphic expressions. Thus Colorado sought statehood from Congress under the name of Tahosa,--"Dwellers of the Mountain-Tops." Even more of poetic suggestiveness has the name given by an invading Indian tribe to the Arapahoes of the Continental Divide,--"Men of the Blue Sky." I have visited on foot every part of Colorado and have made scores of happy excursions through these mountains. These outings were in every season of the year and they brought me into contact with the wild life of the heights in every kind of weather. High peaks by the score have been climbed and hundreds of miles covered on snowshoes. I have even followed the trail by night, and by moonlight have enjoyed the solemn forests, the silent lakes, the white cascades, and the summits of the high peaks. The greater part of this book deals with nature and with my own experiences in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Some of the chapters in slightly different form have been printed in various publications. The _Saturday Evening Post_ published "The Grizzly Bear," "Wild Folk of the Mountain-Summits," "Wild Mountain Sheep," "Associating with Snow-Slides," "The Forest Frontier," "Bringing back the Forest," and "Going to the Top." _Country Life in America_ published "A Mountain Pony"; _The Youth's Companion_, "Some Forest History"; _Recreation_, "Drought in Beaver World"; and _Our Dumb Animals_, "My Chipmunk Callers." The editors of these publications have kindly consented to the publishing of these papers in this volume. E. A. M. LONG'S PEAK, ESTES PARK, COLORADO, January, 1915. Contents Going to the Top 1 Wild Mountain Sheep 21 The Forest Frontier 47 The Chinook Wind 67 Associating with Snow-Slides 77 Wild Folk of the Mountain-Summits 99 Some Forest History 123 Mountain Lakes 147 A Mountain Pony 167 The Grizzly Bear 185 Bringing back the Forest 209 Mountain Parks 227 Drought in Beaver World 247 In the Winter Snows 257 My Chipmunk Callers 275 A Peak by the Plains 293 The Conservation of Scenery 311 The Rocky Mountain National Park 333 Index 355 Illustrations _A Wild Garden in the Wonderland, on the Eastern Boundary-Line of the Rocky Mountain National Park_ _Frontispiece_ _The Narrows, Long's Peak Trail_ 14 _A Wild Mountain Sheep_ 40 _The Way of the Wind at Timber-Line_ 52 _A Timber-Line Lake in Northwestern Colorado_ 64 _Lizard Head Peak in the San Juan Mountains_ 84 _Photograph by George L. Beam._ _Alpine Pastures above Timber-Line, near Specimen Mountain in the Rocky Mountain National Park_ 104 _Photograph by John K. Sherman._ _At the Edge of the Arctic-Alpine Life Zone in the San Juan Mountains_ 116 _Photograph by George L. Beam._ _A Western Yellow Pine_ 126 _Crystal Lake; a Typical Glacier Lake_ 150 _Trapper's Lake_ 158 _Cricket, the Return Horse, at the Summit of the Pass_ 172 _Looking Eastward from Lizard Head_ 180 _Overgrown Cones in the Heart of a Lodge-Pole Pine_ 222 _Photograph by Herbert W. Gleason._ _A Mountain Park in the San Juan Mountains_ 230 _Capitol Peak and Snow Mass Mountain from Galena Park, Colorado_ 242 _Photograph by L. C. McClure, Denver._ _A Deer in Deep Snow, Rocky Mountain National Park_ 260 _Entertaining a Chipmunk Caller_ 278 _Photograph by Frank C. Ervin._ _Pike's Peak from the Top of Cascade Cañon_ 296 _Photograph by Photo-Craft Shop, Colorado Springs._ _The Continental Divide near Estes Park_ 314 _Long's Peak from Loch Vale_ 322 _Photograph by George C. Barnard._ _Map of the Rocky Mountain National Park_ 336 _Estes Park Entrance to the Rocky Mountain National Park_ 340 _Photograph by Mrs. M. K. Sherman._ _The Fall River Road across the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountain National Park_ 344 _Photograph by W. T. Parke._ Except as otherwise noted the illustrations are from photographs by the author. Going to the Top Going to the Top The seven football-players who engaged me to guide them to the top of Long's Peak did not reveal their identity until we were on the way. Long's Peak, high, massive, and wildly rugged, is the king of the Rocky Mountains, and there were five thousand feet of altitude and seven steeply inclined miles between our starting-point and the granite-piled summit. We set out on foot. The climbers yelled, threw stones, and wrestled. They were so occupied with themselves during the first mile that I managed to keep them from running over me. Presently they discovered me and gave a cheer, and then proceeded energetically with the evident intention of killing me off. It was fortunate for me that the experience of more than a hundred guiding trips to the summit was a part of my equipment. In addition to the valuable lessons that had been dearly learned in guiding, I had made dozens of trips to the summit before offering my services as guide. I had made climbs in every kind of weather to familiarize myself thoroughly with the way to the top. These trips--always alone--were first made on clear days, then on stormy ones, and finally at night. When I was satisfied that I could find the trail under the worst conditions, endurance tests were made. One of these consisted in making a quick round trip, then, after only a few minutes' rest, shouldering thirty or forty pounds of supplies and hastening to the rescue of an imaginary climber ill on the summit. Besides two seasons of this preliminary experience, the rocks, glacial records, birds, trees, and flowers along the trail were studied, other peaks climbed, and books concerning mountain-climbing diligently read. But long before my two hundred and fifty-seven guiding trips were completed, I found myself ignorant of one of the most important factors in guiding, and perhaps, too, in life,--and that is human nature. Several climbs had been made simply to learn the swiftest pace I could maintain from bottom to summit without a rest. Thus ably coached by experience, I steadied to the work when my noisy football-players started to run away from me. Each player in turn briefly set a hot pace, and in a short time they were ahead of me. Even though they guyed me unmercifully, I refused to be hurried and held to the swiftest pace that I knew could be maintained. Two hours raised us through thirty-five hundred feet of altitude and advanced us five miles. We were above the timber-line, and, though some distance behind the boys, I could tell they were tiring. Presently the guide was again in the lead! By-and-by one of the boys began to pale, and presently he turned green around the mouth. He tried desperately to bluff it off, but ill he was. In a few minutes he had to quit, overcome with nausea. A moment later another long-haired brave tumbled down. On the others went, but three more were dropped along the trail, and only two of those husky, well-trained athletes reached the summit! That evening, when those sad fellows saw me start off to guide another party up by moonlight, they concluded that I must be a wonder; but as a matter of fact, being an invalid, I had learned something of conservation. This experience fixed in my mind the importance of climbing slowly. Hurriedly climbing a rugged peak is a dangerous pastime. Trail hurry frequently produces sickness. A brief dash may keep a climber agitated for an hour. During this time he will waste his strength doing things the wrong way,--often, too, annoying or endangering the others. Finding a way to get climbers to go slowly was a problem that took me time to solve. Early in the guiding game the solution was made impossible by trying to guide large parties and by not knowing human nature. Once accomplished, slow going on the trail noticeably decreased the cases of mountain-sickness, greatly reduced the number of quarrels, and enabled almost all starters to gain the height desired. Slow climbing added pleasure to the trip and enabled every one to return in good form and with splendid pictures in his mind. To keep the party together,--for the tendency of climbers is to scatter, some traveling rapidly and others slowly,--it became my practice to stop occasionally and tell a story, comment on a bit of scenery, or relate an incident that had occurred near by. As I spoke in a low tone, the climbers ahead shouting "Hurry up!" and the ones behind calling "Wait!" could not hear me. This method kept down friction and usually held the party together. With a large party, however, confusion sometimes arose despite my efforts to anticipate it. Hoping to get valuable climbing suggestions, I told my experiences one day to a gentleman who I thought might help me; but he simply repeated the remark of Trampas that in every party of six there is a fool! It is almost impossible for a numerous party, even though every one of them may be well-meaning, to travel along a steep trail without friction. My most unpleasant climb was with a fateful six,--three loving young couples. Two college professors about to be married formed one of the couples. He, the son of wealthy parents, had been sent West to mend his health and manners; he met a young school-ma'am who reformed him. They attended the same college and became professors in a State school. They were to be married at the end of this outing; but on this climb they quarreled. Each married another! Sweethearts for years was the story of the second couple. They, too, quarreled on the trail, but made up again. The story of the third couple is interestingly complicated. He was rich, young, and impetuous; she, handsome and musical. For years she had received his ardent attentions indifferently. As we approached the top of the peak, he became extremely impatient with her. As though to make confusion worse confounded, after years of indifference the young lady became infatuated with her escort. He tried to avoid her, but she feigned a sprained ankle to insure his comforting closeness. They are both single to this day. Meantime the six had a general row among themselves, and at the close of it united to "roast" me! Whether imp or altitude was to blame for this deviltry matters not; the guide had to suffer for it. Early in guiding I conceived it to be my duty to start for the top with any one who cared to try it, and I felt bound also to get the climber to the top if possible. This was poor theory and bad practice. After a few exasperating and exhausting experiences I learned the folly of dragging people to the top who were likely to be too weak to come back. One day a party of four went up. Not one of them was accustomed to walking, and all had apparently lived to eat. After eight hard hours we reached the summit, where all four collapsed. A storm came on, and we were just leaving the top when daylight faded. It rained at intervals all night long, with the temperature a trifle below freezing. We would climb down a short distance, then huddle shivering together for a while. At times every one was suffering from nausea. We got down to timber-line at one o'clock in the morning. Here a rest by a rousing camp-fire enabled all to go on down. We arrived at the starting-place just twenty-four hours after we had left it! Mountain-climbing is not a good line of activity for an invalid or for one who shies at the edge of a precipice, or for any one, either, who worries over the possible fate of his family while he is on a narrow ledge. Altitude, the great bugbear to many, is the scapegoat for a multitude of sins. "Feeling the altitude" would often be more correctly expressed as feeling the effects of high living! The ill effects of altitude are mostly imaginary. True, climbing high into a brighter, finer atmosphere diminishes the elastic clasp--the pressure of the air--and causes physiological changes. These usually are beneficial. Climbers who become ill through mountain-climbing would also become ill in hill-climbing. In the overwhelming number of cases the lowland visitor is permanently benefited by a visit to the mountains and especially by a climb in the heights. Mountain-sickness, with its nausea, first comes to those who are bilious, or to those who are hurrying or exerting themselves more than usual. A slight stomach disorder invites this nausea, and on the heights those who have not been careful of diet, or those who celebrated the climb the evening before it was made, are pretty certain to find out just how mountain-sickness afflicts. Altitude has, I think, but little to do with bringing on so-called mountain-sickness. It is almost identical with sea-sickness, and just as quickly forces the conclusion that life is not worth living! Usually a hot drink, rest, and warmth will cure it in a short time. Clarence King in his "Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada" says concerning the effects of altitude, "All the while I made my instrumental observations the fascination of the view so held me that I felt no surprise at seeing water boiling over our little faggot blaze at a temperature of one hundred and ninety-two degrees F., nor in observing the barometrical column stand at 17.99 inches; and it was not till a week or so after that I realized we had felt none of the conventional sensations of nausea, headache, and I don't know what all, that people are supposed to suffer at extreme altitudes; but these things go with guides and porters, I believe." Altitude commonly stimulates the slow tongue, and in the heights many reserved people become talkative and even confiding. This, along with the natural sociability of such a trip, the scenery, and the many excitements, usually ripens acquaintances with amazing rapidity. Lifelong friendships have commenced on the trail, and many a lovely romance, too. One day two young people met for the first time in one of my climbing parties. Thirty days afterward they were married, and they have lived happily to date. In one climb a chaperon gave out and promptly demanded that two young sweethearts turn back. As we moved on without the chaperon, she called down upon my head the curses of all the gods at once! In order to save the day it is sometimes necessary for the guide to become an autocrat. Occasionally a climber is not susceptible to suggestion and will obey only the imperative mood. A guide is sometimes compelled to stop rock-rolling, or to say "No!" to a plucky but sick climber who is eager to go on. A terrible tongue-lashing came to me one day from a young lady because of my refusal to go farther after she had fainted. She went forward alone for half an hour while I sat watching from a commanding crag. Presently she came to a narrow unbanistered ledge that overhung eternity. She at once retreated and came back with a smile, saying that the spot where she had turned back would enable any one to comprehend the laws of falling bodies. Occasionally a climber became hysterical and I had my hands full keeping the afflicted within bounds. Mountain ledges are not good places for hysterical performances. One day, when a reverend gentleman and his two daughters were nearing the top, the young ladies and myself came out upon the Narrows a few lengths ahead of their father. The ladies were almost exhausted and were climbing on sheer nerve. The stupendous view revealed from the Narrows overwhelmed them, and both became hysterical at once. It was no place for ceremony; and as it was rather cramped for two performances at once, I pushed the feet from beneath one young lady, tripped the other on top of her,--and sat down on both! They struggled, laughed, and cried, and had just calmed down when the father came round the rocks upon us. His face vividly and swiftly expressed three or four kinds of anger before he grasped the situation. Fearing that he might jump on me in turn, or that he might "get them" too, I watched him without a word. Finally he took in the entire situation, and said with a smile, "Well, I don't know whether it's my move or not!" Twice, while guiding, I broke my lifelong rule never to take a tip. One tip had with it a surprise to redeem the taking. It came from the gentleman who had organized the party. On the way up he begged leave to set the pace and to lead the party to the top. He appeared sensible, but I made a blunder by consenting to the arrangement, for his pace was too rapid, and at Keyhole he was attacked by nausea. He pluckily insisted that we go on to the summit and leave him behind. It was five hours before we returned to him. For two hours he had lain helpless in a cold rain and was badly chilled. He was so limp and loose-jointed that it was difficult to carry him across the moraine called Boulderfield. At the Inn the following morning he was completely restored. I was still so exhausted from getting him down that when he insisted that he be allowed to give me a tip in addition to the guiding fee I agreed to accept it. The instant I had consented it occurred to me that a tip from a millionaire for the saving of his life would be worth while. I was startled when, with a satisfied expression, he handed me twenty-five cents! [Illustration: THE NARROWS, LONG'S PEAK TRAIL (Figures of climbers can be made out on the trail)] Early one season, before the ice had melted, one of my five climbers met with an accident in one of the most dangerous places along the way. We were descending, and I was in front, watching each one closely as he crossed a narrow and extremely steep tongue of ice. The gentleman who brought up the rear was a good climber when not talking; but this time he was chattering away and failed to notice me when I signaled him for silence while each climber, in turn, carefully crossed the steep ice in the footholds chopped for that purpose. Still talking, he stepped out on the ice without looking and missed the foothold! Both feet shot from beneath him, and down the smooth, deadly steep he plunged. Early in guiding I had considered the dangerous places and planned just where to stand while the climbers passed them and just what to do in case of accident. When an accident actually occurred, it was a simple matter to go through a ticklish grand-stand performance that had been practiced dozens of times, and which for years I had been ready to put into effect. The instant he slipped, I made a quick leap for a point of rock that barely pierced the steep ice-tongue. This ice was steeper than half pitch. He shot down, clawing desperately and helplessly, with momentum sufficient to knock over half a dozen men. There was just time to grab him by the coat as he shot by the rock. Bracing with all my might to hold him for a fraction of a second so as to divert him and point him at an angle off the ice, I jumped upward as the violent jerk came. We went off as it were on a tangent, and landed in a heap upon the stones, several yards below the spot from which I had leaped to the rescue. His life was saved. The last season of my guiding career was a full one. Thirty-two ascents were made during the thirty-one days of August. Half a dozen of these were by moonlight. In addition to these climbs a daily round trip was made to Estes Park, eight miles distant and fifteen hundred feet down the mountain. These Estes Park trips commonly were made on horseback, though a few were by wagon. My busiest day was crowded with two wagon trips and one horseback trip to Estes Park, then a moonlight climb to the summit. In a sixty-hour stretch I did not have any sleep or take any food. Being in condition for the work and doing it easily, I was in excellent shape when the guiding ended. The happiest one of my two hundred and fifty-seven guiding experiences on the rugged granite trail of this peak was with Harriet Peters, a little eight-year-old girl, the youngest child who has made the climb. She was alert and obedient, enjoyed the experience, and reached the top without a slip or a stumble, and with but little assistance from me. It was pleasant to be with her on the summit, listening to her comments and hearing her childlike questions. I have told the whole story of this climb in "Wild Life on the Rockies." Thoughtfulness and deliberation are essentials of mountain-climbing. Climb slowly. Look before stepping. Ease down off boulders; a jump may jar or sprain. Enjoy the scenery and do most of your talking while at rest. Think of the fellow lower down. A careful diet and training beforehand will make the climb easier and far more enjoyable. Tyndall has said that a few days of mountain-climbing will burn all the effete matter out of the system. In climbing, the stagnant blood is circulated and refined, the lungs are exercised, every cell is cleansed, and all parts are disinfected by the pure air. Climbing a high peak occasionally will not only postpone death but will give continuous intensity to the joy of living. Every one might well climb at least one high peak, and for those leaving high school or college, the post-graduate work of climbing a rugged peak might be a more informative experience or a more helpful test for living than any examination or the writing of a thesis. Scenery, like music, is thought-compelling and gives one a rare combination of practical and poetical inspiration. Along with mountain-climbing, scenery shakes us free from ourselves and the world. From new grand heights one often has the strange feeling that he has looked upon these wondrous scenes before; and on the crest one realizes the full meaning of John Muir's exhortation to "climb the mountains and get their good tidings!" Wild Mountain Sheep Wild Mountain Sheep One day in Glacier Gorge, Colorado, I was astonished to see a number of sheep start to descend the precipitous eastern face of Thatch-Top Mountain. This glaciated wall, only a few degrees off the perpendicular, rises comparatively smooth for several hundred feet. Down they came, slowly, with absolute composure, over places I dared not even try to descend. The nearness of the sheep and the use of field-glasses gave me excellent views of the many ways in which they actually seemed to court danger. It is intensely thrilling to watch a leaping exhibition of one of these heavy, agile, alert, and athletic animals. Down precipitous places he plunges head foremost, turning and checking himself as he descends by striking his feet against walls and projections--perhaps a dozen times--before alighting on a ledge for a full stop. From this he walks overboard and repeats the wild performance! Wild mountain sheep are perhaps the most accomplished and dare-devil acrobats in the animal world. They are indifferent to the depths beneath as they go merrily along cañon-walls. The chamois and the wild mountain goat may equal them in climbing among the crags and peaks, but in descending dizzy precipices and sheer walls the bighorn sheep are unrivaled. When sheep hurriedly descend a precipice, the laws of falling bodies are given a most spectacular display, and the possibilities of friction and adhesion are tested to the utmost. A heavily horned ram led the way down Thatch-Top. He was followed by two young rams and a number of ewes, with two small lambs in the rear. They were in single file, each well separated from the others. Down this frightful wall the lambs appeared to be going to certain death. At times they all followed the contour round small spurs or in niches. In places, from my point of view they appeared to be flattened against the wall and descending head foremost. There was one long pitch that offered nothing on which to stand and no place on which to stop. Down this the old ram plunged with a series of bouncing drops and jumps,--falling under control, with his fall broken, checked, and directed, without stopping, by striking with the feet as frequently as was necessary. First came three or four straightforward bouncing dives, followed by a number of swift zigzag jumps, striking alternately right and left, then three or four darts to the right before again flying off to the left. At last he struck on a wide ledge, where he pulled up and stopped with masterly resistance and stiff-legged jumps! Mind controlled matter! This specialty of the sheep requires keen eyesight, instant decision, excellent judgment, a marvelous nicety in measuring distances, and a complete forgetfulness of peril. Each ewe in turn gave a similar and equally striking exhibition; while the lambs, instead of breaking their necks in the play of drop and bounce, did not appear to be even cautious. They showed off by dropping farther and going faster than the old ones! This was sheer frolic for these children of the crags. Down a vertical gulley--a giant chimney with one side out--they went hippety-hop from side to side, and at the bottom, without a stop, dropped fifteen feet to a wide bench below. The ram simply dived off, with front feet thrust forward and with hind feet drawn up and forward, and apparently struck with all four feet at once. A number of others followed in such rapid succession that they appeared to be falling out of the air. Each, however, made it a point to land to the right or the left of the one it was following. Two ewes turned broadside to the wall as they went over and dropped vertically,--stiff-legged, back horizontal, and with head held well up. The lambs leaped overboard simultaneously only a second behind the rear ewe, each lamb coming to a stop with the elastic bounce of youth. Beneath this bench where all had paused, the wall was perilously steep for perhaps one hundred feet. A moment after the lambs landed, the ram followed the bench round the wall for several yards, then began to descend the steep wall by tacking back and forth on broken and extremely narrow ledges, with many footholds barely two inches wide. He was well down, when he missed his footing and fell. He tumbled outward, turned completely over, and, after a fall of about twenty feet, struck the wall glancingly, at the same time thrusting his feet against it as though trying to right himself. A patch of hair--and perhaps skin--was left clinging to the wall. A few yards below this, while falling almost head first, he struck a slope with all four feet and bounded wildly outward, but with checked speed. He dropped on a ledge, where with the utmost effort he regained control of himself and stopped, with three or four stiff plunges and a slide. From there he trotted over easy ways and moderate slopes to the bottom, where he stood a while trembling, then lay down. One by one his flock came down in good order. The leaps of flying squirrels and the clever gymnastic pranks of monkeys are tame shows compared with the wild feats of these masters of the crags. The flock, after playing and feeding about for an hour or more, started to return. The injured leader lay quietly on the grass, but with head held bravely erect. The two lambs raced ahead and started to climb the precipice over the route they had come down. One ewe went to the bottom of the wall, then turned to look at the big-horned leader who lay still upon the grass. She waited. The lambs, plainly eager to go on up, also waited. Presently the ram rose with an effort and limped heavily away. There was blood on his side. He turned aside from the precipice and led the way back toward the top by long easy slopes. The flock slowly followed. The lambs looked at each other and hesitated for some time. Finally they leaped down and raced rompingly after the others. The massive horns of the rams, along with the audacious dives that sheep sometimes make on precipices, probably suggested the story that sheep jump off a cliff and effectively break the shock of the fall by landing on their horns at the bottom! John Charles Frémont appears to have started this story in print. Though sheep do not alight on their horns, this story is still in circulation and is too widely believed. Every one with whom I have talked who has seen sheep land after a leap says that the sheep land upon their feet. I have seen this performance a number of times, and on a few occasions there were several sheep; and each and all came down feet first. Incidentally I have seen two rams come down a precipice and strike on their horns; but they did not rise again! The small horns of the ewes would offer no shock-breaking resistance if alighted upon; yet the ewes rival the rams in making precipitous plunges. The sheep is the only animal that has circling horns. In rams these rise from the top of the head and grow upward, outward, and backward, then curve downward and forward. Commonly the circle is complete in four or five years. This circular tendency varies with locality. In mature rams the horns are from twenty to forty inches long, measured round the curve, and have a basic circumference of twelve to eighteen inches. The largest horn I ever measured was at the base nineteen and a half inches in circumference. This was of the Colorado bighorn species, and at the time of measurement the owner had been dead about two months. The horns of the ewes are small, and extend upward, pointing slightly outward and backward. The wildest leap I ever saw a sheep take was made in the Rocky Mountains a few miles northwest of Long's Peak. In climbing down a precipice I rounded a point near the bottom and came upon a ram at the end of the ledge I was following. Evidently he had been lying down, looking upon the scenes below. The ledge was narrow and it ended just behind the ram, who faced me only five or six feet away. He stamped angrily, struck an attitude of fight, and shook his head as if to say, "I've half a mind to butt you overboard!" He could have butted an ox overboard. My plan was to fling myself beneath a slight overhang of wall on the narrow ledge between us if he made a move. While retreating backward along almost nothing of a ledge and considering the wisdom of keeping my eyes on the ram, he moved, and I flung myself beneath the few inches of projecting wall. The ram simply made a wild leap off the ledge. This looked like a leap to death. He plunged down at an angle to the wall, head forward and a trifle lower than the rump, with feet drawn upward and thrust forward. I looked over the edge, hoping he was making a record jump. The first place he struck was more than twenty feet below me. When the fore feet struck, his shoulder blades jammed upward as though they would burst through the skin. A fraction of a second later his hind feet also struck and his back sagged violently; his belly must have scraped the slope. He bounded upward and outward like a heavy chunk of rubber. This contact had checked his deadly drop and his second striking-place was on a steeply inclined buttress; apparently in his momentary contact with this he altered his course with a kicking action of the feet. There was lightning-like foot action, and from this striking-place he veered off and came down violently, feet first, upon a shelf of granite. With a splendid show of physical power, and with desperate effort, he got himself to a stand with stiff-legged, sliding bounds along the shelf. Here he paused for a second, then stepped out of sight behind a rock point. Feeling that he must be crippled, I hurriedly scrambled up and out on a promontory from which to look down upon him. He was trotting down a slope without even the sign of a limp! Sheep do sometimes slip, misjudge a distance, and fall. Usually a bad bruise, a wrenched joint, or a split hoof is the worst injury, though now and then one receives broken legs or ribs, or even a broken neck. Most accidents appear to befall them while they are fleeing through territory with which they are unacquainted. In strange places they are likely to have trouble with loose stones, or they may be compelled to leap without knowing the nature of the landing-place. A sheep, like a rabbit or a fox, does his greatest work in evading pursuers in territory with which he is intimately acquainted. If closely pursued in his own territory, he will flee at high speed up or down a precipice, perform seemingly impossible feats, and triumphantly escape. But no matter how skillful, if he goes his utmost in a new territory, he is as likely to come to grief as an orator who attempts to talk on a subject with which he is not well acquainted. It is probable that most of the accidents to these masters of the crags occur when they are making a desperate retreat through strange precipitous territory. In the Elk Mountains a flock of sheep were driven far from their stamping-ground and while in a strange country were fired upon and pursued by hunters. They fled up a peak they had not before climbed. The leader leaped upon a rock that gave way. He tumbled off with the rock on top. He fell upon his back--to rise no more. A ewe missed her footing and in her fall knocked two others over to their death, though she regained her footing and escaped. One day a ram appeared on a near-by sky-line and crossed along the top of a shattered knife-edge of granite. The gale had driven me to shelter, but along he went, unmindful of the gale that was ripping along the crags and knocking things right and left. Occasionally he made a long leap from point to point. Now and then he paused to look into the cañon far below. On the top of the highest pinnacle he stopped and became a splendid statue. Presently he rounded a spur within fifty feet of me and commenced climbing diagonally up a wall that appeared almost vertical and smooth. My glass showed that he was walking along a mere crack in the rock, where footholds existed mostly in imagination. On this place he would stop and scratch with one hind foot and then rub the end of a horn against the wall! As he went on up, the appearance was like a stage effect, as though he were sustained by wires. At the end of the crack he reared, hooked his fore feet over a rough point, and drew himself up like an athlete, with utter indifference to the two hundred feet of drop beneath him. From this point he tacked back and forth until he had ascended to the bottom of a vertical gully, which he easily mastered with a series of zigzag jumps. In some of these he leaped several feet almost horizontally to gain a few inches vertically. Occasionally he leaped up and struck with his feet in a place where he could not stand, but from which he leaped to a place more roomy. His feet slipped as he landed from one high jump; instantly he pushed himself off backward and came down feet foremost on the narrow place from which he had just leaped. He tried again and succeeded. The edges of sheep's hoofs are hard, while the back part of the bottom is a rubbery, gristly pad, which holds well on smooth, steep surfaces. Coöperating with these excellent feet are strong muscles, good eyes, and keen wits. Wild sheep are much larger than tame ones. They are alert, resourceful, and full of energy. Among the Colorado bighorns the rams are from thirty-eight to forty-two inches high, and weigh from two hundred to three hundred and fifty pounds. The ewes are a third smaller. The common color is grayish brown, with under parts and inside of the legs white. In the north there is one pure-white species, while on neighboring ranges there is a black species. Though wild sheep usually fallow a leader, each one is capable of independent action. Tame sheep are stupid and silly; wild sheep are wide-awake and courageous. Tame sheep are dirty and smelly, while wild sheep are as well-groomed and clean as the cliffs among which they live. In discussing wild life many people fail to discriminate between the wild sheep and the wild goats. The goat has back-curving spike horns and a beard that makes the face every inch a goat's. Though of unshapely body and awkward gait, his ungainliness intensified by his long hair, the goat is a most skillful climber. The sheep excel him for speed, grace, and, perhaps, alertness. It is believed that the three or four species of sheep found in the wilds of America had their origin in Asia. In appearance and habits they bear a striking resemblance to the sheep which now inhabit the Asiatic mountains. Wild sheep are found in Alaska, western Canada, and the United States west of the Plains, and extend a short distance down into Mexico. Most flocks in the Sierra and the Rocky Mountains live above the timber-line and at an altitude of twelve thousand feet. Winter quarters in these high stamping-grounds appear to be chosen in localities where the high winds prevent a deep accumulation of snow. This snow-removal decreases the danger of becoming snowbound and usually enables the sheep to obtain food. Their warm, thick under covering of fine wool protects them from the coldest blasts. During storms the sheep commonly huddle together to the leeward of a cliff. Sometimes they stand thus for days and are completely drifted over. At the close of the storm the stronger ones lead and buck their way out through the snow. Occasionally a few weak ones perish, and occasionally, too, a mountain lion appears while the flock is almost helpless in the snow. Excursions from their mountain-top homes are occasionally made into the lowlands. In the spring they go down early for green stuff, which comes first to the lowlands. They go to salt licks, for a ramble, for a change of food, and for the fun of it. The duration of these excursions may be a few hours or several days. Most of the time the full-grown rams form one flock; the ewes and youngsters flock by themselves. Severe storms or harassing enemies may briefly unite these flocks. One hundred and forty is the largest flock I ever counted. This was in June, on Specimen Mountain, Colorado; and the sheep had apparently assembled for the purpose of licking salty, alkaline earth near the top of this mountain. Wild sheep appear to have an insatiable craving for salt and will travel a day's journey to obtain it. Occasionally they will cross a high, broken mountain-range and repeatedly expose themselves to danger, in order to visit a salt lick. The young lambs, one or two at a birth, are usually born about the first of May in the alpine heights above timber-line. What a wildly royal and romantic birthplace! The strange world spreading far below and far away; crags, snowdrifts, brilliant flowers,--a hanging wild garden, with the ptarmigan and the rosy finches for companions! The mother has sole care of the young; for several weeks she must guard them from hungry foxes, eagles, and lions. Once I saw an eagle swoop and strike a lamb. Though the lamb was knocked heels over head, the blow was not fatal. The eagle wheeled to strike again, but the mother leaped up and shielded the wounded lamb. Eaglets are occasionally fed on young lambs, as skulls near eagle's nests in the cliffs bear evidence. A number of ewes and lambs one day came close to my hiding-place. One mother had two children; four others had one each. An active lamb had a merry time with his mother, butting her from every angle, rearing up on his hind legs and striking with his head, and occasionally leaping entirely over her. While she lay in dreamy indifference, he practiced long jumps over her, occasionally stopping to have a fierce fight with an imaginary rival. Later he was joined by another lamb, and they proceeded to race and romp all over a cliff, while the mothers looked on with satisfaction. Presently they all lay down, and a number of magpies, apparently hunting insects, walked over them. In one of the side cañons on the Colorado in Arizona, I was for a number of days close to a flock of wild sheep which evidently had never before seen man. On their first view of me they showed marked curiosity, which they satisfied by approaching closely, two or three touching me with their noses. Several times I walked among the flock with no excitement on their part. I was without either camera or gun. The day I broke camp and moved on, one of the ewes followed me for more than an hour. They become intensely alert and wild when hunted; but in localities where they are not shot at they quickly become semi-domestic, often feeding near homes of friendly people. During the winter sheep frequently come from the heights to feed near my cabin. One day, after a number had licked salt with my pony, a ram which appeared as old as the hills walked boldly by my cabin within a few feet of it, head proudly up. After long acquaintance and many attempts I took his photograph at five feet and finally was allowed to feel of his great horns! [Illustration: A WILD MOUNTAIN SHEEP _Copyright, 1913, by Enos A. Mills_] A few years ago near my cabin a ram lost his life in a barbed-wire fence. He and a number of other rams had fed, then climbed to the top of a small crag by the roadside. While they were there, a man on horseback came along. Indifferently they watched him approach; but when he stopped to take a picture all but one fled in alarm, easily leaping a shoulder-high fence. After a minute the remaining ram became excited, dashed off to follow the others, and ran into the fence. He was hurled backward and one of his curved horns hooked over a wire. Finding himself caught, he surged desperately to tear himself free. In doing this a barb severed the jugular vein. He fell and freed his horn from the wire in falling. Rising, he ran for the crag from which he had just fled, with his blood escaping in great gushes. As he was gaining the top of the crag he rolled over dead. A flock which is often divided into two, one of ewes and one of rams, lives on the summit of Battle Mountain, at an altitude of twelve thousand feet, about four miles from my cabin. I have sometimes followed them when they were rambling. About the middle of one September this flock united and moved off to the south. I made haste to climb to the top of Mt. Meeker so as to command most of their movements. I had been watching for several hours without even a glimpse of them. Rising to move away, I surprised them as they lay at rest near-by, a little below the summit; and I also surprised a lion that evidently was sneaking up on them. This was close to the altitude of fourteen thousand feet. The mountain lion is the game-hog of the heights and is a persistent and insidious foe of sheep. He kills both old and young, and usually makes a capture by sneaking up on his victim. Sometimes for hours he lies in wait by a sheep trail. The day following the surprise on Mt. Meeker, this flock appeared at timber-line about three miles to the southeast. Here some hunters fired on it. As it fled past me, I counted, and one of the twenty-eight was missing. The flock spent most of the next day about Chasm Lake, just under the northern crags of Meeker. Before night it was back at its old stamping-ground on Battle Mountain. Early the following morning the big ram led the way slowly to the west on the northern slope of Long's Peak, a little above timber-line. During the morning a grizzly came lumbering up the slope, and as I thought he would probably intercept the sheep, I awaited the next scene with intense interest. The bear showed no interest in the sheep, which, in turn, were not alarmed by his approach. Within a few yards of the flock he concluded to dig out a fat woodchuck. The sheep, full of curiosity, crowded near to watch this performance,--evidently too near to suit Mr. Grizzly, who presently caused a lively scattering with a _Woof!_ and a charge. The bear returned to his digging, and the sheep proceeded quietly on their way. The flock went down into Glacier Gorge, then out on the opposite side, climbing to the summit of the Continental Divide. The following day another flock united with it; and just at nightfall another, composed entirely of ewes and lambs, was seen approaching. At daylight the following morning the Battle Mountain flock was by itself and the other flocks nowhere in sight. During the day my flock traveled four or five miles to the north, then, doubling back, descended Flat-Top Mountain, and at sundown, after a day's trip of about twenty miles and a descent from twelve thousand feet to eight thousand, arrived at the Mary Lake salt lick in Estes Park. Before noon the following day this flock was on the Crags, about three miles south of the lake and at an altitude of eleven thousand feet. Near the Crags I saw a fight between one of the rams of this flock and one that ranged about the Crags. The start of this was a lively pushing contest, head to head. At each break there was a quick attempt to strike each other with their horns, which was followed by goat-like rearing and sparring. As they reared and struck, or struck while on their hind legs, the aim was to hit the other's nose with head or horn. Both flocks paused, and most of the sheep intently watched the contest. Suddenly the contestants broke away, and each rushed back a few yards, then wheeled with a fine cutting angle and came at the other full tilt. There was a smashing head-on collision, and each was thrown upward and almost back on his haunches by the force of the impact. Instantly they wheeled and came together in a flying butt. A number of times both walked back over the stretch over which they rushed together. It was a contest between battering rams on legs. Occasionally one was knocked to his knees or was flung headlong. The circular arena over which they fought was not more than twenty-five feet in diameter. In the final head-on butt the ram of the Crags was knocked end over end; then he arose and trotted away down the slope, while the victor, erect and motionless as a statue, stared after him. Both were covered with blood and dirt. During the day the flock returned to Battle Mountain. The following day this flock separated into two flocks, the youngsters and ewes in one and the old rams in the other. At mating-time, early in October, the flocks united, and the rams had it out among themselves. There were repeated fights; sometimes two contests were in progress at once. In the end a few rams were driven off without mates, while three or four rams each led off from one to five ewes. Over the greater part of their range the wild mountain sheep are threatened with extermination. They are shot for sport and for their flesh, and are relentlessly hunted for their horns. But the mountain sheep are a valuable asset to our country. They are picturesque and an interesting part of the scenery, an inspiration to every one who sees them. Says Mary Austin:-- "But the wild sheep from the battered rocks, Sure foot and fleet of limb, Gets up to see the stars go by Along the mountain rim." Fortunate is the locality that perpetuates its mountain sheep. These courageous climbers add much to the ancient mountains and snowy peaks; the arctic wild gardens and the crags would not be the same for us if these mountaineers were to vanish forever from the heights. The Forest Frontier The Forest Frontier Timber-line in the high mountains of the West wakes up the most indifferent visitor. The uppermost limit of tree-growth shows nature in strange, picturesque forms, and is so graphic and impressive that all classes of visitors pause to look in silent wonder. This is the forest frontier. It appears as old as the hills and as fixed and unchanging as they; but, like every frontier, that of the forest is aggressive, is ever struggling to advance. To-day this bold and definite line is the forest's Far North, its farthest reach up the heights; but this simply marks where the forest is, and not where it was or where it is striving to be. Here is the line of battle between the woods and the weather. The elements are insistent with "thus far and no farther," but the trees do not heed, and the relentless elements batter and defy them in a never-ending battle along the timber-line. From a commanding promontory the forest-edge appears like a great shore-line, as it sweeps away for miles along the steep and uneven sides of the mountains. For the most part it follows the contour line; here it goes far out round a peninsula-like headland, there it sweeps away to fold back into cove or cañon and form a forested bay. In Colorado and California this forest-line on the mountains is at an altitude of between eleven and twelve thousand feet. Downward from this line a heavy robe of dark forest drapes the mountains; above it the treeless heights rise cool and apparently barren, piled with old and eroded snowdrifts amid silent moorlands and rocky terraces. The trees of timber-line are stunted by cold, crushed by snow, and distorted by prolonged and terrific winds. Many stretches appear like growths of coarse bushes and uncouth vines. They maintain a perpetual battle, and, though crippled, bent, dwarfed, and deformed, they are stocky and strong old warriors, determined, no weaklings, no cowards. They are crowded together and tangled, presenting a united front. Few trees in this forest-front rise to a greater height than twelve feet. The average height is about eight feet, but the length of some of the prostrate ones is not far from the normal height. Wind and other hard conditions give a few trees the uncouth shapes of prehistoric animals. I measured a vine-like ichthyosaurus that was crawling to leeward, flat upon the earth. It was sixty-seven feet long, and close to the roots its body was thirty-eight inches in diameter. One cone-shaped spruce had a base diameter of four feet and came to a point a few inches less than four feet above the earth. Here and there a tough, tall tree manages to stand erect. The high wind either prevents growing or trims off all limbs that do not point to leeward. Some appear as though molded and pressed into shape. A profile of others, with long, streaming-bannered limbs, gives a hopeful view, for they present an unconquerable and conscious appearance, like tattered pennants or torn, triumphant battle-flags of the victorious forest! The forest is incessantly aggressive and eternally vigilant to hold its territory and to advance. Winds are its most terrible and effective foe. To them is due its weird and picturesque front. Occasionally they rage for days without cessation, blowing constantly from the same quarter and at times with the rending and crushing velocity of more than one hundred miles an hour. These terrific winds frequently flay the trees with cutting blasts of sand. At times the wind rolls down the steeps with the crushing, flattening force of a tidal wave. Many places have the appearance of having been gone over by a terrible harrow or an enormous roller. In some localities all the trees, except the few protected by rocky ledges or closely braced by their encircling fellows, are crippled or overthrown. [Illustration: THE WAY OF THE WIND AT TIMBER-LINE] Although I have visited timber-line in a number of States, most of my studies have been made on the eastern slope of the Continental Divide in Colorado. This ragged edge, with its ups and downs and curves, I have eagerly followed for hundreds of miles. Exploring this during every month of the year, I have had great days and nights along the timber-line. It was ever good to be with these trees in the clear air, up close to the wide and silent sky. Adventurers they appeared, strangely wrapped and enveloped in the shifting fog of low-drifting clouds. In the twilight they were always groups and forms of friendly figures, while by moonlight they were just a romantic camp of fraternal explorers. Many a camp-fire I have had in the alpine outskirts of the forest. I remember especially one night, when I camped alone where pioneer trees, rusty cliffs, a wild lake-shore, and a subdued, far-off waterfall furnished sights and sounds as wild as though man had not yet appeared on earth. This night, for a time, a cave man directed my imagination, and it ran riot in primeval fields. After indulging these prehistoric visions, I made a great camp-fire with a monumental pile of tree-trunks and limbs on the shore of the lake, close to the cliff. These slow-grown woods were full of pitch, and the fire was of such blazing proportions that it would have caused consternation anywhere in Europe. The leaping, eager flames threw wavering lights across the lake on the steeply rising heights beyond. These brought the alarm cry of a coyote, with many an answer and echo, and the mocking laughter of a fox. Even these wild voices in the primeval night were neither so strange nor so eloquent as the storm-made and resolute tree-forms that rose, peered, and vanished where my firelight fell and changed. At most timber-lines the high winds always blow from one direction. On the eastern slope of the Colorado divide they are westerly, down the mountain. Many of the trees possess a long vertical fringe of limbs to leeward, being limbless and barkless to stormward. Each might serve as an impressive symbolic statue of a windstorm. Permanently their limbs stream to leeward together, with fixed bends and distortions as though changed to metal in the height of a storm. Whenever a tree dies and remains standing, the sand-blasts speedily erode and carve its unevenly resistant wood into a totem pole which bears many strange embossed pictographs. In time these trees are entirely worn away by the violence of wind-blown ice-pellets and the gnawings of the sand-toothed gales. Novel effects are here and there seen in long hedges of wind-trimmed trees. These are aligned by the wind. They precisely parallel the wind-current and have grown to leeward from the shelter of a boulder or other wind-break. Apparently an adventurous tree makes a successful stand behind the boulder; then its seeds or those of other trees proceed to form a crowding line to the leeward in the shelter thus afforded. Some of these hedges are a few hundred feet in length; rarely are they more than a few feet high or wide. At the front the sand-blasts trim this hedge to the height and width of the wind-break. Though there may be in some a slight, gradual increase in height from the front toward the rear, the wind trims off adventurous twigs on the side-lines and keeps the width almost uniform throughout. During the wildest of winds I sometimes deliberately spent a day or a night in the most exposed places at timber-line, protected in an elkskin sleeping-bag. Wildly, grandly, the surging gusts boomed, ripped, roared, and exploded, as they struck or swept on. The experience was somewhat like lying in a diver's dress on a beach during a storm. At times I was struck almost breathless by an airy breaker, or tumbled and kicked indifferently about by the unbelievable violence of the wind. At other times I was dashed with sand and vigorously pelted with sticks and gravel. This was always at some distance from tree, boulder, or ledge, for I took no risks of being tossed against trees or rocks. Many times, however, I have lain securely anchored and shielded beneath matted tree-growths, where in safety I heard the tempestuous booms and the wildest of rocket-like swishes of the impassioned and invisible ocean of air. The general sound-effect was a prolonged roar, with an interplay of rippings and tumultuous cheerings. There were explosions and silences. There were hours of Niagara. In the midst of these distant roarings the fearful approach of an advancing gale could be heard before the unseen breaker rolled down on me from the heights. The most marked result of cold and snow is the extreme shortness of the growing-season which they allow the trees. Many inclined trees are broken off by snow, while others are prostrated. Though the trees are flattened upon the earth with a heavy load for months, the snow cover affords the trees much protection, from both the wracking violence of the winds and their devitalizing dryness. I know of a few instances of the winter snows piling so deeply that the covered trees were not uncovered by the warmth of the following summer. The trees suspended in this enforced hibernating sleep lost a summer's fun and failed to envelop themselves in the telltale ring of annual growth. Snow and wind combined produce acres of closely matted growth that nowhere rises more than three feet above the earth. This growth is kept well groomed by the gale-flung sand, which clips persistent twigs and keeps it closely trimmed into an enormous bristle brush. In places the surface of this will support a pedestrian, but commonly it is too weak for this; and, as John Muir says, in getting through, over, under, or across growths of this kind, one loses all of his temper and most of his clothing! Timber-line is largely determined by climatic limitations, by temperature and moisture. In the Rocky Mountains the dry winds are more deadly, and therefore more determining, than the high winds. During droughty winters these dry winds absorb the vital juices of hundreds of timber-line trees, whose withered standing skeletons frequently testify to the widespread depredations of this dry blight. A permanent advance, too, is made from time to time. Here and there is a grove, a permanent settlement ahead of and above the main ranks. In advance of these are a few lone trees, heroes scouting in the lead. In moist, sheltered places are seedlings and promising young trees growing up in front of the battle-scarred old guard. Advances on dry, wind-swept ridges are more difficult and much less frequent; on a few dry ridges these trees have met with a repulse and in some places have lost a little territory, but along most of its front the timber-line is slowly advancing into the heights. With this environment it would be natural for these trees to evolve more hardiness than the present trees have. This would mean trees better fitted to contend with, and more likely to triumph over, the harsh conditions. Evolutionary development is the triumphing factor at the timber-line. The highest timber-line in the world is probably on Mount Orizaba, Mexico. Frank M. Chapman says that there are short-leaved pines (_Pinus Montezumæ_) from thirty to forty feet high, on the southern exposure of this peak at an altitude of about 13,800 feet. In Switzerland, along the steep and snowy Alps, it is sixty-four hundred; on Mt. Washington, about forty-five hundred feet. In the mountains of Colorado and California it is of approximately equal altitude, between eleven and twelve thousand feet. Advancing northward from California along the timber-line, one enters regions of heavy snow-fall as well as of restricting latitude. Combined, these speedily lower the altitude of timber-line, until on Mt. Rainier it is below eight thousand feet. There is a noticeable dwarfing of the forest as one approaches the Land of the Midnight Sun, and in its more northerly reaches it comes down to sea-level to form the Land of Little Sticks. It frays out at its Farthest North just within the Arctic Circle. Most of the Arctic Ocean's icy waves break on treeless shores. Everywhere at timber-line the temperature is low, and on Long's Peak the daily average is two degrees below the freezing-point. At timber-line snow may fall any day of the year, and wintry conditions annually prevail from nine to ten months. The hardy trees which maintain this line have adjusted themselves to the extremely short growing-season, and now and then mature and scatter fertile seeds. The trees that do heroic service on all latitudinal and altitudinal timber-lines of the earth are members of the pine, spruce, fir, birch, willow, and aspen families. At timber-line on the Rocky Mountains there are three members each from the deciduous trees and the evergreens. These are the Engelmann spruce, limber pine, alpine fir, arctic willow, black birch, and quaking aspen. A few timber-line trees live a thousand years, but half this time is a ripe old age for most timber-line veterans. The age of these trees cannot be judged by their size, nor by general appearance. There may be centuries of difference in the ages of two arm-in-arm trees of similar size. I examined two trees that were growing within a few yards of each other in the shelter of a crag. One was fourteen feet high and sixteen inches in diameter, and had three hundred and thirty-seven annual rings. The other was seven feet high and five inches in diameter, and had lived four hundred and ninety-two years! One autumn a grizzly I was following--to learn his bill-of-fare--tore up a number of dwarfed trees at timber-line while digging out a woodchuck and some chipmunks. A number of the smaller trees I carried home for careful examination. One of these was a black birch with a trunk nine-tenths of an inch in diameter, a height of fifteen inches, and a limb-spread of twenty-two. It had thirty-four annual rings. Another was truly a veteran pine, though his trunk was but six-tenths of an inch in diameter, his height twenty-three inches, and his limb-spread thirty-one. His age was sixty-seven years. A midget that I carried home in my vest pocket was two inches high, had a limb-spread of about four inches, and was twenty-eight years of age. A limber pine I examined was full of annual rings and experiences. A number of its rings were less than one hundredth of an inch in thickness. At the height of four feet its trunk took on an acute angle and extended nine feet to leeward, then rose vertically for three feet. Its top and limbs merged into a tangled mass about one foot thick, which spread out eight feet horizontally. It was four hundred and nine years old. It grew rapidly during its first thirty-eight years; then followed eighteen years during which it almost ceased growing; after this it grew evenly though slowly. One day by the sunny and sheltered side of a boulder I found a tiny seed-bearer at an altitude of eleven thousand eight hundred feet. How splendidly unconscious it was of its size and its utterly wild surroundings! This brave pine bore a dainty cone, yet a drinking-glass would have completely housed both the tree and its fruit. Many kinds of life are found at timber-line. One April I put on snowshoes and went up to watch the trees emerge from their months-old covering of snow. While standing upon a matted, snow-covered thicket, I saw a swelling of the snow produced by something moving beneath. "Plainly this is not a tree pulling itself free!" I thought, and stood still in astonishment. A moment later a bear burst up through the snow within a few yards of me and paused, blinking in the glare of light. No plan for immediate action occurred to me; so I froze. Presently the bear scented me and turned back for a look. After winking a few times as though half blinded, he galloped off easily across the compacted snow. The black bear and the grizzly occasionally hibernate beneath these low, matted tree-growths. The mountain lion may prowl here during any month. Deer frequent the region in summer. Mountain sheep often take refuge beneath the clustered growths during the autumn storms. Of course the audacious pine squirrel comes to claim the very forest-edge and from a point of safety to scold all trespassers; and here, too, lives the cheery chipmunk. This is the nursery, or summer residence, of many kinds of birds. The "camp-bird," the Rocky Mountain jay, is a resident. Here in spring the white-crowned sparrow sings and sings. During early summer the solitaire, the most eloquent songster I have ever heard, comes up from his nest just down the slope to pay a tribute of divine melody to the listening, time-worn trees. In autumn the Clarke crow appears and, with wild and half-weird calls of merriment, devours the fat nuts in the cones of the limber pine. During this nutting, magpies are present with less business than at any other time and apparently without a plan for deviltry. Possibly they are attracted and entertained by the boisterousness of the crows. [Illustration: A TIMBER-LINE LAKE IN NORTHWESTERN COLORADO] Lovely wild-flower gardens occupy many of the openings in this torn and bristling edge of the forest. In places acres are crowded so closely with thrifty, brilliant bloom that one hesitates to walk through and trample the flowers. Here the columbine, the paintbrush, the monument-plant, and scores of other bright blossoms cheer the wild frontier. Rarely are strangers in the mountains thoroughly aroused. They need time or explanation in order to comprehend or appreciate the larger scenes, though they do, of course, have periodic outbursts in adjectives. But at timber-line the monumental scene at once has the attention, and no explanation is needed. Timber-line tells its own stirring story of frontier experience by a forest of powerful and eloquent tree statues and bold, battered, and far-extending figures in relief. Only a few of the many young people whom I have guided to timber-line have failed to feel the significance of the scene, but upon one party fresh from college the eloquent pioneer spirit of the place made no impression, and they talked glibly and cynically of these faithful trees with such expressions as "A Doré garden!" "Ill-shapen fiends!" "How foolish to live here!" and "Criminal classes!" More appreciative was the little eight-year-old girl whose ascent of Long's Peak I have told of in "Wild Life on the Rockies." She paid the trees at timber-line as simple and as worthy a tribute as I have ever heard them receive: "What brave little trees to stay up here where they have to stand all the time with their feet in the snow!" The powerful impressions received at timber-line lead many visitors to return for a better acquaintance, and from each visit the visitor goes away more deeply impressed: for timber-line is not only novel and strange, it is touched with pathos and poetry and has a life-story that is heroic. Its scenes are among the most primeval, interesting, and thought-compelling to be found upon the globe. The Chinook Wind The Chinook Wind Cold and snow took possession of the ranges on one occasion while I was making a stay in the winter quarters of a Montana cattle company. There was a quiet, heavy snow, a blizzard, and at last a sleet storm. At first the cattle collected with drooping heads and waited for the storm to end, but long before the sky cleared, they milled and trampled confusedly about. With the clearing sky came still and extreme cold. Stock water changed to ice, and the short, crisp grass of the plains was hopelessly cemented over with ice and snow. The suffering of the cattle was beyond description. For a time they wandered about, apparently without an aim. There were thousands of other herds in this appalling condition. At last, widely scattered, they stood humped up, awaiting death. But one morning the foreman burst in excitedly with the news, "The Chinook is coming!" Out in the snow the herds were aroused, and each "critter" was looking westward as though good news had been scented afar. Across the mountain-tops toward which the stock were looking, great wind-blown clouds were flying toward the plains. In less than an hour the rescuing Chinook rushed upon the scene. The temperature rose forty degrees in less than half as many minutes; then it steadied and rose more slowly. The warm, dry wind quickly increased to a gale. By noon both the sleet and the snow were gone, and thousands of cattle were eagerly feeding in the brown and curly grass of the wide, bleached plain. This experience enabled me to understand the "Waiting for a Chinook" picture of the "Cowboy Artist." This picture was originally intended to be the spring report, after a stormy Montana winter, to the eastern stockholders of a big cattle company. It showed a spotted solitary cow standing humped in a snowy plain. One horn is broken and her tail is frozen off. Near are three hungry coyotes in different waiting attitudes. The picture bore the legend "The Last of Five Thousand, Waiting for a Chinook." It is "Presto! Change!" when the warm Chinook wind appears. Wintry landscapes vanish in the balmy, spring-like breath of this strange, hospitable, though inconstant Gulf Stream of the air. This wind is extra dry and warm; occasionally it is almost hot. Many times in Montana I have experienced the forcing, transforming effectiveness of this hale, eccentric wind. The completion of the big copper refinery at Great Falls was celebrated with a banquet. One of the larger rooms in the new building was used for the banquet-hall. Out to this, a mile or so from the city, the banqueters were taken in a sleigh. That evening the roads were snow-and-ice-covered, and the temperature was several degrees below zero. A Chinook wind arrived while the banquet was in session, and although the feast was drawn out no longer than usual, the banqueters, on adjourning, found the snow and ice entirely gone, the earth dry, and the air as balmy as though just off an Arizona desert in June. The Chinook blows occasionally over the Northwest during the five colder months of the year. Though of brief duration, these winds are very efficacious in softening the asperities of winter with their moderating warmth, and they are of great assistance to the stock and other interests. Apparently the Chinook starts from the Pacific, in the extreme Northwest, warm and heavily moisture-laden. Sweeping eastward, it is chilled in crossing the mountains, on which it speedily releases its moisture in heavy snowfalls. Warmed through releasing moisture, it is still further warmed through compression while descending the Cascades, and it goes forward extremely feverish and thirsty. It now feels like a hot desert wind, and, like air off the desert's dusty face, it is insatiably dry and absorbs moisture with astounding rapidity. It may come from the west, the southwest, or the northwest. Its eastward sweep sometimes carries it into Wisconsin, Iowa, and Kansas, but it most frequently floods and favors the Canadian plains, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado. It may come gently and remain as a moderate breeze or it may appear violently and blow a gale. Its duration is from a few hours to several days. There are numerous instances on record of a Chinook greatly raising the temperature, removing several inches of snow, and drying the earth in an unbelievably short time. An extreme case of this kind took place in northern Montana in December, 1896. Thirty inches of snow lay over everything; and the quicksilver-tip in thermometers was many lines below zero. In this polar scene the Chinook appeared. Twelve hours later the snow had entirely vanished! The Blackfoot Indians have a graphic term for this wind,--"the snow-eater." In most respects this wind is climatically beneficial. A thorough warming and drying a few times each winter renders many localities comfortably habitable that otherwise scarcely would be usable. The occasional removal of snow-excesses has its advantages to all users of roads, both wagon and rail, as well as being helpful to stock interests. There are times when this wind leaves the plains too dry, but far more frequently it prevents terrible floods by reducing the heavy snow covering over the sources of the Columbia and the Missouri before the swift spring thaw appears. The Chinook is not likely to create floods through the rapidity of its action, for it changes snow and water to vapor and carries this away through the air. The Chinook is nothing if not eccentric. Sometimes it warms the mountain-tops and ignores the cold lowlands. Often in snowy time it assists the railroad men to clear the tracks on the summit before it goes down the slope a few miles to warm the muffled and discouraged snow-shovelers in the valley. Now and then a wind tempers the clime for a sheepman, while in an adjoining valley only a few miles away the stockman and his herd wait in vain for the Chinook. The Chinook may appear at any hour of the day or night. Occasionally with a rush it chases winter. Frequently and fortunately it follows a blizzard. Often it dramatically saves the suffering herds, both wild and tame, and at the eleventh hour it brings the balm of the southland to the waiting, starving birds. The Chinook wind is a Westerner. Similar though less far-reaching winds blow in the mountains of Europe and Asia. In the West, and especially the Northwest, it has a happy and important place, and the climate of this region cannot be comprehended without understanding the influence of the Chinook wind. Associating with Snow-Slides Associating with Snow-Slides Every snow-fall caused a snow-slide to rush down Bobtail Gulch. This run-off of snow was as regular as the run-off of storm-water. The snow which accumulated at the head of this gulch was a danger to the trail below, and if the snow showed the slightest hesitation to "run" when the storm had ended, a miner from a neighboring mine started it by rolling a few stones into it or by exploding a stick of dynamite near by. During my stay at a miners' boarding-house in the San Juan Mountains a heavy snow-fall came to a close. "Has the Greagory run yet?" inquired the foreman of one of the miners. "No." "Better start it, then." Ten minutes later fifty thousand tons of snow went plunging down Greagory Gulch. "This cabin will never be caught by a snow-slide!" said the prospector with whom I was having supper. "A slide hit my cabin in the Sawtooth Mountains. No more sleeping for me in the possible right-of-way of a slide! I sized up the territory before building this cabin and I've put it out of the range of slides." All this was encouraging, as I was to spend the night in the cabin and had arrived after the surrounding mountains were hidden in darkness. A record-breaking snow of eight days and nights had just ended a few hours before. During the afternoon, as I came down from Alpine Pass on snowshoes, the visible peaks and slopes loomed white and were threateningly overladen with snow. Avalanches would run riot during the next few hours, and the sliding might begin at any minute. Gorges and old slide-ways would hold most of these in the beaten slide-tracks, but there was the possibility of an overladen mountain sending off a shooting star of a slide which might raise havoc by smashing open a new orbit. The large spruces around the cabin showed that if ever a slide had swept this site it was longer ago than a century. As no steep slope came down upon the few acres of flat surrounding the cabin, we appeared to be in a slide-proof situation. However, to the north was a high snow-piled peak that did not look assuring, even though between it and the cabin was a gorge and near by a rocky ridge. Somewhat acquainted with the ways of slides, I lay awake in the cabin, waiting to hear the muffled thunder-storm of sound which would proclaim that slides were "running." Snow-slides may be said to have habits. Like water, they are governed by gravity. Both in gulches and on mountain-sides, they start most readily on steep and comparatively smooth slopes. If a snow-drift is upon a thirty-degree incline, it may almost be pushed into sliding with a feather. A slope more steeply inclined than thirty degrees does not offer a snow-drift any visible means of support. Unless this slope be broken or rough, a snow-drift may slide off at any moment. In the course of a winter, as many as half a dozen slides may start from the same place and each shoot down through the same gorge or over the same slope as its predecessor. Only so much snow can cling to a slope; therefore the number of slides during each winter is determined by the quantity of snow and the character of the slope. As soon as snow is piled beyond the holding-limit, away starts the slide. A slide may have slipped from this spot only a few days before, and here another may slip away a few days later; or a year may elapse before another runs. Thus local topography and local weather conditions determine local slide habits,--when a slide will start and the course over which it will run. The prospector was snoring before the first far-off thunder was heard. Things were moving. Seashore storm sounds could be heard in the background of heavy rumbling. This thunder swelled louder until there was a heavy rumble everywhere. Then came an earthquake jar, closely followed by a violently explosive crash. A slide was upon us! A few seconds later tons of snow fell about us, crushing the trees and wrecking the cabin. Though we escaped without a scratch, a heavy spruce pole, a harpoon flung by the slide, struck the cabin at an angle, piercing the roof and one of the walls. The prospector was not frightened, but he was mad! Outwitted by a snow-slide! That we were alive was no consolation to him. "Where on earth did the thing come from?" he kept repeating until daylight. Next morning we saw that to the depth of several feet about the cabin and on top of it were snow-masses, mixed with rock-fragments, broken tree-trunks, and huge wood-splinters,--the fragment remains of a snow-slide. This slide had started from a high peak-top a mile to the north of the cabin. For three quarters of a mile it had coasted down a slope at the bottom of which a gorge curved away toward the west; but so vast was the quantity of snow that this slide filled and blocked the gorge with less than half of its mass. Over the snowy bridge thus formed, the momentum carried the remainder straight across the gulch. Landing, it swept up a steep slope for three hundred feet and rammed the rocky ridge back of the cabin. The greater part came to a stop and lay scattered about the ridge. Not one tenth of the original bulk went over and up to wreck the cabin! The prospector stood on this ridge, surveying the scene and thinking, when I last looked back. Heavy slides sometimes rush so swiftly down steep slopes that their momentum carries their entire mass destructively several hundred feet up the slope of the mountain opposite. Desiring fuller knowledge of the birth and behavior of avalanches, or snow-slides, I invaded the slide zone on snowshoes at the close of a winter which had the "deepest snow-fall on record." Several days were spent watching the snow-slide action in the San Juan Mountains. It was a wild, adventurous, dramatic experience, which closed with an avalanche that took me from the heights on a thrilling, spectacular coast down a steep mountain-side. [Illustration: LIZARD HEAD PEAK IN THE SAN JUAN MOUNTAINS] A thick, snowy, marble stratum overlay the slopes and summits. Appearing on the scene at the time when, on the steeps, spring was melting the icy cement that held winter's wind-piled snows, I saw many a snowy hill and embankment released. Some of these, as slides, made meteoric plunges from summit crags to gentler places far below. A snow-storm prevailed during my first night in the slide region, and this made a deposit of five or six inches of new snow on top of the old. On the steeper places this promptly slipped off in dry, small slides, but most of it was still in place when I started to climb higher. While I was tacking up a comparatively smooth slope, one of my snowshoes slipped, and, in scraping across the old, crusted snow, started a sheaf of the fluffy new snow to slipping. Hesitatingly at first, the new snow skinned off. Suddenly the fresh snow to right and left concluded to go along, and the full width of the slope below my level was moving and creaking; slowly the whole slid into swifter movement and the mass deepened with the advance. Now and then parts of the sliding snow slid forward over the slower-moving, crumpling, friction-resisted front and bottom. With advance it grew steadily deeper from constantly acquired material and from the influence of converging water-channels which it followed. A quarter of a mile from its birthplace it was about fifty feet deep and twice as wide, with a length of three hundred feet. Composed of new snow and coasting as swiftly as a gale, it trailed a white streamer of snow-dust behind. A steeper or a rougher channel added to the volume of snow-dust or increased the agitation of the pace-keeping pennant. The morning was clear, and, by watching the wigwagging snow flag, I followed easily the fortunes of the slide to the bottom of the slope. After a swift mile of shooting and plunging, the slide, greatly compressed, sprawled and spread out over a level glacier meadow, where its last remnant lingered for the warmth of July. Dismissing this slide, I watched along the range to the north and south, and from time to time saw the white scudding plumes of other slides, which, hidden in the cañons, were merrily coasting down from the steep-sloping crest. These slides, unless they had run down an animal, did no damage. They were composed of freshly fallen snow and in their flight had moved in old channels that had been followed and perhaps formed by hundreds of slides in years gone by. Slides of this kind--those which accompany or follow each storm and which promptly make away with new-fallen snow by carrying it down through stream-channels--may be called Storm, or Flood, slides. These usually are formed in smooth gulches or on steep slopes. The other kinds of slides may be called the Annual and the Century. In places of rough surface or moderate slope there must be a large accumulation of snow before a slide will start. Weeks or even months may pass before storm and wind assemble sufficient snow for a slide. Places of this kind commonly furnish but one slide a year, and this one in the springtime. At last the snow-drifts reach their maximum; warmth assists starting by melting snow-cornices that have held on through the winter; these drop, and by dropping often start things going. Crags wedged off by winter ice are also released in spring; and these, in going recklessly down, often knock hesitating snow-drifts into action. A fitting name for those slides that regularly run at the close of winter would be Spring, or Annual. These are composed of the winter's local accumulation of snow and slide rock, and carry a much heavier percentage of rock-débris than the Storm slide carries. They transport from the starting-place much of the annual crumbling and the weatherings of air and water, along with the tribute pried off by winter's ice levers; with this material from the heights also goes the year's channel accumulation of débris. The Annual slide does man but little damage and, like the Flood slide, it follows the gulches and the water-courses. In snowy zones the avalanche is commonly called a snow-slide, or simply a slide. A slide, with its comet tail of powdered snow, makes an intense impression on all who see one. It appears out of order with the scheme of things; but, as a matter of fact, it is one of gravity's working ways, a demonstration of the laws of sliding bodies. A smooth, steep slope which receives a heavy fall of snow will promptly produce or throw off a sliding mass of snow. Raise, lower, or roughen this slope, increase or decrease the annual snow-fall, or change the direction of the wind,--and thus the position of snow-drifts,--and there will follow corresponding slide-action. Wind and calm, gravity, friction, adhesion, cohesion, geology, temperature and precipitation, all have a part and place in snow-piling and in slide-starting. The Century slides are the damaging ones. These occur not only at unexpected times but in unexpected places. The Century slide is the deadly one. It usually comes down a course not before traversed by a slide, and sometimes crashes through a forest or a village. It may be produced by a record-breaking snow or by snow-drifts formed in new places by winds from an unusual quarter; but commonly the mass is of material slowly accumulated. This may contain the remnant snows and the wreckage spoils of a hundred years or more. Ten thousand snows have added to its slowly growing pile; tons of rock-dust have been swept into it by the winds; gravel has been deposited in it by water; and gravity has conducted to it the crumbling rocks from above. At last--largely ice--it breaks away. In rushing down, it gathers material from its predestined way. In the spring of 1901, one of these slides broke loose and came down the slope of Gray's Peak. For years the snow had accumulated on a ridge above timber-line. The mass shot down a steep slope, struck the woods, and swept to the bottom about four thousand feet below, mowing down every tree in a pathway about three hundred feet wide. About one hundred thousand trees were piled in wild, broken wreckage in the gorge below. Although a snow-slide is almost irresistible, it is not difficult, in many localities, to prevent slides by anchoring the small snow-drift which would slip and start the slide. In the West, a number of slides have been suppressed by setting a few posts in the upper reaches of slopes and gulches. These posts pinned fast the snow that would slip. The remainder held its own. The Swiss, too, have eliminated many Alpine slides by planting hardy shrubbery in the slippery snowy areas. This anchorage gives the snow a hold until it can compact and freeze fast. Shrubbery thus is preventing the white avalanche! A slide once took me with it. I was near the bottom of one snowy arm of a V gulch, waiting to watch Gravity, the world-leveler, take his next fragment of filling to the lowlands. Separating these arms was a low, tongue-like rock-ledge. A gigantic snow-cornice and a great snow-field filled, with full-heaped and rounded measure, the uppermost parts of the other arm. Deep rumblings through the earth, echoings from crags and cañons through the communicative air, suddenly heralded the triumphant starting of an enormous slide. About three hundred feet up the heights, a broken end-on embankment of rocks and snow, it came coasting, dusting into view, plunging towards me. As a rock-ledge separated the two ravines above the junction, I felt secure, and I did not realize until too late that I was to coast down on the slide. Head-on, it rumbled heavily toward me with its mixed and crumbling front, making a most impressive riot of moving matter. Again and again the snowy monster smashed its shoulder into the impregnable farther wall. At last, one hundred feet high and twice as wide, came its impinging, crumbling front. At times the bottom caught and rolled under, leaving the overhanging front to cave and tumble forward with snowy splashes. This crumbling front was not all snow; occasionally an iceberg or a cargo of stones fell forward. With snow flying from it as from a gale-swept, snow-piled summit, this monster of half a million tons roared and thundered by in a sound-burst and reverberation of incomparable depth and resonance, to plunge into a deeper, steeper rock-walled gorge. It probably was moving thirty-five or forty miles an hour and was gaining in velocity every second. The noise of its passing suppressed the sounds of the slide that started in the gulch above me. Before I could realize it, this slide swept down, and the snow on which I was standing burst up with me into the air, struck and leaped the low ledge, rammed the rear end of the passing slide, and landed me, snowshoes down, on top of it. The top was unstable and dangerous; it lurched, burst up, curled under, yawned, and gave off hissing jets of snow powder; these and the plunging movements kept me desperately active, even with my broad snowshoes, to avoid being swallowed up, or overturned and smothered, or crushed in the chaotic, fissuring mass. As its speed increased, I now and then caught a glimpse, through flying, pelting snow-particles, of shooting rocks which burst explosively through the top. At timber-line the gorge walls abruptly ended and the channel curved swiftly to the left in a broad, shallow ravine. The momentum of this monster carried it out of the ravine and straight ahead over a rough, forested ridge. Trees before it were crushed down, and those alongside were thrown into a wild state of excitement by the violence of swiftly created and entangling gale-currents. From the maelstrom on the top I looked down upon the panic through the snow-dust-filled air and saw trees flinging their arms wildly about, bowing and posturing to the snow. Occasionally a treetop was snapped off, and these broken tops swirled wildly about, hurried forward or backward, or were floated upward on rotating, slower currents. The sides of the slide crumbled and expanded; so it became lower, flatter, and wider, as it slid forward on a moderate up grade. A half-mile after leaving the gorge, the slide collided at right angles with a high moraine. The stop telescoped the slide, and the shock exploded the rear third and flung it far to right and left, scattering it over a wide area. Half a minute later I clawed out of the snow-pile, almost suffocated, but unhurt. Toward the close of my last winter as government "Snow Observer" I made a snowshoe trip along the upper slopes of the Continental Divide and scaled a number of peaks in the Rocky Mountains of central Colorado. During this trip I saw a large and impressive snow-slide at a thrillingly close range. It broke loose and "ran"--more correctly, plunged--by me down a frightful slope. Everything before it was overwhelmed and swept down. At the bottom of the slope it leaped in fierce confusion from the top of a precipice down into a cañon. For years this snowy mass had accumulated upon the heights. It was one of the "eternal snows" that showed in summer to people far below and far away. A century of winters had contributed snows to its pile. A white hill it was in the upper slope of a gulch, where it clung, pierced and anchored by granite pinnacles. Its icy base, like poured molten lead, had covered and filled all the inequalities of the foundation upon which it rested. Time and its tools, together with its own height and weight, at last combined to release it to the clutch and eternal pull of gravity. The expanding, shearing, breaking force of forming ice, the constant cutting of emery-edged running water, and the undermining thaw of spring sent thundering downward with ten thousand varying echoes a half-million tons of snow, ice, and stones. Head-on the vast mass came exploding toward me. Wildly it threw off masses of snowy spray and agitated, confused whirlwinds of snow-dust. I was watching from the top of a precipice. Below, the wide, deep cañon was filled with fleecy clouds,--a bay from a sea of clouds beyond. The slide shot straight for the cloud-filled abyss and took with it several hundred broken trees from an alpine grove that it wrecked just above the precipice. This swift-moving monster disturbed the air, and excited, stampeding, and cyclonic winds flung me headlong, as it tore by with rush and roar. I arose in time to see the entire wreckage deflected a few degrees upward as it shot far out over the cloud-made bay of the ocean. A rioting acre of rock-fragments, broken trees, shattered icebergs, and masses of dusting snow hesitated momentarily in the air, then, separating, they fell whirling, hurtling, and scattering, with varying velocities,--rocks, splintered trees, and snow,--in silent flight to plunge into the white bay beneath. No sound was given forth as they fell into, and disappeared beneath, the agitated sea of clouds. How strange this noiseless fall was! A few seconds later, as the wreckage reached the bottom, there came from beneath the silent surface the muffled sounds of crash and conflict. Wild Folk of the Mountain-Summits Wild Folk of the Mountain-Summits The higher mountain-ranges rise far above the zone of life and have summits that are deeply overladen with ancient snow and ice, but the upper slopes and summits of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and the Sierra of California are not barren and lifeless, even though they stand far above the timber-line. There is no other mountain-range on the earth that I know of that can show such a varied and vigorous array of life above the tree-line as do these ranges. In the Alps the upper slopes and summits stand in eternal desolation, without life even in summertime. The icy stratum that overlies the summit Alps is centuries old, and is perpetual down to nine thousand feet. Timber-line there is only sixty-four hundred feet above sea-level. How different the climatic conditions in the Rocky Mountains and in the Sierra, where timber-line is at approximately eleven thousand five hundred feet, or a vertical mile higher than it is in the Alps! Even the high peaks of this region have touches of plant-life and are visited by birds and beasts. The list of living things which I have seen on the summit of Long's Peak (14,255 feet above sea-level) includes the inevitable and many-tinted lichens, spike-grass, dainty blue polemonium, and clumps of crimson purple primroses, all exquisitely beautiful. There are straggling bumblebees, grasshoppers, and at least two kinds of prettily robed butterflies. Among the mammals visiting the summit I have seen a mountain lion, a bob-cat, a rabbit, and a silver fox, though only one of each. The bird callers embrace flocks of rosy finches, ptarmigan, and American pipits, and numbers of white-crowned sparrows and juncos, together with a scattering of robins, bluebirds, golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, and hummingbirds! The summit life zone in the Rocky Mountains not only sweeps up to exceptionally high altitudes, but it embraces vast territory. In Colorado alone the Arctic-Alpine territory above the tree-line probably extends over five million or more acres. Thrust high in this summit area are the tops of more than three hundred peaks. Many of these tower three thousand feet above the timber-line. Much of this region is made up of steep slopes, shattered summits, and precipitous walls, many of which bound cañons. There is a scattering of lakes, gentle slopes, stretches of rolling moorlands, and bits of wet meadow or arctic tundra. In this high and far-extending mountain land one may travel day after day always above the uppermost reaches of the forest. In this strange treeless realm there is a largeness of view. Up close to the clouds and the sky, the big world far below, the scene stretches away in boundless, magnificent distances. The snow-fall of this region varies with locality, and ranges from a few feet up to fifty feet annually. In most localities this snow is rapidly evaporated by the exceedingly dry air of the heights. The remnants of each year's fall commonly rest upon the accumulations of preceding years, but during midsummer not one tenth of the heights is snow-covered. Vast areas are occupied by craggy peaks and barren rock-fields. The barrenness is due almost entirely to a lack of soil, not to altitude nor to the rigors of the climate. The climate is in many respects similar to that which wraps the Arctic Circle near sea-level, and it allows many forms of vigorous life. Numerous moraines, terraces, steppes, and moorlands--the wide sky plains--have their soil, and this in the warmth of summer generously produces green grass and brilliant flowers. These, together with big game, birds, and circling butterflies, people this zone with life and turn the towering and terraced heights into the rarest of hanging wild gardens. In favored places for a mile or so above timber-line are scattered acres of heathy growths. Stunted by cold, clipped off by the wind, and heavily pressed by the snow, these growths are thickly tangled, bristly, and rarely more than a few inches in height. Among these are wintergreen, bunchberry, huckleberry, kalmia, currant, black birch, and arctic willow. There are miles of moorlands covered with short, thin grasses, while deeply soil-covered terraces, cozy slopes, and wet meadows have plushy grass carpets several inches thick. These growths form the basic food-supply of both the insects and the warm-blooded life of the heights. [Illustration: ALPINE PASTURES ABOVE TIMBER-LINE Near Specimen Mountain in the Rocky Mountain National Park] These alpine pastures are the home of many mountain sheep. Between Long's Peak and Mt. Meeker there is a shattered shoulder of granite that is fourteen thousand feet above sea-level and at all times partly covered with an ancient snow-field, the remains of a former glacier. During earlier years I occasionally used the sky-line by this snow-field for a view-point and a lingering-place. One day after a long outlook, I emerged from between two blocks of granite and surprised a flock of mountain sheep near by. A majority of them were lying comfortably among the stones. One was nosing about, another was scratching his side with his hind hoof, while the patriarchal ram was poised on a huge block of granite. He, too, was looking down upon the world, but he was also scouting for enemies. Upon my appearance, the flock broke away at good speed but in excellent order, the old ram leading the way. In scrambling up for a farewell view, I disturbed a mountain lion. He bounded among the scattered wreckage of granite and vanished. Here was big game and its well-fed pursuer, in the mountain heights, above the limits of tree growth and almost three miles above the surface of the sea. Many flocks live at an altitude of twelve thousand feet. Here the lambs are born, and from this place they all make spring foraging excursions far down the slopes into a warmer zone for green stuffs not yet in season on the heights. Their warm covering of soft hair protects them from the coldest blasts. Winter quarters appear to be chosen in localities from which winds regularly sweep the snow. This sweeping prevents the snow from burying food beyond reach, and lessens the danger of these short-legged mountaineers becoming snowbound. They commonly endure wind-storms by crowding closely against the lee side of a ledge. Now and then they are so deeply drifted over with snow that many of the weaker ones perish, unable to wallow out. The snow-slide, the white terror of the heights, occasionally carries off an entire flock of these bold, vigilant sheep. The mountain lion is a prowler, a cowardly, rapacious slaughterer, and may visit the heights at any time. Though apparently irregular in his visits, he seems to keep track of the seasons and to know the date for spring lamb, and he is likely to appear while the sheep are weak or snowbound. He is a wanton killer and is ever vigilant to slay. He lurks and lies in wait and preys upon all the birds and beasts except the bear. This treeless realm is roamed by both the grizzly and the black bear; both pay most visits during the autumn, and the grizzly occasionally hibernates in these uplands. In summer they range the forests far below, but with the coming of autumn they climb the slopes to dig out fat woodchucks and to get the last of the season's berries, with which to put on final fat for hibernating. They overturn stones for mice and lick up the accumulations of chilled insects which they find along the snow and ice fields. Myriads of flies, moths, grasshoppers, and other insects often accumulate along or on the edge of snow or ice fields in the heights, attracted, apparently, by the brilliant whiteness of the ice or the snow. The cold closely surrounding air zone appears to benumb or paralyze them, and they drop in great numbers near the margin. Occasionally swarms of insects are carried by storms up the heights and dropped upon the snow or ice fields which lie in the eddying-places of the wind. One autumn I accompanied a gentleman to the Hallett Glacier. On arriving, we explored a crevasse and examined the bergschrund at the top. When we emerged from the bergschrund, the new snow on the glacier was so softened in the sunshine that we decided to have the fun of coasting down the steep face to the bottom of the slope. Just as we slid away, I espied a bear at the bottom, toward which we were speeding. He was so busily engaged in licking up insects that he had not noticed us. Naturally the gentleman with me was frightened, but it was impossible to stop on the steep, steel-like, and snow-lubricated slope. Knowing something of bear nature, the situation, though most interesting, did not appear serious to me. Meantime, the bear heard us and made lively and awkward efforts to be gone. He fled at a racing gallop, and gave us an excellent side view of his clumsy, far-outreaching lively hind legs going it flatfooted. Deer are among the summer visitors in the cool uplands, climbing a thousand feet or more above the uppermost trees. With the first autumn snow they start to descend, and they commonly winter from three to six thousand feet below their summer range. There are a few woodchuck colonies as high as twelve thousand feet. The woodchuck, in the spring, despite short legs and heavy body, gives way to _wanderlust_, and as a change from hibernation wanders afar and occasionally climbs a mountain-peak. Sometimes, too, a mountain lion prevents his return. The silver fox is a permanent resident of these heights and ranges widely over them. He catches woodchucks and ptarmigan and feasts on big game that has met with accident or that has been left to waste by that wild game-hog, the mountain lion. In summer, and occasionally in winter, both the coyote and the wolf come into the fox's territory. In slide rock and in bouldery moraines up as high as thirteen thousand feet, one finds the pika, or cony. Almost nothing is known of his domestic life. Apparently he does not hibernate, for on sunny days he may be seen the year round. Like the beaver he each autumn lays up supplies for winter. Hay is his harvest. This hay is frequently placed in conical piles in the shelter of shelving rocks. These piles are sometimes two feet in diameter. His haymaking is done with much hurry. After quickly biting off a number of plants or grasses, he commonly seizes these by their ends and simply scampers for the harvest pile. Quickly thrusting them in, he hurries away for more. His ways are decidedly in contrast to the beaver's deliberate movements. When he is sunning himself, one may, by moving slowly, approach within a few feet. He has a squeaky whistle and a birdlike call, each of which it is difficult to describe. He is a tailless little fellow, and has round ratlike ears; is dark gray above and whitish beneath. In appearance he reminds one of a small guinea-pig, or a young rabbit. Up in this region, the most skyward of life zones, nature, as everywhere, is red in tooth and claw. There are strength and cunning, victor and vanquished, pursuit and death. One day, while watching a beetle, I saw a deadly attack. For more than an hour the beetle had been doing nothing except turn this way and then that without getting two inches from the grass-edge on the top of a stone. Suddenly a black bit darted past my face, struck the beetle, and knocked him over. It was a wasp, and for a few seconds these two warriors clinched, and fought with all their strength, cunning, and weapons. While locked in deadly struggle, they fell over a cliff that was twelve inches high; the fall broke their hold; this was instantly renewed, but presently they ceased to struggle, with the wasp victor. The weasel is the white wolf among the small people of the heights. In winter his pure white fur allows him to slip almost unsuspected through the snow. He preys upon the cony and the birds of the alpine zone. Like the mountain lion and some human hunters, he does wanton killing just for amusement. He is bloodthirsty, cunning, and even bold. Many times, within a few feet, he has glared fiendishly at me, seeming almost determined to attack; his long, low-geared body and sinister and snaky eyes make him a mean object to look upon. An experience with a number of rosy finches in the midst of a blizzard was one of the most cheerful ever given me by wild fellow creatures. While snowshoeing across one of the high passes, I was caught in a terrific gale, which dashed the powdered snow-dust so thickly and incessantly that breathing was difficult and at times almost strangling. Crawling beneath an enormous rock-slab to rest and breathe, I disturbed a dozen or so rosy finches already in possession and evidently there for the same purpose as myself. They moved to one side and made room for me, but did not go out. As I settled down, they looked at me frankly and without a fear. Such trust! After one calm look, they gave me no further attention. Although trustful and friendly, they were reserved and mannerly. From time to time there were comings and goings among them. Almost every snow-dashed incoming stranger gave me a look as he entered, and then without the least suspicion turned to his own feathers and affairs. With such honor, I forgot my frosted nose and the blizzard. Presently, however, I crawled forth and groped through the blinding hurricane and entered a friendly forest, where wind-shaped trees at timber-line barely peeped beneath the drifted snow. The rosy finch, the brown-capped leucosticte of the Rockies (in the Sierra it is the gray-crowned), is a little larger than a junco and is one of the bravest and most trusting of the winged mountaineers. It is the most numerous of the resident bird-population. These cheery little bits live in the mountain snows, rarely descending below timber-line. Occasionally they nest as high as thirteen thousand five hundred feet. The largest bird resident of the snowy heights is the ptarmigan. Rarely does this bird descend below the timber-line. But a late and prolonged winter storm may drive him and his neighbor the rosy finch a mile or so down the slopes. The first fine day he is back again to the happy heights. The ptarmigan lives in the heathery growths among huge rocky débris. Much of the winter-time he shelters himself in deeply penetrating holes or runs in the compacted snow. His food consists of the seeds and buds of alpine plants, grasses, and insects. His ways remind one of a grouse, though he is a smaller bird. During winter he appears in suit of white, stockings and all. In spring a few black and cinnamon-colored feathers are added, and by midsummer his dress is grayish-brown. During all seasons he is fairly well concealed from enemies by the protective coloration of his clothes, and he depends largely upon this for protection. He is preyed upon by the weasel, fox, bear, eagle, and lion. Although the mountain-tops have only a few resident birds, they have numerous summer bird builders and sojourners. Many birds nest in these heights instead of going to similar conditions in the great Arctic Circle nursery. Thus most birds met with in the heights during the summer season are the migratory ones. Among the summer residents are the American pipit, the white-crowned sparrow, and the gray-headed junco, the latter occasionally raising two broods in a summer. Here, too, in autumn come flocks of robins and other birds for late berries before starting southward. The golden eagle may soar above the peaks during all the seasons, but he can hardly be classed as a resident, for much of the winter he spends in the lower slopes of the mountains. Early in the spring he appears in the high places and nests among the crags, occasionally twelve thousand feet above sea-level. The young eaglets are fed in part upon spring lamb from the near-by wild flocks. One day, while in a bleak upland above the timber-line, I paused by a berg-filled lake, a miniature Arctic Ocean, with barren rock-bound shores. A partly snow-piled, half-frozen moor stretched away into an arctic distance. Everything was silent. Near by a flock of ptarmigan fed upon the buds of a clump of arctic willow that was dwarfed almost out of existence. I felt as though in the polar world. "Here is the environment of the Eskimo," I discoursed to myself. "He ought to be found in this kind of place. Here are icebergs, frozen tundras, white ptarmigan, dwarf willows, treeless distances. If arctic plants were transported down here on the Big Ice Floe, surely some Eskimo must have been swept along. Why didn't he stay? The climate was better, but perhaps he missed his blubber and sea food, and there was no midnight sun and the nights were extremely short. The pale and infrequent aurora borealis must have reminded him of better nights, if not better days. Anyway, even for the Eskimo, there is no place like home, even though it be in a domed and dingy ice house amid the eternal snows and beneath the wonderful sky of northern lights." [Illustration: AT THE EDGE OF THE ARCTIC-ALPINE LIFE ZONE IN THE SAN JUAN MOUNTAINS] There are fields of varied wild flowers. Brilliant in color, dainty, beautiful, and graceful, they appear at their best amid the wild magnificence of rocky peaks, alpine lakes, and aged snow-fields, and on the far-extending lonely moorlands. Many of these flowers are your lowland friends, slightly dwarfed in some cases, but with charms even fresher, brighter, and more lovely than those of the blooms you know. Numerous upland stretches are crowded and colored in indescribable richness,--acres of purple, blue, and gold. The flowers, by crowding the moist outskirts of snow-drifts, make striking encircling gardens of bloom. In contributed and unstable soil-beds, amid ice and boulders, they take romantic rides and bloom upon the cold backs of the crawling glaciers, and thus touch with color and beauty the most savage of wild scenes. The distribution and arrangement of the flowers has all the charm of the irregular, and for the most part is strikingly effective and delightfully artistic. They grow in bunches and beds; the stalks are long and short; rock towers and barren débris frown on meadow gardens and add to the attractiveness of the millions of mixed blossoms that dance or smile. Ragged tongues of green and blossoms extend for miles. One of the peculiarities of a few of these plants is that they have stems and axes horizontal rather than vertical. Others are masses of mossy, cushion-like bloom. In many cases there is a marked enlargement of the root-growth, but the flowers compare favorably in size, sweetness, and brilliancy of coloring with their lowland relatives. Among the blossoms that shine in these polar gardens are the spring beauty, the daisy, the buttercup, and the forget-me-not. There are numbers of the pink and the saxifrage families, white and purple monkshood, purple asters, and goldenrod. Whole slopes are covered with paintbrushes, and among these commonly is a scattering of tall, white-tipped wild buckwheat. Some of these are scentless, while others diffuse a rich perfume. There are numerous hanging gardens that are grander than all the kings of the earth could create! White cascades with the soft, fluttering veils of spray pour through the brilliant bloom and the bright green of the terraces. In these gardens may bloom the bluest of mertensia, gentians, and polemonium, the brightest of yellow avens, the ruddy stonecrop, and gaillardias as handsome as any black-eyed Susan; then there is a fine scattering of shooting-stars, starworts, pentstemons of prettiest shades, and the tall and stately columbine, a burst of silver and blue. Many of the polar plants that bloom in this Arctic world were probably brought here from the Arctic Circle by the vast and prolonged flow of ice from the north during the last ice age. Stranded here by the receding, melting ice, they are growing up with the country under conditions similar to those in the Northland. They are quick to seize and beautify each new soil-bed that appears,--soil exposed by the shrinking of snow-fields, piled by landslides, washed down by water, or made by the dropped or deposited sweepings of the winds. Bees and butterflies follow the flowers, and every wild garden has the buzz of busy wings and the painted sails of idle ones. Mountain sheep occasionally pose and group among the flowers and butterflies. Often sheep, crags, ptarmigan, and green spaces, flowers, and waterfalls are caught in one small space that sweeps up into the blue and cloud in one grand picture. In many localities there are such numbers of dwarfed plants that one may blunder through a fairy flower-garden without seeing it. To see these tiny flowers at their best, one needs to lie down and use a reading-glass. There are diminutive bellflowers that rise only half an inch above the earth and masses of cushion pinks and tiny phlox still finer and shorter. The Arctic-Alpine zone, with its cloud and bright sunshine, rests upon the elevated and broken world of the Rockies. This realm is full of interest through all the seasons, and with its magnificence are lovely places, brilliant flowers, and merry birds to cheer its solitudes. During winter these polar mountain-stretches have a strange charm, and many a time my snowshoe tracks have left dotted trails upon their snowy distances. These cheerful wild gardens are threatened with ruin. Cattle and sheep are invading them farther and farther, and leaving ruin behind. With their steep slopes, coarse soil, and shallow root-growths these alpine growths cannot endure pasturage. The biting, the pulling, and the choppy hoof-action are ruinous. Destined to early ruin if pastured, and having but little value when so used, these sky gardens might rightly be kept unimpaired for ourselves. They would make delightful National Parks. They have a rapidly increasing value for parks. Used for recreation places, they would have a high commercial value; and thus used they would steadily pay dividends in humanity. Some Forest History Some Forest History Two picturesque pine stumps stood for years in the edge of a grove near my cabin. They looked as old as the hills. Although they had wasted a little through weathering, they showed no sign of decay. Probably they were the ruins of yellow pine trees that before my day had perished in a forest fire. The heat of the fire that had caused their death had boiled the pores of these stumps full of pitch. They were thus preserved, and would endure a long, long time. I often wondered how old they were. A chance to get this information came one morning when a number of old pines that grew around these stumps were blown over. Among those that went down were three large and ancient yellow pines and several smaller lodge-pole pines. These I dissected and studied, with the idea that their annual wood rings, together with the scars and embossments, might give information concerning the death of the old brown-gray stumps. Two of the yellow pines showed two hundred and fifty-six annual rings; the other showed two hundred and fifty-five. All carried fire scars, received in the year 1781. Apparently, then, the stumps had been dead and weathering since 1781. The annual rings in the overthrown lodge-poles showed that they started to grow in 1782. Lodge-pole pines commonly spring up immediately after a fire; these had apparently taken possession of the ground as soon as it was laid bare by the fire that had killed and partly consumed the two yellow pines and injured the three scarred ones. Since the lodge-poles were free from fire scars, since the yellow pine showed no scar after 1781, and since all these trees had stood close about the stumps, it was plain that the stumps were the remnants of trees that perished in a forest fire in 1781. Later, a number of trees elsewhere in the grove were called upon to testify, and these told a story that agreed with that of the trees that had stood close to the stumps. These stumps are now the newel-posts in a rustic stairway. [Illustration: A WESTERN YELLOW PINE] Near my home on the slope of Long's Peak are the records of an extraordinary succession of forest fires. During the last two hundred and fifty years eight large fires and numerous small ones have occurred. Each left a black, fire-engraved date-mark. The dates of some of these fires are 1675, 1707, 1753, 1781, 1842, 1864, 1878, 1885, and 1900. Each fire burned over from a few hundred to a few thousand acres. In part, nature promptly reforested after each fire; consequently some of the later fires swept over areas that had been burned over by the earlier ones. Here and there a fire-scarred tree, escaping with its life, lived on to preserve in its rings the date of the conflagration. In one old pine I found seven widely separated scars that told of seven different fires. In addition to the records in isolated trees, there were records also in many injured trees in groves that had survived and in ragged forest-edges where forest fires had stopped. An excellent check on the evidence given by the annual rings of fire-scarred trees was found in the age of the new tree-growth that came up in the fire-swept territory in which, or on the borders of which, were the telltale fire-injured trees. Some fires swept so clean that they left behind no date of their ravages, but here and there the character of the forest and of the soil in which it stood made me feel certain that the growth had arisen from the ashes of a fire, and that I could tell the extent of the fire. In most localities the fire-killed forest is at once restored by nature. That ever enthusiastic sower, the wind, reseeds most burned areas within a year. Burns on the Western mountains commonly are covered with young lodge-pole or aspen within three years. There are a few dry wind-swept slopes or places left rocky for which years or even centuries may be required to re-earth and reforest. Some members of the Pine Family endure fire much better than others. The "big tree," the redwood, and the yellow and sugar pines will survive far hotter fires than their relatives, for their vitals are protected by a thick sheath of slow-burning bark. The Western yellow pine is one of the best fire-fighters in the forest world. Its vitals appear able to endure unusual heat without death, and it will survive fires that kill neighboring trees of other kinds. In old trees the trunk and large limbs are thickly covered with heat-and-fire-resisting bark. In examining a number of these old fellows that were at last laid low by snow or landslide or the axe, I found that some had triumphantly survived a number of fiery ordeals and two or three lightning-strokes. One pine of eight centuries carried the scars of four thunderbolts and seven wounds that were received from fires decades apart. The deciduous, or broad-leaf, trees resist fires better than the coniferous, or evergreen, trees. Pines and spruces take fire much more readily than oaks and maples, because of the resinous sap that circulates through them; moreover, the pines and spruces when heated give off an inflammable gas which, rising in front of a forest fire, adds to the heat and destructiveness, and the eagerness of the blaze. Considered in relation to a fire, the coniferous forest is a poor risk because it is more inflammable than a deciduous one. Another advantage possessed by broad-leaf trees lies in the rapid growth of their seedlings. Surface fires annihilate most tiny trees. Two-year-old chestnuts, maples, and, in fact, many of the broad-leaf youngsters, are three or more feet high, and are able to survive a severe fire; but two-year-old white pine, Engelmann spruce, or long-leaf pine are barely two inches high,--just fuzzy-topped matches stuck in the earth that perish in a flash from a single breath of flame. The ability to send up sprouts, which most deciduous trees possess, is also a very great advantage in the fight against fire. A fire may destroy a deciduous forest and all its seeds without injuring the potent roots beneath the surface. The year following the fire, most of these roots send up sprouts that swiftly grow to replace the fallen forest. Among the so-called Pine Family, the ability to send up sprouts or shoots is limited to a few kinds, most prominent of which is the redwood. Repeated forest fires have injured enormously the Southern hardwood forests; they have damaged millions of trees so that they have become hollow or punky-hearted. These fires have burned off limbs or burned into the trunks or the roots and made openings through which many kinds of fungi have entered the hearts of the trees, to doom them to rot and decay. Forest fires have been common through the ages. Charcoal has been found in fossil. This has a possible age of a million years. Charred logs have been found, in Dakota and elsewhere, several hundred feet beneath the surface. The big trees of California have fire scars that are two thousand years old. The most remarkable forest fire records that I ever saw were found in a giant California redwood. This tree was felled a few years ago. Its trunk was cut to pieces and studied by scientific men, who from the number of its annual rings found the year of its birth, and also deciphered the dates of the various experiences the tree had had with fire. This patriarch had stood three hundred feet high, was sound to the core, and had lived through two thousand one hundred and seventy-one years. Its existence began in the year 271 B.C. After more than five centuries of life, in A.D. 245 it was in the pathway of a forest fire from which it received a bad burn on the lower trunk. It was one hundred and five years before this burn was fully covered with tissue and bark. Following this fire came the peaceful procession of twelve centuries. Eleven hundred and ninety-six times the golden poppies came to glorify the green hills of spring, while the songs of mating birds filled woods and meadows. More than a thousand times the aspens ripened and scattered their golden leaves, while this serene evergreen grew and towered more and more noble through the centuries. Elsewhere the forests were dim with smoke, and on the Sierra during these centuries the heroic "big trees" received many a scar from fire. But not until 1441 did fire again try this veteran. Soon after this burn was healed there came a third fire. This was less injurious than the preceding ones, for the wound that it inflicted healed in half a century. Higher and more stately the tree grew, and in 1729 it attained the age of two thousand years. At the age of two thousand and eighty-eight years the fourth fire attacked it. This fire burned an eighteen-foot scar upon the trunk of the old tree. In 1900, after the lapse of almost a century, only a small part of this wound was overgrown. This year, 1900, came the reaper, the axeman, who laid low this aged and monumental tree! What starts forest fires? Some are started by lightning; others are kindled by meteors that are flung from the sky, or by fire that is hurled or poured from a volcano; a few are caused by spontaneous combustion; and many are set by man. Down through the ages primitive and civilized men have frequently set fire to the forest. These fires are set sometimes accidentally, sometimes intentionally. The forest has been fired to drive out game, to improve pasturage, to bewilder the enemy during war, and to clear the land for the plow. During one of my Colorado camping-trips a high October wind brought me the information that spruce wood was burning near by. While I was searching for the fire in the thick needle carpet of the forest floor, a spark from above settled before me. A fire was sputtering and starting in a tree top about thirty feet above the earth. This fire was starting where a dead leaning tree-trunk was rasping and rubbing against an upright one. The bark of the standing tree was powdered and tufted with wood-dust which had been ground by friction from the trunks as they swayed and rotated in the wind. This inflammable wood-dust, together with accumulated bark-bits and needles, had been set on fire from the heat generated by these two big sticks rubbing together. Plainly this was a friction fire. The incessant swaying of treetops in the tireless wind occasionally causes a smoke from friction at points where overlapping limbs or entangled trees are rubbing. Within a few minutes after my discovery, this fire was roaring eagerly through the treetops. Friction fires are rare, but my old notebooks tell of numerous fires that were set by lightning. Before this fire, which was in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, had died out, a lightning-set fire in the mountains of central Colorado had attracted my attention with massive, magnificent smoke-clouds, which were two or three thousand feet above the mountain-tops. Though thirty miles distant, these clouds occasionally took on the bossy white splendor of big cumuli assembling for summer rain. I resolved to see the fire at close range. Until burned territory was reached, I followed along sky-line ridges through changing conditions of clear sky, smoke, and falling ashes, ready for swift retreat down a slope in case the fire advanced under smoke cover and surprised me. The burn was entered at the first edge I reached. Millions of seared and blackened trees were standing steadfastly where they had died at their post. All twigs and leafage were burned away, but the majority of the trees still carried their larger limbs and patches of bark. In places only the tree-trunk, a fire-carved totem pole, remained. Whirlwinds of flame had moved, and in places every burnable thing on the surface was consumed, and even tree-roots were burned out two and three feet beneath the surface. Though weirdly interesting, these ashen fields of desolation were not wholly lifeless. Here, as elsewhere, feasters came to banquet, and good fortune brought favorites to the scene of panic and death. Flocks of gorged magpies were about, and unwontedly bold coyotes, both filled and foraging, were frequently met with. At one place a half-dozen beaver were portaging round a tumble of charred tree-trunks that obstructed the brook-channel. Fire had destroyed the food-supply, and the beaver were seeking home and harvest in other scenes. A grizzly bear was wading their pond and feasting on the dead trout that floated on the surface. Two black bears, despite terrible threats from the grizzly, claimed all the fish that came within reach of the shore. They discreetly kept out of the pond. Two fawns and their mother lay dead at the foot of a cliff. Either blinded or terrorized by fire or smoke, they apparently had leaped or fallen to death. As I gained the top in climbing to investigate, an eagle swooped angrily at me from a topless trunk. Her mate with scorched feathers lay on the rocks near by. On returning a few days later I found her still watching the lifeless one from the same perch in the dead tree. In the heart of the burned tract was a thirty-or-forty-acre tract of forest that had escaped the fire. It was surrounded with wide though broken barriers of rock ledges. In this green oasis were numerous wild-folk refugees. Chipmunks, rats, woodchucks, and birds were startlingly abundant, but no big game. Apparently the home people had welcomed the refugees, or had received them indifferently. The only fight noticed was between mountain rats. However, this crowding and overrunning of territory when the exciting fire was over, probably made many terrible pages of animal history, before exodus and death brought a normal readjustment of life to the territory. Wandering on across the burn toward the fire-line, I came to the place where a ragged-edged and beautiful glacier meadow had reposed, a poetic park among the spruces dark and tall. Commonly these meadows are sufficiently saturated to defy fire, but this one was burning, though slowly and with but little blaze or smoke. The fire was working toward the centre from the edges and eating downward from one to three feet. This kind of meadow usually carries a covering stratum of a kind of peat or turf which is composed almost entirely of matted grass or sedge roots that are almost free from earthy or mineral matter. These meadows lack warmth or soil sufficient to germinate tree seeds or to grow trees. Often they remain beautiful treeless gardens for generations, while wind and wash slowly bring sediment, or until a flood or landslip brings soil. The deep burning of the surface and the consequent deposit of ash on the new surface probably offered an abiding-place to the next adventurous tree seeds. Glacier meadows occasionally have this kind of ending. Two prospectors were found at work in a spruce forest near which the fire started but which it did not reach for a week. These men said that, an hour or so after a thunder-shower of a few days before, one of the brown beetle-killed pines had sent up a smoke-column. Apparently lightning had struck this tree. The following day a small fire was burning near it. This expanded into the forest fire. Commonly it is a standing dead tree that is set on fire by the lightning, but the bolt sometimes fires accumulated trash around the roots where it enters the earth. Within this extensive burn the trees had stood from thirty to one hundred and forty feet high and from two hundred to three thousand to the acre, and they were from thirty to four hundred and fifty years old. A majority were about two centuries old. The predominating kinds were yellow pine, Douglas spruce, Engelmann spruce, and aspen. Different altitudes, forest fires, and a variety of slope-exposures, along with the peculiar characteristics of each species, had distributed these in almost pure stands, an area of each kind to itself. There was some overlapping and mixing, but lodge-pole pine noticeably stood by itself. Where first encountered, this fire was roaring through a thick second growth of lodge-pole pine. Scattered through this young growth were hundreds of dead and limbless trees killed by a fire of thirty years before. The preservative effect of their fiery death had kept these great pillars sound, though they had become checked and weathered. They burned slowly, and that night while the fire-front was storming a ridge, these columns spread sparks and flames from split sides, or as gigantic candles blazed only at the top. Yellow pines and Douglas spruces killed in an intensely hot fire are so cooked and preserved that they will resist weathering or rot for decades. I have seen a few of these pitchy broken fellows standing erect in the depth of a century-old second generation of forest with the arms of the living trees about and above them. Down a slope a fire moves more slowly and with lower temperature than upward on the same slope. A fire may rush in a minute up a slope which it would require a day to creep down. A fire is more all-consuming in going up, and even after years have passed, the remains left on a slope will often enable one to determine whether a fire swept up or crept down. One peculiarity of flames in young growths on steep slopes is that they sometimes dart up the heights in tongues, leaving narrow ragged stretches of unburned trees! Usually these fiery tongues sweep in a straight line up the slope. The intense heat of a passing fire-front is withering at long distances. I have known a fire to blister aspen clumps that were seven or eight hundred feet from the nearest burned trees. The passing flames may have been pushed much closer than this by slow heavy air-swells or by the brief blasts of wild wind rushes. The habits of forest fires are largely determined by slope-inclination, wind-speed, and the quantity and quality of the fuel. In places the fire slips quietly along with low whispering, then suddenly it goes leaping, whirling, and roaring. A fire may travel less than one mile or farther than one hundred miles in a day. The ever varying slope and forest conditions in the mountains are constantly changing the speed and the enthusiasm of a fire. Where all conditions are favorable, it sweeps level stretches at a mile-a-minute speed and rolls up slopes with the speed of sound! One evening I climbed a high ridge that stood about half a mile in front of a heavily forested peninsula which the fire-front would reach in a few hours. The fire was advancing across the valley with a front of about two miles. On arriving at the top of the ridge, I came up behind a grizzly bear seated on his haunches like a dog, intently watching the fire below. On discovering me he took a second look before concentrating his mind on a speedy retreat. Along the ridge about a quarter of a mile distant, a number of mountain sheep could be seen through the falling ashes, with heads toward the fire, but whether they were excited or simply curious could not be determined. The forested peninsula which extended from between two forested cañons had a number of meadow openings on the slopes closest to me. Around these were many brilliant fiery displays. Overheated trees in or across these openings often became enveloped in robes of invisible gas far in advance of the flames. This gas flashed and flared up before the tree blazed, and occasionally it convoyed the flames across openings one hundred feet or so above the earth. Heated isolated trees usually went with a gushing flash. At other places this flaming sometimes lasted several seconds, and, when seen through steamy curtains or clouds of smoke, appeared like geysers of red fire. At times there were vast scrolls and whirling spirals of sparks above and around the torrential, upstreaming flames of the fire-front. Millions of these sparks were sometimes formed by high outflowing air streams into splendid and far-reaching milky ways. In moments of general calm the sky was deeply filled with myriads of excited sparks, which gradually quieted, then floated beautifully, peacefully up to vanish in the night. Meantime the fire-front was pushed by wind-currents and led by ridges. By the time the fire-line had advanced to the steeper slopes it was one vast U about three miles long. Its closed end was around the peninsula toward me. The fire-front rushed upward through the dense forest of the peninsula steeps more swiftly than the wildest avalanche could have plunged down. The flames swept across three-hundred-foot grassy openings as easily as breakers roll in across a beach. Up the final two thousand feet there were magnificent outbursts and sheets of flame with accompanying gale and stormy-ocean roars. Terrific were the rushes of whirled smoke-and-flame clouds of brown, ashen green, and sooty black. There were lurid and volcanic effects in molten red and black, while tattered yellow flames rushed, rolled, and tumbled everywhere. An uprushing, explosive burst of flames from all sides wrapped and united on the summit. For a minute a storm of smoke and flame filled the heavens with riot. The wild, irresistible, cyclonic rush of fiery wind carried scores of tree-limbs and many blazing treetops hundreds of feet above the summit. Fire and sparks were hurled explosively outward, and a number of blazing treetops rushed off in gale-currents. One of these blazing tops dropped, a destructive torch, in a forest more than a mile distant from the summit! Mountain Lakes Mountain Lakes High up in the Rocky Mountains are lakes which shine as brightly as dewdrops in a garden. These mountains are a vast hanging garden in which flowers and waterfalls, forests and lakes, slopes and terraces, group and mingle in lovely grandeur. Hundreds of these lakes and tarns rest in this broken topography. Though most of them are small, they vary in size from one acre to two thousand acres. Scores of these lakes have not been named. They form a harmonious part of the architecture of the mountains. Their basins were patiently fashioned by the Ice King. Of the thousand or more lakes in the Colorado mountains only a few are not glacial. The overwhelming majority rest in basins that were gouged and worn in solid rock by glaciers. John Muir says that Nature used the delicate snowflake for a tool with which to fashion lake-basins and to sculpture the mountains. He also says: "Every lake in the Sierra is a glacier lake. Their basins were not merely remodeled and scoured out by this mighty agent, but in the first place were eroded from the solid." The Rocky Mountain lakes are set deep in cañons, mounted on terraces, and strung like uncut gems along alpine streams. The boulders in many of their basins are as clean and new as though just left by the constructive ice. These lakes are scattered through the high mountains of Colorado, the greater number lying between the altitudes of ten thousand and twelve thousand feet. Few were formed above the altitude of twelve thousand, and most of those below ten thousand now are great flowerpots and hold a flower-illumined meadow or a grove. Timber-line divides this lake-belt into two nearly equal parts. Many are small tarns with rocky and utterly wild surroundings. Circular, elliptical, and long, narrow forms predominate. Some lie upon a narrow terrace along the base of a precipice. Many are great circular wells at the bottom of a fall; others are long and narrow, filling cañons from wall to wall. [Illustration: CRYSTAL LAKE, A TYPICAL GLACIER LAKE] Glaciers the world over have been the chief makers of lake-basins, large and small. These basins were formed in darkness, and hundreds and even thousands of years may have been required for the ice to carve and set the gems whose presence now adds so much to the light and beauty of the rugged mountain-ranges. The ponderous glaciers or ice rivers in descending from the mountain-summits came down steep slopes or precipitous walls and bore irresistibly against the bottom. The vast weight of these embankments of ice moving almost end-on, mixed with boulders, tore and wore excavations into the solid rock at the bottom of each high, steep descent. Nature's ways are interestingly complicated. Both the number and the location of many of these glacier lakes are due in part to the prevailing direction of the wind during the last glacial epoch. This is especially true of those in the Snowy Range of the Rocky Mountains, which fronts the Great Plains. The majority of the lakes in this range are situated on its eastern slope. Westerly winds undoubtedly prevailed on these mountains during the depositing of the snows which formed and maintained the glaciers that excavated these lake-basins. As a result, much of the snow which fell on the summit and its westerly slope was swept across and deposited on the eastern slope, thus producing on the eastern side deeper ice, more glaciers, and more appreciable erosion from the glaciers. The eastern summit of this range is precipitous and is deeply cut by numerous ice-worn cirques which extend at right angles to the trend of this range. These cirques frequently lie close together, separated by a thin precipitous wall, or ridge. On the westerly side of the range the upper slopes descend into the lowlands through slopes and ridges rounded and but little broken. Over these it is possible to ride a horse to the summit, while foot travel and careful climbing over precipitous rocky walls is in most places required to gain the summit from the east. Westerly winds still blow strongly, sometimes for weeks, and the present scanty snowfall is largely swept from the western slopes and deposited on the eastern side. So far as I know, all the remaining glaciers in the front ranges are on the eastern slope. The Arapahoe, Sprague, Hallett, and Andrews Glaciers and the one on Long's Peak are on the eastern slope. They are but the stubs or remnants of large glaciers, and their presence is due in part to the deep, cool cirques cut out by the former ice-flows, and in part to the snows swept to them by prevailing westerly winds. Though these lakes vary in shape and size, and though each is set in a different topography, many have a number of like features and are surrounded with somewhat similar verdure. A typical lake is elliptical and about one fifth of a mile long; its altitude about ten thousand feet; its waters clear and cold. A few huge rock-points or boulders thrust through its surface near the outlet. A part of its circling shore is of clean granite whose lines proclaim the former presence of the Ice King. Extending from one shore is a dense, dark forest. One stretch of low-lying shore is parklike and grassy, flower-crowded, and dotted here and there with a plume of spruce or fir. By the outlet is a filled-in portion of the lake covered with sedge and willow. In summer, magpies, woodpeckers, nuthatches, and chickadees live in the bordering woods. In the willows the white-crowned sparrow builds. By the outlet or in the cascades above or below is the ever-cheerful water-ouzel. The solitaire nesting near often flies across the lake, filling the air with eager and melodious song. Along the shore, gentians, columbines, paintbrushes, larkspur, and blue mertensia often lean over the edge and give the water-margin the beauty of their reflected colors. These lakes above the limits of tree-growth do not appear desolate, even though stern peaks rise far above. The bits of flowery meadow or moorland lying close or stretching away, the songful streams arriving or departing, soften their coldness and give a welcome to their rock-bound, crag-piled shores. Mountain sheep are often visitors. They come to drink, or to feed and play in the sedgy meadow near by. Ptarmigan have their homes here, and all around them nest many birds from the southland. Into these lakes swift waters run, and here the snowy cataract leaps in glory. From the overshadowing cliffs, flattened and lacy streams flutter down. During the summer there is the ever-flowing harmony, the endless animation, of falling water; and in winter there is the silent and architectural symphony of the frozen waterfall. Many lakes during summer are partly edged with inthrusting snow and ice piles; from time to time fragments of these piles break away and become miniature icebergs in these small arctic seas. Although filled with the purest and clearest water, from a distant height they often appear to contain a brilliant heavy liquid. Under different lights and from different points of view they are emerald, opal, inky black, violet, indigo-blue, and sea-green. I have approached one from a high distant point, and as I descended and waveringly advanced, the lake took on a number of deep colors, each melting like a passing shadow from one into the other. Occasionally, too, it almost vanished in dull gray or flashed up in molten silver. The colors shown were as vivid as if made of the brilliant fire of the northern lights. All these changing colors played on the lake, while the surrounding peaks towered in cold and silent desolation, changeless except when occasionally swept with the filmy bluish shadows of the clouds. Below the timber-line these lakes are more appealing, and many in the midst of groves and meadows help to form delightful wild parks. Others are hidden away in black forests; tall, crowding firs and spruces rise from their edges and hide them completely, even when one is only a yard or two from their shores. I camped for a week within a stone's throw of one of these forest-embowered gems without suspecting its presence. Returning to camp one evening from an encircling ramble, I was startled by stepping into a lake-edge. For a moment I was puzzled. Instinctively I felt that my camp was about the width of the lake ahead of me. Although I felt certain of my bearings, my mental processes were such that I was unwilling to trust this strange lake. Instead of walking around its poetic shore, I lashed two water-soaked logs together with willows and on this rude raft made my way directly across. My camp was within fifty feet of the place where I landed. Elements of peculiar attractiveness are combined in the lakes that are situated along the timber-line. Some have a treeless mountain or a rugged snow-piled peak rising boldly behind, and an acre or so of meadow between one shore and the forest. A segment of wind-distorted trees, a few enormous rock domes, a fine pile of boulders, and a strip of willow with clumps of spruces and firs combine to give a charming border. Among the best known of these Colorado lakes are Grand, Trapper's, Bierstadt, Trout, San Cristoval, Chicago, Thunder, Silver, Moraine, and Twin Lakes. Grand Lake, probably the largest, is about three miles long by one mile wide. Its basin appears to be largely due to a morainal dam. The San Cristoval basin appears to have been formed by a mud stream which blockaded a mountain valley. The lakes of the Long's Peak region are my favorites. These are numerous and show a variety of forms. Grand Lake and a few others lie to the west; Thunder Lake, Ouzel Lake, and a dozen others are in Wild Basin to the south; Odessa, Bierstadt, and the score of lakes in Loch Vale and Glacier Gorge are to the north. All are within ten miles of the summit of this peak. These lakes and their splendid mountain setting will in time give scenic fame to the region. The alpine lakes in the mountains of the West are but little known to travelers. Many Western people appreciate the beauty of the Swiss and Italian lakes but do not even know of the existence of the shining lakes in their own mountains. But the unexcelled beauty and grandeur of these lakes, their scenic surroundings, and the happy climate in which they repose will in due time give them fame and bring countless travelers to their shores. [Illustration: TRAPPER'S LAKE] In exploring the mountains I have often camped on a lake-shore. These camps were conveniently situated for the exploration of neighboring slopes and the valley below; or for making excursions to the more rugged scenes,--the moraines, snow-fields, cirques, and peaks above. Many an evening after a day with the moraines and the forests, or with the eagles and the crags, I have gone down to one of these ideal camping-places. Here through the night my fire blazed and faded in the edge of a meadow before a templed cluster of spruces on a rocky rim above the lake. Many times camp was so situated that splendid sunsets or the lingering pink and silver afterglow were at their best behind a broken sky-line ridge. My camp-fire was reflected in the lake, which often sparkled as if enamel-filled with stars. Across one corner lay softly the inverted Milky Way. Shooting stars passed like white rockets through the silent waters. The moon came up big and yellow from behind a crag and in the lake became a disc of gold. Many a night the cliffs repeated the restlessness of the wind-shaken water until the sun quieted all with light. During the calm nights there were hours of almost unbroken silence, though at times and faintly a far-off waterfall could be heard, the bark of a fox sounded across the lake, or the weird and merry cries of the coyote were echoed and reëchoed around the shore. More often the white-crowned sparrow sang hopefully in the night. Morning usually was preceded by a horizon of red and rose and gold. Often, too, vague sheep and deer along the farther shore were slowly developed into reality by the morning light. From all around birds came to bathe and drink, and meet in morning song service. Occasionally I remained in camp almost motionless from early morning until the stars of evening filled the lake, enjoying the comings and goings and social gatherings of the wilderness folk. These lakes, if frozen during calm times, have ice of exceeding clearness and smoothness. In early winter this reflects peak, cloud, and sky with astonishing faithfulness. In walking across on this ice when the reflective condition was at its best, I have marveled at my reflection, or that of Scotch, my dog, walking on what appeared to be the surface of the water. The lakes above timber-line are frozen over about nine months of the year, some of them even longer. Avalanches of snow often pile upon them, burying them deeply. Gravity and water are filling with débris and sediment these basins which the glaciers dug. Many lakes have long since faded from the landscape. The earthy surface as it emerges above the water is in time overspread with a carpet of plushy sedge or grass, a tangle of willow, a grove of aspen, or a forest of pine or spruce. The rapidity of this filling is dependent on a number of things,--the situation of the lake, the stability of the watershed, its relation to forests, slopes, meadows, and other lakes, which may intercept a part of the down-coming sediment or wreckage. This filling material may be deposited evenly over the bottom, the lake steadily becoming shallower, though maintaining its original size, with its edge clean until the last; or it may be heaped at one end or piled along one side. In some lakes the entering stream builds a slowly extending delta, which in time gains the surface and extends over the entire basin. In other lakes a side stream may form an expanding dry delta which the grass, willows or aspens eagerly follow outward and cover long before water is displaced from the remainder of the lake's rock-bound shores. With many, the lower end of the basin, shallow from the first, is filled with sediment and changed to meadow, while the deep upper end lies almost unchanged in its rock basin. Now and then a plunging landslide forms an island, on which the spruces and firs make haste to wave triumphant plumes. Lake Agnes on the northern slope of Mt. Richthofen was formed with a rounded dome of glaciated rock remaining near the centre. This lake is being filled by the slow inflow of a "rock stream." Landslides, large and small, often plunge into these lakes. One of the largest rock avalanches that I ever saw made one wild leap into Chasm Lake and buried itself. This was about the middle of June. This glacier lake is on the eastern side of Long's Peak and is in a most utterly wild place. The lake was still covered with thick ice, and on the ice the snow lay deep. But spring was melting and loosening things in the alpine heights. As I stood on a talus slope above the outlet of the lake, an echoing on the opposite cliffs told me that a rock-slide was coming down. Almost instantly there was the ripping whizz of falling stone. A huge stone struck and pierced twenty feet of snow and more than four feet of ice, which covered the lake. At the same instant there came sounds of riot from above. More stones were coming down. The crash of their striking, repeated and reëchoed by surrounding cliffs and steeps, made an uproarious crashing as though the top of Long's Peak had collapsed. It was an avalanche of several thousand tons off the slope of Mt. Washington. This avalanche was formed of a quantity of broken granite sufficient to load a number of freight-trains. It smashed through the icy cover of the lake. The effect was like a terrific explosion. Enormous fragments of ice were thrown into the air and hurled afar. Great masses of water burst explosively upward, as if the entire filling of water had been blown out or had leaped out of its basin. The cliffs opposite were deluged. The confused wind-current which this created shredded and separated much of the water into spray, dashing and blowing it about. I was thoroughly drenched. For half a minute this spray whirled so thickly that it was almost smothering. Water and ice are incessantly at work tearing down the heights. Water undermines by washing away the softer parts and by leaching. Every winter ice thrusts its expansive wedge into each opening. Places are so shattered by this explosive action that thousands of gallons of water are admitted. This collects in openings, and the following winter the freezing and forcing continues. During the winter the irresistible expansion of freezing water thus pushes the rocks and widens the openings with a force that is slow but powerful. Winter by winter rocks are moved; summer by summer the water helps enlarge the opening. Years or centuries go by, and at last during a rainy time or in the spring thaw a mass slips away or falls over. This may amount to only a few pounds, or it may be a cliff or even a mountain-side. The long ice-ages of the earth appear to have their sway, go, and return. These alternate with long climatic periods made up of the short winters and the other changing seasons such as we know. The glacier lake is slowly created, but an avalanche may blot it out the day after it is completed. Other lakes more favorably situated may live on for thousands of years. But every one must eventually pass away. These lakes come into existence, have a period of youth, maturity, and declining years; then they are gone forever. They are covered over with verdure--covered with beauty--and forgotten. A Mountain Pony A Mountain Pony Our stage in the San Juan Mountains had just gained the top of the grade when an alert, riderless pony trotted into view on a near-by ridge. Saddled and bridled, she was returning home down a zigzag trail after carrying a rider to a mine up the mountain-side. One look at this trim, spirited "return horse" from across a narrow gorge, and she disappeared behind a cliff. A moment later she rounded a point of rocks and came down into the road on a gallop. The stage met her in a narrow place. Indifferent to the wild gorge below, she paused unflinchingly on the rim as the brushing stage dashed by. She was a beautiful bay pony. "That is Cricket, the wisest return horse in these hills," declared the stage-driver, who proceeded to tell of her triumphant adventures as he drove on into Silverton. When I went to hire Cricket, her owner said that I might use her as long as I desired, and proudly declared that if she was turned loose anywhere within thirty miles she would promptly come home or die. A trip into the mountains beyond Telluride was my plan. A "return horse" is one that will go home at once when set free by the rider, even though the way be through miles of trailless mountains. He is a natural result of the topography of the San Juan Mountains and the geographic conditions therein. Many of the mines in this region are situated a thousand feet or so up the precipitous slopes above the valleys. The railroads, the towns, society, are down in the cañons,--so near and yet so far,--and the only outlet to the big world is through the cañon. Miners are willing to walk down from the boarding-house at the mine; but not many will make the vigorous effort, nor give the three to four hours required, to climb back up the mountain. Perhaps some one wants to go to a camp on the opposite side of the mountain. As there is no tunnel through, he rides a return horse to the summit, turns the horse loose, then walks down the opposite side. The return horse, by coming back undirected, meets a peculiar transportation condition in a satisfactory manner. The liverymen of Silverton, Ouray, and Telluride keep the San Juan section supplied with these trained ponies. With kind treatment and experience the horses learn to meet emergencies without hesitation. Storm, fallen trees, a landslide, or drifted snow may block the way--they will find a new one and come home. The local unwritten law is that these horses are let out at the owner's risk. If killed or stolen, as sometimes happens, the owner is the loser. However, there is another unwritten law which places the catching or riding of these horses in the category of horse-stealing,--a serious matter in the West. I rode Cricket from Silverton to Ouray, and on the way we became intimately acquainted. I talked to her, asked questions, scratched the back of her head, examined her feet, and occasionally found something for her to eat. I walked up the steeper stretches, and before evening she followed me like a dog, even when I traveled out of the trail. For the night she was placed in a livery-barn in Ouray. Before going to bed I went out and patted and talked to her for several minutes. She turned to watch me go, and gave a pleasant little whinny as the barn-door closed. Telluride and Ouray are separated by a mountain that rises four thousand feet above their altitude. By trail they are twelve miles apart; by railroad, forty miles. Many people go by trail from one to the other, usually riding to the summit, one half the distance, where the horse is set free, and walking the rest of the way. When Cricket and I set out from Ouray, we followed the road to the Camp Bird Mine. We met horses returning with empty saddles, each having that morning carried a rider from Ouray to the mine. Three of these horses were abreast, trotting merrily, sociably along, now and then giving a pleasant nip at one another. [Illustration: CRICKET AT THE SUMMIT OF THE PASS] We stopped at the Camp Bird Mine, and while in the office I overheard a telephone inquiry concerning a return horse, Hesperus, who had been sent with a rider to the summit and was more than an hour overdue. Half a mile above the mine we met Hesperus coming deliberately down. He was not loafing, but was hampered by a loose shoe. When he reached the Camp Bird barn he stopped, evidently to have the shoe removed. As soon as this was done, he set off on a swinging trot down the trail. As Cricket and I went forward, I occasionally gave her attention, such as taking off her saddle and rubbing her back. These attentions she enjoyed. I walked up the steep places, an act that was plainly to her satisfaction. Sometimes I talked to her as if she were a child, always speaking in a quiet, conversational manner, and in a merry make-believe way, pretending that she understood me. And doubtless she did, for tone is a universal language. At the summit Cricket met some old friends. One pony had been ridden by a careless man who had neglected to fasten the bridle-reins around the saddle-horn,--as every rider is expected to do when he starts the pony homeward. This failure resulted in the pony's entangling a foot in the bridle-rein. When I tried to relieve him there was some lively dodging before he would stand still enough for me to right matters. Another pony was eating grass by walking in the bottom of a narrow gully and feeding off the banks. Commonly these horses are back on time. If they fail to return, or are late, there is usually a good reason for it. The trail crossed the pass at an altitude of thirteen thousand feet. From this point magnificent scenes spread away on every hand. Here we lingered to enjoy the view and to watch the antics of the return ponies. Two of them, just released, were rolling vigorously, despite their saddles. This rolling enabled me to understand the importance of every liveryman's caution to strangers, "Be sure to tighten the saddle-cinches before you let the pony go." A loose cinch has more than once caught the shoe of a rolling horse and resulted in the death of the animal. A number of riderless ponies who were returning to Telluride accompanied Cricket and me down the winding, scene-commanding road into this picturesque mining town. I spent a few days about Telluride riding Cricket up to a number of mines, taking photographs on the way. Whenever we arrived at an exceptionally steep pitch, either in ascending or in descending, Cricket invited me to get off and walk. Unbidden she would stop. After standing for a few seconds, if I made no move to get off, she turned for a look at me; then if I failed to understand, she laid back her ears and pretended to bite at my feet. One day we paused on a point to look down at a steep trail far below. A man was climbing up. A riderless pony was trotting down. Just as they met, the man made a dash to catch the pony. It swerved and struck with both fore feet. He dodged and made another bold, swift grab for the bridle-rein, but narrowly missed. He staggered, and, before he could recover, the pony wheeled and kicked him headlong. Without looking back, the pony trotted on down the trail as though nothing had happened. For a moment the man lay stunned, then, slowly rising, he went limping up the slope. A well-meaning tenderfoot, that afternoon in Telluride, saw a riderless pony and concluded that he had broken loose. After lively work he cornered the pony in an alley and caught it. The owner appeared just as the stranger was tying the pony to a hitching-post. A crowd gathered as the owner, laughing heartily, dragged the stranger into a saloon. I leaped off Cricket and went into the saloon after them. To the astonishment of every one Cricket also walked in. We left Telluride one sunny October morning with a sleeping-bag and a few supplies. I had made plans to have a few days for the study of forest conditions around Lizard Head and Mt. Wilson. In the neighborhood of Ophir Loop, the first night out, the moonlight on the mountains was so enchanting that I rode on until nearly morning. Cricket and I were chummy. The following afternoon, while waiting for sunset over Trout Lake, I lay down for a sleep on the grass in a sun-filled opening surrounded by clumps of tall spruces. Trusting Cricket to stay near, I threw her bridle-rein over her head to the ground and thus set her free. In the sunny, dry air I quickly fell asleep. An hour later, a snorting explosion on the top of my head awakened me. Though I was somewhat startled, the situation was anything but alarming. Cricket was lying beside me. Apparently, while dozing, she had dropped her head against mine, and had snorted while her nostrils were against my ear. We wandered far from the trail, and, after a few perfect days in the mountain heights, big clouds came in and snow fell thickly all night long. By morning it was nearly two feet deep, and before noon several snow-slides were heard. Being a good rustler, Cricket had all the morning been pawing into the snow, where she obtained a few mouthfuls of snowy grass. But she must be taken where she could get enough to eat. After thirty-six hours of storm we started down a cañon out of the snowy wilderness under a blue sky. No air stirred. The bright sun cast purple shadows of the pines and spruces upon the clean white snow. After a few hours we came to a blockade. The cañon was filled with an enormous mass of snow. A snow-slide had run in from a side gulch. We managed to get into the upper edge of this snow, where it was thin and not compressed. Cricket fought her way through in the most matter-of-fact manner, notwithstanding her head and neck were all that showed above the snow. As these return horses are often caught out in deep drifts, it is important that they be good "snow horses." She slowly forced her way forward, sometimes pawing to make an opening and again rearing and striking forward with both fore feet. From time to time she paused to breathe, occasionally eating a mouthful of snow while she rested. All the time I talked encouragingly to her, saying, "Of course you can make it!" "Once more!" When more than halfway through the snow-slide mass, one of the saddle-cinches caught on the snag of a fallen log and held her fast. Her violent efforts were in vain. Wallowing my way along the rocks several yards above, I descended to her side, cut both saddle-cinches, threw the saddle and the sleeping-bag off her back, and removed the bridle. Cricket was thus left a naked horse in the snow. When after two hours she had made her way out, I went for the saddle and sleeping-bag. As it was impossible to carry them, I attached the bridle to them and wallowed my way forward, dragging them after me. Meantime Cricket was impatiently waiting for me and occasionally gave an encouraging hurry-up neigh. When I had almost reached her, a mass of snow, a tiny slide from a shelving rock, plunged down, sweeping the saddle and the bag down into the cañon and nearly smothering me. As it was almost night, I made no attempt to recover them. Without saddle or bridle, I mounted Cricket and went on until dark. We spent the night at the foot of an overhanging cliff, where we were safe from slides. Here we managed to keep warm by a camp-fire. Cricket browsed aspen twigs for supper. I had nothing. A number of slides were heard during the night, but none were near us. At daylight we again pushed forward. The snow became thinner as we advanced. Near Ophir Loop, we passed over the pathway of a slide where the ground had been swept bare. Having long been vigilant with eyes and ears for slides, while on this slide-swept stretch, I ceased to be alert. Fortunately Cricket's vigilance did not cease. Suddenly she wheeled, and, with a quickness that almost took her from beneath me, she made a frantic retreat, as a slide with thunderous roar shot down into the cañon. So narrowly did it miss us that we were heavily splashed with snow-fragments and almost smothered by the thick, prolonged whirl of snow-dust. Cricket's vigilance had saved my life. The masses of snow, stones, and broken timber brought down by this slide blockaded the cañon from wall to wall. These walls were too steep to be climbed, and, after trying until dark to make a way through the wreckage, we had to give it up. We spent a cold night alongside a cliff. Cricket and I each ate a few willow twigs. The night was of refined clearness, and from time to time I moved away from the pungent camp-fire smoke to look at the myriads of stars that pierced with icy points the purple sky. [Illustration: LOOKING EASTWARD FROM LIZARD HEAD] The clear morning brought no solution of my problem of getting Cricket through. I could not abandon her. While she was trying to find something to eat, I made my way up a side gulch, endeavoring to find a way for her to the summit. From the top we could get down beyond the slide blockade. After a time a way was found that was impossible for her at only one point. This point was a narrow gulch in the summit. I climbed along a narrow ledge, swept bare by the slide, then turned into a rocky gulch which came in from the side. I was within fifteen feet of success. But this was the width of a rocky gulch. Beyond this it would be comparatively easy to descend on the other side of the slide wreckage and land in the road to Telluride. But how was Cricket to get to the other side of this gorge? Along the right I made my way through great piles of fallen fire-killed timber. In places this wreckage lay several logs deep. I thought to find a way through the four or five hundred feet of timber-wreckage. Careful examination showed that with much lifting and numerous detours there was a way through this except at four places, at which the logs that blocked the way were so heavy that they could not be moved. Without tools the only way to attack this confusion of log-masses was with fire. In a short time the first of these piles was ablaze. As I stepped back to rub my smoke-filled eyes, a neigh came echoing to me from the side cañon below. Cricket had become lonesome and was trying to follow me. Reared in the mountains, she was accustomed to making her way through extremely rugged places, over rocks and fallen trees. Going to the rim of the cañon, I looked down upon her. There she stood on a smoothly glaciated point, a splendid statue of alertness. When I called to her she responded with a whinny and at once started to climb up toward me. Coaching her up the steep places and along narrow ledges, I got her at last to the burning log obstruction. Here several minutes of wrestling with burning log-ends opened a way for her. The two or three other masses were more formidable than the first one. The logs were so large that a day or more of burning and heavy lifting would be required to break through them. More than two days and nights of hard work had been passed without food, and I must hold out until a way could be fought through these other heavy timber-heaps. Cricket, apparently not caring to be left behind again, came close to me and eagerly watched my every move. To hasten the fire, armfuls of small limbs were gathered for it. As limbs were plentiful on the other side of the gorge, I went across on a large fallen log for a supply, shuffling the snow off with my feet as I crossed. To my astonishment Cricket came trotting across the slippery log after me! She had been raised with fallen timber and had walked logs before. As she cleared the edge, I threw my arms around her neck and leaped upon her back. Without saddle, bridle, or guiding, she took me merrily down the mountain-side into the wagon-road beyond the snow-slide blockade. At midnight we were in Telluride. The Grizzly Bear The Grizzly Bear One day in North Park, Colorado, I came on the carcass of a cow that wolves had recently killed. Knowing that bears were about, I climbed into the substantial top of a stocky pine near by, hoping that one would come to feast. A grizzly came at sundown. The carcass lay in a grassy opening surrounded by willow-clumps, grassy spaces, and a sprinkling of low-growing, round-topped pines. When about one hundred feet from the carcass, the bear stopped. Standing erect, with his fore paws hanging loosely, he looked, listened, and carefully examined the air with his nose. As the air was not stirring, I felt that he had not, and probably would not, scent me in the treetop perch. After scouting for a minute or two with all his keen senses, he dropped on all fours and slowly, without a sound, advanced toward the carcass. He circled as he advanced; and, when within thirty feet of the waiting feast, he redoubled his precautions against surprise and ambush. My scent by the carcass probably had nothing to do with these precautions. A grizzly is ever on guard and in places of possible ambush is extremely cautious. He is not a coward; but he does not propose to blunder into trouble. Slipping cautiously to the edge of a thick willow-clump, he suddenly flung himself into it with a fearful roar, then instantly leaped out on the other side. Evidently he planned to start something if there was anything to start. Standing fully erect, tense at every point, he waited a moment in ferocious attitude, ready to charge anything that might plunge from the willows; but nothing started. After a brief pause he charged, roaring, through another willow-clump. It was a satisfaction to know that the tree-limb on which I sat was substantial. That a grizzly bear cannot climb a tree is a fact in natural history which gave me immense satisfaction. Every willow-clump near the carcass was charged, with a roar. Not finding an enemy, he at last went to the carcass. After feasting for a few minutes he rose and snarled. Then, sniffing along my trail a few yards, he stopped to mutter a few growling threats and returned to the feast. After eating contentedly and to his satisfaction, he moved round the carcass, raking and scraping grass and trash on it. Then, pausing for a minute or two in apparently peaceful contemplation, he doubled back on the trail over which he had come and faded into the twilight. Alertness and brain-power are characteristics of the grizzly bear. He is eternally vigilant. He has the genius for taking pains. He is watchful even in seclusion; and when he is traveling his amazingly developed senses appear never to rest, but are constantly on scout and sentinel duty,--except on rare occasions when he is temporarily hypnotized by curiosity. I believe his intelligence to be greater than that of the dog, the horse, or the elephant. Apparently he assumes that some one is ever stealthily in pursuit. In repeatedly following the grizzly with photographic intentions I was almost invariably outwitted. On one occasion I followed one almost constantly for eight days and nights; and though many times I almost had him, yet I never succeeded. Now and then he climbed a rocky crag to look about; or he doubled back a short distance on his trail to some point of vantage, where he rose on his hind legs, sniffed the air, looked and listened. At other times he turned at right angles to his general course, went a short distance to a point favorable for seeing, hearing, or smelling his possible pursuer, and there remained for a few minutes. If all seemed well, he commonly returned to his trail and again went forward. Usually he traveled in the face of the wind; commonly he promptly changed his course if the wind changed. In crossing a grassy opening in the woods he sometimes went boldly across; but on the farther side, concealed by the trees, he waited to see whether a pursuer appeared across the opening. Sometimes he went round an opening to the right or to the left. Apparently there lay a plan behind his every move. The third day he was well started diagonally down the wall of a cañon. I naturally concluded that he would on this course descend to the bottom and there continue down-stream. Instead of doing this, he stopped at a point about midway down for a long stay. Then from this place he pointed his nose up-stream and descended diagonally to the bottom of the cañon. At the bottom he again made an acute angle to ascend to the top of the opposite wall. The last three days of this pursuit he knew that I was following him, but there seemed to be no change in his tactics. He simply moved a little more rapidly. Though well acquainted with grizzly habits, I was unable to anticipate his next important move, and he defeated every plan I put into operation. For several years an outlaw or cattle-killing grizzly terrorized an extensive cattle-grazing section in the mountains of Utah. For months at a stretch he killed a cow or steer at least every other day. He would make a kill one day and on the next would appear across the mountains, forty or more miles away. Organized expeditions, made up of from thirty to fifty men, with packs of dogs, pursued him day and night for a week or longer; but each time he escaped. Large rewards were offered for his capture. Old trappers and hunters came from afar, but after weeks of trial gave up the pursuit. The grizzly has a well-developed bump of curiosity. This sometimes betrays him into forgetfulness. On a few occasions I have come on one--and twice one unwittingly came close to me--while he was intent on solving something that had awakened that curiosity. Once, while watching a forest fire, I climbed a mountain to a point above the tree-line in order to reach a safe and commanding spot from which to view the flames on a near-by slope. At the summit I came upon a grizzly within a few yards of me. He was squatting on his haunches like a dog, and was intently watching the fire-fount below. A deep roar at one place, high-leaping flames at another, a vast smoke-cloud at another,--each in turn caught his attention. None of his keen senses warned him of my presence, though I stood near him for two or three minutes. When I yelled at him he slowly turned his head and stared at me in a half-dazed manner. Then he angrily showed his teeth for a second or two, and finally--much to my relief--fled like a frightened rabbit. On another occasion I saw a grizzly on the opposite side of a narrow cañon, with his fore paws on a boulder, watching with the greatest interest the actions of a fisherman on the bank of the stream below. Every cast of the fly was followed by the head of the bear. The pulling-up of a trout caused him almost excited interest. For some minutes he concentrated all his faculties on the fisherman; but suddenly, with no apparent reason that I could discern, he came to his senses and broke away in a most frightened manner, apparently condemning himself for briefly relapsing into dullness. Two pet grizzlies that I raised always showed marked curiosity. An unusual sound near by or a glimpse of some distant object brought them to tiptoe height, roused their complete attention, and held it until the mystery was solved. The grizzly is not ferocious. On the contrary, he uses his wits to keep far away from man. He will not make a wanton attack. He will fight in self-defense; or if surprised, and thinking himself cornered, he at once becomes the aggressor. If a mother grizzly feels that her cubs are in danger, she will face any danger for their defense; but the grizzly does not fight unless he thinks a fight cannot be avoided. He is a masterful fighter. He has strength, endurance, powerful jaws, deadly claws, courage, and brains. Before the white man and the repeating rifle came, he boldly wandered over his domain as absolute master; there was nothing to fear,--not a single aggressive foe existed. I doubt whether toward man the grizzly was ever ferociously aggressive. That he has changed on account of contact with the white man and the repeating rifle there can be no doubt. Formerly the rightful monarch of the wilds through capability, he roamed freely about, indifferent as to where he went or whether he was seen. He feared no foe and knew no master. The bow and arrow, and the spear, he held in contempt; for the powerful repeating rifle he has a profound respect. He has been wise to adjust himself to this influential factor of environment or evolutionary force. He has thus become less inquisitive and aggressive, and more retiring and wary. He has learned to keep out of sight and out of man's way. A grizzly acts so promptly in emergencies that he has often been misunderstood. He fights because he thinks he has to, not because he wants to. On one occasion in Wyoming I was running down a mountain-side, leaping fallen fire-killed timber. In the midst of this I surprised a grizzly by landing within a few feet of him. He leaped to his feet and struck at me with sufficient force to have almost cut me in two had the blow landed. Then he instantly fled. On other occasions I have seen grizzlies surprised, when, though not cornered, they thought they were and instantly commenced a fierce and effective fight. Dogs, horses, and men were charged in rapid succession and either knocked down or put to flight; yet in these fights he was not the aggressor. He does not belong to the criminal class. Almost every one is interested in bears; children, the tenderfeet, and Westerners are always glad to have a good bear story. Countless thousands of bear stories have been written,--and generally written by people unacquainted with the character of grizzly bears. Most of these stories are founded on one or another of three fundamental errors. One of these is that the grizzly has a bad temper,--"as cross as a bear" is an exceedingly common expression; another is that bears are ferocious, watchful, and aggressive, always ready to make an attack or to do wanton killing; and the third is that it is almost impossible to kill him. After a desperate fight--in the story--the grizzly at last succumbs, but not, as a rule, until his body is numerously perforated or changed into a lead mine. As a matter of fact, a shot in the brain, in the upper part of the heart, or properly placed in the spine instantly ends the life of a grizzly. Most hunters when facing a grizzly do not shoot accurately. One day I saw three men fire from twelve to sixteen shots at a small grizzly bear on a mountain-side only a short distance away. That evening these men sincerely asserted that he must have weighed at least a ton--when he probably did not weigh more than five hundred pounds--and that though they shot him full of lead, he refused to die. I doubt whether a single one of their shots hit the grizzly. Most of the shots went wild, and some of them hit a rocky cliff about two hundred yards distant and fifty or sixty feet higher than the bear. At another time I saw a hunter kill four huge grizzly bears with just four successive shots. Of course he knew the vital point at which to aim, was a good shot, and had perfect self-control during the few seconds of shooting. As a rule, the grizzly does not kill cattle or big game. There were buffalo-killing grizzlies, and an occasional one now kills cattle. These killers commonly slay right and left, often killing a dozen head in a short time, but they do not often kill big game. I have a number of times seen elk, deer, and mountain sheep feeding near a grizzly without showing the slightest concern. The grizzly is an omnivorous feeder. He will eat anything that is edible,--fresh meat or carrion, bark, grass, grasshoppers, ants, fruit, grubs, and leaves. He is fond of honey and with it will consume rotten wood, trash, and bees,--stings and all. He is a destroyer of many pests that afflict man, and in the realm of economic biology should be rated high for work in this connection. I doubt whether any dozen cats, hawks, or owls annually catch as many mice as he. But in some localities the grizzly is almost a vegetarian. In western Montana and in the southern Selkirks of Canada he lives almost exclusively on plants and plant-roots, together with berries and bark. All grizzlies are fond of fish and in some sections they become successful fishermen. Sometimes they capture fish by wading along a brook, and catching, with claws or teeth, the fish that conceal themselves beneath banks or roots. Commonly the bear makes a stand in driftwood on a bank, or on a log that has fallen into or across a stream. From this stand he knocks fish entirely out of the water with a lightning-like stroke of his paw. The bears that range along the water-sheds of the Columbia and its tributaries feed largely on fish, mostly salmon. I saw a grizzly make a stand in the ripple of an Idaho stream, where he was partly concealed by a willow-clump. In about half an hour he knocked five large salmon out of the water. With a single stroke of his fore paw each fish was flung on the shore, fifteen or twenty feet away. He made only one miss. These salmon weighed between five and twenty pounds each. One autumn day, along the timber-line in the Rocky Mountains, wild folk were feeding on the last of the season's berries. Birds were present in such numbers that it appeared like a cosmopolitan bird picnic. There were flocks of grouse and robins, numerous jays and camp-birds; and noisiest and liveliest of all were the Clarke crows. I watched the scene from the top of a tall spruce. This annual autumn feast is common to both bears and birds. In this region, and in the heights above, the bears sometimes fatten themselves before retiring for their long winter's sleep. While I was up in the tree, out of the woods below a mother grizzly and her two cubs ambled into an opening and made their way slowly up the slope toward me. Mother Grizzly stopped near my tree to dig out some mice. Just after this operation she evidently caught a faint scent of me and instantly stood on tiptoe, all concentration. Motionless as a statue, she looked, listened, and gathered information with her nostrils; but just one whiff of danger was all that came to her through the calm air. Presently she relaxed and stood for a moment on all fours before moving on. One of the cubs concluded to suckle. Either this violated an ancient grizzly custom or else it was something that in the face of danger was too thoughtless to be excused; at all events the mother knocked the cub headlong with a side swing of her left fore paw. He landed heavily some yards away and tumbled heels over head. The instant he rolled on his feet he sniffed the earth eagerly, as though a remarkable discovery had been made; and immediately he started to dig rapidly with his fore paws, as if some good thing were buried just beneath. He may have been only pretending, however. Without uncovering a thing, he presently raced forward to overtake Mother Grizzly. The hibernating habits of the grizzly are not completely understood. The custom probably originated, as did the hibernation of other animals, from the scarcity of food. In a long acquaintance with the grizzly my study of his hibernation has brought scanty returns, though all that I have actually seen has been of the greatest interest. The grizzly hibernates each winter,--"dens up" from three to four months. The length of time is determined apparently by latitude and altitude, by the snow-fall, weather conditions,--whether severe or mild,--and the length of the winter; and perhaps, also, by the peculiarities or the condition of the individual animal. Commonly he hibernates in high altitudes, many going to sleep near or above the timber-line. The place where he hibernates preferably is a natural cave or a large opening beneath rocks. If completely sheltered in a cave, he is commonly satisfied to lie on bare rocks, with nothing over him. In other places, where the snow might come in contact with him, he commonly crawls beneath a huge pile of trash, leaves, sticks, and roots. Snow had drifted deeply over each hibernating-place I have found. That his winter-sleep is more or less restless is shown in the spring by his hairless hips and sides, the hair having been worn off during the winter. This probably is due to frequent turnings from side to side. He is generally fat when he turns in for his winter's sleep; but usually he does not eat anything for a few days before going in. On the few occasions on which I was able to keep track of a bear for several days before he went to sleep he did not eat a single thing during the four or five days that immediately preceded retiring. I have examined a number of grizzlies that were killed while hibernating, and in every instance the stomach and intestines were entirely empty and clean. These facts lead me to think that bears do not eat just before hibernating. Nor do they at once eat heartily on emerging. The instances in which I was able to watch them for the first few days after they emerged from winter quarters showed each time almost a fast. Those observed ate only a few ounces of food during the four or five days immediately after emerging. Each drank a little water. The first thing each ate was a few willow-twigs. Apparently they do not eat heartily until a number of days elapse. On one occasion I carefully watched a grizzly for six days after he emerged from his hibernating-cave. His winter quarters were at timber-line on Battle Mountain, at an altitude of nearly twelve thousand feet. The winter had been of average temperature but scanty snow-fall. I saw him, by chance, just as he was emerging. It was the first day of March. I watched him with a field-glass. He walked about aimlessly for an hour or more, then returned to his sleeping-place without eating or drinking anything. The following morning he came forth and wandered about until afternoon; then he broke his fast with a mouthful of willow-twigs. Soon after eating these he took a drink of water. After this he walked leisurely about until nearly sundown, then made himself a nest at the foot of a cliff in the woods. Here he remained until late the following afternoon, apparently sleeping. Just before sundown he walked out a short distance, smelled of a number of things, licked the snow a few times, and then returned to his nest. The next morning he went early for a drink of water and ate more willow-twigs. In the afternoon of this day he came on a dead bird,--apparently a junco,--which he ate. Another drink, and he lay down at the foot of a tree for the night. The next morning he drank freely of water, surprised a rabbit, which he entirely devoured, and then lay down and probably slept until noon the following day. On this day he found a dead grouse, and toward evening he caught another rabbit. The following day he started off with more spirit than on any of the preceding ones. Evidently he was hungry, and he covered more distance that day than in all those preceding. He caught another rabbit, apparently picked up three or four dead birds, and captured a mouse or two. Grizzlies are born about midwinter, while the mother is in the hibernating-cave. The number at birth is commonly two, though sometimes there is only one, and occasionally there are as many as four. The period between births is usually two years. Generally the young bears run with their mother a year and sleep in the cave with her the winter after their birth. At the time of birth the grizzly is a small, blind, almost hairless, ugly little fellow, about the size of a chipmunk. Rarely does he weigh more than one pound! During the first two months he grows but little. When the mother emerges from the cave the cubs are often no larger than cottontail rabbits; but from the time of emergence their appetites increase and their development is very rapid. They are exceedingly bright and playful youngsters. I have never seen a collie that learned so easily or took training so readily as grizzly bear cubs. My experience, however, is confined to five cubs. The loyalty of a dog to his master is in every respect equaled by the loyalty of a grizzly cub to his master. A grizzly, young or old, is an exceedingly sensitive animal. He is what may be called high-strung. He does unto you as you do unto him. If you are invariably kind, gentle, and playful, he always responds in the same manner; but tease him, and he resents it. Punish him or treat him unfairly, and he will become permanently cross and even cruel. Grizzly bears show great variations in color. Two grizzlies of a like shade are not common, unless they are aged ones that have become grizzled and whitish. Among their colors are almost jet black, dark brown, buff, cinnamon, gray, whitish, cream, and golden yellow. I have no way of accounting for the irregularity of color. This variation commonly shows in the same litter of cubs; in fact it is the exception and not the rule for cubs of the same litter to be of one color. In the Bitter Root Mountains, Montana, I saw four cubs and their mother all five of which were of different colors. The color of the grizzly has been and still is the source of much confusion among hunters and others who think all grizzlies are grayish. Other names besides grizzly are frequently used in descriptions of this animal. Such names as silver-tip, baldface, cinnamon, and range bear are quite common. Within the bounds of the United States there are just two kinds of bears,--the grizzly and the black; these, of course, show a number of local variations, and five subspecies, or races, of the grizzly are recognized. Formerly he ranged over all the western part of North America. The great Alaskan bears are closely allied to the grizzly, but the grizzly that is found in the United States is smaller than most people imagine. Though a few have been killed that weighed a thousand pounds or a trifle more, the majority of grizzlies weigh less than seven hundred pounds. Most of the grizzly's movements appear lumbering and awkward; but, despite appearances, the grizzly is a swift runner. He is agile, strikes like lightning with his fore paws, and, when fighting in close quarters, is anything but slow. The life of a grizzly appears to be from fifteen to forty years. In only a few localities is there any close season to protect him. Outside the National Parks and a few game preserves he is without refuge from the hunter throughout the year. It is not surprising that over the greater portion of his old territory he rarely is seen. He is, indeed, rapidly verging on extermination. The lion and the tiger are often rapacious, cruel, sneaking, bloodthirsty, and cowardly, and it may be better for other wild folk if they are exterminated; but the grizzly deserves a better fate. He is an animal of high type; and for strength, mentality, alertness, prowess, superiority, and sheer force of character he is the king of the wilderness. It is unfortunate that the Fates have conspired to end the reign of this royal monarch. How dull will be the forest primeval without the grizzly bear! Much of the spell of the wilderness will be gone. Bringing Back the Forest Bringing back the Forest During the last fifty years repeated fires have swept through Western forests and destroyed vast quantities of timber. As a result of these fires, most species of trees in the West have lost large areas of their territory. There is one species of tree, however, that has, by the very means of these fires, enormously extended its holdings and gained much of the area lost by the others. This species is the lodge-pole pine. My introduction to this intrepid tree took place in the mountains of Colorado. One day, while watching a forest fire, I paused in the midst of the new desolation to watch the behavior of the flames. Only a few hours before, the fire had stripped and killed the half-blackened trees around me. All the twigs were burned off the tree beneath which I stood, but the larger limbs remained; and to each of these a score or more of blackened cones stuck closely. Knowing but little of trees and being interested in the fire, I paid no attention to these cones until a number of thin, brownish bits, like insects' wings, came fluttering and eddying easily down from the treetop. The ashes and the earth around me were still warm, and the air was misty with smoke. Near by, a tall snag and some fallen logs smoked and blazed by turns. Again, a number of these tissue bits came fluttering and whirling lightly down out of the fire-killed treetop. Watching carefully, I saw brown tissue bits, one after another, silently climb out of a blackened cone and make a merry one-winged flight for the earth. An examination of these brown bits showed that they were the fertile seeds of the lodge-pole pine. With heroic and inspiring pioneer spirit, this indomitable tree was sowing seeds, beginning the work of reconstruction while its fire-ruined empire still smoked. It is the first tree to be up and doing after destructive flames sweep by. Hoarded seeds by the million are often set free by fire, and most of these reach the earth within a few hours or a few days after the fiery whirlwind has passed by. Being winged and exceedingly light, thousands are sometimes blown for miles. It would thus appear that the millions of lodge-pole seeds released by fire begin under most favorable conditions. Falling as they do, upon earth cleaned for their reception, there is little or no competition and but few enemies. The fire has banished most of the injurious animals, consumed competitors and their seeds, and prepared an ashen, mineralized seed-bed; not a leaf shades it, and altogether it is an ideal place for the lodge-pole seed and seedlings. It seems extraordinary that fire, the archenemy of the lodge-pole pine, should so largely contribute to the forest extension of this tree. It is not only one of the most inflammable of trees but it is easily killed by fire. Despite these weaknesses, such are the remarkable characteristics of this species that an increase in the number of forest fires in the West will enable this tree to extend its holdings; on the other hand, a complete cessation of fires would, in time, almost eliminate it from the forest! The lodge-pole pine (_Pinus contorta_, var. _Murrayana_) lives an adventurous frontier life, and of the six hundred kinds of North American trees no other has so many pioneer characteristics. This species strikingly exhibits some of the necessary requisites in trees that extend or maintain the forest-frontier. The characteristics which so largely contribute to its success and enable it to succeed through the agency of fire are its seed-hoarding habit and the ability of its seedling to thrive best in recently fire-cleaned earth, in the full glare of the sun. Most coniferous seedlings cannot stand full sunlight, but must have either completely or partly shaded places for the first few years of their lives. Trees grow from seed, sprouts, or cuttings. Hence, in order to grow or to bring back a forest, it is necessary to get seeds, sprouts, or cuttings upon the ground. The pitch pine of New Jersey and the redwood of California, whether felled by fire or by axe, will sprout from root or stump. So, too, will the aspen, chestnut, cherry, cottonwood, elm, most of the oaks, and many other kinds of trees. The extensive areas in New Brunswick and Maine that were cleared by the fires of 1825 were in large part at once regrown with aspen, most of which sprouted from the roots of burned aspens. Willow is easily propagated from a short section of the root, trunk, or limb. These sections may be broken from the tree by accident, be carried miles down-stream, lodge on shore or shoal, and there take root and grow. Beaver dams made of willow poles are commonly overgrown in a short time with willow. Several years ago a tornado wrecked hundreds of willows along a Kansas stream. Each willow was broken into scores of pieces, which were carried and dropped along the track of the tornado. Countless numbers of them were stuck into the earth. Several thousand willow trees were thus successfully planted by this violent wind. Seeds are the chief means by which the forest is extended or produced. They are sown by wind and gravity, by water, by birds and beasts. I have dwelt at length upon the romance of seed-scattering in "The Spell of the Rockies," in the chapter concerning "The Fate of a Tree Seed." Each species of tree has its own way of scattering its seeds. Once upon the earth, they and the seedlings that may spring from them have peculiar limitations and special advantages. In some cases--as, for instance, with most willows and poplars--these seeds must in an extremely short time find a place and germinate or they perish; the seeds of few trees will stand exposure for two years and still be fertile. It is only a question of a few years until seeds are carried to every treeless locality. They may journey down-stream or across lakes on a log, fly with birds across mountain-ranges, ride by easy stages clinging to the fur of animals, or be blown in storms across deserts; but these adventurous seeds may find grass in possession of the locality and so thickly sodded that for a century or longer they may try in vain to establish a forest. Commonly wind-blown seeds are first upon the ground and the most numerous. Though it is of advantage to be the first upon the ground, it is of immense importance that the seed which falls in an opening produce a seedling which thrives in the sun-glare,--which grows without shade. The seedlings of our great oaks and most strong and long-lived trees cannot thrive unless shielded from the sun, sheltered from the wind, and protected from the sudden temperature-changes which so often afflict openings. While these maintain the forest areas, they extend it but little. Only a small number of trees have the peculiar frontier characteristics. Young trees which cannot live in the sun are called tolerant,--they tolerate shade and need it. Species which conquer sunny territory are called intolerant,--they cannot stand shade and need sunlight. It will thus be seen that the acquirement of treeless territory by any species of tree demands not only that the tree get its seeds upon the earth in that territory, but also that the seeds, once there, have the ability to survive in the sunlight and endure the sudden changes of the shelterless opening. Most species of oaks, elms, firs, and spruces require shade during their first few years, and though they steadfastly defend possessions, they can do but little toward winning new territory. On the other hand, aspens, willows, gray birch, cottonwood, old-field pine, and lodge-pole pine produce seedlings that glory in the sunlight and seek to gain more territory,--to push forward the forest-frontier. Again and again the forest has been swept away by fire; but again and again a few aggressive species have retaken speedily the lost territory. In this pioneer reclamation the aspen and the lodge-pole are leaders. The aspen follows the water-courses, running along the muddy places, while the lodge-pole occupies the dry and rocky slope of the burned area. Seen from a distance the aspen groves suggest bright ribbons and pockets on the sombre cloak with which lodge-pole drapes the mountain. And even beneath the trees the contrast between the methods of these two agents of reforestation is marked. The lodge-pole pine is all for business. Its forest floor is swept clean and remains uncarpeted. The aspen groves, on the other hand, seem like the haunts of little women. Here the floor has a carpet of grass gay with columbines, sweet peas, and wild roses. While the aspens and the lodge-poles are still young they begin to shelter the less hardy coniferous seedlings. But sooner or later both the aspens and the lodge-poles themselves are smothered by their nurslings. They then surrender their areas to forest trees that will live to be many times their age. But that species which is preëminently successful in bringing back the forest to a burned-over area is the lodge-pole pine. It produces seeds each year and commonly hoards them for many years. Its seeds are light, winged, and easily carried by the wind. As they are frequently released by fire, they are sown at the most opportune time, scattered in profusion, and, in windy weather, transported long distances. Commonly lodge-pole pine holds on to, or hoards, a percentage of the seeds it bears; that is to say, these seeds remain in the cone, and the cone remains on the tree. In some situations it begins to bear at eight years of age, and in most localities by the time it is twelve. Year after year the cones, with their fertile seeds safely enclosed, are borne and cling to the tree. Some of these cones remain unopened from three to nine years. A small percentage of them do not open and distribute their seeds until they have been on the tree from twelve to twenty years, and many of the cones cling to the tree through life. Under favorable conditions the lodge-pole is a rapidly growing conifer. In a forty-five-year growth near my home, the varied light and soil conditions were so spotted that in a small area marked differences in growth were shown. A few clusters were vigorous, and the trees showed an average diameter of six inches and a height of thirty-four feet. From this the size dropped, and in one group the individuals were less than one inch in diameter and scarcely tall enough to be used as a cane; yet all were forty-five years old. The lodge-pole is not long-lived. The oldest one I ever measured grew upon the slope of Long's Peak. It was three hundred and forty-six years of age, measured twenty-nine inches in diameter, and stood eighty-four feet high. A study of its annual rings showed that at the age of two hundred it was only eleven inches in diameter, with a height of sixty-nine feet. Evidently it had lived two centuries in an overcrowded district. The soil and moisture conditions were good, and apparently in its two hundred and second year a forest fire brought it advantages by sweeping away its crowding, retarding competitors. Its annual ring two hundred and two bore a big fire-scar, and after this age it grew with a marked increase of rapidity over the rate of previous years. A mature lodge-pole of average size and age measures about eighteen inches in diameter and stands sixty feet high, with an age of between one hundred and twenty-five and one hundred and seventy-five years. The clinging habit of the cones of the lodge-pole pine in rare cases causes numbers of them to be caught by the expanding tissues, held, and finally overgrown and completely buried up in the tree like a knot. Commonly the first crop of cones is the one caught. These are usually stuck a few inches apart in two vertical opposite rows along the slender trunk. Each knob-like cone is held closely against the trunk by a short, strong stem. I have a ten-foot plank from the heart of a large tree which shows twenty-eight imbedded cones. The biography of this tree, which its scroll of annual rings pictured in the abstract, is of interest. The imbedded cones grew upon the sapling before it was thirty years old and when it was less than twenty-five feet high. They appeared upon the slender trunk before it was an inch in diameter. Twenty-six annual wood-rings formed around them and covered them from sight as completely as the seeds the cone-scales clasped and concealed. The year of this completed covering, as the annual rings showed, was 1790. Then the tree was sixty-six years of age; it came into existence in 1724, and apparently, from the forest-history of the place, in the pathway of a fire. This lodge-pole lived on through one hundred and eighty-two years. In the spring of 1906 a woodsman cut it down. A few weeks later two-inch planks were sliced from the log of this tree in a sawmill. The fourth cut split the pith of the tree, and the startled sawyer beheld a number of imbedded cones stuck along and around the pith, the heart of this aged pine. These cones and the numerous seeds which they contained were approximately one hundred and fifty years old. I planted two dozen of the seeds, and three of these were fertile and sprouted. [Illustration: OVERGROWN CONES IN THE HEART OF A LODGE-POLE PINE (Showing also the cones as borne on the twigs and an early stage of the overgrowing process)] Old trees may carry hundreds or even thousands of seed-filled cones. Once I counted 14,137 of these on the arms of one veteran lodge-pole. If we allow but twenty seeds to the cone, this tree alone held a good seed-reserve. Commonly a forest fire does not consume the tree it kills. With a lodge-pole it usually burns off the twigs and the foliage, leaving many of the cones unconsumed. The cones are excellent fire-resisters, and their seeds usually escape injury, even though the cones be charred. The heat, however, melts the resinous sealing-wax that holds the cone-scales closed. I have known the heat of a forest fire to be so intense as to break the seals on cones that were more than one hundred feet beyond the side line of the fire. In most cases the seedlings spring up on a burned-over area the year following the fire. Often they stand as thickly as grain in the field. Under favorable conditions as many as one hundred and fifty thousand will appear upon an acre, and a stand of fifty thousand to the acre is not uncommon. Starting in a close, even growth, they usually suppress for years all other species of trees and most other plants. Their growth is mostly upward--about the only direction possible for expansion--with moderate rapidity. In a few years they are tall but exceedingly slender, and they become poles in from twenty-five to fifty years. The trappers named this tree lodge-pole because of its common use by the Indians for lodge, or tepee, poles. In overcrowded stands, especially those in which groups or individual trees have slight advantages over their neighbors, a heavy percentage of the growth may die annually for the want of nutrition. If equal opportunities prevail in a crowded tract, all will grow slowly until some have an advantage; these will then grow more rapidly, and shade and suppress neighboring competitors. The lodge-pole does good work in developing places that are inhospitable to other and longer-lived trees, but it gives way after preparing for the coming and the triumph of other species. By the time lodge-poles are sixty years of age their self-thinning has made openings in their crowded ranks. In these openings the shade-enduring seedlings of other species make a start. Years go by, and these seedlings become great trees that overtop the circle of lodge-poles around them. From this time forward the lodge-pole is suppressed, and ultimately its fire-acquired territory is completely surrendered to other species. It holds fire-gained areas from seventy-five to one hundred and fifty years. It is often supplanted by Douglas or Engelmann spruce. Let fire sweep these, and back comes the lodge-pole pine. Though it distances all competitors in taking possession of fire-cleared territory, it is less successful than its fellows in entering a territory already occupied by other trees or by grass, because its seedlings cannot endure shade, and its seeds will not germinate or take root except they be brought directly into contact with clean mineral soil. The lodge-pole, therefore, needs the assistance of fire both to acquire and to hold territory. Increase the number of forest fires, and the lodge-pole extends its holdings; if we could stop fires altogether, the lodge-pole would become almost extinct. The lodge-pole has an astonishing altitudinal as well as latitudinal range. Scattered pretty well over the mountain region of the western United States, thence northward along the coast over much of the head-waters of the Yukon in Alaska, it occupies an enormous area. Over this it adapts itself with marked success to a variety of soil, moisture, and climatic conditions, and covers ragged tracts from warm sea-beaches to dry, cold mountain slopes eleven thousand feet above the sea. In many places it surrenders the traditional pole form of its race and wins success by becoming thick-barked, stocky, and limb-covered from top to bottom. Mountain Parks Mountain Parks The grassy park openings within the mountain forests are among the great charms of the outdoor world. These are as varied in their forms as clouds, delightfully irregular of outline. Their ragged-edged border of forest, with its grassy bays and peninsulas of trees, is a delight. Numbers are bordered by a lake or a crag, and many are crossed by brooks and decorated with scattered trees and tree-clumps. Others extend across swelling moraines. All are formed on Nature's free and flowing lines, have the charms of the irregular, and are model parks which many landscape gardeners have tried in vain to imitate. They vary in size from a mere grass-plot to a wide prairie within the forest. "Park" is the name given to most of these openings, be they large or small. There are many of these scattered through the Rocky Mountains. North, South, and Middle Parks of Colorado are among the largest. These larger ones are simply meadows on a magnificent scale. Each is an extensive prairie of irregular outline surrounded by high forest-draped mountains with snowy peaks,--an inter-mountain plain broken by grassy hills and forested ridges. Here a mountain peninsula thrusts out into the lowland, and there a grassy bay extends a few miles back into the forested mountains. Samuel Bowles, in the "Springfield Republican," gave the following description of Middle Park while it was still primeval: "Above us the mountain peaks go up sharp with snow and rock, and shut in our view; but below and beyond through wide and thick forests lies Middle Park, a varied picture of plain and hill, with snowy peaks beyond and around.... It offers as much of varied and sublime beauty in mountain scenery as any so comparatively easy a trip within our experience possibly can.... A short ride brought us into miles of clear prairie, with grass one to two feet high, and hearty streams struggling to be first into the Pacific Ocean. This was the Middle Park, and we had a long twenty-five miles ride northerly through it that day. It was not monotonous by any means. Frequent ranges of hills break the prairie; the latter changes from rich bottom lands with heavy grass, to light, cold gravelly uplands, thin with bunch grass and sage brush; sluggish streams and quick streams alternate; belts of hardy pines and tender-looking aspens (cottonwood) lie along the crests or sides of the hills; farther away are higher hills fully wooded, and still beyond the range that bounds the Park and circles it with eternal snows." [Illustration: A MOUNTAIN PARK IN THE SAN JUAN MOUNTAINS] During one of his early exploring expeditions, John C. Frémont visited North Park and wrote of it as follows: "The valley narrowed as we ascended and presently degenerated into a gorge, through which the river passed as through a gate--a beautiful circular valley of thirty miles in diameter, walled in all around with snowy mountains, rich with water and with grass, fringed with pine on the mountain sides below the snow line and a paradise to all grazing animals. We continued our way among the waters of the park over the foothills of the bordering mountains." Hayden Valley in the Yellowstone National Park is another large grassy opening in a mountain forest. This valley apparently was once a vast arm of Yellowstone Lake. Estes Park, in Colorado, is one of the most attractive as well as the best known of the mountain parks. Although much smaller than Middle or South Park, it is much larger than hundreds of the other beautiful mountain parks. The Estes Park region embraces about one hundred square miles, though only one third of this is open. The approximate altitude of the ragged lowland park is a trifle less than eight thousand feet. This is entirely surrounded by high mountains which uphold a number of rocky, snowy peaks. In 1875 Dr. F. V. Hayden, father of the Yellowstone Park, wrote of this region: "Within the district treated we will scarcely be able to find a region so favorably distinguished as that presented by Estes Park. Not only has nature amply supplied this valley with features of rare beauty and surroundings of admirable grandeur, but it has thus distributed them that the eye of an artist may rest with perfect satisfaction on the complete picture presented." Erosion and glacial action have given this region its form, while fire made the beautiful opening or park within a forest. The majority of parks or meadow gardens which decorate the forests of the Rocky Mountains probably owe their existence to fire. Trees and grass are endlessly contending for the possession of the earth. In this incessant silent struggle a sweeping fire is generally of advantage to the grass. Trees suffer more from fire than does grass. It is probable that repeated fires enable the grass to hold the plains and prairies against the encroachments of the trees. Each forest fire commonly gives the grass possession of a part of the area formerly dominated by the forest. Usually both grass and trees are prompt to seize any fire-cleared area. The grass may be first to come, or some space may be wet or in some other way unfavorable to tree seed but encouraging to grass seed. While forest fires bring many of these parks, others are glacier meadows, lake-basins which time has filled with sediment and sodded with grass. Many are due to the presence of water, either outspreading surface water or an excess of underground water just beneath the surface,--to streams visible or invisible. A few result from boggy places which result from impaired drainage caused by landslips or fallen trees. Thousands were made by beaver dams,--are old beaver ponds that filled with sediment and then grassed over. Most parks that owe their origin to forest fires have charcoal beneath the surface. A little digging commonly reveals charred logs or roots. Occasionally, too, a blackened tree-snag stands suggestively in these treeless gardens. In the competition for this territory, in which grass, spruces, aspens, and kinnikinick compete, grass was successful. Just what conditions may have been favorable to grass cannot be told, though probably one point was the abundance of moisture. Possibly the fire destroyed all near-by seed trees, or trees not destroyed may not have borne seed until the year following the fire. Anyway, grass often seizes and covers fire-cleared areas so thickly and so continuously with sod that tree seeds find no opening, and grass thus holds possession for decades, and, in favorable places, possibly for a century. Trees grow up around these areas and in due time the grassy park is surrounded by a forest. The trees along the edge of this park extend long limbs out into it. These limbs shade and kill the grass beneath. Tree seeds sprout where the grass is killed, and these seedlings in turn produce trees with long limbs reaching into the park. These shade and smother more grass and thus advance the forest another limb's length. Slowly but surely the park is diminished. Struggling trees may sometimes obtain a place in advance of the others or a start in the centre of the park, and thus hasten the death of the park and speed the triumph of the trees. A mere incident may shorten the life of a park. A grizzly bear that I followed one day, paused on a dry point in a park to dig out some mice. In reaching these he discovered a chipmunk burrow. By the time he had secured all these he had torn up several square yards of sod. In this fresh earth the surrounding trees sowed triumphant seeds, from which a cluster of spruces expanded and went out to meet the surrounding advancing forest. Fighting deer sometimes cut the sod and thus allow a few tree seeds to assert themselves. Wind may blow down a tall tree which lands in the edge of the park. Along its full length grows a line of invading forest. Occasionally the earth piled out by a gopher, or by a coyote in digging out a gopher, offers an opportunity that is seized by a tree seed. An ant-hill in a meadow may afford a footing for invading tree seeds. On one occasion a cliff tumbled and a huge rock-fragment bounded far into the sloping meadow. Trees sprang up in each place where the rock tore the sod and also around where it came to rest in the grass. These breaks in the sod made by animals or other agencies do not always give triumph to the trees. Seedlings may eagerly start in these openings, but, being isolated, they are in greater danger, perhaps, than seedlings in the forest. Rabbits may nibble them, woodchucks devour, or insects overrun them. The surrounding grass may smother them and reclaim the temporarily lost opening. But, though only one tree may grow, this in due time shades the grass, a circle of young trees rise around it, and these in turn carry forward the work of winning territory. At last the park is overgrown with trees! Glacier meadows may be seen in all stages of evolution. The lake-basin gouged by a glacier goes through many changes before it is covered by a forest and forgotten. No sooner does ice vanish and a glacier lake appear than its filling-in is commenced. Landslips and snow-slides thrust boulders and cliff-fragments into it; running water is constantly depositing sand and sediment upon its bottom. Sedge and moss commence covering its surface as soon as its water becomes shallow. In due time it becomes a bog with a thick covering like a wet mattress, composed of the matted roots of sedge and grass. Over this, wind and water deposit earthy matter, but centuries may pass before the bog is filled in sufficiently to have a dry surface and produce grass and flowers and finally trees. Once while strolling through a forested flat in central Colorado, I concluded from the topography of the country that it must formerly have been a glacier lake. I procured tools and sank a shaft into the earth between the spruces. At a depth of two feet was a gravelly soil-deposit, and beneath this a matting of willow roots and sedge roots and stalks. These rested in a kind of turf at water-level, beneath which were boulders, while under these was bed-rock. Numerous romantic changes time had made here. Many of these meadows are as level as the surface of a lake. Commonly the surface is comparatively smooth, even though one edge may be higher than the other. I measured one meadow that was three thousand feet long by two hundred and fifty feet wide. Tree-ranks of the surrounding forest crowded to its very edge. On the north the country extended away only a foot or two higher than meadow-level. On the south a mountain rose steeply, and this surface of the meadow was four feet higher than the one opposite. The up-the-mountain end was about three feet higher than the end which had been the old outlet of the lake. The steep south shore had sent down more material than the level one on the north. In fact, water-level on the north shore, though concealed by grass, was almost precisely the same as when the waters of the lake shone from shore to shore. In one corner of the meadow was an aspen grove. From the mountain-side above, a landslide had come down. Rains had eroded this area to bed-rock and had torn out a gully that was several feet wide on the slope below. This washed material was spread out in a delta-like deposit on the surface of the meadow. Aspens took possession of this delta. Glacier meadows are usually longer-lived than other mountain parks. In favorable places they sometimes endure for centuries. Commonly they are slowly replaced by the extending forest. The peaty, turfy growth which covers them is of fine matted roots, almost free of earthy or mineral matter, and often is a saturated mattress several feet in thickness. The water-level is usually at the surface, but during an extremely dry time it may sink several inches or even a few feet. If fires run during a dry period of this kind, the fire will burn to water-level. The ashes of this fire, together with the mineral matter which it concentrates, commonly form a soil-bed which promptly produces trees. Sometimes, however, grass returns. Thus, while fire brings forth many meadows in the forest, it sometimes is the end of one evolved from glacial action. A landslip often plunges a peninsula of soil out upon a glacial meadow. This is usually captured by trees in a year or two. These parks make ideal camping-places,--wild, beautiful, and alluring in every season. I have enjoyed them when they were white with snow, mysterious with cloud and mist, romantic with moonlight, and knee-deep in the floral wealth of June. Often I have burst out upon a sunny meadow hidden away in the solitude of the forest. As it lies silent in the sunshine, butterflies with beautifully colored wings circle lightly above its brilliant masses of flowers. Here bears prowl, deer feed, and birds assemble in such numbers that the park appears to be their social centre. In these wild gardens the matchless solitaire is found. Often he sings from the top of a spruce and accompanies his song by darting off or upward on happy wings, returning and darting again, singing all the time as if enchanted. Among the hundreds of these happy resting-grounds in which I have camped, one in the San Juan Mountains has left me the most memories. I came there one evening during a severe gale. The wind roared and thundered as impressively as breakers on a rock-bound shore. By midnight the storm ceased, and the tall trees stood as quietly as if content to rest after their vigorous exercise in the friendly wrestling-match with the wind. The spruces had become towering folded flags of fluffy black. After the gale the sky was luminous with crowding stars. I lingered in the centre of the opening to watch them. The heavens appeared to be made of many star-filled skies, one behind the other. The farthest one was very remote, while the closest seemed strangely near me, just above the tops of the trees. Many times I have come out of the subdued light of the pathless forest to enjoy these sunny openings. Often I have stood within them watching the butterflies circling in the sun or a deer and her fawns feeding quietly across, and, as I looked, I have listened to the scolding of the squirrel and the mellow ringing of the woodpecker far away in the forest. Here I have watched the coming storm, have enjoyed its presence, and in its breaking have seen the brilliant bow rest its foundations in front of the trees just across the meadow. Sometimes the moon showed its soft bow in the edge of the advancing or the breaking storm. One evening, before the moon looked into this fairy garden, I watched a dance of crowding fireflies. They were as thick as snowflakes, but all vanished when the moonlight turned the park into fairyland. Rare shadow etchings the tall, short-armed spruces made, as they lay in light along the eastern border of this moon-filled park. A blue tower of shadow stretched from a lone spruce in the open to the forest wall beyond. As the moon rose higher, one of the dead trees in the edge of the forest appeared to rise out of the darkness and stand to watch or to serve. Then another rose, and presently two appeared side by side and edged into the light. They might have been conversing. As the night advanced, the shadow of the spruces shortened as their shadow points moved round to the north. As the moon sank behind a mountain, the dead trees settled back into the darkness, and, just before light left the park, the two broken trees moved behind a shadow and vanished. They were scarcely out of sight when the weird cries of a fox sounded from the farther edge of the woods. [Illustration: CAPITOL PEAK AND SNOW MASS MOUNTAIN FROM GALENA PARK] Those who believe in fairies will receive the most from Nature. The unfenced wilderness is full of wild folk, full of fairy gardens and homes. With these a careless prowler is rarely welcome. Wasps and bees early gave me sharp hints on blundering, hurried intrusion, and a mother grizzly with two cubs by her side also impressed me concerning this matter. Birds sometimes made me ashamed for breaking in upon them. I did no shooting, carried only a kodak, and was careful to avoid rushing from one place to another; but refined wilderness etiquette was yet to be learned. Usually I felt welcome in the most secluded place, but one day, having wandered out into the corner of the meadow, I felt that I was not only an uninvited guest, but a most unwelcome intruder. The meadow was a deeply secluded one, such as the fairies would naturally reserve for themselves. Towering spruces shut it out from the world. A summer play was surely in progress when I blundered upon the scene. With my intrusion everything stopped abruptly. Each flower paused in the midst of its part, the music of the thrush broke off, the tall spruces scowled stiffly, and the slender, observant young trees stood unwillingly still. Plainly all were annoyed at my presence, and all were waiting impatiently for me to be gone. As I retreated into the woods, a breeze whispered and the spruces made stately movements. The flowers in the meadow resumed their dance, the aspen leaves their merry accompaniment, the young trees their graceful swaying and bowing, and the fairies and bees became as happy as before. A camp-fire anywhere in the wilderness appeals strongly to the imagination. To me it was most captivating in a little mountain meadow. Even in a circle of friends it may shut out all else, and with it one may return through "yesterday's seven thousand years." But to be completely under its spell one must be alone with its changing flame. Although I have watched the camp-fire all alone in many scenes,--in the wilderness, at the shore of the sea, at timber-line, and on the desert in the shadow of the prehistoric cactus,--nowhere has my imagination been more deeply stirred than it was one night by my camp-fire in a little mountain meadow. Around were the silent ranks of trees. Here the world was new and the fire blazed in primeval scenes. Its strange dance of lights and shadows against the trees rebuilt for me the past. Once more I felt the hopes and dreads of savage life. Once more I knew the legends that were told when the first camp-fire burned. Drought in Beaver World Drought in Beaver World Not until one year of drought did I realize how dependent the beaver is upon a constant water-supply that is both fresh and ample. A number of beaver colonies close to my cabin were badly afflicted by this dry period. I was already making special studies of beaver ways among the forty-odd beaver colonies that were within a few miles of my mountain home, and toward the close of this droughty summer I made frequent rounds among the beaver. By the middle of September I confined these attentions to five of the colonies that were most affected by low water. Two were close to each other, but upon separate brooks. The other three were upon one tumbling streamlet. Autumn is the busiest time of the year in beaver world. Harvest is then gathered, the dam is repaired, sometimes the pond is partly dredged, and the house is made ready for winter,--all before the pond freezes over. But drought had so afflicted these colonies that in only one had any of the harvest been gathered. This one I called the Cascade Colony. It was the uppermost of the three that were dependent upon this one stream. Among the five colonies that I observed that autumn, this one had the most desperate and tragic experience. Toward the close of September the colonists in each of the five colonies gave most of their attention to the condition of their dam. Every leak was stopped, and its water face was given a thick covering of mud, most of which was dredged from the bottom of the pond. The beaver is intimately associated with water. He is not a landsman, and only necessity will cause him to go far from the water. The water in a main beaver pond is usually three or more feet deep, a depth needed all the year around. Where nature has provided a place of this kind that is close to his food-supply, the beaver uses it; he will not trouble to build a dam and form a pond of deep water unless this is necessary. But deep water he must have; to him it is a daily necessity in getting a living, moving about the easiest way, and protecting his life. Early in October the first colony below the Cascade had to leave the old home because of the scarcity of water. There were seven or eight of them, and all went down-stream and joined another colony. From what I know of the two colonies I judge that this was probably a case of the old folks being forced to take refuge with their fortunate children. Apparently they were welcome. A few days later the lowest of the three colonies on the Cascade streamlet was also abandoned. Two days before leaving home the beaver had commenced to harvest aspen for winter food. A few aspens were standing partly cut; a number untrimmed were lying where they fell; several had been dragged into the pond. But suddenly the beaver deserted the place. The fifteen or sixteen in this colony went down-stream and took possession of an old and abandoned house and pond. They hastily repaired the dam and the house, and they had only just begun to gather supplies for the winter when the pond froze over. In the bottom of the pond, below the ice, there may have been an abundance of the tuberous growths of the pond-lily or a supply of intruding willow roots; both of these the beaver often dig out even while the pond is frozen over. These beaver in this old pond may have pieced out their scanty food-supply with these roots and endured until springtime; but I fear that at best they had a close squeak. One brook went dry and the beaver folk on it moved up-stream. They left the dam well repaired, a new house, and a pile of green aspen cuttings in the pond. They were ready for winter when the water-failure forced them to find a new home. They scooped out a small basin by a spring in the top of a moraine, used the material for a dam, and into the pond thus formed dragged a few aspens and willows. A winter den was dug in the bank. The colonists at the other low-water place abandoned their home and moved three miles down-stream. The tracks in the mud, a few bits of fur, told too well a story of a tragedy during this enforced journey. While traveling along the almost dry bed of the stream and at a point where the water was too shallow to allow them to dive and escape, two, and probably three, of their number were captured by coyotes. The survivors found a deep hole in a large channel, and here they hurriedly accumulated a scanty supply of green aspen. As winter came on, they dug a burrow in the bank. This had a passageway which opened into the water about two feet below the surface and close to their food-supply. The Cascade colonists held on for the winter. Their pond was deep, and their careful repair of the dam had enabled them to retain water to the very top of it. However, beaver cannot long endure water that is stagnant. This is especially true in winter-time. A beaver house is almost without ventilation, but its entrance ways are full of water; the fresh water of the pond appears to absorb impurities from the air of the house. Apparently stagnant water will not do this. Then, too, a stagnant pond freezes much more rapidly than the waters of a pond that are constantly stirred and aerated by the inflow of fresh water. The Cascade colonists entered the winter with an abundant food-supply that was stored close to the house. The pond was full of water, but it was becoming stagnant. The drought continued and no snow fell. This was another disadvantage to the colony. If a pond is thickly blanketed with snow, it does not freeze so deeply nor so rapidly as when its surface is bare. By the middle of October the pond was solidly frozen. Drought and continued cold weather came and stayed. Christmas week not a drop of water was flowing from the pond and apparently none was flowing into it. The ice was clear, and, the day I called, there appeared to be digging going on in the pond beneath the ice; close to the dam the water was so roily that I could not see into it. On the first of February I sounded the ice in a number of places. It seemed to be frozen solidly to the bottom. This pond was circular in outline, and the house stood near the centre in about three feet of water. I climbed up on the house and stood there for some time. Commonly in the winter an inhabited beaver house gives a scent to the small amount of air that escapes from the top, and this tells of the presence of the living beaver inside. But I was unable to detect the slightest beaver scent in the air. Apparently the water in the pond was frozen from top to bottom; probably all the beaver had perished, unless they had managed to dig out, as they sometimes do, by tunneling beneath the dam into the brook-channel below. Many old beaver ponds have a subway in the mud of the bottom. One opening is close to the entrance of the house; the other at a point on shore a few feet or several yards beyond the edge of the pond. This offers a means of escape from the pond in case it is frozen to the bottom or if it be drained. A careful search failed to reveal any tunnel, new or old, through which these beaver might have escaped. I determined to know their fate and went to my cabin for an axe and a shovel. A hole was cut in the ice midway between the beaver house and the food-pile,--a pile of green aspen cuttings about twelve feet away from the house. The pond was solidly frozen to the bottom, and the beaver had all been caught. The entrances to their house were full of ice. One beaver was found at the food-pile, where he apparently had been gnawing off a bark-covered stick. One was dead between the food-pile and the house. The others were dead by the entrance of an incomplete tunnel beneath the dam, which they apparently had been digging as a means of escape when death overtook them. One had died while gnawing at the ice-filled entrance of the house. Inside of the house were the bodies of two very old beaver and four young ones, frozen solid. The death of these little people, one and all, in their home under the ice, may have come from suffocation, from cold, from starvation, or from a combination of all these; I do not know. But my observations made it clear that the drought was at the bottom of it all. In the Winter Snows In the Winter Snows For years I wondered how big game managed to live through the hard winters. How did they obtain food while the snows lay deep? Two winters of snowshoeing through the Rocky Mountains as Snow Observer often brought me in contact with wild game. These wanderings, together with numerous winter camping-excursions through the woods in other scenes, gave me many a glimpse of the winter manners and customs of big wild folk. One autumn a heavy snow-storm caught me in the mountains of Colorado without snowshoes. In getting out of this I found it easier to wade down a shallow unfrozen stream than to wallow through deep snow. Presently I came upon a herd of deer who were also avoiding the deep snow by using a water-way. They were traveling along in the river and occasionally paused to feed off the banks. Out all floundered into the snow to let me pass. They reëntered the water before I was out of sight. A few days later I returned on snowshoes to see how they were faring. Deep snow had not seriously concerned them. They were in a snow-less place near the river. During the storm an accumulation of sludgy, floating snow had formed a temporary dam in the stream, which raised the water and flooded a near-by flat. Presently the dam went out, and the water ran off; but the water carried with it some of the snow, and it had dissolved much of the remainder. In this cleared place the deer were feeding and loitering. Wild life easily stands an ordinary storm and usually manages to survive even a deep, long-lying snow. The ability of big game to endure storms must in part be due to their acquaintance with every opportunity afforded by the restricted district in which they live. Big wild folk do not range afar nor at random, nor do they drift about like gypsies. Most animals range in a small locality,--spend their lives in a comparatively small territory. They are familiar with a small district and thus are able to use it at all times to the best advantage. They know where to find the earliest grass; where flies are least troublesome; the route over which to retreat in case of attack; and where is the best shelter from the storm. [Illustration: A DEER IN DEEP SNOW, ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK] With the coming of a snow-storm big game commonly move to the most sheltered spot in their district. This may or may not be close to a food-supply. A usual place of refuge is in a cover or sheltered spot on a sunny southern slope,--a place, too, in which the snow will first melt. Immediately after a storm there may often be found a motley collection of local wild folk in a place of this kind. Bunched, the big game hope and wait. Unless the snow is extremely deep they become restless and begin to scatter after two or three days. There are a number of places in each locality which may offer temporary, or even permanent, relief to snow-hampered game. These are open streams, flood-cleared flats, open spots around springs, wind-cleared places, and openings, large and small, made by snow-slides. During long-lying deep snows the big game generally use every local spot or opening of vantage. In many regions a fall of snow is followed by days of fair weather. During these days most of the snow melts; often the earth is almost free of one snow before another fall comes. In places of this kind the game have periods of ease. But in vast territories the snow comes, deepens, and lies deep over the earth for weeks. To endure long-lying deep snows requires special habits or methods. The yarding habit, more or less intensely developed, is common with sheep, elk, deer, and moose of all snowy lands. The careful yarding habit of the moose is an excellent method of triumphing over deep snow. In early winter, or with the deepening snow, a moose family proceed to a locality where food is abundant; here they restrict themselves to a small stamping-ground,--one of a stone's throw or a few hundred feet radius. Constant tramping and feeding in this limited area compacts the snow in spaces and in all the trails so that the animals walk on top of it. Each additional snow is in turn trampled to sustaining compactness. At first the low-growing herbage is eaten; but when this is buried, and the animals are raised up by added snow, they feed upon shrubs; then on the willow or the birch tops, and sometimes on limbs well up in the trees, which the platform of deeply accumulated snow enables them to reach. Commonly moose stay all winter in one yard. Sometimes the giving-out of the food-supply may drive them forth. Then they try to reach another yard. But deep snow or wolves may overcome one or all on the way. During one snowshoe trip through western Colorado I visited seven deer-yards. One of these had been attacked by wolves but probably without result. Apparently five of the others had not as yet been visited by deadly enemies. The seventh and most interesting yard was situated in a deep gorge amid rugged mountains. It was long and narrow, and in it the deer had fed upon withered grass, plant stalks, and willow twigs. All around the undrifted snow lay deep. The limbless bases of the spruces were set deep in snow, and their lower limbs were pulled down and tangled in it. These trees had the appearance of having been pushed part way up through the snow. In places the cliffs showed their bare brown sides. Entire spruce groves had been tilted to sharp angles by the slipping and dragging snow weight on steep places; among them were tall spruces that appeared like great feathered arrows that had been shot into snowy steeps. The leafless aspens attractively displayed their white and greenish-white skin on limbs that were held just above the snow. With a curve, the yard shaped itself to the buried stream. It lay between forested and moderately steep mountains that rose high. In this primeval winter scene the deer had faced the slow-going snow in the primitive way. At the upper end of the yard all the snow was trampled to compactness, and over this animals could walk without sinking in. Firm, too, were the surfaces of the much looped and oft trodden trails. The trail nearest to the stream passed beneath a number of beautiful snow-piled arches. These arches were formed of outreaching and interlacing arms of parallel growths of willow and birch clusters. The stream gurgled beneath its storm window of rough ice. I rounded the yard and at the lower end I found the carcasses of the entire herd of deer,--nine in all,--evidently recently killed by a mountain lion. He had eaten but little of their flesh. Wolves had not yet discovered this feast, but a number of Rocky Mountain jays were there. The dark spruces stood waiting! No air stirred. Bright sunlight and bluish pine shadows rested upon the glazed whiteness of the snow. The flock of cheerful chickadees feeding through the trees knew no tragedy. The winter food of big game consists of dead grass, shrubs, twigs, buds and bark of trees, moss, and dry plants. At times grass dries or cures before the frost comes. When thus cured it retains much nutrition,--is, in fact, unraked hay. If blighted by frost it loses its flavor and most of its food value. During summer both elk and deer range high on the mountains. With the coming of winter they descend to the foothill region, where the elk collect in large herds, living in yards in case of prolonged deep snow. Deer roam in small herds. Occasionally a herd of the older elk will for weeks live in the comparatively deep snow on northern slopes,--slopes where the snow crusts least. Here they browse off alder and even aspen bark. The present congestion of elk in Jackson Hole represents an abnormal condition brought about by man. The winter feed on which they formerly lived is devoured by sheep or cattle during the summer; a part of their former winter range is mowed for hay; they are hampered by fences. As a result of these conditions many suffer and not a few starve. Wolves are now afflicting both wild and tame herds in Jackson Hole. Apparently the wolves, which formerly were unknown here in winter, have been drawn thither by the food-supply which weak or dead elk afford. The regular winter home of wild sheep is among the peaks above the limits of tree growth. Unlike elk and deer, the mountain sheep is found in the heights the year round. He may, both in winter and summer, make excursions into the lowlands, but during snowy times he clings to the heights. Here he usually finds a tableland or a ridge that has been freed of snow by the winds. In these snow-free places he can feed and loiter and sometimes look down on unfortunate snow-bound deer and elk. The bunching habit of big game during periods of extreme cold or deep snow probably confers many benefits. It discourages the attacks of carnivorous enemies, and usually renders such attacks ineffective. Crowding also gives the greatest warmth with the least burning of fat fuel. The conservation of energy by storm-bound animals is of the utmost importance. Cold and snow make complicated endurance tests; the animals must with such handicaps withstand enemies and sometimes live for days with but little or nothing to eat. Big game, on occasions, suffer bitterly through a combination of misfortunes. Something may prevent a herd reaching its best shelter, and it must then endure the storm in poor quarters; pursuit may scatter and leave each one stranded alone in a bad place; in such case each will suffer from lonesomeness, even though it endure the cold and defy enemies. Most animals, even those that are normally solitary, appear to want society during emergencies. A deep snow is sometimes followed by a brief thaw, then by days of extreme cold. The snow crusts, making it almost impossible for big game to move, but encouragingly easy for wolves to travel and to attack. Of course, long periods separate these extremely deadly combinations. Probably the ordinary loss of big game from wolves and mountain lions is less than is imagined. Some years ago an old Ute Indian told me that during a winter of his boyhood the snow for weeks lay "four ponies deep" over the Rocky Mountains, and that "most elk die, many ponies die, wolves die, and Indian nearly die too." A "Great Snow" of this kind is terrible for wild folk. Snow and cold sometimes combine to do their worst. The snow covers everything deeply; then follows an unbroken period of extreme cold; the Ice King is again enthroned; the snow fiendishly refuses to melt, and lies for weeks; the endurance of most wild folk becomes exhausted, and birds, herds, and wolves perish. Similar calamities used occasionally to afflict our primitive ancestors. Over the vast Northwest a feature of the climate is the winter-annihilating Chinook wind. This occasionally saves the people of the wilds when other relief is impossible. The snowy earth is quickly transformed by this warm, dry wind. In a few hours conditions become summer-like. Fortunately, the Chinook often follows a blizzard. Many a time at the eleventh hour it has dramatically saved the waiting, suffering birds and rescued the snow-buried and starving folk of the wilds. The beaver and the bear are often benefited by the deep snows which afflict their wild neighbors. During the prolonged hibernating sleep, the bear does not eat, but he commonly needs a thick snowy blanket to keep him comfortable. The beaver has his winter stores on the bottom of the pond beneath the ice. These he reaches from his house by swimming beneath the ice from the house to the food-pile. If the ice is not covered by snow, it may, during a cold winter, freeze thickly, even to the bottom, and thus cause a starving time in the beaver colony. Deep snow appears not to trouble the "stupidest animal in the woods," the porcupine. A deeper snow is for him a higher platform from which the bark on the tree may be devoured. Rabbits, too, appear to fare well during deep snow. This uplift allows them a long feast among the crowded, bud-fruited bush-tops at which they have so often looked in vain. The chipmunk is not concerned with groundhog day. Last summer he filled his underground granaries with nuts and seeds, and subways connect his underground winter quarters with these stores. But heavy snows, with their excess of water, flood him out of winter quarters in spring earlier than he planned. One March at the close of a wet snow-fall I went out into a near-by pine grove to see the squirrels. One descended from a high hole to the snow and without trouble located and bored down through the snow to his cone-deposit. With difficulty he climbed up through the heavy snow with a cone. He did not enjoy floundering through the clinging snow to the tree-trunk. But at last up he started with a snow-laden cone, in search of a dry seat on which to eat. After climbing a few feet he tumbled back into the unpleasant snow. In some manner the wet snow on the tree-trunk had caused his downfall. With temper peppery he gathered himself up, and for a moment glared at me as though about to blame me for his troubles. Then, muttering, he climbed up the tree. Sometimes the chipmunk, and the squirrel also, indulge in hibernating periods of sleep despite their ample stores of convenient food. The ptarmigan is preëminently the bird of the snows; it is the Eskimo of the bird world. It resides in the land realm of the Farthest North and also throughout the West upon high mountain-tops. In the heights it lives above the limits of tree growth, close to snow-drifts that never melt, and in places above the altitude of twelve thousand feet. It is a permanent resident of the heights, and apparently only starvation will drive it to the lowlands. Its winter food consists of seeds of alpine plants and the buds of dwarf arctic willow. This willow is matted, dwarfed, and low-growing. When drifted over, the ptarmigan burrow into the snow and find shelter beneath its flattened growth. Here they are in reach of willow buds. Buds are freely eaten by many kinds of birds; they are the staff of life of the ptarmigan and often of the grouse. They are sought by rabbits and go in with the browse eaten by big game. Buds of trees and shrubs are a kind of fruit, a concentrated food, much of the nature of nuts or tubers. The cheerful water-ouzel, even during the winter, obtains much of its food from the bottom of brooks and lakes. The ouzel spends many winter nights in nooks and niches in the bank between the ice and the water. This is a strange place, though one comparatively safe and sheltered. In getting into the water beneath the ice, the ouzel commonly finds opportunity at the outlet or the inlet of the lake; sometimes through an opening maintained by spring water. There are usually many entrances into the waters of a frozen brook,--openings by cascades and the holes that commonly remain in the ice over swift waters. Excessive snow or extreme cold may close all entrances and thus exclude the ouzel from both food and water. Down the mountain or southward the ouzel then goes. Woodpeckers and chickadees fare well despite any combination of extreme cold or deep snow. For the most part their food is the larvæ or the eggs that are deposited here and there in the tree by hundreds of kinds of insects and parasites which afflict trees. Nothing except a heavy sleet appears to make these food-deposits inaccessible. Most birds spend the winter months in the South. But bad conditions may cause resident birds and animals to migrate, even in midwinter. Extremely unfavorable winters in British Columbia will cause many birds that regularly winter in that country to travel one or two thousand miles southward into the mountains of Colorado. Among the species which thus modify their habits are the red crossbill, the redpoll, the Lapland longspur, and the snowy owl. After all, there are points in common between the animal life of the wild and the human life of civilization. Man and the wild animals alike find their chief occupation in getting food or in keeping out of danger. Change plays a large part in the life of each, and abnormal conditions affect them both. Let a great snow come in early winter, and both will have trouble, and both for a time may find the struggle for existence severe. The primitive man slaughtered storm-bound animals, but civilized man rescues them. A deep snow offers a good opportunity for more intimate acquaintance with our wild neighbors. And snowy times, too, are good picture-taking periods. In snowy times, if our wild neighbors already respect us, tempting food and encouraging hunger will place big, shy, and awkward country fellows and nervous birds close to the camera and close to our hearts. My Chipmunk Callers My Chipmunk Callers About a score of chipmunks have their homes in my yard. They are delightfully tame and will climb upon my head or shoulder, eat nuts from my hand, or go into my pockets after them. At times three or four make it lively for me. One day I stooped to give one some peanuts. While he was standing erect and taking them from my fingers, a strange dog appeared. At once all the chipmunks in the yard gave a chattering, scolding alarm-cry and retreated to their holes. The one I was feeding dashed up into my coat pocket. Standing up with fore paws on the edge of the pocket, and with head thrust out, he gave the dog a tempestuous scolding. This same chipmunk often played upon the back of Scotch, my collie. Occasionally he stood erect on Scotch to sputter out an alarm-cry and to look around when something aroused his suspicions. Chipmunks are easily tamed and on short acquaintance will come to eat from one's hand. Often they come into my cabin for food or for paper to use for bedding. Occasionally one will sit erect upon my knee or shoulder, sometimes looking off intently into the yard; at other times apparently seeing nothing, but wrapped in meditation. More often, however, they are storing peanuts in their pouches or deliberately eating a kernel. Rarely is the presence of one agreeable to another, and when four or five happen to call at the same time, they sometimes forget their etiquette and I am the centre of a chipmunk scrimmage. Once five callers came, each stringing in behind another. Just as the fifth came in the door, there was a dispute among the others and one started to retreat. Evidently he did not want to go, for he retreated away from the open door. As number two started in pursuit of him, number three gave chase to number two. After them started number four, and the fifth one after all the others. The first one, being closely pressed and not wanting to leave the room, ran round the centre table, and in an instant all five were racing single file round the table. After the first round they became excited and each one went his best. The circle they were following was not large, and the floor was smooth. Presently the rear legs of one skidded comically, then the fore feet of another; and now and then one lost his footing and rolled entirely over, then arose, looking surprised and foolish, but with a leap entered the circle and was again at full speed. [Illustration: ENTERTAINING A CHIPMUNK CALLER] I enjoy having them about, and spend many a happy hour watching them or playing with them. They often make a picnic-ground of my porch, and now and then one lies down to rest upon one of the log seats, where, outstretched, with head up and one fore paw extended leisurely upon the log, he looks like a young lion. Often they climb up and scamper over the roof of my cabin; but most of their time on the roof is spent in dressing their fur or enjoying long, warm sun baths. Frequently they mount the roof early in the morning, even before sunrise. I am sometimes awakened at early dawn by a chipmunk mob that is having a lively time upon the roof. In many things they are persistent. Once I closed the hole that one had made in a place where I did not want it. I filled the hole full of earth. Inside of two hours it was reopened. Then I pounded it full of gravel, but this was dug out. I drove a stake into the hole. A new hole was promptly made alongside the stake. I poured this full of water. Presently out came a wet and angry chipmunk. This daily drowning out by water was continued for more than a week before the chipmunk gave it up and opened a hole about thirty feet distant. For eight years I kept track of a chipmunk by my cabin. She lived in a long, crooked underground hole, or tunnel, which must have had a total length of nearly one hundred feet. It extended in a semicircle and could be entered at three or four places through holes that opened upon the surface. Each of these entrance holes was partly concealed in a clump of grass by a cluster of plants or a shrub. I have many times examined the underground works of the chipmunk. Some of these examinations were made by digging, and others I traced as they were exposed in the making of large irrigation ditches. The earth which is dug from these tunnels is ejected from one or more holes, which are closed when the tunnel is completed. Around the entrance holes there is nothing to indicate or to publish their presence; and often they are well concealed. These tunnels are from forty to one hundred feet long, run from two to four feet beneath the surface, and have two or more entrances. Here and there is a niche or pocket in the side of the tunnel. These niches are from a few inches to a foot in diameter and in height. In one or more of these the chipmunk sleeps, and in others is stored his winter food-supply. He uses one of these pockets for a time as a sleeping-place, then changes to another. This change may enable the chipmunk to hold parasites in check. The fact that he has a number of sleeping-places and also that in summer he frequently changes his bedding, indicates that these efforts in sanitation are essential for avoiding parasites and disease. Commonly the bedding is grass, straw, and leaves; but in my yard the chipmunks eagerly seize upon a piece of paper or a handkerchief. I am compelled to keep my eyes open whenever they come into the cabin, for they do not hesitate to seize upon unanswered letters or incomplete manuscripts. In carrying off paper the chipmunk commonly tears off a huge piece, crumples it into a wad, and, with this sticking from his mouth, hurries away to his bedchamber. It is not uncommon to see half a dozen at once in the yard, each going his own way with his clean bed-linen. Chipmunks take frequent dust and sun baths, but I have never seen one bathe in water. They appear, however, to drink water freely. One will sip water several times daily. In the mountains near me the chipmunks spend from four to seven months of each year underground. I am at an altitude of nine thousand feet. Although during the winter they indulge in long periods of what may be called hibernating sleep, they are awake a part of the time and commonly lay in abundant stores for winter. In the underground granaries of one I once found about a peck and a half of weed seeds. Even during the summer the chipmunk occasionally does not come forth for a day or two. On some of these occasions I have found that they were in a heavy sleep in their beds. These in my yard are fed so freely upon peanuts that they have come to depend upon them for winter supplies. They prefer raw to roasted peanuts. The chipmunk near my cabin sometimes becomes a little particular and will occasionally reject peanuts that are handed to her with the shell on. Commonly, however, she grabs the nut with both fore paws, then, standing erect, rapidly bites away the shell until the nut is reached. This she usually forces into her cheek pocket with both hands. Her cheek pouches hold from twelve to twenty of these. As soon as these are filled she hurries away to deposit her stores in her underground granary. One day she managed to store twenty-two, and her cheek pouches stood out abnormally! With this "swelled" and uncouth head she hurried away to deposit the nuts in her storehouse, but when she reached the hole her cheeks were so distended that she was unable to enter. After trying again and again she began to enlarge the hole. This she presently gave up. Then she rejected about one third of the nuts, entered, and stored the remainder. In a few minutes she was back for more. One day she made eleven round trips in fifty-seven minutes. Early one autumn morning a coyote, in attempting to reach her, dug into her granary and scattered the nuts about. After sending him off I gathered up three quarts of shelled nuts and left about as many more scattered through the earth! Over these the jays and magpies squabbled all day. One day a lady who was unsympathetic with chipmunks was startled by one of the youngsters, who scrambled up her clothes and perched upon her head. Greatly excited, she gave wild screams. The young chipmunk was in turn frightened, and fled in haste. He took consolation with his mother several yards away. She, standing erect, received him literally with open arms. He stood erect with one arm upon her shoulder, while she held one arm around him. They thus stood for some seconds, he screeching a frightened cry, while she, with a subdued muttering, endeavored to quiet him. Once, my old chipmunk, seeing me across the yard, came bounding to me. Forgetting, in her haste, to be vigilant, she ran into a family of weasels, two old and five young ones, who were crossing the yard. Instantly, and with lion-like ferocity, the largest weasel leaped and seized the chipmunk by the throat. With a fiendish jerk of his head the weasel landed the chipmunk across his shoulders and, still holding it by the throat, he forced his way, half swimming, half floundering, through a swift brook which crossed the yard. His entire family followed him. Most savagely did he resent my interference when I compelled him to drop the dead chipmunk. The wise coyote has a peculiar habit each autumn of feasting upon chipmunks. Commonly the chipmunks retire for the winter before the earth is frozen, or before it is frozen deeply. Apparently they at once sink into a hibernating sleep. Each autumn, shortly after the chipmunks retire, the coyotes raid all localities in my neighborhood in which digging is good. Scores of chipmunks are dug out and devoured. Within a quarter of a mile of my cabin one October night forty-two holes were dug. Another night fifty-four holes were dug near by. In a number of these a few scattered drops of blood showed that the coyote had made a capture. In one week within a few miles of my cabin I found several hundred freshly dug holes. Many holes were dug directly down to the granary where the stores were scattered about; and others descended upon the pocket in which the chipmunk was asleep. In a few places the digging followed along the tunnel for several yards, and in others the coyote dug down into the earth and then tunneled along the chipmunk's tunnel for several feet before reaching the little sleeper. So far as I know, each old chipmunk lives by itself. It is, I think, rare for one to enter the underground works of another. Each appears to have a small local range upon the surface, but this range is occasionally invaded by a neighboring chipmunk. This invasion is always resented, and often the invader is angrily ejected by the local claimant of the territory. In my locality the young are born during the first week in June. The five years that I kept track of the mother chipmunk near my cabin, she usually brought the youngsters out into the sunlight about the middle of June. Three of these years there were five youngsters. One year the number was four, and another year it was six. About the middle of July the young were left to fight the battle of life alone. They were left in possession of the underground house in which they were born, and the mother went to another part of the yard, renovated another underground home, and here laid up supplies for the winter. A few days before the mother leaves the youngsters, they run about and find most of their food. One year, a day or two before the one by my cabin bade her children good-bye, she brought them--or, at any rate, the children came with her--to the place where we often distributed peanuts. The youngsters, much lighter in color, and less distinctly marked than the mother, as well as much smaller, were amusingly shy, and they made comic shows in trying to eat peanuts. They could not break through the shell. If offered a shelled nut, they were as likely to bite the end of your finger as the nut. They had not learned which was which. With their baby teeth they could eat but little of the nut, but they had the storing instinct and after a struggle managed to thrust one or two of the nuts into their cheek pockets. The youngsters, on being left to shift for themselves, linger about their old home for a week or longer, then scatter, each apparently going off to make an underground home for himself. The house may be entirely new or it may be an old one renovated. I do not know just when the mother returns to her old home. Possibly the new home is closely connected with the one she has temporarily left, and it may be that during the autumn or the early spring she digs a short tunnel which unites them. The manner of this aside, I can say that each summer the mother that I watched, on retiring from the youngsters, carried supplies into a hole which she had not used before, and the following spring the youngsters came forth from the same hole, and presumably from the same quarters, that the children of preceding years had used. Chipmunks feed upon a variety of plants. The leaves, seeds, and roots are eaten. During bloom time they feast upon wild flowers. Often they make a dainty meal off the blossoms of the fringed blue gentian, the mariposa lily, and the harebell. Commonly, in gathering flowers, the chipmunk stands erect on hind feet, reaches up with one or both hands, bends down the stalk, leisurely eats the blossoms, and then pulls down another. The big chipmunk, however, has some gross food habits. I have seen him eating mice, and he often catches grasshoppers and flies. It is possible that he may rob birds' nests, but this is not common and I have never seen him do so. However, the bluebirds, robins, and red-winged blackbirds near me resent his close approach. A chipmunk which has unwittingly climbed into a tree or traveled into a territory close to the nest of one of these birds receives a beating from the wings of the birds and many stabs from their bills before he can retreat to a peaceful zone. Many times I have seen birds battering him, sometimes repeatedly knocking him heels over head, while he, frightened and chattering, was doing his best to escape. There are five species of chipmunks in Colorado. Two of these are near me,--the big chipmunk and the busy chipmunk. The latter is much smaller, shyer, and more lively than the former and spends a part of its time in the treetops; while the big, although it sometimes climbs, commonly keeps close to the earth. Among their numerous enemies are coyotes, wild-cats, mountain lions, bears, hawks, and owls. They appear to live from six to twelve years. The one near my place I watched for eight years. She probably was one or more years of age when I first saw her. Almost every day in summer a number of children come, some of them for miles, to watch and to feed my chipmunks. The children enjoy this as keenly as I have ever seen them enjoy anything. Surely the kindly sympathies which are thus aroused in the children, and the delightful lesson in natural history which they get, will give a helpful educational stimulus, and may be the beginning of a sympathetic interest in every living thing. A Peak by the Plains A Peak by the Plains Pike's Peak rises boldly from the plains, going steeply up into the sky a vertical mile and a half. There is no middle distance or foreground; no terraced or inclined approach. A spectator may thus stand close to its foot, at an altitude of six thousand feet, and have a commanding view of the eight thousand feet of slopes and terraces which culminate in the summit, 14,110 feet above the sea. Its steep, abrupt ascent makes it imposing and impressive. It fronts the wide plains a vast broken tower. The typical high peak stands with other high peaks in the summit of a mountain-range. Miles of lesser mountains lie between its summit and the lowlands. Foothills rise from the edge of the lowland; above these, broken benches, terrace beyond terrace, each rising higher until the summit rises supreme. With Pike's Peak this typical arrangement is reversed. Pike's Peak probably is the most intimately known high mountain. It has given mountain-top pleasure to more people than any other fourteen thousand foot summit of the earth. One million persons have walked upon its summit, and probably two million others have climbed well up its slopes. Only a few thousand climbers have reached the top of Mont Blanc. Pike's is a peak for the multitude. Climbing it is comparatively easy. It stands in a mild, arid climate, and has scanty snowfall; there are but few precipitous walls, no dangerous ice-fields; and up most of its slopes any one may ramble. One may go up on foot, on horseback, in a carriage, or by railroad, or even by automobile. It is not only easy of ascent, but also easy of access. It is on the edge of the plains, and a number of railroads cross its very foot. This peak affords a unique view,--wide plains to the east, high peaks to the west. Sixty thousand or more square miles are visible from the summit. It towers far above the plains, whose streams, hills, and level spaces stretch away a vast flat picture. To the west it commands a wondrous array of mountain topography,--a two-hundred-mile front of shattered, snow-drifted peaks. [Illustration: PIKE'S PEAK FROM THE TOP OF CASCADE CAÑON] The peak is an enormous broken pyramid, dotted with high-perched lakes, cut with plunging streams, broken by cañons, skirted with torn forests, old and young, and in addition is beautiful with bushes, meadows, and wild flowers. The major part of the peak's primeval forest robe was destroyed by fire a half-century ago. Many ragged, crag-torn areas of the old forest, of a square mile or less, are connected with young growths from thirty to sixty years old. Much of this new growth is aspen. From the tree-studies which I have made, I learn that two forest fires caused most of the destruction. The annual rings in the young growth, together with the rings in the fire-scarred trees which did not perish, indicate that the older and more extensive of these fires wrapped most of the peak in flames and all of it in smoke during the autumn of 1850. The other fire was in 1880. Pike's Peak exhibits a number of scenic attractions and is bordered by other excellent ones. Near are the Royal Gorge, Cripple Creek, and the fossil-beds at Florissant. The Garden of the Gods, Manitou Mineral Springs, Glen Eyrie, Crystal Park, the Cave of the Winds, and Williams, Ruxton, and South Cheyenne Cañons are some of its attractions. The fossil-beds at Florissant are one of the most famous of fossil-deposits. Here was an old Tertiary lake-basin. In the deposit which filled it--a deposit of fine volcanic sand or ash, sediment, and other débris--is a wonderful array of fossilized plants and insects of a past age. All are strangely preserved for us in stone. A part of the lake appears to have been filled by a volcanic catastrophe which overwhelmed animals, plants, and insects. Whole and in fragments, they are lying where they fell. Here have been found upwards of one hundred recognizable plants, eleven vertebrate animals, and a few hundred insects. Among the fossil trees are the narrow-leaf cottonwood, the ginkgo, the magnolia, the incense cedar, and the giant redwood. Water erosion through the ages has cut deeply into these fossil-beds and worn and washed away their treasures. This deposit has been but little studied. But what it has yielded, together with the magnitude of the unexamined remainder, makes one eager concerning the extent and the nature of the treasures which still lie buried in it. Helen Hunt, whose books helped awaken the American people to the injustice done the Indian and to an appreciation of the scenic grandeur of the West, lived for many years at the foot of this peak. Much of her writing was done from commanding points on the peak. She was temporarily buried on Cheyenne Mountain, and on her former grave has accumulated a large cairn of stones, contributed singly by appreciative pilgrims. South Cheyenne Cañon, like Yosemite, gives a large, clear, and pleasing picture to the mind. This is due to the individuality and the artistic grouping of the beauty and grandeur of the cañon. The cañon is so narrow, and its high walls so precipitous, that it could justly be called an enormous cleft. At one point the walls are only forty feet apart; between these a road and a swift, clear stream are crowded. Inside the entrance stand the two "Pillars of Hercules." These magnificent rock domes rise nearly one thousand feet, and their steep, tree-dotted walls are peculiarly pleasing and impressive. Prospect Dome is another striking rock point in this cañon. The cañon ends in a colossal cirque, or amphitheatre, about two hundred and fifty feet deep. Down one side of this a stream makes its seven white zigzag jumps. Pike's Peak wins impressiveness by standing by itself. Cheyenne Cañon is more imposing by being alone,--away from other cañons. This cañon opens upon the plains. It is a cañon that would win attention anywhere, but its situation is a most favorable one. Low altitude and a warm climate welcome trees, grass, bushes, and many kinds of plants and flowers. These cling to every break, spot, ledge, terrace, and niche, and thereby touch and decorate the cañon's grim and towering walls with lovely beauty. Walls, water, and verdure--water in pools and falls, rocks in cliffs, terraces, and domes, grass and flowers on slopes and terraces, trees and groves,--a magnificence of rocks, a richness of verdure, and the charm of running water--all unite in a picturesque association which makes a glorious and pleasing sunken garden. It is probable that Pike's Peak was discovered by Spanish explorers either in 1598 or in 1601. These are the dates of separate exploring expeditions which entered Colorado from the south and marched up the plains in near view of this peak. The discovery is usually accredited, however, to Lieutenant Pike, who caught sight of it on the 15th day of November, 1806. Pike's journal of this date says: "At two o'clock in the afternoon I thought I could distinguish a mountain to our right which appeared like a small blue cloud; viewed it with a spyglass and was still more confirmed in my conjecture.... In half an hour it appeared in full view before us. When our small party arrived on a hill, they with one accord gave three cheers to the Mexican Mountains." It appears not to have been called Pike's Peak until about twenty-five years after Pike first saw it. He spoke of it as the Mexican Mountains and as Great Peak. The first ascent by white men was made July 14, 1819, by members of Lieutenant Long's exploring expedition. For a number of years this peak was called James Peak, in honor of the naturalist in the Long exploring party. Pike's Peak has what Montesquieu calls the "most powerful of all empires, the empire of climate." It stands most of the time in the sun. All over it the miner and the prospector have searched for gold, mutilating it here and there with holes. Fires have scarred the sides, and pasturing has robbed it of flowers and verdure. The reputed discovery of gold at its base started a flood of gold-seekers west with "Pike's Peak or bust" enthusiasm. But the climate and scenery of this peak attract people who come for pleasure and to seek for health. It has thus brought millions of dollars into Colorado, and it will probably continue to attract people who seek pleasure and refreshment and who receive in exchange higher values than they spend. Pike's Peak is a rich asset. The summit of Pike's Peak is an excellent place to study the effect of altitude upon lowland visitors. Individual observations and the special investigations of scientific men show that altitude has been a large, unconscious source of nature-faking. During the summer of 1911 a number of English and American scientists, the "Anglo-American Expedition," spent five weeks on Pike's Peak, making special studies of the effects of altitude. Their investigations explode the theory that altitude is a strain upon the heart, or injurious to the system. These men concluded that the heart is subjected to no greater strain in high altitudes than at sea-level, except under the strain of physical exertion. The blood is richer in high altitudes. For every hundred red corpuscles found at sea-level there are in Colorado Springs, at six thousand feet, one hundred and ten; and on the summit of Pike's Peak, from one hundred and forty to one hundred and fifty-four. "The danger to people suffering from heart trouble coming into high altitudes is grossly exaggerated," says Dr. Edward C. Schneider, one of the Anglo-American expedition. "The rate of circulation is not materially increased. The blood-pressure on the Peak is not increased; it is even lowered. The heart--if a person exercises--may beat a little faster but it does not pump any more blood. The pulse is a little more rapid. If a man suffering from heart trouble rode up the peak on a train, remained in his seat, and did not exert himself physically, his heart would not beat a bit faster at the summit than when he left Manitou. But if he walked about on the summit there would be a change, for the exercise would make the heart work harder." But exercise is not injurious; it is beneficial. As I found in guiding on Long's Peak, the rarefied air of the heights was often stimulating, especially to the tongue. Rarefied air is likened by the scientists to "laughing-gas" and furnishes a plausible explanation of the queerness which characterizes the action of many people on mountain-summits. "We saw many visitors at the summit," said Dr. Schneider in explaining this phase, "who appeared to be intoxicated. But there was no smell of liquor on their breath. They were intoxicated with rarefied atmosphere, not with alcohol. The peculiar effects of laughing-gas and carbon-monoxide gas on people are due to the lack of oxygen in the gas; and the same applies to the air at high altitudes." The summit of Pike's Peak is roomy and comparatively level, and is composed of broken granite, many of the pieces being of large size. A stone house stands upon the top. In this for many years was a government weather-observer. A weather station has just been re-established on its summit. This will be one of a line of high weather stations extending across the continent. This unique station should contribute continuously to the weather news and steadily add to the sum of climatic knowledge. This one peak has on its high and broken slopes a majority of the earth's climatic zones, and a numerous array of the earth's countless kinds of plant and animal life. One may in two hours go from base to summit and pass through as many life zones as though he had traveled northward into the Arctic Circle. Going from base to summit, one would start in the Upper Sonoran Zone, pass through the Transition, Canadian, and Hudsonian Zones, and enter the Arctic-Alpine Zone. The peak has a number of places which exhibit the complexity of climatic zones. In a deep cañon near Minnehaha Falls, two zones may be seen side by side on opposite sides of a deep, narrow cañon. The north side of the cañon, exposed to the sun, has such plants as are found in the Transition Zone, while the cool south side has an Hudsonian flora. Here is almost an actual contact of two zones that outside the mountains are separated by approximately two thousand miles. The varied climate of this peak makes a large appeal to bird-life. Upward of one hundred species are found here. People from every part of the Union are here often startled by the presence of birds which they thought were far away at home. At the base the melodious meadowlark sings; along the streams on the middle slopes lives the contented water-ouzel. Upon the heights are the ptarmigan and the rosy finch. Often the golden eagle casts his shadow upon all these scenes. The robin is here, and also the bluebird, bluer, too, than you have ever seen him. The Western evening grosbeak, a bird with attractive plumage and pleasing manners, often winters here. The brilliant lazuli bunting, the Bullock oriole, the red-shafted flicker, and the dear and dainty goldfinch are present in summer, along with mockingbirds, wrens, tanagers, thrushes, and scores of other visitants. A few migratory species winter about the foot of the peak. In summer they fly to the upper slopes and nest and raise their young in the miniature arctic prairies of the heights. With the coming of autumn all descend by easy stages to the foot. The full distance of this vertical migration could be covered in an hour's flight. Many of the north-and-south-migrating birds travel a thousand times as far as these birds of vertical migration. The big game which formerly ranged this peak included buffalo, deer, elk, mountain sheep, the grizzly, the black bear, the mountain lion, the fox, the coyote, and the wolf. Along the descending streams, through one vertical mile of altitude, were beaver colonies, terrace upon terrace. No one knows how many varieties of wild flowers each year bloom in all the Peak's various ragged zones, but there are probably no fewer than two thousand. Along with these are a number of species of trees. Covering the lower part of the mountain are growths of cottonwood, Douglas spruce, yellow pine, white fir, silver spruce, and the Rocky Mountain birch. Among the flowering plants are the columbine, shooting-star, monkshood, yucca or Spanish bayonet, and iris. Ascending, one finds the wintergreen, a number of varieties of polemonium, the paintbrush, the Northern gentian, the Western yarrow, and the mertensia. At timber-line, at the altitude of about eleven thousand five hundred feet, are Engelmann spruce, arctic willow, mountain birch, foxtail pine, and aspen. At timber-line, too, are the columbine, the paintbrush, and a number of species of phlox. There are no trees in the zone which drapes the uppermost two thousand feet of the summit, but in this are bright flowers,--cushion pinks, the spring beauty, the alpine gentian, the mountain buckwheat, the white and yellow mountain avens, the arctic harebell, the marsh-marigold, the stonecrop, and the forget-me-not. One summer I found a few flowers on the summit. Isolation probably rendered the summit of this peak less favorable for snow-accumulation during the Ice Age than the summits of unisolated peaks of equal altitude. During the last ice epoch, however, it carried glaciers, and some of these extended down the slopes three miles or farther. These degraded the upper slopes, moved this excavated material toward the bottom, and spread it in a number of places. There are five distinct cuplike hollows or depressions in this peak that were gouged by glaciers. The one lying between Cameron's Cone and the summit is known as the "Crater." A part of this is readily seen from Colorado Springs. Far up the slopes are Lake Moraine and Seven Lakes, all of glacial origin. The mountain mass which culminates in Pike's Peak probably originated as a vast uplift. Internal forces appear to have severed this mass from its surroundings and slowly upraised it seven thousand or more feet. The slow uprising probably ended thousands of years ago. Since that time, disintegration, frost, air, and stream erosion have combined to sculpture this great peak. Pike's Peak might well be made a National Park. The Conservation of Scenery The Conservation of Scenery The comparative merits of the Alps and the Rocky Mountains for recreation purposes are frequently discussed. Roosevelt and others have spoken of the Colorado Rockies as "The Nation's Playground." This Colorado region really is one vast natural park. The area of it is three times that of the Alps. The scenery of these Colorado Rocky Mountains, though unlike that of the Alps, is equally attractive and more varied. Being almost free from snow, the entire region is easily enjoyed; a novice may scale the peaks without the ice and snow that hamper and endanger even the expert climbers in the icy Alps. The Alps wear a perpetual ice-cap down to nine thousand feet. The inhabited zone in Colorado is seven thousand feet higher than that zone in Switzerland. At ten thousand feet and even higher, in Colorado, one finds railroads, wagon-roads, and hotels. In Switzerland there are but few hotels above five thousand feet, and most people live below the three-thousand-foot mark. Timber-line in Colorado is five thousand feet farther up the heights than in Switzerland. The Centennial State offers a more numerous and attractive array of wild flowers, birds, animals, and mineral springs than the land of William Tell. The Rocky Mountain sheep is as interesting and audacious as the chamois; the fair phlox dares greater heights than the famed edelweiss. The climate of the Rocky Mountains is more cheerful than that of the Alps; there are more sunny days, and while the skies are as blue as in Switzerland, the air is drier and more energizing. [Illustration: THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE NEAR ESTES PARK] But the attractions in the Alps are being preserved, while the Rocky Mountains are being stripped of their scenery. Yet in the Rocky Mountains there are many areas rich in perishable attractions which might well be reserved as parks so that their natural beauties could be kept unmarred. It is to be hoped that the growing interest in American scenery will bring this about before these wild mountain gardens are shorn of their loveliness.[1] [1] Since this was put into type, the Rocky Mountain National Park, after a campaign of six years, has been established, and campaigns have started to make National Parks of Mount Evans and Pike's Peak. And the Secretary of the Interior has appointed a Superintendent of National Parks and called attention to the great need of legislation for these Parks. The United States is behind most nations in making profitable use of scenery. Alpine scenery annually produces upward of ten thousand dollars to the square mile, while the Rocky Mountains are being despoiled by cattle and sawmills for a few dollars a square mile. Though Switzerland has already accomplished much along scenic conservation lines, it is working for still better results. It is constructing modern hotels throughout the Alps and is exploiting the winter as well as the summer use of these. The Canadian Government has done and is doing extensive development work in its national parks. It is preparing a welcome for multitudes of travelers; travelers are responding in numbers. The unfortunate fact is that our scenery has never had a standing. To date, it has been an outcast. Often lauded as akin to the fine arts, or something sacred, commonly it is destroyed or put to base uses. Parks should no longer be used as pigpens and pastures. These base uses prevent the parks from paying dividends in humanity. There is in this country a splendid array of Nature's masterpieces to lure and reward the traveler. In mountain-peaks there are Grand Teton, Long's Peak, Mt. Whitney, and Mt. Rainier; in cañons, the vast Grand Cañon and the brilliantly colored Yellowstone; in trees, the unrivaled sequoias and many matchless primeval forests; in rivers, few on earth are enriched with scenes equal to those between which rolls the Columbia; in petrified forests, those in Arizona and the Yellowstone are unsurpassed; in natural bridges, those in Utah easily arch above the other great ones of the earth; in desert attractions, Death Valley offers a rare display of colors, strangeness, silences, and mirages; in waterfalls, we have Niagara, Yellowstone, and Yosemite; in glaciers, there are those of the Glacier and Mount Rainier National Parks and of Alaska; in medicinal springs, there is an array of flowing, life-extending fountains; in wild flowers, the mountain wild flowers in the West are lovely with the loveliest anywhere; in wild animals of interest and influence, we have the grizzly bear, the beaver, and the mountain sheep; in bird music, that which is sung by the thrushes, the cañon wren, and the solitaire silences with melodious sweetness the other best bird-songs of the earth. In these varied attractions of our many natural parks we have ample playgrounds for all the world and the opportunity for a travel industry many times as productive as our gold and silver mines--and more lasting, too, than they. When these scenes are ready for the traveler we shall not need to nag Americans to see America first; and Europeans, too, might start a continuous procession to these wonderlands. In the nature of things, the United States should have a travel industry of vast economic importance. The people of the United States are great travelers, and we have numerous and extensive scenic areas of unexcelled attractiveness, together with many of the world's greatest natural wonders and wonderlands which every one wants to see. All these scenes, too, repose in a climate that is hospitable and refreshing. They should attract travelers from abroad as well as our own people. The traveler brings ideas as well as gold. He comes with the ideals of other lands and helps promote international friendship. Then, too, he is an excellent counter-irritant to prevent that self-satisfied attitude, that deadening provincialism, which always seems to afflict successful people. Develop our parks by making them ready for the traveler, and they will become continuously productive, both commercially and spiritually. Our established scenic reservations, or those which may be hereafter set aside, are destined to become the basis of our large scenic industry. The present reservations embrace fourteen National Parks and twenty-eight National Monuments. Each Park and Monument was reserved because of its scenic wonders, to be a recreation place for the people. The name Monument might well be changed to Park. The Monuments were set aside by executive orders of the President; the Parks were created by acts of Congress. Each Park or Monument is a wonderland in itself. All these together contain some of the strangest, sublimest scenes on the globe. Each reservation is different from every other, and in all of them a traveler could spend a lifetime without exhausting their wonders. I suppose that in order to lead Americans to see America first, or to see it at all, and also to win travel from Europe, it is absolutely necessary to get America ready for the traveler. Only a small part of American scenery is ready for the traveler. The traveler's ultimatum contains four main propositions. These are grand scenery, excellent climate, good entertainment, and swift, comfortable transportation. When all of these demands are supplied with a generous horn of plenty, then, but not until then, will multitudes travel in America. Parks now have a large and important place in the general welfare, and the nation that neglects its parks will suffer a general decline. The people of the United States greatly need more parks, and these are needed at once. I do not know of any city that has park room extensive enough to refresh its own inhabitants. Is there a State in the Union that has developed park areas that are large enough for the people of the State? With present development, our National Parks cannot entertain one fifth of the number of Americans who annually go abroad. As a matter of fact, the entertainment facilities in our National Parks are already doing a capacity business. How, then, can our Parks be seen by additional travelers? For a travel industry, the present needs in America are for cities at once to acquire and develop into parks all near-by scenery; for each State to develop its best scenic places as State Parks; and for the nation to make a number of new National Parks and at once make these scenic reservations ready for the traveler. Systems of good roads and trails are necessary. In addition to these, the Parks, Monuments, and Reservations need the whole and special attention of a department of their own. A park requires eternal vigilance. The better half of our scenic attractions are the perishable ones. The forests and the flowers, the birds and the animals, the luxuriant growths in the primeval wild gardens, are the poetry, the inspiration, of outdoors. Without these, how dead and desolate the mountain, the meadow, and the lake! If a park is to be kept permanently productive, its alluring features must be maintained. If the beaver ceases to build his picturesque home, if the deer vanishes, if the mountain sheep no longer poses on the crags, if the columbine no longer opens its "bannered" bosom to the sun, if the solitaire no longer sings,--without these poetic and primeval charms, marred nature will not attract nor refresh. People often feel the call of the wild, and they want the wild world beautiful. They need the temples of the gods, the forest primeval, and the pure and flower-fringed brooks. It would be well to save at once in parks and reservations the better of all remaining unspoiled scenic sections of the country,--the lake-shores and the seashore, the stream-side, the forests primeval, and the Rocky Mountains. There is a great and ragged scenic border of varying width that extends entirely around the United States. This includes the Great Lake region and the splendid Olympic Mountains at the northwest corner of the country. Inside of this border are other localities richly dowered with natural beauty and dowered, too, with hospitable climate. The Rocky Mountain region is one splendid recreation-ground. There are many beauty-spots in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri and Arkansas, and there are scenic regions in New York, Pennsylvania, and western North Carolina, and the State of Idaho embraces many scenic empires. These contain scores of park areas that will early be needed. [Illustration: LONG'S PEAK FROM LOCH VALE] Every park is a place of refuge, a place wherein wild life thrives and multiplies. As hunters are perpetually excluded from all parks, these places will thus become sanctuaries for our vanishing wild life. All wild life quickly loses its fear and allows itself to be readily seen in protected localities. Wild life in parks thus affords enjoyment by being readily seen, and from now on this life will become a factor in education. Children who go into parks will be pleasantly compelled to observe, delightfully incited to think, and will thus become alert and interested,--will have the very foundation of education. Perhaps it is safe to predict that from now on the tendency will be to multiply the number of parks and decrease the number of zoölogical gardens. Scenic places, if used for parks, will pay larger returns than by any other use that can be made of their territory. Parks, then, are not a luxury but a profitable investment. Switzerland is supporting about half of her population through the use of her mountain scenery for recreation purposes. Although parks pay large dividends, they also have a higher, nobler use. They help make better men and women. Outdoor life is educational. It develops the seeing eye, supplies information, gives material for reflection, and compels thinking, which is one of the greatest of accomplishments. Exercise in the pure air of parks means health, which is the greatest of personal resources, and this in turn makes for efficiency, kindness, hopefulness, and high ideals. Recreation in parks tends to prevent wasted life by preventing disease and wrong-doing. The conservation of scenery, the use of scenic places for public recreation parks, is conservation in the highest sense, for parks make the best economic use of the territory and they also pay large dividends in humanity. The travel industry is a large and direct contributor to many industries and their laborers. It helps the railroads, automobile-makers, hotels, guides, and the manufacturers of the clothing, books, souvenirs, and other articles purchased by travelers. Perhaps the farmer is the one most benefited; he furnishes the beef, fruit, butter, chickens, and in fact all the food consumed by the traveling multitude. A large travel industry means enlarging the home market to gigantic proportions. The courts have recently expressed definite and advanced views concerning scenic beauty. In Colorado, where water has a high economic value, a United States Circuit Court recently decided that the beneficial use of a stream was not necessarily an agricultural, industrial, or commercial use, and that, as a part of the scenery, it was being beneficially used for the general welfare. The question was whether the waters of a stream, which in the way of a lakelet and a waterfall were among the attractions of a summer resort, could be diverted to the detriment of the falls and used for power. The judge said "No," because the waters as used, were contributing toward the promotion of the public health, rest, and recreation; and that as an object of beauty--"just to be looked at"--they were not running to waste but were in beneficial use. He held that objects of beauty have an important place in our lives and that these objects should not be destroyed because they are without assessable value. The judge, Robert E. Lewis, said in part:-- "It is a beneficial use to the weary that they, ailing and feeble, can have the wild beauties of Nature placed at their convenient disposal. Is a piece of canvas valuable only for a tentfly, but worthless as a painting? Is a block of stone beneficially used when put into the walls of a dam, and not beneficially used when carved into a piece of statuary? Is the test dollars, or has beauty of scenery, rest, recreation, health and enjoyment something to do with it? Is there no beneficial use except that which is purely commercial?" This decision is epoch-marking. Taken as a whole, our National Parks and Monuments and our unreserved scenic places may be described as an undeveloped scenic resource of enormous potential value. These places should be developed as parks and their resources used exclusively for recreation purposes. Thus used, they would help all interests and reach all people. South America, Switzerland, Canada, and other countries are making intensified and splendid use of their parks by reserving that wild scenic beauty which appeals to all the world. Parks are dedicated to the highest uses. They are worthy of our greatest attentions. It is of utmost importance that the management of Forest Reserves and the National Parks be separate. In 1897 the National Academy of Sciences in submitting a plan for the management of the Forest Reserves recommended that places specially scenic be separated from the Forest Reserves and set aside as Parks and given the separate and special administration which parks need. If scenery is to be saved, it must be saved for its own sake, on its own merits; it cannot be saved as something incidental. Multitudes will annually visit these places, provided they be developed as parks and used for people and for nothing else. Grazing, lumbering, shooting, and other commercial, conflicting, and disfiguring uses should be rigidly prohibited. Scenery, like beauty, has superior merit, and its supreme use is by people for rest and recreation purposes. Switzerland after long experience is establishing National Parks and giving these a separate and distinct management from her forest reserves. For a time Canadian National Parks were managed by the Forest Service. Recently, however, the parks were withdrawn from the Forest Service and placed in a Park Department. This was a most beneficial change. Forestry is commercial, radically utilitarian. The forester is a man with an axe. Trees to the forester mean what cattle do to the butcher. Lumber is his product and to recite "Woodman, Spare that Tree!" to a forester would be like asking the butcher to spare the ox. The forester is a scientific slaughterer of the forest; he must keep trees falling in order to supply lumber. A forester is not concerned with the conservation of scenery. Then, too, a forester builds his roads to facilitate logging and lumbering. The Park man builds roads that are scenic highways, places for people. We need the forest reserve, and we need the National Park. Each of these serves in a distinct way, and it is of utmost importance that each be in charge of its specialist. The forester is always the lumberman, the park man is a practical poet; the forester thinks ever of lumber, the park man always of landscapes. The forester must cut trees before they are over-ripe or his crop will waste, while the park man wants the groves to become aged and picturesque. The forester pastures cattle in his meadows, while the park man has only people and romping children among his wild flowers. The park needs the charm of primeval nature, and should be free from ugliness, artificiality, and commercialism. For the perpetuation of scenery, a landscape artist is absolutely necessary. It would be folly to put a park man in charge of a forest reserve, a lumbering proposition. On the other hand, what a blunder to put a tree-cutting forester in charge of a park! We need both these men; each is important in his place; but it would be a double misfortune to put one in charge of the work of the other. A National Park service is greatly needed. Apparently William Penn was the first to honor our scenery, and Bryant, with poetry, won a literary standing for it. Official recognition came later, but the establishment of the Yellowstone National Park was a great incident in the scenic history of America--and in that of the world. For the first time, a scenic wonderland was dedicated as "a public park or pleasure ground for the benefit and enjoyment of all the people." The Yellowstone stands a high tribute to the statesmanship, the public spirit, and the energy of F. V. Hayden and the few men who won it for us. During the last few years the nation, as well as the courts, has put itself on record concerning the higher worth of scenery. The White House conference of governors recommended that "the beauty ... of our country should be preserved and increased"; and the first National Conservation Commission thought that "public lands more valuable for conserving ... natural beauties and wonders than for agriculture should be held for the use of the people." The travel industry benefits both parties,--the entertained as well as the entertainer. Investments in outdoor vacations give large returns; from an outing one returns with life lengthened, in livelier spirits, more efficient, with new ideas and a broader outlook, and more hopeful and kind. Hence parks and outdoor recreation places are mighty factors for the general welfare; they assist in making better men and women. A park offers the first aid and often the only cure for the sick and the overworked. Looking upon our sublime scenes arouses a love for our native land and promotes a fellow feeling. Nature is more democratic even than death; and when people mingle amid primeval scenes they become fraternal. Saving our best scenes is the saving of manhood. These places encourage every one to do his best and help all to live comfortably in a beautiful world. Scenery is our noblest resource. No nation has ever fallen from having too much scenery. The Rocky Mountain National Park The Rocky Mountain National Park Extend a straight line fifty-five miles northwest from Denver and another line sixty miles southwest from Cheyenne and these lines meet in approximately the centre of the Rocky Mountain National Park. This centre is in the mountain-heights a few miles northwest of Long's Peak, in what Dr. F. V. Hayden, the famous geologist, calls the most rugged section of the Continental Divide of the Rocky Mountains. This Park is a mountain realm lying almost entirely above the altitude of nine thousand feet. Through it from north to south extends the Snowy Range,--the Continental Divide,--and in it this and the Mummy Range form a vast mountain Y. Specimen Mountain is the north end of the west arm of this Y, while Mummy Mountain is at the tip of the east arm. Mt. Clarence King on the south forms the base of the stem, while Long's Peak is against the eastern side of the stem, about midway. Long's Peak, "King of the Rockies," is the dominating peak and rises to the altitude of 14,255 feet. There are ten or more peaks in the Park that tower above thirteen thousand, and upwards of forty others with a greater altitude than twelve thousand feet. Between these peaks and their out-jutting spurs are numerous cañons. The Park is from ten to eighteen miles wide, its greatest length is twenty-five miles, and its total area is about three hundred and sixty square miles. [Illustration: ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK] A line drawn around the Park on the boundary line would only in two or three places drop below the altitude of nine thousand feet. The area thus is high-lying and for the most part on edge. About one fifth of the entire area is above the limits of tree-growth. The peaks are rocky, rounded, and sharp. Here and there they are whitened by comparatively small snow and ice fields. From the summits the mountains descend through steeps, walls, slopes, terraces, tablelands, spurs, gorges, and mountain valleys. This Park is a wilderness. Though entirely surrounded by settlers and villages, it is an almost unbroken wild. Many of its peaks are as yet unclimbed. There are pathless forests, unvisited gorges, unnamed lakes, and unknown localities. Gray and red granite form the larger portion of its surface. Here and there are mixtures of schist, gneiss, and porphyry. The northwest corner is volcanic and is made up of rhyolite, obsidian, and lava. The Indians have a tradition concerning the volcanic activity of Specimen Mountain, though I doubt if this mountain has been active within a century. It is a dead or sleeping volcano. A part of its old crater-rim has fallen away, and brilliant flowers cover the cold ashes in the crater. Most of the territory was glaciated during the last ice age, and there still remain five small glaciers and a number of ice-fields. The Hallett Glacier is on the north shoulder of Hague's Peak, the Sprague Glacier on the south side of Stone's Peak, Tyndall Glacier between Flat-Top and Mt. Hallett, and Andrews Glacier in a cirque of Loch Vale, while an unnamed small one is at the bottom of the east precipice of Long's Peak. There can hardly be found a greater and more closely gathered area of imposing, easily read glacial records than those which centre about Long's Peak. These works of the Ice King, both intact and partly ruined, have attracted the attention and study of a number of prominent geologists and glaciologists. Among these ice works Dr. Hayden and Dr. David Starr Jordan have climbed and wandered. Vernon L. Kellogg has here gathered material for a book, and Dr. Edward L. Orton, former State Geologist of Ohio, has spent many weeks here in study. Within a six-mile radius of the top of Long's Peak are more than thirty glacier lakes and perhaps twice as many lakelets or mountain tarns. Immediately south of the Peak, Wild Basin is literally filled with glacier-records. To the north is Moraine Park; to the northwest, Glacier Gorge and Loch Vale; to the west, lying between the Peak and Grand Lake, there is a wondrous area of the Ice King's topography. Bierstadt, St. Vrain, and Mills Moraines are imposing deposits of glacial débris. Of these Mills Moraine has been the most studied. It apparently holds the story of two widely separated ice ages. This moraine evidently was formed by the glacier which made the basin of Chasm Lake. It extends eastward from Long's Peak, its uppermost end being at twelve thousand five hundred feet. At timber-line its trend is toward the southeast. It is about one mile wide, five miles long, and in places apparently more than one thousand feet deep. The ice-stream which piled the enormous Bierstadt Moraine took its rise on the west summit slope of Long's Peak. It flowed first toward the west, and in the upper amphitheatre of Glacier Gorge it united with the ice-stream from the north slope of Shoshone Peak and the stream off the eastern slope of Mt. McHenry. Although a part of this enlarged flow appears to have been thrust across the Continental Divide, the larger portion of it was deflected to the north through Glacier Gorge. Emerging from this gorge and enlarged by the ice-streams from Mt. Otis, Mt. Hallett, and other peaks in the Continental Divide, it flowed on to thrust against the eastern base of Flat-Top Mountain. This bent it to the east, and from this turning-point it began to unload its débris on Bierstadt Moraine. A part of its débris was dropped in a smaller parallel moraine on the opposite side of Glacier Creek, and finally a terminal moraine was piled against the western front of Green Mountain, where it almost united with the terminal part of the Moraine on the south side of Moraine Park. The glaciers have formed and distributed much of the soil of this region. Above timber-line there are wide, sedgy meadows and tundras and dry, grassy moorlands. Everywhere on the heights where there is soil there is a growth of Arctic-Alpine vegetation. Above the limits of tree-growth are enormous ragged areas and tiny ledge gardens that are crowded with a variety of brilliantly colored wild blossoms. [Illustration: ESTES PARK ENTRANCE TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK] The average altitude of the timber-line is about eleven thousand three hundred feet, nearly a vertical mile higher than the timber-line in the Alps. Timber-line the world over is a place of striking interest, but nowhere have I found or heard of a timber-line which exhibits so many telling features as does the forest-frontier on the eastern side of the Continental Divide. The prevailing tree on the drier slopes at timber-line is _Pinus flexilis_, the limber pine. In the moist places Engelmann spruce predominates, and in many of the moister places there are dwarfed and tangled growths of arctic willow, black birch, and aspen. Among the least broken and most enchanting of the primeval forests of the Park are a few that are grand. One of these is between the head of Fall River and the Poudre; another is in Forest Cañon; one is in the southern part of Wild Basin; still another is on the western slope of Stone's Peak and Flat-Top Mountain. These forests are mostly Engelmann spruce, with a scattering of sub-alpine fir. Around the lower, warmer slopes grows the Western yellow pine, and on the cold lower slopes the Douglas spruce. There are a number of extensive lodge-pole pine forests. These are from thirty to one hundred and thirty years old. Lines of aspen adorn most streams; here and there where the soil is moist they expand into groves. The wild-flower inhabitants of this great Park number more than a thousand species. Many of these are members of famous families,--famous for their antiquity upon the earth, for their delicate scent, for their intricate and artistic structure, and for their brilliant color. The gentian family is represented by fifteen species, one of these being a fringed blue gentian, a Western relative of the fringed gentian celebrated by the poet Bryant. There are intricately-formed orchids. The silver and blue columbine is here at its best; it blossoms on the lower slopes in June, on the heights during September. The populous pea family, in yellow, white, and lavender, covers and colors extensive areas. Then there are asters, daisies, mariposa lilies, polemonium, wintergreen, forget-me-nots, black-eyed Susans, and numerous other handsome flower people. These flowers are scattered all over the Park except in places destitute of soil. I have found primroses, phlox, and mertensia on the summit of Long's Peak. In the heights above the limits of tree-growth there are scores of other blossoms. More than one hundred species of birds nest in these scenes. Among these are the robin, the bluebird, the wren, the hermit thrush, the hummingbird, the golden eagle, the white-crowned sparrow, and that marvelous singer the solitaire. Among the resident birds are the ouzel, the crested and the Rocky Mountain jays, the chickadee, the downy woodpecker, and the magpie. The ptarmigan and the rosy finch are prominent residents in the heights above the timber-line. Once the big-game population was numerous. But the grizzly has been almost exterminated, and only a few black bear remain. There are a few mountain lions and elk. Deer are fairly common, and in localities mountain sheep are plentiful and on the increase. Specimen Mountain probably is one of the places most frequented by mountain sheep. A number of times flocks of more than a hundred have been seen on this mountain. A scattering of wolves, coyotes, and foxes remain. Conies are numerous in the slide rock of the heights, and snowshoe rabbits people the forests. The Frémont, or pine, squirrels are scattered throughout the woods. Lunch where you will, and the dear and confiding busy chipmunk is pretty certain to approach. The region appears to be above the snake line, and I have never seen a snake within the boundary. The streams and a number of the lakes have their population of rainbow and brook trout. Around the water's edge mink make their home. The beaver has colonies large and small all over the park up to the limits of tree-growth. Houses, ponds, dams, tree-cuttings, canals, and other works of the beaver are here readily seen. Excellent opportunities are afforded to study beaver manners and customs and to comprehend the influence of his work in the conservation of soil and water. [Illustration: THE FALL RIVER ROAD ACROSS] [Illustration: THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE] Big game, and in fact all wild life, begin to increase in numbers and also to allow themselves to be seen from the instant they receive the complete protection which parks afford. This park will thus assure a multiplication of the various kinds of wild life which the region now contains. And this increased wild life, with no hunters to alarm, will allow itself to be readily seen. There are only a few miles of road within the Park boundaries, but the Fall River Road, now under construction across the Continental Divide at Milner Pass, just south of Specimen Mountain, will be a wonderful scenic highway. Although there are a number of trails in the Park, so broken is the topography that most of the country a stone's throw away from them is unvisited and unknown. A road skirts the western boundary of the Park and touches it at Grand Lake and Specimen Mountain. Another road closely parallels the eastern boundary-line, and from it a half-dozen roads touch the Park. This parallel road reaches the roads of Denver and of the plains through the Boulder, Left Hand, Big Thompson, and two St. Vrain cañons. The drainage of the western half of the Park concentrates in the Grand River on the western boundary and reaches the Pacific Ocean through the Grand Cañon of Arizona. A number of streams rise in the eastern side. These assemble their waters in the Platte River out on the plains. In their upper course, all these streams start from the snows and come rushing and bounding down the roughest, steepest slopes. The climate of the eastern slope is comparatively dry and mild. The winters are sunny, but little snow falls, and the winds are occasionally warm and usually extremely dry. Though only a few miles from the eastern slope, the western rarely receives a wind, and its snow-fall is more than double that of the eastern. Numerous authors and artists have made long visits in this region, and its scenery has received their highest praise. Bierstadt, the artist, came here in 1870. A few years later he was followed by the famous authors Isabella Bird, Anna Dickinson, and Helen Hunt. Frederick H. Chapin visited the region in 1888 and wrote a splendidly illustrated book about it, called "Mountaineering in Colorado." This was published by the Appalachian Club. In commenting upon the scenery of the region, Hayden, Father of the Yellowstone National Park, turned aside from scientific discussion in his geological report for 1875 to pay the following tribute to the scenic charm of this territory:-- "Not only has nature amply supplied this with features of rare beauty and surroundings of admirable grandeur, but it has thus distributed them that the eye of an artist may rest with perfect satisfaction on the complete picture presented. It may be said, perhaps, that the more minute details of the scenery are too decorative in their character, showing, as they do, the irregular picturesque groups of hills, buttes, products of erosion, and the finely moulded ridges--the effect is pleasing in the extreme." Long's Peak is considered by mountain-climbers an excellent view-point. Standing aside one mile from the Continental Divide and rising above a large surrounding wonderland, its summit and upper slopes give splendid views and command a variety of scenes, near and far. While upon its slope, Mr. Chapin said: "I would not fail to impress on the mind of the tourist that the scenes are too grand for words to convey a true idea of their magnificence. Let him, then, not fail to visit them." It is an extremely rocky and rugged peak, but it is almost entirely free of snow and ice, so that climbing it is simply a day's work crowded with enjoyment and almost free from danger. Though it is two hundred and fifty feet lower than the highest peak in the Rocky Mountains and three hundred and fifty feet lower than Mt. Whitney, California, the highest peak in the United States, Long's Peak probably has a greater individuality than either. Alongside it stands Mt. Meeker, with an altitude of 14,000 feet. These sky towers are visible more than one hundred miles. The Indians of the Colorado and Wyoming plains used to call them the "Two Guides." It is possible, if not probable, that Long's Peak was originally one thousand or even two thousand feet higher. The mass of this peak stands apart from the main range and embraces three other peaks. These are Mt. Meeker, Mt. Washington, and Storm Peak. All are united below thirteen thousand feet. They may once have been united in one greatly higher mass. Much of the débris in the vast Boulderfield and Mills Moraines and a lesser amount from the enormous Bierstadt and St. Vrain Moraines must have come from the summit slope of the Long's Peak group. No small part of this may have come from above thirteen thousand feet. An exceedingly small percentage of the glacial débris which surrounds Long's Peak would, if atop the Long's Peak group, elevate it two thousand feet higher. The Glacier Gorge region, which lies just to the northwest of Long's Peak, probably has the most magnificent scenery in the Park. Here are clustered enormous glaciated gorges, great glaciated walls, alpine lakes, waterfalls, moraines, alpine flora, and towering peaks. Wild Basin, a broken and glaciated region of twenty-five square miles, lies immediately south of the Peak. This basin is almost encircled by eight towering peaks, and the enormous St. Vrain Moraine thrusts out of its outlet and shows where the united ice-rivers formerly made their way from this basin. Within this wild area are lakes, forests, waterfalls, and a splendid variety of wild and lovely scenes. The glacier lakes and wild tarns of this Park are one of its delights. Though most of these water fountains are small, they are singularly beautiful. They are in the middle-mountain zone, in a belt which lies between the altitudes of ten thousand and twelve thousand feet. There are more than a hundred of these, and their attractiveness equals that of any of the mountain lakes of the world. The best known and most popular of these lakes are Fern and Odessa. These lie about twelve miles west of the village of Estes Park. Chasm Lake, on the east side of Long's Peak, is set in an utterly wild place. Its basin was gouged from solid granite by the old Long's Peak Glacier. Mt. Washington, Mt. Meeker, and Long's Peak tower above it, and around it these peaks have flung their wreckage in chaotic confusion. A glacier almost crawls into it, and the east precipice of Long's Peak, the greatest precipice in the Park, looms above it. Long, Black, Thunder, Ouzel, and Poudre Lakes have charms peculiar to each, and each is well worth a visit. Lake Mills, in the lower end of Glacier Gorge, is one of the largest lakes in the Park. The largest lake that I know of in the Rocky Mountain National Park is Lake Nanita. This is about one mile long and half as wide, and reposes in that wilderness of wild topography about midway between Grand Lake and Long's Peak. There are mountain people living within eight or ten miles of this lake who have never even heard of its existence. Although I have been to it a number of times, I have never found even a sign of another human visitor. A member of the United States Geological Survey is the only individual I have ever met who had seen it. As originally planned, the Park was to have more than twice its present area. I hope there may be early added to this region Mt. Audubon, Arapahoe Peak, and other territory to the south. The summit of Twin Peaks on the east would make another excellent addition. A part of the Rabbit Ear Range to the northwest, and Medicine Bow Mountains and the headwaters of the Poudre lying to the north, would make excellent park territory. But even as it now stands, this splendidly scenic region with its delightful climate appears predestined to become one of the most visited and one of the most enjoyed of all the scenic reservations of the Government. In addition to its scenery and climate, it is not far from the geographical centre of the United States. A number of transcontinental railroads are close to it, and two railroads run within a few miles of its border. The Lincoln Highway is within twenty miles of it, and six excellent automobile roads connect its edges with the outside world. Each year visitors reach it in increasing numbers. During 1914 there were more than 56,000 of these, many of whom remained to enjoy it for weeks. It has a rare combination of those characteristics which almost every one wants and which all tired people need,--accessibility, rare scenery, and a friendly climate. THE END Index Index Alpine Pass, 80. Alps, the, compared with the Rocky Mountains, 313, 314; conservation of scenery in, 315, 323. Altitude, effects of, 10-12, 302-305. Andrews Glacier, 153, 338. Arapahoe Glacier, 153. Arapahoe Peak, 352. Aspen, 61, 214, 215, 218, 219. Austin, Mary, quoted, 46. Battle Mountain, the mountain sheep of, 41-46. Bear, black, 63; above timber-line, 107; eating dead trout, 136. Bear, grizzly, and mountain sheep, 43; tearing up dwarfed trees, 61; hibernation, 63, 201-203; above timber-line, 107; eating dead trout, 136; watching a forest fire, 142; a grizzly observed at close quarters, 187-189; caution, 188; alertness and brain-power, 189; following a grizzly, 190, 191; a cattle-killing grizzly, 191, 192; curiosity, 192, 193; attitude towards man, 194-196; stories of, 196, 197; food, 197-200; fishing, 198, 199; a mother and two cubs, 200, 201; hibernating habits, 201-203; emerging from hibernation, 203-205; young, 205; cubs as pets, 205, 206; color and races, 206, 207; size and agility, 207, 208; age, 208; verging on extermination, 208; shortening the life of a mountain park, 235. Bears, emerging from snow, 63; an encounter on the Hallett Glacier, 108, 109; benefited by deep snow, 269. Beaver, 136; the Cascade Colony annihilated by drought, 249-256; benefited by deep snow, 269, 270; in the Rocky Mountain National Park, 344. Beetle, battle with a wasp, 111. Bellflower, 120. Bierstadt, Albert, 346. Bierstadt Lake, 157, 158. Bierstadt Moraine, 339, 340. Bighorn. _See_ Sheep, Mountain. Birch, black, 61, 62. Bird, Isabella, 346, 347. Birds, visiting the summit of Long's Peak, 102; of the mountain-summits, 112-115; in winter, 271-274; on Pike's Peak, 306, 307; of the Rocky Mountain National Park, 343. Bobtail Gulch, 79. Boulderfield, 15, 349. Bowles, Samuel, quoted, 230, 231. Buckwheat, wild, 118. Buds, as food, 272. Cameron's Cone, 309. Camp Bird Mine, 172, 173. Camp-bird. _See_ Jay, Rocky Mountain. Camp-fire, the, 245. Canada, National Parks, 315, 326, 327. Chapin, Frederick H., 347; quoted, 348. Chapman, Frank M., 59. Chasm Lake, 162, 339, 350, 351. Cheyenne Cañon, 300. Cheyenne Mountain, 299. Chicago Lake, 157. Chickadees, 273. Chinook wind, the, 69-75, 269. Chipmunk, big, 289, 290. Chipmunk, busy, 290, 344. Chipmunks, and heavy snow, 270; hibernation, 271, 282, 283; in the author's yard, 277-291; persistency, 280; tunnels, 280, 281; bedding, 281, 282; bathing, 282; drinking, 282; winter stores, 282-284; a frightened young one, 284; and weasels, 285; and coyotes, 285, 286; sense of proprietorship, 286; the young, 287, 288; food, 289; mobbed by birds, 289, 290; species, 290; enemies, 290; and children, 290, 291. Columbine, 119, 342. Conservation Commission, 330. Continental Divide, 335, 345. Cony, or pika, 110, 111, 344. Coyotes, 136; and chipmunks, 285, 286. Crags, the, 44, 45. Cricket, the return horse, 169-183. Crow, Clarke, 64, 199. Death Valley, 316. Deer, above timber-line, 109; in deep snow, 259, 260; yarding habit, 262-265; a herd killed by a mountain lion, 265; winter food, 265; summer and winter ranges, 265, 266. Dickinson, Anna, 347. Eagle, faithful to its dead mate, 137. Eagle, golden, 102, 115. Elk, summer and winter ranges, 265, 266; preyed upon by wolves, 266. Estes Park, description, 232, 233. Fall River Road, 345. Fern Lake, 350. Finch, rosy, brown-capped, 112, 113. Fir, alpine, 61. Flat-Top Mountain, 44, 341. Florissant, 298, 299. Flowers, at timber-line, 65; of mountain-summits, 116-120; on Pike's Peak, 308, 309. Forest Cañon, 341. Forest fires, records of, 125-128; resistance of various trees to fire, 128-130; injury to Southern hardwood forests, 131; antiquity, 131; a record in a redwood, 131-133; origins, 133-135, 139; following a fire, 135-140; effect on animal life, 136, 137, 142; up and down slopes, 140, 141; heat at a distance, 141; varying speed, 141, 142; brilliant displays, 142-145; cause of some mountain parks, 233, 234. Forest Reserves, should be kept separate from National Parks, 326-329. Forester, and scenery, 328, 329. Fossil-beds, 298, 299. Fox, silver, 109. Frémont, John C., 28; quoted, 231. Game, big, in deep snow, 259-268; yarding, 262-265; winter food, 265, 266; bunching habit, 267, 268. Gentians, 342. Glacier Creek, 340. Glacier Gorge, 23, 43, 158, 338-340; scenery, 349. Glacier meadows. _See_ Meadows. Glaciers, as makers of lake-basins, 150-153; in Colorado, 153; in the Rocky Mountain National Park, 337, 338; glacial records in the Rocky Mountain National Park, 338-340. Goat, mountain, 36. Grand Lake, 157, 158. Gray's Peak, 90. Greagory Gulch, 79. Great Falls, Mont., 71. Green Mountain, 340. Grosbeak, Western evening, 307. Hague's Peak, 337. Hallett Glacier, 108, 153, 337. Hayden, Dr. F. V., 330, 335, 338; quoted, 232, 347. Hayden Valley, 232. Hesperus, a return horse, 173, 174. Horses, the story of Cricket, 169-183; return horses, 170-176. Hunt, Helen, 299, 347. Insects, on the heights, 108, 111. Jay, Rocky Mountain, 64, 265. Jordan, Dr. David Starr, 338. Junco, gray-headed, 115. Kellogg, Vernon L., 338. King, Clarence, his "Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada" quoted, 11. Lake Agnes, 162. Lake Mills, 351. Lake Moraine, 309. Lake Nanita, 351. Lake Odessa, 158, 350. Lakes, made by glaciers, 149-153; beauties of, 154-160; names, 157, 158; ice on, 160; filled by débris and landslides, 161-165; in Rocky Mountain National Park, 350, 351. Landslides, destruction of lakes by, 162-165. Leucosticte, brown-capped. _See_ Finch, rosy. Lewis, Judge Robert E., decision as to scenery, 324-326. Lion, mountain, a game-hog, 42; pursuing mountain sheep on the heights, 106, 107; killing a herd of deer, 265. Lizard Head, 176. Loch Vale, 158, 338. Long, Stephen H., his expedition, 302. Long's Peak, guiding experiences on, 3-18; the Narrows, 13; temperature at timber-line, 60; altitude, 102, 336; life on the summit, 102; glacial records about, 338; flowers on summit, 343; view, 347, 348; individuality, 348; geological history, 349. Magpie, 64, 136. Mary Lake, 44. Meadows, glacier, evolution of, 237-239; termination, 239, 240. Mertensia, 118. Middle Park, 229-231. Mills Moraine, 339, 349. Milner Pass, 345. Minnehaha Falls, 306. Montana, the Chinook wind in, 71, 73. Moose, yarding habit, 262, 263. Moraine Lake, 157. Moraine Park, 338, 340. Moraines, in Rocky Mountain National Park, 339, 340. Mt. Audubon, 352. Mt. Clarence King, 336. Mt. McHenry, 339. Mt. Meeker, 42; altitude, 348; geological history, 349. Mt. Orizaba, 59. Mt. Richthofen, 162. Mt. Washington (Colo.), 163, 349. Mt. Wilson, 176. Mountain-climbing, speed in, 3-6; keeping the party together, 7; quarrels, 7, 8; sickness, 9-11; autocracy of the guide, 12-14; a narrow escape, 15, 16; suggestions to climbers, 18; advantages of, 18, 19. Mountain-sickness, 5, 6, 9, 14; causes and cure, 10, 11. Muir, John, quoted, 19, 58, 149, 150. Mummy Mountain, 335. Mummy Range, 335. National Monuments, 318, 319. National Parks, in Canada, 315, 326, 327; in the United States, 315 note, 318, 319; need of separate management, 320, 326-329; perishable attractions, 321; wild life in, 322, 323; as an investment, 323, 324; development, 326; should be kept separate from Forest Reserves, 326-329; establishment of Yellowstone Park, 329; Rocky Mountain National Park, 335-353. North Park, 229, 231. Ophir Loop, 176, 180. Orton, Dr. Edward L., 338. Ouray, 171, 172. Ouzel, water, in winter, 272, 273. Ouzel Lake, 158. Paint-brush, 118. Parks, mountain, their characteristics, 229-232; origin, 233-235; end, 235-237; glacier meadows, 237-240; as camping-places, 240-245. Parks, National. _See_ National Parks. Penn, William, 329. Pika, or cony, 110, 111, 344. Pike, Zebulon M., 301. Pike's Peak, situation, 295; altitude, 295; accessibility, 295, 296; view, 296; characteristics, 297; attractions, 297-300; history, 301, 302; climate, 302-305; summit, 305; life zones, 305, 306; bird-life, 306, 307; big game, 307; wild flowers and trees, 308, 309; geology, 309, 310. Pillars of Hercules, 300. Pine, limber, 61-63. Pine, lodge-pole, 125, 126, 140; extension of area, 211; seeding, 211-213; spread dependent upon fire, 213; elements of success, 214; a forest pioneer, 218, 219; hoarding of seed, 219, 220; rapidity of growth, 220, 221; overgrown cones, 221-223; fruitfulness, 223; release of seeds, 223; character of stands, 224; giving way to other species, 225; dependence upon fire, 225, 226; range, 226. Pine, pitch, 214. Pine, short-leaved (_Pinus Montezumæ_), 59. Pine, Western yellow, two stumps, 125, 126; a good fire-fighter, 129; preserved by fire, 140. Porcupine, 270. Prospect Dome, 300. Ptarmigan, 102, 113, 114; in the winter snows, 271, 272; food, 272. Rabbit, snowshoe, 344. Rabbits, 270. Rats, mountain, 137. Redwood, 128, 130; a forest-fire record, 131-133. Rocky Mountain National Park, location, area, and topography, 335, 336; geology, 337-340; forests, 341, 342; wild flowers, 342, 343; animal life, 343-345; roads and trails, 345; streams, 346; climate, 346; scenery, 346-350; lakes, 350, 351; accessibility, 352; visitors, 352, 353. Rocky Mountains, Colorado, scenery of, 313, 314. St. Vrain Moraine, 339, 349, 350. San Cristoval Lake, 157. San Juan Mountains, and return horses, 170, 171. Scenery, of the Rocky Mountains, 313, 314; conservation and destruction, 314-331; in the United States, 316, 317, 321, 322; a judicial decision, 324-326; and forestry, 327-329; literary and official recognition, 329, 330. Schneider, Dr. Edward C., quoted, 303-305. Seven Lakes, 309. Sheep, mountain, 64; a flock descending a mountain, 23-28; as acrobats, 24; fable as to landing on horns, 28, 29; shape and size of horns, 29, 30; a wild leap, 30-32; accidents, 32, 33; an agile ram, 33-35; hoofs, 35; size, color, and other characteristics, 35, 36; species and range, 36, 37; in winter, 37; excursions to the lowlands, 37, 38; composition of flocks, 38; craving for salt, 38; lambs, 38, 39; near approach to, 40; a ram killed by a barbed-wire fence, 40, 41; the flock on Battle Mountain, 41-46; fights, 44-46; threatened extermination, 46; at high altitudes, 105-107; watching a forest fire, 142; clings to the heights in snowy times, 266, 267. Shoshone Peak, 339. Silver Lake, 157. Silverton, 171. Snow, on summits of the Rocky Mountains, 103; and animal life, 259-275; a great snow, 268; and the Chinook wind, 269. Snow-slides, started by dynamite, 79; a prospector outwitted, 79-84; habits, 81; observation of, 84-86; classification, 87-90; coasting on a slide, 91-94; a large slide, 94-97. Solitaire, Townsend's, 64, 154, 241. South Cheyenne Cañon, 298-300. South Park, 229. Sparrow, white-crowned, 64, 102, 115, 154. Specimen Mountain, 38, 335, 337, 343, 344. Sprague Glacier, 153, 337. "Springfield Republican," quoted, 230, 231. Spruce, Douglas, 140. Spruce, Engelmann, 61. Squirrel, Frémont, or pine, 64, 344. Squirrels, and deep snow, 270, 271; hibernation, 271. Stone's Peak, 338, 341. Storm Peak, 349. Switzerland, conservation of scenery in, 313-315, 323, 327. Telluride, 171, 172, 174-176, 183. Thatch-Top Mountain, mountain sheep on, 23-28. Thunder Lake, 157, 158. Timber-line, characteristics of, 49-58; altitude, 50, 59, 60, 101; determining factors, 58, 59; temperature, 60; species of trees at, 60, 61; age of trees at, 61, 62; animal life at, 63, 64; flowers at, 65; impressions at, 65, 66; animal life above, 101, 102, 105-115; flowers above, 116-120. Trapper's Lake, 157. Trees, species at timber-line, 60; age at timber-line, 61, 62; resistance to fire, 128-130; methods of reproduction, 214-216; tolerance and intolerance, 216-218; of Pike's Peak, 308. _See_ also Timber-line. Trout Lake, 157, 176. Twin Lakes, 157. Tyndall, John, 18. Tyndall Glacier, 338. Wasp, battle with a beetle, 111. Weasels, above timber-line, 111, 112; and chipmunk, 285. Wild Basin, 338, 341; description, 350. Willow, arctic, 61. Willow, propagation, 215. Wolves, 266, 268. Woodchuck, above timber-line, 109. Woodpeckers, 273. Yarding, 262-265. Yellowstone National Park, establishment of, 329. Zones, life, 305, 306. The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A 
42042	----	By Enos A. Mills THE SPELL OF THE ROCKIES. Illustrated. WILD LIFE ON THE ROCKIES. Illustrated. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON AND NEW YORK The Spell of the Rockies [Illustration: THE HOME OF THE WHIRLWIND (p. 78)] The Spell of the Rockies By Enos A. Mills With Illustrations from Photographs by the Author [Illustration] Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company The Riverside Press Cambridge 1911 COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY ENOS A. MILLS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Published November 1911_ To B. W. Preface Although I have been alone by a camp-fire in every State and Territory in the Union, with the exception of Rhode Island, the matter in this book is drawn almost entirely from my experiences in the Rocky Mountain region. Some of the chapters have already appeared in magazines, and I am indebted to The Curtis Publishing Company, Doubleday, Page and Company, "Suburban Life," and "Recreation" for allowing me to reprint the papers which they have published. "Country Life in America" published "Racing an Avalanche," "Alone with a Landslide," and "A Rainy Day at the Stream's Source,"--the two last under the titles of "Alone with a Crumbling Mountain" and "At the Stream's Source." The "Saturday Evening Post" published "Little Conservationists," "Mountain-Top Weather," "The Forest Fire," "Insects in the Forest," "Doctor Woodpecker," and "The Fate of a Tree Seed." "Suburban Life" published "Rob of the Rockies" and "Little Boy Grizzly"; and "Recreation" "Harvest Time with Beavers." E. A. M. Contents Racing an Avalanche 1 Little Conservationists 17 Harvest Time with Beavers 49 Mountain-Top Weather 69 Rob of the Rockies 91 Sierra Blanca 107 The Wealth of the Woods 121 The Forest Fire 137 Insects in the Forest 171 Dr. Woodpecker, Tree-Surgeon 191 Little Boy Grizzly 205 Alone with a Landslide 221 The Maker of Scenery and Soil 245 A Rainy Day at the Stream's Source 265 The Fate of a Tree Seed 289 In a Mountain Blizzard 307 A Midget in Fur 321 The Estes Park Region 335 Index 351 Illustrations _The Home of the Whirlwind_ (page 78) _Frontispiece_ _Near the top of Long's Peak._ _A Snow-Slide Region_ 6 _Near Telluride, Colorado._ _Mt. Meeker_ 20 _A Beaver House in Winter_ 38 _Lily Lake, Estes Park._ _A Beaver Canal_ 56 _Length, 334 feet; average width, 26 inches; average depth, 15 inches._ _Aspens cut by Beaver_ 64 _On slope of Mt. Meeker._ _Wind-blown Trees at Timber-Line_ 76 _Long's Peak._ _Sierra Blanca in Winter_ 110 _Spanish Moss_ 124 _Lake Charles, Louisiana._ _A Forest Fire on the Grand River_ 140 _Near Grand Lake, Colorado._ _A Yellow Pine, Forty-Seven Years after it had been killed by Fire_ 154 _Estes Park._ _A Tree killed by Mistletoe and Beetles_ 184 _Estes Park._ _Woodpecker Holes in a Pine injured by Lightning_ 198 _Estes Park._ _Johnny and Jenny_ 210 _Near the Top of Mt. Coxcomb_ 228 _Court-House Rock_ 242 _The Hallett Glacier_ 250 _A Crevasse_ 260 _Hallett Glacier._ _Among the Clouds_ 272 _Continental Divide, near Long's Peak._ _Full Streams_ 286 _Near Telluride, Colorado._ _On Grand River, Middle Park, in Winter_ 310 _Snow and Shadow_ 318 _Long's Peak._ _The Home of the Frémont Squirrel_ 326 _On the Little Cimarron River._ _Long's Peak and Estes Park_ 338 Racing an Avalanche Racing an Avalanche I had gone into the San Juan Mountains during the first week in March to learn something of the laws which govern snow slides, to get a fuller idea of their power and destructiveness, and also with the hope of seeing them in wild, magnificent action. Everywhere, except on wind-swept points, the winter's snows lay deep. Conditions for slide movement were so favorable it seemed probable that, during the next few days at least, one would "run" or chute down every gulch that led from the summit. I climbed on skees well to the top of the range. By waiting on spurs and ridges I saw several thrilling exhibitions. It was an exciting experience, but at the close of one great day the clear weather that had prevailed came to an end. From the table-like summit I watched hundreds of splendid clouds slowly advance, take their places, mass, and form fluffy seas in valley and cañons just below my level. They submerged the low places in the plateau, and torn, silver-gray masses of mists surrounded crags and headlands. The sunset promised to be wonderful, but suddenly the mists came surging past my feet and threatened to shut out the view. Hurriedly climbing a promontory, I watched from it a many-colored sunset change and fade over mist-wreathed spires, and swelling, peak-torn seas. But the cloud-masses were rising, and suddenly points and peaks began to settle out of sight; then a dash of frosty mists, and my promontory sank into the sea. The light vanished from the heights, and I was caught in dense, frosty clouds and winter snows without a star. I had left my skees at the foot of the promontory, and had climbed up by fingers and toes over the rocks without great difficulty. But on starting to return I could see only a few inches into the frosty, sheep's-wool clouds, and quickly found that trying to get down would be a perilous pastime. The side of the promontory stood over the steep walls of the plateau, and, not caring to be tumbled overboard by a slip, I concluded that sunrise from this point would probably be worth while. It was not bitter cold, and I was comfortably dressed; however, it was necessary to do much dancing and arm-swinging to keep warm. Snow began to fall just after the clouds closed in, and it fell rapidly without a pause until near morning. Early in the evening I began a mental review of a number of subjects, mingling with these, from time to time, vigorous practice of gymnastics or calisthenics to help pass the night and to aid in keeping warm. The first subject I thought through was Arctic exploration; then I recalled all that my mind had retained of countless stories of mountain-climbing experiences; the contents of Tyndall's "Hours of Exercise in the Alps" was most clearly recalled. I was enjoying the poetry of Burns, when broken clouds and a glowing eastern sky claimed all attention until it was light enough to get off the promontory. Planning to go down the west side, I crossed the table-like top, found, after many trials, a break in the enormous snow-cornice, and started down the steep slope. It was a dangerous descent, for the rock was steep and smooth as a wall, and was overladen with snow which might slip at any moment. I descended slowly and with great caution, so as not to start the snow, as well as to guard against slipping and losing control of myself. It was like descending a mile of steep, snow-covered barn roof,--nothing to lay hold of and omnipresent opportunity for slipping. A short distance below the summit the clouds again were around me and I could see only a short distance. I went sideways, with my long skees, which I had now regained, at right angles to the slope; slowly, a few inches at a time, I eased myself down, planting one skee firmly before I moved the other. [Illustration: A SNOW-SLIDE REGION Near Telluride, Colorado] At last I reached a point where the wall was sufficiently tilted to be called a slope, though it was still too steep for safe coasting. The clouds lifted and were floating away, while the sun made the mountains of snow still whiter. I paused to look back and up, to where the wall ended in the blue sky, and could not understand how I had come safely down, even with the long tacks I had made, which showed clearly up to the snow-corniced, mist-shrouded crags at the summit. I had come down the side of a precipitous amphitheatre which rose a thousand feet or more above me. A short distance down the mountain, the slopes of this amphitheatre concentrated in a narrow gulch that extended two miles or more. Altogether it was like being in an enormous frying-pan lying face up. I was in the pan just above the place where the gulch handle joined. It was a bad place to get out of, and thousands of tons of snow clinging to the steeps and sagging from corniced crests ready to slip, plunge down, and sweep the very spot on which I stood, showed most impressively that it was a perilous place to be in. As I stood gazing upward and wondering how the snow ever could have held while I came down this cloud over the crest in an inverted cascade. All this showed for a few seconds until the snowy spray began to separate and vanish in the air. The snow-cloud settled downward and began to roll forward. Then monsters of massed snow appeared beneath the front of the cloud and plunged down the slopes. Wildly, grandly they dragged the entire snow-cloud in their wake. At the same instant the remainder of the snow-cornice was suddenly enveloped in another explosive snow-cloud effect. A general slide had started. I whirled to escape, pointed my skees down the slope,--and went. In less than half a minute a tremendous snow avalanche, one hundred or perhaps two hundred feet deep and five or six hundred feet long, thundered over the spot where I had stood. There was no chance to dodge, no time to climb out of the way. The only hope of escape lay in outrunning the magnificent monster. It came crashing and thundering after me as swift as a gale and more all-sweeping and destructive than an earthquake tidal wave. I made a desperate start. Friction almost ceases to be a factor with skees on a snowy steep, and in less than a hundred yards I was going like the wind. For the first quarter of a mile, to the upper end of the gulch, was smooth coasting, and down this I shot, with the avalanche, comet-tailed with snow-dust, in close pursuit. A race for life was on. The gulch down which I must go began with a rocky gorge and continued downward, an enormous U-shaped depression between high mountain-ridges. Here and there it expanded and then contracted, and it was broken with granite crags and ribs. It was piled and bristled with ten thousand fire-killed trees. To coast through all these snow-clad obstructions at breakneck speed would be taking the maximum number of life-and-death chances in the minimum amount of time. The worst of it all was that I had never been through the place. And bad enough, too, was the fact that a ridge thrust in from the left and completely hid the beginning of the gulch. As I shot across the lower point of the ridge, about to plunge blindly into the gorge, I thought of the possibility of becoming entangled in the hedge-like thickets of dwarfed, gnarled timber-line trees. I also realized that I might dash against a cliff or plunge into a deep cañon. Of course I might strike an open way, but certain it was that I could not stop, nor see the beginning of the gorge, nor tell what I should strike when I shot over the ridge. It was a second of most intense concern as I cleared the ridge blindly to go into what lay below and beyond. It was like leaping into the dark, and with the leap turning on the all-revealing light. As I cleared the ridge, there was just time to pull myself together for a forty-odd-foot leap across one arm of the horseshoe-shaped end of the gorge. In all my wild mountainside coasts on skees, never have I sped as swiftly as when I made this mad flight. As I shot through the air, I had a glimpse down into the pointed, snow-laden tops of a few tall fir trees that were firmly rooted among the rocks in the bottom of the gorge. Luckily I cleared the gorge and landed in a good place; but so narrowly did I miss the corner of a cliff that my shadow collided with it. There was no time to bid farewell to fears when the slide started, nor to entertain them while running away from it. Instinct put me to flight; the situation set my wits working at their best, and, once started, I could neither stop nor look back; and so thick and fast did obstructions and dangers rise before me that only dimly and incidentally did I think of the oncoming danger behind. I came down on the farther side of the gorge, to glance forward like an arrow. There was only an instant to shape my course and direct my flight across the second arm of the gorge, over which I leaped from a high place, sailing far above the snow-mantled trees and boulders in the bottom. My senses were keenly alert, and I remember noticing the shadows of the fir trees on the white snow and hearing while still in the air the brave, cheery notes of a chickadee; then the snowslide on my trail, less than an eighth of a mile behind, plunged into the gorge with a thundering crash. I came back to the snow on the lower side, and went skimming down the slope with the slide only a few seconds behind. Fortunately most of the fallen masses of trees were buried, though a few broken limbs peeped through the snow to snag or trip me. How I ever dodged my way through the thickly standing tree growths is one feature of the experience that was too swift for recollection. Numerous factors presented themselves which should have done much to dispel mental procrastination and develop decision. There were scores of progressive propositions to decide within a few seconds; should I dodge that tree on the left side and duck under low limbs just beyond, or dodge to the right and scrape that pike of rocks? These, with my speed, required instant decision and action. With almost uncontrollable rapidity I shot out into a small, nearly level glacier meadow, and had a brief rest from swift decisions and oncoming dangers. How relieved my weary brain felt, with nothing to decide about dodging! As though starved for thought material, I wondered if there were willows buried beneath the snow. Sharp pains in my left hand compelled attention, and showed my left arm drawn tightly against my breast, with fingers and thumb spread to the fullest, and all their muscles tense. The lower edge of the meadow was almost blockaded with a dense growth of fire-killed trees. Fortunately the easy slope here had so checked my speed that I was able to dodge safely through, but the heavy slide swept across the meadow after me with undiminished speed, and came crashing into the dead trees so close to me that broken limbs were flung flying past as I shot down off a steep moraine less than one hundred feet ahead. All the way down I had hoped to find a side cañon into which I might dodge. I was going too rapidly to enter the one I had seen. As I coasted the moraine it flashed through my mind that I had once heard a prospector say it was only a quarter of a mile from Aspen Gulch up to the meadows. Aspen Gulch came in on the right, as the now slightly widening track seemed to indicate. At the bottom of the moraine I was forced between two trees that stood close together, and a broken limb of one pierced my open coat just beneath the left armhole, and slit the coat to the bottom. My momentum and the resistance of the strong material gave me such a shock that I was flung off my balance, and my left skee smashed against a tree. Two feet of the heel was broken off and the remainder split. I managed to avoid falling, but had to check my speed with my staff for fear of a worse accident. Battling breakers with a broken oar or racing with a broken skee are struggles of short duration. The slide did not slow down, and so closely did it crowd me that, through the crashing of trees as it struck them down, I could hear the rocks and splintered timbers in its mass grinding together and thudding against obstructions over which it swept. These sounds, and flying, broken limbs cried to me "Faster!" and as I started to descend another steep moraine, I threw away my staff and "let go." I simply flashed down the slope, dodged and rounded a cliff, turned awkwardly into Aspen Gulch, and tumbled heels over head--into safety. Then I picked myself up, to see the slide go by within twenty feet, with great broken trees sticking out of its side, and a snow-cloud dragging above. Little Conservationists Little Conservationists Twenty-four years ago, while studying glaciation on the slope of Long's Peak, I came upon a cluster of eight beaver houses. These crude, conical mud huts were in a forest pond far up on the mountainside. In this colony of our first engineers were so many things of interest that the fascinating study of the dead Ice King's ruins and records was indefinitely given up in order to observe Citizen Beaver's works and ways. The industrious beaver builds a permanent home, keeps it clean and in repair, and beside it stores food supplies for winter. He takes thought for the morrow. These and other commendable characteristics give him a place of honor among the horde of homeless, hand-to-mouth folk of the wild. His picturesque works add a charm to nature and are helpful to mankind. His dams and ponds have saved vast areas of soil, have checked many a flood, and helped to equalize stream-flow. A pile of granite boulders on the edge of the pond stood several feet above the water-level, and from the top of these the entire colony and its operations could be seen. On these I spent days observing and enjoying the autumnal activities of Beaverdom. It was the busiest time of the year for these industrious folk. General and extensive preparations were now being made for the long winter amid the mountain snows. A harvest of scores of trees was being gathered, and work on a new house was in progress, while the old houses were receiving repairs. It was a serene autumn day when I came into the picturesque village of these primitive people. The aspens were golden, the willows rusty, the grass tanned, and the pines were purring in the easy air. [Illustration: MT. MEEKER] The colony-site was in a small basin amid morainal débris at an altitude of nine thousand feet above the sea-level. I at once christened it the Moraine Colony. The scene was utterly wild. Peaks of crags and snow rose steeply and high above; all around crowded a dense evergreen forest of pine and spruce. A few small swamps reposed in this forest, while here and there in it bristled several gigantic windrows of boulders. A ragged belt of aspens surrounded the several ponds and separated the pines and spruces from the fringe of water-loving willows along the shores. There were three large ponds in succession and below these a number of smaller ones. The dams that formed the large ponds were willow-grown, earthy structures about four feet in height, and all sagged down stream. The houses were grouped in the middle pond, the largest one, the dam of which was more than three hundred feet long. Three of these lake dwellings stood near the upper margin, close to where the brook poured in. The other five were clustered by the outlet, just below which a small willow-grown, boulder-dotted island lay between the divided waters of the stream. A number of beavers were busy gnawing down aspens, while others cut the felled ones into sections, pushed and rolled the sections into the water, and then floated them to the harvest piles, one of which was being made beside each house. Some were quietly at work spreading a coat of mud on the outside of each house. This would freeze and defy the tooth and claw of the hungriest or the strongest predaceous enemy. Four beavers were leisurely lengthening and repairing a dam. A few worked singly, but most of them were in groups. All worked quietly and with apparent deliberation, but all were in motion, so that it was a busy scene. "To work like a beaver!" What a stirring exhibition of beaver industry and forethought I viewed from my boulder-pile! At times upward of forty of them were in sight. Though there was a general coöperation, yet each one appeared to do his part without orders or direction. Time and again a group of workers completed a task and without pause silently moved off and began another. Everything appeared to go on mechanically. It produced a strange feeling to see so many workers doing so many kinds of work effectively and automatically. Again and again I listened for the superintendent's voice; constantly I watched to see the overseer move among them; but I listened and watched in vain. Yet I feel that some of the patriarchal fellows must have carried a general plan of the work, and that during its progress orders and directions that I could not comprehend were given from time to time. The work was at its height a little before midday. Nowadays it is rare for a beaver to work in daylight. Men and guns have prevented daylight workers from leaving descendants. These not only worked but played by day. One morning for more than an hour there was a general frolic, in which the entire population appeared to take part. They raced, dived, crowded in general mix-ups, whacked the water with their tails, wrestled, and dived again. There were two or three play-centres, but the play went on without intermission, and as their position constantly changed, the merrymakers splashed water all over the main pond before they calmed down and in silence returned to work. I gave most attention to the harvesters, who felled the aspens and moved them, bodily or in sections, by land and water to the harvest piles. One tree on the shore of the pond which was felled into the water was eight inches in diameter and fifteen feet high. Without having even a limb cut off, it was floated to the nearest harvest pile. Another, about the same size, which was procured some fifty feet from the water, was cut into four sections and its branches removed; then a single beaver would take a branch in his teeth, drag it to the water, and swim with it to a harvest pile. But four beavers united to transport the largest section to the water. They pushed with fore paws, with breasts, and with hips. Plainly it was too heavy for them. They paused. "Now they will go for help," I said to myself, "and I shall find out who the boss is." But to my astonishment one of them began to gnaw the piece in two, and two more began to clear a narrow way to the water, while the fourth set himself to cutting down another aspen. Good roads and open waterways are the rule, and perhaps the necessary rule, of beaver colonies. I was impatient to have a close view of a beaver cutting down a tree, and at last one came prospecting near where I was hidden. After a prolonged period of repose and possibly reflection he rose, gazed into the treetop, as though to see if it were entangled, then put his fore paws against the tree, spread his hind legs, sat back on his extended tail, and took a bite from the trunk. Everything in his actions suggested that his only intention was to devour the tree deliberately. He did most of the cutting from one side. Occasionally he pulled out a chip by leaning backward; sometimes he pried it out by tilting his head to the horizontal, forcing his lower front teeth behind it, then splitting it out by using his jaws as a lever. He was a trifle more than an hour in felling a four-inch tree; just before it fell he thudded the ground a few times with his tail and ran away. I became deeply interested in this colony, which was situated within two miles of my cabin, and its nearness enabled me to be a frequent visitor and to follow closely its fortunes and misfortunes. About the hut-filled pond I lingered when it was covered with winter's white, when fringed with the gentian's blue, and while decked with the pond-lily's yellow glory. Ruin befell it before my first visit ended. One morning, while watching from the boulder-pile, I noticed an occasional flake of ash dropping into the pond. Soon smoke scented the air, then came the awful and subdued roar of a forest fire. I fled, and from above the timber-line watched the storm-cloud of black smoke sweep furiously forward, bursting and closing to the terrible leaps of red and tattered flames. Before noon several thousand acres of forest were dead, all leaves and twigs were in ashes, all tree-trunks blistered and blackened. The Moraine Colony was closely embowered in a pitchy forest. For a time the houses in the water must have been wrapped in flames of smelter heat. Could these mud houses stand this? The beavers themselves I knew would escape by sinking under the water. Next morning I went through the hot, smoky area and found every house cracked and crumbling; not one was inhabitable. Most serious of all was the total loss of the uncut food supply, when harvesting for winter had only begun. Would these energetic people starve at home or would they try to find refuge in some other colony? Would they endeavor to find a grove that the fire had missed and there start anew? The intense heat had consumed almost every fibrous thing above the surface. The piles of garnered green aspen were charred to the water-line; all that remained of willow thickets and aspen groves were thousands of blackened pickets and points, acres of coarse charcoal stubble. It was a dreary, starving outlook for my furred friends. I left the scene to explore the entire burned area. After wandering for hours amid ashes and charcoal, seeing here and there the seared carcass of a deer or some other wild animal, I came upon a beaver colony that had escaped the fire. It was in the midst of several acres of swampy ground that was covered with fire-resisting willows and aspens. The surrounding pine forest was not dense and the heat it produced in burning did no damage to the scattered beaver houses. From the top of a granite crag I surveyed the green scene of life and the surrounding sweep of desolation. Here and there a sodden log smouldered in the ashen distance and supported a tower of smoke in the still air. A few miles to the east, among the scattered trees of a rocky summit, the fire was burning itself out: to the west the sun was sinking behind crags and snow; near-by, on a blackened limb, a south-bound robin chattered volubly but hopelessly. While I was listening, thinking, and watching, a mountain lion appeared and leaped lightly upon a block of granite. He was on my right, about one hundred feet away and about an equal distance from the shore of the nearest pond. He was interested in the approach of something. With a nervous switching of his tail he peered eagerly forward over the crown of the ridge just before him, and then crouched tensely and expectantly upon his rock. A pine tree that had escaped the fire screened the place toward which the lion looked and where something evidently was approaching. While I was trying to discover what it could be, a coyote trotted into view. Without catching sight of the near-by lion, he suddenly stopped and fixed his gaze upon the point that so interested the crouching beast. The mystery was solved when thirty or forty beavers came hurrying into view. They had come from the ruined Moraine Colony. I thought to myself that the coyote, stuffed as he must be with the seared flesh of fire-roasted victims, would not attack them; but a lion wants a fresh kill for every meal, and so I watched the movements of the latter. He adjusted his feet a trifle and made ready to spring. The beavers were getting close; but just as I was about to shout to frighten him the coyote leaped among them and began killing. In the excitement of getting off the crag I narrowly escaped breaking my neck. Once on the ground I ran for the coyote, shouting wildly to frighten him off; but he was so intent upon killing that a violent kick in the ribs first made him aware of my presence. In anger and excitement he leaped at me with ugly teeth as he fled. The lion had disappeared, and by this time the beavers in the front ranks were jumping into the pond, while the others were awkwardly speeding down the slope. The coyote had killed three. If beavers have a language, surely that night the refugees related to their hospitable neighbors some thrilling experiences. The next morning I returned to the Moraine Colony over the route followed by the refugees. Leaving their fire-ruined homes, they had followed the stream that issued from their ponds. In places the channel was so clogged with fire wreckage that they had followed alongside the water rather than in it, as is their wont. At one place they had hurriedly taken refuge in the stream. Coyote tracks in the scattered ashes explained this. But after going a short distance they had climbed from the water and again traveled the ashy earth. Beavers, like fish, commonly follow water routes, but in times of emergency or in moments of audacity they will journey overland. To have followed this stream down to its first tributary, then up this to where the colony in which they found refuge was situated, would have required four miles of travel. Overland it was less than a mile. After following the stream for some distance, at just the right place they turned off, left the stream, and dared the overland dangers. How did they know the situation of the colony in the willows, or that it had escaped fire, and how could they have known the shortest, best way to it? The morning after the arrival of the refugees, work was begun on two new houses and a dam, which was about sixty feet in length and built across a grassy open. Green cuttings of willow, aspen, and alder were used in its construction. Not a single stone or a handful of mud was used. When completed it appeared like a windrow of freshly raked shrubs. It was almost straight, but sagged a trifle downstream. Though the water filtered freely through, it flooded the flat above. As the two new houses could not shelter all the refugees, it is probable that some of them were sheltered in bank tunnels, while room for others may have been found in the old houses. That winter the colony was raided by some trappers; more than one hundred pelts were secured, and the colony was left in ruins and almost depopulated. The Moraine Colony site was deserted for a long time. Eight years after the fire I returned to examine it. The willow growth about the ruins was almost as thrifty as when the fire came. A growth of aspen taller than one's head clung to the old shore-lines, while a close seedling growth of lodge-pole pine throve in the ashes of the old forest. One low mound, merry with blooming columbine, was the only house ruin to be seen. The ponds were empty and every dam was broken. The stream, in rushing unobstructed through the ruins, had eroded deeply. This erosion revealed the records of ages, and showed that the old main dam had been built on the top of an older dam and a sediment-filled pond. The second dam was on top of an older one still. In the sediment of the oldest--the bottom pond--I found a spear-head, two charred logs, and the skull of a buffalo. Colonies of beaver, as well as those of men, are often found upon sites that have a tragic history. Beavers, with Omar, might say,-- "When you and I behind the veil are past, Oh but the long long while the world shall last." The next summer, 1893, the Moraine site was resettled. During the first season the colonists put in their time repairing dams and were content to live in holes. In autumn they gathered no harvest, and no trace of them could be found after the snow; so it is likely that they had returned to winter in the colony whence they had come. But early in the next spring there were reinforced numbers of them at work establishing a permanent settlement. Three dams were repaired, and in the autumn many of the golden leaves that fell found lodgment in the fresh plaster of two new houses. Most beaver dams are built on the installment plan,--are the result of growth. As the pond fills with sediment, and the water becomes shallower, the dam is built higher and, where conditions require it, longer; or, as is often the case, it may be raised and lengthened for the purpose of raising or backing water to the trees that are next to be harvested. The dams are made of sticks, small trees, sods, mud, stones, coal, grass, roots,--that is, combinations of these. The same may be said of the houses. For either house or dam the most convenient material is likely to be used. But this is not always the case; for the situation of the house, or what the dam may have to endure, evidently is sometimes considered, and apparently that kind of material is used that will best meet all the requirements. Most beaver dams are so situated that they are destined earlier or later to accumulate sediment, trash, and fallen leaves, and become earthy; then they will, of course, be planted by Nature with grass, shrubby willows, and even trees. I have seen many trees with birds' nests in them standing on a beaver dam; yet the original dam had been composed almost entirely of sticks or stones. Why do beavers want or need ponds? They have very heavy bodies and extremely short legs. On land they are slow and awkward and in the greatest danger from their enemies,--wolves, lions, bears, and wildcats; but they are excellent swimmers, and in water they easily elude their enemies, and through it they conveniently bring their harvests home. Water is necessary for their existence, and to have this at all times compels the construction of dams and ponds. In the new Moraine Colony one of the houses was torn to pieces by some animal, probably a bear. This was before Thanksgiving. About midwinter a prospector left his tunnel a few miles away, came to the colony, and dynamited a house, and "got seven of them." Next year two houses were built on the ruins of the two just fallen. That year's harvest-home was broken by deadly attacks of enemies. In gathering the harvest the beavers showed a preference for some aspens that were growing in a moist place about one hundred feet from the water. Whether it was the size of these or their peculiar flavor that determined their election in preference to nearer ones, I could not determine. One day, while several beavers were cutting here, they were surprised by a mountain lion, which leaped upon and killed one of the harvesters. The next day the lion surprised and killed another. Two or three days later a coyote killed one on the same blood-stained spot, and then overtook and killed two others as they fled for the water. I could not see these deadly attacks from the boulder-pile, but in each case the sight of flying beavers sent me rushing upon the scene, where I beheld the cause of their desperate retreat. But despite dangers they persisted until the last of these aspens was harvested. During the winter the bark was eaten from these, and the next season their clean wood was used in the walls of a new house. One spring I several times visited a number of colonies while trying to determine the number of young brought forth at a birth. Six furry little fellows sunning themselves on top of their rude home were the first discovery; this was the twelfth of May. By the close of the month I had come in sight of many youngsters, and found the average number to be five. One mother proudly exhibited eight, while another, one who all winter had been harassed by trappers and who lived in a burrow on the bank, could display but one. In the Moraine Colony the three sets of youngsters numbered two, three, and five. Great times these had as they were growing up. They played over the house, and such fun they had nosing and pushing each other off a large boulder into the water! A thousand merry ripples they sent to the shore as they raced, wrestled, and dived in the pond, both in the sunshine and in the shadows of the willows along the shore. The beaver has a rich birthright, though born in a windowless hut of mud. Close to the primitive place of his birth the wild folk of both woods and water meet and often mingle; around it are the ever-changing, never-ending scenes and silences of the water or the shore. He grows up with the many-sided wild, playing amid the enameled flowers, the great boulders,--the Ice King's marbles,--and the fallen logs in the edge of the mysterious forest; learning to swim and slide; listening to the strong, harmonious stir of wind and water; living with the stars in the sky and the stars in the pond; beginning serious life when brilliant clouds of color enrich the hills; helping to harvest the trees that wear the robes of gold, while the birds go by for the southland in the reflective autumn days. If Mother Nature should ever call me to live upon another planet I could wish that I might be born a beaver, to inhabit a house in the water. The autumn of the year when I watched the young beavers I had the pleasure of seeing some immigrants pass me _en route_ for a new home in the Moraine Colony. Of course they may have been only visitors, or have come temporarily to assist in the harvesting; but I like to think of them as immigrants, and a number of things testified that immigrants they were. One evening I had long been lying on a boulder by the stream below the colony, waiting for a gift from the gods. It came. Out of the water within ten feet of me scrambled the most patriarchal, as well as the largest, beaver that I have ever seen. I wanted to take off my hat to him, I wanted to ask him to tell me the story of his life, but from long habit I simply lay still and watched and thought in silence. He was making a portage round a cascade. As he scrambled up over the rocks, I noticed that he had but two fingers on his right hand. He was followed, in single file, by four others; one of these was minus a finger on the left hand. The next morning I read that five immigrants had arrived in the Moraine Colony. They had registered their footprints in the muddy margin of the lower pond. Had an agent been sent to invite these colonists, or had they come out of their own adventurous spirit? The day following their arrival I trailed them backward in the hope of learning whence they came and why they had moved. They had traveled in the water most of the time; but in places they had come out on the bank to go round a waterfall or to avoid an obstruction. Here and there I saw their tracks in the mud and traced them to a beaver settlement in which the houses and dams had been recently wrecked. A near-by rancher told me that he had been "making it hot" for all beavers in his meadow. During the next two years I occasionally saw this patriarchal beaver or his tracks thereabout. [Illustration: A BEAVER HOUSE IN WINTER] It is the custom among old male beavers to idle away two or three months of each summer in exploring the neighboring brooks and streams. But they never fail to return in time for autumn activities. It thus becomes plain how, when an old colony needs to move, some one in it knows where to go and the route to follow. I had enjoyed the ways of "our first engineers" for several years before it dawned upon me that their works might be useful to man and that the beaver might justly be called the first conservationist. One dry winter the stream through the Moraine Colony ran low and froze to the bottom, and the only trout in it that survived were those in the deep holes of these beaver ponds. Another demonstration of their usefulness came one gray day. The easy rain of two days ended in a heavy downpour and a deluge of water on the mountainside above. This mountain-slope was still barren from the forest fire. It had but little to absorb or delay the excess of water, which was speedily shed into the stream below. Flooding down the stream's channel came a roaring avalanche or waterslide, with a rubbish-filled front that was five or six feet high. This expanded as it rolled into the pond and swept far out on the sides, while the front, greatly lowered, rushed over the dam. Much of this water was caught and temporarily detained in the ponds, and by the time it poured over the last dam its volume was greatly reduced and its speed checked. The ponds had broken the rush and prevented a flood. Every beaver pond is a settling-basin that takes sediment and soil from the water that passes through it. If this soil were carried down it would not only be lost, but it would clog the deep waterway, the river channel. Deposited in the pond, it will in time become productive. During past ages the millions of beaver dams in the United States have spread soil over thousands of square miles and rendered them productive. Beavers prepared the way for numerous forests and meadows, for countless orchards and peaceful, productive valleys. The Moraine colonists gathered an unusually large harvest during the autumn of 1909. Seven hundred and thirty-two sapling aspens and several hundred willows were massed in the main pond by the largest house. This pile, which was mostly below the water-line, was three feet deep and one hundred and twenty-four feet in circumference. Would a new house be built this fall? This unusually large harvest plainly told that either children or immigrants had increased the population of the colony. Of course, a hard winter may also have been expected. No; they were not to build a new house, but the old house by the harvest pile was to be enlarged. One day, just as the evening shadow of Long's Peak had covered the pond, I peeped over a log on top of the dam to watch the work. The house was only forty feet distant. Not a ripple stirred among the inverted peaks and pines in the clear, shadow-enameled pond. A lone beaver rose quietly in the scene from the water near the house. Swimming noiselessly, he made a circuit of the pond. Then for a time, and without any apparent purpose, he swam back and forth over a short, straight course; he moved leisurely, and occasionally made a shallow, quiet dive. He did not appear to be watching anything in particular or to have anything special on his mind. Yet his eyes may have been scouting for enemies and his mind may have been full of house plans. Finally he dived deeply, and the next I saw of him he was climbing up the side of the house addition with a pawful of mud. By this time a number of beavers were swimming in the pond after the manner of the first one. Presently all began to work. The addition already stood more than two feet above the water-line. The top of this was crescent-shaped and was about seven feet long and half as wide. It was made mostly of mud, which was plentifully reinforced with willow cuttings and aspen sticks. For a time all the workers busied themselves in carrying mud and roots from the bottom of the pond and placing these on the slowly rising addition. Eleven were working at one time. By and by three swam ashore, each in a different direction and each a few seconds apart. After a minute or two they returned from the shore, each carrying or trailing a long willow. These were dragged to the top of the addition, laid down, and trampled in the mud. Meantime the mud-carriers kept steadily at their work; again willows were brought, but this time four beavers went, and, as before, each was independent of the others. I did not see how this work could go on without some one bossing the thing, but I failed to detect any beaver acting as overseer. While there was general coöperation, each acted independently most of the time and sometimes was apparently oblivious of the others. These beavers simply worked,--slowly, silently, and steadily; and they were still working away methodically and with dignified deliberation when darkness hid them. Most beaver houses are conical and round of outline. This house originally was slightly elliptical and measured forty-one feet in circumference. After enlargement it was almost a flattened ellipse and measured sixty-three feet in circumference. Generally I have found that small beaver houses are round and large ones elliptical. One of the last large interesting works of the Moraine Colony was the making of a new pond. This was made alongside the main pond and about fifty feet distant from it. A low ridge separated the two. As it was nearly one hundred feet from the stream, a ditch or canal was dug from the stream, below the main pond, to fill it. The new pond was made for the purpose of reaching with a waterway an aspen grove on its farther shore. The making of the dam showed more forethought than the getting of the water into the pond. With the exception of aspen, no dam-making material such as beavers commonly use was to be found. The population of the colony was now large, while aspen, the chief food-supply, was becoming scarce. Would the beavers see far enough ahead to realize this? Evidently they did; at any rate not a single precious aspen was used in making the dam. Close to the dam-site was a supply of young lodge-pole pines; but it is against the tradition of the beaver to cut green pines or spruces. Two of these lodge-poles were cut, but evidently these pitchy, smelly things were not to the beavers' taste and no more of them were used. Not far away were scores of fire-killed trees, both standing and fallen. "Surely," I said to myself, when two dead chunks had been dragged into place, "they are not going to use this dead timber?" A beaver avoids gnawing dead wood; it is slow work, and besides is very hard on the teeth. Most of these dead trees were inconveniently large, and were fire-hardened and full of sand-filled weather-cracks; but contrary to all my years of observation, they, after long, hard labor, built an excellent dam from this material. * * * * * I have determined to do all I can to perpetuate the beaver, and I wish I could interest every man, woman, boy, and girl in the land to help in this. Beaver works are so picturesque and so useful to man that I trust this persistent practicer of conservation will not perish from the hills and mountains of our land. His growing scarcity is awakening some interest in him, and I hope and half believe that before many years every brook that is born on a great watershed will, as it goes swiftly, merrily singing down the slopes toward the sea, pass through and be steadied in a poetic pond that is made and will be maintained by our patient, persistent, faithful friend the beaver. Harvest Time with Beavers Harvest Time with Beavers One autumn I watched a beaver colony and observed the customs of its primitive inhabitants as they gathered their harvest for winter. It was the Spruce Tree Colony, the most attractive one of the sixteen beaver municipalities on the big moraine on the slope of Long's Peak. The first evening I concealed myself close to the beaver house by the edge of the pond. Just at sunset a large, aged beaver of striking, patriarchal appearance, rose in the water by the house and swam slowly, silently round the pond. He kept close to the shore and appeared to be scouting to see if an enemy lurked near. On completing the circuit of the pond, he climbed upon the end of a log that was thrust a few feet out into the water. Presently several other beaver appeared in the water close to the house. A few of these at once left the pond and nosed quietly about on the shore. The others swam about for some minutes and then joined their comrades on land, where all rested for a time. Meanwhile the aged beaver had lifted a small aspen limb out of the water and was squatted on the log, leisurely eating bark. Before many minutes elapsed the other beaver became restless and finally started up the slope in a runway. They traveled slowly in single file and one by one vanished amid the tall sedge. The old beaver slipped noiselessly into the water, and a series of low waves pointed toward the house. It was dark as I stole away in silence for the night, and Mars was gently throbbing in the black water. This was an old beaver settlement, and the numerous harvests gathered by its inhabitants had long since exhausted the near-by growths of aspen, the bark of which is the favorite food of North American beaver, though the bark of willow, cottonwood, alder, and birch is also eaten. An examination of the aspen supply, together with the lines of transportation,--the runways, canals, and ponds,--indicated that this year's harvest would have to be brought a long distance. The place it would come from was an aspen grove far up the slope, about a quarter of a mile distant from the main house, and perhaps a hundred and twenty feet above it. In this grove I cut three notches in the trunks of several trees to enable me to identify them whether in the garnered pile by a house or along the line of transportation to it. The grounds of this colony occupied several acres on a terraced, moderately steep slope of a mountain moraine. Along one side rushed a swift stream on which the colonists maintained three but little used ponds. On the opposite side were the slope and summit of the moraine. There was a large pond at the bottom, and one or two small ponds, or water-filled basins, dotted each of the five terraces which rose above. The entire grounds were perforated with subterranean passageways or tunnels. Beaver commonly fill their ponds by damming a brook or a river. But this colony obtained most of its water-supply from springs poured forth abundantly on the uppermost terrace, where the water was led into one pond and a number of basins. Overflowing from these, it either made a merry, tiny cascade or went to lubricate a slide on the short slopes which led to the ponds on the terrace below. The waters from all terraces were gathered into a large pond at the bottom. This pond measured six hundred feet in circumference. The crooked and almost encircling grass-grown dam was six feet high, and four hundred feet long. In its upper edge stood the main house, which was eighty feet high and forty feet in circumference. There was also another house on one of the terraces. After notching the aspens I spent some time exploring the colony grounds and did not return to the marked trees until forty-eight hours had elapsed. Harvest had begun, and one of the largest notched trees had been felled and removed. Its gnawed stump was six inches in diameter and stood fifteen inches high. The limbs had been trimmed off, and a number of these lay scattered about the stump. The trunk, which must have been about eighteen feet long, had disappeared, cut into lengths of from three to six feet, probably, and started toward the harvest pile. Wondering for which house these logs were intended, I followed, hoping to trace and trail them to the house, or find them _en route_. From the spot where they were cut, they had evidently been rolled down a steep, grassy seventy-foot slope, at the bottom of this dragged an equal distance over a level stretch among some lodge-pole pines, and then pushed or dragged along a narrow runway that had been cut through a rank growth of willows. Once through the willows, they were pushed into the uppermost pond. They were taken across this, forced over the dam on the opposite side, and shot down a slide into the pond which contained the smaller house. Only forty-eight hours before, the little logs which I was following were in a tree, and now I expected to find them by this house. It was good work to have got them here so quickly, I thought. But no logs could be found by the house or in the pond! The folks at this place had not yet laid up anything for winter. The logs must have gone farther. On the opposite side of this pond I found where the logs had been dragged across the broad dam and then heaved into a long, wet slide which landed them in a small, shallow harbor in the grass. From this point a canal about eighty feet long ran around the brow of the terrace and ended at the top of a long slide which reached to the big pond. This canal was new and probably had been dug especially for this harvest. For sixty feet of its length it was quite regular in form and had an average width of thirty inches and a depth of fourteen. The mud dug in making it was piled evenly along the lower side. Altogether it looked more like the work of a careful man with a shovel than of beaver without tools. Seepage and overflow water from the ponds above filled and flowed slowly through it and out at the farther end, where it swept down the long slide into the big pond. Through this canal the logs had been taken one by one. At the farther end I found the butt-end log. It probably had been too heavy to heave out of the canal, but tracks in the mud indicated that there was a hard tussle before it was abandoned. [Illustration: A BEAVER CANAL Length 334 feet, average depth 15 inches, average width 26 inches] The pile of winter supplies was started. Close to the big house a few aspen leaves fluttered on twigs in the water; evidently these twigs were attached to limbs or larger pieces of aspen that were piled beneath the surface. Could it be that the aspen which I had marked on the mountainside a quarter of a mile distant so short a time before, and which I had followed over slope and slide, canal and basin, was now piled on the bottom of this pond? I waded out into the water, prodded about with a pole, and found several smaller logs. Dragging one of these to the surface, I found there were three notches on it. Evidently these heavy green tree cuttings had been sunk to the bottom simply by the piling of other similar cuttings upon them. With this heavy material in the still water a slight contact with the bottom would prevent the drifting of accumulating cuttings until a heavy pile could be formed. However, in deep or swift water I have noticed that an anchorage for the first few pieces was secured by placing these upon the lower slope of the house or against the dam. Scores of aspens were felled in the grove where the notched ones were. They were trimmed, cut into sections, and limbs, logs, and all taken over the route of the one I had followed, and at last placed in a pile beside the big house. This harvest gathering went on for a month. All about was busy, earnest preparation for winter. The squirrels from the tree-tops kept a rattling rain of cones on the leaf-strewn forest floor, the cheery chipmunk foraged and frolicked among the withered leaves and plants, while aspens with leaves of gold fell before the ivory sickles of the beaver. Splendid glimpses, grand views, I had of this strange harvest-home. How busy the beavers were! They were busy in the grove on the steep mountainside; they tugged logs along the runways; they hurried them across the water-basins, wrestled with them in canals, and merrily piled them by the rude house in the water. And I watched them through the changing hours; I saw their shadowy activity in the starry, silent night; I saw them hopefully leave home for the harvest groves in the serene twilight, and I watched them working busily in the light of the noonday sun. Most of the aspens were cut off between thirteen and fifteen inches above the ground. A few stumps were less than five inches high, while a number were four feet high. These high cuttings were probably made from reclining trunks of lodged aspens which were afterward removed. The average diameter of the aspens cut was four and one half inches at the top of the stump. Numerous seedlings of an inch diameter were cut, and the largest tree felled for this harvest measured fourteen inches across the stump. This had been laid low only a few hours before I found it, and a bushel of white chips and cuttings encircled the lifeless stump like a wreath. In falling, the top had become entangled in an alder thicket and lodged six feet from the ground. It remained in this position for several days and was apparently abandoned; but the last time I went to see it the alders which upheld it were being cut away. Although the alders were thick upon the ground, only those which had upheld the aspen had been cut. It may be that the beaver which felled them looked and thought before they went ahead with the cutting. Why had this and several other large aspens been left uncut in a place where all were convenient for harvest? All other neighboring aspens were cut years ago. One explanation is that the beaver realized that the tops of the aspens were entangled and interlocked in the limbs of crowding spruces and would not fall if cut off at the bottom. This and one other were the only large ones that were felled, and the tops of these had been recently released by the overturning of some spruces and the breaking of several branches on others. Other scattered large aspens were left uncut, but all of these were clasped in the arms of near-by spruces. It was the habit of these colonists to transfer a tree to the harvest pile promptly after cutting it down. But one morning I found logs on slides and in canals, and unfinished work in the grove, as though everything had been suddenly dropped in the night when work was at its height. Coyotes had howled freely during the night, but this was not uncommon. In going over the grounds I found the explanation of this untidy work in a bear track and numerous wolf tracks, freshly moulded in the muddy places. After the bulk of the harvest was gathered, I went one day to the opposite side of the moraine and briefly observed the methods of the Island beaver colony. The ways of the two colonies were in some things very different. In the Spruce Tree Colony the custom was to move the felled aspen promptly to the harvest pile. In the Island Colony the custom was to cut down most of the harvest before transporting any of it to the pile beside the house. Of the one hundred and sixty-two trees that had been felled for this harvest, one hundred and twenty-seven were still lying where they fell. However, the work of transporting was getting under way; a few logs were in the pile beside the house, and numerous others were scattered along the canals, runways, and slides between the house and the harvest grove. There was more wasted labor, too, in the Island Colony. This was noticeable in the attempts that had been made to fell limb-entangled trees that could not fall. One five-inch aspen had three times been cut off at the bottom. The third cut was more than three feet from the ground, and was made by a beaver working from the top of a fallen log. Still this high-cut aspen refused to come down and there it hung like a collapsed balloon entangled in tree-tops. Before the white man came it is probable that beaver did most of their work in the day-time. But at present, except in the most remote localities, day work is perilous. Prowling hunters have compelled most beaver to work at night. The Spruce Tree Colony was an isolated one, and occasionally its members worked and even played in the sunshine. Each day I secluded myself, kept still, and waited; and on a few occasions watched them as they worked in the light. One windy day, just as I was unroping myself from the shaking limb of a spruce, four beaver were plodding along in single file beneath. They had come out of a hole between the roots of the spruce. At an aspen growth about fifty feet distant they separated. Though they had been closely assembled, each appeared utterly oblivious of the presence of the others. One squatted on the ground by an aspen, took a bite of bark out of it and ate leisurely. By and by he rose, clasped the aspen with fore paws and began to bite chips from it systematically. He was deliberately cutting it down. The most aged beaver waddled near an aspen, gazed into its top for a few seconds, then moved away about ten feet and started to fell a five-inch aspen. The one rejected was entangled at the top. Presently the third beaver selected a tree, and after some trouble to get comfortably seated, or squatted, also began cutting. The fourth beaver disappeared and I did not see him again. While I was looking for this one the huge, aged beaver whose venerable appearance had impressed me the first evening appeared on the scene. He came out of a hole beneath some spruces about a hundred feet distant. He looked neither to right nor to left, nor up nor down, as he ambled toward the aspen growth. When about halfway there he wheeled suddenly and took an uneasy survey of the open he had traversed, as though he had heard an enemy behind. Then with apparently stolid indifference he went on leisurely, and for a time paused among the cutters, which did nothing to indicate that they realized his presence. He ate some bark from a green limb on the ground, moved on, and went into the hole beneath me. He appeared so large that I afterward measured the distance between the two aspens where he paused. He was not less than three and a half feet long and probably weighed fifty pounds. He had all his toes; there was no white spot on his body; in fact, there was neither mark nor blemish by which I could positively identify him. Yet I feel that in my month around the colony I beheld the patriarch of the first evening in several scenes of action. [Illustration: ASPENS CUT BY BEAVER] Sixty-seven minutes after the second beaver began cutting he made a brief pause; then he suddenly thudded the ground with his tail, hurriedly took out a few more chips, and ran away, with the other two beaver a little in advance, just as his four-inch aspen settled over and then fell. All paused for a time close to the hole beneath me, and then the old beaver returned to his work. The one that had felled his tree followed closely and at once began on another aspen. The other beaver, with his aspen half cut off, went into the hole and did not again come out. By and by an old and a young beaver came out of the hole. The young one at once began cutting limbs off the recently felled aspen, while the other began work on the half-cut tree; but he ignored the work already done, and finally severed the trunk about four inches above the cut made by the other. Suddenly the old beaver whacked the ground and ran, but at thirty feet distant he paused and nervously thumped the ground with his tail, as his aspen slowly settled and fell. Then he went into the hole beneath me. This year's harvest was so much larger than usual that it may be the population of this colony had been increased by the arrival of emigrants from a persecuted colony down in the valley. The total harvest numbered four hundred and forty-three trees. These made a harvest pile four feet high and ninety feet in circumference. A thick covering of willows was placed on top of the harvest pile,--I cannot tell for what reason unless it was to sink all the aspen below reach of the ice. This bulk of stores together with numerous roots of willow and water plants, which in the water are eaten from the bottom of the pond, would support a numerous beaver population through the days of ice and snow. On the last tour through the colony everything was ready for the long and cold winter. Dams were in repair and ponds were brimming over with water, the fresh coats of mud on the houses were freezing to defy enemies, and a bountiful harvest was home. Harvest-gathering is full of hope and romance. What a joy it must be to every man or animal who has a hand in it! What a satisfaction, too, for all dependent upon a harvest, to know that there is abundance stored for all the frosty days! The people of this wild, strange, picturesque colony had planned and prepared well. I wished them a winter unvisited by cruel fate or foe, and trusted that when June came again the fat and furry young beaver would play with the aged one amid the tiger lilies in the shadows of the big spruce trees. Mountain-Top Weather Mountain-Top Weather The narrow Alpine zone of peaks and snow that forms the crest of the Rocky Mountains has its own individual elemental moods, its characteristic winds, its electrical and other peculiarities, and a climate of its own. Commonly its days are serene and sunny, but from time to time it has hail and snow and showers of wind-blown rain, cold as ice-water. It is subject to violent changes from clear, calm air to blizzard. I have enjoyed these strange, silent heights in every season of the year. In climbing scores of these peaks, in crossing the passes, often on snowshoes, and in camping here and there on the skyline, I have encountered these climatic changes and had numerous strange experiences. From these experiences I realize that the transcontinental aviator, with this realm of peak and sky, will have some delightful as well as serious surprises. He will encounter stern conditions. He may, like a storm-defying bird, be carried from his course by treacherous currents and battle with breakers or struggle in vain in the monstrous, invisible maelstroms that beset this ocean of air. Of these skyline factors the more imposing are wind, cold, clouds, rain, snow, and subtle, capricious electricity. High winds are common across the summits of these mountains; and they are most prevalent in winter. Those of summer, though less frequent and much more short-lived, are a menace on account of their fury and the suddenness with which they surprise and sweep the heights. Early one summer, while exploring a wide alpine moorland above the timber-line, I--and some others--had an experience with one of those sudden stormbursts. The region was utterly wild, but up to it straggling tourists occasionally rode for a view of the surrounding mountain world. All alone, I was studying the ways of the wild inhabitants of the heights. I had spent the calm, sunny morning in watching a solitary bighorn that was feeding among some boulders. He was aged, and he ate as though his teeth were poor and walked as though afflicted with rheumatism. Suddenly this patriarch forgot his age and fled precipitately, with almost the speed of frightened youth. I leaped upon a boulder to watch him, but was instantly knocked headlong by a wild blast of wind. In falling I caught sight of a straw hat and a wrecked umbrella falling out of the sky. Rising amid the pelting gale of flung hail, ice-water, and snow, I pushed my way in the teeth of the storm, hoping for shelter in the lee of a rock-pile about a hundred yards distant. A lady's disheveled hat blew by me, and with the howl of the wind came, almost drowned, excited human utterances. Nearing the rock-pile, I caught a vague view of a merry-go-round of man and horse, then a glimpse of the last gyration, in which an elderly Eastern gentleman parted company with a stampeded bronco. Five tourists had ridden up in the sunshine to enjoy the heights, and the suddenness and fierceness of the storm had thrown them into a panic and stampeded their horses. They were drenched and severely chilled, and they were frightened. I made haste to tell them that the storm would be brief. While I was still trying to reassure them, the clouds commenced to dissolve and the sun came out. Presently all were watching the majestic soaring of two eagles up in the blue, while I went off to collect five scattered saddle-ponies that were contentedly feeding far away on the moor. Though the winter winds are of slower development, they are more prolonged and are tempestuously powerful. Occasionally these winds blow for days; and where they follow a fall of snow they blow and whirl this about so wildly that the air is befogged for several hundred feet above the earth. So violently and thickly is the powdered snow flung about that a few minutes at a time is the longest that one can see or breathe in it. These high winter winds come out of the west in a deep, broad stratum that is far above most of the surface over which they blow. Commonly a high wind strikes the western slope of the Continental Divide a little below the altitude of eleven thousand feet. This striking throws it into fierce confusion. It rolls whirling up the steeps and frequently shoots far above the highest peaks. Across the passes it sweeps, roars down the cañons on the eastern slope, and rushes out across the plains. Though the western slope below eleven thousand feet is a calm zone, the entire eastern slope is being whipped and scourged by a flood of wind. Occasionally the temperature of these winds is warm. These swift, insistent winds, torn, intercepted, and deflected by dashing against the broken skyline, produce currents, counter-currents, sleepy eddies, violent vertical whirls, and milling maelstroms that are tilted at every angle. In places there is a gale blowing upward, and here and there the air pours heavily down in an invisible but almost crushing air-fall. One winter I placed an air-meter in Granite Pass, at twelve thousand feet altitude on the slope of Long's Peak. During the first high wind I fought my way up to read what the meter said. Both the meter and myself found the wind exceeded the speed limit. Emerging above the trees at timber-line, I had to face the unbroken fury of the gale as it swept down the slope from the heights above. The region was barren of snow. The wind dashed me with sandblasts and pelted me with gravel volleys that were almost unbearable. My face and wrists were bruised, and blood was drawn in many places where the gravel struck. Seeking rest and shelter from this persistent punishment, I approached a crag and when only a few yards away was struck and overturned by the milling air-current around it. The air was so agitated around this crag that its churnings followed me, like disturbed water, under and behind the large rock-fragments, where shelter was hoped for but only partly secured. [Illustration: WIND-BLOWN TREES AT TIMBER-LINE] On the last slope below the meter the wind simply played with me. I was overthrown, tripped, knocked down, blown explosively off my feet and dropped. Sometimes the wind dropped me heavily, but just as often it eased me down. I made no attempt to stand erect; most of the time this was impossible and at all times it was very dangerous. Now and then the wind rolled me as I lay resting upon a smooth place. Advancing was akin to swimming a whirlpool or to wrestling one's way up a slope despite the ceaseless opposition of a vigorous, tireless opponent. At last I crawled and climbed up to the buzzing cups of the meter. So swiftly were they rotating they formed a blurred circle, like a fast-revolving life-preserver. The meter showed that the wind was passing with a speed of from one hundred and sixty-five to one hundred and seventy miles an hour. The meter blew up--or, rather, flew to pieces--during a swifter spurt. The wind so loudly ripped and roared round the top of the peak that I determined to scale the summit and experience its wildest and most eloquent efforts. All my strength and climbing knowledge were required to prevent my being literally blown out of converging rock channels through which the wind gushed; again and again I clung with all my might to avoid being torn from the ledges. Fortunately not a bruise was received, though many times this was narrowly avoided. The top of the peak, an area of between three and four acres and comparatively level, was in an easy eddy, almost a calm when compared with the wind's activities below and near by. Apparently the wind-current collided so forcefully with the western wall of the peak that it was thrown far above the summit before recovering to continue its way eastward; but against the resisting spurs and pinnacles a little below summit-level the wind roared, boomed, and crashed in its determined, passionate onsweep. The better to hear this grand uproar, I advanced to the western edge of the summit. Here my hat was torn off, but not quite grasped, by the upshooting blast. It fell into the swirl above the summit and in large circles floated upward at slow speed, rising directly above the top of the peak. It rose and circled so slowly that I threw several stones at it, trying to knock it down before it rose out of range. The diameter of the circle through which it floated was about one hundred and fifty feet; when it had risen five, or perhaps six, hundred feet above the summit it suddenly tumbled over and over as though about to fall, but instead of falling it sailed off toward the east as though a carrier pigeon hurrying for a known and definite place in the horizon. Some of the gulf-streams, hell-gates, whirlpools, rough channels, and dangerous tides in the sea of air either are in fixed places or adjust themselves to winds from a different quarter so definitely that their location can be told by considering them in connection with the direction of the wind. Thus the sea of air may be partly charted and the position of some of its dangerous places, even in mountain-top oceans, positively known. However, there are dangerous mountain-top winds of one kind, or, more properly, numerous local air-blasts, that are sometimes created within these high winds, that do not appear to have any habits. It would be easier to tell where the next thunderbolt would fall than where the next one of these would explode. One of these might be called a cannon wind. An old prospector, who had experienced countless high winds among the crags, once stated that high, gusty winds on mountain-slopes "sometimes shoot off a cannon." These explosive blasts touch only a short, narrow space, but in this they are almost irresistible. Isolated clouds often soften and beautify the stern heights as they silently float and drift among peaks and passes. Flocks of these sky birds frequently float about together. On sunny days, in addition to giving a charm to the peaks, their restless shadows never tire of readjusting themselves and are ever trying to find a foundation or a place of rest upon the tempestuous topography of the heights below. Now and then a deep, dense cloud-stratum will cover the crests and envelop the summit slopes for days. These vapory strata usually feel but little wind and they vary in thickness from a few hundred to a few thousand feet. Sometimes one of these rests so serenely that it suggests an aggregation of clouds pushed off to one side because temporarily the sky does not need them elsewhere for either decorative or precipitative purposes. Now and then they do drop rain or snow, but most of the time they appear to be in a procrastinating mood and unable to decide whether to precipitate or to move on. Commonly the upper surfaces of cloud-strata appear like a peaceful silver-gray sea. They appear woolly and sometimes fluffy, level, and often so vast that they sweep away beyond the horizon. Peaks and ridges often pierce their interminable surface with romantic continents and islands; along their romantic shores, above the surface of the picturesque sea, the airship could sail in safe poetic flight, though the foggy depths below were too dense for any traveler to penetrate. One spring the snow fell continuously around my cabin for three days. Reports told that the storm was general over the Rocky Mountain region. Later investigations showed that that cloud and storm were spread over a quarter of a million square miles. Over this entire area there was made a comparatively even deposit of thirty inches of snow. All over the area, the bottom, or under surface, of the cloud was at an altitude of approximately nine thousand feet. My cabin, with an altitude of nine thousand, was immersed in cloud, though at times it was one hundred feet or so below it. Fully satisfied of the widespread and general nature of the storm, and convinced of the comparatively level line of the bottom surface of the cloud, I determined to measure its vertical depth and observe its slow movements by climbing above its silver lining. This was the third day of the storm. On snowshoes up the mountainside I went through this almost opaque sheep's-wool cloud. It was not bitterly cold, but cloud and snow combined were blinding, and only a ravine and instinct enabled me to make my way. At an altitude of about twelve thousand feet the depth of the snow became suddenly less, soon falling to only an inch or so. Within a few rods of where it began to grow shallow I burst through the upper surface of the cloud. Around me and above there was not a flake of snow. Over the entire storm-area of a quarter of a million square miles, all heights above twelve thousand had escaped both cloud and snow. The cloud, which thus lay between the altitudes of nine thousand and twelve thousand feet, was three thousand feet deep. When I rose above the surface of this sea the sun was shining upon it. It was a smooth sea; not a breath of wind ruffled it. The top of Long's Peak rose bald and broken above. Climbing to the top of a commanding ridge, I long watched this beautiful expanse of cloud and could scarcely realize that it was steadily flinging multitudes of snowflakes upon slopes and snows below. Though practically stationary, this cloud expanse had some slight movements. These were somewhat akin to those of a huge raft that is becalmed in a quiet harbor. Slowly, easily, and almost imperceptibly the entire mass slid forward along the mountains; it moved but a short distance, paused for some minutes, then slowly slid back a trifle farther than it had advanced. After a brief stop the entire mass, as though anchored in the centre, started to swing in an easy, deliberate rotation; after a few degrees of movement it paused, hesitated, then swung with slow, heavy movement back. In addition to these shifting horizontal motions there was a short vertical one. The entire mass slowly sank and settled two or three hundred feet, then, with scarcely a pause, rose easily to the level from which it sank. Only once did it rise above this level. During all seasons of the year there are oft-recurring periods when the mountains sit in sunshine and all the winds are still. In days of this kind the transcontinental passengers in glass-bottomed airships would have a bird's-eye view of sublime scenes. The purple forests, the embowered, peaceful parks, the drifted snows, the streams that fold and shine through the forests,--all these combine and cover magnificently the billowed and broken distances, while ever floating up from below are the soft, ebbing, and intermittent songs from white water that leaps in glory. Though the summits of the Rocky Mountains are always cool, it is only in rare, brief times that they fall within the frigid spell of Farthest North and become cruelly cold. The climate among these mountain-tops is much milder than people far away imagine. The electrical effects that enliven and sometimes illuminate these summits are peculiar and often highly interesting. Thunderbolts--lightning-strokes--are rare, far less frequent than in most lowland districts. However, when lightning does strike the heights, it appears to have many times the force that is displayed in lowland strokes. My conclusions concerning the infrequency of thunderbolts on these sky-piercing peaks are drawn chiefly from my own experience. I have stood through storms upon more than a score of Rocky Mountain summits that were upward of fourteen thousand feet above the tides. Only one of these peaks was struck; this was Long's Peak, which rises to the height of 14,256 feet above the sea. Seventy storms I have experienced on the summit of this peak, and during these it was struck but three times to my knowledge. One of these strokes fell a thousand feet below the top; two struck the same spot on the edge of the summit. The rock struck was granite, and the effects of the strokes were similar; hundreds of pounds of shattered rock fragments were flung horizontally afar. Out of scores of experiences in rain-drenched passes I have record of but two thunderbolts. Both of these were heavy. In all these instances the thunderbolt descended at a time when the storm-cloud was a few hundred feet above the place struck. During the greater number of high-altitude storms the cloud is in contact with the surface or but little removed from it. Never have I known the lightning to strike when the clouds were close to the surface or touching it. It is, however, common, during times of low-dragging clouds, for the surface air to be heavily charged with electrical fluid. This often is accompanied with strange effects. Prominent among these is a low pulsating hum or an intermittent _buz-z-z-z_, with now and then a sharp _zit-zit!_ Sometimes accompanying, at other times only briefly breaking in, are subdued camp-fire cracklings and roarings. Falling snowflakes, during these times, are occasionally briefly luminous, like fireflies, the instant they touch the earth. Hair-pulling is the commonest effect that people experience in these sizzling electrical storms. There is a straightening of the hairs and apparently a sharp pull upon each. As John Muir has it, "You are sure to be lost in wonder and praise and every hair of your head will stand up and hum and sing like an enthusiastic congregation." Most people take very gravely their first experience of this kind; especially when accompanied, as it often is, with apparent near-by bee-buzzings and a purplish roll or halo around the head. During these times a sudden finger movement will produce a crackling snap or spark. On rare occasions these interesting peculiarities become irritating and sometimes serious to one. In "A Watcher on the Heights," in "Wild Life on the Rockies," I have described a case of this kind. A few people suffer from a muscular cramp or spasm, and occasionally the muscles are so tensed that breathing becomes difficult and heart-action disturbed. I have never known an electrical storm to be fatal. Relief from the effects of such a storm may generally be had by lying between big stones or beneath shelving rocks. On one occasion I saw two ladies and four gentlemen lay dignity aside and obtain relief by jamming into a place barely large enough for two. In my own case, activity invariably intensified these effects; and the touching of steel or iron often had the same results. For some years a family resided upon the slope of Mt. Teller, at an altitude of twelve thousand feet. Commonly during storms the stove and pipe were charged with fluid so heavily that it was a case of hands off and let dinner wait, and sometimes spoil, until the heavens shut off the current. The sustaining buoyancy of the air to aerial things decreases with altitude. In this "light" air some motor machinery is less efficient than it is in the lowlands. It is probable that aviators will always find the air around uplifted peaks much less serviceable than this element upon the surface of the sea. But known and unknown dangers in the air will be mastered, and ere long the dangers to those who take flight through the air will be no greater than the dangers to those who go down to the sea in ships. Flying across the crest of the continent, above the crags and cañons, will be enchanting, and this journey through the upper air may bring to many the first stirring message from the rocks and templed hills. Rob of the Rockies Rob of the Rockies Hurrying out of the flood-swept mountains in northern Colorado, in May, 1905, I came upon a shaggy black and white dog, hopelessly fastened in an entanglement of flood-moored barbed-wire fence that had been caught in a clump of willows. He had been carried down with the flood and was coated with earth. Masses of mud clung here and there to his matted hair, and his handsome tail was encased as though in a plaster cast. He was bruised, and the barbs had given him several cuts. One ear was slit, and a blood-clot from a cut on his head almost closed his left eye. Had I not chanced upon him, he probably would have perished from hunger and slow torture. Though he must have spent twelve hours in this miserable barbed binding, he made no outcry. The barbs repeatedly penetrated his skin, as I untangled and uncoiled the wires from around his neck and between his legs. As he neither flinched nor howled, I did him the injustice to suppose that he was almost dead. He trusted me, and as I rolled him about, taking off that last thorny tangle, the slit ear, bloody muzzle, and muddy head could not hide from me an expression of gratitude in his intelligent face. Returning from a camping-trip, and narrowly escaping drowning, too, I was a dirty vagabond myself. When the last wire dropped from the prisoner, he enthusiastically began to share his earth coating with me. He leaped up and half clasped me in his fore legs, at the same time wiping most of the mud off his head on one side of my face. Then he darted between my legs, racing about and occasionally leaping or flinging himself against me; each time he leaped, he twisted as he came up so that he struck me with his back, head, or side, and thus managed to transfer much of this fertile coat to me. He finally ended by giving several barks, and then racing to the near-by river for a drink and a bath. I, too, needed another cloudburst. Just what kinds of dogs may have made his mixed ancestry could not be told. Occasionally I had a glimpse of a collie in him, but for all practical purposes he was a shepherd, and he frequently exhibited traits for which the shepherd is celebrated. I could never find out where he came from. It may be that the flood separated him from his master's team; he may have been washed away from one of the flooded ranches; or he may have been, as the stage-driver later told me, "a tramp dog that has been seen in North Park, Cheyenne, and Greeley." Home he may have left; master he may have lost; or tramp he may have been; but he insisted on going with me, and after a kindly though forceful protest, I gave in and told him he might follow. The flood had swept all bridges away, and I was hurrying down the Poudre, hoping to find a place to cross without being compelled to swim. He followed, and kept close to my heels as I wound in and out among flood débris and willow-clumps. But I did not find a place that appeared shallow. As it was necessary to cross, I patted my companion good-by, thinking he would not care to go farther, and waded in. He squatted by the water's edge and set up a howl. I stopped and explained to him that this was very bad crossing for an injured dog, and that we would better separate; but he only howled the more. He wanted to go with me, but was afraid to try alone. Returning to the bank, I found a rope in the flood wreckage, tied this around his neck and waded in. He followed cheerfully, but swam with effort. When about half way across, and in the water up to my shoulders, I attached myself to a floating log lest the dog should weaken and need help. Within sixty or seventy feet of the desired bank we struck a stretch of swift, deep water, in which I was compelled to let the animal go and swim for the shore. My companion was swept down by the current, and the rope caught on a snag, entangling my legs so that I had to cut it or drown. The current swept poor doggie against some stranded wreckage in midstream. On this he climbed, while I struggled on to the bank. I called to him to come on, but he only howled. Again I called, patted my knees, made friendly gesticulations, and did all I could think of to encourage him. Finally, I told him that if he would only start I would come part way and be ready to help him if he got into trouble. But he would not start. Not desiring the task of returning for him through the cold, strong current, and feeling in a hurry, I started on. He howled and then cried so piteously that I went back and towed him safely ashore. That night some good people of the ranch house treated both of us kindly, and in the morning they wanted to keep my companion. I was willing that he should stay, for he would have a good place, and I was bound for Denver, where I feared some accident would befall him. But he growled and ran away when the man advanced to tie him. I started on afoot and he joined me, insisting on following. All the time he had been with me his only thought appeared to be to stay with me. Game, dogs, horses, and people he saw and passed with expressionless face, except two or three times when he imagined I was in danger; then he was instantly alert for my defense. When the stage overtook us, and stopped to let me in, he leaped in also, and squatted by the driver with such an air of importance that I half expected to see him take the lines and drive. I lost him in my rush to make the train at the station. He could, of course, have kept with me had he been without fear, or if he had really so desired. As the train pulled out, I saw him start down-street with an air of unconscious confidence that told of wide experience. He was a tramp dog. The next time I saw him was several months later, in Leadville, some two hundred miles from where he left me. Where, in the mean time, he may have rambled, what towns he may have visited, or what good days or troubles he may have had, I have no means of knowing. I came walking into Leadville with snowshoes under my arm, from two weeks' snowshoeing and camping on the upper slopes of the Rockies. The ends of broken tree limbs had torn numerous right-angled triangles in my clothes, my soft hat was unduly slouchy, and fourteen nights' intimate association with a camp-fire, along with only an infrequent, indifferent contact with water, had made me a sight to behold,--for dogs, anyway. On the outskirts, one snarly cur noticed me and barked; in a few minutes at least a dozen dogs were closely following and making me unwelcome to their haunts. They grew bold with time, numbers, and closer inspection of me. They crowded unpleasantly close. Realizing that if one of them became courageous enough to make a snap at my legs, all might follow his example, I began to sidle out of the middle of the street, intending to leap a fence close by and take refuge in a house. Before I could realize it, they were snapping right and left at me, and howling as they collided with the tail of a snowshoe which I used as a bayonet. We were close to the fence, I trying to find time to turn and leap over; but I was too busy, and, without assistance, it is probable that I should have been badly bitten. Suddenly there was something like a football mix-up at my feet, then followed a yelping of curs, with tucked tails dashing right and left to avoid the ferocious tackles of a shaggy black and white dog. It was Rob, who was delighted to see me, and whom I assured that he was most welcome. He had been seen about Leadville for two or three months, and several persons had bits of information concerning him. All agreed that he had held aloof from other dogs, and that he quietly ignored the friendly greetings of all who made advances. He was not quarrelsome, but had nearly killed a bulldog that had attacked a boy. On one occasion, a braying burro so irritated him that he made a savage attack on the long-eared beast, and sent him pell-mell down the street, braying in a most excited manner. The drivers of ore wagons reported that he occasionally followed them to and from the mines up the mountainside. At one livery-stable he was a frequent caller, and usually came in to have a drink; but no one knew where he ate or slept. One day a little mittened girl had left her sled, to play with him. He had responded in a most friendly manner, and had raced, jumped, circled, and barked; at last he had carried her slowly, proudly on his back. I grew greatly interested in his biography, and wondered what could have shaped his life so strangely. In what kind of a home was his pretty puppyhood spent? Why was he so indifferent to dogs and people, and had he left or lost a master? Early next spring, after vainly trying to follow the trail of explorer Pike, I struck out on a road that led me across the Wet Mountain valley up into Sangre de Cristo Mountains. When well up into the mountains, I saw a large dog walking slowly toward me, and at once recognized him as Rob. Although clean and well-fed, he held his head low and walked as though discouraged. The instant he scented me, however, he leaped forward and greeted me with many a wag, bark, and leap. He was one hundred miles from Leadville, and fully three hundred miles from the flood scene on the Poudre. He faced about and followed me up into the alpine heights, far beyond trail. We saw a number of deer and many mountain sheep; these he barely noticed, but a bear that we came upon he was most eager to fight. The second night in the mountains, near Horne's Peak, we had an exciting time with a mountain lion. Coyotes howled during the evening, much to the dog's annoyance. It was a cold night, and, being without bedding, I had moved the fire and lain down upon the warm earth. The fire was at my feet, a crag rose above my head, and Rob was curled up against my back. A shrill, uncanny cry of the lion roused me after less than an hour's sleep. The dog was frightened and cuddled up close to my face. The lion was on a low terrace in the crag, not many yards distant. Having been much in the wilds alone and never having been attacked by lions, I had no fear of them; but none had ever been so audacious as this one. I began to think that perhaps it might be true that a lion would leap upon a dog boldly at night, even though the dog lay at the feet of his master. I kept close watch, threw stones at suspicious shadows on the cliff terraces, and maintained a blazing fire. Long before sunrise we started down the mountain. Both Rob and I were hungry, and although we startled birds and rabbits, Rob paid not the least attention to them. At noon, on Madano Pass, I lay down for a sleep and used Rob for a pillow. This he evidently enjoyed, for he lay still with head stretched out and one eye open. At mid-afternoon we met a sheep-herder who was carrying a club. I had seen this man elsewhere, and, on recognizing me as he came up, he waved his club by the way of expressing gladness. Rob misinterpreted this demonstration, and dragged me almost to the frightened herder before I could make him understand that this ragged, unwashed, club-carrying fellow had no ill wishes for me. I had in mind to climb Sierra Blanca the following day, and hoped to spend the night in a ranch house on the northern slope of this great peak. Toward sundown Rob and I climbed through a pole fence and entered the ranch house-yard. Round a corner of the house came a boy racing on a willow switch pony. On seeing us, he stopped, relaxed his hold on the willow and started for Rob. How happily he ran, holding out both eager hands! The dog sprang playfully backward, and began to dodge and bark as the boy laughingly and repeatedly fell while trying to catch him. Just as I entered the house, Rob was trying to climb to the top of the fence after his new playmate. That night Rob was agreeable with every one in the house, and even had a romp with the cat. These people wanted to keep him, and offered money and their best saddle-horse. I knew that with them he would have kind treatment to the day of his death. I wanted him, too, but I knew the weeks of mountain-exploring just before me would be too hard for him. "Rob is a free dog," I said, "and is, of his own choice, simply traveling with me as a companion. I cannot sell or give him away. I like him, but, if he wants to stay, it will be a pleasure to me to leave him." The next morning every one was wondering whether Rob would go or stay. The dog had made up his mind. He watched me prepare to leave with keenest interest, but it was evident that he had planned to stay, and his boy friend was very happy. As I passed through the yard, these two were playing together; at the gate I called good-by, at which Rob paused, gave a few happy barks, and then raced away, to try to follow his mountain boy to the top of the old pole fence. Sierra Blanca Sierra Blanca I was rambling alone on snowshoes, doing some winter observations in the alpine heights of the Sangre de Cristo range. It was miles to the nearest house. There was but little snow upon the mountains, and, for winter, the day was warm. I was thirsty, and a spring which burst forth among the fragments of petrified wood was more inviting than the water-bottle in my pocket. The water was cool and clear, tasteless and, to all appearances, pure. As I rose from drinking, a deadly, all-gone feeling overcame me. After a few seconds of this, a violent and prolonged nausea came on. Evidently I had discovered a mineral spring! Perhaps it was arsenic, perhaps some other poison. Poison of some kind it must have been, and poisonous mineral springs are not unknown. The sickness was very like seasickness, with a severe internal pain and a mental stimulus added. After a few minutes I partly recovered from these effects and set off sadly for the nearest house of which I had heard. This was eight or ten miles distant and I hoped to find it through the guidance of a crude map which a prospector had prepared for me. I had not before explored this mountainous section. The gulches and ridges which descended the slope at right angles to my course gave me a rough sea which kept me stirred up. I advanced in tottering installments; a slow, short advance would be made on wobbly legs, then a heave-to, as pay for the advance gained. Now and then there was smoothness, and I took an occasional look at severe Sierra Blanca now looming big before me. It was mostly bare and brown with a number of icy plates and ornaments shining in the sun. At last in the evening light, from the top of a gigantic moraine, I looked down upon the river and a log ranch-house nestling in a grassy open bordered with clumps of spruces. An old lady and gentleman with real sympathy in their faces stood in the doorway and for a moment watched me, then hastened to help me from the pole fence to the door. [Illustration: SIERRA BLANCA IN WINTER] While giving them an incoherent account of my experience, I fell into a stupor, and although I had evidently much to say concerning drinking and apparently showed symptoms of too much drink, these old people did not think me drunk. Waking from a fantastic dream I heard, "Does he need any more sage tea?" The Western pioneers have faith in sage tea and many ascribe to it all the life-saving, life-extending qualities usually claimed for patent medicines. The following morning I was able to walk about, while my slightly bloated, bronzed face did not appear so badly. Altogether, I looked much better than I felt. These good old people declared that they had not seen better days, but that they were living the simple life from choice. They loved the peace of this isolated mountain home and the companionship of the grand old peak. In the Central States the wife had been a professor in a State school, while the husband had been a State's Attorney. The nearest neighbor was four miles downstream, and no one lived farther up the mountain. The nearest railroad station was seventy rough mountain-road miles away. It appeared best to hasten to Denver, but two days in a jarring wagon to reach the railroad seemed more than I could endure. I had not planned even to try for the top of Colorado's highest peak in midwinter, but the way across Sierra Blanca was shorter and probably much easier than the way around. Across the range, directly over the shoulder of Sierra Blanca, lay historic Fort Garland. It was only thirty miles away, and I determined to cross the range and reach it in time for the midnight train. On hearing this resolution the old people were at first astonished, but after a moment they felt that they at last knew who I was. "You must be the Snow Man! Surely no one but he would try to do this in winter." They, with scores of other upland-dwellers, had heard numerous and wild accounts of my lone, unarmed camping-trips and winter adventures in the mountain snows. The misgivings of the old gentleman concerning the wisdom of my move grew stronger when he perceived how weak I was, as we proceeded on mule-back up the slope of Sierra Blanca. The ice blocked us at timber-line, and in his parting handclasp I felt the hope and fear of a father who sees his son go away into the world. He appeared to realize that I was not only weak, but that at any moment I might collapse. He knew the heights were steep and stern, and that in the twenty-odd miles to Fort Garland there was neither house nor human being to help me. Apparently he hoped that at the last moment I would change my mind and turn back. Up the northern side of the peak I made my way. Now and then it was necessary to cut a few steps in the ice-plated steeps. The shoulder of the peak across which I was to go was thirteen thousand feet above the sea, and in making the last climb to this it was necessary to choose between a precipitous ice-covered slope and an extremely steep rock-slide,--more correctly a rock glacier. I picked my way up this with the greatest caution. To start a rock avalanche would be easy, for the loose rocks lay insecure on a slope of perilous steepness. From time to time in resting I heard the entire mass settling, snarling, and grinding its way with glacier slowness down the steep. Just beneath the shoulder the tilting steepness of this rocky débris showed all too well that the slightest provocation would set a grinding whirlpool of a stone river madly flowing. The expected at last happened when a boulder upon which I lightly leaped settled and then gave way. The rocks before made haste to get out of the way, while those behind began readjusting themselves. The liveliest of foot-work kept me on top of the now settling, hesitating, and inclined-to-roll boulder. There was nothing substantial upon which to leap. Slowly the heavy boulder settled forward with a roll, now right, now left, with me on top trying to avoid being tumbled into the grinding mill hopper below. At last, on the left, a sliding mass of crushed, macadamized rock offered a possible means of escape. Not daring to risk thrusting a leg into this uncertain mass, I allowed myself to fall easily backwards until my body was almost horizontal, and then face upwards I threw myself off the boulder with all my strength. The rock gave a great plunge, and went bounding down the slope, sending the smaller stuff flying before at each contact with the earth. Though completely relaxed, and with the snowshoes on my back acting as a buffer, the landing was something of a jolt. For a few seconds I lay limp and spread out, and drifted slowly along with the slow-sliding mass of macadam. When this came to rest, I rose up and with the greatest concern for my foundation, made my way upwards, and at last lay down to breathe and rest upon the solid granite shoulder of Sierra Blanca. In ten hours the midnight train would be due in Fort Garland, and as the way was all downgrade, I hoped that my strength would hold out till I caught it. But, turning my eyes from the descent to the summit, I forgot the world below, and also my poison-weakened body. Suddenly I felt and knew only the charm and the call of the summit. There are times when Nature completely commands her citizens. A splendid landscape, sunset clouds, or a rainbow on a near-by mountain's slope,--by these one may be as completely charmed and made as completely captive as were those who heard the music of Orpheus' lyre. My youthful dream had been to scale peak after peak, and from the earthly spires to see the scenic world far below and far away. All this had come true, though of many trips into the sky and cloudland, none had been up to the bold heights of Blanca. Thinking that the poisoned water might take me from the list of those who seek good tidings in the heights, I suddenly determined to reach those wintry wonder-heights while yet I had the strength. I rose from relaxation, laid down my snowshoes, and started for the summit. Blanca is a mountain with an enormous amount of material in it,--enough for a score of sizable peaks. Its battered head is nearly two thousand feet above its rugged shoulder. The sun sank slowly as I moved along a rocky skyline ridge and at last gained the summit. Beyond an infinite ocean of low, broken peaks, sank the sun. It was a wonderful sunset effect in that mountain-dotted, mountain-walled plain, the San Luis Valley. Mist-wreathed peaks rose from the plain, one side glowing in burning gold, the other bannered with black shadows. The low, ragged clouds dragged slanting shadows across the golden pale. A million slender silver threads were flung out in a measureless horizontal fan from the far-away sun. The sunset from the summit of Sierra Blanca was the grandest that I have ever seen. The prismatic brilliancy played on peak and cloud, then changed into purple, fading into misty gray, while the light of this strong mountain day slowly vanished in the infinite silence of a perfect mountain night. Then came the serious business of getting down and off the rough slope and out of the inky woods before darkness took complete possession. After intense vigilance and effort for two hours, I emerged from the forest-robed slope and started across the easy, sloping plain beneath a million stars. The night was mild and still. Slowly, across the wide brown way, I made my course, guided by a low star that hung above Fort Garland. My strength ran low, and, in order to sustain it, I moved slowly, lying down and relaxing every few minutes. My mind was clear and strangely active. With pleasure I recalled in order the experiences of the day and the wonderful sunset with which it came triumphantly to a close. As I followed a straight line across the cactus-padded plains, I could not help wondering whether the Denver physicians would tell me that going up to see the sunset was a serious blunder, or a poison-eliminating triumph. However, the possibility of dying was a thought that never came. At eleven o'clock, when instinctively and positively I felt that I had traveled far enough, I paused; but from Fort Garland neither sound nor light came to greet me in the silent, mysterious night. I might pass close to the low, dull adobes of this station without realizing its presence. So confident was I that I had gone far enough that I commenced a series of constantly enlarging semicircles, trying to locate in the darkness the hidden fort. In the midst of these, a coyote challenged, and a dog answered. I hastened toward the dog and came upon a single low adobe full of Mexicans who could not understand me. However, their soft accents awakened vivid memories in my mind, and distinctly my strangely stimulated brain took me back through fifteen years to the seedling orange groves in the land of to-morrow where I had lingered and learned to speak their tongue. An offer of five dollars for transportation to Fort Garland in time for the midnight train sent Mexicans flying in all directions as though I had hurled a bomb. Two boys with an ancient, wobbling horse and buckboard landed me at the platform as the headlight-glare of my train swept across it. The big, good-natured conductor greeted me with "Here's the Snow Man again,--worse starved than ever!" The Wealth of the Woods The Wealth of the Woods The ancients told many wonderful legends concerning the tree, and claimed for it numerous extraordinary qualities. Modern experience is finding some of these legends to be almost literal truth, and increasing knowledge of the tree shows that it has many of those high qualities for which it was anciently revered. Though people no longer think of it as the Tree of Life, they are beginning to realize that the tree is what enables our race to make a living and to live comfortably and hopefully upon this beautiful world. Camping among forests quickly gives one a home feeling for them and develops an appreciation of their value. How different American history might have been had Columbus discovered a treeless land! The American forests have largely contributed to the development of the country. The first settlers on the Atlantic coast felled and used the waiting trees for home-building; they also used wood for fuel, furniture, and fortifications. When trading-posts were established in the wilderness the axe was as essential as the gun. From Atlantic to Pacific the pioneers built their cabins of wood. As the country developed, wood continued to be indispensable; it was used in almost every industry, and to-day it has a more general use than ever. Forests enrich us in many ways. One of these is through the supply of wood which they produce,--which they annually produce. Wood is one of the most useful materials used by man. Wood is the home-making material. It gives good cheer to a million hearthstones. How extensively it is used for tools, furniture, and vehicles, for mine timbers and railroad development! The living influences which forests exert, the environments which they create and maintain, are potent to enable man best to manage and control the earth, the air, and the water, so that these will give him the greatest service and do him the least damage. [Illustration: SPANISH MOSS AT LAKE CHARLES, LOUISIANA] Forests are water-distributors, and everywhere their presence tends to prevent both floods and extreme low water; they check evaporation and assist drainage; they create soil; they resist sudden changes of temperature; they break and temper the winds; they do sanitary work by taking impurities from the air; they shelter and furnish homes for millions of birds which destroy enormous numbers of weed-seed and injurious insects. Lastly, and possibly most important, forests make this earth comfortable and beautiful. Next to the soil, they are the most useful and helpful of Nature's agencies. Forests are moderators of climate. They heat and cool slowly. Their slow response to change resists sudden changes, and, consequently, they mitigate the rudeness with which sudden changes are always accompanied. Sudden changes of temperature are often annoying and enervating to man, and frequently do severe damage to domestic plants and animals. They sometimes have what may be called an explosive effect upon the life-tissues of many plants and animals which man has domesticated and is producing for his benefit. Many plants have been domesticated and largely so specialized that they have been rendered less hardy. With good care, these plants are heavy producers, but, to have from them a premium harvest each year, they need the genial clime, the stimulating shelter, and the constant protection which only forests can supply. Closely allied to changes of temperature is the movement of the air. In the sea every peninsula is a breakwater: on land every grove is a windbreak. The effect of the violence of high winds on fruited orchards and fields of golden grain may be compared to the beatings of innumerable clubs. Hot waves and cold waves come like withering breaths of flame and frost to trees and plants. High winds may be mastered by the forest. The forest will make even the Storm King calm, and it will also soften, temper, and subdue the hottest or the coldest waves that blow. Forests may be placed so as to make every field a harbor. The air is an invisible blotter that is constantly absorbing moisture. Its capacity to evaporate and absorb increases with rapidity of movement. Roughly, six times as much water is evaporated from a place that is swept by a twenty-five-mile wind as from a place in the dead calm of the forest. The quantity of water evaporated within a forest or in its shelter is many times less than is evaporated from the soil in an exposed situation. This shelter and the consequent decreased evaporation may save a crop in a dry season. During seasons of scanty rainfall the crops often fail, probably not because sufficient water has not fallen, but because the thirsty winds have drawn from the soil so much moisture that the water-table in the soil is lowered below the reach of the roots of the growing plants. In the arid West the extra-dry winds are insatiable. In many localities their annual capacity to absorb water is greater than the annual precipitation of water. In "dry-farming" localities, the central idea is to save all the water that Nature supplies, to prevent the moisture from evaporating, to protect it from the robber winds. Forests greatly check evaporation, and Professor L. G. Carpenter, the celebrated irrigation engineer, says that forests are absolutely necessary for the interests of irrigated agriculture. Considering the many influences of the forest that are beneficial to agriculture, it would seem as though ideal forest environments would be the best annual assurance that the crops of the field would not fail and that the soil would most generously respond to the seed-sower. So well is man served in the distribution of the waters and the management of their movements by the forests, that forests seem almost to think. The forest is an eternal mediator between winds and gravity in their never-ending struggle for the possession of the waters. The forest seems to try to take the intermittent and ever-varying rainfall and send the collected waters in slow and steady stream back to the sea. It has marked success, and one may say it is only to the extent the forest succeeds in doing this that the waters become helpful to man. Possibly they may need assistance in this work. Anyway, so great is the evaporation on the mountains of the West that John Muir says, "Cut down the groves and the streams will vanish." Many investigators assert that only thirty per cent of the rainfall is returned by the rivers to the sea. Evaporation--winds--probably carry away the greater portion of the remainder. Afforestation has created springs and streams, not by increasing rainfall, although the forests may do this, but by saving the water that falls,--by checking evaporation. On some exposed watersheds the winds carry off as much as ninety per cent of the annual precipitation. It seems plain that wider, better forests would mean deeper, steadier streams. Forests not only check evaporation, but they store water and guard it from the greed of gravity. The forest gets the water into the ground where a brake is put upon the pull of gravity. Forest floors are covered with fluffy little rugs and pierced with countless tree-roots. So all-absorbing is the porous, rug-covered forest floor that most of the water that falls in the forest goes into the ground; a small percentage may run off on the surface, but the greater part settles into the earth and seeps slowly by subterranean drainage, till at last it bubbles out in a spring some distance away and below the place where the raindrops came to earth. The underground drainage, upon which the forest insists, is much slower and steadier than the surface drainage of a treeless place. The tendency of the forest is to take the water of the widely separated rainy days and dole it out daily to the streams. The forest may be described as a large, ever-leaking reservoir. The forest is so large a reservoir that it rarely overflows, and seepage from it is so slow that it seldom goes dry. The presence of a forest on a watershed tends to give the stream which rises thereon its daily supply of water, whether it rains every day or not. By checking evaporation, the forest swells the volume of sea-going water in this stream, and thereby increases its water-power and makes it more useful as a deep waterway. Forests so regulate stream-flow that if all the watersheds were forested but few floods would occur. Forest-destruction has allowed many a flood to form and foam and to ruin a thousand homes. A deforested hillside may, in a single storm, loose the hoarded soil of a thousand years. Deforestation may result in filling a river-channel and in stopping boats a thousand miles downstream. By bringing forests to our aid, we may almost domesticate and control winds and waters! One of the most important resources is soil,--the cream of the earth, the plant-food of the world. Scientists estimate that it takes nature ten thousand years to create a foot of soil. This heritage of ages, though so valuable and so slowly created, may speedily be washed away and lost. Forests help to anchor it and to hold it in productive places. Every tree stands upon an inverted basket of roots and rootlets. Rains may come and rains may go, but these roots hold the soil in place. The soil of forest-covered hillsides is reinforced and anchored with a webwork of the roots and rootlets of the forest. Assisting in the soil-anchorage is the accumulation of twigs and leaves, the litter rugs on the forest floor. These cover the soil, and protect it from both wind and water erosion. The roots and rugs not only hold soil, but add to the soil matter by catching and holding the trash, silt, dust, and sediment that is blown or washed into the forest. The forest also creates new soil, enriches the very land it is using. Trash on a forest floor absorbs nitrogenous matter from the air; every fallen leaf is a flake of a fertilizer; roots pry rocks apart, and this sets up chemical action. Acids given off by tree-roots dissolve even the rocks, and turn these to soil. A tree, unlike most plants, creates more soil than it consumes. In a forest the soil is steadily growing richer and deeper. Birds are one of the resources of the country. They are the protectors, the winged watchmen, of the products which man needs. Birds are hearty eaters, and the food which they devour consists mostly of noxious weed-seed and injurious insects. Several species of birds feed freely upon caterpillars, moths, wood-lice, wood-borers, and other deadly tree-enemies. Most species of birds need the forest for shelter, a home, and a breeding-place; and, having the forest, they multiply and fly out into the fields and orchards, and wage a more persistent warfare even than the farmer upon the insistent and innumerable crop-injuring weeds, and also the swarms of insatiable crop-devouring insects. Birds work for us all the time, and board themselves most of the time. Birds are of inestimable value to agriculture, but many of these useful species need forest shelter. So to lose a forest means at the same time to lose the service of these birds. The forest is a sanitary agent. It is constantly eliminating impurities from the earth and the air. Trees check, sweep, and filter from the air quantities of filthy, germ-laden dust. Their leaves absorb the poisonous gases from the air. Roots assist in drainage, and absorb impurities from the soil. Roots also give off acids, and these acids, together with the acids released by the fallen, decaying leaves, have a sterilizing effect upon the soil. Trees help to keep the earth sweet and clean, and water which comes from a forested watershed is likely to be pure. Many unsanitary areas have been redeemed and rendered healthy by tree-planting. Numerous are the products and the influences of the trees. Many medicines for the sick-room are compounded wholly or in part from the bark, the fruit, the juices, or the leaves of trees. Fruits and nuts are at least the poetry of the dining-table. One may say of trees what the French physician said of water: needed externally, internally, and eternally! United we stand, but divided we fall, is the history of peoples and forests. Forest-destruction seems to offer the speediest way by which a nation may go into decline or death. "Without forests" are two words that may be written upon the maps of most depopulated lands and declining nations. When one who is acquainted with both history and natural history reads of a nation that "its forests are destroyed," he naturally pictures the train of evils that inevitably follow,--the waste and failure that will come without the presence of forests to prevent. He realizes that the ultimate condition to be expected in this land is a waste of desolate distances, arched with a gray, sad sky beneath which a few lonely ruins stand crumbling and pathetic in the desert's drifting sand. The trees are our friends. As an agency for promoting and sustaining the general welfare, the forest stands preëminent. A nation which appreciates trees, which maintains sufficient forests, and these in the most serviceable places, may expect to enjoy regularly the richest of harvests; it will be a nation of homes and land that is comfortable, full of hope, and beautiful. The Forest Fire The Forest Fire Forest fires led me to abandon the most nearly ideal journey through the wilds I had ever embarked upon, but the conflagrations that took me aside filled a series of my days and nights with wild, fiery exhibitions and stirring experiences. It was early September and I had started southward along the crest of the continental divide of the Rocky Mountains in northern Colorado. All autumn was to be mine and upon this alpine skyline I was to saunter southward, possibly to the land of cactus and mirage. Not being commanded by either the calendar or the compass, no day was to be marred by hurrying. I was just to linger and read all the nature stories in the heights that I could comprehend or enjoy. From my starting-place, twelve thousand feet above the tides, miles of continental slopes could be seen that sent their streams east and west to the two far-off seas. With many a loitering advance, with many a glad going back, intense days were lived. After two great weeks I climbed off the treeless heights and went down into the woods to watch and learn the deadly and dramatic ways of forest fires. This revolution in plans was brought about by the view from amid the broken granite on the summit of Long's Peak. Far below and far away the magnificent mountain distances reposed in the autumn sunshine. The dark crags, snowy summits, light-tipped peaks, bright lakes, purple forests traced with silver streams and groves of aspen,--all fused and faded away in the golden haze. But these splendid scenes were being blurred and blotted out by the smoke of a dozen or more forest fires. [Illustration: A FOREST FIRE ON THE GRAND RIVER] Little realizing that for six weeks I was to hesitate on fire-threatened heights and hurry through smoke-filled forests, I took a good look at the destruction from afar and then hastened toward the nearest fire-front. This was a smoke-clouded blaze on the Rabbit-Ear Range that was storming its way eastward. In a few hours it would travel to the Grand River, which flowed southward through a straight, mountain-walled valley that was about half a mile wide. Along the river, occupying about half the width of the valley, was a picturesque grassy avenue that stretched for miles between ragged forest-edges. There was but little wind and, hoping to see the big game that the flames might drive into the open, I innocently took my stand in the centre of the grassy stretch directly before the fire. This great smoky fire-billow, as I viewed it from the heights while I was descending, was advancing with a formidable crooked front about three miles across. The left wing was more than a mile in advance of the active though lagging right one. As I afterward learned, the difference in speed of the two wings was caused chiefly by topography; the forest conditions were similar, but the left wing had for some time been burning up a slope while the right had traveled down one. Fire burns swiftly up a slope, but slowly down it. Set fire simultaneously to the top and the bottom of a forest on a steep slope and the blaze at the bottom will overrun at least nine-tenths of the area. Flame and the drafts that it creates sweep upward. Upon a huge lava boulder in the grassy stretch I commanded a view of more than a mile of the forest-edge and was close to where a game trail came into it out of the fiery woods. On this burning forest-border a picturesque, unplanned wild-animal parade passed before me. Scattered flakes of ashes were falling when a herd of elk led the exodus of wild folk from the fire-doomed forest. They came stringing out of the woods into the open, with both old and young going forward without confusion and as though headed for a definite place or pasture. They splashed through a beaver pond without stopping and continued their way up the river. There was no show of fear, no suggestion of retreat. They never looked back. Deer straggled out singly and in groups. It was plain that all were fleeing from danger, all were excitedly trying to get out of the way of something; and they did not appear to know where they were going. Apparently they gave more troubled attention to the roaring, the breath, and the movements of that fiery, mysterious monster than to the seeking of a place of permanent safety. In the grassy open, into which the smoke was beginning to drift and hang, the deer scattered and lingered. At each roar of the fire they turned hither and thither excitedly to look and listen. A flock of mountain sheep, in a long, narrow, closely pressed rank and led by an alert, aggressive bighorn, presented a fine appearance as it raced into the open. The admirable directness of these wild animals put them out of the category occupied by tame, "silly sheep." Without slackening pace they swept across the grassy valley in a straight line and vanished in the wooded slope beyond. Now and then a coyote appeared from somewhere and stopped for a time in the open among the deer; all these wise little wolves were a trifle nervous, but each had himself well in hand. Glimpses were had of two stealthy mountain lions, now leaping, now creeping, now swiftly fleeing. Bears were the most matter-of-fact fellows in the exodus. Each loitered in the grass and occasionally looked toward the oncoming danger. Their actions showed curiosity and anger, but not alarm. Each duly took notice of the surrounding animals, and one old grizzly even struck viciously at a snarling coyote. Two black bear cubs, true to their nature, had a merry romp. Even these serious conditions could not make them solemn. Each tried to prevent the other from climbing a tree that stood alone in the open; around this tree they clinched, cuffed, and rolled about so merrily that the frightened wild folks were attracted and momentarily forgot their fears. The only birds seen were some grouse that whirred and sailed by on swift, definite wings; they were going somewhere. With subdued and ever-varying roar the fire steadily advanced. It constantly threw off an upcurling, unbroken cloud of heavy smoke that hid the flames from view. Now and then a whirl of wind brought a shower of sparks together with bits of burning bark out over the open valley. Just as the flames were reaching the margin of the forest a great bank of black smoke curled forward and then appeared to fall into the grassy open. I had just a glimpse of a few fleeing animals, then all became hot, fiery, and dark. Red flames darted through swirling black smoke. It was stifling. Leaping into a beaver pond, I lowered my own sizzling temperature and that of my smoking clothes. The air was too hot and black for breathing; so I fled, floundering through the water, down Grand River. A quarter of a mile took me beyond danger-line and gave me fresh air. Here the smoke ceased to settle to the earth, but extended in a light upcurling stratum a few yards above it. Through this smoke the sunlight came so changed that everything around was magically covered with a canvas of sepia or rich golden brown. I touched the burned spots on hands and face with real, though raw, balsam and then plunged into the burned-over district to explore the extensive ruins of the fire. A prairie fire commonly consumes everything to the earth-line and leaves behind it only a black field. Rarely does a forest fire make so clean a sweep; generally it burns away the smaller limbs and the foliage, leaving the tree standing all blackened and bristling. This fire, like thousands of others, consumed the litter carpet on the forest floor and the mossy covering of the rocks; it ate the underbrush, devoured the foliage, charred and burned the limbs, and blackened the trunks. Behind was a dead forest in a desolate field, a territory with millions of bristling, mutilated trees, a forest ruin impressively picturesque and pathetic. From a commanding ridge I surveyed this ashen desert and its multitude of upright figures all blurred and lifeless; these stood everywhere,--in the gulches, on the slopes, on the ridges against the sky,--and they bristled in every vanishing distance. Over the entire area only a few trees escaped with their lives; these were isolated in soggy glacier meadows or among rock fields and probably were defended by friendly air-currents when the fiery billow rolled over them. When I entered the burn that afternoon the fallen trees that the fire had found were in ashes, the trees just killed were smoking, while the standing dead trees were just beginning to burn freely. That night these scattered beacons strangely burned among the multitudinous dead. Close to my camp all through that night several of these fire columns showered sparks like a fountain, glowed and occasionally lighted up the scene with flaming torches. Weird and strange in the night were the groups of silhouetted figures in a shadow-dance between me and the flickering, heroic torches. The greater part of the area burned over consisted of mountain-slopes and ridges that lay between the altitudes of nine thousand and eleven thousand feet. The forest was made up almost entirely of Engelmann and Douglas spruces, alpine fir, and flexilis pine. A majority of these trees were from fifteen to twenty-four inches in diameter, and those examined were two hundred and fourteen years of age. Over the greater extent of the burn the trees were tall and crowded, about two thousand to the acre. As the fire swept over about eighteen thousand acres, the number of trees that perished must have approximated thirty-six million. Fires make the Rocky Mountains still more rocky. This bald fact stuck out all through this burn and in dozens of others afterward visited. Most Rocky Mountain fires not only skin off the humus but so cut up the fleshy soil and so completely destroy the fibrous bindings that the elements quickly drag much of it from the bones and fling it down into the stream-channels. Down many summit slopes in these mountains, where the fires went to bed-rock, the snows and waters still scoot and scour. The fire damage to some of these steep slopes cannot be repaired for generations and even centuries. Meantime these disfigured places will support only a scattered growth of trees and sustain only a sparse population of animals. In wandering about I found that the average thickness of humus--decayed vegetable matter--consumed by this fire was about five inches. The removal of even these few inches of covering had in many places exposed boulders and bed-rock. On many shallow-covered steeps the soil-anchoring roots were consumed and the productive heritage of ages was left to be the early victim of eager running water and insatiable gravity. Probably the part of this burn that was most completely devastated was a tract of four or five hundred acres in a zone a little below timber-line. Here stood a heavy forest on solid rock in thirty-two inches of humus. The tree-roots burned with the humus, and down crashed the trees into the flames. The work of a thousand years was undone in a day! The loss of animal life in this fire probably was not heavy; in five or six days of exploring I came upon fewer than three dozen fire victims of all kinds. Among the dead were groundhogs, bobcats, snowshoe rabbits, and a few grouse. Flying about the waste were crested jays, gray jays ("camp birds"), and magpies. Coyotes came early to search for the feast prepared by the fire. During the second day's exploration on the burn, a grizzly bear and I came upon two roasted deer in the end of a gulch. I was first to arrive, so Mr. Grizzly remained at what may have been a respectful distance, restlessly watching me. With his nearness and impolite stare I found it very embarrassing to eat alone. However, two days of fasting had prepared me for this primitive feast; and, knowing that bears were better than their reputation, I kept him waiting until I was served. On arising to go, I said, "Come, you may have the remainder; there is plenty of it." The fire was followed by clear weather, and for days the light ash lay deep and undisturbed over the burn. One morning conditions changed and after a few preliminary whirlwinds a gusty gale set in. In a few minutes I felt and appeared as though just from an ash-barrel. The ashen dust-storm was blinding and choking, and I fled for the unburned heights. So blinding was the flying ash that I was unable to see; and, to make matters worse, the trees with fire-weakened foundations and limbs almost severed by flames commenced falling. The limbs were flung about in a perfectly reckless manner, while the falling trees took a fiendish delight in crashing down alongside me at the very moment that the storm was most blinding. Being without nerves and incidentally almost choked, I ignored the falling bodies and kept going. Several times I rushed blindly against limb-points and was rudely thrust aside; and finally I came near walking off into space from the edge of a crag. After this I sought temporary refuge to the leeward of a boulder, with the hope that the weakened trees would speedily fall and end the danger from that source. The ash flew thicker than ever did gale-blown desert dust; it was impossible to see and so nearly impossible to breathe that I was quickly driven forth. I have been in many dangers, but this is the only instance in which I was ever irritated by Nature's blind forces. At last I made my escape from them. From clear though wind-swept heights I long watched the burned area surrender its slowly accumulated, rich store of plant-food to the insatiable and all-sweeping wind. By morning, when the wind abated, the garnered fertility and phosphates of generations were gone, and the sun cast the shadows of millions of leafless trees upon rock bones and barren earth. And the waters were still to take their toll. Of course Nature would at once commence to repair and would again upbuild upon the foundations left by the fire; such, however, were the climatic and geological conditions that improving changes would come but slowly. In a century only a good beginning could be made. For years the greater portion of the burn would be uninhabitable by bird or beast; those driven forth by this fire would seek home and food in the neighboring territory, where this influx of population would compel interesting readjustments and create bitter strife between the old wild-folk population and the new. This fire originated from a camp-fire which a hunting-party had left burning; it lived three weeks and extended eastward from the starting-place. Along most of its course it burned to the timber-line on the left, while rocky ridges, glacier meadows, and rock fields stopped its extension and determined the side line on the right; it ran out of the forest and stopped in the grassy Grand River Valley. Across its course were a number of rocky ridges and grassy gorges where the fire could have been easily stopped by removing the scattered trees,--by burning the frail bridges that enabled the fire to travel from one dense forest to abundant fuel beyond. In a city it is common to smother a fire with water or acid, but with a forest fire usually it is best to break its inflammable line of communication by removing from before it a width of fibrous material. The axe, rake, hoe, and shovel are the usual fire-fighting tools. A few yards away from the spot where the fire started I found, freshly cut in the bark of an aspen, the inscription:-- J S M YALE 18 A bullet had obliterated the two right-hand figures. For days I wandered over the mountains, going from fire to smoke and studying burns new and old. One comparatively level tract had been fireswept in 1791. On this the soil was good. Lodge-pole pine had promptly restocked the burn, but these trees were now being smothered out by a promising growth of Engelmann spruce. Fifty-seven years before my visit a fire had burned over about four thousand acres and was brought to a stand by a lake, a rocky ridge, and a wide fire-line that a snowslide had cleared through the woods. The surface of the burn was coarse, disintegrated granite and sloped toward the west, where it was exposed to prevailing high westerly winds. A few kinnikinnick rugs apparently were the only green things upon the surface, and only a close examination revealed a few stunted trees starting. It was almost barren. Erosion was still active; there were no roots to bind the finer particles together or to anchor them in place. One of the most striking features of the entire burn was that the trees killed by the fire fifty-seven years ago were standing where they died. They had excellent root-anchorage in the shattered surface, and many of them probably would remain erect for years. The fire that killed them had been a hot one, and it had burned away most of the limbs, and had so thoroughly boiled the pitch through the exterior of the trunk that the wood was in an excellent state of preservation. [Illustration: A YELLOW PINE, FORTY-SEVEN YEARS AFTER IT HAD BEEN KILLED BY FIRE] Another old burn visited was a small one in an Engelmann spruce forest on a moderate northern slope. It had been stopped while burning in very inflammable timber. It is probable that on this occasion either a rain or snow had saved the surrounding forest. The regrowth had slowly extended from the margin of the forest to the centre of the burn until it was restocked. One morning I noticed two small fires a few miles down the mountain and went to examine them. Both were two days old, and both had started from unextinguished camp-fires. One had burned over about an acre and the other about four times that area. If the smaller had not been built against an old snag it probably would have gone out within a few hours after the congressman who built it moved camp. It was wind-sheltered and the blaze had traveled slowly in all directions and burned a ragged circle that was about sixty feet across. The outline of the other blaze was that of a flattened ellipse, like the orbit of many a wandering comet in the sky. This had gone before the wind, and the windward end of its orbit closely encircled the place of origin. The camp-fire nucleus of this blaze had also been built in the wrong place,--against a fallen log which lay in a deep bed of decaying needles. Of course each departing camper should put out his camp-fire. However, a camp-fire built on a humus-covered forest floor, or by a log, or against a dead tree, is one that is very difficult to extinguish. With the best of intentions one may deluge such a fire with water without destroying its potency. A fire thus secreted appears, like a lie, to have a spark of immortality in it. A fire should not be built in contact with substances that will burn, for such fuel will prolong the fire's life and may lead it far into the forest. There is but little danger to the forest from a fire that is built upon rock, earth, sand, or gravel. A fire so built is isolated and it usually dies an early natural death. Such a fire--one built in a safe and sane place--is easily extinguished. The larger of these two incipient fires was burning quietly, and that night I camped within its orbit. Toward morning the wind began to blow, this slow-burning surface fire began to leap, and before long it was a crown fire, traveling rapidly among the tree-tops. It swiftly expanded into an enormous delta of flame. At noon I looked back and down upon it from a mountain-top, and it had advanced about three miles into a primeval forest sea, giving off more smoke than a volcano. I went a day's journey and met a big fire that was coming aggressively forward against the wind. It was burning a crowded, stunted growth of forest that stood in a deep litter carpet. The smoke, which flowed freely from it, was distinctly ashen green; this expanded and maintained in the sky a smoky sheet that was several miles in length. Before the fire lay a square mile or so of old burn which was covered with a crowded growth of lodge-pole pine that stood in a deep, criss-crossed entanglement of fallen fire-killed timber. A thousand or more of these long, broken dead trees covered each acre with wreckage, and in this stood upward of five thousand live young ones. This would make an intensely hot and flame-writhing fire. It appears that a veteran spruce forest had occupied this burn prior to the fire. The fire had occurred fifty-seven years before. Trees old and young testified to the date. In the margin of the living forest on the edge of the burn were numerous trees that were fire-scarred fifty-seven years before; the regrowth on the burn was an even-aged fifty-six-year growth. That night, as the fire neared the young tree growth, I scaled a rock ledge to watch it. Before me, and between the fire and the rocks, stood several veteran lodge-pole pines in a mass of dead-and-down timber. Each of these trees had an outline like that of a plump Lombardy poplar. They perished in the most spectacular manner. Blazing, wind-blown bark set fire to the fallen timber around their feet; this fire, together with the close, oncoming fire-front, so heated the needles on the lodge-poles that they gave off a smoky gas; this was issuing from every top when a rippling rill of purplish flame ran up one of the trunks. Instantly there was a flash and white flames flared upward more than one hundred feet, stood gushing for a few seconds, and then went out completely. The other trees in close succession followed and flashed up like giant geysers discharging flame. This discharge was brief, but it was followed by every needle on the trees glowing and changing to white incandescence, then vanishing. In a minute these leafless lodge-poles were black and dead. The fire-front struck and crossed the lodge-pole thicket in a flash; each tree flared up like a fountain of gas and in a moment a deep, ragged-edged lake of flame heaved high into the dark, indifferent night. A general fire of the dead-and-down timber followed, and the smelter heat of this cut the green trees down, the flames widely, splendidly illuminating the surrounding mountains and changing a cloud-filled sky to convulsed, burning lava. Not a tree was left standing, and every log went to ashes. The burn was as completely cleared as a fireswept prairie; in places there were holes in the earth where tree-roots had burned out. This burn was an ideal place for another lodge-pole growth, and three years later these pines were growing thereon as thick as wheat in a field. In a boggy area within the burn an acre or two of aspen sprang up; this area, however, was much smaller than the one that the fire removed from the bog. Aspens commonly hold territory and extend their holdings by sprouting from roots; but over the greater portion of the bog the fire had either baked or burned the roots, and this small aspen area marked the wetter part of the bog, that in which the roots had survived. After destroying the lodge-pole growth the fire passed on, and the following day it burned away as a quiet surface fire through a forest of scattered trees. It crept slowly forward, with a yellow blaze only a few inches high. Here and there this reddened over a pile of cone-scales that had been left by a squirrel, or blazed up in a pile of broken limbs or a fallen tree-top; it consumed the litter mulch and fertility of the forest floor, but seriously burned only a few trees. Advancing along the blaze, I came upon a veteran yellow pine that had received a large pot-hole burn in its instep. As the Western yellow pine is the best fire-fighter in the conifer family, it was puzzling to account for this deep burn. On the Rocky Mountains are to be found many picturesque yellow pines that have a dozen times triumphed over the greatest enemy of the forest. Once past youth, these trees possess a thick, corky, asbestos-like bark that defies the average fire. Close to this injured old fellow was a rock ledge that formed an influential part of its environment; its sloping surface shed water and fertility upon its feet; cones, twigs, and trash had also slid down this and formed an inflammable pile which, in burning, had bored into its ankle. An examination of its annual rings in the burned hole revealed the fact that it too had been slightly burned fifty-seven years before. How long would it be until it was again injured by fire or until some one again read its records? Until recently a forest fire continued until stopped by rain or snow, or until it came to the edge of the forest. I have notes on a forest fire that lived a fluctuating life of four months. Once a fire invades an old forest, it is impossible speedily to get rid of it. "It never goes out," declared an old trapper. The fire will crawl into a slow-burning log, burrow down into a root, or eat its way beneath a bed of needles, and give off no sign of its presence. In places such as these it will hibernate for weeks, despite rain or snow, and finally some day come forth as ferocious as ever. About twenty-four hours after the lodge-pole blaze a snow-storm came to extinguish the surface fire. Two feet of snow--more than three inches of water--fell. During the storm I was comfortable beneath a shelving rock, with a fire in front; here I had a meal of wild raspberries and pine-nuts and reflected concerning the uses of forests, and wished that every one might better understand and feel the injustice and the enormous loss caused by forest fires. During the last fifty years the majority of the Western forest fires have been set by unextinguished camp-fires, while the majority of the others were the result of some human carelessness. The number of preventable forest fires is but little less than the total number. True, lightning does occasionally set a forest on fire; I have personal knowledge of a number of such fires, but I have never known lightning to set fire to a green tree. Remove the tall dead trees from forests, and the lightning will lose the greater part of its kindling. In forest protection, the rivers, ridge-tops, rocky gulches, rock-fields, lake-shores, meadows, and other natural fire-resisting boundary lines between forests are beginning to be used and can be more fully utilized for fire-lines, fire-fighting, and fire-defying places. These natural fire-barriers may be connected by barren cleared lanes through the forest, so that a fire-break will isolate or run entirely around any natural division of forest. With such a barrier a fire could be kept within a given section or shut out of it. In order to fight fire in a forest it must be made accessible by means of roads and trails; these should run on or alongside the fire-barrier so as to facilitate the movements of fire patrols or fire-fighters. There should be with every forest an organized force of men who are eternally vigilant to prevent or to fight forest fires. Fires should be fought while young and small, before they are beyond control. There should be crows'-nests on commanding crags and in each of these should be a lookout to watch constantly for starting fires or suspicious smoke in the surrounding sea of forest. The lookout should have telephonic connection with rangers down the slopes. In our national forests incidents like the following are beginning to occur: Upon a summit is stationed a ranger who has two hundred thousand acres of forest to patrol with his eyes. One morning a smudgy spot appears upon the purple forest sea about fifteen miles to the northwest. The lookout gazes for a moment through his glass and, although not certain as to what it is, decides to get the distance with the range-finder. At that instant, however, the wind acts upon the smudge and shows that a fire exists and reveals its position. A ranger, through a telephone at the forks of the trail below, hears from the heights, "Small fire one mile south of Mirror Lake, between Spruce Fork and Bear Pass Trail, close to O'Brien's Spring." In less than an hour a ranger leaps from his panting pony and with shovel and axe hastily digs a narrow trench through the vegetable mould in a circle around the fire. Then a few shovelfuls of sand go upon the liveliest blaze and the fire is under control. As soon as there lives a good, sympathetic public sentiment concerning the forest, it will be comparatively easy to prevent most forest fires from starting and to extinguish those that do start. With the snow over, I started for the scene of the first fire, and on the way noticed how much more rapidly the snow melted in the open than in a forest. The autumn sun was warm, and at the end of the first day most of the snow in open or fireswept places was gone, though on the forest floor the slushy, compacted snow still retained the greater portion of its original moisture. On the flame-cleared slopes there was heavy erosion; the fire had destroyed the root-anchorage of the surface and consumed the trash that would ordinarily have absorbed and delayed the water running off; but this, unchecked, had carried off with it tons of earthy material. One slope on the first burn suffered heavily; a part of this day's "wash" was deposited in a beaver pond, of half an acre, which was filled to the depth of three feet. The beavers, finding their subterranean exits filled with wash, had escaped by tearing a hole in the top of their house. Leaving this place, I walked across the range to look at a fire that was burning beyond the bounds of the snowfall. It was in a heavily forested cove and was rapidly undoing the constructive work of centuries. This cove was a horseshoe-shaped one and apparently would hold the fire within its rocky ridges. While following along one of these ridges, I came to a narrow, tree-dotted pass, the only break in the confining rocky barrier. As I looked at the fire down in the cove, it was plain that with a high wind the fire would storm this pass and break into a heavily forested alpine realm beyond. In one day two men with axes could have made this pass impregnable to the assaults of any fire, no matter how swift the wind ally; but men were not then defending our forests and an ill wind was blowing. Many factors help to determine the speed of these fires, and a number of observations showed that under average conditions a fire burned down a slope at about one mile an hour; on the level it traveled from two to eight miles an hour, while up a slope it made from eight to twelve. For short distances fires occasionally roared along at a speed of fifty or sixty miles an hour and made a terrible gale of flames. I hurried up into the alpine realm and after half an hour scaled a promontory and looked back to the pass. A great cloud of smoke was streaming up just beyond and after a minute tattered sheets of flame were shooting high above it. Presently a tornado of smoke and flame surged into the pass and for some seconds nothing could be seen. As this cleared, a succession of tongues and sheets of flame tried to reach over into the forest on the other side of the pass, but finally gave it up. Just as I was beginning to feel that the forest around me was safe, a smoke-column arose among the trees by the pass. Probably during the first assault of the flames a fiery dart had been hurled across the pass. Up the shallow forested valley below me came the flames, an inverted Niagara of red and yellow, with flying spray of black. It sent forward a succession of short-lived whirlwinds that went to pieces explosively, hurling sparks and blazing bark far and high. During one of its wilder displays the fire rolled forward, an enormous horizontal whirl of flame, and then, with thunder and roar, the molten flames swept upward into a wall of fire; this tore to pieces, collapsed, and fell forward in fiery disappearing clouds. With amazing quickness the splendid hanging garden on the terraced heights was crushed and blackened. By my promontory went this magnificent zigzag surging front of flame, blowing the heavens full of sparks and smoke and flinging enormous fiery rockets. Swift and slow, loud and low, swelling and vanishing, it sang its eloquent death song. A heavy stratum of tarlike smoke formed above the fire as it toned down. Presently this black stratum was uplifted near the centre and then pierced with a stupendous geyser of yellow flame, which reddened as it fused and tore through the tarry smoke and then gushed astonishingly high above. A year or two prior to the fire a snow slide from the heights had smashed down into the forest. More than ten thousand trees were mowed, raked, and piled in one mountainous mass of wreckage upon some crags and in a narrow-throated gulch between them. This wood-pile made the geyser flames and a bonfire to startle even the giants. While I was trying to account for this extraordinary display, there came a series of explosions in rapid succession, ending in a violent crashing one. An ominous, elemental silence followed. All alone I had enjoyed the surprises, the threatening uncertainties, and the dangerous experiences that swiftly came with the fire-line battles of this long, smoky war; but when those awful explosions came I for a time wished that some one were with me. Had there been, I should have turned and asked, while getting a better grip on my nerves, "What on earth is that?" While the startled mountain-walls were still shuddering with the shock, an enormous agitated column of steam shot several hundred feet upward where the fiery geyser had flamed. Unable to account for these strange demonstrations, I early made my way through heat and smoke to the big bonfire. In the bottom of the gulch, beneath the bonfire, flowed a small stream; just above the bonfire this stream had been temporarily dammed by fire wreckage. On being released, the accumulated waters thus gathered had rushed down upon the red-hot rocks and cliffs and produced these explosions. In the morning light this hanging terraced garden of yesterday's forest glory was a stupendous charcoal drawing of desolation. Insects in the Forest Insects in the Forest The big trees of California are never attacked by insects. This immunity is extraordinary and may be the chief characteristic that enables these noble trees to live so long. Unfortunately it is not shared by other species. The American forests are infested with thousands of species of injurious and destructive insects. These insects, like the forest fires, annually kill numerous forest areas, and in addition leave millions of deformed and sickly trees scattered through the living forest to impair and imperil it. After some general tree studies which have occupied odd times for years and extended through the groves and forests of every State and Territory in the Union, the conclusion has been forced upon me that the forests are more widely wasted by insects than by fire. Some of Nature's strange ways are exhibited in the interrelation of insects and fires in tree-killing. It is common for the attack of one of these tree-enemies to open the way for the depredations of the other. The trees that insects kill quickly become dry and inflammable and ready kindling for the forest fire. On the other hand, the injuries that green trees often receive from forest fires render them most susceptible to the attacks of insects. This interrelation--almost coöperation--between these arch-enemies of the forest was impressed upon me during my early tree studies. One day I enjoyed a splendid forest sea from the summit of a granite crag that pierced this purple expanse. Near the crag a few clumps of trees stood out conspicuous in robes of sear yellow brown. Unable to account for this coloring of their needles, I went down and looked them over. The trees had recently been killed by insects. They were Western yellow pine, and their needles, changed to greenish yellow, still clung to them. In each clump of these pines there were several stunted or deformed trees, or trees that showed a recent injury. The stunted and injured trees in these clumps were attacked and killed by beetles the summer before my visit. In these injured trees the beetles had multiplied, and they emerged the following summer and made a deadly attack upon the surrounding vigorous trees. Although this latter attack was made only a month or two before my arrival, the trees were already dead and their needles had changed to a sickly greenish yellow. Amid one of these clumps was a veteran yellow pine that lightning had injured a few years before. Beetles attacked and killed this old pine about a year before I appeared upon the scene. It was the only tree in this now dead clump that was attacked on that first occasion; but some weeks before my visit the beetles in multiplied numbers swarmed forth from it and speedily killed the sound neighboring trees. These conclusions were gathered from the condition of the trees themselves together with a knowledge of beetle habits. Not a beetle could be found in the lightning-injured pine, and its needles were dry and yellow. The near-by dead pines were full of beetles and their eggs; the needles, of a greenish yellow, were slightly tough and still contained a little sap. While I was in camp one evening, in the midst of these tree studies, the veteran pine, now dead, was again struck by lightning. As everything was drenched with rain, there appeared to be no likelihood of fire. However, the following morning the old pine was ablaze. In extinguishing the fire I found that it had started at the base of the tree at a point where the bolt had descended and entered the earth. At this place there was an accumulation of bark-bits from the trunk, together with fallen twigs and needles from the dead tree-top. Thus a dead, inflammable tree in the woods is kindling which at any moment may become a torch and set fire to the surrounding green forest. Although fires frequently sweep through and destroy a green forest, they commonly have their start among dead trees or trash. The pine beetle just mentioned attacks and burrows into trees for the purpose of laying its eggs therein. When few in number they confine their attacks to trees of low vitality,--those that will easily succumb to their attack. The speedy death of the tree and the resultant chemical change in its sap appear to be necessary for the well-being of the deposited eggs or the youngsters that emerge from them. When these beetles are numerous they freely attack and easily kill the most vigorous of trees. The pine beetle is one of a dozen species of bark beetles that are grouped under a name that means "killer of trees." Each year they kill many acres of forest, and almost every year some one depredation extends over several thousand acres. The way of each species is similar to that of the others. The beetles of each species vary in length from a tenth to a fifth of an inch. They migrate in midsummer, at the time of the principal attack. Swarming over the tree, they at once bore into and through the bark. Here short transverse or vertical galleries are run, and in these the eggs are laid. In a short time the eggs hatch into grubs, and these at once start to feed upon the inner bark at right angles to the galleries, extending to right and left around the tree. It does not require many of them to girdle the tree. Commonly the tree is dead in two months or less. All these little animals remain in the tree until late spring or early summer, when they emerge in multiplied swarms and repeat the deadly work in other trees. The depredations of these insects are enormous. During the early eighties the Southern pine beetle ruined several thousand acres of pines in Texas. Ten years later, 1890-92, it swarmed through western North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia to southern Pennsylvania and over an area aggregating seventy-five thousand square miles, and killed pines of all species and ages, leaving but few alive. Within the past few years the mountain and Western pine beetles have ruined a one-hundred-thousand-acre lodge-pole pine tract in northeastern Oregon, destroying not less than ninety per cent of the stand. During the past decade the Black Hills beetle has been active over the Rocky Mountains, where in some districts it has destroyed from ten to eighty per cent of the Western yellow pines. In the Black Hills the forests over several thousand square miles are ruined. These bug-killed trees deteriorate rapidly. In most cases a beetle-killed pine is pretty well rotted in five years and usually falls to pieces in less than a decade. Borers attack upon the heels of the beetles, and the holes made by the beetles admit water and fungi into the wood. This rapidly reduces the wood to a punky, rotten mass. One day in Colorado I tore a number of wind-wrecked, bug-killed trees to pieces and was busily engaged examining the numerous population of grubs and borers, when some robins and other birds discovered the feast, collected, and impatiently awaited their turn. Perceiving the situation, I dragged a fragment of a log to one side for examination while the birds assembled to banquet and dispute. Returning to the rotten logs for another grub-filled fragment, I paused to watch some wasps that, like the birds, were feasting upon these grubs. A wasp on finding a grub simply thrust his snout into the grub and then braced himself firmly as he bored down and proceeded to suck his victim's fluids. In throwing a log to one side I disturbed a bevy of slender banqueters that I had not seen. Instantly a number of wasps were effervescing round my head. Despite busy arms, they effectively peppered my face, and I fled to a neighboring brook to bathe my wounds. While I was at a safe distance, cogitating as to the wisdom of returning for further examination of the logs, a black bear appeared down the opening. From his actions I realized that he had scented not myself but the feast in the log-pile. After sniffling, pointing, and tip-toeing, he lumbered toward the logs. Of course I was curious as to the manner of his reception and allowed him to go unwarned to the feast. Two Rocky Mountain jays gave a low, indifferent call on his approach, but the other birds ignored his coming. With his fore paw he tore a log apart and deftly picked up a number of grubs. All went well until he climbed upon the pile of wreckage and rolled a broken log off the top. This disturbed another wasp feast. Suddenly he grabbed his nose with both fore paws and tumbled off the pile. For a few seconds he was slapping and battling at a lively pace; then, with a _woof-f-f-f!_ he fled--straight at me. I made a tangential move. The hardwoods are also warred upon by bugs, weevils, borers, and fungi. The percentage of swift deaths, however, that the insects cause among the hardwoods is much smaller than that among the pines; but the percentage of diseased and slow-dying hardwoods is much greater. The methods of beetles that attack oaks, hickories, aspens, and birches are similar to the methods of those that attack pines and spruces. They attack in swarms, bore through the bark, and deposit their eggs either in the inner bark or in the cambium,--the vitals of the tree. The grubs, on hatching, begin to feed upon the tree's vitals. In this feeding each grub commonly drives a minute tunnel from one to several inches in length. Where scores of grubs hatch side by side they drive a score of closely parallel tunnels. Commonly these are either horizontal or vertical and generally they are numerous enough to make many complete girdles around the tree. Girdling means cutting off the circulation, and this produces quick death. While these beetles are busy killing unnumbered millions of trees annually, the various species of another group of beetles known as weevils are active in deforming and injuring even a greater number. They mutilate and deform trees by the millions. The work of the white-pine weevil is particularly devilish. It deposits its eggs in the vigorous shoots of the white-pine sapling. The eggs hatch, and the grubs feed upon and kill the shoot. Another shoot bursts forth to take the place of the one killed; this is attacked and either killed or injured. The result is a stunted, crooked, and much-forked tree. Borers attack trees both old and young of many species, and a few of these species with wholesale deadly effect. Birches by the million annually fall a prey to these tree-tunnelers, and their deadly work has almost wiped the black locust out of existence. Borers pierce and honeycomb the tree-trunk. If their work is not fatal, it is speedily extended and made so by the fungi and rot that its holes admit into the tree. Trees, like people, often entertain a number of troubles at once and have misfortunes in series. A seedling injured by one insect is more likely to be attacked again, and by some other insect, than is the sound seedling by its side. Let a seedling be injured, and relays of insects--often several species at a time and each species with a way of its own--will attack it through the seedling, sapling, pole, tree, and veteran stages of its growth until it succumbs. Or let a vigorous tree meet with an accident, and like an injured deer it becomes food for an enemy. If lightning, wind, or sleet split the bark or break a limb, through these wounds some spore or borer will speedily reach the tree's vitals. In many cases the deadly work of parasitic plants and fungi is interrelated with, and almost inseparable from, the destructive operations of predacious insects. Many so-called tree diseases are but the spread of rot and fungi through the wood by means of an entrance bored by a borer, weevil, or beetle. The bark of a tree, like the skin on one's body, is an impervious, elastic armor that protects blood and tissues from the poisonous or corrupting touch or seizure of thousands of deadly and incessantly clamoring germs. Tear the skin on one's body or the bark upon a tree, and eternally vigilant microbes at once sow the wound with the seeds of destruction or decay. A single thoughtless stroke of an axe in the bark of a tree may admit germs that will produce a kind of blood-poisoning and cause slow death. The false-tinder fungus apparently can spread and do damage only as it is admitted into the tree through insect-holes or the wounds of accidents. Yet its annual damage is almost beyond computation. This rot is widely distributed and affects a large number of species. As with insects, its outbreaks often occur and extend over wide areas upon which its depredations are almost complete. As almost all trees are susceptible to this punk-producer, it will not be easy to suppress. [Illustration: A TREE KILLED BY MISTLETOE AND BEETLES] The study of forest insects has not progressed far enough to enable one to make more than a rough approximation of the number of the important species that attack our common trees. However, more than five hundred species are known to afflict the sturdy oak, while four hundred prey upon the bending willow. The birches supply food to about three hundred of these predacious fellows, while poplars feed and shelter almost as many. The pines and spruces are compelled permanently to pension or provide for about three hundred families of sucking, chewing parasites. The recent ravages of the chestnut-tree blight and the appalling depredations of the gypsy and brown-tailed moths, together with other evils, suggest at once the bigness of these problems and the importance of their study and solution. The insect army is as innumerable as the leaves in the forest. This army occupies points of vantage in every part of the tree zone, has an insatiable appetite, is eternally vigilant for invasion, and is eager to multiply. It maintains incessant warfare against the forest, and every tree that matures must run a gantlet of enemies in series, each species of which is armed with weapons long specialized for the tree's destruction. Some trees escape unscarred, though countless numbers are killed and multitudes maimed, which for a time live almost useless lives, ever ready to spread insects and disease among the healthy trees. Every part of the tree suffers; even its roots are cut to pieces and consumed. Caterpillars, grubs, and beetles specialize on defoliation and feed upon the leaves, the lungs of the trees. The partial defoliation of the tree is devitalizing, and the loss of all its leaves commonly kills it. Not only is the tree itself attacked but also its efforts toward reproduction. The dainty bloom is food for a number of insect beasts, while the seed is fed upon and made an egg-depository by other enemies. Weevils, blight, gall, ants, aphids, and lice prey upon it. The seed drops upon the earth into another army that is hungry and waiting to devour it. The moment it sprouts it is gnawed, stung, bitten, and bored by ever-active fiends. Many forest trees are scarred in the base by ground fires. These trees are entered by insects through the scars and become sources of rot and insect infection. Although these trees may for a time live on, it is with a rotten heart or as a mere hollow shell. A forest fire that sweeps raging through the tree-tops has a very different effect: the twigs and bark are burned off and the pitches are boiled through the exterior of the trunk and the wood fortified against all sources of decay. This preservative treatment often gives long endurance to fire-killed timber, especially when the trees killed are yellow pine or Douglas spruce. Many a night in the Rocky Mountains my eager, blazing camp-fire was burning timber that forest fires had killed forty and even sixty years before. In forest protection and improvement the insect factor is one that will not easily down. Controlling the depredations of beetles, borers, weevils, and fungi calls for work of magnitude, but work that insures success. This work consists of the constant removal of both the infected trees and the dwarfed or injured ones that are susceptible to infection. Most forest insects multiply with amazing rapidity; some mother bark-beetles may have half a million descendants in less than two years. Thus efforts for the control of insect outbreaks should begin at once,--in the early stages of their activity. A single infested tree may in a year or two spread destruction through thousands of acres of forest. Most insects have enemies to bite them. The ichneumon-fly spreads death among injurious grubs. Efforts to control forest-enemies will embrace the giving of aid and comfort to those insects that prey upon them. Bugs will be hunted with bugs. Already the gypsy moth in the East is being fought in this way. Many species of birds feed freely upon weevils, borers, and beetles. Of these birds, the woodpeckers are the most important. They must be protected and encouraged. There are other methods of fighting the enemy. A striking and successful device for putting an end to the spruce-destroying beetle is to hack-girdle a spruce here and there in the forest at a season when the physiological make-up of the tree will cause it to change into a condition most favorable for the attraction of beetles. Like carrion, this changed condition appears to be scented from all quarters and afar. Swarms of beetles concentrate their attack upon this tree and bury themselves in it and deposit their eggs. The multiplied army will remain in the tree until late spring. Thus months of time may be had to cut and burn the tree, with its myriads of murderous guests. The freedom of the big trees from insect attacks suggests that man as well as nature may develop or breed species of trees that will better resist or even defy insects. Insects are now damaging our forests to the extent of not less than one hundred million dollars annually. This we believe to be a conservative estimate. Yet these figures only begin to tell the story of loss. They tell only the commercial value of the timber. The other greater and higher values cannot be resolved into figures. Forest influences and forest scenes add much to existence and bestow blessings upon life that cannot be measured by gold. Dr. Woodpecker, Tree-Surgeon Dr. Woodpecker, Tree-Surgeon Although the eagle has the emblematic place of honor in the United States, the downy woodpecker is distinguished as the most useful bird citizen. Of the eight hundred and three kinds of birds in North America, his services are most helpful to man. He destroys destructive forest insects. Long ago Nature selected the woodpecker to be the chief caretaker--the physician and surgeon--of the tree world. This is a stupendous task. Forests are extensive and are formed of hundreds of species of trees. The American woodpeckers have the supervision of uncounted acres that are forested with more than six hundred kinds of trees. With the exception of the California big tree, each tree species is preyed upon by scores, and many species by hundreds, of injurious and deadly insects. Five hundred kinds of insects are known to prey upon the oak, and a complete count may show a thousand kinds. Many of these insects multiply with amazing rapidity, and at all times countless numbers of these aggressive pests form warrior armies with which the woodpecker must constantly contend. In this incessant struggle with insects the woodpecker has helpful assistance from many other bird families. Though the woodpecker gives general attention to hundreds of kinds of insects, he specializes on those which injure the tree internally,--which require a surgical operation to obtain. He is a distinguished specialist; the instruments for tree-surgery are intrusted to his keeping, and with these he each year performs innumerable successful surgical operations upon our friends the trees. Woodpeckers are as widely distributed as forests,--just how many to the square mile no one knows. Some localities are blessed with a goodly number, made up of representatives from three or four of our twenty-four woodpecker species. Forest, shade, and orchard trees receive their impartial attention. The annual saving from their service is enormous. Although this cannot be estimated, it can hardly be overstated. A single borer may kill a tree; so, too, may a few beetles; while a small number of weevils will injure and stunt a tree so that it is left an easy victim for other insects. Borers, beetles, and weevils are among the worst enemies of trees. They multiply with astounding rapidity and annually kill millions of scattered trees. Annually, too, there are numerous outbreaks of beetles, whose depredations extend over hundreds and occasionally over thousands of acres. Caterpillars, moths, and saw-flies are exceedingly injurious tree-pests, but they damage the outer parts of the tree. Both they and their eggs are easily accessible to many kinds of birds, including the woodpeckers; but borers, beetles, and weevils live and deposit their eggs in the very vitals of the tree. In the tree's vitals, protected by a heavy barrier of wood or bark, they are secure from the beaks and claws of all birds except Dr. Woodpecker, the chief surgeon of the forest. About the only opportunity that other birds have to feed upon borers and beetles is during the brief time they occupy in emerging from the tree that they have killed, in their flight to some live tree, and during their brief exposure while boring into it. Beetles live and move in swarms, and, according to their numbers, concentrate their attack upon a single tree or upon many trees. Most beetles are one of a dozen species of _Dendroctonus_, which means "tree-killer." Left in undisturbed possession of a tree, many mother beetles may have half a million descendants in a single season. Fortunately for the forest, Dr. Woodpecker, during his ceaseless round of inspection and service, generally discovers infested trees. If one woodpecker is not equal to the situation, many are concentrated at this insect-breeding place; and here they remain until the last dweller in darkness is reached and devoured. Thus most beetle outbreaks are prevented. Now and then all the conditions are favorable for the beetles, or the woodpecker may be persecuted and lose some of his family; so that, despite his utmost efforts, he fails to make the rounds of his forest, and the result is an outbreak of insects, with wide depredations. So important are these birds that the shooting of a single one may allow insects to multiply and waste acres of forest. During the periods in which the insects are held in check the woodpecker ranges through the forest, inspecting tree after tree. Many times, during their tireless rounds of search and inspection, I have followed them for hours. On one occasion in the mountains of Colorado I followed a Batchelder woodpecker through a spruce forest all day long. Both of us had a busy day. He inspected eight hundred and twenty-seven trees, most of which were spruce or lodge-pole pine. Although he moved quickly, he was intensely concentrated, was systematic, and apparently did the inspection carefully. The forest was a healthy one and harbored only straggling insects. Now and then he picked up an isolated insect from a limb or took an egg-cluster from a break in the bark on a trunk. Only two pecking operations were required. On another occasion I watched a hairy woodpecker spend more than three days upon one tree-trunk; this he pecked full of holes and from its vitals he dragged more than a gross of devouring grubs. In this case not only was the beetle colony destroyed but the tree survived. Woodpecker holes commonly are shallow, except in dead trees. Most of the burrowing or boring insects which infest living trees work in the outermost sapwood, just beneath the bark, or in the inner bark. Hence the doctor does not need to cut deeply. In most cases his peckings in the wood are so shallow that no scar or record is found. Hence a tree might be operated on by him a dozen times in a season, and still not show a scar when split or sawed into pieces. Most of his peckings simply penetrate the bark, and on living trees this epidermis scales off; thus in a short time all traces of his feast-getting are obliterated. I have, however, in dissecting and studying fallen trees, found a number of deep holes in their trunks which woodpeckers had made years before the trees came to their death. In one instance, as I have related in "The Story of a Thousand-Year Pine" in "Wild Life on the Rockies," a deep oblong hole was pecked in a pine nearly eight hundred years before it died. The hole filled with pitch and was overgrown with bark and wood. [Illustration: WOODPECKER HOLES IN A PINE INJURED BY LIGHTNING] Woodpeckers commonly nest in a dead limb or trunk, a number of feet from the ground. Here, in the heart of things, they excavate a moderately roomy nest. It is common for many woodpeckers to peck out a deep hole in a dead tree for individual shelter during the winter. Generally neither nest nor winter lodging is used longer than a season. The abandoned holes are welcomed as shelters and nesting-places by many birds that prefer wooden-walled houses but cannot themselves construct them. Chickadees and bluebirds often nest in them. Screech owls frequently philosophize within these retreats. On bitter cold nights these holes shelter and save birds of many species. One autumn day, while watching beneath a pine, I saw fifteen brown nuthatches issue from a woodpecker's hole in a dead limb. Just what they were doing inside I cannot imagine; the extraordinary number that had gathered therein made the incident so unusual that for a long time I hesitated to tell it. However, early one autumn, Mr. Frank M. Chapman climbed up the mountainside to see me, and, while resting on the way up, he beheld twenty-seven nuthatches emerge from a hole in a pine. By tapping against dead tree-trunks I have often roused Mother Woodpecker from her nest. Thrusting out her head from a hole far above, she peered down with one eye and comically tilted her head to discover the cause of the disturbance. With long nose and head tilted to one side, she had both a storky and a philosophical appearance. The woodpecker, more than any other bird of my acquaintance, at times actually appears to need only a pair of spectacles upon his nose in order fully to complete his attitude and expression of wisdom. The downy woodpecker, the smallest member of a family of twenty-four distinguished species, is the honored one. He is a confiding little fellow and I have often accompanied him on his daily rounds. He does not confine his attacks to the concealed enemies of the trees, but preys freely upon caterpillars and other enemies which feast upon their leaves and bloom. He appears most content close to the haunts of man and spends much of his time caring for orchards and cleaning up the shade trees. One morning in Missouri a downy alighted against the base of an apple tree within a few feet of where I was standing. He arrived with an undulating flight and swept in sideways toward the trunk, as though thrown. Spat! he struck. For a moment he stuck motionless, then he began to sidle round and up the trunk. Every now and then he tapped with his bill or else stopped to peer into a bark-cavity. He devoured an insect egg-cluster, a spider, and a beetle of some kind before ascending to the first limb. Just below the point of a limb's attachment he edged about, giving the tree-trunk a rattling patter of taps with his bill. He was sounding for something. Presently a spot appeared to satisfy him. Adjusting himself, he rained blows with his pick-axe bill upon this, tilting his head and directing the strokes with an apparently automatic action, now and then giving a side swipe with his bill, probably to tear out a splinter or throw off a chip. In six minutes his prey was evidently in sight. Then he enlarged the hole and slightly deepened it vertically. Pausing, he thrust his head into the hole and his bill into a cavity beyond. With a backward tug he pulled his head out, then his bill, and at last his extended tongue with a grub impaled on its barbed point. This grub was dragged from the bottom of a crooked gallery at a point more than three inches beyond the bottom of the pecked hole. A useful bread-getting tool, this tongue of his,--a flexible, extensible spear. In another tree he uncovered a feast of ants and their eggs. Once a grasshopper alighted against another tree-trunk up which he was climbing. Downy seized him instantly. In one tree-top he consumed an entire tent-caterpillar colony. In four hours he examined the trunks, larger limbs, and many of the smaller ones of one hundred and thirty-eight apple trees. In this time he made twenty-two excavations, five of which were large ones. Among the insects devoured were beetles, ants, their eggs and their aphids, a grasshopper, a moth or two, and a colony of caterpillars. I followed him closely, and frequently was within a few feet of him. Often I saw his eyes, or rather one eye at a time; and a number of times I imagined him about to look round and with merry laugh fly away, for he frequently acted like a happy child who is closely watching you while all the time merrily pretending not to see you. Yet, in all those four hours, he did not do a single thing which showed that he knew of my nearness or even of my existence! Examining each tree in turn, he moved down a long row and at the end flew without the slightest pause to the first tree in the next row. From here he examined a line of trees diagonally across the orchard to the farther corner. Here he followed along the outside row until he flew away. The line of his inspection, from the time I first saw him until he flew away, formed a big letter "N." During a wind-storm in a pine forest a dead tree fell near me and a flying limb knocked a downy, stunned, to the earth, by my feet. On reviving in my hands, he showed but little excitement, and when my hands opened he pushed himself off as though to dive to the earth; but he skimmed and swung upward, landing against a tree-trunk about twenty feet distant. Up this he at once began to skate and sidle, exploring away as though nothing had happened and I were only a stump. Little Boy Grizzly Little Boy Grizzly One day, while wandering in the pine woods on the slope of Mt. Meeker, I came upon two young grizzly bears. Though they dodged about as lively as chickens, I at last cornered them in a penlike pocket of fallen trees. Getting them into a sack was one of the liveliest experiences I ever had. Though small and almost starved, these little orphans proceeded to "chew me up" after the manner of big grizzlies, as is told of them in books. After an exciting chase and tussle, I would catch one and thrust him into the sack. In resisting, he would insert his claws into my clothes, or thrust them through the side of the sack; then, while I was trying to tear him loose, or to thrust him forcibly in, he would lay hold of a finger, or take a bite in my leg. Whenever he bit, I at once dropped him, and then all began over again. Their mother had been killed a few days before I found them; so, of course, they were famished and in need of a home; but so bitterly did they resist my efforts that I barely succeeded in taking them. Though hardly so large as a collie when he is at his prettiest, they were nimble athletes. At last I started home, the sack over my shoulder, with these lively _Ursus horribilis_ in the bottom of it. Their final demonstration was not needed to convince me of the extraordinary power of their jaws. Nevertheless, while going down a steep slope, one managed to bite into my back through sack and clothes, so effectively that I responded with a yell. Then I fastened the sack at the end of a long pole, which I carried across my shoulder, and I was able to travel the remainder of the distance to my cabin without another attack in the rear. Of course the youngsters did not need to be taught to eat. I simply pushed their noses down into a basin of milk, and the little red tongues at once began to ply; then raw eggs and bread were dropped into the basin. There was no hesitation between courses; they simply gobbled the food as long as I kept it before them. Jenny and Johnny were pets before sundown. Though both were alert, Johnny was the wiser and the more cheerful of the two. He took training as readily as a collie or shepherd-dog, and I have never seen any dog more playful. All bears are keen of wit, but he was the brightest one of the wild folk that I have ever known. He grew rapidly, and ate me almost out of supplies. We were intimate friends in less than a month, and I spent much time playing and talking with him. One of the first things I taught him was, when hungry, to stand erect with arms extended almost horizontally, with palms forward. I also taught him to greet me in this manner. One day, after two weeks with me, he climbed to the top of a pole fence to which he was chained. Up there he had a great time; he perched, gazed here and there, pranced back and forth, and finally fell off. His chain tangled and caught. For a few seconds he dangled in the air by the neck, then slipped through his collar and galloped off up the mountainside and quickly disappeared in the woods. I supposed he was gone for good. Although I followed for several hours, I did not even catch sight of him. This little boy had three days of runaway life, and then concluded to return. Hunger drove him back. I saw him coming and went to meet him; but kept out of sight until he was within twenty feet, then stepped into view. Apparently a confused or entangled mental condition followed my appearance. His first impulse was to let me know that he was hungry by standing erect and outstretching his arms; this he started hastily to do. In the midst of this performance, it occurred to him that if he wanted anything to eat he must hurry to me; so he interrupted his first action, and started to carry his second into instant effect. These incomplete proceedings interrupted and tripped one another three or four times in rapid succession. Though he tumbled about in comic confusion while trying to do two things at once, it was apparent through all that his central idea was to get something to eat. [Illustration: JOHNNY AND JENNY] And this, as with all boys, was his central idea much of the time. I did not find anything that he would not eat. He simply gobbled scraps from the table,--mountain sage, rhubarb, dandelion, and apples. Of course, being a boy, he liked apples best of all. If I approached him with meat and honey upon a plate and with an apple in my pocket, he would smell the apple and begin to dance before me, ignoring the eatables in sight. Instantly, on permission, he would clasp me with both fore paws and thrust his nose into the apple pocket. Often, standing between him and Jenny, I alternately fed each a bit. A few times I broke the regular order and gave Jenny two bits in succession. At this Johnny raged, and usually ended by striking desperately at me; I never flinched, and the wise little rogue made it a point each time to miss me by an inch or two. A few other people tried this irritating experiment with him, but he hit them every time. However, I early tried to prevent anything being done that teased or irritated him. Visitors did occasionally tease him, and frequently they fed the two on bad-temper-producing knickknacks. Occasionally the two quarreled, but not more frequently than two ordinary children; and these quarrels were largely traceable to fight-producing food mixtures. Anyway, bears will maintain a better disposition with a diet of putrid meat, snakes, mice, and weeds than upon desserts of human concoction. Naturally bears are fun-loving and cheerful; they like to romp and play. Johnny played by the hour. Most of the time he was chained to a low, small shed that was built for his accommodation. Scores of times each day he covered all the territory that could be traversed while he was fastened with a twelve-foot chain. Often he skipped back and forth in a straight line for an hour or more. These were not the restless, aimless movements of the caged tiger, but those of playful, happy activity. It was a pleasure to watch this eager play; in it he would gallop to the outer limit of his chain, then, reversing his legs without turning his body, go backward with a queer, lively hippety-hop to the other end, then gallop forward again. He knew the length of his chain to an inch. No matter how wildly he rushed after some bone-stealing dog, he was never jerked off his feet by forgetting his limitations. He and Scotch, my collie, were good friends and jolly playmates. In their favorite play Scotch tried to take a bone which Johnny guarded; this brought out from both a lively lot of feinting, dodging, grabbing, and striking. Occasionally they clinched, and when this ended, Johnny usually tried for a good bite or two on Scotch's shaggy tail. Scotch appeared always to have in mind that the end of Johnny's nose was sensitive, and he landed many a good slap on this spot. Apparently, Johnny early appreciated the fact that I would not tease him, and also that I was a master who must be obeyed. One day, however, he met with a little mishap, misjudged things, and endeavored to make it lively for me. I had just got him to the point where he enjoyed a rocking-chair. In this chair he sat up like a little man. Sometimes his fore paws lay awkwardly in his lap, but more often each rested on an arm of the big chair. He found rocking such a delight that it was not long until he learned to rock himself. This brought on the mishap. He had grown over-confident, and one day was rocking with great enthusiasm. Suddenly, the big rocker, little man and all, went over backward. Though standing by, I was unable to save him, and did not move. Seeing his angry look when he struck the floor, and guessing his next move, I leaped upon the table. Up he sprang, and delivered a vicious blow that barely missed, but which knocked a piece out of my trousers. Apparently no other large animal has such intense curiosity as the grizzly. An object in the distance, a scent, a sound, or a trail, may arouse this, and for a time overcome his intense and wary vigilance. In satisfying this curiosity he will do unexpected and apparently bold things. But the instant the mystery is solved he is himself again, and may run for dear life from some situation into which his curiosity has unwittingly drawn him. An unusual noise behind Johnny's shed would bring him out with a rush, to determine what it was. If not at once satisfied as to the cause, he would put his fore paws on the top of the shed and peer over in the most eager and inquiring manner imaginable. Like a scout, he spied mysterious and dim objects afar. If a man, a dog, or a horse, appeared in the distance, he quickly discovered the object, and at once stood erect, with fore paws drawn up, until he had a good look at it. The instant he made out what it was, he lost interest in it. At all times he was vigilant to know what was going on about him. He was like a boy in his fondness for water. Usually, when unchained and given the freedom of the place, he would spend much of the time in the brook, rolling, playing, and wading. He and I had a few foot-races, and usually, in order to give me a better chance, we ran down hill. In a two-hundred-yard dash he usually paused three or four times and waited for me to catch up, and I was not a slow biped, either. The grizzly, though apparently awkward and lumbering, is really one of the most agile of beasts. I constantly marveled at Johnny's lightness of touch, or the deftness of movement of his fore paws. With but one claw touching it, he could slide a coin back and forth on the floor more rapidly and lightly than I could. He would slide an eggshell swiftly along without breaking it. Yet by using but one paw, he could, without apparent effort, overturn rocks that were heavier than himself. One day, while he slept in the yard, outstretched in the sun, I opened a large umbrella and put it over him, and waited near for him to wake up. By and by the sleepy eyes half opened, but without a move he closed them and slept again. Presently he was wide awake, making a quiet study of the strange thing over him, but except to roll his eyes, not a move did he make. Then a puff of wind gave sudden movement to the umbrella, rolling it over a point or two. At this he leaped to his feet, terribly frightened, and made a dash to escape this mysterious monster. But, as he jumped, the wind whirled the umbrella, and plump into it he landed. An instant of desperate clawing, and he shook off the wrecked umbrella and fled in terror. A minute or two later I found him standing behind the house, still frightened and trembling. When I came up and spoke to him, he made three or four lively attempts to bite my ankles. Plainly, he felt that I had played a mean and uncalled-for trick upon him. I talked to him for some time and endeavored to explain the matter to him. A sudden movement of a new or mysterious object will usually frighten any animal. On more than one occasion people have taken advantage of this characteristic of wild beasts, and prevented an attack upon themselves. In one instance I unconsciously used it to my advantage. In the woods, one day, as I have related elsewhere, two wolves and myself unexpectedly met. With bared teeth they stood ready to leap upon me. Needing something to keep up my courage and divert my thoughts, it occurred to me to snap a picture of them. This effectively broke the spell, for when the kodak door flew open they wheeled and fled. Autumn came, and I was to leave for a forestry tour. The only man that I could persuade to stay at my place for the winter was one who neither understood nor sympathized with my wide-awake and aggressive young grizzly. Realizing that the man and the bear would surely clash, and perhaps to the man's disadvantage, I settled things once and for all by sending Johnny to the Denver Zoo. He was seven months old when we parted, and apparently as much attached to me as any dog to master. I frequently had news of him, but let two years go by before I allowed myself the pleasure of visiting him. He was lying on the ground asleep when I called, while around him a number of other bears were walking about. He was no longer a boy bear, but a big fellow. In my eagerness to see him I forgot to be cautious and, climbing to the top of the picket fence, leaped into the pen, calling, "Hello, Johnny!" as I leaped, and repeating this greeting as I landed on the ground beside him. He jumped up, fully awake, and at once recognized me. Instantly, he stood erect, with both arms extended, and gave a few happy grunts of joy and by way of greeting. I talked to him for a little while and patted him as I talked. Then I caught a fore paw in my hand and we hopped and pranced about as in old times. A yell from the outside brought me to my senses. Instinctively I glanced about for a way of escape, though I really did not feel that I was in danger. We were, however, the observed of all observers, and I do not know which throng was staring with greater interest and astonishment,--the bears in the pen or the spectators on the outside. Alone with a Landslide Alone with a Landslide Realizing the importance of traveling as lightly as possible during my hasty trip through the Uncompahgre Mountains, I allowed myself to believe that the golden days would continue. Accordingly I set off with no bedding, with but little food, and without even snowshoes. A few miles up the trail, above Lake City, I met a prospector coming down and out of these mountains for the winter. "Yes," he said, "the first snow usually is a heavy one, and I am going out now for fear of being snowed-in for the winter." My imagination at once pictured the grand mountains deeply, splendidly covered with snow, myself by a camp-fire in a solemn primeval forest without food or bedding, a camp-bird on a near-by limb sympathizing with me in low, confiding tones, the snow waist-deep and mountains-wide. Then I dismissed the imaginary picture of winter and joyfully climbed the grand old mountains amid the low and leafless aspens and the tall and richly robed firs. I was impelled to try to make this mountain realm a National Forest and felt that sometime it would become a National Park. The wonderful reports of prospectors about the scenery of this region, together with what I knew of it from incomplete exploration, eloquently urged this course upon me. My plan was to make a series of photographs, from commanding heights and slopes, that would illustrate the forest wealth and the scenic grandeur of this wonderland. In the centre Uncompahgre Peak rose high, and by girdling it a little above the timber I obtained a number of the desired photographs, and then hurried from height to height, taking other pictures of towering summits or their slopes below that were black and purpling with impressive, pathless forests. The second evening I went into camp among some picturesque trees upon a skyline at an altitude of eleven thousand feet above the tides. While gathering wood for a fire, I paused to watch the moon, a great globe of luminous gold, rise strangely, silently into the mellow haze of autumn night. For a moment on the horizon it paused to peep from behind a crag into a scattered group of weird storm-beaten trees on a ridge before me, then swiftly floated up into lonely, misty space. Just before I lay down for the night, I saw a cloud-form in the dim, low distance that was creeping up into my moonlit world of mountains. Other shadowy forms followed it. A little past midnight I was awakened by the rain falling gently, coldly upon my face. As I stood shivering with my back to the fire, there fell an occasional feathery flake of snow. Had my snowshoes been with me, a different lot of experiences would have followed. With them I should have stayed in camp and watched the filmy flakes form their beautiful white feathery bog upon the earth, watched robes, rugs, and drapery decorate rocks and cliffs, or the fir trees come out in pointed, spearhead caps, or the festoons form upon the limbs of dead and lifeless trees,--crumbling tree-ruins in the midst of growing forest life. To be without food or snowshoes in faraway mountain snows is about as serious as to be adrift in a lifeboat without food or oars in the ocean's wide waste. In a few minutes the large, almost pelt-like flakes were falling thick and fast. Hastily I put the two kodaks and the treasured films into water-tight cases, pocketed my only food, a handful of raisins, adjusted hatchet and barometer, then started across the strange, snowy mountains through the night. The nearest and apparently the speediest way out lay across the mountains to Ridgway; the first half of this fifteen miles was through a rough section that was new to me. After the lapse of several years this night expedition appears a serious one, though at the time it gave me no concern that I recall. How I ever managed to go through that black, storm-filled night without breaking my neck amid the innumerable opportunities for accident, is a thing that I cannot explain. I descended a steep, rugged slope for a thousand feet or more with my eyes useless in the eager falling of mingled rain and snow. Nothing could be seen, but despite slow, careful going a dead limb occasionally prodded me. With the deliberation of a blind man I descended the long, steep, broken, slippery slope, into the bottom of a cañon. Now and then I came out upon a jumping-off place; here I felt before and below with a slender staff for a place to descend; occasionally no bottom could be found, and upon this report I would climb back a short distance and search out a way. Activity kept me warm, although the cold rain drenched me and the slipperiness of slopes and ledges never allowed me to forget the law of falling bodies. At last a roaring torrent told me that I was at the bottom of a slope. Apparently I had come down by the very place where the stream contracted and dashed into a deep, narrow box cañon. Not being able to go down stream or make a crossing at this point, I turned and went up the stream for half a mile or so, where I crossed the swift, roaring water in inky darkness on a fallen Douglas spruce,--for such was the arrangement of its limbs and the feel of the wood in its barkless trunk, that these told me it was a spruce, though I could see nothing. During this night journey I put myself both in feeling and in fact in a blind man's place,--the best lesson I ever had to develop deliberation and keenness of touch. The next hour after crossing the stream I spent in climbing and descending a low wooded ridge with smooth surface and gentle slopes. Then there was one more river, the Little Cimarron, to cross. An Engelmann spruce, with scaly, flaky bark, that had stood perfectly perpendicular for a century or two but had recently been hurled to the horizontal, provided a long, vibrating bridge for me to cross on. Once across, I started to climb the most unstable mountain that I had ever trodden. [Illustration: NEAR THE TOP OF MT. COXCOMB] Mt. Coxcomb, up which I climbed, is not one of the "eternal hills" but a crumbling, dissolving, tumbling, transient mountain. Every hard rain dissolves, erodes, and uncovers the sides of this mountain as if it were composed of sugar, paste, and stones. It is made up of a confused mingling of parts and masses of soluble and flinty materials. Here change and erosion run riot after every rain. There is a great falling to pieces; gravity, the insatiable, is temporarily satisfied, and the gulches feast on earthy materials, while the river-channel is glutted with crushed cliffs, acres of earth, and the débris of ruined forests. Here and there these are flung together in fierce confusion. On this bit of the wild world's stage are theatrical lightning changes of scenes,--changes that on most mountains would require ten thousand years or more. It is a place of strange and fleeting landscapes; the earth is ever changing like the sky. In wreathed clouds a great cliff is born, stands out bold and new in the sunshine and the blue. The Storm King comes, the thunders echo among crags and cañons, the broken clouds clear away, and the beautiful bow bends above a ruined cliff. Here and there strange, immature monsters are struggling to rise,--to free themselves from the earth. Occasionally a crag is brought forth full grown during one operation of gravity, erosion, and storm, and left upon a foundation that would raise corn but never sustain cliff or crag. Scattered monoliths at times indulge in a contest of leaning the farthest from the perpendicular without falling. The potato-patch foundations of these in time give way, then gravity drags them head foremost, or in broken installments, down the slope. Among the forested slopes that I traversed there were rock-slides, earthy glaciers, and leafless gulches with crumbling walls. Some of these gulches extended from bottom to top of the mountain, while others were digging their way. An occasional one had a temporary ending against the bottom of a kingly cliff, whose short reign was about to end as its igneous throne was disorganized and decomposed. The storm and darkness continued as I climbed the mountain of short-lived scenes,--a mountain so eagerly moving from its place in the sky to a bed in the sea. The saturation had softened and lubricated the surface; these sedimentary slopes had been made restless by the rain. I endeavored to follow up one of the ridges, but it was narrow and all the pulpy places very slippery. Fearing to tumble off into the dark unknown, I climbed down into a gully and up this made my way toward the top. All my mountain experience told me to stay on the ridge and not travel in darkness the way in which gravity flings all his spoils. The clouds were low, and I climbed well up into them. The temperature was cooler, and snow was whitening the earth. When I was well up to the silver lining of the clouds, a gust of wind momentarily rent them, and I stood amid snow-covered statuary,--leaning monoliths and shattered minarets all weird and enchanting in the moonlight. A few seconds later I was in darkness and snowstorm again. The gulch steepened and apparently grew shallower. Occasionally a mass of mud or a few small stones rolled from the sides of the gulch to my feet and told that saturation was at work dissolving and loosening anchorages and foundations. It was time to get out of the gulch. While I was making haste to do so, there came a sudden tremor instantly followed by an awful crash and roar. Then _r-r-rip! z-zi-ip! s-w-w-r-r-ip!_ A bombardment of flying, bounding, plunging rocks from an overturned cliff above was raking my gulch. Nothing could be seen, but several slaps in the face from dashes of snow which these rock missiles disturbed and displaced was expressively comprehensive. As this brief bombardment ceased, the ominous sounds from above echoing among the cliffs shouted warning of an advancing landslide. This gave a little zest to my efforts to get out of the gulch; too much perhaps, for my scramble ended in a slip and a tumble back to the bottom. In the second attempt a long, uncovered tree-root reached down to me in the darkness, and with the aid of this I climbed out of the way of the avalanche. None too soon, however. With quarreling and subdued grinding sounds the rushing flood of landslide material went past, followed by an offensive smell. While I paused listening to the monster groan and grind his way downward, the cliffs fired a few more rock missiles in my direction. One struck a crag beside me. The explosive contact gave forth a blast of sputtering sparks and an offensive, rotten-egg smell. A flying fragment of this shattered missile struck my left instep, breaking one of the small bones. Fortunately my foot was resting in the mud when struck. When consciousness came back to me I was lying in the mud and snow, drenched, mud-bespattered, and cold. The rain and snow had almost ceased to fall, and while I was bandaging my foot the pale light of day began to show feebly through heavy clouds. If that luminous place is in the eastern horizon, then I have lost my sense of direction. An appeal to the compass brought no consolation, for it said laconically, "Yes, you are turned around now, even though you never were before." The accuracy of the compass was at once doubted,--but its decree was followed. Slowly, painfully, the slippery, snowy steeps were scaled beneath a low, gloomy sky. My plan was to cross the north shoulder of Mt. Coxcomb and then down slope and gulch descend to the deeply filled alluvium Uncompahgre valley and the railroad village of Ridgway. With the summit only a few feet above, the wall became so steep and the hold so insecure that it appeared best to turn back lest I be precipitated from the cliff. The small, hard points in the sedimentary wall had been loosened in their settings by the rain. Climbing this wall with two good feet in a dry time would be adventurous pastime. While I was flattened against the wall, descending with greatest caution, there came a roaring crash together with a trembling of earth and air. An enormous section of the opposite side of the mass that I was on had fallen away, and the oscillations of the cliff nearly hurled me to the rock wreckage at the bottom of the wall. On safe footing at last, I followed along the bottom of the summit cliff and encountered the place from which the rocks had been hurled at me in the darkness and where a cliff had fallen to start the slide. It was evident that the storm waters had wrecked the foundation of the cliff. Ridges and gullies of the Bad Land's type fluted the slope and prevented my traveling along close to the summit at right angles to the slope. There appeared no course for me but to descend to the Little Cimarron River. Hours were required for less than two miles of painful though intensely interesting travel. It was a day of landslides,--just as there are, in the heights, days of snow slides. This excessive saturation after months of drought left cohesion and adhesion but slight hold on these strange sedimentary mixtures. The surface tore loose and crawled; cliffs tumbled. After counting the crash and echoing roar of forty-three fallen cliffs, I ceased counting and gave more attention to other demonstrations. On the steeps, numerous fleshy areas crawled, slipped, and crept. The front of a long one had brought up against a rock ledge while the blind rear of the mass pressed powerfully forward, crumpling, folding, and piling the front part against the ledge. At one place an enormous rocky buttress had tumbled over. Below, the largest piece of this, a wreck in a mass of mud, floated slowly down the slope in a shallow, moderately tilted gulch. This buttress had been something of an impounding, retaining wall against which loosened, down-drifting materials had accumulated into a terrace. The terrace had long been adorned with a cluster of tall spruces whose presence produced vegetable mould and improved soil conditions. On the falling-away of this buttress the tree-plumed terrace commenced to sag and settle. The soil-covered débris was well roped together and reinforced with tree-roots. When I came along, these tall trees, so long bravely erect, were leaning, drooping forward. Their entire foundation had slipped several feet and was steadily crowding out over the pit from which gravity had dragged the buttress. The trees, with their roots wedged in crevices, were anchored to bed-rock and clinging on for dear life. Now and then a low, thudding, earth-muffled sound told of strained or ruptured roots. The foundation steadily gave way while the trees drooped dangerously forward. United on the heights, the brave trees had struggled through the seasons, and united they would go down together. They had fixed and fertilized the spoil from the slopes above. This spoil had been held and made to produce, and prevented from going down to clog the channel of the Little Cimarron or making with the waters the long, sifting, shifting journey, joining at last the lifeless soil deposits in the delta tongues of the Colorado. But the steadfast trees, with all their power to check erosion and create soil, were to fall before the overwhelming elements. Farther and farther the unsupported and water-lubricated foundation slipped; more and more the trees leaned and drooped forward; until gravity tore all loose and plunged the trees head foremost into the pit, crushing down upon tumbled tons of rocks, soil, matted mud, and roots,--all the wreckage of the time-formed, tree-crowned terrace. The slide that narrowly missed me in the night was a monster one and grew in magnitude as it brutally rooted and gouged its way downward. After descending more than half a mile it struck an enormous dome rock, which stayed a small part of it, while the remainder, deflected, made an awesome plunge and engulfed a small, circular grove in an easily sloping grassy plot. Most of the towering spruces were thrown down and deeply buried beneath mud, smashed cliffs, and the mangled forms of trees from up the slope. A few trees on the margin of the grove were left standing, but they suffered from cruel bruises and badly torn bark. On the farther side of the grove a number of the trees were bent forward but only partly buried; with heads and shoulders out, they were struggling to extricate themselves, and now and then one shook an arm free from the débris. Over the place where a few hours before tall tree plumes had stood in the sky, a fierce confusion of slide wreckage settled and tumbled to pieces while the buried and half-buried trees whispered, murmured, and sighed as they struggled to rise. Out with nature trees are supposed to stand in one place all their lives, but one of the most interesting movements of this elemental day was the transplanting, by gravity, of an entire clump of tall old firs. Water released these trees, and they appeared to enjoy being dragged by gravity to a new home and setting. I was resting my foot and watching a gigantic monolithic stone settle and come down gracefully, when a tree-clump on the skyline just beyond appeared to move forward several yards, then make a stop. While I was trying to decide whether they really had moved or not, they moved forward again with all their earthly claims, a few square rods of surface together with their foundations beneath. With all tops merrily erect they slid forward, swerving right and left along the line of least resistance, and finally came to rest in a small unclaimed flat in which no doubt they grew up with the country. The many-sized slides of that weird day showed a change of position varying from a few feet to a mile. Several ploughed out into the Little Cimarron and piled its channel more than full of spoils from the slopes. Through this the river fought its way, and from it the waters flowed richly laden with earthy matter. The great changes which took place on Mt. Coxcomb in a few hours were more marked and extensive than the alterations in most mountains since the Sphinx began to watch the shifting, changing sands by the Nile. By mid-afternoon the air grew colder and the snow commenced to deepen upon the earth. Bedraggled and limping, I made slow progress down the slope. Just at twilight a mother bear and her two cubs met me. They probably were climbing up to winter-quarters. I stood still to let them pass. When a few yards distant the bear rose up and looked at me with a combination of curiosity, astonishment, and perhaps contempt. With _Woof! Woof!_ more in a tone of disgust than of fear or anger, she rushed off, followed by the cubs, and the three disappeared in the darkening, snow-filling forest aisles. The trees were snow-laden and dripping, but on and on I went. Years of training had given me great physical endurance, and this, along with a peculiar mental attitude that Nature had developed in me from being alone in her wild places at all seasons, gave me a rare trust in her and an enthusiastic though unconscious confidence in the ultimate success of whatever I attempted to accomplish out of doors. About two o'clock in the morning I at last descended to the river. The fresh débris on my side of the stream so hampered traveling that it became necessary to cross. Not finding any fallen-tree bridge, I started to wade across in a wide place that I supposed to be shallow. Midway and hip-deep in the swift water, I struck the injured foot against a boulder, momentarily flinching, and the current swirled me off my feet. After much struggling and battling with the turbulent waters, I succeeded in reaching the opposite shore. This immersion did not make me any wetter than I was or than I had been for hours, but the water chilled me; so I hurried forward as rapidly as possible to warm up. After a few steps the injured leg suddenly became helpless, and I tumbled down in the snow. Unable to revive the leg promptly and being very cold from my icy-water experience, I endeavored to start a fire. Everything was soaked and snow-covered; the snow was falling and the trees dripping water; I groped about on my hands and one knee, dragging the paralyzed leg; all these disadvantages, along with chattering teeth and numb fingers, made my fire-starting attempts a series of failures. That night of raw, primitive life is worse in retrospect than was the real one. Still I was deadly in earnest at the time. Twenty-four hours of alertness and activity in the wilds, swimming and wading a torrent of ice-water at two o'clock in the morning, tumbling out into the wet, snowy wilds miles from food and shelter, a crushed foot and a helpless leg, the penetrating, clinging cold, and no fire, is going back to nature about ten thousand years farther than it is desirable to go. But I was not discouraged even for a moment, and it did not occur to me to complain, though, as I look back now, the theory of non-resistance appears to have been carried a trifle too far. At last the fire blazed. After two hours beside it I went down the river greatly improved. The snow was about fifteen inches deep. [Illustration: COURT-HOUSE ROCK] Shortly before daylight I felt that I was close to a trail I had traveled, one that came to Cimarron near by Court-House Rock. Recrossing the river on a fallen log, I lay down to sleep beneath a shelving rock with a roaring fire before me, sleeping soundly and deeply until the crash of an overturned cliff awakened me. Jumping to my feet, I found the storm over with the clouds broken and drifting back and forth in two strata as though undecided whether to go or remain. Above a low, lazy cloud, I caught a glimpse of Turret-Top, and turning, beheld Court-House Rock. The foot gave no pain as I limped along the trail I had so often followed. Now and then I turned to take a photograph. The stars and the lights in the village were just appearing when I limped into the surgeon's office in Ridgway. The Maker of Scenery and Soil The Maker of Scenery and Soil During my first boyish exploring trip in the Rocky Mountains I was impressed with the stupendous changes which the upper slope of these mountains had undergone. In places were immense embankments and wild deltas of débris that plainly had come from elsewhere. In other places the rough edges of the cañons and ridges had been trimmed and polished; their cliffs and projections were gone and their surfaces had been swept clean of all loose material. Later, I tried vainly to account for some cañon walls being trimmed and polished at the bottom while their upper parts were jagged. In most cañons the height of the polishings above the bottom was equal on both walls, with the upper edge of the polish even or level for the entire length of the cañon. In one cañon, in both floor and walls, were deep lateral scratches in the rocks. One day I found some polished boulders perched like driftwood on the top of a polished rock dome; they were porphyry, while the dome was flawless granite. They plainly had come from somewhere else. How they managed to be where they were was too much for me. Mountain floods were terrible but not wild enough in their fiercest rushes to do this. Upon a mountainside across a gorge about two miles distant, and a thousand feet above the perched boulders on the dome, I found a porphyry outcrop; but this situation only added to my confusion. I did not then know of the glacial period, or the actions of glaciers. It was a delightful revelation when John Muir told me of these wonders. Much of the earth's surface, together with most mountain-ranges, have gone through a glacial period or periods. There is extensive and varied evidence that the greater portion of the earth has been carved and extensively changed by the Ice King. Substantial works, blurred and broken records, and impressive ruins in wide array over the earth show long and active possession by the Ice King, as eloquently as the monumental ruins in the Seven Hills tell of their intense association with man. Both the northern and the southern hemispheres have had their heavy, slow-going floods of ice that appear to have swept from the polar world far toward the equator. During the great glacial period, which may have lasted for ages, a mountainous flood of ice overspread America from the north and extended far down the Mississippi Valley. This ice may have been a mile or more in depth. It utterly changed the topography and made a new earth. Lakes were filled and new ones made. New landscapes were formed: mountains were rubbed down to plains, morainal hills were built upon plains, and streams were moved bodily. It is probable that during the last ice age the location and course of both the Ohio and the Missouri Rivers were changed. Originally the Missouri flowed east and north, probably emptying into a lake that had possession of the Lake Superior territory. The Ice King deliberately shoved this river hundreds of miles toward the south. The Ohio probably had a similar experience. These rivers appear to mark the "Farthest South" of the ice; their position probably was determined by the ice. Had a line been traced on the map along the ragged edge and front of the glacier at its maximum extension, this line would almost answer for the present position of the Missouri and Ohio Rivers. The most suggestive and revealing words concerning glaciers that I have ever read are these of John Muir in "The Mountains of California": "When we bear in mind that all the Sierra forests are young, growing upon moraine soil recently deposited, and that the flank of the range itself, with all its landscapes, is new-born, recently sculptured, and brought to light of day from beneath the ice mantle of the glacial winter, then a thousand lawless mysteries disappear and broad harmonies take their places." "A glacier," says Judge Junius Henderson, in the best definition that I have heard, "is a body of ice originating in an area where the annual accumulation of snow exceeds the dissipation, and moving downward and outward to an area where dissipation exceeds accumulation." [Illustration: THE HALLETT GLACIER] A glacier may move forward only a few feet in a year or it may move several feet in a day. It may be only a few hundred feet in length, or, as during the Ice Age, have an area of thousands of square miles. The Arapahoe Glacier moves slowly, as do all small glaciers and some large ones. One year's measured movement was 27.7 feet near the centre and 11.15 near the edge. This, too, is about the average for one year, and also an approximate movement for most small mountain glaciers. The centre of the glacier, meeting less resistance than the edges, commonly flows much more rapidly. The enormous Alaskan glaciers have a much more rapid flow, many moving forward five or more feet a day. A glacier is the greatest of eroding agents. It wears away the surface over which it flows. It grinds mountains to dust, transports soil and boulders, scoops out lake-basins, gives flowing lines to landscapes. Beyond comprehension we are indebted to them for scenery and soil. Glaciers, or ice rivers, make vast changes. Those in the Rocky Mountains overthrew cliffs, pinnacles, and rocky headlands. These in part were crushed and in part they became embedded in the front, bottom, and sides of the ice. This rock-set front tore into the sides and bottom of its channel--after it had made a channel!--with a terrible, rasping, crushing, and grinding effect, forced irresistibly forward by a pressure of untold millions of tons. Glaciers, large and small, the world over, have like characteristics and influences. To know one glacier will enable one to enjoy glaciers everywhere and to appreciate the stupendous influence they have had upon the surface of the earth. They have planed down the surface and even reduced mountain-ridges to turtle outlines. In places the nose of the glacier was thrust with such enormous pressure against a mountainside that the ice was forced up the slope which it flowed across and then descended on the opposite side. Sustained by constant and measureless pressure, years of fearful and incessant application of this weighty, flowing, planing, ploughing sandpaper wore the mountain down. In time, too, the small ragged-edged, V-shaped ravines became widened, deepened, and extended into enormous U-shaped glaciated gorges. Glaciers have gouged or scooped many basins in the solid rock. These commonly are made at the bottom of a deep slope where the descending ice bore heavily on the lever or against a reverse incline. The size of the basin thus made is determined by the size, width, and weight of the glacier and by other factors. In the Rocky Mountains these excavations vary in size from a few acres to a few thousand. They became lake-basins on the disappearance of the ice. More than a thousand lakes of glacial origin dot the upper portions of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Most of these are above the altitude of nine thousand feet, and the largest, Grand Lake, is three miles in length. Landslides and silt have filled many of the old glacier lake basins, and these, overgrown with grass and sedge, are called glacier meadows. Vast was the quantity of material picked up and transported by these glaciers. Mountains were moved piecemeal, and ground to boulders, pebbles, and rock-flour in the moving. In addition to the material which the glacier gathered up and excavated, it also carried the wreckage brought down by landslides and the eroded matter poured upon it by streams from the heights. Most of the material which falls upon the top of the upper end of the glacier ultimately works its way to the bottom, where, with the other gathered material, it is pressed against the bottom and sides and used as a cutting or grinding tool until worn to a powder or pebbles. Train-loads of débris often accumulate upon the top of the glacier. On the lower course this often is a hundred feet or more above the surface, and as the glacier descends and shrivels, enormous quantities of this rocky débris fall off the sides and, in places, form enormous embankments; these often closely parallel long stretches of the glacier like river levees. The large remainder of the material is carried to the end of the glacier, where the melting ice unloads and releases it. This accumulation, which corresponds to the delta of a river, is the terminal moraine. For years the bulk of the ice may melt away at about the same place; this accumulates an enormous amount of débris; an advance of the ice may plough through this and repile it, or the retreat of the ice or a changed direction of its flow may pile the débris elsewhere and over wide areas. Many of these terminal moraines are an array of broken embankments, small basin-like holes and smooth, level spaces. The débris of these moraines embraces rock-flour, gravel, pebbles, a few angular rock-masses, and enormous quantities of many-sized boulders,--rocks rounded by the grind of the glacial mill. Strange freight, of unknown age, these creeping ice rivers bring down. One season the frozen carcass of a mountain sheep was taken from the ice at the end of the Arapahoe Glacier. If this sheep fell into a crevasse at the upper end of the glacier, its carcass probably had been in the ice for more than a century. Human victims, too, have been strangely handled by glaciers. It appears that in 1820 Dr. Hamil and a party of climbers were struck by a snowslide on the slope of Mont Blanc. One escaped with his life, while the others were swept down into a crevasse and buried so deeply in the snow and ice that their bodies could not be recovered. Scientists said that at the rate the glacier was moving it would give up its dead after forty years. Far down the mountain forty-one years afterward, the ice gave up its victims. A writer has founded on this incident an interesting story, in which the bodies are recovered in an excellent state of preservation, and an old woman with sunken cheeks and gray hair clasps the youthful body of her lover of long ago, the guide. Where morainal débris covers thousands of acres, it is probable that valuable mineral veins were in some cases covered, prospecting prevented, and mineral wealth lost; but on the other hand, the erosion done by the glacier, often cutting down several hundred feet, has in many cases uncovered leads which otherwise probably would have been left buried beyond search. Then, too, millions of dollars of placer gold have been washed from moraines. In addition to the work of making and giving the mountains flowing lines of beauty, the glaciers added inconceivably to the richness of the earth's resources by creating vast estates of soil. It is probable that glaciers have supplied one half of the productive areas of the earth with soil; the mills of the glaciers have ground as much rock-flour--soil--for the earth as wind, frost, heat, and rain,--all the weathering forces. This flour and other coarser glacial grindings were quickly changed by the chemistry of Nature into plant-food,--the staff of life for forests and flowers. Glaciers have not only ground the soil but in many places have carried this and spread it out hundreds of miles from the place where the original raw rocks were obtained. Wind and water have done an enormous amount of work sorting out the soil in moraines and, leaving the boulders behind, this soil was scattered and sifted far and wide to feed the hungry plant-life. At last the Glacial Winter ended, and each year more snow melted and evaporated than fell. Snow-line retreated up the slopes and finally became broken, even in the heights. To-day, in the Rockies, there are only a dozen or so small glaciers, mere fragments of the once great ice cap which originally covered deeply all the higher places and slopes, and extended unbroken for hundreds of miles, pierced strangely with a few sharp peaks. The small remaining glaciers in the Rocky Mountains lie in sheltered basins or cirques in the summits and mostly above the altitude of thirteen thousand feet. These are built and supplied by the winds which carry and sweep snow to them from off thousands of acres of treeless, barren summits. The present climate of these mountains is very different from what it was ages ago. Then for a time the annual snowfall was extremely heavy. Each year the sun and the wind removed only a part of the snow which fell during the year. This icy remainder was added to the left-over of preceding years until the accumulation was of vast depth and weight. On the summit slopes this snow appears to have been from a few hundred to a few thousand feet deep. Softened from the saturation of melting and compressed from its own weight, it became a stratum of ice. This overlay the summit of the main ranges, and was pierced by only a few of the higher, sharper peaks which were sufficiently steep to be stripped of snow by snowslides and the wind. The weight of this superimposed icy stratum was immense; it was greater than the bottom layers could support. Ice is plastic--rubbery--if sufficient pressure or weight be applied. Under the enormous pressure the bottom layers started to crawl or flow from beneath like squeezed dough. This forced mass moved outward and downward in the direction of the least resistance,--down the slope. Thus a glacier is conceived and born. Numbers of these glaciers--immense serpents and tongues of ice--extended down the slopes, in places miles beyond the line of perpetual snow. Some of these were miles in length, a thousand or more feet wide, and hundreds of feet deep, and they forced and crushed their way irresistibly. It is probable they had a sustained, continuous flow for centuries. A glacier is one of the natural wonders of the world and well might every one pay a visit to one of these great earth-sculpturers. The time to visit a glacier is during late summer, when the snows of the preceding winter are most completely removed from the surface. With the snows removed, the beauty of the ice and its almost stratified make-up are revealed. The snow, too, conceals the yawning _bergschlunds_ and the dangerous, splendid crevasses. A visit to one of these ponderous, patient, and effective monsters is not without danger; concealed crevasses, or thinly covered icy caverns, or recently deposited and insecurely placed boulders on the moraines are potent dangers that require vigilance to avoid. However, the careful explorer will find one of these places far safer than the city's chaotic and crowded street. [Illustration: A CREVASSE] For the study of old glacier records few places can equal the Estes Park district in Colorado. The Arapahoe, on Arapahoe Peak, Colorado, is an excellent glacier to visit. It is characteristic and is easy of access. It is close to civilization,--within a few miles of a railroad,--is comprehensively situated, and is amid some of the grandest scenery in the Rocky Mountains. It has been mapped and studied, and its rate of movement and many other things concerning it are accurately known. It is the abstract and brief chronicle of the Ice Age, a key to all the glacier ways and secrets. In the Arapahoe Glacier one may see the cirque in which the snow is deposited or drifted by the wind; and the bergschlund-yawn--crack of separation--made by glacier ice where it moves away from the névé or snowy ice above. In walking over the ice in summer one may see or descend into the crevasses. These deep, wide cracks, miniature cañons, are caused by the ice flowing over inequalities in the surface. At the end of this glacier one may see the terminal moraine,--a raw, muddy pile of powdered, crushed, and rounded rocks. Farther along down the slope one may see the lakes that were made, the rocks that were polished, and the lateral moraine deposited by the glacier in its bigger days,--times when the Ice King almost conquered the earth. In the Rocky Mountains the soil and morainal débris were transported only a few miles, while the Wisconsin and Iowa glaciers brought thousands of acres of rich surfacing, now on the productive farms of Ohio, Illinois, and Iowa, from places hundreds of miles to the north in Canada. In the Rocky Mountains most of the forests are growing in soil or moraines that were ground and distributed by glaciers. Thus the work of the glaciers has made the earth and the mountains far more useful in addition to giving them gentler influences,--charming lakes and flowing landscape lines. It is wonderful that the mighty worker and earth-shaper, the Ice King, should have used snowflakes for edge-tools, millstones, and crushing stamps! To know the story of the Ice King--to be able to understand and restore the conditions that made lakes and headlands, moraines and fertile fields--will add mightily to the enjoyment of a visit to the Rocky Mountains, the Alps, the coasts and mountains of Norway and New England, Alaska's unrivaled glacier realm, or the extraordinary ice sculpturing in the Yosemite National Park. Edward Orton, Jr., formerly State Geologist of Ohio, who spent weeks toiling over and mapping the Mills Moraine on the east slope of Long's Peak, gave a glimpse of what one may feel and enjoy from nature investigation in his closing remarks concerning this experience. He said, "If one adds to the physical pleasures of mountaineering, the intellectual delight of looking with the seeing eye, of explaining, interpreting, and understanding the gigantic forces which have wrought these wonders; if by these studies one's vision may be extended past the sublime beauties of the present down through the dim ages of the past until each carved and bastioned peak tells a romance above words; if by communion with this greatness, one's soul is uplifted and attuned into fuller accord with the great cosmic forces of which we are the higher manifestation, then mountaineering becomes not a pastime but an inspiration." A Rainy Day at the Stream's Source A Rainy Day at the Stream's Source To spend a day in the rain at the source of a stream was an experience I had long desired, for the behavior of the waters in collecting and hurrying down slopes would doubtless show some of Nature's interesting ways. On the Rockies no spot seemed quite so promising as the watershed on which the St. Vrain made its start to the sea. This had steep and moderate slopes, rock ledges, and deep soil; and about one half of its five thousand acres was covered with primeval forest, while the remainder had been burned almost to barrenness by a fierce forest fire. Here were varied and contrasting conditions to give many moods to the waters, and all this display could easily be seen during one active day. June was the month chosen, since in the region of the St. Vrain that is the rainiest part of the year. After thoroughly exploring the ground I concluded to go down the river a few miles and make headquarters in a new sawmill. There I spent delightful days in gathering information concerning tree-growth and in making biographical studies of several veteran logs, as the saw ripped open and revealed their life-scrolls. One morning I was awakened by the pelting and thumping of large, widely scattered raindrops on the roof of the mill. Tree stories were forgotten, and I rushed outdoors. The sky was filled with the structureless gloom of storm-cloud, and the heavy, calm air suggested rain. "We'll get a wetting such as you read of, to-day!" declared the sawmill foreman, as I made haste to start for the wilds. I plunged into the woods and went eagerly up the dim, steep mountain trail which kept close company with the river St. Vrain. Any doubts concerning the strength of the storm were quickly washed away. My dry-weather clothes were swiftly soaked, but with notebook safe under my hat, I hastened to gain the "forks" as soon as possible, enjoying the general downpour and the softened noise that it made through the woods. I had often been out in rains on the Rockies, but this one was wetting the earth with less effort than any I had ever experienced. For half an hour no air stirred; then, while crossing a small irregular opening in the woods, I was caught in a storm-centre of wrangling winds and waters, and now and then their weight would almost knock me over, until, like a sapling, I bowed, streaming, in the storm. The air was full of "water-dust," and, once across the open, I made haste to hug a tree, hoping to find a breath of air that was not saturated to strangulation. Neither bird nor beast had been seen, nor did I expect to come upon any, unless by chance my movements drove one from its refuge; but while I sat on a sodden log, reveling in elemental moods and sounds, a water-ouzel came flying along. He alighted on a boulder which the on-sweeping stream at my feet seemed determined to drown or dislodge, and, making his usual courtesies, he began to sing. His melody is penetrating; but so sustained was the combined roar of the stream and the storm that there came to me only a few notes of his energetic nesting-time song. His expressive attitudes and gestures were so harmoniously united with these, however, that I could not help feeling that he was singing with all his might to the water, the woods, and me. Keeping close to the stream, I continued my climb. My ear now caught the feeble note of a robin, who was making discouraged and disconsolate efforts at song, and it seemed to issue from a throat clogged with wet cotton. Plainly the world was not beautiful to him, and the attempt at music was made to kill time or cheer himself up. The robin and the ouzel,--how I love them both, and yet how utterly unlike they are! The former usually chooses so poor a building-site, anchors its nest so carelessly, or builds so clumsily, that the precious contents are often spilled or the nest discovered by some enemy. His mental make-up is such that he is prone to predict the worst possible outcome of any new situation. The ouzel, on the other hand, is sweet and serene. He builds his nest upon a rock and tucks it where search and sharp eyes may not find it. He appears indifferent to the comings and goings of beast or man, enjoys all weathers, seems entranced with life, and may sing every day of the year. Up in the lower margin of the Engelmann spruce forest the wind now ceased and the clouds began to conserve their waters. The territory which I was about to explore is on the eastern summit slopes of the Rockies, between the altitudes of ninety-five hundred and twelve thousand feet. Most of these slopes were steep, and much of the soil had a basis of disintegrated granite. The forested and the treeless slopes had approximately equal areas, and were much alike in regard to soil, inclination, and altitude, while the verdure of both areas before the forest fire had been almost identical. The St. Vrain is formed by two branches flowing northeasterly and southeasterly, the former draining the treeless area and the latter the forested one. Below the junction, the united waters sweep away through the woods, but at it, and a short distance above, the fire had destroyed every living thing. At the forks I found many things of interest. The branch with dark waters from the barren slopes was already swollen to many times its normal volume and was thick with sediment from the fire-scarred region. The stream with white waters from the forest had risen just a trifle, and there was only a slight stain visible. These noticeable changes were produced by an hour of rain. I dipped several canfuls from the deforested drainage fork, and after each had stood half a minute the water was poured off. The average quantity of sediment remaining was one fifth of a canful, while the white water from the forested slope deposited only a thin layer on the bottom of the can. It was evident that the forest was absorbing and delaying the water clinging to its soil and sediment. In fact, both streams carried so much suggestive and alluring news concerning storm effects on the slopes above that I determined to hasten on in order to climb over and watch them while they were dashed and drenched with rain. [Illustration: AMONG THE CLOUDS Continental Divide, near Long's Peak] Planning to return and give more attention to the waters of both branches at this place, I started to inspect first the forested sides. The lower of these slopes were tilted with a twenty to twenty-five per cent grade, and covered with a primeval Engelmann spruce forest of tall, crowding trees, the age of which, as I had learned during previous visits, was only a few years less than two centuries. The forest floor was covered with a thick carpet of litter,--one which the years had woven out of the wreckage of limbs and leaves. This, though loosely, coarsely woven, has a firm feeling when trodden during dry weather. To-day however, the forest floor seemed recently upholstered. It is absorbent; hence the water had filled the interstices and given elasticity. I cleared away some of this litter and found that it had an average depth of fifteen inches. The upper third lay loosely, but below it the weave was more compact and much finer than that on or near the surface. I judged that two inches of rain had fallen and had soaked to an average depth of eight inches. It was interesting to watch the water ooze from the broken walls of this litter, or humus, on the upper sides of the holes which I dug down into it. One of these was close to a bare, tilted slope of granite. As I stood watching the water slowly dripping from the broken humus and rapidly racing down the rocks, the thought came to me that, with the same difference in speed, the run-off from the deforested land might be breaking through the levees at New Orleans before the water from these woods escaped and got down as far as the sawmill. The forest might well proclaim: "As long as I stand, my countless roots shall clutch and clasp the soil like eagles' claws and hold it on these slopes. I shall add to this soil by annually creating more. I shall heave it with my growing roots, loosen and cover it with litter rugs, and maintain a porous, sievelike surface that will catch the rain and so delay and distribute these waters that at the foot of my slope perennial springs will ever flow quietly toward the sea. Destroy me, and on stormy days the waters may wash away the unanchored soil as they run unresisted down the slopes, to form a black, destructive flood in the home-dotted valley below." The summit of the forested slope was comparatively smooth where I gained it, and contained a few small, ragged-edged, grassy spaces among its spruces and firs. The wind was blowing and the low clouds pressed, hurried along the ground, whirled through the grassy places, and were driven and dragged swiftly among the trees. I was in the lower margin of cloud, and it was like a wet, gray night. Nothing could be seen clearly, even at a few feet, and every breath I took was like swallowing a saturated sponge. These conditions did not last long, for a wind-surge completely rent the clouds and gave me a glimpse of the blue, sun-filled sky. I hurried along the ascending trend of the ridge, hoping to get above the clouds, but they kept rising, and after I had traveled half a mile or more I gave it up. Presently I was impressed with the height of an exceptionally tall spruce that stood in the centre of a group of its companions. At once I decided to climb it and have a look over the country and cloud from its swaying top. When half way up, the swift manner in which the tree was tracing seismographic lines through the air awakened my interest in the trunk that was holding me. Was it sound or not? At the foot appearances gave it good standing. The exercising action of ordinary winds probably toughens the wood fibres of young trees, but this one was no longer young, and the wind was high. I held an ear against the trunk and heard a humming whisper which told only of soundness. A blow with broad side of my belt axe told me that it rang true and would stand the storm and myself. The sound brought a spectator from a spruce with broken top that stood almost within touching distance of me. In this tree was a squirrel home, and my axe had brought the owner from his hole. What an angry, comic midget he was, this Frémont squirrel! With fierce whiskers and a rattling, choppy, jerky chatter, he came out on a dead limb that pointed toward me, and made a rush as though to annihilate me or to cause me to take hurried flight; but as I held on he found himself more "up in the air" than I was. He stopped short, shut off his chatter, and held himself at close range facing me, a picture of furious study. This scene occurred in a brief period that was undisturbed by either wind or rain. We had a good look at each other. He was every inch alive, but for a second or two both his place and expression were fixed. He sat with eyes full of telling wonder and with face that showed intense curiosity. A dash of wind and rain ended our interview, for after his explosive introduction neither of us had uttered a sound. He fled into his hole, and from this a moment later thrust forth his head; but presently he subsided and withdrew. As I began to climb again, I heard muffled expletives from within his tree that sounded plainly like "Fool, fool, fool!" The wind had tried hard to dislodge me, but, seated on the small limbs and astride the slender top, I held on. The tree shook and danced; splendidly we charged, circled, looped, and angled; such wild, exhilarating joy I have not elsewhere experienced. At all times I could feel in the trunk a subdued quiver or vibration, and I half believe that a tree's greatest joys are the dances it takes with the winds. Conditions changed while I rocked there; the clouds rose, the wind calmed, and the rain ceased to fall. Thunder occasionally rumbled, but I was completely unprepared for the blinding flash and explosive crash of the bolt that came. The violent concussion, the wave of air which spread from it like an enormous, invisible breaker, almost knocked me over. A tall fir that stood within fifty feet of me was struck, the top whirled off, and the trunk split in rails to the ground. I quickly went back to earth, for I was eager to see the full effect of the lightning's stroke on that tall, slender evergreen cone. With one wild, mighty stroke, in a second or less, the century-old tree tower was wrecked. Leaving this centenarian, I climbed up the incline a few hundred feet higher and started out through the woods to the deforested side. Though it was the last week in June, it was not long before I was hampered with snow. Ragged patches, about six feet deep, covered more than half of the forest floor. This was melting rapidly and was "rotten" from the rain, so that I quickly gave up the difficult task of fording it and made an abrupt descent until below the snow-line, where I again headed for the fire-cleared slopes. As I was leaving the wood, the storm seemed to begin all over again. The rain at first fell steadily, but soon slackened, and the lower cloud-margins began to drift through the woods. Just before reaching the barrens I paused to breathe in a place where the trees were well spaced, and found myself facing a large one with deeply furrowed bark and limbs plentifully covered with short, fat, blunt needles. I was at first puzzled to know what kind it was, but at last I recognized it as a Douglas fir or "Oregon pine." I had never before seen this species at so great an altitude,--approximately ten thousand feet. It was a long distance from home, but it stood so contentedly in the quiet rain that I half expected to hear it remark, "The traditions of my family are mostly associated with gray, growing days of this kind." Out on the barren slopes the few widely scattered, fire-killed, fire-preserved trees with broken arms stood partly concealed and lonely in the mists. After zigzagging for a time over the ruins, I concluded to go at once to the uppermost side and thence down to the forks. But the rain was again falling, and the clouds were so low and heavy that the standing skeleton trees could not be seen unless one was within touching distance. There was no wind or lightning, only a warm, steady rain. It was, in fact, so comfortable that I sat down to enjoy it until a slackening should enable me better to see the things I most wanted to observe. There was no snow about, and three weeks before at the same place I had found only one small drift which was shielded and half-covered with shelving rock. The dry Western air is insatiable and absorbs enormous quantities of water, and, as the Indians say, "eats snow." The snowless area about me was on a similar slope and at about the same altitude as the snow-filled woods, so the forest is evidently an effective check upon the ravenous winds. Now the rain almost ceased, and I began to descend. The upper gentle slopes were completely covered with a filmy sheet of clear water which separated into tattered torrents and took on color. These united and grew in size as they progressed from the top, and each was separated from its companions by ridges that widened and gulches that deepened as down the sides they went. The waters carried most of the eroded material away, but here and there, where they crossed a comparatively level stretch, small deposits of gravel were made or sandbars and deltas formed. Occasionally I saw miniature landslides, and, hoping for a larger one to move, I hurried downward. Knowing that the soil is often deep at the foot of crags on account of contributions from above, together with the protection from erosion which the cliffs gave, I endeavored to find such a place. While searching, I had occasion to jump from a lower ledge on a cliff to the deposit below. The distance to the slope and its real pitch were minimized by the mists. After shooting through the air for at least thrice the supposed distance to the slope, I struck heavily and loosened several rods of a landslide. I tumbled off the back of it, but not before its rock points had made some impressions. I sought safety and a place of lookout on a crag, and picked bits of granite gravel from my anatomy. Presently I heard a muffled creaking, and looked up to see a gigantic landslide starting. At first it moved slowly, seemed to hesitate, then slid faster, with its stone-filled front edge here and there doubling and rolling under; finally the entire mass broke into yawning, ragged fissures as it shot forward and plunged over a cliff. Waiting until most of the straggling, detached riffraff had followed, I hastened to examine the place just evacuated. In getting down I disturbed a ground-hog from his rock point, and found that he was in the same attitude and position I had seen him holding just before the slide started, so that the exhibition had merely caused him to move his eyes a little. In the cracks and crevices of the glaciated rock-slope from which this mass had slid, there were broken, half-decayed roots and numerous marks which showed where other roots had held. It seems probable that if the grove which sustained them had not been destroyed by fire, they in turn would have anchored and held securely the portion of land which had just slipped away. I went over the lower slopes of the burned area and had a look at numerous new-made gullies, and near the forks I measured a large one. It was more than a hundred feet long, two to four feet wide, and, over the greater part of its length, more than four feet deep. It was eroded by the late downpour, and its misplaced material, after being deposited by the waters, would of itself almost call for an increase of the river and harbor appropriations. Late in the afternoon, with the storm breaking, I stopped and watched the largest torrent from the devastated region pour over a cliff. This waterfall more nearly represented a liquefied landslide, for it was burdened with sediment and spoils. As it rushed wildly over, it carried enormous quantities of dirt, gravel, and other earthy wreckage, and some of the stones were as large as a man's hat. Now and then there was a slackening, but these momentary subsidences were followed by explosive outpourings with which mingled large pieces of charred or half-decayed wood, sometimes closely pursued by a small boulder or some rock-fragments. Surely, these deforested slopes were heavy contributors to the millions of tons of undesirable matter that annually went in to fill the channel and vex the current of the Mississippi! These demonstrations brought to mind a remark of an army engineer to the effect that the "Western forest fires had resulted in filling the Missouri River channel full of dissolved Rocky Mountains." The action of the water on this single burned area suggested that ten thousand other fireswept heights must be rapidly diminishing. At all events, it is evident that, unless this erosion is stopped, boats before long will hardly find room to enter the Mississippi. It now became easier to account for the mud-filled channel of the great river, and also for the innumerable bars that display their broad backs above its shallow, sluggish water. Every smooth or fluted fill in this great stream tells of a ragged gulch or a roughened, soilless place somewhere on a slope at one of its sources. What a mingling of matter makes up the mud of the Mississippi,--a soil mixture from twenty States, the blended richness of ten thousand slopes! Coming up the "Father of Waters," and noting its obstructions of sediment and sand, its embarrassment of misplaced material, its dumps and deposits of soil,--monumental ruins of wasted resources,--one may say, "Here lies the lineal descendant of Pike's Peak; here the greater part of an Ohio hill"; or, "A flood took this from a terraced cotton-field, and this from a farm in sunny Tennessee." A mud flat itself might remark, "The thoughtless lumberman who caused my downfall is now in Congress urging river improvement"; and the shallow waters at the big bend could add, "Our once deep channel was filled with soil from a fire-scourged mountain. The minister whose vacation fire caused this ruin is now a militant missionary among the heathen of Cherry Blossom land." Wondering if the ouzel's boulder had been rolled away, or if the deep hole above it, where the mill men caught trout, had been filled with wash, I decided to go at once and see, and then return for a final look about the forks. Yes, the boulder was missing, apparently buried, for the hole was earth-filled and the trout gone. So it was evident that forests were helpful even to the fish in the streams. I took off my hat to the trees and started back to the junction. On the way I resolved to tell the men in the mill that a tree is the most useful thing that grows, and that floods may be checked by forests. The storm was over and the clouds were retreating. On a fallen log that lay across the main stream I lingered and watched the dark and white waters mingle. The white stream was slowly rising, while the dark one was rapidly falling. In a few days the one from the barren slopes would be hardly alive, while the other from among the trees would be singing a song full of strength as it swept on toward the sea. [Illustration: FULL STREAMS] The forest-born stream is the useful and beautiful one. It has a steady flow of clear water, and fishermen cheerfully come to its green, mossy banks. The buildings along its course are safe from floods, and are steadily served with the power of its reliable flow; its channel is free from mud and full of water; it allows the busy boats of commerce freely to come and go; in countless ways it serves the activities of man. It never causes damage, and always enriches and gladdens the valley through which it flows on to the sea. A song roused me from my revery. The sky was almost clear, and the long, ragged shadows of the nearest peaks streamed far toward the east. Not a breath of air stirred. Far away a hermit thrush was singing, while a thousand spruces stood and listened. In the midst of this a solitaire on the top of a pine tree burst out in marvelous melody. The Fate of a Tree Seed The Fate of a Tree Seed The ripened seeds of trees are sent forth with many strange devices and at random for the unoccupied and fertile places of the earth. There are six hundred kinds of trees in North America, and each of these equips its seeds in a peculiar way, that they may take advantage of wind, gravity, water, birds, or beasts to transport them on their home-seeking journey. The whole seed-sowing story is a fascinating one. Blindly, often thick as snow, the seeds go forth to seek their fortune,--to find a rooting-place. All are in danger, many are limited as to time, and the majority are restricted to a single effort. A few, however, have a complex and novel equipment and with this make a long, romantic, and sometimes an adventurous journey, colonizing at last some strange land far from the place of their birth. Commonly, however, this journey is brief, and usually after one short fall or flight the seed comes to rest where it will sprout or perish. Generally it dies. One autumn afternoon in southeastern Missouri, seated upon some driftwood on the shallow margin of the Mississippi, I discovered a primitive craft that was carrying a colony of adventurous tree seeds down the mighty river. As I watched and listened, the nuts pattered upon the fallen leaves and the Father of Waters purled and whispered as he slipped his broad yellow-gray current almost silently to the sea. Here and there a few broad-backed sandbars showed themselves above the surface, as though preparing to rise up and inquire what had become of the water. This primitive craft was a log that drifted low and heavy, end on with the current. It was going somewhere with a small cargo of tree seeds. Upon a broken upraised limb of the log sat a kingfisher. As it drifted with the current, breezes upon the wooded hill-tops decorated the autumn air with deliberately falling leaves and floating winged seeds. The floating log pointed straight for a sand-bar upon which other logs and snags were stranded. I determined, when it should come aground, to see the character of the cargo that it carried. Now and then, as I sat there, the heavy round nuts like merry boys came bounding and rattling down the hillside, which rose from the water's edge. Occasionally as a nut dropped from the tree-top he struck a limb spring board and from this made a long leap outward for a roll down the hillside. These nuts were walnut and hickory; and like most heavy nuts they traveled by rolling, floating, and squirrel carriage. One nut dropped upon a low limb, glanced far outward, and landed upon a log, from which it bounced outward and went bouncing down the hillside _aplunk_ into the river. Slowly it rolled this way and that in the almost currentless water. At last it made up its mind, and, with the almost invisible swells, commenced to float slowly toward the floating log out in the river. By and by the current caught it, carried it toward and round the sand-bar, to float away with the onsweep toward the sea. This nut may have been carried a few miles or a few hundred before it went ashore on the bank of the river or landed upon some romantic island to sprout and grow. Seeds often are carried by rivers and then successfully planted, after many stops and advances, far from the parent tree. The log hesitated as it approached the sand-bar, as if cautiously smelling with its big, rooty nose; but at last it swung round broadside, and sleepily allowed the current to put it to bed upon the sand. As a tree, this log had lived on the banks of the Mississippi or one of its tributaries, in Minnesota. While standing it had for a time served as a woodpecker home. In one of the larger excavations made by these birds, I found some white pine cones and other seeds from the north that had been stored by bird or squirrel. A long voyage these seeds had taken; they may have continued the journey, landing at last to grow in sunny Tennessee; or they may have sunk to the bottom of the river or even have perished in the salt waters of the Gulf. In climbing up the steep hillside above the river, I found many nests of hickory and walnuts against the upper side of fallen logs. Upon the level hill-top the ground beneath the tree was thickly covered with fallen nuts; only a few of these had got a tree's length away from the parent. Occasionally, however, a wind-gust used a long, slender limb as a sling, and flung the attached nuts afar. The squirrels were active, laying up a hoard of nuts for winter. Many a walnut, hickory, or butternut tree at some distant place may have grown from an uneaten or forgotten nut which the squirrels carried away. The winged seeds are the ones that are most widely scattered. These are grown by many kinds of trees. From May until midwinter trees of this kind are giving their little atoms of life to the great seed-sower, the wind. Most winged seeds have one wing for each seed and commonly each makes but one flight. Generally the lighter the seed and the higher the wind, the farther the seed will fly or be blown. In May the silver maple starts the flight of winged seeds. This tree has a seed about the size of a peanut, provided with a one-sided wing as large as one's thumb. It sails away from the tree, settling rapidly toward the earth with heavy end downward, whirling round and round as it falls. Red maple seeds ripen in June, but not until autumn does the hard maple send its winged ones forth from amid the painted leaves. The seed of an ash tree is like a dart. In the different ashes these are of different lengths, but all have two-edged wings which in calm weather dart the seed to the snowy earth; but in a lively wind they are tumbled and whirled about while being unceremoniously carried afar; this they do not mind, for at the first lull they right themselves and drop in good form to the earth. Cottonwoods and willows send forth their seeds inclosed in a dainty puff or ball of silky cotton that is so light that the wind often carries it long distances. With the willow this device is so airy and dainty that it is easily entangled on twigs or grass and may never reach the earth. The willow seed, too, is so feeble that it will often perish inside twenty-four hours if it does not find a most favorable germinating-place. This makes but little difference to the willows, for they do not depend upon seeds for extension but upon the breaking off of roots or twigs by various agencies; these pieces of roots or twigs often are carried miles by streams, and take root perhaps at the first place where they go around. The seeds of the sycamore are in balls attached to the limbs by a slender twiglet. The winter winds beat and thump these balls against the limbs, thus causing the seeds to loosen and to drop a few at a time to the earth. Each seed is a light little pencil which at one end is equipped with a whorl of hairs,--a parachute which delays its fall and thus enables the wind to carry it away from the parent tree. The conifers--the pines, firs, and spruces--have ingeniously devised and developed their winged seeds for wind distribution. Most of these seeds are light, and each is attached to a dainty feather or wing which is used on its commencement day. These wings are as handsome as insects' wings, dainty enough for fairies; they are purple, plain brown, and spotted, and so balanced that they revolve or whirl, glinting in the autumn sun as they go on their adventurous wind-blown flight to the earth. A high wind may carry them miles. With the pines and spruces the cones open one or a few scales at a time, so that the seeds from each cone are distributed through many days. The firs, however, carry cones that when ripe often collapse in the wind. The entire filling of seeds are thus dropped at once and fill the air with flocks of merry, diving, glinting wings. A heavy seed-crop in a coniferous forest gives a touch of poetry to the viewless air. The lodge-pole pine is one of the most patient and philosophical seed-sowers in the forest. It is a prolific seed-producer and has a remarkable hoarding characteristic,--that of keeping its cones closed and holding on to them for years. Commonly a forest fire kills trees without consuming them. With the lodge-pole the fire frequently burns off the needles, leaving the tree standing, but it melts the sealing-wax on the cones. Thus the fire releases these seeds and they fall upon a freshly fire-cleaned soil,--a condition for them most favorable. Although the cherry is without wings or a flying-machine of its own, it is rich enough to employ the rarest transportation in the world. With attractively colored and luscious pulp it hires many beautiful birds to carry it to new scenes. On the wings of the mockingbird and the hermit thrush,--what a happy and romantic way in which to seek the promised land! Many kinds of pulp-covered seeds that are attractive and delicious when ripe are unpleasant to the taste while green; this protective measure guards them against being sown before they are ready or ripe. The instant persimmons are ripe, the trees are full of opossums which disseminate the ready-to-grow seeds; but Mr. 'Possum avoids the green and puckery persimmons! The big tree is one of the most fruitful of seed-bearers. In a single year one of these may produce some millions of fertile seeds. These mature in comparatively small cones and, each seed being light as air, they are sometimes carried by high winds across ridges and ravines before being dropped to the earth. The honey locust uses a peculiar device to secure wind assistance in pushing afar its long, purplish pods with their heavy beanlike seeds. This pod is not only flattened but crooked and slightly twisted. Dropping from the tree in midwinter, it often lands upon crusted snow. Here on windy days it becomes a kind of crude ice-boat and goes skimming along before the wind; with its flattened, twisted surface it ever presents a boosting-surface to the breeze. The ironwood tree launches its seeds each seated in the prow of a tiny boat, which floats or careers away upon the invisible ocean of air, sinking, after a rudderless voyage, to the earth. The attachment to some seeds is bladder- or balloon-like; tied helplessly to this, the seed is cast forth briefly to wander with the wandering winds. The linden, or basswood, tree uses a monoplane for buoyancy. The basswood attaches or suspends a number of seeds by slender threads to the centre of a leaf; in autumn when this falls it resists gravity for a time and ofttimes with its clinging cargo alights far from the tree which sent it forth. Burr- or hook-covered seeds may become attached to the backs of animals and thus be transported afar. One day in Colorado I disturbed a black bear in some willows more than a mile from the woods; as he ran over a grassy ridge three or four pine cones that had been hooked and entangled in his hair went spinning off. Seeds sometimes are internationally distributed by becoming attached by some sticky substance--pitch or dried mud--to the legs or feathers of birds. Cottonwood seed often has a long ride, though generally a fruitless one, by alighting in the hair of some animal. Sometimes a cone or nut becomes wedged between the hoofs of an animal and is carried about for days; taken miles before it is dropped, it grows a lone tree far from the nearest grove. Though the witch-hazel is no longer invested with eerie charms, it still has its own peculiar way of doing things. It chooses to bloom alone in the autumn, just at the time its seeds are ripe and scattering. Assisted by the frost and the sun, it scatters its shotlike seeds with a series of snappy little explosions which fling them twelve to twenty feet from the capsule in which they ripen. The mangrove trees of Florida germinate their seeds upon the tree and then drop little plants off into the water; here winds and currents may move them hither and yon as they blindly explore for a rooting-place. The cocoanut tree covers its nuts with a kind of "excelsior" which prevents their breaking upon the rocks. This also facilitates the floating and transportation of the nut in the sea. When the breakers have flung it upon rocks or broken reefs, here its fibrous covering helps it cling until the young roots grow and anchor it securely. Thus endlessly during all the seasons of the year the trees are sowing their ripened seed and sending them forth, variously equipped, blindly to seek a place in which they may live, perpetuate the species, and extend the forest. It is well that nature sows seeds like a spendthrift. So many are the chances against the seed, so numerous are the destroying agencies, so few are the places in reach that are unoccupied, that perhaps not more than one seed in a million ever germinates, and hardly one tree in a thousand that starts to grow ever attains maturity. Through sheer force of numbers and continuous seed-scattering, the necessarily random methods of nature produce results; and where opportunity opens, trees promptly extend their holdings or reclaim a territory from which they have been driven. Many times I have wandered through the coniferous forests in the mountains when the seeds were ripe and fluttering thick as snowflakes to the earth. Visiting ridges, slopes, and cañons, I have watched the pines, firs, and spruces closing a year's busy, invisible activity by merrily strewing the air and the earth with their fruits,--seeding for the centuries to come. One breathless autumn day I looked up into the blue sky from the bottom of a cañon. The golden air was as thickly filled with winged seeds as a perfect night with stars. A light local air-current made a milky way across this sky. Myriads of becalmed and suspended seeds were fixed stars. Some of the seeds, each with a filmy wing, hurried through elliptical orbits like comets as they settled to the earth; while innumerable others, as they came rotating down, were revolving through planetary orbits in this seed-sown field of space. Now and then a number of cones on a fir tree collapsed and precipitated into space a meteoric shower of slow-descending seeds and a hurried zigzag fall of heavier scales. Occasionally on a ridge-top a few of the lighter seeds would come floating upward through an air-chimney as though carried in an invisible smoke-column. One windy day I crossed the mountains when a gale was driving millions of low-flying seeds before it. Away they swept down the slope, to whirl widely and flutter over the gulch where the wind-current dashed against the uprising mountain beyond. Most of the seeds were flung to the earth along the way or dropped in the bottom of the gulch; a few, however, were carried by the swift uprushing current up and across the mountain and at last scattered on the opposite side. When the last seed of the year has fallen, how thickly the woodland regions are sown broadcast with seeds! Only a few of these will have landed in a hospitable place. The overwhelmingly majority fell in the water to drown or on rock ledges or other places to starve or wither. The few fortunate enough to find unoccupied and fertile places will still have to reckon with devouring insects and animals. How different may be the environment of two seedlings sprung from seeds grown on the selfsame tree! On their commencement day two little atoms of life may be separated by the wind: one finds shelter and fertile earth; the other roots in a barely livable place on the cold, stormbeaten heights of timber-line. Both use their inherent energy and effort to the utmost. One becomes a forest monarch; the other a dwarf, uncouth and ugly. In a Mountain Blizzard In a Mountain Blizzard At the close of one of our winter trips, my collie Scotch and I started across the continental divide of the Rocky Mountains in face of weather conditions that indicated a snowstorm or a blizzard before we could gain the other side. We had eaten the last of our food twenty-four hours before and could no longer wait for fair weather. So off we started to scale the snowy steeps of the cold, gray heights a thousand feet above. The mountains already were deeply snow-covered and it would have been a hard trip even without the discomforts and dangers of a storm. I was on snowshoes and for a week we had been camping and tramping through the snowy forests and glacier meadows at the source of Grand River, two miles above the sea. The primeval Rocky Mountain forests are just as near to Nature's heart in winter as in summer. I had found so much to study and enjoy that the long distance from a food-supply, even when the last mouthful was eaten, had not aroused me to the seriousness of the situation. Scotch had not complained, and appeared to have the keenest collie interest in the tracks and trails, the scenes and silences away from the haunts of man. The snow lay seven feet deep, but by keeping in my snowshoe tracks Scotch easily followed me about. Our last camp was in the depths of an alpine forest at an altitude of ten thousand feet. Here, though zero weather prevailed, we were easily comfortable beside a fire under the protection of an overhanging cliff. After a walk through woods the sun came blazing in our faces past the snow-piled crags on Long's Peak, and threw slender blue shadows of the spiry spruces far out in a white glacier meadow to meet us. Rëentering the tall but open woods, we saw, down the long aisles and limb-arched avenues, a forest of tree columns, entangled in sunlight and shadow, standing on a snowy marble floor. [Illustration: ON GRAND RIVER, MIDDLE PARK, IN WINTER] We were on the Pacific slope, and our plan was to cross the summit by the shortest way between timber-line and timber-line on the Atlantic side. This meant ascending a thousand feet, descending an equal distance, traveling five miles amid bleak, rugged environment. Along the treeless, gradual ascent we started, realizing that the last steep icy climb would be dangerous and defiant. Most of the snow had slid from the steeper places, and much of the remainder had blown away. Over the unsheltered whole the wind was howling. For a time the sun shone dimly through the wind-driven snow-dust that rolled from the top of the range, but it disappeared early behind wild, windswept clouds. After gaining a thousand feet of altitude through the friendly forest, we climbed out and up above the trees on a steep slope at timber-line. This place, the farthest up for trees, was a picturesque, desolate place. The dwarfed, gnarled, storm-shaped trees amid enormous snow-drifts told of endless, and at times deadly, struggles of the trees with the elements. Most of the trees were buried, but here and there a leaning or a storm-distorted one bent bravely above the snows. At last we were safely on a ridge and started merrily off, hoping to cover speedily the three miles of comparatively level plateau. How the wind did blow! Up more than eleven thousand feet above the sea, with not a tree to steady or break, it had a royal sweep. The wind appeared to be putting forth its wildest efforts to blow us off the ridge. There being a broad way, I kept well from the edges. The wind came with a dash and heavy rush, first from one quarter, then from another. I was watchful and faced each rush firmly braced. Generally, this preparedness saved me; but several times the wind apparently expanded or exploded beneath me, and, with an upward toss, I was flung among the icy rocks and crusted snows. Finally I took to dropping and lying flat whenever a violent gust came ripping among the crags. There was an arctic barrenness to this alpine ridge,--not a house within miles, no trail, and here no tree could live to soften the sternness of the landscape or to cheer the traveler. The way was amid snowy piles, icy spaces, and windswept crags. The wind slackened and snow began to fall just as we were leaving the smooth plateau for the broken part of the divide. The next mile of way was badly cut to pieces with deep gorges from both sides of the ridge. The inner ends of several of these broke through the centre of the ridge and extended beyond the ends of the gorges from the opposite side. This made the course a series of sharp, short zigzags. We went forward in the flying snow. I could scarcely see, but felt that I could keep the way on the broken ridge between the numerous rents and cañons. On snowy, icy ledges the wind took reckless liberties. I wanted to stop but dared not, for the cold was intense enough to freeze one in a few minutes. Fearing that a snow-whirl might separate us, I fastened one end of my light, strong rope to Scotch's collar and the other end to my belt. This proved to be fortunate for both, for while we were crossing an icy, though moderate, slope, a gust of wind swept me off my feet and started us sliding. It was not steep, but was so slippery I could not stop, nor see where the slope ended, and I grabbed in vain at the few icy projections. Scotch also lost his footing and was sliding and rolling about, and the wind was hurrying us along, when I threw myself flat and dug at the ice with fingers and toes. In the midst of my unsuccessful efforts we were brought to a sudden stop by the rope between us catching over a small rock-point that was thrust up through the ice. Around this in every direction was smooth, sloping ice; this, with the high wind, made me wonder for a moment how we were to get safely off the slope. The belt axe proved the means, for with it I reached out as far as I could and chopped a hole in the ice, while with the other hand I clung to the rock-point. Then, returning the axe to my belt, I caught hold in the chopped place and pulled myself forward, repeating this until on safe footing. In oncoming darkness and whirling snow I had safely rounded the ends of two gorges and was hurrying forward over a comparatively level stretch, with the wind at my back boosting along. Scotch was running by my side and evidently was trusting me to guard against all dangers. This I tried to do. Suddenly, however, there came a fierce dash of wind and whirl of snow that hid everything. Instantly I flung myself flat, trying to stop quickly. Just as I did this I caught the strange, weird sound made by high wind as it sweeps across a cañon, and at once realized that we were close to a storm-hidden gorge. I stopped against a rock, while Scotch slid in and was hauled back with the rope. The gorge had been encountered between two out-thrusting side gorges, and between these in the darkness I had a cold time feeling my way out. At last I came to a cairn of stones which I recognized. The way had been missed by only a few yards, but this miss had been nearly fatal. Not daring to hurry in the darkness in order to get warm, I was becoming colder every moment. I still had a stiff climb between me and the summit, with timber-line three rough miles beyond. To attempt to make it would probably result in freezing or tumbling into a gorge. At last I realized that I must stop and spend the night in a snow-drift. Quickly kicking and trampling a trench in a loose drift, I placed my elk-skin sleeping-bag therein, thrust Scotch into the bag, and then squeezed into it myself. I was almost congealed with cold. My first thought after warming up was to wonder why I had not earlier remembered the bag. Two in a bag would guarantee warmth, and with warmth a snow-drift on the crest of the continent would not be a bad place in which to lodge for the night. The sounds of wind and snow beating upon the bag grew fainter and fainter as we were drifted and piled over with the latter. At the same time our temperature rose, and before long it was necessary to open the flap of the bag slightly for ventilation. At last the sounds of the storm could barely be heard. Was the storm quieting down, or was its roar muffled and lost in the deepening cover of snow, was the unimportant question occupying my thoughts when I fell asleep. Scotch awakened me in trying to get out of the bag. It was morning. Out we crawled, and, standing with only my head above the drift, I found the air still and saw a snowy mountain world all serene in the morning sun. I hastily adjusted sleeping-bag and snowshoes, and we set off for the final climb to the summit. The final one hundred feet or so rose steep, jagged, and ice-covered before me. There was nothing to lay hold of; every point of vantage was plated and coated with non-prehensible ice. There appeared only one way to surmount this icy barrier and that was to chop toe and hand holes from the bottom to the top of this icy wall, which in places was close to vertical. Such a climb would not be especially difficult or dangerous for me, but could Scotch do it? He could hardly know how to place his feet in the holes or on the steps properly; nor could he realize that a slip or a misstep would mean a slide and a roll to death. Leaving sleeping-bag and snowshoes with Scotch, I grasped my axe and chopped my way to the top and then went down and carried bag and snowshoes up. Returning for Scotch, I started him climbing just ahead of me, so that I could boost and encourage him. We had gained only a few feet when it became plain that sooner or later he would slip and bring disaster to both. We stopped and descended to the bottom for a new start. Though the wind was again blowing a gale, I determined to carry him. His weight was forty pounds, and he would make a top-heavy load and give the wind a good chance to upset my balance and tip me off the wall. But, as there appeared no other way, I threw him over my shoulder and started up. Many times Scotch and I had been in ticklish places together, and more than once I had pulled him up rocky cliffs on which he could not find footing. Several times I had carried him over gulches on fallen logs that were too slippery for him. He was so trusting and so trained that he relaxed and never moved while in my arms or on my shoulder. [Illustration: SNOW AND SHADOW] Arriving at the place least steep, I stopped to transfer Scotch from one shoulder to the other. The wind was at its worst; its direction frequently changed and it alternately calmed and then came on like an explosion. For several seconds it had been roaring down the slope; bracing myself to withstand its force from this direction, I was about moving Scotch, when it suddenly shifted to one side and came with the force of a breaker. It threw me off my balance and tumbled me heavily against the icy slope. Though my head struck solidly, Scotch came down beneath me and took most of the shock. Instantly we glanced off and began to slide swiftly. Fortunately I managed to get two fingers into one of the chopped holes and held fast. I clung to Scotch with one arm; we came to a stop, both saved. Scotch gave a yelp of pain when he fell beneath me, but he did not move. Had he made a jump or attempted to help himself, it is likely that both of us would have gone to the bottom of the slope. Gripping Scotch with one hand and clinging to the icy hold with the other, I shuffled about until I got my feet into two holes in the icy wall. Standing in these and leaning against the ice, with the wind butting and dashing, I attempted the ticklish task of lifting Scotch again to my shoulder--and succeeded. A minute later we paused to breathe on the summit's icy ridge, between two oceans and amid seas of snowy peaks. A Midget in Fur A Midget in Fur The Frémont squirrel is the most audacious and wide-awake of wild folk among whom I have lived. He appears to be ever up and doing, is intensely in earnest at all times and strongly inclined to take a serious view of things. Both the looks and manners of Mr. Frémont, _Sciurus fremonti_, proclaim for him a close relationship with the Douglas squirrel of California and the Pacific coast, the squirrel immortalized by John Muir. His most popular name is "Pine Squirrel," and he is found through the pine and spruce forests of the Rocky Mountains and its spur ranges, between the foothills and timber-line; a vertical, or altitudinal, range of more than a mile. He assumes and asserts ownership of the region occupied. If you invade his forests he will see you first and watch you closely. Often he does this with simple curiosity, but more often he is irritated by your presence and issues a chattering protest while you are still at long range. If you continue to approach after this proclamation, he may come down on a low limb near by and give you as torrential and as abusive a "cussing" as trespasser ever received from irate owner. Yet he is most ridiculously small to do all that he threatens to do. Of course he brags and bluffs, but these become admirable qualities in this little fellow who will ably, desperately defend his domain against heavy odds of size or numbers. Among the squirrels of the world he is one of the smallest. He is clad in gray and his coat perceptibly darkens in winter. His plumy tail, with a fringe of white hairs, is as airy as thistledown. He always appears clean and well-groomed. Though in many ways a grizzly in miniature and apparently as untamable as a tiger, the Frémont quickly responds to kind advances. Near my cabin a number became so tame that they took peanuts from my hand, sometimes even following me to the cabin door for this purpose. These squirrels occasionally eat mushrooms, berries, and the inner bark of pine twigs, but they depend almost entirely upon conifer nuts or seeds, the greater part of these coming from the cones of pines and spruces. They start harvesting the cones in early autumn, so as to harvest all needed food for winter before the dry, ripened cones open and empty their tiny seeds. Deftly they dart through the tree-tops almost as swiftly as a hummingbird and as utterly indifferent to the dangers of falling. With polished blades of ivory they clip off the clinging, fruited cones. Happy, hopeful, harvest-home sounds the cones make as they drop and bounce on the dry floor of the autumn woods. Often a pair work together, one reaping the cones with his ivory cutters and the other carrying them home, each being a sheaf of grain of Nature's bundling. When harvesting alone, Mr. Frémont is often annoyed by the chipmunks. These little rascals will persist in stealing the fallen cones, despite glaring eyes, irate looks, and deadly threats from the angry harvester above. When finally he comes tearing down to carry his terrible ultimatums into effect, the frightened chipmunks make haste to be off, but usually some one is overtaken and knocked sprawling with an accompanying rapid fire of denunciation. One day I watched a single harvester who was busily, happily working. He cut off a number of cones before descending to gather them. These scattered widely like children playing hide-and-seek. One hid behind a log; another bounced into some brush and stuck two feet above the ground, while two others scampered far from the tree. The squirrel went to each in turn without the least hesitation or search and as though he had been to each spot a dozen times before. [Illustration: THE HOME OF THE FRÉMONT SQUIRREL On the Little Cimarron] A squirrel often displays oddities both in the place selected for storing the cones and the manner of their arrangement. Usually the cones are wisely hoarded both for curing and for preservation, by being stored a few in a place. This may be beneath a living tree or in an open space, placed one layer deep in the loose forest litter scarcely below the general level of the surface. They are also stowed both in and upon old logs and stumps. Sometimes they are placed in little nests with a half-dozen or so cones each; often there are a dozen of these in a square yard. This scattering of the sap-filled cones, together with the bringing of each into contact with dry foreign substances, secures ventilation and assists the sappy cones to dry and cure; if closely piled, many of these moist cones would be lost through mould and decay. The numbers of cones hoarded for winter by each squirrel varies with different winters and also with individuals. I have many times counted upwards of two hundred per squirrel. During years of scanty cone-crop the squirrels claim the entire crop. The outcry raised against the squirrel for preventing far extension, by consuming all the seeds, is I think in the same class as the cry against the woodpecker; it appears a cry raised by those who see only the harm without the accompanying good. The fact is that many of the cones are never eaten; more are stored than are wanted; some are forgotten, while others are left by the death of the squirrel. Thus many are stored and left uneaten in places where they are likely to germinate and produce trees. John Muir too believes that the Douglas and Frémont squirrels are beneficial to forest-extension. Commonly the cones are stored in the same place year after year. In dining, also, the squirrel uses a log, limb, or stump year after year. Thus bushels of the slowly decaying scales and cobs accumulate in one place. It is not uncommon for these accumulations to cover a square rod to the depth of two feet. I know of a few instances in which squirrels stowed cones in the edge of a brook beneath the water. One of these places being near my cabin, I kept track of it until the cones were used, which was in the spring. In early autumn the cones were frozen in, and there they remained, unvisited I think, until the break-up of the ice in April. Then a squirrel appeared, to drag them from their cold storage. He carried each by to his regular dining-place. Clasping the cone vertically, base up, in his fore paws, he snipped off the scales and ate the seeds beneath in regular order, turning the cone as he proceeded as though it were an ear of corn and he were eating the kernels. I have often waited to see a squirrel go for something to eat after a snowstorm. This he did in a matter-of-fact way. Without hunting or hesitation he went hopping across the snow to a spot immediately above his supplies, where he at once pawed his way down into the snow and came up with a cone. In rambling the woods I have often heard these squirrels barking and "chickareeing" with wild hilarity, apparently from the pure joy of living. Then again they proclaimed my distant approach, or presence, with unnecessary vigor. The energetic protest they make against the trespasser in their woods, is often, if not always, taken by big game as a warning. Generally on hearing this the game will be all alert for some seconds, and occasionally will move off to a more commanding position. Sometimes birds will stop and listen when this tree-top sentinel shouts warnings which have often saved big game from being shot. Most hunters hate this squirrel. There are brief periods in winter when these squirrels disappear for days at a time. The kind of weather does not appear to be a determining factor in this. During this disappearance they probably take a hibernating sleep; anyway, I have in a few cases seen them so soundly asleep that the fall and fracture of their tree did not awaken them. They sometimes live, temporarily at least, in holes in the ground, but the home is usually in a hollow limb or a cavern in a tree-trunk well toward the top of the tree. Commonly four young ones are brought forth at a birth. Cunning, happy midgets they are when first beginning their acquaintance with the wooded world, and taking sun baths on a high limb of their house tree. Just how long they live no one appears to know. As pets they have been kept for ten years. A pair lived near my cabin for eight years, then disappeared. Whether they migrated or met a violent death, I never knew. There was another pair in the grove that I kept track of through eleven years. This grove was a wedge-shaped one of about ten acres that stood between two brooks. With but few exceptions, the trees were lodge-pole pine. My acquaintance with the pair began one day in early autumn. Both set up such a wild chatter as I approached the grove that I first thought that something was attacking them. Seated upon a log close to the tree which they occupied, I watched them for three or four hours. They in turn watched me. Failing to dislodge me by vehement denunciation, they quieted down and eyed me with intense curiosity. I sat perfectly still. Evidently they were greatly puzzled and unable to make out what I was and what of all things on earth it could be that I wanted. With beady eyes they stared at me from a number of positions in several trees. Occasionally in the midst of this silent, eager eying one would break out in a half-repressed and drawling bark that was unconsciously, nervously repeated at brief intervals. The next day they silently allowed me to take a seat. After a brief stare they grew bold with curiosity and descended to the earth for a closer investigation. Pausing for a sharp look, both suddenly exploded with wild chatter and fled with a retchy barking to the tree-tops. In less than a month they took peanuts from my fingers. They were easily terrified by a loud noise or sudden movement. One day an acquaintance came to see me while I was in the grove with the squirrels. By way of heralding his approach, he flung a club which fell with a crash upon a brush pile alongside these most nervous fellows. They fled in terror, and it was two or three days before they would come near me again. One year the grove cone-crop was a total failure. As a result, Mr. and Mrs. Frémont temporarily abandoned their old home and moved to new quarters on a mountainside about half a mile distant. The day they moved I was by the brook, watching a water-ouzel, when they chanced to cross on a fallen log near-by. In passing, one paused to give a hasty, half-glad, half-frightened, chattery bark of recognition. They hastened across the grassy open beyond as though they felt themselves in danger when out of the woods. They made a home in an old snag, using places that were, I think, formerly used by woodpeckers. The afternoon of their arrival they commenced to harvest cones, which were abundant on the spruce trees around them. I often wondered if they made a preliminary trip and located a food-supply before moving, or if they simply started forth and stopped at the first favorable place. The following summer they returned to their old quarters in the grove. The first time that I saw them they were sitting upon a log daintily making a breakfast of fresh mushrooms. They often ate the inner bark of pine twigs, and once I saw one of them eating wild raspberries. I never saw these, or any Frémont squirrel, robbing or trying to rob a bird's nest, and as I have never noticed a bird disturbed by their presence, I believe they are not guilty of this serious offense, as are most kinds of squirrels. Through eleven years I occasionally fed them. Apparently full-grown at the time of our first meeting, they were active and agile to the last. After eleven years they showed but few and minor signs of aging. One was shot by a gun-carrying visitor. While I was dismissing the gunner, my attention was attracted by the wailing of her mate when he found her lifeless body. His grief was most pitiful; among wild birds and animals I have never seen anything so pathetic. Almost humanly he stared at his mate; he fondled her and tried to coax her back to life, at times almost pleading and wailing. When I carried her off for burial he sat moveless and dazed. The following day I searched the grove, whistling and calling, but I never saw him again. The Estes Park Region The Estes Park Region The Estes Park region became famous for its scenery during the height of the Rocky Mountain gold-fever half a century ago. While Colorado was still a Territory, its scenes were visited by Helen Hunt, Anna Dickinson, and Isabella Bird, all of whom sang the praises of this great hanging wild garden. The park is a natural one,--a mingling of meadows, headlands, groves, winding streams deeply set in high mountains whose forested steeps and snowy, broken tops stand high and bold above its romantic loveliness. It is a marvelous grouping of gentleness and grandeur; an eloquent, wordless hymn, that is sung in silent, poetic pictures; a sublime garden miles in extent and all arranged with infinite care. Grace Greenwood once declared that the skyline of this region, when seen from out in the Great Plains, loomed up like the Alps from the plains of Lombardy. Long's Peak, "King of the Rocky Mountains," dominates these scenes. Around this peak, within a radius of fifteen miles, is a striking and composite grouping of the best features of the Rocky Mountain scenery. Again and again I have explored every nook and height of this scenic mountain wilderness, enjoying its forests, lakes, and cañons during every month of the year. Frost and fire have had much to do with its lines and landscapes. Ice has wrought bold sculptures, while fire made the graceful open gardens, forest-framed and flower-filled in the sun. The region was occupied by the Ice King during the last glacial period. Many rounded peaks, U-shaped, polished gorges, enormous morainal embankments, upwards of fifty lakes and tarns--almost the entire present striking landscape--were shaped through the ages by the slow sculpturing of the ice. Forest fires have made marked changes, and many of the wide poetic places--the grassy parks--in the woods are largely due to severe and repeated burnings. [Illustration: LONG'S PEAK AND ESTES PARK] This locality has been swept by fire again and again. Most of the forest is less than two hundred years of age. During the past two hundred years, beginning with 1707, there have been no less than seven forest fires, two of which appear to have swept over most of the region. There probably were other fires, the records of which have vanished. The dates of these scourges and in many cases the extent of their ravages were burned into the annual rings of a number of trees which escaped with their lives and lived on, carrying these fire-records down to us. These fires, together with the erosion which followed, had something to do with the topography and the scenery of this section. There are a few ugly scars from recent fires, but most of the burned areas were reforested with reasonable promptness. Some crags, however, may have lost for centuries their trees and vegetation. Other areas, though losing trees, gained in meadows. I am strongly inclined to ascribe much of the openness--the existence even--of Estes, Allen's, and Middle Parks to repeated fires, some of which probably were severe. Thus we may look down from the heights and enjoy the mingling beauty and grandeur of forest and meadow and still realize that fire, with all its destructiveness, may help to make the gardens of the earth. A dozen species of trees form the forests of this section. These forests, delightfully inviting, cover the mountains below the altitude of eleven thousand feet. This rich robe, draping from the shoulders to the feet of the mountains, appears a dark purple from a distance. A great robe it hangs over every steep and slope, smooth, wrinkled, and torn; pierced with pinnacles and spires, gathered on terraces and headlands, uplifted on the swells, and torn by cañons. Here and there this forest is beautified with a ragged-edged grass-plot, a lake, or a stream that flows, ever singing, on. The trees which brave the heights and maintain the forest frontier among the storms, are the Engelmann spruce, sub-alpine fir, arctic willow, black birch, quaking aspen, and limber pine. For the most part, timber-line is a trifle above eleven thousand feet, but in a few places the trees climb up almost to twelve thousand. Most of the trees at timber-line are distorted and stunted by the hard conditions. Snow covers and crushes them; cold chains their activity through the greater part of the year; the high winds drain their sap, persecute them with relentless sand-blasts, and break their limbs and roots. Among glacier-records in the Rocky Mountains those on the slopes of Long's Peak are pre-eminent for magnitude and interest. On the western slope of this peak the ice stream descended into the upper end of Glacier Gorge, where it united with streams from Mt. Barrat and McHenry Peak. Here it flowed northward for two miles through the now wonderfully ice-carved Glacier Gorge. Beyond the gorge heavy ice rivers flooded down to this ice stream from Thatch-Top, Taylor, Otis, and Hallett Peaks. A mile beyond the gorge it was deflected to the east by the solid slopes of Flat-Top and Mt. Hallett. It descended to about the altitude of eight thousand feet. Along its lower course, the lateral moraine on the south side dammed up a number of small water channels that drained the northern slope of Battle Mountain. On the northern slope of the Peak a boulder field begins at the altitude of thirteen thousand feet and descends over a wide field, then over a terraced slope. Though probably not of great depth, it will average a mile wide and extends four miles down the slope. It contains an immense amount of material, enough to form a great mountain-peak. Probably the greatest array of glacial débris is the Mills Moraine on the east side of the Peak. This covers several thousand acres, consists of boulders, rock-fragments, and rock-flour, and in places is several hundred feet deep. Where has all this wreckage come from? Some geologists have expressed the opinion that ages ago Long's Peak was two thousand or so feet higher. At the time of its great height, Long's Peak was united with the near surrounding peaks,--Meeker, Washington, and Storm,--and all stood together as one peak. The present shattered condition of these peaks, their crumbling nature, the mountain masses of débris on the slopes below, all of which must have come from heights above, suggest this explanation. But to take it as it now is, to stand on this crumbling peak to-day and look down upon the lakes, moraines, polished gorges,--all the vast and varied glacial works and ruins,--is for the geological student startling and profoundly eloquent. Above the altitude of thirteen thousand feet are many fields of "eternal snow," and a dozen miles to the south of Long's Peak is the Arapahoe Glacier; while northward are the Andrews, Sprague, and Hallett Glaciers within ten miles. Though all these are small, each exhibits in a striking manner the Ice Age in a nutshell. On the east side of Long's Peak, too, is a moving ice-field that might well be classed as a glacier. By this ice begins the upper extent of the Mills Moraine, and in the gorge just below--one of the most utterly wild places on the earth--is Chasm Lake. Most of the glacier lakes are in gorges or on terraces between the altitudes of eleven thousand and twelve thousand feet. Almost all have a slope or steep rising above them, down which the ice descended while gouging out their basins. Grand Lake, one of the largest reservoirs constructed by the Ice King in the Rocky Mountains, is three miles in length and one in width, cut into bed-rock. This lake is less than nine thousand feet above the sea. It is in the eastern extremity of Middle Park, a few miles to the west of Long's Peak. Great peaks rising from it, a great moraine sweeping along its northerly and westerly shores, it peacefully shows the titanic beautifying landscape labors of the ice. The glacial winter is over. The present snowfall over this section is about one half that of the Alps. Here snow-line is thirteen thousand feet above the sea, while in the Alps it is four thousand feet lower. Down from the heights of all the high peaks pour many white streams ever singing the song of the sea. In these mountains there are many deep gorges and cañons. Most of these are short and ice-polished. The Thompson Cañon is one of the longest and finest. Its twenty miles of walled length is full of scenic contrasts and picturesque varieties. The lovely mingles with the wild. In places its walls stand two thousand feet above the river and the daisies. The walls are many-formed, rugged, polished, perpendicular, terraced, and statuesque, and are adorned with panels of rusty veneer, with decorative lichen tracery or with vertical meadows of velvet moss. Blossoms fill many niches with poetry, while shrubbery, concealing in its clinging the cracks in the wall, forms many a charming festoon. In some stretches the parallel walls go straight away, well separated; then they curve, or crowd so closely that there is barely room for the river and the road. At intervals the walls sweep outward in short, grand semicircles and inclose ideal wild gardens of pines, grass, flowers, and the winding river. The river is ever varying its speed, its surface, and its song. Here it is a boulder-framed mirror reflecting the aspens and the sky, there a stretch of foam-flow; now it rests in a wild pool pierced with sharp rocks, now it hurries on to plunge and roar over a terrace of rocks, then on, always on, toward the sea. Speckled and rainbow trout dart in the streams. Mountain sheep climb and pose on the crags; bear, deer, and mountain lions are still occasionally seen prowling the woods or hurrying across the meadows. The wise coyote is also occasionally seen darting under cover, and he is frequently heard during the night. Here among the evergreens is found that wee and audacious bit of intensely interesting and animated life, the Frémont squirrel, and also, one of the dearest of all small animals, the merry chipmunk. Within this territory are a number of beaver colonies, whose ways I have described in earlier chapters. The entire region is a wild-flower garden. Bloom-time lasts all summer long. The scores of streams which splash down from the snows are fringed with ferns and blossoms. There are many areas petalled with red, blue, purple, and gold. Difference of altitude, topography, and moisture-distribution induce nearly a thousand varieties to bloom in and to color this glad wild garden. July is white with Mariposa lilies. Wild roses, sweet peas, daisies, tiger lilies, violets, orchids, primroses, fringed blue gentians give their color and their perfume to the friendly air. Here flourishes the Rocky Mountain columbine. The region is gladdened with many kinds of birds. On the heights lives the serene, self-contained ptarmigan; the "camp-bird" resides in the upland forests; hummingbirds flit here and there; the robin sings and re-sings its song over the lowlands; blackbirds swing on the willows by the brooks; the wise magpie spreads his spotted wings and explores every corner. Along the cascading streams is the darling bird of the Rockies, the cheerful water-ouzel. Here, too, the hermit thrush charms the air with a wonderful wealth of melody, and here the solitaire, perhaps the most inspiring of all songsters, pours his divine melody amid pines, crags, and the sounds of winds and falling waters. Numerous trails wind through this region, and over these one may visit Specimen Mountain, an old volcano, Fern and Odessa Lakes,--splendid tree-bordered alpine tarns,--Wild Basin, Locke Vale, Wind River, Glacier Gorge, and the summit of Long's Peak. The Flat-Top trail is the greatest one; this touches a variety of scenes, crosses the continental divide at twelve thousand feet, and connects Grand Lake and Estes Park. This splendid natural recreation-ground might well "be held for the use of the people." It is close to the geographical centre of the country, is easily accessible, has an excellent climate, and as a National Park it would become a scenic resource of enormous and exhaustless richness. THE END Index Index Allen's Park, 339. Andrews Glacier, 343. Arapahoe Glacier, 251, 255, 260, 261, 343. Arapahoe Peak, 260. Ash, seeds, 296. Aspen, after a fire, 160. Aspen Gulch, 13-15. Avalanches. _See_ Rock avalanche, Snowslides. Basswood, seeds, 300. Bears, escaping from a forest fire, 143, 144; a mother and cubs, 240. Bears, black, two cubs and a forest fire, 144; attacked by wasps, 180; carrying pine cones, 301. Bears, grizzly, and a forest fire, 144; and roasted deer after the fire, 149, 150; two pet cubs, 207-209; the further history of Johnny, 209-219; curiosity, 214; agility, 215. Beaver, the Moraine Colony, 19-46; characteristics and usefulness, 19, 40, 41, 46, 47; dams, 21, 31-34, 45, 53, 54; houses, 21, 22, 31, 42, 44, 54; felling trees, 21, 24, 25, 58-65; harvest piles, 22, 41, 42, 56, 57, 65, 66; coöperation, 22-24, 43, 44; working by daylight, 23, 62; play, 23; transporting logs and branches, 23, 24, 54-62; village destroyed by fire, 26, 27; attacked by mountain lion, 28, 29, 35, 36; attacked by coyote, 29, 30, 36; journeying by water and by land, 30, 31; migration from ruined village, 29-31; raided by trappers, 31; need of ponds, 34, 35; house dynamited, 35; young, 36, 37; a migration witnessed, 38, 39; aged beaver, 38, 39, 51, 52, 63-65; explorations of old males, 39, 40; the first conservationist, 40, 41; making a new pond, 44, 45; pitchy wood and dead wood avoided, 45, 46; canals, 45, 56; ford, 45, 52, 66; the Spruce Tree Colony, 51-67; tunnels, 53; log slides, 54-56; the Island Colony, 61, 62; ready for winter, 66. Beetles, depredations in forests, 174-181, 195. Big Thompson River, 345. Big tree, immune from insects, 173; seeds, 299. Bighorn. _See_ Sheep, mountain. Birds, of Estes Park, 347. Blizzard, 311-316. Borers, depredations in forests, 182, 195. Camp-bird. _See_ Jay, Rocky Mountain. Camp-fires, as origins of forest fires, 152, 153, 155, 156. Carpenter, Prof. L. G., on forests, 127. Chapman, Frank M., 200. Chasm Lake, 343. Cherry, seed-sowing, 298, 299. Chipmunk, 325. Cimarron, 242. Clouds, of mountain-tops, 80, 81; a snow-cloud, 81-84. Cocoanut, 302. Conifers, seed-distribution, 297, 298. Cottonwood, seeds, 296, 301. Couple, elderly, in a log house, 110-112. Court-House Rock, 242, 243. Coyote, attacking beaver, 29, 30, 36; fleeing from a forest-fire, 143; after the fire, 149. Deer, in a forest fire, 142, 143. _Dendroctonus_, 196. Dogs, story of a tramp dog, 93-105; Scotch and the bear Johnny, 213; Scotch in a mountain blizzard, 309-320. Electrical storms, 85-88. Elk, in a forest fire, 142. Erosion, after forest fires, 165, 166; by glaciers, 251; a study of, 271, 272, 281-286. Estes Park, glaciers in, 260, 338, 341-343; attractions, 337, 338, 348; forest fires, 339; forests, 340, 341; Long's Peak, 341-343; lakes, 343, 344; streams and cañons, 344, 345; animal life, 346; flowers, 346, 347; birds, 347; trails, 347. Fern Lake, 347. Fir, Douglas, 279. Fires. _See_ Forest Fires. Flat-Top, 341, 347. Flowers, of Estes Park, 346, 347. Foot, an injured, 233, 234, 241-243. Forest fires, watching, 139-170; varying speed of, 141, 142, 167; wild animals in, 142-145; rarely make a clean sweep, 145, 146; dead trees burning after, 146, 147; extent, 147; destroy humus, 148, 149; loss of animal life in, 149; storm of ashes after a fire, 150, 151; upbuilding after, 152; origins of, 152, 153, 155, 156, 162, 163, 176; methods of fighting, 152, 153, 163-165; trees standing after, 154, 158; geysers of flame, 158, 159, 169; duration of, 161, 162; protection against, 163-165; erosion after, 165, 166; explosions of rock caused by, 169, 170; interrelation with destructive insects, 173, 174, 186; wood preserved by, 187. Forests, as wood-producers, 124; as water-distributors, 124, 125; other uses, 125; as moderators of climate, 125, 126; as windbreaks, 126; delaying evaporation, 126-129; necessary to agriculture, 127, 128; as reservoirs, 128-130; as regulators of stream-flow, 130; as makers of soil, 131, 132; as bird-shelters, 132, 133; as sanitary agents, 133; evils following destruction of, 134; preëminent in promoting the general welfare, 134, 135; insect enemies of, 173-189; observations of a forested and a deforested region during a rain, 267-287; the forest floor, 273, 274. Fort Garland, 112, 113, 118, 119. Fungi, enemies of trees, 183, 184. Fungus, false-tinder, 184. Glacier Gorge, 341, 347. Glaciers, work of, 247-250; Muir and Henderson on, 250; rate of movement, 251; Arapahoe, 251, 255, 260, 261; grinding and excavating powers, 251-253; moraines, 253-255; lakes made by, 253, 343; strange freight, 255, 256; mineral wealth, 256; making soil, 257; formation, 258, 259; in the Rocky Mountains, 258, 260-263, 338, 341-343; bergschlunds and crevasses, 260, 261; pleasures of investigation, 263. Grand Lake, 348. Grand River, 309; forest fires on, 140-153. Granite Pass, wind in, 75-77. Greenwood, Grace, 337. Ground-hog, 282. Grouse, fleeing from a forest fire, 144. Hallett Glacier, 343. Hallett Peak, 341. Henderson, Junius, quoted, 250. Horne's Peak, 102. Ice, climbing with a dog over, 310, 314, 317-320. Insects, in the forest, 173-189; interrelation with forest-fires, 173, 174, 186; beetles, 174-181; weevils, 182; borers, 182; serial attacks, 182, 183; interrelation with parasitic plants, 183, 184; seriousness of their ravages, 185, 186, 189; control of depredations, 187-189; woodpeckers the enemies of, 193-204. Ironwood, seeds, 300. Jay, crested, 149. Jay, Rocky Mountain, _or_ gray jay, _or_ camp-bird, 149, 180, 223. Lake City, 223. Landslides, a night and a day of, 232-239; on a deforested slope, 281, 282; a liquefied landslide, 283, 284. _See_ Rock avalanche. Leadville, 98-100. Lightning, 85, 86; trees struck by, 175, 176, 278. Linden, seeds, 300. Lion, mountain, attacking beaver, 28, 29, 35, 36; adventure, 102; fleeing from a forest fire, 143. Little Cimarron River, 228, 234, 240-242. Locke Vale, 347. Locust, honey, seeds and pods, 299, 300. Log, with a cargo of seeds, 292-294. Long's Peak, 310, 338; wind on, 75-78; area of summit, 78; altitude, 85; thunder-storms on, 85; forest fires seen from, 140; Mills Moraine, 263, 342; glaciers, 341; boulder field, 342; geological history, 342, 343. McHenry Peak, 341. Magpie, 149, 347. Mangrove, seeding, 302. Maple, red, seeds, 296. Maple, silver, seeds, 295. Middle Park, 339, 344. Mills Moraine, 263, 342, 343. Mississippi River, origin of its mud, 285; a seed-laden log on, 292-294. Missouri River, its channel full of dissolved Rocky Mountains, 284. Mt. Barrat, 341. Mt. Coxcomb, crumbling character of, 228-230; a night climb in the rain, 228-240. Mt. Hallett, 341. Mt. Meeker, 207, 342. Mt. Teller, 88. Muir, John, quoted, 128, 250, 327. Night, mountain-climbing by, 226-232. Nuthatch, 199, 200. Nuts, 293-295. Orton, Edward, Jr., quoted, 263. Otis Peak, 341. Ouzel. _See_ Water-ouzel. Parks, mountain, openness caused by forest fires, 339. Persimmons, 299. Pine, lodge-pole, 153, 157, 160; spectacular death of, 158, 159; destroyed by beetles, 178; seeding, 298. Pine, Western yellow, as a fire-fighter, 160, 161; killed by beetles, 174-176. Poisoning, from a spring, 109-111. Poudre River, 95. Ptarmigan, 347. Rabbit-Ear Range, 140. Rain, effects on forested and deforested slopes, 267-287. Ridgway, 226, 233, 243. Robin, 270. Rock avalanche, 113-115. St. Vrain River, a rainy day at the source, 267-287; the two branches, 271. San Juan Mountains, snowslides in, 3-15. San Luis Valley, 117. Sangre de Cristo Mountains, 101, 109. Scotch, the collie, and the bear cub Johnny, 213; in a mountain blizzard, 309-320. Seeds of trees, many devices for sowing, 291; log cargo of, 292-294; nuts, 293-295; winged, 295-298; pulp-covered, 298, 299; other wind-carried seeds, 299, 300; hooked, 301; carried by animals, 301; catapulted, 301; water-carried, 302; prodigality of nature in regard to, 302-305. Sheep, mountain, _or_ bighorn, in a whirlwind, 72, 73; in a forest fire, 143. Sierra Blanca, 110; climbing, 112-117. Snow slides, studying, 3; an adventure with a slide, 4-15. Snow-storm, climbing above a, 81-83; a mountain blizzard, 311-316. Solitaire, 287, 347. Specimen Mountain, 347. Spring, a poisonous, 109. Spruce, Engelmann, 153, 155, 273. Squirrel, Frémont, an interview, 276, 277; character and manners, 323, 324; food and harvesting, 324-329, 333; hibernation, 329, 330; homes, 330; young, 330; longevity, 330, 333; story of a pair, 330-334. Sycamore, seeds, 297. Taylor Peak, 341. Thatch-Top, 341. Thompson Cañon, 344, 345. Thrush, Audubon's hermit, 287, 347. Trees, relations to mankind, 123, 134, 135; as sanitary agents, 133; medicines and foods produced by, 133, 134; uprooted and transported by a landslide, 236-239; up a tree in a storm, 276-278; seeds and seeding, 291-305. _See also_ Forests. Turret-Top, 243. Uncompahgre Mountains, trip through, 223-243. Uncompahgre Peak, 224. Wasps, feeding on grubs, 179; and bear, 180. Water-ouzel, 269-271, 347. Weather, of alpine zone of Rocky Mountains, 71-89. Weevils, in forest-trees, 182, 191. Wet Mountain valley, 101. Wild Basin, 347. Willows, seeds, 296. Wind River, 347. Winds, on mountain-tops, 72-80; drying powers of, 126, 127; a mountain blizzard, 311-316. Witch-hazel, flowers and seeds, 301. Woodpecker, Batchelder, 197. Woodpecker, downy, the most useful bird citizen, 193, 200; a downy at work, 201-204. Woodpecker, hairy, 197, 198. Woodpeckers, value as destroyers of noxious insects, 193-198; holes, 198, 199; winter lodgings, 199; nesting-holes, 199, 200. The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A * * * * * THE LAND OF LITTLE RAIN By MARY AUSTIN This is a book of unique interest about out-door life in the arid region of Southeastern California. It describes the marvels of the desert, the Indian, the Greaser, and the gold-hunter, the strange birds and beasts and flowers of that region, with extraordinary fidelity. "What John Muir has done for the western slopes of the Sierras, with their solemn forests and their mysterious silences, Mrs. Austin does in a more tender and intimate fashion for the eastern slopes." _Brooklyn Eagle._ With full-page and marginal illustrations by E. BOYD SMITH. 8vo, $2.00, _net_. Postpaid, $2.24 BOOKS BY ANDY ADAMS WELLS BROTHERS "It carries the true spirit of the plains." _Chicago Evening Post._ Illustrated. $1.20 _net_. Postage 11 cents. REED ANTHONY, COWMAN The autobiography of a cowboy, giving an interesting insight into the old-time cattle business. THE LOG OF A COWBOY "Breezy, natural, entertaining and racy of the soil." _Chicago Record-Herald._ Illustrated by E. BOYD SMITH. A TEXAS MATCHMAKER "A rattling good story, full of fun and the spirit of out-of-doors." _San Francisco Argonaut._ Illustrated by E. BOYD SMITH. THE OUTLET "A splendid description of a cattle-drive, vivid and well written." _New York Life._ Illustrated by E. BOYD SMITH. CATTLE BRANDS "Clever, original and highly amusing tales." _Boston Transcript._ Each of the above, except "Wells Brothers," $1.50. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY [Illustration] BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
45608	----	[Illustration: "THE OLD, OLD STORY."] MR. DIDE, HIS VACATION IN COLORADO. BY LEWIS B. FRANCE, AUTHOR OF "ROD AND LINE," "MOUNTAIN TRAILS AND PARKS IN COLORADO," ETC. STATE JOURNAL PRINTING COMPANY, PRINTERS AND STEREOTYPERS, MADISON, WIS. COPYRIGHTED, 1890, BY L. B. FRANCE. CONTENTS. PAGE MR. DIDE: HIS VACATION IN COLORADO, 7 A Cold Slot, 7 A Warmer Trail, 17 Twin Lakes, 28 Through the Saguache Range, 40 Joshua, 51 On White River, 65 On the South Fork, 77 Sport, 88 Success and--Success, 102 Vapor, 114 Pike's Peak, 125 For him who seeks her solitudes in sympathy, Nature has always a welcome. What we call storms are but her periods of house-cleaning, and the sunshine of her smile lurks in every humor; with love it is easy to adapt ourselves to her moods and with prudence we may avoid her missiles. MR. DIDE: HIS VACATION IN COLORADO. CHAPTER I. A COLD SLOT. The upper end of the mercury is anchored, say in the vicinity of twenty degrees below zero, and there are two feet of snow on the ground. I have to travel a hundred miles or more from Denver; one mile on foot, the others by rail. As I make my way down street early in the morning, with the rising sun turning the white peaks into rose-color, I feel disposed to halt and watch the changes. But I am denied the privilege of even walking slowly; I must wipe the tears from my eyes and hurry. The few people I meet seem cheery, and they steam along, reminding me of the cigarette smokers; the men wear icicles for beards, and one woman has a luminous nose, and I think is aware of it, for she holds her handkerchief to her face as she passes by. No one says good-morning--we have become too metropolitan for such courtesies--but every one expresses by a glance, "Cold! ain't it?" and steams on. One should always keep one's mouth shut on such a morning; one's inspirations will always be full and the shoulders thrown back without trying--that is if one be healthy. There is not the faintest indication of a breeze, and the iron tires of a heavy freight wagon, laboring slowly along, ring out like the music of tiny bells, close and smooth, as though the master of the baton were directing a legato movement. The driver walks by the side of his team, thrashing one hand against his shoulder and holding the lines with the other; the horses are half hidden in the steam of their own providing and are frosted even to their flanks. Thunder and Mars! but it is cold! and a cloud of cold air rushes into the car with me. The ebony deity presiding over the coach looked on with a wide, white smile as I thawed my beard. "Ain't gwine fishin' to-day?" He seemed a little puzzled when I said I might indulge in a bit of angling. Perhaps he had never fished through the ice, or was not aware that the art of angling depended upon other things than bait and hook and line, or was not aware, in fact, that these tools might be dispensed with, and the votary of the gentle art still be successful. [Illustration: PIKE'S PEAK FROM MANITOU PARK.] The only other occupants of the car were two young ladies, neither of them over twenty years of age, I dare be sworn, and behind whom the porter assigned me a seat. They sat facing each other. One of these young ladies was a blonde with fluffy hair daintily banged, her cheeks were rosy and she reveled in the faintest intimation of brevity of nose--just enough of heavenward proclivity to make it cunning. Her companion was a brunette in glasses, possessing a delicate creamy complexion and a close-fitting dainty ear, not marred by a ring or a place for one. I speak of one ear, the one immediately under my observation. I subsequently learned that she was endowed with a pair, and they were mates, very pretty, and uninfluenced by the cold, of a delicate pink that seemed to rival the exquisite tint of sea shells I had seen; a very bewitching ear, an ear into which a lover--but perhaps I would better not follow the lead of that ear any farther, and will let go before I fall into trouble. Being absorbed I did not catch what the blonde said to the ear, but having released myself, I took in the reply: "Darwin's theory is, to my mind, correct, and the strongest argument in favor of immortality within my experience." An experience of less than twenty years! Think of it! The blonde put on a look of deeper interest; as for myself, a feeling of weak dependence began to creep over me and finally settled in my back. The brunette continued: "We know that man is an improvement on the monkey, and we know how imperfect man is even in his best estate--are we not authorized in believing that the next change will present something grander?" I began to wonder whether some man had not failed in his contract with this young lady. The glasses suggested Boston, and yet she was too young for a vagrant schoolma'am or a victim in a desert world. I debated concerning the man and whether I should blame him, if one were in the case, and my wonder quite resolved itself into a conviction in favor of the man. To set my mind at rest if possible, I changed my seat to one behind the blonde. When I saw the pretty, quiet face, and the eloquent, brown eyes appealing to the blonde for approval, I was more in doubt than ever. To get out of the labyrinth I went into the smoking room and took counsel of my briar-root and the foot-hills. Snow everywhere! The willows are dressed in gray and the pines are almost black; the purple haze of summer has changed into a veil of white and the shrub oaks are garmented in ragged coats of brown. No living thing, except the snow-birds, is in sight between me and the hills, piling tier upon tier to the summit of the range. It is not like looking back from the front seat in the pit upon a grand-opera night--the colors are all sober. Where the rugged cliffs are too precipitous for the snow to cling, I find Titanic jewels with white settings. It is a good time to learn, in truth, how rough and broken are the outlines that the summer's breath makes smooth. Stripped of their finery their majesty is sterner, that is all, but they are still to be reverenced--there is the difference, merely, between the smile and the frown of one we know to be worthy of love, but always lovable. The fences make the white fields look like great, clean napkins edged with black lace and spread out smoothly, to dry. As we get farther away from the Platte Valley a bird of evil omen shows himself, looking blacker, if possible, as he hovers over this ocean of white. I wonder what has become of the ravens? In the early days they were plentiful and tame, coming into town and perching on the fences and housetops, alert for food, and in the evening, before twilight would set in they were wont to string along overhead, upon lazy wing, to their roost up the river. We must have become too metropolitan also for these sable friends and they are going out with the pioneers! When I saw this solitary representative of the old abundance, he brought to me the remembrance of other changes--I realized thirty miles an hour and steam, instead of ten miles and mules; a luxurious car with scarcely a vibration, instead of the swaying Concord redolent of old leather, musty hay and the stables. Overcoats, buffalo shoes and blankets are necessaries no longer. Yet the old coach possessed some excellent attributes: it was a great leveller of artificial barriers; its patrons were democratic in its presence if never so before or after; they were rarely otherwise than jolly; the emergency demanded cheerfulness, as hardship always does if one would succeed in overcoming obstacles; one might not sit and dream with open eyes in such surroundings. Shadows of familiar faces are flitting about me, very eloquent they are in their silence. And now and then will come one, and another, demanding deeper recognition and whose ways are so sweet to remember that I forget all except the old coaching days and-- But I declare! while I have been drifting, the window has grown dim--it must be with the frost--and I am compelled to wipe it off that I may see a bevy of snow-buntings; bright little fellows in mottled jackets and black neckties. They easily make, in their billowy flight, twenty-five miles an hour. The train is going at that rate, or more, and they keep along with it as if to cheer us on the road for a few hundred yards and then alight to have their places taken by others. They are very numerous, thanks to some one who loved them and placed a penalty in the statute books against their destruction. Down there in a hollow, sheltered by the bluffs, are a cabin and a corral, and a few stacks of hay protected by a fence. Outside stand three creatures drawn up, and shivering, it must be, wishfully feeding their minds on the unattainable luxury under their noses. I would like to halt long enough to drive the owner out of bed, or away from his fire, with hydraulic appliances. A magpie alights on the back of one of the cows, perhaps to inspire her with hope and to remind her that summer will come again. As we climb toward the summit of the Divide I catch a glimpse of one of my castles. When travelling by I always look out for this property of mine, to assure myself that it has not been trespassed upon. Some one has taken the liberty of levelling a camera at it, and bestowing a name upon it, thinking it deserted, perhaps, and assuming a claim upon it for that reason. But it is not, nor has it ever been deserted since my knowledge of it; my people are always there. Sweeping round a certain curve in the road the grand pile, without moat or drawbridge, now comes into full view. Its white turrets shine in the morning sun and its grand doorway is always open as a token of the hospitality ever to be found in its spacious halls. It is the old-time hospitality, of course--say of the feudal age--rude, maybe, but bestowed with royal munificence, to be in keeping with the precincts. Claw-hammer coats, vests of percale cut low, and glaring shirt fronts of linen would be novelties amid the concourse of mailed cavaliers and hardy retainers wont to gather here. Its great banqueting hall is decked with ghosts of armor and the rugged walls are hung with rude implements in keeping with the ghosts; the skins of beasts serve as beds or floor cloths as occasion may demand; rough benches and a long table with no sign of covering; a high stiff-backed chair at the end above the salt, where may sit the master. The broad fireplace is aglow this cold day and the fire roars and sparkles up the wide chimney, and dogs lie dozing in its cheerful warmth, while leather-clothed servitors clank back and forth. But how quickly the dogs awake and all the surroundings vanish at the sound of the shriek ahead of me! We have seen much at the rate we are going--and it is better so--we are not moving backward; the broadcloth claw-hammer is, after all, an improvement on the coat of mail. My other grand estate south of the Divide is also encumbered with the winter mantle, and because of it the red ruins over under the foot-hills are more sharply defined. The red castle on the left with its arched porchway stands out grandly against the clear blue background. But there is no one at home, the place seems deserted for the time; the usual inmates may be away on a hunt in those groves beyond, or perhaps they may have vanished for the same reason as did those we found on the north side. The air grows warmer as we go on. Above the Peak a few clouds are hovering, and I notice above the summits of the lower mountains two long, slender clouds of a deadwood color. Presently these join at one end, and soon the other ends swing together and form an oval with a stretch of blue between, and there is a lake above the horizon. It requires no stretch of the imagination; on the contrary, I find I am compelled to satisfy my mind that one part of the cloud must be above the other, else the highest is the near shore, in the plane of my vision, and I look across a sheet of blue water to the farther side. An irregular rift in one place makes a cove, and on the bank is a cabin, and around the edges is fallen timber. Thanks to the absent winds, I am for twenty minutes or more treated to this view of a lake and its wooded surroundings, made of a strip of blue sky and a cloud. It is not necessary that I disclose where I had dinner this day--there were no bills of fare printed, and as I took a seat at one of the small tables I saw that the others were not crowded. It was evidently a cold day for the landlord as well as the rest of us. At one of the tables stood the blonde, her hat and cloak off, and a dainty white apron, with frills and pockets, tied about her waist. She was evidently not here in the character of a guest. Before I had time to wonder why she might be here in the other capacity, a voice at my shoulder said rapidly: "Roast-beef-boiled-mutton-caper-sauce-pork-and-beans-veal-pie." I thought I recognized the tones and squared myself to take in the glasses and brown eyes of the brunette. While I studied them she said it all over again in the same key and without pause, as though under conviction that she would forget a part if she failed in the stereotyped manner. She smiled at the end of the second stanza and I saw that her teeth were very white and even--were pretty, indeed, and so was the smile. She sang it again, a note higher, and at the conclusion I could trace only the ghost of the smile. It was time for me to respond. I was painfully aware of it, but somehow I persisted in wandering away thousands of ages and drifting about in the mysteries of the primary period, barking my shins on the azoic rocks trying to find the starting-point and to trace the connection. "Will you tell me what you want?" The mood was now imperative. I said I could not tell her that, but I would take pork and beans. [Illustration: CASCADE.] CHAPTER II. A WARMER TRAIL. A scientific knowledge of botany is by no means essential to happiness. Latin does not add an atom of beauty to the wild clematis. One can admire a healthy, bright-eyed baby without knowing its name. This morning after I start out on the railroad I notice that the July flowers are abundant on the slopes leading up to the foot-hills. Great patches of wild poppies grow here and there--it is not an infatuating plant, but one loses sight of the coarse leaves in the delicate white of the bloom. The bluish-gray of the wild chamomile of itself makes a rich carpet, but into this the hand of the Master has woven a countless variety of colors. Hanging in bountiful clusters of crimson and scarlet is a little flower, shaped like that of the honeysuckle; beside it, pendant from their slender stems, a wealth of purple bells, while a little canary-colored gem--a tiny, perfect, five-pointed star--peeps up modestly, as if asking permission to add its atom to the gorgeous pattern. So we have acres of tender beauty. I am glad to know that I am not alone in the enjoyment of it. At the first station, where the liberty of a few minutes' pause is allowed, a gentleman with his trousers in his boots gives us to understand that appearances are deceitful, by gathering a bouquet, and a young man in light-colored tweed, small umbrella and eyeglass redeems himself also, in like manner. The ladies are delighted and full of wonder, so beautiful they are--the flowers, I mean, yet lacking fragrance; how can it be? Two senses at least expectant and only one can be gratified? A little three-year-old, disappointed, stigmatizes them as "weed flowers," but is compelled, at the instance of a juvenile friend, to admit: "They are pretty, anyway." They have a generous influence too; people who had barely looked at each other for forty miles, pleasantly express a common sentiment one to another, it may be a smile or a glance merely, but it is sufficient to make them know they are of kin; even the young man with the umbrella unbends and feels on the same plane with humanity. The delicate haze of summer is again upon the hills; the great, white napkins of a little while ago are changed into fields of grain shimmering in the sun as they are brushed by the gentle wind; the cattle no longer haunt the hay-stack, but slowly feed along the mesas, or, filled and sleek, complacently chew their cuds in the shadows of the pines; my castles on the Divide give evidence of thrift in the surroundings, and in their summer garb display the exquisite taste of their mistress; the song of the meadow lark strikes high above the roar of the car wheels, and you lose entirely the clang of the iron in the clear, sweet trill from the golden-throated beauty perched upon an adjacent fence, or half hid in some grassy tussock; the pines have turned to a lighter green, the willows are in full leaf, and as the eye sweeps over the brilliant carpet toward the foot-hills and beyond, it encounters the only sign of winter in the patches of snow lingering in the clefts of the distant range; you mark the irregular sky-line of the towering summits against that background of delicate blue, while the loftier peaks may be kissed by a cloud. Does disease weigh you down; do you fret under the vexations and disappointments of the daily drudgery; has the sordid strife among your fellows made you feel that life is not worth living; does sorrow brood in your heart? Why, look you, this leaf is a panacea for hurt minds! it was not created for you, but you are so constituted that you may find solace in it if you will--it is one of the many out of the book that gives our copper-hued, untutored brother, _faith_. Will you accept less than he? But I am reminded that if I loiter so, I shall not reach Cascade in a week. The Deacon, a young friend of mine, and the Major, are to join me there, fully equipped for a campaign in the Roan Range. I propose, however, to make them stop by the way, as the humor moves me. Speeding across and down the south side of the Divide, I notice trespassers on a part of my whilom wild estate under the foot-hills at the right. Specks of cottages perched upon the slope of one of my glades do not add to the romance of the picture, yet I feel a bit flattered in that the builders have exhibited good taste in selecting a location for their brown-roofed boxes. They can be cool in summer and enjoy a view of mountains and plains. Then they may speculate, too, upon what preceded the pines and grass-covered earth about them. The gorge just back of them, and the meagre creek tumbling out from it, give a hint, and as we move quickly down the narrow valley dolmens here and there indicate that the little creek is only the remains of a river of ice. These monuments of the centuries are very abundant hereabouts. I have seen fossilized bivalves from this same drift down which I am speeding, and am set to wondering what kind of mortals inhabited these shores when those oysters were growing, and whether the brown-roofed cottages on the slope above are an improvement upon the architecture of that epoch. Or how many millions of years preceding that ice and ocean age this same valley was a bed of verdure, as now; and whether those who stirred up the soil are permitted to look on us and whether they do so in sympathy with us in our tragedies, or are our tragedies all comedies to them? Loitering again! well, why may one not loiter when he finds a thrifty city of his own time flourishing on an old ocean bed? This new city is filled with the refinement and culture of the age, even its outlying shanties have an air of respectability. It has its share of vices too, no doubt; however, reformation is not my mission, the duties are too delicate; I might be admonished to "throw the first stone" if I dared. But there is no harm in wondering whether the culture and refinement that flourished in the same spot a great many centuries ago was different from the present ideal. We will not discuss it, as you suggest, but sweep round and into the mountain gorge at our right, looking down, as we speed along, upon Manitou. The Spirit invites one to linger again, and there is comfort in the reflection that the Kind Mother will welcome our coming, without stopping to inquire whether we are compelled by the result of our vices to seek her beautiful places, or are prompted by our virtues. Thirty years since, the way we are travelling was an unbroken wilderness; the Ute was only then being succeeded by the prospector. Had it been suggested to the latter that his successors would ever journey by rail, it would have moved him to pity for the unfortunate mental plight of the prophet. A broad-gauge train of cars speeding over the way where he found it toilsome to creep! Could anything be more preposterous? Yet we are careening round graceful curves upon the precipitous mountain sides, rushing over bridges that span yawning chasms, plunging from light into darkness and out again from the short tunnels into the light, ever on and up without impediment. Surely, for the first time, it is like a pleasant dream, and one almost forgets to take in the gorgeous, ever-changing panorama made up of pinnacles, pine-clad hills, towering cliffs and flashing stream. Soon the gorge widens into a cozy dell; to the right, a gentle grass-covered slope, with countless wild flowers woven into the pattern, and groups of young pines here and there, leads up to a tier of hills with rock-crowned summits. To the left is Cascade Cañon, sentineled by lofty cliffs, and from out its shady recesses comes tumbling the bright mountain stream that suggested the name. [Illustration: KEY-HOLE.] The departing train leaves, besides myself, the gentleman with the eyeglasses and slim umbrella. After dinner, while I solace myself with the briar-root, this gentleman sits a little way off on the veranda puffing a cigar. There is another, an obese party, walking up and down; he is not to be mistaken; his boots are shiny, so are his coat and trousers, and his felt hat gives token of grease and dust about the band. His shirt bosom discloses a compromise between cheviot and wool, and he wears an immense gold nugget for a breast-pin. He possesses the air of one with prospects and bestows an occasional glance of inquiry upon the gentleman with the umbrella. He catches the latter's eye, and halts, almost imperceptibly, feels encouraged, nods and approaches; then with an expression of boundless hospitality pervading his entire person, bursts forth: "A stranger in Colorado?" The gentleman with the eyeglasses pauses in the middle of a puff, looks up staringly, and the next moment relapses into his wonted contentment, while the native takes a seat. "Ya-a-s." "The grandest country in the world; scenery unsurpassed, and the climate superb; the air--there's nothing like the vivifying air--do you notice the air?" "Notice--ah--notice the aha?" The stranger dropped his eyeglass, replaced it suddenly and stared a further inquiry at his interrogator. "Exactly--the lightness of it--its purity--the ozone, as it were----" "Aw--y-a-s--I smell the fwagwance of the pines, and I feel sleepy when----" "You've struck it, my dear sir--that's what every one says--they always feel sleepy on first coming out--but you'll overcome that in time--it's a wide-awake country, you will find." "You have wesided some time in Colowado, y-a-s?" "Well, y-e-s, so, so--a few years, long enough to become acquainted with the ways of the country. I came out to see about certain little mining interests," he continued in a burst of confidence, "and was detained longer than I expected, and now, I could not be induced to go anywhere else to live." There was an air of firmness in this avowal of attachment that carried conviction with it. "You are intawested in mines--y-a-s?" "Slightly--enough to occupy my leisure time, that is all." From the manner of the man he might have owned the State, exclusive of the mines. "I have one nice little piece of property over in Dead Man's Gulch, I think of developing some day." And while he patted this property on the back, so to speak, he plunged his hand into his pocket for--a specimen, of course--"ruby silver"--fabulous in ounces to the ton. "Wooby silvah?" I heard the stranger inquire, as I relighted my pipe and started for the cañon. The broad avenue quickly narrows into a trail, leading into charming nooks and shady retreats. The air is fragrant with the perfume of the pines and the half mile of cascades contributes to the delight with its music. The bed of this mountain brook is precipitous and has no still reaches in its current. There are seemingly a dozen picturesque waterfalls in its course, and the giver of names seems for once to have been moved with happy intelligence and good taste. At the Naiads' Bath I come to a halt in search of an Old Man, who, I am told, presides over this place sacred to the spirits that flit hereabout, to indulge in their holy ablutions. The early afternoon sun lights up the gray and brown of the cliffs almost overhead and helps work the stately rocks into fantastic shapes. I find him at last, on the opposite mountain side, a tutelary deity carved out of the cold rock by the hand of old Time, and looking down silent and grim upon the consecrated pool of crystal. Not a great way below his chin, sits a modern belle, thin at the waist and with flowing skirts. The sculptor must have anticipated the day when she would be in the fashion, and set her up as a satire in the sanctuary. While I rest here, peering into the depths in search of the ethereal beauties which I know must be sporting there, and who will be revealed to me by the bright rays glinting through the foliage, and while I listen in vain to catch some change in the deep notes of the silvery organ almost at my side, I am conscious of another presence and look up. The young woman in glasses and her companion with the fluffy hair are standing within a few feet of me. I am at once reduced to plain diet; even Darwin is forgotten, as his fair disciple with uplifted hands exclaims: "Is it not lovely!" Her companion had barely time ecstatically to coincide, when the man with the mine and his newly-found acquaintance climbed into sight. The man with the mine remarked for the benefit of all: "Splendid site for an overshot wheel." The gentleman with the umbrella said: "Chawming," leaving one in doubt. But a startled and evident feeling of astonishment made itself manifest in this gentleman's face as the Darwinian, hearing voices behind her, turned in his direction. "Why, Miss Gwace," he exclaimed, dropping his umbrella and extending both hands, "this is a vewey gwatifying supwise." Miss Grace did not seem so much gratified, accepting one hand only, and allowing "Mr. Dide," as she named him, to recover his umbrella with the other. I considered it high time for me to move on. I had not gone far when I heard a footstep behind me, and looking back, discovered the native puffing up the trail. He had taken off his coat, and was perspiring freely, so I halted, feeling a weakness for the practical mind. At the same time I took comfort in the reflection that there were many economical methods of exit from this life, and that the man with the mine might find one to his taste. If he would only fall off a rock! When he came up very red in the face and had mopped his thinly-covered temples with a questionable handkerchief, he told me it was "hot." I acquiesced by a nod, and he felt encouraged. I knew intuitively what he would say next, and in that affirmative sort of way that precludes denial: "Stranger in Colorado? What part of the east are you from?" "Italy." "No! why, you talk like a native." As it was the only word he heard me utter I considered him a competent judge, and felt flattered. [Illustration: MCGREGOR FALLS.] I inquired if he had explored the cañon, and he reluctantly denied that he had, but was going now to the top, notwithstanding it was "hot work" for a man of his "build." I wanted to give him credit, and would have done so, but for his remark touching the beautiful waterfall below. While I kept moving it was impossible for him to talk without discomfort, and I prayed that the way might become more precipitous. Suddenly the trail presented a termination. The rocks towered up grandly to the right, to the left was a steep incline, and directly in front a pile of rocks blocking up the way, save for a slight rift that might admit my working through. "The prayer of the wicked availeth not." I felt that I was one of the righteous: the man with the mine could never accomplish that keyhole, nor could he get around it. I went on with reverence and humility. When I looked around he stood on the lower side of the impassable barrier in evident contemplation, his hat pushed back, his coat still on his arm, and one hand poised in the act of mopping his dripping face. I found the grotto: great slabs of granite leaning together at the top and edges made smooth by the tempests of the ages, leaving a capacious, cool retreat below. I felt a momentary regret at the condition of the man with the mine, and lay in the shade listening to the music of the brook singing to me its mysteries: whence it came, whither it was going, and of its adventures thus far by the way. CHAPTER III. TWIN LAKES. When the Deacon put in his appearance the next day according to appointment, he desired to know, first, whether I had gone up the cañon. I told him I had, then he wanted to know what I had seen to be pleased with. I advised him that when I had a week's leisure, and he felt inclined to listen, I would "dilate fully" my afternoon's experience; that a week devoted to the relation of each half day's enjoyment would be none too much; whereat he seemed tickled, for the cañon is a weakness with him. When I told him I had returned from the grotto in the cool of the afternoon after a delightful interview with the nymphs of the neighborhood, he insisted that I had made a mistake; that I should have climbed on up to the carriage road, and returned by that way, whence a delightful view of the valley and the wooded mountain sides could be obtained. But I reminded him I was in the humor to court the hidden recesses rather than the sunlight, and besides, that just above the grotto it was necessary, if I would go on, to swing-off a perpendicular rock six feet, and I did not care to risk the leap. Then he advised me of another trail turning off to the road, just below the Naiads' Bath, where the ascent was easy, and exacted a promise that the next time I would come out that way. The Deacon being assigned to the office of guide and general counsellor concerning the early part of this expedition, he suggested that we take a trip into Manitou Park. It became my duty to inform him that we could not in a season, let alone three weeks, visit all the places of interest this side of White River; that we might stop a day or two at Twin Lakes and thence we must go straight into the wilderness. "But there is a party going over into the park this afternoon; the station is only eight miles up the road, and we can have a delightful drive of half a dozen miles, and be back in time for the west-bound train to-morrow." "Whom shall we have in this party, Deacon?" "A couple of ladies, and a man--a dude--with an eyeglass; the ladies are pretty----" "Deacon! Deacon! none o' that----" "But see here, I mean the ladies are attractive, and----" "Yes, I understand--one talks Darwin and wears glasses, and the other is a blonde." "Exactly--where did you become acquainted with them? I had thought to introduce you." I was compelled to set the Deacon right and inform him of my last winter's trip. Then I declined his offer of an introduction. He seemed a little nettled at my indifference, and thereupon I pleaded old age in extenuation of my lack of gallantry. "But, Deacon, how long have you been acquainted with these ladies; and who are they?" "Oh, several months--the train is coming, let us go in to dinner." I conjectured that there was a sensitive spot in the Deacon's anatomy, and I had unconsciously touched it with a rude hand. To apologize further at present might provoke embarrassment, and yet I feared something more was demanded of me. He came to my relief by taking a seat at the same table with the parties in question, leaving me in company with the Major, who had arrived on the train. "Where is the Deacon?" was the Major's first inquiry. I motioned in the direction. "Whom have we there?" I could give him no information, of course, and we discussed our dinner with the prospects which Twin Lakes might afford. From the rear end of the train as it nears Manitou Park station, a view is had of the great peak which dwarfs that from the plains. The mountain seems to quadruple in size and grows in grandeur, until the great mass overtopping its companions appears to be standing alone, endowed with the consciousness of its own majesty. Miles beyond, and when we are traversing the lower end of the great South Park, the noble pile still stands out, from its azure background, the gray of its rocks and the snow-drifts flashing down a royal smile in the afternoon light. Ahead of us is the Musquito Range, with Buffalo Peak serving as another grand landmark in the bewildering assemblage of lofty mountains; and the park, for thirty miles, seemingly as level as a floor, reposes peacefully in its cordon of hills. [Illustration: ARKANSAS VALLEY. (BUENA VISTA.)] At Idlewild our list of travellers is added to--a broad-shouldered young man and a young woman. The boot heels of the young man appear uncomfortably high, and he consequently bears his weight upon his turned-in toes. The new doeskin trousers incase a pair of caliper legs, carrying with them the impression that their owner is astride an invisible something and is not at all accustomed to walking; the Prince Albert is unbuttoned and the white vest is ornamented by a large chain with a silver horse pendant; a low-crowned, broad-brimmed, white felt hat with a wide leather band, is thrown back from a face that is sunburned but smiling; the eyes of the young man are, no doubt, keen even in repose, but there is a shade of embarrassment lingering about them; he evidently feels that everybody in the car understands the situation, and he is ready to be friendly or defiant as occasion may demand. The color in the young woman's cheeks deepens as she smilingly bustles into the only unoccupied seat, and when the couple have settled down there is plenty of room on the end of the seat for another. She has a paper bag of cookies; she takes a bite from one and reaches it up to him, he absorbs the remainder as complacently as a two-year-old being fed with a spoon. The cookies disappear rapidly after this fashion; meantime a sleeve of the Prince Albert, with an arm in it, has quietly stolen along the back of the seat, and a strong brown hand rests tenderly on the plump shoulder where it has a right to be. A backward look through the car discloses a smile on every face, but our new friends are busy with the sunny prospects of the radiant world just opening up to them, and have forgotten that they are objects of interest. The Major leaning a little toward me, whispers: "I don't know just what you think of it, my boy, but I hope it will always be sunny for them to the end of the long trail." From Hill-top, at the western side of the park, our way is well up on the mountain sides along well-timbered gorges. Presently, from the shelf in the gray granite, one may look down into the beautiful valley of the Arkansas. The pioneers and familiars of the neighborhood will tell to this day the delight they would feel on reaching the summit over the old trail, whence they could look into this vale. Sloping from the foot of what is now called Mount Princeton down to the river, is an emerald floor of six miles in width, skirted far to the east by pine-covered mountains; the river winds along the northerly side until it disappears through a gorge in the distant hills. Beyond Mount Princeton stand gray and solemn the massive piles of Mounts Yale and Harvard, as if they would shut out from intrusion and guard the lovely valley in perpetual tranquillity. From our vantage-point it seems quiet even now, with the busy town just below. Before the advent of the railroads and the multitude, one may understand why the early miners looked upon it as another dwelling-place of the Genius of Peace. We lodge at Granite, one of the old mining camps, prominent early "in the sixties," and with golden prospects yet. I get a good bed in a room that reminds me of old times; clean, eight feet square, with a pipe running through the floor from the office stove beneath. The pipe is not to be despised, as an addition to one's bedchamber, if one is unaccustomed to a sudden drop to 45° from 90°. As I stand on the doorstep next morning and take a survey of the town, no longer to be called a camp, I conclude that it must have been named Granite because there is less of that rock here than anywhere else in the vicinity. After breakfast, at which we taste our first trout of the season, we start on a six-mile ride over a splendid road to the lakes. Though we are fairly in the heart of the mountains the way may not be called mountainous; an exaggerated rolling prairie surrounded by magnificent peaks gives a better idea of the land. The air is fresh and cool, the sun is bright, with no sign of clouds save in the direction we are going. Reaching the mesa from the valley a storm seems to be gathering about the summits of the Twin Peaks and Mount Elbert. Climbing the last rising ground between our starting-point and destination, I find we are upon what I conceive to be a terminal moraine, or the remains of one, and can look down into the grand court where the Ice King, at some remote date, held high carnival; his throne, twenty or more miles away, guarded on either side by peaks over fourteen thousand feet in height; at my feet the ancient floor of his palace, covering an area of six thousand acres or more, no longer solid, but a pair of crystal lakes flashing under the bright rays of the morning sun. The July heat has not yet melted the white helmets on the sentinels' heads, and back of them the clouds I had seen but a little while before, fleecy and drifting in the azure, are gathering volume and blackness. Between them and me a gray mist, driving earthward in perpendicular sheets, tells of the rain coming down; the long lines brushed by the breath of the storm will wave to the right and left, and then drop again straight as a plummet, while the sun's rays here and there flash in the rainbow tints. The background of the sullen clouds begins to pale a little, then breaks, and a great mass of white and gray and rose-tinted vapor rolls majestically to the left, while the main storm, with its artillery in full play, follows south, down the range, and once more lets in the light upon the seat of ancient royalty. [Illustration: UPPER TWIN LAKE.] We catch only a few scattering drops while we trot briskly around the south side of the lower lake to the rustic hotel. The landlord takes possession of my grip and I walk off alone to the stream that holds in bond the beautiful lakes; it is barely fifty feet wide by a hundred yards long. I put my rod together with a coachman on the end of the leader. I had not taken time to soak anything and the kinks were not out, but nevertheless the fly had hardly touched the water before I hooked a ten-inch trout. He gave up readily and I lifted him out with an impression of a good time at hand. But a half-hour's work disclosed not another fin, and I concluded he was the last one there. Wandering toward the shore of the Upper Lake, I overhauled a man with a cane pole and a bag. I gave him my trout by way of encouragement, as he said he was out of luck, and then I tried the head of the outlet without avail. The man said there were trout in the lakes, but the best way to catch them was to row about with half a dozen poles stuck out at different angles, and "hooks baited with grasshoppers and such-like." I sat on a rock and watched the tints of the Twin Peaks and Mount Elbert mirrored in the smooth water, and prayed for the destroyer, that if he had not already overtaken the pot-hunter, he would; and would burn, not drown him; toast him on a fork and turn him around and toast him some more; toast him slowly just in sight of the cool, clear waters he had helped to almost ruin. But the government promises to establish a hatchery here and to restock the waters. When that is accomplished what more attractive spot can be found in all these mountains for a summer sojourn for wife, babies and your precious self? It can be made a headquarters, if you wish, and thence you may make easy runs farther into the wilderness. With sweet air, pure water, grand scenery and trouting, what more can mortal ask when he is tired and the baby teething? Though injured, the lakes are by no means depleted; the fishing is not quite so gratifying as it was twenty years ago, that is all. There are three different varieties of native trout here: the red or salmon-tinted, the lighter-colored variety, and a slender, active trout, different from the denizens of any other waters in the State except, perhaps, Trapper's Lake. The back is a pale green, just the color of the water in the lake, the lateral lines are fine and black, and the spots perfectly round and smaller than the finest shot; it is a graceful fish in its contour, running to three-quarters of a pound in weight, and possessed of excellent fighting qualities. The State has made an attempt at improving the lakes, and I met the superintendent of the State hatchery here. He said I must go a-fishing. I asked him where, and he said on the lake, if I was not disposed to take a run of a couple of miles up to the falls, where the fishing was good. I told him what I had heard, that the trouting was nothing to boast of except as the market hunter potted his game. To this he replied that when I came to the lakes I must do as the lakers do. I told him I had not had an oar in my hands for a great many years and was in no humor to be drowned. But he promised to attend to the rowing while I fished. With this assurance and to oblige him I rigged up, under his directions, four pine poles, tied on the lines and fixed up a cast of a coachman for a stretcher and a brown hackle and a gray for droppers. I persuaded him to allow me to take my bamboo, and armed with the implements of torture and my rod, like Hyperion among Satyrs, we stepped into a skiff and started for the lower end of the lake. I stuck out those pine poles with their ten feet of line, two over the stern and one out each side, and sat on the butts. The flies trailed along on the water and I had room to ply the bamboo astern beyond the annoyances floating there. After fifteen minutes of this business, I asked the skipper if he did not think a fellow who called this trouting, ought to drown and go to--sheol. He laughed; I took to praying again and in my earnestness lost one of the poles. Shortly after I had a rise to the coachman on the bamboo and hooked a trout. Inside of two minutes I could not tell whether the fish was on the hook that struck him, or the other three lines, or whether I had four trout in tow. I found out very soon that there was one trout and four lines snarled. I pulled them all in, took off the trout, untangled the knots and stowed the poles. The man wanted to know whether I had become tired and I told him I had, whereat he proposed to tell everybody that I didn't know how to fish. I said he would oblige me by circulating the report, and that I was mortified only at having tried. With this I sent the coachman astern again and caught another trout; that was all; one trout to the mile. Then I prevailed on him to row me back to the landing at the hotel. Looking down the lake after a little, I saw the Major bending manfully to his oars and coming home in grand style. When he reached us I discovered among his other trophies of the afternoon, two trout, one weighing four, and the other four pounds and a half. "You did not go far enough toward the east shore," said the Major; "there is a place about half a mile above the outlet, on that side, where there is grass growing; I never failed in finding good sport there; it is the home of these big salmon-colored fellows. When you hook them they make for the grass below; then, you know, you have business in hand." Later in the evening, while the Major and I enjoyed our pipes and watched the light of the full moon glimmering on the lake, he wondered what had "come over the Deacon." Our friend had evidently determined to have another view of Manitou Park, and I informed the Major of the Deacon's proposition to me. "Ah! if he were only here!" sighed the Major; "with the lake in front of him, and under this moonlight, or with the shadows of the pines down by the water's edge, and the melody of the miniature breakers to whisper inspirations--eh! old boy, maybe we should lose the Deacon--at least for this trip," he asserted hastily, as if unwilling to commit himself, against experience, and with a knowledge that the sweetest things in life demand a change. "They get tired of us, you know," continued the Major. "You talk as if the Deacon were in love." "The symptoms are marked, my boy--he called the other fellow a 'dude,' you say. It looks bad; I fear he'll spoil the biscuit." CHAPTER IV. THROUGH THE SAGUACHE RANGE. Much of the way from Granite to Leadville lies close to the Arkansas, and with the level of it, the river being but a few feet below the road. The Major and I conclude to occupy the rear platform and encounter an elderly lady on a camp-stool in possession of the car door. She is here evidently with a view to the scenery. As we squeeze past, we are regaled with an odor of rose leaves, suggestive of old-fashioned bureaus with obstinate drawers, catnip tea and grandmotherly tenderness. The velocity of the railroad train is not to be compared to the speed with which the perfume flashes one back through the decades, to the hard times, and I detect a sigh from the Major as he seats himself upon the car step. "What are you sighing for, Major?" With a hasty glance toward the car door: "For the happy times of nearly half a century ago." "And the rose leaves----" "Aha!" with a cheerful smile, "you caught the fragrance too, did you, my boy?" [Illustration: LOOP.] Except for the rumble of the car wheels, silence reigned for five minutes; the Major's meditations were finally interrupted by the appearance of Mr. Dide, camp-stool in hand. The new arrival had just taken his seat on the side next the Major when the old lady exclaimed in a shrill treble: "Land sakes! I believe in my heart that crick is runnin' up hill." Certainly from our level, and running in an opposite direction, the current had that appearance when looked at casually. Mr. Dide turned toward the lady, stared, and addressed her: "Begpahdon! But weally that is not phenomenal." "Eh?" "It is not unusual foah watah to wun up hill." "Where was you born and bred, young man?" "New Yauk." They were both serious, the old lady, with her head thrown a little forward and inclining to one side, gazing at him over her glasses. "What's your business?" "I am a gentleman of lesyah, madam," and for the first time something like a smile hovered about the mouth of Mr. Dide. "Evidently you was brought up that way--you ain't married, surely?" with a manner implying that though the world were full of feminine fools, he had not discovered one foolish enough to enter into the marriage relation with him. Mr. Dide seemed discomfited, but rallied in a moment. "Begpahdon! but you know the earth is not a spheah but a spheaoid, flattened at the poles, and the equatah is a dozen miles hiah than the surface at the poles, and that some of the pwincipal wivahs flow toward the equatah----" "See here, young man, I don't know as I just rightly understand what you're talkin' about, and I don't think you do yourself. Seems to me you must be one of them chaps that believes his grandfather was a monkey, and lookin' at you I don't know as you're to blame. I've raised nine children, six boys and three girls, all married and settled down 'cept Hannah--she's next to the baby, and I don't know as she ever will; and if I'd had one like you, indeed I'm afraid I'd a-flew into the face of natur and set on him when a baby. Where's your mother? you'd better go to her and let her learn you not to talk to an old woman like me as if I was a fool--there now!" "Begpahdon, but----" "Oh, git away with your begp-a-h-don, as you call it----" "But, my deah madam----" "But me no buts, and don't dear madam me. I'll tell my Joshua and he'll shake that glass out of your eye for insultin' his mother, he will." Either the condition of Mr. Dide reflected in the old lady's mind with his eyeglass gone, or his general demoralization under the hands of Joshua, mitigated her indignation; she laughed as she bridled. "Weally, madam," and Mr. Dide arose, held on to the guard rail with one hand while he removed his hat with the other, and with a manner that went far toward making his peace, continued: "I should nevah faugive myself if I went away leaving you with the impwession that I intended an insult--believe me, I am incapable." "Well--don't you try to make anybody believe again that water runs up hill." "I will not, madam, I assauh you." "And don't talk as if you was swearin' every time you say _ma_dam. Why don't you say ma'am like a Christian?" "I will mahm, with plesyah." "That's right. Set down now, I want to see out. I think somethin' might be made out of you with a little trainin', though mebbe it's too late; 'as the twig is bent the tree's inclined,' you know. What do you carry that little umbrill for, that thing you've got in your hand--don't you know the name of it?" "Ah, weally--to wahd off the sun and the wain." "Land sakes--mebbe you think you're sugar and'll melt; and you part your hair in the middle like a gal; I see it when you had your hat off." "Weally--please excuse me, I would like to pass in." "Set right down and don't let me drive you away. I've taken an interest in you; where's your mother?" "Weally, ma--mahm--she has been dead many yeahs--I can just wemember her." "I know'd it, and you've just been left to grow up of your own accord; been to college of course. 'Squire Dodd he let his Jake go off to college, and he staid just one year and come back with one of them glasses and lost it next day; the ole 'squire kep' him home after that, and set him to maulin' rails in the patch down by the hemlock p'int----" For half an hour the dear old soul held the disconsolate gentleman in durance. I dared not look at the Major but kept my eyes fixed on the landscape, without seeing any of it. Reaching Leadville, we searched in vain for the Deacon; his lady friends were also absent, and the Major remarked: "The Deacon evidently is one point ahead in the game. If he does not turn up in the morning we shall be obliged to abandon him." Leadville, that has added so many millions to the wealth of the world, is more dignified than half a dozen years ago; there is less of the revolver and saloon and a little more of the church and the Sabbath-school; no longer a mining camp, but a city with only a tithe of its resources developed. It reposes very quietly this Sabbath morning under the bright sun. Turning from the range at the north with its snow-capped peaks and looking down the almost deserted avenue, I am reminded of another Sunday morning--and it seems only a little while ago--when the same street was wont to be alive with humanity. Coming out of an adjacent saloon a couple of young men faced each other, blear-eyed and dishevelled; they had plainly been making a night of it. Each stood with his hand on his hip, while epithets, the most choice in the camp vocabulary, flew thick and furious. It might be dangerous or not; perhaps not. But the innocent third party running away or seeking shelter at the side might be in peril. I took up a vibrating station, so to speak, immediately in the rear of one of the would-be murderers, and awaited the opening. It did not come, but ended in froth and the appearance of an autocrat with a star on his breast and a club in his hand. He gathered in the bad men and was about to possess himself of the undersigned, when I felt compelled to explain the situation. He complimented me by saying: "Your head's level," and I was suffered to depart. From the carbonate metropolis to the tunnel through the Saguache Range the distance by rail is perhaps seventeen miles, the difference in elevation about thirteen hundred feet. To make this distance one can hardly realize that one is ascending, the grade is so light, winding on and about the mountain sides. Lake Valley, with its crooked band of water here and there widening into silvery pools, and the gold and green of its meadow-like spots, seems to be silently drifting down and away. At the foot lies the city we have just left, and beyond is the Mosquito Range. In following the tortuous line the grand peaks seem to change from one side of you to the other, all the motion being with them. Mount Massive gives you the aptness of its name. You feel its magnificence as you approach, and that it may be the glorious court of blue-eyed Athena at whose vestibule you stand wonderingly, and whence she issues to kiss the petals of the wild flowers and endow the earth with health and beauty. All about you are the pines, with here and there a patch of aspens, their whitened trunks set in banks of larkspur empurpling the sloping mountain sides. Over deep gorges spanned by threadlike trestle-work, you feel awed at the audacity that planned and executed the way into this solitude. High above the utmost peak of the bulky mass, a spot no larger than your hand is poised in ether, or moving, passes between you and the sun, and you think perhaps of what Tennyson says: "He clasps the crag with hooked hands, Close to the sun in lonely lands; Ringed with the azure world he stands: The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls: He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls." Or as Campbell puts it: "And stood at pleasure, 'neath heavens zenith, like A lamp suspended from its azure dome, Then downward, faster than a falling star, He neared the earth, until his shape distinct Was blackly shadowed on the sunny ground." [Illustration: HAGERMAN PASS.] Or older still, as we find it in the Iliad: "So the strong eagle from his airy height, Who marks the swans' or cranes' embodied flight Stoops down impetuous while they light for food And, stooping, darkens with his wings the flood." The Major thought he would give Campbell the benefit of his vote, though the old Greek tells us the bird was a robber in his day as he is in ours. The shriek of the whistle echoes and re-echoes through the impressive silence; it startles you, and you feel as if warned in a weird way by the unseen spirits of these wilds, that you are an intruder. Suddenly you are swept from the bright sunlight, the lofty mountains and modest wild flowers into utter darkness. Your dream of the wise goddess may not be all a dream. You are being hurled, in her anger, from the heavenly heights to the depths of Erebus. Looking out, you see mysterious shadows moving with lights through clouds of smoke, and the lights burn dim and red. There is comfort only in the reflection that mortals have preceded us, and that we are merely in Hagerman Tunnel[1] and not knocking at the gates of sheol. [1] Hagerman Tunnel is two thousand two hundred feet in length and penetrates the Saguache Range at an elevation of eleven thousand five hundred and twenty eight feet above sea level. In the ghostly light of the car lamp I discover the venerable incubus of Mr. Dide, and inquire what she thinks. "Land sakes! it's flyin' in the face of the Almighty. I suppose it's all right, but I kind o' wish I was well out of it and with Joshua. I don't know but I was a little hard on that young man with the umbrill." The Major, overhearing the wail, immediately entered upon the office of comforter, and had but fairly begun when, swish! and we were in the broad daylight once again, on the western slope of the Saguache Range. There is a beautiful picture to the right; a few miles away, down the mountain side, you catch a view of a little lake, bordered by a strip of level ground carpeted in gold; back of this grow the pines, reaching on and up to the summits of their homes, made dark and green; and away beyond, delicately toned by the ever-present gray mist, stands a lofty mountain range. The engineer is kindly and pauses here, that you may have a glimpse of the enchanting retreat, over the memory of which you may dream when you are back in the turmoil, and that will make you sigh for the coming summer. The character of the country through which we are now winding our way down toward the valley is more rugged than on the eastern side. The thickly wooded slopes give place to more frequent piles of granite, massive and gray. We come suddenly upon a little park and find the haymakers busy there, with a team of oxen, a motive power already growing quite novel; a little further over, where the gorge widens, affording a few acres of comparatively level ground, we find the white tents of the campers-out. There is a newness about the cotton habitations that suggests experiment. There are women in sun-bonnets and calico gowns and a ruddiness of complexion no city air can paint. Children with brown, bare legs scratched by the briars, their cheeks tanned to a russet that affords a contrast to the whiteness of their milk teeth. And these jolly little fellows always greet you with a broad smile and a hurrah that is without feebleness or fever. Young men in long rubber boots, helmet hats decorated with nondescript flies and sporting an endless variety of trout rods. All pause to look at the train, an act to which they would rarely condescend at home. But this one, maybe, brings accessions to their ranks from the outside world, or a newspaper, and serves as a link between what we call civilization and the glorious freedom of the wilderness. A little further on, standing upon the bank of a still reach, we encounter a tall "lone fisherman," dressed in overalls, a waistcoat ragged at the back, an old white felt hat with the battered brim thrown up from his face and drooping behind; in his hand a long cane pole which it makes one's arms ache to look at. But he will come in to-night with that canvas bag swung from his shoulder well filled with trout, and prove to you that the fishing is good. Artificial flies are not indispensable with him; grasshoppers when he can get them, bugs, grubs, a bit of beef or a strip from the belly of his first trophy of the day, will serve his purpose; he is "after meat" and gets it. What could he do with a fly and that walking-beam? We reach a cañon whose sides at its mouth are clothed with pines and aspens; the rocks have changed from the granite to red sandstone and great mountains made up of boulders and red clay. The latter have been built here by the waters away back in the untold centuries, and of whose abundance the beautiful crystal stream now brawling over its pebbled bed is but a thread. As the once mighty force has cut its way through all impediments and dwindled century by century to a narrower channel, it has left exposed the great red cliffs; falling still farther, soil has accumulated on the more gentle slopes and has given these Titanic piles broad bases of green interspersed with wild flowers, and the delicate feathers of the clematis here and there twine among the willows. The winds and the rains have bestowed their aid and carved the red mass into castles, buttressed and pinnacled. And so, having traversed one of the grandest gorges in the State and enjoyed a fair view of some of the loftiest mountain peaks and ranges, we slow up in the beautiful valley of the Roaring Fork. The Major declared it was the most delightful ride he had ever taken, and was disposed to enthusiasm. [Illustration: LOCH IVANHOE.] CHAPTER V. JOSHUA. While awaiting the departure of the train from Aspen Junction to Glenwood Springs, one of the dwellers in the neighborhood came up with a string of beautiful trout, the largest of which weighed two pounds. Where did he catch them? "Why, right over yonder in the Roaring Fork; lots of 'em; a fellow got one the other day that weighed three pounds." The manner of the informant defied contradiction or doubt. "Not improbable, my friend. I have landed more than one five-pounder from that same water," said the Major. "See here, mister, if I'd a-know'd you was goin' to chip in I'd a-made it bigger--the last man hain't no show, that's a fact." "Honor bright, my friend; I camped here nineteen years ago this summer; five-pound trout were no rarity then." The Major's tones carried conviction with them, and, mollified, the native admitted he had "heard of bigger ones up the fork." The ride of twenty-five miles to Glenwood Springs completed our trip by rail. The next business was to look up a man with a team and wagon. We found him lingering over some old circus posters on a bill-board down a side street, which he seemed reluctant to abandon. He had been recommended to us as a good cook, possessed of a complete camp outfit, and to whom the whole country was an open book. Mr. Miles was a blue-eyed man of forty, perhaps, with a hint of gray hairs about his temples, broad-shouldered and wearing a pleasant smile. He had been to Trapper's Lake times without number, but he "couldn't get a wagon over the trail." "If you want to go by wagon, the best way is round by Meeker, and up the White River; it's a hundred and thirty miles, mebbe, while it's only about a day's ride by the trail." "By Meeker," was our route; we had come to look at the White River Valley; we might return to Glenwood by the trail. "Meeker it is; then four dollars a day and you find the grub and your own saddle-horses, or ride in the waggin." After assuring us that he would be back in an hour with "everything ready to roll out for Newcastle," where we were to stop the first night, Mr. Miles took his departure, singing in a delightful tenor, "The sweet by-and-by." Two hours elapsed and Mr. Miles had failed to put in his appearance. We set out to hunt him and found his cabin. It was a very neat cabin of logs, hewed to the line, and a rustic porch covered with a wild clematis vine made the place inviting on a warm day. A couple of women in calico gowns and sun-bonnets sat outside picking wild hops from a vine which they had cut off at the roots and brought in bodily. A youngster in slips, regardless of the conventionalities of good society, was standing on his head in the shade of the chimney out of sight of the occupants of the porch. The ground being sandy our approach was unheeded by the women. The hands of one were toil-worn, of the other slender and shapely, but browned by the sun. The Major was about to speak but was forestalled by the imp from the chimney appearing, right side up, with the announcement: "G'amma! here's men!" The old lady's face, from her position, was first to be seen, and revealed Mr. Dide's monitress. The other was that of a young woman of twenty, perhaps. As the child spoke the latter raised her hands to the sun-bonnet, and turning toward us, disclosed a very pleasant face with wonderful brown eyes. "Land sakes! if it ain't you; come in and set down--Hannah, git some cheers." The Major declined, as we were in a hurry, and inquired for Mr. Miles. "That's my Joshua, certain. He's gone to hunt his horses; he's been hired to go out campin' with some tenderfeet, and they are out grazin'; but do set down; this is my daughter Hannah," as the young woman returned with the chairs, which she burnished with her apron, though they were entirely innocent of dust. The Major felt obliged to repeat his excuse; then pleasantly: "I guess we are the tenderfeet----" "Now, you don't say!--Land sakes--but you won't mind an old woman's nonsense, will you? Set down, _do_; Joshua'll be here by-'m-by, he greased his waggin just before he went; don't mind the muss--me and Hannah's been savin' these hops, they're better'n any store truck; they're good for yeast; I never could 'bide salt risin' anyway, and for neuralgie, I've suffered with that some, so's Joshua, seems it's in the altitude, that's what the doctors call it, and to my mind there's nothing like a hop piller. Wish you'd set awhile." The Major assured the good soul that we should be delighted, but really we were anxious to start and had a multitude of trifles to look after. Would she be kind enough to request Joshua not to delay longer than was necessary? and we bowed ourselves away. The sun went down and Joshua did not appear. At ten o'clock we went to bed with the conviction that we should have to abandon the namesake of the potent commander. About the time we were fairly asleep, he came and assured us, through the door, that he would "be on hand at eight o'clock, sure, with everything ready." That the horses had "strayed and were not to be found until after dark." We were prompt at the appointed time and waited until nine. The Major was again about to give him up, when he came around with a pair of stout-looking mares and an empty lumber wagon, and announced that he must "go and hunt up an extra spring seat," as we had concluded not to take saddle-horses. He came back in about half an hour, with a seat lying in the wagon, and said he had "a mind" to go after his bedding. The Major suggested that he hurry. "Oh, I'll be round, you bet." At ten o'clock he returned with a roll of blankets and we inquired after his camp outfit. "By the great horn spoon--if I didn't forget all about it; just hold on a minute," and he drove off again. In the course of another half hour he returned with a frying-pan and a broken skillet. We inquired for the plates, cups, knives and other articles supposed to be convenient in camp, including the coffee-pot. "Well, I lent my coffee-pot to a feller who's gone prospectin' and I don't think he'll be back inside of a week--you've got some canned beans and such like--we can use the cans for coffee, and have a new one every day, and I'm out of plates and cups just now, though if I'd a-knowed it I might 'a borrowed some of Jake." The Major complimented him on this evidence of cleanliness and economy, and then went off and purchased the necessary tinware and cutlery. Joshua packed everything snugly and undertook to adjust the borrowed wagon seat. It was found to be too short. "Well, I swan! but I'll git a seat if I have to steal it--just hold on a minute." "I think, Mr. Miles," said the Major, "as it is near noon, you'd better drive home and get your dinner and the seat, and call for us in an hour." "All right, I'll be round on time--hannup, Woman, get on, Baby--we're not goin' to camp here." "'There's a land that is fairer than day, And by faith we can see it afar, For the Father waits over the way, To prepare us a dwelling place thar, In the sweet by-and-by.'" "That man and his song match well," said the Major, as Joshua disappeared around the corner and the refrain died away, "'my dukedom to a beggarly denier' he does not get back until too late in the day to start. I wonder if he is not trying to make an extra day in his count?" At two o'clock he returned, but had not succeeded in obtaining a seat. He stood before the Major with eyes cast down and his forefinger on his chin, evidently in deep communion with himself. "I wonder, now, where I can get a seat--lemme see--Bowers' got a waggin same as mine, but he started yesterday with a load to Newcastle. Ben Soggs-no! his is broke. Lemme see--Pat McGinnis--no, he's usin' his every day----" "Suppose you buy one--is there not a wagon shop in the city?" said the Major. "Well, I swan! I hadn't thought of that--just hold on a minute." In the course of half an hour he returned with the announcement that he had found a seat, but the man wanted five dollars and a half, "second hand, and that's a dollar'n a half more'n it's worth, and----." "Well, get it, we'll stand the dollar and a half." "All right--just hold on a minute." It was three o'clock in the afternoon when we started. We were blessed with several friends in Glenwood; they manifested much interest in our preparations for departure, and, as they had a number of resident acquaintances, the sidewalk was well peopled by the time we climbed into the wagon. Looking over that sea of faces, as I remember it now, every one was lighted up with a broad smile, which resolved itself into a laugh, with a hearty good-by and wishes for luck, together with the request that we "leave some of the game on the White," and would "not kill it all." We smiled in return, and I felt that I should be happy if Mr. Miles' shoulders were not so broad and I had his head in chancery. "Where do you propose camping to-night, Mr. Miles?" inquired the Major as we reached the bridge across the Grand River. "Lemme see--it's fifteen miles to Newcastle, pretty good road, we can make that in three hours with the load we've got; then it's about fourteen miles to Rifle Creek, but there's muskeeters. We might stop at Ferguson's, that's about ten miles beyond Newcastle; that's a good place." "But it will be quite dark by that time." "Yes, that's a fact, it will be quite dark by that time." "Well, it is not very pleasant to make camp in the dark." "No, that's a fact; you're right about that--'tain't pleasant to make camp in the dark." "What will you do?" "Lemme see--we was goin' to stop at Newcastle, wasn't we? that's a good place." "To camp, do you mean?" "Yes, good place to camp, or there's a good hotel--we might stop at the hotel over night and take a fresh start in the mornin'." "How far is it from Newcastle to Meeker?" "Fifty-five miles,--hannup, Woman! we won't camp here!" "That's rather a long drive for one day?" "You're right, it is--but we can make it, with the load we've got--Baby! come out o' that!" "It would be better not to try." "You're right--we might camp at Morgan's, t'other side of the Divide, if you want to, that's more'n half way." "Very well, we'll make Newcastle to-night, Morgan's to-morrow night, and reach Meeker the next day--say at what hour?" [Illustration: QUEEN OF THE CA�ON.] "Oh, anywhere before dark, easy." "Well, we'll see if you can make it." "Oh, I'll make it, or break a trace!" The "pretty good road" between Glenwood and Newcastle had recently been traversed by a herd of cattle and seemed the paradise of loose stones. The Grand was muddy, as it frequently is, from the mining on the Blue River and a recent storm. But there is enough beauty in the scenery to compensate one for the roughness of the road, which Joshua seemed to make more rugged by hitting all the rocks in the way. When we reached Newcastle, Joshua drove up to the hotel and the landlord put in an appearance. "Why do you stop here, Mr. Miles?" inquired the Major. "This is a good place to stop, and I thought you said you'd stop here to-night and take a fresh start in the mornin'?" "We purpose to have an outing, Mr. Miles, and although the hotel may be excellent, we will go into camp just below here on Elk Creek." There was a decisiveness about the Major's tones not to be misunderstood. Mr. Miles turned around to get a better view. "All right, just as you say--hannup, Woman! Baby!" He kept silent until we reached the creek, when I made a remark about its beauty, then Joshua broke out: "Fresh from the throne of glory Bright in its crystal stream." At the first verse the sternness vanished from the Major's face; he could not resist the inclination to laugh; the laugh was contagious; Joshua turned in his seat with a look of inquiry, and halting in his song, joined us. "How d'you know the name of the creek, Major?" "I have been here before, Mr. Miles." "Oh! How long you lived in this country, Major?" "Thirty years, next spring." "No? Then you're a mossback sure enough---- 'Tell me the old, old story, Of unseen things above'". "Are you a member of the church, Mr. Miles?" "Why, I ain't never just professed, exactly--what makes you ask that?" "Your familiarity with the Gospel hymns." "Mebbe you don't like 'em----" "Quite the contrary, Mr. Miles--I not only like them, but your singing." "Oh, give us a rest, Major--you can't blame me for takin' you for tenderfeet with them knee-breeches." "What did you pay for this wagon-seat, Mr. Miles?" "Four dollars,--honest Injun." "I think we understand each other, Mr. Miles?" "George Washington and his hatchet--I've felt for some time's if I wanted to kick myself for bein' a fool." The footing being established, Joshua drew up in a grassy spot near some scrub oaks. "Just rest easy, gentlemen, till I git this team unhitched, and I'll look after the supper, and put up the tent while you're eatin' it." "We have only a fly, and will not need that to night." "That's an offset to the knee-breeches; if I'd only knowed it! You don't care for a tent, even? 'The proper study of mankind is man'". I suggested to the Major that he try the creek,--perhaps he could get a mess of trout for breakfast. He adopted the suggestion, and when we called him, half an hour afterward, he came with five good-sized trout. Not contented with his success, after supper he went to the mouth of the creek and hooked a pound-and-a-half fish, which he brought in with much gratification. Joshua seemed endowed with new life; he was out of bed next morning and had breakfast prepared before we were fairly awake; by seven o'clock we were on the road. The coach on its way to Meeker passed us shortly after we had started, and would reach its destination by five o'clock. Joshua admitted that he had more than once made the trip in one day from Glenwood with a light wagon and a good team. The country between Newcastle and Rifle Creek is blessed with spacious mesas covered with black sage brush. Here and there these acres are under ditch and cultivation, attesting that the uninviting uplands, with the aid of water, can be converted into beautiful farms. We crossed Rifle Creek, up and over a broad mesa to Dry Rifle, and found ourselves in a neighborhood by no means attractive. Sage brush, cactus and greasewood, inhabited by magpies and an occasional raven, do not tend to inspire one with pleasant fancies. The soil is adobe, the gulch contracted and hot, and water to be thought of only; the sage brush had assumed dignity and grown into trees. But the arroyo soon widened and gave us a view of pleasantly wooded low hills, and a cool breeze greeted us. The road was good, and we trundled along in cheerfulness, Joshua aiding at intervals with a lively air from the Gospel Collection, or stimulating us with the assurance that game was plenty "back among them hills." We took a lunch about noon but found the water warm and slightly impregnated with alkali; at Morgan's, where we went into early camp, the water was better. After crossing the Divide, and before we reached our camping-place, the country had improved decidedly; the grass was fresher and more abundant, and the wild flowers added to the attraction of the slope along which we were travelling; the distant hills were bountifully dotted with aspen groves and openings--suggestive to one accustomed to the haunts of deer. Gaps in the hills immediately skirting our way would reveal small parks, beautifully green, and the entrance to them usually guarded by picturesque rocks. In one of these projections a dromedary was conspicuously outlined, with its head carried to the life. In another a hippopotamus was wallowing up from a sandstone bed. In another the form of a woman half reclining in a high-backed chair, while immediately in front was a figure in an attitude of supplication. The afternoon sun shining fairly upon this group gave us a good view of the features in profile; other rocks immediately in front and to the right of the principal figure, were readily constructed into groups bearing a human resemblance, and the Major at once gave the place the name of the Queen's Court. Many have passed this way, no doubt, and have seen a medley of rocks, while others may have enjoyed with us the distinction of an audience with royalty. Balancing Rock, however, cannot escape the attention of the most indifferent. We finally caught a glimpse of a bit of the White River Valley through the gorge toward which we were moving: a beautiful stretch of meadow-like land reaching up to timber-clothed mountains. The view continued to expand until we arrived at the border of the stream. The way wound among willows and mountain beech, with a few scrub oaks, now and then an alder bush, and what Joshua termed haw bushes, bringing us suddenly to the margin of the river. The water was perfectly clear and cold, with the brush growing close down to the edges of the banks; just above the ford was a pool in which the Major was as sure there were trout as that the sun shone. It did seem, indeed, that the fish must find delightful habitation in every foot of water in sight. We crossed and made camp, and it was not long before the Major verified his prediction. From that same pool, within a hundred feet of the ford where people were crossing nearly every hour of the day, he brought in two trout that more than sufficed for our supper. "The stream is just alive with them, my boy--you will have trouting such as you never had before." [Illustration: ON THE FRYING PAN.] CHAPTER VI. ON WHITE RIVER. Two miles, about, below our camp is that part of the valley where the Ute Indian Agency was situated a few years ago. Here it was that the pot-bellied potentate Colorow and his horde of tatterdemalions cruelly murdered agent Meeker, captured and carried away women and children, and committed other unprovoked atrocities--receiving, as an inducement for further outrages, additional government subsidies and comfort. The soil which these "red brothers" refused to cultivate now glitters in a garb of golden grain; they killed their best guide and friend, who never had for them other than kind words and fatherly admonitions, because it required work to change the product from sage brush to wheat. If a man should undertake to harness an adult grizzly to a plough the world would consider him weak and fail to mourn his death, though he would be on a par with the governmental "policy" touching the Indian. A century of failure should, it would seem, convince even a nation that there were defective cogs in its policy wheel. But the Major suggests that I drop the subject, unless I desire to write a volume on a disease that I cannot cure. He says it is like any other botch, spoiled in the beginning of its existence, and it would be impossible now "to lick into shape." "It is only a matter of time when our 'red brother' will cease to be, and our disgrace will culminate at his final departure. We are out for fish and our own reformation only." Now that we are on the stream that we started in search of, there is no occasion to hurry. We have with us all the necessary accessories to comfortable housekeeping; our time is our own, and we enjoy a solid independence of landlords, railroads or stage-coaches. A house would be an incumbrance and finger-bowls as superfluous as a piano. Do you know what it is to be free, absolutely oblivious to care, past or prospective; with no apprehension touching the condition of your linen, the set of your necktie or the volume of your trousers at the knees? If not, go camping. The destitution of polish on your shoes and the holes in your hat become luxurious, as you view the one through the other while you lie on your back in the shade and pull down the "old felt" to screen your eyes from the brilliancy of the blue roof under which you are loafing. Each month thus invested will add six months to each year; toward the end of your time you will realize this, and find your joints supple to a ripe old age. The next morning at breakfast the Major requested me to do the fishing for the day's supply; he desired to go prospecting: "You have not wet a line since we started; you had an opportunity at Elk Creek and here, also, last night. I thought you were fond of angling?" "So I am, but catching fish does not constitute my view of angling; it is only one of the pleasures that awaits in the vestibule of the temple. A beautiful attendant merely who induces us into the inner sanctuary." "We'll shake hands on that, my boy," exclaimed the Major. Joshua, who ate with us at our solicitation, stopped his cup of coffee half way to his mouth and stared at me. "I'll get a gunny-sack full, if you want 'em, Major,--can do it in half a day," said Joshua, sipping his coffee. "We would rather you did nothing of the sort, Mr. Miles," and the Major's manner was somewhat testy; "we could make no use of them--the time of plenty is the time to save--you've heard that before, no doubt, or something like it?" "Oh, yes, I've heard mother say that many a time." "I thought so--a mother's advice is always good, and you can apply it to fish and other game." "All right, just as you say." The Major started off to the hills with his Winchester. Joshua concluded he would stay around camp and "square things up." One of the horses had stepped on the new coffee-mill and ruined it, and he must look out for another. The principal feature of the new coffee-mill was a piece of clean board about a foot square; the other part of the complication consisted of a tin can. He placed the coffee on the board and rolled it fine with the can: the board, being the important part, in the absence of carpenter shops and sawmills, was the portion fractured, of course. I put my rod together and adjusted the reel. The leader and flies had been in soak for an hour and were in good condition; I had selected a coachman, a red-bodied gray hackle and a brown cofflin to test in prolific water a theory of mine. The White River in the fifty or more miles we experimented is the ideal of a trout stream. From our camping-place for thirty and odd miles to the cañon of the South Fork is a series of riffles, deep swirls under bushy banks, pools and comparatively still reaches. The willows and other shrubs are so thick that the opportunity for casting from the shore is happily exceptional. There is no satisfactory alternative but to pursue the best method. The stones are clean beyond those in any stream which I ever waded, and the prospect of a wetting from smooth rubber boots and rocks a remote possibility. To avoid the places too deep to wade, crossing and recrossing the riffles becomes a necessity; these opportunities seem to lie at such convenient and appropriate distances that admiration for the skill of the Designer is irresistible; one takes to the dancing crystal with a love for it, and a reverence for its Presiding Genius. There is a feeling of exultation as one enters and stands solitary in mid-stream and looks down the flashing current; the surging of the water, as it takes his limbs into its cool embrace, whispers a greeting of welcome; hid by the growth upon either side one feels no longer alone, the water-sprites are with him in loving communion and sympathy. So standing and happily surrounded, I commissioned the gray hackle, at the end of my leader, to ascertain what might be lurking in the shade of the opposite bank, where the current was swift and the water four feet deep, at least. It was taken at once, and inside of five minutes I had a trout of a pound's weight safe in the landing-net. As soon as possible after hooking him, I had drawn away from his hiding-place and coaxed him into shallower and quieter water, so that his neighbors, if he had any, might not be disturbed. After placing him in the creel, I changed the hackle for the coachman and it was taken as readily, the fish being a mate to the first. A third cast resulted in a failure, a fourth brought a rise, a little more line and at the fifth the fly alighted in the acceptable spot, and was taken by a still larger fish. Changing the coachman for the cofflin, I waded down, close under the bushes of the right bank, crossed a riffle and dropped the fly just where the water slowed up a little, at the foot. It had scarcely touched the surface when I saw the gaping jaws of an apparent leviathan close upon it; at the same instant I struck and the bamboo bent to its work. A leap clear from the water advised me that I had one of the lighter-colored variety and consequently more of a fight on my hands. Five minutes, however, at a guess, sufficed to bring him into the net. He weighed, an hour afterward by my pocket scales, a scant one and three quarter pounds. I lengthened the line a little and brought out another of nearly a pound. If the trout were to keep up to these weights, for only a little while, there would be waste in camp, and I wished for a few smaller. But they did not come to me; either of the next three would weigh three-fourths of a pound, and going back to the slight opening in the brush, through which I entered, I climbed out and returned to camp. Joshua received the creel and examined its contents. "You and the Major seem to have the same notions; I thought you would fill up that basket and string a lot on a willer." "There are quite eight pounds,--sufficient for two meals." "Yes, I know, but how do you manage to stop? When the fish bite that way I want to catch 'em." Thereupon I read a homily to Joshua on the art of angling, at the conclusion of which he said he understood what I had told the Major in the morning about the "inner sanctuary." [Illustration: SILVERY CASCADE.] "That is, I have an idea about it--mebbe I'll try it some day; but this is such a dog-on hard world to get along in and buy shoes for the baby! I'm afraid I can't get into your way--a fellow can't live on scenery, you know, and 'tain't easy for old dogs to learn new tricks. But I'll try and not make a trout hog of myself, as you call it, anyway--I think I can manage that much." He went off with my fish and creel toward the river, singing, and I flattered myself on having made a partial convert. Just before noon the Major returned, warm and tired, and sought solace of his pipe. He brought with him two willow grouse with their heads shot off. He had found a coal mine in the bluffs above us, near the town, and had discovered other flattering indications of future wealth for those inclined to pick them up. He had also started two deer, "within fifty yards," during his tramp. "Where are they?" inquired Joshua. "Over in those hills, I presume," answered the Major, with a nod toward the supposed locality. "Why! didn't you kill nary one?" "Nary one." "Well, I swan--what's the good of carrying a rifle?" "What's the good of killing what you don't need?" "Gentlemen, excuse me, I don't mean any offence, but I'm durned if you ain't the queerest pair of cranks in the huntin' and fishin' way, I ever see. I don't know, but mebbe you're right about it, still I can't get it through my hair. Of course, I don't believe in wastin' meat, _but_, I'd a--_had_ to shot them deer." "Mr. Miles, you ought to live where there is one deer to a township and a trout to a mile of water--you'd change your mind and want to hang the man who talked as you do." "How'll you have the grouse cooked, Major--stewed or fried?" "Either way." Joshua served them up to us roasted, and they were delicious. Loitering by the road later in the afternoon I saw the coach on the opposite side of the river, before it came down into the bottom-land. There was a passenger on the box with an umbrella. I waited and recognized Mr. Dide, who had added a fishing-rod to his luggage. "Weally!--dwivah, stop a moment. I am delighted to see you; do you live in the vicinity?" I informed him that the camp was just below, and we should be pleased to have him call. "Chawming--thanks; I shall be delighted to drop in." He did so, just before supper, very much to the astonishment of Joshua and the surprise of the Major. I had forgotten to apprise my friend of the new arrival and of the invitation I had extended. I also confessed a little wonder to myself at the gentleman's prompt fulfilment of his promise, but was none the less gratified. "I have heard" (it is impossible to spell the word as he pronounced it) "of Meekah, you know, and the twouting, and thought it would be quite novel to wun ovah. The wide was not vewy inviting, but this is chawming--think so?" Mr. Dide was so truly delighted with the novelty of his experience, and so full of anxiety to make it known, that he was permitted to run on without interruption. Hitherto he had seemed reticent, now he was overflowing in the opposite direction. "I've nevah twouted, you know, but I shall twy. I bought a pole and some widiculous-looking flies." The Major suggested that I knew something about the sport, and would, no doubt, assist him in gratifying his ambition. Of course I would, and did. My office of mentor was not devoid of pleasant incidents. He was to call in the morning, with his tackle, and did so immediately after breakfast. He was not prepared to wade, and I borrowed the Major's boots without leave. The rod was a cheap specimen of ash and lancewood, and the dealer had been fair with him in the matter of line, leaders and flies. The Major will bring down the scales at two hundred, Mr. Dide at one hundred and twenty-five pounds, at a guess; in the Major's boots Mr. Dide, I must confess, appeared at a disadvantage. I adjusted his tackle, even to the winding of the line on the little brass reel above the grip, and led the way to the scene of my own recent exploits. Mr. Dide, upon entering the water, affirmed that it was cold; there was no gainsaying his assertion. He expressed a doubt of his ability to keep his feet, and I endeavored to assist him. He tossed his fly in the direction I suggested, allowed the point of the rod to drop and the fly floated at the edge of the swirl. I admonished him to hold his rod up; at the same instant a trout hooked himself, the little reel spun round and Mr. Dide exclaimed in great exultation: "I have got him! I have got him!" "But you will not keep him long, Mr. Dide, if you do not check the line." "Aw--but I cawn't, you know--oblige me!" and he held out his umbrella toward me. The trout in the meantime was having his own way; the line was fast disappearing from the reel; suddenly it slacked, his troutship was returning, and rapidly. I supported Mr. Dide by seizing the back of his collar with one hand and relieved him of the umbrella, directing him to reel in the line. The fish was without doubt fatally hooked. Mr. Dide, laboring at the crank with a vigor that would have given a hundred revolutions a second to an ordinary grindstone, succeeded in retrieving the slack. As he did so the fish gave a leap half out of the water, and a struggle that brought the butt of the rod in contact with the fisherman's stomach. Something snapped--it was the tip. Still the hook held, the line could be trusted; if the leader and snell proved true the fish might yet be saved. I directed Mr. Dide to give no more line, but simply to hold the remains of his rod firmly and to stand still, if he could. He endeavored to follow instructions, and I took up my station a little lower down and to one side in shallower water, watching the brave exertions of the quarry to free itself. I bethought me that the umbrella, in the absence of my landing-net, might be put to profitable use. As the fish came my way I suddenly scooped him up from behind, together with an umbrella nearly full of water; the trout went over the edge some time before I could empty the novel device. "That's the most extwaawdinawy pwoceeding I evah witnessed!" exclaimed Mr. Dide. Certainly it was beyond anything in my own experience. I concluded that the only way to save the fish was to get to the bank. Mr. Dide declined my offer to take his rod, for which I commended him, but he was doubtful of his ability to stem the current and manage his tackle without my assistance, so I led him ashore and he dragged the trout. Seizing my opportunity, when the nearly exhausted victim was quiet, I lifted him out by the leader. He had hooked himself through the tongue, and so deeply that, notwithstanding his struggles, the wound was but little enlarged, and the use of a knife was required to release him. Mr. Dide was so much delighted at his success that the damage to his rod was a matter of little importance. He would have continued to fish with the remains of it, but that I convinced him of the impossibility of casting a fly without a tip. He returned to camp and soon came back with the extra one. I concluded to prospect for openings in the brush. Having found one with a promising little eddy below it, I indicated the best place, in my judgment, at which the fly should be delivered. Mr. Dide undertook the feat and the fly caught in the willows behind him. I released it and the next effort resulted in a good hold upon the umbrella, which the gentleman insisted upon keeping over his head. I was constrained to advise him that the umbrella would better be put aside; he surrendered it to me hesitatingly, as if he might be at a loss without it. He splashed the fly into the water within a rod of the place I had suggested, but that was of no importance; a trout took it in a moment and in the next was flying high in air and eventually became entangled in the brush. I wondered whether first efforts were ordinarily attended with the results I had witnessed, or whether my _protégé_ were specially skilled in awkwardness. After he had placed me and my apparel in jeopardy several times I took the rod and endeavored to show him how to make a cast; then I did not blame him so much. But he felt encouraged, and I betook myself to camp, leaving him to work out his own salvation. He came back before noon with the two trout; his rod was broken again and he was very wet, having evidently been up to his neck in water. [Illustration: SEVEN CASTLES.] CHAPTER VII. ON THE SOUTH FORK. The particulars of the disaster to Mr. Dide and what led up to it were brief: "I hooked a vewy big twout--he would have weighed ten pounds----" "No, no, Mr. Dide----" interrupted the Major. "Pon honah!" "The speed with which you have become proficient as a fisherman is something marvellous, Mr. Dide. Ten-pounders in this water are not within the memory of the oldest inhabitant." "Weally, he was twice as big as the one we hooked this mawning----" "Then he must have weighed not quite three pounds, Mr. Dide. The only sure way is to catch your fish and weigh him on the scales." "Major! Major! think of the penalty provided against that sort of wit." "It was not so intended, I assure you, my boy." "But, weally, he must have weighed moah than thwee pounds, Majah, he was so big and he smashed the pole, you know! I hooked him, and he stwuggled violently for a gweat while, and when I sought to pull him out the pole bwoke; he lay on the watah and I sought to secuah him by going in myself and catching him in my hands; it was vewy cold, 'pon honah; he moved away and I followed him into a hole, but he eluded me." "My dear sir, you're quite as intrepid as Kit North. You will make an angler, certainly." "Thanks--vewy much delighted, I assuah you. I have been devising another method of casting the fly, majah. I find it vewy difficult, and it makes my ahms ache. I think I will take a piece of aldah and make a pop-gun and pop the fly out. Did you evah twy it?" "I never did; with the pop-gun and umbrella you will revolutionize the science of angling." "No? weally? But the umbwella was not my device, you know," Mr. Dide modestly protested. "Still, you made the project possible." "Think so?" "Do you shoot, Mr. Dide?" "Aw, a little. I have pwacticed some with a Winchestah, at a tawget, you know." The Major deemed it advisable to admonish the gentleman that it would be well for him to seek a change of clothing, or at least to wring out his garments and hang them on the bushes to dry. The latter part of the suggestion was rejected as impossible--"somebody might come, you know"--notwithstanding the Major offered him the use of a rubber coat during the emergency. Mr. Dide therefore trudged off toward the town, leaving an impression, to one ignorant of the cause, that a miniature sprinkler had just passed over the road. After his departure I informed the Major that the gentleman had intimated a desire to accompany us during the remainder of our trip. "If you can stand it, I can, my boy." We broke camp and passed through Meeker early the following morning. The town--the site of the old military post--is pleasantly situated on a level place in the valley, skirted on one side by low hills and on the other by the river, from which rises a steep bluff; on the summit of this stands the remains of an adobe signal station, profiled against the background of sky. There is a square in the town, and surrounding it the adobe buildings erected by the government, but now utilized by the peaceful citizens as dwellings or stores. Indians are not presumed capable of bombs, mortars or big guns, and, of course, in selecting a military post with a view to their methods and capabilities a valley with water is better than a hill-top without. The country is rich with ripening grain, and every available acre is either being prepared for cultivation or is actually under tillage. The mountains that border all this valley are low and many covered with timber to their summits. Between the gaps of the closer hills one may discover glades opulent in pasturage. Near noon we lunched at an excellent spring a little way from the forks of the river. We were overtaken here by Mr. Dide on horseback, for whom we had left, at the hotel, an invitation to join us. He had provided himself with a new rod and a pair of blankets. What the settlers thought of a man on horseback, with a glass in his eye and an umbrella over his head, riding through the country, has not yet transpired. He had experienced some difficulty at the start; the horse, objecting to the extraordinary equipment of the rider, had endeavored to throw him off, but failing in that, ran away. The dogs also had added to his discomfiture by making frequent sorties, threatening his legs and vociferously assailing the heels of his steed. Mr. Dide had, however, survived all impediments and came up smiling. The valley of the South Fork is somewhat narrower than that of the main river through which we had come. The brush marks the course of the stream on the left, and beyond it the mountains rise gradually for perhaps two thousand feet, while to the right they reach about the same altitude. The aspen groves are abundant, their lighter green foliage being interspersed with the darker hue of the pines, clothing the sloping hillsides from the base to the summit. The road is smooth and we can trot the horses readily. At times we are close to the river and again half a mile away. Coming to a great clump of bushes on the left, a family of willow grouse was flushed from the grass near the road-side; there were six in the flock, and the major potted four of the young ones, they having alighted in the adjacent trees. We had gathered up the birds and gone but a little way when Joshua cried out excitedly: "Look at her! look at her! right ahead there, in the road. Where's the rifle--gimme the rifle!" Not two hundred feet from us stood a magnificent doe, broadside on, and an easy shot for the veriest tyro that ever pulled trigger. Instead of bringing the rifle to bear or giving it to Mr. Miles, the Major waved his hat and shouted. The beauty ceased staring at us and bounded away gracefully toward the aspens on the right. "What'n thunder!--Major! you do beat all, that's a fact. Did anybody ever see such a pretty shot!" exclaimed Joshua regretfully and with an expression of disgust. "Mr. Miles, you should understand, as well as the rest of us, that it is against the law to kill does at this time; it is the close season, and I have no doubt she has a suckling fawn hid not a hundred yards away. We'll have no law-breaking; if we need venison we will take one with horns, not kill the mother and leave the babies to starve. Think of it, man; think of the cruelty of it!" "Hannup, Woman! ga'lang, Baby," was the only response from Joshua. It came with vigor; disgust pervaded his entire system. We passed the clump of willows, when Mr. Dide, who was trotting along behind, exclaimed: "Aw, Majah! look theah." Turning, we saw a buck that had just made its way out of the cover, running swiftly across the road and making for the mountain side. Joshua brought down his whip upon the horses with his usual admonition to them, but given in a tone that indicated a determination to eschew venison or even the thought of it. The Major smiled with the satisfaction of a man who realizes having made an impression. Reaching the foot of a slight rise the horses were permitted to slacken their pace, and silence reigning at the time, Joshua broke out with one of his familiar hymns: "Almost persuaded." "I would rather you were fully persuaded, Mr. Miles," said the Major when the singer had concluded the first stanza. "All right--here she goes." Joshua seemed to rise to his best effort, and was unexpectedly joined by Mr. Dide in an excellent bass. "Well!" said the Major, as the song was concluded, "our lines seem to have fallen in pleasant places, sure enough. I was not aware of the hymn, however." "If all the hunters that come over here lived up to your way, Major, we'd have to kill the deer in self-defence." "You believe, however, that my way is the right way, don't you?" "Yes, I do--hannup, Woman." Later in the afternoon we came to what is known as the "Still Water." A subsequent examination of this place in the stream impressed me as being caused by the peculiar formation of the bed-rock. An idea of it may be imparted by taking a dozen shingles and laying them on a level, as you would upon a roof, with the butts lapping a couple of inches only. Consider this the bed of a river with the water flowing over it from the thin end of the shingles, the butts being from three or four feet to ten in thickness. At each butt, or where the rock breaks abruptly, there is a scarcely perceptible motion of the water; immediately beneath is a deep hole, growing shallower as the next butt is reached; then follows another hole; there are several miles of this water in which the current is barely noticeable; the banks are four and five feet from the surface, which is as smooth as glass. The willows grow thickly on both sides of the stream, with breaks at intervals that give one access to it. Joshua, who was familiar with the vicinity, pronounced Still Water "a dandy place to fish," but we did not stop, except to permit the Major to possess himself of two more grouse, the birds being abundant. We made camp before dark near the mouth of the cañon. Immediately opposite is a perpendicular bluff of rocks two hundred feet high, or more; slight projections here and there in the face of it serve as footholds for a few hardy bushes, a cluster of wild flowers, or a matted vine; nearer the summit are dwarfed pines. The river sweeps along the foot of this wall; distilled from its near mountain springs, it is as clear as crystal, and, dashing from the shadows of the adjacent cañon, is, as Mr. Dide expresses it, "_vewy_ cold." On the side of the river where our camp lies the valley extends very gradually up and back to the neighboring hills. The grass is bountiful and rich, and we have a cluster of young pines under which we may lounge in the heat of the day. Looking down the course of the river the valley becomes wider, and we have an open view of mountains and green slopes for miles. At our first night's camp in this secluded spot, when the fire has burned low and casts fitful shadows against the opposite cliff, we find ourselves with our feet due north as we lie in our blankets. There is a peculiar charm in the bed of fragrant twigs, with nothing to shut off our vision of the fretted roof. We may gaze out of our shadowy environment into the faces of the bright gems and hold hallowed communion with their mysteries. The liquid voices of the Naiads in their revels sweep gleefully toward me and then away again in softest cadence. The north star and the Dipper grow bright, then indistinct, then revive and grow dim again, as the gentle sprites brush my eyelids tenderly with their downy wings and soothe me into sweet forgetfulness. Some time in the night I awoke; the Dipper had moved, or rather we had moved, and the constellation was no longer in sight. The silence was broken only by the heavy breathing of my nearest companion, the Major, and the hymn from the river. As its notes rose and fell its somnolent influence took me gently in charge again. The "to-hoo--to-hoo" of an owl interrupted the spell for a moment; I saw him in my mind's eye solemnly staring into the darkness, and I was gone before he had concluded the second call. When I awoke again it was daylight and I raised on my elbow to take in my fellows. Joshua lay rolled in his blankets under the cluster of pines. Mr. Dide looked thin and singular without his eyeglass. His nose had reached the peeling stage under the influence of the sun, and was decorated with ragged bits of skin, as if it had been caught in a shower of tattered tissue-paper. The Major, with his hat tied over his head, bore marks of the out-door life and slept like a child. I turned out quietly, as the sun crept over the hills, slanting its glad rays against the opposite cliff, and when they touched the swirling water at its foot, I put my rod together, with a coachman on the end of the leader, and walked a dozen paces to a little gravel bar. I had never before tried the denizens of our mountain streams at so early an hour, and was doubtful of securing anything for breakfast. I sent the coachman over into the swirl and hooked a trout at once; landing him safely, I tried for the second and secured him. Just below me a few rods the river made an abrupt bend, and a great boulder there had accumulated a quantity of drift, under which was a promising pool. I tried the pool with flattering success, landing three fish, either of which would weigh half a pound. Another cast, a little nearer a log that constituted the main support of the rubbish, and a beautiful salmon-tinted trout rolled up to the fly and was caught. The water was swift, and he caused me some uneasiness by making directly for his lurking-place; if he ever reached the snags that had heretofore afforded him shelter, or the line should foul in the vibrating branches of some drift that swung in mid-stream between us, he was no longer mine. To keep him from his hiding-place I took the risk of refusing him line, merely dropping the point of the rod a little in his more violent struggles; to avoid the nearer brush I went into the water and succeeded in getting below that difficulty. I realized Mr. Dide's conclusion of the temperature, and felt that his adverb was altogether inadequate--a dead failure, in fact; it demanded adjectives in quantity and force. The water reached my knees, and I feared if it rose any higher I should be compelled to take to the bank; rubber boots afford some protection in such emergencies and temper the chill. I had only a light pair of old shoes devoted to camp use in dry weather. Having attained an advantageous position, I succeeded in coaxing his troutship completely away from danger into slower water, and learning that he was securely fastened, I had no apprehension of the result. I allowed him to fight until he was quite exhausted, and then drew him up to and upon the small bar at the edge of which I had been standing. I must weigh him, surely, then and there; and by the pocket scales he brings down the indicator to two pounds and two ounces, and, for "a red feller," he had offered more than ordinary resistance. [Illustration: LAKE GEORGE.] There was an abundance for breakfast, and twenty minutes had sufficed to cover the time from my leaving the camp. I gathered up my spoils, strung them on a willow twig and returned. The sleepers had not changed their attitudes, and I gave them the benefit of a morning bell after the manner of an Indian war-whoop. The Major merely opened his eyes, Mr. Dide was startled, and Joshua took in the situation calmly. "Arise, ye sluggards, and see the result of twenty-minutes' work on the South Fork of the White!" "I'll discount that before noon," said the major, throwing off his blankets. While the Major and Mr. Dide made their way to the water's edge with soap and towel, Joshua appealed to me confidentially. He wanted to know why the Major had brought "that Winchester." I suggested that he might have intended it for bear. "But see here, now, can't you persuade him to kill a deer, or to let me have the rifle? I see that he keeps the ca'tridges fastened up in that box of his, or stowed in his pockets." Plainly the Major and Joshua understood each other upon the question of game, but I consoled him by agreeing to comply with his wishes. CHAPTER VIII. SPORT. Within two miles of us was a ranch, where we knew there were several men. While discussing breakfast, I prefaced my request to the Major by intimating these facts, and hinting that a taste of venison would serve as a change from trout and grouse. The Major looked at me and then at Joshua, who was busy over the fire, but attentive. "Those men will help us dispose of a deer, if you get one." "Very likely, if they haven't got a supply on hand." "Suppose you inquire." "Well, I'll think of it," looking again in Joshua's direction. "If you'll just leave some of them ca'tridges where I can lay hands on 'em, I'll get some venison," Joshua broke in, giving a trout in the frying-pan an extra turn and pressing the centre down with his knife. "No doubt," and the Major's visage relaxed into a smile. "You bet I will. I can't see the use of havin' deer runnin' all over and never a shot fired; there's a difference between supplyin' your wants and wastin'." When the meal was concluded the Major shouldered his rifle and sauntered off toward the cabin of the settler. He returned in the course of an hour, with the announcement that the men would "not mind" taking a little meat; they had been too busy for a few days past to do any hunting. They would not object to a few trout, as well, if we had them to spare. This was good news. "Those men have trapped and killed four bears during the past few days," said the Major. "Where'bouts?" inquired Joshua quickly. "Just up there in the timber a couple of miles. The bear killed a horse, and the men have been after the bear with pretty good success." "I should say so--mebbe I'll go up and see 'em." "Better not, without a gun." "That's so--mebbe there's more around," murmured Joshua; "I've no notion goin' up there and roostin' in a tree." In a few moments he broke out with a song which we had not heard from him: "The Lord will provide." "I've heard that He 'helps those who help themselves,'" said the Major. "Look here, major, haven't I been tryin' to help myself for a week and can't?" There was something irresistibly ludicrous in the pathetic appeal that set us all laughing, including the promoter of the merriment. "I will try for one in the morning, Mr. Miles, or you may go if you can get back in time to prepare breakfast." "Oh, I'll get back in time, you bet." As it was after nine o'clock, the Major said he would go up the cañon a little way and catch a few trout. I was to look after the advancement of Mr. Dide; I prevailed upon him to leave his umbrella in camp, and took him and his new rod under my supervision. The gentleman gave indications of improvement, and I persuaded him to the pool with the drift. After several ineffectual efforts he succeeded in throwing his fly beyond the brush in mid-stream, and hooked a trout that the next moment had the line entangled. He was without waders, and I did not propose to swim in that cold water for the sake of saving another man's leader. I took the rod, but finding gentle manipulation unavailing, I gave the line a pull and broke the snell only. Bending on another fly, I advised him to work his way through the bushes and reach the little bar where I had landed my last trout. By that means he could cast up toward the pool and would avoid at least one pile of brush. When he was fairly stationed I went back to camp, took my bamboo and worked my way down to the water at the mouth of the cañon. A likely place presented itself a few rods above; I crossed a riffle and made my way to it on a beach of gravel about three feet wide. The pool was quite deep on the farther side and the bottom descended somewhat abruptly from the bar, so that I could not get more than eight feet from the bushes behind me without going over my boots. It was a difficult place to cast from, with even twenty feet of line, without catching the bushes, but I managed to get the fly away, after a fashion not satisfactory. It seemed the rule, however, that no matter where or how the fly landed, except on the shallow riffles, a trout was almost certain to put in an appearance. In the clear and smooth-flowing water in front of me, I saw a dozen beautiful fish; the one nearest the fly came up and took it. I soon landed him on the beach and tried again. We had made some stir, but it had no appreciable effect on the others, and I had another fastened in a few moments. This sort of angling has its disadvantages to the lover of the gentle art; it is too apt to curtail the measure of his enjoyment; he absorbs in half an hour a fund that, to be correctly appreciated, should consume double the time. Instead of casting again at once, I stood watching the well-to-do citizens. One and another would rise to the surface, take in something I could not discern and settle back again; their existence seemed to be one of ease, as of mortals who had inherited or secured a competency, and were disposed to indolence. They moved with a dignity characteristic of high breeding. If one started in quest of a floating morsel his nearest neighbor courteously bowed him on, as it were, and with a graceful wave of his caudal said plainly: "Oblige me by taking precedence." Seeing one larger than his mates behind a small rock, I sent the coachman in his vicinity. Two started, but the smaller one halted--it was age and beauty before beauty alone. Age with its wisdom declined and settled back, beauty and inexperience came forward again and was lost to his crystal world. Was this experience of the one who refused greater than could be encompassed by human subtlety? I was a little piqued, perhaps, at the indifference manifested. He might be a hotel clerk, a justice of the peace or some other dignitary metamorphosed. I lighted my pipe, sat under the shade of the mountain beeches, smoked and reflected. An ousel came suddenly round the elbow of the river and alighted in the edge of the water a few yards away. He bobbed up and down a few times, said something to himself and took a running dive for a few feet along the margin of the bar, came out again, bobbed and spoke, as though he might be rehearsing for some water-wagtail entertainment, then took another dive. Presently a second one came round the same course, pleased himself and me with an exhibition precisely like that of his predecessor and finally disappeared. I changed the coachman for a gray hackle with a peacock body and stepped into the edge of the pool. "The deformed transformed" had resumed his station behind his desk, and I put the temptation in his way. He could not resist it; he had his price and I had ascertained its maximum; a very trifle indeed, the veriest fraud as usual, compounded of tinsel and feathers, appealing first to the eye, then to the palate, arousing his dormant wicked propensities, tickling not the least of these--his avarice. I felt, I must confess, a symptom of contempt for him, as the sting of death touched his lips. I watched him struggle, feeling something approaching vicious exultation. I could not, however, but admire his efforts to rid himself of the consequences of his folly. Repentance, if he experienced it, came too late; the inexorable hand of the fate he had courted was closing upon him. He must have said to himself, at intervals, while he lay gasping: "If I were only safe out of this--I would never put on airs again--to excite the pride of the most humble of creatures." Resignation, however, was not one of his attributes; so long as hope of escape held a place in the remotest corner of his soul, he debated between genuine repentance and its shadow. He would yet make endeavors to release himself; if successful his old ways would be avoided, and humility might find a place in his mind, perhaps. I was not thoroughly convinced that he had been sufficiently overcome to warrant this favorable conclusion; I was still anxious to put my hand on him: he might forget his lesson. Being myself unsettled, I experienced no trouble in attributing all the hallucination to the individual at the other end of the line. One last, glorious endeavor, and he was free. I lifted my hat in token of his prowess, though I had not entirely pardoned his original conceit. When I saw him again he had safely ensconced himself between two rocks with his nose courting the opposite bank. He seemed very passive, with his tail at right angles with the gentle current. I watched him some time, but he did not move; he was prostrated, if ever fish was, in abject humiliation, crushed, absolutely, to earth. I resolved to say nothing of my adventure. The Major would receive my story with an aggravating smile, a smile that quietly throws out temptation to anger and violence. Or Joshua might break out with that song of his: "Tell me the old, old story." But I will intrust it to you, in confidence, you understand. I am a very good judge and he weighed four pounds, if he weighed an ounce. I recrossed the riffle and sought Mr. Dide. I found him within a few feet of where I had deposited him. He had procured his umbrella during my absence, and, with the patience commendable in the bait fisherman, was waiting for a rise in six inches of water. I watched him for a while and wondered if he would make even a fisherman; he possessed some of the gifts of the angler. "I see you have that umbrella again, Mr. Dide." "Aw, yes--it is so vewy waam, you know, in the sun." "Have you caught anything?" "Not yet, but I anticipate a vewy big one, by-and-by." I went up to the pool with the drift, and casting my hackle close under the old log, was fast in a moment to the mate of the one I had secured before breakfast. Pursuing my former tactics I was soon by the side of our friend, who watched me with interest and encouraged me with his doubts of my ability to land the captive. When I finally brought him out, released him from the hook and rapped him on the head with a stone, Mr. Dide declared he never could accomplish such a feat. "Why, my deah boy, he would smash my pole, you know." His modesty gave me some hope that ultimately he would arrive at proficiency, barring the umbrella. At noon the Major put in his appearance with twelve trout and two white-fish; the string weighed sixteen pounds. "That is a splendid average," said the Major, spreading the fish out upon the grass, to be the more conveniently admired as individuals. These white-fish were the first we had taken, although they are quite plentiful in the stream, and are sometimes an annoyance to those who are seeking trout only. Why they should be a source of vexation to any one is a mystery. The fish is beautiful in contour, more slender than the trout, has a delicate mouth, rises eagerly to the fly, and its meat is delicious. Break a Brazil nut in two, and the firm white kernel will remind you of the meat of the white-fish when it has been properly cooked. They are good fighters withal, though they do not break the water when hooked as readily as the trout. To my mind the complaints have in them somewhat of affectation, unless one is indulging solely in the science of angling. The following morning the camp was not astir until the sun came up over the hills and, shining in our faces, dried the moisture on our beards. The Major was the first to awake, and looking in Joshua's direction, discovered that individual in the enjoyment of his morning nap. He called to him: "I thought you were going for a deer, Mr. Miles. You should have been up before daylight." Joshua declared that such had been his intention, but on reflection he thought, that as he would have to wade the stream, he would not go. "But there must be good hunting on this side, Mr. Miles." "Yes, I shouldn't wonder, but it looks better over on that side; mebbe I'll go when the grass dries off." "If you had only mentioned your preference I would have gone out and driven a deer into camp." "Now, look here, Major, can't you give us a rest? I was sleepy this morning, that's a fact." Before day the next morning, the Major slipped out of his blankets, and with his Winchester started off in the direction of the aspens on the hills below and back from the camp. The sun had fairly streaked the east with gold color, and I lay watching the coming light, dozing a few moments and then awakening to see the surroundings put on more definite shapes, when I heard the report of a rifle. Before the echo ceased its complainings I was asleep again, dreaming that the major had encountered a silver-tip, and, failing in his first shot, had been compelled to take to a tree. I saw the brute tearing away at the bark and my friend embracing the trunk a dozen feet from the ground. The comical side of the picture was appealing to me when the vision suddenly vanished. I had been aroused by my own laughter, and I saw the Major looking down at me with a broad smile on his face. "You must have been indulging in a pleasant dream, my boy. Come, it is time you were out of bed. Mr. Miles, will you please put the saddle and bridle of Mr. Dide's on one of your mares and go with me? I have killed that deer." The Major was wet to the waist. Joshua looked at him dolefully and crawled out, inquiring for the locality of the game. When the Major told him it was not half a mile away and he had seen fresh bear tracks, he accelerated his pace and longed for another rifle. We had noticed every morning fresh deer signs along the margin of the river, and the Major had stationed himself in some willows but a little way from the camp. Just after daybreak the buck, which he brought in was on his way for a morning tipple when the Major called him to a halt. The animal turned in his tracks on feeling the bullet, and the Major had followed for nearly half a mile, when he found him dead. Joshua reported elk signs upon his return, and was enjoying a new fever from that cause; but he never found any cartridges in the magazine when the weapon was left in camp. We had passed two weeks in our delightful retreat, seeing no one except the inhabitants of the neighboring ranch, who would visit us at intervals for a supply of trout, which we always had for them. In return they brought us such quantities of rich milk that we became surfeited. The weather had been superb, without a drop of rain, and we had no use even for the fly to shelter us at night. The Major wished for a shower to break the monotony, but we did not get it. We had wondered more than once during our idle moments concerning the deacon and his whereabouts. One evening when Mr. Dide and myself were alone at the camp-fire, the Major and Joshua having gone to the neighboring ranch, I made bold to inquire of the gentleman touching the ladies in whose company we had left our friend. Mr. Dide answered: "Miss Jennie is a cousin, I believe, of the Deacon, as you call him." "But about the other lady, Mr. Dide?" "Aw,--Miss Gwace!--she is a vewy chawming young lady, as you say." "You have known her some time?" "Aw--y-a-s." Mr. Dide retired within himself, and I concluded, if I would learn anything, I must come to the point without indirection. "She seems to be alone here; how does that happen?" "Most extwaawdinawy--she is a vewy independent young lady and went away fwom home because of some misapwehension with her welatives. They pwoposed that she mahwy a gentleman who was distasteful to her and she declined." "I admire her for declining such an alliance." "So do I, you know--by Jove--I do! My impwession is that if the gentleman had known he was distasteful, he would have withdwawn himself--I know he would." "You know the gentleman, then?" "Aw, y-a-s. But it was too bad, you know, that she should be compelled to abandon her home. I have twied to pwevail on her to weconsidah and weturn, but she won't, you know. I have it fwom a weliable fwiend that she wan out of money heah last wintah, and became a waitah, watha than communicate with her welatives. She is a bwave young lady; I wegwet she deemed it necessawy to do so." "What was her objection to the gentleman, Mr. Dide?" "She said to her fathah that he was a simpleton,--the gentleman, I mean. She was wight, no doubt, but she is a vewy extwaawdinawy young lady, you know; she's a student of Dawwin and Huxley and those fellows, and the gentleman--aw--he is--aw--only a gentleman, you know, with no taste in that direction." "Indeed, Mr. Dide, I believe you--he is a gentleman." "Thanks. I--I know him and he would not have sanctioned it--weally--he would have ceased his attentions at once. It is a vewy unhappy situation--he was not advised until she had put her wesolution into effect. She is a vewy amiable young lady, but she has too much pwide to seek a wecconciliation with her pawents. I endeavahed to pwesent the mattah to her in the stwongest light, but she would not be moved." "She seemed to be very favorably impressed with the Deacon, Mr. Dide," I ventured to insinuate. "Aw, y-a-s, you are wight; the Deacon is, I think, a vewy estimable gentleman." "But suppose he should not be serious, Mr. Dide--the Deacon is a stranger to you, and he might be trifling." "Twifling! impossible! I cannot think so of him." "Ah! Deacon! Deacon!" I thought, "you called this gentleman, contemptuously, 'a dude'--how do you compare with him?" and confessed to myself that the verdict was not in favor of my friend. I had no question of the Deacon's integrity. I was looking only for one of the elements that go to make up a gentleman, and found that Mr. Dide was better endowed with unselfishness. The Major and Joshua coming in, the subject between Mr. Dide and myself was dropped. That night when my friend and I were covered with our blankets, looking out at the bright lamps and ready to be wooed into unconsciousness by the river's melody, he said to me: "I have changed my mind concerning our new friend. I thought he would be a bore, at least, but I have discovered him to be a gentleman." "So have I." But I did not deem it necessary to explain to him why I had reached the same conclusion. CHAPTER IX. SUCCESS AND--SUCCESS. Breaking camp, we went down the river as far as Still Water. I left our old quarters with a feeling of regret, thinking that when I came again I should find them occupied; it was like giving up to strangers a home where life has been sweet. No one may question the stranger's right nor his good taste, but it is not a pleasant reflection that in due course one will be crowded out or will drop from his place, and the world will move round at the same old rate, as if one had never encumbered the earth; the thought tends to induce humility. "It's like stickin' your finger in a pail of water, then pullin' it out and lookin' for the hole," said Joshua, as I expressed my regrets. "I have heard that comparison before, Mr. Miles." "So have I, Major. Mebbe I'll strike somethin' yet that you _ain't_ heard." The retort called a smile to the Major's face as he turned away. The camp for a day on the Still Water gave the Major an opportunity to shoot a few ducks, and the variety of our larder was thus added to. I found my way through the willows and reached a clear place on the bank. The pool thus exposed to me presented an abundance of fish, the water being perfectly clear and glassy on the surface. I cast into it and the inhabitants started in every direction away from the lure. It was a good place to practice delicacy, and I soon concluded that delicacy was not among my talents. Now and then I would deliver the fly in a way that caused no commotion; the trout would not look at it, and as I drew it across the water, they would come up gently and take something within a few feet of it, then settle back, leaving a little ripple on the surface to widen. I changed flies several times, but the result was still the same: neither variety nor size seemed of any avail, yet the trout were feeding. I put a shot on the leader, threw above, and drawing the fly down, allowed it to sink and moved it slowly among them. One fellow came forward a little and looked at it, and I became satisfied that I saw him turn up his nose in disgust. That a human being of ordinary intelligence, as he presumed me to be, should put such an abominable species of diet as a bedraggled coachman on his dining-table, was beyond laughing at or praying for,--words were too feeble to express his scorn--he could only turn up his nose and move away. The verdict was as clear to me as the water. A grasshopper might decoy one of those fellows to destruction, but there could be no credit in that to me, as an angler. It would be assuming the rôle of a Borgia and not taking an adversary with all his faculties alert--it would be secret poisoning and not the clean rapier glittering in the sunlight backed by a heart willing to take equal chances. I scorned the grasshopper in this emergency, as the beautiful denizen of the crystal scorned my ragged servitor. Close to the bank I saw a white-fish moving slowly up stream, nosing the small rocks as if he might be in search of a tid-bit to tickle a fastidious palate. His small scales were distinct, and with the sun's rays playing upon them he was the perfection of beauty in color. His dainty mouth was fairly visible, turned up to me, and his gill-covers glistened like polished silver. I took the shot from the leader and dropped the fly upon the surface about a yard in front of him, barely moving it. The water was about four feet deep and he was near the bottom. When he caught sight of the fraud, it seemed to me that I saw his eyes suddenly distend; the iris became animated and shone within a flexible circle of pale gold, as he sculled quickly to the surface and closed upon the hook. At the critical moment I gave the fatal motion of the wrist and the trim quarry was fast. The instant he felt the sting he darted, like a flash of light through a clear topaz, for the bottom and centre of the pool. His flight was a strong, steady pull, always below the surface. I would draw him up, but the moment his nostrils tasted the air, he would strive for the depths. Believing him too heavy to lift out, and the bank being too high and abrupt for me to get down to him, I permitted him to fight until he was too feeble to prevent my holding his head clear from the water. In this condition, and when I deemed a violent struggle among the possibilities merely, I drew him toward the bank, kneeled, and taking the leader in my left hand as low as I could reach, I swung him upon the grass; he came straight, without the slightest movement until he touched the ground, otherwise he would have been free. I could not but notice how firm his body felt, as I grasped him to take out the hook; there was no yielding whatever to the pressure of my hand; he might have been absolutely as solid as a stone. Then I thought of those who take it upon themselves to talk flippantly of these pieces of perfection in their way, and felt a sympathy for the grumblers in their weakness. I placed the fish in the shade of the willows and lengthened the line again; I felt encouraged by my success and thought I might secure a trout. They had returned to their several stations, after a short respite from the recent commotion, but all that I could see, scattered as I threw them the fly, save one; he seemed indifferent and remained at his post. I cast in his vicinity several times; he finally seemed inclined to move, and I coaxed him, as I thought, though perhaps I may have incited him to anger and a determination to drive my monstrosity away. Whether rage, sudden hunger or curiosity impelled him was a matter of indifference to me; suffice it to say that he abruptly darted up and took the hitherto scouted mystery, and I fastened it directly through his tongue. My movement and his own impetus brought him clear of the water; he went back with a plunge, was up again in a few moments, shaking himself in a very paroxysm of rage and terror. Half a dozen times he rushed hither and yon, but at all times he felt the spring of the splendid toy in my hand. If he moved to the opposite shore, it checked his career and responded to his every motion, as he circled back. A straight shoot directly up stream, or down, the bamboo arched over him like the wand of fate. He would pause at times as if by contemplation he might solve the occult cause of his restraint, and thus devise an avenue of escape, but his destiny was determined. A few more struggles and he surrendered. He could not release himself; I could not free him, or I verily believe I should have bowed deferentially and requested him to retain his sword. Even when he was so far exhausted that I could draw him toward me without resistance, I dared not attempt to lift him out as I had his predecessor. I called the Major and he came to me, held on by the willows, and slipping down the bank seized and threw the gallant champion upon the sod. It seemed like indignity to him to have him thus handled, and I told the Major so. He should have been lifted out with the net and received with a delicacy commensurate with his greatness. The white-fish weighed one pound and a half, the trout one pound and a quarter. Caught within fifteen minutes of each other, it was a fit time to determine their qualities as warriors. The trout, of course, from the dash and brilliancy of his evolutions, must bear the palm, but the sturdy determination of his neighbor in the pool must have a share of praise. I love them both, with a little more admiration in my heart for the black-spotted denizen. The time to fish this water when a full creel is desired quickly is when there is a slight breeze, just sufficient force in the summer air to caress the surface into a gentle ripple. I warrant me, then there will be leaping and sport that will be fast and glorious. I had read of a trick, and tried it. I found a cottonwood leaf for my purpose, and wetting it, that the fly might stick to it gently, threw it into the pool. After several trials I succeeded in getting the fly partly upon it with sufficient hold at least to guide the leaf, which I worked down to where the trout seemed more numerous. I gave the fly a gentle flirt and it fell from the novel argosy into the water; it had not floated a foot before it was seized, and I had another fight on my hands, much to the interest and amusement of the Major. At noon Mr. Dide expressed a preference for our late camp over the present one. "I cannot heah the wipple of the watah, you know," was his explanation. "Then, Mr. Dide, we will move on, and make camp below the Still Water, for a few days," said the major, expressing my wishes as well. "I have a weakness for that music, myself," he continued; "as cowering upon the lofty cliff, I trembling court the wondrous depths; with eager eyes I seek the angry rush and the flashing tints of foaming waves. Borne high upon the ambient air, the solemn whispers of troubled souls and the rippling laughter of the blest reach past me, intertwined, to sink again in lamentation. Then, lying prone, my attentive ears drink in the softer sighs of the sweeping crystal, and stills all my pulse to catch the cadence of the liquid rhythm, sweet as the fading notes of some dear vesper hymn, lingering in hushed cathedral aisles." "Bwavo! bwavo! my deah Majah! you have won my heart!" exclaimed Mr. Dide, clapping his hands, and ecstatic enthusiasm apparently exuding from his entire person. My amazement kept me silent. That the Major should indulge in "that sort of sky-scraping," as Joshua irreverently expressed it, rather weakened my friend in our _chef's_ estimation for the time. The Major received Joshua's strictures in dignified silence, which made the latter think there was more in the Major's poetic escapade than mere words, and, like every other mystery to the average intellect, it became weighty; he requested the Major to write it down, and that is how it found a place here; I purloined the manuscript. We moved down after the noonday meal and made camp in a secluded spot not a great way from the forks of the river. That evening, when our fire burned low, Joshua felt in the mood to sing. Having concluded one hymn he struck into another familiar to Mr. Dide. The effusion had a refrain of some sort, and we were all startled by hearing that taken up and repeated by female voices. Not being superstitious, the Major moved out of the light of our own fire and discovered the reflection of another some little distance away. We had, in the vicinity, mortals like ourselves, but fairer, no doubt, and Joshua, with Mr. Dide's help, sent out frequent invitations to the unknown singers, bringing a response until the hour grew late. The episode was not an unpleasant one, and I thought it might pave the way to an acquaintance with our neighbors. In the morning I started on a prospecting tour, and the first individual I met proved, much to my surprise, to be the Deacon, whom I discovered gathering wood with which to cook breakfast. Where did he come from? "Why, Trapper's Lake--we came down the river yesterday, with the intention of spending a week on the South Fork, hoping to find you and the Major. I had no notion you two were the singers, or I should have called last night." "Then you have the ladies with you?" "Oh, yes, my cousin and her mother,--you saw my cousin at Cascade,--they were the singers you heard answering you." "The Major and I were not the singers, Deacon." "No? well, who is camped over there by you?" "Our cook and Mr. Dide were the singers you heard." "Mr. Dide--oh, he's with you, is he?" and there came a smile into the Deacon's face, as he repeated the name, that, with his tone, indicated nothing to be apprehended by the speaker from the vicinity or presence of Mr. Dide, and in addition, his air was patronizing. Had I not known the Deacon well, having much faith in his kindness of heart, his manner in speaking of my newer friend would have proved offensive. "If you are so fortified in your own mind, Deacon, you can afford to speak less cavalierly of Mr. Dide." "Fortified?" he repeated, "how fortified? Don't talk in riddles, old boy." "You understand, well enough--victory should make you courteous to the conquered." "Why, my dear sir, I never treated him uncivilly." "Perhaps not, but you spoke uncivilly of him--you called him a dude, and your manner, just now----" "Well, is he not a dude?" "He is every inch a gentleman, Deacon." "I may not dispute that; but you seem to take great interest in him." "Not without reason, Deacon. What became of Miss Grace?" "Miss Grace--why, she's in camp there, with my aunt and cousin." The Deacon's face was wreathed in a smile unmistakable in its import. "I'm not disposed to be impertinent, Deacon--but are you engaged to Miss Grace?" "Engaged! why, my dear sir, we were married ten days ago, at Glenwood." "The d--deuce you were----" "Fact, my dear old boy--and she's the sweetest----" "Spare us, Deacon! you seem to have been expeditious." "Not so,--I have known her for a year, nearly; we were engaged last winter. Cousin Jennie and she were schoolmates east." "Oh, that's the way of it. Do you know that Mr. Dide will be glad to congratulate you?" "No, I _don't_ know it--to tell you frankly, he was the cause of her leaving home; perhaps I ought to feel friendly toward him because of that--indirectly he became my benefactor----" "Wait a moment, Deacon, let me tell you something," and I detailed the conversation I had held with Mr. Dide over the camp-fire. "Now, you see, if he had been aware of her wishes she would have had no excuse for leaving; she did not refuse him directly, and her bear of a father had set his mind in one direction and thought, no doubt, he was taking in the horizon, when he was only in a small hole of his own digging. Mr. Dide explained this to your wife, at Cascade, where they accidentally met, and she has failed to tell it to you. You know now how unselfish he was and is. Could you have relinquished your object with the same degree of nobleness?" "Not one in a thousand would. But I don't just like the idea of some other man loving my wife better than I do." "So long as she does not love him in return, you can have no cause of complaint." "I guess you're right. I'll take in this wood and call on Mr. Dide." Our friend received the announcement from me very quietly and greeted the Deacon cordially on his arrival. When the latter went away, Mr. Dide sauntered off to the river bearing his rod and umbrella. We saw nothing of him at noon, and later on I concluded to hunt him up. I had not gone far when I discovered him seated on the edge of a pool. He had one trout, thoroughly dried, and was waiting for another rise; the fly had floated down and lodged against a bit of willow that hung to the bank by its roots, while the limbs vibrated with the current. He started when I spoke to him, but looked up cheerfully, saying: "I am afwaid I shall not make a success at fishing." "Not if you sit still, Mr. Dide; you should keep moving and the fly must not be allowed to rest a moment." "Aw--that makes one's ahms ache, you know." It might have made his heart ache less, perhaps. "Supper is about ready--won't you come in to camp?" "Weally, I did not think it was so late--thanks." In the evening Mr. Dide announced that he should go to Meeker on the following day, and thence he knew not where, definitely. "You'll go to Glenwood, won't you? I'd like to have you take word to my folks and tell 'em how we're gettin' on," Joshua requested, on Mr. Dide's stating his determination to return to civilization. The gentleman consented in his usual affable way. At the earliest opportunity, I informed Mr. Dide who Joshua's "folks" were. "Weally! that vewy extwaadinawy old lady! I shall be obliged to wequest him to wite--then I can dwop it in the mail, you know." And so on the morrow Mr. Dide drifted out of sight. CHAPTER X. VAPOR. At the next evening's camp-fire I took down the Deacon's report of his trip: "The trail from Glenwood Springs to Trapper's Lake is good, and the country through which it runs is always attractive, beautiful, and in places grand. In fact, it is a difficult matter, you know, to go astray of magnificent scenery in these beloved mountains of ours. We made one camp, the ladies being out for pleasure and not in a hurry, and for one day's ride the trip is a little tiresome, especially if you are not accustomed to the saddle. Our camp outfit and provisions made light loads for two pack animals. "The first view of the lake coming in from the south side is finer than that from the trail out of Egeria Park. By the latter route you come directly upon the lake from the timber, low down the mountain side, and look directly across. By the way we came you get a fine view of the lake first from a point higher up the mountain, and can look down upon it, along its length, toward the outlet. You have a foreground of the beautiful lake, and through the wide gap at its foot a distant range of hills veiled in the gray mist forms a background, while the lake itself, except at the outlet, is shut in by the high-terraced mountains. These mountains, you will remember, reach down to the very margin of the lake, excepting only at the little meadow on the left of the outlet. The terraces are thickly covered with pines until the last precipice is reached, which runs up above the timber line. [Illustration: TRAPPER'S LAKE.] "We remained four days there, fishing from rafts. There are two varieties of trout in the lake, the light and the salmon-colored. The light variety are the fighters, of course, and so abundant that but for the presence of others to help us dispose of them they would spoil on our hands; they are large, too, running uniformly to fourteen inches in length. "I killed a buck in the little meadow near the outlet. The Deaconess declares that those four days were 'just too lovely.'" "But about the trail, Deacon, from the lake to the forks here?" "It is a good trail. Did you ever see an Indian trail that wasn't good? Our red brother, as you call him, is a first-class engineer in that respect; he is the only one who accomplishes his purpose prompted by pure laziness. We took the ridge part of the way, and made a short _détour_ to see the Devil's Causeway, and on that account saw a band of elk; there were fifty in the band at least, because I counted that number, and missed some without doubt. There was indeed a commotion in the camp when I announced the discovery of bear signs, but I succeeded in allaying the fright by persuading them to believe that Cuffy was no more liable to attack us than the deer were. We had splendid fishing in the Pot Hole Valley, and I want you to know that I landed a trout of five pounds and four ounces out of one of those pools, and that's no fish story. The trout run large as they do here in the South Fork. White-fish are plentiful, too; the largest one I caught weighed a scant two pounds, and I know you agree with me as to their excellence on the table. The valley is filling up, though, with settlers; it is not so much in the wilderness as it was a few years ago." "You are having an unusual wedding tour, Deacon." "But a very happy one. Just try it, and see for yourself." "I have been travelling the 'long path' too many years for that, Deacon." "Well, you'll enjoy it, all the same." Of course I had to thank the Deacon for the compliment and I promised to "try it." The next day a few fleecy clouds climbed up over the hills in the west, and in the afternoon we moved further down the river toward Meeker. That evening we put up the fly for the first time, lapped and pegged down the ends. We thought we might have rain before morning, but were disappointed. The following morning the clouds put in an appearance again; the sky had been absolutely clear during the most of our trip, and the pretty harbingers afforded a relief. From white they gathered into clusters and turned to gray, and the drapery of a darker shade, hanging below, told of the rain. It passed us by, however, and we had a beautiful sunset. The west was clear, while just above a range of hills in the east, veiled with a thin blue mist, was a stratum of pale bronze, its upper line apparently as straight as if run by a level. From this base of miles in length there arose a great mass of clouds, seemingly thousands of feet in height, and white as carded wool. Its northern and southern ends were almost perpendicular, and its summit of great rolling folds was outlined against the delicate blue of the sky. For half an hour there seemed no change; the huge pile stood apparently still, pure and white as newly-fallen snow. Then, as if moved by some gentle and artistic freak of its presiding genius, a rift in a mountain side appeared, reaching from the bronze base to the top, the line was sharply defined in white and gray and the shadow was cast against the background of white to our right. Away at the northerly summit a small bit seemed to break away, or was left; it divided, and in a few moments there were clearly defined a pair of gigantic wings, regular in their contour as those of a bird. In another place a gray tower presented itself with a great arched doorway near its base. Castles would spring into a brief existence, machicolated and loop-holed, to be lost again in some modern cottage with vine-clad porch. Along the upper margin figures would come and go as if the gods and their retinues were all abroad directing a magnificent display. And in one corner, by itself, there was plainly outlined a fleecy hood, into which I caught myself intently gazing, expecting to see the laughing eyes and face of a beautiful child. All this in tones of white and gray. But as the sun sank lower, veils of slanting mist appeared here and there, the apparently solid mass was being broken up, the summit was still white scroll-work, but below, the line of bronze had turned into a crimson shade, within an uneven apex; the lead-colored base of the main body was changing to a purple hue, and all through the mass the rose and amber were being laid in, shifting from moment to moment, until the hues became bewildering in their multitude; then, as the sun went down, the gray tones returned again, such as the artist may sometimes give a hint of but never paints. It was a great storm we had witnessed, away over the range to the east; we were far from the sound of the artillery, and it hid from us the flash of its batteries. During the beautiful display the Deacon's young wife sat a few feet in front of me and to the left. She had moved but once, and that was when the first shadow came and marked out the great gorge; she turned round then, and said to me: "Is it not grand?" When the rose tints faded out, she turned again; there was a mist in her dark eyes, and a perceptible quiver about her pretty lips; she spoke in a half-whisper, as of one just awakened from a happy vision: "Did you ever see anything so glorious? and yet I felt all the time as if I must kneel and look upon it with reverence." I did not blame Mr. Dide, nor the Deacon; they couldn't help it; I envied her father. "When we can have our backs to the afternoon sun, with a mountain range to the east of us, these magnificent carnivals of shadows are not uncommon." "Did you see the baby's bonnet? was it not too cute for anything?" and then, half-musingly to me, "you have lived in these beautiful mountains since before the time I was born--you ought to be happy!" I told her that happiness was my normal condition, and then she wanted to know of me if I had ever read Ruskin, and I said I hadn't. "I wish he could have seen what we have this afternoon." "He would have criticised and found fault with it." "It is unkind of you to say so, knowing nothing of him." The rebuke was quick, earnest, and, I confessed to myself, not wholly unwarranted. I determined to read Ruskin, and I presume that if the Major and the others had not just then drifted up to us, I should have been led off after "Darwin and those fellows." With such disciples the philosophers in question might effect a revolution rapidly. The Major and the others, except Joshua, had much to say about the afternoon's entertainment. Joshua didn't see anything except a great bank of clouds, and knew there had been a storm on the main range. While we were at supper (and since we had ladies in company, the Major had improvised a table out of some boards which he picked up, using the wagon seats for supports), our table now decked with wild flowers, and the tin plates and cups presenting a brighter appearance, we had a call. Our visitor was a lank mortal in flannel shirt, blue cotton overalls, and the ordinary white felt hat of the country. He was not a cowboy, but "a hand" from a neighboring ranch, who had "hoofed it in last fall." "Evenin'," was his salutation, with a nod, intended for all of us. "Bin campin' out, ain't ye? Had a good time, s'pose--lots o' fish and sech? Didn't see nothin' of a roan cayuse with a strip in face, up crick? No! been a-huntin' the darn brute since noon-time; branded 'J. K.' on his left hip." "You'd better keep on, if you count on findin' him before night," hinted Joshua, shaking a flapjack in the frying-pan preparatory to a final turn. "Stranger in these parts?" the visitor inquired of Joshua. "Yes; been here a week." "More'n that--I see you go up crick more'n two weeks ago. What's yer business?" "Mindin' it." "Mindin' what?" "My business." "Don't know as you'll ever die o' brain fever." "Neither will you, if you stay in this country. I wonder you wasn't buried before spring." "They wasn't no fellers round here handy 'nough----" "What can we do for you, my friend?" broke in the Major, in some doubt as to the result of the dialogue. "Nothin', 'bleeged to ye, 'less yer got sumpin's good for cuts; cut my finger sharpnin' a sickle; durn near cut it off an' it's festerin'--see." He exposed the wounded member. If there is anything in life with a tendency to raise one's curiosity, or anything else, I know of nothing more potent than a sick finger at meal time. The stranger was generously determined that none of us should miss the luxury. The Major stared, the ladies turned away, and Joshua, out of all patience, exclaimed: "Come off the shelf, man, the flies'll eat you up." The stranger's attention was distracted. "Whatcher mean? I ain't got no flies on me, mister." "Cover up that paw o' yours and go after your cayuse--don't you see it up yonder in the willers?" And Joshua took our visitor by the arm and started him in the right direction. He led him farther than was necessary, the pony being in sight, and they had some conversation on the way, but we did not overhear it, and they seemed to part with a satisfactory understanding. The next day we made a move still farther down stream and camped in the vicinity of the site selected by the government for the erection of a sawmill that was to aid in civilizing the Utes. The habitations that had been erected at great expense were no longer visible; literally not one stone remained upon another. The boiler was perforated with bullet-holes, and rusty bits of machinery lay scattered over a square mile of the level mesa. A more complete wreck than this, effected by the gentle savages, would be hard to conceive, and a more sorrowful exhibition of sheer viciousness could not have been expressed; it was as if the destroyers had determined to obliterate every vestige that might give rise even to a memory of the kindness intended them. Those beautiful symbols of peace, the doves, were plentiful, flitting about the ruins, as docile as if the valley had never known a wrathful moment. The birds were not within the protection of the law, but to kill them in such a place seemed like adding sacrilege to cruelty, so not one was harmed. Upon the breaking up of this camp our company was to be divided. The Deacon and his relatives would turn off to the right a few miles below, to visit the Thornburg battle-ground, while the Major and I would take our way back over the old route to Glenwood Springs. One more day's sojourn on the beautiful river at our first camping-ground, below Meeker, and we bade farewell, reluctantly, to the charming valley. But the keen edge of our unwillingness was softened by an assurance to ourselves that another summer would find us again with our tent pitched amid the sweet peacefulness. We would come again, if for no other purpose, to make acquaintance with the trail to Trapper's Lake--the gem of the Roan Range. There is no comfort whatever in towels, with a tin cup for a bath-tub; the White River is no place to bathe in, unless one would encourage pneumonia or the rheumatism. The sight of the great pool at Glenwood, after several weeks of travesty, gave a hint of marvellous luxury. It was as if we approached the performance of a religious rite; we stood upon the edge, filled with the eagerness of neophytes, but hesitating for a moment before penetrating the mystery whose revelation we sought. But once within the warm embrace of the voluptuous crystal, the Wesleyan admonition was made manifest; we washed, and worshipped close to the throne. Then we thanked the men whose enterprise had converted the possibility of the luxury into a fact. "Epicurean Rome could boast of no such treat as this," exclaimed the Major, shaking the crystal drops from his shaggy mane, as he rose to the surface after the first plunge. "I don't know much about Rome," said Joshua, "but this suits me, this does." We left the bright little city beautifully nestled among the carmine hills, as the afternoon sun was caressing the summits of the mountains in the west. We were again on the rail, speeding up the valley of the Roaring Fork. A slight bend in the road and Mount Sopris towers grandly, in front and to the right of us, with its long patch of snow offering a perpetual challenge to our daily friend. The ride up the great gorge in the western slope to the top of the Saguache Range affords a grander pageant than that in descending. One experiences a sensation of quiet, while one is looking down upon a panorama that is drifting. As the sun touches only the highest peaks the magnificent cliffs and wooded mountain sides are in shadow, seem animate, and as if stealing away, phantom-like, into the deepening twilight below. But the sunlight of the morrow will clothe the scene in new beauties, and the summer days to come will be bountiful in fresh surprises for the sojourner in these recesses of the majestic hills. [Illustration: THE SWITCHBACK.] CHAPTER XI. PIKE'S PEAK. The name has a familiar sound; I have heard it almost every day for nearly three decades, and wherever English is spoken the name has been mentioned. Having it in sight daily, with its long slope reaching up to the apex over fourteen thousand feet high, its north face always clothed in or fretted with snow, it might seem that it would grow monotonous. Monotony is not possible with the magnificent eminence and, like the presence of one we love, it is always welcome. The great ice-field at the pole is as to the earth but the thickness of a hair, the great mountain range as a wrinkle on the surface; but we measure the thickness and the heights by miles. They who made the Bible possible loved the high places of the earth; the law was there given to the great leader, and the beloved Master sought the mountain top to pray. It lifted him away from the earth while he was of it, but brought him nearer to the Father. It is the vantage ground of humility, the sanctuary where arrogance cannot enter. The devil was lacking in tact when he offered the world to the Master from a mountain top; his royal highness was out of his element, the atmosphere was repugnant. Neither he nor his pupils lack ambition, but on a mountain top there is nothing to which mortal may aspire, except the unknowable, and for the unknowable he is made willing to bide his time in meekness. It is no place for his majesty to proselyte; his most zealous disciples even, are liable to step into the path he never designed for them. No doubt the devil would have failed, on the occasion in question, had he selected a valley where the air was impure, but to seek a mountain top as the theatre for the bribery of One purer than the element he breathed, only goes to show that the devil, with all his accredited intelligence, was a very great ass. The only mystery to me is that he himself was not then and there led captive and future generations saved from his machinations. The solution may be that, being already condemned, he was beyond the pale of divine influence. I would, however give the devil his due, and should be glad to surmise that he longed to be clean, but was so much of a dolt as not to be worth regenerating. The first man to climb a mountain peak may be pardoned exultation at the accomplishment of his feat. The gallant officer whose name this mountain bears essayed that exploit and failed, though history says he wrought valiantly. Grand monuments are not infrequently erected to the undeserving. We have other mountains with titles a little more satirical; there can be no objection to commemorating the memory of a dead hero, for a man is rarely a hero until he is dead, and this is no paradox. But except in a very few instances, it were well to leave the erection of memorials to the intimate friends of the dear departed, rather than to appropriate, without permission, the works of the Almighty. Mountains, however, are abundant, and we, not being the owners, can afford to give them away; it were better, though, to reward our live friends out of our own earnings. We know in such case they would have the chance at least to appreciate our acknowledgment of their merits. He who goes up a mountain by trail may exult in a lesser degree than the first explorer. But all may not surmount unexplored mountains; many cannot do so even by trail. To him, then, who makes the happiness of conversion from the ills of this life possible to all, if only for an hour, great credit is due, and he may, with an easy conscience no doubt, exact toll for his achievement. To the æsthetic it may seem like a sacrilege to disfigure a great mountain with a road; but a road for human needs is so slight a scratch here on the earth's surface that it does not mar the surroundings. The good that it does outweighs the apparent desecration. As the Major and myself aspire to that which is high, and as neither of us might reach the summit of the peak by the primitive methods any more than office may now be so reached, the opportunity to gratify our ambition by carriage was a blessing. The novelty must be considered as adding to the zest. The mountain is not visible from Cascade, the initial point of the road; the intervening hills shut it out. Starting thence we follow the Fountain up a very little distance, then turn to the left along the face of the first hill, then to the right, and so winding our way for two miles we reach the vicinity of the Grotto in Cascade Cañon. In a direct line we are half a mile from the starting-point. Over and through the pines that sparsely cover the mountain side, and over beds of wild flowers that carpet the slope, we can, before this distance is accomplished, obtain a fair view of the valley of the Fountain, Cascade and Manitou, thence out on to the broad plains, rising blue and dim until they kiss the horizon. One does not look for valleys in the mountain tops, but a mountain top reached is still further surmounted, and the road winds through aspen glades and the air is freighted with the odor of pines. The four horses trundle the light Beach wagon along most of the way at a trot. The driver tells you that after a little while the horses must be brought down to a walk. The grade is not steep, but "in the light air a fast gait would be a little hard on the stock." Eight and a half miles we have come in a little less than two hours. "A pretty good road," that allows the making of such time to an elevation of over three thousand feet, at a guess. We are half way and are still in the timber. "The horses are changed to mules here"--an extraordinary metamorphosis, certainly--that is the way the driver put it, but there was no mystery in his language, except to a Boston lady, who was anxious to witness the process. Verily one must speak by the card in such a presence, or "equivocation will undo us." The four mules seemed to consider their load a trifle and they moved as jauntily as if out for a holiday. To beguile the tediousness of the way we were assured that on returning we should "come in a whirl." The motive that prompted the information was commendable, and the driver to be excused--he travelled the road every day and his early pleasure had simply turned into an attractive matter of business. We told him not to hurry on our account, as it was our desire to miss no part of the scenery. He said he should come back in two hours and a half. I had ridden behind mules before--I mean in period of time--and was doubtful touching the prospective gloriousness of the journey, but he assured me that it was perfectly safe. He spoke of a "switch-back," and there was an intimation of occult peril in his manner. When we reached the vicinity of the timber line he pointed out the mystery. From our point of vision the zigzag scratches away up on the steep mountain side reminded me of old times. I was having a longitudinal view of a few sections of worm fence running up a hill at an angle of seventy degrees; at least a man under the influence of spirits would say it was a longitudinal view. Considered as a fence, from an economical basis, the angles were unnecessarily acute; it might fairly have represented five miles of fence and half a mile of ground in a straight line, or it looked as if unknown powers at each end were trying to jam the thing together and make it double up on itself. I was very much interested in it. As a line for an irrigating ditch it might be pronounced a success. As nothing goes down a ditch except water, and very little of that in a dry season, nobody is put in jeopardy. "And you come down there at the rate of eight or nine miles an hour?" I asked. "Yes, oh, yes, easy enough." "I should think it would be easy, especially if you went off one of those corners." "You wouldn't know the difference." "No, I suppose not. It must be a glorious ride, coming down at the rate of eight or nine miles an hour, I think you said?" "Yes, eight or nine, mebbe less, dependin'." "You can make it in less time, then?" "Certainly." "And turn round those corners?" "'Course, how else? You don't s'pose I'm thinkin' 'bout rollin' down the mountain side?" I wondered what else it would be without snow on the ground; but the driver seemed a little too short of breath to answer. I accounted for his deficiency in this regard because of the altitude; we were above timber line, eleven thousand feet and over from sea-level. The pines had become dwarfed, naked on one side, and were leaning toward the rocks above them, or, in their sturdy struggle for existence, they clung to the precipitous mountain side like matted vines. Looking down from a certain point I observed a large quantity of the road resembling a corpulent angle-worm in several stages of colic. I could not resist appealing to the driver again; I don't think anybody could. "Do you go round all those places at the rate of eight or nine miles an hour?" "Of course." "And you don't slow up?" "What should I slow up for?" "So as not to turn over, you know." "I never turned over in my life, and I drove stage in California twenty years." I believed he was a liar, but deemed it inexpedient to tell him so, although he was a small man. "Never had a runaway either, I suppose?" and sitting behind him I casually--it being convenient--put my hand on his biceps; the arm was not large, but assuring. "No." My opinion of his veracity was not augmented. "I hardly think you can make the time you say you can." "Just wait and see." "I'm sure it will be grand; I've been suffering for such an experience." "I didn't know but you was gittin' a little nervous--they sometimes do." "Nervous! I'm an old stager. I have ridden with Bill Updyke and Jake Hawks many a mile in these mountains. Take it in the winter time, down hill, for instance, the road covered with ice and the driver obliged to whip his horses into a dead run to keep the coach from sliding and swinging off such a place as that," and I pointed to a precipice several hundred feet perpendicular at our left. "That's coaching!" and I placed my hand upon his shoulder affectionately. During the colloquy the Major had not opened his lips. The vicinity is the dwelling-place of desolation; nothing but rocks about us. What had once perhaps been a solid mass of trachyte is split to fragments in the mill of the centuries, and bits from as big as one's fist to the size of one's body or a small house lay tumbled in a confused and monstrous heap, as though there might have been in the remote ages, a great temple here dedicated to the gods of old, and now in shapeless ruins. Of the view from this great mountain peak, what shall I or any one say? Nothing! It does not admit of description; upon it, you can understand why the Indian never mounts so high. It is one of the places whence comes his inspiration of deity, the temple of his god, and he may not desecrate it with his unhallowed feet; it gathers the storm, and the sun caresses it into a smile and crowns it with glory, as he views it reverently from the valley. But we, the civilized, penetrate the mystery of these heights and find, what? humility! and feel as though we should have worshipped from afar. We have risen to receive the divine inspiration, our brother has remained below to kiss submissively the nether threshold of the sanctuary. Which is nearest to the Father? It is very still to-day; no sound greets you save the gentlest murmur of the summer wind brushing lightly across the uninviting rocks. The wide plains checkered with green and gold, stretching away out below you, give you no sign. The city you see there, bustling with the ambition of youthful vigor, is silent as death; you recognize it as a town-plat on paper, that is all, except that it adds to the sense of your own insignificance; it may make you wonder, perhaps, why you were ever a part of the life there; it may be a shadow that you look down upon, as you would recall an almost faded dream. You turn. "And the mountain world stands present And behold a wond'rous corps-- Well I knew them each, though never Had we met in life before-- Knew them by that dream-world knowledge All unknown to earthly lore." Just below you a vast ocean bed of billowy hills, with its stately pines dwarfed to shrubs, its shores looming up in the dim distance through their dainty veil of gray, and brooding over all that "Awful voice of stillness, Which the Seer discerned in Horeb; That which hallowed Beth El's ground." It seems like sacrilege, but the interest in that town-plat down there, or in one like it, begins tugging at the skirts of one's adoration. The sun is going down and we also must go. I had an interview with the driver, out behind the barn. (There is a signal station on the summit and the barn is a necessity.) "You are sure you can go to Cascade from here in two hours and a half?" I inquired. "Certain." "Take something?" and I made a feint of reaching into the inside pocket of my coat for "something" I did not have. "Can't! that's agin' the rules--I'm a man of family and I don't care to lose my job." "So am I a man of family, and my friend, the Major there, he has a family--a wife and nine children, all young. You love your family?" "What do you ask that for? 'Course I do." "So does the Major love his--the eldest only ten years old. You noticed, perhaps, on coming up, when we were talking about making time, going down 'in a whirl;' I think you expressed it so? Yes, he said not a word, just sat and listened. He was thinking about the seventeen miles down hill, round those short curves, in two hours and a half. The Major has a slight heart trouble, and any little excitement, like rolling down the mountain side, or getting upset, might be injurious to him. Being a man with a large family I desire to avoid his running any risk--you understand? His family is dependent on him and he has no life insurance. Now, the making of this trip in two hours and a half might be well enough for me, because I am used to it, you know; I haven't so much of a family, and I've ridden with Bill Updyke and Jake Hawks, and there is nothing I should like better than just such a ride as you proposed--I'd glory in it, but I'm a little uneasy about the Major. The doctor has already warned him against any undue excitement. Hold on a minute! there is another matter: he'd never hint that he is nervous, he is very averse to having it thought that he is troubled that way--see? And just as like as not, to show you that he is not nervous, he would tell you to 'Let 'em out!' Now--hold on a minute! if he should tell you so, don't you do it--you just go round those curves quietly, and trot along easy like, or walk. He's a very close friend of mine, you can understand. Take this," and I slipped a half-dollar into the driver's hand. Just then I heard the Major yelling to me with the voice of a strong man in enviable health to "hurry up." The driver accepted the half-dollar and went round one end of the barn to the carriage, while I took the other way. When we were seated he touched the off leader gently, the team started, and then he twirled the long lash of his whip with a graceful and fancy curve that rounded up with a report like that of a small pistol. The mules struck into a gallop and I concluded that my half-dollar was wasted, literally thrown away, to say nothing of my other appeal. The loss of the latter caused me the more chagrin--the money was a trifle. But think of that blessed stage-driver ignoring my eloquence! By the great horn spoon! as Joshua would have expressed it, if I had a gun and was not deterred by the thought of consequences, I'd leave the wretch as food for the eagles--he'd never be missed. Just about the time I had him fairly killed and his body comfortably rolled over a precipice where it would never be discovered, he came to the first turn. The mules were on a dead run, and what did that--blessed driver do? He just let that silk out again, gave a yell like a Comanche and whirled round that bend without so much as allowing the wheels to slide a quarter of an inch, and away he went, down the short, straight stretch as though he had been paid to go somewhere in a hurry. When he made the next turn I leaned over and said quietly: "Let me see that half-dollar I gave you; perhaps it is plugged." He changed his lines and whip into his left hand and passed over the suspected coin with his right. I substituted a silver dollar, which he slipped into his pocket, straightened out his lines and brought the mules down to a trot. "Why don't you let 'em out, driver?" inquired the Major. The driver looked round as if he thought I had addressed him. "I think you can let 'em go," I said, and he did! Along the straight chutes! around the bends! away and down, with a merry jingle of the harness, the cool air turned into a breeze that caressed our cheeks as lovingly as the kiss of a child! Away and down, with the gleeful "hi! he! g'lang there" of the driver, the mountains began to tower above us! Away and down, with the sharp reports of the curling lash, the cold granite and dwarfed shrubs changed, and we sped in among the stately pines! Away and down, with hearts as light as the perfumed air, the flashes of the sun stealing through the trees salutes our flushed faces, and every moment a Te Deum Laudamus whispers in ecstasy from our half-closed lips. Eight miles and a half in thirty-five minutes! Was there ever before such a ride vouchsafed to mortal? We sighed for four fresh mules to take us the remainder of the way. The exhilaration was not lost behind the horses, it was only toned down. As the evening shades began to touch the valley and while the sun yet kissed the mountains above us, we brought up at the starting-place, happy. PINE VALLEY. TWO CHARMING STORIES By LEWIS B. FRANCE. A marvel of the book-maker's art is "PINE VALLEY."--_Colorado Sun._ "PINE VALLEY," by Lewis B. France, contains but two stories, but these two are veritable cameos carved from the boundless treasures of the Rockies.--_Denver Republican._ There is little that could be suggested in the way of improvement in the dainty volume issued by the Chain and Hardy Company of Denver, entitled "PINE VALLEY," by Lewis B. France.--_Colorado Springs Gazette._ Its very simplicity is its highest charm. It is realistic because incomplex. There is no stage effect. It is heart to heart from the first sentence ... to the orphan baby's lisping grace at that eventful Christmas feast which made the desperado, Baltimore Hatch, a new man.--_David H. Moore in Western Christian Advocate._ PRICE 75 CENTS. PUBLISHED BY THE CHAIN & HARDY CO., DENVER, COLO. Colorado Midland Railway. PIKE'S PEAK ROUTE. Through a Scenic Region that has No Equal in the World. The Popular Route for ... ... Tourists and Excursions. _Scenery Unequaled. Equipment Unequaled. Delightful Health and Pleasure Resorts._ SPORTSMEN WILL FIND THE COLORADO MIDLAND RAILWAY THE SHORTEST LINE TO THE BEST HUNTING AND FISHING GROUNDS IN COLORADO. RATES, DESCRIPTIVE PAMPHLETS, AND OTHER INFORMATION SENT ON APPLICATION. H. COLLBRAN, CHAS. S. LEE, _Gen'l Manager._ _Gen'l Passenger Agent._ TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE -Plain print and punctuation errors fixed. 
34430	----	[Illustration: _All that morning Rob fished and Nelly stuck grasshoppers on the hook for him._ FRONTISPIECE. _See page 204._] The Beacon Hill Bookshelf Nelly's Silver Mine _A Story of Colorado Life_ By Helen Hunt Jackson With Illustrations in Color by Harriet Roosevelt Richards Boston Little, Brown, and Company 1926 _Copyright, 1878,_ BY ROBERTS BROTHERS _Copyright, 1906, 1920,_ BY WILLIAM S. JACKSON. _Copyright, 1910,_ BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. _All rights reserved._ _Printed in the United States of America_ CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I CHRISTMAS-DAY IN NELLY'S NEW ENGLAND HOME 1 II A TALK ABOUT LEAVING MAYFIELD 18 III OFF FOR COLORADO 48 IV A NIGHT IN A SLEEPING-CAR 71 V FIRST GLIMPSES OF COLORADO AND A NEW HOME 96 VI LIFE AT GARLAND'S 125 VII A HUNT FOR A SILVER MINE 141 VIII THE MARCHES LEAVE GARLAND'S 156 IX WET MOUNTAIN VALLEY 187 X ROB AND NELLY GO INTO BUSINESS 208 XI HOW TO FIND A SILVER MINE 227 XII NELLY'S SILVER MINE 250 XIII "THE GOOD LUCK" 270 XIV AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE 292 XV CHANGES IN PROSPECT 311 XVI "GOOT-BY AND GOOT LUCK" 323 ILLUSTRATIONS All that morning Rob fished and Nelly stuck grasshoppers on the hook for him _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE Nelly sat on one side, with all the dolls ranged in a row against the wall 20 He would ring out such a "jodel" that the people would stop and look up amazed 132 There she saw the very place she recollected so well 256 NELLY'S SILVER MINE CHAPTER I CHRISTMAS-DAY IN NELLY'S NEW-ENGLAND HOME It was Christmas morning; and Nelly March and her brother Rob were lying wide awake in their beds, wondering if it would do for them to get up and look in their stockings to see what Santa Claus had brought them. Nelly and Rob were twins; but you would never have thought so, when you looked at them, for Nelly was half a head taller than Rob, and a good deal heavier. She had always been well; but Rob had always been a delicate child. He was ill now with a bad sore throat, and had been shut up in the house for ten days. This was the reason that he and Nelly were in bed at six o'clock this Christmas morning, instead of scampering all about the house, and waking everybody up with their shouts of delight over their presents. When they went to bed the night before, Mrs. March had said: "Now, Rob, you must promise me not to get out of bed till it is broad daylight, and the house is thoroughly warm. You will certainly take cold, if you get up in the cold room." "Mamma," said Nelly, "I needn't stay in bed just because Rob has to, need I? I can take his presents out of the stocking, and carry them to him." "You shan't, either," said Rob, fretfully. "I want to take them out myself; and you're real mean not to wait for me, Nell. 'Tisn't half so much fun for just one. Shan't she stay in bed too, mamma, as long as I have to?" Mrs. March looked at Nelly, and smiled. She knew Nelly had not thought Rob would care any thing about her getting up first, or she would never have proposed it. Nelly was always ready to give up to Rob, much more so than was for his good. "Nelly can do as she pleases, Rob," she answered. "I don't think it would be fair for me to compel her to stay in bed because you have a sore throat: do you?" But Rob did not answer. He was not a very generous boy, and all he was thinking of now was his own pleasure. "Say, Nell," he cried, "you won't get up, will you, till I can? Don't: I'll think you're real unkind if you do." "No, no, Rob," said Nelly. "Indeed I won't. I don't care. It will be all the longer to think about it, and that's almost the best part of it." And Nelly threw her arms around Rob's neck and kissed him. "It's too bad, you darling," she said, "you have to be sick on Christmas-day. I won't have any pudding, either, if you don't want me to." Mrs. March was an Englishwoman, and had lived in England till she was married, and she always had on Christmas-day a real English plum-pudding with brandy turned over it, and set on fire just before the pudding was brought to the table, so that when it came in the blue and red and yellow flames were all blazing up high over it, and the waitress had to turn her head away not to breathe the heat from the flames. You would have thought it would have made Rob ashamed to have Nelly propose to go without pudding because he could not eat any, but I don't think it did. All he said was,-- "Don't be a goose, Nell. That's quite different." Just before they went to sleep, Sarah, the cook, went past their door, and Nelly called to her:-- "Sarah, mamma says we mustn't get up to-morrow morning till the house is very warm. Couldn't you get up very early and start the furnace fire?" "Why, yes, Miss Nelly, I can do that easy enough, sure; but where'll you be sleeping?" "Just where we always do, Sarah," replied Nelly, much surprised at this question. "Well, miss, I'll be up long before light and get the house as warm as toast by the time you can see to tell the toes from the heels of your stockings," said Sarah. "Good-night, Miss Nelly. Good-night, Master Rob." "What could she have meant asking where we'd be sleeping?" said Rob. "I'm sure I don't know," said Nelly; "it's very queer. We've never slept anywhere but in these two beds since we were babies. I don't know what's got into her head. It's the queerest thing I ever knew. I guess she was sleepy," and in a few moments both the children were fast asleep. Rob was the first to wake up. It was not much past midnight. "Nelly," he whispered. No answer. Twice he called: still no answer. There was not a sound to be heard except the loud ticking of the high clock at the head of the stairs. Presently there came a rustle and quick low steps, and his mother stood by his bed. "What do you want, my dear little boy?" she said. "Is your throat worse?" "No; isn't it time to get up?" said Rob. "Hasn't Sarah made the fire?" "Oh, mercy!" exclaimed Mrs. March. "Is that all? Why Rob! it isn't anywhere near morning. You must go to sleep again, child; it is a terribly cold night," and she tucked the bed-clothes tight around him, and ran back to her own room. "I don't care," said Rob. "I'll just stay awake. I don't believe it'll be very long;" but before he knew it he was fast asleep again. The next time he waked, it had begun to be light, or rather a little less dark. He could see the outline of the window at the foot of his bed, and he could see Nelly's bedstead, which was on the opposite side of the room. "Nelly," he called again. "I'm awake," said Nelly. "Why didn't you speak?" said Rob. "I was thinking," replied Nelly. "Sarah hasn't gone down yet." "Pshaw," said Rob, "she must have. She said she'd go long before light. She went before you were awake." "It's awful cold," whispered Nelly; "I can't keep even my hands out of bed. I'm going to jump up and see if any hot air comes in at the register." So saying, she jumped out of bed, ran to the register, and held her hands above it. "Cold as Greenland, Rob," she said, "Sarah can't have made the fire. I don't believe she is up." "Oh, dear," said Rob, "every thing all goes wrong when I'm sick. I think it's too mean I have to be the sick one just because we're twins. I heard a lady say once to mamma,--she didn't think I heard but I did,--'Weren't you very sorry, Mrs. March, to have twins? You know they can't ever both be strong. Your Rob, now, he looks very sickly.' Civil, that was, to mamma, wasn't it? I was so mad I could have flung my ball at her old wise head. But I think it must be true, because mamma answered her real gentle, but with her voice all trembly, and she said, 'Yes, I know that is usually said to be so; but we hope to prove to the contrary. Rob grows stronger every year, and he and his sister take so much comfort together, I can never regret that they were born twins.' But I do: I think it's a shame to make a fellow sick all his life that way. I say, Nell, I don't believe you'd mind it half so much as I do. Girls are different from boys. I think it would have been better for you to be the sick one than me. Don't you? Say, Nell!" This was a hard question for poor Nelly. "Oh, Rob!" she said, "I don't want to be selfish about it. I'd be willing to take turns and be sick half the times; or some more than half,--I guess three-quarters: but I think you ought to have a little." "But don't you see, Nell, it can't be that way," interrupted Rob; "it can't be that way with twins. It's got to be one sick one and one strong one. That's what that lady said, and mamma said she'd heard so too; and I think it's just as mean as any thing. They might have let us be born as much as three days apart, or a week: that wouldn't have made any difference in the fun; we could have played just as well, and, besides, we'd have had two birthdays to keep then, don't you see?" "I don't think that would be so nice, Rob," said Nelly, "as to have one together. That would be like my getting up now, before you do, and having my stocking all to myself, and you didn't want me to do that." "Pshaw, Nell," replied Rob, impatiently as before: "that's quite different; but girls never see things." Nelly laughed out loud. "I don't know why: we have as many eyes as boys have. I see lots more things in the woods than you do, always." "Oh, not that sort of things," answered Rob; "not that kind of seeing; not with your eyes: I mean to see with your--well, I don't know what it is you see with, the kind I mean; but don't you know mamma often says to papa about something that's got to be done, 'don't you see? don't you see?' and she doesn't mean that he is to look with his eyes: that's the kind I mean. Now where is that Sarah?" he exclaimed suddenly, sitting bolt upright in bed in his excitement. "It's as cold as out-doors here, and there isn't a creature stirring in the house, and it's broad daylight." "Oh, Rob, do lie down and cover yourself up," cried Nelly. "You're a naughty boy, and you'll have another sore throat as sure's you're alive. It isn't broad daylight nor any thing like it. I can't but just see the stockings." "Can't but just see them!" said Rob. "Didn't I tell you girls couldn't see any thing? Why, I can see them just as plain, just as plain as if I was in 'em! Ain't they big, Nell? I know what's in yours, for one thing." "Oh, Rob! do you? Tell me!" exclaimed Nell. "I can't," replied Rob. "I promised mamma I wouldn't. But it's something you've wanted awfully." "A doll, Rob! oh, is it a doll with eyes that can shut? oh, say, Rob!" pleaded Nelly. "It's long past the time I ought to have had it, if you hadn't been sick: you might tell me. I'll tell you what one of your things is if you will." "I don't want to know, Nell," replied Rob, "and you needn't tease me, for I'll never tell you: not if they lie abed in this house all day. Dear me! where can Sarah be? I'm going to call mamma." "You can't make her hear, Rob," answered Nelly. "They shut the doors ever so long ago. They were talking about something they didn't want us to hear." "How do you know?" said Rob. "Because I heard some of what they said, and I coughed so that they might know I was awake," replied Nelly. "Oh, Rob, it is awful!" and Nelly began to sob. "What's awful? what is it, Nell? Tell me, can't you?" said Rob, in an excited tone. "No, Rob I'm not going to tell you any thing about it," replied Nelly. "It wouldn't be fair, because they didn't want us to know. It'll be time enough when it comes." "When what comes?" shouted Rob, thoroughly roused now. "I do say, Nell March, you're enough to try a saint. What did you tell me any thing about it for? I'll tell mamma the minute she comes in, and tell her you listened. Oh, shame, shame, shame on a listener!" "Rob, you're just as mean as you can be," cried Nelly. "I didn't listen, and mamma knows very well I wouldn't do such a thing. Of course I couldn't help hearing when both doors were open, and I coughed out loud as soon as I thought about it that most likely they didn't mean we should know any thing about it. I heard papa say something about the children, and mamma said, 'we won't tell them till it is all settled,' and then I gave a great big cough, and she got up and shut both the doors; so now, Rob, you see I wasn't a listener. I wouldn't listen for any thing: mamma said once it was the very meanest kind of a lie in the whole world! Mamma knows I wouldn't do it, and you can just tell her what you like, you old hateful boy." This was a very unhappy sort of talk for Christmas morning, was it not? But both Rob and Nelly were tired and cold, and their patience was all worn out. It really was a hard trial for two children only twelve years old to have to lie still in bed, hour after hour, Christmas morning, waiting for their presents; it grew slowly lighter and lighter; each moment they could see the big stockings plainer and plainer; they hung on the outside of the closet door on two big hooks, where were usually hung the children's school hats. One stocking was gray, and one was white. I must tell you about these stockings, for they were very droll. They were larger than the largest boots you ever saw, and would reach the whole length of a man's leg, way above his knee, as far up as they could go. They belonged to the children's grandfather March. He was one of the queerest old gentlemen that ever was known, I think. He lived in a city a great many miles away from the village where Mr. and Mrs. March lived, but he used to spend his winters with them. About six weeks before he arrived, big boxes used to begin to come. There was no railroad to this village: every thing had to come on coaches or big luggage wagons. Early in November, old Mr. March's boxes always began to arrive at his son's house. When Rob and Nelly saw Mr. Earle's big express wagon drive up to the back gate, they always exclaimed, "Oh, there are grandpa's things coming!" and they would run out to see them unloaded. You would have thought that old Mr. March supposed there was nothing to eat in all the village, to see what quantities of food he sent up. But the most peculiar thing about it was that he sent such queer things. He was as queer about his food as he was about every thing else, and he did not eat the things other people ate. For instance, he never ate butter; he ate fresh olive oil on everything; and he had a notion that no olive oil was brought to this country to sell which was fit to eat. He had an intimate friend who was an old sea captain, and used to sail to Smyrna; this sea captain used to bring over for him large boxes of bottles of olive oil every spring and autumn; and two or three of these boxes he would use up in the course of the winter. He never used more than half of the oil in a bottle: after it had been opened a few days, he did not like it; he would smell it very carefully each day, and, by the third or fourth day, he would shove the bottle from him, and say, "Bah! throw the stuff away! throw it away! it isn't fit to eat!" Mrs. March had great trouble in disposing of these half bottles of oil; everybody in the neighborhood took them, and very glad people were to get them too, for the oil was delicious; but there were enough for two or three villages of the size of Mayfield. These sweet-oil boxes had curious letters on them in scarlet and blue, and the bottles were all rolled up in a sort of shining silver paper, which Rob and Nelly used to keep to cover boxes with. It was very pretty, so they were always glad when they saw a big pile of the olive-oil boxes. Then there were also boxes full of bottles of pepper-sauce; this came in big black bottles, and the little peppers showed red through the glass; the smallest drop of this pepper-sauce made your mouth burn like fire, but this queer old gentleman used to pour it over every thing he ate. The big bottle of pepper-sauce and the big bottle of olive oil were always put by his plate, and he poured first from one and then from the other, until the food on his plate was nearly swimming in the strange mixture. Salt fish was another of his favorite dishes, and he brought up every autumn huge piles of them. They came in flat packages, tied up with coarse cord; when Mr. Earle threw them down to the ground from the top of his wagon a strong and disagreeable odor rose in the air, and Rob and Nelly used to exclaim, "Groans for the salt fish! groans for the salt fish! Why didn't you lose it off the wagon, Mr. Earle?" "It wouldn't have made any odds, miss," Mr. Earle used to reply. "The old gentleman'd have made me go back for more." Besides the salt fish, there were little kegs full of what are called "tongues and sounds," put up in salt brine; these are the tongues and the intestines of fish; there were also jars of oysters and of clams, and a barrel of the sort of bread sailors eat at sea, which is called hard-tack. Now, after hearing about the extraordinary food this old gentleman used to bring for his own use, you will be prepared to believe what I have to tell you about his big stockings. He had just as queer notions about his bed and all his arrangements for sleeping, as he had about his food. No woman was ever allowed to make his bed. He always made it himself. Except in the very hottest weather, he would not have any sheets on it, only the very finest of flannel blankets, a great many of them; and he never wore any night-gown; he believed they were very unwholesome things. "Why don't animals put on night-gowns to sleep in?" he used to say; one might very well have replied to him, "Animals don't crawl in between blankets either, and if you are going to be simply an animal, you must go without any clothes day and night both." However, he was a very irritable old gentleman, and nobody ever argued with him about any thing. Mr. and Mrs. March let him do in all ways exactly as he liked, and never contradicted him, for he loved them very much, in his way, and was very good to them. Of all his queer ways and queer things, I think these big stockings were the queerest. As I said, he never wore any night-gown in bed, but he was over seventy years old, and, in spite of all his theories, his feet and legs would sometimes get cold: so he went to a tailor and got an exact pattern of a tight-fitting leg to a pair of trousers; then he took this to a woman who knit stockings to sell, and he unrolled his leg pattern before her, and said:-- "Do you see that leg, ma'am? Can you knit a stocking leg that shape and length?" The woman did not know what to make of him. "Why, sir," said she, "you'd never want a stocking-leg that long?" "I didn't ask you what I wanted, ma'am," growled the old gentleman, "I asked you what you could do. Can you knit a stocking-leg that length and shape?" "Why, yes, sir, I suppose I can," she replied, much cowed by his fierce manner. "Well, then, knit me six pairs, three gray and three white. There's the pattern for the foot," and he threw down an old sock of his on the table, and was striding away. The woman followed him. "But, sir," she said timidly, "I couldn't knit these for the price of ordinary stockings. I'm afraid you wouldn't be willing to pay what they would cost. It would be like knitting a pair of pantaloons, sir,--indeed it would." Old Mr. March always carried a big gold-headed cane; and, when he was angry, he lifted it from the ground and shook the gold knob as fast as he could right in people's faces. He lifted it now, and shook the gold knob so close in the woman's face, that she retreated rapidly toward the door. "I didn't say any thing about money: did I, ma'am? Knit those stockings: I don't care what they cost," he cried. "But I thought," she interrupted. "I didn't ask you to think, did I?" said Mr. March, speaking louder and louder. "You'll never earn any money thinking. Knit those stockings, ma'am, and the sooner the better," and the old gentleman walked out of the house muttering. "Dear me, what a very hasty old gentleman!" said the woman to herself. "I'll go over and ask Mrs. March, and make sure it's all right." So the next day she went to see Mrs. March, who explained to her all the old gentleman's whims about sleeping, and that he was quite willing and able to pay whatever the queer stockings would cost. In a very few weeks, the stockings were all done; and the old gentleman was so pleased with them that he gave the woman an extra five-dollar bill, besides the sum she had charged for knitting them. And this was the way that there came to be hanging up in Nelly's and Rob's chamber two such huge stockings on this Christmas morning of which I am telling you. They were splendid stockings for Christmas stockings! It did really seem as if you never would get to the bottom of them. The children used to lay them down on the floor, and run around them, and pull out thing after thing. Mrs. March sometimes wished they were not quite so large: it took a great deal to fill them: but, after having once used them, she had not the heart to go back to the ordinary-sized stocking, for it would have been such a disappointment to the children. She used them, first, one Christmas when Nelly's chief present was a big doll about two feet and a half tall, which wore real baby clothes like a live baby. This was so big it could not go into a common stocking, and Mrs. March happened then to think of her father's. The old gentleman was delighted to have them used for the purpose, and stood by laughing hard, while Mrs. March put the things in. "Ha! ha!" he said, "the old stockings are good for more than one thing: aren't they?" But we are leaving Nelly and Rob a long time in bed waiting for their Christmas presents. It grew lighter and lighter, and still there was no sound in the house, and the room grew no warmer. Rob was so thoroughly cross that he lay back on his pillow, with his eyes shut and his lips pouting out, and would not speak a word. In vain Nelly tried to comfort him, or to interest him. He would not speak. Even Nelly's patience was nearly worn out. At last the door of their mother's room opened, and she came out in her warm red wrapper. "Why, you dear patient little children!" she exclaimed; "are you in bed yet? this is too bad. What does make your room so cold! Why, bless me!" she exclaimed, going to the register, "no heat is coming up here; what does this mean?" "I don't think Sarah has gone down yet: I've been awake a long time, mamma," said Nelly. "A thousand years, it is," exclaimed Rob, "or more, that we've been lying awake here waiting: Sarah's the meanest girl alive." "Hush, hush, Rob!" said Mrs. March. "Don't speak so. Perhaps she is ill. I will go and see. But you may have your presents on the bed;" and, going to the closet, she took down first the gray stocking, which was for Rob, and carried it and laid it on his bed. Then she carried the white one, and laid it on Nelly's bed. "Oh, goody, goody!" they both cried at once. "You're real good, mamma;" and in one second more all four of the little arms were plunging into the depths of the big stockings. "You've earned your presents this time," said Mrs. March, as she pinned warm blankets round the children's shoulders. "I think you are really very brave little children to be quiet so many hours. It is after eight o'clock. I am afraid Sarah is ill." Then she went upstairs and the children heard her knocking at Sarah's door, and calling, "Sarah! Sarah!" Presently she came down very quickly, and went into her room; in a few minutes, she went back again, and Mr. March went with her. Then the children heard more knocking, and their papa calling very loud, "Sarah! Sarah! open the door this moment." Then came a loud crash. "Papa's smashed the door in," said Rob. "Good enough for her, lazy old thing, to sleep so Christmas morning! I hope mamma won't give her any present." Nelly did not speak. She had scarcely heard the knocking or the calls: she was so absorbed in looking at her new doll,--a wax doll with eyes that could open and shut. To have such a doll as this had been the great desire of Nelly's heart for years. There was also a beautiful little leather trunk full of clothes for the doll, and four little band-boxes, each with a hat or bonnet in it. There was a bedstead for her to sleep in, and a pretty red arm-chair for her to sit in, and a play piano, which could make a little real music. Then there were four beautiful new books, and ever so many pretty little paper boxes with different sorts of candy in them: all white candy; Mrs. March never gave her children any colored candies. Rob had a beautiful kaleidoscope, mounted with a handle to turn it round by; it was about as long as Nelly's doll, and as he drew it out he couldn't imagine what it was. Then he had a geographical globe, and a paint-box, and four new volumes of Mayne Reid's stories, and the same number of boxes of candy which Nelly had. You never saw two happier children than Rob and Nelly were for the next half-hour. They forgot all about the cold, about Sarah, and about having had to wait so long. For half an hour, all that was to be heard in the room were exclamations from one to the other, such as:-- "Oh, Nell! see this picture!" "Oh, Rob! look at this lovely bonnet!" "Nell, this is the splendidest one of all." "This doll is bigger than Mary Pratt's: I know it is. Oh, Rob! don't you suppose it must have cost a lot of money?" At last Mrs. March came back into their room, looking very much annoyed. "Well, children," she said, "we're going to have a droll sort of Christmas. Sarah is so fast asleep we can't wake her up, and your papa thinks she must be drunk. We shall have to cook our Christmas dinner ourselves. How will you like that?" "Oh, splendid, mamma, splendid! Let us get right up now," cried both the children, eagerly laying down their playthings. "No," said Mrs. March. "Rob must not get up yet: it is too cold; but you may get up, Nell, and help me get breakfast. Can you leave your new dolly?" "Oh, yes, mamma!" cried Nelly, "indeed I can." And laying the dolly carefully between the bed-clothes with her head on the pillow, she kissed her, and said, "Good-by, dear Josephine Harriet: you won't be very long alone. I will come back soon." Rob burst out laughing. "What a name!" he said, mimicking Nelly. "Josephine Harriet! whoever heard such a name?" "I think it's a real pretty name, Rob," replied Nelly. "Boys don't know any thing about dolls names. Besides, she is named for two people: Josephine is for that poor, dear, beautiful Empress that mamma told us about; I've always thought since then if ever I had a doll handsome enough, I'd name her after her. And Harriet is after Hatty Pratt. I love Hatty dearly, and she's named two dolls after me." "Well, I shall call the doll the Empress, then," said Rob, in a tone intended to be very sarcastic. "Yes; so shall I," replied Nelly: "I thought of that. It will sound very nice." Rob looked a little disappointed. He thought it would tease Nelly to have her doll called "The Empress." "No: I think I'll call her Mrs. Napoleon," said he. "Well," said Nelly, "I suppose that would do,"--Nelly had not the least idea that Rob was making fun of her,--"but I don't believe they ever call the real Empress so. I don't remember it in the story. I'll ask mamma. I think Mrs. Napoleon is a beautiful name: don't you, Rob?" By this time Rob was too deep in the "Cliff Climbers"--one of his new books--to answer; and Nelly was all dressed ready to go downstairs. As she left the room, Rob called out:-- "I say, Nell, tell mamma I don't want any breakfast. I'd rather stay in bed and read this story." It was a very droll Christmas-day, but the children always said it was one of the very pleasantest they ever spent. It turned out that the cook was really in a heavy drunken sleep. She had been partly under the influence of liquor when she went to bed the night before. That was the reason she had asked Nelly where they would be sleeping in the morning. She did not know what she was saying when she said that. Mr. March went and brought a doctor to look at her in her sleep, for they were afraid it might be apoplexy; but the doctor only laughed, and said:-- "Pshaw! The woman's drunk. Let her alone. She'll wake up by noon." Mr. and Mrs. March felt very unhappy about this, for Sarah had lived with them two years, and had never done such a thing before. She did not wake up by noon, as the doctor had said. She did not wake up till nearly night; and, when she went downstairs, there were Mrs. March and Nelly and Rob in the kitchen, all at work. Mrs. March and Nelly were washing the dishes, and Rob was cleaning the knives. They had cooked the dinner and eaten it, and cleared every thing away. Sarah dropped into a chair, and looked from one to the other without speaking. "Hullo!" said Rob, "you cooked us a nice Christmas dinner: didn't you? We'd have never had any if we'd waited for you." "Do you feel sick now, Sarah?" said good-hearted little Nelly. Sarah did not speak. Her brain was not yet clear. She looked helplessly from Mrs. March to the children, and from the children to Mrs. March. Then she rose and walked unsteadily to the table, and tried to take the towel out of Nelly's hands. "Let me wipe the dishes," she said: "my head's better now." "No, Sarah," said Mrs. March, sternly. "Go back to your room. You're not yet fit to be on your feet." The children wondered very much that their mamma, who was usually so kind, should speak so sternly to Sarah; but they asked no questions. They were too full of the excitement of doing all the work, and looking at their presents, and talking about them. The hours flew by so quickly that it was dark before they knew it; and, when they went to bed, they both exclaimed together:-- "Oh, Nell!" and "Oh, Rob! hasn't it been a splendid Christmas!" They remembered it for a great many years, for it was the last Christmas they spent in their pleasant home at Mayfield. CHAPTER II A TALK ABOUT LEAVING MAYFIELD The next day a big snow fell. It was one of those snows which fall so thick and fast and fine, that when you look out of the windows it seems as if great white sheets were being let down from the skies. When Rob first waked and saw this snow falling, he exclaimed:-- "Hurrah! here's a bully snow-storm! Now we'll get some snow-balling. Say, Nell, won't you help me build a real big snow-fort with high walls that we can stand behind, and fire snow-balls at the boys?" "Oh, Rob!" said Nelly, "I'm afraid mamma won't let you play in the snow yet: your throat isn't well enough; but by next week I think it will be. We'll have snow right along now all winter." "Oh, dear!" said Rob, fretfully: "there it is again. I can't ever do any thing I want to." "Why, Rob," replied Nelly, "aren't you ashamed of yourself, with that lovely kaleidoscope and all those books? I shouldn't think you'd want to go out to-day. I'm sure I don't. I'd rather stay at home with Mrs. Napoleon and the rest of my dolls all day than go anywhere,--that is, unless it was to take a sleigh-ride. Mamma said perhaps, if it stopped snowing, papa might take us on a sleigh-ride this afternoon." "Did she?" exclaimed Rob; "oh, bully! But then I suppose I can't go," he added, in a quite altered tone. "Oh, yes! you can," answered Nelly, "mamma said so. I heard her tell papa it would do you good to go well wrapped up." "I hate to be bundled up so," said Rob. "It's as hot as fury; and, besides, it makes the boys laugh; last time I went out so, Ned Saunders he stood on his father's store steps, when we stopped there,--mamma wanted to buy a broom,--and Ned called out, 'By-by, baby bunting, where's your little rabbit skin?' I shan't go if mamma makes me wear that red shawl, so!" and Rob's face was the picture of misery. Nelly's cheeks flushed at the thought of the insulting taunt to Rob which was conveyed in that quotation from Mother Goose: but she was a very wise and clear-headed little girl, as you have no doubt discovered before this time, and she knew much better than to let Rob think she felt as he did about it; so all she said was, "I don't care: I shouldn't mind. If Ned Saunders had the sore throat, he'd have to be wrapped up just the same way. Boys are a great deal hatefuller than girls. No girl would ever say such a thing as that to a girl if she was sick, or to a boy either." "No, I don't suppose they would," said Rob, reflectively. "Girls are nicer than boys some ways: that's a fact." In the excitement of the Christmas presents, and the getting of the Christmas dinner, and all the housework which had to be done afterward, Nelly had forgotten about the conversation which she had overheard in the night between her father and mother. But in the quiet of this stormy morning it all came back to her. She and Rob were spending the forenoon in the place which they liked best in all the house, their mother's room. It was a beautiful sunny chamber, with two big bay-windows in it,--one looking to the south, and one to the west; the south window looked out on the garden, and the west window looked out on a great pine grove which was only a few rods away from the house; on the east side of the room was the fireplace with a low grate set in it; the fire burned better in this fireplace than in any other in the house, the children thought. That was because they had a nice time every night, sitting down a while in front of this fire and talking with their mother. This was the time when they told her things they didn't quite like to tell in the daytime; and this was the time she always took to tell them things she was anxious they should remember. They associated all their talks with the bright open fire; and, whenever they saw the flames of soft coal leaping up and shining, they remembered a great many things their mother had said to them. There was a large old-fashioned mahogany table on one side of this room, which Mrs. March used for cutting out work, and which the children liked better than any thing in the room. It had droll twisted legs which ended in knobs and castors, and it had big leaves fastened on with brass hinges which opened and shut; when these leaves were open the table was so big that both Rob and Nelly could be up on it at once, and have plenty of room for their things. This morning their mother had let them open it out to its full size, and push it close up in one corner of the room, so that the walls made a fine back for them to lean against. Nelly sat on one side, with all her dolls ranged in a row against the wall, Mrs. Napoleon at the head. In front of her, she had all their clothes in one great pile, and was sorting and arranging them in the little bureau and trunk and boxes in which she kept them. Rob sat opposite her with his feet on a blanket shawl, so that they would not scratch the mahogany; he was reading the "Cliff Climbers," and every few minutes he would break out with:-- "This is the most splendid story of all yet." "Nell, look at this picture of them going up over the cliff by ropes. Oh, don't I just wish I could go to some such place!" [Illustration: Nelly sat on one side with all her dolls ranged in a row against the wall. _Page 20_] After a while, Nelly leaned her head back against the wall, and stopped playing with her dolls. She looked at the snow-storm outside, and the bright fire in the grate, and exclaimed, "Oh, mamma! isn't it nice here?" There was something in Nelly's tone which made her mother look up surprised. "Why, yes, dear; of course it is nice here; it is always nice here; what made you think of it just now?" Nelly March was one of the honestest little girls that ever lived. Nothing seemed to her so dreadful as a lie; but she came very near telling one now. "I don't know, mamma," she said; but, almost before the words were out of her mouth, she added:-- "Yes, I do know, too; I meant I didn't want to tell." "Why not? my little daughter," said Mrs. March, looking much puzzled. "Surely it cannot be any thing you do not want mamma to know." "Oh, no, mamma! it is something you didn't want me to know," said Nelly hastily, turning very red. "Something I didn't want you to know, Nell," she said. "What do you mean? And how did you know it then?" "She listened, she listened," cried Rob, throwing down his book, "and she wouldn't tell me a thing either, and she was real mean." The tears came into Nelly's eyes, and Mrs. March looked very sternly at Rob. "Rob," she said, "telling tales is as mean as listening: I'm ashamed of you. Nell, what does he mean?" Poor Nelly was almost crying. "Indeed, mamma," she exclaimed, "I didn't listen; and I told Rob then I didn't; he's told a lie, a wicked lie, and he ought to be punished, mamma; he knows it's a lie." "It ain't either," shouted Rob, "if you didn't listen how'd you hear? She did listen, mamma, and now she's told a lie too." Mrs. March threw down her sewing, and walked quickly across the room to the table where the children were sitting. She put one hand on Nelly's head, and one on Rob's. "My dear children," she said, "you shock me. Do think what you are saying: this is a bad beginning for the new year." "'Tain't New Year yet for a week," muttered Rob. "This needn't count." Mrs. March laughed in spite of herself. "Every thing counts, Rob, which we do, whether it is the beginning of a New Year or not. Mamma ought not to have spoken as if that made any odds. But you must not accuse each other of lying. That is a most dreadful thing. I know neither of you would tell a lie." "Course we wouldn't," cried both the children. "Neither would Nelly listen, Rob, in any such sense as you meant," continued Mrs. March. "Sometimes we over-hear things when we do not mean to." "That's just the way it was, mamma," interrupted Nelly eagerly; "and I told Rob so: it was in the night, night before last, and you and papa were talking, and I was awake, and I could not help hearing, and I coughed as loud as I could for you to hear." "Oh," said Mrs. March, "that is it, is it? I remember you coughed, and I shut the door. I did not think you were awake, but I was afraid we should waken you. We were talking about going away from this place." "Yes, mamma," said Nelly, in a sad tone. "Going away! Oh, mamma, are we really going away? oh, where? say where, mamma, say quick!" cried Rob, throwing down his "Cliff Climbers," and springing from the table to the floor at one bound. "Gently, gently, wild boy," said Mrs. March, catching Rob by one arm and drawing him into her lap. In spite of all Rob's ill temper and selfishness, I think Mrs. March loved him a little better than she loved Nelly. Neither Nelly nor Rob dreamed of this, and perhaps Mrs. March never was conscious of it herself; but other people could see it. "Why, Rob," she said, "would you be glad to go away from this house, and the grove, and the pond, and from all your friends, and go to live in a strange place where you didn't know anybody?" Rob's face sobered. "To stay, mamma?" he said, "to stay always?" Nelly did not speak. She knew more about this matter than Rob did. She watched her mother's face very earnestly and sadly, and tears filled her eyes when Mrs. March answered:-- "I am afraid so, Rob: if we go I do not believe we shall ever come back. I didn't mean to let you know any thing about it till it was all settled. But, since you have heard something about it, I will tell you all I know myself. Come here, Nelly; both of you sit down now at my feet, and I will talk to you about it." Nelly and Rob sat down on two low crickets by their mother's knee, and looked up in her face without speaking. They felt that something very serious was coming. Before Mrs. March began to speak, she kissed them both several times, then she said:-- "There is one thing I am very sure of: both my little children will be brave and good, if hard times come." "Oh, mamma! tell us quick; don't bother," interrupted impatient Rob, "let's know what it is quick, mamma. Are we going to be awful poor, like the people in story books? I don't care if we are, if that's all. Let's have it over." Mrs. March laughed again: one reason she loved Rob so much was that his temper was so much like her own. It had been very hard for her herself to learn to be patient, and to be sufficiently moderate in her speech; and even now there was nothing in the world she disliked so much as suspense of any kind. She could make up her mind to endure almost any thing, if only it were fixed and settled. So when Rob burst out with impatient speeches like this one, she knew exactly how he felt. And sometimes when Nelly took things quietly and calmly, and was so deliberate in all her movements, Mrs. March misunderstood her, and thought she did not really care about any thing half as much as Rob did. But the truth was, Nelly really cared a great deal more about almost everything, than he did. He forgot things in a day, or an hour even; sad things, pleasant things, all alike: they blew away from Rob's memory and Rob's heart like leaves in a great wind, and he never thought much more about any thing than just whether he liked it or disliked it at the moment. The phrase he used to his mother just now was very often on his lips, "Oh, don't bother!" Especially he used to say this to Nelly whenever she tried to reason with him about something which she thought not quite right or not quite safe. You would have thought to hear them talk that Nelly was at least five years older than he: she talked to him like a little mother. At this moment, when Rob was hurrying his mother so impatiently, Nelly exclaimed, "Oh, hush, Rob! do let mamma tell it as she wants to;" and Nelly drew up close to her mother's side, and laid her cheek down on her mother's hand. Nelly's heart was as full as it could be of sympathy: she knew that her mother felt very unhappy about going away, and Nelly's way of showing her sympathy was to be very loving and tender and quiet; but, strange as it may seem, this did not comfort and help Mrs. March so much as Rob's off-hand and impatient way. "Well, but she's so slow: ain't you slow, mamma? And it's horrid to wait," replied Rob. "Yes, Rob," laughed Mrs. March. "I am rather slow, and it is horrid to wait; but I won't be slow any longer: this is what papa and I were talking about the other night,--about going out to Colorado to live." "Colorado! where's that? Is it anywhere near the Himalayas?" cried Rob. "If it is, I'd like to go; oh, I'd like to go ever so much." Mrs. March laughed out loud. "Oh you droll Rob," she said. "No, it's nowhere near the Himalayas; but there are mountains there about as high as the Himalayas,--higher than any other mountains in America." "Are there elephants?" said Rob. "I wouldn't mind about any thing if there are only elephants." "Rob, how can you!" burst out Nelly, with a vehemence very unusual in her. "How can you! It's because papa's sick that we are going." "Why, what's the matter with papa?" said Rob, wonderingly. Mr. March had been a sufferer from asthma for so many years that no one any longer thought of him as an invalid. He was very rarely confined to the house, and, except in the summer, his asthma did not give him a great deal of trouble; but in the summer it was so bad that for weeks he was not able to preach at all: I believe I have forgotten all this time to tell you that he was a minister. I have been so busy talking about Nelly and Rob, that I have hardly told you any thing about their papa and mamma. Mr. March had been settled in this village of Mayfield for fifteen years, and the people loved him so much that they would not hear of having any other minister. When his asthma was so bad that he could not preach, they hired some one else; always in the summer they gave him a two-months' vacation; and, whenever any stranger said any thing unkind about his asthmatic voice, they always replied, "If Mr. March couldn't preach in any thing more than a whisper, we'd rather hear him than any other man living." The truth was, that they had grown so accustomed to the asthmatic, wheezy tone, that they did not notice it. It really was very unpleasant to a stranger's ear, and everybody wondered how a whole congregation of people could endure it. But it is wonderful how much love can do to reconcile us to disagreeable things in the people we love; and not only to reconcile us to them, but to make us forget them entirely. Nelly and Rob never thought but that their father's voice was as pleasant as anybody's: when his breath came very short and quick, they knew he was suffering, but at other times they did not remember any thing about his having asthma; this was the reason that Rob said so wonderingly now:-- "Why, what is the matter with papa?" Mrs. March's voice was very sad as she replied:-- "Only his asthma, dear, which he has had so many years, but it is growing much worse; and we have seen a gentleman lately who has come from Colorado, and he says that people never have asthma at all there, and the doctor says if papa does not go to some such climate to live, he will get worse and worse, so that he will not be able to do any thing. You don't know how much poor papa suffers, even here. He has not been able to lie down in bed for almost a year now; ever since early last summer." "Not lie down!" exclaimed Nelly, "why, what does he do, mamma? How does he sleep?" "He sleeps propped up with pillows, dear, almost as straight as he would be in a chair," replied Mrs. March. "Oh, dear," cried Rob, "isn't that awful! Why didn't you ever tell us, mamma? Isn't he awful tired? What makes people not have asthma in Colorado, anyhow?" "Which question first, Rob?" said Mrs. March. "I haven't told you, because papa dislikes very much to have any thing said about it. Yes: he is very tired all the time. He never feels rested in the morning as you do. I don't know why people never have asthma in Colorado; but I think it must be because the air is so very dry there. They never have any rain there from October to April, and the country is very high; some of the towns where people live are twice as high as the highest mountains you ever saw." "Mamma!" exclaimed Rob, with so loud and earnest a voice that both Mrs. March and Nelly gave a little jump. "Mamma, if it's the being so high up that does the good, why couldn't we go to the Himalayas instead? Oh, it's perfectly splendid there! just let me read you about it," and Rob ran back to the table for his "Cliff Climbers," and was about to begin to read aloud from it. Mrs. March could not help laughing: and Nelly laughed too; for Nelly, although she was no older than Rob, was very much ahead of him in her studies at school, and she knew very well where the Himalaya mountains were, and that there would be no way of living there comfortably even if it were not quite too far to go. "But, Rob,--" began Mrs. March. "You just wait till I read you, mamma," interrupted Rob; "you haven't read the 'Cliff Climbers,' and you don't know any thing about it. Perhaps the doctors don't know how many good things grow there; and the mountains are five miles high, some of them. I'm sure papa couldn't have the asthma as high up as that: could he?" "My dear little boy," said Mrs. March, putting her hand on the book and shutting it up, "you are always too hasty: you must stop and listen. Nobody could live five miles up in the air. That would be as much too high as this is too low; and things which sound very fine to read about would be very inconvenient in real life." "Yes," interrupted Rob, "an elephant tore down their cabin one night,--just tramped right over it, and smashed it all flat as we would an ant-hill. That wouldn't be very nice: but we needn't live where the elephants come; we could just go out to hunt them in the summer." Rob's eyes were dark blue, and when he was eager and excited they seemed to turn black, and to be twice their usual size. He was so eager now that his eyes were fairly dancing in his head. He was possessed of this idea about going to live in the Himalaya mountains, and nothing could stop him. "They're all heathen there too, mamma, and wouldn't papa like that? He could preach to them, don't you know? Oh, it would be splendid! and I could collect seeds just like these cliff climbers, and stuff birds, and make lots of money sending them back to this country." "Oh, Rob!" exclaimed Nelly, at last; "do stop talking, and let mamma talk: she hasn't half told us yet. It's all nonsense about the Himalayas. We couldn't go there; nobody goes there. I'll just show you on your new globe where it is, and you can see for yourself." So saying, Nelly ran for the globe, and was proceeding to show Rob what a long journey round the world it would be to reach the Himalayas; but Rob pushed the globe away. "I don't care any thing about the old globe," he said; "people do go there, for Mayne Reid's books are all true; he says they are, and it isn't all nonsense about the Himalayas; is it, mamma? Couldn't we go there?" Rob was fast growing angry. "No, Rob," said Mrs. March: "we cannot go to the Himalayas to live; that is very certain. One of these days, when you're a man, I hope you will be able to go all about the world and see all these countries you are so fond of reading about: you will have to wait till then for the Himalayas. If we go away from home at all, we must go to Colorado. That is quite far enough: it will take us four whole days and five nights, going just as fast as the cars can go, to get there." "I don't care where we go, if we can't go to the Himalayas," said Rob, sulkily. "I think it's real mean if we've got to go away not to go there. I know it would be real good for papa." Mrs. March laughed again very heartily. "Rob," she said, "you are a very queer little boy. Mamma can't understand how you get so excited over things in such a short time. A few minutes ago you had never thought of such a thing as going to the Himalayas; and here you are already sure that it would be good for papa to go there. Why, even the doctors are not sure what would be good for papa! It is very hard to tell." "Does it really take four whole days and five nights to get to Colorado?" asked Rob. He had already given up the idea of the Himalayas, and was beginning to think about Colorado. Rob's mind moved from one thing to another as quickly as a weathercock when the wind is shifting. "Yes: four whole days and five nights," said Mrs. March; "or else four nights and five days, according to the time you start." "Five days! days! Let's start so as to make it come five days; so as to see all we can," exclaimed Rob. "That's splendid! When will we start, mamma?" "It isn't really sure, is it, mamma, that we are to go?" asked Nelly, who had hardly had a chance yet to speak a word: Rob had been talking so fast. "Does papa want to go?" You see how much more thoughtful Nelly was for other people than for herself. All Rob was thinking of was what good times might come of this journey; but Nelly was thinking how hard it was for her papa and mamma to break up their pleasant home, and how sad it might be for all of them to go to live among strangers. "No, dear," said Mrs. March. "Papa does not want to go at all. It is very hard for him to make up his mind to do it. And I do not want to go either, except on papa's account: but we would go anywhere in the world that would make papa well; wouldn't we?" "Yes, indeed," said Nelly, earnestly. "Why doesn't papa want to go?" cried Rob. "There'll be plenty of people there to preach to: won't there? And that's all papa cares for." "Papa doesn't like to leave all these people here that he has preached to for so many years: he loves them all very much," replied Mrs. March; "and he does not expect to preach any more if he goes to Colorado. There are not a great many villages there; it is chiefly a wild new country: people live on great farms and keep large herds of sheep or of cows; and the doctor wants papa to be a farmer and work out of doors, and not live in his study among his books any more." "Be a farmer like Uncle Alonzo?" exclaimed Nelly. "Oh, mamma, wouldn't that be nice? and wouldn't papa like that? He always has a good time when he goes to Uncle Alonzo's. He says it makes him feel as if he was a boy again. And oh, mamma, the cows are beautiful. Don't you like cows, mamma?" Nelly was now almost as excited as Rob. She had been several times to make a visit at her Uncle Alonzo's house. He was a rich farmer, and had big barns, and fields full of raspberries and huckleberries, and a beautiful pine grove close to the house; and he had nearly a hundred cows, and used to make butter and cheese to sell, and both Nelly and Rob thought there was nothing so delightful in the whole world as to stay at Uncle Alonzo's. "No, dear," said Mrs. March. "I can't honestly say I do like cows. I am so silly as to be afraid of them. But I like your Uncle Alonzo's farm very much." "Oh, mamma, how can you be afraid of a cow!" cried Rob. "They never hurt you." "I suppose it's because I am a coward, Rob," answered Mrs. March; "but I can't help it. I was chased by a bull once when I was a girl; and, ever since then, I have been afraid of any thing which has horns on its head." "Is that what the word coward comes from, mamma?" asked Rob: "does it mean to be afraid of a cow?" "I guess not, Rob," said Mrs. March, laughing. "Don't begin to make puns, Rob: it is a bad habit." "Puns!" said Rob, much surprised; "what is a pun?" Then Mrs. March tried to explain to Rob what a pun was, but it was very hard work; and I don't think Rob understood, after all her explanations, so I shall not try to explain it to you here; but I dare say a great many of you understand what a pun is, and, if you do, you will see that Rob had accidentally made rather a good pun, for a little boy only twelve years old, when he asked if a coward was a person afraid of a cow. Presently the dinner-bell rang. "Why, mamma," exclaimed both the children, "it isn't dinner-time, is it?" "Yes, it really is," said Mrs. March, looking at her watch: "I had no idea it was so late. Where has the morning gone to?" "Gone to Colorado," exclaimed Rob, running downstairs, "gone to Colorado! Hurrah for Colorado." "By way of the Himalayas," said Nelly behind him, as they ran downstairs. "Be still, Nell, can't you," said Rob, half vexed, half laughing. "I haven't been in Geography half so long as you have. We haven't come to the Himalayas yet." Mr. March was just coming in at the front-door. He was so covered with snow that he looked like a snow-man; and as he stamped his feet on the door-mat, and shook off the snow from his overcoat and hat and beard, there seemed to be quite a snow-storm in the hall. "Hurrah for Colorado," he repeated. "What does that mean? Who is going to Colorado?" "All of us, papa; all of us, papa," cried Rob. "Mamma's told us all about it, so you can't keep it a secret any longer." Mr. March looked up inquiringly at Mrs. March, who was coming down the stairs behind Nelly and Rob. "Yes," she said, in answer to his inquiring look. "Yes. I have told the children all about it, and they are both wild to go, though Rob thinks the Himalayas would be a better place for you." Mr. March burst into a loud laugh. "The Himalayas!" he exclaimed. "Why, what do you know about the Himalayas, my boy?" It was rather too bad to laugh at Rob so much about his idea of the Himalayas, I think; because almost any boy who had just been reading Captain Mayne Reid's "Cliff Climbers," would think that there could be nothing in this life half so fine to do as to go to the Himalayas to live. Rob took it very good-naturedly this time, however. "Not any thing, papa," he replied, "except what is in that book you gave me, the 'Cliff Climbers;' but that says some of the mountains are five miles high, and I thought that would cure the asthma, to go up as high as that. Mamma says that's what we are going to Colorado for, to get up high, to cure your asthma." "Papa, we're so glad to go if it will make you better," said Nelly, taking hold of her father's hand with both of hers. Mr. March stooped over and kissed Nelly on her forehead. "I know you are," he said: "you are papa's own little comfort always." Mr. March loved both of his children very dearly; but Nelly gave him more pleasure than Rob did. He often said to his wife when they were alone: "Nelly never gives me a moment's anxiety. The child has all the traits which will make her a noble and a useful and a happy woman; but I am not so sure about Rob. I am afraid we shall have trouble with him." And Mrs. March always replied: "It is very true all you say about Nelly. She is a thoroughly good child; but you are quite mistaken about Rob. He is very hasty and impulsive; but he will come out all right. He has twice Nelly's cleverness, though he is so backward about his books. You'll see." "I'm glad too, papa," cried Rob, "just as glad as any thing. It will be splendid to live on a farm. Shall you wear blue overalls like Uncle Alonzo? And will you let me help milk? And can't I have a bull pup? I'm going to call him Caesar." "Well, upon my word, young people," said Mr. March; and he looked at his wife when he spoke, "you seem to have got this thing pretty well settled between you. I don't know that we are going to Colorado at all: after dinner we will all sit down together and talk it over. I've got a letter here"--and he took a big envelope out of his pocket--"from a gentleman I wrote to in Colorado, and he has sent me some pictures of different places there, and of some of the strange rocks. We can't have our sleigh-ride this afternoon; it is not going to stop snowing: so we may as well take a journey to Colorado on paper; perhaps it will be the only way we shall ever go." Rob and Nelly could hardly eat their dinner: they were so eager to see the Colorado pictures and to hear all about the country. As Mr. March looked at their eager faces, he sighed, and thought to himself:-- "Dear little souls! They have no idea of what is before them if we go to Colorado. It is as well they haven't." "What makes you look so sad, papa?" said Nelly. "Did I look sad, Nelly?" replied Mr. March. "I didn't mean to. I was thinking how delighted you and Rob seemed at the idea of going to Colorado, and thinking that you would probably find it very different from what you expect. You would not be so comfortable there as you are here." "Isn't there enough to eat out there?" asked Rob, anxiously. "Oh, yes!" said Mr. March, laughing, "plenty to eat." "Well, that's all I care for," said Rob. "Oh, papa, do hurry! you never ate your dinner so slow before. I've been done ever so long. Can't I be excused, and go and read till you're ready to show us the pictures?" "Yes," said Mrs. March, "you may both go up into my room; and, as soon as papa and I have finished our dinner, we will come up there and have our talk." Mrs. March wished to have a little conversation alone with her husband before their talk with the children. She told him about Nelly's having accidentally overheard what they were saying in the night; "so I thought I would tell them all about it," she said. "Certainly, certainly," said Mr. March. "There is no reason they should not know. Even if we do not go, no harm can come of it." Then she told him of the obstinate notion Rob had taken into his head about the Himalayas, and how hard it had been to convince him that they ought not to set off for those mountains at once. Mr. March was laughing very heartily over this as they went up the stairs, and, as they entered the room, Rob said:-- "What are you and mamma laughing so about, papa?" Mrs. March gave her husband a meaning look, intended to warn him not to tell Rob that they were laughing at him; but Mr. March did not understand her glance. "Laughing at your fierce desire to start off for the Himalayas, Rob," he said. "I don't care," said Rob: "I'm going there some day. You just read the 'Cliff Climbers,' and see if you don't think so too. I'll take you and mamma and Nell there when I'm a man and have money enough; see if I don't." "Well, well, Rob, we'll go when that time comes, if we're not too old when you're rich enough to pay all that the journey costs. I've always thought I should like to go round the world," said Mr. March; "but now we'll look at the Colorado pictures." Then they sat down, Mr. and Mrs. March on the lounge in front of the fire, Nelly in her father's lap, and Rob perched up on the back of the lounge behind his mother, so that he could look over her shoulder. The first picture Mr. March took out of the envelope was one which looked like the picture of two gigantic legs and feet wrong side up. "Oh, what big feet!" exclaimed Rob. "Do giants live in Colorado?" Mr. March turned the picture the other side up. "They are rocks, Rob," he said, "not feet; but they do look like feet, that's a fact. These are some of the rocks in a place called Monument Park, because it is so full of these queer rocks. Here are some more of them: they are of very strange shapes. Here are some that look like women walking with big hoop-skirts on, and some like posts with round caps on their heads; and here is a picture of a place where so many of these rocks are scattered among the trees, that they look like people walking about. Here is one group which has been called the 'Quaker Wedding.'" "Oh, let me see that! let me see that!" exclaimed Nelly. "How queer to call rocks Quakers!" "I don't see that they look very much like men and women, after all," added she as she studied the picture; "but they don't look like any rocks I ever saw. I think I should be afraid of them. They look alive." "Pooh!" said Rob, "I shouldn't be. Rocks can't stir. Show us some more, papa." The next pictures were of beautiful waterfalls: there were three of them,--one of seven falls, one above the other, and one of a beautiful fall, very narrow, hemmed in between rocks, with tall pine-trees growing about it. The next was of a high mountain with snow half way down its sides, and a great many lower mountains all around it. This was called Pike's Peak. "Oh, papa!" said Nelly, "could we live where we could see that mountain all the time?" "Perhaps so, Nell," answered her father, smiling at her eagerness: "would you like to?" Nelly was looking at the picture intently, and did not reply for a moment. Then she said:-- "Papa, I think it would keep us good all the time to look at that mountain." "Why, Nell," said her mother, "I didn't know you cared so much for mountains. You never said so." "I never saw a real mountain before," said Nelly. "This isn't a bit like Mount Saycross." The town of Mayfield was in one of the pleasantest counties in Massachusetts. The region was very beautifully wooded and had several small rivers in it, and one range of low hills called the Saycross Hills; the highest of these was perhaps three thousand feet high, and Nelly had spent many a day on its top: but she had never seen any thing which gave her any idea of the grandeur of a high mountain till she saw this picture of Pike's Peak. It seemed as if she could not take her eyes away from this picture: she looked at it as one looks at the picture of the face of a friend. "Oh papa!" she exclaimed at last, "let me have this picture for my own: won't you? I'll be very, very careful of it." "Yes, you may have it if you want it so much," replied Mr. March, "but be very sure not to lose it. I may want to show it to some one, any day." "I won't lose it, papa," said Nelly, in a tone of so much feeling that her father looked at her in surprise. "Why, Nell," he said, "you must be a born mountaineer I think." And so she was. From the day she first looked on this picture of Pike's Peak till the day when she stood at the foot of the real mountain itself, it was seldom out of her mind. She kept the little card in the box with Mrs. Napoleon's best bonnet and gown, and she talked so much about it that her father called her his "little Pike's Peak girl." The rest of the pictures were of some of the towns in Colorado, some ranches,--ranches is the word which the Coloradoans use instead of farm,--and some beautiful canyons. A canyon is either a narrow valley with very high steep sides to it, or a chasm between two rocky walls. The most beautiful and wonderful things in Colorado are the canyons; they all have streams of water running through them; in fact, the canyons may be said to be roads which rivers and creeks have made for themselves among the mountains. Sometimes the river has cut a road for itself right down through solid rock, twelve hundred feet deep. You can think how deep that must be, by looking at the walls of the room you are sitting in, as you read this story. Probably the walls of your room are about ten feet high. Now imagine walls of rock one hundred and twenty times as high as that; and only far enough apart for a small river to go through at the bottom; and then imagine beautiful great pine-trees, and many sorts of shrubs and flowers growing all the way down these sides, and along the upper edges of them, and don't you see what a wonderful place a canyon must be? You mustn't think either that they are just straight up and down walls, such as a mason might build out of bricks, or that they run straight in one direction for their whole length. They are made up often of great rocks as big as houses piled one on top of another, and all rough and full of points, and with big caves in them; and they turn and twist, just as the river has turned and twisted, to the north or south or east or west. Sometimes they take such sharp turns that, when you look ahead, all you can see is the big high wall right before you, and it looks as if you couldn't go any farther; but, when you go a few steps nearer, you will see that both the high walls bend off to the right or the left, and the river is still running between them, and you can go right on. One of the prettiest pictures which Mr. March's friend had sent him was of a canyon called Boulder Canyon. It is named after the town of Boulder, which is very near it. This is one of the most beautiful canyons in all Colorado. It is very narrow, for the creek which made it is a small creek; but the bed of the creek is full of great rocks, and the creek just goes tumbling head over heels, if a creek can be said to have head and heels. Ten miles long this canyon is, and the creek is in a white foam all the way. There is just room for the road by side of the creek; first one side and then the other. I think it crosses the creek as many as twenty-five times in the ten miles; and it is shaded all the way by beautiful trees, and flowers grow in every crevice of the rocks, and along the edge of the water. As Rob and Nelly looked at picture after picture of these beautiful places, they grew more and more excited. Rob could not keep still: he jumped down from his perch behind his mother's shoulder, and ran round to his father's knee. "Papa, papa! say you'll go? say you'll go?" and Nelly said in her quieter voice:-- "Oh papa! I didn't know there were such beautiful places in the world. Don't you think we'll go?" Pretty soon it grew too dark to look at the pictures any longer, and Mrs. March sent the children downstairs to play in the dining-room by the fire-light. After they had gone, she said to her husband: "Doesn't it make you more willing to go, Robert, to see how eager the children are for it?" Mr. March sighed. "I do not know, Sarah," he said. "Their feelings are very soon changed one way or the other. A little discomfort would soon make them unhappy. I have great fears about the rough life out there, both for them and for you." "I wish you would not think so much about that," replied Mrs. March. "I am convinced that you exaggerate it. I am not in the least afraid; and as for the children they are so young they would soon grow accustomed to any thing. Of course there would be no danger of our not being able to have good plain food; and that is the only real necessity." "But you seem to forget, Sarah, about schools. How are we to educate the children there?" "Teach them ourselves, Robert," replied Mrs. March earnestly. "It will be better for them in every way. Such an out-door life as they will lead there is ten times better than all the schools in the world. Oh, Robert! if you can only be well and strong, we shall be perfectly happy. I am as eager to go as the children are." Mrs. March had been from the beginning in favor of the move. In fact, except for her, Mr. March would never have thought of it. He was a patient and quiet man, and would have gone on bearing the suffering of his asthma till he died, without thinking of the possibility of escaping it by so great a change as the going to a new country to live. It was well for him that he had a wife of a different nature. Mrs. March had no patience with people who, as she said, would "put up with any thing, rather than take trouble." Mrs. March's way was never to "put up" with any thing which was wrong, unless she had tried every possible way of righting it. Then, when she was convinced that it couldn't be righted, she would make the best of it, and not grumble or be discontented. Which way do you think was the best?--Mr. March's or Mrs. March's? I think Mrs. March's was; and I think Rob and Nelly were very fortunate children to have a mother who taught them such a good doctrine of life. This is the way she would have put it, if she had been going to write it out in rules. First. If you don't like a thing, try with all your might to make it as you do like it. Second. If you can't possibly make it as you like it, stop thinking about it: let it go. There was a very wise man, who lived hundreds and hundreds of years ago, who said very much the same thing, only in different words. I don't know whether Mrs. March ever heard of him or not. His name was Epictetus, and he was only a poor slave. But he said so many wise things that men kept them and printed them in a book; and one of the things he said was this:-- "There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power. Seek at once to be able to say to every unpleasing semblance: 'You are but a semblance, and by no means the real thing.' And then examine it by those rules which you have; and first and chiefly by this: whether it concerns the things which are within our own power, or those which are not; and if it concerns any thing beyond our power, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you." I think this would be a good rule for all of us to copy and pin up on the door of our rooms, to read every morning before we go downstairs. Some of the words sound a little hard to understand at first: but after they are explained to you they wouldn't seem so; and if we all lived up to this rule, we should always be contented. Late in the evening, after the children had gone to bed, as Mr. and Mrs. March sat talking over their plans, there came a loud ring at the door-bell. "I think that is Deacon Plummer," said Mr. March. "He said he would come in to-night and talk over Colorado. He has been thinking for some time of going out there; and, if we go, I think he will go too." "Will he, really?" exclaimed Mrs. March. "And Mrs. Plummer? What a help that would be!" "Yes, it would be a great advantage," said Mr. March. "He is the best farmer in all this region, and as honest as the day is long; and, queer as he is, I like him, I believe, better than any deacon I've ever had." "And he likes you too," said Mrs. March. "I believe if he goes now, it will be only to go with you; or, at least, partly for that. Mrs. Plummer's health, I suppose, is one reason." "Yes, that is it," said Mr. March. "The doctors say she must go to Florida next winter: she can't stand another of our winters here; and Mr. Plummer says he'd rather break up altogether and move to a new place, than be always journeying back and forth." Just as Mr. March pronounced these words, the door opened and Deacon and Mrs. Plummer appeared. They were a very droll little couple: they were very short and very thin and very wrinkled. Deacon Plummer had little round black eyes, and Mrs. Plummer had little round blue eyes. Deacon Plummer had thin black hair, which was very stiff, and never would lie down flat, and Mrs. Plummer had very thin white hair, which was as soft as a baby's, and always clung as close to her head as if it had been glued on. It was so thin that the skin of her head showed through, pink, in many places; and, except for the little round knot of hair at the back, you might have taken it for a baby's head. Deacon Plummer always spoke very fast and very loud, so loud that at first you jumped, and wondered if he thought everybody was deaf. Mrs. Plummer always spoke in a little fine squeaky voice, and had to stop to cough every few minutes, so it took her a great while to say any thing. Deacon Plummer very seldom smiled, and looked quite fierce. Mrs. Plummer had a habit of smiling most of the time, and looked so good-natured she looked almost silly. She was not silly, however: she was sensible, and was one of the best housekeepers and cooks in all Mayfield. She was famous for making good crullers; and, whenever she came to Mr. March's house, she always brought four crullers in her pocket,--two for Rob and two for Nelly. As soon as she came into the room this night, she began fumbling in her pocket, saying:-- "Good evening, Mrs. March. How do you do, Mr. March?" (cough, cough). "I've brought a cruller" (cough, cough) "for the" (cough, cough) "children. Dear me" (cough, cough), "they're crumbled up" (cough, cough). "I got a leetle too much lard in 'em, jest a leetle, and the leastest speck too much lard'll make 'em crumble like any thing" (cough, cough); "but I reckon the crumbs'll taste good" (cough, cough) "if they be crumbled" (cough, cough); and, going to the table, she turned her pocket wrong side out, and emptied upon a newspaper a large pile of small bits of cruller. "Do you think they'll mind their being" (cough, cough) "crumbled up?" (cough, cough) "'twas only my spectacle case" (cough, cough) "did it," she said, looking anxiously at the crumbs. "Call 'em crumblers! call 'em crumblers," said Deacon Plummer, laughing hard at his own joke, and rubbing his hands together before the fire; "tell the children they're a new kind, called crumblers." "Oh! the children won't mind," said Mrs. March, politely, and she brought a glass dish from the closet, and, filling it with the crumbs, covered it with a red napkin, and set it on the sideboard. "There," said she, "as soon as Rob comes downstairs in the morning, he will peep into this dish, and the first thing he will say will be, 'I know who's been here: Mrs. Plummer's been here. I know her crullers.' That's what he always says when he finds your crullers on the sideboard." Mrs. Plummer's little blue eyes twinkled with pleasure, so that the wrinkles around their corners all folded together like the sticks of an umbrella shutting up. "Does he now, really?" she said. "The dear little fellow! Children always does like crullers." "Crumblers; call 'em crumblers," shouted the Deacon. "That's the best name for 'em anyhow." "Well, Parson," he said, "how's Colorado? Heard any thing more? Me an' my wife's gettin' more'n more inter the notion of goin', that is, ef you go. We shan't pick up an' go off by ourselves; we're too old, an' we ain't used enough to travellin': but ef you go, we go; that's about fixed, ain't it, 'Lizy?" and he looked at his wife and then at Mr. March and then at Mrs. March, with his queer little quick, fierce glance, as if he had said something very warlike, and everybody were going to contradict him at once. "Yes" (cough, cough), "I expect we'd better" (cough, cough) "go 'long; 't seems kinder" (cough, cough) "providential like our all goin'" (cough, cough) "together so. Don't you think" (cough, cough) "so, Mrs. March? Be ye sure" (cough, cough) "ye'd like to have us go?" replied Mrs. Plummer. "Oh, yes, indeed!" said Mrs. March. "Mr. March was just speaking of it when you came in how much he would like to have Deacon Plummer go. Mr. March knows very little about farming, though he was brought up on a farm, and he will be very glad of Deacon Plummer's help; and I shall be very glad to see two Mayfield faces there. I expect to be lonely sometimes." "Lonely, ma'am, lonely!" spoke up the Deacon: "can't be lonely, ma'am. Don't think of such a thing, ma'am, with the youngsters, ma'am, and me an' my wife, ma'am, an' the Parson. I'd like to see you have a lonesome minnit, ma'am;" and the Deacon looked round on them all again with his quick, fierce look. Mr. March laughed. "It seems to be shutting in all round us, Sarah, to take us to Colorado: doesn't it?" "It isn't two hours," he continued, turning to Deacon Plummer, "since the children left us to go to bed, with their heads so full of Colorado and their desire to set out for the country immediately, that I am afraid they haven't shut their eyes yet. And as for Nelly, she's gone to bed with a picture of Pike's Peak in her hand." "Picture! Have ye got pictures of the country round about there?" interrupted the Deacon. "I'd like to see 'em, Parson; so'd Elizy. She was a wonderin' how 'twould look in them parts. She hain't travelled none, Elizy hain't, since she was a gal. I hain't never been much of a hand to stir away from home, an' I donno now what's taken me so sudden to go so far away; but I expect it's providential." Mr. March took the Colorado pictures out of the big envelope again, and showed them to Deacon and Mrs. Plummer. They were as interested in them as Rob and Nelly had been, and it made Mrs. March laugh to think how much the old man and his wife, bending over the pictures, looked like Rob and Nelly suddenly changed from ten years old to sixty. Mrs. Plummer did not say much. Her spectacles were not quite strong enough for her eyes. She had been for a whole year thinking of getting a new pair, and she wished to-night she had done so, for she could not see any thing in the stereoscope distinctly. But she saw enough to fill her with wonder and delight, and make her impatient to go to the country where there were such beautiful sights to be seen. As for the Deacon, he could hardly contain himself: in his excitement, he slapped Mr. March's knee, and exclaimed:-- "By golly,--beg your pardon, sir,--but this must be the greatest country goin'. It'd pay to go jest to see it, ef we didn't any more 'n look round 'n come right home again. Don't you think so, Elizy?" The enthusiasm of these good old people, and the eager wishes of the children produced a great impression on both Mr. and Mrs. March. It did really seem as if every thing showed that they ought to go; and, before Deacon and Mrs. Plummer went home, it was about decided that the plan should be carried out. Deacon Plummer was for starting immediately. "I'll jest turn the key in my house," he said, "'n start right along; 'n you'd better do the same thing; we don't want to be left without a roof to come back to ef things turns out different from what we expect; ef we settle, we kin come back 'n sell out afterwards; 'n the sooner we git there the better, afore the heavy snows set in." "But they don't have heavy snows in Colorado, not in the part where we are going," said Mr. March: "the cattle run out in the open fields all winter." "You don't mean to tell me so!" exclaimed the Deacon. "What a country to live in! I should think everybody'd go into raisin' cattle afore anything else." "I think that is one of the best things to do there," replied Mr. March. "I have already made up my mind to that. And there is nothing I should enjoy more. And between your farming and my herds of cattle, we ought to make a good living. Deacon, come round in the morning and we'll talk it over more, and see what time it's best to start." At breakfast the next morning, Mr. March told Rob and Nelly that it was decided that they would move out to Colorado. The two children received the news very differently. Nelly dropped her knife and fork, and looked steadily in her father's face for a full minute: her cheeks grew red, and she drew in a long breath, and said, "Oh! oh!" That was all she said; but her face was radiant with happiness. Rob bounded out of his chair, flew to his mother and gave her a kiss, then to his father and gave him a great hug, and then he gave a regular Indian war-whoop, as he ran back to his seat. "Rob! Rob! you must not be so boisterous," exclaimed his mother; but she was laughing as hard as she could laugh, and Rob knew she was not really displeased with him. "Oh Nell, Nell!" cried Rob, "isn't it splendid? why don't you say any thing?" "I can't," replied Nelly. But her cheeks were growing redder and redder every minute, and her father saw that tears were coming in her eyes. "Why, Nell," he said, "you are not sorry, are you? I thought you wanted to go." "Oh, so I do, papa," exclaimed Nelly; "I want to go so much that I can't believe it." Mr. March smiled. He understood Nelly better than her mother did. CHAPTER III OFF FOR COLORADO It was finally decided that it would be best not to set out for Colorado until the middle of March. There were many things to be arranged and provided for, and Mr. March did not wish to leave the people of his parish too suddenly. Afterward he wished that he had gone away immediately, as soon as his decision was made; for the ten weeks that he waited were merely ten long weeks of good-bye. Everybody loved him, and was sorry he was going; and there was not a day that somebody did not come in to hear the whole story over again, why he was going, when he was going, where he was going, and all about it. At last Mrs. March grew so tired of talking it all over and over, that she said to people: "I really can't talk any more about it. We are not going till the fifteenth of March, but I wish it were to-morrow." After the first two or three weeks, Rob and Nelly lost much of their interest in talking it over; two months ahead seemed to them just as far off as two years; and they did not more than half believe they would ever really go. But when the packing began, all their old interest and enthusiasm returned, and they could not keep quiet a moment. Nelly's great anxiety was to decide whether she would better carry Mrs. Napoleon in her arms all the way or let her go in a trunk. She said to her mother that she really thought Mrs. Napoleon would go safer in her arms than anywhere else. "You see, mamma, I should never lay her down a single minute, and how could any thing happen to her then? But in the trunk she would be shaken and jolted all the time." The truth was, Nelly was very proud of Mrs. Napoleon, and she secretly had thought to herself, "I expect there'll be a great many little girls in the cars: in four whole days, there must be; and they would all like to see such a beautiful doll." Mrs. March understood this feeling in Nelly perfectly well, and it amused her very much to see how Nelly was trying to deceive herself about it. "But, Nelly," she said, "the cars will be full of cinders and dust, and they will be sure to stick to the wax. Her face would get dirty in a single day, and you can't wash it as you do Pocahontas's. Don't you think you'd better carry Pocahontas instead?" Pocahontas was Nelly's next best doll: she was the big one I told you about; the one that was almost the size of a real live baby; the one which was so big that it made Mrs. March first think of using her father's great stockings to hang up for Christmas stockings for the children. "Oh, mamma!" said Nelly: "Pocahontas is too heavy; and I don't care half so much for her as for dear beautiful Josephine. I shouldn't care very much if Pocahontas did get broken, but if any thing were to happen to the Empress it would be dreadful. Do let me carry her, mamma. I'll make her a beautiful waterproof cloak just like mine; and she can wear two veils just as you do on the water." "Very well, Nelly, you can do as you like," replied her mother; "but I warn you that you will wish the doll out of the way a great many times before we reach our journey's end; and I am afraid her looks will be entirely spoiled." "Oh, no, mamma!" replied Nelly, confidently. "You'll see you haven't the least idea what good care I shall take of her." At last the day came when the last box was shut and nailed and corded, the last leather bag locked, the last bundle rolled up and strapped; and Mr. and Mrs. March, and Rob and Nelly, and little Deacon Plummer and his good little wife, all stood on the doorsteps of the parsonage waiting for the stage, which was to carry them ten miles to the railway station where they were to take the cars. Mrs. Napoleon really looked very pretty in her long waterproof cloak; it was of bright blue lined with scarlet; and she wore a dark blue hat with a little bit of scarlet feather in it, to match her cloak; and she had a dark blue veil, two thicknesses of it, pinned very tight over her face and hat; Nelly held her hugged tight in her arms, and never put her down. "Oh, my! before I'd be bothered with a doll to carry," exclaimed Rob, looking at Nelly,--"leave her behind. Give her to Mary Pratt. You won't care for dolls out in Colorado. I know you won't." Nelly gave Rob a look which would have melted the heart of an older boy; but Rob was not to be melted. "Oh, you needn't look that way!" he said. "A doll's a plague: I heard mamma tell you so too, so now, there," he added triumphantly. Nelly walked away in silence, and only hugged Mrs. Napoleon tighter, and Mr. March, who had been watching the scene, said to his wife: "Look at that motherly little thing. The doll's the same to her as a baby to you." "Yes," said Mrs. March, "but Rob's right after all. It'll be a great bother having that wax doll along; but I thought it was better to let Nelly see for herself. I dare say she'll forget it, and leave it at the first place where we change cars." "Not she," said Mr. March. "You don't know Nelly half so well as I do, Sarah, if she is your own child. Nelly'd carry that doll round the world and never lay it down." "We'll see," said Mrs. March, laughing. Mr. March was a little vexed at his wife for saying this; and he privately resolved that he would keep an eye on Mrs. Napoleon himself all through the journey, and see that she was not left behind at any station. Four days and four nights in the cars, going, going, going every minute, night and day, dark and light, asleep and awake: nobody has any idea what such a journey is till he takes it. Poor old Deacon Plummer and Mrs. Plummer were so tired by the end of the second day that they looked about ninety years old. "Deary me!" Mrs. Plummer said a dozen times a day. "It's a great deal farther than I thought." "I told you, Elizy, it was four days and four nights," the Deacon always replied; "but I suppose you didn't sense it no more'n I did. Nobody couldn't believe the joltin' 'd be so wearin'. I feel's if my bones was all jelly in my skin," and the poor old man moved as if they were. He reeled when he walked; and, at each lurch the cars gave, he would catch hold of anything or anybody who happened to be near him. If it were a person, he would apologize most humbly: but if the car gave another lurch, even while he was apologizing, he would catch hold again, just as hard as before, at which the person would walk away quite offended; and very soon everybody in the car tried to keep out of the old man's way, they were so afraid of being violently laid hold of by him. Rob and Nelly did not mind the jolting; did not mind the lurches the cars gave; did not mind the cinders, the dust, the noise. They were having the best time they ever had in their lives. For the first two days of their journey, they were in what is called "The drawing-room," in the sleeping-car. I wonder if I could make those of you who have never been in a sleeping-car understand about this little room. I will try. Most of the sleeping-cars have merely shelves along the sides in the place where the seats are in the ordinary day-cars: curtains are hung in front of these shelves, and they are parted off from each other like the shelves in a long cupboard. In the daytime, these shelves are folded away and fastened up against the walls, and seats left below them. At night when people are ready to go to bed, the shelves are let down, and the curtains put up in front of them, and each person climbs up on his shelf, and undresses behind the curtain, and goes to bed. I forgot to say that a very good little bed is made up on each shelf. A man who has the care of the car, and who is called the porter, makes these beds. This is the way it is in nearly all the sleeping-cars. But there are some cars which have, besides these, a nice little room walled off at one end. It has seats for two people on each side; and these seats are made into comfortable beds at night. It has two windows which open on the outside of the car, and two which open on the narrow aisle of the car; these four windows are all your own, if you have hired the whole little room for yourself. You can have them either open or shut, just as you like, and nobody else has any right to say any thing about it, which is a great comfort; in the ordinary car, you know there is always somebody just behind you or just before you who is either too hot or too cold, and wants the windows shut when you want them open, or open when you want them shut. This little room has a door at each end of it. One opens into the car where the rest of the people are sitting. The other opens into a nice little closet where there is a washbowl and water, and you can take a bath comfortably. At night the porter comes and hangs up curtains across these doors, because they have glass in the tops of them; then he draws the curtains at your windows; then he lights a lamp which hangs in the middle of the ceiling in your room: and there you are shut up in as cunning a little bedroom as you would ever want to see; and almost as snug and private as you could be in your own bedroom. You can undress and go to bed comfortably; and, unless the jolting of the car keeps you awake, you can sleep all night as soundly as you would at home. Rob and Nelly were delighted with this little room. So was Mrs. March. She hung up their cloaks and hats on the hooks, and took out their books and papers, and made the little room look like home. Nelly propped Mrs. Napoleon up in one corner of one of the red velvet arm-chairs, and took off her blue veils, for there seemed to be no dust at all. "I wish I'd brought Pocahontas too," said Nelly: "there is so much room, and dolls do look so nice travelling like other people." "People!" laughed Rob. "Dolls ain't people." "They are too," said Nelly. "People are men and women, and there are boy dolls and girl dolls and women dolls and men dolls." "Mamma, are dolls people?" asked Rob, vehemently. "Nell says they are, and I say they ain't. They ain't: are they?" "Not live people," said Mrs. March: "Nell didn't mean that." "Oh, no!" said Nelly; "but they're play people, and you can't be sure they don't know any thing just because they don't speak. I could go a whole year without speaking if I tried to." "I believe you could," laughed Mrs. March; "but Rob couldn't." "Not I," said Rob. "What's the use? I like to talk. Nell's a dumb-cat: that's what she is." "I can talk if I've a mind to," retorted Nelly; "but I don't want to; that is, not very often: I don't see the use in it." This is the way it always was with Rob and Nelly. Dearly as they loved each other, they never thought alike about any thing: but for that very reason they did each other good; much more than if they had been just alike. When it was time for breakfast or for dinner, the black porter, whose name was Charley, brought in a little square table and set it up as firm as he could between the seats. Then Mr. March lifted up the big luncheon-basket on one of the chairs, and Mrs. March took out her spirit-lamp, and they had great fun cooking. There was a saucepan which fitted over the spirit-lamp, and the flame of the spirit-lamp was so large that water boiled in this saucepan in a very few minutes. Mrs. March could make tea or chocolate or coffee: she could boil eggs, or warm up beef soup; then, after they had eaten all they wanted, they heated more water in the same saucepan and washed their dishes in it. At first, this seemed dreadful to Nelly, who was a very neat little girl. "Oh, mamma," she said, "how horrid to cook in the same pan you wash dishes in!" But Mrs. March laughed at her, and told her that when people were travelling they could not afford to be so particular. It was only for the first two days and nights of their journey that they had this comfortable little room. On the morning of the third day they reached Kansas City, and there they had to change cars. They sat in a large and crowded waiting-room, while Mr. March went to see about the tickets. Nelly and Rob looked with great astonishment on every thing they saw. They seemed already to have come into a new world. The people looked strange, and a great many of them were speaking German. There were whole families--father, mother, and perhaps half-a-dozen little children--sitting on the railway platforms, on big chests, which were tied up with strong ropes. They had great feather-beds, too, tied in bundles and bulging out all round the ropes. Their faces were very red, and their clothes were old and patched: if Nelly had met them in the lanes of Mayfield, she would have taken them for beggars; but here they were travelling just like herself, going the same way too, for she watched several of them getting into the same train. Then there were groups of men in leather clothes, with their boots reaching up to their knees, and powder-horns slung across their shoulders. They all carried rifles: some of them had two or three; and one of them, as he stepped on the platform, threw down a dead deer; another carried a splendid pair of antlers. Nelly took hold of Rob's hand and walked very cautiously nearer the dead deer. "Oh, Rob!" she said, "it's a real deer. There is a picture of one in my Geography with just such horns as these." Nelly was carrying Mrs. Napoleon hugged up very tight in her arms; but she had not observed that, in the jostling of the crowd, Mrs. Napoleon had somehow turned her head round as if she were looking backward over Nelly's shoulder. Neither had she observed that two little girls were following closely behind her, jabbering German as fast as they could, and pointing to the doll. Presently, she felt her gown pulled gently. She turned round, and there were the two little girls, both with outstretched hands, talking as fast as magpies, and much more unintelligibly. Each of them took hold of Nelly's gown again, and made signs to her that she should let them take the doll. They looked so eager that it seemed as if they would snatch the doll out of her hands: the words they spoke sounded so thick and strange that it half frightened Nelly. "Oh, dear me, Rob!" she exclaimed; "do tell them to go away. Go away, good little girls, go away!" she said, pleadingly. "I can't let you take her." "Clear out!" said Rob, roughly, taking hold of one of them by the shoulder and giving her a shove. No sooner had the words passed his lips than he felt himself lifted by the nape of his neck as if he had been a little puppy: he was in the hand's of a great red-faced German, who looked like a scarlet giant to poor Rob, as he gazed up in his face. This was the father of the two little girls; he had seen the shove that Rob gave his little Wilhelmina, and he was in a great rage; he shook Rob back and forth, and cuffed his ears, all the time talking very loud in German. All he said was:-- "You are a good-for-nothing: I will teach you manners, that you do not push little girls who are doing you no harm;" but it sounded in the German language like something very dreadful. Poor Nelly clung to him with one hand, and tried to stop his beating Rob. "Oh, please don't whip my brother, sir!" she cried. "He did not mean to hurt the little girl. She was going to snatch my doll away from me." But the angry German shook Nelly off as if she had been a little fly that lighted on his arm. Rob did not cry out, nor speak a word. He was horribly frightened, but he was too angry to cry. He said afterwards:-- "I thought he was going to kill me; but I just made up my mind I wouldn't speak a single word if he did." All this that I have been telling you didn't take much more than a minute; but it seemed to poor Nelly a thousand years. She was crying, and the little German girls were crying too: they did not mean to do any harm, and they did not want the little boy whipped. Some rough men and women who were looking on began to laugh, and one man called out:-- "Go it, Dutchy, go it!" Mr. March, who was just walking up the platform, heard the noise; and, when he looked up to see what it meant, what should he see but his own Rob held away up in the air, in the powerful grip of this tall man, and being soundly cuffed about the ears. Mr. March sprang forward, and, taking hold of Rob with one hand, caught the angry man's uplifted arm in the other. "Stop, sir," he said; "this is my little boy. What has he done? Leave him to me. What has he done?" "Nothing, papa," called poor Rob, the tears coming into his eyes at the sight of a protector; "nothing except push that ugly little yellow-haired girl: I guess she is his; she was going to snatch Nell's doll." The German set Rob down; and, turning towards Mr. March, began to pour out a torrent of words. Luckily, Mr. March understood most of what he said, and could speak to him in his own language. So he explained to him that his little daughters had tried to take Nelly's doll away from her, and that Rob had only intended to protect his sister, as was quite right and proper he should do. As soon as the man understood this, he turned at once to his little girls who stood by crying, and asked them a short question in German. They sobbed out, "ja, ja" (that means "yes, yes"). In less than a minute he caught up first the elder one, just as he had caught up Rob, and boxed her ears; then the smaller one, and cuffed her also; and set them both down on the ground, as if he were used to swinging children up in the air and boxing their ears every day. Then he turned to Rob, and taking him by the hand, said to Mr. March,-- "Explain to your little boy that I ask his pardon. He was doing the right thing: he is a gentleman; and I ask that he accept this horn from me and from my very bad little girls." So saying, he took out of a great wallet that hung across his back a beautiful little powder horn. It was a horn of the chamois, the beautiful wild deer that lives in the mountains in Switzerland. It was as black as ebony, and had a fine pattern cut on it, like a border round the top; then it had a scarlet cord and silver buckles, to fasten it across the shoulders. Rob's eyes glistened with delight as he stretched out his hand for it. "Oh, thank you, thank you!" he said. "Oh, papa! please thank him, and tell him I don't mind the whipping a bit now. And," he added, "please tell him, too, that I didn't mean to shove his little girl hard, only just to keep her off Nell." Mr. March interpreted Rob's speech to the German, who nodded pleasantly and walked off, leading his two little sobbing children by the hand. He was so tall that the little girls looked like little elves by his side, and he looked like the picture of the Giant with his seven-league boots on. When Rob turned to show his beautiful powder horn to Nelly, she was nowhere to be seen. "Why, where is Nell, papa?" he exclaimed. Mr. March looked around anxiously, but could see nothing of her. They hurried back into the waiting-room, and there to their great relief they saw Nelly sitting by her mother's side. Rob rushed up to her, holding up his powder horn, and exclaiming,-- "Why, Nell, what made you come away? That old thrasher was a splendid fellow: see what he gave me, as soon as papa made him understand; and he cuffed those girls well, I tell you,--most as hard as he did me. Why, Nell, what's the matter?" Rob suddenly observed that Nelly was crying. "Don't talk to Nelly just now," said Mrs. March: "she is in trouble." And she put her arm round Nelly tenderly. "But what is it, mamma?" exclaimed Rob; "tell me. Is she hurt?" "What is it, Sarah?" said Mr. March. By this time Nelly was sobbing hard, and her head was buried on her mother's shoulder. Mrs. March pointed to Nelly's lap: there lay a shapeless and dirty little bundle, which Nelly held grasped feebly in one hand. It was the remains of Mrs. Napoleon. The blue waterproof was all torn and grimed with dirt; a broken wax arm hung out at one side; and when Rob cautiously lifted a fold of the waterproof, there came into view a shocking sight: poor Mrs. Napoleon's face, or rather what had been her face, without a single feature to be seen in it,--just a round ball of dirty, crumbling wax, with the pretty yellow curls all matted in it. Mr. March could not help smiling at the sight; luckily, Nelly did not see him. "Why, how did that happen?" he said. "What a shame!" exclaimed Rob. "Say, Nell, you shall have my powder horn;" and he thrust it into her hand. Nelly shook her head and pushed it away, but did not speak. Her heart was too full. Then Mrs. March told them in a low tone how it had happened. When Nelly caught hold of the German's arm, trying to stop his beating Rob, she had forgotten all about Mrs. Napoleon, and let her fall to the ground. Nobody saw her, and, in the general scuffle, the doll had been trampled under foot. Really, if one had not been so sorry for Nelly, one could not help laughing at the spectacle. The scarlet feather and the bright blue cloak, and the golden curls, and the dark blue veils, and the red and white wax, all mixed up together so that you would have hardly known that it was a doll at all,--except that one blue eye was left whole, with a little bit of the red cheek under it. This made the whole wreck look still worse. "Our first railroad accident," said Mrs. March, laughingly. Nelly sobbed harder than ever. "Hush," said Mr. March, in a low tone to his wife. "Don't make light of it." "Nelly, dear," he said, taking hold of the doll gently, "shall not papa throw the poor dolly away? You don't want to look at her any more." "Oh, no, no!" said Nelly, lifting up the bundle, and hugging it tighter. "Very well, dear," replied her father, "you shall keep it as long as you like. But let me pin poor dolly up tight, so that nobody can see how she is hurt." Nelly gave the doll up without a word, and her kind papa rolled the little waterproof cloak tight round the body and arms; then he doubled up the blue veil and pinned it many thicknesses thick all round the head; and then he took a clean dark-blue and white silk handkerchief of his own and put outside all the veil, and made it into a snug little parcel, that nobody would have known was a dolly at all. "There, Nelly," he said, putting it in her lap, "there is dolly, all rolled up, so that nobody can look at her." Nelly took the sad little bundle, and laid it across her knees. "Can she ever be mended, papa?" she said. "No, dear, I think not," said Mr. March; "I think the sooner you put her out of your sight the better; but now we must go into the cars." Poor Nelly! she walked slowly along, carrying the blue and white package as if it were a coffin,--as indeed it was, a kind of coffin, for a very dead dolly. As they were going into the car, Mr. March said to his wife:-- "There is no drawing-room in the sleeping-car which goes through to-day. I have had to take two sections." Mrs. March had never travelled in a sleeping-car before, and she did not know how much nicer the little room was than the "sections." So she replied: "They'll do just as well, won't they?" "I think you will not like them quite so well," replied Mr. March; "you cannot be by yourself with the children. But it is only for one night; we will make the best of it. There are our sections, one right opposite the other; so you will not have strangers opposite you." They put their lunch-basket and bags and bundles down on the floor, and sat down on the two sofas, facing each other. Nelly put her blue and white parcel in one corner of the sofa, lay down with her head on it, and was soon fast asleep. There were tears on her cheeks. "Poor child!" said Mr. March; "this is her first real grief." "I'm glad I ain't a girl," said Rob, bluntly; "I don't believe in dolls, do you, papa?" Mr. March answered Rob's question by another. "Do you believe in babies, Rob?" "Why, of course, papa! What a funny question! I think babies are real nice. They're alive, you know." "Yes," said his father; "but dolls are just the same to little girls that babies are to grown-up women. Nelly felt just like a mother to Mrs. Napoleon. She was a very good little mother too." "Yes," said Mrs. March; "she was. I am very sorry for her." "I'm real glad Deacon Plummer and Mrs. Plummer weren't here," said Rob. "Why, why, Rob?" said his mother. (Deacon and Mrs. Plummer had left the train at Quincy to spend a week with a son of theirs who lived there. They were to join the Marches later, in Denver.) "Oh, because she'd have said: 'This is--cough--cough--providential.' What does providential mean, anyhow, papa? You never say it. Does it make you cough and sneeze? Mrs. Plummer is always saying it about every thing." Mr. and Mrs. March laughed so hard at this they could not speak for some minutes. Then Mr. March said:-- "You must not speak so, Rob;" but, before he had finished his sentence, he had to stop again, and laugh harder than before. "Deacon and Mrs. Plummer are going to be the greatest help to us, and they are as good and kind as they can be." "Yes, I like her crullers first-rate," said Rob. "What does providential mean, papa?" Mr. March looked puzzled. "I hardly know how to tell you, Rob. Mrs. Plummer means by it that God made the thing happen, whatever it is that she is speaking of, on purpose for her accommodation: that is one way of using the word. I do not believe that doctrine: so I never use the word, because it would be understood to mean something I don't believe in." "I should think God'd be too busy," said Rob, as if he were thinking very hard; "he couldn't remember everybody, could he?" "Not in that way, I think," said Mr. March; "but in another way I think it is true that he never forgets anybody. It is something like my garden, Rob. You know I've got parsnips, and carrots, and beets, and potatoes,--oh! a dozen of things, all growing together. Now I never forget my garden. I know when it is time to have the corn hoed; and I know, when there hasn't been any rain for a long time, that I must water it. But I don't think about each particular carrot or parsnip in the bed: I could hardly count them if I tried. Yet I mean to take very good care of my garden, and never let them suffer for any thing; and if any one of my vegetables were to be thirsty, if it could speak, it ought to ask me to give it some water." I am afraid Rob did not listen attentively to this long explanation. He never thought of any one thing very long, as you know. And he was busy now watching all the people pour into the car. There was a little girl, only about Nelly's age, who had to be carried on a little mattress. She could not walk. Something was the matter with her spine. Her father and mother were with her. And there was a lady with a sweet face, who was too ill to sit up at all. The sofas in her "section" were made up into a bed as soon as she came in; she had a doctor and a nurse with her. Then there were several couples, who had two or three children with them; and one poor lady who was travelling all alone with five children, and the largest only twelve years old; and there were some Englishmen with guns and fishing-rods and spy-glasses and almost every thing you could think of that could be cased in leather and carried on a journey,--one of them even had a bath-tub, a big, round bath-tub, in addition to every thing else. He had a man-servant with him who carried all these things, or else he never could have got on at all. The man's name was Felix. That is a Latin word which means "happy," but I don't think this poor fellow was happy at all. He was a Frenchman. I don't know how he came to be an Englishman's servant, but I suppose the Englishman had lived a great while in France, and had found him there. Felix's master always talked French with him; so Felix had not learned much English, and it would have made you laugh to see him clap his hand to his head when anybody said any thing he could not understand. He would pound his head as if he could drive the meaning in that way; and then he would pull his thin hair; and then sometimes he would turn round and round as fast as a top two or three times. When he came into the cars loaded down with the guns and the rods and the bundles and the bath-tub, his master would tell him to put them down in the corner; then the porter would come along and say:-- "Look here! you can't have all these things in here," and then Felix would say:-- "Vat dat you say, sare?" Then the porter would repeat it; and Felix would say again:-- "Vat dat you say, sare?" And then the porter would get angry, and pick up some of the things, and lay them on Felix's back, and tell him to carry them off; and there Felix would stand stock-still, with the things on his back, till his master appeared. Then he would pour out all his story of his troubles in French, and the Englishman would be very angry with the porter, and say that he would have his things where he pleased; and the porter would say he should not. He must put them under his berth or in the baggage car; and poor Felix would stand all the while looking first in the porter's face and then in his master's, just like a dog that is waiting for his master to tell him which way to run for a thing. Great drops of perspiration would stand on his forehead, and his face would be as red as if it were August: he was so worried and confused. Poor Felix! he was one of the drollest sights in the whole journey. The people kept pouring in. "Mamma, where are they all to sleep?" whispered Rob. "I'm sure I don't know, Rob," she answered. At last the train moved off, and the different families arranged themselves in their own sections, and it seemed a little less crowded. But there were not seats enough for all the children, and some of them were obliged to sit on the floor in the middle of the aisle. The lady who had five children had only engaged one berth: that is half of a section. "How do you expect to manage about sleeping?" said Mrs. March to her. "Oh, that's easy enough," said she. "We've slept so all the way from New York. I put the three little ones crosswise at the foot, and the two others lie 'longside of me." Mrs. March did not reply to this; but she thought to herself, "I'd like to see those babies after they are all packed away for the night." At noon the train stopped for the passengers to take their dinner at a little station. More than half the people in the car went out. Then the porter--the new porter's name was Ben--brought in little tables and put them up between the seats for the people who had their own lunch-baskets and did not want to go out to dinner. In the next section to the Marches were a man and his wife with three children. They had a big coffee-pot full of coffee, and one tin cup to drink it from. They had loaves of brown bread, a big cheese, and a bunch of onions. As soon as they opened their basket, the smell of the onions and the cheese filled the car. "Ugh!" said Rob; "where does this horrible smell come from?" Luckily the people who owned the cheese and the onions did not hear him, and before he had time to say any more, his mother whispered to him to be quiet; but Rob's face was one of such disgust, that nobody could have looked at him without seeing that he was very uncomfortable. Mrs. March felt as uncomfortable as Rob did: but she knew that those people had just the same right to have cheese and onions on their table that she had to have chocolate and orange marmalade on hers; so she opened one of the windows wide to let in fresh air, and went on with her dinner. As soon as the spirit-lamp began to burn, the children in the next section exclaimed aloud: "Oh, what is that? what is that?" They had never seen any thing of the kind before. The two eldest, who were boys, jumped down from their seat, each carrying a big piece of bread and of cheese, and came crowding around Mrs. March to look at the lamp. Mrs. March was a very gentle and polite woman, but she could not help being vexed at these ill-mannered children. "Go away, little boys," she said: "I am very busy now. I am afraid you will upset the lamp, and get burned." Then she looked at the father and mother, hoping they would call their children back. But they took no notice of them: they went on eating their bread and cheese and onions; and, at every fresh onion they sliced, a fresh whiff of the strong, disagreeable odor went through the car. Mr. March had been out to the eating-house, to get some milk. Mrs. March had brought a big square glass bottle, which held three pints; and, whenever they stopped at an eating-house, Mr. March bought fresh milk to fill it, and this was a great addition to their bill of fare. He came into the car at this moment, bringing the milk bottle, and as soon as he opened the car door, he exclaimed, as Rob had done:-- "Ugh!" but in a second more he saw what had made the odor, and he said no more. As he handed the milk to his wife, she said in a low tone:-- "Could we go anywhere else to eat our dinner, Robert?" Mr. March looked all around the car and shook his head. "No," he said; "every seat is taken, and at any moment the people may come back. It is nearly time now for the train to start. We will make a hasty meal; perhaps we can do better at night." Rob and Nelly were very quiet. They did not like the two strange boys who stood close to their seat staring at them, and at every thing which was on the table. Rob whispered to Nelly:-- "'Tain't half so nice as it was in the little room: is it, Nell?" "No," said Nelly. "Shouldn't you think they'd be ashamed to stare so?" continued Rob, making a gesture over his shoulder towards their uninvited guests. "Yes," said Nelly. "It's real rude." Still the boys stood immovable at Mrs. March's knee. At last one of them lifted his head, and, saying "What keeps that thing on there?" pointed to the saucepan standing on the little tripod of the lamp. Just at that moment, his brother accidentally hit his arm and made his hand go farther than he meant: it hit the saucepan and knocked it over; down went the spirit-lamp, all the alcohol ran out and took fire, and for a few minutes there was a great hubbub I assure you. Mr. March seized their heavy woollen lap-robe, and threw it on the floor above the burning alcohol, and stamped out the flames; and nobody was burned. But the nice chocolate was all lost; it went running down a little muddy stream, way out to the door; and the tumbler which had the butter in it fell to the floor and was broken; and the nice slices of white bread which Mrs. March had just cut were all soaked in alcohol and spoiled; and altogether it was a wretched mess, and all because two little boys had not been taught how to behave properly. They ran off as hard as they could go, you may be sure, back into their own seat, as soon as the mischief was done; and, if you will believe it, their father and mother never even looked round or took notice of all the confusion that was going on. They sat and munched their onions and brown bread and cheese as if they were in their own house all alone. One sees very queer and disagreeable people in travelling. By the time Mr. and Mrs. March had put out the fire, and picked up all the things and wiped up the chocolate as well as they could with a newspaper, the people who had gone out to get their dinners, all came pouring back, and the cars began to move. "Oh, dear me!" said Mrs. March: "we shall have to go without our lunch now till tea-time. Here, children, just drink this milk, and eat a piece of bread, and at tea-time, perhaps, we'll have better luck." "I don't care," said Rob; "I ain't hungry a bit: it's all so horrid in here." "Neither am I," said Nelly. "Can't we have a little room all to ourselves to-morrow, papa?" "No, Nell," said her father: "no more little room for us on this journey; this car goes through to Denver. We can't change. But it is only one night and one day: we can stand it." "I'm glad part of it is night," said Nelly; "we'll be by ourselves when we're in bed." "Yes," said Mrs. March. "You are to sleep with me, and Rob with papa; and we'll be all shut in behind the curtains. I think that will be quite comfortable." When the train stopped for the passengers to take supper, Mr. and Mrs. March decided that they would go out too, and not try any more experiments with the spirit-lamp while they had such dangerous and disagreeable companions in the next seat. Nelly and Rob clung to their father's hand as they entered the eating-room. There were four long tables, all filled with people eating as fast as they could eat. Nearly all the men had their hats on their heads, and the noise of the knives and forks sounded like the clatter of machinery. The train was to stop only twenty minutes, and everybody was trying to eat all he could in so short a time. Mr. and Mrs. March, being very gentle and quiet people, did not hurry the waiters as the other people did; and so it happened that their supper was not brought to them for some time. Nelly had eaten only a few mouthfuls of her bread and milk when there was a general rush from all the tables, and the room was emptied in a minute. The conductor of the train was sitting at the table with the Marches, and he said kindly to them:-- "Don't hurry; there is plenty of time; five minutes yet." "Five minutes!" said Rob, scornfully: "I couldn't take five mouthfuls in five minutes. I'm going to carry mine into the cars." And he began spreading bread and butter. "A good idea, Rob," said his mother. And she did the same thing; and, as the conductor called "All aboard!" the March family entered the car, each carrying two slices of bread and butter. "Not much better luck with our supper than with our dinner, Sarah," said Mr. March; "I think you'll have to open your lunch-basket, after all." "Oh, don't ask me to!" said Mrs. March. "The children have had a good drink of milk. We can get along till morning. I would rather go hungry than take out the things with all those people looking on. We can go to bed early: that will be a comfort." Mistaken Mrs. March! They sat on the steps of the cars for half an hour to watch the sunset. The brakeman had found out that Mr. March was so careful and Nelly and Rob were such good children that he let them sit there as often as they liked. Nelly loved dearly to sit between her father's knees on the upper step and look down at the ground as it seemed to fly away so swiftly under the wheels. Sometimes they went so fast that the ground did not look like ground at all. It looked like a smooth, striped sheet of brown and green paper being drawn swiftly under the car wheels. It seemed to Rob and Nelly as if they must be going out over the edge of the world. All they could see was sky and ground. "This is the way it looks when you are out in the middle of the ocean, Nell," said her father; "just the great round sky over your head, and the great flat sea underneath: only the sea is never still as the ground is; that is the only difference." "Still!" cried Rob. "You don't call this ground under us still, do you? It's going as fast as lightning all the time." "No, Rob! it is we who are going; the ground is still," said his mother; "but it does look just as if the ground were flying one way and we the other. It makes me almost dizzy to look down." Pretty soon the moon came up in the east. It was almost full, and, as it came up slowly in sight, it looked like a great circle of fire. Rob and Nelly both cried out, when they first saw it:-- "Oh, mamma! oh, papa! see that fire!" In a very few minutes it was up in full sight, and then they saw what it was. "Dear me! only the moon, after all," said Rob; "I hoped it was a big fire." CHAPTER IV A NIGHT IN A SLEEPING-CAR The moonlight was so beautiful that Mrs. March did not like to go back into the car; and Rob and Nelly begged so hard to sit up, that she let them stay long past their bedtime. At last she exclaimed:-- "Come, come! this won't do! We must go to bed," and she opened the car door. As soon as she looked in she started back, so that she nearly knocked Mr. March and Nelly off the platform. "Why, what has happened?" she said. Mr. March laughed. "Oh, nothing," he said: "this is the way a sleeping-car always looks at night." Curtains were let down on each side the aisle its whole length. It was very dark, and the aisle looked very narrow. Not a human being was in sight. "Where are our sections?" said Mrs. March. "These are ours, I think," said Mr. March, pulling open a curtain on the left. "Let my curtain alone," called somebody from inside, "Go away." Mr. March had opened the wrong curtain. "Oh, I beg your pardon, madam," he said, much mortified that he should have broken open a lady's bedroom. Mrs. March and Rob and Nelly stood close together in the middle of the aisle, at their wits' end. They did not dare to open another curtain, for fear it should be somebody's else bedroom, and not their own. "I'll call Ben," said Mr. March; "he'll know." But Ben was nowhere to be found. At last they found him sound asleep in a little state-room at the end of the car. "Ben, come show us which are our sections," said Mr. March. Ben was very sleepy. He came stumbling down the aisle, rubbing his eyes. "Reckon there is your berths; I made 'em up all ready for you," said Ben, and pulled open the very curtain Mr. March had opened before. "Oh! don't open that one; there's a lady in there," cried Mrs. March; but she was too late. Ben had thrown the curtains wide open. The same angry voice as before called out:-- "I wish you'd let my curtain alone. What are you about?" "Done made a mistake this time, sure," said Ben, composedly drawing the curtains together again; but not before Mrs. March and Nelly and Rob had had time to see into the bed, and had seen that it held the mother with five children. There they all lay as snug as you please: the three little ones packed like herrings in a box, across the foot of the bed, and the two others on the inside; and the mother lying on the outer edge almost in the aisle. As Ben pushed back the curtains, she muttered:-- "There ain't any room to spare in this berth, if that's what you're looking for." Rob and Nelly gave a smothered laugh at this. "Hush, children!" whispered Mrs. March. "You wouldn't like to be laughed at." "Oh, mamma, it's so funny!" said Rob. "We can't help it." Mrs. March did not think it funny at all. She began to be in despair about the night. The very next section to the one with the five children was one of Mr. March's, and luckily those were the next curtains Ben opened. "Here you are! you're all right!" he said, cheerfully. "Here's all your things: I done piled 'em up first-rate for you." Piled up they were indeed. The lunch-basket, the strapped bundle of blankets, the overcoats, the water-proofs, the leather bags, all one above the other on one bed. "Where are we to sleep, mamma?" exclaimed Nelly. "On top," said Rob. "Hurrah! hurrah!" and he was about to jump on the top of the pile. "Be quiet, Rob," said his father: "we must go to bed as quietly as we can, and not wake people up. We ought to have come earlier. Almost everybody is asleep, I think." At this point, rose two great snores, so close that Mrs. March started. "Mercy!" she exclaimed. "How that frightened me!" Snore! snore! snore! The sounds came as regularly as the striking of a clock: they were most uncommonly loud snores. Mr. March looked at his wife and smiled. Mrs. March did not smile in return: she did not like this state of things at all. At last they had sorted out the things they needed, and the rest of the things they pushed under their berths,--all but the big lunch-basket: Mr. March had to carry that out to the end of the car, and set it by the stove. Then Mr. March and Rob climbed into their bed, and shut the curtains; and Mrs. March and Nelly climbed into theirs, and shut their curtains, and began to undress. Presently, Mr. March called across in a whisper:-- "Wife, what shall I do with Rob's clothes?" Mrs. March was at that moment trying to find some place to put Nelly's and hers. "I'm sure I don't know," she replied. "There isn't a sign of a hook here to hang any thing on." "Nor here," replied Mr. March: "I'll leave them all in a pile on the foot of the bed." "That'll do very well for a man's clothes," thought Mrs. March; "but I must hang up our gowns and skirts." At last, she had a bright thought. She stood up on the edge of the bed, and hooked the skirts over the rod the curtains were swung from. It was all she could do to reach it; and, just as she was hooking the last skirt on, the car gave a lurch, and out she fell, out into the aisle, and across it, through the curtains of Mr. March's berth, right on to his bed. "Goodness alive, Sarah! is this you?" he exclaimed, jumping up, frightened. He was just falling asleep. "Well, I believe so," she said: "I'm not sure." "Oh, mamma, did it hurt you?" called Nelly, anxiously. "No, no, dear," replied her mother. "I'm coming right back." But, before she went, she whispered in her husband's ear:-- "Robert March, I think a sleeping-car is the most detestable place I ever got into in my life. Suppose I'd tumbled into some stranger's berth, as I did into yours just now." Mr. March only laughed, and Mrs. March heard him laughing to himself after she had gone back, and it did not make her feel any pleasanter to hear this. At last she and Nelly were both undressed and in bed. Their clothes and dressing-cases and travelling-bags were piled up on their feet. "You mustn't kick, Nelly," said Mrs. March. "If you do, you'll upset all the things out on the floor." "I'm afraid I always kick, mamma," replied honest Nelly. "I won't while I'm awake; but when I'm asleep I don't know." Nelly was fast asleep in two minutes; but Mrs. March could not sleep. The air in the car was so close and hot it made her head ache. She had pinned her curtains tight together before she lay down, so that nobody could look in on her as she had on the poor lady with five children. Now she sat up in bed and unpinned them, and looked out into the aisle. It was dark: the car was dashing along at a tremendous rate; the air was most disagreeable, and there were at least six people snoring different snores. "I can't stand this. I must open the window at the foot of the berth," said Mrs. March. So she crept down and tried to open it. She had not observed in the daytime how the windows were fastened: she fumbled about in the dark till she found the fastening; she could not move it; she took the skin off her knuckles; she wrenched her shoulder; all this time sitting cross-legged on the bed. At last she gave a shove with all her strength, and the window flew up: in one second, an icy blast blew in full of smoke and cinders. "This won't do, either," said Mrs. March; and she tried to get the window down. This took longer than to get it up; finally, in despair, she propped it open about two inches with one of her boots; then she sank back exhausted, and came down hard on her watch and broke the crystal: then she had a difficult time picking up all the little bits of glass in the dark, and then, after she had picked them up, she did not know what to do with them. There was some stiff paper in her travelling-bag, if she could only get at it; at last she found it, but, in drawing it out, she knocked the cork out of the hartshorn bottle, and over went the bottle in the bag, all the hartshorn poured out, and such a strong smell of hartshorn filled the berth it waked Nelly up. "Oh, mamma! what is it? and what smells so?" she said, sleepily. "Only hartshorn, dear," said her mother, in a despairing tone. "I've upset it all over every thing. Go to sleep, dear: it won't smell so very long." Nelly dozed off again, saying: "I'm going to get up just as soon as it's light. I hate this bed: don't you, mamma?" "Yes, Nell, I do," said Mrs. March; "I would rather have sat up all night: but I am so tired and sleepy now I shall go to sleep, I think." When Nelly waked, it was just beginning to be light. Her mother was sound asleep. Nelly leaned over her, and looked out into the aisle. Nobody was up except Ben, who was blacking boots at the end of the aisle. "I'll get up as still as I can, and get all dressed before mamma wakes up," thought Nelly. "Poor mamma! What a time she had last night!" At that moment, as Nelly turned her head, she saw a sight which so frightened her that, in spite of herself, she screamed. "What is it, Nell?" asked her mother, waking instantly. Nelly could not speak, but pointed to the wall at the back of their berth. Mrs. March sat upright in bed, and gazed with astonishment and alarm almost as great as Nelly's. What could it mean? There, in the smooth panel of black walnut, which was almost as shining as a looking-glass, was the reflection of a man's face. It was the face of the man who had been eating the cheese and brown bread and onions. He had a red handkerchief tied about his head for a nightcap; and he was sound asleep, with his mouth wide open. While Mrs. March and Nelly sat gazing breathlessly at this unaccountable sight, the head slowly turned on the pillow, and a hand came up and rubbed one eye. Nelly nearly screamed again. Her mother put her hand quickly over her mouth. "Hush, Nell!" she said; "do not be frightened. I see how it is." The partitions which separated the sleeping-berths one from the other did not come up close to the wall of the car. There was room to put your hand through between. The black walnut lining of the car was so polished that it reflected like a looking-glass; so each person could see, in the back of his berth, the face of the person who was lying in the berth next before his. "Goodness!" exclaimed Mrs. March; "if we can see into that berth, they can see into this one;" and she seized one of the pillows, and set it up against the crack. Then she looked down, and saw a similar opening at the foot of the berth. This one she stopped up with another pillow. "There, Nell," she said, "now we can dress without being overlooked." Nelly did not quite understand how these shining black walnut panels could have acted like looking-glasses, and she was a little afraid still that the queer, shaggy face with the red silk nightcap would glare out at her again; but she hurried on her clothes, and in a few minutes was ready to go to the little wash-room which was provided for ladies at the end of the car. "We are so early," said Mrs. March, "that I think we will be the first ones there." Ah, how mistaken she was! When they reached the little room, there stood two women waiting for their turn at the wash-stand; a third was washing her face. As Mrs. March and Nelly appeared, one of those who were waiting called out:-- "Come in. Don't go away. If you do, you'll lose your turn: there'll be lots more here directly." "Thank you," said Mrs. March: "my daughter and I will wait there, just outside the door. We will not intrude upon you." At this, all three of the women laughed, and one said: "H'm! there ain't much question of intrudin' in these sleepin'-cars. It's just a kind o' big bedroom, that's all." Mrs. March smiled, and said: "Yes, I think so;" and the women went on talking. They were relating their experiences in the night. One of them said:-- "Well, I got along very well till somebody opened a window, and then I thought I should ha' froze to death; but my husband he called the conductor up, and they shut all the ventilators up; but I just shivered all night. Real good soap this is: ain't it?" Mrs. March looked warningly at Nelly, who was just about to speak. "Keep quiet, Nell," she said. But Nelly whispered: "Do you suppose that was our window, mamma?" "I dare say," answered Mrs. March, in a still lower whisper: "keep still, Nell." "Well, I wa'n't too cold," said the woman at the washbowl. She had her false teeth in her hand, and was washing them under the little slow stream running from the faucet: so she could not speak very distinctly. "Well, I wa'n't too cold," she said, "but I'll tell you what did happen to me. In the middle o' the night I felt somethin' against my head, right on the very top on't; and what do you think it was? 'Twas the feet of the man in the next section to our'n. 'Well,' says I, 'this is more'n I can stand;' and I gave 'em a real shove. I reckon he waked up, for I didn't feel 'em no more." At this Nelly had to run away. She could not keep the laugh back any longer. And Mrs. March thought it better to let her go, for she did not know what might be coming next in the conversation of these women. At the other end of the car, Nelly saw Rob, carrying something done up in newspaper in his hand. She ran after him. He put his finger on his lips as she drew near him, and made signs to her not to speak. She could not imagine what he was carrying. He went very fast to the outside door of the car, opened it, and threw the parcel out. "What was it, Rob?" said Nell, eagerly. "I won't tell you," said Rob: "you'll tell." "Oh! I won't; I won't; indeed I won't," said Nell. "Honest Indian?" said Rob. "Honest Indian," said Nelly. This was the strongest form of pledge which Rob and Nelly ever gave. It was like a sort of oath among the children in Mayfield. If a child broke his promise after he had said "Honest Indian," there was nothing too bad for him. "Well," said Rob, coming very close to Nelly, and speaking in a low whisper, "it was those people's string of onions!" "Why, Rob!" cried Nelly, in a horrified tone, "why, Rob! that's stealing. How could you?" "'Tain't stealing either, Nell March," said Rob, stoutly; "I haven't got 'em. Stealing is taking things. I haven't got them. I didn't want the old, horrid things. I just threw them away. That ain't taking." Nelly still looked distressed. "Papa wouldn't like it," she said, "nor mamma either. They were all those people had to eat, except bread and cheese. Oh, Rob! I think it was awful mean in you." "I don't care: I wish I hadn't told you. I don't think it was mean. It was good enough for them for making such a smell in the cars. I heard some of the gentlemen saying they hadn't any business with onions in the car,--that the conductor ought to make them throw them away. Anyhow, Nell, you promised not to tell." "Yes," said Nell, "but I never once thought of its being such a thing as this. What do you suppose they'll do? They might have you took up and put in prison, Rob." Rob looked a little disturbed, but he replied bravely: "Oh, pshaw! I don't know whose onions they were anyhow. I just found them rolling round on the floor, and I picked them up: they weren't anybody's when they were out loose in the car. I don't care: we won't have such a horrid smell here to-day." Nelly walked away looking very unhappy. She disliked the smell of onions as much as Rob did; but she would rather have had the string of onions in her lap all day than have had Rob do such a thing as this; and she felt sure it would all be known, somehow, before the day came to an end,--as you will see that it was. After everybody had got up, and the beds and pillows and blankets were all packed away in the little cupboards overhead, and the car was put in order for the day, the people who had lunch-baskets began to eat their breakfasts. Nelly sat very still in her seat, and watched to see what would happen when the onions were found to be missing. Rob had walked away, and stood at the farther door of the car. He seemed to be very busy looking out at the scenery. Mrs. March had a good little breakfast of boiled eggs and bread and butter and tea and milk, all ready on the table. "Call Rob," she said to Nelly. Nelly walked to the end of the car, and said:-- "Come, Rob. Mamma's got breakfast all ready." Without looking round, Rob whispered:-- "Have they missed 'em?" "I don't know: I haven't heard any thing," answered Nelly, in the same low tone. And they walked back together, Nelly looking much more anxious than Rob did. Mrs. March noticed their grave faces as they took their seats, and she said:-- "You are tired: aren't you, children?" "Oh, no, mamma!" they both exclaimed; "we aren't a bit tired!" But their faces did not brighten. If the whole truth were told, it must be owned that they were both very unhappy. The more Rob thought about those onions, the more he felt afraid that it was stealing to have thrown them away; and this made him wretched enough. And the more Nelly thought about it, the surer she felt that Rob was going to get into trouble before the thing was done with. Neither of them ate much breakfast; they were both listening to what was going on in the next section. They could hear such sentences as:-- "I know I left 'em here last night." "Perhaps they went out of the window." "They couldn't: they were on the floor." "That black rascal's got 'em, you may be sure." At this last sentence, Nelly gave Rob a push under the table with her foot, and his face turned very red. In a moment more, Ben entered the car; as he was passing the Marches' table, the angry man from the next section called out, in a very rude way:-- "Here, you nigger, what'd you do with my onions?" Ben stood stock-still, he was so astonished. "Ungyuns!" he exclaimed; "I never seed no ungyuns." "Yes, you did! You must have: you've stowed 'em away somewhere. Now jest you pass 'em out, or I'll report you." Ben had never been accused of stealing before. He looked the man full in the face, and said:-- "You can do all the reportin' yer want to, mister. I never seed your ungyuns." And he was about to pass on; but the man was so angry, and so sure that Ben must have taken his onions, that he stood in the middle of the aisle, right in Ben's way, and would not let him pass. "Hand 'em over now," he said, in the most insulting tone; "hand 'em over." Mr. March, who had been watching the scene with some amusement, was very much astonished, on looking at Rob at this moment, to see his cheeks flushed, his lips parted as if he were about to speak. "Why, Rob," he said, "do you know where the onions are?" "No," said Rob. Nelly gave an involuntary gasp, under her breath, "Oh!" Mr. March looked at her in still greater surprise. "Do you, Nell?" he said. Nelly did not reply, but looked at Rob, who said:-- "I don't know where they are now." But his expression was a very guilty one. "Rob!" said his father, sternly, "you know something about those onions: tell me this moment." Nelly clasped her hands tight, and gave a little cry, "Oh, Rob!" Now that the final moment had come, Rob spoke up like a man. "Papa, I threw them out of the car door,--they made such a smell. I found them close to our berth when I first got up, and they smelled so horrid I threw them away. Perhaps they weren't this man's onions," said poor Rob, clutching at a last hope. Mr. March could hardly believe his ears. "You! You took what did not belong to you, and then threw it away! Why, Rob! I am ashamed of you! Why, Rob, I wouldn't have believed it!" exclaimed Mr. March. "You will pay for those onions out of your allowance." And he looked at Rob more sternly than he had ever done in his life. "Come, now, immediately," he continued, "and apologize to the man." And he took Rob by the hand and led him to the next seat. "I am very sorry to tell you, sir," he said, "that my little boy here took your onions and threw them away. He shall buy some for you at the very first station where we can." "What'd yer throw 'em away for?" said the man, looking curiously and not unkindly at Rob, whose face was enough to make anybody sorry for him. "Because I hate the smell of them so," said Rob, sturdily; "and my mamma hates them too; and I found them rolling round on the floor, by our berth; and I just picked them up and threw them away. I didn't think about their being anybody's,--not until afterwards," he added; "and I'm very sorry, sir. I'll buy you some more out of my own money." Mr. March smiled at this little explanation: he saw that Rob had not really intended to do wrong. "No, no, my boy, you needn't do that," said the man; "we're going to get off before dinner time; an' we've got a bin full o' onions at home. I expect they do smell kind o' strong to folks that ain't used to 'em, but they're mighty healthy." Rob walked back to his seat somewhat relieved, but still very much ashamed. He glanced up in his mother's face. She looked mortified; still there was a twinkle in her eyes: in the bottom of her heart, she sympathized with Rob's impulse to be rid of the onions at any cost. "Oh, Rob!" she said, "how could you do such a thing? You knew they must belong to somebody." "Well, I did afterwards,--after I told Nell; but, when I picked them up, I didn't think any thing except how they smelt. It was a good riddance anyhow." The sick lady, who had to lie down all the way, was in the section next but one to Mr. March's. She had looked much amused during all this conversation, which she could not help hearing. Mrs. March noticed her pleasant smile, and thought she would like to do something for her. So she gave Nelly a nice cup of hot tea to take over to her. The lady was very grateful. "Oh!" she said, "this is the first good tea I have tasted since I left home." Then she made Nelly sit down on the bed beside her, and talked to her so sweetly that Nelly felt as if she had known her all her life; and pretty soon she told her all about Mrs. Napoleon. "Bring her here. Let me see her," said the lady. "Oh, I can't bear to have anybody see her!" said Nelly: "she looks awful." "Never mind: we'll draw the curtains, and nobody else shall see." So she called her nurse, who was sitting near; and, as soon as Nelly had climbed up into the berth, the nurse drew the curtains tight and shut them together. It seemed to Mrs. March a long time before Nelly came out. When she came she had two small parcels in her hands. They were both in nice white tissue paper, tied up with pink ribbon. Nelly looked as if she had been crying, but yet she looked happy; and the sick lady had a most beautiful smile on her face. Nelly gave one of the parcels to her mother, and said:-- "Mamma, will you please pack this in the bag? It is the Empress's clothes. Perhaps I may have another doll some day that they will fit." Then she handed the other parcel to her father, and said:-- "Please throw this out of the window, papa?" "What is it, Nell?" he said, surprised. Nelly's voice trembled a little; but she answered bravely. "Mrs. Napoleon, papa. That nice lady looked at her, and said she never could be mended; and if she were me, she'd throw her right away. She says I'll feel better as soon as she is out of my sight." Mr. March looked over at the sick lady and bowed and smiled. "She is quite right, Nell. You'll forget all about it much quicker. Good-by, Mrs. Napoleon," he said, and threw the white parcel with its pink ribbons as far as he could throw it. "I don't want to forget about it, papa," replied Nelly, and pressed her face close against the window-pane, so as not to lose that last glimpse of the package. Never were people gladder to reach any place than Mr. and Mrs. March and Nelly and Rob were to reach Denver. They were so tired that they went right to bed as soon as they entered the hotel. They did not want any supper. The next morning, however, they were up early, all rested and ready to look at every thing. The first thing they saw as they walked out of the hotel door, was a long range of high mountains to the south. They looked down the street on which the hotel stood, and saw these mountains rising up like a great wall across the end of the street. They were covered with snow two-thirds of the way down. The lower part which was not covered with snow was of a very dark blue color; and the upper part, where the snow lay, shone in the sun so dazzling bright that it made their eyes ache to look at it. The sky was as blue as blue could be, and had not a cloud in it; and some of the sharp peaks of the mountains looked as if they were really cutting through the sky. Mr. and Mrs. March and Nelly and Rob all stood still in the middle of the street looking at the beautiful sight. Several carriages and wagons came very near running over them, but they hardly observed it. No one of them spoke for some minutes: even Rob was overawed by the grandeur of the mountains. But his overawed silence did not last long. In a few minutes, he broke out with:-- "Bully mountains! ain't they? Come on!" Mr. and Mrs. March laughed. "Well, Rob," said his father, "you've brought us to our senses: haven't you? But I do wish you wouldn't talk slang." "No, Rob," said his mother. "How many times have I asked you not to say 'bully'?" "I know it, mother," replied Rob; "but you don't tell me any other word to say instead of it. A fellow must say something; and 'bully' 's such a bully word. I don't believe there's any other word that's good for any thing when things are 'bully.'" "Oh, dear Rob! dear Rob! Three times in one sentence! What shall we do to you? We will really have to hire you to leave off that word, as grandpa hired you to drink cold water, at so much a week." "Mamma," said Rob, solemnly, "you couldn't hire me to leave off saying 'bully.' Money wouldn't pay me: I try not to say it often, because you hate it so; but I don't expect to leave it off till I'm a man. I just have to say it sometimes." "Oh, Rob, you don't 'have' to say it!" exclaimed Nell. "Nobody 'has to say' any thing." "Girls don't," said Rob, patronizingly: "but girls are different; I'm always telling you that girls don't need words like boys. It's just like whistling: girls needn't whistle; but a boy--why, a boy'd die if he couldn't whistle." "I can whistle," said Nell. "I can whistle most as well as you." "You can't, Nell," exclaimed Rob, utterly astonished. For reply, Nelly quietly whistled a bar of Yankee Doodle. Rob stared at her. "Why, so you can!" said he. "I didn't know girls ever whistled: I thought they were made so they couldn't." "Oh, no!" said Mrs. March; "I used to be a great whistler when I was a girl; but I never let anybody hear me, if I could help it. And Nelly knows that it is not lady-like for a girl to whistle. She likes to whistle as well as you like to say 'bully,' however; so you might leave off that as well as she can leave off whistling." "But you used to whistle all alone by yourself," persisted Rob; "and it is just as good fun to whistle all alone as with other people; but it wouldn't be any fun to go off all alone, and say 'bully! bully! bully!'" Mrs. March put her hands over her ears, and exclaimed: "Oh, Rob! Rob! That makes six times! That dreadful word!" "Oh!" said Rob, pretending to be very innocent, "do you mind my saying it that way? That wasn't saying it really: only talking about it," and Rob gave his mother a mischievous look. The streets were thronged with people; everybody seemed in a hurry; the shop windows were full of just such things as one sees in shop windows at the East; through street after street they walked, growing more and more surprised every moment. "Why, Robert," said Mrs. March, "except for the bustling and excited air of the people, I should not know that I was not in an Eastern city." "Nor I," said Mr. March: "I am greatly astonished to see such a civilized-looking place." Just then an open carriage rolled past them. It was a beautiful carriage, lined with red satin. "Oh, mamma! there is the nice lady who was in the cars," said Nelly: "let me go and speak to her." The lady saw them and stopped her carriage: she was very glad to see their faces; she felt so lonely in this strange place. She was all alone with her doctor and nurse; and already she was so homesick she was almost ready to turn about and go home. "Oh! do let your little girl jump in and take a drive with me," she said. "It will be a great favor to me if you will." "Oh, mamma! let me; let me," cried Nelly; and, almost before her mother had fully pronounced the words giving her permission, she was climbing up the carriage steps. As she took her seat by the lady's side, she looked wistfully back at Rob. Mrs. Williams (that was the lady's name) observed the glance, and said: "Won't you let the little boy come too? Would you like to come, dear?" "No, thank you," said Rob: "I'd rather walk. I can see better." "Oh, Rob! how can you?" exclaimed Nelly, but the driver touched his horses with the whip, and they were off. What a drive that was for Nelly! She never forgot it. It was her first sight of the grand Rocky Mountains. The city of Denver lies on a great plain; about thirty miles away stands the mountain range; between the city and the mountains runs a river,--the Platte River,--which has green trees along its bank. Mrs. Williams took Nelly out on high ground to the east, from which she could look over the whole city, and the river, and out to the beautiful mountains. Some of the peaks were as solid white as white clouds, and looked almost like clouds suddenly made to stand still in the skies. Mrs. Williams loved mountains very much; and, as she looked at Nelly's face, she saw that Nelly loved them too. Nelly said very little; but she kept hold of Mrs. Williams's hand, and, whenever they came to a particularly beautiful view, she would press it so hard that once or twice Mrs. Williams cried out: "Dear child, you hurt me: don't squeeze so tight;" upon which Nelly, very much ashamed, would let go of her hand for a few minutes, but presently, in her excitement, would be holding it again as tight as ever. Mrs. Williams was a widow lady: she had lost her husband and her only child--a little girl about Nelly's age--only two years before, and she had been an invalid ever since. As soon as she saw Nelly's face in the cars, she had fancied that she looked like her little girl who was dead. Her name was Ellen too, and she had always been called Elly; so that Nelly's name had a familiar sound to her. Mrs. Williams was a very rich lady; and, if Nelly's father and mother had been poor people, she would have asked them at once to give Nelly to her. But, of course, she knew that that would be out of the question; so all she could do was to try to make Nelly have a good time as long as she was with her. After they had driven all about the city, and had seen all there was to see, she said to the driver: "Now go to the best toy store in the city." Nelly did not hear this direction: she was absorbed in looking at the mountains. So she was much surprised when they stopped at the shop, and Mrs. Williams said:-- "Now, Nelly dear, I want you to go in and buy something for me: will you? I can't get out of the carriage myself." "Yes indeed," exclaimed Nelly, "if I can; but I never went into a shop alone in my life. Mamma always goes with me. Can't I bring what you want out here for you to look at?" Mrs. Williams laughed. "You'll be a better judge of it than I, Nell," she said. "It is a wax doll I want for a young friend of mine,--just about such an one as you had in the cars." Wasn't Nelly a very simple little girl never to think that Mrs. Williams meant to buy it for her? She never so much as thought of it. "Oh!" said she, "how glad she'll be! I hope she'll have better luck with it than I had. You tell her not to take her on any journeys. Is it your own little girl?" Then Nelly saw the tears come in Mrs. Williams's eyes: her lips quivered, and she said:-- "My own little girl is in heaven; but this doll is for a little girl I love very much, who looks like my little girl. Run in, dear, and see what you can find." The shopkeeper looked quite surprised to see such a little girl coming up to the counter, and asking if he had any big wax dolls with eyes which would open. "Yes, sis," he said, "we have two; but they cost too much money for you, I reckon." Nelly did not like being called "sis." "My name is not sis," she said, "and the doll is for a sick lady out in the carriage. Won't you please bring them out for her to look at?" and Nelly turned, and walked out of the shop. "Hoity toity!" said the man. "What airs we put on, don't we, for small fry! Eastern folks, I reckon;" but he went to a drawer, and took out his two wax dolls, and carried them to the carriage. Each doll was in a box by itself. One was dressed in pink satin, and one in white muslin. "Which is the prettiest, Nelly?" said Mrs. Williams. "Oh, the one in white muslin,--ever so much the prettiest! My mamma says satin is very silly on dolls, and I think so too. Mrs. Napoleon had a blue satin dress, and I gave it to Mabel Martin. She never wore it but once,--the day she came; she had it on when she was in the stocking; but I hated it on her." "In the stocking!" said Mrs. Williams; "that big doll never went into a stocking. What do you mean?" "Oh, not into a common stocking!" said Nelly; "into one of my grandpa's stockings. Mamma always hangs his stockings up for us at Christmas." Mrs. Williams was still more perplexed. "Why, child," she said, "how big is your grandpa? Is he a giant?" "Oh, no!" laughed Nelly, "he isn't very big; but these are great stockings he had made to sleep in. They come all the way up his legs,--both parts of his leg,--way up above his knee, as far as his legs go, so as to keep him warm when he's asleep. He doesn't sleep in any night-gown." Mrs. Williams laughed heartily at this, and was about to ask Nelly some other questions, when the storekeeper interrupted her with:-- "Can't stand here all day, mum. Do ye want the dolls or not: say quick." Mrs. Williams was not accustomed to be spoken to in this manner, and she looked at him in surprise. "Oh!" he said, in answer to her look, "you ain't in the East, you'll find out. We Western men've got too much to do to dangle round all day on a single trade. Do ye want the dolls? If not, I'll take 'em back." "I am sorry you are in such a hurry all the time, sir," said Mrs. Williams, slowly: "it must be very disagreeable. I will take one of these dolls as soon as this little girl has decided which one is the prettiest." "Oh, the white-muslin-gown one, ever so much," exclaimed Nelly. "Very well. You may put it up for me," said Mrs. Williams, taking out her purse. "How much does it cost?" "Ten dollars," said the man. "Oh, oh!" exclaimed Nelly, "mine was only five, and it was just as big as this one." The man looked a little embarrassed. The doll did not really cost ten dollars: it had only cost five; but he thought Mrs. Williams looked like a rich lady, and he might as well ask all he could get. "Well, this cost me six dollars in New York," he said; "but there isn't much sale for them here: you can have it for seven." Mrs. Williams paid him the seven dollars, and they drove away with the box with the doll in it, lying in Nelly's lap. Presently Nelly said:-- "Oh, Mrs. Williams, won't you let me send all Mrs. Napoleon's clothes to the little girl this dolly's for? I think they'd fit this dolly: don't you?" "You dear little thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Williams; "would you really send all those pretty clothes to a little girl you don't know?" "But you know her," said Nelly, "and you said you loved her; so I'd like to have her have them. Besides, I don't believe I'll ever have another dolly like Mrs. Napoleon: at any rate, not for a great many years." "Very well, dear," replied Mrs. Williams: "I will take them. She will be all the more pleased to get so many extra suits. When we stop at the hotel, you can give them to me." "The waterproof is torn some," said Nelly: "I guess mamma'll mend it." "Oh, never mind!" said Mrs. Williams. "This little girl's mamma is a very kind mamma: she can mend it." When they stopped at the hotel, Nelly raced upstairs and burst into her mother's room. "Mamma!" she exclaimed almost as breathlessly as Rob was in the habit of speaking, "mamma, give me all Mrs. Napoleon's clothes. The sick lady's bought a beautiful wax doll--just Mrs. Napoleon's size--her name's Mrs. Williams--I asked her--and she's going to send it to a little girl she loves very much--her own little girl's dead--and I want her to have those clothes too, because Mrs. Williams is so kind; oh, she's the sweetest lady! Give me the clothes, quick!" Mrs. March was looking in a trunk for them while Nelly ran on. She smiled as she handed them to Nelly. "Are you sure you will not want them yourself, Nell?" she said; "you might have a doll that they'd just fit." "I don't believe I ever will, mamma," said Nelly, "and even if I do, I'd rather give these clothes away. Mrs. Williams is such a sweet lady--you don't know, mamma!" And Nelly ran downstairs with the package in her hand. As she left the room, Rob said to his mother:-- "Mamma, I bet she's bought the doll for Nell! Wouldn't that be fun? Nell's such a goose she'd never suspect any thing!" "Hush, Rob!" said Mrs. March; "don't put such an idea into Nell's head. It isn't at all likely." "Well, you'll see, mamma. I'll bet you any thing." "Ladies don't 'bet,' Rob; and you know mamma hates to hear you say the word." "Oh, dear, mamma!" groaned Rob, "you hate all the nice words! I wish ladies were just like boys!" Late that evening, after Rob and Nelly were fast asleep, a large parcel was brought to their rooms, addressed to Mrs. March. She opened it, and found inside--sure enough, as Rob had said--the beautiful wax doll which Nelly had told them about; and, in the box with the doll, the little bundle of all Mrs. Napoleon's clothes. A note from Mrs. Williams to Mrs. March was pinned on the outside of the package. She said:-- "MY DEAR MRS. MARCH,--Will you allow me to give this doll to your dear, sweet little daughter, to supply the place of the lost Mrs. Napoleon. If you knew how great a pleasure it is to me to do this, I am sure you would not refuse it. Your little girl reminds me so strongly of my own little Elly, who died two years ago, that I only wish I could have her always with me. "Truly your friend, although a stranger, "ISABELLA WILLIAMS." "Well, Rob was right!" exclaimed Mrs. March, as she read this note. "See, Robert, what a beautiful doll has come for Nelly from that invalid lady she went to drive with this afternoon. Rob said she had bought it for Nelly, but I didn't believe it. I don't exactly like to take such a valuable present from a stranger." Mr. March was reading the note. "But we could not refuse," he said. "It would be cruel, when she wants to give it to Nelly because she looks so like her little child that is dead." "No," said Mrs. March; "of course we could not refuse." "She had one of the sweetest and saddest faces I ever saw," said Mr. March. "I do not think she will live long. I wish we could do something for her." "I will go and see her to-morrow morning, and thank her for the doll," said Mrs. March; "and then I will find out whether we can do any thing for her or not. I shall not let Nelly know any thing about the doll till we are all settled. I will pack it away in my trunk." "Yes, that will be much wiser," said Mr. March; "we won't have a second Mrs. Napoleon disaster." Later in the evening, Deacon and Mrs. Plummer arrived; and the next day was very much taken up in discussing plans with them, and making arrangements for going on their journey; and it was late in the afternoon before Mrs. March found time to go to the hotel where Mrs. Williams was staying. She found, to her great sorrow, that Mrs. Williams had left town at noon. She had gone, the landlord said, to Idaho Springs; where he believed she was to take the hot baths. Mrs. March wrote a note to her immediately, and the landlord said he would forward it; but he was not sure of her address, and Mrs. March was very much afraid it would never reach her. The Marches stayed in Denver a week, but they did not hear a word from Mrs. Williams, and Mrs. March reproached herself very much for not having gone to see her early the next morning after the doll came. "It is evident," she said, "that she never got my note; and what must she have thought of us for not acknowledging such a beautiful present. It will worry me always, as often as I see the doll." CHAPTER V FIRST GLIMPSES OF COLORADO AND A NEW HOME Just one week from the day they had reached Denver they set out again on their journey southward. They were going to a beautiful place in the mountains, called the Ute Pass. It really is a canyon: you remember I tried to explain to you what a canyon is like. This canyon is called the Ute Pass because a tribe of Indians named the Utes used to come and go through it when they were journeying from one hunting ground to another. A little stream comes down through this pass, which is called the Fountain Creek. It leaps and tumbles from rock to rock, and is always in a foam. A great many years ago, some Frenchmen who were here named it "The fountain that boils." Part of the canyon is very narrow, and the rocky walls are very high. There is a good road through it now, close beside the brook; but when the Indians used to go through it there was no road: they had a little narrow path; some parts of it are still to be seen high up on the ledges of the rock, wherever there is room enough for a pony to get foothold. It looks like a little, worn track which sheep or goats might have made; you would never believe, to look at it, that great bands of Indians on ponies used to travel over it. One thing they used to come down for was to drink the waters of some springs which bubble up out of the rocks at the mouth of the canyon. These are very strange. They bubble up so fast that they look as if they were boiling: this is why the Frenchmen called the brook "The fountain that boils." But they are not any hotter than the water in the brook. The Indians found out that this water would cure people who were ill: so they used to wrap their sick people up in blankets, and bring them on ponies over this little narrow path through the pass, and then build their wigwams close to the springs, and stay there for weeks, drinking the water, and bathing in it. The last part of the canyon is not narrow: it widens out; and has little fields and meadows and groves in it. The road through it is lined almost all the way with green trees and bushes of different kinds; and there is a beautiful wild-hop vine which grows in great abundance, and climbs up the trees, and seems to be tying them all up in knots together; the hop blossoms look like green tassels at every knot. Does not this sound like a lovely place to live in? Mr. and Mrs. March thought so; they had seen several pictures of it; and a man who had lived two years there told them about it, and tried to persuade them to buy his house and land. But old Deacon Plummer was too wise to buy till they had tried it. "No, no," he said; "we'll hire it for six months first, and see how it works. It may be all true as you say about the cattle's grazin' well up and down them rocks; but I'd rather hev medder land any day. We'll hire, to begin with." So they had rented the man's house and land for six months, and had bought all his cows: the cows were still on the place. Then they bought a nice wagon, with three seats and a white top to it, very much like the butchers' carts you see going round with meat to sell in country villages. All the farmers in Colorado drive in such wagons. Then they had bought two horses. The horses and the wagon were to go with them on the cars. I must tell you about the horses. They had such queer names! One was a dark red, and he was called "Fox." He had a narrow head and a sharp nose; and really his face did look like a fox's face. The other horse was of a very queer shade of reddish yellow, with a good deal of white about him; his forefeet were white, and his mane was almost white; and, if you will believe it, his name was "Pumpkinseed"! The man the Marches bought him of did not know why he was called so. He himself had only owned him a year; and, when he asked the man he bought him of how he came to give the horse such a queer name, he said he "didn't know. The old woman named him; mebbe she thought he was kind o' the color of pumpkin-seed, sort o' streaked with yaller 'n' white." Rob was delighted with this name. He kept singing it over and over: "Pumpkinseed! Pumpkinseed! We've got a horse called Pumpkinseed!"--till his mother begged him to stop. The railroad which runs southward from Denver is the kind of railroad called a narrow-gauge railroad. This means that the track is only about two-thirds the width of ordinary railroad tracks; and the cars and the engines are made small to match the track. You can't think how droll a train of such little cars looks when you first see it; it looks like a play train. A gentleman I know said a funny thing the first time he saw a little narrow-gauge train puffing along behind its little engine; he turned to his wife: "Look here, wife," said he; "let's buy that and send it home to the children to play with." When Rob and Nelly first stepped into the little car, they exclaimed, "What a funny car!" On one side the car there were double seats in which two people could sit; on the other side were single seats, rather tight even for one person. Nelly and Rob both ran to get two of these little seats. "Hurrah!" said Rob, as he sat down in this; "I'm going in a high chair! Mamma, ain't this just like a baby's high chair?" "Yes, just about, Rob," said Mr. March, who had taken his seat in one, and found it too tight for comfort. But they soon ceased to wonder at the little seats, for they found so much to look at out of the car windows. The journey from Denver to the town of Colorado Springs, where they were to leave the cars, takes four hours and a half: the road lies all the way on the plains, but runs near the lower hills of the mountain ranges on the right; about half way, it crosses what is called the "Divide." That is a high ridge of land, with great pine groves on it, and a beautiful little lake at the top. This is over eight thousand feet high. Down the south side of this, the cars run swiftly by their own weight, just as you go down hill on a sled: the engine does not have to draw them at all. In fact, they have to turn the brakes down some of the time to keep the cars from going too fast. Nelly and Rob sat sidewise in their seats with their faces close to the window, all the way. They had never seen such a country. Every mile new mountain tops came in sight, and new and wonderful rocks. Some of the rocks looked like great castles, with towers to them. More than once Rob called out:-- "There, mamma! that one is a castle: I know it is. It can't possibly be a rock." And it was hard even for the grown people to believe that they were merely rocks. Old Deacon and Mrs. Plummer were almost as much excited as Rob and Nelly. The Deacon, however, was looking with a farmer's eye at the country. He did not like to find so much snow: as far as he could see in all directions, there was a thin coating of snow over the ground. The yellow grass blades stood up above it like little masts of ships under water. Everywhere he looked he saw cattle walking about. They did not look as if they were contented; and they were so thin, you could see their bones when they came close to the cars. At last the Deacon said to Mr. March:-- "Here's their stock runnin' out all winter, that we've heard so much on; but it appears to me, it's mighty poor-lookin' stock. I don't see how in natur' the poor things get a livin' off this dried grass, half buried up in snow." "Ah, sir!" spoke up a man on the seat behind Mr. March; "you do not know how much sweeter the hay is, dried on the stalk, standing. There is no such hay in the world as the winter grasses in Colorado." "Do you keep stock yourself, sir?" asked the Deacon. "No, I've never been in the stock business myself," the man replied; "but I have lived in this State five years, and I know it pretty well; and it's the greatest country for stock in the world, sir,--yes, the greatest in the world." Deacon Plummer smiled, but did not ask any more questions. After this enthusiastic man had left the car, the Deacon said quietly, pointing to a poor, lean cow who was sniffing hungrily at some little tufts of yellow grass near the railroad track: "I'd rather have her opinion than his. If the critter could speak, I guess she'd say, 'Give me a manger full of good medder hay, in a Massachusetts barn, in place of all this fine winter grass of Colorado.'" Rob and Nelly laughed out at this idea of the cow's being called in as witness. "I guess so too," said Rob; "don't she look hungry, though?" Just before they reached the town of Colorado Springs, they suddenly saw, a short distance off, on the right-hand side of the railroad track, two enormous red rocks, rising like broken pieces of a high wall; they looked thin, like slabs. One of them was deep brick red, and the other was a sort of pink. "Oh, mamma! look quick, look quick," exclaimed Nelly: "what can those red rocks be?" "They are the Gates of the Garden of the Gods," said the conductor, who was passing at that moment; "the Garden lies just behind them, and you drive in between those high rocks." Even while he was passing, the rocks disappeared from view. Nelly looked at them with awe-stricken eyes. "The Garden of the Gods, sir!" she said; "what does that mean? What gods? Do they worship heathen gods in this country?" A lady who was sitting opposite Nelly laughed aloud at this question. "I don't wonder you ask such a question," she said: "it is one of the most absurd names ever given to a place, and I cannot find out who gave it. Those high rocks that you saw are like a sort of gateway into a great field which is full of very queer-shaped rocks. Most of them are red, like the gates; some of them have uncouth resemblances to animals or to human heads. There is one that looks like a seal, and another like a fish standing on its tail, and peering up over a rock. There are a good many cedar-trees and pines in this place, and in June a few flowers; but, for the most part, it is quite barren. The soil is of a red color, like the rocks; and the grass is very thin, so that the red color shows through; and you couldn't find a place in all Colorado that looks less like a garden." "But why did they say 'gods'?" asked Nelly; "did they mean the old gods? My papa has told me about them,--Jupiter, and his wife, Juno. Is this where they lived?" The lady laughed again. "I can't tell you about that, dear," she said. "I think they thought the place was so grand that it looked as if it ought to belong to some beings greater than human beings: so they said 'gods.' I think myself it would have been a good name for it to call it the 'Fortress of the Gods,' or 'The Tombs of the Giants;' but not the 'Garden of the Gods.' I shouldn't want it even for my own garden; and I'm only a commonplace woman. But it is a very wonderful place to see. You will be sure to go there, for all strangers are taken to see it." "Do you live in Colorado, madam?" asked Mrs. March. "Oh, yes!" replied the lady: "Colorado Springs, the little town we are just coming to, is my home." "Do you like it?" asked Mrs. March, anxiously. "Like it!" replied the lady: "like is not a strong enough word. I love it. I love these mountains so that, whenever I go away from them, I miss them all the time; and I keep seeing them before me all the while, just as you see the face of a dear friend you are separated from. I should be very ungrateful, if I did not love the place; for it has simply made me over again. I came out here three years ago on a mattress, with my doctor and nurse, and thought it very doubtful if I lived to get here; and I have been perfectly well ever since." "Did you have asthma?" asked Rob, turning very red as soon as he had asked the question. He was afraid it was improper. "My papa has the asthma." "Oh, if that is your papa's trouble, he will be sure to be entirely well. Nobody can have asthma in Colorado," replied the lady. "It is the one thing which is always cured here. My own trouble was only a throat trouble." "I am very glad to hear you speak so confidently about the asthma," said Mrs. March: "my husband has been a great sufferer from it, and it is for that we have come." "You have done the very wisest thing you could have done," said the lady "you will never be sorry for it. But here we are; good morning." The train was already stopping in front of a little brown wooden building, and the brakeman called out: "Colorado Springs." "What a pleasant lady!" said Nelly to her mother. "Yes," said Mrs. March; "but it was partly because she told us such good news for papa." As they stepped out on the platform, they were almost deafened by the shouts of two black men, who were calling out the names of two hotels: two omnibuses belonging to the different hotels were standing there, and each black man was trying to get the most passengers for his hotel. Each man called out:-- "Free 'bus--this way to the free 'bus--only first-class hotel in the city." "Mercy on us!" exclaimed Mrs. March. "Let us go to the one who speaks the lowest, if there is any difference. They must think railroad travellers are all deaf! It makes no difference to which one we go just for a dinner. We shall drive home this afternoon." So saying, she stepped into the nearest omnibus, and the rest of the party followed her. In a moment more, the driver cracked his whip, and the four horses set off on a full gallop up the hill which lies between the railway station and the town. As they drew near the hotel door, the driver turned such a sharp corner, all at full speed, that the omnibus swung round on the wheels of one side, and pitched so violently that it threw both Nelly and Rob off their seats into the laps of their father and mother who sat opposite. "Hullo!" exclaimed Rob, picking himself up, "this is the way the gods drive, I suppose!" His mother looked reprovingly at him; but he only laughed and said:-- "They call every thing after the gods, don't they? So I thought that pitch was the same sort." After dinner, Deacon Plummer harnessed Fox and Pumpkinseed into the new wagon, and they set out for their new home. It was a beautiful afternoon; as warm and bright as a May day in New England. There was no snow to be seen except on the mountains, which rose like a great blue wall with white peaks to the west of the town. "Now this feels something like," said the Deacon, as they set out; "this is like what they told us. I wonder if it's been this way all winter." They drove five miles straight towards the mountains. Nelly had taken her picture of Pike's Peak out of the travelling-bag, and held it in her hand. Now she could look up from it to the real mountain itself, and see if the picture were true. "I don't care for the picture any more, papa," said Nelly, "now I've got the mountain. The picture isn't half so beautiful." And Nelly hardly took her eyes from the shining, snowy summit till they were so close to its base that it was nearly shut out from their sight by the lower hills. They drove through the little village at the mouth of the Ute Pass. Here they saw two large hotels, and half a dozen small houses and shops. This little village is called Manitou. The Indians named it so. Manitou means "Good Spirit," and they thought the Good Spirit had made the waters bubble up out of the rocks here to cure sick people. A few rods beyond the last house, they entered the real pass. Now their surprises began. On each side of them were high walls of rock: at the bottom of the right-hand wall was just room enough for the road; on the left hand they looked over a steep precipice down to a brook which was rushing over great stones, and leaping down with much roar and foam from one basin to another; there was no fence along this left-hand side of the road, and as Mrs. March looked over she shuddered, and exclaimed:-- "Oh, Robert, let me get out! I never can drive up this road: let us all walk." Mr. March himself thought it was dangerous; so he stopped the horses, and Mrs. March and Mrs. Plummer and the two children got out to walk. Nelly and Rob did not look where they were walking; they were all the while looking up at the great rocks over their heads, which jutted out above the road like great shelves: some rose up high in the air like towers; they were all of a fine red color, or else of a yellowish brown; and they were full of sharp points, and deep lines were cut in them; and a beautiful green lichen grew on many of them. Sometimes they were heaped up in piles, so that they looked as if they might tumble down any minute; sometimes they were hollowed out in places that looked as if they were made for niches for statues to stand in; on one high hill was a strange pile, built up so solid and round it looked like a pulpit. Mrs. March and Nelly and Rob were standing still, looking at this, when a man who passed by, seeing they were strangers, called out:-- "That's Tim Bunker's Pulpit." "Who's Tim Bunker?" cried Rob; but the man was riding so fast he did not hear him. "Oh, Nell! if it isn't too far we'll climb up there some day: won't we?" said Rob. "Mamma, don't you suppose we're pretty near our house?" "I think not, Rob," replied Mrs. March; "there cannot be any place for a house while the pass is so narrow." "Oh, mamma! mamma! come here!" shouted Nelly. She had taken one step down from the road, and was looking over into the brook. "Here is the most beautiful little fall you ever saw!" They all climbed carefully down on the broad stone where Nelly was standing, and looked over. It was indeed a beautiful fall: not very high,--but all one white foam from top to bottom; and the water fell into a small pool, where the spray had frozen into a great round rim: it looked like frosted silver. "That's a pretty silver bowl to catch the water in; ain't it, now?" said Mrs. Plummer. "I'd like a drink of it." "What a queer country this is!" said Mrs. March "here we are walking without any outside wraps on, and almost too warm in the sun; and here is ice all round this pool; and I have seen little thin rims of ice here and there on the brook all the way up." "It's just bully," cried Rob. "Say, mamma, I'm going down to drink out of that bowl;" and, before they could stop him, Rob was half way down the precipice. He found it rougher than he thought; and he had more than one good tumble before he got down to the bed of the brook: but he reached it, dipped his drinking-cup into the pool, broke off a big piece of the frozen spray, and with that in one hand, and his drinking-cup in the other, began to climb up again. This was twice as hard as to go down,--it made Rob puff and pant, and he lost his piece of ice before he had gone many steps,--but he managed to carry the water up, and very much they all enjoyed it. "It's the sweetest water I ever tasted," said Mrs. Plummer. "Yes," said Mrs. March, "it must be, in good part, melted snow water out of the mountains: that is always sweet. This is the brook, no doubt, which runs past our house. You know they said it was close to the brook." "Oh, splendid!" cried Rob; "oh, mamma, isn't this a gay country? so much nicer than an old village with streets in it, like Mayfield. This is some fun." Mrs. March laughed, but she thought in her heart: "I hope he'll always find it fun." "I don't think it's fun, Rob," said Nelly, slowly. "Why not, Nell?" exclaimed Rob; "why don't you like it?" "I do like it," said Nell, earnestly; "I like it better than any thing in all the world; but I don't think it's fun. It's lots better than fun." "Well, what'd you call it, if you don't call it fun?" said Rob, in a vexed tone. Nelly did not answer. "Why don't you say?" cried Rob. "I'm thinking," replied Nelly: "I guess there isn't any name for it. I don't know any." Just at this moment, they heard the tinkle of bells ahead, and in a second more loud shouts and cries. They walked faster. The wagon had been out of their sight for some time. As they turned a sharp bend in the road now, they saw it; and they saw also another wagon brought to a dead halt in front of it. The wagon which was coming down was loaded high with packages of shingles. It was drawn by six mules. They had bells on their necks, so as to warn people when they were coming. Mr. March and Deacon Plummer had heard these bells, but they had not known what they meant: if they had, they would have drawn off into one of the wider bends in the road, and waited. Now here the two wagons were, face to face, in one of the very worst places in the road, just where it seemed barely wide enough for one wagon alone. The rock rose up straight on one side, and the precipice fell off sharp on the other. To make matters worse, Pumpkinseed, who hated the very sight of a mule, and who did not like the shining of the bright, yellow shingles, began to rear and to plunge. The driver of the mule team sat still, and looked at Mr. March and the Deacon surlily without speaking. Mr. March and the Deacon looked at him helplessly, and said:-- "What are we going to do now?" "Didn't yer hear me a-coming?" growled the man. "No, sir," said Mr. March, pleasantly: "we are strangers here, and did not know what the bells meant." At this the man jumped down: he was not so angry, when he found out that they were strangers. He walked down the road a little way, and looked, and shook his head; then he walked back in the direction he had come from; then he came back, and said:-- "There's nothin' for it, mister, but you'll have to unharness your team. My mules'll stand; I'll help you." So they took out Pumpkinseed and Fox, and Mr. March led them on ahead. Then Deacon Plummer and the mule-driver pushed the wagon backward down the road till they came to a place where there was a curve in the road, and they could push it up so close to the rock that there was room for another wagon to pass. There the mule-driver drove his wagon by; and then Mr. March led Fox and Pumpkinseed down, and harnessed them to the wagon again: all this time Mrs. March and Mrs. Plummer and Rob and Nelly stood on the edge of the precipice, wherever they could find a secure place, and holding on to each other. As the mule team started on, the driver called back: "There's three or four more behind me: you'd better keep a sharp lookout, mister." "I should think so," exclaimed Deacon Plummer, "this is the perkiest place for teams to pass in thet ever I got into. I don't much like the thought o' comin' up and down here with all our teamin'." "No," said Mrs. March. "I'll never drive down here as long as I live." "Never's a long word, wife," laughed Mr. March. "If we're going to live in this Pass, I don't doubt we shall get so used to this road, we sha'n't think any thing about it." The road wound like a snake, turning first one way and then the other, and crossing the brook every few minutes. Sometimes they would be in dark shadow, when they were close to the left-hand hill; and then, in a minute, they would come out again into full sunlight. "It's just like going right back again from after sundown to the middle of the afternoon: isn't it, mamma?" said Nelly. "How queer it feels!" "Yes," said Mrs. March, "and I do not like the sundown part. I hope our house is not in such a narrow part of the Pass as this." Presently they saw a white house a little way ahead, on the right-hand side of the road. A high, rocky precipice rose immediately behind it; and the brook seemed to be running under the house, it was so close to it. The house was surrounded by tall pine and fir trees; and, on the opposite side of the road the hill was so steep and high that already, although it was only three o'clock in the afternoon, the sun had gone down out of sight, and the house was dark and cold. The whole party looked anxiously at this house. "That can't be it, can it?" said Mrs. March. "Oh, no!" said Mr. March; "it isn't in the least such a house as the photograph showed: but I will stop and ask." A man was chopping wood a few steps from the house. Mr. March called to him. "This isn't Garland's, is it?" Instead of replying, the man laid down his axe, and walked slowly out to the road, staring very hard at them all. "Be you the folks that's comin' to live to Garland's?" he said. "Yes," said the Deacon; "and we hope this isn't the place; if 'tis, we hain't been told the truth, that's all." "Oh, Lor', no," laughed the man. "This ain't Garland's; his place's two mile farther on. That ain't no great shakes of a place, either,--Garland's ain't; but he's got more land'n we have. There ain't land enough here to raise a ground mole in. I'm sick on 't." "You don't get daylight enough to raise any thing, for that matter," said Mr. March; "here it is the middle of the afternoon, by the clock, and past sundown for you." "I know it," said the man; "but there's something in the air here which kind o' makes up for every thing. I don't know how 'tis, but we've had our healths first rate ever since we've lived here. But I'm going to move down to the Springs: it's too lonesome up here, and there ain't nothin' to do. Be you goin' into stock?" "Not much," said Mr. March. "We are only trying an experiment here: we have bought all Garland's cows." "Have ye?" said the man. "Well, Garland had some first-rate cattle; but they're pretty well peaked out now. Cattle gets dreadful poor here, along in March and April: ye'd reelly pity 'em. But it's amazin' how they pick up's soon's the grass comes in June. It don't seem to hurt 'em none to be kinder starved all winter. Come and see us: we're neighborly folks out'n this country. My wife she'll be glad to know there's some wimmen folks in the Pass. She's been the only woman here for a year. Garland he bached it: he hadn't no wife." Rob and Nelly had listened silently with wide-open eyes and ears to this conversation; but at this last statement Rob's curiosity got the better of him. "What is baching it?" said he, as they drove off. The man laughed. "Ask your father: he'll tell you," he said. "What is it, papa?" said Rob. "I suppose it is for a man to live all alone, without any wife. You know they call unmarried men 'old bachelors,' after they get to be thirty or thirty-five. But I never heard the word before." "Oh!" said Rob; "is that all? I thought 'twas a trade he had,--or something he sold or made." "Well," said the Deacon; "any man that could live up here in this stone gully, without his wife along, I don't think much of. It's the lonesomest place, for an out-doors place, that ever I saw." "Oh, I think it's splendid!" said Rob. "So do I," said Nelly. "It's perfectly beautiful!" "Ain't it a comfort, Mrs. March," said Mrs. Plummer, "how children always do take to new places?" "We don't either," cried Rob; "I hate some places I've seen. But this is splendid. Just you look at those rocks: you bet I'll pitch 'em down! I'm going up on to every one of the highest rocks I can find." "Oh, Rob! you'll break your neck," said Mrs. March. "I shall not allow you to climb, unless your father is with you." "Now, mamma"--Rob was beginning when, suddenly catching sight of a house, he exclaimed:-- "There 'tis! That's like the picture. And there's the barn! I saw it first! Oh, hurry! hurry!" And in his excitement Rob stood up in the wagon. Yes, there it was. It had looked better in the photograph which Mr. Garland had showed to Mr. March than it did in reality. It was a small, unpainted pine house; without any piazza or blinds. The windows were small; the front door was very small; there was no fence between it and the road; and all the ground around it had been left wild. It was really a desolate-looking place. "Why, there isn't any yard!" exclaimed Nelly. "Yard!" said her mother; "why, it is _all_ yard, child. As far as you can see in every direction, it is all our yard." Mrs. March's heart had really sunk within her at the sight of the place. The house was nothing more than she would have called a shanty at home; but she was resolved, no matter what happened to them, never to let her husband see that she found any thing hard. So she spoke cheerfully about the yard; and, as they were getting out of the wagon, she said:-- "How nice and open it is here! See, Robert, the sun is still an hour high, I should think. This is a lovely place." Mr. March shook his head. He did not like the appearance of things. Mrs. Plummer had bustled ahead into the house. In a moment she came back, followed by a man. This was the man who had been left by Mr. Garland in charge of the house, and who was to stay and work for Mr. March. "Bless my eyes!" he exclaimed; "you've took me by surprise. I hain't had no letter from Garland. He said he'd write and let me know when you'd be up. I calculated to have spruced up considerable before you come in. We've bached it here so long 'tain't much of a place for wimmen folks to come to." "Oh, never mind!" said Mrs. March; "Mr."--she hesitated for a name; "I don't think I've heard your name--" "Zeb, ma'am; Zeb's my name. Don't go by any other name since I've been in these mountains," said the man, pulling off his old woollen cap, and making an awkward bow to Mrs. March, whose pleasant smile and voice had won his liking at once. "Never mind, then, Zeb," Mrs. March continued: "we have not come expecting to find things as we had them at home. We shall call it a picnic all the time." "Well, that's about what it is, mum, most generally in this country's fur's I've seen it," said Zeb, thinking at that moment, with a dreadful misgiving, that he had no meat in the house, except salt pork; and no bread at all. He had intended to make some soda biscuit for his own supper. "But she looks like jest one o' them kind that can't abide soda," thought poor Zeb to himself. "An' where in thunder be they all to sleep?" he continued; "Garland might ha' known better than to let six folks come down on me, this way, without any warnin'. 'Twas mighty unconsiderate of him! However, 'tain't none o' my business. I don't keep no hotel." While Zeb was pursuing this uncomfortable train of thought, he was helping Deacon Plummer and Mr. March unharness the horses; he seemed silent, and, Mr. March thought, surly; but it was in reality only his distress at not being able to make the family more comfortable. Finally he spoke. "Did Garland tell you he'd written?" "Oh, yes!" said Mr. March; "he said he'd written, and you would be looking out for us." "Well, perhaps he wrote, and perhaps he didn't. It's as likely as not he didn't. At any rate, if he did, the letter's down in that Manitou post-office. I hain't never seen it: an' I may as well tell you first as last, that I ain't no ways ready for ye. There ain't but two beds in the whole house. I was a calculatin' to bring up one more from the Springs next week; an' I hain't got much in the way of provisions, either, except for the hosses. There's plenty of oats, an' that's about all there is plenty of." Deacon Plummer and Mr. March were standing in the barn door: the Deacon thrust his hands deep down in his pockets and whistled. Mr. March looked at Zeb's face. The more he studied it, the better he liked it. "Zeb," said he, "we can stay, somehow, can't we? We men can sleep on the hay for a few nights, if the sleeping's all. What have you really got in the way of food? That's the main thing." It pleased Zeb to have Mr. March say "we men." "I guess he's got some stuff in him, if he is a parson," thought Zeb; and his face brightened as he replied: "Well, if you can sleep on the hay, it's all right about the sleepin'; but I didn't reckon you could. But that's only part o' the trouble. However, I can jump on to a hoss and ride down to Manitou and pick up suthin', if the wimmen folks think they can get along." "Get along! of course we can get along!" exclaimed Mrs. March, who had just come out in search of her husband. "There is an iron pot and a tea-kettle and a frying-pan and a barrel of flour and a firkin of Graham meal; what more do we want?" and she laughed merrily. "Hens, mamma, hens! There are lots of hens here!" shouted Rob, coming up at full speed; "and see this splendid shepherd dog! He knows me already! See! he follows me!" and Rob held his hand high up in the air to a beautiful black and white shepherd dog who was running close behind him. "Yes; Watch, he's real friendly with everybody," said Zeb. "He's lots o' company, Watch is. He knows more'n most folks. Here, Watch! give us your paw?" The dog lifted one paw and held it out. "No, not that one--the white one!" said Zeb. Watch dropped the black paw, and held up the white one instantly. "He'll do that just's often's you'll ask him," said Zeb; "an' it's a mighty queer thing for a dog to know black from white." "Oh! let me try him?" said Rob, "Here, Watch! Watch!" Watch ran to Rob at once. "He does take to you, that's a fact," said Zeb. "Give your paw, Watch,--your white paw," said Rob. Watch put his white paw in Rob's hand. "Now your black paw," said Rob. Watch put down his white paw and lifted the other. "White, black!--white, black!" said Rob, as fast as he could pronounce the words; and, just as fast as he said them, the dog held up his paws. At this moment, Nelly appeared, her cheeks very red, carrying a little yellow and white puppy in her arms. "Oh! see this dear little puppy!" she said; "doesn't he just match Pumpkinseed?" "We might call him Pumpkin Blossom," said Mrs. March. "His name's Trotter," said Zeb. "He's jest got it learned: I guess you can't change it very easy. Put him down, miss, and I'll show you what he can do. I hain't taught him much yet; he's such a pup: but there's nothin' he can't learn. Trotter, roll over!" The puppy lay down instantly and rolled over and over. "Faster!" said Zeb. Trotter rolled faster. "Faster! faster! fast as you can!" cried Zeb; and Trotter rolled so fast that you could hardly see his legs or his tail; he looked like a round ball of yellow hair, with two bright eyes in it. Nelly and Rob shouted with laughter, and even Mr. March and Deacon Plummer laughed hard. They had been so busy that they had not observed that it was growing dark. Suddenly Zeb looked up, and said:-- "Ye'd better run in: it's going to be a snow flurry." "A snow flurry!" exclaimed Mrs. March, looking up at the bright blue sky overhead. "Where's the snow to come from?" "Out o' that cloud, mum," replied Zeb, pointing to a black cloud just coming up over the top of the hill to the west. "'T'll be here in less than five minutes; mebbe 't'll be hail: reckon 't will." Sure enough, in less than five minutes the cloud had spread over their heads, and the hail began to fall. They all stood at the windows and watched it. Rattle, rattle, it came on the roof and against the west windows, and the hailstones bounded off from every place they hit, and rolled about on the ground like marbles. At first they were very small: not bigger than pins' heads; but larger and larger ones came every minute, until they were as big as large plums. Rob and Nelly had never seen such hailstones; they were half frightened, and yet the sight was so beautiful to watch, that they enjoyed it. The storm did not last more than ten minutes; the hailstones grew smaller again, just as they had grown larger; and then they came slower and slower, till they stopped altogether, and the great black cloud rolled off toward the south and left the sky clear blue above their heads, just as it was before; and the sun shone out, and every thing glistened like silver from the boughs of the trees down to the blades of grass. The great hailstones were piled up in all the hollow places of the ground, but the hot sun shining on them began to melt them immediately; and, except where they were in the shadow of rocks or trees or piles of boards, they did not last long. Nelly picked up a tin pan and ran out and filled it in a minute: then she passed them round to everybody, saying: "Won't you have some sugared almonds?" and they all ate them and pretended they were candy; and Rob and Nelly rolled them away from the doorstep and made Trotter run after them. In less than ten minutes after the storm had passed, it was so warm that they were all standing in the open doorway, or walking about out of doors. "Upon my word, what a country this is!" said Mr. March. "Ten minutes ago it was winter; now it is spring." "Yes," said Zeb. "That's jest the way 'tis all through the winter; but next month ye'll get some winter in good airnest. April 'n' May's our winter months. I've seen the snow a foot 'n' a half deep in this Pass in May." "What!" exclaimed Mr. March, now really excited. "A foot and a half of snow! What becomes of the cattle then?" "Oh!" said Zeb, "it never lays long: not over a day or two. This sun'll melt snow's quick's a fire'll melt grease, 'n' quicker." "Then I suppose it is very muddy," said Mrs. March. "No, mum, never no mud to speak of; sometimes a little stretch of what they call adobe land'll be putty muddy for a week or so; but's a general thing the roads are dry in a day; in fact, you'll often see the ground white with a little sprinkle of snow at eight o'clock in the morning, and by twelve you'll see the roads dry, except along the edges: the snow jest kind o' goes off in the air here; it don't seem's if it melted into water at all." "Well, I'll give it up!" said the Deacon; "near's I can make out, this country's a conundrum." Mrs. March and Mrs. Plummer now set themselves to work in good earnest to put the little house in order. They had brought with them only what they could carry in valises and hand-bags: all their boxes and trunks were to come in a big wagon the next day; so there was not much unpacking to be done. The house had only five rooms in it: one large room, which was to be used as the kitchen and dining-room and living-room; three small rooms which were for bedrooms; and another room which had been used as a lumber-room. As soon as Mrs. March looked into this room, she resolved to make it into a little sitting-room by and by. It had one window to the east, which looked out on the brook, and one to the south, which had a most beautiful view down the Pass. These rooms had no plaster on the walls, and the boards were very rough; but the Colorado pine is such a lovely shade of yellow that rooms built of bare boards are really prettier than most of the rooms you see which have paper on them. Poor Mrs. Plummer thought these bare boards were dreadful. She worked on, industriously, helping Mrs. March do all she could; but every few minutes she would give a great sigh, and look up at the walls, or down at the floor, and say:-- "Well, Mrs. March! I never did expect to see you come to this." Mr. March also wore rather a long face as he stood in the doorway and watched his wife. "Oh, Sarah!" he said, at last, "I can't bear to have you work like this. I didn't realize it was going to be just such a place. I shall go to the Springs to-morrow and get a servant for you." "You won't do any such thing, Robert," said Mrs. March. "There's no room for a servant to sleep in; and I don't want one, any way. Mrs. Plummer will give me all the help I need; and Rob and Nelly will help too. Look at Rob now!" At that minute, Rob came puffing and panting in at the door, with his arms full of crooked sticks, stems of vines, and all sorts of odds and ends of drift-wood, which he had picked up on the edge of the brook. "Here's kindling wood, mamma; lots of it. Zeb told me where to get it. There's lots and lots all along the brook." And he threw down his armful on the hearth, and was going back for more. "Dear boy! here is enough, and more than enough," said Mrs. March. "You can bring me some water next; we dip it out of the brook, I suppose." "Now, mamma, that's just all you know about it," replied Rob, with a most exultant air of superiority; "there's just the nicest spring, right across the brook, only a little bit of ways. Zeb showed me; you come and see,--there's a bridge." Mrs. March followed him. Sure enough, there was a nice, fresh spring, bubbling up out of the ground, among the bushes; it was walled around with boards a few feet high, so that the cattle should not trample too close to it; a narrow plank was laid across the brook just opposite it; and it was twenty steps from the house. "See, mamma," said Rob, as he dipped in the pail, and drew it out dripping full, "see how nice this is. I can bring you all the water you want." "Take care! take care, Rob!" shouted his father, as Rob stepped back on the plank. He was too late. Rob in his excitement had stepped a little to one side of the middle of the plank; it tipped; he lost his balance, and over he went, pail of water and all, into the brook. The brook was not deep, and he scrambled out again in less than a minute,--much mortified and very wet. Mrs. March could not help laughing. "Well, you helped fill the brook instead of my pail; didn't you?" she said. "But, mamma, I haven't got any dry clothes," said poor Rob: "what'll I do?" "That's a fact, Rob," said his mother. "You'll have to go to bed while these dry." "Oh, dear!" said Rob; "that's too bad!" And he walked very disconsolately toward the house. Zeb was just riding off, with two empty sacks hanging from his saddle pommel. "Zeb," called Rob; "I tumbled in the brook; and I've got to go to bed till my clothes are dry." "Don't you do no such a thing," cried Zeb; "you jest walk round a leetle lively, and your clothes'll be dry afore ye know it. Water don't wet ye much in this country." "Come, now, Zeb," said the Deacon, "let's draw a line somewhere! That's a little too big a story. I can believe ye about the snow's not making mud, because I've seen these hailstones just melt away into nothin' in half an hour; but when it comes to water's not wettin', I can't go that." "Well, you just feel of me now!" shouted Rob; "I'm half dry already!" The Deacon and Mrs. March both felt Rob's arms and shoulders. "'Pon my word, they ain't so very wet," said the Deacon; "was it only just now you tumbled in?" "Not five minutes ago," said Mrs. March. "It is certainly the queerest thing I ever saw," she continued, feeling Rob from his shoulders to his ankles: "he is really, as he says, half dry. I'll try Zeb's advice. Rob, run up and down the road as hard as you can for ten minutes; don't you stand still at all." Rob raced away, with Watch at his heels, and Mr. and Mrs. March walked into the house, Mr. March carrying the pail filled once more with the nice spring water. In a few minutes, as they were busily at work, they heard a sound at the door: they looked up; there stood a white cow, looking in on them with a mild expression of surprise. "Oh!" said Mr. March, "Zeb said the cows'd be coming home pretty soon. The Deacon and I'll have to milk." "Yes, they're a comin'," called out the Deacon, peering over the back of the white cow, and pushing her gently to one side, so that he could enter the door; "they're a comin' down the road, and down the hill up there back o' the sawmill: I jest wish ye'd come and look at 'em. Don't know as ye'd better, either, if ye want to have a good appetite for your supper! If ever ye see Pharaoh's lean kine, ye'll see 'em now." Mr. and Mrs. March and Mrs. Plummer all ran out and stood in front of the house, looking up the road. There came the cows, one, two, three, all in single file, down the hill, now and then stopping to take a nibble by the way; in the road there were half a dozen more, walking straight on, neither turning to the right nor the left. "That's right, ye poor things: make for the barn; I would if I was you. Perhaps I won't feed you a good feed o' hay 'n' corn-meal to-night, sure's my name's Plummer!" The cows were indeed lean: you could count every rib on their bodies, and their hip bones stuck out like great ploughshares. "What a shame!" exclaimed Mrs. March. "Husband, you were imposed upon. These cows are not worth any thing." "Oh, yes they be; they're first-rate stock," said the Deacon; "first-rate stock, only they're so run down. Ye'll see I'll have 'em so fat in four weeks ye won't know 'em." The cows gathered together in a little group between the two barns, and looked very hard at these strangers they had never seen before. They knew very well that something had happened,--they missed Zeb,--and began to low uneasily; but when Deacon Plummer came out of the barn with a big pitchfork full of hay, and threw it down before them, all their anxieties were allayed. These were good friends who had come: there was no doubt of that. Nine times the Deacon brought out his pitchfork full of hay, and threw it on the ground, one for each cow: and didn't they fall to and eat! "H'm!" said the Deacon, as he watched them. "If this is the result of your fine winter grazin', I don't want any thing to do with it. It's just slow starvation to my way o' thinking. Look at them udders! There ain't a quart apiece in 'em. Our milkin' 'll be soon over, Parson." "The sooner the better for me, Deacon," laughed Mr. March. "I never did like to milk." "Oh! let me milk! let me milk, papa! please do!" cried Rob, who had returned from his ten minutes' run on the road, as dry as ever. "And me, too! me too!" said Nelly, who was close behind. "Not to-night, children. It is late, and we are in a hurry," said Mr. March. Just as he spoke, the sun sank behind the hill. Almost instantly, a chill fell on the air. "Bless me," said Mr. March, "here we have winter again. Run in, children; it is growing too cold for you to be out. What a climate this is, to be sure! one can't keep up with it." While Deacon Plummer and Mr. March were milking, they talked over their prospects. They were forced to acknowledge that there was small chance of making a living on this farm. "We're took in: that's all there is on't," said the Deacon, cheerily; "but I reckon we can grub along for six months; we can live that long even if we don't make a cent; and now we're here, we can look about for ourselves, and see what we're gettin' before we make another move." "Yes," said Mr. March. "That's the only way to do. I confess I am disappointed. Mr. Garland seemed such a fair man." The Deacon laughed. "Ye don't know human nature, Parson, the way we men do that's knockin' round all the time among folks. Ye see folks always comes to you when they're in trouble, or else when they're joyful,--bein' married, or a baptizin' their babies,--or somethin' o' ruther that's out o' the common line; so you don't never see 'em jest exactly's they are. Now I kinder mistrusted that Garland from the fust. He was too anxious to sell, to suit me. When a man's got a first-rate berth, he ain't generally so ready to quit." When the milkers went in with their pails of milk, they found a blazing fire on the hearth, and supper set out on a red pine table without any table-cloth. Mrs. March had made Graham biscuit and white biscuit, and had baked some apples which she had left in her lunch-basket. When she saw the milk, she exclaimed:-- "Now, if this isn't a supper fit for a king!--bread and milk and baked apples!" "Ain't there any butter?" called out Rob. "Yes, there is some butter; but I doubt if you will eat it," said Mrs. March. "Zeb is going to buy some better butter at Manitou." Rob put some of the butter on his bread, and put a mouthful of the bread in his mouth. In less than a second, he had clapped his hand over his mouth with an expression of horror. "Oh, what'll I do, mamma? it's worse than medicine!" he cried; and swallowed the whole mouthful at one gulp. "That can't be butter, mamma," he said. "You've made a mistake. It'll poison us: it's something else." "Little you know about bad butter, don't you, Rob?" said Deacon Plummer, calmly buttering his biscuit, and eating it. "I've eaten much worse butter than this." Rob's eyes grew big. "What'd you eat it for?" he said, earnestly. "Sure enough," said Mrs. Plummer. "That's what I've always said about butter. If there's any thing else set before folks that's bad, why they just leave it alone. There isn't any need ever of eating what you don't like. But when it comes to butter, folks seem to think they've got to eat it, good, bad, or indifferent." "That's so," said the Deacon; "and if I've heard you say so once, Elizy, I've heard you say it a thousand times; I don't know how 'tis, but it does seem as if you had to have somethin' in shape o' butter, if it's ever so bad, to make a meal go down." "I don't see how bad butter helps to make a meal go down," said Rob. "It like to have made mine come up just now." "Rob, Rob!" said his mother, reprovingly; "you forget that we are at supper." "Excuse me, mamma," said Rob, penitently; "but it was true." CHAPTER VI LIFE AT GARLAND'S This was the first night of the Marches and Plummers in their strange new home in Colorado. When they waked up the next morning, Mr. March and Deacon Plummer rolled up in buffalo robes on the hay in the barn, Mrs. March and Nelly in one bed in one little bedroom, Mrs. Plummer in another opening out of it, and Rob on an old black leather sofa in the kitchen, they could hardly believe their eyes as they looked around them. They all got up very early, and now their new life had begun in good earnest. Immediately after breakfast, Mr. March drove away in the big wagon with Fox and Pumpkinseed. He would not tell his wife where he was going, nor take any one with him. The truth was, that in the night Mr. March had taken two resolutions: one was that he would get a servant for Mrs. March; the other was that he would buy furniture enough to make the house pleasant and comfortable, and china enough to make their table look a little like their old home table. But he knew if he told Mrs. March what he meant to do, she would think they ought not to spend the money. All their own pretty china which they had used at home, she had packed up and left behind them, saying: "We shall not want any thing of that kind in Colorado." Mrs. March did not care about such things half so much as Mr. March and Nelly did; that is, she could do without them more easily. She liked pretty things very much, but she could do without them very well if it were necessary. She watched Mr. March driving off down the road this morning with an uneasy feeling. "I don't know what Mr. March's got in his head," she said to Mrs. Plummer; "but I think he is going to do something rash. He looks as children do when they are in some secret mischief." "Why, what could it be?" said good Mrs. Plummer. "I don't see what there is for him to do." "Well, we shall see," said Mrs. March. "I wish I'd made him take me along." "Made him!" exclaimed Mrs. Plummer. "Can you make him do any thing he's sot not to? I hain't never been able to do that with Mr. Plummer, not once in all the thirty years I've lived with him. It's always seemed to me that men was the obstinatest critters made, even the best on 'em; an' I'm sure Mr. Plummer's as good a man's ever was born; but I don't no more think o' movin' him if his mind's made up, than I should think o' movin' that rock up there," pointing to a huge rock which was at the top of one of the hills to the southwest of the house. The day flew by quickly in putting their new home in order. Both Mrs. March and Mrs. Plummer worked very hard, and Rob and Nelly helped them. They swept and washed floors; they washed windows; they washed even the chairs and tables,--which sadly needed it, it must be owned. Rob and Nelly enjoyed it all as a frolic. "This is like last Christmas, when Sarah was drunk: isn't it, mamma?" said Rob. "It's real fun." "Don't you wish Sarah was here to help you, mamma?" said Nelly. "No, dear," replied Mrs. March, "I do not. I would rather do all the work ourselves, and save the money." "Are we very, very, very poor, mamma?" said Nelly, with a distressed face. "Oh, no, dear! not so bad as that," laughed Mrs. March; "but papa's salary has all stopped now, as I explained to you; and that was the greater part of our income: and, till we have more money coming in regularly from something out here, we must spend just as little as possible." Just before dinner, Rob came in with a big armful of kindling-wood, and on the top of the wood he carried a long piece of a beautiful green vine. "Oh, Rob, Rob, let me see that! Where did you find it?" said his mother. "Upon the hills, mamma, back of the saw-mill. There's oceans of it up there." "There _is_ oceans, Rob?" said his mother. "There _are_ oceans, then! You knew what I meant. It's just like a carpet; and you can pull up great, long pieces of it: it comes up just as easy as any thing." Mrs. March turned the vine over and over in her hands. It had a small glossy leaf, like the leaf of the box. Some of the long, slender tendrils of it were bright red. "The leaf is so thick I think it would keep a long time," said Mrs. March. "I wish you and Nelly would bring me several armfuls of it. I'll tack it up all round the room: the walls won't look so bare, then." "Oh, goody!" said the children; "that's just like Christmas." And they ran off as fast as they could go. In an hour they had heaped the whole floor with piles of the vine. The more they brought, the more beautiful it looked: the leaves shone like satin, and there were great mats of it nearly two yards long. Mrs. March had never seen it before, and did not know its name. Afterward she found out that it was the kinnikinnick vine, and that the Indians used it to smoke in their pipes. Some of the branches had beautiful little red berries like wintergreen berries on them. Nelly sorted these all out by themselves; then Mrs. March stood up on a chair, and some of the time on a table, and nailed a thick border of these vines all round the top of the room; then she took the branches which had red berries on them; and, wherever there was an upright beam in the wall, she nailed on one of these boughs with the red berries and let it hang down just as it would. Then she trimmed the fireplace and the door and the windows. It took her about two hours to do it. When it was all done, you would hardly have known the room. It looked lovely: the yellow pine boards looked much prettier with the green of the vines than any paper in the world could have looked. Rob and Nelly fairly danced with delight. "Oh, mamma! mamma! it's prettier than any Christmas we ever had: isn't it?" "Yes," said Mrs. March; "if the vines will only last, it is all we need to keep our walls pretty till summer time." "Well, I never!" said Zeb, who came in at that moment. "If wimmen folks don't beat all! Why, mum, ye look's if you was goin' to have an ice-cream festival." Zeb's only experience of rooms decorated with green vines had been when he had attended ice-cream festivals, given by churches to raise money. "Well, we'll have one some day, Zeb," said Mrs. March, laughing; "and we won't charge you any thing. I can make very good ice-cream." "Oh, to-night! to-night! mamma," exclaimed the children. "Can't to-night," Mrs. March said; "for the freezer's in the big box with all the other kitchen things." "I might make some crullers," said Mrs. Plummer. "Do! do! do!" cried Rob. "Mrs. Plummer's famous for crullers!" And he ran off, singing-- "Plummer! Cruller! Plummer! Cruller!" at the top of his lungs. It was nearly dark before Mr. March returned. Rob was the first to spy him. "Why, there's Pumpkinseed!" he exclaimed. "And what in the world's papa got in the wagon?" And he ran down the road to meet him. All the others ran too. The wagon did indeed present a very singular appearance. Four red wooden legs stuck far out in front; Mr. March was wedged in between them; high above his head bulged out a great roll of bolsters and pillows; and as far as you could see, away back in the wagon, there seemed to be nothing but bed-ticking, and legs of furniture. "Mercy on us!" exclaimed Mrs. March; "What did I tell you, Mrs. Plummer? That's what he went off for,--to buy furniture. Mr. March always must have things just right. Dear me! I wish he hadn't done it." But, as I told you long ago, it was Mrs. March's way always to make the best of what couldn't be helped. So she went forward to welcome her husband as pleasantly as if she were delighted to see all this new furniture. "Ah, Robert," she said, "now I know why you wouldn't take me. You wanted to surprise us all." "Yes," said Mr. March, his face beaming all over with satisfaction, "I didn't mean you should spend another night in such a desolate hole. There's another wagon load behind." At this Mrs. March could not help groaning. "Oh, Robert! Robert!" she said, "what did you buy so much for?" "Oh, part of the other load is feed for the cattle," said Mr. March. "That I'm responsible to Deacon Plummer for. Those were his orders." When the two wagons were unloaded, the space in front of the little house looked like an auction. Rob and Nelly ran from one thing to another, exclaiming and shouting. Mr. March had indeed furnished the whole house. He had bought two pretty little single bedsteads for Rob and Nelly, and a fine large bedstead for himself and Mrs. March; he had bought mattresses and pillows and bolsters and blankets; a whole piece of pretty rag-carpet, in gray and red stripes; two large rocking-chairs with arms, two without, and two small low chairs; a work-table with drawers, two bureaus, a wardrobe, and two sets of book-shelves to hang on the walls; two student lamps, and a table with leaves that could open out. Then he had bought a whole piece of pretty chintz in stripes of black and green. "There, wife," he said, as he showed her this, last of all, "now we can make a decent little home out of it, after a few days." As he spoke, he stepped into the kitchen: he started back with surprise. "Why, how perfectly lovely!" he exclaimed; "where did you get it? And what is it? I never saw a place so transformed. Why, it looks even elegant." "I thought you would like it," said Mrs. March, much pleased. "Perhaps if you had seen it so before you went away, you wouldn't have bought so many new things." "Why, Sarah, I haven't bought a thing that wasn't absolutely necessary," said Mr. March. "They are all very nice, dear," replied Mrs. March; "and of course we shall be much more comfortable with them. It was very kind of you. But haven't you spent a great deal of money?" she asked anxiously. "Oh, no!" said Mr. March, "I think not; though things are much higher here than at home. I didn't get the bills; but I don't believe it's over two hundred dollars." This seemed a great deal to Mrs. March; but she said no more. And the next day, when all the things were arranged, a square of the rag-carpet laid on the floor, and the pretty chintz curtains at the window, she could not help admitting to herself that life looked much easier and pleasanter than it had before. "And I ought to be thankful that he did not buy more," she thought; "and that he could not find a servant to bring out here." On inquiring after servants, Mr. March had found that it was almost impossible to get any good ones; and their wages were so high, he had at once given up all idea of hiring one now. "I'll let you try it, Sarah, for the present," he said, "but, if I see you in the least breaking down, I shall have a servant, if I have to send home for one." "I won't break down," said Mrs. March; "I never felt so well in my life. I am never tired. I suppose it is the air." "Yes," said Mr. March; "it must be. I, too, feel like another man. I can draw such full, long breaths; I shouldn't know there was such a thing as asthma in the world." As day after day went on, they all came to like their new home better and better. The little room which had been a lumber room was made into a sitting-room, and trimmed all round with the kinnikinnick vines; the big table with leaves stood in the centre, and the book-shelves hung on the walls. Zeb and Deacon Plummer built pine shelves across one end of the room, way to the top; these were filled with Mr. March's books. There were two small school-desks by the east window; and at these Rob and Nelly sat for two hours every morning, and studied and recited their lessons to Mr. March. In the afternoon, they played out of doors; they climbed the hills and the rocks; and, at four o'clock, they went after the cows. This was something they were never tired of, because they never knew just where they should find the cows: they rambled into so many little nooks and corners among the hills; but three of the cows had bells on their necks, and the rest never went far from them. Watch always went with Rob and Nelly, and he seemed to have a wonderful instinct to tell where to look for a cow. Whenever it stormed too much for the children to be out, Zeb went. Sometimes Watch went all alone. He could bring the cows home as well as anybody. But Nelly and Rob never liked to miss it. It was the great pleasure of their day; and the out-door air and the exercise were making them brown and strong. They looked like little Italian peasant children: wherever they went they sang; up hill and down, and on the tops of the highest rocks, their merry voices rang out. Felix--that Frenchman I told you about that they saw in the cars, the one who was servant to the English gentleman--had taught Rob how to make the cry which the Swiss hunters make in the Alps. It is called the "Jodel"--and it sounds very fine among high hill-tops. It is something like this:-- [Illustration: _He would ring out such a "jodel", that the people would stop and look up amazed. Page 132._] "Yo-ho! yo-ho! yo-ho!" The syllables are pronounced one after the other just as fast as you can, in a high shrill tone, and there is a sort of tune to it which I could not describe; but perhaps you know some traveller who has been in Switzerland, who can describe it to you. Rob used to "jodel" beautifully; and many a time when he was on a high rock, way up above the road, and saw people riding or driving below him, he would ring out such a "jodel," that the people would stop and look up amazed. They could not believe they were in America. Rob was fast growing as strong and well as Nelly. He never had sore throats here: and Mr. and Mrs. March often said that they would be glad they had come to Colorado, if it were for nothing except that it had made Rob so well. As he grew stronger, he grew to be a much better boy. He was not selfish nor cross as he used to be at home; and he was as full of fun as a squirrel, all day long. One thing he very much enjoyed doing, was taking Fox and Pumpkinseed up to the tops of the high hills to graze. The best grass grew very high up on the hills; but neither Fox nor Pumpkinseed had ever been used to such steep hills, and they both hated to climb them. Deacon Plummer was very droll about it. "Don't blame 'em," said he, "don't blame 'em a mite. Who'd want to be for ever climbing up garret to get a mouthful of something to eat?" However, since the food was chiefly "up garret," as the Deacon called it, "up garret" the horses must go; and it was somebody's duty every morning to lead them up. Often, in the course of the day, they would ramble slowly down: then they would have to be taken up again; and Rob was always on the lookout for a chance to do this. He always took Fox; he was easier to lead than Pumpkinseed. You had to lead only one: the other would follow; and it was a funny sight to see Rob way up on the steep hill, tugging away at Fox's halter, and Fox half holding back, half going along, and Pumpkinseed behind, following on slowly with a most disgusted expression, every now and then stopping short and looking up at Rob and Fox, as much as to say, "Oh, dear! why will you drag us up this horrible hill?" The hill opposite the house was so high that when Rob was at the very top of it with the horses, he didn't look bigger than a "Hop-o'-my-thumb," and the horses looked like goats. After he got them fairly up, and saw them grazing contentedly, Rob would run down the hill at full speed. At first he got many a tumble flat on his nose doing this; but after a while he learned how to slant his body backwards, and then he did not tumble. But while Rob and Nelly were growing well and strong, and having such a good time that they never wanted to go back to Mayfield, I am sorry to say that the grown people were not so contented. In the first place, good old Mrs. Plummer could not sleep. Her cough was all gone; and if she could only have slept, she would have been as well as anybody; but her heart beat too fast all the time, and kept her awake at night. She did not know that she had any trouble with her heart when she was at home; and nobody had told them that people with heart-trouble could not live in Colorado: but that is the case; the air which is so pure and dry is also so light that it makes your pulse beat a good many times more a minute, and it takes a good strong heart to bear this. You know your heart is nothing but a pump that pumps blood to go through your veins, just as water goes through pipes all over a house; and the pump has to be very strong to pump so many strokes a minute as it does in Colorado. So poor Mrs. Plummer, instead of growing better, was growing worse; and this made them all unhappy. Then Deacon Plummer and Mr. March had to acknowledge that they were paying out more money than they took in, and this worried them both. "We've got to get out on't somehow, that's clear and sartin," said the Deacon. "It won't take very long at this rate to clear us both out. I hate to give up. I'm sure there must be better places in the country somewhere for stock raisin' than this is; but we won't stir till warm weather sets in. Then we'll look round." The last week in April and the first in May were hard weeks. Snow-storm after snow-storm fell. At one time, all travel through the Pass was cut off for two days. The snow lay in great drifts in the narrowest places. In such weather as this, all the cattle had to be kept in the barns and yards, and fed; hay was very dear; and as Deacon Plummer said, "It don't take a critter very long to eat his own head off, and after it's eaten it off six times over, its head's on all the same for you to keep a feedin'." When June came in, matters brightened. The cows had plenty of grass, gave good milk, and Mrs. March and Mrs. Plummer made a good many pounds of butter each week, which they sold at Manitou without difficulty. Here at last was a regular source of income; but it was small: "a mere drop in the bucket," Mrs. March said when she was talking over matters with Mrs. Plummer. I must tell you how this butter was made, because it was such a pleasure to Rob and Nelly to watch it. It was made in a little shed which joined on to the old saw-mill, and the old saw-mill wheel did the churning. Wasn't that a funny way? We must give Zeb the credit of this. He was turning the grindstone one day for Deacon Plummer to sharpen up his axes. It is very hard work to turn a grindstone, and Zeb was very tired before the axes were half ground. Suddenly the thought popped into his head, "Why shouldn't I make that old water-wheel turn this grindstone for us?" After dinner he went up to the saw-mill and looked at it. There was the old wooden wheel as good as ever; the gate which had shut the water off and let it on was gone; "but that's easy fixed," said Zeb, and to work he went; and before sundown, he had the water-wheel bobbing round again as fast as need be. The next day he took the grindstone and sunk it in between two old timbers in a broken place in the floor, just back of the wheel; then he put a strap round the grindstone and fastened it to the water-wheel; then he pulled up the little gate, and let the water in the water-wheel. Hurrah! round went the water-wheel, and round went the grindstone keeping exact pace with it! Zeb clapped his knee, which was the same thing as if he had patted himself on the shoulder. "Good for you, Abe Mack!" he said. Then he looked around frightened, to see if anybody had heard him. No one was near. He drew a long breath. "Lord!" he said; "to think o' my saying that name out loud after all this time!" and he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. "I'd better be more keerful than that," he said. "I'll get tracked yet, if I don't look out." Two years before, in a fight in a mining town a great many miles north of his present home, Zeb had had the misfortune to kill a man. He never intended to do such a thing. He really drew his pistol in self-defence; but he could not prove this, and he had fled for his life, and had been ever since living hidden away on this lonely farm in the mountains. He had intended to go still farther away where there would be no possibility of his ever being seen by any of the men who had known him before, but he had fallen so in love with these hills he could not tear himself away from them. But he had never told his true name to any one, and when he pronounced it now the sound of it frightened him almost as if it had been a sheriff who was calling him by it. After dinner, Zeb invited the whole family out to see his new water-works. They all looked on with interest and pleasure. Mr. March had often looked at the old mill and wished he had money enough to put it in order. "Well done, Zeb!" he said. "You've turned the old thing to some account, haven't you? That's a capital idea; we'll grind knives and axes now for anybody who comes along." "Zeb," said Mrs. March, "can't you make it churn the butter for you?" Zeb was struck by the idea. "Lor, ma'am," he said; "I never heard o' such a thing! but I don't know why not. I'll try it, sure's my name's--" he stopped short, and gasped out "Zebulon Craig." No one observed his agitation. They were all too busy watching the grindstone and water-wheel. The next day and the next, Zeb was seen steadily at work in the saw-mill. He would not let the children stay with him. "Run away! run away!" he said. "I've got a job o' thinkin' to do: can't think with you youngsters a lookin' on." Rob and Nelly were almost beside themselves with curiosity. "Zeb's making a churn to go by water like the grindstone: I know he is," said Rob. "It's real mean for him not to let us see." "But, Rob," said the wise Nelly, "he says he can't think if we're round. He'll show it to us's soon's it's done." "I don't care," said Rob; "I want to see how he does it;" and Rob hovered round the mill perpetually, much to Zeb's vexation. Late in the second afternoon, Zeb called out:-- "Rob, go fetch me the churn, will you?" Rob was only too happy to be admitted into the partnership on any terms. The churn was quite heavy, but he rolled it and tugged it to the shed-door. Zeb lifted it over the threshold: and then Rob saw that there was a long slender beam fastened to the water-wheel, and reaching half way across the wall of the shed; an upright beam was fastened to this, a hole was cut in the shed wall, and another beam run through this hole, and fastened to the upright beam on the other side. When the water-wheel turned round and round, it made this upright beam go up and down. Zeb took the dasher of the churn and fastened it to this beam: up and down, up and down it went, faster than anybody could churn. "Tain't quite long enough," said Zeb. "We'll have to stand the churn on something." Then he ran back to the house and asked Mrs. Plummer for some cream. She gave him about three gallons; he put it into the churn, raised the churn a little higher, and set the machinery in motion. In about ten minutes he looked in. "It's comin'! it's comin'!" he cried. "Run, call all the folks, Rob." Rob ran, and in a few minutes the whole family were looking on at this new mode of churning. It worked beautifully; in fifteen minutes more the butter was made. "There!" said Zeb, as he drew up the dasher with great solid lumps of butter sticking to it. "If that ain't the easiest churned three gallons o' cream ever I see!" "Yes, indeed, Zeb," said Mrs. March, "it is. We sha'n't dread churning-day any more." Mr. March examined the machinery curiously. "Zeb," he said, "if we had two good iron wheels we could make shingles here, couldn't we? I believe it would pay to rig the old place up again." "Yes, sir," said Zeb. "There's nothin' ye can't make with such a stream o' water's that if ye've got the machinery to put it to. It's only the machinery that's wantin'. We've got water power enough here to run a factory." You would not have thought so to look at it; the water did not come right out of the brook; it came through a wooden pipe, high up on wooden posts. It was taken out of the brook a mile or two farther up the Pass, where the ground was a great deal higher than it was here at the mill. So it came running all the way down through this pipe, high up above the brook, and when it was let out it fell with great force. The pipe was quite old now, and it leaked in many places; in one place there was such a big leak it made a little waterfall; this water dripping and falling into the brook beneath made it sound like a shower, and all the bushes and green things along the edges of the brook were dripping wet all the time. There was a big pile of the old sawdust on the edge of the brook; this was of a bright yellow color: the old saw-mill had fallen so into decay that three sides of it were open, and it looked hardly safe to go into it. You had to step carefully from one beam to another: there was not much of the floor left. But it was a lovely, cool, shady place, and almost every day some of the teamsters who were driving heavy teams through the Pass would stop here to take their lunch at noon: often Rob and Nelly would go out and talk with them, and carry them milk to drink. Zeb kept out of sight at such times. He was always in fear of being seen by somebody who had known him in the northern country. As the summer came on, all sorts of beautiful flowers appeared along the edges of the brook, in the open clearings, and even in the crevices of the rocks. Nelly gathered great bunches of them every morning. She loved flowers almost as well as she loved mountains. She used to go out late in the afternoon and gather a huge basketful of all the kinds she could find,--red and white, and yellow and blue,--then she would set the basket in the brook and let the water run through it all night, keeping the stems of the flowers very wet. In the morning they would look as fresh as if she had just picked them. Remember this, all of you little children who love flowers and like to pick them. If you pick them in the morning, they will wither and never revive perfectly, no matter how much water you put them in. Pick them at sundown, and leave them in a great tub full of water out of doors all night, and in the morning you can arrange them in bouquets, and they will keep twice as long as they would if you had not left them out of doors all night. Nelly used to sit on the ground in the open space west of the saw-mill and arrange her bouquets; sometimes she would tie up as many as eight or ten in one morning, and sometimes travellers driving past would call to her and ask her to sell them: but Nelly would not sell them; she always gave them away to anybody who loved flowers. Rob thought she was very foolish. "Nell, why didn't you take the money?" he would say. "It's just the same to sell flowers as milk: isn't it?" "No," said Nelly, "I don't think it is. The flowers are not ours." "Whose are they?" exclaimed Rob. "God's," said Nelly, soberly. Rob could not appreciate Nelly's feeling. "Well, what makes you steal 'em, then?" he asked, in a satirical tone. "God likes to have us pick them: I know he does," said Nelly, earnestly. "He gives them all to us for every summer as long as we live." "Oh, pshaw, Nell!" said Rob. "He don't do any such thing. They just grow: that's all." "Well, papa says that God makes them grow on purpose for us to see how pretty they are. They aren't of any other use: they aren't the same as potatoes. And don't you know the little verse,-- "'God might have made the earth bring forth Enough for great and small; The oak tree and the cedar tree, Without a flower at all.' "I'm always thinking of that. 'Twould be horrid here if we didn't have any thing but things to eat." CHAPTER VII A HUNT FOR A SILVER MINE One morning, early in June, Nelly was sitting out by the old mill, with her lap full of blue anemones and white daisies: the anemones were hardly out of their gray cloaks. The anemones in Colorado come up out of the ground like crocuses; the buds are rolled up tight in the loveliest little furry coverings almost like chinchilla fur. I think this is to keep them warm, because they come very early in the spring, and often there are cold storms after they arrive, and the poor little anemones are all covered up in snow. Nelly heard steps and voices and the trampling of hoofs. She sprang up, and saw that a large blue wagon, drawn by eight mules, had just turned in from the road, towards the brook, and the driver was making ready to camp. He came towards Nelly, and said, very pleasantly:-- "Little girl, do your folks live in yonder?" pointing to the house. "Yes, sir," said Nelly. "Do they ever keep folks?" "What, sir?" said Nelly. "Do they ever keep folks,--keep 'em to board?" "Oh, no! never," replied Nelly. The man looked disappointed. "Well," he said, "I've got to lie by here a day or two, anyhow. I was in hopes I could get took in. I'm clean beat out; but I can sleep in the wagon." "My mamma will be glad to do all she can for you if you're sick, I'm sure," said Nelly; "but we haven't any spare room in our house." The driver looked at Nelly again. He had once been a coachman in a gentleman's family at the East, and he knew by Nelly's voice and polite manner that she was not the child of any of the common farmers of the country. "Have you lived here long?" he said. "Oh, no!" replied Nelly: "only since last spring. We came because my papa was sick. He has the asthma." "Oh!" said the man: "I thought so." Nelly wondered why the man should have thought her papa had the asthma; but she did not ask him what he meant. In a few minutes, the man lay down in his wagon and fell fast asleep, and Nelly went into the house. After dinner, she told Rob about the man, and they went out together to see him. They peeped into the wagon. It was loaded full of small bits of gray rock: the man was rolled up in a buffalo robe, lying on top of the stones, still fast asleep. His face was very red, and he breathed loud. "Oh, dear!" said Nelly, "how uncomfortable he must be! He looks real sick." "I bet he's drunk!" said Rob, who had unluckily seen a good deal of that sort of sickness since he had lived on a thoroughfare for mule-wagons. "Is he?" said Nelly, horror-stricken. "No, Rob, he can't be, because he talked with me real nice this morning. Let's go and tell mamma." Mr. March went out, looked at the man, and woke him up. He found that he was indeed ill, and not drunk. The poor fellow had been five days on the road, with a very heavy cold; and had taken more cold every night, sleeping in the open air. Walking all day long in the hot sun had also made him worse, and he was suffering severely. "Come right into the house with me, my man," said Mr. March; "my wife'll make you a cup of hot tea." "Oh, thank you!" said the man. "I've been thinkin' I'd give all the ore in this 'ere wagon for a first-rate cup of tea. I don't never carry tea: only coffee; but I've turned against coffee these last two days;" and he followed Mr. March into the house. "What'd you say you had in your wagon?" asked Rob, who had been standing by. "Ore," said the man. The only word Rob knew which had that sound was "oar." "Oar!" he said. "Why, I didn't see any thing but rocks." Mr. March and the man both laughed. "Not 'oar,' to row with, Rob," said Mr. March; "but 'ore,' to make money out of." "Silver ore, I suppose," he added, turning to the man. "Yes," he said; "from the Moose mine, up on Mount Lincoln." Rob's eyes grew big. "Oh! tell me about it," he said. And Nelly, coming up closer, exclaimed, in a tone unusually eager for her, "And me too. Is the mountain made of silver, like the mountains in fairy stories?" The man was drinking his tea, and did not answer. He drank it in great mouthfuls, though it was scalding hot. "Oh, ma'am," he said, "I haven't tasted any thing that went right to the spot's that does, for months; if it wouldn't trouble ye too much, I'd like one more cup." He drank the second cup as quickly as he had the first; then he leaned his head back in the chair, and said: "I feel like a new man now. I guess that was the medicine I needed. I reckon I can go on this afternoon." "No," said Mr. March: "you ought to stay here till to-morrow. There is an old leather-covered settee in the barn you're welcome to sleep on. It will be better than the ground; and we'll doctor you with hot tea, night and morning." "You're very kind," said the man: "I don't know but I'd better stay." "Oh, do! do!" said Rob; and "do do!" said Nelly. "Stay and tell us all about the mountain of silver and the Moose; does the Moose draw out the silver?" You see Rob and Nelly couldn't get it out of their heads that it was all like a fairy tale. And so it is when you think of it, more wonderful than almost any fairy tale, to think how great mountains are full of silver and of gold, and men can burrow deep down into them, and get out all the silver and gold they need. "Oh, there isn't any real Moose," said the man. "That's only the name of the mine. I don't know why they called the mine the Moose mine. They give mines the queerest kind o' names." "What is a mine, anyhow?" asked Rob. "Oh," said the man, "I forgot you didn't know that. A mine's a hole in the ground, or in the side of a mountain, where they dig out gold or silver. There's mines that's miles and miles big, underground, with passages running every way like streets." "How do they see down there?" said Rob. "They carry lanterns, and there are lanterns fastened up in the walls." "Is your wagon all full of silver?" asked Nelly, in a low tone. "Not exactly all silver yet," the man said, laughing; "there's a good deal of silver in it: it's very good ore." "It looked just like gray rock," said Rob. "Well, that's what it is," replied the man; "it's gray rock. It's got to be all pounded up fine in a mill, and then it's got to be roasted with salt in a great oven, and then it's got to be mixed with chemicals and things. I don't rightly know just what it is they do to it; it's a heap of work I know, before it ever gets to be the pure silver." "Some day I will take you, Rob," said his father, "where you can see all this done: I want to see it myself. Run out, now, you and Nelly, and play, and let the driver rest. He is too tired to talk any more." Rob and Nelly went back to the wagon. All Nelly's anemones and daisies were lying on the ground, withered. Even this one short hour of hot sun had been enough to kill them. "Oh, my poor, dear flowers!" said Nelly, picking them up. "How could I forget you!" and she looked at them as sorrowfully as if they were little babies she had neglected. "Pooh, Nell," cried Rob. "They're no good now. Throw them in the brook, and come look at the silver." They both climbed up on the tongue of the wagon and looked in at the front. "I can't see any silver about it," said Nelly; "it don't look like any thing but little gray stones, all broken up into bits." "No," said Rob: "it don't shine much;" and he picked up a bit and held it out in the sun. "Oh, take care! take care, Rob!" cried Nelly. "Don't lose it; it might be as much as a quarter of a dollar, that bit." "Nell," said Rob, earnestly, "don't you wish papa had a mine, and we could dig up all the money we wanted? oh, my!" and Rob drew in his breath in a long whistle. "Yes," said Nelly: "I mean to look for one. Do you find the holes already dug, do you suppose? Perhaps that place where old Molly tumbled in was a mine." Old Molly was one of their cows, who had tumbled one day into a hole made by a slide of earth; and Zeb had had to go down and tie ropes around her to pull her up. "Yes," said Rob: "I bet you any thing it is. Let's go right up there now, and see if we can find some rock like this. I'll carry this piece in my pocket to tell by. I'll only borrow it: I'll put it back." "Let me carry it then," said Nelly. "I'm so afraid you'll lose it." So Nelly tied the little bit of gray rock in a corner of her pocket-handkerchief, and then crammed her handkerchief down tight in her pocket, and they set off at a swift pace, towards the ravine where Molly had had her unlucky fall. When dinner-time came, the children were nowhere to be found. Zeb went up and down the brook for a mile, looking and calling aloud. Watch and Trotter had both disappeared also. "Ye needn't worry so long's the dogs is along, ma'am," said Zeb, when he returned from his bootless search. "If they get into any trouble, Watch'll come home and let us know. He's got more sense'n most men, that dog has." But Mrs. March could not help worrying. Never since they had lived in the Pass had Nelly and Rob gone away for any long walk without coming and bidding her good-by, and telling her where they were going. The truth was, that this time they had entirely forgotten it: they were so excited by the hopes of finding a mine. They had walked nearly a mile when Nelly suddenly exclaimed: "Oh, Rob! we didn't say good-by to mamma! She won't know where we are." "So we didn't!" said Rob. "What a shame! But we can't go back now, Nell: it's too late; we've come miles and miles; we'd better keep on; she'll know we're all right; we always are. We're most there now." It was the middle of the afternoon before Rob and Nelly got home. Mrs. March had been walking up and down the road anxiously for an hour, when she saw the two little figures coming down the very steepest of the hills. They walked very slowly; so slowly that she felt sure one of them must be hurt. The dogs were bounding along before them. As soon as the children saw their mother, Rob took off his hat, and Nelly her sun-bonnet, and waved them in the air. This relieved Mrs. March's fears, and the tears came into her eyes, she was so glad. "Oh, Robert, there they are!" she exclaimed to Mr. March, who had just joined her. "See! there they are, way up on that steep hill. Thank God, they are safe!" Mr. and Mrs. March both stood in the road, shading their eyes with their hands, and looking up at the children. As they drew nearer, Mrs. March exclaimed: "Why, what are they carrying?" Mr. March burst out laughing, and said: "They look like little pack mules." In a few minutes, the hot, tired, dusty little wanderers reached the road, and ran breathlessly up to their father and mother: "Oh, mamma!" cried Rob; and "Oh, papa!" cried Nelly. "We've found a mine; we've got lots of ore; now we can get all the money we want. You see if this isn't almost exactly like the stuff in the man's wagon!" and Nelly emptied her apron on the ground, and Rob emptied his jacket; he had taken it off and carried it by the sleeves so as to make a big sack of it. Mr. and Mrs. March could hardly keep from laughing at the sight: there were the two piles of little bits of stone, and the children with red and dirty faces and the perspiration rolling down their cheeks, getting down on their knees to pick out the choicest specimens. Nelly was fumbling deep down in her pocket; presently she drew out her handkerchief all knotted in a wisp, and out of the last knot she took the little bit of ore which they had borrowed from the wagon for a sample. This she laid in her father's hand: "There, papa," she said, "that's the man's: we borrowed it to carry along to tell by." "They don't look so much like it as they did," she added, turning sorrowfully back to the poor little pile of stones. Rob was gazing at them too, with a crest-fallen face. "Why, they don't shine a bit now," he said; "up there they shone like every thing." Mr. March picked up a bit of the stone and looked closely at it. "Ah, Rob," he said, "the reason it doesn't shine now, is because the sun has gone under a cloud. There are little points of mica in these stones, and mica shines in the sun; but there isn't any silver here, dear. Did you really think you had made all our fortunes?" Rob did not speak. He had hard work to keep from crying. He stood still, slowly kicking the pile of stones with one foot. His father pitied him very much. "Never mind, Rob," he said; "you're not the first fellow that has thought he had found a mine, and been mistaken." Rob stooped down and picked up two big handfuls of the stones and threw them as far as he could throw them. "Old cheats!" he said. "Yes, real old cheats!" said Nelly; and she began to scatter the stones with her foot. "And they were awful heavy. Oh, mamma, I'm so hungry!" "So'm I," said Rob. "Isn't it dinner-time?" "Dinner-time!" exclaimed their mother. "Did you really not have any more idea of the time than that! Why, it is three o'clock! Where have you been?" "Not very far, mamma," answered Nelly; "only up where old Molly tumbled in. Rob thought perhaps that hole was a mine. It's all full of these shining stones. Isn't it too bad, mamma?" "Isn't what too bad, Nell?" said Mrs. March. "Why, too bad that they ain't silver," replied Nelly. "We thought we could all have every thing we wanted." Mrs. March laughed. "What do you want most of all this minute?" she said. "Something to eat, mamma," said Nelly. "Well, that you can have; and that I hope we can always have without any silver mine: and to-day we have something very good to eat." "Oh! what, mamma, what? say, quick!" said Rob. "Chicken pie," said Mrs. March, in a very comical, earnest tone. "Chicken pie!" shouted Rob. "Hurrah! hurrah!" and both he and Nelly ran toward the house as hard as they could go. "There is a wish-bone drying for you on the mantelpiece," called out Mr. March. "They'll both wish for a silver mine, I expect," laughed Mrs. March, as she and her husband walked slowly along. "What a queer notion that was to come into such children's heads!" "I don't know," said Mr. March, reflectively; "I think it's a very natural notion to come into anybody's head. I'd like a silver mine myself, very much." "We mightn't be any happier if we had one, nor half so happy," replied Mrs. March. "I'd rather have you well, and the children well, than have all the silver mines in Colorado." "If you had to choose between the two things, I dare say," answered Mr. March; "but I suppose a person might have good health and a silver mine besides. How would that do?" "Well, I'll make sure of the health first," said Mrs. March, laughing. "I'm not in so much hurry for the silver mine." After Rob and Nelly had eaten up all the chicken pie which had been saved for them, they took down the wish-bone from the mantelpiece, and prepared to "wish." "It's so dry, it'll break splendidly," said Rob. "I know what I'm going to wish for." "So do I," said Nelly, resolutely; "I'm going to wish hard." They both pulled with all their might. Crack went the wish-bone,--no difference in the length of the two pieces. "Pshaw!" cried Rob; "how mean! one or the other of us might have had it." Nelly drew a long sigh. "Rob," said she, "What did you wish for?" "A silver mine," said he, "both times." "So did I," said Nell. "I thought you did, too. I guess we sha'n't either of us ever have one." "I don't care," said Rob; "there's plenty of money besides in mines. I'm going to have a bank when I'm a man." "Are you, Rob?" said Nell. "What's that?" "Oh, just a house where you can go and get money," replied Rob, confidently. "I used to go with papa often at home. They gave him all he wanted." Nelly looked somewhat perplexed. She did not know any thing about banks: still she thought there was a loose screw somewhere in Rob's calculations; but she did not ask him any more questions. After tea, Mr. March walked away with the driver of the mule team. They did not come back until it was dark. Mr. March opened the door of the sitting-room, and said, "Sarah, I wish you'd come out here a few minutes." When she had stepped out and closed the door, he said, "I want you to come up where the wagon is: there's a nice bonfire up there, and it isn't cold; I want this man to tell you all he's been telling me about a place down south,--a hundred miles below this. If it's all's he says, that's the place we ought to go to. But I wanted you to hear all about it before I said any thing to the Deacon." The driver's name, by the way, was Billy; he was called "Long Billy" on the roads where he drove, because his legs were so long, and his body so short. He had made a splendid bonfire on the edge of the brook, and Mr. March and he had been sitting there for an hour, on a buffalo robe spread on the ground. Mrs. March sat down with them, and Long Billy began his story over again. It seemed that he had formerly been a driver of a mule team on another route, much farther south than this one. He had "hauled ore," as he called it, from a little town called Rosita, to another town called Canyon City. There the ore was packed on cars and sent over the little narrow-gauge railroad up to Central City, where the silver was extracted from the rock, and moulded into little solid bricks of silver ready to be sent to the mint at Philadelphia to be made into half dollars and quarters. This town of Rosita lay among mountains: was built on the sides of two or three narrow gulches, in the Wet Mountain range; at the foot of these mountains was the beautiful Wet Mountain Valley,--a valley thirty miles long, and only from five to eight miles wide; on the side farthest from Rosita this valley was walled by another high mountain range, the Sangre di Christo range. This means "The blood of Christ." The Spaniards gave this name to the mountains when they first came to the country. All the mountains in the Sangre di Christo range are over eight thousand feet high, and many of them are over twelve thousand; their points are sharp like the teeth of a saw, and they are white with snow the greater part of the year. The beautiful valley lying between these two long lines of mountains was the place about which Long Billy had been telling Mr. March, and now began to tell Mrs. March. "Why, ma'am," he said, "I tell ye, after coming over these plains, it is jest like lookin' into Heaven, to get a look down into that valley; it's as green as any medder land ye ever laid your eyes on; I've seen the grass there higher'n my knee, in July." "Oh!" said Mrs. March, with a sigh of satisfaction at the very thought of it, "I would like to see tall grass once more." "Yes, indeed wife," said Mr. March; "but think what a place that would be for cattle, and for hay. Farming would be something worth talking about; and Billy says that the farmers in the valley can have a good market in Rosita for all they can raise. There are nearly a thousand miners there; and it is also only a day's journey from Pueblo, which is quite a city. It really looks to me like the most promising place I've heard any thing about here." "It's the nicest bit of country there is anywhere in Colorado," said Billy, "'s fur's I've seen it. Them mountains's jest a picture to look at all the time; 'n' there's a creek,--Grape Creek, they call it, because it's just lined with wild grape-vines, for miles,--runs through the valley; 'n' lots o' little creeks coming down out o' the mountains, 'n' empties into't. I wouldn't ask nothin' more o' the Lord than that He'd give me a little farm down in Wet Mountain Valley for the rest o' my life. I know that." "Do you think there are any farms there that could be bought?" asked Mr. March, anxiously. "I should think such desirable lands would be all taken up." "Well, they're changin' round there a good deal," said Billy. "Ye wouldn't think it; but men they git discontented a hearing so much talk about silver. They're always a hoping to get hold on a mine 'n' make a big fortin all in a minnit; but I hain't seen so many of these big fortins made off minin' 'n this country. For one man thet's made his fortin, I've known twenty that's lost it. Now I think on't I did hear, last spring, that Wilson he wanted to sell out; 'n' if you could get his farm, you'd jest be fixed first rate. There's the best spring o' water on his place there is in all the valley; and it ain't more'n four miles 'n' a half from his place up into Rosita: ye'd walk it easy." Mr. March looked at his wife. Her face was full of excitement and pleasure. "It sounds perfectly delightful, Robert," she said; "but you know we thought just so about this Pass. The pictures were so beautiful, and all they told us sounded attractive." Billy made a scornful sound almost like a snort. "H'm!" he said, "anybody that recommended ye to settle this low down in the Ute Pass for stock-raisin' or farmin' must ha' been either a knave or a fool: that's certain." "A knave, I think," said Mrs. March. "He tried very hard to sell us the whole place." "I'll be bound he did," sneered Billy; "cheap enough he'll sell it, too, afore ever he gets anybody to buy." "Say, mister," he continued, "you jest come along with me to-morrow: I'd like to take a run down to Rosita, first rate; 'n' I've got to lay by a few days anyhow. I'll get this load o' ore board the cars at the Springs, 'n' then I'll jest quit work for a week; 'n' I'll go down with yer to Rosita. There's somebody there I'm wantin' to see putty bad." And Billy's burnt face grew a shade or two deeper red. "Ah, Billy, is that it?" said Mr. March. "Well, yes, sir. We're a calculatin' to be married one o' these days soon's I get a little ahead. It's slow work, though, layin' up money teamin', 'n' I won't take her out of a good home till I can give her one o' her own's good. Her father he's foreman 'n one o' the mines there; 'n' he's always been a real forehanded man. She's well off: she's got no occasion to marry anybody to be took care of." And Billy smiled complacently at the thought that it must have been for pure love that the Rosita young lady had promised to marry him. "Sarah, what do you think of my going?" said Mr. March. "Go, by all means!" said Mrs. March. "The little journey will do you good, even if nothing comes of it. We need not say any thing about the reason for your going, till you get back. If you decide to move down there, that will be time enough to explain." "And Mrs. Plummer will say that it was all 'providential,'" laughed Mr. March. "And so shall I, Robert," said Mrs. March, very earnestly. The next morning Mr. March and Long Billy set off together at seven o'clock. It was the first time Mrs. March had been separated from her husband in this new country, and she dreaded it. "Good-by! good-by!" called the children, in their night-gowns, at the bedroom window; "good-by, papa." "Good-by!" said the Deacon; "reckon your bones'll ache some, before ye get to the Springs, a ridin' that wheeler." Mr. March was riding the rear wheeler, and Long Billy was walking by his side. "Not if he don't walk any faster than this," said Mr. March. "And I shall walk half of the time." "Ye needn't walk a step if ye'd rather ride," said Billy. "I'm all right this mornin'. 'Tain't only about ten miles down to Colorado Springs. I don't think nothin' o' walkin' that fur, especially when I've got company to talk to. Mules is dreadful tiresome critters. Now a hoss's real good company; but a mule ain't no company, 't all." CHAPTER VIII THE MARCHES LEAVE GARLAND'S It was on a Wednesday morning that Mr. March and Long Billy set out for Rosita. The next week, on Thursday evening, just at sunset, Mrs. March heard the sound of wheels, and, looking up, saw a white-topped wagon, drawn by two mules, coming up the road. In the next instant, she saw Rob and Nelly running, jumping, and clapping their hands, and trying to climb up into the wagon. "Why, that must be Mr. March," she exclaimed, and ran out of the door. "Why, that's queer," said the Deacon, following slowly; "he said he'd write the day before he was a-comin'; and we were to go down 'n' meet him at the Springs." "And if he hasn't brought that long-geared fellow back with him, I declare!" continued the Deacon, as he walked on: "I'd like to know what's up now." Mrs. March had already reached the wagon, and was welcoming her husband. Long Billy interrupted her greetings. "Well, mum," he said, "I s'pose you're surprised to see me back again. But me 'n' him"--nodding to Mr. March--"'s struck up a kind o' 'liance, an' I'm to your service now: me 'n' my mules." "I know what that means," thought Mrs. March: "we're going to move down to that valley, post haste." But all she said was:-- "Very well, Billy; I'm glad to see you. Mr. March's friends are always mine." "What are you going to do with that Long Legs, Parson?" said Deacon Plummer, as soon as he found a chance to speak to Mr. March alone; "seems to me we haven't got work for another hand: have we?" "Not on this farm: that's a clear case, Deacon," replied Mr. March; "but it's too long a story to enter on now. After supper I'll tell you my plans." The Deacon took out his red silk handkerchief, and rubbed his forehead. "Oh, Lord!" said he to himself; "what's that blessed man been and done now? He ain't noways fit to go off by himself. I'll bet he's been took in worse 'n ever." After supper Mr. March told his story. He had bought a farm in the Wet Mountain Valley, and he proposed that they should all move down there immediately. The place had more than equalled all Long Billy's descriptions of it; and Mr. March's enthusiasm was unbounded. Deacon Plummer listened to all his statements with a perplexed and incredulous face. "Did you see that medder grass's high's a man's knee?" he asked. "Waded in it, Deacon," replied Mr. March; "but that isn't all: I've got a wisp of it in my pocket." Long Billy chuckled, as Mr. March drew the crumpled green wisp out of his pocket, and handed it to the Deacon. "'Twas I put him up to bringin' that," said Billy. "Sez I, 'there ain't nothin' so good for folks's seein' with their own eyes.' I kind o' misgave that the old man wouldn't be for believin' it all." The Deacon unfolded the grass; back and forth, back and forth, he bent it, and straightened it out across his knees. He looked at it in silence for a minute; then he said:-- "Well, that beats me! Acres like this, you say?" "Miles, Deacon," said Mr. March. "Miles 'n' miles," said Billy; "'s fur's you can see it wavin' in the wind; 't looks like wheat, only puttier. P'raps you'd better show him the wheat now?" Mr. March pulled out of his other pocket a similar wisp of wheat, and handed it to the Deacon. This he straightened out, as he had the grass, across his knees, and looked at it in silence for a moment; then he tasted the kernel; then he rolled up both wheat and grass together, and handed them back to Mr. March, saying: "I've got nothin' more to say. Seein' 's believin'." Long Billy nodded his head triumphantly, and winked at Mr. March. "But," continued the Deacon, "for all that I don't feel it clear in my mind about our goin'. 'Twouldn't make any difference to ye, Parson, anyway, if Elizy 'n' I didn't go; would it?" Mr. March was much surprised. "Why, Deacon!" he said, "we should be very sorry to have you separate from us. You surely can't stay on in this place!" "Oh, no!" replied the Deacon; "we hain't the least idea o' that. The fact is, I expect we ought to go home: Elizy's so poorly. We've been thinkin' on't for some time. But we was so kind o' settled here, and all so home-like, we hated to stir. But if you're goin' to break up, and go to a new place, I expect we'd better take that time to go home." This was not wholly a surprise to Mr. and Mrs. March, for they had themselves felt that old Mrs. Plummer would after all be better off in her comfortable home in Mayfield. They saw that she was growing slowly more feeble: the climate did not suit her. "I reckon we're kind o' old for this country," said the Deacon. "It don't seem to me's I feel quite so fust-rate's I did at home. Trees gets too old to transplant after a while." "That's so! that's so!" exclaimed Billy. "I've never yet seen the fust time, old folks adoin' well here. The air's too bracin' for 'em. They can't get used to it,--no offence to you, sir,"--looking at Deacon Plummer. "Oh, no offence,--no offence at all," replied the Deacon. "I don't make any bones about ownin' that I'm old. Me 'n' my wife's both seen our best days; 'n' I reckon we're best off at home. I think we'd better go, Parson. We're mighty sorry to leave you; but when you move south, we'll start the other way towards home. Ain't that so, Elizy?" Mrs. Plummer had been rocking violently for the last few minutes, with her face buried in her handkerchief. "Yes," she sobbed, "I expect so. It's just providential, the hull on't." "Dear Mrs. Plummer, do not cry so!" exclaimed Mrs. March. "We have had a very pleasant time. It is only a few months; and when you get home, it will only seem as if you had taken a six months' journey. I really think you will be better in Mayfield than here." "Oh, I've no doubt on't," said Mrs. Plummer, still crying in her handkerchief; "but I thought we was a goin' to live with you all the rest o' our lives. It's a awful disappointment to me. But it's all providential. It's a comfort to know that." When Zeb heard the news that the family would break up in a few days,--the Marches to move to Wet Mountain Valley, and the Plummers to go back to Massachusetts,--he was very sorry. He turned on his heel without saying a word, and went into the barn. "Just your luck, Abe Mack!" he said, under his breath; "you don't no sooner get used to a place 'n' to folks, 'n' feel real contented, than somethin' happens to tip ye out. Ye're born onlucky; I reckon there's no use fightin'. They're so took up with this long-legged spindle of a mule-driver I expect they won't want me; 'n' I don't want to go down into no minin' country, nuther,--'taint safe. I'll see if the old man won't take me back to the States. I've got enough to pay my way, if he'll give me work after I get there, and I reckon I'd be safe from any o' them Georgetown fellers in Massachusetts." The Deacon was very glad to take Zeb back with him. He had learned to like the man, and he needed such a hand on his farm. And so it was all settled, and everybody went to work as hard as possible to get ready for the move. Nelly and Rob hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry. They loved the hills so much, they were afraid they would not love the valley so well. Yet their heads were nearly turned by Long Billy's stories of the wonderful mines in Rosita; of the machinery in the stamp-mill where they crushed the ore and got the silver out; of the delicious wild grapes on Grape Creek; and the trout, and the flowers on the hills. "Yer hain't ever seen any flowers yet," said Billy, when Nelly tried to tell him how many flowers grew in the Pass; "ye jest wait till I take ye up on Pine's ranch, some Sunday. I'll show ye flowers then: sixty odd kinds in one field,--yes, sure! I counted 'em; and old Pine he counted em too. And he sent 'em off by express once, some of each kind, to the folks at Washington. You'll see!" Just three weeks from the day Long Billy first drove into the shadow of the old saw-mill to camp, the March and Plummer family set out on their journeys: Fox and Pumpkinseed drawing one big white-topped wagon, in which were Mrs. March, Deacon and Mrs. Plummer, Nelly and Rob. Billy's two mules drew the other big wagon, which was loaded down very heavily with the furniture Mr. March had bought. Mr. March drove this; and Billy, mounted on a new horse which he had bought, was driving all the cattle before him. Zeb sat by Mr. March's side in the mule wagon. He and Deacon and Mrs. Plummer were to take the cars at Colorado Springs, and go to Denver. Mr. and Mrs. March had begged them to come down with them into Wet Mountain Valley, and make a visit. But the Deacon said "No." "The fact is," he said, "I may's well own it: now that we're really started for home, we're dreadful homesick. I didn't know's I had felt it so much. Can't transplant old trees, Parson, no use! It's a good country for young folks,--a good country; I shall tell the boys about it. But give me old Massachusetts. I just hanker after a sight o' the old buryin'-ground, 'n' that black elder-bush in the corner on't." When they parted at the little railroad station in Colorado Springs, Mrs. Plummer broke down and cried. Nelly cried a little too, from sympathy; and even Watch whined, seeing that something unusual and uncomfortable was going on. Luckily, however, good-bys at railway stations always are cut short. The engine-bell rings, and the cars move off, and that puts an end to the last words. Mr. and Mrs. March were sorry to part from these good old people; and yet, if the whole truth were told, it must be owned that they felt a sense of relief when they were gone. They had felt, all the while, a responsibility for their comfort, and a fear lest they should be taken ill, which had been burdensome. "We shall miss them: shan't we?" said Mrs. March, as the train moved off. "Yes," said Nelly; "I'm real sorry they're gone. I like Zeb too." "We'll miss the crullers," said Rob. "Say, mamma, didn't she show you how to make 'em?" "Rob," said his father, "you ought to be a Chinese." "Why?" asked Rob. "Because they think the seat of all life is in the stomach; and they give great honor to people with very big stomachs," answered his father. Rob did not know whether his father were laughing at him or not. He suspected he might be. "I don't know what you mean, papa," he said: "you like crullers, anyhow." "Fair hit, Rob!" said Mrs. March. "Fair hit, papa!" The journey to Rosita took six days: they had to go very slowly on account of the cattle. The weather was perfect; and every night they slept on the ground, in a tent which Mr. March had bought in Colorado Springs. Rob rode on Pumpkinseed's back a good part of the way, like a little postilion. Before the end of the journey, they were all so burnt by the sun that they looked, Mrs. March said, "a great deal more like Indians than like white people." They drove into Rosita just at sunset. I wish I could tell you how beautiful the whole place looked to them. You go down a steep hill, just as you come into the town of Rosita. On the top of this hill, Mr. March called out to his wife to stop. She was driving Fox and Pumpkinseed; and he was following behind with the mules. He jumped out, and came up to the side of her wagon. "There, Sarah!" he said, "did you ever see any thing in your life so beautiful as this?" Mrs. March did not speak; both she and Nelly and even Rob were struck dumb by the beauty of the picture. They looked right down into the little village. It was cuddled in the ravine as if it had gone to sleep there. The sides of the hills were dotted with pine-trees; and most of the little houses were built of bright yellow pine boards: they shone in the sun. Just beyond the village they could see a bit of a most beautiful green valley; and, beyond that, great high mountains, half covered with snow. "That is the valley," said Mr. March; "that bit of bright green, way down there to the west." Nelly was the first to speak. "Papa," said she, "it looks just like a beautiful green bottom to a deep well: doesn't it?" "Yes, this little bit that you see of it from here, does," said Mr. March: "but, after you get into it, it doesn't look so. It is thirty miles long; and so level you would think you were on the plains. And oh, Nell! you can see your dear Pike's Peak grandly there! It looks twice as high here as it does from any place I have seen it." "Oh, I'm so glad!" said Nelly. Still Mrs. March did not speak. Her husband turned to her at last, anxiously, and said:-- "Don't you like it, Sarah?" "Oh, Robert!" she said, "it is so beautiful it doesn't look to me like a real place. It looks like a painted picture!" "That'll do! that'll do!" laughed Mr. March; "I'm satisfied. Now we'll go down the hill." Rob nudged Nelly. They were on the back seat of the wagon. "Nell," he whispered, "did you ever see any thing like it? I see lots of silver mines all round on the hills. Billy told me how they looked. Those piles of stones are all on top of mines; that's where they throw out the stones. I'll bet we'll find a mine." "Oh," said Nelly, "wouldn't that be splendid! Let's go out the first thing to-morrow morning." Mr. March had planned to stay in Rosita a couple of days, before going down to his farm in the valley. He wished to become acquainted with some of the Rosita tradesmen, and to find out all about the best ways of doing things in this new life. Long Billy proved a good helper now. Everybody in Rosita knew Long Billy and liked him; and, when he said to his friends, confidentially: "This is a first-rate feller I've hired with: he does the square thing by everybody, I tell you. There's nothin' narrer about him; he's the least like a parson of any parson ye ever see,"--they accepted Billy's word for it all, and met Mr. March with a friendliness which would not usually have been shown to a newcomer. The next morning after they reached Rosita, Long Billy proposed to take Mr. March out and introduce him to some of the people he knew. When Mr. March came downstairs, he was dressed in a good suit of black, and wore a white collar; on the journey, he had worn his rough working-clothes, and a flannel shirt. Long Billy looked him up and down, from head to foot, with an expression of great dissatisfaction; but did not say anything. Then he walked out on the piazza of the hotel, and stood still for some minutes, in deep thought. Then he said to himself:-- "Hang it all! I'll have to speak to him. What'd he want to go 'n' spruce hisself all up like that for? 'T'll jest ruin him in this town, oncet for all! I'll have to speak to him. I'd rather be scotch-wolloped." What scotch-wolloped means I do not know: but it was a favorite expression of Long Billy's. So he walked back into the hotel, and beckoned Mr. March out on the piazza. "Look here, Parson," he said, speaking very fast, and looking very much embarrassed,--which was an odd thing for Billy,--"look here, Parson, you ain't goin' to preach to-day, be yer?" "Why, no, Billy," said Mr. March; "why did you ask?" "Ain't these yer preachin' clo'es?" replied Billy, pointing to the black coat. Mr. March laughed. "Why, yes, I have preached in them, Billy; but I do not expect ever to again. I must wear them out, though." "Not in these parts, Parson," said Billy, solemnly, shaking his head. "Yer don't know minin' towns so well's I do. Ef I was to take you down town in that rig, there wouldn't one o' the fellers open his head to yer. They'd shet up jest like snappin' turtles. Ye jest go upstairs 'n' put on the clo'es ye allers wears won't ye?" said Billy, almost pleadingly. "Why, certainly, Billy, if you really think it would make any difference about my making friends with the people. I don't want to offend anybody. These are pretty old clothes, though, Billy, if they only knew it. It was to save my others that I put them on. But I'll change them, if you say so." And Mr. March ran upstairs much amused. When he came down in his rough suit and his blue flannel shirt, Billy smiled with pleasure. "There," he said, "you look like a man in them clo'es, Parson. Excuse my bein' so free; but I allers did think that the parsons' clo'es had a good deal to do with fellers despisin' 'em's they do. They allers call 'em 'Tender-feet.'" "Tender-feet!" exclaimed Mr. March; "what does that mean, Billy?" Billy did not answer immediately. He was puzzled to think of any definition of "Tender-feet." "Well," he said at last, "don'no' as I can say exactly what it does mean; but 'tain't because I don't know. Any feller that's over-particular about his clo'es, 'n' his way o' livin', 'n' can't rough it like the generality o' folks in Colorado, gets called a 'Tender-foot'! Lord, I'd rather be called a thief, any day!" Mr. March laughed heartily. "I see! I see!" he said. "Well now, Billy, you don't think there'd be any danger of my ever being called a 'Tender-foot' do you?" "Not a bit of it, Parson," said Billy, emphatically, "when a feller came to live with yer; but to see yer jest a walkin' round in them black clo'es o' yourn, you'd get took for one. Yer would: that's a fact. I should take yer for one myself. Yer may's well give that suit up, oncet for all, Parson, for this country, I tell ye," added Billy, thinking he would make sure that the danger did not occur again. "Thet is," he continued, "except Sundays. I don't suppose 'twould do ye any harm to be seen in it Sundays, or to a dance." "I don't go to dances, Billy," said Mr. March; "perhaps I'll give the suit away: that'll save all trouble." As they left the hotel, they saw Rob and Nelly walking hand in hand up the steep road down which they had come the night before, entering the village. "Where can the children be going?" said Mr. March. "Rob! Nelly!" he called. They both turned and said: "What, papa?" but did not come towards him. "Where are you going?" he said. "Oh, only a little way up this road," replied Rob. "Don't you want to come with me?" said Mr. March. The children hesitated. "Do you want us, papa?" said Nelly. "Why, no, certainly not," replied Mr. March, "unless you want to come. I thought you would like to see the town: that's all." "We'd rather go up on the hill, papa," said Rob. "Mamma said we might, if we wouldn't go out of sight of the hotel. Good-by!" "Good-by, papa!" called Nelly. And they both trudged off with a most business-like air. Long Billy laughed. "Them youngsters got silver on the brain," he said. "Thet's what's the matter with them. I've seen plenty o' grown folks jest the same way in this country: a walkin', walkin' by the month to a time, a pokin' into every hole, 'n' a hammerin' every stone,--jest wild after gold 'n' silver. There's plenty on 'em's jest wasted time enough on't to ha' made a considerable money, if they'd stuck to some kind o' regular work. That little chap o' yourn, he's a driver; he hain't never let go the idee of findin' a silver mine, sence the day they hauled all them mica stuns down, back there'n the Pass. They're a rare couple, he 'n' Nelly: they are." "Yes, they are good children," said Mr. March: "good children; but I don't want them to get possessed with this desire for money." And he looked anxiously up the hill, where he could see Rob and Nelly striking off from the road, and picking their way across the rough ground towards a great pile of gray ore, which had been thrown out of one of the mines. Long Billy also looked up at them. "The little sarpents!" he said. "They're a makin' for the Pocahontas mine, straight. Rob, he was askin' me all about the piles o' ore 'n' the engines in the mines, yesterday." "Is there any danger of their being hurt?" said Mr. March. "Oh, no! I reckon not. That Nelly, she's jest the same's a grown woman. I allers notice her a holdin' the little feller back. She won't go into any resky places no more'n her ma would. She's got a heap o' sense, that little gal has." While Mr. March and the children were away, Mrs. March sat at the west window of her room, looking off into the beautiful valley. I wish I could make you see just how it looked from her window; however, no picture can show it, and I suppose no words can tell it; but if you really want to try to imagine how it looked just ask somebody who is with you while you are reading this page, to explain to you how high a thousand feet would seem to you. If you can see the spire of the church, and can know just how high that is, that will help you get an idea of a thousand feet. Then you can imagine that you are looking off between two high hills, right down into a bit of green valley one thousand feet lower down than you are. Then try to imagine that this bit of green valley looked very small; and that, beyond it, there were grand high mountains, half covered with snow. The lower half of the mountains looked blue: on a sunny day, mountains always look blue in the distance; and the upper half was dazzling white. This is the best I can do towards making you see the picture which Mrs. March saw as she sat at her western window. After all, I think Nelly's sentence was worth more than all mine, when she said, "Oh, papa, it looks like a beautiful green bottom to a deep well." The picture was so beautiful that Mrs. March did not want to do anything but sit and look at it, and when her husband returned from his walk in the village, she was really astonished to find that she had sat at the window two whole hours without moving. The children did not come home until noon. Their faces were red and their eyes shone with excitement: they had had a fine time; they had rambled on from one mine to another on the hill; wherever they saw a pile of the gray ore, and a yellow pine building near it, they had gone into the building and looked into the shaft down which the miners went into the ground. They had found kind men everywhere who had answered all their questions; and Rob had both his pockets full of pieces of stone with beautiful colors, like a peacock's neck. Rob had forgotten the name of the stone: so had Nelly. "It sounded something like prophets," said Nelly, "but it couldn't have been that"; she handed a bit of the stone to Long Billy. "Oh," said he, glancing at it carelessly, "that's nothing but pyrites; that's no account; they'll give you all you want of that." "I don't care:" said Rob, "it's splendid. I'm going to make a museum, and I shall have the shelves full of it. But, mamma," he said sadly, "there isn't any use in our looking for a mine. When I told one of the men that we were going to see if we couldn't find a mine, he just laughed, and he said that every inch of the ground all round here belonged to people that thought they'd got mines. All those little bits of piles of stones, with just a stick stuck up by them, every one of those means that a man's been digging there to find silver; and they're just as thick! why, you can't go ten steps without coming on one! They call them 'claims.'" "That's so," said Long Billy; "and I'll tell ye what I call 'em. I call 'em gravestones, them little sticks stuck up on stone heaps: that's what most on 'em are, graves where some poor feller's buried a lot o' hope and some money." Nelly turned her great dark eyes full on Long Billy when he said this. Her face grew very sad: she understood exactly what he meant. Rob did not understand. He looked only puzzled. "Graves!" exclaimed he. "Why, what do you call them graves for, Billy? There isn't any thing buried in them." Billy looked a little ashamed of his speech; he did not often indulge in anything so much like a flight of fancy as this. "Oh, nothin'!" he said. "That's only a silly way o' puttin' it." "I don't think so, Billy," said Nelly. "I think it's real true. Don't you know, Rob, how awfully you and I felt when we thought we'd found that mine up in the Pass, and it turned out nothing but mica? We felt just as if we'd lost something." "I didn't," said Rob; "I just felt mad; and it makes me feel mad now to think of it: how we lugged those heavy old stones all that way. I wish I'd saved some for my museum though. All the boys here have museums, a man told me, and perhaps I won't find any of that kind of stone here." After dinner, they all drove down into the valley to look at their new home. The road wound down in a zigzag way among a great many low hills. Sometimes for quite a distance among these hills, you cannot see the valley at all; and then all of a sudden you look right out into it. As they went lower, they saw more and more of it, until at last they reached it and came out on the level ground, where they could look up and down the whole length of the valley. Long Billy was driving them: when they reached the spot where the whole valley lay in full view, he stopped the horses and, turning round to Mrs. March, said:-- "Well, mum, did I tell the truth or not?" "No, Billy, you did not," replied Mrs. March, very gravely. Billy looked surprised, and was just about to speak when Mrs. March continued:-- "You did not tell half how beautiful it is." "Ah!" said Billy. "Well, that kind o' lie I don't mind bein' charged with." "Oh, papa! let me get out!" cried Nelly. "I want to walk in this grass. Is this our grass?" The road was winding along between two fields of high grass, which waved in the wind. As it waved, Nelly saw bright red and blue flowers among it; some tall, and some low down close to the ground as if they were hiding. "Yes, this is where our land begins," said her father; "this is our own grass: but I don't want you to run in it; we must mow it next week." "Oh, let us, papa; just a little bit--close to the fence. You can spare a little bit of hay," pleaded Nelly; "we'll step light." "Do let them, Robert," said Mrs. March. "I should like to do it myself." "Very well: keep close to the fence, then," said Mr. March, and reined up the horses. Rob and Nelly jumped out, and had clambered over the fence in a second, and waded into the grass. It was nearly up to their shoulders, and they looked very pretty moving about in it, picking the flowers. As Mrs. March was watching them, she suddenly saw a brown bird with yellow breast fly out of the grass, and perch on one of the fence-posts. "Oh, don't stir, children! don't stir!" she cried: "see that bird!" Rob and Nelly stood perfectly still. And what do you think that bird did?--opened his mouth and sang the most exquisite song you ever heard. The canary bird's song is not half so sweet. The bird was not ten steps away from the carriage or from the children: there he sat, looking first at one and then at the other, like a tame bird. In a few seconds he sang again: then he spread his wings and flew a little way into the field, and alighted on a tall, slender grass stalk, and there he sat, swinging to and fro on the grass, and sang again; then he flew away. Nobody drew a long breath till he had gone. "That's a lark," said Billy; "this country's full on 'em; they're the tamest birds for a wild bird I ever see. They'll sing to ye right under your feet." "Well, he's a glorious chorister," said Mr. March. "If he's a chorister, I'd like to go where he keeps his choir," said Rob. "I mean to catch one, and have him to sing in my museum." "Oh, no, Rob," said Nelly; "don't!" "They won't never sing in cages," said Billy. "I've seen it tried many a time. They jest walk, walk, walk up and down, up and down in the cage the hull time, and beat their wings. They can't stand bein' shut up, for all they're so tame actin' while they're free." The children climbed back into the wagon now, with their hands full of flowers; and Billy whipped up the horses. "Git up, Pumpkinseed! git up, Fox!" he said: "there's a crib o' corn ahead for you." Very soon the new home came in sight. It looked, when they first saw it, as if it were half buried in green grass; but, as they came nearer, they saw that the enclosure in which the house and barns stood was entirely bare of grass. This gave it a naked and barren look which was not pleasing, and disappointed Mrs. March very much. However, she said nothing; only thought to herself "I'll have green grass up to that very doorstep, before another year's out." The house was very much like the one they had lived in, in the Ute Pass, except that it was larger; there were three log-cabin barns, two of which were very large; and a queer-shaped log-house, bigger at the top than at the bottom, standing up quite a distance from the ground, on posts. This was for wheat. Then there were two dog-houses, and a great place built round with palings, to keep hens in; and one or two large open sheds where wagons and carts stood. Billy looked round on all these buildings with great pride. "I declare," said he, "there ain't such a ranch's this in all the valley. What a dumb fool that Wilson was to go 'n' leave it. He's put all he's worth, except this farm, into a mine up in Central; 'n' now he'll go 'n' put the money for this in too, and's like's not he'll never see a dollar on't again's long's he lives'. This minin' jest crazes folks." "Did ye ever see a puttier farm'n this, mum?" he asked, turning to Mrs. March. Mrs. March could not say that she had not. To her eye, accustomed to Massachusetts green yards, shaded by elms and maples, this little group of rough houses and sheds, standing up quite a distance from the ground, on posts, few tufts of coarse grass, and weeds growing around it, was very unsightly. But she did not want to say this; so she said:-- "It is much the nicest place I have seen in Colorado, Billy; and this valley is perfectly beautiful. But where is the creek?" "Right there, mum, just a few rods beyond that fence to the west,--where you see that line of bushes." "I don't see any water," said Nelly. "No, you can't till yer come right on it," said Billy; "'tain't very wide here, 'n' it jest slips along in the bushes 's if it was trying to hide itself." "Papa," whispered Nelly, "doesn't Billy say queer things about things, just as if every thing was alive, and had feelings as we do? I like it." Mr. March smiled, and took Nelly's hand in his. "Girlie," he said, "Billy's a little of a poet, in his rough way." "He doesn't make verses: does he?" asked Nelly, reverentially. To make verses had always been the height of Nelly's ambition, as many a little roll of scribbled paper in her desk would show. But there was one great trouble with Nelly's verses thus far: she never could find any words that rhymed; and now to hear Billy called a poet seemed very strange to her. "I never should have thought he could make verses," she continued. "Oh! making verses is the smallest part of being a poet, Nellie," said Mr. March. "You can't understand that yet; but you will some day." Then they all went into the house, and looked at room after room, thinking what they would do with each. The rooms were sunny and bright, but were so dirty that Mrs. March groaned. "Oh, how shall we ever get this place clean?" "I'll tell you," said Billy. "If ye don't mind the expense o' stayin' at the hotel a week, an' if ye'll buy me a little paint, I'll have this hull place so ye won't know it, in a week's time. There's nothin' I can't turn my hand to; an' I'd like to fix things up here for you, first rate. I saw up 't the other place about how you like things." Billy had a quick eye for everything that was pretty. He had never seen any house in Colorado which was so cosey and pretty as the Marches' house in the Ute Pass; and he was thinking now in his heart how he would like to make this new one as pretty as that. "Mebbe you couldn't trust me," he said, seeing that Mrs. March hesitated. "Oh, yes, I could, Billy," she replied; "I have no doubt you could put it all in beautiful order. I was thinking whether we ought to stay"--she was going to say, "stay a whole week at the hotel"--but, just at that minute, there came piercing shrieks in Rob's voice: "Papa! papa! Billy; come! come!" The shrieks came from the direction of the creek. "Oh, my God! he's fallen into the creek!" cried Mrs. March, as she tried to run towards the spot. Long Billy dashed past her, with his great strides, and said, as he passed:-- "Don't be skeered, mum; in the mud, most likely." The cries came feebler and feebler, and stopped altogether,--then a loud burst of laughter from Billy, which brought the life back to Mrs. March. She was clinging to the fence, nearly senseless with terror; Nelly stood close by, her face white, and tears rolling down her cheeks: when they heard Billy's laugh, they looked at each other in amazement and relief. "He can't be in the creek, mamma," said Nelly: "Billy wouldn't laugh." Then they heard Mr. March laugh, and say:-- "Hold on, Rob: don't be frightened; we'll get a rail." Then Billy came striding back out of the bushes, still laughing. When he saw Mrs. March's and Nelly's agonized faces, his own sobered instantly. "'Twas too bad, mum," he exclaimed, "to give ye such a skeer. He's in the slough, thet's all; he's putty well in, too; he'll be a sight to see when we get him fished out. He's in putty well nigh up to his arms." Mrs. March could not help laughing; but Nelly only cried the more. "Poor dear Rob!" she said: "how he will feel!" And she began to climb the fence. "Oh, Lor'! don't any more on ye come over here," cried Billy: "it's all we can do to get round. The creek's overflowed: 'n' it's all quakin' tussocks here; that's the way he went in, a jumpin' from one to another." While Billy was speaking he was tearing off two of the top rails from the fence. He seemed to be as strong as a giant. In a very few minutes, he had two rails over his shoulder, and had plunged back among the bushes. In a few minutes more, out they all came; Rob being led between Mr. March and Billy. He was indeed, as Billy had said he would be, "a sight to behold." Up to his very arms he was plastered with black, slimy mud. "Oh, mamma, it smells horrid," was his first remark. "I wouldn't mind if it didn't smell so." Nelly ran up as close to him as she dared. "Oh, Rob," she said, "how could you go in such a place! Why didn't you stay with us?" "I wanted to see if there were any grapes yet," said Rob; "and you couldn't have told yourself, Nell, that it wouldn't bear. Ugh! What'll I do, mamma?" "I'm sure I don't know, Rob," said Mrs. March: she was at her wits' end. She looked helplessly at Billy: Billy was rubbing his left cheek with his right forefinger,--his invariable gesture when he was perplexed. Mr. March also stood looking at Rob with a despairing face. "I wish you wouldn't all look so at me," cried Rob, half crying: "it's horrid to be stared at. What'll I do, mamma?" It was indeed a dilemma. Rob's trousers and jacket were dripping wet, and coated thick with the muddy slime; his shoes were full of it; as he walked about it made a gurgling noise, and spurted up; his face was spattered with it; his hands were black; even his hair had not escaped. "There's lots o' hay in the barn," said Billy; "we might rub a good deal off on him with that. Me 'n' you'd better take him," said Billy, nodding to Mr. March. "No, mum, ye stay where ye be; we'll manage better without ye, this time," continued Billy, waving Mrs. March back, as she set out to follow them. Poor Rob looked back, as Billy led him off towards the barn; the tears ran down in the mud on his cheeks, and made little white tracks all the way. "I think you're real mean to laugh, mamma," he said. Mrs. March was sorry to hurt his feelings, but she could not help laughing. Nelly did not laugh, however: she looked almost as wretched as Rob did. It seemed an age before any one came back from the barn. Then Mr. March and Billy came out alone: Mr. March carried Rob's trousers on a stick, and Billy carried the jacket and stockings and shoes. "Why, what have you done with the child!" exclaimed Mrs. March: "he will take cold, without any clothes on." Mr. March's eyes twinkled. "Well, he has some clothes on, such as they are," he said. "Billy raised a contribution for him: my under-drawers and vest, and Billy's coat; he's all rolled up in the hay, and you'd better go and sit by him now." Mrs. March and Nelly hurried in. There lay Rob, all buried up in hay: only his face to be seen. He looked very jolly now, and said he felt perfectly comfortable. "Now tell me a story, mamma! tell me a story. You've got to tell me stories as long as I stay here." So Mrs. March sat down on one side, and Nelly on the other, and Mrs. March told them the story of the Master Thief, out of the Brothers Grimm's "Fairy Stories of All Lands"; and, just as she got to where the Master Thief was planning to steal the bottom sheet from off the king's bed, she looked up and saw that Rob was fast asleep. "Oh, that's good," she said; "that's the best thing that could have happened to him. Now we'll go out and look at the house again." "But, mamma," said Nelly, "I think I'll stay here. If he should wake up, he would feel so lonely here; and he can't get out of the hay." "Thank you, dear: that is very kind of you," replied Mrs. March. And, as she went out of the barn, she said to herself, "What a kind, thoughtful child Nelly is. She really is like a little woman." Mrs. March could not find her husband and Billy anywhere; so she sat down on the door-step of the house to wait for them. She looked up and down the beautiful valley: it seemed a great deal more than thirty miles long. The mountains at the south end of it looked blue and hazy; the great Sangre di Christo Mountains, which made the western wall, looked very near; the snow on them shone so brightly it dazzled Mrs. March's eyes to look at it. After a time, she got up from the door-step and walked round to the north side of the house. "Oh, there is Nelly's mountain!" she said. There stood Pike's Peak, in full sight, to the northeast. It looked so grand and so high at first, Mrs. March did not know it. This, too, had a great deal of snow on it, and there were white clouds floating round the top; it was the grandest sight in the whole view. There were no other houses near; she could see only a few in the valley; and she could not see Rosita at all. The road down which they had come seemed to end very soon among the hills. "We shall not have much more to do with neighbors here than in the Pass," thought Mrs. March. "But I do not care for that. One could never be lonely with these mountains to look at." "Well, mum, here's the little feller's clo'es," said Billy, coming up at this moment, with Rob's clothes hanging in a limp wet bundle over his arm. "Now I'll jest make a rousin' fire back here, 'n' you'll be astonished to see how quick they'll dry. I've washed 'em in about five hundred waters,--that medder mud's the meanest stuff to stick ye ever see,--but they'll be dry in no time now." "Mamma!" called Nelly, from the barn; "Rob's awake. He wants to get up: he says he won't lie here another minute." "I'll show him his clo'es," said Billy. "I guess that'll convince him," and Billy carried the wet bundle into the barn. Shouts of laughter followed, and in a minute more Billy came out again, shaking all over with laughter. "I jest offered 'em to him," said he, "'n' told him he could get up 'n' put 'em on ef he wanted to; but I rayther thought he'd better let 'em dry some fust." "What did he say?" asked Mrs. March. "He wanted to know how long it would take 'em to dry 'n' I told him the best part of an hour; 'twill be some longer'n that, but I couldn't pretend to be exact to a minnit, 'n' he laid back on the hay 'n' sez he: 'You tell my mamma to come right here 'n' finish that story she was a tellin'.'" When Mrs. March went back into the barn, she shouted aloud as soon as she saw Rob. He had crawled out of his hay bed. It was too warm: there he sat bolt upright, with his legs straight out in front of him. Nelly had drawn the white drawer legs out to their full length, and set Rob's shoes, toes up, in the hay at the end of them, so it looked as if his legs were all that length; then Mr. March's gray waistcoat came down nearly to his knees, and Billy's old brown coat hung on his shoulders as loosely as a blanket. He looked up at his mother with a perfectly grave face, and did not speak. Nelly was laughing hard. "Isn't he too funny, mamma?" said she. "You can laugh now if you want to, mamma," said Rob politely. "I don't mind your laughing at papa's drawers and waistcoat and Billy's old coat. That's quite different from laughing at me." "Thank you, dear," said Mrs. March: "you're very kind; but I can get along very comfortably without laughing at you now. You're not half so funny as you were when you were covered with the mud." It took so long to dry Rob's clothes, that it was nearly dark when they got back to Rosita. "Well, I reckoned you liked your house so well you weren't coming back to us at all," said the landlord, as they drove up. "Oh, no, sir," cried Rob, "that wasn't it. I fell into the mud by the creek: I always fall into the water each new place we go to. I did it the first thing up in the Pass." The landlord looked closely at him. "What! you been into the creek in them clothes?" "Billy washed them," said Nelly; "they were all black as mud." "Oh!" said the landlord. "Well, there ain't any thing under Heaven that Long Billy can't do: that's certain." Mr. and Mrs. March thought so too, when one week later they drove down to take possession of their home. Billy had pleaded so earnestly to be allowed to do all the work himself that Mr. March had consented; and had even promised him that they would not come near the house until he invited them. Then Billy set to work in good earnest, and Miss Lucinda Harkiss set to work with him. This was the young woman to whom Billy was engaged. She was coming to be Mrs. March's servant. A very good time Lucinda and Billy had all that week. It was almost like going to housekeeping together for themselves. The first day Lucinda swept and scrubbed the floors, and washed the windows till they shone; then Billy stained all the floors dark brown, and painted the window-sashes and the door-frames brown; and this brown color was so pretty with the yellow of the pine, that it made the rough boarded rooms look almost handsome. While the paint was drying, Lucinda and Billy drove over to Pine's ranch at the foot of one of the Sangre di Christo mountains. They knew old Mr. Pine very well; and he was very glad to have them make him a visit. All one day Billy worked hard digging up young pine-trees, and Lucinda gathered a great quantity of kinnikinnick vines. Billy had told her how Mrs. March had had them nailed up on the walls in the other house. The next day they drove home early in the morning, and in the afternoon Billy set out a row of the little pine-trees all round the house. "Even if they don't grow, they'll look green for a spell," he said to Lucinda; "an' ye never see a woman hanker arter green stuff's Miss March does. There wan't a livin' thing growin' in the Ute Pass, but what she had it in a pitcher or a tumbler or a tin can, a settin' round in her house. And as for that Nelly, she'd bring in her arms full o' flowers every day o' her life. You'll like 'em all, Lucinda, see if you don't. They ain't like most o' the folks out here." Lucinda had a good many fears about coming to live with Mrs. March. She had never been a servant; but she wanted to be married to Billy as much as he wanted to be married to her, and she thought if she could earn good wages and lay all the money up, they could be married sooner. "I shall like them well enough, I dare say," said Lucinda; "but I don't know how I'll stand being ordered round." "Ordered round!" said Billy, in a scornful tone. "I tell you they ain't the orderin' round kind; they're the reel genuwine fust-class folks; an' genuwine fust-class folks don't never order nobody to do nothing: I tell you I shouldn't stand no orderin' any more'n you would. Mr. March he always sez to me, 'We'd better do so and so,' if there's anything he wants done; 'n' he works 's hard as I do, any day, 'n' Miss March she's jest like him. You'll see how 'twill be. I ain't a mite afeared." After the paint was dry, they nailed up the vines; and Billy added to them some pine boughs with great clusters of green cones on them which were beautiful. Then they unpacked the boxes of furniture; and Billy showed Lucinda how to put up the chintz curtains in the sitting-room, and the white ones in the bedrooms, and, when it was all done, it looked so pretty that Billy could not help saying:-- "Don't you wish it was our house, Luce?" He always called her Luce for short. "Can't take time for no three-storied names 'n this country," said Billy; "two's too many." Lucinda blushed a little, and said:-- "We can make ours just as pretty some day, Billy." "That's so, Luce," said Billy: "you'll get lots o' idees out o' Miss March. She's what I call a reel home-y woman. I hain't never seen nobody I've took to so since I left hum." When everything was ready, the house and the barns and sheds all in order, and the whole enclosure raked over and made as tidy as possible, Billy said:-- "Now, we'll jest keep 'em waitn' one more day. You make up a lot o' your best bread, and churn some butter; 'n' I'll go over to Pine's and pick two or three gallons o' raspberries. They're just ripe to pick now, 'n' this is the last chance I'll get. Then you 'n' Miss March can preserve 'em. I know she wants some. I heard her say so when we was a comin' up Hardscrabble Canyon." Something besides raspberries Billy brought back from Pine's ranch that night,--something that he never dreamed of getting, something which pleased him so greatly he fairly snapped his fingers with delight,--it was a little pet fawn. "Old-man Pine" had had it for several months; it had strayed down out of the woods, when it was too young to find its way back; he had found it early one morning lapping milk out of the milk-pan he kept outside his cabin-door for his dog Spotty. He had caught it without difficulty, and tamed it, so that it followed him about like a puppy. Sometimes it would disappear for a few days, but always came back again. It was a lovely little creature, almost white under its belly, and on the under side of its legs; but all the rest of a beautiful bright red. When Billy told old Mr. Pine about the March family, and about the twin brother and sister, who were such nice children, the old man said:-- "Don't you think they'd like to have the fawn? It's a pesky little thing, for all it's so pretty, an' I'm tired on't. There was a man offered me seven dollars for it, a while ago, but I thought I didn't want to let it go; but ye may have it for them children if ye want it. Ye can tell 'em I sent it to 'em; an' I'm the oldest settler in this valley, tell 'em. Yer must bring 'em over to see me some time." Billy promised to do so. "They'll go clean out o' their heads when they see the critter," he added. "They've been a talkin' about deer ever since they come: deer an' silver are the two things they're full of. They've pretty near walked their little feet off by this time, I expect, lookin' fur a mine. They took the idee's soon's they see the wagon-load o' ore I was haulin' through the Ute Pass: that's when I fust knew 'em; an' I declare to you, the youngsters hain't never let go on't, 'n' I dunno's they ever will." "Mebbe, then, they'll find a mine yet," said old Pine. "There's one o' the best mines in all Californy was found by a little feller not more'n ten years old. He jest hauled up a bush with solid gold a stickin' in the roots. "You don't say so!" said Billy. "Well, there ain't no such free gold's that in this country; but I wouldn't like any thing much better, next to findin' a mine myself, than to have Mr. March's folks find one. They're the sort o' folks ought to have money." Billy worked very late that night fencing a little bit of the green meadow nearest the house, to keep the fawn in. The little creature seemed shy and frightened; and, when Billy drove away in the morning to bring the family down, he charged Lucinda to go out often and speak to it and feed it with sugar. "I'd like to have it get over its scare before Nelly sees it," he said; "for, if it don't seem to be happy, she's just the gal to go on the sly and let the critter out, so it could go where it wants to." Billy was much disappointed, when he reached the hotel, to learn that Mr. and Mrs. March and the children were out. They had gone to one of the mines, and would not be back till dinner-time; for they were going down into the mine. "I never see any thing in all my life like that little chap," said the landlord. "He don't rest a minute. I believe he 'n' his sister have walked over every foot o' ground within five miles o' this house; 'n' there ain't a workin' mine in all these gulches that he don't know by name; 'n' he'll tell you who's the foreman 'n' how many workmen are on; 'n' he's got about a wheelbarrow full o' specimens o' one sort 'n' another, for his museum, 's he calls it. The little girl she seems a kind o' nurse to him, she's so steady; but they say they're twins: you wouldn't ever think it." "No, that you wouldn't," replied Billy; "but they are. I like the gal best myself. She don't say much; but there ain't nothin' escapes her, 'n' she's just the sweetest-tempered little thing that was ever born. She's too good: that's the worst on't. I don't like to see youngsters always doin' right; 't don't look healthy." Poor Lucinda's nice dinner was almost spoiled,--it had to wait so long before the family came. Billy had not once thought of the possibility of his not finding them at home, and had called out to Lucinda, as he drove off:-- "Now, mind, Luce, you have all ready at one, sharp. We'll be here before that time." So, when Billy drove into the yard, at half-past two o'clock, he felt quite crestfallen, and half afraid to see Lucinda's face in the doorway. But she smiled pleasantly, and only said:-- "How punctual you are, to be sure! Dinner won't be very good." "Never mind, Lucinda," said Mrs. March. "We were not at home. It wasn't Billy's fault. He has been worrying about you for an hour. It will taste very good to us all, for we are hungry." Mrs. March praised every thing in the house, till Billy's face and Lucinda's grew red with pleasure; and Mr. March also praised everything out of doors. "Didn't I tell you, Luce," said Billy, at the first chance he found to whisper in her ear, "didn't I tell you they was nice folks to work for? They don't let you slave yourself to death for 'em like some folks, 'n' never say so much 's a thank you." The delight of Rob and Nelly in the fawn was greater than could be told in words. They ran round and round the enclosure, to see it upon all sides; they fed it, till it would not eat another mouthful; they stood still, gazing at it with almost unbelief in their faces. "Oh, is it really our own? Will it always stay?" they cried. "It is too good to be true." I don't believe there was in all Colorado a happier family than went to sleep under Mr. March's roof that night. Everybody was entirely satisfied with the home and with everybody in it. Even Watch and Trotter sat in the low-arched doors of their new houses, and held their heads up, and looked around them with an air of contentment and pride. They had never had houses of their own before. They had slept on the great pile of sawdust by the old mill; but they walked straight into these little houses and took possession of them as naturally as possible. They almost made you think of people who, when they come into possession of things much finer than they have been accustomed to, try very hard to act as if they had had them all their lives. CHAPTER IX WET MOUNTAIN VALLEY And now my story must skip over three whole years. There is so much to tell you about Nelly, and her life in Wet Mountain Valley, that, if I do not skip a good deal, the story will be much too long. The first year was a very happy and prosperous one. There were big crops of wheat and hay, and they were sold for good prices, so that Mr. March had more money than he needed to live on, and he was so pleased that he spent it all for new things,--some new books, some new furniture, and a nice new carriage much more comfortable for Mrs. March to drive in than the white-topped wagon. Mrs. March felt very sorry to have this money spent; she wanted it put away to keep; but, as I told you before, Mr. March always wanted to buy every thing he liked, and he thought that there would always be money enough. "Why, Sarah!" he said; "here's the land! It can't run away! and we can always sell the hay and the wheat; and the cattle go on increasing every year. We shall have more and more money every year. By and by, when we get things comfortable around us, we can lay up money; but I really think we ought to make ourselves comfortable." So Mr. March bought everything that Billy said he would like to have to work with on the farm, and he sent to Denver for books and for clothes for Rob and Nelly, and almost every month he added some new and pretty thing to the house. Thus it went on until at the end of the year, all the money which had been made off the farm was gone, and all their own little income had been spent too. Not a penny had been laid up in the house except by Billy and Lucinda. They had laid up two hundred and fifty dollars apiece. They had each had three hundred and had spent only fifty. "Luce," said Billy, "one more such year's this, an' we can take that little house down to Cobb's and farm it for ourselves." "Yes," said Lucinda, hesitatingly, "but I'd a most rather stay's we are. I don't ever want to leave Mrs. March 'n' the children; and you 'n' I couldn't be together any more'n we are now." "Why, Luce!" said Billy; and he walked out of the kitchen without another word. He was grieved, Lucinda ran after him. "Billy!" she said. "What?" said Billy, chopping away furiously at a big pine log. "I didn't mean that I wouldn't go if you thought best; only that I hated to leave the folks. Of course, I expect we'll go when the time comes. You needn't get mad." "Oh, I ain't mad," said poor Billy; "but it sounded kind o' disappintin', I tell yer. I like the folks's well's you do; but a man wants to have his own place, and his children a growin' up round him; but I shan't ask you to go till you're ready: you may rest 'sured o' that." And with this half way making up, Lucinda had to be satisfied. Before the second summer was over, Mr. March was quite ready to acknowledge that it would have been wiser to follow his wife's advice, and lay up all the money which they did not absolutely need to spend. Just as the crops were well up, and bidding fair to be as large as before, there came all of a sudden, in a night, a great army of grasshoppers and ate everything up. You little children in the East who have seen grasshoppers only a few at a time, as you walk through the fields in the summer, cannot have the least idea of how terrible a thing an army of grasshoppers can be. It comes through the air like a great cloud: in less than a minute, the ground, the fences, the trees, the bushes, the grass, the door-steps, the outsides of the windows, are all covered thick with them; millions and millions of millions, all eating, eating, as fast as they can eat. If you drive over a road where they are, they rise up in great masses, their wings making a whistling noise, and horses are afraid to go along. Think of that: a great creature like a horse afraid of such little creatures as grasshoppers! Nobody would believe without seeing it, how a garden or a field looks after one of these grasshopper armies has passed over it. It looks as bare and brown as if it had been burned with fire. There is not left the smallest bit of green leaf in it. This is the way all Mr. March's fields looked in one week after the grasshoppers came into the valley. All the other farmers' fields were in the same condition. It was enough to make your heart ache to look at them. After there was nothing more left to eat, then the great army spread its wings and moved on to the South. Mr. March looked around him in despair. It had all happened so suddenly he was confused and perplexed. It was almost like having your house burn down over your head. In one week he had lost a whole year's income. It was too late for the things to grow again before the autumn frosts which come very early in the valley. This was real trouble. However, Mr. and Mrs. March kept up good courage, and hoped it would never happen again. They sold their pretty new carriage and all the other things that they could spare, to get money to buy food for themselves and for the cattle; and they told Billy and Lucinda that they could not afford to keep them any longer. "We must do all our own work this winter, Billy," said Mr. March; "if you don't get any thing better to do, I'll be glad of you next summer; but this winter we have got to be as saving as possible. Rob will help me, and Nelly'll help her mother: we must put our shoulders to the wheel like the rest." Billy was not surprised to hear this. On the morning the grasshoppers appeared, he had said to Lucinda:-- "Luce, do you see those pesky varmints? They'll jest clean out this valley in about ten days, 'n' you 'n' me may's well pack our trunks. There won't be victuals for any extra mouths here this year, I tell you; I shouldn't wonder if it jest about broke Mr. March up. He hain't got any ready money to fall back on. He paid down about all he had for this place, 'n' he's spent a sight this last year. Blamed if I don't wish I hadn't asked him for a thing. He's the generousest man ever was. It's a shame he should have such luck. I don't count on next summer nuther, for the ground'll be chuck full of the nasty beasts' eggs: ten to one they'll be worse next year than they are this: there's no knowin'. We might's well get married, Luce, an' if there's any thing doing in the valley at all, I can allers get it to do." So, early in the autumn Billy and Lucinda were married, and went to live in "Cobbs's Cabin," a little log cabin about two miles from Mr. March's place, on the road to Rosita. The winter was a long and a hard one: hay was scarce and dear; and all sorts of provisions were sold at higher prices than ever before. The March family, however, were well and in good spirits. Nelly and Rob enjoyed working with their father and mother,--Rob in the barn and out in the fields, and Nelly in the house. They still studied an hour every day, and recited to their father in the evening. Rob studied Latin, and Nelly studied arithmetic; and their mother read to them every night a few pages of history, or some good book of travels. Rob did not love to study, and did only what he must; but Nelly grew more and more fond of books every day. She did not care for her dolls any longer. Even the great wax doll which Mrs. Williams had given her was now very seldom taken out of the box. All Nelly wanted to make her happy was a book: it seemed sometimes as if it did not make much difference to her what sort of a book. She read every thing she could find in the house; even volumes of sermons she did not despise; and it was an odd thing to see a little girl twelve years old reading a big, old leather bound volume of sermons. Rob used to laugh at her and say:-- "Oh, pshaw, Nell! what makes you read that? Read Mayne Reid's stories: they're worth while. What do you want to read sermons for, I'd like to know?" And Nelly would laugh too, and say:-- "Well, Rob, they aren't so nice as stories; but I do like to read them. It's like hearing papa preach." To which Rob would reply, in a cautious whisper:-- "Well, I'm glad we don't have to hear papa preach any more. I hate sermons. I'm never going to church again's long's I live; and, when I'm a man, I sha'n't make my boys go to church if they don't want to." The third summer began just as the one before it had begun, with a great promise of fine crops; but they were no sooner fairly under way, than the grasshoppers came again, and ate them all up. This was very discouraging. Mr. March did not know what to do. He sold a good many of his cows; and, before the summer was over, he sold some of his books; but that money did not last long, and they were really very poor. Now came the time when Nelly's little head began to be full of plans for earning money. She asked her mother, one day, to let her go up into Rosita and sell some eggs. Mrs. March looked at her in surprise. "Why, Nell," she said, "you couldn't walk so far." "Oh, yes, I could," said Nelly. "Rob and I often walk up to the top of the hill: it's only a little way from Billy's house, and we often go there; and I know I could sell all our eggs,--and some butter too, if we could make enough to spare. I'd like to, too. I think it would be good fun." "I'll ask your father," replied Mrs. March. "I don't think he'd be willing: but if we could get a little money that way, it would be very nice. We don't need half the eggs." When Mrs. March told her husband of Nelly's proposition, his cheeks flushed. "What a child Nelly is!" he exclaimed. "I can't bear to have her go round among those rough miners. I've often thought myself of carrying things up there to sell; but I thought my time was worth more on the farm than any thing I could make selling eggs. Oh, Sarah!" he exclaimed, "I never thought we should come to such a pass as this." "Now, Robert, don't be foolish," said Mrs. March, gayly. "There isn't the least disgrace in selling butter and eggs. I'd as soon earn a living in that way as in any other. But I wouldn't like to have Nelly run any risk of being rudely treated." "I don't believe she would be," said Mr. March; "her face is enough to make the roughest sort of a man good to her. You know how Billy worshipped her; and he's a pretty rough fellow on the surface. I think we might let her try it once, and see what happens." And so it came to pass, that, early in the third summer of their stay in Wet Mountain Valley, Nelly set off one morning at six o'clock with a basket on her arm, holding three dozen of eggs and two pounds of butter, which she was to carry up into Rosita to sell. Rob pleaded hard to go too, but his father would not consent. "Nelly will do better by herself," he said. "You will be sure to get into some scrape if you go." "I don't care," said Rob, as he bade Nelly good-by: "you just wait till trout time: see if I don't make him let me go then. I can make more money selling trout than you can off eggs, any day. A gentleman told me one day when he drove by where I was fishing, one day last summer, that he'd give me forty cents a pound for all I had in my basket; and I told him I wasn't fishing to sell: I was real mad. I didn't know then we were going to sell things; but, if we are, I may as well sell trout; the creek's full of them." "Well, we are going to sell things, I tell you," said Nelly: "I don't know what else there is for us to do. We haven't got any money; I think papa's real worried, and mamma too; and you and I've just got to help. It's too bad! I don't see what God made grasshoppers for." "To catch trout with," said Rob, solemnly: "there isn't any thing else half so good." Nelly laughed, and set off at a brisk pace on the road to Rosita. Her father stood in the barn door watching her. As her little figure disappeared, he said aloud:-- "God bless her! she's the sweetest child a man ever had!" It was almost five miles from Mr. March's house to Rosita. For the first half of the way, the road lay in the open valley, and had no shade; but, as soon as it began to wind in among the low hills, it had pine-trees on each side of it; the little house where Billy and Lucinda lived stood in a nook among these pines. Nelly reached this house about seven o'clock, just as Billy and Lucinda were finishing their breakfast. She walked in without knocking, as she always did. "Bless my soul alive!" exclaimed Billy. "Why, what on airth brings you here, to this time o' day, Nelly?" Nelly had placed her basket on the floor and sat down in a rocking chair and was fanning herself with her sun-bonnet. Her face was very red from the hot sun, but her eyes were full of fun. "Going up to Rosita, Billy," she said. "Guess what I've got in the basket." "A kitten," said Lucinda: "your mother promised me one." "Oh, dear, no!" said Nelly; "a weasel ate them up last Saturday night: all but one; and that one the old cat must keep. Guess again." Billy did not speak. He guessed the truth. "Your luncheon," said Lucinda. "Yes," said Nelly, "my luncheon's in there, on the top; but underneath I've got eggs and I've got butter. I'm going to sell them in Rosita, and mamma said I was to stop and ask you what price I ought to tell the people. She didn't know." Billy walked hastily out of the room and slammed the door behind him. This was what Long Billy always did when he felt badly about any thing. His first idea was to get out in the open air. Lucinda looked after him in astonishment. She did not think of any reason why he should feel sorry about Nelly's selling the butter and eggs, but she saw something was wrong with him. "Why, you don't say so, Nelly!" she replied. "Well, I dare say you'll make a nice little penny. Eggs is thirty cents, and butter thirty-five to forty: your mother's ought to be forty. What're you goin' to do with the money?" "Why, it isn't for myself!" said Nelly, in a tone of great astonishment: "it's for papa and mamma. I don't want any for myself. But you know we don't have hardly any money now; and I asked mamma to let me see if I couldn't get some in Rosita. Rob's going to sell trout too, by and by: as soon as they're plenty." Billy came back into the room now; and, looking away from Nelly, he said:-- "See here, child: you let me carry them things up to town for ye. Ye stay here with Luce. I've got to go up anyway to-day or to-morrow. It's too fur for ye to walk." "Oh, no, Billy, thank you!" said Nelly. "It isn't too far. I've often and often walked up to the hill where you look right into the streets. And I want to go; I wouldn't miss it for any thing." "Well, I'm goin' along with yer, anyhow," said Billy. "Luce, you get me that flour-sack." And, as Lucinda went into the closet to get it, he followed her in and shut the door. "Ain't that a shame, Luce," he said, "to have that little thing go round sellin' eggs? I expect they're awful hard up, or they wouldn't ever have done it. I tell you it jest cuts me. Mr. March don't know them miners 's well's I do. I shall tell him it ain't no place for gals." "You're jest off all wrong now, Billy," replied Lucinda. "It's you that don't know miners. There wouldn't a man in Rosita say a rough word before Nelly no sooner'n you would. They'll jest all take to her: you see if they don't. And it's a real sensible thing for the children to do. I've been thinking o' doing the same thing myself. There's lots o' money to be made off eggs." Billy was unconvinced; but he was too wise to say so. "Well, well," he said, "we shall see. I'll go up with her to-day, and tell her which houses are the best houses to go to. If she's going to do it regular, she'd better have regular houses, and not be a gaddin' all about town, knockin' at doors. Oh, I tell you, Luce, it just cuts me! I can't stand it." "Well, I don't see nothin' so very dreadful in it," replied Lucinda. "The gal's got the sense of a woman: she'll look out for herself as well as if she was twenty; and there's lots o' money to be made off eggs; I tell you that." Nelly trudged along by Billy's side as cheery as a lark. She showed him a little brown silk bag she had to bring home the money in; it was in a pocket in her petticoat, and she had to lift up her gown to get at it. "Mamma put that in yesterday," she said: "I asked her to. I saw a lady in the cars once, Mrs. Williams: such a beautiful lady,--she gave me that big wax doll. She carried all her money in a pocket in her petticoat, under her gown; because, she said, nobody could get at that to steal it." Billy laughed immoderately. The idea of a little girl's pocket being picked on the road from Rosita down into Wet Mountain Valley was very droll. "Well, Nelly," he said, "you've got a long head o' your own; but I reckon you took a little more pains than you needed to, that time. Nobody's goin' to think o' such a thing as pickin' your pocket here." "Mamma thought it was a very good plan," said Nelly, with an air of dignity; "and I think so too. Men can't tell about women's pockets: pockets in trousers are much harder to get at." At which Billy only laughed the harder; and at night, when he went home and told Lucinda, he had another fit of laughter over it. "To think o' that little mite standin' out to me that I couldn't jedge about women's pockets, pockets in trousers was so different! Oh, Lord!" said Billy, stretching his long legs out on the wooden settee: "I thought I should ha' died. You was right though, Luce, about the men. I'll own up. That child can go from eend to eend o' thet town safe's if she was one o' the Lord's angels in white,--if that's what they wear,--an' wings on her shoulders: only I never did believe much in the wings. But you oughter've seen how the men looked at her. You know she's got a different look about her somehow from most gals: she ain't pretty, but you can't take your eyes off her; an' she's so pretty spoken: that does it, more'n her looks. When we come by the stamp-mill, at noon, the men was all pourin' out; and afore I knew it we was right in the midst on 'em: a runnin' an' cuffin' and tumblin' each other, and not choosin' their words much. Nelly she took right hold o' my hand, but she never said nothin'. "'Hullo, sis,' sez Jake Billings; and he pushed her little sun-bonnet back off her head. I declare I'd a notion to knock him over; but Nelly she looked up at him an' jest laughed a little, and sez she:-- "'Oh, please, sir, don't: you'll make me drop my eggs.' And he looked as ashamed as I ever see a man. And he put her bonnet right back on her head agin, and sez he:-- "'Let me carry 'em: won't ye, sis?' "Ye see she wouldn't let me so much's touch the basket all the way, though I kept askin'. She said she was goin' to carry it always, an' she might as well begin; an' it wan't heavy; but I know 'twas, for all her sayin' 'twan't, heavy, that is, for her little pipes o' arms. "'No, thank you,' said she to Jake: 'Billy wanted to carry them for me; but I wouldn't let him. I like to carry them all the way myself, to see if I can. I'm going to come every week, perhaps twice a week.' "'Be ye?' said Jake. 'Whose little gal are ye, and where do ye live?' "Then I told him all about her folks; and all the rest o' the men they walked along with us 's quiet and steady you wouldn't ha' known 'em; and Jake he took her right into that Swede's house, you know: Jan, the one that boards some o' the hands." "Oh, yes!" said Lucinda; "and Ulrica, his wife's the nicest woman among the whole set." "Well," continued Billy, "Jake he took her right in there. 'Jan'll buy all your eggs,' sez he: 'he's allers wantin' eggs.' I followed on: Nelly she was goin' with Jake, jest as if she'd ha' known him all her life; but she looked back, an' sez, in that little voice o' hern, jest like the sweetest fiddle I ever heard:-- "'Come along, Billy,' sez she, 'and see if I can't sell eggs.' "An' as soon as she got inter the house, she walked right up to Ulrica, and held out her basket, and sez:-- "'Would you like to buy some eggs to-day, ma'am? I'm selling 'em for my papa and mamma: and they're thirty cents a dozen.' "Ulrica don't understand English much, and Nelly's words didn't sound like the English she was used to; an' she couldn't make her out: but Jan he stepped up, and explained to her; and then Ulrica took hold o' Nelly's long braids o' hair, and lifted 'em up, and said something to Jan in their own language; an' he nodded his head, an' looked at Nelly real loving: and sez to me, in a whisper like:-- "'The wife thinks she looks like our little Ulrica: and she ain't unlike her, that's true; though she's bigger'n our little girl when she died.' "All this time Nelly was a lookin' from one to the other on 'em with her steady eyes, an' makin' 'em out. They took all her eggs; but the butter they said she'd better take up to Mr. Clapp's, the owner o' the Black Bull Mine. Mis Clapp was very particular about her butter, an' 'd give a good price for it. So we went up to his house; and just as soon as Mis Clapp sot her eyes on Nelly, I could see how she took to her, by the way she spoke: an' she took the butter an' paid her the eighty cents; and you'd oughter seen Nelly a liftin' up her caliker gown to get to her petticoat, and drawin' out her little silk bag, an' putting in the money,--countin' it all as keerful as any old woman. Mis Clapp she laughed, and sez she:-- "'You're a real little business woman: ain't you?' "'Yes'm,' sez Nelly, as grave as a jedge, 'I'm goin' to be. Would you like some more butter next week? I can bring some on Saturday.' "Then Mis Clapp she jest engaged three pounds a week regular: an' Nelly thought that'd be all they could spare now." "Pshaw!" interrupted Lucinda: "Mis March ain't no hand to skimp: but they might spare four's well's not." "Well," said Billy, "I guess they will when they see the money a comin' in so easy. That'll be one dollar and sixty cents a week; and the eggs'll be say one dollar an' eighty more: that'll putty nigh keep 'em in meat 'n' flour. I'm real glad they thought on't. But I expect it goes agin Mr. March dreadful. That gal's the apple o' his eye: that's what she is." "Well, he might go hisself, then," said Lucinda, scornfully, "if he thinks it's too lowerin' for his gal: I don't see nothin' to be ashamed on in't myself. If sellin' is honorable business for men, I don't see why it ain't for women 'n' gals." "Now, Luce," exclaimed Billy, "don't be contrary. You know's well's I do what I mean. There's plenty o' things you don't want gals to do that's honorable enough, so fur's thet goes. But I must tell ye what Ulrica did 's we were comin' out o' town. There she stood waitin' in her door. She'd been watchin' for us all the arternoon; an' 's soon's she see us, she began a beckonin and a callin'; an' we crossed over, 'n' there she hed a little picture o' their gal that was dead; an' sez she, holdin' it up to me an' pointin' to Nelly:-- "'Is it not the same face? Do you not see she haf the same face as mine child?' And then she gave Nelly such a hug and kiss, and Nelly she kissed her back just as kind's could be, and sez she:-- "'I am glad I look like your little girl; but you mustn't cry, or I shall not come again.' "'Oh, yes, yes, come again: all days come again!' sez Ulrica: and she was cryin' too all the time. Then she gave Nelly a paper bag full of queer little square cakes with a picture stamped on 'em. They have 'em at Christmas, she said, in her country. Nelly wan't fur takin' 'em; but I nudged her, 'n' told her to take 'em,--Ulrica'd be hurt if she didn't. After we got away from the house, Nelly sez to me, kind o' solemn, sez she:-- "'Billy, I don't like to look like so many dead little girls. Isn't it queer? That was what Mrs. Williams said,--that nice lady: she used to cry, and say I looked like her little girl that was dead; and now it's a little girl way off in Sweden. Isn't it queer?" "But I tried to put it out of her head; but she kept talking about it all the way. I think people needn't say such things to children; it jest makes 'em gloomy for nothing." The account Nelly gave to her father and mother of her day in Rosita was almost as graphic as Billy's. She had thoroughly enjoyed the day. She was pretty tired; but not too much so to have a fine scamper with Rob and the pet deer in the paddock after tea. And the air castles that she and Rob built that night after they had gone to bed were many stories high. Nelly was sure that if her mother would only make butter enough, and her father would buy some more hens, she could earn all the money they needed to have. "Why, Rob," she said, "you see I had more than two dollars to-day; and the basket wasn't a bit heavy: I could have carried twice as much. If I could make four dollars each day, don't you see how soon it would be hundreds of dollars? hundreds, Rob!" "Yes," said Rob; "and I could make as much more by the trout: and there would be hundreds and hundreds. And strawberries, Nell! Strawberries! why couldn't we sell strawberries? Old Mr. Pine said we could have all we could pick." "I thought of that," replied Nelly; "but we haven't any horses now to carry us over there. You know we always went in the wagon." "Pooh!" said Rob, "we could go just as well in the ox-cart." "But wouldn't it take all day to get there?" said the wise Nelly: "to get there and back?" "Oh," said Rob, "I never thought of that. Perhaps Mr. Scholfield would lend us his horses some day." "I don't believe papa would--like--to--borrow," said Nelly, drowsily; and in a second more she was sound asleep. Mr. and Mrs. March, also, were building some air castles, resting on the same foundations as Rob's and Nelly's. Nelly's happy and animated face when she returned, and her enthusiastic account of her day's work, had surprised both her father and mother. "I thought she would be so tired out she would never want to go again," said Mrs. March; "but she is full of the idea of going twice a week, all the time." "The exercise is not bad for her," replied Mr. March, hesitatingly: "I have no fears about that. And I suppose it is a false pride which makes me shrink so from letting her carry about things to sell. We are very poor, and we do need the money; and the child's impulse to help us is a true and noble one; but I can't be wholly reconciled to the idea yet. If we do permit it, I shall keep an exact account of every penny the dear child brings into this house; and, if we are ever in comfortable circumstances again, I shall pay it all back to her with interest. I have made up my mind to that." "It will be a nice fund to pay for her having a year or two at some good school, when she is older," said Mrs. March, cheerfully; "and I do not feel as you do about her selling things. I think it will never do her the least harm in any way. Some of the best and noblest people in the world have gone through just such struggles in their youth. I see no disgrace in it: not the least; and I have perfect faith in Nelly's good behavior under all circumstances." "Yes," said Mr. March, "she can be trusted anywhere. I only wish Rob had half her steadiness of head." "Rob will come out all right," said Mrs. March: "you don't do justice to him. His heart is in the right place." Mr. March laughed. "You never will hear a word against Rob," said he. "Nor you against Nelly," replied Mrs. March. "Now I think Nelly's obstinacy is quite as serious a fault as Rob's hasty impulsiveness." "Nelly's obstinacy!" exclaimed Mr March: "what do you mean? I never saw a trace of it." "No: you never would," said Mrs. March, "because you never have occasion to deal with her in little matters. To me she is always obedient; but with Rob she is as unyielding as a rock in the most trifling matters. When they were little it was quite different,--while he was ill so much, you know; then she used to give up to him so much I thought it would spoil him. But now she literally rules the boy; and I can't help it. Why, the other day they had a really serious quarrel as to where their hair-brushes should be kept. I don't know what made Rob stand out so: usually he gives up. I did not interfere, because I wish them to settle all such matters themselves; but I heard Nelly say:-- "'Rob March! you can move those hair-brushes just as often as you please: it won't make the least difference. I shall move them right back again into this drawer, if it's every day of your life till you're fifty years old!' "'I sha'n't live with you when I'm fifty,' said Rob: 'so you'll have to leave off before then. And I won't have the hair-brush box in the drawer. It doesn't look bad on the top of the bureau; and I want it where I can get at it easy.' "'I'll take it out for you,' said Nelly, 'as often as you want it, if you're too lazy; but it's going to be in the drawer.'" Mr. March laughed heartily. "Well, wasn't Nelly right?" he said. "If I recollect right, the box is a shabby old box, much better out of sight." "Oh! of course you'd take Nelly's part," said Mrs. March, half playfully, half in earnest. "Well, which won?" said Mr. March. "Oh, Nelly, of course. She always does," replied Mrs. March. "I'm glad of it," laughed Mr. March. And there the conversation dropped. The next day Nelly followed her father out to the barn after breakfast. "Papa," said she, "I want to ask you something." "What is it, little daughter?" he replied. "If I could get four dollars each time I went to Rosita, and should go twice every week, how much would that be in a year?" said Nelly. "Four hundred dollars, my child," replied Mr. March. "Is not that a good deal of money?" said Nelly: "wouldn't it buy almost all we want?" "It would buy enough food for us to eat, dear," said Mr. March: "not much more than that." "Well, Rob could get a good deal for trout too," said Nelly, resolutely: "he's going to fish, next week: and they're forty cents for one pound; and I'm going to take Rob up with me, the next time, and show him how to sell things. It is very easy." "Do you like it, Nell,--really like it?" said her father. "Oh, yes!" replied Nelly; "it's splendid! It's the nicest thing I ever did. I like to see the people, and to count the money; and then it is so nice to help too, papa! Oh! you will let us help: won't you?" "Yes, my child, we will let you help us this summer, because we are really very poor just now; but I hope next year we will not be in such straits. You and Rob are dear, good children to want to work. Papa will never forget it." Nelly put her hand in her father's, and walked along in silence by his side for a few minutes. Then suddenly catching sight of Rob in the field, she exclaimed:-- "Oh! there's Rob going down to the creek now to fish. I will go and tell him it is all settled. I can help him fish. I shall put the grasshoppers on the hook: I hate it, and I said I'd never do it again; but now that it's for the money, I shall." And she ran off as fast as she could, to join Rob. All that morning Rob fished and Nelly stuck grasshoppers on the hook for him. At noon, they were miles away from the house: they had followed up the creek without noticing how far they were going. "Oh, dear!" said Rob, looking up at the sun, "look at that old sun: he's just galloped all this morning. I think his horses are running away. Did papa show you that picture of him in the 'Mythology'? It was a splendid man, in a chariot, standing up, and driving four horses. They thought the sun was really a man. Say, Nell, let's don't go home yet." "I'm so hungry!" said Nelly, whose share of the amusement was not so exciting as Rob's. "Pshaw!" said Rob: "I wonder what's the reason girls get hungry so much sooner than boys." "They don't," said Nelly, doggedly: "they've got stomachs just alike. You're as hungry as you can be; only you won't say so. I know you are." Rob did not deny it; in fact, as soon as Nelly had said the word "hungry," he had begun to feel a dreadful gnawing in the region of his stomach. "I'll tell you, Nell," he exclaimed: "we'll cook a trout on a hot stone. I know how. Billy did it one day last summer. You just get a lot of dried sticks and things, and pile them up; and I'll find a flat stone." In a few minutes, they had a big fire, and a large flat stone standing up in the hottest part of the blaze. "There!" said Rob, rubbing his hands: "now you'll see a dinner fit for a king. We'll have a trout apiece." "Good big ones!" said Nelly. "How do you tell when the stone is hot enough?" "Oh! if it burns a stick to hold it on it, it's too hot, and you let it cool a while," replied Rob, with a patronizing tone; as much as to say, "Girls did not know much about cooking on hot stones." Girls knew more about getting hot stones out of fires, however, than boys did, in this instance. Poor Rob burnt his fingers badly, trying to pull the stone out by taking hold of it with a handful of thick green leaves. "Oh, Rob! Rob!" screamed Nelly: "you'll burn you!" But it was too late. Rob had grasped the stone with all his usual impetuosity, and the leaves had shrivelled up instantly, like cobwebs, the stone was so hot. He let it fall back into the fire, and danced about, shaking his burnt fingers, and screwing up his face very hard, to keep from crying. "Oh, that was too bad, Rob!" cried Nelly. "Why didn't you let me get it out?" "You get it out!" cried Rob, quite angry; "you get it out! I'd like to see you! That's the way Billy took his out. There isn't any other way." Nelly had run off a few steps for a big stick. Presently she came back; and, without saying a word to Rob, put the end of the stick under the stone, and lifted it up and rolled it over and over, till she had it entirely out of the ashes and hot brands, and on a smooth, clean place in the grass. Then she took a little twig, and held it close to the stone, to see if it were still hot. The twig smoked. "Oh! it's lots too hot," said Rob, meekly. "What made you think of that way of getting it out, Nell?" "I don't know," said Nelly: "your burning your fingers, I guess." Then they cut open two nice trout, and Rob scraped them clean with his knife; and, as soon as the stone was cool enough, they laid them on the hot stone. Oh, how good they smelled as soon as they began to cook, and the fat began to ooze out! When the under side was nice and brown, Rob turned them over with two sticks carefully; and, in a few minutes more, they were done. Then he stuck a pointed stick through the biggest one, and handed it very politely to Nelly, saying:-- "Won't you be helped to some fish, Miss Nelly March?" Nelly held out two pointed sticks to take it; and then she ran round and round with it, for a minute, to cool it; and then she took it by the tail and ate it up in less time than it has taken to write this page. Rob ate his more slowly. "Oh, I wish we had cooked four," said Nelly. Rob looked at his basket. It was not much more than half full. "I can't fish any more," he said: "my fingers hurt so. Don't let's eat up any more. We can have a good supper when we get home. Let's keep all these to sell." "Of course we will, Rob," said Nelly, quite ashamed: "I was a pig." "Pigs don't eat trout, I guess," said Rob laughing. "No," said Nelly; "but they always want more. I was a real pig. Now let's hurry home. I'm afraid we're a long way off." "Well, they know we're fishing," said Rob: "they won't worry. It's good mamma's got over worrying about my falling into the creek." CHAPTER X ROB AND NELLY GO INTO BUSINESS They were indeed a long way from home; much farther than they dreamed. It was past four o'clock when they reached the house, and Mrs. March had begun to be a little anxious about them. She was much pleased when she saw the basket of trout. "Oh, what a nice supper we will have!" she exclaimed. Rob and Nelly looked at each other and at her. "Oh, mamma!" Nelly began, but checked herself at once, and looked again at Rob. "Why, what is the matter, children?" said Mrs. March. "Nothing. You can have them if you want them," said Rob, rather forlornly. "Why, child, what else did you get them for?" exclaimed their mother, who had forgotten all about Rob's plan of selling trout. "To sell," said Rob. "There's as many as four pounds there, I guess: that's most two dollars; but you can have them. I don't care. I'll go get some more to-morrow, if my hand's well." "Oh!" said Mrs. March, "I had forgotten about it. So you mean to be a little fish-merchant, do you?" "Yes. Nelly's an egg-merchant, an egg and butter merchant; and I'm going to be a fish and fruit merchant; and we're going to take care of you and papa that way," said Rob, in an excited tone. "And I was going to begin to-morrow; but I can begin next day, just as well: let's have these for supper; they're splendid; we've cooked two already." The tears came into Mrs. March's eyes. "We'll ask papa, and see what he says," she said. "If we're really going to be merchants, we mustn't eat up all our goods: that's certain. But what fruits do you propose to deal in, Mr. March? Fruits seem to me rather scarce in this valley." "Oh! strawberries, next month," said Rob; "and then raspberries, and then wild currants, and then wild grapes. There are lots and lots of them on the creek, you know. And we can get carried up to Mr. Pine's, and pick berries up above his ranch. He said we might have all we could pick." When they asked Mr. March about the trout, he laughed, and said:-- "I think we must take a vote of all the partners. This family is a partnership now; the 'March firm' we must call ourselves; four partners, all working to make money for the firm: now let's vote. All that are in favor of eating the trout for supper, hold up their right hand." Nobody's hand went up but Rob's. "Three against you, Rob," said his father: "you'll have to go without your trout this time. It is voted by a majority of the firm that the trout be sold." "I didn't want"--Rob began, but checked himself, and looked at his mother. She nodded and smiled, but said nothing. A little while afterward, when she found Rob alone, she put her arms around him, and kissed him, and said:-- "I understood about the trout, Rob. You thought I wanted some for my supper: didn't you?" "Yes, mamma," said Rob: "that was it. I didn't care so much about them; but it seemed awful mean to keep you from having them. Nelly and I have each had one; they were splendid. Next time I'll just catch one basketful to sell, and one to eat." The next day, Rob and Nelly set off together at six o'clock for Rosita: Rob with his trout, and Nelly with eggs and butter. They stopped a minute to speak to Lucinda and Billy, as they passed their house. Billy was not there. He had gone to work for Mr. Pine, Lucinda said, and would not be at home for a week. "You like it: don't you, Nelly?" she said. "Yes, indeed!" said Nelly: "I think it's fun. And the people are all so kind: that Swede woman kissed me because I look so much like her little girl. I am going there again to-day. They keep boarders, you know; and she wants eggs every time I come, she said. I thought perhaps they'd take Rob's trout too." "Oh, no! they won't," said Lucinda. "Trout is too dear eatin' for such boarders 's they keep. You take the trout right up to Miss Clapp's. She'll take 'em all, an' as many more 's you can ketch." By the middle of the afternoon, the children were at Lucinda's door again. They both ran in shouting:-- "Lucinda! Lucinda! we've sold every thing; and we've got five dollars and seventy-five cents! Now what do you say? Won't mamma be glad? Couldn't anybody get very rich this way, if they only kept on? Isn't it splendid?" "You dear little innocent lambs," said Lucinda: "it's much you know about gettin' rich, or bein' poor." "Why, we are poor now; very, very poor: papa said so," interrupted Nelly. "That's the reason he lets us sell things." "Oh, well! your pa don't know nothin' about bein' real poor," said Lucinda: "and I don't suppose he ever will; but it's a good thing you're a bringin' in somethin' this year. It's a dreadful year on everybody." "Yes; papa said we were a real help," said Nelly: "he said so last night." "Luce," exclaimed Rob, "what do you think Jan is going to make for us? He's taken the measure of us to-day; he showed us a picture of a man and a woman with them on. They're real nice to carry things with: you don't feel the weight a bit, he says. In his country, everybody wears them on their shoulders,--everybody that has any thing heavy to carry. They're something like our ox-yoke,--only with a straight piece, that comes out; and we can hang a basket on each end, and run along just as if we weren't carrying any thing. They're real nice folks, Jan and his wife. They're the nicest folks in Rosita." "Oh! not so nice as Mrs. Clapp, Rob," said Nelly. "Yes, they are too; lots nicer. They don't speak so fine and mincing: but I like them lots better; they're some fun. And Luce," he continued, "they've got a picture-book full of pictures of the way people dress in their country; and they let us look at it. It was splendid. And Ulrica she keeps taking hold of Nelly's hair, and lifting up the braids and looking at them, and talking to Jan in her own language." "It makes her cry, though," said Nelly. "I wish she wouldn't." "But what is this Jan is going to make you?" asked Lucinda: "a real yoke, such as I've seen the men wear to bring up two water-buckets to once? I don't believe your pa and ma'll let you wear it." "Why not?" said Nelly: "does it look awful on your shoulders?" "Well, you know how the ox-yoke looks on old Starbuckle and Jim," said Rob. "It's a good deal like that: I saw one in the picture-book." "But we're not going to be yoked together," said Nelly. "It can't look like that." "No, no," said Lucinda, "not a bit. They're real handy things. Lots o' the men have them, to carry water-buckets up the hill with in Rosita. They just make 'em out of a bent sapling, with two hooks at each end. You'll find them a heap o' help." "Then I shall wear it, no matter how it looks," said Nelly, resolutely. "We needn't wear them in the streets," said Rob: "we can take them off just outside the town, and hide them among the trees." "Now, Rob," exclaimed Nelly, "I'd be ashamed to do that! That would look as if we were too proud to be seen in them. I shall wear mine into all the houses." "Wait till you see how it feels, Nelly," said Lucinda. "Perhaps you won't like it so well's you think." When Nelly and Rob told their father and mother about the shoulder-yokes that the Swede Jan was going to make for them, both Mr. and Mrs. March laughed heartily. "Upon my word," said Mr. March, "you are going to look like little merchants in good earnest: aren't you?" "Don't you suppose they will hurt your shoulders?" asked Mrs. March. "Ulrica said they didn't," replied Nelly. "She said she had worn one a great deal. She puts a little cushion under the place where they come on your neck. She says we can carry twice as much on those as we can in our hands." It was arranged now that Rob and Nelly should, for the present, go up to Rosita twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays. Mr. March reckoned that they would be able to spare butter and eggs enough to bring them five or six dollars each week. The money from the trout they did not allow themselves to count on, because it would be uncertain; but Rob made most magnificent calculations from it. "Four dollars a week, at least," he said; "and that will be one way to pay off those old grasshoppers. I'll make a good many of them work for us: see if I don't!" The next time Rob and Nelly went to Rosita, when they bade their mother good-by, they said:-- "Be on the lookout for us, mamma, this afternoon. You'll see us coming down the road with our yokes on." So Mrs. March began to watch, about three o'clock; and, sure enough, about four, there she saw them coming down the lane which led from the main road to their house. They were coming very fast, at a sort of hop-skip-and-jump pace, but keeping step with each other exactly. A sort of slender pole seemed to be growing out of each shoulder; from this hung slender rods, and on the end of each rod was fastened a basket or a pail, Rob's yoke had two pails; Nelly's had two baskets. As the children ran, they took hold of the rods with their hands, just above the baskets and pails. This steadied them, and also seemed to be a sort of support in walking. As soon as the children saw their mother, they quickened their steps, and came into the yard breathless. "Oh, they are splendid!" "Why, they're just as light as any thing!" "They don't hurt your neck a bit!" "See the nice baskets Ulrica gave us! Jan made them himself out of willows," shouted they, both talking at once, and each out of breath. Then Nelly slipped off her yoke, and, before her mother knew what she was about, had tried to put it on her shoulders; but her mother was too tall: Nelly could not reach up. "Oh! do try it on, mamma," she said: "just to see how nice it is." Mrs. March tried; but the yoke had been carefully adjusted to Nelly's slender little figure, and Mrs. March could not put it on. "Well, if you only could, mamma, you'd see how easy it is," said Nelly, slipping it on her shoulders again, and racing down to the gate to meet her father, who was just coming in. Mr. March stopped short, and stared at Nelly for a minute. "Why, Nell," he said, "I did not know what you were. I thought you were some new kind of animal, with horns growing out lengthwise from your shoulders." "So we are! so we are!" shouted Rob, running up so fast that the pails on the rods of his yoke swung back and forth high up in the air. "We are the four-armed boy and girl of Rosita. They'll want us for a show. Four arms on a boy are as wonderful as two heads on a calf." How Mr. March did laugh! The children's fun was contagious. He seized Rob's yoke, and tried to put it on his own shoulders; but it was as much too small for him as Nelly's had been for her mother. Then he sat down on the fence, and examined the yokes carefully. They were beautifully made out of very slender young aspen-trees, which could be easily bent into place. The wood was almost white, and shone like satin: Jan had rubbed it so long. "He says when the white gets dirty he will paint them for us," said Nelly: "all bright colors, as they have them in Sweden. But while they keep clean they are prettier white." Ulrica had put a soft cushion of red cloth at the place where the yoke rested on the neck behind; also, on each rod just where the hands grasped them. Mrs. March examined them carefully. "This is beautiful cloth," she said: "I wonder where the woman got it." "Oh! she has a big roll of it in a chest," said Nelly. "I saw it; and a big piece of beautiful blue, too. It was made in Sweden, she says; and she has a queer gown, which was her little girl's that is dead, all made of this red and blue cloth, with--oh!--millions of little silver buttons sewed on it, all down the front. She wanted me to try it on; but I did not like to. It was too small, too: not too short; I think it would have come down to my feet. Do little girls in Sweden wear long gowns, like grown-up ladies, mamma?" "I don't know, dear," said Mrs. March. "She has some of the little girl's hair in the same chest; and she took it out and held it close to mine." "Yes," said Rob: "I didn't want her to. How did we know she was clean?" "Oh, for shame, Rob!" cried Nelly: "they're all as clean as pins; you know they are. But I didn't like her to do it, because it made her cry." After supper they had a great time deciding where to keep the yokes. Rob wanted them hung up on the wall. "They look just as pretty as the antlers old Mr. Pine has upon the wall in his house," said Rob; "and we can't ever have any antlers, unless we shoot a deer ourselves. Mr. Pine said a man offered him fifty dollars for them; but he wouldn't take it. I think our yokes look just about as pretty." "Oh, Rob!" exclaimed Nelly, "how can you talk so? They are not pretty a bit; and you know it!" "I don't either!" said Rob: "I do think they're pretty; honest, I do." While they spoke, Mrs. March was hanging one of the yokes on the wall, by a bit of bright red tape, tied in the middle. She hung it quite low, between the door and the south window. Then she hung Nelly's sun-bonnet on the nail above it, and Nelly's little red shawl over one end of the yoke. "There," she said, "you are right, Rob. It makes quite a pretty hat-rack." "So it does," said Mr. March. "Now we'll put the other one up the other side the door; and that shall be Rob's, to hang his coat and jacket on." "My jacket isn't pretty, though, like Nell's shawl," said Rob, wistfully. "Why don't men wear red jackets in this country? In that book of Jan's ever so many of the men have red jackets on, with silver buttons; and they're splendid. Jan has one too in the chest; but he doesn't wear it here, because it would make the folks laugh, he says: it is so different from other clothes here. He put it on for us while Ulrica was showing Nelly the little girl's gown. It did look queer; it came down most to his knees, and had great flaps on the side, and big silver buttons on the front, as big as dollars. But it was splendid: a great deal handsomer than the uniform the Mayfield guards wore." When Billy came home from Mr. Pike's, Lucinda told him about the yokes which Jan had made for the children to wear, to carry their baskets and pails on. Billy listened with a disturbed face. "Miss March'll never let 'em wear 'em: will she?" "I donno," said Lucinda: "Miss March's got heaps of sense; an' the children was jest tickled to death with them. They come racin' down the hill with 'em on, 's proud as militia-men on trainin'-day. But how 'twill be about wearin' 'em round town I donno." "It'll never do in the world," said Billy. "The boys 'll all follow 'em, and hoot and halloo; and Rob 'll be fightin' right an' left, the fust thing you know. It's a bad business, bad business. I donno what put it into that pesky Swede's head, anyhow." "Oh! jest to help the children," said Lucinda. "From what the children say, Jan an' his wife both seem to have kind o' adopted 'em. You know how she takes on over Nelly, 'cause she looks so like her own little gal." "I know it," said Billy. "Blamed if I don't wish I hadn't taken 'em there. You'll see they can't wear the things in Rosita." This time Billy was right. He had been mistaken in thinking that the miners would treat Nelly roughly; but he was right now about the boys. The next time Nelly and Rob went up to Rosita, they entered the town a little before nine o'clock: it was just the time when all the children were on their way to school. As soon as Rob and Nelly appeared with their little yokes on their shoulders, and a basket and pail swinging from each rod, the boys on the street set up a loud shout, and all rushed towards them. "Hullo, bub! what kind o' harness 've you got on?" "Did your pa cut down his ox-yoke to fit ye?" "Oh, my! look at the gal wearin' one too," they cried; and some of the rudest of the boys pressed up close, and tried to take off the covers of the baskets and pails. In less than a second, Rob had slipped his yoke off his shoulders, and thrown it on the ground, baskets and all; and sprung in front of Nelly, doubling up his fists, and pushing the boys back, crying:-- "You let us alone, now: you'd better!" "Hush! hush! Rob," said Nelly, who was quite white with terror. "Come right into this store: the gentleman that keeps the store won't let them touch us." And Nelly slipped into the store, and as quick as lightning took off her yoke and put it on the floor; and, saying to the astonished storekeeper, "Please let my things stay there a minute; the boys are tormenting my brother," she ran back into the centre of the crowd, snatched up both Rob's baskets of trout, and, pushing Rob before her, came back into the store. The crowd of boys followed on, and were coming up the store steps; but the storekeeper ordered them back. "Go away!" he said: "you ought to be ashamed of yourselves, tormenting these children so. I'd like to thrash every one of you! Go away!" The boys shrank away, ashamed; and the storekeeper went up to Nelly, who was sitting down on a nail-keg, trembling with excitement. "What is this thing, anyhow?" said he, taking up the yoke. "Oh, I see,--to carry your pails on." "Yes, sir," said Nelly; "and it's a great help. We have to walk so far the baskets feel real heavy before we get here. Jan, the Swede man, made them for us. It is too bad the boys won't let us wear them." "Are you Mr. March's little girl?" said the shopkeeper. "Yes," said Nelly; "and that's my brother," pointing to Rob, who was still standing on the steps, shaking his fists at the retreating boys and calling after them. "He'd better let 'em alone," said the shopkeeper. "The more notice ye take of 'em, the more they'll pester ye. But I reckon ye can't wear the yokes any more; I wouldn't if I was you. You tell your father that Mr. Martin told ye to leave 'em off. Ye can leave 'em here, if ye're a mind to. Some time when your father's a drivin' in he can stop and get 'em." "Yes," said Nelly: "I hadn't any thought of wearing them again. All I wanted was to get in here and be safe, so they shouldn't break my eggs: I've got four dozen eggs in one pail. I think it is real cruel in the boys to plague us so." And Nelly began to cry. "There, there, don't ye cry about it; 'tain't any use. Here's a stick of candy for ye," said the kind-hearted Mr. Martin. "The Rosita boys are a terrible rough set." "We might take care not to get into town till after they're in school," said Nelly, taking the candy and breaking it in two, and handing half of it to Rob. "Thank you for the candy, sir. I'm sorry I cried: I guess it was because I was so frightened. Oh! there's Ulrica now!" And she ran to the door, and called, "Ulrica! Ulrica!" Ulrica came running as fast as possible, soon as she heard Nelly's voice. She looked surprised enough when she saw the two yokes lying on the floor, and Nelly's face all wet with tears, and Rob's deep-red with anger. When Nelly told her what the matter was, she said some very loud words in Swedish, which I am much afraid were oaths. Then she turned to Mr. Martin, and said:-- "Now, is not that shame--that two children like this will not be to be let alone in these the streets? I carry the yokes myself. Come to mine house." So saying, Ulrica lifted both the yokes up on her strong shoulders, and, taking Nelly's biggest pail in one hand, strode away with long steps. "Come on mit me," she said; "come straight. I like to see the boy that shall dare you touch." And as she passed the boys, who had gathered sullenly in a little knot on the sidewalk, she shook her head at them, and began to say something to them in her broken English; but, finding the English come too slow, she broke into Swedish, and talked louder and faster. But the boys only laughed at her, and cried:-- "Go it, old Swedy!" "Oh, Ulrica, don't let's speak to them," whispered Nelly. "Be quiet, Rob!" And she dragged Rob along with a firm hand. "Now I goes mit you to the houses mineself," said Ulrica. "It shall be no more that the good-for-nothings have room that to you they one word speak." So Ulrica put on her best gown, and a clean white handkerchief over her head, and her Sunday shoes, which had soles almost two inches thick; then she took one of the baskets and one of the pails, and, giving the others to Nelly and Rob, she set off with them to walk up to Mrs. Clapp's, where the butter and trout were to be left. Mrs. Clapp was astonished to see Ulrica with the children. Ulrica tried to tell her the story of the yokes; but Mrs. Clapp could not understand Ulrica's English, and Nelly had to finish the story. "It was too bad," said Mrs. Clapp: "but my advice to you is, to give up the yokes. It would never be quite safe for you to wear them here: the boys in this town are a pretty lawless set." "Oh, no, ma'am!" replied Nelly, "I haven't the least idea of wearing them again. It would be very silly. But it is a dreadful pity: they did help so much, and Jan took so much trouble to make them for us." Rob hardly spoke. He was boiling over with rage and mortification. "I say, Nell," he began, as soon as they got outside Mrs. Clapp's gate: "you might have let me thrash that boy that spoke last, the one that called out at you. I'll die if I don't do something to him. And I'm going to wear my yoke: so there! They may's well get used to it. I'll never give up this way!" "You'll have to, Rob," answered Nelly. "I hate it as much as you do; but there's no use going against boys,--that is, such boys as these. The Mayfield boys 'd never do so. They'd run and stare, perhaps: I expected any boys would stare at our yokes; but they'd never hoot and halloo, and scare you so. We'll have to give the yokes up, Rob." "I won't," said Rob. "I'm going to wear mine home, and ask papa. I know he'll say not to give up." "No, he won't, Rob," persisted Nelly. "I shall tell him what the kind shopkeeper said, and Mrs. Clapp too. You might know better yourself than to go against them all. They know better than we do." "I don't care," said Rob. "It's none of their business. I shall wear my yoke if I've a mind to. At any rate, I'll wear it once more, just to show them." "Papa won't let you," said Nelly, quietly, with a tone so earnest and full of certainty that it made Rob afraid she might be right. When Mrs. March saw the children coming home without their yokes, she wondered what could have happened. But almost before she had opened her lips to ask, Rob and Nelly both began to tell the story of their adventures. "Gently! gently! one at a time," cried Mrs. March; but it was impossible for the children to obey her, they were both so excited. At last Mrs. March said:-- "Rob, let Nelly speak first: ladies before gentlemen, always." And the impatient Rob reluctantly kept silent while Nelly told the tale. Mrs. March's face grew sad as the story went on. It was a terrible thing to her to think of her little daughter attacked in the street in that way by rude boys. "Now, oughtn't I to have thrashed them, mamma?" cried Rob, encouraged by the indignation in his mother's face: "oughtn't I to? But Nell she just pulled me into the store by main force; and I felt so mean. I felt as if I looked just like Trotter when he puts his tail between his legs and runs away from a big dog. I don't care: I'll thrash that ugly black-eyed boy yet,--the one that spoke to Nelly; sha'n't I, mamma? Wouldn't you? I know you would! And mayn't I wear the yoke again, just to show them I ain't afraid?" "Keep cool, Rob," said Mrs. March; "keep cool!" "I can't keep cool, mamma," said Rob, almost crying; "and you couldn't, either,--you know you couldn't!" "Perhaps not, dear; but I'd try," replied his mother. "Nothing else does any good ever." "Well, mayn't I wear the yoke, anyhow?" said Rob. "I won't go into Rosita ever again unless I can!" "Rob," said his mother, earnestly, "if you were going across a field where there was a bull, you wouldn't wear a red cloak: would you? It would be very silly, wouldn't it?" "Yes," said Rob, slowly and very reluctantly. He saw what his mother meant. "That's just what I said," interrupted Nelly: "I said it would be very silly to wear them any more. The boys would never let us alone if we did." "Nelly is right," said Mrs. March: "it would be just as silly to carry a piece of red cloth and flourish it in the eyes of the bull, when you know that the sight of red cloth always makes bulls angry." "I don't care if it does make them all set on me," said Rob: "after I've thrashed them once, they'll let me alone. Anyhow, I won't go unless I can wear it; I know that much: I'd feel like a sneak." "Of course you'll do as you like about that, my dear boy," replied Mrs. March: "you never need go up to Rosita, if you would rather not. You know it was all your own plan, yours and Nelly's, going up there to sell things. Your papa and I would never have thought of it." "Well," said Rob, half crying, "but there's all the money I make: we'd lose all that, if I don't go. Nell couldn't carry the trout besides all the butter and eggs." "I know it," replied his mother; "but that isn't any reason for your doing what you feel would make you seem like a sneak. We wouldn't have you feel like that for any thing." Poor Rob was very unhappy. He didn't see any way out of his dilemma. He wished he hadn't said he would not go up into Rosita without his yoke. "Anyhow, I'll ask papa," he said. "Yes," replied his mother, "of course you will talk it all over with him; and perhaps you'll feel differently about it after that. Let it all go now, and try to forget it." "I'm not going to think any more about it," said Nelly. "I don't care for those boys: they're too rude for any thing. I sha'n't ever look at one of them; but you wouldn't catch me wearing that yoke again, I tell you!" "That's because you're a girl," said Rob. "If you were a boy, you'd feel just exactly as I do. Oh, goodness! don't I wish you had been a boy, Nell? If you had, we two together could thrash that whole crowd quicker'n wink!" "I shouldn't fight, if I were a boy," said Nelly: "I think it is beneath a boy to fight. It's just like dogs and cats: they fight with their teeth and claws; and boys fight with their fists." "Teeth, too," said Rob, grimly. "Do they?" cried Nelly, in a tone of horror. "Do they really? Oh, Rob! did you ever bite a boy?" "Not many times," said Rob; "but sometimes you have to." "Well, I'm glad I'm not a boy," said Nelly: "that's all I've got to say. The idea of biting!" To Mrs. March's great surprise, she found, when she talked the affair over with her husband, that he was inclined to sympathize with Rob's feeling. "I don't like to have the boy give it up," said Mr. March. "You don't know boys as well as I do, Sarah. They'll taunt him every time he goes through the street. I half wish Nelly hadn't hindered him from giving one of them a good, sound thrashing. He could do it." "Why, Robert!" exclaimed Mrs. March-"you don't mean to tell me that you would be willing to have your son engage in a street fight?" "Well, no," laughed Mr. March: "not exactly that; but there might be circumstances under which I should knock a man down: if he insulted you, for instance; and there might come times in a boy's life when I should think it praiseworthy in him to give another boy a thrashing, and I think this was one of them." "Well, for mercy's sake, don't tell Rob so," said Mrs. March: "he's hot-headed enough now; and, if he had a free permission beforehand from you to knock boys down, I don't know where he'd stop." While Mr. and Mrs. March were talking, Billy came in. He had heard the story of the morning's adventures from a teamster who had been on the street when it happened; and Billy had walked all the way in from Pine's ranch, to--as he said in his clumsy, affectionate way--"see ef I couldn't talk the youngsters out of their notion about them yokes." "'Tain't no use," he said: "an' ye won't find a man on the street but'll tell ye the same thing. 'Tain't no use flyin' in the face o' natur' with boys; and the Rosita boys, I will say for 'em, is the worst I ever did see. Their fathers is away from hum all the time, and wimmen hain't much hold on boys after they get to be long from twelve an' up'ards; an' the schools in Rosita ain't no great things, either. 'S soon's I heard about them yokes, I told Luce the children couldn't never wear 'em: the boys 'n the street'd plague their lives out on 'em. I don't know as I blame 'em so much, either,--though they might be decent enough to let a little gal alone; but them yokes is awful cur'us-lookin' things. I never see a man a haulin' water with 'em, without laughin': they make a man look like a doubled-up kind o' critter, with more arms 'n he's any right to. You can't deny yourself, sir, thet they're queer-lookin'. Why, I've seen horses scare at 'em lots o' times." Billy's conversation produced a strong impression on Mr. March's mind. Almost as reluctantly as Rob himself, he admitted that it was the part of wisdom to give up the yokes. "It's no giving up for Nelly," said Mrs. March: "she said herself that nothing would induce her to wear it in again." "And I think Rob would better not go in for a little while, till the boys have forgotten it," said Mrs. March. "And not at all, unless he himself proposes it," added Mr. March. "I have never wholly liked the plan, much as we have been helped by the money." "I've got an idee in my head," said Billy, "thet I think'll help 'em more 'n the yokes,--a sight more. I mean to make 'em a little light wagon. Don't tell 'em any thing about it, because it'll take me some little time yet. I've got to stay up to Pine's a week longer; an' I can't work on't there. But I'll have it ready in two weeks or three to the farthest." "Thank you, Billy," said Mr. March: "that is very kind of you. And a wagon will be much better than the yokes were: it will save them fatigue almost as much, and not attract any attention at all. You were very good to think of it." "Nothin' good about me," said Billy, gruffly: "never was. But I do think a heap o' your youngsters, specially Nelly, Mr. March. It seems to me the Lord don't often send just sech a gal's Nelly is." "I think so too, Billy," replied Mr. March. "I have never seen a child like Nelly. I'm afraid sometimes we shall spoil her." "No danger! no danger!" said Billy: "she ain't the kind that spoils." "Now, you be sure an' not let on about the wagon: won't you, sir," he added, looking back over his shoulder, as he walked away fast on his great long legs, which looked almost like stilts, they were so long. "Oh, yes! you may trust me, Billy," called Mr. March. "I won't tell. Good-by!" CHAPTER XI HOW TO FIND A SILVER MINE When Nelly set off on her next trip to Rosita, she felt a little sad and a little afraid. It had been decided that it would not be best for Rob to go at present, even if he had wished to; that it would be better to wait until the boys had forgotten the fight about the yokes before he was seen in town again. Rob walked with Nelly as far as Billy's cabin. Here they waited awhile for Nelly to rest, and to make sure that she did not get into town till nine o'clock, after the boys were all safe inside the school-house. In the bottom of her heart, Nelly was really afraid of seeing them again. She would not own, even to herself, that she felt fear; but she could not help wondering all the time what the boys would do,--if they would say any thing when they saw her walking along all alone, and without her yoke on her shoulders. Rob was to spend the day with Lucinda, and be ready to walk home with her in the afternoon. He too felt very uncomfortable about being left behind; and there were two sad little faces which looked wistfully into each other, as the good-bys were being said. "I'll come part way and meet you," said Rob. "It's too mean!" "No, don't!" said Nelly: "the sun will be so hot; and perhaps I sha'n't come till late. Good-by!" Nelly wore on her head a man's hat, with a brim so broad you could hardly see her face at all. She had had to wear this ever since the summer weather began: the sun is so hot in Colorado that no one can bear it on his head or face in the summer. On Nelly's arm swung her neat white sun-bonnet, tied by its strings, and pinned up in paper. When she reached the last hill before entering the town, she always took off her hat, and hid it in a hollow place she had found in the root of a great pine-tree; then she wore her sun-bonnet into town, and people sometimes said to her:-- "Why, Nelly, how do you keep your sun-bonnet so clean, after this long, dusty walk?" But Nelly never told her secret. She was afraid some boy might hear it, and go and find the hiding-place of her hat. There wasn't a boy to be seen when Nelly entered the town this morning. How relieved her heart was you can imagine. She just drew a long breath, and said to herself, "Oh! but I'm thankful. Poor Rob! he might as well have come as not." Then she ran on to Ulrica's house. Ulrica was very busy ironing some fine white clothes for a young lady who was visiting in Rosita: Ulrica was the only nice washerwoman in the town. Nelly stood by the ironing-board, watching Ulrica flute the pretty lace ruffles. Presently she sighed, and said:-- "Mamma has ever so many pretty things like these put away in a trunk. I used to wear such ruffles on my aprons and in my neck every day at home. But mamma does all our washing now, and it is too much trouble to iron them. So we don't wear them any more." "Ah, the dear child!" exclaimed Ulrica. "Bring to Ulrica: she will them do; it are not trouble; look how quick can fly the scissors." And in five minutes she had fluted the whole of one neck-ruffle. "Oh! would you really, Ulrica?" said Nelly. "We could pay you in eggs." "Pay! pay!" said Ulrica, angrily: "who did say to be paid? No pay! no pay! Ulrica will do for you: not'ing pay. You are mine child." "I'm afraid mamma would not like to have you do them without pay," said Nelly. "She would not think it was right to take your time." "It is not'ing; it is not time: bring them to Ulrica," was all Ulrica would say. And Nelly ran on, resolving to ask her mother, that very night, for some of the old ruffles she used to wear in the necks of her gowns. After she had left the butter and eggs for Mrs. Clapp, and had sold the rest of her eggs at another house near by, she walked slowly down the hill past the hotel. Just below the hotel was a little one-story wooden building, which had a sign up over the door-- "WILHELM KLEESMAN, "ASSAYER." While the Marches were staying at the hotel, Nelly had often seen old Mr. Kleesman sitting on the steps of his little house, and smoking a big brown pipe. The bowl of the pipe had carved on it a man's head, with a long, flowing beard. Mr. Kleesman himself had a long, flowing beard, as white as snow, and his face did not look unlike the face on the pipe; and the first time Rob saw him smoking, he had run to call Nelly, saying:-- "Come here, Nell! come quick! There's a man out there smoking, with his own portrait on his pipe." Mr. March had explained to Nelly and Rob that "Assayer" meant a man who could take a stone and find out whether there were really any silver and gold in it or not. This seemed very wonderful to the children; and, as they looked at the old gentleman sitting on his door-step every evening, smoking, they thought he looked like a magician, or like Aladdin who had the wonderful lamp. Rob said he meant to go and show him some of his stones, and see if there were not silver in some of them; but his father told him that it took a great deal of time and trouble to find out whether a stone had silver in it or not, and that everybody who had it done had to pay Mr. Kleesman three dollars for doing it. "Whew!" said Rob: "supposing there shouldn't be any silver at all in their stone, what then?" "They have to pay three dollars all the same," said his father; "and it is much cheaper to find out that way, than it is to go on digging and digging, and spending time and money getting stones out of the earth which are not good for any thing." After that, Rob and Nelly used to watch the faces of all the men they saw coming out of Mr. Kleesman's office, and try to guess whether their stones had turned out good or not. If the man looked sad and disappointed, Nelly would say:-- "Oh, see that poor man: his hasn't turned out good, I know." And, whenever some one came out with a quick step and a smiling face, Rob would say:-- "Look! look! Nell. That man's got silver. He's got it: I know he has." As Nelly walked by Mr. Kleesman's house this morning, she saw lying on the ground a queer little round cup. It was about half as big as a small, old-fashioned teacup; it was made of a rough sort of clay, like that which flower-pots are made of; the outside was white, and the inside was all smooth and shining, and of a most beautiful green color. "Oh, what a pretty little cup!" thought Nelly, picking it up, and looking at it closely. "I wonder how it came here! Somebody must have lost it; some little girl, I guess. How sorry she will be!" At that minute, old Mr. Kleesman came to his door. When he saw Nelly looking at the cup, he called out to her:-- "Vould you like more as dat? I haf plenty; dey iss goot for little girls." Mr. Kleesman was a German, and spoke very broken English. Nelly looked up at him, and said:-- "Thank you, sir. I should like some more very much. They are cunning little cups. I thought somebody had lost this one." Mr. Kleesman laughed, and stroked his long, white beard with his hand. "Ach! I throw dem away each day. Little girls come often to mine room for dem: I have vary goot customers in little girls. Come in! come in! you shall have so many that you want." And he led Nelly into a small back room, where, in a corner on the floor, was a great pile of these little cups: some broken ones; some, like the one Nelly had, green on the inside; some brown, some yellow, some dark-red. Nelly was delighted. She knelt down on the floor, and began to look over the pile. "May I really have all I want?" she said. "Are they not of any use?" "Only to little girls," said Mr. Kleesman: "sometimes to a boy; but not often a boy; mostly it is for little girls; they are my goot customers." Nelly picked out six. She did not like to take more, though she would have liked the whole pile. Mr. Kleesman stood watching her. "Vy not you take more as dem?" he said. "I am afraid there will not be enough for the other little girls," replied Nelly. Mr. Kleesman laughed and shook till his white beard went up and down. "Look you here," he said, and pointed behind the door. There was another pile, twice as big as the one which Nelly was examining. "Oh, my!" said Nelly: "what a lot! I'll take a few more, I guess." "I gif you myself. You haf too modest," said the old gentleman. And he picked up two big handfuls of the cups, and threw them into Nelly's basket. Then he sprang to a big brick stove which there was in the room, and opened its iron door and looked in. A fiery heat filled the room, as he opened the door. "Oh!" said Nelly, "I wondered what made it so hot in here. Why do you have a fire in such hot weather?" she said. "To make mine assays," replied Mr. Kleesman. "I haf made three to-day already. I shall make three more. I haf big fire all day. You can look in if you like. Do you like?" "Very much," said Nelly. Mr. Kleesman lifted her up on a block of wood, so that her face came directly opposite the door into the furnace. Then he gave her a piece of wood shaped like a shovel, with two round holes in it. He told her to hold this up in front of her face, so to keep off the heat, and then to look through the two holes into the furnace. Nelly did so; and, as soon as she looked into the fiery furnace, she gave a little scream. The fire was one mass of glowing red coals. In the centre, on a stand, stood three little cups, the same size as those she had. In these cups was something which was red hot, and bubbling in little bubbles. "Oh! what is it in the cups?" she cried. "Silver ore," replied Mr. Kleesman. "It have to be burnt and burnt wiz fire before I can tell if it are good. It are done now. I take out." Then with a long pair of tongs he took out one cup after another, and set them all on an iron block on the table. Nelly stood on tiptoe, and looked into the little cups. The fiery red color died away very quickly; and there, in the bottom of each cup, was a tiny, little round speck of silver. One was as big as the head of a common-sized pin, and one was a little smaller, and the third one was so small you could but just see it. In fact, if it had been loose on the floor or on a table, you would not have noticed it at all. "That is not good for any t'ing," said Mr. Kleesman, pointing to this small one. "I tell the man ven he bring his ore, I think it are no good." Nelly did not speak; but her face was so full of eager curiosity that Mr. Kleesman said:-- "Now I show you how I tell how much silver there will be in each ton of the ore." Then he went into the front room, and Nelly followed him. On a table in the window stood a long box; its sides and top were made of glass, set in narrow wooden frames. In this box was a beautiful little pair of brass scales; and in one of these scales was a tiny silver button. One side of this glass box drew up like a sliding door. Mr. Kleesman set his little cups down very carefully on the table; then he sat down in a chair opposite the glass box, and told Nelly to come and stand close to him. "Now I weigh," he said, and pulled up the sliding side of the glass box; then with a very fine pair of pincers he took up one of the little buttons which had come out of the furnace, and laid it in the empty scale. "See which are the heaviest," he said to Nelly. Nelly strained her eyes; but she could hardly see that one scale was heavier than the other. "They are alike," said Nelly. Mr. Kleesman laughed. "Ah, no! but they are not," he said. "Look! here it is written." And he pointed to a little needle which was fastened on the upright bar from which the scales swung. This needle was balanced so that the very smallest possible weight would make it move one way or the other, and point to figures printed on a scale behind it,--just as you have seen figures on the scales the cooks weigh sugar and butter on in the kitchen. Mr. Kleesman took off the glasses he was wearing, and put on another pair. "These are my best eyes," he said, "to read the small figures with." Then he peered a few minutes at the needle; then he shut down the glass slide, and watched it through the glass. "Even my breath would make that it did not swing true," he said. Presently he pushed up the slide, and took out the little button with his pincers, and put it up on a bar above the scales, where there were as many as a dozen more of the little buttons, all arranged in a row,--some larger, some smaller. Then he wrote a few words in a little book. "There," he said, "I haf good news for two men, and bad news for one man,--the man who haf the little button; his mine are not goot. The other two can make twelve dollars of silver from one ton of ore." By this time Nelly looked so hopelessly puzzled, that the old gentleman laughed, and said:-- "You haf not understand: is that so?" "Oh, no, sir!" said Nelly: "I have not understood at all. Could I understand?" "Ach, yes! it is so simple, so simple; the smallest child shall understand, if I show him. Stay you here till afternoon, and I show you from beginning," said Mr. Kleesman. "I make two more assays this afternoon." "Thank you, sir," replied Nelly: "I should like to stay very much; but my brother is waiting for me. I must hurry home. Some other day, if you will let me, I will come. May I bring my brother?" "Is he goot like you; not to touch, and not ask the questions that are foolish?" said Mr. Kleesman. Nelly colored. She was afraid Rob would not be able to keep as quiet as she had, or to refrain from touching things. Yet she wanted to have him see the curious sight. "I think he will not touch any thing if you ask him not to; and I will try to keep him very still," said Nelly. "Vary goot: he may come. Little one, it will be to me pleasure to show you all. You are like German child, not like American child," replied Mr. Kleesman, whose heart warmed towards Nelly more and more the longer he watched her quiet ways and her thoughtful face. Nelly was so full of thoughts about the fiery furnace, the wonderful little silver buttons in the glowing red cups, and the kind old man with the white beard, that, for the first time all summer, she forgot Ulrica, and set out for the valley on a shorter road, which did not pass Ulrica's house. Poor Ulrica stood in her door, watching for a long time, till she grew anxious; at last, she pinned her white handkerchief over her head, and walked up into the town to see what had become of the child. "If it is that she haf again to be frighted by the bad boys," said Ulrica, doubling up her fist, as she strode along, "I will make Jan that he go to the townmaster, and haf punish them all." No Nelly was to be found. Each person that Ulrica asked had seen Nelly early in the forenoon; but no one had seen her since. At last, a man who was driving a long string of pack-mules overheard Ulrica's questions, and stopped his mules to say:-- "Is it that little brown-eyed gal o' March's, down in the valley, you're asking after?" "Yes, yes, it are she!" exclaimed Ulrica: "haf you saw?" "Yes," said the man: "I met her two hours ago well down the valley road, most to Cobb's cabin,--she an' her brother." "Ach!" said Ulrica, and turned away without another word. Nor did she speak to a soul all the way home. She was hurt and offended. "It are first time," she said; "but it will not be last time. She haf found more as Ulrica," and poor Ulrica brooded over the thing till she made herself very unhappy. She would have been quite comforted if she had known that Nelly was feeling almost as badly about it as she did. Nelly did not remember, till she was half way to Lucinda's cabin, that she had not stopped to say good-by to Ulrica. As soon as she thought of it, she stood still, in the middle of the road, and said, "Oh, dear!" out loud. At first, she had half a mind to go back; but she knew that would be silly. So she trudged along, trying to hope that Ulrica would not have been watching for her. As soon as she saw Rob, she exclaimed:-- "Oh, Rob! I forgot to come by way of Ulrica's, as we always do. I'm afraid she is watching for me. If it hadn't been so far, I'd have gone back." Rob looked astonished. "Why, what in the world made you forget it?" he asked. "You don't like goat's milk as well as I do, or you wouldn't ever forget to go to Ulrica's!" "Well, you'd have forgotten it yourself, this time," said Nelly, "I know, if you'd seen what I have." Then she showed him the cups, and told him all about the good time she had had in Mr. Kleesman's rooms. "What! that jolly old fellow with the pipe that looked like Santa Claus?" cried Rob. "Oh, Nell! don't you believe papa'll let me go with you, next time?" "I guess so," said Nelly. "I didn't see a boy to-day, not one, when I first went in; and at noon they didn't take any notice of me. Mrs. Clapp says they forget every thing very soon." "Well, they don't!" said Rob, firing up at this statement about boys; "and Mrs. Clapp needn't think so. I guess I know. You'll see they'll pitch into us again yet,--at least, into me. I dare say they won't bother you. But I'm going in, anyhow. It's too mean." "I'll ask papa to let you," said Nelly. "We might go in just in time to get in about nine, and we could stay at Mr. Kleesman's at twelve o'clock; and then we needn't see them at all. Say, Rob, do you suppose Ulrica'll care much because I didn't stop?" "Why, no!" said Rob: "why should she? You saw her in the morning?" "Yes," said Nelly: "but we always did stop, you know; and she was always standing in the door watching for us, don't you know? I'm awful sorry!" "Oh, pshaw!" said Rob: "you're always thinking of things, Nell." It seemed very long to Rob and Nelly before the day came round to go up to Rosita again. It was only two days; but it seemed as much as a week to them both. That is one of the queerest things in this life, I think, that time can seem both so much longer and so much shorter than it really is. Haven't you known Saturday afternoons that didn't seem one bit more than a minute long? I have; and I remember just as well all about them, as if it were only this very last Saturday. At last the day came. It was Friday, and a lovely, bright day. Mr. March had said that Rob might go too; and both the children were awake long before light, in their impatience to be off. "It would do just as well if we got up there early enough to be all through with selling things, and get in to Mr. Kleesman's before nine o'clock: wouldn't it, Nell?" said Rob. "Why, yes," said Nelly, "of course it would. That's splendid. Let's get right up now. It's beginning to be light." When Mrs. March heard their feet pattering about, she called from her room:-- "What in the world are you about, children?" "Getting up, mamma," answered Nelly. "We're going up to town real early, so as to get out of the way of the boys, and have a good long time at Mr. Kleesman's. It takes about three hours to do what he does to the ore. Can't we go?" "I have no objection," replied Mrs. March; "but you must have some breakfast. I will get right up." "Oh, no! no! please, dear mamma, don't!" cried Nelly. "It's only four o'clock by the clock downstairs: I've just been down. We can get plenty to eat without you. There is beautiful cream in the pantry; and a whole lot of cold potatoes." Mrs. March laughed, and said:-- "I don't think cold potatoes are a very good breakfast." "Why, mamma! mamma!" cried Rob, "cold potatoes are splendid. I like them best cold, with lots of salt. Please don't you get up." Mrs. March was very sleepy; so she turned over in bed, and went sound to sleep. When Nelly was dressed, she peeped cautiously in at the door of her mother's room, which stood open. "They're both sound asleep, Rob," she whispered: "let's take off our shoes." "What fun!" whispered Rob; and the two children stole downstairs in their stocking-feet, like two little thieves; then they drank a good tumbler of cream, and ate the cold potatoes with salt, and some nice brown bread, and butter. "I don't think a king need have a better breakfast than this," said Rob. "I do!" said Nelly. "If I were a queen, I'd have a better one." "What would you have, Nelly?" said Rob, earnestly. "Cold roast turkey," said Nelly, "and bread and honey." "Pooh!" said Rob, "I hate honey. It has such a twang to it. I'd have melted maple sugar always on my bread, if I were a king. I'd have maple sugar packed up in little houses, as they pack the ice in ice-houses, and just cut out great square junks, to melt up." As the children went out of the house, the sky in the east was just beginning to be bright red. The sun was not up; but it was very light, and Pike's Peak shone against the red sky like a great mountain of alabaster. The peaks of the mountains in the west were rosy red; all their tops were covered with snow, and in the red light they looked like jewels. "Oh, Rob, look! look!" cried Nelly: "isn't it perfectly lovely! Let's always come early like this." Rob looked at the mountains and the sky. "Yes, 'twould be pretty if 'twould stay so," he said; "but 'twon't last a minute." Even while he spoke, the red color faded; the mountains began to look blue; and, in a minute more, up came the sun over the Rosita hills, and flooded the whole valley with a yellow light. All along the sides of the road were beautiful flowers,--blue, pink, white, yellow, and red. It had rained in the night; and every flower was shining with rain-drops, and as bright as if it had just been painted. "Oh, Rob," said Nelly, "I'll tell you what we'll do: we'll pick a perfectly splendid bouquet for Ulrica. I know she'd like it. That'll show her I'm sorry I didn't stop. You pick white and blue, and I'll pick red and yellow; and then we'll put them all together. Have you got any string?" Rob had a big piece. So they picked a big bunch of flowers; and then they sat down on a log, and Nelly arranged them in a beautiful pyramid: the white ones in the middle, then the blue, then the yellow, and then the red. Last, she put a border of the fine, green young shoots of the fir around it, and it was really superb. Then with some stout twine she swung it on her neck, so that it hung down on her shoulders behind. "There!" she said; "I don't feel the weight of it a bit, and that'll keep it out of the sun too." When they reached Ulrica's house, not a window was open. Jan and Ulrica were still asleep. There had been a dance in Rosita the night before; and they had danced nearly all night, and were not likely to wake up very early after such a night as that. "Nell, hang it on the door," said Rob, "so they'll find it when they first open the door." "Somebody might steal it," replied Nelly. "Pshaw!" said Rob: "who'd want it?" "I'm sure anybody would," retorted Nelly: "it's perfectly splendid." "You just tie it on," said Rob: "nobody'll touch it." Nelly had run around to the back side of the house. A small window, which opened from a sort of closet where Ulrica kept milk, was open a little. Nelly squeezed the bouquet in, and ran back to Rob. "I've thrown it in at the closet window," she said. "What do you suppose she'll think when she sees it? She'll think fairies brought it. Ulrica believes in fairies: she told me so." "She don't, though: does she?" exclaimed Rob. "What a goose!" "I think it would be nice to believe in them," replied Nelly. "I do, just a little, wee wee bit. I don't mean really believe, you know; but just a little bit. I guess there used to be fairies, ever so many, many years ago; oh! longer ago than our great, great, great grandmother: don't you?" "No!" said Rob, very contemptuously: "there never could have been any such thing, not since the world began. It's just made-up stories for girls." "Oh, Rob!" cried Nelly: "you used to like to hear the story about the singing tree, the talking bird, and the laughing water; don't you know?" "That ain't a fairy story," said Rob: "it's a--a--I forget what mamma called it. Don't you recollect how she explained it all to us?--how it was all true?" "Oh! you mean a parable," said Nelly. "That's what mamma said,--that it meant that we should all find singing trees and talking birds and laughing water, if we loved them enough. But it's a fairy story too, besides all that." The children had a droll time going to people's houses so early. Nobody was up. At Mrs. Clapp's, they had to pound and pound before they could wake anybody. Then Mr. Clapp put his head out of a window to see what had happened. "Goodness!" he said: "here are the children with the butter. How did they ever get up here so early?" And he ran down to open the door. "Ask them to stay to breakfast," said Mrs. Clapp. "The poor little things must be faint." Nelly and Rob thanked Mr. Clapp, but said they could not stop. "We had a splendid breakfast at home," said Rob, triumphantly. When Mr. Clapp went back to his room, he said to his wife:-- "Poor little things, indeed! You wouldn't have called them so, if you'd seen them. Their eyes shone like diamonds, and their cheeks were just like roses; and they looked as full of frolic as kittens. I declare I do envy March those children. That Nelly's going to make a most beautiful woman." Rob and Nelly reached Mr. Kleesman's door at eight o'clock. His curtains were down; no sign of life about the place. "I say, Nell, aren't the Rosita people lazy!" exclaimed Rob. "What'll we do now?" "Sit down here on the step and wait," said Nelly. "He always comes out here, the first thing, and looks off down into the valley, and at the mountains. I used to see him when we were at the hotel." How long it seemed before they heard steps inside the house; and then how much longer still before the door opened! When Mr. Kleesman saw the little figures sitting on his door-step he started. "Ach, my soul!" he exclaimed: "it is the little one. Good morning! good morning!" And he stooped over and kissed Nelly's forehead. "This is my brother, sir," said Nelly. "We are all done our work, and have come to see you make the assay. You said you would show us." "Ach! ach!" cried the old gentleman; and he looked very sorry. "It is one tousand of pities: it cannot be that I show you to-day. My chimney he did do smoke; and a man will come now this hour to take out my furnace the flue. It must be made new. Not for some day I make the assay more." Nelly and Rob looked straight in his face without speaking: they were too disappointed to say one word. Kind old Mr. Kleesman was very sorry for them. "You shall again come: I will show the very first day," he said. "Thank you, sir," said Nelly. "We always come into town Tuesdays and Fridays. We can come to your house any time." And she took hold of Rob's hand, and began to go down the steps. "Vait! vait!" exclaimed Mr. Kleesman: "come in, and I show you some picture. You will not have seen picture of Malacca. I did live many years in Malacca." Rob bounded at these words. His whole face lighted up. "Oh, thank you! thank you!" he said: "that is what I like best in all the world." "Vat is dat you like best in all the world: Malacca?" said the old gentleman. "And vy like you Malacca?" Rob looked confused. Nelly came to his rescue. "He doesn't mean that he likes Malacca, sir," she said: "only that he likes to hear about strange countries,--any countries." "Ach!" said Mr. Kleesman: "I see. He vill be one explorer." "Indeed I will that!" said Rob. "Just as soon as I'm a man I'm going all round this world." Mr. Kleesman had lived ten years in Malacca. He had been in charge of tin mines there. He was an artist too, this queer old gentleman; and he had painted a great many small pictures of things and places he saw there. These he kept in an old leather portfolio, on a shelf above his bed. This portfolio he now took down, and spread the pictures out on the bed, for Rob and Nelly to look at. There was a picture of the house he lived in while he was in Malacca. It was built of bamboo sticks and rattan, and looked like a little toy house. There was a picture of one of the queer boats a great many of the Malay people live in. Think of that: live in a boat all the time, and never have a house on land at all. These boats are about twenty feet long, and quite narrow; at one end they have a fireplace, and at the other end their bedroom. The bedroom is nothing but a mat spread over four poles; and under this mat the whole family sits by day and sleeps by night. They move about from river to river, and live on fish, and on wild roots which they dig on the banks of the rivers. "My servant lif in that boat," said Mr. Kleesman. "He take wife, and go lif in a boat. His name Jinghi. I write it for you in Malay." Then Mr. Kleesman wrote on a piece of paper some queer characters, which Nelly said looked just like the letters on tea-chests. "Could you write my name in Malay?" asked Nelly, timidly. "Yes, yes," said Mr. Kleesman: "I write." And he handed Nelly a card with the following marks on it:-- [Illustration] "Dear me!" said Nelly: "is that all it takes to write 'Nelly'? It is a quicker language than ours: isn't it? May I have the paper?" "I write you better," said Mr. Kleesman; and wrote it over again on a card, which Nelly wrapped up carefully and put in her pocket. Rob wanted to ask for his name too, but he did not dare to; and Mr. Kleesman did not think of it. He meant to be kind to Rob; but he was thinking most of the time about Nelly. Nelly seemed to him, as he said, like a little girl of Germany, and not of America; and he loved to look at her, and to hear her talk. There were dozens of pictures in the portfolio; more than I could tell you about: pictures of streets in Malacca; pictures of the people in their gay-colored clothes,--they looked like negroes, only not quite so black; pictures of palm-trees, with cocoanuts growing on them; pictures of pineapples growing; and pictures of snakes, especially one of a deadly snake,--the cobra. "Him I kill in my own house, close by my veranda," said Mr. Kleesman: "and I draw him with all his colors, while he lie dead, before he are cold." While they were talking, there came in a man in rough clothes, a miner, carrying a small bag of stout canvas. He opened it, and took out a handful of stones, of a very dark color, almost black. "Would you dig where you found that?" he said, holding out the stones to Mr. Kleesman. Mr. Kleesman took them in his hand, looked at them attentively, and said:-- "Yes, that is goot mineral. There might be mine vere dat mineral is on top. We haf proverb in our country, 'No mine is not wort not'ing unless he haf black hat on his head.'" The man put his stones back in his bag, nodded his head, and went out, saying:-- "I reckon we'll buy that claim. I'll let you know." A small piece of the stone had fallen on the floor. Nelly eyed it like a hawk. She was trying to remember where she had seen stones just like it. She knew she had seen them somewhere; she recollected thinking at the time how very black the stones were. She picked up the little piece of stone, and asked Mr. Kleesman if it were good for any thing. "Oh, no, for not'ing," he said, and turned back to the pictures. Nelly's interest in the pictures had grown suddenly very small. The little black stone had set her to thinking. She put it in her pocket, and told Rob it was time to go home. "Ven vill you again come?" said Mr. Kleesman. "Next Tuesday," replied Nelly. "That is our day." "Perhaps it vill be done den; perhaps not: cannot tell. But ven it is done, I show you all how I make mine assay," said Mr. Kleesman, and kissed Nelly again as he bade them good-by. "Now we'll go down to Ulrica's," said Nelly, "and eat our lunch on her porch. I wonder what she thought when she saw the flowers." When the children reached Ulrica's house, they found the door open, and Ulrica sitting on the door-step, picking the feathers off a white hen. As soon as she saw Nelly, she jumped up and dropped the hen. The feathers flew in all directions; but Ulrica did not mind: she darted up to Nelly, and threw her arms round her neck, and spoke so fast,--half in Swedish, half in broken English,--that Nelly could not understand what she said. However, she knew she was thanking her for the flowers; and so she replied:-- "I am glad you like them, Ulrica. But are you not ashamed to be asleep at six o'clock? And Rob and I had walked all the way from the valley, and you were asleep! and Jan too!" Then Ulrica told them about the dance; and how they had been up so late it had made them sleepy. And then she whisked up the white hen again, and began tearing off its feathers in the greatest hurry. "Vat is it you came so soon?" she said. "You must to dinner stay. I kill dis for you,--for your dinner, I not tink you come till sun high." "Oh, stay! stay, Nell, let's stay!" cried Rob, who had tasted Ulrica's stewed chicken once before, and had never forgotten how good it was. Ulrica always boiled her chickens with a few cranberries, as they cook it in Sweden. You would not think it would be good: but it is delicious. Nelly thought a minute. "It will not make us any later than if we stayed at Mr. Kleesman's," she said. "Yes, I think we will stay." Ulrica clapped her hands when Nelly said this. "Goot! goot!" she said, "mine child." And she looked at Nelly with tears in her eyes, as she so often did. Then she gave Rob the book of Swedish pictures to look at, and he threw himself at full length on the floor with it. You could have eaten off the boards of Ulrica's house, she kept them so clean. Nelly sat in the wooden rocking-chair, and watched Ulrica getting the dinner. Pretty soon Nellie began to nod; and in a few minutes she was fast asleep. Ulrica took her up in her great, strong arms, as easily as if she were a baby, and carried her across the room and laid her on the bed. "Hullo!" said Rob, when he looked up from his book and saw Ulrica carrying Nelly: "what's the matter with Nell?" "Sh! sh! make not noise," whispered Ulrica. "She haf sleep. She haf tire in the sun." "We got up before four o'clock," whispered Rob: "but I ain't sleepy a mite." "Dat iss, that you are man and not girl," said Ulrica; which pleased Rob immensely. After Ulrica had laid Nelly on the bed, she went to the big chest in the corner, and took out a fine red woollen blanket, with bright blue figures in the corners. This she spread over Nelly; and then she stood looking at her for some minutes. Nelly's face, when she was asleep, looked much older than it really was. Her eyes were large, and her mouth was large, and her cheek-bones were high. "Mine child! mine child!" muttered Ulrica, under her breath, and brushed the tears out of her eyes with the back of her hard hand, as she went back to her work. When Nelly waked up, dinner was all ready; and Jan and Ulrica were discussing whether they should wake Nelly or not. "Oh!" exclaimed Nelly, sitting up and rubbing her eyes, "how came I here? Where's Rob?" Ulrica sprang to her, and took her little hand in hers. "Mine child, you haf sleep in chair. I bring you in mine arms here. Haf you rest? Come eat." And she picked her up again, and ran laughing back and forth two or three times across the room with her in her arms. "She is like baby in arms: she is so light," said Ulrica to Jan in Swedish. "She has too much work." "No, no," said Jan: "she is all right. She is at the age to be thin." But Ulrica shook her head. How good that dinner was, and how nice it looked! There was no cloth on the table; but the wood was white as pine wood could be. On one end stood Nelly's pyramid of bright flowers; and, on the other, the great platter of stewed chicken, with the red cranberries floating in the white gravy. Then there was a big plate of rye cakes, baked in the ashes; and two pitchers of milk, one of cow's and one of goat's. Jan always bowed his head down and said a short blessing in Swedish, before they began to eat; and Nelly and Rob liked this, because, as Nelly said:-- "It makes you feel as if Jan were just as good as papa: doesn't it, Rob?" And Rob said, "Yes;" but in a minute afterward he added: "Don't you suppose any bad men say grace, Nell?" "No," said Nelly; "not real grace, real earnest, like papa and Jan. Perhaps they make believe say grace." After dinner, Nelly showed Ulrica and Jan her little card on which Mr. Kleesman had written her name in Malay. As she took it out of her pocket, the black stone fell out and rolled away on the floor. She sprang to catch it. "What's that?" said Rob. "A piece of black stone," replied Nell. "What's it for?" said Rob. "Oh, I just wanted it," said Nelly. "But what did you want it for, Nell?" persisted Rob. CHAPTER XII NELLY'S SILVER MINE Nelly would not give any reason, but put the stone carefully back in her pocket. She was determined not to tell Rob any thing about it, unless she found the stones; and the more she racked her brains the more confused she became as to where it was she had seen them. All the way home she was in a brown study, trying to think where it could have been. She was in such a brown study that she was walking straight past Lucinda's door without seeing her, when Lucinda called her name aloud. "Why, Nelly," she said, "ain't you going to stop long enough to speak?" "She hasn't spoken a word all the way," said Rob, discontentedly. "I can't get any thing out of her. She's real cross." "Oh, Rob! Rob! how can you!" cried Nelly: "I wasn't cross a bit." "Then you're sulky," retorted Rob; "and mamma says that's worse." "Tut, tut," said Lucinda: "Nelly doesn't look either sulky or cross. I guess you're mistaken, Rob." Nelly felt a little conscience-stricken. She knew she had been thinking hard, all the last hour, about the black stones. "Never mind, Rob!" she said: "I'll talk now." And she began to tell Lucinda all about the pictures they had seen at Mr. Kleesman's. "Oh, yes!" said Lucinda: "I know all about those. My little sister's got one of them: Mr. Kleesman gave it to her. He's real fond of little girls. It's a picture he made of the black nurse he had for his little boy. She's got the baby in her arms." "Why, has Mr. Kleesman got any children?" exclaimed Nelly, very much surprised. "Oh, yes!" said Lucinda: "he's got a wife and two children over in Germany. That's what makes him so blue sometimes. His wife hates America, and won't come here." "Then I should think he'd stay there," said Nelly. "So should I," said Lucinda; "but they say it's awful hard to make a living over there; and he's a layin' up money here. He'll go back one of these days." "Oh! I wish he'd take me with him," said Rob. "Rob March! would you go away and leave papa and mamma and me?" said Nelly. Rob hung his head. The longing of a born traveller was in his eyes. "I should come back, Nell," he said. "I shouldn't stay: only just to see the places." "Well," said Nelly, slowly, "I wouldn't go away from all of you, not to see the most beautiful things in all the world; not even to see the city of Constantinople." Rob did not answer. He was afraid that there must be something wrong about him, to be so willing to do what seemed to Nelly such a dreadful thing. To see Constantinople, and hear the muezzins call out the hours for prayers from the mosques, Rob would have set off that very minute and walked all the way. After Nelly went to bed that night, she lay awake a long time, still thinking about the black stones. She had put the little piece of stone on the bureau, and while she was undressing she hardly took her eyes off it. She recollected just how the place looked where she saw them. It was in a ravine: there were piles of stones in the bottom of the ravine, and a good many scattered all along the sides. There were pine trees and bushes too: it was quite a shady place. "I should know it in a minute, if I saw it again," said Nelly to herself; "but where, oh! where was it!" At last, all in one second, it flashed into her mind. It was one day when she had started for Rosita later than usual, and had thought she would take a short cut across the hills; but she had found it any thing but a short cut. As soon as she had climbed one hill she found another rising directly before her, and, between the two, a great ravine, down to the very bottom of which she must go before she could climb the other hill. She had crossed several of these ravines,--she did not remember how many,--and had come out at last on the top of the highest of all the hills above the town: a hill so steep that she had always wondered how the cows could keep on their feet when they were grazing high up on it. It was in one of these ravines that she had seen the black stones; but in which one she could not be sure. Neither could she recollect exactly where she had left the road and struck out to cross the hills. "I might walk and walk all day," thought Nelly, "and never find it. How shall I ever manage?" Fortune favored Nelly. The very next day, Billy came to the house to ask if Mrs. March could spare Nelly to go and stay two days with Lucinda, while he was away. He had an excellent chance to make some money by taking a party of gentlemen across the valley and up into one of the passes in the range, where they were going to fish. He would be at home the second night: Nelly need stay only over one night. Lucinda was not well, and Billy did not like to leave her alone. Mrs. March said, "Certainly: Nelly could go." As soon as she told Nelly of the plan, Nelly's heart seemed to leap in her bosom with the thought:-- "Now that's just the chance for me to look for the stones." She set off very early, and reached Lucinda's house before eight o'clock. After she had unpacked her bag, and arranged all her things in the little room where she was to sleep, she asked Lucinda if there were any thing she could do to help her. Lucinda was quilting a big bedquilt, which was stretched out on chairs and long wooden bars, and took up so much of the room in the kitchen it was hard to get about. "Mercy, no, child!" said Lucinda. "I hain't got nothin' to do but this quilt, an' I expect you ain't much of a hand at quiltin'. 'Twan't my notion to have ye come,--not but what I'm always glad to see ye; ye know that,--but I wan't afraid to be alone. But Billy he's took it into his head 'tain't safe for me to be alone here nights. Now if there's any thing ye want to do, ye jest go 'n' do it." "Would it make any difference to you if I were gone all day, so I am here to sleep?" said Nelly. "Why, no," replied Lucinda; "not a bit. Did ye want to go into the town?" "No," said Nelly; "but I wanted to find a place I saw once, on the way there. It was a real deep place, almost sunk down in the ground, full of pines and bushes: a real pretty place. But it wasn't on the road. I don't know 's I can find it; but I'd like to." "All right," said Lucinda: "you go off. I'll give ye some lunch in case ye get hungry. Ye won't be lonesome, will ye, without Rob?" "Oh, no!" said Nelly: "I like to be all alone out doors." Then she bade Lucinda good-by, and set off. For a half mile or so, she walked in the road toward Rosita. She recollected that she had passed Lucinda's before she turned off from the road. But the more she tried to remember the precise spot where she had turned off the more confused she became. At last she sprang out of the road, on the left hand side, and began running as fast as she could. "I may as well strike off in one place as another," she thought, "since I can't remember. It cannot be very far from here." She climbed one steep hill, and ran down into the ravine beyond it; then another hill, and another ravine,--no black stones. The sun was by this time high, and very hot. Nelly had done some severe climbing. "On the top of the next hill I'll eat my lunch," she thought. The next hill was the steepest one yet. How Nelly did puff and pant before she reached the top; and when she reached it, there was not a single tree big enough to shade her! "Oh, dear!" said Nelly; and looked up and down the ravine, to see if she could spy any shade anywhere. A long way off to the north, she saw a little clump of pines and oaks. She walked slowly in that direction, keeping her foothold with difficulty in the rolling gravel on the steep side of the hill. Just as she reached the first oak-bush, her foot slipped, and she clutched hard at the bush to save herself: the bush gave way, and she rolled down, bush and all, to the very bottom of the ravine. Luckily, it was soft, sandy gravel all the way, and she was not in the least hurt: only very dirty and a good deal frightened. "I'll walk along now at the bottom, where it is level," said Nelly, "and not climb up till I come to where the trees are." There had been at some time or other a little stream in this ravine, and it was in the stony bed of it that Nelly was walking. She looked very carefully at the stones. They were all light gray or reddish colored: not a black one among them. She had in her pocket the little piece Mr. Kleesman had given her: she took it out, and looked at it again. It was totally unlike all the stones she saw about her. "Oh, dear!" sighed Nelly: "I expect I won't find it to-day. I'll come again to-morrow. At any rate, I'll go to that nice, shady place to eat my lunch." It was further than she thought. In Colorado, every thing looks a great deal nearer to you than it really is: the air is so thin and light that mountains twenty miles away look as if they were not more than three or four; and there are a great many funny stories of the mistakes into which travellers are led by this peculiarity of the air. They set off before breakfast, perhaps, to walk to a hill which looks only a little way off; and, after they have walked an hour or two, there stands the hill, still seeming just as far off as ever. One of the funniest stories is of a man who had been cheated in this way so often that at last he didn't believe his eyes any longer as to whether a distance were long or short; and one day he was found taking off his shoes and stockings to wade through a little ditch that anybody could easily step over. "Why, man alive!" said the people who stood by, "what are you about? You don't need to wade a little ditch like that! Step across it." "Ha!" said he, "you needn't try to fool me any more. I expect that ditch is ten feet wide." Nelly walked on and on in the narrow stony bed of the dried-up stream. The stones hurt her feet, but it was easier walking than on the rolling gravel of the steep sides above. She stopped thinking about the black stones. She was so hot and tired and hungry, all she thought of was getting to the trees to sit down. At last she reached the place just below them. They were much higher up on the hillside than she had supposed. She stood looking up at them. "I expect I'll tumble before I get up there," she thought. It looked about as steep as the side of the roof to a house. But the shade was so cool and inviting that Nelly thought it worth trying for. Half-way up her feet slipped, and down she came on her knees. She scrambled up; and, as she looked down, what should she see, in the place where her knees pressed into the gravel, but a bit of the black stone! At first she thought it was the very piece she had had in her pocket; but she felt in her pocket, and there was her own piece all safe. She took it out, held the two together, looked at them, turned them over and over: yes! the stones were really, exactly the same color! Now she was so excited that she forgot all about the heat, and all about her hunger. "This must be the very ravine!" she said, and began to look eagerly about her for more of the stones. Not another bit could she find! In her eager search, she did not observe that she was slowly working down the hill, till suddenly she found herself again at the bottom of the ravine, in the dried bed of the brook. Then she stood still, and looked around her, considering what to do. At last she decided to walk on up the ravine. "The big pile of them was right in such a deep place as this," thought Nelly: "I guess it's farther up." It was very hard walking, and Nelly was beginning to grow tired and discouraged again, when lo! right at her feet, in among the gray stones and the red ones, lay a small black one. She picked it up: it was of the same kind. A few steps farther on, another, and another: she began to stoop fast, picking them up, one by one. She had one hand full: then she looked ahead, and, only a little farther on, there she saw the very place she recollected so well,--the ravine full of bushes, and low pine trees, and piles of stones among them. She had found it! Can you imagine how Nelly felt? You see she believed that it was just the same thing as if she had found a great sum of money. How would you feel if you should suddenly find at your feet thousands and thousands of dollars, if your father and mother were very poor, and needed money very much? I think you would feel just as Nelly did. She sat straight down on the ground, and looked at the stones, and felt as if she should cry,--she was so glad! Then the thought came into her mind:-- "Perhaps this land belongs to somebody who won't sell it. Perhaps he knows there is a mine here!" She looked all about, but she could not see any stakes set up to show that it was owned by any one: so she hoped it was not. [Illustration: _There she saw the very place she recollected so well._ _Page 257._] Now that the excitement of the search was over, she began to feel very hungry again, and ate her lunch with a great relish. The thoughtful Lucinda had put in the basket a small bottle of milk. Nelly thought she had never tasted any thing so good in her life as that milk. When you are very thirsty, milk tastes much better than water. After Nelly had eaten her lunch, she filled her basket with the black stones, and set off for home. Presently she began to wonder if she could find her way back again to the spot. "That would be too dreadful," thought she: "to lose it, now I've just found it." Then she recollected how, in the story of Hop o' My Thumb, it said that when he was carried off into the forest he slyly dropped beans all along the way, to mark the path, and thus found his way back, very easily by means of them. So she resolved to walk along in the bed of the stream, till it was time to climb up and strike off toward Lucinda's, and then to drop red stones all along the way she went, till she reached the beaten road. She took up the skirt of her gown in front, and filled it full with little red stones. Then she trudged along with as light a heart as ever any little girl had, scattering the stones along the way, like a farmer planting corn. When she reached the road, she was surprised to see that she had come out the other side of Lucinda's house, full quarter of a mile nearer home. "Now this isn't anywhere near where I left the road before," she said. "How'll I ever tell the place?" At first she thought she would put a bush up in the crotch of a little pine-tree that stood just there. "No, that won't do," she said: "the wind might blow it out." Then she thought she would stick the bush in the sand; but she feared some horse or cow might munch it and pull it up. At last she decided to break down a small bough of the pine-tree, and leave it hanging. "We can't make a mistake, then, possibly," she thought. When she reached the house, Lucinda had cleared the bedquilt all away, and had the table set for supper, though it was only half-past four o'clock. Nelly was not hungry. It seemed to her only a few minutes since she ate her lunch. "Did you find the place, Nelly?" said Lucinda. "Yes," said Nelly. "Was it as pretty as it was before?" Lucinda asked. "Oh, yes!" said Nelly; "but it was awful steep getting down to it. I kept tumbling down." "Well, you're the curiousest child ever was!" exclaimed Lucinda. "Anybody'd think you got walkin' enough in a week without trampin' off this way." Nelly did not reply. She felt a little guilty at letting Lucinda think it was only to find a pretty place she had gone; but she was sure it would not be best to tell anybody about the black stones till she had told her father. She had hid them all in a pile near the pine-tree whose branch she had broken down; and she meant to pick them up on her way home the next night. In the morning it looked to Nelly as if it never would be night, she was in such a hurry to see her father. "Oh, Lucinda," she said, "do give me something to do! I don't want to go off to-day. I want to stay with you." So Lucinda gave her some brown towels to hem, and also let her snap the chalked cord with which she marked off the pattern on her quilt; and, by help of these two occupations, Nelly contrived to get through the day, till four o'clock, when she set out for home. As good luck would have it, when she was within quarter of a mile from home she saw her father at work in a field. She jumped over the fence and ran to him. "Papa! papa!" she said, breathless: "look here!" And she held up her basket of black stones. "This is the kind of stone that comes where the silver is. There is a mine underneath it always: Mr. Kleesman said so. And I've found a mine: I'll show you where it is." Mr. March laughed very heartily. "Why, my dear little girl!" he said, "what ever put such an idea into your head? I don't believe those stones are good for any thing." Nelly set down her basket, and pulled her pocket-handkerchief out of her pocket: the little piece of black stone she had got from Mr. Kleesman was tied firmly in one corner. "Look at that, papa," she said, "and see if the stones in the basket are not just like it." Then she told her father all about the man's coming into the assayer's office with a bag of stones like that one, and what Mr. Kleesman said to him. "Don't you see, papa," she said, vehemently, "that it must be a mine? Why, there are piles of it: it has all slipped down into the bottom of this steep place; there used to be a brook down there. I know it's a mine, papa! And if I found it, it's ours: isn't it?" Nelly's cheeks were red, and her words came so fast they almost choked her. "Nelly, dear," said her father, "don't you recollect that once before you thought you had found silver ore, you and Rob, up in the Ute Pass?" Nelly looked ashamed. "Oh, papa," she said, "that was quite different. That was when we were little things. Papa, I know this is a mine. If you'd heard what Mr. Kleesman said, you'd think so too. He said in his country they had a proverb, that no mine was good for any thing unless it had a black hat on its head; and that meant that there were always black stones on top like this." Mr. March turned the little bit of black stone over and over, and examined it carefully. "I do not know much about minerals," he said. "I think I never saw a stone like this." "Nor I either, papa," exclaimed Nelly: "except in this one place. I know it's a mine, and I'll give it to you all for your own. It's mine, isn't it, if I found it?" "Yes, dear, it's yours, unless somebody else had found it before you." "I don't believe anybody had," said Nelly; "for there weren't any stakes stuck down anywhere near; and all the claims have stakes stuck down round them. Oh, papa! isn't it splendid! now we can have all the money we want." Mr. March smiled half sadly. "My dear little daughter," he said, "there are a great many more people who have lost all the money they had in the world trying to get money out of a mine, than there are who have made fortunes in that way. You must not get so excited. Even if there is a mine in the place where you found these stones, I don't think I have money enough to open it and take out the ore. But I will show these stones to Mr. Scholfield. He knows a great deal about mines." "Oh, do! do! papa," exclaimed Nelly. "I know it's a mine." "I am going down there to-night," said Mr. March. "I will carry your stones, and see what he says. In the mean time, we will not say any thing about it to anybody. You and papa will just have a little secret." When Nelly kissed her father for good-night, she nodded at him with a meaning glance, and he returned the nod with an equally meaning one. "What are you two plotting?" cried Mrs. March. "I see mischief in both your eyes." "Oh, it's a little secret we have, Nelly and I," said Mr. March. "It won't last long: we'll tell you to-morrow." It turned out that Mrs. March did not have to wait till the next day before learning the secret. Mr. March got home about midnight from Mr. Scholfield's. Mrs. March had been sound asleep for two hours: the sound of Mr. March's steps wakened her. "Is that you, Robert?" she called. "Yes," he said. There was something in the tone of his voice which was so strange that it roused her instantly. She sat up straight in bed and exclaimed:-- "What is the matter?" "Nothing," said Mr. March. "Nonsense!" said Mrs. March: "you can't deceive me. Something has happened. Come in here this minute and tell me what it is." Then Mr. March told her the whole story. He had taken Nelly's stones to Mr. Scholfield, who had said immediately that there was without doubt a mine in the place where that mineral was found; and, when Mr. March had told him as nearly as he could from Nelly's description where the spot was, he had said that no mines had yet been discovered very near that place, and no claims were staked out. "Scholfield says we must go immediately and stake out our claim. He'll go shares with me in digging; and at any rate will see what's there," said Mr. March. "Do you believe in it yourself, Robert?" asked Mrs. March. She was much afraid of new schemes for making money. "Why, I can't say I'm very enthusiastic about it," replied Mr. March; "but then I don't know any thing about mines, you see. Scholfield was near wild over it. He says we've got silver there sure." "Will you have to find money to begin with?" asked Mrs. March, anxiously. "Well, Sarah, considering that we haven't got any money, I don't see how I can: do you?" laughed Mr. March. "But Scholfield says that if I will give him a third of the mine, he'll take another man in, and they two'll pay for the working it at first. That seems very fair: doesn't it?" "I don't know," said Mrs. March. "If the mine really does turn out to be very valuable, it is giving him a good deal." "That is true," replied Mr. March. "But, on the other hand, perhaps it is not worth any thing; and, in that case, Scholfield has the worst of the bargain. He says, though, he can tell very soon. He has been in mining a good deal; and he can make his own assays with the blow-pipe. We're to start very early in the morning, and take Nelly along to show us the way. The dear child was nearly beside herself last night." "So that was your secret: was it?" said Mrs. March. "Yes, and a very hard one it was for the child to keep too," said Mr. March. "She was half crazy to tell Rob." "You'll take him along too: won't you?" asked Mrs. March. "Oh, yes," said Mr. March: "no more secrets now; that is, not in this house. We won't have it talked round, if we can help it. Scholfield says that the minute it is known we've found silver there, those ravines will just swarm with men prospecting for more claims." The next day, Mr. March and Mr. Scholfield and Rob and Nelly set out immediately after breakfast for the ravine. They stopped at Billy's house and took him with them. Mr. Scholfield had said to Mr. March, as they walked along:-- "If Long Billy'll go in with us, I'd rather have him than any man I know about here. He's as honest 's daylight; I don't think he's doing much this summer; I think he'll go to work digging right away." Wasn't Nelly a proud little girl as she walked ahead of the party? She kept hold of Rob's hand, and every now and then they would run so fast that the older people had to run, too, to keep up with them. "How do you know the way so well, Nelly?" said Mr. Scholfield. Nelly laughed. "If you watch closely, you can see what I tell by," she said. "It's in plain sight." "Yes, plain sight! plain sight!" shouted Rob, to whom Nelly had pointed out the little red stones. "It's out of a story." Mr. Scholfield and Mr. March and Billy all looked around, perplexed; but they could see nothing. "Oh, tell us the secret, Guide," said Mr. March. "We are stupid: we can't find it out." Then Nelly told them; and as soon as she pointed to the red stones they wondered very much that they had not noticed them before. It seemed a very short way to the ravine, this time: Nelly had reached it before she thought of its being near. "Why, here it is," she said; "I didn't think we were half way there." Then she and Rob sat on the ground and watched the others. Rob was very quiet. He was a good deal overawed at the idea of a real silver mine all for their own. "Do you suppose it's right here, right under our feet, Nell?" said he, stamping his foot on the ground. "I dare say," said Nelly. "Perhaps it is all over round here: some of them are as big as a mile." "I wonder if they'll let us go down as often as we want to," said Rob. "They'll have to, won't they, if it's our own mine?" "That'll be for papa to say," answered Nelly, decidedly. "I've given it to him. It's his mine." While the children was thus building their innocent air-castles in a small way, the brains of the older people were building no less actively, and on a larger scale. Both Billy and Mr. Scholfield were much excited. Billy ran from spot to spot, now hammering a stone in two with his hammer, now digging fiercely into the ground with his pick-axe. Mr. Scholfield went about picking up the black stones, and piling them together, till he had quite a monument of them. "I declare," he said at last, "it beats me that this place hasn't ever been found before, much 's this country's been prospected over and over. I don't know what to make of it. But there isn't a sign of a claim here for miles: I know that." "Well, I'll tell yer what I'm a thinkin'," said Billy. "I'm a thinkin' that 's fur back 's them fust prospectin' days there was a creek in here; 'n' thet's the reason there didn't nobody look here. I've heern it said hundreds o' times in town thet there wan't no use lookin' along these ridges; they'd all been looked over thorough, 'n' there wan't nothin' in 'em. But we've struck a silver mine, sure: I hain't any doubt of it. Let's name her 'The Little Nelly.'" Mr. March's face grew red. He did not like the idea of having a mine called after Nelly; but he did not want to hurt Billy's feelings. Before he could speak, Mr. Scholfield cried out:-- "Good for you, Billy! That's what we'll call it! That's a name to bring good luck. 'The Little Nelly!' and may she turn out not so 'little,' after all; and the first bucketful of ore we draw up, Nelly, we'll drink your health, and christen the mine." Nelly did not quite understand what all this meant. "Did you mean that I am to name the mine, sir?" she said. "No," said Mr. Scholfield: "we meant that we were going to name it for you, by your name. But you can name it, if you like. That would be luckier still. Don't you like to have it called by your name?" Nelly hesitated. "I think I would rather not have it named after me," she said: "some of the mines have such dreadful names. But I know a name I think would be a real pretty name." "What's that?" said her father. "The Good Luck," said Nelly. Billy clapped his knee hard with his hand. "By jingo!" said he, "that's the best name ever was given to a mine yet. 'The Good Luck' it shall be; and good luck it was to you, Nelly, the day you struck it. Old Pine he said, one day last spring, mebbe you'd find a mine, when I was a tellin' him how you 'n' Rob was allers lookin' for one." "But I wasn't looking for this, Billy," said Nelly. "I gave up looking for one a long time ago, when we began to sell the eggs. It was just an accident that I happened to remember the black stones in here." "That's the way some of the best mines have been found," said Mr. Scholfield: "just by sheer accident. There was a man I knew, in California, had his mule run away from him one day: it was somewhere in that Tuolomne region; and if that mule didn't run straight down into a gulch that was just washed full of free gold,--and the fellow had been walking in it some time before he noticed it! There's a heap o' luck in this world." "Yes," said Mr. March, "there's a great deal of luck; but there is a great deal which is set down to luck which isn't luck. Now, if my little girl here hadn't had the good-will and the energy to try to earn some money for her mother and me, she wouldn't have been searching for a short cut to Rosita over these hills, and would never have found this mine." "That's so," said Mr. Scholfield, looking admiringly at Nelly. "She's a most uncommon girl, that Nelly of yours. I think we ought to call the mine after her; it's hers." "No," said Mr. March: "I like her name for it best. Let us call it 'The Good Luck.'" Mrs. March was watching for her husband and children when they came down the lane. She had been much more excited about the silver mine than she had confessed to Mr. March. All day long she had been unable to keep it out of her mind. The prospect was too tempting. "Why should it not have happened to us, as well as to so many people," she thought. "Oh! if we only could have just money enough to give Rob and Nelly a good education, I would not ask for any thing more. And, even if this is not very much of a mine, it might give us money enough for that." With such hopes and imaginations as these Mrs. March's mind had been full all day long; and, when she saw Mr. March and Rob and Nelly coming toward the house, she felt almost afraid to see them, lest she should see disappointment written on their faces. Not at all. Rob and Nelly came bounding on ahead, and, as they drew near the door, they shouted out:-- "The Good Luck! The Good Luck! It is named 'The Good Luck.'" "They wanted to call it 'The Little Nelly,' but Nelly wouldn't," said Rob. "I don't see why. If I'd found it, I'd have called it 'The Rob,' I know. They didn't ask me to let them call it for me. If they had, they might and welcome." "It is really a mine, then?" said Mrs. March, looking at her husband. "Yes, Sarah, I think it is," he replied. "If Scholfield and Billy know,--and they seem to be very sure,--there is good promise of silver there; and Nelly herself has named it 'The Good Luck.'" "Oh, Nelly! did you, really?" exclaimed Mrs. March. "You dear child!" And she threw both arms around Nelly, and gave her a great hug. "That's a lovely name. I do believe it will bring luck." "I didn't want it named after me," said Nelly. "It isn't as if it was a live thing--" "Subjunctive mood, dear! 'as if it were,'" interrupted Mrs. March. "As if it were," repeated Nelly, looking confused. "I wish they'd left the subjunctive mood out of the grammar. I sha'n't ever learn it! It isn't as if it were a live thing like a baby or a kitten. I wouldn't mind having such things called after me, but some of the mines have the awfullest names, mamma: real wicked names, that I shouldn't dare to say." "Well, they'll call it after you, anyhow, Nell," cried Rob. "Billy said so, coming home." "They won't either," said Nelly, "when it was my own mine, only I gave it to papa, and I asked them not to; I think it would be real mean." "Oh, I don't mean Mr. Scholfield and Billy," said Rob: "they called it 'The Good Luck' as soon as you said so; but the men around town. They'll hear it was you found it; and they'll call it 'The Nelly,' always: you see if they don't." "Rob, don't tease your sister so," said Mrs. March. "Why, does that tease you, Nell?" asked Rob, pretending to be very innocent. "I was only telling you what Billy said." "I don't believe it," said Nelly: "do you, papa?" "No," replied Mr. March. "I do not see why they should give it any other name than the one the owners give it." "Well, you'll see," said Rob. "There are ever so many mines that go by two or three different names. There's one way off in the north somewhere, where Billy used to haul ore, is called 'Bobtail,' some of the time, and 'Miss Lucy,' some of the time. They tried to change 'Bobtail' into 'Miss Lucy,' and they couldn't." "Couldn't!" exclaimed Nelly: "what do you mean by that?" "Why, the people wouldn't," said Rob, saucily: "that's all." "'That's all' about a great many things in this world, Rob," laughed his mother. "'Couldn't' is very apt to be only another word for 'wouldn't' with a little boy I know." Rob laughed, and left off teasing Nelly about the name of her mine. CHAPTER XIII "THE GOOD LUCK" Billy went to work the very next day at "The Good Luck." First, he put up a little hut, which looked more like an Indian wigwam than any thing else. This was for him and Mr. Scholfield to sleep in. "We can't take time to go home nights till we get this thing started," said Billy. "If we've got ore here, the sooner we get some on't out the better; an' if we hain't got ore here, the sooner we find that out the better." All day long, day after day, Billy and Mr. Scholfield dug, till they had a big hole, as deep as a well, dug in the ground. Then they put a windlass at the top, with a long rope fastened to it, and a bucket on the end of the rope. This bucket they lowered down into the hole, just as you lower a water-bucket down into a well; then they filled it full of the stones which they thought had silver in them, and then turned the windlass and drew it up. Mr. Scholfield pounded some of these stones very fine, and melted them with his blow-pipe, and got quite big buttons of silver out of them. He gave some of these to Mr. March. When he showed these to Nelly, she exclaimed:--- "Oh! these are a great deal bigger than any I saw in Mr. Kleesman's office. Our mine must be a good one." Mr. Scholfield was in great glee. He made the most extravagant statements, and talked very foolishly about the mine: said he would not take half a million of dollars for his third of it; and so on, till old, experienced miners shook their heads and said he was crazy. But, when they saw the round buttons of shining silver which he had extracted from the stones, they stopped shaking their heads, and thought perhaps he was right. The fame of "The Good Luck" spread all over town; and, as Billy had said there would be, there were many who persisted in calling the mine "The Nelly." Almost everybody in Rosita knew Nelly by sight by this time; and it gave the mine much greater interest in their eyes that it had been found by this good, industrious little girl, whom everybody liked. Whenever Nelly went to town now, people asked her about her mine. She always answered:-- "It isn't my mine: it is my papa's." "But you found it," they would say. "I found the black hat it wore on its head," was Nelly's usual reply: "that is all. Mr. Scholfield and Billy found the silver." It happened that it was nearly three weeks before Rob and Nelly went to Mr. Kleesman's house again. They had now a new interest, which made them hurry through with all they had to do in Rosita, so as to have time on their way home to stop at "The Good Luck," and watch Billy and Mr. Scholfield at work. It was an endless delight to them to see the windlass wind, wind, wind, and watch the heavy bucket of stone slowly coming up to the mouth of the hole. Then Billy would let Rob take the bucket and empty it on the pile of shining gray ore which grew higher and higher every day. Sometimes the children stayed here so late that it was after dark when they reached home; and at last Mrs. March told them that they must not go to the mine every time they went to Rosita: it made their walk too long. She said they might go only every other time. "Let's go Tuesdays," said Rob. "Why?" said Nelly. "It never seems half so long from Tuesday till Friday as it does from Friday to Tuesday," said Rob. "Why, why not?" asked Nelly. "Oh, I don't know," said Rob. "Sunday's twice as long as any other day: I guess that's it." "But you've got the Sunday each week," exclaimed Nelly: "it isn't any shorter from Tuesday to Tuesday than from Friday to Friday: what a silly boy! The Sunday comes in all the same. Don't you see?" Rob looked puzzled. "I don't care," he said "it seems ever so much shorter." The first day that they were not to go to the mine, Rob said:-- "See here, Nell: if we can't go to the mine, let's go and see old Mr. Kleesman. His furnace must be done by this time. Perhaps he'll be making an assay to-day." "Oh, good!" said Nelly. "I declare I'd almost forgotten all about him: hadn't you?" "No, indeed!" said Rob: "I liked the mine better; but let's go there to-day." "And we'll go and eat our lunch at Ulrica's too," said Nelly. "We haven't taken it there for ever so long: she said so Tuesday. We'll go to-day." "So we will," said Rob. "Perhaps she'll have stewed chicken." "Oh, for shame, Rob!" said Nelly. "What for?" said Rob: "I don't see any shame. Where's the shame?" "Shame to think about something to eat when you go to see people," replied Nelly. "Now, Nell March, didn't you think of it, honest Indian?" said Rob. "Well, it's worse to say it," stammered Nelly. "Perhaps I did think of it, just a little, little bit; but I always try not to." "Ha! ha! Miss Nell! I've caught you this time; and I don't think it's a bit worse to say it: so, there! Stewed chicken! stewed chicken!" And Rob danced along in front of Nelly, shouting the words in her very face. Nelly could not help laughing, though she was angry. "Rob," she said, "you can be the worst torment I ever saw." "That's only because you haven't had any other torment but me," cried Rob, still dancing along backwards in front of Nelly. "Hullo! hullo!" said a loud, gruff voice just behind him: "don't run me down, young man! Which side of the way will you have, or will you have both?" Very much confused, Rob turned and found himself nearly in the arms of an old man with rough clothes on, but with such a nice, benevolent face that Rob knew he was not going to be angry with him. "I beg your pardon, sir," he said. "I didn't see you." "Naturally you didn't, since you have no eyes in the back of your head," said the old man. "Do you always walk backwards, or is it only when you are teasing your sister?" Nelly hastened to defend Rob. "Oh, sir," she said, "he was not really teasing me: he was only in fun." The old man smiled and nodded. "That's right! that's right!" he said. They had just now reached Mr. Kleesman's steps. Rob sprang up, two steps at a time. "What!" said the old man, "are you going in here? So am I." And they all went in together. Mr. Kleesman was very glad to see Nelly. "I haf miss you for many days," he said. "Vy is it you not come more to see assay?" "We have been very busy," said Nelly: "and have not stayed in town any longer than we needed to sell our things." "I know! I know!" said Mr. Kleesman: "you haf been at the Goot Luck mine!" "Why, who told you about it?" exclaimed Rob. "Ach!" said Mr. Kleesman, "you tink dat mines be to be hid in dis town? Not von but knows of 'Goot Luck,' dat the little maid-child haf found;" and he looked at Nelly and smiled affectionately. "And not von but iss glad," he added, patting her on the head. Then he turned to the old man who had come in with the children, and said, politely:-- "Vat can I do for you, sir?" The man took off his hat and sat down, and pulled out of his pocket a little bag of stones, and threw it on the table. "Tell me if that's worth any thing," he said. Mr. Kleesman took a small stone out of the bag, and called:-- "Franz! Franz!" Franz was Mr. Kleesman's servant. He tended the fires, and pounded up the stones fine in an iron mortar, and did all Mr. Kleesman's errands. Franz came running; and Mr. Kleesman gave him the stone, and said something to him in German. Franz took the stone, and disappeared in the back room. "After he haf make it fine," said Mr. Kleesman, "I shall assay it for you." Then, turning to Nelly and Rob, he said:-- "Can you stay? I make three assay now in three cups." "Yes, indeed, we can!" said Nelly: "thank you! That is what we came for. We thought the furnace must be mended by this time." While Franz was pounding the stone, the old man told Mr. Kleesman about his mine. Nelly listened with attentive ears to all he said: but Rob was busy studying the pretty little brass scales in the glass box. The man said that he and two other men had been at work for some months at this mine. The other two men were sure the ore was good; one of them had tried it with the blow-pipe, he said, and got plenty of silver. "But I just made up my mind," said the man, "that, before I put any more money in there, I'd come to somebody that knew. I ain't such a sodhead as to think I can tell so well about things as a man that's studied 'em all his life; and I asked all about, and they all said, 'Kleesman's the man: he'd give you an honest assay of his own mind if he could get at it and weigh it.'" Mr. Kleesman laughed heartily. He was much pleased at this compliment to his honesty. "Yes, I tell you all true," he said. "If it be bad, or if it be good, I tell true." "That's what I want," said the man. Then Franz came in with the fine-powdered stone in a paper. Mr. Kleesman took some of it and weighed it in the little brass scales. Then he took some fine-powdered lead and weighed that. Then he mixed the fine lead and the powdered stone together with a knife. "I take twelve times as much lead as there iss of the stone," he said. "What is the lead for?" asked Nelly. "The lead he will draw out of the stone all that are bad: you will see." Then he put the powdered stone and the lead he had mixed together into a little clay cup, and covered it over with more of the fine-powdered lead. Then he put in a little borax. "He helps it to melt," he said. Then he went through into the back room, carrying this cup and two others which were standing on the table already filled with powder ready to be baked. Rob and Nelly and the old man followed him. He opened the door of the little oven and looked in: it was glowing red hot. Then he took up each cup in tongs, and set it in the oven. When all three were in, he took some burning coals from the fire above, and put them in the mouth of the oven, in front of the cups. "Dat iss dat cold air from door do not touch dem," he said. Then he shut the door tight, and said:-- "Now ve go back. Ve vait fifteen minute." He held his watch in his hand, so as not to make a mistake. When the fifteen minutes were over he opened the oven-door to let a current of cool air blow above the little cups. Nelly stood on a box, as she had before, and looked in through the queer board with holes in it for the eyes. The metal in the little cups was bubbling and as red as fire. Rob tried to look, but the heat hurt his eyes so he could not bear it. "Ven de cold air strike the cups," said Mr. Kleesman, "then the slag are formed." "Oh, what is slag?" cried Rob. "All that are bad go into the slag," said Mr. Kleesman. Then he put on a pair of thick gloves, and a hat on his head, and went close up to the fiery oven door, and took out the cups, and emptied them into little hollow places in a sheet of zinc. The instant the hot metal touched the cool zinc, it spread out into a fiery red rose. "Oh, how lovely!" cried Nelly. "By jingo!" said Rob. Even while they were speaking, the bright red rose turned dark,--hardened,--and there lay three shining buttons, flat and round. Their rims looked like dark glass; and in their centres was a bright, silvery spot. Mr. Kleesman took a hammer and pounded off all this dark, shining rim. Then he pounded the little silvery buttons which were left into the right shape to fit into some tiny little clay cups he had there. They were shaped like a flower-pot, but only about an inch high. "Now these must bake one-half hour again," he said; and put them into the oven. Pretty soon he opened the oven-door to let the cold air in again, as he had done before. That would make all the lead go off, he said: it would melt into the little cups, and leave nothing but the pure silver behind. "Now vatch! vatch!" he said to Nelly. "In von minute you shall see a flash in de cups, like lightning, just one second: it are de last of de lead driven avay; den all is done." Nelly watched with all her might. Sure enough, flash! flash! flash! in all three of the cups it went; the cups were fiery red; as Mr. Kleesman took them out, they turned yellow; they looked like the yolk of a hard-boiled egg hollowed out,--and there, in the bottom of each, lay a tiny, tiny silver button! Mr. Kleesman carried them into the front room and weighed them. Two of them were heavy enough to more than weigh down the little button which was always kept in the left-hand scale. That showed that the ore had silver enough in it to make it worth while to work it. The third one was so small you could hardly see it. That was the one which belonged to the old man. "You ore are not worth not'ing," said Mr. Kleesman to him. Nelly looked sorrowfully at the old man's face; but he only smiled, and said:-- "Well, that's just what I've suspicioned all along. I didn't believe much in all that blow-pipe work. I'm out about a hundred dollars,--that's all,--not counting my time any thing. It's the time I grudge more'n the money. Much obliged to ye, sir." And the philosophical old fellow handed out his three dollars to pay for the assay, and walked off as composedly as if he had had good news instead of bad. Nelly looked very grave. She was thinking of what her father had said about Mr. Scholfield's blow-pipe. "Perhaps Mr. Scholfield was all wrong too, just like this other man. Perhaps our mine isn't good for any thing." Nelly's face was so long that kind-hearted Mr. Kleesman noticed it, and said:-- "You haf tired: it are too long that you look at too many t'ings. You shall sit here and be quiet." "Oh, no, thank you," said Nelly: "I am not tired. I was only thinking." Mr. Kleesman really loved Nelly, and it distressed him to see her look troubled. He wanted to know what troubled her; but he did not like to ask. He looked at her very sympathizingly, and did not say any thing. "Is not a blow-pipe good for any thing to tell about silver?" said Nelly, presently. "Oh, ho!" thought Mr. Kleesman to himself: "now I know what the little wise maiden is thinking: it is her father's mine. It did not escape her one word which this man said." But he replied to her question as if he had not thought any thing farther. "Not very much: the blow-pipe cannot tell true. It tell part true; not all true." Nelly sighed, and said:-- "Come, Rob: it is time for us to go. We are very much obliged to you for letting us see the assay. It is the most wonderful thing I ever saw. It is just like a fairy story. Come, Rob." Rob also thanked Mr. Kleesman; and they went slowly down the steps. "Stay! stay!" said Mr. Kleesman. "Little one, vill you not ask your father that he send me some of the ore from the Goot Luck mine? I shall assay it for you, and I vill tell you true how much silver there should come from each ton, that you are not cheated at the mill vere dey take your ore to make in de silver brick." Nelly ran back to Mr. Kleesman, and took his hand in hers. "Oh, thank you! thank you!" she said: "that was what I was thinking about. I was thinking what if our mine should turn out like that man's that was here this morning." "Oh, no: I t'ink not. Every von say it iss goot, very goot," said Mr. Kleesman. "But I like to make assay. You tell your father I make it for nothing: I make it for you." "I will tell him," said Nelly; "and I am sure he will be very glad to have you do it. I will bring some of the ore next time. Good-by!" And she and Rob ran off very fast, for it was past Ulrica's dinner-time. When they reached the house it was shut up: the curtains down, and the door locked. Ulrica had gone away for the day, to do washing at somebody's house; and Jan had taken his dinner to the mill. The children sat on the doorstep and ate their lunch, much disappointed. Then they tried to think of some way to let Ulrica know they had been there. "If we only had a card such as ladies used to leave for mamma when she was away," said Rob, "that would be nice." "I'll tell you," said Nelly: "we'll prick our names on two of the cottonwood leaves in the top of your hat: they'll do for cards." Rob always put a few green leaves in the top of his hat, to make his head cool. It keeps out the heat of the sun wonderfully. One variety of the cottonwood leaf is a smooth, shining leaf, about as large as a lilac leaf, and much like it in shape. This was the kind Rob had in his hat. Nelly picked out the two biggest ones, and then with a pin she slowly pricked "Nelly" on one and "Rob" on the other. "There!" she said, when they were done: "aren't those nice cards? Now I'll pin them on the door, close above the handle, so that Ulrica can't open the door without seeing them." "What fun!" said Rob. "I say, Nell, you're a capital hand to think of things." Nelly laughed. "Why, Rob," she said, "sometimes you find fault with me just because I do 'think of things,' as you call it." "Oh, those are different things," said Rob. "You know what I mean: bothers. Such things as these cards are fun." When Ulrica came home at night from her washing, she was very tired; and she put her hand on the handle of her door and turned it almost without looking, and did not at first see the green leaves. But, as the door swung in, she saw them. "Ah, den! vat is dat?" she exclaimed. "Dem boys at deir mischiefs again!" And she was about to tear the leaves down angrily, when she caught sight of the fine-pricked letters. She looked closer, and made out the word "Nelly;" then on the other one "Rob." "Ach! mine child! mine child!" she exclaimed. "She haf been here: she make that the green leaf say her name to me. Mine blessed child!" And Ulrica took the leaves and laid them away in a little yellow carved box, in the shape of a tub, which she had brought from Sweden. When Jan sat down at his supper, she took them out, and laid them by his plate, and told him where she found them. Jan was much pleased, and looked a long time curiously at the pricked letters. Then he laid the leaves back in the box, and said to Ulrica:-- "Why do you not make for the child a gown, such as the Swede child wears, of the blue and the red? Think you not it would please her?" "Not to wear," said Ulrica. "She would not like that every one should gaze." "Oh, no, not to wear for people to see," said Jan; "but to keep because it is strange and different from the dress of this country. The rich people that did come travelling to Sweden did all buy clothes like the Swede clothes, to take home to keep and to show." "Yes! yes! I will!" exclaimed Ulrica, much delighted at the thought; "but it shall have no buttons: we cannot find buttons." "Wilhelm Sachs will make them for me out of tin: that will do very well, just for a show," said Jan. "It is not for money; but only that they shine and be round." So after supper Ulrica took the roll of blue cloth out of the chest, and began to measure off the breadths. "How tell you that it is right?" said Jan. "By my heart," said the loving Ulrica: "I know mine child her size by my heart. It vill be right." But for all that it turned out that she cut the breadths too long, and had to hem a deep hem at the bottom; which wasted some of the cloth, and vexed Ulrica's economical soul. But we have not come to that yet. We must go home with Nelly and Rob. Nelly had made up her mind not to tell her father any thing about Mr. Kleesman's proposal to make the assay until she could see him all alone; but she forgot to tell Rob not to speak of it; and they had hardly taken their seats at the tea-table when Rob exclaimed:-- "Papa! don't you think Mr. Kleesman says a blow-pipe isn't good for any thing to tell about silver with. And there was a man there to-day, with ore out of his mine, and it hadn't any silver at all in it,--not any to speak of,--and he thought it was splendid: he and two other men; they had tried it with a blow-pipe." Mr. Scholfield was taking tea with the Marches this night. He listened with a smile to all Rob said. Then he said:-- "That's just like Kleesman. He thinks nobody but he can tell any thing. It's the money he's after. I see through him. Now I know I can make as good an assay with my blow-pipe as he can with all his little cups and saucers and gimcracks, any day." Nelly grew very red. She did not like to hear Mr. Kleesman so spoken of. She opened her mouth to speak: then bit her lips, and remained quiet. "What is it, Nelly?" said her father. "Nothing, sir," replied Nelly: "only I don't think Mr. Kleesman is like that. He is very kind." "Oh, yes, he's kind enough," said Mr. Scholfield: "he's a good-natured fellow. But it's all moonshine about his being the only one who can make assays. There's a plenty of mines working here to-day that haven't ever had any assay made except by the blow-pipe. There's no use in paying a fellow three or four or five dollars for doing what you can do yourself." "But that man said--" began Rob. "Be quiet now, Rob," said Mr. March. "We won't talk any more about it now." After Mr. Scholfield had gone away, Mr. March called Nelly out of the room. "Come walk up and down in the lane with me, Nell," he said, "and tell me all about what happened at Mr. Kleesman's." Then Nelly told her father all about it, from beginning to end. "Upon my word, Nell," he said, "you seem to have studied the thing carefully. I should think you could almost make an assay yourself." "I guess I could if I had the cups and things," said Nelly: "I recollect every thing he did. But, papa, won't you let him take some ore from our mine, and let him see if it is good by his way? He won't ask us any thing: he said he was doing it every day, and he could put in one more cup as well as not. Oh, do, papa!" "I'll think about it," said Mr. March. That night he talked it over with Mrs. March, and she was as anxious as Nelly that he should let Mr. Kleesman make the assay. This decided Mr. March; and the next morning he said to Nelly:-- "Well, Nelly, you shall have your way,--you and mamma. I will take some of the ore to your old friend. I shall go up with you to-morrow myself, and carry it. I do not like to send it by you." "Oh, good! good!" cried Nelly, and jumped up and down, and ran away to find Rob and tell him that their father would walk into town with them the next day. When Nelly walked into Mr. Kleesman's room, holding her father by the hand, she felt very proud. She had always thought her father handsomer and nicer to look at than any other man in the world; and, when she said to Mr. Kleesman, "Here is my father, sir," this pride was so evident in her face that it made Mr. Kleesman laugh. It did not make him love Nelly any less, however. It only made him think sadly of the little girl way off in Germany, who would have just as much pride in his face as Nelly did in her father's. Mr. Kleesman's love for Nelly made him treat Mr. March like an old friend. "I am glad to see you here," he said. "I haf for your little girl von great friendship: she iss so goot. I say often to myself, she haf goot father, goot mother. She iss not like American childs I haf seen." Mr. March was glad to have Nelly liked; but he did not wish to have her praised in this open way. So he said, very quickly:-- "Yes, Nelly is a good girl. I have come to talk to you, Mr. Kleesman, about our mine: perhaps you have heard of it,--'The Good Luck.'" "Yes: I hear it is goot mine, very goot," replied Mr. Kleesman. "I ask the child to bring me ore. I assay it for you. It vill be pleasure to me." "That is what I was going to ask you to do," said Mr. March. "I would like to know the exact truth about it before I go any farther. Scholfield is pressing me to put in machinery; but I do not like to spend money on it till I am sure." "Dat iss right," said Mr. Kleesman. "Vait! vait! It is always safe to vait. Haf you brought with you the ore?" "Yes, I have it here," replied Mr. March, and took a small bag of it from his pocket. Mr. Kleesman examined it very carefully. His face did not look cheerful. He took piece after piece out of the bag, and, after examining them, tossed them on the table with a dissatisfied air. "Is it all as dis?" he said. "Yes, about like that," replied Mr. March. Nelly watched Mr. Kleesman's face breathlessly. "I know he don't think it is good," she whispered to Rob. "I cannot tell till I make assay," said Mr. Kleesman. "But I t'ink it not so very good. To-morrow I vill know. To-day I cannot do. I send you vord." "Oh, no, you need not take that trouble," said Mr. March. "The children will be in day after to-morrow. They can call." "No, I send you vord," repeated Mr. Kleesman. "I send you vord. Dere are plenty vays. I send you vord to-morrow night. Alvays men go past my door down to valley. I send you vord." "What do you suppose is the reason he did not want us to call for it?" said Rob, as they walked down street. "I know," said Nelly. "What?" said Rob, sulkily. His pride was a little touched at Mr. Kleesman's having so evidently preferred to send the message by some one else rather than by them. "Because," said Nelly, "he is so kind he doesn't want to tell us to our face the mine isn't good." "Oh, Nell!" exclaimed Rob, in a tone of distress, "do you think it's that?" "I know it's that," said Nelly, calmly. "It couldn't be any thing else: you'll see. He doesn't believe that ore's good for any thing. I know by his face he doesn't. I've seen him look so at ore before now." "Oh, Nell!" cried Rob, "what'll we do if it turns out not to be good for any thing?" "Do!" said Nelly; "why, we shall do just what we did before. But I'm awful sorry I ever told papa about the old thing. It's too mean!" "We haven't spent any money on it: that's one good thing," said Rob. "Yes," said Nelly; "and it's lucky we happened in at Mr. Kleesman's just when we did: there was some good luck in that, if there isn't any in the mine." "But I don't see why you're so sure, Nell," cried Rob: "Mr. Kleesman said he couldn't tell till he tried it." "Well, I _am_ sure," said Nelly; "just as sure's any thing. I know Mr. Kleesman thinks it isn't good for any thing; and if he thinks so just by looking at the stone, won't he think so a great deal more when he has burnt all the bad stuff away?" "Well, anyhow, I shan't give up till he send 'vord,' as he calls it," said Rob. "I guess it'll be good for a little if it isn't for much. Everybody says Mr. Scholfield knows all about mines." "You'll see!" was all Nelly replied; and she trudged along with a very grave and set look on her face. Mr. March was to stay in town later, to see some farmers who were coming in from the country: so the children had a lonely walk home. They stopped only a moment at Ulrica's and at Lucinda's; and both Ulrica and Lucinda saw that something was wrong. But Nelly had cautioned Rob to say nothing about the ore, and she herself said nothing about it; and so the two faithful hearts that loved them could only wonder what had happened to cloud the usually bright little faces. When it drew near to sunset, the time at which the farmers who had been up into Rosita usually returned into the valley, Rob and Nelly went down the lane to the gate, to watch for the messenger from Mr. Kleesman. The sun set, and the twilight deepened into dusk, and no messenger came. Several farm wagons passed; and, as each one approached, the children's hearts began to beat quicker, thinking that the wagon would stop, and the man would hand out a letter; but wagon after wagon passed,--and no letter. At last Nelly said:-- "It is so dark we really must go in, Rob. I don't believe it's coming to-night." "Perhaps his furnace is broken again, and he couldn't do it to-day," said Rob. "Perhaps so," said Nelly, drearily. "Oh, dear! I wish the old mine was in Guinea. Weren't we happier without it, Rob?" "Yes, lots!" said Rob; "and we're making a good lot of money off the butter and eggs and trout. I don't care about the old mine." "I do!" said Nelly: "if it was a good mine--if it were a good mine, I mean, because then we could all have every thing we want, and papa wouldn't have to work. But I know this mine isn't a good one, and I ain't ever going to look for another 's long as I live. Nor I won't tell of one, if I find it, either!" "Pshaw, Nell! don't be a goose," said Rob. "If this one isn't good for any thing, it don't prove that the next one won't be. I'll find all I can, and try 'em one after the other." "Well, you may: I won't!" said Nelly. Bedtime came: still no letter. All through the evening, the children were listening so closely for the sound of wheels, that they could not attend to any thing else. Even Mr. March found it rather hard to keep his thoughts from wandering down the lane in expectation of the message from Rosita. But it did not come; and the whole family finally went to bed with their suspense unrelieved. The next morning, while they were sitting at breakfast, and not thinking about the message at all, a man knocked at the door and handed in a letter. He had brought it from Rosita the night before, but had forgotten all about it, he said, till he was a mile past the house; and he thought as he would be going in again early in the morning, it would do as well to bring it then. "Oh, certainly, certainly!" said Mr. March: "it was not on any pressing business. Much obliged to you, sir. Sit down and have some breakfast with us: won't you?" The man was an old bachelor,--a Mr. Bangs,--who lived alone on a farm some six miles north of Mr. March's. He looked longingly at the nice breakfast, and said to Mrs. March:-- "Well, I had what I called a breakfast before I left home; but your coffee does smell so tempting, I think I'll take a cup,--since you're so kind." Then he drew up a chair and sat down, and began to eat and drink as if he had just come starved from a shipwreck. Mr. March laid the letter down by his plate, and went on talking with Mr. Bangs as politely as if he had nothing else to do. Rob and Nelly looked at the letter; then at each other; then at their father and mother: Rob fidgeted on his chair. Finally, Nelly put down her knife and fork, and said she did not want any more breakfast. Mrs. March could hardly keep from laughing to see the children's impatience, though she felt nearly as impatient herself. At last she said to the children:-- "You may be excused, children. Run out into the barn and see if you can find any eggs!" Rob and Nelly darted off, only too glad to be free. "Did you ever see such a pig!" exclaimed Rob. "He'd had his breakfast at home. I don't see what made papa ask him!" "He ate as if he were half starved," said Nelly. "I guess old bachelors don't cook much that's good. Oh! I do wish he'd hurry." Mr. Bangs had no idea of hurrying. It was a long time since he had tasted good home-made bread and butter and coffee, and he knew it would be a still longer time before he tasted them again. He almost wished he had two stomachs, like a camel, and could fill them both. At last, when he really could eat no more, and Mrs. March had poured for him the last drop out of the coffee-pot, he went away. The children were watching in the barn to see him go. As soon as he had passed the barn-door, they scampered back to the house. Their father had the open letter under his hand, on the table. He was looking at their mother, and there were tears in her eyes. He turned to the children, and said, in a voice which he tried hard to make cheerful:-- "Well, Nelly, are you ready for bad news?" "Oh, yes!" interrupted Nelly, "indeed I am, all ready. I knew it would be bad news! I knew it when we were at Mr. Kleesman's." "Pshaw!" said Rob, and sat down in a chair, and twirled his hat over and over between his knees: "I don't care! I'm going fishing." And he jumped up suddenly, and ran out of the room. Mrs. March laughed in spite of herself. "That is to hide how badly he feels," she said. "Let's all go fishing." Nelly did not laugh. She stood still by the table, leaning on it. "It's all my fault," she said. "If I hadn't found the mine, we shouldn't have had all this trouble." "Why, child, this isn't trouble," exclaimed her father; "don't feel so. Of course we're all a little disappointed." "A good deal!" interrupted Mrs. March, smiling. "Yes, a good deal," he continued; "but we won't be unhappy long about it. We're no worse off than we were before. And there's one thing: we are very lucky to have got out of it so soon,--before we had put any money into it." "What does Mr. Kleesman say?" asked Nelly. "He says that there is a little silver in the ore, but not enough to make it pay to work the mine," replied her father; "and he says that he is more sorry to say this than he has ever been before in his life to say that ore was not good. I will read you the letter." Then Mr. March read the whole letter aloud to Nelly. The last sentence was a droll one. Mr. Kleesman said:-- "I have for your little girl so great love that I do wish she may never have more sorrow as this." "What does he mean, papa?" asked Nelly. "Why, he means that he hopes this disappointment about the mine will be the most serious sorrow you will ever know: that nothing worse will ever happen to you," replied Mr. March. "Oh," said Nelly, "is that it? I couldn't make it mean any thing. Well, I hope so too." "So do I," said Mrs. March. "And I," said Mr. March. "And if nothing worse ever does happen to us than to think for a few weeks we have found a fortune, and then to find that we haven't, we shall be very lucky people." So they all tried to comfort each other, and to conceal how much disappointed they really were; but all the time, each one of them was very unhappy, and knew perfectly well that all the rest were too. Mr. March was the unhappiest of the four. He had made such fine plans for the future: how he would send Rob and Nelly to school at the East; build a pretty new house; have a nice, comfortable carriage; have Billy and Lucinda come back to live with them; buy all the books he wanted. Poor Mr. March! it was a very hard thing to have so many air-castles tumble down all in one minute! Mrs. March did not mind it so much, because she had never from the beginning had very firm faith in the mine. And for Rob and Nelly it was not nearly so hard, for they had not made any definite plans of what they would like to do; and they were so young that each day brought them new pleasures in their simple life. Still it was a great disappointment even to them, and I presume would have made them seem less cheerful and contented for a long time, if something had not happened the very next day to divert their minds and give them plenty to think about. CHAPTER XIV AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE Ever since they had lived in the valley, it had been Nelly's habit, when she got up in the morning, to go at once to the eastern window in her room and look out at Pike's Peak. She loved the mountain now just as much as she had when she first saw it; and her first thought in the morning always was:-- "I wonder if Pike is clear." The next morning after Mr. Kleesman's letter came, Nelly slept late. She had been out all the day before with Rob, who had fished far down the creek, and led her a long, hard chase through the grape thickets and wet meadows. They had caught two basketsful of trout, which were pretty heavy to lug home; and both Rob and Nelly were so tired that they went to bed the minute they had eaten supper, and hardly spoke while they were undressing. When Nelly waked, she knew by the light in her room that it must be late. She sprang up and ran to the window. As soon as she looked out, she exclaimed "Why!" and rubbed her eyes and looked again. She could not believe what she saw. "Rob! Rob!" she called. But Rob was fast asleep, and did not hear her. She slipped her feet into her slippers, and ran into his room (he slept in a tiny room opening out of hers: it was not much bigger than a closet, and only held a little narrow bed and one chair). "Rob! Rob!" she said, shaking him, "get up! Come look out of the window." "You let me be," said Rob, sleepily: "what is it?" "Tents! Rob, tents! Four splendid great tents, right close to the wheat-barn. Do get up! Who do you suppose it is?" "Tents!" cried Rob, as wide awake in one second as if the house were on fire, "tents! hurrah! I hope it's those men with instruments that came last summer. I'm going right down to see." And Rob bounced out of bed, and began to toss his clothes on at a furious rate. Nelly also made great haste; and, in less time than you would have thought possible, the two children were dressed and out in the lane, walking toward the tents. When they got there, they had had their walk for their pains: the tents were all closed up tight,--not a sign of life about one of them. Rob and Nelly walked round and round, like two little spies, trying to find out some sign by which they could tell what sort of people had come into their territory; but they could not. "I know one thing," said Rob: "they've got splendid wagons and horses." There were six fine horses grazing in the field; and there was a nice covered carriage, besides the heavy white-topped wagon. "What do you suppose the other two horses are for?" said Nelly. "They don't have four to draw the wagon: do they?" "I guess they're horses to ride," said Rob: "one of them isn't much bigger than a pony. Oh, dear! I think they're real lazy people not to get up." And Rob and Nelly walked back to the house quite discontented. When they told their mother about the tents, she said:-- "Oh, yes, I know it. The party came late last night, after you had gone to bed. They sent up to the house for milk; they were very tired; they had come all the way from Canyon City. There's a little lame boy in the party; and the motion of the carriage hurts him. He was quite sick last night, the nurse said." "Oh!" said Nelly: "poor little fellow! That's the reason they weren't up, then. I'm real sorry for him. Can't we go down there, by and by, and see him?" "Yes, I think so," said her mother: "this afternoon, perhaps." Rob and Nelly sat down on the barn-doorsteps, and watched the tents. It seemed a long time before anybody stirred. At last, a man came out of the tent which was nearest the barn. He stood still for a minute, looking up and down the valley. Then he gave a great stretch and yawned very loud, and walked off towards the field where the horses were. "That's their man," said Rob: "he's going to water the horses. I mean to go and talk to him." "Oh, no, don't!" said Nelly: "let's see who comes out next." In a few minutes more, there came out of the next tent a stout woman, with a white cap on her head. The cap had thick fluted ruffles all round the front. "Oh! what a funny cap!" said Rob. "That must be the little boy's mother." "No," said Nelly, "I don't think so. I think that's the nurse. Mamma said there was a nurse." "Oh, yes!" said Rob; "she must be the nurse." The nurse stood looking, just as the man had, up and down the valley. Nobody could see that beautiful view without wanting to stand still and look at it. "She's looking at Pike now," said Nelly. "I wonder if she ever saw such a mountain before." The woman stood a long time without moving: then she turned and walked slowly back to the tent. As she walked she kept looking back over her shoulder at the mountains. "Ah! ah!" said Nelly; "see how she looks at the mountains!" "I should think she would," said Rob. "But I wish the boy'd come out." The nurse went into the tent; and presently came out, bringing a chair all folded up into a flat shape: this she set down on the ground in the shadow of the tent, and unfolded it, and kept on unfolding it, till it was about as long as a lounge. "Hullo!" said Rob, "what sort of a chair is that?" "For the sick boy, I guess," said Nelly. "It's a kind of bed." Then the nurse brought out pillows and blankets, and put them in it, and then she brought out two pretty bright rugs, and spread them down, one in front of the chair and one at its side. Next she brought out a little table, and set it close to the chair. On this she spread a white cloth. "I guess he's going to have his breakfast on that," said Nelly. Then the woman went into the tent, and did not come back again. In a few minutes another man came out of the tent out of which the first man had come. This man did not look about him at all. He ran to the place where the stove stood, and began making a fire in a great hurry. "Oh, ho!" cried Rob: "two men! I say, Nell, they must be awfully rich folks. They've got a cook, and a driver, besides the nurse. I wish that boy'd come out." "I guess if he's sick he won't get up early," said Nelly. "Don't you remember how you used to have to lie in bed when we were at home, Rob?" "Oh, my! I guess I do!" said Rob. "Wasn't it horrid! I'd as lief die as be like that again. I haven't been sick once since we came to Colorado: have I, Nell?" "No," said Nelly. "Don't you remember you used to say I ought to be sick half the time: it wasn't fair for me not to be sick any and for you to be sick all the time?" "Did I?" said Rob: "that was real mean of me. I wouldn't say so now." While they were talking, they suddenly saw the nurse come out again, and call the cook. He went in to the tent with her, and, in a moment more, they came out again, bringing in their arms a little boy about Rob's size. "Oh, goodness!" cried Rob: "can't he walk? Pshaw! I hoped he'd go fishing with me! He won't be any fun." "Why, Rob March!" exclaimed Nelly: "you're a selfish thing. How'd you like to be lame like that and not have anybody sorry for you?" "Why, Nell, I am real sorry for him: I mean I expect I should be if I knew him; but I did hope he'd go round some with me. I haven't had a boy since we came to Colorado." Nelly looked hurt. "I'm sure I go everywhere that you do," she said. "You don't ever have to be alone." "I know it, Nell," replied Rob, meekly: "you're as good as any girl can be,--lots better than most girls; but a boy's different. You'd like a girl sometimes yourself: you know you would." "I wouldn't either," retorted Nelly: "I'd rather have you than any girl in the whole world." The little sick boy had sharper eyes than the nurse had. She had not seen the two children sitting on the barn-doorsteps: but the boy spied them in a minute, and said to his nurse:-- "There are a boy and a girl sitting in that barn-door. Give me my opera-glass: I want to see what they're like." Then Nelly and Rob saw the boy lift up a round thing to his eyes, and point it at them. "He's looking at us, Rob," said Nelly, "through that thing: I saw a gentleman have one in the cars. I shall go away: I don't want him to look at us." "Stop!" said Rob: "he's put it down. He's talking to his nurse." This is what the boy was saying:-- "Flora, please go across there and ask that boy to come here: I want to see him. Tell him I'm sick. I want to ask him if there are any birds here,--if he can't get me a lark." "Now, Master Arthur," the nurse replied, "you just wait till your mamma gets up, and ask her. Perhaps she wouldn't want you to have that boy play with you." "You go along this minute," said Arthur, beginning to cry: "if you don't I'll cry. You know the doctor said I was not to be crossed in any thing. You go along, quick! Stay! you tell them both to come here." The nurse walked away, muttering under her breath: "And a fine life ye'll lead them, if ye get them under your thumb, to be sure! It's a thousand pities you ever heard that speech of the doctor's, you poor thing." "She's coming over here, Rob," said Nelly, as she saw the woman walking in their direction: "what do you suppose she wants?" "Milk or eggs, I guess," said Rob. "I can get her some splendid fresh eggs right behind this door. Old Spotty's got her nest in there now. The weasels got into her old nest and she won't lay there any more." When the nurse reached the door, she said very politely to the children:-- "Good morning, children. Do you live here?" "No, ma'am," said Rob, gravely. Nelly looked at him indignantly. "Why, Rob!" she began. But Rob went on:-- "Our oxen and cows and hens live here: we live in the house over yonder." Nelly laughed out, and so did the nurse. "You have a droll tongue in your head, my boy," she said. "I came to ask you if you wouldn't come over to the tent there and see Master Arthur. He's in the chair there: see him? He's lame: he can't walk." "What's the matter with him?" asked Nelly. "Was he always lame?" "Oh, no!" said the nurse: "he got a fall when he was about six years old, and he's been lame ever since: he's twelve now. But I must go right back: he don't like to be alone a minute. Will you come across?" Rob looked at Nelly. "Mamma said we might go this afternoon," he said: "do you think she'd care if we went now?" "We'd better go and ask her," answered Nelly. "You tell the little boy we've gone to ask our mother if we may come," she said to the nurse, and ran off with Rob to the house as fast as feet could go. The nurse looked after them, and sighed. "Well, those are well-brought-up children, whosever they are, to be found out in this wilderness. Oh, but I'd like to see Master Arthur run like that." Flora had been little Arthur's nurse ever since he was a baby; and, though she was often out of patience with him, she loved him dearly. When she went back and told him what the children said, he muttered fretfully:-- "Oh, dear! they needn't have gone to ask. Can't they go two steps without getting leave? I should think they were babies. They looked as old as I am." "They're older, Master Arthur," replied Flora. "I think they are as much as thirteen: the girl is, at any rate." "Is the boy nice?" asked Arthur. Flora laughed. "He's funny," she replied. And then she told Arthur what Rob had said when she asked him if he and his sister lived there. Arthur smiled faintly: he hardly ever laughed. His back ached all the time, so that he could very seldom forget it; and this constant pain made him very nervous and irritable. "You go up to the house and ask their mother to let them come," he said. "Well, dear," Flora replied, "I will, if they don't come in a few minutes. But I'm sure they'll come, for they said their mother had told them they might come this afternoon; and I'm sure she'll let them come now instead." "They can come in the afternoon too," said Arthur. "I want them all the time." "Well, well: I dare say they'll like to stay with you, and read your books, and see your things, very much," said Flora. "I'll show them my microscope," said Arthur: "that's the only thing I've got that's good for any thing. The books are no good." Just now the cook came up, bringing Arthur's breakfast on a tray. It looked very nice: milk-toast, and baked apples, and poached eggs, and a cup of nice cocoa. It was wonderful what good things Ralph used to cook, in that little bit of a camp stove, out of doors. Ralph had lived in the family as long as Flora, and loved poor Arthur just as well as she did. It was into the area in front of the basement that Arthur had fallen when he got his terrible hurt; and Ralph had picked him up and carried him upstairs in his arms, thinking all the way that he was dead. Ralph often said that he'd never forget that time,--not if he should live to be a thousand years old! He often told the story to people they met on their journeys. Everybody took an interest in poor Arthur, and wanted to know how he came to be so lame; but nobody liked to ask his father or mother: so they would ask Flora or Ralph. Ralph was an Englishman, and he had a very queer pronunciation of all words beginning with _h_. He dropped the _h_'s off such words, and he put them on to other words; which made his sentences sound very queer indeed. "It was just about height o'clock," he would say, "an' I'd just in my 'and the 'ot water for the master's shaving; an' Thomas 'ee was a takin' hof it out o' my 'and, when we 'ears such a screech, such a screech, and the missus she come a flyin' hover the stairs,--I'm blessed hif 'er feet so much as lighted hon 'em,--an' she screeching screechin', an' 'ollerin'; an' the same minute I 'ears a noise to the front o' the 'ouse, an' a perliceman a knockin' at the airy door, an' the missus she got to't fust; an' if it wan't a meracle wat was it, for 'er to 'ave come down two flights o' 'igh stairs in less time than I could 'urry across the 'all? An' I takes Master Harthur out o' the perliceman's 'ands; an' 'is little 'ead a 'anging down 's if 't 'a' been snapped off. Oh! if it seemed one minute afore I got 'im hup to the nursery it seemed a 'undred years; an' the missus she was never 'erself again,--not till she died. She allers said as 'ow she'd killed 'im 'erself. You see 'ee was all alone with 'er in 'er bedroom, an' she never noticed that 'ee 'ad gone to the window. She was never 'erself again,--never: she'd sit an' look at 'im, an' look at 'im, an' the tears'd run down 'er face faster'n rain. But she couldn't 'old a candle to this missus, in no respects: not to my way o' thinkin'. It's a 'ard thing to say of 'er, bein' she's dead; but it's my 'onest opinion that she's better in 'eaven than hearth, an' all parties better suited." This was Ralph's story of the accident, and he told it wherever they went. Every one was much surprised to hear that Mrs. Cook was not Arthur's own mother; for no own mother could have shown more patience and love than she did. She had never left Arthur for a whole day or a whole night since she became his mother; and it seemed as if she really thought of little else except how to invent some new thing to amuse him, and keep him from remembering his pain. Just as Arthur had begun to eat his breakfast, he looked up and saw Rob and Nelly coming out of the door of the house. He pushed away his plate, and cried:-- "Take it away! take it away! I won't eat another mouthful. That boy and girl are coming. Take it away!" "Oh, Master Arthur," said Flora: "indeed you must eat some more. You'll never get well if you don't eat." "I won't! I won't! I tell you take it away," screamed Arthur. "I am not hungry. I hate it!" Poor Arthur never was really hungry. "Your mamma will be very unhappy when she comes out if you have not eaten any thing," said Flora. Arthur's face fell. "Well, give me the cocoa, then, quick!" he said: "I'll drink that, just to please mamma: that's all. She don't make me eat when I don't want to." At that moment Mrs. Cook came out of her tent, and hurried to Arthur's chair. "My darling," she said, "mamma was a lazy mamma, wasn't she, this morning? Have you had a nice breakfast? Papa will be out in a minute." "Mamma! mamma!" cried Arthur, "see that boy and girl, the other side of the fence: they're coming over to see me. I sent Flora after them. I wish they'd hurry. Don't they walk slow?" Mrs. Cook looked inquiringly at Flora, who explained that Master Arthur had spied the children sitting in the barn-door, and that nothing would do but she must go over and ask them to come and see him. "They seem to be most uncommon nice-spoken children for these parts, ma'am," said Flora; "and the little girl she wouldn't come, nor let her brother come, till she'd gone into the house and asked leave of their mother." Mrs. Cook was gazing very earnestly at the children, as they walked slowly towards the tent. In a moment more she sprang to her feet, and took two or three steps forward, and exclaimed, "Why, it is! it is my little Nelly!" and, to Arthur's great astonishment, he saw his mother run very fast to meet the children, and throw her arms round the little girl's neck, and kiss her over and over again. Nelly was so astonished and bewildered she did not know what to do. She could not see the face of the lady who was kissing her for she held her so tight she could not look up; and, when she did look up, she did not at first know who the lady was. "Why, Nelly, Nelly!" she cried; "have you forgotten me? Don't you remember I came on in the same car with you? Why! I've been looking for you and asking for you all over Colorado." Then Nelly remembered; but still she looked bewildered. "Oh, yes! Mrs. Williams. I remember you very, very well," she said; "but you don't look a bit as you used to." "Come here! come here!" shouted Arthur; "come right here, all of you! Mamma, who is this girl, and what makes you kiss her?" Arthur had been so long used to being the only child, and having all his mother's affection showered upon him, that he really felt uncomfortable to see her kiss another child. "Why, Arthur! Arthur!" exclaimed his mother, leading Nelly and Rob towards him; "don't speak so. These are old friends of mamma's that she knew before she ever saw you. Don't you recollect my telling you about the little boy in the cars, that threw away the onions, and the little girl that had the nice wax doll all broken in the crowd? These are those very same children; and isn't it wonderful that we should have found them here? I am very glad to see them: Nelly, Rob, this is my little boy, Arthur, and he will be more glad to know you than you can possibly imagine; for he can't run about as you do. He has to lie in this chair all day." While she was speaking, Arthur had been looking very steadily at Rob. He did not take much notice of Nelly. As soon as his mother stopped speaking, Arthur said to Rob:-- "How do you do? Mamma told me all about your throwing away the man's onions ever so long ago, and I used to make her tell me over and over and over again, till she said it was almost as bad as having onions in the house. Didn't you have fun when you did it?" and Arthur laughed harder than he had been seen to laugh for a long time. "Why, no!" said Rob; "I don't think it was much fun. I don't remember much about it now; but I know I felt awfully mean: you see I felt like a thief when the man began to look for his onions." Nelly was standing still, close to her new-found friend. She was thoroughly bewildered; she looked from Mrs. Williams to Arthur, and from Arthur to Mrs. Williams, and did not know what to make of it all: and no wonder. When Mrs. Williams bade Nelly good-by in Denver three years before, she was a thin, pale lady, dressed in the deepest black, and with a face so sad it made you feel like crying to look at her. She wore a widow's cap close around her face, and a long, black veil; and she was all alone with her nurse; and she had no little boy. Now she was a stout, rosy-faced lady; and she wore a bright, dark-blue cloth gown, looped up over a scarlet petticoat; and on her head she wore a broad-brimmed straw hat with scarlet poppies and blue bachelor's buttons round the crown. At last Nelly could not contain her perplexity any longer. "Oh! Mrs. Williams," she exclaimed; "what does make you so pretty now?" "That isn't my mamma's name," cried Arthur; "her name is Mrs. Cook. Wasn't she pretty when you saw her in the cars? She's always pretty now." Mrs. Williams laughed very hard, and told Nelly she did not wonder that she was surprised to see her look so differently. "I often think, when I look in the glass now," she said, "that I shouldn't know my own self, if I hadn't seen myself since three years ago." Then she led Nelly to one side, and explained to her that she had met Arthur and his papa up at Idaho Springs, where she had gone immediately after leaving Nelly in Denver. Mr. Cook had taken Arthur there, to see if the water in the Idaho Springs would not cure his lameness. They had all lived in the same hotel at Idaho all winter, and in the spring Mrs. Williams had been married to Mr. Cook, and had thus become Arthur's mother. Mr. Cook's home was in New York; but they had come to Colorado every summer for Arthur's sake. He always was much better in Colorado. While they were talking, Mr. Cook came out of his tent; and surprised enough he looked to see his wife sitting on the ground with a little stranger girl in her lap, and Arthur in eager conversation with a boy he had never seen before. He stood still on the threshold of the tent for a moment, looking in astonishment at the scene. "Oh, Edward! Edward!" exclaimed Mrs. Cook, "this is my little friend! Think of our having found her at last, down in this valley!" "Is it possible!" said Mr. Cook. "Why, I am as glad to see you, my little girl, as if I were your own uncle. I didn't know but I should have to go journeying all about the world, like my famous ancestor, Captain Cook, to find you; for my wife has never given up talking about you since I have known her." Mr. Cook was so tall and so big Nelly felt half afraid of him. He was as tall as Long Billy, and twice as big: he had a long, thick beard, of a beautiful brown color, and his eyes were as blue as the sky. Nelly thought he looked like one of the pictures, in a picture-book Rob had, of "Three Giant Kings from the North who came Over the Sea." But when he smiled you did not feel afraid of him; and his voice was so good and true and kind that everybody trusted him and liked him as soon as he spoke. "Was Captain Cook really an ancestor of yours?" asked Nelly, eagerly. "Oh!" cried Rob, bounding away from Arthur, and looking up with reverence into this tall man's face, "are you a relation of Captain Cook? Have you got any of his things? Did you know him? Did he ever tell you about his voyage? We've got the book about them: I know everywhere he went." Mr. Cook lifted Rob up in his arms, and tossed him over his shoulders, and whirled round with him, and set him down on the ground again, before he answered. This was a thing Mr. Cook loved to do to boys of Rob's size. Boys of that age are not used to being picked up and tossed like babies; but Mr. Cook was so strong he could toss a big boy as easily as you or I could a little baby. "No, sir, I am not a relative of Captain Cook's, so far as I know, nor of any other Cook, except of all good cooks: I am a first cousin and great friend and lover of all good cooks," shouted this jolly, tall man, whose very presence seemed like sunshine. "Ralph, you cook of cooks and for all the Cooks, is our breakfast ready?" Ralph chuckled with inward laughter as he tried to answer with a quiet propriety. Long as he had lived with Mr. Cook, he had never grown accustomed to his droll ways. Rob and Nelly looked on with amazement. This was a sort of man they had never seen. "Oh, I wish papa was like this," thought Rob: in the next second he was ashamed and sorry for the thought. But from that moment he had a loving admiration for Mr. Cook, which was about as strong as his love for his own father. As soon as Mr. and Mrs. Cook had eaten their breakfast, they walked up to the house with Nelly. Rob stayed behind with Arthur, entirely absorbed in the microscope. Nelly's feet seemed hardly to touch the ground: she was so excited in the thought of taking Mrs. Cook to see her mother. She utterly forgot all the changes which the three years had brought to them: she forgot how poor they were, and that her mother was at that moment hard at work churning butter. She forgot every thing except that she had found her old friend, and was about to give her mother a great surprise. She opened the door into the sitting-room, and, crying, "Mamma! mamma! who do you think is here?" she ran on into the kitchen, turning back to Mr. and Mrs. Cook and crying, "Come out here! Here she is!" Mrs. March looked up from her churning, much astonished at the interruption, and still more astonished to see two strangers standing in her kitchen doorway, and evidently on such intimate terms with Nelly. Mrs. March had on a stout tow-cloth apron which reached from her neck to her ankles; this was splashed all over with cream. On her head she had a white handkerchief, bound tight like a turban. Altogether she looked as unlike the Mrs. March whom Mrs. Cook had seen in the cars as Mrs. Cook looked unlike the Mrs. Williams. But Mrs. Cook's smile was one nobody ever forgot. As soon as she smiled, Mrs. March exclaimed:-- "Why, Mrs. Williams! how glad I am to see you again. Pray excuse me a minute, till I can take myself out of this buttery apron: walk back into the sitting-room." "No, no!" laughed Mr. Cook, "I know a great deal better than that! I was brought up on a farm. You can't leave that butter! Here! give me the apron, and let me churn it: it's twenty-five years since I've churned; but I believe I can do it." And, without giving Mrs. March time to object, he fairly took the apron away from her, and tied it around his own neck, and began to churn furiously. "Now you two go in and sit down," he said, "and leave this little girl and me to attend to this butter. You'll see how soon I'll 'bring' it!" And indeed he did. His powerful arms worked as if they were driven by steam; and in less than a quarter of an hour the butter was firm and hard, and Nelly and Mr. Cook had become good friends. He liked the quiet, grave little girl very much; but, after all, his heart warmed most to Rob, and the greater part of his talk with Nelly was about her brother. In the meantime, Mrs. Cook and Mrs. March were having a full talk about all that had happened. There was something about Mrs. Cook which made people tell her all their affairs. She never asked questions or pried in any way, but she was brimful of sympathy and kindly intent; and to such persons everybody goes for comfort and advice. Mrs. March had always remembered her with affectionate gratitude for her goodness to Nelly, and she was glad of the opportunity, even three years late, to thank her for that beautiful wax doll. "It is as good as new now," she said. "Nelly keeps it rolled in tissue paper, in the box. She does not play with dolls any more, but it is still her chief treasure." "Not play with dolls!" exclaimed Mrs. Cook: "why, she is not fifteen." "I know it," replied Mrs. March, "but our hardworking life here has made both the children old for their years: especially Nelly. She was naturally a thoughtful, care-taking child. Rob is of a more mirthful, adventurous temperament. He has taken the jolly side of the life here; but Nelly has grown almost too sober and wise. She is a blessed child." "Yes, indeed, she is," replied Mrs. Cook; "and she was so when I first knew her. I never could forget her earnest face. I want you to let her and Rob too be with us just as much as possible while we are here. We shall stay a month: perhaps six weeks, if it does not grow too cold. We find it is much better for Arthur to stay quietly in one place than it is to move about. He gains much more. Travelling tires him dreadfully." "I shall be more than glad to have the children with you as much as possible," replied Mrs. March; "but that will not be so much as I could wish: for we are all working very hard now; and two days each week the children go to Rosita, to sell eggs and butter. That is the greater part of our income this summer." Mrs. March said this in a cheerful tone, and as if it were nothing worth dwelling upon, and Mrs. Cook did not express any surprise; but in her heart she was much grieved and shocked to find that the Marches were so poor, and as soon as she was alone with her husband she told him of it with tears in her eyes. "Only think, Edward," she said, "of those sweet children going about selling eggs and butter in the town." Mr. Cook was a very rich man; but his father and his grandfather had been farmers; and in Mr. Cook's early years he had driven the market-wagon into town many a time and sold potatoes and corn in the market. It did not, therefore, seem so dreadful to him as it did to his wife that Rob and Nelly should carry about eggs and butter to sell in Rosita. Still, he was sorry to hear it, and exclaimed:-- "Do they really? The plucky little toads! That's too bad--for the girl: it won't hurt the boy any!" "Oh, Edward!" said Mrs. Cook, "you wouldn't like to have Arthur do it." "No, I wouldn't like to have him do it," replied Mr. Cook: "most certainly I wouldn't like to have him; but that wouldn't prove that it mightn't be better for him in the end if he had to. But fate has taken all such questions as that out of our hands, so far as poor Arthur is concerned." And Mr. Cook sighed heavily. Arthur's condition was a terrible grief to his father. All the more because he was so well and strong himself, Mr. Cook had a dread of physical pain or weakness. Many times a day he looked at his helpless son, and said in his inmost heart:-- "Rather than be like that, I would die any death that could be invented." It was a mercy that Arthur did not inherit his father's temperament. He was much more like his mother: so long as he could be amused, and did not suffer severe pain, he did not so much mind having to lie still. When Rob said to him, one day:-- "Oh, Arthur, doesn't it tire you horribly to stay in that chair?" Arthur answered:-- "Why, no: it's the easiest chair you ever sat in. You just try it some day. I had one before this that did tire me, though: it was a horrid chair. It wasn't made right; but this is a jolly chair. It's better than the bed." Rob, who had felt guilty the moment he had asked the question, thinking it was not kind, was much relieved at this answer, and thought to himself:-- "Well, that's lucky. He didn't mind my asking him one bit. I guess it's because he's been sick so long he doesn't remember how it felt to run about." CHAPTER XV CHANGES IN PROSPECT I could not tell you one-half of the pleasant things that happened in the course of the next month to Rob and Nelly. They had such good times that they hardly ever thought of their disappointment about the mine. And even Mr. and Mrs. March thought less and less about it every day, they were so much interested in talking with Mr. and Mrs. Cook. Mr. March and Mr. Cook became good friends very soon. Mr. Cook would often work all day long in the fields with Mr. March. He said it made him feel as if he were a boy again, on his father's farm. The days that Rob and Nelly went to Rosita were very long days to Arthur. He was so lonely that Mrs. Cook proposed to her husband one day that they should let Thomas, the driver, take the children up town in the carriage, and bring them right back again. "They need not be gone more than two hours in all," she said. "It is that tiresome walk that takes so long." But Mr. Cook was too wise to do this. "That would not be any true kindness to the children," he said. "It is much better that they should keep on with the regular routine of their life, just as they did before. If they were to have the carriage to take them up to town for a month, it would only make the walk seem very long and hard to them after we are gone. We will give them all the pleasure we can, without altering their way of living." "The mere fact of our being here alters their whole life," said Mrs. Cook. "They have now constant companionship, and a variety of amusements and interests, in Arthur's toys and books, which are all new to them. Before we came, they had solitude, absolutely no amusements, and no occupation except hard work. Nelly told me the other day that she had read every book in their house, twice over." "There are not very many books," said Mr. Cook: "I don't know how March comes to have so few." "Oh, they had to sell ever so many last summer: Mrs. March told me so," replied Mrs. Cook. "By Jove! did they?" exclaimed Mr. Cook. "That was too bad. I wonder if March would take it amiss if I sent him out a box of books this autumn." "I don't know," Mrs. Cook said thoughtfully. "They haven't a particle of false pride, about their work, or selling things, or any thing of that kind; but I doubt their liking presents. They are very independent." The weeks slipped by as if they weren't more than three days long. Rob and Nelly got up before daylight every morning, so as to hurry through their work and go down to the tents,--down to "Arthur's," they always called it, as if it were a house. Sometimes they stayed all day, till it was time for Rob to go for the cows. They read, or they played dominoes or chequers or backgammon; or they put dissected maps together; or they looked at all sorts of things under the microscope; or they painted flowers: this was the nicest thing of all. Mrs. Cook drew and painted beautifully. She had taught Arthur, so that he could paint a little simple flower really very well; and he had a beautiful paint-box, full of real good paints, such as artists use,--not such as are put in toy-boxes for children. This was the thing Nelly enjoyed best. Then Ralph, the cook, used to go off gunning every day, and he brought home beautiful birds, and Arthur and Rob used to nail the wings on boards to dry. Arthur had a little table that fitted across his chair, and on this table he could pound pretty hard; and he made a good many pretty things out of wood. It seemed to Rob that there wasn't any thing in the whole world which Flora could not bring out of the two big black boxes which stood in her tent, and held Arthur's things. As for books, he had fifty: every one of Mayne Reid's. When Rob saw those he was delighted. "Oh, Arthur! Arthur! ain't they splendid! I've had 'The Cliff Climbers.'" "I don't think so," said Arthur. "They're all about hunting and fighting, and such things." "Oh, my!" said Rob, "don't you like that? That's just what I like. I'll read some of 'em to you. I bet you'd like them." And when Rob read them to him, Arthur really did like them. He could not help sharing Rob's enthusiasm; but when Rob exclaimed:--"Oh, Arthur, don't you wish you could go to the Himalayas?" poor Arthur only shuddered, and said:-- "No, indeed! it shakes you so awfully to go in the cars." Rob did not ask him again; but he told Nelly at night what Arthur had said, and he added:-- "Say, Nell, if I should ever get to be like Arthur, I'd take poison." "Why, Rob!" cried Nelly, "that's awfully wicked! You wouldn't ever dare to!" And Nelly turned pale with fright. "I expect it is," said Rob; "but I reckon I'd do it! Why, Nell, I'd just have to!" Mrs. Cook sat with the children hours at a time, and listened to their talk and play. She and her husband took a drive or a ride every afternoon; but the rest of the time she did not leave Arthur. The more she saw the influence of Rob and Nelly upon him, the more grateful she felt for the strange chance which had brought them together. Arthur was really growing better. He had more color, more appetite, and very seldom complained of pain. He had something to think of beside himself; and he was happy,--the two best medicines in all the world: they will cure more diseases than people dream. One day, Flora said to Mrs. Cook:-- "I suppose, ma'am, ye'll be going soon. There was quite a frost in the north o' the valley last night, Thomas was telling me. They say there'll be snow here before long." "Yes, Flora, I suppose we will have to go very soon: week after next, Mr. Cook thinks," replied Mrs. Cook. Arthur was lying back in his chair, with his eyes shut. They thought he was asleep; but at the sound of these words he opened his eyes, and cried out:-- "I won't go away, mamma! I won't go! You can't make me. I'm not going away ever. I'm going to stay here." "Why, Arthur dear!" said his mother, "you wouldn't like to stay here without papa and without me; and you know papa must go home." "Yes, I would!" cried Arthur: "I've been thinking about it for ever so long. Flora can stay: she can dress and undress me; and I can live in Mrs. March's house, and sleep in Rob's bed. I asked Nelly, and she said I could. Rob can sleep on the lounge. I shan't go home. I hate New York; and if you take me back there I'll get sicker and sicker, and die; and I don't care if I do, if I can't stay here!" Mrs. Cook was grieved and shocked. She had often thought to herself that there was danger that Rob and Nelly would be discontented and lonely when Arthur went away; but strangely enough she had never thought of any such danger for Arthur. She had often wished she could take Nelly home with her to live; but she had dismissed it from her mind as an impossible thing. Now she began to think of it again. She sat a long time in silence, turning it over and over. "Why don't you speak, mamma?" asked Arthur: "are you angry with me?" "No, dear," replied Mrs. Cook: "I am not angry: only very, very sorry; and I am trying to think what we can do to make you happy when we go away. I shall be very sorry if all our pleasant time here only makes you unhappier after you go home. You were very contented before we came here." "I don't think I was very, mamma," said Arthur, sadly. "I always wanted a boy or a girl; and none of the boys and girls in New York cared any thing about me,--only my things; but Nelly is just like my own sister,--at least I guess that's the way sisters are,--and Rob is just like my brother. Mamma, I can't go away! I don't see why you can't leave me. You and papa would come back in the spring. Oh, mamma, let me! let me!" And poor Arthur began to cry. Mrs. Cook put her arms around him, and laid her face down close to his. "My darling child!" she said, "haven't papa and I done every thing we possibly could to make you happy always?" "Yes," sobbed Arthur; "and that's why I think you might leave me here." "Dear boy, you don't seem to think," said his mother, "how lonely papa and I would be without you." "Oh, mamma, would you, really? How could you be? I'm only a bother: I can't go round with you or any thing. I think you'd have a great deal better time without me. Perhaps I'd get so I could walk if I stayed here all winter. You know one doctor said I ought to stay a whole year." "Arthur, dear," said Mrs. Cook, earnestly, "do not talk any more about this now. Promise mamma that you will try not to think about it either; and I promise you I will talk to papa and see what he thinks can be done. All we want in this world is to make you happy, and do what is best for you." "Will you ask him to let me stay?" cried Arthur. "I will tell him how you feel about being separated from Nelly and Rob," replied his mother; "and I think we can arrange in some way." Mrs. Cook had already made up her mind what she would do. She would ask Mrs. March to let Nelly go back with them to New York for the winter. She knew that Mr. Cook would be willing; and she believed that Mrs. March might be persuaded to consent, on account of the advantage it would be to Nelly. But she would not mention this plan to Arthur now, because he would only be all the more disappointed if it failed. Arthur leaned his head back in his chair, and shut his eyes again. "Oh, dear!" he said, "crying does always make my head ache so!" "Yes, dear," said his mother, "that is reason enough, if there were no other, why you should try hard to behave like a man always, and never let any little thing upset you enough to make you cry." "I know it," said Arthur, forlornly; "but you cry before you think you're going to; and then you can't stop." As soon as Mrs. Cook was alone with her husband, she told him what Arthur had said. "I am not at all surprised," he replied: "I have been expecting it." "Of course it would never do to leave the child here," said Mrs. Cook. "Of course not," said Mr. Cook. "But I'll tell you what we might do: take Rob and Nelly home with us for the winter. I think their father and mother would let them go." "Rob too?" said Mrs. Cook. "Rob too!" echoed Mr. Cook. "Why, if I could have but one Rob would be the one; but if we take one we've got to take both: you might as well propose to separate the Siamese twins." "I was thinking of proposing to take Nelly," said Mrs. Cook. "I don't see how Mrs. March could spare them both." "She could easier let them both go than have one left behind to pine. I don't know but it would kill them to be apart from each other. I don't see, though, how you can prefer Nelly to Rob?" "And I don't see how you can prefer Rob to Nelly," answered Mrs. Cook: "as a companion for Arthur, Nelly is twice as good as Rob." "Does Arthur like her better?" asked Mr. Cook. "Yes, I think he does," replied Mrs. Cook: "he seems to lean on her. He is very fond of Rob, too. He said to-day that they were just like his sister and brother." "Let us go down to-night and ask Mr. and Mrs. March about it," said Mr. Cook. "The sooner it is settled the better. If Arthur has got this crotchet in his head about staying, he won't be easy a minute." After tea, Mr. and Mrs. Cook walked down to the house, and proposed the plan. At first, Mr. March said no, most decidedly. But Mrs. March begged him to consider the thing, and not decide too hastily. "Think what a splendid thing it would be for the children," she said. "But think what a desolate winter you would have here without them," said Mr. March. "Oh, no, not desolate!" said Mrs. March: "not desolate with you here. Nelly would write every week. The winter would soon pass away. And, Robert, they may never have another such opportunity in their lives. I think it would be wrong for us to refuse it for them." "Why not consult them?" said Mr. Cook. "I know beforehand what they would say," answered Mr. March. "Nelly would say stay here, and Rob would say go. No: we must decide the question ourselves; and Mrs. March is right: we ought not to decide too hastily. We will let you know in the morning." "You understand, I hope," said Mrs. Cook, "that it is a very great favor, for the sake of our helpless boy, that we ask it. It is really asking you to give up your two children for a time, just to make our one happy." "I understand that," replied Mr. March; "but you must know that it is also a very great obligation under which we lay ourselves to you. I feel it to be such, and I confess I shrink from it: I can never repay it." "Nonsense!" said Mr. Cook. "The obligation is all on our side; and if you had ever had a poor helpless child like Arthur, you could realize it. Why, March, I'd give all my fortune this moment, and begin at the bottom and make it all over again, if I could see Arthur well and strong as your Rob." And the tears filled Mr. Cook's eyes, as he shook hands with Mrs. March, and bade her good-night. Mr. and Mrs. March talked nearly all night before they could come to a decision about this matter. It was a terrible thing to them to look forward to a whole winter without the children. But Mrs. March continually said:-- "Robert, suppose we never have another chance to give either of them such an opportunity of pleasure and improvement as this. How shall we feel when we look back? We should never forgive ourselves." So it was decided that the children should go. In the morning Mrs. March said to Nelly:-- "You'll miss Arthur when he goes: won't you?" Nelly hesitated, and finally said:-- "Arthur says he won't go!" "Won't go!" exclaimed Mrs. March: "what does he mean?" "He is going to ask his father to ask you to let him stay here with us," replied Nelly. "I thought he might sleep in Rob's bed. Rob says he'd just as soon sleep on the lounge; and I thought you'd be willing. He's such a poor dear! I could take all the care of him." "Would you really like to have him?" said Mrs. March. "Oh, yes, indeed, mamma, ever so much! I love him as well as I do Rob,--almost: not quite, I guess, because he isn't my own brother; but it is so hard for him to be sick, that makes me love him more." "Mr. and Mrs. Cook came down here last night to ask us to let you and Rob go back to New York with them for the winter," said Mrs. March, very quietly, watching Nelly's face as she spoke. It turned scarlet in one second, and the voice was almost a shriek in which Nelly cried out:-- "Oh, mamma! how perfectly splendid! Can we go?" Then in the very next second she said:-- "But you couldn't spare us: could you? You couldn't stay here all alone." And her face fell. "Yes, I think we could spare you; and we have said you might go," said Mrs. March, smiling. Nelly's arms were round her mother's neck in one moment, and she was kissing her and half laughing and half crying. "Oh, mamma! mamma!" she said, "I can't tell whether I am glad or sorry. I don't want to go away from you; but oh! if you only could hear Arthur tell of all the beautiful things in New York! Oh! I don't know whether I am sorry or glad!" But Mrs. March knew very well that she was glad, and this made it much easier for her to bear the thought of the separation. If Nelly, the quiet Nelly, were as glad and excited as this, how do you suppose the adventurous Rob felt, when he heard the news? The house wouldn't hold him. He had to run out and turn summersaults on the grass. Then he raced off down to the tents, and told Flora and Ralph and Thomas. It was early in the morning, and Arthur was not up. All the servants were glad. They all liked Rob and Nelly, and they all saw how much better Arthur had grown since he had had children to play with. "Ah, Master Rob," said Thomas, "just wait till I drive ye out in the Park; that's a place worth looking at,--all beautiful green grass, and lakes, and roads as smooth and hard as a beach, and groves of trees,--not like this bare wilderness, I can tell ye." "Are there mountains there, Thomas?" asked Rob. "Mountains! no! The Lord be praised: never a mountain!" exclaimed Ralph; "and if ever I'm thankful for anything, it is to get out of sight of the ugly sides of 'em!" "Oh, Ralph!" was all Rob could say at hearing such an opinion of mountains. When Flora and Thomas brought Arthur out of the tent, Rob ran towards them. "Oh, Arthur--" he began. "I know all about it," said Arthur: "Nelly and you are going home with us. I'd rather stay here, but they won't let me; and having you go home with us is next best." Rob thought this was rather an ungracious way for Arthur to speak, and so it was. "You wouldn't like it here in the winter half so well as you do now, Arthur," he said. "It's awfully cold sometimes; and real deep snow. You'd be shut up in the house lots." "So I am at home," said Arthur: "weeks and weeks." "But your house is nicer to be shut up in than ours," continued Rob. "I don't care," said Arthur: "I wanted to stay. But I'm real glad you and Nelly are going. Can Nelly skate? We'll go and see her skate in the Park." "No, she can't! but I can," said Rob. "Is there good skating there?" "Oh, goodness, Rob!" exclaimed Arthur, "didn't you know about the skating in Central Park? Well, you'll see! We drive up there every pleasant day. I'm sick of it. But the skating's some fun: I wish I could skate." "Perhaps you'll get strong enough to, pretty soon," said Rob, sympathizingly. "If they'd let me stay here I might," said Arthur, fretfully; "but they won't." The nights grew cool so fast that Mr. and Mrs. Cook began to be impatient to set out for home. At first, Mr. and Mrs. March pleaded with them to stay longer; but one morning Mrs. March said suddenly to her husband:-- "Robert, I've changed my mind about the children's going: I think the sooner they go the better. It is just like having a day set for having a tooth pulled: you suffer all the pain ten times over in anticipating it. I can't think about anything else from morning till night. Oh, I do hope we haven't done wrong!" "It isn't too late yet to keep them at home," said Mr. March. "Don't let us do it if your mind is not clear. I don't think Nelly more than half wants to go now." "Oh, yes, she does!" replied Mrs. March. "She is so excited in the prospect that she talks in her sleep about it. I heard her, last night." "The dear child!" said Mr. March. "It was Nelly that they really wanted most." "Not at all," said Mrs. March, quickly: "Mr. Cook told me that he would have only asked for Rob, but he knew the children could not be separated." "Well, that's odd," said Mr. March. "Mrs. Cook told me that she had been long thinking that she wished she could have Nelly, but she knew it would be out of the question to separate the children." Mrs. March laughed. "I see," she said: "they disagree about the children, just as you and I do. Mrs. Cook likes Nelly best, and Mr. Cook likes Rob." "Why, Sarah!" exclaimed Mr. March, "what do you mean? We love the children just alike." "Yes, perhaps we love them equally," replied Mrs. March; "but we don't like them equally. I like Rob's ways best, and you like Nelly's. It's always been so, ever since they were born. You'll see Nelly will make a good, loving, lovable woman; but Rob will make a splendid man. Rob will do something in the world: you see if he does not!" Mr. March smiled. "I hope he will," he said. "But as for my little Nelly, I wouldn't ask any thing more for her than to be, as you say, 'a good, loving, lovable woman.'" CHAPTER XVI "GOOT-BY AND GOOT LUCK" When Nelly heard that they were to set out in three days, she exclaimed:-- "Why, I didn't bid Ulrica good-by, or Mr. Kleesman, or Billy and Lucinda. I thought we weren't going for two weeks. Mayn't I go up to-morrow, mamma? I can sell some eggs, too, even if it isn't the regular day. Ever so many people ask me for them always. Hardly anybody keeps hens in Rosita." Mrs. March said she might go. So, very early the next morning, Nelly set off on her last trip to Rosita. Billy was standing in his doorway as she passed. "Hullo, Nelly! Where's Rob?" he said. "Rob's at home with Arthur," she replied. "He didn't want to come. I only came to bid everybody good-by. We're going day after to-morrow." "Be yer?" said Billy, slowly. "Be yer glad, Nelly?" "Why, yes, Billy, I can't help being glad; and for all that, it makes me cry when I think about going away from mamma and papa. Isn't that queer?" said Nelly: "I'm glad, and yet it makes me cry." "No, 'tain't queer," said Billy: "'twould be queerer if ye didn't. Ain't Rob goin' to bid anybody good-by?" "Oh, he'll have time when we go by, the day we go," said Nelly. "We're all coming up to Rosita to sleep to-morrow night at the hotel; and then papa and mamma and Rob and I are going in the stage to Canyon City. There isn't room for any more in Mr. Cook's carriage. Perhaps Rob'll go in the wagon with Ralph and Thomas. He wants to; but mamma wants to see all of him she can. "That's just the difference between them two children, Luce," said Billy, after Nelly had walked on: "Rob he's all for himself, without meanin' to be, either; he jest don't think: but Nelly she's 's thoughtful 's a woman about everybody." "I donno why you say 's thoughtful 's a woman, Billy," said Lucinda. "I've seen plenty of women that was as selfish as any men ever I see." "Well, I expect that's so, Luce," said Billy. "You ought to know, bein' a woman." Nelly went first to Ulrica's. Ulrica listened with wide open mouth and eyes to the news that she would see Nelly no more all winter. At first, her face was very sad; but in a few moments she said:-- "Bah! shame me to be sorry. It are goot! goot! Ulrica vill be glad. Ven you come back?" "Early next summer," replied Nelly. "Mr. Cook always comes to Colorado in June." Ulrica ran to the big oak-chest, and opening it took out the blue skirt and red bodice she had been making for Nelly. "See! it are not done: that goot-for-not'ing Sachs he promise, promise, all de time promise to make buttons." "What is it, Ulrica?" asked Nelly. "Oh, you not know? It are gown,--Swede gown for you: like mine child." And she ran for the picture-book of costumes, and pointed to one like it. Nelly was much pleased. "Oh! how good of you, Ulrica!" she said. "Mrs. Cook would love to see me put that dress on, I am sure. I will wear it sometimes in the house, when I am in New York, to remind me of you." "I get buttons to-day!" said Ulrica, fiercely. "I stay by dat Sachs till he cut dem. It are not work: he do it in five minnit. You come again to-night: it are done." Mrs. Clapp and Mr. Kleesman were both very much pleased to hear that Nelly was going away with Mr. and Mrs. Cook. Mrs. Clapp kissed her, and said:-- "Good-by, dear! You are a brave little girl, and deserve to have a nice, long play-spell; and I am glad you are going to have one. Wait a minute, and I will give you something to wear on your journey." Then she ran upstairs, and brought down a nice leather belt with a pretty little leather bag hanging from it, just big enough to hold a purse. "There, that is to keep your purse in, and your railroad ticket," she said, and fastened it around Nelly's waist. Mr. Kleesman also kissed Nelly, and said he was glad she was going. "You haf earn that you haf playtime," he said. "You haf vork all summer like von voman more as von little girl." "I wonder why they all say such things to me," thought Nelly. "I am sure I don't know what I have done. If they mean selling the eggs, that was only fun." "Do you mean selling the eggs, sir?" asked honest Nelly. "That was not work: it was just fun. Rob and I never had such a good time before. We would have liked to come every day." Mr. Kleesman nodded. "I know! I know!" he said. "You are not like American childs." Then he asked:-- "And vat do become of the Goot Luck mine? I not hear not'ing since." "Oh!" said Nelly, "we have almost forgotten about the old mine. It wasn't 'good luck:' was it? But Mr. Scholfield keeps on working at it now. He will not give up that it is not good for any thing." "I say not, it are wort not'ing," replied Mr. Kleesman: "I say it not pay to work it. It cost too much for so little silver as come out." "Yes, sir; papa understood that," said Nelly; "and he was very much obliged to you indeed; and so we all were." Then Mr. Kleesman said:-- "Come in! come in! Can you to vait von little? I make for you silver rose, that you carry viz you." "Oh, thank you!" said Nelly; and followed him in, wondering much what he meant by a silver rose. Then he took out of the glass box, where the brass scales were, a little saucer, full of tiny silver beads like pin-heads. These he folded up in a bit of paper, shaped like a little cocked hat. This he put into one of the little clay cups, and set it in the glowing red-hot oven. Pretty soon Nelly looked in. The silver was boiling and bubbling in the little cup; the bubbles looked like shining silver eyes on the red; then there came beautiful rainbow colors all over it. "See you it haf colors like rainbow?" said Mr. Kleesman: "ven dey come it are almost done." In a second more he took out the cup: set it on the iron anvil: there was a fiery line of red around the silver button: the button was about the size of a three-cent piece. "Vatch! vatch!" cried Mr. Kleesman: "in one second it burst." Sure enough, in one second the round button burst in the middle, and the hot silver gushed up like a little fairy fountain of water, not more than quarter of an inch high: in the same instant it fell, cooled, and there was a sort of flower, not unlike a rose, of frosted silver. "Dere! ven you are in New York, you can take dis to jeweller, and he put pin on it; and you shall vear it, and tell to all peoples you haf seen it ven it vas made by old man in de Colorado mountains." Nelly took the pretty thing in her hands and looked at it with delight. She had never had any thing so pretty, she thought; and she thanked Mr. Kleesman again and again, as she bade him good-by. "Oh, I see you again: I see you ven you go in stage. I not say good-by to-day," he said, and looked after her lovingly as she ran down the steps. Ulrica had a stormy time of it with Sachs, the tin-man, before she could get him to cut out the make-believe buttons for Nelly's gown. He was at work on a big boiler, and he did not want to stop. Ulrica's broken English grew so much more broken when she was angry, that hardly any one could understand her; and William Sachs, who was a German, knew English very little better than Ulrica: so between them they made sad work of it. "I stamp my foot at him," said Ulrica, telling Nelly the tale: "I stamp at him my foot, and I take out of his hand his big hammer vat he pound, pound viz all time dat I am speak, so dat he not hear my speak. I take out his hand, and I frow down on floor; and I say, 'I not stir till you my buttons haf cut for mine child;' and ven he see I not stir, he take tools and he cut, cut, cut, and all the time he swear at me; he call me 'tam Swede woman;' but I not care. And here are gown: now you come in and put on." So Nelly went in, and Ulrica helped her to undress. When she saw Nelly's white neck, she stooped down and kissed her, and said.-- "Mine child haf white skin: like your skin." The red bodice fitted Nelly very well; and she looked lovely in it. It had a low collar, all covered with the shining tin buttons; and in the front there was a square space of white muslin, and the tin buttons were sewed on all round this. The blue petticoat was too long: it lay on the ground two inches or more. Ulrica looked at it dismayed. "Ach!" she said: "ach! you haf not so tall I tink. I make him now in von little more as short." And down on the floor she sat, and hemmed up the skirt in a wonderfully quick time. "Ach! if you vait till Jan see you in dis," she said, looking imploringly at Nelly, with tears running down her face. "You are mine child, mine child!" But Nelly knew that Jan would not be at home till six o'clock, and she could not stay so long. So she took off the pretty costume, and kissed Ulrica, and thanked her many times over; and set off for home with all her presents safe-packed in her basket. When Rob saw the presents, he said:-- "Oh, my! I wonder if they'd all have given me things too, if I'd gone up. Did they say any thing about me?" "They asked why you didn't come," replied Nelly; "and I told them you meant to bid them good-by to-morrow, when we started on the journey." "All right!" said Rob: "if they've got any thing for me they can give it to me then." "I never thought of their giving me any thing," said Nelly: "I wonder what made them." "Because they all know that you love them, Nelly," said her father: "don't you?" "Yes, I think so," said Nelly, hesitatingly: "almost love them,--not quite, I guess: except Ulrica. I love her dearly." "And Lucinda and Billy," added Rob. "I love them best of all. I don't love any of the rest. You can't love everybody." At sunset the next night, the March house was shut up; the tents were all gone; the whole place looked deserted and silent. Everybody had gone: Mr. and Mrs. Cook and Flora and Arthur in the carriage: Ralph and Thomas and Rob in the white-topped wagon; and Mr. and Mrs. March and Nelly in Mr. Scholfield's buggy, which he had lent them. They drove up to Rosita in time to see the sunset from the top of the hill. Nelly looked at the mountains as they changed from blue to purple, and from purple to dusky gray: she did not speak. At last her mother said:-- "You won't forget how the mountains look: will you, Nelly?" "Not a bit more than I'll forget how you and papa look!" said Nelly: "not a bit!" After tea, Rob went to bid Mrs. Clapp and Mr. Kleesman and Ulrica and Jan good-by. Everybody spoke very cordially to him, and hoped he would have a good time; but nobody gave him any thing, and Rob was a good deal disappointed. He said nothing about it when he came home: he was ashamed to. But Nelly knew how he felt, just as well as if he had told her; and in her good little heart she was very sorry for him. "Mamma," she said, "isn't it too bad that none of them gave Rob any thing, when they gave me all those nice things?" "Yes, I'm sorry," said Mrs. March; "but he has not been here so much as you have,--that is the reason: and he is so happy in the prospect of his journey, he will not mind it." The stage from Rosita to Canyon City set off at seven o'clock in the morning. When it drove up to the hotel door, Mr. and Mrs. March and Rob and Nelly were all ready, sitting on the piazza. While they were getting in, Mr. Kleesman's door opened, and he came running up, with his red cotton cap still on his head: in his hurry he had forgotten to take it off. He looked so droll that even Nelly laughed; and this reminded him of his nightcap. "Ach!" he said, and snatched it off and crammed it into his pocket. In a moment more, who should come hurrying up the hill but Jan and Ulrica; and, behind them, Billy and Lucinda. Billy and Lucinda had come up to town the night before, and slept at Lucinda's father's house, so as to be on hand to see Nelly and Rob off. None of the Cook family were up. Their horses would go so much faster than the stage horses, they were not going to set out until noon. Ralph and Thomas had started with the heavy wagon at daylight. There were no other passengers to go in the stage except the Marches: so the driver did not hurry them; and, after they had taken their seats, Jan and Ulrica and Billy and Lucinda all crowded around, saying last words. Ulrica had brought two great bouquets of purple and white asters and golden-rod, the only flowers that were then in bloom. "Dese are for you," she said to the children; but, when they reached out their hands to take them, she shook her head, and said: "No, I frow dem: it haf luck to frow dem." Lucinda had brought a little parcel in which were two knit scarfs, which she had knit herself: one white and one red. The red one was for Rob and the white one for Nelly, she said. They were very pretty. Billy brought a knife for Rob: a capital knife, one with four blades. Rob's face flushed with pleasure. "Why, Billy," he said, "how'd you know I'd lost my knife?" "Oh, I found out," said Billy. The truth was, that Billy had walked all the way down to the tents, a few days before, and asked Ralph and Flora if they knew of any thing Rob wanted; and Flora told him how Rob had lost his knife that very day,--had dropped it in the creek, while he was cutting willows to make whistles of. After Billy had given Rob the knife, he pulled out of his pocket a little parcel done up in white paper, and handed it to Nelly, saying:-- "I dunno 's it'll be of any kind o' use to yer; but I thought 'twas kind o' putty." Nelly opened the paper. It held a queer little scarlet velvet pincushion, in a white ivory frame, which was made so that it could screw on a table. "Oh, how pretty!" said Nelly. "Thank you, Billy. I'll keep it on my table all winter." Mr. Kleesman stood behind the others. He smiled and bowed, and said to Mr. March:-- "You haf goot day. The sun shine on your journey." "Yes," said Mr. March. "I'm afraid it will not shine so bright when we come back without these little people." "No, dat it vill not," said Mr. Kleesman. "Dat it vill not." "Well," said the driver, gathering up the reins in his left hand, and lifting his whip, "I guess we'll have to be movin' along, if you're ready, sir." "All ready," said Mr. March. The driver cracked his whip, and the horses started off on a run, up the hill. "Good-by! good-by!" shouted Rob and Nelly, leaning out. "Goot-by!" cried Ulrica, and flung her bouquets into the stage, into Mrs. March's lap, and Nelly's. "Good-by! good-by!" cried Billy and Lucinda. "Goot-by!" cried Mr. Kleesman; "and goot luck go with you." "That's jest what will go with that Nelly wherever she goes," said Billy, turning to Mr. Kleesman. "You haf known the child?" asked Mr. Kleesman. "Well, yes," said Billy, leisurely, "I may say I know her. I brought 'em here, three years ago last spring; an' me 'n' my wife we lived with 'em goin' on a year. Yes, I know 'em. There ain't any nicer folks in this world; but Nelly she's the pick o' the hull on 'em. She ain't no common child; she ain't, now. She hain't minded no more about that mine o' hern,--that mine she found,--I suppose you've heered all about it--" "Yes, I know," said Mr. Kleesman. "Well," continued Billy, "nobody but me knows how that little gal's heart was set on to thet mine. She'd come an' stand by the hour an' see me work in it. I worked there long o' Scholfield some six weeks: we was all took in putty bad. She'd come an' stand an' look an' look, and talk about what her father 'n' mother could do with the money; never so much 's a word about any thing she'd like herself; an' yet I could see her hull heart was jest set on it. And yet's soon 's 'twas clear an' sartin that the mine wan't good for any thing, she jest give it all up; and there hain't never come a complainin' or a disapp'inted word out o' her mouth. 'Twas her own mine too,--and after her namin' it and all. I've seen many a man in this country broken all up by no worse a disappointment than that child had. She's been jest a lesson to me: she has. I declare I never go by the pesky mine without thinking o' the day when she danced up and sez she, 'I'll name it! I'll name it "The Good Luck!"'" "Ach, veil!" said Mr. Kleesman, "she haf better than any silver mine in her own self. She haf such goot-vill, such patient, such true, she haf always 'goot luck.' She are 'Goot Luck mine' her own self." * * * * * TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: Spelling and punctuation have been retained except as noted. crestfallen and crest-fallen are both used doorstep and door-step are both used Nelly and Nellie were both used, standardized to Nelly. Page 141 beause changed to because (because they come very early) Page 175 than changed to then (then a loud burst of laughter) Page 203 thmselves changed to themselves (settle all such matters themselves) Page 213 by changed to be (be one way to pay) Page 231 stroke changed to stroked (stroked his long, white beard) Page 242 stopped changed to stooped (stooped over and kissed Page 278 seek changed to see (to see her look troubled.); never changed to ever (thing I ever saw) Page 305 ancester changed to ancestor (like my famous ancestor) 
33458	----	THE CAPTAIN OF THE GRAY-HORSE TROOP By HAMLIN GARLAND SUNSET EDITION HARPER & BROTHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON COPYRIGHT, 1901. BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY COPYRIGHT 1902. BY HAMLIN GARLAND [Illustration] CONTENTS I. A CAMP IN THE SNOW II. THE STREETER GUN-RACK III. CURTIS ASSUMES CHARGE OF THE AGENT IV. THE BEAUTIFUL ELSIE BEE BEE V. CAGED EAGLES VI. CURTIS SEEKS A TRUCE VII. ELSIE RELENTS A LITTLE VIII. CURTIS WRITES A LONG LETTER IX. CALLED TO WASHINGTON X. CURTIS AT HEADQUARTERS XI. CURTIS GRAPPLES WITH BRISBANE XII. SPRING ON THE ELK XIII. ELSIE PROMISES TO RETURN XIV. ELSIE REVISITS CURTIS XV. ELSIE ENTERS HER STUDIO XVI. THE CAMP AMONG THE ROSES XVII. A FLUTE, A DRUM, AND A MESSAGE XVIII. ELSIE'S ANCIENT LOVE AFFAIR XIX. THE SHERIFF'S MOB XX. FEMININE STRATEGY XXI. IN STORMY COUNCILS XXII. A COUNCIL AT NIGHT XXIII. THE RETURN OF THE MOB XXIV. THE GRAY-HORSE TROOP XXV. AFTER THE STRUGGLE XXVI. THE WARRIOR PROCLAIMS HIMSELF XXVII. BRISBANE COMES FOR ELSIE XXVIII. A WALK IN THE STARLIGHT XXIX. ELSIE WARNS CURTIS XXX. THE CAPTURE OF THE MAN XXXI. OUTWITTING THE SHERIFF XXXII. AN EVENTFUL NIGHT XXXIII. ELSIE CONFESSES HER LOVE XXXIV. SEED-TIME XXXV. THE BATTLE WITH THE WEEDS XXXVI. THE HARVEST-HOME XXXVII. THE MINGLING OF THE OLD AND THE NEW THE CAPTAIN OF THE GRAY-HORSE TROOP I A CAMP IN THE SNOW Winter in the upper heights of the Bear Tooth Range is a glittering desolation of snow with a flaming blue sky above. Nothing moves, nothing utters a sound, save the cony at the mouth of the spiral shaft, which sinks to his deeply buried den in the rocks. The peaks are like marble domes, set high in the pathway of the sun by day and thrust amid the stars by night. The firs seem hopeless under their ever-increasing burdens. The streams are silenced--only the wind is abroad in the waste, the tireless, pitiless wind, fanged like ingratitude, insatiate as fire. But it is beautiful, nevertheless, especially of a clear dawn, when the shadows are vividly purple and each rime-wreathed summit is smit with ethereal fire, and each eastern slope is resplendent as a high-way of powdered diamonds--or at sunset, when the high crests of the range stand like flaming mile-stones leading to the Celestial City, and the lakes are like pools of pure gold caught in a robe of green velvet. Yet always this land demands youth and strength in its explorer. King Frost's dominion was already complete over all the crests, over timber-line, when young Captain Curtis set out to cross the divide which lay between Lake Congar and Fort Sherman--a trip to test the virtue of a Sibley tent and the staying qualities of a mountain horse. Bennett, the hairy trapper at the head of the lake, advised against it. "The snow is soft--I reckon you better wait a week." But Curtis was a seasoned mountaineer and took pride in assaulting the stern barrier. "Besides, my leave of absence is nearly up," he said to the trapper. "Well, you're the doctor," the old trapper replied. "Good luck to ye, Cap." It was sunrise of a crisp, clear autumn morning when they started, and around them the ground was still bare, but by noon they were wallowing mid-leg deep in new-fallen snow. Curtis led the way on foot--his own horse having been packed to relieve the burdens of the others--while Sergeant Pierce, resolute and uncomplaining, brought up the rear. "We must camp beside the sulphur spring to-night," Curtis said, as they left timber-line and entered upon the bleak, wind-swept slopes of Grizzly Bear. "Very well, sir," Pierce cheerily replied, and till three o'clock they climbed steadily towards the far-off glacial heights, the drifts ever deepening, the cold ever intensifying. They had eaten no food since dawn, and the horses were weak with hunger and weariness as they topped the divide and looked down upon the vast eastern slope. The world before them seemed even more inhospitable and wind-swept than the land they had left below them to the west. The air was filled with flying frost, the sun was weak and pale, and the plain was only a pale-blue sea far, far below to the northeast. The wind blew through the pass with terrible force, and the cold nipped every limb like a famishing white wolf. "There is the sulphur spring, sir," said Pierce, pointing towards a delicate strand of steam which rose from a clump of pines in the second basin beneath them. "Quite right, sergeant, and we must make that in an hour. I'd like to take an observation here, but I reckon we'd better slide down to camp before the horses freeze." The dry snow, sculptured by the blast in the pass, made the threadlike path an exceedingly elusive line to keep, and trailing narrowed to a process of feeling with the feet; but Curtis set his face resolutely into the northeast wind and led the way down the gulch. For the first half-mile the little pack-train crawled slowly and hesitatingly, like a bewildered worm, turning and twisting, retracing its way, circling huge bowlders, edging awful cliffs, slipping, stumbling, but ever moving, ever descending; and, at last, while yet the sun's light glorified the icy kings behind them, the Captain drew into the shelter of the clump of pines from which the steam of the warm spring rose like a chimney's cheery greeting. "Whoa, boys!" called Curtis, and with a smile at Pierce, added, "Here we are, home again!" It was not a cheerful place to spend the night, for even at this level the undisturbed snow lay full twelve inches deep and the pines were bowed with the weight of it, and as the sun sank the cold deepened to zero point; but the sergeant drew off his gloves and began to free the horses from their packs quite as if these were the usual conditions of camping. "Better leave the blankets on," remarked the young officer. "They'll need 'em for warmth." The sergeant saluted and continued his work, deft and silent, while Curtis threw up a little tent on a cleared spot and banked it snugly with snow. In a very short time a fire was blazing and some coffee boiling. The two men seemed not to regard the cold or the falling night, except in so far as the wind threatened the horses. "It's hard luck on them," remarked Curtis, as they were finishing their coffee in the tent; "but it is unavoidable. I don't think it safe to try to go down that slide in the dusk. Do you?" "It's dangerous at any time, sir, and with our horses weak as they are, it sure would be taking chances." "We'll make Tom Skinner's by noon to-morrow, and be out of the snow, probably." The young soldier put down his tin cup and drew a map from his pocket. "Hold a light, sergeant; I want to make some notes before I forget them." While the sergeant held a candle for him, Curtis rapidly traced with a soft pencil a few rough lines upon the map. "That settles that water-shed question;" he pointed with his pencil. "Here is the dividing wall, not over there where Lieutenant Crombie drew it. Nothing is more deceptive than the relative heights of ranges. Well, now take a last look at the horses," he said, putting away his pencil, "and I'll unroll our blankets." As they crawled into their snug sleeping-bags Curtis said again, with a sigh, "I'm sorry for the ponies." "They'll be all right now, Captain; they've got something in their stomachs. If a cayuse has any fuel in him he's like an engine--he'll keep warm," and so silence fell on them, and in the valley the cold deepened till the rocks and the trees cried out in the rigor of their resistance. The sun was filling the sky with an all-pervading crimson-and-orange mist when the sergeant crawled out of his snug nest and started a fire. The air was perfectly still, but the frost gripped each limb with benumbing fury. The horses, with blankets awry, stood huddled close together in the shelter of the pines not far away. As the sergeant appeared they whinnied to express their dependence upon him, and when the sun rose they turned their broadsides to it gratefully. The two men, with swift, unhesitating action, set to work to break camp. In half an hour the tent was folded and packed, the horses saddled, and then, lustily singing, Curtis led the way down upon the floor of the second basin, which narrowed towards the north into a deep and wooded valley leading to the plains. The grasp of winter weakened as they descended; December became October. The snow thinned, the streams sang clear, and considerably before noon the little train of worn and hungry horses came out upon the grassy shore of a small lake to bask in genial sunshine. From this point the road to Skinner's was smooth and easy, and quite untouched of snow. As they neared the miner's shack, a tall young Payonnay, in the dress of a cowboy, came out to meet them, smiling broadly. "I'm looking for you, Captain." "Are you, Jack? Well, you see me. What's your message?" "The Colonel says you are to come in right off. He told me to tell you he had an order for you." A slouching figure, supporting a heap of greasy rags, drew near, and a low voice drawled, weakly: "Jack's been here since Friday. I told him where you was, but he thought he'd druther lay by my fire than hunt ye." Curtis studied the squat figure keenly. "You weren't looking for the job of crossing the range yourself, were you?" The tramplike miner grinned and sucked at his pipe. "Well, no--I can't say that I was, but I like to rub it into these lazy Injuns." Jack winked at Curtis with humorous appreciation. "He's a dandy to rub it into an Injun, don't you think?" Even Skinner laughed at this, and Curtis said: "Unsaddle the horses and give them a chance at the grass, sergeant. We can't go into the fort to-night with the packs. And, Skinner, I want to hire a horse of you, while you help Pierce bring my outfit into the fort to-morrow. I must hurry on to see what's in the wind." "All right, Captain, anything I've got is yours," responded the miner, heartily. The bugles were sounding "retreat" as the young officer rode up to the door of Colonel Quinlan's quarters and reported for duty. "Good-evening, Major," called the Colonel, with a quizzical smile and a sharp emphasis on the word major. "Major!" exclaimed Curtis; "what do you mean--" "Not a wholesale slaughter of your superiors. Oh no! You are Major by the grace of the Secretary of Indian Affairs. Colonel Hackett, of the War Department, writes me that you have been detailed as Indian agent at Fort Smith. You'll find your notification in your mail, no doubt." Curtis touched his hat in mock courtesy. "Thanks, Mr. Secretary; your kindness overwhelms me." "Didn't think the reform administration could get along without you, did you?" asked the Colonel, with some humor. He was standing at his gate. "Come in, and we'll talk it over. You seem a little breathless." "It does double me up, I confess. But I can't consistently back out after the stand I've made." "Back out! Well, not if I can prevent it. Haven't you hammered it into us for two years that the army was the proper instrument for dealing with these redskins? No, sir, you can't turn tail now. Take your medicine like a man." "But how did they drop onto me? Did you suggest it?" The Colonel became grave. "No, my boy, I did not. But I think I know who did. You remember the two literary chaps who camped with us on our trial march two years ago?" The young officer's eyes opened wide. "Ah! I see. They told me at the time that they were friends of the Secretary. That explains it." "Your success with that troop of enlisted Cheyennes had something to do with it, too," added the Colonel. "I told those literary sharps about that experience, and also about your crazy interest in the sign-language and Indian songs." "You did? Well, then you _are_ responsible, after all." The Colonel put his hand on his subordinate's shoulder. "Go and do the work, boy! It's better than sitting around here waiting promotion. If I weren't so near retirement I'd resign. I have lived out on these cursed deserts ever since 1868--but I'll fool 'em," he added, with a grim smile. "I'm going to hang on to the last, and retire on half-pay. Then I'll spend all my time looking after my health and live to be ninety-five, in order to get even." Curtis laughed. "Quite right, Colonel," and, then becoming serious, he added, "It's my duty, and I will do it." And in this quiet temper he accepted his detail. Captain George Curtis, as the Colonel had intimated, was already a marked man at Fort Sherman--and, indeed, throughout the western division of the army. He feared no hardship, and acknowledged no superior on the trail except Pierce, who was as invincible to cold and snow as a grizzly bear, and his chief diversions were these trips into the wild. Each outing helped him endure the monotony of barrack life, for when it was over he returned to the open fire of his study, where he pored over his maps, smoking his pipe and writing a little between bugle-calls. In this way he had been able to put together several articles on the forests, the water-sheds, and the wild animals of the region he had traversed, and in this way had made himself known to the Smithsonian Institution. He was considered a crank on trees and Indians by his fellow-officers, who all drank more whiskey and played a better hand at poker than he; "but, after all, Curtis is a good soldier," they often said, in conclusion. "His voice in command is clear and decisive, and his control of his men excellent." He was handsome, too, in a firm, brown, cleanly outlined way, and though not a popular officer, he had no enemies in the service. His sister Jennie, who had devotedly kept house for him during his garrison life, was waiting for him at the gate of his little yard, and cried out in greeting: "How _did_ you cross the range in this weather? I was frightened for you, George. I could see the storm raging up there all day yesterday." "Oh, a little wind and snow don't count," he replied, carelessly. "I thought you'd given up worrying about me." "I have--only I thought of poor Sergeant Pierce and the horses. There's a stack of mail here. Do you know what's happened to you?" "The Colonel told me." "How do you like it?" "I don't know yet. At this moment I'm too tired to express an opinion." From the pile of mail on his desk he drew out the order which directed him to "proceed at once to Fort Smith, and as secretly as may be. You will surprise the agent, if possible--intercepting him at his desk, so that he will have no opportunity for secreting his private papers. You will take entire charge of the agency, and at your earliest convenience forward to us a report covering every detail of the conditions there." "Now that promises well," he said, as he finished reading the order. "We start with a fair expectancy of drama. Sis--we are Indian agents! All this must be given up." He looked round the room, which glowed in the light of an open grate fire. The floor was bright with Navajo blankets and warm with fur rugs, and on the walls his books waited his hand. "I don't like to leave our snug nest, Jennie," he said, with a sigh. "You needn't. Take it with you," she replied, promptly. He glanced ruefully at her. "I knew I'd get mighty little sympathy from you." "Why should you? I'm ready to go. I don't want you trailing about over these mountains till the end of time; and you know this life is fatal to you, or any other man who wants to do anything in the world. It's all very well to talk about being a soldier, but I'm not so enthusiastic as I used to be. I don't think sitting around waiting for some one to die is very noble." He rose and stood before the fire. "I wish this whole house could be lifted up and set down at Fort Smith; then I might consider the matter." She came over, and, as he put his arm about her, continued earnestly: "George, I'm serious about this. The President is trying to put the Indian service into capable hands, and I believe you ought to accept; in fact, you can't refuse. There is work for us both there. I am heartily tired of garrison life, George. As the boys say, there's nothing in it." "But there's danger threatening at Smith, sis. I can't take you into an Indian outbreak." "That's all newspaper talk. Mr. Dudley writes--" "Dudley--is he down there? Oh, you are a masterful sly one! Your touching solicitude for the Tetongs is now explained. What is Dudley doing at Smith besides interfering with my affairs?" "He's studying the Tetong burial customs--but he isn't there at present." "These Smithsonian sharps are unexpectedly keen. He'd sacrifice me and my whole military career to have you study skulls with him for a few days. Do you know, I suspect him and Osborne Lawson of this whole conspiracy--and you--you were in it! I've a mind to rebel and throw everything out o' gear." Jennie gave him a shove. "Go dress for dinner. The Colonel and his wife and Mr. Ross are coming in to congratulate you, and you must pretend to be overjoyed." As he sat at the head of his handsome table that night Curtis began to appreciate his comforts. He forgot the dissensions and jealousies, the cynical speculations and the bitter rivalries of the officers--he remembered only the pleasant things. His guests were personable and gracious, and Jennie presided over the coffee with distinction. She was a natural hostess, and her part in the conversation which followed was notable for its good sense, but Mr. Ross, the young lieutenant, considered her delicate color and shining hair even more remarkable than her humor. He liked her voice, also, and had a desire to kick the shins of the loquacious Colonel for absorbing so much of her attention. Mrs. Quinlan, the Colonel's wife, was, by the same token, a retiring, silent little woman, who smiled and nodded her head to all that was said, paying special attention to the Colonel's stories, with which all were familiar; even Mr. Ross had learned them. At last the Colonel turned to Curtis. "You'll miss this, Curtis, when you're exiled down there at old Fort Smith among the Tetongs. Here we are a little oasis of civilization in the midst of a desert of barbarians; down there you'll be swallowed up." "We'll take civilization with us," said Jennie. "But, of course, we shall miss our friends." "Well, you'll have a clear field for experiment at Smith. You can try all your pet theories on the Tetongs. God be with them!--their case is desperate." He chuckled gracelessly. "When do you go?" asked Mrs. Quinlan. "At once. As soon as I can make arrangements," replied Curtis, and then added: "And, by-the-way, I hope you will all refrain from mentioning my appointment till after I reach Fort Smith." The visitors did not stay late, for their host was plainly preoccupied, and as they shook hands with him in parting they openly commiserated him. "I'm sorry for you," again remarked the Colonel, "but it's a just punishment." After they were gone Curtis turned to his sister. "I must leave here to-morrow morning, sis." "Why, George! Can't you take time to breathe and pack up?" "No, I must drop down on that agent like a hawk on a June-bug, before he has a chance to bury his misdeeds. The Colonel has given out the news of my detail, and the quicker I move the better. I must reach there before the mail does." "But I want to go with you," she quickly and resentfully replied. "Well, you can, if you are willing to leave our packing in Pierce's hands." "I don't intend to be left behind," she replied. "I'm going along to see that you don't do anything reckless. I never trust a man in a place requiring tact." Curtis laughed. "That's your long suit, sis, but I reckon we'll need all the virtues that lie in each of us. We are going into battle with strange forces." II THE STREETER GUN-RACK There is a good wagon-road leading to old Fort Smith from Pinon City, but it runs for the most part through an uninteresting country, and does not touch the reservation till within a few miles of the agency buildings. From the other side, however, a rough trail crosses a low divide, and for more than sixty miles lies within the Tetong boundaries, a rolling, cattle country rising to grassy hills on the west. For these reasons Curtis determined to go in on horseback and in civilian's dress, leaving his sister to follow by rail and buckboard; but here again Jennie promptly made protest. "I'll not go that way, George. I am going to keep with you, and you needn't plan for anything else--so there!" "It's a hard ride, sis--sixty miles and more. You'll be tired out." "What of that? I'll have plenty of time to rest afterwards." "Very well. It is always a pleasure to have you with me, you stubborn thing," he replied, affectionately. It had been hard to leave everything at the Fort, hard to look back from the threshold upon well-ordered books and furniture, and harder still to know that rude and careless hands would jostle them into heaps on the morrow, but Jennie was accustomed to all the hardships involved in being sister to a soldier, and, after she had turned the key in the lock, set her face to the south cheerfully. There was something of the missionary in her, and she had long burned with a desire to help the red people. They got off at a squalid little cow-town called "Riddell" about noon of the second day, and Curtis, after a swift glance around him, said: "Sis, our chances for dinner are poor." The hotel, a squat, battlemented wooden building, was trimmed with loafing cowboys on the outside and speckled with flies on the inside, but the landlord was unexpectedly attractive, a smiling, courteous host, to whom flies and cowboys were matters of course. It was plain he had slipped down to his present low level by insensible declinations. "The food is not so bad if it were only served decently," said Jennie, as they sat at the table eying the heavy china chipped and maimed in the savage process of washing. "I hope you won't be sorry we've left the army, sis." "I would, if we had to live with these people," she replied, decisively, looking about the room, which was filled with uncouth types of men, keen-eyed, slouchy, and loud-voiced. The presence of a pretty woman had subdued most of them into something like decorum, but they were not pleasant to look at. They were the unattached males of the town, a mob of barkeepers, hostlers, clerks, and railway hands, intermixed with a half-dozen cowboys who had ridden in to "loaf away a day or two in town." "The ragged edge of the cloth of gold," said Curtis, as he glanced round at them. "Civilization has its seamy side." "This makes the dear old Fort seem beautiful, doesn't it?" the girl sighed. "We'll see no more green grass and well-groomed men." An hour later, with a half-breed Indian boy for a guide, they rode away over the hills towards the east, glad to shake the dust of Riddell off their feet. The day was one of flooding sunlight, warm and golden. Winter seemed far away, and only the dry grass made it possible to say, "This is autumn." The air was without dust or moisture--crystalline, crisp, and deliciously invigorating. The girl turned to her brother with radiant face. "This is living! Isn't it good to escape that horrid little town?" "You'd suppose in an air like this all life would be clean and sweet," he replied. "But it isn't. The trouble is, these people have no inner resource. They lop down when their accustomed props are removed. They come from defective stock." The half-breed guide had the quality of his Indian mother--he knew when to keep silence and when to speak. He led the way steadily, galloping along on his little gray pony, with elbows flapping like a rooster about to take flight. There was a wonderful charm in this treeless land, it was so lonely and so sinister. It appealed with great power to Curtis, while it appalled his sister. The solitary buttes, smooth of slope and grotesque of line; the splendid, grassy hollows, where the cattle fed; the burned-up mesas, where nothing lived but the horned toad; the alkaline flats, leprous and ashen; the occasional green line of cottonwood-trees, deep sunk in a dry water-course--all these were typical of the whole vast eastern water-shed of the continental divide, and familiar to the young officer, for in such a land he had entered upon active service. It was beautiful, but it was an ill place for a woman, as Jennie soon discovered. The air, so dry, so fierce, parched her skin and pinched her red lips. The alkali settled in a gray dust upon her pretty hair and entered her throat, increasing her thirst to a keen pain. "Oh, George! here is a little stream," she cried out. "Courage, sis. We will soon get above the alkali. That water is rank poison." "It looks good," she replied, wistfully. "We'll find some glorious water up there in that clump of willows," and a few minutes' hard riding brought them to a gurgling little brook of clear, cold water, and the girl not merely drank--she laved away all traces of the bitter soil of the lower levels. At about four o'clock the guide struck into a transverse valley, and followed a small stream to its source in a range of pine-clad hills which separate the white man's country from the Tetong reservation. As they topped this divide, riding directly over a smooth swell, Curtis drew rein, crying out, "Wait a moment, Louie." They stood on the edge of a vast dip in the plain, a bowl of amethyst and turquoise. Under the vivid October sun the tawny grass seemed to be transmuted into something that shimmered, was translucent, and yet was firm, while the opposite wall, already faintly in shadow, rose by two degrees to snow-flecked mountains, faintly showing in the west and north. On the floor of this resplendent amphitheatre a flock of cattle fed irregularly, luminous as red and white and deep-purple beads. The landscape was silent--as silent as the cloudless sky above. No bird or beast, save the cattle, and the horses the three travellers rode, was abroad in this dream-world. "Oh, isn't it beautiful!" exclaimed Jennie. Curtis sat in silence till the guide said: "We must hurry. Long ways to Streeter." Then he drew a sigh. "That scene is typical of the old time. Nothing could be more moving to me. I saw the buffaloes feed like that once. Whose are the cattle?" he asked of the boy. "Thompson's, I think." "But what are they doing here--that's Tetong land, isn't it?" The guide grinned. "That don't make no difference to Thompson. All same to him whose grass he eats." "Well, lead on," said Curtis, and the boy galloped away swiftly down the trail. As they descended to the east the sun seemed to slide down the sky and the chill dusk rose to meet them from the valley of the Elk, like an exhalation from some region of icy waters. Night was near, but Streeter's was in sight, a big log-house, surrounded by sheds and corrals of various sorts and sizes. "How does Mr. Streeter happen to be so snugly settled on Indian land?" asked Jennie. "He made his location before the reservation was set aside. I believe there are about twenty ranches of the same sort within the lines," replied Curtis, "and I think we'll find in these settlers the chief cause of friction. The cattle business is not one that leads to scrupulous regard for the rights of others." As they clattered up to the door of the ranch-house a tall young fellow in cowboy dress came out to meet them. He was plainly amazed to find a pretty girl at his door, and for a moment fairly gaped with lax jaws. "Good-evening," said Curtis. "Are you the boss here?" He recovered himself quickly. "Howdy--howdy! Yes, I'm Cal Streeter. Won't you 'light off?" "Thank you. We'd like to take shelter for the night if you can spare us room." "Why, cert. Mother and the old man are away just now, but there's plenty to eat." He took a swift stride towards Jennie. "Let me help you down, miss." "Thank you, I'm already down," said Jennie, anticipating his service. The young man called shrilly, and a Mexican appeared at the door of the stable. "Hosy, come and take these horses." Turning to Jennie with a grin, he said: "I can't answer for the quality of the grub, fer Hosy is cooking just now. Mother's been gone a week, and the bread is wiped out. If you don't mind slapjacks I'll see what we can do for you." Jennie didn't know whether she liked this young fellow or not. After his first stare of astonishment he was by no means lacking in assurance. However, she was plains-woman enough to feel the necessity of making the best of any hospitality when night was falling, and quickly replied: "Don't take any trouble for us. If you'll show me your kitchen and pantry I'll be glad to do the cooking." "Will you? Well, now, that's a sure-enough trade," and he led the way into the house, which was a two-story building, with one-story wings on either side. The room into which they entered was large and bare as a guard-room. The floor was uneven, the log walls merely whitewashed, and the beams overhead were rough pine boles. Some plain wooden chairs, a table painted a pale blue, and covered with dusty newspapers, comprised the visible furniture, unless a gun-rack which filled one entire wall could be listed among the furnishings. Curtis brought a keen gaze to bear on this arsenal, and estimated that it contained nearly a score of rifles--a sinister array. Young Streeter opened a side door. "This is where you are to sleep. Just make yourself to home, and I'll rub two sticks together and start a fire." After Jennie left the room, the young fellow turned abruptly. "Stranger, what might I call you?" "My name is Curtis. I'm going over to visit the agency." "She your wife?" He pointed his thumb in Jennie's direction. "No, my sister." "Oh! Well, then, you can bunk with me in this room." He indicated a door on the opposite side of the hall. "When she gets ready, bring her out to the kitchen. It's hard lines to make her cook her own grub, but I tell you right now I think she'd better." As Jennie met her brother a few moments later, she exclaimed, "Isn't he handsome?" "M--yes. He's good-looking enough, but he's just a little self-important, it seems to me." "Are you going to let him know who you are?" "Certainly not. I want to draw him out. I begin to suspect that this house is a rendezvous for all the interests we have to fight. These guns are all loaded and in prime order." "What a big house you have here," said Jennie, ingratiatingly, as she entered the kitchen. "And what a nice kitchen." "Oh, purty fair," replied the youth, busy at the stove. "Our ranch ain't what we'd make it if these Injuns were out o' the way. Now, here's the grub--if you can dig up anything you're welcome." He showed her the pantry, where she found plenty of bacon and flour, and some eggs and milk. "I thought cattlemen never had milk?" "Well, they don't generally, but mother makes us milk a cow. Now, I'll do this cooking if you want me to, but I reckon you won't enjoy seein' me do it. I can't make biscuits, and we're all out o' bread, as I say, and Hosy's sinkers would choke a dog." "Oh, I'll cook if you'll get some water and keep a good fire going." "Sure thing," he said, heartily, taking up the water-pail to go to the spring. When he came back Jennie was dabbling the milk and flour. He stood watching her in silence for some minutes as she worked, and the sullen lines on his face softened and his lips grew boyish. "You sure know your business," he said, in a tone of conviction. "When I try to mix dough I get all strung up with it." She replied with a smile. "Is the oven hot? These biscuit must come out just right." He stirred up the fire. "A man ain't fitten to cook; he's too blame long in the elbows. We have an old squaw when mother is home, but she don't like me, and so she takes a vacation whenever the old lady does. That throws us down on Hosy, and he just about poisons us. A Mexican can't cook no more'n an Injun. We get spring-poor by the time the old lady comes back." Jennie was rolling at the dough and did not reply to him. He held the door open for her when she was ready to put the biscuit in the oven, and lit another bracket-lamp in order to see her better. "Do you know, you're the first girl I ever saw in this kitchen." "Am I?" "That's right." After a pause he added: "I'm mighty glad I didn't get home to eat Hosy's supper. I want a chance at some of them biscuit." "Slice this bacon, please--not too thick," she added, briskly. He took the knife. "Where do you hail from, anyway?" he asked, irrelevantly. "From the coast," she replied. "That so? Born there?" "Oh no. I was born in Maryland, near Washington." "There's a place I'd like to live if I had money enough. A feller can have a continuous picnic in Washington if he's got the dust to spare, so I hear." "Now you set the table while I make the omelette." "The how-many?" "The omelette, which must go directly to the table after it is made." He began to pile dishes on the table, which ran across one end of the room, but found time to watch her as she broke the eggs. "If a feller lives long enough and keeps his mouth shut and his eyes open he'll learn a powerful heap, won't he? I've seen that word in the newspaper a whole lot, but I'll be shot if I ever knew that it was jest aigs." Jennie was amused, but too hungry to spend much time listening. "You may call them in," she said, after a glance at the biscuit. The young man opened the door and said, lazily, "Cap, come to grub." Curtis was again examining the guns in the rack, "You're well heeled." "Haff to be, in this country," said the young fellow, carelessly. "Set down anywhere--that is, I mean anywhere the cook says." Jennie didn't like his growing familiarity, but she dissembled. "Sit here, George," she said, indicating a chair at the end. "I will sit where I can reach the coffee." "Let me do that," said Calvin. "Louie, I guess you're not in this game," he said to the boy looking wistfully in at the door. "Oh, let him come--he's as hungry as we are. Let him sit down," protested Jennie. Young Streeter acquiesced. "It's all the same to me, if _you_ don't object to a 'breed," he said, brutally. Louie took his seat in silence, but it was plain he did not enjoy the insolence of the cowboy. Curtis was after information. "You speak of needing guns--there isn't any danger, I hope?" "Well, not right now, but we expect to get Congress to pass a bill removing these brutes, and then there may be trouble. Even now we find it safer to go armed. Every little while some Injun kills a beef for us, and we want to be prepared to skin 'em if we jump 'em up in time. I wouldn't trust one of 'em as far as you could throw a yearling bull by the tail." "Are they as bad as that?" asked Jennie, with widely open eyes. "They're treacherous hounds. Old Elk goes around smiling, but he'd let a knife into me too quick if he saw his chance. Hark!" he called, with lifted hand. They all listened. The swift drumming of hoofs could be heard, mingled with the chuckle of a carriage. Calvin rose. "That's the old man, I reckon," and going to the door he raised a peculiar whoop. A voice replied faintly, and soon the buggy rolled up to the door and the new-comer entered the front room. A quick, sharp voice cried out: "Whose hat is that? Who's here?" "A feller on his way to visit the agent. He's in there eatin' supper." A rapid, resolute step approached the door, and Curtis looked up to meet the keen eyes of a big, ruddy-faced man of fifty, with hair and beard as white as wool. His eyes were steel-blue and penetrating as fire. "Good-evening, sir. Good-evening, madam. Don't rise. Keep your seats. I'll just drop my coat and sit down with you." He was so distinctly a man of remarkable quality that Curtis stared at him in deep surprise. He had expected to see a loose-jointed, slouchy man of middle-age, but Joseph Streeter was plainly a man of decision and power. His white hair did not betoken weakness or age, for he moved like one in the full vigor of his late manhood. To his visitors he appeared to be a suspicious, irascible, and generous man. "Hello!" he called, jovially, "biscuit! Cal, you didn't do these, nor Hosy, neither." Cal grinned. "Well, not by a whole row o' dogs. This--lady did 'em." Streeter turned his vivid blue eyes on Jennie. "I want to know! Well, I'm much obliged. When did you come?" he asked of Curtis. "About an hour ago." "Goin' far?" "Over to the agency." "Friend of the agent?" "No, but I have a letter of introduction to him." Streeter seemed to be satisfied. "You'll find him a very accommodating gentleman." "So I hear," said Curtis, and some subtle inflection in his tone caused Streeter to turn towards him again. "What did I understand your name was?" "Curtis." "Where from?" "San Francisco." "Oh yes. I think I heard Sennett speak of you. Those biscuit are mighty good. I'll take another. Couldn't persuade you to stay here, could I?" He turned to Jennie. Jennie laughed. "I'm afraid not--it's too lonesome." Cal seized the chance to say: "It ain't so lonesome as it looks now. We're a lively lot here sometimes." Streeter gave him a glance which stopped him. "Cal, you take Hosy and go over to the camp and tell the boys to hustle in two hundred steers. I want to get 'em passed on to-morrow afternoon, or next day sure." Calvin's face fell. "I don't think I need to go. Hosy can carry the orders just as well as me," he said, boyishly sullen. "I want _you_ to go!" was the stern answer, and it was plain that Streeter was commander even of his reckless son. As he rose from the table, Calvin said, in a low voice, to Jennie, "I'll be here to breakfast all right, and I'll see that you get over to the agency." Streeter the elder upon reflection considered that his guests had not sufficiently accounted for themselves, and, after Calvin left, again turned a penetrating glance on Curtis, saying, in a peculiar way, "Where did you say you were from?" "San Francisco," replied Curtis, promptly, and cut in ahead with a question of his own. "You seem to be well supplied with munitions of war. Do you need all those guns now?" "Need every shell. We're going to oust these devils pretty soon, and they know it, and they're ugly." "What do you mean by ousting 'em?" "We're pushing a bill to have 'em removed." "Where to?" "Oh, to the Red River reservation, or the Powder Valley; we're not particular, so that we get rid of 'em." Jennie tingled with indignation as Streeter outlined the plans of the settlers and told of his friction with the redmen, but Curtis remained calm and smiling. "You'll miss their market for your beef, won't you?" "Oh, that's a small item in comparison with the extra range we'll get," and thereupon he entered upon a long statement of what the government ought to do. Jennie rose wearily, and the old man was all attention. "I suppose you are tired and would like to go to bed?" "We are rather limp," confessed Curtis, glad to escape the searching cross-examination which he knew would follow Jennie's retirement. When they were alone the two young people looked at each other in silence, Jennie with big, horrified eyes, Curtis with an amused comprehension of his sister's feeling. "Isn't he a pirate? He doesn't know it, but his state of mind makes him indictable for murder on the high seas." "George, I don't like this. We are going to have trouble if this old man and his like are not put off this reservation." "Well, now, we won't put him off to-night, especially as he is a gallant host. But this visit here has put me in touch with the cattlemen. I feel that I know their plans and their temper very clearly." "George, I will not sleep here in this room alone. You must make up a cot-bed or something. These people make me nervous, with their guns and Mexican servants." "Don't you worry, sis. I'll roll up in a blanket and sleep across your door-sill," and this he did, acknowledging the reasonableness of her fears. III CURTIS ASSUMES CHARGE OF THE AGENT During the night Curtis was quite sure he heard a party of men ride up to the door, but in the morning there remained no signs of them. They were early on their feet, and Calvin, true to his promise, was present to help get breakfast. He had shaved some time during the night, and wore a new shirt with a purple silk handkerchief looped about his neck, and Jennie found it hard to be as cold and severe with him as she had resolved upon. He was only a big, handsome boy, after all. "I'm going to send that half-breed back and take you over to the fort myself," he said to Curtis. "No, I can't have that," Curtis sharply replied. "If you care to ride with us over to the fort I've no objection, but Louie will carry out his contract with us." The truth was, he did not care to be under any further obligation to the Streeters. Breakfast was a hurried and rather silent meal. As they rose, Jennie said, apologetically: "I fear I can't stop to do up the dishes. It is a long, hard ride to the fort." "That's right," replied Calvin, "it's close on thirty-five miles. Never you mind about the dishes. Hosy will swab 'em out." As they were mounting, the elder Streeter said, hospitably: "If you return this way, Mr. Curtis, make my ranch your half-way house." He bowed to Jennie. "My wife will be here then, miss, and you will not be obliged to cook your own meals." "Oh, I didn't mind; I rather enjoyed it," responded Jennie. Calvin was delayed at the start, and came thundering after with a shrill, cowboy yell, his horse running close to the ground with ears viciously laid back. The boy made a fine figure as he swept past them with the speed of an eagle. His was the perfection of range horsemanship. He talked, gesticulated, rolled cigarettes, put his coat on or off as he rode, without apparent thought of his horse or of the ground he crossed. He knew nothing but the life of a cattleman, and spoke quite frankly of his ignorance. "The old man tried to send me to school once. Packed me off to St. Joe. I stayed a week. 'See here, old man, don't do that again,' I says. 'I won't stand for it.' Hell! You might as well tie up a coyote as shut me in a school-room." He made a most picturesque guide as he rode ahead of them, always in view, completing a thousand typical combinations of man and horse and landscape--now suppling in his saddle to look down and a little backward at some "sign," now trotting straight towards a dark opening among the pines, now wheeling swiftly to mount a sudden ascent on the trail. Everything he did was as graceful and as self-unconscious as the movements of a panther. He was a living illustration of all the cowboy stories the girl had read. His horse, his saddle, his peculiar, slouching seat, the roll of clothing behind his saddle, his spurs, his long-heeled boots--every detail was as it should be, and Jennie was glad of him, and of Louis, too. "Yes, it's all here, Jennie," replied Curtis--"the wild country, the Indian, the gallant scout, and the tender maiden." "I'm having a beautiful ride. Since we left the wagon-road it really seems like the primitive wilderness." "It is. This little wedge of land is all these brave people have saved from the flood. They made their last stand here. The reflux from the coast caught them here, and here they are, waiting extinction." The girl's eyes widened. "It's tragic, isn't it?" "Yes, but so is all life, except to Calvin Streeter, and even he wants what he can't get. He told me this morning he wanted to go to Chicago and take a fall out of a judge who fined him for carrying a gun. So even he has his unsatisfied ambition. As he told me about it he snarled like a young tiger." At about one o'clock, Calvin, who was riding ahead, halted on the crest of a timbered ridge and raised a shout. "He's topped the divide!" called Curtis to Jennie, who was riding behind. "We'll soon be in." "I'm glad of it. I'm tired." When they reached the spot where Calvin waited they could look down into the main valley of the Elk, and the agency, a singular village of ancient barracks, sheds, corrals, and red-roofed storehouses was almost beneath them. All about on the low hills the criss-crossing trails gave evidence that the Tetongs were still a nation of horsemen. Theirs was a barren land, a land of pine-clad, precipitous hills and deep valleys, which opened to the east--a region of scant rains and thin, discouraged streams. The sight of the officers' whitewashed quarters and the parade-ground brought a certain sadness to Curtis. "The old garrison don't look as it did when I was here in 188-," he said, musingly. "Army days in the West are almost gone. The Indian war is over. What a waste of human life it was on both sides! Yes, Louie, go ahead." As they alternately slid and trotted down the trail, native horsemen could be seen coming and going, their gay blankets sparkling in the clear air. Others on foot were clustered about the central building, where the flag hung droopingly on a tall staff. As they passed the corral, groups of young Tetongs smiled and nudged each other, but offered no greeting. Neither did the older men, though their keen eyes absorbed every detail of the stranger's dress and bearing. It was plain that they held every white man in suspicion, especially if he came attended by a cowboy. Calvin was elaborately free and easy with them all, eager to show his wide acquaintanceship. "Hello, Two Horns; hello, Hawk," he called to a couple of fine-looking men of middle age. They did not reply. "Hello, Gray Wolf, you old sardine; want to try another horse-race?" Gray Wolf, evidently something of a wag, smilingly replied: "You bet. Got new pony--heap fast." Calvin wheeled and spurred into the bunch of young fellows, who scattered with shouts of laughter, while the Captain and Jennie followed Louie, their guide, to the agency gate. They were met at the fence before the office by two men, one a middle-aged man, with a dirty-gray beard and fat, bloated cheeks, who said, blandly: "Good-morning, sir. Good-morning, miss; nice day." Curtis dismounted. "Are you Mr. Sennett?" "I am--what can I do for you?" He turned to his companion, a tall young man, with innocent gray eyes and a loose, weak mouth: "This is my son Clarence. Clarence, take the lady's horse." "Thank you," said the Captain, as he stepped inside the gate. "I am Captain Curtis, of the cavalry, detailed to take charge of this agency. You have just left the office--have you the keys in your pocket? If so, please surrender them to me. It is an unpleasant duty, but I am ordered to assume absolute control at once." The man's red skin faded to a yellow-gray--the color of his beard. For a moment he seemed about to fall, then the blood came surging back; his cheeks grew purple with its weight. "I'll be damned if I submit. It is an outrage!" "You can't afford to make any trouble. I am sorry to do this, but I am under orders of the department to take you unawares, and on no account to let you return to your office." Sennett began to bluster. "Show me your authority." "My authority is in this paper." He drew the order from his pocket. "If you think a moment you will see that instant acquiescence is best." While Sennett stormed, the two chiefs, Elk and Two Horns, drew near, and lifting his hand, Curtis, using the sign language swiftly, said to them: "I am your new agent. The Great Father has heard that the old agent is bad. I am here to straighten matters out. I am Swift Eagle--don't you remember? I came with Bear Robe. I was only second lieutenant then." The faces of the old chiefs lit up with pleasure. "Ay, we remember! We shake your hands. We are glad you have come." Curtis then asked: "Who is your interpreter--one you can trust, one who can read this paper." The two men looked at each other for a moment. Elk said, "Joe?" Two Horns shook his head; then, catching sight of a man who was regarding the scene from a door-way not very distant, he said, in English: "Him--Nawson. Hay, my friend," he called, "come here!" This observer at once responded to Two Horns' sign. As he came up the chief said: "My friend, here is a paper from Washington; read it for us." Curtis said: "I am Captain Curtis, of the cavalry, detailed to act as agent here. This is my commission." The stranger extended his hand. "I'm glad to meet you, Captain Curtis, very glad, indeed." As they shook hands he added: "I've read your articles on the sign language, et cetera, with great pleasure. My name is Lawson." Curtis smiled. "Are you Osborne Lawson? I'm mighty glad to meet you. This is my sister, Mr. Lawson." Mr. Lawson greeted Jennie with grace, and she liked him at once. His manner was direct and his voice pleasing. He was tall, lean, and a little stooping, but strong and brown. "Now, Captain, what can I do for you?" he asked, turning briskly. "I want you to read this paper to the chiefs here, and then I intend to put a guard on the door. Mr. Sennett is not to be permitted to re-enter his office. These are harsh measures, but I am not responsible for them." Lawson looked thoughtful. "I see." After reading the paper he said to the chiefs: "It is as this man has said. The Great Father has sent him here to take charge of the office. The old agent is cut off--he is not allowed to go back to his office for fear he may hide something. Have Crow put a guard on the door. The new agent will try to find out why you have not received your rations. This is the secret of this paper, and here is the signature of the Secretary. This is a true thing, and you must now obey Captain Curtis. I know him," he said, looking round him. "He is my friend; you can trust him. That is all." "Good! Good!" said the chiefs. "We understand." A short, dark Tetong in a frayed captain's uniform came up. "I am chief of the police," he signed. "What shall I do?" "Guard the door of the office and of the issue house. Let no one but those I bring enter. Will you do as I say?" he asked. "Ay!" replied the officer, whose name was Crow. "Then all is said; go guard the door." Sennett and his son had withdrawn a little from the scene and were talking in low voices. They had placed themselves in the worst possible light, and they felt it. As Curtis reached this point in his orders, Sennett started to cross the road. "Wait a moment, gentlemen," called Curtis. "My orders are very strict. I must precede you. There is a certain desk in your library, Mr. Sennett, which I must search." Sennett flamed out into wild oaths. "You shall not search my private papers." "Silence!" called Curtis. "Another oath and I'll put you in the guard-house." "Do you suppose I'm going to submit to this without protest? You treat me like a criminal." "So far as my orders go, that's what you are," said Curtis. "I give you the benefit of the doubt so long as you act the gentleman, but you must respect the presence of my sister, or I'll gag you." After a pause he added, in a gentler tone: "I don't pretend to judge your case. I am merely obeying the orders of the department." "I have powerful friends in Washington. You will regret this," snarled Sennett. But his son was like one smitten dumb; his breathing was troubled, and his big, gray eyes were childish in their wide appeal. Lawson then spoke. "Can I do anything further, Captain? Command me freely." "No, I think not, except to see that my horses are taken care of and my guide fed. I suppose there is a mess or boarding-house where my sister can get something to eat." "Won't you come to dinner with me?" asked Lawson. "Mrs. Wilcox, some artist friends, and I are messing over in one of the old quarters, and our mid-day dinner is waiting." Curtis smiled grimly. "Thank you, I am on duty. I must dine with Mr. Sennett. Jennie will accept your invitation thankfully." As Curtis walked over to the agency house with Sennett and his son, Jennie looked anxious. "They may do something to him." Lawson smiled. "Oh no, they won't. They are quite cowed, but I'll suggest a guard." He turned to Two Horns and said, in Dakota: "Father, the old agent is angry. The new agent is a brave man, but he is only one against two." "I understand," said the old man, with a smile, and a few minutes later a couple of policemen were sitting on the door-step of the agent's house. It was a sunny place to sit, and they enjoyed being there very much. One of them understood English, and the other was well able to tell an angry word when he heard it spoken. The drowsy hush of mid-day again settled down upon the little cluster of buildings--news, even when it passes swiftly among red people, makes no noise. It walks with velvet foot, it speaks in a murmur; it hastens, but conceals its haste. IV THE BEAUTIFUL ELSIE BEE BEE As Jennie entered the mess-house she uttered a little cry of amazement. Outwardly, it was a rude barrack of whitewashed cottonwood logs, but its interior glowed with color and light. Bright rugs were on the floor, and a big divan in one corner displayed a monstrous black bear-skin. A capacious fireplace, which dated back to the first invasion of the army, filled one end of the hall, which had been enlarged by the removal of a partition. Oil-paintings, without frames, were tacked against the walls, and the odor of fresh pigments lingered in the air. "This is our general meeting-place," explained Lawson. "It smells like a studio," Jennie replied, after a glance around her. A plain, quiet little woman, with a look of inquiry on her face, appeared at the dining-room door, and Lawson called out: "Mrs. Wilcox, this is Miss Curtis, who will stay with us for a few days." As they greeted each other he added: "There is a story to tell, but we are late, and it can wait. Where is Elsie?" "Still at work. She never _would_ come to her meals if we didn't call her." "I'm disposed to try it some day. Will you take charge of Miss Curtis while I go fetch the delinquent?" Under Mrs. Wilcox's direction Jennie prepared for luncheon in an adjoining room, wondering still at the unexpected refinement of the furnishings, and curious to see the artist. As she re-entered the sitting-room a tall girl rose languidly to meet her, and Lawson said: "Miss Curtis, this is Miss Brisbane, the painter of the pictures you see about." Miss Brisbane bowed in silence, while Jennie cried out: "Oh! did you do them? I think they are beautiful!" The sincerity of her voice touched the young artist, and she said: "I'm glad you like them--sometimes I think they're pretty 'bum.'" A slang word on the red lips of the handsome girl seemed wofully out of place to Jennie, who stared at her with the eager curiosity of a child. She was slender and dark, with an exquisite chin, and her hands, though slim and white, were strong and capable. Her eyes were very dark, of a velvety brown-black, and her hair was abundant and negligently piled upon her small head. Altogether she had a stately and rather foreign presence, which made Jennie feel very dowdy and very commonplace. Mrs. Wilcox hurried them all out into the dining-room, where a pretty table was spread for six people. Jennie's attention was absorbed by the walls, which were also lightened with sketches of small, red babies in gay cradles, and of glowing bits of tawny plain and purple butte. "Did you do all of these beautiful things?" she asked. Lawson interposed. "She did, Miss Curtis. Be not deceived. Miss Brisbane's languid manner springs from her theory of rest. When work is finished she 'devitalizes'--I think that is the word--and becomes a rag. But she's a horrible example of industry, spineless as she now appears." Miss Brisbane remained quite unmoved by Lawson's words; smiling dreamily, her red lips, as serene as those of a child, softly shaped themselves to say: "The strung bow needs relaxation." "I think you are right," said Jennie, with sudden conviction. Elsie opened her eyes wide and murmured, "Thank you." Jennie went on: "Now my trouble is just that. I'm always nerved up. I can't relax. Won't you teach me how?" "With pleasure. Are you going to live here?" asked Elsie, with faint accession of interest. "As long as my brother does." "I suppose you've come to teach these ragamuffins?" Lawson here answered for Jennie. "Miss Curtis is a sister to Captain Curtis, who has come to displace your uncle." Miss Brisbane looked up blankly. "I don't understand." Lawson became explicit, and as she listened the girl's hands clinched. "How abominable!" she cried, with eyes aflame. "Not at all. If Mr. Sennett is an honest employé of the government, he should be willing to be searched--if he isn't, then no measure is too harsh. He'll get a thorough raking over, if my impression of the new agent is correct." "My father would not put a dishonest man in this place," insisted Elsie, "and I don't believe Uncle Sennett has done wrong." "Well, now, we'll suspend judgment," retorted Lawson, who knew just when to change his tone. "Captain Curtis is an officer of known ability, and no one can accuse him of prejudice. His living doesn't depend upon pleasing either Mr. Sennett or your father. Undoubtedly the government has good reasons for sending him here, and I for one am willing to accept his judgment." Elsie rose in swift resolution. "I say it is an outrage! I am going to see that Uncle Sennett is not persecuted." Lawson laid his hand on her arm and his voice was sternly quiet. "I think you would better finish your tea. Whatever protest you feel called upon to make can be made later. If you like," he added, in a gentler voice, "I will represent you in the matter and go with you to see Captain Curtis during the afternoon. I don't think we should trouble him now." Elsie resumed her seat without either accepting or rejecting his offer, and the meal continued in some constraint, although Lawson summoned his best humor to cover Elsie's passionate outburst. A few minutes later Elsie sullenly retired to her studio, and Lawson said: "I am going out to see what is going on, Miss Curtis; please make yourself at home here." When the door closed behind him Jennie turned to Mrs. Wilcox. "Why does Mr. Lawson use that tone with Miss Brisbane--are they engaged?" Mrs. Wilcox laughed. "That's just what none of us knows. Sometimes I think they are husband and wife--he lectures her so." * * * * * When Curtis joined the mess in the evening he was weary and a little sombre. Vastly preoccupied with his difficult task at the office, he had given but little attention to Jennie's announcement of having been taken into the bosom of an artistic family messing at the barracks, and when Elsie met him in a regal gown, glittering and changeful, he pulled himself up in surprise and admiration. Elsie, on her part, was eager to see him and ready to do battle, but as he faced her, abrupt, vigorous of movement, keen-eyed and composed--almost stern of countenance--she was a little daunted. He was handsomer than she had expected, and older. His head was impressive, his frame muscular, and his movements graceful. Plainly he was a man of power, one it would be politic to treat with respect. As they took up their napkins at the table Lawson opened out: "Well, Captain, we don't want to seem inquisitive, but we are dying to know what you've been doing this afternoon. We feel on the outside of it all." "Yes," Elsie quickly added, "we want to know whether there is to be a revolution, or only a riot." Curtis turned to her smilingly and replied: "You'll all be disappointed. I've been looking over accounts and holding humdrum audience with my clerks--a very busy but very quiet afternoon--nothing doing, as the phrase goes." "Where is Uncle Sennett?" inquired Elsie. "I tried to find him, but your men would not let me into the office." "You shouldn't have tried," interjected Lawson. "Is he your uncle?" asked Curtis. "He's my father's sister's husband--but that doesn't matter; I'd defend him if he were a stranger. I think he has been shamefully treated. The idea of searching his private desk!" Curtis looked at her keenly. "I am under orders," he said. "Mr. Sennett is nothing to me, one way or the other. The question for answer is--has he abused his office?" "He has not!" exclaimed Elsie. "I _know_ he has not. He is not a man to cheat and steal; he is not a strong man, but he is kind and generous." "Too kind and too generous," muttered Lawson. "I'm sorry to say that the records are against him," replied Curtis, "and his action is against him. He and his son have gone to Pinon City--riding very like fugitives. I had no orders to hold them; indeed, I was glad to let them go." Elsie bit her lips. "He has gone to get aid," she said at last, "and when he comes back you will take a different tone with him." Curtis laughed. "I believe he did say he'd have my hide, or something like that." Lawson put in a word. "He'll do it, too, if the cattle interest can influence the Secretary. Don't tell us any more than is proper, Captain, but--how do you find his accounts?" "In very bad shape. The chiefs say he has been holding back rations and turning in bad beef for some time." "You'd take the word of a nasty Indian against my uncle, or _any_ white man, I can see that," said Elsie, in withering scorn. Curtis turned upon her a most searching glance. "Miss Brisbane, I don't understand your attitude towards me. As a soldier on special duty, detailed almost against my will, I have no prejudice in this affair. It is my duty to see that the treaties of the government are carried out. You seem to think I am started on a line of persecution of your uncle--" he checked himself. "I beg you will not pursue the subject any further." He turned to Lawson with an effort to put aside unpleasant conversation. "Please don't ask me disagreeable questions when I am curious to know the meaning of this artistic invasion of my territory. Who is responsible for these pictures?" Lawson hastened to explain. "This plague of artists is due to me entirely, Captain Curtis. I am doing some studies of the Tetongs, and Miss Brisbane came out to make some illustrations for me. In fact, she suggested coming here rather than to the upper agencies, because of her uncle's presence. Our coming brought others." "I am very glad you came," said Curtis, heartily, "and I will do all in my power to further your work. Please do not allow my coming to change your plans in the slightest degree." Lawson continued: "Intending to stay some months, we concluded to set up a mess and be comfortable--and permit me to say, we hope you'll eat with us until your own goods arrive." "Thank you; I accept with pleasure, for I don't enjoy camping in the tent of my angry predecessor--this company is more to my mind." Elsie's red lips were tremulous with indignation. "You can't blame Mr. Sennett for being angry. You would be if treated in the same way. There is no justice in it. _I_ would never have surrendered those keys to you." Curtis patiently repeated, "My orders were peremptory." "You can't take shelter behind that plea. Your acts are atrocious, and I shall write to my father in Washington and have you investigated." She was beautiful as flame in the glow of her wrath. Curtis seemed struck with a new idea. "Are you the daughter of ex-Senator Brisbane?" She braced herself. "Well, suppose I am?" "Oh, nothing at all--only it explains." "What does it explain?" "Your attitude. It is quite natural for a daughter of Andrew Brisbane to take sides against these people." He was not in a mood to be gallant, and his glance quelled the angry girl. With flushed face and quivering lips she sprang to her feet. "I will not stay to be insulted," she said. Curtis rose as she swept from the room, but checked his instinctive words of apology and returned to his seat in silence. Mrs. Wilcox relieved the painful pause by saying, "Captain Curtis, you must not misjudge Elsie. She is a much better girl than she seems." Lawson was troubled as he said, "She has lashed herself into a great rage over this affair, but as a matter of fact she don't care a hang for Sennett." "I can't apologize for doing my duty," said Curtis, "even to Miss Brisbane." "Certainly not," replied Lawson, though he was deeply hurt by Elsie's display of unreason. As soon as he decently could, he followed her to her studio, where he found her lying in sullen dejection on the big divan. "Bee Bee, you are missing a good dinner," he began, gently. She was instantly ready to fight. "I suppose you blame me for this scene." "I think you are hasty, and a little unreasonable. I know Curtis by reputation, and he is above any petty malice." "You are taking his side against me!" "Not at all, Bee Bee, I am merely trying to show you--" "He looked at me as no man ever dared to look before, and I hate him. He thinks because he has a little authority he can lord it over us all here. I shall write to father at once, telling him just how this little prig of a lieutenant--" "Captain," interrupted Lawson--"for distinguished service." His smile made her furious. She flung herself back on the divan. "Go away. I hate you, too." Lawson, at the end of his patience, went out and closed the door behind him. "What is the matter with the girl?" he said to Mrs. Wilcox. "I've seen her in temper, but never like this. She has taken the most violent antagonism to Curtis." "She'd better let that young man alone," replied Mrs. Wilcox, sagely. "He has a very firm mouth." V CAGED EAGLES The word had gone out among all the red people that the old agent was entirely "cut off," and that a soldier and a sign-talker had come to take his place, and so each little camp loaded its tepees on wagons or lashed them to the ponies and came flocking in to sit down before the Little Father and be inspired of him. The young men came first, whirling in on swift ponies, looking at a distance like bands of cowboys--for, though they hated the cattlemen, they formed themselves on Calvin Streeter as a model. Each wore a wide, white hat and dark trousers, and carried a gay kerchief slung round his neck. All still wore moccasins of buckskin, beautifully beaded and fringed, and their braided hair hung low on their breasts. The old men, who jogged in later in the day, still carried blankets, though they, too, had adopted the trousers and calico shirts of the white man. Several of the chieftains preserved their precious peace-pipes, and their fans and tobacco pouches, as of old, and a few of those who had been in Washington came in wrinkled suits of army-blue. The women dressed in calico robes cut in their own distinctive style, with wide sleeves, the loose flow of the garment being confined at the waist with a girdle. As this was a time of great formality, several of the young girls returned to their buckskin dresses trimmed with elk teeth, which they highly prized. As a race they were tall and strong, but the men, from much riding, were thin in the shanks and bowed out at the knee. They had lost the fine proportions for which they were famed in the days when they were trailers a-foot. "Straight as an Indian" no longer applied to them, but they were all skilled and picturesque horsemen. Lacking in beauty and strength, they possessed other compensating qualities which still made them most interesting to an artist. Their gestures were unstudiedly graceful, and their roughhewn faces were pleasant in expression. Ill words or dark looks were rare among them. In all external things they were quite obviously half-way from the tepee to the cabin. Their homes consisted of small hovels of cottonwood logs, set round with tall tepees and low lodges of canvas, used for dormitories and kitchens in summer. A rack for drying meat rations was a part of each family's possessions. They owned many minute ponies, and their camps abounded in dogs of wolfish breed which they handled not at all, for they were, as of old, merely the camp-guard. Such were the salient characteristics of the Tetongs, westernmost representatives of a once powerful race of hunters, whose home had been far to the east, in a land of lakes, rivers, and forests. They were not strangers to the young soldier; he knew their history and their habits of thought. He now studied them to detect change and found deterioration. "I am your friend," he said to them each and all. "I come to do you good, to lead you in the new road. It is a strange road to me also, for I, too, am a soldier and a hunter; but together we will learn to make the earth produce meat for our eating. Put your hand in mine." He was plunged at once into a wilderness of work, but in his moments of leisure the face of Elsie Brisbane came into his thought and her resentment troubled him more than he cared to acknowledge. He well knew that her birth and her training put her in hopeless opposition to all he was planning to do for the Tetongs, and yet he determined to demonstrate to her both the justice and the humanity of his position. He knew her father's career very well. He had once travelled for two days on the same railway train with him, and remembered him as a boastful but powerful man, whose antagonism no one held in light esteem. Andrew Brisbane had entered the State at a time when its mineral wealth lay undeveloped and free to the taker, and having leagued himself with men less masterly than himself but quite as unscrupulous, had set to work to grasp and hold the natural resources of the great Territory--he laid strong fists upon the mines and forests and grass of the wild land. Once grasped, nothing was ever surrendered. It mattered nothing to him and his kind that a race of men already lived upon this land and were prepared to die in defence of it. By adroit juggling, he and his corporation put the unsuspecting settler forward to receive the first shock of the battle, and, when trouble came, loudly called upon the government to send its troops "in support of the pioneers." In this way, without danger to himself, the shrewd old Yankee had acquired mineral belts, cattle-ranges, railway rights, and many other good things, and at last, when the Territory was made a State, he became one of its senators. Naturally, he hated the red people. They were pestilential because, first of all, they paid no railway charges, and also for the reason that they held the land away from those who would add to his unearned increment and increase the sum total of his tariff receipts. His original plan was broadly simple. "Sweep them from the earth," he snarled, when asked "What will we do with the Indians?" But his policy, modified by men with hearts and a sense of justice, had settled into a process of remorseless removal from point to point, from tillable land to grazing land, from grazing land to barren waste, and from barren waste to arid desert. He had no doubts in these matters. It was good business, and to say a thing was not good business was conclusive. The Tetong did not pay--remove him! Elsie in her home-life, therefore, had been well schooled in race hatred. Tender-hearted where suffering in a dog or even a wolf was concerned, she remained indifferent when a tribe was reported to be starving. Nothing modified her view till, as an art student in Paris, she came into contact with men who placed high value on the redman as "material." She found herself envied because she had casually looked upon a few of these "wonderful chaps," as Newt Penrose called them, and was often asked to give her impressions of them. When she returned to New York she was deeply impressed by Maurice Stewart's enormous success in sculpturing certain types of this despised race. A little later Wilfred J. Buttes, who had been struggling along as a painter of bad portraits, suddenly purchased a house in a choice suburb on the strength of two summers' work among the mountain Utes. Thereupon Elsie opened her eyes. Not that money was a lure to her, for it was not, but she was eager for notice--for the fame that comes quickly, and with loud trumpets and gay banners. In conversation with Lawson one day she learned that he was about to do some pen-portraits of noted Tetong chieftains, and at once sprang to her opportunity. She admired and trusted Lawson. His keen judgment, his definiteness of speech awed her a little, and with him she was noticeably less assertive than with the others of her artist acquaintances. So here now she sat, painting with rigor and immense satisfaction the picturesque rags and tinsel ornaments of the Tetongs. To her they were beggars and tramps, on a scale with the lazzaroni of Rome or Naples. That they were anything more than troublesome models had not been borne in on her mind. She had never professed special regard for her uncle the agent--in fact, she covertly despised him for his lack of power--but, now that the issue was drawn, she naturally flew to the side of those who would destroy the small peoples of the earth. She wrote to her father a passionate letter. "Can't you stop this?" she asked. "No doubt Uncle Henry will go direct to Washington and make complaint. This Captain Curtis is insufferable. I would leave here instantly only I am bound to do some work for Mr. Lawson. We must all go soon, for winter is coming on, but I would like to see this upstart humbled. He treats me as if I were a school-girl--'declines to argue the matter.' Oh! he is provoking. His sister is a nice little thing, but she sides with him, of course--and so does Lawson, in a sense; so you see I am all alone. The settlers are infuriated at Uncle Sennett's dismissal, and will support you and Uncle Henry." In the days that followed she met Curtis's attempts at modifying her resentment with scornful silence, and took great credit to herself that she did not literally fly at his head when he spoke of his work or his wards. Her avoidance of him became so painful that at the end of the third day he said to his sister: "Jennie, I think I will go to the school mess after this. Miss Brisbane's hostility shows no signs of relenting, and the situation is becoming decidedly unpleasant." "George!" said Jennie, sternly. "Don't you let that snip drive you away. Why, the thing is ridiculous! She is here on sufferance--your sufferance. You could order them all off the reservation at once." "I know I could, but I won't. You know what I mean--I can't even let Miss Brisbane know that she has made me uncomfortable. She's a very instructive example of the power of environment. She has all the prejudices and a good part of the will of her father, and represents her class just as a little wild-cat represents its species. She's a beautiful girl, and yet she is to me one of the most unattractive women I ever knew." Jennie looked puzzled. "You are a little hard on her, George. She _is_ unsympathetic, but I think she says a lot of those shocking things just to hurt you." "That isn't very nice, either," he said, quietly. "Well, our goods are on the way, and by Thursday we'll be independent of any one. But maybe you are right--it would excite comment if I left the mess. I will join you all at meals until we are ready to light our own kitchen fire." Thereafter he saw very little of the artists. By borrowing a few necessaries of his head farmer he was able to camp down in the house which Sennett had so precipitately vacated. He was busy, very busy, during the day; but when his work was over and he sat beside his fire, pipe in hand, Elsie's haughty face troubled him. His life had not taken him much among women, and his love fancies had been few. His duties as an officer and his researches as a forester and map-builder had also aided to keep him a bachelor. Once or twice he had been disturbed by a fair face at the post, only to have it whisked away again into the mysterious world of happy girlhood whence it came. And now, at thirty-four, he was obliged to confess that he was as far from marriage as ever--farther, in fact, for an Indian reservation offers but slender opportunity in way of courtship for a man of his exacting tastes. He was not quite honest with himself, or he would have acknowledged the pleasure he took in watching Elsie's erect and graceful figure as she rode past his office window of a morning. It was pleasant to pause at the open door of her studio for a moment and say "Good-morning," though he received but a cold and formal bow in return. She was more alluring at her easel than in any other place, for she had several curious and very pretty tricks in working, and seemed like a very intent child, with her brown hair loosening over her temples, her eyes glowing with excitement, while she dabbed at the canvas with a piece of cheese-cloth or a crumb of bread. She dragged her stool into position with a quick, amusing jerk, holding her brush in her teeth meanwhile. Her blouses were marvels of odd grace and rich color. The soldier once or twice lingered in silence at the door after she had forgotten his presence, and each time the glow of her disturbing beauty burned deeper into his heart, and he went away with drooping head. Mrs. Wilcox took occasion one day to remonstrate with her niece. "Elsie, you were very rude to Captain Curtis again to-day. He was deeply hurt." "Now, aunt, don't _you_ try to convert me to a belief in that tin soldier. He gets on my nerves." "It would serve you right if he ordered us off the reservation. Your remarks to-day before that young Mr. Streeter were very wrong and very injudicious, and will be used in a bad cause. Captain Curtis is trying to keep the peace here, and you are doing a great deal of harm by your hints of his removal." "I don't care. I intend to have him removed. I have taken a frightful dislike to him. He is a prig and a hypocrite, and has no business to come in here in this way, setting his low-down Indians up against the settlers." "That's just what he is trying _not_ to do, and if you weren't so obstinate you'd see it and honor him for his good sense." "Aunt, don't _you_ lecture me," cried the imperious girl. "I will not allow it!" In truth, Mrs. Wilcox's well-meant efforts at peace-making worked out wrongly. Elsie became insufferably rude to Curtis, and her letters were filled with the bitterest references to him and his work. Lawson continued most friendly, and Curtis gladly availed himself of the wide knowledge of primitive psychology which the ethnologist had acquired. The subject of Indian education came up very naturally at a little dinner which Jennie gave to the teachers and missionaries soon after she opened house, and Lawson's remarks were very valuable to Curtis. Lawson was talking to the principal of the central school. "We should apply to the Indian problem the law of inherited aptitudes," he said, slowly. "We should follow lines of least resistance. Fifty thousand years of life proceeding in a certain way results in a certain arrangement of brain-cells which can't be changed in a day, or even in a generation. The red hunter, for example, was trained to endure hunger, cold, and prolonged exertion. When he struck a game-trail he never left it. His pertinacity was like that of a wolf. These qualities do not make a market-gardener; they might not be out of place as a herder. We must be patient while the redman makes the change from the hunter to the herdsman. It is like mulching a young crab-apple and expecting it to bear pippins." "Patience is an unknown virtue in an Indian agent," remarked the principal of the central school--"present company excepted." "Do you believe in the allotment?" asked Miss Colson, one of the missionaries for kindergarten work, an eager little woman, aflame with religious zeal. "Not in its present form," replied Lawson, shortly. "Any attempt to make the Tetong conform to the isolated, dreary, lonesome life of the Western farmer will fail. The redman is a social being--he is pathetically dependent on his tribe. He has always lived a communal life, with the voices of his fellows always in his ears. He loves to sit at evening and hear the chatter of his neighbors. His games, his hunting, his toil, all went on with what our early settlers called a 'bee.' He seldom worked or played alone. His worst punishment was to be banished from the camping circle. Now the Dawes theorists think they can take this man, who has no newspaper, no books, no letters, and set him apart from his fellows in a wretched hovel on the bare plain, miles from a neighbor, there to improve his farm and become a citizen. This mechanical theory has failed in every case; nominally, the Sioux, the Piegans, are living this abhorrent life; actually, they are always visiting. The loneliness is unendurable, and so they will not cultivate gardens or keep live-stock, which would force them to keep at home. If they were allowed to settle in groups of four or five they would do better." Miss Colson's deep seriousness of purpose was evident in the tremulous intensity of her voice. "If they had the transforming love of Christ in their hearts they would feel no loneliness." A silence followed this speech; both men mentally shrugged their shoulders, but Jennie came to the rescue. "Miss Colson, did you ever live on a ranch, miles from any other stove-pipe?" "No, but I am sure that with God as my helper I could live in a dungeon." "You should have been a nun," said Lawson. "I don't mind your living alone with Christ, but I think it cruel and unchristian to force your solitary way of life on a sociable redman. Would Christ do that? Would He insist on shutting the door on their mythology, their nature lore, their dances and ceremonies? Would He not go freely among them, glad of their joy, and condemning only what was hurtful? Is there any record that He ever condemned an innocent pleasure? How do you know but they are as near the Creator's design as the people of Ohio?" The teacher's pretty face was strained and white, and her wide-set eyes were painful to see. She set her slim hands together. "Oh, I can't answer you now, but I know you are wrong--wickedly wrong!" Jennie again broke the intensity of the silence by saying: "Two big men against one little woman isn't fair. I object to having the Indian problem settled over cold coffee. Mr. Lawson, stop preaching!" "Miss Colson is abundantly able to take care of herself," said Slicer, and the other teachers, who had handed over their cause to their ablest advocate, chorused approval. Curtis, who sat with deeply meditative eyes fixed on Miss Colson, now said: "It all depends on what we are trying to do for these people. Personally, I am not concerned about the future life of my wards. I want to make them healthy and happy, here and now." "Time's up!" cried Jennie, and led the woman out into the safe harbor of the sitting-room. After they had lighted their cigars, Lawson said privately to Curtis: "Now there's a girl with too much moral purpose--just as Elsie is spoiled by too little. However, I prefer a wholesome pagan to a morbid Christian." "It's rather curious," Curtis replied. "Miss Colson is a pretty girl--a very pretty girl; but I can't quite imagine a man being in love with her. What could you do with such inexorable moral purpose? You couldn't put your arm round it, could you?" "You'd have to hang her up by a string, like one of these toy angels the Dutch put atop their Christmas-trees. The Tetongs fairly dread to see her coming--they think she's deranged." "I know it--the children go to her with reluctance; she doesn't seem wholesome to them, as Miss Diehl does. And yet I can't discharge her." "Naturally not! You'd hear from the missionary world. Think of it! 'I find Miss Colson too pious, please take her away.'" Both men laughed at the absurdity of this, and Lawson went on: "I wished a dozen times during dinner that Elsie Bee Bee had been present. It would have given her a jolt to come in contact with such inartistic, unshakable convictions." "She would have been here, only her resentment towards me is still very strong." "She has it in for you, sure thing. I can't budge her," said Lawson, smiling. "She's going to have you removed the moment she reaches Washington." "I have moments when I think I'd like to be removed," said Curtis, as he turned towards Mr. Slicer and his other guests. "Suppose we go into the library, gentlemen." VI CURTIS SEEKS A TRUCE "Our artists are going to flit," remarked Jennie, one evening, as they were taking seats at luncheon. He looked up quickly. "Are they?" "Yes, Miss Brisbane is going back to Washington, and Mr. Lawson will follow, no doubt." He unfolded his napkin with unmoved countenance. "Well, they are wise; we are likely to have a norther any day now." The soldier had all the responsibilities and perplexities he could master without the addition of Elsie Brisbane's disturbing lure. The value of her good opinion was enormously enhanced by the news of her intended departure, and for a day or two Curtis went about his duties with absent-minded ineffectiveness; he even detected himself once or twice sitting with his pen in his hand creating aimless markings on his blotting-pad. Wilson, the clerk, on one occasion waited full five minutes for an answer while his chief debated with himself whether to call upon Miss Brisbane at the studio or at the house. He began to find excuses for her--"A man who is a villain in business may be a very attractive citizen in private life--and she may have been very fond of Sennett. From her point of view--anyhow, she is a lovely young girl, and it is absurd to place her among my enemies." The thought of her face set in bitter scorn against him caused his heart to contract painfully. "I've been too harsh. These people are repugnant to one so dainty and superrefined. There are excuses for her prejudice. I can't let her go away in anger." And in this humble mood he stopped at the door of her studio one morning, prepared to be very patient and very persuasive. "Good-morning, Miss Brisbane. May I come in?" "Certainly, if my work will interest you," she replied; "you'll excuse my going on. I want to finish this portrait of Little Peta to-day." "By all means--I do not intend to interrupt." He took a seat to the front and a little to the left of her, and sat in silence for a few moments. Her brown hair, piled loosely on her head, brought out the exquisite fairness of her complexion, and the big, loose sleeve of her blouse made her hand seem like a child's, but it was strong and steady. She was working with her whole mind, breathing quickly as she mixed her colors, holding her breath as she put her brush against the canvas. She used the apparently aimless yet secure movement of the born painter. With half-closed eyes and head a little to one side, with small hand lifted to measure and compare, she took on a new expression, a bewitching intentness, which quite transformed her. "I hear you are going away," said Curtis at last, speaking with some effort, uncertain of her temper. "Yes, we break up and vacate to-morrow." "Why break up? You will want to come back next spring. Leave the place as it is." She gave him a quick, keen glance, and put her head again on one side to squint. "I have no intention of returning." "Have you exhausted Indian subjects?" "Oh no!" she exclaimed, with sudden, artistic enthusiasm. "I have just begun to see what I want to do." "Then why not come back?" She did not reply, and he resumed, with tender gravity: "I hope I haven't made it so unpleasant for you that you are running away to escape _me_?" She turned with a sharp word on her tongue, but he was so frank and so handsome, and withal so humble, that she instantly relented. She was used to this humility in men and knew the meaning thereof, and a flush of gratified pride rose to her face. The proud soldier had become a suitor like the others. "Oh no--you have nothing to do with it," she replied, carelessly. "I am glad of that. I was afraid you might think me unsympathetic, but I am not. I am here this morning to offer you my cordial assistance, for I am eager to see this people put into art. So far as I know, they have never been adequately treated in painting or in sculpture." "Thank you," she said, "I don't think I shall go very far with them. They are very pleasant on canvas, but there are too many disagreeable things connected with painting them. I don't see how you endure the thought of living here among them." She shuddered. "I hate them!" "I don't understand that hardness in you, Miss Brisbane," he replied. "I'm sure it isn't mysterious. I hate dirt and rags, even when painted. Now Little Peta here is quite different. She is a dear little thing. See her sigh--she gets so tired, but she's patient." "You are making a beautiful picture of her. Your skill is marvellous." His method of approach was more adroit than he realized; she softened yet again. "Thank you. I seem to have hit her off very well." "Will you exhibit in Washington this winter?" he asked, with boyish eagerness. "I may--I haven't quite decided," she said, quite off guard at last. "If you do I wish you would let me know. I may be able to visit the exhibition and witness your triumph." She began to suspect his motives. "Oh, my little row of paintings couldn't be tortured into a triumph. I've stolen the time for them from Mr. Lawson, whose illustrations I have neglected." She was again cold and repellent. "Miss Brisbane, this whole situation has become intolerable to me." He rose and faced her, very sincere and deeply earnest. "I do not like to have you go away carrying an unpleasant impression of me. What can I do to change it? If I have been boorish or presuming in any way I sincerely beg your pardon." She motioned to Peta. "You can go now, dear, I've done all I can to-day." Curtis took up his hat. "I hope I have not broken up your sitting. It would be unpardonable in me." She squinted back at the picture with professional gravity. "Oh no; I only had a few touches to put in under the chin--that luminous shadow is so hard to get. I'm quite finished." She went behind a screen for a few moments, and when she reappeared without her brushes and her blouse she was the society young lady in tone and manner. "Would you like to look at my sketches?" she asked. "They're jolly rubbish, the whole lot, but they represent a deal of enthusiasm." Her tone was friendly--too friendly, considering the point at which he had paused, and he was a little hurt by it. Was she playing with him? His tone was firm and his manner direct as he said: "Miss Brisbane, I am accustomed to deal directly with friends as well as enemies, and I like to have people equally frank with me. I know you are angry because of my action in the case of your uncle. I do not ask pardon for that; I was acting there in line of my duty. But if I have spoken harshly or without due regard to your feelings at any time I ask you to forgive me." He made a powerful appeal to her at this moment, but she wilfully replied: "You made no effort to soften my uncle's disgrace." "I didn't know he was your uncle at that time," he said, but his face grew grave quickly. "It would have made no difference if I had--my orders were to step between him and the records of the office. So far as my orders enlightened me, he was a man to be watched." He turned towards the door. "Is there anything I can do to help you reach the station to-morrow? My sister and I would gladly drive you down." She was unrelenting, but very lovely as she replied: "Thank you; you are very kind, but all arrangements are made." "Good-afternoon, Miss Brisbane." "Good-bye, Captain Curtis." "She is hard--hard as iron," he said, as he walked away. "Her father's daughter in every fibre." He was ashamed to acknowledge how deeply he felt her rejection of his friendship, and the thought of not seeing her again gave him a sudden sense of weakness and loneliness. Elsie, on her part, was surprised to find a new nerve tingling in her brain, and this tremor cut into the complete self-satisfaction she expected to feel over her refusal of the peace-pipe. Several times during the afternoon, while superintending her packing, she found herself standing in an attitude of meditation--her inward eye reverting to the fine, manly figure he made, while his grave, sweet voice vibrated in her ears. She began to see herself in an unpleasant light, and when at the dinner-table Lawson spoke of Curtis, she listened to him with more real interest than ever before. "He is making wonderful changes here," Lawson was saying. "Everywhere you go you see Tetongs working at fence-building, bridge-making, cabin-raising, with their eagle feathers fluttering in the winds, their small hands chapped with cold. They are sawing boards and piling grain in the warehouse and daubing red paint on the roofs. They are in a frenzy of work. Every man has his rations and is happy. In some way he has persuaded the chiefs to bring in all the school-children, and the benches are full of the little shock-heads, wild as colts." "A new broom, etc.," murmured Elsie. "His predecessor never was a new broom," retorted Lawson, quickly. "Sennett always had a nasty slaunch to him. He never in his life cleaned the dirt from the corners, and I don't see exactly why you take such pains in defending him." "Because he is my uncle," she replied. "Uncle Boot-jack! That is pure fudge, Bee Bee. You didn't speak to him once a week; you privately despised him--anybody could see that. You are simply making a cudgel of him now to beat Curtis with--and, to speak plainly, I think it petty of you. More than this, you'd better hedge, for I'm not at all sure that Sennett has not been peculating." Elsie stopped him with an angry gesture. "I'll not have you accusing him behind his back." Lawson threw out his hands in a gesture of despair. "All right! But make a note of it: you'll regret this taking sides with a disreputable old bummer against an officer of Captain Curtis's reputation." "You are not my master!" she said, and her eyes were fiercely bright. "I do not wish to hear you use that tone to me again! I resent it!" and she struck the floor with her foot. "Henceforth, if we are to remain friends, you will refrain from lecturing me!" and she left the room with a feeling of having done two men a wrong by being unjust to herself, and this feeling deepened into shame as she lay in her bed that night. It was her first serious difference with Lawson and she grew unhappy over it. "But he shouldn't take sides against me like that," she said, in an attempt to justify her anger. On the second morning thereafter Lawson came into the office and said: "Well, Captain, we leave you this morning." Curtis looked up into his visitor's fine, sensitive face, and exclaimed, abruptly--almost violently: "I'm going to miss you, old man." "My heart's with you," replied Lawson. "And I shall return next spring." "Bring Miss Brisbane with you." "I'd like to do so, but she is vastly out of key--and I doubt. Meanwhile, if I can be of any use to you in Washington let me know." "Thank you, Lawson, I trust you perfectly," Curtis replied, with a glow of warm liking. As he stood at the gate looking up into Elsie's face, she seemed very much softened, and he wished to reach his hand and stay her where she sat; but the last word was spoken, and the wagon rolled away with no more definite assurance of her growing friendship than was to be read in a polite smile. Jennie was tearful as she said: "After all, they were worth while." Curtis sighed as he said: "Sis, the realities of our position begin to make themselves felt. Play-spells will be fewer now that our artists are gone." "They certainly broke our fall," replied Jennie, soberly. "Osborne Lawson is fine, and I don't believe Elsie Bee Bee is as ferocious as she pretends to be." "It's her training. She has breathed the air of rapacity from childhood. I can't blame her for being her father's child." Jennie looked at him as if he were presented from a new angle of vision. "George, there _is_ a queer streak in you--for a soldier; you're too soft-hearted. But don't you get too much interested in Elsie Bee Bee; she's dangerous--and, besides, Mr. Lawson wears an air of command." VII ELSIE RELENTS A LITTLE The feeling against the redmen, intensified throughout the State by the removal of Sennett, beat against Curtis like a flood. Delegations of citizens, headed by Streeter and Johnson, proceeded at once to Washington, laden with briefs, affidavits, and petitions, and there laid siege to Congress as soon as the members began to assemble. The twenty original homesteaders were taken as the text for most impassioned appeals by local orators, and their melancholy situation was skilfully enlarged upon. They were described as hardy and industrious patriots, hemmed in by sullen savages, with no outlet for trade and scant pasturage for their flocks--in nightly fear of the torch and the scalping-knife. To Curtis, these settlers were by no interpretation martyrs in the cause of civilization--they were quite other. His birth, his military training, and his natural refinement tended to make him critical of them. They were to him, for the most part, "poor whites," too pitiless to be civilized, and too degenerate to have the interest of their primitive red neighbors. "The best of them," he said to Jennie, "are foolhardy pioneers who have exiled their wives and children for no good reason. The others are cattlemen who followed the cavalry in order to fatten their stock under the protection of our guidon." The citizens of Pinon City wondered why their delegates made so little impression on the department, but Streeter was not left long in doubt. The Secretary interrupted him in the midst of his first presentation of the matter. "Mr. Streeter, you are a cattleman, I believe?" Streeter looked a little set back. "I am--yes, sir, Mr. Secretary." The Secretary took up a slip of paper. "Are you the Streeter located on the reservation itself?" "Yes, sir." "Well, you are an interested witness. How can you expect me to take your word against that of Captain Curtis? He tells me the Tetongs are peaceful, and quick to respond to fair treatment. The department has absolute confidence in Captain Curtis, and you are wasting time in the effort to discredit him. The tribe will _not_ be removed. Is there any other question you would like to raise?" Streeter took his dismissal hard. He hurried at once to Brisbane, his face scarlet with rage. "He turned me down," he snarled, "and he's got to suffer for it. There's a way to get at him, and you must find it." Brisbane was too crafty to promise any definite thing. "Now wait a moment, neighbor; never try to yank a badger out of his den--wait and catch him on the open plain. We must sound the Committee on Indian Affairs, and then move on the House. If we can't put through our removal bill we'll substitute the plan for buying out the settlers. If that don't work I've a little scheme for cutting down the reservation. We must keep cool--and don't mention my name in the matter. What we want to do is to pave the way for my return to the Senate next fall; then I can be of some real service to you. I am now entirely out of it, as you can see, but I'll do what I can." Streeter went away with a feeling that Brisbane was losing his vigor, and a few days later returned to the West, very bitter and very inflammatory of speech. "The bill is lost. It will be smothered in committee," he said to Calvin. Brisbane, after leaving Streeter that day, went home to dinner with an awakened curiosity to know more about this young man in whom the department had such confidence. Lawson was dining at his table that night, and it occurred to him to ask a little more fully about Curtis. "See here, Lawson, you were out there on the Fort Smith reservation, weren't you? Wasn't that where you and Elsie camped this summer?" Elsie replied, "Yes, papa. We were there when Uncle Sennett was dismissed." Brisbane started a little. "Why, of course you were; my memory is failing me. Well, what about this man Curtis--he's a crank on the Indian question, like yourself, isn't he?" Lawson smiled. "We believe in fair play, Governor. Yes, he's friendly to the Indians." "And a man of some ability, I take it?" "A man of unusual ability. He is an able forester, a well-read ethnologist, and has made many valuable surveys for the War Department." "His word seems to have great weight with the department." "Justly, too, for he is as able a man as ever held an agent's position. A few men like Curtis would solve the Indian problem." Elsie, who had been listening in meditative silence, now spoke. "Nevertheless, his treatment of Uncle Sennett was brutal. He arrested him and searched all his private papers--don't you remember?" Brisbane looked at Lawson solemnly and winked the eye farthest from his daughter. Lawson's lips quivered with his efforts to restrain a smile. Turning then to Elsie, Brisbane said: "I recall your story now--yes, he was pretty rigorous, but I'm holding up the department for that; the agent wasn't to blame. He was sent there to do that kind of a job, and from all accounts he did it well." Elsie lifted her eyebrows. "Does that excuse him? He kept repeating to me that he was under orders, but I took his saying so to be just a subterfuge." "Mighty little you know about war, my girl. To be a soldier means to obey orders from general down to corporal. Moreover, your uncle has given me a whole lot of trouble, and I wouldn't insist on a relationship which does us no credit. I've held his chin above water about as long as I'm going to." Elsie was getting deeper into the motives and private opinions of her father than ever before, and, as he spoke, her mind reverted to the handsome figure of the young soldier as he stood before her in the studio, asking for a kindlier good-bye. His head was really beautiful, and his eyes were deep and sincere. She looked up at her father with frowning brows. "I thought you liked Mr. Sennett? He told me you got him his place." Brisbane laughed. "My dear chicken, he was a political choice. He was doing work for our side, and had to be paid." "Do you mean you knew the kind of a man he was when you put him there?" Brisbane pulled himself up short. "Now see here, my daughter, you're getting out of your bailiwick." "But I want to understand--if you knew he was stealing--" "I didn't know it. How should I know it? I put him there to keep him busy. I didn't suppose he was a sot and a petty plunderer. Now let's have no more of this." Brisbane was getting old and a trifle irritable, but he was still master of himself. "I don't know why I should be taken to task by my own daughter." Elsie said no more, but her lips straightened and her eyes grew reflective. As the coffee and cigars came in, she left the two men at the table and went out into the music-room. It seemed very lonely in the big house that night, and she sat down at the piano to play, thinking to cure herself of an uneasy conscience. She was almost as good a pianist as a painter, and the common criticism of her was on this score. "Bee does everything _too_ well," Penrose said. She played softly, musingly, and, for some reason, sadly. "I wonder if I have done him an injustice?" she thought. And then that brutal leer on her father's face came to disturb her. "I wish he hadn't spoken to me like that," she said. "I don't like his political world. I wish he would get out of it. It isn't nice." In the end, she left off playing and went slowly up to her studio, half determined to write a letter of apology. Her "work-shop," which had been added to the house since her return from Paris, was on a level with her sitting-room, which served as a reception hall to the studio itself. Her artist friends declared it to be too beautiful to work in, and so it seemed, for it was full of cosey corners and soft divans--a glorious lounging-place. Nevertheless, its walls were covered with pictures of her own making. Costly rugs and a polished floor seemed not to deter her from effort. She remained a miracle of industry in spite of the scoffing of her fellows, who were stowed about the city in dusty lofts like pigeons. Proud and wilful as she seemed, Elsie had always prided herself on being just, and to be placed in the position of doing an honorable man a wrong was intolerable. The longer she dwelt upon her action the more uneasy she became. Her vision clarified. All that had been hidden by her absurd prejudice and reasonless dislike--the soldier's frank and manly firmness, Lawson's reproaches, her aunt's open reproof--all these grew in power and significance as she mused. Taking a seat at her desk, she began a letter, "Captain Curtis, Dear Sir--" But this seemed so palpably a continuance of her repellent mood that she tore it up, and started another in the spirit of friendliness and contrition which had seized upon her: "DEAR CAPTAIN CURTIS,--I have just heard something which convinces me that I have done you an injustice, and I hasten to beg your pardon. I knew my uncle Sennett only as a child knows a man of middle age--he was always kind and good and amusing to me. I had no conception of his real self. My present understanding of him has changed my feeling towards your action. I still think you were harsh and unsympathetic, but I now see that you were simply doing the will of the department. So far I apologize. If you come to Washington I hope you will let us know." As she re-read this it seemed to be a very great concession indeed; but as she recalled the handsome, troubled face of the soldier, she decided to send it, no matter what he might think of her. As she sealed the letter her heart grew lighter, and she smiled. When she re-entered the library her father was saying: "No, I don't expect to get him removed. The present administration and its whole policy must be overthrown. Curtis is only a fly on the rim of the wheel. He don't count." "Any man counts who is a moral force," Lawson replied, with calm sincerity. "Curtis will bother you yet." VIII CURTIS WRITES A LONG LETTER The stage-driver and mail-carrier to Fort Smith was young Crane's Voice, and this was his first trip in December. He congratulated himself on having his back to the wind on the fifty-mile ride up the valley. A norther was abroad over the earth, and, sweeping down from arctic wildernesses, seemingly gathered power as it came. It crossed two vast States in a single night and fell upon the Fort Smith reservation with terrible fury about ten o'clock in the morning. Crane's Voice did not get his mail-sack till twelve, but his ponies were fed and watered and ready to move when the bag came. He did not know that it contained a letter to warm the heart of his hero, the Captain, but he flung the sack into his cart and put stick to his broncos quite as manfully as though the Little Father waited. The road was smooth and hard and quite level for thirty miles, and he intended to cover this stretch in five hours. Darkness would come early, and the snow, which was hardly more than a frost at noon, might thicken into a blizzard. So he pushed on steadily, fiercely, silently, till a sinister dusk began to fall over the buttes, and then, lifting his voice in a deep, humming, throbbing incantation, he sang to keep off spirits of evil. Crane's Voice was something of an aristocrat. As the son of Chief Elk he had improved his opportunities to learn of the white man, and could speak a little English and understand a good deal more than he acknowledged, which gave him a startling insight at times into the words and actions of the white people. It was his report of the unvarying kindliness and right feeling of Captain Curtis which had done so much to make the whole tribe trust and obey the new agent. Crane's Voice was afraid of spirits, but he shrank from no hardship. He was proud of his blue uniform, and of the revolver which he was permitted to wear to guard the mail. No storm had ever prevented him from making his trip, and his uncomplaining endurance of heat, cold, snow, and rain would have been counted heroic in a military scout. His virtues were so evident even to the cowboys that they made him an exception by saying, "Yes, Crane is purty near white," and being besotted in their own vanity, they failed to see the humor of such a phrase in the mouth of a drunken, obscene, lawless son of a Missouri emigrant. As a matter of fact there were many like Crane in the tribe, only the settlers never came in personal contact with them. Crane found his road heavy with drifts as he left the main valley and began to climb, and he did not reach the agency till long after Curtis had gone to bed, but he found his anxious mother waiting for him, together with the captain of police, who took the bag of mail to the office. As he drove into the big corral out of the wind the boy said, in his quaint English: "Me no like 'um blizzard. Fleeze ears like buffalo horn." Curtis came to the office next morning with a heavy heart. He knew how hard the bitter cold pressed upon his helpless wards, and suffered acutely for sympathy. He spoke to all of those he met with unusual tenderness, and asked minutely after the children, to be sure that none were ill or hungry. As Wilson, his clerk, laid the big package of letters and papers on his table, the pale-blue, square envelope which bore Elsie's handwriting was ostentatiously balanced on top. Wilson, the lovelorn clerk, sighed to think he had no such missive in his mail that gloomy morning. Looking in, a half-hour later, he found Curtis writing busily in answer to that letter, all the rest of his mail being untouched. "I thought so," said he; "I'd neglect any business for a sweet little envelope like that," and he sighed again. Curtis had opened the letter eagerly, but with no expectation of comfort. As he read he forgot the storm outside. A warm glow crept into his blood. Lover-like, he got from the letter a great deal more than Elsie had intended to say. He seized his pen to reply at once--just a few lines to set her mind at rest; but his thought ran on so fast, so full of energy, that his writing became all but illegible: "DEAR MISS BRISBANE,--You have given me a great pleasure by your letter, and I am replying at once to assure you that I did not lay your words up against you, because I felt you did not fully understand the situation. Your letter gives me courage to say that I think you are unjust in your attitude towards these primitive races--and I also hope that as fuller understanding comes you will change your views. "Here they are, fenced in on the poorest part of this bleak reservation, on the cold slope of the range, exposed to the heat and drought of summer and the storms of winter. This morning, for example, the wind is rushing up the converging walls of this valley--which opens out to the northeast, you remember--and the cold is intense. I am just sending out messengers to see that no children are freezing. Everything is hard as iron, and the Indians, muffled in their blankets, are sitting beside their fires glum as owls, waiting the coming of the sunshine. "I must tell you something which happened since you went away--it may correct your views of the Tetongs. It is my policy to give all hauling and wood contracts to the Indian instead of the white man, and when I told the white who has been putting in the wood that I was about to let the contract to the reds he laughed and said, 'You can't get 'em to do that work!' But I felt sure I could. I called them together and gave them fifty axes and told them how much wood I wanted. A few days later I thought I'd ride over to see how they were getting along. As I drew near I heard the most astonishing click-clack of axe-strokes, shouts, laughter, the falling of trees, and when I came in sight I 'trun up both hands.' They had hundreds of cords already cut--twice as much, it seemed, as I could use. I begged them to stop, and finally got them to begin to haul. In the end I was obliged to take sixty cords more than I needed. "You cannot understand what a pleasure it is for me to see ancient lies about these people destroyed by such experiences as this. It was pathetic to me to find the Two Horns, the Crawling Elk, and other proud old warriors toiling awkwardly with their axes, their small hands covered with blisters; but they laughed and joked about it, and encouraged each other as if they were New-Englanders at a husking-bee. My days and nights are full of trouble, because I can do so little for them. If they were on tillable land I could make them self-supporting in two years, but this land is arid as a desert. It is fair to look upon, but it will not yield a living to any one but a herder. "Your attitude towards the so-called _savage_ races troubles me more than I have any right to mention. The older I grow the less certain I am that any race or people has a monopoly of the virtues. I do not care to see the 'little peoples' of the world civilized in the sense in which the word is commonly used. It will be a sorrowful time to me when all the tribes of the earth shall have cottonade trousers and derby hats. You, as an artist, ought to shrink from the dead level of utilitarian dress which the English-speaking race seems determined to impose on the world. If I could, I would civilize only to the extent of making life easier and happier--the religious beliefs, the songs, the native dress--all these things I would retain. What is life for, if not for this? "My artist friends as a rule agree with me in these matters, and that is another reason why your unsympathetic attitude surprises and grieves me. I know your home-life has been such as would prejudice you against the redman, but your training in Paris should have changed all that. You consider the Tetongs 'good material'--if you come to know them as I do you will find they are _folks_, just like anybody else, with the same rights to the earth that we have. Of course, they _are_ crude and unlovely--and sometimes they are cruel; but they have an astonishing power over those who come to know them well. "Pardon this long letter. You may call me a crank or any hard name you please, but I am anxious to have you on the right side in this struggle, for it is a struggle to the death. The tragedy of their certain extinction overwhelms me at times. I found a little scrap of canvas with a sketch of Peta on it--may I keep it? My sister is quite well and deep in 'the work.' She often speaks of you and we are both hoping to see you next year." It was foolish for him to expect an immediate reply to this epistle, but he did--he counted the days which lay between its posting and a possible date for return mail. Perhaps, had he been in Washington, diverted by Congress, cheered by the Army and Navy Club, and entertained by his friends, he would not have surrendered so completely to the domination of that imperious girl-face; but in the dead of winter, surrounded by ragged, smoky squaws and their impatient, complaining husbands, with no companionship but his sister and Wilson, the love-sick clerk, his thought in every moment of relaxation went back to the moments he had spent in Elsie's company. Nature cried out, "It is not good for man to be alone," but the iron ring of circumstance held him a prisoner in a land where delicate women were as alien as orange blossoms or tea-roses. Outwardly composed, indefatigable, stern in discipline and judicial of report, he was inwardly filled with a mighty longing to see again that slim young girl with the big, black, changeful eyes. He made careful attempt to conceal his growing unrest from Jennie, but her sharp eyes, accustomed to every change in his face, detected a tremor when Elsie's name was mentioned, and her ears discovered a subtle vibration in his voice which instructed her, though she did not attain complete realization of his absorbing interest. She was sympathetic enough to search out Elsie's name in the social columns of the Washington papers, and it was pitiful to see with what joy the busy Indian agent listened to the brief item concerning "Miss Brisbane's reception on Monday," or the description of her dress at the McCartney ball. Jennie sighed as she read of these brilliant assemblages. "George, I wonder if we will ever spend another winter in Washington?" "Oh, I think so, sis--some time." "Some time! But we'll both be so old we won't enjoy it. Sometimes I feel that we are missing everything that's worth while." He did not mention Elsie's letter, and as the weeks passed without any reply he was very glad he had kept silence. Jennie had her secret, also, which was that Elsie was as good as engaged to Lawson. No one knew this for a certainty, but Mrs. Wilcox was quite free to say she considered it a settled thing. Jennie was relieved to know how indifferent her brother was to Miss Colson, the missionary, who seemed to be undergoing a subtle transformation. With Jennie she was always moaning and sighing, but in the presence of her lord, the agent, she relaxed and became quite cheerful and dangerously pretty. The other teachers--good, commonplace souls!--went their mechanical way, with very little communication with the agent's household, but Miss Colson seized every opportunity to escape her messmates. "They are so material," she said, sighfully; "they make spiritual growth impossible to me." Jennie was not deceived. "You're a cat, that's what you are--a nice, little, scared cat; but you're getting over your scare," she added, as she watched the devotee in spirited conversation with her brother. Elsie's reply to Curtis's long letter was studiedly cool but polite. "I feel the force of what you say, but the course of civilization lies across the lands of the 'small peoples.' It is sorrowful, of course, but they must go, like the wolves and the rattlesnakes." In this phrase he recognized the voice of Andrew J. Brisbane, and it gave him a twinge to see it written by Elsie's small hand. The letter ended by leaving matters very adroitly at an equipoise. It was friendlier than she had ever been in conversation, yet not so womanly as he had hoped it might be. As he studied it, however, some subtler sense than sight detected in its carefully compounded phrases something to feed upon, and though he did not write in answer to it, he had a feeling that she expected him to do so. Meanwhile the tone of the opposition grew confident. The settlers were convinced that Congress would accede to their wishes and remove the Tetongs, and they began to treat the redmen with a certain good-natured tolerance, as if to say, "Well, you'll soon be settled for, anyway." Calvin Streeter came often to the agency, and not infrequently stayed to dinner with Curtis, paying timid court to Jennie, who retained enough of her girlhood's coquetry to enjoy the handsome cowboy's open-eyed admiration, even though she laughed at him afterwards in response to her brother's jesting. Calvin vastly improved under the stress of his desire to be worthy of her. He caught up many of the Captain's nice mannerisms, and handled his fork and napkin with very good grace indeed. He usually came galloping across the flat, his horse outstretched at full speed, his hat-rim uprolled by the wind, his gay neckerchief fluttering, his hands holding the reins high--a magnificent picture of powerful young manhood. As he reached the gate it was his habit to put his horse on his haunches with one sudden, pitiless wrench on the Mexican bit and drop to the ground, and in dramatic contrast with his approach call out in smooth, quiet voice: "Howdy, folks, howdy! Nice day." These affectations pleased Jennie very much, though she finally complained of his cruelty in reining in his horse so sharply. "All right, miss, I won't do it no more," he said, instantly. He quite regularly invited them to the dances given round about, and Jennie was ready to go, but Curtis, being too deeply occupied, could not spare the time, and that debarred Jennie, though Calvin could see no good reason why it should. "I'll take care of you," said he, but the girl could not trust herself to his protection. His was not a secretive nature, and he kept Curtis very well informed as to the feeling of the settlers, reporting, as he did, their conversations as well as their speeches, with great freedom and remarkable accuracy. In this way the agent learned that the cattlemen had agreed to use caution in dealing with him. "He's a bad man to monkey with," was the sentiment Calvin reported to be current among the settlers on the West Fork. Young Crane's Voice also circulated this phrase, properly translated into Dakota, to his uncles Lame Paw and Two Horns, and so the tribe came to understand that they had a redoubtable defender in Swift Eagle, as they called the agent in their own tongue. From every source they heard good things of him, and they came to love him and to obey him as they had never loved and obeyed even their best-regarded chief. The squaws made excuse to come in and shake hands with him and hear his laughter, and the children no longer hid or turned away when he came near--on the contrary, they ran to him, crying "Hello, Hagent!" and clung to his legs as he walked. The old men often laid their arms across his shoulders as they jokingly threatened to pull out the hairs of his face, in order to make him a redman. His lightest wish was respected. The wildest young dare-devil would dismount and take a hand at pushing a wagon or lifting a piece of machinery when Curtis asked it of him. "If I only had the water that flows in these three little streams," he often said to Jennie, "I'd make these people self-supporting." "We'll have things our own way yet," replied Jennie, always the optimist. IX CALLED TO WASHINGTON One day Curtis announced, with joyful face: "Sis, we are called to Washington. Get on your bonnet!" She did not light up as he had expected her to do. "I can't go, George," she replied, decisively and without marked disappointment. He seemed surprised. "Why not?" "Because I have my plans all laid for giving my little 'ingines' such a Christmas as they never had, and you must manage to get back in time to be 'Sandy Claws.'" "I don't see how I can do it. I am to appear before the Committee on Indian Affairs relative to this removal plan, and there may be other business requiring me to remain over the holidays." "I don't like to have you away. I suppose you'll see Mr. Lawson and Miss Brisbane," she remarked, quietly, after a pause. "Oh yes," he replied, with an assumption of carelessness. "I imagine Lawson will appear before the committee, and I hope to call on Miss Brisbane--I want to see her paintings." He did not meet his sister's eyes as squarely as was his wont, and her keen glance detected a bit more color in his face than was usual to him. "You must certainly call," she finally said. "I want to know all about how they live." Many things combined to make this trip to Washington most pleasurable to the soldier. He was weary with six weeks of most intense application to a confused and vexatious situation, and besides he had not been East for several years, and his pocket was filled with urgent invitations to dinner from fellow-officers and co-workers in science, courtesies which he now had opportunity to accept; but back of all and above all was the hope of meeting Elsie Brisbane again. He immediately wrote her a note, telling her of his order to report at the department, and asking permission to call upon her at her convenience. It was a long ride, but he enjoyed every moment of it. He gave himself up to rest. He went regularly to his meals in the dining-car; he smoked and dreamed and looked out with impersonal, shadowy interest upon the flying fields and the whizzing cities. He slept long hours and rose at will. Such freedom he had known only on the trail; here luxury was combined with leisure. In Chicago a friend met him and they lunched at a luxurious club, and afterwards went for a drive. That night he left the Western metropolis behind and Washington seemed very near. As the train drew down out of the snows of the hill country into the sunshine and shelter of the Potomac Valley his heart leaped. This was home! Here were the little, whitewashed cabins, the red soil, the angular stone houses--verandaed and shuttered--of his native town. It was pleasant to meet the darkies swarming, chirping like crickets, around the train. They shadowed forth a warmer clime, a less insistent civilization than that of the West, and he was glad of them. They brought up in his mind a thousand memories of his boy-life in an old Maryland village not far from the great city, which still retained its supremacy in his mind. He loved Washington; to him it was the centre of national life. The great generals, the great political leaders were there, and the greatest ethnologic bureau in all the world was there, and when the gleaming monument came into view over the wooded hills he had only one regret--he was sorrowful when he thought of Jennie far away in the bleak valley of the Elk. It was characteristic of him that he took a cab to the Smithsonian Society rather than to the Army and Navy Club, and was made at home at once in the plain but comfortable "rooms of the Bug Sharps." He had just time to report by telephone to the Department of the Interior before the close of the official day. Several letters awaited him. One was from Elsie, and this he read at once, finding it unexpectedly cordial: "My father is writing you an invitation to come to us immediately. You said you would arrive in Washington on the 17th, either on the 11 A.M. train or the one at 3 P.M. In either case we will look for you at 6.30 to dine with us before you get your calendar filled with engagements. I shall wait impatiently to hear how you are getting on out there. It is all coming to have a strange fascination for me. It is almost like a dream." This letter quickened his pulse in a way which should have brought shame to him, but did not. The Senator's letter was ponderously polite. "I hope, my dear Captain Curtis, you will be free to call at once. My daughter and Lawson--" At that word a chill wind blew upon the agent's hope. Lawson! "I had forgotten the man!" he said, almost aloud. "Ah! that explains her frank kindliness. She writes as one whose affections are engaged, and therefore feels secure from criticism or misapprehension." That explained also her feeling for the valley--it was the scene of her surrender to Lawson. The tremor went out of his nerves, his heart resumed its customary beating, steady and calm, and, setting his lips into a straight line, he resumed the Senator's letter, which ended with these significant words: "There are some important matters I want to talk over in private." A note from Lawson urged him to take his first breakfast in the city with him. "I want to post you on the inside meaning of certain legislation now pending. I expect to see you at the Brisbanes'." Curtis made his toilet slowly and with great care, remitting nothing the absence of which would indicate a letting down of military neatness and discipline. He wore the handsome undress uniform of a captain, and his powerful figure, still youthful in its erectness, although the lines were less slender than he wished, was dignified and handsome--fit to be taken as a type of mature soldier. He set forth, self-contained but eager. The Brisbane portico of rose granite was immensely imposing to a dweller in tents and cantonments, such as Curtis had been for ten years, but he allowed no sign of his nervousness to appear as he handed his overcoat and cap to the old colored man in the vestibule. As he started down the polished floor of the wide hall, stepping over a monstrous tiger-skin, he saw Elsie in the door of the drawing-room, her back against the folded portière. Her slender figure was exquisitely gowned in pale-green, and her color was iridescent in youthful sparkle. He thought once again--"Evening dress transforms a woman." She met him with a smile of welcome. "Ah, Captain, this is very good of you, to come to us so soon." "Not at all," he gallantly replied. "I would have come sooner had opportunity served." "Father, this is Captain Curtis," she said, turning her head towards a tall man who stood within. Brisbane came forward, greeting Curtis most cordially. He was grayer than Curtis remembered him, and a little stooping from age. His massive head was covered with a close-clipped bristle of white hair, and his beard, also neatly trimmed, was shaped to a point, from the habit he had of stroking it with his closed left hand in moments of deep thought. His skin was flushed pink with blood, and his urbane manner denoted pride and self-sufficiency. He was old, but he was still a powerful personality, and though he shook hands warmly, Curtis felt his keen and penetrating glance as palpably as an electric shock. Lawson's voice arose. "Well, Captain, I hardly expected to see you so soon." As the two men clasped hands Elsie again closely compared them. Curtis was the handsomer man, though Lawson was by no means ill-looking, even by contrast. The soldier more nearly approached the admirable male type, but there was charm in the characteristic attitudes and gestures of the student, who had the assured and humorous manner of the onlooker. A young woman of indeterminate type who was seated in conversation with Mrs. Wilcox received Curtis with impassive countenance, eying him closely through pinch-nose glasses. Mrs. Wilcox beamed with pleasure, and inquired minutely concerning the people at the agency, and especially she wished to know how little Johnny and Jessie Eagle were. "I quite fell in love with the tots, they were so cunning. I hope they got the toys I sent." Brisbane gave Curtis the most studious attention, lounging deep in his big chair. Occasionally he ponderously leaned forward to listen to some remark, with his head cocked in keen scrutiny--actions which did not escape the Captain's notice. "He's sizing me up," he thought. "Well, let him." Elsie also listened, curiously like her father in certain inclinations of the head--intent, absorbed; only Lawson seemed indifferent to the news the agent guardedly recited. Brisbane broke his silence by saying: "I infer you're on the side of the redskin?" "Decidedly, in this connection." "Quite aside from your duty?" "Entirely so. My duty in this case happened to be my inclination. I could have declined the detail, but being a believer in the army's arrangement of Indian affairs, I couldn't decently refuse." Brisbane settled back into his chair and looked straight at his visitor. "You think the white man the aggressor in this land question?" Curtis definitely pulled himself up. "I am not at liberty to speak further on that matter." Mrs. Wilcox interrupted smilingly. "Andrew, don't start an argument now. Dinner is served, and I know Captain Curtis is hungry." Elsie rose. "Yes, papa, leave your discussion till some other time, when you can bang the furniture." Curtis expected to take Miss Cooke in to dinner, but Elsie delighted him by saying, "You're to go in with me, Captain." "I am very glad of the privilege," he said, with deliberate intent to please her; his sincerity was unquestionable. Curtis would have been more profoundly impressed with the spaciousness of the hall and the dining-room had they been less like the interior of a hotel. The whole house, so far as its mural decoration went, had the over-stuffed quality of a Pullman car (with the exception of the pictures on the walls, which were exceedingly good), for Brisbane had successfully opposed all of Elsie's new-fangled notions with regard to interior decoration; he was of those who insist on being masters in their houses as well as in their business offices, and Elsie's manner was that of an obedient daughter deferring to a sire who had not ceased to consider her a child. Seated at Elsie's right hand, with Mrs. Wilcox between himself and the head of the table, Curtis was fairly out of reach of Brisbane, who was dangerously eager to open a discussion concerning the bill for the removal of the Tetongs. Elsie turned to him at once to say: "Do you know, Captain Curtis, I begin to long to return to the West. All my friends are enthusiastic over the studies I made last year, and I've decided to go back next spring. How early could one come out?" "Any time after the first of May--in fact, that is the most beautiful month in the year; the grass is deliciously green then. I'm glad to know you think of returning. Jennie will also rejoice. It seems too good to be true. Will Mr. Lawson also return?" "Oh yes. In fact, I go to complete his work--to do penance for neglecting him last summer." And in her tone, he fancied, lay a covert warning, as though she had said: "Do not mistake me; I am not coming out of interest in you." He needed the word, for under the spell of her near presence and the charm of her smile, new to him, the soldier was beginning to glow again and to soften, in spite of his resolution to be very calm. She went on: "I am genuinely remorseful, because Mr. Lawson has not been able to bring his paper out as he had planned." "I will see that you have every possible aid," he replied, matter-of-factly. "The work must be done soon." "How handsome he is!" the girl thought, as she studied his quiet face. "His profile is especially fine, and the line of his neck and shoulders--" an impulse seized her, and she said: "Captain, I'd like to make a sketch of you. Could you find time to sit for me?" "That's very flattering of you, but I'm afraid my stay in Washington is too short and too preoccupied." Her face darkened. "I'm sorry. I know I could make a good thing of you." "Thank you for the compliment, but it is out of the question at present. Next summer, if you come out, I will be very glad to give the time for it. And that reminds me, you promised to show me your pictures when I came, and your studio." "Did I? Well, you shall see them, although they are not as good as I shall do next year. One has to learn to handle new material. Your Western atmosphere is so different from that of Giverney, in which we all paint in Paris; then, the feeling of the landscape is so different; everything is so firm and crisp in line--but I am going to get it! 'There is the mystery of light as well as of the dark,' Meunnot used to say to us, and if I can get that clear shimmer, and the vibration of the vivid color of the savage in the midst of it--" She broke off as if in contemplation of the problem, rapt with question how to solve it. "There speaks the artist in you, and it is fine. But I'd like you to see the humanitarian side of life, too," he replied. "There is none," she instantly replied, with a curious blending of defiance and amusement. "I belong to the world of Light and Might--" "And I to the world of Right--what about that?" "Light and Might make right." "Your team is wrongly harnessed--Light and Right are co-workers. Might fears both Light and Right." Mrs. Wilcox, who had been listening, fairly clapped her hands. "I'm glad to have you refute her arguments, Captain. She is absolutely heartless in her theories--in practice she's a nice girl." Elsie laughed. "What amuses me is that a soldier, the embodiment of Might, should dare to talk of Right." Curtis grew grave. "If I did not think that my profession at bottom guarded the rights of both white men and red, I'd resign instantly. Our army is only an impartial instrument for preserving justice." "That isn't the old-world notion," put in Lawson from across the table. "It is _our_ notion," stoutly replied Curtis. "Our little army to-day stands towards the whole nation as a police force relates itself to a city--a power that interferes only to prevent aggression of one interest on the rights of another." Brisbane's big, flat voice took up the theme. "That's a very pretty theory, but you'll find plenty to claim that the army is an instrument of oppression." "I'll admit it is sometimes wrongly used," Curtis replied. "We who are in the field can't help that, however. We are under orders. Of course," he added, modestly, "I am only a young soldier. I have seen but ten years of service, and I have taken part in but one campaign--a war I considered unavoidable at that time." "You would hold, then, that an officer of the army has a right to convictions?" queried Brisbane, in the tone of the lawyer. "Most certainly. A man does not cease to think upon entering the army." "That's dangerous doctrine." "It's the American idea. What people would suffer by having its army intelligent?" Lawson coughed significantly. "Bring forth the black-swathed axe--treason has upreared her head." It was plain that Brisbane was lying in wait for him. Curtis whispered to Elsie: "Rescue me! Your father is planning to quiz me, and I must not talk before I report to the department." "I understand. We will go to my studio after dinner." And with Lawson's aid she turned the conversation into safe channels. It was a very great pleasure to the young soldier to sit once more at such a board and in pleasant relation to Elsie. It was more than he had ever hoped for, and he surprised her by his ability to take on her interests. He grew younger in the glow of her own youth and beauty, and they finished their ices in such good-fellowship that Mrs. Wilcox was amazed. "We will slip away now," Elsie said, in a low tone to Curtis, and they both rose. As they were about to leave the room Brisbane looked up in surprise. "Where are you going? Don't you smoke, Captain? Stay and have a cigar." Elsie answered for him. "Captain Curtis can come back, but I want him to see my studio now, for I know if you get to talking politics he will miss the pictures altogether." "She has a notion I'm growing garrulous," Brisbane retorted, "but I deny the charge. Well, let me see you later, Captain; there are some things I want to discuss with you." "Grace, you are to come, too," Elsie said to her girl friend, and led the way out into the hall. Miss Cooke stepped to Curtis's side. "You've been in Washington before?" she asked, with an inflection which he hated. "Oh yes, many times. In fact, I lived here till I was sixteen. I was born in Maryland, not far from here." "Indeed! Then you know the city thoroughly?" "Certain sides of it. Exteriorly and officially I know it; socially, I am a stranger to it. My people were proud and poor. A good old family in a fine old house, and very little besides." Elsie led the way slowly up the big staircase, secretly hoping Miss Cooke would find it too cool for her thin blood. She wished to be alone with Curtis, and this wish, obscure as it was, grew stronger as she set a chair for him and placed a frame on an easel. "You really need daylight to see them properly." "Am I to make remarks?" "Certainly; tell me just what you think." "Then let me preface my helpful criticisms by saying that I don't know an earthly thing about painting. We had drawing, of a certain kind, at the academy, and I used to visit the galleries in New York when occasion served. Now you know the top and the bottom of my art education." "It's cold in here, Elsie," broke in Miss Cooke, whom they had quite forgotten. "Is the steam turned on?" "Wrap my slumber-robe around you," Elsie carelessly replied. "Now here is my completed study of Little Peta. What do you think of that? Is it like her?" "Very like her, indeed. I think it excellent," he said, with unaffected enthusiasm. "She was a quaint little thing. She is about to be married to young Two Horns--a white man's wedding." Elsie's eyes glowed. "Oh, I wish I could see that! But don't let her wear white man's clothing. She'd be so cunning in her own way of dress. I wish she had not learned to chew gum." "None of us quite live up to our best intentions," he replied, laughing. "Peta thinks she's gaining in grace. Most of the white ladies she knows chew gum." The pictures were an old story to Miss Cooke, who shivered for a time in silence and at last withdrew. Elsie and Curtis were deep in discussion of the effect of white man's clothing on the Tetongs, but each was aware of a subtle change in the other as the third person was withdrawn. A delicious sense of danger, of inward impulse warring with outward restraint, added zest to their intercourse. He instantly recalled the last time he stood in her studio feeling her frank contempt of him. "I am on a different footing now," he thought, with a certain exultation. It was worth years of hardship and hunger and cold to stand side by side with a woman who had not merely beauty and wealth but talent, and a mysterious quality that was more alluring than beauty or intellect. What this was he could not tell, but it had already made life a new game to him. She, on her part, exulted with a sudden sense of having him to herself for experiment, and every motion of his body, every tone of his voice she noted and admired. He resumed: "Naturally, I can say nothing of the technique of these pictures. My praise of them must be on the score of their likeness to the people. They are all admirable portraits, exact and spirited, and yet--" He hesitated, with wrinkled brows. "Don't spare me!" she cried out. "Cut me up if you can!" "Well, then, they seem to me unsympathetic. For example, the best of them all is Peta, because you liked her, you comprehended her, partly, for she was a child, gentle and sweet. But you have painted old Crawling Elk as if he were a felonious mendicant. You've delineated his rags, his wrinkled skin, his knotted hands, but you've left the light out of his eyes. Let me tell you something about that old man. When I saw him first he was sitting on the high bank of the river, motionless as bronze, and as silent. He was mourning the loss of his little grandchild, and had been there two days and two nights wailing till his voice had sunk to a whisper. His rags were a sign of his utter despair. You didn't know that when you painted him, did you?" "No, I did not," she replied, softly. "Moreover, Crawling Elk is the annalist and story-teller of his tribe. He carries the 'winter count' and the sacred pipe, and can tell you of every movement of the Tetongs for more than a century and a half. His mind is full of poetry, and his conceptions of the earth and sky are beautiful. He knows little that white men know, and cares for very little that the white man fights for, but his mind teems with lore of the mysterious universe into which he has been thrust, and which he has studied for seventy-two years. In the eyes of God, I am persuaded there is no very wide difference between old Crawling Elk and Herbert Spencer. The circle of Spencer's knowledge is wider, but it is as far from including the infinite as the redman's story of creation. Could you understand the old man as I do, you would forget his rags. He would loom large in the mysterious gloom of life. Your painting is as prejudiced in its way as the description which a cowboy would give you of this old man. You have given the color, the picturesque qualities of your subjects, but you have forgotten that they are human souls, groping for happiness and light." As he went on, Elsie stared at the picture fixedly, and it changed under her glance till his deeply passionate words seemed written on the canvas. The painting ceased to be a human face and became a mechanical setting together of features, a clever delineation of the exterior of a ragged old man holding a beaded tobacco-pouch and a long red pipe. "This old 'beggar,'" Curtis continued, "never lights that pipe you have put in his hands without blowing a whiff to the great spirits seated at the cardinal points of the compass. He makes offerings for the health of his children--he hears voices in the noon-day haze. He sits on the hill-top at dawn to commune with the spirits over his head. As a beggar he is picturesque; as a man, he is bewildered by the changes in his world, and sad with the shadow of his children's future. All these things, and many more, you must learn before you can represent the soul of the redman. You can't afford to be unjust." She was deeply affected by his words. They held conceptions new to her. But his voice pierced her, strangely subdued her. It quivered with an emotion which she could not understand. Why should he care so much whether she painted her subjects well or ill? She was seized with sudden, bitter distrust. "I wish I had not shown you my studies," she said, resentfully. His face became anxious, his voice gentle. "I beg your pardon; I have presumed too far. I hope, Miss Brisbane, you will not take what I say too much to heart. Indeed, you must not mind me at all. I am, first of all, a sort of crank; and then, as I say, I don't know a word about painting; please forget my criticisms." She understood his mood now. His anxiety to regain her good-will was within her grasp, and she seized the opportunity to make him plead for himself and exonerate her. "You have torn my summer's work to flinders," she said, sullenly, looking down at a bit of charcoal she was grinding into the rug beneath her feet. He was aghast. "Don't say that, I beg of you! Good Heavens! don't let my preachment discourage you. You see, I have two or three hobbies, and when I am once mounted I'm sure to ride right over somebody's garden wall." He rose and approached her. "I shall never forgive myself if I have taken away the smallest degree of your enthusiasm. My aim--if I had an aim--was to help you to understand my people, so that when you come out next summer--" "All that is ended now," she said, sombrely. "I shall attempt no more Indian work!" This silenced him. He took time to consider what this sudden depression on her part meant. As he studied her he saw her lip quiver, and anxiety suddenly left him. His tone was laughter-filled as he called: "Come, now, Miss Brisbane, you're making game of me by taking my criticisms so solemnly. I can see a smile twitching your lips this moment. Look at me!" She looked up and broke into a laugh. He joined in with her, but a flush rose to his face. "You fooled me completely. I reckon you should have been an actress instead of a painter." She sobered a little. "Really, I _was_ depressed for a moment. Your tone was so terribly destructive. Shall we go down?" "Not till you say you'll forgive me and forget my harangue." She gave him her hand. "I'll forgive you, but I'm going to remember the harangue. I--rather liked it. It made me think. Strange to say, I like people who make me think." Again his heart leaped with the blood of exultant youth. "She is coming to understand me better!" he thought. "You must see my other pictures by daylight," she was saying. "Mr. Lawson likes this one particularly." They had moved out into the little reception-room. "I did it in Giverney--we all go down sooner or later to paint one of Monet's pollard willows. These are my 'stunts.'" Lawson! Yes, there was the secret of her increasing friendliness. As the fiancée of Lawson she could afford to lessen her reserve towards his friend. And so it happened that, notwithstanding her cordial welcome and her respectful consideration of his criticism, he went away with a feeling of disappointment. That her beauty was more deeply enthralling than he had hitherto realized made his disquiet all the greater. As he stepped out upon the street, she seemed as insubstantial as a dream of his imaginative youth, far separated from any reality with which he had any durable association. X CURTIS AT HEADQUARTERS Curtis was frankly exclamatory at the size and splendor of Lawson's apartments. He had accepted the invitation to take breakfast with him without much thought as to the quality of the breakfast or where it would be eaten, until he found himself entering the hall of a superb apartment hotel. "Why, see here, Lawson," he exclaimed, as he looked about his friend's suite, "this is too much for any bachelor--it's baronial! I must revise my judgments. I had a notion you were a hard-working ethnologic sharp." "So I am," replied Lawson, smiling with frank enjoyment of his visitor's amazement. "I've been at work two hours at my desk. If you don't believe it, there's the desk." The room was filled with books, cases of antique pottery, paintings of Indians, models of Pueblo dwellings, and other things in keeping, and was made rich in color by a half-dozen very choice Navajo blankets in the fine old weaves with the vegetable dyes so dear to the collector. The long table was heaped with current issues of the latest magazines, and dozens of books, with markers set to guard some valuable passages, were piled within reach. It was plainly the library of a student and man of letters. Lawson's lean, brown face at once assumed a different aspect to Curtis. It became more refined, more scholarly, and distinctly less shrewd and quizzical, and the soldier began to understand the writer's smiling defiance of Western politicians and millionaire cattle-owners. Plainly a man of large fortune, with high social connections, what had Lawson to fear of the mountain West? The menace of the greedy cattlemen troubled him no more than the howl of the blizzard. In the same measure that Lawson's power was revealed to him the heart of the agent sank. He could not but acknowledge that here was the fitting husband and proper home for Elsie--"while I," he thought, "have only a barrack in a desolate Indian country to offer her," and he swung deep in the trough of his sea of doubt. A map on the wall, lined with red, caught his eye, and he seized upon it for diversion. "What is this?" he asked. "That's my trail-map," replied Lawson. "The red lines represent my wanderings." Curtis studied it with expert eyes. "You have ploughed the Arizona deserts pretty thoroughly." "Yes, I've spent three summers down in that country studying cliff-dwellings. It's a mighty alluring region. Last summer I broke away and got back into the north, but I am greatly taken with the hot sunshine and loneliness of the desert." Curtis turned sharply. "What I can't understand, Lawson, is this: How can you pull up and leave such a home?"--he indicated the room with a sweep of his hand--"and go out on the painted desert or down the Chaco and swelter in the heat like a horned toad?" Lawson smiled. "It _is_ absurd, isn't it? Man's an unaccountable beast. But come! Breakfast is waiting, and I hope you're hungry." The dining-room was built on a scale with the library, and the mahogany table, sparsely covered with dishes, looked small and lonely in the midst of the shining floor. This feature of the beautiful room impressed Curtis, and as they took seats opposite each other he remarked, "If I were not here you would be alone?" "Yes, quite generally I breakfast alone. I entertain less than you would think. I'm a busy man when at home." "Well, the waste of room is criminal, Lawson, that's all I have to say--criminal. You'll be called upon to answer for it some time." "I've begun to think so myself," replied the host, significantly. They talked mountain ranges and Pueblo dwellers, and the theoretical relation of the mound-builders to the small, brown races of the Rio Grande Valley, touching also on the future of the redman; and all the while Curtis was struggling with a benumbing sense of his hopeless weakness in the face of a rival like Lawson. He gave up all thought of seeing Elsie again, and resolutely set himself to do the work before him, eager to return to his duties in the Western foot-hills. Lawson accompanied him to the Interior Department and introduced him to the Secretary, who had the preoccupied air of a business man rather than the assumed leisure of the politician. He shook hands warmly, and asked his visitors to be seated while he finished a paper in hand. At last he turned and pleasantly began: "I'm glad to meet you, Captain. Yours is a distinguished name with us. We fully recognize the value of your volunteer service, and hope to make the best use of you. Our mutual friend, Lawson here, threatens to make you Secretary in my stead." Here he looked over his spectacles with a grave and accusing air, which amused Lawson greatly. "Not so bad as that, Mr. Secretary," he laughed. "I merely suggested that Captain Curtis would make an excellent President." "Oh, well, it all comes to the same thing." He then became quite serious. "Now, Captain, I would suggest that you put this whole matter as you see it, together with your recommendations, into the briefest, most telling form possible, and be ready to come before the committee to-morrow. Confer with the commissioner and be ready to meet the queries of the opposition. Brisbane is behind the cattlemen in this controversy, and he is a strong man. I agree entirely with you and Lawson that the Tetongs should remain where they are and be helped in the way you suggest. Be ready with computations of the cost of satisfying claims of the settlers, building ditches, etc. Come and see me again before you return. Good-morning," and he bent to his desk with instant absorption. Lawson again led the way across the square in search of the commissioner's office. The large, bare waiting-room was filled with a dozen or more redmen, all wearing new blue suits and wide black hats. They were smoking in contemplative silence, with only an occasional word spoken in undertone. It was plain they were expecting an audience with the great white chief. Several of them knew Lawson and cried out: "Ho! Ho!" coming up one by one to shake hands, but they glowed with pleasure as Curtis began to sign-talk with them. "Who are you?" he asked of one. "Oh! Northern Cheyenne--I thought so. And you--you are Apache?" he said to another. "I can tell that, too. What are you all waiting for? To see the commissioner? Have you had a good visit? Yes, I see you have nice new suits. The government is good to you--sometimes." They laughed at his sharp hits. "Well, don't stay too long here. The white man will rob you of your good clothes. Be careful of fire-water." One old man, whose gestures were peculiarly flowing and dignified, thereupon signed: "When the white man come to buy our lands we are great chiefs--very tall; when we ask for our money to be paid to us, then we are small, like children." This caused a general laugh, in which Curtis joined. They all wanted to know who he was, and he told them. "Ah! we are glad for the Tetongs. They have a good man. Tell the commissioner we are anxious to council and go home--we are weary of this place." Lawson, meanwhile, had entered the office and now reappeared. "Mr. Brown will see you at once, Captain." The acting commissioner wore the troubled look of a man sorely overworked and badly badgered. He breathed a sigh of ostentatious relief as he faced his two visitors, who came neither to complain nor to ask favors. He studied Curtis contemplatively, his pale face set in sad lines. "I'm leaning on you in this Tetong business," he began. "I have so many similar fights all over the West, I can't give you the attention you deserve. It seems as though our settlers were insane over Indian lands. I honestly believe, if we should lay out a reservation on the staked plains there'd be a mad rush for it. 'The Injun has it--let's take it away from him,' seems to be the universal cry. I am pestered to death with schemes for cutting down reservations and removing tribes. It would seem as if these poor, hunted devils might have a thumb-nail's breadth of the continent they once entirely owned; but no, so long as an acre exists they are liable to attack. I'm worn out with the attempt to defend them. I'll have nervous prostration or something worse if this pressure continues. Yesterday nearly finished me. What kind of pirates do you raise out there, anyway?" Curtis listened with amazement to this frank avowal, but Lawson only laughed, saying, in explanation: "This is one of the commissioner's poor days. He'll fight till the last ditch--" "Irrigating ditch!" supplemented the commissioner. "Yes, there's another nightmare. Beautiful complication! The government puts the Indian on a reservation so dry that water won't run down hill, and then Lawson or some other friend of the Indian comes in here and insists on irrigating ditches being put in, and then I am besieged by civil engineers for jobs, and wild-eyed contractors twist my door-knobs off. Captain Curtis, keep out of the Indian service if you have any conscience." "That's exactly why I recommended him," said Lawson--"because he _has_ a conscience." "It'll shorten his life ten years and do no material good. Well, now, about this Tetong imbroglio." Immediately he fell upon the problem with the most intense application, and Curtis had a feeling that his little season of plain speaking had refreshed him. Lawson went his way, but Curtis spent the remainder of the day in the commissioner's office, putting together his defence of the Tetongs, compiling figures, and drawing maps to show the location of grass and water. He did not rise from his work till the signal for closing came, and even then he gathered his papers together and took them home to his room in the club in order to put the finishing touches to them. While dressing for his dinner with Lieutenant Kirkman, a classmate and comrade, he began to wonder how soon he could decently make his dinner-call on the Brisbanes. It was shameful in him, of course, but he had suddenly lost interest in the Kirkmans. The day seemed lost because he had not been able to see Elsie. There was a powerful longing in his heart, an impatience which he had not experienced since his early manhood. It was a hunger which had lain dormant--scotched but not killed--for now it rose from its mysterious lair with augmented power to break his rest and render all other desires of no account. That night, after he returned from the Kirkmans', where he had enjoyed an exquisite little dinner amid a joyous chatter reviving old-time memories, he found himself not merely wide-awake, but restless. His brain seemed determined to reveal itself to him completely. Pictures of his early life and the faces and homes of his friends in the West came whirling in orderless procession like flights of swift birds--now a council with the Sioux; now a dinner of the staff of General Miles; visions of West Point, a flock of them, came also, and the faces of the girls he had loved with a boy's fancy; and then, as if these were but whisks of cloud scattering, the walls of great mountain ranges appeared behind, stern and majestic, sunlit for a moment, only to withdraw swiftly into gray night; and when he seized upon these sweeping fragments and attempted to arrange them, Elsie's proud face, with its dark, changeful eyes and beautiful, curving lips, took central place, and in the end obscured all the rest. The Kirkman home, the cheer, the tenderness of the husband towards his dainty little wife, the obvious rest and satisfaction of the man, betokening that the ultimate of his desires had been reached, also came in for consideration by the restless brain of the soldier-mountaineer. "I shall never be at peace till I have wife and child, that I now realize," he acknowledged to himself in the deep, solitary places of his thought. Then he rose and took up the papers which he had been preparing, and as he went over them again he came to profounder realization than ever before of the mighty tragedy whose final act he seemed about to witness. His heart swelled with a great tenderness towards that fragment of a proud and free people who sat in wonder before the coming of an infinite flood of alien races, helpless to stay it, appalled by the breadth and power of the stream which swept them away. He felt himself in some sense their chosen friend--their Moses, to lead them out of the desolation in which they sat bewildered and despairing. Thinking of them and of plans to help them, he grew weary at last, his brain ceased to grind, and he slept. XI CURTIS GRAPPLES WITH BRISBANE The hearing took place at ten o'clock, but Curtis had opportunity for a little helpful consultation with Lawson before the chairman called the committeemen to order. The session seemed unimportant--perfunctory. The members sat for the most part silent, ruminating, with eyes fixed on the walls or upon slips of paper which they held abstractedly in their hands. Occasionally some one of them would rouse up to ask a question, but, in general, their attitudes were those of bored and preoccupied business men. They came and went carelessly in response to calls of their clerks, and Curtis perceived that they had very little real interest in the life or death of the redmen. He would have been profoundly discouraged had not the chairman been alert and his questions to the point. After his formal statement had been taken and the hearing was over, the chairman approached Curtis informally and showed a very human sympathy for the Tetongs. "Yes, I think we can hold this raid in check," he said, in answer to Curtis, and added, slowly, "I am very glad to find a man of your quality taking up this branch of service." He paused, and a smile wrinkled his long, Scotch face. "They accuse me of being a weak sentimentalist, because I refuse to consider the redman in the light of a reptile. I was an abolitionist"--the smile faded from his eyes and his thin lips straightened--"in days when it meant something to defend the negro, and in standing for the rights of the redman I am merely continuing my life-work. It isn't a question of whether I know the Indian or not, though I know him better than most of my critics; it's a question of his dues under our treaties. We considered him a man when we bought his land, and I insist he shall be treated the same now. I should like to hear from you--unofficially, of course--whenever you have anything to say. Lawson's testimony"--he laid a caressing hand on Lawson's shoulder--"is worth more to me than that of a thousand land speculators. He's a comfort to us, for we know he is disinterested, and has nothing to gain or lose in any question which concerns the reds, and we find very much the same about you, Captain Curtis, and I am determined that you shall have free hand." Curtis shook hands with the old man with a sense of security. Here, at least, was a senator of the old school, a man to be depended upon in time of trouble. He began also to realize Lawson's power, for he seemed to be the personal friend of every honest official connected with the department. As the two young men stepped out into the hall they came face to face with Elsie and her father. "Are we too late?" cried the girl. "Is the hearing over?" "My part of it is," answered Curtis--"at least for to-day. They may recall me to-morrow." Brisbane was visibly annoyed. "I didn't suppose you would come on till eleven; that's the word I got over the 'phone. I particularly wanted to hear your deposition," he added, sourly. "Papa has an idea your opposition to this bill is important," Elsie said, lightly, as Curtis edged away from Brisbane. Brisbane followed him up. "Well, now that your hearing is over, suppose you get into our carriage and go home with us to lunch?' "Please do!" said Elsie, with flattering sincerity. Curtis hesitated, and was made captive. "It is a great temptation," he said, looking at Lawson. Elsie saw him yielding and cried out: "Oh, you must come--and you, too, Osborne." Lawson was plainly defeated. "I can't do it. I have a couple of New York men to lunch at the club, and I couldn't think of putting them off." "Oh, I'm so sorry; we would have made a nice little lunch party." "There are other days coming!" he replied, as lightly as possible. As they drove away Curtis had a premonition that his impending interview would be disagreeable, for Brisbane sat in silence, his keen eyes full of some sinister resolution. He was, in fact, revolving in his mind a plan of attack. He realized the danger of attempting to bribe such a man even indirectly, but a poor and ambitious soldier might be removed by gentler means, through promotion; and friendly pressure might be brought to bear on the War Department to that effect. Having set himself to the task of clearing the reservation of the Tetongs, a man of Brisbane's power did not hesitate long over the morality of methods, and having decided upon promotion as his method of approaching Curtis, the old man distinctly softened, and made himself agreeable by extending the drive and affably pointing out the recent improvements in the city. "Our Capitol is as good as any now," he said. "Our new buildings are up to the standard." The young soldier refused to be drawn into any blood-heating discussions, being quite content to sit facing Elsie, feeling obscurely the soft roll of the wheels beneath him, and absorbing the light and color of the streets. "This is my city," he said; "I spent my boyhood, here. I went to West Point from here." "It _is_ beautiful," replied Elsie, and at the moment a spark of some mysterious flame sprang from each to the other. They were young, and the air was soft and sweet. Thereafter everything gave the young soldier pleasure. The whistling of the darkies, the gay garments of the shoppers, the glitter of passing carriages, the spread of trees against the bright sky--everything assumed a singular grace. His courage rose, and he felt equal to any task. As they entered the big house Elsie said: "You're to come right up to the studio. I want to show you a canvas I finished yesterday. I had an inspiration--I think you brought it to me." As she led the way up the wide and splendidly carved stair-way the soldier's elation sank away, for each step emphasized the girl's pride and power, and by contrast threw the poor Indian agent into hopeless shadow. He hardly heard what she said, till she led him before her easel and said: "There is yesterday's work. I've been trying for days to get a certain effect of color, and, behold! I caught it flying this morning. What puzzles me in your country is the enormously high value of your earth in reference to the sky. The sky is so solid." As he took in the significance of the canvas Curtis exclaimed: "It is very beautiful. It is miraculous. How do you do it?" "I'm glad you like it. My problem there was to represent the difference in value between Chief Elk, who is riding in the vivid sunlight, and his wife and Little Peta, who are just in the edge of that purple cloud-shadow. The difference between white in sunlight and white in shadow is something terrific in your dry air. Contrasts are enough to knock you down. This gray, Eastern studio light makes all my sketches seem false, but I know they are not." "They are very true, it seems to me." "When I close my eyes and hark back to the flooding light of the valley of the Elk, then I can do these things; I can't if I don't. I have to forget all my other pictures. This is nearer my impression than anything else I've done." "It has great charm," he said, after a pause, "and it also reminds me of my duty. I must return at once to the West." "When do you go--actually?" "Actually, I leave to-morrow at three o'clock; unless I receive word to the contrary, to-morrow morning." "So soon? You are making a very short stay. Can't you remain over the holidays? Some friends of mine are coming on from New York. I'd like you to meet them." "I think I must return. Jennie is preparing to give her little 'Ingines' a Christmas-tree, and I am told that my 'Sandy Claws' would add greatly to their joy, so I am making special effort to reach there on the 23d." She looked at him musingly. "You really are interested in those ugly creatures? I don't understand it." "To be really frank, I don't understand your lack of sympathy," he replied, smiling a little. "It isn't at all feminine." She took a seat on the divan before she spoke again. "Oh, women are such posers. You think I am quite heartless, don't you?" "No, I don't think that, but I do think you are a little unjust to these people, whose thought you have made very little effort to comprehend." "Why should I? They are not worth while." "Do you speak now as an artist?" he asked, gravely. "But they are so gross and so cruel!" "I don't deny but they are, sometimes, both gross and cruel, but so are civilized men. The scalp-dance no more represents them than a bayonet charge represents us. It isn't just to condemn all for the faults of a few. You wouldn't destroy servant-girls because some of them are ugly and untidy, would you?" "The cases are not precisely similar." "I'll admit that, but the point is here: as an artist you can't afford to dispose of a race on the testimony of their hereditary enemies. You wouldn't expect a sympathetic study of the Greek by the Saracen, would you?" "It isn't that so much, but they are so perfectly unimportant. They have no use in the world. What does it matter if they die, or don't?" "Perhaps not so much to them; but to me, if I can help them and fail to do it, it matters a great deal. We can't afford to be unjust, for our own sake. The bearer of the torch should not burn, he should illumine." "I don't understand that," she said, genuinely searching for his meaning. "There is where you disappoint me," he retorted. "Most women quiver with altruistic passion the moment they see helpless misery. If you saw a kitten fall into a well what would you do?" "I should certainly try to save it." "Your heart would bleed to see it drown?" She shivered at the thought. "Why, of course!" "And yet you can share in your father's exterminating vengeance as he sweeps ten thousand redmen into their graves?" "The case is different--the kitten never did any harm." "The wrong is by no means all on the redman's side. But even if it were, Christ said, 'Love them that hate you,' and as a Christian nation we should not go out in vindictive warfare against even those who despitefully use us. I haven't a very high seat in the synagogue. I have a soldier's training for warfare, but I acknowledge the splendor of Christ's precepts and try to live up to them. I always liked Grant's position as regards the soldier. But more than that--I like these red people. They are a good deal more than rude men. It is a great pleasure to feel their trust and confidence in me. It touches me deeply to have them come and put their palms on me reverently, as though I were superhuman in wisdom, and say: 'Little Father, we are blind. We cannot see the way. Lead us and we will go.' At such times I feel that no other work in the world is so important. If human souls are valuable anywhere on earth they are valuable here; no selfish land-lust should blind us to see that." As he spoke, the girl again felt something large and sweet and powerful, like a current of electrical air which came out of wide spaces of human emotion and covered her like a flood. She was humbled by the high purpose and inexplicable enthusiasm of the man before her. "I suppose you consider me cruel and heartless!" she cried out. "But I am not to blame for being what I am." "If you are not free, who is? You have it all--youth, wealth, beauty. Nothing enslaves you but indifference." She was thinking that Lawson had never moved her so, and wishing Curtis were less inexorable in his logic, when he checked himself by saying: "I beg your pardon again. I came to see your pictures, not to preach forgiveness of sins. I here pull myself up short." "I think you could make me feel personal interest in brickbats or--or spiders," she said, with a quaint, relaxing smile. "You were born to be a preacher, not a soldier." "Do you think so? I've had a notion all along that I was a fairly good commander and a mighty poor persuader; what I don't intend to be is a bore." He rose and began to walk slowly round the walls, studying the paintings under her direction. He was struggling with obscure impulses to other and more important speech, but after making the circuit of the room he said, as though rendering a final verdict: "You have great talent; that is evident. What do you intend to do with it? It should help some one." "You are old-fashioned," she replied. "In our modern day, art is content to add beauty to the world; it does not trouble itself to do good. It is _un_moral." "Perhaps I _am_ a preacher, after all, for I like the book or picture that has a motive, that stands for something. Your conception of art's uses is French, is it not?" "I suppose it is; clearly, it isn't Germanic. What would you have me do--paint Indians to convince the world of their sufferings?" "Wouldn't that be something like the work Millet did? Seems to me I remember something of that sort in some book I have read." She laughed. "Unfortunately, I am not Millet; besides, he isn't the god of our present idolatry. He's a dead duck. We paint skirt-dancers and the singers in the cafés now. Toiling peasants are 'out.'" "You are a woman, and a woman ought--" "Please don't hand me any of that stupid rot about what a woman _ought_ to be, and isn't. What I am I am, and I don't like dirty, ragged people, no matter whether they are Roman beggars or Chinese. I like clean, well-dressed, well-mannered people and no one can make me believe they are less than a lot of ill-smelling Indians." "Miss Brisbane, you must not do me an injustice," he earnestly entreated. "It was not my intention to instruct you to-day. I am honestly interested in your pictures, and had no thought of renewing an appeal. I was tempted and fell. If you will forgive me this time, I'll never preach again." "I don't say I object to your preachment. I think I rather like it. I don't think I ever met a man who was so ready to sacrifice his own interest for an idea. It's rather amusing to meet a soldier who is ready to knock one down with a moral war-club." She ended with a mocking inflection of voice. His face lost its eager, boyish expression. "I'm delighted to think I have amused you," he said, slowly. "It makes amends." "Please don't be angry," she pleaded. "I didn't mean to be flippant." "Your words were explicit," he replied, feeling at the moment that she was making a mock of him, and this duplicity hurt him. She put forth her sweetest voice. "Please forgive me! I think your work very noble, only I can't understand how you can exile yourself to do it. Let us go down; it is time for lunch, and papa is waiting for you, I know." It was unaccountable that a mocking tone, a derisive smile from this chance acquaintance, should so shake the soldier and so weaken him, but he descended the stair-way with a humiliating consciousness of having betrayed his heart to a fleering, luring daughter of wealth. At the door of the library the girl paused. "Papa, are you asleep?" The abrupt rustle of a newspaper preceded Brisbane's deep utterance. "Not at all--just reading the _Star_. Come in, Captain. Is lunch nearly ready?" he asked of Elsie. "I think so. They are a little late. I'll go see." As she left the room Brisbane cordially rumbled on. "Sit down, Captain. I'm sorry I missed your talk to-day. I am curious to know what your notion is about the Tetongs. Of course, I understood you couldn't go into the case the other night, but, now that your testimony is all in, I hope you feel free to give me your reasons for opposing our plan for a removal of the tribe." Curtis took a seat, while Brisbane stretched himself out in a big chair and fixed his cold, gray-blue eyes on the soldier, who hesitated a moment before replying, "I don't think it wise to go into that matter, Senator." "Why not?" "Well, we differ so radically on the bill, and your interests make it exceedingly difficult for you to be just in the case. Nothing would be gained by argument." "You think you know what my interests are?" There was a veiled sarcasm in the great man's smile. "I think I do. As a candidate for re-election to the Senate you can't afford to antagonize the cattle and mining interests of your State, and, as I am now officially the representative of the Tetongs, I sincerely hope you will not insist on a discussion of the motives involved." The young officer spoke firmly, but with impressive dignity and candor. Brisbane's ambiguous manner took a sudden shift to cordiality, and, leaning forward, he said: "Curtis, I like you. I admire your frankness. Let me be equally plain. You're too able a man to be shelved out there on a bleak reservation. What was your idea of going into the Indian service, anyway?" The young officer remained on guard despite this genial glow. "I considered it my duty," he replied. "Besides, I was rusting out in garrison, and--but there is no need to go into my motives. I am agent, and shall stand firmly for the right of my wards so long as I am in position to do so." "But you're wasting your life. Suppose you were offered a chance to go to--well, say West Point, as an instructor on a good salary?" "I would decline the appointment." "Why?" "Because at this time I am needed where I am, and I have started on a plan of action which I have a pride in finishing." Brisbane grew distinctively less urbane. "You are bent on fighting me, are you?" "What do you mean?" asked Curtis, though he knew. "You are dead set against the removal of the Tetongs?" "Most certainly I am!" Elsie re-entered the room during this rapid interchange of phrase, but neither of the men heard her, so intent were they upon each other. "Young man, do you know who you are fighting?" asked Brisbane, bristling like a bear and showing his teeth a little. Curtis being silent, he went on: "You're lined up against the whole State! Not only the cattlemen round about the reservation, but a majority of the citizens are determined to be rid of those vagabonds. Anybody that knows anything about 'em knows they're a public nuisance. Why should they be allowed to camp on land which they can't use--graze their mangy ponies on lands rich in minerals--" "Because they are human beings." "Human beings!" sneered Brisbane. "They are nothing but a greasy lot of vermin--worthless from every point of view. Their rights can't stand in the way of civilization." "It is not a question of whether they are clean or dirty, it is a question of justice," Curtis replied, hotly. "They came into the world like the rest of us, without any choice in the matter, and so far as I can see have the same rights to the earth--at least, so much of it as they need to sustain life. The fact that they make a different use of the soil than you would do isn't a sufficient reason for starving and robbing them." "The quicker they die the better," replied Brisbane, flushing with sudden anger. "The only good Injun is a dead Injun." At this familiar phrase Curtis took fire. "Yes, I expected that accursed sentence. Let me tell you, Mr. Brisbane, I never knew a redman savage enough to utter such a sentiment as that. The most ferocious utterance of Geronimo never touched the tigerish malignity of that saying. Sitting Bull was willing to live and let live. If your view represents civilization, I want none of it. The world of the savage is less cruel, less selfish." Brisbane's face writhed white, and a snarling curse choked his utterance for a moment. "If you weren't my guest," he said, reaching a clutching hand towards Curtis, "I'd cut your throat." Elsie, waiting in strained expectancy, cried out: "Father! What are you saying? Are you crazy?" Curtis hastily rose, very white and very quiet. "I will take care not to put myself in your way as guest again, sir." "You can't leave too quick!" roared the old man, his face twitching with uncontrollable wrath. "You are a traitor to your race! You'd sacrifice the settlers to the interests of a greasy red vagabond!" "Father, be quiet! You are making a scene," called Elsie, and added, sadly: "Don't go, Captain Curtis; I shall be deeply mortified if you do. Father will be sorry for this." Brisbane also rose, shaking with a weakness pitiful to see. "Well, sir, you can go, for I know now the kind of sneak you are. Let me tell you this, young man: you'll feel my hand before you are a year older. You can't come into my house and insult me in the presence of my daughter. Get out!" His hands were moving uncontrollably, and Elsie discovered with a curious pang that she was pitying him and admiring the stern young soldier who stood quietly waiting for an opportunity to speak. At last he said: "Miss Brisbane, I beg your pardon; I should not have said what I did." He turned to Brisbane. "I am sorry I spoke so harshly, sir. You are an older man than I, and--" "Never mind my age," replied Brisbane, his heat beginning to cool into self-contained malice. "I desire no terms of friendship with you. It's war now--to the knife, and the knife to the hilt. You think you are safe from me, but the man that lines up against me generally regrets it to the day of his death." "Very well, sir, I am not one to waste words. I shall do my duty to the Tetongs regardless of you or your friends." He turned to Elsie. "Miss Brisbane, I ask you to remember that I honestly tried to avoid a controversy." Six months before Elsie would have remained passive while her father ordered Curtis from the door, but now she could not even attempt to justify his anger, and the tears glistened on her lashes as she said: "Father, why can't you accept Captain Curtis's hand? These ragamuffin redmen aren't worth quarrelling about. No one ever went away from us like this, and it breaks my heart to have it so. Don't go, Captain Curtis. Father, ask his pardon." The old man turned towards her. "Go to your room. I will see that this young squirt finds the door!" Elsie shrank from the glare of his eyes. "Father, you are brutal! You hurt me." "Do as I say!" he snarled. "I will _not_!" She faced him, tall and resolute. "I am not a child. I am the mistress of this house." She turned and walked towards the door. "Captain Curtis, I beg _your_ pardon; my father has forgotten himself." Brisbane took a step towards Curtis. "Get out! And you, girl, leave the room." The girl's face whitened. "Have you no sense of decency?" she said, and her voice cut deep down into his heart and he flinched. "Captain Curtis is my guest as well as yours." She extended her hand. "Please go! It is best." "It is the most miserable moment of my life," he replied, as they moved down the hall, leaving Brisbane at the door of the study. "I will do any honorable thing to regain your good-will." "You have not lost it," she replied. "I cannot blame you--as I should," she added, and the look on her face mystified him. "May I see you again before I leave for the West?" "Perhaps," she softly replied. "Remember he is old--and--" "I will try not to bear anger," he replied. And as he turned away it seemed that she had leagued herself with him against her own father, and this feeling deepened as she ran up the stairs heedless of the voice whose commands had hitherto been law to her. The young officer walked down the sunny avenue towards the White House with a curious feeling of having just passed through a bitter and degrading dream. He was numb and cold. Around him the little negro newsboys were calling the one-o'clock editions of the "_Styah_," and the pavements were swarming with public servants hastening to lunch, punctual as clocks, while he, having been ordered from the house of his host, was mechanically returning to his club. There was something piercingly pathetic in the thought of the good cheer he had anticipated, and the lost pleasure of sitting opposite Elsie made his heart ache. At the moment his feet stumbled in the path of duty. Surely he was a long way from the single-minded map-builder who had crossed the Sulphur Spring Divide. XII SPRING ON THE ELK Spring came early in that latitude, and Curtis was profoundly thankful that his first winter had proven unusually short and mild, for it enabled him to provide for his people far better than he had dared to hope. The rations were insufficient at best, and for several days of each alternate week the grown people were hungry as well as cold, though no one actually perished from lack of food. Beyond the wood contract and the hauling of hides each month there was very little work to be done during the winter, not enough to buy the tobacco the men longed for. They believed in Swift Eagle, however, for he visited every cluster of huts each month, and became acquainted with nearly every family during the winter. No agent had ever taken the like pains to shake the old women by the hand, or to speak as kindly to the old men who sat beside the fire, feeble and bent with rheumatism. The little children all ran to him when he came near, as if he were a friend, and that was a good sign, too. Some of the old chiefs complained, of course--there was so little else for them to do; but they did not blame the Little Father. They were assured of his willingness to do whatever lay within his power to mitigate their poverty. Jennie, who was often at the beds of those who suffered, had won wide acceptance of her lotions by an amused tolerance of the medicine-men, whose mystic paraphernalia interested her exceedingly. The men of magic came at last to sing their curious songs and perform their feats of healing in her presence. "Together we will defeat the evil spirits," they said, and the health of the tribe continued to be very good, in spite of unsanitary housing and the evil influence of the medicine-men. When the missionaries came to have the native doctors suppressed Curtis said: "My policy is to supplant, not to suppress." The bill which called for the removal of the Tetongs to another reservation was reported killed. The compromise measure for buying out the settlers was "hung up" in the committee-room, and this delay on the part of Congress exasperated the settlers beyond reason, and at a convention held early in April at Pinon City, Joseph Streeter brazenly shouted, "If the government does not remove these Injuns before the first of July we'll make it hot for all concerned," and his threat was wildly cheered and largely quoted thereafter as the utterance of a man not afraid of Congress or anybody else. Seed-time came without any promise of change, and the white settlers on the reservation went sullenly to their planting, and the cattlemen drove their herds across the boundaries upon the Tetong range as they had been doing for many years. "We are in for another season of it," they said, with the air of being martyrs in the cause of civilization. Curtis immediately sent warning commands to all the outside ranchers to keep clear of the reservation, and also notified Streeter, Johnson, and others of the settlers on the Elk and the Willow that their cattle must not be allowed to stray beyond certain lines, which he indicated. These orders, according to Calvin, made the settlers "red-headed as wood-peckers. They think you're drawin' the lines down pretty fine." "I mean to," replied Curtis. "You original settlers are here by right and shall have full opportunity to graze your stock, but those on the outside must keep out. I will seize and impound all stock that does not belong on this land." Calvin reported this statement to the outside men, and its audacity provoked the most violent threats against the agent, but he rode about unaccompanied and unarmed; but not without defence, for Calvin said to one of the loudest of the boasters, "The man who jerks a gun on Curtis runs a good chance of losing a lung or two," and the remark took effect, for Calvin had somehow acquired a reputation for being "plumb sassy when attack-ted." Curtis had the army officer's contempt of personal injury, and, in pursuance of his campaign against the invading stockmen, did not hesitate to ride into their round-up camps alone, or accompanied only by Crow Wing, and no blusterer could sustain his reputation in the face of the agent's calm sense of command. "I am not speaking personally," he said once, to an angry camp of a dozen armed men. "I am here as an officer of the United States army, detailed to special duty as an Indian agent, and I am in command of this reservation. It is of no use to bluster. Your cattle _must_ be kept from the Tetong range." "The grass is going to waste there," the boss argued. "That does not concern you. It is not the fault of the Tetongs that they have not cattle enough to fill the range." In the end he had his way, and though the settlers and ranchers hated him, they also respected him. No one thought of attempting to bribe or scare him, and political "pull" had no value in his eyes. Jennie, meanwhile, had acquired almost mythic fame as a marvellously beautiful and haughty "queen." Calvin was singularly close-mouthed about her, but one or two of the cowboys who had chanced to meet her with the agent spread the most appreciative reports of her beauty and of the garments she wore. She was said to be a singer of opera tunes, and that she played the piano "to beat the Jews." One fellow who had business with the agent reported having met her at the door. "By mighty! she's purty enough to eat," he said to his chum. "Her cheeks are as pink as peaches, and her eyes are jest the brown I like. She's a 'glad rag,' all right." "Made good use o' your time, didn't ye?" remarked his friend. "You bet your life! I weren't lettin' nothin' git by me endurin' that minute or two." "I bet you dursn't go there again." "I take ye--I'll go to-morrow." "Without any business, this time? No excuse but jest to see her? You 'ain't got the nerve." "You'll see. I'm the boy. There ain't no 'rag' gay enough to scare me." It became a common joke for some lank, brown chap to say carelessly, as he rose from supper, "Well, I guess I'll throw a saddle onto my bald-faced sorrel and ride over and see the agent's sister." In reality, not one of them ever dared to even knock at the door, and when they came to the yards with a consignment of cattle they were as self-conscious as school-boys in a parlor and uneasy as wolves in a trap, till they were once more riding down the trail; then they "broke loose," whooping shrilly and racing like mad, in order to show that they had never been afraid. Calvin continued to call, and his defence of the agent had led to several sharp altercations with his father. The red people expanded and took on cheer under the coming of the summer, like some larger form of insect life. They were profoundly glad of the warmth. The old men, climbing to some rounded hill-top at dawn, sat reverently to smoke and offer incense to the Great Spirit, which the sun was, and the little children, seeing the sages thus in deep meditation, passed quietly by with a touch of awe. As the soft winds began to blow, the dingy huts were deserted for the sweeter and wholesomer life of the tepee, which is always ventilated, and which has also a thousand memories of battle and the chase associated with its ribbed walls, its yellowed peak, and its smouldering fires. The sick grew well and the weak became strong as they passed once more from the foul air of their cabins to the inspiriting breath of the mountains, uncontaminated by any smoke of white man's fire. The little girls went forth on the hills to gather flowers for the teachers, and the medicine-men, taking great credit to themselves, said: "See! our incantations again prevailed. The sun is coming back, the grass is green, and the warm winds are breathing upon the hills." "Ay, but you cannot bring back the buffalo," said those who doubted, for there are sceptics among the redmen as elsewhere. "When you do that, then we will believe that you are really men of magic." But the people did not respond cheerfully to Curtis when he urged them to plant gardens. They said: "We will do it, Little Father, but it is of no use. For two years we tried it, and each year the hot sun dried our little plants. Our corn withered and our potatoes came to nothing. Do not ask us to again plough the hard earth. It is all a weariness to no result." To Jennie, Curtis said: "I haven't the heart to push them into doing a useless thing. They are right. I must wait until we have the water of the streams for our own use." The elder Streeter was very bitter, Calvin reported. "But he ain't no idyot. He won't make no move that the law don't back him up in; but some o' these other yaps are talkin' all kinds of gun-play. But don't you lose any flesh. They got to git by me before they reach you." Curtis smiled. "Calvin, you're a loyal friend, but I am not a bit nervous." "That's all right, Captain, but you can't tell what a mob o' these lahees will do. I've seen 'em make some crazy plays--I sure have; but I'll keep one ear lapped back for signs of war." XIII ELSIE PROMISES TO RETURN One beautiful May day Curtis came into the house with shining face. "Sis, our artists are coming back," he called to Jennie from the hall. "Are they? Oh, isn't that glorious!" she answered, running to meet him. "When are they to reach here? Whom did you hear from?" "Lawson. They can't come till some time in June, however." Jennie's face fell. "In June! I thought you meant they were coming now--right away--this week." "Lawson furthermore writes that he expects to bring a sculptor with him--a Mr. Parker. You remember those photographs he showed us of some statues of Indians? Well, this is the man who made the figures. His wife is coming as chaperon for Miss Brisbane." "She still needs a chaperon, does she?" "It would seem so. Besides, Mrs. Parker goes everywhere with her husband." "I hope she'll be as nice as Mrs. Wilcox." "I don't think Lawson would bring any crooked timber along--there must be something worth while in them." "Well, I am delighted, George. I confess I'm hungry for a message from the outside world; and during the school vacation we can get away once in a while to enjoy ourselves." The certainty of the return of the artistic colony changed Curtis's entire summer outlook. Work had dragged heavily upon him during February and March, and there were moments when his enthusiasm ebbed. It was a trying position. He began to understand how a man might start in his duties with the most commendable desire, even solemn resolution, to be ever kindly and patient and self-respecting, and end by cursing the redmen and himself most impartially. Misunderstandings are so easy where two races are forced into daily contact, without knowledge of each other's speech, and with only a partial comprehension of each other's outlook on the world. Some of the employés possessed a small vocabulary of common Tetong words, but they could neither explain nor reason about any act. They could only command. Curtis, by means of the sign language, which he had carried to marvellous clearness and swiftness, was able to make himself understood fairly well on most topics, but nevertheless found himself groping at times in the obscure caverns of their thinking. "Even after a man gets their thought he must comprehend the origin of their motives," he said to Wilson, his clerk. "Everything they do has meaning and sequence. They have developed, like ourselves, through countless generations of life under relatively stable conditions. These material conditions are now giving way, are vanishing, but the mental traits they formed will persist. Think of this when you are impatient with them." Wilson took a pessimistic view. "I defy the angel Gabriel to keep his temper if he should get himself appointed clerk. If I was a married man I could make a better mark; but there it is--they can't see me." He ended with a deep sigh. Curtis took advantage of Lawson's letter to write again to Elsie, and though he considered it a very polite and entirely circumspect performance, his fervor of gladness burned through every line, and the girl as she read it fell to musing on the singularity of the situation. He was in her mind very often, now; the romance and the poetry of the work he was doing began at last to appeal to her, and the knowledge that she, in a sense, shared the possibilities with him, was distinctly pleasurable. She had perception enough to feel also the force of the contrast in their lives, he toiling thanklessly on a barren, sun-smit land, in effort to lead a subject race to self-supporting freedom, while she, dabbling in art for art's sake, sat in a secure place and watched him curiously. "How well he writes," she thought, returning to his letter. His sentences clutched her like strong hands, and she could not escape them. As she read she drew again the splendid lines of his head in profile, and then, a sentence later, it seemed that he was looking straight into her eyes, grave of countenance, involved in some moral question whose solution he considered essential to his happiness and to the welfare of his people. Surely he was a most uncommon soldier. When she had finished reading she was sincerely moved to reply. She had nothing definitely in mind to say, and yet somehow she visualized him at his desk waiting an answer. "The worst of it is, we seem to have no topic in common except his distressing Indians," she said, as she returned to her work. "Even art to him means painting the redmen sympathetically." But he could not be put aside. He was narrow and one-sided, but he was sincere and manly--and handsome. That was the very worst of it; he was too attractive to be forgotten. Therefore she took up her pen again, being careful to keep close to artistic motives. She spoke of the success of her spring exhibition, and said: "It has confirmed me in the desire to go on valiantly in the same line. That is the reason I am coming back to the Tetongs. I feel that I begin to know them--artistically, I mean; not as you know them--and I need your blazing sunlight to drink up the fogs that I brought from Holland and Belgium. The prismatic flare of color out there pleases me. It's just the white ray split into its primary colors, but I can get it. I'm going to do more of those canvases of the moving figure blended with the landscape; they make a stunning technical problem in vibration as well as in values; and then the critics shout over them, too. I sold the one you liked so well, and also five portraits, and feel vastly encouraged. Owen Field was over from New York and gave me a real hurrah. I am going to exhibit in New York next fall if all goes well with me among the Tetongs." XIV ELSIE REVISITS CURTIS Jennie thought her brother the handsomest man in the State as they walked up and down the station platform waiting for the express train which was bringing Elsie and Lawson and a famous Parisian-American sculptor and his wife. Curtis was in undress uniform, and in the midst of the slouching crowd of weather-beaten loafers he seemed a man of velvet-green parade grounds and whitewashed palings, commanding lines of polished bayonets. He was more profoundly stirred at the thought of Elsie's coming than he cared to admit, but Jennie's delight was outspoken. "I didn't know how hungry for a change I was," she said. "They will bring the air of the big city world with them." The whistle of the far-off train punctuated her sentences. "Oh, George, doesn't it seem impossible that in a few moments the mistress of that great Washington home will descend the car-steps to meet us?" "Yes, I can't believe it," he replied, and his hands trembled a little as he nervously buttoned his coat. The train came rapidly to a stop, with singing rods, grinding brakes, and the whiz of escaping steam. Some ordinary mortals tumbled out, and then the wonderful one! "There they are!" cried Jennie. "And, oh--aren't her clothes maddening!" Lawson, descending first, helped Elsie to the platform with an accepted lover's firm touch. She wore a blue-cloth tailored suit which fitted marvellously, and her color was more exquisite than ever. Admiring Jennie fairly gasped as the simple elegance of Elsie's habit became manifest, and she had only a glance for the sculptor and his wife. Elsie, with hands extended, seized upon them both with cordial intensity. A little flurry of hand-shakings followed, and at last Mr. and Mrs. Jerome Parker were introduced. He was a tall man with a bush of yellow beard, while she was dark and plain; but she had a pleasant smile, and her eyes were nice and quiet. "Do you know, I'm overjoyed to get back!" said Elsie to Curtis. "I don't know why I should be, but I've been eagerly looking for the Cleft Butte all day. Jerome will tell you that I expressed a sort of proprietorship in every prairie-dog." "We are very glad to have you here again," replied Curtis. "And now that you _are_ here, we must get your belongings together and get away. We are to camp to-night at the Sandstone Spring." "A real camp?" "A real camp. We could drive through, of course, but it would be tiresome, and then I thought you'd enjoy the camp." "Of course we shall. It's very thoughtful of you." "Everything will be ready for us. I left Two Horns to look after it." "Then it will be _right_," said Lawson, who was beaming with placid joy. "Isn't it good to breathe this air again? It was stifling hot in Alta City. I never knew it to be hotter in the month of June." While they talked, Crane's Voice was collecting the trunks, and in a few minutes, with Elsie by his side, Curtis drove his three-seated buckboard out upon the floor of the valley, leaving the squalid town behind. Lawson and Mrs. Parker occupied the middle seat, and Jennie and the tall sculptor sat behind. They were all as merry as children. Elsie took off her hat and faced the sun with joyous greeting. "Isn't this glorious? I've dreamed of this every night for a month." "That's one thing the Tetong has--good, fresh air, and plenty of it," said Lawson. "A thin diet, sometimes," Curtis replied. He turned to Elsie. "Your studio is all ready for you, and I have spoken to a number of the head men about you. You'll not lack sitters. They are eager to be immortalized at your convenience." "You are most kind--I am going to work as never before." "You mustn't work too hard. I have a plan for an outing. One of my districts lies up in the head-waters of the Willow. I propose that we all go camping up there for a couple of weeks." "Do you hear that, Osborne?" she called, turning her head. "I did not--what is it?" Curtis repeated his suggestion, and Parker shouted with joy. "Just what I want to do," he said. Curtis went on: "We'll find the redman living there under much more favorable conditions than down in the hot valley. We have a saw-mill up in the pines, and the ladies can stay in the superintendent's house--" "Oh no!" interrupted Elsie. "We must camp. Don't think of putting us under a roof." A little later she said, in a low voice: "Father is in Chicago, and expects to be out here later. I mean, he's coming to make a tour of the State." "How is his health?" Curtis asked, politely. Her face clouded. "He's not at all well. He is older than he realizes. I can see he is failing, and he ought not to go into this senatorial fight." After a pause she said: "He was quite ill in March, and I nursed him; he seemed very grateful, and we've been very good friends since." "I'm glad of that," he replied, and bent closely to his driving. "You drive well, Captain." "An Indian agent needs to be able to do anything." "May I drive?" "You will spoil your gloves." "Please! I'll take them off. I'm a famous whip." She smiled at him with such understanding as they had never before reached, as she stripped her gloves from her hands and dropped them at her feet. "Now let me take the reins," she said. He surrendered them to her unhesitatingly. "I believe you can drive," he said, exultantly. Her hands were as beautiful as her face, strong and white, and exquisitely modelled; but he, looking upon them with keen admiration, caught the gleam of a diamond on the engagement finger. This should not have chilled him, but it did. Then he thought: "It is an engagement ring. She is now fairly bound to Lawson," and a light that was within him went out. It was only a tiny, wavering flame of hope, but it had been burning in opposition to his will all the year. As she drove, they talked about the grasses and flowers, the mountain range far beyond, the camping trip, and a dozen other impersonal topics which did not satisfy Curtis, though he had no claim to more intimate phrase. She, on her part, was perfectly happy, and retained her hold of the reins and the whip in spite of his protest. "You must not spoil your beautiful hands," he protested; "they are for higher things. Please return the lines to me." "Oh no! Please! Just another half-hour--till we reach that butte. I'm stronger than you think. I am accustomed to the whip." She had her way in this, and drove nearly the entire afternoon. When he took the reins at last, her fingers were cramped and swollen, but her face was deeply flushed with pleasure. "I've had a delicious drive," she gratefully remarked. At the foot of a tall butte Curtis turned his team and struck into a road leading to the left. This road at once descended upon a crescent-shaped, natural meadow enclosed by a small stream, like a babe in a sheltering arm. All about were signs of its use as a camping-ground. Sweat lodges, broken tepee-poles, piles of blackened stones, and rings of bowlders told of the many fires that had been built. Willows fringed the creek, while to the south and west rose a tall, bare hill, on which a stone tower stood like a sentinel warrior. Elsie cried out in delight of the place. "Isn't it romantic!" Already the sun, sinking behind the hill, threw across the meadow a mysterious purple gloom, out of which a couple of tents gleamed like gray bowlders. "There is your house to-night," said Curtis. "See the tents?" "How tiny they look!" Elsie exclaimed, in a hushed voice, as though fearing to alarm and put them to flight. "They are small, but as night falls you will be amazed to discover how snug and homelike they can become." Two Horns came to meet them, and Parker cried out, "Hello! see the big Indian!" The chief greeted Lawson with a deep and hearty "Hah! Nawson--my friend. How! How!" And Lawson, with equal ceremony, replied, in Dakota: "I am well, my brother; how is it with you?" "My heart is warm towards you." Elsie gave him her hand, and he took it without embarrassment or awkwardness. "I know you; you make pictures," he said, in his own tongue. "Jerusalem, but he's a stunner!" said Parker. "Hello, old man! How you vass, ain't it?" and he clapped the old man on the shoulder. Two Horns looked at him keenly, and the smile faded from his face. "Huh! Big fool," he said to Lawson. "You mustn't talk to an Indian like that, Parker, if you expect to have his friendship," said Lawson. "Two Horns hates over-familiarity." "Oh, he does, does he?" laughed Parker. "Kind of a Ward McAllister, hey?" Lawson, a little later, said, privately: "That was a bad break, Parker; you really must treat these head men with decent respect or they'll hoodoo you so you can't get any models. Two Horns is a gentleman, and you must at least equal him in reserve and dignity or he will report you a buffoon." Parker, who had done his figures from models procured in Paris from Buffalo Bill's show, opened his eyes wide. "Lawson, you're joking!" "You'll find every word I tell you true. I advise you to set to work now and remove your bad impression from Two Horns, who is one of the three principal chiefs. You can't come out here and clap these people on the back and call 'em 'old hoss.' That will do in some of the stories you read, but realities are different. You'll find money won't command these people, either." "I thought they liked to be treated as equals?" "They do, but they don't like to have a stranger too free and easy. You haven't been introduced yet." While Crane's Voice attended to the teams, Jennie and Two Horns worked at getting supper. Their comradeship was charming to see, and the Parkers looked on with amazement. Two Horns, deft, attentive, careful, anticipated every want. Nothing could be finer than the perfectly cheerful assistance he rendered the pretty cook. His manner was like that of an elder brother rather than that of a servant. "I didn't suppose Indians ever worked around a camp, and especially with a woman," remarked Parker. "What you don't know about Indians is still a large volume, Parker," retorted Lawson. "If you stay around with this outfit for a few weeks you'll gather a great deal of information useful for a sculptor of redmen." Elsie took Lawson mildly to task for his sharp reply. Lawson admitted that it made him impatient when a man like Parker opened his mouth on things he knew nothing about. "You never can tell what your best friend will do, can you? Parker is decidedly fresh. If he keeps on he'll become tiresome." Elsie presumed on her enormous experience of three months on the reservation, and gave Parker many valuable hints of how to wheedle the Tetongs in personal contact. "It seems I'm being schooled," he complained. "You need it," was Lawson's disconcerting reply. As night fell, and the fire began to glow in the cool, sweet dark with increasing power, they all sat round the flame and planned the trip into the mountains. "I have some Tetongs up there who are disposed to keep very clear of the agency. Red Wolf is their head man. You may all go with me and see my council with him if you like." "Oh! that will be glorious fun!" cried Elsie. But Parker asked, a little anxiously, "You think it safe?" which amused Curtis, and Parker hastened to explain: "You've no idea what a bad reputation these Tetongs have. Anyhow, I would not feel justified in taking Mrs. Parker into any danger." "She is quite safe," replied Curtis. "I will answer for the action of my wards." "Well, if you are quite sure!" "How far away Washington seems now!" remarked Elsie, after a silence. "I feel as if I had gone back to the very beginning of things." "It seems the end of things for the Tetongs," replied Lawson. "We forget that fact sometimes when we are anxious to have them change to our ways. Barring out a few rudenesses, their old life was a beautiful adaptation of organism to environment. Isn't that so, Curtis?" "It certainly had its idyllic side." "But they must have been worried to death for fear of getting scalped," said Parker. "Oh, they didn't war much till the white man came to disturb them, by crowding one tribe into another tribe's territory. Their 'wars' were small affairs--hardly more than skirmishes. That they were infrequent is evident from the importance given small forays in their 'winter counts.'" One by one the campers began to yawn, and Jennie and Mrs. Parker withdrew into the tent reserved for the women, but Lawson and Elsie and Curtis still remained about the fire. The girl's eyes were wide with excitement. "Isn't it delicious to be a little speck of life in this limitless world of darkness? Osborne, why didn't we camp last year?" "I proposed it, but Mattie would not hear to it. I have a notion that you also put my suggestion aside with scorn." She protested that he was mistaken. "It is the only way to get close to these wild people. I begin to understand them as I sit here beside this fire. What do you suppose Two Horns is thinking about as he sits over there smoking?" As they talked, Lawson began to yawn also, and at last said: "Elsie Bee Bee, I am sleepy, and I know Curtis is." "Not at all," protested Curtis. "I'm just coming to myself. As the camp-fire smoulders the night is at its best. Besides, I'm in the midst of a story." "Well, I didn't sleep very well last night," began Lawson, apologetically. "I think--if you don't mind--" "Go to bed, Sleepy Head," laughed Elsie. "We'll excuse you." "I believe I will," and off he went, leaving the two young people alone. "Go on!" cried Elsie. "Tell me all about it." Curtis glowed with new fire at this proof of her interest. "Well, there we were, Sergeant Pierce, Standing Elk, and myself, camped in Avalanche Basin, which at that time of the year is as full of storms as a cave is of bats." A yelping cry on the hill back of them interrupted him. "There goes a coyote! Now the night is perfect," he ended, with a note of exultant poetry. She drew a little nearer to him. "I don't enjoy that cry as well as you do," she said, with a touch of delicious timidity in her voice. "That's the woman of it, isn't it?" "I know how harmless he is." After a pause, he slowly said: "This is the farthest reach of the imaginable--that you should sit here beside my fire in this wild land. It must seem as much of a dream to you as your splendid home was to me." "I didn't suppose these things could shake me so. How mysterious the world is when night makes it lone and empty! I never realized it before. That hill behind us, and the wolf--and see those willows by the brook. They might be savages creeping upon us, or great birds resting, or any silent, threatening creature of the darkness. If I were alone my heart would stand still with awe and fear of them." "They are not mysterious to me," he made answer. "Only in the sense that space and dusk are inexplicable. After all, the wonder of the universe is in our brains, like love, rather than in the object to which we attribute mystery or majesty. To the Tetong, the simplest thing belonging to the white race is mysterious--a button, a cartridge, a tin-plate. 'How are they made? What are they built for?' he asks. So, deeply considered, all nature is inexplicable to us also. We white children of the Great Ruler push the mystery a little further back, that is all. Once I tried to understand the universe; now I am content to enjoy it." "Tell me, how did you first become interested in these people?" He hesitated a little before he replied. "Well, I was always interested in them, and when I got out among the Payonnay I tried to get at their notions of life; but they are a strange people--a secretive people--and I couldn't win their confidence for a long time. One day while on a hunting expedition I came suddenly upon a crew of wood-choppers who had an old man tied to a tree and were about to burn him alive--" "Horrible! Why?" "No reason at all, so far as I could learn. His wife sat on the ground not far away, wailing in deep despair. What treatment she had suffered I do not know. Naturally, I ordered the men to release the old man, and when they refused I cut his bands. The ruffians were furious with rage, and threatened to tie me up and burn me, too. By this time I was too angry to fear anything. 'If you do, you better pulverize the buttons on my uniform, for the United States government will demand a head for every one of them.' Had I been a civilian they would have killed me." "They wouldn't have dared!" Elsie shuddered. "Such men dare do anything when they are safe from discovery--and there is always the Indian to whom a deed of that sort can be laid." "Did they release the old man?" "Yes; and he and his wife camped along with me for several days, and their devotion to me was pathetic. Finally I came to understand that he considered himself dead, so far as his tribe was concerned. 'My life belongs to you,' he said. I was just beginning the sign language at that time and I couldn't get very far with him, but I made him understand that I gave his life back to him. He left me at last and returned to the tribe. Thereafter, every redman I met called me friend, and patiently sat while I struggled to learn his language. As I grew proficient they told me things they had concealed from all white men. I ceased to be an enemy. I became an adviser, a chief." "Did you ever see the old man again?" "Oh yes. He was my guide on several hunting expeditions. Poor old Siyeh, he died of small-pox. 'The white man's disease,' he called it, bitterly. He wanted to see me, but when he understood that I would be endangered thereby, he said: 'It is well--I will die alone; but tell him I fold my hands on my breast and his hand is between my palms.'" The soldier's voice grew hard and dry as the memory of the old man's death returned upon him. Elsie shuddered with a new emotion. "You make my head whirl--you and the night. Did that determine your course with regard to them?" "Yes. I resolved to get at their hearts--their inner thoughts--and my commanders put me forward from time to time as interpreter, where I could serve both the army and the redman. In some strange way all the Northwest tribes came to know of me, and I could go where few men could follow me. It is curious, but they never did seem strange to me. From the first time I met an Indian I felt that he was a man like other men--a father, a son, a brother, like anybody else. Naturally, when the plan for enlisting redmen into the cavalry came to be worked out, I was chosen to command a troop of Shi-an-nay. I received my promotion at that time. My detail as Indian agent came from the same cause, I suppose. I was known to be a friend of the redman, and the department is now experimenting with 'Curtis of the Gray-Horse Troop,'" he added, with a smile. "Such is the story of my life." "How long will you remain Indian agent?" "Till I can demonstrate my theory that, properly led, these people can be made happy." "I am afraid you will live here until you are old," she said, and there was a note of undefinable regret in her voice. "I begin to feel that you really have a problem to solve." "It lies with us, the dominant race," he said, slowly, "whether the red race shall die or become a strand in the woof of our national life. It is a question of saving our own souls, not of making them grotesque caricatures of American farmers. I am not of those who believe in teaching creeds that are dying out of our own life; to be clean, to be peaceful, to be happy--these are the precepts I would teach them." "I don't understand you, and I think I would better go to bed," she said, with a return to her ordinary manner. "Good-night." "Good-night," he replied, and in the utterance of those words was something that stirred her unaccountably. "He makes life too serious, and too full of responsibility," she thought. "I don't like to feel responsible. All the same, he is fine," she added, in conclusion. XV ELSIE ENTERS HER STUDIO Elsie, being young and of flamelike vitality, was up and ready for a walk while Two Horns was building the fire, and was trying to make him understand her wish to paint him, when Curtis emerged from his tent. "Good-morning, Captain," she called. "I'm glad you've come. Please tell Two Horns I want to have him sit for me." Curtis, with a few swift gestures, conveyed her wishes to Two Horns, who replied in a way which made Curtis smile. Elsie asked, "What does he say?" "He says, 'Yes, how much?'" "Oh, the mercenary thing!" "Not at all," replied Curtis. "His time is worth something. You artists think the redmen ought to sit for nothing." Two Horns ran through a swift and very graceful series of signs, which Curtis translated rapidly. "He says: 'I have heard of you. You painted Elk's daughter. I hear you sell these pictures and catch a great pile of money. I think it is right you pay us something when we stand before you for long hours, while you make pictures to sell to rich men in Washington. Now, I drive a team; I earn some days two dollars driving team. If I stop driving team, and come and sit for you, then I lose my two dollars.'" As he finished, Two Horns smiled at Elsie with a sly twinkle in his eyes which disconcerted her. "You sabbe?" he ended, speaking directly to her. "I sabbe," she said, in reply. "Good!" He held out his hand and she took it, and the bargain was sealed. He then returned to his work about the camp. "Isn't it glorious!" the girl cried, as she looked about her. "It's enough to do an artist all over new." The grass and the willows sparkled with dew-drops. The sky, cloudless save for one long, low, orange-and-purple cape of glory just above the sunrise, canopied a limitless spread of plain to the north and east, while the high butte to the back was like the wall of a temple. "Oh, let's take a run up that hill," Elsie said, with sudden change of tone. "Come!" and, giving Curtis no time to protest, she scuttled away, swift as a partridge. He followed her, calling: "Wait a moment, please!" When he overtook her at the foot of the first incline she was breathless, but her eyes were joyous as a child's and her cheeks were glowing. "Let me help you," he said; "and if you slip, don't put your hand on the ground; that is the way men get snake-bitten." "Snakes!" She stopped short. "I forgot--are there rattlesnakes here?" "There is always danger on the sunny side of these buttes at this time of the year, especially where the rocks crop out." "Why didn't you tell me?" "You didn't give me time." "Do you really think there is danger?" "Not if you walk slowly and follow me; I'll draw their poison. After they bite me they'll have no virus left for you." She began to smile roguishly. "You are tired--you want an excuse to rest." "If I thought you meant that, I'd run up to the summit and back again to show you that I'm younger than my years." She clapped her hands. "Do it! It will be like the knight in the story--the glove-and-lion story." "No. On reflection, I will not run; it would compromise my dignity. We will climb soberly, side by side, like Darby and Joan on the hill of life." With a demure countenance she took his hand, and they scrambled briskly up the slope. When they reached the brow of the hill she was fairly done up, while he, breathing easily, showed little fatigue, although she had felt his powerful arm sustaining her many times on the steeper slopes. She could not speak, and he smilingly said, "I hope I haven't hurried you?" "You--are--strong," she admitted, brokenly. "I'm not tired, but I can't get breath." At length they reached the summit and looked about. "What is the meaning of those little towers of stone?" she asked, after a moment's rest. "Oh, they have different meanings. Sometimes they locate the springs of water, sometimes they indicate the course of a trail. This one was put here by a young fellow to mark the spot from whence he saw a famous herd of buffalo--what time he made a wonderful killing." "I suppose all this land has been the hunting-ground of these people for ages. Do you suppose they had names for hills like this, and were fond of them like white people?" "Certainly. They had a geography of their own as complete in its way as ours, and they are wonderfully sure of direction even now. They seldom make a mistake in the correlative positions of streams or mountains, even when confused by a white man's map." "It _is_ wonderful, isn't it--that they should have lived here all those years without knowing or caring for the white man's world?" "They don't care for it now--but I see Two Horns signalling that breakfast is ready, so we had better go." "Let's run down!" "Wait!" He caught her. "It will lame you frightfully, I warn you." "Oh no, it won't." "Very well, experience is a fine school. If you must run down, we'll go down the shadowed side. Now I'll let you get half-way down and beat you in, after all. One, two, three--go!" With her skirt caught up in her hand, she started down the hill in reckless flight. She heard his shout and the thud of his prodigious leaps, and just as she reached the level he overtook her and relentlessly left her far behind. Discouraged and panting, she fell into a walk and waited for him to return, as she knew he would. "Oh, these skirts!" she said, resentfully. "What chance has a woman with yards of cloth binding her? I nearly tumbled headlong." He did not make her suffer for her defeat, and they returned to camp gay as a couple of children. Lawson smiled benevolently, like an aged uncle, while Elsie told him of their climb. Said he: "When you're as old as I am you will wait for wonders to come your way; you will not seek them." The breakfast was made merry by Jennie, who waged gentle warfare on Parker, whose preconceived ideas of the people resident on an Indian reservation had been shaken. "Why, you're very decent," he admitted at last. "They are all like us--nit," replied Jennie. "We're marked 'special.'" "Couldn't be any more like you, sis," said Curtis. "_You_ shouldn't say that." "Well, it needed saying, and no one else seemed ready to do it. If Calvin had been here!" "Who is Calvin?" asked Mrs. Parker. "I know!" cried Elsie. "He's one of the handsomest young cowboys you ever saw. If you want to do a cow-puncher, Parker, he's your model." "I certainly must see him. If I don't do a cowboy or a bucking bronco I'm a failure." As they were ready to start, Elsie again took her place beside Curtis, but Lawson insisted on sitting behind with Jennie. "It's hard luck, Parker, to have to sit with your wife," he said, compassionately. "Oh, well! I'm used to disappointments," Parker replied, in resigned calm. Elsie felt the need of justifying herself. "Are you complaining? Am I the assistant driver, or am I not? If I am, here is where I belong." "When I was coaching in Scotland once--" began Lawson. "Oh, never mind Scotland!" interrupted Elsie. "See that chain of peaks? Aren't they gorgeous! Do we camp there?" "Yes," replied Curtis. "Just where that fan-shaped belt of timber begins, I hope to set our tent. The agency is just between those dark ridges." "It is strange," Elsie said, after a pause. "Last year I was _wondering_ at everything; now I am looking for familiar things." "That is the second stage," he answered. "The third will be sympathy." "What will the fourth be?" "Affection." "And the fifth?" "Devotion." She laughed. "You place too high a value on your Western land." "I admit there is to me great charm in these barren foot-hills and the great divide they lead up to," he soberly answered. As they talked, the swift little horses drummed along the hard road, and by the time the agency flag-pole came in view they had passed over their main points of difference, and were chatting gayly on topics not controversial. Elsie was taking her turn with the reins, her face flushed with the joy and excitement of it, while Jennie and Mrs. Parker, shrieking with pretended fear, clung to their seats with frenzied clasp. Curtis was as merry as a boy, and his people, seeing him come in smiling and alert, looked at each other in amazement, and Crow Wing said: "Our Little Father has found a squaw at last." Whereas, as her lover, Curtis had been careful to consider the effect of every word, he now went to Elsie's service as frankly as Lawson himself, and his thoughtfulness touched her deeply. Her old studio had been put in order, and contained all needful furniture, and her sleeping apartment looked very clean and very comfortable indeed. Jennie apologized. "Of course, it's like camping compared to your own splendid home, but George said you wouldn't mind that, being an artist. He has an idea an artist can sleep in a palace one night and a pigsty the next, and rejoice." "He isn't so very far wrong," Elsie valiantly replied. "Of course, the pigsty is a little bit extreme. This is good enough for any one. You are very kind," she added, softly. "It was good of him to take so much trouble." "George is the best man I ever knew," replied Jennie. "That's why I've never been able to leave him for any other man." She smiled shrewdly. "I'll admit that eligible men have been scarce, and my chances have been few. Well, I must run across and look after dinner. You're to eat with us till you get settled. _We_ insist on being hosts this time." * * * * * "Surely," said Curtis, as they rose from the table, "being Indian agent is not the grim, vexatious experience I once considered it. If the charm of such company should get reckoned in as one of the perquisites of the office, the crush of applicants would thicken into a riot. I find it hard to return to my work in the office." "Don't be hasty; we may turn out to be nuisances," responded Elsie. XVI THE CAMP AMONG THE ROSES During the remainder of the day the agent found office work most difficult. His mind wandered to other and pleasanter things, and at last he began to make out a list of the necessaries for the camping trip. The next day, about four o'clock, Crow Wing and Crawling Elk came into his office bringing a young Tetong, who said he had been struck on the head by a sheep-herder. Curtis was instantly alert. "Sit down--all of you!" he commanded. "Now, Yellow Hand, tell your story." Yellow Hand, a tall and sinister-looking fellow, related his adventure sullenly. "I was riding the line of the reservation, as Crawling Elk had told me and as you commanded, when I came upon this sheep-man driving his flocks across the river. I hollered to him to keep away, but he kept on pushing the sheep into the river; then I tried to drive them back. This made him angry and he threw a rock at me, and struck me here." He touched his bandaged head. "I had no gun, so I came away." "Did you throw rocks at him?" asked Curtis. "No, I was on my horse." "You rode among his sheep?" "Yes." "Well, that was wrong. You should have reported to me and I would have sent a policeman. You must not make trouble with these men. Come to me or report to Grayman, your head man over there. The ranchers are angry at Washington, and we must be careful not to make them angry at us. I will send Crow back with you and he will remove this man." As they went out Curtis said to Wilson: "This is the second assault they have made on our boys. They seem determined to involve us in a shooting scrape, in order to influence Congress. We must be very careful. I am afraid I ought not to take this camping trip just now." "Don't put too much importance on these little scraps, Major. Yellow Hand is always getting into trouble. He's quarrelsome." "I'd disarm a few of these reckless young fellows if it would do any good." "It wouldn't. They'd simply borrow a gun of some one, and it won't do to disarm the whole tribe, for if you do these cowboys will swarm in here and run us all out." "Well, caution every one to be careful. I'm particularly anxious just now, on account of our visitors." "I don't think you need to be, Major. You take your trip with your friends. I'll guarantee nothing serious happens down here. And as you are not to leave the reservation, I don't see as the department can have any roar coming." Nevertheless, it was with some misgiving that Curtis made his final arrangements for the start. Crane's Voice and Two Horns had interested Elsie very much; therefore he filled their places with other men, and notified them to be in readiness to accompany the expedition, an order which pleased them mightily. Mary, the mother of Crane's Voice, was to go along as chief cook, under Jennie's direction, while Two Horns took general charge of the camp. Elsie burdened herself with canvases. "I don't suppose I'll paint a picture while I'm gone, but I'm going to make a bluff at it on the start," she said, as she came out and took her place with the driver amid the mock lamentations of Lawson and Parker and Jennie. "Can any of you drive--no!" replied Elsie, in German fashion. "Then I am here." "I like her impudence," said Lawson. As they drove up the valley, Curtis outlined his plan for using the water on a huge agency garden. "I would lay it out in lots and mark every lot with the name of a family, and require it to be planted and taken care of by that family. There are sites for three such gardens, enough to feed the entire tribe, but so long as a few white men are allowed to use up all the water nothing can be done but continue to feed the Tetongs in idleness, as we are now doing." As they rose the grass grew greener, and at last Elsie began to discover wild roses growing low in damp places, and at noon, when they stopped for lunch, they were able to eat in the shade of a murmuring aspen, with wild flowers all about them. The stream was swift and cold and clear, hardly to be classed with the turbid, sluggish, discouraged current which seeped past the agency. "It is a different world up here," Elsie said, again and again. "I can't believe we are only a half-day's drive from the agency. I never saw more delicious greens." Mrs. Parker, being an amateur botanist, was filled with delight of the thickening flowers. "It is exactly as if we had begun in August and were moving backward towards spring. I feel as though violets were near. It is positively enchanting." "You'll camp beside violets to-night," replied Curtis. Lawson pretended to sleep. Parker smoked a pipe while striding along behind the wagon. Elsie drove, and of course Curtis could not leave her to guide the team alone. Necessarily, they talked freely on many topics, and all restraint, all reserve, were away at last. It is difficult to hold a formal and carefully considered conversation in a jolting buckboard climbing towards a great range of shining peaks, and every frank speech brought them into friendlier relation. Considered in this light, the afternoon assumed vast importance. At last, just on the edge of a small lake entirely enclosed by sparse pines, they drew into camp. To the west the top of a snow mountain could be seen, low down, and against it a thin column of blue smoke was rising. The water, dark as topaz and smooth as oil, reflected the opposite shore, the yellow sky, and the peak with magic clearness, and Elsie was seized with a desire to do something. "Where is my paint-box? Here is the background for some action--I don't know what--something primeval." "An Indian in a canoe, _à la_ Brush; or a bear coming down to drink, _à la_ Bierstadt," suggested Parker. "Don't mention that old fogy," cried Elsie. Lawson interposed. "Well, now, those old chaps had something to say--and that's better than your modern Frenchmen do." She was soon at work, with Lawson and Parker standing by her side, overlooking her panel and offering advice. "There's no color in that," Parker said, finally. "It's a black-and-white merely. Its charm is in things you can't paint--the feel of the air, the smell of pine boughs." "Go away--both of you," she commanded, curtly, and they retreated to the camp, where Curtis was setting the tents, and Jennie, old Mary, and Two Horns, with swift and harmonious action, were bringing appetizing odors out of various cans and boxes, what time the crackle of the fire increased to a gentle roar. There they sat immovably, shamelessly waiting till the call for supper came. They were all hungry, and Jennie's cooking received such praise as comes from friends who speak and devour--Parker nearly devoured without speaking, so lank and empty was he by reason of his long walk. Elsie seemed to have forgotten her life of luxury, and was reverted to a primitive stage of culture wherein she found everything enjoyable. Her sketch, propped up against a basket by Curtis, was admired unreservedly. Altogether, the trouble and toil of civilized life were forgotten tyrants, so far as these few souls were concerned. They came close to the peace and the care-free tranquillity of the redman, whose ideals they had come to destroy. As soon as supper was eaten and the men had lighted their cigars, the whole party walked out to the edge of the little pond and lounged about on blankets, and watched the light go out of the sky. Talk grew more subdued as the beauty and the mystery of the night deepened. Elsie listened to every sound, and asked innumerable questions of Curtis. She insisted on knowing the name of every bird or beast whose call could be heard. The young soldier's wood-craft both pleased and astonished her. Mrs. Parker, with her lap full of botanical specimens, was absorbed in the work of classifying them. Parker was a gentleman of leisure, with nothing to do but watch the peaceful coming of the dusk and comment largely on the universe. It was natural that, as host, Curtis should enjoy a large part of Elsie's company, but neither of them seemed to realize that Lawson was being left quite unheeded in the background, but Jennie was aware of this neglect, and put forth skilful effort to break the force of it. Lawson himself seemed to be entirely unconscious of any loss or threatening disaster. A little later, as they sat watching the fire grow in power in the deepening darkness, Curtis suddenly lifted his hand. "Hark!" All listened. Two Horns spoke first. "One man come, on horse." "Some messenger for me, probably," said the Captain, composedly. "He is coming fast, too." As the steady drumming of the horse's hoofs increased in power, Elsie felt something chill creep beneath the roots of her hair. Perhaps the Indians had broken out in war against the whites! Perhaps-- A tall young Tetong slipped from his tired horse and approached the Captain. In his extended hand lay an envelope, which gleamed in the firelight. As Curtis took this letter the messenger, squatting before him, began to roll a cigarette. His lean and powerful face was shadowed by a limp sombrero and his eyes were hidden, but his lips were grave and calm. A quirt dangled from his right wrist, and in the two braids of his hair green eagle-plumes were twisted. The star on the lapel of his embroidered vest showed him to be a police-officer. From the intensity of his attitude it was plain he was studying his agent's face in order to read thereon the character of the message he had brought. Curtis turned the paper slowly and without excitement. With rapid signs he dismissed the courier. "I have read it. You will camp with Two Horns. Go get some food. Mary will give you meat." Turning to his guests, he then said: "It is nothing special--merely some papers I forgot to sign before leaving." "By George! what a picture the fellow made, sitting there!" said Parker. "It was like an illustration in a novel. Why don't you paint that kind of thing, Bee Bee?" "Because I can't," she replied. "Don't you suppose I saw it? I'd need the skill of Zorn to do a thing as big and mysterious as that. Did you see the intensity of his pose? He expected Captain Curtis to show excitement or alarm. He was very curious to know what it was all about--don't you think so?" Curtis was amused. "Yes, I suppose he thought the paper more important than it was. The settlers have kept the tribe guessing all the spring by threats of running them off the reservation. Of course they wouldn't openly resort to violence, but there are several irresponsibles who would strike in the dark if they found opportunity." In spite of his reassuring tone, a vague fear fell over the camping party. Parker was frankly alarmed. "If you think there is any danger, Captain, I want to get out o' here quick. I'm not here to study the Tetong with his war-paint on." "If there had been any danger, Mr. Parker, I would not have left my office. I shall have a report similar to this every day while I am away, so please be composed." The policeman came back, resumed his squatting position before the fire, and began a series of vigorous and dramatic gestures, to which the Captain replied in kind, absorbed, intent, with a face as inscrutable as that of the redman himself. The contrast between the resolute, handsome young white man and the roughhewn Tetong was superb. "There's nothing in it for me," said Parker, "but it's great business for a painter." Elsie seized a block of paper, and with soft pencil began to sketch them both against the background of mysterious blackness, out of which a pine bole gleamed ashy white. Suddenly, silently, as though one of the tree-trunks had taken on life, another Tetong appeared in the circle of the firelight and stood with deep-sunk eyes fastened on the Captain's face. Another followed, and still others, till two old men and four young fellows ranged themselves in a semicircle before their agent, with Crane's Voice and Two Horns at the left and a little behind. The old men smoked a long pipe, but the young men rolled cigarettes, taking no part in the council, listening the while with eyes as bright as those of foxes. It was all sinister and menacing to the Parkers, and all wondered till Curtis turned to say: "They are my mill-hands--good, faithful boys, too." "Mill-hands!" exclaimed Parker. "They looked uncommonly like a scalping party." "That is what imagination can do. I thought your faces were extra solemn," remarked Curtis, dryly; but Lawson knew that the agent was not so untroubled as he pretended, for old Crow Killer had a bitter story to relate of the passage of a band of cowboys through his camp. They had stampeded his ponies and shot at him, one bullet passing so close to his ear that it burned the skin, and he was angry. "They wish to kill us, these cattlemen," he said, sombrely, in conclusion. "If they come again we will fight." Happily, his vehemence did not reach the comprehension of the women nor the understanding of Parker, and Lawson smoked on as calmly as if these tell-tale gestures were the flecking of shadows cast by the leaping flames. At last the red visitors rose and vanished as silently as they came. They seemed to pass through black curtains, so suddenly they disappeared. In spite of all reassurance, the women were a little reluctant to go to bed--at least Mrs. Parker and Elsie were. "I wish the men's tent were not so far off," Mrs. Parker said to Elsie, plaintively. "I'll ask them to move it, if you wish," returned Elsie, and when Jennie came in she said: "Aren't you a little nervous to-night?" Jennie looked surprised. "Why, no! Do you mean about sleeping in a tent?" "Yes," replied Mrs. Parker. "Suppose a wolf or a redman should come?" Jennie laughed. "You needn't worry--we have a powerful guard. I never am afraid with George." "But the men are so far away! I wish their tent were close beside ours. I'm not standing on propriety," Mrs. Parker added, as Jennie hesitated. "I'm getting nervous, and I want Jerome where he can hear me if I call to him." Perceiving that Elsie shared this feeling in no small degree, Jennie soberly conveyed their wish to Curtis. "Very well, we'll move over. It will take but a moment." As she heard the men driving the tent-pegs close beside her bed Mrs. Parker sighed peacefully. "_Now_ I can sleep. There is no comfort like a man in case of wolves, Indians, and burglars," and the fact that the men were laughing did not disturb her. With a little shock, Elsie realized that Curtis and not Lawson was in her mind as her defender. Of course, he was in command; that accounted for it. Nevertheless, as she listened to the murmur of their voices she detected herself waiting for Curtis's crisp, clear bass, and not for the nasal tenor of the man whose ring she wore. Her mind was filled, too, with the dramatic figure the young officer made as he sat in gesture-talk with his Tetong wards. In case of trouble the safest place on all the reservation would be by his side, for his people loved and trusted him. She did not go to sleep easily; the excitement, the strangeness of being in a tent, kept her alert long after Jennie and Mrs. Parker were breathing tranquilly on their cots. One hears everything from a tent. It seems to stand in the midst of the world. It is like being in a diving-bell under water. Life goes on almost uninterruptedly. The girl heard a hundred obscure, singular, sibilant sounds, as of serpents conferring. Mysterious footsteps advanced, paused, retreated. Whispered colloquies arose among the leaves, giving her heart disquiet. Every unfamiliar sound was a threat. The voices of birds and beasts no longer interested her--they scared her; and, try as she would to banish these fancies, her nerves thrilled with every rush of the wind. It was deep night before she dropped asleep. XVII A FLUTE, A DRUM, AND A MESSAGE Elsie dreamed she was at the theatre. The opera was "Il Trovatore," and at the moment when the prison song--that worn yet ever-mournful cry--should have pulsed forth; but in its stead another strain came floating from afar, a short phrase equally sad, which sank slowly, as a fragment of cloud descends from sky to earth to become tears of dew on the roses. Over and over again it was repeated, so sad, so sweet, so elemental, it seemed that the pain of all love's vain regret was in it, longing and sorrow and despair, without relief, without hope, defiant of death. Slowly the walls of the theatre faded. The gray light of morning crept into the dreamer's eyes, and she was aware of the walls of her tent and knew she had been dreaming. But the sorrowful song went on, with occasional slight deviations of time and tone, but always the same. Beginning on a high key, it fell by degrees, hesitating, momentarily swooping upward, yet ever falling, till at last it melted in with the solemn moan of the pines stirring above her head. Then she drowsed again, and seemed to be listening to the wailing song with some one whose hand she held. As she turned to ask whence the music came a little shudder seized her, for the eyes looking into hers were not those of Lawson. Curtis faced her, grave and sweet. With this shock she wakened, but the song had ceased. She waited in silence, hoping to hear it again. When fully aroused to her surroundings, she was convinced that she had dreamed the music as well as the hand-clasp, and a flush ran over her. "Why should I dream in that way of _him_?" She heard the soft lisp of moccasined feet outside the tent, and immediately after the sound of an axe. Presently the fire began to crackle, and the rising sun threw a flood of golden light against the canvas wall. Jennie lifted her arms and yawned, and at last sat up and listened. Catching Elsie's eye she said: "Good-morning, dear. How did you sleep?" "Deliciously--but did you hear some one singing just before sunrise?" "No--did you?" "I thought I did; but perhaps I dreamed it." "Where did it seem to come from?" "Oh, from away off and high up--the saddest song--a phrase constantly repeated." "Oh, I know. It was some young Tetong lover playing the flute. They often do that when the girls are going for water in the morning. Isn't it beautiful?" "I never heard anything so sad." "All their songs are sad. George says the primitive love-songs of all races are the same. But Two Horns has the fire going, and I must get up and superintend breakfast. You need not rise till I call." Mrs. Parker began to stir. "Jerome! What time is it?" The girls laughed as Jerome, in the other tent, replied, sweetly: "Time to arise, Honey Plum." Mrs. Parker started up and stared around, her eyes still misty with slumber. "I slept the whole night through," she finally remarked, as if in answer to a question, and her voice expressed profound astonishment. "Didn't hear the wolves, did you, pet?" called Parker. "Wolves! No. Did they howl?" "Howl is no name for it. They tied themselves into double bow-knots of noise." "I don't believe it." Elsie replied: "I didn't hear anything but the music. Did you hear the singing?" Lawson spoke. "You people have the most active imaginations. All I heard was the wind in the pines, and an occasional moose walking by." "Moose!" cried Mrs. Parker. "Why, they're enormous creatures." Jennie began to laugh. "You people will need to hurry to be ready for breakfast. I'm going to put the coffee on." She slipped outside. "Oh, girls! Get up at once, it's glorious out here on the lake!" Curtis was busy about the camp-fire. "Good-morning, sis. Here are some trout for breakfast." "Trout!" shouted Lawson, from the tent. "Trout!" echoed Parker. "We'll be there," and the tent bulged and flapped with his hasty efforts at dressing. In gay spirits they gathered round their rude table, Parker and Jennie particularly jocular. Curtis was puzzled by some subtle change in Elsie. Her gaze was not quite so frank, and her color seemed a little more fitful; but she was as merry as a child, and enjoyed every makeshift as though it were done for the first time and for her own amusement. "What's the programme for to-day?" asked Parker. "After I inspect the saw-mill we will hook up and move over the divide to the head-waters of the Willow and camp with Red Wolf's band." Parker coughed. "Well, now--of course, Captain, we are depending on you." Curtis smiled. "Perhaps you'd like to go back to the agency?" "No, sirree, bob! I'm sticking right to your coat-tails till we're out o' the woods." Lawson interposed. "You wouldn't infer that Parker had ever had a Parisian education, would you?" Parker was not abashed. "I know what you mean. Those are all expressions my father used. They stick to me like fly-paper." "I've tried and tried to break him of his plebeian phrases, but I cannot," Mrs. Parker said, with sad emphasis. "I wouldn't try," replied Jennie. "I like them." "Thank you, lady, thank you," Parker fervently made answer. Curtis hurried away to look at the saw-mill. Lawson and Parker went fishing, and Elsie got out her paint-box and started another sketch. The morning was glorious, the air invigorating, and she painted joyously with firm, plashing strokes. Never had she been so sure of her brush. Life and art were very much worth while--only now and then a disturbing wish intruded--it was only a vague and timid longing; but it grew a little in power each time. Once she looked steadily and soberly at the ring whose jewel sparkled like a drop of dew on the third finger of her left hand. A half-hour later Curtis came back, walking rapidly. Seeing her at work he deflected from the straight trail and drew near. "I think that is wonderful," he said, as he looked at her sketch. "I don't see how you do so much with so few strokes." "That always puzzles the layman," she replied. "But it's really very simple." "When you know how. I hope you're enjoying your trip with us?" She flashed a smile that was almost coquettish upon him. "It is glorious. I am so happy I'm afraid it won't last." "We always feel that way about any keen pleasure," he replied, soberly. "Now I can't keep the thought of your going out of my mind. Every hour or two I find myself saying, 'It'll be lonesome business when these artists leave us.'" "You mustn't speak of anything sorrowful this week. Let's be as happy as we can." He pondered a fitting reply, but at last gave it up and said: "If you are satisfied with your sketch, we'll start. I see the teams are ready." "Oh yes, I'm ready to go. I just wanted to make a record of the values--they are changing so fast now," and she began to wipe her brushes and put away her panel. "I don't care where we go so we keep in the pines and have the mountains somewhere in sight." It must have been in remorse of her neglect of Lawson the preceding day that Elsie insisted on sitting beside him in the back seat, while Mrs. Parker took her place with the driver. The keen pang of disappointment which crossed his heart warned Curtis that his loyalty to his friend was in danger of being a burden, and the drive was robbed of all the blithe intercourse of the day before. Parker and Jennie fought clamorously on a variety of subjects in the middle distance, but Curtis was hardly more than courteous to Mrs. Parker--so absorbed was he in some inner controversy. Retracing their course to the valley the two wagons crossed the stream and crawled slowly up the divide between the Elk and the Willow, and at one o'clock came down upon a sparse village of huts and tepees situated on the bank of a clear little stream--just where it fell away from a narrow pond which was wedged among the foot-hills like an artificial reservoir. The year was still fresh and green here, and the air was like May. Dogs were barking and snarling round the teams, as a couple of old men left the doors of their tepees and came forward. One of them was gray-haired, but tall and broad-shouldered. This was Many Coups, a famous warrior and one of the historians of his tribe. He greeted the agent soberly, expressing neither fear nor love, asking: "Who are these with you? I have not seen them before." To this Curtis replied: "They are my friends. They make pictures of the hills and the lakes and of chieftains like Many Coups." Many Coups looked keenly at Elsie. "My eyes are old and poor," he slowly said. "But now I remember. This young woman was at the agency last year," and he put up his hand, which was small and graceful even yet--the hand of an artist. "I make pictures also," he said. When this was translated, Elsie said: "You shall make a picture of me and I will make one of you." At this the old man smilingly answered: "It shall be so." "Where is Red Wolf?" asked Curtis. "He is away with Tailfeathers to keep the cowboys from our land. We are growing afraid, Little Father." "We will talk more of that by-and-by--we must now camp. Call your people together and at mid-afternoon we will council," replied Curtis. Driving a little above the village, Curtis found a sheltered spot behind some low-growing pines and not far from the lake, and there they hastened to camp. The news flew from camp to camp that the Little Father was come, but no one crowded unseasonably to look at him. "We will council," Many Coups announced, and began to array himself for the ceremony. Horsemen galloped away to call Red Wolf and others who lived down the valley. Never before had an agent visited them in their homes, and they were disposed to make the most of it. By the time the white people had eaten their lunch all the red women were in their best dresses. The pappooses were shining with the scrubbing they had suffered and each small warrior wore a cunning buckskin coat elaborate with beads and quills. A semicircular wall of canvas was being erected to shield the old men from the mountain wind, and a detail of cooks had started in upon the task of preparing the feast which would end the council. Said Curtis: "You will find in this camp the Tetong comparatively unchanged. Red Wolf's band is the most primitive encampment I know." A few minutes later he added, "Here comes Many Coups and his son in official garb." The two chieftains greeted their visitors as if they had not hitherto been seen--with all the dignity of ambassadors to a foreign court. "Please treat them with the same formality," warned Curtis. "It will pay you for the glimpse of the old-time ceremony." The younger man was unpainted, save for some small blue figures on his forehead. On his head he wore a wide Mexican hat which vastly became him. His face was one of the handsomest and most typical of his race. "This young man is the son of Many Coups, and is called Blue Fox, or 'The Southern Traveller,' because he has been down where the Mexicans are. His hat he got there, and he is very proud of it," explained Curtis. Jennie gave each of them a cup of coffee and a biscuit, of which they partook without haste, discussing meanwhile the coming council. "We did not know you were coming; some of our people will not get here in time," said Many Coups. "To-night, after the council, we wish to dance," said Blue Fox, meaning it as a request. "It is forbidden in Washington to dance in the old way." "We have heard of that, but we will dance for your wives. They will be glad to see it." "Very well, you may dance, but not too long. No war-dance--only the visitors' dance." "Ay, we understand," said Many Coups as he rose and drew his blanket about him. "In one hour we will come to council. Red Wolf will be there, and Hump Shoulder and his son. It may be others will return in time." The women were delighted at the promise of both a council and a dance, and Lawson unlimbered his camera in order to take some views of both functions, though he expressed some dissatisfaction. "The noble redman is thin and crooked in the legs," he said to Curtis. "Why is this?" "All the plains Indians, who ride the horse almost from their babyhood, are bow-legged. They never walk, and they are seldom symmetrically developed." "They are significant, but not beautiful," said Lawson. As they walked about the camp Elsie exclaimed: "This is the way all redmen should live," and, indeed, the scene was very beautiful. They were far above the agency, and the long valleys could be seen descending like folds in a vast robe reaching to the plain. The ridges were dark with pines for a space, but grew smooth and green at lower levels, and at last melted into haze. The camp was a summer camp, and all about, in pleasant places among the pines, stood the tepees, swarming with happy children and puppies. Under low lodges of canvas or bowers of pine branches the women were at work boiling meat or cooking a rude sort of cruller. They were very shy, and mostly hung their heads as their visitors passed, though they soon yielded to Jennie, who could speak a few words to them. "There's nothing in them for sculpture," said Parker, critically. "At least not for beauty. They might be treated as Raffaelle paints--for character." "They grow heavy early," Jennie added, "but the little girls are beautiful--see that little one!" The crier, a tall old man, toothless and wrinkled and gray, began to cry in a hollow, monotonous voice, "Come to the council place," and Curtis led his flock to their places in the midst of the circle. The council began with all the old-time forms, with gravity and decorum. Red Wolf was in the centre, with Many Coups at his left. The pipe of peace went round, and those whose minds were not yet prepared for speech drew deep inspirations of the fragrant smoke in the hope that their thoughts might be clarified, and when they lifted their eyes they seemed not to perceive their visitors or those who passed to and fro among the tepees. The sun, westering, fell with untempered light on their heads, but they faced it with the calm unconcern of eagles. To please his guests, Curtis allowed the utmost formality, and did not hasten, interrupt, or excise. The speeches were translated into English by Lawson, and at each telling point or period in Red Wolf's speech the women looked at each other in surprise. "Did he really say that?" asked Elsie. "Didn't you make it up?" "Rather good for a ragamuffin, don't you think?" said Lawson, as the old man took his seat. Many Coups spoke slowly, sadly, as though half communing with himself, with nothing of the bombast the visitors had expected, and he grew in dignity and power as his thought began to make itself felt through his interpreter. "He is speaking for his race," remarked Lawson to Elsie. "By Jove! the old fellow is a good lawyer!" cried Parker. "I don't see any answer to his indictment." Curtis sat listening as though each point the old man made were new--and this attitude pleased the chieftains very much. The speech, in its general tenor, was similar to many others he had heard from thoughtful redmen. Briefly he described the time when the redmen were happy in a land filled with deer and buffalo, before the white man was. "We lived as the Great Spirit made us. Then the white man came--and now we are bewildered with his commands. Our eyes are blinded, we know not where to go. We know not whom to believe or trust. I am old, I am going to my grave troubled over the fate of my children. Agents come and go. The good ones go too soon--the bad ones stay too long, but they all go. There is no one in whose care to leave my children. It is better to die here in the hills than to live the slave of the white man, ragged and spiritless, slinking about like a dog without a friend. We do not want to make war any more--we ask only to live as our fathers lived, and die here in the hills." As he spoke these final tragic words his voice grew deep and trembled, and Elsie felt some strong force gripping at her throat, and burning tears filled her eyes. In the city it was easy to say, "The way of civilization lies over the graves of the primitive races," but here, under the sun, among the trees, when one of those about to die looked over and beyond her to the hills as though choosing his grave--the utterance of the pitiless phrase was difficult in any tone--impossible in the boasting shout of the white promoter. She rose suddenly and walked away--being ashamed of her tears, a painful constriction in her throat. The speakers who followed spoke in much the same way--all but Blue Fox, who sharply insisted that the government should help them. "You have put us here on barren land where we can only live by raising stock. You should help us fence the reservation, and get us cattle to start with. Then by-and-by we can build good houses and have plenty to eat. This is right, for you have destroyed our game--and you will not let us go to the mountains to hunt. You must do something besides furnish us ploughs in a land where the rain does not come." In answer to all this, Curtis replied, using the sign language. He admitted that Red Wolf was right. "The Tetongs have been cheated, but good days are coming. I am going to help you. I am going to stay with you till you are safely on the white man's road. We intend to buy out the settlers, and take the water in the streams so that you may raise potatoes for your children, and you will then be glad because your gardens will bear many things good to eat. Do not despair, the white people are coming to understand the situation now. You have many friends who will help." As Many Coups rose and shook hands with the agent he was smiling again, and he said, "Your words are good." The old crier went forth again calling: "Come to the dance-hall. The white people desire to see you dance. Come clothed in your best garments." Then the drum began to utter its spasmodic signal, and the herald's voice sounded faint and far off as he descended the path to the second group of tepees. "Shall we go now?" asked Mrs. Parker. "Oh no, it will be two hours before they begin. The young men must go and dress. We have time to sup and smoke a pipe." "Oh! I'm so glad we're going to see a real Indian dance. I didn't suppose it could be seen now--not the real thing." Lawson smiled. "You'll think this is the real thing before you get inside the door. I've known tenderfeet to weaken at the last moment." Parker pretended to be a little nervous. "Suppose they should get hold of some liquor." "This band is too far away from the white man to have his vices," replied Curtis with a slight smile. He had wondered at Elsie's going, but concluded she had grown weary of the old chief's speech. "There is great charm in this life," said Lawson, as they all gathered before their tent and sat overlooking the village and the lake. "I sometimes wonder whether we have not complicated life without adding to the sum of human happiness." "I'm thinking of this in winter," said Elsie. "O-o-o! It must be terrible! No furnace, no bath-tubs." The others laughed heartily at the sincerity of her shudder, and Curtis said: "Well, now, you'd be surprised to know how comfortable they keep in their tepees. In the old skin tepee they were quite warm even on the coldest days. They always camp in sheltered places out of the wind, and where fuel is plenty." "At the same time I prefer my own way of living to theirs--when winter comes." "I know something of your logic," replied Curtis. "But I think I understand the reluctance of these people when asked to give up the old things. I love their life--their daily actions--this man coiling a lariat--that child's outline against the tepee--the smell of their fresh bread--the smoke of their little fires. I can understand a Tetong when he says: 'All this is as sweet to me as your own life--why should I give it up?' Feeling as I do, I never insist on their giving up anything which is not an impediment. I argue with them, and show that some of their ways are evil or a hinderance in the struggle for life under new conditions, and they always meet me half-way." "Supper is ready," called Jennie, and his audience rose. While still at meat, the drum, which had been sounding at intervals, suddenly took on a wilder energy, followed immediately by a high, shrill, yelping call, which was instantly augmented by a half-dozen others, all as savage and startling as the sudden burst of howling from a pack of wolves. This clamor fell away into a deep, throbbing chant, only to rise again to the yelping, whimpering cries with which it began. Every woman stiffened with terror, with wide eyes questioning Curtis. "What is all that?" "The opening chorus," he explained, much amused. "A song of the chase." The dusk was beginning to fall, and the tepees, with their small, sparkling fires close beside, and the shadowy, blanketed forms assembling slowly, silently, gave a wonderful remoteness and wildness to the scene. To Curtis it was quite like the old-time village. The husky voice of the aged crier seemed like a call from out of the years primeval before the white race with its devastating energy and its killing problems had appeared in the east. The artist in Elsie, now fully awake, dominated the daughter of wealth. "Oh, this is beautiful! I never expected to see anything so primitive." Knowing that his guests were eager to view it all, Curtis led the way towards the dance-lodge. Elsie was moved to take her place beside him, but checked herself and turned to Lawson, leaving Mrs. Parker to walk at the Captain's elbow. To the ears of the city dwellers the uproar was appalling--full of murder and sudden death. As they approached the lodge the frenzied booming of the drum, the wild, yelping howls, the shrill whooping, brought up in their minds all the stories of dreadful deeds they had ever read, and Parker said to Jennie: "Do you really think the Captain will be able to control them?" Jennie laughed. "I'm used to this clamor; it's only their way of singing." Elsie said: "They must be flourishing bloody scalping-knives in there; it is direful." "Wait and see," said Lawson. The dance-house was a large octagonal hut built of pine logs, partly roofed with grass and soil. It was lighted by a leaping fire in the centre, and by four lanterns on the walls, and as Curtis and his party entered, the clamor (in their honor) redoubled. In a first swift glance Elsie apprehended only a confused, jingling, fluttering mass of color--a chaos of leaping, half-naked forms and a small circle of singers fiercely assaulting a drum which sat on the floor at the right of the door. Then Red Wolf, calm, stately, courtly, came before them carrying his wand of office and conducted them to seats at the left of the fire, and the girl's heart ceased to pound so fiercely. Looking back she saw Jennie shaking hands with one of the fiercest of the painted and beplumed dancers, and recognized him as Blue Fox. Turning, she fixed her eyes on a middle-aged man who was dancing as sedately as Washington might have led the minuet, his handsome face calm of line and the clip of his lips genial and placid. Plainly the ferocity did not extend to the dancers; the singers alone seemed to express hate and lust and war. The music suddenly ceased, and in an instant the girl's mind cleared. She perceived that the singers were laughing as they rolled their cigarettes, and that the savage warrior dancers were gossiping together as they rested, while all about her sat plump young girls in gay dresses, very conscious of the eyes of the young men. In her early life Elsie had attended a country dance, and her changed impressions of this mad, blood-thirsty revel was indicated in her tone as she said: "Why, it's just an old-fashioned country hoe-down." Curtis laughed. "I congratulate you on your penetration," he mockingly said. The old men came up to shake hands with the agent, and on being presented to Elsie smiled reassuringly. Their manners were very good, indeed. Several of them gravely made a swift sign which caused Curtis to color and look confused, and when his answering sign caused them all to look at Lawson, Elsie demanded to know what it was all about. "Do you think you'd better know?" he asked. "Certainly, I insist on knowing," she added, as he hesitated again. He looked at her, but a little unsteadily. "They asked if you were my bride, and I replied no, that you came with Lawson." It was her turn to look confused. "The impudent things!" was all she could find to say at the moment. Red Wolf called out a few imperative words, the song began with its imitation of the wolves at war as before, then settled into a pounding chant--deep, resonant, and inspiriting. The dancers sprang forth--not all, but a part of them--as though their names had been called, while a curious little bent and withered old man crept in like a gnome and built up the fire till it blazed brightly. As they danced the younger men re-enacted with abrupt, swift, violent, yet graceful gestures the drama of wild life. They trailed game, rescued lost warriors, and defeated enemies. "You see it proceeds with decorum," said Curtis to Elsie and Mrs. Parker, as the dancers returned to their seats. "They enjoy it just as white people enjoy a cotillion, and, barring the noise of the singers, it is quite as formal and harmless." A little boy in full dancing costume now came on with the rest, and the visitors exclaimed in delight of his grace and dignity. He could not have been more than six years of age. His companion, an old man of seventy, was a good deal of a wag, and danced in comic-wise to make the on-lookers laugh. Parker was fairly hooking his chin over Curtis's shoulder to hear every word uttered and to see all that went on, and Curtis was in the midst of an explanation of the significance of the drama of the dance, when a short, sturdy, bow-legged Tetong, dressed in a policeman's uniform, pushed his way in at the door and thrust a letter at his agent's hand. Instantly every eye was fixed on Curtis's bent head as he opened the letter. The dancers took their seats, whispering and muttering, the drum ceased, and the singers, turned into bronze figures, stared solemnly. A nervous chill ran though Elsie's blood and Parker turned pale and cold. "What's up--what's up?" he asked, hurriedly. "This is a creepy pause." Lawson laid a hand on his arm and shut down on it like a vice. Red Wolf brought a lantern and held it at the Captain's shoulder. Jennie, leaning over, caught the words, "There's been a row over on the Willow--" Curtis calmly folded the paper, nodded and smiled his thanks to Red Wolf, and then lifting his hand he signed to the policeman, in full view of all the dancers: "Go back and tell Wilson to issue just the same amount of flour this week that he did last, and that Red Wolf wants a new mowing-machine for his people. You need not return till morning." Then, turning to Red Wolf, he said: "Go on with the dance; my friends are much pleased." The tension instantly gave way, every one being deceived but Jennie, who understood the situation and tried to help on the deception, but her round face was plainly anxious. Elsie, as she ceased to wonder concerning the forms and regulations of the dance, grew absorbed in the swirling forms, the harsh clashing of colors, the short, shrill cries, the gleam of round and polished limbs, the haughty fling of tall head-dresses, and the lightness of the small and beautifully modelled feet drumming upon the ground; but most of all she was moved by the aloofness of expression on the faces of many of the dancers. For the most part they seemed to dream--to revisit the past--especially the old men. Their lips were sad, their eyes pensive--singularly so--and mentally the girl said: "I must paint my next portrait of this quality--an old man dreaming of the olden time. I wonder if they really were happy in those days--happier than our civilization can make them?" and thoughts came to her which shook her confidence in the city and the mart. For the first time in her life she doubted the sanctity of the steam-engine and the ore-crusher. As they took their seats from time to time the older men smoked their long pipes; only the young men rolled their cigarettes. To them the past was a child's recollection, not the irrevocable dream of age. They were the links between the old and the new. As the time came to go, Curtis rose and addressed his people in signs. "We are glad to be here," he said. "All my friends are pleased. My heart is joyous when you dance. I do not forbid it. Sometimes Washington tells me to do something, and I must obey. They say you must not dance the war-dance any more, and so I must forbid it. This dance was pleasant--it is not bad. My heart is made warm to be with you. I am visiting all my people, and I must go to-morrow. Do not quarrel with the white man. Be patient, and Washington will do you good." Each promise was greeted by the old men with cries of: "Ay! Ay!" and the drummers thumped the drums most furiously in applause. And so the agent said, "Good-night," and withdrew. XVIII ELSIE'S ANCIENT LOVE AFFAIR As they walked back to their camp Jennie took her brother's arm: "What is it, George?" "I must return to the agency." "That means we must all go?" "I suppose so. The settlers seemed determined to make trouble. They have had another row with Gray Man's band, and shots have been fired. Fortunately no one was hurt. We must leave here early. Say nothing to any of our guests till we are safely on the way home." Elsie, walking with Lawson, was very pensive. "I begin to understand why Captain Curtis is made Indian agent. He understands these people, sympathizes with them." "No one better, and if the department can retain him six years he will have the Tetongs comfortably housed and on the road to independence and self-respect." "Why shouldn't he be retained?" "Well, your father may secure re-election to the Senate next winter." "I know," she softly answered, "he dislikes Captain Curtis." "More than that--in order to be elected, he must pledge himself to have Curtis put out o' the way." "That sounds like murder," she said. "Oh no; it's only politics--politics and business. But let's not talk of that--let us absorb the beauty of the night. Did you enjoy the dance?" "Very much. I am hopeless of ever painting it though--it is so full of big, significant shadows. I wish I knew more about it." "You are less confident than you were last year." He looked at her slyly. "I see more." "And feel more?" he asked. "Yes--I'm afraid I'm getting Captain Curtis's point of view. These people aren't the mendicants they once seemed. The expression of some of those faces to-night was wonderful. They are something more than tramps when they discard their rags." "I wish you'd come to my point of view," he said, a little irrelevantly. "About what?" "About our momentous day. Suppose we say Wednesday of Thanksgiving week?" "I thought you were going to wait for me to speak," she replied. He caught his breath a little. "So I will--only you won't forget my gray hairs, will you?" "I don't think I will--not with your broad daily hints to remind me. But you promised to be patient and--just friendly." He ignored her sarcasm. "It would be rather curious if I _should_ become increasingly impatient, wouldn't it? I made that promise in entire good faith, but--I seem to be changing." "That's what troubles me," she said. "You are trying to hurry me." At this moment they came close to the Parkers and she did not continue. He had given her another disturbing thought to sleep on, and that was, "Would it hurt him much if I should now return his ring?" Mrs. Parker was disposed to discuss the dance, but Jennie said: "We must all go to sleep. George says we are to move early to-morrow." * * * * * The walls of the tent could hardly be seen when the sound of the crackling flames again told that faithful Two Horns was feeding the camp-fire. Crane's Voice could be heard bringing in the horses, and in a few moments Curtis called out in a low, incisive voice: "Everybody turn out; we must make an early start across the range." The morning was gray, the peaks hidden in clouds, and the wind chill as the women came from their beds. Two Horns had stretched some blankets to keep off the blast, but still Elsie shivered, and Curtis roundly apologized. "I'm sorry to get you up so early. It spoils all the fun of camping if you're obliged to rise before the sun. An hour from now and all will be genial. Please wait for my explanation." Breakfast was eaten in discomfort and comparative silence, though Parker, with intent to enliven the scene, cut a few capers as awkward as the antics of a sand-hill crane. Almost before the smoke of the tepee fires began to climb the trees the agent and his party started back over the divide towards the mill, no one in holiday mood. There was a certain pathos in this loss of good cheer. Once out of sight of the camp, Curtis turned and said: "Friends, I'm sorry to announce it, but I must return to the agency to-night and I must take you all with me. Wilson has asked me to hasten home, and of course he would not do so without good reason." "What is the matter?" asked Elsie. "The same old trouble. The cattlemen are throwing their stock on the reservation and the Tetongs are resenting it." "No danger, I hope," said Parker, pop-eyed this time with genuine apprehension. "Oh no--not if I am on hand to keep the races apart. Now I'm going to drive hard, and you must all hang on. I want to pull into the agency before dark." The wagon lurched and rattled down the divide as Curtis urged the horses steadily forward. With his foot in the brake, he descended in a single hour the road which had consumed three long hours to climb. Conversation under these conditions was difficult and at times impossible. Jennie, intrepid driver herself, clutched her brother's arm at times, as the vehicle lurched, but Curtis made it all a joke by shouting, "It is always easy to slide into Hades--the worst is soon over." Once in the valley of the Elk the road grew better, and Curtis asked Elsie if she wished to drive. She, being very self-conscious for some reason, shook her head, "No, thank you," and rode for the most part in silence, though Lawson made a brave effort to keep up a conversation. By eleven o'clock not even Curtis and Lawson together could make the ride a joke. The women were hungry and tired, and distinctly saddened by this sudden ending of their joyous outing. "I wish these rampant cowboys could have waited till we had our holiday," Jennie grumbled, as she stretched her tired arms. "Probably they were informed of the Captain's plans and seized the opportunity," suggested Parker. "I wonder if Cal is a traitor?" mused Jennie. Two Horns and Crane's Voice came rattling along soon after Curtis stopped for noon at their first camping-place, and in a few minutes lunch was ready. Conversation still lagged in spite of inspiriting coffee, and the women lay out on their rugs and blankets, resting their aching bones, while the men smoked and speculated on the outcome of the whole Indian question. The teams were put to the wagons as soon as their oats were eaten and the homeward drive begun, brisk and business-like, and for some mysterious reason Curtis recovered his usual cheerful tone. It was mid-afternoon when the agency was sighted, and the five-o'clock bell had just rung as they drove slowly and with no appearance of haste into the yard. Wilson came out to meet them. "How-de-do? You made a short trip." "How are things?" inquired Curtis. "Nothing doing--all quiet," replied the clerk, but Curtis detected something yet untold in the quiver of his clerk's eyelid. "Well, I'm glad we got in." Supper was eaten with little ceremony and very languid conversation, and the artists at once sought their rooms to rest. The Parkers were too tired to be nervous, and Curtis was absorbed with some private problem. As Lawson and Elsie walked across the square in the twilight he announced, meditatively: "I'm going to be more and more impatient--that is now certain." "Osborne, don't! Please don't take that tone; I don't like it." "Why not, dear?" he asked, tenderly. "Because--because--" She turned in a swift, overmastering impulse. "Because if you do, I must give you back your ring." She wrung it from her finger. "I think I must, anyhow." As she crowded the gem into his lax hand he said: "Why, what does this mean, Elsie Bee Bee?" His voice expressed pain and bewilderment. "I don't know _what_ it means yet, only I feel that it isn't right now to wear it. I told you when you put it on that it implied no promise on my part." "I know it, and it doesn't imply any now." "Yes, it does. Your whole attitude towards me implies an absolute engagement, and I can't rest under that. Take back your ring till I can receive it as other girls do--as a binding promise. You _must_ do this or I will hate you!" she added, with a sudden fury. "Why, certainly, dearest--only I don't see what has produced this change in you." "I have not changed--you have changed." He laughed at this. "The woman's last word! Well, I admit it. I have come to love you as a man loves the woman he wishes to make his wife. I'm going to care a great deal, Elsie Bee Bee, if you do not come to me some time." "Don't say that!" she cried, and there was an imploring accent in her voice. "Don't you see I must not wear your ring till I promise all you ask?" They walked on in silence to the door. As they stood there he said: "I feel as though I were about to say good-bye to you forever, and it makes my heart ache." She put both hands on his shoulders, then, swift as a bird, turned and was gone. He felt that she had thought to kiss him, but he divined it would have been a farewell kiss, and he was glad that she had turned away. There was still hope for him in that indecision. As for Elsie, life seemed suddenly less simple and less orderly. She pitied Osborne, she was angry and dissatisfied with herself, and in doubt about Curtis. "I'm not in love with him--it is impossible, absurd; but my summer is spoiled. I shall go home at once. It is foolish for me to be here when I could be at the sea-shore." After a moment she thought: "Why am I here? I guess the girls were right. I _am_ a crank--an irresponsible. Why should I want to paint these malodorous tepee dwellers? Just to be different from any one else." As she sat at her open window she heard again the Tetong lover's flute wailing from the hill-side across the stream, and the sound struck straight in upon her heart and filled her with a mysterious longing--a pain which she dared not analyze. Her mind was active to the point of confusion--seething with doubts and the wreckage of her opinions. Lawson's action had deeply disturbed her. They had never pretended to sentiment in their relationship; indeed, she had settled into a conviction that love was a silly passion, possible only to girls in their teens. This belief she had attained by passing through what seemed to her a fiery furnace of suffering at eighteen, and when that self-effacing passion had burned itself out she had renounced love and marriage and "devoted herself to art," healing herself with work. For some years thereafter she posed as a man-hater. The objective cause of all this tumult and flame and renunciation seemed ridiculously inadequate in the eyes of others. He was the private secretary of Senator Stollwaert at the time, a smug, discreet, pretty man, of slender attainment and no great ambition. Happily, he had afterwards removed to New York, or Washington would have been an impossible place of residence for Elsie. She had met him once since her return--he had had the courage to call upon her--and the familiar pose of his small head and the mincing stride of his slender legs had given her a feeling of nausea. "Is it possible that I once agonized over this trig little man?" she asked herself. To be just to him, Mr. Garretson did not presume in the least on his previous intimacy; on the contrary, he seemed timid and ill at ease in the presence of the woman whose beauty had by no means been foreshadowed in her girlhood. He was not stupid; the splendor of her surroundings awed him, but above all else there was a look on her face which too plainly expressed contempt for her ancient folly. Her shame was as perceptible to him as though expressed in spoken words, and his visit was never repeated. Of this affair Elsie had spoken quite freely to Lawson. "It only shows what an unmitigated idiot a girl is. She is bound to love some one. I knew quantities of nice boys, and why I should have selected poor Sammy as the centre of all my hopes and affections I don't know. I dimly recall thinking he had nice ears and hands, but even they do not now seem a reasonable basis for wild passion, do they?" Lawson had been amused. "Love at that age isn't a creature of reason." "Evidently not, if mine was a sample." "Ours now is so reasonable as to seem insecure and dangerous." Her intimacy with Lawson, therefore, had begun on the plane of good-fellowship while they were in Paris together, and for two years he seemed quite satisfied. Of late he had been less contained. After her outburst of anger at her father's ejectment of Curtis, she met Lawson with a certain reserve not common to her. At the moment, she more than half resolved that the time had come to leave her father's house for Lawson's flat, and yet her will wavered. She said as little as possible to him concerning that last disgraceful scene, as much on her own account as to spare Curtis, but her restlessness was apparent to Lawson and puzzled him. Two or three times during the summer he had openly, though jocularly, alluded to their marriage, but she had put him off with a keen word. Now that her father seemed intolerable, she listened to him with a new interest. He became a definite possibility--a refuge. Encouraged by this slight change in her attitude towards him, Lawson took a ring from his pocket one night and said, "I wish you'd wear this, Elsie Bee Bee." She drew back. "I can't do that. I'm not ready to promise anything yet." "It needn't bind you," he pleaded. "It needn't mean any more than you care to have it mean. But I think our understanding justifies a ring." "That's just it," she answered, quickly. "I don't like you to be so solemn about our 'understanding.' You promised to let me think it all out in my own way and in my own time." "I know I did--and I mean to do so. Only"--he smiled with a wistful look at her--"I would have you observe that I have developed three gray hairs over my ears." She took the ring slowly, and as she put the tip of her finger into it a slight premonitory shudder passed over her. "You are sure you understand--this is no binding promise on my part?" "It will leave you as free as before." "Then I will wear it," she said, and slipped it to its place. "It is a beautiful ring." He bent and kissed her fingers. "And a beautiful hand, Elsie Bee Bee." Now, lying alone in the soundless deep of the night, she went over that scene, and the one through which she had just passed. "He's a dear, good fellow, and I love him--but not like that." And the thought that it was all over between them, and the decision irrevocably made, was at once a pain and a pleasure. The promise, slight as it was, had been a burden. "Now I am absolutely free," she said, in swift, exultant rebound. XIX THE SHERIFF'S MOB The next day was cloudless, with a south wind, and the little, crawling brook which watered the agency seemed about to seethe. The lower foot-hills were already sere as autumn, and the ponies came down to their drinking-places unnaturally thirsty; and the cattle, wallowing in the creek-bed, seemed at times to almost stop its flow. The timid trees which Curtis had planted around the school-house and office were plainly suffering for lack of moisture, and the little gardens which the Indians had once more been induced to plant were in sore distress. The torrid sun beat down into the valley from the unclouded sky so fiercely that the idle young men of the reservation postponed their horse-racing till after sunset. Curtis felt the heat and dust very keenly on his guests' account, and was irritated over the assaults of the cattlemen. "If they had but kept the peace we would still be in the cool, sweet hills," he said to Lawson. "This will not last," Lawson replied. "We'll get a mountain wind to-night. The girls are wisely keeping within doors and are not yet aware of the extreme heat." "I hope you are a true prophet. But at this moment it seems as if no cool wind could arise out of this sun-baked land." "Any news from the Willow?" "The trouble was in the West Fort. Some cowboys raided a camp of Tetongs. No one was injured, and so it must pass for a joke." "Some of those jokes will set something afire some of these hot days." "But you know how hard it is to apprehend the ruffians; they come and go in the night like wolves. They spoiled our outing, but I hope we may get away again next week." In the days which followed, Curtis saw little of Elsie, and when they met she seemed cold and preoccupied. In conversation she seemed listening to another voice, appeared to be pondering some abstract subject, and Curtis was puzzled and vaguely saddened. Jennie took a far less serious view of the estrangement. "It's just a mood. We've set her thinking; she's 'under conviction,' as the revivalists used to say. Don't bother her and she'll 'come through.'" Curtis was at lunch on Wednesday when Wilson came to the door and said, "Major, Streeter and a man named Jenks are here and want to see you." "More stolen cattle to be charged up to the Indians, I suppose." "I reckon some such complaint--they didn't say." "Well, tell them to wait--or no--ask them to come over and lunch with me." Wilson soon returned. "They are very glum, and say they'll wait at the office till you come." "As they prefer. I will have finished in a few moments." He concluded not to hasten, however, and the ranchers had plenty of time to become impatient. They met him darkly. "We want a word in private, Major," said Jenks, a tall, long-bearded man of most portentous gravity. Curtis led the way to an inner office and offered them seats, which they took in the same oppressive silence. The agent briskly opened the hearing. "What can I do for you, gentlemen?" Jenks looked at Streeter--Streeter nodded. "Go ahead, Hank." Jenks leaned over aggressively. "Your damned Injuns have murdered one o' my herders." Curtis hardened. "What makes you think so?" he sharply asked. "He disappeared more than a week ago, and no one has heard of him since. I know he has been killed, and your Injuns done it. No one--" "Wait a moment," interrupted Curtis. "Who was he?" "His name is Cole--he was herdin' my sheep." "Are you a sheep-man?" "I am." "Where do you live?" "My sheep ranch is over on Horned Toad Creek." "Where was this man when he disappeared?" Jenks grew a little uneasy. "He was camped by the Mud Spring." Curtis rose and called Wilson in. "Wilson, where is the Mud Spring?" "Just inside our south line, about four miles from the school." "I thought so," replied Curtis. "Your sheep were on the reservation. Are you sure this man was murdered?" "Him and the dog disappeared together, and hain't neither of 'em been seen since." "How long ago was this?" "Just a week to-morrow." "Have you made a search for him? Have you studied the ground closely?" Streeter interposed. "We've done all that could be done in that line. I _know_ he's killed. He told Cal about two weeks ago that he had been shot at twice and expected to get wiped out before the summer was over. There isn't a particle of doubt in my mind about it. The thing for you to do is to make a demand--" "I am not in need of instructions as to my duty," interrupted Curtis. "Wilson, who is over from the Willow Creek?" "Old Elk himself." "Send him in. I shall take all means to help you find this herder," Curtis said to the ranchers, "but I cannot allow you to charge my people with his death without greater reason than at present. We must move calmly and without heat in this matter. Murder is a serious charge to make without ample proof." The Elk, smiling and serene, entered the door and stood for a moment searching the countenances of the white men. His face grew grave as the swift signs of his agent filled his mind with the story of the disappearance of the herder. "I am sorry; it is bad business," he said. "Now, Crawling Elk, I want you to call together five or six of your best trailers and go with these men to the place where the herder was last seen and see if you can find any trace of him;" then, turning to Streeter, he said: "You know Crawling Elk; he is the one chief against whom you have no enmity. If Cole was murdered, his body will be found. Until you have more proof of his death I must ask you to give my people the benefit of the doubt. Good-day, gentlemen." As they turned to go, two young reds were seen leaving the window. They had watched Curtis as he signed the story to Crawling Elk. As the white men emerged these young fellows were leaning lazily on the fence, betraying no interest and very little animation, but a few minutes later they were mounted and riding up the valley at full gallop, heavy with news of the herder's death and Streeter's threats. "Now, Elk," signed Curtis, "say nothing to any one but your young men and the captain of police, whom I will send with you to bring me word." After they had all ridden away, Curtis turned to Wilson and said, "I didn't suppose I should live to see a sheep-man and a cattleman riding side by side in this amicable fashion." "Oh, they'll get together against the Indian, all right. They're mighty glad of a chance to make any kind of common cause. That lazy herder has jumped the country. He told me he was sick of his job." "But the dog?" "Oh, he killed the dog to keep him from being traced. There isn't a thing in it, Major." "I'm inclined to think you're right, but we must make careful investigation; the people are very censorious of my policy." Next morning Crawling Elk brought word that no trace of the man could be found. "The grass is very dry," he explained, "and the trail is old. We discovered nothing except some horses' hoof-marks." "Keep searching till every foot of land is covered," commanded Curtis. "Otherwise the white man will complain." On Friday, just after the bell had called the people to resume work at one o'clock, Crow, the police captain, rode into the yard on a pony covered with ridges of dried sweat. His face was impassive, but his eyes glittered as he lifted his hand and signed: "The white man's body is found!" "Where?" asked Curtis from the door-way. "On the high ground near the spring. He has three bullet-holes in him. Three cartridge-shells were found where the horses' hoof-marks were. The ones who shot dismounted there and fired over a little knoll. There are many white men over there now; they are very angry. They are coming here--" "Be silent! Come in here!" Once within the office, Curtis drew from Crow Wing all he knew. He was just in the midst of giving his orders when Wilson opened the door and said, quietly, though his voice had a tremulous intensity: "Major, step here a moment." Curtis went to the door. He could not restrain a smile, even while a cold chill went to his heart. Nothing could exceed the suddenness of the change which had swept over the agency. As he had stood in the office door ten minutes before, his ears had been filled with the clink-clank of the blacksmiths' hammers, the shouts of drivers, and the low laughter of young women on their way to the store. Crane's Voice was hitching up his team, while Lost Legs and Turkey Tail were climbing to the roof of the warehouse with pots of red paint. Peter Wolf was mending a mowing-machine, and his brother Robert was cutting wood behind the agency kitchen. All about he had observed groups of white-blanketed Indians smoking cigarettes in the shade of the buildings, while a crowd of nearly twenty others stood watching a game of duck-on-the-rock before the agency store. Now as he looked over the yards not a redman could be seen at his work. On every side the people, without apparent haste, but surely, steadily, and swiftly, were scattering. The anvil no longer cried out, the teamsters were silent, all laughter had ceased, the pots of paint sat scorching in the sun. There was something fiercely ominous as well as uncanny in this sudden, silent dispersion of a busy, merry throng, and Curtis, skilled in Indian signs, appreciated to the full the distrust of the white man here expressed. He understood this panic. The settlers had long threatened war. Now the pretext had come, and the sound of guns was about to begin. "Wilson," said Curtis, calmly, "if the settlers fire a shot they will regret it. See Crane's Voice, if you can find him, and send him to me." He turned to Crow and signed: "Go tell your people I will not let the cowboys hurt them. Hurry! Call them all back. Tell them to go to work. I will call the soldiers, if necessary, to keep the white man away. There is no danger." Crow was a brave and loyal man, and, weary as he was, hastened to carry out his orders. The call for "assembly" was rung on the signal-bell, and a few of the red employés responded. To them Curtis spoke reassuringly, but his words were belied by Thomas Big Voice, the official interpreter, who was so scared his knees shook. Curtis sent Wilson to quiet the teachers and hurried immediately to the studio, where Elsie was at work painting a portrait of old Chief Black Bull. The old man sprang to his feet the instant he caught sight of his agent's face. "Friend, what is the matter?" he asked. To Elsie, Curtis said: "Do not be alarmed." "There is no danger," he signed to Black Bull. "The white man's body has been found near the spring. He was shot by two men with horses. The white men are coming to see me about it, but there is no need of alarm. Tell your people to go quietly to their camps. I will protect them." The old chief's face grew sterner as he flung his blanket over his arm. "I go to see," he said. "The white men are very angry." "Wait!" called Curtis. "Keep your people quiet right where they are. You must help me. I depend on you. You must not alarm them." "I will do as you command," Bull replied, as he went away, but it was plain he apprehended violence. "What is the matter?" inquired Elsie. "The settlers have discovered the body of the herder who was killed, and Crow brings word they are angry. I don't think there is any danger, but I wish you and Jennie were at the fort for a few days. I don't like to have you disturbed by these things." It was their first meeting alone since their return from the camping-trip, but Elsie was too much concerned with the serious expression of his face to feel any embarrassment. "You don't think there will be trouble?" "No, only a distracting wrangle, which may prevent your getting models. The Indians are nervous, and are even now getting out for the hills. But I hope you will not be alarmed." "I'm not a nervous person." "I know you're not--that is the reason I dared to come and tell you what was going on. I deeply regret--" Wilson rapped on the door. "Major, you are needed. Bow-legs reports two bodies of armed men riding up the valley; the dust of their horses' hoofs can be seen. There are at least twenty men in the two squads," Wilson continued; "one came across from the West Fork, the other came from the south. It looks like a prearranged invasion." "Very well, Wilson, I'll be at the office in time to meet them." Curtis turned on Elsie a look which went to her heart. His voice was low as he said: "Let me take you over to Jennie. I presume these men are coming to make a demand on me for the murderers. They may or may not know who the guilty ones are, but their coming in force by prearrangement has alarmed the people." As she laid down her brushes and took up her hat she said, gleefully: "Father won't be able to ask me what I know about war--will he? Will they begin shooting at once?" "I don't think they are likely to do anything as a body, but some reckless cowboy may do violence to some Tetong, which will rouse the tribe to retaliation. The settlers have too much sense to incite an outbreak." At the door he said: "I wish you would go to Jennie. Tell her not to get excited. I will let you know what it is all about as soon as I find out myself. It may be all a mistake." As he was crossing the road Lawson joined him, and when they reached the gate before the office, several of the invaders had dismounted and were waiting the agent's coming. There were eleven of them; all were deeply excited, and two or three of the younger men were observably drunk and reckless. Streeter, stepping forward, introduced a short, sullen-faced man as "Sheriff Winters, of Pinon County." "What name?" said Curtis, as he shook hands pleasantly. "Sheriff Winters," repeated Streeter. "What is the meaning of all this?" queried Curtis. "We have come for the man that killed Ed Cole. We are a committee appointed by a convention of three hundred citizens who are holding an inquest over the body," said Winters. "We have come for the murderer." "Do you know who committed the murder?" "No, but we know it was an Injun." "How do you know it?" They hesitated. "Do you come as an officer of the law? Have you a warrant?" "No, I have not, but we are determined--" "Then I deny your right to be here. Your coming is an armed invasion of federal territory," said Curtis, and his voice rang like steel. "Here comes the other fellers," called some one in the crowd. Turning his head, Curtis saw another squad of men filing down over the hill from the north. He counted them and made out fifteen. Turning sharply to the sheriff, he asked: "Who are those men?" "I don't know." "Are you responsible for their coming?" "No, sir, I am not!" the sheriff replied, plainly on the defence. As the second squad came galloping up, the sheriff's party greeted them with nods and low words. Curtis heard one man ask: "Where's Charley? I thought he was coming," and became perfectly certain that this meeting had been prearranged. The new-comers mingled with the sheriff's party quite indistinguishably and made no further explanation of their presence. The young officer burned hot with indignation. "Sheriff Winters, order these men to retire at once. They have no business here!" A mutter of rage ran over the mob and several hands dropped ostentatiously upon pistols. One loud-voiced young whelp called out an insulting word. "You go to ----! We'll retire when we get an Injun, not before!" "Shut up, you fool!" called the sheriff, and, turning to Jenks, began to mutter in consultation. Curtis advanced a step, and raising his voice addressed the entire mob. "As commander of this reservation, I order you to withdraw. Your presence here is unlawful and menacing. Retire to the boundary of the reservation, and I will use every effort to discover the murderer. If he is in the tribe I will find him and deliver him to the county authorities." At this one of the same young ruffians who had challenged him before spurred his horse close to Curtis, and with his pistol in his hand shouted: "Not by a d---- sight. We come to take it out o' these thieves, and we're goin' to do it. Go ahead, Winters--say the word and well clean out the whole tribe." Curtis looked the youth in the eye. "My boy, I advise you to make war slowly, even with your mouth." Calvin Streeter, with his teeth clinched, crowded his horse forward and struck the insolent hoodlum in the face with his hat. "Shut up, or I'll pinch your neck off! Think you're sheriff?" The belligerent retired, snarling wild curses. Curtis addressed himself again to Winters, assuming a tone of respect and confidence which he did not feel. "Mr. Winters, you are here as a representative of the courts of Pinon County. I call upon you, as sheriff, to disperse all these men, who are here without warrant of law!" The sheriff hesitated, for the cattlemen were now furious and eager to display their valor. Many of them were of the roughest types of cowboys, the profane and reckless renegades of older communities, and being burdened with ammunition, and foolhardy with drink, they were in no mood to turn tail and ride away. They savagely blustered, flourishing their revolvers recklessly. The sheriff attempted to silence them, and said, petulantly, to Curtis: "If I hadn't come you'd 'a' had a mob of two hundred armed men instead of twenty. I had hard work to keep 'em back. I swore in these ten men as my deputies. This second crowd I don't know anything about. They just happen to be here." Curtis knew this to be a lie, but proceeded to cajole the sheriff by recognizing him and his authority. "In that case I shall act." Addressing the leader of the second party, he said: "Sheriff Winters is the legal representative of the county; you are an unlawful mob, and I once more command you to leave the reservation, which is federal territory, under my command." "No, you don't! We stay right here!" shouted several. "We'll see whether the people of this State have any rights or not," said Jenks, deeply excited. "We won't allow you to shield your murdering redskins under such a plea; we'll be judge and jury in this case." Curtis turned sharply to the sheriff: "Officer, do your duty! Dispose of this mob!" His tone was magnificently commanding. "I shall hold you responsible for further trouble," said Curtis, turning a long look on Winters, which stung. The sheriff angrily addressed the crowd. "Get out o' this, boys. You're twisting me all up and doing no good. Vamoose now! I've got all the help I need. I'm just as much obliged, but you'd better clear out." Then to his deputies, "Round 'em up, boys, and send 'em away." Calvin's face wore a smile of wicked glee as he called out: "Now you fellers git!" and spurring his horse into their midst he hustled them. "Hunt your holes! You're more bother than you are worth. Git out o' here!" While the sheriff and his deputies alternately pleaded and commanded the mob to withdraw, Lawson touched Curtis on the arm and pointed to the crests of the hills to the west. On every smooth peak a mounted sentinel stood, silent and motionless as a figure on a monument--watching the struggle going on before the agency gate. "Behind every hill young warriors are riding," said Lawson. "By sundown every man and boy will be armed and ready for battle. If these noble citizens knew what you have saved them from they would bless you." The mob of cattlemen retreated slowly, with many fierce oaths and a jangle of loud debate which Curtis feared each moment might break into a crackle of pistol shots. "That was a good stroke," said Lawson. "It sets up division, and so weakens them. You will be able to handle the sheriff now." XX FEMININE STRATEGY Having seen the horsemen ride away, Jennie and Elsie came across the road tense with excitement. "Tell us all about it? Have they gone?" "Who are they?" "We hope they are gone," Curtis replied, as lightly as he could. "It was the sheriff of Pinon County and a lynching party. I have persuaded one mob to drive away the other. They were less dangerous than they seemed." "See those heads!" exclaimed Lawson, pointing out several employés who were peering cautiously over roofs and around corners. "Not one has retained his hat," he added. "If the danger sharpens, off will come their shirts and trousers, and those belligerent white men will find themselves contending with six hundred of the best fighters in the world." "We must temporize," said Curtis. "A single shot now would be disaster." He checked himself there, but Lawson understood as well as he the situation. Jennie was not yet satisfied. "Has the sheriff come for some one in particular?" "No, he has no warrant, hasn't even a clew to the murder. He is really at the lead of a lynching party himself, and has no more right to be here than the men he is driving away." "What ought he to do?" asked Elsie. "He should go home. It is my business as agent to make the arrest. I have only a half-dozen police, and I dare not attempt to force him and his party to leave the reservation." "The whole situation is this," explained Lawson. "They've made this inquest the occasion for bringing all the hot-headed fools of the country together, and this is a bluff which they think will intimidate the Indians." "They wouldn't dare to begin shooting, would they?" asked Elsie. "You can't tell what such civilized persons will do," said Lawson. "But Curtis has the sheriff thinking, and the worst of it is over." "Here they come again!" exclaimed Wilson, who surprised Curtis by remaining cool and watchful through this first mutiny. At a swift gallop the sheriff and his posse came whirling back up the road--a wild and warlike squad--hardly more tractable than the redoubtables they had rounded up and thrown down the valley. "I think you had better go in," said Curtis to Elsie. "Jennie, take her back to the house for a little while." "No, let us stay," cried Elsie. "I want to see this sheriff myself. If we hear the talk we'll be less nervous." Curtis was firm. "This is no place for you. These cowboys have no respect for God, man, or devil; please go in." Jennie started to obey, but Elsie obstinately held her ground. "I will not! I have the right to know what is threatening me! I always hated to go below in a storm." In a cloud of dust--with snorting of excited horses, the posse, with the sheriff at its head, again pulled up at the gate. The young men stared at the two daintily dressed girls with eyes of stupefaction. Here was an unlooked-for complication. A new element had entered the controversy. The sheriff slid from his horse and gave a rude salute with his big brown fist. "Howdy, ladies, howdy." It was plain he was deeply embarrassed by this turn of affairs. Elsie seized Curtis by the arm and whispered: "Introduce me to him--quick! Tell him who I am." Curtis instantly apprehended her plan. "Sheriff Winters, this is Miss Brisbane, daughter of ex-Senator Brisbane, of Washington." The sheriff awkwardly seized her small hand, "Pleased to make your acquaintance, miss," he said. "I know the Senator well." Curtis turned to Jennie, who came forward--"And this is my sister." "I've heard of you," the sheriff said, regaining his self-possession. "I'm sorry to disturb you, ladies--" Elsie looked at him and quietly said: "I hope you will not be hasty, sheriff; my father will not sanction violence." "You're being here makes a difference, miss--of course--I--" Jennie spoke up: "You must be hungry, Mr. Sheriff," she said, and smiling up at Calvin, added, "and so are your men. Why not picket your horses and have some lunch with us?" Curtis took advantage of the hesitation. "That's the reasonable thing, men. We can discuss measures at our ease." The cowboys looked at each other with significant glances. Several began to dust themselves and to slyly swab their faces with their gay kerchiefs, and one or two became noticeably redder about the ears as they looked down at their horses' bridles. Calvin broke the silence. "I don't let this chance slip, boys. I'm powerful keen, myself." "So'm I," echoed several others. The sheriff coughed. "Well--really--I'm agreeable, but I'm afeerd it'll be a powerful sight o' trouble, miss." "Oh no, let us attend to that," cried Jennie. "We shall expect you in fifteen minutes," and taking Elsie by the arm, she started across the road. As the cowboys followed the graceful retreating figures of the girls, Lawson and Curtis looked at each other with eyes of amazement; Lawson acknowledged a mighty impulse to laugh. "How unmilitary," he muttered. "But how effective," replied Curtis, his lips twitching. The cowboys muttered among themselves. "Say, is this a dream?" "Who said pork-and-beans?" "Does my necktie kiver my collar-button?" asked a third. "Come, boys!" called Curtis, cheerily. "While the sheriff and I have a little set-to, you water your ponies and dust off, and be ready for cold potatoes. You're a little late for a square meal, but I think we can ease your pangs." With a patter of jocose remarks the cowboys rode off down towards the creek, taking the sheriff's horse along with them. Curtis turned to Lawson. "I wish you'd bring that code over to the house, Lawson. I want to show that special clause to the sheriff." Turning to Winters, he said: "Come, let's go across to my library and talk our differences over in comfort." The sheriff dusted his trousers with the broad of his hand. "Well, now, I'm in no condition to sit down with ladies." "I'll give you a chance to clean up," replied Curtis, who plainly saw that the girls had the rough bordermen "on the ice and going," as Calvin would say. A man can brag and swear and bluster out of doors, or in a bare, tobacco-stained office; but in a library, surrounded by books, in the hearing of ladies, he is more human--more reasonable. Jennie's invitation had turned impending defeat to victory. Curtis took Winters into his own bedroom and put its toilet articles at his service and left him. As the sheriff came out into the Captain's library five minutes later, it was plain he had washed away a large part of his ferocity; his hair, plastered down smooth, represented the change in his mental condition--his quills were laid. He was, in fact, fairly meek. Curtis confidentially remarked, in a low voice: "You see, sheriff, we must manage this thing quietly. We mustn't endanger these women, and especially Miss Brisbane. If the old Senator gets a notion his daughter is in danger--" Winters blew a whiff. "Great God, he'd tear the State wide open! No, the boys were too hasty. As I say, I saw the irregularity, but if I hadn't consented to lead a posse in here that whole inquest would have come a-rampin' down on ye. I said to 'em, 'Boys,' I says, 'you can't do that kind of thing,' I says. 'These Tetongs are fighters,' I says, 'and you'll have a sweet time chasin' 'em over the hills--just go slow and learn to peddle,' I says--" Lawson, entering with the code, cut him short in his shameless exculpation, and Curtis said, suavely: "Mr. Winters, I think you know Mr. Lawson." "We've crossed each other's trail once or twice, I believe," said Lawson. "Here is the clause." Curtis laid the book before the sheriff, who pushed a stubby forefinger against the letters and read the paragraph laboriously. His thick wits were moved by it, and he said: "Seems a clear case, and yet the reservation is included in the lines of Pinon County. 'Pears like the county'd ought 'o have some rights." "Well, here comes the posse," said Curtis; "we'll talk it all over with them after lunch. Come in, boys!" he called cheerily to the straggling herders, who came in sheepishly, one by one, their spurs rattling, their big, limp hats twisted in their hands. They had pounded the alkali from each other's shirt, and their red faces shone with the determined rubbing they had received. All the wild grace of their horsemanship was gone, and as they sidled in and squatted down along the wall they were anything but ferocious in manner or speech. "Ah, now, this is all right," each man said, when Curtis offered chairs. "You take the chair, Jim; you take it, Joe--this suits me." Lawson was interested in their cranial development, and their alignment along the wall gave a fine opportunity for comparison. "They were, for the most part, shapeless and of small capacity," he said afterwards--"just country bumpkins, trained to the horse and the revolver, but each of them arrogated to himself the judicial mind of the Almighty Creator." The sheriff, leaning far back in the big Morris chair, wore a smirking smile which seemed to say: "Boys, I'm onto this luxury all right. Stuffed chair don't get me no back-ache. Nothing's too rich for _my_ blood--if I can get it." The young fellows were transfixed with awe of Calvin, for, though the last to enter the house, he walked calmly past the library door on into the dining-room, and a moment later could be heard chatting with the girls, "sassy as a whiskey-jack." One big, freckled young fellow nudged his neighbor and said: "Wouldn't that pull your teeth? That wall-eyed sorrel has waltzed right into the kitchen to buzz the women. Say, his neck needs shortening." "Does he stand in, or is it just gall?" "It's nerve--nothing else. We ain't onto our job, that's all." "Oh, he knows 'em all right. I heered he stands in with the agent's sister." "The hell he does! Lookin' that way? Well, I don't think. It's his brass-bound cheek. Wait till we ketch him alone." Cal appeared at the door. "Well, fellers, come in; grub's all spread out." "What you got to say about it?" asked Green. "Think you're the nigger that rings the bell, don't ye?" remarked Galvin. "We're waitin' for the boss to say 'when.'" Not one of them stirred till Curtis rose, saying to the sheriff, "Well, we'll take time later to discuss that; come right out and tame the wolf." The fact that Curtis accepted Calvin's call impressed the crowd deeply. "You'd think he was one o' the fambly," muttered Galvin. "Wait till we get a rope 'round his neck." The table, looking cool and dainty in its fleckless linen, was set with plates of cold chicken and ham, with pots of jelly and white bread at each end of the cloth, beside big pitchers of cool milk. To the cowboys, accustomed only to their rude camps and the crude housekeeping of the settlers round about, this dainty cleanliness of dining-room was marvellously subduing. They shuffled into their seats noisily, with only swift, animal-like glances at the girls, who were bubbling over with the excitement of feeding this band of Cossacks. As they drank their milk and fed great slices of bread and jelly into their mouths, fighting Indians seemed less necessary than they had supposed. Whiskey and alkali dust, and the smell of sweating ponies, were all forgotten in the quiet and sweetness of this pretty home. The soft answer had turned wrath into shamefaced wonder and awkward courtesy. Curtis, sitting at the head of the board as host, plied the sheriff with cold chicken, discussing meanwhile the difficulties under which the Tetongs labored, and drew from that sorely beleaguered officer admissions which he afterwards regretted. "That's so, I don't know as I'd do any better in their places, but--" Jennie, with a keen perception of her power over her guests, went from one to the other, inquiring, in her sweetest voice: "Won't _you_ have another slice of bread? Please do!" Elsie, less secure of manner, followed her with the pitcher of milk, while the young men bruised each other's shins beneath the table in their zealous efforts to diminish the joy each one took in the alluring presence of his cup-bearer. Calvin sat near the end of the table, and his assured manner made the others furious. "Look at that stoatin' bottle," growled Green, out of the corner of his mouth; "he needs killin'." "Ah, we'll fix that tommy-cod!" replied Galvin. While the girls were at the upper end of the table the man on Calvin's right leaned over and said: "Say, Cal, 'pears like you got the run o' the house here." Calvin, big with joy and pride, replied: "Oh, I ride round and picket here once in a while. It pays." "Well, I should say yes--carry all your cheek right with ye, don't ye?" As the boys began to shove back, Curtis brought out a box of cigars and passed them along the line. "Take hearty, boys; they don't belong to the government; they're mine, and you'll find them good." As they were all helping themselves, the sheriff coughed loudly and called out: "Boys, the Major and me has fixed this thing up. I won't need but three of you; the rest can ride back and tell the gang on the West Fork it's all right. Cal, you and Tom and Green stay with me. The rest of you can go as soon as your dinner's settled." The ones not chosen looked a little disappointed, but they made no protest. As they rose to go out they all made powerful effort to do the right thing; they lifted their eyes to the girls for a last glance and grumbled: "Much obliged, ladies!" And in this humble fashion the ferocious posse of the sheriff retreated from the house of their enemy. Once outside, they turned on each other with broad grins. They straightened--took on grace and security of manner again. They were streaming with perspiration, and their neckerchiefs were moist with the drip of it, but they lit their cigars nonchalantly, flung their hats rakishly on their heads, and turned to take a last look at the house. Elsie appeared at the door. "Boys!" she called, and her clear voice transfixed every soul of them. "You mustn't do anything reckless. You won't, will you?" Galvin alone was able to reply. "No, miss, we won't. We won't do nothing to hurt you nor the Major's sister--you needn't be scart." "You can trust Captain Curtis; he will do what is right, I'm sure of that. Good-bye." "Good-bye," they answered, one by one. Nothing further was said till they had crossed the road. Then one of the roughest-looking of the whole gang turned and said: "Fellers, that promise goes. We got to keep that mob from goin' to war while these girls are here. Ain't that right?" "That's right!" "Say, fellers, I'll tell you a job that would suit me--" "Hain't got any work into it if it does." "What is it?" "I'd like to be detailed to guard these 'queens' from monkeys like you." The others fell upon this reckless one with their hats and gloves till he broke into a run, and all disappeared down the road in a cloud of dust. XXI IN STORMY COUNCILS Meanwhile the sentinels on the hills missed little of the movement in the valley. They quivered with rage as the horsemen dismounted and entered the agent's house, for that seemed a defeat for their friend; but when the strangers remounted and rode away all were reassured, and Two Horns said, "I will go down and see what it all means." One by one the principal native employés reappeared. Crane's Voice came out of the barn, where he had lain with his eyes to a crack in the wall, and Peter Big-Voice and Robert Wolf stepped cautiously into view from behind the slaughter-pen. Old Mary, the cook, suddenly blocked the kitchen door-way, and, with tremulous lips, asked: "Cowboys gone?" "Yes, all gone," replied Jennie, much amused. "Good, good," replied the old woman. "Where have you been, Mary?" Her white teeth shone out in a sudden smile. "Ice-house--heap cold." "What did you go in there for?" "Cowboy no good--mebbe so shoot." "They won't hurt you," said Jennie, gently. "Go to work again. The Captain will take care of you." "Little Father no got gun--cowboy heap gun." "Little Father don't need gun now; you are all right," Jennie said, and the old woman went to her work again, though nervously alert to every sound. From nowhere in particular, two sharp-eyed lads sauntered up the road to play under the office window, so that if any loud word should be spoken the tribe might know of it. Jennie and Elsie discussed the situation while sitting at the library window with a view of the agency front door. "I can't for the life of me take a serious view of this episode," said Jennie. "These cowboys wouldn't be so foolish as to fire a first shot. They are like big, country school-boys." "The Parkers!" cried Elsie, suddenly. "Where are the Parkers?" Jennie gasped. "True enough! I had forgotten all about them. I don't believe they have got back from their ride." "They will be scared blue. We must send for them." "I'll have Crane's Voice go at once," said Jennie. "I will go with him." "Don't do that--not without letting the Captain know. How far is it?" "Just over the hill--not more than five miles." But even as she was hurrying across to the corral to find an angel for this mission of mercy, she saw the Parkers coming down the hill-side, moving slowly, for both were very bad riders. It was plain they had heard nothing, and as she watched them approach Jennie cried: "Don't say a word. They won't see anything suspicious." There was something irresistibly funny in the calm stateliness of the blond Parker as he led the way past the store which was deserted of its patrons, past the school-house where the students were quivering with excitement, and close beside the office behind whose doors Curtis was still in legal battle with the sheriff. Jennie met her visitors at the gate, her hands clinched in the effort to control her laughter. "You are late. Are you hungry?" she asked. "Famished!" said Parker. "I had to ride slow on Mrs. Parker's account." "I like that!" cried Jennie. "As if any one could be a worse rider than you are." "How do women get off, anyway?" asked Parker, as he approached his wife's pony. "Fall off," suggested Jennie, and this seemed so funny that she and Elsie went off into simultaneous hysterical peals of laughter. "You are easily amused," remarked Parker, eying them keenly. "Laugh on; it is good for digestion. Excuse me from joining; I haven't anything to digest." Putting his angular shoulder to Mrs. Parker's waist, he eased her to the ground awkwardly but tenderly. Upon facing the girls again and discovering them still in foolish mirth, Parker looked himself all over carefully, then turned to his wife. "We seem to be affording these young ladies a great deal of hearty pleasure, Mrs. Parker." Mrs. Parker was not so dense. "What is the matter?" she asked, sharply. "What has happened? This laughter is not natural--you are both hysterical." Both girls instantly became as grave as they had been hilarious a moment before. "Now I _know_ something is wrong," said Mrs. Parker. "Where is the Captain? What made you laugh that way? Have the savages broken out?" Jennie met Parker's eyes fairly popping from his head, and went off into another shout. At last she paused and said, breathlessly: "Oh, you are funny! Come into the house. We've been entertaining a lynching party--all the Indians are in the hills and the sheriff's in the office throttling the agent." While the Parkers consumed their crusts of bread and scraps of cold meat, Jennie told them what had happened. Parker rose to the occasion. "We must get out o' here--every one of us! We should never have come in here. Your brother is to blame; he deceived us." "He did not!" replied Jennie. "You shall not hold him responsible!" "He knew the situation was critical," Parker hotly retorted. "He knew an outbreak was likely. It was criminal on his part." "Jerome Parker, you are a donkey," remarked Elsie, calmly. "Nothing has really happened. If you're so nervous, go home. You can't sculp an Indian, anyway--grasshoppers and sheep are in your line." She had reverted to the plain talk of the studios. "Your nervousness amused us for a while, but it bores us now. Please shut up and run away if you are afraid." "You're not very nice," said Mrs. Parker, severely. "I don't think it's very manly of your husband when he begins to blame Captain Curtis for an invasion of cowboys." "You admitted you were scared," pursued Parker. "Well, suppose we were, we didn't weep and complain; we set to work to tide over the crisis." Jennie put in a word. "If you'd feel safer in the camp of the enemy, Mr. Parker, we'll set you down the valley with the settlers. I intend to stay right here with my brother." "So do I," added Elsie; "if there is danger it is safer here than with the cowboys; but the mob is gone, and the Captain and Osborne will see that we are protected." Meanwhile the office resounded with the furious argument of the sheriff. "The whole western part of the State is disgusted with the way in which these Indians escape arrest. They commit all kinds of depredations, and not one is punished. This has got to stop. We intend to learn this tribe it can't hide thieves and murderers any longer." He ended, blustering like a northwest wind. "Produce your warrants and I'll secure the men," replied Curtis, patiently. "You shall not punish a whole tribe on a pure assumption. You must come to me with a proper warrant for a particular man, and when you receive him from me you must prove his guilt in court. As the case now stands, you haven't the slightest evidence that an Indian killed this herder, and I will not give over an innocent man to be lynched by you." As the sheriff stormed up and down the floor Lawson said, in a low voice: "Delay--delay." Curtis, who had been writing a note, slipped it to Lawson, who rose and went out of the door. Curtis continued to parley. "I appreciate your feeling in this matter, Mr. Sheriff, and I am willing to do what is right. I have called a council of my head men to-night, and I will ask them to search for the murderer. An Indian cannot keep a secret. If one of the Tetongs killed your herder he will tell of it. I again suggest that you go back to your people and assure them of my willingness to aid in this affair. Give me three days in which to act." "That crowd will not be satisfied unless we bring an Injun with us. We've got to do that or they'll come rompin' in here and raise hell with you. I propose to take old Crawling Elk himself and hold him till the tribe--" "If you attempt such a crime I will put you off the reservation," replied Curtis, sharply. "Put me off! By ----, I think I see you doing that! Why, the whole State would rise and wipe you and your tribe out of existence." He turned threateningly and towered over Curtis, who was seated. "Be quiet, and keep your distance, or I'll put you in irons! Sit down!" These words were not spoken loudly, but they caused the sheriff's face to blanch and his knees to tremble. There was a terrifying, set glare in the officer's eyes as he went on: "What do you suppose would be the consequences of firing upon a captain of the United States army in the discharge of his duty, by a sheriff acting outside the law? You have only three men out there, and one of them is my friend, and you know the quality of Calvin Streeter. I am still in command of this reservation, Mr. Sheriff." Lawson re-entering at this moment, Curtis said: "Ask Streeter to come in, will you, Mr. Lawson?" Calvin entered smilingly. "Well, what's the up-shot?" he asked. "It is this, Calvin. The sheriff has no warrant for anybody, not even for a suspect. I have asked him to go back and wait till I can find some clew to the murderer. Do you consider that reasonable?" "It sounds fair," admitted Calvin, growing grave. "Now the question of whether the State or county authority covers a federal reservation or not is too big a question for us to settle. You see that, Calvin?" Calvin scratched his head. "It sure is too many fer me." "Now I'll compromise in this case, Mr. Sheriff. You discharge the rest of your deputies and send them away, while you and Calvin remain with me to attend a council--not to arrest anybody, but to convince yourself of my good-will in the matter. I will not permit you to be armed nor to arrest any of my Indians until we know what we are doing. When we secure evidence against any man I will arrest him myself and turn him over to you. But I insist that you send away the men in the outer office." Calvin spoke up. "I reckon the Major's right, sheriff. How ye goin' to arrest a man if you don't know who he is? I reckon you better do as he says. I ain't a-lookin' fer no fuss with the agent, and the United States army only fifty miles off." The sheriff growled surlily. "All right, but there ain't no monkey business about this. I get my man sooner or later, you bet your heart on that." As he went out into the general office and announced the agent's demand, Green blurted out defiant phrases. "I'll be damned if I would! No--stick it out! Do? Why, take old Elk and hold him till the tribe produces the right man--that's the way we always done before." The arguments of Calvin could not be heard, but at last he prevailed, and the sullen deputies withdrew. The sheriff scrawled a hasty note to the county attorney to explain his failure to bring his man, and the three deputies went out to saddle up. Their cursing was forceful and varied, but they went. Parker, seeing them come forth, met them, inquiring anxiously: "Well, what do you think of the situation?" Green looked at him surlily. "You belong here?" "No, I'm just a visitor." "Well, you better get out quick as God'll let ye." "Why, what is going to happen?" "Just this: we're goin' to have the man that killed Cole or we'll cut this whole tribe into strips. That's all," and they moved on, cursing afresh. Parker fell back aghast, and watched them in silence as they saddled their horses and rode off. He then hurried to the office. Wilson, after going in to see his chief, came back to say: "The Major will see you in a moment. He's sending out his police." A few moments afterwards six of the Indian policemen came filing out, looking tense and grave, and a couple of minutes later Curtis appeared. "What is it, Parker?" "What is going on, Captain? I am very anxious." "You need not be. We've reached a compromise. Wait a moment and I will go over to the house with you." When he reappeared, Lawson was with him. Nothing was said till they were well in the middle of the road. Then Curtis remarked, carelessly: "You attended to that matter, Lawson?" "Yes, Crane's Voice is ten miles on his way." "There go two dangerous messengers," said Curtis, lifting his eyes to the hill-side, up which the sullen deputies were climbing. Parker was importunate--he wished to understand the whole matter. Curtis became a little impatient. "I will explain presently," he replied, and nothing more was said till they entered the library, which was filled with the women of the agency. Jennie had reassured them as best she could, but they were eager to see the agent himself. Miss Colson, the kindergarten teacher, was disposed to rush into his arms. Curtis smiled round upon them. "What's all this--a council of war?" Miss Colson seized the dramatic moment. "Oh, Major, are we in danger? Tell us what has happened." "Nothing much has happened since dinner. I have persuaded the sheriff to discharge all his deputies except Calvin, and they are to remain over. I have sent for the head man to come in, and we are going to council to-night. The trouble is practically over, for the sheriff has given up the attempt to arrest Elk as a hostage. Now go back to your work, all of you. You should not have left your children," he added, rather sternly, to Miss Colson. "They need you now." The women went out at once, and in a few minutes Curtis was alone with the members of his own little circle. "Now I have another story for you," he said, turning to Elsie. "While I am sure the worst of the sheriff's work is over, I realize that there are two hundred armed men over on the Willow, and that it is better to be on the safe side. Therefore I have sent to Fort Lincoln for troops. Crane's Voice will reach there by sundown--the troops should arrive here by sunrise to-morrow. Meanwhile I will talk with Elk--" "Suppose Elk don't come?" asked Jennie. Curtis looked grave. "In that case I shall go to find him." Elsie cried out, "You wouldn't do that?" "Yes, it would be my duty--I have promised--but he will come. He trusts me. I have ordered him to bring all his people and camp as usual just above the agency store. Now, of course, no one can tell the precise outcome of all this, and if you, Miss Brisbane, and Mr. and Mrs. Parker, want to go down to the white settlement, I will send you at once. Mr. Lawson will go with you, or I will ask the sheriff to take you--" "The safest place on the reservation is right here!" said Lawson. "Suppose the ranchers return--they will take control here, and use the agency as a base of supplies; the fighting will take place in the hills. Besides, our going would excite the settlers uselessly, and put Captain Curtis deeper into trouble. I propose that we stay right here, and convince the employés and the Indians that we are not alarmed. I don't want to assume the responsibility of a panic, and our going this afternoon might precipitate one." Curtis was profoundly grateful to Lawson for this firm statement. "I think you are right, Mr. Lawson," he said, formally. "You see my position clearly. I feel sure I can control the sheriff by peaceable means--and yet my responsibility to you weighs upon me." He looked at Elsie again. "I think you can trust me. Will you stay?" "Of course we will stay," she replied, and Parker sank into his chair as if resigned to his fate. Curtis went on: "I am not speaking to reassure myself. Perhaps I am too positive, but my experience as an officer in the army has given me a contempt for these six-shooter heroes. The thing I really fear is a panic among the settlers. Naturally, I am disinclined towards the notoriety I would gain in the press; but the troops will certainly be here to-morrow, and that will settle the turmoil. The sheriff is less of an embarrassment, now that he has only Calvin as deputy." "Send the sheriff over here--we'll entertain him by showing him the photograph album," called Jennie. "We helped out this forenoon, and we can do it again." "I don't think such heroic methods are necessary; an extra good dinner will do quite as well," replied Curtis, smiling. "I'm sorry, Mr. Parker, that your expedition for material is coming to this grewsome end." Elsie interposed. "It is precisely what he wants; he will know from positive knowledge how a Tetong brave dresses for war. I have always claimed that no Indian ever wore that absurd war-bonnet." Lawson added: "And _you_ will gain valuable information as to the character of white settlers and 'Indian outbreaks.'" "I ought to telegraph papa." "I have already done so," replied Lawson--"in anticipation of the hullabaloo that will break forth in the papers of the State to-morrow." "I shall wire the department a full statement to-night," said Curtis. "But we must be careful what we say at this point." "Isn't it a foolish thing not to have a telegraph line connecting the fort and the agency?" cried Jennie. "The troops could have been half-way here by this time." "It's the same penny-wise and pound-foolish method by which the Indian service is run," responded Lawson. "Here comes one of my scouts," said Curtis, as a young Tetong galloped up to the gate, threw himself from his reeking pony, and strode into the hall-way without knocking, his spurs clattering, his quirt dangling from his wrist. As he stood before his chief, delivering his message with shadowy silence and swiftness, Elsie thrilled with the dramatic significance of the scene. The stern, almost haughty face of the young man was in keeping with his duties. Curtis dismissed the boy and translated his message. "He says the settlers below us have fled towards Pinon City, taking all their goods with them. White Wolf's band are all in camp except the young men, who are scouting for the chiefs to see what it all means. That mob of cowboys took delight, no doubt, in scattering consternation as they passed. The settlers are in stampede." "Wilson is coming across the street," said Jennie, "and has an Indian with him." "Another scout," said Curtis. "Now I will let you know all that goes on, but I must ask you all, except Mr. Lawson, to leave me the library to transact this business in." As Elsie passed him, she drew towards him with a little, shrinking movement which moved him deeply. It was as though she were clutched by a force greater than her will. "It's like being at army headquarters," she said to Jennie. "It is a little like a commander's tent in the field. I wish we dared to throw that old sheriff off the reservation. He has no right to be snooping round here." Parker slumped deep in a big rocker, and Mrs. Parker sat beside him and put her hand on his arm. "Don't worry about me, Jerome." He looked up gloomily. "I got you into this, dearest, and I must get you out. If the soldiers come to-morrow I will ask for an escort to the fort, and then we can reach the railway and get out of the cursed country. I'd as soon live in a den of hyenas and rattlesnakes." Elsie laughed. "Parker, you are too amusing. You are pathetic. When I think of you as you pranced about the camp-fire two days ago and look upon you now, my heart aches for you." "I don't think it generous of you to make fun of us at this time, Bee Bee," Mrs. Parker replied, reproachfully. "Oh, let her go on. Her Latin Quarter English doesn't disturb me," Parker answered, savagely. Curtis at this moment appeared. "My message was from the farmer at Willow Spring. He says all his employés, with one or two exceptions, have disappeared; that the band of Crawling Elk was threatened by a mob of white men early this morning, and that they are all breaking camp in order to flee to the hills. All the settlers on the Willow are hurrying their women and children down towards Pinon City. The whole country has been alarmed by the menace of the coroner's inquest, which is camped below the agency at Johnson's ranch, waiting the sheriff's return. The deputies had not reached there when this letter was written," added Curtis. "The sheriff's message will disperse the crowds, and I am sending a note of reassurance to the farmers and to the settlers." "It's getting mighty serious, don't you think so?" asked Parker. "I wish the troops were here. Can't we hurry them up?" "No, all that can be done has been done. I am telling you all that goes on, and I must request you not to repeat it. I wish you would all be specially guarded in the presence of the sheriff. You might engage him in a game of 'cinch' after dinner. Anything to keep him out of my way." "We'll absorb him," said Jennie. One by one Curtis called in his most trusted employés, and, quieting their fears, put them to their duties. Special policemen were uniformed and sent to carry messages to the encampments on the hills, asking the head men of each band to come at once to the agency for council, and to order their people into camp. The tranquillizing effect of the agent's bearing made itself felt immediately. The threads of the whole tangle were soon in his hands and made straight, and when he received the sheriff at six o'clock he was confident and serene of bearing. * * * * * Two Horns came down from the hills, and at the agent's order gathered his band close around his own tepee to camp until the trouble was ended. Together they made a tour of the village, and Curtis made it plain that he would protect them, and that no more armed men would come among them to incite violence. "They have turned back, for fear of the Little Father and of Washington," said Two Horns to the old men, and they were glad of his words. Curtis was by no means at ease. As he recalled the threats of the cattlemen, the encroachments of their flocks, the vicious assaults made on Crow Killer and Yellow Hand, he divined a growing antagonism which could go but little further without producing war. His mind dwelt on the hurrying figure of Crane's Voice. Much depended on him. He saw him as he faced the sentry. "If he should fail to reach the Colonel! But he will not fail, and troops will be instantly despatched." From these considerations he turned to the growing trust and confidence which Elsie was displaying. That movement towards him, slight as it was, and the softened look in her eyes, quickened his breath as he allowed his inward self to muse on their meaning. She was looking to him for protection, and this attitude was not only new, it was disturbing; and the soldier found it necessary to put away his pipe and fall savagely upon some work to keep his mind from ranging too far afield. XXII A COUNCIL AT NIGHT The sheriff came to dinner rather shamefacedly, but Calvin, being profoundly pleased, was on his very best behavior. "This being deputy suits me to the ground," said he to Wilson, as he rose in answer to the call to dinner. As they were crossing the road he said, confidentially: "Now see here, you mustn't talk politics round the ladies over there, sheriff." "Politics?" "You know what I mean. You keep to the weather and the crops, and let this murder case alone for a minute or two, or I'll bat you one for luck." Winters took this threat as a sign of their good understanding, and remarked, jocosely, "You damned young cub, I'd break you in two for a leather cent." "That's all right, but what I say goes," replied Calvin. And remembering old Joe Streeter's political pull, the sheriff did not reply. Jennie kept the talk pleasantly inconsequential during dinner by a cheery tale of the doings of a certain Chinaman she had once tried to train into a cook, and Calvin, laughing heartily, matched her experience with that of his mother while keeping house in Pinon City one winter. This left Elsie to a little conversation with Curtis. "You must let me see this council to-night," she said, and her request had the note of a command. "I know how you feel," he said, "and I wish I could do so; but I can't make an exception in your favor without offending the Parkers." "Are you not the general?" she asked, smilingly. "If you see fit to invite me and leave them out, they can only complain. I'm going to stay here with Jennie, anyhow." "In that case we can manage it." "Do you know what I think? You've instigated this whole affair to convert me to your point of view. Really, the whole thing is like a play. I'm not a bit frightened--at least, not yet. It's precisely like sitting in a private box and seeing the wolves tear holes in Davy Crockett's cabin. You are the manager of the show." "Well, why not? When the princess tours the provinces it is customary to present historical pageants in her honor. This drama is your due." And as he spoke he observed for the first time the absence of the ring from her significant finger. The shock threw him into a moment's swift surmise, and when he looked up at her she was flushed and uneasy. She recovered herself first, and though her hand remained on the table it had the tremulous action of a frightened small animal--observed yet daring not to seek cover. "I hope this council to-night will not fail. I am eager to see what you will do with them," she hastened to say. "They will come!" he replied. Calvin was relating a story of a mountain-lion he had once treed for an Eastern artist to photograph. "Just then the dern brute jumped right plum onto the feller and knocked him down, machine and all; for a minute or two it was just a mixture o' man and lion, then that feller come up top, and the next thing I seen he batted the lion with his box, and that kind o' stunted the brute, and he hit him again and glass began to fly; he was game all right, that feller was. When the lion stiffened out, he turned to where I was a-rollin' on the pine-needles, and says, quiet-like, 'Give me your revolver, please.' I give it to him, and he put it to the lion's ear and finished him. When he got up and looked at his machine he says, 'How much is a mountain-lion skin worth?' ''Bout four dollars, green,' I says. He looked at the inwards of his box, which was scattered all over the ground. Says he, 'You wouldn't call that profitable, would you--a seventy-dollar instrument in exchange for a four-dollar pelt?'" Everybody laughed at this story, and the dinner came to an end with the sheriff in excellent temper. Lawson offered cigars, and tolled him across the road to the office, leaving Curtis alone in his library. He resolutely set to work to present the situation of the sheriff's presence concisely to the department in a telegram, and was still at work upon this when Jennie entered the room, closed the curtains, and lit the lamp. Elsie came in a little later to say, sympathetically: "Are you tired, Captain Curtis?" He pushed his writing away. "Yes, a little. The worst of it is, I keep saying: _If so and so happens, then I must do thus and thus_, and that is the hardest work in the world. I can deal with actual, well-defined conditions--even riots and mobs--but fighting suppositions is like grappling with ghosts." "I know what you mean," she replied, quickly. "But I want to ask you--could father be of any help if I telegraphed him to come?" He sat up very straight as she spoke, but did not reply till he turned her suggestion over in his mind. "No--at least, not now. What troubles me is this: the local papers will be filled with scare-heads to-morrow morning; your father will see them, and will be alarmed about you." "I will wire him that I am all right." "You must do that. I consider you are perfectly safe, but at the same time your father will think you ought not to be here, and blame me for allowing you to come in; and, worst of all, he will wire you to come out." "Suppose I refuse to go, would that be the best of all?" Her face was distinctly arch of line. His heart responded to her lure, but his words were measured as he answered: "Sometimes the responsibility seems too great; perhaps you would better go. It will be hard to convince him that you are not in danger." She sobered. "There really is danger, then?" "Oh yes, so long as these settlers are in their present mood, I suppose there is. Nothing but the life of an 'Injun' will satisfy them. Their hate is racial in its bitterness." "You think I ought to go, then?" He looked at her with eyes that were wistful and searching. "Yes. It is a sad ending, but perhaps Captain Maynard will be here to-morrow with a troop of cavalry, and--I--think I must ask him to escort you to the railway." "But the danger will be over then." "To your father it will seem to be intensifying." "I will not go on that account! I feel that the safest place will be right here with you, for your people love you. I am not afraid when I am near you." Curtis suddenly realized how dangerously sweet it was to sit in his own library with Elsie in that mood seated opposite him. The sound of a tapping on the window relieved the tension of the moment. "Another of my faithful boys," he said, rising quickly. Then, turning to her with a tenderness almost solemn, he added: "Miss Brisbane, I hope you feel that if danger really threatened I would think of you first of all. You will stay with Jennie to-night?" "If you think best, but we want to know all that goes on. I can't bear to be battened down like passengers in a storm at sea; there is nothing so trying to nerves. I want to be on deck with the captain if the storm breaks." "Very well. I promise not to leave you in ignorance," and, raising the curtain, he signed to the man without to enter. It was Crow, the captain of the police, a short man with a good-humored face, now squared with serious dignity. "Two Dog has just come in from Willow Creek," he reported. "He says the cattlemen are still camped by Johnson's ranch. They all held a council this afternoon." "Are any of the head men here?" "Yes, they are all at my tepee. They want to see you very bad." "Tell them to come over at once; the council will take place here. I want you, but no more of the police. I want only the head men of each band." After the officer went out Curtis moved the easy-chairs to the back of the room and set plain ones in a semicircular row at the front. Hardly was he settled when Elk, Grayman, and Two Horns entered the room, and, after formally shaking hands, took the seats assigned them. Their faces, usually smiling, were grave, and Grayman's brow was knotted with lines of anxiety. He was a small man, with long, brown hair, braided and adorned with tufts of the fine feathers which grow under the eagle's wings. He was handsome and neatly dressed, the direct antithesis to Crawling Elk, who was tall and slovenly, with a homely, grandfatherly face deeply seamed with wrinkles, a face that would be recognized as typical of his race. He seemed far less concerned than some of the others. Two Horns, also quite at his ease, unrolled his pipe and began filling it, while Curtis resumed his writing. Jennie, looking in at the door, recognized the chiefs, and they all rose politely to greet her. "I'm coming to the council," she said to Two Horns. He smiled. "Squaws no come council--no good." "No, no, heap good," she replied. "We come. Chiefs heap talk--we catchim coffee." "Good, good!" he replied. "After council, feast." One by one the other chiefs slipped in and took their places, till all the bands were represented save that of Red Wolf, who was too far away to be reached. Curtis then sent for the sheriff and Calvin and Elsie and Lawson, and when all were seated began his talk by addressing the chieftains. He spoke in English, in order that the sheriff could hear all that was said, and Lawson interpreted it into Sioux. "You know this young man"--he pointed at Calvin. "Some of you know this man"--he touched the sheriff. "He is the war chief of all the country beyond where Grayman lives. He comes to tell us that a herder has been killed over by the Muddy Spring. He thinks it was done by an Indian. The white people are very angry, and they say that you must find the murderer. Do you know of any one who has threatened to do this thing?" One by one the chiefs replied: "I do not know who did this thing. I have heard no one speak of it as a thing good to be done. We are all sad." Two Horns added a protest. "I think it hard that a whole tribe should suffer because the white man thinks one redman has done a wrong thing." Grayman spoke sadly: "My people have had much trouble because the cattlemen want to drive their herds up the Willow, and we are like men who guard the door. On us the trouble falls. It is our duty--the same as you should say to a policeman, 'Do not let anybody come in my house.' Therefore we have been accused of killing the cattle and stealing things. But this is not true. I remembered your words, and I did nothing to make these people angry; but some of my young men threw stones to drive the sheep back, and then the herder fired at them with revolver. This was not our fault." "He lies!" said the sheriff, hotly, when this was interpreted. "No one has fired a gun but his reckless young devils. His men were riding down the sheep, and the herder rocked 'em away." "You admit the sheep were on the reservation, then?" asked Curtis. "Well--yes--temporarily. They were being watered." "Well, we won't go into that now," said Curtis, turning to the chiefs and speaking with great solemnity, using the sign-language at times. And as he sat thus fronting the strongly wrought, serious faces of his head men he was wholly admirable, and Elsie's blood thrilled with excitement, for she felt herself to be in the presence of primeval men. "Now, Grayman, Elk, Two Horns, Standing Elk, Lone Man, and Crow, listen to me. Among white men it is the law that when any one has done a wrong thing--when he steals or murders--he is punished. If he kills a man he is slain by the chief, not by the relatives of the man who is slain. As with you, I am here to apply the white man's rule. If a Tetong has shot this herder he must suffer for it--he and no one else. I will not permit the cattlemen to punish the tribe. If you know who did this, it is your duty to give him up to the law. It is the command of the Great Father--he asks you to go back to your people and search hard to find who killed this white man. When you find him bring him to me. Will you do this?" No one answered but Two Horns, who said, "Ay, we will do as you say," and his solemnity of utterance attested his sincerity. "Listen to me," said Curtis again, fixing their eyes with his dramatic action. "If my only brother had done this thing, I would give him up to be punished. I would not hesitate, and I expect you to do the same." "It is always thus," Standing Elk broke out. "The cattlemen wish to punish all redmen for what one bad young warrior does. We are weary of it." "I know it has been so, but it shall not be so again, not while I am your chief," Curtis responded. "Will you go home and do as I have commanded? Will you search hard and bring me word what you discover?" One by one they muttered, "Ay!" and Curtis added, heartily: "That is good--now you may go." "I want to say a word," said the sheriff. "Not now," replied Curtis. "These people are in my charge. Whatever is said to them I will say," and at his gesture they rose, and Crow, Standing Elk, and Lone Man went soberly out into the night. Grayman approached Curtis and took his hand in both of his and pressed it to his breast. "Little Father, I have heard your words; they are not easy to follow, but they have entered my heart. No white man has ever spoken to me with your tongue. You do not lie; your words are soft, but they stand like rocks--they do not melt away. My words shall be like yours--they will not vanish like smoke. What I have promised, that I will fulfil." As he spoke his slight frame trembled with the intensity of his emotion, and his eyes were dim with tears, and his deep, sweet voice, accompanying his gestures, thrilled every soul in the room. At the end he dropped the agent's hand and hastened from the house like one afraid of himself. Curtis turned to Lawson to hide his own emotion. "Mr. Lawson, I assume the sheriff is as tired as the rest of us; will you show him the bed you were kind enough to offer?" "Sheriff Winters, if you will come with me I'll pilot you to a couch. It isn't downy, but it will rest a tired man. Calvin, you are to bunk alongside." "All right, professor." Calvin rose reluctantly, and as he stood in the door he said, in a low voice, to Jennie, "Now if you want me any time just send for me." "Hold the sheriff level--that's what you do for us." "I'll see that he don't get gay," he replied, and his hearty confidence did them all good. After the sheriff and his deputy went out, Elsie said: "Oh, it was wonderful! That old man who spoke last must be the Edwin Booth of the tribe. He was superbly dramatic." "He took my words very deeply to heart. That was Grayman, one of the most intelligent of all my head men; but he has had a great deal of trouble. He comprehends all too much of the tragedy of his situation." Elsie sat with her elbows on the table, gazing in silence towards the empty fireplace. She looked weary and sad. Curtis checked himself. "I regret very deeply the worry and discomfort all this brings upon you." "Oh, I'm not thinking of myself this time, I am thinking of the hopeless task you have set yourself. You can't solve this racial question--it's too big and too complicated. Men are simply a kind of ferocious beast. They go to work killing each other the way chickens eat grasshoppers." "Your figure is wrong. If our Christian settlers only killed Indians to fill their stomachs they'd stop some time; but they kill them because they're like the boy about his mother--tired of seeing 'em 'round." There was a time when Elsie's jests were frankly on the side of the strong against the weak, but she was becoming oppressed with the suffering involved in the march of civilization. "What a fine face Grayman has; I couldn't help thinking how much more refined it was than Winters! As for the cowboys, they were hulking school-boys; I was not a bit afraid of them after they were dismounted." "Unfortunately they are a kind of six-footed beast, always mounted; there isn't a true frontiersman among them. It angered me that they had the opportunity to even look at you." His intensity of gaze and the bitterness of his voice took away her breath for an instant, and before she could reply Jennie and Lawson came in. Lawson was smiling. "Parker is righteously incensed. He tried to enter the council an hour ago and your dusky minions stopped him. He is genuinely alarmed now, and only waiting for daylight to take flight." "Jerome is a goose," said Elsie. "He's a jackass at times. A man of talent, but a bore when his yellow streak comes out." Turning to Curtis he said, very seriously, "Is there anything I can do for you, Captain?" "You might wire your version of the disturbance to the Secretary along with mine. We can safely look for an avalanche of newspaper criticism, and I would like to anticipate their outbreak." "Our telegrams will be at once made public--" "Undoubtedly, and for that reason we must use great care in their composition. I have mine written; please look it over." Jennie, who had dropped into a chair, checked a yawn. "Oh, dear; I wish it were morning." Curtis looked at her and laughed. "I think you girls would better go to bed. Your eyes are heavy-lidded with weariness." "Aren't you going to sleep?" asked Jennie, anxiously. "I shall lie down here on the sofa--I must be where I can hear a tap on the window. Good-night." Both girls rose at his word, and Elsie said: "It seems cruel that you cannot go properly to bed--after such a wearisome day." "You forget that I am a soldier," he said, and saluted as they passed. He observed that Lawson merely bowed when she said "Good-night" politely. Surely some change had come to their relationship. Lawson turned. "I think I will turn in, Captain; I have endorsed the telegram." "It must go at once." He tapped on the pane, and almost instantly a Tetong, sleeping under the window, rose from his blanket and stood with his face to the window, alert and keen-eyed. "Tony, I have a long ride for you." "All right," replied the faithful fellow, cheerfully. "I want you to take some letters to Pinon City. Come round to the door." As he stepped into the light the messenger appeared to be a boy of twenty, black-eyed and yellow-skinned, with thin and sensitive lips. "Take the letters to the post-office," said Curtis, speaking slowly. "You understand--and these despatches to the telegraph-office." "Pay money?" "No pay. Can you go now?" "Yes, go now." "Very well, take the best pony in the corral. You better keep the trail and avoid the ranches. Good-night." The young fellow put the letters away in the inside pocket of his blue coat, buttoned it tightly, and slipped out into the night, and was swallowed up by the moonless darkness. "Aren't you afraid they will do Tony harm if they meet him?" "Not in his uniform." "I wouldn't want that ride. Well, so long, old man. Call me if I can be of any use." After Lawson went out Curtis sank back into his big chair and closed his eyes in deep thought. As he forecast the enormous and tragic results of the return of that armed throng of reckless cattlemen he shuddered. A war would almost destroy the Tetongs. It would nullify all he had been trying to do for them, and would array the whole State, the whole Indian-hating population of the nation, against them. Jennie re-entered softly and stood by his side. "It's worrisome business being Indian agent, after all, isn't it, George?" she said, with her hand in his hair. He forced himself to a cheerful tone of voice. "Oh, I don't know; this is our first worry, and it will soon be over. It looks bad just now, but it will be--" A knock at the outer door startled them both. "That is a white man--probably Barker," he said, and called, "Come in." Calvin Streeter entered, a little abashed at seeing Jennie. Meeting Curtis's look of inquiry, he said, with winning candor, "Major, I been a-studyin' on this thing a good 'eal, and I've come to the conclusion that you're right on all these counts, and I've concluded to ride over the hill and see if I can't argue the boys out of their notion to kill somebody." Jennie clapped her hands. "Good! That is a splendid resolution. I always knew you meant right." Curtis held out his hand. "Shake hands, my boy. There isn't a moment to be lost. If they are coming at all, they will start about sunrise. I hope they have reconsidered the matter and broken camp." Calvin looked a little uneasy. "Well, I'll tell ye, Major, I'm afraid them lahees that we sent back home will egg the rest on; they sure were bilun mad, but I'll go and do what I can to head 'em off. If I can't delay 'em, I'll come along with 'em, but you can count on me to do any little job that'll help you after we get here. Good-night." "Good-night. Don't take any rest." "Oh, I'm all right. Nobody ain't huntin' trouble with me." After he went out Jennie said: "I call that the grace of God working in the soul of man." Curtis looked at her keenly. "I call it the love of woman sanctifying the heart of a cowboy." She colored a little. "Do we women go on the pay-rolls as assistant agents?" "Not if we men can prevent it. What kind of a report would it make if I were forced to say, 'At this critical moment the charming Miss So-and-so came to my aid, and, by inviting the men in to dinner with a sweet smile, completely disarmed their hostility. Too much honor cannot be given,' etc." "I guess if history were written by women once in a while those reports wouldn't be so rare as they are." XXIII THE RETURN OF THE MOB Curtis was awakened about four o'clock by Wilson at his window. "Are you awake, Major?" "Yes; what is it?" "Two of the scouts have just come in from the hills. They are sure the ranchers are coming to make war. Bands of white men are crossing the county to join the camp. It certainly looks owly, Major." Curtis rose and went to the window. "The troops will be here by nine o'clock at the furthest, and the mob will not move till sunrise, and can't reach here, even by hard riding, before eleven." "Shall I send a courier out to meet the troops and hurry them on?" asked Wilson, whose voice was untouched of fear. "It might be well. Send Two Horns to me if you can find him. Keep silent as to these reports." "All right, Major." Curtis did not underestimate the dangers of the situation. If the troops did not arrive, and if the armed posse of the settlers should come and attempt to arrest Elk, war would follow, that was certain. Meanwhile he was one day's hard riding from either the fort or the telegraph line, with the settlers between, and no news could reach him for twenty-four hours. At that very moment the morning papers were being distributed bearing a burden of calumny. The department would open his telegram in a few minutes, but the Secretary's reply could not reach him before sunset at the earliest, "and by that time I will be master of the situation or there will be war. I must parley--delay them, by any means, till the troops arrive. Colonel Daggett will forward the men at once--I hope under Maynard--and Jack is no sluggard. He will be here if only the Colonel takes action." The sun rose as usual in a cloudless sky, but the wind was again in the northwest, and as he stood on the little porch looking up the valley he could see the smoke of the camp-fires in Grayman's camp, and beyond him the Crawling Elk and his people occupied a larger circle of shining tepees. The two villages seemed as peaceful as if the people were waiting for their rations, but as he lifted his eyes to the hills he could see the mounted sentinels patiently waiting the coming of the sun, and he knew that beyond and to the east every butte was similarly crested with spies. These people of the wide spaces had their own signal service and were not to be taken unawares. Each movement of the enemy would be flashed from hill to hill, miles in advance of the beat of their horses' hoofs. As he was returning to his library Elsie met him. "Good-morning, Captain. Did you sleep?" "Oh yes, indeed!" He spoke as lightly as he could. "But my messengers reporting disturbed me a little during the early morning." "With bad news?" "Oh no, quite the contrary. I think we are well out of our difficulty." "I'm sure I hope so. You look tired." "I'm ashamed of it. You must have slept well--you are radiant. I am sorry I cannot promise you the Elk for a sitter to-day." "I like him better as the leader of his people. Do we breakfast with the sheriff this morning?" "That affliction is bearing down upon us," he replied. "He is even now moving morosely across the road. I fear he is in bad temper." "I think I will be late to breakfast in that case," she said, with a little grimace, and fled. Curtis greeted his guest pleasantly. "Good-morning, sheriff." "Good-morning, Major. Have you seen anything of my deputy?" "No; has he left you?" "I didn't miss him till this morning," replied Winters, sourly. "But he's gone, horse and all." "Well, the loss is not serious. Come in and break an egg with me." Jennie was distinctly less cordial than before, but she made her unwelcome guest comfortable, and asked after his health politely. She was just pouring his second cup of coffee when the furious clanging of the office bell made them all start. Curtis looked at his watch. "Good Heavens! It can't be the eight-o'clock bell. What time have you?" "Seven thirty-three." Curtis sprang up. "It's a signal of fire!" At the word "fire" Jennie turned white and rose. Elsie came flying down-stairs, crying: "The Indians are running!" A wild shout arose, "Stop that bell!" and a moment later Wilson burst in at the door--"Major, the Indians are signalling from the buttes--everybody is taking to the hills--the mob is coming." Curtis gave Elsie one piercing look. "I hope you will trust me; you are in no danger, even if this alarm is true. I think it is a mistake. I will return soon and let you know. I beg you not to be alarmed." The alarum was true. On the buttes horsemen were riding to and fro excitedly crossing and recrossing the same ground--the sign which means an approaching enemy. On every hill-side mounted warriors were gathering and circling. Boys with wild halloos were bringing in the ponies. The women busy, swarming like bees, were dropping the tepees; even as the agent mounted the steps to the office and looked up the valley, the white canvases sank to the ground one by one as though melted by the hot sun. War times were come again, and the chanting cries of the old women came pulsing by on the soft west wind. A grim smile settled on the agent's lips as he comprehended these preparations. He knew the history of these people and admired them for their skill and their bravery. War times were come again! "Our cowboy friends have set themselves a memorable task in trying to wipe out this tribe. The ranchers never fight their own battles; they always call upon the federal government; and that is their purpose now, to stir up strife and leave the troops to bear the burden of the war." "I don't see our fellers," said the sheriff, who was deeply excited. "I'll ride to meet them." "They are a long way off yet," said Curtis. "The Tetong sentinels have only signalled their start. I hope the troops are on the way," he said to the two girls who had followed and now stood close beside him as if for protection. Then he called to the sheriff, who had started for his horse: "I depend on you to keep off this invasion, sheriff. I warn you and your men that this entrance here at this time is a crime against Washington." Winters did not reply, and Curtis knew that he would join the majority; being a candidate for re-election, he could not afford to run counter to the wishes of his constituents. Hastily mounting his horse, he galloped furiously away. Curtis strained his eyes down the valley, hoping for a sight of the guidons of the --th. "What can you do?" asked Elsie. "Nothing but await the issue," he replied. "I have sent another courier to hasten the troops; it is now a race between the forces of law and of order. If the mob arrives first, I must delay them--prevent their advance if possible. There is nothing else to be done." "Can we help?" "I'm afraid not. There will be two or three hundred of the invaders this time, if the sheriff is to be believed. I am afraid to have you meet them. I think it better for you all to keep within doors." "I wish my father knew--he could stop this!" wailed Elsie, in sudden realization of her helplessness. "He could wire the authorities in Pinon City. I know they would listen to him." "Here come the Parkers!" said Jennie. "Now look out for squalls." "I had forgotten them," said Curtis, with a comic look of dismay. Parker was running, half dragging his poor, breathless wife, while in their rear Lawson appeared, walking calmly, quite irreproachable in a gray morning suit, and the sight of him was a comfort to Curtis, for his forces were practically reduced to Wilson and four or five clerks. "Now, Captain, what are you going to do?" called Parker. "You let us into this--" Being in no mood for squalls, Curtis cut Parker short. "Be quiet; don't be uselessly foolish. Try and conduct yourself like a reasonable human being. Jennie, go into the house, and take the ladies with you. You'll have all the women of the agency to look after in a few minutes. Lawson, I can depend on you--will you go over to the office with me?" When they reached the office Lawson threw back his coat and displayed two wicked-looking revolvers. "I've been known to fight when pushed too far," he said, smilingly. In the space of an hour the panic had become preparation. On a low butte to the southwest a dark mass of armed and resolute warriors waited on their swift ponies ready for whatever came, while behind them on a higher ridge a smaller group of dismounted chieftains sat in council. Up the slopes below and to the right the women and old men were leading the ponies, laden with their tepees, children, and supplies, precisely as in the olden times. The wagons of the white men were of no use where they were now climbing. The ways of the wheel were no longer desirable. They sought the shelter of the trail. "I am confident that the troops will arrive first," said Curtis. "If the powers of evil have found a leader, it will be hard to control them even with a troop of cavalry," Lawson replied, soberly. "The sheriff will go with the mob when it comes to a show down." "Oh, of course. I do not count on him; but Calvin is loyal." Before the office stood two or three of the white employés of the agency with their wives and children about them. Two policemen alone remained of all the throng of red employés usually to be seen about the yards; the rest were out on duty or had joined their people in the hills. "What shall we do?" cried Miss Colson, a look of mortal terror on her face. She crowded close to Curtis and laid her hands on his arm. "Let us stay near you." "You are in no danger," he replied. "Those poor devils on the hill-side are the ones who will suffer. Where are your children?" he asked, sharply. "They all disappeared like rabbits at sound of the bell; only the kindergarten class remains." "Go and help take care of them," he commanded. "Sing to them--amuse them. Wolf Robe," he called to one of the policemen--he of the bow-legs--"go to the people on the hill and say to them to fear nothing, Washington protects them. Tell them they must not fight. Say to the mothers of the little ones that nothing shall hurt them. Go quick!" Wolf Robe handed his sombrero, his coat, and his revolver to his friend, Beaver Kill, and ran away towards the corral, agile as a boy. "What did he do that for?" asked Jennie. Curtis smiled. "He is Indian now; he doesn't want to be mistaken for a cowboy." When he reappeared on his pony, his long, dark hair streaming, a red handkerchief bound about his head, he looked like a warrior stripped for battle. "There isn't a faithfuler man in the world," said Curtis, and a lump rose in his throat. "He has been riding half the night for me, but he charges that hill as if he were playing a game." "I don't understand how you can trust them to do such things," said Elsie. "Perhaps he will not come back. How do you know he will do as you commanded?" "Because that ugly little bow-legged Tetong is a man!" replied Curtis. "He would die in performance of his duty." And something in his voice made the tears start to Elsie's eyes. The sentinels on the hills were quiet now--facing the northeast, motionless as weather-vanes. The camps had disappeared as if by magic; nothing remained but a few wagons. Wolf Robe, diminishing to the value of a coyote, was riding straight towards the retreating women. Even as Curtis watched, the chieftains on the higher hill rose, and one of them started downward towards the warriors on the rounded hill-top. Then a small squad detached itself from the main command and slid down the grassy slope to meet the women. As they rode slowly on, the moving figures of those leading the camp horses gathered round them. Curtis understood some command was being shouted by the descending squad. Separating themselves from the led ponies, these scouts swept on down the hill directly upon the solitary and minute figure of Wolf Robe, whose pony climbed slowly and in zigzag course. "They will kill him," said a woman. Wolf Robe halted and waited till the skirmishers rode up to him. They massed round him closely, listening while he delivered his message. "When he returns we will know all that his people have learned of the invaders," said Curtis. "They will tell him what they have seen." "It is strange," exclaimed Elsie, in a low voice, standing close beside him. "But I'm not afraid. It is like a story--a dream. That I should stand here watching Indians preparing for war and waiting for United States troops is incredible." "I wish it were not true," he replied. "But it is. I have no fear of my people, only of the rash act of a vicious white man." "Which way will the cattlemen come from?" asked Jennie. "Probably down that trail." He pointed to the northeast. "Part of them may come up the valley road. Wolf Robe has started on his return." The little squad of warriors returned to the group of chieftains, while the loyal Wolf Robe came racing down the slope, his hair streaming, his elbows flapping. In a few minutes he dropped rein at the gate and re-entered the yard. Standing before his chief, he delivered his message. "Their hearts are very glad at your good words, but the women are crying for their babies. They ask that you send them away before the bad white men come. Send them out towards the hills and they will come down and get them--this they said." "What did the scouts say?" "They said that the sentinels on the hills saw the white men break camp and come this way--many of them--so they say." "Where are they now?" "They are hidden in the pines of the valley. They will soon be here--so they say." "Take a fresh pony and ride back and tell all who have children here to come down and talk with me. Tell them I will turn the white men away. No one shall be harmed. The children are safe. There will be no war. I will meet them in the old camp. I keep repeating there is no danger because I believe it," he said to the silent group around him, after Wolf Robe rode away. "There is nothing to be done but wait. So go about your duties," he added, with a note of command. One by one the employés dropped away till only Wilson remained. His only sign of nervousness was a quiver of the muscles of one cheek, where he held his quid of tobacco. His bright blue eyes were fixed on the sentinels, while he leaned negligently against the fence. Lawson, smoking a German pipe, was watching the warriors on the hills, a rapt expression on his face, as if he were working out some problem in ethics which demanded complete concentration and absorption of thought. The two girls had drawn close together as if for comfort, their nerves a-quiver with the strain. "Are you waiting for something to go off?" suddenly asked Curtis. Each one started a little, and all laughed together. "I think I was," confessed Elsie. "You seemed to be holding your breath. I wish you'd both go in and rest," he pleaded. "It is no use--" "They're coming!" interrupted Lawson. "Where? Where?" "The sentinels are signalling again." All turned to the east, but nothing could be seen--no smoke, no dust, no sign of horsemen--yet the swift circling of the sentinels and the turmoil among the warriors on the butte indicated the menace of an approaching army. Another little band detached itself from the huddle of the camp and came down the hill, slowly and in single file. "The squaws are coming for their children, even before Wolf Robe reaches them," said Lawson. "And there's the mob!" said Curtis, and at his words a keen thrill of fear ran through the hearts of the women. With set, pale faces they looked away beneath levelled finger. "That's right," said Wilson, "and two hundred strong." The sad-colored horsemen were pouring over a high, pine-clad ridge some two miles to the east, and streaming down into a narrow valley behind a sharp intervening butte. "Now, girls, you _must_ go in!" commanded Curtis, sharply. "You can do no good--" "George, let us stay!" pleaded Jennie. "We saved you yesterday, and we may help to-day." "What is the use of shutting us in the house? I'm not afraid," added Elsie. "These men will do us no harm." "I beg you will not interfere," he said, looking at Jennie, but Elsie knew he included her as well. "It isn't a bit impressive to have an agent flanked with women--in a council of war." "Hang the looks! they're mighty effective sometimes," remarked Lawson. "That's right!" chimed in Wilson. "By the Lord! they look sassy," he added, referring back to the cowboys. They formed a sinister cavalcade as they came streaming down the rough road, two and two, like a monstrous swift serpent, parti-colored, sinuous, silent, save for the muffled clatter of their horses' hoofs. Curtis nerved himself for the shock, and, though weakened and embarrassed by the presence of Elsie and Jennie, he presented a soldierly breast to the mob. Had it been a question of protecting the women, the case would have been different, but to argue a point of law with them at his elbow exposed him to ridicule and to interruption. As the horsemen debouched upon the valley road, a prodigious cloud of dust arose and sailed away on the wind, completely hiding the rear ranks so that they could not be numbered. As they drew near, the sheriff could be seen riding at the head of the column side by side with a big man in a blue shirt. They approached at a shacking trot, which was more menacing than a gallop would have been--it was steady, inexorable, self-contained as a charge of cavalry. As they reached the issue-house, Curtis opened the gate and stepped out into the road and faced them alone, and Elsie grew cold with fear as the sheriff and his formidable following rode steadily up. When almost upon the agent the leader turned, and, pushing his limp hat away from his eyes, shouted: "_Halt!_" As the men pulled in their horses he added, "Keep back there!" The mob had found a leader, and was organized for violence. Curtis, with folded arms, seemed small and weak as the army of invasion came to a stand, filling the lane between the office and the agency house with trampling horses and cursing men. "Good-morning," growled the leader, surlily. "We're come for old Elk, and I want to say we get him this time. No monkey business goes with old Bill Yarpe. Women can't fool me." Calvin Streeter rode out of the throng and pushed his way to the front. Yarpe yelled: "H'yar! Keep in line there!" "Go to hell!" replied Calvin, as he rode past him. "I'm no nigger. I want to hear what goes on, and I tell ye right now you treat these people fair or you'll hear from me." "I'll shoot you up a few if you ain't keerful, young feller," replied the old ruffian. "That's right, General, he's too fresh," called some one. Calvin spurred his horse alongside Yarpe's and looked him in the eye with a glare which made the older man wince. "You be decent before these women or I'll cut the heart out o' ye. You hear me!" Curtis stepped forward. "Careful, Streeter--don't provoke trouble; we'll protect the women." The sheriff rode between the two men. "Cal, git away--you're my deputy, remember." As Cal reined his horse away, Curtis went to him and said, in a low voice: "I appreciate your chivalry, Calvin, but be careful; don't excite them." As he looked into the big, red, whiskey-bloated face of Yarpe, Curtis was frankly dismayed. The old ruffian was not only inflamed with liquor, he was intoxicated with a subtler elixir--the pride of command. As he looked back over his followers he visibly expanded and a savage glare lit up his eyes. "Keep quiet, boys; I'll settle this thing." Curtis again stepped towards the sheriff. "What do you propose to do, Mr. Sheriff?" Yarpe broke in boisterously. "We want old Elk. Bring him out or we go after him." A chorus of applause followed. "On what authority do you make this demand?" asked Curtis, facing Yarpe. "On the authority of the sheriff of Pinon City," replied Yarpe, "and we come along to see he does his duty." "The sheriff is present and can speak for himself. He was my guest last night and made an agreement with me, which, as an honorable man, he is disposed to keep." The sheriff avoided Curtis's eye, but Yarpe replied: "He showed the white feather. He let you fool him, but you can't fool this crowd. Bring on your Injun, or we go get him." "Have you a warrant?" "Oh, damn the warrant!" The sheriff cleared his throat. "Yes, I have a warrant for Crawling Elk and Grayman," he said, and began searching his pockets. The decisive moment had arrived. XXIV THE GRAY-HORSE TROOP Curtis minutely studied the crowd, which was made up very largely of reckless young men--cowboys from all over the range, together with the loafers and gamblers of the cow-towns. The sheriff's deputies were all well to the front, but were quiet; they seemed to be a little abashed by the gaze of the women to whom they were indebted for their dinner of yesterday. Each member of the gang was burdened with ammunition and carried both rifle and revolver. The sheriff dismounted and handed a paper to Curtis, who took plenty of time to read it. It was manifestly bogus, manufactured for use as a bluff, and had not been properly sworn out; but to dispute it would be to anger the cattlemen. There was only one chance for delay. "Very well," he said, at last. "This warrant calls for two of the head men among the Tetongs. Of course, I understand your motives. You do not intend to charge these chiefs with the crime, you only wish to force the tribe to yield some one else to your vengeance. In face of such a force as this of yours, Mr. Sheriff, I can only yield, though I deny your right to lay hand on one of my charges. I do all this under pressure. If your men will retire a little I will call a messenger and communicate with the chiefs named, and ask--" Yarpe glared. "Communicate hell! Sheriff, say the word and we'll go and get 'em." Curtis fixed a calm gaze upon him. "You are a brave man, Mr. Yarpe, but you'll need all your resolution when you charge up that hill in the face of those desperate warriors." As he swept his arm out towards the west all eyes were turned on the swarming mass of mounted Tetongs. The women had moved higher, and were halted just on the eastern brow of the high ridge, behind and to the right of the fighting men. "Now what will you do, Mr. Sheriff?" pursued Curtis; "act with me through the head men, or make your demand of the whole tribe?" A dispute arose among the crowd. A few shouted, noisily, "Say the word and we'll sweep the greasy devils off the earth." But the larger number, like the sheriff's posse of the day before, found it not easy to overawe this quiet soldier. Calvin harangued the leader. "No, I will not button my lip," he shouted again, confronting Yarpe, "for you nor no other man. You let the sheriff and the Captain fix this thing up. What are you in this thing for, anyhow? You don't own a foot of land nor a head o' stock. You're nothing but a bum! You can't get trusted for a pound of tobacco. Nice man to lead a mob--" "Shut him up, Bill," shouted one fellow. "Cal's right," called another. "Don't let 'em fool ye, Bill; we come fer a redskin, and we'll have him or burn the town." Calvin had a revolver in each hand, and on his face was a look that meant war. Curtis called to Lawson. "Take the women in, quick!" He feared shooting among the leaders of the mob. "Don't shoot, Calvin. Keep the peace." With tears of impotent rage filling her eyes, Elsie retreated towards the office under Lawson's care. Curtis stepped to the side of the leader. "Silence your gang," he said. Yarpe raised his bellowing voice. "Keep quiet, there! I'll settle this thing in a minute." "Keep back!" commanded the sheriff. The crowd fell back a little, with Calvin crowding them hard, revolver in hand. "No more funny business with me," he said, and death blazed from his eyes. "Get back!" Quiet having been restored, the sheriff, Curtis, and Yarpe were revealed in animated argument. Curtis was talking against time--every moment was precious. "If you give in, your chances for re-election ain't worth a leatherette," Yarpe said to the sheriff. "You crazy fool! You wouldn't charge that hill?" asked the sheriff. "That's what I would, and that's what the boys come for." "But what good would it do?" "It would learn these red devils a lesson they wouldn't forget, and it would make you an' me the most popular men in the county. If you don't do it, you're dead as the hinges of hell." "If you charge that hill, some of you will stay there," put in Curtis. Yarpe turned and roared: "Boys, the sheriff has weakened. Will you follow me?" "We will!" shouted the reckless majority. At this precise moment, while looking over the sheriff's head towards the pinon-spotted hill to the west, Curtis caught the gleam of something white bobbing down the hill. It disappeared, but came into sight lower down, a white globe based in a splash of blue. It was a white helmet, topping the uniform of a cavalry officer. A sudden emotion seized Curtis by the throat--his heart warmed, swelled big in his bosom. Oh, the good old color! Now he could see the gauntleted gloves, the broad shoulders, the easy seat of blessed old Jack Maynard as he ambled peacefully across the flat. "Look there!" he cried, turning to the group inside the gate, his finger pointing like a pistol. His voice rang out joyous as a morning bugle, and the girls thrilled with joy. Yarpe looked. "Hell! The cavalry! We're euchred--clean." Over the hill behind the officer appeared a squadron of gray horse, marching in single file, winding down the trail like a long serpent, spotted with blue and buff, the sun sparkling fitfully from their polished brass and steel. When Curtis turned to the sheriff his face was pale with excitement for the first time, quivering, exultant. "You'll have the federal troops to deal with now," he said. "At last we are on equal terms." A deep silence fell on the mob. Every ruffian of them seemed suddenly frozen into immobility, and each sat with head turned and eyes wide-staring, watching the coming of the blue-shirted horsemen. As the officer approached he was distinguishable as a powerful, smooth-faced young man in a captain's uniform. As his eyes rested on Curtis his plump, red face broke into a broad smile. It was plain that he was Irish, and not averse to a bit of a shindy. Riding straight up to the agent, he formally saluted, and in a deep, dry, military voice, said: "Colonel Daggett presents his compliments to Captain Curtis and tenders Squadron B, at your service. Captain Maynard in command." With equally impersonal decorum Curtis acknowledged the courtesy. "Captain Curtis returns the compliment, and thanks Captain Maynard for his prompt and most opportune arrival--Jack, I'm mighty glad to see you." Maynard dismounted and they shook hands. "Same to you, old man. What's all the row?" A clear, distant, boyish voice cried, "By columns of four into line!" and the bugle, breaking voice, caused the hair of the agent's head to stand; turning, he saw the squadron taking form as it crossed the stream. It required his most heroic effort to keep the tears from his eyes as his ear heard the dull rattle of scabbards and he watched the splendid play of the gray horses' legs and broad chests as they came on, weary but full of spirit yet. There was something inexorable in their advance. In their order, their clean glitter, their impersonal grace, was expressed the power of the general government. Turning to the sheriff, he said: "Sheriff Winters, this warrant is bogus--forged this morning by some one of your lynching-party; the ink is hardly dry. I decline to serve it," and he tore it into strips and flung it on the ground. "Halt!" cried the oncoming commander, and with creak of saddle and diminishing thunder of hoofs the Gray Squadron stopped within fifty feet of the agency gate, and out of the dust a young lieutenant rode forward and saluted. "Hold your position, Mr. Payne," commanded Maynard. "I just _love_ Captain Maynard!" said Jennie, fervently. "I'll tell him," said Lawson. "Now," said Maynard, "what's it all about? Nice gang, this!" The mob that had been so loud of mouth now sat in silence as profound as if each man had been smitten dumb. It was easy to threaten and flourish pistols in the face of an Indian agent with a dozen women to protect, but this wall of Uncle Sam's blue was a different barrier--not to be lightly overleaped. The cowboys were not accustomed to facing such men as these when they shot up towns and raced the Tetongs across the hills. "Now what is it all about?" repeated Maynard, composing his comedy face into a look of military sternness. Curtis explained swiftly in a low voice, and ended by saying: "This is, in effect, a lynching-party on federal territory. What would you do in such a case?" "Order them off, instanter!" "Precisely. I have done so, but they refuse to go." "Do they?" Maynard turned and remounted his horse. Saluting, he said: "Captain Curtis, I am ready to execute any order you may choose to give." Curtis saluted. "You will see that these citizens, unlawfully assembled, leave the reservation at once. Sheriff Winters, with all due respect to your office, I request you to withdraw. Captain Maynard will escort you to the borders of the reservation. When you have a warrant properly executed, send or bring it to me and I will use every effort to serve it. Good-morning, sir." Captain Maynard drew his sword. "_'Tention, squadron!_" The tired horses lifted their heads as the dusty troopers forced them into line. Maynard's voice rang out: "_Left wheel, into line--march!_" "You'll hear from this!" said the sheriff. "You'll find the State won't stand any such foolishness." Yarpe's ferocity had entirely evaporated. "'Bout face, boys; we're not fightin' the United States army--I had enough o' that in '63. Clear out! Our bluff don't go." The cowboys, cursing under breath, whirled their ponies and followed Yarpe, the redoubtable. The sheriff brought up the rear, still contending for the rights of the county, but he retreated. Small as the dusty squadron looked, it was too formidable, both because of its commanders and because of the majestic idea it embodied. Calvin was the last to leave. "I done my best, Major," he said, loudly, in order that Jennie might hear. "I know it, Calvin; come and see us again in your civil capacity," replied Curtis, and waved a cordial salute. As the squadron fell in behind and was hidden by the dust of the passing cattlemen, Curtis turned to where Elsie still stood. He was smiling, but his limbs were stiffened and inert by reason of the rigidity of his long position before the posse. "We are saved!" he said, in mock-heroic phrase. "Oh, wasn't it glorious to see the good old blue-and-buff!" cried Jennie, the tears of her joy still on her cheeks. "I could have hugged Captain Maynard." "There is chance yet," said Curtis. "He's coming back." Elsie did not speak for a moment. "What would you have done if they had not come?" she asked, soberly. "I could have delayed them a little longer by sending couriers to Elk and Grayman; but let's not think of that. Let's all go into the house; you look completely tired out." Elsie fairly reeled with weakness, and Curtis took her arm. "You are trembling," he said, tenderly. "I haven't stirred for a half-hour," she said. "I was so tense with the excitement. I feared you would be shot, and the tribe isn't worth the sacrifice," she added, with a touch of her old spirit. "I was in no physical danger," he replied. "But I should have felt disgraced had the mob had its way." "The people are coming back," said Lawson. "They have seen the soldiers." "So they are!" exclaimed Curtis. "They are shouting with joy. Can't you hear them? The chiefs are riding this way already; they know the army will protect them." The thick mass of horsemen was breaking up, some of them were riding towards the women with the camp stuff, others were crossing the valley, while a dozen head men, riding straight towards the agency, began to sing a song of deliverance and victory. Joyous shouts could be heard as the young men signalled the good news. "_The cattlemen are going--the soldiers have come!_" XXV AFTER THE STRUGGLE Upon reaching the library each member of the party sank into easy-chairs with sighs of deep relief, relaxed and nerveless. The storm was over. Jennie voiced the feeling as she said, "Thank the Lord and Colonel Daggett." Elsie was physically weary to the point of drowsiness, but her mind was active. Mrs. Parker was bewildered and silent. Even Parker was subdued by the grave face of the agent. Lawson, with a curious half-smile, broke the silence. "There are times when I wish I owned a Gatling gun and knew how to use it." Curtis started up. "Well, it's all over but the shouting. I must return to the office and set things in order once more." "You ought to rest a little," said Elsie. "You must feel the strain." "I am a little inert at the moment," he confessed, "but I'm Hamlet in the play, you know, and must be at my post. I'll meet you all at lunch. You need have no further worry." The employés responded bravely to his orders. The cheerful clink of the anvil broke forth with tranquillizing effect. The school-bell called the children together, the tepees began to rise from the sod as before, and the sluggish life of the agency resumed its unhurried flow, though beneath the surface still lurked vague forms of fear. Parker returned to his studio, Lawson sought his den, and there stretched out to smoke and muse upon the leadings of the event, while Jennie planned a mid-day dinner for a round dozen. "It will be a sort of love-feast to Captain Maynard," she said, roguishly. "Will he return so soon?" asked Elsie. "Oh yes, he'll only go a little way. Jack Maynard can smell a good dinner across a range of foot-hills. Didn't he look beautiful as he smiled? I used to think he grinned, but to-day--well, he looked like a heavenly cherub in the helmet of an archangel as he rode up." Elsie was genuinely amused. "What is the meaning of this fervor. Has there been something between you and Captain Maynard in the past?" "Not a thing! Oh, I always liked him--he's so good-natured--and so comical. Can you peel potatoes?" "I never did such a thing in my life, but I'll try." About one o'clock Maynard came jogging back, accompanied by a sergeant and a squad of men, dusty, tired, and hungry. Curtis met him at the gate. "Send your horses down to the corral, Captain. You're to take pot-luck with us." Maynard dismounted, slowly, painfully. "I've been wondering about those girls," he said, after the horses were led away. "One is your sister Jennie, of course; but who is the other? She's what the boys would call a 'queen.'" "You've heard of Andrew J. Brisbane?" "You mean the erstwhile Senator?" "Yes; this is his daughter." "Great Himmel! What is she doing here?" "She's an artist and is making some studies of Indians." "I didn't suppose a man of Brisbane's blood and brawn could have a girl as fine as she looks to be." "Oh, Brisbane has his good points--But come over to the house. Of course the mob gave no further trouble?" "Not a bit, only the trouble of keeping them in sight; they rode like Jehu. I left the chase to Payne--it was what Cooper used to call a 'stern chase and a long chase.' Your quarters aren't so bad," he added, as they entered the library. Jennie came in wearing an apron and looking as tasty as a dumpling. "How do you do, Colonel Maynard?" she cried out, most cordially. He gave his head a comical flirt on one side. "I beg pardon! Why Colonel?" "I've promoted you for the brave deed of this morning." He recovered himself. "Oh!--oh--yes!--Hah! I had forgotten. You saw me put 'em to flight? I was a little late, but I gave service, don't you think?" "You were wonderful, but I know you're hungry; we're to have dinner soon--a real dinner, not a lunch." He looked a little self-conscious. "Well--I--shall be delighted. You see, I was awake most of the night, and in riding one gets hungry--and, besides, breakfast was a little hurried. In fact, I don't remember that I had any." "Why, you poor thing! I'll hurry it forward. Cheer up," and she whisked out of the room. Maynard flecked a little dust from his sleeve and inquired, carelessly: "Your sister isn't married?" "No, she sticks to me still. She's a blessed, good girl, and I don't know what I should do without her." "You mustn't be selfish," remarked Maynard, reflectively. "But see here, I must knock off some dust, or I will lose the good impression I made on the ladies." "Make yourself at home here and we'll have something to eat soon," said Curtis at the door. The dinner was unexpectedly merry. Every one felt like celebrating the army, and Maynard, as the representative of the cavalry arm, came near blushing at the praise which floated his way on toasts which were drunk from a bottle of sherry, a liquor Jennie had smuggled in for cooking purposes. "I admit I did it," he rose to say, "but I hold it not meet to have it so set down." Parker was extravagantly gay. "I'm going to do a statue of Maynard on his horse rushing to our rescue," he said. "It will be a tinted piece like the ancients used to do. That white helmet shall flash like snow. Sheridan will no longer be the great equestrian." "Leave off the broad smile," interrupted Lawson. "Captain Maynard's smile made light of our tragic situation." "I don't think so; it was the smile of combat," exclaimed Elsie. "It was thrilling." Maynard bowed. "Thank you, Miss Brisbane." "It was Jack Maynard's murderin' grin," said Curtis; "it was the look the boys used to edge away from at the Academy. I must tell you, Jack nearly got shunted into the ways of glory. He could whip any man in West Point in his day, and a New York sporting man offered to back him for a career. Thereupon Jack wrestled with the tempter and 'thrun 'im.' He now sees his mistake. He might have been 'Happy Jack, the Holy Terror,' by this time, earning two hundred thousand a year like the great O'Neill." Maynard sighed. "Instead of which, here I am rescuing beleaguered damsels, like the hero of a dime novel, on two thousand a year." Jennie spoke up sharply. "I will not have Captain Maynard made fun of any more. It was a noble deed, and he deserves better treatment for it." Maynard bowed. "I have one defender," he said, soberly. "Here's another," cried Elsie. "With two such faithful defenders I defy the world!" he shouted, valorously. Thereupon they left off joking him. As they rose from the table, Curtis turned to Elsie: "Would you like to go with me to make a tour of the camp?" Her eyes lighted up. "I should like it exceedingly." "Very well, about three o'clock we will go. You will have time for a _siesta_. You must be tired." "Oh no, I am quite rested and ready to go any time," and her bright eyes and warm color confirmed her words. With military promptness the horses were brought round, and, accompanied by Maynard and Jennie, Curtis, with Elsie by his side, led the way to the camp. She was a confident horsewoman and rode a fine brown pony, and Curtis, who had never ridden with her before, glowed with pleasure in her grace and skill. As they galloped off up the road a keen twinge of remorseful pity for Lawson touched Elsie's heart. He was grown suddenly older, it seemed to her, as though he had definitely given up the attempt to remain young, and this thought made her rather sober. He was being left out of her plans now almost unconsciously, while the other-- "One of the real heroes in this affair," Curtis was saying, "is Crane's Voice. He has been in saddle nearly thirty-six hours, and is willing to start again to Pinon City if I ask it." "Of course you will not?" "No. I will send a white man. The settlers might do even Crane's Voice an injury." All was quiet in the camps, with little sign of the precipitate flight of the morning, either in the faces of the men or in the disposal of the tepees. The old men and some of the women came out to greet their Little Father and the soldier of the good heart, and Curtis gave out a tranquillizing message and asked, "Have you called the council?" "Ay, for sunrise to-morrow," answered Elk and Two Horns. "That is good," he replied. "Where are your young men?" "Some are in the hills, some are gone as messengers, others are watching the ponies." "Call them all in. I don't want them riding about to-night. Keep them in camp, close by the soldiers--then no harm will come to them." So, scattering greetings and commands, he rode through the two circles of tepees. The redmen were all eager to shake hands with Maynard, in whom they recognized a valiant friend as well as an old-time enemy. They found the camp of Grayman less tranquil, for the stragglers were still coming in from the hills, and scores of women were busy resetting their tepees. Grayman himself came forth, nervous and eager. "Ho, Little Father, my heart is glad that the soldiers have come." "We are all glad," replied Curtis. "Where is your son?" Grayman looked troubled. "I do not know. He is away with Cut Finger, my sister's son." "Cut Finger is bad company for your son." "I know it; but they are blood-brothers, as is the way of young men. Where one is, there the other is also." Maynard and Jennie were not as deeply interested in the camp as they had given out to be at starting. He was recalling to her mind some of the parties they had attended together at Fort Sibley. "Really, Captain Maynard," she was saying, as they rode up, "you would have it appear that we saw a great deal of each other in those days." "That's my contention entirely," he replied, "and it is my _in_tention to continue this Indian outbreak indefinitely in order to go into cantonment here." "You always were susceptible to good dinners, Captain Maynard." "Say good company, and you'll be right entirely." Curtis, having caught Maynard's last remark, called out in the biting tone of the upper classman at West Point. "Are you on special duty, Captain Maynard, or riding in the park?" He saluted imperturbably. "By good luck I am doing both, at your service." "Merely cast your eye around so that you can report the Tetongs peaceful and in camp, then you may ride where you please." Maynard swept his eyes over the village. "It is done! Now, Miss Curtis, let's try for the top of that hill?" "No, no, you have been riding all night." "Why, so I have! In the charm of your presence I'd forgotten it. I'm supposed to be fagged." "You don't look it," remarked Curtis, humorously, running his eyes over the burly figure before him. "At the same time, I think you'd better return. Your commissariat wagons will be rumbling in soon." Maynard again saluted. "Very well, 'Major,' it shall be so," and, wheeling his horse in such wise as to turn Jennie's pony, they galloped off together, leaving Curtis and Elsie to follow. "It's hard to realize that disaster came so near to us," he said, musingly, and Elsie shaded her eyes with her hand and looked up at the hills. "There is a wonderful charm in this dry country! I have never seen such blinding sunshine. But life must be difficult here." "You begin to feel that? I expect to stay here at least five years, providing I am not removed." She shuddered perceptibly. "Five years is a long time to give out of one's life--with so little to show for it." He hesitated a moment, then said, with deep feeling, "It's hard, it's lonely, but, after all, it has its compensations. I can see results. The worst side of it all is--I can never ask any woman to share such a life with me. I feel guilty when I consider Jennie--she ought to have a home of her own; she has no outlook here." She looked straight ahead as she replied. "You would find life here intolerable without her." "I know it; but in my best moments I realize how selfish it is in me to keep her." "Suppose you were to resign, what would you do?" "I would try to secure a chance at some field-work for the Ethnologic Bureau. It doesn't pay very well, but it would be congenial, and my proficiency in the sign language would, I think, make me valuable. I have determined never to go back to garrison life without some special duty to occupy my mind." "Life isn't a bit simple when you are grown up, is it?" "Life is always simple, if one does one's duty." "That is a soldier's answer; it is not easy for me to enter into that spirit. I have my art, and no sense of duty at all." "Your position is equally strange to me; but duties will discover themselves--later. A life without duties is impossible." "I know what you mean, but I do not intend to allow any duty to circumscribe my art." This she uttered defiantly. "I don't like to hear you say that. Life is greater than art." She laughed. "How different our points of view! You are Anglo-Saxon, I am French. Art counts far more with us." "Was your mother French? I did not know that." "Yes--a Canadian. I have her nature rather than that of my father." "Sometimes I think you are your father's daughter. Did your mother live to enjoy her husband's success?" "Not to the full. Still, she had a nice home in Alta, where I was born. She died before he was elected Senator." They had nearly reached the agency now, and she shook off her sober mood. "Shall we go in with a dash?" "I'm agreed." She put quirt to her horse and they entered the lane at a flying gallop. As he assisted her to alight at the studio door he said: "I hope your father will not require you to join him in the East. It is a great pleasure to have you here." His voice touched something vibrant in her heart. "Oh, I don't think he will when he fully understands the situation. I'm sure I don't want to go. I shall write him so." Curtis rode away elate as a boy. Something which he did not care to define had come to him from her, subtle as a perfume, intangible as light, and yet it had entered into his blood with most transforming effect. He put aside its analysis, and went about his duties content with the feeling that life was growing richer day by day. Wilson, seeing his shining face, sighed and said to himself: "I guess the Major has found his girl. He's a lucky dog. I wish I could pick up even a piece of plain calico, I'd be satisfied." And he ran through a list of the unmarried women within reach, to no result, as usual. Meanwhile the supply-wagons had arrived, and Captain Maynard was overseeing the laying-out of the camp just below the agency. Lieutenant Payne and his command returned at five o'clock, and in a short time the little village of white tents was in order. Curtis came over to insist that the officers take dinner with them at "the parsonage," and, as Captain Maynard had already spoken of the good company and the excellent dinner he had enjoyed in the middle of the day, Lieutenant Payne was quite ready to comply, especially as his lunch had been as light as his breakfast. The meal was as enjoyable as the mid-day dinner, and the Parkers derived much comfort from the presence of the soldiers. "I guess I'm not fitted to be a pioneer artist," Parker confessed, and the hearty agreement he met with quite disconcerted him. Mrs. Parker was indignant at the covert ridicule of her husband, and was silent all through the meal; indeed, the burden of the conversation fell upon Jennie and Maynard, but they were entirely willing to bear it, and were not lacking for words. "It is good to hear the bugles again," Jennie remarked, as one of the calls rang out on the still air, sweet and sad and as far removed from war as a love song. "They're not so pleasant when they call to the same monotonous round of daily duties," said Mr. Payne. Curtis smiled. "Here's another disgruntled officer. What would you do--kill off the Indians and move into the city?" "To kill off a few measly whites might insure completer peace and tranquillity," replied Maynard. "You fellows couldn't be more righteously employed," put in Lawson. "You might begin on the political whoopers round about." "What blasphemy!" cried Jennie. "These 'noble pioneers!'" "Founding a mighty State," added Curtis. "Founding a state of anarchy!" retorted Lawson. "They never did have any regard for law, except a law that worked in their favor." Parker got in a word. "Lawson, do you know what you are? You're what Norman Bass used to call 'a blame a-riss-to-crat.'" This provoked a laugh at Lawson's expense. "I admit it," said Lawson, calmly. "I am interested in the cowboy and the miner--as wild animals--as much as any of you, but as founders of an empire! The hard and unlovely truth is, they are representatives of every worst form of American vice; they are ignorant, filthy, and cruel. Their value as couriers of the Christian army has never been great with me." Maynard was unusually reflective as he stared at Lawson. "That's mighty plain talk," he observed, in the pause that followed. "You couldn't run for office on speeches like that." "Lawson's living doesn't depend on prevarication," remarked Curtis. "If it did--" "If it did I'd lie like the best--I mean the worst of you," replied Lawson. "In a few years there will not be an Indian left," Parker remarked. "The world will be the poorer." "They will all be submerged," continued Parker. "Why submerge them? Is the Anglo-Saxon type so adorable in the sight of God that He desires all the races of the earth to be like unto it? If the proselytizing zeal of the missionaries and functionaries of the English-speaking race could work out, the world would lose all its color, all its piquancy. Hungary would be like Scotland, Scotland would be Cornwall, Cornwall would duplicate London, and London reflect New York. Beautiful scheme for tailors, shoe-makers, and preachers, but depressing to artists." "You must be one of those chaps the missionaries tell about, who would keep men savage just to please your sense of the picturesque." "Savage! There's a fine word. What is a savage?" "A man who needs converting to our faith," said Jennie. "A man to exercise the army on," said Maynard. "A man to rob in the name of the Lord," said Parker. "You're stealing all my oratorical thunder," complained Lawson. "When a speaker asks a question like that he doesn't want a detailed answer--he is pausing for effect. Speaking seriously--" "Oh!" said Maynard, "then you were _not_ serious." Lawson went his oratorical way. "My conviction is that savagery held more of true happiness than we have yet realized; and civilization, as you begin to see, does not, by any construction, advance the sum of human happiness as it should do." "What an advantage it is to have an independent income!" mused Maynard, looking about the table. "There's a man who not only has opinions, but utters them in a firm tone of voice." "I am being instructed," remarked Elsie. "I used to think no one took the Indian's side; now every one seems opposed to the cattlemen." "When we are civilized enough to understand this redman, he will have disappeared," said Curtis, very soberly. "Judging from the temper of this State at present, I reckon you're about right," replied Maynard. "Well, it's out o' my hands, as the fellah says; I'm not the Almighty; if I were I'd arrange things on a different basis." "We are all transition types," remarked Curtis, harking back to a remark of Lawson's making. "Even these settlers are immortal souls," said Parker. "Consider!" exclaimed Lawson. "How could we live without the Indian question? Maynard would be like Othello--occupation gone. Curtis would cease to be a philanthropist. Elsie Bee Bee would go sadly back to painting 'old hats' and dead ducks. I alone of all this company would be busy and well paid. I would continue to study the remains of the race." Jennie rose. "Put a period there," said she, "till we escape, and, remember, if we hear any loud talk we'll come out and fetch you away," and she hurried out into the sitting-room, where Elsie and Mrs. Parker yielded up valuable suggestions about dress. * * * * * As the Parkers rose to go, Lawson approached Elsie and asked in a low voice: "_Are_ you going home to the mess-house to-night? If you are, I want to go with you." "I'll be ready in a moment," she replied, but her eyes wavered. As they stepped out together quite in the old way, he abruptly but gently began: "It is significant of our changed relations when I say that this is the first time I've had an opportunity for a private word since our camping trip. There is no need of this constraint, Elsie. I want you to be your good, frank self with me. I'll not misunderstand it. I am not charging anything up against you. In fact, I can see that you are right in your decision, but it hurts me to have you avoid me as you have done lately." There was something in his voice which brought the hot tears to her eyes and she replied, gently: "I'm very sorry, Osborne. I hoped you wouldn't care--so much, and I didn't mean--" "I've tried not to show my hurt, for my own sake as well as yours, but the fact is I didn't realize how deeply you'd taken root in my thoughts till I tried to put you away. It is said that no two lovers are ever equal sharers in affection--one always gives more than the other--or one expects more than the other. I was perfectly sincere when I made that bargain with you, and I know you were; but you are younger than I, and that has changed the conditions for you. I am older than you thought, and I find myself naturally demanding more and more. I think I understand better than I did two days ago why you gave me back the ring, and I do not complain of it. I shall never again refer to it, but we can at least be friends. This cold silence--" She put out her hand. "Don't, please don't." "I can't bear your being stiff and uncomfortable in my presence, Bee Bee! You even called me Mister Lawson." There was a pathetic sort of humor in his voice which touched her. "Let us be good comrades again." She gave him her hand. "Very well, Osborne. But you are mistaken if you think--" "Time will tell!" he interrupted, and his voice was strenuously cheerful. "Anyhow, we are on a sound footing again. Good-night." * * * * * The presence of Maynard and the troop was a greater relief to Curtis than he realized. He laid down for a moment's rest on his couch and fell into a dreamless sleep at once, and Jennie, deciding not to arouse him, spread a light shawl over him and withdrew softly. Maynard's coming brought a deeper sense of security than a stranger could have given with twice the number of troops. "Jack Maynard is so dependable," she said, and a distinct note of tenderness trembled in her voice. XXVI THE WARRIOR PROCLAIMS HIMSELF The messengers from both Riddell and Pinon reported to Curtis about daylight, laden with papers and telegrams. The telegrams naturally received first reading. There was one filled with instructions from the Secretary of the Interior, and one from the Commissioner, bidding him stand firm. Several anxious ones from various cities, all of this tenor: "Is there any danger? my niece is one of your teachers," etc. In the midst of the others, Curtis came upon a fat one for Elsie, plainly from her father. This he put aside till after breakfast, when he permitted himself the pleasure of carrying it to the studio. He found her at work, painting a little brown tot of a girl in the arms of her smiling mother. "I have a telegram for you--from your father, no doubt." She rose quickly and opened the envelope. As she read she laughed. "Poor papa; he is genuinely alarmed. Read it." He took it with more interest than he cared to show, and found it most peremptory in tone. "Reports from Fort Smith most alarming. Come out at once. Have wired the agent to furnish escort and conveyance. Shall expect you to reply immediately, giving news that you have left agency. You should not have gone there. I will meet you at Pinon City if possible; if I do not, take train for Alta. Wire me your plans. Country is much alarmed. I must hear from you at once or shall be worried." Curtis looked up with an amused light in his eyes. "He's a little incoherent, but sufficiently mandatory. When will you start?" "I will send a telegram out at once that I am safe, and all danger over. He will not want me to leave now." "Very well. A messenger will start at once with all our letters and messages. Anything you wish to send can go at the same time." "What news have you?" "I only had time to glance at my mail, but the papers are all that Lawson has predicted. If you would know how important a criminal I am, read these"--he pointed at a bundle on a chair. "I must go back to the office now, but I will wait for your letters and telegrams before despatching a messenger. If you think it better to go than to stay, I will ask Captain Maynard to escort you to the station." "I will stay," she replied. She wrote a brief telegram to her father, saying: "I am quite safe and hard at work. All quiet; don't worry," and also composed a letter giving vital details of the situation and taking strong ground against the way in which the cattlemen had invaded the reservation. In conclusion she added: "I have a fine studio, plenty of models, and am in fine health; I cannot think of giving up my work because of this foolish panic. Don't let these settlers influence you against Captain Curtis; he's right this time." As she ran through the papers and caught the full significance of their precipitate attack on the agent, her teeth clinched in hot indignation. At the first breath, before they were sure of a single item of news, they leaped upon an honorable man, accusing him of concealing stolen cattle and of harboring murderers and thieves. "As for the Indians, it is time to exterminate these vermin! Let the State wipe out this tribe and its agency, and send this fellow Curtis back to his regiment where he belongs," was the burden of their song. As she read on, tingling with wrath at these vulgarly written and utterly un-Christian editorials, the girl caught an amazing side-glimpse of herself and the views she once held. She remembered reading just such reports once before, and joining with her father in his desire to punish the redmen. Was Lawson right? Had her notions of the "brave and noble pioneers fighting the wild beast and the savage" arisen from ignorance of their true nature? Had they always been as narrow, as bigoted, as relentless, and as greedy as these articles hinted at? Some of Lawson's clean-cut, relentless phrases came back to her at the moment, and she began to believe that he was nearer right than she had been. And her father? Would he sanction such libels as these? At last the essential grandeur of the position held in common by both Curtis and Lawson--of the right of the small people to their place on the planet--came to her, and in opposition to their grave, sweet eyes she saw again the brutal, leering faces of the mob, and comprehended the feelings of a chief like Grayman, as he confronts the oncoming hordes of a destroying race. * * * * * Meanwhile, in the grassy hollow between two round-top hills the bands of Elk and Grayman were gathered in extraordinary council. No one was in gala-dress, no one was painted, all were serious or sad or morose. Upon their folded blankets the head men sat in a small circle on the smooth sod, exposed to the blazing sun. Behind them stood or knelt a larger circle, the men and boys on one side, the women on the other, while in the rear, mounted on their fleetest ponies, some two hundred of the young men were ranked, enthralled listeners to the impassioned speeches of the old men. Crawling Elk made the first address, repeating the story which the agent had told and calling upon all those who sat before him to search for the guilty one and report to him if they found him. His words were received in silence. Then Grayman rose, and, stepping into the circle, began to speak in a low and sorrowful voice. Something in his manner as well as in his words enlisted the almost breathless interest of the crowd. There was a tragic pathos in his voice as he called out: "You see how it is, brothers; we are like a nest of ants in a white man's field, which he is ploughing. We are only a few and weak, while all around us our enemies press in upon us. We have only one friend--our Little Father. We must do as he says. We must give up a man to the war chief of the cowboys. They will never believe that any one else killed the sheep-man. The cattlemen and sheepmen are always quarrelling, but they readily join hands to do the Tetongs harm." "It is death to us to fight the white man; I know it. Unless we all wish to be shot, we must not become angry this time; we must do as the Little Father says, and if we cannot find the man who did this thing, I will go and give myself into the hands of the white war chief." A murmur of protest and anger ran round the circle. "It is better for one to suffer than many," he said, in answer to the protest, "and I am old. My wife is dead. I have but one son, and he is estranged from me. I say, if we cannot find who did this thing, then I am willing to go and be killed of the white people in order to keep the peace. I have said it." Standing Elk leaped to his feet, tall, gaunt, excitable. "We will not do this," he said. "We will fight first." And among the young warriors there was applause. "The Tetongs are not dogs to be always kicked in the ribs. I have fought the white man. I have met 'Long Hair' and 'Bear Robe' in battle. I am not afraid of the cattlemen. I am old, but my heart is yet big. Let us do battle and die like brave men." Then Crawling Elk rose, and his broad, good-humored face shone in the sun like polished bronze as he turned his cheek to the wind. "The words of my brother are loud and quick," he said, slowly. "In the ancient time it was always so. He was always ready to fight. I was always opposed to fighting. We must not talk of fighting now; all that is put away. It belongs to the suns that have gone over our heads. We must now talk of cattle-herding and ploughing. We must strive always to be at peace with the cowboys. I, too, am old. I have not many years to live; but you young men have a long time to live, and you cannot be always quarrelling with the settlers; you must be wise and patient. Our Little Father, Swift Eagle, is our friend; you can trust him. You can put your hand in his and find it strong and warm. His heart is good and his words are wise. If we can find the man who did this evil deed, we must give him up. It is not right that all of us should suffer for the wickedness of one man. No, it is not right that we who are old should die for one whose hands are red." This speech was also received in silence, but plainly produced a powerful effect. Then one of the men who found the body rose and told what he knew of the case. "I do not think a Tetong killed the man," he said, in conclusion. In this wise the talk proceeded for nearly two hours, and then the council rose to meet again at sunset, and word of what had been said was carried to Curtis by Crawling Elk and Grayman. To them Curtis said: "I am pleased with you. Go over the names of all your reckless young men, and when you reach one you think might do such a deed, question him and his people closely. The shells of the rifle were the largest size--that may help you. Your old men would not do this thing--their heads are cool; but some of your young men have hot hearts and may have quarrelled with this herder." The old men went away very sorrowful. Grayman was especially troubled, because he could not help thinking all the time of Cut Finger, his nephew. Running Fox, or "Cut Finger," as the white people called him, he knew to be a morose and reckless young man, and probably possessed of some evil spirit, for at times he was quite crazy. Once he had forced his pony into the cooking-lodge of Bear Paw for no reason at all, and Bear Paw, in a rage, had snatched up his rifle and fired, putting a bullet through the bridle hand of Running Fox, who lost two fingers and gained a new name. At another time the mad fool had tried to force his horse to leap a cliff; and once he had attempted to drown himself; and yet, between these obsessions, he could be very winning, and there were many among Elk's band who pitied him. He was comely withal, and had married a handsome girl, the daughter of Standing Wolf. It was easy to imagine that Cut Finger was the guilty one, and yet to think of him was to think of his son's intimate friend. When he reached his tepee Grayman lit his pipe and sat down alone and remained in deep thought for hours. He feared to find Cut Finger guilty, for his own son was Cut Finger's friend, or fellow, and that means the closest intimacy. There are no secrets between a Tetong and his chum. "If Cut Finger is guilty, then my son knows of it. That I fear." When any one came to the door he motioned them away; even his daughter dared not enter, for she saw him in meditation. As he smoked he made offering to the Great Spirit, and prayed that he might be shown the right way, and his heart was greatly troubled. Crawling Elk, with a half-dozen of his head men, was seated in his tepee, calmly discussing the same question. The canvas of his lodge was raised, as much to insure privacy as to let the wind sweep through. It was not easy to accuse any man of this crime, or even to suggest the name of any one as capable of such a foolish deed of blood. For relationships were close; therefore it was that he, too, narrowed the investigation down to Cut Finger. It is easier to accuse the son of a neighbor than your own son, especially if that other is already a marked man among reckless youths. At five o'clock Grayman called his daughter and said, "Send my sister, Standing Cloud, to me." Standing Cloud came and took a seat on the outside of the tepee--on the side where the canvas was fastened up--and there sat with bent head, her fingers busy with blades of grass, while her brother questioned her. She was a large and comely woman of middle age. Her expression was still youthful, and her voice had girlish lightness. She was at once deeply moved by her brother's questions. She did not know where her son was; he had not been to see her for several days. She understood whereto the questioning tended, and stoutly denied that her son would do so evil a deed. Nevertheless, Grayman was compelled to say: "You know he has a bad head," and he made the confused, wavering sign of the hand which signifies crazy or foolish, and the mother rose and went away sobbing. Then Grayman recalled the words of the Little Father. "If my own brother should do wrong, I would give him up to the war chief," he therefore said. "If my son and my sister's son are guilty, I will give them up," and he rose and sought out Crawling Elk and told him of his fears, and repeated his resolution as they sat together while the sun was going down and the crier was calling the second council. "It is right," said Elk. "Those who are guilty must be punished; but we do not know who fired the shot." The people were slow in coming together this second time, and darkness was falling as the head men again took their seats. A small fire was being built in the centre of the circle, and towards this at last, like nocturnal insects, the larger number of the people in the two camps slowly concentrated. The wind had gone down and the night was dark and still and warm. The people gathered in comparative silence, though the laugh of a girl occasionally broke from the clustering masses of the women, to be followed by a mutter of jests from the young men who stood close packed behind the older members of the bands. Excitement had deepened since the morning, for in some way the news had passed from lip to lip that Grayman had discovered the evil-doer. On their part the chieftains were slow to begin their painful task. They smoked in silence till the fire was twice replenished, then began talking in low tones among themselves. At last Crawling Elk arose and made a speech similar to that of the morning. He recounted the tale of the murdered white man, and the details of finding the body, and ended by saying: "We are commanded by the agent to find the ones who have done this evil deed. If any one knows anything about this, let him come forward and speak. It is not right that we should all suffer for the wrong-doing of some reckless young warriors." "Come forth and speak, any one who knows," called the head men, looking round the circle. "He who remains silent does wrong." Two Horns rose. "We mean you, young men--you too," he said, turning to the women. "If any of you have heard anything of this matter, speak!" Then the silence fell again on the circle of old men, and they bent their heads in meditation. Crawling Elk was just handing the pipe to Grayman, in order to rise, when a low mutter and a jostling caused every glance to centre upon one side of the circle, and then, decked in war-paint, gay with beads and feathers, and carrying a rifle, Cut Finger stepped silently and haughtily into the circle and stood motionless as a statue, his tall figure erect and rigid as an oak. A moaning sound swept over the assembly, and every eye was fixed on the young man. "Ahee! Ahee!" the women wailed, in astonishment and fear; two or three began a low, sad chant, and death seemed to stretch a black wing over the council. By his weapons, by his war-paint, by his bared head decked with eagle-plumes, and by the haughty lift of his face, Cut Finger proclaimed louder than words: "I am the man who killed the herder." Standing so, he began to sing a stern song: "I alone killed him--the white man. He was a thief and I killed him. No one helped me; I alone fired the shot. He will drive his sheep no more on Tetong lands. This dog of a herder. He lies there in the short grass. It was I, Cut Finger, who did it." As his chant died away he turned: "I go to the hills to fight and die like a man." And before the old men could stay him he had vanished among the young horsemen of the outer circle, and a moment later the loud drumming of his pony's hoofs could be heard as he rode away. * * * * * Curtis was sitting alone in the library when a tap at his window announced the presence of Grayman. Following a gesture, the chieftain came in, and, with a look on his face which expressed high resolution and keen sorrow, he said: "The man who killed the herder is found. He has proclaimed himself at our council, and he has ridden away into the hills." "Who was he?" "Cut Finger." "Ah! So? Well, you have done your duty. I will not ask you to arrest him. Crow will do that. I hope"--he hesitated--"I hope your son was not with him?" "'I alone did it,' he says. My son is innocent." "I am very glad," replied Curtis, looking into the old man's tremulous face. "Go home and sleep in peace." With a clasp of the hand Grayman said good-night and vanished. There was nothing to be done till morning, and Curtis knew the habits of the Indians too well to be anxious about the criminal. Calling his faithful Crane's Voice, he said: "Crane, will you go to Pinon City?" Crane's Voice straightened. "To-night?" "Yes, to-night." "If you will let me wear a blue coat I will go." Curtis smiled. "You are a brave boy. I will give you a coat. That will protect you if you are caught by the white men. Saddle your pony." With a smile he turned on his heel and went out as cheerfully as though he were going on an errand to the issue-house. In his letter to the sheriff Curtis said: "I have found the murderer. He is a half-crazy boy called Cut Finger. Make out a warrant for him and I will deliver him to you. You will need no deputies. No one but yourself will be permitted to cross the line for the present." After Crane had galloped off, Curtis laid down his pen and sat for a long time recalling the events of the evening. He remembered that Lawson and Elsie went away together, and a pang of jealous pain took hold upon him. "I never had the privilege of taking her arm," he thought, unreasonably. XXVII BRISBANE COMES FOR ELSIE Among other perplexities which now assailed the agent was the question of how to secure Cut Finger without inciting further violence. He confidently expected the police to locate the fugitive during the day, probably in the camp of Red Wolf, on the head-waters of the Elk. "He cannot escape. There is no place for him to go." "He may have committed suicide," said Wilson, discussing the matter with his chief the following morning. "He may, but his death will not satisfy the ranchers unless they are made the instrument of vengeance. They would feel cheated and bitterer than ever," replied Curtis, sombrely. "He must be taken and delivered up to the law." On his return to the office after breakfast Curtis stopped at the door of Elsie's studio, his brain yet tingling with the consciousness that no other man's claim stood between them now. She greeted him joyously. "I am starting a big canvas this morning," she said. "Come in and see it." He stepped inside to see, but the canvas only had a few rude, reddish lines upon it, and Elsie laughed at his blank look as he faced the easel. "This thing here," she pointed with her brush, "is a beautiful purple butte; this yellow circle is the sun; these little crumbly looking boxes are trees; this streak is a river. This jack-in-the-box here is Crow Wing on his horse." Her joking helped to clear his brain, though his blood was throbbing in his ears. "Ah! I'm glad to know all that. Will you tag each anomalous hump?" "Certainly. You will recognize everything by number or otherwise." She turned a suddenly serious face upon him. "I am determined to get back to work. These last few days have been so exciting. Is there any news?" "Yes. The murderer proclaimed himself at a big council last night." "He did! Oh, tell me about it! When?" "I don't know exactly the hour, but the chieftains came to me about nine o'clock. I know him well; he is a reckless, handsome, half-crazy young man--" He broke off suddenly as Heavybreast, one of the policemen, profoundly excited, darkened the door-way. "Cut Finger is on the hill," he signed, and pointed away with trembling finger to a height which rose like a monstrous bee-hive just behind the school-house. On the rounded top, looking like a small monument on a colossal pedestal, sat a mounted warrior. "What is he there for?" asked Curtis. "He wants to die like Raven Face. He wants to fight the cowboys, he says. He don't want to hurt any one else, he says; only the cowboys and their war chief, so he says." "Where is Crow? I want this man arrested and brought to me." "Now he will shoot any one who goes up the hill; he has said so. All the people are watching." Curtis mused a moment. "Can you send word to him?" "Yes; his wife is here." "Then tell him I will not let him fight. Tell him that shooting will do no good, and that I want him to come down and see me." The officer trotted away. "What did he say?" asked Elsie. "What is that man on the hill for?" "That is Cut Finger, the guilty man. He proclaimed himself the murderer last night and now he is willing to die, but wants to die on his horse." The whole agency was again tremulous with excitement. The teachers, the scholars, the native employés were all gathered into chattering groups with eyes fixed on the motionless figure of the desperate horseman, and in the camps above the agency an almost frenzied excitement was spreading. The stark bravery of the boy's attitude had kindled anew the flame of war, and behind Cut Finger on the hills two groups of mounted warriors had gathered suddenly. Several of the more excitable old women broke into a war-song, whose wail came faintly to the ears of the agent. "Two Horns, silence those singers," said Curtis, sternly. Elsie and Jennie and the Parkers joined the group around the agent, and Miss Colson, the missionary, came flying for refuge at the side of her hero. "What are you going to do?" asked Parker. "If the fellow really means to shoot, of course no man can go up to him. You might send some soldiers." "Silence in the ranks!" commanded Maynard, and, though he smiled as he said it, Parker realized his mistake. He turned to Elsie and his wife. "I tell you, we'd better get out of here. I feel just like a man sitting on a powder-mine. There's no telling what's going to happen next." Lawson turned towards him with a sarcastic grin. "I wish I'd realized the state of your nerves, Parker; I should have invited you to Asbury Beach instead of the Indian country." Maynard brought his field-glasses to bear on the desperado. "He has dismounted," he said. "He is squatted beside his horse, the bridle-rein on his arm, a rifle across his knees, and is faced this way. His attitude is resolute and 'sassy.'" Curtis quietly said: "Now, friends, I wish you would all go in and pay no further attention to this man. Miss Colson, go back to your work. So long as he sees us looking at him he will maintain his defiant attitude. He will grow weary of his bravado if ignored." "Quite right, Captain," replied Lawson, and the little knot of visitors broke up and dispersed to sheltered points of observation. Under the same gentle pressure the employés went back to work, and the self-convicted warrior was left to defy the wind and the sky. Even the Tetongs themselves grew tired of looking when nothing seemed likely to happen, and the forenoon wore away as usual, well filled with duties. Maynard's men got out for drill an hour later, and their bugle's voice pulsed upward to the silent and motionless watcher on the hill like mocking laughter. The clink of the anvil also rose to him on the hot, dry air, and just beneath him the children came forth at recess to play. He became tired of sitting on the ground at last, and again mounted his horse, but no one at the agency seemed to know or to care. The sun beat remorselessly upon his head, and his throat became parched with thirst. Slowly but surely the exaltation of the morning ebbed away and a tremulous weakness seized upon him, so that, when his wife came bringing meat and water, he who had never expected to eat or drink again seized upon the food and ate greedily. Then, while she sat on the ground and repeated the agent's message, he stood beside his horse, sullen and wordless. The bell rang for noon, and as the children came rushing out they pointed up at him again, and the teachers also stood in a group for a moment, with faces turned upward, but only for a moment, then went carelessly away to their meals. An hour passed, the work-bell rang, the clerks returned to their duties, and the agent walked slowly across the road towards the office. Cut Finger lifted his rifle and pointed it. "I could shoot him now," he muttered. "But he is a good man; I do not want to kill him." Then the heat and silence settled over hill and valley, and no sound but the buzzing of flies and the clatter of grasshoppers broke the hot, brooding hush of the mid-day. The wind was from the plain and brought no coolness on its wings. But he was not entirely forgotten. Elsie, from her studio door, kept close watch upon him. "There's something fine about him after all," she said to Curtis. "It's like the old Mosaic times--an eye for an eye. He knows he must die for this, but he prefers to die gloriously, as a warrior dies." A dust down the road caught Curtis's attention. "The mail will soon be in and then we will see how all this affects the press of the State; the Chicago dailies will not reach us for a couple of days yet." "Send the papers over here, please!" cried Elsie, "I'm wild to see them." "Why not all assemble at 'the parsonage' and I'll bring them there?" "Very well; that will do as well," she replied. "It will be such a joy to read our obituaries." As he entered the library with his armful of papers a half-hour later Curtis exclaimed: "Well, now, here is a feast! The commotion on the outside is prodigious. Here are the Copper City and Alta papers, and a dozen lesser 'lights and signals of progress' in the State. Help yourselves." He took out a handful of letters and telegrams. "And here are the prayers of anxious relatives. A telegram for you, Miss Brisbane; and two for you, Lawson." Elsie's message from her father was brief. "Have no word from you; am en route for Pinon City. Not finding you there will cross to agency at once. Why do you not come out?" Looking at the date she said: "Papa is coming; he is probably on his way to the agency at this moment." Curtis looked a little troubled. "I hope not; the roads are dusty and the sun is hot." "By George! this is fierce stuff," said Parker, looking up from his paper. "Cut Finger has left the hill," announced Jennie from the door-way; "he is nowhere to be seen." "Now he will submit to arrest," exclaimed Curtis. "His fine frenzy is gone." "I'm sorry," Elsie soberly exclaimed. "Must you give him up to that stupid sheriff?" "Yes, it must be done," replied Curtis. "My only claim to consideration lies in executing the law. I fought lawlessness with the promise that when the sheriff came with proper warrant I would act." As the young officer went back to his duties the head-lines of the papers he had but glanced at began to burn into his brain. Hitherto his name had been most inconspicuous; only once or twice had it achieved a long-primer setting; mainly it had kept to the security and dignity of brevier notices in the _Army and Navy Journal_. Now here it stood, blazoned in ill-smelling ink on wood-pulp paper, in letters half an inch in height: CURTIS CULPABLE THE AGENT SHIELDS HIS PETS while in the editorial columns of the Copper City papers similar accusations, though adroitly veiled, were none the less apparent. He had smiled at all this in the presence of his friends, but inwardly he shrank from it just as he would have done had some tramp in the street flung a handful of gutter slime across the breast of his uniform. A gust of rage made his teeth clinch and his face burn hot, and he entered his office with lowering brows. Wilson looked up with a grin. "Well, Major, the politicians are getting in their work on us." "This is only the beginning. We may expect an army of reporters to complete the work of misrepresentation." "The wonder is they haven't got here before. They must be really nervous. Crane says the people in town have very bad hearts. As near as I can make out they faced him up and threatened his life. He says the mob is hanging round the edge of the reservation crazy for blood. He got shy and took to the hills." "Did he see the sheriff?" "Yes, the sheriff is on the way." "Is Crane still asleep?" "Yes. He didn't wait for grub; he dropped like a log and is dead to the world." "Poor chap! I shouldn't have sent him on this last trip. Where is Tony?" "Tony's out in the hills to keep an eye on Cut Finger. Will you go after him to-night?" "No, not till morning. The police will locate him and stay with him to-night, and to-morrow morning I will go out and get him myself. I don't want any shooting, if it can be avoided. What is it, Heavybreast?" he asked of a large Tetong who entered at the moment, his eyes bright with information. "White man coming," signed the redman. Curtis rose and went to the door and looked down the road. Three carriages were passing the issue-house--one a rather pretentious family surrey, the others ordinary mountain wagons. In the hinder seat of the surrey, and beside the sheriff, sat a gray-haired man. "It is Senator Brisbane!" said Curtis to Wilson, and a keen pang of anticipated loss came to him, for he knew that Brisbane had come to take his daughter away. But his face was calm as he went down to the gate to meet his distinguished and powerful enemy. The ex-Senator was hot, weary, and angry. He had arrived in Pinon City on the early train, just as the county attorney and the sheriff were about to set forth. A few words with these officials assuaged his anxiety for his daughter but increased his irritation towards Curtis. Leaving orders for another team to follow, he had taken passage with the sheriff, an action he regretted at once. The seats were too low and too narrow for his vast bulk, and his knees grew weary. The wind came from the plain hot and insolent, bringing no relief to the lungs; on the contrary, it filled his eyes and ears with dust and parched the skin like a furnace blast. Altogether the conditions of his ride had been torturing to the great man, and he had ridden the latter part of it in grim silence, mentally execrating both Lawson and Curtis for luring his daughter so far from civilization. No one spoke till the agent, pacing calmly down to the gate, stepped into the road and said: "Good-evening, gentlemen, will you get out and come in?" Even then Brisbane made no reply, but the sheriff spoke up: "I suppose we'll have to. This is Senator Brisbane, Major. He was very anxious about his daughter and so came in with me. This is Mr. Grismore, our county attorney." Curtis bowed slightly. "Mr. Grismore I have seen. Senator Brisbane I have met. Send your horses down to the corral, sheriff, and come in; you can't return to-night." As the sheriff got out he said: "This second team is the Senator's, and the reporter for the Associated Press is in there with Streeter." Brisbane got out slowly and painfully, and a yellow-gray pallor came into his face as he stood beside the carriage steadying himself by resting his hand on the wheel. The young county attorney, eager to serve the great politician, sprang out and offered a hand, and Curtis, with sudden pity in his heart, made a step forward, but Brisbane put them both aside harshly. "No, no! I'm all right now. My legs were cramped--that's all. They'll limber up in a minute. The seats were too low for a man of my height. I should have stayed in the other carriage." After all he was Elsie's father, and Curtis relented: "Senator, if you'll take a seat in my office, I'll go fetch your daughter." "I prefer to go to her myself," Brisbane replied, menacingly formal. "Where is she?" "I will show you if you will permit," Curtis coldly replied, and set out to cross the road. The old man hobbled painfully at first, but soon recovered enough of his habitual power to follow Curtis, who did not wait, for he wished to have a private word with Elsie before her father came. She was lying down as he knocked, resting, waiting for the dinner call. "Your father is here," he said, as she opened the door. Her face expressed surprise, not pleasure. "Here! Here at the agency?" "Yes, and on his way to the studio. Moreover, he is very dirty, very disgusted, very crusty, and not at all well." "Poor old father! Now he'll make it uncomfortable for us all. He has come for me, of course. Who is with him?" "The sheriff, the county attorney, and some reporters." She smiled. "Then he is 'after you,' too." "It looks that way. But you must not go away without giving me another chance to talk with you. Will you promise that?" he demanded, abruptly, passionately. "I have something to say to you." "I dare not promise," she responded, and her words chilled him even more than her action as she turned away to the door. "How slowly he walks! Poor old papa! You shouldn't have done this, popsey," she cried, as she met him with a kiss on his cheek. Curtis walked away, leaving them alone, a hand of ice at his heart. Brisbane took her kiss without changing to lighter mood. "Why didn't you follow out my orders?" he demanded, harshly. "You see what I've had to go through just because you are so foolishly obstinate. That ride is enough to kill a man." Her throat swelled with anger, but she choked it down and replied very gently. "Come into the studio and let me clean off the dust. I'm sorry." He followed her in and sank heavily upon a chair. "I wouldn't take that journey again for ten thousand dollars. Why didn't you come to the railway as I ordered?" "Because I saw no good reason for it. I knew what I was doing. Captain Curtis assured me--" "Captain Curtis!" he sneered. "You'd take his word against mine, would you?" "Yes, I would, for he is on the ground and knows all the conditions. He has the outbreak well in hand. You have seen only the outside exaggeration of it. He has acted with honor and good judgment--" "Oh, he has, has he? Well, we'll see about that!" His mind had taken a new turn. "He won't have anything in his hand six months from now. No West Point dude like him can set himself up against the power of this State and live." "Now, papa, don't start in to abuse Captain Curtis; he is our host, and it isn't seemly." "Oh, it isn't! Well, I don't care whether it is or is not; I shall speak my mind. His whole attitude has been hostile to the best interests of the State, and he must get off his high horse." As he growled and sneered his way through a long diatribe, she brought water and bathed his face and hands and brushed his hair, her anger melting into pity as she comprehended how weak and broken he was. She had observed it before in times of great fatigue, but the heat and dust and discomfort of the drive had reduced the big body, debilitated by lack of exercise, to a nerveless lump, his brain to a mass of incoherent and savage impulses. No matter what he said thereafter, she realized his pitiable weakness and felt no anger. As he rested he grew calmer, and at last consented to lie down while she made a little tea on an alcohol lamp. After sipping the tea he fell asleep, and she sat by his side, her mind filled with the fundamental conception of a daughter's obligation to her sire. To her he was no longer a great politician, no longer a powerful, aggressive business man--he was only her poor, old, dying father, to whom she owed her every comfort, her education, her jewels, her art. He had never been a companion to her--his had been the rule absolute--and yet a hundred indulgences, a hundred really kind and considerate acts came thronging to her mind as she fanned his flushed face. "I must go with him," she said; "it is my duty." Curtis came to the door again and tapped. She put her finger to her lips, and so he stood silent, looking in at her. His eyes called her and she rose and tiptoed to the door. "I came to ask you both to dinner," he whispered. Her eyes filled with quick tears. "That's good of you," she returned, in a low voice. "But he would not come. He's only a poor, old, broken man, after all." Her voice was apologetic in tone. "I hope you will not be angry." They both stood looking down at him. "He has failed terribly in the last few weeks. His campaigning will kill him. I wish he would give it up. He needs rest and quiet. What can I do?" Curtis, looking upon the livid old man, inert and lumpish, yet venerable because of his white hairs--and because he was the sire of his love--experienced a sudden melting of his own resolution. His throat choked, but he said: "Go with him. He needs you." At the moment words were unnecessary. She understood his deeper meaning, and lifted her hand to him. He took it in both his. "It may be a long time before I shall see you again. I--I ought not--" he struggled with himself and ceased to speak. Her eyes wavered and she withdrew her hand. "My duty is with him now; perhaps I can carry him through his campaign, or dissuade him altogether. Don't you see that I am right?" He drew himself up as though his general-in-chief were passing. "Duty is a word I can understand," he said, and turned away. XXVIII A WALK IN THE STARLIGHT Having no further pretext for calling upon her, Curtis thought of Elsie as of a strain of music which had passed. He was rather silent at dinner, but not noticeably so, for Maynard absorbed most of the time and attention of those present. At the first opportunity he returned to his papers, and was deep in work when Jennie came in to tell him that Elsie was coming over to stay the night. "She has given up her bed to her father, and so she will sleep here. Go over about nine and get her." If she knew how deeply this command moved him, she was considerate enough to make no comment. "Very well, sis," he replied, quietly. "As soon as I finish this letter." But he did not finish the letter--did not even complete the sentence with which his pen was engaged when Jennie interrupted him. After she went out he sat in silence and in complete immobility for nearly an hour. At last he rose and went out into the warm and windless night. When he entered the studio he found her seated upon one trunk and surveying another. "This looks like flight," he said. "Yes; papa insists on our going early to-morrow morning. Isn't it preposterous! I can only pack my clothing. He says the trouble is only beginning, and that I must not remain here another day." "I have come to fetch you to Jennie." "I will be ready presently. I am just looking round to decide on what to take. Be seated, please, while I look over this pile of sketches." He took a seat and looked at her sombrely. "You'll leave a great big empty place here when you go." "Do you mean this studio?" "I mean in my daily life." She became reflective. "I hate to go, and that's the truth of it. I am just beginning to feel my grip tighten on this material. I know I could do some good work here, but really I was frightened at papa's condition this afternoon. He is better now, but I can see that he is failing. If he insists on campaigning I must go with him--but, oh, how I hate it! Think of standing up and shaking hands with all these queer people for months! I oughtn't to feel so, of course, but I can't help it. I've no patience with people who are half-baked, neither bread nor dough. I believe I like old Mary and Two Horns better." "I fear you are voicing a mood, not a conviction. We ought not to condemn any one;" he paused a moment, then added: "I don't like you to even _say_ cruel things. It hurts me. As I look round this room I see nothing which has to do with duty or conviction or war or politics. There is peace and beauty here. You belong in this atmosphere; you are fitted to your environment. I admit that I was fired at first with a desire to convert you to my ways of thought; now, when a sense of duty troubles you, takes you away from the joy of your art, I question myself. You are too beautiful to wear yourself out in problems. I now say, remain an artist. There is something idyllic about your artist life as I now understand it. It is simple and childlike. In that respect it seems to have less troublesome questions of right or wrong to decide than science. Its one care seems to be, 'What will produce and preserve beauty, and so assuage the pain of the world?' No question of money or religion or politics--just the pursuit of an ideal in a sheltered nook." "You have gone too far the other way, I fear," she said, sadly. "Our lives, even at the best, are far from being the ideal you present. It seems very strange to me to hear you say those things--" "I have given the matter much thought," he replied. "If I have made you think of the woes of the world, so you have shown me glimpses of a life where men and women are almost free from care. We are mutually instructed." He rose at this point and, after hesitation, said: "When you go I wish you would leave this room just as it is, and when I am tired and irritable and lonely I'll come here and imagine myself a part of your world of harmonious colors, with no race questions to settle and no harsh duties to perform. Will you do this? These few hangings and lamps and easels are unimportant to you--you won't miss them; to me they will be priceless, and, besides, you may come back again some time. Say you will. It will comfort me." There was a light in his eyes and an intensity in his voice which startled her. She stammered a little. "Why, of course, if it will give you the slightest pleasure; there is nothing here of any particular value. I'll be glad to leave them." "Thank you. So long as I have this room as it is I shall be able to persuade myself that you have not passed utterly out of my life." She was a little alarmed now, and hastened to say: "I do not see why we should not meet again. I shall expect you to call when you come to Washington--" she checked herself. "I'm afraid my sense of duty to the Tetongs is not strong. Don't think too hardly of me because of it." He seemed intent on another thought. "Do you know, you've given me a dim notion of a new philosophy. I haven't organized it yet, but it's something like this: Beauty is a sense of fitness, harmony. This sense of beauty--call it taste--demands positively a readjustment of the external facts of life, so that all angles, all suffering and violence, shall cease. If all men were lovers of the beautiful, the gentle, then the world would needs be suave and genial, and life harmoniously colored, like your own studio, and we would campaign only against ugliness. To civilize would mean a totally different thing. I'm not quite clear on my theory yet, but perhaps you can help me out." "I think I see what you mean. But my world," she hastened to say, "is nothing like so blameless as you think it. Don't think artists are actually what they should be. They are very human, eager to succeed, to outstrip each other; and they are sordid, too. No, you are too kind to us. We are a poor lot when you take us as a whole, and the worst of it is the cleverest makers of the beautiful are often the least inspiring in their lives. I mean they're ignorant and spiteful, and often dishonorable." She stopped abruptly. "I'm sorry to hear you say that. It certainly shatters a beautiful theory I had built up out of what you and other artists have said to me." After a little silence he resumed: "It comes down to this, then: that all arts and professions are a part of life, and life is a compromise between desire and duty. There are certain things I want to do to-day, but my duties for to-morrow forbid. You are right in going away with your father--I'm not one to keep you from doing that--but I must tell you how great has been the pleasure of having you here, and I hope you will come again. If you go to-morrow morning I shall not see you again." "Why not?" "I start at dawn to arrest Cut Finger." "Alone?" "No. The captain of the police goes with me." Her face paled a little. "Oh! I wish you wouldn't! Why don't you take the soldiers?" "They are not necessary. I shall leave here about four o'clock and surprise the guilty man in his bed. He will not fight me." He rose. "Are you ready to go now?" "In a moment," she said, and softly crossed the floor to peep into the bedroom. "Poor papa, he looks almost bloodless as he sleeps." As they stepped out into the darkness Curtis realized that this was their last walk together, and the thought was both sweet and sad. "Will you take my arm?" he asked. "It is very dark, though there should be a new moon." "It has gone down; I saw it," she replied, as she slipped her hand through his elbow. "How peaceful it all is! It doesn't seem possible that to-morrow you will risk your life in the performance of duty, and that I will leave here, never to return. I have a curious feeling about this place now. It seems as though I were settled here, and that I am to go on living here forever." "I wish it were true. Women like you--you know what I mean; there are no women like you, of course--come into my life too seldom. I dread the empty futility of to-morrow. As an Indian agent, I must expect to live without companionship with such as you. I have a premonition that Jennie is going to leave me--as she ought." "You will be very lonely then; what will you do?" "Work harder; do more good, and so cheat myself into forgetfulness that time is flying." "You are bitter to-night." "Why shouldn't I be when you are going away? It wouldn't be decent of me to be gay." "Your methods of flattery are always effective. At one moment you discuss the weightiest matters with me--which argues I have brains--and then you grow gloomy over my going and would seem to mean that I am charming, which I don't think is quite true." "If I weren't a poor devil of an army officer I'd convince you of my sincerity by asking you not to go away at all." "That _would_ be convincing," she said, laughingly. "Please don't do it!" His tone became suddenly serious. "You are right, I can't ask you to share a life like mine. It is too uncertain. I may be ordered back to my regiment next winter, and then nothing remains but garrison duty. I think I will then resign. But I am unfitted for business, or for any money-getting, and so I've decided that as an honorable man I must not imperil the happiness of a woman. I claim to be a person of taste, and the girl I admired would have other chances in life. I can't afford to say to her, 'Give up all your comfort and security and come with me to the frontier.' She would be foolish to listen--no woman of the stamp I have in mind could do it." They were nearing "the parsonage" gate, and he ended in a low voice: "Don't you think I am right?" "The theory is that nothing really counts in a woman's life but love," she replied, enigmatically. "Yes, but theory aside--" "Well, then, I can conceive of a girl--a very _young_ girl--leaving wealth and friends, and even her art, for the man she loved, but--" He waited a moment as a culprit listens to his judge. "But then--but in case--" "If the girl were grown up and loved luxurious living, and shared an enthusiasm--say for art--then--" She broke off and said, wearily, "Then she might palter and measure values and weigh chances, and take account of the future and end by not marrying at all." They had reached the gate and he spoke with perceivable effort: "I've no right to ask it, of course, but if you take pity on my loneliness at any time and write to me, your letters will be more welcome than it is seemly in me to say, and I'll promise not to bore you with further details of my 'Injines.' Will you be kind to me?" "I will be glad to write," she replied, but in her voice was something he did not understand. As they entered the house Elsie said: "Captain Maynard, Captain Curtis is going out to-morrow morning to arrest that crazy Indian. Do you think he ought to go alone?" "Certainly not! It would be too dangerous. He shall have an escort," replied Maynard, emphatically. "No, no!" said Curtis, decisively. "I am safer to go unarmed and alone." "George!" protested Jennie, "you shall not go out there alone. Why don't you send the police?" Maynard here interposed. "Don't take on worry; I'll go with him myself." This last hour in Elsie's company was a mingled pain and pleasure to Curtis, for she was most charming. She laid aside all hauteur, all perversity, and gave herself unreservedly to her good friends. They were all at high tension, and the talk leaped from jest to protest, and back to laughter again, agile and inconsequent. The time and the place, the past and the future, counted for little to these four, for they were young and they were lovers. At last Jennie rose. "If you people are to rise at dawn you must go to sleep now. Good-night! Come, Elsie Bee Bee." Maynard followed Jennie into the hall with some jest, and Curtis seized the opportunity to delay Elsie. He offered his hand, and she laid hers therein with a motion of half-surrender. "Good-night, Captain. I appreciate your kindness more than I can say." "Don't try. I feel now that I have done nothing--nothing of what I should have done; but I didn't think you were to leave so soon. If I had known--" "You have done more than you realize. Once more, good-night!" "Good-night!" he said, in an unsteady voice; "and remember, you promised to write!" "I will keep my promise." She turned at the door. "Don't try to write around your red people. I believe I'd like to hear how you get on with them." "Defend me from mine enemies within the gates, and I'll work out my problem." "I'll do my best. Good-bye!" "No, not good-bye--just good-night!" For a moment he stood meditating a further word, then stepped into the hall. Elsie, midway on the stairs, had turned and was looking down at him with a face wherein the eyes were wistful and brows perplexed. She guiltily lowered her lashes and turned away, but that momentary pause--that subtle interplay of doubt and dream--had given the soldier a pleasure deeper than words. * * * * * Jennie was waiting at the door of the tiny room in which Elsie was to sleep, her face glowing with admiration and love. "Oh, you queenly girl!" she cried, with a convulsive clasp of her strong arms. "I can't get over the wonder of your being here in our little house. You ought to live always in a castle." Elsie smiled, but with tears in her eyes. "You're a dear, good girl. I never had a truer friend." "I wish you were poor!" said Jennie, as they entered the plain little room; "then you could come here as a missionary or something, and we could have you with us all the time. I hate to think of your going away to-morrow." "You must come and see me in Washington." "Oh no! That wouldn't do!" said Jennie, half alarmed. "It might spoil me for life out here. You must visit us again." There was a note of honest, almost boyish suffering in Jennie's entreaties which moved the daughter of wealth very deeply, and she went to her bed with a feeling of loss, as though she were taking leave of something very sweet and elementally comforting. She thought of her first lover, and her cheeks burned with disgust of her folly. She thought of two or three good, manly suitors whose protestations of love had left her cold and humorously critical. On Lawson's suit she lingered, for he was still a possibility should she decide to put her soldier-lover away. "But I _have_ done so--definitely," she said to some pleading within herself. "I can't marry him; our lives are ordered on divergent lines. I can't come here to live." "Happiness is not dependent on material things," argued her newly awakened self. "He loves you--he is handsome and true and good." "But I don't love him." "Yes, you do. When you returned Osborne Lawson's ring you quite plainly said so." She burned with a new flame with this confession; but she protested, "Let us be sensible! Let us argue!" "You cannot argue with love." "I am not a child to be carried away by a momentary gust of emotion. See how impossible it is for me to share his work--his austere life." And here entered the far-reaching question of the life and death of a race. In a most disturbing measure this obscure young soldier represented a view of life--of civilization antagonistic to her faith, and in stern opposition to the teachings of her father. In a subtle fashion he had warped the word _duty_ from its martial significance to a place in a lofty philosophy whose tenets were only just beginning to unfold their inner meaning to her. Was it not true that she was less sympathetic with the poor brown peoples of the earth than with the animals? "How can you be contemptuous of God's children, whom the physical universe has colored brown or black or yellow--you, who are indignant when a beast is overburdened? If we repudiate and condemn to death those who do not please us, who will live?" She felt in herself some singular commotion. Conceptions, hitherto mere shells of thought, became infilled with passion; and pity, hitherto a feeble sentiment with her, expanded into an emotion which shook her, filled her throat with sobs, discrediting her old self with her new self till the thought of her mean and selfish art brought shame. How small it all was, how trivial, beside the consciousness of duty well done, measured against a life of self-sacrifice, such as that suggested by this man, whose eyes sought her in worship! Could there be any greater happiness than to stand by his side, helping to render a dying, captive race happier--healthier? Could her great wealth be put to better use than this of teaching two hundred thousand red people how to meet and adjust themselves to the white man's way of life? Their rags, their squalor, their ignorance were more deeply depressing to her lover than the poverty of the slums, for the Tetongs had been free and joyous hunters. Their condition was a tragic debasement. She began to feel the arguments of the Indian helpers. Their words were no longer dead things; they had become electric nodes; they moved her, set her blood aflame, and she clinched her hands and said: "I will help him do this great work!" XXIX ELSIE WARNS CURTIS Brisbane was early awake, abrupt and harsh in command. "Come! we must get out o' here," he said. "I don't want to be under the slightest obligation to this young crank. I intend to break him." She flamed into wrath--a white radiance. "When you break him you break me," she said. "What do you mean?" "I mean I've changed my mind. I think he's right and you are wrong." The entrance of the sheriff prevented a full accounting at the moment, but it was merely deferred. Once in the carriage, Brisbane began to discredit her lover. "Don't tell me Curtis is disinterested; he is scheming for some fat job. His altruistic plea is too thin." "You are ill-fitted to understand the motives of a man like Captain Curtis," Elsie replied, and every word cut. "What have you--or I--ever done that was not selfish?" "I've given a thousand dollars to charity for every cent of his." "Yes, and that's the spirit in which you gave--never to help, only to exalt yourself, just as I have done. Captain Curtis is giving himself. He and his sister have made me see myself as I am, and I am not happy over it. But I wish you would not talk to me any more about them; they are my friends, and I will not listen to your abuse of them." It was a most fatiguing ride. Brisbane complained of the heat and the dust, and of a mysterious pain in his head; and Elsie, alarmed by his flushed face, softened. "Poor papa, I'm so sorry you had to come on this long ride!" Lawson was also genuinely concerned over the Senator's growing incoherency, and privately told the driver to push hard on the reins. When they rounded the sharp point of the Black Bear Mesa, and came in sight of the long, low, half-way house, Lawson sat up with a jerk. "There is the mob--camped and waiting for the sheriff." As Elsie looked at the swarming figures of the cowboys her mind forecasted tragic events. The desperadoes were waiting to lynch Cut Finger--that was plain. Curtis had said he would not surrender his prisoner to be lynched. He was coming; he would be met by this mob. She clutched Lawson by the arm. "We must warn him!" He merely nodded; but a look in his eyes gave her to understand that he would do his duty. The cattlemen, seeing the wagon whirling round the mesa, mounted and massed in stern array, believing that the carriage contained the sheriff and his prisoner. They were disappointed and a little uneasy when they recognized Brisbane, the great political boss; but with ready wit Johnson rode along in front of the gang, saying, with a wink: "Put up your guns, boys. This is a meeting in honor of Senator Brisbane." Then, as a mutter of laughter ran down the line, he took off his hat and lifted his voice: "Boys, three cheers for Senator Brisbane--hip, hip, hurrah!" After the cheers were given the horsemen closed round the carriage with cries for a speech. Brisbane, practised orator and shrewd manipulator, rose as the carriage stopped, and removed his hat. His eyes were dim and the blood seemed about to burst through his cheeks, but he was not without self-possession. "Gentlemen, I thank you for this demonstration, but I must ask you to wait till I have rested and refreshed myself. With your permission I will then address you." "Right--right!" "We can wait!" they heartily responded, and opened a way for the carriage. Elsie shuddered as she looked into the rude and cruel faces of the leaders of this lynching party. They no longer amused her. She saw them now from the stand-point of Captain Curtis and his wards, and realized how little of mercy they would show to their enemies. On Lawson's lips lay a subtly contemptuous smile, and he uttered no word--did not lift a hand till the carriage was at the door. Streeter helped the Senator out, and with unexpected grace presented his hand to Elsie. "I do not need help," she said, coldly, and brushed past him into the little sitting-room, which swarmed with excited, scrawny, tired, and tearful women. "What is goin' on out there? Have the soldiers put down the pizen critters?" asked one. "You're Miss Brisbane--we heerd you was all killed at the agency. Weren't you scared?" Almost contemptuously Elsie calmed their fears, and by a few questions learned that this house had been made a rallying-point for the settlers and that the women were just beginning to feel the depressing effects of being so long away from their homes without rest and proper food. "_Do_ you think we can go home now?" "Certainly. Captain Curtis will see that you are not harmed," she replied, and she spoke with all a wife's sense of joy and pride in her husband. "We've been camping here for most a week, seems like, an' we're all wore out," wailed one little woman who had three small children to herd and watch over. Brisbane, inspirited by an egg-nog and a sandwich, mounted a wash-tub on the low porch and began a speech--a suave, diplomatic utterance, wherein he counselled moderation in all things. "We can't afford at this time to do a rash thing," he said, and winked jovially at Johnson. "The election coming on is, after all, the best chance for us to get back at these fool Injun apologists. So go slow, boys--go slow!" As these smooth words flowed from his lips Elsie burned with shame and anger. Some newly acquired inward light enabled her to read in the half-hearted dissuasion of her father's speech a subtle, heartless encouragement to violence _after_ election. While the cheers were still ringing in her ears, at the close of the address, Elsie felt a touch on her shoulder and turned to face Calvin, standing close beside her, timid and flushed. She held out her hand with a swift rush of confidence. "Why, how do you do, Mr. Streeter?" "I'm pretty well," he said, loudly, and added, in a low voice, "I want to see you alone." He looked about the room. The corner least crowded was occupied by a woman nursing a wailing baby. "Come this way; she's Norwegian; she can't understand us." Elsie followed him, and when he spoke it was in a rapid, low mutter. "Is the Major goin' to come with Cut Finger?" "I'm afraid so." "He mustn't. You know what this gang's here for?" "What can we do? Can't we warn him?" "Well, I'm goin' to take a sneak and try it. It's all my neck is worth to play it on the boys; but it's got to be done, for the Major is a fighter, and if this mob meets him there will be blood on the moon. Now don't worry. I'm going to slide right out through the first gate I see and head him off; mebbe you'd like to write a word or two." "You are a real hero," she said, as she put a little slip of paper into his hand, and pressed it there with both of hers. "Don't do that," he said, hurriedly; "they'll think something's up. I'm doin' it for the Major; he's treated me white all the way along, and I'll be derned if I let this gang do him." A pain shot through her heart. Putting her hand to her bosom, she said: "It means everything to me, Calvin. Good-bye. I am trusting you--it's life or death to me. Good-bye!" XXX THE CAPTURE OF THE MAN The east was saffron and pale-blue as Crow and the agent drove out of the corral and up the road to the south. Two Horns was the driver. Crow alone was armed, and he wore but his official revolver. Maynard had been purposely left out of the expedition, for Curtis did not wish to seem to question in the slightest degree the obedience of his people. He preferred to go unarmed and without handcuffs or rope, as a friend and adviser, not as an officer of the law. The morning was deliciously cool, with a gentle wind sliding down from the high peaks, which were already glowing with the morning's pink and yellow. From some of the tepees in Grayman's camp smoke was already rising, and a few old women could be seen pottering about the cooking lodges, while the morning chorus of the dogs and coyotes thickened. There was an elemental charm in it all which helped the young soldier to shake off his depression. Passing rapidly through the two villages, Two Horns turned to the left and entered upon a road which climbed diagonally up the side of a long, low ridge. This involved plodding, and by the time they reached the summit the sun met them full-fronted. In the smaller valley, which lay between this ridge and the foot-hills, a rough trail led towards the mountains. This way Two Horns took, driving rapidly and silently, and soon entered the pines and pinons which form the lower fringe of the vast and splendid robe of green which covers the middle heights of the Rocky Mountains. After an hour of sharp driving, with scarcely a word or gesture, Crow turned and said: "Cut Finger there. Black Wolf, his tepee." The trail here took a sharp curve to the left to avoid a piece of stony ground, and from a little transverse ridge Curtis could look down on a small, temporary village, the band of Black Wolf, who had located here to cut hay on the marsh. "We must surprise him if we can," said Curtis to Crow. "We must not shoot. I will talk to him. If he cocks his gun kill him; but I don't think he will want to fight." The lads could be heard singing their plaintive songs as they climbed the hills for their ponies. Smoke was rising from each lodge, and children, dogs, and hens were outdoing each other in cheerful uproar as Two Horns drove up to where Black Wolf stood, an old man with thin, gray hair, shielding his eyes with the scant shadow of his bony wrist. "Ho, agent!" he cried. "Why do you come to see us so early?" "Is Cut Finger here?" "Yes; he is in there." He pointed to a tepee near. "Be silent!" commanded Curtis, as he alighted swiftly, but without apparent haste or excitement. Crow instantly followed him, alert and resolute. As they entered the tepee Cut Finger, still half asleep on his willow hammock, instinctively reached for his rifle, which lay beneath him on the ground, dangerous as a half-awakened rattlesnake. Curtis put his foot on the weapon, and said, pleasantly: "Good-morning, Cut Finger; you sleep late." The young man sat up and blinked stupidly, while Crow took the gun from beneath the agent's foot. Curtis signed to Black Wolf. "This boy has killed a herder and I have come for him. You knew of his deed." "I have heard of it," the old man replied, with a gesture. "It is such men who bring trouble on the tribe," pursued Curtis. "They must be punished. Cut Finger must go with me down to the agency. He must not make more trouble." The news of the agent's mission brought every soul hurrying to the tent, for Cut Finger had said, "I will fight the soldiers if they come." Curtis heard them coming and said: "Crow, tell all these people outside that Cut Finger has done a bad thing and must be punished. That unless such men are cast out by the Tetongs they will always be in trouble." Crow lifted up his big, resounding voice and recounted what the agent had said, and added: "You shall see we will take this man. I, Crow, have said it. It will be foolish for any one to resist." The agent, sitting before Cut Finger, addressed him in signs. "I am your friend, I am sorry for you. I am sorry for any man who does wrong and suffers punishment; but you have injured your people, you made the white man very angry; he came ready to shoot--you saw how I turned him away. I said: 'I will find the man who shot the herder. I will bring him--I do not want any one else to suffer.' Then you proclaimed yourself. You said: 'I alone did this thing.' Then you went on the hill to fight--I cannot allow that. No more blood will be shed. I will not lie; I have come to take you. You will be punished; you must go with me to the white man's strong-house." A whimpering cry arose, a cry which ended in a sighing moan of heart-piercing, uncontrollable agony, and Curtis, turning his face, saw the wife of Cut Finger looking at him from her blanket on the opposite side of the tepee. A shout of warning from Crow made him leap to his feet and turn. Cut Finger confronted him, his eyes glowing with desperate resolution. "_Sit down!_" commanded the Captain, using his fist in the sign, with a powerful gesture. The fugitive could not endure his chief's eyes; he sank back on his couch and sat trembling. "If you touch the Little Father I will kill you," said Crow, gruffly, as he stood with drawn revolver in his hand. "I, Crow, have said it!" Black Wolf was looking on with lowering brow. "He says the white man was driving his sheep on our land." "So he was," replied Curtis, "but it is bad for the Tetongs when a white man is killed. It is better to come and tell me. When a redman kills a white man the white men say: 'Let us kill _all_ the Tetongs--spare no one.' Cut Finger said he was ready to die. Well, then, let him go with me, and I will make his punishment as light as I can. I am his friend--a friend to every Tetong. I will tell the war chief at Pinon City how it was, and he will say Cut Finger was not alone to blame--the white man was also to blame. Thus the punishment will not be so heavy. Cut Finger is a young man; he has many years to live if he will do as I tell him. He will come back to his tribe by-and-by and be a good man." So, by putting forth all his skill in gesture he conveyed to Cut Finger's mind a new idea--the idea of sacrificing himself for the good of the tribe. He also convinced the members of Black Wolf's band that their peace and safety lay in giving him up to their agent, and so at last the young desperado rose and followed his chief to the wagon wherein Two Horns still sat, impassive and unafraid. As he put his hand on the carriage-seat a convulsive shudder swept over Cut Finger. He folded his arms and, lifting his eyes to the hills, burst forth in a death-song, a chant so sad, so passionate, and so searching, that the agent's heart was wrenched. Answering sobs and wails broke from the women, and the young wife of the singer came and crouched at his feet, her little babe in her arms, and this was his song: "I am going away. I go to my death. The white man has said it-- I am to die in a prison. I am young, but I must go-- I have a wife, but I must go To die among the white men In the dark. So says the soldier chief." Curtis, looking into the eyes of Black Wolf, perceived that the old man wavered. The wailing of the women, the young man's song, had roused his racial hatred--what to him was the killing of a "white robber"? "Be quiet!" commanded Curtis, and the song ceased. "Get in, quick! No more singing." The ending of the song left the prisoner in a mood of gloomy yet passive exaltation. He took the place indicated and sat with bowed head, his hands limply crossed. "Go on!" commanded Curtis, and Two Horns brought the whip down on the horses. As they sprang forward a wail of agony burst from the lips of the bereaved young wife. At this cry Cut Finger again turned upon the agent with hands opened like the claws of a bear--his face contorted with despair. Curtis seized him in a grip whose crunching power made itself felt to the marrow of the Tetong's bones, and his eyes, piercing with terrible determination, shrivelled the resolution of the half-crazed man. He sank back into his seat, a hopeless lump of swaying flesh, his face a tragic mask, and uttered no further word till the sound of a galloping horse made them all turn to see who followed. "My wife!" the prisoner said. "She carries my baby." This was indeed true. The sad little wife was galloping after, riding a strong bay pony, the reins flapping loose, while across the pommel of her saddle she held her small pappoose, whose faint wailing told of his discomfort and terror. "Wait--me take pappoose," the prisoner said, in English, with a note of command. Curtis was deeply touched. He ordered Two Horns to halt, and Crow got out and took the babe and handed it to Cut Finger, who received it carefully in his long arms. No woman could have been tenderer. As they drove on, a big lump rose in the soldier's throat. It seemed a treacherous and sinful thing to hand this man over to a savage throng of white men, perhaps to be lynched on the road. "I will not do it," he said; "I will take him to Pinon City myself. He shall have trial as if he were white. I will yield him to the law, but not to vengeance." Cut Finger thereafter spoke no word, did not even look back, though Curtis detected him turning his head whenever the sound of the galloping horse grew faint or died away for a few moments. The baby ceased to wail, and on the rough ground, when the wagon jarred, the father held the little one high as in a sling. Upon entering the camp of Crawling Elk they found all the people massed, waiting, listening, and their presence excited the prisoner greatly, and he began again to sing his death-chant, which now seemed infinitely more touching by reason of the small creature he cradled so lovingly in his arms. "Be silent!" commanded Curtis. "You must not sing. Drive fast, Two Horns!" Answering wails and fragments of chanting broke from the women; one or two cried out, "Take him from the agent!" But the men shook their heads and sadly watched them pass. "He has done a foolish thing; he must now suffer for it," said Crawling Elk. As they drew up before the door of the parsonage Curtis sprang out and said to Cut Finger: "Give me the baby; he shall be well cared for." The father gave up the child passively, and Curtis called to Jennie: "Here is a babe that is tired and hungry--be good to it." "Where is the mother?" asked Jennie, as she tenderly received the little brown boy. "She is coming," he said, and the mother galloped up in a few moments and fairly tumbled off her horse. "See!" Curtis said to her and to the father, "My sister will give the baby milk, and its mother shall also be fed. You need not fear; both will be taken care of. We are your friends." Cut Finger watched Jennie as she carefully carried the baby into the house, and as he turned away, a look of apathetic misery, more moving than any cry, settled on his face. Maynard, who had been standing in the door, said, in a tone of astonishment, "Did that wild Injun carry his papoose all the way down?" "Yes, and was as tender of it as a woman, too." "Well, I'll be hanged! There's a whole lot for me to learn about Injuns yet. Want a guard?" "Yes; I think it safer. There is a good deal of sympathy for this poor chap." "I don't blame 'em very much," said Maynard. "Take him right down to our guard-house, and I'll have Payne detail a squad of men to take care of him." "I intend taking him to Pinon myself. I can't find it in my heart to give him over into the hands of these whites--they'd lynch him, sure." "I believe it," replied Maynard, with conviction. As they passed the agency gate, Winters and the county attorney stepped out as if they expected to receive the prisoner; but the savage grin on the sheriff's face died out as Curtis nodded coldly and drove past. "That fellow is a wolf. Did you have any trouble?" asked Maynard. "Not a bit. We surprised him in bed, as I planned to do." "Nice thing, your leaving me out in this way!" "Have the Brisbanes gone?" "Yes. Got away about eight o'clock. Lawson went with them, though he's coming back to see you clear of this war. He's a crackerjack, is Lawson; but the old man has you marked for slaughter." It was good to be able to turn his prisoner over to the blue-coats and feel that he would not be taken away except properly and in order. Lynching does not flourish under the eyes of a commander like Maynard. As Curtis led his man into the guard-house and motioned him to a seat, he said, in signs: "You are safe now from the cattlemen. I am your friend, remember that. I myself will take you to the white chief's big village. I will not let the war chief have you. I will turn you over to the wise man--the man who will judge your case. I will let your wife and your little son go with you. So you see I am still your Little Father. I am very sorry you have shot this man, but you must be punished. I cannot prevent that." As he met the sheriff he said, quietly, "I have decided to accompany you to Pinon City." The sheriff was not greatly surprised. "Oh, very well. But I don't see the need of it." "I do!" replied Curtis, and his tone silenced opposition. Going immediately to the house, Curtis flung himself down in his chair and submitted to Jennie's anxious care. She brought him some coffee and biscuit, and stood with her hand on his shoulder while he ate. "Well, they're gone--Lawson and all. I never saw a greater change in any one than in that girl. Do you remember how she was last fall? I never supposed I should come to love her. I hated her for the treatment of you then, but--I think she has a different feeling towards us now--not excepting you. I think--she was crying because she was--going--away--from--you." He looked up at her and smiled incredulously. "Your loyalty to me, sis, is more than I deserve!" Curtis seized a moment to cross the square to Elsie's studio, eager to see whether she had regarded his wishes or not. It was an absurd thing to ask of her, and yet he did not regret having done so. It would serve as a sort of test of her regard, her sympathy. Now as he stood at the door he hesitated--if it should be bare! He turned the knob and entered. The effect of the first impression was exalting, satisfying. All was in order, and the air was deliciously cool and fragrant, infilled with some rare and delicate odor. Each article was in its place--she had taken nothing but the finished pictures and some sketches which she specially needed. Scraps of canvas covered with splashes of color were pinned about on the walls, the easel stood in the centre of the room, and her palette and brushes were on the table. The young soldier closed the door behind him and took a seat in deep emotion. At that moment he realized to the full his need of her, and his irreparable loss. All he had suffered before was forgotten--swallowed up in the empty, hungry ache of his heart. The curtains and draperies were almost as much a part of her as her dress, and he could not have touched them at the moment, so intimately personal did they seem. It appeared that he had not fully understood himself, after all. This empty temple, where she had lived and worked, these reminders of her beautiful self, were not to be a solace and a comfort, after all, but a torture. He felt broken and unmanned, and the aching in his throat grew to an intolerable pain, and with a reaction to disdain of himself he rose and went out, closing and locking the door. XXXI OUTWITTING THE SHERIFF Maynard came over just as the wagon was being brought round, and with a look of concern on his big, red face, began: "Now see here, Curtis, you'd better take an escort. Those devils may be hanging round the edge of the reservation. Say the word and I'll send Payne and a squad of men." "I don't think it at all necessary, Maynard. I don't want to excite the settlers, and, besides, the troops are all needed here. I have no fear of the mob while daylight lasts. They will not attempt to take the man from me. I leave you in command. Wilson will keep the police out on the hills and report any movement of the mob." Maynard saluted. "Very well, Major; when may I look for you to return?" "Not before to-morrow night. I shall get in by sundown to-day, for it is all the way down hill; the return will be slower." "I don't like to see you go away with that cut-throat sheriff." "I am not alone," said Curtis. "I have two of the faithfulest men in the world--Two Horns and Crow--both armed and watchful. Don't worry about me, Jack; keep yourself alert to-night." The wagon was now standing before the guard-house, and the prisoner was being brought forth by Crow. Cut Finger, blinking around him in the noon-day glare, saw his wife already in the wagon, and went resignedly towards the agent, who beckoned to him. "You may sit beside her," Curtis signed, and the youth climbed submissively to his seat. "Mr. Sheriff, you are to take a place beside the driver." Winters, swollen with rebellion because of the secondary part he had to play, surlily consented to sit with Two Horns. "Crow, you camp here," called Curtis, and the trusted Tetong scrambled to his seat. "Drive on, Two Horns." For an hour and more no one spoke but Two Horns, gently urging the horses to their best pace. Curtis welcomed this silence, for it gave him time to take account of many things, chief of which was Brisbane's violent antagonism. "He overestimates my importance," he thought. "But that is the way such men succeed. They are as thorough-going in destroying the opposition as they are in building up their own side." He thought, too, of that last intimate hour with Elsie, and wished he had spoken plainer with her. "It would have been definite if I had secured an answer. It would have been a negative, of course, and yet such is my folly, I still hope, and so long as there is the slightest uncertainty I shall waste my time in dreaming." His mind then turned to the question of the mob. There came into his mind again the conviction that they were waiting to intercept the sheriff at the boundary of the reservation; but he was perfectly certain that they would relinquish their designs when they found the sheriff reinforced by three determined men--one of them an army officer and the agent. He had no fear on that score; he only felt a little uneasy at leaving the agency. A sharp exclamation from Crow brought his dreaming to an end, and, looking up, he saw a horseman approaching swiftly, his reins held high, his elbows flapping. "That's young Streeter," he said, on the impulse. "So it is," replied Winters, hot with instant excitement. "I wonder what's his hurry?" Calvin came up with a rush, and when opposite set his horse on his haunches with a wrench of his powerful wrist, calling, in lazy drawl: "Howdy, folks, howdy. Well, I see you've got 'im," he remarked to Curtis. "You've been ridin' hard," said Winters; "what's your rush? Anything doin'?" Calvin looked down at his panting, reeking horse, and carelessly replied: "Oh no. I'm just takin' it out o' this watch-eyed bronco." He exchanged a look with the sheriff. "I thought I'd ketch ye 'fore ye left the agency. I'd like a word with you, sheriff; tumble out here for a minute. You'll wait a second, won't you, Major?" Curtis looked up at the sun. "Yes; but be quick." Calvin slid from his horse, and while the sheriff was climbing stiffly down on the opposite side slipped a note into Curtis's hand. As the sheriff listened to Calvin's low-voiced report Curtis glanced at the paper. It was in pencil, and from Elsie. "The mob is waiting at the half-way house, cruel as wolves--turn back--for my sake." Curtis crumpled the paper in his hand and called out imperatively: "Come, Sheriff Winters, I cannot wait." Winters turned away smilingly. "That's all right, Cal. I didn't understand, that's all. I'm glad the boys went home. Of course the troops settled everything." Curtis caught Calvin's eye, and a nod, almost imperceptible, passed between them, and the cowboy was aware that the soldier understood the situation. "Where did you leave the Senator?" "At the half-way house." "How was he?" "Feeling well enough to make a speech," replied Calvin. The other team, containing Grismore and the reporters, was by this time but a few rods away, and, watching his opportunity, Curtis signalled: "Stop that wagon--hold them here." Calvin again nodded. "Drive on," called Curtis. And Winters smiled with rare satisfaction. Some miles before reaching the border of the reservation, Two Horns, at a sign from Curtis, left the main road and began to climb a low ridge to the east. The sheriff turned and called sharply: "Where is he going?" "He has his orders, Mr. Sheriff." "He's taking the wrong road. It is five miles farther that way." "He is following my orders." "But I don't see the sense of it." "You are only a passenger. If you don't care to ride with us you can walk," replied Curtis, and the sheriff settled back into his seat with a curse. The second wagon had been left far behind, and would undoubtedly keep the main road, a mishap Curtis had calculated upon. An hour or two of extra travel would not matter, especially as the mob was being left safely on the left. The warning from Elsie had a singular effect upon the soldier. He grew almost gay at the thought of her care of him. In some occult way the little card meant a great deal more than its few words. If they were delayed at the half-way house they might not reach Pinon in time for the afternoon train, and so--"I may see her again." As he neared the boundary of the reservation the sheriff gained in resolution. Looking backward, he saw his own team following, outlined like a rock against the sky, just topping a ridge, and reaching over he laid his hand on the reins and pulled the horses to a stand. "Right here _I_ take charge!" he growled. "I'm on my own ground. Get out o' there!" he said to the prisoner, and as he spoke he drew his revolver and leaped to the ground. Cut Finger turned towards Curtis, whose face was set and stern. "Sit still!" he commanded, with a gesture. "Put up your gun!" he said to Crow, who had drawn his revolver, ready to defend his prisoner. Winters flew into bluster. "Do you defy my authority now? I'm sheriff of this county!" he shouted. "Your control ends right here! This is State territory." Curtis eyed him calmly. "I started out to give this man safe convoy to the prison, and I'm going to do it! Not only that--he is a ward of the government, even when lodged in the county jail, and it is my duty to see that he has fair trial; then, and not till then, will I abandon him to the ferocity of your mob. I know your plan, and I have defeated it. Do you intend to ride with us?" The sheriff's courage again failed him as he looked up into the direct, unwavering eagle gaze of the young officer. He began to curse. "We'll have your hide for this! You've gone too far! You've defied the laws of the county!" "Drive on," said Curtis, and Two Horns touched his ponies with the whip. "Halt, or I fire!" shouted Winters. "Drive on!" commanded Curtis, and Two Horns laid the whip hard on the back of his off horse. Winters fired, but the bullet went wide; he dared not aim to kill. Cut Finger rose as if to leap from the wagon, but Crow seized him with one great brown paw and thrust his shining gun against his breast. "Sit down, brother!" he said, grimly. "We'll care for you." The prisoner sank back into his seat trembling with excitement, while the wife began to cry piteously. Curtis, looking back, saw the sheriff waving his revolver maniacally, but his curses fainted on the way. A sudden reaction to humor set in, and the young agent laughed a hearty chuckle which made his faithful Tetong aids break into sympathetic grins. Nevertheless, the case was not entirely humorous. In a certain sense he had cut athwart the law in this last transaction, though in doing so he had prevented an act of violence which would have still further embittered the tribe. "I am right," he said, and put away all further doubt. The drive now settled into a race for the jail. "The sheriff, after being picked up by his own party, will undertake to overhaul us," reasoned Curtis, but that did not trouble him so much as the thought of what lay before him. The road ran along Willow Creek, winding as the stream itself, and Curtis could not avoid the thought of an ambuscade. On the right were clumps of tall willows capable of concealing horsemen, while on the left the hot, treeless banks rose a hundred feet above the wagon, and the loopings of the track prevented a view of what was coming. If the mob should get impatient, or if they should suspect his trick, it would be easy to send a detachment across the hills and intercept him. "Push hard!" he signed to Two Horns. The road was smooth and dusty and descended rapidly, so that the horses had little to do but guide the tongue. As the wagon rocked and reeled past the ranch houses, the settlers had hardly time to discern what manner of man was driving, but they were thrown into fierce panic by the clatter of fleeing horses and the cloud of prophetic dust. The sheriff was not in sight, and no sound of him could be detected in the whiz of their own wheels. At last Two Horns, with his moccasined foot on the brake, broke through the hills out upon the valley land, with Pinon City in sight. The mob and the sheriff were alike left behind. Ambush was now impossible. "Easy now, Two Horns," called Curtis, with a smile and an explanatory gesture. "We're safe now; the angry white men are behind," and the reeking, dusty, begrimed horses fell into a walk. The hour for their arrival in Pinon City was fortunate. The town was still at supper, and in the dusk Curtis and prisoner escaped notice. They hurried across the main street and on towards the jail, which stood on a little knoll just outside the town. As they drew up before the door a young man came out and stared with inquiring gaze. Curtis spoke first. "Are you the turnkey?" "I'm in charge here; yes, sir." "I am Captain Curtis, the agent. This is Cut Finger, charged with the murder of a white man. I have brought him in. The sheriff is just behind." He turned to the prisoner and signed. "Get down! Here is the strong-house where you are to stay!" Cut Finger clambered slowly down, his face rigid, his limbs tremulous with emotion. To go to the dark room of the strong-house was the worst fate that could overtake a free man of the hills, and his heart fluttered like a scared bird. "It would be a good plan to let his wife go in with him," suggested Curtis. "It will save trouble." The poor, whimpering girl-wife followed her culprit husband up the steps and into the cold and gloomy hall to which they were admitted, her eyes on the floor, her sleeping child held tightly in her arms. When the gate shut behind him Curtis signed to the prisoner this advice: "Now be good. Do not make any trouble. Do what these people tell you. Eat your food. I will ask the sheriff to let your wife see you in the morning, and then she will go home again. She can come once each month to see you." He touched the wife on the arm, and when she comprehended his gesture she uttered again that whimpering moan, and as she bent her head in dumb agony above her babe, Curtis gently led her to the door, leaving Cut Finger to the rigor of the white man's law. XXXII AN EVENTFUL NIGHT At the railway station Curtis alighted. "Go to Paul Ladue's," he said to Two Horns. "Put the horses in his corral and feed them well. Sit down with Paul, and to-morrow morning at sunrise come for me at the big hotel. Be careful. Don't go on the street to-night. The white men have evil hearts." "We know," said Crow, with a clip of his forefinger. "We will sleep like the wolf, with one eye open." As they drove away, Curtis hurried into the station, and calling for a blank, dashed away at a brief telegram to the Commissioner. While revising it he overheard the clerk say, in answer to a question over the telephone: "No, Senator Brisbane did not get away on 'sixteen.' He is still at the Sherman House." Curtis straightened and his heart leaped. "Then I can see Elsie again!" he thought. Hastily pencilling two or three shorter messages, he handed them in and hurried up the street towards the hotel, eager to relieve her anxiety. By this time the violet dusk of a peaceful night covered the town. The moon, low down in the west, was dim, but the stars were beginning to loom large in the wonderful deep blue to the east. The air was windless. No cloud was to be seen, and yet the soldier had a touch of uneasiness. "I wish I had brought my faithful men with me to the Sherman House. However, there is no real cause to worry. Paul is more Tetong than borderman--and will protect them--if only they keep off the street." He began to meet men in close-packed groups on the sidewalk--roughly clad citizens who seemed absorbed in the discussion of some important event. A few of them recognized him as he passed, and one called, in a bitter tone, "There goes the cur himself!" Curtis did not turn, though the tone, more insulting than the words, made his heart hot with battle. It was plain that the sheriff and his party had already entered and reported their defeat. A saloon emptied a mob of loud-voiced men upon the sidewalk before him, and though he feared trouble he pushed steadily forward. The ruffians gave way before his resolute feet, but he felt their hate beating like flame upon his face. He dared not turn a hair's-breadth to the right nor to the left; nothing was better than to walk straight on. "They will not shoot me in the back," he reasoned, and beyond a volley of curses he remained unassaulted. The rotunda of the hotel was filled with a different but not less dangerous throng of excited politicians and leading citizens, who had assembled to escort Brisbane to the opera-house. The talk, though less profane than that of the saloon loafers, was hardly less bitter against the agent. Mingled with these district bosses were a half-dozen newspaper men, who instantly rushed upon Curtis in frank and boyish rivalry. "Captain, what is the news?" they breathlessly asked, with pads and pencils ready for his undoing. "All quiet!" was his curt reply. "But--but--how about--" "All lies!" he interrupted to say, and pushed on to the desk. "Is Senator Brisbane and party still here?" he asked, as he signed his name in the book. The clerk applied the blotter. "Yes; he is still at supper." The young soldier took time to wash the dust from his face and hands and smooth his hair before entering the dining-room. At the threshold he paused and took account of his enemies. Brisbane and three of his most trusted supporters, still sitting at coffee, were holding a low-voiced consultation at a corner table, while Lawson and Elsie sat waiting some distance away and near an open window. The Parkers were not in view. Elsie, at sight of her lover, rose impulsively, and her face, tired and pale, flushed to a beautiful pink. Her lips formed the words "Why, there is Captain Curtis!" but her voice was inaudible. He hastened forward with eyes only for her, and she met him with both hands outstretched--eager, joyous! "Oh, how good it is to see you! We were so alarmed--Calvin warned you?" "Yes. He met me just before I left the reservation." "But I expected you to bring soldiers; how did you escape? Did you find the cattlemen gone?" "I flanked them." His face relaxed into humor. "Discretion is a sort of valor sometimes. I took the Willow road." Lawson now joined them, and in his hand-clasp was a brother's regard for the soldier. His smile was exultant. "Good work! I knew Calvin could be trusted. It looked bad for Cut Finger when we reached the half-way house." "You must be hungry!" exclaimed Elsie. "Sit here and I will order something for you." "I _was hungry_ an hour ago," he said, meaningly, "but now I am not. But I am tired," he added. "Where are the Parkers?" Elsie laughed. "On their way to civilization. They fled on the up-train." "The town is aflame," said Lawson. "You and your Tetongs are an issue here to-night. A big meeting is called, and the Senator is to speak. He has just discovered you," he added, glancing towards Brisbane, who had risen and was glaring at Curtis, his small eyes hot as those of an angry bear. "Excuse me, won't you?" pleaded Elsie, rising hastily. "I must go to him!" Curtis also rose and looked soberly into her eyes. "May I not see you again?" She hesitated. "Yes. I'm not going to the meeting. Come to our parlor when you are finished supper." He remained standing till she joined her father and passed from the room, then he turned towards Lawson, who said: "Seriously, my dear Curtis, you are in danger here. I hope you will not go out this evening. Even Uncle Sam's blue might not prove a protection in the dark of a night like this. Where did you house your men?" "At Ladue's, with orders not to leave the corral." "Quite right. Where is the sheriff?" This question brought a humorous light into the young soldier's eyes. "When I saw him last he was on Sage-hen Flat swinging his revolver and cursing me," and he told the story. Lawson grew grave. "I'm sorry you had to do that; it will give your enemies another grip on you. It's a mere technicality, of course, but they'll use it. You must watch every one of your clerks from this on; they'll trump up a charge against you if they can, and secure a court-martial. This election is really the last dying struggle of the political banditti of the State, and they will be defeated. Take to-night as an example. The reckless devils, the loud of mouth are alone in evidence, the better class of citizens dare not protest--dare not appear on the streets. But don't be deceived, you have your supporters even here, in the midst of this saturnalia of hate. You are an issue." Curtis grimly smiled. "I accept the challenge! They can only order me back to my regiment." "As for Brisbane, he is on the point of collapse. He has lost his self-control. He has attained a fixed notion that you are his most dangerous enemy; the mention of your name throws him into fury. I lost patience with him to-day, and opened fire. 'You are doomed to defeat!' I said to him. 'You represent the ignoble, greedy, conscienceless hustler and speculator, not the peaceful, justice-loving citizen of this State. Your dominion is gone; the reign of order and peace is about to begin.' If it were not for Elsie I would publicly denounce him, for his election would work incalculable injury to the West. But he can't fill the legislature with his men as he did twelve years ago. He will fail of election by fifty votes." "I hope so," responded Curtis, with a sigh, as Lawson rose. "But I have no faith in the courage of the better element; virtue is so timid and evil is always so fully organized." After Lawson left him Curtis hurriedly finished his supper and went his way to his room for a moment's rest. Through the open windows he could hear the cheering which greeted Brisbane's entrance into the opera-house, which faced upon the little square before the hotel. The street was thronging with noisy boys, and at intervals a band of young herders clattered into the square. Their horses thickened along the hitching-poles, and the saloons swarmed with men already inflamed with drink. The air seemed heavy, oppressive, electrical, and the shrill cheers which rose above the dull rumble of pounding boot-heels in the hall possessed a savage animal vehemence. Again a sense of impending disaster swept over the young officer. "I am tired and nervous," he thought. "Surely law and order rules in a civilized community like this." He put away all thoughts of war as he followed the boy up the stair-way to the Brisbane private parlor, and became the lover, palpitant with the hope that he was about to see Elsie alone. She met him at the door, her face a-quiver with feeling, a note of alarm in her voice. "Have you heard the cheering? They are denouncing you over there!" "I suppose so. But let's not talk of such unimportant matters; this is our last evening together, and I want to forget the storm outside. Since I left you last night I have had a most remarkable experience, and I--" "Oh, you mean catching the murderer; tell me about it!" "No. Oh no; that is not worth telling. I mean something more intimately personal." Shrill yells from across the way interrupted him, and Elsie rose and shut the window. "I hate them; they are worse than savages," she said. "Please don't mind them." He went on: "I was about to say I had a deal of time to think on my long ride this morning, and I reached some conclusions which I want to tell you about. When my prisoner was safe in the guard-house, I went over to see how my little temple of art looked--I mean your studio, of course. I closed the door and dropped into one of the big chairs, hoping to gain rest and serenity in the beauty and quiet of the place. But I didn't; I was painfully depressed." She opened her eyes very wide at this. "Why?" "Because everything I saw there emphasized the irrevocable loss I had suffered. I couldn't endure the thought of it, and I fled. I could not remain without weeping, and you know a man is ashamed of his tears; but when I got your note of warning I flung conscience to the winds! 'It is not a crime to love a woman,' I said. 'I will write to her and say to her "I love you, no matter what happens;"' and, now I find you here, I tell it to you instead of writing it." She was facing him with a look of perplexity and alarm. One hand laid upon her throat seemed to express suffering. When she spoke her voice was very low. "What do you expect me to say; you make it so hard for me! Why do you tell me this?" "Because I could not rest till I had spoken. For a long time I thought you were bound to Lawson, and since then I've tried to keep silent because of my poverty and--no one knows better than I the unreason of it all--I do not ask you to speak except to say, 'I am sorry.' When I found you were still within reach, the desire to let you know my feeling overcame every other consideration. I can't even do the customary thing and ask you to wait, for my future is as uncertain as my present, but if you could say you loved me--a little--" he paused abruptly, as though choked into silence by a merciless hand. Elsie remained silent, with her eyes turned towards the window, her hands in her lap, and at last he went on: "If your father is a true prophet, I shall be ordered back to my regiment. That will hurt me, but it won't ruin me exactly. It would be a shameful thing if the department sacrificed me to expediency; but politicians are wonderful people! If you were not so much an artist and Andrew Brisbane's daughter, I would ask you to come to me and help me do my work, but I can't quite do that--yet; I can only say you are more to me now than any other soul in the world. I do this because I can't keep from it," he repeated, in poor ending. "I've heard that the best way to make a woman love a man is to persecute the man," she replied, smiling a little, though her eyes were wet. "When you were apparently triumphant I hated you--now--" she hesitated and a sudden timidity shook her. He sprang up. "Can you carry out the figure? I dare you to finish the sentence. Do you care for me a little?" His face, suddenly illuminated, moved her powerfully. "I'm afraid I do--wait, please!" She stopped him with a gesture. "You mustn't think I mean more than I do. My mind is all in a whirl now; it isn't fair to hurry me; I must take time to consider. Your being poor and an Indian agent wouldn't make any difference to me if I--But I must be sure. I respect you--I admire you very much--and last night when I said good-bye I felt a sharp pain here." She put her hand to her throat. "But I must be sure. There are so many things against it," she ended, covering her eyes with her hand in piteous perplexity. His eyes were alight, his voice eager. "It would be such a glorious thing if you could join me in my work." The mention of his work stung her. "Oh no! It is impossible. I should die here! I have no sense of duty towards these poor vagabonds. I'm sorry for them--but to live here--no, no! You must not ask it. You must go your way and I will go mine. You are only torturing me needlessly." "Forgive me," he pleaded. "I did not mean to do so." She continued, wildly: "Can't you see how crazy, how impossible, it is? I admire you--I believe in your work--it is magnificent; but I can't live your life. My friends, my art, mean too much to me." There was a tremulous, passionate pleading which failed of finality: it perplexed her lover; it did not convince him. "You are right; of course you are right," he said again; "but that does not help me to bear the pain of your loss. I can't let you go out of my life--utterly--I can't do it--I will not--Hark! What is that?" A faint, far-off, thundering sound interrupted him. A rushing roar, as of many horsemen rapidly approaching. Hastening to the window, Curtis bent his head to listen. "It sounds like a cavalry charge. Here they come! Cowboys--a mob of them! Can it be Yarpe's gang? Yes; that is precisely what it is. Yarpe leading them into some further deviltry." Whooping and cursing, and urging their tired horses with quirt and spur, the desperadoes, somewhat thinned of ranks, pouring by in clattering, pounding rush--as orderless as a charging squad of Sioux warriors--turned up a side street and disappeared almost before any one but Curtis was aware of them. "They are bent on mischief," said the soldier as he turned upon the girl, all personal feeling swept away by the passing mob. "They have followed me in to force the jail and hang Cut Finger." He caught up his cap. "I must prevent it!" "No! No!" cried Elsie, seizing his arm. "You must not go out in the street to-night--they will kill you--please don't go--you have done your duty. Now let the mayor act, I beg of you!" "Dear girl, I _must_ thwart this lynching party. I would be disgraced! Don't you see? They have seized the moment when the citizens are all in the hall away from the jail to do this thing. I must alarm the town and prevent them." Even as he pleaded with her the tumult in the hall broke forth again, roared for a moment in wild crescendo, and then ceased instantly, strangely. A moment's silence followed, and a confused murmur arose, quite different from any sound which had hitherto emanated from the hall. A powerful voice dominated all others, and through the open windows the words of command could be distinctly heard. "_Keep back there! Keep your seats!_" "The meeting is breaking up!" exclaimed Curtis. "Some one has alarmed them. See, they are pouring out to prevent this crazy mob from carrying out its plan." The shouting ceased, but the trample of feet and the murmur of voices thickened to a clamor, and Elsie turned white with a new fear. "They are rushing across the square! Perhaps they are coming for _you_!" "I don't think so; they would not dare to attack me--they hate me, but--" Her over-wrought nerves gave way. A panic seized her. "Hide! Hide! They will kill you!" she cried out, hoarsely. "No; I am going to help them defend the jail." "For my sake!" she pleaded, "don't leave me! Listen! they are coming!" she whispered. The sound of many feet could be heard in the lobby below, the roar of a hundred voices came up the stair-way, but even the excited girl could now detect something hushed and solemn in the sound--something mournful in the measured footsteps up the stairs. "It is father!" she cried, with a flash of divination. "Something has happened to him!" And with this new terror in her face she hurried out into the hall. Curtis reached her side just as the head of the procession topped the stair-way. Brisbane, up-borne by Lawson and a tall young stranger, first appeared, followed by a dozen men, who walked two and two with bared heads and serious faces, as if following a hearse. The stricken man's face was flushed and knobby, and his eyelids drooped laxly like those of a drunkard. He saw nothing, and his breathing was labored. "Father, what has happened?" called Elsie. "Tell me--quick!" "A touch of vertigo," answered Lawson, soothingly. "The doctor says nothing serious." "Are you the doctor?" she turned to the young man. "Yes. Don't be alarmed. The Senator has over-taxed himself a little, that is all, and needs rest. Show me his bed, and we will make him comfortable." Elsie led the way to the bedroom, while Curtis stood helplessly facing the crowd in the hall. Lawson relieved the situation by coming out a few moments later to say: "Gentlemen, the doctor thanks you, and requests you to leave the Senator to rest as quietly as possible." After this dismissal had dispersed the on-lookers, Lawson turned to Curtis. "The old man's work as a speaker is done. Rather tragic business, don't you think? He was assailing you with the utmost bitterness. His big, right fist was in the air like a hammer when he fell; but it was his last effort." Curtis seized his hand and said: "I envy you your chance to go with her and serve her." His voice changed. "The mob! Did you hear Yarpe and his men pass?" "No; when?" "Not ten minutes ago. I fear some mischief." The doctor appeared. "Mr. Lawson, a moment." As Lawson hurried into the sick-room a far-off, faint volley of pistol-shots broke the hush that had settled over the square. Distant yells succeeded, accompanied by a sound as of some giant hammering. The young soldier lifted his head like a young lion listening to a battle-call. "They are beating in the gates!" he said. For a moment he hesitated, but only for a moment. "She is safe!" he thought, with a glance towards Elsie's door. "My man and the poor little wife are not," and he rushed down the stair-way and out into the street with intent to find and defend his faithful men. XXXIII ELSIE CONFESSES HER LOVE As he paused on the steps to the hotel, a gust of bitter rage swept over him. "What can I do against this implacable town? Oh, for a squad of the boys in blue!" The street and square were filled with men all running, as to a fire, from left to right--a laughing, jesting throng. Along the hitching-poles excited and jocular cowboys were loosing their ponies and leaping to their saddles. Some excitable citizen had begun to ring the fire-bell, and women, bareheaded and white with fear, were lining the sidewalks and leaning from windows. The town resembled an ant-hill into which a fleeing bison has planted a foot. "Oh, sir!" cried one young mother as she caught sight of Curtis, "are the Injuns coming?" "No," he replied, bitterly, "these marauders are not Indians; they are noble citizens," and set off at a run towards the corral in which Two Horns and Crow were camped. The tumult behind him grew fainter, and at last died to a murmur, and only one or two houses showed a light. Ladue's was an old ranch on the river, around which the town of Pinon had for twenty years been slowly growing. The cabin was of stone, low and strong, and two sides of it formed the corner of a low corral of cottonwood logs. In this enclosure teamsters (for two bits) were allowed to camp and feed their horses. A rickety gate some fifty feet south of the house stood ajar, and Curtis entered the yard, calling sharply for Crow Wing and Two Horns. No one replied. Searching the stalls, he found the blankets wherein they had lain, but the tumult had undoubtedly called them forth into danger. Hurrying to the house, he knocked most vigorously at the door--to no effect. The shack was also empty. Closing the door with a slam, the young officer, now thoroughly alarmed, turned back towards the hotel. A vast, confused clamor, growing each moment louder, added edge to his apprehension. The crowd was evidently returning from the jail, jubilant and remorseless. Upon reaching the corner of the square Curtis turned to the left, with the design of encircling it, hoping to find the two redmen looking on from a door-way on the outskirts of the throng. He had crossed but one side of the plaza, when a band of cowboys dashed in from the opposite corner with swinging lariats, whooping shrilly, in close pursuit of a flying footman. A moment later a rope looped, the fugitive fell and the horsemen closed round him in joyous clamor, like dogs around a fox. With a fear that this was one of his men, Curtis raised a great shout, but his voice was lost in the rush and roar of the throng pouring in towards the fugitive. In fierce rage he rushed straight towards the whirling mass of horsemen, but before he had passed half the intervening space a horseman circled the pavilion, and the popping of a revolver, swift yet with deliberate pauses, began. Wild yells broke forth, the pursuers scattered, other revolvers began to crack, and as the press of horsemen reeled back, Curtis perceived Calvin, dismounted and bareheaded, with his back against the wall of the little wooden band-stand, defiant, a revolver in each hand, holding the mob at bay, while over his head a light sputtered and sizzled. A lane seemed to open for Curtis as he ran swiftly in towards the writhing, ensnared captive on the ground. It was Two Horns, struggling with the ropes which bound him, and just as his Little Father bent over him the big Tetong freed himself, and, with a sliding rush, entered the shadow by Calvin's side. Instantly his revolver began to speak. Curtis, left alone in the full light of the lamp on the pavilion, raised his arms and shouted: "Hold! Cease firing!" The crowd recognized him and fell silent. The army blue subdued them, and those who had done the shooting began to edge away. For a moment the young soldier could not speak, so furious was he, but at last he found words: "Cowards! Is this your way of fighting--a hundred to one? Where is your mayor? Have you no law in this town?" He turned to Calvin, who stood still, leaning against the pavilion. "Are you hurt?" Calvin lifted one dripping hand. "I reckon I'm punched a few. My right arm feels numb, and the blood is fillin' my left boot. But I'm all here, sure thing." But even as he spoke he reeled. Curtis caught him; he smiled apologetically: "That left leg o' mine, sure feels like a hitchin'-post; reckon some one must o' clipped a nerve somewhere." Two Horns seized him by the other arm, just as Winters blustered into the circle. "What's going on here; who's doin' this shootin'?" "This is a good time to ask that," remarked Curtis. "Where were you twenty minutes ago?" Calvin struggled to get his right hand free. "Let me have a crack at the beast!" he pleaded. "I saw you," he said to Winters: "you were in the lynching crowd, you sneak! You hung round in the shadow like a coyote." Curtis tried to calm him. "Come, this won't do, Calvin; you are losing blood and must have a doctor; come to the hotel." As they half-carried him away the young rancher snarled back, like a wounded wolf: "I disown the whole cowardly pack of ye; I put my mark on some of ye, too." The crowd was now so completely with Calvin that Winters hastened to explain: "Cal is my deputy; he was acting inside his duty! He was trying to keep the peace and you had no business fightin'," and proceeded to arrest some fairly innocent by-standers, while the wounded desperadoes were being swiftly hidden away by their friends, and the remaining citizens of the town talked of what should have been done. Calvin continued to explain as they hurried him through the excited throng. "I tried to stand 'em off at the jail," he said, "but I couldn't get near enough; my cayuse was used up. Oh, you was there!" he called to a tall man with a new sombrero, "I saw you, Bill Vawney, and I'll get you for it; I've spotted you!" He was enraged through every fibre of his strong, young body, and only the iron grip of the persistent men kept him from doing battle. As they neared the hotel, Curtis, looking up, glimpsed Elsie's white face at the window and waved his cap at her. She clapped her hands in joy of his return, but did not smile. The hotel lobby was packed with a silent mass of men, but the landlord, with authoritative voice, called out: "Clear the way, gentlemen!" and a lane opened for them. "Right in here," he added, and led the way to the parlor bedroom. The Captain and Calvin were now most distinguished of citizens; nothing was too good for them. "Bring a physician," said Curtis. "Right here," replied a cool, clear voice, and Doctor Philipps stepped to Calvin's side and relieved Two Horns. The young rancher sank down on the bed limply, but smiled as he explained: "I'm only singed a little, doc. They had me foul. You see, I was in the light, but I handed one or two of them something they didn't like. I left a keepsake with 'em. They won't forget me soon." The physician pressed him back upon the bed and began to strip his clothes from him. "Be quiet for five minutes and I'll have you in shape. We must close up your gashes." Curtis, relieved of part of his anxiety, then asked: "How is the Senator?" "Pretty comfortable; no danger." "Don't leave me, Major," called Calvin, as Curtis turned away to seek Elsie. "Don't let this chap cut me up. I'm no centipede. I need all my legs." There was genuine pleading in the boy's voice, and Curtis came back and took a chair near him while the doctor probed the wounds and dressed them. The officer's heart was very tender towards the reckless, warm-hearted young rancher as he watched his face whiten and the lips stiffen in the effort to conceal his pain. "Calvin, you've been loyal all through," he said, "and we won't forget it." At last, when the wounds were bandaged and the worst of the pain over, Curtis turned to Two Horns and signed: "Where is Crow and the wife of Cut Finger?" "I do not know." "I will go find him; you remain here. Do not fear; you are safe now. Sit down by Calvin's bed. You will sleep here to-night." As he made his way through the close-packed mass of excited men in the lobby and before the hotel, Curtis met no hostile face. It seemed that all men were become his friends, and eager to disclaim any share in the mob's action. He put their proffered hands aside and hurried back to Ladue's, which he found close-barred and dark. "Who's there?" called a shaking voice as he knocked. "Captain Curtis. Where is Crow?" "In here!" was the answer, in joyful voice. As he opened the door, Ladue reached his hand to the agent. "My God, I'm glad it is you! I was afraid you'd been wiped out. Where is Two Horns?" Crow, with his revolver still gripped in his hand, stepped forward, his face quivering with emotion. "Little Father, it is good to see you; you are not hurt? Where is Two Horns?" "Safe in the big house with me. The evil white men are gone; you will camp here, you and the wife of Cut Finger," he signed as he saw the cowering form of the little wife. Ladue, a big, hulking, pock-marked half-breed, began to grin. "I was a-scared; I sure was. I thought we was all goin' to hang. Old Bill Yarpe was out for game." "The better citizens are in control now," replied Curtis. "You are safe, but you'd better remain in the house till morning." As Curtis made his way through the crowd some one raised a cheer for "Major Curtis," and the cry was taken up by a hundred voices. Indignant citizens shouted: "We'll stand by you, Major. We'll see justice done." Curtis, as he reached the stair-way, turned and coldly said: "Make your words good. For four days a mob of two hundred armed men have menaced the lives of my employés and my wards, and you did nothing to prevent them. I am glad to see you appreciate the horror and the disgrace of this night's doings. If you mean what you say, let no guilty man escape. Make this night the memorable end of lawlessness in your country." "We will!" roared a big, broad-faced, black-bearded man, and the crowd broke into another roar of approval. Elsie was waiting at the top of the stairs, tense and white. Her eyes burned down into his with a singular flame as she cried out: "Why didn't you come to me sooner? Why do you walk so slowly? Are you hurt? Tell me the truth!" "No, only tired," he answered, as he reached her side. She put out her hand and touched his breast. "You are; you are all bloody. Take off your coat; let me see!" "No, it's not mine; it is poor Calvin's; he was badly wounded; he leaned against me." "But I saw you standing in the pistol-fire; take it off, I say!" Her voice was almost frenziedly insistent. He removed his coat in a daze of astonishment, and she cried out, triumphantly: "See! I was right; your shirt is soaked. You are wounded!" "True enough!" he replied, looking down in surprise at a big stain on his shoulder. "I've been 'singed,' as Calvin calls it. It can't be serious, for I have not felt it." A sudden faintness seized upon Elsie as she gazed fixedly upon the tell-tale stain. A gray whiteness passed over her face. "Oh, God! suppose you had been killed!" she whispered. In that shuddering whisper was the expression of the girl's complete and final surrender, and Curtis did not question, did not speak; he took her in his arms to comfort her. "My sweetheart, you _do_ love me! I doubt no more. My poverty, your wealth, what do they matter?" She suddenly started away. "Oh, your wound! Where is the doctor? Go to him!" "The touch of your lips has healed me," he protested, but she insisted. "Go! You are bleeding!" she commanded; and so, reluctantly, lingeringly, with most unmilitary sloth, he turned away, made numb to any physical pain by the tenderness in her voice. As the young surgeon was dressing the gash, he said: "Well, Captain, things happen in the West." "Yes, the kind of things which ought not to happen anywhere. I suppose they lynched poor Cut Finger?" "No; they merely shot him and dragged him to death, as near as I can learn." Curtis clinched his fists. "Ah, the devils! Where is the body?" "Back in the corridor of the jail." Curtis pondered the effect of this news on the tribe. "It's a little difficult to eliminate violence from an inferior race when such cruelty is manifested in those we call their teachers." He sent for Ladue, who was deep in discussion of the evening's events with Crow and Two Horns, and said to him: "Do not tell the wife of Cut Finger of the death of her husband; wait till morning. What the sheriff will do with the body I do not know. To-morrow say to her, 'All is over; go with the agent.' It will do her no good to remain here. Good-night!" * * * * * It was hard to realize in the peaceful light of the following morning that the little square had been the scene of so much cruelty and riot. The townspeople came forth yawning and lax, and went about their duties mechanically. Crow Wing and Two Horns, who would camp nowhere but on the floor of Curtis's room, were awake at dawn, conversing in signs, in order not to disturb the Little Father. He, waking a little later, called to them in greeting and said: "Now all is quiet. The white men are sorry. You are safe. Go to Paul's, eat and get ready. We must start at once for the agency. Cut Finger did an ill deed, and brought trouble on us all. Now he is dead, but good may come out of it. Go, tell the little wife; be gentle with her; say to her I wish her to go home with us." Silently, soberly, the two redmen left the room, and Curtis dressed and went at once to find Calvin. The boy looked up as Curtis entered and cheerily called: "Hello, Major, I've had a lively dream. I dreamed there was some gun-play goin' on out in the square and you and I were in it. Was that right?" "I've a sore place here on my shoulder that says you are. How do you feel? Can you travel? If you can, I'll take you home in my buckboard." "I can travel all right, but I haven't any home to go to. The old man and I haven't hitched very well for a year, and this will just about turn me out on the range." "Well, come home with me, then; Jennie will soon have you all right again; she's a famous nurse, and will look out for you till your mother comes over, as she will. Mothers don't go back on their boys." A curious dimness came into the bold, keen eyes of the wounded youth. "Major, that'll suit me better than anything else I know." "Very well, if the doctor says you can travel, we'll go along together," replied Curtis. He was eager to see Elsie and was pacing impatiently up and down the hall when Lawson met him, smiling, imperturbable. "Well, Captain, how are you this morning?" "Have you seen Miss Brisbane?" "No; she is still asleep, I hope. The Senator is conscious, but in a curious state; seems not to know or care where he is; his troubles are over." Even as he spoke a maid came from Elsie's room to say that her mistress would breakfast in her own parlor, and wished both Mr. Lawson and Captain Curtis to join her in half an hour. Lawson, in discussing the events of the night, was decidedly optimistic. "This outbreak will bring about a reaction," he said, with conviction. "You will find every decent man on your side to-day." "I hope so," responded Curtis. "But last night's mob made me long for my Gray-Horse Troop." When they entered the little parlor Elsie rose and passed straight to Curtis without coquetry or concealment. "How is your wound? Did you sleep?" He assured her that he was almost as well as ever, and not till she had convinced herself of the truth did she turn to Lawson. "Osborne, I can never thank you enough for your good, kind help." Osborne protested that he had done nothing worth considering, and they took seats at the table--a subdued and quiet group, for Lawson was still suffering from his loss, and the lovers could not conceal from themselves the knowledge that this was their last meeting for many long months. Elsie was a being transformed, so tender, so wilful, so strangely sweet and womanly was she in every smile and in every gesture. They dwelt upon impersonal topics so long as Lawson remained; but he, being ill at ease, hastened with his coffee, and soon made excuse to withdraw, leaving them alone. For a moment they faced each other, and then, with a wistful cadence in his voice, Curtis said, "Dear girl, it's hard to say good-bye now, just when I have found you, but I must return at once." "Oh, must you? Can't you wait till we go--this afternoon?" "No; I must be the first to carry this dreadful news to my people." "You are right, of course; but I'll miss you so, and you need me. Say you need me!" "Need you! Of course I do; but you cannot stay with me and I cannot go with you." "I know, I know!" she sighed, resignedly. "But it hurts all the same." "This tumult will die out soon," he went on, in the effort to comfort her, "and then I can come on to Washington for a visit. I warn you I've lost all my scruples; seventeen hundred million dollars are as straws in my path, now that I know you really care for me." "I don't feel rich now; I feel very poor. You must come to Washington soon." "I warn you that when I come I will ask hard things of you!" He rose and his face darkened. "But my duty calls!" She came to him and yielded herself to his embrace. "My queenly, beautiful girl! It is sweet to have you here in my arms; but I _must_ say good-bye--good-bye." In spite of his words he held her till she, with an instinctive movement, pushed from his arms. "Go--go quick!" she exclaimed, in a low, imperative voice. Not staying to wonder at the meaning of her strange dismissal, he turned and left the room without looking back. Only after he had helped Calvin into the wagon, and had taken his seat beside him, did the young soldier lift his eyes in search of her face at the window. She was looking down upon him, tears were on her cheeks, but she blew a kiss from her finger-tips, not caring if all the world were there to see. XXXIV SEED-TIME As Lawson predicted, the very violence of this outburst of racial hatred was its cure. A reaction set in. The leaders of Brisbane's party, with loud shouts, ordered their harriers back to their lairs, while the great leader himself, oblivious to daylight or to darkness, was hurried home to Washington. The Tetongs returned to their camps and hay-making, the troops drilled peacefully each afternoon in the broiling heat, while Curtis bent to his work again with a desperate sort of energy, as if by so doing he could shorten the long, hot days, which seemed well-nigh interminable after the passing of Elsie and her friends. In a letter announcing their safe arrival in Washington, Elsie said: "I am going to see the President about you, as soon as he returns from the mountains. Papa is gaining, but takes no interest in anything. He is pitifully weak, but the doctor thinks he will recover if he will only rest. His brain is worn out and needs complete freedom from care. Congress has adjourned finally. I am told that your enemies expect to secure a court-martial on the charge of usurping the authority of the sheriff. Osborne says not to worry, for nothing will be done now till the President returns, and he is confident that the department will sustain you--the fact that the violence you feared did actually take place has robbed your enemies of their power." Nevertheless, the fight against the Tetongs and himself went on with ever-increasing rancor during July and August, and each Congressional candidate was sharply interrogated as to his attitude towards the removal bill. The anti-administration papers boldly said: "If we win (and we will) we'll cut the comb of this bantam. We'll break his sabre over his back." To this the opposition made answer: "We're no lovers of the redman, but Captain Curtis is an honorable soldier, doing his duty, and it will not be easy for you, even if victorious, to order a court-martial." This half-hearted defence gave courage to those who took the high ground that the time for lynching had gone by. "The Tetongs have rights which every decent man is bound to respect, no matter how much he personally dislikes the redskin." During the last days of August a letter came from Elsie, full of comforting assurances, both public and private, being more intimate and tender in tone than any that had preceded it, and full of sprightly humor too. It began: "MY DEAR SOLDIER,--I've been so busy fighting your enemies I couldn't write a letter. I've met both the Secretary and the commissioner--their desks are said to be full of screeds against you--_and I've been to see the President_! He wasn't a bit gallant, but he listened. He glowered at me (not unkindly) while I told your story. I'm afraid I didn't phrase it very well, but he listened. I brought out all the good points I could think of. I said: 'Mr. President, Captain Curtis is the most disinterested man in the Indian service. He is sacrificing everything for his plans.' 'What are his plans?' he asked, so abruptly that I jumped. I then spoke learnedly of irrigating ditches and gardens; you would have laughed had you heard me, and I said: 'If he is ordered back to his regiment, Mr. President, these poor people will be robbed again.' 'Does Mr. Blank, of New York, endorse Captain Curtis?' he asked. I didn't see what this led to, but I answered that I did not know. 'He's a friend of yours, isn't he?' he asked. 'Whom do you mean?' I said, and my cheeks burned. Then he smiled. 'You needn't worry,' he said, banging the table with his fist. 'I'll keep Captain Curtis where he is if every politician in the State petitions for his removal.' I liked his wooden cuss-word, and I thanked him and jumped up and hurried home to write this letter. The Secretary told Osborne that the bill for buying out the settlers would certainly go through next winter, and that your plans were approved by the whole department. So, you see, you are master of the situation, and can plan as grandly as you wish--the entire reservation is yours. "It is still hot here, and now that my 'lobbying' is done, I am going to the sea-shore, where papa is, and I know I shall wish you were with me to enjoy it. I am so sorry for you and Jennie, my heart aches for you. Think of it! The cool, beautiful ocean will be singing me to sleep to-night. I wish I could send you some fruit and some ices; I know you are longing for them. "I wonder how it will all turn out? Will you be East this winter? Perhaps I'll help you celebrate the opening of your new gardens, next spring. Wouldn't you like me to come out and break a bottle of wine over the first plough or water-gate or something? If you do, maybe I'll come. If you write, address me at the Brunswick, Crescent Beach. I wish you could come and see me here--you look so handsome in your uniform." The soldier's answer was not a letter, it was a packet! He began by writing sorrowfully: "DEAREST GIRL,--I fear I shall not be able to get away this winter. There is so much here that requires my care. If the bill passes, the people will be stirred up; if it doesn't pass, the settlers will be uneasy, and I shall be most imperatively necessary here. Nothing would be sweeter to me than a visit to you at the beach. As a boy I knew the sea-shore intimately, and to wall the sands with you would be to revive those sweet, careless boy memories and unite them with the deepest emotions of my life--my love for you, dear one. It almost makes me willing to resign. In a sense it would be worth it. I _would_ resign only I know I am not losing the delight forever--I am only postponing it a year. "I have thought pretty deeply on my problem, dearest, and I've come to this conclusion: When two people love each other as we do, neither poverty nor riches--nothing but duty, should separate them. Your wealth troubled me at first. I knew I could not give you the comforts--not to say luxuries--you were accustomed to, and I knew that my life as a soldier would always make even a barrack a place of uncertain residence. I must stand to my guns here till I have won my fight; then I may ask for a transfer to some field where life would not be so hard. If only there were ways to use your great wealth in helping these people I would rejoice to be your agent in the matter. "I am a penniless suitor, but a good soldier. I can say that without egotism. I think I could have acquired money had I started out that way; of course I cannot do it now. Perhaps my knowledge and training will come to supplement and give power to your wealth. I must work. I am not one to be idle. If I go on working--devising--in my own way, then my self-respect would not be daunted, even though you were worth ten millions instead of one. I am fitted to be the head of a department--like that of Forestry, or Civil Engineering. After my work here is finished I may ask for something of that kind, but I am resolved to do my duty here first. I like your suggestion about the water-gate. I hold you to that word, my lady. One year from now, when my gardens are ready for the sickle, I will have the criers announce a harvest-home festival, and you must come and dance with me among my people, and then, perhaps, I will take a little vacation, and return with you to the East, and be happy with you among the joyous of the earth for a little season. Beyond that I dare not plan." The administration was sustained, and Brisbane's forces were beaten back. The better elements of the State, long scattered, disintegrated, and without voice, spoke, and with majesty, rebuking the cruelty, the barbarism, and the blatant assertion of men like Musgrove and Streeter, who had made the State odious. Even Winters, the sheriff, was defeated, and a fairly humane and decent citizen put in his place, and this change, close down to the people, was most significant of all. "Now I have hope of the courts," said Curtis to Maynard. If the Tetongs did not at once apprehend the peace and comfort which the defeat of Brisbane's gang and the passage of the purchase bill assured to them, they deeply appreciated the significance of the immediate withdrawal of the settlers. They rejoiced in full-toned song as their implacable and sleepless enemies drove their heavily laden wagons across the line, leaving their farms, sheds, and houses to the government for the use of the needy tribe. The urgency of the case being fully pleaded, the whole readjustment was permitted to be made the following spring, and the powers of the agent and his employés were taxed to the uttermost. When the order actually came to hand, Curtis mounted his horse and rode from camp to camp, carrying the good news; calling the members of each band around him, he told the story of their victory. "Your days of hunger and cold will soon be over," he said. "The white man has gone from the reservation. The water of the streams, the ploughed fields, are all yours. Now we must set to work. Every one will have good ground; all will share alike, and every one must work. We must show the Great Father at Washington that we are glad of his kindness. Our friends will not be ashamed when they come to see us, and look upon our corn and wheat." Every man, woman, and child did as they had promised. They laid hands to the duties appointed them, and did so merrily. They moved at once to the places designated. A mighty shifting of dwellings took place first of all, and when this was finished they set to work. They built fences, they dug ditches, they ploughed and they planted, cheery as robins. Even the gaunt old women lifted their morose faces to the sun and muttered unaccustomed thanks. The old men no longer sat in complaining council, but talked of the wonderful things about to be. "Ho! have you heard?" cried one. "Grayman lives in the house the white man has left; Elk too. Two Horns sleeps in the house above Grayman, and is not afraid. Ah, it is wonderful!" The more thoughtful dwelt in imagination on the reservation completely fenced, and saw the hills swarming with cattle as in the olden time it swarmed with the wild, black buffalo. They helped at the gardens, these old men, and as they rested on their hoes and listened to the laughter of the women and children, they said one to the other: "Our camp is as it was in the days when game was plenty. Every one is smiling. Our worst days are over. The white man's road is very long, and runs into a strange country, but while Swift Eagle leads we follow." There was commotion in every corral, where long-haired men in leggings and with feathered ornaments in their hats, were awkwardly breaking fiery ponies to drive, for teams were in sharp demand. The young men who formerly raced horses, for lack of other things to do, and in order not to die of inertness, now became the hilarious teamsters of each valley. Every person, white or red, who could give instruction in ditching and planting, was employed each hour of the day. The various camps were as busy as ant-hills, and as full of cheer as a flock of magpies. Curtis was everywhere, superintending the moving of barns, the building of cabins, and the laying out of lands. Each night he returned to his bed so tired he could not lie flat enough, but happy in the knowledge that some needed and permanent improvement had that day been made. Lawson, faithful to his post, came on from Washington, and was a comfort in ways less material than wielding a hoe. He went about encouraging the people at their work, and his words had the quality of a poem. "You see how it is!" he said. "You need not despair. It is not true that the redmen are to vanish from the earth. They are now to be happy and have plenty of food. The white people, at last, have found out the way to help you." Maynard got a short leave of absence, and came over to see "the hustle," as he called it, and to visit Jennie, who still refused to leave her post, though she had practically consented to his proposal. "We will see," she had said. "If George marries, then I will feel free to go with you; but not now." Maynard expressed the same astonishment as ever. "A man may fight a people a lifetime and never really know 'em. Now I consider it marvellous the way these devils work." Calvin, after his recovery, came seldom to the agency. He recognized the power and the fitness of Captain Maynard's successful courtship, and though Jennie wrote twice inviting him to call, he did not come, and did not even reply till she had almost forgotten her own letters. In a very erratic and laborious screed he conveyed his regrets. "I'm powfle bizzy just now. The old man is gone East, an' that thros all the work of the ranch onto me. Ime just as mutch obliged." Jennie did not laugh at this letter; she put it away with a sigh--"Poor boy!" XXXV THE BATTLE WITH THE WEEDS Between the planting and the reaping lay the sun-smitten summer-time and a battle with the weeds! It was a period demanding patience and understanding in Curtis, for as the first flush of enthusiasm over the sowing died away, apathy and indifference sprang up naturally as thistles. These childlike souls said: "Behold we have done our part, now let Mother Earth and the Father Sun bring forth the harvest. We cannot ripen the grain; we can only wait. Besides, we are weary." To them harvest should follow seeding without further effort. They were like boys wearied with waiting for the trees to grow. The seed and the apple were too far apart. Curtis, understanding this lack of training in their lives, did not allow himself to express the impatience he sometimes felt. He told them that the new life they were to lead involved constant care, but care would bring a reward. "In the old days when you hunted, these things were not so." He also made honorable examples of men like Two Horns and Crane's Voice, who kept their gardens clean of all noxious plants. He organized mimic war-parties. "To-day," he said, "the warriors of Elk will go forth with me against these evil ones, the weeds. Each man will be armed with a bright hoe. Elk, old as he is, will lead, and I will go by his side. We will work busily till the sun has climbed half-way to his hill; then we will smoke." His knowledge of their needs, their habits, their modes of thinking, made all that he did successful. He allowed the women to bring cool drinks, flavored with herbs, and to build little bowers to shade their sons and husbands from the fierce sun while they rested. There was grumbling, there was envy, naturally, but less than he expected. On the first day of July he was confident of a big crop, and wrote to Elsie, saying: "The potatoes are in bloom, the wheat is waving in the wind like a green sea. I am waiting." To this she replied: "Papa's mind turns to the mountains these hot days, and so we are coming; also my heart yearns for a certain soldier in the West--a commander of shining hoes and a leader of destructive red ploughmen. I ought, for my own peace and comfort, to forget this singular creature; but, alas! I cannot. My perplexity grows daily. I long to see him, yet I am afraid!" These words made him tireless and of Job-like patience. "You need not wait till the harvest is ended," he wrote, in reply. "Come and watch the grain ripen, so that you will be garmented duly and ready for the feast. Moreover, we will snatch so many more days of joy out of the maw of devouring time." To this she answered: "Your expressed reasons are not overwhelming, but as the sun is scorching now, we leave soon. We will reach Pinon City in about ten days. Father is quite well, but restless with the heat. I am well, but restless, for other reasons. I don't see that the problem of our lives is any nearer solution, do you? What can I do? What can you do? Is there any common ground?" "There are no problems now that you are coming," he replied. It was with a deep surprise and joy that she found herself trembling before each of his letters. All the old-time ecstasy and breathless passion of her girlhood came back to her, but enlarged, and based deeper, a woman's care and introspection giving it greater significance and power. The next day after Elsie's definite promise Curtis rode over to the first camp and called the people round him and said: "Next week we will hold our feast to give thanks for the good things the earth has given to us, and after we have councilled together we will feast and have a dance. Let everything be in order. Come in your finest dress. Let every garment be as it was of old. Let the young girls be very beautiful in whitened buckskin and beads. I do not despise your old-time dress; I like it. Hereafter, when you work you will need to wear white man's clothes, for they are more comfortable; but when you wish to have a good time, then your old dress will be pleasant. I do not ask you to forget the old time. It is past, but it is sweet to you. I want you to be happy, for I am happy." XXXVI THE HARVEST-HOME The hay-harvest was still going on when Curtis and Jennie drove down the valley to meet Elsie and Lawson at Pinon City. "Father is much changed," Elsie had written. "You will hardly know him now. He has forgotten all about his campaign; he remembers you only momentarily, so that you need not feel any resentment. He will probably meet you as if he had never seen you before. Please do not show any surprise, no matter what he says." Curtis expected to find Brisbane a poor shambling wreck of a man, morose and sorrowful to look upon, and his astonishment was correspondingly profound as the ex-Senator descended from the train. His step was vigorous, and his face was placid and of good color; thus much the young soldier took in at a glance, then he forgot all the world in the radiant face of his heart's beloved. As she put up her lips to be kissed, Elsie's eyes were dim with tears, and she hurried to Jennie as if for relief from her emotion. When she turned, her father was shaking hands urbanely with Curtis. "Glad to meet you, sir," he said, in the tone of the suave man of position. "I didn't catch the name." A spasm of pain crossed Elsie's face. "This is Mr. Curtis, papa. Don't you remember Captain Curtis?" "Ah, yes, so it is," he replied. "I remember you spoke of him once before. I am very glad to make your acquaintance--very glad indeed, sir." To meet this calm politeness in a man who, in his right mind, would have refused to shake hands, was deeply moving to the young officer. To all outward appearance the great promoter was the same, and on all matters concerning his first campaign and first term, and especially on the events of his early life, he spoke with freedom, even with humor, but of the incidents of the later campaign he had no recollection. That he had been defeated and humbled seemed also to have left no lasting mark upon his mind. "The fact is, my memory has grown very bad," he explained. "I can remember faces in a dim way, but anything that is said to me I forget instantly." For a time the thought of Brisbane's mental decay threw a gloom over the party, but Elsie said: "Please don't mind him. I have reached a certain philosophic calm in the matter. I can do him no good by sorrowing. I have, therefore, determined to be as happy as I can." Curtis cheerfully called: "We must start at once. Will your father go with us?" "Oh no! I am afraid to have him undertake that. He will go on to Copper City with his secretary." "Of course, that is best," replied Curtis, vastly relieved. Brisbane parted with Elsie quite matter-of-factly, and his urbanity remained unbroken as he shook hands with Curtis. "Pleased to have met you, sir," he said, and, in spite of her resolution, the tears filled the daughter's eyes. The old warrior's smiling forgetfulness of feuds was tragic. As they rode homeward, Curtis and Elsie sat as before on the forward seat, and he detailed what had taken place at the agency, and she listened, genuinely absorbed. She laughed and she wept a little as his story touched on the pathetic incidents of the year. "You are like a father confessor," she said. "You hold in your hands the most intimate secrets of your people. I don't understand your patience with them. Do you feel that you have made your demonstration?" "What I have done is written in lines of gold and green on the earth. The sky is too bright to remember my gray days," he replied, most exultantly. She looked at him quizzically. "You are developing new and singular powers." "I have a new and singular teacher." "New?" she queried. "New to me," he answered, and in such enigmatic way they expressed their emotion while Lawson and Jennie chatted gayly and in clear prose behind. Part of the time Elsie drove, and that gave Curtis an excuse to lay his hand on her wrist when he wished her to drive slow. At the half-way house she shuddered and made a mouth of disgust. "Let's hurry past here; I have a bad heart when I think of those horrible men." "They are thinning out, and this ranch has 'changed hands' as they say on restaurant signs in Chicago. Here's our north line of fence," he said, as they came to a big, new gate. "I hastened to build this at once before anything happened to prevent. This keeps the stock of the white man out, and has stopped all friction." As they came in sight of the flag-pole, Elsie cried out: "Just think! This is the third time I have driven up this road in this way. Twice with you." "I know it is wonderful. I don't intend you to go away without me." She was ignoring every one of his suggestions now, but the flush of her cheek and a certain softness in her eyes encouraged him to go on. As they alighted at the door, Jennie remained to look after her bundles, and Curtis and Elsie entered the library together. He who had waited so eagerly for this moment turned and folded her close in his arms. "I need you, sweetest! I'll never let you go again. Never!" This was her moment to protest; but she was silent, with her face against his shoulder. Jennie bounced into the hall with a great deal of premonitory clatter and hurried Elsie to her room to rest. "And now you're to be my really truly sister," she said, closing the door behind her. "I think--George," she hesitated a little, and blushed before speaking his name, "expects it--rather confidently." "Then give me a good hug, you glorious thing!" XXXVII THE MINGLING OF THE OLD AND THE NEW Early on the morning of the great day--before the dawn, in truth--the Tetongs came riding in over the hills from every quarter of the earth, bringing their finest clothing, their newest blankets, and their whitest tepees, all lashed on long poles between which the patient ponies walked as in the olden time. Every man, woman, and child able to sit a horse was mounted. No one wore a white man's hat or shoes or vest; all were in leggings and moccasins, fringed and painted, and they carried their summer blankets as they once carried their robes of the buffalo-skin. Even the boys of six and seven wore suits cunningly fashioned and decorated like those of their elders. The young warriors, painted, and with fluttering feathers, rode their fleetest ponies, with shoulders bare and gleaming like bronze in the sun. With all due form, without hurry or jostling, the whole tribe camped in a wide ellipse, each clan in its place, each family having a fixed position in the circle. The tepees rose like magic, and their threads of smoke began to creep up into the clear sky like mysterious plants, slender and wavering. Greetings passed from camp to camp, the head men met in council, and, as the sun rose higher, swarms of the young men galloped to and fro, laying out a racing-course and making up for a procession under Wilson's direction. Curtis said: "I am not interdicting any of their customs merely because they belong to their old life, but because some of them are coarse or hurtful. Their dance is not harmful unless protracted to the point of interfering with their work. That they are all living somewhat in the past, to-day, is true; but they will put away this finery and go to work with me to-morrow. To cut them off from all amusement is cruel fanaticism. No people can endure without amusement." "How appropriate their gay colors seem in this hot, dun land!" remarked Elsie. "They would look gaudy in a studio; but out here they are grateful to the sense." In the centre of the wide circle of tepees a huge bower of pines was being erected for the dance, and pulsing through the air the voice of the criers could be heard, as they rode slowly round the circle publishing the programme of the day. "Looking over the camp towards the hills it is not difficult to imagine one's self back in the old days," said Maynard. "I saw Sitting Bull camped like this. See, here is the 'Soldier Lodge' or chief's headquarters," and he pointed to a large, handsome tepee set in one of the foci of the big ellipse. Everywhere they went Curtis and his friends met with hearty greeting. "Hoh--hoh! The Little Father!" the old men cried, and came to shake hands, and the women smiled, looking up from their work. The little children, though they ran away at first, came out again when they knew that it was the Captain who called. Jennie gave hints about the cooking, and praised the neat tepees and the pretty dresses, while Elsie, looking upon it all with reflective eyes, could not help thinking, "Such will be my work if I do my duty as a wife." Once she looked at the firm, bold, facial outlines of the man she had learned to love, and snuggled a little closer into his shelter; he would toil to make every hardship light, that was certain; but, oh! the dreary winters! There were moments when she took to herself a part of the love and obedience this people showed Curtis. Here was a little kingdom over which Curtis reigned, a despotic monarch, and she, if she did her duty, would reign by his side. It had, at least, the virtue of being an unconventional self-sacrifice. And then, again, she smiled to think that Elsie Bee Bee should feel a touch of pride in being the wife of an Indian agent! Driving his guests back to the agency, Curtis returned to the camp and moved about on foot among his people. Wherever he went he seemed to give zest to the sports, and knowing this he remained with them till noon, and only came in to rest his weary feet and aching eyes for half an hour before lunch. It was unutterably sweet to stretch out in his big, battered easy-chair, in the shaded coolness of the library, and feel Elsie's smooth, light hand in his hair. "And you are never to leave me," he said, dreamily. "I can't realize it yet." After a pause he added: "I am demanding too much of you, sweetheart." "You are demanding nothing, sir; if you did you wouldn't get it. If I choose to _give_ you anything, you are to be grateful and discreetly silent." "Can't I say, 'Thank you'?" "Not a word." "I am content," he said, and closed his eyes again to express it, and she, being unasked, bent and kissed his forehead. Rousing up a few minutes later, he said, "I have a present in keeping for you." "Have you? What is it? Is it from you? Why didn't you let me see it before?" He rose and opened a closet door. "Because the proper time had not come. Before I show it to you I want you to promise to wear it." "I promise," she instantly replied. "Don't be so ready; I intend it to be a symbol of your change of heart." "Well, then, I don't promise," she said, backing away. "I don't mean your change of heart towards me; I have a ring to express that; this is to express your change of heart towards--" "Towards Injuns?" "No; towards all 'the small peoples of the earth.'" "Well, then, I can't wear it; I haven't changed. Down with them!" she shouted, in smiling bravado. He closed the door. "Very well, then, you shall not even see the present; you are not worthy of it." "Oh, please! please! I'll forgive all the heathens of Africa, if you will only let me see." "I don't believe I like that, either," he replied. "You are now too flippant. However, I'll hold you to the word. If you don't mean it now you will by-and-by." Elsie clapped her hands with girlish delight as he held up a fine buckskin dress, beautifully adorned with beads and quills. It was exquisitely tanned, as soft as silk, and a deep cream color. "Isn't it lovely! I'll wear it whether my heart is changed or not." "Here are the leggings and moccasins to match." She gathered them all up at a swoop. "I'm going to put them on at once." "Wait!" he commanded. "Small Bird, who made these garments, is out in the kitchen. I want to call her; she can be your maid for this time." As Small Bird sidled bashfully into the hall Elsie cried out in delight of her. She was dressed in the old-time Tetong dress, and was exceedingly comely. Her face was carefully painted and her hair shone with much brushing and oil. Her teeth were white and even. "Can she speak English?" asked Elsie. "Not very well; but she understands. Small Bird, the lady says, thank you. She thinks they are very fine. Her heart is glad. Go help her dress." "Come!" cried Elsie, eagerly, and fairly ran up the stairs in her haste to be transformed into a woman of the red people. When she returned she was a sister to Small Bird. Her dark hair was braided in the Tetong fashion, her face was browned, and her little feet were clothed in glittering, beaded moccasins. "You look exactly like some of the old engravings of Mohawk princesses," cried Curtis. "Now you are ready to sit by my side and review the procession." "Are we to have a procession?" "Indeed we are, as significant as any mediæval tournament. I am the resident duke before whom the review takes place, and I shall be in my best dress and you are to sit by my side--my bride-elect." "Oh no!" "Oh yes. It is decided." He drew himself up haughtily. "I have said it, and I am chief to-day. It is good, Small Bird," he said, as the Tetong girl started to go. "My wife likes it very much." Elsie ran towards the girl and took her by the shoulders as if to make her understand the better. "Thank you; thank you!" Small Bird smiled, but surrendered to her timidity, and, turning, ran swiftly out of the room. Curtis hooked Elsie in his right arm. "Now all is decreed. You have put on the garb of my people," and his kiss stopped the protest she struggled to utter. Surely the day was a day strangely apart. Everything that could be done to make it symbolic, to make it idyllic, was done. Curtis appeared after lunch in a fine costume of buckskin, trimmed with green porcupine quills and beads, and for a hat he wore a fillet of beaver-skin with a single feather on the back. Across his shoulder he carried the sash of a finely beaded tobacco pouch, and in his hand a long fringed bag, very ancient, containing a peace-pipe, which had been transmitted to Crawling Elk by his father's father, a very precious thing, worn only by chieftains. "Oh, I shall paint you in that dress," cried Elsie. So accoutred, he led the way to the canopied platform under the flag-pole, where the reviewing party were to sit. In order that no invidious distinctions might be drawn, two or three of the old chiefs and their wives had been given seats thereon, and they were already in place. Not many strangers were present, for Curtis had purposely refrained from setting a day too long ahead, but Lawson's friends and some relatives of the employés, and several of the young officers from the fort made up the outside representation. Maynard was in his brightest uniform, and Jennie, looking very nice in a muslin gown, and a broad, white hat, sat by his side. From the seats in the stand, the camp, swarming with horsemen, could be seen. Wilson, as grand marshal, was riding to and fro, assisted by Lawson, who had entered into the game with the self-sacrificing devotion of a drum-major. His make-up was superb, and when at last he approached, leading the cavalcade, Elsie did not recognize him. His lean face, dark with paint, was indistinguishably Tetong, seen from a distance, and he sat his horse in perfect simulation of his red brethren. He was but re-enacting scenes of his early life. His hunting-shirt was dark with use, and his splendid war-bonnet trailed grandly down his back. He rode by, looking neither to the right nor the left, singing a new song. "We are passing. See us passing by. We are leaving the old behind us. The new we seek to find. We are passing, passing by." Crawling Elk followed, holding aloft a spear with a green plume; it was a turnip thrust through with a sharp-pointed, blackened stick, and behind him, two and two, came fifty of his young warriors carrying shining hoes upright, as of old they carried their lances, while at their shoulders, where quivers of arrows should have swung, dangled trim sheaves of green wheat and golden barley. The free fluttering of their feather-ornamented hair, the barbaric painting on their faces and hands, symbolized the old life, as the green arrows of the grain prefigured the new. Behind them rode their women, each bearing in her left hand a bunch of flowers. Those who could read wore on their bosoms a small, shining medal, and in their hair an eagle feather. No Tetong woman had ever worn a plume before. Standing Elk, quaint and bent, rode by, singing a war-song, magnificent in his dress as war chief, leading some twenty young men. His hands were empty of the signs of peace, and his face was rapt with dreams of the past, but his young men carried long-handled forks which flamed in the sun, and bracelets of green grass encircled their firm, brown arms. They, too, were painted to signify their clan and their ancestry, and the "medicine" they affected was on their breasts. Their wives were close behind, each bearing a stalk of corn in bloom; their beaded saddles and gay blankets were pleasant to see. Every weapon bespoke warfare against weeds. Every ornament represented the better nature, the striving, the aspiration of its wearer. Then came the school-children, adding a final note of pathos, poor little brown men and women trudging on foot to symbolize that they must go through life, plodding in the dust of the white man's chariot wheel--their toes imprisoned in a shapeless box of leather, their hair closely clipped, their clothing hot and restrictive. Each carried a book and a slate, and their faces were very intent and serious as they paced by on their way from the old to the new. They were followed by the school-band playing "The Star-Spangled Banner," with splendid disregard of the broken faith of the government whose song it was. And so they streamed by, these folk, accounted the most warlike of all red men, genially carrying out the wishes of their chief, illustrating, without knowing it, the wondrous change which had come to them; the old men still clinging to the past, the young men careless of the future, the children already transformed, and, as they glanced up, some smiling, some grave and dreaming, Elsie shuddered with a species of awe; it seemed as if a people were being disintegrated before her eyes; that the evolution of a race having proceeded for countless ages by almost imperceptible degrees was now and here rushing, as by mighty bounds, from war to peace, from hunting to harvesting, from primitive indolence to ordered thrift. They were, indeed, passing, as the plains and the wild spaces were passing; as the buffalo had passed; as every wild thing must pass before the ever-thickening flood of white ploughmen pressing upon the land. Twice they circled, and then, as they all massed before him, Curtis rose to sign to them. "I am very proud of you. All my friends are pleased. My heart is big with emotion and my head is full of thoughts. This is a great day for you and also for me. Some of you are sad, for you long for the old things--the big, broad plain, the elk, and the buffalo. So do I. I loved those things also. But you have seen how it is. The water of the stream never turns back to the spring, the old man never grows young, the tree that falls does not rise up again. So the old things come never again. We have always to look ahead. Perhaps, in the happy hunting-ground all will be different, but here now we must do our best to live upon the earth. It is the law that, now the game being gone, we must plough and sow and reap the fruit of the soil. That is the meaning of all we have done to-day. We have put away the rifle; we here take up the hoe. "I am glad; my heart is like a bird; it sings when I see you happy. Listen--I will tell you a great secret. You see this young woman," he touched Elsie. "You see she wears the Tetong dress, the same as I; that means much. It signifies two things: Last year her heart was hard towards the Tetongs; now it is soft. She is proud of what you have done. She wears this dress for another reason; she is going to be my wife, and help me show you the good way." At this moment a chorus of pleased outcries broke forth. "Now, go to your feast. Let everything be orderly. To-night we will come to see you dance." With an outburst of jocular whooping, the young men wheeled their horses and vanished under cover of a cloud of dust, while the old men and the women and the children moved sedately back to camp; the women chattering gayly over the day's exciting shows, and in anticipation of the dance which was to come. * * * * * There were tears in Elsie's eyes as she looked up at Curtis. "They have so far to go, poor things! They can't realize how long the road to civilization is." "I do not care whether they reach what you call civilization or not; the road to happiness and peace is not long, it is short; they are even now entering upon it. They can be happy right here, and so can we," he ended, looking at her with a tender wistfulness. "Can't you understand?" "You have conquered," she said, with deep feeling. "Under the spell of this day, I feel your work to be the only thing in the world worth doing." Her words, her voice, so moved him that he bent and laid a kiss upon her lips. When he could speak, he said: "Now I want to ask something of you. I have a leave of absence for six months. Show me the Old World." She sprang up. "Ah! Can you go?" "When the crops are garnered and sifted, and my people clothed and sheltered." "I'd rather show you Paris than anything else in the world!" she cried. "I'd almost marry you to do that." "Very well, marry me; we will spend our honeymoon there; perhaps then you will be willing to spend one more year here with me, and then--well--Never cross the range till you get to it is a maxim of the trail." THE END 
43989	----	THE TRAIL OF THE BADGER [Illustration: "DICK PUSHED HIS RIFLE-BARREL THROUGH A CREVICE IN THE ROCKS."] The Trail of The Badger _A STORY OF THE COLORADO BORDER THIRTY YEARS AGO_ BY SIDFORD F. HAMP _Author of "Dale and Fraser, Sheepmen," "The Boys of Crawford's Basin," etc._ ILLUSTRATED BY CHASE EMERSON [Illustration: logo] W. A. WILDE COMPANY BOSTON CHICAGO _Copyrighted, 1908_ BY W. A. WILDE COMPANY _All rights reserved_ THE TRAIL OF THE BADGER PREFACE In writing the adventures of the boys who followed "The Trail of the Badger" down into that part of Colorado where the fringes of two discordant civilizations overlapped each other--the strenuous Anglo-Saxon and the easygoing Mexican--the author has endeavored to show how two healthy, enterprising young fellows were able to do their little part in that great work of Desert Reclamation whose importance is now as well understood by the general public as it always has been by those whose lot has been cast to the west of meridian one hundred and five. To some it may appear that the boys are ahead of their time, but to the author, whose introduction to "the arid region" dates back thirty years and more, remembering the conditions then prevailing, it seems no more than natural that they should recognize the unusual opportunity presented to them of making a career for themselves, and even that they should be dimly conscious of the fact that if they "could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before" they would be deserving well of the infant community of which they formed a part. That in making this attempt they would meet with adventures--in fact, that they could hardly avoid them--the author, recalling his own experiences in that country at that time, feels well assured. CONTENTS I. DICK STANLEY 11 II. SHEEP AND CINNAMON 32 III. THE MESCALERO VALLEY 51 IV. RACING THE STORM 68 V. HOW DICK BROUGHT THE NEWS 87 VI. THE PROFESSOR'S STORY 102 VII. DICK'S DIPLOMACY 116 VIII. THE START 129 IX. ANTONIO MARTINEZ 147 X. THE PADRON 165 XI. THE SPANISH TRAIL 179 XII. THE BADGER 191 XIII. THE KING PHILIP MINE 203 XIV. A CHANGE OF PLAN 221 XV. DICK'S SNAP SHOT 241 XVI. THE OLD PUEBLO HEAD-GATE 259 XVII. THE BRIDGE 276 XVIII. THE BIG FLUME 294 XIX. PEDRO'S BOLD STROKE 313 XX. THE MEMORABLE TWENTY-NINTH 333 ILLUSTRATIONS "Dick pushed his rifle-barrel through a crevice in the rocks" (_Frontispiece_) 42 "It was a splendid chance; nobody could ask for a better target" 57 "Passing on our way through the town of Mosby" 137 "Behind him, stood the squat figure of Pedro Sanchez" 213 "I could not think what he was doing it for" 286 The Trail of the Badger CHAPTER I DICK STANLEY "Look out! Look out! Behind you, man! Behind you! Jump quick, or he'll get you!" It was a boy, a tall, spare, wiry young fellow of sixteen, who shouted this warning, his voice, in its frantic urgency, rising almost to a shriek at the end; and it was another boy, also tall, spare and wiry, to whom the warning was shouted. The latter turned to look behind him, and for one brief instant his whole body stiffened with fear--his very hair stood on end. Nor is this a mere figure of speech: the boy's hair did actually stand on end: he could feel it "creep" against the crown of his hat. _I know_--for I was the boy! That I had good reason to be "scared stiff" I think any other boy will admit, for, not thirty feet below me, coming quickly and silently up the rocks, his little gleaming eyes fixed intently upon me, was a grim old cinnamon bear, an animal which, though less dangerous than his big cousin, the grizzly, is quite dangerous enough when he is thoroughly in earnest. But for my companion's warning shout the bear would surely have caught me, and my story would have come to an end at the very beginning of the first chapter. It was certainly an awkward situation, about as awkward, I should think, as any boy ever got himself into; and how I, Frank Preston, lately a schoolboy in St. Louis, happened to find myself on a spur of Mescalero Mountain, in Colorado, with a cinnamon bear charging up the rocks within a few feet of me, needs a word of explanation. I will therefore go back a few steps in order to give myself space for a preliminary run before jumping head-first into my story, and will tell not only how I came to be there, but will relate also the curious incident which first brought me into contact with my future friend, Dick Stanley; an incident which, while it served as an introduction, at the same time gave me some idea of the resourcefulness and promptness of action with which his very peculiar training had endowed him. It was in the last week of October, 1877, that I was seated one evening in my room in St. Louis, very busy preparing my studies for next day, when the door opened suddenly and in walked my Uncle Tom. When, at the age of seven, I had been left an orphan, Uncle Tom, my mother's brother, though himself a bachelor, had taken charge of me, and with him I had lived ever since. He and I, I am glad to say, were the best of friends--regular chums--for, though twenty years my senior, he seemed in some respects to be as young as myself, and our relations were more like those of elder and younger brother than of uncle and nephew. Uncle Tom was rather short and rather fat, and he was moreover one of the jolliest of men, being blessed with a disposition which prompted him always to see the bright side of things, no matter how dark and threatening they might look. Having at a very early age been pitched out into the world to "fend for himself," and having by square dealing and hard work done remarkably well, he had imbibed the idea that book-learning as a means of getting on in the world was somewhat overrated; an idea which, right or wrong--and I think myself that Uncle Tom carried it rather too far--was to have a decided effect in shaping my own career. As it was against the rule, laid down by Uncle Tom himself, for any one to disturb me at my studies, I naturally looked up from my books to ascertain the cause of the intrusion, when, with a cigar in his mouth and his hands in his pockets, he came bulging in, half filling the little room. That there was something unusual in the wind I felt sure, and my guardian's first act went far to confirm my suspicion, for, removing one hand from his pocket, he quietly reached forward and with his finger tilted my book shut. "Put 'em away," said he. "You won't need them for a month or more." As the fall term of school was then in full swing, this declaration was a good deal of a surprise to me, as any one will suppose, and doubtless I showed as much in my face. "I have a scheme in my head, Frank," said he, with a knowing wag of that member, in reply to my look of inquiry. "I know _that_," I replied, laughing; for there never was a moment when Uncle Tom had not a scheme in his head of one sort or another. "You spider-legged young reptile!" cried he, with perfect good humor, but at the same time shaking a threatening finger at me. "Don't you dare to laugh at my schemes; especially this one. For this is a brand-new idea, and a very important one--to you. I'm leaving to-morrow night for Colorado." "Are you?" I cried, a good deal surprised by this sudden announcement. "When did you decide upon that?" "To-day. I got a letter this afternoon from my friend, Sam Warren, the assayer, written from Mosby--if you know where that is." I shook my head. "I didn't suppose you did," remarked Uncle Tom. "It is a new mining camp on one of the spurs of Mescalero Mountain in Colorado, and in the opinion of Sam Warren--my old schoolmate, you know--it has a great future before it. So he has written me that if I have the time to spare I had better come out and take a look at it." Uncle Tom's business was that of a mining promoter, the middle man between the prospector and the capitalist, a business in which his ability and his honorable methods had gained for him an enviable reputation. "So you have decided to go out, have you?" said I. "Yes," he replied. "I leave to-morrow evening--and you are coming with me." As may be imagined, I opened my eyes pretty widely at this unfolding of the "brand-new idea." "What do you mean?" I asked. "Look here, Frank, old chap," said he, seating himself on the edge of the table and becoming confidential. "You've stuck to your books very well--if anything, too well. Now, I've had my eye on you ever since the hot weather last summer, and it strikes me you need a change--you are too pale and altogether too thin." Being fat and "comfortable" himself, Uncle Tom was disposed to regard with pity any one, like myself, whose framework showed through its covering. "But----" I began; when Uncle Tom headed me off. "Now you be quiet," said he, "and let me finish. I've had some such idea brewing in my head for some time; it isn't a sudden freak, as you imagine. I've considered the matter carefully, and I've come to the conclusion that you'll lose nothing by the move. In fact, what you will lose by missing a month or so of schooling will be more than made up to you by the eye-opener you will get in making this expedition." "How so?" I asked. "You will make the acquaintance of a young State just learning to walk alone--for, as you know, it was only last year that Colorado came into the Union; you will see a new mining camp, and rub up against the men, good, bad and indifferent, who go to make up the community of a frontier town; and more than that, you will get at first hand, what you never could get by sitting here and reading about it, a correct idea of the country traversed by the explorers--Pike, Frémont and the rest of them. "I am honestly of opinion, Frank," he went on, seriously, "that this is an opportunity not to be neglected. At the same time, old fellow, as it is your education and not mine that is under discussion, I consider that you have a right to a voice in the matter; so I'll leave you to think it over, and to-morrow at breakfast you can tell me whether you are coming or not." With that, Uncle Tom slipped down from the table, walked out and shut the door behind him. That was his way: he was always as sudden as a clap of thunder. Anybody will guess that my books did not receive much more attention that evening. For an hour I paced up and down the room, considering Uncle Tom's proposition. It was true that I did feel pulled down by the effects of the hot weather, combined with a pretty close application to my books, and I had no doubt that the expedition proposed would do me a world of good; though whether my education would be benefited in like manner I was not so sure as Uncle Tom seemed to be. But though I did my best honestly to consider the question in all its aspects, there can be little doubt that my inclinations--whether I was aware of it or not--colored my judgment, so that my final decision was just what might have been expected in any active boy of sixteen. As the clock struck ten I ran down-stairs and informed Uncle Tom that I was going with him. It is not necessary to go into all the details of our journey, though to me, who had never before been a hundred miles from home, everything was new and everything was interesting. It is enough to say that, leaving the train at the foot of the mountains--for the railroad then went no further--we engaged places in the mail-carrier's open buckboard, and after a very rough and very tiring drive of a day and a half we at last reached our destination and were set down at the door of a house outside which hung a "shingle" bearing the legend, "Samuel Warren, Assayer and U. S. Dep. Min. Surveyor." It will be remembered that one of Uncle Tom's reasons for breaking into my school term was that I should rub up against the citizens comprising a frontier settlement. He could hardly have contemplated, however, that I should come in contact with quite so many of them quite so early in the day as I did. We had hardly sat down to the refreshments spread before us by our host--a big, bearded man, clad in a suit of brown canvas--when we, in common with the rest of the community, were startled by the sudden shriek of a woman in distress. To rush to the door was the work of a moment, when, the first thing we caught sight of was a man, clad only in his nightshirt, running like a madman up the street, while far behind him, and losing ground at every step, ran a woman, calling out with all the breath she had to spare--which was not much--"Stop him! Stop him!" "It's Tim Donovan!" shouted the assayer. "He's sick with the mountain-fever! He's crazy! Head him off! Head him off! The poor chap will die of exposure!" Warren's house was near the upper end of the street, and just as we three jumped down the porch steps, the demented fugitive passed the door, going like the wind. At once we set off in pursuit, while behind us came all the rest of the population and most of the dogs, by this time roused to action by the cries of the sick man's wife. Nobody knows until he has tried it how hard it is to run up-hill at an elevation of nine thousand feet, especially to one unaccustomed to such altitudes. Uncle Tom, who was not built for such exercise, fell out in the first fifty yards, while, of the others, the short-winded barroom loafers--of whom, as is always the case in a new camp, there were more than enough--gave out even more quickly, their habits of life being a fatal handicap in a foot-race. One by one, nearly all the rest came down to a walk, until presently the only ones left with any run in them were Jake Peters and Oscar Swansen, both timber-cutters from the hills, Aleck Smith, a wiry little teamster, and myself. As for me, having the advantage of a good start over everybody else, being only sixteen years old, and having a reputation at school as a long-distance runner, it seemed as though I ought to be able to catch the unfortunate fugitive, who, having run a quarter of a mile already, should by this time be out of breath. Indeed, I believe I should have caught him at the first dash had he not resorted to tactics which made me chary of coming near him. Not more than thirty yards separated us and I was gaining steadily, when he, barefooted himself and making no noise, hearing the clatter of my shoes behind him, suddenly stopped, picked up a stone and hurled it at me. It would have taken me square in the chest had I not jumped aside; when, finding that the man was really dangerous, and knowing very well that I should have no chance whatever in a personal struggle with him--for he was a stout young Irish miner with a fore-arm like a leg of mutton--I contented myself with trotting behind and keeping him in sight; trusting to the able-bodied men following me to do the tackling when the opportunity should arise. The town of Mosby consisted of one steep street about half a mile long and two houses thick; for it was situated in a valley, or, rather, in a gorge, so narrow that there was no room for it to spread except at the two ends. In truth, there was no room for it to grow except southward, for at the upper, or northern, end the mountains came together, forming an inaccessible cañon through which rushed the little stream of ice-cold water coming down from Mescalero. From the lower end of this cañon the stream fell perpendicularly into a great hole in the rocks--a sort of natural chimney, or well, about sixty feet deep. The down-stream side of this "chimney" was split from top to bottom, and through the narrow crack, only four or five feet wide, the water leaped foaming down in a series of miniature cascades. The only way of getting into this deep pit was by taking to the water, scrambling up the steep, step-like bed of the stream and passing through the crack, when, once inside, a man might defy the world to come and get him out. This was exactly what Tim Donovan did. Seeing that he could follow the stream no further, I was wondering whether he would take to the mountain on the right or the one on the left, when he suddenly jumped into the water, ran up the smooth, wet "steps," and disappeared from sight through the crevice. In ten seconds, however, he showed himself again. He had found in the driftwood a ragged branch of a pine tree about three feet long, and with this in one hand and a ten-pound stone in the other he stood at bay, regardless of the icy water which poured over his feet, or of the spray from the fall behind him, which in half a minute had wet his thin single garment through and through. It was an impregnable stronghold. No one could get in from the rear, and the place could not be rushed from the front--the ascent was too steep and slippery and the entrance too narrow. If Tim were determined to stay there and perish with cold, it appeared to me that nobody could do anything to prevent him. One by one the pursuers joined me before the entrance, when Mrs. Donovan, who was among the last to arrive, advanced as near as she could without getting into the water, and besought her errant husband to come down. But Tim was deaf to entreaty; all the blandishments of his anxious wife were without effect, and if she could not get him to come down it appeared as though nobody could. Tim, though, was a popular young fellow, and it was not in the nature of a Colorado miner, or of an Irishman either--for they hold together like burrs in a horse's tail--to desert a comrade in distress. So, Mrs. Donovan having failed, there stepped to the front a short, thick-set, red-haired man, Mike O'Brien by name, Tim's partner and particular crony, who, talking pleasantly and naturally to him, as though his friend were quite sane and rational, stepped into the water and waded carefully up the steep slope. "How are ye, Tim, me boy?" said he, with off-hand cordiality. "It's glad I am to see ye out again. It's me birthday to-day, Tim; I'm having a bit of a supper at home an' I come up to ask ye----" Whack! came the stone from Tim's hand, breaking to pieces against the rocky wall within an inch of Mike's head. The invitation was declined. Mike himself, in his effort to dodge the missile, missed his footing, fell on his back, and in a series of dislocating bumps was swept down the "steps" to the starting place, wet, as he declared, right through to his bones. Up to this time the demented man had kept silence, but on seeing Mike go tumbling down-stream, he shook his fist after him and cried out: "Come back and try again, ye devouring baste! Come on, the whole pack of yez! Don't stand there howling, ye cowardly curs; come up and get me out--if ye dare!" "I believe he thinks we are a pack of wolves," said Mr. Warren. "That's it, Mr. Warren, sir," exclaimed Mrs. Donovan, turning to the assayer. "That's it, entirely. He heard a wolf howl last night, and it was hard wor-rk I had to kape him from jumping out of his bed and running off right thin. He thinks it's a pack of them that's hunting him." "Poor fellow! No wonder he refuses to come down. What are we going to do? We _must_ get him out." Then ensued an eager debate, in which everybody took a share except Uncle Tom and myself, who, standing a little apart from the rest on the sloping bank of the stream, were listening and looking on, when some one touched me on my arm, and a boyish voice said: "What's the matter? What's it all about?" Turning round, I saw before me a tall young fellow about my own age, with reddish hair, very keen gray eyes and a much-freckled face, carrying in one hand an old-fashioned, muzzle-loading rifle, nearly as long as himself, and in the other three grouse which he appeared to have shot. Wondering who the boy might be, I explained the situation, when he cried: "What! Tim Donovan! Why he'll die if he's left in there. Poor chap! We must get him out." "Yes," said Uncle Tom. "That's just it. But how? The man won't be persuaded to come out, and no one can get in to drag him out--so what's to be done?" The young fellow stood for a minute thinking, and then, suddenly lifting his head, he exclaimed, with a half laugh: "I know! I know what we can do! He can't be persuaded out or dragged out, but he can be driven out." "How?" asked Uncle Tom. "If you'll come with me," replied the boy, "I'll show you in two minutes." So saying, he jumped across the creek and set off straight up the almost perpendicular side of the mountain, we two following. Uncle Tom, however, finding the climb too steep for him, very soon turned back again, so we two boys went on alone. About three hundred feet up my companion stopped, and it was well for me he did, for I could hardly have gone another step, so desperately out of breath was I. "Not used to it, are you?" said the boy, who himself seemed to be quite unaffected. "Well, we don't have to go any higher, fortunately. Look over there. Do you see that stubby pine tree growing out of the rocks and overhanging the waterfall?" "Yes, I see it," I replied. "And what's that big round thing hanging to it?" "A wasps' nest." "A wasps' nest?" "A wasps' nest," repeated my new acquaintance with peculiar emphasis and with a twinkle in his eye. "Ah!" I exclaimed, suddenly enlightened. "I see your little game. Good! You propose to knock down the wasps' nest into the 'well,' and then poor Tim will just have to vacate." "That's my idea." "Great idea, too. But, look here! Are the wasps alive at this time of year?" "They are this year. We've had such a wonderfully warm season that they are just as brisk as ever." "Well, but there's another thing: how are you going to do it? You can't get at it: the rocks are too straight-up-and-down; and you can't come near enough to knock it off with a stone. How are you going to do it?" The young fellow smiled and patted the stock of his gun. "Shoot it down!" I exclaimed. "Do you think you can? It won't be any use plugging it full of holes, you know; you'll have to nip off the little twig it hangs on. Can you do that?" "I think I can." "All right, then, fire away and let's see." I must confess I felt doubtful. The boy did not look nor talk like a braggart, but nevertheless, to cut with a bullet the slim little branch, no bigger than a lead-pencil, upon which the nest hung suspended looked to me like a pretty ticklish shot. My companion, however, seemed confident. Cocking his gun, he kneeled down, and using a big rock as a rest he took careful aim and fired. It was a perfect shot. The big ball of gray "paper" dropped like a plumb, struck the rim of the "well," burst open, and emptied upon the head of the unfortunate Tim about a bucketful of venomous little yellow-jackets, each and every one of them quivering with rage, and each and every one bent on taking vengeance on somebody. The people below were still debating how to get the sick man out of his fortress, when the sound of the rifle-shot caused them all to look up; but only for an instant, for the echoes had not yet died away, when, with a startling yell, out came Tim, frantically waving his club above his head, seemingly more crazy than ever. Supposing that he was making a dash for liberty, half a dozen of his particular friends flung themselves upon him, and down they all went in a heap together. But this arrangement was of the briefest. In another moment, with shrieks and yells and whirling arms, the whole population went charging down the street, Uncle Tom in the lead, running--breath or no breath--as he had never run before. Never was there a more complete victory: besiegers and besieged flying in one general rout before the assaults of the new enemy. And never did I laugh so extravagantly as I did then, to see the enraged yellow-jackets "take it out" on an unoffending community, while the real culprits were all the time sitting safely perched on the mountainside looking down on the rumpus. "Well, we got him out all right," remarked my companion, as he calmly reloaded his rifle. "I thought we could. You're a newcomer, aren't you? My name's Dick Stanley; I live up-stream, just at the head of the cañon. Are you expecting to make a long stay?" "Two or three weeks, I think," I replied. "My uncle, Mr. Tom Allen, is here to inspect the mines, and he brought me with him. We come from St. Louis. My name's Frank Preston. We're staying at Mr. Warren's house." "Well, come up to our house some day. It is in a little clearing just at the head of the cañon--you can't miss it--and we'll go off for a day's grouse-shooting up into the mountains if you like." "All right, I will. That would just suit me. To-morrow?" "Yes, come up to-morrow, if you like. I'll be on the lookout for you. I suppose you are going home now," he continued, as we rose to our feet. "If I were you, I'd keep up here on the side of the mountain--the street will be full of yellow-jackets--and then, when you come opposite the assayer's house, make a bolt for his back door, or some of them may get you yet." "That's a good idea. I'll do it. Well, good-bye. I'll come up to-morrow then, if I can." CHAPTER II SHEEP AND CINNAMON "That was the funniest thing I ever saw," exclaimed Uncle Tom, laughing in spite of himself, while at the same time, with a comically rueful twist of his countenance, he rubbed the back of his neck where one of the wasps had "got" him. "The way poor Tim bolted out of his stronghold after defying the whole population to come and get him out, was the very funniest thing I ever did see. That was a smart trick of that young rascal; though I wish he had given me notice beforehand of what he intended to do. I'd have started to run a good five minutes earlier if I'd known what was coming. Who is the boy, Warren?" "Well, that is not easy to say," replied our host, "for, as a matter of fact, he does not know himself. His history, what there is of it, is a peculiar one. He lives up here at the head of the cañon with an old German named Bergen--commonly known as the Professor--and his Mexican servant, a man of forty whom the professor brought up with him from Albuquerque, I believe. If Frank's object in coming here was to rub up against all sorts and conditions of men, he could hardly have chosen a better place. Certainly he cannot expect to find a more remarkable character than the professor. "The old fellow is regarded by the people here as a harmless lunatic--which, in a community like this, where muscle is at a premium and scientific attainments at a discount, is not to be wondered at--for it is incomprehensible to them that any man in his right mind should spend his life as the professor spends his. "The old gentleman is an enthusiastic naturalist. He is making a collection of the butterflies, beetles and such things, of the Rocky Mountain region, and with true German thoroughness he has spent years in the pursuit. Choosing some promising spot, he builds a log cabin, and there he stays one year--or two if necessary--until that district is 'fished out,' as you may say, when he packs up and moves somewhere else, to do the same thing over again." "Well, that is certainly a queer character to come across," was Uncle Tom's comment. "But how about the boy, Sam? How does he happen to be in such company?" "Why, about twelve or thirteen years ago, old Bergen was 'doing' the country somewhere northwest of Santa Fé, when he made a very strange discovery. It was a bad piece of country for snowslides, which were frequent and dangerous in the spring, and one day, being anxious to get to a particular point quickly, the professor was crossing the tail of a new slide--a risky thing to do--as being the shortest cut, when his attention was attracted by some strange object lodged half way up the great bank of snow. Climbing up to it, he found to his astonishment that the strange object was a wagon-bed, while, to his infinitely greater astonishment, inside it on a mattress, fast asleep, was a three-year-old boy--young Dick!" "That was an astonisher, sure enough!" exclaimed I, who had been an eager listener. "And was that all the professor found?" "That was all. The running-gear of the wagon had vanished; the horses had vanished; and the boy's parents or guardians had vanished--all buried, undoubtedly, under the snow." "And what did the professor do?" "The only thing he could do: took the boy with him--and a fortunate thing it was for young Dick that the old gentleman happened to find him. But though he inquired of everybody he came across--they were not many, for white folks were scarce in those parts then--the professor could learn nothing of the party; so, not knowing what else to do, he just carried off the youngster with him, and with him Dick has been ever since." "That's a queer history, sure enough," remarked Uncle Tom. "And was there nothing at all by which to identify the boy?" "Just one thing. I forgot to say that in the wagon-bed was a single volume of Shakespeare--one of a set: volume two--on the fly-leaf of which was written the name, 'Richard Livingstone Stanley, from Anna,' and as the boy was old enough to tell his own name--Dick Stanley--the professor concluded that the owner of the book was his father. Moreover, as the boy made no mention of his mother, though he now and then spoke of his 'Daddy' and his 'Uncle David,' the old gentleman formed the theory that the mother was dead and that the father and uncle, bringing the boy with them, had come west to seek their fortunes, and being very likely tenderfeet, unacquainted with the dangerous nature of those great snow-masses in spring time, they had been caught in a slide and killed." "Poor little chap," said Uncle Tom. "And he has been wandering about with the old gentleman ever since, has he? He must be a sort of Wild Man of the West in miniature." "Not a bit of it. The professor is a man of learning, and he has not neglected his duty. Dick has a highly respectable education, including some items rather out of the common for a boy: he speaks German and Spanish; he has a pretty intimate knowledge of the wild animals of the Rocky Mountains; and he is one of the best woodsmen and quite the best shot of anybody in these immediate parts." "Well, they are an odd pair, certainly. I should like to go up and see the professor--that is, if he ever receives visitors." "Oh, yes. He's a sociable old fellow. He and I are very good friends. I'll take you up there and introduce you some day. He is well worth knowing. If there is any information you desire concerning the Rocky Mountain country from here southward to the border, Herr Bergen can give it you. You are to be congratulated, Frank, on making Dick's acquaintance so early: he will be a fine companion for you while you stay here. You propose to go grouse-shooting to-morrow, do you? Well, you can take my shotgun--it hangs up there on the wall--and make a day of it; for your uncle and I are proposing to ride up to inspect a mine on Cape Horn, which will take us pretty well all afternoon." I thanked our host for his offer, and next morning, gun in hand, I set off immediately after breakfast for Dick's dwelling. Passing the "well" where Tim Donovan had taken refuge the day before, I ascended by a clearly-marked trail to the edge of the cañon, and following along it through the woods for about a mile, I presently came in sight of a little clearing, in which stood a neat log cabin of two or three rooms. Outside was a Mexican, chopping wood, while in the doorway stood Dick, evidently looking out for me, for, the moment I appeared, he ran forward to meet me. "How are you?" he cried. "Glad you came early: I have a new plan for the day, if it suits you. I've been spying around with a field-glass and I've just seen a band of sheep up on that big middle spur of Mescalero; they are working their way up from their feeding-ground, and I propose that we go after them instead of hunting grouse. What do you say?" "All right; that will suit me." "Come on, then. Just come into the house for a minute first and see the professor, and then we'll dig out at once." From the fact that Mr. Warren had so frequently spoken of the professor as "the old gentleman," I was prepared to see a bent old man, with a white beard and big round spectacles--the typical "German professor," of my imagination. I was a good deal surprised, then, to find a small, active man of sixty, perhaps, a little gray, certainly, but with a clear blue eye and a wide-awake manner I was far from anticipating. He was in the inner room when I entered--evidently the sanctum where he prepared and stored his specimens--but the moment he heard our steps he came briskly out, and, on Dick's introducing me, shook hands with me very heartily. "And how's poor Tim this morning?" he asked, as soon as the formalities, if they can be called so, were over. "He is all right, sir," I replied. "I went down there before breakfast this morning at Mr. Warren's request to inquire. In fact, Tim was so much better apparently that Mrs. Donovan declares that if he ever gets the fever again she intends to apply iced water to his feet and wasp-stings to the rest of his anatomy, as being a sure cure. She is immensely grateful to Dick for having discovered and applied a remedy that has worked so well." "Then if Tim is wise," remarked the professor, laughing, "he won't get the fever again, for I should think the cure would be worse than the disease. But you want to be off, don't you? Do you understand the working of a Winchester repeater? Well," as I shook my head, "then you had better take the Sharp's and Dick the Winchester. And, Dick, you'd better have an eye on the weather. Romero says there is a change coming, and he is generally pretty reliable. So, now, off you go; and good luck to you." Leaving the cabin, we went straight on up the narrow valley for about three miles--the pine-clad mountains rising half a mile high on either side of us--going as quickly as we could, or, to be more exact, going as quickly as I could. For the elevation, beginning at nine thousand feet, increased, of course, at every step, and I, being unused to such altitudes, found myself much distressed for breath--a fact which was rather a surprise to me, considering that in our track-meets at school the mile run was my strong point. I did not understand then that to get enough oxygen out of that thin mountain air it was necessary to take two breaths where one would suffice at sea-level. We had ascended about a thousand feet, I think, when, at the base of the bare ridge for which we had been making, we slackened our pace, and my companion, who knew the country, taking the lead, we went scrambling up over the rocks and snow for an hour or more. The quantity of snow we found up there was a surprise to me, for, from below the amount seemed trifling. There had been a heavy fall up in the range a month before, and this snow, drifting into the gullies, had settled into compact masses, the surface of which, on this, the southern face of the mountain, being every day slightly softened by the heat of the sun, and every night frozen solid again, made the footing exceedingly treacherous. Whenever, therefore, we found it necessary to cross one of these steep-tilted snow-beds we did so with the greatest caution. We had been climbing, as I have said, for more than an hour, and were nearing the top of the ridge, when Dick stopped and silently beckoned to me to come up to where he lay, crouching under shelter of a little ledge. "Smell anything?" he whispered. I gave a sniff and raised my eyebrows inquiringly. "Sheep?" said I, softly. My companion nodded. "They must be somewhere close by," said he, in a voice hardly audible. "Go very carefully and keep your eyes wide open. If you see anything, stop instantly." We were lying side by side upon the rocks, Dick considerately waiting a moment while I got my breath again, and were just about to crawl forward, when there came the sound of a sudden rush of hoofs and a clatter of stones from some invisible point ahead of us, and then dead silence again. "They've winded us and gone off," whispered Dick. But the next moment he added eagerly, "There they are! Look! There they are! Up there! See? My! What a chance!" Immediately on our left was a deep gorge, so narrow and precipitous that we could not see the bottom of it from where we lay. The sheep, having seemingly got wind of us, with that agility which is always so astonishing in such heavy animals, had rushed down one side of the precipitous gorge and up the other, and now, there they were, all standing in a row--eleven of them--on the opposite summit, looking down, not at us, but at something immediately below them. "What do you suppose it is, Dick?" I whispered. "Don't know," my companion replied. "Mountain-lion, perhaps: they are very partial to mutton. Anyhow," he continued, "if we want to get a shot we must shoot from here: we can't move without the sheep seeing us, and they'd be off like a flash if they did. You take a shot, Frank. Take the nearest one. Sight for two hundred yards." "No," I replied. "You shoot. I shall miss: I'm too unsteady for want of breath." "All right." Raising himself a fraction of an inch at a time until he had come to a kneeling position, Dick pushed his rifle-barrel through a crevice in the rocks, took aim and fired. The nearest sheep, a fine fellow with a handsome pair of horns, pitched forward, fell headlong from the ledge upon which he had been standing and vanished from our sight among the broken rocks below; while the others turned tail and fled up the mountain, disappearing also in a minute or less. "Come on!" cried Dick, springing to his feet. "Let's go across and get him. Round this way. Don't trust to that slope of ice: you may slip and break your neck." "But the mountain-lion, Dick," I protested. "Suppose there's a mountain-lion down there." "Oh, never mind him!" Dick exclaimed. "If there was one, he's gone by this time. And even if he should be there yet, he'd skip the moment he saw us. We needn't mind him. Come on!" Away we went, therefore, Dick in the lead, and scrambling quickly though carefully down the rocky wall, we made our way up the bed of the ravine until we found ourselves opposite the ledge upon which the sheep had been standing. Here we discovered that the wall of the gorge was split from top to bottom by a narrow cleft--previously invisible to us--filled with hard snow, and whether the sheep had been standing on the right side or the left of this crevice, and therefore on which side the big ram had fallen, we could not tell; for the wall of the gorge, besides being exceedingly rough, was littered with great masses of rock against any of which the body of the sheep might have lodged. "I'll tell you what, Frank," said my companion. "It might take us an hour or two to search all the cracks and crannies here. The best plan will be to climb straight up to the ledge where the sheep stood and look down. Then, if he is lodged against the upper side of any of these rocks, we shall be able to see him. But as we can't tell whether he was standing on the right or the left of this crevice, suppose you climb up one side while I go up the other." "All right," said I. "You take the one on the left and I'll go up on this side." It was a laborious climb for both of us--and how those sheep got up there so quickly is a wonder to me still--but as my side of the crevice happened to be easier of ascent than Dick's I got so far ahead of him that I presently found myself about fifty yards in the lead. At this point, however, I met with an obstruction which at first seemed likely to stop me altogether. The fallen rocks were so big, and piled so high, that I could not get over them, and for a moment I thought I should be forced to go back and try another passage. Before resorting to this measure, though, I thought I would attempt to get round the barrier by taking to the snow-bank, supporting myself by holding on to the rocks. To do this I should need the use of both my hands, so, as my rifle had no strap by which to hang it over my shoulder, I took out my handkerchief, tied one end to the trigger-guard, took the other end in my teeth, and slinging the weapon behind me, I seized the rock with both hands and set one foot on the snow. It was at this moment that Dick, down below me on the other side of the crevice, while in the act of crawling up over a big rock, caught a glimpse of something moving over on my side, and the next instant, out from between two great fragments of granite rushed a cinnamon bear and went charging up the slope after me. The bear--as we discovered afterward--had found our sheep, and was agreeably engaged in tearing it to pieces, when he caught a whiff of me. He was an old bear, and had very likely been chased and shot at more than once in the past few years--since the white men had begun to invade his domain--and having conceived a strong antipathy for those interfering bipeds which walked on their hind legs and carried "thunder-sticks" in their fore paws, he decided instantly that, before finishing his dinner, he would just dash out and finish me. And very near he came to doing it. It was only Dick's quick sight and his equally quick shout that saved me. My companion's warning cry to jump could have but one meaning: there was nowhere to jump except out upon the snow-bank; and recovering from my first momentary panic, I let go my rifle and sprang out from the rocks. My hope was that I should be able to keep my footing long enough to scramble across to the rocks on the other side; but in this I was disappointed. The snow-bed lay at an angle as steep as a church roof, and while its surface was slightly softened by the sun, just beneath it was as hard and as slippery as glass. Consequently, the moment my feet struck it they slipped from under me, down I went on my face, and in spite of all my frantic clawing and scratching I began to slide briskly and steadily down-hill. The bear--most fortunately for me--seemed to be less cunning than most of his fellows. Had he paused for a moment to reason it out, he would have seen that by waiting five seconds he might leap upon my back as I went by. Luckily, however, he did not reason it out, but the instant he saw me jump he jumped too, and he, too, began sliding down the icy slope ahead of me; for being, as I said, an old bear, his blunted claws could get no hold. It was an odd situation, and "to a man up a tree," as the saying is, it might have been entertaining. Here was the pursuer retreating backward from the pursued, while the pursued, albeit with extreme reluctance, was pursuing the pursuer--also backward. It was like a nightmare--and a real, live, untamed broncho of a nightmare at that--but luckily it did not last long. Finding that no efforts of mine would arrest my downward progress, and knowing that the bear, reaching the bottom first, need only stand there with his mouth wide open and wait for me to fall into it, I whirled myself over and over sideways, until presently my hand struck the rocks, my finger-tips caught upon a little projection, and there I hung on for dear life, not daring to move a muscle for fear my hold should slip. But from this uncomfortable predicament I was promptly relieved. I had not hung there five seconds ere the sharp report of a rifle rang out, and then another, and next came Dick's voice hailing me: "All right, Frank! I've got him! Hold on: I'm coming up!" Half a minute later, as I lay there face downward on the ice, I heard footsteps just above me, a firm hand grasped my wrist, and a cheerful voice said: "Come on up, old chap. I can steady you." "But the bear, Dick! The bear!" I cried, as I rose to my knees. "Dead as a door-nail," he replied, calmly. "Look." I glanced over my shoulder down the slope. There, on his back among the rocks, lay the cinnamon, his great arms spread out and his head hanging over, motionless. As the snarling beast had slid past him, not ten feet away, Dick, with his Winchester repeater, had shot him once through the heart and once in the base of the skull, so that the bear was stone dead ere he fell from the little two-foot ice-cliff at the bottom of the slope. As for myself, I had had such a scare and was so completely exhausted by my vehement struggles during the past couple of minutes, that for a quarter of an hour I lay on the rocks panting and gasping ere I could get my lungs and my muscles back into working order again. As soon as I could do so, however, I sat up, and holding out my hand to my companion, I said: "Thanks, old chap. I'm mighty glad you were on hand, or, I'm afraid, it would have been all up with me." "It was a pretty close shave," replied Dick; "rather too close for comfort. He meant mischief, sure enough. Well, he's out of mischief now, all right. Let's go down and look at him." "I suppose," said I, "it was the bear that the sheep were looking down at when they stood up there on the ledge all in a row." "Yes, that was it. If I'd known it was a bear they were staring at I'd have left them alone. A mountain-lion I'm not afraid of: he'll run ninety-nine times out of a hundred. But a cinnamon bear is quite another thing: the less you have to do with them, the better." "Well, as far as I'm concerned," said I, "the less I have to do with them, the better it will suit me. If this fellow is a sample of his tribe I'm very willing to forego their further acquaintance: my first interview came too unpleasantly near to being my last. Come on; let's go down." CHAPTER III THE MESCALERO VALLEY It had been our intention to take off the bear's hide and carry it home with us, but we found that he was such a shabby old specimen that the skin was not worth the carriage, so, after cutting out his claws as trophies, we went on to inspect our sheep. Here again we found that "the game was not worth the candle," as the saying is, for the bear had torn the carcass so badly as to render it useless, while the horns, which at a distance and seen against the sky-line, had looked so imposing, proved to be too much chipped and broken to be any good. My rifle we found lying beside the bear, it also having slid down the ice-slope when I dropped it. "Well, Frank," remarked my companion, "our hunt so far doesn't seem to have had much result--unless you count the experience as something." "Which I most decidedly do," I interjected. "You are right enough there," replied Dick; "there's no gainsaying that. Well, what I was going to say was that the day is early yet, and if you like there is still time for us to go off and have a try for a deer. I should like to take home something to show for our day's work." "Very well," said I. "Which way should we take? There are no deer up here among the rocks, I suppose." "Why, I propose that we go up over this ridge here and try the country to the southwest. I've never been down there myself, having always up to the present hunted to the north and east of camp; but I've often thought of trying it: it is a likely-looking country, quite different from that on the Mosby side of the divide: high mesa land cut up by deep cañons. What do you say?" "Anything you like," I answered. "It is all new to me, and one direction is as good as another." "Very well, then, let us get up over the ridge at once and make a start." Having discovered a place easier of ascent than those by which we had first tried to climb up, we soon found ourselves on top of the ridge, whence we could look out over the country we were intending to explore. It was plain at a glance that the two sides of the divide were very different. Behind us, to the north, rose Mescalero Mountain, bare, rugged and seamed with strips of snow. From this mountain, as from a center, there radiated in all directions great spurs, like fingers spread out, on one of which we were then standing. Looking southward, we could see that our spur continued for many miles in the form of a chain of round-topped mountains, well covered with timber, the elevation of which diminished pretty regularly the further they receded from the parent stem. On the left hand side of this chain--the eastern, or Mosby side--the country was very rough and broken: from where we stood we could see nothing but the tops of mountains, some sharp and rugged, some round and tree-covered, seemingly massed together without order or regularity. But to the south and southwest it was very different. Here the land lying embraced between two of the spurs was spread out like a great fan-shaped park, which, though it sloped away pretty sharply, was fairly smooth, except where several dark lines indicated the presence of cañons of unknown depth. The whole stretch, as far as we could distinguish, was pretty well covered with timber, though occasional open spaces showed here and there, some of two or three acres and some of two or three square miles in extent. "Just the country for black-tail," said Dick, "especially at this time of year--the beginning of winter. For, you see, it lies very much lower on the average than the Mosby side, and the snow consequently will not come so early nor stay so late. It ought to be a great hunting-ground." "It is a curious thing to find an open stretch like that in the midst of the mountains," said I. "What is it called?" "The Mescalero valley. The professor says it was once an arm of the sea--and it looks like it, doesn't it? Over on the Mosby side the rocks are all granite and porphyry, tilted up at all sorts of angles; but down there it is sandstone and limestone, lying flat--a sure sign that it was once the bottom of a sea." "Is the valley inhabited?" I asked. "Down at the southern end, about fifty miles away, there is a Mexican settlement, at the foot of those twin peaks you see down there standing all alone in the midst of the valley--the Dos Hermanos: Two Brothers, they are called--but up at this end there are no inhabitants, I believe." "Well, there will be some day, I expect," said I. "It ought to be a fine situation for a saw-mill, for instance." "I don't know about that. There would be no way of getting your product to market. Old Jeff Andrews, the founder of Mosby, told me about it once--he's been across it two or three times--and he says that the country is so slashed with cañons that a wheeled vehicle couldn't travel across it, and consequently the expense of road-making would amount to about as much as the value of the timber." "I see. And, of course, the streams are much too shallow to float out the logs. Well, let us get along down." "All right. By the way, before we start, there was one thing I wanted to say:--If we should happen to get separated, all you have to do is to turn your face eastward, climb up over the Mosby Ridge, and you'll find yourself on our own creek, either above or below the town. It's very plain; you can hardly lose yourself--by daylight at any rate. So, now, let's be off." The climb down on this side we found to be very much steeper than the climb up on the other had been. We dropped, by Dick's guess, about three thousand feet in the three miles we traversed ere we found ourselves in the midst of the thick timber, walking on comparatively level ground. Keeping along the eastern side of the valley, in the neighborhood of the Mosby Ridge, we made our way forward, steering by the sun--for the trees were so thick we could see but a short distance ahead--when we came upon one of the little open spaces I have mentioned. We were just about to walk out from among the trees, when my companion, with a sudden, "Pst!" stepped behind a tree-trunk and went down on one knee. Without knowing the reason for this move, I did the same, and on my making a motion with my eyebrows, as much as to say, "What's up?" Dick whispered: "Do you see that white patch on the other side of the clearing? An antelope with its back to us. I'll try to draw him over here, so that you may get a shot." So saying, Dick took out a red cotton handkerchief, poked the corner of it into the muzzle of his rifle, and standing erect behind his tree, held out his flag at right angles. At first the antelope took no notice, but presently, catching a glimpse of the strange object out of the corner of his eye, he whirled round and stood for a moment facing us with his head held high. A slight puff of wind fluttered the handkerchief; the antelope started as though to run; but finding himself unhurt, his curiosity got the better of his fears, and he came trotting straight across the clearing in order to get a closer view. At about a hundred yards distance he stopped, his body turned broadside to us, all ready to bolt at the shortest notice, when Dick whispered to me to shoot. [Illustration: "IT WAS A SPLENDID CHANCE; NOBODY COULD ASK FOR A BETTER TARGET."] It was a splendid chance; nobody could ask for a better target; but do you think I could hold that rifle steady? Not a bit of it! Instead of one sight, I could see half a dozen; and finding that the longer I aimed the more I trembled, I at length pulled the trigger and chanced it. Where the bullet went I know not: somewhere southward; and so did the antelope, and at much the same pace, if I am any judge of speed. "Never mind, old chap," said Dick, laughing. "That is liable to happen to anybody. Most people get a touch of the buck-fever the first time they try to shoot a wild animal. You'll probably find yourself all right the next chance you get." "I'm afraid there's not likely to be a 'next chance,' is there?" I asked. "Won't that shot scare all the deer out of the country?" "I hardly think so: the deer are almost never disturbed down here; it isn't like the Mosby side, where the prospectors are tramping over the hills all the time." "Don't they ever come down here, then?" "No, never. There is a common saying, as you know, perhaps, that 'gold is where you find it'; meaning that it may be anywhere--one place is as likely as another. But, all the same, the prospectors seem to think the chances are better among the granite and porphyry rocks on the other side, where the formation has been cracked and broken and heaved up on end by volcanic force. They never trouble to come down here, where any one can see at a glance that the deposits have never been disturbed since they were first laid down at the bottom of a great inlet of the ocean." "I see what you mean: and as nobody ever comes down here the deer are not fidgety and suspicious as they would be if they were always being disturbed." "That's it, exactly. They are so unused to the presence of human beings that I doubt if they would take any notice of your shot except to cock their ears and sniff at the breeze for a minute or two. Anyhow, we'll go ahead and find out. Let us go across this clearing and see if there isn't a spring on the other side. That antelope was drinking when we first saw him, if I'm not mistaken." Sure enough, just before we entered the trees again, we came upon a pool of water around the softened rim of which were many tracks of animals. "Hallo!" cried Dick. "Just look here! See the wolf tracks--any number of them. It must be a great wolf country as well as a great deer country--in fact, because it is a great deer country. I shouldn't like to be caught here in the winter with so many wolves about; they are unpleasant neighbors when food is scarce." "Are they dangerous to a man with a gun?" I asked. "Yes, they are. One wolf--or even two--doesn't matter much to a man with a breach-loading rifle; but when a dozen or twenty get after you, you'll do well to go up a tree and stay there. A pack of hungry wolves is no trifle, I can tell you." "Have you ever had any experience with them yourself?" "I did once, and a mighty distressing one it was, though it didn't hurt me, personally. I was out hunting with my dog, Blucher, a little short-legged, long-bodied fellow of no particular breed, and was up among the tall timber east of the house, going along suspecting nothing, when Blucher, all of a sudden, began to whine and crowd against my legs. I looked back, and there I saw six big timber-wolves slipping down a hill about a quarter of a mile behind me. They stopped when I stopped, but as soon as I moved, on they came again--it was very uncomfortable, especially when two of them vanished among the trees, and I couldn't tell whether they might not be running to get round the other side of me. I went on up the next rise, the wolves keeping about the same distance behind me, and as soon as we were out of their sight, Blucher and I ran for it. But it was no use: the wolves had taken the same opportunity, and when I looked back again, there they were, all six of them, not a hundred yards behind this time. "It began to look serious; for though it was possible that they were after Blucher, and not after me at all, I couldn't be sure of that. So, first picking out a tree to go up in case of necessity, I knelt down and fired into the bunch, getting one. I had hoped that the others would turn and run, but the shot seemed to have a directly opposite effect: the remaining five wolves came charging straight at me. "I gave the dog one kick and yelled at him to 'Go home!'--it was all I could do--dropped my rifle, jumped for a branch, and was out of reach when the wolves rushed past in pursuit of Blucher. "Poor little beast! Though he was a mongrel with no pretence at a pedigree, he was a good hunting dog and a faithful friend. But what chance had he in a race with five long-legged, half-starved timber-wolves? It happened out of my sight, I am glad to say; all I heard was one yelp, followed by an angry snarling, and then all was silent again." Dick paused for a moment, his face looking very grim for a boy, and then continued: "I've hated the sight and the sound of wolves ever since. Of course, I know they were only following their nature, but--I can't help it--I hate a wolf, and that's all there is to it." "I don't wonder," said I. "Any one----" "Hark!" cried Dick, clapping his hand on my arm. "Did you hear that? Listen!" We stood silent for a moment, and then, far off in the direction from which we had come, I heard a curious whimpering sound, the nature of which I could not understand. "What is it?" I whispered, involuntarily sinking my voice. "Wolves--hunting." "Hunting what?" "I don't know; but we'll move away from here, anyhow. Come on." Dick's manner, more than his words, made me feel a little uneasy and I followed him very willingly as he set off at a smart walk through the timber. "You don't suppose they are hunting us, Dick, do you?" I asked, as we strode along side by side. "I can't tell yet. It seems hardly likely--in daylight, and at this time of year. I could understand it if it were winter. If they are hunting us, it is probably because they, like the deer, are unacquainted with men, and never having been shot at, they don't know what danger they are running into. Still, I feel a little suspicious that it is our trail they are following. They are coming down right on the line we took, at any rate. We shall be able to decide, though, in a minute or two. Look ahead. Do you see how the trees are thinning out? We are coming to another open space, a big one, I think; I noticed it when we were up on the ridge just now." "What good will that do us?" I asked. "We shall be able to get a sight of them. Come on. I'll show you." True enough, we presently stepped out from among the trees again and found ourselves on the edge of another open, grassy space, very much larger than the last one. It was about three hundred yards across to the other side, and a mile in length from east to west. We had struck it about midway of its east-and-west length. Out into the open Dick walked some twenty yards, and there stopped once more to listen. We had not long to wait. The eager whimper came again, much nearer, and now and then a quavering howl. I did not like the sound at all. I looked at Dick, who was standing "facing the music" and frowning thoughtfully. "Well, Dick!" I exclaimed, getting impatient. "I think they are after us," said he. "And what do you mean to do? Not stay out here in the open, I suppose." "Not we; at least, not for more than five minutes. Look here, Frank," he went on, speaking quickly. "I'll tell you what I propose to do. We'll keep out here in the open, about this distance from the trees, and make straight eastward for the Mosby Ridge; it is only half a mile or so to the woods at that end of the clearing and we can make it in five minutes. Then, if the wolves are truly hunting us, they will follow our trail out into the open, when we shall get a sight of them and be able to count them. If they are only three or four we can handle them all right, but if there is a big pack of them we shall have to take to a tree. Give me your rifle to carry--my breathing machinery is better used to it than yours--and we'll make a run for it." It was only a short half-mile we had to run--quite enough for me, though--and under the first tree we came to, Dick stopped. "This will do," said he, handing back my rifle. "We'll wait here now and watch. Hark! They're getting pretty close. Hallo! Hallo! Why, look there, Frank!" That Dick should thus exclaim was not to be wondered at, for out from the trees, scarce a hundred paces from us, there came, not the wolves, but a man! And such an odd-looking man, riding on such an odd-looking steed! "What is he riding on, Dick?" I asked. "A mule?" "No; a burro--a jack--a donkey; a big one, too; and it need be, for he is a tremendous fellow. Did you ever see such a chest?" "Is he an Indian?" "No; a Mexican. An Indian wouldn't deign to ride a burro. I understand it all now. The wolves are not hunting us at all: they are after the donkey. And the man is aware of it, too: see how he keeps looking behind. What is that thing he is carrying in his left hand? A bow?" "Yes; a bow. And a quiver of arrows over his shoulder." "So he has! He doesn't seem to be in much of a hurry, does he? Evidently he is not much afraid of the wolves. Why, he's stopping to wait for them! He's a plucky fellow. Why, Frank, just look! Did you ever see such a queer-looking specimen?" This exclamation was drawn from my companion involuntarily when the Mexican, checking his donkey, sprang to the ground. He certainly was a queer-looking specimen. If he had looked like a giant on donkey-back, he looked like a dwarf on foot; for, though his head was big and his body huge, his legs were so short that he appeared to be scarce five feet high; while his muscular arms were of such length that he could touch his knees without stooping. To add to his strange appearance, the man was clad in a long, sleeveless coat made of deer-skin, with the hairy side out. We had hardly had time to take in all these peculiarities when Dick once more exclaimed: "Ah! Here they come! One, two, three--only five of them after all." As he spoke, the wolves came loping out from among the trees; but the moment they struck our cross-trail the suspicious, wary creatures all stopped with one accord, puzzled by coming upon a scent they had not expected. This was the Mexican's opportunity. Raising his long left arm, he drew an arrow to its head and let fly. I thought he had missed, for I saw the arrow strike the ground and knock up a little puff of dust. But I was mistaken. One of the wolves gave a yelp, ran back a few steps, fell down, got up again and ran another few steps, fell again, and this time lay motionless. The arrow had gone right through him! Almost at the same instant Dick raised his rifle and fired. The shot was electrical. One of the wolves fell, when the remaining three instantly turned tail and ran. But not only did the wolves run: the Mexican, casting one glance in our direction, sprang upon his donkey and away he went, at a pace that was surprising considering the respective sizes of man and beast. It was in vain that Dick ran out from under our tree and shouted after him something in Spanish. I could distinguish the word, _amigos_, two or three times repeated, but the man took no notice. Perhaps he did not believe in friendships so suddenly declared. At any rate, he neither looked back nor slackened his pace, and in a minute or less he and his faithful steed vanished into the timber on the south side of the clearing. The whole incident had not occupied five minutes; but for the presence of the two dead wolves one would have been tempted to believe it had never happened at all--solitude and silence reigned once more. "Well, wasn't that a queer thing!" cried Dick. "It certainly was," I replied. "I wonder who the man is. Anyhow, he's not coming back, so let's go and pick up his arrow." CHAPTER IV RACING THE STORM Walking over to where the two wolves lay, we soon found the arrow, its head buried out of sight in the hard ground, showing with what force it had come from the bow. It was carefully made of a bit of some hard wood, scraped down to the proper diameter, and fitted with three feathers--eagle feathers, Dick said--one-third as long as the shaft, very neatly bound on with some kind of fine sinew. "Looks like a Ute arrow," remarked my companion, as he stooped to pick it up; "yet the man was a Mexican, I am sure. I suppose he must have got it from the Indians." "Do the Utes use copper arrow-heads?" I asked. "No, they don't. They use iron or steel nowadays. Why do you ask?" "Because this arrow-head is copper," I replied. "Why, so it is!" cried Dick, rubbing the soil from the point on his trouser-leg. "That's very odd. I never saw one before. I feel pretty sure the Indians never use copper: it is too soft. This bit seems to take an edge pretty well, though. See, the point doesn't seem to have been damaged by sticking into the ground; and it has been filed pretty sharp, too; or, what is more likely, rubbed sharp on a stone. It has evidently been made by hand from a piece of native copper." "I wonder why the man should choose to use copper," said I. "Though when you come to think of it, Dick," I added, "I don't see why it shouldn't make a pretty good arrow-head. It is soft metal, of course, but it is only soft by comparison with other metals. This wedge of copper weighs two or three ounces, and it is quite hard enough to go through the hide of an animal at twenty or thirty yards' distance when 'fired' with the force that this one was." "That's true. And I expect the explanation is simple enough why the man uses copper. It is probably from necessity and not from choice. Like nearly all Mexicans of the peon class, he probably never has a cent of money in his possession. Consequently, as he can't buy a gun, he uses a bow; and for the same reason, being unable to procure iron for arrow-heads, he uses copper. I expect he comes from the settlement at the foot of the valley, for copper is a very common metal down there." "Why should it be more common there than elsewhere?" I asked. "Well, that's the question--and a very interesting question, too. The professor and I were down in that neighborhood about a year ago, and on going into the village we were a good deal surprised to find that every household seemed to possess a bowl or a pot or a cup or a dipper or all four, perhaps, hammered out of native copper--all of them having the appearance of great age. There were dozens of them altogether." "How do they get them?" I asked. "That's the question again--and the Mexicans themselves don't seem to know. They say, if you ask them, that they've always had them. And the professor did ask them. He went into one house after another and questioned the people, especially the old people, as to where the copper came from; but none of them could give him any information. I wondered why he should be so persevering in the matter--though when there is anything he desires to learn, no trouble is too much for him--but after we had left the place he explained it all to me, and then I ceased to wonder." "What was his explanation, then?" "He told me that when he was in Santa Fé about fifteen years before, he made the acquaintance of a Spanish gentleman of the remarkable name of Blake----" "Blake!" I interrupted. "That's a queer name for a Spaniard." "Yes," replied Dick. "The professor says he was a descendant of one of those Irishmen who fled to the continent in the time of William III, of England, most of them going into the service of the king of France and others to other countries--Austria and Spain in particular." "Well, go ahead. Excuse me for interrupting." "Well, this gentleman was engaged in hunting through the old Spanish records kept there in Santa Fé, looking up something about the title to a land-grant, I believe, and he told the professor that in the course of his search he had frequently come across copies of reports to the Spanish government of shipments of copper from a mine called the King Philip mine. That it was a mine of importance was evident from the frequency and regularity of the 'returns,' which were kept up for a number of years, until somewhere about the year 1720, if I remember rightly, they began to become irregular and then suddenly ceased altogether." "Why?" "There was no definite statement as to why; but from the reports it appeared that the miners were much harried by the Indians, sometimes the Navajos and sometimes the Utes, while the loss, partial or total, of two or three trains with their escorts, seemed to bring matters to a climax. Shipments ceased and the mine was abandoned." "That's interesting," said I. "And where was this King Philip mine?" "The gentleman could not say. There seemed to be no map or description of any kind among the records; but from casual statements, such as notes of the trains being delayed by floods in this or that creek, or by snow blockades on certain passes, he concluded that the mine was somewhere up in this direction." "Well, that is certainly very interesting. And the professor, I suppose, concludes that the Mexicans down there at---- What's the name of the place?" "Hermanos--called so after the two peaks, at the foot of which it stands." "The professor concludes, I suppose, that the Mexicans' unusual supply of copper pots and pans came originally from the King Philip mine." "Yes; and I've no doubt they did; though the Mexicans themselves had never heard of such a mine. Yet--and it shows how names will stick long after people have forgotten their origin--yet, just outside the village there stands a big, square adobe building, showing four blank walls to the outside, with a single gateway cut through one of them, flat-roofed and battlemented--a regular fortress--and it is called to this day the _Casa del Rey_:--the King's House. Now, why should it be called the King's House? The Mexicans have no idea; but to me it seems plain enough. The King Philip mine was probably a royal mine, and the residence of the king's representative, the storage-place for the product of the mine, the headquarters of the soldier escort, would naturally be called the King's House." "It seems likely, doesn't it? Is that the professor's opinion?" "Yes. He feels sure that the King Philip mine is not far from the village; possibly--in fact, probably--in the Dos Hermanos mountains." "And did he ever make any attempt to find it?" "Not he. Prospecting is altogether out of his line. It was only the historical side of the matter that interested him. All he did was to write to the Señor Blake at Cadiz, in Spain, telling him about it; though whether the letter ever reached its destination he has never heard." "And who lives in the King's House now?" I asked. "Anybody?" "Yes. It is occupied by a man named Galvez, the 'padron' of the village, who owns, or claims, all the country down there for five miles square--the Hermanos Grant. We did not see him when we were there, but from what we heard of him, he seems to regard himself as lord of creation in those parts, owning not only the land, but the village and the villagers, too." "How so? How can he own the villagers?" "Why, it is not an uncommon state of affairs in these remote Mexican settlements. The padron provides the people with the clothes or the tools or the seed they require on credit, taking security on next year's crop, and so manages matters as to get them into debt and keep them there; for they are an improvident lot. In this way they fall into a state of chronic indebtedness, working their land practically for the benefit of the padron and becoming in effect little better than slaves." "I see. A pretty miserable condition for the poor people, isn't it? And doesn't this man, Galvez, with his superior intelligence--presumably--know anything of the King Philip mine?" "Apparently not." "My word, Dick!" I exclaimed. "What fun it would be to go and hunt for it ourselves, wouldn't it?" "Wouldn't it! I've often thought of it before, but I know the professor would never consent. He would consider it a waste of time. It's an idea worth keeping in mind, though, at any rate. There's never any telling what may turn up. We might get the chance somehow; though I confess I don't see how. But we must be moving, Frank," said he, suddenly changing the subject. "It's getting latish. Hallo!" "What's the matter?" I asked, looking wonderingly at my companion, who, with his hand held up to protect his eyes from the glare, was standing, staring at the sun. "Why, the matter is, Frank, that the professor will say that I've neglected my duty, I'm afraid. You remember he told me to look out for a change of weather? I'd forgotten all about it." "Well," said I, "I don't see that that matters. There's no sign of a change, is there?" "Yes, there is. Look up there. Do you see a number of tiny specks all hurrying across the face of the sun from north to south?" "Yes. What is it?" "Snow." "Snow!" I cried, incredulously. "How can it be snow, when there isn't a scrap of cloud visible anywhere?" "It is snow, all the same," said Dick; "old snow blown from the other side of Mescalero." "But how can that be, Dick? All the snow we found up there was packed like ice." "Ah, but we were on the south side. On the north side, where the sun has no effect, it is still as loose and as powdery as it was when it fell." "Of course. I hadn't thought of that. There must be a pretty stiff breeze blowing overhead to keep it hung up in the sky like that and not allow a speck of it to fall down here." "Yes, it's blowing great guns up there, all right, and I am afraid we shall be getting it ourselves before long. We must dig out of here hot foot, Frank. I hope we haven't stayed too long as it is." It was hard to believe that there was anything to fear from the weather, with the unclouded sun shining down upon us with such power as to be almost uncomfortably hot; but Dick, I could see, felt uneasy, and as I could not presume to set up my judgment against his larger experience, I did not wait to ask any more questions, but set off side by side with him when he started eastward at a pace which required the saving of all my breath to keep up with him. We had been walking through the woods for about half an hour and were expecting to begin the ascent of the Mosby Ridge in a few minutes, when we were brought to a standstill by coming suddenly upon the edge of a deep cleft in the earth, cutting across our course at right angles. It was one of the many cañons for which the Mescalero valley was notorious. Looking across the cañon, we could see that the opposite wall was composed of a thick bed of limestone overlying another of sandstone, the latter, being the softer, so scooped out that the limestone cap projected several feet beyond it. It appeared to be quite unscalable, and on our side it was doubtless the same, for, on cautiously approaching the edge as near as we dared, we could see that the cliff fell sheer for three hundred feet or more. "No getting down here!" cried Dick. "Up stream, Frank! The cañon will shallow in that direction." Away we went again along the edge of the gorge, and presently were rejoiced to find a place where the cliff had broken away, enabling us, with care, to climb down to the bottom. The other side, however, presented no possible chance of getting out, so on we went, following up the dry bed of the arroyo, looking out sharply for some break by which we might climb up, when, on rounding a slight bend, Dick stopped so suddenly that I, who was close on his heels, bumped up against him. "What's the matter, Dick?" I asked. "What are you stopping for?" "Look up there at Mescalero," said he. It was the first glimpse of the mountain we had had since entering the woods at the head of the valley, and the change in its appearance was alarming. The only part of it we could see was the summit, standing out clear and sharp against the sky; all the rest of it, and of the whole range as well, was shrouded by a heavy gray cloud, which, creeping round either side of the peak, was rolling down our side of the range, slowly and steadily filling up and blotting out each gully and ravine as it came to it. There was a stealthy, vindictive look about it I did not at all like. "Snow, Dick?" I asked. "Yes, and lots of it, I'm afraid. See how the cloud comes creeping down--like cold molasses. I expect it is so heavy with snow that it can't float in the thin air up there, and the north wind is just shouldering it up over the range from behind. We've got to get out of here, Frank, as fast as we can and make the top of the Mosby Ridge, if possible, before that cloud catches us. Once on the other side, we're pretty safe: I know the country; but on this side I don't. So, let us waste no more time--we have none to waste, I can tell you." Nor did we waste any, for neither of us had any inclination to linger, but pushing forward once more along the bottom of the cañon, we presently espied a place where we thought we might climb out. Scrambling up the steep slope of shaly detritus, we had come almost to the top, when to our disappointment we found our further progress barred by a little cliff, not more than eight feet high, but slightly overhanging, and so smooth that there was no hold for either feet or fingers. "Up on my shoulders, Frank!" cried my companion, laying down his rifle and leaning his arms against the rock and his head against his arms. In two seconds I was standing on his shoulders, but even then I could not get any hold for my hands on the smooth, curved, shaly bank which capped the limestone. Only a foot out of my reach, however, there grew a little pine tree, about three inches thick, and whipping off my belt I lashed at the tree trunk with it. The end of the belt flew round; I caught it; and having now both ends in my hands I quickly relieved my companion of his burden and crawled up out of the ravine. Then, buckling the belt to the tree, I took the loose end in one hand, and lying down flat I received and laid aside the two rifles which Dick handed up to me, one at a time. Dick himself, though, was out of reach, perceiving which, I pulled off my coat, firmly grasped the collar and let down the other end to him, lying, myself, face downward upon the stones, with the end of the belt held tight in the other hand. "All set?" cried Dick; and, "All set!" I shouted in reply. There was a violent jerk upon the coat, and the next thing, there was Dick himself kneeling beside me. "Well done, old chap!" cried he. "That was a great idea. Now, then, let's be off. I'll carry the two rifles. It's plain sailing now. Straight up the Ridge for those two great rocks that stand up there like a gateway to the pass. I know the place. Only a couple of thousand feet to climb and then we begin to go down-hill. We shall make it now. Come on!" The trees were thin just here, and as we started to ascend the pass we obtained one more glimpse of Mescalero--the last one we were to get that day. The bank of cloud had advanced about half a mile since we first caught sight of it, while it had become so much thicker as the wind rolled it up from the other side of the range, that now only the very tip of the mountain showed above it. Even as we watched it, a great fold of the cloud passed over the summit, hiding it altogether. "See that, Dick?" said I. "Yes," he replied. "A very big snow, I expect. Hark! Do you hear that faint humming? The wind in the pines. We shall be getting it soon. Come on, now; stick close to my heels; if I go too fast, call out." Away we went up the pass, pressing forward at the utmost speed I could stand, desperately anxious to get as far ahead as possible before the storm should overtake us. The ascent, though very steep on this side, presented no other special difficulty, and at the end of an hour we had come close to the two great rocks for which we had been making. All this time the sun continued to shine down upon us, though with diminishing power as the hurrying snowflakes passing above our heads became thicker and thicker; while, as to the storm-cloud itself, we could not see how near it had come, for the pine-clad mountain, rising high on our left hand, obstructed our view in that direction. That it was not far off, though, we were pretty sure, for the humming of the wind in the woods--the only thing by which we could judge--though faint at first, had by this time increased to a roar. The storm was, in fact, much nearer than we imagined, and just as we passed between the "gateway" rocks it burst upon us with a fury and a suddenness that, to me at least, were appalling. Almost as though a door had been slammed in our faces, the light of the sun was cut off, leaving us in twilight gloom, and with a roar like a stampede of cattle across a wooden bridge, a swirling, blinding smother of snow, driven by a furious wind, rushed through the "gateway," taking us full in the face, with such violence that Dick was thrown back against me, nearly knocking us both from our feet. Instinctively, we crouched for shelter behind the rock, and there we waited a minute or two to recover breath and collect our senses. "Pretty bad," said Dick. "But it might have been worse: it isn't very cold--not yet; we have only about two miles to go, and I know the lay of the land. We'll start again as soon as you are ready. I'll go first and you follow close behind. Whatever you do, don't lose sight of me for an instant: it won't do to get lost. Hark! Did you hear that?" There was a rending crash, as some big tree gave way before the storm. It was a new danger, one I had not thought of before. I looked apprehensively at my companion. "Suppose one of them should fall on us, Dick," said I. "Suppose it shouldn't," replied Dick. "That is just as easy to suppose, and a good deal healthier." I confess I had been feeling somewhat scared. The sudden gloom, the astonishing fury of the wind, the confusing whirl and rush of the snow, and then from some point unknown the sharp breaking of a tree, sounding in the midst of the universal roar like the crack of a whip--all this, coming all together and so suddenly, was quite enough, I think, to "rattle" a town-bred boy. But if panic is catching, so is courage. Dick's prompt and sensible remark acted like a tonic. Springing to my feet, I cried: "You are right, old chap! Come on. Let's step right out at once. I'm ready." It was most fortunate that Dick knew where he was, for the light was so dim and the snow so thick that we could see but a few paces ahead; while the wind, though beating in general against our left cheeks, was itself useless as a guide, for, being deflected by the ridges and ravines of the mountain, it would every now and then strike us square in the face, stopping us dead, and the next moment leap upon us from behind, sending me stumbling forward against my leader. In spite of its vindictive and ceaseless assaults, though, Dick kept straight on, his head bent and his cap pulled down over his ears; while I, following three feet behind, kept him steadily in view. Presently he stopped with a joyful shout. "Hurrah, Frank!" he cried. "Look here! Now we are all right. Here's a thread to hold on by: as good as a rope to a drowning man." The "thread" was a little stream of water, appearing suddenly from I know not where, and running off in the direction we were going. "This will take us home, Frank!" my companion shouted in my ear. "It runs down and joins our own creek about a quarter of a mile above the house. With this for a guide we are all safe; we mustn't lose it, that's all. And we won't do that: we'll get into it and walk in the water if we have to. Best foot foremost, now! All down-hill! Hurrah, for us!" Dick's cheerful view of the situation was very encouraging, though, as a matter of fact, it was a pretty desperate struggle we had to get down the mountain, with the darkness increasing and the snow becoming deeper every minute. Indeed it was becoming a serious question with me whether I could keep going much longer, when at the end of the most perilous hour I ever went through, we at last came down to the junction of the creeks, and turning to our right presently caught sight of a lighted window. Five minutes later we were safe inside the professor's house--and high time too, for I could not have stood much more of it: I had just about reached the end of my tether. But the warmth and rest and above all the assurance of safety quickly had their effect, and very soon I found myself seated before the fire consuming with infinite gusto a great bowl of strong, hot soup which Romero had made all ready for us; thus comfortably winding up the most eventful day of my existence--up to that moment. CHAPTER V HOW DICK BROUGHT THE NEWS "You ran it rather too close, Dick," said the professor, with a shake of his head, when we had told him the story of our race with the storm. "I was beginning to be afraid; not so much for you as for your companion: it was too big an undertaking for him, considering that it was his first day in the mountains; even leaving out the risk of the snow-storm." "I'm afraid I was thoughtless," replied Dick, penitently; "especially in not looking out for a change of weather. It did run us too close, as you say--a great deal too close. But there is one thing I can do, anyhow, to repair that error to some extent, and I'll be off at once and do it." So saying, Dick, who by this time had finished his supper, jumped out of his chair and began putting on his overcoat. "Where are you off to, Dick?" I exclaimed. "Not going out again to-night?" "Only a little way," replied Dick. "Down to the town to let your uncle know that you are all safe. He'll be pretty anxious, I expect." I had thought of that, but I could see no way of getting over it. I could not go myself, for even if I had dared to venture I had not the strength for it, and of course I could not expect any one else to do it for me. My first thought, therefore, when Dick announced that he was going, was one of satisfaction; though my next thought, following very quickly upon the first one, was to protest against his doing any such thing. "No, no, Dick," I cried, "it's too risky--you mustn't! Uncle Tom will be worried, I know, but he will conclude that I am staying the night with you. And though I should be glad to have his mind relieved, I don't consider--and he would say the same, I'm pretty sure--that that is a good enough reason for you to take such a risk." "Thanks, old chap," replied Dick; "but it isn't so much of a risk as you think. Going down wind to the town is a very different matter from coming down that rough mountain with the storm beating on us from every side. I've been over the trail a thousand times, and I believe I could follow it with my eyes shut; and, anyhow, to lose your way is pretty near impossible, you know, with the cañon on your right hand and the mountain on your left. So, don't you worry yourself, Frank: I'll be under cover again in an hour or less." Seeing that the professor nodded approval, I protested no more, though I still had my doubts about letting him go. "Well, Dick," said I, "it's mighty good of you. I wish I could go, too, but that is out of the question, I'm afraid: I should only hamper you if I tried. I can tell you one thing, anyhow: Uncle Tom will appreciate it--you may be sure of that." In this I was right, though I little suspected at the moment in what form his appreciation was to show itself. As a matter of fact, Dick's action in braving the storm a second time that evening was to be a turning-point in his fortune and mine. "Good-night, Frank," said he. "I'll be back again in the morning, I expect. Hope you'll sleep as well in my bed as I intend to do in yours. Good-night." So saying, Dick, this time overcoated, gloved and ear-capped, opened the door and stepped out. Watching him from the window, I saw him striding off down wind, to be lost to sight in ten seconds in the maze of driving snow. "Are you sure it's all right, Professor?" said I, anxiously. "There's time yet to call him back." "It is all right," replied my host, reassuringly. "You need not fear. Dick has been out in many a storm before, and he knows very well how to take care of himself. You may be sure I would not let him go if I thought it were not all right. And now, I think, it would be well if you took possession of Dick's bed. You have had a very hard day and need a good long rest." To this I made no objection, and early though it was, I was asleep in five minutes, too tired to be disturbed even by the insistent banging and howling of the storm outside. Meanwhile, Uncle Tom, down in the town, was, as I had suspected, fretting and fuming and worrying himself in his uncertainty as to whether I was safe under cover or not. The storm had taken the town by surprise, for the morning had opened gloriously, clear and sharp and still, as it had done every day for a month past, and most people naturally supposed there was to be another day as fine as those which had gone before; little suspecting that the north wind, up there among the icebound peaks and gorges of the mother range, was at that moment marshaling its forces for a mad rush down into the valley. And how should they suspect? Of the three hundred people comprising the population, not one, not even old Jeff Andrews himself, the patriarch of the district, had spent more than two winters in the camp. In the year of its founding there were about a dozen men and no women who had braved the hardships of the first winter, but as the fame of the new camp extended to the outer world, other people began to come in, slowly at first and then in larger numbers, so that by this time the population numbered, as I said, about three hundred souls, including twenty-one women and two babies; while at a rough guess I should say there was about two-thirds of a dog to each citizen, counting in the twelve children of school age and the two babies as well. These dogs, by the way, were the chief source of entertainment in the town, for during the hours of daylight there was always a fight going on somewhere, while at night most of them, especially the younger ones, used to sit out in the middle of the street barking defiance at the coyotes, which, from the hills all round, howled back at them in unceasing chorus. This part of the programme was changed, however, later in the winter, for one half-cloudy night the blacksmith's long-legged shepherd pup, seated in front of the forge door, was barking himself hoarse at the moon when a big timber-wolf came slipping down out of the woods and finished the puppy's song and his existence with one snap. After this the other dogs were more careful about the hours they kept. But to return to the human part of the population. Considering how few of them had spent a winter in this high valley; remembering that every one of the grown-up citizens had been born in some other State, and that the very great majority were newcomers in Colorado, it is not to be wondered at that the storm should have caught them unawares. For, in Colorado, if there is one thing almost impossible to forecast it is the weather, especially in the mountains where it is made, where the snow-storms and the thunder-storms, brewing in secret behind the peaks, bounce out on you before you know it. So, on this sunshiny morning, most people went about their usual occupations unsuspicious of evil; it was only the few old-timers who divined what was coming, and their little precautions, such as shutting their doors and windows before leaving the house, merely excited a smile or a word of chaff from the "plum-sure" newcomers. For it is always the new arrival who thinks he can predict the weather; the old-stager, having had experience enough to be aware that he knows nothing about it for certain, can seldom be persuaded to venture a decided opinion. Tied to a hitching-post outside the assayer's door that afternoon were two ponies, and about two o'clock Mr. Warren, himself, and Uncle Tom, issued from the house, prepared for their ride up on Cape Horn--a big, bare mountain lying southeast of town. As they stepped down from the porch, however, Warren happened to notice old Jeff Andrews walking up the street, carrying over his shoulder a great buffalo-skin overcoat, which, considering the warmth of the day, seemed rather out of place. "Hallo, Jeff!" the assayer called out. "What are you carrying that thing for? Are we going to have a change?" Jeff, a gray-bearded, round-shouldered man of sixty, with a face burnt all of one color by years of life in the open, paused for a moment before replying, and then, knowing that the assayer was not one of those "guying tenderfeet," for whom, as he expressed it, "he had no manner of use," he answered genially: "Well, gents, I ain't no weather prophet--I'll leave that business to the latest arrival--but I have my suspicions. Just look up overhead." The old man had detected the hurrying snowflakes passing across the face of the sun, and though to Uncle Tom there was nothing unusual to be seen, the assayer understood the signs. "Wind, Jeff?" said he. "And snow," replied the old prospector. "Was you going to ride up on Cape Horn this evening, Mr. Warren? Well, if I was you, I wouldn't. Cape Horn lies south o' here, and if a storm from the north catches you up there on that bare mountain you may not be able to work your way back again. If I was you, I'd put the ponies back in the stable and lay low for a spell." "Thank you, Jeff," responded the assayer. "I believe that's a good idea. I think we shall do well, Tom, to postpone our trip. No use running the risk of being caught out in a blizzard: it's a bit too dangerous to suit me." The ponies, therefore, were taken back to the stable and the two men, returning to the house, sat down on the sunny porch to await developments. The snow-cloud was already half way down the range and it was not long ere the murmur of the wind among the distant trees began to make itself heard, giving warning of what was coming to a few of the more observant people. "It looks pretty threatening, Sam," said Uncle Tom. "I don't like the way that cloud comes creeping down. I hope those boys will notice it in time." "I don't think you need worry about them," replied the assayer. "Young Dick is well able to take care of himself. He knows the signs as well as anybody." "Well, I hope he'll notice them in time. Going indoors, are you?" "Yes; if you don't mind, I'll leave you for the present. I have some work I want to finish up. Let me know when it comes pretty close so that I may get my windows shut. It will come with a 'whoop' when it does come." As the assayer rose to his feet, he observed across the street the proprietor of the corner grocery standing in his doorway with his hands in his pockets. "Hallo, Jackson!" he called out. "You'd better take in those loose boxes from the sidewalk if you want to save them: there's a big blow coming pretty soon." "Oh, I guess not," replied the grocer, a fat-faced, self-satisfied man, one of those "dead-sure weather prophets" for whom old Jeff felt such supreme contempt. "I reckon I'll chance it." He cast a glance skyward, and deceived by the sparkling brilliancy of the sun, he added under his breath, "Big blow! As if any one couldn't see with half an eye that there isn't a sign of wind in the sky." "All right, Jackson, suit yourself," replied Warren; adding on his part, as an aside to Uncle Tom, "He'll change his mind in about half an hour, if I'm not mistaken." For about that length of time Uncle Tom continued to sit on the porch watching the approaching cloud and listening to the increasing murmur of the wind, when, on the crown of a high ridge about a mile above town he saw all the pine trees with one accord suddenly bend their heads toward him, as though making him a stately obeisance. Springing out of his chair, Uncle Tom bolted into the house, slamming the door behind him and calling out: "Here it comes, Sam! Here it comes!" It did. The roar of its approach was now plainly audible; there was a hurrying and scurrying of men and women, a banging of doors and a slamming down of windows; even the incredulous grocer, convinced at last, made a dive for his loose boxes--but just too late. With a shriek, as of triumph at catching them all unprepared, the wind came raging down the street, making a clean sweep of everything. A young mining camp is not as a rule over-particular about the amount of rubbish that encumbers its streets, and Mosby was no exception to the rule, but in five minutes it was swept as clean as though the twenty-one housewives had been at work on it for a week with broom and scrubbing-brush. Heralded by a cloud of mingled dust and snow, a whole covey of paper scraps, loose straw and a few hats, went whirling down the street, followed by a dozen or two of empty tin cans, while behind them, with infinite clatter, came three lengths of stove-pipe from the bakery chimney, closely pursued by an immense barrel which had once contained crockery. As though enjoying the fun, this barrel came bounding down the roadway, making astonishing leaps, until, at the grocery corner, it encountered the only one of the empty boxes which had not already gone south, and glancing off at an angle, went bang through the show window! It was as though My Lord, the North Wind, aware of Mr. Jackson's incredulity, had sent an emissary to convince him that he _did_ intend to blow that day. From that moment the wind and the snow had it all their own way; not a citizen dared to show his nose outside. It was an uneasy day for Uncle Tom. Knowing full well the extreme danger of being caught on the mountain in such a storm, he could not help feeling anxious for our safety, and though his host tried to reassure him by repeating his confidence in Dick Stanley's good sense and experience, he grew more and more fidgety as the day wore on and darkness began to settle down upon the town. In fact, by sunset, Uncle Tom had worked himself up to a high state of nervousness. He kept pacing up and down the room like a caged beast, unconsciously puffing at a cigar which had gone out half an hour before; then striding to the window to look out--a disheartening prospect, for not even the corner grocery was visible now. Then back he would come, plump himself into his chair before the fire, only to jump up again in fifteen seconds to go through the same performance once more. At length he flung his cigar-stump into the fire, and turning to his friend, exclaimed: "Sam, I can't stand this uncertainty any longer. I'm going out to see if I can't find somebody who will undertake to go up to the professor's house and back for twenty dollars, just to make sure those boys have got safe home. I'd go myself, only I know I should never get there." The assayer shook his head. "No use, Tom," said he. "You couldn't get one to go; at least, not for money. If it were to dig a friend out of the snow you could raise a hundred men in a minute; but for money--no. I don't believe you could get any of them to face this storm for twenty dollars--or fifty, either. They would say, 'What's the use? If the boys are in, they're in; if they're not----'" "Well, if they're not---- What? I know what you mean. You chill me all through, Sam, with your 'ifs.' Look here, old man, isn't there _anybody_ who would go? Think, man, think!" "We might try little Aleck Smith, the teamster," said the assayer, thoughtfully. "He's as tough as a bit of bailing-wire and plum full of grit. We'll try him anyhow. Come on. I'll go with you. It's only six houses down. Jump into your overcoat, old man!" The two men turned to get their coats, when, at that moment, there came a thump upon the porch outside, as though somebody had jumped up the two steps at a bound, the door burst open and in the midst of a whirl of snow there was blown into the room the muffled, snow-coated figure of a boy, who, slamming the door behind him, leaned back against it, gasping for breath. The men stared in astonishment, until the boy, pulling off his cap, revealed the face, scarlet from exposure, of Dick Stanley. "Why, Dick!" cried the assayer. "What's the matter? Where's young Frank?" "All safe, sir! Safe in our house, and in bed and asleep by this time." "And did you come down through this howling storm to tell me?" cried Uncle Tom. "Yes, sir. But that wasn't anything so very much, you know: it was down-hill and downwind, too." "Well, you may think what you like about it--but so may I, too; and my opinion is that there isn't another boy in the country would have done it. I shan't forget your service, Dick. You may count on that. I shan't forget it!" Nor did he--as you will see. CHAPTER VI THE PROFESSOR'S STORY What a change had come over the landscape when, at sunrise next morning, I jumped out of bed and went to the door to look out. Though the sky was as clear and as blue as ever, though Mescalero, swept bare by the wind, looked much as usual, all the lower parts of the range, except the crowns of the ridges, were buried under the snow. The woods were full of it; every hollow was leveled off so that one could hardly tell where it used to be; while the narrow valley itself was ridged and furrowed by great drifts piled up by freaks of the wind. It was cold, too, for with the falling of the wind and the clearing of the sky the temperature had dropped to zero. As so often happens in these parts, winter had arrived with a bang. Closing the door, I hopped back to the jolly, roaring fire of logs which Romero had started an hour before, and there finished my dressing. While I was thus engaged, the professor came out of the back room, where it was his custom to sleep--a queer choice--with a couple of thousand dead insects for company. "Well, Frank," said he, cheerily. "Here's King Winter in all his glory. Rather a rough-and-tumble monarch, isn't he? When his majesty makes his royal progress, we, his humble subjects, do well to get out of his way and leave the course clear for him." "That's true, sir," said I, laughing; and falling into the professor's humor, I added: "I never met a king before, and if King Winter is an example of the race I think we Americans were wise to get rid of them when we did." "Oh," replied the professor, "you must not judge a whole order by one specimen: there are kings and kings, and some of them are very fine fellows. King Winter, though, is rather too boisterous and inconsiderate; and to tell you the truth, Frank, you had rather a narrow escape from him yesterday. I did not like to make too much of it before Dick; I did not want him to think I blamed him for what was, after all, merely an oversight; but as a matter of fact you ran a pretty big risk, as you may easily understand when you see the amount of snow that fell in about twelve hours; for the storm ceased and the sky cleared again about three o'clock this morning." "It was nip and tuck for us, sure enough," said I; "but if our getting caught in the storm was any fault of Dick's, there is one thing certain, sir: he got us out of it in great style. I wouldn't ask for a better guide. I was pretty badly scared myself, I don't mind owning"--the professor nodded, as much as to say, "I don't wonder,"--"but Dick," I continued, "did not seem to be flustered for a moment; he knew just what to do and pitched right in and did it. It seems to me, sir--though of course I don't set up to be a judge--that the most experienced mountaineer couldn't have done any better." "Dick is a good boy," said the professor, evidently pleased at my standing up for his young friend; "and he seems to have a faculty for keeping his wits about him in an emergency. It has always been so, ever since he was a little boy. I suppose he has never told you, has he, how he once saved his donkey from a mountain-lion?" "No, sir," I replied. "How was it?" "He was about nine years old at the time, and as his little legs were too short to enable him to keep up with me, I had given him a young burro to ride. We were camped one night on the Trinchera, not far from Fort Garland, when we were awakened by a great squealing on the part of the donkey, which was tethered a few feet away, and sitting up in our beds, which were on the ground under the open sky, we were just in time to see some big, cat-like animal spring upon the poor little beast and knock it over. Instead of crying and crawling under the blankets, as he might well have been excused for doing, little Dick sprang out of his bed--as did I also. But the youngster was twice as quick as I was, and without an instant's hesitation he seized a burning stick from the fire, ran right up to the mountain-lion--for that was what it was--and as the snarling creature raised its head, the plucky little chap thrust the hot end of his stick into its mouth, when, with a yell of pain and astonishment, the beast let go its hold and fled like a yellow streak into the woods again." "Bully for Dick!" I cried. "That was pretty good, wasn't it? And was the donkey killed?" "No; rather badly scratched; but Dick's promptness and courage saved it from anything more serious." "Well, that was certainly pretty good for such a youngster," said I. "By the way, sir," I continued, "there is one thing I should like to ask you, if you don't mind, about your life in the mountains, especially back in the 'sixties' and earlier, and that is, how you managed to escape being killed and scalped by the Indians." My host laughed, and I could see by his face that he was thinking backward, as he slowly stirred his coffee round and round; for we were seated at our breakfast, Romero serving us. "That _was_ a serious question at first," he replied presently, "but I solved it very early in my wanderings; and now I--and Dick, too--may go among any of the tribes with impunity." "Will you tell me about it, sir?" I asked, full of curiosity to know how he had worked such a seeming miracle. The professor leaned back in his chair, stretched out his feet and folded his hands on the edge of the table. "I will, with pleasure," he replied; "for it is rather a curious incident, I have always thought. "Before I took up the profession of 'bug-hunting,' as the pursuit of entomology is irreverently termed by the people here, I had graduated as a physician--very fortunately for me, as it turned out, for my knowledge of medicine was the basis of my reputation among the Indians. I was down in Arizona at one time, when, on coming to a little Mexican village, I found the poor people suffering from an epidemic of smallpox. Several had died, and the survivors, scared out of their wits, had given themselves up for lost. After my arrival, however, there were no more deaths, I am glad to say, and by the end of about a month I had succeeded in putting all my patients on the highroad to recovery. "There was a little adobe ranch-house about a quarter of a mile up-stream from the village, the owner of which had died before my arrival, and this building I had utilized as a pest-house. I was on my way out to it one morning, with my little case of medicines in my hand, when I heard behind me a great crying out among the villagers, and looking back I saw them all scuttling for shelter, at the same time shouting and screaming, according to their age and sex, 'Apache! Apache!' "The next moment, right through the middle of the village, riding like a whirlwind, came ten horsemen, who, paying no attention to the frightened Mexicans, made straight for me. Doubtless they had been hiding in the creek-bed among the willows since daylight, awaiting their opportunity to dash out and capture me--for, as I found later, it was I whom they were after. "To run was useless, to fight impossible, as I was unarmed, so, there being nothing else to do, I just stood still and waited for them. In a moment I was surrounded, when one of the Indians sprang from his horse and advanced upon me. He had, as I very well remember, his nose painted a bright green--a fearsome object. This apparition came striding toward me, and I supposed I was to be killed and scalped forthwith; but instead, my friend of the green nose, in halting Spanish, and with a deference which was as welcome as it was unexpected, explained to me that the fame of the great white medicine-man had extended far and wide; that the smallpox was ravaging their village; and that they had come to beg me to return with them and drive out the enemy. "Greatly relieved to find that their mission was peaceful, I replied at once that I would come with pleasure, provided I were treated with the respect due to my quality, but that I must first visit the pest-house and leave directions for the care of my two remaining patients. To this--rather to my surprise--they readily consented, relying implicitly upon my promise to accompany them; an instance of trustfulness from which I could only infer, I regret to say, that they had had but little intercourse with white men. "The Indians had brought a horse for me, and after a long two-days' ride into the mountains, we reached the camp, consisting of about twenty lodges, where I found matters in pretty bad condition. I went to work vigorously, however, and again had the good fortune to rout the enemy without the loss of a patient; thereby, as you may suppose, gaining the lasting good will of every member of the tribe--with one exception. "This exception--rather an important one--was the local medicine-man, who, having vainly endeavored to drive out the plague by the application of bad smells and worse noises, was not unnaturally consumed with jealousy of my superior success, and with the desire to discover what charms and spells I used to that end. "On our way up from the Mexican settlement I had several times stopped to note the direction with a little pocket-compass I always carried about with me, on each of which occasions I had observed that the medicine-man, who was one of the party, had eyed the little instrument with a sort of fearful curiosity. Later, when my patients were all getting well, I had several times gone out to a distance from the camp and with the compass taken the bearings of the many mountain peaks visible in all directions, making a little map of the country. Every time I did this, the medicine-man was sure to come stalking by, watching my motions out of the corner of his eye. On one such occasion I called him to me, anxious to be on friendly terms, and showing him the instrument, tried to explain its use. But the Indian, seeing through the glass the unaccountable motion of the needle, was afraid to touch it, and my explanation, I fear, had rather the effect of misleading him, for his knowledge of Spanish was very small, while my knowledge of Apache was smaller, and eventually he went off with the idea that the compass, which I had tried to make him understand was my 'guide,' 'director' and so forth, was in fact nothing more nor less than the familiar spirit through whose aid I had ousted the evil spirit of the smallpox. "With this conviction in his mind, and supposing that the possession of the compass would confer upon him similar powers, he screwed up his courage to steal it--and a very courageous act it was, too, I consider, remembering how greatly he stood in fear of it. "It was on the eve of my departure that I discovered my loss, and going straight to my friend with the green nose I informed him of the fact, at the same time stating my conviction that the medicine-man was the thief. He was very wroth that his guest should have been so treated after having rendered such good service to the community, but feeling some diffidence about seizing and searching his medicine-man, of whom he was rather afraid, he suggested that I concoct a spell which should induce the thief to disgorge his plunder of his own accord; a course which would doubtless be a simple matter to a high-class magician like myself. "This was rather embarrassing. I did not at all like to trust to the tricks of the charlatan, but being unable to devise any other plan by which to recover my compass, an instrument indispensable to me, and impossible to replace, in that wild country, I determined to employ a device I had once read of as having been adopted by an officer in the East India Company's service to detect a thieving Sepoy soldier. Even then I should not have resorted to such a measure had I not felt convinced that the medicine-man was the thief, and that his superstitious dread of my powers would cause him to fall into my trap. "I therefore desired Green Nose to summon all the men of the village, which being done, I addressed them through him as interpreter. I told them that one of their number was a thief, and that I was about to find out which one it was--a statement which I could see had an impressive effect. "Taking two straws of wild rye, I cut them to exactly equal lengths, and then, holding them up so that all might see, I announced that the men were to come forward, one at a time, take one of the straws, step inside my lodge for a few seconds, and then bring back the straw to me. To those who were innocent nothing would happen, 'but,' said I, with menacing fore-finger, 'when the _thief_ brings back the straw it will be found to have _grown one inch_!' "I waited a minute to allow this announcement to have its full effect, and then requested that, in deference to his exalted position, my honored brother, the medicine-man, should be the first to test the potency of my magic. "I could see that he was very reluctant to do any such thing, but to decline would be to draw suspicion on himself, so, stepping from the line, he received the straw and retired with it to my lodge. "There was a minute of breathless suspense, when back he came and handed over his straw to me. My own straw, together with the hand which held it, I had covered with a large, spotted silk handkerchief, in such a manner that it was concealed from view, and slipping the medicine-man's straw into the same hand, I perceived at once that the thief had betrayed himself, just as I had hoped and expected he would. "Casting a glance along the line of silent Indians, and noting that they were all attention, I withdrew the handkerchief and held up the two straws. One of them was an inch longer than the other! "In spite of their habitual stoicism, there was a murmur and a stir along the line; but the greatest effect was naturally upon the poor medicine-man. Thrusting his hand into his bosom, he drew out the compass from under his shirt, handed it to me, and then, pulling his blanket over his head, he crept away without a word and shut himself up in his lodge." "But how did you do it?" I interrupted. "How did his straw come out longer than the other? Did you break off a piece from your own?" "No," replied the professor, smiling; "it was the medicine-man who broke off a piece from his. Knowing himself to be the thief, and fully believing that the straw would grow in his hand, he no sooner got into the shelter of my lodge than he bit off an inch from his straw, thus making sure, as he supposed, that its supernatural growth would bring it back to its original length. It was just what I had expected him to do. Nobody but myself, of course, could tell which straw was which, and when I held them up to view, one longer than the other, the whole assembly never doubted for an instant that the shorter one was mine and that it was the thief's straw that had grown--least of all the medicine-man, himself. "He, poor fellow, conscious of guilt, and being himself a dealer in charms and incantations, was more than anybody in a proper frame of mind to put faith in my magic, and when he saw, as he supposed, that his straw, in spite of his precautions, had grown the promised inch, he collapsed at once; and thinking, very likely, that it was the compass itself that had betrayed him, he handed it back to me very willingly, glad to be rid of so pernicious a little imp." "And was that the end of the matter?" I asked. "Yes, that was the end of it. Being all ready to go, I went, leaving behind me a reputation which was to be of great service to me on many a subsequent occasion; a reputation due, I am sorry to say, very much more to the clap-trap trick played upon the poor medicine-man than upon my really meritorious service in dealing with the smallpox epidemic. My fame gradually extended among all the mountain tribes, and since then I have been free to go anywhere with the assurance not only of safety but of welcome from any of the Indians, Apache, Ute or Navajo--a condition of affairs which, as you will readily understand has been of infinite service to me during my twenty years of wandering. "Ah!" casting a glance out of the window as he rose from the table. "Here comes Dick, and somebody with him; a stranger to me--your uncle, I presume." CHAPTER VII DICK'S DIPLOMACY Running to the door, I saw Dick striding down toward the cabin, while behind him on a stout pony rode Uncle Tom. Just as I stepped out, the pair approached one of the drifts of snow which ridged the valley, and into this Dick plunged at once. Though it was up to his waist, he pretty soon forced his way through, when it was Uncle Tom's turn. Evidently it was not the first time the pony had tackled a snow-drift, for he showed no disposition to shirk the task, but wading in up to his knees, he did the rest of the passage in a series of short leaps, very like buck-jumping; a mode of progression extremely discomforting to his plump, short-legged rider. "Oh! Ah!" gasped Uncle Tom at each jump. "Heavens! What a country! Dick, you imp of darkness, I thought you said it was an easy trail." At this I could not help laughing, when Uncle Tom, who had not perceived me before, transferred his attention to me. "You young scamp, Frank!" cried he, shaking his fist at me as I ran forward to meet him. "This is a nice way to treat your respected uncle--first scare him half to death and then laugh at him. Lucky for me there's only one of you: if you had been born twins I should have been worn to a rag long ago. How are you, old fellow?" he went on, reaching down to shake hands with me. "Any the worse for your adventure?" "Not a bit," I replied. "Sound as a bell, thank you." "Thank Dick, you mean. I'll tell you what, Frank," he continued, leaning down and whispering; Dick having walked on toward the house: "that's an uncommonly fine young fellow, in my opinion. His coming down in the storm last night to tell me that you were all safe was a thing that few boys of his age would have done and fewer still would have thought of doing. Ah! This is the professor, I suppose. Why, I've seen him before!" So saying, Uncle Tom jumped to the ground, and hastening forward, held out his hand, exclaiming: "How are you, Herr Bergen? I'm glad to meet you again. We are old acquaintances, though I had forgotten your name, if I ever heard it." "I believe you are right, Mr. Allen," responded the professor. "Your face seems familiar, though I am ashamed to say I cannot recall when or where we met." "I can remind you," said Uncle Tom. "It was at Fort Garland, six or seven years ago. I was on my way to investigate an alleged gold discovery in the Taos mountains, when you rode into the fort to ask the cavalry vet to give you something to dress the wounds of a burro which had been clawed by a mountain-lion. I got into conversation with you, and learning that you also wanted some cartridges for a little Ballard rifle, I gave you a box of fifty. Do you remember?" "I remember very well," replied the professor. "The cartridges were for Dick: he learned to shoot with a Ballard. Well, this is a great pleasure to meet an old acquaintance like this. Come in out of the cold. Romero will take your pony." Soon we were all seated before the fire, Uncle Tom puffing away his aches and pains with the smoke of the inevitable cigar, when the professor, turning to him, asked: "And how long do you intend to stay in camp, Mr. Allen? Will this snow drive you out?" "Not at all," replied Uncle Tom. "I expect to be here a couple of weeks, in spite of the snow. The drifts will settle in a day or two, and the miners will break trails to their claims, and then I shall be able to get about--there won't be any difficulty. Though if it were going to be as hard work as it was coming up here this morning I might as well go home again at once--it took us an hour to make the one mile from town." "You came to inspect the mines, I understand. Do you confine yourself to silver mines, or do you deal in mines of all sorts?" "Silver and gold," replied Uncle Tom. "Though, as it happens, I am on the lookout this time for a copper mine as well. Before I left St. Louis I notified a Boston firm, with whom I have frequent dealings, of my intention to come here, and received from them in reply a telegram, saying, 'Find us a good copper mine. Price no object.' There was no explanation, and I am rather puzzled to understand why they should suddenly branch out into 'coppers' in this way." "I expect the explanation is simple enough," remarked the professor. "What is it, then?" asked Uncle Tom. "To any one watching the progress of science," replied the professor, puffing away at his big porcelain pipe, "even to me, here on the ragged edge of civilization, it is obvious that a new era is close at hand; a new force rapidly coming to the front." "Electricity?" asked Uncle Tom. "Yes, electricity. The science is still in the egg, as you may say, but to those who have ears to hear, the shell is beginning to crack. I am convinced that before long we shall be lighting our streets with electricity and using it in a thousand ways as a mechanical power. The consequence will be an immense increase in the demand for copper; and that, I have no doubt, is why you have been asked to look out for a copper mine: they want to be ready when the time comes. What is this, Dick?" At the first mention of the words, "copper mine," the thoughts of Dick and myself had, of course, instantly reverted to the King Philip mine, and I was on the point of introducing the subject, when Dick, catching my eye, signed to me to keep quiet. Rising from his chair, he stepped softly to the rack where the rifles hung and took down the Mexican's arrow, which he had put there the evening before. It happened that we had not mentioned the episode of the wolves and the Mexican when describing to the professor our struggle homeward through the snow-storm, and consequently, when my companion laid the arrow on the table close to his elbow, it was only natural that the old gentleman should exclaim, "What is this, Dick?" Very briefly, Dick related how he had come by it, merely stating that we had seen a Mexican shoot a wolf; that the Mexican had run away when we hailed him; and that we had gone and picked up his arrow. I wondered rather why he did not call attention to the copper arrow-head; but Dick knew what he was about, as I very soon saw: he intended to let the professor discover it for himself, which a man of his habits of close observation was certain to do. In fact, the old gentleman had no sooner taken the arrow into his hands than he exclaimed: "Why, this arrow-head is made of copper! A Mexican, you say? Then he probably came from Hermanos. You remember, Dick, how all the people down there---- Why, Mr. Allen, here's the very thing! You want a copper mine? Well, here is a copper mine all ready to your hand! All you have to do is----" "To find it," interjected Dick, laughing. "That is true," the professor assented, laughing himself. "I had forgotten that little particular for the moment, Dick. I'm afraid it is not quite so ready to your hand as I was leading you to suppose, Mr. Allen; but that it is there, somewhere in the Dos Hermanos mountains, I feel sure." Thereupon the professor proceeded to tell the story that Dick had already told me, giving some further details of the information he had derived from the Spanish gentleman, Don Blake. "It appears to have been a mine of some consequence," said the professor. "The records covered a period of fifteen years, and during the last five years of the time the shipments were constant and large. It is fairly sure, I think, that the product was native copper----" "Sure to be," interrupted Uncle Tom. "It would never have paid to ship any waste product so far. In fact, I am surprised that they should ship even native copper such a long distance." "Yes; but as they did so, I think the inference is that the metal was plentiful and easy to mine." "That is a reasonable assumption," said Uncle Tom, thoughtfully nodding his head. "What beats me, though," he went on, "is that the memory of the spot should have been so totally lost. Considering that the mine was producing for fifteen years, there must be many traces of the work done, such as the waste dump, the old road or trail, and so forth: you can't run a mine for that length of time and leave no marks. It is a wonder to me that the place has never been rediscovered." "I don't think there is anything surprising in that," replied the professor. "The villagers of Hermanos, agricultural people, seldom go five miles from home; it is only old Galvez' _vaqueros_, his cow-men, who would be likely to come across the traces of mining, and if they did, those peons are such incurious, unenterprising people they would pay no attention. Besides which, I gathered that even the cow-men never went up into the Dos Hermanos mountains: it is not a good cattle country--rough granite and limestone, little water and scant pasturage. Consequently, the cattle range southward toward the Santa Claras, instead of westward to the Dos Hermanos, and the Twin Peaks, therefore, remain in their solitary glory, untouched by the foot of man; and probably they have so remained ever since the King Philip mine was abandoned, a hundred and fifty years ago." For a full minute Uncle Tom remained silent, thoughtfully blowing out long spirals of cigar smoke, but presently he roused up again and said: "There is one thing more I should like to ask you, Professor, and that is, why you conclude that the King Philip mine is in the Dos Hermanos mountains?" "For this reason," replied our friend: "In the first place, many of the reports were dated from the _Casa del Rey_. Of course, it is likely enough that there are other _Casas del Rey_ in other parts of the country, but besides the frequent mention of the King's House, there was also mention of Indian fights at different places: 'at the crossing of the Perdita,' for instance, and 'near the spring by Picture Buttes'; then there was the record of a snow-blockade on the Mosca Pass, in the Santa Claras; another of a terrible dust-storm on the Little Cactus Desert, 'with the loss of one man and three mules'; and so forth. Now, a line running through these and other places mentioned would bring you into the Mescalero valley at its southern end, and there is no doubt in my mind that the _Casa del Rey_ named in the reports is the King's House down there at Hermanos." "It does seem so, doesn't it?" responded Uncle Tom. "Look here, professor," he went on, suddenly jumping out of his chair and casting his cigar stump into the fire, "I must make an attempt to find that copper mine. It does, as you say, seem all ready to my hand. But how to do it, is the question. I can't go myself--can't spare the time--so the only way, I suppose, is to hire some prospector, if I can." "I don't think you can get one," said the professor, shaking his head; "at least, not here in Mosby. They are all too intent on hunting for silver, and I doubt if you could persuade one of them to waste a season in searching for a metal so commonplace as copper, the value of which is rather prospective than immediate. I doubt very much if you could get one to go." "I suppose not," replied Uncle Tom. "And you can hardly blame them, either, when you consider that by the expenditure of the same amount of labor a man may come across a rich vein of silver, every ounce of which he knows to be worth a dollar and twenty cents." "Just so," the professor assented. "What am I to do, then?" asked Uncle Tom. "Give it up? Seems a pity, doesn't it, when, more than likely, the old workings are lying there plain to view, only waiting for some one with his eyes open to pass that way. Still, if I can't get a man----" "Take a boy," suggested Dick, cutting in unexpectedly. Uncle Tom whirled round on his heels and stared at him; the professor removed his long pipe from his mouth and stared at him too; while Dick himself sat bolt upright in his chair, a broad and genial grin overspreading his countenance. For some seconds they all maintained these attitudes in silence, when Uncle Tom suddenly broke into a hearty laugh. "You young scamp!" cried he, shaking his forefinger at Dick. "I believe that's what you've been aiming at all the time." "That's just what we have, Mr. Allen," replied my companion. "Frank and I were talking about it yesterday, saying what fun it would be to go and hunt for the old mine; though we never expected to get the chance. But when you began to talk about copper mines, we cocked our ears, of course, thinking that here, perhaps, _was_ a chance after all--and--and if you _can't_ get a man, Mr. Allen, why not send a boy? Would you let me go, Professor?" Our two elders looked at each other, and very anxiously we looked at our two elders. Not a word did either of them say, until the professor, rising from his chair and knocking out the ashes of his pipe upon the hearthstone, remarked quietly: "Go out and chop some wood, boys. I want to talk to Mr. Allen." Regarding this order as a hopeful sign, out we went, and for a long half-hour we feverishly hacked at the heap of poles outside, making a rather indifferent job of it, I suspect, until a tapping at the window attracted our attention and we saw Uncle Tom beckoning us to come in. How anxiously we scanned their countenances this time, any one will guess. Both men were standing with their backs to the fire, Uncle Tom smoking a fresh cigar and the professor puffing away again at his pipe, both of them looking so solemn that I thought to myself, "It's no go," and my spirits fell accordingly; but looking again at Uncle Tom I detected a twitching at the corner of his mouth which sent them up again with a bound. "Well, Uncle Tom!" I cried. "What's it to be?" "It is a serious matter," replied my guardian, with all the solemnity of a judge passing sentence. "The professor and I have discussed it very earnestly, and we have decided--that you shall go!" CHAPTER VIII THE START The delight with which this announcement was received by us two boys may be imagined, for though we had hoped for such a decision we had not dared to expect it. I, for my part, had feared that the matter of my interrupted education alone would form an insurmountable barrier; and indeed it was that subject which had proved the chief obstacle, as Uncle Tom presently informed me. All the other objections were minor ones and we discreetly refrained from asking for their recapitulation lest, in going over them again, something not thought of before should crop up to interfere. We were quite content to accept the decision without knowing how it had been arrived at. As to my interrupted schooling, though, that was a serious matter, as Uncle Tom, in spite of his original ideas about education, clearly understood. "The main question with me, you see, Frank," said he, "was whether you would benefit or otherwise by missing so much schooling, and though I believe pretty strongly in the value of learning by practice and experience, I should have felt obliged to decide against this expedition if the professor had not come to the rescue. It is to him you owe our decision to let you boys go." I looked gratefully at Herr Bergen, who serenely waved the stem of his pipe in our direction, though whether to intimate that the obligation was nothing to speak of, or as a sign to Uncle Tom to go on, I could not decide. "I find," continued the latter, "that the winter is Dick's school-time; and the professor has offered to take you in, Frank, and let you share in Dick's work, undertaking to bring you on in your mathematics in particular--which is your weak spot, you know. In the spring, when the snow clears off, you are to start for the Dos Hermanos and make a thorough search for this old copper mine; and as you will be doing it on my account, I shall bear all expenses. There, that is all, except--well, it is not necessary to mention that--but I was going to say that I rely on you, old fellow, to make the most of your opportunity and in your own person to prove the correctness of my theory that a boy may sometimes learn more out of school than in it." "I believe you may count on me, Uncle Tom," said I. "I'll do my level best. And I'm tremendously obliged to you, Herr Bergen----" "Not at all," interrupted the professor, "not at all. The fact is, I am very glad to have a companion for Dick; and as to the schooling, the obligation is not all on one side by any means, for to me it is one of the greatest pleasures possible to teach a boy who really desires to learn. I anticipate a most pleasant winter." Thus was this odd arrangement made by which I, who by right should have been attending a public school in St. Louis, became the private pupil of an eminent German professor, pursuing my studies in a little log cabin tucked away in a snow-encumbered valley of the Rocky Mountains--about as queer a piece of topsyturviness, to my notion, as ever happened to a boy, and one very unlikely to happen to any other boy, unless he chanced to be endowed with an Uncle Tom cut out on the same pattern as mine. "There's one thing, Frank," said my guardian, as we made our way down to camp later in the day, "there's one thing I didn't mention in Dick's presence, and that is that the professor laid great stress on the pleasure and advantage it would be to Dick to have a companion of his own age for once, and it was that which turned the balance with me--after the educational question had been got out of the way. For I owe Dick a good turn if I can do him one without hurting anybody else; I told him I wouldn't forget his service in coming down through the storm yesterday, and I haven't forgotten. I'm uncommonly glad to think that in consenting to your taking part in this expedition--which I believe will be a great thing for you, mentally as well as bodily--we shall be doing a service to Dick and to the old professor at the same time." "Well, Uncle Tom," said I, "you may be sure I am glad enough to stay, and I hope it will not only prove a good thing for Dick and me, but for you as well." "I hope so, too. And it will, if you can locate that old copper mine, and if it should prove to be anywhere near as good as it sounds." As things turned out, I was destined to begin my winter's schooling somewhat earlier than we had expected, for, five days after the storm, Uncle Tom received from his Boston employers a telegram, forwarded by mail from the end of the line, saying, "Come here at once. Important," when, without demur, he forthwith packed up his things and away he went; while I, taking leave of our kind host, the assayer, moved up to Herr Bergen's house. I need not go into the details of our daily life on Mosby Creek; it is enough to say that the winter was one of the pleasantest I had ever spent. Time flew by, as was only natural, for there was not an idle moment for either of us. Herr Bergen proved to be a most able instructor, not only in the matter of scholarship but in general training as well. He had served in the German army in his younger days, and the habits of orderliness, precision and promptness remained with him. We boys were made to toe the mark, and no mistake; there was a time for work and a time for play, and whether for duty or pleasure, we had to be on hand to the minute. I do not wish to imply that the professor was harsh, or anything of the sort; very far from it: he was most considerate of our shortcomings, which were doubtless plentiful enough, and with infinite patience would go over the ground again and again whenever Dick or I got ourselves tangled up; a condition of things which happened on the average about once a day to each of us. Then, every marked advance we made in any of our studies was so obviously gratifying to the kindly old gentleman that that fact alone was enough to spur a fellow on to doing his extra-best. As a consequence, I, for my part, made very notable progress, and it was with great pleasure, as you may suppose, that I was able later on to write to Uncle Tom my conviction that I had gained rather than lost by my winter's work. One thing, at least, which I should not have acquired in school, I gained by my association with the professor's household: I learned to speak Spanish. Herr Bergen made a great point of it that I should do so, as it would be pretty sure to come in useful during the ensuing summer. He and Dick--and Romero, of course--all spoke it very well, so that my opportunity for picking it up was excellent, and I made rapid progress; my knowledge of Latin, which, though very far from profound, was up to the average of a schoolboy of my age, being an immense help. All this time we did not lack exercise--the professor was just as particular about that as he was about our work--and Dick and I had many a jolly outing on our snow-shoes, the management of which was another thing I learned. I should not omit to mention also that I spent a good deal of time and a liberal number of cartridges practising with a rifle, thereby becoming a very fair shot; though, of course, I could not compete with Dick, who, having learned as a mere child, seemed, almost, to shoot straight by nature. The weather on the average was splendid that winter, and there were but few days when we could not get out. Four or five times, perhaps, during the months I spent in the valley a snow-storm came raging down on us, shutting us up for a day or two, after which the jovial sun would turn up smiling again just as though nothing had happened. It was toward the end of April that Dick and I began to get ready to leave. The increasing power of the sun had cleared off all the snow below eleven thousand feet, the green grass was beginning to show in many places, and it was fair to suppose that by the time we reached the Dos Hermanos we should find pasturage enough for our animals--two ponies and a mule. Dick already had his own pony, while the mule, a tough little beast by name Uncle Fritz, was provided by the professor, both animals having passed the winter on a ranch about a couple of thousand feet lower down. Before he left, Uncle Tom had suggested hiring them for the season, but the professor would not consent to his paying anything, saying that the animals might just as well be put to some use as to waste their time doing nothing all summer. Consequently, about the only expense to which my guardian was put, besides furnishing provisions and tools for the expedition, was the purchase of a pony and a rifle for me. This was a very moderate outlay, and I was glad to think that Uncle Tom would get off so cheaply, if our search should turn out a failure; and no one was more ready to recognize that possibility--probability, I should rather say, perhaps--than Uncle Tom himself, to whom the many stories in general circulation of lost Spanish mines of fabulous richness were familiar, and who knew very well how little foundation there was for most of them. The present case, though, was different from the generality, in that there existed documentary evidence that there had been such a mine; a fact which altered the conditions entirely. For it is safe to say that without such documentary evidence Uncle Tom would never have consented to our undertaking such an enterprise, and Dick and I, in consequence, would never have run into the series of adventures which were destined to befall us before we were many weeks older. It was on the first day of May that we at last took leave of our good friend, Herr Bergen, and rode off down the valley, passing on our way through the town of Mosby, where our appearance on horseback, driving our pack-mule before us, excited among the citizens much speculation as to our destination; a matter concerning which we had said not a word to anybody. That it was a prospecting expedition any one could see, for the pick and shovel could not very well be concealed, but where we were bound for nobody knew, Uncle Tom having cautioned us that if we let a word escape about an old Spanish mine we should have a hundred men at our heels in no time; the very idea of such a thing having an irresistible fascination for some people, especially for the inexperienced newcomer. [Illustration: "PASSING ON OUR WAY THROUGH THE TOWN OF MOSBY."] Our reason for taking our way through town rather than crossing the Mosby Ridge, back of the professor's house, and going down the Mescalero valley, was that the latter course, cut up by many deep cañons, would be much the more difficult of the two; for by following down the eastern side of the ridge, as we proposed to do, we should presently come to a point where that barrier, which up near Mescalero began as a mountain range, became first a line of round-topped hills, and then, about forty miles below town, came to an end altogether in a little conical eminence known as The Foolscap. We could therefore pass round its southern end without difficulty, when we should find ourselves in the Mescalero valley at its wide part, and by heading southwestward should arrive in about another twenty miles in the neighborhood of the village of Hermanos--a route somewhat longer, but very much easier for the animals, than the other one. About five miles below town we abandoned the road, which there turned off to the left to join the main stage-road, and continuing our southward course up and down hill over the spurs of the Mosby Ridge we made camp early in the afternoon; for our animals being as yet in rather poor condition, we thought it advisable to give them an easy day for the first one. Selecting a sheltered nook among the pine trees, we unpacked the mule and unsaddled the ponies, and then, while Dick cooked our supper, I busied myself cutting pine boughs for our beds and chopping fire-wood. Soon after sunset we rolled ourselves in our blankets, and in spite of the novelty of the situation--for I had never before gone to bed with no roof overhead nearer than the sky--I slept soundly until Dick's voice aroused me, crying, "Roll out, old chap! Roll out! The sun will catch you in bed in a minute," when I sprang up, fresh as a daisy and hungry as a shark, as one always seems to do after sleeping out under the stars in the keen, pine-scented air of the mountains. Continuing our journey, we presently rounded the end of the Mosby Ridge, and turning to the right saw before us the twin peaks of the Dos Hermanos, standing there, as it seemed to me, like two faithful sentinels guarding the secret of the King Philip mine. "Now, Frank," said my companion, as we sat at supper on the little hill with which the Ridge terminated, "we have a tough day of it before us to-morrow. The valley down at this end, you see, is just a sage-brush plain; there are no cañons down here like there are at the upper end; and there is no water either, unfortunately--this side of the mountains, I mean. The streams which come down from Mescalero and the Ridge take a westerly turn and go off through a deep gorge to the north of the peaks--you can see the black shadow of it from here." "What do the people at Hermanos do for water, then?" I asked. "There is a little stream which comes down from the saddle between the Dos Hermanos peaks and runs eastward through the village. But it sinks into the soil soon afterward, for the country down that way becomes very sandy; it is the beginning of the Little Cactus Desert, across which the pack-trains and the soldier escort used to travel, you remember, headed for the Mosca Pass--that low place in the Santa Claras that you see down there, due south from here." "I see. So the nearest water is the stream running through the village. Do you propose, then, to make for Hermanos?" "No, I don't," replied Dick. "We want to avoid the village, if possible: it is no use exciting the curiosity of old Galvez, if he happens to be there. What I propose is that we make straight from here to the north side of the peaks, leaving the village three or four miles on our left; find a good camping-place, and make it a base for our preliminary operations." "That's all right," I assented. "But how much of a day's ride will it be to the north side of the peaks? Further than to Hermanos, I suppose, and that is over twenty miles." "Yes," replied Dick, "twenty-five miles certainly and perhaps thirty--a long stretch without water. But we can do it all right. I propose that we get off by four in the morning, which ought to bring us to the foothills of the Dos Hermanos by two or three o'clock in the afternoon." "That's a good idea," I responded. "And if, by bad luck, we should find that we can't make it, we can always turn off and head for the village if we have to." "Yes. So let us get to bed early. It will be a hard day at best, and we may as well get all the sleep we can." As my companion had predicted, the morrow did turn out to be a tough day, and it began early, too. It was about half-past three in the morning that I was awakened by the crackling of the fire, and sitting up in my blankets, I saw Dick squatted on his heels, frying bacon over some of the hot embers. "Time to turn out, Frank," said he. "Breakfast will be ready in two minutes; feeling pretty hungry this morning?" By way of reply, I opened my mouth with a yawn so prodigious that Dick laughingly continued: "Hungry as all that, eh? Well, old man, if the size of your mouth is an indication of the size of your appetite, I'll slice up another half-pound of bacon!" At this I laughed too, and jumping up, I ran to the creek, where I soused my head and face in the cold water, which wakened me up effectually. By four o'clock we were under way, steering by compass; for, though the stars were shining and the waning moon, then near its setting, furnished some light, there was not enough to enable us to distinguish objects at any distance. Our progress at first was pretty slow, for horses and mules do not like traveling by night, but presently there came a change, the sky behind us took on a rosy hue, and pretty soon there appeared on the western horizon two glowing points, like a pair of triangular red lamps hung up in the sky for our guidance--the summits of the Dos Hermanos caught by the rising sun. It was an inspiring sight! The very animals, seeming to feel its influence, brisked up at once and stepped out gaily, while Dick and I, who had been "mouching" along in silence, straightened up in our saddles and fell to talking. "I've been thinking, Dick," said I, "about what our first move should be after we have found a good camping-place. My idea is that we should ride down to the neighborhood of Hermanos and see if there is any sign of an old trail leading from the village to the mountains." "That's a good idea," Dick responded. "It is pretty certain that the copper was brought down from the mine on the backs of burros, and the supplies carried up in the same way, and if that was kept up for several years there must have been a well-defined trail worn in this soft soil, which may be visible yet." "On the other hand," was my comment, "as the travel ceased so long ago, isn't it probable that the trail will have been blown full of sand and covered up?" "That is likely enough--in many places, at least," replied my companion, "though it is very possible, I think, that there may be some traces left, for it is surprising how long such marks on the ground continue to show. At any rate, we'll try it. Here's the sun; it's going to be pretty hot, I expect." Slowly we plodded along, hour after hour, until presently we had come opposite the village, the mud-colored buildings of which, though not more than three miles away, were barely distinguishable against the gray-tinted plain upon which they stood. The green fields and gardens surrounding the houses we could not see, they being below the general level, but that they were there, and that the Mexicans were at that moment engaged in irrigating them, we felt very sure. A light wind was blowing from the south, and Dick declared that he could "smell the wet"; but though I sniffed and sniffed, I could not conscientiously say that I could detect it myself. Our animals, however, very evidently smelt it, for they evinced a decided inclination to bear to the left, and we had a good deal of difficulty in keeping their heads straight--the slightest inattention on our part, and they were off the line in a moment. As is so often the case, they had not cared to drink in the cool of the morning before we started, and consequently, what with the heat of the sun and the alkali dust they kicked up, they had become eager for water and would have made a straight shoot for Hermanos if we had let them. But we were nearing the mountains, an hour or two more and we should reach water, probably, so, though it was painful to deny the poor beasts, we kept right on, until about four in the afternoon--for it had taken us longer than we had anticipated--when all three of them suddenly lifted their heads, pricked their ears and wanted to run forward. They smelt water ahead of them. Pressing on at an increased pace, we were presently brought to a halt by coming upon the brink of a cliff, at the base of which was a large pool of clear water. The pool lay in a little grass-covered valley about half a mile long, encompassed on all sides by the precipitous wall of rock. We could not see that there was any way of getting down. In order to get a better view, Dick and I dismounted and walked to the edge, when the first thing we saw was a little bunch of half-a-dozen scrawny Mexican cattle down near the pool. "Then there is a way down," cried Dick. "Whoop!" he yelled, clapping his mouth with his hand. The cattle looked up, and seeing two horseless human beings on the sky-line above them, away they went up the valley, vanished for an instant among the fallen rocks at the foot of the cliff, and in another moment appeared again on our level, going off southward with their tails in the air, wild as deer. "Come on!" cried Dick, jumping upon his horse. "Where they came up we can get down." Riding forward, we presently found the cow-trail, when, dismounting once more, for it was too steep to ride without risk of breaking one's neck, we led our horses down. Within another half-hour Dick and I, comfortably seated in the shade of the rock, were enjoying a much-needed dinner, while the three animals, their waist-lines enormously distended with the gallons of water they had swallowed, were eagerly snapping up the young green grass with which the valley was covered--all the troubles of the day completely forgotten. CHAPTER IX ANTONIO MARTINEZ As we wished to give the animals a good rest, we decided to stay where we were for the remainder of that day and on the morrow move to the foot of the mountain and look out for a good camping-place from which to make our preliminary explorations. The spot where we were then encamped would not serve, for we were yet at least three miles from the lowest spurs of the twin mountains. The stream beside which we were seated issued from the northernmost of the two peaks, and after running out into the plain for some distance made a great bend and went back almost to the point of departure, when, turning to the northward, it poured its waters into the deep cañon cut by the streams which came down from Mescalero and the Ridge. It was just at the bend that we had struck it. "What we want, Frank," said my companion, "is a good place in the foothills, and when we have found one, I propose that we take our ponies, skirt along the base of the mountains from north to south, and see if we can't cut across that old trail we were talking about this morning. It is extremely important that we should do so; it might save us weeks of useless searching." "Yes," I assented, "it would be a great help, of course; though all we can hope to find is some mark in the soil which will point us generally in one direction or another." "Yes; and that's just it. If we can find any indication of the direction the trains used to take when they started from the King's House, it will lighten our task tremendously. Look here," taking a pointed stick and drawing a rough plat of the country in the sand. "Here are the two peaks, lying north and south of each other; here, between them, the creek comes down which runs two or three miles out on to the plain to the village here. Now, when the trains used to start out from the _Casa del Rey_ they took to the right of that stream or they took to the left of it, one or the other, and if we can do no more than find out which it was it will be a great help." "Of course," I responded. "I see that. It would show us whether it was the north mountain or the south mountain that we had to explore." "That's it, exactly. And if you stop for a moment to consider, you will see that that would be a pretty big item all by itself. The two mountains cover a space about fifteen miles long by, perhaps, ten miles wide--a hundred and fifty square miles--a pretty big piece of country, old man, for you and me to scramble over; but if we can find a trail which will show us which of the two mountains is the right one, that hundred and fifty miles will be chopped in half at one blow--and if that isn't a pretty big item all by itself, I should like to know what is." With that, Dick, who was sitting cross-legged on the ground, stuck his stick point downward into the middle of his map, planted his hands on either knee, and with a defiant jerk of his head, challenged me to deny his conclusion. I could not help laughing at his emphatic manner, but I could not help, either, admitting that his point was a good one. "It certainly would make an immense difference," said I, "and it will pay us to find that old trail if it takes us a week to do it. So, let us dig out first thing to-morrow, Dick, and find a good camping-place as a base." Accordingly we broke camp again early next morning, and following along the rim of the cañon we presently drew near the foothills. As we approached the mountain we were able to distinguish with more clearness the details of its form, and the more clearly we could distinguish them the more were we impressed with the difficulty and the magnitude of the task we had undertaken. It was not going to be the simple, straightforward matter I had at first imagined. Seen from a distance the north peak looked smooth and symmetrical, but when you came close to it you found that it was broken up into cliffs and cañons, some of them of great height and depth. On its northern face, a thousand feet or so below the summit, our attention was drawn to a great semicircular precipice which looked very like the upper half of an old volcanic crater, the lower half, presumably, having broken away and fallen down the mountain. "A pretty tough piece of country, Frank," said my companion, "and a pretty large stretch of it, too, for us to tramp over; for, by the look of it from here, our horses won't be much use to us--at least, when we get up above the lower spurs. Let us try this gully to the left: there's probably water up there; I see the tops of two or three cottonwoods." Turning in that direction, therefore, we presently came upon a diminutive stream which ran down and fell into the cañon, and passing between two high rocks, which looked as though they had been split apart with a wedge to let the water out, we found ourselves in a little park-like valley, flanked on either side by high ridges. "This ought to do, Dick," said I, "at any rate for the present; plenty of grass, plenty of wood and plenty of water. Just the place." "Yes, this is all right; couldn't be better. Let's unsaddle at once, make our camp, and after dinner we'll ride down in the direction of Hermanos and do a little prospecting." Having chosen a good spot, we arranged a comfortable camp, and after a hasty dinner we started out; first picketing Uncle Fritz to keep him from coming trailing after us. Immediately to the south of our camping-place, forming one of the boundaries of the little ravine, in fact, there stretched down from the mountain a great, bare rib of granite, almost devoid of vegetation, which projected a long way out into the valley, and as it lay square across our course we decided, instead of going round the end of it, to ride up to the top in order to get a good lookout over the country we proposed to examine. From the summit of this ridge, at a point about four hundred feet above the plain, we were able to get a very good view of all the wide stretch of comparatively level ground below us, including the village of Hermanos and the green irrigated fields around it, which from this elevation were distinctly visible. Except for this tiny oasis, the whole plain, bounded on the east by the Mosby Ridge, and on the south by the Santa Clara mountains, appeared to be one uniform, level stretch of sage-brush desert--dull, gray and uninviting. "What a pity," remarked Dick, "that there is no water here. If only one could get water upon it, this sage-brush plain could be turned into a wheat-field big enough to supply the whole State with bread, besides furnishing labor and subsistence for a good-sized population of farmers." "It would be fine, wouldn't it?" I assented. "And I don't see why it has never been done: there must be many streams coming down from these mountains." "Yes, no doubt; but the difficulty is that all the streams of any consequence have cut cañons for themselves and are too far below the general level to be of any use. To get water out upon the surface of this valley one would have to go high up on the mountain, find some good-sized stream, head it off--building a dam for the purpose, perhaps--and then conduct the water down here by a ditch several miles long possibly. Far too big an undertaking, you see, for these penniless, unenterprising Mexicans." "I see. It would take a great deal of work and a great deal of money, probably, but it would be a fine thing to do, all the same." "Yes, it would; and some day it will be done. It won't be so very many years before all the 'easy water' in the State will have been appropriated, and then people will begin to look out for a supply in the more out-of-the-way places, building reservoirs to catch the rainfall which now runs to waste after every thunder-storm, and carrying the water long distances to sell it to the ranchman. The professor says that some day the business of catching and distributing irrigation water will be the most important industry in the State, and that a good ever-flowing stream will be more valuable than any silver mine." "I can understand that," I replied. "The best mine will some day come to an end, for when the silver is once dug out it is gone--you can't plant more; whereas, a good stream of water applied on the soil will go on producing forever and ever." "That's it, exactly. And some day that is what will happen here. This fine stretch of level land, which now grows only grass enough to support about three cows and a burro, won't always lie idle. Some enterprising fellow will come along, climb up into this mountain, catch one of those streams which now go running off through the cañons, turn it down here, and a couple of years later this worthless desert will be converted into farms and orchards." "A fine undertaking, too!" I exclaimed. "I should like to have a try at it myself." "So should I. But our object in life just now is 'copper,' so come on, old chap, and let us ride down to the point of this ridge. What is that black speck down there toward the village? Man on horseback? Ah! He has disappeared again. Well, come on now, Frank. Let's get started." Getting down upon the plain again, we turned southward, skirting the base of the mountain, winding our way through the sage-brush, which was large and very thick, when, after riding barely a quarter of a mile in that direction, Dick suddenly pulled up. "Frank!" he exclaimed. "Look here! Doesn't it seem to you that there is a depression in the soil going off to the right and the left? Look away a hundred yards and you will see what I mean. It seems to lead straight up into the mountain one way, and straight out upon the plain the other way." At first I could not detect anything of the sort, but on Dick's pointing it out more particularly it did appear to me that there was a depression going off in both directions. "Let us turn to the left, Dick," said I, "and follow it--if we can--out into the valley and see what becomes of it." "All right," responded my companion. "Let's do so." The mark on the ground was by no means easy to follow, it was so overgrown with sage-brush, and in many places altogether obliterated by drifting sand, but, though we frequently lost it, by looking far ahead we always caught the line again. Presently we found that it went curving off to the right in the direction of Hermanos, and our hopes rose. "Dick!" I cried. "This is no accidental mark in the soil! It is a trail, as sure as you live!" "It does begin to look like it," replied my more cautious friend. "I believe it---- Hallo! Who's this coming?" As he spoke, I saw about half a mile away a horseman coming toward us at an easy lope from the direction of the village. He was riding a handsome gray horse, very superior to the little bronchos we ourselves bestrode. "He rides well," said I. "I wonder how he got so close to us on this flat country without our seeing him." "The country is probably not quite so flat as it looks," replied my companion. "I expect the man has been keeping in the hollows so that he might slip up on us unobserved. It is probably old Galvez coming to find out what we are doing prowling around his domain. He must be the horseman I saw just now, and I've no doubt he saw us, too, cocked up on that bare ridge--for all these Mexicans have eyes like hawks." Meanwhile the rider continued to approach, and as he came nearer we observed, rather to our relief, that it could not be the padron, for the stranger was a well-dressed young Mexican, only three or four years older than ourselves, a handsome, intelligent-looking young fellow, too, with a trim little black moustache and bright black eyes--evidently one of a class superior to the ordinary cow-man or farm-hand. Watching him closely as he came up, wondering what sort of a reception we should get from him, it appeared to me that he, too, looked both surprised and relieved when he perceived that instead of the two rough and sturdy prospectors he had probably expected to meet, it was only a couple of boys, younger than himself, with whom he had to deal. And it is likely that he did feel relieved, for at that time the white men--or, at least, very many of them--dwelling on what was then the outer edge of civilization, were apt to look down upon all Mexicans as people of an inferior race, frequently treating them in consequence in a rough, overbearing manner by no means calculated to promote friendly feeling. The young Mexican doubtless "sized us up" favorably; at any rate, no sooner had he come near enough to see what we were like than he rode straight up to us, and addressing us politely in Spanish, said: "Good-day, sirs. Are you going down to Hermanos? I shall be glad to ride with you if you are." It happened that I was the one to whom he addressed this salutation, Dick being a little further back. Now, though I had acquired enough of the language to understand and speak it fairly well, the Spanish I had learned was good Castilian, whereas the young Mexican spoke a kind of _patois_, such as is commonly used among all the natives of these outlying settlements. The unexpected difference of pronunciation, though slight, caused me to hesitate an instant in making reply--I have no doubt, too, my face looked rather blank--whereupon the young fellow instantly jumped to the conclusion that we did not speak Spanish at all, and he therefore repeated his remark in English. It was without any thought of misleading him that I replied, very naturally, in the tongue which came easiest to me, and as the stranger spoke English quite as well as I did, it was very natural again that the conversation should be continued in that tongue. Thus it happened that we accidentally deceived him--or, rather, he deceived himself--into the belief that we did not understand any language but our own, and as no opportunity cropped up during our talk for setting him right, he continued in this mistaken idea; a fact which, a little later, caused us considerable satisfaction--not on our own account, but on his. Replying to his question therefore in English, I said: "No, we were not bound for Hermanos in particular. We have come down here to do a little prospecting, and were just riding around a bit to take a look at the country. Do you live here?" "No," he replied, "I live in Santa Fé. My name is Antonio Martinez. I am on a visit here to my uncle, Señor Galvez, the padron of Hermanos. He is my mother's brother, and as she had not seen him for many years, and as he has always declined to come to us, she sent me here to make his acquaintance. For myself, I had never even seen him until I arrived here two weeks ago, and----" He checked himself suddenly, looking a little confused; I had an idea that what he was going to say was that he did not much care if he never saw him again. "And are you expecting to stay here?" asked Dick. "No, I go back in a day or two. Where do you, yourselves hail from, if I may ask? From Mosby?" "Yes, from Mosby," replied Dick. "We came down, as my friend said, to do some prospecting up in one or other of these two peaks--we don't know which one yet. How is the country up there? Pretty accessible? You've been up, I suppose." "No, I haven't," replied the young Mexican. "You think that rather strange, don't you? And naturally enough. Here have I been for two weeks hanging around this village with absolutely nothing to do; I should have been glad enough to make an expedition up into the mountains--in fact, I had a very particular reason for wishing to do so--but when I suggested the idea to the padron, explaining to him why I was so anxious to go, he not only refused emphatically for himself, but declined to let me go either." "Why, that seems queer!" cried Dick. "It does, doesn't it? And his reason for refusing will appear to you queerer still--he's afraid!" "Afraid!" we both exclaimed. "Afraid of what?" "Afraid of The Badger," replied the young fellow, breaking into a laugh as he noted the mystified look which came over both our faces. "What do you mean?" I asked. "Why should he--or anybody--be afraid of a badger?" "I said _The_ Badger," replied our friend. "You have never heard of him, evidently--El Tejon, The Badger." We both shook our heads. "What is he?" I asked. "A man?" "Yes--or a wild beast. It is hard to say which. He is a Mexican who once lived in the village here, I believe. For some reason which I cannot understand--for my uncle won't talk about it, though I have asked him several times--for some reason The Badger conceived a violent hatred for the padron; whether he went crazy or not, I don't know, but anyhow he committed a murderous assault upon him, hurting him badly--knocked out all his front teeth with a stone, for one thing--and then escaped into the mountains. That was twelve years ago, and as far as any one knows he is there yet, if he is still alive." "And wasn't any attempt ever made to capture him?" asked Dick. "Once," replied Antonio. "According to the padron's story, he went out with six of his cow-men to try to run The Badger to earth; but the attempt was a failure, as was only to be expected, for the cow-men were very unwilling to go. They trembled at the very name of El Tejon, who was a man of immense strength and a great hunter, and they feared that instead of catching him, he would catch one of them. And the event showed that they had reason. They had been out several days, had ridden all over the lower part of the north mountain without seeing a sign of their man, and were coming back, single file, down a narrow gully, when the padron's horse suddenly, and seemingly without cause, fell down, stone dead. The rider, of course, fell too, and striking his head against a stone he lay for a moment stunned. No one could think what had happened to the horse, until presently one of the men noticed blood upon the rocks, and turning the animal over they were all scared out of their wits by seeing the head of an arrow sticking out between his ribs." "An arrow!" we both cried. "Yes, an arrow," continued the narrator, not noticing the glance Dick and I exchanged. "They knew well enough where it came from, for The Badger had always hunted with a bow and arrow, with which he was extraordinarily expert. The instant the cow-men saw what had happened they stuck spurs into their horses and away they all went, helter-skelter, leaving their leader lying on the ground." "That was a pretty shabby desertion," said I. "How did the padron escape?" "That is one of the things I can't understand," replied Antonio. "Why the man, having him so entirely in his power, didn't kill him at once is a puzzle to me. As it was, when the padron recovered his senses, he found El Tejon calmly seated on the carcase of the horse, waiting for him to wake up. He quite expected, he says, to be murdered forthwith, but instead, the man merely held up the arrow, which he had drawn out of the horse's body, and said: 'For you--next time'; and with that he arose and walked off. The padron is no coward, but he knows when to let well enough alone: he has never been up on the mountain since." "That's a curious story," said Dick. "What sort of a looking man is this El Tejon?" "I've never seen him myself, of course," replied our friend, "but the padron describes him as a very remarkable man to look at: less than five feet high, with an immense body, very short legs and very long arms." Dick and I exchanged glances again. "Whether the man is yet alive," continued the young fellow, "nobody knows. It is nearly twelve years ago that this happened, and since then he has never been seen nor heard of. The chances are, I expect, that he has been long dead." "On that point," remarked Dick, "we can give _you_ a little information. He is not dead--at least he wasn't last fall." CHAPTER X THE PADRON "What do you mean?" cried Antonio. "How do you know? I thought you said you had never heard of him." "We hadn't," replied Dick, "until you mentioned his name, but from your description we have no doubt we saw him some months ago up here at the head of the valley." With this by way of preface, my companion related to our new acquaintance the particulars of our "interview" with the "little giant," as he called him. "It must be the same man," said Antonio. "I wonder what he was doing so far away from his own mountain. You say he shot the wolf with a copper-headed arrow? That's something I should like to investigate, if only the padron were not so dead set against my going up into the mountain. Where does he get his copper? In fact----" He paused to consider, and then went on: "Yes; I don't see why I shouldn't tell you--my uncle won't go himself, and he won't let me go, so I may as well tell _you_. The truth is that the reason why I was so anxious to make an excursion up there was just that--to find out where El Tejon gets his copper. And not only he, but the villagers down here. Every house in Hermanos has its copper bowl and dipper. They are hammered out of lumps of native copper; some of them must weigh five or six pounds. Where did they come from? Lumps of copper of that size were not washed down the streams--they were dug up. But by whom, and where?" I felt a great inclination to tell him. He had been so friendly and communicative that I began to feel rather uncomfortable at the thought that we were drawing all this information from him under what might be regarded as false pretences. I was pretty sure that Dick would be feeling much the same--for among boys, as I have many a time noticed, there is nothing more catching than open-heartedness--and I was right; for, glancing at him to see what he thought, I caught his eye, when he immediately raised his eyebrows a trifle, as much as to say, "Shall I tell him?" "Yes," said I, aloud. "I think so. Though we must remember, Dick, that it isn't altogether our secret." Dick nodded, and turning to the young Mexican, who was gazing at us open-eyed, wondering what we were talking about, he said: "Senor Antonio, my friend and I agree that it isn't quite fair to you to let you go on telling us these things without our telling you something in return. As Frank says, it is not altogether our own secret, but at the same time we don't think it is quite a square deal to get all these particulars from you and to keep you in the dark about ourselves. I can tell you this much, anyhow: that our object in coming down here was to find out where those same lumps of copper did come from." "Why, how did _you_ know anything about them?" cried Antonio, opening his eyes wider still. "I passed through Hermanos about eighteen months ago," replied Dick, "in company with a German naturalist, Herr Bergen, when we noticed the great number of copper bowls and things, and the sight of them reminded the professor of a story he had heard of an old copper mine, abandoned more than a hundred years ago, supposed to be somewhere down in this country. The story the professor told us is the story which we think we have no business to repeat, but I can tell you this much, at least, that it seemed to indicate the Dos Hermanos as the site of the old mine; and so we got leave to come down here to see if we couldn't trail it up." "Is that so? What fun you will have. I wish I could go with you. But that, I know, is out of the question: the padron would not consent, and I could not go against his will. But if I can help you I shall be very glad. Does the story you refer to indicate which of the two peaks is the right one?" "No, it doesn't," replied Dick. "We suppose that the copper used to be brought down to the _Casa_ on pack-burros, and we thought there might be the remains of a trail down here in the valley. That is what we were doing when you rode up:--looking for the trail; and we thought perhaps we had found it when we discovered this indentation in the soil that we have been following." "And I believe you have!" cried Antonio. "That's just what you have! It goes on straight southward from here, very plain, to within half a mile of the _Casa_ and then seems to die out for some reason. But, that it is the old trail I feel certain. Your copper mine is up there on the north peak as sure as----" He stopped short, his enthusiasm suddenly died out, and pulling a long face, he gazed at us rather blankly. "Well?" asked Dick. "I was forgetting. There's something else up there on the north peak." "What's that?" "The Badger!" "That's so!" cried Dick. "I'd forgotten him, too. Do you suppose he would interfere with us?" "That's more than I can say. From what the padron has told me, I imagine it is only to him that El Tejon objects, and perhaps also to me as one of the family; but I'm not sure about that. Look here! I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll just ride home and ask him what he thinks. You stay here. I'll be back in half an hour." "You are very kind," said my partner. "But why should we trouble you to come back here? We'll ride down with you." To our surprise the young fellow flushed and looked embarrassed, but recovering in a moment, he said: "Come on, then. But before we go, let me tell you something. The reason I hesitated was that I feared you might not receive a very hearty welcome from the padron. The truth of the matter is--to put it plainly, once for all--he hates strangers, and above all he hates the Americans. I am sorry it should be so, but so it is. The feeling is not uncommon among the older Mexicans: those who went through the war of '46; and if you stop to think of it, it isn't altogether unreasonable. According to the padron's view of the matter, his native country was invaded without cause or justice; he, himself, fought against the invader; his own brother and many of his friends were killed; and finally, he saw the land where he was born torn away from its old moorings and attached to the country of the enemy." This defence of his fellow-countryman, which the young Mexican delivered with much earnestness and feeling, was a revelation to me. Hitherto I had only considered the war with Mexico from our side, glorying in our success and admiring--very rightly--the bravery of our soldiers. That the Mexicans, themselves, might have a point of view of their own had never occurred to me, until this young fellow thus held up their side of the picture for me to see. "That's a matter I never thought of before," said I; "but when you do stop to think of it, it is _not_ surprising that the older generation of Mexicans should have no liking for us." "No," Dick chimed in; "and I don't think you can blame them, either." "I'm glad you see it that way," said Antonio. "It makes things all comfortable for me. So, now, let us get along. And if the padron doesn't seem best pleased to see you, you will know why." Following along the line of the supposed trail, which continued in general to be pretty plain, we presently passed alongside of a high bank of earth to which our guide called our attention. "Just ride up here a minute," said he. "Now, do you see how this earth-bank forms a perfect square, measuring about two hundred yards each way? What do you make of that?" "It was evidently built up," said I; "it can't be a natural formation. But what the earth was piled up for, I can't see." "I think I can," remarked Dick. "If I'm not mistaken, this is the site of an old pueblo." "Just what I think," responded Antonio. "An old pueblo which probably stood here before ever the Spaniards came to the country, and has been melted down to this shapeless bank by the rains of centuries. This valley must have supported a good-sized population once--very much larger than at present." "It looks like it," Dick assented. "I wonder where they got their water from--for I suppose they lived mostly by agriculture, as the Pueblos do still. Hasn't the padron ever tried to find the old source of supply?" The young Mexican shook his head. "No," said he. "The source of supply, wherever it was, was up in the mountains somewhere, and in spite of the fact that if he could find it, it would increase the value of the grant a thousand times, he daren't go to look for it." "My! What a chance there is here"--Dick began, when he suddenly checked himself. "Here's some one coming," said he. "Is this the padron?" "Yes; he must be coming to see who you are. I hope he won't make himself unpleasant." As Antonio spoke, there came riding toward us a square-set, gray-haired Mexican, at whom, as he approached, we gazed with much interest. He was a man of fifty, or thereabouts, harsh-featured and forbidding, who scowled at us in a manner which made me, at least, rather wish I had not come. To put it shortly and plainly, the Señor Galvez had, in fact, the most truculent countenance I had ever seen; and his first remark to his nephew, as the latter advanced to meet him, was on a par with his appearance. "What are you bringing these American pigs here for, Antonio?" he growled, in Spanish. "You know I will have nothing to do with them." Poor Antonio flushed painfully under his brown skin. He half raised his hand with a deprecatory gesture, as though to beg the speaker to be more moderate, while he glanced uneasily at us out of the corner of his eye to see if we had understood. It was then that Dick and I congratulated ourselves on having accidentally deceived our friend into the belief that we did not speak Spanish. Suppressing our natural desire to bandy a few compliments with the churlish padron, we put on an expression of countenance as stolid and vacant as if we had been indeed the American pigs aforesaid--immensely to the comfort of the younger man, as it was easy to see. "Do not be harsh, señor," said he. "They are only boys, and they are doing no harm here. Moreover," he went on, "they have brought you a piece of information which you will be glad to have:--El Tejon is still alive." The elder man started; his weather-beaten face paled a little. "How do they know that?" he asked, suspiciously. Antonio briefly told him our story. "Hm!" grunted the padron, glowering at us from under his bushy eyebrows. "But what are these boys skulking around here for? They don't pretend, I suppose, that they have come all the way down from Mosby just to tell me they have seen El Tejon." "Not at all," replied Antonio, with considerable spirit. "They are gentlemen, and they don't pretend anything. That bigger one of the two, the freckled one with the hook-nose and red hair"--it was Dick he meant, and intense was my desire to wink at him and laugh--"that one passed through here before; he noticed how every house contained its copper bowl and dipper--just as I did--and he has come down here with his friend--just as I wanted to do--to try to find out where the copper came from. We have had a long talk about it, and we have concluded that it probably came from somewhere up on the north peak. What I brought them down here for was to ask you whether you thought The Badger would let them alone if they went up there--that's all." "That's all, is it? Well, perhaps it is. But I'm suspicious of strangers, Antonio, especially since----" He paused, seemingly considering whether he should or should not mention the subject he had in mind, but at length--evidently supposing that we could not understand what he was saying--he went on: "I had not intended to say anything to you about it, but three days ago--the day you rode over to Zapatero to spend the night--something occurred here which makes me rather uneasy. I had been away all day myself that day and on my return I found a young man in the village who had come, he said, from Santa Fé. For a young man to come to this out-of-the-way place, all alone, from Santa Fé, or from anywhere else, for that matter, was a strange thing: it made me suspicious that he was after no good. And I became more than suspicious when I found that he had spent the day going from one house to another inquiring after El Tejon!" "Inquiring after El Tejon!" repeated Antonio. "That was strange; especially considering that El Tejon has been practically dead for a dozen years. Did he offer any explanation?" "No. To tell the truth, I did not give him the opportunity. When I found out what he was doing, how he had slipped into the village during my absence and had gone prying about among these ignorant peons, asking questions concerning my enemy, I was so enraged that I threatened to shoot him if he did not depart at once. I made a mistake there, I admit; if I had curbed my anger, I might have found out what his object was. But I did not, so there is no more to be said." "That was unfortunate," said Antonio; "but, as you say, it can't be helped now. So the stranger went off, did he? Did he return to----" "No, he didn't," Galvez interrupted, "or, at any rate, not immediately. I'll tell you how I know. I was so distrustful of him that I followed his trail next morning--it was dark when he left, and I couldn't do it then. It was an easy trail to follow, for his horse was shod, and ours, of course, are not. It led eastward for a mile and then turned back, circled round the village and went up into the north mountain. I have not seen him, nor a trace of him since." "It is a strange thing," said Antonio, thoughtfully. "What was the young man like? How old? Was he a Mexican or an American?" "I don't know. He looked like an American, though he spoke Spanish perfectly. He might be twenty years old. It is an odd thing, Antonio--and it is that, perhaps, which made me speak so sharply when I first saw these new friends of yours--but the young man was something like the bigger one of these two boys: the same hook-nose and light-gray eyes, though his hair was black instead of red." "A strange thing altogether," said Antonio, reflectively. "I don't wonder you feel a little uneasy." "As to these boys here," the padron went on, jerking his head in our direction, "you may tell them that they need not fear The Badger. It is only I who have cause to fear him, and perhaps you, as my nephew. These boys may go where they like without danger. The chances are they won't see El Tejon--they certainly won't if he doesn't want to be seen. And, Antonio, just thank them for bringing me their information, and then send them off." So saying, old Galvez turned his unmannerly back on us and rode away. The interview, if it can be called such--for the padron had not addressed a single word to us--being plainly at an end, we shook hands with our friend, Antonio, and having thanked him very heartily for his service, we set off for camp, riding fast, in our hurry to get back before darkness should overtake us. CHAPTER XI THE SPANISH TRAIL "Dick," said I, as we sat together that evening beside our camp-fire, "what do you make of it? That was a queer thing, that young fellow coming inquiring for El Tejon. I confess, for my part, I can't make head or tail of it." "I can't either," replied Dick; "at least, as far as this stranger is concerned. I'm quite in the dark on that point. As to the padron and The Badger, though, that seems to me simple enough. It is some old feud between the two which concerns nobody but themselves." "That is how it strikes me. You don't think, then, that there is any danger to us?" "No, I don't. In fact, I feel sure of it. It is just a personal quarrel of long standing between those two--that's all. I have no more fear of El Tejon than I have of any other Mexican. All the same, old chap, if you have any doubt about it, I'm ready to quit and go home again." "No," I replied, emphatically. "I vote we go on. And I'll tell you why, Dick. For one thing, I always did hate to give up." My partner nodded appreciation. "For another thing, I have gathered the notion that this Badger is not a bad fellow; not at all the kind that would murder a man in his sleep or shoot him from behind a rock. The fact that he let old Galvez go that time when he had him helpless, seems to me pretty good evidence that he is a man of some generosity and above-boardness." "That's a fact," Dick assented; "it was rather a fine action, as it seems to me. And unless I'm vastly mistaken, Frank," he went on, "if the cases had been reversed, and the padron had caught The Badger as The Badger caught the padron, it would have been all up with El Tejon. I never saw a harder-looking specimen in my life than old Galvez. I know, if he were my enemy, I should be mighty sorry to fall into his hands." "So should I; and the less we have to do with him the better, to my notion. I think we shall do well to steer clear of him." "Yes; and there won't be any temptation to go near him, anyhow, especially as Antonio won't be there to act as a buffer. So, we decide to go on, do we?" Dick concluded, as he arose to put two big logs on the fire for the night. "All right. Then we'll get out to-morrow morning. We'll take the line of the old trail and follow it up into the mountain as far as it goes--or as far as we can, perhaps I should say." "Very well," I agreed. "And we may as well abandon this camp, take old Fritz and all our belongings with us, and find another place more suitable higher up the mountain." "Yes; so now to bed." We were up betimes next morning, and having packed our traps away we went, Dick in the lead, Fritz following, and I bringing up the rear. Climbing over the big ridge from whose crest we had surveyed the valley the day before, we rode down its other side to the line of the old trail, and there, turning to the right, we followed it as it gradually ascended, until presently at the head of the ravine the trail, greatly to our perplexity, came to an end altogether. The ravine itself had become so narrow and its sides so precipitous that there appeared to be no way of climbing out of it, and we began to have our doubts as to whether it could really be an old trail that we had been following after all, when Dick, spying about, discovered a much-washed-out crevice on the right-hand side, so grown up with trees and brush as to be hardly distinguishable. "Frank," said he, "they must have come down here--there's no other way that I can see. Wait a moment till I get up there and see if the trail isn't visible again up on top." It was a pretty stiff scramble to get up, but as soon as he had reached the top my partner shouted down to me to come up--he had found the trail once more. If it had been a stiff climb for Dick's horse, it was stiffer still for old Fritz with his bulky pack. But Fritz was a first-rate animal for mountain work, having had lots of practice, and being allowed to choose his own course and take his own time he made the ascent without damaging himself or his burden. As soon as I had rejoined him, Dick pointed out to me the line of the trail, which, bearing away northward now, was much more distinct than it had been down below. For one thing, the ground here was a great deal harder; and for another, being well sheltered by the pine woods, the trail had not drifted full of sand as it had out on the unprotected valley. There were, it is true, frequent places where the rains of many years had washed the soil down the hillsides and covered it up, but in general it was easily distinguishable as it went winding along the base of the mountain proper, at the point where the steeper slopes merged into the great spurs which projected out into the valley. The distinctness of the old trail was, indeed, a surprise to me, its line was so much easier to follow than I had expected. If it continued to be as plain as this, we should have no trouble in keeping it; and so I remarked to my companion. "That's true," Dick assented, adding: "I'll tell you what, Frank: this must surely have been a government enterprise. Just see how much work has been expended on this trail--and needlessly, I should say--no private individual or corporation would have taken the trouble to make a carefully graded road like this--for that is what it really was apparently. It must have been some manager handling government funds and not worrying himself much about the amount he spent." "I shouldn't wonder," said I. "Just notice," Dick continued, pointing out the places with his finger. "See what useless expenditure they made. Whenever they came to a dip, big or little, instead of going down one side and up the other, as any ordinary human being would do, they carried their road round the end of the gully--just as though a loaded burro would object to coming up a little hill like this one, for instance, here in front of us." "It does seem rather ridiculous," I assented. "And they must have laid out their line with care, too, for, if you notice, Dick, it goes on climbing up the mountain with a grade which seems to be perfectly uniform as far as we can see it. It is more like a railroad grade than a trail. It isn't possible, is it, Dick," I asked, as the thought suddenly occurred to me, "it isn't possible that they can have used wheeled vehicles?" "Hm!" replied my companion, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "No, I think not. It would be extremely improbable, to say the least. No, I think it is more likely to be as I said: some lordly government official, spending government funds, and not troubling himself whether the income would warrant the expenditure or not." "I suppose that was probably it," said I. "There's one thing sure, Dick," I added: "if the income did warrant the expenditure, that old copper mine must have been a staver and no mistake." "That's a fact. Well, come on; let us go ahead and see where the trail takes us." This following of the trail was a perfectly simple matter; the animals themselves, in fact, took to it and kept to it as naturally as though even they recognized it as a road. So, on we went, climbing gradually higher at every step, when, on rounding the shoulder of a big spur, we were brought to a sudden and most unexpected halt by coming plump upon the edge of a deep and very narrow cañon. Right up to the very brink of this great chasm the trail led us, and there, of necessity, it abruptly ended. This gorge, which was perhaps a thousand feet deep, and, as I have said, extremely narrow--not more than thirty feet wide at the point where we had struck it--came down from the north face of the mountain, and, as we could see from where we stood, ran out eastward into the plain. It was undoubtedly the stream upon which we had camped when we had come across the valley two days before. Looking the other way--to the left, that is: up stream--our view was limited, but from what we could see of it, the country in that direction bade fair to be inaccessible, for horses, at least; while as to the cañon itself, it curved first to the left and then to the right in such a manner that we could not see to the bottom. Moreover a large rock, rising from the edge of the gorge, and in fact overhanging it a little, cut off our view up stream. On the opposite side of the chasm the ground rose high and rocky, an exceedingly rough piece of country; for though it was in general well clothed with trees, we could see in a score of places great bare-topped ridges and pinnacles of rock projecting high above the somber woods. "Dick," said I, "this looks rather like the end of things. What are we to do now?" "The end of things!" cried Dick. "Not a bit of it! Don't you see, on the other side of the cañon, exactly opposite, that little ravine which goes winding up the mountain until it loses itself among the trees? Well, that is the continuation of the trail. Come down here to the edge and I'll show you." Dismounting from our horses, we advanced as near the rim of the chasm as we dared, when Dick, pointing across to the other side, said: "Look there, Frank, about a foot below the top. Do you see those two square niches cut in the face of the rock? This place was spanned by a bridge once, and those two niches are where the ends of the big stringers rested." "It does look like it!" I exclaimed. "If there are other similar niches on this side, that would settle it. Take hold of my feet, will you, while I stick my head over the edge and see?" With Dick firmly clasping my ankle by way of precaution, I crept to the rim and craned my neck out over the precipice as far as I dared venture. As we had expected, there were the two corresponding niches, while about ten feet below them were two others, the existence of which puzzled me. Squirming carefully back again, I rose to my feet and told Dick what I had seen. "Two others, eh?" said he. "That's easily explained. Look across again and you will see that there are two in the face of the opposite cliff to match them. Those people not only laid two big stringers across the cañon, but they supported them from below with four stays set in those lower holes." "That must be it!" I exclaimed. "They did things well, didn't they--it is on a par with the work they expended on the trail. The trail itself, of course, went on up that little ravine and has since been washed out by the rains." "Yes; and the bridge has rotted and fallen into the stream; unless they destroyed it purposely when they abandoned the mine." "Well, Dick," said I. "It seems fairly sure that the mine was over there, somewhere in the rough country on the other side of the cañon. The question is, how are _we_ to get over there?" "Yes, that's the question all right. We can't get down here. That is plain enough. We shall have to find some other way. And that there is another way is pretty certain. See here! This cañon comes down from the north side of the mountain, runs out into the valley to the point where we struck it day before yesterday, doubles back, and joins the streams coming down from Mescalero, as well as those others which flow down from the north side of the peak." "Well?" "Well, this piece of country before us is therefore a sort of island, surrounded, or nearly surrounded, by cañons." I nodded. "Yes," said I. "Or more like a fortress with a thousand-foot moat all round it." "Well," continued my partner, "the original discoverers of the mine, whether Indians or Spaniards, did not cross here by a bridge, of course; they climbed up from the bottom of one of these cañons somewhere, and at first, probably, brought out the copper the same way, until, finding how much easier it would be to come across here, they built a bridge and made this road for the purpose." "That sounds reasonable," I assented. "So if we want to find the place where they used to get up, we must climb down into the bottom of the cañon ourselves and hunt for it." "Yes," replied Dick. "And from the look of it, I shouldn't wonder if we don't have to go all the way back to our old camping-place in order to get down!" "Hm!" said I, puckering up my lips and rubbing my chin. "I hope we don't have to go that far; but if we must, we must. Anyhow, Dick, before we go all the way down to the bottom of the mountain again, let us climb up above this big rock here and take a look up stream. It is just possible there may be a way down in that direction." "Very well," replied my partner. "I don't suppose there is, but we'll try it anyhow." Leaving our horses standing, we went back a little way along the trail, and climbing upward, presently reached a point level with the top of the big rock which rose above the edge of the gorge. There we found several little gullies leading down to the ravine, and Dick taking one of them and I another, we thus became separated for a few minutes. Only for a few minutes, however, for very soon I heard my partner hailing me to come back. From the tone of his voice I felt sure he had discovered something. "What is it, Dick?" I asked. "Found a way down?" "That's what I have, Frank, I'm pretty sure. Come here and look!" CHAPTER XII THE BADGER A short distance down Dick's gully was a great slab of stone standing on edge, which, leaning over until its upper end touched the opposite wall, formed a natural arch about as high as a church door. Through this vaulted passage Dick led the way. In about twenty steps we came out again upon the brink of the chasm, and then it was that my partner, with some natural exultation, pointed out to me the remarkable discovery he had made. In the face of the cliff was a sort of ledge, varying in width from ten feet to about double as much, which, with a pretty steep, though pretty regular pitch, continued downward until it disappeared around the bend in the gorge. Unless the ledge should narrow very considerably we should have no trouble in getting down, for there was room in plenty not only for ourselves but for our animals also--even for old Fritz, pack and all. "Why, Dick!" I cried. "We can easily get down here! I wonder if this wasn't the original road taken by the pack-trains." "It was," replied Dick; "at least, I feel pretty sure it was--and it was used for a long time, too." "Why do you think so?" I asked. "You speak as though you felt pretty certain, Dick, but for my part I don't see why." "Don't you? Why, it's very plain. Look here! Do you see, close to the outer edge of the shelf, a sort of trough worn in the rock? Do you know what that is? If I'm not very much mistaken, it is the trail of the pack-burros. There must have been a good many of them, and they must have gone up and down for a good many years to wear such a trail; though, of course, it has been enlarged since by the rain-water running down it." "Well, Dick," said I, "I still don't see why you should conclude that this is the trail of a pack-train. It seems to me much more likely to be due to water only. In the first place, though there is room enough and to spare on the ledge, your supposed trail is on the very outer edge, where a false step would send the burro head-first into the cañon; and in the next place, it keeps to the very edge, no matter whether the ledge is wide or narrow." "That's exactly the point," explained Dick. "It is just that very thing which makes me feel so sure that this is the trail of a pack-train. You've never seen pack-burros at work in the mountains, have you? Well, I have lots of times: they are frequently used to carry ore down from the mines. If you had seen them, you could not have helped noticing the habit they have of walking on the outside of a ledge like this, where there is a precipice on one side and a cliff on the other. A burro may be a 'donkey,' but he understands his own business. He knows that if he touches his pack against the rock he will be knocked over the precipice, and he has learned his lesson so well that it makes no difference how wide the ledge may be--he will keep as far away from the rock as he can. As to a false step, that doesn't enter into his calculations: a burro doesn't make a false step--there is no surer-footed beast in existence, I should think, excepting, possibly, the mountain-sheep." "I never thought of all that," said I. "Then I expect you are right, Dick, and this is an old trail after all. What is your idea? To follow it down, I suppose." "Yes, certainly. Our animals won't make any bones about going down a wide path like this. They are all used to the mountains. So let us get them at once and start down." Dick was right. Our horses, each led by the bridle, followed us without hesitation, while old Fritz, half a burro himself, took at once to the trail which one of his ancestors, perhaps, had helped to make. Without trouble or mishap, we descended the steeply-pitching ledge down to the margin of the creek, crossed over to the other side, and continued on our way up stream over the slope of decomposed rock fallen from the towering cliff which rose at least a thousand feet above us--the cliff being now on our right hand and the stream on our left. This sloping bank was scantily covered with trees, and among them we threaded our way, still following the trail, which, however, down here had lost any resemblance to a made road, and had become a mere thread, more like a disused cow-path than anything else. Presently, we found that the cañon began to widen, and soon afterward the cliff along whose base we had been skirting, suddenly fell away to the right in a great sweeping curve, forming an immense natural amphitheatre, enclosing a good-sized stretch of grass-land, with willows and cottonwoods fringing the nearer bank of the stream. As we sat on our horses surveying the scene, we found ourselves confronting at last the imposing north face of the mountain. Up toward its summit we could see the great semi-circular cliff which we supposed to be the upper half of an old crater, while the country below it, bare, rocky and much broken up, was exceedingly rough and precipitous. Starting, apparently, from the neighborhood of this crater, there came down the mountain a second very narrow and very deep gorge, whose waters, when there were any, emptied into the stream we had been following; the two cañons being separated by a high, narrow rib of rock--a mere wedge. Curiously enough, however, this second cañon did not carry a stream, though we could see the shimmer of two or three pools as they caught the reflection of the sky down there in the bottom of its gloomy depths. "Well, Dick," said I, "I don't see any sign yet of a pathway up to the top of this 'island' of yours. This basin is merely an enlargement of the cañon; the walls are just as high and just as straight-up-and-down as ever." "Yes, I see that plainly enough," replied Dick. "Yet there must be a way up somewhere. Those pack-trains didn't come down here for nothing. We shall find a break in the wall presently--up in that gorge, there, it must be, too. So let us go on. Hark! What's that?" We sat still and listened. The whole atmosphere seemed to vibrate with a low hum, the cause of which we could not understand. It kept on for five minutes, perhaps, and then died out again. "What was it, Dick?" said I. "Wind?" "I suppose it must have been," replied my companion; "though there isn't a breath stirring down here. If the sky had not been so perfectly clear all morning I should have said it was a flood coming. It must have been wind, though, I suppose." Satisfied that this was the cause, we thought no more of it, but, taking up the trail once more, we followed it down to the mouth of the second cañon, and there at the edge of the watercourse all trace of it ceased. "That seems to settle it," remarked Dick. "You see, Frank, the walls of this cañon are so steep and its bed is so filled with great boulders that even a burro could get no further. The copper must have been carried down to this point on men's backs, and if so, it was not carried any great distance probably. The mine must be somewhere pretty near now; we shan't have to search much further, I think, for a way up this right-hand cliff. Let us unsaddle here, where the horses can get plenty of grass, and go on up on foot." The ascent of the chasm was no easy task, we found, but, weaving our way between the boulders which strewed its bed, up we went, until presently we came to a place where some time or another a great slice of the wall, about an eighth of a mile in length, falling down, had blocked it completely, forming an immense dam nearly a hundred feet high. It must have been many years since it fell, for its surface was well grown up with trees, though none of them were of any great size. It seemed probable, too, that the base of the dam must be composed of large fragments of rock, for, though there was no stream in the bed of the gorge, it was very plain that water did sometimes run down it. If so, however, it was equally plain that it must squeeze its way through the crevices between the foundation rocks, for there was no sign at all that it had ever run over the top. Scrambling up this mass of earth and rocks, we went on, keeping a sharp lookout for some sign of a pathway up the cliff on our right, but still seeing nothing of the sort, when presently we reached the upper face of the dam, and there for a moment we stopped. Beneath us lay a stretch of the ravine, forming a basin about two hundred yards long, in the bottom of which were three or four pools of clear water. At the upper end of this basin was a perpendicular cliff, barring all further advance in that direction, over which, in some seasons of the year, the water evidently poured--sometimes in considerable volume apparently, judging from the manner in which the sides of the basin had been undermined. The sides themselves continued to be just as unscalable as ever; in spite of Dick's assurance that we should find a way up, it was apparent at a glance that there was neither crack nor crevice by which one could ascend. "Well!" cried my partner, in a tone of desperation. "This does beat me! I felt certain that the trail would lead us to some pathway up the cliff; but, as it does not, what does it come down here for at all?" "There is only one reason that I can think of," I replied, "and that is that they must have come down here for water--there is probably none to be found up on top of the 'island.'" "That must be it, Frank. Yes, I expect you've struck it. And in that case the pathway we have been hunting for must be down stream from the site of the old bridge after all." "Yes. So we may as well go back to-morrow morning, I suppose, and start downward. It is rather late to go back now--and besides, there is no water up there: we had better camp here for to-night, at any rate." "That's true. Well, as we have some hours of daylight yet--if you can call this daylight down here in this narrow crack--let us climb down the face of the dam and examine the basin before we give up and go back, so as to make quite sure that there is no way up the side." Accordingly, having clambered down, we walked up the middle of the basin, our eyes carefully scanning the wall on our right, when, having traversed about three-quarters of its length, we suddenly heard again that humming noise which we had taken for a wind-storm among the pines. With one accord we both stopped dead and listened. The noise was decidedly louder than it had been before, and moreover it appeared to be increasing in volume every second. "Frank!" exclaimed my companion. "I don't like the sound of it! It seems to me suspiciously like water! Let us get out of here! This is no place to be caught by a flood!" We turned to run, but before we had gone five steps we heard a roar behind us, and casting a glance backward, we saw to our horror an immense wall of water, ten feet high, leap from the ledge at the end of the basin and fall to the bottom with a prodigious splash. In one second the whole floor of the basin was awash. In another second our feet were knocked from under us, when, without the power of helping ourselves, we were tumbled about and swept hither and thither at the caprice of the rapidly deepening flood. Happily for myself, for I was no swimmer, I was carried right down to the dam, where, by desperate exertions, I was able to scramble up out of reach of the water. Dick, however, less fortunate than I, was carried off to one side, and when I caught sight of him again he was being swept rapidly along under the right-hand wall--looking up stream--in whose smooth surface there was no chance of finding a hold. As I watched him, my heart in my mouth, he was carried back close to the fall, where the violence of the water, now several feet deep, tossed him about like a straw. Half paralyzed with fear lest my companion should be drowned before my eyes, I stood there on the rocks, powerless to go to his aid, hoping only that he might be swept down near enough to enable me to catch hold of him, when, of a sudden, there occurred an event so astounding that for a moment I could hardly tell whether I ought to believe my own eyes or not. Out from the wall on the left, up near the fall, there shot a great dark body, which, with a noiseless splash, disappeared under the water. The next moment a man's head bobbed up, a big, shaggy, bearded head, the owner of which with vigorous strokes swam toward Dick and seized him by the collar. Then, swimming with the power of a steam-tug, he bore down upon the dam, clutched a projecting rock, drew himself up, and with a strength I had never before seen in a human being, he lifted Dick out of the water with one hand--his left--and set him up on the bank. Running to the spot, I seized hold of my partner, who, almost played out, staggered and swayed about, and helped him further up out of reach of the water. Then, turning round, I was advancing to thank his rescuer, when, for the first time, I saw that the man was almost a dwarf--in height, at least--though his astonishing strength was indicated in his magnificent chest and arms. "The Badger!" I cried, involuntarily. At the sound of that name the man turned short round, and without a word leaped into the water again. Sweeping back under the right-hand wall, he presently turned across the pool and struck out for the opposite side. Ten seconds later he had disappeared, having seemingly swum through the very face of the cliff itself! CHAPTER XIII THE KING PHILIP MINE I think it is safe to say that Dick and I were at that moment the two most astonished boys in the State of Colorado. Where had the man sprung from? And how had he disappeared again? There must be, of course, some opening in the rock which we had failed to notice; a circumstance easily explained by the fact that we had not gone far enough up the basin, and by the added fact that our attention had been fixed upon the opposite wall. Then, again, though the identity of the man could hardly be doubted, why should he take offence, as he seemed to do, at being addressed as "The Badger"? This was a question to which we could not find an answer; and, indeed, for the moment we postponed any attempt to do so, for our attention was too much taken up by the action of the water, which, continuing to rise with great rapidity, forced us to retreat higher and higher up the dam. For about half an hour it thus continued to rise, until there must have been at least fifteen feet of it in the basin, by the end of which time we noticed a sudden diminution in the amount coming over the fall. A few minutes later the flow had ceased altogether, when the water in the pool at once began to subside again, though far less rapidly than it had risen. Our first impulse after our narrow escape from drowning had been to run to the other end of the dam and get back forthwith to our horses, but this we had found to be rather too risky an undertaking to attempt, for the water, coming out from under the dam, was rushing down the bed of the cañon, seething and foaming between the obstructing boulders in such a fashion that we decided that discretion would be a good deal the better part of valor--that it would be an act of wisdom to wait a bit. Moreover, when the flood, leaping from the cliff, had bowled us over in such unceremonious style, we had had our rifles in our hands, and as those indispensable weapons were at that moment lying under fifteen feet of water, there was nothing for it but to wait till the pool drained off if we wished to recover them. As there was no telling how long we might have to wait, and as we were both wet through and very cold--Dick being besides still shaky from his recent buffeting--I collected a lot of dead wood and started a roaring fire, before whose cheerful blaze our clothes soon dried out and our spirits rose again to their normal level. It was then that I first fully appreciated the value of my partner's habit of carrying matches in a water-tight box--a habit I strongly recommend to anybody camping out in these mountains. For three hours we waited, by which time as we guessed there remained not more than a foot of water in the pool. I had gone down to measure it with a stick, and was leaning with my hand against the smooth, wet wall on my right, when I heard sounds as of a human voice speaking very faintly and indistinctly. The sounds seemed to come from the rock where my hand rested, and putting my ear against it, I plainly heard a strange voice say, "Hallo, boys!" "Hallo!" I called out, at the top of my voice, startled into an explosive shout. "Who are you? Where are you?" "Who's that you're talking to?" cried Dick, springing to his feet and looking all about. "I don't know," I replied. "Come here and put your ear to the rock." Dick instantly joined me, when we both very clearly heard the voice say: "You needn't shout. I can hear you. Do you hear me?" "Yes," said I; and repeating my question, I asked: "Who are you, and where are you?" "Before I tell you that," replied the voice, "I want to ask _you_ a question, if you please. Are you Americans?" "Yes," I replied. "Two American boys." "Thank you. One more question, please: Did old Galvez send you up here?" "No!" I replied, with considerable emphasis. "We never saw old Galvez till yesterday." "Good! Then I'll come down if you'll wait a minute." It was less than a minute that we had to wait, when from behind a slight bulge in the left-hand wall, up near the head of the basin, there appeared the figure of a young fellow, seemingly about twenty years old, who, with his trousers tucked up, carrying a rifle in one hand and his boots in the other, came wading down to us. With what interest we watched his approach will be imagined. Neither of us doubted that it was the young fellow whom Galvez had mentioned as having visited Hermanos during his absence, and as soon as he had come near enough for us to distinguish his features, I, for one, was sure of it, for, with his hook nose and his gray eyes, he did indeed bear a curious resemblance to my partner. Standing on the bank at the edge of the water, we waited for him to come near, when, having advanced to within six feet of us he stopped and eyed us critically. He was a good-looking young fellow, not very big, but with a bright, intelligent face which at once took our fancy. Apparently his judgment of our looks was also favorable, for, smiling pleasantly, he said: "Good-evening, boys. Which of you is Dick?" "I am," replied the owner of that name. "I just wanted to congratulate you, that's all, on your escape just now. It might have gone hard with you if it hadn't been for my good friend, Sanchez." "Sanchez?" I repeated, inquiringly. "Is that The Badger's proper name?" "Yes," replied the stranger. "Pedro Sanchez. The name of El Tejon was bestowed upon him by old Galvez, and consequently he objects to it. Your use of that name just now made him suspicious that you might be emissaries of the padron, and it was that which caused him to jump back into the water so suddenly." "I see. I'll take care in future. Here! Give me your hand"--seeing that he was about to come up the bank. "Thank you," replied the stranger, reaching out his hand to me and giving mine a shake before he let go--a greeting he repeated with Dick. "I'm very glad to find you are a couple of American boys and not a pair of Mexican cut-throats, as we rather suspected you might be. Let us go up to your fire there and sit down. The water will take another half-hour yet to drain off completely." Accordingly, we walked up to the fire, where the stranger dried his feet and pulled on his boots again. "Why did you suspect us of being Mexican cut-throats?" asked Dick. "Did you think that old Galvez had sent us up here on a hunt for you or for El--for Sanchez, I mean?" "Yes, that was it. We've been watching you for two days past. We saw you go down to Hermanos yesterday and start up the trail this morning. From the fact of your having gone down to the village, Pedro was inclined to believe you were hunting him or me; but, for my part, I rather inferred from your actions that you were hunting the old copper mine." "The old copper mine!" we both cried. "Yes. Did I make a mistake? Weren't you?" "No, you didn't make any mistake," replied Dick. "What surprised us was that you should know anything about it." The young fellow laughed. "Do you suppose, then," said he, "that you are the only ones to notice the pots and pans down there at Hermanos?" "No, of course not," replied Dick. "The professor was right, you see, Frank," he continued, turning to me, "when he said that the first white man who came along would notice those copper utensils and go hunting for the mine." "Yes," said I; and addressing the stranger again, I added: "So it was the copper mine you were seeking after all, was it? Old Galvez thought you came up here looking for Sanchez." Thereupon I related to him what the padron had said on the subject, when the young fellow, smiling rather grimly, remarked, with a touch of sarcasm in his voice: "Nice old gentleman, the Señor Galvez. So he professed not to know my name, did he? He's a bad lot, if ever there was one. He was right, though, in supposing that I came up here to look for Pedro. That was my main object, though I intended at the same time to keep an eye open for the old mine." "And have you seen any indication of it?--if we may ask." "Oh, yes," he replied, with unaccountable indifference. "There was no trouble about that. Pedro discovered it years ago and he took me straight to it." At this unlooked-for blow to all our hopes and plans, Dick and I gazed at each other aghast. At one stroke apparently, our expedition was deprived of its object. We might just as well turn round and go home again, as far as the King Philip mine was concerned. Our hopes had been so high; and here they were all toppled over in an instant. Intense was our disappointment. For half a minute we sat there speechless, when our new acquaintance, observing our crestfallen looks, remarked: "I'm afraid that is a good deal of a disappointment to you, isn't it? But, perhaps you will be less disappointed when I tell you that the old mine is valueless to me or you or anybody else." "How's that?" exclaimed Dick. "Why, it's---- But come and see for yourselves," he cried, springing to his feet. "That's the best way. You'll understand the why and the wherefore in five minutes." "What! Is it near here, then?" asked my partner. "Yes, close by. Behind the bulge in the wall on the left here." "On _that_ side!" cried Dick. "Not on the right, then, after all? Well, that is a puzzler!" "Why is it a puzzler?" asked the stranger. "I don't understand you." "Why, if the mine is on the _left_ of the creek, what was that bridge for up above here, crossing over to the _right_?" "Bridge! What bridge? What do you mean?" Upon this we told him of the niches in the rock up above, which we supposed to have been receptacles for bridge-stringers. "That's queer," remarked our friend. "I had not heard of those before. I wonder if Pedro knows anything about it. It is a puzzler, as you say." "Yes, I can't make it out," continued Dick; and after standing for a minute thinking, he repeated, with a shake of his head: "No, I can't make it out. I can't see what that bridge was for. Well, never mind that for the present; let's go and see the old mine." "Come on, then. But before we go, I'll just speak to Pedro, or he may be going off and hiding himself somewhere up in the old workings. Do you notice," he asked, "how smoothly the swirl of the water has scoured out a sort of half-arch at the base of the cañon-wall all the way from the end of the dam here, under the waterfall, round to the bulge on the other side? It forms a perfect 'whispering gallery.' Hallo, Pedro!" he called out, putting his face close to the rock. "It is all right. We are coming up now." Descending to the bed of the pool, whence all the water except three or four permanent puddles had now drained away, we first searched for our rifles, and having recovered them, followed our guide around the bulge in the wall, and there found ourselves confronting the old mine-entrance. About ten feet above the floor of the pool was a big hole in the rock, evidently made by hand--for it was square--leading up to which were several roughly-hewn steps, more or less rounded off and worn away by the water. On top of the steps, framed in the blackness of the opening behind him, stood the squat figure of Pedro Sanchez--in his rough shirt of deer-skin representing very well, I thought, the badger in the mouth of his hole. [Illustration: "BEHIND HIM, STOOD THE SQUAT FIGURE OF PEDRO SANCHEZ."] "Pedro," said our new friend, "these gentlemen were seeking the old mine, as I thought. You have nothing to fear from them." "On the contrary," cried Dick, bounding up the steps and holding out his hand, "we have to thank you for your good service just now!" Stretching out his long arm, the little giant smiled genially, showing a row of big white teeth. "It is nothing," said he; adding, with a twinkle in his eye: "The señores will remember that I owed to them some return for their assistance against the wolves." "That's a fact!" cried Dick. "I'd forgotten that. So you remember us, do you? I wonder at that--you didn't stay long to look at us." "No, señor," replied Pedro, laughing. "I was out of my own country and was distrustful of strangers." Turning to our new friend, who was wondering what all this was about, Dick explained the circumstances of our former meeting with Pedro, adding: "So, you see, we are old acquaintances after all. In fact, if we had not met Pedro before we should not be here now, for it was his copper-headed arrow which brought us down, oddly enough." "That was odd, certainly. Well, Pedro, get the torch and show your old friends over the mine. We must be quick, or it will be getting dark before we can get back to our camp." Pedro disappeared into the darkness somewhere, while we ourselves climbed up into the mouth of the tunnel. It was very wet in there: we could hear the _drip_, _drip_ of water in all directions. "Were you in here when the flood came down?" asked Dick. "How is it you weren't drowned--for I see the water stood five feet deep in the tunnel?" "Oh," replied the other, "there was no fear of drowning. There are plenty of places in here out of reach of the water. Wait a moment and you'll see." True enough, we soon heard the striking of a match, and next we saw the Mexican standing with a torch in his hand in a recess about ten feet above us. "That is where we took refuge," said our friend. "Far out of reach of the water, you see. Come on, now, and I'll show you how this old mine was worked, and why it was abandoned." Leading the way, torch in hand, he presently stopped, and said: "The place where we came in was the mouth of the main working-tunnel. It follows the vein into the rock for about a thousand feet, which would bring it, as I calculate, pretty near to the other cañon--for the rock between the two cañons is nothing more than a spit, as you will remember. Above the tunnel they have followed the vein upward, gouging out all the native copper and wastefully throwing away all the less valuable ore, until there was none left. If you look, you can see the empty crevice extending upward out of sight." "I see," said Dick, shading his eyes from the glare of the torch. "It seems to have been pretty primitive mining." "It was--that part of it, at least. But having exhausted all the copper above, they next began the more difficult process of mining downward. Come along this way and I'll show you." Walking along the tunnel some distance, our guide pointed out to us a square pool in the floor, measuring about eight feet each way. "This," said he, "was a shaft. There is another further along. How deep they are, I don't know." "But, look here!" cried Dick. "How could they venture to sink shafts, when at any moment a flood might rush in and drown them all?" "Ah! That's just the point," said our friend. "Come outside again and you'll understand." Returning once more to the bed of the pool, we faced the hole in the wall, when our guide continued: "Now, you see, the floor of the tunnel is about ten feet above the creek-bed, and before the cliff fell down, forming the dam, the water ran freely past its mouth. But some time after the miners had got out all the copper overhead and had begun sinking shafts, this cliff came down, blocked the channel, and caused the water to back up into the workings. As you remarked just now, it filled the tunnel five feet deep, and, as a matter of course, filled the shafts up to the top." "I see," said Dick. "You think, then, that the cliff fell in comparatively recent times. I believe you are right, too. That would account for there being no trees of any great size upon the dam." "Yes. And as a consequence the mine was abandoned; for it would have taken years to dig away this dam, and as long as it existed it would be impossible to go on with the work with the water coming down and filling up the tunnel once every three days, or thereabouts." "Every three days!" we both exclaimed. "Is this a regular thing, then, this flood?" "Why, yes. I'd forgotten you didn't know that. Yes, it's a pretty regular thing, and a very curious one, too. Pedro says that up in that old crater near the top of the mountain there is a great intermittent spring which every now and then rises up and spills out a great mass of water. The water comes racing down this gorge, and half an hour later leaps over the fall here, fills up the pool and the mine, and gradually drains off again under the dam." "That certainly is a curious thing," Dick responded. "And it also furnishes a reason good enough to satisfy anybody for abandoning the mine. Well, Frank," he went on, "this looks like the end of our expedition. We've done what we set out to do:--found the King Philip mine; and now, I suppose, there's nothing left but to turn round and go home again." "I suppose so," I assented, regretfully. "I hate to go back; but I'm afraid we have no excuse for remaining." "You think you must go back, do you?" asked our friend. "I'm sorry you should have to do so, but if you must, why shouldn't we travel the first stage together? I start back to Santa Fé to-morrow, and from there home to Washington." "You live in Washington, do you?" said Dick. "Then, why do you go round by way of Santa Fé? It would be much shorter to go to Mosby--and then we could ride all the way together." "I wish I could, but I have to go the other way. I left my baggage there, for one thing; and besides that I have some inquiries to make there which my mother asked me to undertake." Dick nodded. "And then you go straight back to Washington?" he asked. "Yes. Then I must get straight back home as fast as I can and report to my father. I had two commissions to perform for him:--one was to look into the matter of this old mine; the other concerned the present condition of the Hermanos Grant. The first one I consider settled, but the other, I find, is a matter for the lawyers: it is too complicated a subject for me, a stranger in the land and a foreigner." "A foreigner!" I cried. "Why, we supposed you were an American." "No," said he. "I am a Spaniard." "A Spaniard!" we both exclaimed this time. "Yes," laughing at our astonishment. "A Scotch-Irish-Spaniard--which seems a queer mixture, doesn't it? Though I was born in Spain, my forefathers were Irish, my mother is Scotch, and I have lived for several years first in Edinburgh and then in London; and now my father, who is in the Spanish diplomatic service, is stationed in Washington." "And what----?" I began, and then stopped, with some embarrassment, as it occurred to me that it was not exactly my business. "And what am I doing out here? you were going to say. I'll tell you. My father was out in this part of the world a good many years ago, having business in Santa Fé, where he got track of this old copper mine; but his idea of its whereabouts was very vague until, about a year ago, a gentleman whom he had met when he was out here wrote him a letter telling him of the number of copper utensils to be found down there at Hermanos---- What's the matter?" That he should thus exclaim was not to be wondered at if the look of surprise on my face was anything like the look on Dick's. "Well, of all the queer things!" exclaimed the latter; and then, advancing a step and addressing our friend, he said, smiling: "I think we can guess your name." "You do!" cried the young fellow. "That seems hardly likely. What is it?" "Blake!" replied Dick. CHAPTER XIV A CHANGE OF PLAN If the young Spaniard had provided us with two or three surprises during the day, I think we got even with him in that line when Dick thus disclosed to him the fact that we knew his name. For a moment he stood gazing blankly at us, and then exclaimed: "How in the world did you guess that?" "I don't wonder you are puzzled," replied Dick, "but the explanation is very simple. The Professor Bergen who wrote to your father--that's the right name, isn't it?" Young Blake nodded. "That was the name signed to the letter," said he. "'Otto Bergen.'" "Well, this Professor Bergen is my best and oldest friend; I have lived with him for thirteen or fourteen years. We left his house to come down here less than a week ago. It was he who told us of his meeting with a Spaniard of the remarkable name of Blake, who, while hunting through the records in Santa Fé, had come across mention of this old mine. And when he and I passed through Hermanos last year and saw all those old copper vessels there, the professor wrote at once to your father to tell him about them. I mailed the letter myself." "Well, this is certainly a most remarkable meeting!" cried our new acquaintance. "Why, I feel as if I had fallen in with two old friends!" "Well, you have, if you like!" cried Dick, laughing; whereupon we shook hands all over again with the greatest heartiness. "My first name," said young Blake, "is Arturo--Arthur in this country--the name of the original Irish ancestor who fled to Spain in the year 1691, and after whom each of the eldest sons of our family has been named ever since. But not being gifted with your genius for guessing names," he continued, with a smile, "I haven't yet found out what yours are." "That's a fact!" cried Dick. "What thoughtless chaps we are! My friend here, is Frank Preston of St. Louis; my own name is----" "Señores," said Pedro, cutting in at this moment, "with your pardon, we must be getting out of this cañon: it will be black night down here in another ten minutes." "That's true!" our friend assented. "So come along. We camp together, of course. How are you off for provisions? We have the hind-quarter of a deer which Pedro shot three days ago; pretty lean and stringy, but if you are as hungry as I am we can make it do." "Hungry!" cried Dick. "I'm ravenous. We've had nothing to eat since six o'clock this morning. How is it with you, Frank?" "I'll show you," I replied, snapping my teeth together, "as soon as I get the chance." With a laugh, we set off over the dam, and half an hour later were all busy round the fire toasting strips of deer-meat on sticks and eating them as fast as they were cooked, with an appetite which illustrated--if it needed illustration--the truth of the old saying, that the best of all sauces is hunger. Our supper finished, we made ourselves comfortable round the fire, and far into the night--long after Pedro had rolled himself in his blanket and had gone to sleep--we sat there talking. The reasons for our own presence in these parts were briefly and easily explained, when our new friend, Arthur--with whom, by the way, we very soon felt ourselves sufficiently familiar to address by his first name--Arthur related to us the motives which had brought him so far from home. "It was not only to hunt up this old mine," said he; "in fact, that was quite a secondary object. My chief reason for coming out was to look into the condition of the Hermanos Grant, and to find out why it was we had been unable for the past twelve years to get any reports from there." "Why _you_ hadn't been able to get reports!" exclaimed Dick. "What have _you_ got to do with the Hermanos Grant, then?" "It belongs to my father," replied Arthur, smiling. We stared at him with raised eyebrows. "But what about old Galvez, then?" asked my partner. "We supposed it belonged to him. In fact, his nephew told us as much, and he evidently spoke in good faith, too." "I dare say he did," replied Arthur. "All the same, the grant belongs, and for about a century and a half has belonged, to our family. It was my ancestor, Arthur the First, who 'bossed' the King Philip mine and who built the _Casa del Rey_. Old Galvez is just a usurper. I did not even know of his existence till I reached the village three days ago. It is a long and rather complicated story, but if you are not too sleepy I'll try to explain it before we go to bed." It was a long story; and as our frequent questions and interruptions made it a good deal longer, I think it will be wise to relate it, or some of it, at least, in my own words, to save time. The original Arthur Blake having rendered notable service in the great battle of Almanza, the king of Spain rewarded the gallant Irishman by making him "Governor" of the King Philip mine, at the same time, in true kingly fashion, bestowing upon him a large tract of land, comprising the village of Hermanos with the inhabitants thereof, as well as the desert surrounding it for five miles each way. The mine having ceased to be workable, for the reason we had seen, Arthur the First was preparing to return to his adopted country, when he died out there, alone, in that far-off land of exile. In course of time the existence of the King Philip mine passed entirely out of everybody's recollection, as would probably have been the case with the Hermanos Grant itself, had not the agent or factor, or, as he was locally called, the _mayordomo_, placed in charge by the old Irishman, continued from year to year to send over to the representative of the family in Spain certain small sums of money collected in the way of rents. They were an honest family, these factors, the son succeeding the father from generation to generation, and faithfully they continued to send over the trifling annual remittances, until the year 1865, when the payments suddenly and unaccountably ceased. It was two or three years before this that Señor Blake, having the opportunity to do so, had come out to Southern Colorado to take a look at the old grant, which, since the discovery of gold in the territory, might have some value after all. As a part of this trip he visited Santa Fé, with the object of searching through the records for some copy of the original royal patent; for what had become of that document nobody knew. It was possible that it had been destroyed when the French burnt the family mansion during the Peninsular war; again it was possible that old Arthur the First had brought it with him to America for the purpose of submitting it to the inspection of the Mexican authorities--for that part of Colorado was in those days under the rule of the viceroy of Mexico. In the limited time at his disposal, however, Señor Blake had found no trace of it; a circumstance he much regretted, for though hitherto there had never been any question as to the title, should the tract some day prove of value, such question might very well arise, when the Blake family might have difficulty in proving ownership. For about three years after his visit things continued to jog along in the old way, until, as I said, in the year 1865 the annual remittances suddenly ceased and all communication with Hermanos appeared to be cut off--for reasons unknown and undiscoverable. Such was the state of affairs when the elder Blake took up his residence in Washington, when Arthur, having solicited permission from his father, came west to find out if possible what was the matter. "When I got to Hermanos," said Arthur, continuing his story, "I found the people in such a down-trodden, spiritless condition that I had great difficulty in getting any information out of them--they were afraid to say anything lest evil should befall. By degrees, however, I gained their confidence, when I found that the Sanchez family, by whom, for generations past, the office of _mayordomo_ had been held, was extinct, except for a certain Pedro, a member of a distant branch, and that the present owner of the grant was one, Galvez, who, seemingly, had come into possession about twelve years ago. "As I could not understand how this could be, and as nobody seemed able to enlighten me, I decided, of course, to wait till Galvez came home in order to question him. "Meanwhile, I inquired about this man, Pedro Sanchez, who, I was told, was the only one likely to be able to explain, meeting with no difficulty in ascertaining where he was to be found; for, though Galvez himself did not know whether Pedro was alive or dead, every other inhabitant of the village knew perfectly well, and always had known, not only that he was alive but where to find him. "Presently, about dusk, Galvez came riding in, when I at once made myself known to him. At the mention of my name he appeared for a moment to be rendered speechless, either with fear or surprise, and then, to my great astonishment, with a burst of execration, he snatched a revolver out of its holster. Luckily for me, he did it in such haste that the weapon, striking the pommel of the saddle, flew out of his hand and fell upon the ground; whereupon I ran for it, jumped upon my horse and rode away. "After riding a short distance, I bethought me of Pedro, so, circling round the village, I came up here, and following the directions of the peons, I easily found him next morning. Through Pedro, as soon as I had succeeded in convincing him of my identity, I quickly got at the rights of the case." "Wait a minute," said Dick, who, together with myself, had been an attentive listener. "Let me put some more logs on the fire. There!" as he seated himself once more. "That will last for some time. Now, go ahead." Leaning back against a tree-trunk and stretching out his feet to the fire, Arthur began again: "Did you ever hear of the Espinosas?" he asked. "No!" I exclaimed, surprised by the apparently unconnected question; but Dick replied, "Yes, I have. Mexican bandits, or something of the sort, weren't they?" "Yes," said our friend. "They were a pair of Mexicans who, in the year '65, terrorized certain parts of Colorado by committing many murders of white people. This man, Galvez, who then lived in Taos, hated the Americans with a very thorough and absorbing hatred, and the exploits of the Espinosas being just suited to his taste, he decided to join them. But he was a little too late; the two brigands were killed, and he himself, with a bullet through his shoulder, would assuredly have been captured had he not had the good fortune to fall in with Pedro Sanchez. "Pedro had been a soldier, too, and coming thus upon a comrade in distress he packed him on his burro, and by trails known only to himself brought him down to Hermanos, entering the village secretly by night. "The occupant of the _Casa_ at that time was another Pedro Sanchez, a forty-second cousin or thereabouts of our Pedro. He was a very old man, the last of his immediate family, a good, honest, simple-minded old fellow, who for thirty years or more had been factor for us. With him Pedro sought asylum for his comrade--a favor the old man readily granted to his namesake and relative. "It was pretty sure that there would be a hue and cry after Galvez, so, to avoid suspicion as much as possible, they arranged to give out that it was Pedro who lay sick at the _Casa_, while Pedro himself went off again that same night up into the mountain to hide till Galvez thought it safe to move. He had done everything he could think of for his friend, and how do you suppose his friend requited him? It will show you the sort of man this Galvez is. "For six weeks the latter lay hidden, when in some roundabout way he got word that his description was placarded on the walls of Taos and a reward offered for his capture. This cut him off from returning home and he was in a quandary what to do, when one day his host, who, as I said, was a very old man, had a fall from his horse and two days later died. "Then did Galvez resolve upon a bold stroke. He came out of his hiding-place, and without offering reasons or explanations calmly announced that he had become proprietor of the Hermanos Grant, and that in future the villagers were to look to him for orders! The very impudence of the move carried the day. The ignorant peons, accustomed for generations to obey, accepted the situation without question; and thus did Galvez install himself as padron of Hermanos, and padron he has remained for twelve years, there being nobody within five thousand miles to enter protest or dispute his title." "Well!" exclaimed Dick. "That was about the most bare-faced piece of rascality I ever did hear of. And your father, of course, over there in Cadiz or London or wherever you were then, was helpless to find out what was going on in this remote corner." "That's it exactly; and at that time, too, this corner was far more remote even than it is now--there were no railroads anywhere near then, you see." "That's true. Well, go on. What about his treatment of Pedro?" "Why, Galvez, as padron of Hermanos--a place almost completely cut off from the rest of the world--felt pretty sure that he would never be identified as Galvez of Taos, the man wanted for brigandage; for the villagers had no suspicion of the fact. The only danger lay in Pedro." "I see. Pedro being the one person who did know the facts." "Exactly. Well, Galvez was not one to stick at trifles, and understanding that the simplest way to secure his own safety would be to get rid of this witness, he came riding up into the mountain one day, found Pedro, and while talking with him in friendly fashion, pulled out a big flint-lock horse-pistol, jammed it against his benefactor's chest and pulled the trigger. Luckily the weapon missed fire; Pedro jumped away, picked up a big stone and hurled it at his faithless friend, taking him in the mouth and knocking out all his front teeth. Then he, himself, fled up into his mountain; and that was their last meeting, except on the occasion when Galvez came up to hunt for him and Pedro shot his horse with the copper-headed arrow. "There!" Arthur concluded. "Now you have it all. That's the whole story!" "And a mighty curious and interesting story it is, too!" exclaimed Dick; adding, after a thoughtful pause: "That man, Galvez, is certainly a remarkable specimen; and a dangerous one. He is not an ordinary, every-day, primitive ruffian. That move of his in declaring himself padron of Hermanos was a stroke of genius in its way. It won't be a simple matter to get him out of there, if that is what you are after." "That is what I am after," replied Arthur. "But, as I said, the question of how to do it is too complicated for me. I know nothing of American law, but it strikes me that, in spite of the fact that he plainly has no right there, we may have considerable difficulty in getting him out, for, as we can show neither the original patent nor a copy of it, we have only our word for it that such a thing ever existed." "That's true," said I. "And Galvez being in possession, it may be that he would not have to prove _his_ rights: it would rest with you to prove _yours._" "I should think that was very likely," remarked Dick. "It is a complicated matter, as you say. What do you suppose your father will do? Have you any idea?" "Yes, I have," replied Arthur, very emphatically. "I know exactly what he will do. When I tell him how the grant has been 'annexed' by this man--and such a man, too--he will never rest until he has got him out. It may be that the old brigandage business may serve as a lever--that, I don't know--but whatever is necessary to be done he will do, however long it may take and however much it may cost." "As to the cost," said I, "that is likely, I should think, to be pretty big. Is the grant worth it? Suppose, on investigation, your father should find that the expense of getting Galvez out would be greater than the value of the property--what then?" Arthur laughed. "You don't know my father," said he. "The value of the grant--which, in truth, is nothing, or nearly nothing--makes no difference whatever. It's the principle of the thing. To permit a robber like Galvez to remain quietly in possession would be impossible to my father. He will regard it as his duty to society to right the wrong, and he will do it, if it takes ten years, without considering for a moment whether the grant is worth it or not." "Good for him!" cried Dick, thumping his knee with his fist. "The law in this new West is weak--naturally--and here in this out-of-the-way corner there is none at all, but a few such men as your father would soon stiffen its backbone. I hope he'll succeed; the only thing I'm sorry for is that the grant has so little value." "That is unfortunate," replied Arthur; "though, as it happens, that particular concerns my father less than it does me." "Is that so? How is that?" "It is an old custom in the family to bestow the Hermanos Grant on the eldest son on his coming of age. I am the eldest son, and I come of age next August, when, according to the custom, I shall become the owner of this valueless patch of desert--if Galvez will be graciously pleased to allow me." "What are the limits of the grant?" asked Dick. "North, south and east," replied Arthur, "it extends five miles from Hermanos, but on the west it stops at the foot of the mountains." "So the only part of it which produces anything is that little patch of cultivated ground surrounding the village." "Yes; and as the water-supply is very limited the place can never grow any larger. In fact, it produces little more than enough to feed the villagers; and even as it is, the boys as they grow up have to go off and get work elsewhere as sheep-herders and cowmen, there being no room for them at home. It is the padron's custom, I was told, to hire them out, their wages being paid to him, in which case you may be sure it is precious little of their earnings they ever get themselves." "He's a bad one, sure enough," remarked Dick. "But to go back to that water-supply. Isn't there any way of increasing it?" "I'm afraid not," replied Arthur. "I wish there were: a plentiful supply of water would make the place really valuable. There is land enough, and excellent land, too; all that is needed is water. But that, I'm afraid, is not to be had. I've talked to Pedro about it; he knows every stream on these two mountains, but he says that they all run in cañons from five hundred to two thousand feet deep, and there is no possible way of getting any of them out upon the surface of the valley. What are you thinking about, Dick?" My partner, who had been sitting with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, frowning severely at the fire, started from his revery, and turning toward his questioner, he replied, speaking slowly and thoughtfully: "If any one ought to know, it's Pedro; but, all the same, I believe Pedro is wrong. I believe there _is_ a way of turning one of these streams somewhere and bringing it down to Hermanos--if only one could find the right stream." "Why do you think so?" asked Arthur. "I know it looks ridiculous for me to be setting up my opinion against Pedro's," replied my partner, "but I can't help thinking that there is such a stream. Look here!" he cried, jumping up, walking to and fro between us and the fire once or twice, and then stopping and shaking his finger at us as though he were delivering a lecture to two inattentive pupils. "Where did those old Pueblos get their water from, I should like to know? Up in these mountains somewhere, didn't they? Of course they did: there's no other place. There was a big irrigation system down there once, enough to support a population of three or four thousand people probably. Well! What has become of that supply? That's what I want to know. They had it once--where is it now?" For some seconds Dick stood in front of Arthur, pointing his finger straight at him, while Arthur sat there in silence gazing steadfastly at Dick. Suddenly, the young Spaniard jumped up, stepped forward, and slapping my partner on his chest with the back of his hand, exclaimed: "Look here, old man! I believe you are right. I believe there is a stream somewhere which those old Pueblos used for irrigating their farms. It has somehow been switched off and lost. It ought to be found and brought back. Now, look here! I can't stay here to hunt for it myself: I _must_ get home right away. But I'll make a bargain with you:--You find that stream and provide a way of getting the water back to Hermanos, and I'll give you a half-interest in the grant--when I get it. There, now! There's a chance for you!" "Do you mean that?" cried my partner. "I certainly do," replied Arthur. "The grant is without value as it stands: if you can get water on to it and give it a value, it would be only just that you should have a share in the profits. Yes, I mean what I say, all right. If you'll supply the water, I'll supply the land. There! What do you say? Is it a bargain?" For a moment Dick stood staring thoughtfully at our friend, and then, turning to me, he exclaimed sharply: "Frank! Let's do it! Here we are, out for the summer. It's true we came out to hunt for a copper mine, but that scheme being 'busted' at the very start, let us turn to and hunt for water instead. What do you think?" "I'm agreed!" I cried. "Good! Then we'll do it! And the very first move----" "The very first move," interrupted Arthur, laughing, "the very first move is--to bed! It's after eleven!" "Phew!" Dick whistled. "I'd no idea it was so late. To bed, then; and to-morrow we'll work out a plan of action. This has been a pretty long day, and a pretty eventful one, too. So let's get to bed at once, and to-morrow we'll start fair." In spite of the long day and the lateness of the hour, however, I could not get to sleep at once. Dick, too, seemed to be wakeful. I heard him stir, and opening my eyes, I saw him sitting up in bed with his arms clasped around his blanketed knees, gazing at the fire. Suddenly, he gave his leg a mighty slap with his open hand, and I heard him chuckle to himself. "What's the matter, Dick?" I whispered. "Got a flea?" "No," he replied, laughing softly. "I've got an idea. Go to sleep, old chap. I'll tell you in the morning." CHAPTER XV DICK'S SNAP SHOT The sun rose late down in that deep crevice, and for that reason, added to the lateness of the hour at which we had gone to bed, we did not wake up next morning till after six o'clock. We found, however, that Pedro had been up a couple of hours at least, for he had a good fire going, had made everything ready to start breakfast, and moreover he had been up on the mountain and had brought down Arthur's horse and his own burro from the little valley where they had been left at pasture. When I, myself, awoke, I found that Dick was ahead of me. He was standing by the fire, warming himself--for the mornings were still cold--and talking to Pedro, who, I guessed, was explaining something, for he was waving his long arms energetically, first in one direction and then in another. "Well, Dick," said I, as we sat cross-legged on the ground, eating our breakfast, "what is this idea of yours? Does it still look as favorable as it seemed to do last night?" "Better," replied Dick, with his mouth full of bacon. "A great deal better. I felt pretty confident last night that I was on the way to earn that half-interest in the Hermanos Grant, and this morning, since talking with Pedro, I feel more confident still." "Is that so?" cried Arthur. "I hope you're right. What is it you think you have discovered?" "In the first place," replied Dick, "I have discovered that we are a lot of wiseacres: we have been going around with our eyes shut." "How?" we both asked. "If we hadn't had our heads so full of the old copper mine, and if we hadn't been so bent on finding the trail to it, we should never have made the mistake we did." "What mistake?" I asked. "Hurry up, Dick! Don't take so long about it. What are you driving at?" "Why, this!" replied my partner, suddenly sitting up straight and wagging his finger at us. "This trail we have been following, all the way from Hermanos up to the edge of the cañon, was not a trail at all--it was a ditch!" "A ditch!" we both exclaimed. "Yes, a ditch. A ditch dug by those old Pueblo Indians to carry water down to that wide, level stretch of ground at the back of the _Casa_. I'm sure of it. If you give up the idea of a trail and consider it as a ditch, all its peculiarities will be explained at once. It will account for its uniform grade, for its unexpected distinctness, and more than everything else, it will account for the fact that the 'trail' never once dipped down a hill or climbed one either, but always--invariably--went round the head of every gully, deep or shallow, that came in its way." "Upon my word, Dick!" cried Arthur. "I believe you _have_ made a discovery! I believe that it is the line of an old ditch, after all; though the pack-trains doubtless used it as a convenient road as far as the top of the cañon and then switched off down here by that shelf in the wall." "That's my idea," said Dick, nodding his head. "But, look here, Dick," Arthur went on, after a moment's thoughtful pause. "Suppose it is an old ditch--where did the water come from? That's the question. A ditch without water isn't much use." Dick laughed. "No," said he. "I understand that well enough. The water came from this 'island,' up here above our heads, and was carried across the cañon in a flume!" "Ah!" I cried. "I see! What we at first supposed to have been a bridge up there, built for the accommodation of the pack-trains, was in reality a flume for carrying water." "That's what I believe," replied Dick. "Well, but see here, Dick," remarked Arthur again. "Suppose that there was a flume there for carrying water--where's the water now? That's the point. That's what I want to know." "Ah!" replied my partner. "And that was what I wanted to know, too. That was the very question that bothered me until I talked to Pedro about it just now. I asked him if he had ever seen or heard of a stream of water coming down from the top of this high land, and I can tell you he eased my mind of a load when he told me he had. He says there is a good big waterfall which jumps off the cliff on the north side of the 'island' and falls into this stream we are camped upon now, but about twelve or thirteen miles below this point, following the bends of the creek." "Is that so? Then the chances are that that is the stream from which the Pueblos used to get their water. Did you ask Pedro if he knew of any way of getting up there?" "Yes, I did, and I'm sorry to say he doesn't know of any. He says that this 'island' is really an island, being compassed about on all sides by cañons of varying depths; that it includes a large tract of country, part mountain and part plain; and that to the best of his knowledge, no man has ever set foot on it. In that, though, I'm pretty sure he's mistaken. In fact, it is as certain as anything can be that there is a way up somewhere, or else, how did the Pueblos get over there in the first place? They didn't fly across this gorge; and yet they must have worked from both sides at once when they built their flume." "That's true. Well, Dick, it does look as though you had made a genuine discovery, and one likely to be of great value. What's your idea, then? You and Frank will stay here and hunt for the old Pueblo ditch-head, I suppose, while I dig out for home by myself. I wish I could stay and hunt with you, but there's no knowing how long it may take, and meanwhile my father and mother will be worrying themselves to know what has become of me. I've been here now a good bit longer than I intended. I must get back at once and----" "Look here, Arthur," Dick interrupted. "Excuse me for cutting in, but I'd like to make a suggestion. There is just a possibility--I don't expect it, I own, but there is a possibility--that if Galvez were informed that you know how he came to be padron of Hermanos, and also of his connection with the Espinosas, he might get scared and skip out of his own accord--which would simplify matters for you very much. Now, here's what I propose--if you really are bound to leave at once." "Yes," Arthur interjected. "I mustn't stay a minute longer than I can help." "Well, then, I propose that before you go--it will only make a difference of a couple of hours--before you go, Frank and I will ride down to Hermanos, see old Galvez, tell him what you have told us, and recommend him to take his departure. Perhaps he'll be scared and skip out; but if he won't, why, then you'll know where you stand. How does that strike you?" "Hm!" muttered Arthur, doubtfully. "I don't much like the idea of running you into danger. Galvez is such a treacherous fellow, there's no knowing what he might do to you." "That's true enough," said Dick; "though I don't think he would attempt anything on two of us at once, and in broad daylight, too. It might be to his advantage to get rid of you or Pedro or both, but he would surely have sense enough to see that he wouldn't gain anything by hurting either of us." "That's a fact. Well, suppose you go, then. But be careful." "We'll be careful," replied my partner. "You needn't worry yourself on that account." By this time we were ready to start, and accordingly we all rode together up the ledge until we came out again at the point where the old flume used to be--where we pointed out to Arthur the sockets in the rock--and thence, continuing to the foot of the mountain, Dick and I, leaving the others to wait for us, galloped off toward Hermanos. By good fortune, as we approached the village, we saw Galvez himself down near the creek, where he was directing three of his _vaqueros_ who were engaged in cutting out cows from a bunch of wild Mexican cattle. Further down stream, only a short distance from the houses, we noticed half-a-dozen Mexican children, very busy making mud pies, quite unconcerned, apparently, at the proximity of the herd of cattle. It happened, however, that just as we came riding up to where Galvez sat on his horse, shouting orders to his men, a gaunt, wild-eyed, long-horned steer broke out of the bunch on the down-stream side. One of the cowmen dashed forward to turn it, when, to his astonishment, the steer, instead of running back into the bunch or attempting to dodge him, charged the rider and knocked him and his little broncho over and over. Then, wildly tossing its head, the beast made straight for the group of unsuspecting and defenceless children. "Loco! Loco!" shouted Galvez. "Rope him, one of you!" The two other men galloped forward, swinging their lariats, but the locoed steer, going like a scared antelope, had such a start that it looked as though it would surely reach the children before the men could catch it. Seeing this, Galvez pulled out his revolver and fired six shots at it in quick succession. Whether he hit the steer or not, I cannot say, but even if he did the range was too great for a revolver to be effective--unless by a lucky chance. The children, hearing the shots, looked up, saw the steer coming, and scattered like a flock of sparrows--all but one of them, that is to say. He, a brown-bodied little three-year-old, without a scrap of clothing upon him except a piece of string tied round his middle, stood stock still, with his little hands full of mud, seemingly too frightened to move, and straight down upon this little bronze statue the crazy beast went charging. It looked as though a tragedy were imminent! It was at this moment that my partner and I came riding up behind Galvez, who, sitting on his horse with his back to us, his body interposed between us and the steer, had not seen us yet. It was no time for ceremony. Without wasting words in greetings or explanations, Dick jammed his heels into his pony's ribs; the pony sprang forward; Dick pulled him up short, leaped to the ground, threw up his rifle and fired a snap shot. Down went the steer, heels over head, gave one kick and lay dead--shot through the heart! It was a grand shot! The three _vaqueros_, two on their horses and one on foot, carried away by their enthusiasm, forgot for once their habitual dread of the padron, and waving their hats above their heads joined me in a shout of applause; while as for Galvez, himself, he sat on his horse with his empty revolver in his hand, gazing open-mouthed first at Dick and then at the dead steer, seemingly rendered speechless for the moment. At length he turned to me, who had come up close beside him, and said: "Can he always do that?" "Just about," I replied, with a nod. "He is one of the best shots in the State." "Hm!" remarked the padron, sticking out his lower lip and thoughtfully scratching his chin with his thumb-nail; and though that was all he did say, the muttered exclamation conveyed to me as much meaning as if he had talked for five minutes. That Dick's remarkable shot had made a great impression on him I felt certain, and it was a matter of much satisfaction to me to think that it had; for if at any time he should entertain the idea of resorting to violence against any of us, the recollection of how that steer had pitched heels over head would probably cause him to think again. The whole episode had not occupied more than two minutes, at the end of which time Galvez, recovering himself, turned to us and said, in his usual gracious manner: "Well, you two, what have you come back here for?" "We have come down to speak to you," replied Dick, as he slipped another cartridge into his Sharp's rifle. "We have just parted with Señor Blake and El Tejon." The padron scowled at the mention of the two names. "Oh, you have, eh? Well, what then?" he asked. "Señor Blake," my partner continued, "wished us to say that he has learned how you came to be padron of Hermanos. Pedro has told him the whole story--everything--the Espinosa business and all." "Oh! And is that all?" "That's all," said Dick. The padron, I have no doubt, had been expecting some such communication and had made up his mind beforehand what to say, for, after sitting for a few seconds looking at Dick without a word, he smiled an unpleasant, toothless smile, and said: "That's all, is it? Well, you go back to your Señor Blake and tell him that here I am and here I stay, and if he thinks that three beardless boys and a shiftless, half-crazy peon can make me move, why, he's welcome to try. There! That's all on my side." He started to ride off, but after a few steps stopped again to add: "Except this:--I recommend you two boys to get along back home as fast as you can and leave this young Blake--if that is really his name--to manage his own affairs. You may find it dangerous to be mixed up with them." He said this in an aggressive, menacing tone; but I noticed, all the same, that his eye wandered involuntarily toward the dead steer, and I congratulated myself again on the lucky chance that had given Dick the opportunity to show his skill with a rifle. Galvez, I was convinced, would be exceedingly careful how he provoked a quarrel with any one who could shoot like that. "Very well, señor," said Dick. "We will deliver your message. That is all we came for." And with that we turned round and rode away again. In the course of an hour we were back at the foot of the mountain, where we found Arthur sitting on the ground waiting for us. "Well, what luck?" he cried. "What did Galvez have to say?" We told him all about our interview with the padron, not forgetting the episode of the wild steer, at hearing which Arthur expressed much gratification. "That was a very fortunate chance," said he. "Galvez may profess to despise three beardless boys, but after seeing one of them shoot a running steer at three hundred yards, I expect he will think twice before he stirs up a fuss with them. It is just the sort of thing--and the only sort of thing, too--to make an impression on a man like that. What is your idea, Dick? Do you think he intends to stick it out, or was he only 'bluffing'?" "I don't know," replied my partner. "I'm afraid he means to hold on. But though at present he puts on 'a brag countenance,' as the saying is, when he has had time to reconsider he might change his mind and skip. My impression is, though, that he means to hold on." "I think so, too," said I. "What is Pedro's opinion?" "Ah! Yes. Let us ask Pedro." "Señores," said the Mexican, when Arthur had explained the whole matter to him in Spanish, "the padron is a pig, a mule. He will not move." "Then that settles it!" cried Arthur, jumping up, walking away a few paces and coming back again. "I never really expected that Galvez would move, though it was worth trying. So now I'll be off at once. As for that old ditch-head, though I should have liked very much to stay and help hunt for it, you three can, as a matter of fact, make the search just as well without me. And whether you find it or whether you don't, makes no difference in one way--the business of getting Galvez out of Hermanos will have to proceed regardless of that or any other consideration. We have two things to do, you see:--To turn out Galvez and to find that ditch-head. The first is my business; the second is yours; and the sooner I get about mine the better, if I am to give you a clear title to your half-interest when you are ready to claim it." "As to that," remarked Dick, "I don't think we ought to hold you to that bargain. It was made more or less in joke, anyhow." "No, no, it wasn't!" cried Arthur, emphatically. "Not a bit of it! I meant it then and I mean it still. I'm quite content. You provide the water and I'll provide the land, as I said. It's a fair bargain. I don't want to be let off. But before I can perform my part of it I must prove my own title, and as I can't do it at this end of the line I'll waste no more time here, but get right back home as fast as I can and report the conditions to my father." "Well," said Dick, after a moment's thoughtful silence, "I believe you are right. I believe that is the best way after all, unless----" "Unless what?" "Unless we abandon the whole thing." "Abandon----!" cried Arthur; but he got no further, for Dick, holding up his hand, said, laughingly: "All right, old man! All right! You needn't say any more. I only suggested it just to see what you would say. So you are determined to go through with this thing, are you? Very well, then, you may count on us to do our part if it's doable. Eh, Frank?" I nodded. "We'll find that ditch-head," said I, "if we have to stay here till snow flies." "Good!" cried Arthur. "Then that does settle it. I'll be off this minute. Bring my horse, Pedro: I'm going to start at once." "Look here, Arthur," remarked Dick. "I think it would be a good plan if Frank and I were to escort you to the other side of Hermanos. Galvez, I expect, guessed what you were after when you first told him your name, and now he'll be sure of it, and it might be pretty dangerous for you if you should meet him alone; so we'll just ride part way with you and see you safely started." "Thanks," replied Arthur. "I shall be glad of your company. Well, let us get off, then. Good-bye, Pedro. I expect you'll see me back here before very long. _Adios!_" Thus taking leave of the burly Mexican, Arthur started off, Dick and I riding on either side of him. Keeping about a mile to the north of Hermanos, we circled round that village, and were making our way southeastward toward the Cactus Desert, when we saw off to our right a great cloud of dust, and in the midst of it a bunch of cattle accompanied by three men. At first we were suspicious that Galvez might be one of them, but pretty soon we discovered that they were the three _vaqueros_ we had seen that morning. They, on their part, quickly detected us, when one of them immediately turned his horse and came riding toward us. As soon as he had come pretty close I saw that it was the one whose horse had been knocked over by the locoed steer. This man, advancing to Dick, pulled off his hat, and speaking with considerable feeling, said: "I wish to thank the señor who shoots so straight. It was my little boy who was in danger." "Was it?" cried Dick. "I'm very glad, then, that I happened to make such a good shot. The steer was locoed, of course." "_Si, señor_," replied the man. "It happens sometimes. This one was very bad. It should have been killed long ago, but the padron would not. I am grateful to the señor, and if I can serve him at any time I shall be glad." "Thank you," said Dick. "What is your name?" "José Santanna," replied the man. "Well, José," continued Dick, "I'm much obliged to you for your offer, and if I need your help at any time I'll come and ask you." "_Gracias, señor_," replied the man; and with that he turned and galloped after his companions. "That's a good thing for us," remarked Arthur. "We may find it very handy to have an ally in the enemy's camp. And now, you fellows," he continued, "you may as well turn back. I'm safe enough now, and there is no need for you to come any further. I hope it won't be long before you see me back again. Meanwhile you'll search for that ditch-head, and if there is anything you can do toward getting the water down, you'll go ahead and do it. That's the plan, eh?" "That's the plan," repeated my partner. "Very well. Then, good-bye, and good luck to you!" CHAPTER XVI THE OLD PUEBLO HEAD-GATE It was about two in the afternoon that we parted with our friend, and wishing him the best of success, we watched him ride away until the shimmering haze drawn by the heat of the sun from the surface of the valley, finally obscured him from our view altogether. Then, turning our ponies, we rode back up the mountain and once more descended to our camp, where we found Pedro waiting for us. As it was then too late to begin any fresh enterprise, especially one so difficult as the attempt to climb the cañon-wall was likely to be, we determined to postpone the expedition until next morning. In order, too, that we might be in good fettle for the adventure, we went to bed that night as soon as it got dark; no more late hours for us; late hours at night not being conducive to clear heads in the morning--and it was more than likely that clear heads might be very essential to the success of the task in hand. About an hour after sunrise we set off on foot down the left bank of the stream, making our way along the steep slope of stone scraps, big and little, which bordered its edge, and after a pretty rough scramble we reached a spot about a mile below camp where Pedro had told us he thought there was a possible way up--a narrow cleft in the rocky wall, none too wide to admit the passage of the Mexican's big body--and following the sturdy hunter, who acted as guide, we began the ascent. There was no great difficulty about it at first, for the crevice, though still very narrow, was not particularly steep. After climbing up about three hundred feet, however, the ascent became much more abrupt, and presently we came to a place where the bed of the dry watercourse was blocked entirely by a smooth, water-worn mass of rock, twenty feet high, filling the whole width of the crevice, and overhanging in such a manner that even a lizard would have had difficulty in climbing up it. We were looking about for some means of surmounting this obstacle, when Pedro, who had stepped back a little to survey it, called our attention to what appeared to be a number of steps, or, rather, foot-holes in the rock about ten feet up, just above the bulge. "Hallo!" cried Dick. "This looks promising. Those holes were made with a purpose. I believe we've struck the original Pueblo highway after all." "It does look like it," I agreed. "But how are we going to get up there?" "Señor," said Pedro to Dick, "if you will stand on my shoulders, I think you can reach those holes." "All right," replied Dick. "Let's try." It was simple enough. Dick easily reached the lower steps, which, it was hardly to be doubted, had been cut for the purpose, and scrambled up to the top. Then, letting down the rope we had brought for such an emergency, he called to me to come up. With a boost from Pedro, and with the rope to hold on by, I was quickly standing beside my partner, when up came Pedro himself, hand over hand. If this was really the road by which the Pueblos originally came up--and from those nicks in the rock we felt pretty sure it was--it was the roughest and by long odds the most upended road we had ever traveled over. It was, in fact, a climb rather than a walk: we had to use our hands nearly all the time. We had come within a hundred feet of the top, when, looking upward, I was startled to see on an overhanging ledge a large, tawny, cat-like animal calmly sitting there looking down at us. "Look there, Dick!" I cried. "What's that?" "A mountain-lion!" exclaimed my partner. "My! What a shot!" It happened, however, that we were at a point where it was necessary to hold on with our hands to prevent ourselves from slipping back; it was impossible to shoot. The "lion" therefore continued to stare at us and we at him, until Dick shouted at him, when the beast leisurely walked off and disappeared round a corner. "Well!" remarked my companion. "I never saw a mountain-lion so calm and unconcerned before. As a rule they are the shyest of animals." "All the animals up here are like that," remarked Pedro. "Many times since I have lived on the mountain I have seen them come down to the edge of the cañon to look at me--deer and even mountain-sheep and wolves; yes, many times wolves. They have no fear of man." "That's queer," said I. "I wonder why not." "Señor," replied Pedro, looking rather surprised at my lack of intelligence, "it is simple: since the days of the Pueblos there has been no man up here." "Why, I suppose there hasn't!" cried Dick. "That didn't occur to me before, either. It will be interesting to see how the wild animals behave, Frank. It will be like Robinson Crusoe on his island." He spoke in Spanish, as we always did when Pedro was in company, not wishing him to feel that he was left out. It was Pedro who replied. "I know not," said he, "the honorable gentleman, Señor Don Crusoe, of whom you speak, but for ourselves we must have care." "Why, Pedro. What do you mean?" "The wolves up here are many, and they will surely smell us out." "Well, suppose they do, Pedro. What then?" asked Dick, jokingly. "You are not afraid of wolves, are you?" This seemed a reasonable question, remembering how boldly he had faced them that time at the head of the Mescalero valley. "Most times I have no fear," replied Pedro, simply, "but up here it is different. These wolves know not what a man is; they will smell us out, and they will think only, 'Here is something to eat;' they do not know enough to be afraid." "I suppose that is likely," Dick assented. "You are quite right, Pedro: we must take care. I don't suppose there will be anything to fear from them during daylight, but we'll keep a sharp lookout, all the same. Come on, let us get forward." In another ten minutes we had reached the top, when, turning up-stream, we presently came to the dry gully which led down to where the old flume once stood. Thence, turning "inland," as one might say, we followed up the bed of this gully, finding that it had its head in a little grassy basin which looked as though it had once been a small lake. In crossing this basin we stirred up from among the bushes a band of blacktail deer, which ran off about fifty yards and then stood still to look at us; these usually shy animals being evidently consumed with curiosity at the sight of three strange beasts walking on their hind legs. Undoubtedly, we were the first human beings they had ever encountered. We did not molest them, but pursuing our course across the little basin, we were about to proceed up a narrow, stony draw at its further end, when a sudden scurry of feet behind us caused us to look back. The band of deer had vanished, and in their stead were four wolves, which, when we turned round, drew up in line and stood staring at us! As Dick had said, the wild animals up here were making themselves decidedly "interesting." Pedro had an arrow fitted to his bow in an instant, while Dick and I simultaneously cocked our rifles and stood ready. The wolves, however, remained stationary; it was evidently curiosity and not hunger that inspired them. Seeing this, I picked up a pebble and threw it at them, just to see what they would think of it. The stone struck the ground close under their noses, making them all start, passed between two of them and went hopping along the ground, when, to our great amusement, the whole row of them turned, ran after the stone, sniffed at it, one after the other, and then came back to the old position. It looked so comical that Dick and I burst out laughing; whereupon the wolves, who had doubtless never heard such a sound before, retreated a few paces, where they once more turned round to stare at us. "Well, Pedro!" cried Dick. "They don't seem to be very dangerous. If all the wolves up here are like that we needn't be afraid of them." "They are not hungry just now," replied Pedro, so significantly that our merriment was checked; "and you see for yourselves," he added, "that a man is a new animal to them. They know not what to make of us. It is that which makes me uneasy. A big pack of hungry wolves would be very dangerous, for the reason that they have never learned that we are dangerous, too. For me, I am afraid of them." Such an admission, coming from such a man, one who, we knew, was not lacking in courage, was impressive; so, in order that he should not regard us as merely a pair of careless, light-headed boys, Dick assured him in all earnestness that we had no intention of treating the matter lightly; that we fully understood and agreed with his view of the matter. "You are quite right, Pedro," said he. "We can't afford to be careless. A pack of wolves is dangerous enough when you know what to expect of them, but when you don't----! It will pay us to be careful, all right; there's no doubt about that. Come on, now. Let us get ahead. Those beasts back there have gone off--to tell the others, perhaps." Proceeding up the stony draw for about half a mile, we presently came upon a most unexpected sight:--a little lake, covering perhaps a space of twenty acres, its surface, smooth as a mirror, reflecting the trees and rocks surrounding it, and dotted all over with hundreds of wild ducks and geese. "Here's the head of the ditch!" cried Dick, exultingly. "Here's where the Pueblos got their water! They drew from this lake down the gully we have just come up. The mouth of the draw has been blocked by the caving of the sides, you see, but it will be an easy job to dig a narrow trench through the dam, and then the pitch is so great that the water will soon scour a channel for itself. Don't you think so, Pedro? The water must have run down here, filled the grassy basin where the deer were, flowed out at its lower end down the gully to the flume, and then by the ditch over the foothills to the valley. Wasn't that the way of it, Pedro?" It was natural that Dick should address his question to the Mexican rather than to me, for Pedro, one of a race that had followed irrigation for centuries, knew far more of its practical possibilities than I did, and his opinion was infinitely more valuable than mine was likely to be. In reply, he nodded his big head and said, gravely: "That is it. It is not possible to doubt. The Pueblos drew their water from the lake at this point. That is very sure. But----" "But what?" asked Dick. "This lake is small, and I see nowhere any stream coming into it," replied Pedro. "That's a fact," Dick assented. "Perhaps it is fed by underground springs. Let us walk round the lake and see where the water runs out and how much of a stream there is. That is what concerns us. Where it comes from doesn't matter particularly--it's how much of it there is." Our walk round the little lake, however, resulted in a disappointment which staggered us for the moment. There was no outlet. The lake was land-locked; the one insignificant rivulet we found running into it being evidently no more than enough to counterbalance the daily evaporation. "Well," remarked Dick, after a long pause, "there is one thing sure: the Pueblos never built a flume and dug that big, long ditch to carry this trifling amount of water. This lake, after all, was not the source of supply, as we were supposing. It was a reservoir, perhaps, but nothing more. The real source was somewhere higher up." If Dick was right--and there could be hardly a doubt that he was--the most promising direction in which to continue our search would be on the west side of the lake, whence the little rivulet came down. An examination of the ravine in which the stream ran showed evidence that it had at one time carried much more water than at present, so, with hopes renewed, we set off at once along its steep, stony bed. The country on that side was very rough and precipitous, and the ravine itself, reasonably wide at first, became narrower and narrower, and its sides more and more lofty, until presently it became so contracted that we might have imagined ourselves to be walking up a very narrow lane with rows of ten-story houses on either side. The sky above us was a mere ribbon of blue. After climbing upward for about half a mile, we began to catch occasional glimpses ahead of us of a frowning cliff which bade fair to bar our further progress altogether, and we were beginning to wonder whether we had not chosen the wrong ravine after all, when suddenly, with one accord, we all stopped short and cocked our ears. There was a sound of running water somewhere close by! There was a bend in the gorge just here, and we could not see ahead, but the instant we detected the sound of water, Dick, with a shout, sprang forward, and with me close on his heels and the short-legged Pedro some distance in the rear, dashed up the bed of the ravine and round the corner. What a wonderful sight met our gaze! Out of the great cliff I mentioned just now there came roaring down a magnificent stream, which, falling into a deep pool it had worn for itself in the rocks, went boiling and foaming off through a second ravine to the right--a fine thing to see! But what was finer, and infinitely more interesting, was the original Pueblo head-gate, so set in the narrow gorge in which we stood that the water, which, if left to itself, would have flowed down our ravine, was forced to run off through the other channel. It was a remarkable piece of work for such a primitive people to have performed, considering especially the very inferior tools they had to do it with. The walls of the gorge came together at this point in such a manner that they were not more than five feet apart and were so straight-up-and-down that they looked as though they had been trimmed by hand--as possibly they had been to some extent. Taking advantage of this narrow gap, the Pueblos had cut a deep groove in the rocks on either side of the ravine, and in these grooves they had set up on end a great flat stone about five feet high and three inches thick--it must have weighed a thousand pounds or more. Against this stone head-gate, on its inner side, the water stood four feet deep, and it was obvious that when the gate was raised the flood would go raging down the gorge we had just ascended into the little lake below, leaving the bed in which it now ran high and dry. Undoubtedly, it was this stone door with which the Pueblos used to regulate their water-supply, prying it up and holding it in position, perhaps, with blocks of wood, which, after the Indians deserted the valley, had in time rotted away, allowing the gate to fall, thus shutting off the water entirely. However that may have been, one thing at any rate was certain:--Whenever our flume and our ditch were ready, here was water enough for thousands of acres only waiting to be let loose. For a long time Dick and I stood with our hands resting on the top of the head-gate and our chins resting on our hands, watching the water as it went foaming and splashing down the other ravine, and as we stood there, there came over us by degrees a sense of the real importance to us of this discovery. We were only boys, after all, and we had gone into this enterprise more or less in the spirit of adventure, but now it gradually dawned upon us that we had in reality arrived at a point where the roads forked:--Here, ready to our hands, was work for a lifetime, and we had to decide whether we were going into it heart and soul or whether we were not. Every boy arrives at this fork in the roads sooner or later, and when he does, he is apt to feel pretty serious. I know we did. With us, however, the question seemed to settle itself, for Dick, presently straightening up and turning to me, said: "Frank! What will your Uncle Tom say? Will he be willing that you should stay out in this country and take to wheat-raising and ditch-building and so forth?" "If I know Uncle Tom," I replied, "he'll be not only willing but delighted. If we make a success of this thing--as we will if hard work will do it--just imagine how proudly he will point to us as proofs of his theory that a fellow may sometimes learn more out of school than in it. In fact, if I'm not much mistaken, he will be eager to help; and if we need money for the work, as we certainly shall, I shan't hesitate to ask him for it. I shall inherit a little when I come of age, and I'm pretty sure Uncle Tom will advance me some if I need it. But how about the professor, Dick? How will he fancy the idea of your settling down in this valley? For if we _do_ go into this thing in earnest, that is what it means." "I know it does," replied my companion, seriously. "And I'm glad of it. I'll let you into a little secret, Frank. For some time past the professor has been worrying himself as to what was to become of me: what business or occupation I was fit for with my peculiar bringing-up--for there is no getting over the fact that it has been peculiar--and the professor, considering himself responsible for it, has been pretty anxious about the result. Now, here is an occupation all laid out for me, and nobody will be so pleased to hear of it as the professor. It will take a burden off his mind; and I'm mighty glad to think it will." "I see," said I. "I should think you would be: such a fine old fellow as he is. So, then, Dick, it is settled, is it, that we go ahead? What's the first move, then?" "Why, the first move of all, I think, is to get back to the lake and eat our lunch, and while we are doing so we can consult as to what work to start upon and how to set about it. What time is it, Pedro?" "Midday and ten minutes," promptly replied the Mexican, casting an eye at the sun; while I, pulling out my watch, saw that he had hit it exactly, as he always did, I found later. "Then let us get back to the lake," said Dick. "Hark! What was that? The water makes so much noise that I can't be sure, but it sounded to me like wolves howling." Pedro nodded his big head. "It will be well to go down to where there are some trees," said he. "This arroyo, with its high walls, is not a good place." As we walked down the ravine and got further away from the water, we could hear more distinctly the cry of the wolves. Pedro stopped short and listened intently. "There is a good many of them," said he. "I think they come hunting us. Let us get up on this rock here and wait a little." In the middle of the ravine lay a great flat-topped stone, about six feet high, and to the top of this we soon scrambled--there was plenty of room--and there for a minute or two we waited. The cry of the hunting wolves grew louder and louder, and presently, around a bend a short distance below, loping along with their noses to the ground, there came a band of sixteen of them. At sight of us they stopped short, and then--showing plainly that they knew of no danger to themselves--with a yell of delight at having run down their prey, as they supposed, they came charging up the ravine! CHAPTER XVII THE BRIDGE As the pack came racing up the gulch, we waited an instant until a narrow place crowded them into a bunch, when Dick called out, "Now!" and we all fired together into the midst of them. Three of the wolves fell, two dead--I could see the feather of Pedro's arrow sticking out of the ribs of one of them--and one with its back broken. I had hoped that the strange thunder of the rifles would send them flying--but no. They all stopped again for a moment, and then, maddened seemingly at the sight of the broken-backed wolf dragging itself about and screeching with pain--poor beast--they all fell upon the unfortunate creature and worried it to death. Then, with yells of rage, on they came again. The pause had given us time to re-load. Dick and Pedro, quicker than I, fired a second shot, and once more two wolves fell writhing among the stones. The next moment we were surrounded, and for a minute or two after that I was too much engaged myself to note what the others were doing. A gaunt, long-legged wolf sprang up on the rock within three feet of me. I fired my rifle into his chest. Another, close beside him, was within an ace of scrambling up when I hit him across the side of his head a fearful crack with the empty rifle-barrel and knocked him off again. Then, seeing a third with his feet on top of the rock, his head thrown back in his straining efforts to get up, I sprang to that side, kicked the beast under his chin and knocked him down. Meanwhile my companions had been similarly engaged and similarly successful. Pedro in particular, having dropped his bow and taken in one hand the short-handled ax he always carried with him, while in the other he held his big sheath-knife, had laid about him to such effect that he had put four of the enemy out of the fight--two of them permanently. Dick was the only one who had received any damage, and that was to his clothes and not to himself. His rifle being empty, he had used it to push back the wolves as they jumped up. In doing so he had stepped too near the edge of the rock, and one of the watchful beasts, springing up at that moment, had caught the leg of his trousers with its teeth, tearing it from end to end and coming dangerously near to pulling my partner down. Pedro, however, quick as a flash, had delivered a back-handed "swipe" with his ax at the wolf's neck, nearly cutting off its head, and Dick was saved. It was an unpleasantly close thing, though. It was a short, sharp tussle, and at the end of it nine of the sixteen wolves lay scattered about the bed of the ravine, dead or helpless. This seemed to take the fight out of the remaining seven--as well it might--who retreated down the arroyo, turning at the corner and looking back at us with their lips drawn up and their teeth showing, seeming to convey a threat, as though they would say, "Your turn this time--but just you wait a bit." Such unexpected fierceness and such determination on the part of the wolves--by daylight, too--scared me rather; Dick also, I noted, looked pretty sober, as, turning to the Mexican, he said: "You were right, Pedro: these wolves _are_ dangerous--a good deal more so than I had supposed. Our chances would have been pretty slim if we hadn't had this rock so handy. If this sort of thing is going to happen at any time, day or night, it will add very much to the difficulty of the work up here. We shall have to be continuously on the lookout; it won't do to separate; and wherever we are at work, we shall have to prepare a place of refuge near at hand. I don't like it. I've seen wolves by the hundred, but I never saw any before so savage and so persistent as these. I tell you, I don't half like it." "And I don't either," said I, glad to find that I was not the only one to feel uneasy. "Did you notice, Dick, how thin they all were? I've often heard the expression, 'gaunt as a wolf,' and now I know what it means. They seemed half-starved." "That is it, senor," remarked Pedro. "The wolves up here are very many--too many for the space they have. Here they are, the cañons all round them, they cannot get away. All the time they are half-starved, all the time they hunt for food, all the time they are dangerous. Often in winter they eat each other. It is well if we move away from here. Pretty soon there will come another pack to eat up these dead ones." "Let us get out, then!" I cried. "I've had enough of them for one day!" The others were quite ready to move, so, jumping down from our fortress we started along the ravine again, this time keeping our ears wide open for suspicious sounds, and feeling a good deal relieved when, on the edge of the lake, we sat down to our lunch with an old low-branching pine tree close by, up which we could go in a jiffy if need be. But though the presence of so many wolves on the "island" was something we had not anticipated, something, moreover, which was likely to add very much to the difficulty of our undertaking, we did not for a moment contemplate its abandonment. It meant the use of great caution in going about the work, but as to backing out, I do not think the idea so much as occurred to either of us. As soon as we had sat down to our lunch, therefore, we began the discussion of the best method of procedure. "It is a big undertaking, Dick," said I, "a very big undertaking; but it looks like a straightforward piece of work; and it seems to me that what has been done once can certainly be done again, especially as we have our line already laid out for us. Don't you think so?" "Yes, I certainly think so," replied my partner. "What those Pueblos accomplished with their poor implements, we can surely do again with our superior tools. And some of it, at least, we can do ourselves, I believe--with our own hands, I mean. When it comes to digging out the ditch on the other side of the cañon, it will pay us to hire Mexicans; but the preliminary work of bringing the water down to the cañon, and, perhaps, the building of the flume, I believe we can do ourselves." "The building of the flume," said I, "is likely to be a pretty big job by itself. We can undoubtedly get the water down that far--that is simple--but the building of the flume is quite another thing. A small flume won't do; it has to be a big, strong, solid structure, and it strikes me that the very first thing to be done--the laying of the two big stringers across the cañon--is going to take us all we know, and a trifle over. In fact, I don't see myself how we are to do it." "I think I do," rejoined my partner; "but we shall need tools for the purpose. We can't build a big, solid flume with one pick, one shovel and two axes." "No, we certainly can't," I replied. "We shall need, too, a large amount of lumber," continued Dick, "heavy pieces, besides boards for floor and sides--two inch planks, at least--three inch would be better. We shall need several thousand feet altogether." "Well?" "Well, there is no lumber to be had nearer than Mosby, and to bring it from Mosby is out of the question. In the first place it would cost too much; and in the second place it is too far to pack it on mule-back." I nodded. "You mean we shall have to cut it out ourselves, here on the spot." "Yes; and to do that we shall need a long, two-handled rip-saw, and a saw-pit to work in. Besides this, the other tools we shall require, as far as I can think of them on the spur of the moment, are two or three pulley-blocks for placing the big timbers, hammers, nails, cross-cut saws and a big auger; for I propose that we pin the heavy parts together with wooden pins: it will save the carriage on spikes, and be just as good, if not better. Don't you think so, Pedro?" Pedro approved of the idea, and we were about to continue the discussion, when there broke out a great yelling and snarling of wolves up the arroyo. Dick and I sprang to our feet, and instinctively cast an eye up into the adjacent tree in search of a convenient limb; but Pedro, unconcernedly continuing his meal, remarked: "It is only that they eat the dead ones." "Well, they're a deal too close to be pleasant," said Dick. "I vote we move on down to the cañon and get a little further away from them." As I was heartily of the same opinion, we moved down accordingly, and there on the brink of the gorge surveyed the scene of our future labors. "Look here," said Dick. "Here's where we shall have to cut our timbers--on this side. See what a splendid supply there is right at hand." He pointed to a scar on the mountain close by where a landslide had brought down scores of trees of all sizes. "When did that come down, Pedro?" he asked. "Only last spring, señor," replied the Mexican. "And the trees are sound and good." "Mighty lucky for us," continued my partner; "for, you see, on the other side trees are scarce and they average rather small. But on this side, there are not only seasoned trees of all sizes in abundance, but it will be a down-hill pull to get them into place--a big item by itself. Besides that, just back here on this little level spot we can dig our saw-pit very conveniently. The only question to my mind is, whether we should not move our camp over to this side. If it were not for the wolves I should certainly say, 'Yes'; but as it is, I feel rather doubtful. The nearest water is up there at the lake, and if we did move over to this side that is where we should have to make our camp." "It's a long way up to the lake, Dick," said I, "and it might be dangerous going to and from our work--especially going back in the evening. In fact, it might easily happen that we couldn't get back at all." "That's what I was thinking of," replied my partner. "On the other hand," I continued, "if we keep our present camp, it will be very inconvenient, and will waste a great deal of time, to come to our work every day by way of those stone steps we climbed this morning." "Yes, that's it. But there's yet another way which, I think, would get us over both difficulties; one which would combine all the advantages and at the same time do away with the danger--or, to say the least, the inconvenience--of being harried by the wolves, and that is to build a bridge here. Then, if we move our camp to that little 'park' just below here, where we found that spring yesterday, it would only take us five minutes in the morning to come up here, cross the bridge and go to work. How does that strike you? What do you think, Pedro?" "It is good," replied Pedro. "First thing of everything a bridge; and that is easy. We make it to-day before the sun set." "We do, do we?" cried Dick, laughing. "That will be pretty expeditious; but if you think you know how, Pedro, go ahead and we'll follow." Pedro's eye twinkled. "The señor means it?" he asked. "Certainly," replied Dick. "_Bueno_," said Pedro, briefly. There was a little pine tree growing just on the brink of the chasm, and without another word the Mexican drew his ax from his belt, stepped up to the tree and cut it off about four feet from the ground, allowing the top to fall from the precipice into the stream below. "What's that for, Pedro?" I asked, in surprise. Pedro grinned. "I show you pretty quick," said he. "Come, now. We go back to the other side." Though we could not fathom his plan, having voluntarily made him captain for the time being we could not do less than obey orders; so away we went at a brisk walk back to the crack in the wall, down the steps in the rock, along the bank of the creek to camp--where we picked up our own ax--then up the ledge to the point opposite the one we had just left--a two-mile walk to accomplish thirty feet. Here, the first thing Pedro did was to take his lariat, a beautifully-made rawhide rope strong enough to hold a thousand-pound steer, tie a stone to one end and throw the stone across the cañon. I could not think what he was doing it for, until I saw that he was measuring the width. We made it about twenty-seven feet, its remarkable narrowness being accounted for by the great overhang of the cliff on our side. [Illustration: "I COULD NOT THINK WHAT HE WAS DOING IT FOR."] "Now," said Pedro, "we go up the mountain here a little way and cut some poles. It is just close by up here." We soon found the place, and there we cut off three poles about thirty feet long and eight inches thick at the small end. These we trimmed down to about the same thickness at the butt, and having roughly squared them, we dragged them down to the edge of the gorge. So far it had been a simple proceeding, but what puzzled me was how Pedro proposed to lay these sticks across the cañon. This, too, as it turned out, proved to be a simple matter, but its first step was one to make your hair stand on end to look at, nevertheless. It was now we found out why Pedro had cut off the little tree on the other side. Taking his lariat, he swung the loop above his head a time or two and cast it across the gorge. The loop settled over the tree-stump, when the Mexican pulled it tight and then proceeded with great care to tie the other end of the rope to a tree which stood very convenient on our side. What was he up to? Dick and I stood watching him in silence, when he stepped to the edge of the cliff, took hold of the rope with both hands, and swung himself off into space! My! It gave me cold shivers all down my back to see him hanging there with nothing but that thread of a rope to prevent his falling on the rocks a thousand feet below! Motionless and breathless, Dick and I watched him as he went swinging across, hand over hand--the rope sagging in the middle in an alarming manner--and profound was our relief when he drew himself up and stepped safely upon the opposite wall. But though this tight-rope performance had given us palpitation of the heart, Pedro himself appeared to be absolutely unaffected. With perfect calmness and unconcern, he turned round and said in the most matter-of-fact tone: "Now undo the rope and tie it to the end of one of those poles." As Pedro evidently regarded his feat of gymnastics as nothing out of the common, we affected to look upon it in the same light, so, following his directions, we tied the rope to one of the poles, when the Mexican began pulling it toward him, we pushing at the other end. Presently the pole was so far over the edge that it began to teeter, when Pedro called to us to go slowly. Then, while we pried it forward inch by inch, Pedro retreated backward up the gully until the end of the pole bumped against the wall on his side, when he came forward, keeping the rope taut all the time, lifted the pole and set its end on the rocks. The first beam of our bridge was laid. The other two poles we sent across by the same process, and then, scraping a bed for them in the sand and gravel, we laid them side by side, two with their butt-ends on our side, the other--the middle one--reversed. Pedro then took from his pocket a long strip of deer-hide with which he bound the three poles together, when we, at his request, having once more tied the rope to the tree, he laid his hand upon it, using it as a hand-rail, and walked across to our side, where with a second buckskin thong he bound the poles together at that end. Next he walked back to the middle of the bridge, and holding the rope with both hands, jumped up and down upon the poles, to make sure of their solidity, and finding them all right, he went to the far end, loosened the loop from the tree-stump, threw it across to us, and then, without any hand-rail this time, walked back across the flimsy-looking bridge to our side! What a head the man must have had! The bridge at its widest did not measure thirty inches, and yet the Mexican--barefooted, to be sure--walked erect across that fearful chasm without a thought of turning dizzy. I suppose he was born without nerves, and had never cultivated any, as we more civilized people do by our habits of life. For years he had lived out-of-doors, always at exercise, used to climbing in all sorts of dangerous places, and what perhaps may have counted for as much as anything else, he was one of the few Mexicans I have known who abjured that habit so common among his people--the habit of smoking cigarettes. I know very well that I, though I did not smoke cigarettes either, and though I thought myself pretty clear-headed, would never have dared such a thing, unless under pressure of great and imminent danger. "What did you untie the rope for, Pedro?" I asked. "Why not leave it for a hand-rail?" "Because the wolves will eat it," replied Pedro. "We will bring one of your hempen ropes and tie there: the wolves will not trouble that." "By the way, Pedro!" cried Dick. "How about those wolves? Won't they come across the bridge?" "I think not," the Mexican answered. "They are wary and suspicious--it is the nature of a wolf--and I think they will fear to venture." At that moment the sun set behind the peak, and as though its setting had been a signal, there arose in three or four different directions the howls of wolves. They were coming out for their nightly hunt. "Señores," said Pedro, "we will see very soon if the wolves will cross the bridge. It will not be long before they find our trail and then they will come down here. Let us hide us and watch. Up here, behind these rocks, is a good place." A little way up the bank, only a few steps back from the edge of the gorge, we lay down and waited. Presently, from the direction of the lake, there suddenly arose a joyous chorus of yelps, which proclaimed that our trail had been discovered. And not to us only was the "find" proclaimed. A second pack, hearing the call, hastened to join the hunt, hoping for a share in the spoil; we caught a glimpse of them as they came racing down one of the slopes which bordered the gully. The swelling clamor drew nearer and nearer, and pretty soon, with a rush of pattering feet, the wolves appeared; there must have been thirty of them. Down to the edge of the cañon they came, and there they drew up. One of them, a big, gray old fellow, the leader of one of the packs, probably, advanced to the end of the bridge, sniffed at it and drew hastily back. One after another, other wolves came forward, sniffed and withdrew. It was evident that Pedro had guessed right: they dared not cross. At this balking of their hopes they set up a howl of disappointment. Poor things! I felt quite sorry for them. They were _so_ hungry; and yet they dared not cross. Nevertheless, though I might feel sorry for them, I was more than glad that they feared to venture, for against such a pack as that our chances would have been small indeed. "Señores," whispered Pedro, "I try them yet a little more. It is quite safe. Stay you here and watch." With that, taking his ax in his hand, he rose up in full view of the pack and walked down to the end of the bridge. Such an uproar as broke forth I never heard. Many of the wolves ran up the banks on either side of the gully in order to get a sight of Pedro, and every one of them, those in front, those behind and those on the sides, lifted their heads and yelled at the man calmly standing there, scarce ten steps away. But they dared not cross. One of them, indeed, crowded forward against his will by those behind, was pushed out on to the bridge a little way, when, striving to get back, his hind feet slipped off. I thought he was gone, but by desperate scratching he succeeded in saving himself, when, rendered crazy by fright and rage he attacked the nearest wolves, fought his way through to the rear and fled straight away up the gully. This seemed to settle the matter. The whole pack, as though struck with panic, turned and pursued him. In ten seconds not one of them was to be seen. As Dick and I rose up from our hiding-place, Pedro came back to us. "You see," said he, "we are quite safe." "Yes," replied Dick. "It is evident we have nothing to fear from them on this side--and I'm mighty glad of it. Well, let us get down to camp. I think we've done a pretty good day's work, taking it all round, and I shall be glad of a good supper and a good rest." "So shall I," was my response. "And as to our day's work, Dick, I'm much mistaken if it isn't by long odds the most important one to us that either you or I ever put in." CHAPTER XVIII THE BIG FLUME As the first step in restoring the old Pueblo irrigation system, we moved camp next morning as arranged. Packing our scanty belongings upon old Fritz, we rode up the ledge, past the site of the proposed flume, and down the mountain a short distance to a point between two of the big claw-like spurs, where, two days before, in riding down to speak to Galvez, we had come across a little spring which would furnish water enough for ourselves and our animals. Thence, walking back to the bridge, taking with us, besides our rifles, the two axes and one of our long picket-ropes, Pedro first tied the latter to the tree on our side, and then, taking the other end in his hand, he walked across and fastened it to the stump on the far side. It was now our turn to cross, and very little did either of us relish the idea. Dick, who had volunteered to go first, took hold of the rope, set one foot on the bridge, and then--he could not resist it--did just what he ought not to have done:--looked down. The inevitable consequence was that he took his foot off again and retreated a few steps. "My word, Frank!" said he. "You may laugh if you like, but I'll be shot if I'm going to walk across that place. Crawling's good enough for me." So saying, he again approached the bridge, and going down on his hands and knees, crawled carefully over. For myself, I found it equally impossible to screw up my courage far enough to attempt the passage on foot. In fact, even crawling seemed too risky, so I just sat myself astride of the three poles and "humped" myself along with my hands to the other side, where the grinning Pedro gave me a hand to help me to my feet again. It was ignominious, perhaps, to be thus outdone by an ignorant, semi-savage Mexican; but, as Dick said, "You may laugh if you like": I was not going to break my neck just to prove that I was not afraid--when I was. At that hour in the morning the wolves, I suppose, were all asleep. At any rate we heard nothing of them. But knowing very well that they might turn up again at any moment, we wasted no time in starting our first piece of work, namely, preparing a place of refuge against them. Choosing a spot on the level near the point where we expected to dig our saw-pit, we cut a number of good, heavy logs, with which, after carefully notching and fitting them, we erected a pen, seven feet high and about ten feet square inside. It was the plainest kind of a structure: merely four walls, without even a doorway; but as it was not chinked it would be a simple matter for us to clamber up and get inside; whereas, for a wolf to do the same--with safety--would be far from simple with us waiting in there to crack him on the head with an ax as soon as he showed it above the top log. It may be that we were unnecessarily cautious in providing this refuge. If the wolves should molest us--a contingency pretty sure to occur some time or other--it was probable that we should hear them coming in time to retreat by the bridge, which was not more than a hundred yards distant. But on the other hand, if they should not give us timely notice of their approach, it might be very awkward, not to say dangerous--for Dick and me, at least. "For Pedro it might be all right," was my partner's comment, "but for us--no, thank you. I have no desire to be hustled across that bridge in a hurry. Just imagine how it would paralyze you to try to crawl across those poles, knowing that there was a wolf standing at the far end trying to make up his mind to follow you. No, thank you; not for me. We'll have a refuge here on 'dry land.'" It was a long day's work, the building of this pen, for we were careful to make it strong and solid; indeed, we had not yet quite finished it, when, about four in the afternoon, we heard the first faint whimperings of the wolves, a long way off somewhere. So, fearing they might come down upon us before we were quite ready for them, we postponed the completion of the job until the morrow, and re-crossing the bridge in the same order and the same manner as before, we went back to camp, where we spent the remaining hours of daylight in making things comfortable for a lengthened stay. To this end we built a little three-sided shelter of logs about four feet high, the side to the east, facing down the mountain, being left open. This we roofed with a wagon-sheet we had brought with us in place of a tent, dug a trench all round it to drain off the rain-water, covered the floor with a thick mat of pine-boughs, and there we were, prepared for a residence of six months or more, if necessary. "Now, Frank," said my partner, as we sat by the fire that evening, "we have about got to a point where we have to have tools. One of us has got to go to Mosby to get them, while the other stays here with Pedro. The question is, which shall go. Take your choice. I'll stay or go, just as you like." "Then I think you had better go, Dick," I replied. "You know better than I do what tools we shall need; you are far more handy at packing a mule than I am; and besides all that, it will give you an opportunity to see the professor." "Thanks, old chap," said Dick, heartily. "That is a consideration. Yes, I shall be glad to go, if you don't mind staying here with Pedro." "Not a bit," I replied. "He's an interesting companion; and if one needed a protector it would be hard to find a better one. No; I'll stay. I don't at all mind it." "Very well," said Dick. "Then I think I'll dig out the first thing in the morning. It will take me, I expect, about six days: two days each way and perhaps two days in Mosby. It depends on whether I can get the tools there that I want." "I should think you could," said I, "unless it is the big rip-saw." "I don't think there'll be any trouble about that," replied my partner. "Before the saw-mill came in, two or three of the mines used to cut their own big timbers by hand, and I've no doubt the old saws are lying around somewhere still. If they are, I'm pretty sure I can get one for next-to-nothing, for, of course, they are never used now." "There's one thing, Dick," said I, after a thoughtful pause, "which makes me feel a little doubtful about your going alone, and that is lest Galvez should interfere with you. If he caught sight of you, either going or returning, he might make trouble." "He might," replied Dick. "Though I don't much think he is likely to trouble you or me. Anyhow, when I leave to-morrow, you can take the glass and just keep watch on the village for an hour or so to see that he doesn't make any attempt to cut me off. If he should, you can raise a big smoke here to warn me and ride down to help." "All right. I will. But how about when you come back?" "Why, I'll arrange to leave The Foolscap, as we did before, at four o'clock in the morning, which would bring me about half way across the valley by sunrise. On the sixth morning, and every morning after till I turn up, you can take the field-glass and look out for me. From this elevation you would be able to see me long before Galvez could, and then you might ride down to meet me." "That's a good idea. Yes; I'll do that." Our camp was so placed that we could not only see the whole stretch of the valley between us and The Foolscap, but also the village and the country beyond it for many miles, and for about two hours after Dick's departure I sat there with the glass in my hand watching his retreating figure, and more especially watching the village. For, though in reality I had little fear that Galvez would attempt to play any tricks on him, particularly after Dick's exhibition of rifle-shooting, I was not going to take any avoidable chances. At the end of that time, however, I rose up, put away the glass, and in company with Pedro went over to the other side of the cañon, where we first finished up the building of the pen, and then, picking out a big, straight tree suitable for a stringer, I went to work upon it, trimming off the branches, while Pedro with the shovel began the task of digging out the saw-pit. That evening, and each succeeding evening, just before the sun set, we stopped work and retreated across the bridge in order to avoid any trouble with the wolves, which, as a rule, did not come out in force until about that hour. Once only during the time that Pedro and I were at work there by ourselves did any of them venture on an attack. It was a pack of about a dozen which came down on us one evening just before quitting-time, but as we heard them coming, we retired into the pen, whence I shot one of them before they had found out where we were; whereupon the rest bolted. I think the survivors of the fight in Wolf Arroyo--as we had named the ravine where we had had our battle--must have imparted to all the others the intelligence that we were dangerous creatures to deal with, for the wolves in general were certainly much less venturesome than they had been that first day. At night, though, they came out in droves, and continuous were the howlings, especially when the wind was south and they could smell us and our animals only a hundred yards away on the other side of the cañon. At sunrise on the sixth day, and again on the seventh, I searched the valley with the glass to see if Dick was within sight, but it was not until the morning of the eighth day that I saw him and old Fritz coming along, not more than five miles away. He must have made a very early start. Jumping on my pony, I rode to meet him, while Pedro remained behind to watch the village. I was very glad to see my partner safely back again, and especially pleased to hear the news he brought. The professor, he told me, was delighted with the turn of events which bade fair to provide Dick with a settled occupation, and one so well suited to his tastes and training; while as to Uncle Tom, Dick had written to him an account of the present condition of the King Philip mine, and had given him a full description of the undertaking upon which we proposed to enter. In reply, my genial guardian had sent to me a characteristic telegram, delivered the very morning Dick left Mosby. It read thus: "Go ahead. Money when wanted. How about book-learning now?" "How's that, Dick?" said I, handing it over to my companion to read. Dick laughed. "You made a pretty good guess, didn't you?" he replied. It was a matter of intense satisfaction to both of us to find our guardians so heartily in favor of the prosecution of our design, and it was with high spirits and a firm determination to "do or die" that we carried over the bridge the assortment of tools with which old Fritz was laden, and that very afternoon went systematically to work. It was not until we really went about it in earnest that we fully realized the magnitude of the task we had set ourselves when we undertook to build that flume. We were determined that if we did it at all we would do it thoroughly well, and in consequence the timbers we selected for the stringers were of such size and weight that we should have been beaten at the word "go" if we had not had for an assistant a man like Pedro, who combined in his own person the strength of five ordinary men. It was a pleasure to see him when he put forth all his powers. Give him a lever, and let him take his own time, and the most obstinate log was made to travel sulkily down hill when Pedro took it in hand. After measuring with particular accuracy the space between the sockets on either side of the gorge, we sawed off one big timber to the right length, and getting it into position over the saw-pit we squared its two ends and then sawed it flat on one side, leaving the other sides untouched. I had always understood that working in a saw-pit was a disagreeable job, but not till I had practical experience of it did I discover how correct my understanding had been. I discovered also why the expression, "top sawyer," was meant to indicate an enviable position. It fell to Pedro to be top sawyer, for the harder part of the work is the continuous lifting of the saw; but for all that, the man below has the worst of it, for if he looks up he gets a stream of sawdust into his eyes, and if he looks down he gets it in the back of his neck. There is no escape, as Dick and I found--for we took it in turns to go below and pull at the saw-handle. However, we were not going to shirk the task just because it happened to be unpleasant, and being fairly in for it, we made the best of it. Our first big timber being at length prepared, we got it down to the edge of the cañon, and then were ready for the next move--the most important move of all--getting it across the gorge. This could not be done by main strength, as had been the case with our bridge-timbers, for this stick, twenty-nine feet long and sixteen inches square, though pretty well seasoned, was an immense weight. But what could not be done by force might be accomplished by contrivance. The most bulky part of old Fritz's load had been composed of ropes and pulley-blocks, and it was with these that we intended to coax our big stick across the gap. Going over to the other side, we set up a framework of stout poles--a derrick, we called it--to the top of which we attached a big pulley. Threading a strong rope through this pulley, we carried it back and fastened it to a windlass which Dick built; he having seen dozens of them at work among the mines, having observed, fortunately, how they were made, and being himself a very handy fellow with tools. The windlass was securely anchored to two trees, when, the other end of the rope having been carried over and tied to our big log, we were ready to try the experiment of placing it athwart the chasm. With this object, Dick and Pedro turned the windlass, while I, crossing the bridge once more, pried the log forward from behind. It was a slow and laborious operation, but inch by inch the great log went grating and grinding forward, until at length its end overlapped the further edge of the gorge. Soon, with a sullen thump, my end fell into its socket, when Dick lowered his end into the socket opposite, and our first big stringer was successfully laid. It was a good start and greatly heartened us up to tackle the rest of the work. Our second big stringer we prepared and laid in the same manner--flat side up--and then came the most ticklish job of all--the placing of the two supports beneath each stringer. Without Pedro, with his steady nerves and his cat-like agility, we could not have done it. Tying a rope to the stringer, Pedro descended the face of the cliff and set the butt-end of the supporting beam in its socket--the other end being temporarily tied in place--repeating the same process on the other side. These beams we had measured and prepared with great care, so that when their bases were set, the beveled smaller ends, by persistent pounding, could be tightly jammed into the notch previously cut for their reception in the under side of the big stringer. It was a good piece of work, and very thankful I was when it was safely accomplished; for though to one with a clear head it might not be very dangerous, it looked so, and I was, as I say, greatly relieved when it was done. It might seem that we made these stringers unnecessarily strong, and perhaps we did. But we intended to be on the safe side if we could. Our flume was designed to be eight feet wide and five feet deep, and though the pitch was considerable and the water in consequence would run fast, if it should by chance ever fill to the top there would be by our calculation thirty-three or thirty-four tons of water in it. Having now our foundation laid, the rest of the work was plain, straightforward building, in which there was no special mechanical difficulty. One part of our task, however--the sawing of the lumber--we soon found to be so slow that we decided, if we could get them, to procure the assistance of two or three Mexicans from Hermanos, and with that object in view we sought an interview with our friend, José Santanna. To do this we supposed we should have to go down to Hermanos, but on consulting Pedro, we found that there was another and a much easier way. I had often wondered if Pedro, during all the years he had lived on the mountain, had subsisted exclusively on meat, or whether he had some means of obtaining other supplies, and now I found out. I found that he had a regular system of exchange with the villagers, by which he traded deer-meat and bear-meat for other provisions, and that by an arranged code of signals, familiar to everybody in the village, with the single exception of Galvez himself, he was accustomed to let it be known when he desired to communicate with the inhabitants. Accordingly, Pedro that day at noon went down to a certain spot on one of the spurs, and there built a fire, and piling on it a number of green boughs he soon had a column of smoke rising skyward. This was the signal, and that same evening he and we two boys, going down to the same spot, sat down there and waited, until about an hour after dark, we heard the sound of a horse's hoofs, and presently a man rode into sight. It proved to be Santanna himself, much to our satisfaction. He, as soon as he learned what we wanted, engaged to send us up three stout young Mexicans, an engagement he duly fulfilled--to the rage and bewilderment of Galvez, as we afterward heard, who could not for the life of him make out what had become of them. With this accession of strength we needed a second saw, and Dick went off to Mosby to get one. In a few days he returned with two saws instead of one, and with a load of dried apples, sugar and coffee with which to feed our hungry Mexicans. Flour--of a kind--we could get from the village, and deer-meat, though poor and tough at that season of the year, we could always procure. Dick also brought back with him that commodity so necessary in all business undertakings--some money. The professor had insisted on advancing him some, while Uncle Tom had enclosed fifty dollars in a registered letter to me. Thus armed, we procured two more Mexicans, and setting Pedro and his five compatriots to work with the three saws, while Dick and I did the carpenter work, we very soon began to make a showing. As it was obviously too dangerous to attempt to work on the bare stringers, we first laid a solid temporary floor of three-inch planks, and having then a good platform we could proceed in safety to set our big cross-pieces--upon which the permanent floor was afterward laid--and to go ahead with the rest of the building. There being no stint of timber, we could afford to make our flume immensely strong--and we did. The framework was composed mostly of ten-by-ten pieces, while the planks for the floor and sides were three inches thick. The wings at each end of the flume were extended up stream and down stream eight feet in either direction; and to prevent the water from getting around these ends we built rough stone walls on the edge of the gorge and filled in the spaces with well-tamped clay, of which we were fortunate enough to find a great supply close at hand. I do not intend to go into all the many details of the work, or to relate our mistakes or the accidents--all of them slight, fortunately--which now and then befell us. There was one little item of construction, however, which seemed to me so ingenious and withal so simple and so effective that I think it is worth special mention. When we came to lay our floor and build the sides, the question of leakage cropped up, when Dick suggested a plan which he said he had heard of as being adopted by sheepmen on the plains in building dipping-troughs. Each three-inch plank, before being spiked in place, was set up on edge, and along the middle of its whole length we hammered a dent about half an inch wide and half an inch deep. Then, taking the jack-plane, we planed off the projecting edges to the same level. The consequence was that when the plank became water-soaked, this dented line swelled up and completely closed any crack between itself and the plank above or beside it. It was an ingenious trick, and proved so successful that it was well worth the time and trouble it took. In fact, by the expenditure of time and trouble, in addition to a very modest sum of money, we did at length put together a flume which, I think I may say, was a very creditable piece of work. It was strenuous and unceasing labor, and at first it was pretty hard on me, but as my muscles became used to the strain I enjoyed it more and more, especially as every evening showed a forward step--a small one, perhaps, but still a forward step--toward the accomplishment of our object. Week after week we kept at it, steadily and perseveringly pegging away, and at last, one day near the end of July, summoning our six Mexicans to witness the ceremony, Dick and I, in alternate "licks" drove the last spike, and the flume was finished! CHAPTER XIX PEDRO'S BOLD STROKE All this time the wolves had let us alone. Frequently, toward evening, we would detect them standing on the hillsides watching us, but they were afraid to come near: the hammering and sawing, the stir and bustle checked them and they kept aloof--by daylight. Every night, though, they came down to the edge of the cañon to howl at us, and as the flume neared completion there was danger that they might summon courage to cross by it--the old bridge we had long ago tumbled into the stream. To prevent this, we at first set up every night a temporary gate across it, but later, we adopted a safer and better plan. We set two doors in our flume, one in the down-stream end, the other in the side, about the middle, so that by closing the former and opening the latter, all the water could be made to fall into the stream below. Our supply could thus be regulated at the flume instead of going all the way up to the old head-gate for the purpose. These gates being set, Pedro and another Mexican went up and opened connection between the lake and the low place where we had stirred up the deer the first day we were up there, and very soon there was a second little lake formed. Then, the flume being ready, we two and Pedro went up and raised the stone head-gate three inches. The rush with which the water came out was astonishing, and before the day was over it had come on down to the flume and was pouring through the side gate into the gorge--making a perfect defence against the wolves. During the two months, or thereabouts, that we had been engaged in this work, Dick had made altogether three trips to Mosby, on which occasions he had written to Arthur, detailing our progress. Arthur, on his part, had written to us--or, rather, somewhat to our surprise, he had written to the professor instead of directly to Dick--once from Santa Fé and once from the City of Mexico, whither he had been sent to institute a search of the records there. His last letter stated that up to that time no trace of the old patent had been found, but that, in spite of that drawback, his father was vigorously stirring things up at his end of the line, and that we might expect to see "something doing" in the enemy's camp at any time. He stated also that he had hopes of rejoining us some time early in July. In consequence, we had been constantly on the watch for him for nearly a month, but here was the end of July approaching and no Arthur had appeared. As we were very anxious to know when to expect him, and as we were also in need of new supplies, the moment the flume was finished Dick set off once more for Mosby, while Pedro and I, transferring all our tools from the far side of the gorge, picked out a new working-ground on our side. There was nothing further to be done on the "island," but though the flume was finished and ready for use, we still had need of a large amount of lumber in the construction of our ditch, for at the head of every draw it would be necessary to build a short flume, or, in some places, a culvert, to allow a passage for the rain-water which otherwise during the summer thunder-storm season would wash our ditch full of earth and rubbish. As it would be too inconvenient, unfortunately, to cut lumber in the old place and carry it across the flume, we moved all the tools, as I said, over to our side, and following along the line of the ditch for about half a mile, we selected a spot above it on the mountain and there set our Mexicans to work felling trees and digging new saw-pits. From the place selected we could see out over the plain in all directions; a fact which had been one of our reasons for choosing that particular spot. Indeed it had become a matter of great importance that we should be able to keep a watch on the valley, for we believed we had more than ever reason to fear some act of hostility on the part of the padron. Dick had no more than gone that day, when we were surprised by receiving a daylight visit from our friend, José Santanna, who informed us that Galvez of late had been showing unwonted signs of unrest; that he was growing more and more suspicious, irritable and evil-tempered. That the evening before a man had ridden into the village and had handed Galvez a paper--some legal notice, I guessed--upon receipt of which the padron had at first broken into a towering rage; had then gone about for half a day in a mood so morose and snappish that no one dared go near him; and that finally he had ordered his horse and ridden away, saying that he was going to Taos. "To Taos!" I exclaimed. "What has he gone to Taos for?" José shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands, palms upward, as much as to say, "Who knows?" "Have we scared him out after all, I wonder," said I. "Did he say anything about coming back, José?" "He said he would return in four days," replied the Mexican. "And is that all you know about it?" "_Si, señor_, that is all. I know no more." From this conversation it was plain to me that the law was beginning to work, and that Galvez was becoming uneasy. Knowing his character, I, too, became uneasy, for, should he be rendered desperate, there was no telling what tactics he might resort to. It was this consideration that made me so anxious for the safe return of my two partners. From my vantage-point on the mountain I kept up a pretty constant watch for the next few days; no one could come across the valley from any direction without my seeing them--during daylight, that is--and unless Galvez had slipped into Hermanos after dark I was sure he had not returned, when, about three o'clock on the afternoon of the fourth day I espied Dick, a long way off, coming back from Mosby. It was twelve hours earlier than I had expected him, and wondering if he had any special reason for making such a quick trip, I got my pony and hurried off to meet him. I had a feeling that Dick was bringing news of some sort, and his first words after shaking hands proved the correctness of my impression. "Well, old chap!" he exclaimed. "I've got news for you this time that will make you 'sit up and take notice':--Arthur may be here any day; and he has at last got track of that patent." "Got a letter from him, then, did you?" I asked. "Yes; written from Cadiz, in Spain, more than three weeks ago." "From Cadiz!" I cried. "What's he doing there?" "His father sent him over to go through a chest of old papers they have in their house there. Arthur says--I'll give you his letter to read as soon as we get to camp--he says that he spent a fortnight reading all sorts of musty documents, without success, when at last he came upon an old note-book with the name of Arthur the First on its fly-leaf, and in that he found a single line referring to the patent--the only mention that has turned up anywhere." "And what does that say?" "It says---- Here, wait a minute; hold my rifle. I'll show you what it says." So saying, Dick took the letter out of his pocket, and finding the right place, handed it to me. The passage read: "It was an old memorandum-book in which my very great-grandfather used to note down all the particulars of the copper shipments and other matters dealing with the K. P. mine; but on the last fly-leaf was this entry, written in English: 'Mem. In case of accident to myself: The King's patent and the King's commission are in a hole in the wall above the door of the strong-room.' Where the strong-room may have been," Arthur went on, "I don't know, unless it is in the _Casa_. Ask Pedro." "What do you think of that?" asked Dick. "I think---- Well, I think we'll do as Arthur says: ask Pedro." In the course of an hour we had reached camp, when Dick, as soon as he had greeted the faithful Mexican, at once propounded the important question. "Pedro," said he, without any preface, "did you ever hear of the 'strong-room'?" "Surely," replied Pedro, with an air of surprise at being asked such a question. "Everybody knows the strong-room. It is a little room on the east side of the _Casa_; it has a door and no window; it is where one time the copper was stored, waiting for the pack-trains to come and take it away." "It is, is it!" cried Dick. "Then, Frank, I shouldn't be a bit surprised if those deeds were in there now. How are we to find out?" "Go and look!" I exclaimed, springing to my feet. "Now's our chance! Galvez is away--gone to Taos. Let us make a try for it at once. He's due to be back to-day, and then it will be too late. Come on! Let's get out! We haven't a minute to lose! Will you come with us, Pedro?" To my surprise, and, I must confess, to my disappointment also, Pedro shook his head. I supposed he was afraid to leave his mountain, and for a moment my opinion of his courage suffered a relapse. But I was doing him an injustice, as I heartily owned to myself, when, pointing out over the valley, he said, quietly: "It is too late already, señor. Look there!" Half a mile the other side of Hermanos, riding toward the village, were three horsemen, one of whom we recognized as Galvez. Who the others might be, and why the padron should be bringing them to Hermanos, we could not guess. We were destined, however, to learn all about them later in the day. As a matter of course, the sole subject of our thoughts and our conversation was the King's patent, and whether or not it was still in its hiding-place above the door of the strong-room. The only way to find out was to get in there and search for it, but how to do that was the question. Many plans did we discuss and discard, and we were still discussing as we sat round the fire that night--our Mexican workmen being encamped some distance away--when Pedro suddenly jumped up, and signaling to us to keep quiet, stood for a moment with his head bent forward, listening intently. His sharp ears had detected some sound inaudible to our less practised hearing. Making a quick backward motion with his hand, he whispered sharply: "Get away! Get away back from the light of the fire while I go see!" We speedily retreated up the hill a little way and hid ourselves among the trees, while Pedro, with the stealth of a wild animal, slipped silently off into the darkness. So quick and so noiseless were the movements of the clumsy-looking Mexican that I thought to myself I had rather be hunted by wolves than by that skilful woodsman, with his keen senses, his giant strength and his deadly, silent bow and arrow. I did not wonder any more that Galvez kept himself aloof. For two or three minutes silence prevailed, when we saw Pedro step back into the circle of light, and with him another man. It was our friend, José Santanna, again. "Well, José!" cried Dick. "What can we do for you?" "Señor," replied the Mexican, "I came up to tell you something--to warn you. The padron is come back. He has been to Taos and he has brought back with him two men. They are bad--like himself. I go up to the _Casa_ this evening while they are at supper and I hear them talking and laughing together through the door which is open. They say they like now to see three boys and a stupid peon"--he nodded toward Pedro--"get them out. They say if they catch Pedro they hang him, and if they catch 'that young Blake' they shoot him. They are dangerous, señor." "We shall have to keep our eyes wide open," said Dick. "Do you think they'll venture up here, José?" "I think not," replied the Mexican. "One of the men say, 'Let us go up on the mountain and catch them,' but the padron, he say very quick, 'No, no. I do not go up on the mountain. While they are there they do no harm, but if they come down here, then----!'" "I see," said Dick. "They mean to hold the fort against all comers. It is pretty evident, I think, that Galvez has been back to his old haunts, hunted out a couple of his old-time cronies, and brought them back to garrison the _Casa_, meaning to defy the law to get him out." "That's it, I expect," said I. "And our chances of getting into the strong-room are a good deal slimmer than ever." It certainly did look so; yet, as it happened, I never made a greater mistake. Who would have guessed how soon we were to get that chance? And who would have guessed that the man who was to provide the opportunity--and that by a plan so bold that I am astonished at it yet--was the man whom I had that day mentally accused of cowardice? How I did apologize to him in my thoughts! "José," said Pedro, "does the padron still go to bed every night at ten o'clock, as he used to do?" "_Si_," replied the cowman. "Does he always come out to the well to get a drink of cold water just before he goes to bed, as he used to do?" "_Si_," replied the cowman once more. "Those two men, are they to sleep in that room next the padron's?" "_Si_," replied the cowman for the third time. "Good!" exclaimed Pedro. "What time is it, señor?" turning suddenly to Dick. "Half past eight," replied my partner, looking at his watch. "Good!" exclaimed Pedro once more. For a minute he sat silent, his lower lip stuck out, frowning at the fire, while we sat watching him, wondering what he was thinking about, when, with an angry grunt he muttered to himself, "Stupid peon, eh! Humph! We'll see!" Then, jumping up, he said briskly: "Señores, get your horses. We will search the strong-room to-night." Still wondering what scheme he had in his head, we saddled up and followed him as he rode down the mountain and out upon the plain, too much engaged for the moment in picking our way to find an opportunity to ask questions. It seemed to me that our guide must have something of the wild animal in him, for, though it was very dark, he never hesitated for a moment, but went jogging along, threading his way through the sage-brush without a pause or a stumble. Either he or his burro must have had the cat-like gift of being able to see in the dark. In about an hour we saw dimly the walls of the _Casa_ looming up near us, and passing by it, we went on down to the creek where we dismounted and tied up our horses to the trees. Then, following down the creek for a short distance, we presently came opposite the front gate of the _Casa_, about a hundred yards distant. The village on the other side of the stream was dark and silent, but in one of the rooms in the _Casa_, facing the gateway, we could see a light burning. "That is the padron's room," whispered José. "He has not gone to bed yet." Against the light of the open door we could see between us and the house the long, black arm of the well-sweep, and advancing toward it, we had come within about thirty steps of it when Pedro requested us to stop there and lie down, while he himself went on and crouched behind the curbing of the well. We could not see him; in fact we could see nothing but the lights in the window and doorway, the well-sweep, and, very dimly, the outline of the building. There we lay in dead silence for a quarter of an hour, wondering what Pedro expected to do, when we heard voices, and the next moment the figures of two men showed themselves in the lighted doorway. One of them carried a candle, and the pair of them went into the next room--all the rooms opened into the courtyard--and shut the door. For five minutes the light showed through the little window and then went out. The padron's friends had gone to bed. For another five minutes we waited, and then the padron himself appeared. We could hear the jingle of his spurs as he came leisurely down to the well to get his nightly drink of cold water. We lay still, hardly daring to breathe. Presently, we heard the squeak of the well-sweep and saw it come round, dip down and rise again. Then we heard the clink of a cup: Galvez was taking his drink. He never finished it! At that moment Pedro's burly form rose up from behind the curbing; he took two steps forward, and with his great right hand he seized Galvez by the neck from behind, giving it such a squeeze that the unfortunate man could not utter a sound. We heard the cup fall to the ground with a clatter. Then, grasping the helpless padron by the back of his trousers, the little giant swung him off his feet and hoisting him high above his head, stepped to the rim of the curbing. The next moment there was a muffled splash--Galvez had been dropped into the well! He had been dropped in feet foremost, however, and as the well was only twelve feet deep with four feet of water in it, his life was not endangered. At this point we all jumped up and ran forward, reaching the well just as Galvez recovered his feet, as we could tell by the coughing and spluttering noises which came up from below. As we approached, Pedro leaned over the coping and said in a low voice: "Good-evening, Padron. This is Pedro Sanchez. If you make any noise I drop the bucket of water on your head." This gentle hint was not lost upon Galvez, who contented himself with muttered growlings of an uncomplimentary nature, when Pedro, turning to Dick, whispered sharply: "Run quick now to the strong-room. I stay here to guard the padron." In company with the barefooted José, we ran into the courtyard, where the Mexican pointed out to us the door of the strong-room, the first on the right, and while Dick and I pulled it open, taking great care to make no noise, José himself ran on to the padron's room, whence he quickly returned with a candle in his hand. While Dick stood guard outside, in case the padron's two friends should come out, I slipped into the little room, where, finding an empty barrel, I placed it in front of the doorway, jumped upon it, and taking my sheath-knife, I stabbed at the adobe wall just above the lintel of the door. The second or third stroke produced a hollow sound and brought down a shower of dried mud, when, vigorously attacking the spot, I soon uncovered a little board which had been let into the wall and plastered over with adobe. In a few seconds I had pried this out, when I found that the space behind it was hollow, and thrusting in my hand I brought out a brass box shaped like a magnified cigar-case. "Dick!" I whispered, eagerly. "I've found something! Come in here!" My partner quickly joined me, when we pried open the box, finding that it contained a parcel wrapped up in a piece of cloth. Imagine our excitement when on tearing off the wrapping we found that the contents of the package consisted of two parchment documents, written in Spanish! We had no time to examine them thoroughly, but a hasty glance convincing us that we had indeed found what we sought, and there being nothing else in the hole, I crammed the parchments back into the box, shoved the box into my pocket, buttoned my coat, and away we went back to the well. "Find it?" whispered Pedro. I replied by patting my pocket. Pedro nodded; and then, having first lowered the bucket into the well again, he leaned over the coping and said softly: "Padron, you may come out now as soon as you like." With that, leaving Galvez to climb out if he could, or to remain where he was if he couldn't, we all turned and ran for it. Having recovered our horses, José bolted for home, while we went off as fast as we dared in the darkness for camp. There, by the light of the fire, we examined our capture. One of the parchments was the commission of old Arthur the First to the "Governorship" of the King Philip mine; the other was the original "Grant" of the Hermanos tract from Philip V, King of Spain, the Indies and a dozen other countries, to his trusty and well-beloved subject, Arturo Blake. "This _is_ great!" cried Dick. "This will settle the title without any chance of dispute. Galvez may as well pack up and go now. I wonder what he'll do?" "I don't know what Galvez will do," said I; "but I can tell you what _we_ must do, Dick. We must cut and run. This patent must be put away in a safe place--and it isn't safe here by any means. Galvez will be about crazy with rage at having been dropped into the well; and for another thing, he'll see that hole above the door, and he'll know that whatever it was we took out of the hole, it must be something of importance to have induced us to come raiding his premises like that." "That's true," said Dick, nodding his head. "And I shouldn't be a bit surprised," I continued, "now that he has two other unscrupulous rascals to back him, if he were to come raiding us in return. What do you think, Pedro?" "I think it is likely," replied the Mexican. "I think it is well that you go, and stop the Señor Blake from coming here. Those men are dangerous. For me, I have no fear: I can take care of myself." "Then we'll skip," said Dick. "It's safest; and it's only for a time, anyhow, for, of course, Galvez's legal ejection is certain, sooner or later, now that we have the patent in our hands. So we'll get out, Frank, the very first thing to-morrow." It was the night of July 28th that we came to this resolution; though, as a matter of fact, we were not aware of it at the time, for we had lost track of the days of the month. It was the astounding event of the day following that impressed the date so indelibly on our memories. Men plot and plan and calculate and contrive, thinking themselves very clever; but how feeble they are when Dame Nature steps in and takes a hand, and how easily she can upset all their calculations, we were to learn, once for all, that coming day. CHAPTER XX THE MEMORABLE TWENTY-NINTH Though we had intended to get off about sunrise we failed to do so, for we found that Galvez was on the lookout for us. No sooner had we started than we saw the three men ride out from the _Casa_ with the evident intention of cutting us off, so, not wishing to get into a fight if it could be avoided, we turned back again. Thereupon, the enemy also turned back; but, watching their movements, we saw that soon after they had entered the house, the figure of one of them appeared again on the roof, and there remained--a sentinel. Plainly, they were not going to let us get away if they could help it. At midday, however, we saw the sentinel go down, presumably to get his dinner, when we thought we would try again. Pedro therefore went off to get our horses for us, but he had hardly been gone a minute when we were startled to see him coming back with them, running as fast as his short legs would permit. "What's the matter, Pedro?" cried Dick. "What's wrong?" "I see the Señor Arturo coming!" shouted the Mexican. "What!" cried Dick, and, "Where?" cried I, both turning to look out over the plain. That man, Pedro, must have had eyes like telescopes to pretend to distinguish any one at such a distance, but on examining the little black speck through the glass I made out that it was a horseman, and after watching him for a few seconds I concluded that it was indeed our friend, Arthur, returning. "Frank!" cried my partner. "We must ride out to meet him at once! Pedro, you stay here and watch the _Casa_. If those three men come out, make a big smoke here so that we may know whether we have to hurry or not." "It is good," replied the Mexican; and seeing that he might be relied upon to give us timely warning--for he at once began to collect materials for his fire--away we went. Riding briskly, though without haste, we had left the mountain and were crossing a wide depression in the plain, when, on its further edge, there suddenly appeared the solitary horseman, riding toward us at a hard gallop. Dick turned in his saddle and cast a glance behind him. "The smoke!" he cried; and without another word we clapped our heels into our ponies' ribs and dashed forward. As Arthur approached--for we could now clearly see that it was he--we observed that he kept looking back over his left shoulder, and just as we arrived within hailing distance three other horsemen came in sight over the southern rim of the depression, riding at a furious pace, their bodies bent forward over their horses' necks. Each of the three carried a rifle, we noticed, and one of the three was Galvez. At sight of us, the pursuers, seemingly taken aback at finding themselves confronted by three of us, when they had expected to find only one, abruptly pulled up. This brief pause gave time to Arthur to join us, when Dick, slipping down from his horse, advanced a few steps toward the enemy, kneeled down, and ostentatiously cocked his rifle. Whether the padron's quick ears caught the sound of the cocking of the rifle--which seemed hardly likely, though in that clear, still atmosphere the sharp _click-click_ would carry a surprisingly long distance--I do not know; but whatever the cause, the result was as unexpected as it was satisfactory. Galvez uttered a sharp exclamation, whirled his horse round, and away they all went again as fast as they had come. "See that!" cried Arthur. "What did I tell you, Dick? We have to thank that locoed steer for that." "I expect we have," replied Dick. "Not a doubt of it," said I. "I was sure that Galvez was much impressed by the way that steer went over, and now I'm surer. Lucky he was, too, for those three fellows meant mischief, if I'm not mistaken." "That's pretty certain, I think," responded Arthur. "And it was another piece of good fortune that you turned up just when you did. How did it happen?" We explained the circumstances, but we had no more than done so, when Arthur exclaimed: "Why, here comes old Pedro now! At a gallop, too! Everybody seems to be riding at a gallop this morning." Looking toward the mountain, we saw the Mexican on his burro coming down at a great pace, but we had hardly caught sight of him when he suddenly stopped. He was on a little elevation, from which, evidently, he could see Galvez and his friends careering homeward, and observing that the affair was over and that his assistance was not needed, he forthwith halted, and, with a mercifulness not too common among Mexicans, jumped to the ground in order to ease his steed of his weight. There he stood, nearly two miles away, with his hand on the burro's shoulders, watching the retreating enemy, while we three rode toward him at a leisurely pace. As will be readily imagined, there was great rejoicing among us over the safe return of our friend and partner, and a great shaking of hands all round, when, hardly giving him time to get his breath again, Dick and I plunged head-first into the relation of all we had done since we saw him last: the finding of the head-gate and the building of the flume; triumphantly concluding our story with the recovery of the patent the night before. "Well, that was a great stroke, sure enough!" exclaimed Arthur. "That will settle the business. The 'stupid peon' got ahead of the padron that time, all right. But before we talk about anything else, Dick," he went on, "I have something I want to tell you about, something in my opinion--and the professor thinks so too--even more important--to you--than the title to the Hermanos Grant." "What's that?" cried my partner, alarmed by his serious manner. "Nothing wrong, is there?" "No, there's nothing wrong, I'm glad to say. Quite the contrary, in fact. I'm half afraid to mention it, old man, for fear I should be mistaken after all, and should stir you up all for nothing, but--why didn't you tell me, Dick, that your name was Stanley?" "Why, I did!" cried Dick. "No, you didn't, old fellow. If you remember, you were going to do so that first day we met, down there in the cañon by the opening of the King Philip mine, when Pedro interrupted you by remarking that the darkness would catch us if we stayed there any longer." "I remember. Yes, that's so. Ah! I see. That was why you addressed your letters to the professor instead of to me." "Yes, that was the reason. It didn't occur to me till I came to write to you that I didn't know your name." "That was rather funny, wasn't it?" said Dick, laughing. "But I don't see that it made much difference in the end: I got your letters all right." My partner spoke rather lightly, but Arthur on the other hand looked so serious, not to say solemn, that Dick's levity died out. "What is it, old man?" he asked. "What difference does it make whether my name is Stanley or anything else?" "It makes a great difference, Dick," replied Arthur. "I believe"--he paused, hesitating, and then went on, "I'm half afraid to tell you, for fear there might be some mistake after all, but--well--I believe, Dick, that I've found out who you are and where you came from!" It was Dick's turn to look serious. His face turned a little pale under its sunburn. "Go on," said he, briefly. "You remember, perhaps," Arthur continued, "how I told you that one reason why I had to go back by way of Santa Fé was because I had some inquiries to make on behalf of my mother. Well, as it turned out, Santa Fé was the wrong place. The place for me to go to was Mosby, and the man for me to ask was--the professor! "When I reached Mosby yesterday," he continued, "I rode straight on up to his house, when the kindly old gentleman, as soon as I had explained who I was, made me more than welcome. We were sitting last evening talking, when I happened to cast my eye on the professor's book shelf, and there I saw something which brought me out of my chair like a shot. It was a volume of Shakespeare, one of a set, volume two--that book which the professor found in the wagon-bed when he found you. I knew the book in a moment--for we have the rest of the set at home, Dick!" Dick stopped his horse and sat silent for a moment, staring at Arthur. Then, "Go on," said he once more. "I pulled the book down from the shelf," Arthur went on, "and looked at the fly-leaf. There was an inscription there--I knew there would be--'Richard Livingstone Stanley, from Anna.'" "Well," said Dick. His voice was husky and his face was pale enough now. "Dick," replied Arthur, reaching out and grasping my partner's arm, "my mother's name was Anna Stanley, and she gave that set of Shakespeare to her brother, Richard, on his twenty-first birthday!" For a time Dick sat there without a word, not at first comprehending, apparently, the significance of these facts--that he and Arthur must be first cousins--while the latter quickly related to us the rest of the story. Dick's mother having died, his father determined to leave Scotland and seek his fortune in the new territory of Colorado, whose fame was then making some stir in the world. In company, then, with a friend, David Scott--the "Uncle" David whom Dick faintly remembered--he set out, taking the boy with him. From the little town of Pueblo, on the Arkansas, Richard Stanley had written that he intended going down to Santa Fé, and that was the last ever heard of him. At that time--the year '64--everything westward from the foot of the mountains was practically wilderness. Into this wilderness Richard Stanley had plunged, and there, it was supposed, he and his son and his friend had perished. As for Dick, he seemed to be dazed--and no wonder. For a boy who had never had any relatives that he knew of to be told suddenly that the young fellow sitting there with his hand on his arm was his own cousin, was naturally a good deal of a shock. If it needed a counter-shock to jolt his faculties back into place, he had it, and it was I who provided it. In order to give the pair an opportunity to get used to their new relationship, I was about to ride forward to join Pedro, when I saw the Mexican suddenly commence cutting up all sorts of queer antics, jumping about and waving his arms in a frantic manner. "What's the matter with Pedro?" I called out. "Look there, you fellows! What's the matter with Pedro?" "Something wrong!" cried Dick. "Get up!" Away we went at a gallop, keeping a sharp lookout in all directions lest those three men should bob up again from somewhere, while the Mexican himself, jumping upon his burro, rode down to meet us. "What's up, Pedro?" Dick shouted, as soon as we had come within hearing. "Anything the matter?" "Señores," cried Pedro, speaking with eager rapidity, "those men come hunting us. I watch them ride back almost to the _Casa_, and then of a sudden they change their minds and turn up into the mountain. They think to catch us, but"--he stretched out his great hand and shut it tight, his black eyes gleaming with excitement--"if the señores will give me leave, we will catch them!" If his surmise was right, if those men were indeed coming after us as he believed, there was no question that if any of us could beat them at that game, Pedro was the one. Dick was a fine woodsman, but Pedro was a finer--my partner himself would have been the first to acknowledge it--and it was Dick in fact who promptly replied: "Go ahead, Pedro! You're captain to-day! Take the lead; we'll follow!" "_'Sta bueno!_" cried the Mexican, greatly pleased. "Come, then!" Turning his burro, he rode quickly back to camp, and there, at his direction, having unsaddled and turned loose our horses, we followed him to the flume, taking with us nothing but our rifles. There had been a little thunder-storm the day before, and the soil near the flume was muddy. Through this mud, by Pedro's direction, we tramped; crossed the flume on the gangway we had laid for the purpose, leaving muddy tracks as we went; jumped down at the other end and set off hot-foot up the gully to the little new-made lake and thence on up to the old lake; in several soft places purposely leaving footmarks which could not escape notice. "What's all this for, Pedro?" asked Dick. "What's your scheme?" "The padron will see our tracks crossing the flume," replied Pedro. "He will think you take Señor Arturo up to show him all the work you have done, and he will follow. If he does so, we have him! When he is safe across, we slip back, and then I hide me among the rocks on the other side and guard the flume. Without my leave they cannot cross back again. Thus I hold them on the wrong side, while you ride away at your ease to Mosby. Now, come quick with me!" So saying, Pedro turned at right angles to the line of the ditch, climbed a short distance up the hillside, and then, under cover of the trees, started back at a run, until presently he brought us to a point whence we could look down upon the flume, its approaches at both ends, and the line of the ditch up to the head of the little lake. Hitherto it had been all bustle and activity, but now we were called upon to exercise a new virtue, one always difficult to fellows of our age--patience. It must have been nearly an hour that we had lain there, sometimes talking together in whispers, but more often keeping silence, when Dick, pulling out his watch, said in a low voice: "If those fellows are coming, I wish they'd come. It's twenty minutes past two; and we're in for a thunder-storm, I'm afraid. Do you notice how dark it's getting?" "Yes," whispered Arthur. "And such a queer darkness. I'm afraid it's a forest fire and not a thunder-storm that is making it." "I believe you're right," replied Dick. "It _is_ a queer-colored light, isn't it?" We could not see the sun on account of a high cliff at the foot of which we were lying, and if we had had any thought of getting up to look at it, we were stopped by Pedro, who at this moment whispered sharply to us to keep quiet. His quick eyes had detected a movement on the far side of the cañon. Intently we watched, and presently the figure of a man stepped out from among the trees. Advancing cautiously to the end of the flume, he examined the tracks in the mud, climbed up to the gang-plank, inspected the tracks again, and turning, made a sign with his hand; whereupon two other men stepped out from among the trees. The three then crossed the flume, jumped down, and set off up the gully. We watched them as they followed the ditch up to the new lake, and thence to the draw which led up to the old lake. At the mouth of the draw they paused for some time, hesitating, doubtless, whether they should trust themselves in that deep, narrow crevice--a veritable trap, for all they knew. Presumably, however, they made up their minds to risk it, for on they went, and a few minutes later were lost to sight. By this time the darkness had so increased that the men were hardly distinguishable, though they, themselves, seemed to take no notice of it. The sun was behind them, and so intent were they in following our tracks and keeping watch ahead, that they never thought to cast a glance upward to see what was coming. "Pedro," whispered Dick, as soon as the men had vanished, "let us get out of here. Either the woods are on fire or there'll be a tremendous storm down on us directly." Pedro, however, requested us to wait another five minutes, when, jumping to his feet, he cried: "Come, then! Let us get back! We have them safe now!" Down we ran, but no sooner had we got clear of the trees than Pedro stopped short. In a frightened voice--the first and only time I ever knew him to show fear--he ejaculated: "Look there! Look there!" Following his pointing finger, we looked up. The uncanny darkness was accounted for:--a great semi-circular piece seemed to have been bitten out of the sun! "The eclipse!" cried Arthur. "I'd forgotten all about it. This is the twenty-ninth of July. The newspapers were full of it, but I'd forgotten all about it!" "A total eclipse, isn't it?" asked Dick, quickly. "Yes, total." "Then it will be a great deal darker presently. We'd better get out of this, and cross the flume while we can see." In fact, it was already so dark that the small birds, thinking it was night, were busily going to bed; the night-hawks had come out, the curious whir of their wings sounding above our heads; and then--a sound which made us all start--there came the long-drawn howl of a wolf! "Run!" shouted Dick. "They'll be after us directly!" Undoubtedly, the wolves, too, were deceived into the belief that night was approaching, for even as Dick spoke we heard in three or four different directions the hunting-cry of the packs. Wasting no time, as will be imagined, away we went, scrambled up on the gang-plank of the flume, and there stopped to listen. "I hope those men"--Dick began; when, from the direction of the draw above there arose a fearful clamor of howling. There was a shot! Another and another, in quick succession! And then, piercing through and rising above all other sounds, there went up a cry so dreadful that it turned us sick to hear it. What had happened? The hour that followed was the worst I ever endured, as we crouched there in the darkness and the silence, not knowing what had occurred up above. At length the shadow moved across the face of the sun, it was brilliant day once more, when, the moment we thought it safe to venture, down we jumped and set off up the line of the ditch. We had not gone a quarter-mile when we saw two men coming down, running frantically. In a few seconds they had reached the spot where we stood waiting for them, not knowing exactly what we were to expect of them. Never have I seen such panic terror as these men exhibited; they were white and trembling and speechless. For two or three minutes we could get nothing out of them, but at length one of them recovered himself enough to tell us what had happened. The wolves had caught them in that narrow, precipitous arroyo, coming from both ends at once. The two men, themselves, had succeeded in scrambling up to a safe place, but Galvez, attempting to do the same, had lost his hold and fallen back. Before he could recover his feet the wolves were upon him, and then----! Well--no wonder those men were sick and pale and trembling! That the padron's designs against us had been evil there could be no doubt--in fact, his shivering henchmen admitted as much--but, quite unsuspicious of the coming of the midday darkness, and knowing nothing of the fierce nature of these "island" wolves, he had run himself into that fatal trap. It was truly a dreadful ending. Does any one wonder now that the date of the eclipse of '78 should be so indelibly stamped on our memories? There being now nothing to interfere with us, we went down to Hermanos and took possession of the _Casa_, and from that time forward the work on our irrigation system moved along without let or hindrance from anything but the seasons. But though it was now plain sailing, and though we eventually got together a force of twenty Mexicans to do the digging, the amount of work was so great that we had not nearly finished that part of the ditch which wound over the foothills when frost came and stopped us. We at once moved everything down to the village and began again at that end, keeping hard at it until frost stopped us once more, and finally for that year. In fact, it was not until the spring of '80 that we at last turned in the water--a moderate amount at first--but since then the quantity has been increased year by year, until now we are supplying at an easy rental a great number of small farms, many of them cultivated by Mexicans, but the majority by Americans. The largest of the farms is that run by the two cousins and myself, and its management, together with the supervision and maintenance of the water-supply keeps us all three on the jump. As for old Pedro, he stuck to his mountain until just lately, when we persuaded him to come down and take up his residence on the ranch; though even now, every fall he goes off for a three-months' hunt and we see nothing of him till the first snow sends him down again. He is a privileged character, allowed to go and come as he pleases; for we do not forget his great services in turning this worthless desert into a flourishing community of busy wheat-farmers and fruit-growers; nor do we forget that it was really he who started the whole business. As to that, though, we are not likely to forget it, for we have on hand a constant reminder. Above the fireplace in our house there hangs, plain to be seen, a relic with which we would not part at any price--the "indicator" which pointed the way for us when we first set out on this enterprise--the original copper-headed arrow! THE END 
6001	----	POLLY OF PEBBLY PIT BY LILLIAN ELIZABETH ROY Author of Polly and Eleanor, Polly in New York, Polly and Her Friends Abroad, Polly's Business Venture. Illustrated 1922 TO MY DEAR FRIENDS, SARAH J. BATTEY, M.D., AND BRYAN M. BATTEY. CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE FARM IN PEBBLY PIT II A MOMENTOUS LETTER III PREPARING FOR THE UNKNOWN IV THE "SERVANT PROBLEM" SOLVED V UNPLEASANT SURPRISES VI THE HARROWING DETAILS VII A LITTLE SCHEME THAT WORKED VIII ACCLIMATING THE CITY GIRLS IX SEVERAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS X THE DANCE AT BEAR FORKS XI IN THE WILDERNESS XII THE BLIZZARD ON GRIZZLY SLIDE XIII A NIGHT IN THE CAVE XIV OLD MONTRESOR'S LEGACY XV MONTRESOR'S CLAIM is JUSTIFIED XVI A YOUNG STRANGER IN OAK CREEK XVII SARY'S AMBITIONS CHAPTER I THE FARM IN PEBBLY PIT "Polly! Poll-ee!" sounded musically from the direction of the kitchen doorway in a ranch-house, and reached Polly Brewster as she knelt beside her pet in the barn. "Run outside and see what Maw wants, Poll," said Mr. Brewster, who was working faithfully over the object of Polly's solicitous devotion. Obediently, Polly ran out and shaded her eyes as she gazed across the great depression of the volcanic crater which had made such a wonderful farm for the Brewsters. At the door of the long, squat homestead, stood Mrs. Brewster, waiting for an answer. The moment she saw Polly, she called: "Din-ner-r's ready!" "All right!" shouted the girl, waving her sun-bonnet to signify she had heard the message. Mrs. Brewster returned to the kitchen and Polly went back to her father's side. He glanced up as she entered the barn, and Polly replied to his questioning look. "Maw said dinner's ready." "Well, Ah reckon Noddy's all right now, Poll," said the rancher, as he stood up to stretch his tired muscles. "I felt sure she would be, Paw," returned Polly, positively. "If only Jeb was about, now, Ah could leave him with Noddy, with directions about the medicine, till we-all get back from dinner," mused Mr. Brewster, standing in the doorway to look about for Jeb. "Why, Daddy! Do you suppose I'd leave Noddy with Jeb for a single moment? And just as we saved her life, too! I reckon not! I'll stop here myself and watch her," declared Polly with finality, as she assumed the post vacated by her father, and held the little burro's fuzzy head upon her knees. Sam Brewster smiled as he watched Polly bend over her pet and whisper affectionately in the long, sensitive ear. "Poll, Jeb will shore say you used witchcraft on the burro; he said Noddy was done for--being buried under that slide the way she was." "Noddy _would_ have been done for if Jeb had had her in charge; but she just couldn't refuse to live, with me right here calling her back, you know. She loves me so, she had to listen to my voice," explained Polly, with suspicious moisture in her big blue eyes. "Ah reckon that's it, Poll! Love works wonders if we'd only _let_ it. And you love everything in a way that everything loves you back again. It beats me, how the beavers, and foxes, and even the bears treat you as if you were one of them, instead of running to cover. As for the chicks and colts and lambs on the ranch--why, they'd follow you to Oak Creek, if they could!" Polly smiled happily as she looked away over the distant mountain-sides where Nature's creatures roamed unrestrained. And then her eyes rested upon the pastures nearer home, where the farm pets grazed. Every one of them, wild or tame, were her friends. "Reckon Ah'll go now, Poll. What shall Maw do about the dinner?" "Tell her not to bother about me. I'll wash the dishes' when I get back, Daddy." So Mr. Brewster started for the house and Polly settled herself in a more comfortable position while crooning to little Noddy. As she sat holding the little burro's head, her thoughts wandered back to the time when Noddy was but three days old. The mother had died and left the tiny bundle of brown wool to be brought up on a nursing bottle. To keep the baby burro warm it had been wrapped in an old blanket and placed back of the kitchen stove. Thus Noddy first learned to walk in the large kitchen of the log ranch-house, and later it felt quite like a member of the family. Being such a sleepy little colt, the name of Noddy was considered very appropriate but, as the burro grew older, it showed such intelligence and energy that its name was a dreadful misnomer. Noddy considered Polly her particular charge and followed her about the place like a dog. And when the burro was full-grown, she became the daily companion that Polly rode to school, over the mountain trails, or about the farm. The wise western burros are not half appreciated by folks who do not understand their unusual intelligence and their devotion to their masters. They will seek for water or edible herbs when lost on the desert or mountain peaks and sacrifice life to save that of the rider's. But Noddy's present condition was not due to sacrifice. Most of the horses and burros at Pebbly Pit showed such an aversion to the Rainbow Cliffs that they never grazed near there, although the luxuriant grass made fine pasturage. These cliffs were the local wonder and gave the farm its name. They were a section of jagged "pudding-stone" wall composed of large and small fragments of gorgeously hued stones massed together in loose formation, like shale. Great heaps of these jeweled fragments, which crumbled easily from the cliff, lay piled up along the base of the wall and sparkled brilliantly when the sun shone upon them, or directly after a rain. Noddy had been pasturing out the night before her accident, and at sunrise found herself too near the tabooed cliffs. She lifted her ears suspiciously, wrinkled her nose fearfully, and wheeled to run away to a more desirable locality. But in that quick turn she loosened the shale at the base of a steep descent. The treacherous rock slid and threw her down. Before she could get up and away the great mass rumbled down and covered her, but she finally managed to work her head free for breath. Jeb, out early to seek for stray cattle, saw the fresh slide and gazed wonderingly at it. Then he spied the nose and hoof of a burro protruding from the shale. He rushed to the barn where he had left Mr. Brewster, and in a short time master and man had the tools and "cradle" back at the spot, and Noddy was soon unearthed. She was unconscious, and Jeb declared it was useless to bother with a burro so evidently far gone. Even Mr. Brewster feared she was past help, but Polly insisted that Noddy must live. All that morning Polly sat holding the limp brown head while whispering words of affection in the long ears, and who will say that Noddy's instinct did not respond to love, even though the physical sense of hearing was deaf to earthly sounds? She slowly revived and was resting comfortably when the house-call came for dinner. Mr. Brewster returned after dinner, bringing a bowl of gruel for the burro, and Jeb followed his master to inquire about the patient. "Jeb, you-all help me feed Noddy while Polly runs to the house for her dinner," said Mr. Brewster. "I'd a heap rather wait here and help with Noddy, Paw!" "Oh, Polly! Maw told me to say there was a letter for you. Jim Melvin stopped off with our mail he got at Oak Creek to-day." "A letter! Who can it be from?" asked Polly wonderingly. "That's what you must find out. It looks like a girl's writing and it is post-marked Denver. Who do you know there?" replied her father. "Denver? Why, nobody! I'll run and see who it's from!" cried she eagerly, and Mr. Brewster smiled at the success of the ruse to get his daughter away for a time. Polly was a genuine child of Nature. Her life of little more than fourteen years had been spent in the mountains surrounding her ranch-home, Pebbly Pit. The farm was oddly located in the crater of an extinct volcano, known on the maps as "The Devil's Grave." Like many other peaks scattered about in this region of Colorado, the volcanic fires had been dead for centuries. The outer rim of the crater formed a natural wall about the bowl, and protected the rich and fertile soil of the farm from the desert winds that covered other ranches with its fine alkali dust. The snows in winter, lodging in the crevices of the cliffs, slowly melted during the progress of summer, thus furnishing sufficient moisture for the vegetation growing in the "bowl"; and this provided splendid pasturage for the herds of cattle owned by the rancher. When Sam Brewster staked his claim in this crater, his companions jeered at the choice and called the place "Pebbly Pit." But the young man had studied agriculture thoroughly and knew what he was doing; then the test made by the government convinced him of this. Besides, his Denver bride preferred the beauty of the spot to the more sociable but draughty ranches in the valley of Bear Forks River; so they settled in the crater, and named the farm Rainbow Cliffs, but the original nick-name clung, and gradually the owners, from habit, also came to call their place "Pebbly Pit." In the mountains where the government gives a settler all the timber he needs, transportation is so difficult and paid labor almost unknown, so that the size and quality of a rancher's house and out-buildings expresses his character. Sam Brewster's buildings and fences were as solid and comfortable as any in the State. He and his wife (a refined young woman) were ambitious and energetic, so it was not surprising that they succeeded in life. When John, the first-born, had completed his studies at High School in Denver, he was sent to a well-known college in Chicago. And now that Polly, seven years John's junior, had finished her grammar course at the little Bear Forks log school-house, she, too, was determined to enter High School at Denver. Sam Brewster had stubbornly refused to consent to the plan, taking for an excuse that no friends or relatives remained in Denver where Polly might board, and commutation was out of the question. But he knew, and so did his wife, that the truth of his refusal lay in the fact that he could not bear to part with his youngest child--even though she visited at home each week-end. Mrs. Brewster sided with Polly's ambition, and planned to visit her old home in Denver to see if she could find any friends who would prove to be desirable for Polly to associate with. The matter stood thus this lovely June day when the unexpected letter arrived. The very unusual occurrence created enough interest for Polly to take her mind from the burro, so she ran swiftly towards the house while every possible correspondent she could think of passed through her thoughts. But she was as much at sea as ever, when she danced up the log steps leading directly to the kitchen. "Maw, Maw! Where are you--is there really a letter?" "Yes--from Denver! But how is Noddy?" replied Mrs. Brewster, coming to the kitchen door, holding a square envelope in her hand. "Dear little Noddy--she is all right now, Maw, but it looked mighty bad a bit of time back. I just had to pray and _pray_ with all my might, Maw--you know how!" sighed Polly, taking the refined-looking letter from her mother without seeing it. "I never knew how I loved that dear little bundle of fuzz and flesh till I thought she was dead! Oh, I am so glad she will live that I don't care if I ever eat again or not!" Still holding the precious letter, Polly turned back to look at the barn where the object of her love was lapping up the gruel. Mrs. Brewster smiled indulgently at her intense young daughter, then reminded her of the unopened communication. "Dear me! So much excitement in one day--I don't see how I can quiet down again. But _who_ do you suppose would write to _me_?" queried Polly, holding the envelope at arm's length and studying the hand-writing. "I'm not clairvoyant, Polly, so suppose you open it and see for yourself," laughed Mrs. Brewster. "Well, I hate to spoil this nice stationery but--here it goes!" murmured Polly, severing an end of the envelope as if she was the executioner of an innocent victim. "See who it's from, Polly, while I dish up your dinner. Of course you don't care whether you ever eat again, but I would suggest that at least you strive to ward off starvation," remarked her mother, teasingly, as she took a well-filled plate from the oven. "Wh-h-y--of all things!" gasped Polly, as she read the letter quickly. Mrs. Brewster stood waiting to hear more, and Polly gave another hurried glance at the signature before explaining. "It's from Anne Stewart--the girl who used to teach at Bear Forks school that time the teacher got sick and had to leave for a few months. You know--the pretty one with the blonde hair that all the big scholars raved over?" announced Polly. "Oh, yes! The one that you said was so happy to be in this wonderful country?" "Yes, that's the girl! Well, guess what she writes me?" And Polly waved the written sheet above her head. "Polly, have you been writing to her about High School?" hurriedly asked Mrs. Brewster. "I never thought of that! Maybe we can plan it with her," returned Polly, her expression changing instantly to meet the new suggestion of her mother's. "Well, time enough to settle that question. Now tell me what she wrote," declared Mrs. Brewster, sighing with relief. "You'll be taken right off your feet, Maw, so you'd best sit down and listen," advised Polly, nibbling at a biscuit while she waited for her mother to be seated. "Now, I don't want you to shake your head or say a word, until I'm all through reading, Maw. It's something terribly surprising and goodness only knows why she asked _me_. I was so young when she taught school that she never noticed me much." "Yes, you were _so_ much younger two years ago, and you are so very ancient now!" retorted Mrs. Brewster, trying to appear serious. "You know what I mean--but this isn't reading you the letter and I know just how you'll gasp when you hear her brother--listen and I'll read it." CHAPTER II A MOMENTOUS LETTER Having seen that her mother was seated and ready for the surprise, Polly read: "Dear Miss Polly: "As you are fast reaching the boundary-line where girlhood and womanhood meet, I feel I must address you with the prefix that dignifies this stage of your life, although I seem to know you best as the rosy-cheeked little girl whose name of 'Polly' seemed to fit her exactly. "Perhaps your mother will be surprised that I did not write this letter to her, as most of it concerns her and her family directly. But I can best explain why I am writing to you by the following: "My brother Paul and your brother John are chums in college, you know, and I heard quite recently that you wished to prepare for High School in Denver this fall. When a friend in Chicago wrote me to find a good home in the mountains near Denver where I can stay with and tutor his daughters during the summer, I thought of the region about Bear Forks. Having been there myself, I know how wonderful the country and climate are. "If your mother and yourself think well of my proposition, I know I can help you a great deal, also, towards preparing you for High School, as I will have to devote a short time each day this summer in keeping Eleanor up in her studies. "Last year Eleanor and Barbara Maynard, of Chicago, came to board with us in Denver. These girls are acquainted with Paul and John, through their brother who is a class-mate of the boys. The younger girl, Eleanor, who is your age, had been very ill and the doctor ordered her to Denver because of the wonderful air. Her sister, who is about my age, accompanied her. The father, Mr. Maynard, engaged me to tutor Eleanor, or Nolla we call her, during her stay in Denver, as she was backward in lessons. "We three became very good friends and when the girls went back to Chicago, I missed their companionship very much. I had a letter from the father last week, asking me to find a mountain resort for this summer where he could send the girls, as Nolla needs the invigorating air and simple life of the Rockies. She is organically sound but not strong enough to stand city air and life. "Mr. Maynard has been through the Bear Forks country and when I wrote suggesting a ranch there, he immediately wired me to settle the matter at once. To-day I had a letter from the mother who cannot go with her daughters for the summer, so she asked me to go with them, more as a friend and adviser than as a tutor. My expenses will be paid, and my salary for tutoring Nolla will be a blessing to help Paul through his third year's term of the college course. "I know your brother is away with Tom Latimer on some practice work with a survey crew, so his room is vacant this summer. Then too, I was told by John that you had a small spare room back of the kitchen, so that three girls could have comfortable quarters. If, by any chance, your mother would consent to take us in for the summer, I could help you with your preparatory lessons for High School next term, at the same time that I coach Nolla. And I will agree for myself and the two girls that we will not expect any other than your usual home-life. "This unexpected request may meet with disapproval and refusal by your family, but do not let one of the causes be on the grounds of the extra work we might create, because we do not want any fussing, whatever, but we do want to be treated as members of the family--to do our share of anything that needs to be done. "Mr. Maynard wishes his girls to live in the outdoors as much as possible, so we will not be in your mother's way. I certainly hope your father and mother will allow us to come, and I can promise you that you will enjoy these girls very much. The terms are of no consequence, Mr. Maynard said, as he is ready to pay anything to give Nolla a quiet home and the life she needs. "I trust you can persuade your mother to try us, at any rate, and so, hoping for a favorable reply to this letter, "I am your sincere friend, ANNE STEWART." While Polly read the letter aloud, her mother thought rapidly. She had the picture of a charming girl who had often met John Brewster at social gatherings during the term she taught the children at Bear Forks. Now her brother Paul was one of John's chums at college. Perhaps this girl had visited at Chicago, and perhaps John had visited her home at Denver--but he had never said a word about it. It was very evident that this girl had an intimate acquaintance with the home-life at Pebbly Pit, and this knowledge must have reached her through John. Hence John and she must be very well acquainted. John would doubtless marry some day, but his mother did not care to see him entangled before he had launched his bark on the waters of his ambition. If he was touched by one of Cupid's darts to fancy himself in love with his chum's pretty sister, it was good judgment for his mother to know all there was to be known about the girl. Not that the letter confessed this state of affairs, but the mother feared that such must be the case--for who could resist loving her handsome, clever boy? "Maw! I _said_--Anne Stewart is perfectly lovely!" "Oh, yes, Polly! So I believe," replied Mrs. Brewster, in an absent-minded manner. "Well! If you'd let them come here I would love it!" "You can't judge beforehand, Polly. Having three city strangers come suddenly to live at a ranch where city manners are unknown, will turn things upside-down, you know." "But you see, Maw, the teacher offers to help me with lessons so I can pass for High School in the fall," Polly reminded her mother. "I can do as much for you, dear, without the care of strangers," remonstrated Mrs. Brewster, who would not commit herself until she had had time to weigh all things carefully. "Then I s'pose you intend refusing this request!" pouted the disappointed girl. "I wish to think over the situation most wisely before we reply to the letter. Now finish your dinner and do the dishes. I am going to take my mending to the side porch." Polly did as she was told but her imagination strayed to Denver and Chicago, as she tried to picture Barbara and Eleanor Maynard with Anne Stewart, visiting Pebbly Pit that summer. Meantime, Mrs. Brewster considered the _pros_ and _cons_ of the problem. If this Anne Stewart proved to be the sort of wife John needed, it would be advisable to have her know her future family-in-law. If she was not desirable, it would be discovered during the weeks she lived under the same roof with John's mother. But should it transpire that there was no cause for worry about John and this young teacher, she would still prove to be a good friend for Polly to know in case the child attended school in Denver the following term. Mrs. Brewster had almost decided to speak favorably to Polly of the plan, when the girl joined her on the porch. "Do you suppose Daddy will mind having so many young folks about the place--that is, if you will let them come?" "I'm sure your Paw will be happy to give you pleasure, and you know how glad he is to have young people visiting here, rather than having you leave home to visit others," remarked Mrs. Brewster, slowly drawing the yarn through a hole in a sock. "While I washed the dishes, I wondered if he would say anything to you about the extra work, the three girls will make?" said Polly, trying to "feel" her mother out. "That will be his main objection, I think. He had planned for me to visit my old friends in Denver, this summer, but this new departure will make it impossible for me to be away from here." "Oh, Maw, if you want to go away, don't let these girls spoil your plans!" cried Polly, contritely. "I really had not thought of my own pleasure in visiting old friends at Denver, Polly, but I had planned to see about your residence this winter should you attend school there. I want you to board with a family that can offer you the proper atmosphere. If this young teacher proves to be nice, she will know all I needed to find out about the school and a boarding house, and I will not have to leave my beloved home at all." "Well, then, it all depends on what Daddy will say!" cried Polly, joyously. "I do wish he'd hurry in." "He must have known your wishes, Polly; I see him coming towards the house," laughed Mrs. Brewster. Polly leaned over the hand-rail of the porch to watch her father coming nearer and nearer. Then, when she thought he was in hailing distance, she shouted: "Daddy! Do hurry and hear the news--came in my letter!" And the missive was waved back and forth to urge the rancher to greater speed. Mr. Brewster reached the porch and whipped off his wide sombrero to mop his warm forehead. "Well, Maw, did Poll tell you about Noddy? Ah tell you! Our Polly is some doctor, all right!" As the rancher chuckled over his words, Polly felt she had been guilty of neglect, for she had quite forgotten to ask how Noddy was. Mrs. Brewster smiled as she continued her darning. "Who's with Noddy now--did you give Jeb careful instructions, Paw?" anxiously queried Polly. "Noddy's sleeping as peacefully as a babe, so you-all needn't worry any more. Now tell me all about the wonderful letter." "Sam, do you remember that golden-haired young lady from Denver, who took Miss Shalp's place at Bear Forks school for a few months?" quickly asked Mrs. Brewster. The note of anxiety in the query was not overlooked by the rancher, but he answered indifferently--to all appearances: "Shore thing, wife. Could any one forget such a nice girl in a hurry?" "Well, Sam, the letter's from her--Anne Stewart is her name." "Don't tell him what! Let me read it, Maw!" cried Polly. So the letter was read again and the moment it was concluded Polly and Mrs. Brewster looked fearfully at Mr. Brewster, for they both expected violent objections from him. But the rancher stood boring a hole with the toe of his boot down through the soft grass sod, while he seemed to study the cobbler's handiwork. After a few moments of tense silence, he looked up and laughed heartily. "Who'd have thought it, Mary? You, young looking enough to pass for a blushing bride but having a son old enough to think of a sweet-heart. And little Poll here, trying to bamboozle us to let her go away to school. Ah, well!" Polly gazed from father to mother and back again. "What has John got to do with this letter? Gracious, he isn't thinking of a wife, I hope!" Her parents laughed at her perplexity, and Mr. Brewster explained satisfactorily to her question: "I was thinking of the four pretty girls we'd have at the ranch all summer, if John comes home to choose one of them." "Oh, Daddy! Then you'll have them come?" cried Polly, at the same time jumping at her father to throw her arms about his neck. "On one condition--yes. That is: a gal to do the chores for Maw, so she can look after such a handful of trouble as three new ready-made daughters will make for her." "A hired girl! Why, Sam, how you talk. What could I ever do with help in such a small house? Besides, Anne Stewart says they will help with the work," objected Mrs. Brewster. "That's my only condition! You're not going to slave for a lot of city girls if I know it. Why, they won't know how to hold a kitchen knife, let alone cook for the family," replied Mr. Brewster. "I'll agree at once, Sam, because I know there isn't a girl or woman to hire within fifty miles of Oak Creek," laughed Mrs. Brewster. "Then Polly can answer the letter as she likes, and I will hunt up a gal. You said it: you'd agree to hire help if one can be found!" quickly came from the rancher. "Sam, you took this occasion to have your own about hired help," laughed his wife, shaking her head deprecatingly. "You never would listen before, but now you've got to!" said Mr. Brewster, triumphantly. "Polly, you can run in and answer that letter as soon as you like," hinted Mrs. Brewster, and the girl eagerly obeyed. While she wrote the answer over and over till it met with her approval, her parents exchanged confidences regarding John and this young teacher, but Polly never dreamed of such fears. The letter that left Pebbly Pit the following day was the first thread woven in the warp and woof of two young lives--Eleanor Maynard in Chicago and Polly Brewster in the Rockies. Had the reply been other than it was, would these two girls have met and experienced the interesting schooldays, college years, and business careers that they enjoyed through becoming acquainted that summer at Pebbly Pit? CHAPTER III PREPARING FOR THE UNKNOWN The letter sent from Pebbly Pit to Anne Stewart was forwarded by the latter to the Maynard girls in Chicago. It was eagerly read aloud to Mrs. Maynard by Barbara. Reaching the paragraph in the letter where Mrs. Brewster asked Anne Stewart if she thought five dollars a week for the board of each would be asking too much, Barbara dropped the sheet of paper and gasped. An expression of incredulity appeared on the faces of the mother and daughter, while Eleanor laughed outright. "Just fancy! Five dollars a week!" she cried, throwing herself back on the cushions of the divan. "It must be a mistake! I trust it isn't meant for fifty a week! That is about the price a good hotel would charge, but I had hoped this place would be more reasonable. However, I am quite sure that figure five is a mistake; no one can possibly give meals at that rate, no matter how meager the fare may be!" declared Mrs. Maynard. "The writing is plain enough and so is the figure '5,' mother," returned Barbara, referring again to the letter, then handing it to her mother. Mrs. Maynard adjusted her lorgnette and studied the figure given. "It _does_ seem to be five, without a doubt!" admitted she. "Oh, well! it really doesn't matter much what the price is just as long as we have a good time this summer!" exclaimed Eleanor. "But, Nolla, dear, it does matter! Your father is dreadfully upset about our plans. He says my Newport season will cost far more than I fancied it would, and you two girls going to a mountain resort like this is an extra cost. He will have to be away all summer on important business connected with the bank, and _that_ will cost extra money. Altogether, he feels anything but indifferent," sighed Mrs. Maynard, handing the letter back to Barbara. "Well, we are not responsible for father's worries over the bank's loans, but we _are_ concerned about the style and quality of meals to be served at this Brewster place for five dollars a week," scorned Barbara. "I don't believe Anne Stewart would take us to a place where anything was horrid and cheap! She knows what's good as well as we do!" defended Eleanor, who was eager to go to this mountain ranch. "Nolla is quite right, Bob. Anne is too particular to engage board in an undesirable house or hotel!" added Mrs. Maynard. "Besides, these Brewsters have a farm, you know, and I suppose they raise lots of things that we have to pay such awful prices for--eggs, chickens, butter and vegetables," added Eleanor. Mrs. Maynard and Barbara looked with admiration at the young girl, for that was an idea they had not thought of! "Of course, that's why they can board us so reasonably! Then, too, I suppose they do their own marketing for other items of food, such as delicacies and supplies from the baker's! It does make a difference in the accounts, you see, when one markets!" ventured Barbara, glancing at her mother who never bothered about anything connected with the housekeeping--leaving it all for the servants to do. "Now, Bob, don't criticize your mother's methods. I can't drudge about the house and take charge of the Social Clubs and Welfare Work as well," complained Mrs. Maynard. "Of course not, Bob! Besides, mother never did know a good cut of beef from a poor one--they never taught domestic science in her day, you see," hurriedly interpolated Eleanor, hoping to waive a scene such as was a common occurrence between Barbara and her mother. "Nolla, are you sarcastic about my education?" queried Mrs. Maynard, with dignity. "Mercy, no! I only tried to show Bob the difference in present day methods and the past." Mr. Maynard entered the room during Eleanor's reply, and smiled as he heard his youngest daughter's frank words. It was a keen pleasure to him to have one child fearless in thought and word. His son and elder daughter had been spoiled by fawning tutors and companions, so they had acquired the habit of white-washing facts to suit the needs. Eleanor had been too delicate to attend any expensive and fashionable seminary and, being taught by Anne Stewart while in Denver, had acquired many of Anne's splendid ways. "Frederick, what do you know about this mountain resort you asked Anne Stewart to write about?" asked Mrs. Maynard. "Well, now that we are all together and have the time to talk this matter out, I will say my say," replied Mr. Maynard, seating himself and drawing Eleanor down beside him upon the divan. "You remember the first year we were married--I had to visit Bear Forks to investigate a loan one of our clients at the bank asked us to make on a tract of timber-land? You wouldn't go with me when you heard we would have to camp out at night and ride horses over rough mountain-trails. That is the season you visited your school-friend in the East." Mr. Maynard looked at his wife as he spoke and she nodded her head as if the memory was not pleasant to recall. Her husband smiled an enigmatical smile and continued his description. "That is when I met Sam Brewster and his wife--they had been married about as long as we had, and their happy ranch-life struck me as being the most desirable existence I ever heard of." Mrs. Maynard's lips curled in silent derision. She understood her husband's yearning for a simple life in place of the frivolous and empty excitement of the social career she had made for herself and family. "The country about the sections I visited is beautiful and healthy, and as Nolla is ordered to a quiet, mountainous region for a time, I know of no place so suitable. Besides, Anne Stewart has been there, too, and she is wild over the place." "But you are so old-fashioned in your ideas of living and pleasures, father, and I want to know if this place will suit me. Are the Brewsters members of the best set there, or will I be left absolutely unaided to find a way to meet young people such as we would like to know?" asked Barbara, anxiously. "The Brewsters are by far the wealthiest family in that whole section of country, and I have heard that the ranch and house are the finest in the state. You met young John Brewster at the College Prom and you can tell what you think of _him._" "Ye-es, young Brewster is all right. Every one seemed to think he is exceptionally nice," remarked Barbara. Mrs. Maynard sighed with relief as she felt that a weight had been lifted from her mind. She was anxious to have her two daughters climb the social ladder to a higher plane than she had been able to reach, so she knew they must be careful to associate with only those who had already arrived there through forbears or ambition. "Then we can wire Anne at once to complete arrangements, Frederick?" ventured the lady, watching her husband's expression. "I'll attend to that but when can you be ready to go?" asked Mr. Maynard, glancing from one to the other of the trio. "The same day you start, Daddy!" declared Eleanor, giving her father a hug. "Why, we simply can't, Nolla! Father leaves Chicago next week and we have so much to prepare before going to a place where we are apt to meet the very elite of society," cried Barbara. "It will take fully two weeks to go through the girls' wardrobe, Frederick, and see that everything is the last word," added Mrs. Maynard, explanatory of her eldest daughter's dismay. "Well, fix things up any way you say, but I'm off for the bank when you begin talking dress," laughed Mr. Maynard. "Now, Frederick, don't leave us like this! You know we will need money to fit out the girls, and then you _must_ have some idea of when Anne can expect them in Denver," hurriedly said Mrs. Maynard as her husband crossed the room to leave. "Daddy, I don't want another thing to wear; I've got so many things now that it makes me tired to keep changing to suit the thousand and one occasions," declared Eleanor, running after her father to kiss him good-by. "Nolla! I declare you will never grow up! Pray _walk_ like a lady when you cross a room, won't you?" complained Barbara. Eleanor smiled up at her father and he pinched her thin cheek as he stooped to kiss her. Then, he waved his hand at the others and left the room. Once outside the door and safely out of hearing he chuckled to himself. "Bob pictures a gay resort with troops of male admirers to play tennis and dance away the hours with. She is thinking of dress to captivate her 'moths,' but Nolla is thinking of the rural pleasures she has heard me describe to her. If Bob knew the truth, she'd never go, and poor little Nolla would lose the most wonderful opportunity of her young life. I'd best not prejudice Bob or mother, but just pay the bills for finery and whims and bide my time." Soon after arriving at his bank-office he sent a message to Anne Stewart at Denver, advising her to engage the rooms at the Brewster home. As an afterthought, he added that he was anxious to have Eleanor get away about the time he left home for his trip. That afternoon he carried home the reply from Anne Stewart: "Have engaged rooms and board from next week on. Wire when to expect you at Denver. Anne." Mrs. Maynard had heard from her friends that day that their plans were changed and now they expected to leave Chicago sooner than she had thought. This made her agree quickly to having her daughters start the following week. "But, mother, it can't be done. I need a riding habit, and tennis clothes, and a few new afternoon gowns and evening dresses!" remonstrated Barbara. "You had a new habit last fall, Bob," Eleanor said. "But it has a long coat and full bloomers. No one is wearing that style, now. Everything is mannish coats and tight knickerbockers," argued Barbara. "I will call up the tailor at once, girls, and have him give us the preference over other work," Mrs. Maynard replied. "Not for me! I don't like the tight habits. I shall take my bloomer one," replied Eleanor, decidedly. "Dear me, Nolla! You don't seem to care a fig about your appearance. What will become of you when it is time for you to make your debut?" sighed Mrs. Maynard, despondently. "I'm not going to do anything so silly--I'm going into business when I grow up!" "Oh!" "Nolla!" Mother and sister could hardly gasp the words as they turned shocked eyes in the direction of Mr. Maynard who had been writing out checks for his family. He leaned back in his chair and laughed heartily at the independence of his youngest child. "Frederick! Now you see what comes of your petting Nolla whenever she says or does anything dreadful!" exclaimed Mrs. Maynard. "Is business so dreadful, then? Anne Stewart seems all right, and she is earning her living," ventured Eleanor. "I wash my hands of you, after this, Eleanor! If you do anything so unheard of as you threaten, no one will keep up with you," declared Barbara, sternly. "They'll have to travel mighty fast to keep up with me, Bob, once I am of age and start in business," laughed Eleanor. "That will do, young lady! Remember you are only fourteen, and business is a long time off for you!" Mrs. Maynard remarked. Then Eleanor hung over the back of her father's chair twisting the iron-gray hair into ridiculous points while her mother and Barbara forgot her presence and planned many fetching gowns for the summer campaign. Both were fair examples of modern society and its aims, and they sacrificed many worth-while plans and pleasures upon the altar of their fickle goddess. So it followed that the fashionable tailors, the modiste and the lingerie-maker stitched and fitted and clipped, on beautiful materials and trimmings, until everything was ready for Barbara's summer victory. Eleanor steadfastly refused to be annoyed by having new clothes made, so her trunk was packed with the wardrobe she already had on hand. "Of course, Nolla's appearance is not of as much consequence as yours, Bob, as she still is so young and delicate. It is different with you, however, and I'm so glad you are sensible to appreciate what a difference clothes make," said Mrs. Maynard, resignedly, as the seven trunks were packed and waiting for the expressman. "I'm glad your fussing is over at last. If you had much more to sew and fit we never _would_ get away!" grumbled Eleanor, watching the man stagger as he carried the heavy trunks downstairs. "Well, I'll soon be reaping the benefit of my patience and _you'll_ be sorry you were so indifferent over your looks," retorted Barbara, turning away from the window once her five trunks were safely on the express wagon. "Girls, you're sure everything that Celeste wrote down on the list is packed? Your complexion cream in case of freckles or tan--and the shampoo mixture for the hair-dresser to use? Tell him I never allow you to use ready-made preparations on your hair." "Yes, mother, all the toilet articles are in the small trunk, and the few extra things were packed in Eleanor's trunk because she had a corner with nothing to fill in it," explained Barbara. "Thank goodness we can eat dinner and go to bed to-night without being served styles and fits!" sighed Eleanor, not meaning to be irreverent at her mother's gospel. Anne Stewart had not mentioned the need of mountain-shoes and good plain clothing in her letters to the Maynards, because Mr. Maynard particularly requested her to delete such items. Anne was bright at reading minds and smiled as she surmised the reason for the restriction. She knew Eleanor would glory in old clothes and a good time, but would _Barbara_ be so willing to visit Pebbly Pit farm if she knew the truth about the environment? Anne's single steamer trunk was filled with sensible clothes and the toilet articles she knew she would need for the summer. Then she wired the Maynards to say all was waiting to hear from them. And Barbara wired back that they would meet her at the Denver Terminal Station at the day and time agreed upon. Meantime, great preparations were under way at Pebbly Pit. John's room had to be cleaned and rearranged for the young ladies. While Polly and her mother planned the work, Mr. Brewster made a thorough search of the countryside in hopes of finding a suitable maid-servant for his wife and Polly. Most ranchers need their daughters at home, and as there are no really poor or poverty-stricken families in those farming sections, the task of finding a servant was not an easy one. And Mr. Brewster realized what it meant, when he read in the papers how difficult a problem it was becoming--this servant-girl question! At last, as he was about to despair of ever finding any one, he stopped in at the Oak Creek Post Office to see if there was any mail. Here he met a rancher-friend from the Yellow Jacket Pass region. "How-thar, Sam!" called Jim Sattler, heartily. "How-do yourself, Jim!" returned Mr. Brewster, catching hold of Jim's hardened hand and shaking it back and forth. "You-all air a sight for sore eyes, Sam! Hain't seen hide nor hair of any one of you for nigh onto a year! Be'n keepin' pritty busy, Sam?" said Jim, in a voice that rolled forth like deep thunder. "Mighty busy, Jim! John's away to college, you know, and now my leetle chick thinks she can scratch for herself, too. She's bound to go to school, in Denver, this coming fall." "Sam, nuthin' like it, these days! A man or woman has to have ddication to rassle with livin'! Let her go to it, says Ah! It won't be long afore my boys'll be goin' away, too!" "That's what brings me here to-day. Ah have been hunting for some kind of a gal to help the missus this summer and to have her broken in by the time Polly leaves home," explained Sam Brewster. "Git one?" "Not yet! It seems they're as scarce as hen's teeth. Ah never dreamed it would be such a job to hunt one up, or Ah doubt if Ah'd have consented to have those girls come and summer with us." "See har, Sam! Ah bet Ah knows just the woman for you-all, ef you-all ain't lookin' for a young gal with a figger like a wisp of hay." "Polly's wisp enough for one ranch! So Ah'm not looking for style but stock. Do you-all know one, Jim?" "Ah do that! Sary Dodd's her name. You know Bill Dodd, don't yuh--he never 'mounted to much as a rancher." "Seems to me Ah do! The name's familiar, anyway. Did he come from Yellow Jacket Pass way?" asked Mr. Brewster, scratching his neck, thoughtfully. "The same! Wall, he died an' left Sary with nothing but funeral costs. She had to sell that measly ranch that Bill held a quarter interest in to pay bills, and now she hain't got nawthin' but her health. Better see Sary, Sam." It was the dawn of hope for Mr. Brewster. Since starting on his self-appointed search, he had been growing more and more despondent of success. Now he urged his horse towards Yellow Jacket Pass to find Sary Dodd. After seeking at various ranches for the elusive Sary, he located her. But she was not elusive looking. She was six feet in height and would tip the scales easily at two hundred pounds. "Are you widow Dodd? Jim Sattler sent me to see if you-all would like a place to live out? We-all have company for the summer and my wife needs help," explained Sam Brewster. Sary beamed and exchanged polite introductions. "You-all tuk me clar off my feet, Mr. Brewster. Yes, Ah did think some of goin' in a reel good fam'ly to wuk, but nawthin' come up fer me, so Ah'm visitin' the neighbors. Do you-all want me immijit?" The rancher saw that Sary was over-anxious to accept his offer of a place, but he was not the man to take advantage of her in financial matters. So he replied: "Ah s'pose we ought to fix the wage, but Mrs. Brewster wants some one at once, and you-all can settle salary when you-all get there." "Ah've heerd tell what a square man you-all was, Mr. Brewster, an' now Ah knows it!" Suspicious moisture filled Sary's eyes as she spoke. "Ah've won a way by being honest in all my dealings, for it pays in the end. But tell me--can you come along?" "Ef you-all kin wait, Ah'll tie up my bundle in a minit!" agreed Sary, anxiously. "All right! But don't waste any time packing your ball-gowns, Sary," laughed Mr. Brewster, facetiously, as the load of trouble rolled from his heart. Sary was soon perched beside the rancher on the high spring seat of the lumbering ranch-wagon, tenderly holding a half-dead rubber plant. On that drive, her host heard more of every family history of the ranchers for miles around than he had ever dreamed of knowing even if he lived to be a hundred. Sary Dodd arrived at the ranch-house the day before the visitors were expected. Mrs. Brewster and Polly were in the midst of a light house-cleaning as the strangers must not find a speck of dust anywhere! "Maw, here's Sary Dodd! Ah got her to help!" shouted Sam Brewster, pulling up his horse by the side of the porch. "Sary Dodd! Oh, Sary, I'm right glad to see you! Come in, won't you?" greeted Mrs. Brewster, coming to the door. "Just in time, Mrs. Dodd, to help me shove this press in to the spare room," added Polly, arresting her work to smile at the new-comer. "Give Sary time to lay off her bonnet, child!" reproved Mrs. Brewster, pulling out a rocker for the widow. "Laws me! What'cher doin'--a-cleanin' house agin!" cried Sary, leaning against the door-frame panting for breath. "Winded, Sary? Ah told you-all Ah'd carry that heavy box from the wagon. But no!" exclaimed Mr. Brewster. Polly was over by the door by this time, and she stooped to carry the box indoors. "Goodness! What's in the box to make it so heavy?" "Chil', that box hol's all my treasures on arth! Some few things Bill lef me, our fam'iy album, an' my gran'mother's pieces of reel silver--four plated! And mos' of all, the Brittania cake basket Bill gave me on our annerversary!" explained Sary, pathetically, as she dabbed a black cotton glove at her dewy eyes. "Sam, take the team to the barn and leave Sary with us. We'll soon have her feeling at home," said Mrs. Brewster, seeing a frown coming over her lord and master's face, as he wondered if his home-life was to be shadowed by a sorrowing widow! The moment Mr. Brewster left for the barn, his wife returned to the "help," who had plumped herself down into the wooden Boston rocker and was fanning herself vigorously with a newspaper. "Let me remove your bonnet, Sary," offered Mrs. Brewster kindly, taking the twisted black strings to undo the knot that was tightly tied under a heavy double chin. "Ah declar t' goodness, Miss Brewster, ef you-all hain't too good! Ah'll jest set t' git my second wind, an' then Ah'll tek right hol' of things!" gasped Sary. "Don't hurry yourself. Just cool off and then you'll feel better after such a long ride. Shall I send Polly to the spring-house for some cold milk?" asked the lady of the house, folding the flimsy crepe token of Sary's state of widowhood. "G'wan now, Miss Brewster--I'm no infant!" scoffed Sary. "Don' cher know a fat bein' mustn't tech milk 'cause it's more fattenin'?" The hostess refrained from giving her opinion, but she busied herself with unpinning the rusty black plush cape that the widow had donned when she began her journey to new surroundings. Being quite rested by this time, Sary gripped a hold on each arm of the rocker and managed to hoist her bulky form out from the too close embrace of the senseless wooden arms. "Now ef Polly er you-all 'll show me what to bunk, Ah ricken Ah'll change my Sunday-best an' pitch inter work," said the willing help. "Polly, you drag the box in while I show Sary her room," called Mrs. Brewster, coming to the door that opened from the living-room directly into John's chamber--now to be a guest room. CHAPTER IV THE "SERVANT PROBLEM" SOLVED In the wild mountain regions of the Rockies, where maids are unheard of, and the "hotels" provide the most primitive service, the house-wives have little concern over the perplexing question of "help" as experienced in large cities. If it is necessary to assist a neighbor who is marrying off a daughter and wants to provide her with a trousseau, a sewing-bee is arranged and ranchers' families for miles around drive in and visit. Quilts, sheets, and other necessities are quickly stitched and neatly folded out of the way by the women, while the men occupy themselves with work about the place until it is time for the grand dinner. The same neighborly help is offered in other emergencies, so that few families want servants. At the same time, help has not been looked down upon as menial work by the ranchers, and so the "help" lives as a member of the family that happens to secure one. In cases such as Sary Dodd's, where a woman is left penniless and another woman needs her practical aid, the two meet half-way and the kitchen atmosphere is serene. Quite different is the case in cities, however. Sary felt she was the social equal to any rancher's wife, for had she not been mistress of a ranch, too--even though it was never paid for. So she felt she was doing the Brewsters a favor by sharing their home and work, even while she admitted the obligation she was under of being provided with bed and board. The tiny room allotted to the widow was directly back of the kitchen L. It had a single window that gave a fine view of Rainbow Cliffs, but the furniture was of the plainest. Sary took in the simplicity in one glance and then turned to her mistress. "Ah've hear'n tell how Sam Brewster kin buy er sell th' hull township, ef he likes, Miss Brewster," ventured Sary, slyly. But the mistress had heard of Sary's proneness to gossip and so replied: "We don't consider wealth worth anything unless you know what to do with it. We live as comfortably as we like, and try to use what is left in helping others." Sary made no reply to this statement, but watched Mrs. Brewster go to the window and pull on the cord that was stretched at one side of the window-frame. Instantly, the decorated window-shade pulleyed up to allow more light to shine into the room. "Now Ah see how that wu'ks!" cried Sary, delightedly. Mrs. Brewster turned with a questioning look in her eyes. Sary explained. "Cal Lorrimer tol' me like-es-how them winder shades wu'ked but Ah jest coulden' see it." Mrs. Brewster laughed and Sary ventured to pulley the shade herself. She drew it up and down several times and then turned to express her sentiments to her mistress. "My, but yuh're ferchunit t' have all seeh new-fangled idees in the house! It clean locoes me t' think Ah'm livin' wid sech fine contraptions." And Sary pressed her large freckled, hands over her sparse red hair to signify how "locoed" her brain really was. Mrs. Brewster laughed merrily. "Why, Sary, since I left Denver, my friends all have shades in the windows that run up and down on springs without any other help. They go by themselves." "Now, Miss Brewster! Do _you_ believe that fairy-tale?" quizzed Sary, looking keenly at her mistress to see if she was trying to laugh at her ignorance of city-life. "It is a fact, Sary--not a fairy-tale. My friend has them all through her house, and I expect to replace these pulleys with spring rollers, some day." Sary passed her hand over the lustra design on the shade and Mrs. Brewster turned to leave the room. Before she closed the door, she said: "I'm going to start dinner, Sary. When you are ready you can join me in the kitchen." The moment the mistress was gone, Sary ran to make sure the door was securely closed. Then she turned to inspect the belongings of the room. "Huh! the press ain't so much--plain deal painted brown." The press was passed by the scornful occupant of the room, and the bed next came under her appraising eye. "Th' bed's soft wood, too, but it feels comfertible." Sary sat on the bed and bounced up and down to test the springs and mattress before she pulled back the covers to examine the quality of filling in the ticking. "Laws! It hain't corn-husks, a-tall! It's soft as down!" Inborn curiosity compelled her to take a hairpin and rip open a bit of the seam. To her amazement she pulled out a tangle of long whitish hair. "Of all things! And _this_ is what I hev to sleep on!" ejaculated the insulted maid. "Wall, we'll see about that!" The sheets and newly patched quilt were designated as "ornery" but the printed spread, patterned to imitate blue torchon lace, drew a murmur of admiration from the woman. Sary quickly changed her robe of mourning to a calico house-dress and went out, determined to speak her mind about that awful mattress! She never thought such a rich man's house would have so common a thing as "combin's"--even if it was in the "help's" tick! But the wonderful odor of boiling cabbage made her forget her complaint for the time being. She went to the stove and lifted a lid from the large kettle. She sniffed audibly. "Um! Ah loves cabbige soup, Miss Brewster!" "Do you, Sary--so does Mr. Brewster. If you will watch the meat frying, I will blow the horn to call the men to dinner." Mrs. Brewster waited until Sary began thickening the gravy, then she took the horn and stood upon the door-step, blowing it several times. It was then hung back of the kitchen door again. "Polly! Come now, dear, and wash up for dinner," called Mrs. Brewster, standing in the doorway that led to the family living-room. Presently, the family, augmented by Sary, sat down in the kitchen for dinner. Jeb, the hired man, had followed in after his master, and had been introduced to the new help; he now watched her capable hands and arms as she swung the soup-kettle from the stove. "Just a moment, Sary!" whispered Mrs. Brewster, warningly. Sary looked around in surprise and saw the others with bowed heads, waiting for her to get rid of the pot and fold her hands. It took her but half a second to understand and follow the leading. The ranchers of the Rocky Mountains and plains are most orthodox church folk. They would as soon steal or murder as to miss "meetin'," or work on a Sunday. And most of them have regular family prayers and long services at home whenever opportunity offers. Sam Brewster was not one of the latter kind but the longer the grace he said, the better a man he thought he was. In every other way, so liberal and kind, it was not consistent for him to act so narrow-minded regarding religion. Once the grace was said, the host unfolded his napkin and looked to Sary for the soup. The soup-pot had been taken up the second time and was about to be placed in the middle of the table where every one could serve themselves as they wished, but Mrs. Brewster gave her a look and sign that was incomprehensible. She was confused for once in her life. "I'll serve the soup this noon, Sary, and you can pass the plates," remarked Mrs. Brewster, seeing her maid did not understand. And now Sary beheld a new order of things! Soup that was dipped into plates and passed until each member at table had a dish before him. Large white napkins that were not tied about the neck but spread over the lap! How funny it seemed that the small red-flowered squares Sary had been accustomed to when company came were nowhere in evidence. As the meal progressed, Sary's wonderment increased; she failed to hear familiar sounds of eating, nor saw the usual form of plying knife and fork together. Immediately after dinner, Polly led her mother to John's room. "Maw, I'm going to use those new shades I bought for your Christmas gift, and put them at the windows of the girls' room." "Oh, Polly, don't you think plain white ones will look nicer?" quickly replied Mrs. Brewster, as she beheld the pea-green Holland decorated with monster bronze roses and huge butterflies. Polly felt disconcerted for the moment as she realized that her mother's tone implied disapproval of the change. But she would not admit that possibly the white would improve the bed-room. "Why, Maw, you know how much I paid for those shades last Christmas. The man in Oak Creek said they were the grandest ones in Denver!" "Maybe _he_ thought so, Polly, but we must remember that his taste in art has lacked cultivation. Now I prefer pure white shades, or curtains, for a bed-room window," said wise Mrs. Brewster, leaving her daughter to wonder whether she liked pure white for the living-room, also. But Polly had enough human will and stubbornness in her make-up to resist the suggestion offered by her experienced mother. "Well, I'll tell you what we'll do, Maw: I'll just put these lovely shades up till after the girls see them, then we'll change to white. I think it will be best to keep these new and clean for the front room, but I want the city girls to _know_ we've got such expensive things in the house." "Polly dear, that is foolish. I have always tried to teach you otherwise. What matters it, whether you display gorgeous 'feathers' if the thing be false? Simplicity and wisdom are the rarest adornments of a home." "There you go again, Maw, lecturing me with your wise old saws," laughed Polly, jumping upon the chair to fit the shades in place. Mrs. Brewster smiled but said nothing. She knew how soon her child would learn good from bad, once she came in contact with strangers. And so well had the mother grounded her daughter that she had no qualms about the result of any contacts. Mrs. Brewster watched while Polly finished the placing of the dreadful shades, then she looked about at the colored prints tacked upon every available spot of rough plaster-walls. Her brow puckered at the conglomeration of subjects and sizes of the chromos, but she knew how carefully Polly had saved every one of them that had arrived with tea or soap, so she passed no audible judgment. "Oh, Maw! I have another great idea!" cried Polly, jumping from the chair and clapping her hands. "Yes?" "Let's move Daddy's sofa into the bedroom and place it at the foot of the bed, just like the pictures in the _Farm Journal_ show us! Then we won't have to have the single bed brought in from the barn--Anne can sleep on the bed-lounge." "I really think Anne Stewart will prefer a bed, Polly, even if it is small," gasped Mrs. Brewster hastily. "Then we'll change later. It won't take a minute to move the sofa in and it will look so citified to the girls who most likely have divans or sofas in their bedrooms at home." "I think they will like the difference--not having their country bedroom look like the city one. A complete change always is better than a similar environment, especially if the city rooms are more artistically furnished than the result of _our_ efforts." "Now, Maw, don't you want me to surprise them with the sofa John gave Paw and you, long ago? I'm sure they won't hurt it," coaxed Polly. "Oh, I'm not thinking of any damage. I was wondering how Anne would like to sleep on a folding sofa instead of in a bed." "She won't mind; and she'll be glad to see her friends impressed by the bedroom furniture," quickly explained Polly. "Well, then, call Sary to help you shove it in, while I go and find those braided mats we made last winter," said Mrs. Brewster in a tone of resignation. Polly needed no second consent, but ran out to call Sary. The sofa was soon wheeled from the chimney-nook into the bedroom which adjoined the living-room at the back. Once it was placed at the foot of the heavy walnut bed, Polly whipped off the cretonne covering that always hid the hideous plush-carpet upholstery. As the slip-cover came off and revealed the red and green and purple design, Polly glanced at Sary to see the effect made. "Oh, laws! Ah never see'd sech a sofy! Ain't it grand?" breathed Sary, lost in admiration. "Sary, it opens, too!" announced Polly, condescendingly pulling at the strap that moved the spring to turn the half into a low bed. "Well, suhs! What next? Yoh Paw must be a milyonaire, shore!" "No, Sary; John saved his money for selling chickens and a calf, and got this for Paw and Maw, when he went to high school in Denver. Oh, we had an awful time carting it from Oak Creek to Pebbly Pit through all the snow and weather!" explained Polly. Mrs. Brewster laughed at the remembrance but told Polly that she hoped she would keep the cover on the sofa. "You don't mean me to cover up the velvet, do you?" asked Polly, aghast at the suggestion. "Perhaps Anne will sleep better if the flowers are out of sight," remarked Mrs. Brewster, softly, but with amused sarcasm. "You-all mought better do that, Miss Pollee, cuz them colors will git sun-streaked in this bright light," added Sary. "I am not worrying about the fade, Sary, but over the fact that the young teacher and her friends will think we _prefer_ such crude articles of furniture, instead of tolerating them just because my dear children denied themselves to give us pleasure. It is their motive and delight that we all felt in the gifts, more than the objects which showed immature judgment," explained Mrs. Brewster, slowly and thoughtfully. Polly was silenced and she suddenly realized how far she must climb before she knew as much as her mother--even though she studied "Art Notes" in the monthly magazines that reached the ranch. "I wonder if the harsh color Maw speaks of is the real cause of that cretonne cover always being over the sofa?" wondered the girl to herself. But she said nothing and the sofa was left at the foot of the great bed. Mrs. Brewster knew she had said much, so she left the room and beckoned Sary to follow her to the kitchen. Polly silently proceeded with the finishing touches to the room. She hung a painted-framed mirror over the wash-stand. The glass was greenish in hue and wavy in lines, but it looked like a reflector and so it remained in position. An enameled basin and earthen jug did duty for toilet purposes. The plain deal chairs were decorated with crocheted tidies--one tied to the back of each chair. And last, but not least, came the treasure of the Brewster family. It had been preserved in paper wrappings and lavender for many years, and now and then the mistress of the ranch-house removed it and hung it out to keep the folds from turning yellow. "There now! When they see this knitted cotton spread with its raised roses and lilies, those girls will know that we can have wonderful things here as well as there." So saying, Polly spread out the thick white quilt until the large double-bed was smoothly covered. Then she stood back and sighed with gratification at the result of her afternoon's work. "There now! I'll just call Maw before I close up the room," murmured Polly, skipping away to look for Mrs. Brewster. Sary followed closely after the mistress, as Polly led the triumphal march to the guest-chamber. The door was flung open and the ladies asked to admire. "Polly, something told me that you would get the spread out of the chest," declared Mrs. Brewster, patting her daughter gently. "And your god-mother would be so pleased if she were here to see how you honored her work. Some day, these quaint old-fashioned spreads and patch-work quilts will become quite the rage again, and then you will feel proud to show yours. I think Anne will appreciate the endless task such a spread represents." And once more Polly felt that she had not expressed her interior decorating ideals on the same high plane her mother seemed to have reached, but she would not admit having made a mistake, so the crocheted spread remained, even as the green shades and the gay sofa remained, to welcome the city girls to Pebbly Pit. CHAPTER V UNPLEASANT SURPRISES The time set for the meeting of the Maynard girls and Anne Stewart at the Denver Terminal Station came and passed with no sign of the Chicago travelers. Then Mrs. Stewart was seen hurrying down the platform waving a yellow envelope to attract her daughter's attention. Anne was patiently seated on the edge of a truck looking keenly at every one in sight, so she soon saw her mother. The Oak Creek local, that left Denver daily at noon, was getting up enough steam to enable it to make a _regular_ start. Whether it would arrive was a question! Anne hastily tore the telegram open and read it aloud. "Missed train. Don't wait for us. Go on and send machine to meet us to-morrow, same train, at Oak Creek. Explain to Brewsters. Bob." Anne looked at her mother and laughed. "If that isn't Bob all over! Guess her hair wasn't dressed." "Do they think the Brewsters run a limousine, or do they mean a sewing-machine?" asked Mrs. Stewart, guilelessly. Anne laughed again at her mother's innocent expression, but Mrs. Stewart added: "I told you no good would come of transplanting hot-house flowers to an old-fashioned roundel." "I can picture Bob Maynard hiking from Oak Creek Station to Pebbly Pit--most likely she will wear French heeled shoes!" said Anne, and she laughed so merrily that waiting passengers in the dingy cars glanced from the tiny windows and felt better for the contagious laughter. "Oh, my dear! You won't think of making those city girls start training with such a hard lesson, will you?" cried Mrs. Stewart, who understood the reason Mr. Maynard had for this outing. "Bless your dear heart, no! I'll send the wagon for them, but I wondered what would happen in case they _had_ to walk!" "Well, I'm thankful I'm not in Mr. Maynard's shoes when those girls find out what they will have to do _without_ all summer." "Nolla will be in her glory--" began Anne, when the conductor hurried over to the two women. "Going by this train, ladies?" "Good-by, mother. I'll write all about the reception," laughed Anne, hurriedly kissing her mother and giving her a hug. "All aboard!" shouted the brakeman, as the tardy passenger mounted the steep steps and waved her hand at Mrs. Stewart. It was a ride of about seventy miles and Anne thoroughly enjoyed reviewing every landmark as she passed it by. Jeb stood waiting at the little station of Oak Creek, his mouth and eyes wide open as he watched the train pull in--always an exciting time for the farmhand. The cumbersome ranch-wagon, with its high spring-seat, was drawn up beside a telegraph pole to which the skittish young horses had been securely tied. Anne went over to meet Jeb, and said, with a smile: "Were you waiting for some ladies for the Brewsters? I am Anne Stewart, the teacher who used to be at Bear Forks school." "Ya-as'm! How-dee! Hain't you-all got unny more comin'?" "Not to-day. They missed their train and expect to be here on to-morrow's noon-train. What is your name, may I ask?" "Jeb," laconically replied the man, looking about as if he still missed a necessary item for the return trip. "Oh! I guess you want my baggage. It's that small trunk over by the box-car," explained Anne, and Jeb grinned with relief. As he carried the trunk lightly as if it were a stick, Anne remarked: "It's too bad to make you take this trip again to-morrow." "Not so-es you-all kin notice it! To-morrer is pay-day fer the miners, en Oak Crick is a lively town, them times," explained Jeb, winking an eye to show what fun he expected to have next day. "Then it's a lucky thing for you, Jeb, that my friends missed the train to-day." "Jes' so!" chuckled Jeb, as he gathered up the reins and snacked the whip over his horses' heads. Conversation lagged after the start, for the bumping and rumbling of the heavy wagon as it went over rocks and ruts in the rough trail, forced all the breath from the passenger's lungs. The wagon drew up beside the porch of the ranch-house and Anne found the family waiting to receive them. She jumped from her perch and greeted Polly, then smiled at Mr. and Mrs. Brewster as the girl introduced her. Even Sary felt flattered at the kindly greeting accorded her by this pretty school-teacher. "Wh-hy--you are all alone!" gasped Polly. Then Anne explained about the telegram just as her train was about to leave Denver. The looks of blank surprise changed to relief as the family heard the cause of the other two girls' non-appearance. They all entered the house together, delighted with each other. Mrs. Brewster felt that she was going to like this girl. Anne was delighted with the place and everything in connection with it. Even the intense coloring of the sofa or the pea-green shades failed to disturb her peace and repose that night. After the supper dishes had been cleared away, Mrs. Brewster led the way to the wide terrace that stretched from the porch to the descent of the crater. Here the group watched the sunset, and became better acquainted. By bedtime, Mrs. Brewster was of the opinion that any man excepting John, who got Anne Stewart for a wife was very fortunate, indeed! John was still a superior being. The next morning, at breakfast, Mr. Brewster said to Jeb: "Ah have to look after some business in Oak Creek, to-day, Jeb, so you need not drive over for the girls. Ah will stop at the station and look them up." "Mebbe you-all'd better take me to hist the trunks, es Ah am young and hearty," ventured Jeb, anxiously. "You! Why, Jeb, Ah can turn you over with my small finger," laughed Mr. Brewster, comparing his tall muscular frame with that of small slim Jeb's. So Jeb slouched away to look after his master's farm work as well as his own, and as he worked he grumbled and thought of the fun and frolics the "fellers" in Oak Creek were having on their pay-day. At the Denver station, two girls dressed in the latest modes, walked along the platform toward a line of railway coaches. "What dirty-looking cars. Can these be right?" said Barbara Maynard. And the younger girl, Eleanor, replied: "I suppose they burn soft coal." "Well, they shouldn't! Everything we have on will be covered with soot before we reach the town." "That will mean more business for the dry-cleaners at Oak Creek," laughed Eleanor. Had she known that the place could not boast of any kind of a cleaning establishment, she would have laughed louder and longer at the novelty. "I suppose this Oak Creek is the shopping center for all the smaller villages that are within motoring distance of it," surmised Barbara. "I suppose so," agreed Eleanor, as she watched a man oil the wheels under the engine. The man finished the work and straightened up. His face and hands were black from grease and oil and soot, but he smiled a friendly smile at the young ladies who were obviously waiting to board his train. "She's all made up, leddies, ef you-all wants to git in." "Mercy! Does he have to grin as if he were an old friend when he announces the fact?" complained Barbara, daintily picking her way between boxes and bags of freight. "He's a genuine western type," laughed Eleanor, following her sister into the coach. "Goodness gracious! Are we expected to sit on these old dusty plush seats?" cried Barbara, whipping the upholstery with her tiny handkerchief before she seated herself. Again Eleanor laughed but she was not as merry as when she jumped from the Pullman that morning. Quite different were the sensations of the two city girls, to those of Anne Stewart, as they passed over the same route and saw the same country. Perhaps it was the difference in training more than the ideals of the three girls. "Nolla, can all the houses be as horrid as those we have passed by?" asked Barbara, nodding at a group of log-houses. "I don't know, but they certainly are smaller than the homes in Chicago, aren't they?" rejoined Eleanor, gazing in open curiosity at the scenery and buildings so different from that of the city. "Smaller! Why, they are simply _poverty_-stricken in looks!" exclaimed Barbara in disgust. The nearer the train came to Oak Creek, the smaller and rougher the houses seemed, until the guard called out: "Oak Crick! Here's your station!" The girls gazed at each other in consternation, for the place was little more than a rough mining settlement, or ranch-town. The brakeman caught up the leather bags and jumped from the slowing train. He planked them down regardless of contents, and ran off to the station. It was an old discarded box-car shoved on a siding to do duty as ticket-office and freight station. The girls hurried out to the car platform and Barbara asked: "Nolla, why don't you call the porter?" "They never had one on this line!" Then stepping down side-ways from the high narrow steps of the train, Eleanor cried: "Gracious! Do catch me if I fall!" Barbara stared about as a frozen horror slowly crept into her soul and was expressed in her eyes. "Was _this_ the lovely mountain resort for which she had planned such conquests?" Eleanor spied the precious bags too close to the tracks to insure their safety, so she rushed over to save them from disaster--for who could tell whether that shaky old train would hold together much longer! But the Local looked worse than it really was. It was as reliable a set of old cars as could be found, even if the paint and polish had vanished with age. Just as the bags were recovered, the whistle tooted, the wheels grated in turning, and the train that on its return trip to Denver, might have carried these girls back to _their_ kind of civilization, slowly pulled out of sight. Eleanor struggled with the two well-filled bags of toilet accessories, and deposited them before her sister. "Bet you everything is broken, and our house-dresses ruined with perfume!" As Barbara made no reply, Eleanor followed the direction of her stare. A group of dreadful looking miners and a crowd of wild-looking cow-punchers were using seven expensive wardrobe trunks for their pleasure. Evidently the men had indulged in too many tests of Oak Creek whiskey, called "Pizen" by the natives. The cow-boys were picturesque enough in their wide sombreros, woolly chaps, gay shirts, and a swagger that matched their trick of shooting. The miners were swarthy, bearded foreigners, who wore long boots, loose shirts, and belts from which ugly-looking six-shooters protruded. As Eleanor decided to go over to the circle surrounding the trunks, and demand an explanation she heard a hardened miner shout: "It's my deal next!" Then the sisters saw that their largest trunk had been turned over on its side to make a convenient card-table. The others accommodated the players and loungers whose spurred heels beat a tattoo upon the polished grain-leather covers. "Humph! At least we can display original etchings on our trunks when we get them back home," remarked Eleanor, with a gleam of amusement at the affair. "Everything will simply be ruined! Just see that trunk holding my evening-dresses--right by that horse-trough. Do make those awful creatures go away, won't you, Nolla?" begged Barbara. "With those nasty guns sticking from their belts--not me! But I'll go to the office and complain to the baggage-master." So Eleanor courageously turned her back on the fascinating sight of all those revolvers, and Barbara followed closely at her sister's heels; both of them hurried to the old car that displayed a sign saying it was the baggage-room. No one was there, so the girls stood at the door, whence the road leading to the railway could be seen. "If only we knew when the chauffeur would come!" sighed Barbara, but now Eleanor had misgivings about an automobile. Meantime the men had seen the two strangers hovering about but they were not aware that the trunks belonged to the new-comers. When the girls entered the "station" one old rascal leaned over and said: "Them are tenderfeet an' we-all oughter welcome 'em in th' good old-fashioned custom." "Sure thing!" cried the others, and they quickly planned. Eleanor decided it was time to dispossess these ruffians from her property, so she assumed an air of courage and started for the group, while Barbara held firmly to her sister's sleeve. But an unexpected denouement halted the two girls. "Ah say you cheated that deal!" howled a miner, at the same time he slapped his leather gauntlet across a cow-boy's face. Instantly every revolver was whipped forth and a terrible fight ensued, every man taking part in the general melee. The girls, trembling with fear as shots and curses rang out profusely, clung to each other helplessly, but failed to note that the guns were aimed skyward. "Hey, boys--what the deuce do you-all mean?" shouted a fine-looking man coming upon the scene unannounced. The crowd of men looked sheepish and hurriedly explained the joke, looking over in the direction of the two strangers. As their welcome was considered a huge joke the men laughed loudly. Mr. Brewster (for it was the rancher) frowned when he saw the pale girls almost fainting from fear. Then he turned to the ringleader in the plot: "Say, Bill! Was that pesky train from Denver on time--or too soon, for a change?" asked Mr. Brewster, consulting his watch. "It war ten minits too airly, 'cause Hank Janssen, th' ingineer, 's got a christenin' down to his home to-night," explained Bill. "Then those two girls are my company," groaned the rancher, causing a scramble at his words. The cow-punchers whipped off their hats to salute and the miners shuffled behind the daring cow-boys, the better to hide their faces from the "Boss." Mr. Brewster hurried over to reassure the girls that the whole fight had been staged to entertain them. He explained the cause of his not being on hand to meet them, and waving his hand for the cow-boys, he called: "Get busy, boys! Shake those trunks into the wagon." While the men eagerly lent shoulders and muscles to the task expected of them, the three principals in this group made personal notes of each other, albeit not a word was said. "Ah never did see such ridiculous styles as this!" thought Sam Brewster, looking the girls over from top to toe. "This rough man Mr. Brewster! Why, he's a common farmer!" thought Barbara, disdainfully. "I bet Polly's father's a heap of fun!" thought Eleanor. When Mr. Brewster realized there were _seven_ great trunks belonging to two girls, he groaned within himself, wondering what in the world could be found to fill so many! The men were handed cigars, and as they doffed their hats to say "Thank you-all" they backed away to permit the Boss to help the girls up the high wagon-side. Barbara looked at the rough stained hands and said insultingly: "No, thank you!" "Here--let me jump up and pull you in," laughed Eleanor, uncomfortably, seeing that her sister had offended their host. Sam Brewster turned to give his horses a pail of water while the two girls attempted to climb up. But the small steel foot-rest was too high to be reached without a boost from below, so they had to climb, hand over hand, up the great wheel with its spokes clogged with the heavy mud from the trails. When they were finally seated, both girls looked at each other. Fresh natty traveling suits were streaked by the mud, and their gloves--soft chamois-skins--could now be thrown away. Even their faces had been smeared with mud when they slipped and had to clutch at any possible rescue. Naturally, they were not in too amiable a frame of mind for what awaited them at the end of the trip. The high spring-seat was the only one, so Barbara had to sit there. "I simply cannot hold on to this sky-scraper!" complained she testily. "It's the only one, Bob, so you will _have_ to!" replied Eleanor. In another moment, Mr. Brewster climbed up easily and sat beside the strangers. He churked to the horses and drove away in a manner that threatened to hurl the city girls from their earthly perch into kingdom come. "Oh, this is terrible!" groaned Barbara, at an unusually hard bump of the wagon over a rutty road. "Maybe we can sit down on the floor of the wagon where the trunks are?" ventured Eleanor, looking at Mr. Brewster. "Shore--if you-all want to. The senseless trunks make better company than a rough old farmer," replied Mr. Brewster, without the least suspicion of malice in the words. The exchange was made and the girls felt protected by the trunks, so they could take a livelier interest in the ride. As they left the road leading from Oak Creek, the sight of imposing mountains towering in the distance thrilled them in spite of their determination to dislike everything they saw. And the gorgeous hues and beauty of the strange wild-flowers caused exclamations from Eleanor, while Barbara gasped at the vast herds of cattle, grazing, as they roamed over the plains. Finally Mr. Brewster guided the horses away from the wide trail, into the Bear Forks trail that wound in and out, now on the brink of the river's chasm, or again between jagged cliffs. Anon the awed girls gazed down into fearful depths as the wagon skirted the dangerous brink, or craned their necks to look at the wonderful vines and foliage hanging from the tops of massive rocks. By the time they reached the ridge of foot-hills where the trail led off to the cliffs at the Devil's Grave, both sisters were silenced by the impressive scenery, so that petty problems of puny mortals faded into a misty back-ground. Suddenly the trail turned around a group of great rocks and the first glimpse of Rainbow Cliffs could be seen. As the wagon drew nigh the gorge running through the cliffs, Anne Stewart and Polly were found waiting for the visitors. Anne introduced Polly, and Eleanor acknowledged the courtesy, but Barbara rudely failed to notice it as she was so obsessed with the desire to complain about the railroad, the natives of Oak Creek, the trails to Pebbly Pit, and everything connected with the coming. Polly felt dreadfully shy with such unusual-looking girls. Not that their hats had feathers or fine flowers, nor their suits had any expensive trimmings on them, to suggest wealth, but the way they _looked_ in their clothes! What made the difference, she wondered. Had Anne told her the actual cost of those hats and suits, poor Polly would have fainted from shock. Barbara was holding forth on her wrongs. "I can't see for the life of me, Anne, why you selected such an outlandish spot as this, for us, in which to waste a precious summer. Why, it is simply _unbearable_--nothing but mountains and trails in sight! And no one but just farmers to associate with! Oh, oh!" The accent on "farmers" made Polly wince and Eleanor frown, at the speaker. Anne hastened to change the subject for she feared Mr. Brewster might turn his horses and take them all back to Oak Creek station. It was a duel of dialogue between Anne and Barbara after that, each one trying to keep up a conversation they wished to down the other with. Thus the wagon reached the porch. Polly sprang out and ran indoors unnoticed by any one. Eleanor was deeply interested in gazing out at the great crater bowl that formed the pasture and farm-lands of Pebbly Pit. Anne was anxious to have her charges make a good impression on Mrs. Brewster and so she jumped out and held a hand to assist Barbara. The lady of the house stood waiting to welcome the girls, when Sary ran out from the kitchen, hurriedly drying her wet hands on an apron. She fully expected to shake hands with the fine ladies, when her turn came to be introduced. She stood directly back of her mistress peering eagerly at the new-comers in their simple straw hats, severe cloth suits, and shoes, gloves, and veils of the finest. Before Anne Stewart could open her lips to introduce the girls, Barbara sent a scornful glance over the group and then at the ranch-house, and said: "What a barracks! It's nothing more than a log cabin on a gigantic scale." "Oh, I think it is great! Just like the wonderful cabins we read about in the Adirondacks, or other large camp-sites," quickly added Eleanor. "But this is not a camp, my poor little sister! And we haven't the same set either, as we would have had at a fashionable camp," sneered Barbara. "You needn't 'poor me,' Bob! I'm just crazy over the farm and--and everything. Hurry up, Anne, and introduce me so I can get acquainted," cried Eleanor, nudging the teacher to remind her of her duty. Mr. Brewster had driven the team to a post a little farther up the road, and was not present when the introductions took place. Mrs. Brewster summoned a pleasant smile for Barbara, and a motherly pat on the shoulder for Eleanor. Then Sary stepped forward to be introduced, as it was customary for her to be treated as a member of the family. "Glad t' know you-all!" simpered Sary, bowing stiffly and offering her reddened hand to shake the gloved ones of the girls. Barbara completely ignored the par-boiled digits and slightly lifted one eyebrow at Sary. Eleanor felt so humiliated at her sister's actions that she came forward to make amends but Sary would have none of it. When Barbara gave her a frozen look, Sary examined her hands for a moment, then humped her shoulders and stamped back to the kitchen-range where she had been boiling soap-fat and straining out the scum before the arrival of the city misses. "Anne, would your friends like to refresh themselves in the bedroom?" asked Mrs. Brewster to break the embarrassed silence. "Oh, yes, of course!" replied Anne, anxiously turning to Barbara. Eleanor took the initiative of going toward the door. "I never saw such a darling bungalow! I just love everything spread out on the ground floor. No stairs and no elevators--Oh, how nice!" "It is a change from your brown-stone mansions, isn't it?" replied Mrs. Brewster, smiling at the concerned face. "To me it is the most awful place! I don't suppose you have baths, or electric light, or telephone service?" said Barbara. "Now you see here, Barbara Maynard! You've got to stop this whimpering or I'll wire Daddy to make you go home! I just won't have my whole summer spoiled by your complaints!" cried Eleanor, angrily, and stamping her foot to emphasize her words. "I hope you didn't expect me to _stay_ here, did you?" demanded Barbara. "I hope you won't--that's all I've got to say! Come on, Anne, and show me the place. Where's Polly gone?" said Eleanor. Polly was found in the large living-room, looking the picture of disappointment. Anne understood how she must have felt, so she diverted the attention of the newcomers to the great yawning fire-place that could hold several tree-trunks at one time. "And do you know, Nolla, every bit of wood in this house was hewn and carted here by Mr. Brewster? You see the government allows settlers just so much timber with which to construct a home and barns. There is a county sawmill to saw and trim logs and then the owner has to cart them himself. Naturally, one hasn't time to carve fancy _ideals_ in the wood one uses for the house. And having it sent from Denver, or other large cities where labor is to be had, is also out of the question. The freight costs, and the long haul from Oak Creek to the Pit presents difficulties not to be overcome. So folks build homes as solid and strong as they can, and leave the trimmings for a future generation." Anne explained all this for Barbara's benefit, and Mrs. Brewster smiled her gratitude to the girl. Eleanor seemed more impressed than ever after she heard of the time and labor it must have taken to construct such a house as the Brewster ranch boasted; and Barbara was taken back, as she had not thought of such things, but she pretended not to care. [Illustration with caption: Barbara completely ignored Sary.] CHAPTER VI THE HARROWING DETAILS "Now, girls, come and see the guest-room Polly prepared for us. You know she is going to study interior decorating when she grows up--aren't you, Polly?" said Anne, placing an arm protectingly about the girl's shoulders and moving towards the chamber. Polly brightened up at once, for she remembered the sofa that Anne had praised as having made a fine bed, and then there were the gorgeous bronzed shades that darkened the windows! Polly stood at the head of the sofa watching eagerly for the effect of the decorating on the city visitors. Barbara stared at first in utter unbelief that her room could be so barren of comfort, then she turned and frowned darkly as the truth impressed her. "Why! There's nothing here--only an old bed, and a painted set of drawers such as our servants would fling out of the room!" Then she caught a twisted reflection of her face in the green mirror. It was too much! She threw herself upon the sofa and laughed hysterically. Eleanor wondered at her sister's discordant mirth but when she looked in the direction Barbara's eyes were turned, she saw the cause. "Verily, Anne, 'pride goeth before a fall'--Poor Bob!" said Eleanor, cynically. Anne could not hide a smile at the words but tried to smooth matters out by going to the window and speaking of the view. "I've had landscape enough for one day, Anne, and could recover somewhat, if I had an opportunity, without having a family party about," retorted Barbara, meaningly. Instantly, Mrs. Brewster turned and beckoned Polly to follow her from the room. The moment the door closed upon the hostess and her daughter, Barbara anticipated her friend's reproach. "Anne, where were your brains when you recommended this awful place to father?" "I had nothing to do with recommending it, Bob. Your father already knew of it and merely asked me to write Polly--my little pupil of a few years ago." "But why didn't you tell _me_ what to expect?" demanded the angry girl. "Simply because I was asked not to mention any particulars that might prejudice you; and besides, you never asked me anything!" retorted Anne, feeling impatient with Barbara. "What's more, Bob, I can't see any justice in making the poor Brewsters suffer for what your own father did! But I'm glad he sent us here--it is great!" declared Eleanor. "Naturally, you find your level in a common country home and family!" said Barbara in an unpleasant voice. "Words never killed any one, Bob, so keep it up if it makes you feel better. I'm used to your complaints," laughed Eleanor. "And allow me to add, Bob, that the Brewsters are _not_ common farmers. Mrs. Brewster had a better education and has more sense than any woman--other than my mother--that I know; and Mr. Brewster is a fine man respected by every one that knows him. Even the government admires his intelligence and worth, and employs him in cases where they need expert agricultural advice and reports!" Anne spoke with frankness and warmth. "The government employs all sorts of men in its need, but that doesn't say the man is a gentleman, nor does it make his wife a lady. _Our_ mother is a lady and goes in the very best society in Chicago!" said Barbara. "Society does not make the lady, but the lady makes society. Mrs. Brewster could form the most exclusive set in Chicago if she cared for that sort of thing!" came from Anne, curtly. "But it would take money, my dear--a farmer couldn't afford an exclusive set!" jeered Barbara. "If that is the case, the Brewsters could ride on Chicago society's very crest! But they never brag about their money!" laughed Anne, sarcastically. Barbara's breath was suddenly taken away by this news but she recovered enough to say maliciously: "Oh, I see! That is why you take such a deep interest in John!" "Barbara Maynard! you--you--if you dare say another word like that to Anne, I'll--I'll just pull your hair, so there!" cried Eleanor, running to Anne and throwing her arms around her neck. Barbara felt ashamed of her words but she was too proud to confess it. So she tried to excuse herself by saying: "Of course, one can't be expected to fall right in with folks one never heard of before. Anne and you fancy a rural existence, so you naturally defend everything that goes with it. But I shall return home to-morrow on the very first train!" "There is only one out a day, and you'll have to ask a favor of the farmer before you can get to Oak Creek station!" added Anne, with a bit of triumph in her tone. Having relieved her heart of some of its bitterness, Anne felt sorry for Barbara, so she endeavored to change the current of their thoughts. She went to the window to raise the shade as far as it would go, and was struck with the wonderful sunset sky. "Oh, girls! Come here and look at that glory!" Eleanor rushed over, followed by Barbara who never wanted to miss anything good. All irritation was forgotten and healed as they stood gazing raptly at the beautiful view. The cliffs looked as if volcanic fires were again burning within their hearts, and the mist from the valley crept up to form an illusion of smoke rising from the sharply outlined peaks. A purple haze enveloped the mountains and the dusky-red streaks in the sky perfected the appearance of a vast eternal fire consuming the earth. The sight had a salutary effect on the girls, and when they turned from the window, it was with the old friendship restored. But Barbara was of a complaining nature and must have something to find fault with. This time it found innocent objects to bear the grumbling. "Where are we expected to sleep? Both in the same bed?" "Of course! Isn't it big enough? Why, I never saw such a wide bed; it's large enough to hold a dozen of us," said Eleanor. "Where is your room, Anne?" Barbara asked, ignoring her sister's remark. "I sleep here on the sofa," admitted Anne, fearing another scene. "Sofa--impossible!" exclaimed Barbara. "It is a bed-lounge, you know. It opens into the nicest bed!" explained Anne, taking hold of the loop that was partly hidden in the deep crease formed by the meeting of the seat and back. "Watch me! I give a hard tug and presto! the upper half of the seat swings open and turns over like this. There we have a wide bed with ready-made mattress and all that goes to form a comfortable resting place." Anne demonstrated her words and the city girls saw a low bed opened before their wondering eyes. The pillows and bedding were neatly folded and kept in a long shallow drawer under the sofa. "How awful--to sleep on that!" cried Barbara. "It looks like great fun! May I sleep here, Anne?" said Eleanor. "Indeed you shall not! You will sleep with _me!"_ snapped Barbara. Then turning to Anne again, she added: "Where are the wardrobes?" "Those curtains hide the shelves we will use. You will find nails driven into the board against the wall." "What! hang our expensive clothes on these common nails!--With only a calico drapery to protect them!" gasped Barbara. "Leave your expensive clothes in the trunks, then. I am," laughed Eleanor. "Nolla, I will need all of this one for myself; Anne and you will have to share the other one between you," remarked Barbara. "I thought you were leaving on the early train to-morrow?" teased Eleanor, quickly. To avoid another quarrel, Anne hastily said: "Oh, I forgot about the trunks. What shall I tell Mr. Brewster?" "Tell him anything you like about Nolla's, but leave mine where the man can pick them up readily, to-morrow, when I leave," returned Barbara, in a nonchalant manner. "How about the price of the ticket to Chicago? You know we haven't more than a dollar between us?" suggested Eleanor, dryly. Barbara had evidently forgotten the fact, but she was equal to the emergency. "I'll telegraph to the bank, the first thing in the morning, and have them wire me the money." During this animated argument in the guest-chamber, a family gathering formed on the porch of the house. "Mary, what shall we do with those seven huge trunks?" asked Mr. Brewster, quizzically watching Polly. "Seven! Why, Paw!" exclaimed Polly, instantly picturing the wonderful things those trunks held. Creations such as she had pored over in the "Farm Journal Fashion Notes." "I don't know, Sam, unless we leave them in the wagon until the girls decide what they wish done with them?" replied Mrs. Brewster. Sary overheard the conversation and now ran out to see whether there really could be seven trunks! "Laws me! Ah never see'd sech quare-shaped trunks--all bulgy at one side, and all them brass locks!" "They are wardrobe trunks, Sary," remarked Mrs. Brewster. Sary deigned no reply to the information but vented a bit of her ire against the new-comers by shrugging her great shoulders and saying: "Ef Ah w'ar you-all, Miss Brewster, Ah'd shore pitch them trunks clar over th' line inta Wyomin' state whar th' Injuns kin scramble fer th' fancy duds!" "Oh, Sary, I smell the cherry-dumplings scorching!" cried Mrs. Brewster, suddenly, knowing the quickest way to rid herself of Sary. Anne Stewart now came out and saw the group looking at the wagon. "The girls won't bother to unpack to-night, Mr. Brewster, so we may as well leave the trunks in the wagon and take them to the barn." Jeb was sent to the barn with the wagon and contents, and Mr. Brewster retired to the lean-to back of the kitchen where he washed his face and hands in a tin basin. He had dried his hair and face, when Sary called to her mistress that the meal was ready. Polly and her mother added the last touches to the table, when Mr. Brewster came to the door saying: "Well, Ah'm ready, Maw!" "Run and call the girls, Polly; I think Anne went to tell them about the trunks," said Mrs. Brewster. Unwillingly, Polly obeyed and rapped on the door. "Supper's waiting." While Polly was absent on her errand, Jeb came into the kitchen, took a home-spun towel from its peg on the back of the door, and his hair-brush from a small cabinet in the corner. With these toilet articles he went out again to the lean-to where the crude oak bench held the basin and soap. The pump was nearby, and Jeb filled the basin quickly and proceeded to immerse his whole head. Unfortunately, at the moment the city maidens reached the kitchen door leading from the living-room, Jeb was guggling loudly. Then he stood up and snorted as he shook his mane free from the streaming water. Eleanor turned toward Anne with a smile of amusement on her face, but Barbara expressed her disgust with an emphatic "Ugh!" Polly saw and heard, but failed to understand, as she had been gradually accustomed to Jeb and his uncouth ways. But Mrs. Brewster comprehended the shock it must have been to the city girls and tried to cover the unfortunate incident. "Anne, will you seat your friends at that side of the table? Polly and I will sit on this side. Mr. Brewster always sits at the head, you know, and I leave the other end for Sary as it is nearest the stove where she can reach it without walking so far." Jeb came in and immediately pulled out a chair and sat down in his accustomed place, regardless of the standing ladies. Barbara looked on in amazement but said nothing. She was past words! As they all sat down, Eleanor happened to catch her sister's eye and expression, and turned suddenly to Anne. Anne, too, had seen the horror on Barbara's face as Jeb reached over the table for a spoon Sary had forgotten to place beside his plate. Eleanor raised the napkin to hide her laughing face, but Mr. Brewster construed the act to be one of reverence, and he approved of such tendencies in the young. Consequently, he hastened to say grace. Barbara sat stiff-necked throughout the lengthy prayer because she felt so rebellious at everything and with everything, that she wouldn't pay heed to the usual courtesy at prayer-time. The moment Mr. Brewster said "Amen," Sary carried the large soup-pot from the stove and was about to ladle the soup into the bowls when Barbara said icily: "None for me, thank you!" Jeb was tying his napkin about his neck, but at such a surprising refusal he gaped at the stranger. However, the fact that his own soup-plate was now placed before him ended the speechless shock. He began eating at once, and the three boarders watched him scoop up the liquid as if his life depended upon finishing the work. The amount of noise he made while accomplishing the feat was a revelation to the Maynard girls and mortifying to Mrs. Brewster. Sary concluded her serving and sat down to enjoy her own meal. She used the blade of her knife as a shovel and the fork-prongs as a pick. When she was not spearing or loading food upon either, she was using the silver as an eloquent means of expressing her conversation--which was voluble. The moment supper ended, Mr. Brewster remarked: "The trunks are safe in the barn. Whenever you need them you can tell Jeb, and he will see that they are carried in for you." "Thank you, but I shall have them taken back to Oak Creek to-morrow as I have no idea of remaining to spoil my summer," returned Barbara haughtily. Mr. Brewster made no reply but excused himself and went out to the wide steps of the front porch where he sat down to watch the peaceful twilight as it crept slowly over the mountain peaks. Here, the rest of the family soon joined him, and the wonderful western night, as the brilliant stars sparkled seemingly so near to earth, had its soothing effect on the perturbed hearts and minds of all present. When Mrs. Brewster finally mentioned that it was bed-time the individuals in the group felt more amiably disposed towards each other. Anne Stewart was awake bright and early in the morning and, finding the sisters sleeping soundly, crept out to enjoy the invigorating breezes blowing down from the mountain-peaks. Some time later, Eleanor sat up and rubbed her eyes, at a loss to remember where she was. After a moment, however, she saw the sofa and laughed merrily. "Oh, won't you be quiet! What is the matter with you?" complained Barbara, sleepily. "Nothing--I feel so alive! Get up and hear the birds sing," replied Eleanor, springing out of bed and running over to the window. "Oh, Bob! Look at the dazzling mountain-peaks, over there! I suppose these cool breezes come straight from those ice-tops," exclaimed Eleanor. "I may as well get up or you'll cause a riot of noise," answered Barbara, querulously. "Of course I will. I slept so well that I could dance on a trapeze just now. How did you sleep?" "Why--what does it matter to you?" countered Barbara peevishly. "Matter? Why, that bed removes one of the obstacles to your remaining here," laughed Eleanor, triumphantly. Barbara would not admit that she had never slept better nor would she prevaricate, so she merely said: "I am going to Oak Creek the moment we finish breakfast and wire father's bank for money." "Might as well find out, first, if you can use the team and wagon. Jeb only goes to town when anything has to be had here or shipped away by train. A trip of twelve miles is not a trifle every day in the week," remarked Eleanor. "I'll ride a horse to Oak Creek myself. I'll not stand this awful place another day!" declared Barbara. "You can't ride a horse without its owner's permission." "Besides," added Eleanor as an afterthought occurred to her, "you only have your new traveling suit and the little light summer frock here. The trunks are going back to Oak Creek to-day, you said, and your riding habit is in one of them." Barbara made no reply to this statement and Eleanor drew on her stockings and then sought for her shoes which she had playfully aimed at Anne Stewart the night previous. One was found by the bureau and the other was seen under the window. She ran over to pick up the one by the window. "Oh, Bob! Come here quick!" "What is it?" cried Barbara, hastily running over to join her sister. "My! The sun has just touched those snow-covered peaks! I never saw anything so dazzlingly beautiful!" sighed Eleanor, lost in contemplation of the sight. Barbara also stood watching the sun-beams glancing over the towering peaks, and then she said apologetically: "I never said the _scenery_ wasn't wonderful. It is! But one cannot thrive on mountains, or associate with views." "Still, it goes a long way towards creating environment, while the atmosphere and friendships are up to the individual," retorted Eleanor. "Oh, well, you have the knack of making friends with any one, but I am more reserved and ideal in nature, so I simply cannot accommodate myself to such people and places as this!" "No, but you can accommodate yourself to some empty-headed society youth who hangs over your hotel-piazza chair and tells foolish fibs to feed your vanity!" scorned Eleanor. Another sisterly scene might have ensued had not Anne entered the room at this critical time. "Girls, better hurry and finish dressing as breakfast is almost ready to serve," said she, after a pleasant morning greeting. "How long have you been up?" asked Barbara. "Oh, an hour or more. I succeeded in working out a scheme I had to make things pleasanter for every one, and I want you to hurry and approve of it." CHAPTER VII A LITTLE SCHEME THAT WORKED Anne lay with closed eyes for a long time revolving many plans for the ultimate harmony of that summer, and when she finally allowed herself to sleep, she had a scheme that she was going to try the next day. As she came from her room early in the morning, she spied Polly sitting disconsolately on the porch-steps. She went over and sat down beside her. "Polly, I cannot blame you for wishing we had never come, but now that we are here, let us see if we cannot make something out of the tangle of disappointments. Eleanor will love the place at once, as she is so much like you in nature, dear, but Bob always grumbles over things at first. No matter where or what it is, she feels that she is not showing her superiority if she is not condemning what she comes in contact with. It really is a disease, Polly, and I have tried to cure her of it this last year. I am hoping for great things for her during this season, but I feel that I must confide in you to let you know just what the trouble is. Bob will make a fine woman if this hateful tendency is uprooted in time." Polly smiled wanly, and Anne, wise young teacher, changed the subject then. "What a pity one has to waste such glorious views and delightful weather while sitting at breakfast in the kitchen!" "Where would you eat it?" laughed Polly, looking with amusement at her companion. "Why, under that lovely group of oaks, to be sure," replied the teacher, pointing at the trees that shaded the well-kept grass plot and flower-beds at the side of the house. "Under the trees!" "Certainly; what do you suppose they were grown for if not for our uplift and joy?" "Why, Miss Stewart, how funny of you! Who ever heard of having meals out-of-doors--except at picnics," laughed Polly. "Every one who can now prefers out-of-doors to a stuffy room on summer days," replied Anne, calmly, but watching the effect of her words. Satisfied with Polly's expression, she added: "Didn't you ever read about the garden parties of society people, and the present-day trend to live on wide porches and out-of-doors at every opportunity? Your magazines ought to be full of such accounts." "Oh, yes, in magazines, but I never dreamed it was true. I've studied every plan and picture I've seen in the magazines, and I loved to picture the beautiful places and furnishings they speak of." Anne had heard from Polly's brother John, how his sister studied every item on decorating that could be found in papers or periodicals. But Anne did not know that Polly really had a latent talent in this line nor how ambitious she was to express art and beauty in the home. "That is what I'd like to try here. Have our meals out under those trees. It won't make much extra work as the spot is very convenient to the kitchen door, but we will avoid the heat and steam from the stove and cooking, and have much more room, too." "I don't suppose it makes much difference where we eat as long as we get it over with as soon as possible," returned Polly. "That's just the trouble with most people. They merely eat because they feel they have to, but they never stop to make of the habit an opportunity to improve themselves and enjoy a social meeting with each other. We may as well be Zulus and eat with our fingers. Maybe the Zulus would prove more ideal for their home teachings than we really are." Polly laughed again at Anne's words, but the latter added: "It's true, Polly. How many people trouble themselves to eat politely, and act or talk from the highest motives? The Zulus follow traditional customs. If we did we would follow the refined court manners of our English and Dutch ancestors. Instead, we are in such haste to eat and get back to the business of making money, that we lose all the pleasure along the way there." Polly listened anxiously and understood that Anne was gently criticizing what she saw and heard in the kitchen the night before. Anne watched Polly's face and knew she comprehended, then she continued: "If we have breakfast in the open air it will be much cooler for every one, and Sary need not stop her routine work on account of our being in her way in the kitchen. If we help and wait on ourselves Sary need not be delayed by our tardiness in appearing at table." "Miss Stewart, I think you're right. And one good thing about eating out here is that we won't feel crowded together with nothing to look at but each other. At least we have the mountains, if we make the oak-trees our new dining-room." Anne laughed at the manner of Polly's approval and said: "Yes, Polly, the mountains are great and wonderful and so silent, besides." "Let's go now and ask Maw what she thinks of the plan." "In a moment, Polly. You know I am anxious to help you in every way, and to teach you if you express yourself poorly?" "Yes; that's the only good thing about this awful visit," admitted the girl. "Then allow me to correct an error in speech. If you wish to go to Denver High this fall, I want you to use refined expressions." Anne looked at her companion and smiled kindly, and Polly said: "Oh, I'll be so glad to correct any mistakes. Tell me what?" "Just now you called your mother 'Maw.' And I have heard you call your father 'Paw.' They are western terms, but they are not considered correct or refined, elsewhere. The name of Father or Mother is a term of respect and loving reverence from the children. I would like to have you accustom yourself to the use of these titles for your parents and see how the very sound of it will cause you to _feel_ more affection." Polly weighed this news thoughtfully but she was surprised at the information that her customary "Maw" and "Paw" were not the most desirable terms to use. She knew that Anne Stewart knew better than she what was the proper manner of speech and she thanked her for her interest in helping her. "Then another thing I want you to do, Polly, is that you call me 'Anne.' I am to be with you as one of the family all this summer, and the 'Miss' is too formal for members in the same family. I want to ask this favor of your mother and father too. If you were to use Eleanor's and Barbara's first names for them as I do, I think they would feel more at home." "Oh, Miss--I mean Anne, I will love to call you that, but I never _could_ have courage enough to call that proud girl by the name of 'Bob'!" declared Polly. Anne laughed and patted her apt pupil on the head, then she said, "Shall we go in search of your mother and ask about the breakfast table?" Polly jumped up and led the way to the kitchen door where Sary was hard at work. "Sary, can you tell us where my mother is?" asked Polly. "Your maw's just went to th' buttery to skim the milk," said she, giving Polly an opportunity to compare the two terms. As the two girls went toward the buttery, Polly admitted: "Anne, it does make a difference, I think." Anne nodded brightly and opened the creamery-door. Mrs. Brewster stood with skimmer in hand, taking the rich cream from the pans of milk. She looked up with a welcoming smile as the two girls came in. "Mother, Anne's been giving me 'first aid' in manners," laughed Polly, watching her mother's expression keenly. "In which line, dear; there are several you can improve in," rejoined Mrs. Brewster, with a loving little laugh. "Didn't you hear me? I have improved upon your name." "I noticed it, but I wanted to make sure it was intentional and not a mistake." "Tell me--do you like it?" asked Polly, eagerly. "Indeed I do, dear; I never could abide that name of 'Maw' and 'Paw' that is common with the ranchers." "Then why didn't you tell me this long ago! Oh, mother!" "If I corrected you, and the other children at school heard you use different terms from those they were accustomed to, they would think you 'proud' and 'too good for a rancher.' I have heard that criticism so often, that I have given up trying to better conditions or express my own desires in anything that an illiterate and inexperienced neighbor may find fault with. I just accept things as they are, now, but hope for better things for my children." This was a new light on her mother, and Polly felt subdued by it. She wondered if her mother would have been any different if she had been in Mrs. Maynard's place. "You see," continued Mrs. Brewster, turning to Anne, "one so gets to dread the free speech and narrow-minded opinions of some ranchers that one forbears in _everything_, rather than have strife and ill-will from those one must meet at times." Anne nodded. "But sometimes it is better to take the risk of offending the whole community if one finally wins out." Mrs. Brewster looked approvingly at the girl, and Polly changed the conversation by saying: "Mother, Anne and I have a plan that will surprise you." Mrs. Brewster smiled encouragingly for the girls to speak. "It's just this: we think it will be lovely to move the table out under the trees. There the air and view can be enjoyed and afford us ample subjects for conversation," explained Anne. "Anne, splendid! After my experience of last night I would hail any change. But this is really good. I never thought of it myself," replied Mrs. Brewster, with relief. On their walk to the kitchen, they planned to remove the table and chairs; then Mrs. Brewster added: "My husband breakfasted an hour ago but said he would be back when we sat down for coffee. He enjoys a second cup at his leisure. And I'm quite sure Sary gave Jeb his breakfast after I left the kitchen, so that gives us a clear start for the first meal to-day." Sary was found upon her knees before the kitchen range, polishing the nickel name-plate on the oven door. A dish-pan of hot water and a scrubbing brush stood upon the floor beside her. As Mrs. Brewster came in, Sary glanced up impatiently. "Ah de'clar t' goodness! Ah wish you-all'd eat that brekfus an' vamoose outen my way. Ah hes t' scrub this hull floor soon ez th' stove's shined!" "That's exactly why I came in, Sary--to get breakfast out of your way," returned Mrs. Brewster, sending a swift glance at Polly and Anne. As Sary's words made way for their work, all fell to with a vim. Polly and Anne carried dishes and chairs out of the room, while Mrs. Brewster whisked off the cloth and asked the maid to help her carry the table out under the trees. No reply came from Sary, and the mistress turned to see why she did not come to assist. The ludicrous expression on the widow's face, as she sat bolt upright with her blackened hands raised heavenward in silent protest, made Mrs. Brewster laugh. "What's the matter, Sary?" "Yore a clar case o' bein' locoed!" gasped the help. "Not at all, but you want to scrub the floor, don't you?" "Ah don't need th' furnishin's taken out fer that!" "But we want to eat, you see, and under the trees we'll be quite out of your way. Here, Anne, help me with the table, will you, please?" said Mrs. Brewster, with finality. The table was firmly placed under the trees and the cloth relaid. Then the willowware dishes and old Tuttle silver were arranged by Anne, while Polly watched eagerly. "I do believe those old blue dishes look ten times as nice out here as in the kitchen!" declared Polly, while Anne placed a few wild flowers on the center of the table. "Merely the effect of your mental testimony, Polly. In the kitchen, with steam, working utensils, and crowed sense of room, everything takes on a sordid look and feeling. But out in God's sunshine and fresh air, everything looks and feels better. That is why sun and air are the best physician for any ill," explained Anne. Mrs. Brewster heard, and watched Anne with a bright smile, as the sentiment of the words were exactly what she ofttimes thought. When the three returned to the kitchen to take the biscuits and other breakfast food out, Sary stood with head thrown back and body rocking back and forth as she laughed immoderately. "Do tell, Mis' Brewster! You-all bean't goin' t' _eat_ out thar, now be yuh?" "Why, of course!" retorted Polly. "Why shouldn't we?" asked Mrs. Brewster. Sary could not explain, so she turned to the stove while mumbling to herself the doubts she had over the sanity of the women-folks of this queer family--excepting herself of course! Anne had gone to the guest-room to call the girls, and to her relief, found them both dressed and ready for breakfast. "It's a lovely morning," said she, in greeting to them. "Yes, I've been sniffing the sweetness at the open window," replied Eleanor, but Barbara stood unresponsive. Anne noticed the simple-looking house-frocks they wore, and felt relieved at the simplicity of color and lines, although she knew that the name-tag inside of those dresses spoke silently of their cost. "We're going to breakfast out on the lawn--it is perfectly charming there," explained Anne, leading the way from the living-room by way of the front door in order to avoid Sary and her scrub-pail. But Sary had been anxiously peeping from the crack of the kitchen door, and felt mortally offended when the company went out by the front way. "Was it not enough that the folks were too far removed from the kitchen to permit Sary to overhear what was said at table, but now they have to walk out at the Sunday door?" So thought the widow as she left her peep-hole back of the door and stood watching from the open window by the cupboard. Every one seemed in a pleasanter mood than that of the previous evening, and as breakfast advanced, Eleanor went so far as to ask her sister to remain at the ranch a few days, at least. And Barbara, although she would not admit it, knew the bed was exceptionally good and the breakfast most enjoyable, while the air and scenery were simply wonderful! When Mr. Brewster came along the path leading from the barn, he stood near a lilac bush for a few moments watching the pretty group under the trees. But he couldn't understand having breakfast outside the usual place--the kitchen! "Is this a picnic?" asked he, at length, coming forward. "Good morning, Paw--Father! Isn't this fun?" cried Polly. Mrs. Brewster and Anne exchanged glances at Polly's error and correction, but Sam Brewster failed to notice the new term. He bowed to the three guests and smilingly took the chair his wife placed for him at the table. While Mrs. Brewster poured his coffee, she remarked: "This is Polly's and Anne's idea. Isn't it sensible--and much pleasanter than in the stuffy kitchen?" He nodded approval and Polly felt satisfied. Then as her father sipped his fragrant coffee, she said: "Anne was just saying that I ought to show them the Rainbow Cliffs after breakfast." "It's so clear to-day Ah wouldn't be surprised but what you-all will see Pagoda Peak and Grizzly Slide from the Cliffs, Polly," added Mr. Brewster. "If we can, they'll like it; it's a wonderful sight, Anne, with the sun shining on the snow-capped crests," explained Polly. "And then you can take them over there some day, Polly. A good lunch can be packed into Choko's panniers, and with sure-footed horses the ride will be most delightful," added Mrs. Brewster. "Maw, you can go, too. You agreed to take things easy, you know," reminded her husband. "Oh, Sam! Riding over the Flat Top Mountains would be the hardest work for me, these days!" laughed Mrs. Brewster. "Pshaw now! You used to ride better than any cow-boy in these parts, and you can't tell me those days are past," argued Mr. Brewster, dropping the habit of using western terms in his eagerness. "I've heard of Mrs. Brewster's famous riding," now chimed in Anne. "She can ride better'n Pa--Father, or any one I ever saw!" Polly maintained. Mrs. Brewster shook her head in a vain effort to discourage such praise, then she turned to the Maynard girls, saying: "Do you understand western horses? They are rather difficult at times, you know." "We ride daily when in Chicago," said Barbara, boastfully. "But city horses are mere nags, Bob. These half-wild animals accustomed to roaming the plains, are something worth while, you will find," laughed Anne. "I'd advise your going to the corral and having Jeb try out the horses for you, before you undertake any long jaunt," suggested Mrs. Brewster. "We can visit the Cliffs this morning, and try riding this afternoon," added Polly eagerly. "Then Bob and I will have to get our habits from one of the trunks in the barn," said Eleanor. "Bob and you run along and do that while Polly and I make the beds and clear away the breakfast," ventured Anne, looking at Mrs. Brewster. Barbara seemed as interested as any one. So Barbara and Eleanor followed Mr. Brewster to the barn to point out the trunk they wanted to open, while Polly cleared the table and Mrs. Brewster went with Anne to make the beds. As they worked in the guest-room, they exchanged confidences about the two visitors. "It seems the lovely morning has had a salutary effect on Barbara's feelings regarding Pebbly Pit," ventured Anne. "I hope so," replied Mrs. Brewster, diffidently. "You see, Eleanor is broad-minded--more like her father, but Bob takes too much after her mother to adapt herself readily to such a radical change as a ranch," continued Anne, apologetically. "Eleanor appears to be a nice girl." "Bob will shortly be as satisfied as Nolla, but she just can't let go of herself and her foolish training in a minute. If we have a few pleasant outings to show her how really wonderful the country is, she will open out in her natural sweet self." "It certainly isn't a pleasant surprise, to expect a modern fashionable Summer Resort and then find a forgotten nook in the pit of an extinct volcano," laughed Mrs. Brewster, humorously. "Yes, Bob was terribly upset last night. I fancy she was regretting those seven trunks filled with expensive clothes," added Anne, smiling at the remembrance. "I can't but wonder that such a sensible girl as you seem to be, can be so fond of a girl so different from you in every way," remarked Mrs. Brewster, looking Anne in the eyes. Anne flushed. "When you know her as I do, you will see that she really is not snobbish, but only assumes it. As I said, she is the result of silly training by a society mother. I have seen the genuine nature buried by habits and I am willing to help her bring it out to establish it permanently. Nolla will develop herself, if she is allowed to express herself without constant ridicule or reprimands. This summer ought to do wonders for both those girls." Mrs. Brewster showed her approval by nodding her head affirmatively at Anne. "You had ample time to study the two girls last winter when they were in Denver, I suppose," suggested Mrs. Brewster. "Yes, I was with them most of the time, and the result of the erroneous influence over Bob was always noticeable after a short visit from Mrs. Maynard. She only visited her daughters twice in the eight months, but it was generally so unpleasant a time for every one, that we were relieved that she had too many social engagements to come oftener." Anne bent down to tuck in the sheets as she spoke so frankly concerning her friends' mother. "But I must not disparage Mrs. Maynard in your eyes--you may find in her many fine qualities that have been hidden from me," quickly added Anne, fearing she had given her hostess a wrong idea. "Perhaps they are hidden very deep." Anne laughed. "Mr. Maynard is just splendid. He is so _human! He_ must have found the good qualities in his wife, and she, doubtless, permitted herself to be misled by vain aspirations to reach a social height offered by her husband's success in business." "Love is blind, Anne. When a man fancies himself in love with a pretty girl, he seldom seeks for lasting qualities or a strong character. He accepts the transitory beauty as the real thing and wakes up, too late, to find he entertained a dream." "I think you and I feel alike in this problem; my friends laugh at my--what they call--unreasonable opinions on marriage," said Anne, eagerly inviting a discussion with Mrs. Brewster. "Some other day, Anne. We still have the task before us of acclimating the city girls," laughed Mrs. Brewster, taking Anne by the arm and leading her from the room. CHAPTER VIII ACCLIMATING THE CITY GIRLS "Waiting for me, girls?" called Anne, joining her friends. "We just got back from the barn," said Eleanor, showing the habits which she had over her arms. "Well, take them to the room and change your shoes. We must wear flat-heeled boots for walking about this place, you know," returned Anne, noting that Eleanor carried both habits--doing her sister's work for her, as usual. "Good gracious! I forgot to unpack the walking shoes. Won't these Cuban heels answer?" cried Barbara, impatiently. "They might answer for a twisted ankle," laughed Anne. "Then we'll postpone the walk till to-morrow," said Barbara, decisively. "Not me! I'm going to the cliffs if I walk bare-footed. In fact, I'm not so sure but that will be the most delightful thing to do," said Eleanor, sitting down to unbutton her high-heeled shoes. "Nolla! Stop disgracing us so!" cried Barbara, shocked. "Well, I want to see those cliffs at close range. If you start for home to-morrow--or maybe this afternoon, if you find the cliffs disappointing--I can at least take back the remembrance of the wonderful spot," pouted Eleanor. To avoid the usual argument between the sisters, Anne quickly made a suggestion. "Bob's feet seem to be about the same size as mine, and she can have my tennis shoes for this walk." "And Polly's feet look about my size! Why can't I borrow a pair of her country shoes?" added Eleanor, eagerly. "Nolla! Your feet are very slim while Polly's are broad as are most country girls. You would ruin your feet in clumsy shoes," exclaimed Barbara. Polly looked appealingly at her mother, so she came to the rescue. "I have always been very careful of Polly's feet, as I can see no advantage in ruining a child's feet, hence you will find Polly's shoes are made by a first-class shoemaker." "Do they have such things in Oak Creek?" came sarcastically from Barbara. "Do they have them in Denver and Chicago?" retorted Anne. "Naturally--in Chicago. To meet the need for our class." And Barbara tossed her head defiantly. "Polly, run and find those last shoes we had made on the scientific last plan," came from Mrs. Brewster. Polly vanished and Anne ran to her room for the tennis shoes. Barbara walked away and stood on the terrace looking at the far-off peaks. Eleanor and Mrs. Brewster glanced at each other, and finding a similar expression in each other's eyes, both smiled. Thereafter a better understanding existed between the two. "Staring up at white-topped mountains ought to be good and elevating for you, Bob," began Eleanor, teasingly, when Anne returned. "Here, Bob, try them on," suggested Anne, holding out her brand new tennis shoes. Then Polly returned with a neat pair of boots with good extension soles. Eleanor took them, turned down the top and looked at the label. She threw back her head and laughed mockingly. "What a blow to Bob's pride in the Maynard feet! Here we have to come to Pebbly Pit and find our pet label in Polly's shoes. I'm sure the Maynards will change cobblers hereafter!" Every one laughed at Eleanor, but Barbara occupied herself with trying on Anne's tennis shoes. Eleanor sat down upon the grass and soon had on Polly's common-sense shoes. "They fit to a dot!" exclaimed she, holding out one foot to verify her statement. "Well, then, if you feel you can wear them comfortably, do let's start before some other delay occurs," said Barbara, petulantly. The four young folks started on the trail that wound about the cliffs, and Mrs. Brewster went indoors to cook some old-fashioned doughnuts--a large stone crock of which was always kept in the pantry. The walk seemed very long to Barbara, who was unaccustomed to much walking, but the other three girls reveled in the exhilarating air and bright morning sunshine. Reaching the first cliffs, Polly explained about the volcanoes of that section of Colorado and showed the visitors many interesting formations of lava. They were about to continue to the Giant Guards, when Barbara complained of aching feet. She declared it was the rough trail and not her tender feet that caused the pain and ache. So the girls sat down to rest, while Polly told of trips to other volcanic craters and peaks. They were about to start on their way again, when the echoes of a lively whistle sounded over the lava walls. "It's Jeb going to the corral to find our horses for this afternoon," explained Polly, leaning out over a fragment of lava to see who was passing by. But Jeb did not pass. He called loudly for his young mistress. "Miss Pol-lee--Ah got sumthin fer you-all!" "Come up here, Jeb! We're resting on the Giant Guards!" shouted Polly. Soon Jeb appeared on the edge of the cliffs and held out a huge paper bag that had great grease-spots here and there on its sides and bottom. "Yer Maw hed me bring these dunnits t' you-all, ez Ah come by. She sez fer you-all t' let me have anudder one, too." "Oh, they are still warm!" exclaimed Eleanor, as Polly handed her one from the bag. "Shore! But that makes 'em tas' better!" declared Jeb, anxiously watching Polly hand one to Anne next, and one to Barbara, before remembering him. "They're horribly greasy things," said Barbara, holding the doughnut fastidiously with the tip ends of her fingers. "Mebbe folks'd call 'em by anudder name ef no grease war used t' cook 'em by. Ah likes 'em, howsomeever, grease an' all!" returned Jeb, grinning with relief as Polly gave him two large ones. "Um! But they're good!" Eleanor smacked her lips at the first bite. "I can't eat mine--they look so impossible!" And Barbara raised her hand and threw her doughnut over the cliff. "Oo-ah!" came from Jeb in dismay, but he hurriedly left the girls. Polly was surprised, too, but she merely said: "We never waste anything worth while. The chickens and pigs like doughnuts--if we ever have any left for them." Anne had to turn away to hide a smile, and at that moment she saw Jeb at the foot of the cliff, glancing up to see if any one saw him pick up the discarded delicacy from the ground. The incident over the doughnut silenced Polly as she led the way between the two giant peaks of lava. They reared their heads more than sixty feet high and were so oddly shaped that they derived their names of "Giant Guards" from the spears seemingly held out from the shoulders to challenge passersby. The trail leading between the Guards was not more than six feet wide but immediately after passing them, one reached a semi-circle of cliffs standing about a natural arena. Opposite the trail that opened on this arena, a narrow canyon descended gradually away out of sight. "These cliffs forming the rim of the bowl are called the 'Imps' Tombstones.' If you examine them closer, you will find they have queer faces and all sorts of strange patterns traced on their bodies," explained Polly, breaking the uncomfortable silence. "This bowl--as Polly calls it--is as large as Yale Campus, isn't it?" said Eleanor, hoping to, establish conversation. "Everything about Pebbly Pit is on a large scale--even the hearts of the owners," added Anne, patting Polly on the back. "Pardon me for differing, Anne--not the feet of the owners," laughed Eleanor, sending a teasing look at her sister. "Mother says this bowl seems to have been a small crater belonging to the great pit yonder, when the volcano was active in the centuries long gone by," explained Polly, as the others ignored Eleanor's remark. "These Imps certainly are strange formations! Some with arms flung high as if in defense, others crouching low as if to launch an arrow at the enemy. And see those--erect with proud mien, in defiance of all others. They must have been unvanquished," said Anne, interesting Barbara in spite of her assumed indifference. "I just guess they weren't so cold and rusty-brown when the old demon spit fire at them from the active volcano," said Eleanor, gazing aloft at the grotesque heads with facial forms. "Nolla! I beg of you to use better English! You know how mother trembles at your picked-up words from brother!" rebuked Barbara, seemingly shocked at her sister. "What a tale these Imps could tell us of remote ages when they were flung aside as useless in the evolution of things!" said Anne, diverting a possible argument. "I say, Anne, why wouldn't this place give you 'atmosphere' for that story you want to write, some day?" exclaimed Eleanor, unexpectedly. Anne flushed and Polly looked at her in surprise. Barbara seemed amazed, too. "Is this something I never heard of?" asked the latter. "Oh, no; I once said to Nolla that I should love to be able to write a story, and she assured me I could do it. She is only teasing, as usual," laughed Anne, and at the first opportunity, she managed to give Eleanor a smart rap on the shoulder for her breach of confidence. Leaving the Imps behind, Polly took the trail that led to the "Devil's Causeway"--the ravine that cleft two towering peaks of lava. This chasm descended abruptly to a depth of over five hundred feet and then as abruptly ascended to the level of the distant end of the trail, where it brought one to the ridge that over-looked Bear Forks Valley. "Do you want to go through the Devil's Causeway?" asked Polly. "Oh, by all means!" exclaimed Anne. "I wish we had thought of bringing the camera," said Barbara. "We will some other day. Now let us see the best views to get," quickly replied Anne, glad to hear Barbara express herself favorably. "You people go down into that yawning grave, while I sit here and plot out a preface for Anne's book," said exhausted Eleanor, selecting a bowlder where she could sit and see far and wide. "I'd just as soon stay with Eleanor while you two go down and back again," ventured Polly. "All right; Bob and I will see what's to be seen and be back shortly," agreed Anne, starting down the trail. The two young girls sat high upon the lava bowlder while Polly pointed out different familiar spots and mountain peaks. Then Eleanor turned and looked curiously at her companion. "Does your father own all of this great estate free and clear?" asked she. "Free and clear! What do you mean--that he cleared it of timber and freed it of sage-brush?" Eleanor laughed heartily. "Mercy no! I never thought of that. I meant a mortgage, you know." "I don't know what a mortgage is. But father never had to clear the place much as it was always rich free soil without brush." Eleanor glanced quizzically at Polly. "Humph! My father knows what a mortgage is, poor man! Mother made him do it to get her a French car this spring. If your father was my father and owned all this vast place free and clear, my mother would mortgage it in a jiffy if she married him!" "Well, she didn't!" came decidedly from Polly, with a grateful sigh of relief. Eleanor laughed in appreciation. "Say, Polly, my father would like you down to the ground!" Polly made no reply and Eleanor looked about her again. "Polly, how does it feel to own such wonderful things as you just showed us? And such a great farm as you have?" "I never thought of it. In fact, I don't believe any of us remember who owns them. Everybody is welcome to help themselves to these cliffs and the jewels at Rainbow Cliffs." "How much do you s'pose your father is worth?" now asked Eleanor, showing a trace of Mrs. Maynard's teachings. "I never asked him. We never thought of his being worth more than we might need." "Oh, but you never can need all those cattle, and the vast farm, or the wheat and other products he ships and they bring in money," persisted the daughter of a banker. "He sends it off 'cause we can't let it spoil, you know," replied the thrifty rancher's daughter. "But I don't know how much money he may be worth. Maybe a hundred thousand dollars for the land, and maybe another hundred thousand in cattle. I've heard John and Father talk over an offer of half a million dollars for part interest in the Rainbow Cliffs, but Dad wouldn't spoil 'em." "What! What did you say he refused?" shrilled Eleanor. Polly turned suddenly to look at her companion. She was surprised at the expression on Eleanor's face. "I never lie. Why should I?" she cried in defense. "No, but you must have been joking!" "I wasn't! Why should I joke?" retorted Polly. "But goodness me, girl! If your father was as rich as all that, why would you care about wasting a doughnut? And look at your mother making her own butter and helping in housework! Anne says she even spins her own linen towels and knits your stockings. What under the sun would she work like that for, if she could afford to live better'n we do?" cried Eleanor, incredulously. "My mother doesn't _have_ to do a thing, unless she wants to. She just likes to do it for us, and it sure does make a home!" declared Polly, fondly, as she looked across the Pit to her home. "Ye-es--I guess it does; but then some mothers can't sew and spin and cook, you see, so where would the home be if we didn't have servants and folks to do for us?" sighed Eleanor, comparing her own home life to Polly's--to the latter's advantage. "What does your mother do, Nolla?" asked Polly, sympathetically. "Oh, she is a society leader, you know. She goes calling, and has bridge parties every week. Then she has her teas and dinners, and the balls, or theater parties, in season. Other times she has her clubs and Welfare Work--she is President of a Charity Work, you see, and has to address her members every once in a while," said Eleanor, warming up to her description as she visualized her mother's important life-interests. "Anne told us about how sick you were two years ago, and how you had to leave home to live in Denver all last winter," said Polly, a compassionate note creeping into her voice as she pitied the girl at her side. "Well, I got better, didn't I?" came from Eleanor, shortly; then she said tenderly: "Anne and her mother were great!" "Yes, but I was thinking if it was me--so sick that the doctors feared I would never be well again--do you s'pose _my_ mother would have stayed at home when I was with strangers in Denver? I _reckon not!_ All the butter, or balls, or charities in the world could not have kept her from my side every minute I was sick!" Such emphasis found Eleanor lacking with a reply but her eyes filled up at the thought of a love that would sacrifice the world for a beloved child. Would her mother do that if she realized any danger to her children? Ah, that is what hurt! "Polly, my father would do as much for me, too!" said Eleanor, exultantly, the moment she remembered one parent who loved her unreservedly. "So would mine." "Then why should he object to your having a good education in Denver? And look at the way he dresses you, Polly! I don't want you to think I am poking fun at you, 'cause I'm not, but the way you slick back your hair into two long braids and the baggy skirts you wear are simply outlandish. If I had that wonderful curly chestnut hair I'd make so much of it that I'd look positively beautiful." Polly felt hurt, not only because of her love of the beautiful in everything, but also because she hoped Eleanor would turn out to be a staunch friend. Now, of course, she wouldn't make friends with such an old-fashioned country girl! "It's much easier to keep the hair out of my face when it's slicked back. Besides, there isn't any dress-maker in Oak Creek better'n my mother. But she doesn't have much time to trim dresses. When I go to Denver, I'll have as fine a wardrobe as yours." "If your father has any money why doesn't he buy an automobile instead of using that awful ranch-wagon? And why doesn't he hire servants to do the work your mother now does? She could sew on your clothes, if she had more time." "Mother never liked to have me think much of dress and I have always been so busy with my pets and trips on the mountains, that I generally lived in my riding clothes during vacations. But my shoes are as good as yours--you said so. And my teeth and hands and feet are as carefully taken care of as yours or any one's!" Eleanor admitted that this was so, but Polly still had to prove that her father had money. And she insisted upon the fact being proven. "If you don't believe me, you can write to my brother John," declared Polly. "His best college friend visited here last vacation-time and simply went crazy over Rainbow Cliffs. He went so far as to have an expert mineralogist come over here to examine the stones. This man was out west on business for Tom Latimer's father, and Tom said it would cost next to nothing to send for him. The man said the jewels would create the greatest wild-cat speculations in New York if they were placed on the market. Those were his very words!" "Tom Latimer! Do you know him?" gasped Eleanor. "He's John's chum. He visited here for several weeks and we had the loveliest times! I liked him a lot." "I should think you would! But, Polly, Tom is several years older than you. In fact he is older than Bob, as she found out when she tried to capture him for herself. His father is one of the richest financiers in New York." "I didn't think of his age, although now you speak of it, I suppose he must be about John's age. But he acted like a big boy, so we had fine times," explained Polly, entirely innocent of Eleanor's hints regarding the young man. Eleanor threw back her head and laughed heartily. "Just wait until I tell Bob this. Oh, how she will envy you your chance. Why, she did everything on earth but fling herself at his head when mother told her he was the richest catch of the season." "Why, he told me he was never going to marry until he found another girl like Anne Stewart! He thinks _she_ is splendid. I asked him why he didn't marry her, and he teased me by saying I wanted to know too much. But he did tell me that Anne loved some one else who was a thousand times better than he, so he had no chance with her." Eleanor glanced sharply at Polly to see whether she was innocent of guile or whether she was trying to hide her real meaning. She saw that her young companion had really no thought of love for herself or for her brother John. So Eleanor never hinted that she had a suspicion of the truth about Anne and John. "Do you think Anne liked Tom Latimer?" she asked. "Oh, yes! But she likes him because he is such a friend of my brother's and her brother's. You see, Anne's brother Paul is at college with John and Tom," replied Polly. "Yes, I know. My brother is one of their class-mates, too. But I never met your brother or Paul. Mother said I was too young to appear in the drawing-room when Pete gave his party to his class-mates this spring." "Oh, I've heard about a 'Pete' who is so clever in his engineering class. Is that your brother?" eagerly asked Polly. "Yes, and we're proud of him! At least Dad and I are. I don't suppose mother will feel proud of him until he marries a rich society girl. And Bob never bothers about what he does." Now all this was new and strange gossip to Polly and she was willing to hear more along the same lines, but Anne and Barbara returned from the ravine, and the former called to them: "Have you been wondering what kept us so long, girls?" "Never thought of you. We've been getting acquainted," replied Eleanor, with a smile at Polly. "That's good. Now let's go and visit Rainbow Cliffs," added Anne. "Lead off, Polly and I will follow," said Eleanor, linking her arm through Polly's. Polly was not only surprised but pleased at Eleanor's evident act of friendship. She had never had a girl-friend of her own age to confide in, and she had felt very diffident with these city girls after their arrival. But the short talk while sitting on the bowlder not only established a firmer foundation for good comradeship between the two girls, but it gave each a better appreciation of the other's character. After a circuitous walk, the four girls reached the cliffs where the jeweled stones shone resplendent from the side-walls and ground where tons of them were piled up in abandoned confusion. "No wonder they are named Rainbow Cliffs! I never saw such a dazzling sight as these green, blue, red, and other colored stones!" cried Anne. "They are so beautiful that it seems as if they are real jewels!" sighed Barbara, gazing raptly at the seemingly precious stones. "Polly says a man offered a fabulous price for a small interest in this spot," remarked Eleanor, taking up a handful of the pebbles and letting them run between her fingers in a speculative manner, while she glanced covertly at her sister. "Not really!" exclaimed Barbara, looking at Polly. "Yes, but please let's not talk of it. Father does not like any of us to speak of it, as he fears John and I will have our heads turned," returned Polly, sending a reproachful look at Eleanor. But Eleanor smiled with satisfaction, for she knew she had boosted Polly's value a thousand fold in Barbara's estimation. "Well, I'd sell out if it was me! My, but the good times I could have on the money this would bring!" sighed Barbara, glancing up at the masses of colored stones towering above her in the sunshine. "My brother John says he is going to work these cliffs as soon as he finishes his college course of engineering," said Polly. "And Tom Latimer is going to be his partner!" added Eleanor, watching her sister closely. "Nolla, I didn't tell you that, at all!" cried Polly. "Tom Latimer! Does _she_ know him?" asked Barbara of Anne. "I don't know, Bob; Paul and he are great friends of John Brewster's, you know." Polly would not deign to look at Eleanor again, and took the homeward trail without another word as she felt pained at her newly found friend's mis-statement of facts. But Eleanor had done it all for friendship's sake. She knew what a radical change all this information would make in Barbara's estimation of the Brewsters and the ranch, so she said more than she herself really believed true. At that moment the dinner-horn sounded and the girls started for the house, without making further comment on the cliffs. CHAPTER IX SEVERAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS As the four girls came around the corner of the ranch-house Sary banged a plate of hot biscuits upon the table. Some of the biscuits bounced off and rolled across the snowy cloth, so Sary made a swift lunge to catch them before they fell upon the ground. Without hesitation, she replaced the biscuits on the plate and glared at the boarders as she mumbled to herself: "Sech high-filutin' a'rs Ah never did see afore!" The strangers looked at each other, wondering what the maid's perturbed manner portended. But Sary flounced back to the kitchen sending an angry glance over her shoulder before she entered that sacred precinct. She quickly returned with a glass dish of pear preserves and another dish of home-pickled peaches. These were so placed as to flank the biscuits when Sary spied an inquisitive hornet about to settle upon the preserves. "Git out o' that!" shrilled she, whacking at the insect with her kitchen towel. The hornet resented the vicious slap and flew straight for Sary's red head. She unceremoniously ducked and ran. But the insect buzzed after her with evil intent, so Sary ran for her sanctuary, slamming the screen door safely between herself and her pursuer. The audience watching beside the table laughed merrily at the rout. At the sudden entrance of the maid into the kitchen, Mrs. Brewster asked, without looking up: "Did you place the butter and milk on the table, Sary?" "It are!" from Sary, curtly. Mrs. Brewster looked up in surprise. She saw Sary on the safe side of the screen-door glaring at the hornet, which was crawling slowly towards the crack in the opening, while buzzing threateningly, now and then. "There's a hornet, Sary--better drive it away before you venture out again." "Ah are." "Take the kettle and dash some boiling water on it. It sounds angry enough to sting." "It am," flared Sary, as if her anger, too, was vicious enough to do as the hornet would. But she turned to get the hot water and when she returned to deluge the plague, lo! it was there no more. "Sary, what's wrong with you since this morning? You've not been civil in any way," said Mrs. Brewster, impatiently. "Wrong e'nuff! Jeb an' m'sef havin' t' eat meals all alone in a big kitchen that's fine e'nuff fer any one. But these fool gals is so high an' mighty they hez t' nibble at a table under the trees!" Sary's lofty scorn was only equaled by her majestic pose, as she delivered her sentence. "You're wrong, Sary, we do _not_ nibble at the table--we leave that for the field-mice," corrected Mrs. Brewster, sweetly. Sary vented an explosive "Humph!" and grabbed the meat-platter. As she left the kitchen, she sent an insulted glance at her mistress, but the recent correction in speech made her forget the hornet. The watchful insect had been sitting directly over the door, and now eagerly resumed its drive on the enemy. Despite her resolve to be dignified and scornful, Sary had to take flight before the group seated about the table. The girls laughed. One of the maid's loose shoes flew off during the race around the table and the hornet would have conquered her had not Mr. Brewster risen to the occasion and downed the insect with his newspaper. His heavy boot finished the career of the "Hun-net" and Sary went back to the house, picking up her shoe as she passed its resting place. Once more in the kitchen, she returned to the argument. "Ef it warn't that you-all hed this comp'ny an' would be worn out in no time, alone, Ah'd pack an' git, this day!" But in her heart the widow knew horses could not drag her from such luxury as she had only recently enjoyed. Besides, there was Jeb; he offered future possibilities of curtailing her widowhood. While Sary delivered her opinion, Mrs. Brewster finished creaming the potatoes and now dished them up. As she started for the screen-door, she turned to the maid and said: "Either you have a severe attack of indigestion coming on, Sary, or you are falling in love again. Both diseases present similar symptoms in their first stages." "_Mis'_ Brewster!" But the mistress refused to look back even though the temptation to see Sary's face was great! "Oh, Mis' Brewster! How kin you-all say that--so soon after Bill's funeral, an' the expenses not all paid yit!" howled Sary, rushing to the door that her mistress might hear her lament. But the call fell upon deaf ears. Miss Brewster deigned no reply, so Sary sat down heavily upon a strong kitchen chair and took thought for herself. How did Miss Brewster guess her half-formed idea? Had she discovered in some uncanny manner, that Sary had slyly removed Bill's post-card photograph from her Bible and cremated it that she might feel freer to accept a second proposal of marriage--if it came? "She coulden' hev foun' _that_ out, cuz Ah locked th' box sence then. She mus' be one of them brain-readers by nature, Ah rickon, an' she jes' reads me like a book!" Never dreaming of the turbulence created in Sary's mind by her casual remark, about dyspepsia and love, Mrs. Brewster took her chair at the table. Immediately after giving thanks, the host stood up to carve the roast. Then, to the surprise of all present, it was seen that the rancher had donned his second-best black coat and had taken the trouble to wear cuffs and a starched collar. Trying to avoid Polly's eyes, Mrs. Brewster met the gaze of Anne. But the two understood and exchanged a fleeting glance of satisfaction and approval. "Well, girls, did you visit Rainbow Cliffs--and how did you like them?" asked Mr. Brewster, having finished the carving. "Oh, they are just wonderful!" declared Eleanor. "I hear they are very valuable," remarked Barbara. Mr. Brewster sent her a sharp glance and then frowned at Polly. "Ah never give that a thought. There they've stood for ages before Sam Brewster saw them, and Ah reckon there they'll stand for ages after Sam Brewster is dead and forgotten!" "Not if I can coax Polly to sell enough of the loose stones to buy an automobile and go off to school!" said Eleanor, emphatically. An annoyed look from Mr. Brewster and a surprised one from Mrs. Brewster made Anne and Polly feel uncomfortable at Eleanor's lack of tact. But the hostess was equal to the situation. "Polly, who do you think came to the kitchen door to ask for you while you were at the cliffs, this morning?" "Here--to ask for me, Mah--mother!" exclaimed Polly, in surprise. "Yes, and she felt deeply offended because you had not asked for her health or even sent word to her by Jeb--and she so lonely after her accident, too!" Mrs. Brewster managed to express great pathos with her words. "Oh, my darling Noddy! Mother, did she come to the door?" laughed Polly, sympathetic tears starting in her eyes at the picture called up by her mother. "Yes, and she said it was simply inexcusable in you. She was willing to carry you anywhere you wished to go, but now she will disown you forever, unless you make peace with her, this afternoon," said Mrs. Brewster, smiling as she saw how she had succeeded in her effort to change the thoughts and conversation of her family. "And Jeb said he had the horses ready for you girls as soon as you wanted to try them out," added Mr. Brewster. Dinner was dispatched hastily after this announcement, and the girls ran to don their habits. All idea of Barbara's wiring for return-ticket money that day was forgotten as they went gayly towards the corral to try out different horses. The entire afternoon was given over to exciting sport, as the girls, and even Mrs. Brewster, tried to outride each other about the great enclosure. Polly made Noddy happy by mounting her silky little back and whispering fond nothings in the long ears. Anne was pleased to find her Chicago friends could ride so well on the restive western horses, and both Chicago girls were surprised to find what a magnificent rider Mrs. Brewster was. She was slowly rising in their private opinions of her. During the following days, the girls took short rides to points of interest in Bear Forks Valley and nearby mountains. And then came Sunday. Barbara had not openly declared her satisfaction with the ranch or time spent with its people, the past week, but neither had any one heard a hint of her returning to Chicago. In fact, so much had been crowded in the days just gone by, that no moment had been found in which to _think_ of returning home. The trunks had not been opened since the habits had been removed, as there was no need for changes of costumes, and the traveling bags had contained all the girls needed for a few days. The ranchers of the Rocky Mountains are so strict about observing the Sabbath Day, that everything pleasurable, or in the form of work, has to end at twelve o'clock Saturday night. Every one goes to "meetin'" on Sundays, some driving a distance of twenty miles, or more. Once a month, an ordained preacher crosses the Flat Top Mountains to hold a regular service, and on other Sundays the leading ranchers read the Bible and conduct prayers. The weather throughout summer in this section of Colorado is generally fine and clear. Should a heavy thunder storm arise, it as quickly passes over again. The nights are cool and dewy and the days glorious and exhilarating. Hence one has no dread of foggy or prolonged rainy days as in the East. The plan of dining under the trees had proved a good one, and as the weather remained fair, no meals had to be eaten in the kitchen since that first day. When the family gathered about the table that Sunday morning, they all seemed cheerful and animated, but Mr. Brewster had not yet made his appearance. "Has Mr. Brewster had breakfast so soon?" asked Anne. "No, he has not come out yet; he is reading the Sunday lesson for his class in School," replied Mrs. Brewster. "Sunday School! Do you go? Where is the church?" asked Eleanor, wonderingly. "Down at Bear Forks School-house. We use it for church, as well as for other important purposes, besides day-school," Mrs. Brewster replied, smilingly. Soon after the girls appeared at table, Mr. Brewster came out. He said good morning in a very sedate manner that surprised the girls who were not accustomed to his Sunday manners. That morning he gave a lengthy prayer of thanks that was meant to cover the past week, but once he had concluded grace, he turned to his wife. "Mary, I'm sure I smelled the omelette scorching." Mrs. Brewster hurried to the kitchen where she found the eggs burning and the room filled with horrid smoke. Sary was scolding at a great rate, but she never used a _profane_ word because it was wicked. "Why, Sary, how did you happen to let the eggs burn?" "How come? Well, I'll tell you-all! Mr. Brewster handed me a printed prayer to learn, and I was looking for my specs in my box when it happened! That's all the good that prayer did me!" Mrs. Brewster kept a straight face and said: "Well, never mind, Sary. We'll soon have another omelette ready." "Not on Sunday! I made one, and that was a sin, ez you kin see by the way it burnt. I does no more cookin' or there'll be extra sin to wipe out. Thar's bread and jam and coffee--enough fer any one to git along on fer a few hours." Mrs. Brewster knew her husband, however, so she said nothing to Sary, but hurriedly whipped up another omelette and fried it to a delicate brown. This she carried out to serve. At the kitchen door she turned to speak to the help. "Sary, bring out the bread and jam, will you?" Sary had filled a deep dish with dry cereal and held it in one hand. She took up the coffee-pot with the other and' ran to get out of the screen-door which had been flung open by her mistress. But the door slammed to sooner than Sary had calculated and struck the coffee-pot in its violent closing, throwing it upon the floor. "Consarn th' pesky door! Now thar hain't nuthin' on arth fer Mr. Brewster to give thanks fer but jes' toast and jam. Ah cain't bile another pot of coffee on Sunday!" Sary stood contemplating the disaster until Mrs. Brewster called out: "Sary, will you bring that bread and jam?" The help brought the desired edibles and explained about the coffee. Eleanor laughed out loud, but Anne kicked her warningly under the table. Mr. Brewster turned to explain to his guests. "Ranchers never work on the Sabbath. The less we cook the better it is, for we do penance to our material desire for food. I have never been so severe as to forbid cooked food on my table, but many of the families do. This morning, however, we are compelled to sacrifice our weaknesses to Sary's ways." So the bread and jam was eaten with the omelette, to the accompaniment of cold water, and then the master prepared to leave the table. "Girls, don't waste much time fussing with your toilette; we are behind time as it is." "Did you expect us to go to church?" gasped Barbara. "Certainly. Everybody goes," returned Mr. Brewster, equally surprised at such a question. "Why, we haven't unpacked any clothes for church." "That doesn't matter. The Lord doesn't judge according to dress. If your heart is clean it is all He wants," replied Mr. Brewster, walking away towards the house. The girls looked at each other in amazement. "What shall we do, Anne? I won't go in this old rag!" declared Barbara. "Don't drag me into the argument, Bob. You hate going to church and there's no use trying to pretend it is your dress that keeps you away." "Would Eleanor care to go with us?" asked Mrs. Brewster. "Is Polly going?" countered Eleanor. "Oh, yes, I always go," said Polly. "We-el, I don't know, Poll. I'll go next Sunday but I am taken by surprise this week. I'll stay home with Bob, I guess." "Very well, then, I'll tell Mr. Brewster to omit the extra seat in the wagon," and Mrs. Brewster hurried away to dress. "What shall we do all morning?" asked Eleanor the moment the ranch-wagon was out of sight. "We might unpack a few things we need, and arrange the trunks so mine can be sent back home without giving you any trouble about yours," suggested Barbara. "That's a good plan. And a good day to do it in, too," laughed Eleanor. "I think it is ridiculous--the way they go on about the Sabbath! I suppose they would be dreadfully shocked if they knew we were about to unpack our trunks!" said Barbara, sneeringly. Time passed quickly in sorting out the numerous items in the seven trunks, and the girls felt famished before they were done. The articles they wished to have out for use were piled up on the grass outside the barn, and it looked a formidable heap when all was ready to leave the barn. "Goodness me! We'll have to make a dozen trips to the house with all this!" exclaimed Eleanor. "We'll carry all we can pile up this first trip, and then have luncheon. Afterward we will carry the rest over," said Barbara. The clothing seemed so light that they kept piling up the articles until they could hardly see from under the mountain of lingerie and accessories. But they both found how heavy the light summer clothes could be, when one's arms were extended unnaturally to hold up so much finery. They finally reached the porch and threw the things into rustic chairs, while they sat down to cool off in the breeze. "Now, you carry the clothes to the bedroom, Bob, while I hunt in the kitchen for something to eat," remarked Eleanor, after a time. These important duties attended to, the girls were about to go to the barn for a second load of clothing when the ranch-wagon drove up to the steps. The family got out and Jeb drove on to the barn. "What's this on the grass?" asked Mr. Brewster, stooping to pick up a silk stocking. "That's Barbara's, I think," said Anne, instantly divining the cause of its being there. Then Jeb came running back to the house with news. "Ah found th' trunks is b'en opened by some one, an' all th' finery is piled on the grass outside th' barn. What hes happened, Ah want to know." Luckily Mrs. Brewster heard his remark and Mr. Brewster had no time to speak before she caught Anne's hand, and led Jeb back to the barn. Shortly thereafter, the three returned laden with everything ever known in a lady's wardrobe. "Mary, you have broken the commandments to-day!" said Mr. Brewster, overcoming a keen desire to laugh at his wife. "Maybe, Sam, but I strengthened another, called the 'Golden Rule'--I certainly did unto them what I want some one to do for mine in case of need. Poor girls!" Sary happened to be coming from the kitchen with the early supper dishes in her hands. She saw Jeb with dainty silk lingerie almost covering his head, and she heard Mr. and Mrs. Brewster's words. It was too much! She continued on her way, but once she reached the table she thumped the dishes down to vent her spite. "To think them city gals kin wind Jeb about their fingers like that! On a Sunday, too! Ah wonder hain't he got no respeck fer me an' the Brewster women, that he allows them snippy misses to git him to carry underwear--him what's an unmarried man, at that!" While the family sat at table enjoying the quiet Sunday evening, Sary took advantage of their interesting discourse to slip away from the kitchen and examine the beautiful lace-trimmed apparel spread out upon the great bed in the guest-room. "Laws me! Ef it hain't like a bridal outfit. Ef Ah ever hed hed th' chanst t' put on ennything like-es-that, I'd not have hed t'marry a poor rancher like Bill. Ah could have hed my pick of the men at Oak Crick!" Sary sighed with pity at her own limitations in life, and she crept back to her kitchen planning how she could manage to get one of the girls to present her with some of the bridal finery. Thus pondering the problem, she sat down opposite Jeb and entertained him, as he ate his Sunday supper of pork and beans. CHAPTER X THE DANCE AT BEAR FORKS The interesting events which crowded each other, day after day, in this western life, so engrossed the girls that Bob forgot her vow to send a telegram for return money to Chicago. She even forgot to write to Mrs. Maynard at Newport, or to any of her society friends, until Anne reminded her of a duty to her parents. Tuesday following their first Sunday at Pebbly Pit, a rancher's wife called just before noon, to deliver invitations. "Ah heer'd tell how you-all had comp'ny this summer?" were the words with which she greeted Mrs. Brewster. "Yes, a few young people. Will you be seated, Mrs. Halsey?" said Mrs. Brewster, placing a chair on the vine-shaded porch. "Ah come t' ast you-all--say, you, Sally, stop pickin' them flowers! Mis' Brewster'll lick yuh!" The visitor interrupted herself to shout at her little girl who proved to be a naughty one. "Ez Ah was sayin', Ah come t' leave an invite fer th' hop at Bear Forks. We-all is glad t' see Anne Stewart, which was a school-teacher some time back, an' it was fit t' celebrate her friendship, in some way. Don't cha think a dance jes' th' thing?" As the visitor spoke she rocked violently back and forth. "I'm sorry my visitors are not here to thank you themselves, but I feel sure they will be delighted to attend the dance," replied Mrs. Brewster, shaking her head rebukingly at the small boy who stood on the rockers of his mother's chair, and gripped hold of the back, and so was roughly swayed back and forth with the rocking. "See har, yuh Jim Henderson Halsey--git down from thar! Ef Ah ketch yuh, Ah'll skin yer face fer the hop--that Ah will!" threatened the mother, trying to reach her young hopeful. But Jim Henderson Halsey knew from dire experiences just what to expect did his mother succeed in catching him, so he dodged and ran away. "Did you-all say the gals would be in shortly?" asked the caller. "No, I said they were _not_ in. They are at the corral this morning." "Laws me! What a place t' spend th' mornin'. Ah reckon they'll be along any time, then." "They left here just before you came and they are practicing on our western horses before taking any long trips," explained Mrs. Brewster, looking regretfully at the flower-beds where the two willful children were destroying the fruits of her planting. Mrs. Halsey followed her hostess's glance and jumped up. "Ef yuh two varmints don't quit that, an' come right t' me, Ah'll--Ah'll shet yuh up in a boogy-hole!" shrilled the irate mother. Sary heard the familiar voice and instantly ran from the kitchen to assist in entertaining the morning visitor. The two bad youngsters, left to their own devices, began throwing the whitewashed stones that encircled Mrs. Brewster's roundels. "How-dy, Miss Halsey?" was Sary's greeting, her large hand extended in cordial comradeship. "Oh, it's Sary Dodd! How-dee, Sary? Ah recommember now that you-all come t' live wid Miss Brewster. How'd you-all like th' place?" The visitor's frankness lost none of its curiosity as she eagerly waited to hear all about the Brewster family with the mistress still present, but ignored. Sary was in her glory and made the most of it. She had just reached the point where she intended asking the "gossip" to stop to have dinner, when a crash interrupted the enlivening Yellow Jacket Pass conversation. "Sary, run and see what those children have done!" cried Mrs. Brewster, mentally thanking her stars for the timely intervention. Soon the ladies heard Jim Henderson Halsey bawling loudly, and his sister backing away from the buttery while she continued making faces at the angry help. The little girl's protruded tongue made Sary rush at her with uplifted palm, but both youngsters were so accustomed to dodging these attacks, that they reached the haven of Mrs. Halsey's presence without a painful encounter. "The ol' thing shook me till my teeth rattled!" wailed Jim Henderson, etc. "Sarves yuh right! What cha be'n up t', any way?" retorted Mrs. Halsey, the hope of dinner still lingering, but growing dim as Sary did not return. Fortunately, for the general peace of all concerned, Mr. Brewster drove up to the porch, on his way to Oak Creek. His wife's beseeching look appealed to him understandingly. "Good morning, Mrs. Halsey. Ah hear you-all are inviting folks to the dance at the school house. Want me to give you a lift to Jamison's ranch--he hasn't been invited yet!" "Why, Ah figgered goin' thar after dinner. Be you-all goin' off before yuh eat?" "Ah am not sure when we will have dinner to-day, the young ladies are so engaged with riding, you see." The moment the Halsey scions heard mention of "dinner" they clung to their mother's skirts and whined: "We-all wanta stay to dinnerr! Don't cha go widdout dinnerr!" "Why not give the children some cake, mother, and then Mrs. Halsey can have a bite with Jamison. He can lift her on to the next ranch, too," suggested Mr. Brewster. Mrs. Brewster instantly acquiesced and ran to cut three generous triangles of cake, while her husband came up and lifted Sally up into the deep wagon. Before any of the Halsey family could protest, he had turned, lifted Jim Henderson up beside his sister and then asked the visitor if he could help her up to the seat. The cake was distributed, and the vexed but vanquished morning caller jabbed a hat-pin through her rusty toque and pulled her jet-trimmed shoulder cape tightly over her back, before bowing haughtily to Mrs. Brewster. Not until the ranch-wagon turned the edge of Rainbow Cliffs did Mrs. Brewster permit herself to leave the post of watching and slump down into the porch rocker with a sigh of gratitude. Half an hour later the sound of wheels caused her to spring up in dread, but her husband's cheery laugh relieved her fears. "Ah saw your difficulty and did the only sensible thing; but we-all must keep this trick a secret. If Sary gets hold of it, my reputation in Bear Forks, or Yellow Jacket Pass, is gone," confided Sam Brewster to his wife, as he glanced fearfully about for Sary. The horn for dinner sounded shortly after the master's return and, at the table, the girls were told of the visitor and her invitation to the dance, but no word of her form of departure was mentioned. "It's lucky we have evening-dresses," remarked Barbara. "Do folks dress up at these parties?" asked Eleanor. "I should say we do!" declared Polly. Mrs. Brewster and Anne were talking in low tones and did not hear the question and answer, so they did not explain what Polly meant by "dressing up." The days intervening between the Tuesday and the Friday set down for the hop passed quickly. Polly and her mother washed and renovated the dotted swiss dress made for the school-commencement, and to Polly's delight Anne added a blue sash and hair ribbons. Anne had a simple flowered-silk gown she proposed wearing. And the city girls had elaborate dresses--Barbara's very much in the latest mode and Eleanor's flounced and furbelowed, but modestly high in the neck as became a girl not yet "out." Sary had bewailed her fate the day preceding the eventful one. Eleanor pacified her by presenting her with a net-lace collar to enliven her rusty black alpaca. An early supper was planned, as the ride to Bear Forks school would take more than an hour, and every one wanted to be there for the grand march. For several hours before supper-time, Barbara locked herself in the bed-room and began her toilette. She dressed her hair, massaged, and rouged and penciled her eyebrows, until she quite tired herself out. Eleanor and Anne rapped again and again for admission, but Barbara was obdurate about her right of possession. When she finally opened the door for her room-mates, they stared at her in amused surprise. "Your hair looks all sizzly, Bob," said Eleanor. "Oh, Bob, remove some of that carmine from your lips!" advised Anne. "Why?" demanded Barbara. "Too much of it, that's all!" giggled Eleanor. But Anne and Eleanor had their own toilettes to make and paid no further attention to Barbara. She managed to remove some of the carmine, and pat down her hair, hot she could not do things as the French maid generally did them to add to her beauty. Feeling dissatisfied with her appearance made Barbara irritable, but she remained in the room criticizing everything the two other girls did or said. Then just before the horn sounded for supper, a knock came at the door. "Come in!" called Anne, buttoning her white suede boots. "'S onny me. Ah jes' wanta ast you-all ef it is right in city sassiety, fur a widder of six months' standin' t' go t' a party whar onny old frien's will be. Thar won't be no sky-larkin' er high-jinks, yo' know!" Sary's anxious tone expressed her eagerness for a favorable reply to her query on widowhood. Eleanor looked at Anne to answer, so she took the initiative. "Certainly, Sary--come right along and enjoy yourself." Barbara was shocked. "The help's not going--surely!" "Humph! Miss Halsey ast me afore she mentioned you-all!" snapped Sary, quite able to defend herself against Barbara's pride. "Oh, Bob doesn't mean it that way, Sary," said Eleanor, giving her sister a backward kick for silence. "Of course not! Bob means that your mourning might prevent your attending the dance. But seeing we are all old friends from ranches round about, it will be like meeting your family," added Anne, the pacifist. "Wall, then, Ah'll go," sighed Sary, as if loath to join a merry throng. "But Ah hez t' have a smitch of somethin' like-ez-how Miss Bob hez fer her shoulders, cuz my neck's gettin' scrawny now." Barbara had draped chiffon over her neck and dress, and at Sary's request, she turned angrily. "The very idea! This chiffon is two dollars a yard!" "I've got the very thing you need, Sary. You can wear second mourning now, I suppose!" exclaimed Eleanor, sending a look at her sister. She hurried to the closet and took a long flat box from the upper shelf. As she carried it over to Sary, Barbara stared. "Eleanor Maynard! _What_ are you giving her?" "Something I never will need this summer, and Sary can use it very nicely to furbish up that black dress." Sary was too excited to wait and open the box in her own room, so she tore off the paper at once. A lovely rainbow-tinted chiffon scarf lay revealed, the predominating colors being violet. "Ah-h-h! Ah'm clean locoed, Miss Nolla! Not a soul'll ever know that rusty black alpacky is th' same dress Miss Pearson mourned her husband in fer five years before Ah got it given me!" "What nonsense! As if that dainty scarf will hide your outlandish dress and mountainous figure!" came insultingly from Barbara. But nothing could spoil the joy of possessing such a heavenly wisp of angel's robe as that scarf seemed to be to Sary. She was deaf to all else, as she tenderly hugged the box to her ample bosom and backed from the room. When all were seated about the table, which was spread in the living room for that night, Mr. Brewster smiled at Polly in her gala attire. Anne looked sweet and lovely in her simple dress, but the host could not quite make out the style the city girls wore. He was not accustomed to boudoir gowns of filmy lace and thin silk, and he thought they were a new style of party dress. Had he known _what_ Barbara proposed wearing, he would have asked her to remain at home. As Sary passed the bread to Eleanor she leaned over and beamed: "Miss Nolla, Ah tried that on, an' you-all woulden' know me! Ah'm shore he'll pick me fer a lanciers! Mebbe that scarf'll give him spine enough to speak!" "Sary, I know right well he will!" declared Eleanor, not dreaming the mischief she wrought in Sary's soul at that. Sary pranced back to the kitchen, but her flighty thoughts were swinging corners in the quadrille with Jeb, and the fried potatoes were gracefully shot into the coal-scuttle as the pan was waved aloft in imitation of dancers she had envied in days gone by. "Sary, hurry with the coffee-pot, please!" called Polly. And Sary grabbed up the stone jug of vinegar from the back of the stove where she had placed it, and ran in to pour the beverage into cups. The combined cries of every one at the table failed to bring her to her senses, so Mrs. Brewster told her to go quickly and dress for the dance. Then wagon wheels sounded on the gravel road and Jeb yelled: "Air you-all ready?" Sary gave a last lingering look in the tiny mirror over her combination wash-stand, and realized what charms she had when rainbow chiffon adorned her person. She then snuffed out the tiny lamp-wick and hurried forth to meet her fate. Jeb was dressed regardless of all censorship. A great flaming peony in his coat-lapel reflected its scarlet on his ruddy face. His tie was a riot of colors and detracted somewhat from his purple socks and tan shoes. He wore a figured near-silk vest won at an Oak Creek raffle, and large checked trousers said to be the latest fashion some years back, when he squandered his money on them. With his face scoured until it shone, and his hair greased so that it was plastered down neatly, Jeb felt he could woo and win the prettiest gal in the country-side. He forgot there was a "female widow" about. The Brewster party reached the school-house later than was their wont, and the cloak-room was well-filled with ranchers' wives and daughters all waiting to pass judgment on the strangers from Pebbly Pit. Mrs. Brewster and Polly entered first, shaking hands with friends and acquaintances. Anne followed smiling benignly on all. Barbara came next, casting disdainful looks at the ordinary women she found present. Eleanor delighted in the novel experience and was anxious to meet them all. Once in the small room, the new-comers began to remove their dust-coats and wraps. The ranchers' parties then went out to make room. Barbara turned to Anne and whispered: "Where can I find the maid?" "Maid! We haven't one here, you know." "No maid to help me? Goodness, what shall I do?" "You're supposed to dress at home; besides, these people do not powder or rouge, so they need no mirror or maid, you see," explained Eleanor, taking delight in shocking Barbara. "Then I suppose I will have to go out without a look at myself. Do I look all right to you, Anne?" As she spoke, Barbara dropped her evening cloak from her shoulders and pivoted for Anne's benefit. Her gown of rose-pink net, trimmed with elaborate gold embroidery, was extremely decollete, with narrow gold bands over the shoulders performing the double duty as sleeves and to hold the lower section of the dress up in place! Barbara turned slowly and attracted the attention of Mrs. Brewster, Polly, and a few strangers lagging behind to watch the visitors. Just then Sary hurried in from the dance-hall. She gasped at the sight before her and quickly came to the rescue. "Shet yer eyes--every one! The poor dear! Ah'll cover her up whiles some one finds her basque!" And Sary caught up Mrs. Halsey's jet-trimmed cape and wound it quickly about Barbara's bare neck and shoulders. "Child, how come yuh t' fergit the basque? Er what hez happened to it?" cried Sary, sympathetically, while Barbara struggled vainly to wrench herself free from the ill-smelling wrap that generally hung in Halsey's kitchen. "Ah hev it! Polly, git the box Nolla gave me. Ah'll let Miss Bob wear my scarf!" This meant supreme sacrifice for Sary, but she willingly offered the one and only treasure to serve a betrayed friend. Still she was at a loss to understand where that basque could be! Finally Barbara squirmed free and Mrs. Brewster managed to say: "Sary, Bob has on one of her most modern evening gowns. They are made without tops, you know!" Sary gasped and suddenly collapsed upon the chair. Her strained expression, as she took a covert look at the dress, spoke volumes. "Glory be, Miss Brewster," whispered Sary, hoarsely. "You-all don' mean it fer trut', do yuh?" "Yes, Sary, it is a very expensive and stylish robe." "An' kin you-all let her march brazen-like, like that, in front of the men!" shrilled Sary, holding both wide hands over her heart. "I never heard or dreamed there was such ignorance in the world, as I have found in Colorado!" now flared Barbara, turning and leaving the cloak-room. Sary waited but a second, then she cried, "Ah cain't 'low Jeb t' see sech sights--an' he a good bachelor-man!" Sary rushed out to spare her prey any shocks, and the other members of the party gazed at each other doubtfully. "Oh, well, it's not our funeral, Potty!" said Eleanor. "Shall we join the dancers?" asked Anne. "Yes, but I fear Bob will be ostracized," said Mrs. Brewster. "Serve her right! Anne and I told her not to dress like that, but she _would_, you know. She wanted to show folks the style," explained Eleanor, taking silent Polly by the arm and leading her out to the main hall. As they left the cloak-room, the girls heard the fiddler shout: "Git yer pardners fer the Grand March!" And from that time on to midnight, the three girls had the best fun ever. But poor Barbara stood near the cloak-room as isolated as the plague, for the ranchers dared not even look at a gown without a top, let alone dance with the doubtful thing. CHAPTER XI IN THE WILDERNESS Each day the four girls rode along various trails until, in the judgment of Jeb, they were practiced enough to take a longer ride in the mountains. Polly had been urging Jeb to give a favorable opinion on their ability to stand a prolonged ride to the Flat Tops, but he was careful and practical and persisted in making them try a greater distance daily to finally harden them to a rough trail. Then Jeb said he reckoned the girls could start for a real outing. Immediately, they planned where to go and what to see. Polly outlined a trip that might take a whole day, so they would have to take food and kit for cooking purposes. Each girl would ride her favorite horse or burro and the extra burro, Choko, could carry the outfit. Of course, Polly decided to ride Noddy, as the burro was well acquainted with her mistress's ways and the mountains. Eleanor preferred a burro also, because, as she said comically, "if one falls from a burro's back it is not far to Mother Earth." The two other girls selected horses, sure-footed and trained for climbing. On the morning chosen for the trip, Mrs. Brewster and Sary were up at day-break preparing the kit and packing the panniers. At breakfast, four eager girls, with wide sombreros on their heads, heavy mountain-shoes and leather puttees covering feet and limbs, talked of the great adventures they were about to meet with. Sam Brewster laughed at their wild imaginings and said: "Ah shouldn't wonder but what you-all will find a second 'Aladdin's Lamp' hiding place. Just think of the fun to be had by rubbing the Lamp and wishing for things!" Then Jeb brought the mounts from the barn and Sary helped him strap the panniers and kit to Choko. Just as they were ready to start, Sary flew out with a paper package carefully held. "Polly, Ah made a s'prise fer you-all, but don't let Choko roll in it er run away, er my work will go fer nuthin'." "Don't worry about Choko, Sary, he's too trustworthy to serve us such a trick," bragged Polly, petting the burro on the head. "Wall, then, see thet it hain't shooken up too much er gittin' mashed under the ax," were the parting words from Sary, as she shifted the short ax, which is an important item in every outfit. It was a wonderful summer day--the kind that makes one feel happy in mere living, and the anticipation of wonders to come added a zest to the outing for the girls. They left the trail leading from Pebbly Pit and picked up the rough mountain trail at the Forks, Barbara and Eleanor exclaiming constantly at the gorgeous wild flowers growing wherever the roots could find lodgment. "I never saw such columbines! Four times the size of ours in the East," cried Eleanor. "And those marvelous orange-colored blossoms! They look like a rare exotic, with their huge clusters and flaunting colors!" exclaimed Barbara. "If you girls think these are so beautiful, just wait till we reach the 'bottoms'--there you will see size and color enough to make you wonder if you accidentally struck Paradise," said Anne. "And our ferns and mosses, girls! You never saw such specimen, elsewhere," added Polly, churking to Choko to hurry on. "Polly, why did Jeb over-load that poor little burro?" now asked Barbara, having lost her momentary interest in flora. "Choko isn't over-loaded at all. Of course it looks as if he had a great load to carry, but pans and woolen blankets look more than they weigh, you see. The heaviest thing he carries is my ax, I reckon." "Ax! What do you want of an ax?" wondered Barbara. "Can't tell how cold it may be up on the mountain-top, so I brought the sheath-knife, ax, rifle, and other things in case we get the tail-end of a blizzard." "And the blankets in case we get lost and need to camp out all night," added Anne, teasingly, seeing the city girls' fears. "You can't really mean it, Anne! Surely we won't lose our way, and as for a blizzard! Well, it is July," laughed Barbara. "It wouldn't be the first time we ran into a blizzard in July," commented Polly. "But how is it possible, girl alive!" cried Barbara. "Possible enough on the Flat Tops. The merest rag of a cloud finds an excuse to carry snow from the peaks. The wonder will be if we come away without seeing snow fall." "Oh, Polly, how thrilling!" exclaimed Eleanor. "Once when father and I rode over this same trail to find a trapper who had pelts for sale, we got caught in a blizzard. We got the pelts but we also got the storm, and lucky for us that we had the pelts first. "I never had experienced a real mountain storm, but father had, so he showed me what to do. I think I would know now just what to do in case of another surprise." "Bu-r-r-r! Let's hope you won't have to practice on us," laughed Eleanor, pretending to shiver. "Stop your nonsense, Nolla! I don't want to think of such dreadful things," cried Barbara. "And I want to hear about how the pelts saved her life," added Anne. "It's real interesting, Bob, so let me tell them," asked Polly, and receiving no unfavorable word or look, she proceeded: "It was the Fourth of July, and of course no one would start on a ride wearing a fur-lined coat, so father and I had on our summer clothes. "After riding along Top Notch Trail for a time, we met the trapper and bargained for the furs, then started back by a new trail he told us of. It led past Pagoda Peak, and just as we got to the base of the peak and discovered the down-trail, the blizzard came swooping upon us without warning. "Father and I tried to keep going, but the gale traveled too fast and blew in whirling eddies, so we got the pelts out of the bundle, and wrapped ourselves in the largest ones. The smaller ones we used for our feet. Father found two great bear-skins and covered the horse--that acted as a shield on one side from the storm--the other horses stood in front and back of us, making three sides protected. "Father then made me creep with him to the refuge made by the three horses and there we remained. The horses stood perfectly still throughout the blizzard, which lasted only an hour at most, and the steam they exuded from their bodies kept us quite warm as we crouched under them. "When the storm blew over, we dug a way out and removed the horse blankets and fur pelts from the horses. Then we rolled our own coverings into the bundle and started on down-trail. But the floods of melting snow caused wash-outs and it was risky going. When we reached the first Park never a sign of snow was there, and the only result of that mountain blizzard was an added flood of water pouring down the gulleys to the bottoms and valley." "Oh, Polly, what an interesting book your adventures would make!" exclaimed Eleanor. "I'd like to write it down as you tell it, Polly, and we can surely find a publisher for it," added Anne, eagerly. "Really! Oh, how I'd love to tell such a story!" said Polly, all enthusiasm. "We'll try it as soon as we get back to-night!" promised Anne. The going was easy, so Polly told of other adventures: of the trip to Buffalo Park when a bear chased them; of her meeting with Old Montresor, the gold-seeker of Grizzly Slide and his pitiful story; of the nights spent out on the mountains, watching beside a dying camp-fire, or listening to the call of the moose to his mate on a moonlit night; of the wonderful sport fishing in trout-filled streams, or seeking gorgeous flora and strange fauna on the peaks, and again photographing wild beasts and birds that never showed a fear of her as she traversed their domains. The three girls were spell-bound at her vivid descriptions and Anne sighed with desire to put it all down on paper for future publication. "Montresor's Mine is in this mountain that I want to show you to-day. He was a dear old man who lived a solitary life in a cabin near Buffalo Park. Patsy, his dog, was his only companion. But he died and left me his mine--that we never found again," sighed Polly. "Oh, Polly! Tell us the story!" chorused the girls. Polly laughed: "It isn't a story, 'cause there never was a climax as real stories have to have, you know. But I'll tell you how I met Mr. Montresor. I was out with Noddy, one day, and we traveled farther than usual. "In leaving a bad trail to take a good one, I met the gray-haired man slowly riding up. An Irish terrier ran back of his horse, sniffing, sniffing, and whining as if distracted. I was so surprised at the dog's actions that I stopped to ask the man what ailed him. "'Ah, my child, Patsy is seeking for my lost mine!' "'Your lost mine!' I gasped, for I had never heard of him or his mine, although folks said there was a rich vein of gold somewhere in the mountain.[Footnote: This is a true incident.] "'Yes, child, I am the unfortunate Montresor. Haven't you heard of my great loss?' "I thought the poor man was foolish, so I humored him by saying, 'No, sir, I never did, Won't you tell me about it?' "Then he told me the story. He had been an old prospector in the Klondike, but not a successful one, as he was too honest. On his return, from Alaska, he had to stop in Denver and work for his fare back to the East where he came from. Being a splendid engineer as well as a mineralogist, he found a place with a crew of mining engineers about to inspect Pagoda Peak section and Lost Lake district. He came with them. "After he had been in these mountains for a time, he was so certain of finding gold that he remained when the rest of the crew went back to Denver. After two years of patient digging and prospecting he took a new trail that was later found to be Red Man's Trail, seldom traveled, as it was such dangerous and hard going. "He was climbing along an awful place where the ledge hung over a chasm, when he spied a small yellow nugget on the ground. He examined it and found it to be fine red-gold. Upon looking about, he found a few more, but there seemed to be no sign of gold in the ledge or in the rocks about him. Still he staked out a claim on the spot in hopes of later finding gold hidden in the ground. "He hobbled his horse and made a good circuit of the place and then discovered that the opposite ledge of the abyss towered up hundreds of feet higher than the one he was on. That gave him an idea. "He rode the horse carefully along his ledge until he reached a slope where both ledges met an up-grade of mountain-side. Leaving the lower ledge and back-trailing on the higher one, he stopped opposite the place where he had found the nuggets. He dismounted, sought carefully about, and to his joy found more nuggets exactly like the ones picked up on the opposite lower side. "He took the pick from the saddle and worked at the wall facing him, and discovered a rich lode running straight in through the solid rock. He was so excited that he started off without staking a claim or otherwise marking the place. But he soon remembered and went back. He made out a correct claim and fastened it to a tree, then piled up the necessary heaps of stone with his stakes in the middle. Doing all he could think of to legally hold the right to mine the ore, he started back along the dangerous ledge. It was so dark by this time, that he could not find the way he came, and knowing it was almost impassable, he permitted the horse to choose a way out by going up the mountain-side, and so he finally reached the summit. Here he camped for the night and early in the morning he kept on till he struck Top Notch Trail, but so circuitous had been the route that he never could describe the pathway his horse took. "Unfortunately, he had left Patsy home that day to guard supplies in the cabin, and he did not return there at once, thinking it wiser to first file his claims in Oak Creek. The clerk asked for section-corners or distances from the nearest surveyor's blaze, but Montresor had not found any. "It was a question whether the claim would be legal, but the worried old man refused to give full details of the spot, as he feared the claim would be jumped, and he purposed going back again to make a survey for himself. "On his way to the cabin for Patsy, a dreadful storm came over the mountains and lasted for three days. Snow, hail and wind blew down the sides until it seemed as if winter had come in full blast. Of course, no one would attempt climbing in that storm and Montresor had to remain in his cabin for the blizzard to pass. "When he was able to travel again, he took Patsy to help find the place, but the rain had washed away all scent for the dog. After a tortuous climb on the trail, made ten-fold worse by the down timber and wash-outs, Montresor discovered land-marks and knew he was on the right pathway. "However, he could see no ravine or ledges, and after hunting day after day, without locating a spot that resembled his claim, he well-nigh caved in. There was no gully, no ledge, no wall of rock with fresh-picked vein of gold showing in its face! In fact, so much rock and earth and trees had been washed down from Top Notch Trail during the great storm that the whole area he had previously covered had changed form and appearances. "The poor man then tried to find his claim by following Top Notch Trail and coming down from the summit, but he was taken ill and laid up in his cabin for a long time. "I rode up to see him whenever I could, and father wanted him to have some one stay with him, but the old man would not. Patsy was his only nurse. The ranchers laughed and said he was luny over gold, and that he never had seen any. Still there was the ore to cause wonderment, until a miner declared it was some the old man had left in his kit from Klondike. The report that he was trying to sell a claim that never existed, made folks shun him even when they heard he was sick. "Cold weather was coming on and mother would not let me risk the long ride to his cabin so often, but one warm Saturday I packed supplies and rode Noddy up there. I found the poor man unconscious. Patsy stood by the bunk licking the limp hand. I looked about but no food or drink could I see. I lifted his gray head and tried to make him sip water from my bottle, but he merely opened his eyes and smiled. "He tried to take something from under his head and I helped him. I found a scrawl saying, 'Look on Patsy's collar.' "He tried to mumble and I stooped low but he relaxed suddenly and seemed to shrink. I felt his heart but it was still. I tried his eyes and they were sightless. Patsy sent up a heartrending wail and crawled over behind his master's gun and knapsack, so I knew my old friend was dead. "I removed the paper from Patsy's collar and saw my name on it. Upon opening it, I found the dear man had left me all his interests in the claim filed at Oak Creek offices. I tried to coax Patsy to come with me, but he would not desert his master. Then I placed water in a dish and gave the animal my food, but he would not eat or drink. "I hurried home to tell father and he rode back that same evening, to arrange for the old man's burial. Jeb and John went with him, and the coroner from Oak Creek, who is a friend of ours. "When they reached the cabin they found faithful Patsy stretched across his master's body dead also. So both old comrades were buried together, although the minister from over the mountain said it was a sin to place both in one grave. When John told me, I said I was glad the two could travel the same trail together, for Old Man Montresor had found Patsy his best friend for ten years. "We found no clew to his eastern friends, and when the last will and testament of Ralph Montresor was filed at Oak Creek, every one laughed at us for believing the fairy-tale of a crazy man. But I never believed he was crazy, and I do believe he once discovered that gold-mine!" "Oh, Polly!" wept Anne and Eleanor, deeply affected by the tale, but Barbara plaintively remarked, "Do talk of something cheerful!" "All right, Bob, I'll tell you something that will cheer your woeful heart!" jeered Eleanor, impatiently. "I'm going to take that Red Man's up-trail, soon, and rediscover the mine, then I'll give it to Polly for a present for her loyalty to Old Montresor!" "Don't be silly! If you ever did find a gold-mine you'd hold on to it, fast enough!" retorted Barbara. Eleanor winked at Polly and Polly smiled gratefully at her, but Anne broached another subject to spare the sisters an argument. The horses had been jogging along a trail that now turned off to what looked like a wide plain. "Here's the bridge I've been heading for," said Polly. "From here on, it's clear going to Lone Pine Blaze." "Bridge! Do you call this a bridge," laughed Eleanor. "It's a forest ranger's bridge. They build these over chasms and streams so horses and men can quickly reach any part of the forest when there is a fire. If they had to ford swift streams, or go round about, much time would be lost." The bridge in question was made of loose tree-trunks thrown across the river and pegged down on either side where the ends rested upon the steep banks. After crossing the log-bridge, Polly led the way towards what seemed to be a veritable wilderness of forest. Giant pines thrust their green tops far above trees that would have been considered landmarks in the East, but were deemed quite ordinary in the West. Next in height to the commonly-sized pines came gigantic oaks and then the still shorter aspens and lodge-pole pine. "You never intend breaking through that tangle of trees, I hope, Polly!" cried Barbara, who had never seen such a bewildering growth of forest in her life. "No, not this time! I'm making for that pine that you can see way above all of the others. That is Lone Pine Blaze, because it bears the blaze that shows the way to the up-trail!" Noddy must have been a frequent traveler to this tree for she knew exactly the way to go and when she came opposite the pine that bore the blaze, she stopped of her own accord. "Now, wasn't that cute?" cried Eleanor, riding her burro directly behind Noddy. Polly jumped from her burro's back and went over to Choko. She removed the ax from the pack and chopped a way through the slender undergrowth which had grown up that season. "Yes, here's the blaze as plain as day! Any of you girls want to read it for me?" laughed Polly. The three curious girls jumped from their mounts and pushed a way over to the tree where they saw a queer mark made deep in the tree where the bark could not over-grow it. "What does it say, Poll!" asked Eleanor. "It means for us to turn to the left and follow the trail upwards!" said Polly, pointing to the signs. "I should think the ranchers would put up sign-posts to guide travelers!" said Barbara. "How long do you suppose a post would last in a mild little wind-storm that uproots trees and tosses them about like wisps of hay?" laughed Polly. "Oh, Polly! You surely are making fun of us!" said Eleanor, doubtfully. "No, indeed, she is not! In the three months' time I was at the Cobb School, I saw some terrific gales sweep over the country!" added Anne. But sign-posts and wind-storms were forgotten for the time when the horses came out on a strange road they had to travel. The wilderness of pine forest had been left on the right after leaving Lone Pine, and the trail led down gradually to a bottomland of brilliant green herbage. Directly over this emerald valley ran a corduroy roadway. "There must have been a brook under this at one time!" stated Eleanor, finding the logs partly embedded in caked mud. "No, this too, is built by our forest-rangers who help the timber jacks build these roads. You see, while frost holds good the heaviest tree trunks can be readily moved over icy swamp bottoms, but in the spring, when thaw and freshets begin, the bottoms are more like a marsh, or shallow lake, than anything else I know of. Then these corduroy roads are a make-shift for hard ground," explained Polly, while Noddy started to clip-clop over the firmly-set logs. "Why don't the men wait for the next frost?" asked Barbara. "Hoh! Don't you know the trees would be worthless if they were left for a season? Decay and mold or worms would destroy the finest wood. Besides, these logs, or poles, laid side by side in the mud, soon get to be as solid as a rock, for the mud, oozing up between the chinks of the logs, dries out and leaves them baked tight in the grooves." Having heard the way this novel roadway was made, the girls took a lively interest in crossing it. No more questions were asked until Polly reached the trail that led up through the forest. Then Eleanor spoke. "Polly, you're sure you know the road?" "We can't go very far wrong! If we keep to the trail we are bound to come out on the top--somewhere!" laughed Polly, giving Noddy her head in selecting a safe footing on the rough trail. Eleanor, eager to show how well she could ride, forced her burro past Noddy while the latter was making a slight detour about a sage-brush. She turned partly around to laugh at Polly, when her burro made a sudden lunge away from the trail, and at the same time, a diamond-backed rattlesnake struck out from its coil, reaching at least two-thirds the full length of its body. "Help! Save me!" screamed Eleanor, frantically, but the brave little burro knew how to carry his rider safely out of the way of the reptile. Polly saw the snake coil for another strike at Barbara's horse, which had almost reached the place before Eleanor screamed. The whole occurrence was so unexpected and sudden that Barbara had not seen the swift flash of cinnamon-red and dark diamond-patterned rattler. With great presence of mind, Polly instantly pulled Noddy up on a mound of ground just above the reptile, and caught hold of a long supple branch of wood. In another instant she was whipping the snake until it could not tell from which direction the blows were descending--right, left, front or back! In a moment of indecision, the snake remained quiet and in that second Polly brought down her solid heel upon its flat head. The other girls screamed and turned pale for they thought Polly had fallen from her burro upon the rattler--so quick had been her action. But the moment the daring girl looked up and laughed at them, they also jumped from their saddles and ran up to help. Polly made sure the rattler was quite dead, then took a forked stick and held it up to view. It had beautiful diamond markings of dark-colors on cinnamon-red ground. The belly was of creamy white, and the tail had eight rattles attached to it by means of a peculiar fibrous ribbon. These rattles seemed to be of dry horny skin that made the buzz-sound when shaken. The head had been so crushed open that Polly could easily show the curious girls the poison-fangs which were hinged to the upper jaw. "When a rattler intends to bite, its mouth grasps the object and these fangs drop down into the flesh, puncturing tiny holes into which the fatal poison flows." Polly described the action of the bite minutely, causing her hearers to shiver with dread. Seeing the effect her words had made, she laughed, adding, "A snake does not always bite clear! I mean, the least thing keeps his teeth from driving straight into the flesh, so that the poison bag cannot empty its fluid under the skin. It is often a loose or sidewise bite, so that much of the poison never enters the wound. That is why so many folks survive rattle-snake bites. If it went clean, and the poison bag was emptied under the skin,--pwhew!" Polly whistled to denote her sense of the outcome of such a bite, and Barbara cried, "Oh, mercy, Polly! I feel so sick after hearing you, that I want to go back to Chicago!" Anne laughed at Barbara's fears, saying, "We may not see another rattler all summer!" "Anyway, Bob, you're perfectly safe while on a horse, for they can always tell when a rattler is near and they avoid it. A rattler will never go out of its own course to strike--only biting when one passes too near it for its safety!" said Polly. "Well, that's some consolation, anyway!" sighed Eleanor. "What do you want to do with this snake, Poll?" asked Anne, as the sisters climbed back into their saddles. "Goodness me! What would she do with it, except to kick it over into the bushes!" cried Barbara. "Polly is laughing! She thinks you are crazy, Anne!" added Eleanor, impatiently, for she was eager to proceed on the trail. "Well, Polly, I think we will have it skinned and sent to Denver to be made into an odd handbag for your mother!" suggested Anne. "Oh, Anne, how splendid! I wish I could find a snake skin!" cried Eleanor. "Yes, Anne, I think mother will love that!" added Polly, gratefully, so the rattler was moved carefully over to a large flat rock near the trail, where they could readily find it on their way back. CHAPTER XII THE BLIZZARD ON GRIZZLY SLIDE As the adventurers advanced up the mountainside, the pines grew closer until it was almost impossible to ride between the great trees that crowded on either side of the faint trail. "Polly, I don't see how we can go much farther!" said Anne, who had never before been as high as this. "Oh, we are only one-third of the way up, Anne," smiled Polly, swinging Noddy suddenly to one side to avoid a bowlder of rock that had rolled upon the trail. After more arduous climbing, the horses unexpectedly came out into a vast clearing, called a "park" by the natives. It was acres in extent, fringed about by the heavy close growth of pines. The girls exclaimed at the beauty of the spot, for wild-mountain flowers grew profusely among the thick buffalo grass. "Now, then, every one of you start at this point and hunt for the trail. I haven't been here since last summer when we went for that trapper and his pelts. I didn't look for the blaze then, but it was here, so we must find it to help us find the way out!" called Polly, as she guided Noddy slowly past the fringe of forest trees, looking carefully at each tree. "Goodness, Polly! Do you ever expect to find an opening in this tangle of trees?" asked Barbara. "We can if Polly says there's one!" declared Anne, riding her horse carefully in the opposite direction from Polly. Eleanor permitted her burro to follow after Polly, as she hadn't the slightest idea of what the blaze or trail would look like. Consequently, she was directly behind Polly when she shouted, "I've found it!" The other girls wheeled their horses and galloped over to the place where Polly was swinging the ax about her head. With several good whacks, she chopped down enough young aspens to clear a way through the brush, thus exposing to view an old tree bearing a blaze over twenty years old. "I'll show you how to count the age," said Polly, beginning at the outer bark and counting the rings plainly lined from the new bark into the tree until she reached the place where the blaze had been made. "How interesting! Then that means this trail was made twenty years ago!" said Barbara. "Maybe twenty times twenty years ago, for all we know. Nobody really knows how old this trail is, for it was used by the Indians as far back as the oldest trappers and hunters know and have heard tell from their fathers and grandfathers!" replied Polly, swinging into the saddle and telling Noddy to proceed. The little burro obediently went into the seemingly impassable thicket, the other horses following. After they had traveled for ten or fifteen yards, the undergrowth thinned until they were going on pine-needle-covered ground as soft as moss. The silent forest with its sentinel pines, spreading a canopy overhead, seemed like another world from the bright glare of the one left behind that morning. The trees were so tall and majestic, with great fragrant green tops that scarcely allowed a sunbeam to penetrate to the pale green twilight underneath, that a solemn peace pervaded the minds of the young adventurers. The singing of birds, or the crackling of dry twigs, as wild creatures sprang over them, were the only sounds heard. No shrubs or vegetation obstructed this impressive place, so the girls rode on in silence, until the trail ascended again. Near the confines of this forest, Polly suddenly reined in Noddy and held out a warning hand. Right across their pathway sped a young deer. It paused by the side of a sheltering pine-trunk, with head erect and fore-foot poised gracefully, gazing steadily at the strange creatures who dared intrude upon those sacred precincts! It as suddenly vanished again, and the girls breathed deeply. "Oh, for our camera!" cried Eleanor. "How stupid of us to leave it home," added Barbara. "It's always the way. Who remembers a kodak until it is needed," laughed Anne. "John promised to bring me a fine camera this summer, but he never came home from college, so I didn't get it," said Polly, wistfully. "Haven't you one, Poll?" wondered Eleanor. "Not yet." "It's a shame--and you with such wonderful ways to use it. The moment we get home, I shall give you my new one, and you can give me some prints from it in exchange," said Eleanor, generously. "Why, Eleanor Maynard! Yours is brand new and cost forty dollars!" cried shocked Barbara. "Of course it's new! Would I give my best friend a second-hand thing?" retorted Eleanor. "Oh, Nolla, it's awfully good of you but I wouldn't think of taking it!" exclaimed Polly, gratefully. "If you don't I'll give it to Sary, and then you can look for trouble! She'll snap pictures of Jeb at dinner, of Jeb at the pump, and Jeb here, there, and everywhere!" The girls laughed merrily at the pictures outlined, and the camera was forgotten. After climbing for two hours more, Noddy wrinkled his nose and twitched his sensitive ears. "Noddy scents water. See, Choko is acting the same way," called Polly; and sure enough both burros were making faces at the sky-line. In a short time the riders reached another Park but this one was not half the size of the first. Instead of encircling forest trees, the girls saw giant up-thrusts of rock that deft the blue sky. On each side of the widened trail stood lodge-pole pine that ran up to the summit and down the other side of the peak. "At last--Top Notch Trail!" exclaimed Polly. "You seem relieved?" ventured Anne. "I am, because I half-doubted whether I would remember the right route without an older guide." "When in doubt don't do anything," suggested Eleanor. "If we didn't do anything we wouldn't have been up here," argued Anne. "This trail runs straight to Grizzly Slide, a glacial peak I've always wanted to see. Father never had time to take me and mother wouldn't allow me to find it alone. Explorers say it is a permanent glacier that seldom changes its form as most of our other snow-capped peaks do in summertime." "How I'd love to see it!" sighed Eleanor. "It sounds as if we were in Switzerland about to visit the Alps," added Barbara. "Have you any plans for to-day, Polly?" asked Anne. "Nothing particular. I thought we would try for this trail and have dinner up here, then do whatever you liked before starting for home." "How long might it take to ride along the top and hunt for Grizzly Slide?" asked Eleanor eagerly. "I'm not sure of the distance, although I hear it is four miles from Four Mile Blaze. From here to the blaze may be one or ten miles, but the going is fine on this trail," replied Polly, eagerly showing her inclinations. "I simply won't consider going back home yet!" declared Eleanor. "We might go on a bit further before eating, and then we can see what the trail is like. If we decided to try for the Grizzly Something-or-other Poll mentioned, I'll agree, all right!" ventured Anne, the gleam of adventure shining in her eyes. "I'm the only molly-coddle in the crowd and I'd like to see more of this mountain, myself," laughed Barbara. "'Nuff said,' when Barbara talks like that!" laughed Eleanor. So they continued along the crest of the mountain from which grand views of distant peaks and vast forest-sides could be seen. The brilliant hues of wild flowers, everywhere, mottled the ground; the dark-green of towering pines, or again the shorter aspens like pickets on guard in the foreground; the bleached skeletons of lodge-pole pine burnt clean in forest fires; and just before the riders, the plunging water falling from a cliff that shut out any glimpse of the trail ahead, combined to produce a master-piece of Nature's work. "Why not camp at those Falls for dinner?" asked Eleanor. "Good idea--I'm half-starved," admitted Anne. "And maybe the horses can rest, too," from Barbara. "Bob's going to join the S.P.C.A. soon," laughed Eleanor. "No, I'm not, but horses will last longer if you feed and rest them, and I do not care to walk home!" retorted Barbara. "I brought my fishing tackle, girls, and while you are unpacking dinner I may as well cast for a few trout in that stream," suggested Polly. "Can you fish trout?" exclaimed Barbara, wonderingly. "Can a bird fly?" laughed Anne. "The idea! A westerner and _not_ know how to fish!" scorned Eleanor. But Barbara was not sensitive to-day so did not feel offended at these remarks; neither did she take pains to disguise her real sentiments when it would have been kinder to keep silence on a subject. Having reached the base of the cliff, the girls found a delightful spot for the luncheon. The packs were slipped from Choko and he, with the other mounts, were hobbled and left to graze on the buffalo grass in the clearing. The girls unpacked a pannier while Polly arranged her tackle and started for the top of the cliff whence fell the water. "Let me go with you, Poll, and watch?" asked Eleanor. "If you won't speak, and mind you don't slip and fall!" "I won't," promised Eleanor, crawling up after the sure-footed Polly until both reached the top. To their surprise, the girls found a cleft between two great rocks with a quiet pool resting at the base. The current passed, rushing onward to the Falls, but the water circulating in the nook scarcely rippled. Even as the two girls watched, a flash of a speckled back flounced up in play and splashed their shoes. "_What_ a spot for trout!" whispered Polly, crawling out to the rim of a rock while Eleanor watched breathlessly. "Not too far out, Poll!" whispered Eleanor, anxiously, as Polly leaned over the edge to gaze into the clear depths. Without a word, Polly carefully cast her fly far out upon the smooth surface of the sparkling water. Then flashes deep down, and in incredibly short time a large speckled trout rose to the bait, and Polly felt her nerves tauten with the excitement of the sportsman. Eleanor held her breath for fear the trout would disappear. Polly landed that one, weighing at least three pounds, then caught two more, weighing about two pounds each. "Guess these will be enough for this noon. No use catching more than we need!" remarked Polly, coming back to Eleanor's side. The girls hastened down the rocks and brought the fish over to the place where Polly expected to find a good fire burning. "Why, I don't see any fire--didn't you build one for the fish?" cried Polly. "You didn't tell us to! Anyway, what would we make it with--no matches and no kindlings!" replied Barbara. "Can't you girls start fire with flint--or some sticks?" asked Polly, curiously. "The only fire I can light is with a safety match and the valve of a gas-stove!" replied Barbara, quaintly. The others considered her remark very funny and Polly promised to teach them how to make a fire with two sticks only! "Do it now, and fry the fish for us!" said Eleanor. "No, it will be too late for us to begin all that now. We had better wait until supper-time. We really ought to be on the trail by this time," said Polly. "Child alive! You don't intend being out in the woods at supper-time, do you?" gasped Barbara, fearfully. Polly laughed. "Is that so fearful? Why, I think it is piles of fun to camp out on a fine night!" "Maybe you do, but remember the rattle-snake! We may be sleeping on the ground when one comes along-_Oh,_ OH!" cried Barbara, shivering. "Oh, come now, Bob! No use conjuring up such gruesome pictures to tickle your nerves!" exclaimed Eleanor, impatiently. "If you don't want to go on to Grizzly Slide, now's the time to say so! When we get there it will be too late to complain about the lateness of the hour in getting home!" said sensible Polly. "Oh, we all want to go to Grizzly Slide!" asserted Anne, hastily. "And we will take everything that comes with it!" declared Eleanor, eagerly. "Well, all right, but for the love of goodness, don't let's camp in the wilderness all night!" cried Barbara. They sat down after that discussion and ate the sandwiches and fruit, but Polly wanted a piece of the chocolate cake she thought Sary had packed for them. "I couldn't find any! We looked through and found only sandwiches in the papers," said Anne. "Oh, pshaw! I was sure there was cake!" grumbled Polly. "It may possibly be in the bottom of the other pannier, as we didn't unpack everything, you know," suggested Barbara. "If it is, we'll eat it to-night for supper. At least we know Sary packed _something_ good for us," added Anne. Once more on the trail, the adventurers rode through forests where the notes of unseen birds blending with the murmur of pines sounded like weird music to the city girls. "Just like the sea's roar in a conch-shell, isn't it?" whispered Anne, as she listened rapturously. They passed tumbling, hurrying mountain streams where the burnished trout flashed swiftly back and forth in the clear water. They came to an upland park where the soft whistle of quail caused Polly to lift her rifle, but the whir of wings told of a flight. From jagged rents in the cliffs, through which the horses passed, their hoofs ringing echoes from the iron-veined rock, they came to sleepy hollows where the Quaker Aspens stood ghostlike as sentinels on guard before their beautiful Eden. Having climbed one peak and descended it, then the next one, and so on, and on, following the winding trail that became more difficult to find and more dangerous to climb, Polly finally drew rein beside a tree distinctly scarred. "Hurrah! The blaze to the Slide," shouted she, scraping away the lichen that covered the spot. Glad of an excuse to jump down and stretch their limbs, the other girls joined Polly at the tree and saw the blaze, although so old, to be perfectly plain and easily traced. "Four miles to Grizzly Slide!" read Polly, exultantly. "But it must be three o'clock or more. When can we hope to get back home?" murmured Barbara, glancing down the trail they just left. "Too late to worry about that now," said Eleanor. "I plan to see Grizzly Slide and then camp somewhere," said Polly. "That is the best thing, now," added Anne. "You don't mean to sleep out in this awful wilderness, do you?" gasped Barbara. "No, we're going to engage a suite of rooms at the 'Queen Victoria' for to-night!" jeered Eleanor. "I hope to reach the Slide and ride back to those Falls for camp. We have fish and pasture and soft moss there," said Polly. "Ideal place, too," approved Anne. "But the wild beasts, and, oh, suppose a rattler comes along while we are asleep?" almost sobbed Barbara. "He'll steer clear of you, Bob!" retorted Eleanor. "Come on, girls, don't waste time arguing, or we'll camp on top of the peak, yonder," laughed Polly, jumping back into her saddle and urging Noddy along the way. Although Grizzly Slide was but four miles from the blaze, the trail was so rough that the horses had to go slowly. Too, the rarefied air strained the animals' hearts and Polly advised frequent halts to rest the heavily breathing beasts. During those four miles, the trail often opened from the heavy timber and gave a glimpse of far-off valleys, and dreadfully nearby abysses that made one feel that one was on top of the world. Even the pines in the nearer crests and clefts looked like wisps of green--so small they appeared from the tremendous height. The trail finally led through a thick forest of lodge-pole pine that looked interminable, but suddenly ended at a line as if it had been purposely cleared away. The riders all sat in silent awe at the sight before them. They had reached Grizzly Slide! The snow-capped peak, reaching an altitude, from the clearing where they stood, of at least a thousand feet sheer up, dazzled their eyes in the bright sunshine. To the left of the peak, the sides dropped down almost perpendicularly to the level floor of a valley many thousand feet below. To the right, the snow-fields stretched across a vast area before any timber could be seen on the downward slope. The snow of the Slide was continually melting in summer and furnishing icy streams that cut through in every direction to reach the vales far down. The temperature was almost at freezing point near the peak, and the girls quickly donned their sweaters which had been packed in Choko's panniers. In removing the sweaters, Polly accidentally pulled out a heavy coil of rope, but hung it back on one of the knobs of Choko's harness instead of buckling it inside the pocket. Well she did, too. "Come on, girls, I want to see what that blue line is over on the ice-field," said Polly, starting up the Slide. The horses were sharp-shod and sure-footed, so the girls rode as safely as if on the mossy trail, but they had not gone far before Polly began murmuring to herself. "What's the matter?" wondered Anne, aloud. "That blue line looks to me like a crevice in the ice." "What of that?" asked Barbara, stupidly. "That shows something queer! This slide seldom cracks into fissures, but when it does it means trouble. If that crevice goes down very deep it shows unusual warmth underneath. And that may move this upper section of ice-field any time, thus creating an awful land-slide, don't you see?" "Oh, mercy! Let's hurry back!" cried Barbara, wheeling her horse immediately. "It isn't likely to occur as quickly as that, Bob," said Anne, soothingly. Then turning to Polly, said: "But this slide is said to be stationary." "It _has_ moved, but so seldom that folks never fear it. I know something about land-slides after living in Pebbly Pit for fourteen years, and even a little slide at the lava cliffs causes an awful destruction, so I can picture what this gigantic slide would do if it ever got started down!" "You said it happened when Montresor's Mine was buried?" reminded Eleanor. "Yes, a small one then, and it may happen again, so we won't stay another moment," begged Barbara, from a distance. "It's all right at present, Bob, and I'm going to see if the chasm runs along very far," returned Polly, riding Noddy away from the girls. Anne and Eleanor watched the blinding peak where clouds drifted lazily about so that the top of the crest was visible only now and then. At such times, the sun flashed upon the ice and reflected myriad colors as in a rainbow. "Isn't it just beautiful!" sighed Anne. "As wonderful and beautiful as his Satanic Majesty!" declared Eleanor, but she anxiously watched Polly ride along the brink of the fissure. "Oh, girls! Won't you please come home! I won't be easy till my horse is traveling that corduroy road again!" wailed Barbara. The others laughed. "You complained about _that_ when we crossed it. The time may come when you'd be glad to be standing on Grizzly Slide--after it has slid!" teased Eleanor. "Now I'm going back! So there!" threatened Barbara, but she remained exactly where she was, for she feared to go back alone. "Well, it looks as if we would have to return unrewarded. I can't find a place safe enough to cross to the peak, and the crevice seems to run all the way across and deep down, too," said Polly, coming back to join Anne and Eleanor. "Now will you come back?" nagged Barbara, desperately. "In a minute! We want to watch those rainbow-tinted clouds--they are so beautiful!" sighed Anne. But even as she spoke, the fleecy clouds of snowy white changed quickly to gray. From gray they turned to dark ominous-looking colors, and Polly hastily glanced at the sun. "Let's ride back at once!" said she shortly. [Illustration: NODDY LED THE WAY TO TIMBER AS THE BLIZZARD BEGAN ANEW.] Noddy was turned and urged to lead off as fast as possible, but Polly turned every few moments to watch the clouds now gathering in somber banks and falling down over the Slide. "Girls, make more haste!" ordered she. "What's the matter, Poll?" called Anne, who was in the rear. "I want to get you-all to the timber line just as fast as we can travel. Don't waste breath talking--just _ride!"_ cried Polly, fearfully. "I told you to come home. I knew something terrible would happen up here!" wailed Barbara, trying to push her horse, by leaning far over his neck. "Yes, you always were a Calamity Jane. If we'd left you down with the rattle-snake we wouldn't have been so hoo-dooed!" cried Eleanor, in her nervousness. "Noddy, dear, won't you go faster? We must set a better pace for the others, you see, pet!" said Polly to her little burro. Apparently Noddy understood the need of a brisker step, for she started so that she soon out-distanced the others and Polly had to wait for them. As she waited impatiently, she watched the clouds sweeping down and along over the ice-fields. Then she remembered the rope hung on Choko's collar. She jumped off, grabbed it, and soon had Choko securely fastened to the end of the rope. Another loop was fastened to Noddy's collar. As the others rode up she tied a loop to each mount so that a chain was made of the five animals. "Is it a blizzard or a tornado, Poll?" gasped Anne. "Don't know! Just race on as fast as you can!" Then as they hurried across the icy slope, the sun seemed suddenly quenched and the daylight turned to sodden drab. Heavy drifts of snow could be seen falling headlong from the clouds hanging about the peak, making a wonderful if awesome sight. "Girls, our lives are in jeopardy unless we reach the timber belt!" shouted Polly, trying to outcry the wind that shrieked down the Slide. Noddy, brave little burro, quivered in dread of the elements sweeping about them, but she responded to Polly's call and fairly dragged the trembling Choko after her. The hurricane was now screaming about the peak and howling horribly through the fissures in the ice. As the blizzard gathered fury and strength, the clouds, like rags torn from the sky, raged past the riders, every now and then sweeping the snow completely over them. Still the full fury of the gale had not yet appeared. Polly stopped momentarily and yelled back her orders: "Every one grab hold on the tail of the horse in front of you!" They comprehended the sense of this advice, but could not manage to act upon it, as the drifts of snow and ice made it impossible to jump from the saddle, or lean over to hold to anything. By this time, everything was hidden from sight and even the foremost rider looked ghostlike in the gray light and snow. The trail was obliterated by the drifts and the going was slippery and slow. "We've simply _got_ to make that timber, girls!" shouted Polly, more to encourage than to urge, as she knew the beasts were doing their utmost. The three other girls, too cold and frightened to speak, clung to their animals hopelessly. Noddy seemed imbued with supernatural powers, for she never made a miss-step or swerved from the trail, although it was invisible. This instinct of scent, so marvelous in these little burros, proved the salvation of the adventurers. Then darkness fell completely and the storm broke loose in its fierce madness, so confusing the chain of horses that they stamped and turned until the rope was so tangled that the riders were threatened with being thrown. Even in that awful moment, Polly was glad she tied the beasts to-gether, for surely one or another of them would have bolted or strayed to doom with its rider. Noddy seemed the only animal to keep her sense. As the other horses snorted and wheeled, Polly cried desperately: "Noddy, Noddy! Can't you help us out?" With a tremendous spurt of strength the little burro pulled herself free from the tangle, dragging Choko along, too. The other horses soon calmed down again and followed in the wake. A glassy surface had formed over everything, so that a slip would prove extremely dangerous on that steep slide, but Noddy plodded along as if she knew that the responsibility of all depended upon her accuracy in trailing. The girls had to trust blindly to the burro's sixth sense, as no one could see whether a yawning chasm or a rocky projection was directly before them. "Polly, I'm falling! I can't stick on another moment!" cried Anne, her voice reaching Polly, as the wind blew in that direction. "Anne Stewart--you _must!_ We're right at the timber-line now, and I'd be ashamed to say you gave in before Barbara!" shrilled Polly, to give her friend new endurance. "I'm all in, too!" wailed the plaintive voice of Eleanor. "Oh, dear God, tell me what to do?" screamed Polly, as if she must _make_ the Almighty hear and help. Just as all seemed at its worst, the wind suddenly died down, and the gloomy mantle of darkness lifted perceptibly. Polly felt sure the cessation of wind and sleet was but a lull before a second and worse cloud-sweep, but she made the most of the interval. "One more step, girls, and we are safe! Keep up courage!" To Noddy she crooned anxiously: "Now or never again, little one!" Noddy turned momentarily to look into her beloved mistress's eyes as if to plead for breath and a moment's rest, and then she responded to the call of necessity and led the staggering line to the timber just as the gale began anew. It was darker in the forest of lodge-pole pine than out on the ice-field, but the timber offered comparative refuge from the driving sleet and wind. Another difficulty presented itself, however, in the close growth of trees. To avoid collision with the crowded trunks, it became necessary to undo the rope that held the five beasts together. Each was thus allowed to roam his own way, and this was the more hazardous, as the hurricane ofttimes tore up a smaller pine and, twisting it about like a cork-screw, flung it down like a straw. Noddy seemed possessed to travel in a certain direction, so Polly, sure of a burro's instinct for shelter and refuge, gave her her head. Eleanor's burro also seemed anxious to go in the same direction Noddy took, and followed in her footsteps. But Choko, freed from the detaining rope and not so worn by battling the gale with a rider to carry, made for a spot to the right of Noddy. Suddenly Eleanor screamed and pointed at Choko. "Oh, look quick! Choko! Choko!" Even as she cried, Choko was seen frantically scrambling on the verge of a cliff, and suddenly vanished over its side. CHAPTER XIII A NIGHT IN THE CAVE "Oh, my little Choko!" sobbed Polly, quickly turning Noddy to go down to the edge of the precipice where the burro had slipped over and down. "Now we haven't a thing to eat, and no blankets for the night! I knew this was a foolish outing," complained Barbara. Eleanor failed to hear her sister's selfish remark, for she was driving her burro closely upon Noddy's heels. Anne was so impatient at Barbara that she urged her horse after Eleanor to keep herself busy. "Good gracious! Am I to sit here alone and freeze! I'm sure I'm not such a fool as to have the same thing happen to me as it did to Choko," cried Barbara, but the wind carried her words back to Grizzly Slide. Polly slid from her saddle and stretched out flat upon the brink to peer over the edge for a possible sight of the burro. As she did so, she saw a mass of baggage and burro scramble upright and shake itself violently. Then a plaintive whinny rose up to welcome the fearful girls. "Whoa! Whoa, Choko!" shouted Polly, instantly. Jumping up, she called to Eleanor: "Choko fell upon a ledge, but there's a great hole behind him and should he back he will surely fall in and be lost. I'm going down to lead him out!" "Oh, Polly, don't risk your precious life for a burro!" screamed Barbara, hysterically. "If Noddy can creep down, I'll save Choko without risk to myself," declared Polly, climbing in the saddle. "If Polly goes, I go too!" exclaimed Eleanor, turning her burro to follow Noddy. "Don't you dare! Nolla--think of mother grieving for you, and me left alone in Colorado, helpless!" cried Barbara. "Now I'm going, anyway! I'd like mother to appreciate me," was Eleanor's unexpected reply, but Anne caught an undaunted look in the girl's eyes. The combined persuasions of Barbara and Anne had no effect on Eleanor, who, truth to tell, exulted in this daring feat and would not have missed the thrill for anything. But her burro balked at the point where Noddy began the descent. Noddy was making for a place where the ledge met the downward slope of the mountain-side. The burro felt about for sure footing and then took a step forward. Prodding carefully again, she took the next step, and so on. Sometimes, feeling suspiciously, she would essay a step and as suddenly bring back her hoof before breaking into the pit. Thus taking one assured step after another, she finally reached the beginning of the ledge where Choko had landed. Upon the mountain-side where the frozen girls and beasts trembled, the wind howled and the blizzard swept along between the trunk of trees, but on the ledge Polly found comparative shelter and only now and then a blast of the gale. She stopped to beckon to Eleanor and then urged Noddy along the foothold cleft from the cliff. Above, the rock-wall rose to the mountain-top; beneath, Polly could not gauge the depth--it was too dreadful and was now blurred by fine drifts from the blizzard. After what seemed an age, Polly reached Choko, who still stood obedient to his mistress's command of "Whoa." But he shook and seemed completely broken up with fear and the shock of the fall. "Dear little Choko!" purred Polly, jumping from Noddy's back and softly patting the burro's woolly face. The burro affectionately nosed Polly, who gazed quickly at what she thought to be a pit back of the little beast. She gasped in wonderment and went to the dark hole. Then she quickly ran back and took hold of Noddy's and Choko's bridles. Standing thus, she shouted to the anxious girls above: "Come down as carefully as I did and here you will find a cave." With that she disappeared into the yawning black hole, leading both burros. Barbara and Anne stared at each other in amazement, and the latter said: "Come carefully! Anything is better than freezing here." Eleanor had already reached the ledge, when Polly came forth from the cavern to shout out advices. The two older girls made the perilous descent safely, and then guided their horses along the ledge until all stood before the cave where the burros were waiting. "Isn't this a miracle?" cried Polly, the moment all were safe and the poor beasts were being led inside the refuge. The girls laughed and cried hysterically when they saw the haven, but the animals seemed uneasy, and Noddy came up to Polly with fear apparent in her expressive eyes. "Noddy, are you frightened? Surely no wild beast can be in here, at present?" queried Polly, looking around in the semi-gloom. "Polly! What can it be?" shrieked Barbara, clinging to Anne in fear. "Better get out again, Polly," suggested Eleanor, seeing the horses paw the floor, and strain their eyes to see. "Are we safe here, Polly dear?" asked Anne. "Safer here than up there," returned Polly, and as she spoke a great tree was flung down over the edge of the gorge just where ledge and slope met. "Now we can't crawl out if we wanted to--the tree obstructs the way," declared Polly, decidedly. "But we must see what it is that disturbs the animals," advised Anne. "I'd rather throw myself over the cliff than be clawed to bits by a panther!" wailed Barbara. "The horses are quieting down now, and Noddy seems as much at home as anywhere, so I reckon it was only strangeness that made them act queer," said Eleanor. "But something may pounce out upon us, and take us unawares!" wailed Barbara. "I propose to smoke them out as soon as I make a fire!" said Polly, looking about in the darkness of the cave for a possible stick of wood, but not finding any. "I'll have to chop some of that pine! Noddy can carry me safer than I can walk on this ledge, so I want you girls to promise to keep the horses close about you and wait right here until I get back!" said Polly, taking the ax from the pack. "Polly, I'm coming too! Two axes are better than one, and I can ride my burro, too!" declared Eleanor. Anne and Polly sent the girl a look of gratitude, while Barbara was speechless until after Eleanor started to go, then she remonstrated volubly. The two girls crept toward the down-thrown pine, and Eleanor said, "We'll need wood for a fire, won't we?" "Yes, we will have to remain in the cave all night, and it gets so terribly cold upon these mountain peaks that we will be frozen unless we warm up the interior of the cavern. Then, too, we may need to keep fires going at the back end of the cave as well as in front, to ward off wild beasts!" They were slowly advancing when another awful crash came from the slope above. Both girls ducked instinctively, but the decayed pine that was broken off above ground fell over the edge of the cliff just in front of them and obstructed the way so that progress was impossible. Eleanor quaked and cried, "Oh, let's go back, Polly!" But Polly laughed. "Glory be, our fire-wood came to us halfway." At her cheerful words, Eleanor braced up again. Polly jumped from Noddy's back and started to hew at the soft decayed wood. It was easy to chop and would furnish a flaring fire, even though it would burn rapidly and need constant replenishing. "Nolla, this is the second miracle to-day! Had we hunted the mountain over, no better wood could have been found for just our need. Yonder on that other pine, when this is out of our way, awaits our bedding." "What funny bedding!" "Just you wait and see." When enough wood was chopped to clear a way on the ledge, Polly showed Eleanor how to make bundles of it. These were tied by means of the rope to Noddy's harness and carefully dragged back to the cave. Several trips had to be made before both burros had brought the firewood to the growing pile in the cave. When Polly spoke of cutting balsam for beds, Anne offered to help, as she was so cold. "And leave me here alone?" cried Barbara. "Why don't you come with us?" asked Eleanor. "I'm dead! I can't do another thing!" "Then stay here and cheer the burros," said Eleanor. "I won't let every one of you go and leave me to be killed by a wild animal," shuddered Barbara, looking over her shoulder. "Nothing wild here, but you, Bob. However, you may light a fire for us, while we are gone," retorted Eleanor, unsympathetically. Without further comment, Barbara was left, and soon the girls were stripping the spruce which had blown over the ledge. Its green branches would make the softest of wild-wood beds. "It really was fortunate that both these trees came down when they did! We would have to remove them as obstacles to our going out in the morning, and I would have had to hunt well before I could have found such fine tinder! So I've really saved myself a double chopping!" said Polly, as they tied up the last bundle of evergreen branches and started the burros for the cave. "I'm just frozen, and I wish you would hurry and build a fire!" cried Barbara, petulantly, when the girls came within hearing. No one replied, but Eleanor was furious, while the others were impatient with the girl. "I was so hungry that I tried to get a sandwich out of the pannier, but something made a noise back in the cave, and I'm sure it was a rattle-snake buzzing!" added Barbara, trying to win sympathy from the stony-faced companions. "Pooh! You've got rattle-snake on the brain! It would have done you good to get out there with us and do some rattling of the ax on the wood!" "Why, Nolla! How unkind you are since we came to this awful country!" cried Barbara, not able to find a handkerchief, and sniffing audibly. "Here! Use this to amuse yourself with while _we work!"_ said Eleanor, taking a neatly folded handkerchief from her coat pocket. When Eleanor turned again to the others, she found Anne had unharnessed the burros and piled the saddles upon a stone projection near the opening of the cave. There were numerous little finger-like caves that branched out from the main cave, but they led nowhere and seemed empty. Polly noticed that the dry leaves and loose shale scattered about appeared to have been undisturbed for months. Some of the leaves were from the harvest of the previous fall, so she felt sure no beast had prowled about the "fingers." Coming to a much larger extension than any of the others had been, Polly called out: "This must be the thumb of the hand!" "Sure it isn't the arm!" laughed Eleanor. "Ah, I thought so--now I have it!" murmured Polly, finding a nest of leaves and soft feathers packed down with bits of fur and dry grass. "What have you found?" eagerly asked three voices. "The lair of a grizzly. I've got him!" cried Polly, triumphantly. Instantly, three girls screamed and turned to run, and Polly laughed. "I've got him on the _outside,_ girls! He can't get in with that fire smoking his front doorway, you see." "Oh, hurry back and pile more wood on the fire!" cried Eleanor, quaking with fear. "Yes, yes, Polly! Come away and let's build more fires!" added Barbara, not knowing which one of the girls to hide behind, and looking at the horses as if pondering a refuge with them. "What! And use all of our 'safety first' before dawn! If you waste the wood now, what will you do when old grizzly comes prowling home and finds your fires dying down?" said Polly. "Well, do have one of us go and tend the fire carefully so it can't possibly die down and let him in!" added Anne. "We are almost through exploring, so we may as well finish! Then we will all go and have supper and feed the animals." The remainder of the cave proved to be a rocky wall gradually sloping down until it reached the entrance again. But, just at one side of the "thumb" was an aperture from which the wind blew in, as could be seen when Polly held her torch down to the opening. "That leads out somewhere, and that opening is big enough to let a panther creep through, or a wild-cat! I'd like to crawl through there and make sure where it comes out and if it is quite safe on the other side," suggested Polly, looking at the girls. "Oh, Polly dear! Don't do it! Suppose something should happen to you!" cried Anne. "Why, I wouldn't let it, Anne! If I creep through that tunnel, I'd shove the torch in first and keep it moving ahead of me all the way, so that nothing could grab me, you see!" said Polly, half laughingly. "I say, Polly, let well enough alone. Let's go back and get supper and rest for to-morrow!" advised Barbara. "But just s'posing a rattle-snake was coiled up inside that tunnel! A burro wouldn't smell it, and it could crawl out during the night and take a good straight bite!" teased Eleanor. Polly laughed, but Barbara thought Eleanor meant it, so she replied: "Then Polly had better go in and see if everything is safe for the night." Anne had been so rudely shocked that day at the selfishness apparent in Barbara's character, that she did not try to hide her opinion. The wonder was, that she ever could have been so completely taken in during the months in Denver, as to declare Barbara to be a splendid girl when one knew her. She now decided that it took ranch life and mountain exploits to show up genuine characteristics and thoughts. "Polly, I'll go in first!" offered Eleanor, dropping to her knees to crawl in at the opening. "Eleanor Maynard! Come back here!" cried Barbara, taking hold of her sister's feet. "Nolla, you shan't take the glory from me!" laughed Polly. Meantime Eleanor was pulled back and rolled over, laughing as heartily as if she were at a farce-comedy. "Now listen to me!" advised Polly, shaking a finger at the three girls. "First of all, Anne and Bob must go and watch the fires, then unpack the panniers, and next make beds of the tips--you know how, Anne?" "I've watched the school children at Bear Forks weave it, so I'm sure I can make them, too," replied Anne. "Good! You stick the little stem-ends under the soft fuzz of the others just laid. The principal thing is not to have hard prods hurting the body, and the tips will take care of the springs and softness, all right," said Polly. "While Anne is making the beds, Bob can fix up odds and ends of spruce and leaves in the 'fingers' for the horses' beds--a bed in each finger, Bob. If the animals are comfortably bedded down they will be fresh in the morning. And if we hide them in those fingers the scent will not be so apt to reach a grizzly or lion should any prowl about to-night." "Where shall I place the spruce beds for us?" asked Anne. "Fix up two on each side of the cave as near the entrance as possible, Anne. We need air and the warmth from the fires. Then, too, we can hear any wild beast that may prowl around to-night," advised Polly. "If Nolla wants to go with me she takes _second_ place, see!" Eleanor laughed and said, "Anywhere as long as we start!" "Polly, first I want you to promise me not to be reckless in going through that tunnel. If you meet with the slightest danger or hazard, promise to back right out again," begged Anne. "All right, Anne, I promise, but my shoes will mar my follower's beauty if I back down on her face." Thus joking to make little of the danger, Polly started in through the hole. Eleanor followed and the two older girls stood watching until not a sound, or ray of the torch, could be seen. Then they went to the front of the cave to replenish the fires and prepare supper. CHAPTER XIV OLD MONTRESOR'S LEGACY "I'm afraid to fix the beds in those finger caves, Anne," whimpered Barbara, coming over to where the young woman was weaving the beds of spruce. "What is there to be afraid of? The burros and horses won't hurt you, and they are too weary with this day's troubles to bother about kicking or trampling you. However, you can do this, if you like, and I will make up the beds for the beasts." The spruce beds were being made--Anne showing Barbara how to lay the tips in rows as wide as the bed was to be, then folding under the sticks of the second row to run under the tips of the first row, and so on, until the length of the bed was made. This work finished, and the bedding for the horses arranged in the "fingers" as Polly had directed, the two girls stood near the entrance of the cave, wondering what possibly could have happened to keep Polly and Eleanor so long. "I just felt in my bones that it was an awful risk to go into the black hole of the unknown!" cried Barbara. "It isn't that that bothers me at all, Bob. But Polly has no sense of fear, and I think they may have found an exit at the other end, so Polly is coming around that way. It is a hazardous thing to do, in this storm!" said Anne. "Anne, can't you try to squeeze in there and see what has happened?" asked Barbara. Anne looked at her without saying a word, so Barbara thought she hesitated on account of leaving her alone in the cave. "I won't mind staying alone for a little time. I'll watch the fires and see that the horses do not get away!" said Barbara. "Really!" was all Anne said, as she turned to place another pine knot on the fire. But the tone silenced Barbara, who had food for thought thereafter. Meanwhile Polly and Eleanor had crawled into the aperture, and by dint of squirming and twisting through the passage, found that only the section nearest the cave was of soft debris. It gradually widened as they advanced and Polly distinctly felt a current of cold air blowing in her face. After creeping along for some distance without finding an outlet, Eleanor pulled on Polly's foot to attract her attention. "Let's go back, Poll. No use hunting down in the bowels of Grizzly Slide." "Nolla, the smoke of the torch blows harder than at first, and there is enough air to waft it backwards, so there will be an opening at the end, I am sure. That is what I must know for certain." "All right, lead on! I'll be with you at the death!" Polly chuckled at Eleanor's loyalty and crept on. Finally Eleanor rugged again at her feet and shouted: "Hey, Polly! Aren't we most through to China? Let me know the moment you get the first peep at a pig-tail, as I have to brush the cobwebs from my Chinese!" Polly laughed at the girl who made merry of a journey that would have staggered an older person. Finally, however, the tunnel widened so that both girls could advance comfortably and then, suddenly, the flame of the torch and the smoke ceased to blow into their faces, for they had come out into an open space. "We're here!" laughed Polly, trying to stand up and giving her head a smart rap against the overhanging rock. "'We're here!' For goodness' sake, tell me where?" cried Eleanor, thrusting her torch ahead so that it was almost snuffed out against Polly's shoes. "Gracious me, Nolla! Don't burn my soles!" cried Polly, managing to stand upright and hold aloft her torch. "Ha, that's good! Don't burn your soul!" teased Eleanor. But the moment the girls saw where they were, not another word was uttered, for they found themselves in a vault-like cave somewhat smaller than the entrance cave, but having no "fingers" or outside opening. The dome and sides were rocky, but everywhere, embedded in the rock, myriad points of light reflected as the flare of the torch lit up the place uncertainly. Eleanor thrust up her torch also, and both girls pivoted around, forgetting about wild beasts and the errand they came upon. After blinking at the bright yellow gleams for a time, Polly turned and stared at Eleanor. "What is it?" "I'm sure I don't know, Nolla. It looks like copper." "Polly! If it's copper, then we're rich!" Both girls rushed over to examine the metallic gleams at close range, and Polly frowned as a thought entered her mind. Eleanor turned and looked about to be sure no one could hear, and then whispered: "Polly, it looks like gold! Can it be real GOLD!" The girls stared at each other and then burst out into a simultaneous laugh. But it was excitement, not mirth, that occasioned it. Before the wild echoes had rung through the vault, the hysterical girls were tearing at the hard walls, trying in vain to dislodge a nugget. "Oh, why did I leave that ax in the pannier!" wailed Polly. "Isn't it always that way--when you need a thing!" exclaimed Eleanor. In her haste to reach a fragment that looked easy to break off, Polly dropped the torch. She stooped to pick it up again and saw a nugget of the ore on the ground, half-covered with dirt. "I've got a piece! Oh, Nolla, look! LOOK!" shouted Polly, holding aloft her treasure. Eleanor ran over and both girls examined the chunk of yellow streaked and studded rock. "Polly, it really looks like gold," ventured Eleanor, awed. "And it's red-gold, too, like Old Man Montresor's nuggets," added Polly. At the mention of the gold-seeker, both girls looked at each other and the same thought flashed to both of them at once. "Maybe it is!" breathed Polly. "Oh, Poll, hold the torch down near the ground so I can find a chunk, won't you?" beseeched Eleanor, now anxious to find a nugget for herself. "There, Nolla--see over by the hole! A little piece for you." Eleanor ran over and found it to be smaller than the one Polly found, but there was more metal in the nugget. They examined it closely and decided that the shining metal must be gold. "I'm so excited that I feel as if wheels were turning all inside of me--do you?" laughed Eleanor, hugging her nugget to her heart. "It's sort of a dizzy and squeamish feeling, isn't it?" explained Polly, looking at her companion. Then for the first time since they emerged from the tunnel, she noticed the face. "Oh, Nolla! If you could but see yourself! Just like a negro, but streaky where you smudged the torch smoke from your eyes." "You're no 'bleached blonde' either, Poll!" laughed Eleanor, rubbing her sleeve across her face and looking at the soot in amusement. "But mine can't be as black as yours, 'cause you got all the smoke from both torches." "Never mind now; if this is gold we can afford to have the tunnel and cave wired with electricity at once," laughed the excited girl. "Well, let's finish our hunt in the tunnel and then find some more nuggets for Anne and Barbara. They'll want a share, you know," suggested Polly. "Good gracious, Poll! You're not going on _now_, are you?" "Of course! The gold won't melt away, but we've got to close up any opening into outdoors, you know." "Let's go back and tell the girls and then finish the tunnel work," pleaded Eleanor. "How silly to worm a way back for the sake of showing off the ore. No, let's do this thing up and then go back to stay for the night. If we don't close up any aperture, a wild beast may crawl through, then what good will the gold do us if we are dead?" "Sensible as ever! Even gold can't turn your head!" said Eleanor, starting for the narrow place opposite the tunnel they came from. "Funny, isn't it, that this cave should be here just as if it was an inflated bubble in a glass-blower's tube?" said Polly. "I'll reserve my opinion till I see the end of the tube!" said Eleanor, waiting for Polly to creep into the opening. After considerable twisting and crawling, Polly first, with her torch, and Eleanor second, they suddenly felt a current of fresh air. "Oh! Oh, thank goodness!" gasped Polly. "I shoved the torch ahead! I'd have fallen headlong into this abyss." "What is it, Poll?" "A pit ever so wide, and I can't see how deep it goes down. It's right in the tunnel ground, cutting off all further investigations." "It'll cut off investigations of a wild beast, too, won't it?" asked Eleanor with relief in her tones. "Of course--there isn't a chance of anything coming in this way. I can hear water rushing, too, way down at the bottom, and the wind blows up from this pit, so there must be an opening down there where the subterranean river rushes out." "Maybe this tunnel was a river, once, and emptied down into that pit," ventured Eleanor. "I don't care if it was! I'm anxious to go back and eat, now that we know the worst," replied Polly. "We won't need both torches now, Poll, so drop yours in the pit and see how deep it may be," suggested Eleanor. "All right, but for pity's sake don't let yours go out!" Polly waited to steady the flame and then dropped the torch. It fell straight down and flared up showing the rocky sides of the pit, then suddenly it "sh-isshed" in water and all was dark once more. The girls then wormed their way back to the gold cave (as they termed it) and sought for nuggets in the dust and dirt of ages that covered the rocky floor. Eleanor found a few pieces the size of walnuts and Polly secured a handful of small bits. "How can we tie them up if we have to crawl back?" asked Eleanor. "Got a handkerchief?" "No, I gave it to Bob out of meanness," laughed Eleanor. "Hum! Well, we might put them in our middy blouses, only we take a chance of losing them in squirming back through that tunnel," remarked Polly. "I've heard of folks smuggling things in their shoes." "I have it! Take off our shoes and put the nuggets in, then tie the shoe-strings tightly about the top and fasten them about our necks!" exclaimed Polly. This being a good plan, both girls soon had their precious ore well-tied in their mountain boots, and were ready to proceed. As the two discoverers neared the cave where the others were, Polly shouted excitedly, and Eleanor joined in the clamor. Anne and Barbara had become so frightened at the prolonged absence of the two girls that Anne was about to crawl in to find them, while Barbara realized how much she really loved her younger sister. The moment they heard the awful sounds issuing from the tunnel, however, they were certain a wild beast had attacked them and the victims were fighting a way out. Anne grabbed the ax and held it aloft ready to strike, while Barbara stood wringing her hands in despair. By this time Polly stuck her head out of the opening, but neither Barbara nor Anne recognized the black face--her voice alone told them it was Polly. "Oh, my dear child! Are you badly hurt?" screamed Anne, dropping the ax and pulling Polly forth, Eleanor crawling directly after her. "Gold! Gold! GOLD! See--lots of it! Mountains of it!" yelled Eleanor, trying to drag her nuggets from the boot without untying the strings. "Oh, Anne, we found a gold mine! A great big cave full of gold!" cried Polly, managing to untie the strings. "Poor children! Are you daffy?" exclaimed Anne, not sure whether to cry or laugh. "You'll go daffy when, you see that cave--all shining gold!" laughed Eleanor, handing her nugget to the curious sister. "See here, Anne, isn't this gold?" asked Polly, working the large chunk of ore from her shoe. "It looks like it, Polly, but I'm no judge." "Oh, let's crawl in and see the cave!" now begged Barbara eagerly. "You know you'd get stuck in that narrow tunnel, Bob! Besides, I'm starved," said Eleanor. "Moreover, you wouldn't go when there seemed to be danger for the girls, and I'm sure I'm not going to try it now!" added Anne. "Dear me, won't any one go with me?" complained Barbara, who stooped to gaze in at the tunnel, and seemed too fascinated to leave the spot. "Bob, the gold has been there for centuries and it isn't likely to melt away while we eat supper!" declared practical Eleanor, following Anne to the opening of the cave. As they went to the place where Anne had spread the supper, Polly told them of the magnificent sight when they crept out of the dark hole and saw the glimmering of the gold. Over and over, the two girls had to tell minutest details of the cavern, Barbara sighing, frequently, to think she was not small enough to crawl in and see for herself. While the two adventurers washed their faces and hands with melted snow, Anne fried the fish over some red-hot embers scraped out of the fire. This done, they sat down to eat. As they ate, they talked continually of their mine not so far from the festive board. "Well, Polly, you surely were born with a silver spoon in your mouth!" sighed Anne, smilingly. "What makes you say that?" "You can see for yourself, can't you? First you fall into a family that owns no end of wealth in jeweled cliffs, and now you fall into a gold mine," replied Anne. "But Nolla owns half of this mine, and I'm not so sure but you and Bob come in for your share!" The other girls stared at Polly's generosity, as they had never thought of holding any interest in the mine. "Anyway, nobody owns it yet! It legally belongs to the first one who files a claim, so what we must do is to hurry back to Oak Creek and register the mine," said Barbara, businesslike. "My! Gold has brought Bob's brains uppermost!" teased Eleanor. "Who knows but this claim has been staked years ago!" said Anne, meaningly. Polly and Eleanor exchanged glances. But Barbara wondered. "What do you mean?" asked she. "Well, look out in front: there's a ledge cleft in the side of the mountain wall. Between it and the other lower ledge is a canyon that might be the one Montresor found on his up-climb. Yonder the slope meets the chasm and above is the steep sides leading to Top Notch Trail. Could not the land-slide have buried this wall and then a great wash-out have cleared it again? If we only had a gushing mountain stream pouring from the cliff-side the setting would be complete!" Barbara gasped, but Polly clapped her hands. "Nolla, that's it! The subterranean stream we found in there. Some big upheaval changed its outlet, or maybe this gold vein runs clean through and Montresor's claim is staked opposite this side--just where the river pours out. We must look over that side to-morrow." The two younger girls then told of the pit and the river and all agreed that it might be the stream found by the prospector before the landslide covered his claim. CHAPTER XV MONTRESOR'S CLAIM is JUSTIFIED Polly turned to place the nuggets in the pannier and almost collided with Noddy. "Hello, darling! What do you want--eh?" said she, patting the burro's head. Noddy continued to gaze wistfully at her mistress and Polly said: "Anne, did you feed the burros and horses?" "Yes, just as you told me to." "And make the beds?" "Yes, everything." Then Noddy ambled over to a pan of dirty snow water, in which the explorers had washed their blackened faces. She would have to drink it, if her mistress couldn't understand what she needed! "Oh, you Noddy! Is _that_ what you want?" laughed Polly, taking the pan and running out to the ledge to fill it with clean snow. This she brought back and melted to provide drink for the burro. "Did your thoughtless foster-mother forget a drink for her little Noddy!" crooned Polly, placing the pan for the thirsty burro. "After all that hard climbing and 'first-aid,' too!" The other girls laughed at the wise little burro and her doting mistress, but Polly turned and said: "It's lucky Noddy reminded me! We must water the horses well to-night if we want them in good shape for to-morrow." So Eleanor and Polly gave drink to the thirsty animals while Anne took what was supposed to be a chocolate cake from the bottom of the pannier. It had been so shaken up during transit that the paper felt sticky. While they all watched her open the bundle, Noddy went back to her finger-stall to sleep. Several wrappings of paper were unwound and finally Anne took forth the surprise Sary had mentioned in the morning. "Why! It's a lemon custard pie! Of all things!" cried Barbara. "In the tin dish just as it came from the oven!" added Eleanor, laughing. "Not quite like it was when it came from the oven, for such a shaken up mess of meringue and custard we never had at _our_ table!" laughed Polly, seeing the condition of the pie from the shaking and falling it had had when Choko went over the cliff. "Any one want a slab?" asked Anne, laughing also. "No, thanks! Maybe, if I was famished, I'd eat the crust, but it doesn't appeal to me now!" said Polly. "Well, I say, keep it until to-morrow! We may be glad to eat it in the morning if we are very hungry! It won't hurt to save it, anyway!" said sensible Eleanor. So Anne sat the pie-plate down where she was, intending to put it on the ledge when she got up from supper. "Reckon I'll put some more pine on the fires!" said Polly, seeing the flames were dying down. She had raked up and replenished one fire, and was attending to the other when a blood-curdling cry came from the edge of the cliff, causing Polly to jump back and clutch at Anne's arm. "Mercy! How that frightened me!" said Polly, trying to laugh her fears away. The other girls were trembling too, and Anne said, "It was a wolf, wasn't it?" "No, it was the cry of a panther! They wait and wait in quiet for a long time to get a chance at their prey, then if something interferes, they make that awful cry!" "Oh, Polly! Can he get in, do you think?" wailed Barbara. "I reckon not! But weren't we lucky to have all that pine for the fires! It's the best thing to keep him away!" said Polly, creeping out again to see if both fires were doing their duty. Another howl reached the girls, and Eleanor said in a shaky voice, "He won't jump over the fires, will he, Polly?" "No, smoke and sparks frighten wild beasts from the vicinity. They know from instinct that forest fires kill and they are wary of them. But they haven't the sense to know that a man-made fire is built on purpose to keep them away!" "It must be awful late, Polly! If you think everything is safe, suppose we go to bed," Anne suggested after a long interval unbroken by any howls. "All right! Let Bob and Nolla take the last two beds, while you and I take these in front. I'll use this one where I can watch the ledge going up to the slope. If I see anything suspicious, I'll shoot!" said Polly, examining the rifle and standing it by the side of the green-bough bed. "For comfort's sake, girls, unbutton your clothes and remove your shoes. They can be dried by the fires to-night so they will feel better in the morning," advised Anne. The pine fires were burning beautifully, and Anne, completely tired out, was soon asleep. Barbara and Eleanor had succumbed to weariness the moment they rolled over on the beds. But Polly, tired and fatigued, too, knew that some one must keep the fires going all night, so she merely reclined on the pine-bough bed and started up at every sound or crackle of the fires. She piled pine upon them all night through until the first faint gleams of dawn, and then there was no more wood on hand to use. She worried over the fact that the pine had given out and just as she turned from the fires, having deposited the last small kindlings she had found lying about, she heard the yelping of the mountain-lion and the deep growl of a grizzly bear. She ran and caught up the rifle, planning to shoot up at the cliff in a venture to frighten them away. She aimed, pulled the trigger, and the rifle-shot rang out making the echoes roar and roll through the chasm as if an army was shooting. The three girls who had been sleeping, jumped out of the spruce beds and screamed with fright. Barbara ran madly over the ground, back and forth, not certain where to hide. Eleanor stood shivering and Anne rushed over to ask Polly what had happened. Polly explained in a whisper, and Eleanor, as in a trance, watched her sister running about with something that seemed to cleave to her foot closer than a porous-plaster. Finally, Eleanor came to her senses and ran over to keep Barbara from rolling under the burros for hiding. "For the love of Mike! What's all over your foot?" cried Eleanor, dragging Barbara out from the "finger-stall" to exhibit her foot to the other girls. At sound of the unexpected shot, Barbara had jumped up frantically and darted hither and thither, taking little heed of where she ran. Now, as her companions gazed at that foot exposed by Eleanor, they all laughed hysterically while Anne shouted: "Oh, our _custard pie!"_ And sure enough. Lemon meringue clung tenaciously to as much of a nicely-formed foot and lower limb as it possibly could. In spite of the fears over wild animals, the adventurers had to laugh at the sight. "_How_ will I ever get it off?" wailed Barbara, when she realized how sticky the custard was. "Rather ask: 'How shall we dispense with our breakfast?'" retorted Anne. But another mad howl from without now made the horses cry and quiver with dread, while the girls blanched in fear. Polly had not told them that the wood was used up, and now Anne ran to carry an extra armful of pine to replenish the fires. When she discovered the truth of the situation, she slowly turned and exchanged a meaning look with Polly. But Polly now bent suddenly forward and intently eyed something she saw on the verge of the ledge above. She kept her eyes focused there, and carefully felt for and caught up her rifle. She silently lifted it, took aim, and fired! A gleam of red and a spurt of blue came from the mouth of the gun even as the sharp report cracked the echoes in the gully. Instantly following the shot, a wild howling as of fifty beasts fighting, made Polly shoot again. Snarls and yelps followed, until Polly heard the clamor grow fainter until all was quiet once more. "Well, girls! As long as we are fully awake, suppose we forage for breakfast and make an early start!" said Anne. "Can we get away, do you think, Polly?" asked Eleanor. "Yes, it's a clear morning and it doesn't take long for the snow to melt, once it gets started!" replied Polly. "Have you enough ammunition to load again in case of need?" questioned Anne. "Yes, I always look after that! But I was wondering what we can have for breakfast?" "Ha! Leave that to the cook!" laughed Anne, going to the ledge and reaching up behind a crevice in the rocky wall. She brought forth one of the small fish spared from the night before. "Good for you, Anne! If you could only dig up some sandwiches as readily!" laughed Polly. "Maybe I can do that too, if you will look after the horses and burros!" said Anne, taking a small newspaper bundle from behind her spruce bed. When opened, it showed that Anne had stolen some of the oats from the feed. This she rolled between two stones until it was crushed. Then she told Eleanor to pick out as many of the husks as possible. "She's going to give us Rolled Oats, as I live!" laughed Eleanor. Polly smiled for she was surprised to find Anne could prepare a feast in the wilderness; and soon the oatmeal was cooking beside the fish-pan. "How can you girls enjoy that awful stuff without sugar or cream?" asked Barbara, plaintively. "We're eating ours without a grumble, but I notice, you are also eating yours and doing all the complaining!" retorted Eleanor. "I have to eat it to keep from starving, still I can't enjoy it as you seem to, Nolla. I declare, you seem to be getting awfully common in your tastes." "Huh! Show me a selection of food for breakfast!" laughed Eleanor, smacking her lips over the last spoonful of oats. "What shall we do about feeding the animals?" asked Eleanor, as they got up from the ground to pack up the pans and other stuff waiting to be taken back home. "We'll stop at the first good Park and let them graze for an hour or two. Then a good drink from a stream will fix them all right!" said Polly, glancing at Noddy, who had come from her stall and stood looking sleepily at the girls. "Doesn't Noddy look for all the world like a sleepy child who has to get up for school, but who hates to be disturbed!" laughed Anne, as Noddy's tousled head bobbed up and down while she sniffed the air redolent with oatmeal. Satisfied that something was cooking for her breakfast, Noddy ran over and nozzled at the girls, who laughed and tried to push her cold nose away. The other burros and horses came out then, and Polly said, "It makes me feel selfish to eat their oats but then they can eat grass in the park and we can't!" "Girls! Aren't you going to have another look at the gold-mine before you leave here?" asked Barbara. "What for? It won't do us any good and only waste time," replied Polly. "Maybe you can find some more nuggets to carry back!" ventured Barbara. "We have all we need to claim the rights of the mine, so why lug any more than we need?" returned Polly. "Come on, Poll! Let's pack up and be going!" said Eleanor, decisively. So, with the animals saddled and the panniers packed, the cave-dwellers started carefully along the ledge towards the slope. It was an invigorating morning, and the sun with its rays was just topping the tips of the pines, when the girls rode forth to climb the slope. "Not a sign of that awful storm!" said Anne, amazed. "Only in the glades and ravines, where the snow has drifted into heaps! Even that will melt rapidly, as the warmth of the day is felt," said Polly, looking eagerly about as she rode. "Polly, what do you suppose became of those wild animals?" asked Eleanor, riding directly behind Polly. "That is just what I am looking for. I thought maybe I could see some tracks, for I was sure I got that panther when I took aim and shot!" "Well, I'm going over near that edge of the cliff and see if there is any sign of blood or tracks!" declared Eleanor. "No, no! You stop right here with us, Nolla!" cried Barbara, anxiously. "I'm going over myself, Bob, because I am curious to see why both of them should slink away so quickly. A mountain-lion seldom leaves a possible victim until he has been gorged, and it was strange that he should go without having tried to get at us!" said Polly. "Oh, Polly! _Please_ don't talk of such gruesome things! I am so glad we will soon be back in civilization!" said Barbara. The horses reached the top of the slope and Polly guided Noddy across the rough place to the cliff, where the fight had taken place. Here she sought for some track or sign of the fight, but saw only a few small spots of red in the white snow. Eleanor tried to make her burro follow after Noddy, but he was fractious and would not go near the cliff. He made a detour, however, about a small group of trees and just as he came opposite them, something upon the snow-drift at the base of the largest tree, caused him to shy violently. "Oh, girls! Run! Come here and see what's here," cried Eleanor, excitedly, jumping from her burro but remembering to hold the bridle. The burro backed and refused to go nearer the thing, but Polly rode Noddy over and saw that Eleanor had discovered one of the victims of the fight. "Ha! I thought so!" said Polly, with satisfaction. Noddy was left to watch from a comfortable vantage point, while her mistress ran up to the large panther which was stretched out at the foot of the tree. He had tried to climb it in order to escape the grizzly's claws. "Isn't he a massive beast!" cried Anne, watching from her horse some distance away. "You girls come back! He may not be dead!" shrieked Barbara, the moment she saw the animal. "Say, Bob, if he wasn't dead, he'd have had me down long before you came along to warn us!" laughed Eleanor. "Polly, he's a beauty, even if he is such a terror, isn't he?" said Eleanor, admiring the satiny coat and beautiful form of the large mountain-lion, so majestic in death. "I never saw a larger one! He must be at least nine feet long from nose to tip of tail!" said Polly, lifting the tail with her foot, then letting it drop again. She stooped over looking closely at the wounds made by the grizzly, then she suddenly cried out, "Oh! I thought that shot hit him! It must have been that first shot from the rifle that sent him back from the cliff. Then, the bear tracked him and had the fight back here in the forest. That is when we heard the sounds diminishing. "Well, old fellow, I'm sorry it had to be so! But you decreed it! It was you or one of us, and I preferred to have had it you! Old Grizzly wouldn't be so cattish about sneaking up and laying low for us until the fire died down, or till one of us happened to step out of the circle of light! He would have made a big noise from the beginning and pounced down upon us willy-nilly. And now he has given you yours!" As Polly spoke, she stood looking regretfully at the creature, as if she wished the world was ordered otherwise than all the killing and taking, one from another, in the vain belief of living! "Polly, how much do you think he weighs?" asked Eleanor eagerly. "Too much to drag home--if that is why you asked!" laughed Polly, looking up at Eleanor, with a wise shake of the head. "To tell the truth, that is exactly what I planned to do until I saw how big he was!" laughed Eleanor. "He must weigh at least two hundred pounds, Nolla," said Anne, who had come nearer during the examination. "Yes, nearer two hundred and fifty pounds, I reckon," said Polly. "I wanted to ship him to Chicago and show all of my society friends what _we_ killed during my mountain visit!" explained Eleanor. "Your motive killed the project before you saw him," said Anne, wagging her head at Eleanor as a rebuke. Eleanor laughed merrily. "Well, I intend having a regular exhibit when I get back! All kinds of wild things will be shown my friends. I propose having Polly and Noddy sitting upon a pedestal in the drawing-room as a sample of the wildest things on the Rockies!" laughed Eleanor, giving Polly an affectionate glance. "Oh, Nolla, don't talk so foolishly! As if Polly would come to Chicago! What would she do with herself while we had to entertain?" said Barbara, pettishly, but no one hearkened. "Maybe we can blaze a trail from here to the nearest ranch on our way home, and send some one from there to come and cart the brute home for us. I'd pay him well!" said Eleanor, not willing to forego the pleasure of showing the lion at home. "Oh, but then, you will make these ranchers curious. Once this far, they will look about the place where we spent the night, and that will lead them to discover the mine!" said Polly. "I forgot that! Of course it would be foolish to give any one the slightest clew to our ever being here, and of what we did while here! I see I shall have to say good-by to the lion I hoped to be lionized for!" said Eleanor, laughingly. "With a gold mine as rich as yours, you'll be lionized without the lion!" laughed Anne. "By the way, did you bring your nugget, Polly?" asked Eleanor. "Reckon I did!" "Then before we leave, don't you think we ought to make some sort of a plan, or mark the spot so we can find it again? We don't want to make the same mistake old Montresor did, you know!" said Eleanor, anxiously. "I have a plan all made. I did it while sitting by the fire this morning, before you girls were awake," said Polly, taking off her hat and removing a folded paper. The girls were surprised at the accuracy of the sketch, and Anne said, "Any one can find it from these directions!" "Thank you, but you see, it would be hazardous to risk any one else coming here. The importance of keeping the whole adventure a profound secret until we have duly filed papers and can claim right of ownership to the claim, can be seen now. I hardly think it wise to speak of the crevice or danger of a land-slide until after we get some inside information about taking hold of the mine," said Polly, seriously. An hour more was used by Polly in staking a legal claim and marking the corners with heaps of stone. She also left a very deep blaze in each of the four trees that cornered the large square area she thought would cover the cavern. Noddy soon found the Top Notch Trail when they were again on the way homeward. By riding steadily all morning, they reached the spot where the rattle-snake was waiting for transportation. Anne and the others had experienced so many greater shocks since the killing of the reptile that they felt no qualms about carrying the snake now. When the four riders finally turned in on the Pebbly Pit Trail, it was past four o'clock. They had been going steadily since morning, without food or rest, excepting the hour they had to stop at the falls to give the animals grass and water, and the girls were the sorriest-looking lot as they dragged up the road to the house and stopped at the porch. CHAPTER XVI A YOUNG STRANGER IN OAK CREEK "Glory be! You-all war givin' Mis' Brewster fits wid no sign of hide nor hair sence yistermorn!" cried Sary, rushing out of the kitchen door, the moment she heard the horses' hoof-beats. Mrs. Brewster heard Sary and also ran out, crying, "Oh, my dear children! We've had such a day! Sam just went to the barn to hook up and start the ranchers on a hunt! A trapper rode in this morning and spoke of the awful blizzard that hit Top Notch Trail. Of course, we knew you couldn't find _that_ or we'd have been still more worried!" The girls looked at each other and laughed aloud. Mrs. Brewster shrewdly guessed the truth. "_Did_ you find it? And where under the sun did you hide during that awful storm?" cried she, anxiously. Sary paid no attention to a recital of trails and storms, however, for it was half past four and Jeb would have to take care of the five mounts before he could hope to come in for supper, and spend a quiet evening with her. So, to prevent any delay, she turned to Polly. "You-all 'pear to be tuckered out! Jest flop inter the cheers an' rest whiles Ah carry the hosses to th' barn. Ah'll tell Mr. Brewster like-ez-how you-all come home, an' spared him a trip!" Mrs. Brewster objected to the offer for she wanted Sary to finish the preparations for supper and give her time to talk with the girls. Sary, however, paid no attention to her mistress's objections but gathered all the reins together and led the animals to the barn. Shortly after the girls had gone indoors to drink some hot milk--for Mrs. Brewster said hot milk would take most of the fatigue out of their bodies--Sam Brewster ran down the path from the barn, and burst into the living-room. "Well, say! Ah shore am glad to see you-all back home! Ah just was preparing to wire some detectives to be on the lookout in the Zoo for any lions or bears lately come in who looked unusually well-fed!" Every one was so delighted at the reunion that Mr. Brewster's foolishness made them laugh merrily. He hugged Polly until she cried for breath, then he shook hands over and over again with Anne and the girls, Mrs. Brewster, remonstrating meantime, that she wanted to hear of their adventures! The girls were so eager to tell about the cavern of gold that they refused to wash and dress, or remove any stains of the climb, until after the whole story was told. Mr. and Mrs. Brewster thought it was the tale of the trip and the trials throughout the blizzard, and they cared little for what had passed as long as all were safe and happy again. But Polly blurted out the truth to make them listen. "I found Montresor's gold mine, Paw!" It hit the mark! In the shock the news made upon the Brewsters, no one noticed Polly's slip on the old pet title. After a long tense period of silence, however, Sam Brewster said: "Daughter, it can't be true!" "'Tis, though, Mr. Brewster! Polly and I crawled through the tunnel until we came out into that marvelous cavern of gold," and Eleanor sighed audibly as she thought of that sight. "What cavern! You-all must be clean locoed with the blizzard and the long ride!" cried Mr. Brewster, testily. The girls laughed appreciatively, for they understood just how those who remained at home would feel at such news! So Polly sat upon her father's knee and told him the story of the mine, from the time Choko fell over the cliff until they left the panther at the foot of the tree. "And here's the plan and claim, and there's the gold!" Polly drew the nuggets from her dress and took the papers from her sombrero, and placed them in her father's hands. Mrs. Brewster dropped upon her knees to the floor to look at the map and the ore, while her husband was examining the large nugget. The four girls had no idea how anxious they were about this ore until they saw Mr. Brewster carefully looking it over with the eye of an expert miner. His first words were a decided shock. "Ah wouldn't set much store about this mine, girls! You-all don't see what Ah see in this discovery. It's gold--yes, it looks to me like red-gold of good quality, and if it is as you say--a cavern exposed so any one can value it off-hand, so much the better! But, the end of Top Notch Trail, where you doubtless spent the night, is a far haul from Oak Creek, and the chasm in front, and the mountain on top, are drawbacks to mining. However, we will ride into Oak Creek in the morning and file this claim of yours and see if it comes anywhere near to being the one old Montresor left, Polly. It would give me the keenest joy to be able to say something to a few of the mean old rascals about Oak Creek, who called me a fool for paying the funeral costs and filing the claim of that kind old man, Montresor!" "But, Dad--father! If this mine happens to cross the claim staked by Mr. Montresor, will it interfere with our filing a new claim?" asked Polly, anxiously. "It depends on how much ground you covered with your corners!" replied her father. "You can depend upon it, I covered all I could think might come within a mile of gold!" laughed Polly. "Well, girls, listen to some good advice on this! Not a word to be said about this cave--not even among yourselves until the claim is filed and investigated! You see, the walls have ears when any one speaks of gold! Then, having attended to the legal aspects of the mine, we will all ride over to remain a few days, as visitors to Old Mr. Grizzly! When we get back we ought to have some information worth while!" "And what about sending for John's friend to come and go with us? If he knew enough to tell you about the lava, he will surely be able to judge about the gold!" ventured Polly, eagerly. "I think that is a splendid idea, Sam! When we go in to Oak Creek to-morrow, let us send John a day-letter explaining about this cavern," added Mrs. Brewster. "Hain't you-all comin' to supper? Har hev Ah ben and wukked all day hopin' fer a night off to-night!" said Sary, suddenly appearing at the doorway between the living-room and the kitchen. Every one started for she had not made a sound before speaking, so no one knew how much she had over-heard. Mrs. Brewster quickly replied, however. "Why, Sary! I didn't know you wished to go out! I could have attended to supper myself, had you asked me!" "Ah hain't planned to go out--Ah said a 'night off,' Mis' Brewster," said Sary, hardly deigning to wait for an answer, but looking at the girls with an impatient frown. "Mother, we really must wash before supper!" said Polly. Sary tossed her head. Mrs. Brewster knew what that meant, so she urged the girls to forego any lengthy toilets and merely wash away the worst signs of travel. Sary was pacified when Eleanor came out of the room and handed her a large paper bundle. "Sary, I have a little present for you because we made so much trouble to-night." "Oh, Miss Nolla, Ah'm much obleeged t' you-all. Ah don' mind trouble, onny yoh see Ah expec' comp'ny to-night." It took Sary but an instant to open the package and when she beheld a ruffled organdy dress discarded by Barbara the previous season and accidentally packed in the trunk with other clothes, she rolled her eyes heavenward. "Miss Nolla! Is this fine gown'd fer me?" Eleanor stifled a laugh but Sary made as if she would clasp the girl in her powerful arms, so discretion was needed. Eleanor backed behind the kitchen chair. "Miss Nolla, Ah wonder ef a widder of seven months' standin' mought wear little yaller rose-buds on a dress, like-ez-how this is?" "Certainly, Sary," came from Mrs. Brewster, who now joined the two. "It's not the color or quantity of clothes as much as the sincerity of one's mourning." Quite unintentionally, Mrs. Brewster touched upon a tender spot. In fact, so tender was it, that Sary blamed Bill for having died so recently instead of two years back. She might have now been ending her second year of mourning! Eleanor being trained to the wiles of polite society, saw and understood Sary's flash of resentment, so she turned to Mrs. Brewster with the remark: "I've heard said, that the highest regard a widow can pay her departed, is, to take a second husband. It speaks well for her happiness with the first one, you see." Mrs. Brewster stared at Eleanor but Sary smirked and quickly replied: "You-all is right, Miss Nolla! A widder what hez ben _so_ happy that she gits lonesome whiles thinkin' of her departed, hez a right t' find a second husban'." Mrs. Brewster choked a laugh as she saw the sublime look in the help's eyes, and hurried out. Eleanor then suggested: "Now you run away and beautify yourself, Sary, and I will wash the dishes to-night." Sary needed no second invitation and in another moment she had disappeared to her "boudoir" back of the buttery. Eleanor was as good as her word, for she was soon busy with dish-water and mop, rattling the china, and banging pans about as if noise and bustle were sure signs of hard work and energy. Polly laughed as she cleared away the remains of the meal and then caught up a towel to dry the dishes. As they worked the two girls talked. "Poll, now that you have this gold mine, what will you do with all the wealth that is yours?" asked Eleanor. Polly held a decorated plate in front of her face to hide her smile, and pretended to be looking for grease on its surface. When she had straightened her face again, she said: "Oh, I'm going away to school, first of all. I'm not so sure that I want to stay in Denver, now that you have told me all about Chicago. I'll write for catalogues of schools there; and then I can see John quite often during the school year." "Just what I would have suggested, Poll! Then you can live at home with me. Dad and you and I will have the best times!" To accentuate her approval of Polly's premature plans, Eleanor swished the dish-mop wildly up and down in the soapy water, but the suds flew up lightly, as soapsuds will, and a bubble burst in Polly's eye. "Oo-h! Stop throwing dish water in my face, Nolla!" cried Polly, with eyes screwed shut and one free hand trying to rub the smarting lye from her eye. "I never did, Polly! It must have splashed accidentally when I was washing the pan." "You have done nothing since you began the dishes, but rattle and swash that mop about in the pan as if you were mining the ore from the cave," complained Polly, as she managed to open her eyes again. "I suppose it is because we are so excited over the find, and all it means for you, Polly," explained Eleanor, contritely. "It doesn't mean much more, now, than before. The thing I am most happy over, is that Old Man Montresor will be vindicated, and people will stop jeering at me, and at what they called his locoed ideas." The conversation was interrupted at this moment by the appearance of Sary. She first poked her head from the partly opened door of her room and then said: "Is any one about to see me?" Polly turned to make sure that they were alone in the kitchen, and Eleanor replied: "No, what is it, Sary?" Then the maid stepped forth and such a vision! She had curled her red hair on a pair of old-fashioned tongs. The curling irons were but a quarter of an inch in diameter and they were heated by thrusting them into the living embers of the kitchen fire. When Sary drew the comb through her scanty tresses they took on the appearance of carrot-colored cotton threads which had just been ripped out of an old garment--so crinkly and frizzed were the strands of hair. The flowered organdy dress that Eleanor had given Sary to wear for the great occasion of receiving a caller, was much too small for the buxom widow, and she was in great distress about it. This brought her out to ask advice of the girls. "Why bother to wear the dress, Sary, until you have had time to alter it for yourself?" asked Polly. "Why, Polly! Ah has to keep up my looks now that comp'ny is lookin' my way again. Ef you-all hadn't such fine city gals at home, what wears th' latest fashions so that Jeb can't help but see what's what, Ah woulden' have to worry so much about looks. But a woman has to keep up when other women set the pace, 'specially ef she is a widow, like-as-how Ah am now." Eleanor laughed appreciatively and said: "Sary is just like Bob, when it comes to that! It is the eternal feminine, Poll, that drives both Bob and Sary to the verge of tears, because they cannot catch their beaux with their good looks." Sary smirked self-consciously at Eleanor's words, for she thought she was being coupled with Barbara and her attractions. Sary felt quite sure that she was good-looking and winsome, but she had to hear Eleanor's words to make her believe she was fascinating. "If I was Sary, I'd wear a nice clean blouse and a linen skirt. It would be far more comfortable than that awfully tight gown," remarked Polly. But the help scorned such simplicity and turned to Eleanor for further advice about her appearance. The latter, wise in her years, turned her head on one side and appeared to be debating. "Seems to me, Sary, that putting on that organdy just as it is, without fixing it over a bit, may make Jeb suspicious of its not being made for you. He may even go so far as to wonder if Bob handed it down to you. Now you do not want him to dream that you did not have it made to order for yourself, so why not take it off until you can remodel it to fit yourself, like new?" Sary pondered this suggestion for a few moments, and then said: "Ah ain't got no fancy dress to wear, onny this, Miss Nolla. Ef Ah puts on my black alpaky, he'll remember 'bout Bill, and sech memories allus dampen a man's plans to pop th' question." Both girls had to laugh outright at the unexpected confession; but Sary was in a serious frame of mind and paid no attention to their merriment. She resumed her interrupted explanation. "It's jest this way, in Oak Crick country, you-all see! Single men ain't growin' on every bush, and a widder has a hard time of it, anyway, when most ranchers' dawters are waitin' to snap up a likely catch. Jeb's a catch, Ah says. He ain't a gallavantin' dude, ner he ain't spendin' all his wages on gamblin' at Red Mike's saloon. Ah've learned like-as-how being right on th' spot when a man's willin' to be cotched, is more'n half the fight to hook him. Ah kin afford to snap mah fingers at all them ranch gals about Oak Crick, tryin' their bestes to make Jeb wink his eye at 'em, jus' because Ah _am_ whar Ah am keepin' tabs on him, all his time." When the laughter caused by these words had subsided, somewhat, the two girls replied: Polly to advise and Eleanor to make a giggling explanation. Eleanor said: "You make a wonderfully accurate time-clock on Jeb's comings and goings, Sary." And Polly advised: "You run back to your room, Sary, and put on a sensible dress to keep Jeb from wondering how much of his earnings it would take to dress you in fine clothes like that organdy gown cost." "Thar's somethin' in that, too, Polly! Ah reckon you're right, so Ah'll throw on that striped shirt-waist your Maw gave me, and the duck skirt with the tucks in it." Sary vanished as quickly as she had appeared, and the two girls stood laughing as they saw the bed-room door close. Then they dried the dish-pan, hung up the towels and mop, and turned to go back to the living-room where Sam Brewster and his wife were planning for the ride to Oak Creek on the next day, and the trip up to the cave, on the day following that. But the girls had not reached the living-room door before a "hist" halted them. They turned in the direction of the sound and saw Jeb's small head at the kitchen door. When he saw that he had gained their attention, he beckoned furtively with a horny index finger. Both girls tip-toed over to hear what news he had to impart, for his behavior denoted some dread secret. "Is Sary Dodd hangin' 'round?" he whispered, anxiously. "She's in her room getting ready for company," was Eleanor's amused reply. "Wall, you-all kin do me a big favor ef you-all explain like-as-how Ah was too sick to come in, to-night. She tol' me Ah jus' had to call on her, to-night, but Ah ain't got courage. Ah kin see jus' whar all this callin' and sittin' alone of evenin's, is goin' to land me. Sary Dodd's got a powerful way for a woman, and Ah ain't no marryin' man--am Ah, Polly?" Jeb's plaintive tone and his beseeching eyes convulsed Eleanor with the desire to laugh, but Polly saw how serious he was, in his fear of being caught by a woman's wiles, and she replied: "No, Jeb; you are not a marrying man, I can say that much. And Sary ought to know better than to lure you on with all her past experiences of mankind." Polly's earnest explanation made Eleanor lose control of herself and she sat down in a kitchen chair and laughed so heartily that Sary hurried forth. Jeb instantly ducked and tried to lose himself in the dense darkness of the out-of-doors, but Sary was too quick for him. She darted to the door, called him with an imperative voice, and brought the recreant back to his duty of calling. Then she turned to the two girls, and said calmly, but with meaning: "Ah'se much obliged fer th' dish-washin'. Ah'll see that the kitchen is set to rights fer the evenin'." With this dismissal, Polly and Eleanor had to go, and laughing still, they went through the living-room door to join the others who sat about the round table figuring and planning. Sary very quietly closed the door between the two rooms, and Eleanor whispered to Polly: "Poor Jeb! We had to leave him to his fate, after all." By six o'clock the next morning, the riders were on the way to Oak Creek. Polly and Eleanor rode side by side and discussed a good name for the claim. After suggesting and rejecting many fine sounding names, Polly finally chuckled gleefully. "You've thought of one!" declared Eleanor. "Yes, just the thing! Won't 'Choko's Find' suit it?" "Great! And it was little Choko that found it, too. If he hadn't fallen over the cliff we never would have discovered the cave and the rest of it." "We'll call it that--'Choko's Find!' Say, everybody! Listen to this: The mine is going to be called 'Choko's Find'--do you like it?" called Polly to the other riders. "Very appropriate," was the answer, so "Choko's Find" was its name. Reaching Oak Creek, the party rode to Mr. Simm's office and Mr. Brewster told the story in detail. The attorney was completely silenced at the strangeness of the adventure but demanded proof in seeing the ore before he would credit the tale. "Well, Ah declare! If this isn't the derndest thing Ah ever heard of in my life!" exclaimed Mr. Simms as he examined the nuggets. "Simms, do you remember Montresor's nuggets and legacy?" asked Mr. Brewster. The lawyer looked quickly up at his questioner and a look of understanding crept into his eyes. "Sam, Ah reckon it is the same!" "The ledge, the canyon, the trails _and_ the river!" added Mr. Brewster, convincingly. "You-all just wait here till Ah get my papers from the Bank vault!" excitedly cried the lawyer, snatching his cap and running out of the office. "Simms keeps his valuable papers in the masoned safe at the bank, you know. If the town burns down during a miners' celebration some night, his papers will be safe, anyway," explained Mr. Brewster. The lawyer soon returned with a package held closely under his arm. He sat down and opened the papers before his visitors. "Here's th' rough plan of the claim and here's Montresor's letter that was found after he was buried--you know, Sam." "What letter is that, Father?" wondered Polly. "We never told you about it, as it wouldn't have helped any one then, but now you shall read it." "Where was it found?" "In the pocket of an old hunting coat when we tried to find some clew to his family and home address. But the top of the letter had been torn away so we never knew for whom it was meant." Polly took the closely written sheet and read the letter penned by her old friend on the mountains. "At last I can say to you all, that my education was not wasted as you claimed. I have made good! I am a rich, rich man, as I write these words. I have discovered a gold mine that will prove to be worth millions. I refrained from writing as you had requested, until I had _good_ news. Now I can write. "In the years I have spent on these mountains, I felt sure I would strike gold, as every sign in rock and sand formation, of the sides of the peaks, are favorable to gold deposits. To-day I proved my mining education to be of some worth, for it helped to guide me to a ledge, where the red-gold is so rich that it seems to run deep into the rocks, yet quite easy to mine. "I had great difficulty in reaching the place and, afterwards, when darkness fell over the place, I had to trust to the horse to find a spot to camp. I left my claims staked out and marked as we used to do in the Klondike, and to-morrow morning I shall ride directly to Oak Creek to file the papers and have an assay on the ore. I am now writing by the light of the camp-fire with grizzlies prowling about and panthers howling to get at me and the horse. But my ring of fire is security for us. "I haven't the slightest idea of where this camp is but I will scout around in the morning and then write you again after I return from my trip to Oak Creek. "You must understand how happy I am, to be able to pay off my obligations and take my rightful place in the world with my family. God grant that this blessing of wealth bestowed upon me after all these years of separation and disgrace, charged against me, who am innocent, will be the last of my sufferings. I have never heard from the traitorous friend who caused me this ruin, and now it matters little!" Polly looked up at this point and said: "He must have finished this after the land-slide, Daddy." "Yes, daughter: read on and you will see," replied Mr. Brewster, gently. "The curse still pursues me. I have not written to conclude this letter since the night I started it, as hard luck again is my lot. "I filed the claim and showed the ore but different laws prevail in Colorado, and I found I must register the nearest survey corners and sections to my mine to obtain a legal ownership; however my plans and specifications were sufficient to protect me from claim-jumpers. "That afternoon, a storm came over the mountains and lasted three days. It blew, and poured, and snowed, until it seemed as if all the furies in Hades were let loose. Then it cleared again and I started out with my dog and horse to visit my mine and make satisfactory corners and plans for filing. "A great land-slide had occurred during that storm and the entire mountain-side was changed. Canyons, cliffs, and mine are gone. Wiped away as if they had never existed. Of course, I know the gold is still there but buried under tons of earth and trash. It will take longer and cost more to unearth, that is all. "But I will have to locate the place anew as I have no bearings to work from, so I propose starting from Top Notch Trail and have Patsy help me find it on the down-side, as near as I can remember from the camping-spot of that night where I first wrote this letter: "I am reserving this until I find the mine, then I will mail it at once. Now that I have definite grounds to work on, my enthusiasm is equal to carry me through any difficulties in my pathway." "Oh, father, how sad!" wept Polly, handing the letter to Anne, to read to the other two girls. "We know the rest, Polly. And that is why we never had you read this. Now that we can prove the poor old man was sane, we will try to establish his reputation for all concerned," said Mr. Brewster. "Why didn't you try to find his family when he died?" asked Polly, frowning at what she considered an oversight. "We did. Every newspaper of reputation carried an advertisement, but Ah think, now, that the old man assumed another name than his rightful one. That is why we never had a reply to our ads," replied Mr. Simms. Eleanor was elated at the romance of this experience, and turned to Polly, exclaiming: "Oh, Poll! S'posing we meet Montresor's son some day, and you fall in love with him without knowing who he is! Then it will all come out when he visits your parents to ask for you, and he will get his share of the mine, anyway!" Anne laughed heartily at such nonsense but Polly rather favored such an ending, so her mother and father quickly interrupted the romance by saying: "Come, come, sign papers and wind up this affair!" Mr. Simms said the assay was more than satisfactory, and "Choko's Find" was filed as the discovery of "Marybelle Brewster, daughter of Sam and Mary Brewster of Pebbly Pit." "Who's Marybelle Brewster?" wondered Eleanor, surprised. "It's me, but no one knows it!" laughed Polly. "Sam, when do you reckon you-all ought to go back to the mine and investigate?" said Mr. Simms. "We-all plan to ride there early in the morning. Will you-all try to come with us?" "Ah'd like it first-rate. Ah haven't had my regular fishing trip this year and this will answer," replied Simms, eagerly. "Then be shore to meet us at seven or eight o'clock at the Pine Tree just by the corduroy roadway," said Mr. Brewster. "Sam, better get away before that! We won't be the only riders along Top Notch trail the moment this 'find' gets wind!" warned Simms. "He's right, Sam! Let's start from the farm at day-break and meet Mr. Simms at five or six," advised Mrs. Brewster. "Right! Make it six, Simms, and see if the coroner and sheriff want an outing." Mr. Brewster's voice sounded interesting. Just as the lawyer opened the door for the ladies to leave, a handsome young man of about eighteen came down the road. It was evident, in every way, that he was a "tenderfoot" newly arrived. Probably just came in on the noon local from Denver. "I'm looking for Carew's Camp, sir. That cowboy over at the box-car said you might tell me how to reach it." "Oh, that's the surveyin' crew for the government. Ah reckon you'll have quite a jaunt afore night to reach there. They're working about twenty mile from here--up on the Yellow Jacket Pass road," replied Simms, studying the surprised face closely. "Ah saw Carew's driver stopping at Jake's when we drove by, Simms," said Mr. Brewster at this moment. "If you-all can find Jake, that will be the way to arrive--take a reserved seat beside him,"' chuckled Simms. The youth was shy before so many pretty girls, so he took off his cap to acknowledge the obligation, and would have backed away had not Simms asked a very strange question. "Young man, you look exactly like an old friend I knew in these parts, some years back. So like, that I must ask you your name." The stranger flushed and stammered: "I am Kenneth Evans, from New York." Simms frowned when he heard the name and turned to Sam Brewster: "Did you ever see anything to beat that likeness to the man we were just talking about?" Polly had noticed the resemblance as did her father, but nothing more was said at that time, as so much remained to be attended to before the ride on the morrow. "Well, Boy, be sure to drop in and have a talk with me the next time you are in town. My friend was from your way, too, and who knows but we-all can hook up a relationship, eh?" said Simms, holding out his hand to young Evans. "I'll be glad to do that," responded Kenneth, heartily. Mrs. Brewster's kindly heart was touched by the utter forlornness expressed in the youth's face when he heard how far away the surveyor's camp was located, so she addressed him directly. "Did you want to reach Carew to-night, or can you come home with us and get a fresh start for camp, in the morning?" "I was supposed to report to Carew yesterday, but I lost the train at Chicago, and that made me late all along the line of train-connections," explained young Evans, smiling more cheerfully. "I thank you just the same, for inviting me to join your circle, but I really feel that I must find this man Jake and get away." "Well, young man," now abetted Mr. Brewster, "do as you think best, but that won't prevent you from riding over to Pebbly Pit any day you can get away from work, and having dinner with us." The young man was surprised at such hearty hospitality shown an utter stranger, but he had heard of western generosity and he now felt that he had met such types of westerners. Just now, Mr. Simms called out quickly: "There goes Jake! Hey, _Jake!_ Ah say--J-A-K-E!" The man called Jake halted as he was crossing the muddy road, and looked towards the group which stood in front of Simms' office. Simms waved his wide-brimmed hat to denote that he was wanted, so the driver turned and slouched along the side of the road until he was within a few feet of the lawyer, before the latter explained. "We-all got a fine young Tenderfoot here, for you, Jake, and Ah just wanted to warn you to handle him with care or these pretty gals of Pebbly Pit will call you to account for him. Boys are scarcer than hen's teeth, since the war, you know, and our gals are having a hard time raking the country to find such a swain as young Evans." Mr. Simms' frivolous talk made the girls smile, and Kenneth Evans began to feel more at ease. But Jake was replying to the attorney's explanation, and he listened to what was said. "Ah come all the way from camp, yistiddy, and no kid to be seen. Then the boss sent me back to-day to meet this local train but he ain't come yet. _Now_ when he shows up, he can walk to Carew's Camp, fur all I care! I'm going back, right off." "Lookin' for a kid, eh? What sort of one is he?" teased Mr. Simms. "Augh, Jim Latimer says he was bigger'n him, but a blondy. And he said he looked a Tenderfoot all through. I asked Red Mike if a feller stopped at his eatin' place for a snack, but Mike tole me he ain't seen no stranger in Oak Crick, this week," Jake grumbled. "Did you say Jim Latimer?" exclaimed Eleanor, eagerly. Jake turned to stare at the girl, and young Evans brightened visibly, then he said: "Do you know Jim?" "Do you know him?" chorused several voices, Polly and her parents joining the chorus. "Do I know Jim?" repeated Kenneth, laughing like his old merry self. "I should say I did! Why, Jim and I went through school together, back East, and it's Jim who got me in this Crew so I can get experience and money at the same time." "Well, this is great!" exclaimed Sam Brewster. "You see my boy John goes to college with Tom Latimer, at Chicago, and that's how we met Jim--his brother gave him a letter of introduction to bring us when he came out here to work with Carew. I knew the Boss of the survey crew, and Jim has been over to Pebbly Pit on Sundays. So now you must get him to show you the way." This happy discovery, of having a mutual friend, completed Kenneth's feeling of ease and confidence, and he was soon talking unrestrainedly about the Latimers--what splendid people they were. How Jim's father was trying to save his (Ken's) father from having a very valuable patent stolen by a ring of rascals in New York City. And how Mr. Latimer's brother who was a large financier on Wall Street, was financing the lawsuit, and the stock-company that was formed on the value of the patent. During the time it took for Kenneth to enlarge on the merits of the Latimers, Jake grew restless. He shifted his weight from one cowhide booted leg to the other, and finally he heaved a doleful sigh. Then he drew attention to himself. "Ef we-all ain't goin' to get started mighty soon, thar's no use in gettin' off, to-night. Mike gen'ally has a dance to his ristrant at night, on pay-day, and he can put us up, all right." Mr. Brewster hurriedly took his watch from his pocket and Mr. Simms turned to look at the old banjo clock in his office, and both men quickly said in one voice: "Oh, no, Jake! You have plenty of time to get off and make camp before dark." But the suggestion made by the driver, to stop over-night in Oak Creek, was the means of hustling Kenneth Evans along his way. The entire party walked with him, down the road, towards the shed where Jake had the lumbering camp-wagon; and there they waited while Jake drove back to the baggage room to find his passenger's trunk. During the driver's absence, Simms explained to the young stranger why he was so anxious about getting the man from Carew's Camp away from Oak Creek that afternoon. "You see, my boy, these nights about this burg when the miners and cow-boys have had their pay, are one Bedlam. Decent folks lock their doors and windows and never show a light that might attract any insanely drunken miner. That's why I want you far on your road to camp before these rough foreigners come to town. Jake would revel in a wild night of it, but he'd get fired when Carew heard of it." The young man smiled but the girls were anxious to make the most of the few minutes left before Jake returned for the Tenderfoot, so Eleanor began the moment Simms concluded. "When do you suppose Jim Latimer and you can come to Pebbly Pit to call?" "Never having met the Boss of the Crew, and not being acquainted with distances from camp to the ranch, I couldn't say. But Jim ought to be able to judge, and to decide on a day. We could then write you, couldn't we?" "Don't forget, Nolla, that we have our hands full of important work on Top Notch Trail, for an indefinite time," was Polly's warning. "Oh, I didn't forget that, but it won't keep us busy more than a few days," returned Eleanor. "That reminds me, Simms! Did you say you would take care of that wire to John?" asked Mr. Brewster, turning to the lawyer. "Yes; I'll send a trustworthy man down the line when the train comes back for Denver, and he can send his message couched so that no wise guy will understand what it means, from some telegraph office a distance from Oak Creek," said Simms. "That's a wise plan. And get him off as soon as possible so John will get the word and start home without delay," added Mrs. Brewster. Jake drove up beside the group at this moment, and sat waiting for Kenneth to say good-by to his new friends. The girls reminded him again to be sure and have Jim bring him to the ranch and visit, as soon as it could be arranged, then the great heavy wagon rolled away with the first good-looking young man the girls had seen since they left Denver. CHAPTER XVII SARY'S AMBITIONS "Dear me!" sighed Eleanor. "That boy makes me think of civilization again." Her companions laughed at her expression, and Polly said: "He's awfully nice, isn't he?" "Yes, but not half as nice as Jim Latimer," added Eleanor. "Oh, I think he is. Jim just takes everything for granted, whether you agree with him or not," rejoined Polly. "Jim Latimer is only a child! Now his brother Tom is what I should call wonderful! Not only handsome, but desirable, as well," remarked Barbara, with more spirit than she usually showed in the younger girls' conversation. Eleanor smiled knowingly, and said: "If Tom was poverty stricken, maybe you wouldn't find him so desirable." "Why would any one care for a poverty-stricken friend?" asked Barbara, wonderingly. But Anne hurriedly changed the subject. "How long do you think it might take, before John gets that message, Mr. Brewster?" "Oh, he ought to be within hailing distance of his camp and he'd get the wire when he went for meals, or to sleep. Allowing until morning for it to reach him, and another day for him to pack up and travel, he ought to be in Oak Creek the day after to-morrow." Every one but Simms watched Anne's face to see her blush, or smile joyously, but Simms was not aware of any tender feelings on the part of the pretty teacher for John Brewster, so he abruptly suggested a plan. "Ah wouldn't wait around the ranch for John's coming, Sam. If the women folks are going up to Top Notch Trail with us, all well and good, but waiting about until John and the engineer gets home will be risky business for the claim. Before to-morrow, every thief in Oak Creek, and for miles around, will be wise to that gold vein, and most of them will want to sneak up there and try to jump the claim." "Oh, no, we won't postpone going up there to guard the spot!" explained Anne, anxiously. "I was wondering how long it would take that expert engineer to arrive on the ground and render a reliable verdict about the mine." Eleanor tittered. "Sure! That is all. Anne never dreamed that John Brewster might accompany the expert!" "That will do from you, Nolla!" came reprovingly from Anne. But the girls all laughed at her annoyance. Having concluded all the business necessary in connection with filing and signing papers, and arranging details about the trip back to the mine on the following day, the ranch party said good-by to Mr. Simms, and started on the long ride to Pebbly Pit. The sole subject of conversation between the elder Brewsters and Barbara was the gold mine and the possibilities of it. The engrossing thought that kept Anne so quiet was the unexpected and imminent visit of John to Pebbly Pit. But the topic that now enthused Polly and Eleanor was the arrival of Kenneth Evans, and his acquaintance with Jim Latimer, the pleasant young man who had spent a Sunday at the ranch just before the city girls had arrived. "I wish those boys could join our party up to the cave," remarked Eleanor to Polly, as they rode behind the others along the road to Pebbly Pit. "So do I. But they are camping too far from us, for that. We are almost directly opposite their camp site, using Oak Creek as a central point. But the Government Survey plans will work them along to Yellow Jacket Pass, and from that point, along the wilderness, until they reach Buffalo Park and the Top Notch Trail where we were the other day. But they won't reach that part of the work until late this season," explained Polly. "Tom Latimer brought his younger brother Jim to see us in Chicago, when Jim was on his way west, but I never thought he would be so near me, this summer, as to be able to see him. Had I dreamed of such being the case, I would have paid more attention to him at the time. I said to myself, at that visit, 'Oh, we'll never meet again, so why waste time over him?'" Polly laughed at Eleanor's frank confession, and added: "Well, when Tom wrote mother that his little brother would be near enough to Pebbly Pit to permit him to ride over now and then for a visit, we sent word, at once, for Carew to give him Sundays off to come and have dinner with us. But he has only been over once. Now that this friend is in camp with him, maybe he'll come oftener." "If John would only bring Tom with him, wouldn't it be fine!" planned Eleanor. "Anne would have her choice, John. Bob would be supremely happy if she could flirt with Tom for a time, and you and I would have Jim and Ken Evans." Polly glanced at Eleanor in surprise, and said: "Why, Nolla! I wouldn't like that at all. It will be lots more fun if we all go about together for a good time. But John is coming to see about the mine--not to enjoy himself." "You don't think, do you, that having Anne Stewart right in reach, that he's going to spend all his time working that mine? He's going to divide time so that more than half of it will be given to Anne. Then he'll work double-quick on the mine business to catch up on his work," was Eleanor's precocious statement. Polly said nothing to this, as she had much food for thought given her in Eleanor's words. Rather than pursue a subject that roused her jealousy because of her brother John, she spurred her horse to gallop forward to join the others of the party. "Father, what did you say in your telegram to John?" asked Polly, when she slowed up beside Sam Brewster. "Simms and I had to be careful what we said, so no one on the wire would get wise as to our real meaning, so I wrote out: 'Fine party on at the ranch. Big doings that Tom and you must be in on. Also bring your friend who came with you the time we talked about mining Rainbow Cliffs. Do not delay but start immediately, as the girls have the time of their lives set down for day after to-morrow. Don't write or wire, but come on receiving this message.' You see, that was the only way I could think of to get John off without letting others in on the secret. Every one in these parts knows the city girls are with us, and they'll not wonder at our having the boys come home for a visit." When Sam Brewster concluded his explanation, Anne was smiling happily, and Barbara lifted her head a bit higher as she said: "How nice it will be to see Tom Latimer again, his company _so_ much!" Eleanor could not deny herself the mean little satisfaction in saying: "Yes, Bob met him once, at our house, and _tried_ to meet him several times after that, at various social gatherings in Chicago." But Polly pinched her friend's arm for silence, as the two horses crowded close together to pass on a narrow ledge of the trail that ran up to the Cliffs. "If Tom comes with John, and that expert engineer comes, too, mother, I don't see where we are going to put them up." "We were planning that as we rode along, just now," said Mrs. Brewster. "I think we can put up cot-beds, temporarily, in the loft over the first barn, where father keeps his account books and other business papers. Or we can pitch the large tent under the trees over by the terrace, and they can camp there. It will be far more comfortable, in either place, than they will have up on Top Notch, or what they have been having in the movable camp with the engineers, all this summer." "Finding sleeping quarters for the boys is the least of our worries now," laughed Sam Brewster. "Keeping off claim-jumpers and guarding the cave from miners who would steal the gold as fast as they could pick it, or blow it out of the rock, is more concern for us than any other problem, at present." "Well, we won't lack for excitement if all you fear is justly founded, eh?" laughed Eleanor, plainly showing how thoroughly she was enjoying the experience and its promised thrills. "Even a westerner, immune to thrills, would have a few entirely new ones in this experience," chuckled Mr. Brewster. "But let a few city gals like you three, and a quiet little mouse like Polly, jump right into such a game as this promises to be, and there will be nothing left for you to thrill over, after that, in everyday life." "If only Jim Latimer and Ken Evans could be at the ranch to go with us when we start for the cave," said Eleanor for the second time. This time her remark caused Mr. Brewster to think. Then he said: "It is queer how that boy resembled our old friend Montresor. If we only knew what part of the East Montresor came from. I have always said he was not traveling under his own name, but probably was using a family name to hide behind." "Yes, and that may explain the reason we never had any reply to our widely circulated advertisements for his relatives," added Mrs. Brewster. "If Montresor really was related to this young man, father, he surely would have said something when Mr. Simms mentioned the resemblance, and asked the stranger if he knew of a relative being in Colorado," said Polly. "Montresor had white hair, it is true, but that did not say that he was an old man. He was prematurely wrinkled from worry and hardships, but he was not much more than forty, I should say," ventured Mr. Brewster. "What are you leading up to, Sam?" asked Mrs. Brewster. "I was just thinking, aloud, that Montresor could have had a son as old, or as young, as this Kenneth Evans. If he had gone to the Klondike, as we believed, the boy would have been too young to remember his dad very distinctly. Who knows what drove Old Montresor away from home, to seek adventure or gold so far north as in the Klondike? He and his wife may have separated through some misunderstanding such as that letter would lead us to infer, and his eastern relatives may have kept all facts or news of him from this boy. The poor man's pride and determination to prove himself innocent of some wrong kept him from communicating with his people; we know that from his own letter. So I would not be greatly surprised if we eventually learn that Kenneth Evans is really a son of Montresor's." "Oh, Mr. Brewster! Isn't that exactly what I said to you before, when you hushed me up!" declared Eleanor, delighted over her romantic vision. "I hushed you up because you went on weaving stuff that dreams are made of--not because you hinted that this youth might be Montresor's son," corrected Sam Brewster. The others laughed at Eleanor, and as they rode past the Cliffs, now glimmering faintly in the rays of the new moon rising over the edge of the old crater, Polly said with a sigh: "Thank goodness, we are almost home in time for supper." The materialistic craving in Polly for a good meal was so different from Eleanor's dreams of romance for her friend that the two elder Brewsters felt relieved to hear the exclamation. Soon afterwards, the riders drew rein at the porch where Jeb was awaiting the return of the party. "Wall, did you-all find out if the mine was the same as Old Man Montresor's claim?" asked Jeb, eagerly, as they dismounted. "What's that, Jeb?" asked Sam Brewster, frowningly. "Why, Sary says you-all went to Oak Crick to file papers and make sure that Montresor's claim is the same mine like Polly discovered up on the Trail. Ain't it so?" wondered Jeb, curiously. The two elder Brewsters exchanged glances, and the girls had to laugh at having been completely fooled by clever Sary Dodd. Then Mr. Brewster thought best to make a clean breast of the entire matter. "Well, we were not sure when we left Pebbly Pit, this morning, whether this claim was good or not. So we did not say a word about it to either Sary or you, but she must have overheard us speaking about it, last night." "Yeh--that's what she said to me. She had to wait so long fer you-all to come to supper, last night, that she coulden' help hearin' what was said. She says it will be a grand day fer her and me when you-all get this mine goin'. Sary figgers that you-all won't stay in Oak Crick, ner on a ranch, once you have all this money; 'cause Polly'll make you-all go to some fine city to live," explained Jeb, innocently. "Huh! Is that so!" sneered Sam Brewster, angrily. Jeb was gathering up the reins of the horses as he spoke, and now he turned to wonder at his master's tone. Mrs. Brewster was about to say something conciliatory, when Sary rushed out of the side door. "Ah was jus' comin' to see who rode up, when Ah hearn Jeb talk. Now lissun to me, whiles Ah explains how-come Ah spoke: Me and Jeb was sittin' over dinner, this noon, when Ah says to him, 'Ef the Brewsters plan to leave Pebbly Pit, Jeb, will you-all stay on and wuk the ranch fer 'em, or buy it outright?' Now wasn't that a most natchul thing to ask?" Sary's apparent guilelessness made the girls stare and her mistress smile understandingly. "Of course, Sary--go on." "Wall, then, Jeb diden' know a thing about the gold mine ner what you-all rode to Oak Crick fer, so Ah hed to explain. He was that flabbergasted! My, Ah feared he'd keel over right at table. So Ah hurried to brace him up wid puttin' an ambitious idee in his head. That's how-come Ah mentioned his takin' over Pebbly Pit." Here Jeb interpolated: "But you-all said, Sary, that no self-respecking woman could remain on the ranch ef all the ladies left. And you told me a man needed a help-mate on such a big place." Sary frowned down on meek little Jeb, but her displeasure was wasted, for Jeb was too earnestly concerned over his master's future plans to see the widow's expression. The girls were so intensely amused over this new development in Sary's affairs that they forgot about their own ambitions for the time being. "Of course, Ah said that!" affirmed Sary, when all other escape by excuses seemed vain. "Ah also said to Jeb that now he was callin' on me evenin's, and by such ways showin' the public like-as-how he was courtin' me, it was the right thing to do to marry afore you-all leave the ranch. Then we both could pitch in and do fer your interests, as well as fer our own, what two folks separate can't do as well. See?" Every one could see plainly what Sary meant, and no one had the heart to ruin her romance by trying to show Jeb that he was a doomed Benedict if he allowed himself to be so beguiled by a scheming widow. "Jeb, if there's any one on earth who can make me leave Pebbly Pit, let me know who it is, and Ah'll mighty soon fight it out with him!" declared Sam Brewster, fervently. Mrs. Brewster and the girls laughed at his intensity, but Jeb's face lighted up with relief, while Sary's clouded with doubt. Then Jeb led the horses away, and a happy whistle sounded from his lips as he marched towards the barn. And Sary stood looking after his receding form as if she was seeing her future happiness vanish, also. The weary riders went indoors, and after Mrs. Brewster had removed her riding togs, she went to the kitchen to see what was ready for supper. To her joy, she found Sary had prepared an unusually tempting meal, and had everything in readiness to serve. The table had been set in the living-room, as it was too dark to eat under the trees; and soon after the girls had washed and changed their clothes, all sat down to enjoy the well-cooked and carefully seasoned viands. Sary and Jeb had had supper, _a la tete-a-tete_, more than an hour before the riders got home, so Sary gave her attention to waiting on the famished family. As she served and passed dishes, she conversed volubly about the mine, and the claim, and the trouble so much work would make for Mr. Brewster, if he kept on with the ranch at the same time. "Not at all, Sary. Ah shall have nothing to do with the work at the mine. John and his engineers will look after all that. But this does not mean that Jeb must always remain a hired man. If the time comes when he wants to settle down at Pebbly Pit and take to himself a spouse, Ah shall be the first man to reach out a hand to help him on in life. He shall have certain parts of the ranch to work on shares, if he prefers that, and he can build a good home for himself down on the road that runs by the pastures." "You-all ain't sayin' this in a joke, be yuh, Sam Brewster?" asked Sary, breathlessly. "No, indeed, Sary. Ah want Jeb to make a good match, that's all. He seldom goes away from the ranch, other than driving to Oak Creek, and he does not have opportunity to see or meet girls. So Ah am seriously thinking of giving him a vacation, very soon, and sending him to Denver for a week or two, just to give him a chance to get acquainted with other women; and then he'll be able to judge what sort of a girl will suit him best for a wife." Sary gasped fearfully at this unexpected plan of Sam Brewster's, and her grasp on the soup ladle relaxed so that it fell to the floor with a ringing echo. But she paid no attention to it: she stood with mouth open staring at the master of Pebbly Pit. Mrs. Brewster felt sincerely sorry for her, but the four girls had to smother their laughter behind the dinner napkins. Then Sary found her power of speech. "Why, Sam Brewster! You-all can't mean that! Send dear, innocent Jeb to such a wicked city as Denver, all alone, to be caught by them ravenin' wolves? Ain't you hear'n tell of flirty gals what goes about vampin' nice young men jus' fer a good time? Like as not our Jeb'll get lassoed by one of 'em, and she'll marry him fer his money, er git it all away from him afore she lets him go. Ah've seen it all, over and over again, in the movies at Oak Crick!" Sary almost wept as she described the lamentable case of Jeb if he was permitted to visit Denver, alone. "Don't worry over Jeb, Sary. He hasn't gone yet," said Mrs. Brewster, sending her husband a signal to keep quiet. Sary went out of the room, and when Polly called for a cup, no one replied. So she had to jump up and go to the kitchen for her own cup, but the kitchen was empty--no Sary to be seen, anywhere. Polly reported this discovery when she came back to the table, and Mrs. Brewster spoke impatiently to her husband. "You haven't any judgment about love affairs, Sam! Don't you know that you are actually throwing Jeb at Sary's head by saying such things, as you did--about giving Jeb enough vacation to allow him to go to the city and find a pretty girl for himself?" Mr. Brewster sat back in his chair and dropped his fork upon the table in surprise. He turned wondering eyes at his wife as he said: "Ah only said that to show Sary that she must bide her time with Jeb, and give him a chance to make an honest choice for a wife." "That's what you _wanted_ to do, Sam, but what you actually accomplished was to give Sary a fright over having Jeb get out of her snare, and now she'll move heaven and earth to consummate her own schemes to get Jeb. I wouldn't be one bit surprised if we should find out that she is, even now, helping Jeb at the barn and trying to wheedle him into an out and out proposal. There!" was Mrs. Brewster's reply. At that, Sam Brewster jumped up, and without asking to be excused, rushed away and down the road that led to the barns. Mrs. Brewster, with the girls, laughed at his sudden departure, and when supper was over, with the master of the house still absent, they all cleared away the meal and piled up the dishes for Sary to wash in the morning. Then Mr. Brewster came back. "Well, Mary! You must have second sight, is all Ah can say. Sary was out helping Jeb with the horses, sure enough. And Ah overheard her sayin', when Ah came up to the door: 'Jeb, if you-all ever has time to go visitin' to Denver, or any such place, it would be a fine honeymoon for me and you, woulden' it?'" As Mr. Brewster repeated Sary's words, he glanced at his wife, but every one laughed heartily at his expression and Sary's clever anticipation of Jeb's vacation. Mrs. Brewster wagged her head wisely, as she said: "Didn't I tell you so, Sam? Now Sary will have no rest, nor indeed give poor Jeb any peace of mind, until she has him firmly attached to her by vows. Once the bans are announced at church, she knows Jeb will not try to dodge them and his responsibility." "Well, Mary, after this experience Ah swear Ah shall have nothing more to do in trying to break up any matches. No, not even if my own children plan to marry without having due time to judge what is best for them!" His sigh of sacrifice in such a dire case made all eyes turn to Anne, and her companions laughed teasingly at her blush. "Now, girls--all off to bed at once, if you expect to go with us at daybreak," was Mrs. Brewster's advice that cut the conversation short. "I have no objections to tumbling into bed," confessed Polly. "Nor I. If it were not for that ride to-morrow, I could sleep all day," added Eleanor, hiding a yawn. "Ah will set the Big Ben to-night, I think," said Mr. Brewster, "so that we will not miss Simms and his party at Lone Pine Blaze in the morning." "Who besides Simms is going with us, father?" asked Polly. "Why, my old pal the Sheriff, and his men; Simms and a few of his best friends, and Rattle-snake Mike as a guide." "Oh, really! Why, it will be a large party, won't it?" cried Polly, delightedly. "We'll need a large party, Ah'm thinking, girls, if our surmises are right. In fact, the Sheriff plans to send an extra posse up by a different trail, in order to head off any strange-acting or unfamiliar-looking men who might happen to meet them on this unfrequented ride along Top Notch Trail." "My! It makes me tingle deliciously at thought of the fun we will have if we have to fight for the mine," said Eleanor. "I don't think we women ought to go if there is the least danger," whimpered Barbara, glancing from one to the other in the group. "You can stay at home and chaperone Sary," said Eleanor. "I'll do nothing of the kind, Eleanor Maynard! If you and the others go, I shall go too!" declared Barbara, jealously. "Well, no one in this family will go unless you all get into bed inside of the next five minutes," said Mr. Brewster. "Don't take time to use cold cream and wrinkle plasters this night." Laughingly, the girls said good-night and left the two adult Brewsters alone. The moment the door closed upon the last girl, Mrs. Brewster made sure that Sary was in her room with the door closed, and then she tiptoed back to join her husband. She spoke in a whisper. "Sam, do you really think there will be any danger of claim-jumpers, to-morrow, on Top Notch?" "There's always trouble where gold is to be had," returned Mr. Brewster, seriously. "But I mean, do you apprehend it and thus asked the Sheriff and his men to ride with us?" "Simms and the Sheriff think so. It was his idea to prepare against any surprises along the road, and after we get there. But it was the Sheriff's idea to get Rattlesnake Mike to guide us, and hire him to cook while we are in camp. Mike is an honest Indian, you know, Mary, and we may need one who is as good a woodsman as he is." "Well, Sam, if I thought there was to be the slightest risk to these girls, in any way whatever, I should refuse to allow them to go to-morrow," declared Mrs. Brewster. "You don't think that I would consent to have Polly go if I thought there was to be any trouble do you? All the gold in the earth wouldn't bribe me to do such a foolish thing." "I thought you may belittle any risk we might run. You are so accustomed to these ruffians at Oak Creek, but three city girls are different from western ranchmen. Even Polly and I are better seasoned for the adventures we may encounter than Anne and her friends," was Mrs. Brewster's reply. "Well, if you feel the least nervous over this trip you had better remain at home with the girls. Ah reckon we-all can readily find the cave by the descriptions Polly gave us, and by the claim she staked. Then, too, Rattlesnake Mike can guide us to any spot on the mountaintop." "I don't want to deprive the girls of any safe adventure we may experience, Sam, nor do I want them to run risks. So we had better wait and leave it entirely to them, if you feel sure nothing would happen through an encounter with ruffians," said Mrs. Brewster. "Oh, if that is what worries you, Mary, rest your mind on that score. No one will attack such a large party, especially when the Sheriff and his men are in the party." "Well, then, Sam, we'll get out the supplies you need to take for the excursion, and then you can catch a few hours' sleep." But it will take another book to tell what actually did happen there and on Grizzly Slide; and who Ken proved to be; and whether John Brewster loved Anne Stewart, or Tom Latimer fell a victim to Barbara's blandishments. All these queries are answered in the second volume called: "Polly and Eleanor." THE END 
45133	----	THE HELPERS BY FRANCIS LYNDE [Illustration: Tout bien ou rien The Riverside Press] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1899 COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY FRANCIS LYNDE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _TO THE MEN AND WOMEN OF THE GUILD COMPASSIONATE, GREETING:_ _Forasmuch as it hath seemed good in the eyes of many to write of those things which make for the disheartening of all humankind, these things are written in the hope that the God-gift of loving-kindness, shared alike by saint and sinner, may in some poor measure be given its due._ _The Author._ THE HELPERS CHAPTER I THE curtain had gone down on the first act of the opera, and Jeffard found his hat and rose to go out. His place was the fourth from the aisle, and after an ineffectual attempt to make a passageway for him without rising, the two young women and the elderly man stood up and folded their opera chairs. Being driven to think pointedly of something else, Jeffard neglected to acknowledge the courtesy; and the two young women balanced the account by discussing him after he had passed out of hearing. "I think he might at least have said 'Thank you,'" protested the one in the black-plumed picture-hat, preening herself after the manner of ruffled birds and disturbed womankind. "I'm in love with your mountains, and your climate, and your end-of-the-century impetus, but I can't say that I particularly admire Denver manners." The clear-eyed young woman in the modest toque laughed joyously. "Go on, Myra dear; don't mind me. It's so refreshing to hear an out-of-church opinion on one's self. I know our manners are perfectly primitive, but what can you expect when every train from the East brings us a new lot of people to civilize? When you are tempted to groan over our shortcomings it'll comfort you wonderfully if you will just stop long enough to remember that a good many of us are the newest of new tenderfoots!" "Tenderfoots! What an expression!" "It's good English, though we did use to say 'tenderfeet' before the 'Century Dictionary' set us right. And it calls the turn, as poppa would say." She of the far-reaching plumes bent her eyebrows in severe deprecation. "Connie, your slang is simply vicious. Will you be good enough to tell me what 'calls the turn' means?" "Ask poppa." Appealed to by the censorious one, the elderly man stopped twiddling the bit of gold quartz on his watch-guard long enough to explain. He did it with a little hesitancy, picking his way among the words as one might handle broken glass, or the edged tools of an unfamiliar trade. He was a plain man, and he stood in considerable awe of the picture-hat and its wearer. When he had finished, the toque made honorable amends. "I beg your pardon, Myra. Really, I didn't know it had anything to do with gambling. But to go back to our manners: I'll give you the ponies and the phaeton if I don't convince you that the absent-minded gentleman on our left here is the tenderest of tenderfoots--most probably from Philadelphia, too," she added, in mischievous afterthought. "You wouldn't dare!" "You think not? Just wait and you'll see. Oh, cousin mine, you've a lot to learn about your kind, yet. If you stay out here six months or a year, you will begin to think your philosophy hasn't been half dreamful enough." "How absurd you are, Constance. If I didn't know you to be"-- "Wait a minute; let me start you off right: good, and sensible, and modest, and unassuming, and dutiful, and brimful of fads"--she checked the attributes off on her fingers. "You see I have them all by heart." The little cloud of dust puffing from beneath the drop-curtain began to subside, and the thumping and rumbling on the stage died away what time the musicians were clambering back to their places in the orchestra. Miss Van Vetter swept the aisles and the standing-room with her opera-glass. "You will not have a chance to prove it, Connie. He isn't coming back." "Don't you believe it. I am quite sure he is a gentleman who always gets the worth of his money." "What makes you say that?" "Oh, I don't know; intuition, I suppose. That's what they call it in a woman, though I think it would be called good judgment in a man." Taking him at his worst, Miss Elliott's terse characterization of Henry Jeffard was not altogether inaccurate, though, in the present instance, he would not have gone back to the theatre if he had known what else to do with himself. Indeed, he was minded not to go back, but a turn in the open air made him think better of it, and he strolled in as the curtain was rising. Whereupon the elderly man and the two young women had to stand again while he edged past them to his chair. This time he remembered, and said something about being sorry to trouble them. Miss Elliott's chair was next to his, and she smiled and nodded reassuringly. Jeffard was moody and disheartened, and the nod and the smile went near to the better part of him. He kept his seat during the next intermission, and ventured a civil commonplace about the opera. The young woman replied in kind, and the wheel thus set in motion soon rolled away from the beaten track of trivialities into a path leading straight to the fulfillment of Miss Elliott's promise to her cousin. "Then you haven't been long in Denver," she hazarded on the strength of a remark which betrayed his unfamiliarity with Colorado. "Only a few weeks." "And you like it? Every one does, you know." Jeffard tried to look decorously acquiescent and made a failure of it. "I suppose I ought to be polite and say yes; but for once in a way, I'm going to be sincere and say no." "You surprise me! I thought everybody, and especially new-comers, liked Denver; enthusiastically at first, and rather more than less afterward." "Perhaps I am the exception," he suggested, willing to concede something. "I fancy it depends very much upon the point of view. To be brutally frank about it, I came here--like some few hundreds of others, I presume--to make my fortune; and I think I would better have stayed at home. I seem to have arrived a decade or two after the fact." The young woman never swerved from her intention by a hair's-breadth. "Yes?" she queried. "It's too true that these are not the palmy days of the 'Matchless' and the 'Little Pittsburg,' notwithstanding Creede and Cripple Creek. And yet it would seem that even now our Colorado is a fairer field for ambition and energy than"-- She paused, and Jeffard, with an unanalyzed impression that it was both very singular and very pleasant to be talking thus freely with a self-contained young woman whose serenity was apparently undisturbed by any notions of conventionality, said, "Than a city of the fifth class in New England, let us say. Yes, I concede that, if you include ambition; but when it comes to a plain question of earning a living"-- "Oh, as to that," she rejoined, quite willing to argue with him now that her point was gained, "if it is merely a question of getting enough to eat and drink I suppose that can be answered anywhere. Even the Utes managed to answer it here before the Government began feeding them." He regarded her curiously, trying to determine her social point of view by the many little outward signs of prosperity which tasteful simplicity, unhampered by a lean purse, may exhibit. "I wonder if you know anything at all about it," he said, half musingly. "About getting something to eat?" Her laugh was a ripple of pure joy that had the tonic of the altitudes in it. "I dare say I don't--not in any practical way; though I do go about among our poor people. That is what makes me uncharitable. I can't help knowing why so many people have to go hungry." Jeffard winced as if the uncharity had a personal application. "We were speaking of fortunes," he corrected, calmly ignoring the fact that his own remark had brought up the question of the struggle for existence. "I think my own case is a fair example of what comes of chasing ambitious phantoms. I gave up a modest certainty at home to come here, and"--The musicians were taking their places again, and he stopped abruptly. "And now?" The words uttered themselves, and she was sorry for them when they were beyond recall. His gesture was expressive of disgust, but there was no resentment in his reply. "That was some time ago, as I have intimated; and I am still here and beginning to wish very heartily that I had never come. I presume you can infer the rest." The leader lifted his baton, and the curtain rose on the third act of the opera. At the same moment the curtain of unacquaintance, drawn aside a hand's-breadth by the young woman's curiosity, fell between these two who knew not so much as each other's names, and who assumed--if either of them thought anything about it--that the wave of chance which had tossed them together would presently sweep them apart again. After the opera the ebbing tide of humanity did so separate them; but when the man had melted into the crowd in the foyer, the young woman had a curious little thrill of regret; a twinge of remorse born of the recollection that she had made him open the book of his life to a stranger for the satisfying of a mere whim of curiosity. Miss Van Vetter was ominously silent on the way home, but she made it a point of conscience to go to Constance's room before her cousin had gone to bed. "Connie Elliott," she began, "you deserve to be shaken! How did you dare to talk with that young man without knowing the first syllable about him?" Constance sat down on the edge of the bed and laughed till the tears came. "Oh, Myra dear," she gasped, "it's worth any amount of disgrace to see you ruffle your feathers so beautifully. Don't you see that I talked to him just because I didn't know any of the syllables? And he told me a lot of them." "I should think he did. I suppose he will call on you next." Connie the unconventional became Miss Elliott in the smallest appreciable lapse of time. "Indeed, he will not. He knows better than to do that, even if he is a ten--" But Miss Van Vetter was gone. CHAPTER II WHEN Jeffard left the theatre he went to his room; but not directly. He made a detour of a few squares which took him down Sixteenth Street to Larimer, and so on around to his lodging, which was in the neighborhood of the St. James hotel. After the manner of those whose goings and comings have reached the accusative point, he took the trouble to assure himself that the burning of a cigar in the open air was the excuse for the roundabout walk; but the real reason showed its head for a moment or two when he slackened his pace at one point in the circuit and glanced furtively up at a row of carefully shaded windows in the second story of a building on the opposite side of the street. The lower part of the building was dark and deserted; but in the alley there was a small hallway screened by a pair of swing doors with glass eyes in them, and at the end of the hallway a carpeted stair leading up to the lighted room above. It was to keep from climbing this stair that Jeffard had gone to the theatre earlier in the evening. Opposite the alley he stopped and made as if he would cross the street, but the impulse seemed to expend itself in the moment of hesitation, and he went on again, slowly, as one to whom dubiety has lent its leaden-soled shoes. Reaching his room he lighted the gas and dropped into a chair, his hands deep-buried in his pockets, and a look of something like desperation in his eyes. The suggestive outline of his Western experience sketched between the acts of the opera for the young woman with the reassuring smile was made up of half-truths, as such confidences are wont to be. It was true that he had come to Colorado to seek his fortune, and that thus far the quest had been bootless. But it was also true that he had begun by persuading himself that he must first study his environment; and that the curriculum which he had chosen was comprehensive, exhaustive, and costly enough to speedily absorb the few thousand dollars which were to have been his lure for success. His walk in life hitherto had been decently irreproachable, hedged in on either hand by such good habits as may be formed by the attrition of a moral community; but since these were more the attributes of time and place than of the man, and were unconsciously left behind in the leave-takings, a species of insanity, known only to those who have habitually worn the harness of self-restraint, had come upon him in the new environment. At first it had been but a vagrant impulse, and as such he had suffered it to put a bandage on the eyes of reason. Later, when he would fain have removed the bandage, he found it tied in a hard knot. For the hundredth time within a month he was once more tugging at the knot. To give himself the benefit of an object-lesson, he turned his pockets inside out, throwing together a small heap of loose silver and crumpled bank-notes on the table. After which he made a deliberate accounting, smoothing the creases out of the bills, and building an accurate little pillar with the coins. The exact sum ascertained, he sat back and regarded the money reflectively. "Ninety-five dollars and forty-five cents. That's what there is left out of the nest-egg; and I've been here rather less than four months. At that rate I've averaged, let me see"--he knitted his brows and made an approximate calculation--"say, fifty dollars a day. Consequently, the mill will run out of grist in less than two days, or it would if the law of averages held good--which it doesn't, in this case. Taking the last fortnight as a basis, I'm capitalized for just about one hour longer." He looked at his watch and got up wearily. "It's Kismet," he mused. "I might as well take my hour now, and be done with it." Whereupon he rolled the money into a compact little bundle, turned off the gas, and felt his way down the dark stair to the street. At the corner he ran against a stalwart young fellow, gloved and overcoated, and carrying a valise. "Why, hello, Jeffard, old man," said the traveler heartily, stopping to shake hands. "Doing time on the street at midnight, as usual, aren't you? When do you ever catch up on your sleep?" Jeffard's laugh was perfunctory. "I don't have much to do but eat and sleep," he replied. "Have you been somewhere?" "Yes; just got down from the mine--train was late. Same old story with you, I suppose? Haven't found the barrel of money rolling up hill yet?" Jeffard shook his head. "Jeff, you're an ass--that's what you are; a humpbacked burro of the Saguache, at that! You come out here in the morning of a bad year with a piece of sheepskin in your grip, and the Lord knows what little pickings of civil engineering in your head, and camp down in Denver expecting your lucky day to come along and slap you in the face. Why don't you come up on the range and take hold with your hands?" "Perhaps I'll have to before I get through," Jeffard admitted; and then: "Don't abuse me to-night, Bartrow. I've about all I can carry." The stalwart one put his free arm about his friend and swung him around to the light. "And that isn't the worst of it," he went on, ignoring Jeffard's protest. "You've been monkeying with the fire and getting your fingers burned; and, as a matter of course, making ducks and drakes of your little stake. Drop it all, Jeffard, and come across to the St. James and smoke a cigar with me." "I can't to-night, Bartrow. I'm in a blue funk, and I've got to walk it off." "Blue nothing! You'll walk about two blocks, more or less, and then you'll pull up a chair and proceed to burn your fingers some more. Oh, I know the symptoms like a book." Jeffard summoned his dignity, and found some few shreds and patches of it left. "Bartrow, there is such a thing as overdrawing one's account with a friend," he returned stiffly. "I don't want to quarrel with you. Good-night." Three minutes later the goggle-eyed swing doors opened and engulfed him. At the top of the carpeted stair he met a hard-faced man who was doubling a thick sheaf of bank-notes into portable shape. The outgoer nodded, and tapped the roll significantly. "Go in and break 'em," he rasped. "The bank's out o' luck to-night, and it's our rake-off. I win all I can stand." Jeffard pushed through another swing door and went to the faro-table. Counting his money he dropped the odd change back into his pocket and handed the bills to the banker. "Ninety-five?" queried the man; and when Jeffard nodded, he pushed the requisite number of blue, red, and white counters across the table. Jeffard arranged them in a symmetrical row in front of him, and began to play with the singleness of purpose which is the characteristic of that particular form of dementia. It was the old story with the usual variations. He lost, won, and then lost again until he could reckon his counters by units. After which the tide turned once more, and the roar of its flood dinned in his ears like the drumming of a tornado in a forest. His capital grew by leaps and bounds, doubling, trebling, and finally quadrupling the sum he had handed the banker. Then his hands began to shake, and the man on his right paused in his own play long enough to say, "Now's yer time to cash in, pardner. Yer nerve's a-flickerin'." The prudent advice fell upon deaf ears. Jeffard's soul was Berserk in the fierce battle with chance, and he began placing the counters upon certain of the inlaid cards before him, stopping only when he had staked his last dollar. Five minutes afterward he was standing on the sidewalk again, drawing in deep breaths of the keen morning air, and wondering if it were only the possession of the thing called money that kept one's head from buzzing ordinarily. In the midst of the unspoken query the shuffling figure of a night tramp sidled up to him, and he heard imperfectly the stereotyped appeal. "Hungry, you say? Perhaps I'll be that, myself, before long. Here you are." The odd change jingled into the outstretched palm of the vagrant, and for the first time in a fairly industrious life Jeffard knew what it felt like to be quite without money. "That is, I think I do, but I don't," he mused, walking slowly in the direction of his room. "It isn't breakfast-time yet; and by the same token, it isn't going to be for a good while. I believe I can sleep the clock around, now that I've reached the bottom." CHAPTER III WHEN one has sown the wind, and the whirlwind harvest is begun, it is easy to imagine that the first few strokes of the sickle have gathered in all the bitterness there is in the crop. Some such illusory assumption lent itself to Jeffard's mood when he assured himself that he had finally reached the bottom; but the light of a new day, and a habit of early rising which was not to be broken at such short notice, brought a clearer perspective. In lieu of breakfast he walked up one street and down another, carefully avoiding the vicinity of the St. James for fear Bartrow might offer him hospitality, and dodging the haunts of his few acquaintances in the downtown thoroughfares for the same reason. This drove him to the residence district; and out in Colfax Avenue he met the elderly man whom he had taken to be the father of the young woman with the kindly nod and smile. Seeing him in daylight, Jeffard recognized a familiar figure of the Mining Exchange and the brokers' offices, and thought it not unlikely that he might presently stumble upon the home of the young woman. He found it a square or two farther out, identifying it by a glimpse of the young woman herself, who was on the veranda, looping up the tendrils of a climbing rose. At sight of her Jeffard forgot his penalties for the moment, and the early morning sunshine seemed to take on a kindlier glow. She was standing on the arm of a clumsy veranda-chair, trying vainly to reach the higher branches of the rose, and Jeffard remarked that she was small almost to girlishness. But the suggestion of immaturity paused with her stature. The rounded arms discovered by the loose sleeves of her belted house-gown; the firm, full outline of her figure; the crowning glory of red-brown hair with the heart of the sunlight in it; the self-contained poise on the arm of the great chair; these were all womanly, and the glimpse stirred the waters of a neglected pool in Jeffard's past as he went on his aimless way along the avenue. There was a closely written leaf in the book of memory which he had sought to tear out and destroy; but the sight of the graceful figure poised on the arm of the big chair opened the record at the forbidden page, and the imagined personality of the sweet-faced young woman with the red-brown hair and sympathetic eyes set itself antithetically over against the self-seeking ambition of the girl who had written her own epitaph in the book of his remembrance. He gave place to the sharply defined contrast for a time, indulging it as one who plunges not unwillingly into the past for the sake of escaping the present, and banishing it only when his shortening shadow gave token that the chance of a breakfast invitation was no longer to be apprehended. But when he turned his face cityward it was with a conscious avoidance of the route which would lead him past the house with a climbing rose on one of its veranda pillars. For what had a man to whom the proletary's highway was already opening up its cheerless vista to do with love, and dalliance, and heaven-suggestive pictures of domestic beatitude? Once more in Sixteenth Street, the moneyless reality thrust itself upon him with renewed insistence, and he turned a corner abruptly to escape an acquaintance who was crossing the street. The shame of it was too new to strike hands with dissimulation as yet, and companionship was least of all things to be desired. If he could but win back to his room unaccosted and lock himself in until the sharpness of hunger should have exorcised the devil of humiliation, he might hope to be able to face an accusing world with such equanimity as may be born of desperation. But fate willed otherwise. As he was passing a deep-set doorway giving on the sidewalk, a friendly arm shot out and barred the way. Jeffard looked up with an unspoken malediction on his tongue. It was Bartrow. In his haste to gain his lodging the shamed one had forgotten the proximity of the St. James hotel. "You're a chump!" declared the broad-shouldered young miner, backing Jeffard against the wall and pinning him fast with one finger. "You're no man's man, and you're not fit to live in a man's town. Why didn't you come around to breakfast this morning, like decent people?" "I'm not boarding at the St. James now." Jeffard tried to say it naturally, but the evasion was palpable enough. "What of that? Couldn't you afford to be sociable once in a way?" Jeffard prevaricated, and since he was but a clumsy liar, contrived to fall into a snare of his own setting. "I was up too early for you, I guess. When I came by, the clerk told me you weren't down yet." Bartrow shook his head and appeared to be much moved. "What an abnormal liar that clerk must be," he commented reflectively. "I asked him five minutes ago if any one had inquired for me, and he said no." Jeffard hung his head and would have tried to break away; but Bartrow locked arms with him and dragged him whither he would. "I'll forgive you this time," he went on, laughing at Jeffard's discomfiture. "I suppose you had your reasons for dodging, and while it's ten to one they were no good, that leaves one chance in your favor. Have a smoke?" Now Jeffard's poverty-pride was fire-new as yet, and though the smell of Bartrow's cigar made him faint with desire, he refused the gift. "Haven't quit, have you?" Bartrow demanded. "No--yes; that is, I have for the present. I'm not feeling very well this morning." "You look it; every inch of it. Let's go around and see what the money people are doing. Maybe that'll chirk you up a bit." Jeffard yielded, partly because Bartrow's impetus was always of the irresistible sort, and partly because he could think of no plausible objection on the spur of the moment. Bartrow talked cheerily all the way around to the Mining Exchange, telling of his claims and prospects in Chaffee County, and warming to his subject as only a seasoned Coloradoan can when the talk is of "mineral" and mining. Jeffard, being hungry, and sick with a fierce longing for tobacco, said little, and was duly thankful that Bartrow required no more than a word now and then to keep him going. None the less he watched narrowly for a chance to escape, and was visibly depressed when none offered. In the crowded Exchange the poverty-pride began to lose the fine keenness of its edge. The atmosphere of the room was pungent with cigar smoke, and the tobacco craving rose up in its might and smote down Jeffard's self-respect. "If you'll excuse me a minute, Dick, I believe I'll go out and get a cigar as a measure of self-defense," he said; and Bartrow supplied his need, as a matter of course. It was a shameful subterfuge, and he loathed himself for having descended to it. Nevertheless, he took the cigar which Bartrow made haste to offer, and lighted it. The first few whiffs made him dizzy, but afterward he was better company for the enthusiast. While they were talking, the elderly man with the bit of quartz on his watch-chain came in, and Jeffard inquired if Bartrow knew him. "Know Steve Elliott? I should say I do. Everybody knows him, barring now and then a tenderfoot like yourself. Besides being one of the most lovable old infants on top of earth, he's one of Denver's picturesques. That old man has had more ups and downs than any three men in Colorado; and that's saying a good deal." "In what way?" "Oh, every way. He's a Fifty-niner, to begin with; came across the plains in a bull-train to hunt for mineral. He found it--Steve would find it if anybody could--but some sharp rascal euchred him out of it, and he's been finding it and losing it at regular intervals ever since." Jeffard blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling, and took in the outward presentment of the pioneer in an appraisive eye-sweep. "This is one of the finding intervals, I take it." "Sure. He's on top just now,--rather more so than usual, I believe,--but the 'pioneer's luck' will catch him again some day, and just as likely as not he'll be hustling around for a grub-stake." "Man of family?" queried Jeffard. "Yes, if a daughter's a family. His wife died in one of the lean years a long time ago. But say, Jeffard, you ought to know the daughter. She's as pretty as a peach, and as bright as a new nickel. She's had her share of the ups and downs, and they've made a queer little medley of her. Trap and tandem and a big house on Capitol Hill one month, and as like as not two rooms in a block and a ride in the street-cars the next. That's about the way Connie Elliott's had it all her life, and it's made her as wide awake as a frosty morning, and as good as a Sister of Charity." "I can believe all that," Jeffard admitted, meaning more than he said. "Yes, you're safe in believing all the good things you hear about Steve Elliott and his daughter. They're good people. By the way, why can't you come up to the house with me some evening and get acquainted? They've a Philadelphia cousin staying with them now, and you might compare notes on the 'wild and woolly' with her." Jeffard had a string of excuses ready, ending with, "Besides, there are particular reasons why I don't wish to meet Miss Elliott just now--reasons that I can't explain." "Reasons be hanged! Just you stand still a minute while I go get the old man and introduce you. You'll like him a whole lot." Bartrow did his part, but by the time he had pulled Elliott out of the throng in front of the quotation board, Jeffard was two squares away, headed once more for the suburbs. This time he crossed the river and tramped for hours in the Highlands. He told himself he was killing time and keeping out of the way of the luncheon hour; but in reality he was fighting a desperate battle with pride, or self-respect, or whatever it is that makes a man who is not a born vagrant shrink from that species of cannibalism which begins with the eating of one's personal possessions. It was an unequal fight at best, since hunger was the besieger, but Jeffard made shift to prolong it until the long day of fasting was drawing to its close. He yielded at last, as needs must when famine drives, but the capitulation was upon conditions, and his heart was soft with repentant kneadings. Since one must eat to live, the pride-quenching thing must come to pass; but the doing of it should be the pivot upon which he would turn back to sanity and industrious thrift. The loss of his small patrimony and the hard-earned savings by which it had been fairly doubled was shrewd upon him, but he told himself that the consequences of his folly must be set over against the experience; that he must be content to begin again at the bottom, as his father had before him, thankful for the youth and strength which made such a beginning possible. From the preliminary survey of penitence to plotting out the map of good intentions is an easy stage, and Jeffard beguiled the long tramp townward by building air-castles spacious and many-storied, with the new resolutions for their foundations. But when the sidewalks of the streets were once more under his feet, the pride-quenching necessity urged itself afresh, plying the lash of shame until he was driven to tramp yet other squares before he could attain to the plunging point. He was passing the Albany when the climax was reached, and he turned aside to get a light for the carefully economized stump of Bartrow's cigar before setting out to find a pawnshop where his pride might suffer least. At the cigar counter in the rotunda a giant in rough tweeds, with an unshorn beard and the fine bronze of the grazing plains on face and hands, was filling his case with high-priced Cubans from an open box. At sight of Jeffard he dropped the cigar-case and roared out a mighty welcome. "Well, I'll be ----! Jeffard, my boy, where under the canopy did you drop from? If I haven't had a search-warrant out for you all day, I'm a liar and the truth has shook me. Been to dinner?--but of course you haven't; or if you have, you are going to eat another with me right now. How've you been? and where in Tophet have you been hiding out?" Jeffard smiled. "That's the place--in Tophet and elsewhere; but I haven't been out of town since you were here last." "The devil you haven't! Then what did that muley maverick at the hotel mean when he said you were gone?" "Gone from the hotel, I guess he meant. I've been 'eating around,' as we used to say back in the Berkshire Hills." "Have, eh? Well, you're going to 'eat around' with me to-night, savez? I was just going to swear a few lines and go up and eat by myself. Come on; let's get a move. I've got a train-load of steers on the iron, and I'm due to chase 'em at eight-thirty. But before I forget it, here"--the big man found a compact little wad of bank-notes in his vest pocket and thrust it into Jeffard's hand. "I counted that out the next morning and meant to give it back to you, but the thing got away from me slick and clean." "Give it back to me?" queried Jeffard, with a sudden swelling of the throat that made his voice husky and tremulous, "what is it?" "Why, it's the hundred I borrowed of you the last time we took in the menagerie together. What's the matter with you? Don't tell me you don't remember it, or I shall go kick myself around the block for an over-honest idiot!" Jeffard did not remember it; could but dimly recall the circumstances now that he was reminded of them. The lending had been in a moment of supreme excitement in the midst of a feverish attack of the dementia; the loan was in celluloid counters, in fact, and not in legal tender at all. And having been made, it was swiftly lost sight of in the varying fortunes of the sitting. None the less, the return of it at the precise moment when it was most needed drove the thankfulness to his eyes, and the lights of the great rotunda swam in a misty haze when he thought of the humiliating thing from which the small Providence had saved him. "Pettigrew," he said, when he could trust himself to speak, "you're an honest man, and that's the worst that can be said of you. I had forgotten it long ago. Take me in and fill me up. I've been tramping all day, and it runs in my mind that I've skipped a meal or two." CHAPTER IV THE dancing party at the Calmaines' was a crush, as Mrs. Calmaine's social enlargements were wont to be. For an hour or more the avenue had been a-rumble with carriages coming and going, and a trickling stream of bidden ones flowed steadily inward under the electric-lighted awning, which extended the welcome of the hospitable house to the very curb. Thanks to Myra Van Vetter, whose tiring was always of the most leisurely, the Elliotts were fashionably late; and the elderly man, with the hesitant air accentuated by the unwonted dress-coat, had much ado to win through the throng in the drawing-rooms with his charges. His greeting to the hostess was sincere rather than well-turned in its phrasing; but Mrs. Calmaine was sweetly gracious. "_So_ glad to see you, Stephen," she protested; "the old friends can never be spared, you know." She shook hands with unaffected cordiality, and her tactful use of the elderly man's Christian name went far toward effacing the afflictive dress-coat. "Miss Van Vetter, you are quite radiant to-night. You spoil all one's ideals of Quaker demureness." "Oh, Myra's demure enough, only you have to be her country cousin to find it out," put in Connie maliciously; and when her father and Miss Van Vetter had made room for later comers, she waited for another word with the hostess. "Just a hint, before I'm submerged," she began, when her opportunity came. "I'm unattached, and particularly good-natured and docile to-night. Make use of me just as you would of Delia or Bessie. You've everybody here, as usual, and if I can help you amuse people"-- "Thank you, Connie, dear; that is very sweet of you. There are people here to-night who seem not to belong to any one. Here comes one of them now." Constance looked and saw a young man making his way toward them; a soldierly figure, with square shoulders and the easy bearing of one who has lived much in the open; but with a face which was rather thoughtful than strong, though its lines were well masked under a close-trimmed beard and virile mustaches. She recognized her unintroduced acquaintance of the theatre; and a minute or two afterward, when Mrs. Calmaine would have presented the new-comer, Miss Elliott had disappeared. "Let's sit down here, Teddy; this is as good a place as any. You poor boy! it bores you dreadfully, doesn't it? How trying it must be to be _blasé_ at--shall I say twenty? or is it twenty-one?" The dancing was two hours old, and Connie and the smooth-faced boy who stood for the hopes of the house of Calmaine were sitting out the intermission on a broad step of the main stair. "Oh, I'm young, but I'll outgrow that," rejoined the youth tolerantly. "All the same, you needn't bully me because you've a month or two the advantage. Shall I go and get you something to eat, or drink?" "No, thank you, Teddy; I'm neither hungry nor thirsty. But you might give me the recipe for being good-natured when people make game of you." "Yes; I think I see myself giving you points on that," said the boy, with frank admiration in his eyes. "I'm not running an angel-school just at present." Connie's blush was reproachful. "You ridiculous boy!" she retorted. "You'll be making love to me next, just the same as if we hadn't known each other all our lives. Do you talk that way to other girls? or are you only practicing on me so that you can?" Teddy Calmaine shook his head. "There isn't anybody else," he asserted, with mock earnestness. "My celestial acquaintance is too limited. When the goddess goes, there are no half-goddesses to take her place." Connie sniffed sympathetically, and then laughed at him. "You ought to have seen me yesterday, when poppa brought old Jack Hawley home with him. Poppa and Jack were partners in the 'Vesta,' and Mr. Hawley hadn't seen me since I was in pinafores. He called me 'little girl,' and wanted to know if I went to school, and how I was getting along!" Young Calmaine made a dumb show of applause. "_O umbræ Pygmæorum!_ Why wasn't I there to see! But you mustn't be too hard on old Jack. Half the people here who don't know you think you're an escaped schoolgirl; I've heard 'em. That's why I took pity on you and"-- "Teddy Calmaine, go away and find me somebody to talk to; a grown man, if you please. You make me tired." The boy got up with a quizzical grin on his smooth face. "I'll do it," he assented affably; "I'm no end good-natured, as you remarked a few minutes ago." When he was gone Connie forgot him, and fell into a muse, with the sights and sounds of the crush for its motive. From her perch on the stair she could look down on the shifting scene in the wide entrance hall, and through the archway beyond she had a glimpse of the circling figures in the ball-room swaying rhythmically to the music. It was all very delightful and joyous, and she enjoyed it with a zest which was yet undulled by satiety. None the less, the lavishness of it oppressed her, and a vague protest, born of other sights and scenes sharply contrasted but no less familiar to the daughter of Stephen Elliott, began to shape itself in her heart. How much suffering a bare tithe of the wealth blazing here in jewels on fair hands and arms and necks would alleviate. And how many hungry mouths might be filled from the groaning tables in the supper-room. Miss Elliott came out of her reverie reluctantly at the bidding of her late companion. Teddy Calmaine had obeyed her literally; and when she turned he was presenting the soldierly young man with the pointed beard and curling mustaches. "Miss Elliott, this is Mr. Jeffard. You said you wanted a"-- "An ice, Teddy," she cut in, with a look which was meant to be obliterative. "But you needn't mind it now. Will you have half a stair-step, Mr. Jeffard?" She made room for him, but he was mindful of his obligations. "Not if you will give me this waltz." She glanced at her card and looked up at him with a smile which was half pleading and half quizzical. "Must I?" He laughed and sat down beside her. "There is no 'must' about it. I was hoping you would refuse." "Oh, thank you." "For your sake rather than my own," he hastened to add. "I am a wretched dancer." "What a damaging admission!" "Is it? Do you know, I had hoped you wouldn't take that view of it." "I don't," she admitted, quite frankly. "We take it seriously, as we do most of our amusements, but it's a relic of barbarism. Once, when I was a very little girl, my father took me to see a Ute scalp-dance,--without the scalps, of course,--and--well, first impressions are apt to be lasting. I never see a ball-room in action without thinking of Fire-in-the-Snow and his capering braves." Jeffard smiled at the conceit, but he spoke to the truism. "I hope your first impressions of me won't be lasting," he ventured. "I think I was more than usually churlish last night." She glanced up quickly. "There should be no 'last night' for us," she averred. "Forgive me; you are quite right. But no matter what happens there always will be." Her gaze lost itself among the circling figures beyond the archway, and the truth of the assertion drove itself home with a twinge of something like regret. But when she turned to him again there was unashamed frankness in the clear gray eyes. "What poor minions the conventions have made us," she said. "Let us be primitive and admit that our acquaintance began last night. Does that help you?" "It will help me very much, if you will let me try to efface the first impression." "Does it need effacing?" "I think it must. I was moody and half desperate." He stopped, and she knew that he was waiting for some sign of encouragement. She looked away again, meaning not to give it. It is one of the little martyrdoms of sympathetic souls to invite confidences and thereby to suffer vicariously for the misdoings of the erring majority, and her burdens in this wise were many and heavy. Why should she go out of her way to add to them those of this man who ought to be abundantly able to carry his own? Thus the unspoken question, and the answer came close upon the heels of it. But for her own curiosity,--impertinence, she had begun to call it,--the occasion would never have arisen. "I am listening," she said, giving him his sign. Being permitted to speak freely, Jeffard found himself suddenly tongue-tied. "I don't know what I ought to say,--if, indeed, I ought to say anything at all," he began. "I think I gave you to understand that the world had been using me rather hardly." "And if you did?" A palpitant couple, free of the waltz, came up the stair, and Jeffard rose to make way. When the breathless ones perched themselves on the landing above, he went on, standing on the step below her and leaning against the baluster. "If I did, it was an implied untruth. It's a trite saying that the world is what we make it, and I am quite sure now that I have been making my part of it since I came to Denver. I'm not going to afflict you with the formula, but I shall feel better for having told you that I have torn it up and thrown it away." "And you will write out another?" "Beginning with to-morrow. I leave Denver in the morning." "You are not going back?" She said it with a little tang of deprecation in the words. His heart warmed to the small flash of friendly interest, and he smiled and shook his head. "No, that would never do--without the fortune, you know. I'm going to the mountains; with pick and shovel, if need be. I should have started to-night if I hadn't found Mrs. Calmaine's invitation. She has been very good to me in a social way, and I could do no less than come." He said it apologetically, as if the dip into the social pool on the eve of the new setting forth demanded an explanation. She smiled up at him. "Does it need an apology? Are you sorry you came?" "Sorry? It's the one wise thing I've done these four months. I shall always be glad--and thankful." It was on his tongue to say more; to dig the pit of confession still deeper, as one who, finding himself at the shrine of compassionate purity, would be assoilzied for all the wrong-doings and follies and stumblings of a misguided past; to say many things for which he had no shadow of warrant, and to which the self-contained young woman on the step before him could make no possible rejoinder; but the upcoming of the man whose name stood next on Connie's card saved him. A moment later he was taking his leave. "Not going to break away now, are you, Jeffard?" said the fortunate one, helping Connie to rise. "Yes; I must cut it short. I leave town in the morning. Miss Elliott, will you bid me Godspeed?" She put her hand in his and said what was meet; and to the man who stood beside her the parting appeared to be neither more nor less than conventionally formal. But when Jeffard was free of the house and swinging along on his way cityward, the spirit of it made itself a name to live; and out of the God-speed and the kindly phrase of leavetaking the new-blown fire of good intention distilled a subtle liqueur of jubilance which sang in his veins like the true wine of rejuvenescence; so nearly may the alchemy of pure womanhood transmute sounding brass, or still baser metal, into the semblance of virgin gold. So Jeffard went his way reflective, and while he mused the fire burned and he saw himself in his recent stumblings in the valley of dry bones as a thing apart. From the saner point of view it seemed incredible that he could ever have been the thrall of such an ignoble passion as that which had so lately despoiled him and sent him to tramp the streets like a hungry vagrant. As yet the lesson was but a few hours old, but the barrier it had thrown up between the insensate yesterday and the rational to-day seemed safely impassable. In the strength of reinstated reason, confidence returned; and close upon the heels of confidence, temerity. His reverie had led him past the corner where he should have turned westward, and when he took cognizance of his surroundings he was standing opposite the alley-way of the glass-eyed doors. He glanced at his watch. It was midnight. Twenty-four hours before, almost to the minute, he had been dragged irresistibly across the street and up the carpeted stair to the lair of the dementia-demon. He looked up at the carefully shaded windows, and a sudden desire to prove himself came upon him. Not once since the first hot flashes of the fever had begun to quicken his pulse, had he been able to go and look on and return scathless. But was he not sane now? and was not the barrier well builded? If it were not--if it stood only upon the lack of opportunity-- He crossed the street and threaded the narrow alley, tramping steadily as one who goes into battle,--a battle which may be postponed, but which may by no means be evaded. The swing doors gave back under his hand, and a minute later he stood beside the table with the inlaid cards in its centre, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, and his breath coming in sharp little gasps. It was a perilous moment for any son of Adam who has been once bitten by the dog of avarice gone mad. The run of luck was against the bank, and the piles of counters under the hands of the haggard ones girdling the table grew and multiplied with every turn of the cards. Jeffard's lips began to twitch, and the pupils of his eyes narrowed to two scintillant points. Slowly, and by almost imperceptible advances, his right hand crept from its covert, the fingers tightly clenched upon the small roll of bank-notes,--the Providential windfall which must provision any future argosy of endeavor. The dealer ran the cards with monotonous precision, his hands moving like the pieces of a nicely adjusted mechanism. Jeffard's fingers unclosed and he stood staring down at the money in his palm as if the sight of it fascinated him. Then he turned quickly and tossed it across to the banker. "Reds and whites," he said; and the sound of his own voice jarred upon his nerves like the rasping of files in a saw-pit. Two hours later, he was again standing on the narrow footway in the alley, with the swing doors winging to rest behind him. Two hours of frenzied excitement in the dubious battle with chance, and the day of penitence and its hopeful promise for the future were as if they had not been. Halfway across the street he turned and flung his clenched fist up at the shaded windows, but his tongue clave to his teeth and the curse turned to a groan with a sob at the end of it. And as he went his way, sodden with weariness, the words of a long-forgotten allegory were ringing knell-like in his ears:-- "When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh in dry places seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty and swept and garnished. Then goeth he and taketh with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first." CHAPTER V IT was on the day following the dancing party at the Calmaines' that Constance Elliott arrayed herself in a modest street dress, and ran down to the library where Miss Van Vetter was writing letters. "You'd better change your mind, Myra, and come along with me. It'll do you good to see how the other half lives," she said coaxingly. Miss Van Vetter calmly finished her sentence before she replied. "Thank you, Connie; but I believe not. I know it is the proper fad nowadays to go slumming, but I can't do it; it's a matter of principle with me." Connie's eyebrows arched in mild surprise. "That's a new one," she commented. "I've heard all kinds of excuses, but never that. How do you diagram it?" "It is simple enough. One sees plenty of misery in the ordinary course of things without making a specialty of looking for it; and when you've done everything that your money and sympathy can do, it is only a single drop in the great ocean of human wretchedness, after all. More than that, you have added to the sum total of the world's suffering by just so much as the miseries of the others hurt you through your compassion." "Myra, dear, if I didn't know that you are better than your theories, I should try to humble you. What will you do if the evil day ever comes to you?" "Unload my woes upon some such angelic and charitable sister of mercy as you are, I suppose," rejoined Miss Van Vetter complacently. "But that doesn't make it necessary for me to go about and shed literal tears with those who weep, now. I prefer to do it by proxy." She took a gold piece from her purse and offered it to Constance. "Take this, and make some poor wretch comfortable for ten or fifteen minutes on my account." Miss Elliott was not yet canonized, and she refused the contribution with an indignant little stamp of her foot. "Myra Van Vetter, you're worse than a heathen! I wouldn't touch your money with the tip of my finger; I'd be afraid it would burn me. I hope you'll learn for yourself some day what the cold shoulder of charity is--there!" And she swept out of the room with as much dignity as five-feet-one-and-a-half may compass upon extraordinary occasions. Once on the other side of the library door, she laughed softly to herself and was instantly Connie the serene again. "It does me a whole lot of good to boil over once in a while," she said, going out on the veranda. "Myra serves one beneficent end in the cosmogony in spite of herself: she's a perfect safety-valve for me. Tommie-e-e-e! O Tom! Are you out there?" A ragged boy, sitting on the curb and shaking dice with a pair of pebbles, sprang up and ran to the gate. When the latch baffled him, as it usually did from the outside, he vaulted the fence and stood before her. "Prompt as usual, aren't you, Tommie?" "Ain't got nothin' else to do but to be promp'. Is it a baskit, dis time, 'r wot?" "It's a basket, and you'll find it in the kitchen." Five minutes later the dwellers in the avenue might have seen a small procession headed townwards. Its component parts were a dainty little lady, walking very straight with her hands in the pockets of her jacket, and a ragged urchin bent sidewise against the weight of a capacious basket. The street-car line was convenient, but Constance walked in deference to Tommie's convictions,--he objected to the car on the score of economy. "Wot's the use o' givin' a bloated corp'ration a nickel w'en a feller can mog along on his feets?" he had demanded, one day; and thereafter they walked. What profits it to set down in measured phrase at what numbers in what streets the basket cover was lifted that afternoon? Doubtless, in that great day when the books shall be opened, it will be found that a faithful record has been kept, not only of the tumbler of jelly left with bedridden Mother M'Garrihan, the bottle of wine put into the hands of gaunt Tom Devins, who was slowly dying of lead-poisoning, and the more substantial viands spread out before the hungry children in drunken Owen David's shanty, but of all the other deeds of mercy that left a trail of thankful benisons in the wake of the small procession. Be it sufficient to say that the round was a long one, and that Constance spared neither herself nor her father's bank-account where she found misery with uplifted hands. The basket had grown appreciably lighter, and Tommie's body was once more approaching the perpendicular, when the procession paused before an unswept stairway leading to the second story of a building fronting on one of the lower cross streets. Constance held out her hand for the basket, but the boy put it behind him. "Wot's the matter with me?" he demanded. "Nothing at all, Tommie. I only meant to save you a climb. The basket isn't heavy now, you know." "S'posin' it ain't; ain't I hired to run this end o' the show? You jes' tell me where you want it put, an' that's right where I'm goin' to put it, an' not nowheres else." She smiled and let him lead the way up the dusty stair. At a certain door near the end of the long upper corridor she signed to him to give her the basket. "Go to the head of the stairs and wait," she whispered. "I may want you." When he was out of hearing she tapped on the door and went in. It was the interior of all others that made Constance want to cry. There was a sufficiency of garish furniture and tawdry knickknacks scattered about to show that it was not the dwelling-place of the desperately poor; but these were only the accessories to the picture of desolation and utter neglect having for its central figure the woman stretched out upon the bed. She was asleep, and her face was turned toward the light which struggled feebly through the unwashed window. Beauty there had been, and might be again, but not even the flush of health would efface the marks of Margaret Gannon's latest plunge into the chilling depths of human indifference. Connie tiptoed to the bedside and looked, and her heart swelled within her. It had fallen out in this wise. On the Monday night Mademoiselle Angeline--known to her intimates as Mag Gannon--saw fuzzy little circles expand and contract around the gas-jets in the Bijou Theatre while she was walking through her part in the farce. Tuesday night the fuzzy circles became blurs; and the stage manager swore audibly when she faltered and missed the step in her specialty. On the Wednesday Mademoiselle Angeline disappeared from the Bijou altogether; and for three days she had lain helpless and suffering, seeing no human face until Constance came and ministered to her. And the pity of it was that while the fever wrought its torturous will upon her, delirium would not come to help her to forget that she was forgotten. Constance had pieced out the pitiful story by fragments while she was dragging the woman back from the brink of the pit; and when all was said, she began to understand that a sick soul demands other remedies than drugs and dainties. Just what they were, or how they were to be applied, was another matter; but Constance grappled with the problem as ardently as if no one had ever before attacked it. In her later visits she always brought the conversation around to Margaret's future; and on the afternoon of the basket-procession, after she had made her patient eat and drink, she essayed once again to enlist the woman's will in her own behalf. "It's no use of me trying, Miss Constance; I've got to go back when I'm fit. There ain't nothing else for the likes of me to do." "How can you tell till you try? O Margaret, I wish you would try!" A smile of hard-earned wisdom flitted across the face of the woman. "You know more than most of 'em," she said, "but you don't know it all. You can't, you see; you're so good the world puts on its gloves before it touches you. But for the likes of me, we get the bare hand, and we're playing in luck if it ain't made into a fist." "You poor girl! It makes my heart ache to think what you must have gone through before you could learn to say a thing like that. But you must try; I can't let you go back to that awful place after what you've told me about it." "Supposing I did try; there's only the one thing on earth I know how to do,--that's trim hats. Suppose you run your pretty feet off till you found me a place where I could work right. How long would it be before somebody would go to the missis, or the boss, or whoever it might be, and say, 'See here; you've got one of Pete Grim's Bijou women in there. That won't do.' And the night after, I'd be doing my specialty again, if I was that lucky to get on." "But you could learn to do housework, or something of that kind, so you could keep out of the way of people who would remember you. You must have had some experience." The invalid rocked her head on the pillow. "That'd be worse than the other. Somebody'd be dead sure to find out and tell; and then I'd be lucky if I got off without going to jail. And for the experience,--a minute ago you called me a girl, but I know you didn't mean it. How old do you think I am?" Constance looked at the fever-burned face, and tried to make allowances for the ravages of disease. "I should say twenty-five," she replied, "only you talk as if you might be older." "I'll be eighteen next June, if I'd happen to live that long," said Margaret; and Constance went home a few minutes later with a new pain in her heart, born of the simple statement. At the gate she took the empty basket and paid the boy. "That's all for to-day, but I want to give you some more work," she said. "Every morning, and every noon, and every night, until I tell you to stop, I want you to go up to that last place and ask Margaret Gannon if there is anything you can do for her. And if she says yes, you do it; and if it's too big for you to do, you come right up here after me. Will you do all that?" "Will I? Will a yaller dorg eat his supper w'en he's hungry? You're jes' dead right I'll do it. An' I'll be yere to-morrer afternoon, promp'." All of which was well enough in its way, but the problem was yet unsolved, and Constance had to draw heavily on her reserves of cheerfulness to be able to make an accordant one of four when Richard Bartrow called that evening after dinner. CHAPTER VI DURING the week following the day of repentance and backsliding, Jeffard's regression down the inclined plane became an accelerated rush. In that interval he parted with his watch and his surveying instruments, and made a beginning on his surplus clothing. It was a measure of the velocity of the descent that the watch, with the transit and level, brought him no more than seven knife-and-fork meals and an occasional luncheon. But the clothing being transmutable in smaller installments, did rather better. Before the week was out, a bachelor's apartment in a respectable locality became an incongruous superfluity; and having by no means reached the philosophical level in his descent, he hid himself from all comers in a dubious neighborhood below Larimer Street. The second week brought sharper misery than the first, since it enforced the pitiful shifts of vagrancy before he could acquire the spirit-breaking experience which makes them tolerable. But before many days the poor remnants of pride and self-respect gave up the unequal struggle, leaving him to his own devices; after which he soon learned how to keep an open and unbalanced meal-and-cigar account with his few unmercenary friends. In a short time, however, the friendly tables began to grow scarce. Bartrow went back to his mine, and with his going the doors of the St. James's dining-room opened no more to the proletary. Then came the return of John Pettigrew, whose hospitality was as boundless as the range whereon his herds grazed, and who claimed kinship with Jeffard because both chanced to be transplanted New Englanders. While Pettigrew stayed in Denver, Jeffard lived on the fat of the land, eating at his friend's table at the Albany, and gambling with the ranchman's money at odd hours of the day and night. But after Pettigrew left there was another lean interval, and Jeffard grew haggard and ran his weight down at the rate of a pound a day. In the midst of this came a spasm of the reformative sort, born of a passing glimpse of Stephen Elliott's daughter on one of her charitable expeditions. The incident brought him face to face with a fact which had been unconsciously lending desperation to despair. Now that the discovery could be no more than an added twist of the thumbscrew, he began to realize that he had found in the person of the sweet-faced young woman with the far-seeing eyes the Heaven-born alchemist who could, if she so willed, transmute the flinty perverseness of him into plastic wax, shaping it after her own ideals; that it was the unacknowledged beginning of love which had found wings for the short-lived flight of higher hopes and more worthy aspirations. The day of fasting and penitence had set his feet in the way leading to reinstatement in his own good opinion; but the meeting with Constance was answerable for a worthier prompting,--a perfervid determination to fight his way back to better things for righteousness' sake, knowing that no otherwise could he hope to stand with her on the Mount of Benediction. It was against this anointing of grace that he had sinned; and it was in remorseful memory of it that he brushed his clothes, put on an ill-fitting air of respectability, and tramped the streets in a fruitless search for employment until he was ready to drop from fatigue and hunger. Nothing came of it. The great public, and notably the employing minority of it, is no mean physiognomist; and the gambler carries his hall-mark no less than the profligate or the drunkard. At the close of one of these days of disheartenment, a day wherein a single cup of coffee had been made to stand sponsor for breakfast, luncheon, and dinner, Jeffard saw a familiar figure standing at the counter in one of the newspaper offices. Knowing his man, Jeffard stopped on the sidewalk and waited. If Lansdale had but the price of a single meal in his pocket, two men would share that meal that night. There were two entrances to the newspaper office, and Jeffard watched beaglewise lest his chance of breaking his fast should vanish while he tarried. Presently Lansdale came out, and Jeffard fell upon him before he could latch the door. "Salaam! Jeffard, my son," said the outcomer. "I saw you waiting for me. How goes the world-old struggle for existence?" "Don't remind me of it, Lansdale; do you happen to have the price of a meal about you?" Lansdale smiled, and gravely tucking Jeffard's arm under his own, steered diagonally across the street toward the open doors of a café. "Now that is what our forefathers called Providence, and what we, being so much wiser in our own generation, call luck," he declared. "I had just got a check out of the post-office for a bit of work sent months ago to an editor whose name is unhasting. When you saw me I was closing a negotiation, by the terms of which the cashier of the 'Coloradoan' becomes my banker. Behold, now, the mysteries of--shall we say Providence? At any time within the six months I would have sworn that the opportune moment for the arrival of this bit of money-paper had come; nevertheless Providence, and the slow-geared editor, get it here just in time to save two men from going to bed supperless. Why don't you say something?" They were at the door of the café, and Jeffard gripped his companion's arm and thrust him in. "Can't you see that I'm too damned hungry to talk?" he demanded savagely; and Lansdale wisely held his peace until the barbarian in his guest had been appeased. When the soup and fish had disappeared, Jeffard was ashamed of himself, and said as much. "You mustn't mind what I said," he began, by way of making amends. "I used to think I was a civilized being, but, God help me, Lansdale, I'm not! When I've gone without food for twenty-four hours on end, I'm nothing more or less than a hungry savage." Lansdale smiled intelligence. "I know the taste of it, and it's bad medicine--for the soul as well as for the body," he rejoined. "There is reason to suspect that Shakespeare never went hungry, else he wouldn't have said, 'Sweet are the uses of adversity.' They're not sweet; they're damnably bitter. A man may come forth of the winepress with bones unbroken and insight sharpened to the puncturing point; but his capacity for evil will be increased in just proportion." "I don't want to believe that," said Jeffard, whose despair was not yet proof against a good meal in good company. "You needn't, but it's true. The necessities breed a certain familiarity with evil. Moral metes and bounds have a trick of disappearing in the day of physical dearth. When hunger has driven a man over the ethical boundary a few times, the crossing becomes easy; and when hunger drops the whip, inclination is very likely to take it up." Jeffard laughed. "'The words of Agur the son of Jakeh,'" he quoted. "I believe you'd moralize if you were going to be hanged, Lansdale." "Perhaps I should. What possible contingency could offer better opportunities? And am I not going to be hanged--or choked, which amounts to the same thing?" Jeffard looked up quickly and saw what the myopia of hunger had hitherto obscured: that his companion's smooth-shaven face seemed gaunter than usual, and that his hands were unsteady when he lifted the knife and fork. "Colorado isn't helping you, then," he said. "No; but it isn't altogether Colorado's fault. The Boston medicine man said change of climate, plenty of outdoor indolence, nutritious food at stated intervals. I have all any one could ask of the first, and as little of either of the others as may be." "But you do good work, Lansdale. I've always believed you could make it win, in time. Hasn't the time come yet?" "No. What I can do easiest would bring bread and meat, if I could sell it; but a literary hack-writer has no business in Colorado--or anywhere else outside of the literary centres. In Boston I could always find an odd job of reviewing, or space-writing, or something that would serve to keep body and soul together; but here they won't have me even in the newspapers." "Overcrowded, I suppose, like everything else in this cursed country." "That's the alleged reason; but the fact is that I'm not a journalist. Your thoroughbred newspaper man has more or less contempt for a fellow who can't or won't write journalese." They had attained to the dessert, and the waiter was opening a modest bottle of claret for them. Jeffard turned his wineglass down. "What! Is that the way you flout a man's hospitality?" demanded Lansdale, in mock displeasure. "No; I don't mean to do that. But I'm drunken with feasting now, and if I put wine into me I shall pawn the coat off my back before midnight for a stake to play with." Lansdale smiled. "I'll see that you don't have to. Turn up your glass." But Jeffard was obstinate, and sat munching raisins while Lansdale sipped his wine. When the waiter brought the cigars he came out of his reverie to say, "You want to live, don't you, Lansdale?" The potential man of letters took time to think about it. "I suppose I do; else I shouldn't be starving to death in Denver," he admitted finally. "And there is nothing but the lack of a little ready money that keeps you from giving the Boston doctor's prescription a fair trial. If I had the money I believe I'd change places with you; that is, I'd give you the money in exchange for your good chance of being able to shuffle off mortality without the help of extraneous means. I think I've had enough of it." "Do you? That proves how little a man has learned when he thinks he has arrived. Now pull yourself together, and tell me what you really would do if you became suddenly rich." "How rich?" "Oh, make it a comfortable figure; say eight or ten thousand a month for an income." "I'd do what I said I should,--change places with you; only I suppose that wouldn't be possible. Failing that"--He pondered over it for a moment, balancing his fork on the edge of his plate the while. "A few weeks ago I should have mapped out a future worth talking about. I had a lucid day, in which the things that make for ambition of the better sort had their inning. If you had asked me such a question then, I should doubtless have told you that I should try to realize the ideals of other days; to walk uprightly, and to hold great wealth as it should be held--in trust for the good of one's kind; to win the love of the ideal woman, perhaps; and, having won it, to sit at her feet until I had learned how to be God's almoner." Lansdale's smile was not wholly cynical. "But now?" he queried. "But now I know my own limitations. I think I should go back to the old farm in the Berkshire Hills, and try to make it earn me bread and meat." "But you couldn't spend ten thousand a month on an abandoned farm, though I grant you it would be a pretty expensive luxury. What would you do with the lave of it?" Jeffard's lips tightened, and his face was not pleasant to look upon. "I'd let it go on accumulating, piling up and up till there was no shadow of possibility that I should ever again come to know what it means to be without money. And even then I should know I could never get enough," he added. This time Lansdale's smile was of incredulity. "Let me prophesy," he suggested. "When your lucky day overtakes you, you will do none of these things. Jeffard the fool may be heard of wherever the Associated Press has a wire or a correspondent; but Jeffard the miser will never exist outside of your own unbalanced imagination. Let's go out and walk. It's fervidly close in here." Arm in arm they paced the streets until nearly midnight, talking of things practical and impracticable, and keeping well out of the present in either the past or the future. When Lansdale said good-night, he stuffed a bank-note into Jeffard's pocket. "It's only a loan," he protested, when Jeffard would have made him take it back. "And there are no conditions. You can go and play with it, if that's what you'd rather do." The suggestion was unfortunate, though possibly the result would have been the same in any event. Five minutes after parting from Lansdale, Jeffard had taken his place in the silent group around the table in the upper room; and by the time the pile of counters under his hand had increased to double the amount of Lansdale's gift, he was oblivious to everything save the one potent fact--that after so many reverses his luck had turned at last. Five hundred and odd dollars he had at one time in that eventful sitting, and his neighbor across the corner of the table, a grizzled miner with the jaw of a pugilist and eyes that had a trick of softening like a woman's, had warned him by winks, nods, and sundry kicks under the table to stop. Jeffard scowled his resentment of the interference and played on, losing steadily until his capital had shrunk to fifty dollars. Then the miner rose up in his place, reached across, and gave Jeffard an open-handed buffet that nearly knocked him out of his chair. "Dad blame you!" he roared; "I'll learn you how to spile my play! Stan' up and fight it out like a man!" The game stopped at once. The dealer held his hand, and the banker reached for his revolver. "You two gen'lemen cash in and get out o' here," he commanded. "This is a gen'leman's game, and we don't run no shootin'-gallery--leastwise, not unless _I_ have to take a hand in it. Pass in your chips." They both obeyed; the miner with maledictory reluctance, and Jeffard in a tremulous frenzy of wrath. When they reached the sidewalk, Jeffard flung himself savagely upon his assailant, only to learn that abstinence is a poor trainer, and that he was little better than a lay-figure in the grasp of the square-jawed one with the melting eyes. The big man thrust him into a corner and held him there until he listened to reason. "You blamed idjit! you hain't got sense enough to go in when it rains! Hold still, 'r I'll bump your head ag'inst the wall! As I was sayin', you don't know enough to pound sand. Every single time I've been in this dive, you've been here, too, a-blowin' yourself like you had a wad as big as a feather bed, and you know danged well you hain't got nothin'. And you wouldn't 'a' kep' a dern cent to-night, if I hadn't thumped you and raised a row. Now you go and hunt you a place to sleep while you've got dust enough to pay for it; and don't you come round here ag'in till you've put a whole grub-stake inside of you. Savez?" CHAPTER VII FROM the beginning of the cannibalistic stage of the journey down the inclined plane, Jeffard had determined that, come what might, he would keep enough of his wardrobe to enable him to present an outward appearance of respectability. With a vague premonition of the not improbable end of the journey he recoiled at the thought of figuring before a coroner's jury as a common vagrant. This resolution, however, like all others of a prideful nature, went down before the renewed assaults of the allies, hunger and dementia. Whereby it speedily came to pass that he retained only the garments he stood in, and these soon became shabby and wayworn. Since, in his own estimation, if not in that of others, the clothes do make the man to a very considerable extent, Jeffard gradually withdrew from his former lounging-places, confining himself to the less critical region below Larimer Street during the day, and avoiding as much as possible the haunts of his former associates at all hours. It was for this cause that Bartrow, on his return from Chaffee County, was unable to find Jeffard. Meeting Lansdale when the search had become unhopeful, the large-hearted man of the altitudes lamented his failure after his own peculiar fashion. "When was it you saw him last?" he inquired of the transplanted Bostonian. "It was about a week ago. To be exact, it was a week Tuesday. I remember because we dined together that evening." "Now doesn't that beat the band? Here I've gone and got him a soft snap up on the range--good pay, and little or nothing to do--and he's got to go and drop out like a monte man's little joker. It's enough to make a man swear continuous!" "I don't think he would have gone with you," Lansdale ventured. "Wouldn't, eh? If I can find him I'll take him by the neck and make him go; savez? How do you put it up? Runaway? or a pile of bones out on the prairie somewhere?" "It's hard to say. Jeffard's a queer combination of good and not so good,--like a few others of us,--and just now the negative part is on top. He was pretty low the night we were together, though when we separated I thought he was taking himself a little less seriously." "Didn't talk about getting the drop on himself, or anything like that?" "N--no, not in a way to leave the impression that he was in any immediate danger of doing such a thing." Bartrow chewed the end of his cigar reflectively. "Hasn't taken to quizzing the world through the bottom of a whiskey-glass?" "No, I should say not. Thus far, I think he has but the one devil." "And that's the 'tiger,' of course. I knew about that; I've known it all along. The Lord forgive me! I don't know but I was the ring-master in that show. You know we chased around a good deal together, along at the first, and it's as likely as not I showed him a whole lot of things he'd better not have seen." The half-cynical smile lightened upon Lansdale's grave face. "That is one of my criticisms of Western manners," he commented. "When you get hold of a stranger, you welcome him with open arms--and proceed to regale him with a near-hand view of the back yards and cesspools. And then you swear piteously when he goes back East and tells his friends what an abandoned lot you are." Bartrow took the thrust good-naturedly, as he did most of his chastenings. "That's right; that's just about what we do. But you've been here long enough now to know that it's meant for hospitality. It's a way we've got into of taking it for granted that people come out here more to see the sights than for any other purpose." "Oh, it's good of you--I don't deny that; only it's a little rough on the new-comer, sometimes. Take Jeffard's case, for example. He came to Denver with good introductions; I know, for I saw some of them. But a man in a strange city doesn't often go about presenting his social credentials. What he does is to make a few haphazard acquaintances, and let them set the pace for him. That is what Jeffard did, and I'll venture to say there have been nine evil doors open to him to one good one. You've known him longer than any one else--how many times have you invited him to spend a rational evening with you in the company of respectable people?" "Good Lord, Lansdale; for Heaven's sake don't begin to open up that lead! We're all miserable sinners, and I'm the medicine-man of the tribe. I never asked the poor devil to go visiting with me but once, and that was after he was down." "And then he wouldn't go, as a matter of course. But that is neither here nor there. I'll find him for you, if I can, and leave word for you at the St. James." "You're a brick, Lansdale; that's about what you are. I'll get square with you some day. By the way, can't you come up to Steve Elliott's with me this evening and meet some good people?" Lansdale laughed outright. "You're a good fellow, Bartrow, but you're no diplomat. When I go a-fishing into your mentality you'll never see the hook. Make my apologies to your friends, and tell them I'm an invalid." And Bartrow, being densely practical, and so proof against irony of whatsoever calibre, actually did so that evening when he called upon Miss Elliott and her cousin. "But your friend wasn't promised to us, Mr. Bartrow," objected Miss Van Vetter. "Why should he send excuses?" "I'm blessed if I know," said honest Dick, looking innocently from one to the other of them. "But that's what he told me to do, and I've done it." Constance laughed softly. "You're too good for any use, Dick. He was making game of you. Tell us how he came to say it." Bartrow did that, also; and the two young women laughed in chorus. "After you've had your fun out of it I wish you'd tell me, so I can laugh too," he said. "I can't see where the joke comes in, myself." Constance enlightened him. "There isn't any joke--only this: he had just been scolding you about your inhospitality, and then you turn on him and ask him to go calling with you. Of course, he couldn't accept, then; it would have been like inviting himself." "Well, what of it? I don't see why he shouldn't invite himself, if he felt like it. He's a rattling good fellow." And from thence the talk drifted easily to Jeffard, who was, or who had been, another good fellow. At the mention of Jeffard's name, Constance borrowed the mask of disinterest, and laid her commands on Bartrow. "Tell us about him," she said. "There isn't much to tell. He came here from somewhere back East, got into bad company, lost his money, and now he's disappeared." "How did he lose his money?" Constance would have asked the question, but her cousin forestalled her. "Gambled it," quoth Bartrow placidly. Constance looked sorry, and Miss Van Vetter was plainly shocked. "How very dreadful!" said the latter. "Did he lose much?" "Oh, no; you couldn't call it much--only a few thousands, I believe. But then, you see, it was his stake; it was all he had, and he couldn't afford to give it up. And now he has gone and hid out somewhere just when I have found a place for him. It makes me very weary." "Can't you find any trace of him?" queried Constance. "That is singular. I should think he would have left his address." Bartrow grinned. "Well, hardly. Man don't leave his address when he wants to drop out. That's the one thing he's pretty sure to take with him. But we'll run him down yet, if he's on top of earth. Lansdale has seen more of him lately than I have, and he is taking a hand. He and Jeffard used to flock together a good deal when the shoe was on the other foot." Miss Van Vetter looked mystified; and Bartrow deemed it a matter for self-congratulation that he was able to comprehend the query in her eyes without having it hurled at him in so many words. "That was while Jeffard had money, and Lansdale was trying to starve himself to death," he explained. "You see, Lansdale is a queer fish in some ways. When he's down he won't let anybody touch him on his money side, so we used to work all kinds of schemes to keep him going. Jeffard would study them up, and I'd help him steer them." This was practical benevolence, and Connie's interest bestirred itself in its charitable part. "What were some of the schemes?" she asked. "Oh, there were a lot of them. Lansdale can see farther into a millstone than most people, and we had to invent new ones as we went along. One time, Jeffard bought a common, every-day sort of a pocketbook, and rumpled it up and tramped on it till it looked as if it might have come across the plains in Fifty-nine. Then he put a twenty-dollar bill and some loose silver in it, and dropped it on the sidewalk where I was walking Lansdale up and down for his health. After a while, when he'd actually stumbled over it four or five times, Lansdale saw the wallet and picked it up. Right there the scheme nearly fell down. You see, he was going to make me take charge of it while he advertised it. I got out of it, somehow, but I don't believe he used a nickel of the money for a month." Connie clapped her hands softly. "That was fine! Tell us some more." "The next one was better, and it worked like a charm. Lansdale writes things for the papers, only the editors here wouldn't buy any of his work"-- "Why not?" interrupted Miss Van Vetter. "I don't know; because it was too good, I guess. Anyway, they wouldn't buy it, so Jeffard went to work on that lead. I took him around and introduced him to Kershaw of the 'Coloradoan,' and he made Kershaw take fifty dollars on deposit, and got him to promise to accept some of Lansdale's stories. Kershaw kicked like the deu--like the mischief, and didn't want to do it; but we bullied him, and then I got Lansdale to send him some stuff." "Mr. Jeffard is an artist in schemes, and I envy him," said Connie. "What happened to that one?" "Kershaw upset it by not printing the stuff. Of course, Lansdale watched the 'Coloradoan,' and when he found he wasn't in it, he wouldn't send any more. We caught him the next time, though, for something worth while." "How was that?" It was Miss Van Vetter who asked the question; and Bartrow made a strenuous effort to evade the frontier idiom which stood ready to trip him at every turn when Myra Van Vetter's poiseful gaze rested upon him. "Why, I happen to have a played-out--er--that is, a sort of no-account mine up in Clear Creek, and I made Lansdale believe I was the resident agent for the property, authorized to get up a descriptive prospectus. He took the job of writing it, and never once tumbled to the racket--that is, he never suspected that we were working him for a--oh, good Lord, why can't I talk plain English!--you know what I mean; he thought it was all straight. Well, he turned in the copy, and we paid him as much as he'd stand; but he has just about worried the life out of me ever since, trying to get to read proof on that prospectus. That one was Jeffard's idea, too, but I made him let me in on the assessment." Before Miss Van Vetter could inquire what the "assessment" was, Stephen Elliott came in and the talk became general. An hour later, when Bartrow took his leave, Constance went to the door with him. "Don't you really know where Mr. Jeffard is, Dick?" she asked. Something in her tone set him upon the right track. "No; do you?" "I know that he left Denver quite a while ago; about the time you were down last." "How do you know it?" "He told me he was going." "The mischief he did! Where did you get acquainted with him?" "At Mrs. Calmaine's." Honest Dick ground his heel into the door-mat and thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his overcoat. What was in his mind came out shorn of euphemism. "Say, Connie, do you care anything about him?" "What a question!" she retorted, not pretending to misunderstand its pointing. "I've met him only once--or twice, I should say, though I didn't even know his name the first time." "What did he tell you? about his going away, I mean." "He said--but you've no right to ask me, Dick. It wasn't exactly a confidence, but"-- "Yes, I have a right to ask; he was my friend a good while before he was yours. Tell me what he said." "He gave me to understand that things hadn't been going quite right with him, and he said he was going to the mountains to--to try to make another start." Bartrow tucked Connie's arm under his own and walked her up and down the long veranda twice before he could bring himself to say the thing that was. "He didn't go, Connie; he's here now, if he hasn't gone out on the prairie somewhere and taken a pot shot at himself. Lansdale saw him only a week or so ago." "Oh, Dick!" "It's tough, isn't it?" He stood on the step and buttoned his coat. "But I'm glad you know him--or at least, know who he is. If you should happen to run across him in any of your charity trips, just set Tommie on him and wire me if you find out where he burrows." "You said you had found a place for him. Will it keep?" "I'll try to hold it open for him, and if you wire, I'll come down and tackle him. He's too good a fellow to turn down in his little day of witlessness. Good-night; and good-by--for a week or so. I've got to go back on the morning train." CHAPTER VIII CONTRARY to the doctor's prophecy, Margaret Gannon's progress toward recovery was slow and rather uncertain. Constance professed to be sorry, but in her heart she was thankful, since the hesitant convalescence gave her time to try many expedients pointing toward the moral rehabilitation of her protégée. Ignoring Margaret's bodeful prediction, Constance coursed far and wide, quartering the domestic field diligently; but inasmuch as she was careful in each instance to state the exact truth, each endeavor was but the introduction to another failure. "Why, Constance Elliott! The idea of your proposing such a thing to me!" said Mrs. Calmaine, upon whose motherly good sense Connie had leaned from childhood. "That is what comes of a girl growing up as you have without a mother to watch over her. Can't you understand how dreadful it is for you to mix up in such things? You can't touch pitch and not be defiled." Connie was moved, first to tears, and presently to indignation. "No, I can't understand anything of the kind," she retorted. "It's your privilege not to take Margaret if you don't want her; but it's mine to help her, if I can. And I mean to do it in spite of all the cruel prejudice in the world!" "You talk like a foolish child, Connie. I can tell you beforehand that you won't succeed in getting the woman into any respectable household in Denver, unless you do it under false pretenses." "So much the worse for our Christianity, then," Connie asserted stoutly. "If people won't help, they'll have it to answer to One who wasn't afraid to take a much worse woman by the hand. That's all I have to say about it." Mrs. Calmaine smiled benignantly. She had daughters of her own, and knew how to make allowances for youthful enthusiasm. "You will get over it, after a while, and then you'll see how foolish it is to try to reform the world single-handed," she rejoined. "You might as well try to move Pike's Peak as to think you can remodel society after your own enthusiastic notions. And when the reflective after-time comes, you'll be glad that society didn't let you make a martyr of yourself at its expense. "And, Connie, dear; there is another side of the question which you should consider," she continued, going to the door with her visitor. "It's this: since society as a unit insists upon having this particular kind of reformative work turned over to organizations designed for the purpose, there must be a sufficient reason for it. You are not wiser than the aggregated wisdom of the civilized centuries." Constance went her way, silenced, but by no means convinced; and she added three more failures to her long list before going home to luncheon. In the afternoon, she laid hold of her courage yet once again, and went to her minister, good Dr. Launceston, pastor of St. Cyril's-in-the-Desert. Here, indeed, she found sympathy without stint, but it was hopelessly void of practical suggestion. "It is certainly most pitiful, Miss Elliott, pitiful to a degree; but I really don't see what is to be done. Had you any plan in view that, ah"-- "It is because all my plans have come to grief that I am here," said Connie. "Dear, dear! and those cases are so very hard to deal with. Now, if it were a question of money, I dare say we could manage it quite easily." Constance had some very clear ideas on reformative subjects, and one of them was that it was not less culpable to pauperize than to ignore. "It isn't that," she made haste to say. "I could get money easily enough, but Margaret wouldn't take it. If she would, I should have small hopes for her." "No," rejoined the clergyman reflectively; "you are quite right. It is not a problem to be solved by money. The young woman must be given a chance to win her way back to respectability by her own efforts. Do I understand that she is willing to try if the opportunity should present itself?" "I'm afraid I can't say that she is--not without reservation," Connie admitted. "You see, she knows the cruel side of the world; and she is quite sure that any effort she might make would end in defeat and deeper disgrace." "A very natural apprehension, and one for which there are only too good grounds," said the clergyman sadly. "We are compassionate and charitable in the aggregate, but as individuals I fear we are very unmerciful. Had you thought of trying to send her to one of our institutional homes in the East? I might possibly be able to make such representations as would"-- Constance shook her head. "Margaret is a Roman Catholic, and I suggested the House of the Good Shepherd in one of our earlier talks. She fought the idea desperately, and I don't know that I blame her. She is just a woman like other women, and I believe she would gladly undertake an honest woman's work in the world; but that isn't saying she'd be willing to become a lay-sister." "No, I suppose not; I quite agree with you. But what else can you do for her?" "I don't know, Doctor Launceston,--oh, I don't know! But I'll never give up till I've done something." In the momentary afflatus of which fine determination Constance went her way again, not wholly comfortless this time, but apparently quite as far from the solution of the problem as when she had latched Mrs. Calmaine's gate behind her. As for the clergyman, the precious fervor of the young enthusiast left a spark in his heart which burst into flame on the following Sunday morning, when he preached a stirring sermon from the text, "Who is my neighbor?" to the decorous and well-fed congregation of St. Cyril's-in-the-Desert. Leaving the rectory, Constance postponed the quest for that afternoon and went to pay her daily visit to Margaret. On the way downtown a happy thought came to her, and she welcomed it as an inspiration, setting it to work as soon as she had put the convalescent's room in order. "You are feeling better to-day, aren't you, Margaret?" she began. "Yes. I'm thinking I'll be able to go to work again before long; only Pete Grim mightn't have no use for me." Constance brought the hair-brush, and letting Margaret's luxuriant hair fall in heavy masses over the back of the chair, began another of her ministries of service. "Do you really want to go back to the Bijou?" she asked, knowing well enough what the answer would be. "You know you needn't to ask that; it's just Pete Grim's place or something worse. I can't do no different"--she paused and the fingers of her clasped hands worked nervously--"and you can't help it, Miss Constance. I know you've been trying and worrying; but it ain't no use." Connie did not find words to reply at once, but after a little she said: "Tell me more about your old home, Margaret." "I've told you all there was to tell, many's the time since you found me with the fever." "Let me see if I can remember it. You said your father was the village blacksmith, and that you used to sit in the shop and watch the sparks fly from the anvil as he worked. And when his day's work was done, he would take you on his shoulder and carry you home to your mother, who called you her pretty colleen, and loved you because you were the only girl. And then"-- "Oh, _don't_!" There was sharp anguish in the cry, and Margaret covered her eyes with her hands as if to shut out the picture. Constance waited until she thought she had given the seed time to germinate. Then she went on. "And when you left home they mourned for you, not as one dead, but as one living and still beloved; and as long as they could keep track of you they begged you to come back to them. Margaret, won't you go?" Margaret shook her head in passionate negation. "I can't--_I can't!_ that's the one thing I can't do! Didn't I bring them shame enough and misery enough in the one day? and will I be going back to stir it all up again? having the people say, 'There's Pat Gannon's girl come back; she that went to the bad and broke her mother's heart.' Indeed, I'll not do that, Miss Constance, though the saints and the holy angels'll tell you I'd do anything else you'd ask." This was Connie's happy thought; to induce Margaret to go back to her parents. When it proved to be but another rope of sand, she allowed it one sigh and changed front so cheerfully that Margaret never knew the cost of the effort. "Then we must try something else," she insisted. "I'll never let you go back to the theatre--that's settled. You told me once you could trim hats. Have you ever done any other kind of sewing?" Margaret knelt before her trunk and threw out an armful of her stage finery. "I made them," she said. Constance examined the work critically. It was good, and she took courage. "That is our way out of the trouble, Margaret. Why didn't we think of it before? When you are well enough, I'll get you a sewing-machine and find you all the work you can do." Margaret went to the window and stood there so long that Constance began to tremble lest the battle were going evilward at the last moment. The fear was groundless, as she found out when the girl came back to kneel and cry silently with her face in Connie's lap. "It isn't so much the love of you," she sobbed; "it's the knowing that somebody cares whether the likes of me goes straight to the devil or not. And never so much as a word about behaving myself, or confessing to the priest, or anything. Miss Constance,"--this with uplifted face, grown suddenly beautiful and glorified in the outshining of penitence,--"the devil may fly away with me,--he did that same one day,--but if he does, I'll not live to leave him have the good of it. I promise you that." "I can trust you," said Constance; and she took her leave presently, wondering how the many-sided world could so unify itself in its merciless condemnation of the Magdalenes. When she had closed Margaret's door behind her and was halfway to the stair, she heard sounds as of a scuffle coming from a corridor intersecting the main hallway at the landing. Her first impulse was to retreat to Margaret Gannon's room; but when she recognized Tommie's voice uplifted in alternate plea and imprecation, she went forward quickly. At the turn she met a gaunt, unshaven man leading Tommie by the ear, and her indignation slipped the leash without a thought of consequences. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself to abuse a child like that!" she began; and then two things happened: Jeffard released the boy, and Constance recognized in the gaunt figure the wreck of the man whom she had bidden God-speed on the stair at the Calmaine dancing party. Jeffard flattened himself against the wall, bowed low, and was about to apologize, when Tommie, scenting an accusation, proceeded to vindicate himself by exploding a veritable bomb of consternation between the two. "I warn't doin' ary single thing, Miss Constance, 'ceptin' jest wot you telled me to do. I caught on to his nibs down on de street an' follered him up yere; an' w'en I was takin' a squint t'rough de keyhole, jest to make sure, he outs an' nabs me." For one dreadful instant Connie thought she must scream and run away. Then her wits came back, and she saw that deliverance could come only through swift confession. "Tommie," she said hastily, "run down and wait for me on the sidewalk." And then to Jeffard: "The poor boy wasn't to blame; he was doing just what he had been told to do, and you have a right to ask--to--to know"--She stopped in pitiable embarrassment, and Jeffard flung himself into the breach with chivalric tact. "Not another word, Miss Elliott, I implore you. It isn't the first time I have been taken for my double, and in broad daylight at that. May I go down and make my peace with the boy?" Constance was too greatly perturbed not to catch gratefully at the chance to escape, and she made use of it while Jeffard was talking to Tommie at the foot of the stair. Taking Constance's nod and smile in passing as tokens of amity, the urchin allowed himself to be placated; and when Jeffard went back to his room he knew all that Tommie could tell him about Miss Elliott and her deeds of mercy. That night, before he went out to tramp himself weary, Jeffard did a characteristic thing. He wrapped his last five-dollar note around a bit of plaster dug from the wall, and creeping through the corridor in his stocking feet, tossed the pellet over the transom into Margaret Gannon's room. CHAPTER IX AT the breakfast-table the next morning, Constance had a shock that set her nerves a-jangle and banished her appetite. The exciting cause was a paragraph in the morning "Coloradoan" which her father had been reading between the fruit and the cereals. "I wonder if that isn't the fellow Dick was looking for and couldn't find," he queried, passing the paper across the table with his finger on the suggestive paragraph. It was a custom-hardened account of a commonplace tragedy. A man whose name was given as George Jeffrey had shot himself an hour before midnight on one of the bridges spanning Cherry Creek. Constance read the story of the tragedy with her father's remark in abeyance, and the shock came with the conviction that the self-slain one was Jeffard, whose name might easily become Jeffrey in the hurried notes of a news-gatherer. The meagre particulars tallied accurately with Bartrow's terse account of Jeffard's sociological experiment. The suicide was a late-comer from the farther East; he had spent his money in riotous living; and he had latterly been lost to those who knew him best. It was characteristic of Stephen Elliott's daughter that she passed the paper back to her father without comment, and that she preserved an outward presentment of cheerfulness during the remainder of the meal. But when she was free she ran up to her room and was seen no more of her father or her cousin until the latter went upstairs an hour later to see if Connie were ready for her morning walk. "Why, Connie, dear! What is the matter?" Since her tap at the door went unanswered, Myra had turned the knob and entered. Connie was lying in a dejected little heap on the floor before the fireless grate. She shook her head in dumb protest at her cousin's question; but when Myra knelt beside her it all came out brokenly. "You didn't see what poppa gave me to read: it was an account of a suicide. Mr. Jeffard has killed himself, and--and, oh, Myra! it's all my fault!" "Mr. Jeffard? Oh, I remember now,--Mr. Bartrow's friend. But I don't understand; how could it have been your fault?" "It was, it was! Don't you remember what Dick said? that Mr. Jeffard was in trouble, and that he had a place for him? I saw him yesterday, and I--_I didn't tell him!_" "But, Connie, dear, how could you? You didn't know him." Getting no more than a smothered sob in reply to this, Myra asked for particulars, and Connie gave them sparingly. "You say the name was George Jeffrey? Why do you think it was Mr. Jeffard? I can't for the life of me see how you are to blame, in the remotest sense; but if you are, it's foolish to grieve over it until you are quite sure of the identities. Isn't there any way you can find out?" Connie sat up at that, but she refused to be comforted. "There is a way, and I'll try it; but it's no use, Myra. I'm just as sure as if I had stood beside him when he did it. And I shall never, _never_ forgive myself!" She got up and bathed her eyes, and when she had made herself ready to go out, she refused Myra's proffer of company. "No, dear; thank you, but I'd rather go alone," she objected; "I'll share the misery of it with you by and by, perhaps, but I can't just yet." Her plan for making sure was a simple one. Tommie Reagan had known Jeffard living, and he would know him dead. Putting it in train, she found her small henchman selling papers on his regular beat in front of the Opera House; and inasmuch as he was crying the principal fact of the tragedy, she was spared the necessity of entering into details. "Tommie, have you--did you go to see the man who killed himself last night?" she questioned. "Nope; der ain't no morbid cur'osity inside o' me." "Would you go?--if I asked you to?" "W'y, cert; I'd take a squint at de old feller wid de hoofs an' horns if it'd do you any good." "Then I'll tell you why I want you to go. I am afraid it is the man we were going to try to help." The boy shut one eye and whistled softly. "My gosh! but dat's tough, ain't it now! An' jest w'en I'd got 'quainted with him an' was a-fixin' to give him a lift! Dat's wot I call hard luck!" Constance felt that the uncertainty was no longer to be borne. "Go quickly, Tommie," she directed; "and hurry back as soon as you can. I'll wait for you in the drug store across the street." The coroner's office was not far to seek, and the small scout was back in a few minutes. "Dey wouldn't lemme look," he reported, "but I skinned round to where I could see de top o' his head. It's his nibs, right 'nough." "Tommie! Are you quite sure?" "Nope; feller ain't sure o' nothin' in dis world, 'ceptin' death an' de penitenchry," amended Tommie, doing violence to his convictions when he saw that his patron saint was sorely in need of comfort. "Maybe 'tain't him, after all. You jest loaf 'round yere a couple o' shakes while I skip down to his hotel an' see wot I can dig up." The boy was gone less than a quarter of an hour, but to Constance the minutes marched leaden-footed. When Tommie returned, his face signaled discomfiture. "I didn't send me card up," he explained, with impish gravity; "I jest went right up to his nibsey's room an' mogged in, a-thinkin' I'd offer him a paper if he happened to be there and kicked. Say, Miss Constance; 'tain't a-goin' ter do no good to cry about it. He ain't there, an' he ain't been there, 'nless he slep' in a chair." Constance went home with a lump in her throat and her trouble writ large on her face, and Myra needed not to ask the result of the investigation. Miss Van Vetter was not less curious than she should have been, but something in Connie's eyes forestalled inquiry, and Myra held her peace. Connie wore out the day as best she might, widening the rift of sorrow until it bade fair to become an abyss of remorse. When evening came, and with it a telegram from Bartrow, asking if she had yet learned Jeffard's whereabouts, it was too much, and she shared the misery with her cousin, as she had promised to, making a clean breast of it from the beginning. Something to her surprise, Myra heard her through without a word of condemnation or reproach. "Now that is something I can understand," said Myra, when the tale was told. "The most of your charity work seems to me to be pitifully commonplace and inconsequent; but here was a mission which asked for all sorts of heroism, for which it promised to pay the highest of all prices, namely, the possibility of saving a man worth the trouble." Now Connie was well assured that her love for her neighbor was no respecter of persons, and she made answer accordingly. "I can't agree with you there, Myra. Mr. Jeffard's possible worth had nothing to do with it. I wanted to help him because--well, because it was mean in me to make him talk about himself that night at the opera. And besides, when I met him the next evening at Mrs. Calmaine's, he told me enough to make me quite sure that he needed all the help and encouragement he could get. Of course, he didn't say anything like that, you know; but I knew." Myra's eyes promised sympathy, and Connie went on. "Then, when I came upon him yesterday I was angry because he was hurting Tommie. And afterward, when I tried to explain, he made me understand that I mustn't reach down to him; and--and I didn't know any other way to go about it." "That was a situation in which I should probably have horrified you," said Myra decisively. "I shouldn't have noticed or known anything about him at first, as you did; but in your place yesterday, and with your knowledge of the circumstances, I should have said my say whether he wanted to hear it or not. And I'd have made him listen to reason, too." "You don't quite understand, Myra. It seemed altogether impossible; though if I had known what was in his mind I should have spoken at any cost." Twenty times the pendulum of the chalet clock on the wall beat the seconds, and Myra was silent; then she crossed over to Connie's chair and sat upon the arm of it. "Connie, dear, you're crying again,"--this with her arm around her cousin's neck. "Are you quite sure you haven't been telling me half-truths? Wasn't there the least little bit of a feeling warmer than charity in your heart for this poor fellow?" Constance shook her head, but the denial did not set itself in words. "He was Dick's friend, and that was enough," she replied. Miss Van Vetter's lips brushed her cousin's cheek, and Constance felt a warm tear plash on her hand. This was quite another Myra from the one she thought she knew, and she said as much. "We're all puzzles, Connie dear, and the answers to most of us have been lost; but, do you know, I can't help crying a little with you for this poor fellow. Just to think of him lying there with no one within a thousand miles to care the least little bit about it. And if you are right--if it is Mr. Bartrow's friend--it's so much the more pitiful. The world is poorer when such men leave it." "Why, Myra! What do you know about him?" "Nothing more than you do--or as much. But surely you haven't forgotten what Mr. Bartrow told us." "About his helping Mr. Lansdale?" "Yes." "No, I hadn't forgotten." "It was very noble; and so delicately chivalrous. It seems as if one who did such things would surely be helped in his own day of misfortune. But that doesn't often happen, I'm afraid." "No," Constance assented, with a sigh; and Myra went back to the question of identity. "I suppose there is no possible chance that Tommie may have been mistaken?" Constance shook her head. "I think not; he saw that I was troubled about it, and he would have strained a point to comfort me if the facts had given him leave. But I shall be quite sure before I answer Dick's message." With that thought in mind, and with no hope behind it, Constance waylaid her father in the hall the next morning as he was about to go out. "Poppa, I want you to do something for me; no, not that"--the elderly man was feeling in his pockets for his check-book--"it is something very different, this time; different and--and rather dreadful. You remember the suicide you read about, yesterday morning?" "Did I read about one? Oh, yes; the man that shot himself down on the Platte, or was it Cherry Creek? The fellow I thought might be Dick's friend. What about it?" "It's that. We ought to make sure of it for Dick's sake, you know. Won't you go to the coroner's office and see if it is Mr. Jeffard? It's a horrible thing to ask you to do, but"-- There was grim reminiscence in the old pioneer's smile. "It won't be the first one I've seen that died with his boots on. I'll go and locate your claim for you." She kissed him good-by, but he came back from the gate to say: "Hold on, here; I don't know your Mr. Jeffard from a side of sole leather. How am I going to identify him?" "You've seen him once," she explained. "Do you remember the man who sat next to me the night we went to hear 'The Bohemian Girl'?" "The thirsty one that you and Myra made a bet on? Yes, I recollect him." "I don't think he was thirsty. Would you know him if you were to see him again?" "I guess maybe I would; I've seen him half a dozen times since,--met him out here on the sidewalk the next morning. Is that your man?" "That was Mr. Jeffard," she affirmed, turning away that he might not see the tears that welled up unbidden. "All right; I'll go and identify him for you." So he said, and so he meant to do; but it proved to be a rather exciting day at the Mining Exchange, and he forgot the commission until he was about to board a homeward-bound car in the evening. Then he found that he was too late. The body of the suicide had been shipped East in accordance with telegraphic instructions received at noon. When he made his report to Constance, she fell back upon Tommie's assurance, and sent the delayed answer to Bartrow's message, telling him that his friend was dead. Having sorrowfully recorded all these things in the book of facts accomplished, it was not wonderful that Constance, coming out of Margaret Gannon's room late the following afternoon, should cover her face and cry out in something akin to terror when she cannoned against Jeffard at the turn in the dingy hallway. Neither was it remarkable that her strength should forsake her for the moment; nor that Jeffard, seeing her plight, should forget his degradation and give her timely help by leading her to a seat in the dusty window embrasure. At that the conventionalities, or such shreds of them as might still have bound either of them, parted asunder in the midst, and for the time being they were but a man and a woman, as God had created them. "Oh, I'm so glad!" were her first words. "I--I thought you were dead!" "I ought to be," was his comment. "But what made you think that?" "It was in the newspaper--about the man who shot himself. I was afraid it was you, and when Tommie had been to see we were sure of it." "In the newspaper?" he queried; and then, with a ghost of a smile which was mirthless: "It was a little previous, but so justifiable that I really ought to take the hint. Can't you tell me more? I'm immensely interested." She told him everything from the beginning, concluding with a pathetic little appeal for forgiveness if she had done wrong in taking too much for granted. "You couldn't well do that," he hastened to say. "And you mustn't ask forgiveness for motives which an angel might envy. But it is casting pearls before swine in my case, Miss Elliott. I have sown the wind, deliberately and with malice aforethought, and now I am reaping the whirlwind, and regretting day by day that it doesn't develop sufficient violence to finish that which it has begun." "Please don't say that," she pleaded. "There are always hands stretched out to help us, if we could but see and lay hold of them. Why won't you let Dick help you when he is so anxious to do it? You will, now that you know about it, won't you?" "I knew about it before. Lansdale told me, but I made him promise to drop it. It isn't that I wouldn't accept help from Bartrow as willingly as I would from any one in the world; it is simply that I don't care to take the chance of adding ingratitude to my other ill-doings." "Ingratitude?" "Yes. The man who allows his friend to help him in any crisis of his own making should at least be able to give bond for his good behavior. I can't do that now. I wouldn't trust myself to go across the street. I know my own potentiality for evil too well." "But potentiality isn't evil," she protested. "It's only the power to do things, good or bad. And if one have that there is always hope." "Not for me," he said shortly. "I have sinned against grace." "Who hasn't?" Constance rejoined. "But grace doesn't die because it's sinned against." He smiled again at that. "I think my particular allotment of grace is dead beyond the hope of resurrection." "How can that be?" He put his back to the window so that he had not to look in her eyes. "Grace for most men takes the form of an ideal. So long as the condition to be attained is ahead there is hope, but when one has turned his back upon it"-- Indirection fences badly with open-eyed sincerity, and he did not finish. But the door was open now, and Constance meant to do her whole duty. "I think I understand," she assented; "but I wish you would be quite frank with me. In a way, I am Mr. Bartrow's deputy, and if I have to tell him you refuse to let him help you, I shall have to give him a better reason than you have given me." "You are inexorable," he said, and there was love in his eyes, despite his efforts reasonward. "I wish I dared tell you the whole miserable truth." "And why may you not?" "Because it concerns--a woman." She shrank back a little at that, and he saw that she had misunderstood. Wherefore he plunged recklessly into the pool of frankness. "The woman is a good woman," he went on quickly, "and one day not so very long ago I loved her well enough to believe that I could win my way back to decency and uprightness for her sake. It was a mistake. I had fallen lower than I knew, and the devil came in for his own." Here was something tangible to lay hold of at last, and Connie made instant use of it. "Does she know?" she asked. The mirthless smile came and went again. "She thinks she does." "But you haven't told her all; is that it?" "I have tried to, but, being a good woman, she can't understand. I think I didn't fully understand, myself; but I do now." "Is it so far beyond reparation?" "It is indeed. If the devil's emissary who has brought me to this pass could be exorcised this moment I should never recover the lost ground of self-respect. There is nothing to go back to. If I had not to be despicable from necessity, I should doubtless be so from choice." "I think you are harder with yourself than you would be with another. Can't you begin to believe in yourself again? _I_ believe in you." "You!--but you don't know what you are saying, Miss Elliott. See!"--his coat was buttoned to the chin, tramp-wise, and he tore it open to show her the rags that underlay it--"do you understand now? I have pawned the shirt off my back--not to satisfy the cravings of hunger, but to feed a baser passion than that of the most avaricious miser that ever lived. Do I make it plain that I am not worthy of your sympathy, or of Richard Bartrow's?" For once the clear gray eyes were veiled, and her chin quivered a little when she spoke. "You hurt me more than I can tell," she said. The dull rage of self-abasement in him flamed into passion at the sight of what he had done, but the bitter speech of it tarried at the sound of a heavy step on the stair. Constance rose from her seat in the window embrasure with a nervous thrill of embarrassment, but Jeffard relieved her at once. There was a vacant room on the opposite side of the corridor, and when the intruder appeared at the stair-head, Miss Elliott was alone. She glanced at the man as he passed, and Jeffard, from his place behind the half-closed door of the vacant room, saw her draw back, and clenched his hands and swore softly, because, forsooth, she had for some fleeting pulse-beat of time to breathe the same air with the intruder. For he knew the man as a purveyor for Peter Grim's house of dishonor; a base thing for which wholesome speech has no name. What followed was without sequence. Almost at the same instant the footsteps of the man ceased to echo in the empty corridor, there was a cry half angry and half of terror from Margaret Gannon's room, and Miss Elliott disappeared from Jeffard's limited field of vision. In the turning of a leaf Jeffard was at the door of the room in the end of the corridor. What he saw and heard made a man of him for the moment. Margaret Gannon had evidently been surprised at her sewing-machine; the work was still under the needle, and the chair was overturned. Margaret was crouching in the farthest corner of the room, with Miss Elliott standing over her like a small guardian angel at bay. The nameless one had his back to the door, and Jeffard heard only the conclusion of a jeering insult which included both of the women. Now Jeffard had fasted for twenty-four hours, and the quick dash to the end of the corridor made him dizzy and faint; but red wrath, so it be fierce enough, is its own elixir. Thinking of nothing but that he should acquit himself as a man before the woman he loved, he flung himself upon the contemner of women with the vigor of a righteous cause singing in his veins like the wine of new life. The struggle was short and decisive. In his college days Jeffard had been a man of his hands, and the fierce onset proved to be the better half of the battle. Constance caught her breath and cowered in the corner with Margaret when the two men went down together, but she gave a glad little cry when she saw that Jeffard had won the fall; that he had wrenched the drawn pistol from the other's grasp and flung it harmless across the room. Then there was another and a fiercer grapple on the floor, and Jeffard's fist rose and fell like a blacksmith's hammer with the dodging head of his antagonist for its anvil. The end of it was as abrupt as the beginning. In the midst of another wrestling bout the beaten one freed himself, bounded to his feet, and darted into the corridor with Jeffard at his heels. There was a sharp scurry of racing feet in the hall, a prolonged crash as of a heavy body falling down the stair, and Jeffard was back again, panting with the violence of it, but with eyes alight and an apology on his lips. Constance ran to meet him and cut the apology short. "The idea!" she protested; "when it was for Margaret's sake and mine! Are you sure you're not hurt?" Jeffard's knuckles were cut and bleeding, but he kept that hand behind him. "It's the other fellow who is hurt, I hope." Then to Margaret: "Do you know him? Are you afraid of him?" Margaret glanced at Constance and hesitated. "He'll not be troubling me any more, I'm thinking. It's Pete Grim that sent him; and he was at me before I knew." Jeffard picked up the captured weapon and put it on the sewing-machine. "Take that to him if he comes again when you are alone. Miss Elliott, please stay here a moment until I can go down and see that the way is clear." He was gone at the word, but he had barely reached the window with the dusty embrasure when she overtook him. There was a sweet shyness in her manner now, and he trembled as he had not in any stage of the late encounter. "Mr. Jeffard," she began, "will you forgive me if I say that you have disproved all the hard things you were trying to say of yourself? You'll let me wire Dick, now, won't you?" He shook his head because he was afraid to trust himself to speak. As between an abject appeal with his hopeless passion for its motive, and a plunge back into the abyss of degradation which would efface the temptation, there was nothing to choose. "You will at least promise me that you will consider it," she went on. "I can't ask less." If he did not reply immediately it was because he was trying to fix her image so that he should always be able to think of her just as she stood, with the afternoon sunlight falling upon her face, irradiating it and making a shimmering halo of the red-brown hair and deep wells of the clear gray eyes. A vagrant thought came to him: that it was worth a descent into the nether depths to have such a woman seek him out and plead with him for his soul's sake. He put it aside to deny her entreaty. "I can't promise even that." She was silent for a moment, and embarrassment came back and fought for holding-ground when she tried to bring herself to do the thing which compassion suggested. But compassion won; and Jeffard looked on with a half-cynical smile when she took a gold coin from her purse and offered it to him. "Just for the present," she begged, with a beseeching look which might have melted a worse man. He took the money, and the smile ended in an unpleasant laugh. "You think I ought to refuse, and so I ought; as any man would who had a spark of manhood left in him. But that is why I take it; I have been trying to make you understand that I am not worth saving. Do I make it plain to you?" "You make me very sorry," she quavered; and because her sorrow throttled speech, she turned and left him. CHAPTER X AFTER Constance had gone, Jeffard had an exceedingly bad half-hour. For a time he tramped up and down the deserted corridor, calling himself hard names and likening his latest obliquity to whatsoever unpardonable sin has been recorded against the most incorrigible of mankind. Love had its word, also--outraged love, acknowledged only to be openly flouted and spat upon; for one may neither do violence to a worthy passion, nor give rein to an unworthy, without paying for it, blow for blow. What would she think of him? What could she think, save that she had wasted her sympathy on a shameless vagabond who had sought to palm himself off on her and her friends as a gentleman? The thought of it was stifling. The air of the musty hallway seemed suddenly to grow suffocating, and the muffled drumming of the sewing-machine in Margaret Gannon's room jarred upon him until it drove him forth to wander hot-hearted and desperate in the streets. Without remembering that he had crossed the viaduct or ascended the hill, he finally found himself wandering in the Highlands. Drifting aimlessly on beyond the fringe of suburban houses, he came to the borders of a shallow pond what time the sun was poising for its plunge behind the upreared mountain background in the west. It was here, when he had flung himself down upon the warm brown earth in utter weariness of soul and body, that his good angel came once more and wrestled with him. Looking backward he saw that the angle of the inclined plane had grown suddenly precipitous within a fortnight. Since the night of his quarrel with the well-meaning miner, the baize door at the head of the carpeted stair had been closed to him. In consequence he had been driven to the lair of a less carefully groomed but more rapacious wild beast whose keeper offered his patrons a choice between the more serious business of the gaming-tables, and the lighter diversions of a variety theatre. Jeffard had seen the interior of the Bijou on the earliest of his investigative expeditions in Denver, and had gone away sick at heart at the sight of it. Wherefore it was a measure of the depths to which he had descended that he could become an habitue of the place, caring nothing for the misery and depravity which locked arms with all who breathed its tainted atmosphere. It was at the Bijou that he had lost the better part of the winnings rescued by the miner's bit of charitable by-play; and it was there, also, that he had thrown away the major portion of a second gift from Lansdale. For two nights in succession the lack of money had kept him away. He took out Connie's offering and stared at it with lack-lustre eyes. With heedful manipulation here was the fuel to feed the fire of his besetting passion for some hours. Having permitted her to give and himself to take it, why should he quibble at the manner of its spending? When he saw that hesitancy implied another attempt to turn back at the eleventh hour, he felt that this was no longer possible. Try as he might, the shame of this last infamous thing would reach out and drag him back into the mire. The alternative disposed of, the matter simplified itself. He had only to determine whether he should end it all before or after he had flung away this bit of yellow metal. The decision was so nicely balanced that he let it turn upon the flipping of the coin--heads for a sudden plunge into the pond, tails for a final bout with chance and the plunge afterward. He spun the gold piece, and went down on his hands and knees to read the oracle in the fading light. It was the misshapen eagle that stared back at him from the face of the coin, and he took his reprieve sullenly, calling his evil genius a usurer. He got upon his feet stiffly and turned his face toward the city. Then it occurred to him that it would be well to make his preparations while he could see. There was a house building on the little knoll above the pond; a brick and the binding-string from a bundle of lath would serve; and when he had secured them he sounded the pond around the edges with a stick. It was too shallow; but from a plank thrown across to the head of the drainage flume it proved deep enough, and here he left the brick and the bit of tarred twine. Half an hour later he entered the Bijou. On the threshold he met the proprietor; and when he would have passed with a nod, Grim barred the way. "Been layin' for you," announced the man of vice, sententiously. "Come into the box-office." Jeffard obeyed mechanically. He was in the semi-stupor which anticipates the delirium of the gaming fever, and the man's voice sounded afar off. Grim led the way behind the bar to a windowless den furnished with a roll-top desk and two chairs. Closing the door, he waved Jeffard to a seat. "Been sort o' sizin' you up lately, and I put it up that you're out o' luck. Does that call the turn?" "I don't know how that concerns you," said Jeffard, with a sudden access of dull resentment. "No more do I; but that's neither here nor yonder. You're down on your luck, ain't you?" Jeffard nodded. "Call it that, if you like." "Thought so. Broke most of the time, I reckon?" "Yes; most of the time." "Jes' so. Well, I'm goin' to put you on to a soft snap. I know all about you--who you are, where you come from, and all the rest. You've been playin' to lose right along, and now I'm goin' to give you a tip so you can play to win ever' time. See?" Jeffard came out of his abstraction sufficiently to wonder what the man was driving at. "Make it short," he rejoined curtly. Grim leaned back in his pivot-chair, and his hard face wrinkled under an evil smile. "Don't be in a rush. Game runs all night, and you'll have plenty of time to go and blow in whatever you've got after I get through with you. Or, if you can't wait, go and blow it first, and we'll talk business afterwards." "No," Jeffard objected sullenly. "If you have anything to say to me, say it now." "Business before pleasure, eh? All right; here's the lay-out. I'm goin' to stake you with a suit o' good clothes, pay your board at the Albany or the Brown, whichever you like, and give you a roll to flash up that'll make you feel flush ever' time you look at it. Then"-- Jeffard's gesture was of impatience. "Never mind about the details. What is the price of all this?" "Mighty nigh nothin' at all. You had plenty o' friends a while back, and you'll have 'em again, as soon as you're flush. And when any of 'em feel like proddin' the tagger, why--you know where he's kep'; that's all." While one might draw a breath there was murder in Jeffard's heart; in his weakness a rage that was childish in its vehemence took possession of him, and he covered his face with his hands to crush back the hot tears of impotence which sprang up and blinded him. Grim looked on unpityingly, waiting for what he conceived to be the inevitable. When Jeffard struggled to his feet, his face was white and he had to steady himself by the back of the chair. "I thought I'd got to the bottom when I came here to-night," he began unsteadily, "but you've shown me my mistake. Thank God, I can yet say No to you, low as I am. Let me get out of here." Knowing the strength of the gambler's chain, as well as the length thereof, Grim held his peace; and Jeffard pushed past the bar-tender and went out through the small door at the end of the bar. On the sidewalk a crowd beset the theatre entrance, and out of the midst of it came two men, striking and clutching at each other as they fought their way into the clear. Within arm's-length of Jeffard they separated. He saw the sheen of the electric light on a weapon, and darted between them in time to spoil the aim of the man who drew first. There was a flash and a report, a rush on the part of the crowd, and Jeffard found himself dodging and doubling swiftly through dark alleys and crooked covered ways, following the lead of the man whose life he had saved. After a time they came out in a silent street where there was light. "Didn't know me, did you, pardner?" quoth the fugitive, relaxing his grasp on Jeffard's wrist. "Like as not you wouldn't 'a' done it if you had, but that don't saw no wood with me. That greaser had the drop on me, sure's yer born." Whereupon Jeffard looked again, and recognizing his friendly enemy of the winning night, was glad, inasmuch as he had been able to cancel an obligation. None the less, his reply was ungracious enough. "Oh, it's you, is it? Well, we're quits now. Good-night." He turned and walked away, but at the corner the man overtook him. "Not that-a-way," he forbade, pointing up the street. "Somebody in the crowd'll be sure to know you, and you'll walk slap back into trouble after I done drug you out. The p'lice are there by this time, an' they don't care who, so they get a man 'r two to lock up." Jeffard nodded, and made a circuit of the dangerous locality with his head up and the light of a steadfast purpose in his eyes. Whatever of vacillation there was in him an hour earlier had been thoroughly flailed out in the brief interview with Peter Grim. He knew now what he had to do, and the precise manner of its doing. Keeping to the quieter streets, he came out in front of the St. James; and dodging the crowded lobby, made his way to the writing-room. Since he dare not go to the clerk for stationery, he was compelled to wait until some one left what he required. The chance befell presently, but when he came to write his note to Constance Elliott the thing was harder to do than he had prefigured it. What he finally wrote, after he had spoiled two of the three sheets of paper left by his predecessor in the chair at the writing-table, was this:-- "After what happened this afternoon, you will not think worse of me if I ask you to let me try to explain what must seem to you too despicable to be remembered. I can't hope to make you understand without being frank, and when, at some future time, you may learn the circumstances under which this is written, I shall hope for forgiveness. "You may remember that I said I couldn't tell you the truth, because it concerns a woman. When I add that the woman is yourself, you will understand. I love you; I think I have been loving you ever since that evening which you said we were to forget--the evening at the theatre. Strangely enough, my love for you isn't strong in the strength which saves. I went from you that night when you had bidden me God-speed at Mrs. Calmaine's, and within the hour I was once more a penniless vagabond. "When you were trying to help me this afternoon, I was trying to keep from saying that which I could never have a right to say. You pressed me very hard in your sweet innocence and loving sympathy,--you see, I am quite frank,--and when you finally gave me a chance to make the impossible thing that I longed to say still more impossible, I took it in sheer desperation. Nay, more; I purposed in my heart to so desecrate your gift as to make the thought of my love for you an unhallowed memory. "That is all, I think, save, when it came to the brink, I found that there was still a deeper depth which was yet unplumbed, and which I trust I shall have the courage to leave unexplored." When it was finished he wrapped the gold piece in a bit of paper, and, putting it in the envelope with the note, set out to find the house in Colfax Avenue. Having seen it but once, and that in daylight, it was not singular that it eluded him in the night; but it was surely the very irony of chance which led him to slip the envelope under the front door of a house two squares beyond that occupied by the Elliotts, and which kept him from noticing the placard "For Rent" nailed upon the very door under which he thrust his message to Constance. This single preliminary set in order, he faced once more toward the Highlands, lagging a little from sheer weariness as he went, but finding comfort in the thought that there would be infinite surcease from hunger and exhaustion at the end of this last pilgrimage. There was time for reflection on the way, and he marvelled that his thoughts dwelt so persistently upon the trivial details of the thing he was about to do. He was a practiced swimmer; would the weight of a single brick be sufficient to overcome the instinct of self-preservation which might assert itself at the last moment? Probably, since he was weak from fasting, and would be encumbered with his clothing. Then another suggestion came to torment him: If he should tie the brick to his feet, as he had thought to, the water might not be deep enough, after all. Consequently, he must fasten it about his neck. And thereupon he had a fit of creeping horror at the thought of drowning with his face dragged down into the ooze and slime of the bottom. Oddly enough, when he came to the brink of the pool these things ceased to trouble him; though even there it was impossible to turn the current of thought into a reflective channel. He made the effort for decency's sake. It was not meet that a thinking being should go out of life like the brutes that perish; without a thought for the past with its lacks and havings, or the future with its untried possibilities. But the effort returned to him void, and presently he stumbled upon the reason: the premeditated fact of self-murder shut him off alike from repentance for what had gone before, and from hope in what should come after. Very good, he said; and flung himself down to make the most of the present. He was faint and weary, and it would be ill to drown a tired body. There was no moon, but the midsummer night was clear and still. The stars burned steadily overhead, and there was a soft light abroad which seemed to be a part of the atmosphere. Over in the west the black bulk of the range rose up to meet the sky; and poised above one of the highest peaks the planet Mars swung to its setting. Jeffard marked it, saying it should be his executioner; that when the rosy point of light should touch the black sky-line, he would rise up and go to his place. Meanwhile it was soothing to lie stretched out upon the warm earth with no human future to prefigure, and no past insistent enough to disturb one with its annals. And there was still the present, with its soft light and its dim hemisphere of sky; its balmy air and its vague and shadowy horizon. It was good to be alone with nature in these last few moments; to have done with the tiresome world of man's marring; to be quit of man's presence. The thought had scarcely shaped itself when it was made of none effect by the appearance of a man at the top of the little knoll. The intruder came straight on, as if in no doubt as to his purpose, and sitting down on the end of the plank bridge, proceeded to fill and light his pipe without saying a word. Jeffard caught a glimpse of a bearded face by the flare of the match, and said, "Oh, it's you again, is it?" "Right you are, pardner. Hope I ain't intrudin'." "I suppose you have as good a right here as I have. But I might suggest that the night is fine and the world large, and that there are times when a man has no use for his fellows." The new-comer smoked in silence for a full minute before he removed his pipe to say:-- "That's a sort of a gilt-edged invitation for me to mog off, ain't it? All right; I'll go pretty middlin' quick; but I've been fool enough to tramp somewheres nigh ten mile behind you to-night for to get a show to say what's on my mind; wher'fore, I'll say it first and vamoose afte'wards." Jeffard gave him leave, watching the narrowing margin between the star and the mountain-top. "Well, b'iled down, it's just about this: I know what you're out yere for,--seen it in your eye back yonder on the street corner,--but I says to myself, 'Jim Garvin, you go kinder slow; it ain't none o' your business. When a man takes a mill-run o' hisself and finds out the claim ain't worth workin' no longer, w'y, it's his funeral, and none o' yourn.' And then again I says to myself, 'Maybe that there feller hain't got nary 'nother claim--leastwise, not as he knows of,' and so I follered you, all over the blame' town and out yere." Jeffard made no reply, and the intruder went on. "'Course, you understand I ain't a-mixin' up any in your business, not if I know it. You just listen at what I'm goin' to say, and then if you want to go ahead, w'y, all right, do it; and I'll loan you my gun so 't you won't have to get yourself wet in cold water. Is that about right?" "Go on," said Jeffard. "Well, it's this-a-way; I'm off on a prospectin' tower to-morrow. Blowed in ever' last thing I had, and took a grub-stake, same as heretofore. Now the old man that puts up the grub-stake, he says, says he, 'Jim, you'll want a pardner. It's gettin' pretty late in the season, and you won't stand no kind of a chance goin' alone.' 'Right you are,' says I,' and I'll pick up some feller on the range as I go in.' 'Good enough,' says he. 'I'll make this here order big enough to stake the two of you.' That's the whole lay-out, and you're the pardner, if you say the word. You don't know beans about me, and I don't know you from Adam's off ox, so that's a stand-off. What do you say?" Jeffard did not answer until there was but a bare thread of sky between the star and the peak. Then he said: "Do you happen to have a coin of any kind about you?" Garvin tossed a dollar across to him, and Jeffard spun it. Then he found that he had no match, and asked the miner to give him one. Garvin watched him curiously as he bent over the coin and struck the match. "The luck's against me--it's heads," he announced gravely. "I'll go with you." Garvin rose and stretched himself stiffly. "You're a cool one," he commented. "What if it'd been tails?" Jeffard got up and kicked the brick into the pond. "In that case I should have been obliged to ask you to lend me your pistol. Let's go back to town and get something to eat with that dollar. I haven't had anything since last night." CHAPTER XI AFTER toiling all night through black gorges and over unspeakable mountain passes, the narrow-gauge train from Denver, headed by two pygmy locomotives, came out into daylight, sunshine, and wider horizons at Alta Vista. In the sleeping-car three sections had been transformed by the drowsy porter into daytime smugness, and three persons--two of them in deference to the enthusiasm of the third--were up and dressed. "Isn't it all perfectly indescribable?" Myra was saying, when the engineer of one of the pygmies sounded the whistle for the station. "Do you know, I couldn't go to sleep for hours last night, late as it was. I put up the window curtain and piled the pillows in the corner so I could look out. The sky was like a great inverted bowl lined with black velvet and spangled with diamonds, circling around us as we darted around the curves. And in the open places there was always a solemn procession of cliffs and peaks, marching with us sometimes, and then turning to slip past again when the bowl whirled the other way. Oh, but it was grand!" "I'm glad it lays hold of you," said Connie, who was loyally jealous for the scenic renown of her native Colorado. "Now you know why I wouldn't let you go on any of those breathless little one-day excursions from Denver. They just take you up in a balloon, give you a glimpse while you gasp, and drop you without a parachute. The tourist people all make them, you know,--it's in the itinerary, with a coupon in the cute little morocco-bound book of tickets,--and they come back wild-eyed and desperate, and go without their suppers to scribble incoherent notes about the 'Cache la Platte' and 'Clear Poudre Canyon,' and other ridiculous things. It would be funny if it wasn't so exasperating." Myra nodded. "I'm beginning to 'savez,' as Mr. Bartrow would say. By the way, isn't this the place where he was to meet us?--Why, yes; there he is now!" She waved her hand and struggled with the window-latch as the train drew up to the platform. He was with them in a moment, carrying a towel-covered basket, and a tin coffee-pot which he waved gingerly by way of salutation. "The top o' the morning to you all," he said, beaming genially. "I was afraid you wouldn't be up, and then my hot coffee would be cold coffee, and I'd get myself disliked." Then to the drowsy porter: "John, you scoundrel, get us a table before I break you in two and throw you out of the window." The table was promptly forthcoming, and Myra made room in the narrow seat for Bartrow. "Excuse me," he begged, laughing, "I'd like to, but I can't. Somebody's got to stand up and do the swing-rack act with this coffee-pot. Just unload that basket, will you, Elliott, and I'll play head waiter while you set the table." The breakfast was good, and there was a most astonishing variety. Moreover the coffee rose to a degree of excellence which more than atoned for the admixture of condensed milk in lieu of cream, and for the slight resinous taste imparted by the new tin cups. Bartrow apologized for the cups. "You see, I left the mine rather middling early this morning, and packed things in a hurry. When I was making the coffee over Jim Bryant's stove here at Alta Vista, it struck me all at once that I'd forgotten the cups. The train was in sight, and Jim had only one, and that hadn't been washed for a month of Sundays. Maybe you think I wasn't stampeded for about a minute." Connie laughed. "I suppose you went out and robbed somebody." "That's what I did; made a break for the store, and found it locked up, of course. I had to smash a window to get what I wanted." "Why, you lawless man!" protested Myra, trying to make room on the narrow table for the contents of the inexhaustible basket. "Where in the world did you get such a variety of things?" "Canned goods," Connie cut in maliciously; "all canned goods, put out in dishes so you won't be reminded of the tinny taste. Everybody lives on canned goods in the mountains." "Connie, you make me tired," Bartrow retorted, bracing himself as the train whisked around a sharp curve. "Just dig a little deeper and get out that platter of trout; they've never seen the inside of a can." "Never mind what Connie says; she isn't responsible," said Myra. "The breakfast is just as good as it can be. Besides, you know you promised us that we should live just as you do if we'd visit the Little Myriad. I wish you'd put that coffee-pot on the floor and sit down with us." Bartrow tried it, and found it possible; after which the talk became general and cheerful over the resinous coffee cups and the lurching dishes. In a lull Elliott asked how the Little Myriad was going on. "Good enough for anybody," rejoined Bartrow, with enthusiasm alert. "Lead opens out better every day, and we're in only about seventy-five feet." "No pay-dirt yet, of course," said the older man. "Well, hardly; not yet. I'm figuring on a hundred and fifty feet of development work at the very least before we begin to take out pay." "Mr. Bartrow, don't you remember that another thing you promised was that you wouldn't talk mineral-English before me without explaining it?" Myra broke in. "I want to know"--An unexpected plunge of the car made her grasp at the coffee cup, and Connie slipped deftly into the break. "And it shall know, bless its inquisitive little soul! It shall be stuffed with information like a fat little pillow with feathers. But not here, cuzzy dear. Wait till we're on the ground, and then I'll go off out of hearing, and Dick may turn himself into a glossary, or an intelligence office, or a personal conductor, or anything else you'd like to have him." Bartrow looked unspeakable things, and put down his knife and fork to say, "Connie, you're a--a"-- "Brute, Dickie; say it right out, and don't spare me on Myra's account. She rather enjoys it; she loves to hear people abuse me." "Connie, you are perfectly incorrigible," said Myra severely. "With your poor people you are an angel of light, but with your friends"-- "I'm an angel of darkness. That's right, cuzzy dear; pile it on, I'm young and strong. Poppa, can't you think of something mean to say about me? Do try, please." Bartrow grinned; and Elliott, who knew his daughter's vagaries and delighted in them, laughed outright. Constance made a face across the table at her cousin, and said, "Now talk mines, if you can." "I shall," asserted Myra calmly. "Mr. Bartrow, how did you ever come to call your mine the 'Little Myriad'?" If the bottom had suddenly dropped out of his coffee cup, Bartrow could not have been more disconcerted. Constance, who was in his secret, laughed gleefully, and clapped her hands. "Tell her, Dick; tell her all about it. If you don't I shall." Bartrow stammered and stumbled until Connie went into ecstasies of mischievous delight. After two or three helpless beginnings, he said, rather tamely, "I thought it was a pretty name." "But it's so odd; a myriad is many, and a mine is only one." "Oh, the meaning didn't have anything to do with it," rejoined Bartrow, going straight to his own discomfiture with refreshing candor. "It was the--the suggestion; the similarity; the--By Jove! we're there at last; this is the mine switch." The exclamation was a heartfelt thanksgiving, and in the confusion of debarking the perilous topic was safely eluded. It was a sharp climb of some distance from the railway track to the mine, and Elliott developed unsuspected reserves of tact by leading the way with Miss Van Vetter, leaving Bartrow to follow with Constance. When they had lagged sufficiently behind the others, and were yet out of earshot of the men who were following with the luggage, Bartrow went back to the unexploded petard. "Connie, you've just got to help me out now," he declared. "What shall I tell her if she tackles me again?" "Tell her the truth." "I don't dare to." "Then tell her a fib. But no--on second thought I shouldn't do that, if I were you; you'd only make a mess of it. I'll tell you what to do: just fight shy of it till I can get her to myself. I promise you she'll never ask you about the Little Myriad's christening again as long as she lives." "Thank you," said Bartrow, with the air of a reprieved criminal; and then dubiously: "See here, Connie, how are you going to do it? No monkey business, you know." "Not a single, solitary monkey," she answered so soberly that Bartrow forgot his suspicions, and plunged into another subject which was also near to his heart. "About Jeffard; how did you come to think he had shot himself?" "It was only one of those suppositions you think you have verified when you've only been playing blind-man's bluff with it. The similarity of names misled me at first." "But afterward you merely wired that you were mistaken. Was that another supposition?" "Oh, no; I saw him and talked with him." "The mischief you did! What did he have to say for himself?" "Not much that will bear repeating. I'm too sorry for him to want to talk about it, Dick." Bartrow wondered, and kept his wonder to himself. What he said was in the nature of worldly wisdom. "Jeffard'll come out all right in the end. He's as obstinate as a pig, but that's the only swinish thing about him. I'm afraid he'll have to go through the stamp-mill and get himself pulverized; but when it comes to the clean-up there'll be more good metal than tailings. Don't you think so?" "How should I know?" queried Constance. "I didn't ask you what you know; I asked what you thought about it." "You forget that we've met only two or three times." "I don't forget anything. But I know you can size a man up while the rest of us are trying to get acquainted with him. Don't you believe that Jeffard will come out all right in the end?" She was silent for a minute or two, and when she answered there was a tremulous note in her voice which was new to Bartrow. "I'm afraid he has made that and everything else impossible, Dick. I told you I had seen him and talked with him; that was the day after I telegraphed you about the suicide, nearly two months ago. From that day to this he has not been seen or heard of in Denver, so far as Tommie can find out." "Pshaw! Then you think he has taken the short cut out of it, after all?" "I don't know what to think," said Constance; and as they were at the top of the steep trail, the subject was dropped. On the whole, Connie's apprehensions that her cousin's urban upbringing might make her a difficult guest for the young miner were apparently groundless. Miss Van Vetter rhapsodized over the scenery; waded cheerfully through the dripping tunnel of the Little Myriad to the very heading, in order to see with her own eyes the vein of mineral; thought Bartrow's three-room log cabin was good enough for any one; and ate the dishes of Wun Ling's preparing as though a Chinese cook were a necessary adjunct to every well regulated household. When the first day of exhilarating sight-seeing came to an end, and the two young women were together in their room, Connie bethought her of her promise to Bartrow. "By the way, Myra, did you find out how the Little Myriad came by its name?" she asked. "No; I forgot to ask Mr. Bartrow again." "I can tell you, if you'd really like to know." "Well?" "He was going to call it the 'Myra,' and he asked me if I thought you'd object. I told him you would,--most emphatically. Then he said he would call it the 'Myriad,' because that was the only word he could think of that was anything like Myra." Miss Van Vetter was arranging her hair before the small mirror at the other end of the room, and Constance waited long for her rejoinder. When it came it was rather irrelevant. "I've heard of people who could read your thoughts better than you could think them," she said; and Connie was too sleepy to strike back. CHAPTER XII FOR a week after the arrival of his visitors, Bartrow had scant time and less inclination for troublement about such purely mundane affairs as the driving of tunnels and the incidental acquisition of wealth thereby. There were burro journeys to the top of the pass, and to the sheer cliff known to the prosaic frontiersmen as the devil's jumping-off-place; excursions afoot down the mountain to the cool depths of Chipeta Canyon, and to Silver Lake beyond the shrugged shoulder of Lost Creek Mountain; and finally there was a breath-cutting climb to the snow-patched summit of El Reposo, undertaken for the express purpose of enabling Myra Van Vetter to say that she had been where there was reason to presume that no human being had preceded her. These things three of them did, leaving Stephen Elliott to his own devices, in accordance with the set terms upon which he had consented to father the _parti carré_. "Go on and climb your mountains and just leave me out," he would say, when the preparations were making for the day's jaunt. "I've had my share of it, off and on, while I was hunting for something I hadn't lost. Dick, here, hasn't any better sense than to humor you; but you'd tramp mighty little if I had to go along." Whereupon he would plant his chair for the day upon the slab-floored porch of the cabin, tilt it to a comfortable angle against the wall, and while away the hours smoking a mellow pipe and reading the day-old Denver paper painstakingly, from the top of the title page to the bottom of the last want column. Thus the crystalline autumn days winged their flight, and Bartrow squired the two young women hither and yon, and finally to the top of El Reposo, as recorded. This excursion was the climax, from a scenic point of view; and Myra, having long since exhausted her vocabulary of superlatives, was unusually silent. "What's come over you? are you gorged with mountains?" queried Connie sympathetically, slipping her arm around her cousin's waist. "It isn't that; it's just that I'm too full for utterance, I think; or perhaps I should say too empty of words to do it justice. How flippantly trivial everything human seems in the face of such a landscape! Here are we, three inconsequent atoms, standing brazenly in the face of great nature, and trying to gather some notion of the infinite into our finite little souls. It's sheer impertinence." "They won't mind," rejoined Bartrow, with a comprehensive gesture, meant to include the mountains, singular and collective; "they're used to it--the impertinence, I mean. What you see is the face of nature, as you say, and man doesn't seem to be in it. Just the same, there is a small army of men scattered among these overgrown hills, each with an inquisitive pick and shovel, backed by hardihood enough to dare anything for the sake of adding something to the wealth of the world." Myra turned her back on the prospect and searched Bartrow's eyes in a way to make him wonder what was wrong with his well-turned little speech. "That is the first insincere thing I ever heard you say," she asserted. "As if you didn't know that not one of these men ever wastes a second thought upon the world or the people in it, or upon anything outside of his own little circle of ambitions and cravings!" "You're quite right," admitted Bartrow, abashed and more than willing to stand corrected in any field entered by Miss Van Vetter; but Constance took up the cudgels on the other side. "You make me exceedingly weary, you two," she said, with seraphic sweetness. "Neither of you knows what you are talking about half the time, and when you do, it isn't worth telling. Now listen to me while I show you how ridiculous you are,"--Bartrow sat down on a flat-topped boulder, and made a dumb show of stopping his ears,--"I contend that nearly every one of these poor prospectors you've been maligning is a perfect monument of unselfishness. He is working and starving and hoping and enduring for somebody else in nine cases out of ten. It's a wife, or a family, or an old father or mother, or the mortgage on the farm, or some other good thing." Myra made a snowball and threw it at Connie the eloquent. "I think El Reposo is misnamed," she contended. "It ought to be called the Mount of Perversity. Mr. Bartrow, you are sitting upon the table, which is very undignified. Please move and let us see what Wun Ling has stowed away in the haversack." They spread their luncheon on the flat-topped boulder, and fell upon it like the hungry wayfarers that they were, calling it a sky banquet, and drinking Wun Ling's health in a bottle of cold tea. With satiety came thoughts of the descent, and Myra pleaded piteously for a change of route. "I shall never get down the way we came up in the wide, wide world,--not alive," she asserted. "With the view in prospect, I believe I could climb the Matterhorn; but getting down is quite another matter. Can't we go around some other way?" Bartrow thought it possible; but since Miss Van Vetter had particularly desired to stand upon the summit of a hitherto unexplored peak, he was not sure. "But we can try," said Myra. "At the worst we can come back and creep down the way we came up." Bartrow glanced at his watch, and focused the field-glass on a diaphanous cloud slipping stealthily across the serrated summits of the main range away to the westward. "Yes, we can do that, if we have time," he assented. "But I'm a little afraid of the weather. That cloud may miss us by twenty miles; and then again, it may take a straight shoot across the valley and make us very wet and uncomfortable." Constance came to the rescue with a compromise. "You go and prospect for a new trail, Dick, and we'll stay here. If you find one you can come back for us, and if you don't we'll be fresh for the scramble down the other way." Bartrow said it was well, and immediately set about putting the suggestion into effect. When he was fairly out of sight over the curvature of El Reposo's mighty shoulder, Myra said:-- "He's good, isn't he?" "He is a man among men, Myra; a man to tie to, as we say here in Colorado." They were sitting together on the flat boulder, and Miss Van Vetter stole a side glance at her cousin's profile. "You have known him a long time, haven't you, Connie?" "Almost ever since I can remember. I'm Colorado-born, you know, and he isn't; but he came across the plains in the days of the ox-teams, when he was a little fellow, and the first work he ever did was for poppa, when we lived on the ranch below Golden." "He is a self-made man, isn't he?" "Don't say that, Myra, please. I hate the word. God makes us, and circumstances or our own foolishness mar us. But Dick is self-educated, so far as he is educated at all. He was a homeless waif when he first saw the Rockies. His father died in the middle of the trip across the plains, and his mother lived only long enough to have her grave dug some two hundred miles farther west. The others took care of Dick and brought him along with them to Colorado because there wasn't anything else to do; and since, Dick has made his own way, doing any honest thing that came to his hand." "He couldn't do the other kind," Myra averred. "But you spoke of his education as if he hadn't any. I suppose that was one of your 'exuberances,' as Uncle Stephen calls them. Mr. Bartrow is certainly anything but illiterate." "No, he isn't that, though he has no education of the kind you effete people have in mind when you spell the word with a capital--the kind with a Greek-letter-badge and college-yell attachment. If you should tell him you had been to Bryn Mawr, he would probably take it to be some summer resort he hadn't heard of. But that isn't saying he is stupid. He could give the man with the yell a lot of information on a good many subjects. Poppa says he was always an earnest little lad; always reading everything he could get hold of--which wasn't very much in the early days, as you may imagine." "Nevertheless, he seems to be getting on in the world," said Miss Van Vetter. "Your father says the Little Myriad is a promising mine." There was more pathos than mirth in the smile which flitted across Connie's face. "You're new among us yet, Myra. Everything with mineral in it is promising to us; we are cranks pure and simple, on that subject. The Little Myriad is promising, of course,--there isn't an unpromising mine in the State, for that matter,--but it's only a promise, as yet. If Dick should reach the end of his hundred and fifty feet of development without striking pay, he would be a ruined man." "Why couldn't he keep on until he should strike it?" "For the very simple reason that he is working on borrowed capital; and I happen to know that he has borrowed about all he can." "But he believes in the success of the venture, absolutely." "Of course he does; that is one of the conditions. It's merely a question of credit with him. If any one would lend, Dick would go on borrowing and digging until he struck pay-ore or came out on the other side of the mountain--and then he'd think he hadn't gone deep enough. That is the pathetic side of his character; he never knows when he's beaten." "I should call it the heroic side." "It is heroic, but it is pathetic, too. It is sure to bring him trouble, sooner or later, and Dick isn't one to take trouble lightly. He'll go on fighting and struggling long after the battle has become hopeless, and that makes the sting of defeat so much sharper. It makes me want to cry when I think what a terrible thing it would be for him if the Little Myriad should go back on its promise." Miss Van Vetter took the field-glass and stood up to watch the storm cloud which was now spreading gradually and creeping slowly down the slopes of the divide. "You think a great deal of Mr. Bartrow, don't you, Connie?" "Indeed I do; he comes next to poppa with me." For so long a time as one might take in saying a little prayer at a needful crisis, Myra gave her undivided attention to the fleecy blur slipping down the side of the main range. Then the strain on her eyes filled them with tears, and she put the glass back into its case. Constance saw the tears. "Why, Myra! you're crying. What is the matter?" "I'm lonesome and homesick, and I long for the flesh-pots of Denver; but it was the glass that made me cry. Connie, dear, don't you think we'd better be going back to town?" "Why, yes; if you are quite ready. But it will be a disappointment for Dick. He is counting on another week, at least." "Yes, I know; and that is why I think we ought to go. We are keeping him from his work in the mine, and his time is precious." "Rather more so than he gives us to understand, I fancy," Constance assented. "I suppose you are right, Myra,--we ought not to stay; but you'll have to tax your ingenuity to find an excuse that will hold water. Dick won't be satisfied with a P. P. C. card." "Perhaps the chapter of accidents will help us. If it doesn't, you must make your father remember that he has urgent business in Denver which won't wait. Can't you manage it that way?" "If I can't, I'll ring you in. Poppa would take passage for Honolulu to-morrow if he had an idea that you'd like to see the Kanakas ride surf-boards." "I should much rather not appear in it," said Myra; and then, with truly feminine inconsistency, "I don't know why I say that. On the whole, perhaps you'd better say that it's my proposal. Then Mr. Bartrow will set it down to the vagaries of a flighty migrant, and he won't hold spite against his old friends." Connie the wise began to wonder if there were unplumbed depths in her cousin,--depths which Bartrow's defenseless obviousness had stirred to his sparing; but she drove the thought out as unworthy. Myra had been kind to Dick, certainly, but she had never encouraged him. There might well be an accepted lover in the dim Philadelphia background for aught Myra had said or done to evince the contrary. In which case--Connie the wise became Connie the pitiful in the turning of a leaf--poor Dick! At that moment, as if the sympathetic thought had evoked him, Bartrow came in sight on the lower slope of the summit. He was breathing hard when he reached them. "We can make it all right," he said, slinging the glass and the haversack, "but it'll add three or four miles. It's a roundabout way, and it will take us into the head of Little Myriad Gulch. If you're ready we'll get a quick move. That storm is heading straight for us, and we'll be in luck if we don't come in for a soaking." El Reposo is a bald mountain, and its tonsure is fringed with a heavy forest growth which stops abruptly at timber-line. Halfway to the head of the gulch the new trail ended in a tangle of fallen trees,--the débris of an ancient snowslide,--and much valuable time was lost in skirting the obstacle. Bartrow glanced over his shoulder from time to time, and finally said, "There it comes, with a vengeance!" The exclamation was ill-timed. Myra turned and stopped to watch the fleecy curtain of vapor shrouding the great bald summit they had just quitted. Bartrow sought to possess his soul in patience. "Isn't it grand!" she said, with kindling enthusiasm. "Yes; grand and wet. If you'll excuse me, Miss Myra, I think we'd better run for it." They ran for it accordingly, Connie in the lead like the free-limbed daughter of the altitudes that she was, and Bartrow and Miss Van Vetter hand in hand like joyous children for whom self-consciousness is not. From the beginning of the wild race down the slopes the wetting seemed momentarily imminent; none the less, they managed to reach the gulch dryshod. Inasmuch as their course down the ravine was in a direction nearly opposite to the sweep of the wind, it soon took them beyond the storm zone, and they stopped to listen to the echoes of nature's battle reverberating from the crags of the higher levels. The writhing of the great firs in the grasp of the wind came to their ears like the clashing of miniature breakers on a tideless shore; and the booming of the thunder was minified by the rare atmosphere into a sound not unlike the distant firing of cannon. While they paused, Myra climbed to the top of a water-worn boulder in the bed of the ravine to get a better point of view, and from this elevation she could see the forest at the head of the gulch. "Oh, Connie!" she cried, "climb up here, quick! It's a cyclone!" Bartrow threw up his head like a startled animal. There was a steady roar in the air which was not of the thunder. "Cyclone nothing!" he yelled. "It's a cloud-burst! Stay where you are, for your life, Miss Myra!" Even as he spoke the roar deepened until the vibration of it shook the solid earth, and a dark mass of water, turbid and débris-laden, shot from the head of the gulch and swept down the ravine. Bartrow lived an anguished lifetime in an instant of hesitation. To save the woman he loved was to sacrifice Constance. To help Connie first was to take the desperate chance that Myra would be safe till he could reach her. There was no time for the nice weighing of possibilities; and Richard Bartrow was a man of action before all else. Winding an arm about Constance, he dashed out of the ravine with her, getting back to Myra three seconds in advance of the boulder-laden flood. There was time enough, but none to spare. A tree gave him an anchorage on the bank above her; she sprang toward him at the word of command; and he plucked her up out of the reach of the foaming torrent which snapped at her and overturned the great rock upon which she had been standing. After which narrow escape they sat together on the slope of safety and watched the subsiding flood, laughing over the "stampede," as Connie called it, with all the reckless hardihood of youth and good spirits. "I wouldn't have missed seeing it for anything in the world," declared the enthusiast. "I had plenty of time to get out of the way, but I couldn't help waiting to see how it would look, coming over that last cliff up there." "Dick didn't give me a chance to see anything," Connie complained. "He whisked me out of the way as if I'd been a naughty little girl caught playing with the fire." Bartrow examined the field-glass to see if it had suffered in the scramble. It was unbroken, and he put it back into the case with a sigh of relief. "If you two had smashed that glass between you, I don't know what I should have done," he said; whereat they all laughed again and took up the line of march for the mine. That evening, after supper, the four of them were on the porch of the three-roomed cabin, enjoying the sunset. Constance had spoken to her father about the return to Denver, and Stephen Elliott was racking his brain for some excuse reasonable enough to satisfy Bartrow, when a man came up the trail from the direction of Alta Vista. It was Bryant, the station agent; and he was the bearer of a telegram addressed to Constance. She read it and gave it to Bartrow. The operator had taken it literally, and it was a small study in phonetics. "Shees gaun an got inter trubbel. P. Grims swipt her masheen. Wot shel I do. "T. REAGAN." Bartrow smiled and handed the message back. "That's Tommie, I take it. What's it about?" "It's a young woman I've been trying to help. They are persecuting her again, and I'll have to go back as quickly as I can." "That's bad," said Bartrow; but Connie's father looked greatly relieved, and, filling his pipe, began to burn incense to the kindly god of chance. After a time, Bartrow asked, "When?" Connie's gaze was on the sunset, but her thoughts were miles away in a humble cottage in West Denver where she had thought Margaret would be safely hidden from the spoiler. "I think we'd better go now--to-night. You can flag the train at the mine switch, can't you?" "Yes." "And you can get ready, can't you, Myra?" "Certainly; it won't take me long to pack. If you'll excuse me I'll go and do it now, and get it off my mind." When Myra had gone in, Bartrow took the message and read it again. "This is no woman's job," he objected. "Let me go down with you and straighten it out." "No, you mustn't, Dick; you have lost a clear week as it is." She rose and went to the end of the porch, whither he presently followed her. "You'll need a man," he insisted. "I shall have poppa." "Yes, but he's no good--only to pay the bills." "No matter; I shall get along all right." "That's straight, is it?" "Yes, I mean it." "All right; you're the doctor. But you must wire me if you need me." An hour later the visitors had said good-by to Bartrow and the Little Myriad, and were on their way down the canyon in the miniature sleeping-car. Myra pleaded weariness and had her berth made down early. Nevertheless, she lay awake far into the night gazing out at the rotating heavens and the silent procession of peaks and precipices. For a background the shifting scene held two irrelevant pictures; one, freshly etched, reproducing the little drama of the cloud-burst; the other a memory of something she had read,--a story in which a man, two women, an overturned boat, and a storm-lashed lake figured as the persons and properties. "He knew which he loved--which to save first--when the crux came," she said softly to her pillow, "and the other girl was fortunate not to have drowned." And at that moment a certain well-to-do gentleman of middle age in a far-away city on the Atlantic seaboard was nearer the goal of his wishes than he had ever been before. In the mean time, Bartrow had an inspiration which was importunate enough to send him afoot to Alta Vista in the wake of the swinging passenger train. It found voice in a mandatory telegram to Lansdale, telling him to call at once upon Miss Constance Elliott, to present the message as his credential, and to place himself at her service in any required capacity, from man-at-arms to attorney-at-law. CHAPTER XIII IN his westward sweep over the Titanic playground of farther Colorado, the sun looks down into a narrow valley through which tumbles a brawling stream whose waters, snow-born within rifle-shot, go to swell the canyoned flood of the Gunnison River. Fir-clad mountains, sombre green to timber-line and fallow dun or dazzling white above it, according to the season, stand like a cordon of mighty sentinels around and about; and the foot of civilized man treading the sward of the park-like valley must first have measured many weary miles of the mountain wilderness. Notwithstanding its apparent inaccessibility, and its remoteness from any hoof-worn trail, the valley had once been inhabited. The evidences were a rude log cabin, with its slab door hanging by a single leathern hinge, buttressing a weathered cliff on the western bank of the stream; and, in the opposing mountain slope, a timbered opening bearded with a gray dump of débris, marking the entrance to a prospect tunnel. Cabin and tunnel were both the handiwork of James Garvin. On one of his many prospecting tours he had penetrated to the shut-in valley; and finding a promise of mineral deposits in the slopes of the sentinel mountains, had gone into permanent camp and driven the prospect tunnel into the rocky hillside. When he had done something more than the development work necessary to hold the claim, two things conspired to drive him forth of the valley. His provisions ran low; and the indications in the tunnel, which had pointed to a silver-bearing lode of graphic tellurium, changed suddenly at a "dike" in the strata, and disappeared altogether. Garvin was a stubborn man, and the toxin of the prospector's fever was in his blood. Wherefore he put himself upon siege rations and delved against time. When he had baked his last skillet of panbread and fired his last charge of dynamite in the heading, the dike was still unpenetrated. After that, there was nothing for it but retreat; and he reluctantly broke camp and left the valley, meaning to return when he could. Two years elapsed and the opportunity still tarried; but Garvin kept the shut-in valley in mind, and it was thitherward he turned his face when Stephen Elliott's liberal "grub-stake," and the hastily formed partnership with Jeffard, provided the means and the help necessary to sink a shaft. It was in the afternoon of a cloudless August day that Jeffard had his first glimpse of the park-like valley lying in the lap of the sentinel mountains. The air was crisp and thin-edged with the keen breath of the altitudes, but the untempered heat of the sun beat pitilessly upon the heads of the two men picking their laborious way over the rock-ribbed shoulder of the least precipitous mountain. "Well, pardner, we've riz the last o' the hills," quoth Garvin, stepping aside to let the burro, with its jangling burden of camp utensils and provisions, precede him. "How d'you stack up by this time?" Jeffard's tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. Frantic plunges into the nether depths are not conducive to good health, moral or physical, and nature was exacting the inevitable penalty. For three days he had been fighting a losing battle with an augmenting army of ills, and but for the rough heartening of his companion he would have fallen by the wayside more than once during the breath-cutting march over the mountain passes. Wherefore his answer to Garvin's question was the babblement of despair. "I'm a dead man, Garvin. You'll only have me to bury if you persist in dragging me any farther. I'm done, I tell you." Garvin stroked his stubbly chin and hid his concern under a ferocious scowl. "No, you ain't done, not by a long shot. You needn't to think I'm goin' to let you play off on me that-a-way--with the promised land cuddlin' down yonder in that gulch a-waitin' for us. Not much, Mary Ann. You're goin' to twist the crank o' that there win'lass a-many a time afore you get shut o' me." The burro wagged one ear and sat upon its haunches preparatory to a perilous slide down a steep place in the trail. Garvin saved the pack by darting forward and anchoring both beast and burden by main strength. While the big man was wrestling with the burro, Jeffard stumbled and fell, rose wavering to his knees and fell again, this time with his teeth set to stifle a groan. Garvin threw the pack-animal with dexterous twitch of its foreleg, and hoppled it with a turn of the lariat before going back to Jeffard. "Now then, up you come," he said, trying to stand Jeffard upon his feet; but the sick man collapsed inertly and sank down again. "Let me alone," he enjoined, in a sudden transport of feeble truculence. "I told you I was done, and I am. Can't you go about your business and leave a man to die in peace?" "Oh, you be damned," retorted Garvin cheerfully. "All you need is a little more sand. Get up and mog along now, 'fore I run shy o' patience and thump the everlastin' daylights out o' you." And he stooped again and slipped his arm under Jeffard's shoulders. The sick man's head rocked from side to side. "Don't," he groaned, this time in gentler protest. "I'd do it if I could--if only for your sake. But it isn't in me; I've been dying on my feet for the last three hours. I couldn't drag myself another step if the gates of Heaven stood open down yonder and all hell were yapping at my heels. Go on and leave me to fight it out. You can come back to-morrow and cover up what the buzzards have left." Garvin straightened up and drew the back of his hand across his eyes. "Listen at him!" he broke out, in a fine frenzy of simulated rage. "Just listen at the fool idjit talk, will you? And me standin' over him a-pleadin' like a suckin' dove! By crucifer! if it wasn't for throwin' away good ammynition, I'd plug him one just for his impidence--blame my skin if I wouldn't!" And being frugal of his cartridges, Garvin flung himself upon the prostrate burro, dragged it to its feet, cast the jangling burden, pack-saddle and all, and lifted Jeffard astride of the diminutive mount. "There you are," he said, with gruff tenderness. "Now then, just lop your head on my shoulder and lay back ag'inst my arm, and play you was a-coastin' down the hill back o' the old schoolhouse on a greazed streak o' lightnin', with your big brother a-holdin' you on. We'll make it pretty middlin' quick, now, if the canary don't peg out." And thus they made entrance into the shut-in valley, and won across it to the log cabin whose door hung slantwise by the single hinge. Then and there began a grim fight for the life of a man, with an untutored son of the solitudes, lacking everything but the will to do, pitted against a fierce attack of mountain fever which was aided and abetted by the devitalizing effects of Jeffard's hard apprenticeship to evil. In the end the indomitable will of the nurse, rather than any conscious effort on the part of the patient, won the battle. Garvin cursed his luck and swore pathetically as day after day of the short mountain summer came and went unmarked by any pick-blow on the slopes of the mountains of promise; but his care of the sick man was unremitting, and he was brutally tender and wrathfully soft-hearted by turns until Jeffard was well beyond the danger line. It was a lambent evening in the final week of August when Garvin carried the fever-wasted convalescent to the door of the cabin and propped him in a rustic chair builded for the occasion. "How's that?" he demanded, standing back to get the general effect of man and chair. "Ain't I a jack-leg carpenter, all right? Now you just brace up and swaller all the outdoors you can hold while I smoke me a pipe." He sat down on the doorstep and filled and lighted his pipe. After a few deep-drawn whiffs, he said, "Don't tire you none to be a-settin' up, does it?" "No." Jeffard turned slowly and sniffed the pungent fragrance of the burning tobacco with a vague return of the old craving. "Have you another pipe?" he queried. "I believe I'd enjoy a whiff or two with you." "Now just listen at that, will you?" Garvin growled, masking his joy under a transparent affectation of disgust. "Me takin' care of him like he was a new-borned baby, and him a-settin' there, cool as a blizzard, askin' for a pipe! If I wasn't a bloomin' angel, just waitin' for my wings to sprout, I'd tell him to go to blazes, that's about what I'd do." None the less, he went in and found a clean corncob, filling it and giving it to Jeffard with a lighted match. The convalescent smoked tentatively for a few minutes, pausing longer between the whiffs until the fire and the tobacco-hunger died out together. After which he said what was in his mind. "Garvin, old man, you must begin work to-morrow," he began. "I can take care of myself now, and in a few days I hope I'll be able to take hold with you. You've lost too much time tinkering with me. I'm not worth it." "We'll find out about that when we get you on to the crank o' that win'lass," said Garvin sententiously. "Man's a good deal like a horse,--vallyble accordin' to location. They tell me that back in God's country, where I was raised, horses ain't worth their winter keep since the 'lectric cars come in; but out yere I've seen the time when a no-account, gristly little bronco, three parts wire and five parts pure cussedness, 'u'd a-been worth his weight in bullion." Jeffard picked the application out of the parable, and smiled. "You've got your bronco," he asserted. "When you're a little better acquainted with me you'll find your definition isn't far wrong. I used to think I was a halfway decent sort of fellow, Garvin, but I believe the last few months have flailed all the whole wheat out of me, leaving nothing but the musty chaff." "Oh, you be hanged!" laughed Garvin, with the emphasis heartening. "You're off your feed a few lines yet and your blood needs thickenin', that's all. I'll risk but what you'll assay up to grade in the mill-run." Silence came and sat between them for a little space, holding its own until Jeffard's eye lighted upon the débris-bearded tunnel-opening in the opposite hillside. "What is that?" he asked, pointing the query with an emaciated finger. "That's my old back number that I was tellin' you about on the way in," Garvin explained. "I thought I'd struck a lead o' tellurides up there, sure, but it petered out on me." "When was that?" Jeffard's recollection of all things connected with the fever-haunted jornada across the ranges was misty and fragmentary. "Two year ago this summer," rejoined the miner; and filling his pipe afresh he retold the story of his earlier visit to the valley. "It's a dead horse," he added, by way of conclusion. "I ought to knowed better. I'm old enough at the business to savvy tellurides when I see 'em, and that lead never did look right from the start." "Did you ever locate it?" asked Jeffard. "Not much! I never got any furder along that-a-way than to stake it off and make a map of it." Garvin found a pack of thumbed and grimy papers in his pocket and worked his way through it till he came upon the map. "You're an engineer," he said: "how's that for a jack-leg entry map?" Jeffard examined the rude sketch and pronounced it good enough; after which he folded the paper absently and put it in his pocket. Garvin did not notice his failure to return it,--if, indeed, he thought or cared anything further about it,--and went on talking of his own unwisdom in driving a tunnel on a lode which did not "look right." "We'll know better, this trip," he asserted, as somewhat of a salve to the former hurt. "We'll go higher up the gulch and sink a shaft; that's about what we'll do." And this, in the fullness of time, was what they did. After a few days, Jeffard was able to inch his way by easy stages to the new location; and by the time Garvin had dug and blasted himself into a square pit windlass-deep, the convalescent was strong enough to take his place at the hoist. From the very first, Jeffard was totally unable to share Garvin's enthusiastic faith in the possibilities of the new cast for fortune. Ignorant of the first principles of practical metal-digging, he was, none the less, a fairly good laboratory metallurgist; while Garvin, on the other hand, knew naught of man's, but much of nature's, book. Hence there arose many discussions over the possibilities; Jeffard contending that the silver-bearing lodes of the valley were not rich enough to bear pack-train transportation to the nearest railway point; and Garvin clinging tenaciously to the prospectors' theory that a "true-fissure" vein must of necessity prove a very Golconda once you had gone deep enough into its storehouse. When all was said, the man of the laboratory won a barren victory. At thirty feet the lode in the shaft had dwindled to a few knife-blade seams, and the last shot fired in the bottom of the excavation put an end to the work of exploitation by letting in a flood of water. Since they had no means of draining the shaft so suddenly transformed into a well, Garvin gave over, perforce, but proposed trying their luck elsewhere in the valley before seeking a new field. Jeffard acquiesced, with the suggestion that they save time by prospecting in different directions; and this they did, Garvin taking the upper half of the valley and Jeffard the lower. At the end of a week, Jeffard gave up in disgust; and when his companion begged for yet one other day, was minded to stay in camp and invite his soul in idleness until the persevering one should be convinced. As a matter of course, Garvin's day multiplied itself by three, and Jeffard wore out the interval as best he might, tramping the hillsides in the vicinity of the cabin to kill time, and smoking uncounted pipes on the doorstep in the cool of the day while waiting for Garvin's return. It was in the pipe-smoking interregnum of the third day that the abandoned tunnel in the opposite hillside beckoned to him. Oddly enough, he thought, Garvin had never referred to it since the retelling of its history in the reminiscent pauses of their first outdoor evening together. Jeffard's eye measured the dump appraisively. It was a monument to the heroic perseverance of the solitary prospector. "That hole must be thirty or forty feet into the hill," he mused. "And to think of his worrying it out alone!" Here idle curiosity nudged him with its blunt elbow, and he rose and knocked the ashes from his pipe. "I believe I'll go up and have a look at it. It'll kill another half-hour or so, and they're beginning to die rather hard." He crossed the stream on Garvin's ancient foot-log, and clambered leisurely to the toe of the dump. The snows of two winters had washed the detritus free of soil, and Jeffard bent, hand on knee, to look for specimens of the ore-bearing rock. "Gangue-rock, most of it, with a sprinkling of decomposed quartz along at the last," he said reflectively. "The quartz was the dike he struck, I suppose. He was wise to give it up. There's no silver in that stuff." He picked up a bit of the snuff-colored rock and crumbled it in his hand. It was quite friable, like weathered sandstone, but when the fragment was crushed the particles still clung together as if matted with invisible threads. Jeffard was too new to the business of metal-hunting to suspect the tremendous significance of the small phenomenon, but he was sufficiently curious to gather a double handful of the fragments of quartz, meaning to ask Garvin if he had noticed the peculiarity. And when he had climbed to the tunnel and explored it to its rock-littered heading by the light of a sliver splintered from one of the pitchy logs of the timbering, he sauntered back to the cabin beneath the western cliff and made a fire over which to prepare supper against Garvin's return. CHAPTER XIV GARVIN came into camp late, and Jeffard needed not to ask the result of the day's quest. He had cooked the simple supper, and they ate it together in silence--the big man too weary and dejected to talk, and Jeffard holding his peace in deference to Garvin's mood. Over the pipes on the doorstep Jeffard permitted himself a single query. "No go?" "Nary," was the laconic rejoinder. Jeffard was the least demonstrative of men, but the occasion seemed to ask for something more than sympathetic silence. So he said: "It's hard luck; harder for you than for me, I imagine. Somehow, I haven't been able to catch the inspiration of the mineral-hunt; but you have, and you've worked hard and earned a better send-off." "Huh! far as earnin' goes, I reckon it's a stand-off 'twixt the two of us. You've certain'y done your share o' the pullin' and haulin', if you have been sort o' like what the boys call a 'hoodoo.'" Jeffard blew a cloud of smoke toward the gray rock-beard hanging ghostly beneath the black mouth of the excavation in the opposite hillside, and was far from taking offense. "Meaning that I haven't been enthusiastic enough to fill the bill?" he asked. "I guess that's about it. And it always seemed sort o' cur'ous to me. Money'd do you a mighty sight more good than it would me." Jeffard smoked his pipe out, debating with himself whether it was worth while to try to explain his indifference to his companion. He did try, finally, though more for the sake of putting the fact into words than in any hope of making it understandable to Garvin. "I'm afraid it isn't in me to care very much about anything," he said, at the end of the reflective excursion. "Six months ago I could have come out here with you and given you points on enthusiasm; but since then I've lived two or three lifetimes. I'm a very old man, Garvin. One day, not so very long ago, if you measure by weeks and months, I was young and strong and hopeful, like other men; but instead of burning the candle decently at the proper end, I made a bonfire of it. The fire has gone out now, and I haven't any other candle." The big prospector was good-naturedly incredulous. "You've had the fever, and you're rattled, yet; that's all that's the matter with you. You've been flat down on your luck, like one or two of the rest of us; but that ain't any reason why you can't get up ag'in, is it?" Jeffard despaired of making it clear to any simple-hearted son of the wilderness, but he must needs try again. "That is your view of the case, and it would be that of others who knew the circumstances as well as you do. But it doesn't fit the individual. David said he would wash his hands in innocency, and perhaps he could, and did--though I doubt it. I can't. When you picked me up that night on the shore of the pond, I'd been wandering around in the bottomless pit and had lost my way. I knew then I shouldn't find it again, and I haven't. I seem to have strayed into a region somewhere beyond the place where the actual brimstone chokes you; but it's a barren desert where nothing seems quite the same as it used to--where nothing is the same, as a matter of fact. Do I make it plain?" "You bet you don't," responded Garvin, out of the depths of cheerful density. "You've been a mile or two out o' my reach for the last half-hour 'r so. Ther' ain't no use a-cryin' over spilt milk, is what I say; and when I go kerflummix, why, I just cuss a few lines and get up and mog along, same as heretofore." Jeffard laughed, but there was no mirth in him. "I envy you; you are a lucky man to be able to do it. I wish in my soul I could." "What's the reason you can't?" "That is precisely what I haven't been able to make you understand. But the fact remains. The Henry Jeffard my mother knew is dead and buried. In his place has arisen a man who is acquainted with evil, and is skeptical about most other things. Garvin, if you knew me as well as I know myself, you'd run me out of this valley with a gun before you slept. I owe you as heavy a debt of gratitude as any one man ever owed another, and yet if your welfare stood between the beginning and the end of some devil's service in which I might be commissioned, you wouldn't be safe to sleep in the same cabin with me." "Oh, you be damned," said the big man, relapsing into a deeper depth of incredulity. "You've got a devil 'r two, all right, maybe, but they're the blue kind, and they'll soak out in the washin'. Fact o' the matter is, our cussed luck in this yere hole in the ground has struck in on you worse'n it has on me. You'll be all right when we get some place else and strike it rich." Jeffard refilled his pipe and gave over trying to define himself in set terms. When next he broke silence it was to speak of the impending migration. "I suppose we pull out in the morning?" he said. "Might as well. We've played the string out up yere. Besides, summer's gone, and a month of fall, and the grub's runnin' shy." "Where next?" inquired Jeffard. "I dunno, hardly. 'Tain't worth while to strike furder in, this late in the season. We've got to be makin' tracks along back t'wards the valley afore the snow comes, and that'll be pretty quick now. What d' you say to tryin' some o' the gulches o' the Mosquito?" "Anywhere you say. I'm with you--if you care to take me after what I've tried to tell you. But you'd much better go alone. You had it right a while ago; you have yoked yourself to a Jonah." "Jonah nothin'!" growled the soft-hearted giant. "Nex' time I set out to devil you, I'll drill a hole aforehand and put in a pinch o' dannymite along with the joke. Then when I tech it off, you'll know." The moon was riding high in the black arch of the sky, and the gray dump on the opposite mountain stood out in bold relief. Jeffard rose and leaned against the doorpost. "Garvin, you have never yet told me who staked us for this trip," he said, broaching a subject which had more than once asked for speech. The miner laughed. "You never asked. It's the same old man that staked me when I was yere the first time." "When you dug that hole up yonder in the hill?" "Um--hm." "Who is he?" Garvin hesitated. "I had a fool notion I wouldn't tell you till we'd struck somethin' worth while," he said finally. "If so be we've got to go back with our fingers in our mouths, I put it up that maybe you'd feel easier in your mind if you didn't know. You're so cussed thin-skinned about some things that a feller has to watch out for you continnyus." Jeffard dug the kindly intention out of the upbraiding, and forebore to press the question. After all, what did it matter? Whatever befell, he was under no obligations to any one save Garvin. And in the itemizing of that debt, an obligation which made him restive every time he thought of it, he lost sight of the question he had intended asking about the peculiarity of the snuff-colored rock in the abandoned tunnel. A little later, Garvin got up with a mighty yawn, and said: "If we're goin' to get out o' here afore noon to-morrer, I reckon we'd better be huntin' us a little sleep." "Turn in if you like; I'm not sleepy yet," said Jeffard; and when Garvin was gone in, he fell to pacing up and down before the cabin door with his hands behind him and the cold pipe between his teeth. To what good end had he been preserved by Garvin's interference on that night of despair two months before? Had the reprieve opened up any practicable way out of the cynical labyrinth into which he had wandered? Had his immense obligation to the prospector quickened any fibre of the dead sense of human responsibility, or lighted any fire of generous love for his kind? He shook his head. To none of these questions could he honestly append an affirmative. In the desolate wreck he had made of his life no good thing had survived save his love for Constance Elliott. That, indeed, was hopeless on the side of fruition; but he clung to it as the one clue of promise, hoping, and yet not daring to hope, that it might one day lead him out of the wilderness of indifference. While he dwelt upon it, pacing back and forth in the moonlight, he recalled his picture of her standing in the dust-filtered afternoon sunlight, with the dim corridor for a background. "God keep you, my darling. I may not look upon your face again, but the memory of your loving kindness to one soul-sick castaway will live while he lives." He said it reverently, turning his face toward the far-away city beyond the foot-hills; and there was no subtle sense of divination to tell him that, at an unmapped side-track on the farther slope of the southernmost sentinel mountain, Bartrow was at that moment handing Constance Elliott up the steps of a diminutive sleeping-car which was presently to go lurching and swaying on its way down the mountain in the wake of a pygmy locomotive. Nor could he know that, a few hours earlier, the far-seeing gray eyes, out of whose depths he had once drawn courage and inspiration and the will to do good, had rested for a moment on the shut-in valley. For the southward sentinel mountain was known to the dwellers on its farther slopes as El Reposo. CHAPTER XV ROBERT LANSDALE, literary starveling and doomed victim of an incurable malady, was yet sufficiently unchastened to read Bartrow's telegram with the nerves of reluctance sharp set. For what he persuaded himself were good and defensible reasons, he had lived the life of an urban hermit in Denver, arguing that a poverty-smitten crumb-gatherer with one foot in the grave might properly refuse to be other than an onlooker in any scene of the human comedy. The prompting was not altogether unselfish. In common with other craftsmen of his guild, Lansdale was blessed, or banned, with a moiety of the seer's gift. For him, as for all who can discern the masks and trappings and the sham stage-properties, the world-comedy had become pitifully tragic; and he was by nature compassionate and sympathetic. Wherefore he spared himself the personal point of view, cultivating an aloofness which his few friends were prone to miscall cynicism and exclusiveness. Lansdale knew Miss Elliott by repute, and he shrewdly suspected that she knew all Bartrow could tell her about a certain literary pretender who had once been rude enough to send apologies to a hostess who had not invited him. None the less Bartrow was too good a friend to be ignored in the day of his asking; and Lansdale presented himself at the door of the house in Colfax Avenue at an unfashionably early hour, meaning to begin by making the tender of his services as nearly a matter of business as might be. It was Connie herself who met him at the door and would hear no more than his name until he was established in her father's easy-chair before the cheerful fire in the library. Her welcome was hospitably cordial; and Lansdale, who had fondly imagined embarrassment to be one of the foibles most deeply buried under the débris of the disillusioning years, found himself struggling with an attack of tongue-tied abashment which is like to be the penalty exacted of any hermit who refuses to mix and mingle with his kind. "I came to see you at the request of a friend of yours, and of mine, Miss Elliott," he began formally, fumbling in his pocket for the telegram. "I have a message from Mr. Richard Bartrow which--will--explain"-- The search and the sentence raveled out together in the discovery that the telegram which was to have been his introduction had been left on the writing-table in his room. Connie saw consternation in his face and made haste to help him. "From Mr. Bartrow? We have just returned from a visit to his mine up in Chaffee County. Did he forget something that he wanted to tell us, at the last moment?" "Really, I--I can't say," stammered Lansdale, to whom the loss of the telegram was the dragging of the last anchor of equanimity. "It appears that I was thoughtless enough to leave the telegram in my room. Will you excuse me until I can go back and fetch it?" "Is it necessary?" Connie queried. "Can't you tell me what he says?" Lansdale pulled himself together and gave her the gist of Bartrow's mandate. Miss Elliott's laugh made him forget his embarrassment. "That is just like Dick," she said. "He offered to come down with us last night, but I wouldn't let him. You know Mr. Bartrow quite well, do you not?" "Very well, indeed." "Then you know how anxious he always is to help his friends." "No one has better cause to know; he is one of the finest fellows in the world," Lansdale rejoined warmly. "Thank you, for Dick's sake," said Connie; "now we shall get on nicely. But to go back a little: a young woman whom I have been trying to help is in some trouble, and Dick thought he might be needed. It was out of the goodness of his heart. I really don't need any help--at least, not more than my father's check-book can answer for." "Are you quite sure? You must remember that I am Richard Bartrow's substitute, and make use of me accordingly. May I know the circumstances?" Constance related them, telling him Margaret Gannon's story as only a sister of mercy could tell it; without extenuation or censure, and also without embarrassment. Lansdale listened absorbedly, with the literary instinct dominant. It was Margaret Gannon's story, but Constance Elliott was the heroine; a heroine worthy the pen of a master craftsman, he thought, while the creative part of him was busy with the pulling and hauling and scene-shifting which the discovery of a Heaven-born central figure sets in motion. But in the midst of it the man got the better of the craftsman. He foresaw with sudden clarity of insight that Miss Elliott would presently be of the inner circle of those out of whom the most hardened votary of the pen cannot make copy; those whose personality is sacred because it is no longer a thing apart to be dispassionately analyzed. When she made an end, he sat looking at her so intently and so long that she grew nervous. The light in his eyes made her feel as if she were focused under the object glass of a microscope. He saw the enthusiasm die out of her face and give place to discomposure, and made eager apologies. "Forgive me, Miss Elliott; I didn't mean to be rude. But I have never looked upon your like before,--a woman in whom the quality of mercy is not strained; whose charity is compassionate enough to reach out to the unfortunate of her own sex." Connie was too simple-hearted to be self-conscious under commendation. "That is because your opportunities have been unkind, I fancy. A few years ago your criticism would have been very just; but nowadays much of the rescue work is done by women, as it should be." "Much of the organized work, yes. But your own story proves that it has not become individualized." "That may well be the fault of the advocate in Margaret's case," returned Connie, whose charity was not circumscribed. "If any one of the many good women I have tried to enlist in this young woman's cause had been the one to discover her, I should doubtless have the same story to tell, and quite possibly with a better sequel. But now you understand why I don't need help. Tommie--he's my newsboy henchman, you know--has been here this morning to make his report. It seems that when Margaret was taken sick she was in debt to this man Grim for costumes, or railway fare, or something, and he has taken her sewing-machine to satisfy the claim." The hectic flush in Lansdale's thin cheek began to define itself, with a little pulse throbbing in the centre of it. "He is an iniquitous scoundrel, and he ought to be prosecuted," he declared. "Don't you see?--but of course you don't; you are too charitable to suspect his real object, which is to drive the young woman back into the service of his master, the devil. He had no more legal right to take her sewing-machine than he would have to attach the tools of a mechanic. Is there any law in Colorado?" "Plenty of it," Connie rejoined; adding, with unconscious sarcasm, "but I think it is chiefly concerned with disputes about mining claims." "Let us hope there is a statute or two over and above, for the protection of ordinary mortals," said Lansdale, rising and finding his hat. "I presume you meant to buy Margaret another sewing-machine. You mustn't encourage buccaneering in any such way. Let me go and try my powers of persuasion on Mr. Peter Grim." But Connie was not unmindful of what Bartrow had told them about Lansdale's ill health, and she promptly disapproved. "No, indeed, you mustn't, Mr. Lansdale; you mustn't think of doing any such thing. You don't know the man. He is a 'hold-over' desperado from the stage-line days. Even Dick admits that he is a person to be feared and avoided. And, besides, you're not strong, you know." Lansdale smiled down upon her from his gaunt height, and his heart warmed to her in a way which was not to be accounted for by the simple rule of the humanities. "Dick told you that, too, did he? I am sorry." "Why?" "Because it involves your sympathy, and sympathy is much too precious to be wasted upon such flotsam as I. But I am quite robust enough to see justice done in this young woman's case. You must promise me not to move in it until you hear from me." Connie promised and let him go. But in the stronger light of the hall she saw how really ill he looked, and was remorsefully repentant, after her kind. Lansdale left the house in Colfax Avenue with an unanalyzed sense of levitation, which made him feel as though he were walking upon air; but when he had accounted for the phenomenon he came to earth again with disheartening celerity. What had a man in whose daily walk death was a visible presence to do with the tumult of gladsome suggestion evoked by a few words of sympathy from a compassionate young woman with a winsome face and innocent eyes? Nothing; clearly, nothing whatever. Lansdale set his teeth upon the word, and drove the suggestion forth with sudden bitterness. His part in the little drama growing out of Miss Elliott's deed of mercy was at best but that of a supernumerary. When he should have made his entrance and exit, he must go the way of other supernumeraries, and be presently forgotten of the real actors. So ran the wise conclusion; but the event leagued itself with unwisdom, and the prudent forecasting gave place to the apparent necessities. The preliminary interview with Grim was wholly abortive. The man of vice not only refused point blank to make restitution, but evinced a readiness to take the matter into the courts which was most disconcerting to Margaret Gannon's moneyless advocate. Thereupon ensued other visits to the house in Colfax Avenue, and a growing and confidential intimacy with Constance, and the enlisting of Stephen Elliott in the cause of justice, and many other things not prefigured in Lansdale's itinerary. And at the end of it all it was Stephen Elliott's check-book, and not an appeal to the majesty of the law, which rescued Margaret Gannon's sewing-machine; and the man of vice pocketed the amount of his extortionate claim, and gave a receipt in full therefor, biding his time, and bidding an obsequious Son of Ahriman--the same whom Jeffard had smitten aforetime--keep an eye on Margaret Gannon against the day when she should be sufficiently unbefriended to warrant a recasting of the net. And when these things had come to pass, Robert Lansdale was of all men the most miserable. From much dabbling in the trickling rill of fictional sentiment, he had come to disbelieve the existence of any deep river of passion; but now he found himself upon the brink of such a river and was forbidden to plunge therein. Nay, more; he must turn away from it, parched and thirsty as any wayworn pilgrim of the world-desert, without so much as lifting a palmful of its healing waters to his lips. He postponed the turning away from day to day, weakly promising himself that each visit to the house in Colfax Avenue should be the last, and as weakly yielding when a day or two of abstinence had enhanced his soul-hunger until it became a restless agony, mocking his most strenuous effort to drown it in a sea of work. Failing himself utterly, he fell to watching Connie's face for some token of the hopelessness of his passion, telling himself that he should find strength to stay away when he should read his sentence in the calm gray eyes. But Connie's eyes were as yet no more than frankly sympathetic. And because he was far from home, and seemingly friendless, and fighting the last grim battle with an incurable malady, she made him welcome and yet more welcome, until finally, the optimistic insanity of the consumptive came upon him, assuring him that he should live and not die, and pointing him hopefully down a dim vista of years,--a shining way wherein they two might walk hand in hand till they should come to the gate of the House Beautiful whose chatelaine is Fame. CHAPTER XVI THE line of retreat from the valley, called by Jeffard "of dry bones," to the possible land of promise in the Mosquito, lay through Leadville; not the teeming, ebullient, pandemoniac mining-camp of the early carbonate era, but its less crowded, less effervescent, though no less strenuous successor of the present. On the march across the sky-pitched mountains it had been agreed between them that there should be one bivouac in the city of the bleak altitudes. That is to say, Garvin proposed it, and Jeffard assented, though not without a premonition that the halt would be fatal to the proposed Mosquito sequel to the campaign in the Saguache. He knew at least one of Garvin's weaknesses, and that it was akin to his own. There were the beast of burden and the dispensable moiety of the camping outfit to sell, and provision to buy; and Jeffard weighed his companion in the balances of his own shortcomings. He was well assured that he could not trust himself with money in his hand in any such city of chanceful opportunity as the great carbonate camp; and arraigning Garvin at the bar of the same tribunal, he judged him before the fact. It was a measure of the apathetic indifference which possessed Jeffard that the premonition gave him scant concern. He marveled inwardly when the fact of indifference defined itself. Aside from any promptings of common human gratitude evolving themselves into friendly solicitude for the man who had twice saved his life,--promptings which he found dead because he looked to find them dead,--there was this: If his companion should stumble and spill the scanty residue in the common purse the wolf-pack of famine and distress would be at their heels in a single sweep of the clock-hands. And yet the fact remained. Jeffard was cogitating vaguely this curious manifestation of mental and moral inertia when the city of the altitudes came into view over the crest of the final ascent in the toilsome journey. The smoke from the smelters was trailing lazily toward the distant Mosquito, and a shifting cumulus of steam marked the snail-like advance of a railway train up the steep grade from Malta. California Gulch and the older town were hidden behind the mountain of approach; but the upper town and its western environs lay stark in the hazeless atmosphere, with the snow-splotched background of the nearer range, uptilted and immense, dwarfing the houses into hutch-like insignificance. Dreary as is this first view of the Mecca of wealth-seekers, it has quickened the pulse and brightened the eye of many a wayworn pilgrim of the mountain desert; but Jeffard's thought was in his question to Garvin. "Is it as near as it looks? or is it as far away as this cursed no-atmosphere removes everything?" "It's a good ten mile 'r so, yet. If we get a move on, we'll make it by sundown, maybe." They tramped on in silence, the singing silence of the crystalline heights, measuring mile after mile at the heels of the patient burro, and reaching the scattering outposts of the western suburb while yet the sun hung hesitant above the peaks of the main range. The nearer aspect of the great mining-camp was inexpressibly depressive to Jeffard. The weathered buildings, frankly utilitarian and correspondingly unbeautiful; the harsh sterility of the rocky soil; the ruthless subordination of all things to the sordid purposes of money-getting; these were the stage-settings of a scene which moved him curiously, like the fumes of a mingled cup, intoxicating, but soul-nauseating, withal. The nausea was a consequent of the changed point of view, and he knew it; but it was no whit less grievous. Wherefore he groped in the pool of indifference until he found a small stone of protest. "Let us do what we have to do and get away from here quickly, Garvin," he said, flinging the stone with what precision there was in him. They had turned into the principal street, and the burro became reluctant. Garvin smote the beast from behind, and took a turn of the halter around its jaw. "Goin' to gig back for the crowd, ain't you?" he growled, apostrophizing the jack; and then to Jeffard: "Makes you sort o' town-sick, I reckon. I know the feel of it; used to catch it, reg'lar, ever' time I'd get in from the range. It'll wear off after a day 'r so; but, as you say, the quick way to do it up is to light out ag'in, suddint." "The sooner the better," said Jeffard. "The atmosphere of the place is maddening." Garvin took the word literally and laughed. "'T ain't got no atmosphere to speak of,--that's what's the matter with it; too blame' high up for any use." They were in the thick of the street traffic by this time, and it required their united malisons joined to what of energy and determination the long day's march had left them to keep the ass from planting itself monument-wise in the middle of the street. "Dad burn a canary, anyhow!" grumbled the man of the wilderness, when they were resting a moment in front of a shackly building on the corner of a cross street. "For ornerary, simon-pure, b'iled-down, soul-killin'"--His vocabulary of objurgatory expletives ran short, and he wrought out the remainder of the malediction with a dumb show of violence. Jeffard smiled in spite of his mood, which was anything but farcical, and pointed to the haversack of specimens dangling from the loosened pack. "We're about to lose the samples," he said. Garvin regained his wonted good-humor at a plunge. "That'd be too blame' bad, wouldn't it, now; they're so blazin' precious! S'pose you lug 'em acrost yonder to that there assay-shop whilst I toll the canary down to the corral. When you get shut o' the rocks, come on round to the boardin'-house,--'Miner's Rest,'--a block furder along and two to your right. I'll meet you there bime-by, if there's anything left o' me after I get through with this dad-burned, lop-eared totin'-machine." Jeffard shouldered the bag of samples, but before he could reply the opportunity fled clamorous. The lop-eared one, finding itself free for the moment, gave heed to a foolish bee buzzing in its atomic brain, and went racing down the cross street, with the big miner in hot pursuit. "Exit James Garvin," quoth Jeffard, moved to smile again; and he crossed the avenue to the shackly building with the sign of the assayer besprent upon the windows. When he tried the door and found it locked, and the littered room beyond it empty, he was minded to go on to the rendezvous while daylight served. But when he reflected that Garvin would be sure to await an assayer's verdict on the samples, and so prolong their stay in the city of banality, he decided to conclude the business affair first. So he went up and down and around and about, and found all the assay offices closed for the day save one, whose occupant, a round-bodied little German, with the face of a cherub, martialized by the huge mustachios of a cuirassier, was still at his bench. Jeffard guessed at the little man's nationality, and made a shrewd bid for celerity. "_Guten abend, mein Herr_," he said, unslinging his haversack. The cherubic face of the expatriated one responded quickly to the greeting in the loved mother-tongue. "_Wie geht's, wie geht's, mein guter Herr_," he rejoined; and then in broken English: "I haf not dot Cherman before heard spoken in dis Gott-forsaken blaces. You haf some sambles _gebracht_?" "_Ja, mein Herr._" "_Gut!_ I vill of dem de tests maig. _Nicht wahr?_" "_Gefälligst, mein lieber Herr_;" and quickly,--"we must go on our way again to-morrow." "So qvick? _Ach! das ist nicht sehr gut._ You vill der poor olt assay-meister maig to vork on der nide. But because you haf der goot Cherman in your moud I vill it do. Vat you haf?" Jeffard unwrapped the samples one by one, and the assayer examined them with many dubious head-shakings. The amateur made haste to anticipate the preliminary verdict. "I know they're valueless," he admitted, "but I have a partner who will require your certificate before he will be convinced. Can you let us know to-morrow?" "Because you haf der Cherman, yes. But it vill be no goot; der silwer iss not dere"--including the various specimens in a comprehensive gesture. Jeffard turned to go, slinging the lightened haversack over his shoulder. At the door he bethought him of the curious fragment of quartz picked up on the dump of the abandoned tunnel. It was in his pocket, and he rummaged till he found it. "Can you tell me anything about this?" he asked. "It seems to be a decomposed quartzite, matted on a base of some sort,--a metal, I should say." The little German snatched the bit of quartz, and ogled it eagerly through his eye-glass. "_Mein Gott im Himmel!_" he cried; and the eye-glass fell to the floor and rolled under the bench. "Iss it possible dot you know him not? Dot iss golt, _mein lieber freund_,--vire golt, reech, reech! Vere you got him? Haf you got some more _von_ dis?" Jeffard took it in vaguely, and tried to remember what he had done with the handful of similar fragments gathered at the same time. It came to him presently. He had emptied his pocket into the haversack on the morning of the departure from the valley what time Garvin was seeking the strayed burro. He unslung the canvas bag and poured the handful of gravel on the bench. The assayer, trembling now with repressed excitement, examined the snuff-colored quartz, bit by bit, with a guttural ejaculation for each. "_Donnerwetter!_ He gifs me feerst der vorthless stones to maig of dem de assay, und den he vill ask me von leedle qvestion about dis--dis maknificend bonansa! _Ach! mein freund!_ haf you got _viel_ of dis precious qvartz?" "Why, yes; there's a good bit of it, I believe," replied Jeffard, still unawake to the magnitude of the discovery. "Und you can find der blaces again? Dink aboud it now--dink hardt!" Jeffard smiled. "Don't get excited, _mein Herr_. I know the place very well, indeed; I left it only three days since." "_Gut; sehr gut!_ Now go you; go und leef me to _mein_ vork. Come you back in der _morgen_, und I vill tell you dot you are reech, reech! Go, _mein freund_, mit der goot Cherman in your moud--und Gott go mit you." Jeffard felt his way down the dark stair, and so on out into the lighted street, still only in the middle ground between realization and the bare knowledge of the fact. He was conscious of some vague recurrent effort to surround the incredible thing; and conscious, too, that it grew and spread with each succeeding attempt to measure it until no mere human arms could girdle it. Not yet did it occur to him to place himself at the nodus of discovery and possession. The miraculous thing was for him quite a thing apart; and when he had advanced far enough into the open country of realization to look a little about him, his thought was wholly for Garvin and the effect upon him of this sudden projection into the infinite. He tried to imagine the simple-hearted prospector as a man of affluence, and laughed aloud at the grotesque figure conjured up by the thought. What would Garvin do with his money? Squander it royally, like a loyal son of fortune, and think the world well lost, Jeffard decided. The hissing gasoline torch of a street fakir flared gustily in the keen night wind sweeping down from the Mosquito, and the scintillant arc-stars at the corners began to take on frosty aureoles of prismatic hues. The crowds on the resonant plank sidewalks streamed boisterous and masterful, as if the plangent spirit of time and place were abroad. Jeffard came to earth again in the rude jostling of the throng. While he speculated, Garvin--Garvin the inexpectant--was doubtless awaiting him at the place appointed. He must hasten thither to be the bearer of the good news to the unspoiled one. Looking about him to get his bearings, he found himself in front of the deserted assay office on the spot where he had parted from Garvin. "One square down and two to the right," he said, repeating Garvin's directions; and he set out to trudge them doggedly, lagging a little from honest leg-weariness. In the last half of the third square there was a screened doorway, and the click of celluloid counters came to his ears from the brilliantly lighted room beyond. At the sound the embers of the fire kindled months before glowed afresh and made his heart hot. "Ah, you're there yet, are you?" he said, speaking to the stirring passion as if it were a sentient entity within him. "Well, you'll have to lie down again; there's no meat on the bone." At the designated corner he found the rendezvous. It was a hostelry of the baser sort, with a bar-room dominant, and eating and sleeping conveniences--or inconveniences--subsidiary. The clatter of knives and forks on ironstone china came from the ill-smelling dining-room in the rear, and the bar-room held but one occupant. It was Garvin; he was sitting at one of the card-tables with his head in his arms. He looked up when Jeffard entered, and his smile was of fatigue. "Hello, there; thought you'd gone and got lost in the shuffle. Get shut of 'em?" Jeffard nodded. "No good, I reckon?" "No; nothing that we've found this summer. But you're a rich man, just the same, Garvin." "Yes; I've cashed in on the outfit, and I've got twenty dollars in my inside pocket. Let's go in and chew before them fellers eat it all up." "Don't be in a hurry; the kind of supper we'll get here can wait. I said you are a rich man, and I meant it. You remember the old hole up in the hillside above the camp,--the one you struck a 'dike' in two years ago?" "Reckon I ain't likely to forget it." "Well, that 'dike' was decomposed quartz carrying free gold. I was curious enough to put a handful of the stuff into my pocket and bring it out. The assayer's at work on it now, and he says it'll run high--up into the hundreds, I imagine. Is there much of it?" The effect of the announcement on the unspoiled one was like that of an electric shock. He staggered to his feet, went white under the bronze, and flung his arms about Jeffard. "Hooray!" he shouted; "that old hole--that same derned old hole 'at I've cussed out more'n a million times! Damn my fool soul, but I knew you was a Mascot--knew it right from the jump! Come on--let's irrigate it right now, 'fore it's a minute older!" It was out of the depth of pure good-fellowship that Jeffard went to the bar with the fortune-daft miner. Not all the vicissitudes of the breathless rush down the inclined plane had been sufficient to slay the epicure in him; and the untidy bar reeked malodorous. But the occasion was its own excuse. Garvin beat upon the bar with his fist, and the roar of his summons drowned the clatter of knives and forks in the adjacent dining-room. The bartender came out, wiping his lips on the back of his hand. "What'll it be, gents?" "The best you've got ain't good enough," said Garvin, with unwitting sarcasm. "Trot her out--three of a kind. It's on me, and the house is in it." The man spun two glasses across the bar, and set out a black bottle of dubious aspect. Knowing his own stock in trade, he drew himself a glass of Apollinaris water. Jeffard sniffed at the black bottle and christened his glass sparingly. The bouquet of the liquor was an entire round of dissipation with the subsequent headache thrown in. Garvin tilted the bottle with trembling hand, and filled his glass to the brim. The object-lesson was not thrown away upon the epicure. "Here's to the derned old hole with a cold million in it," said the miner, naming the toast and draining his glass in the same breath. And then: "Come again, barkeep'; drink water yourself, if you want to, but the red likker's good enough for us. What do ye say, pardner? We're in it at last, plum up to the neck, and all on account o' that derned old hole 'at I've cussed out a mil-- Here's lookin' at ye." Jeffard merely moistened his lips the second time, and the object-lesson exemplified itself. Garvin had brimmed his glass again, and the contents of the black bottle were adulterant poisons. Wherefore he cut in quickly when Garvin would have ordered again. "That'll do, old man; a little at a time and often, if you must, but not on an empty stomach. Let's get the money before we spend it." The latter part of the warning had special significance for the bartender, who scowled ominously. "Lemme see the color o' yer money," he commanded. "If youse fellies are runnin' futures on me"-- Now Garvin had been living the life of an anchoret for many weeks, and the fumes of the fiery liquor were already mounting to his brain. For which cause the bartender's insinuation was as spark to tow. "Futures?" he yelled, throwing down a ten-dollar bill with a mighty buffet on the bar; "them's the kind o' futures we're drinkin' on right now! Why, you thick-lipped, mealy-mouthed white nigger, you, I'll come down here some day and buy the floor out from in under your feet; see? Come on, pardner; let's mog along out o' here 'fore I'm tempted to mop up his greasy floor with this here"-- There was hot wrath in the bartender's eyes, and Jeffard hustled the abusive one out of the place lest a worse thing should follow. On the sidewalk he remembered what Garvin had already forgotten, and went back for the change out of the ten-dollar bill, dropping it into his pocket and rejoining his companion before the latter had missed him. Thereupon ensued a war of words. The newly belted knight of fortune was for making a night of it; and when Jeffard would by no means consent to this, Garvin insisted upon going to the best hotel in the city, where they might live at large as prospective millionaires should. Jeffard accepted the alternative, and constituted himself bearward in ordinary to the half-crazed son of the wilderness. He saw difficulties ahead, and the event proved that he did not overestimate them. What a half-intoxicated man, bent upon becoming wholly intoxicated, may do to make thorny the path of a self-constituted guardian Garvin did that night. At the hotel he scandalized the not too curious clerk, and became the centre of an appreciative group in the rotunda what time Jeffard was pleading the mitigating circumstances with the hesitant deputy proprietor. In the midst of the plea, when Jeffard had consented to assume all responsibility for his companion's vagaries, Garvin broke cover in the direction of the bar-room, followed by a tail of thirsty ones. "You say you know him?" said the clerk tentatively. "Know him? Why, yes; he is my partner. We are just in from the range, and he has struck it rich. It's a little too much for him just now, but he'll quiet down after a bit. He is one of the best fellows alive, when he's sober; and this is the first time I've ever seen him in liquor. Two drinks of bad whiskey did it." "Two drinks and a surfeit of good luck," laughed the clerk. "Well, we'll take him; but you must keep him out of the way. He'll be crazy drunk in less than an hour. Been to supper?" "No." "Better have it sent to your room. He isn't fit to go to the dining-room." "All right; have a bell-boy ready, and I'll knock him down and drag him out, if I can." That was easier said than done. Jeffard found the foolish one in the bar-room, drinking _ad libitum_, and holding forth to a circle of interested hearers. Garvin had evidently been recounting the history of the abandoned claim, and one of the listeners, a hawk-faced man, with shifty black eyes, was endeavoring to draw him aside. He succeeded just as Jeffard thrust his way into the circle, and the self-elected bearwarden caught the whispered question and its answer. "You say you located her two years ago?" queried the hawk-faced one. "No; that's the joke o' the whole shootin'-match,--thess like I was a-tellin' ye." Garvin's speech ran back to its native Tennessee idiom at the bidding of intoxication. "She ain't nev' been located _yit_; and if it hadn't 'a' been for that derned little sharp-eyed pardner o' mine"-- The questioner turned quickly to the bar. "Drinks all round, gentlemen--on me." Then to Garvin in the cautious undertone: "You said she was over in Stray Horse Valley, didn't you?" Garvin fell into the trap headlong. "Not much I didn't! She's a-snugglin' down under one o' the bigges' peaks in the Saguache, right whar she can listen to the purlin' o' the big creek that heads in"-- There was no time for diplomatic interference. Jeffard locked his arm about Garvin's head, and dragged the big man bodily out of the circle. "You fool!" he hissed. "Will you pitch it into the hands of the first man that asks for it? Come along out of this!" Garvin stood dazed, and a murmur of disapproval ran through the group of thirsters. The hand of the hawk-faced one stole by imperceptible degrees toward his hip pocket. Jeffard stopped it with a look. "You have had fun enough with my partner for one evening, gentlemen," he said sternly. "Come on, Jim; let's go to supper." And the thirsters saw them no more. CHAPTER XVII IT was midnight and worse before the lately belted knight of fortune had outworn the hilarious and entered upon the somnolent stage of the little journey insensate, and when the thing could be done, Jeffard put him to bed with a pæan of thanksgiving which was none the less heartfelt for being unvocalized. Having thus set his hand to Garvin's plough, there was no alternative but to turn the furrow to the end; wherefore, to guard against surprises, he hid the boots of the bottle-mad one, barricaded the door with his own bed, and lay down to doze with eyelids ajar. At least that was the alert determination; but the event proved that he was weary enough to sleep soundly and late, and it was seven o'clock, and the breakfast caller was hammering on the door, when he opened his eyes on the new day. Naturally, his first thought was for his companion, and the sight of the empty bed in the farther corner of the room brought him broad awake and afoot at the same saltatory moment. The son of fortune was gone, and an open door into the adjoining room accounted for the manner of his going. Five minutes later, picture an anxious brother-keeper making pointed inquiries of the day-clerk below stairs. Instant question and answer fly back and forth shuttle-wise, one may suppose, weaving suspicion into a firm fabric of fact. Two men whose names, or whose latest aliases, were Howard and Lantermann, had occupied the room next to Jeffard's,--quite chancefully, the clerk thinks. They had left at an early hour; their call was for--one moment, and he (the clerk) will ascertain the exact time. Whereupon one may fancy an exasperated bearwarden cursing exactnesses and beating with impatient fist upon the counter for the major fact. The fact, extorted at length, is simple and conclusive. The two men had come down some time between five and six o'clock, with a third as a middle link in a chain of locked arms. One of the two had paid the bill, and they had all departed; by way of the bar-room and the side entrance, as the clerk remembers. Whereat Jeffard is moved to swear strange oaths; is swearing them, in point of fact, when the omnibus from an early train shunts its cargo of arrivals into the main entrance. Among the incomers is a big fellow with a drooping mustache and square-set shoulders, who forthwith drops his handbag and pounces upon Jeffard with greetings boisterous. "Well, I'll be shot!--or words to that effect" (hand-wringings and shoulder-clappings). "Now where on top of God's green earth did you tumble from? Begin away back yonder and give an account of yourself; or, hold on,--let me write my name in the book and then you can tell me while we eat. By Jove, old man! I'm foolishly glad to see you!" Jeffard cut in quickly between the large-hearted protest and the signing of the register. "Just a second, Bartrow; let the breakfast wait, and listen to me. I'm in no end of a tangle, and you're the man of all others to help me out if any one can. Do you happen to know a fellow named Garvin?" "Don't I? 'Tennessee Jim, P. P.,'--that stands for perennial prospector, you know. Sure. He's of the salt of the earth; rock salt, but full flavored. I know him like a book, though I hadn't seen him for a dog's-age until--but go on." Jeffard did go on, making the occasion one of the few which seemed to justify the setting aside of indirection. "We were partners; we have been out together all summer. He has struck it rich, and has gone clean daft in the lilt of it. I can't get him sober long enough to do what may be necessary to secure the claim. The sharks are after him hot foot, and if they can succeed in soaking the data out of him, they will jump the claim before he can get it located and recorded." Bartrow laughed. "That's just like Jim: ordinarily, he doesn't drink as much whiskey in a year as most men do in a week. But if that's your only grief you can come to breakfast with me and take your time about it. Later on, when we've smoked a few lines and brought up the arrears of gossip, we'll hold a council of war and see what you're to do about the potential bonanza." "But I can't do anything; it's Garvin's, I tell you." "Well, you are partners in it, aren't you?" Jeffard had another fight with an ingrained reserve which was always blocking the way to directness and prompting him to leave the major fact unstated. "We are not partners in this particular claim. It's an old discovery of Garvin's. He drove the tunnel on it two years ago and then abandoned it. He was looking for tellurides and opened a vein of free-gold quartz without knowing what he had found." "Then it's nobody's claim, as it stands; or rather I should say it's anybody's. You--or rather Garvin--will have to begin at the beginning, just as if it were a new deal; go back and post a notice on the ground and then come out and record it. And if it's Garvin's claim, as you say, he's got to do this in person. Nobody can do it for him. You can't turn a wheel till you get hold of Jim, and that's what makes me say what I 'does.' Let's go in and eat." "But, Dick; you don't understand"-- "Yes, I do; and I happen to know a thing or two about this deal that you don't. You've got the whole forenoon before you; you are as safe as a house up to twelve o'clock. Come on." "I say you don't understand. You called it a 'potential bonanza' just now, meaning that it wouldn't make so very much difference if it were never recorded. But it's a bonanza in fact. If Rittenberger knows what he is talking about, it is the biggest strike of the year, by long odds. I don't know much about such things, but it seems to me it ought to be secured at once and at all hazards." "Rittenberger, you say?--the little Dutchman? You can bank on what he tells you, every time. I didn't know you'd been to an assayer. What is the figure?" "I don't know that. I left the sample with him last night, and was to call this morning for the certificate. But the little man bubbled over at the mere sight of it." "Good for old Jim! So much the better. Nevertheless, as I say, you've an easy half-hour in which to square yourself with me over the ham and eggs and what-not, and plenty of time to do what there is to be done afterward. You can't do anything but wait." "Yes, I can; I can find Garvin and make sure of him. Don't you see"-- "I see that I'll have to tell you all I know--and that's something you never do for anybody--before you'll be reasonable. Listen, then: I saw your chump of a partner less than an hour ago. He was with two of his old cronies, and all three of them were pretty well in the push, for this early in the morning. They boarded the train I came up on, and that is why I say you're safe till noon. There is no train from the west till twelve-seven. I know Jim pretty well, and at his foolishest he never quite loses his grip. He had it in mind that he ought to fight shy of something or somebody, and he's given you the slip, dodged the enemy, and gone off on a three-handed spree all in a bunch. There now, does that clear up the mystery?" Jeffard had caught at the counter-rail and was gradually petrifying. Here was the worst that could have befallen, and Bartrow had suspected nothing more than a drunken man's frolic. "Gone?--with two men, you say? Can you describe them?" "Roughly, yes; they were Jim's kind--miners or prospectors. One of them was tall and thin and black, and the other was rather thick-set and red. The red one was the drunkest of the three." "Dressed like miners?" Jeffard had to fight for the "s's." His tongue was thick and his lips dry. "Sure." "That settles it, Dick, definitely. Last night those two fellows were dressed like men about town and wore diamonds. They've soaked their information out of Garvin, and they are on their way to locate that claim." It was Bartrow's turn to gasp and stammer. "What?--locate the--Cæsar's ghost, man, you're daft! They wouldn't take Garvin with them!" "They would do just that. In the first place, with the most accurate description of the locality that Garvin, drunk, could give them, there would be the uncertainty of finding it without a guide. They know that they have left a sane man behind them who can find the way back to the claim; and their only chance was to take Garvin along, keeping him drunk enough to be unsuspicious, and not too drunk to pilot them. Once on the ground ahead of me, and with Garvin in their power, they can do the worst." Bartrow came alive to the probabilities in the catching of a breath. "Which will be to kill Garvin safely out of the way, post the claim, and snap their fingers at the world. Good Lord!--and I let 'em knock him down and drag him out under my very eyes! I'd ought to be shot." "It's not your fault, Dick; it's mine. I saw what was in the wind last night, and stuck to Garvin till I got him to bed. I was dog-tired,--we'd been tramping all day,--and I thought he was safe to sleep the clock around. I hid his boots, dragged my bed across the door, and went to sleep." "You couldn't have done less--or more. What happened?" "This. Those two fellows had the room next to us, and there was a door between. They slipped him out this morning before I was awake." "Of course; all cut out and shaped up beforehand. But, thank the Lord, there's a ghost of a chance yet. Where is the claim?" "It is three days' march a little to the south of west, on the headwaters of a stream which flows into the Gunnison River." "And the nearest railroad point?" "Is Aspen. If I remember correctly, Garvin said it was about twenty miles across the range." "Good. That accounts for the beginning of the race; they'll go to Aspen and take horses from there. But I don't understand why they took the long line. There are two railroads to Aspen, and one of them is an hour and twenty minutes longer than the other. That's your chance, and the only one,--to beat 'em to the end of the railroad run. How are you fixed?" "For money, you mean? I have the wreck of a ten-dollar note and a hotel bill to pay." Bartrow spun around on his heel and shot a sudden question at the hotel clerk, the answer to which was inaudible to Jeffard. But Bartrow's rejoinder was explanatory. "Rooms over the bank, you say? That's lucky." This to the clerk; and then to Jeffard: "Come along with me; this is no time to stick at trifles. You've got to have money, suddenly, and plenty of it." But Jeffard hung back. "What are you going to do, Dick?" "Stake you and let you try for a special engine over the short line. Those fellows took the long way around, as I say,--why, I don't know, because both trains leave at the same time. The running time the way they have gone is five hours and forty-five minutes. By the other line it's only four hours and twenty-five minutes. Savez?" "Yes, but"-- "Weed out the 'buts' and come along. We're due to rout a man out of bed and make him open a bank vault. I can't put my hand into my pocket for you, as I'd like to; but I know a banker, and my credit's good." They found the cashier of the Carbonate City National in the midst of his toilet. He was an Eastern man of conservative habit, but he was sufficiently Occidentalized to grasp the main points in Bartrow's terse narrative, and to rise to the inexorable demands of the occasion. "You know the rule, Mr. Bartrow,--two good names; and I don't know your friend. But this seems to be an eighteen-carat emergency. Take that key and go down the back way into the bank. You'll find blank notes on the public desk. Make out your paper for what Mr. Jeffard will need, and I'll be with you in half a minute." They found the way and the blank, which latter Bartrow hastily filled out, indorsed, and handed to Jeffard for signature. It was for five hundred dollars, and the proletary's hand shook when he dipped the pen. "It's too much," he protested; "I can't stand it, Dick. It is like putting a whetted sword into the hands of a madman." That was his first reference to the past and its smirched record, and Bartrow promptly toppled it into the abyss of generalities. "Same old hair-splitter, aren't you? What's the matter with you now?" "You know--better than any one. I am not to be trusted with any such sum of money." "Call it Garvin's, then. I don't know how you feel toward Jim, but I've always found him a man to tie to." A woman would have said that Jeffard turned aside to hide an upflash of emotion, though a clot on the pen was the excuse. But it was the better part of him that made answer. "I owe him my life--twice, Dick. By all the known hypotheses of honor and gratitude and common decency I ought to be true to him now, in this his day of helplessness. But when one has eaten and drunk and slept with infamy"-- The cashier's step was on the stair, and Bartrow cut in swiftly. "Jeffard, you make me weary!--and, incidentally, you're killing precious time. Can't you see that trust isn't a matter of much or little? If you can't, why just name the amount for which you'd be tempted to drop Garvin, and we'll cut under it so as to be on the safe side." "But I sha'n't need a fifth of this," Jeffard objected, wavering. "You are liable to need more. You must remember that ten minutes hence you'll be trying to subsidize a railroad company. Sign that note and quit quibbling about it." The thing was done, but when the money had changed hands, Jeffard quibbled again. "If the worst comes, you can't afford to pay that note, Bartrow; and my probability hangs on a hundred hazards. What if I fail?" The cashier had unlocked the street door for them, and Bartrow ran the splitter of hairs out to the sidewalk. "You're not going to fail if I can ever succeed in getting you in motion. Good Lord, man! can't you wake up and get a grip of the situation? It isn't the mere saving or losing of the bonanza; it's sheer life or death to Jim Garvin--and you say you owe him. Here,--this cab is as good as any. Midland office, my man; half time, double fare. Don't spare the leather." At eight-ten to the minute they were negotiating with the superintendent's chief clerk for a special engine to Aspen. Whereupon, as is foreordained in such crises, difficulties multiplied themselves, while the office clock's decorous pendulum ticked off the precious margin of time. Bartrow fought this battle, fought it single-handed and won; but that was because his weapon was invincible. The preliminary passage at arms vocalized itself thus:-- _The Clerk_, mindful of his superior's moods, and reflectively dubitant: "I'm afraid I haven't the authority. You will have to wait and see the superintendent. He'll be down at nine." _Bartrow_: "Make it a dollar a mile." _The Clerk_: "Can't be done; or, at least, I can't do it. We're short of motive power. There isn't an engine fit for the run at this end of the division." _Bartrow_: "Say a hundred and fifty for the trip." _The Clerk_: "I'm afraid we couldn't make it, anyhow. We'd have to send a caller after a crew, and"-- _Bartrow_, sticking to his single text like a phonograph set to repeat: "Call it a hundred and seventy-five." _The Clerk_, in a desperate aside: "Heavens! I wish the old man would come!"--and aloud--"Say, I don't believe we could better the passenger schedule, even with a light engine. It's fast--four hours and twenty-five"-- _Bartrow_: "Make it two hundred." Jeffard counted out the money while the office operator was calling the engine-dispatcher; and at eight-twenty they were pacing the station platform, waiting for the ordered special. Bartrow looked at his watch. "If you get away from here at eight-thirty, you'll have three hours and thirty-five minutes for the run, which is just fifty minutes better than the regular schedule. It'll be nip and tuck, but if your engineer is any good he'll make it. Do you know what to do when you reach Aspen?" "Why, yes; I'll meet Garvin when his train arrives, cut him out of the tangle with the sharks, get him on a horse and ride for life across the range." "That's the scheme. But what if the other fellows object?" Jeffard straightened himself unconsciously. "I'm not uncertain on that side; I can fight for it, if that is what you mean." Bartrow looked him up and down with a smile which was grimly approbative. "Your summer's done you a whole lot of good, Jeffard. You look like a grown man." "As I didn't when you last saw me. But I'm afraid I am neither better nor worse, Dick,--morally." "Nonsense! You can't help being one or the other. And that reminds me: you haven't accounted for yourself yet. Can you do it in the hollow of a minute?" "Just about. Garvin picked me out of the gutter and took me with him on this prospecting trip. That's all." "But you ought to have left word with somebody. It was rough on your friends to drop out as if you'd dodged the undertaker." "Who was there to care?" "Well, I cared, for one; and then there is Lansdale, and--and"-- "I know," said Jeffard humbly. He was hungry for news, but he went fasting on the thinnest paring of inquiry. "Does she remember me yet?" Bartrow nodded. "She's not of the forgetting kind. I never go to Denver that she doesn't ask me if I've heard of you. But that's Connie Elliott, every day in the week. She's got a heartful of her own just now, too, I take it, but that doesn't make any difference. She's everybody's sister, just the same." "A--a heartful of her own, you say? I don't quite understand." Jeffard was staring intently down the empty railway yard, and the glistening lines of steel were blurred for him. It was a situation for a bit of merciful diplomacy, but Bartrow the tactless blundered on remorselessly. "Why, yes,--with Lansdale, you know. I don't know just how far it has gone, but if I were going to put money on it, I'd say she would let her life be shortened year for year if his could be spun out in proportion." Jeffard brought himself up with a savage turn. Who was he that he should be privileged as those who are slain in any honorable cause? "Lansdale is no better, then?" "I don't know. Sometimes he thinks he is. But I guess it's written in the book; and I'm sorry--for his sake and hers. There comes your automobile." A big engine was clanking up through the yard, but Jeffard did not turn to look at it. He was wringing Bartrow's hand, and trying vainly to think of some message to send to the woman he loved. And at the end of it, it went unsaid. One of the clerks was waiting with the train-order when the engine steamed up; and Jeffard was fain to clamber to his place in the cab, full to the lips with tender embassies, which would by no means array themselves in words. Bartrow waited till he could fling his God-speed up to the cab window. It took the form of a parting injunction, and neither of them suspected how much it would involve. "If you need backing in Aspen, look up Mark Denby. He's a good friend of mine; an all-around business man, and a guardian angel to fellows with holes in the ground and no ready money. Hunt him up. I'll wire your introduction and have it there ahead of you. Off you go--good luck to you!" And at the word the big engine lifted its voice with a shout and a bell-clang, and shook itself free for the race. CHAPTER XVIII FROM Leadville to the point in the sky-line of the Continental Divide where the southern shoulder of Mount Massive dips to Hagerman's Pass, the railway grade climbs with the old Glenwood trail; and when Malta was left behind and the ascent fairly begun, Jeffard had fleeting glimpses of the road over which he and Garvin and the patient burro had toiled eastward the day before. From outer curves and promontories doubled at storming speed the hoof-beaten trail flicked into view and disappeared; and at times the brief vistas framed a reminiscent picture of two foot-weary pilgrims plodding doggedly in the wake of a pack-laden ass. It was impossible to conceive that these phantoms belonged to to-day's yesterday. The crowding events of a few hours had already pushed them into a far-away past; their entities were lost in the kaleidoscopic whirl which had transformed the two men no less than their prefigurings. What had the foolish witling raving yonder on his way to despoilment and death with the two plunderers in common with the self-contained son of the wilderness, who had but yesterday been his brother's keeper in a world of disheartenment? And this other; steam-hurrying on his way to the same goal, with set jaw and tight lips and resolute purpose in his eyes; by how much or little could he be identified with the undeterminate one, whose leaden-footed trudgings the storming locomotive was taking in reverse? Through some such cycle the wheel of reflection rolled around to its starting point in things present, and Jeffard awoke to the moving realities of steep grades and breath-cutting curves, yawning abysses and hurtling cliffs, flitting backward to the cacophone _obbligato_ of the exhaust and the clangorous cries of racking machinery. The engineer braced on his box was a muscular giant, with the jaw of a prizefighter, and steel-gray eyes that had long since looked death out of countenance. Jeffard took his measure in an appraisive glance. "If your engineer is good for anything," Bartrow had said; and the glance slew the conditional doubt. What a fearless driver of fast locomotives might do toward reversing the fate of the besotted one would be done. In the mean time the race was to the judicious rather than to the swift. The interminable succession of grades and curves clogged the wheels, and the great engine snorted and wallowed on its upward way, slowing down at times until the throbbing puffs of the escaping steam seemed to beat no more than leisurely minuet-time. But the climbing miles to the summit of the pass were measured doggedly, if not with speed. No trifling advantage of tangent or "let-up" was passed without fresh spurrings of the throttle; and when the engine swept around the long curve which is the approach to the telegraph station at the summit tunnel, the engineer glanced at his watch and nodded across to his passenger. "We're goin' to make it," he said, in answer to Jeffard's shouted inquiry. "It'll be a close call, but the old Ninety-seven's a bird." At the station the operator tossed a telegram through the cab window. It was from Bartrow, and its major purpose was to give the figures of the assay, which he had obtained from the little German. They were sufficiently significant, and Bartrow's added urgings were unnecessary. "I'm standing over the train dispatcher here with a club," he wired. "Don't make any economical mistake at your end of the string." The engineer had finished oiling around and had clambered back to his box. The water supply was replenished, and the fireman was uprearing the tank-spout. Jeffard crossed the footboard and thrust a little roll of bank notes between the fingers of the brawny hand on the throttle lever. The engineer smoothed the bills on his knee and wagged his head as one doubtful. "That's pretty well up to a month's pay." "Well, you are going to earn it." "Better keep it till I do," said the stalwart one, offering it back. "No; I'm not afraid to pay you in advance. You are going to do your best, and I am not trying to bribe you. It's yours, whether we make it or not." The big man thrust the bills into his pocket and opened the throttle. "You go over there and sit down and hold your hair on," he commanded. "I'm goin' to break the record when we get out into daylight on the other side o' the mountain." Jeffard was still groping for hand and foot holds on the fireman's seat when the locomotive rolled out of the western portal of the summit tunnel and the record-breaking began. Of the brain-benumbing rush down the gorges of the Frying Pan on a flying locomotive, one recalls but a confused memory; a phantasmagoric jumble of cliffs and chasms, backward-flitting forests and gyrating mountain peaks, trestles and culverts roaring beneath the drumming wheels, the shrieks of the whistle and the intermittent stridor of escaping steam in the iron throat of the safety-valve; a goblin dance of matter in motion to a war blast of chaotic uproar. One sets the teeth to endure, and comes back to the cosmic point of view with a deep-drawn sigh of relief when the goblin dance is over, and the engine halts at the junction where the Aspen branch leaves the main line and crosses the Frying Pan to begin the ascent of the Roaring Fork. From this point the competing railways parallel each other, and at the junction the trains on either line are within whistle call. To the engineer's question the telegraph operator nodded an affirmative. "Yep; she's just gone by. That's her whistlin' for Emma now. What's the rush?--backed to beat her into Aspen?" The engineer nodded in his turn, and signed the order for the right of way on the branch. A minute later the junction station was also a memory, and Jeffard was straining his eyes for a glimpse of the passenger train on the other line. A short distance to the southward the rival lines meet and cross, exchanging river banks for the remainder of the run to Aspen. The passenger train was first at the crossing, and Jeffard had his glimpse as the engine slackened speed. Not to lose a rail-length in the hard-fought race, Jeffard's man ran close to the crossing to await his turn, and the light engine came to a stand within pistol shot of the train, which was slowly clanking over the crossing-frogs. Jeffard slipped from his seat and went over to the engineer's gangway. It would be worth something if he could make sure that Garvin was on the train. The espial was rewarded and punished in swift sequence. The trucks of the smoking-car were jolting over the crossing, and Jeffard saw the head and shoulders of the insane one filling an open window. It was conspicuously evident that Garvin had drained the bottle to the frenzy mark. He was yelling like a lost soul, and shaking impotent fists at the halted engine. Jeffard's eye measured the distance to the moving car. It was but down one embankment and up the other. "That's my man," he said quickly to the engineer. "Do you suppose I could make it across?" "Dead easy," was the reply; and Jeffard swung down to the step of the engine to drop off. The impulse saved his life. As he quitted his hold a hairy arm bared to the elbow was thrust out of the window next to the yelling maniac. There was a glint of sun-rays on polished metal, and a pistol ball bit out the corner of the cab under the engineer's arm-rest. Jeffard desisted, and climbed to his place when the moving train gathered headway. "Damn a crazy loon, anyway," said the engineer, much as one might pass the time of day. "They'd ought to have sense enough to take his gun away from him." Jeffard explained in a sentence. "It wasn't the crazy one; it was one of the two cut-throats who are kidnaping him--the fellows I'm trying to beat." "The fellers you're goin' to beat," corrected the engineer. "We'll head 'em off now if the Ninety-seven goes in on three legs. The gall o' the cusses!--why, they might ha' shot somebody!" From the crossing in the lower valley neither line encounters any special obstacle to speed; and under equal conditions a locomotive race up the Roaring Fork might be an affair of seconds and rail lengths for the victor. But the light engine with regardless orders speedily distanced the passenger train with stops to make; and when the smokes of the mountain-girt town at the head of the valley came in sight, the big engineer pulled his watch and shouted triumphant:-- "Eleven-forty,--and their time's twelve-five. We'll be twenty minutes to the good in spite o'"-- It is conceivable that he would have used a strong figure, but the depravity of things inanimate took the word out of his mouth. There was a tearing crash to the rear; a shock as if a huge projectile had overtaken them; and the flying locomotive came to earth like an eagle with a mangled wing. It was a broken axle under the tender; a tested steel shaft which had outlived the pounding race across the mountains only to fall apart in the last level mile of the home stretch. Jeffard clambered down with the enginemen, and saw defeat, crushing and definite, in the wreck under the tender. But the big engineer was a man for a crisis. One glance at the wreck sufficed, and the fireman got his orders in shot-like sentences. "Up with you, Tom, and give her the water,--both injectors! Drop me the sledge, and get the pinch-bar under the head o' that couplin'-pin when I drive it up. Give her a scoop 'r two o' coal--'nough to run in with. By cripes! we'll beat 'em yet!" The minced oath came from beneath the engine, and was punctuated by mighty upward blows of the sledge hammer on the coupling-pin, whose head was rising by half-inch impulses from its seat in the footplate. Jeffard saw and understood. The engineer meant to cut loose from the wreck and finish the run without the tender. "Use me if you can," he offered. "What shall I do?" "Climb up there and help Tom with that bar. If we can pull this pin we're in it yet." Jeffard laid hold with the fireman, and together they pried at the reluctant pin. It yielded at length, but when the engineer had disconnected the water and air hose and mounted to his place in the cab, the roar of the oncoming passenger train was ajar in the air. "You stay with the wreck, Tom, and flag it!" was the final command; and then to Jeffard, as the engine shot away from its disabled member: "How much time have you got to have?" "I don't know. It depends upon how much those fellows have found out, and how drunk my partner is. At the worst, a minute or two will serve." It was still to be had, but in the very yard a thrown switch intervened, and the small margin vanished. The passenger train was in, and Jeffard saw defeat again; but he dropped from the locomotive and ran up the yard, forgetting in the heat of it that he had elided two meals in the twenty-four hours. The final dash brought its reward. He took the first vehicle that offered and reached the principal hotel in time to see Garvin and his keepers descend from a carriage at the entrance. "Yes, sir; in one moment. Those three fellows who came in just now? They've gone up to their room. Be with us over night?" Thus the hotel clerk in answer to Jeffard's gasping inquiry. To whom the proletary, fighting desperately for some semblance of equanimity:-- "I--I'll be here indefinitely; no, I have no baggage; I'll pay in advance. Can you give me the room next to these men? The crazy one is my partner, and I'll be responsible for him." The clerk hesitated, but Jeffard won his cause without knowing it by the necessary parade of bank-notes in the pecuniary affair. "Certainly, sir; the boy will show you up. You won't trouble him? All right; Number Nineteen--second floor, third door to the right. Dinner is served, when you're ready." If Jeffard had forgotten his directions the uproar in Number Eighteen would have guided him. Garvin's voice, uplifted in alternate malediction and maudlin bathos, jarred upon the air of the corridor. Jeffard paused. The long chase was ended and only a pine door intervened between pursuer and pursued. He laid a hand on the doorknob. His breath came hard, and the veins in his forehead were like knotted whipcords. While he paused some broken babblings from within wrought a swift change in him. The knotted veins relaxed and he laughed, not mirthfully but with a cynical upcurve of the lip. His hand slipped from the doorknob, and he stole away, cat-like, to let himself noiselessly into the adjoining room. There was a door of communication between the two rooms, bolted on Jeffard's side, and with the knob removed. He went on his knees to the square hole through the lock, but the angle of vision included no more than a blank patch of the opposite wall. Then he laid his ear to the aperture. Out of the jangling discord beyond the door came fragmentary lucidities pieceable together into a strand of sequence. Garvin had told all he knew, or all he could remember, and the robbery paused at the trivial detail of the most feasible route over the mountains from Aspen. But to make sure, and possibly to provide against the contingency of having to eliminate Garvin, some rude map was needed; and this one of the plunderers was evidently trying to draw under instructions from the witling. At the mention of a map, Jeffard rummaged his pockets without taking his ear from the door. From one of them he drew a crumpled bit of paper, thumbed and crease-broken. It was Garvin's map of the claim and the trail, passed over for inspection in the hollow of a certain lambent evening months before and never returned. Who shall say what was behind the inscrutable darkling of the eyes of him when he returned the paper to his pocket and bent to listen with four senses lending their acuteness to the fifth? Was it a softening memory of the loving-kindnesses of one James Garvin to a man soul-sick and body-wasted, snatched as a charred brand out of a fire of his own kindling? Or was it the stirring of a ruthless devil of self; a devil never more than dormant in any heart insurgent; a fell demon of the pit whose arousing waits only upon opportunity, whose power is to transform pity into remorseless ingratitude and ruth into relentless greed? There was room for the alternative. "Here; take another nip o' this and pull yourself together,"--it was the voice of the hawk-faced one. "If you wasn't such a howlin' idiot you'd see that we're the only friends you've got. I keep a-tellin' you that that slick pardner o' yours was on that wild ingine, and if you don't sink a shaft on your wits he's a-goin' to do you up cold!" The appeal brought blood as a blow. The crash of an overturned chair was followed by an explosion of cursings, the outcries of a soul in torment. And when the madman choked in the fullness of it, a voice said: "Pick up that chair, Pete, and pull him down. He'll be seein' things in a minute, and that'll settle the whole shootin'-match." There was a struggle short but violent, the jar of a forcible downsetting, and a sound as of one flinging his arms abroad upon the table. After which the tormented one became brokenly articulate. What he said is unrecordable. With maudlin oath and thick-tongued ravings he rehearsed his fancied wrongs and breathed forth promises of vengeance, calling down the wrath of the spheres upon one Henry Jeffard and his posterity to the third and fourth generation. "That's all right; I'd kill him on sight, if I was you. But just now you're killin' time, instid. First you know, he'll be on his way acrost the range, and then where'll you be? You don't even know that he didn't locate that claim before you came out. Git down to business and tell us where that valley is, if you ever knowed. You said it was on a creek"-- Jeffard rose and went softly across the room to sit on the edge of the bed. The unfathomable light was still in his eyes, and his thought wrought itself into words. "It's done; they'll wring it out of him, and then fling him aside like so much offal. I wonder if it is worth while to try to save it--for him. What good would it do him?--or, rather, what evil thing is there that it wouldn't make possible for him? What devil of curiosity led me to open this Pandora-box of responsibility? For I am responsible, first for the finding, and now for the keeping, and hereafter for what shall come of it. That is, if I save it--for him." He got upon his feet and tiptoed back to the door of communication, listening once more. The clamor had quieted down, and the scratching of a pen gnawed the silence. Then came the voice of the hawk-faced one. "There she is; you sign your name right there and it'll be all right. It's the only way; you're too drunk to pull strings with that pardner o' yours, and we're goin' to stand by you, see? All we want is the authority." Jeffard started back and made as if he would fling himself against the locked door. Then he thought better of it. "That simplifies it," he mused, pacing up and down with noiseless steps. "He has signed away whatever right he had, and now it's my turn. If I pay the price I can checkmate them. But can I pay the price? Surely, if any man can; I, who have deliberately turned my back upon the world's approval for a much less thing. And in the end the money will atone." A stir in the adjoining room admonished him that the time for action had come. He wheeled quickly and let himself into the corridor. A key was rattling in the lock of Number Eighteen as he passed, but he found the stair before the bolt was shot. In the lobby he stopped to ask a hurried question of a man who was opening his mail at the public writing-table. The question was answered curtly, but the man left his letters and went to the door to point the reply. "I see it; thank you," said Jeffard; and went his way rapidly, with now and then a glance behind him as if to make sure that he was not followed. In a few minutes he came back, walking slowly, with his head down and his hands in the pockets of the brown duck miner's coat. There was a knot of loungers in front of the hotel, gathered about the door and peering in; a group of curious ones, which grew by accretions from the by-passers. A disturbance of some sort was afoot in the lobby--two persuasive ones struggling peaceably with a drunken man, while the bystanders looked on with smiles pitying or cynical, each after his kind. Jeffard pushed into the circle, and those who remarked him said that he seemed to see nothing but the struggling trio. Some of the onlookers were near enough to hear what he said to the two who were not drunk. "The game is closed, gentlemen, and you are out of it. When you get on the ground you will find the claim located--in my name." Two right hands made simultaneous backward dips, and two potential murderers apparently realized the folly of it at the same instant. But the drunken one spun around with his face ablaze, a fiercer madness than that of drink burning in his bloodshot eyes. "You? You played the sneak an' located hit behind my back? In your name, d' ye say?--your name? Well, by God, you hain't got a name!" A pistol cracked with the oath, and Jeffard put his hands to his head and pitched forward. The crowd fell back aghast, to surge inward again with a rush when the reaction came. Then a shout was raised at the door, and the haggard manslayer, cured now of all madness save that of fear, burst through the inpressing throng and disappeared. CHAPTER XIX EVEN in a Colorado mining town a shooting affray at midday in the lobby of the principal hotel creates more or less of a sensation, and it was fully fifteen minutes before the buzz of public comment subsided sufficiently to suffer Mr. Mark Denby to go back to his letters and telegrams. He had made one in the circle of onlookers; had seen and heard, and, now that the wounded man had been carried to his room and cared for, and the hunt was up and afield for the would-be murderer, was willing to forget. But a traveling salesman at the opposite blotting-pad must needs keep the pool astir. "Say, wasn't that the most cold-blooded thing you ever saw? 'Y gad! I've heard that these Western towns were fearfully tough, but I had no idea a man wouldn't be safe to sit down and write his house in the lobby of a decent hotel. 'Pon my word, I actually heard the 'zip' of that bullet!" Denby looked across at the hinderer of oblivion, and remembered that the salesman had been well to the rear of the battery in action. Wherefore he said, with a touch of the gravest irony: "You'll get used to it, after a bit. Suppose you take a spin around the block in the open air; that will doubtless steady your nerves so you can write the house without a quiver." "Think it would? I believe I'll try it; I can't hold a pen still to save my life. But say, I might happen to run up against that fellow, and he might recognize me and think I was after him." "In which case he would in all probability draw and quarter you and take your scalp for a memento. On second thought, I don't know but you're safer where you are." The mere suggestion was perspiratory, and the traveling man mopped his face. But there are occasions when one must talk or burst, and presently he began again. "Say, I suppose they'll lynch that fellow if they catch him, won't they?" The badgered one came to attention with a fine-lined frown of annoyance radiating fan-like above his eyes. He was of the stuff of which man-masters are made; a well-knit figure of a man, rather under than over the average of height and breadth, but so fairly proportioned as to give the impression of unmeasured strength in reserve,--the strength of steel under silk. His face was bronzed with the sun-stain of the altitudes, but it was as smooth as a child's, and beardless, with thin lips and masterful eyes of the sort that can look unmoved upon things unnamable. "Lynch him? Oh, no; you do us an injustice," he said, and the tone was quite as level as the eye-volley. "We don't lynch people out here for shooting,--only for talking too much." Whereat one may picture unacclimated loquacity gasping and silenced, with the owner of the "Chincapin" and other listed properties going on to read his letters and telegrams in peace. The process furthered itself in the sequence of well-ordered dispatch until a message, damp from the copying-press and dated at Leadville, came to the surface. It covered two of the yellow sheets in the spacious handwriting of the receiving operator, and Denby read it twice, and yet once again, before laying it aside. Whatever it was, it was not suffered to interrupt the orderly sequence of things; and Denby had read the last of the letters before he held up a summoning finger for a bell-boy. "Go and ask the clerk the name of the man who was shot, will you?" The information came in two words, and the querist gathered up his papers and sent the boy for his room key. At the stairhead he met the surgeon and stopped him to ask about the wounded man. "How are you, Doctor? What is the verdict? Is there a fighting chance for him?" "Oh, yes; much more than that. It isn't as bad as it might have been; the skull isn't fractured. But it was enough to knock him out under the circumstances. He had skipped two or three meals, he tells me, and was under a pretty tense strain of excitement." "Then he is conscious?" The physician laughed. "Very much so. He is sitting up to take my prescription,--which was a square meal. Whatever the strain was, it isn't off yet. He insists that he must mount and ride this afternoon if he has to be lashed in the saddle; has already ordered a horse, in fact. He is plucky." "Then he is able to talk business, I suppose." "Able, yes; but if you can get anything out of him, you'll do better than I could. He won't talk,--won't even tell what the row was about." "Won't he?" The man of affairs crossed the corridor and tapped on the door of Number Nineteen. There was no response, and he turned the knob and entered. The shades were drawn and there was a cleanly odor of aseptics in the air of the darkened room. The wounded man was propped among pillows on the bed, with a well-furnished tea-tray on his knees. He gave prompt evidence of his ability to talk. "Back again, are you? I told you I had nothing to say for publication, and I meant it." This wrathfully; then he discovered his mistake, but the tone of the careless apology was scarcely more conciliatory. "Oh--excuse me. I thought it was the reporter." Bartrow's correspondent found a chair and introduced himself with charitable directness. "My name is Denby. I am here because Mr. Richard Bartrow wires me to look you up." Jeffard delayed the knife and fork play long enough to say: "Denby?--oh, yes; I remember. Thank you," and there the interview bade fair to die of inanition. Jeffard went on with his dinner as one who eats to live; and Denby tilted his chair gently and studied his man as well as he might in the twilight of the drawn shades. After a time, he said:-- "Bartrow bespeaks my help for you. He says your affair may need expediting: does it?" Jeffard's rejoinder was almost antagonistic. "How much do you know of the affair?" "What the whole town knows by this time--added to what little Bartrow tells me in his wire. You or your partner have stumbled upon an abandoned claim which promises to be a bonanza. One of you--public rumor is a little uncertain as to which one--tried to euchre the other; and it seems that you have won in the race to the Recorder's office, and have come out of it alive. Is that the summary?" He called it public rumor, but it was rather a shrewd guess. Jeffard did not hasten to confirm it. On the contrary, his reply was evasive. "You may call it an hypothesis--a working hypothesis, if you choose. What then?" The promoter was not of those who swerve from conclusions. "It follows that you are a stout fighter, and a man to be helped, or a very great rascal," he said coolly. Again the knife and fork paused, and the wounded man's gaze was at least as steady as that of his conditional accuser. "It may simplify matters, Mr. Denby, if I say that I expect nothing from public rumor." The mine-owner shrugged his shoulders as an unwilling arbiter who would fain wash his hands of the ethical entanglement if he could. "It's your own affair, of course,--the public opinion part of it. But it may prove to be worth your while not to ignore the suffrages of those who make and unmake reputations." "Why?" "Because you will need capital,--honest capital,--and"-- He left the sentence in the air, and Jeffard brought it down with a cynical stonecast. "And, under the circumstances, an honest capitalist might hesitate, you would say. Possibly; but capital, as I know it, is not so discriminating when the legal requirements are satisfied. There will be no question of ownership involved in the development of the 'Midas.'" "Legal ownership, you mean?" "Legal or otherwise. When the time for investment comes, I shall be abundantly able to assure the capitalist." "To guarantee the investment: doubtless. But capital is not always as unscrupulous as you seem to think." "No?"--the tilt of the negative was almost aggressive. "There are borrowers and borrowers, Mr. Denby. It's the man without collateral who is constrained to make a confidant of his banker." The blue-gray eyes of the master of men looked their levelest, and the clean-shaven face was shrewdly inscrutable. "Pardon me, Mr. Jeffard, but there are men who couldn't borrow with the Orizaba behind them." Jeffard parried the eye-thrust, and brushed the generalities aside in a sentence. "All of which is beside the mark, and I have neither the strength nor the inclination to flail it out with you. As you say, I shall need capital--yours or another's. State the case--yours, or mine,--in so many words, if you please." "Briefly, then: the equity in this affair lies between you and the man who tried to kill you. I mean by this that the bonanza is either yours or his. If it were a partnership discovery there would have been no chance for one of you to overreach the other. You'll hardly deny that there was a sharp fight for possession: you both advertised that fact pretty liberally." Jeffard was listening with indifference, real or feigned, and he neither denied nor affirmed. "Go on." "From the point of view of an unprejudiced observer the evidence is against your partner. He comes here drunk and abusive, in company with two men whose faces would condemn them anywhere, and squanders his lead in the race in a supplementary carouse. And a little later, when he finds that you have outclassed him, he shoots you down like a dog in a fit of drunken fury. To an impartial onlooker the inference is fairly obvious." "And that is?"-- "That your partner is the scoundrel; that the discovery is yours, and that he and his accomplices were trying to rob you. I don't mind saying that this is my own inference, but I shall be glad to have it confirmed." Jeffard looked up quickly. "Then Bartrow hasn't told you"-- "Bartrow's message was merely introductory; two pages of eulogy, in fact, as any friendly office of Dick's is bound to be. He doesn't go into details." Jeffard put the tea-tray aside and with it the air of abstraction, and in a better light his interlocutor would not have failed to remark the swift change from dubiety to assurance. "Will you bear with me, Mr. Denby, if I say that your methods are a little indirect? You say that the evidence is against James Garvin, and yet you give me to understand that it will be well if I can clear myself." "Exactly; a word of assurance is sometimes worth many deductions." "But if, for reasons of my own, I refuse to say the word?" The promoter's shrug was barely perceptible. "I don't see why you should refuse." Jeffard went silent at that, lying back with closed eyes and no more than a twitching of the lips to show that he was not asleep. After what seemed an interminable interval to the mine-owner, he said:-- "I do refuse, for the present. A few days later, when I have done what I have to do, there will be time enough to discuss ways and means--and ethics, if you still feel inclined that way. May I trouble you to run that window-shade up?" He was sitting on the edge of the bed and groping beneath it for his shoes. The promoter admitted the light and ventured a question. "What are you going to do?" "Get on the ground with the least possible delay." The shoes were found, but when the wounded one bent to lace them the room spun around and he would have fallen if Denby had not caught him. "You're not fit," said the master of men, not unsympathetically. "You couldn't sit a horse if your life depended upon it." "I must; therefore I can and will," Jeffard asserted, with fine determination. "Be good enough to ask the bell-boy to come in and lace my shoes." The man with a mission to compel other men smiled. His fetish was indomitable resolution, for himself first, and afterward for those who deserved; and here was a man who, whatever his lacks and havings in the ethical field, was at least courageous. Having admitted so much, the promoter went down on one knee to lace the courageous one's shoes, dissuading him, meanwhile. "You can't go to-day; the wound-fever will come on presently, and you'll be a sick man. Let it rest a while. Having put himself on the criminal side of the fence by trying to kill you, your partner will hardly dare to jump the claim in person; he will have to find a proxy, and that will ask for time,--more time than the sheriff-dodging will permit." "His proxies are here, and they will act without instructions from him," said Jeffard, with his hands to his head and his teeth set to keep the words from shaping themselves into a groan. "You mean the two who were with him?" "Yes. So far as the present fight is concerned, the three are one; and two of them are still free to act." "So?--that's different." Denby finished tying the second shoe and rose to begin measuring a sentinel's beat between the window and the door, pacing evenly with his brows knitted and his hands clasped behind him. "You know what to expect, then?" "I know that I have been twice shot at within the past two hours, and that the moments are golden." "But you are in no condition to go in and hold it alone! You'll have to meet force with force. You ought to have at least three or four good men with you." "What I have to do presupposes a clear field," said Jeffard guardedly. "If it should come to blows, the discussion of--of ethics will be indefinitely postponed, I'm afraid." "Humph! I suppose your reasons are as strong as your obstinacy. How far is it to your claim?" "I don't know the exact distance; about twenty miles, I believe. But there is a mountain range intervening." "You can't ride it in your present condition; it's a sheer physical impossibility." "I shall ride it." "What is the use of being an ass?" demanded the master of men, losing patience for once in a way. "Don't you see you can't stand alone?" Jeffard struggled to his feet and wavered across the room to a chair. Denby laughed,--a quiet little chuckle of appreciation. "I didn't mean literally; I meant in the business affair. You'll have to have help from the start. That means that you will have to trust some one. From what you say it is evident that there will be an immediate attempt made to jump the claim; an attempt which will be afoot and on the ground long before you can get there. Let us be reasonable and take hold of the live facts. I have a man here who is both capable and trustworthy. Let me send him in with a sufficient force to stand off the jumpers until you are able to hold your own." Jeffard shook his head. "I can't do it, unreasonable as it may seem. I must go first and alone. That is another mystery, you will say, but I can't help it. If I win through it alive I shall be here again in a day or two, ready to talk business. More than that I can't say now." Denby's thin lips came together in a straight line, with a click of the white teeth behind them. "As you please. I am not going about to prove to you that you would lose nothing by trusting me from the start. Can I do anything toward helping you off?" "Yes; you can give me your shoulder down the stair and a lift into the saddle." The little journey to the ground floor was made in silence. When they were passing the desk the clerk said: "Your horse is at the door, Mr. Jeffard. I was just about to send up word. Are you feeling better?" "I am all right." He leaned heavily on the counter and paid his bill. "Did the liveryman leave any message?" "No, only to say that he has stocked the saddle-bags as you directed." The personally conducted journey went on to the sidewalk, and Denby heaved the wounded one into the saddle, steadying him therein till the vertigo loosed its hold. "Anything else you can delegate?" "No, thank you; nothing that I think of." "You are still determined to go?" "Quite determined." "Well, you are a stubborn madman, and I rather like you for it; that's all I have to say. Good luck to you." Jeffard gathered the reins and sat reflective what time the broncho sniffed the cool breeze pouring down from the higher slopes of the western range. When the horse would have set out, Jeffard restrained him yet another moment. "You intimated a few minutes ago that I was afraid to trust you, Mr. Denby," he said, picking and choosing among the words as one who has a difficult course to steer. "I do trust you as far as I can trust any one at the present crisis, and I'll prove it." He drew a crumpled bit of paper from his pocket, and smoothed it upon the pommel of the saddle. "Here is a rough map of the claim and the trails by which it may be reached. If I'm not back in Aspen in three days, fit out your expedition and go in prepared to take and hold the property. The men you will find in possession will be robbers,--and murderers,--and you may have to fight for it; but that won't matter. In the right-hand tunnel wall, a few feet from the entrance, you will see a crevice where the dynamite was kept. In the bottom of that crevice you'll find my last will and testament, and I'm going to believe that you will carry out its provisions to the letter." The promoter's smile was of grimness, with quarterings of approval. "Which is to say that you'll be safely dead and buried. Barring your idiotic stubbornness, you are a man after my own heart, Mr. Jeffard, and I'll willingly be your executor. Are you armed?" "No; I told you it would depend upon speed. I have no weapons." "What! And you are going on a forlorn hope with an even chance of having to fight for your life? Wait a minute." He ran back into the hotel, coming out again presently with a repeating rifle and a well-filled cartridge belt. "There is such a thing as cold nerve carried to the vanishing point in foolhardiness, Mr. Jeffard," he said. "Put this belt on while I sling the rifle under the saddle-flap. Can you shoot straight?" "It is extremely doubtful. A little target practice as a boy"-- "Target practice!--and you may have to stand off a gang of desperadoes who can clip coins at a hundred yards! You'd better reconsider and give me time to organize a posse." "No; thank you--for that and everything else. Good-by." Denby stood on the curb and watched his man ride slowly up the street and take the turn toward the southern mountains. After which he went back to his place at the public writing-table in the lobby, picking up the hotel stenographer on the way. For a preoccupied half-hour he dictated steadily, and when the last letter was answered got up to pace out the transcribing interval. In the midst of it he drifted out to the sidewalk and stood staring absently up the street, as, an hour earlier, he had gazed after the lessening figure of the obstinate one. But this time there were two horsemen in the field of vision wending their way leisurely to the street-end. Denby, thinking pointedly of other things, saw them and saw them not; but when they, too, took the turn to the southward, he came alive to the probabilities in the heart of an instant. "By all that's good!--they're after him, as sure as fate!" he muttered; and a little later he was quizzing the proprietor of a livery stable around the corner. "Do you know those two fellows who have just left, Thompson?" "You bet I don't; and I made 'em put up the collateral for the whole outfit before they got away." "Where did you say they were going?" "Didn't say, did I? But somewheres up Jackfoot Gulch was what they told me." "H'm; that is east. And just now they are riding in another direction. You sold them the horses, you say?" The man grinned. "Temp'rarily. I'll take 'em back at the same price, less the tariff, if I ever see 'em again. I ain't takin' no chances on stray strangers with any such lookin'-glass-bustin' faces as they've got. Not much, Mary Ann." "It is well to be careful. Have you seen my man Donald since dinner?" "Yes; he was here just now and said he'd be back again. Want him?" Denby looked at his watch. "Yes. If he doesn't come back within five minutes, send some of the boys out to hunt him up. Tell him to outfit for himself and me for two days, and to be at the hotel at three, sharp. Give him the best horses you can lay your hands on." "Always yours to command, Mr. Denby. Anything else?" "That's all." The promoter left the stable and walked quickly to the hotel. At the entrance he met an acquaintance and stopped to pass the time of day. "How are you, Roberts?--By the way, you are just the man I wanted to see; saves me a trip to the Court House. Did a fellow named Jeffard, J-e-f-f-a-r-d, file a notice and affidavit on a claim called the 'Midas' just after dinner?" "No. He came over to ask me if there was any way in which he could secure himself. It seems that he neglected to post a notice on the claim before coming out with his samples,--why, he didn't explain." Denby nodded and went on, talking to himself. "So!--that's his little mystery, is it? The 'Midas' isn't located yet, and until he gets that notice posted and recorded, it's anybody's bonanza. I hope Donald can pick up the trail and follow it. If he can't, there'll be one plucky fellow less in the world, and two more thugs to be hanged, later on." CHAPTER XX A TOPOGRAPHICAL map of that portion of the Saguache known as the Elk Mountain Range--the spur which forms the watershed between the Gunnison and the Grand--will include a primeval valley gashing the range southeastward from Tourtelotte on the Ashcroft trail, and heading fifteen miles farther wildernessward in a windswept pass across the summit of the watershed. Its watercourse, a tumbling torrent fed by the melting snows in the higher gulches, is a tributary of the Roaring Fork; and a disused pack-trail, which once served a scattered pioneer corps of prospectors, climbs by tortuous stages to the windswept pass, now swerving from bank to bank of the stream, and now heading a lateral gulch or crossing the point of a barrier spur. It is a crystalline afternoon in mid-autumn. Indian summer on the high plateaus of the continent's crest there is none, but instead, a breathing space of life-giving days, with the bouquet of fine old wine in the keen-edged air, and of frosty nights when the stars swing clear in illimitable space. Positive coloring, other than the sombre greens of pine and fir, is lacking. The season of bursting buds and quickening leaf tints is over, and what little deciduous vegetation the altitude permits is present only in twig traceries and sun-cured range grass. In the heart of the valley the heights are heavily wooded, and the sombre greens wall out the world to the sky-line; but farther on bald slopes and ridges stretch away above the pines and firs, and the blue arch of the firmament springs clear from snow-capped abutments of fallow dun and weathered gray. In the upper levels of the valley the disused trail leaves the stream and begins to climb by loops and zigzags to the pass. On the reverse curve of one of the loops--the last but one in the upward path--a solitary horseman sends his mount recklessly onward, heedless alike of stones of stumbling and the breath-cutting steepness of the way. His head is bandaged, and he rides loose in the saddle like a drunken man, swaying and reeling, but evermore urging the horse by word and blow and the drumming of unspurred heels. His feet are thrust far into the stirrups, and at every fresh vantage point he steadies himself by pommel and cantle to scan the backward windings of the trail. A man riding desperately for his life and against time, with a handicap of physical unfitness, one would say; but there would seem to be fierce determination in the unrelenting onpush, as if wounds and weariness were as yet no more than spurs to goad and whips to drive. The reverse curve of the loop ends on the crest of the last of the barrier spurs, and at the crown of the ascent the forest thins to right and left, opening a longer backward vista. On the bare summit the rider turns once more in his saddle, and the rearward glance becomes a steady eye-sweep. In the bight of the loop which he has just traversed the trail swings clear of the gulch timber, and while he gazes two dark objects advancing abreast and alternately rising and falling to a distance-softened staccato of pounding hoofs cross the open space and double the loop. The wounded one measures his lead. For all his spurrings the distance is decreasing; and a hasty survey of the trail ahead is not reassuring. From the bald summit of the spur the bridle path winds around the head of another gulch, and the approach to the pass on the farther side is a snow-banked incline, above timber line, uncovered, and within easy rifle-shot of the hill of reconnaissance. What will befall is measurably certain. If he attempts to head the traversing ravine on the trail, his pursuers will reach the bald summit, wait, and pick him off at their leisure while he is scaling the opposite snowbank. At the second glance a dubious alternative offers. The gorge in the direct line may not prove impassable; there is a slender chance that one may push straight across and up the opposing slope to the pass before the guns of the enemy can be brought into position. Wherefore he sends the horse at a reckless gallop down the descent to the gorge, making shift to cling with knee and heel while he disengages a rifle from its sling under the saddle-flap, and fills its magazine with cartridges from a belt at his waist. At the bottom of the ravine the alternative vanishes; becomes a thing inexistent, in fact. The gorge in its lower length is a canyoned slit, a barrier to be passed only by creatures with wings. To return is to meet his pursuers on the bald summit of the spur; to hesitate is equally hazardous. The horse obeys the sudden wrenching of the rein, spins as on a pivot, and darts away up the canyon brink. Fortunately, the timber is sparse, and, luckily again, a practicable crossing is found well within the longer detour traced by the trail. For the second time that day it is a race to the swift; and, as before, an accident comes between. Horse and man are across the ravine, are clear of the stunted firs, are mounting the final snow-banked incline to the pass with no more than a trooper's dash between them and safety, when the sure-footed beast slips on the packed snow of the trail, and horse and man roll together to the bottom of the declivity. A few hours earlier this man had been the football of circumstances, tossed hither and yon as the buffetings of chance might impel him. But the pregnant hours have wrought a curious change in him, for better or worse, and before the breath-cutting plunge is checked he is free of the struggling horse and is kicking it to its feet to mount and ride again, charging the steep uprising with plying lash and digging heels and shouts of encouragement. Ten seconds later the trail is regained and the summit of the pass cuts the sky-line above him. Ten other flying leaps and a resolute man may hold an army at bay. But in the midst of them comes a clatter of hoofs on the rocky headland across the gulch, and a nerve-melting instant wherein the hoof-beats cease and the bleak heights give back a muffled echo in the rarefied air. The hunted one bends to the saddle-horn at the crack of the rifle, and the bullet sings high. A second is better aimed, and at the shrill hiss of it the snorting horse flattens its ears and lunges at the ascent with flagging powers fear-revived. A scrambling bound or two and the final height is gained, but in the pivoting instant between danger and safety a third bullet scores the horse's back and embeds itself in the cantle of the saddle with a benumbing shock to the rider. But by this the fugitive is fair Berserk-mad, and those who would stay him must shoot to kill. Once out of range beyond the crest of the pass, he drags the trembling horse to its haunches and whips down from the saddle, the wine of battle singing in his veins and red wrath answering for physical fitness. A hasty glance to make sure that the broncho's wound is not disabling, and he is back at the summit of the pass, sheltering himself behind a rock and sending shot after shot across the ravine at his assailants. The fusillade is harmless; wounds, mad gallops, and red wrath being easily subversive of accuracy in target practice; but it has the effect of sending the enemy to the rear in discreet haste, with the dropping shots beating quick time for the double quartette of trampling hoofs as the twain gallop out of range behind the bald headland. For a resolute half-hour, while the undertow of the ebbing minutes steadily undermines the props and shores set up by Berserk wrath, the solitary rifleman lies watchful and vigilant. Thrice in that interval have the attackers rallied; once in a desperate charge to gain the cover of the timber on the canyon's brink, and twice in equally desperate efforts to turn the rifleman's position by following the looping of the trail. Notwithstanding the bad marksmanship of the garrison the position has proved--still proves--impregnable; and the end of the half-hour leaguer finds the intrenched one secure in his position, with the enemy in permanent check, and only his own waning strength to warn him that the pass cannot be held indefinitely. But this warning is imperative, as is that other of the fast westering sun; and when a movement on the opposite height gives him one more chance to announce volley-wise that the pass is still manned, he retreats swiftly, remounts after more than one exhaustive effort, and canters down the farther windings of the trail into a valley shut in on all sides by snow-coifed sentinel mountains, and with a brawling stream plunging through its midst; into this valley and down the length of it to a narrowing of the stream path, where a rude cabin, with its door hanging awry, looks across from the heel of the western cliff to the gray dump of a tunnel-opening in the opposite mountain side. The sun has already set for the lower slopes of the shut-in valley, and the frosty breath of the snow-capped sentinel peaks is in the air. At the door of the cabin the winner in the desperate race slides from the saddle. His knees are quaking, and because of them he stumbles and falls over the log doorstone, cursing his helplessness in the jolt of it. But there remains much to be done, and the sunset glories are changing from crimson and dusky gold on the snow-caps to royal purple in the shadow of the western cliff. With many slippings and stumblings he crosses the foot-log and climbs to the level of the tunnel-opening opposite, constraining the unwilling horse to follow. With a stone for a hammer he tacks a square of paper on one of the struts of the timbered entrance; and after another struggle feebly fierce the horse is dragged into the low-browed cavern and tethered out of harm's way. By the leaden-footed step of the man one would say that the last reserves of determination have been called in and are far spent; but he will not desist. With four stakes taken from the heap of wooden treenails used in the tunnel timbering he drags himself from corner to corner of the claim, pacing its boundaries and marking the points of intersection with dogged exactness. When the final stake is driven he can no longer stand upright, and is fain to win back to the tunnel on hands and knees with groans and futile tooth-gnashings. But the aftermath of the task still waits; shall wait until he has barricaded the tunnel's mouth with an up-piling of timbers, fragments of rock, odds and ends movable, with a counterscarp of loose earth to make it bullet-proof--the last scraped up with bleeding hands from the débris at the head of the dump. This done, he drags himself over the barricade, finds the saddle-bags again, and strikes a light. The candle flame is but a yellow puncture in the thick gloom of the tunnel, but it serves his purpose, which is to scrawl a few words on a blank page of an engineer's note-book,--sole reminder of the thrifty forecast of saner days beyond the descent into the nether depths. An imprecation bubbles up to punctuate the signature; a pointless cursing, which is no more than a verbal mask for a groan extorted by the agony of the effort to guide the pencil point. The malison strings itself out into broken sentences of justification; mere ravings, as pointless as the curse. "Finders are keepers,--that's the law of the strong. 'He that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger.' I found it and gave it back, and he drowned it in a bottle.... Now it is mine; and to-morrow I'll be dead. But she'll know that I haven't--that I haven't--quite--forgotten." To pain-blurred eyes the candle flame has faded to a nebulous point in the darkness, but still the light suffices. He has neither envelope nor sealing-wax, but he makes shift to seal the book with a wrapping of twine and a bit of pitch scraped from the nearest strut in the timbering. After which he seeks and finds the crevice in which Garvin kept his explosives; and when the note-book is safely hidden, drops exhausted behind the breastwork, with the rifle at his shoulder, beginning his vigil what time the first silvery flight of moon-arrows is pouring upon cliff-face and cabin opposite. CHAPTER XXI IT is a fact no less deprecable than true that events in orderly sequence do not always lend themselves to the purposes of a chronicler who would be glad to prick in his climaxes with a pen borrowed of the dramatist. With some little labor, and the help of not a few coincidences which may fairly be called fortuitous, the march of events in the life of Henry Jeffard has led up to a point at which the fictional unities pause, confidently anticipative of a climax which shall reëcho the heroic struggle of the Spartan few at Thermopylæ, or the daring-do of the Pontine Horatius. But the facts are inexorable and altogether disappointing. With prologue and stage-setting for a Sophoclean tragedy, the piece halts; hangs in the wind at the critical conjuncture like a misstaying ship; becomes, in point of fact, a mere modern comedy-drama with a touch of travesty in it; and the unities, fictional and dramatic, shriek and expire. This humiliating failure of the dramatic possibilities turns upon an inconsequent pivot-pin in the human mechanism, namely, the lack of courage in the last resort in men of low degree. To kidnap a drunken man or to pistol an unarmed one is one thing; to force a sky-pitched Gibraltar defended by a resolute fellow-being with a modern high-power repeating rifle and an itching trigger-finger is quite another. This was the conservative point of view of the aliased ones; and after the final futile attempt to gain the trail and the cover of the timber, the twain held a council of war, vilified their luck, and sounded a retreat. Thus it came about that Denby and his man, riding tantivy to the rescue, met the raiders two miles down the trail Aspenward; and having this eye-assurance that the foray had failed, the promoter was minded to go back to town to await Jeffard's return. But, having the eye-assurance, he was not unwilling to add another. Bartrow's telegram had named the figure of the assay; the incredible number of dollars and cents to the ton to be sweated out of the bonanza drift. Now assays are assays, but investment is shy of them, demanding mill-runs, and conservative estimates based on averages; and pondering these things the rescuer reverted to his normal character of capitalist in ordinary to moneyless bonanzists, and determined to go on and see for himself. Accordingly, Jeffard's unexpected reinforcements pressed forward while the enemy was in full tide of retreat; and a short half-hour later the squadron of retrieval came near to paying the penalty of an unheralded approach, since it was upon the promoter and his henchman that Jeffard poured his final volley. So much for the tragi-comedy of the sky-pitched Gibraltar, which made a travesty of Jeffard's heart-breaking efforts to fortify himself in the old tunnel. And as for the apparent determination to die open-eyed and militant behind the barricade, the unromantic truth again steps in to give the _coup de grace_ to the disappointed unities. There is a limit to human endurance, and the hardiest soldier may find it on a field as yet no more than half won. Fastings and fierce hurryings, wounds, physical and spiritual, and ruthless determination may ride roughshod over Nature's turnpike; but Nature will demand her toll. For this cause Jeffard saw no more than the first flight of moon-arrows glancing from the face of the western cliff. Long before the Selenean archers were fairly warmed to their work he had fallen asleep, with his cheek on the carved grip of the borrowed rifle; a lost man to all intents and purposes, if the fictional unities had not been put to flight by the commonplace fact. Behold him, then, awakening what time the volleying sun has changed places with the moon-archers. The barricaded tunnel has a dim twilight of its own, but out and abroad the day is come, and the keen air is tinnient with the fine treble of the mountain morning. The slanting sun-fire spatters the gray cliff opposite, and a spiral of blue smoke is curling peacefully above the chimney of the cabin. And in the shallows of the stream a man, who is neither desperado black or red, is bathing the legs of a horse. Under such conditions one may imagine a recreant sentry rubbing his eyes to make sure, and presently climbing the barricade to slide down the dump into parley range, question-charged. Denby unbent, smiling. "Didn't I say that you were an inconsiderate madman? You had to sleep or die." "But when did you get here?" "About the time the proxies would have arrived, if you hadn't succeeded in discouraging them. It was late; much later than it would have been if you hadn't given us such an emphatic stand-off at the summit. Come across and have some breakfast with us." Jeffard found the foot-log and made shift to walk it. "Did I fire at you? I thought it was another charge coming. They had been trying to rush me." "So I inferred. We camped down out of range and gave you plenty of time. You may be no marksman, but"--He finished the sentence in dumb show by taking off his hat and pointing to a bullet score in the crown of it. "A few inches lower and you would have spoiled your first chance of capitalizing the Midas. How do you feel this morning?" "A bit unresponsive, but better than I have a right to expect. What became of the two raiders?" "We met them riding a steeplechase toward town. You discouraged them, as I said. From Donald's count of the bullet-splashes on that bald summit you must have gotten in your work pretty lively." Jeffard lowered the hammer of the rifle and emptied the magazine. "It's a good weapon," he said. "I believe I could learn to shoot with it, after a while. Will you sell it?" "Not to any one. But I'll make you a present of it. Let's go in and see what Donald has found in his saddle-bags. It's a fine breakfast morning." So they went into the cabin and sat at meat on either side of a rough table of Garvin's contriving, and were served by a solemn-faced Scot, whose skill as a camp cook was commensurate with his ability to hold his tongue. Notwithstanding the presumable urgencies the breakfast talk was not of business. Jeffard would have had it so, but Denby forbade. "Not yet," he objected. "Not until you have caught up with yourself. After breakfast Donald will sling you a blanket hammock under the trees, and you shall sleep the clock around. Then you'll feel fit, and we can talk futures if you please." If there were a prompting of suspicion in the glance with which Jeffard met this proposal it remained in abeyance. With every embrasure gunned and manned the fortress of this life must always be pregnable on the human side; in the last resort one must trust something to the chance of loyalty in the garrison. Wherefore Jeffard accepted the promoter's pipe and the blanket hammock, and fell asleep while Donald was pulling down the barricade at the tunnel's mouth preparatory to liberating the neighing horse stabled in the heading. It was evening, just such another as that one three months agone, in the heart of which two men had sat at the cabin door looking a little into each other's past, when Jeffard opened his eyes. The three horses, saddled, but with loose cinches, were cropping the sun-cured grass on the level which served as a dooryard for the cabin; and an appetizing smell of frying bacon was abroad in the air. Jeffard sat up yawning, and the promoter rose from the doorstep and rapped the ashes from his pipe. "Feel better?" he queried. "I feel like a new man. I hadn't realized that I was so nearly spent." "That is why I prescribed the blanket. Another day would have finished you." Jeffard slid out of the hammock and went to plunge his face and hands in the stream; after which they ate again as men who postpone the lesser to the greater; with Donald the taciturn serving them, and hunger waiving speech and ceremony. It was yet no more than twilight when the meal was finished; and Denby found a candle and matches in the henchman's saddlebags. "If you are ready, we'll go up to the tunnel and have another look at the lead before we go," he said. "I have been examining it to-day, and I'll make you a proposition on the ground, if you like." Jeffard pieced out the inference with the recollection of the saddled horses. "Do we go back to-night?" "Yes; if you are good for it. It has been a pretty warm day for the season, and we are like to have more of them. There is a good bit of snow on the trail, and if it softens we shall be shut in. That's one reason, and another is this: if we make a deal and mean to get any machinery in here before snow flies and the range is blocked, we've got to be about it." Jeffard nodded acquiescence, and they fared forth to cross the foot-log and toil up the shelving slope of the gray dump. It was a stiff climb for a whole man, and at the summit Jeffard sat down with his hands to his head and his teeth agrind. "By Jove! but that sets it in motion again in good shape!" he groaned. "Sit down here and let's talk it out in the open. I don't care to burrow." Denby pocketed his candle, and they sat together on the brink of the dump, with their backs to the opening; and thus it chanced that neither of them saw a shadowy figure skulking among the firs beside the tunnel's mouth. When they began to talk the figure edged nearer, flitting ghostlike from tree to tree, and finally crouching under the penthouse of the tunnel timbering. The crimson and mauve had faded out of the western sky when the two at the dump-head rose, and Jeffard said: "Your alternative is fair enough. It's accepted, without conditions other than this--that you will advance me a few hundred dollars for my own purposes some time within thirty days." "You needn't make that a condition; I should be glad to tide you over in any event. But I am sorry you won't let me buy in. As I have said, there is enough here for both of us." The aftermath of the getting up was a sharp agony, and Jeffard had his hands to his head again. When he answered it was to say:-- "I sha'n't sell. There are reasons, and you may take this for the lack of a better. A while back, when a single meal in the day was sometimes beyond me, I used to say that if the tide should ever turn I'd let the money go on piling up and up until there was no possibility of hunger in an eternity of futures. You say the tide has turned." "It has, for a fact; and I don't know that I blame you. If it were mine I should probably try to keep it whole." Jeffard went on as one who follows out his own train of thought regardless of answers relevant or impertinent. "I said that, and I don't know that I have changed my mind. But before we strike hands on the bargain it may be as well to go back to the question which you were good enough to leave in abeyance yesterday." "The question of ethics?" "Yes." "I am going to take something for granted, if you don't choose to be frank with me." "It will be safer to take nothing for granted." "But the claim is yours?" "Legally, yes; there will be no litigation." "But honestly, as man to man." Denby put his hands on the wounded man's shoulders, and turned him about so that the fading light in the west fell upon his face. "My dear fellow, I've known you but a day, but your face isn't the face of a scoundrel. I can't believe that the man who made the magnificent fight that you did would make it to overreach his partner." Jeffard turned aside, with a backward step that freed him from the friendly hands. Twice he tried to speak, and at the third attempt the words came but haltingly. "It will be better in the end--better for all concerned--if you--if you do believe it. Believe it, and cause it to be believed, if you choose. I have counted the cost, and am ready to take the consequences." Denby thrust his hands into his pockets and began to tramp, three paces and a turn, across and across the narrow embankment. A little light was beginning to sift in between the man and his mystery, but it was not of the sun. "Mr. Jeffard, I'd like to ask a question. You needn't answer it if you don't want to. Do you know who drove this tunnel?" "I do." "Was it the man who raced you from Leadville to Aspen, and who shot you when you tried to bluff him by making him believe that you had already located the claim in your own name?" "It was." "Then, to put it plainly, you are the aggressor, after all. You have really jumped your partner's claim." The promoter stopped and faced his man, and the skulker at the tunnel's mouth crept nearer, as a listener who may not miss a word. "That is what men will say, I suppose; and I shall not contradict them. He has forfeited his right." Jeffard said it with eyes downcast, but there was no incertitude in the words. "Forfeited his right? How? By shooting at you in a very natural fit of frenzied rage? I can't believe that you realize the enormity of this thing, Mr. Jeffard. You are new to the West. It is true that the law can't touch you, but public opinion, the sentiment of a mining region, will brand you as the basest of thieves." "That is the public's privilege. I shall not attempt to defend myself--to you, or to any one. The consequences are mine to suffer or to ignore." "You can't ignore them. Your best friends will turn upon you, and mining-camp justice will not only acquit the man who tried to kill you--it will fight for him and condemn you." "But yesterday you said it would have given me the benefit of the doubt and lynched him. I can fight my own battle." "Yes, I did say so; and, lacking your own evidence against yourself, it will condemn him yet. Had you thought of that?" "Mr. Denby, I have answered your questions because you had a right to ask them. To the public I shall neither deny nor affirm." "Then you'll have the choice of posing as a scoundrel on the one hand, or of consenting to the death or imprisonment of a measurably innocent man on the other. I don't envy you." "It is my own affair, as you were good enough to say yesterday. Do you wish to withdraw your proposal?" Denby took time to think about it, pacing out his decision what time the moon was beginning to silver the western snow-caps. "No; as I have made it and you have accepted it, the proposal is merely a matter of service to be rendered and paid for; I furnish the capital to work the mine for a year for a certain portion of the output. But if you had taken me up on the original proposition, I should beg to be excused. Under the circumstances, I shouldn't care to be a joint owner with you." "You couldn't be," said Jeffard briefly; "you, nor any one else." "Well, we are agreed as to that. Shall we go now? Donald is waiting, and the moon will be up by the time we strike the trail." "One moment; I have left something in the tunnel." Jeffard turned back toward the timbered archway, and the promoter went with him. In the act a shadowy figure darted into the mouth of gloom and was seen by Denby. "What was that?" "I didn't see anything." Denby stumbled over the remains of the barricade. "That must have been what I saw," he said. "But at the moment I could have sworn it was a man dodging into the tunnel." A few feet from the entrance Jeffard felt along the wall for the crevice, found it, and presently thrust the note-book into Denby's hands. "You may remember that I told you I should leave my will here against a contingency which seemed altogether probable. In view of what has since passed between us, I sha'n't hold you to your promise to act as my executor; but if anything happens to me I shall be glad if you will send that book under seal to Dick Bartrow. You will do that much for me, won't you?" "Yes." "That is all; now I am at your service." A few minutes later the cabin and the bit of dry sward in front of it were deserted, and the whispering firs had swallowed up the last faint echoes of minishing hoof-beats. Not until the silence was unbroken did the shadowy figure venture out of its hiding in the tunnel to stumble blindly down the dump, across the foot-log, and so to the cabin door. Here it went down on hands and knees to quarter the ground like a hungry animal in search of food. Unhappily, the simile is no simile. It was James Garvin, who, for the better part of two days, had not tasted food. And when finally the patient search was rewarded by the retrieval of a few scraps of bacon and pan-bread, the broken meats of Donald's supper-table, the starving fugitive fell upon them with a beastlike growl of triumph. But in the midst of the scanty feast he dropped the bread and meat to cover his face with his hands, rocking back and forth in his misery and sobbing like a child. "Oh, my Gawd!--ef I hadn't hearn it out'n his own mouth ... and me a-lovin' him thess like he'd been blood-kin to me! Oh, my Gawd!" CHAPTER XXII IT was rather late in the autumn, too late to admit of a rush of prospectors to the shut-in valley, when the fame of the new gold-bearing district in the Elk Mountains began to be noised about. As bonanza fame is like to be, the earlier bruitings of it were as nebulous as the later and more detailed accounts were fabulous. Some garbled story of the fight for possession found its way into the newspapers; and since this had its starting-point in the resentment of the Aspen newsgatherer who had been so curtly sent to the right-about by Jeffard, it became the basis of an accusation, which was scathing and fearless, or covert and retractable, in just proportion to the obsequiousness of the journalistic accusers. In its most favorable rendering this story was an ugly one; but here again chance, in the form of reportorial inaccuracy, was kind to Jeffard. From his boyhood people had been stumbling over his name; and with ample facilities for verifying the spelling of it the reporters began, continued, and ended by making it "Jeffers," "Jeffreys," and in one instance even "Jefferson." Hence, with Bartrow as the single exception, no one who knew Jeffard identified him with the man who had figured as the putative villain-hero in the fight for possession. Bartrow read the account of the race, the shooting affray, and the subsequent details of the capitalizing of the Midas, with Denby as its promoter and Jeffard as sole owner, with judgment suspended. It was not in him to condemn any man unheard; and Jeffard had put himself safely out of reach of queryings, friendly or otherwise, by burying himself for the winter with the development force which the promoter had hurried across the range before the snows isolated the shut-in valley. Later, when he had to pay the note in the Leadville bank, Bartrow had a twinge of dismay; but again invincible fairness came to the rescue, and he lifted the dishonored paper at a time when he could ill afford to, promising himself that this, too, should be held in solution; should not even be precipitated in confidence with any one. This promise he kept until Constance Elliott plumbed the depths of him, as she was prone to do when he gave evidence of having anything to conceal. The occasion was the midwinter ball of the First Families of Colorado; and having more than one score to settle with the young miner, who had lately been conspicuous only by his absence, Connie had arbitrarily revised Bartrow's programme,--which contemplated a monopoly of all the dances Miss Van Vetter would give him. "Well, catalogue 'em--what have I done?" demanded the unabashed one, when she had marched him into that particular alcove of the great hotel dining-room which did temporary duty as a conservatory. "Several things." Stephen Elliott's daughter was in the mood called pertness in disagreeable young women. "Have you quite forgotten that I stand _in loco parentis_ to the giddy and irresponsible young person whose card you have covered with your scrawly autographs?" The idea was immensely entertaining to the young miner, who laughed so heartily that a sentimental couple billing and cooing behind the fan-palms took wing immediately. "You? you chaperoning Myr--Miss Van Vetter? That's a good one!" "It's a bad one, where you are concerned. What do you mean by such an inconsistent breach of the proprieties?" "Inconsistent? I'm afraid I don't quite catch on." "Yes, inconsistent. You bury yourself for months on end in that powder-smelly old tunnel of yours, and about the time we've comfortably forgotten you, you straggle in with a dress-coat on your arm and proceed to monopolize one of us. What do you take us for?" It was on the tip of Bartrow's tongue to retort that he would very much like to take Miss Van Vetter for better or worse, but he had not the courage of his convictions. So he kept well in the middle of the road, and made the smoke-blackened tunnel his excuse for the inconsistency. "It isn't 'months,' Connie; or at least it's only two of them. You know I'd be glad enough to chase myself into Denver every other day if I could. But it is coming down to brass tacks with us in the Little Myriad, and I've just got to keep my eye on the gun." Whereupon pertness, or the Constance Elliott transmutation of it, vanished, and she made him sit down. "Tell me all about the Little Myriad, Dick. Is it going to keep its promise?" The Little Myriad's owner sought and found a handkerchief, using it mopwise. Curious questions touching the prospects of his venture on Topeka Mountain were beginning to have a perspiratory effect upon him. "I wish I could know for sure, Connie. Sometimes I think it will; and some other times I should think it means to go back on me,--if I dared to." "Isn't the lead still well-defined?" Constance dropped into the mining technicalities with the easy familiarity of one born in the metalliferous West. "It is now; but two months ago, or thereabouts, it pinched out entirely. That is why I hibernated." "Was the last mill-run encouraging?" "N-no, I can't say that it was. The ore--what little there is of it--seems to grade rather lower as we go in. But it's a true fissure, and it must begin to go the other way when we get deep enough." For a half-score of fan-sweeps Connie was silent. Then: "Is the purse growing light, Dickie? Because if it is, poppa's is still comfortably fat." Bartrow laughed in a way to indicate that the strain was lessened for the moment. "I believe you and your father would give away the last dollar you have in the world. But it hasn't come to a fresh loan with me yet." "When it does, you know where to float it." "When it does, I sha'n't rob my best friends. If I have to borrow more money for development, I'm afraid the loan will be classed as 'extra hazardous.' But you said there were several things. What else have I done?" "The next is something you haven't done. You haven't written a line to Mr. Lansdale in all these weeks,--not even to thank him for taking your foolish telegram about the Margaret Gannon crisis seriously. And he tells me he has written you twice." "I'm a miserable sinner, and letter writing isn't in me. Is Lansdale here? I'll go and square myself in the most abject formula you can suggest." "He isn't here. He is out at Bennett on a ranch." "On a ranch in midwinter? Who on top of earth told him to do that?" "One of the doctors. I wanted to dissuade him, but I hadn't the heart to try. He is so anxious to live." "Naturally." Bartrow eyed his companion in a way which was meant to be a measure of the things he knew and would by no means tell, but Constance was opening and shutting her fan with inthought paramount, and saw it not. Whereat Bartrow was brutal enough to say: "Is he going to make a go of it?" "Oh, I hope so, Dick! It is such a pathetic struggle. And he is like all the others who are best worth keeping alive: he won't let any one help him. Just fancy him working for his board on a dreary prairie ranch! The monotony of it is enough to kill him." "I should say so. Lamb ranch, I suppose?" "Yes." "Then I can imagine the hilarity of it. Up at all sorts of hours and in all weathers feeding and watering. That isn't what he needs. A wagon trip in summer, with good company, lots of outdoors, and nothing to do but eat and sleep, would be more like it. If he pulls through to spring, and the Myriad will let up on me for a month or two, I don't know but I shall be tempted to make him try it." "Oh, Dick! would you?" There was a quick upflash of wistful emotion in the calm gray eyes. Bartrow set it down to a fresh growth in perspicacity on his own part that he was able to interpret it--or thought he was. But the little upflash went out like a taper in the dark with the added afterthought. "It's no use, Dick. The Myriad won't let you." "Perhaps it will; though I'm bound to admit that it doesn't look that way at present. Now, if Jef--" From what has gone before it will be understood that any mention of Jeffard for good or ill was the one thing which Bartrow had promised himself to avoid at all hazards; wherefore he broke the name in the midst, coughed, dragged out his watch,--in short, did what manlike untactfulness may do to create a diversion, and at the end of it found the unafraid eyes fixed upon him with mandatory orders in them. "Go on," she said calmly. "If Mr. Jeffard"-- "Really, Connie, I must break it off short; my time's up. Don't you hear the orchestra? Miss Van Vetter will"-- But Connie was not to be turned aside by any consideration for Bartrow's engagements or her own; nor yet by the inflow into the alcove-conservatory of sundry other fanning couples lately freed from the hop-and-slide of the two-step. Nor yet again by the appearance of young Mr. Theodore Calmaine, who came up behind Bartrow and was straightway transfixed and driven forth with pantomimic cut and thrust. "Myra will have no difficulty in finding a partner. Don't be foolish, Dick. I have known all along that you have learned something about Mr. Jeffard which you wouldn't tell me. You may remember that you have persistently ignored my questions in your answers to my letters,--and I paid you back by telling you little or nothing about Myra. Now what were you going to say?" "I was going to say that if Jeffard were like what he used to be, he would do for Lansdale what I shall probably not be able to do." "What do you know about Mr. Jeffard?" "What all the world knows--and a little more. Of course you have read what the newspapers had to say?" "I have never seen a mention of his name." "Why, you must have; they were full of it a month or two ago, and will be again as soon as the range opens and we find out what the big bonanza has been doing through the winter. You don't mean to say that you didn't read about the free-gold strike in the Elk Mountains, and the locomotive race, and the shooting scrape in the hotel at Aspen, and all that?" The steady eyes were veiled and Connie's breath came in nervous little gasps. Any man save downright Richard Bartrow would have made a swift diversion, were it only to an open window or back to the ballroom. But he sat stocklike and silent, letting her win through the speechlessness of it to the faltered reply. "I--I saw it; yes. But the name of that man was--was not Jeffard." "No, it was Jeffers, or anything that came handy in the newspaper accounts. But that was a reporter's mistake." "Dick,"--the steadfast eyes were transfixing him again,--"are you quite sure of that?" "I ought to be. I was the man who helped him out at the pinch and got him started on the locomotive chase." "You helped him?--then all those things they said about him were true?" It was Bartrow's turn to hesitate. "I--I'm trying not to believe that, Connie." "But you know the facts; or at least, more of them than the newspapers told. Did the claim really belong to him, or to James Garvin?" Bartrow crossed his legs, uncrossed them, and again had recourse to his watch. "I wish you'd leave the whole business up in the air, Connie, the way I'm trying to. It doesn't seem quite fair, somehow, to condemn him behind his back." "But the facts," she insisted. "You know them, don't you?" "Yes; and they're against him." Bartrow confessed it in sheer desperation. "The claim was Garvin's; Jeffard not only admitted it, but he started out on the chase with the declared determination of standing between Garvin and those two blacklegs who were trying to plunder him. That's all; that's as far as my facts go. Beyond that you--and the newspapers--know as much as I do." "Not quite all, Dick. You say you helped him; that means that you lent him money, or borrowed it for him. Did he ever pay it back?" Bartrow got upon his feet at that and glowered down upon her with mingled chagrin and awe in gaze and answer. "Say, Connie, you come precious near to being uncanny at times, don't you know it? That was the one thing I didn't mean to tell any one. Yes, I borrowed for him; and no, he didn't pay it back. That's all--all of the all. If you put me in a stamp-mill you couldn't pound out anything else. Now, for pity's sake, let me get back to Miss Van Vetter before I fall in with the notion that I'm too transparent to be visible to the naked eye." She rose and took his arm. "You're good, Dickie," she said softly; "much too good for this world. I'm sorry for you, because it earns you so many buffetings." "And you think I'm in for another on Jeffard's account." "I am sure you are--now. The last time I saw him he wore a mask; a horrible mask of willful degradation and cynicism and self-loathing; but I saw behind it." They were making a slow circuit of the ballroom in search of Connie's cousin, and the throng and the music isolated them. "What did you see?" "I saw the making of a strong man; strong for good or for evil; a man who could compel the world-attitudes that most of us have to sue for, or who would be strong enough on the evil side to flout and ignore them. I thought then that he was at the parting of the ways, but it seems I was mistaken,--that the real balancing moment came with what poppa calls the 'high-mountain bribe,'--Satan's offer of the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them." Now, a thronged ballroom is scarcely a fit place for heart-to-heart outreachings; but there be loyal hearts who are not constrained by their encompassments, and Bartrow was of that brotherhood. They had attained a corner where one might swing a short-sword without fear of beheading the nearest of the dancers or out-sitters, and he faced about and took both of Connie's hands in his. "Do you know, little sister, I'm awfully glad you're able to talk that way about him. There was a time when I began to be afraid--for your sake first, and afterward for"-- It is conceivable that the frankest of young women may have some reserves of time and place, if not of subjects, and before honest Dick could finish, Constance had freed herself and was reproaching young Calmaine for not seeking her out for the dance in process,--which was his. Teddy's apology had in it the flavor of long acquaintance and the insolence thereof. "You're a cool one," he said, when they had left Bartrow behind. "As if I didn't stand for five good minutes at the door of that conservatory place, with you eye-pistoling and daggering me to make me go away!" Thinking about it afterward, Bartrow wondered a little that Connie seemed bent on ignoring him through the remainder of the functional hours, large and small, but so it was. And when finally he was constrained to put Miss Van Vetter in the carriage, Connie's good-night and good-by were of the briefest. Miss Van Vetter, too, was silent on the homeward drive, and this Connie remarked, charging it openly to Dick's account when they were before the fire in Myra's room contemplating the necessity of going to bed. "No, Mr. Bartrow was all that the most exacting person could demand,--and more," said Miss Van Vetter, going to the mirror to begin the relaxing process. "It was something he told me." "About Mr. Jeffard?" "Yes; how did you know?" "I didn't know--I guessed." "Isn't it dreadful!" "No. Some of the other things he did might have been that; but this is unspeakable." Myra turned her back upon the mirror and came to stand behind Connie's chair with her arms about her cousin's neck. "Connie, dear, do you know that one time I was almost afraid that you,--but now I am glad,--glad that your point of view is--is quite extrinsic, you know." Connie's gaze was upon the fire in the grate, fresh-stirred and glowing, a circumstance which may have accounted for the sudden trembling of the eyelids and the upwelling of tears in the steadfast eyes. And as for the nervous little quaver in her voice, there was fatigue to answer for that. "I--I'm so glad you all take that for granted," she said. "I don't know what I should do if you didn't." And a little later Myra went to bed and to sleep, wondering if, after all, there were not secret places in the heart of her transparent kinswoman which evaded the search-warrant of cousinly disinterest. CHAPTER XXIII THE obsequious waiter had cleared the table and brought in the dessert, and was hovering in the middle distance with two cigars in a whiskey glass. The persiflant young people at the other end of the table rose and went away, leaving a grateful silence behind them; and the clerical gentleman at Lansdale's right folded his napkin in absent-minded deference to home habit, and slipped sidewise out of his chair as if reluctant to mar the new-born hush. Bartrow was down from the mine on the ostensible business of restocking the commissariat department of the Little Myriad,--a business which, prior to Miss Van Vetter's Denver year, had transacted itself indifferently well by letter,--and Lansdale was dining with him at the hotel by hospitable appointment. There were months between this and their last meeting, an entire winter, in point of fact; but it is one of the compensations of man-to-man friendships that they ignore absences and bridge intervals smoothly, uncoupling and upcoupling again with small jar of accountings for the incidents of the lacuna. Because of the persiflant young people, the fire of query and rejoinder had been the merest shelling of the woods on either side; but with the advent of quiet Bartrow said: "Your winter on the lamb-ranch didn't do you much good, did it?" "Think not?" Lansdale looked up quickly, with a pathetic plea for heartening in the deep-set eyes of him. "I was hoping you'd say it had. I feel stronger--at times." Bartrow saw the plea and the pathos of it, and added one more to the innumerable contemnings of his own maladroitness. He was quite sure of his postulate, however,--as sure as he was of the unnecessary cruelty of setting it in words. Lansdale was visibly failing. The clean-shaven face was thin to gauntness, and the dark eyes were unnaturally bright and wistful. Bartrow bribed the ubiquitous waiter to remove himself, making the incident an excuse for changing the subject. "Never saw or heard anything more of Jeffard, did you?" he said, pitching the conversational quoit toward a known peg of common interest, and taking it for granted that Lansdale, like Connie, had not read the proletary's name into the newspaper misspellings. "Not a thing. And I have often wondered what happened." "Then Connie hasn't told you?" "Miss Elliott? No; I didn't know she knew him." "She met him a time or two; which is another way of saying that she knows him better than we do. She's a whole assay outfit when it comes to sizing people up." "What was her opinion of Jeffard?" Lansdale was curious to know if it confirmed his own. "Oh, she thinks he is a grand rascal, of course,--as everybody does." "Naturally," said Lansdale, having in mind the proletary's later reincarnations as vagrant and starveling. "You didn't see much of him after he got fairly into the toboggan and on the steeper grades, did you?" "Here in Denver?--no. But what I did see was enough to show that he was pretty badly tiger-bitten. You told me afterward that he took the post-graduate course in his particular specialty." "He did; sunk his shaft, as you mining folk would say, straight on down to the chaotic substrata; pawned himself piecemeal to feed the animals, and went hungry between times by way of contrast." "Poor devil!" said Bartrow, speaking in the past tense. "Yes, in all conscience; but not so much for what he suffered as for what he was." The distinction was a little abstruse for a man whose nayword was obviousness, but for the better part of a year Bartrow had been borrowing of Miss Van Vetter; among other things some transplantings of subtlety. "That's where we come apart," he objected, with amiable obstinacy. "You think the root of the thing is in the man,--has been in him all along, and only waiting for a chance to sprout. Now I don't. I think it's in the atmosphere; in the--the"-- "Environment?" suggested Lansdale. "Yes, I guess that's the word; something outside of the man; something that he didn't make, and isn't altogether to blame for, and can't always control." The man with a moiety of the seer's gift suffered his eyebrows to arch query-wise. "Doesn't that ask for a remodeling of the accepted theory of good and evil?" "No, you don't!" laughed Bartrow. "You are not going to pull me in over my head, if I know it. But I'll wrestle with you from now till midnight on my own ground. You take the best fellow in the world, brought up on good wholesome bread and meat and the like, and stop his rations for awhile. Then, when he is hungry enough, you give him a rag to chew, and he'll proceed to chew it,--not necessarily because he likes the taste of the rag, or because he was born with the rag-chewing appetite, but simply for the reason that you have put it in his mouth, and, being hungry, he's got to chew something. Jeffard is a case in point." "Let us leave Jeffard and the personal point of view out of the question and stand it upon its own feet," rejoined Lansdale, warming to the fray. "Doubtless Jeffard's problem is divisible by the common human factor, whatever that may be, but your theory makes it too easy for the evil-doer. Consequently I can't admit it,--not even in Jeffard's case." "I could make you admit it," retorted Bartrow, with generous warmth, forgetting the dishonored note in the Leadville bank, and remembering only the year agone partnership in brother-keeping. "You can size people up ten times to my once,--you ought to; it's right in your line,--but I know Jeffard worlds better than you do, and I could tell you things about him that would make you weep. Since he did those things I've had a rattling good chance to change my mind about him, but I'm not going to do it till I have to. I'm going to keep on believing that away down deep under this devil's-drift of--what was it you called it?--environment, there's a streak of good clean ore. It may take the stamp-mill or the smelter to get it out, but it's there all the same. He may fall down on you and me and all of his friends at any one of a dozen pinches,--he has fallen down on me, and pretty middling hard, too,--but there will come a pinch sometime that will pull him up short, and then you'll see what is in the lower levels of him,--what was there all the time, waiting for somebody to sink a shaft deep enough to tap it." Lansdale took the cigar Bartrow was proffering and clipped the end of it, reflectively deliberate. He was silent so long that Bartrow said: "Well? you don't believe it, eh?" "I wouldn't say that," Lansdale rejoined abstractedly; "anyway, not of Jeffard. Perhaps you are right. He has given me the same impression at times, but he was always saying or doing something immediately afterward to obliterate it. But I was wondering why you prophesy so confidently about a man who, for aught we know, took himself out of the world the better part of a year ago." "Suicided?--not much! He's alive all right; very much alive and very much on top, as far as money is concerned. You don't read the papers, I take it?" Lansdale's smile was of weariness. "Being at present a reporter on one of them I read them as little as may be. What should I have read that I didn't?" "To begin back a piece, you should have read last fall about the big free-gold strike in the Elk Mountains, and an exciting little scrap between two men to get the first location on it." "I remember that." "Well, one of the men--the successful one--was Jeffard; our Jeffard. Your newspaper accomplices didn't spell his name right,--won't spell it right yet,--but it's Henry Jeffard, and yesterday's 'Coloradoan' says he's on his way to Denver to play leading man in the bonanza show." Lansdale went silent what time it took to splice out the past with the present. After which he said: "I understand now why Miss Elliott condemns him, but not quite clearly why you defend him. As I remember it, the man who got possession of the Midas posed as a highwayman of the sort that the law can't punish. What has he to say for himself?" Bartrow shook his head. "I don't know. I haven't seen him since one day last fall; the day of the locomotive chase." "Did you know then that he was going to steal his partner's mine?" "No. I thought then that he was going to do the other thing. And I'll not believe yet that he hasn't done the other thing. It's the finish I'm betting on. He may have flown the track at all the turns,--at this last turn as well as the others,--but when it comes to the home stretch, you watch him put his shoulder into the collar and remember what I said. I hope we'll both be there to see." "So be it," Lansdale acquiesced. "It isn't in me to smash any man's ideal. And if anything could make me have faith in my kind, I think your belief in the inherent virtue of the race would work the miracle." Bartrow laughed again, and pushed back his chair. "It does you a whole lot of good to play at being a cold-blooded man-hater, doesn't it? But it's no go. Your practice doesn't gee with your preaching. Let's go out on the porch and smoke, if it won't be too cool for you." They left the dining-room together and strolled out through the crowded lobby, lighting their cigars at the news-stand in passing. There was a convention of some sort in progress, and a sprinkling of the delegates, with red silk badges displayed, was scattered among the chairs on the veranda. Bartrow found two chairs a little apart from the decorated ones, faced them, and tilted his own against the railing. When his cigar was well alight he bethought him of a neglected duty. "By the way, old man, I've never had the grace to say 'much obliged' for your neatness and dispatch in carrying out my wire order. I suppose you've forgotten it months ago, but I haven't. It was good of you. Connie wrote me about it at the time, and she said a whole lot of pretty things about the way you climbed into the breach." "Did she?" Lansdale's habitual reserve fell away from him like a cast garment, and if Bartrow had been less oblivious to face readings he might have seen that which would have made his heart ache. But he saw nothing and went on, following his own lead. "Yes; she said you took hold like a good fellow, and hung on like a dog to a root,--that is, she didn't say that, of course, but that was the sense of it. I'm obliged, a whole lot." "You needn't be. The obligation is on my side. It was a pleasure to try to help Miss Elliott, even if I wasn't able to accomplish anything worth mentioning." "Yes. She's good people; there's no discount on that. But say, you didn't size up Pete Grim any better than you had to. A good stiff bluff is about the only thing he can appreciate." "If you had heard me talk to him you would have admitted that I was trying to bluff him the best I knew how," said Lansdale. Bartrow laughed unfeelingly. "Tried to scare him with a lawsuit, didn't you? What do you suppose a man like Grim cares for the law? Why, bless your innocent soul, he can buy all the law he needs six days in the week and get it gratis on the seventh. But you might have fetched him down with a gun." Lansdale tried to imagine himself attempting such a thing and failed. "I'm afraid I couldn't have done that--successfully. It asks for a little practice, doesn't it? and from what I have learned of Mr. Peter Grim in my small dealings with him, I fancy he wouldn't make a very tractable lay-figure for a beginner to experiment on. But we worried the thing through after a fashion, and recovered the young woman's sewing-machine finally." "Bought Grim off, didn't you?" "That was what it amounted to. Miss Elliott's father came to the rescue." "There's a man for you!" declared Bartrow. "Built from the ground up, and white all the way through. And Connie's just like him. She's first cousin to the angels when she isn't making game of you. But I suppose you don't need to have anybody sing her praises to you at this late day." "No; that is why I say the obligation is on my side. I am indebted to your 'wire order' for more things than I could well catalogue." Bartrow rocked gently on the hinder legs of his chair, assuring himself that one of the things needed not to be listed. After which he became diplomatically abstruse on his own account. Two of the decorated ones came by, promenading arm in arm, and he waited until they were out of hearing. "Found them good people to know, didn't you? _Bueno!_ You used to hibernate a heap too much." Then, with labored indifference: "What do you think of Miss Van Vetter?" Lansdale laughed. "Whatever you would like to have me think, my dear boy. Shall I say that she is the quintessence of all the virtuous graces and the graceful virtues?--a paragon of para--" "Oh, come off!" growled the abstruse one. "You've been taking lessons of Connie. You know what I mean. Do I--that is--er--do you think I stand a ghost of a show there? Honest, now." "My dear Richard, if I could look into the heart of a young woman and read what is therein written, I could pass poverty in the street with a nod contemptuous. I'd be a made man." "Oh, you be hanged, will you? You're a wild ass of the lamb-ranches, and wisdom has shook you," Bartrow rejoined, relapsing into vituperation. "Why can't you quit braying for a minute or so and be serious? It's a serious world, for the bigger part." "Do you find it so? with a Miss Van Vetter for an eye-piece to your telescope? I am astonished." Bartrow pulled his hat over his eyes and enveloped himself in a cloud of smoke. "When you're ready to fold up your ears and be human people again, just let me know, will you?" This from the midst of the smoke-cloud. "Don't sulk, my Achilles; you shall have your Briseis,--if you can get her," laughed Lansdale. "Miss Van Vetter hasn't made a confidant of me, but I'll tell you a lot of encouraging little fibs, if that will help you." Bartrow fanned an opening in the tobacco-nimbus. "What do you think about it?" "I think I should find out for myself, if I were you," said Lansdale, with becoming gravity. "I don't believe you would." "Why?" "Miss Van Vetter is rich." "And Mr. Richard Bartrow is only potentially so. That is a most excellent reason, but I shouldn't let it overweigh common sense. From what Miss Elliott has said I infer that her cousin's fortune is not large enough to overawe the owner of a promising mine." Bartrow's chair righted itself with a crash. "That's the devil of it, Lansdale; that's just what scares me out. I've been pecking away in the Myriad for a year and a half now, and we're in something over four hundred feet--in rock, not ore. If we don't strike pay in the immediate hence I'm a ruined community. I've borrowed right and left, and piled up debt enough to keep me in a cold sweat for the next ten years. That's the chilly fact, and I leave it to you if I hadn't better take the night train and skip out for Topeka Mountain without going near Steve Elliott's." The red-badges were passing again, and Lansdale took time to consider it. The appeal threw a new side-light on the character of the young miner, and Lansdale made mental apologies for having misjudged him. When he replied it was out of the heart of sincerity. "It's a hard thing to say, but if you have stated the case impartially, I don't know but you would better do just that, Dick. From what I have seen of Miss Van Vetter, I should hazard a guess that the success or failure of the Little Myriad wouldn't move her a hair's-breadth, but that isn't what you have to consider." "No." Bartrow said it from the teeth outward, looking at his watch. "It's tough, but I guess you're right. I can just about make it if I get a quick move. Will you go down to the train with me?" Lansdale assented, and they walked the few squares to the Union Depot in silence. The narrow-gauge train was coupled and ready to leave, and Bartrow tossed his handbag to the porter of the sleeping-car. "You're a cold-blooded beggar, do you know it?" he said, turning upon Lansdale with as near an approach to petulance as his invincible good-nature would sanction. "Here I've lost a whole day and ridden a hundred and fifty miles just to get a sight of her, and now you won't let me have it." Lansdale laughed and promptly evaded the responsibility. "Don't lay it on my shoulders; I have sins enough of my own to answer for. It's a little hard, as you say, but it is your own suggestion." "Is it? I don't know about that. It has been with me for a good while, but it never knocked me quite out until I began to wonder what you'd do in my place. That settled it. And you're not out of it by a large majority. What are you going to tell them up at Elliott's?--about me, I mean." "Why should I tell them anything?" "Because you can't help yourself. Elliott knows I'm in town,--knows we were going to eat together. I met him on the way up to dinner." "Oh, I'll tell them anything you say." "Thanks. Fix it up to suit yourself,--wired to come back on first train, or something of that sort. Anything'll do; anything but the truth." Lansdale's smile was inscrutable. He was thinking how impossible it would be for the most accomplished dissembler to tell aught but the truth with Constance Elliott's calm gray eyes upon him. "I am afraid I shall make a mess of it." "If you do, I'll come back and murder you. It's bad enough as it is. I've got a few days to go on, and I don't want them to know that the jig is definitely up until it can't be helped." "Then you'd better write a note and do your own lying," said Lansdale. "I can spin fetching little fictions on paper and sign my name to them, but I'm no good at the other kind." The engine-bell clanged, putting the alternative out of the question. "That lets me out," Bartrow said. "You go up there and square it right for me; savez? And say, Lansdale, old man; don't work yourself too hard. In spite of the lamb-ranch, you look thinner than usual, and that's needless. Good-by." Bartrow wrung his friend's hand from the steps of the Pullman, and Lansdale laughed quite cheerfully. "Don't you waste any sympathy on me," he said. "I'm going to disappoint you all and get well. Good-night; and success to the Little Myriad." CHAPTER XXIV LANSDALE stood watching the two red eyes on the rear platform of the sleeping-car until the curve on the farther side of the viaduct blotted them out; after which he fell in with the tide of humanity ebbing cityward through the great arch of the station, and set out to do Bartrow's errand at the house in Colfax Avenue. On the way he found time to admire Bartrow's manliness. The little deed of self-effacement promised a much keener sense of the eternal fitness of things than he had expected to come upon, in the young miner, or in any son of the untempered wilderness. Not that the wilderness was more mercenary than the less strenuous world of an older civilization--rather the contrary; but if it gave generously it was also prone to take freely. Lansdale wrought out the antithesis as a small concession to his own point of view, and was glad to set Bartrow's self-abnegation over against it. Assuredly he would do what a friendly man might toward making good the excuses of the magnanimous one. It was Miss Van Vetter who met him at the door, and he thought he surprised a shadow of disappointment in her eyes when she welcomed him. But it was Constance who said, "Come in, Mr. Lansdale. Where is Dick?" She was holding the portière aside for him, and he made sure of his ingress before replying. Being of two minds whether to deny all previous knowledge of such a person as Richard Bartrow, or to commit himself recklessly to the hazards of equivocal explanations, he steered a middle course. "Am I my brother's keeper?" he demanded, dropping into the easy-chair which had come to be called his by right of frequent occupancy. "Oh, I hope you haven't murdered him!" said Connie, with a show of trepidation. "That's a terribly suggestive quotation." "So it is. But are not my hands clean?" He held them up for inspection. "How are you both this evening?" Connie's eyes danced. "Mr. Lansdale, do you happen to know anything about the habits of the ostrich?" Lansdale acknowledged defeat, extending his hands in mock desperation. "Put the thumbikins on if you must," he said, "but don't screw them down too hard. I couldn't tell anything but the truth if I should try." "What have you done with Dick?" "I have murdered him, as you suggested, and put his remains in a trunk and shipped them East." Miss Van Vetter looked horrified, but whether at his flippancy or at the hideous possibility, Lansdale could not determine. "But, really," Connie persisted, with a look in her eyes which would have exorcised any demon of brazenness; "you dined with him, you know." "So I did; but he had to go back to his mine on the night train. I saw him off, and he made me promise to come here and--and"-- "Square it?" Connie suggested. "That is precisely the word,--his word. And you will both bear me witness that I have done it, won't you?" Miss Van Vetter was cutting the leaves of a magazine, and she looked up to say: "That is one of the explanations which doesn't explain, isn't it?" Lansdale collapsed in the depths of the chair. "'I'm a poor unfort'net as don't know nothink,'" he quoted. "Tell me what you'd like to have me say and I'll say it." "Why did Mr. Bartrow have to go back so unexpectedly?" asked Myra. "He told Uncle Stephen he would be in Denver two or three days." Lansdale was not under bonds to keep the truthful peace at the behest of any eyes save those of Constance Elliott; wherefore he drew upon his imagination promptly, and, as it chanced, rather unfortunately. "He had a telegram from his foreman about a--a strike, I think he called it." "A strike in the Little Myriad!" This from both of the young women in chorus. Then Connie thankfully: "Oh, I'm so glad!" and Myra vindictively: "I hope he'll never give in to them!" Lansdale collapsed again. "What have I done!" he exclaimed. Constance set her cousin right, or tried to. "It isn't a strike of the men; it's pay-ore--isn't it, Mr. Lansdale?" "Now how should I know?" protested the amateur apologist. "A strike is a strike, isn't it? But I don't believe it was the good kind. He wasn't at all enthusiastic about it." "That will do," said Connie. "Poor Dick!" And Miss Van Vetter, who was not of the stony-hearted, rose and went to the piano that she might not advertise her emotion. Lansdale picked himself up out of the ruins of his attempt to do Bartrow a good turn, and hoped the worst was over. It was for the time; but later in the evening, when Myra had gone to the library for a book they had been talking about, Connie returned to the unfinished inquisition. "You know more than you have told us about Dick's trouble," she said gravely. "Is it very serious?" "Yes, rather." Lansdale made a sudden resolve to cleave to the facts in the case, telling as few of them as he might. "It wasn't a strike at all, was it?" "No; that was a little figure of speech. It is rather the lack of a strike--of the kind you meant." "Poor boy! I don't wonder that it made him want to run away. He has worked so hard and so long, and his faith in the Little Myriad has been unbounded. What will he do?" "I don't know that. In fact, I think he is not quite at the brink of things yet. But he is afraid it is coming to that." "How did he talk? Is he very much discouraged? But of course he isn't; nothing discourages him." Lansdale was looking into the compelling eyes and he forgot his rôle,--forgot that he had been giving Constance to understand that the prospective failure of the mine was the only cloud in Bartrow's sky. "I'm sorry I can't confirm that." He spoke hurriedly, hearing the rustle of Miss Van Vetter's skirts in the hall. "He decided rather suddenly,--to go back, you know. He intended coming here with me this evening. I don't think he had ever considered all the possibilities and consequences; and we were talking it over. Then he decided not to come. He is the soul of honor." Constance nodded intelligence, and made the proper diversion when her cousin came in with the book. But Miss Van Vetter had overheard the final sentence, and she put it away for future reference. Lansdale said good-night a little later, and they both went to the door with him. When he was gone Myra drew Connie into the library and made her sit down where the light from the shaded chandelier fell full upon her. "Connie, dear," she began, fixing her cousin with an inquisitorial eye, "who is 'the soul of honor'?" "It isn't nice to overhear things," said Connie pertly. "I might retort that it isn't nice to have confidences with a gentleman the moment your cousin's back is turned, but I sha'n't. Will you tell me what I want to know?" "We were talking about Dick." Myra's hands were clasped over her knee, and one daintily shod foot was tapping a tattoo on the rug. "Was it anything that I ought not to know?" Connie's pertness vanished, and the steadfast gray eyes brightened with quick upwellings of sympathy. "No, dear; it will doubtless be in everybody's mouth before many days. You remember what I told you once about Dick's prospects?--that day we were on top of El Reposo?" "Yes." "Well, I think the Little Myriad isn't going to keep its promise; Dick thinks so." Myra sat quietly under it for a little while, and then got up to go to the window. When she spoke she did not turn her head. "He will be ruined, you said. What will you do, Connie?" "I? What can I do? Poppa would lend him more money, but he wouldn't take it,--not from us." Silence while the bronze-figured clock on the mantel measured a full minute. Then:-- "There is one way you can make him take it." "How?" Myra gave a quick glance over her shoulder, as if to make sure that her cousin was still sitting under the chandelier. "He believes--and so does your father--that it is only a question of time and more money. He couldn't refuse to take his wife's money." Miss Van Vetter heard a little gasp, which, to her strained sense, seemed to be more than half a sob, and the arc-light swinging from its wire across the avenue was blurred for her. Then Connie's voice, soft and low-pitched in the silence of the book-lined room, came to her as from a great distance. "You are quite mistaken, Myra, dear; mistaken and--and very blind. Dick is my good brother,--the only one I ever had; not my father's son, but yet my brother. There has been no thought of anything else between us. Besides"-- Myra heard light footfalls and the rustle of drapery, and stole another quick glance over her shoulder. The big pivot-chair under the chandelier was empty. The door into the hall was ajar, and Connie's face, piquant with suppressed rapture, was framed in the aperture. "Besides, you good, dense, impracticable cuzzy, dear,--are you listening?--Dick is head over ears in love with--you." The door slammed softly on the final word, and there was a quick patter of flying feet on the stairs. Myra kept her place at the window; but when the arc-light had parted with its blurring aureole she drew the big pivot-chair to the desk and sat down to write. What she had in mind seemed not to say itself readily, and there was quite a pyramid of waste paper in the basket before she had finished her two letters. She left them on the hall table when she went up to her room, and Connie found them in the morning on her way to the breakfast-room to pour her father's coffee. "I wish I might read them," she said, with the mischievous light dancing in her eyes. "It's deliciously suspicious; a letter to Dick, and one to her man of business, all in a breath, and right on the heels of my little bomb-shell. If she ever tries to discipline me again,--well, she'd better not, that's all." CHAPTER XXV TWO days after his return to the mine on Topeka Mountain, Bartrow received a letter. It came up from Alta Vista by the hands of one of the workmen who had been down to the camp blacksmith shop with the day's gathering of dulled tools, and was considerably the worse for handling when it reached its destination. Connie's monogram was on the flap of the envelope, but the address was not in Connie's handwriting. So much Bartrow remarked while he was questioning the tool-carrier. "Took you a good while, didn't it? Was Pat sober to-day?" "Naw; swimmin' full, same as usual." "Spoil anything?" "Burnt up a drill 'r two, spite of all I could do. Laid off to lick me when he got through, but I lit out 'fore he got round to it." "Did, eh? It's a pity; he's a good blacksmith if he'd only let whiskey alone. Try him in the morning next time, and maybe you'll catch him sober." "Don't make any dif'rence 'bout the time o' day with him. He's full all the time, he is." Bartrow's curiosity was beginning to bestir itself, but he put it under foot till he had climbed to the three-roomed cabin on the bench above the tunnel-opening. Wun Ling was laying the table for supper, and the master of the mine sat down on the porch to read his letter. It was from Miss Van Vetter; and the glow on Bartrow's sunburned face as he read it was not altogether the ruddy reflection from the piled-up masses of sunset crimson in the western sky. "Dear Mr. Bartrow," she wrote: "Mr. Lansdale has just been here, and we made him tell us about your trouble, though he tried very hard not to. From which we infer that you didn't want us to know,--and that was wrong. If one cannot go to one's friends at such times, it is surely a very thankless world. "Constance told me some time ago that you might not be able to go on with the Little Myriad without the investment of more capital, and I have written about it to a friend of mine in the East who has money to invest. You may call it a most unwarrantable impertinence if you please, but I'm not going to apologize for it,--not here. If you would really like to humble me, I'll give you plenary indulgence when you come to see us. "I inclose my friend's Philadelphia address, and I may say with confidence that I am quite sure he will help you if you will write him. "We have abundant faith in you and in the Little Myriad. Don't think of giving up, and please don't evade us when you are next in Denver." Bartrow absorbed it by littles, and sat fingering the slip of paper with the Philadelphia address on it, quite unheedful of Wun Ling's thrice-repeated announcement that supper was ready. It was his first letter from her, and the fact was easily subversive of presence of mind. Not until the lilt of it had a little outworn itself could he bring himself down to any fair-minded consideration of the offer of help. But when it finally came to that, he put the letter in his pocket and went in to supper, smiling ineffably and shaking his head as one who has set his face flintwise against temptation. An hour later, however, when he was smoking his pipe on the porch step, the temptation beset him afresh. His faith in the ultimate success of the mine had never wavered. It was unshaken even now, when he was at the end of his resources, and a thing had happened which threatened to demand a costly change in the method of exploiting the lode. But to be confident for himself and for those who, knowing the hazard, had helped him hitherto, was one thing; and to take a stranger's money was quite another. And when the stranger chanced to be the friend of the woman he loved, a person who would invest in the Little Myriad solely on the ground of Miss Van Vetter's recommendation, the difference magnified itself until it took the shape of a prohibition. The light had faded out of the western sky, and the peaks of the main range stood out in shadowy relief against the star-dusted background. The homely noises in Wun Ling's sanctum had ceased, and silence begirt the great mountain. Bartrow tossed the extinct pipe through an open window, and began to pace the length of the slab-floored porch. It was not in him to give up without another struggle; a final struggle, he called it, though none knew better that there is no final struggle for a strong man save that which crowns perseverance with the chaplet of fruition. The temptation to grasp the hand held out to him was very subtle. If Miss Van Vetter could have been eliminated--if only the proposal had come direct from the Philadelphia capitalist, instead of through her. The sound of footsteps on the gravel at the tunnel's mouth broke into his reverie, and the figure of a man loomed dimly in the darkness at the foot of the path leading up to the cabin. It was McMurtrie, the mining engineer in charge of the Big Bonanza at Alta Vista. Bartrow called down to him. "Is that you, Mac? Don't come up; I'll be with you in a second." The engineer sat down on a tool-box and waited. "I'm a little late," he said, when Bartrow came down the path. "It's pay-day at the Bonanza. Get a lamp and let's go in and have a look at your new grief." "You didn't need to tramp up here in the dark," Bartrow rejoined, feeling in a niche in the timbering for a miner's lamp. "I'd given you up for to-night." "Oh, I said I'd come, and I'm here. I know how it feels to be on the ragged edge,--been there myself. Is that the best lamp you could find? It isn't much better than a white bean. Pick it up a little higher so I can see the wet spots. It's too chilly to go in swimming to-night." They were picking their way through the damp tunnel, Bartrow ahead with the lamp held high. The "new grief" was an apparent change in the direction of the ore-bearing crevice from its slight inclination upward to a sharp pitch downward; and Bartrow had asked McMurtrie to come up and look at it. In the heading the engineer took the lamp and made a careful examination of the rock face of the cutting, tracing the outline of the vein with the flame of the lamp, and picking off bits of the shattered rock to determine the lines of cleavage. Bartrow stood aside and waited for the verdict; waited with a tense thrill of nervousness which was quite new to him; and the monotonous drip-drip of the water percolating through the tunnel roof magnified itself into a din like the ringing of hammers upon an anvil. "Well, what do you say?" he queried, when the engineer made an end and began to fill his pipe. "You're in for it, Dick,--here, hold this lamp a minute, will you? It's a pretty well-defined dip in the formation, and I'm afraid it has come to stay. That means an incline." The echo took up Bartrow's ironical laugh and gave it back in mocking reiteration. "Yes; an incline at the end of a four-hundred-and-forty-foot tunnel, and a steam hoist, and a pumping outfit, and a few other little knickknacks. Say a couple of thousand dollars or so before I can turn a wheel." McMurtrie bent to light his pipe at the flame of the lamp. "That's about the size of it. Hold that lamp still, can't you?" "Hold it yourself," retorted Bartrow; and he took a turn in the darkness to steady his nerves. When he stumbled back into the dim nimbus of lamplight he had fought and won his small battle. "Don't lay it up against me, Mac," he said, in blunt contrition. "It knocked me out for a minute. You know I've been backing my luck here for all I'm worth." "Yes, I know that. What will you do now?" "Quit; come off the perch; shut up shop and pull down the blinds. It's all there is to do." "And give it up?" "And give it up. Bank's broke; or at least it will be when I've paid the men another time or two." McMurtrie had Scotch blood in his veins, and was cannily chary of offering unasked advice. None the less, he did it. "I'd borrow a little more nerve and go on, if it were mine." "So would I if I could." "Can't you?" Bartrow said "no," changed it to "yes," and then qualified the assent until it, too, became a negation. "It's a pity," was the engineer's comment. "I believe another hundred feet would let you in for a decently good thing." "So do I. But it might as well be a thousand. I know when I'm downed." McMurtrie scoffed openly at that, taking his pipe from his mouth to say: "That's the one thing you don't know. You'll chew on it a while and go to Denver; and in a day or so your men will get orders to go on. I've seen you downed before. Why don't you go back East and marry a rich girl? That's the way to develop a mine." It was a random shot, but it went so near the mark that Bartrow winced, and was thankful that the flaring miner's lamp was not an arc-light. And his rejoinder ignored the matrimonial suggestion. "You're off wrong this time, Mac. I wish you didn't have to be. But it's no use. I'm in debt till I can't see out over the top of it, and I couldn't raise another thousand on the Myriad if I should try,--that is, not in Colorado. If I go to Denver it'll be to turn over my collateral and let everybody down as easy as I can." "Then don't go yet a while." Bartrow took the lamp and led the way out of the tunnel. "I did mean to stand it off to the last minute," he said, when they were once more under the stars, "but I don't know as it's worth while now. Will you come up to the shack and smoke a few lines? No? Then wait till I get my coat and I'll walk down to camp with you. I want to do a little wiring before I turn in." They parted at the railway station above the camp at the foot of Bonanza Mountain, and Bartrow went in to send his message. In the hour of defeat he yearned, manlike, for sympathy; and it was to Connie that his cry went out. Notwithstanding the earnestness of it, the appeal was consistently characteristic in its wording. "I'm hunting sympathy. Can you give me a lonesome hour or two if I come down? Answer while I wait." He asked the night operator to rush it, and sat down with his feet on the window-sill to smoke out the interval. A half-hour later, when the operator was jogging Denver for a reply to his "rush," the din of an affray floated up to the open window from the camp in the gulch. The operator came to the window and looked down upon the twinkling lights of the town. "That's the blacksmith again," he said. "He's been on a steady bat for two weeks, and the camp isn't big enough to hold him." "He'll kill himself, if he don't mind," Bartrow prophesied. "He's raw yet, and hasn't found out that a man can't stand the drink up here that he could in the valley." "No. Doc said he had a touch of the jimmies last night. He yelled for his daughter till they heard him up at the shaft-house of the Bonanza. McMurtrie said"--But what the engineer's commentary had been was lost to Bartrow, since the clicking sounder was snipping out the reply to the "rush" message. The operator wrote it out and handed it to Bartrow. The answer was as characteristic as the appeal. "Two of the three of us go to Boulder to-morrow to return by the late train. The other one is most sympathetic. Come. "CONNIE." CHAPTER XXVI ON the long day-ride from Alta Vista to Denver, Bartrow dwelt upon Myra's letter until the hopefulness of it took possession of him, urging him to reconsider his determination to give up the fight on the Little Myriad. That which seems to have fortified itself beyond peradventure of doubt in the night season is prone to open the door to dubiety in the morning; and the hope which McMurtrie's verdict had quenched came to life again, setting the mill of retrieval agrind, though, apart from the suggestion in Myra's letter, there was little enough for grist. From admitting the hope to considering ways and means was but a step in the march of returning confidence; and, setting aside Myra's proposal as an alternative which would bring victory at the expense of the cause in which the battle was fought, he was moved to break his promise to himself and to ask help of Stephen Elliott. This decision was not reached without a day-long struggle, in which pride and generosity fought shoulder to shoulder against the apparent necessity. The pioneer had more than once offered to back the promise of the Little Myriad; but Bartrow, knowing Elliott's weakness in the matter of money keeping, had steadily refused to open another door of risk to the old man who had fathered him from boyhood, and whose major infirmity was an open-handed willingness to lend to any borrower. But the necessity was most urgent. Bartrow rehearsed the condoning facts and set them over against his promise to himself. If he should give up the fight the Little Myriad would be lost, he would be left hopelessly in debt, and the beatific vision, with Miss Van Vetter for its central figure, vanished at once into the limbo of things unrealizable. Moreover, the investment would be less hazardous for the pioneer than at any previous time in the history of the mine. Notwithstanding the discouragements, it was a heartening fact that the ore-bearing vein was steadily widening; and the last mill-run assay, made a week before, had shown a cheering increase in value. Bartrow weighed the pros and cons for the twentieth time while the train was speeding over the ultimate mile of the long run, and finally yielded to the importunate urgings of the necessity. The first step was to take Connie into his confidence; and when the train reached Denver he hurried to the hotel, full of the new hope and eager to begin the campaign of retrieval. While he was inscribing his name in the register the clerk asked a question. "Just come down from the range, Mr. Bartrow?" "Yes. Can you give me my old room?" "Certainly." The clerk wrote the number opposite the name. "What do they say up in the carbonate camp about the Lodestar business?" "The Lodestar? I don't know. I haven't been in Leadville. I came down from the Bonanza district on the other line. Anything broke loose?" "Haven't you heard? The big producer is played out." "What!" "Fact; struck a 'lime horse' two weeks ago, and they've been keeping it dark and unloading the stock right and left. You are not in it, I hope?" Bartrow was not, but he knew that Elliott was; knew, too, that in any unloading _sauve qui peut_ the old pioneer would most likely be one of those found dead in the deserted trenches. Wherefore he slurred his supper and hastened out to the house in Colfax Avenue, not to ask help, as he had prefigured, but to ascertain if there were not some way in which a broken man might tender it. There was a light in the library and none in the parlor; and Bartrow, being rather more a brevet member of Stephen Elliott's family than a visitor, nodded to the servant who admitted him, hung up his coat and hat, and walked unannounced into the lighted room. When he discovered that the library held but one occupant, that the shapely head bending over a book in the cone of light beneath the reading-lamp was not Connie's, he realized the magnitude of Connie's duplicity, and equanimity forsook him. Miss Van Vetter shut her finger in her book and smiled as if his sudden appearance were quite a matter of course. "I hoped you would come," she said. "Have you been to dinner?" The prosaic question might have enabled a less ingenuous man to cover his discomposure with some poor verbal mantle of commonplace or what not; but Bartrow could only murmur "Good Lord!" sinking therewith into the hollow of the nearest chair because his emotion was too great to be borne standing. Since she was not a party to Connie's small plot, Myra was left to infer that her visitor was ill, and she rose in sympathetic concern. "Why, Mr. Bartrow! is anything the matter? Shall I get you something? a glass of wine, or"-- Bartrow shook his head and besought her with both hands to sit down again. "No, nothing, thank you; it's miles past that sort of mending. Do you--do you happen to know where your cousin is?" "Why, yes; she has gone to Boulder with Uncle Stephen." "I--I thought you were going," Bartrow stammered. It did not occur to Miss Van Vetter to wonder why he should have thought anything about it. "I thought so myself, up to the last moment," she rejoined. Bartrow leaned forward with his hands on his knees. "Miss Myra, would you--do you mind telling me why you didn't go?" He said it with reproachful gravity. Miss Van Vetter's poise was an inheritance which had lost nothing in transmission, but the unconscious reproach in his appeal overset it. Under less trying conditions her laugh would have emancipated him; but being still in the bonds of unreadiness, he could only glower at her in a way which lacked nothing of hostility save intention, and say, "I should think you might tell me what you're laughing at!" "Oh, nothing--nothing at all. Only one would think you were sorry I didn't go. Are you?" "You know well enough I'm not." This time the reproach was not unconscious. "But you haven't answered my question. I have a horrible suspicion, and I want to know." "It was Connie's mistake. I was to meet them at the station at half past four--I am sure she said half past four--and when I went down I found the train had been gone an hour. Did you ever hear of such a thing?" Miss Van Vetter did not know that the small arch-plotter had exhausted her ingenuity trying to devise some less primitive means of accomplishing her purpose; but Bartrow gave Connie full credit for act and intention. "She'd do worse things than that; she wouldn't stick at anything to carry her point," he said unguardedly. Myra laughed again. "I hope you don't ask me to believe that she did it purposely," she said. "Oh, no; of course not. I don't ask you to believe anything--except that I'm foolishly glad you missed the train," rejoined the downright one, beginning to find himself. "Are you, really? I was almost ready to doubt it." Bartrow was not yet fit to measure swords of repartee with any one, least of all with Miss Van Vetter, and the quicksand of speechlessness engulfed him. His helplessness was so palpable that it presently became infectious, and Myra was dismayed to find herself growing sympathetically self-conscious. Her letter lay between their last meeting and this, and she began to wonder if that were the barrier. When the silence became portentous, Bartrow gathered himself for another dash toward enlargement. It was that or asphyxia. The very air of the room was heavy with the narcosis of embarrassment. "Your letter came yesterday," he began abruptly. "Did it? And you have come to tell me to--to tell me to mind my own business? as I said you might?" "No, indeed, I haven't. But I can't do it, all the same--drag your friend in on the Myriad." "Was Mr. Lansdale mistaken? Don't you need more capital to go on with?" "Need it?--well, yes; rather. But I can't take your Mr. Grimsby's money." "Why not?" "Because"--the low-pitched hollow of the big lounging-chair seemed to put him at a disadvantage, and he struggled up out of it to tramp back and forth before her--"well, in the first place, because he _is_ your friend; and if he wasn't, I have no security to offer him--collateral, I suppose he'd call it." "He is not exactly my friend, within your meaning of the word; and he will not ask you to secure him." He stopped and looked down upon her. She was shading her eyes from the sheen of the reading-lamp and turning the leaves of the book. "What does he know about the Little Myriad? anything more than you have told him?" "No." "And yet you say he is willing to put up money on it?" "He is ready to help you--yes." Bartrow's brows went together in a frown of perplexity. "As long as I'm not going to let him, I suppose I haven't any right to ask questions, but"-- She put the book on the table and looked up at him with something of Connie's steadfastness in her eyes. "Perhaps I was foolish to try to make even such a small mystery of it; but I thought--I was so anxious to--to put it in such a way as to"-- The words would not discover themselves; and Bartrow, to whom the mystery was now no mystery, helped her over the obstruction. "As to make it easy for me. I think I catch on, after so long a time. Mr. Grimsby is your business manager, isn't he?" "My solicitor; yes." "That's what I meant. And it was going to be your own money?" "Yes." He met her gaze with a smile of mingled triumph and admiration. "It was a close call, and you'll never know how near I came to falling down," he said. "It was a fearful temptation." The pencilled brows went up with a little arch of interrogation between them. "A temptation? Why do you call it that?" Bartrow was slowly coming to his own in the matter of unconstraint. "If you had ever dabbled in mineral, you'd know. When a fellow gets in about so deep, he'd foreclose the mortgage on his grandfather's farm to get money to go on with. I didn't read between the lines in your letter. I thought the Philadelphia man was some friend of yours who was interested in a general way, and the temptation to fall on his neck and weep was almost too much for me." "You still call it a temptation." "It was just that, and nothing less. I had the toughest kind of a fight with myself before I could say no, and mean it." "But why should you say no? You believe in the Little Myriad, don't you?" "Sure. But that's for myself--and for a few people who knew the size of the risk when they staked me. So far as I've gone with it, it's only a big game of chance; and I wouldn't let you put your money into it unless I knew it was the surest kind of a sure thing." "Not if I believe in it, too? Not if I am willing to take the chances that you and the others have taken?" Myra conceived that her mistake lay in putting it upon the ground of a purely business transaction, and changed front with truly feminine adroitness. "Won't you let me have just a tiny share of it? Enough so that when I go back to Philadelphia I can say that I am interested in a mine? I should think you might. I'll promise to be the most tractable and obedient stockholder you have." She made the plea like a spoiled child begging for a toy, but there was no mistaking the earnestness of it. Bartrow felt his fine determination oozing, and was moved to tramp again, making a circuit of the entire room this time, and saying to himself with many emphatic repetitions that it could not be possible,--that her motive was only charitable,--that he was nothing more to her than Connie's friend. When he spoke again his circlings had brought him to the back of her chair. "You're making it fearfully hard for me, and the worst of it is that you don't seem to know it. You think I am a mining crank, like all the rest of them, and so I am; but there was method in my madness. I never cared overmuch for money until I came to know what it is to love a woman who has too much of it." There was manifestly no reply to be made to such a pointless speech as this, and when he resumed his circumambulatory march she began to turn the leaves of the book again. When it became evident that he was not going to elucidate, she said, "Meaning Connie?" "No, not meaning Connie." He had drifted around to the back of her chair again. "I wish you'd put that book away for a few minutes. It owls me." "I will, if you will stop circling about and talking down on me from the ceiling. It's dreadfully distressing." He laughed and drew up a chair facing her; drew it up until the arm of it touched hers. "It's a stand-off," he said, with cheerful effrontery; "only I didn't mean my part of it. Let's see, where were we? You said, 'Meaning Connie,' and I said, 'No, not meaning Connie.' I meant some one else. Until I met her, the Little Myriad was merely a hole in the ground, not so very different from other holes in the ground except that it was mine--and it wasn't the Little Myriad then, either. After that, it got its name changed, and its mission, too. From that day its business was to make it possible for me to go to her and say, 'I love you; you, yourself, and not your money. I've money enough of my own.'" She heard him through with the face of a graven image. "And now?" "And now I can't do it; I can never do it, I'm afraid. The Little Myriad has gone back on me, and I'm nearer flat broke to-day than I've ever been." "But this unfortunate young person who has too much money--she is young, isn't she?--has she nothing to say about it?" Bartrow answered his own thought rather than her question. "She couldn't be happy with everybody saying she'd staked her husband." "Has she told you that?" "No; but it's so,--you know it's so." Bartrow was no juggler in figures of speech, and his fictitious third person threatened to become unmanageable. Her smile was good to look upon. "I don't know anything of the kind. I think she would be very foolish to let such an absurd thing make her unhappy--supposing any one should be unkind enough to say it." "They would say it, and I'd hear of it; and then there'd be trouble." "But you say you love her; isn't your love strong enough to rise above such things? You think the sacrifice would be hers, but it wouldn't; it would be yours." "I don't see how you make that out." Myra's heart sank within her. It hurt her immeasurably to be driven to plead her own cause, but the money-fact was inexorable; and the look in Bartrow's eyes was her warrant when she dared to read it. "Oh, can't you see?" The words wrought themselves into a plea, though she strove to say them dispassionately. "If it touch your self-respect ever so little, the sacrifice is all yours." That point of view was quite new to Bartrow. He took time to think it out, but when the truth clinched itself he went straight to the mark. "I never saw that side of it before--don't quite see it now. But if you do, that's different. It's you, little woman; and I do love you--you, yourself, and not your money. I wish I could go on and say the rest of it, but I can't. Will you take me for better or for worse--with an even chance that it's going to be all worse and no better?" Her eyes filled with quick tears, and her voice was tremulous. "It would serve you right if I should say no; you've fairly made me beg you to ask me!" Her hand was on the arm of the chair, and he possessed himself of it and raised it to his lips with gentle reverence. "You'll have to begin making allowances for me right at the start," he said humbly. "When I make any bad breaks you must remember it's because I don't know any better, and that away down deep under it all I love you well enough to--to go to jail for you. Will you wait for me while I skirmish around and try to get on my feet again?" "No"--with sweet petulance. "There it is, you see; another bad break right on top of the first. Suppose you talk a while and let me listen. I'm good at listening." "I'll wait, if you want me to,--and if you will let me help you to go on with the Little Myriad." Bartrow's laugh had a ring of boyish joy in it. "Back to the old cross-roads, aren't we? I'll let you in on it now; but if you take the mine you'll have to take the man along with the other incumbrances,--simultaneously, so to speak." "I thought you were anxious to wait." "If you were as poor as I am, I'd ask you to make it high noon to-morrow." "Oh! the money again. Can't we put it aside, once for all? There isn't so much of it as you may imagine." Bartrow overleaped the barrier at a bound. "Then let's make it noon to-morrow. If we are going to push the Myriad I ought to go back to-morrow night." She tried to scoff at him, but there was love in her eyes. "Connie said once that you were Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses, but she doesn't know you. I believe you more than half mean it." "I do mean it. If I sit here and look at you much longer I shall be begging you to make it nine o'clock instead of twelve. Don't ask me to wait very long. It'll be hard enough to go off and leave you afterward. It's a good bit more than a hundred miles in a straight line from Denver to Topeka Mountain." "I'm going with you," she said calmly. "You?--to live in a wicky-up on the side of a bald mountain? But you know what it is; you've been there. You'd die of the blues in a week." "Would I?" She rose and stood beside his chair. "You don't know much about me, yet, do you? If the 'wicky-up' is good enough for you, it is good enough for me. I am going with you, and I'm going to make that dear little log cabin a place that you will always be glad to remember,--if I can." He drew her down on the arm of the chair. "Don't talk to me that way, Myra,--you mustn't, you know. I'm not used to it, and it breaks me all up. If you say another word I shall want to make it seven o'clock in the morning instead of nine." "Can you wait a month?" "No." "Three weeks?" "No." She gave up in despair. "You are dreadfully unreasonable." "I know it; I was born that way and I can't help it. I sha'n't insist on to-morrow, because I'm not sure that Wun Ling has anything for us to eat; but one week from to-morrow, when I've had time to stock up and straighten up a bit, is going to be the limit. Can you make it?" "What if I say no?" "I shall come anyway." She bent over until her lips touched his forehead. "That is your answer, only you don't deserve it. And now will you answer my question? I asked you when you came in if you had been to dinner, and you said 'Good Lord!'" "Did I? I think I must have been a bit rattled. You see, I'd just heard some bad news, and I was expecting to find Connie, and wasn't expecting to find you." "Did Connie write you she would meet you?" He had one hand free to fish out the day-old telegram and give it to her. She read it with a swift blush crimsoning cheek and neck. "The unscrupulous little tyke!" she said; and then, with self-defensive tact: "But you said you had bad news." "Yes. A mine that our good old Uncle Steve is pretty deeply into has gone dry." "Failed, you mean?" "Yes, that's it. I wish you'd teach me how to talk English,--good clean English, like yours. Connie has tried it, but pshaw! she's worse than I am. But about the Lodestar: I don't know how deep the old man is in; he's such an innocent old infant about putting up money that I'm awfully afraid they have salted him. You must pump Connie and find out. I'll be in Leadville to-morrow night, and if there is anything to be done on the ground I'll do it. The old man has been a second father to me." Myra promised, and went back once more to the unanswered dinner query. "Now you remind me of it, I believe I haven't been to dinner," he admitted. "But that's nothing; a meal or two more or less isn't to be mentioned at such a time as this." "I am going to get you something." "No, don't; I'm too happy to eat." But she insisted, and when she came back with a dainty luncheon on a tea-tray he did ample justice to it, if for no better reason than that she sat on the other side of the small reading-table and made tea for him. Afterward, when the time drew near for the Elliotts' return, he took his leave, though it was yet early. "They are the best friends I have on earth," he said, when Myra went to the door with him, "but somehow, I feel as if I didn't want to meet anybody I know,--not to-night. I want to have it all to myself for a few hours." She laughed at that; a laugh with an upbubbling of content and pure happiness in it; and sent him off with his heart afire. When he was halfway down the walk she recalled him. He came back obediently. "It will cost you something every time you do that," he protested, exacting the penalty. "Was that what you wanted?" "Of course not! I merely wanted to ask you what it is to 'owl' a person. You said I 'owled' you." "Did I? Well, you don't; you never can. That is the best definition I can think of: something you can never do to me. May I say good-night again? the way I did a minute ago?" The glare of the arc-light swinging between its poles across the avenue was quite ruthless, and there were passers-by in straggling procession on the sidewalk. But at the critical instant the kindly incandescence burned blue, clicked, fizzed, and died down to a red spot in the darkness. For which cause Bartrow presently went his way, with the heart-fire upblazing afresh; and when Myra won back to the library and the cosy depths of the great chair, the color scheme of fair neck and cheek and brow was not altogether the reflection from the crimson shade of the reading-lamp. CHAPTER XXVII CONSTANCE TO MYRA MY DEAR LADY BOUNTIFUL: Your letter--the ridiculous one--came yesterday. The idea of your proposing in the very morning of your honey-month to take the Colfax Avenue house and turn it into a home for indigent relatives! As Tommie would put it, "Wot are you givin' us!" But seriously, cuzzy dear, it's quite out of the question. Papa wouldn't hear to it, and besides, we are getting along very cosily now, re-learning a good many lessons that prosperity makes one forget. One of them is that gratitude isn't quite like the dodo,--gone into fossilistic extinction, you know. Margaret Gannon is one of the instances. She has taken a room in our block, and there is no limit to her great Irish tender-heartedness. If I'd let her, she would make me sit down and hold my hands while she does the housework of our three rooms. In spite of all I can say or do, she does do a great deal of it; and I can hear her sewing-machine buzzing deep into the night to pay for it. Tommie is another. The day we moved down here from the old home in Colfax Avenue that "irreclaimable little savage," as you once called him, brought me his surplus of a dollar and something and asked me to "blow it in" for him. Think of it and weep, you luxury-spoiled darling! I could have hugged him, dirt and all. And since that day he has been my Ariel, in more ways than you would think possible. He is so sharp and keen-witted; and his philanthropy has developed into a passion. Mr. Lansdale has been most kind. That is the proper phrase, I believe, but now that I have written it down it seems trite and meaningless. If I say that he has fairly earned the right to sign himself "Robert Lansdale, Gentleman," you will understand. The change in our circumstances has been a test that he alone of all our friends has been able to endure unmoved. I don't say that others are not kind and sympathetic, but they are--well, they are different. Now that I can say it without hurting you, I'll admit that I've always had a good bit of contempt for culture of the imported variety (I think I have been spelling it "culchah"), but Mr. Lansdale has converted me. It is worth something to be able to rise superior to circumstances,--the circumstances of others, I mean,--and, between us two, it's a virtue to which we new people haven't quite attained. I presume you read the Denver papers, and if you do you know all I could tell you about the person whom you once said was better worth saving than other people. Mr. Lansdale, who was one of the original trio, you remember, talks very sparingly of Mr. Jeffard; from which I infer that there isn't much to be said,--in mixed company. The newly arrived one lives in an apartment building, and papa says they are beginning to call him a miser on the street. They'd say that of any capitalist who wouldn't invest in at least one "ground-floor" a day; but I think you will agree with me that they can't say anything worse than the truth about him. I haven't had the ill-chance to meet him yet (I hope I'll be spared that), but I am afraid Tommie has been spying upon him,--for reasons of his own which he won't explain. I happened to overhear the final volley of a small battle royal between my Ariel and Margaret the other day, which had in it a hint of an unnamable thing,--a thing which involves Margaret and the unworthy one. You may remember that he once posed as her _deus ex machina_. And she has grown dangerously beautiful in her year of uprightness. When you write, tell me all about your plans for the summer; and believe me always Your cousin-content, CONNIE. MYRA TO CONSTANCE DEAR CONNIE: Really, the S. P. C. C. ought to take you in hand! To think of the cold-blooded way in which you hoodwinked us up to the very last moment, making us believe that the Lodestar involvement was next to nothing, and keeping the home intact solely for the purpose of providing a proper stage-setting for the final act of our little comedy-drama! It's fairly heart-breaking; the more since you won't let us share with you, as we'd be glad to. Before you saw fit to confide in us, Dick had used every argument short of a pick-handle to convince me that I should presently go back to Denver and creature comforts, leaving him here to go on delving in the Myriad. I only laughed at him, but I'll recant if you will listen to reason, and let me make a home for you and Uncle Stephen. But as between living a three-quarter widow in Denver on mere visiting terms with you and your father, and hibernating here with Dick, you may be sure I shall choose the latter. We are both as enthusiastic as can be over the prospects of the mine. The new machinery is on the way, and we are down twenty feet on the incline. Another month will surely carry it into pay-rock. (You see I am learning to talk "mineral-English" with the best of them.) Under the circumstances, I don't blame Dick for wanting to stay right here every day; and it won't be so lonesome for me as you may imagine. You see I have Dick, and he can be a whole cityful upon occasion. You wouldn't know "The Eyrie" (Dick says the altitude is so great that we had to have a high-sounding name) since we have begun to remodel it. We are to have another room, a larger kitchen for Wun Ling (oh, he is a celestial treasure!--quite the archangel of the culinary host), a huge chimney, with immense fireplaces, against a possible winter here, and a wider porch,--board-floored, if you please. And inside I have rugged and portièred, and pictured and bric-a-bracked, until the pristine barkiness of the place is all but effaced. So far, with the exception of an occasional call from Mr. McMurtrie, we have been "each other's own best company;" but if I stay up all summer it will be conditional upon your and Uncle Stephen's spending at least a month with us when the hot weather makes your block uncomfortable. Don't say no beforehand, unless you want to make me quite disgusted. Mr. Lansdale is a lineal descendant in the direct line of the Chevalier,--the _sans peur et sans reproche_ one; you know I've always said that of him. It chokes me when I think of what is lying in wait for him. Isn't there the least little glimmer of hope? He looked so bright and eager on our wedding day that I could almost make myself believe he was going to get well. You must be very, very careful, Connie dear; not to encourage him too much, I mean; not unless you--but I sha'n't say it without your warrant. What you say about Margaret Gannon's Irish true-heartedness reminds me of our own wild Irishman. He is the mine blacksmith, a perfect Sheridan for wit and repartee when he is sober, and a maniac of maniacs when he is drunk,--which happens whenever Dick relaxes his vigilance for a single hour. The other day Pat (if he has any other name I've never heard it) did a thing heroic. They are using dynamite in the tunnel, and after the noon blasts one of the miners went in before the deadly gas had been properly "ventilated" out. One of the others saw him stumble and go headlong down the incline, and the cry went back to the entrance. Pat heard it (he was sober that day), flung his tools to the four winds, dashed into the pit of death, and came out black in the face, but with the man on his shoulder, just as Dick got down to the entrance. Wasn't that fine? As you surmise, we have read all that the newspapers are saying about Mr. Jeffard. Isn't it queer that he should develop into a millionaire miser! Dick has told me a great deal about him,--at least about the Mr. Jeffard he used to know,--and whatever sins he may have had to answer for in those days, avarice was not one of them. I suppose it is another case of money-spoiling, but I can't help wanting to doubt your latest suspicion of him. I read your letter to Dick, and he shook his head when I came to that part; said he couldn't believe it, even on your testimony,--that the man might be capable of all sorts of villainy, but not that. So I am going over to Dick's point of view far enough to ask you not to be too hard upon the "unworthy one" just because he is no longer one of your poverty-stricken sinners,--he _was_ that once, wasn't he? The rich sinners need charity quite as really as the poor; of a different kind, to be sure, and not always as easy to exercise as the other, but none the less necessary. This is all you are going to get to-night. Dick has just come up from the mine, and he says I sha'n't write any more whatever. Your loving cousin, MYRA. LANSDALE TO BARTROW MY DEAR RICHARD:--What with a mine for a taskmaster and a wife for your leisure I can fancy you tossing this letter aside unopened. But the promise which you exacted is herein kept, and it must plead my excuse for breaking into your honeymoon with a few pages of barren gossip. First, as to Miss Elliott and her good father. Your foreboding went nearer the mark than the ostensible fact. They were merely postponing the evil day until after your wedding, and when the crash came it turned out to be no less than a catastrophe. Stephen Elliott met it like a man, giving up everything to his creditors, and coming down to a life of the barest necessities with the serenity of a philosopher, happy, apparently, that the well of assets was deep enough to brim the tank of liability, though at the expense of the final drop. I am told that he was left quite without resources other than a small sum of money which one of the creditors absolutely refused to accept; and he assures me that he will once more shoulder pick and shovel and go afield again as soon as the season is a little farther advanced. I confess frankly that the heroism of it bedazes me. If there be any finer example of dauntlessness in the heart of man, the novellers have not yet portrayed it for us. He was sixty-three last January, and he promises to begin the search for another competence with all the enthusiasm and ardor of youth! Constance you know, and I need not assure you that the sudden down-dropping touches her not at all; or if at all, only on the side of her beneficences to others. So far as one may perceive, the change for her is only of encompassments. She is as much above it as she was superior to the cheapening effect of an elastic bank account. To me she seems the sweeter for the chastening, though really, I presume, she is neither better nor worse for it,--nor any different. You may be sure that my first call upon them after the submergence was made with a heartful of sympathy,--which I took away with me, and with it a lesson in sincerity and simple-heartedness rare enough in my experience. There is gentle blood and enviable in these two. My pen is too clumsy to ink in the details of this picture for you. As to Jeffard: When he made his appearance I struck hands with your point of view sufficiently to meet him as if nothing save good fortune had overtaken him,--an attitude which it is sometimes as difficult for me to maintain as it appears altogether impossible for some others who used to know him. By which you will understand that he is ostracized in a way, or would be in any casting of the potsherd votes by the unthinking majority. I am bound to say, however, that the whiplash of public opinion does not seem to be quite long enough to reach him. A fortnight ago, for reasons charitable or experimental, as you please, I got him a bidding to one of Mrs. Calmaine's "ridottos." You know Mrs. Calmaine and her tolerance, and you will appreciate the situation when I tell you that I had to manoeuvre a bit for the formal invitation, though Jeffard used to be in her good book. Jeffard accepted, and I went with him to see what would befall. There were a good many there who had known the prehistoric Jeffard, and while they did not pointedly ignore him, they seemed to be divided between a desire to cold-shoulder the man and to conciliate the prospective millionaire;--wherefore they compromised by giving him what you would call "the high hand-shake." Whatever may have been my motive in dragging him into it, Jeffard's own reasons for going were confessedly experimental. So much he confided to me on our early retreat from the house of mirth. "I wanted to find out where I stand," he said, "and these good people have been quite explicit. Don't get me any more invitations." And after a time he added, "I can buy them when I want them." From which you will infer that he will henceforth sit in the seat of the scornful, and this, I fear, is the lamentable fact. Touching his present mode of life, it borders on the puzzling. With a bank deposit which is currently reported to reach seven figures, and which is doubtless well up in the sixes, he lives in two rooms in a block, and takes his meals at the club. A very rich spendthrift might do this, you will say, saving at the spigot and wasting at the bung; but so far as my observation goes, Jeffard seems not to know that his barrel has a bung. And if any of the staves have started on the side of dissipation, the leak is not yet apparent to me. The other evening, when I let drive a little arrow pointed with a gibe at his penuriousness, he laughed and reminded me of something he had said one night in the famine time when we were dining by the help of a small windfall of mine. "I told you I should be a miser if the tide ever turned," said he, "and you scoffed at me. I assure you I can account for every dollar I have spent since the Midas began to pour them in." This is his attitude as he defines it, but I can qualify the accusation a little on the friendly side. I should rather say that he had set his mark at thrifty frugality. He is not niggardly; in benevolences which may be paid for in the coin of effort he is still generous; and if he were living on a clerk's income people would commend him. But I fancy I hear you cry "Enough!" and this ends with the heartiest good wishes for you both. Faithfully yours, ROBERT LANSDALE. CHAPTER XXVIII LANSDALE had defined himself as a reporter on the "Coloradoan," but in reality he was rather more,--or less,--being that anomalous member of a newspaper staff known as the literary editor. Kershaw had taken him in doubtfully, and had afterward wondered why a man with such an evident gift for journalistic work should prefer to spend his days and nights writing stories which no one would buy. For, contrary to all precedent, when he could sink his literary ambitions the fictionist proved to be a general utility journalist of no uncertain ability, running the office gamut from proof-reading in an emergency to filling the editorial columns on the rare occasions when Kershaw was absent. It was during one of the Kershawan absences that the letter to Bartrow was written; and the hands of the paper-weight clock on the desk were pointing to the supper hour when Lansdale dropped the pen and drew down the desk-curtain. Unlike his chief, he rarely ignored the supper recess, though a walk in the open air often took the place of the meal; and having his night's work well in hand, he let himself into the corridor, said "Down!" and was presently set afoot at the street level. As usual, the swift rush down the elevator-shaft dizzied him, and he had to steady himself before he could go on. When he allowed himself to think about it he realized that these dizzyings were growing commoner, and were set awhirl by slighter exciting causes. Another man, or a man with another ailment, might have given the unnerving weakness its true name and place and succumbed to it; but Lansdale's _métier_ had been love-transformed into unflinching hopefulness, and the trivialities of the daily walk had come to be so many blind and desperate sorties against the indrawing lines of the relentless besieger. For of the two lions standing in the way to the House Beautiful that named Inequality had been slain by the collapse of the Lodestar; wherefore this other of Ill-health must either slay or be slain, since love would not be denied. This was what was in his resolute step when he went forth into the night; into the whirl of life on the peopled streets and sidewalks. Some vague supper promptings were present, but a stronger impulse sent him riverward, away from the thickly peopled walks and down into the wholesale district toward a shabby apartment building which had been left stranded on the bar of traffic when the uptown tide had set in. The little excursion was purposeless, as had been many another in the same direction; but when he found himself opposite the stairway of the shabby building he wondered if he might not go up and ask Constance for a cup of tea. He was wise in his generation, and he had long since discovered that the way to Constance Elliott's heart lay through helpings accepted. With love abounding for any human soul at need, there were precious reserves of tenderness for those to whom she might minister. Lansdale glanced up at the two lighted windows on the third floor and crossed the street. In the stair archway, which was dimly lighted by a single inefficient gas-jet, he stumbled upon a bit of by-play, in which the actors were a man and a woman leaning together across the stair-rail, and a barelegged boy spying upon the twain from the dimnesses beyond. The little tableau fell apart at the sound of the intruder's footsteps. The boy vanished mysteriously, the woman ran upstairs, and the man turned half angrily, as one faulted. It was Jeffard; and when he recognized Lansdale he spoke quickly, as if to forestall possible comment. "Hello!--think of the devil and you'll hear the clatter of his hoofs. I was just about to go up to the print-shop to see if I could find you. Been to supper?" "No; I was"-- Jeffard cut in again swiftly, with edgings streetward. "That's lucky; neither have I. Let's go up to the club." Lansdale acceded rather reluctantly, since a cup of tea with Constance easily outweighed the grill-room prospect. "I'll go with you, though I can't promise to play much of a knife and fork," he said. "I was just going up to ask Miss Elliott to give me a cup of tea." They were turning the corner above the stranded apartment house before Jeffard returned the shuttle of speech. "So the Elliotts live down there now, do they?" Lansdale said "Yes," and began to rummage in recollection. Had Jeffard been on Constance Elliott's visiting list in the prehistoric time? It was probable that he had been,--with Dick Bartrow for his sponsor. But at this point recollection turned up the mental notes of a certain talk with Bartrow, in which the downright one had confessed his sins of omission Jeffardward. So Lansdale added a query to the affirmative. "Yes; they live in the Thorson Block. Do you know them?" Jeffard's reply was no reply. "I'll have to take time to think about it," he said; and they had traversed the necessary streets and found a table _à deux_ in the grill-room at the club before he pieced out the unfinished rejoinder. "You asked me if I knew the Elliotts. I did know Miss Elliott,--as I knew some of those people at Mrs. Calmaine's the other evening. It's quite likely she does not remember me." Lansdale's brain went apart again, and the reflective half of it continued the rummaging. On the two or three occasions when he had mentioned the newest star in the bonanzine firmament Constance had been visibly disturbed. The nature of her resentment had not been quite obvious, but Jeffard's tardy rejoinder made it clear. She had known Jeffard and was sorry to be reminded of him. Lansdale had not done full justice to himself in slurring his own point of view in the letter to Bartrow. So far as he had analyzed it he had been content to call it negative, but it was not quite that. On the contrary, it was complaisant, concerning itself chiefly with the things of past sight, and not unduly with those of present rumor. Jeffard might be an indubitable scoundrel in his later reincarnation, as certain of the mining-camp newspapers had intimated in their accounts of the fight for possession; but in the older time he had been a good fellow and a generous friend at a pinch. Lansdale remembered some of the generosities, and his heart went soft at the recollection of them. Kershaw had kept the secret of the prearranged purchase of certain unusable manuscripts, but the pigeon-holes of a newspaper office are open archives, and one day Lansdale had found a clue which he had followed out to his comforting; a string of hitherto unexplainable incidents, with two stanch friends at the end of it. One of these loyal friends was the man at whom public opinion was now pointing a dubious finger; and while Lansdale was munching his toast and drinking his cup of weak tea in troubled silence, it began to be discomfortingly evident that he must presently take sides for or against the man whose hospitality he was at that moment sharing. Left to itself, the insularity in him would have evaded the issue. Loyalty of the crucible-test degree of fineness--the loyalty of the single eye--must needs sit below the salt at the table of any analyst of his kind; and Lansdale was a student first and a partisan only when benefits unforgot constrained him. Moreover, frankness in the last resort is rarely at its best in any vivisector of his fellow-men, and it was with no little difficulty that Lansdale made shift to overleap the barrier of reserve. "Jeffard," he began, when the weak tea was low in the cup, "we used to be pretty near to each other in a time that I like to remember; will you bear with me if I say what is in my mind?" "Surely," said Jeffard; but the tone was not of assurance. "You know what the newspapers intimated last fall, and what people are saying of you now?" "Yes." "And that your silence makes it rather hard for your friends?" "I have no friends, Lansdale." "Oh, yes, you have; or you would have if you would take the trouble to set yourself aright." "What if I cannot set myself aright?" "I should be sorry to believe that,--more than sorry to be driven to admit the alternative." "What is the alternative?" Lansdale hesitated, as one who has his point at his adversary's breast and is loath to drive it in. "I don't quite like to put it in words, Jeffard; the English is a bit harsh. But you will understand that it is the smiting of a friend. So long as you refuse to say you didn't, the supposition is that you have robbed a man to whom you were under rather heavy obligations." "Is that Bartrow's supposition?" "He says it isn't, but I'm afraid the wish is the father to the thought: in his case as in--as in that of others." Lansdale added the inclusive in the hope that the wound would be the better for probing. Jeffard's laugh was altogether bitter. "'Give a dog a bad name,'" he quoted. "Do you know, I fancied Dick would be obstinate enough to stand out against the apparent fact?" "That is precisely what he has done, and with less reason than the most devoted partisan might demand. You know you told him that the claim was Garvin's. He wouldn't believe the newspaper story; he insisted that you would be able to 'square' yourself, as he phrased it, when you came out." Jeffard was looking past his interlocutor, out and beyond to where the farther tables were emptying themselves of the late diners. "Yet it is his supposition; and your own, you were going to say. Is it Miss Elliott's also?" Lansdale resisted the impulse to rummage again, and said: "I don't know that--how should I know? But rumor has made the charge, and you have not denied it." "I don't mean to deny it--not even to her. But neither have I admitted it." "My dear Jeffard! aren't the facts an admission?--at least, so long as they stand uncontradicted." "Everybody seems to think so,--and I can afford to be indifferent." "Having the money, you mean?--possibly. Am I to take that as an admission of the facts?" "Facts are fixtures, aren't they? things not to be set up or set aside by admissions or denials. But you may take it as you please." Lansdale shook his head as one whose deprecation is too large for speech. "I can't begin to understand it, Jeffard,--the motive which could impel a man of your convictions, I mean." Jeffard broke forth in revilings. "What do you know about my convictions? What do you know about anything in the heart of man? You have a set of formulas which you call types, and into which you try to fit all human beings arbitrarily, each after his kind. It's the merest child's-play; a fallacy based on an assumption. No two men can be squared by the same rule; no two will do the same things under exactly similar conditions. Character-study is your specialty, I believe; but you have yet to learn that the human atom is an irresponsible individuality." "Oh, no, I haven't; I grant you that. But logically"-- "Logic has nothing whatever to do with it. It's ego, pure and unstrained, in most of us; a sluggish river of self, with a quicksand of evil for its bottom." Lansdale borrowed a gun of his antagonist, and sighted it accurately. "What do you know about humanity as a whole? What do you know about any part of it save your own infinitesimal fraction?--which seems to be a rather unfair sample." Jeffard confessed judgment and paid the costs. "I don't know very much about the sample, Lansdale. One time--it was in the sophomore year, I believe--I thought I knew my own potentialities. But I didn't. If any one had prophesied then that I had it in me to do what I have done, I should have demanded a miracle to confirm it." "But you must justify yourself to yourself," Lansdale persisted. "Why must I? That is another of your cut-and-dried formulas. So far from recognizing any such obligation, I may say that I gave up trying to account for myself a long time ago. And if I have found it impossible, it isn't worth while for you to try." Lansdale was not the man to bruise his hands with much beating upon the barred doors of any one's confidence. So he said, "I'm done. It's between you and your conscience,--if you haven't eliminated that with the other things. But I had hoped you'd see fit to defend yourself. The eternal query is sharp enough without the pointing of particular instances." Jeffard squared himself, with his elbows on the table. "Do you want an hypothesis, too?--as another man did? Take this, and make the most of it. You knew me and my lacks and havings. You knew that I had reached a point at which I would have pawned my soul for the wherewithal to purchase a short hour or two of forgetfulness. Hold that picture in your mind, and conceive that a summer of unsuccessful prospecting had not changed me for better or worse. Is the point of view unobstructed?" "The point of view is your own, not mine," Lansdale objected. "And, moreover, the summer did change you, because advancement in some direction is an irrefrangible law. But go on." "I will. This man whom you have in mind was suddenly brought face to face with a great temptation,--great and subtle. Garvin drove the tunnel on the Midas three years ago and abandoned it as worthless. It was my curiosity which led to the discovery of the gold. It was I who took the sample to the assayer and carried the news of the bonanza to Garvin. I might have kept the knowledge to myself, but I didn't. Why? do you ask? I don't know--perhaps because it didn't occur to me. What followed Bartrow has told you, but not all. Let us assume that the race to Aspen was made in good faith; that this man who had put honor and good report behind him really meant to stand between a drunken fool and the fate he was rushing upon. Can you go so far with me?" Lansdale nodded. He was spellbound, but it was the artist in him and not the man who hung breathless upon the edge of expectancy. "Very well; now for the crux. This man knelt behind a locked door and heard himself execrated by the man he was trying to save; heard the first kindly impulse he had yielded to in months distorted into a desperate plan to rob the cursing maniac. Is it past belief that he crept away from the locked door and sat down to ask himself in hot resentment why he should go on? Is it not conceivable that he should have begun to give ear to the plea of self-preservation?--to say to himself that if the maniac were no better than a lost man it was no reason that the treasure should be lost also?" It was altogether conceivable, and Lansdale nodded again. Jeffard found a cigar and went on while he was clipping the end of it. "But that was not all. Picture this man at the crumbling point of resolution tiptoeing to the door to listen again. He has heard enough to convince him that the miracle of fortune will be worse than wasted upon the drunken witling. Now he is to hear that the besotted fool has already transferred whatever right he had in the Midas to the two despoilers; signed a quitclaim, sold his miracle for a drink or two of whiskey, more or less. Are you listening?" Lansdale moistened his lips with the lees of the tea in the empty cup, and said, "Yes; go on." Jeffard sat back and lighted the cigar. "That's all," he said curtly. "It's enough, isn't it? You knew the man a year ago; you think you know him now. What would he do?" If the hypothesis were intended to be a test of blind loyalty it missed the mark by just so much as the student of his kind must hold himself aloof from sympathetic entanglements. Lansdale weighed the evidence, not as a partisan, but rather as an onlooker whose point of view was wholly extrinsic. "I understand," said he; "the man would do as you have done. It's your own affair. As I said a few minutes ago, it is between you and your private conscience. And I dare say if the facts were known the public conscience wouldn't condemn you. Don't you want to use the columns of the 'Coloradoan'?" Jeffard's negative was explosive. "Do you write me down a fool as well as a knave? Damn the public conscience!" "Don't swear; I was only offering to turn the stone for you if you've anything to grind." "I haven't. If I wanted the consent of the majority I could buy it,--buy it if I had shot the maniac instead of letting him shoot me." "Possibly; and yet you couldn't buy any fraction of it that is worth having," Lansdale asserted, with conviction. "There are a few people left who have not bowed the head in the house of Rimmon." The cynical hardness went out of Jeffard's eye and lip, and for the first time since the proletary's reincarnation, Lansdale fancied he got a brief glimpse of the man he had known in the day of sincerity. "A few, yes; the Elliotts, father and daughter, for two, you would say. I wonder if you could help me there." "To their good opinion?--my dear Jeffard, I'm no professional conscience-keeper!" "No, I didn't mean that. What I had in mind is a much simpler thing. A year ago Miss Elliott gave me of her abundance. She meant it as a gift, though I made it a loan and repaid the principal--when I was able to. But I am still in her debt. Measured by consequences, which are the only true interest-table, the earnings of her small investment are hardly to be computed in dollars and cents. Naturally, she won't take that view of it, but that does not cancel my obligation. Will you help me to discharge it? They need money." Lansdale let the appeal simmer in the pot of reflection. His inclination was to refuse to be drawn into any such entanglement; but the opportunity to lessen by ever so little the burdens of the woman he loved was not to be lightly set aside. None the less, the thing seemed impossible. "I'm afraid it's too big for me, Jeffard; I shouldn't know how to go about it. Don't misunderstand me. I shouldn't stick at the necessary equivocations; but if you know Miss Elliott you must know that Machiavelli himself couldn't be insincere with her. She would have to be told the truth, and"-- He left the sentence incomplete, and Jeffard took it up at the break. "And if she should acknowledge my obligation--which she would not--she would refuse to be reimbursed out of Garvin's money. That is why I haven't sent her a note with a check in it. Will you have another cup of tea?" Lansdale took the query as a dismissal of the subject and pushed back his chair. On the way out they passed a late incomer; a florid man, with a nervous step and the eye of preoccupation. He nodded to Lansdale in passing, and Jeffard said, "Do you know him?" "Yes; it's Finchly,--John Murray's man of business." Jeffard had apparently relapsed into the deeper depths of cynicism again. "Yes, I know. That's the charitable euphemism. Murray is a day laborer, transmogrified by a lucky strike into a millionaire. He doesn't know enough to write his own name, much less how to keep a great fortune from dissolving, so he hires a manager. It was a happy thought. What does Finchly get?" Lansdale laughed. "A good living, doubtless." "Of course; and much more, with the pickings. But there is a salary which is supposed to be the consideration, isn't there?" "Oh, yes; and the figure of it varies with the imagination of the gossips from ten to fifty thousand a year." Jeffard stopped to relight his cigar, and Lansdale fancied that the Finchly query went out with the spent match. But Jeffard revived it a square farther on. "Suppose we assume, for the sake of argument, that the man has a conscience. How much could he justly take for the service rendered?" They were at the entrance of the "Coloradoan" building, and Lansdale took out his notebook and made a memorandum. "That is good for a column," he said; "'The Moral Responsibility of Millionaire-Managers.' I'll answer your question later, when I've had time to think it over." "But, seriously," Jeffard insisted. "Is it worth ten thousand a year?--or the half of it? The man is only a cashier,--a high-class accountant at best." "Finchly is much more than that; he is Murray's brain as well as his pen-hand. But if he were only a money-counter, a money-counter's salary would be enough; say two or three thousand a year, to be liberal." Jeffard nodded and was turning away; had in fact taken three steps streetward, when he came back to return to the subject dropped at the supper table as though there had been no hiatus. "You were going to say she would refuse to take Garvin's money, and I said it for you. Would it make it any easier if I can assure you that the money I shall put in your hands is honestly mine?--that James Garvin has no claim, ethical or otherwise, upon it? Take time to consider it,--with an eye to Miss Elliott's present needs rather than to my havings or wishes in the matter." Lansdale was off his guard, and the human side of him came uppermost in the swift rejoinder,--"Then you didn't tell me the whole truth? The Midas is honestly yours, after all?" Jeffard turned away and snapped the ash from his cigar. "Don't jump at conclusions," he said. "It's always safer to go on voting with the majority. What I said has nothing to do with the story of the man and his temptation; but the meanest laborer is worthy of his hire. I worked all winter with pick and shovel in the Midas. Good-night." CHAPTER XXIX IT was early in June when the pneumatic drill in the Little Myriad was smashed by a premature blast, and the master of the mine was constrained to make a flying trip to Denver to replace it. As a matter of course, if not, indeed, of necessity, Myra went with him. They traveled by the night train, breakfasted on canned viands out of the Pullman buffet, and so took Constance by surprise. Myra had projects in view, some Utopian and others more Utopian, with her relatives for nuclei; and when Richard the untactful had been sent about his machinery business, she settled down for a persuasive day with Constance. Now Constance had been taken unawares, but she was of those who fight best at a disadvantage, and the end of the day found the Utopian projects still in air, being held in suspension by an obstinate young person who steadily refused to make of herself a vessel meet for condolence and cousinly beneficence. "It's no use, cuzzy dear; you shall have an option on the help stock when there is any for sale, but at present there are no quotations." Thus Connie, at the very end of the persuasive day. Upon which the young wife, with patience outwearing or outworn, retorts smartly:-- "I suppose you think it's heroic--your living like this; but it isn't. It is just plain poverty pride, which is all well enough to keep the crowd out, but which is simply wicked when it makes you shut the door in our faces. Think of it--you living here in three rooms at the top of a block when the Myriad has begun to pay dividends! I didn't mean to tell you just yet, but Dick is going to buy back the Colfax Avenue house, and it shall stand empty till doomsday if you won't go and live in it." In times not long past Connie would have returned railing for railing--with interest added; but the reproachful day had been no less trying to her than to Myra, and the poverty fight--and some others--were sore upon her. Hence her disclaimer was of courageous meekness, with a smile of loving appreciation to pave the way. "I hope Dick will do no such preposterous thing--unless you want it for yourselves. You know it would be quite out of the question for us to take it. Or to do anything but make the best of what has happened," she added. Myra was standing at a window, looking down into the street where the early dusk was beginning to prick out the point-like coruscations of the arc-lights. There was that in Connie's eyes which beckoned tears to eyes sympathetic; and she found it easier to go on with her back turned upon the room and its other occupant. "To make the best of it, yes; but you are not making the best of it. Or, if you are, the best is miserably bad. You are looking thin and wretched, as if--as if you didn't get enough to eat." There was a touch of the old-time resilience in Connie's laugh. "How can you tell when you're not looking at me? Indeed, it hasn't come to that yet. We have enough, and a little to spare for those who have less." Myra had been searching earnestly all day for some little rift into which the wedge of helpfulness might be driven, and here was an opening--of the vicarious sort. "Won't you let me be your purseholder for those who have less, Connie? That is the very least you can do." Constance willed it thankfully. After the trying day of refusals it was grateful to find something that could be conceded. "I believe I told you once that I wouldn't be your proxy in that way, didn't I? But I will, now. You are so much better than your theories, Myra." Myra left the window at that, wrote a generous check before the concession should have time to shrink in the cooling, and then went over to sit on the denim-covered lounge with her arm around her cousin's waist. "Now that you have begun to be reasonable, won't you go a step farther, Connie, dear? I know there are troubles,--lots of them besides the pinching. Can't you lean on me just a little bit? I do so want to help you." Connie did it literally, with her face on Myra's shoulder and a sob at the catching of her breath. Myra let her take her own time, as a judicious comforter will, and when the words came they wrought themselves into a confession. "Oh, Myra, I thought I was so strong, and I'm not!" she wept. "The bullet in a gun hasn't less to say about where it shall be sent. I said it wasn't the pinch, but it is--or part of it is. Poppa has set his heart upon trying the mountains again, old as he is, and he can't go because--because there isn't money enough to outfit him with what he could carry on his back!" "And you would have let me go without telling me!" said Myra reproachfully. "He shall have a whole pack train of 'grub stake,'--is that what I should say?--and you shall come and stay with us while he is away. Consider that a trouble past, and tell me some more. You don't know how delicious it is to be permitted to pose as a small god in a car." "Yes, I do," Connie responded, out of a heartful of similar ecstasies. "But it isn't a trouble past: he won't let you do it. Everybody has been offering to lend him money, and he won't take it." "He will have to take it from me," said Myra, with prompt decision. "I'll make him. And when he goes, you will come to us, won't you?" Constance looked up with a smile shining through the tears. "You're good, Myra, just like Dick! But I can't, you know. I must stay here." "Why must you?" To the querist there seemed to be sufficiently good reasons, from the point of view of the proprieties, for setting Connie's decision aside mandatorily, but Myra had grown warier if not wiser in her year of cousin-kenning. "There are reasons,--duties which I must not shirk." "Are they namable?" "Yes; Margaret is the name of one of them." Myra's disapproval found vent in gentle foot-tappings. To the moderately compassionate on-looker it would seem that Constance had long since filled that measure of responsibility,--filled and heaped it to overflowing. But again the experienced one was discreet. "As Dick would put it, you have 'angeled' Margaret for a year and more. Isn't she yet able to stand alone?" Connie's answer was prompt and decisive. "Quite as well able as the best of us would be under similar conditions." "I wouldn't make it conditional; but we've never been able to keep step in that journey. Why is Margaret's case exceptional?" "Did I say it was? It isn't. She is just one of any number of poor girls who are trying to live honestly, with the barriers of innocence all down and an overwhelming temptation always beckoning." Myra shook her head. "That is making temptation a constraint, when it can never be more than a lure. I must confess I can't get far enough away from the conventional point of view to understand how a young woman like Margaret, who has been lifted and carried and set fairly upon her feet, could be tempted to go back to the utter misery and degradation of the other life." Constance spoke first to the sophism, and then to the particular instance. "It is not true that temptation is always a lure. It is oftener a constraint. And you say you can't understand. It is terribly simple. They sin first for a thing which they mistake for love; but after that it is for bread and meat, and surcease from toil which has become a mere frenzied struggle to keep body and soul together. You don't know what it is to be poor, Myra,--with the barriers down. Have you any idea how much Margaret earned last week, working steadily the six days and deep into the nights?" "Oh, not very much, I suppose. But her necessities are not large." "Are they not? They are as large as yours or mine. She must eat and drink and have a bed to sleep on and clothes to cover her. And to provide these she was paid three dollars and eighty-five cents for her week's work; and two dollars of that had to go for rent. Is the temptation a lure or a constraint in her case?" Myra was silenced, if not convinced, and she went back to the fact existent with sympathy no more than seemingly aloof. "You hinted at Margaret's peculiar besetment in one of your letters. Is that what you have to stay and fight?" Constance nodded assent. "I have been hoping you were mistaken. Dick is still loyally incredulous. Isn't there a chance that you or Tommie, or both of you, have taken too much for granted?" Connie's "No" was almost inaudible, and there was chastened sorrow in her voice when she went on to tell how Tommie had seen Jeffard and Margaret together, not once, but many times; how the man was always persuading, and the woman, reluctant at first, was visibly yielding; how within a week Tommie had seen Jeffard give her money. "And she took it?" Myra queried. "She didn't want to take it. Tommie says she almost fought with him to make him take it back. But he wouldn't." Myra's sympathy circled down, but it alighted upon Connie. "You poor dear! after all your loving-kindnesses and helpings! It's miserable; but you can't do anything if you stay." "Yes, I can. I couldn't stay alone, of course, and she will give up her room and come here to live with me. That will give me a better hold on her than I have now." "But if you had a hundred eyes you couldn't safeguard her against her will!" "No; but it isn't her will,--it's his. And he will not come here." Myra's brows went together in a little frown of righteous indignation. "I should hope not,--the wretch! You were right, after all, Connie, and I'll retract all the charitable things Dick wanted me to say. He is too despicable"-- It was Connie's hand on the accusing lips that cut short the indignant arraignment. "Please don't!" she pleaded. "He is all that you can say or think, but my ears are weary with my own repetitions of it." Myra took the hand from her lips and held it fast while she tried to search her cousin's face. But the gathering dusk had mounted from the level of the street to that of the upper room, and it baffled the eye-questioning. "Connie Elliott! I more than half believe"--She stopped abruptly, as if there had been some dumb protest of the imprisoned hand, and then went on with a swift change from accusation to gentle reproach. "I believe you have only just begun to tell me your troubles,--and I've been with you all day! What are some more of them?" "I have told you the worst of them,--or at least that part of them which makes it impossible for me to go away. But there is another reason why I ought to stay." "Is that one namable, too?" "Yes; but perhaps you won't understand. And you will be sure to tell me it isn't proper. I think one of Mr. Lansdale's few pleasures is his coming here." "Few remaining pleasures, you would say, if you were not too tender-hearted. Is it wise, Connie?" "Why not?--if it is a comfort to him?" Myra hesitated, not because she had nothing to say, but because she knew not how to say the thing demanded. "You haven't given me leave to be quite frank with you, Connie. But it seems to me that your kindness in this case is--is mistaken kindness." Constance's rejoinder was merely an underthought slipping the leash. "It is not to be expected that any one would understand," she said. "But I do understand," Myra asserted, this time with better confidence. "I'm not supposed to have the slightest inkling of your feelings,--you've never lisped a word to me,--but Mr. Lansdale's motives are plain enough to be read in the dark. If he were a well man he would have asked you to marry him long ago." "Do you think so?" said Constance half absently. "I'm not so sure about that. He is far away from home and wretchedly ill; and he has many acquaintances and few real friends." "But he loves you," Myra persisted. "He has never said anything like that to me." "It is quite possible that he never will, in view of the insurmountable obstacle." "His ill-health, you mean? Myra, dear, you surely know love better than that--now. Love is the one thing which will both sow and reap even in the day when the heavens are of brass and the earth is a barren desert." The under-roar of traffic in the street made the silence in the upper room more effective by contrast; like the sense of isolation which is often sharpest in a jostling throng. Myra rose and went to the window again, coming back presently to stand over Constance and say, "I suppose it is ordained that you should be a martyr to somebody or something, Connie, dear; and when the time comes I'm not going to say you nay, because I think you will be happier that way. If Mr. Lansdale should be tempted to say that which I am sure he has determined not to say, is your answer ready?" Connie's hands were clasped over one knee, and the poise was of introspective beatitude. But the answer to Myra's query was not irrelevant. "He is the truest of gentlemen; what would your answer be, Myra?" It was the young wife in Myra Bartrow, that precious bit of clay as yet plastic under the hand of the master-potter, that prompted the steadfast reply. "If I loved him as I ought, I should pray God to make me unselfish enough to say yes, Connie." "So should I," said Constance simply; and Myra made the lighting of the lamp an excuse for the diversion which the three soft-spoken words demanded. And when she went back to the matter of fact, she touched lightly upon what she conceived to be a wound yet far from healing. "You have silenced me, Connie, but I can at least provide for the contingency. If the event shapes itself so that you are free to come to us, don't let Margaret stand in the way. Bring her with you, and we'll find room and work for her." Connie's eyes were shining, but there was a loving smile struggling with the tears. "I said you were good, like Dick, Myra, dear, and I can't put it any stronger. If I don't take you at your word, it will not be for anything you have left unsaid. Isn't that Dick coming?" It was. There was a double step in the corridor, and Bartrow came in with Stephen Elliott. Since the battle persuasive with the daughter had kept her single-eyed, Myra had had but brief glimpses of the father during the day; but now she remarked that his step was a little less firmly planted than it had been in that holiday time when he had played the unwonted part of escort in ordinary to two young women who had dragged him whither they would,--and whither he would not. Moreover, there was the look of the burden-bearer in his eyes, though their fire was undimmed; and an air of belated sprightliness in his manner which went near to Myra's heart, because she knew it came of conscious effort. These jottings and others, the added stoop of the shoulders, and the lagging half-step to the rear in entering, as of one who may no longer keep pace with younger men, Myra made while Dick was timing the dash for their train. "Thirty-five minutes more, and we'll quit you,--say, Uncle Steve, that clock of yours is slow,--that's half an hour for supper, and five minutes for the yum-yums at the car-step. Gear yourselves, you two, and we'll all go and make a raid on the supper-room at the station." "Indeed, we sha'n't," said Connie, in hospitable protest. "You are going to eat bread and butter and drink strong tea on the top floor of the Thorson Block. I've had the water cooking for an hour, and you sha'n't make me waste gasoline in any such way." Dick would have argued the point with her; was, in fact, beginning the counter-protest, when Myra stopped him.' "Of course we'll stay," she assented. "You go with Connie and help make the tea, Dick. I haven't begun to have a visit with Uncle Stephen yet." Bartrow gave up the fight and was led captive of the small one to the room across the corridor which served as a kitchen. Left alone with his sister's daughter, Stephen Elliott had a sudden return of the haltingnesses which the Philadelphia niece, newly arrived, used to inspire; but Myra asked only for an acquiescent listener. "Uncle Stephen," she began, pinning him in the lounge-corner from which there was no possibility of escape, "I've been wanting to get at you all day, and I was afraid you weren't going to give me a chance. You have 'grub-staked' a lot of people, first and last, haven't you?" The old man eyed her suspiciously for a moment, and then evidently banished the suspicion as a thing unworthy. "Why, yes; I have staked a good few of them, first and last, as you say." "I knew it, and I wanted to ask a question. How much money did you usually give them?" The suspicion was well lulled by this; and finding himself upon familiar ground, the pioneer went into details. "That depended a good deal upon the other fellow. Some of them--most of 'em, I was going to say--couldn't be trusted with money at all, and I'd go buy them an outfit and stay with them till they got out o' range of the saloons and green tables." "But when you found one whom you could trust, how much money did you give him? I'm not idly curious; I know a man who wants to go prospecting, and I have promised to 'stake' him." The suspicion raised its head again, and was promptly clubbed into submission. Some one of the Myriad men wanted to try his luck, and he had "braced" the wife rather than the husband. So thought the pioneer, and made answer accordingly. "I wouldn't monkey with it, if I were you, Myra; leastwise, not without letting Dick into it. He's right on the ground, and he'll tell you how much you'd ought to put up; or--what's more likely--if you oughtn't to tell the fellow to stick to his day-pay in the mine." "Dick knows," said Myra, anticipating the exact truth by some brief hour or so, "and he's quite willing. But you know Dick; if I should leave it with him he would give the man all he had and go and borrow for himself. I want a good sober conservative opinion,--not too conservative, you know, but just about what you would need if you were going out yourself." Elliott became dubitantly reflective, being divided between a desire to spare Myra's purse and a disposition born of fellow-feelings to make it as easy as might be for the unknown beneficiary. "Oh, I don't know," he said, at length. "If the fellow is going by himself, he won't need much; but if he takes a partner it'll just about double the stake. Is he going to play it alone?" Myra could see through the open door into the adjoining room, and she saw Connie bringing in the tea. Time was growing precious, if the conclusion were not to be tripped up by an interruption. "I suppose he'll take a partner; they always do, don't they? Anyway, I want to make it enough so that he can if he chooses. Please tell me how much." "Well, if he knows how to cut the corners and how to outfit so as to make the most of what he has, he'd ought to be able to do it on a couple of hundred or so. But I don't know if that ain't pretty liberal," he added, as if upon second thought. Myra went quickly to the table under the lamp, and wrote upon a slip of paper. Elliott thought she was making a note of her information; and when she put the check into his hands he took it mechanically. But her hurried explanation drove the firing-pin of intelligence. "It's for you--you are the man, Uncle Stephen; and if it isn't enough, it's your own fault." She said it with one eye on the two in the next room, and with nerves taut-braced for the shock of refusal. The shock came promptly. "Oh--say--here! Myra, girl; I can't take this from you!" He was on his feet, trying to give back the check; and as she eluded him he followed her about the room, protesting as he went. "It's just like you to offer it, but I can't, don't you see? I'll rope somebody else in; somebody that knows the chances. Here, take it back,--I'm getting pretty old, and just as like as not I won't find anything worth assaying. Come, now; you be a good girl, and"-- He had driven her into a corner, and it was time for the _coup de main_. So she put her arms about his neck and her face on his shoulder, and if the attack pathetic were no more than a clever bit of feigning, Stephen Elliott was none the wiser. "I--I'd like to know what I have done!" she quavered. "You'd take it from a stranger--you said you would--and you've made me just the same as your own daughter, and now you wo--won't let me do the first little thing I've ever had a chance to do!" There were more strong solvents of a similar nature in reserve, but they were not needed. The good old man was helplessly soluble in any woman's tears, real or invented; and his fine resolution melted and the bones of it became as water. "There, there, little girl, don't you take on like that. I'll keep it. See? I've chucked it right down into the bottom of my pocket"--he was stroking her hair and otherwise gentling her as if she were a hurt child. "Don't you fret a little bit. I'll spend it--every last cent of it--just the way you want me to. You mustn't cry another tear; Dick'll think I've been abusing you, and he'll fire the old uncle out of one of these high windows. Haven't you got any handkerchief?" Connie and Dick were at the door, announcing the bread and butter and tea, and Myra's handkerchief became a convenient mask for the moment. A less simple-hearted man than the old pioneer might have suspected the sincerity of such tears as may be wiped away at a word, leaving no trace behind them; but Elliott was too child-like to know aught of the fine art of dissimulation, and he took Myra's sudden return to cheerfulness as a tribute to his own astuteness in yielding a point at the critical moment. At the tea-table they were all more or less hilarious, each having somewhat to conceal from the others; and even Bartrow was made to feel the thinness of the ice upon which the trivialities were skating. Much to Connie's surprise, the tactless one developed unsuspected resources of adroitness in keeping the table-talk at concert-pitch of levity; and she forgave him when he was brutal enough to make a jest of the simple meal, giving the bread and butter a new name with each asking, and accusing her of being in league with the commissary department of the sleeping-car company. It spoke volumes for Dick's growth in perspicacity that he was able to discern the keen edge of the crisis without having actually seen the stone upon which it had been whetted; and in the midst of her own fencings with the tensities, Constance found time to wonder how Myra had wrought even the beginning of such a miracle in the downright one. In such resolute ignorings of the moving realities the supper interval was safely outworn; but when, at the end of it, Dick dragged out his watch and called "time," Constance found her tea too hot, and the drinking of it brought tears to her eyes. Whereupon the brutal one made an exaggerated pretense of sympathy, offering her a handkerchief; and the laugh saved them all until the good-bys were said, and the guests, with Elliott to speed their parting, had gone to the station. Constance stood in the empty corridor until the farther stair ceased to echo their footsteps. The day-long strain was off at last, and she meant to go quickly and clear off the table and wash the supper dishes, to the end that the reaction might not overwhelm her. But on the way she stopped at the little square table in the larger room and took a letter from its hiding place at the back of a framed photograph. It was a double inclosure in an outside envelope which bore the business card of a well known legal firm; and the wrapping of the inner envelope was a note on the firm's letter-head, stating in terse phrase that the inclosed letter had been found under the door of an unoccupied house in Colfax Avenue by the writer in the early summer of the previous year; that it had been mislaid; and that it was now forwarded with many regrets for its unintentional suppression. Constance read the note mechanically, as she had read it the day before when the postman had brought it. It explained nothing more than the mere fact of delay, but she understood. The writer of the lost letter, or his messenger, had thrust it under the door of the wrong house. She laid the note aside and tilted the envelope to let a coin fall into her palm. It was a double-eagle piece, little worn, but the memories which clustered about its giving and taking seemed to dull the lustre of the yellow metal. It was the price of sorrowful humiliation, no whit less to the man who had taken than to the woman who had given it. She put it that way in an inflexible determination to be just. Truly, his acceptance of it was a thing to be remembered with cheek-burnings of shame; but she would not hold herself blameless. In the light of that which his letter disclosed, her charitable impulse became a sword to slay the last remnant of manly pride and self-respect--if any remnant there were. She opened the letter and re-read it to the end, going back from the scarcely legible signature to a paragraph in the midst of it that bade fair to grave itself ineffaceably upon her heart. "You may remember that I said I couldn't tell you the truth, because it concerns a woman. When I add that the woman is yourself, you will understand. I love you; I think I have been loving you ever since that evening which you said we were to forget--the evening at the theatre. Strangely enough, my love for you isn't strong in the strength which saves. I went from you that night when you had bidden me God-speed at Mrs. Calmaine's, and within the hour I was once more a penniless vagabond. "When you were trying to help me this afternoon, I was trying to keep from saying that which I could never have a right to say. You pressed me very hard in your sweet innocence".... She sat down and the letter slipped from her fingers. The hurt was a year in the past, but time had not yet dulled the pain of it. Not to any human soul, nor yet to her own heart, had she admitted the one living fact which stood unshaken; which would stand, like some polished corner-stone of a ruined temple, when all else should have crumbled into dust. For which cause she sat with clasped hands and eyes that saw not; eyes that were still deep wells and clear, but brimming with the bitter waters of a fountain which flows only for those whose loss is irreparable. And while she wept, the sorrowful under-thought slipped into speech. "He calls it love, but it couldn't have been that. He says it wasn't strong in the strength that saves; and love is always mighty to succor the weak-hearted. I would have believed in him--I did believe in him, only I didn't know how to help. But no one could help when he didn't believe in himself; and now he is just drifting, with the cruel sword of opportunity loose in its scabbard, and all the unspeakable things dragging him whithersoever they will.... And he meant to end it all when he wrote this letter; I know he did. That would have been terrible; but it would have been braver than to go on to robbery, and unfaith, and--and now to this last pitiless iniquity. Oh, I can't let it go on to that!--not if I have to go and plead with him for the sake of that which he once thought was--love." She went down upon her knees with her face hidden in the chair-cushion, and the unconscious monologue became a passionate beseeching: "O God, help me to be strong and steadfast, that I may not fail when I come to stand between these two; for Thou knowest the secrets of the heart and all its weakness; and Thou knowest"-- CHAPTER XXX THE Bartrows, with Stephen Elliott to expedite their outsetting, caught their train with nothing to spare; and while the goggle-eyed switch-lamps were still flashing past the windows of the sleeping-car, Myra settled herself comfortably in her corner of the section and demanded the day's accounting. Bartrow was rummaging in the hand-bag for his traveling-cap, and he looked up with a most transparent affectation of surprise. "Hah? Wasn't I supposed to be chasing around all day trying to buy a rock-drill?" Myra ignored the skilless parry and thrust home. "Don't tease," she said. "You did beautifully at the supper-table, and I am quite sure Connie didn't suspect. But I want to know what has happened." Bartrow laughed good-naturedly. "Same old window-pane for you to look through, am I not? It's lucky for me that I'm a rattling good fellow, with nothing particular inside of me to be ashamed of." He was thumbing a collection of pocket-worn papers, and presently handed her a crisp bill of exchange for five hundred and forty-five dollars. "What do you think of that for one of the happenings!" She read the figure of it and the date. "I don't understand," she said. "Where did you get it?" "You wouldn't guess in a thousand years. It's the money I borrowed for Jeffard one fine morning last fall, with bank interest to date." "Then you have seen him?" "Saw him, felt of his hand, and went to luncheon with him." "Dick! And you really had the courage to ask him for this?" Bartrow's smile was a grimace. "Don't you sit there and tempt me to lie about it. You know what a fool I am with a debtor. Fortunately, I didn't have to ask; it came about as most things do in this world--click! buzz! boom! and your infernal machine has exploded. We cannoned against each other as I was going into the bank to get the money for the machinery man. After we'd said 'Hello,' and shook hands, Jeffard went in with me. On the way out the cashier stopped us. 'Mr. Jeffard,' says he, 'your personal account has a credit of five hundred dollars which doesn't appear in the deposits. If you'll let me have your book I'll enter it.' 'A credit?--of five hundred dollars? I don't understand,' says Jeffard. 'It's all right,' says the cashier. 'It came from the Carbonate City National, in Leadville. Didn't they notify you?' 'No,' says Jeffard; 'it must be a mistake. I had no credit in Leadville.' All this time the cashier was digging into his pigeonholes. 'You must have had,' says he. 'I can't put my hand on their letter, but as I recall it, they said the money was a remittance made by you sometime last year to cover a promissory note. When it reached them the note had matured and had been lifted. They have kept your money a good while, but they claim not to have known your address.'" Myra was listening with something more than curiosity. "What did Mr. Jeffard say?" she asked. "He looked a good deal more than he said; and what he said was rather queer. When he had pulled me a little aside, he lit a cigar and offered me one, as cool as ice. 'Of course, you'll understand that this was all prearranged between Mr. Holburn and myself,' says he. 'It would be too great a tax upon your credulity to ask you to believe that it is merely a coincidence; that I really did send the money to the Leadville bank to lift that note months ago.' I said No, and meant it; and he went over to the exchange window and made out a check and bought that draft. But afterward I could have kicked him for making that suggestion. I couldn't break away from it to save my life, and it stuck to me straight through to the finish." "But you went to luncheon with him afterward. Didn't he explain?" "Not a word. I tried my level best to pull the thing out of the hole two or three times, but it was buried too deep for me. And somehow that idiotic sneer of his seemed to color everything he said. He seemed to take it for granted that I'd been setting him down all these months for a scalawag, and everything I could say got twisted into a slap. We worried through the meal, and the cigars after it, in some sort of thankless fashion; but I wouldn't do it again for a farm." Myra became reflectively thoughtful, and with the jarring of the car the bit of money paper fell to the floor. Dick recovered it, put it away, and waited patiently for her comment. When it came it was no more than a leading question. "What do you make of it, Dick?" "I don't know what to make of it. If I could break away from all the things I used to know about him, I should say he acts like a man who has done something to make him declare war upon himself, and--as a natural consequence--upon everybody else. He seems to be ready to fight at the drop of the hat, and that's a bad symptom." "It is a symptom of a guilty conscience, isn't it?" Bartrow did not answer at once. To speak by the fact was to admit that all his loyal upholdings of Jeffard had been spent upon an unworthy object, and he was reluctant in just proportion to his loyalty. But the fact was large--too large to be overleaped. "It is a symptom, yes; and I'm beginning to be afraid it's a true one in Jeffard's case. I didn't find a soft spot in him anywhere till we came to speak of Lansdale." "They are still friends?" "Y--es, in a way; a sort of give-and-take way. Lansdale is cool and pretty well-calculated in his friendships as in everything else; and I imagine he forgathers with Jeffard without prejudice to his own private convictions in the Garvin affair. It's a bit odd, but Jeffard seems to have most of the remembrances on his side." "The kindly ones, you mean?" "Yes. I hadn't seen Lansdale yet, and I asked Jeffard how he was looking. He wagged his head, and there was a look in his eyes that I'd seen there more than once in the old days. 'Unless there is something to be done more than has been tried, it's only a question of weeks,' said he; and then he went back to something I had said that morning in Leadville just before he climbed the engine for the race to Aspen." Myra's eyebrows arched a query, and he elucidated. "Didn't I tell you? We had been talking about Connie, and I had hinted that she'd be willing to buy health for Lansdale at a price; and he"-- Myra cut in swiftly. "Has she told you that, Dick?" "Hardly; but I've eyes, haven't I? Well, as I was saying, Jeffard went back to that, and asked if Lansdale's recovery still meant as much to Connie. I told him I thought it meant rather more than less; and then he went into his shell, and when he came out it was on the human side. Said he had money to burn now, and asked if there was anything anybody could do to give Lansdale a better show for his white alley. I told him what I'd do if I could break away from the Myriad." "I remember; you said you would take him afield." "Yes. Rig up a team and a camping outfit, and chase him out into the mountains. Make him live outdoors for a month or two, and belt him over the head if I ever caught him sharpening a lead pencil. He's grinding away with Kershaw nights and Sundays, and trying to write a novel between times. It's a clear case of work-to-death." Myra nodded. "I think so; I have thought so all along. But he wouldn't go with Mr. Jeffard." "That's what I thought, and what I told Jeffard when he hinted at the thing. But we were both off; and that brings me to the other happening. After we'd smoked over it--Jeffard and I--we went around and hunted up Lansdale's doctor. The medicine-man agreed with me that it was the only chance, but he didn't give us much encouragement. Said it was a forlorn hope, with the odds against Lansdale; that he'd die if he didn't go, and would probably die if he did. Jeffard had been in and out of his shell two or three times since the beginning of it, but he came out again at that and stayed out. Said he owed Lansdale, and that would be a good way to wipe out the account. I told him that wouldn't go; that if he wanted to do Lansdale a good turn, he'd have to do it on its merits. 'I sha'n't be such a fool as to tell Lansdale I'm trying to square up with him,' says he. 'You go and persuade him.'" Myra's hand was on his knee. "You poor boy!" she said; "they always unload the thankless things on you, don't they? Did you try?" "Sure. If I'd felt like hanging back, a sight of Lansdale would have done the business for me. It's awful, little woman. I've seen dead men, and men that were going to die, but never a dying one that wanted so hard to live. Of course, he kicked clear over the traces when I proposed it, though I lied like a whitehead, and tried to make him believe it was my scheme to help Jeffard get cured of his case of mental and moral 'jimmies.' When that failed, I dug right down to hard-pan. 'You want to live, don't you?' said I, and when he admitted it, I biffed him square on the point of the jaw. Says I, 'Then it's a question of your stiff-necked New England pride against your love for a little girl who would give her right hand to see you well and strong, is it? You're not as good a man as I thought you were.'" Myra was moved to protest. "Oh, Dick! I do hope you haven't taken too much for granted! But go on; what did he say?" "I thought he'd rise up and fall on me at first; but he didn't. He mumbled something about the 'precious balms of a friend breaking his head,' and said I was altogether mistaken; that Connie was only an angel of mercy, one of God's little ones, and a few other things of that sort." "'Only'!" laughed Myra. "Yes, 'only.' But I could see that my shoulder-blow had knocked him out. He switched the talk to Jeffard, and pretty soon he was asking me if I really thought he could do any good in that quarter; or if my saying so was merely a lie cut out of whole cloth. I was soaked through by that time, and another plunge more or less didn't cut any figure, so I told him it wasn't a lie; that there was still hope for Jeffard if any one would lay hold of him and stick to him. 'What kind of hope, Dick?' says he. And I said, 'The only kind that counts; the kind that'll make him all through what he is in part.' He shook his head at that, and said, 'I don't know. That would mean repentance and restitution,--and the money's got its teeth into him now.' I'll have to admit that I was arguing dead against the probabilities, and I knew it; but I wouldn't let go." Myra's smile was tempered with affectionate pride. "You never do let go. Did he finally listen to reason?" "Yes, at the end of it. But if it were six for himself and Connie, it was a good half-dozen for Jeffard. 'I'll go, Dick,' said he. 'I'm afraid your assumptions are all good-hearted wishes, but I'll go. Perhaps, if it comes to the worst, God will give me a man for my leave-taking.' That was a new side of him, to me; the Puritan side, isn't it?" "The human side," she amended. "It is merely crusted a little thicker in the Puritan family." "But it's there, all the same. Out here, where the horizons and other things are pretty wide open, we're apt to say what we think, and pretty much all of it; but Lansdale and his kind think a good bit more and keep it to themselves. He's all right. I only wish his getting well were as sure as the goodness of him. Are you getting sleepy? Want your berth made down?" "Presently." Myra was gazing out at the night-wall slipping past the car windows, and for her the thick blackness mirrored a picture of a sweet-faced young woman sitting on a denim-covered lounge, with her hands tight clasped over one knee and her eyes alight with a soft starglow of compassion. And because of the picture, she said: "I'm afraid you didn't take too much for granted, Dick; and I could almost wish it were otherwise. It is heart-breaking to think of it." Dick went over to a seat beside her, and tried to put himself as nearly as possible at her point of view. "Let's not try to cross their bridges for them beforehand, little woman," he said, with his lips at her ear. "Life is pretty middling full for all of us,--for us two, at any rate." It was five minutes later, and the train had stopped for orders at the canyon gateway, when she turned to him to say: "What do you think about Mr. Jeffard now, Dick? Are we all mistaken? or is he the hardened cynic he seems to be?" Bartrow did not reply on the spur of the moment, as was his custom. When he had reasoned it out, he said:-- "I think we ought to break away from the notion that a man has got to be either all angel or all devil. Jeffard's a human man, like the rest of us. He's done some good things that I know of,--and one pretty bad one; and it's the bad one that is setting the pace for him just now. But, as I once said to Lansdale, I'm betting on the finish. One bad curve needn't spoil a whole railroad." Myra's hand sought and found his under cover of her wrap. "You are loyalty itself, Dick, and I can't help loving you for it. But you say 'one bad one.' Have you forgotten the Irish girl?" Dick set his jaw at that, and the big hand closed firmly over the small one. "When I have to believe that of him, Myra, my faith in my kind will drop back more notches than one. That would make him all devil, don't you see?" But her charity outran his. "No, Dick; I don't quite see it. It is just one more coil in the puzzle-tangle of good and evil that you spoke of. Connie knows it, and if she can find it in her heart to forgive him"-- There was reverent awe in Bartrow's rejoinder. "Do you mean to say she'd forgive him--_that_?" The intermittent clatter and roar of the canyon climb had begun, and in one of the breathing spaces Myra made answer. "She is one of God's little ones, as Mr. Lansdale said. I think she would forgive him even that." And in the next gap in the clamor, "Did you tell him about Garvin?" Dick shook his head. "No, I didn't dare to. It's a hard thing to say, but I'm not sure he wouldn't prosecute Jim for the attempt to kill. There's no such vindictiveness in the world as that which dates back to benefits forgot. But I told Lansdale, and gave him leave to make use of it if the time should ever come when he could do it without jeopardizing Garvin." At which Myra's charity stumbled and fell and ran no more. "That time will never come, Dick. Mr. Jeffard has a double feud with Garvin,--he is Garvin's debtor for benefits forgot, as you say; and he has done Garvin an injury. I am glad you didn't tell him." CHAPTER XXXI "SHE'S gone to her rest, at last, poor soul, and it's happy she'd be if it wasn't for the childer." Constance had been waiting through the long hours of the afternoon for Margaret's return from Owen David's shanty on the North Side; waiting for the summons to the death-bed of the mother of Owen David's children. She had promised to go, wherefore her heart smote her and the ready tears welled up at Margaret's announcement. "Oh, Margaret! Why didn't you come for me!" "'Twas no use at all, Miss Constance; 'twas her last word she said to you this morning, when she asked you to try once more with Owen for the childer's sake. When you'd gone she turned her face to the wall, and we never knew when her soul went out." "Was Owen there?" "He was; and it's sober he was for the first time in many a day. He took it hard; them Welsh are flighty people, anyway." "He ought to take it hard," said Constance, with as near an approach to vindictiveness as the heart of compassion would sanction. "Has everything been done?" Margaret nodded. "The neighbors were that kind; and it's poor hard-working people they are, too." "I know," said Constance. She was making ready to go out, and she found her purse and counted its keepings. They were as scanty as her will to help was plenteous. Myra's check had been generous, but the askings were many, and there was no more than the sweet savor of it left. "I'm sure I don't know what Owen will do," she went on. "I suppose there isn't money enough to bury her." Margaret had taken off her hat and jacket and she was suddenly impelled to go to work. The lounge-cover was awry, and in the straightening of it she said:-- "Don't you be worrying about that, now, Miss Constance. It was Owen himself that was giving me the money for the funeral when I was leaving." "Owen? Where did he get it? He hasn't had a day's work for a month." Margaret was smoothing the cover and shaking the pillows vigorously. "Sure, that's just what I was thinking" (slap, slap), "but I've his money in my pocket this blessed minute. So you just go and say a sweet word to the childer, Miss Constance, and don't you be worrying about anything." Connie's hand was on the door-knob, but she turned with a sudden sinking of the heart, and a swift impulse that sent her across the room to Margaret's side. "Margaret, you gave Owen that money before he gave it to you. Where did you get it?" Margaret left off beating the pillows and slipped upon her knees to bury her face in one of them. "I knew you'd be asking that," she sobbed, and then: "Haven't I been working honest every day since Christmas? And does it be taking all I earn to keep me, I'd like to know?" Constance went down on her knees beside the girl, and what she said was to One who was merciful even to the Magdalenes. When she rose the pain of it was a little dulled, and she went back to the charitable necessities in a word. "Is there any one to watch with her to-night, Margaret?" The girl lifted a tear-stained face, and the passionate Irish eyes were swimming, and Constance turned away because her loving compassion was greater than her determination to be judicially severe. "I'm one," Margaret answered; "and Mrs. Mulcahey'll come over when her man gets home." "Very well. I'll go over and give the children their suppers and put them to bed. I'll stay till you come, and you can bring Tommie to take me home." Constance went upon her mission heavy-hearted; and in the hovel across the river found comfort in the giving of comfort. The David children were all little ones, too young to fully realize their loss; and when they had been fed and hushed to sleep, and one of David's fellow workmen had taken the husband away for the night, Constance sat down in the room with the dead to wait for Margaret. For a heart less pitiful or a soul less steadfast, the silence of the night and the solitary watch with the sheeted figure on the bed might have been unnerving; but in all her life Constance had never had to reckon with fear. Hence, when the door opened behind her without a preliminary knock, and a footstep crossed the threshold, she thought it was one of the neighbors and rose softly with her finger on her lip. But when she saw who it was, she started back and made as if she would retreat to the room where the children were. "You!" she said. "Why are you here?" "I beg your pardon." Jeffard said it deferentially, almost humbly. "I didn't expect to find you here; I was looking for--for the man, you know. What has become of him?" The hesitant pause in the midst of the explanation opened the door for a swift suspicion,--a suspicion too horrible to be entertained, and yet too strong to be driven forth. There was righteous indignation in her eyes when she went close to him and said:-- "Can you stand here in the presence of that"--pointing to the sheeted figure on the bed--"and lie to me? You expected to meet Margaret Gannon here. You have made an appointment with her--an assignation in the house of the dead. Shame on you!" It should have crushed him. It did for the moment. And when he rallied it was apparently in a spirit of the sheerest hardihood. "You are right," he said; "I did expect to meet Margaret. With your permission, I'll go outside and wait for her." She flashed between him and the door and put her back to it. "Not until you have heard what I have to say, Mr. Jeffard. I've been wanting to say it ever since Tommie told me, but you have been very careful not to give me a chance. You know this girl's story, and what she has had to fight from day to day. Are you so lost to every sense of justice and mercy as to try to drag her back into sin and shame after all her pitiful strugglings?" "It would seem so," Jeffard retorted, and his smile was harder than his words. "It is quite conceivable that you should believe it of the man who once took your charity and made a mock of it. May I go now?" "Oh, no, not yet; not until you have promised me to spare and slay not, for this once. Think of it a moment; it is the price of a human soul! And it is such a little thing for you to concede." The hard smile came and went again. "Another man might say that Margaret has come to be very beautiful, Miss Elliott." The indignation was gone out of her eyes, and her lips were trembling. "Oh, how can you be so hard!" she faltered. "Will nothing move you?" He met the beseeching with a steady gaze that might have been the outlooking of a spirit of calm superiority or the cold stare of a demon of ruthlessness. The mere suggestion of the alternative made her hot and cold by turns. "I wonder that you have the courage to appeal to me," he said, at length. "Are you not afraid?" "For Margaret's sake I am not afraid." "You are very brave--and very loyal. Do you wonder that I was once moved to tell you that I loved you?" "How can you speak of that here--and now!" she burst out. "Is there no measure of the hardness of your heart? Is it not enough that you should make me beg for that which I have a right to demand?" He went apart from her at that to walk softly up and down in the narrow space between the bed and the wall,--to walk for leaden-winged minutes that seemed hours to Constance, waiting for his answer. At the final turn he lifted the sheet from the face of the dead woman and looked long and earnestly, as one who would let death speak where life was dumb and inarticulate. Constance watched him with her heart in a turmoil of doubt and fear. The doubt was of her own making, as the fear was of his. She had thought that this man was known to her, in his potentialities for good or evil, in his stumblings upon the brink of the abyss, and in his later plunge into the depths of wrongdoing; but now that she was brought face to face with him, her prefigurings took new shapes and she feared to look upon them. For the potentialities had suddenly become superhuman, and love itself stood aghast at the possibilities. In the midst of it he stood before her again. "What is it that you would have me do?" he asked. The tone of it assured her that her battle was fought and won; but at the moment of victory she had not the strength to make terms with him. "You know what you ought to do," she said, with eyes downcast. "The 'oughts' are sometimes terribly hard, Miss Elliott. Haven't you found them so?" "Sometimes." She was finding one of them sufficiently hard at that moment to compel the admission. "But they are never impossible, you would say, and that is true also. You asked me a few moments ago if there was nothing that would move me, and I was tempted. But that is past. Will you suffer me to go now?" She stood aside, but her hand was still on the latch of the door. "You have not promised," she said. "Pardon me; I was hoping you would spare me. The cup is of my own mixing, but the lees are bitter. Must I drain them?" "I--I don't understand," she rejoined. "Don't you? Consider it a moment. You have taken it for granted that I had it in my heart to do this thing, and, knowing what you do of me, the inference is just. But I have not admitted it, and I had hoped you would spare me the admission which a promise would imply. Won't you leave me this poor shadow of refutation?" She opened the door for him. "Thank you; it is much more than I deserve. Since you do not ask it, you shall have the assurance,--the best I can give. I shall leave Denver in a day or two, and you may take your own measures for safeguarding Margaret in the interval. Perhaps it won't be as difficult as you may imagine. If I have read her aright you may ask large things of her loyalty and devotion to you." The battle was over, and she had but to hold her peace to be quit of him. But having won her cause it was not in the loving heart of her to let him go unrecompensed. "You are going away? Then we may not meet again. I gave you bitter words a few minutes ago, Mr. Jeffard, but I believed they were true. Won't you deny them--if you can?" His foot was across the threshold, but he turned to smile down upon her. "You are a true woman. You said I lied to you, and now you ask me to deny it, knowing well enough that the denial will afterward stand for another falsehood. I know what you think of me,--what you are bound to think of me; but isn't it conceivable that I would rather quench that fire than add fuel to it?" "But you are going away," she insisted. "And since we may never meet again, you crave the poor comfort of a denial. You shall have it for what it is worth. When you are inclined to think charitably of me, go back to first principles and remember that the worst of men have sometimes had promptings which were not altogether unworthy. Let the major accusation stand, if you choose; I did have an appointment here with Margaret Gannon. But when your faith in humankind needs heartening, conceive that for this once the tryst was one which any woman might have kept with me. Believe, if you care to, that my business here this evening was really with this poor fellow whose sins have found him out. Would you like to be able to believe that?" For the first time since doubt and fear had gotten the better of indignation she was able to lift her eyes to his. "I will believe it," she said gratefully. He smiled again, and she was no longer afraid. Now that she came to think of it, she wondered if she had ever been really afraid of him. "Your faith is very beautiful, Miss Elliott. I am glad to be able to give it something better than a bare suggestion to build on. Will you give this to Margaret when she comes?" It was a folded paper, with a printed title and indorsement blanks on the back. She took it and glanced at the filing. It was the deed to a burial lot in the name of Owen David. "Oh!" she said; and there was a world of contrition and self-reproach in the single word. "Can you ever forgive me, Mr. Jeffard?" As once before, when Lansdale had proffered it, Jeffard pushed aside the cup of reinstatement. "Don't take too much for granted. Remember, the indictment still stands. Margaret Gannon's tempter might have done this and still merit your detestation." And at the word she was once more alone with the still figure on the bed. CHAPTER XXXII FOR what reason Constance, left alone in the house of the dead, went softly from the lighted room to kneel at the bedside of the sleeping children in the lean-to beyond--to kneel with her face in her hands and her heart swelling with emotions too great for any outlet save that of sorrowful beseechings,--let those adjudge who have passed in some crucial moment from loss to gain, and back to loss again. There was a pitiful heart cry in the prayer for help because she knew now that love, mighty and unreasoning, must be reckoned with in every future thought of this man; love heedless of consequences, clinging first to an imagined ideal, and now to the sorrowful wreck of that ideal; love lashed into being, it may be, by the very whip of shame, acknowledged only to be chained and dungeoned in the Castle of Despair, but alive and pleading, and promising yet to live and plead though hope were dead. It was thus that Margaret found her an hour later; and in the darkness of the little room the true-hearted Irish girl knelt beside her saint, with her strong arms around the weeping one, and a sob of precious sympathy in the outpouring of words. "There now--there now, Miss Constance! is it kneeling here and crying for these poor left ones that you are? Sure it's the Holy Virgin herself that'll be mothering them, and the likes of them. And Owen'll be doing his part, too. It's a changed man he is." Constance shook her head. She was too sincere to let the lesser reason stand for the greater, even with Margaret. "I do grieve for them, Margaret; but--but it isn't that." "It isn't that, do you say? Then I know full well what it is, and it's the truth I'm going to tell you, Miss Constance, for all the promisings he made me give him. 'Tis Mr. Jeffard's money that's to go for the funeral, and it was him left it with me to give to Owen. He told me you'd not take it from him, and 'twas his own free gift. Ever since he came back he's been giving me money for the poor ones, and making me swear never to tell you; but it was for your sweet sake, Miss Connie, and not for mine. I'd want to die if you didn't believe that." "Oh, Margaret! are you telling me the truth? I do so want to believe it!" Margaret rose and drew her confessor to the half-open door; to the bedside of the sheeted one. "A little while ago she was alive and talking to you, Miss Constance, and you believed her because you knew she was going fast. If I'd be like that, I'd tell you the same." "I believe you, Margaret--I do believe you; and, oh, I'm _so_ thankful! It would break my heart to have you go back now!" "Don't you be worrying for me. Didn't I say once that the devil might fly away with me, but I'd not live to leave him have the good of it? When that time comes, Miss Constance, it's another dead woman you'll be crying over. And now you'll go home and take your rest; the good old father is waiting on the doorstep for you." Even with his daughter, Stephen Elliott was the most reticent of men; and on the little journey up the river front and across the viaduct he plodded along in silence beside her, waiting for her to speak if she had anything to say. Constance had a heart full to overflowing, but not of the things which lend themselves to speech with any father; and when she broke the silence it was in self-defense, and on the side of the commonplace. "Have you decided yet where you will go?" she asked, knowing that the arrangements for the prospecting trip were all but completed. "N--no, not exactly. Except that I never have gone with the rush, and I don't mean to this time. There's some pretty promising country around up back of Dick's mountain, and I've been thinking of that." "I wish you would go into the Bonanza district," she said. "If I'm to stay with Dick and Myra, it will be a comfort to know that you are not very far away." The old man plodded another square before he succeeded in casting his thought into words. "I was wondering if that wasn't the reason why I want to go there. I'm not letting on to anybody about it, but I'm getting sort of old and trembly, Connie; and you're about all I have left." She slipped her arm an inch or two farther through his. "Must it be, poppa? Can't we get along without it? I'll be glad to live like the poorest of them, if we can only be together." "I know; you're a good daughter to me, Connie, and you'd go into the hospital on Dr. Gordon's offer to-morrow, if I'd say the word. But I think the last strike I made rather spoiled me. I got sort of used to the flesh-pots, and I haven't got over feeling for my check-book yet. I guess I'll have to try it once more before we go on the county." She would have said more had there been more to say. But her arguments had all been exhausted when the prospecting fever had set in, and she could only send him forth with words of heartening and a brave God-speed. "I'm not going to put things in the way," she said; "but I'd go with you and help dig, if you'd let me. The next best thing will be to have you somewhere within reach, and I shall be comforted if you can manage to keep Topeka Mountain in sight. But you won't." "Yes, I will, daughter; the string pulls about as hard at my end as it does at yours, and I'll tell you what I'll do. The gulches that I had in mind are all up at the head of Myriad Creek, and I'll ship the 'stake' to Dick, and make the Myriad a sort of outfitting camp. How will that strike you?" "That will be fine," she said; adding, in an upflash of the old gayety: "and when you've located your claim, Myra and I will come and turn the windlass for you." They were climbing the stairs to the darkened suite on the third floor, and at the door Constance found a telegraph messenger trying to pin a non-delivery notice to the panel. She signed his blank by the hall light, and read the message while her father was unlocking the door and lighting the lamp. "It is from Myra," she explained; "and it's good news and bad. Do you remember what Dick was telling us the other evening about his drunken blacksmith?" "The fellow that went into the blast-choke after the dead man?" "Yes. He is down with mountain fever, and Myra says nothing but good nursing will save him. Dick has got his story out of him at last; he is Margaret Gannon's father." "Humph! what a little world this is! I suppose you will send Margaret right away?" "I shall go with her to-morrow morning. I'll tell Dick what you are going to do, and you can come when you are ready." The old man nodded acquiescence. "It'll be better for you to go along; she'll be all broke up. Want me to go and wire Dick?" "If you will. I should have asked the boy to wait, but he was gone before I had opened the envelope. Tell Dick to keep him alive at any cost, and that we'll be there to-morrow evening." When her father was gone, Constance sat down to piece out the discoveries, comforting and harrowing, of the foregone hour, and to set them over against each other in a field which was as yet too near to be retrospective. She tried to stand aside for herself, and to see and consider only those to whom her heart went out in loving compassion and sympathy; but it was inevitable that she should finally come to a re-reading of the letter taken from its hiding-place in the photograph frame. She dwelt upon it with a soft flush spreading slowly from neck to cheek, reading it twice and yet once again before she laid it in the little wall-pocket of a grate and touched a match to it. "For his sake and for mine," she said softly, as she watched it shrivel and blacken in the flame. "That is what I must do--burn my ships so that I can't go back." The charred wraith of the letter went up the chimney in the expiring gasp of the flame, and there was the sound of a familiar step in the corridor. She went quickly to open the door for the late visitor. It was Lansdale, come to say what must be said on the eve of parting, and to ask for his answer to a conditional plea made in a moment when the consumptive's optimism had carried him off his feet. CHAPTER XXXIII THE periods of the scene-shifter, in life as in life's mimicking on any stage, have fallen into disesteem. In any flight of fancy or plodding journey of fact these are flat countries to be traversed; interregnums which, however replete with incident for the actors themselves, are deemed alike unworthy of the playwright's outworking or the chronicler's recording. To the audience waiting beyond the footlights these are mere breathing spaces of music-hastened minutes standing for whatever lapses of days, weeks or months the story of the play involves; but for the scene-shifter they are gaps toil-filled, with fierce strivings and wrestlings and doughty compellings of the animate and inanimate perversities. None the less, for the toiler behind the scenes there are compensations, for the audience, the _entr'acte_ is a solution of continuity, more or less skillfully bridged, according to the playwright's gift; but the worker of transformations knows no break in the action. For him the story of the play is complete, marching evenly to its climax through spoken line and drop-curtained interregnum. The curtain has rung down upon an interior in an apartment house. It is to rise upon a flashlight picture of a summer night scene in a mountain-girt valley. The walls of the homelike interior vanish, and in their stead dim reaches of the forest-clad mountains suggest themselves. A stream tumbles over the boulders in its bed with a hollow roar hinting at canyoned plungings above; and on the margin of it a quaking aspen blinks its many-lidded eyes in the light of a camp fire. Against the pillared background of forest, primeval firs whose sombre greens become murky black in the firelight, a campers' wagon is drawn up; and the picket pins of the grazing horses are driven in a grass grown extension of the glade to the right. There is a silken whisper abroad in the night, rising and falling upon the sound waves of the tumbling stream: the voices of the trees as they call to each other in the night wind pouring softly down from the sky-pitched peaks. The scene is set and the actors are in their places. They are two men clad in flannel shirts and brown duck overalls and shooting-coats. One of them is bearded and bronzed, with the well-knit figure of conscious strength. The other is of slighter frame, and on his clean-shaven face the prolonged holiday in the open is but now beginning to impress the stamp of returning health and vigor. The bearded man is on his back beside the fire, with his clasped hands for a pillow and an extinct pipe between his teeth. The clean-shaven one is propped against the bole of a tree; his eyes are closed, and his pipe has slipped from his fingers. A brand falls into the glowing mass of embers, and the sparks fly upward in a crackling shower. It is the prompter's call-bell. The man reclining at the tree-foot opens his eyes, and the bearded one sits up and feels mechanically for the tobacco pouch. "Here it is," says Lansdale. "I was just about to fill up again when the realities slipped away. It's astonishing how one can sleep overtime in these upper levels." The athletic one rises and stretches till his joints crack. "Been asleep, have you? So have I. There's no opiate in the world like a day's tramping in the altitudes. Freshen you up any?" "As to body, yes. But I've had a curious dream--if it were a dream." Silence while the sob of the river rises and falls on the night wind, and then a half-hesitant query. "Jeffard, do you believe in presentiments?" The bearded one is on his knees before the fire, pressing a live coal into the bowl of his pipe, and the answer is delayed. "I don't know whether I do or not; I have never had one." "But you have known of others having them, haven't you?" "Of one other: but in that instance it was foreknowledge rather than a foreboding. The presentiment should have been mine; and I had none." "Would you mind telling me about it?" "No. It was while I was making the survey for a logging railway in Quebec. I expected to be out all summer, but in the middle of it the company called a halt and I went home. I hadn't wired or written, but when I reached Hinsdale my father was at the station to meet me. For three days my mother had been insisting that I would come, and to quiet her they had been meeting the trains. She died the next evening." "And you had no premonition?" "None whatever. For a month or more I had been beyond the reach of the mails; and I had left her in her usual health. It was a bolt out of a clear sky." Again the brawling stream and the whispering leaves fill the gap of silence; and as before, Lansdale is the first to speak. "I have always scouted such things, as sanity seems to demand. Stories with any element of the supernatural in them have never appealed to me because, however well authenticated, they were always stories, and never actual happenings in which I had any part. But for the last day or two I've had a growing sense of impending calamity, and I can't shake it off." There is the brusquerie of heartening in Jeffard's rejoinder. "Nonsense! It's only the imaginative part of you kicking against the pricks of a longish holiday." "That is ingenious, but I can't quite accept it. I've eaten and slept with the imaginative fiend long enough to be pretty well acquainted with his vagaries. This is altogether different. It is precisely the feeling you have had just before a storm; a sense of depression as intangible as darkness, but quite as real. It was with me a few minutes ago when I fell asleep, and the dream seemed to be a part of it." "Oh, dreams," says the scoffer; "I thought they had been accounted for by the dietists. I told you that last batch of panbread held possibilities. But go on and unload your dream. I'm shudder-proof." Lansdale tells it circumstantially, keeping his pipe alight in the periods. "It didn't seem like a dream; at least, not in the beginning of it. I was sitting here just as I am now, and you were on your back over there, with the pipe in your mouth. The surroundings were the same, except that the fire was burning low. I remember thinking that you must have fallen asleep, and wondering why the pipe didn't fall and wake you. After a time the roar of the stream seemed to quiet down, and I heard the clink of horseshoes upon stone. The sound came from across the stream, and as I looked I saw a trail and a horseman coming down it. It was all so real that I wondered why I hadn't noticed the trail before. The man rode down to the water's edge and made as if he would cross. I saw him quite distinctly, and thought it curious, because the fire was too low to give much light. He merely glanced at the stream, and then turned his horse's head and rode down the opposite bank. He passed out of sight among the trees, and a moment later I heard the horse's hoofs again, this time as if he were on a bridge of poles." Jeffard has been listening with attention no more than decently alert, but at this point he breaks in to say: "You've been walking in your sleep. Go on." "It was just here that the supernatural came in. I told you that the man had passed out of sight, but all at once I seemed to see him again. He was on a corduroy bridge crossing the stream, and I saw plainly what he did not,--that the bridge was unsafe, and that a step or two would plunge him into the torrent. I don't remember what followed, save that I tried to call out, first to him and then to you; but my voice seemed to be swallowed up in the thunder of the water. There was a little gap filled with fierce strugglings, and then I seemed to be here again, lying by the wagon with a blanket over me; and you were walking up and down with another man,--a stranger. That is all; except that I tried to tell you that you were wet through and would take cold,--tried and couldn't, and awoke." Jeffard has risen to put another log on the fire. "It's the panbread," he says, with the air of one who sweeps the board for a resetting of the pieces. But after a little he adds: "I was wondering how you came to know about the bridge. That is the only unaccountable twist in it." "Is there a bridge?" "Yes; it's just below that farther clump of aspens. But there is nothing the matter with it that I could see. I noticed it while I was picketing the horses." "And is there a trail on the other side of the stream?" "There is. There used to be a ford just here, but it was dangerous, and we built the bridge." "Then you have been here before?" "Yes, many times. I spent the better half of a summer and all of one winter in this valley. The Midas is just below here. I meant to surprise you to-morrow morning." Lansdale's gaze is in the heart of the fire and his voice is low. "Do you know, Henry, I'm rather glad you didn't wait? Don't ask me why, because I can't tell you in terms divisible by the realities. But somehow the to-morrows don't seem to be assured." "Oh, pshaw! that's your dream--and the panbread its father. If you had talked that way a month ago, when you were really living from hand to mouth"-- Lansdale spreads his hands palms down and looks at them. "You promised me a new lease of life, Henry, and you've given it me,--or the key to it. I didn't believe it could be done, and my chief trouble in those first days was the thought that you'd have to bury me alone. And when we camped in a particularly rocky spot, I used to wonder how you would manage it." Jeffard's smile is of grimness. "If you had mentioned it, I could have helped you off with that burden. These mountains are full of graves, ready-made; prospect holes, where the better part of many a man lies buried. Do you see that heap of earth and stone over yonder?" Lansdale shades his eyes from the firelight and looks and sees. "That is one of them. Just behind that heap there is a shaft with a windlass across it, and for six weeks two men worked early and late digging a hole,--which turned out to be an excellent well when the water came in and stopped them." "And the water was bitter," says Lansdale. "Did you drink of it, Henry?" "No; but the other man did, and he went mad." Once more the stream and the sighing night wind share the silence. For many days Lansdale has been assuring himself that the golden moment for speech of the helpful sort must ultimately be made and not waited for. In the hour when he had consented to Bartrow's urgings he had been given to see his opportunity and had determined to grasp it,--had made the determination the excuse for sharing Jeffard's hospitality. He can look back upon that resolve now and see that it was perfunctory; that the prompting had been of duty and not at all of love for the man. But the weeks of close companionship have wrought more miracles than one, and not the least among them is a great amazement builded upon the daily renewal of Jeffard's loving-kindnesses. For the man with the world-quarrel has been a brother indeed; nurse, physician, kinsman, and succoring friend; with the world-quarrel put aside from the moment of outsetting, and with apparently no object in life less worthy than that of fighting a vicarious battle for a sick man. The summary of it is humanizing, and the last upholdings of the crust of reserve break down in the warmth of it. "May I speak as the spirit moves, Henry?" "If you think I deserve it. Why shouldn't you?" "It is a question of obligations rather than of deservings,--my obligations. No brother of my own blood could have done more for me than you have." "And you want to even it up?" "No; but I want to tell you while I may that it has come very near to me in these last few days. At first I was inclined to make another query of it, and to speculate as to your probable motive; but latterly I've come to call it by its right name." Jeffard shakes his head slowly, and removes his pipe to say: "Don't make any more mistakes, Lansdale. I'm neither better nor worse than I was that night when I told you the story of the man and his temptation. I know what you mean and what you would say; but this experiment and its results--the twenty odd pounds of flesh you have put on, and the new lease of life they stand for--mean more to me than they do to you." "I don't begin to understand the drift of that," says Lansdale. "No? I wonder if you would understand and believe if I should tell you the truth; if I should confess that my motive, so far as you are concerned, is entirely selfish?" "Since understanding implies belief, I shall have to say no to that. But you might try,--for your own satisfaction." "It's altogether unprofitable; but perhaps it's your due. I'll have to go back a little to make it clear. In the old days we were pretty good friends, but I think you will admit that there have always been reservations. You haven't known me and I haven't known you as friends of the David and Jonathan sort know each other. Isn't that so?" Lansdale is constrained to say "Yes," wishing it were otherwise. Jeffard refills his pipe and fishes for another live coal in the fire-fringe. The _g-r-r-rh_ of the grazing horses comes from the near-by glade, and again the silence begins to grow. Suddenly he says: "Let's drop it, Lansdale, and talk about something else." "No, go on; nothing you can say will efface the brotherly fact." "Very well,--if you will have it. You said you were inclined to question my motive. It was more than questionable; it was frankly selfish." "Selfish? You'll have to spell it out large for me. From my point of view it seems rather the other way about. What had you to gain by saddling yourself with the care of a sick man?" "I can't put it in words--not without laying myself open to the charge of playing to the gallery. But let me state a fact and ask a question. A year ago you thought it was all up with you, and you didn't seem to care much. A few months later I found you fighting for your life like a shipwrecked sailor with land in sight. What did it?" That the lava-crust of reserve is altogether molten is evinced in Lansdale's straightforward reply. "Love,--love for a woman. I think you must have known that." "I did. That was why you were making the desperate fight for life; and that is why we are here to-night, you and I. I love the woman, too." Lansdale shakes his head slowly, and an ineffable smile is Jeffard's reward. "And yet you call it selfishness, Henry. Man, man! you have deliberately gone about to save my life when another might have taken it!" "I shall reap where I have sown," says Jeffard steadily. "Latterly I have been living for one day,--the day when I can take you back to her in the good hope that she will forget what has been for the sake of what I have tried to make possible." Once more Lansdale's gaze is in the glowing heart of the fire, and the light in his eyes is prophetic. "Verily, you shall reap, Henry; but not in a field where you have sown. Don't ask me how I know. That's my secret. But out of all this will come a thing not to be measured by your prefigurings. You shall have your reward; but I crave mine, too. Will you give it me?" "If it be mine to give." "It is. Do justice and love mercy, Henry. That is the thing I've been trying to find words to say to you all these weeks." Jeffard lays the pipe aside and does not pretend to misunderstand. "Tell me what you would like to have me do." "I think you must know: find the man who drank of the bitter waters and went mad, and give him back that which you have taken from him." "Isn't there a possibility that I can do neither?" "I can help you to do the first,--and for the other I can only plead. I know what you would say: that the man had forfeited his right; that he tried to kill you; that by all the laws of man's inventing this money is yours. But God's right and your debt to your own manhood are above all these. As your poor debtor, I'm privileged to ask large things of you; can't you break the teeth of it and shake yourself free of the money-dragon?" Jeffard is afoot, tramping a monotonous sentry beat between the wagon and the fire. His rejoinder is a question. "Do you know where James Garvin is to be found?" "I don't, but Bartrow does." "Why didn't he tell me?" "Because Dick is merciful. The man is a criminal, and you could send him to the penitentiary." "And Dick thought--and you have thought--that I would prosecute him. It was the natural inference, I suppose,--from your point of view. The man who would rob his partner wouldn't stumble over a little thing like that. Will it help you to sleep the sounder if I say that vengeance isn't in me?--wasn't in me even in the white heat of it?" Lansdale nods assent. "I'm on the asking hand, and any concession is grateful. If you were vindictive about it, I'm afraid the major contention would be hopeless." "But as it is you do not despair?" "I am very far from despairing, Henry. You spoke lightly of our friendship a little while ago, and one time I should have agreed with you. But I know you better now, and the incredibility of this thing that you have done has been growing upon me. It's the one misshapen column in a fair temple. Won't you pull it down and set up another in its place,--a clean-cut pillar of uprightness, which will harmonize with the others?" Jeffard stops short at the tree-bole, with his hand on Lansdale's shoulder. "It has taken me five weeks to find out why you consented to come afield with me," he says. "It was to say this, wasn't it?" "Just that," says Lansdale, and his voice is the voice of one pleading as a mother pleads. "Say you will do it, Henry; if not for your own sake or mine, for the sake of that which has brought us together here." Jeffard has turned away again, but he comes back at that to stand before Garvin's advocate. "It is a small thing you have asked, Lansdale," he says, after a time; "much smaller than you think. The pillar isn't altogether as crooked as it looks; there is something in the perspective. You know how the old Greek builders used to set the corner column out of the perpendicular to make it appear plumb. We don't always do that; sometimes we can't do it without bringing the whole structure down about our ears. But in this case your critical eye shall be satisfied. We'll go down to the mine in the morning and use Denby's wire. If Bartrow can find Garvin, you shall see how easily the dragon's teeth may be broken. Is that what you wanted me to say?" Lansdale's answer is a quotation. "'And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking ... that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.' I've seen my reward and felt of it; and yours will come a little later,--in a way you little dream of. Pass the tobacco, and let's have another whiff or two before we turn in. I'm too acutely thankful to be sleepy." For a peaceful half-hour they sit before the glowing embers, smoking placidly while their talk drifts hither and yon over the spent sea of boyhood and youth. It is a heartening half-hour, and at the end of it Jeffard rises to get the blankets from the wagon. Lansdale elects to sleep at his tree-root, and he is rolling himself in his blanket when Jeffard says: "How about the presentiment? Have we tired it out?" Lansdale laughs softly. "It's gone," he says. "Perhaps it was nothing more than an upheaval of conscience. I'm subject to that when I've anything on my mind. Good-night, and God bless you, Henry." And so the curtain goes down upon the summer night scene in the mountain-girt valley, with the two men sleeping peacefully before the fire, and the stars shining softly in the patch of velvety sky overhead. The midnight ebb of the snow-fed stream has set in, and the throbbing roll of the water drum is muffled. The fire burns low. The whispering leaves are stilled, and the wind slipping down from the snow coifs, sinks to a sigh. The pinions of the night are folded, and darkness and murmurous silence wrap the mantle of invisibility around the camp in the glade. CHAPTER XXXIV IT is the gray dawn that lifts the curtain, and in the little glade where the two men slept there are three figures, dim and ghostly in the morning's twilight. Two of them are afoot, heavy-eyed and weary, tramping a slow-paced beat on the margin of the tumbling stream. The third is a still shape lying blanket-covered beside the wagon. "Tell me about it, Denby," says one of the watchers, and his voice breaks in the saying of it. "I think I can bear it now. How did it happen?" The master of men shakes his head. "I can't tell you anything more than the bald fact, Jeffard. I rode down the trail ahead of Higgins, and should have forded the creek here, only I didn't want to disturb you two. I went on to the bridge, and in the act of crossing he ran down the bank on this side, calling to me to go back. It was too late. I had barely time to get free of the stirrups when we were into it,--the two of us and the horse. It isn't more than three or four feet deep, as you know, but I knew it meant death if we went into the mill tail below. I lost my grip and was gone when he grappled me. I don't know yet how he came to save my life and lose his own." "It was to be," says Jeffard, brokenly. "When I reached you he was holding you up with one hand and clinging to the bridge stringer with the other. His weight and yours with the rush of the water had pushed the timber down, and his head was under." Two other turns they make, and then Jeffard says, with awe in his voice, "He knew about it beforehand, Denby," and he tells Lansdale's dream. Denby hears him through without interrupting, but at the end of it he says, gently: "It wasn't a dream. Higgins was overdue with the team from Aspen, and I went out to see what had become of him. I passed here on my way up the trail about nine o'clock, and you were both asleep then. I had crossed by the lower ford and found it pretty bad, so I turned back from here and rode down to see if the bridge was all right. He saw me and heard me." Jeffard's gesture is of unconvincement. "That accounts for part of it," he says; "but I shall always believe he foresaw his death and the manner of it." After that they pace up and down in silence again, treading out the sorrowful watch until daylight is fully come, bringing with it a team from the mine and men to do what remains to be done. The two stand apart until the men have done their office, falling in to walk softly behind the wagon on the short journey down the valley to the mine settlement. On the way, Jeffard accounts for himself briefly. "He was one of the two best friends I had in the world," he says. "I had him out on a camping holiday for his health, and he was gaining day by day. We were counting upon dropping in on you this morning, and now"-- "I know," says the master. "He gave his life for mine, and it gets pretty near to me, too." And thereafter they keep step with heads bowed and eyes downcast, as those in whom sorrow has murdered speech; and the bellowing stream at the trail-side thunders a requiem for its victim. The setting sun is crimsoning the eastern snow caps while they are burying him on the plateau above the mine settlement. An hour later, the master of men and the master of the mine are met together in the log cabin opposite the great gray dump; in the cabin builded by Garvin, but which now serves as the office of the superintendent of the Midas. Sorrow still sits between, and Denby would give place to it. "Put it off till to-morrow, Jeffard," he says. "Neither of us is fit to talk business to-night." "No, it mustn't be put off. I gave him my promise, and I mean to make it good while time serves. Have you any one here who is competent to witness a legal document?" "Yes; Halsey is a notary public." "Good. Sit down at that desk and draw up a writing transferring my interest in the Midas to Stephen Elliott and Richard Bartrow, trustees." "What's that? Trustees for whom?" "For James Garvin." The master of men leans back in his chair, his eyes narrowing and the little frown of perplexity radiating fan-like above them. "Jeffard, do you mean to say that you are going to step aside in favor of the man who tried to kill you?" "You may put it that way, if you choose. It would have been done long ago if I had been able to find the man." "And you stepped into the breach a year ago and secured his property for him because he had put himself out of the running and couldn't? You've touched me on the raw, Jeffard. It's my business to size people up, and you have fairly outflanked me. A blind man might have seen the drift of it, but I didn't; I thought you had robbed him. Why didn't you give it a name?" "I had no thought of concealment until you warned me. Garvin was a criminal in the eye of the law, and the least I could do for him was to turn the tide of public opinion in his favor." "Well, you did it; but just the same, you might have passed the word to me. It wouldn't have gone any farther, and I should have felt a good bit easier in my mind." "Perhaps; but you will pardon me if I say that I wasn't considering you in the matter. I knew better than to defeat my own end. If I had told you the truth at the time, you would not have believed it; you would have struck hands with your own theory that Garvin had attempted to rob me, and you would have talked and acted accordingly." "What makes you say I wouldn't have believed the truth?" "It would have been merely a declaration of intention at the time, and you would have said that it didn't square with human nature as you know it. Bartrow knew, and he went over to the majority. But that is neither here nor there. Will you draw up the writing?" Denby goes to the desk and writes out the transfer, following Jeffard's dictation. When it is signed and acknowledged, Jeffard slips his final anchor. "I presume you will want to make a new operating contract with the trustees, or with Garvin, and in that case you will want to cancel the old one. I haven't my copy of it with me, but I'll mail it to you when I get back to Denver." Denby is making a pretense of rummaging in the pigeonholes of the desk to cover a small struggle which has nothing to do with the superintendent's files. When the struggle is fought to a finish, he turns suddenly and holds out his hand. "Jeffard, that night when we wrangled it out up yonder on the old dump I said some things that I shouldn't have said if you had seen fit to be a little franker with me. Will you forget them?" Jeffard takes the proffered hand and wrings it gratefully. "Thank you for that, Denby," he says; "it's timely. I feel as if I'd like to drop out and turn up on some other planet. This thing has cost me pretty dear, one way with another." "It'll come out all right in the end," asserts the master; and then: "But you mustn't forget that the cost of it is partly of your own incurring. It's a rare failing, but there is such a thing as being too close-mouthed. You've made out your case, after a fashion, and I'm not going to appeal it; but your postulate was wrong. Human nature is not as incredulous of good intentions as the cynics would make it out to be. You might have told a few of us without imperilling Garvin." "I meant to do it; as I say, I did tell Bartrow that morning when I raced Garvin across the range and into Aspen. But he and every one else drew the other conclusion, and I was too stubborn to plead my own cause. The stubbornness became a mania with me after a time, and I had a fit of it no longer ago than last night. I let Lansdale die believing that he had argued me into promising to make restitution. We were coming down here to-day to set the thing in train, and, of course, he would have learned the whole truth; but for one night--" "For one night you would let him have the comfort of believing that he had brought it about," says Denby, quickly. "That wasn't what you were going to say, but it's the truth, and you know it. I know the feel of it; you've reached the point where you can get some sort of comfort out of holding your finger in the fire. Suppose you begin right here and now to take a little saner view of things. What are your plans?" "I haven't any." "Are you open to an offer?" "From you?--yes." "Good. I'm unlucky enough to have some mining property in Mexico, and I've got to go down there and set it in order, or send some one to do it for me. Will you go?" Jeffard's reply is promptly acquiescent. "Gladly; if you think I am competent." "I don't think,--I know. Can you start at short notice?" "The sooner the better. I said I should like to drop out and turn up on some other planet: that will be the next thing to it." From that the talk goes overland to the affairs of a century-old silver mine in the Chihuahuan mountains, and at the end of it Jeffard knows what is to be done and how he is to go about the doing of it. Denby yawns and looks at his watch. "It's bedtime," he says. "Shall we consider it settled and go over to the bunk-shack?" "I have a letter to write," says Jeffard. "Don't wait for me." "All right. You'll find what you need in the desk,--top drawer on the right. Come over when you get ready," and the promoter leaves his late owner in possession of the superintendent's office. Judging from the number of false starts and torn sheets, the writing of the letter proves to be no easy matter; but it is begun, continued, and ended at length, and Jeffard sits back to read it over. "MY DEAR BARTROW: "When this reaches you, you will have had my telegram of to-day telling you all there is to tell about Lansdale's death. You must forgive me if I don't repeat myself here. It is too new a wound--and too deep--to bear probing, even with a pen. "What I have to say in this letter will probably surprise you. Last night, in our last talk together, Lansdale told me that you know Garvin's whereabouts. Acting upon that information, I have to-night executed a transfer of the Midas to yourself and Stephen Elliott, trustees for Garvin. By agreement with Denby, I cancel my working contract with him, and you, or Garvin, can make another for the unexpired portion of the year on the same terms,--which is Denby's due. You will find the accrued earnings of the mine from the day of my first settlement with Denby deposited in the Denver bank in an account which I opened some months ago in the names of yourself and Elliott, trustees. Out of the earnings I have withheld my wages as a workman in the mine last winter, and a moderate charge for caretaking since. "That is all I have to say, I think, unless I add that you are partly responsible for the delay in Garvin's reinstatement. If you had trusted me sufficiently to tell me what you told Lansdale, it would have saved time and money, inasmuch as I have spared neither in the effort to trace Garvin. I told you the truth that morning in Leadville, but it seems that your loyalty wasn't quite equal to the strain put upon it by public rumor. I don't blame you greatly. I know I had done what a man may to forfeit the respect of his friends. But I made the mistake of taking it for granted that you and Lansdale, and possibly one other, would still give me credit for common honesty, and when I found that you didn't it made me bitter, and I'll be frank enough to say that I haven't gotten over it yet." The letter pauses with the little outflash of resentment, and he takes the pen to sign it. But in the act he adds another paragraph. "That is putting it rather harshly, and just now I'm not in the mood to quarrel with any one; and least of all with you. I am going away to be gone indefinitely, and I don't want to give you a buffet by way of leave-taking. But the fact remains. If you can admit it and still believe that the old-time friendship is yet alive in me, I wish you would. And if you dare take word from me to Miss Elliott, I'd be glad if you would say to her that my sorrow for what has happened is second only to hers." The letter is signed, sealed, and addressed, and he drops it into the mail-box. The lamp is flaring in the night wind sifting in through the loosened chinking, and he extinguishes it and goes out to tramp himself weary in the little cleared space which had once been Garvin's dooryard. It is a year and a day since he wore out the midwatch of that other summer night on the eve of the forthfaring from the valley of dry bones, and he recalls it and the impassioned outburst which went to the ending of it. Again he turns his face toward the far-away city of the plain, but this time his eyes are dim when the reiterant thought slips into speech. "God help me!" he says. "How can I ever go to her and tell her that I have failed!" CHAPTER XXXV THE news of Lansdale's death came with the shock of the unexpected to the dwellers in the metamorphosed cabin on the upslope of Topeka Mountain, albeit no one of the three of them had ventured to hope for anything more than a reprieve as the outcome of the jaunt afield. But the manner of his death at the time when the reprieve seemed well assured was responsible for the shock and its sorrowful aftermath; and if Constance grieved more than Bartrow or her cousin, it was only for the reason that the heart of compassion knows best the bitterness of infruition. "It's a miserably comfortless saying to offer you, Connie, dear, but we must try to believe it is for the best," said Myra, finding Constance re-reading Jeffard's telegram by the light of her bedroom lamp. Constance put her arms about her cousin's neck, and the heart of compassion overflowed. "'For unto every one that hath shall be given, but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath,'" she sobbed. "Of all the things he had set his heart upon life was the least,--was only the means to an end: and even that was taken from him." "No, not taken, Connie; he gave it, and gave it freely. He did for another what his friend was trying to do for him." At the reference to Jeffard, Constance went to stand before the crackling fire of fir-splinters on the hearth. After a time she said: "Do you suppose Mr. Jeffard will come here to tell us about it?" Myra's answer was a query. "Does he know you are here?" "No, I think not." "Then he will be more likely to go to Denver." Connie's gaze was in the fire, and she swerved aside from the straight path of inference. "He will write to Dick," she said. "I should like to read the letter when it comes, if I may." Myra promised, and so it rested; but when Jeffard's letter came, and Bartrow had shared its astounding news with his wife, Myra was for rescinding her promise. "I don't know why she shouldn't read it," said Dick. "She has always been more or less interested in him, and it will do her a whole lot of good to know that we were all off wrong. Jeffard's little slap at me hits her, too, but she won't mind that." "No," said Myra; "I was thinking of something else,--something quite different." "Is it sayable?" They were sitting on the steps of the extended porch. The night-shift was at work in the Myriad below, and the rattle and clank of a dump-car coming out postponed her answer. When the clangor subsided she glanced over her shoulder. "She can't hear," said Bartrow. "She's in the sitting-room reading to Uncle Steve." "I'm not sure that it is sayable, Dick. But for the last two days I've been wondering if we weren't mistaken about something else, too,--about Connie's feeling for Mr. Lansdale. She is sorry, but not quite in the way I expected she would be." "What has that got to do with Jeffard's letter?" demanded the downright one. His transplantings of perspicacity were not yet sufficiently acclimated to bloom out of season. "Nothing, perhaps." She gave it up as unspeakable, and went to the details of the business affair. "Shall you tell Garvin at once?" "Sure." "How fortunate it is that he and Uncle Stephen came in to-day." "Yes. They were staked for another month, and I didn't look for them until they were driven in for more grub. But Garvin says the old man is about played out. He's too old. He can't stand the pick and shovel in this altitude at his age. We'll have to talk him out of it and run him back to Denver some way or other." "Can't you make this trusteeship an excuse? If Garvin needed a guardian at first, he will doubtless need one now." Bartrow nodded thoughtfully. Another car was coming out, and he waited until the crash of the falling ore had come and gone. "Jeffard knew what he was about all the time; knew it when he wrote this letter just as well as he did when he shouldered the curse of it to keep a possible lynching party from hanging Garvin. That's why he put it in trust. He knew Garvin had gone daft and thrown it away once, and he was afraid he might do it again." "Will he?" asked the wife. "I guess not. I believe he has learned his lesson. More than that, Jim's as soft as mush on the side next the old man. If I can make out to tie Uncle Steve's welfare up in the deal, Garvin will come to the front like a man." "Where is Garvin now?" "He is down at the bunk-house." Myra rose. "I suppose you want to get it over with. Let me have the letter, if you won't need it." "What are you going to do?" "Carry Connie off to her room and keep her busy with this while you and Uncle Stephen fight it out with the new millionaire," she said. "I don't envy you your part of it." Bartrow laughed, and the transplantings put forth a late shoot. "Come to think of it, I don't know as I envy you yours," he retorted. "She's all broke up about Uncle Steve's health and Lansdale's death now, and she'll have a fit when she finds out how she has been piling it on to Jeffard when he didn't deserve it." It was an hour later, and the day-men smoking on the porch of the boarding-house had gone to bed, when the husband and wife met again midway of the path leading up from the shaft-house of the Myriad to the metamorphosed cabin. Bartrow had walked down to the boarding-house with Garvin, and Myra's impatience had sent her down the path to meet him. Dick gave her his arm up the steep ascent, and drew her to a seat on the lowest of the porch steps. "Where is Connie?" he inquired, anticipating an avalanche of questions, out of which he would have to dig his way without fear of interruption. "She is with her father. Begin at the beginning, and tell me all about it. What did Garvin say? Is he going to be sensible?" "There isn't so much to tell as there might be," Dick said, smothering a mighty prompting to tell the major fact first. "Garvin took it very sensibly, though a body could see that the lamplight was a good bit too strong for his eyes. He had to try three or four times before he could speak, and then all he could say was 'Thirds, Steve, thirds.'" "'Thirds?' What did he mean by that?" Bartrow hesitated for a moment, as a gunner who would make sure of the priming before he jerks the lanyard. "Did it ever occur to you that any one else besides Garvin and Jeffard might be interested in the Midas?" "Why, no!" "It didn't to me. I don't know why, but I never thought of it, though I knew well enough that Jim never in all his life went prospecting on a grub-stake of his own providing. He didn't that summer three years ago when he drove the tunnel on the Midas." Myra's lips were dry, and she had to moisten them to say, "Who was it, Dick?" "Who should it be but our good old Uncle Steve? Of course, he'd forgotten all about it, and there he stood, wringing Garvin's hand and trying to congratulate him; and Jim hanging on to the back of his chair and saying, 'Thirds, Steve, I say thirds.' Garvin made him understand at last, and then the old man melted down into his chair and put his face in his hands. When he took it out again it was to look up and say, 'You're right, Jim; of course it's thirds,' and then he asked me where Jeffard was." Myra's voice was unsteady, but she made shift to say what there was to be said; and Bartrow went on. "After a bit we got down to business and straightened things out. A third interest in the Midas is to be set apart for Jeffard, to be rammed down his throat when we find him, whether he will or no. Uncle Steve will go back to Denver and set up housekeeping again; and Garvin,--but that's the funny part of the whole shooting-match. Garvin refuses to touch a dollar of the money as owner; insists on leaving it in trust, just as it is now; and made me sit down there and then and write his will." An outcoming car of ore drowned Myra's exclamation of surprise. "Fact," said Bartrow. "He reserves an income to be paid to him at Uncle Steve's discretion and mine, and at his death his third goes,--to whom, do you suppose?" "Indeed, I can't imagine,--unless it is to Connie." "Not much! It's to be held in trust for Margaret Gannon's children." "For Margaret,--why, she hasn't any children! And besides, he doesn't know her!" "Don't you fool yourself. He knows she hasn't any children, but he's living in hopes. I told you there was something between them from the way Garvin turned in and nursed the old blacksmith before Margaret came. You wouldn't believe it, because they both played the total-stranger act; but that was one time when I got ahead of you, wasn't it?" "Yes; go on." "Well, I made out the will, 'I, James Garvin, being of sound mind,' and so on; and Uncle Steve and I witnessed it. But on the way down to the bunk-shanty just now I pinned Garvin up against the wall and made him tell me why. He knew Margaret when she was in the Bijou, and asked her to marry him. She was honest enough even then to refuse him. It made me want to weep when I remembered how she had been mixed up with Jeffard." Myra was silent for a full minute, and when she spoke it was out of the depths of a contrite heart. "I made you believe that, Dick, against your will; and you were right, after all. Mr. Jeffard was only trying to help Connie's poor people through Margaret, though why he should do that when he was withholding a fortune from Uncle Stephen is still a mystery." "That is as simple as twice two," said the husband. "Didn't I tell you? Garvin had no occasion to tell him who his grub-staker was in the first place, and no chance to do it afterward. Jeffard didn't know,--doesn't know yet." Myra went silent again, this time for more than a minute. "I have learned something, too, Dick; but I am not sure that I ought to tell it," she said, after the interval. "I can wait," said Bartrow cheerfully. "I've had a full meal of double-back-action surprises as it is." "This isn't a surprise; or it wouldn't be if we hadn't been taking too much for granted. I tolled Connie off to her room with the letter, as I said I would; and she--she had a fit, as you prophesied." "Of course," says Dick. "It hurts her more than anything to make a miscue on the charitable side." "Yes, but"-- "But what?" "I'll tell you sometime, Dick, but not now. It is too pitiful." "I can wait," said Bartrow again; and his lack of curiosity drove her into the thick of it. "If you knew you'd want to do something,--as I do, only I don't know how. Isn't it pretty clear that Mr. Jeffard cares a great deal for Connie?" "Oh, I don't know about that. What makes you think so?" says the obvious one. "A good many little things; some word or two that Margaret has let slip, for one of them. How otherwise would you explain his eagerness to help Connie?" "On general principles, I guess. She's plenty good enough to warrant it." "Yes, but it wasn't 'general principles' in Mr. Jeffard's case. He is in love with Connie, and"-- "And she doesn't care for him. Is that it?" "No, it isn't it; she does care for him. I fairly shocked it out of her with the letter, and that is why I oughtn't to tell it, even to you. It is too pitiful!" Bartrow shook his head in cheerful density. "Your philosophy's too deep for me. If they are both of one mind, as you say, I don't see where the pity comes in. Jeffard isn't half good enough for her, of course; he made a bally idiot of himself a year ago. But if she can forget that, I'm sure we ought to." "I wasn't thinking of that. But don't you see how impossible this Midas tangle makes it? He won't take his third, you may be very sure of that; and when he finds out that Connie has a daughter's share in one of the other thirds, it will seal his lips for all time. People would say that he gave up his share only to marry hers." Bartrow got upon his feet and helped her to rise. "You'll take cold sitting out here in the ten-thousand-foot night," he said; and on the top step of the porch-flight she had his refutation of her latest assertion. "You say people would talk. Doesn't it strike you that Jeffard is the one man in a thousand who will mount and ride regardless?--who will smile and snap his fingers at public opinion? That's just what he's been doing all along, and he'll do it again if he feels like it. Let's go in and congratulate the good old uncle while we wait." CHAPTER XXXVI THE day train from the south ran into the early winter twilight at Acequia, and into the night at Littleton; and the arc stars of the city, resplendent with frosty aureoles, were brightly scintillant when Jeffard gave his hand-bag to the porter and passed out through the gate at the Union Depot. By telegraphic prearrangement, he was to meet Denby in Denver to make his report upon the Chihuahuan silver mine; but when he made inquiry at the hotel he was not sorry to find that the promoter had not yet arrived. It is a far cry from Santa Rosalia to Denver; as far as from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the end of the nineteenth; and he was grateful for a little breathing space in which to synchronize himself. But after dinner, and a cigar burned frugally in the great rotunda, where the faces of all the comers and goers were unfamiliar, the homesickness of the returned exile came upon him, and he went out to grapple with it in the open air. Faring absently from street to street, with his hands thrust into his overcoat pockets and memory plowing its furrow deep in a field which had lain fallow through many toil-filled weeks, he presently found himself drifting by squares and street-crossings toward Capitol Hill, and out and beyond to a broad avenue and past a house with a veranda in front and a deep-bayed window at the side. There were lights in the house, and an air of owner's occupancy about the place; and on the veranda a big man was tramping solidly up and down, with the red spark at the end of his cigar appearing and disappearing as he passed and repassed the windows. Jeffard saw the man and saw him not. The memory-plow had gone deeper, and the winter night changed places with a June morning, with the sun shining aslant on the wide veranda, and a young woman in a belted house-gown with loose sleeves tiptoeing on the arm of a clumsy chair while she caught up the new growth of a climbing rose. Just here the plow began to tear up rootlets well-buried but still sensitive; and Jeffard turned about abruptly and set his face cityward. But once again in the region of tall buildings and peopled sidewalks, the thought of the crowded lobby and the loneliness of it assailed him afresh, and he changed his course again, being careful to go at right angles to the broad avenue with its house of recollection. A little way beyond the peopled walks the church bells began to ring out clear and melodious on the frosty air, and he remembered what the uncalendared journey had made him forget; that it was Sunday. Pacing thoughtfully, with the transit-hum of the city behind him and the quiet house-streets ahead, and the plow still shearing the sod of the fallow field, he wondered if Constance Elliott would be among the churchgoers. It was an upflash of the old cynicism which prompted the retort that it was improbable; that the Christianity for which she stood was not found in the churches. But the Puritan blood in him rose up in protest at that, and in the rebound the open doors of a church on the opposite side of the way beckoned him. He crossed the street and entered. The organist was playing the voluntary, and a smart young man with a tuberose in his buttonhole held up the finger of invitation. "Not too far forward," Jeffard whispered; but the young man seemed not to have heard, since he led the way up the broad centre aisle to a pew far beyond the strangers' precinct. The pew was unoccupied, and Jeffard went deep into it, meaning to be well out of the way of later comers. But when the finale of the voluntary merged by harmonious transpositions into the key of the opening hymn, the other sittings in the pew were still untaken, and Jeffard congratulated himself. There be times when partial isolation, even in a sparsely filled church, is grateful; and the furrows in the fallow field were still smoking from their recent upturning. Jeffard stood in the hymn-singing, and bowed his head at the prayer, not so much in reverence as in deference to time, place, and encompassments. Since the shearing of the plowshare filled his ears, the words of the beseeching were lost to him, but he was sufficiently alive to his surroundings to know that the pew filled quietly at the beginning of the prayer; and sufficiently reserved afterward to deny himself so much as a glance aside at his nearest neighbor. How long he would have sat staring abstractedly at the pictured window beyond the choir must remain a matter for conjecture. The minister had given out the psalm, and Jeffard stood up with the others. Whereupon he saw of necessity that his neighbor was a woman, so small that the trimmings on her modest walking hat came barely to his shoulder; saw this, and a moment later was looking down into a pair of steadfast gray eyes, deep-welled and eloquent, as she handed him an open book with the leaf turned down. He took the book mechanically, with mute thanks, but afterward he saw and heard nothing for which the evensong in St. Cyril's-in-the-Desert could justly be held responsible, being lifted to a seventh heaven of ecstasy far more real than that depicted in the glowing periods of the preacher. He made the most of it, knowing that it would presently vanish, and that he should have to come to earth again. And not by whispered word or sign of recognition would he mar the beatitude of it. Only once, when he put aside the book she had given him and looked on with her, did he suffer himself to do more than to enjoy silently and to the full the sweet pleasure of her nearness. Under the circumstances it was not singular that his by-glancings did not go beyond her; and that Dick Bartrow's hearty handclasp and stage-whisper greeting at the close of the service should take him by surprise. This he endured as one in a dream; also the introduction to a radiant young woman with whom Bartrow presently led the way into the stream of decorously jostling outgoers pouring down the great aisle. That left Jeffard to follow with the small one; and he was still groping his way through the speechless ravishment of it when they overtook the Bartrows on the sidewalk. Dick promptly broke the spell. "Well, well!" he began. "Nothing surprises me any more; otherwise I should say you are about the last man on top of earth that I'd expect to run up against in church. Don't say 'same here,' because I do go when I'm made to. Where in the forty-five states and odd territories did you drop from?" "Not from any one of them," laughed Jeffard; and Myra remarked that Connie's hand was still on his arm. "I am just up from Old Mexico." "And you made a straight shoot for a church--for our church and our pew. Good boy! You knew right where to find us on a Sunday evening, didn't you?" Jeffard laughed again. Since a time unremembered of him it had not been so easy to laugh and be glad. "Don't believe him, Mrs. Bartrow," he protested. "My motive was a little mixed, I'll confess, but it was altogether better than that. I was passing, and it occurred to me that I hadn't seen the inside of an American church for a long time." "Or of any other kind, I'll be bound," Bartrow amended; and then, in a spirit of sheer ruthlessness: "Why don't you say something, Connie? Call him down and make him tell the truth about it." "You don't give any one a chance to say anything," retorts the quiet one, with a summer-lightning flash of the old mock-antagonism. And then to Jeffard: "We are all very glad to see you again, Mr. Jeffard. Will you be in town long?" Bartrow took the words out of his mouth and made answer for him. "Of course he will; he is going to settle down and be home-folks--aren't you, Jeffard? Fall in and let's walk to where we can wrestle it out without freezing. It's colder than ordinary charity standing here." Now the way to his hotel lay behind him and Jeffard hesitated. Whereupon Bartrow turned with a laugh derisive. "Come on, you two. Have you forgotten the formula, Jeffard? I'll prompt you, and you can say it over after me. 'Miss Elliott, may I have the pleasure of seeing you'--" Myra pounced upon the mocker and dragged him away; and Constance cut in swiftly. "You mustn't mind what Dick says. He calls going to church 'dissipation,' and he is never quite responsible afterward. Won't you go home with us, Mr. Jeffard?" Jeffard murmured something about a hotel and an appointment, but he had been waiting only for an intimation that he was forgiven. So they went on together, walking briskly, as the frosty night demanded, but they were not able to overtake the twain in advance. For a time they were both tongue-tied, and for a wonder it was the man who first rose superior to the entanglements of memory. But he was careful to choose the safest of commonplaces for a topic. They were ascending Capitol Hill, and by way of a beginning he said, "Are you living in this part of the city now?" "Yes; in the old place on Colfax. Dick ran across the owner in California last autumn and bought it." "It is a very pleasant place," Jeffard ventured, still determined to keep on ground of the safest. "Do you know it?" she said, quickly. "Oh, yes;--er--that is, I know where it is. I passed it one morning a long time ago." "While we were living there?" "Yes." Silence again for one entire square and part of another. Then she said, "How did you know it was our house?" He laid hold of his courage and told the truth. "I met your father a block or two down the avenue and I was hoping I might come upon the place where you lived. I found it. You were on the veranda, tying up the new shoots of a climbing rose." "My 'Marechal Niel,'" she said. "It is dead now; they let it freeze last winter." He held his peace for a time, but the rejoinder strove for speech, and had it, finally. "The memory of it lives," he said. "I shall always see you as I saw you that morning, whatever comes between. You had on some sort of a dress that reminded me of the old Greek draperies, and you were standing on the arm of a big chair." They were at the gate, and she let him open it for her. Bartrow and Myra were waiting for them at the veranda step. He realized that the ground was no longer safe, and would have taken his leave at the door. But Dick protested vigorously. "No, you don't--drop out again like a ship in a fog. We've been laying for you, Uncle Steve and I, ever since you absconded last summer, and you don't get away this time without taking your medicine. Run him in there, Connie, and hang on to him while I go get my slippers and a cigar." "There" was the cozy library, with a soft-coal fire burning cheerily in the grate, and the book-lined walls inviting enough to beckon any homeless one. But Jeffard was far beyond any outreaching of encompassments inviting or repellent. Constance drew up a chair for him before the fire, but he stood at the back of it and looked down upon her. "Miss Elliott, there is something that I should like to tell you about--if it is far enough in the past," he said, when they were alone. She was sitting with clasped hands, and there was a look in her eyes in the swift upglancing that he could not fathom. So he waited for her to give him leave. "Is it about Mr. Lansdale?" she asked. "Yes. I was with him up to the last, and I thought that--that you might like to know what I can tell you." She gave him liberty, and he told the story of the jaunt afield, dwelling chiefly on the day-to-day improvement in Lansdale's health, and stumbling a little when he came to speak of their last evening together. "It was a hard blow for me," he said, at the end of it, and his voice was low and unsteady with emotion. "You know what had gone before--what I had lost and couldn't regain; and having failed at all points I had hoped to succeed in this: to bring him back to you sound and well. And when the possibility was fairly within reach it was taken out of my hands forever." She was silent for a little time, fighting a sharp battle with reticence new-born and masterful. When she spoke it was as one who is constrained to walk with bare feet in a thorny path of frankness. "To bring him back to me, you say; and in your letter to Dick you said that your sorrow was second only to mine. Was he not your friend, as well as mine?" "I loved him," said Jeffard, simply; "but not as you did." Again the struggle was upon her, and for a moment she thought that the sound of Dick's returning footsteps would be the signal of a blessed release. But the heart of sincerity would not be denied. "Let there be no more misunderstandings," she said, bravely. "We have all wronged you so deeply that you have a right to know the truth. Mr. Lansdale was my friend--as he was yours." "But he meant to be more," Jeffard persisted--"and if he had come back with the courage of health to help him say it, you would not have denied him." She made a little gesture of dissent. "His health had nothing to do with it. And--and he said it before he went away." Jeffard smiled. "You have halved the bitterness of it for me--as you would have lessened my reward if I had succeeded in bringing him back alive and well. My motive was mixed, as most human promptings are,--I can see that now,--but the better part of it was a desire to prove to you that I could do it for your sake. My debt to you is so large that nothing short of self-effacement can ever discharge it." "How can you say that!" she burst out. "Wasn't I one of the three who ought to have believed in you?--the one who promised and failed and made it harder for you at every turn? You owe me nothing but scorn." He contradicted her gravely. "I owe you everything that has been saved out of the wreck of the man who once sat beside you in the theatre and found fault with the world for his own shortcomings. You are remorseful now because you think you misjudged me; but you must believe me when I tell you that it was my love for you that saved me, at the end of the ends,--that kept me from doing precisely what you thought I had done. It was a fearful temptation. Garvin had fairly tossed the thing into the abyss." "I know; but it was only a temptation, and you did not yield to it." "No; I was able to put it aside in the strength born of four words of yours. At a time when I had forgotten God and so was willing to think that He had forgotten me, you said 'I believe in you.' You remember it?" She nodded assent, looking up with shining eyes to say, "Don't make me ashamed that I hadn't the strength to go on believing in you." "Don't say that. You have nothing to regret. My silence was the price of Garvin's safety, at first, and I knew what the cost would be when I determined to pay it. Later on the fault was mine; but then I found that I had unconsciously been counting upon blind loyalty; yours, and Dick's, and Lansdale's;--counting upon it after I had done everything to make it impossible. I had told Dick in the beginning, and I tried to tell Lansdale. Dick wanted to believe in me,--has wanted to all along, I think,--but Lansdale had drawn his own conclusions, and he made my explanation fit them. It hurt, and I gave place to bitterness." "And yet you would have saved him for--for--" "For that which I couldn't have myself. Yes; but you know the motive." She met his gaze with a new light shining in the steadfast eyes. "I am not worthy," she said, softly; and he went quickly to stand beside her. "You are worthy; worthy of the best that any man can give you, Constance. How little I have to offer you, beyond a love that was strong enough to stand aside for the sake of your happiness, you know. Ever since that afternoon when you strove with me for my own soul I've been living on your compassion, and it is very sweet--but I want more. May I hope to win more--in time?" She shook her head, and his heart stopped beating. But it came alive again with a tumultuous bound at the words of the soft-spoken reply. "You won it long ago, so long that I've forgotten when and how. And it's strong, too, like yours. I've tried hard enough to starve it, but it has lived--lived on nothing." She was sitting in a low willow rocker, and the distance between them was altogether impossible. So he went down on one knee and put his arms about her; and but for his manhood would have put his face in her bosom and wept. "Do you really mean that, Constance?" he said, when he had drunk his fill from the deep wells in the loving eyes. "I do." "In spite of what you believed I had done to Garvin, and of what you believed I was capable of doing with Margaret?" "In spite of everything. Wasn't it dreadful?" "It was--" There was no superlative strong enough, though he sought for it painfully and with tears. "God help me, sweetheart, I believe I shall go mad with the joy of it." And having said that, speech forsook him, and the silence that is golden came between. After a while she broke it to say: "Dick is good, isn't he?--to be so long finding his slippers and the cigar." "Dick is a man and a brother. I wonder if we can persuade him to give me a place on the Myriad." "You wouldn't take it." "Why wouldn't I?" "Because you own an undivided third of a richer mine than the Little Myriad, and--and you are going to marry another third," she said, with sweet audacity. There was a hassock convenient, and he drew it up to sit at her feet. "Break it as gently as you can," he entreated. "My cup is too full to hold much more. Besides, I've been in Mexico for the last three months, and nothing happens there." "It's the Midas," she explained, beginning in the midst. "You saved it for Garvin, but he was only a half-owner." "And the other?" "Was my father. When it came to the apportionment they both said 'thirds,' and that is what poppa and Dick are waiting to say to you now." He found his feet rather unsteadily. "I can't take it," he said; "you know I can't. It would be too much like taking a reward for an act of simple justice. Moreover, I have my reward, and it isn't to be spoken of in the same day with any Midas of them all. I'll go and tell them so." She rose and stood beside him, lifting the loving eyes to his. The soft glow of the firelight made a golden aureole of the red-brown hair, and the sweet lips were tremulous. "If you must, Henry. But loving-kindness isn't always in giving and serving and relinquishing. My father has his ideal of justice, too, and so has James Garvin. But for you, they say, the Midas would never have been found, or, having been found, would straightway have been lost again. I know the money is nothing to you,--to us two, who have so much; but won't you make a little concession, a little sacrifice of pride,--for their sakes, Henry?" He took her face between his hands and bent to kiss the lips of pleading. "Not for their sakes, nor for all the world beside, my beloved; but always and always for yours. Come; let us go together." ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO. The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S. A. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Varied hyphenation was retained. Page 234, comma changed to a period. (fair enough. It's accepted) Page 266, "Connie" changed to "Connie's" (Connie's eyes danced) 
8670	----	IN THE HEART OF THE ROCKIES A STORY OF ADVENTURE IN COLORADO BY G. A. HENTY [Illustration: HUNTING DOG SAVES JERRY FROM THE RAPIDS.] PREFACE MY DEAR LADS, Until comparatively lately that portion of the United States in which I have laid this story was wholly unexplored. The marvellous cañons of the Colorado River extend through a country absolutely bare and waterless, and save the tales told by a few hunters or gold-seekers who, pressed by Indians, made the descent of some of them, but little was known regarding this region. It was not until 1869 that a thorough exploration of the cañons was made by a government expedition under the command of Major Powell. This expedition passed through the whole of the cañons, from those high up on the Green River to the point where the Colorado issues out on to the plains. Four years were occupied by the party in making a detailed survey of the course of the main river and its tributaries. These explorations took place some eight or nine years after the date of my story. The country in which the Big Wind River has its source, and the mountain chains contained in it, were almost unknown until, after the completion of the railway to California, the United States government was forced to send an expedition into it to punish the Indians for their raids upon settlers in the plains. For details of the geography and scenery I have relied upon the narrative of Mr. Baillie-Grohman, who paid several visits to the country in 1878 and the following years in quest of sport, and was the first white man to penetrate the recesses of the higher mountains. At that time the Indians had almost entirely deserted the country. For the details of the dangers and difficulties of the passage through the cañons I am indebted to the official report of Major Powell, published by the United States government. Yours sincerely, G. A. HENTY. CONTENTS CHAP. I. TOM'S CHOICE II. FINDING FRIENDS III. ON THE PLAINS IV. LEAPING HORSE V. IN DANGER VI. UNITED VII. CHASED VIII. IN SAFETY IX. A BAD TIME X. AN AVALANCHE XI. WINTER XII. THE SNOW FORT XIII. A FRESH START XIV. AN INDIAN ATTACK XV. THE COLORADO XVI. AFLOAT IN CANOES XVII. THE GRAND CANON XVIII. BACK TO DENVER XIX. A FORTUNE ILLUSTRATIONS Hunting Dog Saves Jerry From The Rapids Carry Reads Uncle Harry's Letter Jerry Gives Tom A Lesson In Shooting Leaping Horse Mounted, And Rode Across The Stream A Moment Later The Indian Fell Forward On His Face "There Is Another Avalanche, Keep Your Backs To The Wall, Boys" They Went Out To Look At The Indian The Chief Had Shot "No Good Fight Here," Said Leaping Horse. CHAPTER I TOM'S CHOICE "I can be of no use here, Carry. What am I good for? Why, I could not earn money enough to pay for my own food, even if we knew anyone who would help me to get a clerkship. I am too young for it yet. I would rather go before the mast than take a place in a shop. I am too young even to enlist. I know just about as much as other boys at school, and I certainly have no talent anyway, as far as I can see at present. I can sail a boat, and I won the swimming prize a month ago, and the sergeant who gives us lessons in single-stick and boxing says that he considers me his best pupil with the gloves, but all these things put together would not bring me in sixpence a week. I don't want to go away, and nothing would induce me to do so if I could be of the slightest use to you here. But can I be of any use? What is there for me to look forward to if I stay? I am sure that you would be always worrying over me if I did get some sort of situation that you would know father and mother would not have liked to see me in, and would seem to offer no chance for the future, whereas if I went out there it would not matter what I did, and anything I earned I could send home to you." The speaker was a lad of sixteen. He and his sister, who was two years his senior, were both dressed in deep mourning, and were sitting on a bench near Southsea Castle looking across to Spithead, and the Isle of Wight stretching away behind. They had three days before followed their mother to the grave, and laid her beside their father, a lieutenant of the navy, who had died two years before. This was the first time they had left the house, where remained their four sisters--Janet, who came between Carry and Tom; Blanche, who was fourteen; Lucie, twelve; and Harriet, eight. Tom had proposed the walk. "Come out for some fresh air, Carry," he had said. "You have been shut up for a month. Let us two go together;" and Carry had understood that he wanted a talk alone with her. There was need, indeed, that they should look the future in the face. Since Lieutenant Wade's death their means had been very straitened. Their mother had received a small pension as his widow, and on this, eked out by drafts reluctantly drawn upon the thousand pounds she had brought him on her marriage, which had been left untouched during his lifetime, they had lived since his death. Two hundred pounds had been drawn from their little capital, and the balance was all that now remained. It had long been arranged that Carry and Janet should go out as governesses as soon as they each reached the age of eighteen, but it was now clear that Carry must remain at home in charge of the young ones. That morning the two girls had had a talk together, and had settled that, as Janet was too young to take even the humblest place as a governess, they would endeavour to open a little school, and so, for the present at any rate, keep the home together. Carry could give music lessons, for she was already an excellent pianist, having been well taught by her mother, who was an accomplished performer, and Janet was sufficiently advanced to teach young girls. She had communicated their decision to Tom, who had heartily agreed with it. "The rent is only twenty pounds a year," he said, "and, as you say, the eight hundred pounds bring in thirty-two pounds a year, which will pay the rent and leave something over. If you don't get many pupils at first it will help, and you can draw a little from the capital till the school gets big enough to pay all your expenses. It is horrible to me that I don't seem to be able to help, but at any rate I don't intend to remain a drag upon you. If mother had only allowed me to go to sea after father's death I should be off your hands now, and I might even have been able to help a little. As it is, what is there for me to do here?" And then he pointed out how hopeless the prospect seemed at Portsmouth. Carry was silent for a minute or two when he ceased speaking, and sat looking out over the sea. "Certainly, we should not wish you to go into a shop, Tom, and what you say about going into an office is also right enough. We have no sort of interest, and the sort of clerkship you would be likely to get here would not lead to anything. I know what you are thinking about--that letter of Uncle Harry's; but you know that mother could not bear the thought of it, and it would be dreadful for us if you were to go away." "I would not think of going, Carry, if I could see any chance of helping you here, and I don't want to go as I did when the letter first came. It seems such a cowardly thing to run away and leave all the burden upon your shoulders, yours and Janet's, though I know it will be principally on yours; but what else is there to do? It was not for my own sake that I wanted before to go, but I did not see what there was for me to do here even when I grew up. Still, as mother said it would break her heart if I went away, of course there was an end of it for the time, though I have always thought it would be something to fall back upon if, when I got to eighteen or nineteen, nothing else turned up, which seemed to me very likely would be the case. Certainly, if it came to a choice between that and enlisting, I should choose that: and now it seems to me the only thing to be done." "It is such a long way off, Tom," the girl said in a tone of deep pain; "and you know when people get away so far they seem to forget those at home and give up writing. We had not heard from uncle for ten years when that letter came." "There would be no fear of my forgetting you, Carry. I would write to you whenever I got a chance." "But even going out there does not seem to lead to anything, Tom. Uncle has been away twenty-five years, and he does not seem to have made any money at all." "Oh, but then he owned in his letter, Carry, that it was principally his own fault. He said he had made a good sum several times at mining, and chucked it away; but that next time he strikes a good thing he was determined to keep what he made and to come home to live upon it. I sha'n't chuck it away if I make it, but shall send every penny home that I can spare." "But uncle will not expect you, Tom, mother refused so positively to let you go. Perhaps he has gone away from the part of the country he wrote from, and you may not be able to find him." "I shall be able to find him," Tom said confidently. "When that letter went, I sent one of my own to him, and said that though mother would not hear of my going now, I might come out to him when I got older if I could get nothing to do here, and asked him to send me a few words directed to the post-office telling me how I might find him. He wrote back saying that if I called at the Empire Saloon at a small town called Denver, in Colorado, I should be likely to hear whereabouts he was, and that he would sometimes send a line there with instructions if he should be long away." "I see you have set your mind on going, Tom," Carry said sadly. "No, I have not set my mind on it, Carry. I am perfectly ready to stop here if you can see any way for me to earn money, but I cannot stop here idle, eating and drinking, while you girls are working for us all." "If you were but three or four years older, Tom, I should not so much mind, and though it would be a terrible blow to part with you, I do not see that you could do anything better; but you are only sixteen." "Yes, but I am strong and big for my age; I am quite as strong as a good many men. Of course I don't mean the boatmen and the dockyard maties, but men who don't do hard work. Anyhow, there are lots of men who go out to America who are no stronger than I am, and of course I shall get stronger every month. I can walk thirty miles a day easy, and I have never had a day's illness." "It is not your strength, Tom; I shall have no fears about your breaking down; on the contrary, I should say that a life such as uncle wrote about, must be wonderfully healthy. But you seem so young to make such a long journey, and you may have to travel about in such rough places and among such rough men before you can find Uncle Harry." "I expect that I shall get on a great deal easier than a man would," Tom said confidently. "Fellows might play tricks with a grown-up fellow who they see is a stranger and not up to things, and might get into quarrels with him, but no one is likely to interfere with a boy. No, I don't think that there is anything in that, Carry,--the only real difficulty is in going away so far from you, and perhaps being away for a long time." "Well, Tom," the girl said after another pause, "it seems very terrible, but I own that I can see nothing better for you. There is no way that you can earn money here, and I am sure we would rather think of you as mining and hunting with uncle, than as sitting as a sort of boy-clerk in some dark little office in London or Portsmouth. It is no worse than going to sea anyhow, and after all you may, as uncle says, hit on a rich mine and come back with a fortune. Let us be going home. I can hardly bear to think of it now, but I will tell Janet, and will talk about it again this evening after the little ones have gone to bed." Tom had the good sense to avoid any expression of satisfaction. He gave Carry's hand a silent squeeze, and as they walked across the common talked over their plans for setting to work to get pupils, and said no word that would give her a hint of the excitement he felt at the thought of the life of adventure in a wild country that lay before him. He had in his blood a large share of the restless spirit of enterprise that has been the main factor in making the Anglo-Saxons the dominant race of the world. His father and his grandfather had both been officers in the royal navy, and a great-uncle had commanded a merchantman that traded in the Eastern seas, and had never come back from one of its voyages; there had been little doubt that all on board had been massacred and the ship burned by Malay pirates. His Uncle Harry had gone away when little more than a boy to seek a fortune in America, and had, a few years after his landing there, crossed the plains with one of the first parties that started out at news of the discovery of gold in California. Tom himself had longed above all things to be a sailor. His father had not sufficient interest to get him into the royal navy, but had intended to obtain for him a berth as apprentice in the merchant service; but his sudden death had cut that project short, and his mother, who had always been opposed to it, would not hear of his going to sea. But the life that now seemed open to him was in the boy's eyes even preferable to that he had longed for. The excitement of voyages to India or China and back was as nothing to that of a gold-seeker and hunter in the West, where there were bears and Indians and all sorts of adventures to be encountered. He soon calmed down, however, on reaching home. The empty chair, the black dresses and pale faces of the girls, brought back in its full force the sense of loss. In a short time he went up to his room, and sat there thinking it all over again, and asking himself whether it was fair of him to leave his sisters, and whether he was not acting selfishly in thus choosing his own life. He had gone over this ground again and again in the last few days, and he now came to the same conclusion, namely, that he could do no better for the girls by stopping at home, and that he had not decided upon accepting his uncle's invitation because the life was just what he would have chosen, but because he could see nothing that offered equal chances of his being able permanently to aid them at home. When he came downstairs again Carry said: "The others have gone out, Tom; you had better go round and see some of your school-fellows. You look fagged and worn out. You cannot help me here, and I shall go about my work more cheerfully if I know that you are out and about." Tom nodded, put on his cap and went out; but he felt far too restless to follow her advice and call on some of his friends, so he walked across the common and lay down on the beach and went all over it again, until at last he went off to sleep, and did not wake up until, glancing at his watch, he found that it was time to return to tea. He felt fresher and better for his rest, for indeed he had slept but little for the past fortnight, and Carry nodded approvingly as she saw that his eyes were brighter, and the lines of fatigue and sleeplessness less strongly marked on his face. Two hours later, when the younger girls had gone to bed, Carry said: "Now we will have a family council. I have told Janet about our talk, Tom, and she is altogether on your side, and only regrets that she is not a boy and able to go out with you. We need not go over the ground again, we are quite agreed with you that there seems no prospect here of your obtaining work such as we should like to see you at, or that would lead to anything. There are only two things open to you, the one is to go to sea, the other to go out to Uncle Harry. You are old to go as an apprentice, but not too old, and that plan could be carried out; still, we both think that the other is better. You would be almost as much separated from us if you went to sea as you would be if you went out to America. But before you quite decide I will read uncle's letter, which I have found this afternoon among some other papers." She took out the letter and opened it. "'My dear Jack,--I am afraid it is a very long time since I wrote last; I don't like to think how long. I have been intending to do so a score of times, but you know I always hated writing, and I have been waiting to tell you that I had hit upon something good at last. Even now I can only tell you that I have been knocking about and getting older, but so far I cannot say I have been getting richer. As I told you when I wrote last I have several times made good hauls and struck it rich, but somehow the money has always slipped through my fingers. Sometimes I have put it into things that looked well enough but turned out worthless; sometimes I have chucked it away in the fool's manner men do here. I have just come back from a prospecting tour in the country of the Utes, where I found two or three things that seemed good; one of them first-rate, the best thing, I think, I have seen since I came out here. "'Unfortunately I cannot do anything with them at present, for the Utes are getting troublesome, and it would be as much as one's life is worth to go back there with a small party; so that matter must rest for a bit, and I must look out in another quarter until the Utes settle down again. I am going to join a hunting party that starts for the mountains next week. I have done pretty nearly as much hunting as mining since I came out, and though there is no big pile to be made at it, it is a pretty certain living. How are you all getting on? I hope some day to drop in on your quiet quarters at Southsea with some big bags of gold-dust, and to end my days in a nook by your fireside; which I know you will give me, old fellow, with or without the gold bags. '" [Illustration: CARRY READS UNCLE HARRY'S LETTER.] "'I suppose your boy is thirteen or fourteen years old by this time. That is too young for him to come out here, but if in two or three years you don't see any opening for him at home, send him out to me, and I will make a man of him; and even if he does not make a fortune in gold-seeking, there are plenty of things a young fellow can turn his hand to in this country with a good certainty of making his way, if he is but steady. You may think that my example is not likely to be of much benefit to him, but I should do for an object lesson, and seriously, would do my very best to set him in a straight path. Anyhow, three or four years' knocking about with me would enable him to cut his eye-teeth, and hold his own in the world. At the end of that time he could look round and see what line he would take up, and I need not say that I would help him to the utmost of my power, and though I have not done any good for myself I might do good for him. "'In the first place, I know pretty well every one in Colorado, Montana, and Idaho; in the next place, in my wanderings I have come across a score of bits of land in out-of-the-way places where a young fellow could set up a ranche and breed cattle and horses and make a good thing of it; or if he has a turn for mechanics, I could show him places where he could set up saw-mills for lumber, with water-power all the year round, and with markets not far away. Of course, he is too young yet, but unless he is going to walk in your steps and turn sailor he might do worse than come out to me in three or four years' time. Rough as the life is, it is a man's life, and a week of it is worth more than a year's quill-driving in an office. It is a pity your family have run to girls, for if one boy had made up his mind for the sea you might have spared me another.' "That is all. You know mother sent an answer saying that dear father had gone, and that she should never be able to let you go so far away and take up such a rough and dangerous life. However, Tom, as you wrote to uncle, her refusal would not matter, and by his sending you instructions how to find him, it is evident that he will not be surprised at your turning up. In the first place, are you sure that you would prefer this to the sea?" "Quite sure, Carry; I should like it much better. But the principal thing is that I may soon be able to help you from there, while it would be years before I should get pay enough at sea to enable me to do so." "Then that is settled, Tom. And now, I suppose," and her voice quivered a little, "you will want to be off as soon as you can?" "I think so," Tom replied. "If I am to go, it seems to me the sooner I go the better; there is nothing that I can do here, and we shall all be restless and unsettled until I am off." Carry nodded. "I think you are right, Tom; we shall never be able to settle to our work here when we are thinking of your going away. The first thing to do will be to draw some money from the bank. There will be your outfit to get and your passage to pay to America, and a supply of money to take you out West, and keep you until you join uncle." "That is what I hate," Tom said gloomily. "It seems beastly that when I want to help you I must begin by taking some of your money." "That can't be helped," Carry said cheerfully. "One must not grudge a sprat to catch a whale, and besides it would cost ever so much more if we had to apprentice you to the sea, and get your outfit. You will not want many clothes now. You have enough for the voyage and journey, and I should think it would be much better for you to get what you want out there, when you will have uncle to advise what is necessary. I should really think some flannel shirts and a rough suit for the voyage will be the principal things." "I should think so, certainly," Tom agreed. "The less baggage one travels with the better, for when I leave the railway I shall only want what I can carry with me or pack on horses. Anything else would only be a nuisance. As to a rough suit for the voyage, the clothes I had before I put these on" (and he glanced at his black suit) "will do capitally. Of course I shall go steerage. I can get out for four or five pounds that way, and I shall be quite as well off as I should be as an apprentice. I know I must have some money, but I won't take more than is absolutely necessary. I am all right as far as I can see for everything, except three or four flannel shirts. I don't see that another thing will be required except a small trunk to hold them and the clothes I have on, which I don't suppose I shall ever wear again, and a few other things. You know I would only allow you to have this one black suit made. I was thinking of this, and it would have been throwing away money to have got more. Of course, I don't know what I shall want out there. I know it is a long way to travel by rail, and I may have to keep myself for a month before I find uncle. I should think five-and-twenty pounds when I land would be enough for everything." "I shall draw fifty pounds," Carry said positively. "As you say, your outfit will really cost nothing; ten pounds will pay for your journey to Liverpool and your passage; that will leave you forty pounds in your pocket when you land. That is the very least you could do with, for you may find you will have to buy a horse, and though I believe they are very cheap out there, I suppose you could not get one under ten pounds; and then there would be the saddle and bridle and food for the journey, and all sorts of things. I don't think forty pounds will be enough." "I won't have a penny more, anyhow," Tom said. "If I find a horse too expensive I can tramp on foot." "And you must be sure not to get robbed," Janet said, breaking in for the first time. "Just fancy your finding yourself without money in such a place as that. I will make you a belt to wear under your things, with pockets for the money." "I hope I should not be such a fool as that, Janet, but anyhow I will be as careful as I can. I shall be very glad of the belt. One does not know what the fellows might be up to, and I would certainly rather not have my money loose in my pocket; but even if I were robbed I don't think it would be as desperate as you think. I expect a boy could always find something to do to earn his living, and I should try and work my way along somehow, but as that would not be pleasant at all I shall take good care of my money, you may be sure." For an hour they sat talking, and before the council broke up it was agreed that they should look in the newspaper in the morning for a list of vessels sailing for America, and should at once write and take a passage. There was no time lost. Carry felt that it would be best for them all that the parting should be got over as soon as possible. Letters were written the next morning to two steamship companies and to the owners of two sailing vessels asking the prices of steerage passages, agreeing that if there was not much difference it would be better to save perhaps a fortnight by taking the passage in a steamship. The replies showed that the difference was indeed trifling, and a week after their receipt Tom Wade started from Portsmouth to Liverpool. Even at the last moment he was half-inclined to change his plans, it seemed so hard to leave his sisters alone; but Carry and Janet had both convinced themselves that his scheme was the best, and would not hear of his wavering now. They kept up a show of good spirits until the last, talked confidently of the success of their own plans, and how they should set about carrying them out as soon as they were free to act. The younger girls, although implored by the elders not to give way to their grief at the departure of their brother, were in a state of constant tearfulness, and were in consequence frequently got rid of by being sent on errands. Tom, too, took them out for hours every day, and by telling them stories of the wild animals he should hunt, and the Indians he should see, and of the stores of gold he should find hidden, generally brought them home in a more cheerful state of mind. At last the parting was over, and after making heroic efforts to be cheerful to the end, Tom waved a last adieu with his handkerchief to the five weeping figures on the platform, and then threw himself back in his seat and gave free vent to his own feelings. Two girls sitting beside him sniggered at the sight of the strong-built young fellow giving way to tears, but a motherly-looking woman opposite presently put her hand on his knee. "Don't be ashamed of crying, my lad," she said. "I have got a son years older than you, and we always have a good cry together every time he starts on a long voyage. Are you going far? I suppose those are your sisters? I see you are all in black. Lost someone dear to you, no doubt? It comes to us all, my boy, sooner or later." "I am going to America," Tom replied, "and may not be back for years. Yes, those are my sisters, and what upsets me most is that I have to leave them all alone, for we have lost both our parents." "Dear, dear, that is sad indeed! No wonder you are all upset. Well, well, America is not so very far away--only a ten days' voyage by steamer, they tell me, and my boy is away in a sailing ship. He is in China, I reckon, now; he sailed five months ago, and did not expect to be home under a year. I worry about him sometimes, but I know it is of no use doing that. The last thing he said when I bade good-bye to him was, 'Keep up your spirits, mother'; and I try to do so." The old lady went on talking about her son, and Tom, listening to her kindly attempts to draw him out of his own troubles, grew interested, and by the time they reached Winchester, where she left the train, he had shaken off his first depression. It was a long journey with several changes, and he did not arrive in Liverpool until six o'clock in the evening, having been nearly twelve hours on the road. Carry's last injunction had been, "Take a cab when you get to Liverpool, Tom, and drive straight down to the docks. Liverpool is a large place, and you might get directed wrong. I shall be more comfortable if I know that, at any rate, you will go straight on board." Tom had thought it an unnecessary expense, but as he saw that Carry would be more comfortable about him if he followed her advice, he promised to do so, and was not sorry for it as he drove through the streets; for, in spite of cutting down everything that seemed unnecessary for the voyage and subsequent journey, the portmanteau was too heavy to carry far with comfort, and although prepared to rough it to any extent when he had once left England, he felt that he should not like to make his way along the crowded streets with his trunk on his shoulder. The cabman had no difficulty in finding the _Parthia_, which was still in the basin. Tom was, however, only just in time to get on board, for the men were already throwing off the warps, and ten minutes later she passed out through the dock-gates, and soon anchored in the middle of the river. Tom had been on board too many ships at Portsmouth to feel any of that bewilderment common to emigrants starting on their first voyage. He saw that at present everyone was too busy to attend to him, and so he put his portmanteau down by the bulwark forward, and leaning on the rail watched the process of warping the ship out of the docks. There were a good many steerage passengers forward, but at present the after-part of the ship was entirely deserted, as the cabin passengers would not come on board until either late at night or early next morning. When the anchor had been let drop he took up his trunk and asked a sailor where he ought to go to. "Show me your ticket. Ah! single man's quarters, right forward." There he met a steward, who, after looking at his ticket, said: "You will see the bunks down there, and can take any one that is unoccupied. I should advise you to put your trunk into it, and keep the lid shut. People come and go in the morning, and you might find that your things had gone too. It would be just as well for you to keep it locked through the voyage. I see that you have got a cord round it. Keep it corded; the more things there are to unfasten to get at the contents the less chance there is of anyone attempting it." The place was crowded with berths, mere shallow trays, each containing a straw mattress and pillow and two coloured blankets. They were in three tiers, one above the other, and were arranged in lines three deep, with a narrow passage between. He saw by the number into which bags and packets had been thrown that the upper berths were the favourites, but he concluded that the lower tiers were preferable. "It will be frightfully hot and stuffy here," he said to himself, "and I should say the lower berths will be cooler than the upper." He therefore placed his trunk in one of those next to the central passage and near the door, and then went up on deck. The _Parthia_ was a Cunarder, and although not equal in size to the great ships of the present day, was a very fine vessel. The fare had been somewhat higher than that for which he could have had a passage in a sailing ship, but in addition to his saving time, there was the advantage that on board the steamers, passengers were not obliged to provide their own bedding, as they had to do in sailing vessels, and also the food was cooked for them in the ship's galleys. The first meal was served soon after the anchor dropped, and consisted of a bowl of cocoa and a large piece of bread. Half an hour later a tender came alongside with the last batch of steerage passengers, and Tom was interested in watching the various groups as they came on board--men, women, and children. "Well," he said to himself, "I do think I am better fitted to make my way out there than most of these people are, for they look as helpless and confused as a flock of sheep. I pity those women with children. It will be pretty crowded in our quarters, but there is a chance of getting a fair night's sleep, while in a place crowded with babies and children it would be awful." Being a kind-hearted lad he at once set to work to help as far as he could, volunteering to carry children down below, and to help with boxes and bundles. In many cases his assistance was thankfully accepted, but in some it was sharply refused, the people's manner clearly showing their suspicions of his motive. He was not surprised at this after all the warnings Carry had given him against putting any confidence in strangers, but was satisfied, after an hour's hard work, that he had rendered things somewhat easier for many a worried and anxious woman. It was getting dusk even on deck by the time he had finished. "Thank you, lad," a man, who went up the companion ladder with him, said as they stepped on to the deck. "You have done my missis a good turn by taking care of those three young ones while we straightened up a bit, and I saw you helping others too. You are the right sort, I can see. There ain't many young chaps as puts themselves out of the way to do a bit of kindness like that. My name is Bill Brown; what is yours?" "Tom Wade. I had nothing to do, and was glad to be of a little help. People who have never been on board ship before naturally feel confused in such a crowd." "Have you been to sea?" "Not on a voyage, but I have lived at Portsmouth and have often been on board troopships and men-of-war, so it does not seem so strange to me." "Are you by yourself, or have you friends with you?" "I am alone," Tom replied. "I am going out to join an uncle in the States." "I have been across before," the man said. "I am a carpenter, and have worked out there six months, and came home six weeks back to fetch the others over. I have got a place, where I was working before, to go to as soon as I land. It makes a lot of difference to a man." "It does indeed," Tom agreed. "I know if I were going out without any fixed object beyond taking the first work that came to hand, I should not feel so easy and comfortable about it as I do now." "I have got two or three of my mates on board who are going out on my report of the place, and three families from my wife's village. She and the youngsters have been staying with her old folk while I was away. So we are a biggish party, and if you want anything done on the voyage you have only got to say the word to me." CHAPTER II FINDING FRIENDS The weather was fine, and Tom Wade found the voyage more pleasant than he had expected. The port-holes were kept open all the way, and the crowded quarters were less uncomfortable than would have been the case had they encountered rough weather. There were some very rough spirits among the party forward, but the great majority were quiet men, and after the first night all talking and larking were sternly repressed after the lights were out. The food was abundant, and although some grumbled at the meat there was no real cause of complaint. A rope across the deck divided the steerage passengers from those aft, and as there were not much more than one-half the emigrants aboard that the _Parthia_ could carry, there was plenty of room on deck. But few of the passengers suffered from sea-sickness, and the women sat and chatted and sewed in little groups while the children played about, and the men walked up and down or gathered forward and smoked, while a few who had provided themselves with newspapers or books sat in quiet corners and read. Tom was one of these, for he had picked up a few books on the United States at second-hand bookstalls at Portsmouth, and this prevented him from finding the voyage monotonous. When indisposed to read he chatted with Brown the carpenter and his mates, and sometimes getting a party of children round him and telling them stories gathered from the books now standing on the shelves in his room at Southsea. He was glad, however, when the voyage was over; not because he was tired of it, but because he was longing to be on his way west. Before leaving the ship he took a very hearty farewell of his companions on the voyage, and on landing was detained but a few minutes at the custom-house, and then entering an omnibus that was in waiting at the gate, was driven straight to the station of one of the western lines of railway. From the information he had got up before sailing he had learnt that there were several of these, but that there was very little difference either in their speed or rates of fare, and that their through-rates to Denver were practically the same. He had therefore fixed on the Chicago and Little Rock line, not because its advantages were greater, but in order to be able to go straight from the steamer to the station without having to make up his mind between the competing lines. He found on arrival that the emigrant trains ran to Omaha, where all the lines met, and that beyond that he must proceed by the regular trains. An emigrant train was to leave that evening at six o'clock. "The train will be made up about four," a good-natured official said to him, "and you had best be here by that time so as to get a corner seat, for I can tell you that makes all the difference on a journey like this. If you like to take your ticket at once you can register that trunk of yours straight on to Denver, and then you won't have any more trouble about it." "Of course we stop to take our meals on the way?" "Yes; but if you take my advice you will do as most of them do, get a big basket and lay in a stock of bread and cooked meat, cheese, and anything you fancy, then you will only have to go out and get a cup of tea at the stopping-places. It comes a good bit cheaper, and you get done before those who take their meals, and can slip back into the cars again quick and keep your corner seat. There ain't much ceremony in emigrant trains, and it is first come first served." "How long shall we be in getting to Denver?" "It will be fully a week, but there ain't any saying to a day. The emigrant trains just jog along as they can between the freight trains and the fast ones, and get shunted off a bit to let the expresses pass them." Thanking the official for his advice, Tom took his ticket, registered his trunk, and then went out and strolled about the streets of New York until three o'clock. He took the advice as to provisions, and getting a small hamper laid in a stock of food sufficient for three or four days. The platform from which the train was to start was already occupied by a considerable number of emigrants, but when the train came up he was able to secure a corner seat. The cars were all packed with their full complement of passengers. They were open from end to end, with a passage down the middle. Other cars were added as the train filled up, but not until all the places were already occupied. The majority of the passengers were men, but there were a considerable number of women, and still more children; and Tom congratulated himself on learning from the conversation of those around him that a good many were not going beyond Chicago, and that almost all would leave the train at stations between that place and Omaha. The journey to Chicago was the most unpleasant experience Tom had ever gone through. The heat, the dust, and the close confinement seemed to tell on the tempers of everyone. The children fidgeted perpetually, the little ones and the babies cried, the women scolded, and the men grumbled and occasionally quarrelled. It was even worse at night than during the day; the children indeed were quieter, for they lay on the floor of the passage and slept in comparative comfort, but for the men and women there was no change of position, no possibility of rest. The backs of the seats were low, and except for the fortunate ones by the windows there was no rest for the head; but all took uneasy naps with their chins leaning forward on their chest, or sometimes with their heads resting on their neighbour's shoulder. Tom did not retain his corner seat, but resigned it a few hours after starting to a weary woman with a baby in her arms who sat next to him. He himself, strong as he was, felt utterly worn out by the fatigue and sleeplessness. Beyond Chicago there was somewhat more room, and it was possible to make a change of position. Beyond Omaha it was much better; the train was considerably faster and the number of passengers comparatively few. He now generally got a seat to himself and could put his feet up. The people were also, for the most part, acquainted with the country, and he was able to learn a good deal from their conversation. There were but few women or children among them, for except near the stations of the railway, settlements were very rare; and the men were for the most part either miners, ranchemen, or mechanics, going to the rising town of Denver, or bound on the long journey across the plains to Utah or California. It was on the eighth day after starting that Denver was reached. Before leaving the ship Tom had put on his working clothes and a flannel shirt, and had disposed of his black suit, for a small sum, to a fellow-passenger who intended to remain at New York. This had somewhat lightened his portmanteau, but he was glad when he found that there were vehicles at the station to convey passengers up the hill to Denver, which was some three miles away, and many hundred feet above it. He was too tired to set about finding the Empire Saloon, but put up at the hotel at which the omnibus stopped, took a bath and a hearty meal, and then went straight to bed. After breakfast the next morning he at once set out. He had no difficulty in finding the whereabouts of the Empire Saloon, which he learned from the clerk of the hotel was a small place frequented almost entirely by miners. Its appearance was not prepossessing. It had been built in the earliest days of Denver, and was a rough erection. The saloon was low, its bare rafters were darkly coloured by smoke, a number of small tables stood on the sanded floor, and across the farther end of the room ran a bar. On shelves behind this stood a number of black bottles, and a man in his shirt sleeves was engaged in washing up glasses. Two or three rough-looking men in coloured flannel shirts, with the bottoms of their trousers tucked into high boots, were seated at the tables smoking and drinking. "I am expecting a letter for me here," Tom said to the man behind the bar. "My name is Wade." "The boss is out now," the man said. "He will be here in an hour or so. If there is anything for you he will know about it." "Thank you. I will come again in an hour," Tom replied. The man nodded shortly, and went on with his work. When Tom returned, the bar-tender said to a man who was sitting at one of the tables talking to the miners, "This is the chap I told you of as was here about the letter." "Sit right down," the man said to Tom, "I will talk with you presently;" and he continued his conversation in a low tone with the miners. It was nearly half an hour before he concluded it. Then he rose, walked across the room to Tom, and held out his hand. "Shake, young fellow," he said; "that is, if you are the chap Straight Harry told me might turn up here some day." "I expect I am the fellow," Tom said with a smile. "My uncle's name is Harry Wade." "Yes, that is his name; although he is always called Straight Harry. Yes, I have got a letter for you. Come along with me." He led the way into a small room behind the saloon, that served at once as his bed-room and office, and motioned to Tom to sit down on the only chair; then going to a cupboard he took out a tin canister, and opening it shook out half a dozen letters on to the table. "That is yourn," he said, picking one out. It was directed to Tom, and contained but a few lines. "_If you come I have gone west. Pete Hoskings will tell you all he knows about me and put you on the line. Your affectionate uncle._" "Are you Mr. Hoskings?" he asked the landlord. "I am Pete Hoskings," the man said. "There ain't been no Mister to my name as ever I can remember." "My uncle tells me that you will be able to direct me to him, and will put me on the line." "It would take a darn sight cuter fellow than I am to direct you to him at present," the man said with a laugh. "Straight Harry went away from here three months ago, and he might be just anywhere now. He may be grubbing away in a mine, he may be hunting and trapping, or he may have been wiped out by the Indians. I know where he intended to go, at least in a general sort of way. He did tell me he meant to stay about there, and it may be he has done so. He said if he moved away and got a chance he would send me word; but as there ain't nairy a post-office within about five hundred miles of where he is, his only chance of sending a letter would be by a hunter who chanced to be going down to the settlements, and who, like enough, would put it into his hunting-shirt and never give it another thought. So whether he has stayed there or not is more nor I can say." "And where is _there?_" Tom asked. "It is among the hills to the west of the Colorado River, which ain't much, seeing as the Colorado is about two thousand miles long. However, I can put you closer than that, for he showed me on a map the bit of country he intended to work. He said he would be back here in six months from the time he started; and that if you turned up here I was either to tell you the best way of getting there, or to keep you here until he came back. Well, I may say at once that there ain't no best way; there is only one way, and that is to get on a pony and ride there, and a mighty bad way it is. The only thing for you to do is to keep on west along the caravan tract. You have to cross the Green River,--that is the name of the Colorado on its upper course. Fort Bridger is the place for you to start from, but you have got to wait there until you sight some one or other bound south; for as to going by yourself, it would be a sight better to save yourself all trouble by putting that Colt hanging there to your head, and pulling the trigger. It is a bad country, and it is full of bad Indians, and there ain't many, even of the oldest hands, who care to risk their lives by going where Straight Harry has gone. "I did all I could to keep him from it; but he is just as obstinate as a mule when he has made up his mind to a thing. I know him well, for we worked as mates for over a year down on the Yuba in California. We made a good pile, and as I had got a wife and wanted to settle I came back east. This place had a couple of dozen houses then; but I saw it was likely to boom, so I settled down and set up this saloon and sent for my wife to come west to me. If she had lived I should have been in a sight bigger place by this time; but she died six months after she got here, and then I did not care a continental one way or the other; and I like better to stop here, where I meet my old mates and can do as I like, than to run a big hotel. It ain't much to look at, but it suits me, and I am content to know that I could buy up the biggest place here if I had a fancy to. I don't take much money now, but I did when the place was young; and I bought a few lots of land, and you may bet they have turned out worth having. Well, don't you act rashly in this business. Another three months your uncle will turn up, if he is alive; and if he don't turn up at all I dare say I can put you into a soft thing. If you go on it is about ten to one you get scalped before you find him. Where are you staying?" "At the Grand. The omnibus stopped there last night." "Well, you stay there for a week and think it over. You have got to learn about the country west of the Colorado. You had best come here to do that. You might stay a month at the Grand and not find a soul who could tell you anything worth knowing, but there ain't a day when you couldn't meet men here who have either been there themselves or have heard tell of it from men who have." "Are the natives friendly now?" Tom asked. "In a letter he wrote two years ago to us, my uncle said that he should put off going to a part of the country he wanted to prospect until the Indians were quiet." "The darned critters are never either friendly or quiet. A red-skin is pizen, take him when you will. The only difference is, that sometimes they go on the war-path and sometimes they don't; but you may bet that they are always ready to take a white man's scalp if they get a chance." "Well, I am very much obliged to you for your advice, which I will certainly take; that is, I will not decide for a few days, and will come in here and talk to the miners and learn what I can about it." "You can hear at once," the landlord said. He stepped back into the saloon, and said to the two men with whom he had been talking: "Boys, this young chap is a Britisher, and he has come out all the way to join Straight Harry, who is an uncle of his. Straight Harry is with Ben Gulston and Sam Hicks, and they are prospecting somewhere west of the Colorado. He wants to join them. Now, what do you reckon his chances would be of finding them out and dropping in on their campfire?" The men looked at Tom with open eyes. "Waal," one of them drawled, "I should reckon you would have just about the same chance of getting to the North Pole if you started off on foot, as you would of getting to Straight Harry with your hair on." Tom laughed. "That is not cheering," he said. "It ain't. I don't say as an old hand on the plains might not manage it. He would know the sort of place Harry and his mates would be likely to be prospecting, he would know the ways of the red-skins and how to travel among them without ever leaving a trail or making a smoke, but even for him it would be risky work, and not many fellows would care to take the chances even if they knew the country well. But for a tenderfoot to start out on such a job would be downright foolishness. There are about six points wanted in a man for such a journey. He has got to be as hard and tough as leather, to be able to go for days without food or drink, to know the country well, to sleep when he does sleep with his ears open, to be up to every red skin trick, to be able to shoot straight enough to hit a man plumb centre at three hundred yards at least, and to hit a dollar at twenty yards sartin with his six-shooter. If you feel as you have got all them qualifications you can start off as soon as you like, and the chances aren't more'n twenty to one agin your finding him." "I haven't anyone of them," Tom said. "Waal, it is something if you know that, young chap. It is not every tenderfoot who would own up as much. You stick to it that you don't know anything, and at the same time do your best to learn something, and you will do in time. You look a clean-built young chap, and you could not have a better teacher than Straight Harry. What he don't know, whether it is about prospecting for gold or hunting for beasts, ain't worth knowing, you bet. What is your name, mate?" "Tom Wade." "Waal, let us drink. It ain't like you, Pete, to keep a stranger dry as long as you have been doing." "He ain't up to our customs yet," the landlord said, as he moved off towards the bar. "It is a custom everywhere," the miner said reprovingly, "for folks to stand drink to a stranger; and good Bourbon hurts no man." The landlord placed a bottle and four glasses on the counter. Each of the miners filled his glass for himself, and the bottle was then handed to Tom, who followed their example, as did Hoskings. "Here is luck to you," the miner said, as he lifted his glass. Three glasses were set down empty, but Tom had to stop half-way with his to cough violently. "It is strong stuff," he said apologetically, "and I never drank spirits without water before. I had a glass of grog-and-water on board a ship sometimes, but it has always been at least two parts of water to one of spirits." "We mostly drink our liquor straight out here," the miner said. "But I am not saying it is the best way, especially for one who ain't used to it, but you have got to learn to do it if you are going to live long in this country." "Standing drinks round is a custom here," Pete Hoskings explained, seeing that Tom looked a little puzzled, "and there ain't no worse insult than to refuse to drink with a man. There have been scores of men shot, ay, and hundreds, for doing so. I don't say that you may not put water in, but if you refuse to drink you had best do it with your hand on the butt of your gun, for you will want to get it out quick, I can tell you." "There is one advantage in such a custom anyhow," Tom said, "it will keep anyone who does not want to drink from entering a saloon at all." "That is so, lad," Pete Hoskings said heartily. "I keep a saloon, and have made money by it, but for all that I say to every young fellow who hopes to make his way some time, keep out of them altogether. In country places you must go to a saloon to get a square meal, but everyone drinks tea or coffee with their food, and there is no call to stay in the place a minute after you have finished. Calling for drinks round has been the ruin of many a good man; one calls first, then another calls, and no one likes to stand out of it, and though you may only have gone in for one glass, you may find you will have to drink a dozen before you get out." "Why, you are a downright temperance preacher, Pete," one of the miners laughed. "I don't preach to a seasoned old hoss like you, Jerry. I keep my preaching for those who may benefit by it, such as the youngster here; but I say to him and to those like him, you keep out of saloons. If you don't do that, you will find yourself no forwarder when you are fifty than you are now, while there are plenty of openings all over the country for any bright young fellow who will keep away from liquor." "Thank you," Tom said warmly; "I will follow your advice, which will be easy enough. Beyond a glass of beer with my dinner and a tot of grog, perhaps once in three months when I have gone on board a ship, and did not like to say no, I have never touched it, and have no wish to do so." "Stick to that, lad; stick to that. You will find many temptations, but you set your face hard against them, and except when you come upon a hard man bent on kicking up a muss, you will find folks will think none the worse of you when you say to them straight, 'I am much obliged to you all the same, but I never touch liquor.'" Tom remained four days at the hotel, spending a good deal of his time at the saloon, where he met many miners, all of whom endorsed what the first he had spoken to had said respecting the country, and the impossibility of anyone but an old hand among the mountains making his way there. On the fourth evening he said to Pete Hoskings: "I see that your advice was good, and that it would be madness for me to attempt to go by myself, but I don't see why I should not ride to Fort Bridger; not of course by myself, but with one of the caravans going west. It would be a great deal better for me to do that and to learn something of the plains and camping than to stay here for perhaps three months. At Fort Bridger I shall be able to learn more about the country, and might join some hunting party and gain experience that way. I might find other prospectors going up among the hills, and even if it were not near where my uncle is to be found, I should gain by learning something, and should not be quite a greenhorn when I join him." "Well, that is sensible enough," Pete Hoskings said, "and I don't know as I can say anything against it. You certainly would not be doing any good for yourself here, and I don't say that either an hotel or a saloon is the best place for you. I will think it over, and will let you know when you come round in the morning; maybe I can put you a little in the way of carrying it out." The next morning when Tom went to the saloon, Jerry Curtis, one of the miners he had first met there, was sitting chatting with Pete Hoskings. "I had Jerry in my thoughts when I spoke to you last night, Tom," the latter said. "I knew he was just starting west again, and thought I would put the matter to him. He says he has no objection to your travelling with him as far as Fort Bridger, where maybe he will make a stay himself. There ain't no one as knows the plains much better than he does, and he can put you up to more in the course of a month than you would learn in a year just travelling with a caravan with farmers bound west." "I should be very much obliged indeed," Tom said delightedly. "It would be awfully good of you, Jerry, and I won't be more trouble than I can help." "I don't reckon you will be any trouble at all," the miner said. "I was never set much on travelling alone as some men are. I ain't much of a talker, but I ain't fond of going two or three months without opening my mouth except to put food and drink into it. So if you think you will like it I shall be glad enough to take you. I know Straight Harry well, and I can see you are teachable, and not set upon your own opinions as many young fellows I have met out here are, but ready to allow that there are some things as men who have been at them all their lives may know a little more about than they do. So you may take it that it is a bargain. Now, what have you got in the way of outfit?" "I have not got anything beyond flannel shirts, and rough clothes like these." "They are good enough as far as they go. Two flannel shirts, one on and one off, is enough for any man. Two or three pairs of thick stockings. Them as is very particular can carry an extra pair of breeches in case of getting caught in a storm, though for myself I think it is just as well to let your things dry on you. You want a pair of high boots, a buffalo robe, and a couple of blankets, one with a hole cut in the middle to put your head through; that does as a cloak, and is like what the Mexicans call a poncho. You don't want a coat or waistcoat; there ain't no good in them. All you want to carry you can put in your saddle-bag. Get a pair of the best blankets you can find. I will go with you and choose them for you. You want a thing that will keep you warm when you sleep, and shoot off the rain in bad weather. Common blankets are no better than a sponge. "Then, of course, you must have a six-shooter and a rifle. No man in his senses would start across the plains without them. It is true there ain't much fear of red-skins between here and Bridger, but there is never any saying when the varmint may be about. Can you shoot?" "No; I never fired off a rifle or a pistol in my life." "Well, you had better take a good stock of powder and ball, and you can practise a bit as you go along. A man ain't any use out on these plains if he cannot shoot. I have got a pony; but you must buy one, and a saddle, and fixings. We will buy another between us to carry our swag. But you need not trouble about the things, I will get all that fixed." "Thank you very much. How much do you suppose it will all come to?" "Never you mind what it comes to," Pete Hoskings said roughly. "I told your uncle that if you turned up I would see you through. What you have got to get I shall pay for, and when Straight Harry turns up we shall square it. If he don't turn up at all, there is no harm done. This is my business, and you have got nothing to do with it." Tom saw that he should offend Hoskings if he made any demur, and the kind offer was really a relief to him. He had thirty pounds still in his belt, but he had made a mental calculation of the cost of the things Jerry had considered essential, and found that the cost of a horse and saddle, of half another horse, of the rifle, six-shooter ammunition, blankets, boots, and provisions for the journey, must certainly amount up to more than that sum, and would leave him without any funds to live on till he met his uncle. He was so anxious to proceed that he would have made no excuse, although he saw that he might find himself in a very difficult position. Pete's insistence, therefore, on taking all expenses upon himself, was a considerable relief to him; for although determined to go, he had had an uneasy consciousness that it was a foolish step. He therefore expressed his warm thanks. "There, that is enough said about it," the latter growled out. "The money is nothing to me one way or the other, and it would be hard if I couldn't do this little thing for my old mate's nephew. When are you thinking of making a start, Jerry?" "The sooner the better. I have been four months here already and have not struck a vein, that is, not one really worth working, and the sooner I make a fresh start the better. To-day is Wednesday. There will be plenty of time to get all the things to-day and to-morrow, and we will start at daylight on Friday. You may as well come with me, Tom, and learn something about the prices of things. There are some Indians camped three miles away. We will walk over there first and pick up a couple of ponies. I know they have got a troop of them, that is what they come here to sell. They only arrived yesterday, so we shall have the pick of them." Before starting there was a short conversation between Jerry and the landlord, and then the former put on his broad-brimmed hat. "Have you seen any red-skins yet?" "I saw a few at some of the stations the train stopped at between this and Omaha." "Those fellows are mostly Indians who have been turned out of their tribes for theft or drunkenness, and they hang about the stations to sell moccasins and other things their squaws make, to fresh arrivals. "The fellows you are going to see are Navahoes, though not good specimens of the tribe, or they would not be down here to sell ponies. Still, they are a very different sort from those you have seen." An hour's walking took them to a valley, in which the Indians were encamped. There were eight wigwams. Some women paused in their work and looked round at the newcomers. Their dogs ran up barking furiously, but were driven back by a volley of stones thrown by three or four boys, with so good an aim that they went off with sharp yelps. Jerry strolled along without paying any attention to the dogs or boys towards a party of men seated round a fire. One of them rose as they approached. "My white brothers are welcome," he said courteously. "There is room by the fire for them," and he motioned to them to sit down by his side. A pipe, composed of a long flat wooden stem studded with brass nails, with a bowl cut out of red pipe-stone, was now handed round, each taking a short puff. "Does my brother speak the language of the Navahoes?" the chief asked in that tongue. "I can get along with it," Jerry said, "as I can with most of your Indian dialects." "It is good," the chief said. "My brother is wise; he must have wandered much." "I have been a goodish bit among your hills, chief. Have you come from far?" "The moon was full when we left our village." "Ah, then you have been a fortnight on the road. Well, chief, I have come here to trade. I want to buy a couple of ponies." The chief said a word or two to a boy standing near, and he with four or five others at once started up the valley, and in a few minutes returned with a drove of Indian ponies. "They are not a bad lot," Jerry said to Tom. "They don't look much, Jerry." "Indian ponies never look much, but one of those ponies would gallop an eastern-bred horse to a stand-still." Jerry got up and inspected some of the horses closely, and presently picked out two of them; at a word from the chief two of the lads jumped on their backs and rode off on them at full speed, and then wheeling round returned to the spot from where they started. "My white brother is a judge of horses," the chief said; "he has picked out the best of the lot." "There are three or four others quite as good," Jerry said carelessly. "Now, chief, how many blankets, how much powder and lead, and what else do you want for those two horses?" The chief stated his demands, to which Jerry replied: "You said just now, chief, that I was a wise man; but it seems that you must regard me as a fool." For half an hour an animated argument went on. Two or three times Jerry got up, and they started as if to quit the village, but each time the chief called them back. So animated were their gestures and talk that Tom had serious fears that they were coming to blows, but their voices soon fell and the talk became amicable again. At last Jerry turned to Tom. "The bargain is struck," he said; "but he has got the best of me, and has charged an outrageous sum for them," Then, in his own language, he said to the chief: "At noon to-morrow you will send the ponies down to the town. I will meet them at the big rock, half a mile this side of it, with the trade goods." "They shall be there," the chief said, "though I am almost giving them to you." As they walked away, Tom said: "So you have paid more than you expected, Jerry?" "No, I have got them a bargain; only it would never have done to let the chief know I thought so, or the horses would not have turned up to-morrow. I expect they have all been stolen from some other tribe. The two I have got are first-rate animals, and the goods will come to about fourteen pounds. I shall ride one of them myself, and put our swag on my own pony. That has been a very good stroke of business; they would never have sold them at that price if they had been honestly come by." CHAPTER III ON THE PLAINS The purchase of a buffalo robe, blankets, boots, and a Colt's revolver occupied but a short time, but the rifle was a much more difficult matter. "You can always rely upon a Colt," the miner said, "but rifles are different things; and as your life may often depend upon your shooting-iron carrying straight, you have got to be mighty careful about it. A gun that has got the name of being a good weapon will fetch four times as much as a new one." Denver was but a small place; there was no regular gunsmith's shop, but rifles and pistols were sold at almost every store in the town. In this quest Jerry was assisted by Pete Hoskings, who knew of several men who would be ready to dispose of their rifles. Some of these weapons were taken out into the country and tried at marks by the two men. They made what seemed to Tom wonderful shooting, but did not satisfy Hoskings. "I should like the youngster to have a first-rate piece," he said, "and I mean to get him one if I can. There are two of these would do if we can't get a better, but if there is a first-rate one to be had in this township I will have it." Suddenly he exclaimed, "I must have gone off my head, and be going downright foolish! Why, I know the very weapon. You remember Billy the scout?" "In course I do, everyone knew him. I heard he had gone down just before I got back here." "That is so, Jerry. You know he had a bit of a place up in the hills, four or five miles from here, where he lived with that Indian wife of his when he was not away. I went out to see him a day or two afore he died. I asked him if there was anything I could do for him. He said no, his squaw would get on well enough there. She had been alone most of her time, and would wrestle on just as well when he had gone under. He had a big garden-patch which she cultivated, and brought the things down into the town here. They always fetch a good price. Why more people don't grow them I can't make out; it would pay better than gold-seeking, you bet. He had a few hundred dollars laid by, and he said they might come in handy to her if she fell sick, or if things went hard in winter. Well, you remember his gun?" "In course--his gun was nigh as well known as Billy himself. He used to call it Plumb-centre. You don't mean to say she hasn't sold it?" "She hasn't; at least I should have been sure to hear if she had. I know several of the boys who went to the funeral wanted to buy it, and offered her long prices for it too; but she wouldn't trade. I will ride over there this evening and see what I can do about it. She will sell to me if she sells to anyone, for she knows I was a great chum of Billy's, and I have done her a few good turns. She broke her leg some years back when he was away, and luckily enough I chanced to ride over there the next day. Being alone and without anyone to help, she would have got on badly. I sent a surgeon up to her, and got a redskin woman to go up to nurse her. I don't wonder she did not like to sell Billy's piece, seeing he was so famous with it, and I feel sure money would not do it; but perhaps I can talk her into it." The next morning the articles agreed upon as the price of the horses were packed on Jerry's pony, and they went out to the meeting-place. "It is twenty minutes early," Jerry said, as Tom consulted his watch, "and the red-skins won't be here till it is just twelve o'clock. A red-skin is never five minutes before or five minutes after the time he has named for a meeting. It may have been set six months before, and at a place a thousand miles away, but just at the hour, neither before nor after, he will be there. A white man will keep the appointment; but like enough he will be there the night before, will make his camp, sleep, and cook a meal or two, but he does not look for the red-skin till exactly the hour named, whether it is sunrise or sunset or noon. Red-skins ain't got many virtues,--least there ain't many of them has, though I have known some you could trust all round as ready as any white man,--but for keeping an appintment they licks creation." A few minutes before twelve o'clock three Indians were seen coming down the valley on horseback. They were riding at a leisurely pace, and it was exactly the hour when they drew rein in front of Tom and his companion. Jerry had already unloaded his pony and had laid out the contents of the pack. First he proceeded to examine the two ponies, to make sure that they were the same he had chosen. "That is all right," he said; "they would hardly have tried to cheat us over that--they would know that it would not pay with me. There, chief, is your exchange. You will see that the blankets are of good quality. There is the keg of powder, the bar of lead, ten plugs of tobacco, the cloth for the squaws, and all the other things agreed on." The chief examined them carefully, and nodded his satisfaction. "If all the pale-faces dealt as fairly with the red man as you have done there would not be so much trouble between them," he said. "That is right enough, chief; it can't be gainsaid that a great many, ay, I might say the most part, of the traders are rogues. But they would cheat us just the same as they would you, and often do take us in. I have had worthless goods passed off on me many a time; and I don't blame you a bit if you put a bullet into the skull of a rogue who has cheated you, for I should be mightily inclined to do the same myself." No more words were wasted; the lads who had ridden the ponies down made up the goods in great bundles and went up the valley with their chief, while Jerry and Tom took the plaited leather lariats which were round the ponies' necks and returned to Denver. A saddle of Mexican pattern, with high peak and cantle, massive wooden framework, huge straps and heavy stirrups, was next bought. Jerry folded a horse-rug and tried it in different positions on the horse's back until the saddle fitted well upon it. "That is the thing that you have got to be most particular about, Tom. If the saddle does not sit right the horse gets galled, and when a horse once gets galled he ain't of much use till he is well again, though the Indians ride them when they are in a terrible state; but then they have got so many horses that, unless they are specially good, they don't hold them of any account. You see the saddle is so high that there is good space between it and the backbone, and the pressure comes fair on the ribs, so the ponies don't get galled if the blankets are folded properly. The Indians do not use saddles, but ride either on a pad or just a folded blanket, and their ponies are always getting galled." "The saddle is tremendously heavy." "It is heavy, but a few pounds don't make much difference to the horse one way or the other, so that he is carrying it comfortably. The saddles would be no good if they were not made strong, for a horse may put his foot in a hole and come down head over heels, or may tumble down a precipice, and the saddle would be smashed up if it were not pretty near as strong as cast-iron. Out on the plains a man thinks as much of his saddle as he does of his horse, and more. If his horse dies he will put the saddle on his head and carry it for days rather than part with it, for he knows he won't be long before he gets a horse again. He can buy one for a few charges of powder and ball from the first friendly Indians he comes across, or he may get one given to him if he has nothing to exchange for it, or if he comes across a herd of wild horses he can crease one." "What is creasing a horse?" Tom asked. "Well, it is a thing that wants a steady hand, for you have got to hit him just on the right spot--an inch higher, you will miss him; half an inch lower, you will kill him. You have got to put a bullet through his neck two or three inches behind the ears and just above the spine. Of course if you hit the spine you kill him, and he is no good except to give you a meal or two if you are hard-up for food; but if the ball goes through the muscles of the neck, just above the spine, the shock knocks him over as surely as if you had hit him in the heart. It stuns him, and you have only got to run up and put your lariat round his neck, and be ready to mount him as soon as he rises, which he will do in two or three minutes, and he will be none the worse for the shock; in fact you will be able to break him in more easily than if you had caught him by the rope." Jerry then adjusted his own saddle to the other Indian horse. "Can you ride?" he asked. "No, I have never had any chance of learning at home." "Well, you had better have a lesson at once. This is a good way for a beginner;" and he took a blanket, and having rolled it up tightly, strapped it over the peak of the saddle and down the flaps. "There," he said. "You get your knees against that, and what with the high peak and the high cantle you can hardly be chucked out anyhow, that is, if the horse does not buck; but I will try him as to that before you mount. We will lead them out beyond the town, we don't want to make a circus of ourselves in the streets; besides, if you get chucked, you will fall softer there than you would on the road. But first of all we will give them a feed of corn. You see they are skeary of us at present. Indian horses are always afraid of white men at first, just as white men's horses are afraid of Indians. A feed of corn will go a long way towards making us good friends, for you may be sure they have never had a feed in their lives beyond what they could pick up for themselves." The horses snuffed the corn with some apprehension when it was held out towards them, backing away from the sieves with their ears laid back; but seeing that no harm came to them they presently investigated the food more closely, and at last took a mouthful, after which they proceeded to eat greedily, their new masters patting their necks and talking to them while they did so. Then their saddles and bridles were put on, and they were led out of the stable and along the streets. At first they were very fidgety and wild at the unaccustomed sights and sounds, but their fear gradually subsided, and by the time they were well in the country they went along quietly enough. "Now you hold my horse, Tom, and I will try yours." Jerry mounted and galloped away; in ten minutes he returned. "He will do," he said as he dismounted. "He is fresh yet and wants training. I don't suppose he has been ridden half a dozen times, but with patience and training he will turn out a first-rate beast. I could see they were both fast when those boys rode them. I don't wonder the chief asked what, for an Indian pony, was a mighty long price, though it was cheap enough for such good animals. He must have two or three uncommon good ones at home or he would never have parted with them, for when an Indian gets hold of an extra good pony no price will tempt him to sell it, for a man's life on the plains often depends on the speed and stay of his horse. Now, I will take a gallop on my own, and when I come back you can mount and we will ride on quietly together. "There is not much difference between them," he said on his return. "Yours is a bit faster. Pete told me to get you the best horse I could find, and I fixed upon yours, directly my eye fell upon him, as being the pick of the drove. But this is a good one too, and will suit me as well as yours, for he is rather heavier, and will carry me better than yours would do on a long journey. Now climb up into your saddle." Jerry laughed at the difficulty Tom had in lifting his leg over the high cantle. "You will have to practise presently putting your hands on the saddle and vaulting into it. Half a minute in mounting may make all the difference between getting away and being rubbed out. When you see the red-skins coming yelling down on you fifty yards away, and your horse is jumping about as scared as you are, it is not an easy matter to get on to its back if you have got to put your foot in the stirrup first. You have got to learn to chuck yourself straight into your seat whether you are standing still or both on the run. There, how do you feel now?" "I feel regularly wedged into the saddle." "That is right. I will take up the stirrups a hole, then you will get your knees firmer against the blanket. It is better to learn to ride without it, even if you do get chucked off a few times, but as we start to-morrow you have no time for that. In a few days, when you get at home in the saddle, we will take off the blanket, and you have got to learn to hold on by your knees and by the balance of your body. Now we will be moving on." As soon as the reins were slackened the horses started together at an easy canter. "That is their pace," Jerry said. "Except on a very long journey, when he has got squaws and baggage with him, a red-skin never goes at a walk, and the horses will keep on at this lope for hours. That is right. Don't sit so stiffly; you want your legs to be stiff and keeping a steady grip, but from your hips you want to be as slack as possible, just giving to the horse's action, the same way you give on board ship when vessels are rolling. That is better. Ah! here comes Pete. I took this way because I knew it was the line he would come back by--and, by gosh, he has got the rifle, sure enough!" Pete had seen them, and was waving the gun over his head. "I've got it," he said as he reined up his horse when he met them. "It was a stiff job, for she did not like to part with it. I had to talk to her a long time. I put it to her that when she died the gun would have to go to someone, and I wanted it for a nephew of Straight Harry, whom she knew well enough; that it was for a young fellow who was safe to turn out a great hunter and Indian fighter like her husband, and that he would be sure to do credit to Plumb-centre, and make the gun as famous in his hands as it had been in her husband's. That fetched her. She said I had been kind to her, and though she could not have parted with the gun for money, she would do it, partly to please me, and partly because she knew that Straight Harry had been a friend of her husband's, and had fought by his side, and that the young brave I spoke of, would be likely to do credit to Plumb-centre. Her husband, she said, would be glad to know that it was in such good hands. So she handed it over to me. She would not hear of taking money for it; indeed, I did not press it, knowing that she would feel that it was almost a part of her husband; but I will make it up to her in other ways. There, Tom; there is as good a shooting-iron as there is in all the territories." "Thank you very much indeed, Pete. I shall value it immensely, and I only hope that some day I shall be able to do credit to it, as the poor woman said." There was nothing particular in the appearance of the rifle. It was a plainly-finished piece, with a small bore and heavy metal. "It don't look much," Jerry said, "but it is a daisy, you bet." "We will try a shot with it, Jerry. She gave me the bag of bullets and a box of patches and his powder-horn with it. We will see what it will do in our hands, we are both pretty good shots." He loaded the rifle carefully. "You see that bit of black rock cropping out of the hill-side. I guess it is about two hundred and fifty yards away, and is about the size a red-skin's head would be if he were crawling through the grass towards us. Will you shoot first or shall I?" "Fire away, Pete." Hoskings took a steady aim and fired. "You have hit it," Jerry exclaimed. "Just grazed it at the top." They walked across to the rock; there was a chip just on the top. "It was a good shot, Pete; especially considering how you are out of practice. If it had been a red-skin it would have stunned him sure, for I doubt whether it is not too high by a quarter of an inch or so, to have finished him altogether." [Illustration: JERRY GIVES TOM A LESSON IN SHOOTING.] "It would have cut his top-knot off, Jerry, and that is all. I doubt whether it would have even touched his skin." They returned to the spot where Pete had fired, and Jerry threw himself down on the grass and levelled his rifle. "That is not fair, Jerry," Pete protested. "It would not be fair if I was shooting against you, but we are only trying the rifle, and if that rock were a red-skin you may be sure that I should be lying down." He fired: and on going to the stone again they found that the bullet had struck it fair, within an inch of its central point. "That is something like a rifle," Jerry said delighted. "Now, Tom, you shall have a shot." As they walked to the shooting-point, Jerry showed the lad how to hold the rifle, instructed him as to the backsight, and showed him how to get the foresight exactly on the nick of the backsight. "You must just see the bead as if it were resting in the nick, and the object you aim at must just show above the top point of the bead." He showed him how to load, and then told him to lie down, as he had done, on his chest, and to steady the rifle with the left arm, the elbow being on the ground. "You must be quite comfortable," he said; "it is of no use trying to shoot if you are in a cramped position. Now, take a steady aim, and the moment you have got the two sights in a line on the rock, press the trigger steadily. Press pretty hard; it is only a pull of about two pounds, but it is wonderful how stiff a trigger feels the first time you pull at it. You need not be at all afraid of the kick. If you press the butt tightly against your shoulder you will hardly feel it, for there is plenty of weight in the barr'l, and it carries but a small charge of powder. You won't want to shoot at anything much beyond this range, but sometimes you may have to try at four or five hundred yards when you are in want of a dinner. In that case you can put in a charge and a half of powder. Now, are you comfortable? You need not grip so hard with your left hand, the gun only wants to rest between your thumb and fingers. That is better. Now take a steady aim, and the moment you have got it press the trigger. Well done! that is a good shot for a first. You hit the dust an inch or two to the right of the stone. If it had been a red-skin you would have hit him in the shoulder. You will do, lad, and by the time we get to Fort Bridger I guess you will bring down a stag as clean as nine out of ten hunters." "Don't get into the way of waiting too long before you fire, Tom," Pete Hoskings said. "Better to try to shoot too quick to begin with than to be too long about it. When you have made up your mind that you are going to shoot, get your bead on your mark and fire at once. You may want to hit a red-skin's head as he looks out from behind a tree, and to do that you must fire the instant you see him or he will be in again. One of the best shots I ever saw never used to raise his gun to his shoulder at all. He just dropped his piece into the hollow of his left hand, and would fire as he touched it. He did not seem to take any aim at all, but his bullet was sartin to hit the thing he wanted to, even if it were no bigger than an orange. He could not tell himself how he did it. 'I seen the thing and I fired, Pete,' he would say; 'the gun seems to point right of its own accord, I have not anything to say to it.' You see, shooting is a matter of eye. Some men may shoot all their lives, and they will never be more than just respectable, while others shoot well the first time that a gun is put in their hands. Want of nerve is what spoils half men's shooting; that and taking too long an aim. Well, it is time for us to be mounting and getting back. I have got to see that the dinner is all ready. I never can trust that black scoundrel, Sam, to do things right while I am away." The preparations for the journey were completed by the evening. "Now mind, Tom," Pete Hoskings said the last thing before going to bed, "if you don't find your uncle, or if you hear that he has got wiped out, be sure you come right back here. Whether you are cut out for a hunter or not, it will do you a world of good to stick to the life until you get four or five years older and settle as to how you like to fix yourself, for there ain't no better training than a few years out on the plains, no matter what you do afterwards. I will find a good chum for you, and see you through it, both for the sake of my old mate, Straight Harry, and because I have taken a liking to you myself." "Why do you call my uncle Straight Harry?" Tom asked, after thanking Pete for his promise. "Is he so very upright?" "No, lad, no; it ain't nothing to do with that. There are plenty more erect men than him about. He is about the size of Jerry, though, maybe a bit taller. No; he got to be called Straight Harry because he was a square man, a chap everyone could trust. If he said he would do a thing he would do it; there weren't no occasion for any papers to bind him. When he said a thing you could bet on it. You could buy a mine on his word: if he said it was good you need not bother to take a journey to look at it, you knew it was right there, and weren't a put-up job. Once when we were working down on the Yuba we got to a place where there were a fault in the rock, and the lode had slipped right away from us. Everyone in camp knew that we had been doing well, and we had only got to pile up a few pieces of rock at the bottom, and no one who would have seen it would have known that the lode was gone. That is what most chaps would have done, and a third chap who was working with us was all for doing it. Anyone would have given us five hundred ounces for it. Well, I didn't say nothing, it was what pretty nigh anyone on the mines would have done if he had the chance, but Harry turned on our partner like a mountain lion. 'You are a mean skunk, New Jersey' says he. 'Do you think that I would be one to rob a man only because he would be fool enough to take a place without looking at it? We've worked to the edge of the claim both ways, and I don't reckon there is a dollar's worth of gold left in it, now that it has pettered out at the bottom, and if there was I would not work another day with a man who proposed to get up a swindle.' So as soon as he got up to the surface he told everyone that the lode had gone out and that the claim weren't worth a red cent. He and New Jersey had a big fight with fists that evening. The other was bigger than Harry, and stronger, but he were no hand with his pistol, and Harry is a dead shot; so he told New Jersey he would fight him English fashion, and Harry gave him the biggest licking I ever saw a man have. I felt pretty mean myself, you bet, for having thought of planting the thing off; but as I hadn't spoken, Harry knew nothing about it. If he had, I doubt if he would ever have given me his hand again. Yes, sir, he is a straight man all round, and there is no man better liked than Harry. Why, there are a score of men in this town who know him as I do, and, if he came to them and said, 'I have struck it rich, I will go halves with you if you will plank down twenty thousand dollars to open her up,' they would pay down the cash without another word; and, I tell you, there ain't ten men west of the Missouri of whom as much could be said." The next morning at daybreak Jerry and Tom started. They rode due north, skirting the foot of the hills, till they reached the emigrant route, for the railway had not been carried farther than Wabash, from which point it ran south to Denver. It was a journey of some five hundred miles to Fort Bridger, and they took a month to accomplish it, sometimes following the ordinary line of travel, sometimes branching off more to the north, where game was still abundant. "That is Fort Bridger, Tom. It ain't much of a place to look at; but is, like all these forts, just a strong palisading, with a clump of wooden huts for the men in the middle. Well, the first stage of your journey is over, and you know a little more now than when you left Denver; but though I have taught you a good bit, you will want another year's practice with that shooting-iron afore you're a downright good shot; but you have come on well, and the way you brought down that stag on a run yesterday was uncommon good. You have made the most of your opportunities, and have got a steady hand and a good eye. You are all right on your horse now, and can be trusted to keep your seat if you have a pack of red-skins at your heels. You have learnt to make a camp, and to sleep comfortable on the ground; you can frizzle a bit of deer-flesh over the fire, and can bake bread as well as a good many. Six months of it and you will be a good plain's-man. I wish we had had a shot at buffalo. They are getting scarcer than they were, and do not like crossing the trail. We ain't likely to see many of them west of the Colorado; the ground gets too hilly for them, and there are too many bad lands." "What are bad lands, Jerry?" "They are just lands where Nature, when she made them, had got plenty of rock left, but mighty little soil or grass seed. There are bad lands all over the country, but nowhere so bad as the tract on both sides of the Green and Colorado rivers. You may ride fifty miles any way over bare rock without seeing a blade of grass unless you get down into some of the valleys, and you may die of thirst with water under your feet." "How do you mean, Jerry?" "The rivers there don't act like the rivers in other parts. Instead of working round the foot of the hills they just go through them. You ride along on what seems to be a plain, and you come suddenly to a crack that ain't perhaps twenty or thirty feet across, and you look down, if you have got head enough to do it, and there, two thousand feet or more below you, you see a river foaming among rocks. It ain't one river or it ain't another river as does it; every little stream from the hills cuts itself its cañon and makes its way along till it meets two or three others, then they go on together, cutting deeper and deeper until they run into one of the arms of the Green River or the Colorado or the Grand. "The Green and the Colorado are all the same river, only the upper part is called the Green. For about a thousand miles it runs through great cañons. No one has ever gone down them, and I don't suppose anyone ever will; and people don't know what is the course of the river from the time it begins this game till it comes out a big river on the southern plains. You see, the lands are so bad there is no travelling across them, and the rapids are so terrible that there is no going down them. Even the Indians never go near the cañons if they can help it. I believe they think the whole thing is the work of an evil spirit." "But you said some of the valleys had grass?" "Yes; I have gone down one or two myself from the mountains of Utah, where the stream, instead of cutting a cañon for itself, has behaved for a bit in the ordinary way and made a valley. Wonderfully good places they were--plenty of grass, plenty of water, and no end of game. I have spent some months among them, and got a wonderful lot of skins, beavers principally of course, but half a dozen mountain lions and two grizzlies. I did not bring home their skins, you bet. They were too heavy, and I should not have troubled them if they had not troubled me. There was good fish, too, in the streams, and I never had a better time. The red-skins happened to be friendly, and I was with a hunter who had a red-skin wife and a dozen ponies. If it hadn't been for that I should soon have had to quit, for it ain't no good hunting if you can't carry away the skins. As it was I made a good job of it, for I got nigh a thousand dollars for my skins at Utah. "Well, here we are at the fort. I guess we may as well make our camp outside. If you go in you have got to picket your horse here and put your baggage there and come in at gun-fire, and all sorts of things that troubles a man who is accustomed to act as he likes." The horses were soon picketed. "I will go in first and see who is here, Tom. There are usually a lot of loafing Indians about these forts, and though it is safe enough to leave our traps, out on the plain, it will not do here. We must stay with them, or at any rate keep them in sight; besides, these two horses would be a temptation to any redskin who happened to want an animal." "I will wait willingly, Jerry; I should know nobody inside the fort if I went in. I will see to making a fire and boiling the kettle, and I will have supper ready at seven o'clock." "I shall be sure to be back by that time; like enough I sha'n't be a quarter of an hour away." It was but half an hour, indeed, before Tom saw him returning, accompanied by a tall red-skin. "This is a friend of mine, Tom. He was a chief of the Senecas, but his tribe are nearly wiped out, and he has been all his life a hunter, and there are few of us who have been much out on the plains who don't know him. Chief, this is Straight Harry's nephew I was telling you of, who has come out here to join his uncle. Sit down, we have got some deer-flesh. Tom here knocked one over on the run at two hundred and fifty yards by as good a shot as you want to see; while it is cooking we can smoke a pipe and have a chat." The chief gravely seated himself by the fire. "What have you been doing since I last saw you up near the Yellowstone?" "Leaping Horse has been hunting," the Indian said quietly, with a wave of his hand, denoting that he had been over a wide expanse of country. "I guessed so," Jerry put in. "And fighting with 'Rappahoes and Navahoes." "Then you've been north and south?" The Indian nodded. "Much trouble with both; they wanted our scalps. But four of the 'Rappahoe lodges are without a master, and there are five Navahoe widows." "Then you were not alone?" "Garrison was with me among the 'Rappahoes; and the Shoshone hunter, Wind-that-blows, was with me when the Navahoes came on our trail." "They had better have left you alone, chief. Do you know the Ute country?" "The Leaping Horse has been there. The Utes are dogs." "They are troublesome varmint, like most of the others," Jerry agreed. "I was telling you Straight Harry is up in their country somewhere. Tom here is anxious to join him, but of course that can't be. You have not heard anything of him, I suppose?" "The Leaping Horse was with him a week ago." "You were, chief! Why did you not tell me so when I was saying we did not know where he was?" "My white brother did not ask," the chief said quietly. "That is true enough, chief, but you might have told me without asking." The Indian made no reply, but continued to smoke his hatchet pipe tranquilly, as if the remark betrayed such ignorance of Indian manners that it was not worth replying to. Tom took up the conversation now. "Was it far from here that you saw him?" "Five days' journey, if travel quick." "Was he hunting?" Jerry asked. "Hunting, and looking for gold." "Who had he with him?" "Two white men. One was Ben Gulston. Leaping Horse had met him in Idaho. The other was called Sam, a big man with a red beard." "Yes, Sam Hicks; he only came back from California a few months back, so you would not be likely to have met him before. Were they going to remain where you left them?" The Indian shook his head. "They were going farther north." "Farther north!" Jerry repeated. "Don't you mean farther south?" "Leaping Horse is not mistaken, he knows his right hand from his left." "Of course, of course, chief," the miner said apologetically; "I only thought that it was a slip of the tongue. Then if they were going farther north they must have come back in this direction." "They were on the banks of the Big Wind River when Leaping Horse met them." "Jerusalem!" the miner exclaimed. "What on airth are they doing there? Why, we thought they had gone down to the west of the Colorado. I told you so, chief, when I talked to you about it; and instead of that, here they are up in the country of the 'Rappahoes and Shoshones." "They went south," the Indian said quietly, "and had trouble with the Utes and had to come back again, then they went north." "Ah, that accounts for it. I wonder Harry didn't send word to Pete Hoskings that he had gone up to the Big Wind River. I ain't heard of there being any gold in that region, though some think that coming down through the big hills from Yellowstone Valley on the northwest, metal might be struck." "Going to look for gold a little," the chief said, "hunt much; not stay there very long, mean to go down south again after a bit. Leaping Horse go with them." "Oh, I see. The Utes had come upon them, and they knew that if they stopped there they would lose their scalps sooner or later, so they came up here and made north for a bit to hunt and fossick about in the hills, and then go back when the Utes had quieted down." The chief nodded. "Well, well, that alters the affair altogether. Whereabouts did you leave them?" "Near the Buffalo Lake." "Don't know it. Where does it lie?" "On a stream that runs into the river from the west, from a valley running up near Frémont's Buttes. They were going up so as to follow the Rivière de Noir, and then either strike up across the hills to the Upper Yellowstone, or go out west and come down over the Grosventre range on to the Wyoming range, and then down through Thompson's Pass, or else skirt the foot-hills on to the Green River." "Waal, chief, I reckon that among all those hills and mountains, one would have just about the same chance of lighting on them as you would have of finding a chipmunk in a big pine-forest." "Couldn't find," the chief said, "but might follow. If they go fast never catch them; if wait about, hunt beaver, look for gold and silver, then might come up to them easy enough, if 'Rappahoes not catch and kill. Very bad place. Leaping Horse told them so. White brother said he think so too; but other men think they find gold somewhere, so they go on. They have got horses, of course. Three horses to ride, three horses to carry beaver-traps and food. Leaping Horse came back here to sell his skins. He had promised to meet a friend here, or he would not have left Straight Harry, who is a good man and a friend of Leaping Horse. Three men not enough in bad country." "Do you think there would be any chance of my finding them?" Tom asked eagerly. A slight gleam of amusement passed over the Indian's face. "My brother is very young," he said. "He will be a brave warrior and a great hunter some day, but his eyes are not opened yet. Were he to try he would leave his scalp to dry in the 'Rappahoes' lodges." "That is just what I told him, chief. It would be sheer madness." The Indian made no reply, and Jerry turned the conversation. "You don't drink spirits, chief, or I would go and get a bottle from the fort." "Leaping Horse is not a madman," the Indian said scornfully, "that he should poison his brain with fire-water." "Yes; I remembered, chief, that you had fallen into our ways and drink tea." "Tea is good," the Indian said. "It is the best thing the white man has brought out on to the plains." "That is so, chief, except tobacco. We did not bring that; but I reckon you got it from the Spaniards long ago, though maybe you knew of it before they came up from the south." The meat was now cooked, and Tom took it off the fire and handed the pieces on the ramrod, that had served as a spit, to the others, together with some bread, poured out the tea from the kettle, and placed a bag of sugar before them. There was little talk until after the meal was over. Then the Indian and Jerry smoked steadily, while Tom took a single pipe, having only commenced the use of tobacco since he had left Denver. Presently the Indian arose. "In the morning I will see my white friends again," he said, and without further adieu turned and walked gravely back to the fort. CHAPTER IV LEAPING HORSE "He is a fine fellow," Jerry said, after the Indian had left him. "You must have a talk with him one of these days over his adventures among the 'Rappahoes and Navahoes, who are both as troublesome rascals as are to be found on the plains. An Indian seldom talks of his adventures, but sometimes when you can get him in the right humour you may hear about them." "He talks very fair English," Tom said. "Yes; he has been ten years among us. He was employed for two or three years supplying the railway men with meat; but no Indian cares to hunt long in one place, and he often goes away with parties of either hunters or gold-seekers. He knows the country well, and is a first-rate shot; and men are always glad to have him with them. There is no more trusty red-skin on the plains, and he will go through fire and water for those whom he regards as his special friends. I should say he is about the one man alive who could take you to your uncle." "Do you think he would?" Tom asked eagerly. "Ah, that is another matter; I don't know what his plans are. If he is engaged to go with another party he will go, for he would not fail anyone to whom he had made a promise. If he isn't engaged he might perhaps do it. Not for pay, for he has little use for money. His hunting supplies him with all he wants. It gives him food, and occasionally he will go with a bundle of pelts to the nearest town, and the money he gets for them will supply him with tea and tobacco and ammunition, and such clothes as he requires, which is little enough. Buckskin is everlasting wear, and he gets his worked up for him by the women of any Indian tribe among whom he may be hunting. If he were one of these fort Indians it would be only a question of money; but it would never do to offer it to him. He does not forget that he is a chief, though he has been away so many years from what there is left of his old tribe. If he did it at all it would be for the sake of your uncle. I know they have hunted together, and fought the Apachés together. I won't say but that if we get at him the right way, and he don't happen to have no other plans in his mind, that he might not be willing to start with you." "I should be glad if he would, Jerry. I have been quite dreading to get to Fort Bridger. I have had such a splendid time of it with you that I should feel awfully lonely after you had gone on." "Yes, I dare say you would feel lonesome. I should have felt lonesome myself if I did not light upon some mate going the same way. We got on very well together, Tom. When Pete Hoskings first put it to me whether I would be willing to take you with me as far as this, I thought that though I liked you well enough, it would not be in my way to be playing a sort of schoolmaster business to a young tenderfoot; but I had got to like the notion before we left Denver, and now it seems to me that we have had a rare good time of it together." "We have indeed, Jerry; at least I have had. Even if the Indian would agree to take me I should miss you awfully." Jerry made no reply, but sat smoking his pipe and looking into the fire. As he was sometimes inclined to be taciturn, Tom made no attempt to continue the conversation; and after moving out and shifting the picket-pegs so as to give the horses a fresh range of grass to munch during the night, he returned to the fire, wrapped himself in his blankets and lay down, his "Good-night, Jerry," meeting with no response, his companion being evidently absorbed in his own thoughts. "You are not going on to-day, Jerry, are you?" Tom said, as he threw off his blankets and sat up in the morning. The sun was not yet up, but Jerry had already stirred up the embers, put some meat over them to cook, and put the kettle among them. "No, I shall stop here for a day or two, lad. I am in no special hurry, and have no call to push on. I have not made up my mind about things yet." They had scarcely finished breakfast when Leaping Horse came down from the fort. "Tom here has been asking me, chief, whether there was any chance of getting you to guide him to his uncle. I said, of course, that I did not know what your plans were; but that if you had nothing special before you, possibly you might be willing to do so, as I know that you and Straight Harry have done some tall hunting and fighting together." The Indian's face was impassive. "Can my young brother ride day after day and night after night, can he go long without food and water, is he ready to run the risk of his scalp being taken by the 'Rappahoes? Can he crawl and hide, can he leave his horse and travel on foot, can he hear the war-cry of the red-skins without fear?" "I don't say that I can do all these things, chief," Tom said; "but I can do my best. And, anyhow, I think I can promise that if we should be attacked you shall see no signs of my being afraid, whatever I may feel. I am only a boy yet, but I hope I am not a coward." "You have come a long way across the sea to find my brother, Straight Harry. You would not have come so far alone if your heart had been weak. Leaping Horse is going back to join his white brother again, and will take you to him." Tom felt that any outburst of delight would be viewed with distaste by this grave Indian, and he replied simply: "I thank you with all my heart, chief, and I am sure that my uncle will be grateful to you." The chief nodded his head gravely, and then, as if the matter were settled and no more need be said about it, he turned to Jerry: "Which way is my white friend going?" "I'm dog-goned if I know. I had reckoned to go down past Utah, and to go out prospecting among the hills, say a hundred miles farther west; then while I journeyed along with Tom I got mixed in my mind. I should like to have handed him over safe to Harry; but if Harry had gone down to the Ute hills with an idea of trying a spot I have heard him speak of, where he thought he had struck it rich, he might not have cared to have had me come there, and so I concluded last night it was best the lad should wait here till Harry got back. Now the thing is altered; they are just hunting and prospecting, and might be glad to have me with them, and I might as well be there as anywhere else; so as you are going back there, I reckon I shall be one of the party." "That will be capital, Jerry," Tom said. "With you as well as the chief we shall be sure to get through; and it will be awfully jolly having you with us." "Don't you make any mistake," the miner said, "I should not be of much more use in finding them than you would. I ain't been up among the mountains all these years without learning something, but I ain't no more than a child by the side of the chief. And don't you think this affair is going to be a circus. I tell you it is going to be a hard job. There ain't a dozen white men as have been over that country, and we shall want to be pretty spry if we are to bring back our scalps. It is a powerful rough country. There are peaks there, lots of them, ten thousand feet high, and some of them two or three thousand above that. There are rivers, torrents, and defiles. I don't say there will be much chance of running short of food, if it wasn't that half the time one will be afraid to fire for fear the 'tarnal Indians should hear us. We ain't got above a month afore the first snows fall. Altogether it is a risky business, look at it which way you will." "Well, Jerry, if it is as bad as that, I don't think it will be right for you and the chief to risk your lives merely that I should find my uncle. If he is alive he is sure to come back here sooner or later; or if he goes some other way back to Denver he will hear from Pete that I am here, and will either write or come for me." "It ain't entirely on your account, lad, as I am thinking of going; and I am pretty sure the chief would tell you that it is the same with him. You see, he tried to persuade your uncle to turn back. My opinion is, that though he had to come here to keep the appointment, he had it in his mind to go back again to join your uncle. Haven't I about struck your thoughts, chief?" The chief nodded. "My white brother Harry is in danger," he said. "Leaping Horse had to leave him; but would have started back to-day to take his place by his side. The Hunting Dog will go with him." "I thought so, chief; I am dog-goned if I did not think so. It was Hunting Dog you came back here to meet, I suppose." "Hunting Dog is of my tribe," he said; "he is my sister's son. He came across the plains to join me. He has hunted in his own country; this is the first time he has come out to take his place as a man. Leaping Horse will teach him to be a warrior." "That is good; the more the better, so that there ain't too many. Well, what is your advice, chief? Shall we take our pack pony with the outfit?" The chief shook his head decidedly. "Must travel quick and be able to gallop fast. My white brothers must take nothing but what they can carry with them." "All right, chief; we will not overload ourselves. We will just take our robes and blankets, our shooting-irons, some tea and sugar, and a few pounds of flour. At what time shall we start?" "In an hour we will ride out from the fort." "We shall be ready. Ten minutes would fix us, except that I must go into the fort and sell my critter and what flour and outfit we sha'n't want, to a trader there. "I ain't done badly by that deal," Jerry said when he returned. "I have sold the pony for more than I gave for him; for the red-skins have been keeping away from the fort of late, and the folks going by are always wanting horses in place of those that have died on the way. The other things all sold for a good bit more than we gave for them at Denver. Carriage comes mighty high on these plains; besides, the trader took his chances and reckoned them in." "How do you mean, Jerry?" "Waal, I told him we was going up to the Shoshone Sierra, and intended to hunt about and to come back, maybe by the Yellowstone and then by the Bear rivers, and that we would take the price of the goods out in trade when we got back. That made it a sort of lottery for him, for if we never came back at all he would never have to pay, so he could afford to take his risks and offer me a good price. I reckon he thinks he has got them at a gift. He has given two pieces of paper, one for you and one for me, saying that he owes the two of us the money; so if I should go under and you should get back, you will draw it all right." They at once proceeded to pack their ponies. Divided between the saddle-bags of the two animals were four pounds of tea, eight of sugar, and thirty-six of flour. Each took a good store of ammunition, an extra pair of breeches, a flannel shirt, and a pair of stockings. The rest of their clothes had been packed, and taken up by Jerry to the traders to lie there until their return. "That is light enough for anything," Jerry said, when the things were stowed into the saddle-bags. "Four-and-twenty pounds of grub and five pounds of ammunition brings it up to nine-and-twenty pounds each, little enough for a trip that may last three months for aught we know." In addition to the ammunition in the saddle-bags, each carried a powder-horn and a bag of bullets over his shoulder. The revolvers were in their belts, and the rifles slung behind them. While Jerry was away at the fort Tom had made and baked three loaves, which were cut up and put in the holsters. "Now we are ready, Tom; the Indians will be out in a minute or two. The sun is just at its highest." Two minutes later the chief and his companion rode out from the gate of the fort. Jerry and Tom mounted their horses and cantered over to meet them. As they came up, Tom looked with interest at the young Indian. He judged him to be about nineteen, and he had a bright and intelligent face. He was, like his uncle, attired in buckskin; but the shirt was fringed and embroidered, as was the band that carried his powder-horn, a gift, doubtless, from some Indian maiden at his departure from his village. No greetings were exchanged; but the chief and Jerry rode at once side by side towards the northeast, and Tom took his place by the side of the young Indian. "How are you?" he said, holding out his hand. The young Indian took it and responded to the shake, but he shook his head. "Ah, you don't speak English yet?" Hunting Dog again shook his head. "That is a pity," Tom went on; "it would have been jolly if we could have talked together." The chief said something to Jerry, who turned around in his saddle. "His uncle says he can talk some. He has taught him a little when he has paid visits to the village, but he has had no practice in speaking it. He will get on after a time." All were well mounted, and they travelled fast. Just before sunset they crossed the Green River at a ford used by the emigrants, and some fifty miles northeast of Fort Bridger. They had seen a herd of deer by the way, and the two Indians had dismounted and stalked them. The others lost sight of them, but when two rifle-shots were heard Jerry said, "We will take the horses along to them, you may be sure they have got meat; the chief is a dead shot, and he says that his nephew has also gifts that way." As they expected, they found the Indians standing beside two dead deer. Hunting Dog laid open the stomachs with a slash of his knife, and removed the entrails, then tying the hind legs together swung the carcasses on to his horse behind the saddle, and the journey was at once renewed. "You will make for Frémont's Buttes, I suppose, chief?" Jerry said, as after riding up the river for three or four miles so as to be able to obtain wood for their fire--as for a considerable distance on either side of the emigrant trail not a shrub was to be seen--they dismounted, turned the horses loose, lit a fire, and prepared a meal. "Yes. We will go over the pass and camp at one of the little lakes at the head of the north fork, thence we will ride across the plain and ford Little Wind River, and then follow up the Sage Creek and make our camp at night on Buffalo Lake. From there we must follow their trail." "And where shall we have to begin to look out for the 'Rappahoes?" "They may be over the next rise; no one can say. The 'Rappahoes are like the dead leaves drifting before the wind. They come as far south as the emigrant trail, and have attacked caravans many times. After to-night we must look out for them always, and must put out our fires before dark." Tom had noticed how carefully the young Indian had selected the wood for the fire; searching carefully along by the edge of the river for drift-wood, and rejecting all that contained any sap. He himself had offered to cut down some wood with the axe he carried strapped to his saddle, but Hunting Dog had shaken his head. "No good, no good," he said. "Make heap smoke; smoke very bad." Tom thought that the shrub he was about to cut would give out obnoxious smoke that would perhaps flavour the meat hanging over it, but when the Indian added, "Heap smoke, red-skins see a long way," he understood that Hunting Dog had been so careful in choosing the wood in order to avoid making any smoke whatever that might attract the attention of Indians at a distance from them. It was his first lesson in the necessity for caution; and as darkness set in he looked round several times, half expecting to see some crouching red-skins. The careless demeanour of his companions, however, reassured him, for he felt certain that if there was any fear of a surprise, they would be watchful. After supper the Indian talked over with Jerry the route they would most probably have to pursue. The miner had never been in this part of the country before; indeed, very few white men, with the exception of trappers who had married Indian women and had been admitted into their tribes, had ever penetrated into this, the wildest portion of the Rocky Mountains. Vague rumours existed of the abundance of game there, and of the existence of gold, but only one attempt had been made to prospect on a large scale. This had taken place three years before, when a party of twenty Californian miners penetrated into the mountains. None of them returned, but reports brought down by Indians to the settlements were to the effect that, while working a gold reef they had discovered, they were attacked and killed to a man by a war party of Sioux. "I was mighty nigh being one of that crowd," Jerry said when he told the story to Tom, as they sat over the camp-fire that night. "I heard of their start when I got back to Salt Lake City, after being away for some time among the hills. I legged it arter them as fast as I could, but I found when I got to the last settlement that they had gone on ten days before, and as I did not know what line they had followed, and did not care to cross the pass alone, I gave it up. Mighty lucky thing it was, though I did not think so at the time." "But why should my uncle's party have gone into such a dangerous country when they knew that the natives were so hostile?" "It is a mighty big place, it is pretty nigh as big as all the eastern states chucked into one, and the red-skins are not thick. No one knows how many there are, but it is agreed they are not a big tribe. Then it ain't like the plains, where a party travelling can be seen by an Indian scout miles and miles away. It is all broken ground, canons and valleys and rocks. Then again, when we get on the other side of the Wind River they tell me there are big forests. That is so, chief, isn't it?" The chief nodded. "Heap forests," he said, "higher up rocks and bad lands; all bad. In winter snow everywhere on hills. Red-skins not like cold; too much cold, wigwam no good." "That's it, you see, Tom. We are here a long way above the sea-level, and so in the hills you soon get above the timber-line. It's barren land there, just rock, without grass enough for horses, and in winter it is so all-fired cold that the Indians can't live there in their wigwams. I reckon their villages are down in the sheltered valleys, and if we don't have the bad luck to run plump into one of these we may wander about a mighty long time before we meet with a red-skin. That is what you mean, isn't it, chief?" Leaping Horse grunted an assent. "What game is there in the country?" "There are wapitis, which are big stag with thundering great horns, and there are big-horns. Them are mountain sheep; they are mostly up above the timber-line. Wapitis and big-horns are good for food, but their skins ain't worth taking off. There is beaver, heaps of them; though I reckon there ain't as many as there were by a long way, for since the whites came out here and opened trade, and the red-skins found they could get good prices for beaver, they have brought them down by thousands every year. Still, there is no doubt there is plenty left, and that trappers would do first-rate there if the red-skins were friendly. In course, there is plenty of b'ars, but unless you happen to have a thundering good chance it is just as well to leave the b'ars alone, for what with the chances of getting badly mauled, and what with the weight of the skin, it don't pay even when you come right side up out of a tussle." "Are there any maps of the region?" "None of any account. They are all just guess-work. You may take it that this is just a heap of mountains chucked down anyhow. Such maps as there are have been made from tales trappers who came in with pelts have told. Well, firstly they only knew about just where the tribe they had joined lived, and in the second place you may bet they warn't such fools as to tell anything as would help other fellows to get there; so you may put down that they told very little, and what they did tell was all lies. Some day or other I suppose there will be an expedition fitted out to go right through, and to punish these dog-goned red-skins and open the country; but it will be a long time arter that afore it will be safe travelling, for I reckon that soldiers might march and march for years through them mountains without ever catching a sight of a red-skin if they chose to keep out of their way. And now I reckon we had best get in atween our blankets." The two Indians had already lain down by the fire. Tom was some time before he could get to sleep. The thought of the wild and unknown country he was about to enter, with its great game, its hidden gold treasures, its Indians and its dangers, so excited his imagination that, tired as he was with the long ride, two or three hours passed before he fell off to sleep. He was awoke by being shaken somewhat roughly by Jerry. "Why, you are sleeping as sound as a b'ar in a hollow tree," the miner said. "You are generally pretty spry in the morning." A dip in the cold water of the river awoke Tom thoroughly, and by the time he had rejoined his comrades breakfast was ready. The ground rose rapidly as they rode forward. They were now following an Indian trail, a slightly-marked path made by the Indians as they travelled down with their ponies laden with beaver skins, to exchange for ammunition, blankets, and tobacco at the trading station. The country was barren in the extreme, being covered only with patches of sage brush. As they proceeded it became more and more hilly, and distant ridges and peaks could be seen as they crossed over the crests. "These are the bad lands, I suppose?" "You bet they are, Tom, but nothing like as bad as you will see afore you are done. Sage brush will grow pretty nigh everywhere, but there are thousands of square miles of rock where even sage brush cannot live." The hills presently became broken up into fantastic shapes, while isolated rocks and pinnacles rose high above the general level. "How curiously they are coloured," Tom remarked, "just regular bands of white and red and green and orange; and you see the same markings on all these crags, at the same level." "Just so, Tom. We reckon that this country, and it is just the same down south, was once level, and the rains and the rivers and torrents cut their way through it and wore it down, and just these buttes and crags and spires were left standing, as if to show what the nature of the ground was everywhere. Though why the different kinds of rocks has such different colours is more than I can tell. I went out once with an old party as they called a scientific explorer. I have heard him say this was all under water once, and sometimes one kind of stuff settled down like mud to the bottom, sometimes another, though where all the water came from is more nor I can tell. He said something about the ground being raised afterwards, and I suppose the water run off then. I did not pay much attention to his talk, for he was so choke-full of larning, and had got such a lot of hard names on the tip of his tongue, that there were no making head or tail of what he was saying." Tom had learnt something of the elements of geology, and could form an idea of the processes by which the strange country at which he was looking had been formed. "That's Frémont's Buttes," the Indian said presently, pointing to a flat-topped hill that towered above the others ahead. "Why, I thought you said it was a fifty-mile ride to-day, Jerry, and we can't have gone more than half that." "How far do you suppose that hill is off?" "Three or four miles, I should think." "It is over twenty, lad. Up here in the mountains the air is so clear you can see things plain as you couldn't make out the outlines of down below." "But it seems to me so close that I could make out people walking about on the top," Tom said a little incredulously. "I dare say, lad. But you will see when you have ridden another hour it won't seem much closer than it does now." Tom found out that the miner was not joking with him, as he at first had thought was the case. Mile after mile was ridden, and the landmark seemed little nearer than before. Presently Hunting Dog said something to the chief, pointing away to the right. Leaping Horse at once reined in, and motioned to his white companions to do the same. "What is it, chief?" Jerry asked. "Wapiti," he replied. "That is good news," the miner said. "It will be lucky if we can lay in a supply of deer flesh here. The less we shoot after we get through the pass the better. Shall we go with you, chief?" "My white brothers had better ride on slowly," Leaping Horse said. "Might scare deer. No good lose time." Tom felt rather disappointed, but as he went on slowly with Jerry, the miner said: "You will have plenty of chances later on, lad, and there is no time to lose in fooling about. The red-skins will do the business." Looking back, Tom saw the two Indians gallop away till they neared the crest of a low swell. Then they leapt from their horses, and stooping low went forward. In a short time they lay prone on the ground, and wriggled along until just on the crest. "I reckon the stag is just over there somewhere," Jerry said. "The young red-skin must have caught sight of an antler." They stopped their ponies altogether now, and sat watching the Indians. These were half a mile away, but every movement was as clearly visible as if they were but a hundred yards distant. The chief raised himself on his arms and then on to his knees. A moment later he lay down again, and they then crawled along parallel with the crest for a couple of hundred yards. Then they paused, and with their rifles advanced they crept forward again. "Now they see them," Jerry exclaimed. The Indians lay for half a minute motionless. Then two tiny puffs of smoke darted out. The Indians rose to their feet and dashed forward as the sound of their shots reached the ears of their companions. "Come on," Jerry said, "you may be sure they have brought down one stag anyhow. The herd could not have been far from that crest or the boy would not have seen the antler over it, and the chief is not likely to miss a wapiti at a hundred yards." Looking back presently Tom saw that the Indian ponies had disappeared. "Ay, Hunting Dog has come back for them. You may be sure they won't be long before they are up with us again." In a quarter of an hour the two Indians rode up, each having the hind-quarters of a deer fastened across his horse behind the saddle, while the tongues hung from the peaks. "Kill them both at first shot, chief?" Jerry asked; "I did not hear another report." "Close by," the chief said; "no could miss." "It seems a pity to lose such a quantity of meat," Tom remarked. "The Indians seldom carry off more than the hindquarters of a deer, never if they think there is a chance of getting more soon. There is a lot more flesh on the hindquarters than there is on the rest of the stag. But that they are wasteful, the red-skins are, can't be denied. Even when they have got plenty of meat they will shoot a buffalo any day just for the sake of his tongue." It was still early in the afternoon when they passed under the shadow of the buttes, and, two miles farther, came upon a small lake, the water from which ran north. Here they unsaddled the horses and prepared to camp. CHAPTER V IN DANGER There were no bushes that would serve their purpose near the lake; they therefore formed their camp on the leeward side of a large boulder. The greatest care was observed in gathering the fuel, and it burned with a clear flame without giving out the slightest smoke. "Dead wood dries like tinder in this here air," the miner said. "In course, if there wur any red-skins within two or three miles on these hills they would make out the camp, still that ain't likely; but any loafing Indian who chanced to be hunting ten or even fifteen miles away would see smoke if there was any, and when a red-skin sees smoke, if he can't account for it, he is darned sartin to set about finding out who made it." The horses fared badly, for there was nothing for them to pick up save a mouthful of stunted grass here and there. "Plenty of grass to-morrow," the chief said in answer to a remark of Tom as to the scantiness of their feed. "Grass down by Buffalo Lake good." Early the next morning they mounted and rode down the hills into Big Wind River valley. They did not go down to the river itself, but skirted the foot of the hills until they reached Buffalo Lake. "There," the chief said, pointing to a pile of ashes, "the fire of my white brother." Alighting, he and Hunting Dog searched the ground carefully round the fire. Presently the younger Indian lightly touched the chief and pointed to the ground. They talked together, still carefully examining the ground, and moved off in a straight line some fifty yards. Then they returned. "Indian here," Leaping Horse said, "one, two days ago. Found fire, went off on trail of white men." "That is bad news, chief." "Heap bad," the Indian said gravely. "Perhaps he won't follow far," Tom suggested. The Indian made no answer. He evidently considered the remark to be foolish. "You don't know much of Indian nature yet, Tom," the miner said. "When a red-skin comes upon the trail of whites in what he considers his country, he will follow them if it takes him weeks to do it, till he finds out all about them, and if he passes near one of his own villages he will tell the news, and a score of the varmint will take up the trail with him. It's them ashes as has done it. If the chief here had stopped with them till they started this would not have happened, for he would have seen that they swept every sign of their fire into the lake. I wonder they did not think of it themselves. It was a dog-goned foolish trick to leave such a mark as this. I expect they will be more keerful arterwards, but they reckoned that they had scarce got into the Indian country." "Do you think it was yesterday the red-skin was here, or the day before, chief?" "Leaping Horse can't say," the Indian replied. "Ground very hard, mark very small. No rain, trail keep fresh a long time. Only find mark twice." He led them to a spot where, on the light dust among the rocks, was the slight impression of a footmark. "That is the mark of a moccasin, sure enough," Jerry said; "but maybe one of the whites, if not all of them, have put on moccasins for the journey. They reckoned on climbing about some, and moccasins beat boots anyhow for work among the hills." "Red-skin foot," the Indian said quietly. "Well, if you say it is, of course it is. I should know it myself if I saw three or four of them in a line, but as there is only one mark it beats me." "How would you know, Jerry?" "A white man always turns out his toes, lad, an Indian walks straight-footed. There are other differences that a red-skin would see at once, but which are beyond me, for I have never done any tracking work." The Indian without speaking led them to another point some twenty yards away, and pointed to another impression. This was so slight that it was with difficulty that Tom could make out the outline. "Yes, that settles it," Jerry said. "You see, lad, when there was only one mark I could not tell whether it was turned out or not, for that would depend on the direction the man was walking in. This one is just in a line with the other, and so the foot must have been set down straight. Had it been turned out a bit, the line, carried straight through the first footprint, would have gone five or six yards away to the right." It took Tom two or three minutes to reason this out to himself, but at last he understood the drift of what his companion said. As the line through one toe and heel passed along the centre of the other, the foot must each time have been put down in a straight line, while if the footprints had been made by a person who turned out his toes they would never point straight towards those farther on. "Well, what is your advice, chief?" Jerry asked. "Must camp and eat," the Indian replied, "horses gone far enough. No fear here, red-skin gone on trail." "Do you think there have been more than one, chief?" "Not know," Leaping Horse said; "find out by and by." Tom now noticed that Hunting Dog had disappeared. "Where shall we make the fire?" The chief pointed to the ashes. "That's it," Jerry said. "If any red-skin came along you see, Tom, there would be nothing to tell them that more than one party had been here." The chief this time undertook the collection of fuel himself, and a bright fire was presently burning. Two hours later Hunting Dog came back. He talked for some time earnestly with the chief, and taking out two leaves from his wampum bag opened them and showed him two tiny heaps of black dust. Jerry asked no questions until the conversation was done, and then while Hunting Dog cut off a large chunk of deer's flesh, and placing it in the hot ashes sat himself quietly down to wait until it was cooked, he said: "Well, chief, what is the news?" "The Indian had a horse, Hunting Dog came upon the spot where he had left it a hundred yards away. When he saw ashes, he came to look at them. Afterwards he followed the trail quite plain on the soft ground at head of lake. Over there," and he pointed to the foot of the hills, "Indian stopped and fired twice." "How on earth did he know that, chief?" The chief pointed to the two leaves. The scout examined the powder. "Wads," he said. "They are leather wads, Tom, shrivelled and burnt. What did he fire at, chief?" "Signal. Half a mile farther three other mounted redskins joined him. They stopped and had heap talk. Then one rode away into hills, the others went on at gallop on trail." "That is all bad, chief. The fellow who went up the hills no doubt made for a village?" The chief nodded. "The only comfort is that Harry has got a good start of them. It was a week from the time you left them before we met you, that is three days ago, so that if the red-skins took up the trail yesterday, Harry has ten days' start of them." Leaping Horse shook his head. "Long start if travel fast, little start if travel slow." "I see what you mean. If they pushed steadily on up the valley, they have gone a good distance, but if they stopped to catch beaver or prospect for gold they may not have got far away. Hadn't we better be pushing on, chief?" "No good, horses make three days' journey; rest well to-day, travel right on to-morrow. If go farther to-night, little good to-morrow. Good camp here, all rest." "Well, no doubt you are right, chief, but it worries one to think that while we are sitting here those 'tarnal red-skins may be attacking our friends. My only hope is that Harry, who has done a lot of Indian fighting, will hide his trail as much as possible as he goes on, and that they will have a lot of trouble in finding it." The chief nodded. "My white brother, Harry, knows Indian ways. He did not think he had come to Indian country here or he would not have left his ashes. But beyond this he will be sure to hide his trail, and the 'Rappahoes will have to follow slow." "You think they are 'Rappahoes, chief?" "Yes, this 'Rappahoe country. The Shoshones are further north, and are friendly; the Bannacks and Nez Percés are in northwest, near Snake River; and the Sioux more on the north and east, on other side of great mountains. 'Rappahoes here." "Waal," Jerry said wrathfully, "onless they catch Harry asleep, some of the darned skunks will be rubbed out afore they get his scalp. It is a good country for hiding trail. There are many streams coming down from the hills into the Big Wind, and they can turn up or down any of them as they please, and land on rocky ground too, so it would be no easy matter to track them. By the lay of the country there does not seem much chance of gold anywheres about here, and, as I reckon, they will be thinking more of that than of beaver skins, so I think they would push straight on." "Harry said he should get out of Big Wind River valley quick," Leaping Horse said. "Too many Indians there. Get into mountains other side. Go up Rivière de Noir, then over big mountains into Sierra Shoshone, and then down Buffalo through Jackson's Hole, and then strike Snake River. I told him heap bad Indians in Jackson's Hole, Bannacks, and Nez Percés. He said not go down into valley, keep on foot-hills. I told him, too bad journey, but he and other pale-faces thought could do it, and might find much gold. No good Leaping Horse talk." "This is a dog-goned bad business I have brought you into, Tom. I reckoned we should not get out without troubles, but I did not calkerlate on our getting into them so soon." "You did not bring me here, Jerry, so you need not blame yourself for that. It was I brought you into it, for you did not make up your mind to come till I had settled to go with Leaping Horse." "I reckon I should have come anyhow," Jerry grumbled. "Directly the chief said where Harry and the others had gone my mind was set on joining them. It was a new country, and there wur no saying what they might strike, and though I ain't a regular Indian-fighter, leaving them alone when they leave me alone, I can't say as I am averse to a scrimmage with them if the odds are anyways equal." "It is a wonderful country," Tom said, looking at the almost perpendicular cliffs across the valley, with their regular coloured markings, their deep fissures, crags, and pinnacles, "and worth coming a long way to see." "I don't say as it ain't curous, but I have seen the like down on the Colorado, and I don't care if I never see no more of it if we carry our scalps safe out of this. I don't say as I object to hills if they are covered with forest, for there is safe to be plenty of game there, and the wood comes in handy for timbering, but this kind of country that looks as if some chaps with paint-pots had been making lines all over it, ain't to my taste noway. Here, lad; I never travel without hooks and lines; you can get a breakfast and dinner many a day when a gun would bring down on you a score of red varmints. I expect you will find fish in the lake. Many of these mountain lakes just swarm with them. You had better look about and catch a few bugs, there ain't no better bait. Those jumping bugs are as good as any," and he pointed to a grasshopper, somewhat to Tom's relief, for the lad had just been wondering where he should look for bugs, not having seen one since he landed in the States. There were two lines and hooks in the miner's outfit, and Tom and Hunting Dog, after catching some grasshoppers, went down to the lake, while Jerry and the chief had a long and earnest conversation together. The baited hooks were scarcely thrown into the water when they were seized, and in a quarter of an hour ten fine lake trout were lying on the bank. Tom was much delighted. He had fished from boats, but had never met with much success, and his pleasure at landing five fish averaging four or five pounds apiece was great. As it was evidently useless to catch more, they wound up their lines, and Hunting Dog split the fish open and laid them down on the rock, which was so hot that Tom could scarce bear his hand on it. Seeing the elder men engaged in talk Tom did not return to them, but endeavoured to keep up a conversation with the young Indian, whom he found to be willing enough to talk now they were alone, and who knew much more English than he had given him credit for. As soon as the sun set the fire was extinguished, and they lay down to sleep shortly afterwards. An hour before daylight they were in the saddle. Hunting Dog rode ahead on the line he had followed the day before. As soon as it became light Tom kept his eyes fixed upon the ground, but it was only now and then, when the Indian pointed to the print of a horse's hoof in the sand between the rocks, that he could make them out. The two Indians followed the track, however, without the slightest difficulty, the horses going at a hand gallop. "They don't look to me like horses' footprints," Tom said to Jerry when they had passed a spot where the marks were unusually clear. "I reckon you have never seen the track of an unshod horse before, Tom. With a shod horse you see nothing but the mark of the shoe, here you get the print of the whole hoof. Harry has been careful enough here, and has taken the shoes off his ponies, for among all the marks, we have not seen any made by a shod horse. The Indians never shoe theirs, and the mark of an iron is enough to tell the first red-skin who passes that a white man has gone along there. The chief and I took off the shoes of the four horses yesterday afternoon when you were fishing. We put them and the nails by to use when we get out of this dog-goned country." After riding for two hours they came to the bank of a stream. The chief held up his hand for them to stop, while he dismounted and examined the foot-marks. Then he mounted again and rode across the stream, which was some ten yards wide and from two to three feet deep. He went on a short distance beyond it, leapt from his saddle, threw the reins on the horse's neck, and returned to the bank on foot. He went a short distance up the stream and then as much down, stooping low and examining every inch of the ground. Then he stood up and told the others to cross. [Illustration: "Leaping Horse Mounted, And Rode Across The Stream"] "Leave your horses by mine," he said as they joined him. "Trail very bad, all rock." He spoke to the young Indian, who, on dismounting, at once went forward, quartering the ground like a spaniel in search of game, while the chief as carefully searched along the bank. "Best leave them to themselves, Tom; they know what they are doing." "They are hunting for the trail, Jerry, I suppose?" "Ay, lad. Harry struck on a good place when he crossed where he did, for you see the rock here is as smooth as the top of a table, and the wind has swept it as clean of dust as if it had been done by an eastern woman's broom. If the horses had been shod there would have been scratches on the rock that would have been enough for the dullest Indian to follow, but an unshod horse leaves no mark on ground like this. I expect the red-skins who followed them were just as much puzzled as the chief is. There ain't no saying whether they crossed and went straight on, or whether they never crossed at all or kept in the stream either up or down." It was half an hour before the two Indians had concluded their examination of the ground. "Well, chief, what do you make of it?" Jerry asked when they had spoken a few words together. "Hunting Dog has good eyes," the chief said. "The white men went forward, the red men could not find the trail, and thought that they had kept in the river, so they went up to search for them. Come, let us go forward." The miner and Tom mounted their horses, but the Indians led theirs forward some three hundred yards. Then Hunting Dog pointed down, and the chief stooped low and examined the spot. "What is it, chief?" Jerry asked; and he and Tom both got off and knelt down. They could see nothing whatever. "That is it," Leaping Horse said, and pointed to a piece of rock projecting half an inch above the flat. "I am darned if I can see anything." "There is a tiny hair there," Tom said, putting his face within a few inches of the ground. "It might be a cat's hair; it is about the length, but much thicker. It is brown." "Good!" the chief said, putting his hand on Tom's shoulder. "Now let us ride." He leapt into his saddle, the others following his example, and they went on at the same pace as before. "Well, chief," the miner said, "what does that hair tell you about it, for I can't make neither head nor tail of it?" "The white men killed a deer on their way up here, and they cut up the hide and made shoes for horses, so that they should leave no tracks. One of the horses trod on a little rock and a hair came out of the hide." "That may be it, chief," the miner said, after thinking the matter over, "though it ain't much of a thing to go by." "Good enough," Leaping Horse said. "We know now the line they were taking. When we get to soft ground see trail plainer." "What will the others do when they cannot find the trail anywhere along the bank?" "Ride straight on," the chief said. "Search banks of next river, look at mouths of valleys to make sure white men have not gone up there, meet more of tribe, search everywhere closely, find trail at last." "Well, that ought to give Harry a good start, anyhow." "Not know how long gone on," the chief said gravely. "No rainfall. Six, eight--perhaps only two days' start." "But if they always hide their trail as well as they did here I don't see how the Indians can find them at all--especially as they don't know where they are making for, as we do." "Find camp. Men on foot may hide traces, but with horses sure to find." "That is so," Jerry agreed, shaking his head. "An Indian can see with half an eye where the grass has been cropped or the leaves stripped off the bushes. Yes, I am afraid that is so. There ain't no hiding a camp from Indian eyes where horses have been about. It is sure to be near a stream. Shall you look for them, chief?" The Indian shook his head. "Lose time," he said. "We go straight to Rivière de Noir." "You don't think, then, they are likely to turn off before that?" "Leaping Horse thinks not. They know Indian about here. Perhaps found Indian trail near first camp. Know, anyhow, many Indians. Think push straight on." "That is the likeliest. Anyhow, by keeping on we must get nearer to them. The worst danger seems to me that we may overtake the red-skins who are hunting them." The chief nodded. "It is an all-fired fix, Tom," Jerry went on. "If we go slow we may not be in time to help Harry and the others to save their scalps; if we go fast we may come on these 'tarnal red-skins, and have mighty hard work in keeping our own ha'r on." "I feel sure that the chief will find traces of them in time to prevent our running into them, Jerry. Look how good their eyes are. Why, I might have searched all my life without noticing a single hair on a rock." After riding some fifteen miles beyond the stream, and crossing two similar though smaller rivulets, the chief, after a few words with Jerry, turned off to the left and followed the foot of the hills. At the mouth of a narrow valley he stopped, examined the ground carefully, and then led the way up it, carrying his rifle in readiness across the peak of the saddle. The valley opened when they had passed its mouth, and a thick grove of trees grew along the bottom. As soon as they were beneath their shelter they dismounted. The horses at once began to crop the grass. Hunting Dog went forward through the trees, rifle in hand. "Shall I take the bits out of the horses' mouths, Jerry?" Tom asked. "Not till the young Indian returns. It is not likely there is a red-skin village up there, for we should have seen a trail down below if there had been. Still there may be a hut or two, and we can do nothing till he comes back." It was half an hour before Hunting Dog came through the trees again. He shook his head, and without a word loosened the girths of his horse and took off the bridle. "He has seen no signs of them, so we can light a fire and get something to eat. I am beginning to feel I want something badly." Thus reminded, Tom felt at once that he was desperately hungry. They had before starting taken a few mouthfuls of meat that had been cooked the day before and purposely left over, but it was now three o'clock in the afternoon, and he felt ravenous. The Indians quickly collected dried wood, and four of the fish were soon frizzling on hot ashes, while the kettle, hung in the flame, was beginning to sing. "We have done nigh forty miles, Tom, and the horses must have a couple of hours' rest. We will push on as fast as we can before dark, and then wait until the moon rises; it will be up by ten. This ain't a country to ride over in the dark. We will hide up before morning, and not go on again till next night. Of course we shall not go so fast as by day, but we sha'n't have any risk of being ambushed. The chief reckons from what he has heard that the Indian villages are thick along that part of the valley, and that it will never do to travel by day." "Then you have given up all hopes of finding Harry's tracks?" "It would be just wasting our time to look for them. We will push on sharp till we are sure we are ahead of them. We may light upon them by chance, but there can be no searching for them with these red varmint round us. It would be just chucking away our lives without a chance of doing any good. I expect Harry and his party are travelling at night too; but they won't travel as fast as we do, not by a sight. They have got pack-ponies with them, and they are likely to lay off a day or two if they come upon a good place for hiding." They travelled but a few miles after their halt, for the Indians declared they could make out smoke rising in two or three places ahead; and although neither Jerry nor Tom could distinguish it, they knew that the Indians' sight was much keener than their own in a matter of this kind. They therefore halted again behind a mass of rocks that had fallen down the mountain-side. Hunting Dog lay down among the highest of the boulders to keep watch, and the horses were hobbled to prevent their straying. The miner and the chief lit their pipes, and Tom lay down on his back for a sleep. A short time before it became dusk the call of a deer was heard. "There are wapiti, chief. We can't take a shot at them; but it don't matter, we have meat enough for a week." The chief had already risen to his feet, rifle in hand. "It is a signal from Hunting Dog," he said, "he has seen something in the valley. My white brother had better get the horses together," and he made his way up the rocks. In a minute or two he called out that the horses might be left to feed, and presently came leisurely down to them. "Seen Indians--ten 'Rappahoes." "Which way were they going?" "Riding from Big Wind River across valley. Been away hunting among hills over there. Have got meat packed on horses, ride slow. Not have heard about white men's trail. Going to village, where we saw smoke." Tom was fast asleep when Jerry roused him, and told him that the moon was rising, and that it was time to be off. They started at a walk, the chief leading; Jerry followed him, while Tom rode between him and Hunting Dog, who brought up the rear. Tom had been warned that on no account was he to speak aloud. "If you have anything you want to say, and feel that you must say it or bust," Jerry remarked, "just come up alongside of me and whisper it. Keep your eyes open and your rifle handy, we might come upon a party any minute. They might be going back to their village after following Harry's trail as long as they could track it, or it might be a messenger coming back to fetch up food, or those fellows Hunting Dog made out going on to join those in front. Anyhow we have got to travel as quiet as if there was ears all round us." As they passed the clumps of trees where the Indian villages stood they could see the reflection of the fires on the foliage, and heard the frequent barking of dogs and an occasional shout. A quarter of a mile farther the chief halted and spoke to Hunting Dog, who at once dismounted and glided away towards the village. "Gone to see how many men there," the chief said in explanation to Jerry. "Too much laugh, no good." "He means the men must have gone off again, Tom. If there were men in the camp the boys would not be making a noise." They were but a few hundred yards from the trees, and in a very short time the Indian returned. "Men are gone," he said; "only squaws and boys there." "How many lodges are there?" the chief asked. Hunting Dog held up both hands with extended fingers, and then one finger only. "Eleven of them," Jerry said. "I expect they are all small villages, and they move their lodges across into the forests when winter comes on." As soon as they had mounted, the chief put his horse into a canter, and at this pace they went forward for some hours, breaking into a walk occasionally for a few minutes. "I thought you said we should not go beyond a walk to-night, Jerry," Tom remarked on the first of these occasions. "That is what we kinder agreed, lad; but you may be sure the chief has some good reason for going on faster. I dunno what it is, and I ain't going to ask. Red-skins hate being questioned. If he wants to tell us he will tell us without being asked." A faint light was stealing over the sky when the chief halted his horse and sat listening. No sound, however, broke the stillness of the night. "Did you think you heard anything, chief?" "Leaping Horse heard nothing, but he stopped to listen. What does my white brother think of the 'Rappahoes having gone on directly they returned from the chase?" "I thought that when they got the news that some white men had gone through, they might have started to join those following up the trail. Isn't that what you think, chief?" "Only three white men, plenty Indians on trail; no hurry to follow; might have had feast after hunt and gone on in morning." "So they might. You think the whites have been tracked, and are to be attacked this morning?" "Perhaps attacked yesterday. Perhaps have got strong place, 'Rappahoes want more help to take it. White rifle shoot straight, perhaps want more men to starve them out." They again went forward, at a gallop now. Jerry did not think much of the chief's idea. It seemed to him natural that the Indians should want to join in the hunt for scalps, and to get a share of the white men's goods, though he admitted that it was strange they should have gone on without taking a meal. Presently the chief reined in his horse again, and sat with head bent forward. Tom heard an angry grunt from between Hunting Dog's teeth. Listening intently also, he was conscious of a faint, far-away sound. "You hear?" the chief said to Jerry. "I heard something; but it might be anything. A waterfall in the hills miles away, that is what it sounds like." "Guns," the chief said laconically. "Do you think so?" Jerry said doubtfully. "There don't seem to me anything of guns in it. It is just a sort of murmur that keeps on and on." "It is the mountains speaking back again," the chief said, waving his hand. "Hills everywhere. They say to each other, the red men who live in our bosoms are attacking the pale-face strangers." "What do you think, Hunting Dog?" Tom whispered to the Indian. "Gun-shot," he replied, in a tone of absolute conviction. "Waal, chief, I will not gainsay your opinion," Jerry said. "How far do you think it is off?" "The horses will take us there in two hours," the chief replied. "Then we can put it at twenty miles at least. Let us be going; whatever the sound is, we shall know more about it before we have gone much farther." "Not too fast," Leaping Horse said as the miner was urging his horse forward. "Maybe have to fight, maybe have to run. No good tire horse too much." It was more than an hour before Tom could hear any distinct change in the character of the sound, but at last he was able to notice that, though seemingly continuous, the sound really pulsated; sometimes it almost died away, then suddenly swelled out again, and there were several vibrations close together. Jerry, more accustomed to the sound of firearms in the mountains, had before this come round to the chief's opinion. "It is guns, sure enough, Tom; the chief has made no mistake about it. Waal, there is one comfort, they ain't been surprised. They are making a good fight of it, and we may be there in time to take a hand in the game." "Shall we ride straight on and join them?" "I reckon not, lad. We must wait until we see what sort of place Harry is in, and how we can best help him, before we fix on any scheme." The sound became louder and clearer. The echo was still continuous, but the sound of the shots could be distinctly heard. "It is over there, to the right," Jerry said. "They must have crossed the Big Wind River." "And gone up the De Noir valley," the chief said. "We ought to be close to it now." "Yes, I reckon it can't be far off, by what you told me about the distance." "Better cross Big Wind at once. They no see us now." "I agree with you, chief; it would not do for them to get sight of us. If they did our case would be worse than Harry's. I expect he has got strongly posted, or he would have been wiped out long ago; that is what would happen to us if they were to make us out and spy our numbers afore we get to some place where we and Harry's outfit can help each other." They rode rapidly down to the river. With the exception of a few yards in the middle, where the horses had to swim, the depth was not great, and they were soon on the other side. They rode to the foot of the hills, and then kept along it. The sound of firing became louder and louder, and Tom felt his heart beat quickly at the thought that he might soon be engaged in a desperate fight with the Indians, and that with the odds greatly against his party. Presently the hills fell sharply away, and they were at the entrance of the valley of the Rivière de Noir, which is the principal arm of the Big Wind River at this point. The firing had very much died out during the last few minutes, and only an occasional shot was heard. "They have beat off the attack so far," Jerry said to him encouragingly. "Now we have got to lie low a bit, while the chief sees how things stand." Leaping Horse dismounted at the mouth of a narrow canon running up into the cliff beside them. A little stream trickled down its centre. "Could not have been better," Jerry said. "Here is a place we four could hold against a crowd of red-skins for hours. There is water anyway, and where there is water there is mostly a little feed for horses. I will take your horse, chief, and Tom will take Hunting Dog's, if so be you mean him to go with you. "Don't you worry yourself, lad," he went on, seeing how anxious Tom looked, as they started with the horses up the cañon. "If Harry and his friends have beaten off the first attack, you may bet your boots they are safe for some time. It is clear the red-skins have drawn off, and are holding a pow-wow as to how they are to try next. They attacked, you see, just as the day was breaking; that is their favourite hour, and I reckon Harry must have been expecting them, and that he and his mates were prepared." CHAPTER VI UNITED The cañon showed no sign of widening until they had proceeded a quarter of a mile from the entrance, then it broadened suddenly for a distance of a hundred yards. "There has been a big slip here both sides," the miner said, looking round. "It must have taken place a great many years ago, for the winter floods have swept away all signs of it, and there are grass and trees on the slopes. The horses can find enough to keep them alive here for a day or two, and that is all we shall want, I hope." "It would be a nasty place to get out of, Jerry, for the cliffs are perpendicular from half-way up." "It ain't likely as there is any place we could get out without following it to the upper end, which may be some fifty miles away. I don't know the country it runs through, but the red-skins are pretty certain to know all about it. If they were to track us here they would never try to fight their way in, but would just set a guard at the mouth and at the upper end and starve us out. It is a good place to hide in, but a dog-goned bad one to be caught in. However, I hope it ain't coming to that. It is we who are going to attack them, and not them us, and that makes all the difference. The red-skins can't have a notion that there are any other white men in this neighbourhood, and when we open fire on them it will raise such a scare for a bit that it will give us a chance of joining the others if we choose. That of course must depend on their position." They walked back to the mouth of the cañon, and had not to wait long for the return of the Indians. "Come," Leaping Horse said briefly, at once turning and going off at a swift pace. Jerry asked no questions, but with Tom followed close on the Indians' heels. There were bushes growing among the fallen rocks and débris from the face of the cliff, and they were, therefore, able to go forward as quickly as they could leap from boulder to boulder, without fear of being seen. A quarter of an hour's run, and the chief climbed up to a ledge on the face of the cliff where a stratum harder than those above it had resisted the effects of the weather and formed a shelf some twelve feet wide. He went down on his hands and knees, and keeping close to the wall crawled along to a spot where some stunted bushes had made good their hold. The others followed him, and lying down behind the bushes peered through them. The valley was four or five hundred yards wide, and down its centre ran the stream. Close to the water's edge rose abruptly a steep rock. It was some fifty feet in height and but four or five yards across at the top. On the north and west the rocks were too perpendicular to be climbed, but the other sides had crumbled down, the stones being covered with brushwood. From the point where they were looking they could see the six horses lying among the bushes. They were evidently tightly roped, and had probably been led up there when the attack began and thrown at the highest point to which they could be taken, a spot being chosen where the bushes concealed their exact position from those below. The rock was about two hundred and fifty yards from the spot where the party was lying, and their position was about level with its top. Some twenty Indians were gathered a few hundred yards higher up the valley, and about as many some distance down it. "Why didn't the varmint take their places here?" Jerry whispered to the chief. "They came here. See," and he pointed to a patch of blood a few feet beyond him. "Indian guns not shoot far," he said, "powder weak; white man's rifles carry here, red-skin not able to shoot so far. When they found that, went away again." "What are they going to do now, do you think?" "Soon attack again." Half an hour passed, and then a loud yell gave the signal and the two troops galloped towards the rock. They had evidently had experience of the accuracy of the white men's fire; not an Indian showed himself, each dropping over one side of his pony, with an arm resting in a rope round the animals' necks and one leg thrown over the back. So they dashed forward until close to the foot of the rocks. Another instant and they would have thrown themselves from their horses and taken to the bushes, but although hidden from the sight of the defenders of the position, they were exposed to the full view of the party on the ledge, from whom they were distant not more than two hundred yards. The chief fired first, and almost together the other three rifles flashed out. Three of the Indians fell from their horses, another almost slipped off, but with an effort recovered his hold with his leg. A yell of astonishment and fear broke from the Indians. As the two bands mingled together, some of the riders were exposed to those on the top of the rock, and three shots were fired. Two more of the 'Rappahoes fell, and the whole band in obedience to a shout from one of their chiefs galloped at full speed down the valley. The three men sprang to their feet, waving their hats, while the party on the ledge also leapt up with a shout. "It's you, chief, I see!" one of those on the rocks shouted. "I have been hoping ever since morning to hear the crack of your rifle, and I never heard a more welcome sound. We should have been rubbed out sure. Who have you got with you?" "It's Jerry Curtis, Harry. I come up along with Leaping Horse, though I did not expect to find you in such a bad fix. This young Indian is Hunting Dog, and this young chap next to me is your nephew, Tom Wade. You did not expect to meet him like this, I reckon?" While he had been speaking, all had reloaded their rifles. "You had best go across and talk it over with Harry, chief, and consart measures with him for getting out of this fix. Those red-skins have got a bad scare, but you may bet they ain't gone far; and they have lost six of their bucks now beside what the others shot before, and it ain't in Indian natur for them to put up with such a loss as that." He had been looking at the rock as he spoke, and turning round uttered an exclamation of surprise, for the chief was no longer there. Looking down they saw that he had managed to make his way down the face of the cliff, and in another two minutes was ascending the rock. There he stood for some time in earnest conversation with the whites, and then returned to the ledge. "Trouble over horses," he said. "Ay, ay, I reckoned that was what you was talking over. There ain't no going back for them now." The chief shook his head. "'Rappahoes keep watch," he said, "cannot go till night to fetch horses. All lie here to-day, go across to rock when darkness comes, then white men go up valley till get to trees an hour's march away; can see them from rock. Get in among trees and work up into hills. Leaping Horse and Hunting Dog cross river, go down other side past 'Rappahoes, then cross back and get into cañon, drive horses up. White men meet them up in mountains." "That seems a good plan enough, chief. That is, if you can get out at the other end of the cañon." "Cañon little up high," the chief replied. "Find some place to climb." "But they may find the horses to-day." The Indian nodded. "May find, perhaps not." "Why should we not go across to the rock at once, chief?" "Indian count on fingers how many. They do not know we only four; much troubled in their mind where men come from, who can be. Red-skins not like white men. Have many fancies. Fire come out of bush where 'Rappahoe had been killed; think that bad medicine, keep together and talk. Think if men here, why not go across to rock." "I should not be surprised if you are right, chief. They are more likely to fancy we have come down from above than from below, for they must have reckoned for sure there were no other white men in the Big Wind valley, and our not showing ourselves will give them an all-fired scare." "What does the chief mean by bad medicine, Jerry?" Tom asked. "A red-skin is full of all sorts of ideas. Anything he can't make head nor tail of, is bad medicine; they think there is some magic in it, and that old Nick has had his finger in the pie. When they get an idea like that in their minds, even the bravest of them loses his pluck, and is like a child who thinks he has seen a ghost. It is a mighty good notion for us to lie low all day. The red-skins will reason it all out, and will say, if these are white men who killed our brothers why the 'tarnal don't they go and join the others, there ain't nothing to prevent them. If they ain't white men, who are they? Maybe they can move without our being able to see them and will shoot from some other place. No, I reckon it is likely they will keep pretty close together and won't venture to scatter to look for tracks, and in that case the chief's plan will work out all right. In course, a good deal depends on their chief; one of them is among those we shot, you can make out his feathers from here. If he is the boss chief, it may be that they will give it up altogether; the next chief will throw the blame on to him, and may like enough persuade them to draw off altogether. If it ain't the boss chief, then they are bound to try again. He would not like to take them back to their villages with the news that a grist of them had been killed and narry a scalp taken. I expect you will see this afternoon some of them come down to palaver with Harry." The morning passed quietly and not unpleasantly, for they were lying in the shade, but before noon the sun had climbed up over the cliff behind them and shone down with great force, and they had to lie with their heads well under the bushes to screen them from its rays. Presently, Leaping Horse said: "Indian chief come, no lift heads." All shifted their position so as to look down the valley. An Indian chief, holding up his hands to show that he was unarmed, was advancing on foot, accompanied by another Indian also without arms. "There is Harry going down to meet them," Jerry said. Tom looked eagerly at the figure that came down from the rock and advanced to meet the Indians. It seemed strange to him that after having come so far to join his uncle they should remain for hours in sight of each other without meeting. It was too far to distinguish his features, but he saw by the light walk and easy swing of the figure that his uncle was a much more active man than he had expected to see. He had known indeed that he was but forty years old, but he had somehow expected that the life of hardship he had led would have aged him, and he was surprised to see that his walk and figure were those of a young man. "Is it not rather dangerous, his coming down alone to meet two of them? They may have arms hidden." "They have got arms, you maybe sure," Jerry replied. "They have knives for certain, and most likely tomahawks, but I expect Harry has got his six-shooter. But it don't matter whether he has or not, there are his two mates up on that rock with their rifles, and we are across here. The 'Rappahoes would know well enough their lives wouldn't be worth a red cent if they were to try any of their games. They don't mean business; they will make out they have come to persuade Harry and his mates to give up, which they know quite well they ain't fools enough to do. But what is really in their minds is to try and find out who we are, and where we have come from." The conversation lasted a few minutes. Tom could see that questions were being asked about the concealed party, for the chief pointed to the ledge two or three times. When the talk was over the Indians went down the valley again at a slow pace, never once looking back, and the Englishman returned to the rocks. "I don't suppose they have got much from Harry." "I suppose uncle talks their language?" "No, I don't reckon he knows the 'Rappahoe dialect. But the tribes on the western side of the plains can mostly understand each other's talk; and as I know he can get on well with the Utes, he is sure to be able to understand the 'Rappahoes' talk." "Leaping Horse will go along the ledge," the chief said a few minutes later, after a short conversation with Hunting Dog. "The 'Rappahoes will try to find out who are here; not like to attack the rock till find out." The two Indians lay down flat on the ledge, and crawled along without raising themselves in the slightest until they reached a point where the cliffs projected somewhat. From here they could see down the valley, and they lay immovable, with their rifles in front of them. "They are not more than fifty yards or so from those bushes where we got up on to the ledge. That is where the red-skins are likely to try crawling up, for there they would be out of sight of the rock." "Surely they would never venture to come along the ledge in daylight, Jerry. They would have to pass along under the fire of uncle and his mates, and would have our rifles to meet in front." "No, it would only be one, or at most, two scouts. They would reckon that from that point where the chief is lying they would get a view right along the ledge to here, and be able to make out what we are. It is the strangeness of the thing that has kept them quiet all these hours, and I expect their chief will want to prove that there are only a few of us, and that we are men for certain. I reckon they have sent off to the villages already, and there will be more of the varmint here to-night. The Indians are never fond of attacking in the dark; still, if they were sure about us, they might try it. They would know they could get up to the foot of that rock before being seen, and once among the bushes they would reckon they could make easy work of it." A quarter of an hour later there was the crack of a rifle, followed instantly by an Indian yell. "That is the chief's piece, Tom, and I reckon the lead has gone straight." The silence remained unbroken for the next two hours, and then Leaping Horse crawled back as quietly as he had gone. "What was it, chief?" "It was a 'Rappahoe, who will scout no more," the chief said quietly. "He came up the bushes, but before he could step on to the ledge Leaping Horse fired, and he will take no tales back to his tribe." "They won't try again, chief?" Leaping Horse shook his head. "First take rock," he said, "then when they have the scalps of the white men they will watch us here. Will know we cannot stay here long without water." "You are right there, chief, and no m'stake; my tongue is like a piece of leather now, and as soon as it gets dark I shall make a bee-line down to the river. I want to have a talk with Harry, but just at present I want a drink a blamed sight worse. If I had thought we were going to be stuck up here all day I would have brought my water-bottle with me." The time passed very slowly, although the air became cooler as soon as the sun had gone down behind the opposite range. As soon as the light faded a little, the Indian crawled farther along the ledge, and returned in a short time saying that he had found a spot where the whites could descend. Two or three times Jerry urged that it was dark enough, before the chief consented to move. At last, however, he stood up and gave the cry of an owl, and they were in a minute or two joined by Hunting Dog, who had until now remained at his post. The chief at once led the way along the ledge until he reached the spot where the rock had crumbled away somewhat. "We had better go down one at a time," Jerry said. "For if there was a slip or a tumble it might let down a gun-hammer, and we want our lead for the 'Rappahoes, and not for each other." When it came to Tom's turn, he found it a very difficult place to get down in the semi-darkness, and two or three times he almost lost his footing. As soon as all were down they fell into Indian file, and crossed the valley to the rock, the chief giving the hoot of an owl twice as he approached it. Three men at once stepped out from the bushes at its foot. "I began to wonder when you were coming, and was just going to get the ponies down before it was too dark to do it without running the risk of breaking their legs. Well, I am right glad to see you, Jerry; and you too, Tom, though it is too dark to see much of you. The chief has been telling me how he brought you along. There is no time to talk now, but I am right glad to see you, lad" and he shook Tom heartily by the hand. "Now, mates, let us get the horses down." "I must make tracks for the water first, Harry, the young un and I are pretty near choking; and I expect the Indians are as bad, though it ain't their natur to talk about it." "Get down horses first," the chief said. "Too dark soon." "Waal, I suppose five minutes won't make much difference," Jerry grumbled, "so here goes." "I have tied some hide over their hoofs," Harry said, "so as to make as little noise as possible about it." "Must make no noise," the chief said urgently. "Redskin scouts soon be crawling up." One by one the horses were brought down, Harry leading them, and the others pushing aside the bushes as noiselessly as possible. Then their loads were carried down and packed upon them. "You get on my horse, Jerry," Harry Wade whispered, "I will walk with Tom. I have had no time to say a word to him yet, or to ask about the people at home. Where is the chief?" Leaping Horse and his companion had stolen away as soon as the loads had been adjusted. The others led the horses to the river, and allowed them to drink, while Jerry and Tom lay down and took a long draught of the water. The miners' bottles were filled, and they then started. "It is lucky the river makes such a roar among these rocks here," Harry said, "it will drown the sound of the horses' hoofs." For half an hour they proceeded at a fast walk, then the skins were taken off the horses' feet and they went on at a trot, the two Wades taking hold of Jerry's stirrup-leathers and running alongside. In half an hour they entered the belt of trees, and dismounting, at once began to ascend the hill. They were some distance up when they heard a distant yell. "You may yell as much as you like," Jerry panted, "you won't catch us now. They have been a mighty long time finding out we were gone." "They could not make out about you," Harry said. "I could see by the chief's manner, and the glances the Indian with him kept giving to the place where you were lying, that they were puzzled and alarmed. They offered if we would surrender that they would allow us to return down the valley without hurt. I said, of course, that I preferred staying where I was; we had come up the valley and intended going farther; we didn't want to interfere with them, and if they had left us alone we should have left them alone; and they had only themselves to thank for the loss of some of their braves. 'We have,' I said, 'many friends, who will protect us, and much harm will fall on the Indians who venture to meddle with us.' "'Are your friends white men?' the chief asked. 'Have they wings that they have flown down here from the hills?' "'They have come, that is enough,' I said. 'You see, when they were wanted they were here, and if they are wanted again you will hear of them, and your braves will die, and you will gain nothing. You had best go back to your lodges and leave us to go away in peace. Whoever they are, they can shoot, as you have found out to your cost. They have no ill-will to the red-skins, providing the redskins let us alone. They only fired four shots; if they had wished to, they could have killed many more.' When the chief saw that he could get nothing further from me he went away. As usual he spoke boastfully at last, and said that he had offered peace to us, and if war came, it would be our faults. I laughed, and said that we could take care of ourselves, and preferred doing so to trusting ourselves in the hands of the 'Rappahoes, when we had made some of their squaws widows." "Would they have kept their word, uncle, do you think?" Tom asked. "Not they. There are a few of the Indian tribes whose word can be taken, but as a rule words mean nothing with them, and if we had put ourselves in their power they would have tomahawked us instantly, or else taken us down and tortured us at their villages, which would have been a deal worse. I have no doubt they had a long talk after the chief returned to them, and that it was some time after it became dark before they could pluck up courage enough to climb the rock, though I expect they must have got close to it very soon after we left. I reckon they have been crawling up inch by inch. Of course, directly they got to where the horses had been tied they knew we had gone, and I expect that yell was a signal for a rush forward to the top. But we need not bother any more about them. They may ride as far as the foot of the forest, but when they find we have gained that safely they will give it up until morning; they will know well enough it is no good starting to search the woods in the dark. We may as well rest where we are until the moon is up, for we make so much noise crashing through this undergrowth that they could hear us down there." "Now tell me, lad, about your mother and sisters, and how you came out after all." Tom told his uncle of his mother's death, and the reason why he had left his sisters to come out to join him. "It is a very bad business, lad, and I take a lot of blame to myself. When I got your mother's letter, telling me of poor John's death, and that she would not hear of your coming out, I said some very hard things to myself. Here had I been knocking about for twenty years, and having had a fair share of luck, and yet I could not put my hand on five hundred dollars, and there was my brother's widow and children, and I, their nearest relative, could not help them. It made me feel a pretty mean man, I can tell you. Your mother did not say much about her circumstances, but it did not need that. I knew that John had retired from the navy with little besides his half-pay, and that her pension as his widow must be a mighty slim one. Altogether I had a pretty bad time of it. However, I took a tall oath that the next rich strike I made the dollars should not be thrown away. I reckoned that you would be out before long; for it was certain that if you were a lad of spirit you would not be staying there doing nothing. Your mother said that the girls all intended to take up teaching, and it was not likely that you would let them work for the family while you were loafing about at home. I know in my time it was hard enough to get anything to do there, and young fellows who have come out here to ranche tell me that it is harder than ever now. I thought you would fancy this life, and that in time you would talk your mother over into letting you come." "I should never have got her to agree to it, uncle. I wanted to go to sea, but after father's death she would not hear of it. She said I was her only boy and that she could not spare me, and I had to promise to give up the thought. She was still more against your plan, but when I wrote to you I thought that possibly in time she might agree to it. But it was not long afterwards that her health began to fail, and I saw then that I must give up all thought of leaving her, and must, when I left school, take anything that offered; and it was only after her death that I talked it over with the girls, and they agreed that to come here was the best thing for me." "And you left before my last letter arrived?" "Yes; we had no letter after the one you wrote asking me to come out." "No, I suppose you could not have had it. I wrote before I started out three months ago from Salt Lake City. I had struck a ledge of pretty good stuff, I and another. We sold out for a thousand dollars, and I sent my share off to your mother, telling her that I had been having bad luck since I got her letter, but that I hoped to do better in future, and I thought, anyhow, I could promise to send her as much once a year, and if I had a real stroke of luck she and her girls would have the benefit of it." "That was good of you, uncle." "Not good at all," Harry Wade grumbled. "I have behaved like a fool all along; it is true that when I did get letters from your father, which was not very often, he always wrote cheerfully, and said very little about how he was situated as to money. But I ought to have known--I did know, if I thought of it--that with a wife and six children it must be mighty hard to make ends meet on a lieutenant's half-pay, and there was I, often throwing away twice as much as his year's pension on a week's spree. When I heard he was gone you may pretty well guess how I felt. However, lad, if things turn out well I will make it up as far as I can. Now, let us join the others." The others, however, were all sound asleep, having wrapped themselves in their blankets, and lain down as soon as the halt was decided upon. Jerry, having had no sleep the previous night, and but little for four or five days, had not even thought of asking the others for food, which they doubtless had on their saddles, although he had tasted nothing for twenty-four hours. Tom, however, less accustomed to enforced fasts, felt ravenous. "We have had nothing to eat to-day, uncle, except a crust left over from yesterday's baking, and I don't think I could get to sleep if I did not eat something." "Bless me, I never thought of that, Tom. If I had I would have sent food across by the chief this morning. There is no bread, but there is plenty of cold meat. We cooked a lot yesterday evening, for we thought we might not get a chance of cooking to-day." "Then you knew, uncle, the Indians were near?" Tom went on, when he had appeased his appetite and taken a drink of water, with a little whisky in it from his uncle's flask. "Ay, lad; we guessed somehow we had been followed all along. We had done everything we could to throw them off the trail--travelling as much as we could in the course of streams, muffling the feet of our ponies, and picking out the hardest ground to travel on; but every morning before daybreak one of us went up the hillside, and twice we made out mounted Indians moving about down the valley. Yesterday morning ten of them came galloping up within easy shot. I don't think they thought that we were so near. They drew up their horses suddenly, had a talk, and then came riding after us. It didn't need their yells to tell us what their intention was. We knocked three of them out of their saddles, then threw our horses down and lay behind them. "They galloped round and round us shooting, but we picked two more off, and then they rode away. We knew enough of them to be sure that they were not going to give it up, but would follow us till joined by enough of their tribe to attack us again. We made a long march, hoping to get to the timber before they could come up, but just as the sun was setting we saw them coming along, about fifteen of them; and we had just time to get up to that rock. As they rode past we opened a smart fire and dropped four of them; the others rode up the valley, so as to cut us off from going farther. We filled our water-skins and got the horses half-way up as you saw, and then lighted a fire and cooked. We kept watch all night, two down below and one at the top; but everything was quiet, and we guessed they were waiting for others to come up. "About an hour before daylight we heard another gang arrive below us. They halted there, and it was not long before they began crawling up from above and below, and for a bit we shot pretty brisk. The odds were too much against them, with us on the height, and they drew off. Then for an hour they were pretty quiet while they were holding council, except that we did some shooting with a party who had climbed up to that ledge opposite; then we saw both bands mount, and reckoned they were going to make a dash for us. We knew if they did it in earnest we must go down, for once among the rocks and bushes there would be no keeping them from mounting up. We made up our minds that the end was not far off, though I fancy we should have accounted for a good many of them before they rubbed us out. When your four rifles spoke from the ledge we thought it was a party who had gone back there, for we felt sure that we had driven them all away, but it wasn't more than a moment before we saw it wasn't that. There was no mistaking the yell of astonishment from the Indians, and as the horses swerved round we saw that three of them had fallen. You may guess we didn't stop to argue who it was, but set to work to do our share; but it seemed to us something like a miracle when the red-skins rode off. "We had been talking of Leaping Horse during the night, for he had promised to come back to join us, and I knew him well enough to be able to bet all creation that he would come. He had only left us to keep an appointment with his nephew, who was to join him at Fort Bridger. If there had only been two guns fired we should have put it down to him, but being four I don't think either of us thought of him till he stood up and shouted. Now, lad, you had better take a sleep. We shall be moving on as soon as the moon is fairly up, and it won't be over that hill behind us till two or three. I will watch till then, but I don't think there is the least chance of their following us to-night; they have been pretty roughly handled, and I don't think they will follow until they have solved the mystery of that ledge. They searched it, no doubt, as soon as they found the rock was empty, and at daybreak they will set about tracing the trail up. That will be easy enough for them when they have once got rid of the idea that there was something uncanny about it, and then we shall have them on our heels again and on the chief's too. The first thing for us to do will be to make along the hill till we get to the edge of the cañon, where Leaping Horse has gone for your ponies, and to follow it to its upper end." "I will watch, uncle, if you will wake me in an hour. I shall be all right after a nap, but I can scarcely keep my eyes open now." It seemed, however, to Tom that he had not been asleep five minutes when his uncle shook him. The others were already on their feet. The moon was shining down through the trees, and with cautious steps, and taking the utmost trouble to avoid the branches, they started on their upward climb. Not a word was spoken, for all knew how far sound travels on a still night. There was, however, a slight breeze moving among the tree tops when they started, and in an hour this had so far increased that the boughs were swaying and the leaves rustling. "I reckon there ain't no occasion to keep our mouths shut no longer," one of the men said. "Now that the trees are on the move they would not hear us if they were only a hundred yards away." All were glad when daylight began to appear, Tom because the climbing would be much easier when the ground could be seen, the others because they were all longing for a pipe, but had hitherto not dared to light one, for the flash of a match could be seen far away. They had been bearing steadily to the right as they mounted, and shortly after daybreak they suddenly found themselves on the edge of a cañon. "Do you think this is the one, Jerry?" one of the men asked. "That is more than I can tell, Ben. I did not see an opening in the valley as we came up it, but we might very well have missed one in the dark. I should think from the distance we have gone towards the right it must be the one where we left our horses. Anyhow, whether it is or not, we must follow it up to the top and wait there for a bit to see if the chief comes." "I reckon he will be there before us," Harry said; "that is if he got round the red-skins all right and found the horses. There would be no reason for him to wait, and I expect he would go straight on, and is like enough to be waiting for us by this time." CHAPTER VII CHASED The party pressed forward as rapidly as they could. The ground was rough and at times very steep, and those on foot were able to keep up with the horses without much difficulty. "You think the Indians will follow, uncle?" Tom asked. "They will follow, you may bet your boots, Tom; by this time they have got to the bottom of the mystery. The first thing this morning some of them will go up on to the ledge where you were, follow your tracks down to the cañon where you left the horses, and find that you came up the valley and not down it. They will have made out that there were two whites and two red-skins, and that the two red-skins have gone up the cañon with the horses. Directly the matter is all cleared up, they will be hotter than ever for our scalps, for there is nothing a red-skin hates worse than being fooled. Of course, they will know that it is a good deal harder to wipe out seven men than three, and I don't think they will attack us openly; they know well enough that in a fair fight two red-skins, if not three, are likely to go down for each white they rub out. But they will bide their time: red-skins are a wonderful hand at that; time is nothing to them, and they would not mind hanging about us for weeks and weeks if they can but get us at last. However, we will talk it all over when the Indians join us. I don't think there is any chance of fighting to-day, but whether we shall get out of these mountains without having another scrimmage is doubtful." Tom noticed that in his talk with him his uncle dropped most of the western expressions which when speaking with the others he used as freely as they did. He was now able to have a fair look at him, and found that he agreed pretty closely with the ideas he had formed of him. There was a strong likeness between him and his brother. They were about the same height, but Harry was broader and more strongly built. His face was deeply bronzed by long exposure to the wind and sun. He had a large tawny beard, while Tom's father had been clean shaved. The sailor was five years the senior, but the miner looked far younger than Tom could ever remember his father looking, for the latter had never thoroughly recovered his, health after having had a long bout of fever on the Zanzibar station; and the long stride and free carriage of his uncle was in striking contrast to the walk of his father. Both had keen gray eyes, the same outline of face, the same pleasant smile. "Now that I can see you fairly, Tom," the miner said, when they halted once for the horses to come up to them, "I can make out that you are a good deal like your father as I can first remember him." "I was thinking you were very like him, uncle." "We used to be alike in the old days, but I reckon the different lives we led must have changed us both a great deal. He sent me once a photograph four or five years ago, and at first I should not have known it was he. I could see the likeness after a bit, but he was very much changed. No doubt I have changed still more; all this hair on my face makes a lot of difference. You see, it is a very long time since we met. I was but twenty when I left England, and I had not seen him for two or three years before that, for he was on the Mediterranean station at the time. Well, here are the horses again, and as the ground looks flatter ahead we shall have to push on to keep up with them." They were presently altogether beyond the forest, and a broad plateau of bare rock stretched away in front of them for miles. "There they are," Jerry Curtis shouted. "I was beginning to feel scared that the 'Rappahoes had got them." It was a minute or two before Tom could make out the distant figures, for his eyes were less accustomed to search for moving objects than were those of his companions. "They are riding fast," Harry Wade said. "I reckon they have made out some Indians on their trail." The little dark mass Tom had first seen soon resolved itself into two horsemen and two riderless animals. They were still three or four miles away, but in twenty minutes they reached the party advancing to meet them. The whites waved their hats and gave them a cheer as they rode up. "So you have managed to get through them all right, chief?" "The 'Rappahoes are dogs. They are frightened at shadows; their eyes were closed. Leaping Horse stood near their fires and saw them go forward, and knew that his white brothers must have gained the forest before the 'Rappahoes got to the rock. He found the horses safe, but the cañon was very dark and in some places very narrow, with many rocks in the road, so that he had to stop till the moon was high. It was not until morning came that he reached the head of the cañon, an hour's ride from here. Half an hour back Leaping Horse went to the edge and looked down. There were ten 'Rappahoes riding fast up the trail. Has my brother heard anything of the others?" "Nothing whatever," Harry said. "I reckon they did not begin to move until daylight, and as we went on when the moon rose they must be a good two hours behind us. Which way do you think we had better go, chief?" "Where does my brother wish to go?" "It matters mighty little. I should say for a bit we had better travel along this plateau, keeping about the same distance from the timber-line. I don't think the 'Rappahoes will venture to attack us in the open. If we keep on here we can cross the divide and get into the Shoshones' country, and either go down the Buffalo and then up the Snake and so work down south, or go east and strike some of the streams running that way into the Big Horn." The chief shook his head. "Too far, too many bad Indians; will talk over fire tonight." "That is it, chief. It is a matter that wants a good deal of talking over. Anyhow, we had better be moving on at once." Tom was glad to find himself in the saddle again, and the party rode on at a steady pace for some hours, then they halted, lit a fire, and cooked a meal. Tom noticed that the Indians no longer took pains to gather dry sticks, but took the first that came to hand. He remarked this to Jerry. "They know it is no use trying to hide our trail here; the two bands of Indians will follow, one up and one down, until they meet at the spot where the chief joined us. From there they can track us easy enough. Nothing would suit us better than for them to come up to us here, for we should give them fits, sartin. This is a good place. This little stream comes down from that snow peak you see over there, and we have got everything we want, for this patch of bushes will keep us in firing for a bit. You see, there are some more big hills in front of us, and we are better here than we should be among them. I expect we shall camp here for the night." "Then you don't think the Indians will come up close?" "Not they. They will send a spy or two to crawl up, you may be sure, but they will know better than to come within reach of our rifles." "I am mighty glad to have my teeth into some deer-flesh again," Ben Gulston said. "We had two or three chances as we came along, but we dare not fire, and we have just been living on bread and bacon. Where did you kill these wapiti?" "At our first halt, near Fremont's Pass. We got two." "Well, you haven't eaten much, Jerry," Sam Hicks said. "I reckon four men ought pretty well to have finished off two quarters by this time." "I reckon we should have finished one of the bucks, Sam; but we caught a grist of fish the same day, dried them in the sun, and I think we mostly ate them. They would not keep as well as the flesh. That is as good as the day we shot it, for up here in the dry air meat keeps a sight better than down in the plains. Give me some more tea, Sam." "What do you think, mates, of camping here?" Harry Wade said. "The chief thinks we are better here than we should be if we moved on. He feels certain the red-skins won't dare attack us." There was a cordial agreement in favour of a halt, for after the work they had gone through during the last week they were glad of a rest. No one would have thought half an hour afterwards that the little party engaged in washing their shirts at the stream or mending their clothes, were in the heart of a country unknown to most of them, and menaced by a savage foe. The horses cropped the scanty tufts of grass or munched the young tops of the bushes, the rifles stood stacked by the fire, near which the two Indians sat smoking and talking earnestly together, Hunting Dog occasionally getting up and taking a long careful look over the plain. As the men finished their various jobs they came back to the fire. "Now, chief," Harry said, "let us hear your ideas as to what we had best do. We are all pretty old hands at mountaineering, but we reckon you know a great deal more about it than we do. You don't like the plans I proposed." "No can do it," the chief said positively. "In a moon the snow will fall, and there will be no crossing mountains." "That is true enough," Jerry said. "An old trapper who had lived among the Shoshones told me that nine months in the year they were shut up in the valleys by the snow on the passes." "Then how can live?" the chief went on. "As long as we stay in this country the 'Rappahoes will watch us. They will tell the Bannacks and the Nez Percés, and they too would be on our trail. As long as we keep together and watch they will not come, they fear the white man's rifle; but we cannot live without hunting, and then they kill one, two, till all killed. At night must always watch, at day cannot hunt. How we live? What good to stay? If we stop all killed sure." There was silence round the circle. Every one of them felt the truth of the Indian's words, and yet they hated the thought of abandoning their search for gold, or, failing that, of a return home with their horses laden with beaver skins. Harry was the first to speak. "I am afraid these varmint have interfered with our plans, mates. If we had had the luck to drop into one of the upper valleys without being noticed we could have hunted and trapped there and looked for gold for months without much chance of being discovered, but this has upset it all. I am afraid that what the chief says is true. If we keep together we starve, if we break up and hunt we shall be ambushed and killed. I hate giving up anything I have set my mind on, but this time I don't see a way out of it. We ain't the first party that has come up here and had to go back again with empty hands, and we know what happened to that party of twenty old-time miners from California two years ago, though none of them ever got back to tell the tale. We knew when we started, it wur just a chance, and the cards have gone against us." "That is so," Ben agreed; "if it had turned out well we might have made a good strike. It ain't turned out well, and as every day we stay here there will be more of those varmint swarming round us, I say the sooner we get out of this dog-goned country the better." "You can count me in with you, Ben," Sam Hicks said. "We have gone in for the game and we don't hold hands, and it ain't no use bluffing against them red-skins. We sha'n't have lost much time arter all, and I reckon we have all learned something. Some day when the railroad goes right across, Uncle Sam will have to send a grist of troops to reckon up with the red-skins in these hills, and arter that it may be a good country for mining and trapping, but for the present we are a darned sight more likely to lose our scalps than to get skins." "Well, Leaping Horse, which way would you advise us to take, then?" "Go straight back to cañon, ride down there, cross river, go up mountains other side, pass them north of Union Peak, come down on upper water Big Wind River. From there little way on to Green River. Leaping Horse never been there, but has heard. One long day's ride from here, go to upper waters of Green River." "That sounds good," Jerry Curtis said. "If we could once strike the Green we should be out of the 'Rappahoe country altogether. I have known two or three men who have been up the Green nearly to its head, and there is good hunting and a good many beaver in the side streams. I should not have thought it would have come anywhere like as near as this, but I don't doubt the chief is right." "Union Peak," the chief said, pointing to a crag rising among a tumble of hills to the south. "Are you sure, chief?" The Indian nodded. "Forty, fifty miles away," he said. "Leaping Horse has been to upper waters of Green River, seen the peak from other side." "That settles it, then," Harry said. "That is our course, there cannot be a doubt. I should never have proposed the other if I had had an idea that we were within sixty or seventy miles of the Green River. And you think we had better take the cañon you came up by, chief?" The Indian nodded. "If go down through forest may be ambushed. Open ground from here back to cañon. 'Rappahoes most in front. Think we go that way, not think we go back. Get good start. Once across river follow up little stream among hills other side, that the way to pass. If 'Rappahoes follow us we fight them." "Yes, we shall have them at an advantage there, for they would have to come up under our fire, and there are sure to be places where half a dozen men could keep fifty at bay. Very well, chief, that is settled. When do you think we had better start?" "When gets dark," the chief replied. "No lose time, more Indian come every hour. Keep fire burning well, 'Rappahoes think we camp here. Take horses a little way off and mount beyond light of fire." "You think they will be watching us?" "Sure to watch. First ride north half an hour, then turn and ride to cañon. If spies see us go off take word to friends we gone north. Too dark to follow trail. They think they catch us easy to-morrow, and take up trail in morning; but too late then, we cross river before that." There was a general murmur of assent. The thought of being constantly watched, and suddenly attacked when least expecting it, made them feel restless, and the thought of early action was pleasant to them. "You don't think that there are any spies watching us now, uncle, do you?" "Not close, Tom; they would know better than that. They could see us miles away if we were to mount and ride off, and it is only when it gets dark that they would venture to crawl up, for if one were sighted in the daytime he would not have a ghost of a chance of getting away, for we could ride him down sartin." "Well, I reckon we may as well take a sleep," Sam Hicks said. "You lie down for one, anyhow, Harry, for you watched last evening. We will toss up which of us keeps awake." "Leaping Horse will keep watch," the chief said quietly. "No fear of Indians, but better to watch." Knowing the power of the red-skins to keep awake for an almost unlimited time, none of the others thought of refusing the offer, and in a few minutes all were sound asleep. Towards sunset they were on their feet again. Another meal was cooked and eaten, then as it became dusk the horses were gathered fifty yards away, and Hunting Dog and Tom took their places beside them. "Keep your eyes open and your rifle handy, Tom," his uncle said. "It is like enough that some young brave, anxious to distinguish himself, may crawl up with the intention of stampeding the ponies, though I don't think he would attempt it till he thought most of us were asleep. Still, there is no saying." The watch was undisturbed, and soon it became so dark that objects could no longer be seen fifty yards away. Tom began to feel nervous. Every tuft of ground, every little bush seemed to him to take the form of a crawling Indian, and he felt a great sense of relief when he saw the figures round the fire rise and walk towards him. "I am glad you have come, uncle," he said frankly; "I began to feel very uncomfortable several times. It seemed to me that some of the bushes moved." "That is just what I thought you would be feeling, Tom. But it was just as well that your first watch should be a short one, without much chance of an ambush being on foot; and I knew that if your eyes deceived you, Hunting Dog was there. Next time you won't feel so nervous; that sort of thing soon passes off." A fresh armful of brushwood had been thrown on to the fire before the men left it, and long after they had ridden away they could see the flames mounting high. After riding north for a quarter of an hour they changed their route and passed round, leaving the fire half a mile on their right. The light of the stars was quite sufficient for them to travel by, and after four hours' journey the chief, who was riding ahead, halted. "Not far from cañon now. Listen." A very faint murmur came to their ears, so faint that had not his attention been drawn to it Tom would not have noticed it at all. "What is that noise?" he asked. "That is the stream down in the cañon," his uncle replied. "How far are we from the head, chief?" "Not far, must ride slow." They proceeded at a walk, changing their course a little towards the east. Hunting Dog went on ahead, and in a quarter of an hour they heard his signal, the cry of an owl. It arose from a point still further east, and quickening their pace, in a few minutes they came up to the young Indian, who was standing by his horse at the edge of a steep descent, at the bottom of which Tom could see a stream of water. "It looks very steep," Jerry said. "Steep, but smooth," the Indian replied. "Came up here with horses this morning." All dismounted, and Tom went up to his horse's head. "That won't do, Tom. Never go before a horse down a steep place where you can't see your way, always drive it before you." There was some trouble in getting the horses to commence the descent, but after a short time the chief's pony set the example; and tucking its hind legs under it until it sat down on its haunches, began to slide down, while the other animals, after staring into the darkness with ears laid back and snorting with fear, were half-persuaded, half-forced to follow its example, and the men went down after them. The descent was not so steep as in the darkness it looked, and the depth was not over fifty feet. As soon as they reached the bottom they mounted again, and the chief leading the way, they rode down the cañon. At first they were able to proceed at a fair pace, but as the sides grew higher and more precipitous the darkness became more dense, and they were obliged to pick their way with great caution among the boulders that strewed the bottom of the ravine. Several times they had to dismount in order to get the horses over heavy falls, and it was four hours from the time they entered the cañon before they approached its mouth. When they entered the little wood where they had first left the horses, the chief said, "Make fire, cook food here. Leaping Horse and Hunting Dog go on and scout, maybe 'Rappahoes left watch in valley." "Very well, chief. It is seven hours since we started; I think the horses will be all the better for an hour's rest, and I am sure we shall be the better of a feed. Besides, when we are once out of this hole we may have to travel fast." "You don't think it likely that the 'Rappahoes are on the look-out for us at the entrance?" Tom asked, as the Indians moved away. "Not likely at all, Tom. Still, as they might reckon that if we gave their searching party the slip we must come down again by the river or through this cañon, they may have left a party or sent down word to some of their villages to keep a watch in the valley." It was more than an hour before the Indians returned. "No 'Rappahoes in valley," the chief said, as he seated himself by the fire and began without loss of time to eat the meat they had cooked in readiness. "Better be going soon, must cross river and get on before light come; have seen fires, Indian villages up on hillsides. When light comes and 'Rappahoes find trail they come back quick." "You may bet your boots they will, chief," Sam Hicks said. "They will be a pretty mad crowd when they make out that we have come down again by the cañon. As soon as they see which way we have headed some of them will make a bee-line down here in hopes of cutting us off at the mouth, but by the time they are here we shall be half-way up the hill." The Indian made no reply, but he and Hunting Dog ate their meal steadily, and as soon as they had finished rose to their feet, and saying "Time to go" went out to fetch in their horses. "I don't think the chief is as confident we shall get off without a fight as Sam seemed to be," Tom said to his uncle. "There is never any saying what an Indian thinks, Tom, even when he has fallen into white man's ways, as Leaping Horse has done. It may be that the sight of the fires he made out on the opposite hills has troubled him. It will be light before we are far up on the side, and we may be made out by some of the varmint there. They are always restless. Go into an Indian village when you will, you will find some of them smoking by the fire. Their ears are so 'tarnal sharp, they can hear sounds that would never catch our ears, not at half the distance. The clink of a couple of pans together, or a stone set rolling by a horse's tread, were it ever so faint, would bring them on their feet directly, especially now they know that a war-party is out." The march was again resumed. Passing through the narrowest part of the cañon they issued out into the valley and made for the river. Some time was lost here, for Sam Hicks, who was leading one of the pack-ponies, was carried down several hundred yards by the stream, and with difficulty effected his landing. The horse's load shifted and had to be repacked. As soon as this was done they followed the river down for two miles till they came upon a stream running into it from the southwest. "You think this is the stream we have to follow, chief?" "Must be him, no other came in on this side for a long way; right line for peak." They turned up by the stream, and after riding a mile found themselves entering a mountain gorge. It was not a cañon but a steep, narrow valley. They picked their way with the greatest caution for some time, then the two Indians stopped simultaneously. "What is the matter, chief?" Harry, who was riding next to them, whispered. "Smell smoke." Harry sniffed the air. "I can't say I smell it, chief, but if you say you do that settles it. Where do you think it comes from?" "Up valley; wind light, but comes that way. Indian village up here." "Well, so much the worse for the Indian village if it interferes with us," Harry said grimly; "there is one thing certain, we have got to go through. Probably most of the braves are away up in the hills." They now went on with redoubled caution. The chief gave his bridle to Hunting Dog and went forward on foot. A hundred yards farther the valley made a sharp turn and then widened out considerably, and the glow of a fire was visible among some trees standing on the hillside some fifty feet above the level of the stream. The chief looked at the sky; a faint light was breaking, and without pausing he continued to lead the way. They passed under the Indian encampment, and had got a few yards higher when the pony Sam Hicks was leading gave a sharp neigh. "Darn its old ears!" Tom heard Jerry growl. Harry at the same moment put his horse to a trot, and the others following clattered up the valley, knowing that concealment was no longer of any use; indeed, an answering neigh from above and hurried shouts were heard, followed a moment afterwards by a loud yell as an Indian running through the trees caught sight of them in the moonlight. "We are in for it now, Tom; that is, if there are men enough in the village to attack us." The horses broke into a gallop. They had gone but fifty yards when a rifle-shot was heard from behind, and Tom felt a shock as the ball struck his saddle. Almost immediately another shot was fired abreast of him, and an Indian yell rose loudly behind them. A moment later Leaping Horse with a shout of triumph bounded down the rocks and leapt on to his horse. Four or five more shots were fired from behind, but none of them were hit. A hundred yards farther they were in shelter of a belt of trees that extended down to the stream. As they entered it Harry looked back. He could now see the hills beyond the main valley. "Look, chief!" he exclaimed. "The varmint up there are signalling far off above the timber-line." Bright tongues of fire could be seen, two close together and one a short distance to the left. "What does that mean, uncle?" Tom asked, as the chief gave a short exclamation of surprise and anger. "It means, lad, that the red-skins have been sharper than we gave them credit for. When their spies brought them news that we had started they must have come down to the fire and followed our trail at once with torches, before we had got above an hour or two away. No doubt it was slow work, but they must have found where we changed our course, and made out that we were making for the head of the cañon. I expect most of them lost no time in following the trail farther, but rode straight for the head of the cañon, and like enough they weren't half an hour behind us when we came out. The others rode to the edge of the plateau and set those fires alight." "But what do they mean, uncle?" "They are a warning to all the villages that we have headed back, you may be sure of that, though I can't say what the message is, for every tribe has its own signals, but it will have set them on the watch up and down the valley; and like enough the signal has been repeated somewhere at a point where it can be seen straight down the Big Wind Valley. The shooting will tell them all which way we are making, and if the 'Rappahoes have come out of the cañon, as I reckon they have, they need lose no more time in looking for our trail. I reckon in half an hour we shall have a hundred or so of the varmint after us. I only hope there are no more villages upon this line. I don't so much care about the fellows who are following us, we are sure to find some place where we can make a stand, but it would be awkward if we find our way barred." "But if there is no one in front, uncle, I should think we might be able to keep ahead. Our horses are as good as they are likely to have." "You and Jerry might be able to, Tom, for you have got hold of two first-rate ponies; but the Indians' are nothing out of the way, and our ponies ain't in it with you; besides, they and the pack-horses have all been doing hard work for the last week with none too much food, and many of the 'Rappahoes will be on fresh horses. I expect we have got some very tall climbing to do before we get up to the pass, and we have got to do our fighting before we get there." The ground rose steeply, and was encumbered by fallen stones and boulders, and it was not long before the pack-horses began to show signs of distress, while those ridden by Harry and his two comrades were drawing their breath in short gasps. After emerging from the trees the ravine had run in almost a straight line for more than half a mile, and just as they reached the end of this stretch a yell was heard down the valley. Looking back they saw eight or ten mounted Indians emerging from the wood at the lower end. "That is a signal," Harry exclaimed, as four rifles were fired in quick succession. "Well, we have got a bit of a start of them, and they won't venture to attack us until some more come up. We had better take it a bit quietly, chief, or our horses will give out. I expect we sha'n't be long before we come upon a place where we can make a stand." The Seneca looked round at the horses. "You, Sam, Ben and pack-horses go on till you get to place where can fight. We four wait here; got good horses, and can ride on. We stop them here for a bit." "That would be best. I don't like being out of it, but we will do our share presently." No more words were necessary. Harry and his two mates rode on at a slower pace than before, while the two Indians, Jerry, and Tom dismounted, left their horses beyond the turn, and then coming back took up their positions behind four large boulders. The Indians had noticed their returning figures, for they suddenly drew up their horses and gathered together in consultation. "Draw your bullet, Tom," Jerry said, "and drop in half a charge more powder; I reckon that piece of yours will send a bullet among them with the help of a good charge. Allow a bit above that top notch for extra, elevation. It's a good big mark, and you ought to be able to plump a bullet among them." Tom followed the instructions, and then resting the barrel on the top of the boulder took a steady aim and fired. There was a sudden stir among the group of Indians. A horse reared high in the air, almost unseating its rider, and then they all rode off at the top of their speed, and halted two or three hundred yards lower down the valley. The Senecas uttered a grunt of approval. "That was a good shot, Tom, though I wish you had hit one of the red-skins instead of his critter. Still, it will give them a good lesson, and make them mighty keerful. They won't care about showing their ugly heads within range of a piece that will carry five hundred yards." A quarter of an hour passed without any movement on the part of the Indians. Then a large party of horsemen appeared from the trees below, and were greeted by them with a yell of satisfaction. "There must be well-nigh fifty of them," Jerry said. "I reckon it's the party that came down the hill. They must have picked up a good many others by the way. Now the fun is going to begin." After five minutes' consultation some twenty of the Indians dismounted, and dividing into two parties ascended the slopes of the valley and began to move forward, taking advantage of every stone and bush, so that it was but occasionally that a glimpse of one of their bodies was obtained. "They are going to skirmish up to us," Jerry said, "till they are near enough to make it hot for us if we show a head above the rocks to fire. As soon as they can do that, the others will charge. I think they are not more than four hundred yards off now, Tom. That is within your range, so you may as well begin to show them that we are awake. If you can bring one down it will check their pace." Tom had just noticed three Indians run behind a clump of bushes, and he now levelled his rifle so that it bore on a spot a foot on one side of it. Half a minute later an Indian appeared at the bush and began to run forward. Tom pressed the trigger. The Indian ran a few steps, and then fell forward on his face. "Bravo, Plumb-centre!" Jerry shouted. "We said that you would do the rifle credit, Tom, and Billy the Scout could not have done better himself." "Young white man make great hunter," the chief remarked approvingly. "Got good eye and steady hand." The lesson had its effect. The Indian advance was no longer rapid, but was conducted with the greatest caution, and it was only occasionally that a glimpse could be caught of a dusky figure passing from rock to rock. When they came within three hundred yards the two Indians and Jerry also opened fire. One fell to a shot from the chief, but neither of the others hit their marks. Tom indeed did not fire again, the movements of the Indians being so rapid that they were gone before he could bring his sight to bear upon any of them. "Go now," the chief said. "'Rappahoes fire soon; run quick." It was but a few yards to shelter. As they dashed across the intervening space two or three Indian rifles rang out, but the rest of the assailants had been too much occupied in sheltering themselves and looking for the next spot to make for, to keep an eye upon the defenders, and the hastily-fired shots all missed. A moment later the party mounted their horses and rode up the ravine, the yells of the Indians ringing in their ears. [Illustration: "A Moment Later The Indian Fell Forward On His Face."] CHAPTER VIII IN SAFETY "We have gained half an hour anyhow," Jerry said, as they galloped up the ravine, "and I reckon by the time we overtake them we shall find them stowed away in some place where it will puzzle the red-skins to dislodge us. The varmint will fight hard if they are cornered, but they ain't good at advancing when there are a few rifle-tubes, in the hands of white men, pointing at them, and they have had a lesson now that we can shoot." The ravine continued to narrow. The stream had become a mere rivulet, and they were high up on the hillside. "I begin to be afeared there ain't no place for making a stand." Here he was interrupted by an angry growl, as a great bear suddenly rose to his feet behind a rock. "You may thank your stars that we are too busy to attend to you," Jerry said, as they rode past within a few yards of it. "That is a grizzly, Tom; and an awkward beast you would have found him if you had come upon him by yourself without your shooting-iron. He is a big one too, and his skin would have been worth money down in the settlements. Ah, there they are." The ravine made an abrupt turn to the west, and high up on its side they saw their three companions with the five horses climbing up the precipitous rocks. "How ever did they get up there?" Jerry exclaimed. "Found Indian trail," the chief said. "Let my brothers keep their eyes open." They rode on slowly now, examining every foot of the steep hillside. Presently Hunting Dog, who was ahead, uttered an exclamation. Between two great boulders there was a track, evidently a good deal used. "Let Hunting Dog go first," the chief said. "Leaping Horse will follow the white men." "I reckon that this is the great Indian trail over the pass," Jerry said to Tom, who preceded him. "I have heard there ain't no way over the mountains atween that pass by Fremont's Buttes and the pass by this peak, which they calls Union Peak, and the red-skins must travel by this when they go down to hunt buffalo on the Green River. It is a wonder Harry struck on it." "Leaping Horse told him to keep his eyes open," the chief said from the rear. "He knew that Indian trail led up this valley." "Jee-rusalem! but it's a steep road," Jerry said presently. "I am dog-goned if I can guess how the red-skins ever discovered it. I expect they must have tracked some game up it, and followed to see where it went to." The trail wound about in a wonderful way. Sometimes it went horizontally along narrow ledges, then there was a bit of steep climbing, where they had to lead their horses; then it wound back again, and sometimes even descended for a distance to avoid a projecting crag. "Ah! would ye, yer varmint?" Jerry exclaimed, as a shot rang out from the valley below and a bullet flattened itself against a rock within a foot or two of his head. The shot was followed by a loud yell from below, as a crowd of mounted Indians rode at full gallop round the angle of the ravine. "Hurry on, Hunting Dog, and get round the next corner, for we are regular targets here." A few yards farther a turn of the path took them out of sight of the Indians, but not before a score of bullets came whistling up from below. "The varmint have been riding too fast to shoot straight, I reckon. It will be our turn directly." Just as he spoke the chief called upon them to dismount. They threw their bridles on their horses' necks, and descending to the ledge they had just left, lay down on it. "Get your revolver out, Tom, before you shoot," Jerry said. "They will be off before you have time to load your rifle again." The Indians were some four hundred feet below them, and were talking excitedly, evidently hesitating whether to follow up the trail. The four rifles cracked almost together. Two Indians fell, and the plunging of two horses showed that they were hit. In an instant the whole mass were on their way down the valley, followed by bullet after bullet from the revolvers which Leaping Horse as well as the whites carried. Anything like accurate aim was impossible, and no Indian was seen to fall, but it was probable that some of the bullets had taken effect among the crowded horsemen. "Go on quiet now," Leaping Horse said, rising to his feet. "'Rappahoes not follow any farther. One man with this"--and he touched his revolver--"keep back whole tribe here." Half an hour later they joined the party who had halted at the top of the track. "It air too bad our being out of it," Ben said. "I hope you have given some of the varmint grist." "Only five or six of them," Jerry replied regretfully, "counting in the one Leaping Horse shot at the village. Tom here did a big shot, and brought one down in his tracks at a good four hundred yards--as neat a shot as ever I saw fired. The chief he accounted for another; then atween us we wiped out two down below; and I reckon some of the others are carrying some of our lead away. Waal, I think we have shook them off at last any how. I suppose there ain't, no other road they can come up here by, chief?" "Leaping Horse only heard of one trail." "You may bet your life there ain't another," Harry remarked. "They would never have used such a dog-goned road as this if there had been any other way of going up." "Camp here," the chief said. "Long journey over pass, too much cold. Keep watch here at head of trail." "That is a very good plan. I have heard that the pass is over nine thousand feet above the sea, and it would never do to have to camp up there. Besides, I have been looking at the sky, and I don't much like its appearance. Look over there to the north." There were, indeed, evident signs of an approaching change in the weather. On the previous day every peak and jagged crest stood out hard and distinct in the clear air. Now all the higher summits were hidden by a bank of white cloud. "Snow," the Indian said gravely; "winter coming." "That is just what I thought, chief. At any rate we know where we are here, and there is brushwood to be gathered not far down the trail; and even if we are shut up here we can manage well enough for a day or two. These early snows don't lie long, but to be caught in a snow-storm higher up would be a sight worse than fighting with red-skins." From the spot where they were now standing at the edge of the ravine the ground sloped very steeply up for some hundreds of feet, and then steep crags rose in an unbroken wall; but from the view they had had of the country from the other side they knew that behind this wall rose a range of lofty summits. The Indian trail ran along close to the edge of the ravine. The chief looked round earnestly. "No good place to camp," he said. "Wind blow down hills, horses not able to stand against it. Heap snow tumble down from there," and he pointed upwards. "Carry everything down below." "Well, if you think we had better push on, let us do so, chief." The Indian shook his head and pointed to the clouds again. "See," he said; "storm come very soon." Even in the last two or three minutes a change was perceptible. The upper edge of the clouds seemed to be suddenly broken up. Long streamers spread out like signal flags of danger. Masses of clouds seemed to be wrenched off and to fly with great rapidity for a short distance; some of them sinking a little, floated back until they again formed a part of the mountain cap, while others sped onwards towards the south. "No time," the chief repeated earnestly; "must look for camp quick." He spoke in the Indian tongue to Hunting Dog, and the two stood on a point where the ground jutted out, and closely examined the ravine up whose side they had climbed. The chief pointed farther along, and Hunting Dog started at a run along the Indian trail. A few hundred yards farther he paused and looked down, moved a few steps farther, and then disappeared from sight. In three or four minutes he returned and held up his arms. "Come," the chief said, and taking his horse's rein led it along the path. The others followed his example, glad, indeed, to be in motion. Five minutes before they had been bathed in perspiration from their climb up the cliff; now they were conscious of the extraordinary change of temperature that had suddenly set in, and each had snatched a blanket from behind his saddle and wrapped it round him. They soon reached the spot where Hunting Dog was standing, and looked down. Some thirty feet below there was a sort of split in the face of the cliff, a wall of rock rising to within four or five feet of the level of the edge of the ravine. At one end it touched the face of the rock, at the other it was ten or twelve feet from it, the space between being in the form of a long wedge, which was completely filled up with trees and brushwood. A ledge ran down from the point where Hunting Dog was standing to the mouth of the fissure. "Jee-rusalem, chief!" Ben exclaimed. "That air just made for us--we could not have found a better, not if we had sarched for a year. But I reckon we shall have to clear the place a bit before we take the critters down." Two axes were taken from one of the pack-horses. "Don't cut away the bigger stuff, Ben," Harry said as his two mates proceeded down the ledge, "their heads will shelter us from the snow a bit; and only clear away the bushes enough to give room for the horses and us, and leave those standing across the entrance to make a screen. While you are doing it we will fetch in as much more wood and grass as we can get hold of before the snow begins to fall." The horses were left standing while the men scattered along the top of the ravine, and by the time Ben shouted that they were ready, a considerable pile of brushwood and a heap of coarse grass had been collected. The horses were then led down one by one, unsaddled, and packed together in two lines, having beyond them a great pile of the bushes that had been cut away. "I am dog-goned if this ain't the best shelter I ever struck upon," Jerry said. "We could not have fixed upon a better if we had had it built special," the others cordially agreed. The place they occupied was of some twelve feet square. On either side was a perpendicular wall of rock; beyond were the horses; while at the entrance the bush, from three to four feet high, had been left standing; above them stretched a canopy of foliage. Enough dry wood had been collected to start a fire. "Don't make it too big. Jerry, we don't want to scorch up our roof," Harry Wade said. "Well, I reckon we have got enough fuel here for a week, for there is what you cut down and what we brought, and all that is left standing beyond the horses; and with the leaves and the grass the ponies should be able to hold out as long as the fuel lasts. We are short of meat, but we have plenty of flour; and as for water, we can melt snow." Buffalo rugs were laid down on each side by the rock walls, and on these they took their seats and lighted their pipes. "I have been wanting a smoke pretty bad," Jerry said; "I ain't had one since we halted in that there cañon. Hello, here it comes!" As he spoke a fierce gust of wind swayed the foliage overhead and sent the smoke, that had before risen quietly upwards, whirling round the recess; then for a moment all was quiet again; then came another and a stronger gust, rising and gathering in power and laden with fine particles of snow. A thick darkness fell, and Harry threw some more wood on the fire to make a blaze. But loud as was the gale outside, the air in the shelter was hardly moved, and there was but a slight rustling of the leaves overhead. Thicker and thicker flew the snow flakes in the air outside, and yet none seemed to fall through the leaves. "I am dog-goned if I can make this out," Sam Hicks said. "We are as quiet here as if we were in a stone house, and one would think there was a copper-plated roof overhead. It don't seem nat'ral." The others were also looking up with an air of puzzled surprise, not unmingled with uneasiness. Harry went to the entrance and looked out over the breastwork of bushes. "Look here, Sam," he said. "Why, Harry, it looks to me as if it were snowing up instead of down," the miner said as he joined him. "That is just it. You see, we are in the elbow of the valley and are looking straight down it, into the eye of the wind. It comes rushing up the valley and meets this steep wall on its way, and pushed on by the wind behind has to go somewhere, and so it is driven almost straight up here and over the hilltops behind us. So you see the snow is carried up instead of falling, and this rock outside us shoots it clear up over the path we were following above. As long as the wind keeps north, I reckon we sha'n't be troubled by the snow in here." The explanation seemed satisfactory, and there was a general feeling of relief. "I remember reading," Tom said, as the others took their seats again, "that people can stand on the edge of a cliff, facing a gale, without feeling any wind. For the wind that strikes the cliff rushes up with such force that it forms a sort of wall. Of course, it soon beats down again, and not many yards back you can feel the gale as strongly as anywhere else. But just at the edge the air is perfectly still." The miners looked at Tom as if they thought that he was making a joke at their expense. But his uncle said: "Yes, I can quite believe that. You see, it is something like a waterfall; you can stand right under that, for the force shoots it outwards, and I reckon it is the same sort of thing here." The chief nodded gravely. He too had been surprised at the lull in their shelter when the storm was raging so furiously outside, but Harry's illustration of the action of rushing water enlightened him more than his first explanation had done. "But water ain't wind, Harry," Ben said. "It is like water in many ways, Ben. You don't see it, but you can feel it just the same. If you stand behind a tree or round a corner it rushes past you, and you are in a sort of eddy, just as you would be if it was a river that was moving alongside of you. Wind acts just the same way as water. If it had been a big river coming along the valley at the same rate as the wind it would rush up the rocks some distance and then sweep round and race up the valley; but wind being light instead of being heavy is able to rush straight up the hill till it gets right over the crest." "Waal, if you say it is all right I suppose it is. Anyhow, it's a good thing for us, and I don't care how long it goes on in the same way. I reckoned that before morning we should have those branches breaking down on us with the weight of snow; now I see we are like to have a quiet night." "I won't answer for that, Ben; it is early in the day yet, and there is no saying how the wind may be blowing before to-morrow morning. Anyhow, now we have time we may as well get some of those bundles of bushes that we brought down, and pile them so as to thicken the shelter of these bushes and lighten it a bit. If we do that, and hang a couple of blankets inside of them, it will give us a good shelter even if the wind works round, and will help to keep us warm. For though we haven't got wind or snow in here, we have got cold." "You bet," Jerry agreed; "it is a regular blizzard. And although I don't say as it is too cold sitting here by the fire, it won't cost us anything to make the place a bit warmer." Accordingly the bundles of wood they had gathered were brought out, and with these the screen of bush was thickened, and raised to a height of five feet; and when this was hung inside with a couple of blankets, it was agreed that they could get through the storm comfortably even if it lasted for a month. They cooked their last chunk of deer's flesh, after having first prepared some bread and put it in the baking pot among the embers, and made some tea from the water in the skins. When they had eaten their meal they covered themselves up in buffalo robes and blankets, and lighted their pipes. There was, however, but little talk, for the noise of the tempest was so great, that it was necessary to raise the voice almost to a shout to be heard, and it was not long before they were all asleep. For hours there was no stir in the shelter, save when a horse pawed the ground impatiently, or when Hunting Dog rose two or three times to put fresh sticks on the fire. It seemed to Tom when he woke that it ought to be nearly morning. He took out his watch, and by the light of the fire made out to his surprise that it was but ten o'clock. The turmoil of the wind seemed to him to be as loud as before, and he pulled the blankets over his shoulder again and was soon sound asleep. When he next woke, it was with the sensation of coldness in the face, and sitting up he saw that the blankets and the ground were covered with a thick coating of fine snow. There was a faint light in addition to that given by the embers of the fire, and he knew that morning was breaking. His movement disturbed his uncle, who was lying next him. He sat up and at once aroused the others. "Wake up, mates," he said; "we have had somewhere about eighteen hours' sleep, and day is breaking." In a minute all were astir. The snow was first shaken off the blankets, and then Harry, taking a shovel, cleared the floor. Jerry took the largest cooking-pot, and saying to Tom, "You bring that horse-bucket along," pushed his way out through a small gap that had been left in the screen of bushes. The wind had gone down a good deal, though it was still blowing strongly. The snow had drifted against the entrance, and formed a steep bank there; from this they filled the pot and bucket, pressing the snow down. Tom was glad to get back again within the shelter, for the cold outside was intense. The fire was already burning brightly, and the pot and a frying-pan were placed over it, and kept replenished with snow as fast as their contents melted. "We must keep on at this," Harry said, "there is not a drop left in the skins, and the horses must have water." As soon as enough had melted it was poured into the kettle. There was some bacon among the trappers' stores, as they had calculated that they would not be able to hunt until out of Big Wind Valley and far up among the forests beyond. The frying-pan was now utilized for its proper work, while the pail was placed close enough to the fire to thaw its contents, without risking injury to it. Within an hour of breakfast being finished enough snow had been thawed to give the horses half a bucket of water each. In each pail a couple of pounds of flour had been stirred to help out what nourishment could be obtained from the leaves, and from the small modicum of grass given to each animal. "It will be a big journey over the pass, anyhow," Harry had said. "Now that we are making tracks for the settlements we need not be sparing of the flour; indeed, the lighter we are the better." The day did not pass so pleasantly as that preceding it, for the air was filled with fine snow that blew in at the entrance and found its way between the leaves overhead; while from time to time the snow accumulating there came down with a crash, calling forth much strong language from the man on whom it happened to fall, and shouts of laughter from his comrades. The party was indeed a merry one. They had failed altogether in the objects of their expedition, but they had escaped without a scratch from the Indians, and had inflicted some damage upon them; and their luck in finding so snug a shelter in such a storm far more than counterbalanced their disappointment at their failure. "Have you often been caught in the snow, uncle?" "You bet, Tom; me and the chief here were mighty nigh rubbed out three years ago. I was prospecting among the Ute hills, while Leaping Horse was doing the hunting for us both. It was in the middle of winter; the snow was deep on the ground in the valleys and on the tops of the hills, but there was plenty of bare rock on the hillside, so I was able to go on with my work. While as for hunting, the cold drove the big-horns down from the heights where they feed in summer, and the chief often got a shot at them; and they are good eating, I can tell you. "We hadn't much fear of red-skins, for they ain't fond of cold and in winter move their lodges down to the most sheltered valleys and live mostly on dried meat. When they want a change they can always get a bear or maybe a deer in the woods. We were camped in a grove of pines in a valley and were snug enough. One day I had struck what I thought was the richest vein I had ever come on. I got my pockets full of bits of quartz with the gold sticking thick in it, and you may bet I went down to the camp in high glee. A quarter of a mile before I got there I saw Leaping Horse coming to meet me at a lope. It didn't want telling that there was something wrong. As soon as he came up he said 'Utes.' 'Many of them, chief?' I asked. He held up his open hands twice. "'Twenty of them,' I said; 'that is pretty bad. How far are they away?' He said he had seen them coming over a crest on the other side of the valley. 'Then we have got to git,' I said, 'there ain't no doubt about that. What the 'tarnal do the varmint do here?' 'War-party,' the chief said. 'Indian hunter must have come across our trail and taken word back to the lodges.' The place where he had met me was among a lot of rocks that had rolled down. There had been no snow for a fortnight, and of course the red-skins would see our tracks everywhere, going and coming from the camp. We were on foot that time, though we had a pack-horse to carry our outfit. Of course they would get that and everything at the camp. I did not think much of the loss, the point was how were we to save our scalps? We had sat down behind a rock as soon as he had joined me. Just then a yell came from the direction of our camp, and we knew that the red-skins had found it. 'They won't be able to follow your trail here, chief, will they?' He shook his head. 'Trail everywhere, not know which was the last.' We could see the grove where the camp was, and of course they could see the rocks, and it was sartin that if we had made off up the hill they would have been after us in a squirrel's jump; so there was nothing to do but to lie quiet until it was dark. We got in among the boulders, and lay down where we could watch the grove through a chink. "'I don't see a sign of them,' I said. 'You would have thought they would have been out in search of us.' "'No search,' the chief said. 'No good look for us, not know where we have gone to. Hide up in grove. Think we come back, and then catch us.' "So it turned out. Not a sign of them was to be seen, and after that first yell everything was as quiet as death. In a couple of hours it got dark, and as soon as it did we were off. We talked matters over, you may be sure. There weren't no denying we were cornered. There we were without an ounce of flour or a bite of meat. The chief had caught up a couple of buffalo rugs as soon as he sighted the red-skins. That gave us just a chance, but it wasn't more. In the morning the red-skins would know we had either sighted them or come on their trail, and would be scattering all over the country in search of us. We agreed that we must travel a good way apart, though keeping each other in sight. They would have noticed that the trails were all single, and if they came upon two together going straight away from the camp, would know for sure it was us making off. "You may think that with so many tracks as we had made in the fortnight we had been there, they would not have an idea which was made the first day and which was made the last, but that ain't so. In the first place, the snow was packed hard, and the footprints were very slight. Then, even when it is always freezing there is an evaporation of the snow, and the footprints would gradually disappear; besides that, the wind on most days had been blowing a little, and though the drift does not count for much on packed snow, a fine dust is blown along, and if the prints don't get altogether covered there is enough drift in them to show which are old ones and which are fresh. We both knew that they could not make much mistake about it, and that they would be pretty sure to hit on the trail I had made in the morning when I went out, and on that of the chief to the rocks, and following mine back to the same place would guess that we had cached there till it was dark. "I could have done that myself; one can read such a trail as that like a printed book. The worst of it was, there were no getting out of the valley without leaving sign. On the bare hillsides and among the rocks we could travel safe enough, but above them was everywhere snow, and do what we would there would be no hiding our trail. We agreed that the only thing was to cross the snow as quick as possible, to keep on the bare rock whenever we got a chance, and wherever we struck wood, and to double sometimes one way sometimes another, so as to give the red-skins plenty of work to do to follow our trail. We walked all that night, and right on the next day till early in the afternoon. Then we lay down and slept till sunset, and then walked again all night. We did not see any game. If we had we should have shot, for we knew the red-skins must be a long way behind. When we stopped in the morning we were not so very far from the camp we had started from, for if we had pushed straight back to the settlements we should have been caught sure, for the Utes would have been certain to have sent off a party that way to watch the valleys we should have had to pass through. We lay down among some trees and slept for a few hours and then set out to hunt, for we had been two days without food, and I was beginning to feel that I must have a meal. "We had not gone far when we came across the track of a black bear. We both felt certain that the trail was not many hours old. We followed it for two miles, and found it went up to a slide of rocks; they had come down from a cliff some years before, for there were bushes growing among them. As a rule a black bear will always leave you alone if you leave him, and hasn't much fight in him at the best; so up we went, thinking we were sure of our bear-steak without much trouble in getting it. I was ahead, and had just climbed up on to a big rock, when, from a bush in front, the bear came out at me with a growl. I expect it had cubs somewhere, I had just time to take a shot from the hip and then he was on me, and gave me a blow on the shoulder that ripped the flesh down to the elbow. "But that was not the worst, for the blow sent me over the edge, and I fell seven or eight feet down among the sharp rocks. I heard the chief's rifle go off, and it was some time after that before I saw or heard anything more. When I came to I found he had carried me down to the foot of the slide and laid me there. He was cutting up some sticks when I opened my eyes. 'Have you got the bear, Leaping Horse?' "'The bear is dead,' he said. 'My brother is badly hurt.' "'Oh, never mind the hurt,' I said, 'so that we have got him. What are you doing, chief? You are not going to make a fire here, are you?' "'My brother's leg is broken,' he said. 'I am cutting some sticks to keep it straight.' "That brought me round to my senses, as you may guess. To break one's leg up in the mountains is bad at any time, but when it is in the middle of winter, and you have got a tribe of red-skins at your heels, it means you have got to go under. I sat up and looked at my leg. Sure enough, the left one was snapt like a pipe-stem, about half-way between the knee and the ankle. 'Why, chief,' I said, 'it would have been a sight better if you had put a bullet through my head as I lay up there. I should have known nothing about it.' "'The Utes have not got my white brother yet.' "'No,' said I, 'but it won't be long before they have me; maybe it will be this afternoon, and maybe to-morrow morning.' The chief said nothing, but went on with his work. When he had got five or six sticks about three feet long and as many about a foot, and had cut them so that they each had one flat side, he took off his buckskin shirt, and working round the bottom of it cut a thong about an inch wide and five or six yards long. Then he knelt down and got the bone in the right position, and then with what help I could give him put on the splints and bandaged them tightly, a long one and a short one alternately. The long ones he bandaged above the knee as well as below, so that the whole leg was stiff. I felt pretty faint by the time it was done, and Leaping Horse said, 'Want food; my white brother will lie quiet, Leaping Horse will soon get him some.' "He set to work and soon had a fire going, and then went up to the rocks and came down again with the bear's hams and about half his hide. It was not long before he had some slices cooked, and I can tell you I felt better by the time we had finished. We had not said much to each other, but I had been thinking all the time, and when we had done I said, 'Now, chief, I know that you will be wanting to stay with me, but I ain't going to have it. You know as well as I do that the Utes will be here to-morrow at latest, and there ain't more chance of my getting away from them than there is of my flying. It would be just throwing away your scalp if you were to stop here, and it would not do me a bit of good, and would fret me considerable. Now before you start I will get you to put me somewhere up among those stones where I can make a good fight of it. You shall light a fire by the side of me, and put a store of wood within reach and a few pounds of bear's flesh. I will keep them off as long as I can with the rifle, then there will be five shots with my Colt. I will keep the last barrel for myself; I ain't going to let the Utes amuse themselves by torturing me for a few hours before they finish me. Then you make straight away for the settlements; they won't be so hot after you when they have once got me. The next time you go near Denver you can go and tell Pete Hoskings how it all came about.' "'My white brother is weak with the pain,' the chief said quietly; 'he is talking foolishly. He knows that Leaping Horse will stay with his friend. He will go and look for a place.' Without listening to what I had to say he took up his rifle and went up the valley, which was a steep one. He was away better than half an hour and then came back. 'Leaping Horse found a place,' he said, 'where he and his brother can make a good fight. Straight Harry get on his friend's back.' It was clear that there weren't no use talking to him. He lifted me up on to my feet, then he got me well up on to his back, as if I had been a sack of coal, and went off with me, striding along pretty near as quick as if I had not been there. It might have been half a mile, when he turned up a narrow ravine that was little more than a cleft in the rock that rose almost straight up from the valley. It did not go in very far, for there had been a slide, and it was blocked up by a pile of rocks and earth, forty or fifty feet high. It was a big job even for the chief to get me up to the top of them. The snow had drifted down thick into the ravine, and it was a nasty place to climb even for a man who had got nothing but his rifle on his shoulder. However, he got me up safely, and laid me down just over the crest. He had put my buffalo robe over my shoulders before starting, and he rolled me up in this and said, 'Leaping Horse will go and fetch rifles and bear-meat,' and he set straight off and left me there by myself." CHAPTER IX A BAD TIME "Even to me," Harry went on, after refilling and lighting his pipe, "it did not seem long before the chief was back. He brought a heavy load, for besides the rifles and bear's flesh he carried on his back a big faggot of brushwood. After laying that down he searched among the rocks, and presently set to work to dig out the snow and earth between two big blocks, and was not long before he scooped out with his tomahawk a hole big enough for the two of us to lie in comfortably. He laid the bear's-skin down in this, then he carried me to it and helped me in and then put the robes over me; and a snugger place you would not want to lie in. "It was about ten feet below the level of the crest of the heap of rocks, and of course on the upper side, so that directly the red-skins made their appearance he could help me up to the top. That the two of us could keep the Utes back I did not doubt; we had our rifles, and the chief carried a revolver as well as I did. After they had once caught a glimpse of the sort of place we were on, I did not think they would venture into the ravine, for they would have lost a dozen men before they got to the mound. I had looked round while the chief was away, and I saw that a hundred yards or so higher up, the ravine came to an end, the sides closing in, so there was no fear of our being attacked from there. What I was afraid of was that the Indians might be able to get up above and shoot down on us, though whether they could or not depended on the nature of the ground above, and of course I could not see beyond the edge of the rocks. "But even if they could not get up in the daylight, they could crawl up at night and finish us, or they could camp down at the mouth of the ravine and starve us out, for there was no chance of our climbing the sides, even if my leg had been all right. I was mighty sorry for the chief. He had just thrown his life away, and it must come to the same in the end, as far as I was concerned. Even now he could get away if he chose, but I knew well enough it weren't any good talking to him. So I lay there, just listening for the crack of his rifle above. He would bring down the first man that came in, sartin, and there would be plenty of time after that to get me up beside him, for they would be sure to have a long talk before they made any move. I did not expect them until late in the afternoon, and hoped it might be getting dark before they got down into the valley. There had been a big wind sweeping down it since the snow had fallen, and though it had drifted deep along the sides, the bottom was for the most part bare. I noticed that the chief had picked his way carefully, and guessed that, as they would have no reason for thinking we were near, they might not take up the trail till morning. Of course they would find our fire and the dead bear, or all that there was left of him, and they would fancy we had only stopped to take a meal and had gone on again. They would see by the fire that we had left pretty early in the day. I heard nothing of the chief until it began to get dark; then he came down to me. "'Leaping Horse will go out and scout,' he said. 'If Utes not come soon, will come back here; if they come, will watch down at mouth of valley till he sees Utes go to sleep.' 'Well, chief,' I said; 'at any rate you may as well take this robe; one is enough to sleep with in this hole, and I shall be as snug as a beaver wrapped up in mine. Half your hunting shirt is gone, and you will find it mighty cold standing out there.' "In an hour he came back again. 'Utes come,' he said. 'Have just lighted fire and going to cook. No come tonight. Leaping Horse has good news for his brother. There are no stars.' "That is good news indeed,' I said. 'If it does but come on to snow to-night we may carry our scalps back to the settlement yet.' "'Leaping Horse can feel snow in the air,' he said. 'If it snows before morning, good; if not, the Utes will tell their children how many lives the scalps of the Englishman and the Seneca cost.' "The chief lay down beside me. I did not get much sleep, for my leg was hurting me mightily. From time to time he crawled out, and each time he returned saying, 'No snow.' I had begun to fear that when it came it would be too late. It could not have been long before daybreak when he said, as he crawled in: 'The Great Manitou has sent snow. My brother can sleep in peace.' An hour later I raised myself up a bit and looked out. It was light now. The air was full of fine snow, and the earth the chief had scraped out was already covered thickly. I could see as much as that, though the chief had, when he came in for the last time, drawn the faggot in after him. I wondered at the time why he did it, but I saw now. As soon as the snow had fallen a little more it would hide up altogether the entrance to our hole. Hour after hour passed, and it became impossible to get even a peep out, for the snow had fallen so thickly on the leafy end of the brushwood, which was outward, that it had entirely shut us in. All day the snow kept on, as we could tell from the lessening light, and by two o'clock only a faint twilight made its way in. "'How long do you think we shall be imprisoned here, chief?' I asked. "'Must not hurry,' he replied. 'There are trees up the valley, and the Utes may make their camp there and stay till the storm is over. No use to go out till my brother can walk. Wait till snow is over; then stay two or three days to give time for Utes to go away. Got bear's flesh to eat; warm in here, melt snow.' This was true enough, for I was feeling it downright hot. Just before night came on the chief pushed the end of his ramrod through the snow and looked out along the hole. "'Snow very strong,' he said. 'When it is dark can go out if wish.' "There is not much to tell about the next five days. The snow kept falling steadily, and each evening after dark the chief went outside for a short time to smoke his pipe, while I sat at the entrance and smoked mine, and was glad enough to get a little fresh air. As soon as he came in again the faggot was drawn back to its place, and we were imprisoned for another twenty-four hours. One gets pretty tired after a time of eating raw bear's flesh and drinking snow-water, and you bet I was pretty glad when the chief, after looking out through a peephole, said that the snow had stopped falling and the sun was shining. About the middle of that day he said suddenly: 'I hear voices.' "It was some time before I heard anything, but I presently made them out, though the snow muffled them a good deal. They did not seem far off, and a minute or two later they ceased. We lay there two days longer, and then even the chief was of opinion that they would have moved off. My own idea was that they had started the first afternoon after the snow had stopped falling. "'Leaping Horse will go out to scout as soon as it is dark,' he said. 'Go to mouth of ravine. If Utes are in wood he will see their fires and come back again. Not likely come up here again and find his traces.' "That is what I had been saying for the last two days, for after some of them had been up, and had satisfied themselves that there was no one in the gully, they would not be likely to come through the snow again. When the chief returned after an hour's absence, he told me that the Utes had all gone. 'Fire cold,' he said; 'gone many hours. Leaping Horse has brought some dry wood up from their hearth. Can light fire now.' You may guess it was not long before we had a fire blazing in front of our den, and I never knew how good bear-steak really was till that evening. "The next morning the chief took off the splints and rebandaged my leg, this time putting on a long strip of the bear's skin, which he had worked until it was perfectly soft while we had been waiting there. Over this he put on the splints again, and for the first time since that bear had knocked me off the rock I felt at ease. We stayed there another fortnight, by the end of which time the bones seemed to have knit pretty fairly. However, I had made myself a good strong crutch from a straight branch with a fork at the end, that the chief had cut for me, and I had lashed a wad of bear's skin in the fork to make it easy. Then we started, making short journeys at first, but getting longer every day as I became accustomed to the crutch, and at the end of a week I was able to throw it aside. "We never saw a sign of an Indian trail all the way down to the settlements, and by the time we got there I was ready to start on a journey again. The chief found plenty of game on the way down, and I have never had as much as a twinge in my leg since. So you see this affair ain't a circumstance in comparison. Since then the chief and I have always hunted together, and the word brother ain't only a mode of speaking with us;" and he held out his hand to the Seneca, who gravely placed his own in it. "That war a tight corner, Harry, and no blamed mistake. Did you ever find out whether they could have got on the top to shoot down on you?" "Yes, the chief went up the day after the Utes had left. It was level up there, and they could have sat on the edge and fired down upon us, and wiped us out without our having a show." "And you have never since been to that place you struck the day the Utes came down, Harry?" Jerry asked. "I have heard you talk of a place you knew of, just at the edge of the bad lands, off the Utah hills. Were that it?" Harry nodded. "I have never been there since. I went with a party into Nevada the next spring, and last year the Utes were all the time upon the war-path. I had meant to go down this fall, but the Utes were too lively, so I struck up here instead; but I mean to go next spring whether they are quiet or not, and to take my chances, and find out whether it is only good on the surface and peters out to nothing when you get in, or whether it is a real strong lode. Ben and Sam, and of course the chief, will go with me, and Tom here, now he has come out, and if you like to come we shall be all glad." "You may count me in," Jerry said, "and I thank you for the offer. I have had dog-goned bad luck for some time, and I reckon it is about time it was over. How are you going to share?" "We have settled that. The chief and I take two shares each as discoverers. You four will take one share each." "That is fair enough, Harry. Those are mining terms, and after your nearly getting rubbed out in finding it, if you and the chief had each taken three shares there would have been nothing for us to grunt at. They are a 'tarnal bad lot are the Utes. I reckon they are bad by nature, but the Mormons have made them worse. There ain't no doubt it's they who set them on to attack the caravans. They could see from the first that if this was going to be the main route west there would be so many coming along, and a lot perhaps settle there, that the Gentiles, as they call the rest of us, would get too strong for them. What they have been most afeard of is, that a lot of gold or silver should be found up in the hills, and that would soon put a stop to the Mormon business. They have been wise enough to tell the red-skins that if men came in and found gold there would be such a lot come that the hunting would be all spoilt. There is no doubt that in some of the attacks made on the caravans there have been sham Indians mixed up with the real ones. Red-skins are bad enough, but they are good men by the side of scoundrels who are false to their colour, and who use Indians to kill whites. That is one reason I want to see this railway go on till it jines that on the other side. It will be bad for game, and I reckon in a few years the last buffalo will be wiped out, but I will forgive it that, so that it does but break up the Saints as they call themselves, though I reckon there is about as little of the saint among them as you will find if you search all creation." "Right you are, Jerry," Sam Hicks said. "They pretty nigh wiped me out once, and if Uncle Sam ever takes to fighting them you may bet that I am in it, and won't ask for no pay." "How did it come about, Sam?" Jerry asked. "I dunno as I have ever heard you tell that story." "Waal, I had been a good bit farther east, and had been doing some scouting with the troops, who had been giving a lesson to the red-skins there, that it was best for them to let up on plundering the caravans going west. We had done the job, and I jined a caravan coming this way. It was the usual crowd, eastern farmers going to settle west, miners, and such like. Among them was two waggons, which kept mostly as far apart from the others as they could. They was in charge of two fellows who dressed in store clothes, and had a sanctimonious look about them. There was an old man and a couple of old women, and two or three boys and some gals. They did not talk much with the rest, but it got about that they were not going farther than Salt Lake City, and we had not much difficulty in reckoning them up as Mormons. There ain't no law perviding for the shooting of Mormons without some sort of excuse, and as the people kept to themselves and did not interfere with no one, nothing much was said agin them. On a v'yage like that across the plains, folks has themselves to attend to, and plenty to do both on the march and in camp, so no one troubles about any one else's business. "I hadn't no call to either, but I happened to go out near their waggons one evening, and saw two or three bright-looking maids among them, and it riled me to think that they was going to be handed over to some rich old elder with perhaps a dozen other wives, and I used to feel as it would be a satisfaction to pump some lead into them sleek-looking scoundrels who had them in charge. I did not expect that the gals had any idea what was in store for them. I know them Mormons when they goes out to get what they call converts, preaches a lot about the prophet, and a good deal about the comforts they would have in Utah. So much land for nothing, and so much help to set them up, and all that kind of thing, but mighty little about polygamy and the chance of their being handed over to some man old enough to be their father, and without their having any say in the matter. Howsoever, I did not see as I could interfere, and if I wanted to interfere I could not have done it; because all those women believed what they had been taught, and if I a stranger, and an ill-looking one at that, was to tell them the contrary, they wouldn't believe a word what I had said. So we went on till we got within four or five days' journey of Salt Lake City, then one morning, just as the teams were being hitched up, two fellows rode into camp. "As we were in Utah now, there weren't nothing curious about that, but I reckoned them up as two as hard-looking cusses as I had come across for a long time. After asking a question or two they rode to the Mormon waggons, and instead of starting with the rest, the cattle was taken out and they stopped behind. Waal, I thought I would wait for a bit and see what they were arter. It weren't no consarn of mine noways, but I knew I could catch up the waggons if I started in the afternoon, and I concluded that I would just wait; so I sat by the fire and smoked. When the caravan had gone on the Mormons hitched up their cattle again. They were not very far away from where I was sitting, and I could see one of the men in black pointing to me as he talked with the two chaps who had just jined them. With that the fellow walked across to where I was sitting. "'Going to camp here?' says he. "'Waal,' I says, 'I dunno, as I haven't made up my mind about it. Maybe I shall, maybe I sha'n't.' "'I allow it would be better for you to move on.' "'And I allow,' says I, 'it would be better for you to attend to your own affairs.' "'Look here,' says he, 'I hear as you have been a-spying about them waggons.' "'Then,' says I, 'whosoever told you that, is an all-fired liar, and you tell him so from me.' "I had got my hand on the butt of my Colt, and the fellow weakened. "'Waal,' he said, 'I have given you warning, that is all.' "'All right,' says I, 'I don't care none for your warnings; and I would rather anyhow be shot down by white skunks dressed up as red-skins, than I would have a hand in helping to fool a lot of innercent women.' "He swore pretty bad at this, but I could see as he wasn't real grit, and he went off to the waggons. There was considerable talk when he got there, but as the Mormons must have known as I had been a scout, and had brought a lot of meat into the camp on the way, and as the chap that came across must have seen my rifle lying handy beside me, I guess they allowed that I had better be left alone. So a bit later the waggons started, and as I expected they would, went up a side valley instead of going on by the caravan route. The fellow had riz my dander, and after sitting for a bit I made up my mind I would go after 'em. I had no particular motive, it wur just out of cussedness. I was not going to be bluffed from going whar I chose. This air a free country, and I had as much right to go up that valley as they had." "I should have thought yer had had more common sense, Sam Hicks," Jerry said reproachfully, "than to go a-mixing yourself up in a business in which you had no sort of consarn. Ef one of them women had asked you to help her, or if you had thought she was being taken away agin her will, you or any other man would have had a right to take a hand in the game; but as it was, you war just fooling with your life to interfere with them Mormons in their own country." "That is so, Jerry, and I ain't a word to say agin it. It war just a piece of cussedness, and I have asked myself forty-eleven times since, what on arth made me make such a blame fool of myself. Afore that fellow came over to bluff me I hadn't no thought of following the waggons, but arter that I felt somehow as if he dared me to do it. I reckoned I was more nor a match for the two fellows who just jined them, and as for the greasy-faced chaps in black, I did not count them in, one way or the other. I had no thought of getting the gals away, nor of getting into any muss with them if they left me alone. It was just that I had got a right to go up that valley or any other, and I was not going to be bluffed out of it. So I took up my shooting-iron, strapped my blanket over my shoulder, and started. They war maybe a mile away when I turned into the valley. I wasn't hungry for a fight, so I didn't keep up the middle, but just skirted along at the foot of the hill where it did not seem likely as they would see me. I did not get any closer to them, and only caught sight of them now and then. "As far as I could make out there was only one horseman with them, and I reckoned the other was gone on ahead; looking for a camping-ground maybe, or going on to one of the Mormon farms to tell them to get things ready there. What I reckoned on doing, so far as I reckoned at all, was to scout up to them as soon as it got dark and listen to their talk, and try to find out for certain whether the women war goin' willing. Then I thought as I would walk straight up to their fires and just bluff those four men as they tried to bluff me. Waal, they went on until late in the afternoon, unhitched the cattle, and camped. I waited for a bit, and now that I war cooled down and could look at the thing reasonable, I allowed to myself that I had showed up as a blamed fool, and I had pretty well made up my mind to take back tracks and go down the valley, when I heard the sound of some horses coming down fast from the camp. "Then the thought that I was a 'tarnal fool came to me pretty strong, you bet. One of those fellows had ridden on and brought down some of the Regulators, as we used to call them in the mining camps, but I believe the Mormons call them Destroying Angels, though there is mighty little of angels about them. I hoped now that they had not caught sight of me during the day, and that the band were going right down to the waggon camp; but as I had not taken any particular pains to hide myself, I reckoned they must have made me out. It war pretty nigh dark, and as I took cover behind a bush I could scarce see them as they rode along. They went down about two hundred yards and then stopped, and I could hear some of them dismount. "'You are sure we are far enough?' one said. "'Yes; I can swear he was higher up than this when we saw him just before we camped.' "'If you two fellows hadn't been the worst kind of curs,' a man said angrily, 'you would have hidden up as soon as you made out he was following you and shot him as he came along.' "'I told you,' another voice said, 'that the man is an Indian fighter, and a dead shot. Suppose we had missed him.' "'You could not have missed him if you had waited till he was close to you before you fired; then you might have chucked him in among the bushes and there would have been an end of it, and we should have been saved a twenty-mile ride. Now then, look sharp for him and search every bush. Between us and Johnson's party above we are sure to catch him.' "I didn't see that, though I did wish the rocks behind had not been so 'tarnal steep. I could have made my way up in the daylight, though even then it would have been a tough job, but without light enough to see the lay of the ledges and the best places for getting from one to another, it was a business I didn't care about. I was just thinking of making across to the other side of the valley when some horsemen came galloping back. "'You stop here, brother Ephraim, and keep your ears well open, as well as your eyes. You stop fifty yards higher up, Hiram, and the others at the same distance apart. When the men among the rocks come abreast of you, Ephraim, ride on and take your place at the other end of the line. You do the same, Hiram, and so all in turn; I will ride up and down.' "It was clear they meant business, and I was doubting whether I would take my chance of hiding or make for the cliff, when I saw a light coming dancing down from the camp, and knew it was a chap on horseback with a torch. As he came up the man who had spoken before said: 'How many torches have you got, brother Williams?' "'A dozen of them.' "'Give me six, and take the other six down to the men below. That is right, I will light one from yours.' "You may guess that settled me. I had got to git at once, so I began to crawl off towards the foot of the cliffs. By the time I had got there, there war six torches burning a hundred yards below, and the men who carried them were searching every bush and prying under every rock. Along the middle of the valley six other torches were burning fifty yards apart. There was one advantage, the torches were pitch-pine and gave a fairish light, but not so much as tarred rope would have done; but it was enough for me to be able to make out the face of the cliff, and I saw a break by which I could get up for a good bit anyhow. It was where a torrent came down when the snows were melting, and as soon as I had got to the bottom I made straight up. There were rocks piled at its foot, and I got to the top of these without being seen. "I hadn't got a dozen feet higher when my foot set a boulder rolling, and down it went with a crash. There were shouts below, but I did not stop to listen to what they said, but put up the bed of the torrent at a two-forty gait. A shot rang out, and another and another, but I was getting now above the light of their torches. A hundred feet higher I came to a stand-still, for the rock rose right up in front of me, and the water had here come down from above in a fall. This made it a tight place, you bet. There war no ledge as I could see that I could get along, and I should have to go down a good bit afore I got to one. They kept on firing from below, but I felt pretty sure that they could not see me, for I could hear the bullets striking high against the face of the rock that had stopped me. "You may bet I was careful how I went down again, and I took my time, for I could see that the men with the torches had halted at the foot of the heap of rocks below, not caring much, I expect, to begin to mount, while the horsemen kept on firing, hoping to hear my body come rolling down; besides, they must have known that with their torches they made a pretty sure mark for me. At last I got down to the ledge. It war a narrow one, and for a few yards I had to walk with my face to the rock and my arms spread out, and that, when I knew that at any moment they might make me out, and their bullets come singing up, warn't by no means pleasant. In a few yards the ledge got wider and there was room enough on it for me to lie down. I crawled along for a good bit, and then sat down with my back against the rock and reckoned the matter up. All the torches war gathered round where I had gone up. Four more men had come down from the camp on horseback, and five or six on foot with torches were running down the valley. They had been searching for me among the bushes higher up, and when they heard the firing had started down to jine the others. The leader was shouting to the men to climb up after me, but the men didn't seem to see it. "'What's the use?' I heard one fellow say; 'he must be chock-full of bullets long ago. We will go up and find his carcass in the morning.' "'But suppose he is not dead, you fool.' "'Well, if he ain't dead he would just pick us off one after another as we went up with torches.' "'Well, put your torches out, then. Here, I will go first if you are afraid,' and he jumped from his horse. "You can bet your boots that my fingers itched to put a bullet into him. But it warn't to be done; I did not know how far the ledge went or whether there might be any way of getting off it, and now I had once got out of their sight it would have been chucking away my life to let them know whar I lay. So I got up again and walked on a bit farther. I came on a place where the rock had crumbled enough for me to be able to get up on to the next ledge, and after a lot of climbing up and down I got to the top in about two hours, and then struck across the hills and came down at eight o'clock next morning on to the caravan track. I hid up till evening in case they should come down after me, and next morning I came up to the caravan just as they were hitching the teams up for a start." "You got out of that better than you deserved," Harry said. "I wouldn't have believed that any man would have played such a fool's trick as to go meddling with the Mormons in their own country without any kind of reason. It war worse than childishness." The other two miners assented vigorously, and Sam said: "Waal, you can't think more meanly of me over that business than I do of myself. I have never been able to make out why I did it, and you may bet it ain't often I tells the story. It war a dog-goned piece of foolishness, and, as Harry says, I didn't desarve to get out of it as I did. Still, it ain't made me feel any kind of love for Mormons. When about two hundred shots have been fired at a man it makes him feel kinder like as if he war going to pay some of them back when he gets the chance, and you may bet I mean to." "Jee-rusalem!" The exclamation was elicited by the fall of a heavy mass of snow on to the fire, over which the kettle had just begun to boil. The tripod from which it hung was knocked over. A cloud of steam filled the place, and the party all sprung to their feet to avoid being scalded. "It might have waited a few minutes longer," Jerry grumbled, "then we should have had our tea comfortable. Now the fire is out and the water is spilt, and we have got to fetch in some more snow; that is the last lot there was melted." "It is all in the day's work, Jerry," Harry said cheerfully, "and it is just as well we should have something to do. I will fetch the snow in if the rest of you will clear the hearth again. It is a nuisance about the snow, but we agreed that there is no help for it, and we may thank our stars it is no worse." It was not long before the fire was blazing again, but it took some time before water was boiling and tea made, still longer before the bread which had been soddened by the water from the kettle was fit to eat. By this time it was dark. When the meal was over they all turned in for the night. Tom was just going off to sleep, when he was roused by Leaping Dog suddenly throwing off his buffalo robe and springing to his feet with his rifle in his hand. "Hist!" he said in a low tone. "Something comes!" The men all seized their rifles and listened intently. Presently they heard a soft step on the snow outside, then there was a snuffing sound. "B'ar!" the Indian said. A moment later a great head reared itself over the bushes at the entrance. Five rifles rang out, the two Indians reserving their fire; the report was followed by the dull sound of a heavy fall outside. "Wait a moment," Harry said sharply, as the others were preparing to rush out, "let us make sure he is dead." "He is dead enough," Jerry said. "I reckon even a grizzly cannot walk off with five bullets in his head." Harry looked over the screen. "Yes, he is dead enough; anyhow he looks so. Waal, this is a piece of luck." They all stepped out on to the platform. "Is it a grizzly, uncle?" Tom asked excitedly. "He is a grizzly, sure enough. You don't want to see his colour to know that. Look at his size." "Why, he is as big as a cow." "Ay, lad, and a big cow too. You go in and make up the fire while we cut off enough meat for supper." The fact that they had eaten a meal but half an hour before, went for nothing; slices of bear-meat were soon frizzling, and as hearty a meal was eaten as if no food had been tasted since the previous day. The men were in the highest spirits; the fact that they were out of meat had been the greatest drawback to the prospect of being shut up for perhaps a week, for badly-baked bread is but a poor diet to men accustomed to live almost exclusively upon meat. "What brought the bear down here?" Tom asked. "Curiosity at first perhaps, and then hunger," his uncle replied. "I expect he was going along on the path above when he saw the light among the leaves, and then no doubt he smelt the bread, and perhaps us and the horses, and came down to see what he could get. "Curiosity is a bad fault, Tom. You have had two lessons in that this evening. Bear in mind that in this part of the world the safest plan is always to attend strictly to your own business." All thought of sleep was for the present dissipated; their pipes were again lighted, and it was midnight before they lay down. In the morning the bear was with some difficulty skinned and cut up, the joints being left outside to freeze through. The snow still fell steadily, but the wind had almost died down. Sallying out they cut five or six long poles, and with some difficulty fixed these from above across from the cliff to the outstanding rock, pushed the bear's-skin across them, and lashed it there, its bulk being sufficient to cover the space above the fire and a considerable portion of their dwelling room. After breakfast snow was again melted for the horses, and the work for the day thus done they seated themselves contentedly round the fire. CHAPTER X AN AVALANCHE "You don't think, chief," Harry asked, "that there is any chance of the 'Rappahoes taking it into their heads to come up to have a look round?" "Indians keep in lodges, no like cold; they think we have gone on over pass. If weather gets fine perhaps they come to look for our guns and packs. They think sure we die in snow-storm when we up in pass. When snow stops falling, we make no more fire; but path from valley all shut up by snow now." "Yes, I don't think anyone would try to climb it till the sun has cleared the track; it was a pretty bad place when we came up," Harry said. "I don't say that men on foot could not make their way up; but as you say, the red-skins are not likely to try it until the weather has cleared a bit, though I don't say that they wouldn't if they knew we were camped here close to the top." "What noise is that?" Tom asked. "I have heard it several times before, but not so loud as that." "Snow-slide," Leaping Horse said. "Snow come down from mountains; break off trees, roll rocks down. Bad place all along here." "Yes. I saw that you looked up at the hills behind there before you looked over the edge here, chief," Ben Gulston said, "and I reckoned that you had snow-slides in your mind. I thought myself that it was like enough the snow might come tumbling over the edge of that high wall and then come scooting down over where we war, and there would have been no sort of show for us if we had been camped whar the trail goes along." "Leaping Horse has heard from his red brothers with whom he has spoken that trail from top of valley very bad when snow falls. Many Indians stopping too long at fort, to trade goods, have been swept away by snow-slides when caught in storm here." "I thought it looked a bad place," Harry remarked. "There ain't no fooling with a snow-slide anyway. I have come across bones once or twice lying scattered about in snug-looking valleys--bones of horses and men, and it was easy to see they had been killed by a snow-slide coming down on them. Rocks were heaped about among them, some of the bones were smashed. They had been hunting or trapping, and sheltered up in a valley when the storm came on and the slide had fallen on them, and there they had laid till the sun melted the snow in summer, when the coyotes and the vultures would soon clean the bones." He broke off suddenly; there was a dull sound, and at the same moment a distinct vibration of the ground, then a rustling murmur mingled with a rumbling as of a waggon passing over a rocky ground. "There is another one," Jerry exclaimed, "and it is somewhere just above us. Keep your backs to the wall, boys." [Illustration: "There Is Another Avalanche, Keep Your Backs To The Wall, Boys"] Louder and louder grew the sound; the tremor of the earth increased, the horses neighed with fright, the men stood with their backs against the rock next to the hill. Suddenly the light was darkened as a vast mass of snow mingled with rocks of all sizes leapt like a torrent over the edge of the cliff, the impetus carrying it over the outer wall of their shelter and down into the ravine. There was a mighty sound of the crashing of trees, mingled with a thumping and rolling of the rocks as they clashed against the side of the ravine and went leaping down into the valley. The ground shook with a continuous tremor, and then the light returned as suddenly as it had been cut off, and a few seconds later a dead stillness succeeded the deafening roar from below. The passage of the avalanche overhead had lasted but a minute, though to the men standing below it the time had seemed vastly longer. Instinctively they had pressed themselves against the rock, almost holding their breath, and expecting momentarily that one of the boulders in its passage would strike the top of the outside wall and fall in fragments among them. The silence that followed was unbroken for some seconds, and then Sam Hicks stepped a pace forward. "Jee-rusalem!" he said, "that was a close call. I don't know how you felt, boys, but it seemed as if all the sand had gone out of me, and I weakened so that my knees have not done shaking yet." The men, accustomed as they were to danger, were all equally affected. Tom felt relieved to see that the others all looked pale and shaken, for he was conscious that he had been in a terrible fright, and that his legs would scarcely support his weight. "I am glad to hear you say so, Sam, for I was in an awful funk; but I should not have said so if you hadn't spoken." "You needn't be ashamed of that, Tom," his uncle put in. "You showed plenty of pluck when we were in trouble with the red-skins, but I am sure there was not one of us that did not weaken when that snow-slide shot over us; and none of us need be ashamed to say so. A man with good grit will brace up, keep his head cool and his fingers steady on the trigger to the last, though he knows that he has come to the end of his journey and has got to go down; but it is when there is nothing to do, no fight to be made, when you are as helpless as a child and have no sort of show, that the grit runs out of your boots. I have fought red-skins and Mexicans a score of times; I have been in a dozen shooting scrapes in saloons at the diggings; but I don't know that I ever felt so scared as I did just now. Ben, there is a jar of whisky in our outfit; we agreed we would not touch it unless one of us got hurt or ill, but I think a drop of medicine all round now wouldn't be out of place." There was a general assent. "But before we take it," he went on, "we will take off our hats and say 'Thank God' for having taken us safe through this thing. If He had put this shelter here for us express, He could not have planted it better for us, and the least we can do is to thank Him for having pulled us through it safe." The men all took off their hats, and stood silent for a minute or two with bent heads. When they had replaced their hats Ben Gulston went to the corner where the pack-saddles and packs were piled, took out a small keg, and poured out some whisky for each of the white men. The others drank it straight; Tom mixed some water with his, and felt a good deal better after drinking it. Ben did not offer it to the Indians, neither of whom would touch spirits on any occasion. "It is a good friend and a bad enemy," Harry said as he tossed off his portion. "As a rule there ain't no doubt that one is better without it; but there is no better medicine to carry about with you. I have seen many a life saved by a bottle of whisky. Taken after the bite of a rattlesnake, it is as good a thing as there is. In case of fever, and when a man is just tired out after a twenty-four hours' tramp, a drop of it will put new life into him for a bit. But I don't say as it hasn't killed a sight more than it has cured. It is at the bottom of pretty nigh every shooting scrape in the camps, and has been the ruin of hundreds of good men who would have done well if they could but have kept from it." "But you ain't a temperance man yourself, Harry?" "No, Sam; but then, thank God, I am master of the liquor, and not the liquor of me. I can take a glass, or perhaps two, without wanting more. Though I have made a fool of myself in many ways since I have come out here, no man can say he ever saw me drunk; if liquor were to get the better of me once, I would swear off for the rest of my life. Don't you ever take to it, Tom; that is, not to get so as to like to go on drinking it. In our life we often have to go for months without it, and a man has got to be very careful when he goes down to the settlements, else it would be sure to get over him." "I don't care for it at all, uncle." "See you don't get to care for it, Tom. There are plenty start as you do, and before they have been out here long they do get to like it, and from that day they are never any good. It is a big temptation. A man has been hunting or trapping, or fossicking for gold in the hills for months, and he comes down to a fort or town and he meets a lot of mates. One says 'Have a drink?' and another asks you, and it is mighty hard to be always saying 'no'; and there ain't much to do in these places but to drink or to gamble. A man here ain't so much to be blamed as folks who live in comfortable houses, and have got wives and families and decent places of amusement, and books and all that sort of thing, if they take to drink or gambling. I have not any right to preach, for if I don't drink I do gamble; that is, I have done; though I swore off that when I got the letter telling me that your father had gone. Then I thought what a fool I had made of myself for years. Why, if I had kept all the gold I had dug I could go home now and live comfortably for the rest of my life, and have a home for my nieces, as I ought to have. However, I have done with it now. And I am mighty glad it was the cards and not drink that took my dust, for it is a great deal easier to give up cards than it is to give up liquor when you have once taken to it. Now let us talk of something else; I vote we take a turn up on to the trail, and see what the snow-slide has done." Throwing the buffalo robes round their shoulders the party went outside. The air was too thick with snow to enable them to perceive from the platform the destruction it had wrought in the valley below, but upon ascending the path to the level above, the track of the avalanche was plainly marked indeed. For the width of a hundred yards, the white mantle of snow, that covered the slope up to the point where the wall of cliff rose abruptly, had been cleared away as if with a mighty broom. Every rock and boulder lying upon it had been swept off, and the surface of the bare rock lay flat, and unbroken by even a tuft of grass. They walked along the edge until they looked down upon their shelter. The bear's hide was still in its place, sloping like a pent-house roof, from its upper side two or three inches below the edge of the rock, to the other wall three feet lower. It was, however, stripped of its hair, as cleanly as if it had been shorn off with a razor, by the friction of the snow that had shot down along it. "That is the blamedest odd thing I ever saw," Sam Hicks said. "I wonder the weight of the snow didn't break it in." "I expect it just shot over it, Sam," Harry said. "It must have been travelling so mighty fast that the whole mass jumped across, only just rubbing the skin. Of course the boulders and stones must have gone clean over. That shows what a narrow escape we have had; for if that outer rock had been a foot or so higher, the skin would have caved in, and our place would have been filled chock up with snow in a moment. Waal, we may as well turn in again, for I feel cold to the bones already." On the evening of the fifth day the snow ceased falling, and next morning the sky was clear and bright. Preparations were at once made for a start. A batch of bread had been baked on the previous evening. Some buckets of hot gruel were given to the horses, a meal was hastily eaten, the horses saddled and the packs arranged, and before the sun had been up half an hour they were on their way. The usual stillness of the mountains was broken by a variety of sounds. From the valley at their feet came up sharp reports, as a limb of a tree, or sometimes the tree itself, broke beneath the weight of the snow. A dull rumbling sound, echoing from hill to hill, told of the falls of avalanches. Scarcely had the echoes of one ceased, than they began again in a fresh quarter. The journey was toilsome in the extreme, for the horses' hoofs sank deep in the freshly-fallen snow, rendering their progress exceedingly slow. "If we had been sure that this weather would hold, chief, it would have been better to have waited a few days before making our start, for by that time the snow would have been hard enough to travel on." The chief shook his head. "Winter coming for good," he said, waving his hand towards the range of snowy summits to the north. "Clouds there still; if stop, not able to cross pass till next summer." "That is so; we agreed as to that yesterday, and that if we don't get over now the chances are we shall never get over at all. Yet, it is a pity we can't wait a few days for a crust to form on the snow." Twice in the course of the next hour avalanches came down from the hills above them; the first sweeping down into the valley a quarter of a mile behind them, the next but two or three hundred yards ahead of them. Scarcely a word was spoken from end to end of the line. They travelled in Indian file, and each horse stepped in the footprints of its predecessor. Every few hundred yards they changed places, for the labour of the first horse was very much heavier than of those following. At the end of an hour the men drew together for a consultation. There was a wide break in the line of cliffs, and a valley ran nearly due south. "What do you think, chief? This confounded snow has covered up all signs of the trail, and we have got to find our own way. There is no doubt this valley below is running a deal too much to the west, and that the trail must strike off somewhere south. It looks to me as if that were a likely valley through the cliff. There is no hiding the fact that if we take the wrong turn we are all gone coons." "Leaping Horse knows no more than his brother," the chief said gravely. "He knows the pass is on the western side of the great peak. The great peak lies there," and he pointed a little to the west of the break in the hills up which they were looking. "It may be that we must cross the hills into another valley, or perhaps this will turn west presently." "I tell you what, Harry," Sam Hicks said, "my opinion is, that our best plan by a long chalk will be to go back to our last place and to stop there for a bit. We have got b'ar's flesh enough for another fortnight, and we may kill some more game afore that is done. Ef this is but a spell of snow it may melt enough in another ten days for us to make out the trail and follow it. Ef, as the chief thinks, we have got winter right down on us, we must wait till the snow crust hardens ef it is a month or double. Anything is better than going on like this. What with this soft snow and these 'tarnal snow-slides, there ain't no more chance of our getting over that pass in one day's journey, than there air in our flying right down to Salt Lake City. Ef the worst comes to the worst, I tell yer I would rather go back and take our chance of following the Big Wind River down, and fighting the red-skins, than I would of crossing over these dog-goned hills." The other three men were of the same opinion. "Well, what do you say, chief?" Harry asked the Indian. "Leaping Horse thinks that the trail will not be found until next summer," the chief replied quietly. "Heap of hills in front and heap of snow. If snow-storm catch us in the hills no find way anywhere. Leaping Horse is ready to do whatever his white brother thinks." "Well, I am with the others," Harry said. "I don't like the look of those clouds. They are quiet enough now, but they may begin to shift any time, and, as you say, if we are caught in a snow-storm on the hills there is an end of us. I think Sam is right. Even if we have to rustle all through the winter in that hut there, I would rather face it than keep on." That settled it. The horses' heads were turned, and they retraced their steps until they reached the shelter. The bear's-skin had been left where it was, the fire was soon set going, and there was a general feeling of satisfaction as they laid out the robes and blankets again. "Look here, boys," Harry said, "this is not going to be a holiday time, you bet. We have got to make this place a sight snugger than it is now, for, I tell you, when the winter sets in in earnest, it will be cold enough here to freeze a buffalo solid in an hour. We have got to set to work to make a roof all over this place, and we have got to hunt to lay in a big stock of meat. We have got to get a big store of food for the horses, for we must be mighty careful with our flour now. We can wait a fortnight to see how things go, but if it is clear then that we have got to fight it out here through the winter, we must shoot the pack-ponies at once, and I reckon the others will all have to go later. However, we will give them a chance as long as we can." "Take them down into the valley," the chief said. "All Indian horses." "Ah, I didn't think of that, chief. Yes, they are accustomed to rustle for their living, and they may make a shift to hold on down there. I don't think there is much fear of Indians coming up." "No Indians," Leaping Horse said. "Indians go away when winter set in. Some go to forest, some go to lodges right down valley. No stop up here in mountains. When winter comes plenty game--big-horn, wapiti." "Ah, that is a more cheerful look-out, chief. If we can get plenty of meat we can manage without flour, and can go down and give the ponies a pail of hot gruel once a week, which will help them to keep life together. The first thing, I take it, is to cut some poles for the roof. I am afraid we shall have to go down to the bottom for them." "Waal, we needn't begin that till to-morrow," Sam Hicks said. "If we had them, we have got no skins to cover them." "Cut brushwood," Indian said. "First put plenty of brushwood on poles, then put skins over." "Yes, that is the plan, chief. Well, if we get down there we shall have to take our shovels and clear the snow off some of the narrow ledges. If we do that we can lead one of the horses down to pack the poles up here." The chief went out on to the platform. "No use clear snow now. Clouds moving. In two hours snow fall again." The others joined him outside. "I reckon you are right, chief," Jerry said. "It is mighty lucky we didn't go on. It can't be much worse here than it was before." At three in the afternoon it began to snow heavily again. There was less wind than there had been on the previous occasion, and the snow drifted through the entrance less than before. Just as they were turning in for the night an ominous crack was heard above. All leapt from their blankets, and looking up they could see by the light of the fire that the poles supporting the skin were all bent in a curve downwards. "Jee-rusalem!" Sam Hicks exclaimed, "the whole outfit will be coming down on us." "That it will, Sam. You see, there is no wind as there was before, and one of our jobs will be keeping the roof clear of snow. Turn out, boys; we must get rid of it somehow." They at once set to work to lash two poles, some eight feet long, to the handles of the shovels, and as soon as this was done they all turned out. On reaching the edge of the ravine above the roof, they first cleared away the snow down to the rock so as to have firm standing, and then proceeded to shovel the snow off the surface of the skin. It was easier work than they expected, for as soon as it was touched it slid down the incline, and in a very few minutes the whole was cleared off. "I think that is good until morning now," Harry said. "As long as the snow lasts we shall have to do it every few hours. Directly we get a spell of fine weather we must put some more poles under it to strengthen it." For six days the snow continued to fall without intermission. At daybreak, at mid-day, and the last thing before they turned in at night the snow was cleared off the hide. With this exception they did not stir out of the shelter. They had also each day to clear out the inner portion of the fissure, as the snow now frequently broke through the trees in masses, startling the horses, and keeping them in a state of restlessness. The sixth day it stopped snowing, and the next morning the sky was bright and clear. The whole party at once started out, two of them taking shovels, and the rest brooms that they had made during the long hours of their confinement. By the middle of the day they had cleared the path down into the valley, and on their way back to dinner each carried up a large bundle of faggots. The meal was cooked and eaten hastily, and the whole of the horses were then led down into the valley. Here a couple of dozen stout poles for the roof were cut by the whites, the two Indians at once going up the valley in search of game. In half an hour two rifle-shots were heard, and presently Hunting Dog ran in with the news that they had killed two wapiti. Jerry and Sam Hicks at once went off with him, leading two horses, and presently returned with the dead deer fastened across their backs. "They are very like pictures I have seen of moose," Tom said to his uncle as he examined the great stags. "New-comers often call them moose, Tom; but there is a difference between them, though what the difference is I cannot tell you, for I have never hunted moose. I believe the wapiti are peculiar to the West. They often go in great herds of three or four hundreds together." "The chief says there are a great many of them up the valley," Jerry put in. "They made off when he fired, but I could see their foot-tracks myself all about. He says they have been driven down here by the storm for shelter. He has gone round with the lad to head them back." "That is good news, Jerry. The meat we have got already will last some time, but it is as well to lay in a good stock, and we want the skins badly to make our roof. You had better lead these horses to the foot of the path, and then we will all take our post behind trees across the valley." An hour later they heard the reports of two rifles a long way up the valley, and all stood in readiness. A few minutes later there was a dull trampling sound, and almost directly afterwards a herd of wapiti came along at a heavy trot, ploughing their way but slowly through the snow. "Don't use your revolvers, boys," Harry had said, "except to finish off a stag you have wounded with your rifle. The chance is all against your bringing them down, and the poor brutes would only get away to die." One after another the rifles rang out. Tom and his uncle both had the satisfaction of seeing the stags they had aimed at, plunge forward before they had gone many yards farther, and roll over dead. The other three had each hit the animal they aimed at, but as these kept on their course they dashed out in pursuit, firing their Colts, which in their hands were as deadly weapons as a rifle, and the three stags all fell, although one got nearly half a mile down the valley before he succumbed. A carcass was hoisted on to each of the horses' backs, and the loaded animals were then led up the track. "Shall I wait until the Indians come back, uncle, and tell them why you have gone up?" "There is no occasion for that, Tom; they would hear the shots, and will have guessed what has happened." The poles were divided among the men and carried up to the top of the path, and laid down just above the shelter. Harry and Sam Hicks at once proceeded to cut them up into proper lengths, while the others skinned and cut up the deer. A number of thongs were cut from one of the hides for lashing cross-poles across those that were to act as ridge-poles. The bear's-skin was removed and additional poles placed at that spot, and all working together the framework of the roof was completed by nightfall. The Indians had returned soon after the party began their work, and taking their horses down fetched up the deer they had killed. In the morning the roof was completed, hides being stretched over the framework and securely lashed to it with thongs. The whole of the trees and brushwood were then chopped down close to the ground so as to leave a level floor. The foliage was given to the horses, and the wood cut up and piled for fuel. The chief reported that at the upper end of the valley there was a thick pine-wood, which would give good shelter to the horses. Near it were plenty of bushes, and a level tract which had been a beaver meadow, and was thickly covered with grass, as he could see where the wapiti had scratched away the snow to get at it. This was excellent news, for the question of how the horses could be fed through the winter had troubled them much more than that of their own maintenance. The joints of venison were hung up on a pole outside what they now called their hut, one or two hams being suspended from the rafters over the fire, to be smoked. "We shall have to rig up a b'ar-trap outside," Ben said, "or we shall be having them here after the meat; and a b'ar's ham now and then will make a change. Wapiti flesh ain't bad, but we should get dog-goned tired of it arter a bit." "You may bet we shall, Ben," Jerry agreed; "but I reckon that we shall be able to get a lot of game through the winter. That valley down there is just the place for them to shelter in, and I hope we shall get a big-horn now and then. It will be a difficult thing to make a b'ar-trap outside. A grizzly wants a pretty strong pen to keep him in, and though the horses might drag up some big beams from below, there ain't no fastening them in this rock." "No; I don't think we can make that sort of trap," Harry said. "We must contrive something else. We need not do all our work at once; we have got plenty of time before us. We want three or four more skins to finish our hut." "You mean to fill up the entrance?" "Yes; we will sew them together, and make a curtain to hang from the edge of the roof to the ground. I tell you it is going to be mighty cold here, and besides, it will keep the snow from drifting in." "I wish to goodness we could make a chimney," Tom said. "The smoke went up through the leaves all right, but my eyes are watering now, and if you fill up the end with skins it will be something awful." "You will get accustomed to it, Tom; but, of course, we must make a hole at the top when we fill up the entrance. What do you think is the next thing to be done, chief?" "Get wood," the chief said emphatically. "Must fill all the end of hut with wood." "That will be a big job, chief, but there is no doubt we must lay in a great store of it. Well, there is plenty of timber down in the valley, and with ten horses we can bring up a tidy lot every day." "Let us cut quick before snow comes again." "We will begin to-morrow morning, chief. I agree with you, the sooner the better." Accordingly the next morning they went down to the valley. They had but two axes, and Jerry and Sam Hicks, who had both done a good deal of wood-cutting, undertook this portion of the work. The others took the horses up to the beaver meadow, where they at once began scraping at the snow, and were soon munching away at the rich grass. "Why do you call it a beaver meadow, uncle? I don't see any beavers." "They have gone long ago, perhaps a hundred years. As we know, this valley is occupied by the Indians in summer, and they would soon clear out the beavers. But it is called a beaver meadow because it was made by them. They set to work and dammed up the stream, and gradually all this flat became a lake. Well, in time, you know, leaves from the woods above, and soil and dead wood and other things brought down by the stream, gradually filled up the bottom. Then the beavers were killed, and their dams went to ruin and the water drained off, and in a short time grass began to grow. There are hundreds, ay, and thousands of beaver meadows among the hills, and on the little streams that run into the big rivers, and nowhere is the grass so rich. You will often see an Indian village by one of these meadows. They grow their roots and plant their corn there. The horses will do first-rate here through the winter if the snow don't get too deep for them, and, anyhow, we can help them out with a bucket of gruel occasionally." "It will be awfully cold for them, though." "It will be coldish, no doubt, but Indian ponies are accustomed to it." "I should think, uncle, it would not take much trouble to make them a sort of shed up among the trees there." Sam laughed, and even the chief smiled. "It would not be a bad plan, Tom," his uncle said; "not so much for the sake of the warmth, though there is no doubt that the warmer they are the less they can do with to eat, but if they have a place to go to they are less likely to wander away, and we shall not have the trouble of hunting for them. Well, we will think it over." Following the valley up, they found that it extended some ten miles farther, for the last two of which it was but a narrow cañon a few yards wide. They shot a black bear and four small deer, and returned carrying the skins, the hind-quarters of the deer, and the bear's hams. "We seem to have got meat enough for anything," Tom remonstrated when they shot the deer. "Seven men will get through a lot of meat, Tom, when they have nothing else to go with it; and we may be weeks before we can put our heads out of our hut. Besides, the skins will be useful. We shall want deer-skin shirts, trousers, and socks and caps; and the skin of these deer is softer and more pliable than that of the wapiti. I don't want to kill more than I can help, lad, for I hate taking life without there is a necessity for it, but we can do with a lot more skins before we are stocked." When, driving the horses before them, they returned to the woodcutters, they found they had cut down and chopped into logs a number of trees; and Tom was quite astonished at the great pile of firewood that had been got ready by them in the course of a day's work. The logs were made up into bundles, each weighing about eighty pounds. These were tied together with the horses' lariats, and then secured, one on each side of the saddle, two of the horses carrying the meat. Harry took the bridle of his horse and started up the path, the others following at once. "That is a good day's work," Harry said as the logs were piled at the inner end of the hut. "That is about half a ton of wood. If we have but a week of open weather we shall have a good store in our cellar." The work continued steadily for a week. The horses were each day taken to feed at the meadow, the two wood-choppers continued their work, while the rest of the party hunted. The Indians had on the second day gone down the valley, and returned with the report that the Indian lodges had all disappeared and that the valley was entirely deserted. Eight more wapiti were killed during the week, and fourteen smaller deer. Of an evening they occupied themselves in sewing the skins together with thongs of leather, the holes being made with their knives; and a curtain at the mouth of the hut was completed and hung. Four wide slabs of wood had been cut. These had been bound together with thongs so as to form a sort of chimney four feet high, and with a good deal of difficulty this was secured by props in its position over a hole cut through the skins, above the fire. "The first avalanche will carry it away, Tom." "Yes, uncle; but we have had one avalanche here, and it seems to me the chances are strongly against our having another in exactly the same place." The skins of the smaller deer were carefully scraped with knives on the inner side, smeared with bears' fat, and then rubbed and kneaded until they were perfectly soft. CHAPTER XI WINTER The erection of Tom's shed for the horses did not take long. The whole party, with the exception of the two Indians,--who, as usual, went hunting,--proceeded to the pine-wood above the beaver meadow. After a little search six trees were found conveniently situated with regard to each other. The axemen cut down three young firs. One was lashed by the others between the two central trees, to form a ridge-pole eight feet from the ground; the others against the other trees, at a height of three feet, to support the lower ends of the roof. They were but ten feet apart, so that the roof might have a considerable pitch. Numbers of other young trees were felled and fixed, six inches apart, from the ridge down to the eaves. On these the branches of the young fir-trees were thickly laid, and light poles were lashed lengthways over them to keep them in their places. As the poles of the roof had been cut long enough to extend down to the ground, no side walls were necessary. The ends were formed of poles lashed across to the side trees, but extending down only to within four feet six of the ground, so as to allow the horses to pass under, and were, like the roof, thickly covered with boughs. The lower ends were left open for a width of four feet in the middle, uprights being driven into the ground and the sides completed as before. "What do you want a doorway at both ends for?" Tom asked. "It would have been easier and quicker to have shut one end up altogether, and it would be a good deal warmer." "So it would, Tom; but if a grizzly were to appear at the door, what would the horses do? They would be caught in a trap." "Do you think they are likely to come, uncle?" "The likeliest thing in the world, Tom. Horses can smell bear a good distance off, and if they heard one either coming down or going up the valley, they would bolt through the opposite door. They will do first-rate here; they will stand pretty close together, and the warmth of their bodies will heat the place up. They won't know themselves, they will be so comfortable. It has only taken us a day's work to make the shed; and though we laughed at your idea at first, I think now that the day has been well spent in getting them up such a good shelter. Jerry has got the big pail boiling over his fire, and we will put in a few handfuls of the flour we brought down. Bring the horses in from the meadow, and we will give them each a drink of gruel in the shed. They will soon learn that it is to be their home." For two more days the open weather continued, and the horses took up three loads of wood each afternoon, as they had done the previous week. Then, as there were signs of change, they were given a good feed at their shed; the saddles were taken off and hung up on some cross-poles over their heads. The party had scarcely returned to the hut when the snow began to fall. They were, however, weather-proof, and felt the immense additional comfort of the changes they had made. Their stock of firewood was now a very large one. At each journey the horses had brought up about fifteen hundredweight; and as the work had gone on for nine days, they had, they calculated, something like fourteen tons of firewood neatly stacked. They had also a stock of poles in case the roof should require strengthening. A certain amount of light found its way in at the edges of the curtain across the entrance, but they depended principally upon the fire-light. The smoke, however, was a serious grievance, and even the men were forced occasionally to go outside into the open air to allay the smarting of their eyes. "Don't you think, uncle, we might do something to dry the wood?" "I can't see that we can do more than we are doing, Tom. We always keep a dozen logs lying round the fire to dry a bit before they are put on." "I should think we might make a sort of stage about four feet above the fire and keep some logs up there. We might pile them so that the hot air and smoke could go up through them. They would dry a great deal faster there than merely lying down on the ground." "I think the idea is a very good one, Tom; but we shall have to make the frame pretty strong, for if it happened to come down it might break some of our legs." The men all agreed that the idea was a capital one, and after some consultation they set to to carry it out. Two strong poles were first chosen. These were cut carefully to the right length, and were jambed between the rocks at a height of seven feet above the floor and five feet apart. They were driven in and wedged so tightly that they could each bear the weight of two men swinging upon them without moving. Then four upright poles were lashed to them, five feet apart, and these were connected with cross-poles. "That is strong enough for anything," Jerry said when the structure had been so far completed. "If a horse were to run against one of the poles he would hardly bring the thing down." Four other short poles were now lashed to the uprights three feet below the upper framework, and were crossed by others so as to form a gridiron. On this, the logs were laid in tiers crossing each other, sufficient space being left between them to allow for the passage of the hot air. "That is a splendid contrivance," Harry said when they took their seats on the buffalo robes round the fire and looked up admiringly at their work. "The logs will get as dry as chips, and in future we sha'n't be bothered with the smoke. Besides, it will do to stand the pail and pots full of snow there, and keep a supply of water, without putting them down into the fire and running the risk of an upset." They had occupation now in manufacturing a suit of clothes a-piece from the deer-skins. As the work required to be neater than that which sufficed for the making of the curtain, pointed sticks hardened in the fire were used for making the holes, and the thongs that served as thread were cut as finely as possible; this being done by the Indians, who turned them out no thicker than pack-thread. There was no occasion for hurry, and there was much laughing and joking over the work. Their hunting-shirts and breeches served as patterns from which to cut out the skins; and as each strove to outvie the others, the garments when completed were very fair specimens of work. The hunting-shirts were made with hoods that, when pulled over the head, covered the whole face except the eyes, nose, and mouth. As they had plenty of skin, the hoods and shirts were made double, so that there was hair both inside and out. They were made to come down half-way to the knee, being kept close at the waists by their belts. The leggings were made of single thickness only, as they would be worn over their breeches; they were long and reached down below the ankle. The Indians made fresh moccasins for the whole party; they were made higher than usual, so as to come up over the bottom of the leggings. In addition each was provided with long strips of hide, which were to be wound round and round the leggings, from the knee to below the ankle, covering tightly the tops of the moccasins, and so preventing the snow from finding its way in there. Gloves were then manufactured, the fingers being in one and the thumb only being free. The work occupied them a fortnight, broken only by one day's spell of fine weather, which they utilized by going down into the valley, taking with them their kettles and pail, together with a few pounds of flour. They found the horses out in the meadow, and these, as soon as they saw them, came trotting to meet them with loud whinnies of pleasure. A fire was lit near the shed, the snow melted, and an allowance of warm gruel given to each horse. At Tom's suggestion a few fir-boughs were hung from the bar over each entrance. These would swing aside as the horses entered, and would keep out a good deal of wind. When at the end of a fortnight the sky cleared, the chief said that he thought that there would be but little more snow. "If storm come, sure to bring snow, but not last long. Winter now set in; soon snow harden. Now make snowshoes." The hunters had all been accustomed to use these in winter. They had found the last expedition through the deep snow a very toilsome one, and they embraced the idea eagerly. Some of the poles were split into eight feet lengths. These were wetted and hung over the fire, the process being repeated until the wood was sufficiently softened to be bent into the required shape. This was done by the chief. Two cross-pieces were added, to stiffen them and keep them in the right shape when they dried; and the wood was then trimmed up and scraped by the men. When it had dried and hardened, the work of filling up the frame with a closely-stretched network of leather was undertaken. This part of the work occupied three or four days. The straps were attached to go across the toe and round the heel, and they were then ready to set off. The weather was now intensely cold, but as there was but little wind it was not greatly felt; at the same time they were glad of their furs when they ventured outside the hut. On the first day after their snow-shoes were finished, the rest of the party started off to visit the horses, Hunting Dog remaining behind to give Tom instructions in the use of the snow-shoes, and to help him when he fell down. Tom found it difficult work at first, the toe of the shoe frequently catching in the snow, and pitching him head foremost into it, and he would have had great difficulty in extricating himself, had not the young Indian been at hand. Before the day was over, however, he could get on fairly well; and after two or three more days' practice had made such progress that he was considered capable of accompanying the rest. The wood-drying apparatus had succeeded excellently. The wood was now dried so thoroughly before being put on to the fire that there was no annoyance from the smoke inside the hut, and scarce any could be perceived coming from the chimney. Upon Harry's remarking upon this with satisfaction the first time they went out after using the dry wood, Tom said: "What does it matter? There are no Indians in the valley." "That is so, Tom; but as soon as the weather sets in clear, the red-skins will be hunting again. Winter is their best time for laying in their stock of pelts for trading. At other times the game is all high up in the mountains, and it is very difficult to get within range of it. In the winter the animals come down to the shelter of the forests and valleys, and they can be shot in numbers; especially as the Indians in their snow-shoes can get along almost as quickly as the wapiti can plough through the snow. At present the red-skins think that we must have been overtaken by that first storm and have all gone under; but as soon as they begin to venture out of their lodges to hunt, a column of smoke here would be sure to catch their eyes, and then we should be having them up the valley to a certainty. The first thing they would do would be to find our horses and drive them off, and the next thing would be to set themselves to work to catch us." "But we could hold the path against them, uncle." "Yes; but we should have to keep watch every day, which would be a serious trouble. Besides, there must be other places they could get up. No doubt their regular trail comes up here, because it is the straightest way to the pass, and possibly there may be no other point at which loaded animals could mount anywhere about here. But there must be plenty of places where Indians could climb, and even if it took them a detour of fifty miles they would manage it. As long as there is no smoke we may hope they will not discover us here, though any hunting party might come upon the horses. That is what has bothered me all along; but the chief and I have talked it over a dozen times, and can see no way of avoiding the risk. "We can't keep the horses up here because we can't feed them; and even if we were to bring ourselves to leave this comfortable place and to build a hut down in the valley, we might be surprised and rubbed out by the red-skins. Of course we might bring them up here every night and take them down again in the morning, but it would be a troublesome business. We have agreed that we won't do much more shooting down in the valley, and that in coming and going to the horses we will keep along close to the foot of the cliffs this side, so that if two or three Indians do come up they won't see any tracks on the snow, unless they happen to come close up to the cliff. Of course if they go up as far as the beaver flat they will light upon the horses. There is no help for that; but the chief and I agreed last night that in future two of us shall always stay up here, and shall take it by turns to keep watch. It won't be necessary to stand outside. If the curtain is pulled aside three or four inches one can see right down the valley, and any Indians coming up could be made out. If the party is a strong one a gun would be fired as a signal to those away hunting, and some damp wood thrown on the fire. They might possibly push on up the valley to have a look at the place, but the two up here with their rifles would soon stop them. After that, of course, the horses would have to be brought up here at night, and a watch kept by night as well as by day." Two or three mornings later they found on going out that two joints of venison had been carried off, and footprints in the snow showed that it had been done by a grizzly bear. This turned their attention again to the construction of a trap, which had not been thought of since the day it was first mentioned. A young tree of four or five inches in diameter was cut below and brought up. The butt was cut in the shape of a wedge, and this was driven strongly into a fissure in the rock. A rope with a running noose had been fastened to the tree, and this was bent down by the united strength of four men, and fixed to a catch fastened in the ground, the noose being kept open by two sticks placed across it. A foot beyond the noose a joint of venison was hung, the rope passing over a pole and then down to the catch, so that upon the joint being pulled the catch would be loosened, when the tree would fly up and the noose catch anything that might be through it. A week later they were disturbed by an outburst of violent growling. Seizing their rifles they rushed out. A huge bear was caught by one of his paws. The animal's weight was too great for it to be lifted from the ground, but it was standing upright with its paw above its head, making furious efforts to free itself. A volley of bullets at once put an end to its life. The tree was bent down again and the noose loosed, and they at once returned to their rugs, leaving the bear where it fell. Four times during the winter did they thus capture intruders, providing themselves with an ample supply of bear's flesh, while the skins would sell well down at the settlements. Otherwise sport was not very good. No more wapiti came up, but black and white tail deer were occasionally shot, and five or six big-horn sheep also fell to their rifles. One day on approaching the beaver meadow the chief pointed to some deep footprints. No explanation was needed. All knew that they were made by a big grizzly, and that the animal was going up the valley. No horses were in view on the flat, and grasping their rifles they hurried towards the wood. Just as they reached it the horses came galloping to meet them, whinnying and snorting. "They have been scared by the critter," Jerry said. "Do you see their coats are staring. Gosh, look at this pack-pony--the bear has had his paw on him!" The animal's hind-quarters were indeed badly torn. "I wonder how it got away," Harry said. "When a grizzly once gets hold, it don't often leave go." "There is something in front of the hut," Tom exclaimed. "It's the grizzly, sure enough," Harry said. "It is a rum place for it to go to sleep." They advanced, holding their rifles in readiness to fire, when Leaping Horse said: "Bear dead." "What can have killed him?" Harry asked doubtfully. "Horses kill him," the chief replied. They hurried up to the spot. The bear was indeed dead, and there were signs of a desperate struggle. There was blood on the snow from a point near the door of the hut to where the animal was lying ten yards away. Round it the snow was all trampled deeply. The bear's head was battered out of all shape; its jaw was broken, and one of its eyes driven out. The Indians examined the ground closely. "Well, what do you make of it, chief?" Harry asked. "Bear walk round hut, come in other end. Horses not able to get out in time. Pack-horse last, bear catch him by hind-quarters. Horse drag him a little way and then fall. Then other horses come back, form ring round bear and kick him. Look at prints of fore-feet deep in snow. That is where they kick; they break bear's jaw, break his ribs, keep on kick till he dead." "I suppose that is how it came about, chief. I should not have thought they would have done it." The Seneca nodded. "When wild horses with young foals attacked by bear or mountain-lion, they form circle with colts in the middle, stand heads in and kick. Bears and mountain-lion afraid to attack them." "Waal, I should hardly have believed if I had not seen it," Sam Hicks said, "that horses would come back to attack a grizzly." "Not come back," the chief said, "if not for friend. Friend cry out loud, then horses come back, fight bear and kill him." "Well, it was mighty plucky of them," Harry said. "I am afraid this pony won't get over it; he is terribly torn." The chief examined the horse's wounds again. "Get over it," he said. "Cold stop wounds bleeding, get some fat and put in." "I reckon you will find plenty inside the grizzly," Jerry said. The chief shook his head. "Bear's fat bad; other horses smell him, perhaps keep away from him, perhaps kick him. Leaping Horse will bring fat from the big-horn he shot yesterday." The animal lay where it had fallen, a mile up the valley. They went up and tied the great sheep's feet together, and putting a pole through them brought it down to the hut. Partly skinning it, they obtained some fat and melted this in a kettle over the fire. Sam Hicks had remained behind at the fire, the horses all standing near him, excited at the prospect of their usual meal. As soon as the fat was melted it was poured into the horse's wounds. The mess of gruel was then prepared and given to the animals. The bear was skinned and the hams cut off, then by a united effort it was dragged some distance from the hut, and the carcass of the big-horn, the bear's flesh and hide, were afterwards carried up to the hut. Early in February the cold reached its extreme point, and in spite of keeping up a good fire they had long before this been compelled to build up the entrance with a wall of firewood, the interstices being stuffed with moss; the hut was lighted by lamps of bear and deer fat melted down and poured into tin drinking-cups, the wicks being composed of strips of birch bark. A watch was regularly kept all day, two always remaining in the hut, one keeping watch through a small slip cut in the curtain before the narrow orifice in the log wall, that served as a door, the other looking after the fire, keeping up a good supply of melted snow, and preparing dinner ready for the return of the hunters at sunset. Of an evening they told stories, and their stock of yarns of their own adventures and of those they had heard from others, seemed to Tom inexhaustible. Hunting Dog had made rapid advances with his English, and he and Tom had become great friends, always hunting together, or when their turn came, remaining together on guard. The cold was now so intense that the hunting party was seldom out for more than two or three hours. Regularly twice a week the horses were given their ration of hot gruel, and although they had fallen away greatly in flesh they maintained their health, and were capable of work if called upon to do it. It was one day in the middle of February, that Hunting Dog, who was standing at the peep-hole, exclaimed: "'Rappahoes!" Tom sprang up from the side of the fire, and running to the entrance pulled aside the curtain and looked out. Six Indians on snow-shoes were coming up the valley. He ran out on to the platform and fired his ride. As the sound of the report reached the Indians' ears they stopped suddenly. "Shall I throw some green wood on the fire, Hunting Dog?" "No need," the Indian replied. "The others only gone an hour, not farther than horses' hut; hear gun plain enough. Perhaps 'Rappahoes go back." The Indians remained for some time in consultation. "Not know where gun fired," Hunting Dog said. "Soon see hut, then know." After a time the red-skins continued their way up the valley, but instead of coming on carelessly in the centre they separated, and going to the other side crept along among the fallen boulders there, where they would have escaped observation had it not been for their figures showing against the white snow. "Must fire now," the young Indian said, "then Leaping Horse know 'Rappahoes coming up." They went out on to the platform and opened fire. They knew that their chance of hitting one of the Indians was small indeed; the other side of the valley was a quarter of a mile away, and the height at which they were standing rendered it difficult to judge the elevation necessary for their rifles. However, they fired as fast as they could load. The Indians made no reply, for their guns would not carry anything like the distance. They occasionally gathered when they came upon a boulder of rock sufficiently large to give shelter to them all, and then moved on again one at a time. When opposite the lower end of the pathway they again held a consultation. "No go further," Hunting Dog said. "Afraid we come down path and stop them. See, Leaping Horse among rocks." It was some time before Tom could detect the Indian, so stealthily did he move from rock to rock. "Where are the others?" "No see, somewhere in bushes. Leaping Horse go on to scout; not know how many 'Rappahoes." Presently they saw the chief raise his head behind a rock within a hundred yards of that behind which the 'Rappahoes were sheltering. "He see them now," Hunting Dog said. "See, he going to fire." There was a puff of smoke and a sharp report, and almost simultaneously rose an Indian yell, and the war-cry of the Seneca. Then five Indians leapt out from behind the rock and made down the valley at full speed, while from a clump of trees two hundred yards above the spot from which the chief had fired the four white men hurried out rifle in hand. The chief waited until they joined him, for the bend in the valley prevented him from seeing that the 'Rappahoes were making straight down it, and it would have been imprudent to have ventured out until his white allies came up. "They have gone right down," Tom shouted at the top of his voice. Harry waved his arm to show that he heard the words, and then the five men ran to the corner. The Indians were already a quarter of a mile away, and were just entering the wood below. The whites were about to fire, when the chief stopped them. "No use fire," he said. "Stand back behind rocks; no good let 'Rappahoes count our rifles." "That is true enough, chief," Harry said, as they all sprang among the rocks. "All they know at present is, that there are two up on the top there and one down here. If we were sure that we could wipe them all out it would be worth following and making a running fight of it, but there would be no chance of that, and it is better to let them go without learning more about us. Well, I should say the first thing is to get up the horses." The chief nodded. "Get up," he said, "but no fear 'Rappahoes come back to-night. Many hours' journey down to villages, then great council. Next night scouts come up valley, look all about for sign, and then go back and tell friends." "I dare say you are right, chief. Anyhow, I shall feel a great deal more comfortable when we have got the critters up." It was late in the afternoon before they reached the hut. Some hours were spent in collecting tufts of grass in places sheltered from the snow, and in cutting off great bundles of young fir-branches and the heads of evergreen bushes, and the horses arrived almost hidden under the load of grass and foliage they carried. Little was said until some hot tea had been drunk and the bear steaks in readiness were disposed of, for although they had worked hard and kept themselves comparatively warm down in the valley, they had as they moved slowly up the path with the horses become chilled to the bone. "Now then, chief," Harry said, when they had lighted their pipes with the mixture of tobacco and willow bark that they had taken to, as soon as they found that they were likely to be imprisoned all the winter, "we must hold a council. We have been longer than I expected without disturbance by these varmint, but it has come now, and the question is what are we to do? We have agreed all along that there is no getting over the pass till the spring comes." "Too cold," the chief said, "deep drift snow. Indians all say no can pass over hills in winter." "That air a fact," Jerry said. "Down in the valley there it is all right, but up here the cold pretty near takes one's breath away. We ain't sure about the way. We couldn't get over the pass in one day's tramp, and we should be all stiff before morning. There would be no taking the horses, and there is a hundred miles to be done over the snow before we reach the fort. It ain't to be thought of. I would a sight rather go down the valley and fight the hull tribe." "I agree with you, Jerry. We might, with luck, get down the valley, but I don't think there is a possibility of our crossing the pass till the winter breaks." "No can go down valley," Leaping Horse said; "they find trail on snow, sure." "That is so, chief, and in that case it is evident that we have got to fight it out here." "Good place to stop," the Seneca said; "no good place to fight." This was self-evident. An enemy on the rock above would be able to fire down through the roof, without their having a chance of making an effectual reply. "The only way I can see," Harry said after a long pause, "is to build a sort of fort up above. If we put it just at the top of this pathway, we should have them whether they came up by the trail from below or climbed up anywhere else and came along above. It need not be a very big place, only just big enough for us all to fire over. We might make a sort of shelter in it with a fire, and keep guard there by turns." The chief nodded, and there was a general exclamation of assent from the others. "The worst of it is," Jerry said, "the ground is so 'tarnal hard that there will be no driving posts into it. We have cut down all the trees near the bottom of the pass, and it would be a risky thing to go up higher, when we might have the red-skins come whooping up the valley at any time." "Why not make a snow fort?" Tom suggested. "There is four feet of snow up there, and with the shovels we could make a wall ten feet high in a very short time." "So we might, Tom; that is a capital idea. The difficulty is, the snow does not bind in this bitter cold as it does in England." "If it was hammered down it would, I should think, uncle. You know the Esquimaux make snow houses, and it is as cold there as it is here. The snow at the top is light enough, but I should think as it gets down it would be hard enough to cut out in blocks. We have plenty of water, and if we pour it over each layer of blocks it would freeze into solid ice directly. When we finish it we might pour more water down over the outside, and it would make a regular wall of ice that no one could climb up." "Hooray! Bully for you, Tom!" Jerry shouted, while similar exclamations of approval broke from all the others, while the chief said gravely, "My young brother has the head of a man; he is able to teach warriors." "You shall be engineer-in-chief, Tom," Harry said. "It is certain we may sleep quietly to-night; at daybreak to-morrow we will begin the job." The first thing in the morning a semicircular line was traced out at the top of their pathway. It was thirty feet across, for, as Tom said, the walls ought to be at least four feet thick; and six feet would be better, as they would want a parapet at least two feet thick to fire over. It was agreed that the whites should use the two shovels by turns. The Indians were unaccustomed to the work, and were to undertake that of scouting along the hillside, and of watching by turns at night. The frying-pan was brought into requisition, a wooden handle being made for it. The hard upper crust was removed with the shovels, and the layer beneath this was sufficiently soft for the instrument to be used as a shovel. Below that it hardened, and could be cut out in great blocks. The loose snow was thrown inside of the line traced out. As fast as the blocks were cut out they were carried and piled regularly to form the face. Tom's share of the work was to keep on melting snow, and to bring it up and pour between and over the blocks. As fast as a line of these were made the loose snow was thrown in behind it and trampled down hard. Except for meals there was no rest. The chief said that as there was little chance of the 'Rappahoes coming up so soon, Hunting Dog had better stay behind and help, and he lent his aid in carrying the blocks of snow on a rough stretcher they made for the purpose. By the time it became dark the wall had risen to a height of three feet above the general level of the snow, and was already sufficient to form an excellent breastwork. At the end farthest from the side from which the Indians were likely to come, a gap was left between it and the edge of the ravine three feet wide, in order that if necessary the horses could pass out. When it became dark the chief returned. He had gone many miles along towards the main valley, but had seen no sign of any Indians. After supper was over he took one of the wapiti skins and his buffalo robe, went up to the "fort," as they had already called it, and laid the deer-skin down on the slope of snow behind the wall, wrapped the buffalo robe round him, and lay down upon it. Hunting Dog then threw another robe over him, projecting a foot beyond his head, so that he could from time to time raise it and look out over the snow. The night was a dark one, but any object moving across the unbroken white surface could be seen at a considerable distance. "I feel sure I should go to sleep," Tom said, "if I were to lie down like that." "I have no doubt you would, Tom, but there is no fear with the chief. An Indian never sleeps on the watch, or if he does sleep, it is like a dog: he seems to hear as well as if he were awake, and every minute or two his eyes open and he takes a look round. I would rather have an Indian sentry than half a dozen white ones, unless it is in the open, where there is no tree to lean against, and a man must keep moving." Hunting Dog threw himself down as soon as he returned to the hut, and was almost instantly asleep. Three hours later he rose and went out, and Leaping Horse a minute or two later returned. "All quiet," he said; and then after smoking for a short time also lay down. CHAPTER XII THE SNOW FORT The hut was quiet at an unusually early hour, for the men had done a very hard day's work, and felt the strain after the long weeks of inactivity. At daybreak they were up and about, but could remain out but a few minutes, for the cold was so intense that they felt unable to face it until they had taken some hot tea and eaten something. Half an hour sufficed for this early breakfast. Hunting Dog was again left behind by the chief when he started. "Two eyes enough," the latter said. "Hunting Dog more use here." The wall of blocks was raised three more feet during the day, as it was agreed to devote all their efforts to this, and to defer the work of thickening it until the next day, for the snow had now been cleared so far from its foot that it could no longer be thrown inside. Though but six feet above the snow level, it was at least three feet more above the level of the rock, and its face was a solid sheet of ice, Tom having, during the two days, made innumerable journeys backwards and forwards with snow-water. "Another couple of feet and it will be high enough for anything," Harry said. "I don't believe that the Indians will venture to attack us, but it is just as well to have it so high that they can't help each other up to the top. If they knew how strong it is, I am sure they would not attack, and would leave us alone altogether, but if a hundred of them creep up in the dark and make a rush, they will do their best to try to climb it. Anyhow we sha'n't need to make the bank behind very high. If it goes to within four feet and a half of the top, so that we can stand and fire over the wall, that is all that is wanted." Leaping Horse returned at dusk as before. He uttered a warm approval of the work when he had examined it. "Good fort," he said, "better than palisades. Indian no climb over it. No opening to fire through, good as wall of town house." "I think they will be puzzled when they get here, chief." "Must watch well to-night," the chief said. "Indian scout sure to come. Two men keep on watch; two better than one." "That is so, chief; we will change every hour. But it will be mighty cold. I don't see why we shouldn't rig up a shelter against the wall, and have a bit of a fire there. Then the two on watch can take it by turns every few minutes to come in and get a warm." With poles and skins a lean-to was speedily constructed against the wall. The snow was hammered down, and a hearth made of half a dozen logs packed closely together. Some brands were brought up from the fire in the hut, and the skins across the end of the lean-to dropped, so that the air within could get warm while they were at supper. "Hunting Dog and Tom shall take the first watch," Harry said; "Sam and I will take the next, Jerry and Ben the third, then you, chief, can take the next." "Leaping Horse watch by himself," the Seneca said; "his eyes will be open." "Very well, chief. I know you are as good as any two of us, so that will give us each one hour out and three hours in bed." Wrapping buffalo robes round them, Tom and the young Indian went up to the fort. Tom drew aside one of the skins and looked into the shelter. The hearth was in a glow, and two logs lying on it were burning well. The night was very still, except for the occasional rumble of some distant snow-slide. For a few minutes they stood looking over the wall, but keeping far back, so that only their heads were above its level. "Tom go in by the fire," the Indian said. "All white, no need for four eyes." "Very well, I will go in first; but mind, you have got to go in afterwards. I sha'n't go in if you don't." After waiting for a few minutes in the shelter Tom went out again, and Hunting Dog took his place. It was his first war-path, and nothing would have persuaded him to retire from the watch had he not felt sure that even white men's eyes could not fail to detect any dark object moving on the surface of the snow. But although all white the surface was not level; here and there were sudden elevations marking rises in the rock beneath. Still it seemed impossible to Tom that anyone could approach unseen. In spite of the protection of the buffalo robe it was intensely cold outside, and he was glad each time when his turn came for a warm by the fire. The changes, too, made the time pass quickly, and he was quite surprised when his uncle and Sam came out to relieve them. The other two men and the chief were still smoking by the fire. There was tea in the kettle, and they evidently did not mean to lie down until after their first watch. Every few minutes the chief got up and went out to the platform, and stood listening there intently for a short time. Just before it was time to change the guard again he said when he returned: "Indian down in valley." "Have you heard them, chief?" "Leaping Horse heard a dead stick crack." "That might have been a deer," Ben suggested. The chief shook his head. "'Rappahoe; heard gun strike tree." "Then I reckon they will be up in our watch," Ben said. "Well, we shall be ready for them." "Perhaps come, perhaps not come; perhaps scout up valley first see if some of us there, and look for horses. Perhaps some come up path; but crawl up slow, not know whether look-out there." "Well, I don't envy them if they have got much crawling to do to-night; it is cold enough to freeze one's breath." "'Rappahoe not like cold," the chief said, "but wants scalp bad; that makes his blood warm." "I will let some of it out," Jerry said wrathfully, "if I get a chance to lay a bead on one of them. Don't you be afeard, chief; we will look out sharp enough, you bet. Waal, I reckon it is about our time to turn out, Ben." "Jerry tells me that you have heard noises below, chief," Harry said when he came in. "We heard nothing, but it ain't easy to hear well with these hoods over one's head." "Hoods bad for hear," the chief assented. "Leaping Horse heard plain, Indians down below." "Well, it is only what we expected, chief. Anyhow, we are ready for them when they come." Tom lay down now, and knew nothing more till Hunting Dog touched him. "Time to go and watch," he said. "Has everything been quiet?" The Indian nodded. "No come yet." Leaping Horse remained at his post after they came out to relieve him. Tom made no comment. Harry had impressed upon him the necessity for absolute silence. "If they hear voices they will never come near us," he had said, "and we would rather they came than stopped away. The sooner we get this job over the better." The chief stood with his head slightly bent forward and the hood of his hunting-shirt thrown back, listening attentively. Then he touched Hunting Dog, and stooping low down whispered something in his ear, and then both stood again listening. Tom, too, threw back his hood, but he could hear nothing whatever, and was soon glad to pull it forward over his ears again. He strained his eyes in the direction towards which they were listening, which was apparently towards the edge of the ravine where the Indian trail came up from below. All seemed to him to be white and bare. Presently the chief's rifle went up to his shoulder; there was a sharp crack, a dark figure leapt up from the snow fifty yards away and then fell headlong down again. It seemed to Tom almost magical. His eyes had been fixed in that direction for the last five minutes, and he could have sworn that the surface of the snow was unbroken. A minute later the other four men came running up. "What is it, chief?" Harry whispered. Leaping Horse pointed to the dark figure stretched out on the snow. "So you have got the varmint. Good! Do you think there are any more of them about?" "More there sure," the chief said, pointing to the path up from below. "Perhaps more there," and he pointed to a broad black line from the foot of the cliffs to the edge of the ravine, where, three days before, an avalanche from the hills above had swept the rock clear of snow. "They must have made sure that we were all asleep, or that fellow would never have shown himself on the snow," Harry said. "He did not show himself, uncle. How he got there I don't know; but I was looking at the spot when the chief fired, and I saw no signs of him whatever. How he hid himself I don't know. If it had been anywhere else I should have said he must have had a white sheet over him." "It certainly was not that whatever it was, Tom. However, we shall see in the morning. Well, we may as well turn in again. Will they try again, do you think, chief?" "Not try to-night, too cold; if any there, will hide up till daybreak. Now they know we are awake, will not venture on snow." Half an hour later a great fire was lighted out of gunshot range lower down the valley, and three or four figures could be seen round it. "Too cold," Hunting Dog said to Tom. "All gone down to get warm." The watches were relieved regularly through the night, but there was no further alarm until just after daylight had broken, when Sam Hicks suddenly discharged his rifle. The others all turned out at once. He had fired at a bush just at the point where the trail came up from below, and he declared that he had seen a slight movement there, and that some pieces of the snow had dropped from the leaves. "We will make sure that there is no one there," Harry said, "and then we will turn out and have a look. It is like enough that one of the red-skins from below came up the path to have a look at us this morning." He took a steady aim and fired. "Fetch up an axe, Tom; we will cut that bush away at once. It is lucky that Sam caught sight of the red-skin. If he had not done so he might have got a bullet in his own head, for when the red-skin had finished taking a view of the fort he would certainly have picked off Sam or myself before he went down. It is a weak point, that from here one can't command the path. If they come in force we shall have to keep watch on the platform too. From there you can get a sight of two or three of its turnings." [Illustration: "They Went Out To Look At The Indian The Chief Had Shot."] They went out together, and as they passed, stopped to look at the body of the Indian the chief had shot. He was a young brave of two-or three-and-twenty, and the manner of his advance so far unperceived was now evident. Favoured by a slight fall in the ground, he had crawled forward, scooping a trench wide enough for his body a foot in depth, pushing the snow always forward, so that it formed a sort of bank in front of him and screened him from the sight of those on watch. The chief's keen eye had perceived a slight movement of the snow, and after watching a moment had fired at the point where he judged anyone concealed by it must be. He had calculated accurately. The ball had struck on the shoulder close to the neck, and had passed down through the body. The Indian had brought no rifle with him, but had knife and tomahawk in his belt. "Poor young fellow," Harry said. "He wanted to win a name for himself by a deed of desperate bravery. It has cost him his life, but as he would have taken ours if he had had a chance it is of no use regretting it." They now went on to the bush. "You were right, Sam," he went on, as they saw the impression on the snow made by a figure lying down behind it. "There was an Indian here sure enough, and here is the mark of the stock of his rifle, and no doubt he would have picked off one of us if you had not scared him. I don't expect you hit him; there are no signs of blood." "Fire too high," the chief said, pointing to a twig that had been freshly cut off two feet from the ground. "Always shoot low at man behind bush. Man cannot float in air." There was a general laugh at Sam, who replied: "I did not suppose he could, chief. I just fired where I saw the snow fall, without thinking about it one way or the other. I was an all-fired fool, but I shall know better next time." The bush was cut down, and also two or three others that grew along by the edge of the ravine. On their way back to the hut Harry stopped by the dead Indian. "Fetch me a shovel, Tom," he said, "I will dig a hole in the snow; it ain't a pleasant object to be looking at anyway." Tom fetched the shovel, Harry dug down in the snow till he reached the rock, then he and Jerry laid the body in it and filled in the snow again. The chief looked on. "Bears get him," he said when they had finished. "That is like enough, chief, but we have done the best we can for him. There is no digging into the rock." "I thought the Indians always scalped enemies they shot?" Tom afterwards said to his uncle. "So they do, Tom; but you see the chief is a sort of civilized Indian. He has consorted for years with whites, and he knows that we don't like it. I don't say he wouldn't do it if he were on the war-path by himself, but with us he doesn't, at any rate not openly. I have no doubt it went against his grain to see the red-skin buried with his hair on, for the scalp would have been a creditable one, as it would not have been got without a clear eye and good judgment in shooting. I have no doubt he has got some scalps about him now, though he don't show them; but they will be hung up some day if he ever settles down in a wigwam of his own. "Well, chief, and what do you think," he asked Leaping Horse, as, after returning to the hut, they sat down to breakfast, "will they come or won't they?" "I think they no come," the chief said. "Scout behind bush will tell them fort too strong to take; must cross snow, and many fall before they get to it. Very hard to climb. No like cold, Leaping Horse thinks they will stop in wigwams." "No fools either," Jerry agreed; "a man would be worse than a natural if he were to go fooling about in this weather, and run a pretty good big risk of getting shot and nothing much to gain by it. They know we have left their country now, and ain't likely to come back again either to hunt there or to dig gold, and that all we want is to get away as soon as we can. I allow that the chief is right, and that we sha'n't hear no more of them, anyhow not for some time." The chief nodded. "If come again, not come now. Wait a moon, then think perhaps we sleep sound and try again; but more likely not try." "Much more likely," Harry assented. "Unless they can do it by a surprise. Indians are not fond of attacking; they know we shoot straighter than they do and have better rifles. You remember that time when you and I and Jersey Dick kept off a party of Navahoes from sunrise till sunset down near the Emigrant trail? It was lucky for us that a post-rider who was passing along heard the firing, and took the news to a fort, and that the officer there brought out fifty troopers just as the sun went down, or we should have been rubbed out that night sure." The Seneca nodded. "How was it, Harry?" Sam Hicks asked. "It was just the usual thing, Sam. We had left the trail two days before, and were hunting on our own account when the Navahoes came down. We had just time to throw the three horses and lie down behind them. They were within two hundred yards when I began and fetched the chief, who was leading them, out of his saddle. Leaping Horse brought down another one and Jersey Dick held his fire, and instead of keeping straight on they began to straggle round. And they kept at that all day. Sometimes they would get in pretty close, but each time they did the chief brought down a horse, and when his rider, who was of course hanging on the other side of him, got up to run, I fetched him down. Dick wasn't much of a shot, so we would not let him fire. It discourages red-skins mightily when they see that there is never a shot thrown away, and that it is sure death whenever one draws a trigger. So at last they got careful and held off, knowing as they would get us at night, when they could have crawled up on foot and made a rush when they got close to us. "The worst of it was we hadn't struck water the evening before, and it was just one of the hottest days on the plains, and we were pretty nigh mad with thirst before evening. I believe when the soldiers rode up I was about as glad to get a drink from one of their bottles as I was that the Navahoes bolted when they saw them coming. No, the red-skins ain't any good for an open attack; they would have lost fewer men by riding straight at us than they did by fooling round, but they could not bring themselves to do it, and I reckon that is what it will be here. They may, as the chief says, try, say six weeks on, when the frost begins to break, in hopes that we may have given up keeping watch: but if they find us awake they will never try an open attack, for they could not reckon on taking the place without losing a score of men in doing so. If the snow was off the ground it would be different. Then of a dark night they could crawl up close and make a rush." After breakfast the chief and Hunting Dog went out scouting. When they returned they brought news that three Indians had come over the snow along the side of the hills, that three others had come up the valley, and that in a wood half a mile below where they had seen the fire, there had been a large party encamped. "I reckoned that would be about it, chief. Three fellows came along over the hill, in case we should be keeping guard at the top of the path, and they had a big force somewhere down below, so that if the scouts reported that there was nothing to prevent them falling on us they would come up before morning and wipe us out. I suppose they have all ridden off?" "All gone. Leaping Horse and Hunting Dog followed right down valley. No stop anywhere, gone back to lodges." "Then in that case, Harry, we had best get the critters down to their shed again. They have eaten all that stuff they brought up three days ago, I gave them the last of it this morning. The Indians know that we keep a pretty sharp look-out during the day and there ain't no fear of their coming up here when it is light." As the chief was also of opinion that there was no danger, the horses were taken down the path into the valley, where on having their bridles unbuckled they at once trotted off of their own accord towards the beaver meadow. For the next six weeks a watch was kept regularly, but by only one man at a time. The horses were driven down to the valley every morning and brought up again before sunset. There was little hunting now, for they had as many skins as they could carry comfortably, and a supply of frozen meat sufficient to last well into the spring. In March the weather became perceptibly warmer, and the snow in the valley began to melt where the full power of the sun at mid-day fell upon it. Day by day the crashes of distant avalanches became more frequent, and they began to look forward to the time when they should be able to proceed on their journey. One night towards the end of the month Tom was on watch, when he heard a rustling sound far up beyond the wall of cliff in front of him. It grew louder and rose to a roar, and then a white mass came pouring down over the cliff. Leaping from the wall he dashed down the path to the hut. It needed no word to call the men to their feet, for a deep rumbling filled the air and the rock seemed to quiver. The horses struggled to break their head-ropes and snorted with fright. "Your backs to the wall!" Harry shouted, and as all leapt across at his order there was a crash overhead. The roof above them fell in and a mass of snow followed; a minute later a deep silence followed the deafening roar. "Anyone hurt?" Harry shouted, and the replies came in muffled tones. Tom was jambed against the rock by the snow; he was nearest to the entrance, his uncle was next to him. "I am all right at present, uncle, but I feel half smothered." "All right, lad; I am pretty free, and I will soon clear you a bit." The snow was pushed away from before Tom's face, his left arm was cleared, and then his uncle with a vigorous pull brought him back close to him. Here he was comparatively free, for a part of the roof had fallen close to the wall and had partially kept off the snow. Then Harry turned, and with some difficulty managed to get Jerry, who was next to him, freed from the snow. "Now, Jerry, you work along that way and get at the others. Tom and I will try to burrow a way out." It was a difficult task. Once through the passage in the log wall they pushed to the left towards the edge of the platform, taking it by turns to go first until the snow became lighter; then by a vigorous effort Harry rose to his feet, sending a mass of snow tumbling over the edge of the platform. As soon as Tom had joined him they set to work with hands and knives, and soon cleared a passage back to the entrance. Just as they did so Jerry crawled out from within. "Are they all right, Jerry?" "Yes, the others are coming; only about twelve feet of the roof caved in, and the two Indians and Sam soon got in among the horses. I had a lot of trouble with Ben; he had been knocked down, and I thought that he was gone when I got him out; but he is all right now, though he can't walk yet. The Indians and Sam have got the shovels, and are working away to clear a passage along by the wall; there is no getting Ben out through that rabbit-hole you have made." "Thank God we are all right," Harry said; "it does not matter a bit, now that we know no one is badly hurt. We will begin at this end, but we sha'n't be able to do much until we get the shovels, the snow will fall in as fast as we get it out." They soon found that they could do nothing in this way. "We will try to tunnel again," Harry said, "it is not more than ten feet along. If we get in and hump ourselves, we shall soon get it big enough to drag Ben out, then the others can follow, and we can set to work with the spades to clear the place." After a good deal of effort they succeeded in enlarging the hole, and then got Ben through it, one crawling backwards and pulling him while the other shoved at his legs. "How do you feel, Ben?" Harry asked him when they laid him down outside. "I dunno, Harry; I am afraid my back is badly hurt. I don't seem to feel my legs at all. I expect they are numbed from the weight of snow on them." "I will crawl into our store and fetch out the keg." "I reckon a drop of whisky will do me good if anything will," Ben said. "I was crushed pretty near flat, and if my head hadn't been against the wall I should have been smothered. Are you all right, young Tom?" "Yes, I am not hurt at all. The snow squeezed me against the rock, and I could not move an inch, but uncle managed to get me a little free and then pulled me out of it." Harry soon came back with the whisky, and was followed by the Indians and Sam, who found that they could do nothing with the snow, which fell in as fast as they cleared it. Their first step was to dig out a buffalo robe to wrap Ben in. His voice was stronger after he had drank some spirit, and he said that he felt better already. The others at once set to work with the shovels. They first cleared the platform along by the wall to the entrance, and then attacked the snow which filled the space between the two rock walls to the top. Two of them worked with poles, loosening the snow above, and bringing it down in masses, while those with shovels cast it out on to the platform, going out occasionally to throw it over into the ravine. Hunting Dog made his way up over the snow to the top of the path, and called down to say that the fort was entirely swept away, and the chief told him to take up his post at once at the top of the path leading from below. "He need not have told us that the fort was gone," Jerry grumbled. "If it had been made of cast-iron it would not have stood. The sooner we get our rifles out the better." This could not be done for a time, for the loosening of the snow above had caused that below to slip, and the passage along by the wall had fallen in. The Indians, however, who had slept beyond the part filled by snow, had brought their pieces out with them, and could have defended the path alone. Several times those at work were buried by falls of snow, and had to be dragged out by the others. By daylight a considerable gap had been made in the snow, and they were able to get into the space beyond the fall. A number of logs, and a joint of meat that had been taken in the day before to thaw, were brought out, and a fire was soon blazing on the platform. "I wonder why the snow did not shoot over as it did before?" Ben, who was now able to sit up, remarked. "I reckon it is the fort did it," Harry said. "Of course it went, but it may have checked the rush of the snow for a moment, and those thick walls couldn't have got the same way on as the rest of the snow had." "But the fort wasn't over the roof, uncle," Tom remarked. "No, but it may have blocked the slide a little, and thrown some of it sideways; you see it is only this end that gave, while it shot right over the rest of the roof just as before." "It is mighty lucky it did not break in all along," Sam Hicks said, "for it would have left us without horses if it had; and it would have been mighty rough on us to have lost them, just as we are going to want them, after our taking such pains with them all through the winter." The chief took Hunting Dog's place as soon as he had finished his meal, and remained on watch all day. The men worked without ceasing, but it was not until sunset that the snow was completely cleared away. "I reckon that we shall have to be starting before long," Jerry said as they sat round the fire in what they before called their store-room, having driven the horses as far in as possible to make room. "We could have held out before as long as we liked, but it is different now. The rock's cleared now for a hundred yards on each side of us, our fort's gone, and there is nothing to prevent the redskins from crawling close up the first dark night and making a rush. They are like enough to be sending scouts up the valley occasionally, and it won't be long before they hear that our fort has gone and the ground cleared of snow." Leaping Horse nodded. "Two men must watch at top of path," he said. "That is right enough, chief; but we know three of them came along the hills before, and it is like enough they will all come that way next time. They are safe to reckon that we shall hold the path." "It is very unfortunate," Harry said; "in another month, we should have been able to travel. Anyhow, it seems to me that we have got to try now; it would never do to be caught in here by the red-skins. If we are to go, the sooner the better. All our meat has been carried over the edge. This is about the time we expected the Indians back, and it would be dangerous to scatter hunting. It is a big risk, too, taking the horses down to the meadow. No, I think we can manage to get over the pass. The snow gets softer every day when the sun is on it; but it freezes at night. We have the moon, too, so we shall be able to travel then; and even if we take three or four days getting over the divide we can sleep in the daytime." "We must get a little more meat anyhow before we start," Jerry said. "This joint ain't more than enough for another square meal for us, and though I reckon the bighorns will be coming up to the hills again now, it won't do to risk that." "We have the pack-horses, Jerry." "Yes, I did not think of them. Horseflesh ain't so bad on a pinch; but I don't want to lose our skins." "Better our skins than our hair," Sam laughed. "That is right enough, Sam, but I would like to save both." "Perhaps there is some of the meat under the snow," Tom suggested. "It hung near the wall, and the snow must have come straight down on it from above, as it did in here." "That is so, Tom; we will have a look the first thing in the morning. I am so tired now I would not dig for it if it were gold." As soon as it was light the next morning they began to clear the snow from the rest of the platform, and found to their great satisfaction four bear hams. The rest of the meat had been swept over the edge. The two Indians had not shared in the work, having started away early without saying where they were going. They returned to breakfast, each carrying a hind-quarter of venison, which they had found in the snow below. It was agreed that a start should be made that evening. By sunset the horses were loaded, and half an hour later they moved away. Ben Gulston had to be assisted on to his horse, for although in other respects recovered, it was found that he had so severely strained his back across the loins that he was scarcely able to walk a foot. The moon was shining brightly, and as soon as they were on the snow they could see as plainly as if it were day. All were in high spirits that they had left the spot where for six months they had been prisoners. They had difficulty in restraining themselves from shouting and singing, but the chief before starting had warned them of the necessity for travelling silently. "Snow-slides very bad now; shouting might set them going." The others looked rather incredulous, but Harry said: "I know he is right, boys; for I have heard that in the Alps the guides always forbid talking when they are crossing places exposed to avalanches. At any rate we may as well give the snow as little chance as may be of going for us." They travelled in Indian file from habit rather than necessity, for the snow was firm and hard, and the horses made their way over it without difficulty. There had been some debate as to the way they should go; but they determined at last to take the valley through the cliff wall, and to strike to the right whenever they came upon a likely spot for crossing. Two such attempts were made in vain, the upper slopes of snow being found too steep for the horses to climb; but at the third, which was made just after morning broke, they succeeded in getting up the hill to their right, and, after great difficulty, descended into another valley. This they had little doubt was the one that led to the pass, for from the hill they could see the great peak along whose foot the trail ran. It was ten o'clock before they got down into the valley. The snow was beginning to be soft on the surface, and the horses were tired out. They therefore halted, made a fire with two or three of the logs they had brought with them for the purpose, boiled water and had breakfast, and gave half a bucket of gruel to each of the animals. Then wrapping themselves in their buffalo robes they lay down and slept till late in the afternoon. The journey was resumed at sunset, and before morning they had crossed the divide; and when the sun rose obtained a view over the country far to the south. CHAPTER XIII A FRESH START In the evening they camped on the banks of the Green River, here a stream of but small size, except when the melting snow swelled its waters into a torrent. At the spot where they halted a rivulet ran into the stream from a thickly-wooded little valley. It was frozen, but breaking the ice with their axes they found that water was flowing underneath. They had observed that there was a marked difference in temperature on this side of the mountains, upon which the strength of the southern sun had already in many places cleared away the snow. "It is a comfort to be able to sit by a fire without the thought that red-skins maybe crawling up towards you," Sam Hicks said heartily, "and to sleep without being turned out to stand watch in the cold. "You say the country ahead is bad, chief?" "Bad lands both sides of Green River. Deep canons and bare rock." "Well, we need not follow it; it don't make any difference to us whether we get down to the fort in a fortnight or six weeks." "None at all," Harry said. "We have agreed that when summer fairly sets in we will try that place I hit on just as the Utes came down on us. It is the richest place I have ever seen, and if the Indians will but let us alone for a month we ought to bring back a big lot of dust; and if we do, we can sell our share in it for a big sum, and take down enough men to thrash the Utes out of their boots if they interfere with us. By our reckoning it is the end of March now, though we don't at all agree as to the day; but at any rate, it is there or thereabouts. That gives us a good six weeks, and if we start in the middle of May it will be time enough. So I propose that we strike more to the west, or to the east, whichever you think is the best, chief, and try and pick up a few more pelts so as to lay in a fresh stock of goods for our next trip." "Bad hills everywhere," the chief said; "better go west, plenty of game there." "No fear of Indians?" "Indians there peaceable; make good trade with whites. Ten years ago fight, but lose many men and not get much plunder. Trappers here good friends with them. Traders bring up powder and cloth and beads. Indians no give trouble." For the next six weeks, therefore, they travelled slowly, camping sometimes for two or three days on a stream, and then making a long march until they again came to water. The beaver traps had been left behind, but they were fortunate enough to come upon several beaver villages, and by exercising patience they were able to shoot a good many, getting in all some fifty skins. Tom used to go out in the evening and lie down to watch the beavers at work, but he would not take a gun. "I could not shoot them down in cold blood, uncle. It is almost like looking at a village of human beings at work. One can shoot a man who is wanting to shoot you, without feeling much about it, but to fire at a man labouring in the fields is murder. Of course, if we wanted the flesh for food it would be different." "I did not see you refuse that beaver-tail soup we had last night, Tom." "No, and it was very good, uncle; but I would very much rather have gone without it than shoot the beaver the tail belonged to." "Well, Tom, as we have all got guns, and as none of us have any scruples that way, there is no occasion whatever for you to draw a trigger on them. They take some shooting, for if you hit them in the water they sink directly, and you have got to kill them dead when they are on land, otherwise they make for the water at once and dive into their houses and die there." They killed a good many other animals besides the beaver, including several wolverines, and by the time they got down to the fort in the middle of May they had had to give up riding and pack all the animals with the skins they had obtained. None of these were of any great value, but the whole brought enough to buy them a fresh outfit of clothes, a fresh stock of provisions and powder, and to give them a hundred dollars each. The evening after the sale was effected Tom wrote home to his sisters, giving them a brief account of what had taken place since the letter he had posted to them before starting for the mountains, but saying very little of their adventures with Indians. "I am afraid you have been in a great fright about me," he said, "but you must never fidget when you don't get letters. We may often be for a long time away from any place where we can post them, or, as they call it here, mail them, though I certainly do not expect to be snowed up again for a whole winter. Owing to the Indians being hostile we did not do nearly so well as we expected, for we could not go down to hunt in the valleys. So after getting a fresh outfit for our next journey our share is only a hundred dollars each. I did not want to take a share, for of course I was not of much use to them, though I have learnt a lot in the last six months, and can shoot now as well as any of them, except the two Indians. "However, they all insisted on my having the same share as the rest. Uncle wanted me to take his hundred dollars and send them home to you with mine, but I told him that I would not do so, for I know you have money enough to go on with, even if your school has turned out a failure. So I think it would be as well for us to keep our money in hand for the present. There is never any saying what may happen; we may lose our horses and kit, and it would be very awkward if we hadn't the money to replace them. As soon as we get more we will send it off, as you know I always intended to do. I have still some left of what I brought out with me, but that and the two hundred dollars would not be more than enough to buy an entirely new outfit for us both. "I hope you got the five hundred dollars uncle sent you. He told me he sent it off from Denver, and it ought to have got home a few weeks after I left. It is horrid to think that there may be letters from you lying at Denver, but it serves me right for being so stupid as not to put in the short note I wrote you from here before I started, that you had better direct to me at Fort Bridger, as I shall almost be sure to come back to it before I go to Denver. I like uncle awfully; it seems to me that he is just what I expected he would be. I suppose they all put in equal shares, but the other men quite look upon him as their leader. Sometimes when he is talking to me he speaks just as people do at home. When he talks to the men he uses the same queer words they do. He is taller than father was, and more strongly built. What I like in him is, he is always the same. Sometimes the others used to get grumbly when we were shut up so long, but it never seemed to make any difference in him. "I told you when I wrote from Denver that he was called 'Straight Harry,' because he always acted straightforwardly, and now I know him I can quite understand their calling him so. One feels somehow that one could rely upon his always being the same, whatever happened. Leaping Horse is a first-rate fellow, and so is Hunting Dog, though of course he does not know nearly as much as the chief does, but he knows a lot. The other three are all nice fellows, too, so we were a very jolly party. They know a tremendous lot of stories about hunting and red-skins and that sort of thing. Some of them would make all you girls' hairs stand on end. We are going to start off in two or three days to hunt up a gold mine uncle found three years ago. The Indians are going, too; they will hunt while the rest of us work. It will be quite a different journey to the last, and I expect it will be just as hot this time as it was cold last. We may be away for four months, and perhaps we may not come back till the snow sets in, so don't expect a letter till you see it." This was by far the longest letter Tom had ever written, and it took him several hours to get through. He had the room to himself, for the others were talking over their adventures with old friends they had met at the fort. His uncle returned about ten o'clock. "Where are the others?" Tom asked. "In the saloon; but they are not drinking, that is, not drinking much. I told them that if they were to get drunk one of them would be sure to blab as to where we were going, or at any rate to say enough to excite suspicion among some of the old miners, that we knew of a good thing, and in that case we should get a lot of men following us, and it would interfere with our plans altogether. A party as small as ours may live for months without a red-skin happening to light on us, but if there were many more they would be certain to find us. There would be too much noise going on, too much shooting and driving backward and forward with food and necessaries. We want it kept dark till we thoroughly prove the place. So I made them all take an oath this morning that they would keep their heads cool, and I told them that if one of them got drunk, or said a word about our going after gold, I would not take him with us. I have given out that we are going on another hunting party, and of course our having brought in such a lot of skins will make them think that we have hit on a place where game is abundant and are going back there for the summer." Two more pack-ponies had been added to the outfit. They might be away for five or six months, and were determined to take a good supply of flour this time, for all were tired of the diet of meat only, on which they had existed for the last six months, having devoted by far the greater part of the flour to the horses. When they started next day they turned their faces north, as if they intended to hunt in the mountains where they had wintered. They made but a short march, camped on a stream, and long before daybreak started again, travelling for some hours to the west and then striking directly south. For two days they travelled rapidly, Tom going out every morning with the Indians hunting, while the others kept with the pack-horses. Ben had now quite recovered from the strain which had crippled him for the first three weeks of their march down to Fort Bridger. They were now fairly among the Ute hills, and at their third camping-place Harry said: "We must do no more shooting now till we get to our valley. We have got a supply of deer-flesh for a week at least, and we must be careful in future. We heard at the fort that several miners have been cut off and killed by the Utes during the winter, and that they are more set than ever against white men entering their country. Everyone says those rascally Saints are at the bottom of it. We must hide our trail as much as we can. We are just at the edge of the bad lands, and will travel on them for the next two days. The red-skins don't go out that way much, there being nothing either to hunt or to plunder, so there is little fear of their coming on our trail on the bare rocks, especially as none of the horses are shod. On the third day we shall strike right up into their mountains." "Are you sure that you will know the place again, Harry?" "I reckon I could find it, but I should not feel quite certain about it if I had not the chief with me. There is no fear of his going wrong. When a red-skin has once been to a place he can find his way straight back to it again, even if he were a thousand miles off." "You said when we were talking of it among the hills, uncle," Tom said, as he rode beside him the next morning, "that Leaping Horse and you each took two shares. I wonder what he will do with his if it turns out well." "He won't do anything with it, Tom. The chief and I are like brothers. He does not want gold, he has no use for it; and, besides, as a rule, Indians never have anything to do with mining. He and Hunting Dog really come as hunters, and he has an understanding with me that when the expedition is over I shall pay them the same as they would earn from any English sportsman who might engage them as guides and hunters, and that I shall take their shares in whatever we may make. I need not say that if it turns out as well as we expect, the Indians will get as many blankets and as much ammunition as will last them their lives. You can't get a red-skin to dig. Even the chief, who has been with us for years, would consider it degrading to do work of that kind; and if you see an Indian at mining work, you may be sure that he is one of the fellows who has left his tribe and settled down to loaf and drink in the settlements, and is just doing a spell to get himself enough fire-water to make himself drunk on. "The Seneca would be just as willing to come and hunt for us for nothing. He would get his food and the skins, which would pay for his tobacco and ammunition, and, occasionally, a new suit of leggings and hunting-shirt, made by an Indian woman, and with this he would be happy and contented. He doesn't mind taking money in return for skins, and he and Hunting Dog had their full share in the division at the fort. When I last talked to him about this business, he said, 'Leaping Horse doesn't want money. Of what use is it to him? He has got a bagful hidden at home, which he has been paid when he was scouting with the army, and for the skins of beasts he has shot. It is enough to buy many horses and blankets, and all that a chief can want. He is going with his friend to hunt, and to fight by his side if the Utes come; he wants none of the gold.' I explained the matter to him, and he said carelessly: 'Leaping Horse will take the two shares, but it will be for his brother, and that he may send it to the girls, the sisters of his friend Tom, of whom he spoke one night by the fire.' "Hunting Dog is like Leaping Horse, he will take no gold. I have told the three men how matters stand. Of course, it makes no difference to them whether the Indians keep their share or hand it over to me, but at the same time I thought they ought to know how we stood. They said it was no business of theirs; that as I was the discoverer I had a right to sell the whole thing if I chose, and that they thought I had done the friendly thing by them in letting them in as partners. So you see it is all right and square. It is like enough, too, that we shall find some other lodes, and of course there they will come in on even terms with us. So they are pleased with the look-out, and know well enough it is likely to be the best strike they ever made in their lives." They kept near the edge of the bad lands, as had they gone farther out they would have been obliged to make long detours to get round the head of the cañons made by rivers running down into the Colorado. They had filled their water-skins at the last stream where they had camped, and had taken with them enough dried wood for their fires. These they lit each night in a hollow, as from the upper slopes of the Ute hills a view could be obtained for a great distance over the flat rocky plateau. Tom was heartily glad when the two days' journey was over. Not a living creature had met their eyes; there was no grass on which beasts could exist, no earth in which prairie-dogs could burrow; even birds shunned the bare waste of rock. "It is a desolate country," he said, as they sat round the fire; "it would be enough to give one the horrors if one were alone. It is hot now, and in the height of summer the heat and glare from the rock must be awful." "It is, Tom; many and many a man has died of thirst in the bad lands. And what makes it more terrible is, that they can perhaps see water a thousand feet below them and yet die from the want of it." "When we were camped on the Green River, uncle, you said that no one had ever followed it down." "That is so, lad. One knows whereabouts it goes, as men driven by thirst have followed cañons down to it; and in some places it runs for many miles across low land before it plunges into another cañon. Then it cuts its way for two or three hundred miles, perhaps, through the hills, with walls two or three thousand feet high. No one, so far as I know, has gone down these big cañons, but it is certain there are rapids and whirlpools and rocks in them. Two or three parties have gone down through some of the shorter cañons to escape Indians, and most of them have never been heard of again, but one or two have got down some distance and managed to escape. "No one has followed the course by land. They could not do so unless they carried all their provisions, and drink and food for their animals, and even then the expedition would take months, perhaps years to do; for every spring from the hills runs down a cañon to the river, sometimes fifty miles, sometimes a hundred long, and each time the party came upon one of these they would have to work up to the mountains to get round it. It is over a thousand miles in a straight line from the place where the Green River first enters a cañon to where the Colorado issues out on to the plains, and it may be quite twice that distance if one could follow all its windings. Some day when the country fills up attempts will no doubt be made to find out something about it; but it will be a big job whenever it is tried, and may cost a lot of lives before the cañons are all explored." In the morning they started westward for the hills. The greatest care was observed on the march. They took advantage of every depression, and when obliged to pass over level ground moved at a distance apart, as a clump or string of moving animals would be made out at a distance from which a solitary one would be unnoticed. By noon they had left the bare rock, and were travelling up a valley clothed with grass and dotted with clumps of trees. In the first of these they halted. "We will stay here until it begins to get dusk," Harry said, "and then move on as fast as we can go. If we don't lose our way we shall be there before morning." There was no moon, but the stars shone brilliantly, and the mountains, with their summits still covered with snow, could be seen ahead. The chief went on in front. Sometimes they proceeded up valleys, sometimes crossed shoulders and spurs running down from the hills. They moved in Indian file, and at times proceeded at a brisk pace, at other times more slowly; but there was no halt or sign of hesitation on the part of their leader. At last, just as morning was breaking, the chief led them into a clump of trees. He moved a little distance in, and then reined in his horse and dismounted. "Does my brother remember that?" he said to Harry, pointing to something on the ground. "Jee-hoshaphat!" Harry exclaimed; "if that ain't my old pack-saddle! This is the very spot where we camped, boys. Well, chief, you are certainly a wonder. I doubt whether I could have found my way here in the daytime. Half a dozen times to-night it seemed to me that you were going in the wrong direction altogether, and yet you bring us as straight to the spot as if all the time you had been following a main road." "Bully for the chief!" Jerry said warmly. "I am blamed if that ain't a fust-rate piece of tracking. Waal, here we are at our journey's end. Can we make a fire?" "Make small fire, but must put screen round." "Very well; we will leave the fire to you, and we will unpack the critters. There is a bundle of dry wood left, so we sha'n't have the bother of looking for it now." Before lighting the fire the two Indians stretched some blankets some six feet above it, to prevent the light falling upon the foliage; then by their directions Sam cut a dozen short poles, and fixed them in a circle round the fire. Half a dozen more blankets were fastened to the poles, forming a wall round the fire, which the chief then lighted. The nights were, at that height above the sea-level, cool enough to make the heat pleasant, and there was just room for the seven men to sit between the blanket wall and the fire. "Do you mean this to be our permanent camp, Harry?" "What do you think, Leaping Horse?" "Wait till me go up gold valley," the Seneca said. "If can't find a good place there better stay here; if go backwards and forwards every day make trail Indian squaw would notice." "That is so, chief; but by what Harry says it is a mere gully, and the horses will have to range." "Horses must feed," the chief said. "If we find a place up there, make hut, take saddles and outfit there. Tie up horses here, and let them loose to feed at night. No regular track then. But talk after sleep." "It will be broad daylight by the time that we have finished our meal," Jerry said, "and I reckon none of us will be wanting to sleep till we have got a sight of Harry's bonanza." As soon as they had finished their meal, the mining implements, which had been carefully hidden among the rest of their goods when they started from the fort, were brought out. Among these were a dozen light pick-heads and half a dozen handles, as many shovels, a flat iron plate for crushing ore upon, and a short hammer, with a face six inches in diameter, as a pounder; also a supply of long nails, to be used in fastening together troughs, cradles, or any other woodwork that might be required; three or four deep tin dishes, a bottle of mercury, a saw, and a few other tools. Three of the pick-heads were now fastened to their handles, and taking these, a couple of shovels, two of the tin basins, a sledge hammer, and some steel wedges, and the peculiar wooden platter, in shape somewhat resembling a small shield with an indentation in the middle, called a vanner, and universally used by prospectors, the five whites and Leaping Horse started from their camp for the spot where Harry had found the lode. It lay about a mile up a narrow valley, running into the larger one. A rivulet trickled down its centre. "I reckoned on that," Harry said. "Of course it was frozen when we were here, but I could see that there was water in summer. You see this hollow runs right up into that wood, and there is sure to be water in it for the next three months anyhow." They had gone but a short distance up when they stopped at a spot where the streamlet widened out into a pool. "Let us try here," Jerry said, "and see if there is any sign." Half a shovelful of sand was placed in the vanner with a small quantity of water, and while Harry and Sam proceeded to wash some gravel roughly in the pans, Tom stood watching Jerry's operations. He gave a gentle motion to the vanner that caused its contents to revolve, the coarser particles being thrown towards the edges while the finer remained in the centre. The water was poured away and the rougher particles of gravel and sand swept off by the hand; fresh water was then added, and the process repeated again and again, until at last no more than a spoonful of fine sand remained in the centre. A sideway action of the vanner caused this to slope gradually down towards the edge. At the very bottom three tiny bits of yellow metal were seen. They were no bigger than pins' heads. It seemed to Tom that this was a miserably small return for five minutes' labour, but the others seemed well satisfied, and were still more pleased when, on the two pans being cleaned out, several little pieces of gold were found, one of which was nearly as large as a small pea. "That is good enough," Ben said; "it will run a lot richer when we get down on to the rock." At two other places on their way up they tried the experiments, with increasingly good results. "There is some tall work to be done here with washing," Harry said. "Now come on to the vein. I only saw one of them, but there must be a lot more or you would not find so much metal in the sand. However, the one I saw is good enough for anything." They went on again to a point where the rock cropped boldly out on both sides of the valley; Harry led them a few paces up the side, and pointed to some white patches in the rock. "That is where I chipped it off, lads, three years ago." The face of the lode, discoloured by age and weather, differed but little from the rock surrounding it; but where it had been broken off it was a whitish yellow, thickly studded with little bits of dull yellow metal sticking out of it. Tom was not greatly impressed; but he saw from the faces of his companions that they were at once surprised and delighted. "By gosh, Harry, you have done it this time!" Sam Hicks exclaimed. "You have struck it rich, and no mistake. I thought from the way you talked of it it must be something out of the way, but I am blamed if I thought it was like this." "Stand back, you chaps," Jerry said, lifting the heavy sledge hammer; "let me get a drive at it. Here is a crack. Put one of them wedges in, Ben." The wedge was placed in the fissure, and Ben held it while Jerry gave a few light blows to get it firmly fixed. "That will do, Ben; take away your hand and let me drive at it." Swinging the hammer round his head Jerry brought it down with tremendous force on the head of the wedge. Again and again the heavy hammer rose and fell, with the accuracy of a machine, upon the right spot, until the wedge, which was nine inches long, was buried in the crevice. "Now another one, Ben. Give me a longer one this time." This time Ben held the wedge until it was half buried, having perfect confidence in Jerry's skill. It was not until the fourth wedge had been driven in that a fragment of rock weighing four or five hundredweight suddenly broke out from the face. All bent eagerly over it, and the miners gave a shout of joy. The inner surface, which was white, but slightly stained with yellow, with blurs of slate colour here and there, was thickly studded with gold. It stuck out above the surface in thin, leafy plates with ragged edges, with here and there larger spongy masses. "I reckon that is good enough," Jerry said, wiping the sweat from his forehead. "Ef there is but enough of it, it is the biggest thing that ever was struck. There ain't no saying how rich it is, but I will bet my boots it's over five hundred ounces to the ton. It ain't in nature that it is going to run far like that, but it is good enough for anything. Well, what is the next thing, Harry?" "We will break it up," Harry said, "and carry it down with us to the camp. If the Utes came down on us tomorrow, and we could get off with it, that would be plenty to show if we want to make a sale." It took them a long time to break up the rock, for the quartz was hard, and was so bound together by the leafy gold running through it that each of the four men had several spells with the hammer before it was broken up into fragments weighing some twenty pounds apiece. As soon as this was done the men collected earth, filled up the hole in the face of the rock, and planted several large tufts of grass in it, and poured four or five tins of water over them; then they smeared with mud the patches where Harry had before broken pieces off. "What is all that for, Jerry?" Tom asked. "It is to hide up the traces, lad. We may have to bolt away from here to-morrow morning for anything we know, and before we come back again someone else may come along, and though we shall locate our claims at the mining register, there would be a lot of trouble if anyone else had taken possession, and was working the vein when we got back." "It is not likely that anyone else would come along here, Jerry." "Waal, I reckon that is so, but one ain't going to trust to chance when one has struck on such a place as this." The Seneca had been the only unmoved person in the party. "What do you think of that, chief?" Harry asked him. "If my white brother is pleased Leaping Horse is glad," he replied. "But the Indian does not care for gold. What can he do with it? He has a good gun, he does not want twenty. He does not want many hunting suits. If he were to buy as many horses as would fill the valley he could not ride them all, and he would soon tire of sitting in his lodge and being waited upon by many wives. He has enough for his needs now. When he is old it will be time to rest." "Well, that is philosophy, chief, and I don't say you are wrong from your way of looking at it. But that gold means a lot to us. It means going home to our people. It means living in comfort for the rest of our lives. It means making our friends happy." "Leaping Horse is glad," the chief said gravely. "But he cannot forget that to him it means that the white brother, with whom he has so long hunted and camped and fought bad Indians, will go away across the great salt water, and Leaping Horse will see him no more." "That is so, chief," Harry said, grasping the Indian's hand warmly, "and I was a selfish brute not to think of it before. There is one thing I will promise you. Every year or so I will come out here and do a couple of months' hunting with you. The journey is long, but it is quickly made now, and I know that after knocking about for twenty years I shall never be content if I don't take a run out on the plains for a bit every summer. I will give you my word, Leaping Horse, that as long as I have health and strength I will come out regularly, and that you shall see your white brother's friendship is as strong as your own." The Seneca's grave face lit up with pleasure. "My white brother is very good," he said. "He has taken away the thorn out of the heart of Leaping Horse. His Indian brother is all glad now." The quartz was placed in sacks they had brought with them to carry down samples, and they at once returned to the camp, where, after smoking a pipe, they lay down to sleep; but it was some time before all went off, so excited were they at the thought of the fortune that seemed before them. In the afternoon they took one of the pieces of stone, weighing, by a spring balance, twenty pounds, and with the flat plate and the crushing-hammer went to the stream. The rock was first broken with the sledge into pieces the size of a walnut. These were pulverized on the iron plate and the result carefully washed, and when the work was finished the gold was weighed in the miner's scales, and turned the four-ounce weight. "That is nearly five hundred ounces to the ton," Harry said, "but of course it is not going to run like that. I reckon it is a rich pocket; there may be a ton of the stuff, and there may be fifty. Now let's go up and have a quiet look for the lode, and see if we can trace it. We ought to see it on the rock the other side." A careful search showed them the quartz vein on the face of the rock some fifty feet higher up the valley, and this showed them the direction of the run of the lode. It was here, however, only six inches wide instead of being two feet, as at the spot where it was first found. Some pieces were broken off: there was gold embedded in it, but it was evident that it was nothing like so rich as on the other side. A piece of ten pounds was pounded up, it returned only a little over a pennyweight of gold. "About twelve ounces to the ton," Harry said. "Not bad, but a mighty falling off from the other. To-morrow morning we will follow the lode on the other side and see if we can strike an outcrop." The next day they found the lode cropping up through the rock some thirty yards from their great find. It was about nine inches wide. They dug it out with their picks to a depth of two feet so as to get a fair sample. This when crushed gave a return at the rate of twenty ounces. "That is rich enough again, and would pay splendidly if worked by machinery. Of course the question is, how far it holds on as rich as we found it at the face, and how it keeps on in depth? But that is just what we can't find. We want drills and powder, as picks are no sort of good on this hard quartz. Supposing it goes off gradually from the face to this point, there would be millions of dollars in it, even supposing it pinched in below, which there is no reason in the world to suppose. We may as well take a few of these chunks of rock, they will show that the gold holds fairly a good way back anyhow." A few pieces were put aside and the rest thrown into the hole again, which was stamped down and filled up with dust. The party then went back to dinner, and a consultation was held as to what was next to be done. "Of course we must stake out our claims at once," Harry said. "In the first place there are our own eight claims--two for each of the discoverers and one each for the others. Hunting Dog will not have a share, but will be paid the regular rate as a hunter. Then we will take twenty claims in the names of men we know. They wouldn't hold water if it were a well-known place, and everyone scrambling to get a claim on the lode; but as there is no one to cut in, and no one will know the place till we have sold it and a company sends up to take possession and work it, it ain't likely to be disputed. The question is, What shall we do now? Shall we make back to the settlements, or try washing a bit?" "Try washing, I should say," Jerry said. "You may be some time before you can sell the place. Anyone buying will know that they will have to send up a force big enough to fight the Utes, and besides they will want someone to come up here to examine it before they close the bargain. I vote we stick here and work the gravel for a bit so as to take enough away to keep us till next spring. I reckon we shall find plenty of stuff in it as we go down, and if that is so we can't do better than stick to it as long as there is water in the creek." "I agree with you there, Jerry; but it will never do to risk losing those first samples. I am ready to stay here through the summer, but I vote we sew them up in deer-hide, and put two or three thicknesses of skin on them so as to prevent accidents. Two of us had best go with them to the fort and ask the Major to let us stow them away in his magazine, then, if we have to bolt, we sha'n't be weighted down with them. Besides, we might not have time for packing them on the horses, and altogether it would be best to get them away at once, then come what might we should have proofs of the value of the mine." This proposal was cordially agreed to, and it was settled that on the following morning Harry himself should, with Hunting Dog and two pack-horses, start for the fort, following the same route they came, while the rest should set to work to construct a cradle, and troughs for leading the water to it. CHAPTER XIV AN INDIAN ATTACK A couple of trees were felled in the middle of the clump in which they were still encamped. They were first roughly squared and then sawn into planks, the three men taking it by turns to use the saw. The question of shifting the camp up to the spot where they intended to work was discussed the night before Harry started, but it was agreed at last that it would be better to remain where they were. "If Utes come, sure to find traces," the chief said. "Many horses in valley make tracks as plain as noonday. Gold valley bad place for fight." "That is so," Jerry agreed. "We should not have a show there. Even if we made a log-house, and it would be a dog-goned trouble to carry up the logs,--we might be shut up in it, and the red-skins would only have to lie round and shoot us down if we came out. I reckon we had best stay here after all, Harry. We could keep them outside the range of our rifles anyhow by day." "I don't see that that would be much good to us, Jerry; for if they came by day they would not find us here. Still I don't know that it ain't best for us to stay here; it would give us a lot of trouble to build a place. I reckon two of us had better stay here all the day with the horses. If the red-skins come, they can fire a couple of shots, and we shall hear them up at the washing-place. The red-skins would be safe to draw off for a bit to talk it over before they attacked, as they would not know how many there were among the trees. That would give the rest time to come down." It took three days' hard work to saw the planks and make the cradle, and troughs sufficiently long to lead the water down into it from the stream higher up. These were roughly but strongly made, the joints being smeared with clay to prevent the water from running through. A dam was then made to keep back the water above the spot where they intended to begin, which was about fifty yards below the quartz vein, and from this dam the trough was taken along on strong trestles to the cradle. The horses were brought into the camp at daybreak every morning and tied up to the trees, and were let out again at nightfall. Tom remained in camp, the chief being with him. The latter, however, was, during the time Harry was away, twice absent for a day on hunting excursions lower down the valley, which was there thickly wooded. The first time, he returned with the hams and a considerable portion of the rest of the flesh of a bear. The second time, he brought up the carcass of a deer. "How far does the valley run?" Tom asked. "Valley last ten miles. Sides get steep and high, then cañon begin." "That will run right down to the Colorado?" The chief nodded. "Leaping Horse go no farther. Cañon must go down to the river." "How far is it before the sides of the valley get too steep to climb?" "Two miles from here. Men could climb another mile or two, horses not." "Is there much game down there, chief?" The Seneca nodded. "That is a comfort, we sha'n't be likely to run out of fresh meat." The chief was very careful in choosing the wood for the fire, so that in the daytime no smoke should be seen rising from the trees. When the dead wood in the clump of trees was exhausted he rode down the valley each day, and returned in an hour with a large faggot fastened behind him on the horse. He always started before daybreak, so as to reduce the risk of being seen from the hills. On the sixth day the men began their work at the gravel. The bottle of mercury was emptied into the cradle, the bottom of which had been made with the greatest care, so as to prevent any loss from leakage. Two of the men brought up the gravel in buckets and pans, until the cradle was half full. Then water was let in, and the third man rocked the machine and kept on removing the coarse stuff that worked up to the top, while the others continued bringing up fresh gravel. "Well, what luck?" Tom asked, when they returned in the evening. "We have not cleaned up yet; we shall let it run for three or four days before we do. We are only on the surface yet, and the stuff wouldn't pay for the trouble of washing out." On the eighth day after their departure Harry and Hunting Dog returned. "Well, boys, it is all stowed away safely," he said. "I know the Major well, and he let me have a big chest, which he locked up, after I had put the bags in, and had it stowed away in the magazine; so there is no fear of its being touched. Any signs of the red-skins?" "Nary a sign. We have none of us been up the valley beyond this, so that unless they come right down here, they would find no trail. The horses are always driven down the valley at night." "How is the work going on, Jerry?" "We began washing two days ago; to-morrow night we shall clean up. We all think it is going to turn out pretty good, for we have seen gold in the sand several times as we have carried it up in the pails." The next day Tom went up with the others, the Indians remaining in camp. Two men now worked at the cradle, while the other three brought up the sand and gravel. Towards evening they began the work of cleaning up. No more stuff was brought up to the machine, but the water was still run into it. As fast as the shaking brought the rough gravel to the top it was removed, until only a foot of sand remained at the bottom. The water was now stopped and the sand dug out, and carefully washed in the pans by hand. At the bottom of each pan there remained after all the sand had been removed a certain amount of gold-dust, the quantity increasing as the bottom was approached. The last two panfuls contained a considerable amount. "It does not look much," Tom said when the whole was collected together. "It is heavy stuff, lad," Harry replied. "What do you think there is, Jerry? About twelve ounces, I should fancy." "All that, Harry; nigher fourteen, I should think." The pan was now put at the bottom of the cradle, a plug pulled out, and the quicksilver run into it. A portion of this was poured on wash-leather, the ends of which were held up by the men so as to form a bag. Harry took the leather, and holding it over another pan twisted it round and round. As the pressure on the quicksilver increased it ran through the pores of the leather in tiny streams, until at last a lump of pasty metal remained. This was squeezed again and again, until not a single globule of quicksilver passed through the leather. The ball, which was of the consistency of half-dried mortar was then taken out, and the process repeated again and again until the whole of the quicksilver had been passed through the leather. Six lumps of amalgam about the size of small hens' eggs remained. "Is that good, uncle?" Tom asked. "Very fair, lad; wonderfully good indeed, considering we have not got down far yet. I should say we shall get a pound and a half of gold out of it." "But how does the gold get into it, uncle?" "There is what is called an affinity between quicksilver and gold. The moment gold touches quicksilver it is absorbed by it, just as a drop of water is taken up by a lump of salt. It thickens the quicksilver, and as it is squeezed through the leather the quicksilver is as it were strained out, and what remains behind becomes thicker and thicker, until, as you see, it is almost solid. It is no good to use more pressure, for if you do a certain amount of the gold would be squeezed through the leather. You see, as the stuff in the cradle is shaken, the gold being heavier than the sand finds its way down to the bottom, and every particle that comes in contact with the quicksilver is swallowed up by it." "And how do you get the quicksilver out of those lumps?" "We put them in one of those clay crucibles you saw, with a pinch of borax, cover them up, and put them in a heap of glowing embers. That evaporates the quicksilver, and leaves the gold behind in the shape of a button." This was done that evening, and when the buttons were placed in the scales they just turned the two-pound weight. "Well, boys, that is good enough for anything," Harry said. "That, with the dust, makes a pound a day, which is as good as the very best stuff in the early days of California." They worked steadily for the next seven weeks. Contrary to their expectations the gravel was but little richer lower down than they had found it at the end of the first wash-up, but continued about equally good, and the result averaged about a pound weight of gold a day. This was put into little bags of deer-skin, each containing five pounds' weight, and these bags were distributed among the saddle-bags, so that in case of sudden disturbance there would be no risk of their being left behind. The Indians took it by turns to hunt; at other times they remained on guard in camp, Tom only staying when one of them was away. One day when the mining party stopped work, and sat down to eat some bread and cold meat,--which they had from the first brought up, so as to save them the loss of time entailed by going to the camp and back,--the report of a gun came upon their ears. All started to their feet and seized their rifles, and then stood listening intently. A minute later two more shots were heard at close intervals. "Red-skins for sure!" Jerry exclaimed. "I thought as how our luck were too good to last." They started at a run down the little valley, and only paused when they reached its mouth. Harry then advanced cautiously until he could obtain a view of the main valley. He paused for a minute and then rejoined his companions. "There are fifty of them," he said, "if there is one. They are Utes in their war-paint. They are a bit up the valley. I think if we make a rush we can get to the trees before they can cut us off." "We must try anyhow," Sam Hicks said, "else they will get the two Indians and our horses and saddles and all. Just let us get breath for a moment, and then we will start." "Keep close together as you run," Harry said, "and then if they do come up we can get back to back and make a fight of it." After a short pause they started. They had not gone twenty yards when a loud yell proclaimed that the Indians had seen them. They had, however, but three hundred yards to run, while the Utes were double that distance from the clump. When the miners were within fifty yards of the trees two rifle-shots rang out, and two of the Utes, who were somewhat ahead of the rest; fell from their horses, while the rest swerved off, seeing that there was no hope of cutting the party off. A few more yards and the miners were among the trees. "So the Utes have found us out, chief," Harry said as he joined Leaping Horse, who had just reloaded his ride. "Must have tracked us. They are a war-party," the Seneca replied. "Hunter must have found tracks and taken news back to the villages." "Well, we have got to fight for it, that is clear enough," Harry said. "Anyhow, now they see there are seven of us they are not likely to attack until it gets dark, so we have time to think over what had best be done. We had just begun our meal when we heard your shot, and the best thing we can do is to have a good feed at once. We may be too busy later on." The chief said a word to the young Indian, and, leaving him on the watch, accompanied the others to the fire. They had scarcely sat down when Hunting Dog came up. "More Utes," he said briefly, pointing across the valley. They at once went to the outer line of trees. On the brow of the rise opposite were a party of horsemen between twenty and thirty strong. "That shows they have learnt all about our position," Harry said. "Those fellows have been lying in wait somewhere over the hill to cut us off if we took to our horses on seeing the main body. Let us have a look the other side." Crossing the clump of trees, they saw on the brow there another party of Utes. "I reckon they must have crossed that valley we were working in just after we got through," Jerry said. "It is mighty lucky they did not come down on us while we were washing, for they could have wiped us all out before we had time to get hold of our guns. Well, Harry, we are in a pretty tight fix, with fifty of them up the valley and five-and-twenty or so on each side of us. We shall have to be dog-goned smart if we are to get out of this scrape." "Hand me your rifle, Tom," his uncle said, "it carries farther than mine, and I will give those fellows a hint that they had best move off a bit." Steadying his piece against a tree, he took a careful aim and fired. One of the Indians swerved in his saddle, and then fell forward on the neck of his horse, which turned and galloped off with the rest. "Now we will have our meal and take council, chief," Harry said as he turned away. "If we have got to fight there is no occasion to fight hungry." The fire was made up; there was no need to be careful now. Strips of deer's flesh were hung over it, and the meal was soon ready. But little was said while it was being eaten, then they all lighted their pipes and each put a pannikin of hot tea beside him. "Now, chief," Harry said, "have you arrived at any way out of this? It is worse than it was the last time we got caught in this valley." The chief shook his head. "No good fight here," he said; "when night come they creep up all round." "Yes, I see that we have got to bolt, but the question is, how? If we were to ride they would ride us down, that is certain. Jerry and Tom might possibly get away, though that ain't likely. Their critters are good, but nothing downright extraordinary, and the chances are that some of the Utes have got faster horses than theirs. As for the rest of us, they would have us before we had ridden an hour." "That ain't to be thought of," Jerry said. "It seems to me our best chance would be to leave the critters behind, and to crawl out the moment it gets dark, and try and get beyond them." "They will close in as soon as it gets dark, Jerry. They will know well enough that that is the time we shall be moving. I reckon we should not have a chance worth a cent of getting through. What do you say, chief?" Leaping Horse nodded in assent. "Well, then," Sam Hicks said, "I vote we mount our horses and go right at them. I would rather do that and get rubbed out in a fair fight than lie here until they crawl up and finish us." No one answered, and for some minutes they smoked on without a word being spoken, then Harry said: "There is only one chance for us that I can see, and that is to mount now and to ride right down the valley. The chief says that in some places it is not more than fifty yards wide, with steep cliffs on each side, and we could make a much better fight there, for they could only attack us in front. There would be nothing for them then but to dismount and close in upon us from tree to tree, and we could make a running fight of it until we come to the mouth of the cañon. There must be places there, that we ought to be able to hold with our seven rifles against the lot of them." "Bully for you, Harry! I reckon that would give us a chance anyhow. That is, if we ain't cut off before we get to the wood." "Let us have a look round and see what they are doing," Harry said. "Ah! here comes Hunting Dog. He will tell us all about it." "Utes on hills all gone up and joined the others," the young Indian said as he came up. "It could not be better news!" Harry exclaimed. "I reckon they have moved away to tempt us to make a start for the fort, for they know if we go that way they will have us all, sure. They have not reckoned on our riding down the valley, for they will be sure we must have found out long ago that there ain't any way out of it. Well, we had best lose no time. There is some meat ready, Hunting Dog, and you had best fill up while we get ready for a start." The blankets and buffalo rugs were wrapped up and strapped behind the saddles, as soon as these were placed behind the horses. They had only a small quantity of meat left, as the chief was going out hunting the next morning, but they fastened this, and eighty pounds of flour that still remained, on to one of the pack-horses. They filled their powder-horns from the keg, and each put three or four dozen bullets into his holsters, together with all the cartridges for their pistols; the rest of the ammunition was packed on another horse. When all was completed they mounted. "We may get a couple of hundred yards more start before we are seen," Harry said. "Anyhow, we have got five hundred yards, and may reckon on making the two miles to where the valley narrows before they catch us." The instant, however, they emerged from the wood, two loud yells were heard from Indians who had been left lying down on watch at the top of the slopes on either side. Sam, who was the worst shot of the party, had volunteered to lead the string of pack-horses, while Ben was ready to urge them on behind. "You may want to stop some of the leading varmint, and I should not be much good at that game, so I will keep straight on without paying any attention to them." A loud answering yell rose from the Indians up the valley. "We shall gain fifty yards or so before they are fairly in the saddle," Harry said as they went off at the top of their speed, the horses seeming to know that the loud war-cry boded danger. They had gone half a mile before they looked round. The Indians were riding in a confused mass, and were some distance past the grove the miners had left, but they still appeared as far behind as they had been when they started. Another mile and the mass had broken up; the best-mounted Indians had left the rest some distance behind, and considerably decreased the gap between them and the fugitives. Another five minutes and the latter reached the wood, that began just where the valley narrowed and the cliffs rose almost perpendicularly on each side. As soon as they did so they leapt from their horses, and each posting himself behind a tree opened fire at their pursuers, the nearest of whom were but two hundred yards away. Four fell to the first seven shots; the others turned and galloped back to the main body, who halted at once. "They won't try a charge," Harry said; "it isn't in Indian nature to come across the open with the muzzles of seven rifles pointed at them. They will palaver now; they know they have got us in a trap, and they will wait till night. Now, chief, I reckon that you and I and Hunting Dog had best stay here, so that if they try, as they are pretty sure to do, to find out whether we are here still, we can give them a hint to keep off. The other four had better ride straight down the cañon, and go on for a bit, to find out the best place for making a stand, and as soon as it is dark we will go forward and join them. There will be no occasion for us to hurry. I reckon the skunks will crawl up here soon after it is dark; but they won't go much farther, for we might hide up somewhere and they might miss us. In the morning they will come down on foot, sheltering behind the trees as much as they can, till at last they locate us." The chief nodded his approval of the plan, and Tom and the three miners at once started, taking the pack-horses with them. On the way down they came upon a bear. Ben was about to fire, but Jerry said: "Best leave him alone, Ben; we are only three miles down, and these cliffs would echo the sound and the red-skins would hear it and know that some of us had gone down the valley, and might make a rush at once." In an hour and a half they came down to a spot where the valley, after widening out a good bit, suddenly terminated, and the stream entered a deep cañon in the face of the wall of rock that closed it in. "I reckon all this part of the valley was a lake once," Jerry said. "When it got pretty well full it began to run over where this cañon is and gradually cut its way out down to the Colorado. I wonder how far it is to the river." They had gone but a hundred yards down the cañon when they came to a place where a recent fall of rocks blocked it up. Through these the stream, which was but a small one, made its way. "There is a grist of water comes down here when the snow melts in the spring," Ben remarked. "You can see that the rocks are worn fifty feet up. Waal, I reckon this place is good enough for us, Jerry." "I reckon so, too," the latter agreed. "It will be a job to get our horses over; but we have got to do it anyhow, if we have to carry them." The animals, however, managed to scramble up the rocks that filled the cañon to the height of some thirty feet. The distance between the rock walls was not more than this in width. "We could hold this place for a year," Ben said, "if they didn't take to chucking rocks down from above." "Yes, that is the only danger," Jerry agreed; "but the betting is they could not get nigh enough to the edge to look down. Still, they might do it if the ground is level above; anyhow, we should not show much at this depth, for it is pretty dark down here, and the rocks must be seven or eight hundred feet high." It was, indeed, but a narrow strip of sky that they saw as they looked up, and although still broad daylight in the valley they had left, it was almost dark at the bottom of the deep gorge, and became pitch dark as soon as the light above faded. "The first job in the morning," Jerry said, "will be to explore this place down below. I expect there are places where it widens out. If it does, and there are trees and anything like grass, the horses can get a bite of food; if not, they will mighty soon go under, that is if we don't come upon any game, for if we don't we sha'n't be able to spare them flour." "It is almost a pity we did not leave them in the valley to take their chance," Tom said. "Don't you make any mistake," Jerry said. "In the first place they may come in useful to us yet, and even if we never get astride of them again they may come in mighty handy for food. I don't say as we mayn't get a bear if there are openings in the cañon, or terraces where they can come down, but if there ain't it is just horse-meat we have got to depend on. Look here, boys, it is 'tarnal dark here; I can't see my own hand. I vote we get a light. There is a lot of drift-wood jammed in among the stones where we climbed up, that will do to start a fire, and I saw a lot more just at the mouth of this gap. We know the red-skins ain't near yet, so I vote we grope our way up and bring some down. It will be a first-rate thing, too, to make a bit of fire half-way between here and the mouth; that would put a stop to their crawling up, as they are like enough to try to do, to make out whereabouts we are. Of course we shall have to damp our own fire down if they come, else we should show up agin the light if we went up on the rock." The others agreed at once, for it was dull work sitting there in the black darkness. All had matches, and a piece of dry fir was soon found. This was lighted, and served as a torch with which to climb over the rocks. Jammed in between these on the upper side was a large quantity of drift-wood. This was pulled out, made into bundles, and carried over the rock barrier, and a fire was soon blazing there. Then taking a brand and two axes they went up to the mouth of the gorge, cut up the arms of some trees that had been brought down by the last floods and left there as the water sank. The greater part of these were taken down to their camping-place; the rest, with plenty of small wood to light them, were piled halfway between the barrier and the mouth of the cañon, and were soon blazing brightly. They were returning to their camping-place, when Ben exclaimed that he heard the sound of horses' hoofs. All stopped to listen. "There are not more than three of them," Ben said, "and they are coming along at a canter. I don't expect we shall hear anything of the red-skins until tomorrow morning." They heard the horses enter the cañon, then Jerry shouted: "Are you all right, Harry?" "Yes; the red-skins were all quiet when we came away. Why, where are you?" he shouted again when he came up to the fire. "A hundred yards farther on I will show you a light." Two or three blazing brands were brought up. Harry and the Indians had dismounted at the first fire, and now led their horses up to the stone barrier. "What on arth have you lit that other fire for, Jerry?" Harry asked as he stopped at the foot of the barrier. "Because we shall sleep a dog-goned sight better with it there. As like as not they may send on two or three young warriors to scout. It is as black as a wolf's mouth, and we might have sat listening all night, and then should not have heard them. But with that fire there they dare not come on, for they would know they could not pass it without getting a bullet in them." "Well, it is a very good idea, Jerry; I could not think what was up when I got there and did not see anybody. I see you have another fire over the other side. I could make it out clear enough as we came on." "It will burn down a bit presently," Jerry said. "I should not try to get those horses up here now, Harry. It was a bad place to come up in daylight, and like enough they would break their legs if they tried it now. They will do just as well there as they would on this side, and you can get them over as soon as the day breaks." "I would rather get them over, Jerry; but I see it is a pretty rough place." Leaving the horses, Harry and the Indians climbed over the barrier, and were soon seated with the others round their fire, over which the meat was already frizzling. "So the Indians kept quiet all the afternoon, Harry?" "As quiet as is their nature. Two or three times some of them rode down, and galloped backwards and forwards in front of us to make out if we were there. Each time we let them fool about for a good long spell, and then when they got a bit careless sent them a ball or two to let them know we were still there. Hunting Dog went with the three horses half a mile down the valley soon after you had gone, so that they might not hear us ride off. "As soon as it began to get dusk we started. We had to come pretty slow, for it got so dark under the trees we could not make out the trunks, and had to let the horses pick their own way. But we knew there was no hurry, for they would not follow till morning, though of course their scouts would creep up as soon as it was dark, and wouldn't be long before they found out that we had left." "I reckon they will all come and camp in the wood and wait for daylight before they move, though I don't say two or three scouts may not crawl down to try and find out where we are. They will move pretty slow, for they will have to pick their way, and will know well enough that if a twig cracks it will bring bullets among them. I reckon they won't get here under four or five hours. It is sartin they won't try to pass that fire above. As soon as they see us they will take word back to the others, and we shall have the whole lot down here by morning." "We shall have to get the horses over, the first thing. Two of us had best go down, as soon as it is light enough to ride without risking our necks, to see what the cañon is like below." "Yes, that is most important, Jerry; there may be some break where the red-skins could get down, and so catch us between two fires." "I don't care a red cent for the Utes," Jerry said. "We can lick them out of their boots in this cañon. What we have been thinking of, is whether there is some place where the horses can get enough to keep them alive while we are shut up here. If there is game, so much the better; if there ain't, we have got to take to horseflesh." "How long do you suppose that the Indians are likely to wait when they find that they can't get at us?" Tom asked. "There ain't no sort of saying," his uncle replied. "I reckon no one ever found out yet how long a red-skin's patience will last. Time ain't nothing to them. They will follow up this cañon both sides till they are sartin that there ain't no place where a man can climb up. If there ain't, they will just squat in that valley. Like enough they will send for their lodges and squaws and fix themselves there till winter comes, and even then they might not go. They have got wood and water. Some of them will hunt and bring in meat, which they will dry for the winter; and they are just as likely to stay here as to go up to their villages." A vigilant watch was kept up all night, two of them being always on guard at the top of the barrier. As soon as morning broke, the three horses were got over, and half an hour later Harry and Sam Hicks rode off down the cañon, while the others took their places on guard, keeping themselves well behind the rocks, between which they looked out. They had not long to wait, for an Indian was seen to dart rapidly across the mouth of the cañon. Two rifles cracked out, but the Indian's appearance and disappearance was so sudden and quick that they had no reason to believe that they had hit him. "They will know now that we are here, and are pretty wide awake," Ben said. "You may be sure that he caught sight of these rocks." A minute or two later several rifles flashed from among the fallen stones at the mouth of the gorge. "Keep your eyes open," Jerry said, "and when you see the slightest movement, fire. But don't do it unless you feel certain that you make out a head or a limb. We've got to show the Utes that it is sartin death to try and crawl up here." Almost immediately afterwards a head appeared above the stones, the chief's rifle cracked, and at the same instant the head disappeared. "Do you think you got him, chief?" "Think so, not sure. Leaping Horse does not often miss his mark at two hundred yards." Almost directly afterwards Tom fired. An Indian sprang to his feet and bounded away. "What did you fire at, Tom?" "I think it was his arm and shoulder," Tom replied. "I was not sure about it, but I certainly saw something move." "I fancy you must have hit him, or he would not have got up. Waal, now I reckon we are going to have quiet for a bit. They must have had a good look at the place while they were lying there, and must have seen that it air too strong for them. I don't say they mayn't come on again tonight--that they may do, but I think it air more likely they won't try it. They would know that we should be on the watch, and with seven rifles and Colts we should account for a grist of them afore they got over. What do you say, chief?" "Not come now," the Indian said positively. "Send men first along top see if can get down. Not like come at night; the cañons of the Colorado very bad medicine, red-skins no like come into them. If no way where we can get up, then Utes sit down to starve us." "That will be a longish job, chief. A horse a week will keep us for three months." "If no food for horse, horse die one week." "So they will, chief. We must wait till Harry comes back, then we shall know what our chances are." It was six hours before Harry and Sam returned. There was a shout of satisfaction from the men when they saw that they had on their saddles the hind-quarters of a bear. "Waal, what is the news, Harry?" "It ain't altogether good, Ben. It goes down like this for about twelve miles, then it widens out sudden. It gets into a crumbly rock which has got worn away, and there is a place maybe about fifty yards wide and half a mile long, with sloping sides going up a long way, and then cliff all round. The bottom is all stones; there are a few tufts of coarse grass growing between them. On the slopes there are some bushes, and on a ledge high up we made out a bear. We had two or three shots at him, and at last brought him down. There may be more among the bushes; there was plenty of cover for them." "There was no place where there was a chance of getting up, Harry?" "Nary a place. I don't say as there may not be, but we couldn't see one." "But the bear must have got down." "No. He would come down here in the dry season looking for water-holes, and finding the place to his liking he must have concluded to settle there. It is just the place a bear would choose, for he might reckon pretty confident that there weren't no chance of his being disturbed. Well, we went on beyond that, and two miles lower the cañon opened again, and five minutes took us down on to the bank of the Colorado. There was no great room between the river and the cliff, but there were some good-sized trees there, and plenty of bush growing up some distance. We caught sight of another bear, but as we did not want him we left him alone." "Waal, let us have some b'ar-meat first of all," Jerry said. "We finished our meat last night, and bread don't make much of a meal, I reckon. Anyhow we can all do with another, and after we have done we will have a talk. We know what to expect now, and can figure it up better than we could before." CHAPTER XV THE COLORADO "Well, boys," Harry Wade began after they had smoked for some time in silence, "we have got to look at this matter squarely. So far we have got out of a mighty tight place better than we expected. Yesterday it seemed to us that there weren't much chance of our carrying our hair away, but now we are out of that scrape. But we are in another pretty nigh as bad, though there ain't much chance of the red-skins getting at us." "That air so, Harry. We are in a pretty tight hole, you bet. They ain't likely to get our scalps for some time, but there ain't no denying that our chance of carrying them off is dog-goned small." "You bet there ain't, Jerry," Sam Hicks said. "Them pizon varmint will camp outside here; for they know they have got us in a trap. They mayn't attack us at present, but we have got to watch night and day. Any dark night they may take it into their heads to come up, and there won't be nothing to prevent them, for the rustling of the stream among the rocks would cover any little noise they might make. The first we should know of it would be the yell of the varmint at the foot of this barrier, and afore we could get to the top the two on guard would be tomahawked, and they would be down on us like a pack of wolves. I would a'most as soon put down my rifle and walk straight out now and let them shoot me, if I knew they would do it without any of their devilish tortures, as go on night after night, expecting to be woke up with their war-yell in my ears. "Of course they will be always keeping a watch there at the mouth of the cañon,--a couple of boys are enough for that,--for they will know that if we ride out on our horses we must go right up the valley, and it is a nasty place to gallop through in the dark; besides, some of them will no doubt be placed higher up to cut us off, and if we got through, which ain't likely, they could ride us down in a few hours. If we crept out on foot and got fairly among the trees we should be no better off, for they would take up our trail in the morning and hunt us down. I tell you fairly, boys, I don't see any way out of it. I reckon it will come to our having to ride out together, and to wipe out as many of the Utes as possible afore we go down. What do you say, chief?" "Leaping Horse agrees with his white brother, Straight Harry, whose mind he knows." "Waal, go on then, Harry," Sam said. "I thought that you had made an end of it or I wouldn't have opened out. I don't see no way out of it at present, but if you do I am ready to fall in with it whatever it is." "I see but one way out of it, boys. It is a mighty risky thing, but it can't be more risky than stopping here, and there is just a chance. I spoke to the chief last night, and he owned that it didn't seem to him there was a chance in that or any other way. However, he said that if I went he would go with me. My proposal is this, that we take to the river and try and get through the cañons." There was a deep silence among the men. The proposal took them by surprise. No man had ever accomplished the journey. Though two parties similarly attacked by Indians had attempted to raft down some of the cañons higher up; one party perished to a man, one survivor of the other party escaped to tell the tale; but as to the cañons below, through which they would have to pass, no man had ever explored them. The Indians regarded the river with deep awe, and believed the cañons to be peopled with demons. The enterprise was so stupendous and the dangers to be met with so terrible, that ready as the western hunters were to encounter dangers, no one had ever attempted to investigate the windings and turnings of the river that for two thousand miles made its way through terrific precipices, and ran its course some three thousand feet below the surrounding country, until it emerged on to the plains of Mexico. "That was why I was so anxious to reach the river," Harry went on after a pause. "I wanted to see whether there were some trees, by which we could construct a raft, near its bank. Had there not been, I should have proposed to follow it up or down, as far as we could make our way, in hopes of lighting on some trees. However, as it is they are just handy for us. I don't say as we shall get through, boys, but there is just a chance of it. I don't see any other plan that would give us a show." Jerry was the first to speak. "Waal, Harry, you can count me in. One might as well be drowned in a rapid or carried over a fall as killed, or, wuss, taken and tortured by the red-skins." "That is so, Jerry," Sam Hicks agreed. While Ben said: "Waal, if we git through it will be something to talk about all our lives. In course there ain't no taking the horses?" "That is out of the question, Ben. We shall not have much time to spare, for the Utes may take it into their heads to attack us any night; and, besides, we have no means of making a big raft. We might tie two or three trunks together with the lariats and spike a few cross-pieces on them, we might even make two such rafts; that is the outside. They will carry us and our stores, but as for the horses, we must either leave them down in the hollow for the Indians to find, or put a bullet through their heads. I expect the latter will be the best thing for them, poor beasts." "No want trees," the chief said. "Got horses' skins; make canoes." "You are right, chief," Harry exclaimed; "I never thought of that. That would be the very thing. Canoes will go down the rapids where the strongest rafts would be dashed to pieces, and if we come to a bad fall we can make a shift to carry them round." The others were no less pleased with the suggestion, and the doubtful expression of their faces as they assented to the scheme now changed to one of hopefulness, and they discussed the plan eagerly. It was agreed that not a moment should be lost in setting to work to carry it out, and that they should forthwith retreat to the mouth of the lower cañon; for all entertained a secret misgiving that the Utes might make their attack that night, and felt that if that attack were made in earnest it would succeed. It was certain they would be able to find some point at which the lower gorge could be held; and at any rate a day would be gained, for at whatever hour of the night the Indians came up they would not venture farther until daybreak, and there would probably be a long palaver before they would enter the lower cañon. Tom had not spoken. He recognized the justice of Harry's reasoning, but had difficulty in keeping his tears back at the thought of his horse being killed. For well-nigh a year it had carried him well; he had tended and cared for it; it would come to his call and rub its muzzle against his cheek. He thought that had he been alone he would have risked anything rather than part with it. "Don't you like the plan, Tom?" Harry said to him, as, having packed and saddled the horses, they rode together down the cañon. "I don't suppose the passage is so terrible after all." "I am not thinking of the passage at all, uncle," Tom said almost indignantly; "it will be a grand piece of adventure; but I don't like--I hate--the thought of my horse being killed. It is like killing a dear friend to save one's self." "It is a wrench, lad," Harry said kindly; "I can quite understand your feelings, and don't like the thought myself. But I see that it has got to be done, and after all it will be better to kill the poor brutes than to let them fall into the hands of the Indians, who don't know what mercy to their beasts means, and will ride them till they drop dead without the least compunction." "I know it is better, uncle, ever so much better--but it is horrible all the same. Anyhow, don't ask me to do it, for I could not." "I will see to that, Tom. You shall be one of the guards of the cañon. You would not be of much use in making the canoes, and you won't have to know anything about it till you go down and get on board." Tom nodded his thanks; his heart was too full for him to speak, and he felt that if he said a word he should break down altogether. They rode rapidly along, passed through the little valley where the bear had been killed, without stopping, and went down the lower cañon, carefully examining it to fix upon the most suitable point for defence. There had been no recent fall, and though at some points great boulders lay thickly, there was no one place that offered special facilities for defence. "Look here, boys," Harry said, reining up his horse at a point within two hundred yards of the lower end, "we can't do better than fix ourselves here. An hour's work will get up a wall that will puzzle the red-skins to get over, and there is the advantage that a shot fired here by the guard will bring our whole force up in a couple of minutes. I vote we ride the horses down to the river and let them pick up what they can, and then come back here and build the wall. It will be getting dark in an hour's time, and we may as well finish that job at once. Ben and Sam, you may as well pick out a couple of young fir-trees and bring them down at once, then there will be no time lost. Five of us will be enough for the wall. Keep your eyes open. Likely enough there is a bear or two about, and it would be a great thing for us to lay in a stock of meat before we start." As soon as they issued from the gorge the horses were unsaddled and the stores taken off the pack-animals. As they were doing this Harry said a few words in a low tone to Sam. He then carefully examined the trees, and picked out two young firs. Sam and Ben took their axes, and the other five went up the gorge again, and were soon hard at work collecting boulders and piling them in a wall. "There is a gun, uncle," Tom exclaimed presently. "Well, I hope they have got sight of a bear, we shall want a stock of meat badly." A dozen shots were fired, but Tom thought no more of it as he proceeded with his work. The bottom of the cañon was but fifteen feet wide, and by the time it was dark they had a solid wall across it nearly six feet high, with places for them to stand on to fire over. "Now then, Tom, you may as well take post here at once. I will send Sam or Ben up to watch with you. I don't think there is a shadow of chance of their coming to-night, but there is never any answering for red-skins. I would leave Hunting Dog with you, but we shall want him to help make the framework for the canoes; the Indians are a deal handier than we are in making lashings. I will send your supper up here, lad, and your buffalo robes. Then you can take it by turns to watch and sleep. I reckon we shall be at work all night; we have got to get the job finished as quick as we can." A quarter of an hour later Sam Hicks came up. "Have you got the trees down, Sam?" "Lor' bless you, it didn't take a minute to do that. We got them down and split them up, then lit a fire and got the meat over it and the kettle, and mixed the dough." "Did you kill another bear? We heard you firing." "No; the critter was too high up, and I ain't much good at shooting. Perhaps they will get sight of him tomorrow, and Harry and the chief will bring him down if he is within range of their shooting-irons. It is 'tarnal dark up here." In twenty minutes two lights were seen approaching, and Harry and Hunting Dog came up carrying pine-wood torches. Each had a great faggot of wood fastened on his back, and Harry also carried the frying-pan, on which were a pile of meat and two great hunks of bread, while Hunting Dog brought two tin pannikins of hot tea. "That will make it more cheerful for you," Harry said, as he unfastened the rope that tied the faggot to his shoulders. "Now, Hunting Dog, get a good fire as soon as you can, and then come down again to us." The fire was soon blazing merrily, and Tom and Sam sat down to enjoy their meal. "Don't you think one of us ought to keep watch, Sam?" "Not a bit of it," Sam said. "The red-skins will never dare to enter that cañon until after dark, and if they started now and made their way straight on, they would not be here for another three or four hours. I would bet my boots they don't come at all tonight; even if they were not scared at us, they would be scared at coming near the river in the dark. No, we will just take our meal comfortable and smoke a pipe, and then I will take first watch and you shall take a sleep. We ain't closed an eye since the night before last." Tom, indeed, was nearly asleep before he had finished his pipe, and felt that he really must get a nap. So saying to Sam, "Be sure and wake me in two hours," he rolled himself in his robe and instantly fell asleep. It seemed to him that he had only just gone off when Sam roused him. He leapt to his feet, however, rifle in hand. "Anything the matter, Sam?" "Everything quiet," the miner replied. "What did you wake me for then? I have not been asleep five minutes." "According to my reckoning, mate, you have been asleep better'n five hours. It was about half-past eight when you went off, and I reckon it is two now, and will begin to get light in another hour. I would not have waked you till daybreak, but I found myself dropping off." "I am awfully sorry," Tom began. "Don't you trouble, young un. By the time you have been as long in the West as I have you won't think anything of two nights' watch. Now you keep a sharp lookout. I don't think there is much chance of their coming, but I don't want to be woke up with a red-skin coming right down on the top of me." "I see you have let the fire out, Sam," Tom said, with a little shiver. "I put it out hours ago," Sam said, as he prepared to lie down. "It would never have done to keep it all night, for a red-skin would see my head over the top of the wall, while I should not get a sight of him till he was within arm's-length." Tom took up his post, and gazed earnestly into the darkness beyond the wall. He felt that his sense of vision would be of no use whatever, and therefore threw all his faculties into that of listening. Slight as was the chance of the Indians coming, he yet felt somewhat nervous, and it was a satisfaction to him to see beyond the mouth of the cañon the glow of the fire, by which, as he knew, the others were hard at work. In an hour the morning began to break, and as soon as he could see well up the cañon he relighted the fire, jumping up to take a look over the wall every minute or so. It was not long before he saw his uncle approaching with a kettle. "I saw your smoke, Tom, and guessed that you would be glad of a mug of hot tea. You have seen no signs of Indians, I suppose?" "We have heard nothing, uncle. As to seeing, up to half an hour ago there was no possibility of making out anything. But I have not even been listening; Sam went on guard directly we had finished supper, and I asked him to call me in two hours, but he did not wake me until two o'clock." "He is a good fellow," Harry said. "Well, don't wake him now. I can't leave you the kettle, for we have to keep boiling water going, but you can put his tin into the ashes and warm it up when he wakes. Here are a couple of pieces of bread." "Why do you have to keep the kettle boiling, uncle?" "To bend the wood with. The piece we are working on is kept damp with boiling water. We hold it for a time over the fire, pouring a little water on as fast as it evaporates; that softens the wood, and we can bend it much more evenly than we could if we did it by force. Besides, when it is fastened into its position it remains, when it is dry, in that shape, and throws no strain on to anything." "Are you getting on well?" "Capitally. We should have done both the frames by now, but we were obliged to make them very strong so as to resist the bumps they are sure to get against rocks. When they are finished you might almost let them drop off the top of a house, they will be so strong and elastic. If the Indians will but give us time we shall make a first-rate job of them." Three hours later Harry came up again with the kettle and some cooked meat. Sam had just woke up, and was quite angry with Tom for not rousing him before. "The others have been working all night," he said, "and here have I been asleep for five hours; a nice sort of mate they will think me." "Well, but you were watching five hours, Sam; and I would a deal rather work all night than stand here for two hours in the dark, wondering all the time whether the Indians are crawling up, and expecting at any moment to hear a rush against the wall." "I am going to take your place, Sam, when you have finished your breakfast," Harry said, as he came up. "If the Utes found out last night that we had gone, their scouts may be coming down before long. My rifle shoots a bit straighter than yours does." "It ain't the rifle, Harry," Sam said good-temperedly; "it is the eye that is wrong, not the shooting-iron. I never had much practice with these long guns, but when it comes to a six-shooter, I reckon I can do my share as well as most. But they won't give me a chance with it." "I hope they won't, Sam. I am sure they won't as long as there is light, and I hope that before it gets dark they will conclude to leave us alone." A vigilant watch was kept now. "I think I saw a head look out from that corner," Tom exclaimed suddenly, two hours after Sam had left them. "I am quite sure I did, Tom. We must wait until he shows himself a bit more. I reckon it is a good three hundred yards off, and a man's head is a precious small mark at that distance. Stand a bit higher and lay your rifle on the wall. Don't fire if he only puts his head out. They know we can shoot, so there is not any occasion to give them another lesson. I don't hold to killing, unless you have got to do it. Let him have a good look at us. "When he goes back and tells the tribe that there is a three hundred yards' straight passage without shelter, and a strong wall across the end of it, and two white men with rifles ready to shoot, I reckon they will know a good deal better than to try to come up it, as long as there is light. Besides, they won't think there is any occasion to hurry, for they won't count on our taking to the river, and will know that we shall be keeping watch at night. So it may very well be that they will reckon on wearing us out, and that we may not hear of them for a week. There is the fellow's head again!" The head remained visible round the corner of the rock for two or three minutes. "He knows all about it now, Tom. You won't see any more of him to-day. I will go down and lend them a hand below." Tom asked no questions about the horses; he had thought of them a score of times as he stood on guard, and the thought had occurred to him that it was possible the shots he had heard while they were building the wall on the previous afternoon, had been the death shots of the horses. It did not occur to him when Sam was telling the story about the bear, that this was a got-up tale, but when he came to think it over, he thought it probable that it was so. Sam himself was not much of a shot, but Ben, although inferior to Harry or either of the two Indians, shot as well as Jerry, and would hardly have missed a bear three or four times running. Each time the thought of the horses occurred to him he resolutely put it aside, and concentrated his mind upon the probable perils of the passage down the cañons and the wonderful gorges they would traverse, and the adventures and excitement they were sure to pass through. He thought how fortunate it was they had taken the precaution of sending their specimens of quartz back to the fort; for were they in the canoes, the fruits of the journey would be irrevocably lost were these to upset; for now the Indians had twice discovered the presence of whites in the valley they would be sure to watch it closely, and it would not be possible to go up to the mine again unless in strong force. The day passed quietly. Harry brought up Tom's meals, and late in the afternoon all hands came up, and the wall of stones was raised four feet, making it almost impregnable against a sudden attack. The two Indians took post there with Tom, and watched alternately all night. The Utes, however, remained perfectly quiet. They probably felt sure that the fugitives must sooner or later be forced to surrender, and were disinclined to face the loss that must occur before so strong a position, defended by seven men armed with rifles and revolvers, could be carried. At three o'clock on the following afternoon Hunting Dog came up. "Tom go down and get dinner," he said, "Hunting Dog will watch." Tom took his rifle and started down the cañon. "Come on, lad," his uncle shouted. "We are pretty near ready for a start, and have all had our dinner; so be quick about it. We want to get well away from here before night." Tom went to the fire and ate his meal. As he sat down he saw that the stores, blankets, and robes had all been carried away. When he finished, his uncle led him down to the river. Two canoes were floating in the water, and the other men were standing beside them. "There, Tom, what do you think of them?" "They are splendid, uncle; it seems impossible that you can have built them in two days." "Five hands can do a lot of canoe-building in forty-eight hours' work, Tom." The canoes were indeed models of strength if not of beauty. They were each about twenty feet long and five feet wide. Two strong pieces of pine two inches square ran along the top of each side, and one of the same width but an inch deeper formed the keel. The ribs, an inch wide and three-quarters of an inch thick, were placed at intervals of eighteen inches apart. The canoes were almost flat-bottomed. The ribs lay across the keel, which was cut away to allow them to lie flush in it, a strong nail being driven in at the point of junction--these being the only nails used in the boat's construction. The ribs ran straight out to almost the full width of the canoe, and were then turned sharp up, the ends being lashed with thongs of hide to the upper stringers. Outside the ribs were lashed longitudinal wattles of tough wood about an inch wide. They were placed an inch apart, extending over the bottom and halfway up the side. Over all was stretched the skin, five horses' hides having been used for each boat. They were very strongly sewed together by a double row of thongs, the overlaps having, before being sewed, been smeared with melted fat. Cross-pieces of wood at the top kept the upper framework in its place. The hair of the skin was outward, the inner glistened with the fat that had been rubbed into it. "They are strong indeed," Tom said. "They ought to stand anything, uncle." "Yes, I think they would stand a blow against any rock if it hadn't a cutting edge. They would just bound off as a basket would. Of course they are very heavy for canoes; but as they won't have to carry more than the weight of four men each, they will draw little over a couple of inches or so of water. "That is why we made them so wide. We could not get strength without weight; and as there is no saying what shallows there may be, and how close in some places rocks may come up to the surface, we were obliged to build them wide to get light draught. You see we have made ten paddles, so as to have a spare one or two in case of breakage. We have two spare hides, so that we shall have the means of repairing damages." Tom said nothing about the horses. Manufactured into a boat, as the skins were, there was not much to remind him of them; but he pressed his uncle's hand and said, "Thank you very much, uncle; I don't mind so much now, but I should not like to have seen them before." "That is all right, Tom; it was a case of necessity. Sam and Ben shot them directly we got here." The stores were all laid by the boats, being divided between them so that the cargoes were in all respects duplicates of each other. Before Tom came down some had already been placed in each boat, with a blanket thrown over them. "You have got the gold, I suppose, uncle?" "You may bet that we did not leave that behind. There is half in each boat, and the bags are lashed to the timbers, so that if there is an upset they cannot get lost." "How are we going?" "We have settled that you and I and the two Indians shall go together, and the rest in the other boat. The Indians know nothing of canoeing, and won't be of very much use. I know you were accustomed to boats, and I did some rowing when I was a young man. I wish we had a couple of Canadian Indians with us, or of half-breeds; they are up to this sort of work, and with one in the stern of each canoe it would be a much less risky business going down the rapids. However, no doubt we shall get handy with the paddles before long." When everything was ready Harry fired his rifle, and in a couple of minutes Hunting Dog came running down. The others had already taken their seats. He stepped into Harry's boat, and they at once pushed off. The river was running smoothly here, and Harry said, "Directly we get down a little way we will turn the boat's head up stream and practise for a bit. It would never do to get down into rough water before we can use the paddles fairly." Tom sat in the bow of his boat, Hunting Dog was next to him, then came the chief, and Harry sat in the stern. A paddle is a much easier implement to manage for a beginner than is an oar, and it was not long before they found that they could propel the boats at a fair rate. In a short time they had passed the end of the shelf at the mouth of the cañon, and the cliffs on that side rose as abruptly as they did on the other. The river was some eighty yards wide. "We will turn here," Harry said, "and paddle up. We sha'n't do more than keep abreast of these rocks now, for the stream runs fast though it is so smooth." They found, indeed, that they had to work hard to hold their position. "Now, Tom," Harry sang out, "it is you and I do the steering, you know. When you want the head to go to the right you must work your paddle out from the boat, when you want to go to the left you must dip it in the water rather farther out and draw it towards the boat. Of course when you have got the paddle the other side you must do just the contrary. You must sing out right or left according as you see rocks ahead, and I shall steer with my paddle behind. I have a good deal more power over the boat than you have, and you must depend upon me for the steering, unless there is occasion for a smart swerve." At first the two boats shot backwards and forwards across the stream in a very erratic way, but after an hour's practice the steersmen found the amount of force required. An hour later Harry thought that they were competent to make a start, and turning they shot rapidly past the cliffs. In a couple of miles there was a break in the rocks to the left. "We will land there," Harry said. "There are trees near the water and bushes farther up. We will make a camp there. There is no saying how far we may have to go before we get another opportunity. We have done with the Utes for good, and can get a sound night's sleep. If you, chief, will start with Hunting Dog as soon as we land, we will get the things ashore and light the fire. Maybe you will be able to get a bear for us." They did not trouble to haul up the canoes, but fastened them by the head-ropes, which were made from lariats, to trees on the shore. Daylight was beginning to fade as they lighted the fire. No time was lost before mixing the dough, and it was in readiness by the time that there were sufficient glowing embers to stand the pot in. The kettle was filled and hung on a tripod over the fire. In a short time the Indians returned empty-handed. "No find bear," the chief said, "getting too dark to hunt. To-morrow morning try." Harry got up and went to the boats, and returned directly with a joint of meat. Tom looked up in surprise. "It is not from yours, Tom," Jerry said as he saw him looking at it. "We took the hind-quarters of the four pack-ponies, but left the others alone. It was no use bringing more, for it would not keep." "So it is horseflesh!" Tom rather shrank from the idea of eating it, and nothing would have induced him to touch it had he thought that it came from his own favourite. Some steaks were cut and placed in the frying-pan, while strips were hung over the fire for those who preferred the meat in that way. Tom felt strongly inclined to refuse altogether, but when he saw that the others took their meat as a matter of course, and proceeded to eat with a good appetite, he did not like to do so. He hesitated, however, before tasting it; but Harry said with a laugh, "Fire away, Tom. You can hardly tell it from beef, and they say that in Paris lots of horseflesh is sold as beef." Thus encouraged, Tom took a mouthful, and found it by no means bad, for from their long stay in the valley the animals were all in excellent condition, and he acknowledged to himself that he would not have known the flesh from beef. "I call it mighty good for a change." Terry said. "Out on the plains, where one can get buffalo, one would not take horse for choice, but as we have been eating deer and bear meat for about a year, horse-meat ain't bad by no means. What! You won't take another bit, Tom?" "Not to-night, Jerry; next time I shall be all right. But it is my first trial, you know, and though I can't say it is not good, it gives me a queer feeling, so I will stick to the bread." "Well, boys," Harry said presently, "we have made a first-rate start, and have got out of a big scrape, easier than I ever looked for. We could not have got two better canoes for our work if we had had them brought special from Canada, and it seems to me that they ought to go down pretty near anywhere without much damage. We shall get real handy with our paddles in two or three days, and I hope we sha'n't meet with any big rapids until we have got into the way of managing them well." "You bet, Harry, we have got out well," said Jerry. "I tell you it looked downright ugly, and I wouldn't have given a continental for our chances. As for the rapids, I guess we shall generally find rocks one side or the other where we can make our way along, and we can let down the canoes by the ropes. Anyhow, we need not get skeery over them. After getting out of that valley with our hair on, the thought of them does not trouble me a cent." CHAPTER XVI AFLOAT IN CANOES The two Indians were off long before daylight, and just as the others were having a wash at the edge of the river they heard the crack of a rifle some distance up the cliff. "Bear!" Jerry exclaimed; "and I reckon they have got it, else we should have heard another shot directly afterwards. That will set us up in food for some time. Get the fire made up, Tom, you won't have to eat horse steak for breakfast unless you like." The Indians returned half an hour later laden with as much bear-flesh as they could carry. "I vote we stop here for two days," Harry said. "We have got a lot of meat now, but it won't keep for twenty-four hours in this heat, so I vote we cut it up and dry it as the Indians do buffalo-meat; it will keep any time. Besides, we deserve a couple of days' rest, and we can practise paddling while the meat dries. We got on very well yesterday, but I do want us to get quite at home in the boats before we get to a bad bit." The proposal was agreed to, and as soon as breakfast was over the whole of the meat was cut up into thin slices and hung up on cords fastened from tree to tree. "It ought to take three days to do it properly, and four is better," Harry said. "Still, as we have cut it very thin, I should think two days in this hot sun ought to be enough." "Are there any fish in the river, uncle?" "I have no doubt there are, Tom, grists of them, but we have got no hooks." "Jerry has got some, he told me he never travelled without them, and we caught a lot of fish with them up in the mountains just after we started before. I don't know about line, but one might unravel one of the ropes." "I think you might do better than that, Tom. The next small animal we shoot we might make some lines from the gut. They needn't be above five or six feet long. Beyond that we could cut a strip of thirty or forty feet long from one of the hides. However, we can do nothing at present in that way. Now let us get into the canoes and have a couple of hours' paddling. After dinner we will have another good spell at the work." By evening there was a marked improvement in the paddling over that of the previous day, and after having had another day's practice all felt confident that they should get on very well. By nightfall on the second day, the meat was found to be thoroughly dried, and was taken down and packed in bundles, and the next morning they started as soon as it was light. It was agreed that the boats should follow each other at a distance of a hundred yards, so that the leader could signal to the one behind if serious difficulties were made out ahead, and so enable it to row to the bank in time. Were both drawn together into the suck of a dangerous rapid they might find themselves without either boats or stores, whereas if only one of the boats was broken up, there would be the other to fall back upon. Harry's boat was to take the lead on the first day, and Tom, as he knelt in the bows, felt his heart beat with excitement at the thought of the unknown that lay before them, and that they were about to make their way down passes probably unpenetrated by man. Passing between what had seemed to them the entrance to a narrow cañon, they were surprised to rind the river widen out. On their right a great sweep of hills bent round like a vast amphitheatre, the resemblance being heightened by the ledges running in regular lines along it, the cliff being far from perpendicular. "I should think one could climb up there," Tom said, half-turning round to his uncle. "It looks like it, Tom, but there is no saying; some of those steps may be a good deal steeper than they look. However, I have no doubt one could find places where it would be possible to climb if there were any use in doing so, but as we should only find ourselves up on bad lands we should gain nothing by it." "I don't mean we should want to climb up now, uncle; but it seemed a sort of satisfaction to know that there are places where one could climb in case we got the boats smashed up." "If we had to make our way up, lad, it would be much better to go by one of the lateral canons like the one we came down by. I can see at least half a dozen of them going up there. We should certainly find water, and we might find game, but up on the plateau we should find neither one nor the other." On the left-hand bank of the river the cliffs fell still farther back in wide terraces, that rose one behind the other up to a perpendicular cliff half a mile back from the river. There was a shade of green here and there, and the chief pointed far up the hill and exclaimed "Deer!" "That is good," Harry said. "There are sure to be more of these places, and I should think we are not likely to starve anyhow. We can't spare time to stop now; we want to have a long day's paddle to see what it is going to be like, and we have got meat enough for the present. If we happen to see a deer within rifle-shot, so that we can get at him without much loss of time, we will stop, for after all fresh meat is better eating than dry." "I should think it would be, uncle," Tom said. "From the look of the stuff I should think it would be quite as tough as shoe leather and as tasteless." "It needs a set of sharp teeth, Tom, but if you are hard set I have no doubt you will be able to get through it, and at any rate it constitutes the chief food of the Indians between the Missouri and the Rockies." For the next three hours they paddled along on the quiet surface of the river. The other canoe had drawn up, since it was evident that here at least there was no reason why they should keep apart. "I didn't expect we should find it as quiet as this, Harry," Jerry Curtis said. "It is a regular water-party, and I should not mind how long I was at it if it were all like this." "We shall have rough water enough presently, Jerry, and I expect we shall look back on this as the pleasantest part of the trip. It seems to me that the hills close in more towards the end of this sweep. It has made a regular horseshoe." "I reckon it depends upon the nature of the rock," Ben put in. "That is it, you may be sure, Ben. Wherever it is soft rock, in time it crumbles away like this; where it is hard the weather don't affect it much, and we get straight cliffs. I expect it is there we shall find the rapids worst. Well, we shall soon make a trial of them, I fancy. It looks like a wall ahead, but the road must go through somewhere." A quarter of an hour later Harry said: "You had better drop back now, Jerry, there is the gap right ahead. If you see me hold up my paddle you row ashore. When we come to a bad rapid we had better all get out, and make our way down on the rocks as far as we can, to see what it is like. It will never do to go at it blind. Of course we may find places where the water comes to the wall faces on both sides, and then there is nothing to do but to take our chance, but I don't propose to run any risks that I can avoid." There was a perceptible increase in the rate of the current as they neared the gorge, and when they came within a short distance of it Harry gave the signal to the boat behind, and both canoes made for the shore. As they stepped out on to the rocks the chief pointed to a ledge far above them. "There will be time for Hunting Dog to shoot a deer," he said, "while we go down to see cañon." Tom in vain endeavoured to make out the object at which the Indian was pointing. Hunting Dog had evidently noticed it before landing, and upon Harry giving a nod of assent, started off with his rifle. The others waited until Jerry and his companions joined them, and then started along the rocks that had fallen at the foot of the cliffs. They were soon able to obtain a far better view of the gorge than they had done from the canoe. The river ran for a bit in a smooth glassy flood, but a short distance down, it began to form into waves, and beyond that they could see a mass of white foam and breakers. They made their way along the rocks for nearly two miles. It seemed well-nigh impossible to Tom that the boats could go down without being swamped, for the waves were eight or ten feet high, with steep sides capped with white. At last the gorge widened again, and although the cliff to the right rose perpendicularly, on the other side it became less steep, and seemed lower down to assume the same character as that above the gorge. "It looks pretty bad," Harry said, speaking for almost the first time since they had started, for the roar of the water against the rocks, echoed and re-echoed by the cliffs, rendered conversation an impossibility. "It looks bad, but as far as I can see there are no rocks that come up near the surface, and the canoes ought to go through the broken water safely enough." "It is an all-fired nasty-looking place," Jerry said; "but I have heard men who had been in the north talk about rapids they had gone through, and from what they said about them they must have been worse than this. We have got to keep as near the side as we can; the waves ain't as high there as they are in the middle, and we have got to keep the boat's head straight, and to paddle all we know. If we do that, I reckon the canoes will go through." They retraced their steps up the gorge. Hunting Dog was standing by the boat with the dead deer at his feet. Jerry picked it up. "I had better take this, I reckon, Harry. You have got one man more than we have;" and he and his two companions went on to their boat. "Now, what do you think, Tom?" his uncle said. "Can you trust your head to keep cool? It will need a lot of nerve, I can tell you, and if her head swerves in the slightest she will swing round, and over she will go, and it would want some tall swimming to get out of that race. You paddle as well as the chief,--better, I think,--but the chief's nerves are like iron. He has not been practising steering as you have, but as there seem to be no rocks about, that won't matter so much. I ought to be able to keep her straight, if you three paddle hard. It may need a turn of the paddle now and then in the bow, but that we can't tell. So it shall be just as you like, lad. If you think your nerves can stand it you take your usual place, but if you have doubts about it, it were best to let the chief go there." "I think I could stand it, uncle, for I have been out in wherries in some precious rough seas at Spithead; but I think it would be best for the chief to take my place this time, and then I shall see how I feel." Harry said a few words to the chief in his own language, and Leaping Horse without a word stepped into the bow, while Tom took the seat behind him. "We sha'n't be long going down," Harry said, "I reckon the stream is running ten miles an hour, and as we shall be paddling, it will take us through in ten minutes. We had all better sit farther aft, so as to take her bow right out of water. She will go through it ever so much easier so." They shifted their seats until daylight could be seen under the keel a foot from the bow. "I think that is about the right trim," Harry said. "Now paddle all." The boat shot off from the shore. A minute later it darted into the gorge, the Indian setting a long sweeping stroke. There were two or three long heaves, and then they dashed into the race. Tom held his breath at the first wall of water, but, buoyant and lightly laden as the canoe was, with fully a foot of free board, she rose like a feather over it, and darted down into the hollow beyond. Tom kept his eyes fixed on the back of the chief's head, clinched his teeth tightly, and paddled away with all his strength. He felt that were he to look round he should turn giddy at the turmoil of water. Once or twice he was vaguely conscious of Harry's shouts, "Keep her head inshore!" or "A little farther out!" but like a man rowing a race he heeded the words but little. His faculties were concentrated on his work, but he could see a slight swerve of the Indian's body when he was obeying an order. He was not conscious of any change of motion, either in the boat or in the water round, when Harry shouted, "Easy all!" and even then it was the chief's ceasing to paddle rather than Harry's shout which caused him to stop. Then he looked round and saw that the race was passed, and that the canoe was floating in comparatively quiet water. "She is a daisy!" Harry shouted; "we could not do better if we had been all Canadian half-breeds, chief. Now, we had better set to and bale her out as quickly as we can." Tom now for the first time perceived that he was kneeling in water, and that the boat was nearly half-full. Their tea pannikins had been laid by their sides in readiness, and Hunting Dog touched him and passed forward his tin and the chief's, both of which had been swept aft. The Seneca at once began to throw out the water, but Tom for a minute or two was unable to follow his example. He felt as weak as a child. A nervous quivering ran through his body, and his hand trembled so that he could not grasp the handle of the tin. "Feel bad, Tom?" his uncle asked cheerily from behind. "Brace up, lad; it was a pretty warm ten minutes, and I am not surprised you feel it. Now it is over I am a little shaky myself." "I shall be all right presently, uncle." A look at the chief's back did more to steady Tom's nerves than his own efforts. While he himself was panting heavily, and was bathed in perspiration, the chief's breath came so quietly that he could scarce see his shoulders rise and fall, as he baled out the water with perfect unconcern. With an effort the boy took hold of his dipper, and by the time the boat was empty his nerves were gaining their steadiness, though his breath still came quickly. As he laid down his tin he looked round. "Heap water," Hunting Dog said with a smile; "run like herd of buffalo." The other boat lay twenty yards behind them, and was also engaged in baling. "All right now, Tom?" "All right, uncle; but it is lucky you put the chief in the bows. I should have made a mess of it; for from the time we got into the waves it seemed nothing but confusion, and though I heard your voice I did not seem to understand what you said." "It was a trial to the nerves, Tom, but we shall all get accustomed to it before we get through. Well, thank God, we have made our first run safely. Now paddle on, we will stop at the first likely place and have a meal." A mile farther they saw a pile of drift-wood on the left bank, and Harry at once headed the canoe to it, and drawing the boat carefully alongside they got out. A minute later the other canoe joined them. "Jee-hoshaphat, Harry!" Jerry exclaimed as he stepped out; "that was worse nor a cyclone. I would rather sit on the back of the worst kind of bucker than jump over those waves again. If we are going to have much of this I should say let us find our way back and ask the Utes to finish us off." "It was a rough bit, Jerry; but it might have been a deal worse if there had been rocks in the stream. All we had to do was to keep her straight and paddle." "And a pretty big all, too," Jerry grumbled. "I felt skeered pretty nigh out of my wits, and the other two allow they were just as bad. If it hadn't been for your boat ahead I reckon we should never have gone through it, but as long as you kept on straight, there didn't seem any reason why we shouldn't. I tell you I feel so shaky that if there were a grizzly twenty yards off I am blamed if I could keep the muzzle of my rifle on it." Tom had been feeling a good deal ashamed of his nervousness, and was much relieved at hearing that these seasoned men had felt somewhat the same as he had done. "What do you say, boys," Harry asked when breakfast had been cooked and eaten, "if we stop here for to-day? Likely enough we may get some game, and if not it won't matter, for the deer will last us a couple of days." "You bet," Ben Gulston said; "I think we have had enough of the water for to-day. I don't feel quite sure now I ain't going round and round, and I don't think any of us will feel right till we have had a night's sleep. Besides, all the rugs and blankets are wet and want spreading out in the sun for a bit, and the flour will want overhauling." "That settles it, Ben; let us get all the outfit out of the boats at once." After the things had been laid out to dry the two Indians went off in search of game; but none of the others felt any inclination to move, and they spent the rest of the day lying about smoking and dozing. The Indians brought back a big-horn, and the next morning the canoes dropped down the stream again. For some miles the river flowed quietly along a wide valley. At the end of that time it made an abrupt turn and entered the heart of the mountains. As before, Harry's canoe went in advance. The cañon was here a deep gloomy chasm, with almost perpendicular sides, and for some distance the river ran swiftly and smoothly, then white water was seen ahead, so the two boats rowed in to the rocks at the foot of the precipice, and the occupants proceeded to explore the pass ahead. It was of a different character to the last. Black rocks rose everywhere above the surface, and among these the river flowed with extraordinary force and rapidity, foaming and roaring. All agreed that it was madness to think of descending here, and that a portage was necessary. The contents of the boats were lifted out, and then one of them was carried down over the rocks by the united strength of the party. They had gone half a mile when they came to a spot where they could go no farther, as the water rushed along against the rock wall itself. Some fifty yards further down they could see that the ledge again began. "We must go and fetch the other boat," Harry shouted above the din of the water, "and let them down one by one. There is no other way to do it." The second boat was brought down, and another journey was made to bring down the stores. The lariats were then tied together. "Let us sit down and smoke a pipe before we do anything more," Jerry said. "Three times up and down them rocks is worse nor thirty miles on a level." All were glad to adopt this suggestion, and for half an hour they sat watching the rushing waters. As they did so they discussed how they had better divide their forces, and agreed that Harry's boat should, as before, go down first. Three men would be required to let the boat down, and it would need at least four to check the second boat when it came abreast of them. Although all felt certain that a single line of the plaited hide would be sufficient, they determined to use two lines to ensure themselves against risk. "I should let them run out fast at first, Jerry, only keeping enough strain on them to keep her head well up stream. Begin to check her gradually, and let her down only inch by inch. When you see we are close to the rocks, hold her there while we get her alongside, and don't leave go till we lift her from the water. Directly we are out, fasten the ropes to the bow of your canoe, then launch her carefully; and whatever you do, don't let go of the rope. Launch her stern first close to the wall, then two get in and get well towards the stern, while the other holds the rope until the last moment. Then those two in the boat must begin to paddle as hard as they can, while the last man jumps in and snatches up his paddle. Keep her head close to the wall, for if the current catches it and takes her round she would capsize in a moment against those rocks. Paddle all you know; we shall haul in the rope as fast as you come down. When you come abreast two of us will check her, and the others will be on the rocks to catch hold of her side as she swings in." The first canoe was launched stern foremost, the four men took their seats in her and began to paddle against, the stream with all their strength, while Jerry and his companions let the lines run through their fingers. The boat glanced along by the side of the wall. The men above put on more and more strain, giving a turn of the ropes round a smooth water-worn rock they had before picked out as suitable for the purpose. The water surged against the bow of the canoe, lifting it higher and higher as the full strain of the rope came upon it. The chief was kneeling in the stern facing the rocks below, and as the canoe came abreast of them he brought her in alongside. Harry held up his paddle, the men above gave another turn of the ropes round the rock, and the canoe remained stationary. Hunting Dog sprang out on to the rocks, and taking hold of the blade of the chief's paddle, brought the canoe in so close that the others were able to step ashore without difficulty. The baggage was taken out, and the canoe lifted from the water, turned upside down, and laid on the rocks. Harry held up his hand to show that they were ready, having before he did so chosen a stone round which to wind the lariats. The other boat was then launched. Sam and Ben took their places astern and began to paddle against the stream. As they were in the back-water below the ledge of rock they were able to keep her stationary while Jerry took his place and got out his paddle. When all were ready, they paddled her out from the back-water. As soon as the current caught her she flew past the cliff like an arrow, although the three men were now paddling at the top of their speed. Harry and the chief pulled in the rope hand over hand, while Hunting Dog and Tom went a short way down the rocks. "Don't check her too suddenly, chief," Harry shouted. "Let the rope run out easy at first and bring the strain on gradually." "The ropes will hold," the chief said. "One stop buffalo in gallop, two stop boat." "Yes, but you would pull the head out of the canoe; chief, if you stopped her too suddenly." The chief nodded. He had not thought of that. In spite of the efforts of the oarsmen the canoe's head was swerving across the stream just as she came abreast of them. A moment later she felt the check of the rope. "Easy, chief, easy!" Harry shouted, as the water shot up high over the bow of the canoe. "Wait till she gets a bit lower or we shall capsize her." The check of the bow had caused the stern to swerve out, and when they again checked her she was several lengths below them with her head inclined to shore. More and more strain was put on the ropes, until they were as taut as iron bars. A moment later Tom and Hunting Dog seized two paddles held out to them, and the boat came gently in alongside. "Gosh!" Ben exclaimed, as he stepped ashore, "it has taken as much out of me as working a windlass for a day. I am blamed if I did not think the hull boat was coming to pieces. I thought it was all over with us for sure, Harry; when she first felt the rope, the water came in right over the side." "It was touch and go, Ben; but there was a rock just outside you, and if we had not checked her a bit her head would have gone across it, and if it had, I would not have given a red cent for your lives." All day they toiled on foot, and by nightfall had made but four miles. Then they camped for the night among the rocks. The next four days were passed in similar labour. Two or three times they had to cross the torrent in order to get on to fallen rocks on the other side to that which they were following. These passages demanded the greatest caution. In each case there were rocks showing above water in the middle of the channel. One of these was chosen as most suited to their purpose, and by means of the ropes a canoe was sheered out to it. Its occupants then took their places on the rock, and in turn dropped the other boat down to the next suitable point, the process being repeated, step by step, until the opposite bank was reached. At the end of the fourth day the geological formation changed. The rock was softer, and the stream had worn a more even path for itself, and they decided to take to the boats again. There was no occasion for paddling now, it was only when a swell on the surface marked some hidden danger below that a stroke or two of the paddle was needed to sweep them clear of it. For four hours they were carried along at the rate of fully twelve miles an hour, and at the end of that time they shot out from between the overhanging walls into a comparatively broad valley. With a shout of delight they headed the boats for shore, and leapt out on to a flat rock a few inches above the water. "If we could go on at that pace right down we should not be long before we were out of the mountains," Tom said. "We could do with a bit slower, Tom; that is too fast to be pleasant. Just about half that would do--six miles an hour. Twelve hours a day would take us out of the cañons in a fortnight or so. We might do that safely, but we could not calculate on having such good luck as we have had to-day, when going along at twelve miles an hour. The pace for the last four days has been just as much too slow as this is too fast. Four miles a day working from morning till night is heart-breaking. In spite of our run to-day, we cannot have made much over a hundred miles since we started. Well, there is one comfort, we are in no great hurry. We have got just the boats for the work, and so far as we can see, we are likely to find plenty of food. A job like this isn't to be reckoned child's play. So far I consider we have had good luck; I shall be well content if it averages as well all the way down. The fear is we may get to falls where we can neither carry nor let the boats down. In that case we should have to get out of the canon somewhere, pack as much flour as we could carry, and make our way across country, though how far we might have to travel there is no knowing. I hope it mayn't come to that; but at any rate I would rather go through even worse places than that cañon above than have to quit the boats." "Right you are, Harry," Jerry agreed. "I would rather tote the canoe on my back all the way down to Mexico, than have to try and make my way over the bad lands to the hills. Besides, when we get a bit farther we shall be in the Navahoe country, and the Utes ain't a sarcumstance to them. The Ute ain't much of a fighter anyway. He will kill white men he finds up in his hills, 'cause he don't want white men there, but he has to be five or six to one before he will attack him. The Navahoe kills the white man 'cause he is a white man, and 'cause he likes killing. He is a fighter, and don't you forget it. If it had been Navahoes instead of Utes that had caught us up in the hills, you may bet your bottom dollar our scalps would be drying in their lodges now." "That is so, Jerry," Ben put in. "Besides, the Navahoes and the Apaches have got no fear of white men. They have been raiding Mexico for hundreds of years, and man to man they can whip Mexikins out of their boots. I don't say as they haven't a considerable respect for western hunters; they have had a good many lessons that these can out-shoot them and out-fight them; still they ain't scared of them as plain Indians are. They are a bad lot, look at them which way you will, and I don't want to have to tramp across their country noways. It was pretty hard work carrying that boat along them rocks, but I would rather have to do so, right down to the plains, then get into a muss with the Navahoes." "How far does the Navahoe country come this way?" "There ain't no fence, Tom, I expect. They reckon as it's their country just as far as they like to come. They don't come up as far north as this, but where they ends and where the Utes begin no one knows but themselves; and I reckon it shifts according as the Navahoes are busy with the Mexicans in the south, or have got a quiet spell, and take it into their heads to hunt this way." For many days they continued their journey, sometimes floating quietly along a comparatively wide valley, sometimes carrying their boats past dangerous rapids, sometimes rushing along at great speed on the black, deep water, occasionally meeting with falls where everything had to be taken out of the canoes, and the boats themselves allowed to shoot over the falls with long ropes attached, by which they were drawn to shore lower down. It was seldom that they were without meat, as several big-horns and two bears were shot by the Indians. They had no doubt that they could have caught fish, but as a rule they were too tired when they arrived at their halting-place to do more than cook and eat their suppers before they lay down to rest. "I reckon it won't be very long before we come upon a Mexican village," Harry said one day, after they had been six weeks on their downward course. "I have heard there is one above the Grand Cañon." The scenery had varied greatly. In some of the valleys groves of trees bordered the river; sometimes not even a tuft of grass was to be seen. Occasionally the cliffs ran in an even line for many miles, showing that the country beyond was a level plateau, at other times rugged peaks and pinnacles resembling ruined castles, lighthouses, and churches could be seen. Frequently the cliffs rose three or four thousand feet in an almost unbroken line, but more often there were rounded terraces, where it would have been easy to ascend to the upper level. Everywhere the various strata were of different colours: soft grays and browns, orange, vermilion, purple, green, and yellow. They soon learned that when they passed through soft strata, the river ran quietly; where the rocks were hard there were falls and rapids; where the strata lay horizontal the stream ran smoothly, though often with great rapidity; where they dipped up stream there were dangerous rapids and falls. Since the start the river had been largely swollen by the junctions of other streams, and was much wider and deeper than it had been where they embarked; and even where the rapids were fiercest they generally found comparatively quiet water close to the bank on one side or the other. Twice they had had upsets, both the boats having been capsized by striking upon rocks but an inch or two below the surface of the water. Little harm was done, for the guns and all other valuable articles were lashed to the sides of the boats, while strips of hide, zigzagged across the ends of the canoes at short distances apart, prevented the blankets and rugs and other bulky articles from dropping out when the boat capsized. Since the river had become wider and the dangers less frequent, the boats always kept near each other. Upsets were therefore only the occasion for a hearty laugh; for it took but a few minutes to right the canoe, bale it out, and proceed on their way. Occasionally they had unpleasant visitors at their camp, and altogether they killed ten or twelve rattle-snakes. In some of the valleys they found the remains of the dwellings of a people far anterior to the present Indian races. Some of these ruins appeared to have been communal houses. At other points they saw cliff-dwellings in the face of the rock, with rough sculptures and hieroglyphics. The canons varied in length from ten to a hundred and fifty miles, the comparatively flat country between them varying equally in point of appearance and in the nature of the rocks. As they got lower they once or twice saw roughly-made rafts, composed of three or four logs of wood, showing where Indians had crossed the river. The journey so far had been much more pleasant than they had expected, for as the river grew wider the dangers were fewer and farther apart, and more easily avoided; and they looked forward to the descent of the Grand Cañon, from which they knew they could not be far distant, without much fear that it would prove impracticable. CHAPTER XVII THE GRAND CAÑON Passing from a short cañon, the boats emerged into a valley with flat shores for some distance from the river. On the right was a wide side cañon, which might afford a passage up into the hills. Half a mile lower down there were trees and signs of cultivation; and a light smoke rose among them. At this, the first sign of human life they had seen since they took to the boats, all hands paddled rapidly. They were approaching the shore, when Leaping Horse said to Harry: "No go close. Stop in river and see, perhaps bad Indians. Leaping Horse not like smoke." Harry called to the other canoe, and they bore out into the stream again. The chief stood up in the boat, and after gazing at the shore silently for a moment said: "Village burnt. Burnt little time ago, post still burning." As he resumed his seat Harry stood up in turn. "That is so, chief. There have only been five or six huts; whether Indian or white, one can't tell now." Just at this moment an Indian appeared on the bank. As his eye fell on the boats he started. A moment later he raised a war-yell. "Navahoe," the chief said. "Navahoe war-party come down, kill people and burn village. Must row hard." The yell had been answered from the wood, and in two or three minutes as many score of Indians appeared on the banks. They shouted to the boats to come to shore, and as no attention was paid, some of them at once opened fire. The river was about a quarter of a mile wide, and although the shots splashed round them the boats were not long in reaching the farther bank, but not unharmed, for Ben had dropped his paddle and fallen back in the boat. "Is he badly hurt?" Harry asked anxiously, as the canoes drew alongside each other near the bank, and Sam turned round to look at his comrade. "He has finished his journey," Sam said in a hoarse voice. "He has gone down, and a better mate and a truer heart I never met. The ball has hit him in the middle of the forehead. It were to be, I guess, for it could only have been a chance shot at that distance." Exclamations of sorrow and fury broke from the others, and for a few minutes there was no thought of the Indians, whose bullets were still falling in the water, for the most part short of the boats. A sharp tap on the side of Harry's canoe, followed by a jet of water, roused them. "We mustn't stop here," Harry said, as Hunting Dog plugged the hole with a piece of dried meat, "or poor Ben won't be the only one." "Let us have a shot first," Jerry said. "Young Tom, do you take a shot with Plumb-centre. It is about four hundred and fifty yards as near as I can reckon, and she will carry pretty true that distance." "We will give them a shot all round," Harry said, as he took up his rifle. Six shots were discharged almost at the same moment. One of the Indians was seen to fall, the rest bounded away to a short distance from the bank. Then Hunting Dog at a word from the chief stepped into the other canoe. Keeping close under the bank they paddled down. The Indians had ceased firing, and had disappeared at a run. "What are they up to now, chief?" "Going down to mouth of cañon, river sure to be narrow; get there before us." "Wait, Jerry," Harry shouted to the other boat, which was some twenty yards ahead. "The chief thinks they have gone to cut us off at the head of the cañon, which is likely enough. I don't suppose it is fifty yards wide there, and they will riddle us if we try to get through in daylight. We had better stop and have a meal and talk it over." The boats were rowed ashore, and the men landed and proceeded to light a fire as unconcernedly as if no danger threatened them. Ben's death had cast a heavy gloom over them, and but few words were spoken, until the meal was cooked and eaten. "It is a dog-goned bad business," Jerry said. "I don't say at night as we mayn't get past them without being hit, but to go rushing into one of those cañons in the dark would be as bad as standing their fire, if not wuss. The question is--could we leave the boats and strike across?" "We could not strike across this side anyhow," Harry said. "There are no settlements west of the Colorado. We know nothing of the country, and it is a hundred to one we should all die of thirst even if we could carry enough grub to last us. If we land at all it must be on the other side, and then we could not reckon on striking a settlement short of two hundred miles, and two hundred miles across a country like this would be almost certain death." "As the Navahoes must have ridden down, Harry, there must be water. I reckon they came down that cañon opposite." "Navahoe on track in morning," the chief said quietly. "When they see we not go down river look for boat, find where we land and take up trail. Cañon very plain road. Some go up there straight, take all our scalps." No one spoke for a moment or two. What the Seneca said was so evident to them that it was useless to argue. "Well, chief, what do you advise yourself?" Harry asked at length. "Not possible go on foot, Harry. Country all rocks and cañons; cannot get through, cannot get water. Trouble with Navahoes too. Only chance get down in boat to-night. Keep close under this bank; perhaps Indians not see us, night dark." "Do you think they can cross over to this side?" "Yes, got canoe. Two canoes in village, Leaping Horse saw them on bank. When it gets dark, cross over." "We will get a start of them," Harry said. "Directly it is dark we can be off too. The shore is everywhere higher than our heads as we sit in the canoes, and we can paddle in the shadow without being seen by them on the other side, while they won't venture to cross till it is pitch dark. As the stream runs something like three miles an hour, I reckon that they are hardly likely to catch us. As for the rapids, they don't often begin until you are some little distance in. At any rate we shall not have to go far, for the red-skins will not dare to enter the cañon, so we can tie up till morning as soon as we are a short distance in. We have got to run the gauntlet of their fire, but after all that is better than taking our chances by leaving the boats. If we lie down when we get near them they may not see us at all; but if they do, a very few strokes will send us past them. At any rate there seems less risk in that plan than in any other." The others agreed. "Now, boys, let us dig a grave," he went on, as soon as the point was settled. "It is a sort of clay here and we can manage it, and it is not likely we shall find any place, when we are once in the cañon, where we can do it." They had neither picks nor shovels with them, for their mining tools had been left at the spot where they were at work, but with their axes and knives they dug a shallow grave, laid Ben's body in it, covered it up, and then rolled a number of boulders over it. Ben's death affected Tom greatly. They had lived together and gone through many perils and risks for nearly a year, and none had shown more unflagging good-humour throughout than the man who had been killed. That the boats might upset and all might perish together, was a thought that had often occurred to him as they made their way down the river, but that one should be cut off like this had never once been contemplated by him. Their lives from the hour they met on the Big Wind River had seemed bound up together, and this sudden loss of one of the party affected him greatly. The others went about their work silently and sadly, but they had been so accustomed to see life lost in sudden frays, and in one or other of the many dangers that miners and hunters are exposed to, that it did not affect them to the same extent as it did Tom. Except two or three men who remained on watch on the opposite bank, though carefully keeping out of rifle-range, they saw no signs of the Navahoes during the day. As soon as it became so dark that they were sure their movements could not be seen from the other side, they silently took their places in the boats, and pushed off into the current. For a quarter of an hour they lay in the canoes, then at a signal from Harry knelt up, took their paddles and began to row very quietly and cautiously, the necessity for dropping their paddles noiselessly into the water and for avoiding any splashing having been impressed on all before starting. "There is no occasion for haste," Harry said. "Long and gentle strokes of the paddle will take us down as fast as we need go. If those fellows do cross over, as I expect they will, they will find it difficult to travel over the rocks in the dark as fast as we are going now, and there is no fear whatever of their catching us if we go on steadily." After an hour's rowing they could make out a dark mass rising like a wall in front of them, and Harry passed the word back to the other canoe, which was just behind them, that they should now cease paddling, only giving a stroke occasionally to keep the head of the canoe straight, and to prevent the boat from drifting out from under the shelter of the bank, in the stillness of the night they could hear a low roaring, and knew that it was caused by a rapid in the canon ahead. Higher and higher rose the wall of rock, blotting out the stars in front of them till the darkness seemed to spread half-way over the sky. They could see that the boat was passing the shore more rapidly, as the river accelerated its course before rushing into the gorge. Suddenly there was a shout on the right, so close that Tom was startled, then there was a rifle-shot, and a moment later a wild outburst of yells and a dozen other shots. At the first shout the paddles dipped into the water, and at racing speed the boats shot along. Eight or ten more rifle-shots were fired, each farther behind them. "Anyone hurt?" Harry asked. There was a general negative. "I don't believe they really saw us," Harry said. "The first fellow may have caught sight of us, but I expect the others fired merely at random. Now let us row in and fasten up, for judging from that roaring there must be a big rapid close ahead." The boats were soon fastened up against the rocks, and the chief stepped ashore, saying: "Leaping Horse and Hunting Dog will watch. Navahoes may come down here. Don't think they will be brave enough to enter cañon, too dark to see. Still, better watch." "Just as you like, chief," Harry said, "but I have no belief that they will come down here in the dark; it would be as much as they would dare do in broad daylight. Besides, these rocks are steepish climbing anyway, and I should not like myself to try to get over them, when it is so dark that I can't see my own hand, except by putting it up between my eyes and the stars." "If it was not for that," Jerry said, "I would crawl along to the mouth and see if I couldn't get a shot at them varmint on the other side." "You would not find them there, Jerry. You may be sure that when they saw us go through they would know it was of no use waiting there any longer. They would flatter themselves that they had hit some of us, and even if they hadn't, it would not seem to matter a cent to them, as the evil spirit of the canon would surely swallow us up." "Well, they have been wrong in their first supposition, uncle," Tom said, "and I hope they will be equally wrong in the second." "I hope so, Tom. Now we may as well go to sleep. As soon as there is any light we must explore as far as we can go, for by the noise ahead it must be either a fall or a desperately bad rapid." When daylight broke, the whites found Hunting Dog sitting with his rifle across his knees on a rock above them. "Where is the chief?" Harry asked him. "Leaping Horse went up the rocks to see if Navahoes have gone." "Very well. Tell him when he comes back we have gone down to have a look at the rapid. Tom, you may as well stay here. There is plenty of drift-wood among those rocks, and we will breakfast before we start down. I reckon we shall not have much time for anything of that sort after we are once off." Tom was by no means sorry to be saved a heavy climb. He collected some wood and broke it up into suitable pieces, but at the suggestion of Hunting Dog waited for the chief's return before lighting it. The chief came down in a few minutes. "Navahoes all gone," he said briefly. "Then I can light a fire, chief?" Leaping Horse nodded, and Tom took out the tightly-fitting tin box in which he kept his matches. Each of the party carried a box, and to secure against the possibility of the matches being injured by the water in case of a capsize, the boxes were kept in deer's bladders tightly tied at the mouth. The fire was just alight when the others returned. "It is better ahead than we expected," Harry said; "the noise was caused by the echo from the smooth faces of the rocks. It is lucky we hauled in here last night, for these rocks end fifty yards on, and as far as we can see down, the water washes the foot of the wall on both sides. We were able to climb up from them on to a narrow ledge, parallel with the water, and went on to the next turn, but there was no change in the character of the river. So we shall make a fair start anyway." More wood was put on the fire, and in a quarter of an hour the kettle was boiling and slices of meat cooked. Half an hour later they took their places in the canoes and started. The cañon was similar to the one they had last passed; the walls were steep and high, but with irregular shelves running along them. Above these were steep slopes, running up to the foot of smooth perpendicular cliffs of limestone. The stream was very rapid, and they calculated that in the first half-hour they must have run six miles. Here the walls receded to a distance, and ledges of rock and hills of considerable heights intervened between the river and the cliffs. They checked the pace of their canoes just as they reached this opening, for a deep roar told of danger ahead. Fortunately there were rocks where they were able to disembark, and a short way below they found that a natural dam extended across the river. "There has been an eruption of trap here," Harry said, looking at the black rock on either side. "There has been a fissure, I suppose, and the lava was squeezed up through it. You see the river has cut a path for itself some hundreds of feet deep. It must have taken countless ages, Tom, to have done the work." Over this dam the water flowed swiftly and smoothly, and then shot down in a fall six feet high. Below for a distance of two or three hundred yards was a furious rapid, the water running among black rocks. With considerable difficulty they made a portage of the boats and stores to the lower end of the rapid. This transit occupied several hours, and they then proceeded on their way. Five more miles were passed; several times the boats were brought to the bank in order that falls ahead might be examined. These proved to be not too high to shoot, and the boats paddled over them. When they had first taken to the river they would never have dreamt of shooting such falls, but they had now become so expert in the management of the boats, and so confident in their buoyancy, that the dangers which would then have appalled them were now faced without uneasiness. They now came to a long rapid, presenting so many dangers that they deemed it advisable to let down the boats by lines. Again embarking they found that the wall of rocks closed in and they entered a narrow gorge, through which the river ran with great swiftness, touching the walls on each side. Great care was needed to prevent the boats being dashed against the rock, but they succeeded in keeping them fairly in the middle of the stream. After travelling four miles through this gorge it opened somewhat, and on one side was a strip of sand. "We will land there," Harry said. "It looks to me like granite ahead, and if it is we are in for bad times, sure." The boats were soon pulled up, and they proceeded to examine the cliffs below. Hitherto the danger had been in almost exact proportion to the hardness of the rock, and as they were entering a far harder rock than they had before encountered, greater difficulties than those they had surmounted were to be expected. They could not see a long distance down, but what they saw was enough to justify their worst anticipations. The cañon was narrower than any they had traversed, and the current extremely swift. There seemed but few broken rocks in the channel, but on either side the walls jutted out in sharp angles far into the river, with crags and pinnacles. "Waal, it is of no use looking at it," Jerry said after a pause. "It is certain we can't get along the sides, so there is nothing to do but to go straight at it; and the sooner it is over the better." Accordingly they returned to the boats, and soon darted at the speed of an arrow into the race. Bad as it was at starting it speedily became worse: ledges, pinnacles, and towers of rock rose above the surface of the stream breaking it into falls and whirlpools. Every moment it seemed to Tom that the boat must inevitably be dashed to pieces against one of these obstructions, for the light boats were whirled about like a feather on the torrent, and the paddlers could do but little to guide their course. The very strength of the torrent, however, saved them from destruction, the whirl from the rocks sweeping the boat's head aside when within a few feet of them, and driving it past the danger before they had time to realize that they had escaped wreck. Half an hour of this, and a side cañon came in. Down this a vast quantity of boulders had been swept, forming a dam across the river, but they managed to paddle into an eddy at the side, and to make a portage of the boats to the water below the dam, over which there was a fall of from thirty to forty feet high. Three more similar dams were met with. Over one the canoes were carried, but on the others there was a break in the boulder wall, and they were able to shoot the falls. After three days of incessant labour, they heard, soon after starting from their last halting-place, a roar even louder and more menacing than they had yet experienced. Cautiously they got as close as possible to the side, and paddling against the stream were able to effect a landing just above the rapid. On examining it they found that it was nearly half a mile long, and in this distance the water made a fall of some eighty feet, the stream being broken everywhere with ledges and jagged rocks, among which the waves lashed themselves into a white foam. It seemed madness to attempt such a descent, and they agreed that at any rate they would halt for the day. The rocks through which the cañon ran were fully a thousand feet high, but they decided that, great as the labour might be, it would be better to make a portage, if possible, rather than descend the cataract. "There is a gulch here running up on to the hill," Tom said. "Hunting Dog and I will start at once and see if it is possible to get up it, and if so how far it is to a place where we can get down again." Harry assented; Leaping Horse without a word joined the explorers, and they set off up the gulch. It was found that the ravine was steep, but not too steep to climb. When they were nearly at the top Hunting Dog pointed to the hillside above them, and they saw a big-horn standing at the edge of the rock. The three fired their rifles simultaneously, and the wild sheep made a spring into the air and then came tumbling down the side of the ravine. As fresh meat was beginning to run short this was a stroke of good fortune, and after reloading their guns they proceeded up the ravine until they reached the crest of the hill. The soil was disintegrated granite, and tufts of short grass grew here and there. After walking about a mile, parallel to the course of the river, they found that the ground descended again, and without much difficulty made their way down until they reached the foot of a little valley; following this they were soon standing by the side of the river. Above, its surface was as closely studded with rocks as was the upper cataract; below, there was another fall that looked impracticable, except that it seemed possible to pass along on the rocks by the side. It was getting dark by the time they rejoined their comrades. "Your report is not a very cheerful one," Harry said, "but at any rate there seems nothing else to be done than to make the portage. The meat you have got for us will re-stock our larder, and as it is up there we sha'n't have the trouble of carrying it over." The next day was a laborious one. One by one the canoes were carried over, but the operation took them from daybreak till dark. The next morning another journey was made to bring over the rugs and stores, and they were able in addition to these to carry down the carcass of the sheep, after first skinning it and cutting off the head with its great horns. Nothing was done for the rest of the day beyond trying whether another portage could be made. This was found to be impracticable, and there was nothing for them but to attempt the descent. They breakfasted as soon as day broke, carried the boats down over the boulder dam with which the rapids commenced, and put them into the water. For some little distance they were able to let them down by ropes, then the rocks at the foot of the cliffs came to an end. Fortunately the seven lariats furnished them with a considerable length of line, and in addition to these the two Indians had on their way down plaited a considerable length of rope, with thongs cut from the skins of the animals they had killed. The total available amount of rope was now divided into two lengths, the ends being fastened to each canoe. One of the boats with its crew on board was lowered to a point where the men were able to get a foothold on a ledge. As soon as they had done so the other boat dropped down to them, and the ropes were played out until they were in turn enabled to get a footing on a similar ledge or jutting rock, sometimes so narrow that but one man was able to stand. So alternately the boats were let down. Sometimes when no foothold could be obtained on the rock wall, the pinnacles and ledges in the stream were utilized. All the work had to be done by gesture, for the thunder of the waters was so tremendous that the loudest shout could not be heard a few yards away. Hour passed after hour. Their progress was extremely slow, as each step had to be closely considered and carried out with the greatest care. At last a terrible accident happened. Harry, Leaping Horse, and Tom were on a ledge. Below them was a fall of three feet, and in the foaming stream below it, rose several jagged rocks. Jerry's canoe was got safely down the fall, but in spite of the efforts of the rowers was carried against the outer side of one of these rocks. They made a great effort to turn the boat's head into the eddy behind it, but as the line touched the rock its sharp edge severed the rope like a knife, and the boat shot away down the rapid. Those on the ledge watched it with breathless anxiety. Two or three dangers were safely passed, then to their horror they saw the head of the canoe rise suddenly as it ran up a sunken ledge just under the water. An instant later the stern swept round, bringing her broadside on to the stream, and she at once capsized. "Quick!" Harry exclaimed, "we must go to their rescue. Keep close to the wall, chief, till we see signs of them. It is safest close in." In an instant they were in their places, and as they released the canoe she shot in a moment over the fall. For a short distance they kept her close to the side, but a projecting ledge threw the current sharply outwards, and the canoe shot out into the full force of the rapid. The chief knelt up in the bow paddle in hand, keeping a vigilant eye for rocks and ledges ahead, and often with a sharp stroke of the paddle, seconded by the effort of Harry in the stern, sweeping her aside just when Tom thought her destruction inevitable. Now she went headlong down a fall, then was caught by an eddy, and was whirled round and round three or four times before the efforts of the paddlers could take her beyond its influence. Suddenly a cry came to their ears. Just as they approached a rocky ledge some thirty feet long, and showing a saw-like edge a foot above the water, the chief gave a shout and struck his paddle into the water. "Behind the rock, Tom, behind the rock!" Harry exclaimed as he swept the stern round. Tom paddled with all his might, and the canoe headed up stream. Quickly as the movement was done, the boat was some twelve yards below the rock as she came round with her nose just in the lower edge of the eddy behind it, while from either side the current closed in on her. Straining every nerve the three paddlers worked as for life. At first Tom thought that the glancing waters would sweep her down, but inch by inch they gained, and drove the boat forward from the grasp of the current into the back eddy, until suddenly, as if released from a vice, she sprang forward. Never in his life had Tom exerted himself so greatly. His eyes were fixed on the rock in front of him, where Hunting Dog was clinging with one hand, while with the other he supported Jerry's head above water. He gave a shout of joy as the chief swept the head of the canoe round, just as it touched the rock, and laid her broadside to it. "Stick your paddle between two points of the rock, Tom," Harry shouted, "while the chief and I get them in. Sit well over on the other side of the boat." With considerable difficulty Jerry, who was insensible, was lifted into the boat. As soon as he was laid down Hunting Dog made his way hand over hand on the gunwale until close to the stern, where he swung himself into the boat without difficulty. "Have you seen Sam?" Harry asked. The young Indian shook his head. "Sam one side of the boat," he said, "Jerry and Hunting Dog the other. Boat went down that chute between those rocks above. Only just room for it. Jerry was knocked off by rock. Hunting Dog was near the stern, there was room for him. He caught Jerry's hunting-shirt, but could not hold on to boat. When came down here made jump at corner of rock. Could not hold on, but current swept him into eddy. Then swam here and held on, and kept calling. Knew his brothers would come down soon." "Here is a spare paddle," Harry said, as he pulled one out from below the network, "there is not a moment to lose. Keep your eyes open, chief." Again the boat moved down the stream. With four paddles going the steersman had somewhat more control over her, but as she flew down the seething water, glanced past rocks and sprang over falls, Tom expected her to capsize every moment. At last he saw below them a stretch of quiet water, and two or three minutes later they were floating upon it, and as if by a common impulse all ceased rowing. "Thanks be to God for having preserved us," Harry said reverently. "We are half-full of water; another five minutes of that work and it would have been all over with us. Do you see any signs of the canoe, chief?" The chief pointed to a ledge of rock extending out into the stream. "Canoe there," he said. They paddled across to it. After what the young Indian had said they had no hopes of finding Sam with it, but Harry gave a deep sigh as he stepped out on to the ledge. "Another gone," he said. "How many of us will get through this place alive? Let us carry Jerry ashore." There was a patch of sand swept up by the eddy below the rock, and here Jerry was taken out and laid down. He moaned as they lifted him. "Easy with him," Harry said. "Steady with that arm. I think he has a shoulder broken, as well as this knock on the head that has stunned him." As soon as he was laid down Harry cut open his shirt on the shoulder. "Broken," he said shortly. "Now, chief, I know that you are a good hand at this sort of thing. How had this better be bandaged?" "Want something soft first." Tom ran to the canoe, brought out the little canvas sack in which he carried his spare flannel shirt, and brought it to the chief. The latter tore off a piece of stuff and rolled it into a wad. "Want two pieces of wood," he said, holding his hands about a foot apart to show the length he required. Harry fetched a spare paddle, and split a strip off each side of the blade. The chief nodded as he took them. "Good," he said. He tore off two more strips of flannel and wrapped them round the splints, then with Harry's aid he placed the shoulder in its natural position, laid the wad of flannel on the top of it, and over this put the two splints. The whole was kept in its place by flannel bandages, and the arm was fastened firmly across the body, so that it could not be moved. Then the little keg of brandy was brought out of the canoe, a spoonful poured into the pannikin, with half as much water, and allowed to trickle between Jerry's lips, while a wad of wet flannel was placed on his head. "There is nothing more we can do for him at present," Harry said. "Now we will right the other boat, and get all the things out to dry." Three or four pounds of flour were found to be completely soaked with water, but the main store was safe, as the bag was sewn up in bear-skin. This was only opened occasionally to take out two or three days' supply, and then carefully closed again. On landing, Hunting Dog had at once started in search of drift-wood, and by this time a fire was blazing. A piece of bear's fat was placed in the frying-pan, and the wetted flour was at once fried into thin cakes, which were tough and tasteless; but the supply was too precious to allow of an ounce being wasted. Some slices of the flesh of the big-horn were cooked. "What is my white brother going to do?" the chief asked Harry. "There is nothing to do that I can see, chief, but to keep on pegging away. We agreed that it would be almost impossible to find our way over these barren mountains. That is not to be thought of, now that one of our number cannot walk. There is no choice left, we have got to go on." "Leaping Horse understand that," the chief said. "He meant would you take both canoes? One is big enough to take five." "Quite big enough, chief, but it would be deeper in the water, and the heavier it is the harder it will bump against any rock it meets; the lighter they are the better. You see, this other canoe, which I dare say struck a dozen times on its way down, shows no sign of damage except the two rents in the skin, that we can mend in a few minutes. Another thing is, two boats are absolutely necessary for this work of letting down by ropes, of which we may expect plenty more. If we had only one, we should be obliged to run every rapid. The only extra trouble that it will give us is at the portages. I think we had better stay here for two or three days, so as to give Jerry a chance of coming round. No doubt we could carry him over the portages just as we can carry the boats, but after such a knock on the head as he has had, it is best that he should be kept quiet for a bit. If his skull is not cracked he won't be long in getting round. He is as hard as nails, and will pull round in the tenth of the time it would take a man in the towns to get over such a knock. It is a pity the halt is not in a better place. There is not a shadow of a chance of finding game among these crags and bare rocks." From time to time fresh water was applied to the wad of flannel round Jerry's head. "Is there any chance, do you think, of finding poor Sam's body?" The chief shook his head. "No shores where it could be washed up, rocks tear it to pieces; or if it get in an eddy, might be there for weeks. No see Sam any more." The fire was kept blazing all night, and they took it by turns to sit beside Jerry and to pour occasionally a little brandy and water between his lips. As the men were moving about preparing breakfast the next morning Jerry suddenly opened his eyes. He looked at Tom, who was sitting beside him. "Time to get up?" he asked. "Why did you not wake me?" And he made an effort to move. Tom put his hand on him. "Lie still, Jerry. You have had a knock on the head, but you are all right now." The miner lay quiet. His eyes wandered confusedly over the figures of the others, who had, when they heard his voice, gathered round him. "What in thunder is the matter with me?" he asked. "What is this thing on my head? What is the matter with my arm, I don't seem able to move it?" "It is the knock you have had, Jerry," Harry said cheerfully. "You have got a bump upon your head half as big as a cocoa-nut, and you have damaged your shoulder. You have got a wet flannel on your head, and the chief has bandaged your arm. I expect your head will be all right in a day or two, but I reckon you won't be able to use your arm for a bit." Jerry lay quiet without speaking for a few minutes, then he said: "Oh, I remember now; we were capsized. I had hold of the canoe, and I remember seeing a rock just ahead. I suppose I knocked against it." "That was it, mate. Hunting Dog let go his hold and caught you, and managed to get into an eddy and cling to the rocks till we came down and took you on board." Jerry held out his hand to the Indian. "Thankee," he said. "I owe you one, Hunting Dog. If I ever get the chance you can reckon on me sure, whatever it is. But where is Sam? Why ain't he here?" "Sam has gone under, mate," Harry replied. "That chute you went down was only just wide enough for the boat to go through, and no doubt he was knocked off it at the same time as you were; but as the Indian was on your side, he saw nothing of Sam. I reckon he sank at once, just as you would have done if Hunting Dog hadn't been behind you." Jerry made no reply, but as he lay still, with his eyes closed, some big tears made their way through the lids and rolled down his bronzed face. The others thought it best to leave him by himself, and continued their preparations for breakfast. CHAPTER XVIII BACK TO DENVER "When are you going to make a start again?" Jerry asked, after drinking a pannikin of tea. "We are not going on to-day; perhaps not to-morrow. It will depend on how you get on." "I shall be a nuisance to you anyway," the miner said, "and it would be a dog-goned sight the best way to leave me here; but I know you won't do that, so it ain't no use my asking you. I expect I shall be all right to-morrow except for this shoulder, but just now my head is buzzing as if there was a swarm of wild bees inside." "You will be all the better when you have had a good sleep; I reckon we could all do a bit that way. Young Tom and Hunting Dog are going to try a bit of fishing with those hooks of yours. We talked about it when we started, you know, but we have not done anything until now. We want a change of food badly. We may be a month going down this cañon for anything I know, and if it keeps on like this there ain't a chance of seeing a head of game. It ought to be a good place for fish at the foot of the rapids--that is, if there are any fish here, and I reckon there should be any amount of them. If they do catch some, we will wait here till we can dry a good stock. We have nothing now but the dried flesh and some of the big-horn. There ain't above twenty pounds of flour left, and we could clear up all there is in the boat in a week. So you need not worry that you are keeping us." Half an hour later Hunting Dog and Tom put out in one of the canoes, and paddling to the foot of the rapids let the lines drop overboard, the hooks being baited with meat. It was not many minutes before the Indian felt a sharp pull. There was no occasion to play the fish, for the line was strong enough to hold a shark, and a trout of six pounds weight was soon laid in the bottom of the boat. "My turn now," Tom said; and the Indian with a smile took the paddle from his hand, and kept the boat up stream while Tom attended to the lines. Fish after fish was brought up in rapid succession, and when about mid-day a call from below told them that it was time for dinner, they had some thirty fish averaging five pounds' weight at the bottom of the boat. There was a shout of satisfaction from Harry as he looked down into the canoe, and even the chief gave vent to a grunt that testified his pleasure. "Hand me up four of them, Tom; I did not know how much I wanted a change of food till my eyes lit on those beauties. We saw you pulling them out, but I did not expect it was going to be as good as this." The fish were speedily split open, and laid on ramrods over the fire. "I reckon you will want another one for me," Jerry, who had been asleep since they started, remarked. "I don't know that I am good for one as big as those, but I reckon I can pick a bit anyhow." A small fish was put on with the others, and as soon as they were grilled, all set to at what seemed to Tom the best meal he had ever eaten in his life. He thought when he handed them to Harry that two would have been amply sufficient for them all, but he found no difficulty whatever in disposing of a whole one single-handed. "Now, Tom, the chief and I will take our turn while you and Hunting Dog prepare your catch. He will show you how to do it, it is simple enough. Cut off the heads, split and clean them, run a skewer through to keep them flat, and then lay them on that rock in the sun to dry. Or wait, I will rig up a line between two of the rocks for you to hang them on. There is not much wind, but what there is will dry them better than if they were laid flat." Jerry went off to sleep again as soon as the meal was finished, and the bandages round his head re-wetted. The paddle from which the strips had been cut furnished wood for the skewers, and in the course of half an hour the fish were all hanging on a line. Twenty two more were brought in at sunset. Some of these, after being treated like the others, were hung in the smoke of the fire, while the rest were suspended like the first batch. The next morning Jerry was able to move about, and the fishing went on all day, and by night a quantity, considered sufficient, had been brought ashore. "There are over four hundred pounds altogether," Harry said, "though by the time they are dried they won't be more than half that weight. Two pounds of dried fish a man is enough to keep him going, and they will last us twenty days at that rate, and it will be hard luck if we don't find something to help it out as we go down." They stopped another day to allow the drying to be completed. The fish were taken down and packed on board that evening, and at daylight they were afloat again. For the next ten days their labours were continuous. They passed several rapids as bad as the one that had cost them so dear; but as they gained experience they became more skilful in letting down the boats. Some days only two or three miles were gained, on others they made as much as twelve. At last they got out of the granite; beyond this the task was much easier, and on the fifteenth day after leaving their fishing-ground, they emerged from the cañon. By this time Jerry had perfectly recovered, and was with great difficulty persuaded to keep his arm bandaged. He had chafed terribly at first at his helplessness, and at being unable to take any share in the heavy labours of the others; but after the rapids were passed he was more contented, and sat quietly at the bottom of the boat smoking, while Harry and Tom paddled, the two Indians forming the crew of the other canoe. The diet of fish had been varied by bear's flesh, Leaping Horse having shot a large brown bear soon after they got through the rapids. A shout of joy was raised by the three whites as they issued from the gorge into a quiet valley, through which the river ran, a broad tranquil stream. Even the Indians were stirred to wave their paddles above their heads and to give a ringing whoop as their companions cheered. The boats were headed for the shore, and the camp was formed near a large clump of bushes. Their joy at their deliverance from the dangers of the cañon was dashed only by the thought of the loss of their two comrades. The next day three short cañons were passed through, but these presented no difficulties, and in the afternoon they reached the mouth of the Rio Virgen, and continuing their journey arrived five days later at Fort Mojarve. This was a rising settlement, for it was here that the traders' route between Los Angeles and Santa Fé crossed the Colorado. Their appearance passed almost unnoticed, for a large caravan had arrived that afternoon and was starting east the next morning. "We had best hold our tongues about it altogether," Harry said, as soon as he heard that the caravan was going on the next morning. "In the first place they won't believe us, and that would be likely to lead to trouble; and in the next place we should be worried out of our lives with questions. Besides, we have got to get a fresh outfit, for we are pretty near in rags, and to buy horses, food, and kit. We can leave the boats on the shore, no one is likely to come near them." "I will stop and look after them," Tom said. "There are the saddles, buffalo-robes, blankets, and ammunition. This shirt is in rags, and the last moccasins Hunting Dog made me are pretty nearly cut to pieces by the rocks. I would rather stay here and look after the boats than go into the village; besides, it will save you the trouble of carrying all these bags of gold about with you." Harry nodded, cut two of the little bags free from their lashings and dropped them into his pocket, and then went up to the Fort with Jerry and the Indians. Tom cut the other bags loose and put them on the ground beside him, threw a buffalo-robe over them, and then sat for some hours watching the quiet river and thinking over all they had gone through. It was almost dark when the others returned. "It has taken us some time, Tom," his uncle said as they threw some bundles down beside him; "the stores and clothes were easy enough, but we had a lot of trouble to find horses. However, we did not mind much what we paid for them, and the traders were ready to sell a few at the prices we offered. So we have got five riding horses and two pack-ponies, which will be enough for us. That bundle is your lot, riding breeches and boots, three pairs of stockings, two flannel shirts, a Mexican hat, and a silk neck handkerchief. We may as well change at once and go up to the village." The change was soon effected. Harry and Jerry Curtis had clothes similar to those they had bought for Tom, while the Indians wore over their shirts new deer-skin embroidered hunting-shirts, and had fringed Mexican leggings instead of breeches and boots. They, too, had procured Mexican sombreros. Taking their rifles and pistols, and hiding their stock of ammunition, the gold, and their buffalo-robes and blankets, they went up to the village. It was by this time quite dark: the houses were all lit up, and the drinking-shops crowded with the teamsters, who seemed bent on making a night of it, this being the last village through which they would pass until their arrival at Santa Fé. They slept as usual, wrapped up in their buffalo-robes by the side of the boats, as all agreed that this was preferable to a close room in a Mexican house. They were all a-foot as soon as daylight broke, and went up and breakfasted at a fonda, Tom enjoying the Mexican cookery after the simple diet he had been accustomed to. Then they went to the stable where the horses, which were strong serviceable-looking animals, had been placed, and put on their saddles and bridles. The pack-horses were then laden with flour, tea, sugar, bacon, and other necessaries. By the time all was ready the caravan was just starting. Harry had spoken the afternoon before to two of its leaders, and said that he and four companions would be glad to ride with them to Santa Fé. Permission was readily granted, the traders being pleased at the accession of five well-armed men; for although Indian raids were comparatively rare along this trail, there was still a certain amount of danger involved in the journey. Some hours were occupied in crossing the river in two heavy ferry-boats, and the process would have been still longer had not half the waggons been sent across on the previous afternoon. The long journey was made without incident, and no Indians were met with. A few deer were shot, but as it was now late in the autumn the scanty herbage on the plains was all withered up, and the game had for the most part moved away into deep valleys where they could obtain food. The tale of their passage of the cañons was told more than once, but although it was listened to with interest, Harry perceived that it was not really believed. That they had been hunting, had been attacked by Indians, had made canoes and passed through some of the cañons was credible enough, but that they should have traversed the whole of the lower course of the Colorado, seemed to the traders, who were all men experienced in the country, simply incredible. The party stopped at Santa Fé a few days, and then started north, travelling through the Mexican villages, and finally striking across to Denver. At Santa Fé they had converted the contents of their bags into money, which had been equally shared among them. The Indians were not willing to accept more than the recognized monthly pay, but Harry would not hear of it. "This has been no ordinary business, Leaping Horse," he said warmly; "we have all been as brothers together, and for weeks have looked death in the face every hour, and we must share all round alike in the gold we have brought back. Gold is just as useful to an Indian as it is to a white man, and when you add this to the hoard you spoke of, you will have enough to buy as many horses and blankets as you can use all your lifetime, and to settle down in your wigwam and take a wife to yourself whenever you choose. I fancy from what you said, Hunting Dog has his eye on one of the maidens of your tribe. Well, he can buy her father's favour now. The time is coming, chief, when the Indians of the plains will have to take to white men's ways. The buffaloes are fast dying out, and in a few years it will be impossible to live by hunting, and the Indians will have to keep cattle and build houses and live as we do. With his money Hunting Dog could buy a tidy ranche with a few hundred head of cattle. Of course, he can hunt as much as he likes so long as there is any game left, but he will find that as his cattle increase, he will have plenty to look after at home." "We will take the gold if my brother wishes it," the chief replied gravely. "He is wise, and though now it seems to Leaping Horse that red-skins have no need of gold, it may be that some day he and Hunting Dog may be glad that they have done as their brother wished." "Thank you, Leaping Horse. It will make my heart glad when I may be far away from you across the great salt water to know that there will always be comfort in my brother's wigwam." On arriving at Denver they went straight to the Empire. As they entered the saloon Pete Hoskings looked hard at them. "Straight Harry, by thunder!" he shouted; "and Jerry Curtis, and young Tom; though I would not have known him if he hadn't been with the others. Well, this air a good sight for the eyes, and to-morrow Christmas-day. I had begun to be afeard that something had gone wrong with you, I looked for news from you nigh three months ago. I got the message you sent me in the spring, and I have asked every old hand who came along east since the end of August, if there had been any news of you, and I began to fear that you had been rubbed out by the Utes." "We have had a near escape of it, Pete; but it is a long story. Can you put us all up? You know Leaping Horse, don't you? The other is his nephew." "I should think I do know Leaping Horse," Pete said warmly, and went across and shook the Indian's hand heartily. "I was looking at you three, and did not notice who you had with you. In that letter the chap brought me, you said that the chief was going with you, and Sam Hicks and Ben Gulston. I did not know them so well; that is, I never worked with them, though they have stopped here many a time." "They have gone under, Pete. Sam was drowned in the Colorado, Ben shot by the Navahoes. We have all had some close calls, I can tell you. Well now, can you put us up?" "You need not ask such a question as that, Harry," Pete said in an aggrieved tone, "when you know very well that if the place was chock-full, I would clear the crowd out to make room for you. There are three beds in the room over this that will do for you three; and there is a room beside it as Leaping Horse and his nephew can have, though I reckon they won't care to sleep on the beds." "No more shall we, Pete. We have been fifteen months and more sleeping in the open, and we would rather have our buffalo-robes and blankets than the softest bed in the world." "You must have had a cold time of it the last three months up in those Ute hills, where you said you were going." "We left there five months ago, Pete. We have been down as low as Fort Mojarve, and then crossed with a caravan of traders to Santa Fé." Pete began pouring out the liquor. "Oh, you won't take one, chief, nor the young brave. Yes; I remember you do not touch the fire-water, and you may be sure I won't press you. Well, luck to you all, and right glad I am to see you again. Ah! here is my bartender. Now we will get a good fire lit in another room and hurry up supper, and then we will talk it all over. You have put your horses up, I suppose?" "Yes; we knew you had no accommodation that way, Pete." The room into which Pete now led them was not his own sanctum, but one used occasionally when a party of miners coming in from the hills wanted to have a feast by themselves, or when customers wished to talk over private business. There was a table capable of seating some twelve people, a great stove, and some benches. A negro soon lighted a large fire; then, aided by a boy, laid the table, and it was not long before they sat down to a good meal. When it was over, Pete said: "Lend me a hand, Jerry, to push this table aside, then we will bring the benches round the stove and hear all about it. I told the bar-tender that I am not to be disturbed, and that if anyone wants to see me he is to say that he has got to wait till to-morrow, for that I am engaged on important business. Here are brandy and whisky, and tobacco and cigars, and coffee for the chief and his nephew." "I think you may say for all of us, Pete," Harry said. "After being a year without spirits, Jerry, Tom, and I have agreed to keep without them. We wouldn't say no to you when you asked us to take a drink, and we have not sworn off, but Jerry and I have agreed that we have both been all the better without them, and mean to keep to it; and as for Tom, he prefers coffee." "Do as you please," Pete said; "I am always glad to hear men say no. I have made a lot of money out of it, but I have seen so many fellows ruined by it that I am always pleased to see a man give up drink." "There is one thing, Pete," Tom said, "before we begin. We left our bundles of robes and blankets in the next room, if you don't mind I would a deal rather spread them out here--and I am sure the chief and Hunting Dog would--and squat down on them, instead of sitting on these benches. It is a long story uncle will have to tell you." "We will fetch ours too," Harry agreed. "Benches are all well enough for sitting at the table to eat one's dinner, but why a man should sit on them when he can sit on the ground is more than I can make out." Pete nodded. "I will have my rocking-chair in," he said, "and then we shall be fixed up for the evening." The arrangements were soon made; pipes were lighted; the landlord sat in his chair at some little distance back from the front of the stove; Tom and the two Indians sat on their rugs on one side; Harry and Jerry Curtis completed the semicircle on the other. "Well, in the first place, Pete," Harry began, "you will be glad to hear that we have struck it rich--the biggest thing I have ever seen. It is up in the Ute country. We have staked out a claim for you next our own. There are about five hundred pounds of samples lying at Fort Bridger, and a bit of the rock we crushed, panned out five hundred ounces to the ton." "You don't say!" Pete exclaimed. "If there is much of that stuff, Harry, you have got a bonanza." "There is a good bit of it anyhow, Pete. It is a true vein, and though it is not all like that, it keeps good enough. Fifty feet back we found it run twenty ounces. That is on the surface, we can't say how it goes down in depth. Where we struck it on the face it was about fourteen feet high, and the lode kept its width for that depth anyhow." "That air good enough," the landlord said. "Now, what do you reckon on doing?" "The place is among the hills, Pete, and the Utes are hostile, and went very nigh rubbing us all out. We reckon it ought to be worked by a party of thirty men at least. They ought to be well armed, and must build a sort of fort. I don't think the Utes would venture to attack them if they were of that strength. There is a little stream runs close to the vein, and if it were dammed up it would drive a couple of stamps, which, with a concentrator and tables and blankets, would be quite enough for such stuff as that. I reckon fifteen men will be quite enough to work, and to hold the fort. The other fifteen men would include three or four hunters, and the rest would go backwards and forwards to Bridger for supplies, and to take the gold down. They would be seven or eight days away at a time; and if there should be trouble with the red-skins they would always be back before those at the fort were really pressed. But we should not be alone long, the news that a rich thing had been struck would bring scores of miners up in no time. "We have taken up our own ten claims, which will include, of course, the rich part. Then we have taken up the next eight or ten claims for our friends. As I said, we put yours next to ours. We have not registered them yet, but that will be the first job; and of course you and the others will each have to put a man on your claims to hold them. The lode shows on the other side of the creek, though not so rich; still plenty good enough to work. But as we shall practically get all the water, the lode cannot be worked by anyone but ourselves. Still the gravel is rich all down the creek, as rich as anything I have seen in California, and will be sure to be taken up by miners as soon as we are at work. So there will be no real danger of trouble from the Indians then. What we propose is this. We don't what to sell out, we think it is good enough to hold, but we want to get a company to find the money for getting up the machinery, building a strong block-house with a palisade, laying in stores, and working the place. Jerry, Tom, and I would of course be in command, at any rate for the first year or so, when the rich stuff was being worked." "How much money do you think it will want, and what share do you think of giving, Harry?" "Well, I should say fifty thousand dollars, though I believe half that would be enough. Not a penny would be required after the first ton of rock goes through the stamps. But we should have to take the stamps and ironwork from the railway terminus to Bridger, and then down. We might calculate on a month or six weeks in getting up the fort, making the leat and water-wheel, putting up the machinery, and laying down the flumes. Say two months from the time we leave Bridger to the time we begin to work. There would be the pay of the men all that time, the cost of transporting stores, and all that sort of thing; so it would be better to say fifty thousand dollars. What share ought we to offer for that?" "Well, if you could bring that five hundredweight of stuff here and get it crushed up, and it turns out as good as you say, I could get you the money in twenty-four hours. I would not mind going half of it myself, and I should say that a quarter share would be more than good enough." "Well, we thought of a third, Pete." "Well, if you say a third you may consider that part of the business is done. You won't be able to apply for claims in the names of Sam and Ben, and if you did it would be no good, because they could not assign them over to the company. There are eight claims without them, and the one you have put down in my name is nine. Well, I can get say eleven men in this place, who will give you an assignment of their claims for five dollars apiece. That is done every day. I just say to them, I am registering a share in your name in the Tom Cat Mine, write an assignment to me of it and I am good for five dollars' worth of liquor, take it out as you like. The thing is as easy as falling off a log. Well, what are you thinking of doing next?" "We shall buy a light waggon and team to-morrow or next day and drive straight over to Bridger, then we shall go to Salt Lake City and register our claims at the mining-office there. We need not give the locality very precisely. Indeed, we could not describe it ourselves so that anyone could find it, and nobody would go looking for it before spring comes and the snow clears. Besides, there are scores of wild-cat claims registered every year. Until they turn out good no one thinks anything of them. When we have got that done we will go back to Bridger, and fetch the rock over here. We will write to-morrow to Pittsburg for the mining outfit, for all the ironwork of the stamps, the concentrator, and everything required, with axes, picks, and shovels, blasting tools and powder, to be sent as far as they have got the railway." "But they will want the money with the order, Harry," Pete said in a tone of surprise. "They will have the money. We washed the gravel for a couple of months before the Utes lit on us, and after buying horses and a fresh outfit for us all at Fort Mojarve, we have between us got something like five thousand dollars in gold and greenbacks." "Jee-hoshaphat!" Pete exclaimed; "that was good indeed for two months' work. Well, look here, there is no hurry for a few days about your starting back to Bridger. Here we are now, nearly at the end of December. It will take you a month to get there, say another fortnight to go on to Salt Lake City and register your claim and get back to Bridger, then it would be a month getting back here again; that would take you to the middle of March. Well, you see it would be pretty nigh the end of April before you were back at Bridger, then you would have to get your waggons and your men, and that would be too late altogether. "You have got to pick your miners carefully, I can tell you; and it is not a job to be done in a hurry. When they see what gold there is in the rock they will soon set to work washing the gravel, and the day they do they will chuck up your work altogether. I will tell you what I would rather do, and that is, pick up green hands from the east. There are scores of them here now; men who have come as far as this, and can't start west till the snows melt. You need not think anything more about the money. You tell me what you crushed is a fair sample of that five hundred pounds, and that is quite good enough for me, and the gravel being so rich is another proof of what the lode was when the stream cut through it. I can put the twenty-five thousand dollars down, and there are plenty of men here who will take my word for the affair and plank their money down too. If there weren't I would put a mortgage on my houses, so that matter is done. To-morrow I will get the men whose names you are to give in for a claim each; it will be time in another two months to begin to look about for some steady chaps from the east, farmers' sons and such like. That is, if you think that plan is a good one. I mean to see this thing through, and I shall go with you myself, and we three can do the blasting." "We shall be wanted to look after the stamps and pans," Harry said. "We had best get three or four old hands for the rock." "Yes, that is best," Pete said. "Between us it is hard if we can't lay our hands upon men we can trust, and who will give us their word to stay with us if we offer them six dollars a day." "We might offer them ten dollars," Harry said, "without hurting ourselves; but we can say six dollars to begin with, and put some more on afterwards." "There is old Mat Morgan," Jerry put in. "I don't know whether he is about here now. I would trust him. He is getting old for prospecting among the hills now, but he is as good a miner as ever swung a sledge-hammer, and as straight as they make them." "Yes, he is a good man," Pete agreed. And after some talk they settled upon three others, all of whom, Pete said, were either in the town or would be coming in shortly. "Now, you stop here for a week or two, or a month if you like, Harry, then you can go to Salt Lake City as you propose, and then go back to Bridger. If as you pass through you send me five-and-twenty pounds of that rock by express, it will make it easier for me to arrange the money affair. When you get back you might crush the rest up and send me word what it has panned out, then later on you can go down again to Salt Lake City and buy the waggons and flour and bacon, and take them back to Bridger. When March comes in, I will start from here with some waggons. We want them to take the machinery, and powder and tools, and the tea and coffee and things like that, of which we will make a list, on to Bridger, with the four men we pick out, if I can get them all; if not, some others in their place, and a score of young emigrants. I shall have no difficulty in picking out sober, steady chaps, for in a place like this I can find out about their habits before I engage them. However, there will be plenty of time to settle all those points. Now, let us hear all about your adventures. I have not heard about you since Tom left, except that he wrote me a short letter from Bridger saying that you had passed the winter up among the mountains by the Big Wind River. That you had had troubles with the Indians, and hadn't been able to do much trapping or looking for gold." "Well, we will tell it between us," Harry said, "for it is a long yarn." It was, indeed, past midnight before the story was all told. Long before it was finished the two Indians had taken up their rugs and gone up to their room, and although the other three had taken by turns to tell the tale of their adventures, they were all hoarse with speaking by the time they got through. Pete had often stopped them to ask question at various points where the narrators had been inclined to cut the story short. "That beats all," he said, when they brought it to an end. "Only to think that you have gone down the Grand Cañon. I would not have minded being with you when you were fighting the 'Rappahoes or the Utes, but I would not try going down the cañons for all the gold in California. Well, look here, boys, I know that what you tell me is gospel truth, and all the men who know you well, will believe every word you say, but I would not tell the tale to strangers, for they would look on you as the all-firedest liars in creation." "We have learnt that already, Pete," Harry laughed, "and we mean to keep it to ourselves, at any rate till we have got the mine at work. People may not believe the story of a man in a red shirt, and, mind you, I have heard a good many powerful lies told round a miner's fire, but when it is known we have got a wonderfully rich gold mine, I fancy it will be different. The men would say, if fellows are sharp enough to find a bonanza, it stands to reason they may be sharp enough to find their way down a cañon. Now, let us be off to bed, for the heat of the stove has made me so sleepy that for the last hour I have hardly been able to keep my eyes open, and have scarcely heard a word of what Jerry and Tom have been saying." They only remained a few days at Denver. After the life they had been leading they were very speedily tired of that of the town, and at the end of a week they started on horseback, with a light waggon drawn by a good team, to carry their stores for the journey and to serve as a sleeping-place. There had been no question about the Indians accompanying them, this was regarded as a matter of course. It was by no means a pleasant journey. They had frequent snow-storms and biting wind, and had sometimes to work for hours to get the waggon out of deep snow, which had filled up gullies and converted them into traps. After a stay of three days at Fort Bridger to rest the animals, they went on to Utah, having forwarded the sample of quartz to Pete Hoskings. A fortnight was spent at Salt Lake City. Waggons, bullocks, and stores were purchased, and Harry arranged with some teamsters to bring the waggons out to Fort Bridger as soon as the snow cleared from the ground. CHAPTER XIX A FORTUNE On their return to Fort Bridger Harry and his companions pounded up the quartz that had been left there, and found that its average equalled that of the piece they had tried at the mine. The gold was packed in a box and sent to Pete Hoskings. A letter came back in return from him, saying that five of his friends had put in five thousand dollars each, and that he should start with the stores and machinery as soon as the track was clear of snow. The season was an early one, and in the middle of April he arrived with four large waggons and twenty active-looking young emigrants, and four miners, all of whom were known to Harry. There was a good deal of talk at Bridger about the expedition, and many offered to take service in it. But when Harry said that the lode they were going to prospect was in the heart of the Ute country, and that he himself had been twice attacked by the red-skins, the eagerness to accompany him abated considerably. The fact, too, that it was a vein that would have to be worked by machinery, was in itself sufficient to deter solitary miners from trying to follow it up. Scarce a miner but had located a score of claims in different parts of the country, and these being absolutely useless to them, without capital to work them with, they would gladly have disposed of them for a few dollars. It was not, therefore, worth while to risk a perilous journey merely on the chance of being able to find another vein in the neighbourhood of that worked by Harry and the men who had gone into it with him. There was, however, some surprise among the old hands when Pete Hoskings arrived with the waggons. "What! Have you cut the saloon, Pete, and are you going in for mining again?" one of them said as he alighted from his horse. Pete gave a portentous wink. "I guess I know what I am doing, Joe Radley. I am looking after the interests of a few speculators at Denver, who have an idea that they are going to get rich all of a sudden. I was sick of the city, and it just suited me to take a run and to get out of the place for a few months." "Do you think it is rich, Pete?" "One never can say," Hoskings replied with a grin. "We are not greenhorns any of us, and we know there is no saying how things are going to turn out. Straight Harry has had a run of bad luck for the last two years, and I am glad to give him a shoulder up, you know. I reckon he won't come badly off any way it turns out." It was not much, but it was quite enough to send a rumour round the fort that Pete Hoskings had been puffing up a wild-cat mine in Denver for the sake of getting Straight Harry appointed boss of the expedition to test it. Everything was ready at Bridger, and they delayed but twenty-four hours there. The teams had arrived from Salt Lake City with the stores a week before, and the eight waggons set off together. Pete, the three partners, the two Indians, and the four miners were all mounted. There were eight other horses ridden by as many of the young fellows Pete had brought with him, the rest walked on foot. They marched directly for the mine, as with such a force it was not necessary to make a detour over the bad lands. At the first halting-place some long cases Pete had brought with him were opened, and a musket handed to each of the emigrants, together with a packet of ammunition. "Now," Pete said, "if the Utes meddle with us we will give them fits. But I reckon they will know better than to interfere with us." The rate of progress with the heavy waggons was necessarily very much slower than that at which the party had travelled on their previous journey, and it was not until the afternoon of the eighth day after starting, that they came down into the valley. A halt was made at the former camping-place in the grove of trees, and the next morning Pete and the miners went up with Harry and his friends to choose a spot for the fort, and to examine the lode. As soon as the earth was scraped away from the spot from which the rock had been taken, exclamations of astonishment broke from the miners. They had been told by Pete that Harry had struck it rich, but all were astonished at the numerous particles and flakes of gold that protruded from the rock. Pete had forwarded early in the spring to Harry the list of the claimants to the mine, and the latter and Tom had ridden over to Salt Lake City a few days before the waggons came up from there to register the claims at the mining-office, and the first step was to stake out these claims upon the lode. "It doesn't run like this far," Harry said to the miners, "and I reckon that beyond our ground it doesn't run above two ounces to the ton, so I don't think it is worth while your taking up claims beyond. Of course, you can do so if you like, and we will allow you an hour off every few days during the season to work your claims enough to keep possession, and of an evening you can do a bit of washing down below. You will find it good-pay dirt everywhere. At least we did as far as we tried it." They now fixed on the site for the fort. It was upon the top of the bank, some twenty yards above the lode, and it was settled there should be a strong double palisade running down from it to the stream, so that in case of siege they could fetch water without being exposed to the bullets of an enemy taking post higher up the creek. Among the men from Denver were two or three experienced carpenters, and a blacksmith, for whose use a portable forge had been brought in the waggons. The party returned to breakfast, and as soon as this was over the teams were put in and the waggons were brought up and unloaded, the stores being protected from wet by the canvas that formed the tilts. Some of the men accustomed to the use of the axe had been left in the valley to fell trees, and as soon as the waggons were unloaded they were sent down to bring up timber. All worked hard, and at the end of the week a log-hut fifty feet long and twenty-five feet wide had been erected. The walls were five feet high, and the roof was formed of the trunks of young trees squared, and laid side by side. As rain fell seldom in that region it was not considered necessary to place shingles over them, as this could, in case of need, be done later on. The door opened out into the passage between the palisades down to the water, and the windows were all placed on the same side, loopholes being cut at short intervals round the other three sides. Another fortnight completed the preparations for work. The stamps were erected, with the water-wheel to work them; the stream dammed a hundred yards up, and a leat constructed to bring the water down to the wheel. The waggons were formed up in a square. In this the horses were shut every night, four of the men by turns keeping guard there. During the last few days the miners had been at work blasting the quartz, and as soon as the stamps and machinery were in position they were ready to begin. The men were all told off to various duties, some to carry the rock down to the stamps, others to break it up into convenient sizes; two men fed the stamps, others attended to the concentrator and blankets, supervised by Harry. It was the duty of some to take the horses down to the valley and guard them while they were feeding, and bring them back at night. Two men were to bake and cook, Pete Hoskings taking this special department under his care. Jerry worked with the miners, and Tom was his uncle's assistant. The stamps were to be kept going night and day, and each could crush a ton in twenty-four hours. To their great satisfaction each of the men was allowed one day a week to himself, during which he could prospect for other lodes or wash gravel as he pleased. The old cradle was found where it had been left, and as five of the men were off duty each day, they formed themselves into gangs and worked the cradle by turns, adding very considerably to the liberal pay they received. The two Indians hunted, and seldom returned without game of some sort or other. As the quicksilver in the concentrator was squeezed by Harry or Tom, and the blankets washed by them, none but themselves knew what the returns were. They and their partners were, however, more than satisfied with the result, for although the lode was found to pinch in as they got lower, it maintained for the first six weeks the extraordinary average of that they had first crushed. At the end of that time the Indians reported that they had seen traces of the Utes having visited the valley. The number of men who went down with the horses was at once doubled, one or other of the Indians staying down with them, preceding them in the morning by half an hour to see that the valley was clear. A week later the horses were seen coming back again a quarter of an hour after they had started. The men caught up their guns, which were always placed handy for them while at work, and ran out to meet the returning party. "What is it, Hunting Dog?" "A large war-party," the Indian replied. "Three hundred or more." The horses were driven into the inclosure, half the men took their places among the waggons, and the others, clustered round the hut, prepared to enter it as soon as the Indians made their appearance. The partners had already arranged what course to take if the Indians should come down on them, and were for all reasons most anxious that hostilities should if possible be avoided. Presently the Indians were seen approaching at a gallop. As soon as they caught sight of the log-house and the inclosure of waggons they reined in their horses. The men had been ordered to show themselves, and the sight of some forty white men all armed with rifles brought the Indians to a dead stand-still. Pete Hoskings went forward a little and waved a white cloth, and then Harry and the chief, leaving their rifles behind them stepped up to his side and held their arms aloft. There was a short consultation among the Indians, and then two chiefs dismounted, handed their rifles and spears to their men, and in turn advanced. Harry and Leaping Horse went forward until they met the chiefs halfway between the two parties. Harry began the conversation. "Why do my red brothers wish to fight?" he asked. "We are doing them no harm. We are digging in the hills. Why should we not be friends?" "The white men killed many of the Utes when they were here last year," one of the chiefs replied. "Why do they come upon the Utes' land?" "It was the fault of the Utes," Harry said. "The white men wished only to work in peace. The Utes tried to take their scalps, and the white men were forced against their will to fight. No one can be blamed for defending his life. We wish for peace, but, as the Utes can see, we are quite ready to defend ourselves. There are forty rifles loaded and ready, and, as you may see, a strong house. We have no fear. Last time we were but few, but the Utes found that it was not easy to kill us. Now we are many, and how many of the Utes would die before they took our scalps? Nevertheless we wish for peace. The land is the land of the Utes, and although we are strong and could hold it if we chose, we do not wish to take it by force from our red brothers. We are ready to pay for the right to live and work quietly. Let the chiefs go back to their friends and talk together, and say how many blankets and how many guns and what weight of ammunition and tobacco they will be content with. Then if they do not ask too much, the white men will, so long as they remain here, pay that amount each year in order that they may live in peace with the Utes." The two Indians glanced at each other. "My white brother is wise," one said. "Why did he not tell the Utes so last year?" "Because you never gave us time, chief. If you had done so we would have said the same to you then, and your young men would be with you now; but you came as enemies upon us, and when the rifle is speaking the voice is silent." "I will speak with my braves," the chief said gravely. And turning round they walked back to their party, while Harry and the chief returned to the huts. "What do you think, chief? Will it be peace?" Leaping Horse nodded. "Too many rifles," he said. "The Utes will know they could never take block-house." It was nearly two hours before the two Utes advanced as before, and Harry and the Seneca went out to meet them. "My white brother's words are good," the chief said. "The Utes are great warriors, but they do not wish to fight against the white men who come as friends. The chiefs have talked with their braves, and the hatchets will be buried. This is what the Utes ask that the white men who have taken their land shall pay them." Harry had arranged that the chief, who spoke the Ute language more perfectly than he did, should take charge of the bargaining. On the list being given Leaping Horse assumed an expression of stolid indifference. "The land must be very dear in the Ute country," he said. "Do my brothers suppose that the white men are mad that they ask such terms? Peace would be too dear if bought at such a price. They are willing to deal liberally with the Utes, but not to give as much as would buy twenty hills. They will give this." And he enumerated a list of articles, amounting to about one quarter of the Indians' demands. The bargaining now went on in earnest, and finally it was settled that a quantity of goods, amounting to about half the Indians' first demand, should be accepted, and both parties returned to their friends well satisfied. A certain amount of goods had been brought out with a view to such a contingency, and half the amount claimed was handed over to the Utes. They had, indeed, more than enough to satisfy the demands, but Leaping Horse had suggested to Harry that only a portion should be given, as otherwise the Indians might suppose that their wealth was boundless. It would be better to promise to deliver the rest in three months' time. A dozen of the principal men of the Utes came over. The goods were examined and accepted, the calumet of peace was smoked and a solemn covenant of friendship entered into, and by the next morning the Indians had disappeared. One end of the hut had been partitioned off for the use of the leaders of the party, and the gold obtained each day was carried by them there and deposited in a strong iron box, of which several had been brought by Pete Hoskings from Denver. The day after the Indians left, a waggon, was sent off under the escort of eight mounted labourers to Bridger, and this continued to make the journey backward and forward regularly with the boxes of gold, Jerry and Pete Hoskings taking it by turns to command the escort. Harry and Pete had had a talk with the officer in command at Bridger on the evening before they had started on the expedition. "You think you are going to send in a large quantity of gold?" the officer asked. "If the mines are such as we think, Major, we may be sending down two or three hundredweight a month." "Of course, the gold will be perfectly safe as long as it is in the fort, but if it gets known how much there is, you will want a strong convoy to take it across to the railway, and it would not be safe even then. Of course, the bulk is nothing. I should say at any rate you had better get it in here with as little fuss as possible." "If you will keep it here for awhile," Pete said, "we will think over afterwards how it is to be taken further." The officer nodded. "It mayn't turn out as difficult a business as you think," he said with a smile. "You are both old hands enough to know that mines very seldom turn out as rich as they are expected to do." "We both know that," Pete Hoskings agreed. "I dunno as I ever did hear of a mine that turned out anything nigh as good as it ought to have done from samples, but I reckon that this is going to be an exception." When within a few miles of the fort the escort always placed their rifles in the waggon and rode on some distance ahead of it, only one or two with their leader remaining by it. The boxes, which were of no great size, were covered by a sack or two thrown down in the corner of the waggon, and on its arrival in the fort it was taken first to the store, where a considerable quantity of provisions, flour, molasses, bacon, tea and sugar, currants and raisins, and other articles were purchased and placed in it. This was the ostensible purpose of the journey to the fort. Late in the evening Jerry or Pete, whichever happened to be the leader, and one of the men, carried the boxes across to the Major's quarters and stored them in a cellar beneath it. There was a real need of provisions at the mine, for the population of the valley rapidly increased as the season went on. The upper part of the bed of the stream had been staked out into claims, the miners and other men each taking up one, but below them the ground was of course open to all, and although not nearly so rich as the upper gravel it was good enough to pay fairly for working. A stout palisading now surrounded the ground taken up by the machinery and the mine itself, and no one except those engaged by the company were allowed to enter here. Considerable surprise was felt in the camp when the first two or three miners came up and staked out claims on the stream. "I wonder how they could have heard of it," Tom said to his uncle. "The fact that we are remaining out here is enough to show that we are doing something, anyhow. The men who go in are always strictly ordered to say no word about what our luck is, but the mere fact that they hold their tongues--and you may be sure they are questioned sharply--is enough to excite curiosity, and these men have come to find out and see what the country is like, and to prospect the hills round where we are working. You will see a lot of them here before long." As more came up it was determined to open a store. In the first place it furnished an explanation for the waggon going down so often, and in the second the fact that they were ready to sell provisions at cost prices would deter others from coming and setting up stores. There was no liquor kept on the mine, and Pete and Harry were very anxious that no places for its sale should be opened in the valley. During the winter and spring Tom had received several letters from his sisters. They expressed themselves as very grateful for the money that he and their uncle had sent on their return to Denver, but begged them to send no more, as the school was flourishing and they were perfectly able to meet all their expenses. "It is very good of you, Tom," Carry said. "Of course, we are all very pleased to know that you have been able to send the money, because it relieves our anxiety about you; but we really don't want it, and it makes us afraid that you are stinting yourself. Besides, even if you are not, it would be much better for you to keep the money, as you may find some opportunity of using it to your advantage, while here it would only lie in the bank and do no good. It would be different if we had nothing to fall back upon in case of anything happening, such as some of us getting ill, or our having a case of fever in the school, or anything of that sort, but as we have only used fifty pounds of mother's money we have plenty to go on with for a very long time; so that really we would very much rather you did not send us any over. Now that we know your address and can write to you at Fort Bridger, it seems to bring you close to us. But we have had two very anxious times; especially the first, when we did not hear of you for six months. The second time was not so bad, as you had told us that it might be a long time before we should hear, and we were prepared for it, but I do hope it will never be so long again." There had been some discussion as to whether the mine should be shut down in winter, but it was soon decided that work should go on regularly. Six more stamps were ordered to be sent from the east, with a steam-engine powerful enough to work the whole battery, and in September this and other machinery had reached the mine. Fresh buildings had been erected--a storehouse, a house for the officers, and a shed covering the whole of the machinery and yard. By the time this was all ready and in place the valley below was deserted, the gravel having been washed out to the bed-rock. No other lodes of sufficient richness to work had been discovered by the prospectors, and with winter at hand there was no inducement for them to stay longer there. Only two or three of the men at the mine wished to leave when their engagement for the season terminated. All had been well paid, and had in addition made money at gold-washing. Their food had been excellent, and their comforts attended to in all ways. Accordingly, with these exceptions all were ready to renew their engagements. An arrangement was made with the Major at Fort Bridger for an escort under a subaltern officer to proceed with two waggons with the treasure to Denver. Pete Hoskings and Jerry were to remain as managers of the mine throughout the winter. Harry and Tom had made up their minds to go to England and to return in the spring. The ore was now very much poorer than it had been at first. The lode had pinched out below and they had worked some distance along it. The falling off, however, was only relative; the mine was still an extraordinarily rich one, although it contained little more than a tenth of the gold that had been extracted from the first hundred and fifty tons crushed. None but Harry, Pete Hoskings, Jerry, and Tom had any idea of the amount of gold extracted in less than six months, although the miners were well aware that the amount must be very large. It was so indeed, for after repaying the amount expended in preliminary expenses, together with the new machinery, the wages of the men, provisions, and all outgoings, they calculated the treasure sent down to be worth one hundred and twenty-eight thousand pounds, while the mine if sold would fetch at least double that sum. After a hearty farewell to Pete and Jerry, Harry and Tom with the two Indians rode with the last waggon down to Bridger. The iron boxes had all been sewn up in deer-skins when they were sent down, and at night they were placed in the waggons by Harry and his companions. Over them were placed the provisions for the journey, as it was just as well that even the soldiers should not suspect the amount of treasure they were escorting. They encountered some severe snow-storms by the way, but reached Denver without incident. The place had wonderfully changed since Tom had arrived there more than two years before. It had trebled in size; broad streets and handsome houses had been erected, and the town had spread in all directions. They drove straight to the bank, to which Pete Hoskings had sent down a letter a fortnight before they had started, and the boxes were taken out of the waggon and carried down into the vaults of the bank. A handsome present was made to each of the soldiers of the escort, a brace of revolvers was given by Harry to the subaltern, and the handsomest watch and chain that could be purchased in Denver was sent by him to the Major, with an inscription expressing the thanks of the company to him for his kindness. "Well, Tom, I am thankful that that is off my mind," Harry said. "I have had a good many troubles in the course of my life, but this is the first time that money has ever been a care to me. Well, we are rich men, Tom, and we shall be richer, for the mine will run another two or three years before it finishes up the lode as far as we have traced it, and as we have now filed claims for a quarter of a mile farther back, it may be good for aught I know for another ten years. Not so good as it has been this year, but good enough to give handsome profits. Have you calculated what our share is?" "No, uncle. I know it must be a lot, but I have never thought about what each share will be." "Well, to begin with, a third of it goes to Pete Hoskings and his friends, that leaves eighty-five thousand. The remainder is divided into seven shares; I was to have two, the Indians three between them, you one, and Jerry one. His share is then about twelve thousand, which leaves seventy-three thousand between you and me. Of course, we shall divide equally." "No, indeed, uncle; that would be ridiculous. I have been of very little use through it all, and I certainly ought not to have as much as Jerry. You and the chief discovered it, and it was entirely owing to you that any of the rest of us have a share of the profits, and of course your arrangement with the two Indians is only because the chief is so fond of you." "Partly that, Tom; but chiefly because it is in accordance with red-skin customs. They are hunters, fighters, and guides, but they are not miners, and they never go in for shares in an enterprise of this sort. It went very much against the grain for Leaping Horse to take that three or four hundred pounds that came to him at the end of the last expedition, and he would be seriously offended if I were to press upon him more than his ordinary payment now; he would say that he has been simply hunting this year, that he has run no risks, and has had nothing to do with the mine. To-morrow morning we will go out to see what there is in the way of horse-flesh in Denver, and will buy him and Hunting Dog the two best horses in the town, whatever they may cost, with saddles, bridles, new blankets, and so on. If I can get anything special in the way of rifles I shall get a couple of them, and if not I shall get them in New York, and send them to him at Bridger. These are presents he would value infinitely more than all the gold we have stowed away in the bank to-day. He is going back to his tribe for the winter, and he and Hunting Dog will be at the mine before us next spring." In the morning Harry was two hours at the bank, where he saw the gold weighed out, and received a receipt for the value, which came to within a hundred pounds of what they had calculated, as the dust had been very carefully weighed each time it was sent off. In accordance with the arrangement he had made with Pete Hoskings and Jerry the amount of their respective shares was placed to their credit at the bank. Drawing a thousand pounds in cash, he received a draft for the rest upon a firm at New York, where he would be able to exchange it for one on London. He then inquired at the hotel as to who was considered to possess the best horses in the town, and as money was no object to him, he succeeded in persuading the owners to sell two splendid animals; these with the saddles were sent to the hotel. He then bought two finely finished Sharpe's rifles of long range, and two brace of silver-mounted revolvers. "Now, Tom," he said, "I shall give one of these outfits to the chief and you give the other to Hunting Dog; he has been your special chum since we started, and the presents will come better from you than from me. I expect them here in half an hour; I told them I should be busy all the morning." The two Indians were delighted with their presents, even the chief being moved out of his usual impassive demeanour. "My white brothers are too good. Leaping Horse knows that Straight Harry is his friend; he does not want presents to show him that; but he will value them because he loves his white brothers, even more than for themselves." As for Hunting Dog, he was for a long time incredulous that the splendid horse, the rifle and pistols could really be for him, and he was so exuberant in his delight that it was not until Leaping Horse frowned at him severely that he subsided into silent admiration of the gifts. "Here are papers, chief, that you and Hunting Dog had better keep: they are the receipts for the two horses, and two forms that I have had witnessed by a lawyer, saying that we have given you the horses in token of our gratitude for the services that you have rendered; possibly you may find them useful. You may fall in with rough fellows who may make a pretence that the horses have been stolen. Oh, yes! I know that you can hold your own; still, it may avoid trouble." They had now no further use for their horses, so these were sold for a few pounds. They purchased a stock of clothes sufficient only for their journey to England. "You may as well put your revolver in your pocket, Tom," Harry said as they prepared to start the next day. "I have sewn up the draft in the lining of my coat, but sometimes a train gets held up and robbed, and as we have six hundred pounds in gold and notes in our wallets, I certainly should not give it up without a fight." The Indians accompanied them to the station. "Now, chief, you take my advice and look out for a nice wife before next spring. You are forty now, and it is high time you thought of settling down." "Leaping Horse will think over it," the Seneca said gravely. "It may be that in the spring he will have a wigwam in the valley." A few minutes later the train started east, and five days later they reached New York. A steamer left the next day for England, and in this they secured two first-class berths; and although Tom had managed very well on his way out, he thoroughly enjoyed the vastly superior comfort of the homeward trip. They went straight through to Southampton, for, as Harry said, they could run up to London and get their clothes any day; and he saw that Tom was in a fever of excitement to get home. Harriet came to the door of the little house at Southsea when they knocked. She looked surprised at seeing two gentlemen standing there. In the two years and a half that had passed since Tom had left he had altered greatly. He had gone through much toil and hardship, and the bronze of the previous summer's sun was not yet off his cheeks; he had grown four or five inches, and the man's work that he had been doing had made almost a man of him. "Don't you know me, Harriet?" Tom said. The girl at once recognized the voice, and with a loud cry of delight threw her arms round his neck. The cry brought Carry out from the parlour. "Why, Harriet," she exclaimed, "have you gone mad?" "Don't you see it's Tom?" Harriet said, turning round, laughing and crying together. "It is Tom, sure enough, Carry; you need not look so incredulous; and this is Uncle Harry." There were a few minutes of wild joy, then they calmed down and assembled in the sitting-room. "It is lucky the girls have all gone home to dinner," Carry said, "or they would certainly have carried the news to their friends that we were all mad. It is a half-holiday too, nothing could be more fortunate. Now we want to hear everything. Tom's letters were so short and unsatisfactory, uncle, that he told us next to nothing, except that you had found a mine, and that you were both working there, and that it was satisfactory." "Well, my dears, that is the pith of the thing," Harry said. "The first thing for you to do is to send round notes to the mothers of these children saying that from unforeseen circumstances you have retired from the profession, and that the school has finally closed from this afternoon." There was a general exclamation from the girls: "What do you mean, uncle?" "I mean what I say, girls. Tom and I have made our fortunes, and there is no occasion for you to go on teaching any longer. We have not yet made any plans for the future, but at any rate the first step is, that there is to be no more teaching." "But are you quite, quite sure, uncle?" Carry said doubtfully. "We are getting on very nicely now, and it would be a pity to lose the connection." Harry and Tom both laughed. "Well, my girl," the former said, "that is of course a point to be thought of. But as Tom and I have over thirty-five thousand pounds apiece, and the mine will bring us in a good round sum for some years to come, I think we can afford to run the risk of the connection going." After that it was a long while before they settled down to talk quietly again. A week later they all went up to London for a month, while what Harry called "outfits" were purchased for the girls, as well as for him and Tom, and all the sights of London visited. Before their story came to an end, the grand consultation as to future plans had been held, and a handsome house purchased at Blackheath. Tom did not return to Utah in the spring; his uncle strongly advised him not to do so. "I shall go back myself, Tom; partly because I should feel like a fish out of water with nothing to do here, partly because I promised the chief to go back for a bit every year. I am beginning to feel dull already, and am looking forward to the trip across the water, but it will certainly be better for you to stay at home. You left school early, you see, and it would be a good thing for you to get a man to come and read with you for two or three hours a day for the next year or two. We have settled that the three younger girls are to go to school; and I don't see why you, Carry, and Janet, should not go, in the first place, for two or three months on to the Continent. They have had a dull life since you have been away, and the trip will be a treat for them, and perhaps do you some good also. It will be time enough to settle down to reading when you come back." The mine returned large profits that year, the increased amount stamped making up to some extent for the falling off in the value of the ore, and the shares of the various proprietors were more than half what they had been at the end of the first season's work. The third year it fell off considerably. There was a further decrease the year after, and the fifth year it barely paid its expenses, and it was decided to abandon it. Harry Wade went over every season for many years, but spent only the first at the mine. After that he went hunting expeditions with Leaping Horse, who, to his amusement, had met him at his first return to the mine with a pretty squaw, and Hunting Dog had also brought a wife with him. Two wigwams were erected that year near the mine, but after that they returned to their tribe, of which Leaping Horse became the leading chief. Tom's sisters all in due time married, each being presented on her wedding-day with a cheque for ten thousand pounds, as a joint present from her uncle and brother. Tom himself did not remain a bachelor, but six years after his return to England took a wife to himself, and the house at Blackheath was none too large for his family. Harry Wade's home is with Tom, and he is still hale and hearty. Up to the last few years he paid occasional visits to America, and stayed for a while with his red brother Leaping Horse, when they lamented together over the disappearance of game and the extinction of the buffalo. Hunting Dog had, at Harry's urgent advice, settled down in the ways of civilization, taking up a ranche and breeding cattle, of which he now owns a large herd. Jerry Curtis and Pete Hoskings made a journey together to Europe after the closing of the mine. They stayed for a month at Blackheath, and ten years later Tom received a lawyer's letter from Denver saying that Peter Hoskings was dead, and that he had left his large house and other property in Denver to Mr. Thomas Wade's children. Jerry still lives at the age of seventy-five in that city.